Provincial Politics – Page 137

Well Mr. McGuinty, since you asked, your budget sucks.

March 28, 2012 by Peter Lowry

What Ontario Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan announced in the Legislature yesterday was not a liberal budget. It was closer to a Conservative party budget than anything liberal. It was all forecast by that dour banker Don Drummond. Who said he knew what was needed in Ontario?

Why, for example, does Dwight Duncan think it is so important to balance things over the coming five years? Is God going to strike him dead if he does not accomplish this?

Why can we not make plans to grow our Ontario economy and let more jobs and taxes balance the books? Maybe it was planned timing that the Ontario ‘sunshine list’ of publicly paid people who make over $100,000 per year was released last week. You do not need to freeze their inflated salaries. You just need to tax them properly.

And if anyone needs to understand the quote from George Santayana—the one that says: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it—it is the Ontario Liberals. When Bob Rae was Ontario Premier a few years back, he took on the unions to include them in his austerity program. It was these same unions who kept the Liberals in power in the 2011 election—not quite a majority—but enough to stay in power. You try to screw with those unions and after a sooner election that you expect, you will be looking up from down!

And to make matters worse, McGuinty, you are out to screw seniors. What did they ever do for you but vote for you? If you put in a means test on their Ontario Drug Benefit plan, you might as well also kiss that vote goodbye.

If you are going to start a fight with the Ontario Medical Association, you should fight over something worthwhile. How about your government forcing the doctors to stop discriminating against the sick and the elderly? The sick and the elderly are the people who cannot get a family doctor. Are you too stupid to figure out why?

You might be wondering why this supposed Liberal Party member is being so nasty to you. Our axe to grind is that we support real liberals. Maybe we should stop calling your people Whigs. Whigs are just Tories with a different name from another century. If we do not tell you when you are so wrong, who will?

And if you put that callow Tiny Tim Hudak in power, we will never forgive you!

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Are we really seeing red over Ornge?

March 27, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Considering this is budget day in Ontario, Ornge might just be last week’s topic. At that time, the opposition at Queen’s Park was in full cry for the head of Health Minister Deb Mathews. It was not until the Provincial Auditor brought us his report that anyone really knew how bad the situation is with that air ambulance service.

And all the auditor could tell us last week was that it was so screwed up, he could not figure it all out. All he knew was that the Ornge people had been playing fast and loose with the government’s money and rules, they were hardly forthcoming about their transactions and the province might have lost some money in the process.

But what more can Deb Mathews do? She has already fired the people involved. She has ranted and roared at those who are left. The Ministry of Health is a huge portfolio and she can hardly do a hands-on job with all the parts. What she probably needs more than all the shouting in the legislature is for her to shout at her bloated staff—they are obviously doing a lousy job.

She cannot keep using the excuse about the size of her Ministry. She certainly has enough staff to have an overview at the critical points. They let her down. The political staff particularly has to be sensitive to what can cause trouble for their Minister. They have to use similar smell tests as the Auditor General. If something does not pass the smell test, they have to find out why.

There are too many financial corpses around Ontario’s Health Ministry. Deb Mathews knew that when McGuinty gave her the job. It was probably her ego that prevented her from saying ‘No thanks.’ Taking over when she did, that close to the election, meant that she had little time to batten the hatches. She could hardly trust her predecessor David Caplan’s choice of political staff.

The opposition think she should take the bullet for Ornge, the way Caplan took the bullet for eHealth. The difference was he deserved it. He brought fewer skills to the task of Minister than his mother did back in the 1980s and she did an abysmal job.

But in the Health Ministry of today, there are different needs. We have the technologies today to lower the cost of health care and it is not happening. Why? We have people who cannot get a family doctor. Why? We have hospital boards with CEO’s being paid huge salaries and they are no more efficient. Why? We have district health units that are just adding more bureaucracy. Why? And the list goes on and on. Your trials have only begun Deb Mathews.

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Why is the Toronto Star against casinos?

