Category: Provincial Politics

Freeland’s Folly.

by Peter Lowry

Maybe we never realized that finance minister and deputy prime minister Cynthia Freeland was so competitive. In her fall economic-statement the other day, she seemed to be competing with conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to see who was the most frugal.

It was a foolish effort. In his imaginary world, Mr. Poilievre might not be the smartest politician in Ottawa but he does have easy answers for the Greek chorus that surrounds him in the House of Commons. Freeland also played to Poilievre’s Robespierre, and his waiting Guillotine.  His sneering rebuke to the proposed $13.2 billon in new spending was classic. He just hopes that it will never see the light of day. It looks even more likely that it leaves Canadians to the grubby demands of the American oil barons and the collective greed of grocery clerks from sea to sea to sea.

Nobody wanted to hear that dreary recital of finance department inadequacies from Freeland or anyone else. When we needed succor, she gave us platitudes. When we needed revenge in this time of inflation, she gave us surrender. When we needed hope, she gave us a lecture on deficits. When we needed leadership, she left us with Poilievre’s ball and chain solutions.

What Poilievre poses to Canadians as common-sense solutions is just a reminder to Ontario residents of the common-sense solution of the rapacious Mike Harris and his conservatives, who brought Ontario into the 21st century with disastrous results. Harris oversaw a government that found it could kill citizens with impunity. It also led the way in downloading expenses to the municipalities. The Tories proved conclusively to Canadians that governments lie to those who put them in power.

Poilievre took his training in government from the dying days of the Harper conservative government. By that time, Harper was constantly lying to Canadians. Maybe we are lucky that Pierre Poilievre has no friends. His role model might be Doug Ford in Ontario. Mr. Ford offers his best friends multi-billion dollar deals for the simple act of making sure he has the money to get re-elected.

-30-

Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]

Just One Vote, Thank You.

by Peter Lowry

Isn’t it generous of the nebbishes who think they run the liberal party in Ontario? They are letting us suckers tell them our second, third and even fourth choice for leader of the party. What they are really doing is an attempt to deny us our first choice. This ballot that allows you to vote by numbering the selections from one to four has been thrown sideways to where we have no idea who will win if it goes beyond one count.

I am going to keep my ballot simple. I am going to vote for my number-one choice and nobody else. That one vote will be for Bonnie Crombie. I started out this long and dreary campaign thinking I might support Nate Erskine-Smith. All I found out by offering my help, is that Mr. Erskine-Smith is not as well organized as a leadership candidate should be. He reminded me of former premier David Peterson. I liked the entire Peterson family but after a while I was fed up with the truck drivers running David. He became inaccessible and detached from the party. He made some very bad political decisions.

One of the things I was able to do in earlier leadership contests was to assess the team behind the candidate. That tells you a great deal. I must admit that I decided to vote for Bonnie Crombie without knowing who was running her campaign. I found out today and I should have realized that her campaign was the smooth and expensive type of campaign this insider runs. It is the insiders, connected to Queen’s Park, who would have wanted him. He must have come into the campaign late. Her earlier gaffs on bringing the party to the right and using Greenbelt lands would never have happened under his watch.

As it is, Bonnie Crombie is more to the right politically than I. In discussions with liberals across the province, I am of the conclusion that they need a Bonnie Crombie to get rid of Doug Ford and his thugs. It probably reflects what my late friend Hazel McCallion saw in Ms. Crombie. Hazel was always one of the most perceptive politicians I knew. She was always careful how she used her support and whom she trusted. Bonnie Crombie is the Cinderella that the Ontario liberals need. I am also confident that her Disney training will make for an interesting political experience.

-30-

Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]

A Cinderella Solution.

by Peter Lowry

It is really the best solution for the Ontario liberals. They need Bonnie Crombie for the ‘coup de grâce’ on the Ford conservatives. One term for a pragmatic liberal such as Bonnie is all we need from her. She understands how the Ford government has squeezed the municipalities and where the weak points are in support for hospitals and education. She can get the home building moving with support from the municipalities across the province.

The tall order for Bonnie will be the act of going from eight or nine liberals in the current liberal caucus to a majority liberal government in Ontario. That has always been a tough job. It will take hard work and daring. Her first order of business is to get into the legislature. It is the only place she can tackle Ford on equal footing as party leader to premier. Ontario voters need to see her in action in the legislature, not just as a very popular mayor of Mississauga.

Bonnie obviously has the blessing of the Toronto Star. It will be nice to have the paper on board for a change.

