Provincial Politics – Page 91

Bugger bogeyman Brown.

February 24, 2016 by Peter Lowry

It is hardly likely that Opposition Leader Patrick Brown is giving Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne sleepless nights. It is a combination of her ego, her handlers and the confidence that Brown will eventually make the monster mistake.

It was as recent as two years ago when former Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak stood in front of a business crowd at the Barrie Golf Club—with Patrick Brown (then a Member of Parliament) front and centre and applauding wildly—and announced that he was going to cut 100,000 provincial civil servant jobs. That was the monster mistake of 2014 that gave Ms. Wynne a very much undeserved majority at Queen’s Park.

Can you not just imagine Patrick Brown facing that ugly puss of his in the mirror every morning and saying his mantra: “I will not screw up, I will not screw up.”

While a bunch of ethnic groups are feeling flattered these days over the attention that the Ontario Tories are now paying them, there are also lots of old white Tories saying “Who’s this Patrick Brown schmuck?” The guy’s only claim to fame is that he stole the leadership of his provincial party.

That is a great example to our children: “If you can’t win honestly, try the Brown way.”

You have to admit though that Premier Wynne showed a lot of balls to think she could win Whitby – Oshawa electoral district. The former member Christine Elliott did a terrible job of letting Conservatives in the area know why she did not want to stay at Queen’s Park under Brown’s so-called leadership. If more than 30 per cent of the voters had gone to the polls, Wynne would have just been even more embarrassed.

It was a stupid by-election—at the worst time of year. And there was absolutely no need to embarrass Prime Minister Trudeau in the process.

By the way, did anyone take note of the New Democrat performance? And do you really expect NDP Leader Andrea Horwath to do a repeat pratfall in the next Ontario election?

And Patrick Brown is hardly Premier Wynne’s problem. She now has two years to start to look like she knows what she is doing. Selling off Hydro One is doing nothing for her. Her idea of liberalising booze sales in Ontario is nothing but a blue-stocking nightmare. The people of Ontario want to see their future. Kathleen Wynne has to present something far better than she has done so far.

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It’s leadership that builds our future.

February 21, 2016 by Peter Lowry

This is just an idle thought for a bleak February in Barrie. It is what a difference leadership can make. This comes to mind with the sour grapes announcement by Laurentian University that they are dumping their partnership staff and students at Georgian College. It reflects the abysmal failure of the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, Barrie City Council, Georgian College and the college’s University Partnership program. There was no leadership.

And it is leadership that greases the gears of this world in which we live. And frankly, Barrie will have none of that. This city is run by a grossly conservative cabal of civil servants, pathetic politicians and outside interests that hardly give a damn for our city.

There is no better example of this disgrace than Patrick Brown MPP. In years of representing this city in Ottawa, he never once demonstrated any leadership that would aid his city. As Ontario opposition leader, Brown harps at the Wynne government over the Hydro One fiasco that has already left the barn. Yet what did Brown say about the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities denying Barrie a university? Nothing.

Did you know that Kingston, Ontario that hosts the prestigious Queen’s University is much smaller than Barrie? The very successful Georgian College could become Georgian University at the stroke of a pen at Queen’s Park and it would open an entirely new vista for the city and for Simcoe County.

But do not look to City Council for help. Those milk toasts get their leadership from the city’s civil servants and that is taking the city nowhere. One look at that train station to nowhere on the bay will tell you where this city is headed—but watch the realty taxes keep rising.

Barrie City Council is so weak and leaderless it cannot even save Central Collegiate from being demolished. It is the only high school available in downtown Barrie and Simcoe County’s school ‘experts’ are going to bus our downtown students to portables in the burgeoning suburbs. This city cannot even look after its high school students.

And please do not laugh at the Liberal MPP presently representing Barrie at Queen’s Park. She was picked to be exactly what she is: a vote for Ms. Wynne.

