Category: Provincial Politics

Christine Elliott: Thank you for your service.

by Peter Lowry

The Member of the Ontario Legislature for Whitby-Oshawa has resigned. Christine Elliott has served the riding well for the past nine years. She was a progressive in Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party. For the second time, she had lost the contest for the leadership of the party to an extremist. She was too decent a person to want to again serve under a leader she could neither respect nor support.

And why should any decent person want to serve under a leader who blatantly usurped the party leadership under weak, unthinking and unsupervised rules. Patrick Brown did not win the leadership of the party with a majority of party members. He won the leadership with more people who knew nothing of the honour of a political party that had served Ontario well over the past 148 years as either government or opposition.

The Ontario Conservatives might not always have been progressive but they were a party that believed in a strong public school system, building hospitals, libraries, roads and bridges. They were not a party of ideologues until the unfortunate experience of Premier Michael Harris at the turn of this century. Ideology cannot replace a caring and responsible government and Mr. Harris failed Ontario.

But when the federal Conservative Party was taken over by the Reform/Alliance under Stephen Harper, the party fell on hard times. The federal party was ruled from the top and lost touch with its roots. The Ontario party was among the provincial organizations that withered, lost members and direction. By 2009, the provincial party was reduced to a small remnant of its former strength and an ideologue named Tim Hudak was chosen to lead it back to the government benches.

But the ideology was wasted on Ontario voters. Hudak’s second failed election was guaranteed when he precipitously announced at the Barrie Country Club that he would fire 100,000 civil servants in Ontario. The first to jump up and congratulate him on this brilliant decision was the uninspiring MP for Barrie, Patrick Brown. Hudak not only lost the election with that promise but was forced to resign by his caucus.

And it was the sorry state of the party that allowed Patrick Brown to win the party leadership with close to 40,000 sign-ups who were recent immigrants from India. Most knew nothing of Canadian politics. And most of them were likely not yet citizens.

Maybe Christine Elliott’s legacy to all political parties is that we should restrict voting on candidates and leaders. These critical decisions in our society should only be made by citizens who are eligible voters.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

In the heat of an August by-election.

by Peter Lowry

The wife is usually the reasoning member of this household. She is the peacemaker but not when it comes to Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown. She is no fan of his. When driving up to Rama Casino the other day for dinner, she saw the elections signs in Simcoe North provincial riding for the September 3 by-election. She became so enraged at the volume, size and intrusiveness of the Conservative signs that if we had just slowed a bit, she would have been out of the car tearing them down.

But someone else was not quite as constrained. It was a day later that we heard someone had been methodically tearing down both provincial by-election and federal Conservative election signs along Highway 12 at the north end of the riding. It makes you wonder if someone can be just as mad at Patrick Brown as they are at Prime Minister Harper.

Not that Patrick Brown is undeserving of condemnation. We think it might have even been an Ontario Conservative carrying out the mayhem for the way Brown cheated to win the Ontario party leadership. We had already explained to more than enough irate Ontario Conservatives that Brown might not have broken any law. His ethics might have smelled but we know of no law he broke in cheating his fellow Conservatives. Whether he paid the membership fees for most of the almost 40,000 people from the Sub-Continent is only a matter for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. If the party complained formally, just maybe there might be grounds for a charge of fraud but that would be for a judge to decide.

Having lived in Barrie while Patrick Brown has been the world’s most useless Member of Parliament we were initially amused by his going for the brass ring of the Ontario Conservative party leadership. When he produced 40,000 new memberships mainly from India, we were less than impressed. And since then we have heard from friends from that part of the world just how he did it. We realize now that the cost of that swindle was probably well over half a million and we would sure like to know where it came from.

The day is supposed to be long gone when the rich could buy a politician. As Mr. Brown can tell you there are no laws applied to leadership contests. The parties make rules and they are rarely enforced. It is the last stronghold for the cheater and the scoundrel.

But kicking down election signs is still vandalism and we are opposed to that. Our problem is with Premier Wynne allowing a fiasco of a by-election campaign in the summer months and in the middle of the federal election. The Liberal campaign for the by-election is pathetic and a disgrace. Liberals in Simcoe North provincial riding are embarrassed and feel they have been betrayed.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

When is selling a dozen beers news?

by Peter Lowry

On a hot day in the summer, a good publicist can sell editors on some very thin stories. Take the other day when the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) introduced 12-packs of beer in some test stores. No longer does the veteran beer drinker in those neighbourhoods have to go to those disgusting Beer Stores to get a cold 12-pack of his or her favourite suds.

