Category: Provincial Politics

A legislature of eunuchs.

by Peter Lowry

Listening to voters and to people at Queen’s Park, there seems to be a general opinion that there should be a sign from Dante’s Inferno over the legislature entrance “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” All power and importance are vested in the premier and less and less is shared, even with cabinet members.

No less authority than Dave Levac, the retiring speaker of the Ontario legislature, has been bemoaning the loss of personal power for members of the legislative assembly. He seems to see the various members of the parties as nebbishes who only act on cue from their leaders. He sees the discipline of the party leaders as all-controlling.

Maybe lazy and uninterested voters are smarter than the rest of us. When, if they go to the polls, they vote for a follower of their preferred leader. It is now a rare voter who looks into the qualifications of their local candidates. They hardly think it matters.

And we have yet to see any concrete solutions to the problem. It is the political parties themselves who are largely to blame but there has been little understanding of the issues facing them.

And there is unlikely to be a “Mr. Smith goes to Queen’s Park.” Back benchers do what they are told. Cabinet members are the ones who can front most glibly for their leader. The news media pander to the party leaders and ignore the castratos of the back bench.

Question period in the legislature is but a three-act play put on by the three political parties. It is planned and cued, and woe awaits the careless member who shouts the wrong insult at the wrong time.

To be sent to Coventry by the party leader is hell. No committee memberships (with their extra pay), no extra travel benefits or fact-finding missions in Tahiti.

But suck it up buster, show your eagerness to serve the leader and the world is your oyster. Even opposition MPPs can latch on to some of the better trips and extra remuneration for committees.

And as Dave Levac points out, it would be so nice if MPPs could just do their job. If they could just think of the needs of their constituents. And if they could just ask questions for their constituents occasionally.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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

The malice that made the megacity.

by Peter Lowry

Toronto as a megacity turns 20 this year. Canada’s largest city has once again opened the nominations for its city council to be elected in October. It will be another lost opportunity. It will produce another council of dilettantes and wannabes to argue over meaningless issues. Former conservative premier Mike Harris can continue to enjoy his revenge on the city.

As part of a program to sharply reduce the number of municipalities—and to dump more provincial costs on them—the Harris government amalgamated Toronto’s five boroughs and the inner city in 1998. The most vocal outcry against the move was from the former city. It was Mike Harris’ specious claim that it would save millions in duplication of services.

Since most of the costly municipal services had already been amalgamated under the former Metropolitan structure, Harris’ promises of savings turned into increases in costs. His revenge for their fighting him on the amalgamation was to fail to offer the city any new tax revenues to help handle the increased costs.

The latter-day Queen’s Park liberals have taken back some of the people services, offered Toronto a few new tax avenues and promised additional grants. Yet there has been no move to giving the city a workable government structure. The system that the city has, does not work.

And to make matters worse, a schism has been worn into city hall council chamber that has separated the downtown councillors from the suburbs. The mayor can use an archaic appointment system to try to improve things but the frustrations are always with them.

This division was clearly evident in the tumultuous term of Rob Ford and his brother at city hall. There is no foolishness less understandable than the one-stop subway to Scarborough. It was forced through by the Ford’s, more to prove their point than to solve an infrastructure problem. Toronto, like many cities, is caught up in failing infrastructure in a rapidly growing city.

But to show you how much they care, the inner-city councillors devote their time to bicycle lanes and throttling down the accessibility of the city to automobiles. Toronto voters need a mayor and councillors who can come to them with a clear platform of city reform that they can promise and deliver. Until then Mike Harris’ revenge continues.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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

Privacy passing.

by Peter Lowry

Political wannabes never seem to understand the lost privacy of politics. There is less and less every year. Privacy is a passing possibility.

I can remember back in the early 1980s when taking part in a business conference in Calgary. Former finance minister John Turner was the guest speaker one day and he sort of swore everyone to secrecy before launching into a diatribe against Pierre Trudeau’s policies as prime minister. For someone who was expected to step into Trudeau’s role as liberal party leader in a couple years, it was a vitriolic and apolitical speech.

It was obvious that John had not noticed me at the back of the room. He looked a little concerned when I walked up to him afterwards. I opened with asking him what this confidentiality was about? I told him I had gone to a lot of trouble to make careful notes on what he said for a reporter at the Calgary Herald. He realized that he had just been maligning friends of mine.

But at that time, John got away with it. The days of cell phones with cameras were not on us yet.

What got me thinking about this was a supposedly private meeting Doug Ford, leader of the Ontario conservatives, had with some developers a while ago. It seems someone captured Doug’s comments with a cell phone about the greenbelt around Greater Toronto. He actually told the businessmen that after all, the greenbelt was just ‘farmer fields’ and he thought some 800,000 hectares should be developed. He thinks greenbelt is easy to replace.

