Category: Provincial Politics

Our 400 MPP.

by Peter Lowry

There is no point in complaining that our Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte member of the legislature is never in the electoral district.  He obviously drives through it every time he goes to or from the legislature in Toronto and his home. When you live where MPP Doug Downey lives you still have a way to go past Barrie before you are home in Severn.

Whether it is fair to the people of his electoral district is another matter.

Downey was a parachute candidate. A former Orillia councillor and the go-to guy up in Severn for the Ontario conservatives, he was appointed by Doug Ford to run in Barrie to keep Patrick Brown out of making a comeback from here. And now that Orillia has its own Costco, he does not need to come to Barrie very often.

But after six months in office, nobody here seems to have heard from our MPP. You would suspect that especially a parachute candidate would want to be noted at special events around town. And while I have not been at all the major events in Barrie in that time, I have been at those where you would expect an MPP to make an appearance.

Mr. Downey is a disappointment.

But then his entire conservative caucus at Queen’s Park have been letting us down. They have a responsibility to temper the ignorance that Doug Ford brings to his job. You would think as a lawyer himself, Mr. Downey would realize the limitations of the advice of New York trained Caroline Mulroney. He and other lawyers in the caucus have to be prepared to caution her on some of her errors. She is obviously not listening to her civil service advisors. Caucus members need to help.

Nor is likely that anyone can temper the right-wing rage of a Lisa MacLeod but with her heading up the new controls on Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), the caucus must feel like it is on an out-of-control bus careening down the highway. You really do not want the types of problems that woman is going to create. The proof will be in the levers she pulls. There will obviously be more on this subject.

But it is safe to guess that Mr. Downey is just a one-time MPP for Barrie. Why bother getting to know him?

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Ford fast-tracks the slippery slope.

by Peter Lowry

One of the problems with being a bit older is that you have seen it all before. Premier Doug Ford, for example, might be just a reprise of Mike Harris, conservative premier of Ontario from 1995 to 2002. One of the reasons for the longevity of the McGuinty-Wynne liberals after that was the memory of Ontario voters of the mistakes Harris made.

And it looks as though Doug Ford is digging his own grave in the same way as Harris dug his. It is the old story of those who do not learn from the past making the same mistakes. Harris’ mantra was something called ‘the common-sense revolution.’ It was your basic slash and burn conservatism, ‘open for business’ and cutting of taxes.

It would appear that Mike Harris and his provincial ministers gave their changes more consideration than Ford’s people have given their legislation, so far.

Mike Harris gave people lots of time to blow smoke about consolidating Toronto into a supercity. While he had no idea how to fix Toronto’s political problems, Harris let the naysayers vent and then went ahead and put the city into one. It did not save the city any money either.

There were two incidents caused by Harris’ dogmatism that helped speed his downfall. These were at Walkerton and Ipperwash Provincial Park.

In Walkerton, the province—instead of cutting the regulations—cut out the people who oversaw the regulations. These experts, for example, gave technical assistance to people running municipal water treatment plants. It left a lot of people guessing at what to do and, in Walkerton in south-western Ontario, they were about five days to late in finding out that their water supply was contaminated with E. coli bacteria. In an area of 5000 population, more than 2000 people suffered through illness brought on by the contamination and five, six or seven were reported to have died, depending on your source of information.

In the Ipperwash park situation, the local aboriginal population had been displaced from their lands in the area during the Second World War and were still trying to get compensation from the federal government 50 years later. The military had stopped using the federal government area and nobody paid attention to the aboriginals. Since the Ipperwash Provincial Park was popular, the aboriginals occupied that part of the land. It got the wrong attention and a provincial police sharpshooter ended up killing an un-armed protestor.

Since nobody in Ontario expects the provincial police to be told what to do by the premier’s office, premier Harris, so-to-speak, missed a bullet on that one!

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

When the Kingfish rules.

by Peter Lowry

While many see him as a Trump-lite, Ontario’s premier Doug Ford is more of a politician in the tradition of Louisiana’s governor Huey P. Long (Born 1893 – Assassinated 1935). Long liked being called “The Kingfish.”

This is unlike American president Donald Trump’s evident nihilism which is mainly a rejection of any moral or religious principles. Huey Long’s populist struggle to political power was more of a contest between the corrupt establishment and the corrupt populist interloper. Long took on powerful interests on behalf of the people of his state while also fulfilling his own objectives, and filling his pockets.

