Provincial Politics – Page 98

The people wall is uncomfortable.

April 19, 2015 by Peter Lowry

It is coming to a point where politicians will need to use videos of the right types of people behind them. It would certainly be better than the uncertainty of dragging in whoever is available to make up the backdrop for political announcements. It is the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa that goes overboard in this type of thing. His mixed-race backdrops seem to never miss a skin color to pander to.

What brings this to mind was an announcement in Barrie the other day by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. Desperate for a backdrop for her announcement, she had to settle for Transport Minister Steven Del Duca and Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman. These two were not the best of backdrops. Del Duca looked bored as usual and the Barrie Mayor looked a little antsy as though he was eager for a washroom break. They never said anything on air in the clip that was used.

Premier Wynne took all the credit for her announcement of the not too secret effort to have two-way, all-day GO service to and from Barrie and Toronto in the next five years. While there was specific talk about the problems of twining the tracks in some sections, there was no mention to reporters of converting GO to electricity to provide much faster service for commuters.

The Premier then went on to the Flying Monkeys Brewery here in Barrie where they serve their excellent product and have washrooms suitable for the Mayor. Since the Premier is being so nice to craft brewers these days, she might as well get her free drinks while she can. The Flying Monkeys might not yet be aware of the new tax of a loonie for every two-four that will be part of letting some grocery stores sell their beer. Hopefully one or two of our local grocery stores will be able to sell the product.

There was no people wall needed at the brewery. The Premier has pretty well worn out her welcome with the news media with all her backtracking and backfilling on the subject of beer, wine and spirits.

These people walls for Premier Wynne are usually organized by the local provincial Party association. Mr. Del Duca was there because GO is part of his provincial ministry. At least the premier’s office thought to let the mayor know they were coming.

But the provincial Liberal organization in Barrie seems to be run by a very elite cabal and maybe all of them were busy last Friday.

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‘Diplomat’ Brown and his friend Narendra Modi.

April 17, 2015 by Peter Lowry

What is wrong with Canada’s foreign relations is more than explained by the friendship of India Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Patrick Brown MP. Yes, that is Patrick Brown, the most useless member of the Conservative back bench and the candidate for the leadership of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party. With probably less than 50 people in his electoral district from India, Patrick Brown must have been left among the final MP draftees for a country on the friendship committee.

Brown got India. The air flights there are gruelling. The food there is, well, foreign. You can imagine that India was nobody’s first choice. Pakistan must have been added because nobody wanted it either. You have to admit though that where others see hardship, Brown must have seen lemonade.

With more than 400,000 newcomers to Ontario from the sub-continent, Brown had no problem swamping the Ontario PCs existing membership. It makes him the frontrunner in the current provincial leadership contest.

But what do you think a wily Indian politician such as Prime Minister Modi would want from a nebbish like Patrick Brown? What Brown can be is a direct connection to Canada’s Prime Minister Harper. Modi needed a reliable source of uranium for India’s nuclear energy and weapons program. He was able to get around the concerns and caution of Canada’s diplomatic corps by using the Brown connection.

With more than 1.2 billion people, India is the most populous democracy in the world. It is a country rife with poverty, political corruption, misogynist attitudes, sectarian violence and religious extremism. And Mr. Modi has been of little help in solving these problems as he drives for continued, strong growth in India’s gross domestic product. His right wing attitudes have been read as condoning ongoing religious intolerance and strife.

India is an extremely complex country with many pressures. It requires the careful analysis of people trained in diplomatic skills, not the heavy-handed wants of a nerdy small-town lawyer from Barrie, Ontario. Nor does it need the Prime Minister of India’s blessing the signing up of some 40,000 immigrants from the sub-continent to help Brown win the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leadership.

Of course Prime Minister Harper has no objection. MPs such as Brown are a dime a dozen. All he was ever used for was his vote. What the Ontario Tories will use him for is a very good question.

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Whining about Premier Wynne and wine.

April 16, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Once again with feelings folks! We just found out from Ontario’s official newspaper the Toronto Star that the Ontario budget will not include selling good wine in grocery stores. We have been betrayed. We have been used. We have been had. This is unforgiveable.

And what’s the excuse?

It seems there are international trade agreements and “other” challenges. Okay, it sounds like the problems are those created by politicians and that means that our present politicians will know how to eliminate them. Nobody expects the grocery stores to be stocking beer and wine until later in the year anyway. There is lots of time to fix the politicians’ problems if they just put their minds to it.

There is no rationale to have beer in grocery stores and not have some decent wines available at the same time. What kind of rubes do they take us Ontarians for?

That plonk that is being sold along with a few Ontario wines in grocery store kiosks today is a disgrace. It is for people who do not normally drink wine—and probably should not when that is what they get. There is absolutely no excuse for those cheap assembled beverages that those kiosks have been foisting on unsuspecting people who do not have time to go to the Liquor Control Board store.

