Provincial Politics – Page 94

Ontario: Socially responsible or greedy?

November 22, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Fear not fellow Ontarians, we will soon have some beer in some of our supermarkets. We are told that this is all being done to be socially responsible about booze. What it looks like is one huge cash grab.

Step one in the process of making this new(?) liberalized(?) event happen is to have a secret auction to allow 60 out of an estimated 1500 supermarkets (about 1 in 25) offer the government money to let them have a license to sell beer. The secrecy seems to be about how much the government is being given for this privilege?

Step two is the application by the auction winners (those who have paid up) being introduced to the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO). These are the people who are always coming up with new and confusing rules for Ontario’s few casinos. It seems they are now going to create rules for selling six-packs of beer in grocery stores. It seems that AGCO is going to issue the licenses to sell beer to these lucky grocery stores. It makes you wonder about the rules and whether you can get your money back if you do not like the rules? And does the sign saying “BEER” have to be smaller than the sign saying “groceries”?

What is wrong with this entire process is that the government does not want the public to know what is going on. Why the secrecy in licensing grocery stores to sell beer? And why can they only sell six-packs? You can get those at your LCBO store if you do not like Beer Stores that smell like stale beer recycling depots.

That is because you still have to take your empties to the Beer Store. That foreign-owned Beer Store operation still has the lock on that recycling operation.

The media tell us that by May of next year we could have more grocery stores (90 more) selling beer. So if you are eager to buy beer at your local grocery store you just need to be patient. By the time of the next provincial election there might be as many as 450 grocery stores selling beer. Why less than a third of the large grocery stores in Ontario will be allowed the privilege of selling six-packs of beer is supposed to be socially responsible.

Every year there will be more stores selling six-packs and more publicity for the generous government at Queen’s Park that is master minding this brilliant change in how we buy beer. And do not forget dear voter, this is all being done in a socially responsible way. And probably profitable too!

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The makeover of Brother Brown.

November 15, 2015 by Peter Lowry

The best thing you can say about Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown is that he is a real piece of work. He is a person who works very hard at being what he is not. And if you think it only cost him $2 million to take over the leadership of the provincial party, you do not know Patrick as do those of us who live in Barrie.

Of course you are seeing a very different Patrick than what we are used to in Barrie. His handlers at Queen’s Park have scraped the manure off his boots and taken him to a Toronto hairstylist. They bought him properly cut and fitted suits, decent shirts and acceptable ties. Whether he remembers his Saturday night bath is something that only a mother would care to sniff out.

There have not been enough opportunities to hear him speak to say whether he is getting elocution training. It is likely they got him some decent speech writers. He used to get his prepared speeches from different cabinet offices in Ottawa. The quality was erratic but then so was MP Patrick Brown.

Now that he has found a sinecure of a very well-paid job for the next three years, you can be sure that Patrick does not miss his former buddies on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Maybe they think he was smart getting out of a losing situation in Ottawa when he did. He only knew that there was nowhere for him to go in the Conservative caucus. The Harper Conservatives treated him as worthless because they knew and used him.

The word we are hearing from Ontario’s South Asian community is that in signing up of tens of thousands of their community around the province, the $10 party membership fee was optional. Strange is it not that there is no mention of maybe more than $300,000 for memberships in Patrick’s submission to Elections Ontario. And that might not be the first time the boy forgot to report all his expenditures in an election.

Mind you, Ontario Progressive Conservative Party President Richard Ciano has been quoted as saying that our Patrick did not break any of the party rules. The rules for Ontario Conservatives must be a moving target. We always heard that people had to pay their own membership fees. We even heard that people were supposed to know what they were signing when they signed a membership. We bet the people running the balloting for the party leadership had some interesting stories.

The funny thing in Barrie is that nobody here seems to care that American-owned Molson-Coors (part owners of Ontario’s Beer Store) gave Brown $5,000 to aid his campaign. Yet there are Barrie residents who used to support the Barrie Colts hockey team who are quite annoyed that the Colts organization was also reported to have contributed $5,000.

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Fix policing by fixing police boards.

November 12, 2015 by Peter Lowry

It seems there was an attempt recently to get the Toronto Police Services Board thinking about reform of policing. It is reported that the board spent $200,000 of public money to have a management consulting firm report on suggestions for reform. It is likely that the money might have been better spent on finding members of the police services board who better understood their role as a board.

But the problem is that policing in Ontario is the responsibility of the provincial government. It is the responsibility of a government that has been ignoring the need for reform in policing for many decades. And the most serious problem is that the appointees to police services boards in our municipalities think they are some kind of super police instead of representatives of the public.

We used to watch an annual ritual here in Barrie when the chair of the Police Services Board brought the police budget to City Council and read them a summary. It is not that our councilors need to have things read to them. It was putting the imprimatur of the board on the police budget request. The Police Services Board would appear before council representing the police.

