Category: Provincial Politics

No doubt we all know a few new democratic party stalwarts. They are neither as numerous nor as annoying as they once were but they all need a hug these days. They are angry, bewildered, concerned, depressed, you name it. They are not their formerly misguided but cheerful selves. They have fallen on hard times.

One of my frequent flyers (readers), an Ontario NDP, through and through, recently sent me a rather pointed comment on one of my postings. He headlined his e-mail: “You Fucking Idiot.”

He obviously felt strongly on the subject.

What the Dipper was complaining about was my calling the agreement between unpaid consultant Ed Clark and Brewers’ Warehousing a specious matter. “Specious” in this instance was used to indicate the document was plausible but would be a useless piece of paper if signed just by Mr. Clark. It is like a ‘ghost’ document. “Ghost” in this context being something people talk about but nobody has ever seen.

The problem I have with this supposed agreement is that it also committed Brewers’ Warehousing to a budget of $100 million per year to expand, improve and maintain their sales premises. Looking at the Beer Store’s latest audited statement (2014), you are a bit confused about their saying they kept their end of the deal.

The first problem is that in an industry that grosses about $4 billion per year in Ontario, the Beer Store only shows us cost recovery. With 450 stores in Ontario, you would expect the beer retailer to be adding new stores and shipping locations and maintaining the older locations. It is hard to believe that the Beer Store could do that for less than $100 million per year.

Our friendly NDPer is giving us the union B.S. that by weakening the Beer Stores’ monopoly further, we would be jeopardizing 7000 well paying jobs. It would make sense to pull all the part-time jobs from that figure before saying they are well paid.

But if the Beer Store does the distribution to the convenience stores, they could create even more jobs. Who is lying to whom here?

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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry

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

The Toronto Star is doing a tease on the billings of Ontario doctors. Like a dancer, they keep revealing more. After years of secrecy, they have finally broken the seal on the billings of the Ontario Medical Association members. The exposé the other day was on those elite ophthalmologists who bill more than $3 million per year.

We realize, of course, that billings are not earnings. Ophthalmologists have very expensive equipment, staff salaries and office overhead before they make anything. And it is the province’s bill-for-service arrangement that is causing the huge jumps in earnings. The province is not keeping up with the advances in technology.

And for every opportunity that comes along there are the unscrupulous who will take advantage of it. Allow me to tell you of my experience with cataracts early this year.

Rather than have the wife drive me to and from Toronto and getting the procedures done more promptly, I opted to have the job done in Barrie. I still regret the experience.

In a city and market area of several hundred thousand souls we have just two ophthalmologists who seem to have a lock on eye surgery at Barrie’s Royal Victoria Hospital. When you are sent by one of the town’s optometrists to one of these specialists, you join a parade. It took a year to join what I thought of as my chain gang. I was part of a group of 14 Ontario Hospital Insurance Program payees who lined up one cold January day to have a new lens in our left eye.

And that was all that we seemed to be told. I guess they did not want to do a wrong eye. We constantly reaffirmed that we were all having the left eye fixed.

The eye surgeon, whom you only saw briefly, never endeared himself. He tended to shout at you to open your eye(s) and stop moving. You felt that you needed to ask permission before asking a question. He never did tell us what to expect or what he was doing.

Rather than more lessons on the technology, this guy needs lessons on humanitarianism and patient relations. His main interest seemed to be selling more add-ons and prescribing non-Ontario Drug Plan eye drops. (Some patients, who buy into these ‘better’ lens and other add-ons, spend as much as $4000 over and above what the doctor bills OHIP.)

When venting about this to a medical professional who knows Barrie, I called the ophthalmologist our million-dollar man. He corrected me and told me it was over two million.

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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry

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

When Alfred Hitchcock directed his 1953 film I Confess in Québec City, he had problems getting cooperation from the Archdiocese of Québec, until he had the ending of the movie rewritten. The church officials did not want it to end with the hanging of a priest. Hitchcock’s rewrite spoiled the movie. And the performance he got from method actor Montgomery Clift did not win him many kudos.

What was fascinating about the movie was Hitchcock’s trademark use of the historic narrow streets of Lower Town to build suspense. It was almost a dance as you saw people walking on those cobblestones. Also, what you saw was the end of an era. Many of the extras filmed by Hitchcock were wearing ecclesiastical garments.

It took until 1960 for the start of Québec’s Quiet Revolution. Maurice Duplessis and his Union National had played out a rearguard action in support of the Catholic hierarchy and the Jean Lesage liberals brought in the revolution. It spelled the end of the power of the Roman church in the province but not the bigotry it had built up over many years. The Anglos were still the bad guys, even though the church was the past. And the nastiness to Jews and ‘Others’ continued. If it were not for the youth of the province and their forcing more openness, the province would be a moribund backwater on the North American scene.

Over the years, I have come to think of Québec politically as four distinct regions. The fastest growing and most progressive is Montreal/ Laval. That is the future of Québec. The past is represented by the Québec City region, but let me tell you, it has wonderful restaurants and a great night-life. I do not know Chicoutimi, Jonquiére and Trois Riviére as well but I think of that region as the real Québec. The fourth area is the Outaouais (and I always load my car trunk with inexpensive French wines when visiting Gatineau). The Outaouais enjoys the reality of being part of Canada and the federal government jobs. The region has done very well by it.

But the most serious myopia in Québec is in the National Assembly in Québec City. The assembly, under François Legault’s right-wing CAQ, forced through their bigoted Bill 21, forbidding religious symbolism in dress for many people in positions of authority, just before they shut down for the summer. They are thumbing their noses at Quebecer Justin Trudeau and his liberals in Ottawa, defying them to overrule the crude gesture so close on an election.

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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry

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

Assumptions, B.S., chicanery, deceit, the evils of demon rum and beer’s contribution to flatulence are all mixed in to the current dialogue on who can sell booze in Ontario. And politics is somewhere down the list. It is definitely not an issue that drills down party lines.

The attempted modernizing of booze sales, by gradually adding large grocery stores by the Wynne government, was an embarrassment. It made the liberals look like fools and the opposition look like blue stockings. They took two steps forward and three steps back. It was a dance that took them out the back door of the legislature.

Now, with conservative Doug Ford in the driver’s seat, we have no idea where this bus is headed. We are all being made to look stupid. Are the people who manage how we sell booze supposed to be incompetents?

Ontario started out almost 100 years ago with solutions on selling booze that were designed to appease the then powerful Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. To nobody’s surprise, the arrangement streamed unconscionable profits to the bottlers and the government. Drinkers of alcoholic beverages can soon mark 100 years of being screwed by all Ontario governments of all postures and philosophies.

The only thing we have proved is that taxes are far more addictive for politicians than any booze they might consume. And what right has any government to guarantee a continued monopoly on beer distribution to foreign-owned breweries?

For many years, this writer has been complaining about the disgraceful condition of many of the Beer Stores in this province. This company has a lock on whatever it seems to think recycling means. When, someday, the public gets a proper accounting of the process to which we have to contribute, I am sure we will find some outrageous profits involved.

What I am sure of is that there will be no silly lawsuit by the brewers against the province for any billion dollars. As soon as the judge asks for proof of harm, the jig would be up. Neither the province nor the brewers want the real figures exposed.

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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry

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