Provincial Politics – Page 36

Politics of the pandemic.

January 12, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It has been fascinating watching politicians learning about the politics of a pandemic. It has been a learning experience for all of them. Some take naturally to the challenge, while others find it a struggle.

Thinking of the positive ones first, I have to admit that prime minister Justin Trudeau fell into the pandemic cesspool and came out smelling of roses. While I ridiculed his popping out of the Rideau Cottage, as though it was a cuckoo clock, those were very effective sessions. Not only did the media and the public pay attention but they came to trust his statements. Trudeau had reason to laugh at the opposition in parliament. He stood alone in front of the cottage and the listeners had every reason to believe him.

People such as Doctor Theresa Tam, Canada’s Public Health officer, brought the technical expertise to support the prime minister but not on the same set. Best to let her and the lesser politicians play back-up from an official site while the prime minister played his game as a single.

Interestingly, premier Doug Ford from Ontario does not have the younger Trudeau’s confidence. He seems afraid of his ignorance. Ford brings his health minister, his former treasurer, his education minister and other minions to dance a quadrille with him around the microphones.

But Ford still manages to get himself in trouble. He blusters when caught out. He announces that there will be an announcement—and you hope he remembers. He comes across too often as dull-witted and uncaring.

Premier François Legault of Quebec seems to be a cross between Robert Bourassa and Maurice Duplessis. You have to annoy him to get him to make the next move. I keep waiting to see him leading the police in sweeping people off the streets of Montreal.

But the one who really takes the cake is the premier of Alberta. He is almost as bad as Trump in the United States and that guy with the bad haircut in the United Kingdom. All of those men have proved conclusively that they are not effective leaders. Jason Kenney has been leading Alberta down the garden path for too long. He is a narcissist, a misogynist and a fool and seems to have forgotten all the lessons by his mentor Stephen Harper.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be temporarily sent to [email protected]

“Taking care of business…”

December 11, 2020 by Peter Lowry

The Bachman Turner Overdrive seem to say it best in their song, “Taking care of business (every day).” It seems to be the theme song of the conservatives who are mismanaging things in Ontario at this time. These people will bend over backwards to help business, big and small, and yet screw the disadvantaged and downtrodden of our citizens.

Even in the midst of a pandemic, they are true to their political mantra. They are open to business. They will use ministerial orders for friendly developers to exploit wetlands and other inconveniently designated land. They are also disinclined to come down hard on long-term care facility proprietors who fail to protect their clientele. They have even quietly taken on a major updating of Ontario’s liquor laws.

While I am normally in favour of bringing our archaic liquor laws into the 21^st century, this does not strike me as an upgrading that will do anybody any good. And the fact that Ontario attorney general Doug Downey made the announcement made me even more suspicious of the government’s motivation.

Downey is the ward healer from Orillia and Severn, Ontario who was parachuted into our Barrie riding to keep former Ontario conservative leader, Patrick Brown, out of provincial politics. It is not at all sure whether Mr. Downey has ever stopped in Barrie when going to and from his home in Severn and Toronto’s Queen’s Park.

The sad note is that I have never seen much of a choice in the wines offered by local restaurants. And we do have some fine restaurants.

But wine lists locally tend to feature cheap wines at high prices. While the mark up that restaurants charge for serving wines and other alcoholic beverages might be justified when being served with food in the restaurant, it does not make sense if it is for home consumption. The public would be well advised to buy their wines for home use directly from the liquor control board stores. There is much better variety and fairer prices.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Good to know Doug’s got spare money!

December 10, 2020 by Peter Lowry

Were we reading the other day that Ontario premier Doug Ford has a rainy-day $12 billion tucked away? That is what you can expect when you have a conservative government. Yet the Ontario Financial Accountability Officer tells us that some of that money was from the federal government to help with pandemic costs. You would think that the province would be in deficit like other governments who are doing their job.

But, obviously, the Ontario Tories are not doing their job at all. They are cheap, conniving, dangerous people. I say this because of a lesson I learned the other day from people helping those on government assistance. It used to be that these people were complaining about the cheap, penny-pinching liberals.