As you also heard, the plan was short-lived. It was obvious that Doug Ford knew very little about the greenbelt. He obviously did not understand that the Toronto greenbelt includes the Oak Ridges Moraine that is an aquifer drainage region that provides fresh water for more than six million people in the Toronto region. Doug Ford wants to pave it over. What is amazing about this offer from Ford is that the usually more aware developers seemed to consider it a great idea.

Obviously, at least one of the developers thought it through and gave his cell phone video to the liberal environment minister Chris Ballard at Queen’s Park.  Ballard showed the video to the news media.

Smarter people on the Tory team must have prevailed and the plan was quickly cancelled. It makes you wonder though what other private promises Doug Ford is making to people for their financial support. There must be quite a few greedy people across Ontario who do not like restrictions put in place by government to the benefit of citizens both now and in the future.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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

A vote Granic Allen won’t get.

by Peter Lowry

Checking out Mississauga Centre electoral district for the coming provincial election, I see I have an old friend voting there. She is 97-year old former Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion. Hazel claims no political affiliation but conservative Tanya Granic Allen is just not likely Hazel’s cup of tea.

Hazel is the only politician I have ever met who was more interested in what she could do for me than what I could do for her. I never voted for her, though she wanted to change that. Hazel was mayor of Streetsville when we first met and soon afterwards, she was mayor of Mississauga for the next 36 years.

Hazel’s objective in those early years was to show me a home for my family in Mississauga that we could not resist. She was not even in the real estate business. She was just the best booster for the city, it has ever had. She also thought it was terrible that I had a long commute across a clogged Highway 401 coming to work in Mississauga.

Mississauga Centre Conservative candidate Tanya Granic Allen could not be more different from Hazel. This wannabe is a social conservative. She is an extremist. She is against abortion. Her views on sex education are something from the distant past. Her support for the LGBT community seems nonexistent. She is going to have to eat some of her comments on Islamists when she finds that 16 per cent of people in the electoral district are Muslims. She is not fit to run for a member of the legislature. She is not interested in constituents. She only wants the platform for her archaic views.

Some people might think that Doug Ford deserves Granic Allen. Neither of them has any experience or training that could possibly help them to do a responsible job at Queen’s Park.

What gives Granic Allen a chance in Mississauga Centre are the changes in demographics in that part of Mississauga over the years. Only about a third of the population today are described by Statistics Canada as ‘white.’ The next largest group is described as ‘South Asian’ and the third as ‘Chinese.’

Both the conservative and liberal candidates are from outside the riding and they are both female. Premier Wynne appointed Bobbie Daid, the liberal, who is from the Bolton area, and if hard work pays off, she might have a good chance at beating Granic Allen.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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

Dark days descending on Ontario.

by Peter Lowry

It is frightening. We have been studying the mood of voters across Ontario and we do not like what we are seeing and hearing. We are not even into the writ period of the coming election. We are hardly ready to prepare our Morning Line this far ahead but some of what we are seeing is disturbing.

It is the same attitude we had trouble with in Mr. Trump’s win in the United States. We could not see how that blustering bastard could pull it off.

No, Doug Ford is not much like Donald Trump. He is a pale imitation. He is a blowhard and incompetent. Most voters already know that

But people who say they are going to vote for him do not care.

That was the factor that we missed with Donald Trump. We thought that rational people would realize that Trump could do irreparable harm to the United States of America.

But people who want retribution do not care. They want to get even.

And there are two fresh factors throwing us a curve in Ontario. The first is the ‘Me Too’ movement. It is driving a serious wedge in the relations between men and women. It is launching a war between the sexes such as we have never seen before. It has gone past justice to just piling on. It is not a swing in attitude to which you have an opportunity to say “Now stop.”

Those of us who have partnered so equally and openly with each other and the LGTB communities over the years are seeing the divisions and the tensions the ‘Me Too’ movement is causing.

The other incident that is horrifying many of us is the van that was driven down Toronto’s Yonge Street on a sunny day in April. We are seeing it as a sick hatred of the other sex by a very disturbed individual. There is a sad feeling that this needs to be addressed. Society has to recognize the problem. There is no pill for it. Doug Ford is not the answer. He is an irrational get even!

You hardly have to love our lesbian premier. She is too cold for the grandmother role.

But she is a politician. She can pull a coalition behind her. She can be trusted. She knows how to handle the job. You do not have to love her.

