Category: Provincial Politics

This Lone Ranger wears a skirt.

by Peter Lowry

You have to admit the lady has guts. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has the nerve and verve that denies her gender. She is tough and even when she is wrong she is unwavering. She does Alberta proud but rides the range alone.

The daughter of a former New Democratic Party leader, Ms. Notley defies the odds and takes her fight for her province from coast to coast. In British Columbia she is facing the determination of that province’s NDP government to block expansion of the Kinder-Morgan TransMountain pipeline.

What the American pipeline company is considering is actually the conversion of the present pipeline and adding a second pipe so that both lines can take almost three times the diluted bitumen to the west coast port of Burnaby. The only problem is whether investors think that there is future for the project. No one is anticipating any substantive increase in the price of oil in the near future and few are betting on ersatz oil that is only gained at excessive cost in terms of pollution.

While Toronto financial people will listen to her, Toronto is the home of the NDP members who produced the LEAP Manifesto. They are not so polite. They think bitumen has to be left in the ground. For her to take on an NDP audience in Toronto would not be a friendly chat.

And to add to the party problems, the Greater Toronto Area is the home area of the new national NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh. While he is trying desperately to stay clear of Notley’s quest, it is an awkward dance. He cannot get people to believe that there is no need for him to take a stand.

Singh is well aware of the criticism Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already taken among Liberals for being in favour of the Kinder-Morgan proposal. While Trudeau can try to hide behind a supposedly emancipated National Energy Board, he deserves the anger of those who believed him as a poster boy for the environment.

When neither her own national leader nor the prime minister wants to be seen with Rachel Notley, she looks like a lonely lone ranger.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Brown plays bad with the big kids.

by Peter Lowry

The first time I met Barrie, Ontario politician Patrick Brown, I wondered what this miserable person was doing in politics? He has no personality. He has little grasp of election issues. What I soon learned was that he is a gamer. And his game is politics. He plays the game of politics as a video gamer would use a PlayStation 2. It is his strength and it is his weakness. The true test of his skills will be on June 7, 2018—the coming provincial general election.

In watching Brown through five election situations over the years, I can report that he tends to push the envelope on what is legal. He obeys the rules—when he has to. I do not think some of his financial reports to the Returning Officer would bear up well under the scrutiny of a forensic accountant. He is a more effective campaign manager than candidate.

Most of Brown’s opponents admit that he is a good retail politician: he knows how to work the riding. His only problem is that he is not good with people. He is a poor public speaker. He does not have a good grasp of many issues. He has little humour and no empathy.

Since taking a seat in the Legislature of Ontario, he has been a weak Leader of the Opposition. He is no hero to his caucus. Neither the centrists nor the social Conservatives in the caucus trust him. He is telling everyone that he is a pragmatic centrist but nobody knows where he would be if in power.

His most serious problem has been a careless comment to the media that he thought was going to get him coverage. He failed to think through what he was saying. It was a play on words that was the same as saying the Premier was “on trial” in the Sudbury trial of two Liberal apparatchiks. That trial was dismissed by the judge and Brown has failed to apologize for the insult to the premier. He is being sued.

The point is that Patrick Brown is out of his league. I am sure that his family was in despair of him ever passing the Bar Admission for Ontario. He looks like a hick and he is definitely small town. The reason he works so hard at this game of politics is because he is always behind. He has neither the smarts nor the skills.

He broke the rules to become leader of his political party and the party people should have called him on it. It is easy enough to prove. For him to find his way to the Premier’s office would be a disgrace.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Denzil decides to do his duty.

by Peter Lowry

Toronto Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong seems to have heard the clarion call of distant trumpets. He tells people that he is challenging for the Progressive Conservative candidacy in York East electoral district. Knowing the voters in that part of Toronto as I do, this is not really exciting news.

While Denzil might believe he can leap small buildings at a bound, he has never proved to be a super guy in the political scheme of things. He is a social conservative and an avowed penny-pincher to extremes but his experience with the city will take him nowhere at Queen’s Park. They are different venues and require a different understanding of human needs.

It is this difference that is why Denzil’s blanket approval of the conservative platform is meaningless.   Fixing potholes is not a learning platform for the provincial concerns for health care and education needs. These are the two largest attention consuming and spending needs in the Ontario legislature. To bring an anti-spending attitude alone to that picnic is a disservice to the voters. Understanding the issues comes first.

The biggest trap in the conservative platform is the decision by the people preparing it to support a carbon tax over the present cap and trade approach. I, for one, agree with that decision but not how they are using it. They think ‘revenue neutral’ means that they give the carbon tax money back to the taxpayers through efforts such as tax cuts. If you are just going to churn the carbon tax money into other revenue needs, why bother? It would be less trouble if you left the carbon tax in the taxpayers’ pockets in the first place.

