Provincial Politics – Page 50

In the arrogance of ignorance.

April 14, 2019 by Peter Lowry

You saw the big beaming smiles on their faces. If not in the newspapers or television news clips, you can imagine the smugness that Ontario’s conservative government felt bringing in their first budget accounting for Ontario’s billions in revenues. Despite their promises of efficiencies and despite the braggadocio, they failed to even keep pace with inflation. And they failed those who need the most from their government.

In the armour of their dark suits and bright ties, the conservatives laid their claim to the purse strings of the province. The treasurer was strident in his presentation and the premier laughing. He did not have much to laugh about as more and more the bad news was laid on those who could least afford it.

In the age-old tradition of politics everywhere, the treasurer blamed the former government for the slip-shod accounting that left the mess they inherited. They will let the deficit increase until the promised reform by the next term in office. Yes, we have heard it all before.

But the deepest cuts are in the loutish treatment of those less capable of defending themselves. Social services are slashed by a billion dollars. Legal aid can do with 30 per cent less money. Colleges and universities are set up for funding cuts. If you are poor, you can get by with less is this government’s claim.

But do not think of this government as just mean spirted and cruel. It also has a somewhat weird sense of humour. In the tradition of Hogarth’s Gin Lane painting of the mid 1700s, drink is the answer. Drink more, drink often as hours of sale for booze increase and there are more places coming to meet your need for the demon rum and beer.

And the most incongruous actions are the new Tory-blue licence plates and the adhesive signs for the gas pumps damning the federal liberals for the carbon tax that is part of the plan to fight pollution.

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Tories take a try at Toronto transit.

April 13, 2019 by Peter Lowry

You really need to be a Torontonian to recognize the absurdity of the Ontario government’s latest plan for Toronto transit. It seems to be a right of passage for Toronto politicians that they all have to give transit another kick in passing. Premier Doug Ford should be passing out cigars for this baby.

The new scheme has the Ford signature subway to Scarborough. It will probably get the title of the Rob Ford Memorial Ditch if it ever gets dug. Built is yet another problem.

The parsimonious progressive conservatives of Ontario do not have the money. And they really have no intention of finding it.

As frightening as the plan might be, it does provide the odd chuckle. Why do you think the government wants a subway terminus at Ontario Place? It sure is not for the last half of August each year to bring people to the Ex.

And you hardly need to look at that proposed transit map for long to wonder what idiots did this design. Did they even look at bus use, traffic patterns, population demographics or densities?

Mind you, they must have some better vision of what the city should have in high speed transit than the ridiculous maze that cut King Street West off from logical traffic. The city needed to have some adults take control.

This Ford government experiment in transit planning is somewhat whimsical. And if not that, the timelines are mythical and the cost estimates hysterical. And this is so much that Toronto needed—one more damn plan that people will argue over for years instead of getting anything done.

I expect it is an unfair comparison but I have always compared Toronto’s transit solutions with those of Chicago, Illinois. Both cities have the problem of being built upside a lake. Chicago’s Els that are based on the city’s train network, are noisy and smelly and ugly. Chicago city is equally badly run—if not worse.

But Chicago’s Els are people movers and they have done the job over the past century. Toronto just needs to grow up and tell Ford’s phonies to get their hands out of the city’s cookie jar.

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In Alberta, vote, wash hands, wash hands again.

April 11, 2019 by Peter Lowry

With less than a week to another Alberta provincial election I cannot forecast the vote. It is one of those times you can only vote against. There seem to be few positive options. The entire campaign is a disaster and a disappointment.

It is a given that I despise Jason Kenney. It makes it annoying that I have always had more readers in Kenney’s home town of Calgary than in Edmonton. Part of the reason is that I have more friends and relations there than in Edmonton. The only problem is almost everyone in Calgary thinks they are part of Sheriff Kenney’s posse that is going to restore Alberta’s fictional oil supremacy.

What I find hard to believe is that a normally smart and capable Rachel Notley has also bought into this oil B.S. and thinks she can solve Alberta’s economic problems with that ersatz heavy oil that is nothing but bitumen-based sludge.