Now if we had someone such as former Georgian College president Brian Tamblyn running provincially two years from now, we could have a Member of the Legislature who knew what he was talking about and could get things done. He is a potential MPP who would stand up for Barrie and make sure that the city had the facilities it needs. You wonder who could talk him into running?

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It’s a Wynne-Wynne for wine in Ontario.

February 20, 2016 by Peter Lowry

It was like a fanfare of trumpets and drums for the announcement of the coming of some decent wine to Ontario grocery stores. Not immediately and not all at once and with a myriad of confusing rules but foreign and domestic wine will be available in some grocery stores this fall and more in the years to come. It is not as big a deal as it is touted but it is going to be milked for all the publicity the politicians can get.

And would you believe letters-to-the-editor decrying the greater availability of demon alcohol. It is almost as though they were written in the premier’s office to try to show that she is progressive.

She is not. All this progressive stuff is coming from a banker she asked to guide her through the shoals of Ontario politics. Like most bankers, he writes liberal headlines and conservative small print.

It is like Ontario VQA (Ontario wine that meets some standards) will be the only wine sold in about half the currently anointed grocery stores. You can be kind and call most of the stuff sold in the store kiosks today as ‘plonk.’ The plonk is to be moved to those stores’ food shelves instead of being in a separate kiosk. You can be assured though that people who like wines will still not drink it. It will take another five years for the favoured of the larger grocery stores to be selling beer and both foreign and domestic wines as routine.

And that is what it should have been from day one. This incremental expansion of distribution is an outrageously blatant grab at publicity, licence fees and political donations. Nobody involved seems to give a damn about the public.

This same attitude that the public does not matter is prevalent throughout the beer market in Ontario. The other day talking to a Beer Store employee, the question was asked “Why is my brand never in the same place week-to-week in your walk-in cooler?” The simple answer was that different brands are shipped at different times and they put the new stock where there is space. This is not merchandising; this is uncaring.

And that is why we should never allow politicians (or their favourite banker) to make decisions about any commodity. We are the people who choose the politicians. And we are the people who should choose where we want to buy the products we use and consume. We might need to start with more enlightened politicians.

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An Honourable Member from Barrie.

February 17, 2016 by Peter Lowry

In writing about the honourable members we elect to our legislatures and parliament yesterday, an image kept coming to mind of our new Member of Parliament for Barrie–Springwater—Oro-Medonte. It is not a positive image. The honourable gentleman who now represents the riding is an acolyte of Patrick Brown, the new leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party.

And nobody can draw the visceral hatred of a political foe as quickly and as vehemently as Patrick Brown MPP. The man is not widely loved in this his hometown. He spent nine years in the Harper Conservative government and did nothing for his country or city but vote Conservative. In the few times of a free vote being called by the Harper government, he voted against women’s rights.

But it is his stand-in Alex Nuttall, the new Member of Parliament, who assumed the cloak of Patrick Brown in Barrie—Springwater—Oro Medonte, The two Conservatives currently share the rural Springwater and Oro-Medonte townships in their federal and provincial ridings. In the next provincial election, they will have the same electoral district boundaries.

Brown is teaching Mr. Nuttall to be a ‘retail politician’ like himself. It is a position where you never have to explain yourself to voters. Nothing you do in the community is presented as political. It is all presented as serving the community, using community events, charity drives and family activities.

Frankly, Mr. Nuttall is more of a failure in politics than Mr. Brown. Throughout the overly-long federal election campaign, Mr. Nuttall appeared petulant, angry and was unwilling to debate his opponents. He was probably too much out of his depth. His responses in the few appearances, were he showed up, were waspish and included unnecessary attempts to smear an opponent.

In the recount after a very tight finish, you could see where Mr. Nuttall lost most of the Barrie polls. It was the overwhelming lack of knowledge of him in the rural parts of the riding that eked out a narrow Conservative win.

That is why Patrick Brown is back in town to take that boy in hand. It would never do to have the Liberals get smart and start building organizational strength in his riding over the next two years. Brown expects to have a safe seat ready for him in 2018 when he will want to spend his time trying to win the province.

