Provincial Politics – Page 88

Fool some people some of the time.

June 5, 2016 by Peter Lowry

You sometimes wonder what ‘progressive’ means. Babel-on-the-Bay is included in a collection of blogs by progressive Canadian writers. We have come to the conclusion that is a very broad description when you read some of the blogs. With the limited political activity at this time of the year, it is often no surprise that these writers often touch on the same topics. Whether we are equally progressive on the subject can be questioned.

Take the current situation with the Ontario Liberal government. That government is not at a peak in popularity at this time. We wrote a piece the other day about why Premier Wynne’s wheels had fallen off. We did not waste words flattering the premier or her crew.

But just how progressive is it to read another blogger’s assessment when he says: “The Ontario Tories, meanwhile, have picked themselves a new leader who is attempting to push and pull his party towards the centre of the ideological spectrum, and restore “progressive” to its nomenclature. Patrick Brown took over one of the most successful political parties in Western democracy through hard work and sheer force of will. He’s obviously not someone to be underestimated, either.”

You would expect a ‘progressive’ writer to at least research the subject before lauding a right-wing party or its leader. The first fact to consider is that the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party is not currently one of the most successful political parties in Western democracy. After the defeat of Michael Harris and his government in 2003, the party was bleeding membership and clear direction. By 2014 when Patrick Brown entered that year’s leadership race, he was able to swamp the existing membership with about 40,000 sign-ups mainly from India and Pakistan. This former, do-nothing Member of Parliament was hardly picked by the Ontario Tories. Brown and his backers bought the party.

And he is hardly trying to push and pull his party anywhere. His strongest supporters are the people behind the Ontario Landowners and religious conservatives. He has been given middle-of-the-road talking points for his few appearances because he has no direction and he cannot expect the party to follow him.

It seems unlikely that this other writer has ever met Patrick Brown. After meeting him, it is very hard to overestimate him. It would also be hard to believe that Patrick Brown could be picked to defeat Wynne by 75 per cent of the readers of that blog.

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When the wheels fell off for Wynne.

June 3, 2016 by Peter Lowry

With the current slump in the fortunes of Ontario’s Liberal government, Premier Kathleen Wynne has an uphill climb for the last two years of her mandate. Her problem is that while she fancies herself as a reformer, she really out conserves the Conservatives. Her basic problem is that what she sees as progressive is perceived by the public as dawdling and manipulative.

Wynne is no progressive. It is not how she thinks or how she deals with political questions. Her entire political career has been reactionary. She started out working against former Premier Mike Harris’ amalgamation of Metropolitan Toronto. While he did the deed for all the wrong reasons, it was probably the best thing that could be done for the city.

She went on from that protest experience to the public school board. And there is nothing more reactionary and slow moving than Ontario school boards. They have no real power and mainly look after the facilities for the education of our children. Kathleen Wynne fit in well there.

Wynne was barely noticed in the McGuinty government until, as Minister of Education, she defeated Ontario PC Leader John Tory for her North Toronto seat in the 2007 general election. That set her up to succeed Dalton McGuinty as premier. Her manipulative deal with fellow leadership candidate Glen Murray from the adjacent electoral district was the icing that locked her into a position to win.

She floundered at first with the legacy of the gas plants from the McGuinty era but overcame that more because of the weaknesses of her opponents than any winning strategy. Her appearing to be fighting Prime Minister Harper over the inadequacies of the Canada Pension Plan helped her win the 2014 election almost as much as the foolish promise of Conservative Tim Hudak to fire 100,000 civil servants.

What the voters have seen in Premier Wynne over the last couple years has been her scheming for political advantage. Her decision on the Sudbury by-election was seen as vicious when she dismissed a paraplegic as a candidate and appointed a former New Democrat Member of Parliament. And the provincial police investigation did not help.

But her supposedly progressive efforts have appeared to be smoke and mirrors as they are all half or quarter measures instead of action. Like, nothing much is happening in the pension file and beer and wine in grocery stores seems to be nothing more than a glacial creep toward half measures.

The one thing for sure is that energy costs are escalating more because of Wynne’s actions and selling off Hydro One is just adding to the upward cost pressure. And there seems to be no way that she can get farmers to buy into wind farms or solar panels across the province.

And if you think Wynne’s government will close all the loopholes in Ontario’s outrageously corrupt political fund-raising, just wait and see.

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Selling Mr. Brown to Ontario.

May 29, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Early in a career as a political advisor, we were on the way to a meeting about a new candidate when we bumped into another, much more experienced apparatchik, on his way to the same meeting. “Good news,” he said, “I interviewed my cab driver about the new guy. He hadn’t heard of him. That means we can make him anything we want him to be.”