The other day, premier Notley pledged that the Trudeau liberals would have the Trans Mountain pipeline back on the build by the end of May. Her back-up plan is to spend billions on rail tankers to take the bitumen to China. You would think that Albertans would be tired of hearing about how good it is going to be by now.

Mind you, that sleaze Kenney is a master of the untruth. Why does he remind me so much of Hollywood star Bob Hope singing I’m all yours in buttons and bows to co-star Jane Russell in the politically incorrect movie Paleface? Kenney does not even like women. He is the only politician I know who loses a few kilos of baby fat before an election.

But it all goes down to the wire next week. It hardly matters who the voters choose. There is no future in the tar sands but a few nickels and dimes for the foreign investors.

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Ontario liberals need a leader.

April 5, 2019 by Peter Lowry

It is good to see that there are a number of worthy contenders already at the starting line for the upcoming leadership contest for the Ontario liberals. More important than the names of those individuals, at this point in time, are the rules for the race.

And the simpler the rules, the better. Over the years, we have seen too many of all parties’ leadership races twisted to unfair advantage by leadership contenders. Surprisingly, it is the more complex the rules, the easier it is to bend them. The simpler the rules, the harder it is for the unscrupulous to twist them to advantage.

First of all, it should always be one member-one vote. Delegated conventions have been corrupted for too many years. And all electoral districts are not equal, nor should they be counted as such. There is no way a riding with 500 members should be counted the same as one with just 100 members. You do not want to honour mediocrity. Nor should anyone pay their basic membership with anything other than their personal credit card. The occasional person with no credit card needs witnesses.

Nothing other than a single mark or the single click of a mouse should be the process for voting. Please do not try to speed the voting process with preferential voting. You are seeking the best not mediocrity.

To come to a majority decision is the democratic choice of the party and each ballot should be called without dropped candidates trying to influence the subsequent voting. They can only dignify the subsequent ballot with their silence.

And the party has to realize that fund-raising by candidates cannot be a yardstick for quality of leadership. Less is more in leadership. Ideas stand tall. Communications are in the content, not the gloss. Can this candidate walk in your shoes?

We have an opportunity in this leadership contest to be proud of our choice of leader. Let him or her really reflect the liberalism people need in to-day’s Ontario.

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In a time of fools in Quebec.

April 1, 2019 by Peter Lowry

There is no more appropriate time to recognize the foolishness of the bigotry that emerges periodically in Quebec than April Fools Day. They bring it on themselves. Quebec leaders and politicians seem endlessly adept at bringing derision on themselves and their province for bigotry and tribalism.

The provincial paranoia seems to have settled on immigration as its greatest threat today. It is hard to understand what end the politicians seek to achieve. The latest stunt in the national assembly in Quebec City is for premier François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec government to introduce another bill to confirm the religious neutrality of the state. To do this, the government is proposing that nobody in a position of authority is allowed to wear anything with religious connotations. This seems to include everything from head scarves, to crucifixes, to skull caps and turbans.

To get away with this thinly disguised bigotry, the national assembly is being asked to over-ride both the Canadian Bill of Rights and Freedoms and the similar Quebec bill of rights. It seems that the guarantees of religious freedom under these rights bills are not as guaranteed as we assumed.

Immigration minister Simon Jolin-Barrett told the assembly that this bill is a logical follow-up to Quebec’s Quiet Revolution of the 1960s when Quebec threw off many of the controls the Roman Catholic Church held over education and health care. Actually, it reads more like the failed Quebec values bill of the PQ’s Pauline Marois in 2012.

At least the law-makers had the grace to also remove the large crucifix that dominated the décor of their assembly hall for many years.

What is obvious is that most Quebec voters do not know the difference between a head scarf, a hijab, a niqab or a burka. Nor do they realize that these styles of clothing are mainly cultural in origin and have little to do with religion.

But ignorance is no excuse for a bill that promotes bigotry. Premier Legault and his CAQ colleagues should be ashamed of themselves.