And besides, in modern Beer Stores to day, where you have to go into the cold-room to search for the right brand, you can get pneumonia on the side. Walking from a 28 degree (Celsius) day into a warehouse for chilled beer can be a drop of maybe 20 degrees. You can come out severely chilled. You have to work on their sympathy to get one of the properly dressed employees to go in and get your box of beer for you.

And that is why the LCBO thought they could one-up the Beer Store by moving into 12-pack territory. In most liquor stores, you only have to reach into a cooler to get your cold carton of beer. (The LCBO stores that have switched to cold rooms for their beer sales do not get our beer business.)

And beside, the LCBO gives us Air Miles. It might not be by very much but that makes the LCBO cheaper than the rotten Beer Barons’ boutiques.

This all comes up by way of being a bit tired of just talking about the federal election. The province also provides political entertainment. We hear so many derogatory remarks about Premier Wynne these days that we have reached a point where we almost want to defend her. Well almost.

But her position on booze sales in this province is untenable. To make the big grocery chains richer selling booze is an affront to the voters. We could have made convenience stores cleaner, more profitable and better regulated and Wynne ignores the opportunity.

Mind you those clueless union people who work for the LCBO need to smarten up in their advertising. Have you heard the radio ads about all the people who will be leaving the grocery parking lots drunk? Those kinds of scare tactics should embarrass the entire damn union. We always thought well of that union until we heard that silly ad.

Maybe we need to strengthen our campaign to sell the LCBO. Up until now, we wanted the stores to keep the union in place.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Discovering Ontario.

by Peter Lowry

When Babel-on-the-Bay publishes its Morning Line on the federal election in early September, much will hinge on Ontario. With more than a third of the seats in parliament at play in this one province, national parties worry most about their position here. And watching from Barrie, Ontario, we have the catbird seat.

And what we really love about the current feud between Prime Minister Harper and Premier Kathleen Wynne is we can let them go at it. We do not like either one. One of the reasons for their feud is that they are too much alike. He is a bully and she is always ready for a fight. Like Harper, Wynne might not be particularly good at her job but in the last provincial election, she was the best we could find. In a field of nobodies, you have to pick somebody.

Luckily, we do not have that problem this October. Despite the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair’s weaker showing in the leaders’ debate, the voters now know that they do have options. The Conservative savaging of Liberal Justin Trudeau’s youth is not going to work.

But by fighting with the some of the premiers, Steven Harper thinks he can gain some advantage. Mind you only a bully would pick on two women and a fellow Conservative. And picking on Rachel Notley in Alberta is just plain silly. The Alberta voters are still on a honeymoon with their surprise NDP premier. Complaining about her tax plans at this stage will do Harper no good.

While we have known the Conservative Premier Paul Davis of Newfoundland and Labrador is no fan of Prime Minister Harper, you would think that Harper would try to cool the animosity during his too long election campaign. It is just that anyone who threatens Newfoundlanders’ fishing rights is picking a fight they cannot win.

But the stupidest fight of all is with Wynne in Ontario. It’s hardly that the jogging granny is Ontario’s favourite pin-up girl. Nobody is under the illusion that the woman is a Liberal. She won the Liberal leadership under a cloud, picks candidates for the wrong reasons and casually says one thing one day and something else the next.

In a spate of anti-liberal programs such as selling off a chunk of Hydro One and making the Weston family richer selling booze, the one good effort is at helping Ontario residents with their pensions. So this does not sit well with the Prime Minister. He picked the fight by not being willing to go along. It was no skin off his big nose. This is his ideology speaking and she can call him any name she wants.

Harper, of course is kidding himself by thinking he can do as well in Ontario as the last election. His emphasis on tar sands exploitation robbed Ontario of manufacturing capability to the extent that we are unable to do anything other than throw natural resources at a falling market and falling loonie.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Barrie’s bashful bachelor wins over Wynne.

by Peter Lowry

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne must make her daily decisions with her Ouija Board. You would think she could make decisions and stick to them but no such luck. She has now decided that it is no skin off her nose if Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown has a by-election in the middle of a federal election campaign. It seems to prove how little she really knows about real politics.