And Bonnie is the fresh face that the liberals need. Liberalism is a tough sell these days as it emphasizes individual rights in a vitriolic political environment. Both federal and provincial elections coming up in the next three years are going to be hard fought against conservatives taking their lead from well-funded American Republican leaders such as Donald Trump.

At the same time political ethics are shifting as promises seem to always be in the maybe category. It is making voters more and more weary of politicians’ promises that earn substantial distrust.

Despite some early missteps during the overly long provincial liberal leadership campaign, Crombie has recovered well and certainly understands that Ontario liberals want to be proactive in progressive policies that will improve Ontario’s economic situation. And we can certainly expect that from now on, the Ontario Greenbelt will always be respected by all Ontario parties.

-30-

Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]

Promises, Promises.

by Peter Lowry

You can compare the current leadership race for the Ontario liberals to a schoolyard race. There is still time for somebody to get tripped. It’s a mixed race. It’s the boys against the only girl. Call her Cinderella, if you wish. She is running against her two wicked stepsisters and her fairy godmother’s coachman.

Obviously, we are talking about Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie. She thinks she is in for a first-ballot win. Which is possible—if she gets lots of her party sign-ups to vote. Crombie might be the only candidate who really understands the mathematics of the race. By no stretch of the imagination can this be called a ‘one member-one vote’ election. The last riding anybody needs to have new sign-ups is their own riding. As soon as you have 100 members, you have hit your limit. More voters than 100 is just diluting your relative strength.

What particularly annoys me about ranked balloting is when there are a larger number of candidates, the less likely the best person wins. If people would stop to think about it, they would realize that it is a method of picking the best-known candidate, not the most qualified candidate. It is a chance for your second or third best to win. The deeper you get into the count, the less likely that any substantive thought or consideration goes into the choices.

And the most amusing aspect of this degrading count-down is that by the time you get to the fourth or fifth count, you can be letting less than half your voter base make the decision. How many people can even guess who is their fourth or fifth choice?

But don’t pay any attention to me. Do your own countdown on this race. The first ballot will see up to 12,400 votes allocated to 124 electoral districts Those with less than 100 members will have all their voters counted. Voters in strong riding associations have to share their votes on a percentage basis. If there are 300 members voting, for example, each of their votes will only count for 33.3 per cent.

And there is another problem with this that nobody seems to be concerned about. There is no membership fee involved. Of all the mistakes Justin Trudeau has made as leader of the liberal party, I think that was about the stupidest. I bet the candidates’ people went to the easiest people to get memberships. What motivates these freeloaders to vote? Good luck candidates!

-30-

Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]

The State of the Statues.

by Peter Lowry

There are stupid people in this world who think they can upset long-standing statues with impunity. My favourite statue at Queen’s Park in Toronto is that of King Edward VII astride a horse. It is one damn fine horse. And as far as I’m concerned, the guy on the horse is just another horse’s ass.

I mention this as the Ontario government has wasted public money on a statue of the late Queen Elizabeth II. Why they should waste money on this is beyond me. I am confident there was no hue and cry saying; you must do this. It is not even a decent statue. I would swear that a man posed for the face. Queen Elizabeth had much softer features. I have always thought of her as something of a nebbish. Not as much as her son Charles but he was a prince only a mother could love.

And in this time of reminding Torontonians of our country’s colonial past, we have poor old John A. Macdonald all boarded up to protect him from the stupid people who would try to splash paint on him and tear him down. Tearing down Sir John because of the residential schools is a particularly dumb move. This is the guy that pointed the way to creating the Canada that exists today. If it had not been for Sir John, Canada would just be the back lot for the American or British Empire. Toss a coin for which one.

For my part, I suppose I should spring to the defence of Oliver Mowat. His statue is on the west side of the legislature building at Queen’s Park. He is an early relation. My paternal grandmother was a Mowat. Everything I have ever heard about that side of the family tells me not to expect much from my Mowat genes. My late friend Keith Davey had a laugh on me one time when he and wife Dorothy where at the Aberfoyle Market out in Puslinch Township. They found an 1893 copy of the front page of the Saturday Globe. It had a large picture of Sir Oliver Mowat, honouring how long he had been premier of Ontario. Keith gave it to me and said now he knew where my big nose came from. That front page was preserved for me and framed. It hangs on the wall today above my computer screen.

