Category: Provincial Politics

Looney Tunes Is Alberta.

by Peter Lowry

Is it ever thus?  Premier Danielle Smith is off on her tangent to save Alberta from the rapacious government in Ottawa. It must be that they cannot teach Canadian history or mathematics in that province. It is also very important in mathematics that you count the oranges as oranges and the apples as apples.

Can you imagine an insurance program that allows you to take back everything you put in—without deducting what has been taken out? Maybe Smith has the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) confused with a tontine, that is paid out to the last person alive.

The beauty of the CPP is that the pay-out is guaranteed by the federal government. It might not please some actuaries or politicians (for different reasons). It does meet a need among the Canadian public. And it is easily taxed back if you do not need it.

But the simplest question is what the heck does Danielle Smith want with a pension plan? Is she going to decide where the money goes? Does she know anything about investing long-term? Would she put the money into funding the tar sands exploiters? And then what happens when the tar sands run out? The simple facts are that the tar sands become more and more expensive as the low-hung fruit of that resource become more and more expensive to access? And in a world converting to renewable sources of energy, what is Alberta doing, trying to stave off the inevitable? Is she some kind of King Canute, trying to hold back the tides?

And don’t give us that guff about carbon capture. Carbon capture is not 100 per cent. That is the first given. The second problem is that carbon capture relies on underground caverns as a place to capture the carbon. That means longer and longer pipelines from where the carbon is produced to where it will be tucked out of sight.

It would be mean of me to suggest that Danielle Smith must be the dumbest politician this country has ever seen. I just don’t like the impression it leaves with the rest of the country. Just how dumb are the people who elected her? I have worked with some of the people at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and I must admit they earned my respect. I could understand the Alberta voters’ dissatisfaction with Jason Kenney as premier, but Danielle Smith can only be described as Looney Tunes.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Criticizing Bonnie Crombie.

by Peter Lowry

Having missed the liberal leadership debate at the old Ryerson campus last week, it seemed, according to the news articles, I did not miss much. The mayor of Mississauga is handling her four opponents as an older woman would handle adolescent boys. They have foolishly declared her the one to beat and they are struggling with the desire to attack. They are learning though that an attack is not worth it.

Ms. Crombie reminds me of her old mentor, the late Hazel McCallion. Hazel could cut people down with the kindest of words. Bonnie just reminds her present critics that they are fellow liberals, of the task ahead, the need to work together and never really wastes time on their criticisms.

I started out this leadership contest thinking that Nate Erskine-Smith was my kind of liberal and that Bonnie Crombie would make a good back-up plan. I have changed my mind. Despite the charge of many close friends in liberal politics that my greatest weakness is my loyalty, I have to admit that Erskine-Smith is not as well organized as he thinks. He still owes me a call back after we both missed a call.

We should all be concerned about the length of this contest. The liberals needed their new leader this September, early October at the latest. If I were still on the Ontario executive, I would have fought hard for a real one member-one vote election. The approach of the liberal party executive is lazy, unimaginative and they should be ashamed to going along with the federal liberal’s no-fee membership and the conservative belief that all ridings are equal. And I am worried about how this vote could be manipulated.

I read at some point in this leadership campaign that the liberal’s interim leader in the legislature, John Fraser, had advised Bonnie Crombie that there was no rush to get the new leader into the legislature (if not already there). It was that kind of bad idea that cost the last leader, Steven Del Duca, and the liberals any progress in the last provincial election. To be credible to the voters, the leader needs to be doing the job in the legislature. It would serve the public well in Ontario to have all five of these contestants working together at Queen’s Park. Each can be an asset.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Liberals Cannot Count.

by Peter Lowry

It looks as though the Ontario liberals have almost doubled their membership. And they are busy arguing about it. I would be more impressed and might even care if people had paid something for those memberships. The possibly 80,000 members in Ontario is a bit higher than the 74,000 members the party had in the 1960s, when the party had a membership fee. The recent boost in membership is credited to the Ontario liberal leadership contest with five contestants duking it out to be leader of the party.

The liberals have two federal MPs, two provincial MPPs and one big city mayor wrestling for the prize. And based on the problems the Ford conservatives have brought on themselves, the liberal leadership might be an ideal stepping stone to the job of premier of Ontario.

But that is not as simple as winning the majority of votes from liberals. The people running the liberal party have shown that they are just as bad at mathematics as the people running the conservative party. The conservatives give all of their electoral districts the same weight of 100 points. If the riding has less than 100 party members, it gets those votes as one person-one vote. In electoral districts with more than 100 members, the votes for the candidates are counted as a percentage of 100.   

