Category: Provincial Politics

Come Back in May.

by Peter Lowry

It was good for a laugh. I was checking some political polls to find out what Ontario premier Doug Ford was reading. He seems to lack any understanding of polling. It is probably best to leave him believing polls taken five months before the election. This politico will decide in early May who is likely to win the Ontario general election scheduled for June 2 this year.

The voters have far more important things to think about this January than the upcoming election. It might be top of mind with the politicians but the voters have far more serious concerns. We are still in the grip of a pandemic. Our hospital system is collapsing. Our children are not in school. A large part of our workforce cannot work. The economy is in a tailspin. The support systems are failing.

And Doug Ford is sitting on the throne of Queen’s Park thinking about his re-election. He might get a surprise in June. He is likely not aware that polls deal in the past, not the future.

But Ontario is not even thinking election. Which benefits Doug Ford’s conservatives, as it does the other two major parties. No matter how the pollsters ask the question, how we would vote gets little thought. Many people are proud that they even know what party is in power at the moment. It has been interesting to note that the other two major parties seem to have equal levels of support. It should not please Doug Ford that more than 50 per cent of respondents do not want to vote for his party.

It is clear that the official opposition at Queen’s Park is going nowhere. Andrea Horwath has been leader of the Ontario new democrats for the past 12 years. She is getting the same level of support as the leader of the liberals, whom most people have neither met nor heard of.

It is obvious that Ontario voters will get a better chance at considering Steven Del Duca, the liberal leader, as the election gets closer. It is also likely that they will get a chance to measure the job Doug Ford has or has not has done in Ontario. Either way, the polls will likely tell more as we get closer to the election in June.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The Ghost Candidate.

by Peter Lowry

The other day, Ontario premier Doug Ford announced his conservative candidate in Durham for the June election will be a long-time law partner of health minister Christine Elliott. The gentleman, so named, made all the right noises at being so honoured. What he might possibly contribute to the well being of voters in Durham did not seem important enough to mention. He becomes just another ghost candidate.

And this is why people who know Canadian politics are deeply concerned about the constant erosion of democracy in this country. It is part of a growing pattern of less and less consideration of the needs of the voters in the electoral district.  It is taking us towards a form of proportional voting where you only get to vote for this party or that party. The voter only gets to hear from the party leader. And that is for whom the votes are cast. It is a system that works very well for countries with a high level of illiteracy.

But the problem is that the system is just one step away from totalitarianism. The only safeguard to the system is when there are enough strong parties to ward against any one party winning a majority in the country’s legislature. And even that is no guarantee.

There are those who think that preferential voting would help preserve our democracy. Preferential voting is where voters number their preferences on the ballot. There is an illusion of fairness as you eliminate the candidates with the least votes and then count their second, third, fourth, etc. choice until someone has more than 50 per cent of the vote. What you have really done—especially when there are a large number of candidates—is drilled down to the least offensive candidate. And that is not what the voter wants when there are problems to be solved in the particular jurisdiction.

Canadians should realize that we have a marvellous system of government where we are able to choose the person to represent us in local, provincial and federal governments. We should be sure to question that person we choose. And we should be certain that he or she has our needs and wants in mind and can effectively speak for us. Ours is a democratic system with many safeguards. Let’s keep it that way.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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An Exciting Year Ahead.

by Peter Lowry

With the prospect of more covid to cure, there are those less enthusiastic about the year ahead. For a political junkie though, this is going to be an exciting year in Ontario. The political parade will be fascinating. The first, that all Canadians will be watching, is the provincial election in Ontario slated for June 2. That will be the date when Ontario decides what to do about Doug Ford and his bombast. We will round out the year in Ontario with our municipal elections in October.

What fascinates me are the Ontario voters who are committed conservatives. Most appear to be convinced that Doug Ford will get a second term. I expect that they feel this way as he has done such a rotten job in the first four years that they want him to have a second chance.

And I do remember how appalled we were when the Mike Harris conservative government won re-election in 1999. Bad things can happen to good people.

One conservative pointed out to me that in a choice between a new democratic government led by Andrea Horwath and a liberal government led by a liberal nobody knows, why not vote for Ford? That was another frightening thought.