But who then represents the public? The low-key questioning of the police budget by the council members was always pro-forma at best. There was never an opportunity in that open forum to get at the real problems faced by the police or the opportunities for cost savings for the public. Council members would make their usual comments on the police budget and then forget the problems for another year.

With the technologies available to us today and the changing nature of crime in our society, we need to be challenging the police to find better ways to serve the public.

And it is that service that must be emphasized. With the three greatest blots on policing in Canada being the Winnipeg General Strike, the FLQ affair and the G-20 in Toronto, we need to recognize the fragility of our protection for human rights. And only last year the Conservative’s anti-terrorism bill tried to affix tiers to our citizenship.

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a basic document that needs constant support and strengthening. Maybe we need a special day every year just to remind us.

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Is politics really a team sport?

November 8, 2015 by Peter Lowry

In the Pearson-Trudeau era of Liberal politics in Canada the chief political apparatchik of the times was the later Senator Keith Davey. He was a friend and a mentor. He often told us that the greatest political failing in politics is loyalty. It was only after he departed into the fog of Alzheimer that we understood what he meant.

This thought comes to us when reading about one of the new federal Liberal cabinet members from Quebec who is a political neophyte. He considers his greatest challenge is to remember that politics is a team effort. Yes it is. What he also needs to understand is that the team effort does not prevent him from being true to himself.

This came to mind the other day when bantering with a well-known Liberal apparatchik from Toronto. He and an entourage from Queen’s Park had come to Barrie to help us poor rural townies with a judicial recount. Ours was the kind of light banter you might get into with someone you distrust. It was light but the words were cautious. He must have sensed the distrust. He ended the byplay with the comment “We are on the same side, you know.”

The reality is that we are not on the same side. That apparatchik is a key advisor to the Wynne Liberals at Queen’s Park. This writer regularly questions if Wynne’s Whigs are Liberals at all. Calling yourself a Liberal does not make you one. Being a Liberal requires certain standards in regards to human rights and concern for the individual in society. Liberalism might be something of a moving target but Premier Wynne and her gang seem to forget what they are in power to do.

And they dislike dissent. They do not like being challenged. They dance to their own music. It is a private club and nobody else is welcome. They revile and disassociate themselves from those who question their actions, interests and motives. At one time, we had many friends at Queen’s Park, people we respected and supported. No more.

The only reason Wynne’s government runs the store at Queen’s Park is because of the awful opposition. There are three parties to choose from. We think of them as worse, worser and worst. Ontario voters elected the Wynne Liberals last year in self defence.

The only effort that was close to being Liberal was their effort to improve on the Canada Pension Plan. Their hiking the minimum wage in Ontario by 25 cents to $11.25 per hour was a travesty. Nobody can live adequately on that wage in Ontario. Their selling off some of Hydro One is a Conservative plan that flies in the face of liberal logic. This is a government that listens only to Bay Street.

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Shrug this off Mother Goose!

November 1, 2015 by Peter Lowry

It seems that Ontario’s ruling Whigs are going to sell off a portion of Hydro One come hell or high water. Ontario voters are hearing of this continued determination after the newly appointed financial accountability officer for the province has warned that the province will be in even worse financial straits after the sale of the crown utility. Mother Goose—in the person of Premier Kathleen Wynne—has been reported as merely shrugging off the advice of her own appointee. She is treating the person paid to advise the Legislature in these matters as cavalierly as she treats the Ontario opposition parties.

There might be a lot of reasons to ignore the new Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader but she should remember that the idea of selling off Hydro One originated with the Conservative government of former Premier Mike Harris. There is memory in that party of all the work done at the time to prepare Hydro One and that memory might just include the reasons why it did not happen.

The Ontario New Democrats have never been in favour of selling off any of Hydro One. The electric distribution utility is a critical part of the ability of government to attract and support industry in the province. And putting the utility in a position where it will be under constant pressure by investors to increase rates is not a smart industrial strategy.

In fact, selling off one of the province’s Golden Geese is neither good planning nor does it make long-term sense—and that was what the financial accountability officer noted. There is no easy way for the government to replace any or all of the roughly $700 million per year that Hydro One has been turning over to the government.

It is not like cash cows such as Ontario Lottery and Gaming (OLG) and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) where the province has to keep regulatory control as well as a majority of the profits. Those profits are sizeable for the province no matter who owns the distribution and sales outlets. And OLG and the LCBO have many pieces and parts that can be sold off to a myriad of entrepreneurs to make even more money each year for the province.

Mother Goose needs to seriously learn that the care and handling of the province’s assets is part of the management of the province. It is a trust, not a playground. If she cannot handle the task there are lots of other incompetents who want a crack at it.

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What Wynne machine?