If you think that is one member-one vote, you were not paying attention to your grade school arithmetic lessons.

After more than 60 years in politics, I can safely assure you that no two electoral districts are the same. And why in hell would you penalize the party members in electoral districts who take their responsibility seriously to increase their party memberships between elections?

It is very hard to justify the Northern Ontario electoral district deviations from the provincial average number of voters and then also have their vote count for five times the vote of liberals in a Toronto riding.

If people were worried about the ease of manipulating the vote previously, how can they believe this silly system is any better?

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Ford’s Smoke Screen.

by Peter Lowry

Somebody must have told premier Doug Ford that he could use MPP Paul Calandra as a smoke screen to cover up what he is letting happen in the Greenbelt. By making Calandra minister of municipal affairs and housing, he has the perfect cover for what is happening. He can thank former prime minister Stephen Harper for inventing the scheme. Along with many others, I have asked: What does Paul Calandra know about the Greenbelt?” The answer is ‘Not much.’

But that is the great part of the scheme. Do you remember when Calandra was a member of the federal parliament and parliamentary secretary to prime minister Harper?  He used to address the questions to the prime minister that the prime minister did not want to answer in the House of Commons. The point was that the prime minister did not give a damn what Calandra told the house, as long as he did not answer the question. The members in the house and the news media became used to Mr. Calandra talking about something else, that was irrelevant to the issue.

Doug Ford should be warned though that this scheme does not work as long as the premier might like it to last. The problem was that the news media took to ridiculing Paul Calandra and after about a year, he broke down. He had been asked to apologize to Thomas Mulcair, who at that time was leader of the opposition in the house. He started to weep as he tried to state his apology and over all, it was a sad scene.

This proclivity to cry seems to be a part of the story of Paul Calandra. There are some men who have trouble understanding a man becoming emotional but most are sympathetic. We only wonder if it can be brought to the fore when there is a need?

It seems Doug Ford is loading Mr. Calandra with lots of stressful work. Here he is minister of housing and has been challenged to get busy building the 1.5 million homes for Ontario residents that will be needed in this decade. He is also minister of municipal affairs and in that role, he is supposed to review the regional governments in Durham, Halton and York, as well as help sort out the problems in Peel County where Patrick Brown is demanding more from Mississauga in the breakup of Peel County. Doug Ford might want to ease up a bit before he pushes Paul over the edge.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Bad Night in Thunder Bay.

by Peter Lowry

The Ontario liberals are not that inept. It was like an out-of-town try-out of a major play. The first debate in the current liberal leadership contest was allowed to have gaffs and try-out jitters. You just have to hope that not many saw it.

But when you have trouble with the sound from the beginning, you know it is going to be a bad night. You really have to have some sympathy for your stars. From the get-go, Nate Erskine-Smith MP was flat and a bit surly and mayor Bonnie Crombie was her perky self—if you can imagine a sixty-three-year-old ingénue. It was an opportunity for MP Yasir Naqvi to show off his political expertise and for MPP Ted Hsu to be optimistic. They were trailed by the noviciate MPP Adil Shamji who made some good points—if only, he talked into the microphone.

The audience was given warning of the sound problems when one of the co-chairs microphones did not work at the beginning and nobody did anything about it.

You knew that Bonnie Crombie was best prepped for the debate when she brought up Northern Ontario issues such as the Ring of Fire and the federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Everyone tried to show that they were serious about the north but this was a bit strained in some cases.

Yasir Naqvi’s key phrase was that “We have to build trust.”

Adil Shamji made a good point when he (faintly) said that to build trust “We have to know what we are.”

As is typical in these events you quickly know who is leading the pack. That is the kid, the other kids pick on. Erskine-Smith led in the charge that Crombie was not building homes in Mississauga. Her simple answer was that there were currently 39 construction cranes working in the city. They are probably building condominium high rise buildings but they are also homes.

But, overall, it was a civilized event and there is no question that all five of the candidates could make a contribution at Queen’s Park. You can also tell that Doug Ford and the conservatives are particularly worried about Bonnie Crombie heading the liberals in the next provincial election.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Tell It Like It Is Paul.

by Peter Lowry

Ontario premier Doug Ford thinks he has chosen well. Telling the truth has never been a strong or notable habit of Ontario’s new housing minister. I told you the other day about his crying jag in the House of Commons, when he was a member of Steven Harper’s government. It was obvious why people did not re-elect him federally.;

It is worrisome that people might not think the same high standards apply in our provincial legislatures. Did Doug Ford consider the distraction Paul Calandra might be if he brought his fabrications to the Queen’s Park crowd? Maybe Doug Ford is just that determined to distract us from his designs for the Greenbelt.

