Provincial Politics – Page 128

Tiny Tim should be careful what he wishes.

December 16, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak wants a union-free Ontario for Christmas. He figures he can make this happen by attacking the Rand Formula. For more than 60 years, the Rand Formula has supported industrial peace in Canada by the simple measure of making sure all who benefit by a union’s actions pay the equivalent dues. What Tiny Tim does not realize is that the action of dumping the Rand Formula can help destroy the quality of life in this province.

Despite the old images, the union worker today is not a dirt smudged individual in coveralls and a hard hat. Today, union workers are the back-bone of the middle class in this country. The union member can be a teacher or fireman, a scientist or lab worker, a carpenter or brick layer, a police constable or an engineer. And you can sometimes be hard-pressed to find a socialist among them.

But without the Rand Formula, the infighting such as we saw in the Depression would bring back the class hatreds that beset our society in those times.

What Tiny Tim also does not seem to realize is that many of the union members in Ontario do not necessarily vote NDP. He does not seem aware that there are unions with a heavy investment in the status quo. They are almost as conservative as he. To declare war on them with an ultimate plan for right-to-work legislation is to polarize them and push them into the wrong camp.

If Hudak is really out to stop the unions from spending member’s dues to tell people not to vote for him, there are lots of NDPers and Liberals who agree that third party advertising should require clear identification of who is paying, who it is for and come under the control of the Chief Electoral Officer of the Province.

There is no question that the McGuinty Liberals have let Ontario down at a time when the rules should have been stiffened to provide proper spending limits for parties and candidates and more rigid accounting for candidates’ expenses. The time is long past that we should allow those with the money to call the tune at election time. Neither business nor unions should have an unfair advantage.

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Shame on you Mr. Stevenson.

December 14, 2012 by Peter Lowry

You can be excused for not knowing that Howard Stevenson is president of the Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario). It is unlikely that he would be among the hundreds of loyal readers of Babel-on-the-Bay. When we reported the other day that we had not heard from Charles Sousa, the Mississauga MPP running for the Ontario Liberal leadership, it was probably a coincidence that an e-mail arrived extolling the good news of Charles’ candidacy. The e-mail was ostensibly signed by Howard Stevenson.

As president of the Ontario wing of the federal Liberal Party, it seems an improper use of his position for Mr. Stevenson to use his position to support a provincial leadership candidate. First of all, if this was on behalf of a federal leadership candidate, he would be expected to step down from his position on the National Executive for the duration of the campaign. To use his federal position to try to influence votes for a provincial candidate is likely to be considered more in the category of ill mannered.

But worse news is that the letter is supposed to be about Charles Sousa’s detailed plan to renew the Ontario Liberal Party and provide MPPs and their communities a greater voice. Stevenson seems to be giving the federal party’s endorsement to a really bad plan. Charles Sousa’s answer appears to be to give the constituency people money and maybe they will be quiet. He is suggesting nothing about returning democracy to the electoral districts. His really great suggestion is that MPPs should be given the authority they are supposed to always have. It is to be heard.

Sousa appears to be running a policy-oriented campaign and there is nothing wrong with that. We are told that he has released plans to create jobs in the north and he has suggested priorities for the Greater Toronto Area. That leaves him a long way to go to address the mess the McGuinty government is leaving for the next Premier of Ontario.

And while some reporters who claim that Sousa is “Premier-like” are quoted in the letter (with a link to the article), there seems to be no great ground swell for Sousa north of Highway 401.

But we are told that momentum is building, Charles cares, he has the right ideas and is ready to act. We should therefore keep an open mind and wait to see how he develops his campaign in January. Maybe, in the crisp cold air of mid-winter, it will all be clear!

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More updating of the provincial leadership.

December 13, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Yes, this was the theme yesterday. More has happened. Some good.