Wynne spoiled a perfectly good long summer weekend when she announced in Penetanguishene that she had recanted and would allow an immediate by-election in Simcoe North riding to let Patrick Brown run for a seat in the legislature. It was an arrogant amateur performance and convinced even more Ontario voters that she does not know what she is doing.

To be fair, she obviously does not know Patrick Brown the way people in Barrie know him. He seems to have Toronto handlers now who are working on getting the small town out a small-town boy. They have got him a Toronto haircut and the right stuff to slick it down. They have obviously burned his cheap suits and stuck a good-looking blonde at his elbow. Their only problem is that they have not had time to get his adenoids out. He is still a nerdy mouth breather.

But with a good-looking blonde at his elbow, maybe nobody will notice.

Mind you, Wynne’s epiphany on letting the little nerd have his by-election might have included her revelation on the Liberal opponent in the by-election. Whoever it is to be, he or she will have very little time to convince the voters that they are the second coming. The sympathy in this area will be to get rid of Brown and let him go to Queen’s Park. He did nothing in Ottawa for nine years. Why not let him go and do nothing at Queen’s Park?

Brown claims that he needs to be in the Ontario Legislature as soon as possible so that he can ask questions of Premier Wynne. Yes, he will ask questions; when someone writes them for him.

But his campaign will certainly screw up the plans of all party’s candidates in the federal ridings that now share pieces of the old riding of Simcoe North. Ontario has not redistributed their ridings to being the same as federal boundaries. Wynne does not worry about that. She hardly worries if the voters are confused. Ontario’s jogging granny also spends time confusing Liberals.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Ontario’s grannies mud wrestle with Brown.

by Peter Lowry

If you are going to mud wrestle with a political opponent, you had better like the taste of mud. Yet even we are surprised that Ontario’s two political grannies—Premier Kathleen Wynne and her deputy MPP Deb Matthews—are wasting their time in the mud with new Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown. The bashful Barrie bachelor likes the taste of mud and he is slinging it today because the Liberal grannies will not call a by-election for him.

This is not too say that Conservative MPP Garfield Dunlop in Simcoe North is not chortling over the troubles he has caused his former leader. Dunlop waited until it was too short a time before the upcoming federal election to announce his resignation. Rather than cause confusion, the Queen’s Park Liberals said the provincial by-election can wait until after the October 19 federal election.

That left the impoverished Brown gnashing his teeth. He has to spend another three or four months without a paycheque. He has lived mainly off the taxpayer since he first ran for Barrie City Council when he was 22-years old. And for someone used to the highlife of a bachelor MP in Ottawa—where he was making $160,000 plus lavish expenses, Brown must be feeling the pinch as he—supposedly—eats at soup kitchens.

And when you get no quarter from the Liberal grannies, it can really tick you off. Mind you, those grannies are enjoying the scene. It is hardly a secret that very few of the provincial Conservative caucus are in a rush to see Brown in the Legislature. The surprise winner of the Ontario Conservative Party’s leadership sweeps in May has a do-nothing reputation from nine years as an MP in Ottawa and hardly stayed within the Marquess of Queensberry Rules in signing up some 40,000 new members—mainly immigrants from the Indian sub-continent. And, as undemocratic and unfair as it might have been, it was highly questionable if it was done within Ontario Conservative Party rules.

Garfield Dunlop will hardly be the last of the old guard Progressive Conservatives who do not want to serve under the bashful Barrie bachelor. We expect that Christine Elliott will resign now that she will not face the humiliation of that twerp running in her and her late husband’s former provincial riding.

So we can get rid of Stephen Harper in October and then we can help the Simcoe North voters to get rid of that nebbish Brown in November. Democracy can still win.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Dunlop does it up Brown.

by Peter Lowry

When a respected member of the Ontario Legislature resigns his seat so the new party leader can contest the by-election there, the party owes him something in return. But Simcoe North MPP Garfield Dunlop is the real winner as he will not have to serve under Ontario Progressive Conservative Party Leader Patrick Brown. It is very much a win-win situation for Dunlop.

It has been no secret that Garfield Dunlop had been watching Patrick Brown’s embarrassing performance as a Member of Parliament for Barrie with growing distaste. He has made no bones about Brown’s lack of effectiveness in Ottawa. It was obvious to all people in the area that Brown had no future in a Stephen Harper government.

