Category: Provincial Politics

When Silence is Golden.

by Peter Lowry

Not all politicians understand this. It is important to know what to say to the reporter who asks a question. It is also important to know when to say nothing.  Some of the questions are naturals that fit into other programs and the politician comes out sounding knowledgeable and concerned. And some politicians are like Ontario premier Doug Ford, who will never learn when to close his mouth.

It was a good example of the problem recently when the mayors of Brampton and Toronto, as well as premier Ford, weighed in on a bail decision by an Ontario superior court judge. It was in a case of person charged with first degree murder and none of the politicians had an opportunity to read the judge’s reasoning for the unusual decision to grant bail. And since bail hearings are usually kept confidential until after the trial in these cases, only the judge’s ruling is made available.

To the delight of the news media, these politicians, and others, were willing to comment—when, if they had legal advice, they would not have commented. The only thing they could or should have said was that the matter was before the courts. Both Tory in Toronto and Brown in Brampton were trained as lawyers and should have known that. As usual, the premier knew nothing and spouted off anyway.

Ford has become famous for his bombast. Just the other day, he took off on a flight of ire towards the province’s auditor general. By now, the auditor general must be used to Ford’s outbursts. Most devoted conservatives would agree that she is not one of Doug Ford’s favourite people at Queen’s Park.

It is not that the conservatives are routinely careless with the billions of dollars spent every year by the government. It was in trying to assist Ontario companies that the government got itself into what the opposition in the legislature referred to as a “$1 billion tax dollar boondoggle.” The NDP also noted that $210 million went to businesses that did not qualify for the grants and the conservatives had just written it off as bad debts.

Now Ford is saying that the government is going after these bad actors. He never seems to learn.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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The challenge in the choosing!

by Peter Lowry

We were puzzled the other day to hear that Ontario liberal leader Steven Del Duca has pre-picked ridings that will have a female liberal candidate in the coming provincial election. Having worked with both male and female candidates over the years, I certainly agree that our female candidates often need that little extra bit of encouragement. And there are many ways of doing it, without designating the sex of a candidate before the person is chosen.

There is much to be done before choosing a candidate. Steven Del Duca’s job since becoming liberal leader was to rebuild the liberal electoral district associations throughout Ontario. Maybe he knows more about those ridings than he has chosen to tell us. At least, let’s hope he did not draw the names of the ridings out of a hat.

There is a lot I would like to know about a riding before suggesting that it would be a suitable riding for a female versus a male candidate. And you know that by being in constant contact with people there. Is there a trained and well organised team ready to support a good candidate? Do they know how to build a winning campaign? Do they understand the political history of their part of the province? And do they have good intelligence about who they will be up against from the other parties?

And here we are seven months from the coming provincial election. Any well-organized riding association should have at least three to four potential candidates with whom the executive is talking. Any riding without that many prospects had better get to work. And any sudden decision that only a Ken doll or a Barbie doll will do borders on the ridiculous.      

And yet, my riding, which is not designated as for a female, would have little problem with having a female candidate. This area of Ontario has had winning female candidates in the past. What we do not have is a trained and motivated campaign team.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Ford’s Phantom Freeways.

by Peter Lowry

I remember when I was in public school and I was out picking strawberries on a farm that was in the path of Ontario’s planned highway 400. It was many years before that highway became a reality. The point is that these highways take years of planning, design and approvals before the actual construction. And Ontario premier Doug Ford is out selling them like labels to be printed at his father’s printing plant.

And highway 413 should never happen. The reason is that the more you study highway 413, the less logic it makes. It parallels a lightly used portion of the 407 toll-road. If they stopped the tolls, the traffic would take that route. And there is absolutely no logic behind a highway from Milton on the west at highway 401 running 60 kilometres east to Vaughan and highway 400. This is just spreading urban sprawl across good Ontario farmland and critically needed wetlands.

But Doug Ford wants to look like a pro-active premier. He wants his government to run for re-election next year as a party that gets things done. He needs those votes in the urban developments around Toronto. And if you are foolish enough to buy that, you can forget the highway building until the next election cycle.