We see that, according to the news media, Gerard Kennedy has taken the gloves off. He is going to be a peacekeeper in the war against teachers. As a former Minister of Education, he probably could bring peace to that conflict. Somebody has to. Gerard has also noted that the party is running a series of namby-pamby debates for the leadership and he thinks they are boring people. (That is the first sensible thing anybody has said about those debates.)

We got an interesting call last evening from a live volunteer from Eric Hoskins’ campaign. If this guy did not have two university degrees, he would have an assured career ahead of him in telemarketing. He was good. The only thing wrong was that he kept referring to Hoskins as “doctor.” Hoskins had better come down off his perch and talk to the people. It was a good conversation with his volunteer and the Hoskins’ campaign probably has us down as “undecided/possible/leaning.”

Bob Hepburn of the Toronto Star revealed this morning that of the seven candidates for leader of the Ontario Liberals, one is a lesbian and one is gay. It does seem to be a higher ratio than the average population. Since we have known about this sexual orientation since these people announced their candidacies, what is the big deal? Do we know how it is going to fly in Barry’s Bay? No, we do not.

Asking former MPP George Smitherman’s opinion on this was really quite amusing. George was the openly gay former MPP running for mayor of Toronto who got trapped between his strong showing in downtown Toronto and Rob Ford’s solid support in the suburbs. There will be a lot of small “l” liberals among the Liberal Party delegates in January and they could probably care less about a person’s sexual orientation. We need to choose the best candidate and worry about their sexual orientation later.

In the meantime, Kathleen Wynne’s team is aggressively selling her as a tough kind of grandmother. She seems to have some support up here among Babel’s Whigs. We have seen little of Glen Murray’s campaign to date but he does seem more intelligent than some of his opponents. It will be interesting to see his campaign, if he ever launches it.

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Updating the excruciating.

December 12, 2012 by Peter Lowry

We started to watch the Ontario Liberal leadership debate on the Internet from Thunder Bay the other day. It was not exciting. As luck would have it, unexpected company interrupted before we fell asleep in front of the computer.

The debate—as it was called—was not particularly enlightening anyway. What is interesting are the campaigns being waged by the various candidates. If this is a sample of the more intense campaign in January, we will have to get call display to control our telephone calls for the month.

The most aggressive campaign is being waged by former MPP Sandra Pupatello. She did a province-wide telephone town hall late the other evening. We stayed on the line as long as the wife would let us but we were unable to ask the one question that we have not heard her answer yet. It was the question about how to fix the top-down nature of political parties these days.

Kathleen Wynne is the other very aggressive candidate and we have heard her answer to the question; she is going to create a consensus. We have had a number of calls now from Wynne’s campaign. These include annoying robocalls as well as the other day a live telemarketer who wanted to know who we were supporting. The caller was a bit nonplussed when she got a lecture on the responsibility of elected electoral district representatives to represent their riding rather than a candidate. We are likely to be recorded now as a probable/undecided.

Other candidates were caught off guard in Thunder Bay by how much Glen Murray seems to know about problems faced by Canada’s aboriginal population. Anybody who knows Winnipeg knows the answer to that and Murray used to be Winnipeg mayor.

The best marketing award in this campaign seems to have already been awarded to the Eric Hoskins’ team. His team has very little to work with and even uses humour to fill the gaps. His e-mail campaign makes excellent use of third party commentary, when they can find it, and is on top of things.

Which begs the question: who is Charles Sousa and why does nobody hear from him? Or are we just lucky?

Harinder Takhar records his own robocalls. He is not getting good advice.

That leaves Gerard Kennedy who is probably keeping his powder dry until the campaign intensifies in January. Or whatever!

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Beer wars make strange bedfellows.

December 11, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Ontario Opposition Leader Tiny Tim Hudak, the Toronto Star and Babel-on-the-Bay on the same side of any issue is the day there are also three moons in the sky. Yet here we are: all three concurring on doing something about the disgusting state of beer sales in Ontario. Maybe we all come at this for different reasons and with differing agendas but thankfully, we can all agree on screwing Brewers’ Retail.

