Provincial Politics – Page 84

Does Wynne cry for liberalism?

November 23, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Did you hear that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne got all teary at the Liberal Party gathering this past weekend? Not being there, are we to assume these were crocodile tears or tears of frustration? Or were they just a notation on her script saying ‘tears here’? You never know what her reaction is to being pilloried for the inadequate job she is doing.

But in the spirit of concern for her emotional stability, we will try to be more helpful.

First of all, if you like to have people think of you as a progressive, you have to act like one. This might be difficult for Ms. Wynne but to be a progressive, you have to be an agent for change in our society. And to be a liberal, you have to have concern for the rights of the individual. That means that you have to work at ensuring that the individual has the freedom and opportunity to enjoy the lifestyle that they choose.

We need to take a serious look at this agent for change agenda of yours. When will it start? We agree that the fixes on pensions was overdue and you did a good job of dumping the problem on the federal government. Good show! Now what is next? You have to be more than a one act pony.

How about giving some speed and credibility to your electrifying and speeding up the GO Trains? Or better yet get your friends in Ottawa and Quebec City together for a little brainstorming on high-speed electric trains to give us better and ‘Greener’ travel between our major cities. That just might be the profitable type of infrastructure spending needed to attract that foreign investment.

The point is that there are lots of dramatic and worthwhile opportunities in our society for a progressive government. Nobody other than some of the unions are interested in the self-serving New Democrats. You should start now establishing that the raving Patrick Brown has no better answers on what to do about hydro pricing.

And stop the stupid water torture. If you want grocery stores to sell booze, let them. Stop the damn guessing games about who sells what. You cannot keep trying to be half pregnant. It just looks silly.

And the most important thing for a true liberal today is to make sure that every child in the province has all the education and training readily available to them as their life unfolds. Let the conservatives among us be the repressive bastards if they want that appellation. And we need more universities across the province—not just in Toronto.

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Take no solace in bad governance.

November 21, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Did you hear that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is staying in her job? We were in Ottawa last week during the bye-election in Ottawa-Vanier. It was no surprise that the Liberal candidate won. These are happy days in Ottawa. The malaise at Queen’s Park appears distant and of little consequence.

Yet these are the drabbest of days in the Niagara region. Former Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak’s electoral district also stayed true to its gothic conservatism in a bye-election. “And a little child shall lead them.” (Yes, we know that the Bible verse referred to a child leading the animals of prey who laid down with their lunch. Give us some license here!)

But the bye-election stand-off solves nothing. The Liberal majority at Queen’s Park is safe—for now. Conservative Leader Patrick Brown added another straw to the load of his burden of leadership. Now he has another reminder of his narrow social conservatism in the party caucus. He can run (he is a marathoner) but he cannot hide from his own narrow-minded past.

It is the dichotomy of Ontario politics. Rural and small-town Ontario is Conservative. The urban majority are more progressive. You see it so clearly from the spiralling towers of the condominiums of city life. It is the advances of higher education, the forced mix and accommodations of city life, and the realization that the person from a land far away is not so different when you live side by each.

But bigotry blooms where the pseudo politicians pander to ignorance. In the same way as Trump marched across the farming states of America, we see a band of Ontario Landowners flailing at progress across central Ontario. We see a conniving and determined Conservative leader like Brown feeding on the failings of Ontario’s right-wing Liberals at Queen’s Park.

If Wynne tries to win Ontario in 2018, she will fail us. A true leader serves. A false leader commands. There is no leadership today from any Ontario political party. It will be a sorry election in 2018 with Brown, Horwath and Wynne. They are nebbish. They are not leaders.

There is no solace for Ontario.

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It’s the leadership, stupid!

November 18, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star is usually a quite astute observer of Queen’s Park and the political machinations there. What we did not know about him was that he considers himself something of an economist. If he is not an economist, why would he suggest that the Wynne government in Ontario was right or wrong in following the directions of banker Ed Clark?

Clark, of course, is a banker. If Wynne just needed a banker’s opinion, she had Finance Minister Charles Sousa, an unreformed banker, sitting right there at the cabinet table. Since an expert is someone from further away, the cabinet listened to Ed Clark instead of Charles Sousa.

But the economy is hardly the basis for all political decisions. When Bill Clinton’s campaign used the slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid,” it was a way of focussing the direction of that one campaign.

Trump just won the American White House with a mindless slogan of “Make America Great Again. It was a terrible slogan but it worked when Hillary Clinton could not make up her mind about a slogan. How can you vote for a politician who does not even have a slogan?

The conundrum that Martin Regg Cohn addressed recently was that things are actually going well in Ontario but the Wynne government might be guilty of bad politics. He says selling off pieces of Hydro One was good economics and bad politics. He thinks Ontario is in a political depression.