The gentleman that he is, Dunlop had all the right words ready when announcing his decision to Conservative Party supporters in the Town of Coldwater in Simcoe North electoral district. With Brown there to accept the offer, the two men might have appeared to be friendly but sometimes you have to hide your real feelings in politics.

Back when Brown announced his provincial leadership bid, Dunlop told Post Media Network that “He (Brown) knows nothing about provincial politics.” Dunlop added that “He’d be the last guy I’d choose.” Being the party supporter that he is, Dunlop said at the Coldwater love-fest that he was wrong to have made the comments.

The Member of the Legislature for Simcoe North had no idea when Brown announced his candidacy how the younger man was going to win the Ontario leadership. He was probably not aware of the close relationship between Brown and Minister of National Defence and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney. It is Kenney who has been leading the drive to win over new immigrants to the Conservative Party for the past nine years.

While Brown had his ties to the pro-life organizations—and ultimately had MPP Monte McNaughton’s pro-life supporters as well—he could never have won with just Ontario PC Party members. It was the ties to recent immigrants from India who support Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who he signed up as members and swamped the existing Conservative membership. With 40,000 sign-ups who might or might not have paid their own membership fees, there was no way to stop Brown.

We will see further erosion of the long term stalwarts of the party if Brown continues too long as leader. The greatest favour the voters of Simcoe North could do for the Conservatives is to reject Brown in the by-election.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Why the enthusiasm for cap ‘n trade?

by Peter Lowry

Learning about cap-and-trade carbon pricing is not as easy as you might think. If you ever get serious about our world condition, you need to look into schemes such as those proposed by our politicians. Babel-on-the-Bay went on the quest recently when California Governor Jerry Brown, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne got together to fight climate change. You have to wonder what those three are trying to pull off.

While Google can be helpful in your quest for knowledge as long as you remember that environmentalists will call it a carbon tax but politicians consider ‘tax’ a dirty word. That is why you will never hear ‘carbon tax’ from politicians. Politicians also like to set targets—and the further in the future the better. That was why everyone was laughing at the last G-7 meeting when Stephen Harper seriously said that they should set a target for the year 2100. They only wished they could!

Talking to environmentalists about this also reveals some pipe dreams. The main problem is in determining which industries have to have limits set on their carbon (or other greenhouse gas) emissions. It seems the politicians will decide. Mind you the only experts on these emissions work for the industries and they advise the politicians.

Next you have to set prices of how much per metric tonne industries need to pay to the government if they do not meet the target (usually about 10 per cent less than last year) that the politicians have set. You can have a series of auctions to set a price as they are doing in California or you can let the politicians decide. Industries who are not meeting their targets are also free to buy allowances from companies that are exceeding their emissions targets.

And nobody seems to know if shutting down the plant for six or seven weeks and laying off employees for the period can also be counted in the reduction of emissions.

There is some rotten timing here as U.S. Steel has already bought and shut down Hamilton’s major steel works. And is Inco’s big stack in Coppercliffe (Sudbury) still pumping out tonnes of pollution? Mind you Ontario has already shut down our coal-burning electric generating plants.

California only has 600 facilities emitting more than 25,000 metric tonnes of carbon per year each. Between Ontario and Quebec in that category we are likely to be talking a few oil refineries, cement plants and large factories but if it is more than 50 between the two provinces, the Harper Conservatives have not done the damage to our industry that we suspect.

Since the provinces and the state are the ones benefitting from all this money being paid for missing emissions targets, we can understand why they are so interested. The California government expects revenue of about a billion (US) dollars from this ‘environmental’ program. Ontario and Quebec will have to settle for much less.

But we should bear in mind that Ontario and Quebec citizens are a much greater source of carbon emissions than our industries. It will only be when we start to measure our own carbon footprint and do something about it that we can start to really do something about global warming.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

The problem with problem gambling.

by Peter Lowry

Usually in diatribes against the sin of gambling, you get disjointed, uninformed and confused information based on bible studies, imagination and urban legends. It was interesting the other day to read an objection from someone with a surfeit of supposedly scientific information. A gentleman named Rob Simpson signed the article. He is reputed to have spent ten years as the chief executive of the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre. That meant the Ontario government provided about $3 million per year for his organization to arrange for professional studies of problem gambling.