Which would be a shame. The problem is that we do need the Bradford by-pass. This is a 16.2 kilometre four-lane highway connecting highways 400 and 404 just north of the Town of Bradford. What is happening now is that the traffic that needs this piece of highway is streaming through the Town of Newmarket on three different routes including highway 9.

The province already has most of the new overpasses built, or well past the planning stage, to take the increased traffic around Lake Simcoe.

What Doug Ford’s conservatives are missing on are the plans for the electrification of the GO Trains in Ontario. This plan will speed up the commuter systems, handle more trains and get commuters to and from the major cities much faster than before. Without this better commuter system, our highways will stay clogged.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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What Year is that $10?

by Peter Lowry

If premier Ford of Ontario and the federal government argue about it long enough, that $10-a-day daycare will become mute. In a time of serious inflationary pressures, ten dollars has already lost some substantive buying power. It is like two skiers trying to negotiate as they clear the flags and moguls of a down-hill ski course.

It seems though that when both parties benefit from the outcome, negotiations would be fast and easy. Maybe Doug Ford thinks he has something to prove but the longer he delays, the less currency he takes away.

What both sides in the negotiations know is that both benefit from more women being made available to the workforce, the more taxes are collected. More jobs are created and, again, the more revenue both governments have available. It is a win, win, win.

Everyone understands that Toronto has the most expensive daycare in Canada. You would expect that. The fact that Ontario pioneered all-day kindergarten for children at ages four and five is not relevant unless it was also negotiated with the other provinces. As it stands today, the federal government does not have paying for part of Ontario’s education system as part of the negotiation.

What is also understood across Canada is that Ontario could have afforded to go it alone on a $10-a-day daycare model. It was one of the few provinces that could afford it. And it will definitely benefit from it.

And if premier Ford thinks he can do away with all-day kindergarten, he has another think coming. It would be the straw that broke many a conservative’s back. All-day kindergarten works for Ontario and it is here to stay.

The brass ring for Doug Ford is right there in easy reach. All he has to do is tell finance minister Freeland that he is in. He will be welcomed graciously.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Demolition Doug.

by Peter Lowry

Can Ontario make it to next June? That will be our first chance to get rid of the worst provincial government in Ontario since the bumbling of Mike Harris. It is terrible to think that liberal Dalton McGinty bored us for ten years and we tolerated liberal Kathleen Wynne for the following five years. Neither was as destructive as conservative Doug Ford and his incompetents.

While many might consider it malfeasance, the Ford government is certainly guilty of nonfeasance (the failure to act when needed). The government has failed us in protecting us from Covid-19. The erratic series of lockdowns and rules of the pandemic made the government and its medical advisors look foolish and its half-measures on vaccines are prolonging the agony.

But the destructiveness of demolition Doug and his demolition crew have torn the heart out of what was a fairly decent health-care system. The conservatives phony 2019 bill 124, foolishly named ‘Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations,’ has come home to haunt them. At a time when we are experiencing inflation at over four per cent, you cannot keep holding the nurses to a one per cent limit to any raises. Nurses are walking away from their profession. Many are leaving the province looking for better treatment in environments not unnecessarily strapped for cash.

Doug cannot be derelict in supporting teachers and healthcare workers, while building unnecessary highways to nowhere to please his developer friends.

The incompetence is underlined when our premier tells us that he cannot mandate vaccines for healthcare workers because we cannot afford to lose more of them. The unvaccinated will certainly help to keep the pandemic with us.

What is pathetic though is long term care minister Rod Phillips—you remember the conservative cabinet member who holidayed in the Caribbean while Ontario was under lockdown. Phillips is busy making promises to support ‘for-profit’ long term care with new rules. The new rules will hardly matter if no inspections are used to follow through.

Doug Ford is running a demolition derby down at Queen’s Park in Toronto. His bluster and incompetence are not what Ontario needs today. And hardly needs at any time.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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The Nation of Moe.

by Peter Lowry

That was the final straw from Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe. He actually said that his province was also a “Nation within Canada.” He is obviously tired of being the last of the three stooges: Doug Ford of Ontario (Larry), Jason Kenney of Alberta (Curly) and with Moe trailing along. He desperately wants some recognition for Saskatchewan.