But there is absolutely no excuse for that political depression. When calling for Wynne’s resignation the other day, we gave only part of the answer. Wynne is a terrible leader. She is no liberal. She is not a leader. She weaselled her way through the Liberal convention that chose her by manipulation and backroom deals. She was by no means the popular choice of the party. And she has proved she is a disaster.

And what has Kathleen Wynne’s leadership done for us? Forget the polls. What bye-elections has she won since her foolish manipulations in Sudbury? How do Ontario voters feel about her government? Why does she dribble out reforms on booze sales instead of making a decisive move? What the hell has she ever done that showed clear and decisive leadership? Even the needed improvements in government pensions by Ontario were just a ploy to move the federal government to do it.

Wynne has obviously been listening to her advisor, former Premier David Peterson, for too much bad advice. David is a nice guy but he sometimes acts as though he has the political smarts of an Ontario raccoon. Like a raccoon, he is great on family but he too often ends up in the wrong garbage can.

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The devil is in the details, Ms. Wynne.

November 16, 2016 by Peter Lowry

The Ontario government’s water torture continues. There has been a reluctance to write about the so-called ‘reforms’ in political fundraising until we knew more of the details. We are still waiting. The Wynne Liberals like to dribble out their giving in to the inevitable over multiple news cycles. And the hypocrites in the opposition parties are having an ongoing field day.

It is a given that political fundraising in Ontario has been a disgrace for a long time. We should not forget that the rules have not changed appreciably since the 1970s. The same basic rules apply today as applied during the Conservative regime of Mike Harris and the New Democrat interregnum of Bob Rae. Mind you there have been times over the years that even this old apparatchik had to shake his head at the foolishness of the rules.

The problem with working on political campaigns over the years is that at the beginning of each municipal, provincial, federal or leadership campaign you have to sit down with the team’s lawyer and/or accountant to get a refresher on the rules. If you have not gone through that session you had better not touch a donation cheque and definitely do not pay a bill.

What is encouraging so far in this proposed change in Ontario is that the opposition keep daring the Liberals to go further.

And as it stands now, some of the rules have reached the silly stage. One of the proposed rules is that cabinet members and their staff as well as paid political staff of the party are forbidden to attend party fundraising events. A party’s candidates will also be barred from attending fundraisers.

The major changes that nobody seems to be arguing about are that individual donors will be limited to $1200 per year (down from almost $10,000) and that corporations and unions will no longer be able to donate funds.

To make up for the anticipated shortfall in funds because of these supposedly restrictive rules, the public purse will be tapped to make sure that our political parties have a base of financing. About $3 million a year will be divided between maybe 400 electoral district associations for them to kick-start local campaigns while the central parties will be lavished with an annual subsidy of $2.71 per vote received in the last election. These figures look like more than $5 million for the Liberals, $4 million for the Conservatives, $3 million for the New Democrats and just $639,000 for the Greens.

The good news in the package will be the setting of restrictions on third-party advertising by groups such as ‘Working Families.’ This was a group of teacher unions that spend a considerable amount of money attacking the Conservative Leader Tim Hudak in the last Ontario election. What limitations will be set on this third-party advertising is one of the details we have to wait for the law to be passed and the regulations put in print.

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The glass house of Ontario’s Conservatives.

November 15, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Somebody in the Ontario Conservative party is going to have to take Ottawa-Vanier PC candidate André Marin aside and read the riot act to him. The guy thinks he is lawman Wyatt Earp. He actually describes himself as an anti-corruption and ethics expert. And that is the last thing PC leader Patrick Brown wants in the PC Corral down at Queen’s Park.

Get this: Marin is sending out fundraising e-mails that are reported to say “This is one of the most unscrupulous and unethical governments in Ontario’s history.” Boy, that is sure biting the hand that fed him for the past ten years.

Who does Marin think he is, Donald Trump?

And where was Marin hiding in the years of the Mike Harris government? At least when Marin was ombudsman for the Ontario government of Dalton McGuinty, nobody shot one of our aboriginals just because the premier was annoyed at a protest.

But his real concern is that too many of the voters in Ottawa-Vanier are going to find out how useless he was when he was ombudsman for the Canadian army and how bad he turned out to be as Ontario ombudsman. As an experienced crown attorney, he cannot even name just one successful investigation and conviction from his office in the ten years Marin had to prove himself in Ontario.

It seems that the biggest boondoggle at Queen’s Park during the McGinty-Wynne years has been André Marin.

We will leave it to the auditors to discuss his office procedures and expenses.

When nobody at Queen’s Park (including Conservatives) stood in the Legislature to support him staying on as ombudsman, it told us everything we needed to know about him.

If the voters in Ottawa-Vanier are so tired of Kathleen Wynne and her government that they send someone like him to represent them, they will deserve nothing and they will certainly get nothing in return.