Luckily our guy had some positive things going for him and we were able to emphasise them to make him a success as a politician.

But what do you do with a nebbish like MPP Patrick Brown who stole the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership from far better prospects in last year’s leadership race. It took almost a year before his Tory handlers would turn him loose on the news media and public in Ontario.

This guy is a challenge. In eight years as a Member of Parliament, he did nothing, said nothing and in two free votes voted against women’s rights. He is a mouth breather with a whiny voice and dressed like a small town undertaker. He lacks social skills and has no small talk. Women listen to him for about two minutes and then shut him out. They generally do not like him.

But he is a hard worker. He is a marathon runner. And he has some wealthy supporters, if not friends.

These supporters have obviously paid for a total makeover of Patrick Brown. He now has a Toronto salon hairstyle. He has been taking speaking lessons and has dropped his voice an octave for radio and television interviews. He has been provided with an entirely new wardrobe from head to foot. He has been given simplistic speaking notes that pander to popular misconceptions.

Even an experienced political reporter such as Tom Clark of Global Television did a double take when he was asked to interview the Ontario leader and met a very different person than the callow backbencher that everyone had ignored in Ottawa.

Mind you Brown’s speaking notes will catch up to him if he does not get better ideas than Huxley’s Brave New World. He was complaining to the local media here in Barrie that some students were taking training for jobs that do not exist. He did not say whether the students should be forced to change their training.

What has the media agog is that there are some pollsters who are saying that Brown is more popular that Premier Wynne. The polls will correct in time as more voters get to know the real Patrick Brown.

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Politics is for the rich in Ontario.

May 19, 2016 by Peter Lowry

It seems the Ontario Liberals want to keep politics in Ontario as a rich person’s game. After all, how many of us can come up with as much as $7,750 in donations each year to our party of choice? And that is on top of the more than $2 per vote subsidy to be provided to the parties to supposedly wean the parties off the big bucks from corporations and unions.

Mind you a single corporation can probably contribute $150,000 with judicious giving through its executives and board members. To which Premier Wynne would probably say: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

You really do not think that the party in power would do itself any harm in updating political donations do you?

The Liberal dominated legislative committee will be considering this bill over the summer. It is expected that they will stick to a minimum of sitting days. And they would hardly invite a skeptical Liberal apparatchik such as this one to make comments.

Besides, the Conservative and New Democratic members of the committee will only be there to earn some extra money over the summer. (Oh, you did not know that they were paid handsomely for their onerous summer chores?)

But it is the experienced campaign managers for each party who are the most knowledgeable about how political donations get from the deep pockets of contributors to where they are influencing votes for the party. And, in this Internet age, all parties are becoming more adept at drawing maximum funds from their on-line supporters.

And the party apparatchiks would hardly be among those who would leave the central party’s fundraising unlimited. That would leave the leader and the central party in total control of the party and its election process.

Nor would the apparatchiks like the high limit of $100,000 on third-party advertising. That would certainly buy a lot of full-page ads that could help turn an election around.

What also needs to be recognized are the many unrecorded debts that a candidate and party accumulate throughout an election. While these contributions might be considered of no monetary value, they are of very real value to the campaign and to the member of the provincial parliament.

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Empathy for Alberta doesn’t include bitumen.

May 13, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Having fought forest fires as a young man in our Canadian military, we well understood the serious concerns for life and property recently in northern Alberta. The rapidly shifting winds that suddenly endangered the 80,000 citizens of Fort McMurray and gave them so little time to get out of town were well understood.

But the ugly scars on that once pristine and rugged landscape caused by open pit tar sands mining and the hundreds of hectares of tailings ponds are not forgiven. Premier Rachel Notley can beg for leniency and for us to ignore the environmental scourge all she wants but bitumen from the tar sands cannot be the answer to the failing Canadian economy.

Tar sands exploiters cannot expect thinking Canadians to ignore the shipping of seriously polluting bitumen to third-world countries as the answer to recovery in Alberta or Canada. Not after Canadians in all parts of the country have clearly shown their support and concern for the people of northern Alberta in this time of crisis.

There can be no back door in the Canadian conscience for pipelines that will push highly corrosive, diluted and heated bitumen at high pressure to tide water. It is too much to ask of our Canadian environment and our world’s environment. Canadians cannot save the world by themselves but they can certainly do their part.

The other day, Premier Notley announced that tar sands companies are working to get their employees back on the job. She pointed out that the production out of Alberta was down by more than a million barrels per day. She used the word ‘oil’ but made no distinction between ‘oil’ and ‘bitumen.’ When you think about it, she obviously meant bitumen. A person who cares about our environment does not make that mistake.