Tax cuts are only designed to impress the greedy. (The greedy are voters too, you know.) Tax cuts do not belong at the head of the agenda. And if the people who sign those guarantees of performance were honest, they would never sign them.

Denzil is counting on the current distaste for Kathleen Wynne as premier to influence East York voters and to dump a good M.P.P. Michael Coteau who has been serving as minister of children and youth services. Coteau has won the last two elections in the electoral district by more than 50 per cent of the vote. He is a good M.P.P. and could be a keeper.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Tories try sleight-of-hand with transit.

by Peter Lowry

When we first saw the Ontario Conservative’s proposal for Toronto Transit, we thought it was one of the silliest we had heard for a while. It just made no sense why they thought the provincial government would make less a mess of the job of running the subways and light-rail systems than the city. It turns out that what they are really proposing is changing the ownership on a lease-back type deal.

It seems when Toronto Mayor John Tory saw the idea, he also asked if they were that crazy. He had no idea how they could keep Toronto’s transit running in an integrated manner. It turned out that the Brown Conservatives only want to have the assets on their books instead of on the city’s books. By having tangible assets behind the debt, it becomes a way to hide other debt.

It is all sleight of hand. Now you see it, now you do not see it. Debt enables accountants to do their magic. As long as it is a lien against a substantive asset, it effectively disappears. You have balanced your books.

I was surprised as a business executive when I learned that the goodwill of the company was whatever you needed to make the balance sheet balance. Provincial governments certainly do not seem to build up much goodwill. They do need assets to offset debt. That is why it always seems a desperation measure when the politicians want to sell off assets.

Only a banker would have told the Kathleen Wynne government to sell off Ontario’s Hydro One electrical distribution network. They could have kept the golden goose and sold off the Liquor Control Board. The booze network is worth far more than the sum of its parts and the liquor taxes keep on giving.

But why would Wynne care about that? She could make herself look foolish announcing new booze outlets at her friends at Loblaws.

But it is Patrick Brown we are dissing today. Obviously, his accountant friends had come up with this great idea to take the transit assets away from the city. They have no thought of running the system but they have far more use for the transit assets than the city people.

But, as I said when this first came up, kids just love playing with trains.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Quebec colonizing continues.

by Peter Lowry

Some of you might be wondering about that silly motion by the Quebec National Assembly last week. It was the one suggesting that Montreal merchants stop saying “Bonjour Hi” to customers coming into their places of business. The motion was proposed by those language snobs of the Parti Québécois and passed unanimously by all parties. The politicians are worried that merchants who are polite to their English-speaking customers might be easy for the English to colonize.

The conclusion we take to this foolishness is that Montreal merchants are a lot smarter than the politicians in Quebec.

You will please note that the motion of the Assembly is just a polite suggestion and has no form of enforcement included. They still cannot stop people from being polite. The politicians did not want to be given the finger by the Montreal merchants they were complaining about.

What the merchants know and the politicians fail to understand is that the merchants are there to do business. They are not allowed under the province’s somewhat oppressive language laws to say “welcome” on the outside of their place of business but inside is their territory. When someone comes into your store or restaurant, there is a strong possibility that they might want to buy something. The merchants are not all that interested in promoting one language over another. They will be happy to help you do business in either of Canada’s official languages.

I remember a time in Montreal when you got into some abusive situations if you could not speak French. Luckily, merchants realized that confrontations over language are bad for business. They certainly do not promote tourism. As one of those people who cannot carry a musical note in a bucket, I seem to have just as an inadequate an ear for languages. And growing up among the melange of languages of Toronto, there was the chance to study French but not to practice what had been learned.

Traveling around the world over the years, I have learned that you can never be proficient in enough languages but my rudimentary knowledge of French has sometimes been helpful. What really seems to matter in most countries is that it pays to be observant of customs. Politeness never gets you in trouble.

The Montreal business that wants to be polite to me by saying “Bonjour Hi” is going to be the one that gets my business 90 per cent of the time.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Does Ontario come with an owner’s manual?

by Peter Lowry

Maybe Patrick Brown forgot to ask. It has been clear that Premier Kathleen Wynne has been playing the job by ear for the past four years. It is just that the former do-nothing back bencher from the Harper government wants Wynne’s job. The Globe and Mail tells us that Brown is a pragmatist on steroids and the Toronto Star’s Rick Salutin thinks he is merely returning to the zeitgeist of the Bill Davis era in Ontario.

