Babel-on-the-Bay – Page 25 – Babel-on-the-Bay is the personal website of Peter Lowry. It is a vehicle for political commentaries.

‘Scarberia’ Scorned.

May 15, 2023May 14, 2023 by Peter Lowry

When young and single, I was once seeing a young lady in the west end of Toronto. Driving home after another late date, I often thought about my drive through six municipalities from her home to mine. That was six councils, six fire departments and six police departments watching out for speeders such as me. I must have been among the early advocates of merging Toronto with its surrounding municipalities. I lived in Scarborough at the time and I never liked hearing it called ‘Scarberia.’

Scarborough was where I first got involved in politics. At the time Albert Campbell was reeve of the municipality and then mayor. He was a hard working and practical farmer and Ab taught me a lot about being true to the people you represent. I was part of the York-Scarborough organization that dominated Toronto area liberal politics in the 1960s and 70s.

Scarborough always was a community of working peoples’ homes and apartments, served by strip malls and shopping plazas. It was not until the Ford government showed its more affluent Etobicoke leanings that I realized that Mr. Ford was showing his bias. In a city that is busy building subways, Scarborough is still waiting for the Eglinton crosstown light rail transit line to be operational. And to add insult it is losing the Scarborough tram line that took people from the end of the Bloor/Danforth Toronto line to the Scarborough Town Centre.

It seems nobody was concerned when ordering the shut-down of the tram line. It means some 35,000 transit customers are faced with using slower and crowded buses to get to the end of the Toronto subway later this year

The only recourse in the upcoming mayoralty by-election is for Scarborough to get out on-mass to vote for former Scarborough MPP Mitzie Hunter. She is the only one in that long list of candidates who can solve the housing problems across Toronto and make sure Scarborough is part of the solution. She can make sure that Queen’s Park meets its obligations to all Toronto suburbs. She has the ties to get help from Ottawa for Toronto. Besides, she would be an effective mayor.

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The Wicked Witch of the West.

May 14, 2023May 13, 2023 by Peter Lowry

There is no yellow brick road to the legislature in Edmonton but if Calgary votes right (far right), they get a new arena. And the witch gets to keep her job as premier.

Bribery is a time-honoured tradition in Canadian politics. There is many an ancient story from the 19^th century of voting for the five-dollar bill or the mickey of rye. And isn’t it amazing what inflation can do. Now we are expecting new hockey arenas worth $1.22 billion. And it is happening this month in Calgary. That is sure a long way from $5 per vote.

But if you got it, flaunt it. The wicked witch of the west has tar sands product to reap. Have you noted the price of gasoline lately? Every nickel the cost of gas goes up means more money for the tar sands exploiters, And the more the tar sands people make, the more money that lands in the provincial coffers of Alberta. This is not rainy-day money, this just encourages the government of Alberta to spend, spend, spend.

Some very smart premiers in the past have told Albertans that money earned from non-renewable resources are a gift that should be spent carefully on the future needs of the province. As usual, they are to be ignored.

But nobody counted on the wicked witch of the west in the person of Danielle Smith. The premier that nobody but the Wildrose survivors wanted is sure feeling her oats.

She makes the NDP’s Rachel Notley sound like a piker. That lady, when she was last premier, had a lot of common sense to sell and we sure hope enough people in the province are listening today.

The problem that the province is facing in this provincial election is the impact that it will have on the rest of Canada. With the current premier being the wicked witch of the west, Canadians across Canada will write off Alberta as Looney-Tunes country if Danielle Smith continues as premier.

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The Temptation of being Tory.

May 13, 2023May 12, 2023 by Peter Lowry

It is so embarrassing when your electoral district has been saddled with a conservative place-holder. Doug Ford appointed the schmuck as candidate in Barrie-Springwater—Oro-Medonte to keep the disgraced Patrick Brown from showing up as an elected member at Queen’s Park five years ago. Those of us who live in the riding have been embarrassed ever since.

I expect we could have survived being represented by a back-bench nebbish but Brian Mulroney’s little girl, Caroline, blew her role as attorney general. Premier Ford needed an attorney general who was allowed to practice law in Ontario. And that is how a conservative ward-healer from Severn, Ontario became the back-up attorney general of Ontario. The guy is now one of the most self-important politicians in the province. And, as for those of us in his riding, he is too important to deal with us.