But when the conservatives came into power two years ago, they reduced the amount paid to Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) recipients. It used to be an average of about $1200 a month that was paid to single people with no other income. They were allowed about $600 in housing expense (a room which was paid direct to the landlord) and the rest was provided for food and other essentials—depending on the formula allocated by their case worker.

It is only when you realize that there are more than 500,000 Ontario residents who receive money under this program, you realize the dimensions of the program. They include the mentally and physically handicapped who live so precariously on the margins of our society. They are singles, couples and families. They are at the mercy of a skinflint government. They are mistreated or just ignored by most in our society. They are often lonely and with little to occupy their time. They have to search out the diminishing number of food banks that can keep them fed during this pandemic. They are among the vulnerable.

If you ever need a strong argument for a basic income program for all Canadians, it is bringing these people into the mainstream. They need to become part of the Canadian experience.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Are any conservatives listening?

December 8, 2020 by Peter Lowry

It is something of a wonder that Jason Kenney, premier of Alberta, Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, and Erin O’Toole, federal conservative leader, are members of the same political party. The only similarity between the three gentlemen is that they all blame Justin Trudeau for their problems, provincially and across Canada. And that seems like a very heavy load for Canada’s prime minister to carry.

No doubt there are a growing number of Albertans who wish Mr. Kenney spent less of their money on pipelines for diluted bitumen and more on health care. They think he should be paying more attention to the current pandemic than the price of oil—which is obviously not going to suddenly solve all their problems.

At a time when his province is so obviously in need of leadership, Jason Kenney has been reluctant to place any restraints on Albertans. Citizens of Alberta who want to ignore the simple rules that could reduce and prevent the spread of coronavirus are creating the highest incidence of covid-19 in the country.

The news media in Ontario had been giving Doug Ford time to grasp the reins of his job but disillusionment has been growing. Just when you think the guy is doing the job, he reverts to his basic cronyism. Having his majority conservatives approve a bill that includes university status for his friend Charles McVety’s Canada Christian College is a slam at Ontario’s properly run and qualified universities.

Add to that, Ford’s disregard for Ontario’s years of building safeguards for our environment. He is destroying those years of hard work by conservative, liberal and new democratic governments to cater to his developer supporters. It is open season on the environment in Ontario.

And the federal conservative leader is not much help either. He is trying to build a fictitious ‘big tent’ party that more Canadians can support. To do this, he is ignoring the more strident members of his federal caucus such as Pierre Poilievre who thinks we are spending too much helping Canadians through the pandemic and MP Derek Sloan who wants to warn people against vaccines.

It would seem that Canadians would be better off if they had more politicians who put Canadians first and their party second.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Decidedly Different Discipline.

December 4, 2020 by Peter Lowry

Many Canadians are intrigued by the discipline of political parties. Not that it seems to matter within the parties themselves but it does seem to matter in the caucus of elected party members in the federal and provincial parties.

There even seem to be differences when you are the government or not. Party leaders can be much more forgiving when in opposition. The standard explanation of this is that when in opposition rather than government you are building up a big-tent party that has many different opinions. When you are the government, you had better not have any opinion contrary to that of the leader.

You can tell this by the number of the ex-caucus members occupying a small number of seats at the farthest corner of the house or legislature—away from the government leader—and seemingly out of sight of the speaker’s dais.

While I am sure that Mr. Trudeau would quite rapidly send an anti-vaxxer from his caucus to that purgatory, this is not the case with opposition leader Erin O’Toole. O’Toole has ignored conservative MP Derek Sloan’s claim that the first vaccines to be approved will be effectively human experimentation as they are rushed through the approvals process. Sloan wants the legislation establishing the approvals to state that they can only be used on a voluntary basis.

This reluctance to discipline is not the same in the Ontario conservative government’s caucus. Premier Doug Ford bounced the controversial MPP Randy Hillier from caucus for making “disrespectful” comments to parents of autistic children.