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Even a stopped clock is right twice a day…

March 31, 2019 by Peter Lowry

As inept and foolish as the Ford government in Ontario might be, you have to admit it when occasionally the chuckleheads do something right. It is like when the impossibly ideological Mike Harris government in the late 1990s amalgamated the city of Toronto. The province did it for the wrong reasons and, maybe, even out of spite. It was still the best long-term solution for the city.

And while some might wonder at Doug Ford and his friends picking a fight with the Beer Store, it makes sense for a populist government to fight with an organization that Ontario beer drinkers hate. Standing up to the foreign owners of the Beer Store is a rite of passage. It shows that Dougie and his buddies are the big dogs now.

And what reasonably intelligent business person do you know who would want to sue a government giving them increased access to a market worth more than a billion dollars per year? The deal made with the Beer Store five years ago by banker Ed Clark is only of historical interest. It was an inappropriate deal to begin with and neither the brewers nor the government want the gouging of the public by the Beer Store to become public knowledge.

We are told the three companies, Labatt, Molson and Sleeman, agreed to spend $100 million a year in the first four years to upgrade their Beer Store properties. If these companies are serious about staying in business in Ontario, they should be spending that much and more routinely to maintain and improve their 470 outlets, as well as adding new properties as the population grows.

And you can hardly ignore the less glamorous end of the business. The scope of the Beer Store’s recycling business can make many similar operations appear small and puny. And do not forget the deal with the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) to reclaim their liquor and wine bottles. This is not just social responsibility. It is a multi-million dollar business on its own.

But what do you want to bet that a company such as Costco could teach the Beer Store people a thing or two about marketing two-fours?

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Ontario’s going to Hell in a handbasket.

March 30, 2019 by Peter Lowry

There are various opinions about ways of getting to Hell but my American mother liked the phrase about a handbasket and I first heard it from her when I was quite young. It seems appropriate now that we have elected a Ford as premier, that the province is heading for hell and perdition faster than before.

Look at the difference between the much more parsimonious liberal regime than what was elected last June. The liberals used a form of water torture to distribute booze from a grocery store here and then another over there. Dougie is fixing that. The conservatives have already extended the hours of permitted sale and they are even talking about beer in convenience stores.

Just why Dougie has not been as adept in the task of marketing cannabis comes as something of a surprise.

And why is it, all of a sudden, that we have new casinos opening all over the province? Dougie also seems to be behind that. Any voters foolish enough to blow their vote on Ford and his conservatives last year had to be big time gamblers.

Mind you, the wife would like to grab that big schmuck by the throat and find out why there are no craps tables at these new casinos. I am not really embarrassed to tell you that my wife likes to shoot craps.

She might be one of the thriftiest gamblers you have ever seen at a craps table but she is a good shooter and I have seen her hold the dice for close to an hour, making her numbers and making thousands for the heavy hitters at the table. At Rama, where the regular players know her, they will always make room for her at the table.

We have dropped in at two of these new casinos now adding to their table action at Toronto’s Woodbine and at the trotting track in Innisfil and while they were offering some table games, there were no craps tables. The wife advised them that she might come back—when they have craps.

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Jason Kenney’s Quest.

March 23, 2019 by Peter Lowry

There is something about being the big dog in a small kennel. It brings the walls to you and it feels all warm and snuggly. It must be what Jason Kenney thought of when he saw that the years of posing as heir apparent to former prime minister Stephen Harper held hollow promise. Jason Kenny is a person of large ambition and his quest is not to be denied.

But what turns the crank for a pudgy, misogynistic bachelor politician? It’s the power trip. Since he fought against co-eds at his Catholic college in San Francisco being allowed access to birth control information, Kenney’s quest has been for power.

It was this quest that sent Kenney back home to Calgary after the conservatives lost to the Justin Trudeau liberals. He told his supporters he was there to unite the right-wing conservatives and Wildrose parties. And he did it with little concern for any Marquis of Queensbury rules.

Kenney is on the extreme right of the social conservative spectrum. His first hero was Stockwell Day of the Canadian Alliance. Yet he was politically astute enough to recognize that the conservatives were well behind the liberals who were already taking the support of Canada’s ethnic groups for granted. When Stephen Harper came out on top as leader of the combined Canadian conservatives, he saw the work Kenney was doing in the ethnic communities and bought into what he was doing. It was a winner.