In case you were not aware, the name of the liberal party leader is Steven Del Duca. He is not a member of the legislature at this time but was a member of the Kathleen Wynne cabinet. I realize that is not exactly a ringing endorsement but it is hard to recommend someone as premier when he has been sniping from the sidelines.

The other choice is Andrea Horwath. She has been leader of the new democratic party in Ontario since 2009 and has gone nowhere.

I expect Ford’s biggest boosters in this coming election will be the developers who have bought farms along the proposed route of Highway 413. They definitely want to see him re-elected. Whether that highway ever gets built is another matter.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The Tzar of the Toll Roads.

by Peter Lowry

It seems the taxpayers in Ontario are paying for the warm-up to next June’s provincial election. Premier Doug Ford is betting that any and all mention of the Bradford Bypass and Highway 413 is another conservative re-elected. Ford is betting that voters in the greater Toronto area (GTA) are tired of the gridlock around Toronto and the hours spent on gridlocked highways.

But what Doug Ford does not seem to realize is that there are many years of planning behind these projects and they also require many years of any construction. And, frankly, the wasted time on the Highway 413—going from nowhere to nowhere—would involve paving over some very fine farmland and critically needed wetlands. The only people pleased with that bad planning are the developers who have been buying up the farmland around where the 413 would intersect with existing major north-south routes.

A government concerned about our environment would have ended the Hwy 413 speculation years ago. What the previous government was working on was the electrification of the GO trains. This is a critical need to speed commuter services. It requires new overpasses and power lines but will add more trains, coming up to speed faster and stopping faster. It will cut commute time. On the Barrie to Toronto run, a half hour can be cut from the time needed from Kempenfelt Bay to Union Station. The less pollution is a bonus.

And while the idea of having these new highways as toll roads must leave conservatives with goosebumps, Mr. Ford is denying it. He is at least smart enough to know that Ontario voters are annoyed with the tolls on the 407, 412 and 418. Not only are they priced too high for the benefits they offer but the money from them does not go to building new roads. After the election, the conservatives might get greedy and start selling toll roads again.

And the least likely to ever be a toll road—or anything else—is the 413. That particular plan parallels the 407 electronic toll route, only a short distance south. Having those two highways feeding west bound traffic onto the 401 near Georgetown is quite ridiculous. The Bradford bypass was never supposed to be a toll road as it is designed to move traffic from highway 404 over to highway 400 to take it around Lake Simcoe.

It should be mentioned that when the conservative government of Mike Harris leased Hwy 407 for 99 years, they got $3.1 billion for it. Today the highway is estimated to be worth ten times as much to the investor group.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Marley’s ghost visits Doug Ford.

by Peter Lowry

It seems that Jacob Marley’s ghost got short shrift in Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Think of how busy the guy would be in this Christmas of 2021. There are far more people today needing a visit from the ghosts of Christmas’s Past, Present and Yet to Come. We could start with Ontario’s premier Doug Ford.

It is hard to believe Doug Ford could inspire anyone. This is a guy who has never done anything right. He has never made the ‘nice’ list with Santa Claus. He’s a salesman who thinks bombast works. The ghost of Christmas Past took him to a Christmas party for the class he started with at Humber College. Someone mentioned that loser who started with the class and only stayed with it for two months. She added that he thought he was a big shot, peddling labels for his father’s printing company.

The ghost of Christmas Present had a more difficult task. She took Ford to an Ontario hospital where the intensive care unit was overloaded with Covid-19 patients. An exhausted staff of nurses had a minute to grab a quick cup of coffee during a rare, few minutes of quiet. As a joke some started raising their cups to toast people not there. “And here’s to premier Ford,” one of them said, “he’s squeezed our hospital for funds. He’s refused our ask for raises. And he doesn’t listen to the medical experts.”

But he never heard what the group thought about that toast as some heart monitors started beeping. And the staff rushed off to see if they could do anything to save the patients.

But the most dismal of the ghosts was the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. This ghost took him directly to a small group of funeral attendees in a windy corner of a Toronto cemetery. It was a glum crowd. Even the widow was stoic. “He should have known better.” Was her stock phrase to most of the questions directed to her. Even when it shook the premier awake beside her, he quietly got dressed and headed for the office to see if any more conservative developers wanted to build along Highway 413. Doug doesn’t believe in ghosts.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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A lump of coal for Legault.

by Peter Lowry

It was suggested recently that Canadians were helping François Legault and his Coalition Avenir Quebec by voicing their dismay about the passing of what is commonly referred to as Bill 21 in their provincial assembly. I disagree. I believe we give courage and determination to those millions of Quebeckers who decry the bigotry and parochialism of their pretentious politicians.

