Provincial Politics – Page 87

Brown tries outrage over Hydro.

July 23, 2016 by Peter Lowry

It depends where you sit in the Ontario Legislature. The government benches mainly consider Ontario Hydro a golden goose. The opposition benches always consider it the government’s Achilles heel. And it seems the powers that be at all the disparate parts of Hydro think they can charge customers whatever they need to meet the government’s cash flow demands.

And there is a new politician in town sitting in the opposition who thinks he can make hay on the Hydro rip-offs. Its that new man-about-town at Queen’s Park who stole the leadership of the Ontario Tories last year.

What the Ontario voters are seeing at this time are test advertisements. And the voters are the guinea pigs. The current ad is new and angry. It was as though the Tories borrowed the idea from Donald Trump’s campaign for the American presidency. You see an angry less controlled Patrick Brown attacking the Wynne Liberals. If that ad tracks best with the pollsters, it will mean no more Mr. Nice Guy.

They have tried Patrick Brown now in many guises. They have tried dressing him up, giving him a salon hair cut, teaching him to lower his voice and scripting him. They even sent him to the Pride Parade. Very few in Ontario know him anyway so if they are ever going to find out how he should be presented, now is the time.

It was like in a recent report in the Globe and Mail, the female reporter wrote about Brown as a suave young man about town. She even seemed to consider him a pretty good catch. Brown should either hire her or marry her. It might be his only chance at seeming human.

For those of us who have watched Brown over the years in Barrie and in Ottawa, he is the least desirable type of person to be in politics. His background is small-town, conservative Christian and do-nothing politics. In nine years in Ottawa as an MP, he is noted for just two votes where he voted against women’s rights. He never had anything to say for himself in politics and latched onto charities to keep his name prominent in the community.

The bad news for that Globe and Mail reporter is that women who meet him seem to step back shortly after wondering what they had seen in him. He is not an appealing person to men or women. He is a poor public speaker with no small talk to help him out. He is a marathon runner, a mouth breather and something of a nerd.

But his first love is politics. He works at that.

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HOT highway lanes are hilarious.

July 9, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Was that not a joke recently that Ontario is going to have a lottery to test paying for highway space on public highways? Was April Fools Day held over? That makes the Wynne cabinet the fools. High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes were just silly. HOT is stupid.

And they think Ontario drivers are going to put up with this nonsense?

This is not toll roads we are talking about here. They are thinking of charging people to drive in a single reserved lane on public highways. And with the provincial taxes we pay at the gas pumps we sure as hell own these publicly funded highways. The congestion on those roads across the province tells us very clearly that the stupid politicians are not doing their job with our gas taxes. We do not have the highways needed to handle the needs of today’s passenger vehicle, bus, service vehicle and truck traffic.

Reserving lanes on congested highways does not work. It reminds us the addle-brained drivers in Massachusetts who routinely drive on the shoulders of that state’s highways. They claim they have no choice.

The HOV lanes in Ontario have been a failure since day one. The guys with the life-size dolls are the funniest ploy to use the lanes. It hardly took us long to realize that those lanes were at the mercy of the slowest driver.

And HOV lanes are already almost impossible to police. What are we going to see? Cars flying flags that say they have won the lottery and paid the price? Try leaving that outside your vehicle in a public parking lot.

And to add insult to all of this foolishness, the amount of money the province could earn from a HOT lane is not enough to build a kilometre of new controlled access highway in Ontario.

There was an era in Ontario around the turn of the 19^th Century and into the early part of the 20^th Century when Ontario led North America in use of interurban electric trams. They delivered goods and passengers reliably and quickly and cheaply throughout much of Sothern Ontario. And they did it at the time without all the dithering and indecision of the planners. The planners know that electrifying the GO Train service throughout the province can more than double the capacity of the existing commuter lines. Why is it not happening now?

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Jason Kenney ambles westward.

July 8, 2016 by Peter Lowry

It is certainly not wedding bells that are breaking up the old Stephen Harper gang. Can you imagine Jason Kenney—Harper’s minister of everything—answering to the call of the West? It seems he is buckling on his six-guns and ambling west to have a shoot-out with Miss Rachel to decide who rules the Edmonton Legislature.

To do this, our last of the Bobbsey Twins is going to have to unite the provincial right and that is no easy task. The last people to try that were quite unceremoniously drummed out of Alberta politics last year.

And the best of luck to Mr. Kenney in convincing Wildrose Leader Brian Jean that he should join the Alberta provincial Conservatives. And frankly when you compare the provincial Conservatives to the Wildrose people, it only seems to be a question of which is more strident.