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Honourable Members All!

February 16, 2016 by Peter Lowry

A reader brought up what he considers a serious weakness in first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting yesterday. It is the assumption that we elect “honourable members’ to our legislatures and the House of Commons and select the same for our Senate. The member we elect with at least a plurality is assumed capable of representing all voters in the electoral district despite their political leanings. The reader points out that Stephen Harper drove a stake through the heart of that idealistic concept over the past nine years.

The reader explains that the unfettered partisanship of the Harper regime robbed Canadians of the primary checks and balances needed in our parliamentary system. Political assistants and Members of Parliament going to jail over carrying this partisanship too far is hardly the answer.

What voters seem to be failing in is the ability to assess our political candidates in anything beyond which party leader they support. Our political parties, in turn, are failing badly in demanding high standards among the party’s candidates. They seem to prefer fealty to intelligence. They also fail in building their party membership, facilitating policy development, promoting the party’s philosophy and developing new election workers. And our MPs and MPPs fail us as they act like rude undisciplined children in our legislatures and parliament while all initiatives come from the Premier or Prime Minister’s Office.

On today’s Internet, we are seeing the emerging centralized party structures of the future built around a charismatic ‘Big Brother.’ The party is told how to think, how to tithe to the central fundraising that gives no accounting of its receipts and expenditures to the citizens, contributors or Elections Canada.

For lack of answers to these problems, Justin Trudeau’s brain trust told us that the answer is to change how we vote. What that has to do with the quality of party candidates has not been made clear. Maybe it is like the elitist committee to recommend elite candidates for Senate appointments. It will make no difference at all but it will give the politicians someone to blame when we get a bad apple.

Stephen Harper has no one else to blame than himself for Senator Mike Duffy. Mind you, Justin Trudeau will have no one else to blame but himself when he finds how difficult it is to get his government’s legislation through his ‘elite’ Senate.

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Incremental inclinations of the incompetents.

February 13, 2016 by Peter Lowry

The banker has been heard from. The other day we noted that Ontario wine drinkers were waiting to hear about liberalizing wine sales in Ontario. We have been waiting for a long time for this and it seems that we will be waiting even longer. It is turning into a bravura performance of incrementalism. The question we ask is it necessary? Is the public frightened of change? Or are the political manipulators raising the price of liberalism?

It makes us curious. What is the price of bidding for a licence to sell beer in Ontario? What is the price of bidding for a licence to sell wine? Is the payment by cheque to the Ontario Treasurer or in cash in a plain envelope? Is Ontario still back in the 1920s or is this the 21^st Century? All that we are told just raises more questions.

Why the delays? When you make up your mind to allow one grocery store to sell a product, is it not fair to allow all grocery stores to sell the product? Favouring one store over another smacks of corruption. It fails the smell test.

In 50 years of being involved in Ontario politics, this is the most blatantly stupid process we have ever heard of. Having politicians blaming it on a banker is downright embarrassing. And the people who should be the most embarrassed are the editors of the Toronto Star. You wonder what has happened to their claimed concern for their readers?

The other day in a “Toronto Star Exclusive,” reporter Martin Regg Cohn tells us of wine industry fears of liberalized sales. Does that mean Ontario wine producers do not think they can compete? Regg Cohn should ask more questions.

But if they cannot compete, why should 40 grocery stores only be allowed to sell Ontario wines? Why penalize the grocery stores to support Ontario wines? Just think, in another five years wine in grocery stores might have a level playing field?

It is when they blame all these machinations on a banker, you wonder how much they are paying him to take the blame?

What is running this booze circus is greed. The civil servants want to protect the province’s revenue stream of about $2 billion a year from the Liquor Control Board of Ontario stores. The politicians seem to want the ongoing publicity and to protect their revenue stream from the liquor, wine and beer interests and their unions. Only the public gets the dirty end of the stick.

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Sometimes you do not want to be right.

