Babel-on-the-Bay – Page 15 – Babel-on-the-Bay is the personal website of Peter Lowry. It is a vehicle for political commentaries.

Danielle Smith Selects.

August 22, 2023August 21, 2023 by Peter Lowry

If you were wondering who else might support the Ottawa cowboy, Pierre Poilievre, as leader of the federal conservatives, you can certainly add the Wicked Witch of the West, Alberta premier Danielle Smith, to your list. She is no Doug Ford. The Ontario premier seems a little lukewarm on the Ottawa cowboy and he is definitely on Team Trudeau when it comes to the new energy plan for electrical systems across Canada.

The Ontario conservative solution to energy for the future is nuclear. There was a short term there when the Ontario conservatives were headed for increased use of natural gas. After the outcry to the natural gas solution, they found that the nuclear option was the best long-term and economic answer. And it was not causing mother nature to fight back. It is an answer that nobody really likes but it works.

While the Ottawa cowboy scoffs at anything proposed by the Trudeau government, he has no solutions either. It seems a bit tragic that Poilievre’s party can raise more funds than the liberals when the conservatives have no solutions to climate change, housing or inflation. It is as though the dumbest among us, don’t know what else to do with their money.

The wicked witch and her friends should listen to themselves sometime. Instead of cutting back on the emissions of greenhouse gas, their solution is to promise improved carbon capture. The one problem with carbon capture is that it can never reach 100 per cent, it becomes much more expensive when the carbon has to be trucked or transmitted by pipeline to a storage site. And carbon capture does not apply when the final oil product is used. That is when the most greenhouse gasses are emitted.

Where Danielle Smith and Pierre Poilievre fail Canadians and particularly Albertans, is they have no direction beyond non-renewable resources. They want to continue to rape our environment. Smith recently put a moratorium on wind and sunlight electrical generation in Alberta, out of pique or anger at Ottawa setting those environmental goals on electrical generation. Luckily, provinces such as Ontario and Quebec can meet those targets and are well ahead of the challenge.

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A Tip Too Far.

August 21, 2023August 20, 2023 by Peter Lowry

The growing arguments about the practice of tipping for service deserve some decent airing. Having experienced the attitude towards tipping in Japan, I admit that I would be happy to see it banned in North America. It is demeaning to the people receiving the gratuity as it is for the person paying for it.

I think most of us in Ontario are caught off guard enough when we forget the 13.5 per cent Harmonized Sales Tax that is being added to our bill. If you want us to add another 15 or 20 per cent to that, you are just being generous with our money. And the very idea of raising tipping to 30 per cent is ridiculous.

The practice of tipping for service was corrupted a long time ago by the practice of pooling them so not only the wait staff shared them but the cooks, maître d’, busboys and dishwashers all came into a portion. Casinos get into the action with the tip boxes at table games that are shared with all casino staff. And why we tip people delivering food or anything else to our home is beyond me?

What this practice tells us is that these people are not paid adequately by their employers and we, the customer, are expected to supplement their income. Why? That seems like a precarious way for these people to live. And it gets them in trouble with the tax people when they skim off too much so as to not pay their full tax load.

What gets me annoyed with the practice is when a company adds a tip automatically. And when annoyed enough, I have been known to demand a company reverse that tip. A good example of this was the other day when the wife and I felt like some Swiss Chalet chicken for supper and we stopped on the way home to pick up dinner. As a hangover from Covid rules, they did not want you to wait inside for your order. They asked us to wait at one of their numbered signs outside. An employee brought us our order. It was when I looked at the detailed copy of the bill later, that I noticed we had been charged $4.49 for a tip for the employee who had brought out the food. That just annoyed me.

Ontario would be very smart to phase out tipping whether the rest of the country did or not. It would be a novelty for North America and a shot in the arm for the province’s tourism, convention and hospitality industry.

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Blaming Voting Systems.

August 20, 2023August 17, 2023 by Peter Lowry

One of Justin Trudeau’s promises in the 2015 federal election was that it would be the last time Canadians would use first-past-the-post voting. And you know how far he got with that idea. His first error was to give the challenge of change to a minister who seemed to have little understanding of how democracies work.

What should have been beneficial was the special committee of parliament that was created to study the subject. The committee hearings were streamed across the country for the edification of anyone interested. I might have been one of the few who watched, listened and felt I was gaining a better understanding of how Canadians approached the subject.