And for all her weaknesses, she knew what to do after the horror on Yonge Street. She promoted healing. Doug Ford was nowhere to be seen.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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

Arguing ad nauseam with auditors.

by Peter Lowry

Ontario auditor general Bonnie Lysyk looks like an auditor. She also thinks as an auditor. She is one of those people who always cover themselves by saying that they do things according to standard industry practices. The only problem she has is that there are not many jurisdictions comparable to the Province of Ontario. She has few standards to go by.

It means that the auditor is often winging it. And when she changes her mind on something, all hell can break loose.

Maybe that was what she had in mind when she charged the Ontario government the other day of making fast and loose with accounting for the province’s finances. It was just part of an ongoing argument but the timing was obviously designed to embarrass the government just before a provincial election. Lysyk was inferring that the government was hiding part of the planned deficit for the coming year.

The main item in this complaint is the pension fund for teachers and government employees in which the province shares liability. It was sixteen years ago that the Harris conservative government asked the then auditor to show that fund as an asset on the government books. And if you were looking after $11 billion, you might also think of it as an asset.

The problem is that two years ago, auditor general Lysyk changed her mind. You could imagine the screams of horror from the government at the big hole she was driving into their accounts. They have been arguing ever since.

And just to add some icing to the cake, Lysyk has also turned thumbs down on finance minister Charles Sousa’s borrowing money to reduce the electricity rates by 25 per cent. It seems everyone but Lysyk likes the lower electricity rates. The government does not want that debt on its books so it went on the books of the new Ontario Power Generation Trust that is owned by the government but is treated as a private company. That means the trust does not get the low government borrowing rates but pays commercial rates. Ms. Lysyk might have some grounds for this complaint but who wants to be first to pay higher rates for electricity?

As you can imagine, Bonnie Lysyk is the new hero of the opposition parties at Queen’s Park. All the opposition parties are going to do is claim that the liberals have been cooking the books again. And if you get into the details, nobody is going to understand anyway—certainly not Doug Ford.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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

“The Long Goodbye.”

by Peter Lowry

Not to give it the suspense of mystery writer Raymond Chandler’s character Philip Marlowe, but Patrick Brown has taken far too long to say goodbye. It has been two months since he called a hasty news conference at Queen’s Park. Within the day, he was gone from being party leader and poster boy for the Conservative “Guarantee” booklet and a renewed leadership race was on.

To put it mildly, Patrick let the dogs out! We soon understood what his fellow MPPs at Queen’s Park thought of him. His seat in the Ontario Legislature was moved to an out-of-the-way corner. He was ejected from caucus. He was ostracized. Interim leader Vic Fideli did not want him running in the coming provincial election.

The only thing the caucus could not do was prevent him from running in the leadership race to succeed himself. He was in and then he was out without any sensible explanation.

What made no sense at all was the statements that CTV News released from the two women complaining about Brown. One told him she did not want to go to bed with him and he drove her home. The other did not like his penis in her mouth, so he did up his fly and drove her home. Luckily, one of them admitted later that she really was old enough at the time.

But what did these young ladies expect when he invited them up to his bedroom: to play with his electric trains? Patrick needs to pick up his casual companions at a better class of bars. He should also just be friends with his staff and play with ladies in his own age group.

What amazes us though is that Patrick never stops holding himself up for ridicule. Last week, he published a four-page, four-color insert in the local newspaper. It reads like a job application. It is a terrible waste of money but I have a suspicion that the taxpayers footed the bill. It is nothing but self-aggrandisement that takes you through his career at city hall, in parliament in Ottawa and at Queen’s Park. And that was just page one. The next three pages are presented as snapshots of his days in office. All I got out of it was that he has had three jobs, did little and accomplished less. And he has absolutely no idea as to what to do next.

We hope you find a new job soon Patrick.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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

Fraser Institute starts with conclusions.

by Peter Lowry

As any experienced writer can tell you, the toughest challenge is to write a report to a predetermined conclusion. This is also why knowledgeable readers are often skeptical of Fraser Institute reports. It seems as though the institute only pays for reports that favour its right-wing stance.

There was therefore new hope the other day to read one of their reports that was purported to be an analysis of why both the Liberals and Tories in Ontario were wrong on their minimum wage stance. The authors were listed as Charles Lamman and Hugh MacIntyre of institute staff.

The report started by zeroing in on the Liberal government’s approach. There were the typical arguments about lost employment and fewer benefits and fewer hours but little recognition of alternatives such as skills upgrading opportunities offered by the government. The dollars and ‘sense’ of this issue goes far beyond the cold mathematics and cruel assumptions.

The reality today in Ontario is what this report seems to ignore. You have to start with what it costs for food, shelter, clothing and transportation. A minimum wage of less than a living wage is not only cruel but it is designed to keep people at that level. A business that has to rely on its employees working at below a living wage is not a business that we should welcome in our communities. We already make exceptions for the teenagers getting some work experience outside of school hours. That is not how we should pay adults with family responsibilities.