March 21, 2012 by Peter Lowry

You never want to be on the wrong side of an issue with the Toronto Daily Star. The editors show no mercy. They will stomp you. They will grind you down. They go after you full blast on both editorial and news pages. They have no patience for fact or pleas for an open mind. The Star likes to be a crusader. It makes them feel close to the roots of the paper’s founder, Joseph Atkinson.

Yet the Star’s current crusade makes no sense. Why are they damning a casino for Toronto? If the casino is sanctioned by the Ontario government, it is not illegal. It is just another entertainment centre. Is this some false morality? Do they really think they will change anything?

To be fair, it should be noted that a few centimetres of editorial space were allocated to the pro side of the debate today—in the Toronto Star.

But their owned-and-operated grocery store advertising wraps around the province have been turned loose to carry on the fight against the demon Toronto casino. Our own Babel Backward provided a scathing attack today in an editorial intended to enrage the populous. Full of confused claims and erroneous facts, the editorial was an outcry about local employment.

The editorial claims that three casinos in Windsor, Fort Erie and Sarnia are to be padlocked (sic). The fact that these were money-losing slot operations was glossed over. It was then claimed that all slots at racetrack operations would be gone next year. That was not only wrong but completely misrepresented the situation.

What it boils down to in the editorial is local jobs. Rama (which is not on the market, as stated in the editorial) has about 2500 employees. If Torontonians stop coming to Central Ontario because there is a casino in Toronto, a lot more people than the Casino Rama managers are going to be very surprised.

While slots are hardly our thing, Georgian Downs is a very nice little facility. It is quite likely to keep hiring people in Innisfil and paying the municipality for being there. It will not be getting more grants to keep the horses running but that was a luxury the province could ill afford. That racing money was a separate issue.

It all boils down to small town myopia. You should have felt the chill in the air when we told our favourite local council member that the best use for Babel’s Lakeshore train station lands was a casino. And he also ignored the suggestion of a concert hall.

Maybe those of us who choose to live in small-town Ontario deserve this. The positive thought is that we will soon have a world-class casino just an hour away in Toronto!

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Ontario Lottery and Gaming is not in the game.

March 18, 2012 by Peter Lowry

There was no rush to analyse the Ontario Lottery and Gaming (OLG) Strategic Business Review. The media gave us the salient features. The report was a no brainer. This blog has been telling you there would be at least one major casino in Toronto very soon. There was nothing prescient about it. It was obvious.

What we did not know was that the OLG report would show readers how incompetent it is. The executive summary should have included the resignations of all the executives involved in this mess. Originally it was assumed that the government asked for this report last summer and said to deliver it sometime after the October election. You are stunned when you read that this material was a year-and-a-half in the making.

It reads as though it took a month for some interviews, two weeks of writing and a year and a half for approvals.

In trying to demonstrate a path to the future, the report tells us what a failure OLG has been. It has not kept up with the needs of the marketplace. It has failed to serve Ontario citizens. It has suffered from political interference. OLG facilities have further confused the market by trying to satisfy the regulators at the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) and putting political considerations ahead of the wishes of the market.

The report shows that Ontario now has the lowest per capita profit from gambling of any other part of Canada except for Prince Edward Island and the Arctic. That is not only embarrassing but shows the incompetence of everyone involved.

The report freely admits that the OLG has failed to keep up with technology, changing consumer preferences and tourism patterns. What they have been doing, we are not told.

Now the OLG wants us to let them do more. Whether it should be done under new management, is the important question.

It is amusing to note that Toronto is going to get a casino while the report insists municipalities have a veto on facilities in their backyards. If we want to give municipalities the right to reject legal casino’s maybe we could let them to reject pay-day loan leeches and tattoo parlours at the same time. Mind you, casinos provide far more in taxes and employment benefits to the community.

Maybe the report is being too subtle when it mentions that the AGCO is also involved in overseeing gambling in the province. Since the OLG wants to just oversee it and leave the operations to the private sector, we might have one to many overseers here.

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And 39 per cent want chocolate

March 15, 2012 by Peter Lowry

It is always interesting to see these instant surveys that tell us that something the province is doing is not approved by a large number of voters. To-day’s instant results are about casinos. We are told that some high percentage of voters do not want a casino in their backyard. And so what? What would life be like in Ontario if everyone wanted to go to a casino every chance they could get?