After various trips around Niagara and Prince Edward County, we can tell you that there are actually some very decent wines produced in Ontario today. And we can also report that the Niagara ice wines are liquid gold that should be saved for those who can really appreciate them.

And on the subject of booze—standing at the back of an LCBO store, you realized why all this time we have hated shopping at the big LCBO stores. It is only when standing at the back where you can see the entire store you can see the region of wine you are looking for. These stores had been deliberately designed backward with the aisles on the diagonal. Going into another of the large stores the other day, they were busy changing the store around. When asked, the manager explained that the store was being changed again so that the aisles were at right angles to the cashiers. That grocery store style arrangement will work better.

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No Cap ‘n Gown for Premier Wynne’s Cap ‘n Trade.

April 15, 2015 by Peter Lowry

If you really want to screw something up, you just have to wait long enough for Ontario’s Premier Kathleen Wynne to get involved. When you know that your opponents will be on the attack as soon as you announce a new program, a little preplanning is a good idea. Ontario’s Premier seems to always respond like a deer caught in the headlights.

In this Cap-and-Trade announcement, Ontario could not ask for better partners in the deal than Quebec and California. They are two of the largest jurisdictions in North America with Cap-and-Trade in place. They have a wide breadth of industries and companies that can use the scheme and benefit by it. They know the objections and they have tried some solutions. There is no reason they would not share their experience.

And there is nothing wrong with coming up with some realistic made in Ontario solutions. You have the Ontario Conservatives whining about Cap-and-Trade being nothing more than a new tax and the federal Conservatives telling us they know better how to run it (sic). At least the Ontario New Democrats admitted that they did not understand it. That puts them even with about 90 per cent of the population.

But what were Wynne’s people thinking when they made the announcement with only vague promises of transparency and reinvestment of the money collected in environmental projects? This obviously did not include the suggestion that the Ontario program could be revenue neutral.

But nobody would believe that. What would be smarter would be to move up the electrification of the Greater Toronto Area GO trains. People would still bitch about the price of gas but they were going to do that anyway. What would be really smart would be to buy the electricity for the GO trains from Quebec with Cap-and-Trade money. When you are actually seen to be putting Cap-and-Trade money into elimination of greenhouse gas emissions and keeping the money in Canada, you get a chance at earning a few Brownie points.

And if Ontario really wants to take advantage of this opportunity, it could make a deal with Quebec to create the high-speed electric train corridor from Windsor to Quebec City. This would not only slow the amounts we are spending on fossil fuels for planes to handle more and more passengers on that route but would be a tremendous boon for business and tourism.

As you can see, Cap-and-Trade is an opportunity that smart politicians can take advantage of and stupid politicians can stumble over. We really need to stop electing the stupid ones.

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Wynne works with the Arc of Political Change.

April 13, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Political change is never a straight line. No politico ever wants to admit that they were not doing things properly nor do they ever want to make a 90 or, God forbid, 180 degree change. Change must be slow, incremental and loaded with plenty of political plaudits for the politicians in power.

An excellent example of this is the desperate need to modernize how the Province of Ontario retails alcoholic beverages. Booze is a nasty word in staid old Ontario and a Whig politician like Premier Wynne does not rush into change rapidly. She is using the Arc of Political Change principal to fix booze retailing after 90 years. This will be a series of minor changes ranging from one to two degrees each on the arc.

It started with the appointment of former TD Bank president Ed Clark as Change Agent. He headed a committee to tell the government what assets it might sell to find some ready cash for the province. Mr. Clark was told booze was sacrosanct but he could check out opportunities for Hydro sales.

This approach seemed to be working but there were some nagging journalists and bloggers around the province who thought it was long past time to do something about the archaic way booze is sold in Ontario. It was not until the Toronto Star joined the chorus that the politicians realized they were in trouble.

A Toronto Star reporter seemed shocked to learn that the province’s monopoly Beer Store operation was not owned by the province nor even by Canadian-owned beer companies. The paper found a cause. It had story after story on how the Beer Store was mistreating the craft brewers in the province. The newspaper kept the heat on the Wynne Whigs until the Premier capitulated and promised to sell beer and wine in select grocery stores.

The select grocery stores are supposedly those who can easily pay a hefty license fee for the right to sell beer and wine. They are also supposed to be bigger than a football field so that people will actually have to search around to find the beer and wine. Maybe the paternalistic Whigs will arrange it that you can only buy beer and wine if you also buy groceries while you are there.

But when you add everything up when the dust settles, Ontario citizens will find that Ms. Wynne wants their approval for moving the Arc of Change about five degrees. That seems appropriate as the change will please about five per cent of citizens because they shop in those stores anyway and vote Liberal anyway. And Ed Clark will collect his fee from the province and claim: “My work here is done.”