There is a wonderful hypocrisy to the Toronto Star’s stance. As artfully explained by Martin Regg Cohn in the Star today, we can screw the foreign owners of the Beer Store but we need to preserve the provincially-owned Liquor Control Board stores. It seems that the free enterprise Toronto Star thinks there are good monopolies and bad monopolies. And only Torstar knows the difference between them.

At least Tiny Tim is consistent. The Conservative leader is having a hard time these days. He has to overcome the natural tendency of the news media to ignore him. He needs ink. Half his caucus are busy plotting how to dump him and the other half are looking around for a place to jump ship.

But give Timmy credit. Instead of going home to his loving wife and daughter and hiding under the bed, he has writers preparing papers on promises to please Ontario voters. Privatising beer and liquor sales is certainly something to please the discriminating voter. He would forget all about it if he ever accidently came to power but it sure sounds good today.

Babel-on-the-Bay has always fought the good fight against big box beer stores and monopoly liquor stores. This blog still believes that the most disgusting Beer Store in Ontario award should go to the Anne Street store here in Babel. We still believe that the dregs of beer and liquor bottles on the floor in that place will rip the Birkenstocks right off your feet. Luckily, we have never seen a pair of Birkenstocks in that store.

But we do not discriminate against foreigners. We want that Brazilian, Belgian, American, Japanese beer, sold as Molson Canadian or Labatt Blue, available in the corner convenience store. Let the Beer Store continue as a recycling centre. They already smell bad enough anyway.

And the Toronto Star will have to forego its hypocrisy about the LCBO. Beer and wine and liquor need to be sold with food. They belong together. Specialty liquor and wine stores also need an opportunity to flourish where the market will sustain them. Nobody wants the government making decisions about the brands of booze they can buy. We have to get out of the middle ages.

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Reading into political promises.

December 7, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Ontario’s leadership hopefuls in the Premier Stakes are telling us more than they realize in their campaign promises. These policy bits they feed us are nurtured in the minds of the candidates’ policy gurus, based on more or less scientific research with party people, massaged by professional writers and glanced at by the candidate and the campaign manager. It mostly tells us how quickly that stuff will be dumped if we choose that particular candidate.

On one side of the scale, we have MPP Kathleen Wynne who might or might not have read what was presented to her. On the other end of the scale is MPP Harinder Takhar who was not only involved in the writing but he believes it. It would be foolhardy to select either as Ontario Liberal leader. Both would take us quickly to the oblivion of the Opposition benches at Queen’s Park.

Wynne’s people have figured out that one of the appeals Gerard Kennedy offers delegates is that he really does believe in democracy for members of the Liberal Party. There are just too many liberals in Ontario who do not like the way the party is run from the top. Wynne’s campaign informs us that she must work to improve “the relationship between our party and its grassroots membership.” It further states that Kathleen will build a consensus to make this relationship more open and fair. How do you like that for commitment?

Mind you, Harinder Takhar is so busy promoting his 100-day plan to cut the deficit, he has no time to worry about how badly the Ontario Liberal Party is organized and run.

Nobody seems to have told MPP Erik Hoskins, with his artfully crafted hair style, that there is any problem with how the party is organized and functions for the leader’s office. He is busy promoting his endorsement by everyone’s favourite Tory Roy McMurtry. Why he would want to be the choice of a Tory is a good question. When he adds a few labour leaders to his list, we might pay attention. If he can add them from any of the teachers’ unions, we will be even more impressed.

Why former Prime Minister (briefly) John Turner would also endorse anyone in this race was a bit of a puzzle until we remembered that John lives in Hoskins’ electoral district.

We are not sure where Sandra Pupatello stands on anything. We got an e-mail from her saying answer this five-minute quiz about yourself. We set it aside until sometime when we have a spare five minutes. Maybe we should have answered it to find out where she stands.