But getting the Conservatives and Wildrose to make nice with each other is another matter. It took the strong hand of Stephen Harper to get the Reform/Alliance crowd to work with the remnants of the Conservative Party of Canada. Both realized that they would be forever shut out in Ottawa if they did not get together. Kenney has to convince both sides in Alberta that New Democrat Rachel Notley will be in for a long run as premier if they do not get together.

If we were a betting person (which we are), we would suggest that Kenney does not have it in him. Kenney works best behind the scenes. He is no leader. He knows how to manipulate but even after all those years watching Harper, he does not know how to do it from the front of the room.

And that is a fault that has been so glaringly obvious for many years.

It must be a lesson that most effective political apparatchiks have to learn the hard way. When you lead from the front, you have to turn your back on your troops. Each of those troops has his or her own motivation and you never know when jealousy, envy or ambition will supplant loyalty. You never know their limits until you feel the knives in your back.

As minister of everything for Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney was able to use Harper’s strength to accomplish his objectives. Without him, Kenney is too soft a target. A fat and forty bachelor has to battle questions of his sexuality among strongly religious followers when he hardly needs the distractions.

It will be interesting to see how he does.

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The new and few principles of Mr. Brown.

July 3, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Ontario’s provincial Conservative Party leader should have a clearly lettered sign on his chest saying ‘Help send this boy to the premier’s office.’ That way people would have a clue who he is and know that he will do or say anything to get there. If he thought discarding his long pants and painting his behind blue would get him the premier’s job, he would try it.

After nine years of doing nothing for his voters in Ottawa but voting as he was told and denigrating women, Patrick Brown will find that at Queen’s Park there are two very determined women who are out to get him. And Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and New Democratic Leader Andrea Horwath are not to be toyed with.

On Canada Day there was a very telling picture in the Toronto Star of Patrick Brown and Ontario Progressive Conservative Party President Rick Dykstra with a group of men at a backyard barbeque. Just ask yourself this question: Who has a backyard barbeque without any women or children in the picture? There are two men who appear to be Sikhs in the picture (while not identified, one of them is Jagdish Grewal and he has his arm around Mr. Brown’s shoulders). It is certainly not the Sikh custom to not include family in a social event such as a barbeque.

The picture of the group of men might as well have been a campaign committee meeting from when Brown was organizing immigrant Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims from the Indian Sub-Continent to swamp the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party’s very low membership last year. He told the Star reporter that the event was to thank his campaign volunteers.

Mind you this was not the only time Mr. Brown was in the Grewal backyard in Brampton. Both he and Conservative Cabinet Member Jason Kenney were there last year to support Punjabi Post publisher Jagdish Grewal as the Conservative candidate for Brampton. Grewal was removed as the Conservative candidate just before the election when his Punjabi Post (printed in the Punjabi language) published its support for so-called ‘conversion therapies’ to turn gay people straight and other homophobic statements.

Mr. Brown claims he did not know that Jagdish Grewal would be at the event—in his own backyard—until he got there.

But to make it clear that he does not share these attitudes about gays or the LGBT community, Brown and the provincial Conservative caucus are taking part this year in Toronto’s Pride Parade. There is obviously no limit how far this politician will go to show that he wants everybody’s votes.

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PSST, there’s cider at a few grocers.

June 28, 2016 by Peter Lowry

The Province of Ontario slipped that in when we were not looking. They are allowing the few grocery stores selling some beer to also sell apple cider. And we are talking the hard stuff here; not your baby’s apple juice.

The announcement from Premier Kathleen Wynne’s office was all socially responsible, quiet and designed to cause no waves. Mind you what waves might be raised are a ho-hum for most Ontario voters. It just might be the hallmark of the Wynne government that anything they find worth doing is to be done very slowly. It is like a form of water torture, the drips are few and far between and they tend to catch you off guard.

And yet it seems the stupid things they do that they tend to ballyhoo. Take selling off of Hydro One to investors. Every penny that electricity prices rise for the next dozen years will be blamed on this silly so-called Liberal government. Yet they are very proud of that decision. They think it impresses people into thinking they are good managers.

But when they quickly dumped the planned Ontario supplement to the Canada Pension Plan, they gave up all pretense of doing something for Ontario retirees. The suggestion with the Ontario plan was to keep our seniors’ heads above water as inflation ate away their pensions. We have to pay for those higher Ontario electricity rates you know.

The only really good news in this is that locally produced cider will have a better chance to be noticed in grocery stores than in the Liquor Control Board emporiums of dullness and bad merchandising. While the very few grocery stores that have been licenced (at what cost and why?) by the government will increase a bit with time.

All we have seen in stores we have found selling beer to-date (and not in our city) are dull and unappealing grocery end-aisles displaying warm beer. Beer and cider are much more appealing purchases when retrieved from a cooler. Just thinking about the refreshing coolness of a modest glass of beer or cider when you get home from grocery shopping can make the entire experience more pleasant.