Long was the subject of more than a few books and two movies have been made of “All the King’s Men” by author Robert Penn Warren. I have not seen the 2006 film but the way it was panned by the critics, I would not be likely to see it. It was the 1949 version of the film, starring Broderick Crawford, that won three Oscars.

Though it is quite doubtful that Doug Ford would win any rewards for his performance as premier of Ontario to-date. Ford is to busy preening for his fans and taking his bows for a political win where his opponents (Ontario’s liberals) defeated themselves.

But for him to show his vindictive streak against his former opponents shows no class at all. He is seriously ruling that an increase in members in the legislature is required to recognize the liberals as an official party. Maybe we should have hopes for more of his conservatives deserting the Ford party. His personal vendettas are embarrassing many progressive conservatives. He spent billions as soon as he was in office to end Ontario’s participation in a ‘Cap and Trade’ deal with California and Quebec and then set aside millions to try to stop a federal carbon tax.

And we are still computing the costs for his surprise attack on Toronto city hall councillors—reducing the number of wards—in the middle of the election campaign.

But it is his latest faux pas that is enraging anyone who understands the relationship between our Canadian governments and their police forces. He is reported to have changed the rules to accommodate a personal friend as commissioner of Ontario’s provincial police. His friend Ron Taverner did not have the experience as a deputy chief or a chief, so they changed the rules. Mr. Taverner is now commissioner.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Defectors define democracy.

by Peter Lowry

One of the critical strengths of our Canadian democracy is that we elect people in each electoral district to represent us in parliament. While we might choose them because of the party they represent, they have the right to determine at any time whether or not to be a part of that political party. It is a safeguard for us as voters. It is a right that we would lose at our peril.

And yet political commentator Robin V. Sears, writing in the Toronto Star, sees the ability of MPs and MPPs to refute their party allegiance and sit as an independent or to move to another party as hurting our democracy. He knows not of what he writes.

Would Sears have preferred that Sir Winston Churchill remained a liberal throughout his remarkable career in the UK parliament?

It would be a fun game to go down a list of people who have moved to and from Sear’s CCF and NDP parties.

He was complaining about Ontario conservative Amanda Simard leaving her party on principles. He tries to belittle people with principles. He says they betray their voters, when what they are doing is standing up for their voters. Does he really think the largely francophone voters in Simard’s electoral district were standing up cheering what the Ford government is doing? Being one of those rare conservatives with principles, Simard, after thorough discussion and consideration, decided to make a stand. If I was constituent, I would have been cheering.

Frankly, I do not find much in the current Ontario conservative caucus by way of honour, principles or decency. Since taking office, they have been erratic, mean spirited and confused. Doug Ford has proved himself ill-advised and inadequate to the task of governing this province.

We have the advantage in our parliamentary system that if enough of his caucus walked out in disgust, we could have a new election. And now that the voters have had time to think about their June decision, I am sure we could do much better than Mr. Ford.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

If you cannot confront, confuse.

by Peter Lowry

It is a desperation strategy. As one of the three programs fighting greenhouse gases in Canada, Ontario’s ‘Carbon Trust’ is certainly the zaniest. Where ‘Cap and Trade’ lets industries buy extra carbon emissions from each other and a ‘Carbon Tax’ lets the polluters pay (with a rebate to consumers), this newest strategy from the Ford government just announced by environment minister Rod Phillips will have everybody puzzled.

By all standards this could be considered the cheapest plan. Which is lucky as it is the taxpayers who are paying for it. The plan is to be funded with an initial four hundred million of taxpayers’ money to bribe industry not to pollute. Since we are paying back billions to get out of the previous ‘Cap and Trade’ plan, we are very lucky the new plan is so cheap. Mind you, it is hardly enough to make much of an impression on large industries such as the petrochemical industry, that causes so much pollution.

As the former CEO of Ontario Lottery and Gaming, Phillips seems to have set the entire plan up in the form of the huckster’s game of three card monte. That is the one where the sucker tries to find the higher value card after it has been mixed with two lesser value cards.

But the major problem with the plan is it raises more questions than Minister Phillips is prepared to answer. The thinking seems to be that each industry will negotiate its own standards. It is similar to the tar sands industry in Alberta setting their own standards for the Harper conservatives. Canadians waited for nine years for the standards that were never set.