It would be chaos. The economy could not afford all of us going to casinos. We would have to convert every church hall into a bingo parlour. There would be slot machines replacing the baptismal font. The manse would be hosting poker games.

Obviously nobody would want to go that far. We can strike a bargain on the issue. Let’s agree to keep the gamblers out of the churches and the churches out of the casinos. They are not incompatible systems. And the losers need some place to pray after they donate their money to the casino.

To even suggest that everyone would like to have casinos in their city is foolish. Some like casinos and some do not. Some like strawberry ice cream and some like chocolate. That is what makes humans interesting.

There are even some people who should never go to a casino. It is up to them to make that decision. It is the same as people who should never drink alcohol. They are often the one who will politely turn down the offer of a cocktail.

Gambling is a form of entertainment. It has been with us since pre-history. It has been obvious for some time that with the Americans tightening border crossings that the tourism-based casino strategy was in trouble. It was hardly long before the Ontario Government and Ontario Lottery and Gaming remembered that Toronto is Ontario’s number one tourist destination.

And it is quite likely that Woodbine Racetrack can clear some slots area for casino tables in short order. And there is lots of space there, on the track property, for a real casino to be built in the next few years. A place to stand, a place to grow, Ontari-ari-ari-oh!

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The eastern pipeline option.

March 14, 2012 by Peter Lowry

You have to admire the resourcefulness of Albertans. They always have answers at the ready to overcome political obstacles. Whether the blockage is created by Ottawa or the Legislature in Edmonton, they will come up with an answer. The usual solution is to form a new and more right-wing political party. The current provincial inheritor of the Conservative-Reform-Alliance parties is the Wildrose Alliance. The party has been poised to move in on the Alberta Conservatives as that party’s strength erodes.

Well ahead in the public opinion polls, Wildrose leader Danielle Smith is acting as premier-in-waiting for the election to be held in the next couple months. Smith has Conservative Premier Alison Redford in a bind as the Premier is committed to supporting the Trans-Canada’s Keystone XL Pipeline through the United States to the Texas Gulf refineries as well as the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline over the Rockies to Kitimat, B.C. This left Smith with an option that had not been considered, an all Canadian solution. She suggested shipping Alberta’s heavy tar sands oil to refineries in Sarnia, Montreal, Quebec City and Saint John. The only pipeline that would be new on that route would be to Saint John from Montreal.

While it was not a brand new suggestion, it got rave reviews in the more conservative media when Smith proposed it in a speech in Ottawa. It could hardly be ignored in Alberta.

But what Smith did not add was the fact that the Enbridge eastern route is through the U.S. before crossing the Canadian border again into Ontario. One of the options all along was to divert heavy oil from the Enbridge pipelines south to Texas. This is a slightly roundabout route but it gets around most of the serious ecological concerns.

Mind you, the more practical people with a concern for the ecology are pointing out that heavy oil can cause the most serious harm to the ecology. They explain that refined oil cannot mix with water and is much easier to clean up than heavy crude. They ask why the heavy crude cannot be processed to a stage in which it could flow easier and not be an ecological disaster waiting for a pipeline break. Nobody seems to be able to answer that.

Nor would it be a concern of someone such as Wildrose’s Danielle Smith. This is a person who did her internship in Alberta politics as an acolyte of the Fraser Institute. In the convoluted politics of Alberta, Ms. Smith describes herself as Pro-Choice Libertarian. That is quite a fence-sitting accomplishment for any politician.

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Mayor Ford’s dilemma.

March 8, 2012 by Peter Lowry

It is obvious that Ontario Conservative leader ‘Tiny Tim’ Hudak has never served on a municipal council. He seems to have absolutely no idea how the mayor and council interrelate. This must be causing confusion for those of his Conservative members who got their political start in municipal politics. Some of them have also served as mayors. They could explain to Tiny Tim the mistakes Toronto Mayor Ford has made with his city’s councillors.