Recently, we have seen municipal politicians from both inside and outside Quebec, add their voices and their financial support to those in Quebec who are fighting this battle against bigotry. And we shame prime minister Trudeau and the leader of the opposition, Mr. O’Toole, as they do battle with their own caucuses. They want to stay out of the fight. Neither politician wants to lose support in Quebec. They might be surprised to learn that they never had the votes of the bigots in the first place.

This is not to say that there is no bigotry in Quebec. It is important though to recognize that there is much less than there used to be. Even before Wolfe’s soldiers climbed the cliff to the Plains of Abraham in 1759 there was distain in Quebec for the British. The overwhelming control by the Catholic Church in those early days also gave rise to antisemitism, the paternalism with the aboriginal population and the tribal attitude toward the English.

But there is also a pride in Quebec today. It is a pride in maintaining the French language. It is a pride in their province. And there is also the pride in being Canadian.

Quebec has become a more secular society as has the rest of the country. It is not so much the rejection of religion but the recognition within an educated population of the slowness of religious orders to adapt and serve their needs.

Premier Legault can call it Quebec values if he wishes but when those so-called values try to interfere with freedom of religion, he is going to get push-back. All Canadians can recognize bigotry, that is that brazen.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Del Duca’s dubious desire.

by Peter Lowry

The Toronto Star is all aflutter about liberal leader Steven Del Duca’s promise to resign as premier if he does not immediately change Ontario voting to ranked ballots. It strikes this liberal that this is one of the dumber promises for next June’s provincial election. It is right up there with Doug Ford’s promise of a ‘buck a beer” in the last provincial election.

Ranked ballots in our democracy are a joke. The idea reminds me of when Torontonians elected two aldermen in each of the old city wards. The alderman with the most votes sat on both the city and Metro Toronto councils. And was paid more. Instead of harmony and cooperation between the two aldermen, the knives were kept out and sharpened awaiting the opportunity to do in the other alderman. And woe betide the political lackey who did not know to get every supporter to just vote once for alderman.

And it is ranked ballots that are fouling the contests for leader in the federal conservative party. You would think they would learn. Ranked ballots when there are a large number of candidates is a countdown to the least annoying of the candidates. It has very little to do with their competence.

The problem with ranked ballots are the voters, who think they have to number all the candidates. They probably know very little about some of those candidates and you have no idea how badly things will come out in the final count. You can feel a little more confident if there are only three or four candidates on a ranked ballot. The result can be similar to the present first-past-the-post voting.

But as people realize that any idiot can win in a ranked ballot situation, you could possibly see a deluge of candidates. Even worse, in a provincial election, you can end up with ten or more political parties. And that spells chaos for ranked ballots.

For some reason, liberal Steven Del Duca reminds me of a toothless turtle. He needs to come out of his shell and find out what Ontario voters want in the coming election. He should concentrate on how liberals could support voters.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Brampton Brown Battles Bigotry.

by Peter Lowry

We just heard that Brampton mayor Patrick Brown has waded into the war with Quebec over their Law 21. That is the law that the provincial bigots in the Quebec City assembly passed against the wearing of religious symbols. Brown’s remarks are part of the mounting effort to force federal politicians to oppose the Quebec law in the courts.

Brampton Brown, who used to be Barrie Brown, has stuck his oar into the controversy probably to test his potential comeback to the federal political scene. At the very least, he is shoring up his hold on his present job in Brampton with its large number of immigrants from the Indian sub-continent. With the World Sikh Organization, one of the parties fighting the Quebec law, Brown is at least ready to take on anyone with thoughts of replacing him as mayor of Brampton.

We learned about his stand through the unusual route of Althia Raj, who normally reports these days on events in Ottawa for the Toronto Star. She tells us that prime minister Justin Trudeau is still straddling the fence on the issue until the Supreme Court gets involved.

The only federal party leader who has had a change of heart is Jagmeet Singh of the new democrats. Mind you, the involvement of the World Sikh Organization might have had something to do with Singh’s conversion. As a turban-wearing, kirpan-bearing Sikh and a follower of the Tenth Guru, Jagmeet could hardly stick to his previous provincial-rights stand.