This ridiculous approach will never satisfy the federal government’s demand for a plan and leaves the province open to having the feds impose a carbon tax on Ontario. It should please many taxpayers as the money charged to polluters will be returned to taxpayers with their income tax refunds.

In the meantime, the Ontario government and the Saskatchewan government are asking the supreme court to rule that the carbon tax by the federal government is unconstitutional. It is too bad that we do not have a court that could rule that the Ford government’s provincial plan is just silly.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Premier Notley comes to Ottawa.

by Peter Lowry

She rode out of the west to plead her case in Ottawa this past week. Strangely, it is the same case as her arch rival, Jason Kenney, would have made. He would have been more strident and threatening. Let us say that Alberta has many hopes for Ottawa—mainly money.

The practical lady that she is, Ms. Notley asked first for some money to buy tanker cars to send Alberta’s tar sands products by rail. What she really wants is pipelines. She knows they take longer. And she wants them all sooner than later.

But she also wants serious cutbacks in Bill C-69 that will soon be sent to the senate. C-69 is an environmental bill that causes Albertans to be worried. It seems to hold the producers of the raw materials responsible for the downstream green-house gas emissions of the ultimate products. It sounds like the tar sands producers would be responsible for the emissions caused by heating the water and pumping it down to bring the layers of bitumen to the surface. They would then be responsible for the thousands of hectares of Alberta land destroyed to create settling ponds for all that dirty, greasy water that can kill wildlife.

Whether shipped by train or pipeline or ocean tanker, the tar sands exploiters would also be responsible for any spills that mar our environment. And it also needs to be noted that when the tar sands bitumen is processed into synthetic crude oil, it will create three times the pollution of normal processing of crude oil. Much of this pollution is in the form of bitumen slag that is almost pure carbon. And only then does it join the crude oil processes that put the oil products to use.

But Premier Rachel Notley was spreading false news last week. Never once did she mention tar sands, or bitumen. She calls bitumen “Western Canada Select.” It is nothing more than a highly polluting bitumen, fit for nothing more than paving roads.

There is a growing demand in Alberta for the bitumen to be processed there and it would no longer be discounted to prices under $20 per barrel. If the people in Alberta allowed that, they would destroy the environment of their province for many generations to come.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Meet Ms. Mulroney and Ms. Simard.

by Peter Lowry

Coventry can be described as that place in the corner of the Ontario legislature to where politicians are sent to be forever forgotten. They continue to draw their pay from the taxpayers but there are no committee perks and no opportunity to speak on motions. It is a place for non-persons.

There are currently two occupants of this corner. One did something bad, maybe. We are not sure of what. The other chose the corner because of principles. She is MPP Amanda Simard from Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, a largely francophone constituency where Ontario and Quebec meet.

Ms. Simard found it impossible to have principles and remain a conservative. It tells you much about the other members of her former party in the legislature.

Of particular note in the legislature is the daughter of former prime minister Brian Mulroney. Caroline Mulroney is a politician with ambitions. She had barely selected a safe seat where she would run and bought a summer home in the electoral district on the shores of Lake Simcoe when an opportunity came along to be conservative leader. Ms. Mulroney is certainly her father’s daughter. She sprang quickly into the fray.

But when Ms. Mulroney could not handle fellow candidates such as Tanya Granic Allen, her hopes for early leadership bottomed out. Things did not get better when, as the New York trained Ontario attorney general, she tried to justify the use of the charter of rights’ not-withstanding clause to change Toronto from 47 to 25 wards.

But it was in her additional role as responsible for francophone affaires, that Caroline Mulroney did not support her parliamentary assistant in the portfolio, Amanda Simard. It seems Ms. Mulroney never even gave the younger MPP a heads-up on what was happening. She could, at least, have sent her regrets.

It should be obvious by now that Caroline Mulroney has none of the smarts nor judgement nor caring needed to be in politics. Daddy might be disappointed but daddy be damned.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

I, Dinosaur.

by Peter Lowry

While ruminating, the other day, over something brilliant to say about the pickle the politicians are in over the unkind machinations of General Motors, I was actually more concerned about my Buick. It was selfish, I guess. It was also serious. It will probably be my last General Motors gas guzzler. It might have made me out a dinosaur but I really loved that car.

But like my first auto, that I bought for $90 off a used car lot on Toronto’s Danforth, I have had a love affair all my life with Detroit road warriors. That first car was a Chevrolet and had been built as a War Two army staff car. Its only problem was that someone had installed the radio upside down and the vacuum tubes kept falling out.