Anyway, we have already had e-mails from Hoskins, Kennedy, Pupatello, Takhar and Wynne. We assumed Murray and Sousa are taking the highroad and using snail mail. They had better get those snails moving!

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Is Tim Hudak reading Babel-on-the-Bay?

December 6, 2012 by Peter Lowry

“We keep pointing out to myopic Ontario politicians that the operative word for convenience stores in Ontario is the word “convenience.” The idea is that these convenience stores can be a convenient place to get supplies of beer and wine. Yes, it will be slightly more expensive but do not forget what the extra charge is for: convenience.” Babel-on-the-Bay, Jul. 21, 2012

“Booze in the corner stores is about convenience, not reduced prices, Tory Leader Tim Hudak said Wednesday.” Toronto Star, Dec, 6, 2012.

Ontario Opposition Leader Tiny Tim Hudak might have picked up some of his ideas from Babel-on-the-Bay. It hardly wins our vote. What is really amusing about the entire dialogue is the knee-jerk reaction of the Toronto Star.

You can admire the Toronto Star when it goes on a crusade such as for autism recently. You always assume in those situations that the Star might be weighing its opinions on the side of those afflicted but you welcome the attention the editors are paying to them.

But you wonder where the hell they are going when they take after casinos and demon rum. You would swear that the Toronto Star at one Yonge Street is the new headquarters of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. They use the same biased arguments. They make the same inane claims. They seem to forget many of the basics of good journalism.

The guys who have to walk and chew gum at the same time on the booze issue are the New Democrats. Unionized LCBO employees and Beer Store drudges are going to expect their support. Frankly there is room for the Beer Stores and Brewers Retail to stay in the distribution and recycling business but we are hardly going to insist on unionizing the convenience stores in Ontario. They might no longer be convenient.

Opening up liquor sales to grocery stores is a great opportunity to negotiate better wages and working conditions in that industry. The government will have an obligation to inspect and regulate some aspects of this business and you do not expect to see high school students stocking shelves with scotch and giving advice to liquor customers.

Convenience stores will also find that a 15-year old cannot be left in charge of a store that sells beer and wine. This is a rare opportunity to upgrade and improve an entire industry in Ontario—a step that was not taken when they were enlisted to sell lottery tickets.

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Never mind McGuinty, dump Duncan.

December 5, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Premier Dalton McGuinty could do his successor a huge favour by immediately dumping Dwight Duncan as Treasurer. Even Sandra Pupatello would not be as foolish as to be tied to all of Duncan’s bad calls with Ontario’s budget. And Duncan is backing her!

And yet here is Duncan preaching to anyone who will listen that the leadership candidates have to follow his path to salvation.

So Ontario has a $14 billion deficit and debts running on $300 billion. Guess what: we are not alone. We all have to survive today’s world financial crunch. You have to come up with ideas to get people working. You make sure everyone who is making money is paying a fair share to keep the deficit as low as possible. When the economy starts to recover, you can cut some of the deficit and start paying down debt.

Duncan must think he was elected by bankers and business. He forgets his first responsibility is to the citizens of Ontario. He is supposed to look after them first.

Some of those people he is supposed to be looking after are school teachers. Where does he get off threatening to use that Bill 115 to deny teachers their rights?

And he should stop dismissing everything Opposition Leader Tim Hudak says out of hand. Tiny Tim has a rare but good point about privatizing the LCBO. It is long overdue. Government should not be in the business of selling booze. Private enterprise is far more efficient and would produce far more in taxes for the government.

That formula is in place for casinos already. The government regulates (in fact, it duplicates its regulators) while private enterprise manages the casinos. Neither Tiny Tim nor Dwight Duncan has noticed that the formula is working.

But if the new Liberal premier let’s Tiny Tim run a campaign on privatizing booze sales and selling beer at convenience stores, he or she will deserve to lose. Can you imagine the shot in the arm that privatizing beer and booze sales would give Ontario’s economy?