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Trapped in terminal technology.

May 11, 2016 by Peter Lowry

We have seen it many times over the years. It is government funded attempts at trying to take quantum leaps in technology with computer equipment. It is usually just a disaster in the making. Technology moves too fast. Computer equipment will often be out-of-date when delivered. And it can also be used as an excuse for no action at all.

But we have to move with the times. Ontario is considering limited use of computers as the answer to the escalating costs of voting. That only makes sense if we dramatically lower costs, improve voting access and ease of voting at the same time. We should have been moving to the Internet and the adoption of highly secure systems a long tine ago. We need a voting system where any computer with access to the Internet can be used to vote and any government or public server system in the province can help distribute the voter database across the province.

There are very simple technology solutions for distributed records that are date and time stamped and unchangeable after the citizen votes that are quite inexpensive. You should be able to vote at a polling station, at a public library, at your office, in your home and even from your smart phone. And the results can be available immediately to everyone on the closing of the polls.

And keeping the system of voting at a low cost can allow for run-off elections to allow for majority choice in all electoral districts across the province. As people are seeing in the current Canadian census, millions of people really can use a computerized system in a short period if there are enough server systems available.

It is also by using multiple server systems that we can ensure the security of the voting system, Hacking of a single system is theoretically possible but simultaneously hacking of multiple systems is not currently possible.

Despite the security and speed of Internet voting, Elections Ontario plans to only use computers to access the already computerized voter records to authorize the provision of a paper ballot. They then want the ballot to be scanned, stored and then counted electronically. Why would they want to go to the expense of scanning equipment when it is much cheaper, easier and faster to input the information directly in a computer? It makes no sense.

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Carbon Tax or Cap-and-Trade?

May 8, 2016 by Peter Lowry

It looks like the carbon tax concept has been getting a bad rap. At a time when most people are unaware of the difference between cap-and-trade programs and carbon taxes, these two approaches to trying to control carbon emissions need to be better understood. The most important thing to remember is that the consumer pays either way.

Most people who object to a carbon tax start with the objection to a tax. After all, who likes taxes? You have to bear in mind though that cap-and-trade is also a tax. You pay either way. Cap-and-trade costs are paid for by the manufacturer and are added to the manufacturers’ wholesale price. And remember that retail mark-up and sales taxes are added to this higher price.

The difference between the two approaches is that you know the price of carbon emissions with the product when you pay a carbon tax. All you know with cap-and-trade is that the product is more expensive by the time it gets to the consumer.

With a carbon tax, the bill starts out the same to all manufacturers. You put so much carbon into our environment, here is what is going to cost you. It is simple, open and honest. The challenge is to the manufacturer to reduce the carbon emissions and reduce the tax. If the carbon is reduced, the tax is reduced. It is easy to see what is happening and all the figures are there for the consumer to see.

It seems this is not so with cap-and-trade. Caps on carbon emissions are set by industry in negotiation with government. The consumers only choice is to buy or not buy the product. If a manufacturer can lower the emissions, the company can sell or trade the unused emissions with other companies who cannot reach their emissions targets. Whether it earns any profits from such trades is a matter between the company and its shareholders.

The main concern with this not so transparent cap-and-trade is that companies are actually encouraged to move difficult emissions problems off-shore. With a carbon tax, companies both domestic and foreign would be challenged equally to reduce their carbon emissions.

It is also important to note that a carbon tax creates a level playing field for our manufacturers. If they sell to a country with no carbon tax, the only pressure is from their own and international environmentalists who want them to do their part. Cap-and-trade leaves our exporters with a more expensive end product and a disadvantage.

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

Polls and other time wasters.

May 6, 2016 by Peter Lowry

A friend in Barrie called and left a message the other day about public opinion polls that said Conservative Leader Patrick Brown was more acceptable as premier than Liberal Kathleen Wynne. He was aghast that a nebbish such as Brown would even be considered as a serious candidate for the job of premier. What he missed is that the poll was meaningless and further on down in the figures we note that a sizeable portion of the poll respondents said their preference was ‘none of the above.’

While this friend is nominally a Liberal, he is no fan of Premier Kathleen Wynne. He also knows and despises Conservative Leader Patrick Brown. He watched in disgust over the last nine years that Patrick Brown was Barrie’s MP in Ottawa. He not only failed to represent his constituents here in Barrie but in two free votes in those years, he voted against women’s rights.

But the problem with the poll is that there is no context—such as an election—for voters to have an opinion. The dissatisfaction with Wynne reflects more on the economic climate and rising cost of living than any specific actions or inactions of the Wynne government. The normal malaise of a mid-term government is being reflected back from the voters.