The removal of former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and former health minister Jane Philpott from the liberal party caucus was probably the most controversial of all such decisions of prime minister Justin Trudeau. Liberals can only wonder if that ejection from caucus would have been supported by a majority of caucus—in a secret ballot?

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Breaking Faith with Canadians.

November 29, 2020 by Peter Lowry

Before people started accepting news in free form as whatever was trending on social media, we were encouraging business and government to work together. We called it by various names such as business-government partnerships but the essential component was the need to understand that the ultimate beneficiary was supposed to be the Canadian public.

In the late 1980s, one of the more remarkable examples of this partnership was SkyDome in Toronto, where the Blue Jays came to play baseball. At a shared public-private cost of around $600 million, few people really understood the benefits to the people of Toronto, of Ontario or Canada.

For one, it put more lustre for Toronto on the world map. It generated billions in tourism. It drove a steady stream of rebuilding to that part of Canada’s largest city. It helped bring Toronto to life. At least it did until ignorant provincial politicians paid off the debt of about $400 million and sold the building to private interests, including Labatt Breweries, for $151 million. Which seemed like quite a bargain despite the continued financial problems of the time. Labatt’s solution was to sell SkyDome in 2004 to Rogers Communications for $25 million.

But the death knell of any landmark is when you try to give it a new and commercial name. It is still our SkyDome, to us old time baseball fans.

But would you believe that these people who got SkyDome for a song, are now talking about tearing it down. They think they can build another smaller baseball park, with natural grass, nearby.

This new park would be further ‘enhanced,’ according to the proponents with new condominiums and office towers to improve the revenues from the property.

Luckily, the land that SkyDome sits on is not part of the deal for which these schemers paid so little. The lands are leased from a federal government-owned company that specify the only use for these old railway lands is for a ball park and entertainment facility. We might be lucky if this agency says ‘No’ to this new plan.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

The auditor versus the label salesman.

November 27, 2020 by Peter Lowry

It might not be a fair fight but Ontario voters are enjoying it. The ups and downs and the tantrums of former label salesman and now premier Doug Ford are generally entertaining but when he and the province’s auditor general cross swords, the province can see the problems with better clarity.

The problem might be that both of the protagonists are out of their depth. The problem is that Doug Ford’s limited education and political experience, ill prepared him to do battle with both a coronavirus and an experienced auditor general.

You can also make the claim that, once again, auditor general Bonnie Lysyk has overstepped the bounds of her job. That does not make her wrong in telling us that Ford and his Tories are doing a lousy job on the pandemic. When the conservative premiers have made it very clear to Ottawa that the federal role is to do nothing but send money, we have to hope they know what they are doing.

And we agree that Bonnie Lysyk continues to exceed her financial accountability role to point out the lousy job the politicians are doing. She has also pointed out that the province’s medical officer of health is also not doing his job.

But why should that matter when the Ford government is not listening to him either.

What this all boils down to is that once again, the auditor general of Ontario has pointed out the deep pile of do-do that the Ontario government is driving us into. That is her job. How she does it is another matter. She did the same things to the liberals when they were in power.

But we know for a fact now that Ford and his Tories are doing a lousy job. And we have also learned that Ford’s minister of health is no better at her job than the premier is at his.

We hear a retired army general will be reporting in at Queen’s Park to take over distribution logistics for coming vaccines. Let’s hope that he does a better job at that than the politicians have done so far.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Back to the Bully Pulpit.

November 23, 2020 by Peter Lowry

It might have been a term coined by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt but our prime minister Justin Trudeau did the bully pulpit one better. It was living in Rideau Cottage while the official residence at 21 Sussex was under repair. Trudeau did a cuckoo clock single out the front door of the cottage to address the latest news of the coronavirus.

Where lesser Luminoso would need support by technical experts or henchmen, our prime minister does it alone.