And if Marin thinks Canadian politics allow you to make corruption charges so casually, he has another think coming. People who live in glass houses do not get to throw the biggest rocks.

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The rise of the exurbanites.

November 14, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Trump reached for it in America and the exurbanites coalesced behind him. With these new rural voters who have fled the cities and in sync with the traditional American Gothic farmers, he dominated state after state. These people resent and fear our conglomerate cities, the liberal attitudes they promote and the crush of the ethnic hordes. Many of these exurbanites commute to the cities for work and they hate it. The buttons are there; you just have to press them.

It is a supposedly easy route to power. There are two good examples of politicians seeking out those voters here in Ontario. They are the ones working that grungy side of the street. They are MP Kellie Leitch from Simcoe-Grey who is trying to muscle in on the federal party leadership and Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown, currently representing Simcoe-North. They are here in adjoining ridings in central Ontario, pandering to the same type of narrow-minded, bitter and easy to anger voters.

And if you think Barrie voters are going to elect Patrick Brown in the 2018 provincial election, you are wrong. Barrie was deliberately gerrymandered under the Conservatives to cut the city in half and give each half a solid slice of exurbanite and rural voters. The edge in both north and south Barrie ridings goes to the Conservatives.

Brown’s current problems in Ontario are that unlike Donald Trump, he tries to keep a foot on each side of the street. He is a social conservative and he tries to find the middle ground. Eventually he is going to find that there is no middle ground and make a decision.

Meanwhile, in the safe ground of small town and rural Simcoe-Grey, MP Kellie Leitch is moving forward with her hate-filled Canadian-values campaign for her party’s leadership. Donald Trump is her hero.

Leitch has neither the money nor the ego of a Donald Trump and is hardly expected to sustain this aspect of her campaign under the intense pressure by her colleagues in Ottawa to tone it down. What her fellow MPs are concerned about is not as much as whether she wins the leadership but the very real concern of creating a schism in Canada’s Conservative Party. A large block of the urban Conservative vote across the country are progressive conservatives who pride themselves in not being knee-jerk rednecks. They will never buy into Dr. Leitch’s Canadian-values, anti-immigrant B.S. and you cannot win Ontario without winning any urban seats.

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People are not lab rats.

November 11, 2016 by Peter Lowry

There is no question but that we have a high regard for former Senator Hugh Segal. But for God’s sake Hugh, you have got to stop treating people as laboratory rats. They do not and we do not need another damn test of how little people can live on.

And why would you ever get involved in another test with that brain-dead bunch at the Ontario government. They do not need more excuses not to help people in a manner that they need to be helped. We know what people need. They need dignity. They need the same as others need to live. They need decent housing. They need a nourishing diet. They need something to do!

The last thing that these people need is to have some money thrown at them and be told to go away. Each of those people is a complex individual. They have different needs, different diets, different interests and they need different levels of support. And you want to test them on a fixed income? That would be as bad as the stupidity that is going on now!

It was very amusing Hugh to read of your experience as a child in Montreal when your family would debate which two creditors you would pay in a particular month. At least you could pay two! Along with a mother and five siblings trying to survive in Toronto in the late 1930s, we had little for anyone so we were frequently evicted. It made for a hectic and varied life.

But that hardly equips either of us as experts. If you really know what people need, then good on you. Our guess is that we need to ask each person and then see what can be done to help. It actually needs to be a negotiation because, a) most people really do not want something for nothing, and b) they also want to contribute something. Because sitting around with nothing more to do than watch television is demeaning and crushes self respect.

Back when serving as president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, we would often be asked to visit nursing homes where there were numbers of MS patients. These nursing homes were often infuriating because they seemed to be nothing but warehousing for people nobody knew how to help. It is why we kept services to patients high on the society’s priorities.

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It is Premier Wynne who should resign.

November 8, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Anyone with an understanding of the political situation at Queen’s Park must know that the chances of anyone being convicted over the possible bribery in the Sudbury bye-election is unlikely. It is obvious that the Ontario Provincial Police are wary of charging the real perpetrator. And the people charged are merely dupes. Is there a point to all this?

The opposition parties at the legislature are hardly helping. They keep demanding the head of Ontario Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault. Hang him for doing a poor job in cabinet if you wish but it is unlikely he would have been involved in the purported bribery.

The only person who should take responsibility for this breach of the elections act is Premier Kathleen Wynne. And the only person who had the authority to ask Patricia Sorbara to commit this breach was Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Sorbara was only deputy chief of staff to Wynne but she had been involved in politics for far too long to be told to do it by anyone else. And frankly, you would think that someone who has been around as long as Sorbara would know to pass the chore further down the food chain.

It is always too easy to find a dupe in politics to do the dirty work. They rarely realize that they got the chore because it is easy to disavow them.