This apparatchik choked the first time I saw one of Kenney’s carefully constructed ethnic walls of people behind candidate Stephen Harper. I called it pandering at the time, even if I had to admit that it worked. Harper’s conservatives did not always win majorities but they won three federal elections in a row.

But like anything that works in politics, it ends up being overdone. Even today, Kenney gives the small percentage of ethnic communities in Alberta a little extra attention. He knows that all votes matter.

But if I were a betting person, I would check out the odds being offered by the Alberta bookies and maybe risk a looney or two on Rachel Notley and her team.

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Ford Forestalls Hillier’s Hussars.

March 21, 2019 by Peter Lowry

It might not be up to the standards of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade but somebody should have warned Ontario premier Doug Ford before he got into a squabble with the caucus bad boy of the Ontario Tories. Oh well, Ford is due for a drubbing anyway.

Ford and his lackies have no idea of what kind of a fight they are in for when they get Randy Hellier pissed. Randy is to the extreme of the right wing of the Tory caucus at Queen’s Park. Hell, this is the guy who launched the Ontario Landowners. And any MPP from Queen’s Park who does not know the Landowners, had better not turn their back when those people start tearing down Ontario’s wind turbines. And they think Randy is irrational?

Ford’s problem with Hillier is that most of the people who know them both are betting on Randy. Compared to Ford, the Eastern Ontario MPP from Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston is a staunch conservative. The premier is just a conservative when it benefits him. He is a populist who colours way outside the party line.

And Randy does not like it that he and the rest of the back-bench sheep are supposed to stand and applaud every time Ford or one of his cabinet ministers makes a statement in the House. Why would you applaud someone who just proved they can read simple and probably less than truthful words?

Ford is also furious with Randy for telling people that his friends and advisers are lobbying illegally. This has caused the hopeless NDP caucus to ask for the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate.

It is also likely, but unproven, that Hillier was turfed from caucus for not showing the right attitude in caucus meetings. It seems that the time-honoured tradition of MPPs telling their leader what constituents’ really think of the government’s efforts is not welcomed by Mr. Ford.

But for all of Randy’s failings, nobody should have accused him of saying ‘Yada, yada, yada,’ to parents of Autistic children. He is something of a trouble maker but he is not unfeeling. With the way the NDP do go on about their concerns, he would be much more likely to say it to their members.

I always liked Pierre Trudeau’s solution to some of the trouble makers in caucus. He would put them in cabinet.

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Nothing New about a Stalking Horse.

March 19, 2019 by Peter Lowry

Oh, to be in Alberta when the politicos are running! Have you heard the latest about that sleaze Jason Kenney of the united conservatives? With premier Rachel Notley about to pull the plug on the provincial election, UCP leader Kenney has got his jeans in a twist. It seems people can actually document how he made sure of beating Brian Jean for the provincial party leadership.

Not, I hasten point out, that there is anything illegal about using a stalking horse campaign. It is just desperation in a tough fight.

But if another candidate pays for the stalking horse campaign, in whole or in part, there is reason to look at the financing to determine if there was a fraud perpetrated. Mind you, I also think it is a fraud to have one politico pay off another with a plum cabinet position.

A good example of that was the sleazy way former premier Kathleen Wynne won the Ontario liberal leadership in January 2013. By quitting the race to support Wynne, two weeks before the convention, stalking horse, Glen Murray, blocked a realignment of liberals being elected delegates. By forcing his supporters into the independent category, Murray blocked many of the truly independent liberals from getting elected. That sewed it up for Wynne.

A stalking horse can be a very effective strategy in campaigns but the more people who know about it, the less chance it has of working. No doubt Jason Kenney forgot that part when he used the tactic against former Wildrose leader Brian Jean. Kenny’s problem seems to have been that he had too many balls in the air at a time. His misogynistic attitude with women was causing him constant trouble throughout his leadership effort and made it difficult to control some of his supporters who were just following his lead.

The 2019 provincial election in Alberta is not necessarily a foregone conclusion. Premier Rachel Notley is not the same person as won Alberta against a split conservative vote in 2015.

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