-30-

Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]

Reap What You Sow.

by Peter Lowry

Does it come as a surprise that the most serious antisemitic incidents in Canada since the October 7 war was launched in the Middle East, have taken place in Quebec? After all, why should we be surprised in a province that routinely promotes discrimination against people who speak languages other than French? As the kids said in the school yard: “He started it.”

The provincial government of François Legault should not be so surprised. This is a government that routinely uses the ‘Not Withstanding’ clause in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms to try to prevent interference in their discrimination against their English-speaking citizens. And it is not as though it is racial discrimination. English and French speaking peoples are, for the most part, from the same racial origins. Many slurs in both languages have been slung over the English Channel over the centuries of history.

But that is no excuse for the suppression of English in Quebec. It is probably the only jurisdiction with more than eight million population today that does not accept English as the lingua franca of today’s world. The truth be known is that many educated francophones in Quebec want their children to learn English, as it will enable them to have more opportunities in their business career. And come to think of it, what percentage of the members of the Quebec legislature are able to communicate in English?

These are the people who regularly pass laws that limit the availability of English language education in the province. To add insult, they have raised the annual rates for English-speaking students from outside Quebec to attend their English-language universities and colleges to beyond reasonable.

And is our federal government standing up to this discrimination in Quebec. Of course not. The conservatives and the liberals are both thinking of an election in the next two years and are soft-pedaling the objections they might have to this Quebec bigotry. And what else do they have in mind, while they have the feds on the run?

-30-

Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]

Communications Constricted.

by Peter Lowry

Ontario premier Doug Ford tends to bluster. Take the recent meeting of the premiers in Nova Scotia, where he claimed that the federal carbon levy was “the worst tax ever.” What he does not seem to know is that it is really not a tax. When people in Ford’s position do not know the difference, there must be a failure in communications.

And it is not just Mr. Ford who is causing confusion. Mr. Poilievre the conservative Leader of the Opposition in parliament keeps urging everyone to axe the tax. And he knows the difference.

Mr. Poilievre’s problem is that he thinks it is more memorable if he says “Axe the tax” instead of “curtail the carbon levy.” What he never mentions is that this levy is distributed to those who can little afford the contribution it makes to inflation. Seniors and people with lower incomes get Climate Action Incentive payments four times each year. There is also a 20 per cent addition to rural Canadians who do not have the advantage of transit systems to save them money.

What confused the issue was the government decision to remove the levy on heating oil for the next three years to give more Canadians the opportunity to convert their heating systems to lower cost heat pumps.

But the problem is that Mr. Poilievre has no other solution. He is certainly hearing of all the problems with global warming and he and other conservatives do not seem to have any answers. In fact, when you stop to think about it, Mr. Poilievre seems to have lots of things he does not like. Yet, he seems to have no solutions for any of them.

The only conclusion to come to in this is that Mr. Poilievre is a very selfish person. His only effort seems to be to please himself. He thinks the prime minister’s job should be given to him. He does not care what Canadians need or want. All he offers them is greed and selfishness. He wants a country with out rules. He wants a country without controls. He promised the ‘Freedom convoy’ of truckers that he would give them a country with the greatest freedom—where they can block city streets or border crossing as they wished. There is no carbon levy on greenhouse emissions in Mr. Poilievre’s plans.

His only problem is that global warming is real. The wildfires are destroying our forests—and their lumber. The floods are destroying our roads and highways. The weather is inconsistent and destroying our farmers crops. Hurricanes and tornadoes are reaching farther with great intensity.

-30-

Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]

Boys Will Be Boys.

by Peter Lowry

They are trying to turn the Ontario liberal leadership into a boys-only club. Maybe I was a bit of a wus as a youngster but I always let the girls into our various club houses. And I hardly think that this last-minute deal between Nate Erskine Smith and Yasir Naqvi is going to be anything other than of a passing interest. The only worry is that Bonnie Crombie might note their intransigence when the liberals defeat Doug Ford and she might be reluctant to bring the guys into her cabinet.

All I know is if you get involved in as stupidly arranged a leadership contest as the liberals are running, anything can happen. Copying the conservatives’ style of leadership was a very bad idea. First of all, not all electoral districts are created equal. To give added strength to the few votes from low membership ridings is basically denying liberals who work to have a strong membership their rights to fairly chosen leader.

What Nate and Yasir are trying is the same style of stalking horse deal as Jean Charest and Patrick Brown were attempting in the last conservative leadership. I am not privy to knowing which one of Patrick Brown’s dirty tricks got him kicked out of the conservative race but it certainly cemented Pierre Poilievre’s lock on the leadership. There is a possibility that they kicked Patrick Brown out of that race because they were worried, he might accidently win.