I have also had the advantage of visiting countries around the world with different voting, varied political structures and different results. You might have a good laugh at the city hall in Stockholm but the politics can be boring and slow on the uptake. Another riot in the Diet in Tokyo can be puzzling but the results aren’t too bad. I was impressed with the run-off for president in France. The French aren’t opposed to trying new approaches. Watching the Lords in London is just another exercise in watching paint dry. I always think of Washington D.C. as a city of monuments, many of them in the U.S. Senate.

But Canada is a special problem. I think of our system as a failure of British colonialism. The Brits bequeathed us with a copy of the British parliament but screwed us by giving too much power to our former colonies, in the form of provinces.

I was not as disappointed with some of the political science professors but it was not as encouraging to listen to their views as I hoped. When the committee seemed insistent in listening to so many of them, you would have thought the odd good idea might come along with some solutions. No such luck.

That was one of the few times when Canadians saw an impasse in a special committee. It was one of those times when, divided down party lines, the committee agreed to disagree. There was no acceptable solution.

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Poilievre’s Passion.

August 19, 2023August 17, 2023 by Peter Lowry

It is hard to believe that MP Pierre Poilievre has made it as far as he has. His summer travels seem to be a cross between Adolph Hitler’s rants in Bavarian beer halls and Donald Trump’s preaching to the ignorant in America. What we are hearing is lies, lies and more lies. I apologize for laughing when I first heard of Poilievre’s attack on the World Economic Forum (WEF). I could not imagine a less dangerous organization.

The WEF is an opportunity for the rich and famous of the world to get together and pontificate. It can be quite harmless. Demonizing the WEF makes no sense. If Mr. Poilievre needs some organization to demonize, he should look to the Fraser Institute. The Fraser Institute is the antithesis of the WEF. The WEF is looking for ideas. The Fraser Institute pays academics to write opinions that favour the politically right-wing tenets of the Fraser Institute.

In demonizing the WEF, Poilievre is counting on his audience not to do their own research and find that WEF ideas are usually not that threatening. And he certainly is not interested in discussing it with a reporter who might have a university education. Mr. Poilievre finds it more rewarding to concentrate on building support among the foolish and the uneducated.

One of his more interesting scare tactics at the moment is that Justin Trudeau is planning a digital identification (ID) for all Canadians. I can hardly think of any reason to bother anyone with that idea when it has already been accomplished with your social insurance number.

Some academics consider this to just be a phase Poilievre is going through on his determined march on the prime minister’s office. They think he will pivot once in power. I would question that when you consider how much he is like the former American president Donald Trump. Mr. Trump never let truth stand in his way.

Neither would the truth stand in the way, once Poilievre was in power. If his lies and slurs get him that far, he would have little reason to stop. As Mr. Trump has shown, there is little concern for the fact that power corrupts. And he has also proved that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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Our Daily Bread.

August 18, 2023August 17, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Why do we have government? When did we start praying to the government to “Give us this day, our daily bread?” Is this a democratic government? It is not God, that is for sure. And yet, if it is a democratic government, should it not look for ways to ensure its people can be fed in this 21^st century? Is it not the welfare of all its citizens that should concern our government?

Canadians have a convoluted system of government that is so wrong in this day. It has a federal government and provincial governments and they each can blame the other for their failures. The recent coronavirus killed more than 50,000 Canadians. It was remarkable how fast the federal government was able to obtain vaccines. It was remarkable how the provincial governments let their hospitals collapse under the weight of patients sick with the disease. Lock-downs meant different strategies in different provinces. And federal lock-downs conflicted.

Today we have run-away inflation and people are starting to grow hungry. Our grocery stores are more worried about shoplifting that can eat into their windfall capital gains. What do our governments do? They point the finger at each other.

And how is Canada going to house its burgeoning population. Our country needs more people and we cannot accommodate them. The federal government makes faint promises and provincial governments are exploiting the opportunities to their political benefit.

And what do we do about this? Those who think we can change our constitution have a fight on their hands. It is a carryover of our British-crafted colonialism. There are more ways to say ‘no’ than there are to say ‘yes.’ And you can align the ‘nos’ with the provinces. We will even have difficulty in dispensing with the monarchy—despite the majority of Canadians who don’t give a damn about them.

You can almost forget the possibilities to have a democratic constitution. The smaller the fiefdom, the harder they will fight to keep it.

I have always imagined a constitutional congress in Canada. Boy, that is a battle I would love to take part in!

