Provincial Politics – Page 131

There is meaning in the Ontario by-elections

September 7, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Nobody is crowing about the results in the Ontario by-elections in Vaughan and Kitchener-Waterloo. This is not even a ‘told you so!’ It is just a simple conclusion for Premier Dalton McGuinty and Tory leader Timmy Hudak. The conclusion of this sample vote is that they both have to go.

Ontario no longer needs or wants a liberal premier who blames doctors and teachers for the province’s deficit. Calling an act to deny teachers their civil rights the Putting Students First Act is an insult to the intelligence of the voters. And expecting Kitchener-Waterloo voters to vote Liberal after buying off their sitting Conservative MPP is something only a political neophyte would seriously consider. Conservative voters in Kitchener-Waterloo did what Conservative voters always do when confronted with a silly Conservative leader and an unknown local Conservative candidate, they voted NDP.

It is hard to say how many times this has happened. And, contrary to some of the pundits, Andrea Horwath had nothing to do with it. It was not her victory. If anything, her low profile in the by-election helped the NDP candidate in Kitchener-Waterloo.

The by-election in Vaughan was also very interesting but in a different way. Running Greg Sorbara’s executive assistant and former labour leader in Vaughan for the Liberals was an easy transition. It must have been the best way for Greg Sorbara to apologize for getting out of the fiasco at Queen’s Park.

But how long Steven De Luca will want to sit quietly in caucus at Queen’s Park and listen to McGuinty’s out-of-touch Whig philosophy is a good question. At least, with his background, he knows what he is getting into.

Both McGuinty and Hudak are a drag on their parties. Tiny Tim Hudak is a sad joke carried over from the moribund Michael Harris Conservatives. Dalton McGuinty is just as sadly out of touch with the real world. There is still some hope for Horwath. The lady needs to lose about 15 kilos and some of her union backers along with gaining a better insight into the needs of Ontario voters. The good news is the Liberal and NDP caucuses are going to have a higher average intelligence quotient after these by-elections.

But the sooner the Liberals get a new leader who understands the needs of 21^st Century Ontario the better. The Conservatives are in need an entirely new brain trust. Just because many of your followers are out of touch with reality is no excuse for the leader to be like them.

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Come out, come out, wherever you are.

September 5, 2012 by Peter Lowry

We know that Thomas Mulcair, Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition was at his party’s caucus meeting in St. John’s, Newfoundland. We assume he voted in the advance poll in Quebec but it is an interesting question as to which party he voted. Bob Rae and the Liberal Caucus were in Quebec and had ready comment on the Quebec election for the news media. It was a surprisingly shy Prime Minister Harper who was missing on the 10 pm news in Eastern Canada.

But then, Stephen Harper has been playing hide-and-seek with Canadians for most of the summer. In many ways, it added to the enjoyment of the pleasant summer weather.

But other than a comment earlier in the summer that he might launch a provincial NDP wing in Quebec sometime, Mulcair was also among the missing.

What does it say that the Federal Liberal MPs and senators were coincidently gathering at Montebello in Quebec? Timing is everything. Bob Rae, the news grabber that he is, knew to make the federal Liberals the saviours of the nation. The scene just needed appropriate music to give his statement the right drama.

There is no question that the federal Liberal MPs from Quebec are, collectively, far more experienced than the federal NDP members from that province. They continue to run rings around Mulcair’s people and have good access to the news media.

In contrast, Thomas Mulcair has to toe a very fine line in Quebec. His basic problem is that his NDP actually share the core vote in Quebec with the Parti Québécois. The PQ is the left of centre party in that province. There is no comfortable home in Quebec for a left-of-centre federalist. When you add the right-wing Liberal Party’s vote and the CAQ vote on Tuesday, you find that about 57 per cent of the voters opted for a federalist option (even if François Legault’s federalism seems temporary).

