Provincial Politics – Page 3

Buying the Right Polls.

April 8, 2023April 7, 2023 by Peter Lowry

It seems to be the way you ask the questions that determines your answers. You can sure be surprised by the different answers that public opinion polls can produce. I was seeing this conflict in polls related to questions about privatized health care. Canadians have very mixed attitudes about the subject.

But before getting into the polling questions, it is only Quebec, Ontario and Saskatchewan that have mistreated their health care system to the point that they are considering privatized services. What they have told us is that all expense incurred at private clinics will be billed to the province. And we know that is B.S.

I can only reference Ontario in this but the private clinics and surgeries presently active in Ontario are rife with options and upgrades in service. While provided through hospitals, Ontario ophthalmologists have been profiting from upgraded lenses and other ‘extras’ for many years now. Even the Shouldice Hernia Hospital in Thornhill, Ontario, that was grandfathered into Ontario’s Medicare, has extras that some private insurers will pay for but not the province.

This subject occurred to me in reading another news release from the right-wing Montreal Economic Institute. MEI was, of course, shouting praise for seven out of ten Quebec residents supporting privatized health care. First you destroy the confidence people had for their healthcare delivery—and then you throw them a lifeline such as privatization. Why are you not surprised that some 70 per cent of respondents in Quebec will take whatever is offered. Mind you, the same survey said that only six in ten across Canada agreed with the Quebec results.

My personal antenna says that more Canadians are in favour of Medicare than are really in favour of privatized medicine as practiced in the United States. The reality is that most Canadians think the government should pay all the medical and dental bills rather than any of it come direct from their wallet. I know from some personal experience that there are limitations to the government service and payments in Alberta and British Columbia and Ontario is a disaster under the Ford conservatives.

They discouraged our nurses from staying in the profession during the pandemic by passing a law saying they could only have a one per cent raise in any one year. They further mistreated our hospital employees, and locked down their budgets when so much more was needed. We have been paying the price for their penny pinching. Even the minister of health refused to run again last year for the conservatives.

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The Carbon Capture Caper.

April 3, 2023April 2, 2023 by Peter Lowry

It was a sad time a few years back when we lost an old friend in Calgary. He had spent a lifetime in the oil business and was a knowledgeable source on what was going on in the oil sands. I miss him for his friendship.

But life goes on and a retired professor gave me an insight recently into carbon capture that I would not have figured out for myself. It was that carbon captured from processing bitumen from the tar sands and pumped into played out oil wells can produce more crude oil from the oil wells.

It is based on the irregularity of the rock surfaces around the deposits of crude oil allowing for only 40 to 60 per cent of the oil to be brought to the surface. Given the price of crude oil today, compared to when those unclosed wells were producing wells, it sounds like a win-win to me. They don’t even need to re-open those wells that the governments have been trying to get them to close.

So why are the provincial and federal governments subsidizing this development?

This sounds like another oil boom for Alberta. Is that premier of questionable judgement to help spend the proceeds of this windfall for the Alberta government?

And it is all thanks to carbon capture and storage. What you find when you pump CO into old wells you release these additional pockets of crude oil and they can be pumped up from the wells. The results are supposed to be much better than the horizontal drilling that is producing more from today’s wells.

I would give you more on this but I am not comfortable with the figures I am seeing from the Alberta Energy Regulator. All I am seeing is continued growth in the Alberta oil business through to the 2030s. All I want to know is when we are going to have better non-polluting energy sources for our homes, autos and industries?

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“You Can Fool Some of the People…

March 31, 2023March 30, 2023 by Peter Lowry

The full axiom reads as: “You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people, all of the time. Many of us have been watching with concern the attempt in Israel to politicize the judiciary. One of the tenets of a true democracy is the independence of the judiciary.

I thought it was marvelous the way the Israelis turned out in the thousands to protest the move by their right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to politicize their judiciary. He was simply giving himself and his government the power to reverse the courts. Too many Israelis had parents and grandparents who learned what it is like to live and die under such regimes.

And yet in Ontario nobody seems to care when Doug Ford’s attorney general is charging ahead with conservative plans to politicize Ontario justice. The attorney general wants more choice among the choices presented to him, so he can choose someone like him to be chief justice.

