Category: Provincial Politics

You Jest Sir!

by Peter Lowry

A long-time NDP apparatchik, Robin Sears, writes his opinion in the Toronto Star. And no, I am not jealous. I had my fill of writing for Toronto papers years ago. It is more fun questioning the wisdom of those who do it today.

And, it is certainly questionable when Mr. Sears tells us how premier Doug Ford can build a legacy similar to that of the late Bill Davis. Surely, he is trying to be funny!

Sears seems to believe that Ford has matured during his first four years in office. I will go along that he got fatter and older—maturing is a different subject.

It is as though Sears had never seen a salesman lay on the B.S. before. When I heard Ford saying how much he admired and trusted liberal finance minister Chrystia Freeland, it almost cost me my lunch. Luckily, I had heard that song before and took it for what it was worth—nothing. Hell, I’m a liberal and I am still not sure she knows what she is doing in that portfolio.

And what is this bunkum about a friendship with prime minister Trudeau? Queen’s Park gets a lot of funds from the Ottawa government. Doug Ford would kiss Trudeau’s bare behind on the front steps of Queen’s Park if it would get Ontario more money. The delayed negotiations with the Trudeau liberals over child care was arranged by someone much smarter than Ford. That was carefully staged and planned to gain maximum impact on the provincial election.

I only wish I could ask Doug Ford to parse the comment Sears made about “Ford’s new understanding of the value of greater nuance in perspective—and the limits of a world of only predictable partisan certitude—was double edged.”

I could just see Ford blurting out “What the hell does that mean?”

But what Sears appeared to be attempting in that syntactic labyrinth was to apologize for many of Ford’s stupider decisions related to the pandemic. The premier was just as confused coming out of the worst of the pandemic, as he was going in.

And anyone who thinks Christine Elliott and Rod Phillips were the shining lights of Ford’s last cabinet, hasn’t looked at the current conditions of Ontario healthcare and long-term care. Those ministers had no successes in any portfolio. And, if you see Phillips, ask him how things are in Saint Barthélemy.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Bitumen Bust.

by Peter Lowry

It seems the Oil Gods have looked down on Alberta’s tar sands bitumen and damned it to further discounting. It would seem that at a time when the world needs cheaper oil, Alberta just cannot catch a break.

And, for once, we cannot blame the problem on hard-luck, departing premier Jason Kenney. He brought Alberta bad luck. And that cloud continues over his head.

And if the province did not need those farm silos for increased grain production, because of the conflict in Ukraine, they might be converting silos to hold bitumen.

The American refineries that can handle the highly polluting Alberta product have found lately that they can get lots of easier-to-process ‘heavy oil’ from Mexican and off-shore sources. The Alberta gunk ends up low-man on the totem pole.

And to make a sour outlook bleaker for Alberta, is the news from Washington. It seems President Joe Biden plans to undercut the profiteering by the American oil companies. In the peak holiday time of this July, he is releasing 40 million barrels of reserve crude oil into the American market. This reserve is intended for emergencies and I guess a cost of over US$4 per U.S. gallon of regular gasoline, across the United States, would be considered an emergency.

With that much crude flooding the American market, Alberta would have to start giving away bitumen to stay in full production. With only limited capacity for bitumen in the present Trans Mountain pipeline, only a trickle of bitumen can be shipped to the Far East markets or south to California.

To add insult to the costs of the Trans Mountain, it has now been confirmed that total costs for the planned dual pipeline now exceed $21 billion. With the federal government unable to remain credible in funding the project, the pipeline managers are out beating the bushes for private capital to continue the expansion.

The only problem is that the Canadian taxpayers will no longer be first in line to recover the billions already wasted on this project. It would probably take another fifty years to be paid back.

But with another fifty years of bitumen processing and pollution, there would not likely be much of our population left to spend the profits.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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“There is no joy in Mudville.”

by Peter Lowry

In writing “Casey at the Bat” E.L. Thayer spoke of the depth of disappointment felt by the people of Mudville when their champion is defeated. It is the same disappointment that we feel in Barrie when our mayor of the past 12 years, lost in a close race, in the provincial election.

But we have to agree with Thayer that our champion contributed to his own defeat. Casey let the first two strikes fly by—waiting for that perfect pitch. Our champion had to overcome the gerrymander of our riding. He had to address the predominance of conservatives and gun nuts in the rural area of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte electoral district here in middle Ontario.