Tiny Tim has been suggesting to Premier McGuinty that the Ontario government should only support Mayor Ford’s vision of subways. McGuinty has been smart enough to say no and that he will abide by the council’s decision between Light Rapid Transit or subways. McGuinty has enough problems without taking on a rebellious Toronto council.

There is certainly no need for anyone to be surprised that city council has had enough of Toronto’s abrasive mayor. Ford was always odd man out as a councillor. It was like his promise to Toronto voters that he would end the gravy train at city hall. They voted for him and then found out he was the gravy train.

It was obvious a year ago last summer that Ford was set to win the mayor’s chair in Toronto. The only viable opponent was George Smitherman, the openly gay former minister in the McGuinty government. Smitherman was an easy winner downtown while Ford reaped the conservatism of the suburbs. The suburbs are bigger. It was no contest.

But the mayoralty is no holy grail. The job has residual power but it is power that has to be exercised with care and flair. The mayor has to build an alliance with the city officials because s/he works closely with them. If the mayor exercises the power well, the mayor gets more done. The mayor also chairs council and the executive committee. If you know how to wield the gavel, it is power.

But the mayor is still just one vote. To wield power, you need allies. You need to build bridges to former opponents. You have to make nice and work toward the possible. Making new enemies on council just bares your back for more knives.

Looking at it another way, you have to remember that council is the mayor’s mob. The mayor just has to be smart enough to lead that mob to where both sides want to go.

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No, education in Ontario is not big enough.

March 6, 2012 by Peter Lowry

It sometimes seems that the Toronto Star editors enjoy setting pontificating eggheads up for a fall. Professor George Fallis of York University appears to be their latest victim. Professor Fallis writes in today’s Star that Ontario does not need three new university campuses. He makes the argument, in an opinion page piece, that Ontario has enough campus capacity now. He believes that future growth in capacity will only force existing facilities to compete for enrolment. An attitude such as that can only draw derision from across the province.

The professor’s mindset seems to be off. First of all, we need more competition in Ontario. We hardly need to encourage any academics who believe that they do not have to work hard for the attention and attendance of their students. Professors also have a responsibility to keep fees and costs of higher education affordable for students. Academic tenure is not designed to encourage the lazy but to allow challenge and freedom of thinking. Learning must challenge minds not wallets.

The purpose behind the three new campuses is to bring university training and learning to more students across Ontario. We have to bring education to the students and that means going where the growth in population is happening. The day our universities have to compete for enrolment is when we can truly say we are doing the job of educating. Until then, we are denying higher education to those who want it. Education is not just for the professor’s elite.

Babel is one of those three academic centres that will benefit from the province’s promise of growth. Georgian College, based here, has successfully partnered with various universities across the province to bring expanded learning capabilities to central Ontario. Babel (or Barrie, if you insist) is not demanding another university of its own. The city believes that it is the breadth of learning that must be encouraged to help build a strong and varied economy.

Babel’s current mayor, started five years ago to build higher education possibilities. He worked on it before he was even in city politics. He created what is known as the Growing by Degrees task force to expand post-secondary opportunities in the city. The task force has been very successful in bringing more universities to partner in higher education in the city.

Babel respects learning. The city has recently joined with Sudbury-based Laurentian University to develop multi-million plans for a downtown campus that will not only help revitalize Babel’s downtown but build a new style of learning environment. Plans will hopefully include education facilities from kindergarten to PhD. Nor is the planning just for the young. Babel knows that learning is no longer a pastime but a lifetime.

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Does the Rotman School have a degree for prigs?

March 3, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Who would have thought of the Rotman School of Management promoting a prurient position? The director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School writes in the Toronto Star the other day that a casino in Toronto would be a “costly, socially destructive boondoggle.” Instead of offering serious economic studies to make his case, the author tells us of the supposed glitz, tackiness, misery and crime that goes with casinos. This is hardly a very scholarly approach to the question.

We can assure the writer that to not build a casino in Toronto is more socially destructive than he seems to understand. Maybe if he knew of the scope and conditions of the illegal casinos that are operating in the Toronto area and the criminality that these operations generate, he would have a far greater appreciation of the need for legal outlets. And to suggest that a casino is a boondoggle—a waste of time and money—could only be made by someone with no idea of what is involved.