And there is no question that Ontario does not know Brown. The obscure MP from Barrie stole the PC leadership from much more popular Conservative MPP Christine Elliott by paying for many of the memberships of recent immigrants to Ontario from India and Pakistan. Other than the Brampton and Scarborough concentrations of immigrants from the Sub-Continent, Indian and Pakistani immigrants tend to scatter across the province enabling them to control a majority of electoral districts in a weakened party membership.

Since becoming Ontario leader last year, Brown has had to concentrate on getting a provincial seat in the Legislature, dealing with a fractious and unruly caucus, building a supportive staff and changing his image from a small town rube to a more sophisticated Toronto man-about-town.

That does nothing for his basic problems that his only support in caucus comes from the religious right-wing and the anti-wind turbine Ontario Landowners leaders.

His problem is that it is not only Kathleen Wynne who dislikes him. Women who like men lose interest in him after just two minutes of small talk. There is nothing substantive that Patrick Brown has to contribute to life in Ontario and we will ignore the polls until there is a need for them in about two years.

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

Au revoir Pierre Karl.

May 3, 2016 by Peter Lowry

We finally found out the difference between millionaire Pierre Karl Pèladeau and billionaire Donald Trump. As leader of the separatist Parti Quèbècois, Pierre Karl realized he was a square peg in a round hole. There was nowhere he could take the Quebec separatist party but downhill skiing. Conversely Donald Trump still thinks he is God’s gift to America’s Republican Party, and its Tea Party crazies.

But the revelation for Pierre Karl was in his bed. It sounds like his, maybe, wife Julie Synder has finally gotten through to him. It sounds like it was a choice between her and their two kids or Quebec politics. Which did he want?

It seems he has made a wise choice.

Pèladeau had to realize after the past year at the helm of the late Renè Lèvesque’s party, he had nowhere to go and few of the separatists really wanted to follow him. He was never comfortable with the left-wing leanings of his purported followers and they were certainly never too sure about him. His reputation in business had been very right-wing and his relations with organized labour were less than friendly.

But he thought it would be easy to bring the party along and maybe change its direction more to his thinking. He had as much chance of that as of convincing Julie—his wife of less than a year—of staying at home looking after the kids while he spent days on end at the National Assembly in Quebec City and in travelling around the province trying rebuild a crumbling party.

There is also the thought that Pierre Karl wanted to return to the thrill of managing his media empire. While his Sun Media English-language chain has been sold off, he still has the largest circulation print media in the province (le Journal de Montrèal) and the French-language TVA television network. These are fascinating toys for any business person and he has probably been missing them.

Donald Trump on the other hand has no real business empire to run as the properties and hotels with his name on them are easier to understand if you think of them as franchises. In his business you build the building for the least possible and sell it for the most possible. You get your money and run. And that is not a good analogy to being President of the United States.

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Not by half Premier Wynne.

April 30, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Once again Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has taken small steps when big steps were needed. She has failed us. She promises much and delivers little. She said she would release the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) report on the Andrew Loku death. What her government has released is just going to cause more distrust of our police services. This has satisfied nobody.

Whenever you see a government report released late on a Friday, you know it will not bear close scrutiny. It used to be that government or business news released at that time would receive the least scrutiny. That is no longer the case in a twenty-four-seven news environment.

But it fits the pattern of the Wynne approach to governing. Wynne’s is a government that promises the voter a sumptuous dinner and then hands the voter a bologna sandwich. It is a government that promises beer in grocery stores. And it did, if you can find one? It promises fund-raising reform—for the opposition parties. It promises lower automobile insurance rates—if you will settle for far less coverage?

And the list of failures goes on. The time of reckoning is two years away.

But who is the government serving with releasing a heavily edited sham of an SIU report. Do you want to believe a man with a hammer is a danger to armed police officers? Was drunkenness why they shot him? Who was he endangering? And why was there an ‘improper’ attempt at securing of surveillance video of the event? Are the police beyond our control?

Premier Wynne seems to have forgotten that the Ontario government is responsible for regulating police services throughout the province. It is the government that makes the rules on behalf of the citizens. If the people lose confidence in their police services, they are also going to lose confidence in the government.

You can read what the Ministry of the Attorney General has released for yourself. It is not worth commenting on. All we know is that a man was shot to death last July in a confrontation in a Toronto apartment building. Was he attacking someone with a hammer? We do not know that. We do not know why he was shot. We do not know who is to blame. It is as though we knew more before the report was released.

Premier Wynne should know the difference between a report that tells you nothing and a report that explains the circumstances. It is something that you should know if you want to be premier.

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