It meant little to our country folk that Barrie’s mayor was chair of Ontario’s big cities mayors’ caucus. If anything, his strengths as a highly successful city mayor worked against him.

When I first met Jeff Lehman in 2009, he had been back in Canada from teaching at the London School of Economics for ten years. He had built a successful business advising cities across Canada. He had won a seat on council for my downtown ward in Barrie. He soon let me know that his objective at the time was the mayor’s job.

In a field that included the incumbent mayor, a former mayor, a former member of the legislature, another councillor and some other hopefuls, we got to work on the 2010 municipal election in Barrie. I ran the ground game for him. I was training volunteers, organizing and selecting polls for canvas. We did a lot of canvassing in the city over a hot summer. I saved the condominiums around the city for canvassing on the hottest days, to protect our canvassers from heat stroke.

I went canvassing with the candidate fairly often to help move him along and to get to know the city better. He is a strong canvasser but he could get delayed by voters with serious comments on conditions in the city.

But in the provincial campaign, he seemed to rely on his social media, city door knocking and voter identification for the win. He was some 600 votes short of a home run to the Ontario Legislature.

As Thayer said in the last stanza of Casey at the Bat:

“Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,

But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.”

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Ontario Omertá.

by Peter Lowry

It was somewhere between Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs and the Mafia’s Omertá, a vow of silence. The only difference was that it was Ontario’s electorate that was being bled out. Some how, the conservative managers were able to convince that loudmouth Doug Ford to shut up. They also told the conservative candidates to stay away from confrontational events in their ridings—such as candidate meetings. The conservatives were in the zone and they coasted to victory.

Of course, what do you expect in a province with no discernible leadership in the political offerings. Doug Ford of the conservatives was the incumbent with no fixed IQ. Andrea Horwath of the NDP had aged poorly over too many years as leader. Steven Del Duca of the liberals reminded us of a turtle, without the security of a shell.

And we were really motivated to get out there and vote with all the lies they told us. Ontario voters are not all stupid you know.

And the election was jigged to the incumbent’s advantage. The lead-up to the election was long and the announcements many and heavy. It was sometimes frightening to hear what they had in mind for the use of our money. And the actual election was short, vicious and an insult to the electors. Also, the leaders had their share of daily insults for each other.

But an opportunity is hidden in the four more years of a loudmouth premier. The opposition parties can renew and refund and choose leaders who can lead and can make us proud. Please, let’s make them people of decency and character. They should be leaders whom we can all respect. And who will respect their opponents and will stay above the mud slinging.

We also need to restore democracy in our political parties. We need to recognize that the responsibility of our members in parliament and legislatures is to represent our electors. We need to hear our representatives speak out for us. There needs to be honest accountability to our voters.

Let’s stop this interference by leaders in the selection of our candidates. If we are going to continue our first-past-the-post voting, let’s be sure it is working for us.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Look Like a Leader.

by Peter Lowry

Ontario liberal leader Steven Del Duca made an admirable effort. The liberal leader’s only problem was that to be elected leader of a major political party, you have to look like a leader. And you have to rev up the troops. Modesty is very nice, after you win.

But Del Duca came out a loser. He should have been in the legislature before the general election. You do not campaign from a utility vehicle. You wear a suit and tie. (You can take off the tie north of Highway 7.) You have advance people to ensure the crowds and enthusiasm. A good campaign has punch. A winning campaign builds momentum.

Sitting on the sidelines here in Barrie, Ontario was painful. I had placed my bets on our local mayor beating a carpetbagger from Severn. No such luck. Oh well, our former mayor, and now former candidate, did not ask for my help.

It never was a feel-good campaign. The vote seemed to depend on those angry enough to harm themselves. Self-destruction was the order of the do-nothing campaign. It was obvious that it was a campaign where few bothered to vote. The early figures of only 43.5 per cent of voters going to the polls is shocking.

For an election as to whether we would keep Doug Ford as premier or turf him out, less than 25 per cent of voters made the decision.