Keen observers of the Quebec scene are eagerly waiting for the re-opening of the inquiry into corruption in the construction industry. We expect that we might find that certain trades unions, some contractors and possibly some politicians have been chasing their tails for payoffs. We can all agree that cleaning up the construction industry in Quebec is long overdue.

While it will be very much a step backward, Mulcair will probably find that a cleaned up construction industry can give him a base of union support for a provincial New Democratic Party. It could ultimately relegate the Parti Québécois to the fringe party status that it deserves.

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Solidarity for now.

September 3, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Reflecting on unions on Labour Day is routine for left of centre politicos. When you have laboured with brothers and sisters of the movement, you want to give them credit for their solidarity, for their conviction, for their dedication and you want to lambaste them for their pig-headed obstinacy.

But what nobody is willing to understand is that when Harper and company have finished destroying labour unions in Canada, we will have also destroyed Canada’s middle class. The divide between the very rich and the rest of us will a wide and deep void. We will be the clones in Stephen Harper’s Brave New World. We lowly workers will have to learn to love Big Brother.

We are at a crossroads. Tomorrow is decision day in Quebec and where is Thomas Mulcair, leader of Canada’s New Democrats and saviour of unions? Is he leaving the field to Pauline Marois of the Parti Québécois? Where is Andrea Horwath, leader of the Ontario New Democrats and saviour of Ontario unions? Why is she letting Premier Dalton McGuinty blame teachers’ unions for the provincial deficit?

Despite the federal NDP turning to a professional politician such as Thomas Mulcair for leadership, this union based party is not doing the job. It is not making the case for what unions really mean in Canada. It was the struggle in the 1930s to bring management to the bargaining table that brought our nation out of the Great Depression. It was the momentum of manufacturing to support the Second World War that entrenched the labour movement as a Canadian institution. Our country survived that war, richer, more confident and with a more level playing field for our citizens.

The weakness for the unions was in the creation of the New Democratic Party as common ground for the old Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and Canada’s labour movement. Instead of putting their trust in the party, the unions wanted to run it.

It has left the NDP as a party of the past. It still lives in the strife of the Dirty Thirties. It has failed to move to a social democratic stance that can be attractive to all caring Canadians. It has failed to articulate the case for a modern union movement that is based on a partnership with the contributions of management.

The true social democrats in Canada are the left wing of the Liberal Party. These are the people who have to grasp their party’s upcoming leadership campaign and ensure that the new leader opens the door to New Democrats who want to defeat Stephen Harper and see the union movement move into the 21^st Century.

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Spending a nervous Labour Day weekend?

September 1, 2012 by Peter Lowry

While south of the border, Mitt Romney has a long slippery slope to slide between now and November, we have more interesting election and by-elections here in Canada next week. We have a disaster forming in Quebec and that is because we have no clue as to who will win. We also have two by-elections in Ontario that are also a disaster no matter who wins. It makes for a nerve-wracking long Labour Day weekend.

First of all, we are cancelling all bets on the Quebec provincial election on Tuesday. Usually you can sense something in Quebec but all our favourite pundits have thrown up their hands in surrender. They all seem to agree that the incumbent Premier Jean Charest and his so-called Liberals are toast.

But much like the other so-called Liberals in Ontario, Jean Charest’s party has an opposition that is just about as ridiculous as Dalton McGuinty’s. Pauline Marois of the Parti Québécois seems to have all the personality of a Pit Bull bitch and François Legault of the new Coalition Avenir Québec will tell you whatever you want to hear.

Marois could be winning up to a third of the votes by promising to poke a sharp stick in the Cyclopic eye of Harper’s federal Conservatives and make impossible demands on behalf of Quebec xenophobes. Legault, on the other hand, makes no sense on anything and seems to be garnering a third of the possible votes. Charest also seems content to run on his record and keep almost a third of the committed votes. If all these votes were spread evenly across the province, the outcome would be predictable, but they are not.

The Racing Form’s morning line in the Province of Quebec seems to be a PQ minority government. Maybe.