There are some conservatives also pushing at Erin O’Toole to turn his back on the Legault government in Quebec. That might be a tough fight as Legault’s CAQ in Quebec is the closest party to conservative in that province.

The Quebec law is a non-starter in the rest of Canada. When you consider that the wearing of crosses, or turbans, or yarmulkas or versions of the hijab are just a fashion statement in a pluralist society and very few care. You have to admit, Canada is quite a diverse society and we are better for it.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Kenney’s Tammany Hall.

by Peter Lowry

Alberta’s premier Jason Kenney is hardly launching anything as endurable as New York’s Tammany Hall. As a student of politics, he would hardly be eager to follow in the paths of a Boss Tweed or Jimmy Walker of Tammany fame.

But manipulative, he is! Can you imagine selling memberships to political parties in Alberta in bulk? That is a new one in the annals of political corruption. I have seen hundreds of party memberships being supported with a single cheque. I have seen quite lengthy lists of new party members derived from local cemeteries. Yet it is hard to imagine the Alberta legislature passing a party membership bill that allows party donors to purchase up to 400 new party memberships, to distribute as they wish.

Sometimes, you just wonder where the political Jason Kenney is coming from? This guy can ignore the terrible plight of the neighbouring province British Columbia. Our country’s major west coast seaport was cut off from the rest of Canada by torrential rains, mud slides and flooding. Does Kenney roll up his sleeves and get in there and help clear the roads and rebuild rail and other connections to the west coast?

No. The braggart Kenney is too busy boasting about his province setting new records in extracting the highly polluting bitumen from the Alberta tar sands. He brags about the recent upsurge in oil prices that are helping eat away at the deficits, his party has created.

He makes no concession at all to the struggles of farmers and ranchers in B.C. whose livelihoods are endangered. Yet he rejoices at the higher costs of high carbon-producing fuels. He appears ignorant that his eagerness to exploit the tar sands is making a substantial contribution to global warming.

His weak leadership throughout the ongoing pandemic has left Alberta hospitals and their staffs exhausted and embittered.

I used to think that despite his manipulative ways, Kenney knew what he was doing. I’m beginning to wonder about that. He might just be the most hated premier in Canada. He has a tough fight for the title from Ontario’s Doug Ford.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Regg Cohn Cries ‘Wolf.’

by Peter Lowry

Toronto Star opinion writer Martin Regg Cohn might be a Ford fan. He tells us that he believes Ontario premier Doug Ford has found a path to truth, justice and the Ontario way. He even believes Ford is a shoo-in next June for a second four years in the premier’s office. Regg Cohn must be smoking the strong stuff.

The problem is that the Ford, Regg Cohn is referring to, is a phantom. He doesn’t exist. Ford and his side-kick, girl-wonder Christine Elliott, have destroyed Ontario’s over-rated health system. Do you really think anyone with a clue about what has happened to our hospitals could conscientiously return that dangerous duo? Have you found anyone concerned about health care who would vote for them next year?

And have you talked to any school teachers lately? They are hardly silent about what they would like to do to education minister Stephen Lecce. They have found out that Lecce is a phony. He is his own public relations creation. It is kind of like a lawyer who acts as his own lawyer. He is a waste of good suits.

Believe it or not there are people in Ontario who care about the environment. They are concerned about global warming. And they are askance at the Ford government’s Ministerial Zoning Orders. Can you imagine anyone who gives a damn about the environment agreeing to Ford’s highway 413? The act of destroying wetlands and good farmland to please Ford’s developer friends has turned off more than a few Ontario voters. And the Bradford Bypass needs to bypass the Holland Marsh, not destroy part of the Marsh, and part of Bradford.

And, don’t you love Ford’s solution to electricity generation? He wants more nuclear power. When anyone else can make an easy guess as to how popular that idea might be, he thinks nukes are the answer. He could buy the same amount of power from Quebec’s water-generated power grid for about a third of what nuke’s cost. And Regg Cohn thinks Ford knows best?

It is enough to make you want to find out about the liberal’s secret leader, Stephen Del Duca. Or, heaven forbid, consider the NDP’s Andrea Horwath.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]