The road ahead for Ontario is a rocky road. It will be a time when developers and ministerial zoning orders (MZO) will rule. Build where you want. Farmland will give way to pavement. Greenbelts and wetlands will disappear. Prices will be for excessive profits. The poor of Ontario will stay poor. The rich will get richer. Healthcare will suffer. The aged will be ignored. We will not be proud of this province we call home.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Campaigns Gone By.

by Peter Lowry

This has been both the shortest and seemingly the longest campaign in Ontario history. I felt uninvolved. I was left out. The days of bounding up steps to knock on doors are behind me. The only job offered to me was to do phone calls. I was not interested. In this age when all the creativity seems to go to the Internet media, I could have livened up the print media.

What I saw in print from candidates, in mine and other ridings, was stuff that did not pass Go and went directly to the recycle container. What really surprised me was not much was said in this literature about the candidates. You would think if the party is at all pleased with its candidate, they would tell us why. All we want to know is what this person has done to make them worthy of representing us in the Ontario legislature?

Are all of these people just drones who will run, jump and vote as they are told? You would think the conservative in my riding was modest as the author of Bill 161. That was the act of the Legislature designed to help prevent class-action law suits against long-term care facilities that lost too many of their residents to COVID-19 because of negligence and inadequate care.

(You do know, do you not, that former conservative premier Mike Harris makes over $200,000 per year as chairman of Chartwell—one of the larger for-profit long-term care home providers.)

The paucity today of good political literature is having its effect. We are getting a poorer quality of candidates. Many are appointed as opposed to chosen by the riding. Their literature for the riding is nothing but a series of slogans.

We used to care.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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A Chance to Choose.

by Peter Lowry

We will have a chance to see tomorrow how many of our fellow Ontario voters got to the polls in this provincial election. I might be surprised if more than six out of ten bothered.  It has not been a campaign that generated any excitement.

It was obvious in the ten days of advance polls that the amount of interest in the campaign was limited. If we had reduced the advance polls to two days, there might have been a few short line-ups. The ten days was a waste of money. And the only politicians to benefit from it were incumbents. It freed up election-day workers for their campaigns. The workers could concentrate on getting out the vote on the final election day.

I must admit that I have never really liked the election day effort. I don’t like feeling like a nag. I have heard many hundreds of reasons why people did not make it to mark their ballot. I was always happy to have some other duties for that day. Most often, I would opt for getting the counting of the vote properly organized and displayed at the after-the-vote party.

I think what annoyed me the most on election day were the radio people encouraging people to get out and vote—no matter how they intended to vote. I always thought they were encouraging stupid people to go do something stupid. It has always struck me that we should make voters prove they have seriously thought about it, before they are allowed to vote.

Not everyone agrees with me. A chap I once knew gave a Kiwanis Club speech about stupid people being just as entitled to stupid representation. He was actually alibiing the stupid people who elect stupid politicians. I think, it is likely, this election has proved him right once again.

I have often made the point that good leadership can help alleviate the problems of having stupid politicians on the back benches. Mind you, this current Ontario campaign has not been noted for the genius of our party leaders. Oh well, another four years and who knows?

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Done Like Dinner.

by Peter Lowry

It would seem that Ontario’s conservative leader Doug Ford has never missed a dinner. He is the proverbial ‘fat cat.’ He is a salesman without scruples. He uses people. He tells them what he thinks they want to hear. He is not even a conservative. It would strain his brain to explain what conservatism stands for.

And the election period is over tomorrow. It is the farce that played in Ontario this spring. It was a campaign of many promises and little progress. It was a campaign for the future and little hope.  The current election campaign in Ontario should go down as the worst campaign in the province’s history. It has been a campaign of nickel-and-dime offers and comes down to a highway that is not needed.

It was an election that avoided the elephant in the intensive care units. It avoided the casual destruction by the conservatives of Ontario’s Medicare system. Somehow, we find that COVID-19 is blamed for the cuts the conservatives made in our hospital funding. Nurses across Ontario have been betrayed. And yet, some of us are actually convinced that the pandemic is over. And people are still dying of COVID every day.

And does anyone care that our children have lost most of two years of schooling because of erratic and badly planned lockdowns. Did anyone in government care about our teachers? Does the minister of education know that computer-learning alone fails the needs of our children?

Other than our hard-pressed medical people, there are no heroes of the pandemic, only survivors.