But, do you think nobody would notice if fleets of bulldozers arrived at the Greenbelt and started to bulldoze the top soil from some of the richest farmland in Ontario? Did Doug’s call go to all his friends the developers?

And is Paul Calandra, the distraction he needs? Can this review of all Greenbelt lands really be needed at this time? Or is it just a red herring to distract the hoi pollio? Does somebody go out and check if the wetlands are still wet? Are the rich and arable lands still arable?  Does the new minister intend to go out and count the trees in the Greenbelt?

And just why is this new minister of municipal affairs and housing even involved in an evaluation of the Greenbelt? Isn’t Graydon Smith, minister of natural resources and forestry the appropriate minister? Or why not have Lisa Thompson, minister of agriculture, food and rural affairs involved? And then there is David Picinni, minister of conservation, environment and parks. Would he not be the more logical minister to evaluate the Greenbelt. After all, if the ministry of housing is involved, would they not be evaluating it for housing?

After all, when you have a need to have housing for people who want to live in a city, should you not be choosing land available for housing in the cities? Starter homes do not make sense out in the countryside. You not only need fully serviced land but the closer it is to mass transportation systems the more convenient and useful it is for starter homes. Our premier needs a thinking dog to assist him.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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The ‘Truthiness’ of All.

by Peter Lowry

The word ‘Truthiness” has come into heavy play. “Truthiness” applies to the relative truth of what we learn from the Internet and other questionable sources for news. ‘Truthiness’ is truth, as defined by people without facts, logic or concern for verification. There is, for example, the truthiness of the climate deniers and grocery store magnates. And there is former president Trump in the United States and the pipsqueaks in this country who like to ape him, such as Pierre Poilievre of Canada’s federal conservatives and people such as Doug Ford and his minister of anything needing cover-up Paul Calandra of the Ontario conservatives.

The tendency of those of us who still respect the news media for truths, is based on the many editorial hands that legitimate news stories must submit to, prior to being published. And then there is truth as defined by that strange man, Ontario’s premier Doug Ford. Mr. Ford would not know the truth if it bit him on the bum.

Speaking of Ford, did you hear the other day that he and that new premier in British Columbia had both taken to telling the governor of the Bank of Canada what to do. This advice was wasted, as they later found out. What they did not seem to know was that that the Bank’s board is required to ignore any and all political interference in their deliberations to protect Canadian and foreign trust in our currency.

And speaking of Mr. Ford’s truthiness, it is questionable at the best of times. Mr. Ford is that old-fashioned blustering type of salesman. He is out to make the sale, no matter what. If he cannot look after his friends with a few chunks of the Ontario Greenbelt now and then, how else would you spend your days cooped up in the Ontario premier’s office? He is very free with his promises but few are kept.

I mentioned Paul Calandra. This is a MPP who, when he was a federal MP, made it all the way to parliamentary secretary to the prime minister. It was in that position that he made his mark. He might not have been the first parliamentarian to cry in the House of Commons but he came closer than most. He was apologizing to the leader of the opposition for not answering his questions for the prime minister. He had made a habit of doing it in all truthiness. He also lost his federal seat because of it in the 2015 election.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Who’s Right?

by Peter Lowry

It is not just who’s holier than thou in Alberta. It is who is further in commitment to the right-wing loonies. I was inclined to give up on my high regard for Alberta when Jason Kenney put on his fat-boy jeans and ten-gallon hat, bought a truck, drove west and led Alberta to the promised land of the united conservative party.

Things went well until they replaced poor Jason with that bat-crazy Danielle Smith. Now they have me crying over Alberta instead of laughing. They must be promising early release from asylums to those people who think that Danielle Smith is not far enough to the right for them. And, to make matters worse, she has to break off her battles with Ottawa to defend herself.

Can you imagine, there are people in poor little land-locked Alberta who think Danielle should make good on her promise to take Alberta away from those tax-happy bastards in Ottawa? The other day, one of the loonie toons was quoted in the news media as saying that Toronto is “a festering cancerous wound on the otherwise beautiful nation of Canada.”

Hey asshole, that is my Toronto you are talking about there.