October 21, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Giving Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne any credit for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s win in Ontario the other day is like suggesting that a windmill helped create the wind. There is little question but that politically Ontario’s premier needs Justin Trudeau far more than he needs her.

In the appearances the Ontario premier made in support of the federal Liberals during the campaign, the people were there to support the candidates. The premier was not even window dressing. She was just another huckster.

In the coming month, the new Prime Minister will be asking the premiers from across the country to meet with him to plan a joint approach to the Paris meeting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference at the end of November. If he can achieve unanimity with the premiers, the world will see a surprisingly different Canada at the conference.

What Wynne wants mostly from Trudeau is for the federal government to take over the file on an improved Canada Pension Plan. While any change will require the approval of the other provinces, Trudeau and Wynne can double team to make the sale. Despite the Ontario-only version of this being much further along than any federal involvement, Wynne will have had more thorough analysis of costs and will want to bow out.

Wynne’s government is also counting on relief from the federal government on infrastructure spending. The other premiers will be competing with her for the money. As much as she might think that Ontario should get to the head of the line, there is really little Wynne can offer Trudeau politically. She has her own problems.

The honeymoon is long over between Ontario voters and Wynne’s Whigs. While the opposition will continue to scratch the scabs of the gas plant fiasco, inflame the rural arguments against clean energy, Wynne’s people are doing more harm to themselves with the wrong turn on Hydro One. Privatizing and selling off part of Hydro One will be the Sword of Damocles hanging over the Ontario Liberals.

We need to separate Wynne and Trudeau in our minds. They are not the same kind of Liberals. There is always the doubt that Wynne is liberal. We know for sure that she is no leader.

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Premier Wynne’s toughest sale: Liberals.

September 30, 2015 by Peter Lowry

The Ontario Legislature is back in session and Premier Kathleen Wynne seems to be having little trouble with the whiny little boy from Barrie now heading the provincial Conservatives or his provincial NDP counterpart Andrea Horwath. Where Wynne is getting the hard shots is from Liberals across Ontario who cannot understand her determination to sell off the bulk of Ontario’s power distribution system Hydro One. This was something that the discredited former Conservative Premier Mike Harris wanted to do, not the Liberals.

Maybe it was Mike Harris who gave the idea to Wynne’s banker, expert in everything, Ed Clark. In setting Clark up as the expert in divesting the province of its golden egg layers, Wynne pretty well told him “hands off the Liquor Control Board (LCBO) stores but anything else can go.” And what she was told by him was that she had to do something about beer and that there was money to be had from Hydro One.

With total equity of about $7 billion, sales of $6 billion and profits on operations of $800 million, Hydro One would supposedly bring a better price than the LCBO. The business of the LCBO has assets of just $120 million, sales of almost $5 billion and profits of $1.66 billion. You hardly need to know much about balance sheets to realize that the LCBO is one of the most profitable businesses in the province.

But the difference between selling each of these assets is the difference in the revenue stream after selling. If you sell 60 per cent of Hydro One, you lose 60 per cent of the revenues. If you sell 100 per cent of the LCBO, you get to continue to collect the provincial booze taxes and related revenues. And if you sell off the LCBO in its individual parts and locations, you will get a heck of a lot more money than the books indicate. This is the only golden goose that can keep on laying golden eggs after a very sumptuous goose dinner.

And what the public gets is more convenient sales locations, better prices and better service when buying booze. It is a win-win situation for everybody concerned. The province could even let grocery stores bid for the right to sell beer, wine and other alcohol products. That way the market can determine what is convenient.

But all you get from the sale of part of Hydro One is constant pressure on the newly privatized company to get approval for rate increases to increase shareholder return. And all the public will get is less transparency from a private company and rising hydro rates.

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Time for a new navigator at Queen’s Park.

September 20, 2015 by Peter Lowry

The other day Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa was quoted as saying “We are trying to navigate through this thing.” He was talking about selling beer in grocery stores. Frankly if he is still trying to navigate this seemingly thorny issue, the Ontario Liberals need a new navigator.

It might even help if this new navigator knew something about merchandising, grocery stores, the beer business and what Ontario citizens want.

And would someone please silence that Greek chorus from the beer store union? They are saying that a third of the people leaving a grocery store with beer will be drunk. They must be taking advertising 101 and the ‘Big Lie’ from the Harper Conservatives.

But please do not take any lip from that jerk from Barrie posing as the new leader of the opposition. Mind you that jerk is going to keep the Wynne Liberals in power as long as he runs(?) the Tories and Ms. Horwath runs what is left of the provincial NDP.

The point here is that nobody seems to understand is that government is not about running things: it is about serving the needs of the citizens. That includes important things like health care, education, highways, the energy supply and municipal and provincial policing. Selling beer is an incidental. There are some blue stocking people who do not even drink beer; what right do they have to a say? The majority of people who want to buy beer just want greater convenience in their purchasing.