Surprisingly there is almost that much clarity in Ontario. Dalton McGuinty is fighting with the doctors and the teachers in Ontario and that is supposed to win him the two by-elections in Concord and Kitchener-Waterloo and give him a majority government. It is not working that way. McGuinty has forgotten that all those doctors and teachers are also voters and they are really pissed and talk to lots of people every day. NDP leader Andrea Horwath is saying nothing and her candidates are doing well. (She should learn from that.) Conservative leader Timmy Hudak is taking part in things at Queen’s Park and smiling a lot. He is not doing as well as he expected.

The Racing Form’s morning line in Ontario next week is status quo in Ontario. McGuinty’s so-called Liberals stay in a minority. Maybe.

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Dalton McGuinty turns on the teachers.

August 29, 2012 by Peter Lowry

There was a gathering at Queen’s Park yesterday. Some of Premier Dalton McGuinty’s former teacher friends came to call. What they called him cannot be printed in a family-friendly blog. It must have had something to do with the reason McGuinty’s government has recalled the Legislature ahead of the fall session. He wants to deny the teachers their right to bargain in good faith or to honour existing contracts.

People ask us why we seem to be so displeased with Dalton. Frankly when Dalton came on the provincial scene, this province was ready to vote for anyone to get rid of the Conservative government. And after the experience with Bob Rae as a New Democrat premier, the Liberal leader could have had two heads and got elected twice.

Regrettably Dalton could have had two heads but he has less than half a brain. The guy always reminds us of a bumbling, skinny and unfunny Mr. Bean. At first, he seemed to know that he was quite inadequate and he went out to gather in some allies. He made very good allies among various unions such as teachers. In a time of economic concerns, those unions stood by him and there was labour peace in Ontario. The unions even stood by him in elections and ran TV commercials on his behalf.

But not any more! You can hardly treat teachers or any union as badly as McGuinty has and ever be forgiven. Some of his most sympathetic teacher supporters had agreed to a no-raise deal. They trusted him to be fair in the future.

But some of the other large groups of teachers had contracts in place and they were due for some increases this September. Dalton told them he would cancel their increases. This, they claimed, was not only unfair but denied them their rights.

And this is why Conservative leader Tiny Tim Hudak is doing a victory dance around his offices these days. The legislation that Dalton’s Liberals will be presenting is even more draconian (with Hudak’s help) and McGuinty gets all the blame.

With the bye-elections on September 6 in Vaughan and Kitchener-Waterloo, McGuinty can kiss any chance of a majority government goodbye. Even voters who do not feel kindly towards teachers will want to know who is next on the McGuinty hit list.

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McGuinty is in danger of losing this vote.

August 22, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Maybe it is time to declare our independence. We might have been considered a yellow-dog Liberal for too long. That means if the Liberal candidate in our riding is a big yellow dog, we would vote for it. It is now clear that we are somewhat at odds with Dalton McGuinty and his Family Compact.

While often referring to the McGuinty government as Whigs, it is now recognized that the description might be in error. Whigs are Liberals who are only two hundred years out of date. It is possible that Premier McGuinty never has been and never will be a Liberal. Can there be redemption for what he is doing to Ontario?

Did you hear that he has recalled the legislature? He wants to order teachers back to work before they go on strike or get locked out. He wants to cancel terms of existing contracts. Is he unaware that we do not have slavery any more?

There are tens of thousands of people out of work in this province. Even worse, we have even more people who are underemployed. This second group is qualified for much more complex work but are working in lower level or menial levels to feed their families. Instead of being concerned about this Mr. McGuinty says he wants to lower the deficit. We have a deficit because Mr. McGuinty will not tax business appropriately.

Premier McGuinty’s government appears to pay outrageous bonuses to executives working for the government but will freeze the wages of the people working for these overpaid executives. The government seems to prefer fighting with doctors over fees than working with them to ensure citizens have the healthcare professionals they need.

The other day, one of McGuinty’s junior ministers actually told a news conference that the province will sell parkland at Ontario Place for condominiums. Surely Mr. McGuinty was unaware of this outrageous breach of faith with Ontario citizens?