It actually seems more crowded all the time at the Ontario political updates. Despite the team effort, Doug Ford is losing traction with his voters as he rants on. His problem is that he little understands the experts and leans heavily on his own solutions. People are questioning the science behind some of his answers. The largest puzzle he presented recently is closing virtually all small business in the most populous cities in the province while leaving the schools in operation. And it will not help to look to education minister Stephen Lecce for answers.

But even from his bully pulpit, Justin Trudeau knows better than to challenge how some conservative premiers are handling the pandemic problems. Health care is in the hands of the provinces and the feds would be crazy to intervene. All Trudeau can really do is support the provincial efforts and plead for public cooperation in these serious times.

Even when we have some vaccines in the offing, the rapidly escalating case loads of pandemic sufferers is of growing concern. Hospitals in some provinces are reaching capacity and there are fewer and fewer healthy health care workers to fill the gaps.

But what Trudeau can do is throw more aid money into the maw of the coronavirus. In some provinces we are looking at disaster as more and more of our small businesses are ordered to shut their doors, never able to re-open. We will suffer the sores of this pandemic for years to come.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Doug Ford buys Ontario.

November 22, 2020 by Peter Lowry

Listening to premier Doug Ford blow on about his Buy Ontario pitch brings back memories. After all I go back to the days when the province used to promote doing home renovation jobs in winter “When men and materials are available.”

But Doug’s objective is to compete with president-elect Joe Biden’s ‘Buy America’ speech fillers. You have probably noted that American politicians usually include this idea when their speech seems to be lacking substance. It is just a filler, easily said, soon forgotten.

Doug should listen to a very experienced politician he knows by the name of Hazel McCallion, the former mayor of Mississauga. Hazel spent most of her life building her city and she still has words to the wise for political newbie’s such as Ford.

I remember years ago when I was working in Mississauga and one of the division heads wandered into my office. He wanted to know why the City of Mississauga was not buying his product. He wanted me to talk to the mayor and city council about this. Since some of his division’s products were made in the area, he thought they should have more consideration.

I explained that I did not have time for such a presentation myself but it would probably be better if he made the presentation himself. I fed his ego a bit, told him how to arrange to make the presentation and sent him on his way. I already knew exactly what Hazel would do to him.

She had a stock answer for companies with their local-source product presentations. She would give them a lecture about how Mississauga attracted industry such as his because the city provided excellent services at the lowest tax rate of any city in Ontario. And one of the ways that they could offer the lowest tax rate was that they always bought at the lowest price.

My only addendum to that is that we need to challenge our local companies to innovate, to add value and to be good corporate citizens. It is hard not to want do business with those companies.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Colour coding Doug Ford.

November 5, 2020 by Peter Lowry

A month ago, Ontario premier Doug Ford turned thumbs down on colour coding the severity of the pandemic. Now he tells us the doctors have talked him into doing it. In among the much more interesting American election news the other evening there was an item about the new color coding.

If you are not from Ontario, you might never have seen Dougie in action talking about the pandemic. It really is a treat. It has none of the chutzpah of Justin Trudeau’s cuckoo clock single at Rideau Cottage, but it suits his style. Ford brings three or four cabinet ministers or senior civil servants along to give the session some gravitas. He lets them talk occasionally but it is, without question, the Dougie Ford show and tell.

He has been hard-put to convince the news media to stick to the pandemic when it is about the only chance they get to ask him about other provincial subjects.

It does not appear that the premier gets any briefings on these other subjects but he bravely takes them on. It is fun when some of these questions are prepared to embarrass him. A good example was the recent covid-19 bill that had been introduced in the legislature that had a little gift hidden in it for the premier’s friend Charles McVety. The Whitby-based Canada Christian College that McVety runs was being given university status so that it could grant degrees.

The questions from the news media became interesting after it became known that the bible school had not been approved for granting degrees by any senior educational body.

This leaves the premier with the question if he should stay out of trouble and just send lesser ministers and senior health experts to do these briefings.

But it looks like he loves the limelight too much. There he was, hogging the spotlight, and digging a hole for himself. After shrugging off colour coding the various levels of covid-19 seriousness, here he was really confusing people with his new codes. He missed the mark on that one.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]