And I can tell you that someone such as Doug Downey as chief justice of Ontario is a sad thought. Doug Downey was the conservative’s go-to guy in Severn, Ontario. He was a lacklustre councillor on Orillia city council. He was forced on my electoral district of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte by Doug Ford as a parachute candidate. I have only met him once, although by accident. He never attended an all-candidate meeting in the last election. I have never heard of him speaking in Barrie. He is a small-town ward healer.

Downey was not even Doug Ford’s first choice as attorney general. That first appointment was reserved for Brian Mulroney’s daughter. Having the senior Mulroney on board as a fund raiser was probably the price for giving her the job. The only problem was when the premier was told that Caroline Mulroney was educated in law in the United States and all her legal experience was in New York State. The fact that she could not practice law in Ontario was considered something of a problem in her being Attorney General of Ontario. She was quietly shuffled over to minister of transportation where she could shepherd the highway 413 and Bradford Bypass projects along for the conservative party. Mulroney is also minister of francophone affairs. She is one of the few French speakers in the conservative caucus having grown up in Ottawa and Montreal.

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The Bully at Queen’s Park.

March 30, 2023March 29, 2023 by Peter Lowry

In thinking about the type of conservative Ontario premier Doug Ford might be, we have come to the conclusion that he is a bully. He is a conservative, though he isn’t really knowledgeable about what that means. It is hard to give him marks for intelligence ahead of former premier Mike Harris. At least Ford has not had anyone shot yet, or made ill by E. coli in their municipal water supply.

The difference was that Harris had a plan, his ‘Common Sense Revolution’ meant disastrous cuts in welfare, down loading provincial costs on municipalities, smaller government (cutting water inspectors is an example) and forced amalgamation of cities such as Toronto and Ottawa.

Mr. Ford is still fighting battles with his old foes at Toronto City Hall. His first act when he took over at Queen’s Park in 2018 was to interrupt the municipal election already under way in Toronto and reduce the number of councillors back to 25 from 47. It left the city councillors with the same number of constituents as the provincial MPPs and federal MPs. The city people said it left them with an impossible workload because of their direct relationship with their constituents. At the time, it was obvious that instead of saving money, Ford was getting even.

Seeing him in action at Queen’s Park, you quickly get the impression when he is in the House, it is all about me. Ford is self-centred, he is pugilistic and he is a bully. And to round it out, he is also a sneak. One of his funniest gaffs during the Covid-19 Pandemic was his announcing from Queen’s Park that we should all stay home and not go up north spreading covid. After the announcement, we found out that he was up in Muskoka enjoying himself in his motor boat.

His major problem in office is that he wants to come through on his offer to his developer friends to supply them with good opportunities to build subdivisions where no developer has gone before.

While he has found some prime sites in the Greenbelt for them, he is running into resistance to that in the media, in the polls and even with some of his own caucus. The problem is that the Greenbelt is not the place to build the thousands of homes needed in Toronto. Even along his unneeded highway 413, it is too far a drive into Toronto. He might keep trying.

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The Unwanted Child.

March 27, 2023March 26, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Ontario premier Doug Ford should be well aware that the City of Toronto is a child of the province. And his short but hectic four years in Toronto City Hall showed him the way it works. Why else would he, as premier, have interfered with the number of councillors to be elected part way through Toronto’s 2018 municipal election?

Oddly enough, premier Ford still thinks of politics on the city level. He does not really relate on the provincial level. Why else would he seem to lack understanding of the importance of healthcare and education in the provincial legislature? His besties are still the Toronto developers and their lawyers.

Ford cannot assume that the province’s responsibility is to the outside of the city. Helping the city to be liveable and productive is as much the province’s job as it is city council’s job. The city is a child of the province and it is currently suffering from child abuse and neglect. And Toronto is not the only city with problems. It is the biggest city and therefore is the neediest.

The first reality is that Toronto is more desperately in need of housing than the Greenbelt. Not only does it need reasonable cost housing but it needs geared-to-income and supportive housing. That is where the big bucks need to go. More and more we are hearing that housing is not a privilege but it has to be a right in a climate such as Toronto’s. The province has to forget the Greenbelt and build in the cities. It has to get people inside where they can be protected from our unreliable environment.

Mr. Ford has to forget the treatment he received in Toronto city hall. And he has to realize that the reason his brother was fooling with drugs was likely because of the strains of an impossible job for a mayor to cope unsupported in managing a city of almost three million people.

Mr. Ford has to realize that the original concept of city administration was services to infrastructure and properties. Somebody had to clean the moat or the smell would drive people away from the city. And then they found that they needed a night watch to keep the peace and they were also providing services to people. If Mr. Ford cannot understand that the city is also his responsibility, we better elect somebody who does.