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Patrick Brown is the ‘same old, same old.’

April 11, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party is about to succumb to its worst nightmare. The party people thought they could never do worse than Timmy Hudak as their leader. They had obviously never met Barrie’s own Patrick Brown MP.

Timmy Hudak made his signature promise in last year’s provincial election at the Barrie Country Club. Sitting in the front row for that elite event was Patrick Brown MP. It was Brown who jumped up afterwards and congratulated Leader Hudak for promising to fire 100,000 provincial employees. The Progressive Conservative provincial campaign was all downhill from there.

Maybe Brown was already planning his strategy for the provincial leadership at that time. It was about 35 years ago—when Brown was still in diapers—that a couple young Liberals in Toronto found that you need not add new members to your membership lists one at a time. By finding the brokers, you can add members by the hundreds and even by thousands. They worked with the wholesalers.

The political parties solved the problem this created by insisting that the party leader sign off on all party nominations. Nobody realized that the most vulnerable position was that of the party leader. The fact that Patrick Brown saw that weakness and has acted on it is not to his credit. This was especially galling in that the taxpayers and lobbyists paid for the trips to the sub-continent to put Brown in touch with both ends of the stream of people from there coming to Canada. More than 400,000 settled in Ontario.

It was a slam-dunk for Brown to sign up enough newcomers to Ontario to dominate the very low level of membership in the Ontario party after the Hudak years. Brown’s 40,000 new members represent more than 50 per cent of the total memberships. He hardly needed MPP Monte McNaughton’s Coalition-Life memberships to fatten his numbers.

But there is still the question of who paid as much as $400,000 for Brown’s memberships from the sub-continent. According to Patrick Brown’s own figures, he did not even raise that much for his campaign. While people calling these new members might become a little incredulous about what these new Ontarians tell them, it is proving that there are any improper moves by Mr. Brown that is the difficulty.

But what is particularly outrageous about this is the nerve of Patrick Brown to stand before the party members and talk about a new style of politics. He does not know any.

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A time and place for political deals

April 9, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Election day in Ontario in 1985. On the way into a candidate’s campaign headquarters, Liberal Leader David Peterson’s executive assistant was leaving and we stopped to chat. There was no pussy-footing about the situation. “First thing tomorrow morning, you have to arrange a meeting with NDP Leader Bob Rae.” He was a bit taken aback by the bluntness but saw no point in sticking with any denial. We both knew that Frank Miller’s Conservative Party would win a minority government but that the combined Liberal and New Democrat seats could take over the government.

What went without saying in that brief encounter was that it was imperative that the deal be made. If the Peterson Liberals could not remove the Ontario Conservatives from office, we were faced with more decades of Conservative Ontario. It was so serious that long-time Liberal stalwart Bob Nixon headed up the negotiating team. The New Democrats trusted him and did not really know David Peterson.

The point of this story is that until election day the Liberals had never given any credence to a possible deal with the New Democrats. The NDP equally denied that there was any such possibility.

And that is the same to-day. Neither Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau nor New Democratic Leader Thomas Mulcair can give any suggestion of a deal between the two parties before the federal election scheduled for October. They would be wrong to suggest it, foolish to speculate and careless to hint.

Oddly enough, both parties see it as losing votes. The Liberals see it as losing some of the more right-wing Liberal votes to the Tories. They recognize that while they run hard as a centrist party, they need those soft right wing votes that Stephen Harper and his Reformer faction scare off. There are just too many of those voters who would go back to Harper if they thought there was a deal in the air between the Liberals and the New Democrats.

The New Democratic Party has a different problem. They have a solid faction of hard core socialist votes who might sit on their hands rather than support a deal with the devil—in this case those damn Liberals. These people would be sympathetic with Mulcair running a centrist campaign to try to woo left-wing Liberal votes. It is just that with a Liberal/NDP deal in the air, they are likely to stay home.

And that is why you can speculate all you want about a Liberal/NDP deal but nothing will happen until after the election.

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Patrick Brown, we hardly knew you.

April 8, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Ontario media have discovered Patrick Brown MP. Yes, that is our Patrick from Barrie. He has been our Member of Parliament for the last three parliaments. He was barely noticed. He said nothing. He did nothing. He was another mindless Conservative vote. He was your typical Conservative MP.

But finally he is being noticed. Ontario news media have discovered something about Patrick that we have been laughing about for some time. This person we know as a nebbish is quite likely to become the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. Despite being something of a mouth breather, bug-eyed and nerdy looking, this young man has been absorbing political organization most of his life.

Brown seems to have known exactly where he wanted to go from a very early age. While he was having difficulty getting through law at the University of Windsor, he was sailing through positions in the Progressive Conservative Youth Federation. He was also on the executive of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. He absorbed much about politics. There was little he did not learn about the less savoury ways to get elected and keep himself in front of the voters.