If Premier Wynne and her cabinet had an ounce of sense, they would have had every grocery store in Ontario promoting Ontario-made cider. It is from Ontario-grown fruit and made by Ontario craft producers Gee, does that mean Ontario jobs?

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Who is reforming policing?

June 17, 2016 by Peter Lowry

It seems everybody is in on the act these days. The Province of Ontario is reviewing the Police Services Act. The City of Toronto keeps appointing committees to solve its budget problems with policing. And the cops are just digging in their heels against change.

But the question that has to be asked is, “Who is in charge?” The citizens of Toronto used to respect and like their police. The courts are befuddled by the cases of police malfeasance finally brought to them. A judge docked a Toronto police superintendent 30 days of holiday pay for abusing the civil rights of hundreds of citizens six years before. A court found a police officer guilty of attempted murder when he shot a confused young man with a pen knife repeatedly after he had already killed him.

And why are police officers paid over a $100,000 a year to direct traffic around construction sites? Nobody understands that.

But if you are waiting for wisdom from Queen’s Park in how we are running our police services, you can forget it. Police services boards are political fiefdoms for the party in power to pay political debts. Neither the provincial nor municipal politicians want to lose those payoff opportunities. And the public be damned.

You wonder sometimes about the spillover influence from America. Incidents of police brutality south of the border are played well by Canadian media. It is that old adage of news directors: If it bleeds, it leads.

Obviously many of those guns in the hands of young hoodlums in Toronto are being smuggled across the border. It is not ease of access to guns in Canada that is the first problem. The first problem is attitude. It is the collegial attitude of the police and their fellow officers protecting that long blue line. We still have had no accounting with former Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair for the incidents of the Summer of 2010. (He is busy as the Ambassador of Pot for the Trudeau government.)

What about the conservative attitude of the Ontario Government? They make the rules for polices services. The only problem with that is that we have to change the mindset of what policing is all about. ‘To Serve and Protect’ is not just a public relations slogan. It has to mean something. It has to be a creed.

It always impressed us when we were young that the Toronto police were always friendly and helpful. We liked those men and women. We supported them. We wish that was the case today.

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Cabinet shuffle or spring cleaning?

June 15, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Canada’s Inuit used to have a traditional remedy for aging that involved putting the elderly on ice flows and waving goodbye. The Ontario Cabinet showed us the modern approach the other day—some of the seniors in the cabinet were told to quit so that the premier could bring in younger talent. Not all went quietly into the night.

Whether the new and enlarged cabinet is much younger is a mute point. The same old, same old are still in charge. The slightly younger and larger cabinet had to get three more chairs for its game of musical chairs.

The four obviously reluctant retirees took different actions. Long-serving Jim Bradley was demoted to caucus but will serve as government whip. Madelaine Meilleur, the former less than successful attorney general, left cabinet and caucus in a huff. Former Municipal Affairs Minister Ted McMeekin and former Seniors Affairs Minister Mario Sergio are staying in caucus for the time being so that the Liberals will not be faced with too many by-elections.

Despite some people thinking it was his reward for winning Sudbury for the Liberals, Glen Thibeault will find the energy portfolio is no bed of roses. There will be ongoing repercussions on the sell-off of Hydro One. And who would want to be continually apologizing for rising electricity costs?

But the real concerns of this so-called cabinet shake-up are the changes that did not happen. Charles Sousa could have been rescued from finance but he was left to bumble along. With a banker such as Ed Clark telling banker Sousa what to do, you can be sure there will be nothing innovative out of that Ministry.

While many thought Environment Minister Glen Murray should have been moved, the premier is still indebted to him for securing her job for her. We can all have the fun of watching him as the loose cannon of cabinet.

There were no surprises in the premier’s friend Liz Sandals sideways move to the safer job on treasury board. Nor was anyone surprised that Health Minister Eric Hoskins gets to complete the tasks he set for himself in health.

And nobody doubts the continued influence of Deputy Premier Deb Matthews in the newly named Training, Colleges and Universities portfolio.

If they had any serious opposition, you would worry about the future of this Liberal government.

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At least Ontario’s Wynne has a plan!

June 14, 2016 by Peter Lowry

While many are willing to criticize Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, she does have an ‘Action Plan’ to do something about climate change. And, yes, it is easy to criticize. The plan might not be perfect. It is complex. It has many components. It involves a cap-and-trade program for carbon and new taxes. It also promises new initiatives in electric vehicles and new energy sources.

But when the opposition and news media claim that Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government wants to spend billions on her new climate change action plan without proving that this plan is the right one, how would you expect her to answer? While the plan itself seems to be a logical progression of the approach taken by her predecessor Liberal Dalton McGuinty, nobody has proved the success of that program either.