But Kathleen Wynne can hardly disavow Sorbara. Not after making the long-time hanger-on at Queen’s Park head of her re-election campaign. That is a position of considerable trust.

There are a lot of different names for Sorbara’s campaign position but ‘stupid’ should not be one of them. You hear a lot about people being ‘thrown under the bus’ in election campaigns but you hardly do that to the director of your re-election campaign.

What is obvious to the provincial police and to everyone who has heard the tapes of the conversations recorded by former candidate Andrew Olivier that the premier was behind the calls. The calls between Sorbara and Andrew Olivier and Gerry Lougheed and Andrew Olivier made it clear that Lougheed and Sorbara were speaking on behalf of Premier Kathleen Wynne. They would have been idiots to have said what they did if they did not have the Premier’s assurances.

Probably the first thing that will happen in court is the charge that Sorbara bribed NDP MP Glenn Thibeault to switch to provincial politics and the Liberals will be thrown out. There does not seem to be anyone who bothered to record that.

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

When a tax is a better answer.

November 7, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Canadians have not really joined the dispute between carbon tax and ‘Cap and Trade’ yet. It is of increasing importance that they do. And while nobody really wants to choose taxes over industrial deals, there are good reasons for us to choose carbon taxes.

The primary reason why a carbon tax is the best answer is that the people paying these taxes will be able to follow what is going on. After all, what is easier to understand than a tax? Who collects it, who spends it and on what is public information.

‘Cap and Trade’ works like the con artists’ shell game: Now you see it; Now you don’t. This system is played out between the politicians and industry. It is the government and industry who negotiate the ‘Caps’ and then industry that makes the ‘Trades.’ One major stumbling block is industries that threaten to leave the country if their cap is too expensive for them. There are also industries that will not negotiate.

And how do you feel about politicians negotiating with the people who make campaign donations, offer politicians jobs after their public service and other favours?

What a carbon tax does is level the playing field. Both domestic and imported goods will pay the tax—and so will the consumer of both. Politicians can hardly be negotiating ‘Cap’ and ‘Trade’ deals with foreign manufacturers. Taxes that apply to all are not restricted under international trade agreements. And carbon taxes are easy for everyone to understand.

And what is particularly important to Canadians is that this country has an advantage in using carbon taxes. It is the fact that Canada has 80 per cent carbon-free electricity generation—one of the major carbon problems in other countries. Electricity in countries that use coal to generate electricity would not have our carbon tax advantage.

But the real advantage to a carbon tax is the impact it has on consumers. We will be able to see the difference between the highly polluting source of a product versus the ‘Green’ product. And do not feel badly that we, the consumers, are the ones paying the tax as we are collectively the worst polluters. The only hope to slowing down global warming is for all of us to change our habits. We have to burn less fossil fuels, use less polluting products, build energy efficient buildings and homes.

And with carbon taxes, we can see the progress that we are making in saving our planet.

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The drip torture by the Wynne government.

November 1, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Maybe they think they are too classy for simple water torture or boarding. The Ontario Liberals are inflicting an alcohol torture on the poor consumer. First, you have to find out which super grocery stores have just beer and cider or wine and beer or just a kiosk for plonk. There are now 67 out of about 1500 larger grocery stores selling both beer and some real wine.

But do not get these new stores confused with those older kiosks that sell Ontario wines and wines made from foreign concentrate. Those wines are for when you are desperate and do not have time to go to a real liquor store.

This booze roll out by the province has been undertaken with constant news media ballyhoo and the poorest results we have ever seen. After a career in public and government relations with a side interest in politics, this is the stupidest travesty we have ever seen a sitting government inflict on itself.

These foolish people are going to be forced to add more stores so that it can find some new communities in which to hold beer, wine and cider announcements. In an announcement that must have been in the provincial electoral district of York Centre, they even rolled out their recuperating(?) MPP Monte Kwinter (who is 85) in a wheel chair for him to be cheered by his happy constituents.

But the silliest part of this is that in the stores where the province is getting its share of the revenue from alcohol sales, the sales hours for these products are determined by the hours of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO).

Some convenience! If the idea behind this ridiculous roll out is to provide convenience for the consumer, why have the inconvenience of saying ‘no’ at certain hours. If you have ever noticed, grocery stores try to be open at hours convenient to the public. These are people who understand what their customers want. The LCBO is run by bureaucrats. They are not paid to care what the customer wants.

What also strikes us as odd is that in no time during this forever rollout of booze sales has there been a single grocery store selected in the City of Barrie. This city has a population of over 140,000 thirsty souls and we do have some very nice (and large) grocery stores. We do not feel personally slighted but you might wonder if it is because Barrie is where the cranky leader of the opposition, Conservative Patrick Brown, will be running in the next election?

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