Politically, I would say that the province has done very well over the years. Leaders such as John George Diefenbaker and Tommy Douglas are a rare phenomenon. Moe is not. Like Ford and Kenney, he has done a disastrous job in trying to lead his province through the pandemic.

The way the province usually works lately is that Curly in Alberta gets an itch and it is Moe in Regina who scratches. It got so bad recently with the coronavirus that patients in distress in over-crowded Saskatchewan hospitals were being air evacuated to Ontario. Even Ford in Ontario has shut his mouth about what to do about the pandemic as he sets his sights on next June’s Ontario election.

That might be the only thing different in Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan Party which Moe leads is supposed to be a combination of conservatives and right-wing liberals. Whether there are any left-wing or progressive liberals remaining in Saskatchewan is a matter of some concern.

The media assessment of Moe’s claims of nationhood is that he desperately needs a distraction away from his bad handling of the coronavirus. Other than that, the media seem convinced that Moe is just following Kenney. Kenney has his own problems with a likely run at his leadership before next year’s provincial election in Alberta.

What is considered the funniest comment from Moe is that he is considering booting the RCMP out of the provincial police task in Saskatchewan. With the RCMP training centre in Regina, changing the provincial policing could be far more expensive than he imagines.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Doug’s Drive to Damnation.

by Peter Lowry

Like highways to hell, they are not roads that Ontario premier Doug Ford should take. Doug Ford lacks the political smarts, the political acceptance or a party eager to take him where he wants to go. And yet, he has the bus in drive and headed for the ditch. He is running an early municipal-type campaign in a province of almost 15 million.

His biggest problem is back-up. Watching deputy premier, Christine Elliott, the other day dealing with the media was an embarrassment. This woman held so much promise for the health ministry three years ago. She looks like she has aged 20 years. Ontario’s hospitals are in desperate need of resuscitation from her and her government’s bad management. They have had three years of wasted promises, tightened purse strings, bad direction and the horrors of the pandemic.

His “wunderkinder” education minister Stephen Lecce from Vaughn is also on the ropes. Despised and ignored by all flavours of teachers, Lecce’s private school, St. Michael’s never prepared him for the treatment he has received from the feet-on-the-ground hardscrabble public and Catholic teachers of Ontario. They know the difference between concern and crap and they hardly took to the BS of this kid.

Doug’s new finance minister is probably irrelevant. The guy took over from Rod Phillips when he was caught vacationing in the Caribbean while the province was on lockdown. I would check the name of the new guy but since his reports seem different from the premier’s directions, it seems pointless.

Meanwhile Phillips is throwing more promises at the long-term care homes in Ontario in hopes that it will bring him to redemption. What Phillips has yet to learn is that promises of better policing of long-term care facilities has to be seen to be believed.

But the one in Doug’s cabinet who still looks like a deer in the headlights is Brian Mulroney’s little girl Caroline. There was no way Doug could leave her as attorney general, but transport was an even worse choice.

Here is Doug out hustling the crowds on the elixir of new highways but who is going to school Caroline on why these new roads to nowhere are going to solve any of Ontario’s real needs?

And besides, the concern for the environment is simmering on the public’s back burners at the moment. By next June’s provincial election, the dams might burst and Doug and his highways will disappear in the maelstrom.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Can Kenney Keep His Cool?

by Peter Lowry

It appears that in the hiatus, waiting for parliament to convene later in the month, the news media have been having some fun. They are doing their best to start a feud between Alberta premier Jason Kenney and the Bloc Québécois’ leader in the House of Commons Yves-François Blanchet. Since they both like referenda, the media figure these guys have something in common.

The media guys, with little to do, were making fun of the Alberta referendum on equalization payments. This is a federal fund that is distributed to provinces in need. Alberta had its municipal elections last month and ran two province-wide referenda at the same time. One referendum was to stop adjusting clocks twice a year and stay on daylight time. The other was to get the federal government to cooperate in changing the constitution to stop Alberta taxes going into the equalization fund.

Typical of municipal elections, when the local mayoralty is a hot subject, as many as 50 per cent of the locals get out to vote. And when it is a ‘ho-hum’ matter, about 35 per cent might carry out their civic duty. And while there, some voted on the referendums and some did not. It did not help that many constitutional experts and quite a few non-experts had spread the word that the constitutional question was a silly waste of time.