As very few of us understand Rick Salutin, we have to go along with the Globe and Mail on this one. The only problem is that the Globe points out that some of the Conservative promises are more liberal than anything the Ontario Liberals are offering. Maybe Brown’s model is the Trudeau government in Ottawa.

All we know here in Patrick Brown’s electoral district is that the putz will say anything to get elected.

The only thing I regret is that the Conservatives must have read my criticisms of Kathleen Wynne’s Cap and Trade system. They are absolutely right to get behind the federal carbon tax. While it must be causing apoplexy in some Toronto board rooms, the carbon tax is the most open way to force people to help save this planet.

But nobody ever suggested that the carbon tax should fund personal income tax cuts. A proper carbon tax is designed to be revenue neutral and only a Libertarian would see it as a chance for tax cuts.

If any among us has had time to study all 147 promises in that Conservative work of fiction, they must be wondering where the cuts are hiding. You can hardly move that much revenue to popular promises without cutting the hell out of some critical programs. You have to figure that doctors’ incomes will be the only safe zone in the health care budget. (With the help of Brown’s campaign manager, Walied Soliman, greed won control of the Ontario Medical Association this past year.)

While the men in suits that seemed to dominate the Conservative gathering were applauding the new Patrick Brown, there was a feeling of déjà vu to the events. It felt like a piece meal plucking of a goody from here and a goody from there. Yes, Brown had a new haircut but it was the same schmuck we have known for years, reading the teleprompter.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

A Deal with the Devil for our heritage.

by Peter Lowry

The Toronto Star owners have made a deal with PostMedia to divide Ontario between them. Talk about a deal with the devil! Did they think that the Competition Bureau in Ottawa would fail to notice? Is this what heritage minister Mélanie Joly meant when she said the government was not interested in aiding newspapers because they were an industry model that is no longer viable?

PostMedia has not been viable since it was cobbled together by CEO Paul Godfrey. The newspaper company is a nightmare of fire sale accumulations of small community media. Godfrey has been well funded by American investors who wanted to gain a foothold in the Canadian media market. The last we heard, they were adding the American executive responsible for the electronic version of the National Enquirer to the PostMedia board.

You should try to imagine Paul Godfrey in a toga standing on a soap box on the spit by the east channel to the Toronto harbour holding up a flashlight. He could say: Give me your tired, unprofitable papers, your befuddled editors yearning to promote the Conservatives, the wretched refuse of unwanted reporters. Send all those rags to me. (With apologies to Emma Lazarus, author of The New Colossus.)

Of course, Paul Godfrey knew what he was doing as he assembled this list of losers. He made millions while his American investors paid the piper. As time went on, he just kept adding more losing papers.

TorStar, owners of the Toronto Star, paid heed to his wishes and assembled all their losers and cut them loose in a swap for some of the PostMedia stable. Of the local papers they got in return, TorStar will only keep three of them in business. I checked the lists and I find our town’s ancient Barrie Examiner is ‘Gone baby gone.’ TorStar has a competitive paper here that serves as the weekly grocery flyer wrap.

The two chains have effectively divided the province between them except for the largest markets. And what Minister Joly should worry about is the number of single newspaper markets in Ontario now served by the strongly Conservative leaning PostMedia newspapers.

What the heritage minister needs to realize is that those small dailies and weeklies serving us across the hinterland are the lasting record of the communities and their citizens. TorStar has just flushed down the drain a huge chunk of Ontario’s heritage. They are a critical part of what makes our communities, our towns and cities work. They cannot be replaced by electronic media. Those local papers were never just a business.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Promises and Political Promises.

by Peter Lowry

The magazine style “policy platform” handed out to the Ontario Conservative elite at their get-together last weekend is a style of political literature that was developed many years ago. The glossy magazine is a strong sales style that the voter might keep a bit longer. Adding a full-page guarantee was an idea that popped up occasionally when the writers ran out of policies. The only drawback is if you win the election, the people who keep the magazine the longest are your supporters and they will notice how few promises you keep.

The problem with promises are that governments are elected to govern and the minutia of day to day governance, their party ideology and reality get in the way of keeping promises such as a chicken in every pot.

But you are the sucker who believed them.

The other problem with all the promises made is that they are mainly half-baked, ill-considered ideas that are presented in very positive terms. These are not necessarily panaceas.

Some are very bad ideas. An example of a very bad idea is the one the Conservatives are making about taking over the planning and building of subways in Toronto. What they are suggesting is taking the process from one set of incompetent politicians and giving it to another group of incompetent politicians. The only difference is that the people affected will have less say.