The only difference we see is that anticipated costs for the new plan are to be covered by the cap-and-trade program directed at industries creating the most carbon. Since Canada’s energy sector contributes over 80 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions, it means that users of gasoline for their automobiles, trucks or farm equipment and people who heat their homes with natural gas will be paying most of the bills.

But that means we all pay, in the food, goods and services we buy. We pay it in energy usage because nuclear, solar, wind and water cannot always meet the needs. And bicycles are a poor solution to transportation in the Canadian winter. Cities need light rail and subways. Commuters need electric rail and buses. Intercity trains need electrifying. Delivery vans and trucks need new forms of electricity storage.

What Ontario and other jurisdictions need is a clear plan. They need a route to the future. And we need the politicians who can imagine that future and provide the leadership. There is no point in criticizing one party’s plan unless another party’s plan makes more sense. And where are those plans? Where are their strategies for tomorrow?

The Conservatives and New Democrats in Ontario need to stop criticizing and realize that if they have no plan, they must not and should not be given control of the future. They can always disagree with details of the government plan but generalities are a waste of time. We need action now to built the better future we all want.

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Coming to grips with Ontario health care.

June 8, 2016 by Peter Lowry

This commentator has never been a big fan of Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins. Being a medical doctor has never been a criterion for the job. Although being ruthless helps. That we did not expect from Hoskins.

His recently announced reforms could be the start of something. We are just not sure what at this stage. Thinking back to the days when we were a found-in at the ministry and attempting to get it out of one of its many messes, we found it to be a bloated and bureaucratic nightmare.

The creation of the Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN) and their companion Community Care Access Centres (CCAC) was supposed to disperse that Queen’s Park bureaucracy to where they might be effective closer to the patients. Instead we got three bloated bureaucratic nightmares and a frustrated patient backlog.

And to suggest that the cream rises to the top in this type of bureaucracy is the exact opposite of what really happens. What happens in Ontario is that the Greater Toronto Area gets what it needs and the rest of the province only think they are getting any service. Just come 90 kilometres up Highway 400 and it is a different world.

Have you ever had the experience of rushing a patient with a pulmonary embolism to a beautiful big hospital the locals built and waiting twelve hours for a doctor to come by and ask how the patient is feeling. They had about ten patients penned in that hurry-up-and-wait room and after six hours we were starting to rebel. There was a rule that no food was allowed in waiting rooms. We broke the rule.

That is what Eric Hoskins has to do if Premier Wynne leaves him in the health portfolio. Admittedly the job needs a rebel and his announcement the other day was the first sign of any gumption. The job also needs a comer and Wynne just might have Hoskins down to go.

The Patients First Act that Hoskins announced might sound like a public relations effort but there seems to be enough thinking behind it to give it potential. If it really does give patients quicker access to medical help, enables them to move from hospital to home with greater ease and actually gets rid of the entire CCAC bureaucracy, it could be worth a lot.

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Politicians are just like us.

June 6, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Maybe it is because they are never a hero to their valets that we have never been overly impressed with politicians. As a publicist and confidante to many politicians over the years, we have found that they share the same foibles, failures and frustrations as anyone else. Nobody is perfect and the person offering to represent us that does not share any weaknesses with the electorate is usually unable to serve them.

These weaknesses are usually more obvious in populist politicians and can raise or destroy their hopes. The greatest weakness is vanity. An excellent example of this weakness is Donald Trump. It is his vanity—and some possibly sociopathic characteristics—that drive him. His misogyny, his bigotry and his bluster are also weaknesses that will bring him fame but keep him from the American presidency.

There have been many populists in Canadian politics over the years. One of the most interesting was Prairie populist John George Diefenbaker. ‘Dief the Chief’ was brought down finally by the president of his own party, Dalton Camp. Dalton was convinced that Diefenbaker had taken the reins of the Conservative Party for too long and called for a leadership convention. Dief tried to succeed himself and it was a sad end to a fascinating career.

The most celebrated populist in Canadian politics—and also the most successful—was Justin Trudeau’s father. Compared to Pierre, a populist, his son is a politician. The son identifies with the populist father but uses the relationship effectively as a politician.

We can always start arguments among our New Democratic friends by pointing out that Saskatchewan’s Tommy Douglas was very much a populist. There are quite a few others but the most obvious was Toronto’s late councillor and mayor Rob Ford.

Ford failed finally as a politician when cancer brought him down. What also failed him was the effort to create a dynasty. Ford used his bombast and ‘in your face’ style effectively but no other Ford can match it. And he really did—for a while—call people back.

But politics can hardly survive on the few populists—good or bad—that come forward from time to time. We need good people who care. We need people who understand and want to help their fellow Canadians build a country with a rich and fulfilling future.

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