Getting rid of both Duncan and McGuinty is a gift God has given us in Ontario. We have to be sure that we pick a new leader who is not tied to their lame legacy.

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Liberal road show lays egg in Ingersoll.

December 2, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Liberal leadership candidate MPP Kathleen Wynne said it all when she asked her opponents for Dalton McGuinty’s job to make nice in their debut road show appearance. What they did was make it boring. Not that the tightly written script left much room for them to emote with any force. Frankly it was the casting of the production that left much to be desired.

As the aging ingénue, former McGuinty cabinet minister Sandra Pupatello did her best to upstage her fellow cast members. The problem is that when you are busy doing in the rest of the cast, you lose the audience and you leave them in confusion.

But the doctor from downtown Toronto with his artful hair style also has to work on his “gee, shucks, we’re all farmers here” approach. MPP Eric Hoskins might have missed a few classes in Stanislavski’s method acting school.

Mind you, MPP Harinder Takhar seems to have never heard of method acting that is designed to help the actor immerse himself or herself in the persona being portrayed. With Harinder, what you see is what you get.

That might also be true of MPP Charles Sousa, Harinder’s fellow Mississauga contender. Sousa is more like the stage type who portrays the cad who tempts the dew-eyed damsel in distress to try a little Madeira. He looks like he was born wearing a white shirt and tie.

Not like MPP Glen Murray though. Murray should do the Fred Astaire, white tie and tails routine. Ideally, his partner would have to be Kathleen Wynne. She is a bit like an aging Ginger Rogers, do you think? They would be perfect. Except there will be one small problem: Ms. Wynne will probably want to lead.

The only problem with her part in the show on Saturday was that Kathleen Wynne stuck her neck out and offered to make herself Agriculture Minister. That daring move was something of a show stopper.

But, as in any drama going through out-of-town trials, you have to wait for the hero to appear and save Ontario from durance vile under Tiny Tim Hudak. That was the role of former MPP and MP Gerard Kennedy. Gerard even offered to make the Liberal Party in Ontario a more democratic organization. He looked good up there in his shining armour.

Maybe this show just needs better prompting.

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Out of town trials for Liberal tyros.

December 1, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Ingersoll? Sure, you have to take the show on the road to try it out, but who would choose Ingersoll? Most of the seven presumptive heirs to Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty have never been to Ingersoll before. Some will never return. They will fall by the wayside.

But because it sounds rural (it is actually far enough east of London, Ontario not to be amalgamated with London) some of the seven contenders will introduce their rural platforms. MPP Eric Hoskins, the doctor from downtown Toronto, is already playing at his rural roots and waving his plan to restore the family farm to its former glory.

Some might question the rural roots of MPP Harinder Takhar, former government services minister, but he will also be proud to show you the rural aspects of his plan to overcome Ontario’s deficit. Someone has convinced Harinder that the deficit is a problem and so he promises to fix it faster than anyone else.

The presumptive den mother for this gaggle of former cabinet ministers is MPP Kathleen Wynne from Don Valley West. She has asked that all her fellow contenders play nice at these debates. It appears she has sold more memberships than any of her competitors in this race and has some fairly powerful friends among the non-elected ex-officio delegates to the January convention.

The one contender who probably has no intention to play nice is former MPP Sandra Pupatello from Windsor. Why would she? There is nothing in it for her to hide her strengths. She got out of the McGuinty cabinet before it crashed and burned. She has to smear five of her competitors with the errors of the past year, sell her strengths of being from outside the Toronto region and then make a direct appeal for the right-wing vote.

Pupatello’s only competitor without the stigma of membership in the hard-luck Liberal cabinet of the past few years is Toronto’s Gerard Kennedy. As Kennedy is also the only contender with left-wing credentials, Pupatello has to single him out for special treatment. That is an honour he might not appreciate.

The debate today is not important enough to interrupt television’s Saturday sports schedules but it will be on the Internet. Depending on how well your computer system connection handles streaming video, you might enjoy watching.

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