February 12, 2016 by Peter Lowry

So, do you feel better after the Whitby-Oshawa provincial by-election? What do you expect when only 25 per cent of the voters would brave the cold to vote? Frankly, the results might have been the same on a warm spring day. Nothing changed.

The only good news for the day is that auto repair places sold more batteries and Tim Horton’s franchises in the electoral district sold more coffee. It was colder than expected.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has returned to Ottawa and he has his own problems.

Premier Kathleen Wynne has checked with her banker advisor and he had no advice for her. She will continue to be incremental in booze distribution reform. She will continue the ill-advised sale of Hydro-One. She will fail to reform Ontario’s outdated and easily corrupted political finance laws. She will continue to fail to give Ontario the leadership it needs to kick-start the province’s economy.

New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath was among the missing. When the NDP falls to below 20 per cent of the popular vote in the heart of Ontario’s auto production country, it is time to reassess. It has been obvious since the last provincial election that Andrea has to go but, more important, what is the future for the NDP? That requires thought.

And then there is that disgusting Patrick Brown. As leader of the opposition at Queen’s Park, you hardly think of Brown as one of the Three Amigos. Brown, Horwath and Wynne are more of a triumvirate of disappointments. Ontario does not deserve them.

The situation in Ontario calls for revolt. The revolt needs to originate among the political parties. How anyone who respected the decency and concern of Progressive Conservative leaders such as Bill Davis can tolerate the deceit and chicanery of a manipulative little man such as Patrick Brown, is beyond us. Conservatives: Take back your party!

The Liberal Party of Ontario is well within its rights to order a new leadership convention. It should be an open convention and properly regulated. Every Liberal in the province should be entitled to vote without surprise new memberships bought by unknown interests.

The people with the toughest problem are Ontario’s New Democrats. Our attitude is that the real progressives in the NDP could accomplish more as activists in the Liberal Party than as fringe socialists. They need to think about it.

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The perils of political predictions in by-elections

February 11, 2016 by Peter Lowry

A friend called the other evening. He wanted to know who would win tonight’s provincial by-election in Christine Elliott’s former electoral district of Whitby-Oshawa. Once again we had to patiently explain that it is impossible to predict. The opinion polls that say the Conservatives have the best chance are useless. The big rally the other night with Prime Minister Trudeau supporting the provincial Liberal was excessive. And Ontario Conservative Leader Patrick Brown spending his time trying to teach the PC candidate how to win is silly.

The key today is the number of troops each side can get motivated and working to get out the identified vote for their candidate. Included in the planning had better be batteries in their cars able to withstand -8 degrees Celsius for constant short-haul driving. (And, at that temperature, you can count on Ontario Motor League to be overloaded all day.)

The Liberals believe that their throngs of political staffers from Queen’s Park are a secret weapon. They are a secret alright. You will find most of them cooped at a local Tim’s for the day telling each other how important they are. (We used to refer to that type of help as a Children’s Crusade.)

In days gone by we would have worried about the potential strength of the local autoworkers for the New Democratic candidate. You will probably find more of those union people working for the Liberal than for the NDP.

But despite a likely turnout of around 30 per cent of voters, there are important lessons to be learned today. Anything less than a 40 per cent vote for the Conservative will be considered a negative for Leader Patrick Brown. Anything more than a 40 per cent vote for the Liberal will shore up Premier Kathleen Wynne’s position. Anything less than 20 per cent for the NDP will be blamed on NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.

The real reason for the effort in Whitby-Oshawa today is to undermine the position of PC Leader Patrick Brown. The reason for the by-election is Christine Elliott’s distaste for her political party’s new leader. As well as being the widow of the late Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty, Elliott is well regarded in the riding. A lot depends on how many Conservatives in the riding really understand why she resigned.

As leaders go, it would be hard to imagine Patrick Brown having the leadership skills to lead a vulture to road-kill. Conversely, he does know about winning.

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WHERE’S THE BEER?