After that car, they became a blur of Chrysler, Ford and GM products. Over the years, they were newer and bigger with every step higher in the corporate chain. When GM stopped making Oldsmobile, I settled on Buicks. My family was grown before the SUVs started to dominate the market and I never liked the way those damn vehicles blocked your view of the road ahead. My Buick rides so well and purrs like a kitten as you fly down the highways of North America.

But the other day, someone stepped on that poor kitten’s tail. It made it to its dealer—but under protest. I found out that it was lacking two working cylinders for the trip.

The dealer might be a bit richer today but my concern is that Buicks will become pariahs on the roads of Ontario in the next few years. General Motors might have betrayed us but the company has also called it quits with a sizeable chunk of the North American market. Ontario will remember its rejection.

I might just drop by my local Ford dealer in the Spring and see what there is on offer. Or, if really daring, I might check on the latest Toyota or Hyundai.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Where bullies wear blue.

by Peter Lowry

Welcome to Queen’s Park. This is that island in the centre of Toronto that carries the weight of Ontario’s provincial government. The uniform of the day on this island of pecker heads is a blue suit. A white shirt or blouse is appropriate and a tie is obligatory for the boys, only when doing house duty. These are our rulers? These are Ontario’s elite? They are the product of voting against instead of voting for.

We had nobody to vote for and we scraped the bottom of the barrel. The voters voted against the status quo and soiled themselves. They voted for a party that said it was for the people and forgot to ask who these people were. They elected bullies in blue.

Our premier bully, Doug Ford, seems to get great delight out of going after some of his old enemies in Toronto city hall. It was the same time as he stopped former conservative leader, the disgraced Patrick Brown, from running to chair Peel Region. That was when Brown neatly flipped over to the Brampton mayoralty—winning Brampton by a Sikh’s whisker. Mind you, they are still trying to figure out what it cost winners, challengers and wannabes in Toronto to end up in just half the number of wards.

Toronto is still quaking, waiting for the other shoe to drop on their Toronto subways. Dougie has his heart set on playing with real trains. He has promised that he will take over the Toronto subways and create a regional system that will have just one stop for each line.

But Dougie’s major problem as Ontario’s “Kingfish’ is that he keeps telling people that Ontario is open for business and it shuts down behind him. Will Oshawa be the same without General Motors? Will a provincial government have any leverage to attract business under the new U.S., Mexico, Canada Agreement that replaces NAFTA?

Do you remember the time years ago when the commercials sang out that you should “See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet.” Now we can put it to music to “See Canada in your Camry.” Or how about “Forging a new relationship with your Ford 150”?

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Doppelgangers don’t do it.

by Peter Lowry

There is a tendency among political leaders to have someone very much like themselves to serve as their chief of staff. It gives them confidence that the person will react as they do and carry out solutions much the same as their principal. It is a lazy person’s solution. And how smart is it, to pay two salaries for the same opinion?

The notion of this person being something of a doppelganger is based on a person and their pet, over time, coming to look like each other.

In fact, in Ontario, premier Doug Ford and his chief of staff, Dean French, are two arrogant white men in suits. They are too much alike. It is just that Doug Ford lets French do the dirty jobs. French phoning the head of Ontario Power Generation to tell him to fire former conservative leader Patrick Brown’s former chief of staff might have been the ultimate in irony.

The claim that French might have directed the police to make raids on illegal pot shops was far more serious. The idea of any politico directly directing the police in carrying out their policing duties is anathema to how Canadians see their police doing their duty. It carries the risk of being interpreted as something that happens in a police state.

There seems to be no such problems for prime minister Justin Trudeau. In this age of feminism, it would be fascinating to learn if his chief of staff, Katie Telford, makes as much as his principle secretary, Gerald Butts. It is obvious that both make over $200,000 and that is quite a bit more than the much-touted middle-class job.

But the doppelganger danger still pertains. The charmed circle with which Justin Trudeau surrounds himself is isolating him from argument and reality. We now have elite selections of senators, elite selections of judges, elite selections for boards and commissions. It would never hurt to have a modicum of political common sense included in making some of these appointments.

But both Ontario’s Doug Ford and Ottawa’s Justin Trudeau have too much ego for that. Both need to have some better exposure to contrary thinking. There does not seem to be much danger of that.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me