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Modern Meetings.

August 17, 2023August 16, 2023 by Peter Lowry

If there were a few things we learned during the coronavirus pandemic, one of them is how to have better computer to computer meetings. I’ve watched the progress in this field with great interest. We have come a long way since I was running national meetings with people connected to the boardroom by telephone. I must admit though that not everybody understands the image they are projecting to people during these Internet events.

There are more than couple dozen of these programs offered these days and I expect most offer an opportunity to check your image on screen before being connected to the meeting. You should. I remember a remote meeting of a parliamentary committee one day when the chair of the committee looked like he was working from a closet. I was particularly concerned watching that meeting when I thought one of the members in Toronto looked like she lived in a slum.

And yet, that weasel Pierre Poilievre saw the opportunities from the beginning. He always looked like he owned the finance committee when he was a member. He had the perfect (false) book-lined background, wore his trademark glasses, white shirt, red tie and the perfectly pressed blue suit. In comparison, there was a chairman once who looked like he had been waylaid on his way to work in his garden.

Please people, think about the impression you are making.

But before you do anything else check your lighting. There was recent meeting where I was worried about this lady in the semi-dark who seemed to be struggling with something. I finally realized that she was doing her nails. Tell me, would you want to hold a meeting in your bathroom? Proper lighting can be as simple as moving a lamp to make sure you look alive.

The one thing that does not change though is the role of the chair. It was a Zoom program we were using the other day and I was delighted with how simple it had become to join in the discussion. It was also obvious that the chair’s job had become much easier. If your program does not make notes for the chair though, a piece of paper and a pencil can help keep you advised as to your next speaker.

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Promise Denied.

August 16, 2023August 15, 2023 by Peter Lowry

When the Ontario Liberals last met in conclave in Hamilton this year, the attendees were told that the upcoming leadership vote would be one-member-one vote. No doubt many of us were delighted with that. I was not there for the announcement. As a senior, I could scrape together the $250 registration fee but at least $500 in meals and hotel in Hamilton was out of the question. It was not in the budget when facing food inflation at its most virulent stage.

But the executive of the liberal party broke their word. I only found out earlier this week that these dummies are artificially weighting the electoral districts. It is the same as the stupid conservatives. They give every riding a weight of 100. If your riding has more than 100 voters, you become a percentage with your vote. If your riding has less than 100 voters, then you are counted as one.

What they are doing is penalizing ridings that keep their membership up and adding legitimacy to the ridings that do little. If those Ontario liberals had paid attention to the last three leadership races of the federal conservatives, they might have had an inkling that there was something wrong with the procedure. Combined with a ranked ballot, it is a system guaranteed to produce a leader who can only be described as the lowest common denominator. In their last go-around, they probably dumped Patrick Brown from the race for fear that he might keep Pierre Poilievre from winning on the first ballot.

What I really cannot understand is why people who are supposedly supporting democracy can then accept the ballot counts reported by some computer nerds? Have you ever seen the actual results, by the numbers, of ranked ballots? The truth is that not everybody ranks any or all of the possibilities. Nor do many people study all of the possibilities and do an honest ranking?

A ranked ballot is a strange animal. The least contentious ranked ballots are when there are six or fewer candidates. These are easy to rank and usually take less time to count. You tend to trust the count. Try a ranked ballot with 20 candidates some time and follow the bouncing ball—because where it lands is anybody’s guess.

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Tagging Team Nate.

August 15, 2023August 14, 2023 by Peter Lowry

It was fun meeting with my local Nathanial Erskine-Smith committee (otherwise known as Team Nate) organizers earlier in last week. I did tell them I write this blog, so it should not surprise them if they see it. They might think of me as that cranky old man but I found it very interesting. This Team Nate group seems to span the central Ontario city of Barrie, towns of Orillia, Bradford and Newmarket and the rest of Simcoe County provincial electoral districts. Luckily, we used one of those new computerized group meeting programs and I was pleased with the ease of use, the excellent quality of the pictures in the rooms (that were adequately lit) and the ease of managing the meeting. Probably, the only discordant voice was mine.

Not that my decision to support Nate Erskine-Smith for the leadership of Ontario liberals has changed. I neither make those decisions too quickly, nor forego them if something does not necessarily, please me. My only caveat at the moment is that I still have not met Nate. I have followed his career in politics and I don’t think I am wrong to give him some support.