And, you have got to admit that Caroline Mulroney did her job as Doug Ford wanted it done. As attorney general, she had been busy firing all the liberals on the landlord-tenant tribunal. No liberal’s contract was renewed. She laid waste of the people with experience. She purged for political purity. She purged experience. She purged knowledge. She added more than a year to wait times for a hearing before the landlord and tenant board.

It is difficult to say whether this is the most egregious failing of the Tory government in Ontario. I, for one, will never forgive Mr. Ford for his treatment of the halt and the lame receiving Ontario disability support program (ODSP) payments. Others might consider his cavalier attitude towards good farmland and the wetlands that are vital to the farm crops, or the Ontario Greenbelt, as more destructive. And nobody can deny that the dumbass has set our hospitals back years in meeting their staffing needs—while enriching the doctors and others who can now run privatized clinics and care less about Medicare.

But I also note that the back-up attorney general delayed selecting a new chief justice for Ontario until he had a chance to consider all the candidates’ credentials. No doubt, he made a selection that would please his political master, Mr. Ford.

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The Polarizing Personality of Poilievre.

May 12, 2023May 11, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Why would Justin Trudeau look forward to besting conservative leader Pierre Poilievre? What does he have to prove? The prime minister has had his ups and downs over the past eight years. His legacy as prime minister is secure in that he led us through the pandemic and introduced $10 a day daycare. Maybe the question is can he make a come-back after two minority governments?

I think he is counting on the polarizing personality of Pierre Poilievre to give him a going-out majority. If that election is still two years away, nobody knows what the key issues will be. Surely inflation will have eased and maybe the anger as well.

But there are always issues to be resolved, hopes to be considered and real or imagined slights to be aggrieved. Mr. Poilievre has never been one to wait for real crises. He can create them. A good example was when he demeaned the trip the prime minister had to make to the coronation of Charles III in London. To Mr. Poilievre this was just another expensive trip for pleasure as opposed to part of the responsibility of the prime minister. It would be sad if this was the real attitude of a man who thinks he could do the job.

I believe the prime minister’s father said it best when he did a brief pirouette behind the Queen one time when visiting London. He said it for many Canadians who consider the royals as out of date and demeaning. It was the obligation to the United Kingdom that he and his son recognized as the country that gave us Canada. If being polite was the only requirement, we could certainly oblige.

And I think that is where Mr. Poilievre and Justin Trudeau part. Mr. Poilievre is targeted on just one objective. As a very young man, he set his sights on becoming prime minister of Canada. He has devoted himself to politics and nothing else from leaving the University of Calgary. He knew he had to come east to find the right electoral district. He is a right-wing conservative ideologue. He knows of no other form of government. Canadians would not be pleased by a Poilievre government.

In Justin Trudeau’s case, he had his young years in Ottawa in the prime minister’s residence to help him understand what he was getting into.

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Here Comes Nate.

May 11, 2023May 11, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Watch out Mr. Ford. Here comes Nathaniel Erskine-Smith MP, from Toronto’s Beaches-East York electoral district, to run for the leadership of Ontario’s liberals. He is my kind of liberal. He speaks his mind. He believes in the right of individual liberals to disagree with the party on issues. He is neither a maverick nor unpredictable. He is an honest person, a thinking person and a caring person.

It was wonderful to hear that he is going to seek the Scarborough seat of MPP Mitzie Hunter when she resigns so she can be on the ballot for the Toronto mayoralty. They are two people following their dreams. They are both highly qualified for the positions they seek. Mitzie Hunter brings specific knowledge of Toronto housing needs and of Queen’s Park and the Ontario government’s responsibilities to cities. Erskine-Smith brings a wider scope to the Queen’s Park liberal leadership.

The member of parliament for Beaches-East York would be able to takeover as leader from day one if he has already won a seat at Queen’s Park. He would be a formidable opponent for Ontario premier Ford. He would bring a strong support to Medicare in the face of the pressures for-profit medicine is causing for nursing in our hospitals.

The only regret is that liberals have to wait until December 2 to find out the winner of the liberal leadership for Ontario. Other candidates are welcome and liberals across Ontario will have a chance to meet them over the summer and fall. Nathan Erskine Smith is certainly an excellent first to declare.

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And a small apology: When travelling, I usually try to have commentaries ready to run ahead of my trip. That should not include running two on the same day. Now I have to get things back on track.

‘Justin Trudeau’s Party?’