The researchers at least admit that Doug Ford’s PC minimum wage platform is wrong-headed and shows a dreadful lack of knowledge about the provincial tax structure and reality. Ford’s proposal that the minimum be left at $14 per hour and then increase with inflation is an attempt to keep Ontario’s minimum wage workers at below the poverty line.

The Fraser Institute writers further confuse the issue of minimum wage by mixing it with a discussion of a guaranteed minimum income program. While a guaranteed minimum is a desirable direction, Canadians need to understand the privacy they would have to forego, if they opted for that approach. People look to their work and their families for fulfillment in life. Money is not always the first priority.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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

Devolving Deception.

by Peter Lowry

When responsibilities are passed to a lower level (devolved), it helps to have a glossary of terms available so that the lesser levels will get their words right. It seems that Toronto Star writer David Olive has stuck carefully to this glossary in his story on the weekend touting the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Olive hits just the right note in his puff piece when he starts with concern that the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion over the Rocky Mountains will never be built. And to drive home his concern, he calls it an “oil” pipeline. Never once in 87 centimetres of copy does he refer to the bitumen the expanded pipeline is designed to carry to tidewater on the B.C. coast.

Olive is concerned that the lack of the expanded pipeline will do serious damage to Canada. He is worried that Kinder Morgan has suspended work on the Texas company’s $7 billion pipeline expansion.

He refers to the to the Alberta tar sands product as being landlocked. This is despite the coming availability of TransCanada Pipeline’s Keystone XL that President Trump has insisted be built with its access to the Texas gulf ports. There is also the already approved replacement of Enbridge Line 3 to Superior, Wisconsin (despite meeting some resistance in Minnesota) also offers possible access for bitumen to the Great Lakes. And let us not forget the 300,000 barrels per day that can already be shipped through the existing Kinder Morgan line to Burrard Inlet.

We are not really clear if the Kinder Morgan expansion to high-pressure, heated bitumen through the new dual system at almost 900,000 barrels per day is based on need or greed.

For all the weeping and wailing of Alberta and federal politicians, nobody wants to explain publicly why the Alberta companies do not want to convert their bitumen to synthetic crude oil in Alberta.

Olive seems to have the idea that the Athabasca tar sands product would not be discounted the way it is today if the company could just get it to third world customers who are not worried about its excessive polluting. You would expect that any country with the expertise to refine bitumen into synthetic crude oil would also have the knowledge that bitumen costs more to refine and creates serious amounts of highly polluting bitumen slag in the process.

He goes on to compare the tar sands output to Maya crude from Mexico. Maya crude might have many impurities but it is still crude oil, not bitumen.

Our advice to Mr. Olive is that, before he writes more on this complex subject, he read more than the tar sands producers’ handouts.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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

Horwath has been heard from.

by Peter Lowry

News from the front lines of the pre-election election campaign in Ontario: The New Democratic Party does exist. As irrelevant as the NDP might be in this pre-election period, it was nice to see what might be the entire membership of the party forming a human wall for their leader. And there was their cherubic leader, Andrea Horwath, fronting for foolishness.

This will be Andrea Horwath’s third campaign as NDP leader for Ontario. Despite the federal Mulcair mess, NDP leaders are supposed to have at least three tries. If they changed leaders every time they lose, they could eventually run out of members who have not had a try at being leader.

We are feeling a little malicious today and maybe we can get a media friend to ask Andrea a question. I think we would all like to know if she is supporting John Horgan of B.C. or Rachel Notley of Alberta? Her two, much more successful, NDP friends are arguing over a pipeline and eventually all Canadians are going to have to come to grips with the issue.

But before we forget, the news is that the Ontario NDP has a book of promises for the election. The party can promise anything anyway. It has only one chance in a hundred of having to implement any of them.

The funny thing about these promises is that the public will have no idea how to separate the NDP promises from the liberal promises. It is just too darn hard to tell them apart.

The only promise that annoyed me was the NDP are promising free university tuition for students who cannot pass a means test. The only position this liberal will agree with is free tuition for all. University students are too old to be reliant on parents to pay for their tuition. It leaves parents in an improper position of authority over their adult children.

But it is nice of Andrea Horwath to spend the time in the coming election backing up the liberal promises.

Both parties will spend the election period slagging that guy Ford. It will eventually be understood by most voters that he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.

No doubt even Andrea’s loyal Hamilton voters are going to vote liberal this time around to make sure that an irresponsible guy like Ford does not take over the premier’s office.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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