February 8, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Do you have beer in your grocery store? Are you one of the favoured few in Ontario? Here in Barrie we are being discriminated against. We are being denied a proper university here in central Ontario and we cannot even drown our sorrows in grocery-store beer. It is not as though our Liberal MPP can do anything about it. We still have to go to those awful recycling places called Beer Stores to get beer. And that is no fun at all.

Ontario residents are usually stoical about our out-of-date Beer Stores. They assume that there is little that can be done about it. You can ask your local MPP how much money is given by the foreign owners of the Beer Store to the Ontario Liberals and Conservatives and how much the brewers retail union gives to the NDP each year? That might help figure out the answer.

The very fact that foreign companies can give money to our politicians is a disgrace that many jurisdictions do not allow. They consider it a corrupt practice. In Ontario we are behind the times in more than selling beer.

Obviously grocery companies are also allowed to give our politicians money. It got them to a point where they can bid on opportunities to sell beer under very stringent rules.

But many in Ontario thought times were changing. It took more than a year for the government to get organized for beer in a few grocery stores. The bureaucrats had to make new rules just for grocery stores. Stores had to be invited to apply for licensing. Bidding took place by eager grocery groups. The first few licenses were granted for beer. Wine will come later. Much later.

Some people thought: Wow, we will have good merchandising, weekly specials and competition for our beer dollars. Forget it! The price is fixed folks. No specials in beer. The best you are going to get is PC Points or Air Miles on your six-pack.

And all you can get to buy is six packs. Two-Fours and 12-packs are still the exclusive province of the Beer Store recyclers. It is the same deal as the LCBO.

But the one hope we had was that good merchandisers such as experienced grocery chains would figure out how to properly merchandise beer. We thought they could really show up those simpletons at the Beer Store. No such luck. Civil servants are making the rules here and do not forget it.

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It’s not the pipelines, it’s the bitumen.

February 5, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Thank goodness for mayors who can call a spade a spade. Not every city enjoys that luxury. The only problem is that mayors and their municipalities have no jurisdiction over pipelines. What they do is posture for their voters and then conveniently remember it is not their bailiwick when the going gets tough.

Toronto Mayor John Tory blew by the pipeline issue in the last Toronto election because he did not want a fight with fellow Conservative Stephen Harper at the time. Toronto has a pipeline right through the city that is currently preparing to pump diluted bitumen through high density housing areas. It was quietly given the final go-ahead in the middle of last year’s federal election.

But if it was just crude oil, there would not be the concern. The Enbridge Line 9 is an old pipeline that has pumped crude oil back and forth for almost 40 years. With increased line pressure and the corrosive nature of bitumen, it is a disaster waiting to happen. What is particularly grating is that the National Energy Board approved the Line 9 reversal to specifically pump crude oil at a variety of high pressures. There is no mention of bitumen in the NEB order.

Bitumen is what you get when you wash the sands out of tarsands. Bitumen is a potpourri of chemicals in a viscous tarry substance that can be converted to synthetic oil. It can be pumped through a pipeline by diluting it with hydrocarbons, heating it and pumping it at high pressure. When it gets to a refinery, the conversion process creates vast quantities of what is called bitumen slag which can be used as a highly polluting fuel. This is a major component of what is referred to as downstream carbon emissions. Bitumen is polluting our environment even before it becomes fuel for your gas-burning automobile.

Bitumen is a triple threat polluter. The tar sands exploiting companies are polluting the Alberta environment with vast acreages of settling ponds for the polluted water and tar sands residue. The refineries dread the bitumen slag that can blow like a dirty cloud over their communities. And bitumen spills from a pipeline are a triple threat that can never come clean as on water the hydrocarbon thinner floats and the bitumen goes to the bottom, while on land the bitumen can seep down and pollute the water table.

While Prime Minister Trudeau will bend over backwards to try to save the Alberta tar sands, the mayors are right. There is no redemption for bitumen to be shoved down a pipeline. Rebuilding the Canadian economy has to be high priority but it cannot be done at the expense of our environment.

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