The writer needs to understand that Toronto is a major tourist destination. The city attracts visitors from around the world. The city is a year-round convention location. That is why Toronto is also a very successful North American entertainment centre. It is a major league sports town and a world class business and financial centre. To not have a casino is to degrade us in the eyes of sophisticated tourists and business visitors.

To be fair to the writer, he did make one statement with which many experts agree. He said that building casinos “in an already thriving downtown, is a truly terrible idea.” The best example of this is the bad planning that put a young adult ‘entertainment district’ in the John and Richmond Street area in Toronto. It attracts the wrong crowd, at the wrong times in an area that did not need that much more traffic.

What the writer does not seem to understand is that casinos are an entertainment venue. You go there to be entertained. Most of us, who go to casinos, go to have fun. That money you lay on a craps table or stuff in a slot is part of your cost. The few people who win get some added fun. Humans have been gambling since the dawn of time and only the foolish and prurient think they can stop it.

The Rotman School writer also seems concerned that some people want to turn Ontario Place into a casino. That is a very bad idea for the wrong location. Ontario Place works as a family entertainment area. A casino might be a viable tenant at the west end of the Exhibition grounds if other year-round entertainment besides Medieval Times can also be located there. It is not ideal but, at least, there is good access.

The best location in all of Metropolitan Toronto for a casino is probably Woodbine Racetrack. The track is already in the entertainment business. The operators clearly understand that good food, services, excitement and entertainment are part of the glamour and attraction of a full-scale casino.

But Woodbine is not the only location. The Greater Toronto area can probably sustain as many as four casinos if the proper mix of entertainment and tourist attractions are included. And as managers for these casinos, there might even be some spots for Rotman School of Management graduates.

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McGuinty’s wily Whigs can work wonders.

March 1, 2012 by Peter Lowry

It was a revelation this morning to be reading a columnist in the Toronto Star who thinks like a real liberal. This is not only a rare and wondrous thing but the writer actually proposed not cutting but even increasing provincial taxes for business and the rich. If we all write in the same vein do you think we could embarrass McGuinty’s Whigs into acting as liberals for a change? Or do you think this was Premier Dalton’s scheme all along for him to bow to the pressure of liberals in Ontario’s populace?

We have never suggested that he might really be a liberal before. While his Whigs use the name “Liberal” as though they might be a legitimate political party, he seems to scoff at any suggestion that he might be anything other than an out-of-date, right-wing Whig. McGuinty is certainly far to the right politically of the early reformers of York and Clear Grits of Western Ontario that came together under George Brown to create the venerable Liberal Party of Canada.

In a recent CBC television special, actors showed how George Brown set aside partisan positions to work along side Sir John A. Macdonald to bring together Canada as a nation. Now would you not have laughed to see Premier McGuinty in the role of Brown?

But you never know. Some people have more depth than we give them credit for. His doughty Treasurer Dwight Duncan has yet to be heard from. It will be March 29 before we get the Treasurer’s word on how much, if any, of the bunk from Don Drummond will be heeded. While Mr. Duncan is well known for his hesitations and half measures, it will be his chance to recant his Whigishness and emerge as a true reformer.

Duncan could, for example, doublecross Drummond and take a giant step into political stardom, by selling off the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) operations. He is hardly going to lose any tax revenue—in fact, it would increase tax revenue substantially—when privately-owned stores are free to do proper merchandising for their customers. Think how wonderful it would be to have a privately-owned central warehousing operation vying with independents to supply privately-owned liquor stores across the province. Wow!

Mind you, we could hardly have the privatized liquor stores competing with that decrepit old Brewers’ Warehousing operation. There would have to be a companion act by the legislature to end that foolish beer monopoly. Just think of how many Liberal votes that would garner from convenience store operators across the province. The government could then use all the Beer Store ‘In and Outs’ as recycling depots. They already smell like it.

We do so wish that this is the delightful surprise that Mr. McGuinty has in store for us. If he did, all would be forgiven. Well, almost all.

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