May 10, 2023May 10, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Squeezed in between the photos from the coronation this past weekend there were a couple reports in my daily newspaper on the Ottawa meeting of the Liberal Party of Canada. It is good to hear that the party is alive and well but it is not owned in any way by Justin Trudeau. He has it on loan, at best. He visited the convention and spoke to the attendees as the leader of the party before flying to England as prime minister of Canada, and as a member country of the Commonwealth of Nations, to attend the coronation of Charles III.

The liberal party was created by Toronto reformer George Brown and Ontario’s Clear Grits in Upper Canada in 1857 and was joined by Quebec’s Parti Rouge and the Nova Scotian Reformers after the 1867 Confederation of Canada.

While considered a ‘Big Tent’ party today, the Liberal Party of Canada is a centre left party that, over the years, when forming the federal government, has gradually expanded the social safety net for Canadians. It looked at Medicare and made it a fact for Canadians from coast to coast. It took an idea for daycare and is implementing it across Canada so that women with young children can also contribute to our economic growth.

Nobody owns the liberal party. When I joined the party in 1960s Canada, it was changing itself. It took control of the party’s direction. It made accountability of leaders a mandatory requirement.

The liberal party is a progressive party. It invests itself in Canada’s growth and health. It invests in our future. It believes in investing in the Canada of the future.

Among the two most serious mistakes Justin Trudeau made when he became leader was his refusal to recognize the liberal presence in the Senate and to eliminate membership fees in the liberal party. He denied the party its history in the Senate and he denied the party its independent funding.

But the party will outlive, Justin Trudeau. And the Senate of Canada needs more than lip service to change.

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Putting Poilievre on Pause.

May 8, 2023 by Peter Lowry

There is a wonderful button on my television remote. It is a pause button. I think it would be the perfect button to use when I see clips of conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. Every time I see him, I want to ask him some very simple questions about his simple statements.

For example, when I hear him say ‘Canada is broken.” I want to ask him: In what way? This is a serious statement and I would like to know what is behind it? Is it just rhetoric? Or does it have a deeper meaning?

Is it like complaining about inflation. (We all seem to be concerned about that.) It might not be as simple as he paints it. He has that funny little way of blaming it on the prime minister by calling it Just-In—flation. Actually, that is quite a compliment. For the prime minister to create world-wide inflation just with Canada’s economy is quite surprising. Sad to say, Mr. Poilievre did not help in the need to contain Canada’s inflation by complaining about and threatening to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada for his efforts to stall inflation. And suggesting fighting inflation with cryptocurrency simply proves that Mr. Poilievre is no economist.

Sometimes, Mr. Poilievre reminds me of Donald Trump. I always assumed that not all of American presidents took office knowing what they were doing. I think the common thought was that Mr. Trump did not care. His objective was to become president of the country and he did. The only problem was that once he was there, he was at loose ends.

Obviously, Mr. Poilievre would not be at loose ends. He has a mission. He wants to be prime minister. He tells his convoy trucker friends that he is going to make Canada the freest country in the world. He has a budgeting idea that he can buy a couple dollars worth of ice cream as long as he cuts a couple dollars from something else, he was supposed to buy.

We already know that Mr. Poilievre’s idea of freedom is that his trucker friends can park their trucks anywhere they want and eat their ice cream at their leisure. It would be of concern though that in buying the ice cream for their friends and themselves, they might use the money for their truck’s fuel. If you spend your fuel money, you are not much of a trucker. And, we already know that Mr. Poilievre is not much of an economist.

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Toronto and Mr. Ford.

May 8, 2023May 7, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Toronto needs a new deal with Ontario. And it deserves a better deal. At a time when municipalities across Canada are facing greater financial needs, Premier Ford has been using Toronto as his whipping boy. This new deal requires the recognition by the province that Toronto is not just a creature of the province but a partner. And if it cannot negotiate an effective deal with the province, it can seek recourse through the courts and from the federal government.

To put it simply, Toronto had been bullied and mistreated by the province long enough. It is time to stand up to the bullying. The Ford government simply cannot be allowed to bankrupt Toronto because of the relationships Mr. Ford failed to bridge when he was on Toronto council. With more than 20 per cent of the province’s voters living in Toronto, they will have their weight felt if the province will not give them a fair shake in financing their city’s needs.