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The Confusion of Two Cities.

March 25, 2023March 24, 2023 by Peter Lowry

There was a provincial study ordered by the conservative government when it came into office in 2018 of the organizational needs of Peel Region and other major urban centres. With Peel Region’s unwieldy mix of the City of Mississauga, the City of Brampton and rural Caledon and the services each municipality requires, some serious re-organization is needed. It is regretful that the study came up with nothing as nothing has been heard of the study since.

The awkward problem of concern to Mississauga is that a large part of their municipal taxes is spread across the region by Peel County, paying for some of the needs of Brampton and Caledon.

Mississauga, with a population of almost 800,000, is the third largest city in Ontario. It can no longer be left as a two-tier municipality, with Peel Region providing some of the shared services and also, needlessly, duplicating others. As things stand, Mississauga is making a good case for it to be a stand-alone city.

A good alternative is for Brampton to become part of Mississauga and for the Caledon portion of Peel County to be combined with similar Dufferin County.

This solution solves many of the problems that Brampton mayor Patrick Brown complains about. These two cities having interlocking public transportation services makes a great deal of sense. It improves the economic viability of both with the interchange of skilled help. It also means that Brampton would not have to obtain its own water supply as it already has the service connected through Mississauga.

This absorption of Brampton into Mississauga will add under 700,000 citizens to the city of Mississauga and will give balance to the to the services required throughout the enlarged city. It will also save substantial administrative costs as it will now be operated as a single tier city similar to Toronto.

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A Palace to Profit.

March 23, 2023March 22, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Driving to an appointment with my family doctor the other day, I noticed a new and very fancy building nearing completion down the road from the doctor’s office. The sign was already on the building and it is one of the private clinics that Ontario premier Doug Ford has been promising Ontario. This private clinic is for cataracts and other eye surgery and it has obviously been planned for a while.

Thinking about that clinic near my doctor’s office makes an interesting comparison. Family practices are currently having a hard time meeting their expenses each month and ophthalmologists have been making out like bandits. Obviously, there will be a lot of expensive equipment in that building but that modern equipment enables the doctors to do in minutes what used to be an hour and more of delicate surgery. With assembly-line-like cataract surgery, Ontario’s ophthalmologists are fast-tracked millionaires.

And the problem rests with the government and the Ontario Medical Association (OMA). The stranglehold that the specialists have on the OMA is unfair to the general practitioners. Nobody is saying that specialists do not deserve something extra for the long internships required, but a difference that can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year between the specialist and the general practitioner is not only vulgar but unnecessary.

But it is not just the Medicare payments to these private clinics that are the concern. For too long now, our ophthalmologists have been loading on non-Medicare charges. These specialists have been hawking expensive lens to seniors who can ill afford them and they do little to their benefit. Older people are often of the school that believes in doing what the doctor recommends. And who really wants to say ‘no’ to someone who will be using a laser on their eyes.

It is not so hard to imagine under the Ford government, that we could have private surgeries with an array of extra cost titanium hips and joints for replacement parts on sale. And imagine what you could sell in the way of baby merchandise at a private birthing clinic. Medical doctors can also be entrepreneurial.

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The Ethnic Wars.

March 9, 2023March 9, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Despite the headaches it involved, I often thought it would be interesting to write a book about the ethnic battles for political advantage in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) from 1950 through to the 21^st Century. I lived it. I was part of it. I won some and lost some. What has held me back is too many of the transgressors are still alive and they have maybe a bit of their pride left to protect.

The ethnic wars were never a fair fight. My first direct involvement was the Davenport liberal nominating convention in 1968. It was a marker. My role was as an observer. About 5000 people gathered at the horse palace at the Canadian National Exhibition grounds. I learned a lot. The voting process was slow. There were multiple ballots. The final winner was a young Italian immigrant, Charles Caccia. The joke going around was that he won the nomination and went home and painted his house while waiting for the election He served 36 years as MP for Toronto-Davenport.

I always thought the worst and most out-of-control meetings was the one I chaired in St. Catherines-Ontario in 1968. The most impressive of meetings was one in an arena in New Hamburg, Ontario that did not matter. It was not needed because we knew the election was to be called under the old boundaries the following week. The guest speaker was MP Gene Whalen and he was at his funniest for the area farmers. He said they couldn’t have Pierre Trudeau or John Turner as speakers. He said Pierre sent him because he was living proof that anyone can get elected as a liberal.