What Team Nate is targeting at the moment is party memberships. That would be no secret. Any of the teams that are not targeting membership at this time are not in the race. This is not where many groups shine. I have noticed over the years that if you don’t make it fun, rewarding and a whole team effort, it will fall flat on its ass.

I was a member of the York Scarborough group of ridings during the last half of the 20^th Century. We made a rule at one point that for the first half-hour of gathering before a public meeting, no member of the executive was allowed to talk to another. You could only talk to people you had never talked with at a meeting before. We were always numbered in the thousand or more and we always had a great esprit de cours.

I guess that the pandemic has changed that now that we have meetings via computer. It worries me that we are losing the physical contact. I am looking forward to meeting Nate in person when he is in Barrie this week.

What I gleaned from the meeting was that one of the young ladies considered her working on her nails on a par with the meeting. Maybe that was why her background was particularly dark. She really worked hard on her nails.

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Poilievre’s Gold-Plated List.

August 14, 2023August 13, 2023 by Peter Lowry

It makes you wonder. I never answer phony polls like those your local member of parliament sends out. They are not real polls and even if they frame it as a petition, it rarely goes anywhere.

But I am appalled that Pierre Poilievre made money off of his silly petitions. I believe him when he says he has harvested more than 190,000 names and addresses off those years of phoney petitions. Most of the questions I have seen over the years are quite juvenile and I really would question what age group he was targeting.

My favourite though was the one to “Stop the Great Reset.” This is the proposal from the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland to help the world overcome the problems left to us from the pandemic. Did anyone who signed that petition know what the hell they were signing? That stupid petition even got then conservative leader Erin O’Toole mad at Poilievre. It was reported as being the reason he was pulled off the finance committee, where he was starting to build a following.

What bothers me about those petitions is I do not recall that there was a permission acknowledged anywhere on them that gave carte blanche to Mr. Poilievre to make use of the name, address, etc. for any purpose he might consider appropriate. It also amuses me that the firm in Edmonton that evaluated his list as being worth 2.15 cents per name for a total of $4,098.12 might have had some help from Mr. Poilievre finding that ridiculously low price.

That list is what those in the confidence game might consider gold-plated. It is a true sucker list. It is a list of people who have already proved their gullibility. Asking them to join the Conservative Party of Canada for just $15 and to vote for Mr. Poilievre was a no-brainer.

Getting them out to vote is usually your major problem.

But back to that list. If those petitions were on Mr. Poilievre’s parliamentary website, then they were paid for by the citizens of Canada. I would suggest to you, that at this point on the road to the prime minister’s office, Mr. Poilievre has made a mistake.

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Ford’s Fall Guy.

August 13, 2023August 13, 2023 by Peter Lowry

It does seem strange that Ontario municipal affairs and housing minister Steve Clark’s chief of staff Ryan Amato is currently reported to be vacationing in Italy. He might have a reason to not be enjoying a ‘staycation’ in Ontario this year. It appears that his boss Clark and premier Ford have thrown him under the bus in the time-honoured tradition of politicians everywhere.

Finding a scapegoat is the first political step when putting the fix in. And it seems Mr. Amato is the hand-picked choice of premier Ford to front for the phonies. It makes you wonder just where the tickets for Italy came from? Where they one-way?

I can just imagine Premier Ford’s reaction when he first saw the winsome tale of the envelopes Mr. Amato collected from the premier’s developer friends. It seems he got a couple here at a party in Woodbridge. There were more. He mentioned the piles of them to the auditor. She must have been sitting there with her mouth agape listening to how this play was made.

The real beauty of all this is that Mr. Amato did not appear to think he was doing anything wrong. The only question that I would like to hear answered by him is who the hell told him to do this? I have never met Mr. Amato and I do not know him, but I do know lots about the so-called job he was doing. He would not be doing all of the things he told the auditor he was doing without someone, in authority, telling him to do it. It is not his scheme.

And Amato was not dealing with friends of the housing minister. The people he was dealing with were people with ties to Doug Ford back when he was with his brother Rob at Toronto city hall. Many of those developers and their lawyers liked Doug Ford. They saw him as a brash, uneducated, bluff salesman. He was meat for their dinner.

What is mind-boggling about all of the Greenbelt BS is that Doug Ford is holding the line. He states bluntly that nobody had preferential treatment. The only money that has changed hands anywhere in this arrangement is the, maybe, always legal money to the conservatives in Ontario. It could be that Doug Ford might just have his own card for their ATMs.

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