What keeps saving McGuinty’s ass is his opposition. Tiny Tim Hudak, leader of the Conservatives is a bad joke. The guy is a hold-over from the Michael Harris regime and when he gets off script, nobody understands him. The good news is that with McGuinty struggling with a minority government, Hudak hides.

Andrea Horwath is the one who could use a game plan. She could make some headway and get some good ink for her party if she just knew how. The brass ring is there and neither Horwath nor Hudak know enough to reach for it.

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If Jean Charest was a Liberal.

August 21, 2012 by Peter Lowry

A very knowledgeable francophone writer wrote today that Jean Charest’s Quebec Liberals were going the way of their federal counterparts. If she meant that the Quebec Liberals are headed for third party status in the Quebec National Assembly after the September 4 election, she could be right. What she should not have done was confuse the Quebec Liberal Party with the Liberal Party of Canada. She must have done that to keep the explanation simple for her Anglo readers.

Charest’s Liberals are the successors of the Quebec governments of Jean Lesage, Robert Bourassa and Maurice Duplessis and any relationship with liberal philosophy is purely coincidental. The only progressive Quebec governments in that time were Parti Québécois and if they had not been so hung up on constant infighting, tribalism, parochialism, elitism and separatism, they would have done a better job. When Charest passed the draconian anti-demonstration laws against the students earlier this year, he lost any connection he had with liberalism and showed his true colours as a Conservative/Union National adherent.

What is happening at the moment is that François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec is draining off some of the Charest Liberal’s right-wing votes and putting Pauline Marois’ Parti Québécois into the lead in the polls. While there is still time for a turn-around by any of the parties involved, it is starting to look like an interesting minority government situation. Making such a government work, will be a fascinating political challenge.

Just to confuse things, Thomas Mulcair leader of the federal New Democrats is speculating that he might want to help get a provincial NDP wing launched in his province. That would bleed off some of the union and left-wing support for the Parti Québécois and ensure a minority government situation in the Quebec National Assembly for the foreseeable future.

What needs to happen is for true liberals to take over the Quebec Liberal Party when Charest quits after this election. That way when Mulcair’s federal NDP merge with the federal Liberal Party, the Liberal/NDP in Quebec will be the strongest possible combination. It could put an end to separatism for a long time. And federally, it could also put an end to Stephen Harper’s reign in Ottawa.

And if Jean Charest was a liberal, it would be so easy!

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Whigs breach a public trust.

August 19, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Just what part of the word ‘park’ is not understood by Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Whigs? In 1971, then Premier John Robarts introduced Ontario Place as a jewel on Toronto’s waterfront—a park extending Exhibition Park. A park is a public trust. It is a place for public recreation. It belongs to the people of that place. It is definitely not a place for residential development or anything else that does not contribute to the public enjoyment of the park.

We hardly expected John Tory and his panel to understand that. This will teach us to not just laugh at John Tory’s recommendations and throw them in the recycle bin. We already knew that John Tory is not the most astute politician in the province. He showed that when he lead the Ontario Conservatives down the garden path back in 2007 with his offer of expanded parochial school funding to ethnic groups. What he did was hand the election on a platter to Dalton McGuinty. Why is McGuinty now listening to John Tory tell him what to do with Ontario Place?

This is serious. How could McGuinty be so foolish as to let a junior minister stand up and tell people that his government is going to allow condominiums there? Can you think of a worse place for people to live? There are no city services handy. There are no convenient shopping areas. How are these condos going to have vehicle access? Ontario Place is a place for people, not cars.

Why would people who understand casinos have already said this would be a very bad place to have a casino? It is because Ontario Place has built its identification as a place for children, a place for families and a place for youth. There is no space for commerce or business that does not provide direct services that contribute to the enjoyment of the park.