Since that person does not appear to be elected to anything in Alberta, I will put the comment down to general ignorance and the limitations of the Alberta education system. I am not sure if they have provided students with any new school texts since the time of ‘Bible Bill’ Aberhart.

I am waiting for Danielle to cost out her promise to fire the RCMP and create a provincial police system. Just wait until the good citizens of Alberta find out how much that will cost! And do they realize the limitations of a much smaller pension fund than the Canada Pension Plan?

Can you just imagine an Alberta pension fund, based on bitumen extraction of the tar sands at a time of the declining use of fossil fuels?

Alberta desperately needs some politicians who can see something of the future. The province cannot continue to put the blinders on.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Steve, We Hardly Knew Ye.

by Peter Lowry

Sometimes a boy from Brockville gets overlooked but Steve Clark had an impressive electoral record before Ontario premier Doug Ford made him minister of municipal affairs and housing. Steve had even served three terms as mayor of Brockville before putting in an appearance at the Ontario legislature. He also served as Leeds-Grenville MPP Bob Runciman’s executive assistant before continuing as MPP for what is now Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes. The point of this is that Steve Clark must have lots of friends in eastern Ontario but he might not know as many people in the Greater Toronto Area.

And that is why he might not be as au courant of the who’s who of developers in Toronto and York. This is where those major developers, their lawyers and lobbyists hang out, like drug store cowboys, is at Toronto city hall.

There used to be six city halls in Metropolitan Toronto but, in preparation for the 21st century, the city now makes do with just one. It sometimes looks like a builders’ convention at Toronto city hall.

This engorged city hall is where a novice councillor, Doug Ford, under the wing of his younger brother, Rob, mayor Rob, at the time, taught his older brother the why’s and where-fore’s of politics. And, given the confusion of the times, and his younger brother’s crack-cocaine habit, Doug Ford must have thought the developers where the sanest people he met. As a natural sales person, Doug Ford came to liking these developers.

After the death of his younger brother, Doug Ford took solace in an unsuccessful attempt at moving directly to the mayor’s office. No doubt, his campaign was resoundingly supported by his recently acquired developer friends. He lost to fellow conservative, John Tory.

Doug Ford’s next political opportunity came when a rather rattled politician named Patrick Brown, the leader of the Ontario conservatives, made the mistake of resigning when he was obviously not guilty of the questionable charges of some young ladies. When the dust settled on that ridiculous situation, we found that Doug Ford was leader of the Ontario conservatives and the fox was in the hen house.

But when you stop to think about it; those developers who were just assured billions in profits, are Doug Ford’s friends. Why the hell should poor Steve Clark have to resign from cabinet?

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Integrity be Damned.

by Peter Lowry

Integrity is a catch word for accountability. The report of Ontario’s integrity commissioner does much more than impeach the honesty of the minister of municipal affairs and housing. It brings into question the decency and honesty of every single conservative party member in the Ontario legislature. These are the people responsible for allowing Doug Ford to continue to occupy the premier’s office at Queen’s Park. A simple vote of confidence by the legislature can determine if Mr. Ford has the continued support of the majority of that body to stay in office.

And, we suspect, he does not have that confidence. It must be clear to all members of the legislature that it was Mr. Ford who selected those of his developer friends who would be rewarded with parcels of land out of the Greenbelt. It is Mr. Ford who keeps the inept minister Steve Clark in office as his shield against direct attack on him.

The premier keeps referencing the 1.5 million homes needed to be built in Ontario, but we have seen little progress. It is hardly just land that is needed to have homes for people. That land needs services, such as sewers and electricity and transit. It needs convenient schools and stores and recreational facilities. It needs the conveniences of modern living in a progressive country such as Canada.

There is no way that Mr. Ford can bluff his way out of this mess. It is his mess. And the conservative members of the legislature can hardly ignore their responsibility.

If they are they really “honourable” members, they will hold Mr. Ford to account. They pay themselves about $150,000 per year plus various stipends and fulsome expenses. We put our trust in all the members of the legislature to help us be protected from those who would abuse our trust. They have never had a better opportunity to show us that they can earn our trust.

The person who has got off the easiest in this mess is the former chief of staff for the minister of municipal affairs and housing, Ryan Amato. His resignation earned him a severance package which has not been disclosed. His boss, Steve Clark, the minister, has expressed his regret for not supervising the situation. The only problem is that we all know the developers benefiting from this farce are Mr. Ford’s friends.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]