Before he had even been admitted to the Ontario Bar, Brown was running for public office. He was 22 when he defeated a weak sitting councillor and sat on Barrie City Council. This was a stepping stone to federal politics. He lost in his first effort but was successful the next time.

Brown is the type of politician who is helping destroy the credibility of politicians in Canada. He blusters when caught in lies. Former NHL hockey player Wayne Corson whose family lives in Barrie is reported to have called him out on laying claim to the Hockey Night in Barrie event that is a big fundraiser each year for the local hospital.

Brown seems to lack social skills. It is not that he is not interested in the ladies but they appear to be uninterested in him. He shakes hands in a limp way that makes people want to take their hand back. He never seems to have an idea of his own that does not have anything to do with getting his name in front of voters.

Brown is the front runner in the leadership race for the Ontario Progressive Conservatives because he has the ties to India and Pakistan paid for by federal taxpayers. Those ties gave him access to the more than 400,000 people from the subcontinent that now live in Ontario. The only grounds that can negate his lead in the race would be if someone can find out who paid the $400,000 in membership fees for his 40,000 members.

There was an interesting comment by a television reporter the other day. The reporter made the very astute observation that Patrick Brown might just be whatever you want him to be.

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Alberta stumbles as the Hair’s empire crumbles.

April 7, 2015 by Peter Lowry

There are at least a couple ridings in Alberta that could attract some smart Liberals for the federal election. Voters in that province are not stupid you know. They might also like to send a message to the Prime Minister after what he has helped to do to the province’s economy. The message is simply: Bye-bye Hair.

Canadians are inclined to forget much of what the Hair has done to this country over the past nine years. The effect of that bad stewardship has had an even worse effect on the province that gave him its 100 per cent support. That the Hair’s hopes were hollow is an understanding that came later to the West than the East.

But the voters can hardly send a message via Alberta’s provincial Conservatives in the Alberta election that could be held soon. The basic problem with that is that there is not much provincial opposition. The Wildrose Party has hardly recovered from the loss of a leader and most members who decided that being part of the government was more fun than being the opposition.

And they are still puzzling over the Prentice government promising in last week’s budget that the province can save $160 million on health care just through cutting excess spending and other efficiencies. That is a typical claim of Conservative politicians. If they can do that then some people should be fired for the misspending that was taking place before this budget. You would have to work far harder than those people usually work to misspend $160 million.

The only mistake by Prentice and his finance minister was in not including business in sharing some of the tax increases. This was more an ideological stance than any concern about the level of corporate taxes in Alberta. Alberta already has the lowest provincial corporate taxes in Canada. And, of course, there was no hint in the $5 billion deficit budget of there being a provincial sales tax.

But there are still many Albertans whose sense of entitlement has been shaken. When you take candy from children, they try to retaliate. Premier Jim Prentice might be right to get to the provincial election fast. It is like the theory of pulling off the band-aid quickly. If he can get it over with quickly, under the radar, he can leave the Hair to take the blame.

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Ontario can have a two-day budget day.

April 5, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa hardly needs us to tell him what to do. Premier Wynne put Ed Clark of TD Bank in charge. That way, she tells Clark and Clark tells Sousa. No comments from the cheap seats are allowed.

But do they have any idea of how long it will take to read the budget speech to the Ontario Legislature? Between the Premier’s ridiculous plans for beer and wine, Clark’s decision to sell Hydro One and Sousa’s housekeeping items, it is going to take two days to get through it all.

It will be the first time the news media will have to bring their jammies to a budget lock- up. Imagine all the nice comments the media people will have to say about the Ontario government after being in a budget lock-up overnight. And just imagine the comments if they are served cold camembert for breakfast!

The length of time required for the budget announcements makes sense when you consider that Premier Wynne has made the decision that only one in five of the large supermarkets in Ontario will be allowed to sell beer and wine. She is going to need lots of time to explain that piece of stupidity. The real problem is that it lays out for all to see that this woman seems to know very little about beverage alcohol and even less about grocery marketing.

She thinks that liqueurs and brandies and grain alcohol are somehow different from beer and wine. She seems ignorant of the fact that brandy, port and sherry are wines. And does she really think people can get less inebriated on 350 millilitres of five per cent alcohol beer than on a shot (37 millilitres) of 40 per cent alcohol in a mixed drink?

Who let this woman loose in our province? If we owned a grocery store and she said we were not allowed to even join the lottery for a booze licence, we would see her in court for discriminatory treatment. Does the lady seriously think that the Ontario government will not be able to make as much money if we privatized the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO)? Ontario citizens have been ripped off by the Beer Store and the LCBO for so many years it is just another form of tax and we are used to it.

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