Skipping to one of the last, was the 1985 Toronto-Fort York nomination meeting in the Toronto Congress Centre, that was a classic ethnic event. It was the first time we had a candidate of Chinese ancestry with a chance to win the riding. The only problem was that Bob Wong was born in Canada and spoke neither Cantonese nor Mandarin. Rather than being a candidate for the Chinese community, Bob was a representative from the Bay Street community, that was also part of Fort York electoral district.

Nice guys are supposed to finish last but we made Bob the exception. They are not going to have a ‘Welcome Back Peter’ event at the Toronto Congress Centre if I ever try to rent space there. We finished multiple ballots after two AM, and sending buses up and down Spadina Avenue and through Chinatown to pick up people who looked Chinese and wanted to vote. I thought we had given it all away when the buses brought a couple loads from the Toronto Mandarin Club, where they were having a formal event, in tuxedos and evening gowns.

But I am not going to tell you how we squeaked through in the actual election. I’m not sure if there is a statute of limitations on provincial elections.

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Mitzie For Mayor!

March 3, 2023March 3, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Not knowing liberal MPP Mitzie Hunter, she has already earned my support for mayor of Toronto. Mitzie is planning to be in Hamilton for the liberal party annual convention on the weekend, promoting the “one-member, one-vote” change in the party’s constitution. Having been one of the insiders who used to take part in running delegated conventions, I can certainly attest to the unfairness and undemocratic nature of those events.

I am not apologizing for my participation, because, at the time, we had no alternative method to select party leaders. To keep things lively for the news media, we did not consider mail-in ballots. Besides, we needed the publicity and the money those conventions raised for the party. It was the advent of the internet and its wide-spread availability in Ontario that provides a fast and effective way to let every member of the party have a vote.

And as Mitzie wrote for the news media “the one member, one-vote system is not only more democratic but ultimately leads to a stronger party organization.”

But the party delegates at this convention need to be wary of attempts to weight the vote or to rank their ballots. Both of these allow for easy manipulation of the vote. For true one-member, one-vote to work, stick to your guns.

You should remember that preferential ballots and riding weighting were the undoing of the federal conservatives when they chose Andrew Scheer and then Erin O’Toole as their party leaders.

First of all, preferential voting, with a strong field, tends to count down to the least aggressive candidates. Party leaders need to be aggressive.

And weighting ridings is about the dumbest idea in a democratic vote imaginable. Nobody in politics really believes that all electoral districts are equal. Weighting means that the choices of the stronger ridings are diluted with the opinions of weak ridings. In politics, always go with your strengths. Go Mitzie!

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Putting It to the Man.

February 4, 2023February 3, 2023 by Peter Lowry

As a youngster growing up in Toronto, hard on the heels of the Second World War, we had to take our lessons in bigotry in very large doses. And we learned. It was not until I spent time in Quebec as a young man that I realized that the Quebec situation is definitely different. It is the ingrained bigotry in the Quebec psyche, forced on Quebecers for a couple hundred years.

It was the realization in Quebec that putting it to the anglophones was best done through the allophones.

Take the current squabble about Amira Elghawaby being the choice of the federal liberals to help do something about Islamophobia across Canada. No doubt, she can contribute a knowledgeable Muslim view to the problems but it is not Muslims who are causing the problem. I think we need people who understand those bigots and tribalists in the National Assembly.

They also need to understand the history of Quebec and the bitter reign of the Catholic Church during the colonial years. Maurice Duplessis and René Lévesque were divided by more than the Quiet Revolution. The outpouring of anglophones and talent through those turbulent years left Quebec a province with less than it deserved as a quiet backwater of North America.

It is the bitterness and frustrations of the National Assembly as it tries to justify its existence, preserving the xenophobia instead of what it could have been. Constantly beating on the wall of English, guaranteed to lose in time to young people without the baggage. Montreal had already thrown in the towel giving Toronto the power, the privilege and the problems of being the dominant world city.

What Quebecers have never seemed to understand is that there has always been a hand-up offered by those Anglos in Toronto. There is no rivalry. There is no need to put down anyone’s language or heritage or colour or tribe or religion.

The opportunity for all Canadians is greater than the sum of the country’s parts. Together, we can do just about anything, or be anything we want to be.

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