Frankly, if a third of the election promises of any party are ever addressed, the voters should be surprised. One of Canada’s best loved Prime Ministers in the last quarter century was Jean Chrétien. His 1993 Red Book of promises was a work of fiction that was supposedly based on the Liberal Party’s Aylmer Policy Conference. Did he rid us of the hated Goods and Services Tax? Did he cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement? Of course not!

What is the most serious flaw in all these promises is that you need to understand the people making the promises. You need to decide whether these people really have your best interests at heart? If Patrick Brown has been a social conservative all his life, would you wonder at why he now says he is not? If he never had an idea in his life that helped people in Ontario, why does he now promote all these helpful ideas? Do you think we would elect him if he told the truth about himself?

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Patrick’s pathetic policy pantomime.

by Peter Lowry

It was a come from behind event. Ontario Conservative Party Leader Brown hosted a party event over the weekend. Some of the media had noticed that he had no policies. He therefore had an event to announce some policies to start building the scenery for next June’s provincial election. He had already set the centerpiece by refusing to vote for an increased minimum wage and improvements in Ontario’s workplace standards. He was coming from behind until this weekend.

Since the event was in the British Christmas pantomime style, it was based on fairy tales, slapstick and rather broad humour. It was an event to please the children.

My favourite policy promise was that the Conservatives would take over subways from Toronto. Children love playing with trains. Instead of Toronto having an integrated transit system, the Tories would likely disintegrate it.

But, you will love these promises, the Tories say they are going to cut taxes, spend more, take another 12 per cent off Hydro prices, balance the books and pay down the provincial debt. And if you do not believe that he can do it, he is giving you a written guarantee. I bet that really convinces you of Patrick Brown’s sincerity!

Maybe that is why if you buy into Brown’s promises and elect him, he will spend $1.9 billion more on Ontario mental health needs.

It seems Brown has searched Ontario history so that he can find a Conservative that Ontario voters actually liked and he could try to copy. He had to go all the way back to the days of Bill Davis. While many liked Bill when he was Premier—because he has always been a stand-up guy—it would be taking Ontario back about a third of a century while we have to live with the realities of today.

But there were other new realities as well. On the weekend, the party was introduced to the new Patrick Brown. Yes, there has been another remake. He was sporting a new haircut. The first effort did not take and he had gone back to looking like a nerd.

Brown still does not seem to be a hot item with the ladies but he wants to prove he is warm hearted. To do this, he notes he has sleepovers for his sister’s three boys at his Toronto pad. He also tells us that he has been faithful to the promise he made his mother when he was nine-years old. He still does not drink alcohol. There was no mention of the change in marijuana rules coming in July next year.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Rachel wants you on her side.

by Peter Lowry

Do you feel threatened by Alberta Premier Rachel Notley? It seems the lady can scare anyone who gets in her way. Right now, she is in a rage against people who think pipelines for bitumen are bad for the environment. You either ride the bitumen bus with Rachel or she might throw you under it.

You almost feel sorry for Conservative fixer and party leader Jason Kenney who thinks his new united conservatives are going to take over Dodge. Kenney and Notley remind us of that old Bob Hope/Dorothy Lamour movie Buttons and Bows. Remember that old song: “Don’t bury me in this Prairie. Take me where the cement grows.”

Notley is hardly insensitive to the environmental concerns but wants them put on the back burner until her province’s tar sands exploiters can get some money for their stuff that can be turned into ersatz oil.

But if those people trying to turn a buck out of the tar sands are expecting crude oil to go back to selling at $100 a barrel, they might have a long wait.

And even if the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline eventually gets finished down to the Texas Gulf ports, there will be no profit for Alberta in whatever bitumen that gets shipped to countries that do not care about the extreme pollution levels.

Notley has been selling anyone who will listen on the federally approved Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain twinned pipelines for bitumen. Her pitch is that partisan blinders are getting in the way. She believes that environmental protection cannot come before jobs for people.

And yet she tries to get Conservatives in Ottawa and back home in Alberta to understand that climate change is real. At the same time, she is encouraging Justin Trudeau to get his troops to stand up for Alberta. So far, the only people applauding that suggestion are the Conservatives.

Notley’s new federal leader is proving to be as big a problem as the British Columbia NDP. She tells federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh that his interference in the pipeline question is irrelevant and that he needs to stick to future concerns of the party.

One day, Notley is going to notice that she is the only one making all these foolish claims. It is about time for her to find better pursuits for Alberta capitalists than trying to cash in on coal and bitumen that are better off left in the ground.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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