And having beer available in a third of the province’s large grocery stores is the furthest thing from convenient. When you really want to buy a six-pack is when you walk down to the corner convenience store. Did you read that—the operative word was ‘convenience.’ Mr. Sousa should take heed.

What is really galling people right now is you have a banker as finance minister and you have a banker telling him how to sell beer, That is something like the dumb leading the stupid. To make matters worse, they probably both drink single-malt scotch.

And do not get us going about the ignorance of selling part of Hydro One. That is just another way to screw Ontario citizens on energy costs. Sousa and Wynne are damn lucky there is a federal election going on and we do not have time to really give them Hell!

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Building better bigotry.

September 11, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Growing up in Toronto after the Second World War, we always had ready lessons in the problems faced by the children of refugees and immigrants. The children were the rapid adapters of the language and culture they found. They sought acceptance by their peer groups among native-born children. And, in turn, we saw the conflicts created between the old-country parents and their children as the children became more acclimatized and familiar with North American ways.

The tragedy of these cultural conflicts cannot be better expressed than the current conflict between Ontario’s school system and the densely packed immigrant population in an area such as Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park. Having lived in that community when first married and before buying our first home in North York, we know the area. The dramatic difference in Thorncliffe today is the once run-of-the-mill North-American shopping mall in the centre of that mass of apartment buildings now has many of the characteristics of an Arab souk (bazaar).

While many new immigrants like to live where they have the support of so many others, it can cause serious problems. Their children are getting far less opportunity to interface with children born in this country. Their integration is being retarded. It is harder to find the acceptance they need and want. Estrangement can often build resentment.

And now they are being used as pawns in a tug of war between their parent’s and the Ontario school system over sex education. The parents’ objections to the relatively tame discussion points for teachers in the health curriculum are perceived as being based more on ignorance than any religious grounds. The children need the education to cope in this country. They are not living in the old country. Nobody expects the parents to integrate easily into this foreign culture but they have to allow their children to adapt. This country and its culture are a package deal. It is based on tolerance.

What is wrong here is that without the language needed to understand what they hear, the children will get their sex education on the street from less reliable sources. In this freer society they can be more vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. These are just children who want to be like their classmates while their parents appear to be used by others’ to further political agendas.

And speaking of political agendas, you should not wait for the federal Conservatives to rush to the aid of the Syrian and Iraqi refugees flooding into Europe. They will work up a few crocodile tears for appearances but the last thing their extreme right-wing Conservative supporters want is a large number of Muslims impacting the demographics in this country.

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Lessons from Simcoe North.

September 4, 2015 by Peter Lowry

The Ontario Liberals did it to themselves last night. Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minions ran a pathetic campaign to let Ontario’s embarrassment have a seat in the legislature. Last we heard, Conservative Leader Patrick Brown had over 50 per cent of the votes cast in the Simcoe North by-election. It was not Ontario’s finest hour.

It was a foolish decision to have a provincial by-election during the over-stretched federal election. It was a weak and ill-considered campaign in a little understood electoral district. It was a Conservative spare-no-expense campaign versus small-town parsimony. It was a jogging mouth-breather against a jogging granny. It was country mouse versus city mouse.

And it was an “Oops, human error” when the Conservatives contravened the election law and ran a scurrilous attack ad in a local paper after all further advertising was forbidden. Mr. Brown never cared for rules anyway. He appears to think they do not apply to him.

He is believed to have broken the rules by paying for party memberships in the Conservative leadership contest. Nobody seemed to care about that. He won the leadership by signing up thousands of recent immigrants from India. It was just a game to him. It was not politics; it smelled more like fraud. And we have no idea who paid for it.

Visually in the riding, the by-election campaign was a mass of Conservative signs and a few pathetic little Liberal and NDP signs. And then some Queen’s Park Liberal genius decided to run a radio campaign. In a socially conservative area of Ontario, the Liberals ran ads accusing Patrick Brown of being socially conservative.

It was really too bad that the riding did not have the choice of a more dynamic Liberal candidate. Now a three-time loser, the Liberal candidate can enjoy his retirement.

What was really funny in this ill-considered by-election was the transition of the new Conservative leader for Ontario. This small-town boy who did virtually nothing in nine years in Ottawa has always looked small town and nerdy. It looks like someone has taken him in hand. They got the boy a Toronto haircut, burned his old clothes and got him some decent ones. And yet he hardly needed those trappings for this campaign.

And now this boy is coming to Queen’s Park. There, he will have speech writers. There, he will have handlers. There will be a female aide at his elbow to dispel the comments on him being a bachelor. It all means the phony war is over in Ontario. The phony Progressive Conservative leader is in place.

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