This is not to suggest that the province pay public funds to create a more advanced entertainment area at Ontario Place. With the size of the Toronto market and its tourism, no doubt some enterprising entrepreneur with deep pockets could see the profit in something such as a modern year-round water world at the park. And there are many other ideas to be explored. There is nothing wrong with public-private partnerships when they fulfill the objectives of all concerned.

But the Tory report on Ontario Place is wrong and the McGuinty government is absolutely wrong to go along with it.

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You don’t take a lady to the ‘In and Out.’

August 18, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Before they got smart enough to call their disgusting stores ‘The Beer Store,’ Brewers Retail (formerly Brewers Warehousing Company Ltd.) was referred to by many Ontario residents as the ‘In and Out.’ They were hardly going to call the stores by their formal name and after all, the largest signs at the outlets were ‘In’ and ‘Out.’ The one fixed rule was that only a degenerate slob would send a lady to buy his beer,

Face facts, The Beer Store is a guy place. If a lady wants to buy beer, let her go to the liquor store. The liquor board people sell beer in little lady-like packages. You take the measure of a man at The Beer Store by the number of two-fours he can carry.

But all the chickens have come home to roost at The Beer Store. They have finally found out that woman can not only vote but some have been known to drink a cold beer from a bottle and belch appreciatively. While the brewers have been catering to the guy thing, women have been singing siren songs and plying those he-men with wines and drinks mixed with hard liquors.

This is a problem. Any idiot can go into one of those disgusting beer stores and see why 80 per cent of beer sales are to men. Those lame brains at Brewers Retail are trying to figure out why the sales of beer have been flat for the past 15 years. During the same period, wine sales have increased by more than 70 per cent. Wine makes you sexy. Beer makes you pee.

If the people who want to sell beer had any smarts they would get behind the convenience stores and talk turkey with the Ontario government. Beer in smaller packages is a convenience store item. Beer also belongs in grocery stores. It can be sold from coolers, ready to use. Primp the packaging, change the advertising and beer could be more attractive to the ladies. The big brewers could take a lesson from the craft brewers in that.

The lessons are in history. Beer has been a universal drink of both men and women for thousands of years. It is a healthy drink—in moderation. It belongs. It belongs on the table with food. It is a refreshing drink when people are relaxing.

The mistake was made almost a hundred years ago when Ontario’s ignorant politicians tried to appease the equally ignorant Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. It is time we gave beer its place. We can let The Beer Stores learn how to be recycling centres.

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Stating the obvious for police boards.

August 17, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Why should the Province of Ontario further clarify the role of our police services boards? While it has been obvious for many years that these highly politicized boards are largely inadequate for the role they undertake, they have sufficient powers needed to do their job. To outline those powers in more detail to the members of the boards would almost guarantee their usage when not necessarily warranted.

What brings up this concern is the request by the chair of the City of Ottawa police services board for clarification of the role of the boards. The Ottawa board and others across the province appear to be confused by the report from retired judge John Morden on the Toronto G20 fiasco. You hardly need to read between the lines of Morden’s report to see why Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair should be fired and the Toronto Police Services Board should resign for failure to do their job.

But they are like many police board members across Ontario who seem to think they have no right to question those police operations that are managed by the police chief. They appear to be forgetting that the chief works under contract for the board. The board hires and fires the chief.

It is similar, with a few differences, to the relationship of the board of directors of a company and the company’s chief operating officer. The quasi-military chain of command and discipline needs of a police force require the board members to keep their distance from any action that could constitute interference in day-to-day operations.

But questioning policing policies and interaction of the police with the public are very much the right of the board. The board members are responsible for policing on behalf of the community. They work for the public and not the police.

This is one reason why it is very annoying to see police service board members acting as spokespersons for the police. As it stands today, municipal councillors and mayors who serve on police service boards should be declaring a conflict and not voting on police budgets. For the chair of the police services board to present the police budget to the council instead of a representative of the police officials who created it, is a corruption of the role of the police services chair.

But if we continue appointing unqualified people to police services boards, we are going to continue to muddle along. The problem is the people, more than the rules.

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