The best kept secret of this campaign was that the billions Doug Ford wants to spend on an unnecessary highway is needed to electrify Ontario’s commuter trains—making the system faster and more efficient. And some highways will always be needed to move the bounty of our farmlands, the goods and products of our labour and people into the remote corners of our vast province. 

And what is it that Doug Ford and the conservatives are promising seniors? In an era of hyper-inflation, the people at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder and the seniors on fixed incomes are being hurt the worst. Neither Ontario’s poor nor seniors are Ford and the conservative’s concern.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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They Lie, You Know.

by Peter Lowry

Leaked memos, a quiet word with someone ‘in the know.’ You hear a lot of tall tales from politicians as they come to the end of their campaign. It is arrogance, desperation and it is flat out lies. Voters have read and heard so many claims and promises that are so unlikely to be true or kept.

You keep expecting Doug Ford to add the words “Have I ever lied to you before?” You know he has. The man lies by habit. He was taught the secrets of campaigning by his late brother Rob Ford. Promise anything and worry about the alibi for not delivering later.

And there is that stupid slogan: Get it done. Doug Ford is your classic second-storey man. The only difference is, he just holds the ladder for the real thieves.

You need to remember that Ford got his start in politics in Toronto city hall. That means his besties are the developers. There seems to be a very satisfying relationship in Toronto between the right-wing councillors and the developers. They are often joined at the hip.

When his people resurrected highway 413, that the liberals had turned down, Ford found the perfect present for his developer friends.

And speaking of the ridiculous, the new democrats that Andrea Horwath visits with throughout the campaign, introduce her as the next premier of Ontario. Now there is a stretch for you. Why she wastes time making promises she will never have to deliver, is just one of those mysteries in life.

Steven Del Duca of the liberals is much more modest. He has much to be modest about. The van he is travelling around the province in is an embarrassment. At least Ford and Horwath can look out a window once in a while to see if they are still in Kansas. Del Duca also seems to have forgotten to have an advance team. Maybe he just wants to surprise the liberals he visits.

In the final days of this campaign, Doug Ford was so rude as to campaign in Steven Del Duca’s riding. That is an insult to a struggling opponent. And as for Andrea Horwath, she told a reporter the other day that our health-care system is on its knees and hemorrhaging. She said this is a “hope election—not that people have hope, but that they are losing hope and need to know that they can have hope again.”  Let’s hope it’s not four years from now.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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This Campaign Sucks.

by Peter Lowry

The current election campaign in Ontario should go down as the worst campaign in the province’s history. I told liberal leader Steven Del Duca that a 15-day campaign was not to his advantage. At first, he did not understand what I was saying, and then, if he did understand, he ignored me.

I had never heard of an election wherein all voters could casually cast their ballots just 15 days after the election is called. And who do you think benefits from such a scenario? If you are a blowhard and an unreliable schmuck like Doug Ford, the less time people have to think the better.

But who is the bigger fool than the guy who has stayed out of the legislature in his first two years of being party leader? Does Del Duca think he is going to be better known in just 15 days? The truth is that people could actually go to the riding returning office and vote on the day after the writ but few take advantage of that. They usually just take away a mail-in ballot and hope it arrives on time.  

The wife and I had a very pleasant visit to the polls on Queen Victoria’s holiday. We chatted for a while with the staff. Business was slow. The poll clerks enjoyed having visitors. And, quite honestly, I don’t know what to make of the slowness of the voting. Are people disinterested in the election or are they too fixed in the habit of voting on the official voting day?

But what really concerns me are the biases and the inadequacies of our Ontario news media. And there is no point in complaining to the CRTC about the biased broadcast media. I was told by the CRTC minions that they only pay attention if all political comment during the campaign by that licensed outlet can be shown to be biased.

Lately I have been more concerned about the Toronto Star and all its little grocery-flyer deliverers around the province. I have had the feeling for some time now that the Star has dispensed with experienced news editors. The new owners and their lawyer seem to think a newspaper should be full of long-winded opinion pieces.

By way of example, on Tuesday this week, there was one news item and two opinion pieces on page one, with lengthy carries in the inner pages of the section. One of the opinions pieces was by the Star’s Martin Regg Cohn. Regg Cohn’s opinion piece on Doug Ford read more like hero worship than a fair discussion of Ford, the quality of his leadership and his campaign tactics.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]