These studies would probably have shown that problem gambling could affect up to 3.2 per cent of the population from a mild to serious degree. Mr. Simpson does not mention that finding in his lengthy opinion piece in the Toronto Star. Nor does he mention that Ontario has far more serious concerns with alcohol, drug and tobacco addictions. And it should be noted that the Ontario government makes even more money from alcohol and tobacco addictions than it does from gambling.

Mr. Simpson considers just five concerns in his lengthy article damning expansion of Woodbine’s racing and slots to a full casino resort operation.

  • His first objection is that the expansion is “massive.” He obviously is not an observer of what has happened in Las Vegas since ‘Bugsy’ Seigel built the Flamingo. You would think the Vegas slogan should be ‘Grosser is Greater.’ If we are going to have all this foolishness about having just one casino in the Greater Toronto Area, it is going to have to be big enough to handle the traffic. And one casino resort operation is hardly going to cause more than a ripple in Toronto’s leisure and entertainment sector.
  • The second objection is that the casino would get most of its revenue from the 6 million Greater Toronto Area residents. Why this is an objection is not really clear. He points out that gambling revenue is down in places like Atlantic City and Las Vegas. That is a really profound observation when you consider that the world economy has not been overly healthy for some time. Mind you the new Woodbine complex will not be in full operation next week either. Mr. Simpson is obviously not an economist.
  • The third objection he raises is that problem gambling is a problem. We could ignore that observation but he goes on to tell us that slots and table games are the most harmful. And we always thought we were trapped by gambling when engaged in pitching pennies with our lunch money during recess in public school. Are lotteries and bingo less harmful? Is that poker game with friends not friendly enough?
  • Our favourite was the fourth objection. He makes the statement that gambling is inefficient. He complains that only 35 per cent of gambling revenues are turned over to government. Would you like to invest in a billion dollar enterprise that returns 35 per cent net profit? And at the same time he complains that the local burghers will only get 2 per cent of gross revenues for finding it in their municipality. That is found money and is hardly chump change.
  •  And he wraps it up by saying nobody wants the casino anyway. Since there are many investors quite willing to gamble hundreds of millions on this venture, he should let them. It is highly unlikely that Mr. Simpson would have the last laugh.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Outsiders need not apply.

by Peter Lowry

If there was ever a closed shop in Ontario, it is that bunch of bozos ruling the roost down at the Ontario Legislature today. As an insider in all of this, you have to be embarrassed by it. While we might have fallen a bit out of favour over the years, we can still remember the day when you could hold your head high as a Liberal at Queen’s Park.

What annoying act of pomposity that is stuck in the craw today is the permanent appointment of TD Bank’s Ed Clark as grand poobah of everything important at Queen’s Park. This is the guy who thinks the Weston Family Trust should sell beer in Ontario. Nobody elected Clark to anything. With all of that talent concentrated in her office, can we expect Premier Wynne to be send the MPPs to collective farms to earn their keep?

Ed Clark’s appointment as permanent chair of the Premier’s advisory council on selling off all the government assets, reminds us of that really stupid television commercial being run about Justin Trudeau applying for the job of prime minister. You wonder what those supercilious jerks would say when they considered the other two applications.

But did anyone else get a chance to apply for Ed Clark’s job? Was the position advertised? Are there any qualifications required? Do you have to be an ex-banker? We already have an ex-banker in the finance job. His name is Charles Sousa. Obviously Premier Wynne does not trust Sousa. Why does she not fire Sousa as finance minister and give that job to Ed Clark? We expect he needs to be elected to hold that position.

But look at all Ed Clark has accomplished while filling in as a temp worker for Ms. Wynne. He has got Hydro One poised for the big rip-off. The Liberal government has removed all over-sight from the deal and is now prepared to make those selling the stock to the public richer than they were before. All we know for sure is that the hydro user is going to end up paying for everything. Who else would pay for this mistake?

And, oh yes, we should not forget the three card monte of beer sales in Ontario. It is only one in three of the so-called super-grocery-and-everything-else stores in Ontario that will be selling beer. Why it is one in three must be to keep the public guessing which ones have beer and provide some leverage for the recycling people at the old beer stores.

Yah, we know. The whole beer and wine and alcohol sales business in Ontario is an out-of-touch mess. So is the government of Ontario.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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