But Bonnie Crombie can be confident of her position as top dog in chasing this liberal rabbit around Ontario. If I provided a morning line for this Liberal race, all I would be doing is restating the obvious. My reading across Ontario says that Bonnie Crombie is ready to do the job of liberal leader.

What concerns me are the next steps. To build the liberal party for the next provincial election requires her presence in the legislature. It was tragic for the liberals last election when the liberal party leader had never had a chance to show his stuff mano a mano against Doug Ford.

And I am a left-wing liberal who has always been delighted to take donations to the party from developers. Our democracy is important to everybody. And I don’t think anybody who thinks they can buy you will respect you.

-30-

Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]

A People Place.

by Peter Lowry

When premier Bill Davis opened Ontario Place in 1971, he noted that it was “A stimulating and permanent symbol of the work and achievement of the people of Ontario.” Today, it sits fenced off and forlorn on Toronto’s lakefront, a nostalgic memory for those of us who were raising young families in Toronto during the late 1900s.

Closed for the last decade, Ontario Place has been the subject of much political hemming and hawing. It was not until the ignorant Doug Ford moved into the premier’s office at Queen’s Park that the set-backs started. It seems some European company wants to build a luxury spa on the west end of the artificial islands on which Ontario Place sits. Always mindful of the need for profit, Ford cheerfully sold off a piece of Ontario’s heritage. And it is all downhill from there.

On the premier’s behalf, we should note that he is not very smart and not exactly cognizant of the responsibilities of his office to the people of the province. Somebody must have told him he made a boo-boo. He hastened to try to rectify his error by offering to move the much-valued Ontario Science Centre to share the Ontario Place space with the European spa. Since the spa left a space on the islands of about one-third the size of the present Science Centre, this idea has met with little to no enthusiasm.

These islands are very much like the Navy Pier in Chicago. With more than 100 years of history behind it, nobody visiting the Windy City wants to miss spending some time seeing the ever-changing entertainments of the pier today. And it is the range of activities that make the pier a continual success.

In its good times, Ontario Place attracted crowds to the live shows in the forum and the IMAX films in the Cinesphere. The seven-storey high geodesic dome was a distinctive part of the Ontario Place when you were looking south from Lakeshore Boulevard or the Canadian National Exhibition grounds.

I have always been disappointed by the politicians who are unable to recognize the potential of this people place. It needs imaginative and daring management. It needs to keep up with its Toronto market’s interests, for both young and old.

-30-

Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]

Leadership in Lethargy.

by Peter Lowry

The wise writer in these days is wary of certain subjects. They are subjects that offer no wins. It is when, no matter what you say, somebody is convinced you are wrong. Good examples of this are about children and gender selection and our schools. I jump into the fray reluctantly only because that Looney-Tunes premier of Alberta has once again embarrassed her province. She has assured the horse’s asses who are the extreme right-wing members of her United Conservative Party (UCP) who want ignorance to prevail about children and gender in Alberta schools.  

It seems also to be appropriate to respond to the assertion that parent’s rights are being pushed aside by us on “the dangerous of the left which caters to the loud minority in this province and country” as claimed by one delegate. There are no more dangerous topics than parental rights and gender selection. And that topic topped the list of resolutions past by the UCP gathering.

Little kids like to play in mud and there is no muddier topic. There is also the point that few are the little girls who have not wished at one time or another that they were born a boy. And visa-versa for little boys. And there are very, very few times in which that thinking becomes serious.

What the teacher has to consider is that some youngsters also like to act out. They will sometimes make outrageous claims that are not in their best interest. There, we parents have to rely on the teacher’s judgement as to whether or not the situation needs or could be helped by the involvement of the parents.

Children go to school to learn more than their ABCs. They are learning about themselves and their classmates. They are learning about their teachers. And they do tend to brag. It reminds me of the time our daughter’s grade one or two teacher smiled and casually told the wife that our daughter had told the class that her mother goes to downtown hotels with lots of men. The wife looked at her and said, “Well, that’s true.” She paused for effect. And then added: “I sing with a 22-piece orchestra.”

But the sad note in all of this is that Danielle Smith and the ‘Take Back Alberta’ crazies passed extremist resolutions at the UCP meeting that should embarrass any thinking Albertan. Alberta does not deserve the bad press this gets across Canada.

-30-

Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]