It is wrong for the city to be constantly going ‘cap-in-hand’ to the senior levels of government and waiting to see what they will be given. That is not how the system is expected to work. The province cannot be allowed to throttle the city’s ability to finance its responsibilities and so cavalierly download more costs.

And Mr. Ford’s extension of the so-called super mayor power to Toronto is nothing but a sham. They are only extended on the condition that any use is approved by the premier. These are not super-mayor powers. These are powers only available to use with the premier’s permission and only applicable as long as the mayor is willing to kiss the premier’s bare behind in the middle of Nathan Phillips Square.

In no other major country in the world are cities treated in this manner. Throughout world history it has most often been the cities that ultimately brought peace, order and good government to their respective nations.

What Mr. Ford fails to recognize is that the province is responsible for the proper management of the cities. And there is nothing more urgent than making affordable housing available—particularly in Toronto.

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Toronto is My City.

May 7, 2023May 7, 2023 by Peter Lowry

While today, I live an hour north of Toronto, I still consider myself a Torontonian and I worry about my city. From my present catbird seat, I see the errors, the overreaches, the meanness of Queen’s Park, the woke of my city, though many of the treasured memories remain frozen in time.

SkyDome is still SkyDome, where I watched the Blue Jays win back-to-back World Series. Maple Leaf Gardens at Church and Carlton remains the beacon of the National Hockey League. Did you know there was a cricket pitch at one time on the west side of what is now the site of Ryerson University. I saw some wonderful shows at the O’Keefe Centre. Jarvis Street is in a different world when you are delivering The Globe and Mail at 5 AM. The memories are many.

But it is what is happening to my city that worries me. What the hell is happening down at Ontario Place that my children loved and where my wife sang on so many summer evenings? And who said this winter city needed bicycle lanes on main arteries when there are under-used valleys, the Toronto Islands and wonderful parks to enjoy on a bicycle. The Gardiner Expressway and the Allen Ditch are sad reminders of what might have been efficient highways in and out of the city.

When I was born in the 1930s, Toronto was a dull and forbidding city. I watched it grow and its mind-set change. New employment was there for the returning soldiers and newcomers after war two and new attitudes were accepted. We became more secular and rejected past bigotry. We could talk to strangers. We watched Chinatown grow and shopped in Little Italy. Bowles Lunch gave way to foods of the world. Pasty white was no longer the dominant skin colour at Sunnyside Pool.

We welcomed York University and watched the community colleges fill with our progeny. Movies were being made with our city as the backdrop as we added sound stages for burgeoning talent.

To our surprise, Toronto has become a tourist destination with the size and impact of our celebrations of our world. Our city today has become a business and financial centre of note. We have a city of millions and they are the world.

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To be In Calgary, In May.

May 6, 2023May 5, 2023 by Peter Lowry

There is nothing else like it. To be in Calgary in May when a provincial election is called is a special experience. It is a hootenanny without the music. You need a shovel to sort through the promises. There is a dingbat on the loose named Danielle Smith who became a short-term premier when she was chosen to head up the (dis-) united conservatives. Sharpshooter and former premier Rachel Notley is leading the NDP and targeting the dingbat.

Notley is going to have to fix Medicare. Smith has more tax cuts in mind. It is only a four-week campaign, so the two parties have to promise much and often. Former premier Notley has accusatory words for much of what the dingbat Smith has to say about Medicare. Smith does not care for Medicare.

But you are never too sure, from day to day, just what Danielle Smith will say.

Smith thought the Coutts blockade—that only hurt Alberta’s economy—helped the province rid itself of Covid mandates. She claims now that she was opposed to mask and stay-home mandates during the worst of the pandemic.

The problem for the NDP’s Rachel Notley, she says, is that she never knows what the United Conservative Party candidate will say next. Smith’s case of interfering in the prosecution of Calgary pastor Artur Pawlowski is still before the Alberta ethics commissioner. Despite premier Smith’s promise, on a recorded phone call, to go to bat for him, he was still found guilty of inciting the protesters at Coutts.

Smith’s credentials as premier are, at best, questionable. She was the leader of the province’s extreme right Wildrose party when she led most of her party across the legislature floor, to join the conservatives. The problem that floor-crossing caused for her was that she could not find a riding at the time in Alberta that wanted her as their conservative candidate.

One of her first actions as premier last year was to have the legislature pass what is called the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act. The most common guess at what that act means is that Alberta wants to decide which of the acts passed by the federal government, it will support. What it will do about those it does not like is not explained.

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