But, silly or not, Municipal voters hate paying for things they do not understand. There were lots of blank ballots but some 61 per cent of those who voted said ‘Yes.’ They decided, at the same time, to sticking with correcting their clocks twice each year.    

The news media had checked with senior liberal party people to find out when they would sit down and negotiate with Jason Kenney and his united conservatives. The answer they got was “Why?”

The reality is that it would take a vote in every province and a majority of Canadians agreeing to even open the constitution to discuss the question.

Since M. Blanchet has participated in referenda in his home province of Quebec, the news media thought he might have a few tips for Mr. Kenney. Since M. Blanchet has never won a referendum, that was when the name-calling got started.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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It’s Too Late for Ford.

by Peter Lowry

The Ford government in Ontario is desperately seeking voter approval for next June. The election is seven months away, but to win, the conservatives figured they better start early. The other day, they announced that their recent ten-cent per hour increase in the minimum wage was not enough. They announced that as of January 1, the minimum wage in Ontario would be $15 per hour. That was the minimum wage increase that the liberals planned to implement if they won the 2018 provincial election.

And that was before the pandemic and before the rapidly rising prices for groceries. At a time when the estimated living wage in Toronto has reached $22 per hour, the Ford conservatives are coming from behind. The only good news in the announcement was that servers in bars and restaurants were to be included in the new minimum.

There were, of course, the complaints by restaurant owners that they could not afford that kind of a hit so soon after the lockdowns of the pandemic. And there were no kudos from the union leaders Ford invited to join him in making the announcement. It was interesting seeing the Unifor president and the Ontario Pubic Services Employees at a Ford function.. You don’t have to think about it for long to realize that none of those union people represent anybody who only works for minimum wage.

(Mind you, the Toronto Star ran the picture under the headline: Union leaders back Premier’s wage increase. If the headline writer had read the reporter’s story, he or she would have known that the union leaders were there out of curiosity, not approval.)

What is most curious about the announcement is that there is no increase in the works for the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) this is the program that supposedly works alongside Ontario Works for the close to a million Ontario adults who require support for disability or reason to be unable to work. In all the variable rates explained in the government web site, there is no mention of any increase because of the escalating cost of living. And there is no way under today’s cost of living in Ontario that those people are anywhere near what they need to have adequate, safe housing or food to eat. Mr. Ford’s government would make Ebenezer Scrooge (before meeting some ghosts) look like a spendthrift.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

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Ford’s Snakes and Ladders.

by Peter Lowry

The Ford government in Ontario is desperately trying to find a rationale for voter approval. It wants to be seen to be doing something that will earn it a chance at re-election next June. It has chosen the Bradford Bypass as the main player. And the politicians are now playing a childish game of snakes and ladders over some of the most vulnerable land in the province.

Bradford, Ontario is the centre for the area known as the Holland Marsh, some of the richest, most fertile land in the province. It is a major source of garden vegetables for Ontario’s 14.5 million citizens. The Bradford Bypass, also known as Highway 404, is designed today to skirt around most of the Holland Marsh to join Highway 400 just north of Highway 88. What this will do is create a greatly increased flow of traffic going north around Barrie.

While the Highway 400 bridges around Barrie are currently being rebuilt to accommodate up to eight lanes of traffic, all we know in Barrie is that the summer-weekend traffic jams on Highway 400 from the added Highway 404 traffic are not something to which we will look forward.

In the children’s game of snakes and ladders, it is the ladders you have to climb but the snakes slide you back down again. It seems the Ford conservatives are working with the snakes to slide us back down. The conservatives seem to have a penchant for aiding their friends the developers who have fortuitously bought parcels of land just where the new highway will have access for buyers of their developments. And yet moving the new highway 10 to 20 kilometers north would lower land costs and completely bypass the Holland Marsh.

Ideally, of course, an arm of Highway 404 was to connect with the proposed Highway 412, east of Lake Simcoe, to accommodate traffic going north of Orillia. Can we assume that is still the intent?

And the biggest snake for us to slide down was the by-the-way from the Ford conservatives that they are thinking of making this new section of Highway 404 a toll road. The bastards will probably sell our highway to a Russian consortium, and we will pay, and pay, and pay.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]