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

The Dark Side of the Elite.

by Peter Lowry

It is good to see that a real grocery person is slated to take the reins at Canada’s largest chain of grocery stores.  It hardly means that the time of the galloping inflation in groceries is over, but we will not have it rubbed in by the scion of the Weston empire, Galen Weston Junior.

Galen Weston is no Dave Nichol. The late Dave Nichol was the marketing expert who developed the No Name and Presidents Choice lines of products for Loblaws back in the 1980s. He brought simple products to radio and television and made them famous. It is Nichol’s style that Galen Weston uses today to huckster the products for Loblaws.

As president of the family business, Weston was recently one of the three grocery executives invited to Ottawa to tell our MPs why grocery prices seemed out of control. He coldly told the MPs at the hearing that they did not understand his business.

I do understand his business and I go back to the days before he was born and my late friend Leon Weinstein moved from Power Stores to be president of Loblaws. I was out of town when liberal Keith Davey embarrassed Leon by taking him to a liberal party meeting that was choosing a candidate to run for mayor of Toronto. I was lucky Leon lost. Keith had me in mind to manage Leon’s campaign.

And I have nothing against the Weston family. I respected Junior’s father as a businessman and I liked his mother when she was lieutenant governor of Ontario. She understood the duties of the elite.

But when Galen Junior and others, such as Ted Rogers’ son Edward, inherit and try to run these huge companies, their first responsibility is to the thousands of employees who have also been part of the company’s success. The long-term security of those jobs is secured in the reputation of the firm. That means that there is a time to protect earnings and a time to ease up on earnings to maintain the position of the company. A company that has had an illustrious past, deserves a strong future.

Neither Edward Rogers nor Galen Weston Junior need worry about earnings growth quarter by quarter. They have a responsibility to the past generations and the future of the companies they control.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Flying False Flags.

by Peter Lowry

With 50 people running for many different reasons for the mayoralty in Toronto, one of the problems is finding out which political party each represents. I know there are not supposed to be political parties at city hall but if you barred all members of political parties from the chamber for a council meeting, the council chamber would look very empty.

And there is a simple reason for this. Where do you think council candidates get the physical help they need?  The easiest answer to that is you need a group of people who know how to call on their neighbours, ask them to support their candidate in provincial and federal elections and then help them get to the polls on election day.

While using the same boundaries for federal, provincial and municipal elections saves some money, Doug Ford was malicious when he forced Toronto councillors to stay with the federal boundaries when he became premier. The councillors had cut the wards in half in hopes of easing their workload. Ford was just getting even with them for the way they had treated him and his late brother Rob Ford.

The smaller wards would have enabled some independent candidates to win without assistance from a political party. That also was a lost cause.

The other side of the party coin is whether a candidate is or is not an active supporter of the party he or she claims to support. Neither federal nor provincial liberals currently charge a membership fee and all you have to do to be called a liberal is get your name on the e-mail lists to be continuously asked for money.

Frankly, councillors Ana Bailão and Josh Matlow, who claim to be liberals must be from some right-wing pocket of the party that I have never noticed. I think they looked at the lists and noted all the conservatives in the running and decided there were some openings to run as liberals.

Mitzie Hunter is the proven liberal in the race, giving up her seat at Queen’s Park to be able to run for mayor. It might come down to a race between NDP Chow and liberal Hunter. We will have to wait and see.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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Leaning on Labour?

by Peter Lowry

It has always amused me that the news media, depending on their leanings, are always reporting what labour groups are supporting what parties or candidates in elections. The assumption that the labour movement only supported the CCF and then the NDP always was fiction. The only way the labour vote helped conservative Doug Ford in the last Ontario election was by staying home and not voting.

But in the June vote for a Toronto mayor, it will be the post-election analysis of some polls in certain electoral districts that will provide the answers. I have found over the years that there is no certain point in an election that people on the cusp make a decision or decide not to make a decision. I see it as a drift. It is the 30 to 40 per cent of voters who are not committed to this or that party or candidate, who hold the answers. Many of them just go with the flow. Some lose interest and fail to vote. And then there are others striking out to seek change. It was usually at the door where you can catch it. It was always the campaign manager who did not get out and canvas some doors during the campaign, or who did not know how to debrief their canvassers, who did not see it coming.

Hoped for union support, as well as seeking public approbation, was very much in evidence at the recent announcement in St. Thomas, Ontario. The proposed Volkswagen battery plant could have a major impact on the economy of south-western Ontario and both premier Doug Ford and prime minister Justin Trudeau came to have the TV publicity lights shine down upon them.

Meanwhile, back in Ottawa, Canada’s largest government union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) is striking across Canada for a little more meat on the dinner table. And Mr. Trudeau did not seem worried.

I haven’t done my analysis yet for my morning line but I expect NDP candidate, Olivia Chow will be among the top four or five contenders. She finished third in 2014 behind John Tory and Doug Ford. She could take another step back this time.

My sense of the Toronto by-election, at this time, is that this will be a younger persons’ game. There is an interesting dichotomy developing between the younger generation in the suburbs and the younger people in the downtown condos. I think this is their election. Prepare to be surprised.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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Trump’s Stand in Dixieland.

by Peter Lowry

I always thought Dixieland was just a form of jazz. After the years of Donald Trump, today’s Dixie is just a place of darkness. It is a place of closed minds wrapped in ignorance. It is a place of small steps towards the light. It has chosen Donald Trump and it matters to the entire world.

It is not just Canadians and Mexican’s who fear Trump’s return. He cares nothing for Canada. It is his place of only one hotel in his world-wide game of Monopoly. He is titillated by his pal Putin in Russia. He would abandon Ukraine. He would have the might of America stand down. He would abandon America’s friends in his admiration for petty dictators and brutal regimes.

Trump builds walls, not bridges. He cares little in a country of guns, that are used to kill children. Trump Land is a place where people shoot first, alibi later. Never knock on a stranger’s door. The criminal National Rifle Association lobbies hard for more guns instead of better control of guns.

It is hard to explain why Trump wants the hollow victory he can get at the polls. He has little to no respect for America’s Republican Party. They are his toilet tissue, of brief use and function. He uses lies about those who oppose him. Why bother with truth when lies titillate and deceive. He is not fit to rule. He does not care for people. He wants subjects, not their problems. It is all about him.

He laughs at the charges against him in New York. The effort for justice will have the same effect as the wasted shells fired on Fort Sumter in the First American Civil War. In Dixie, they manage to forget that while the South captured Fort Sumter, the South also lost that war.

America is a country deeply divided. There seems to be little effort between the red and blue states to seek peace. Yet peace can be achieved. Compromise is possible.

All it takes is leadership. There was a lot of admiration for Liz Cheney—a Republican who put truth first. In a population of over 300 million people, there have got to be peace makers. They deserve support.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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Well, That Was Wrong.

by Peter Lowry

The one thing to remember about political forecasting is that sometimes, you get it wrong. The other day I wrote that Olivia Chow must be older and smarter and was staying out of the mayoralty race in Toronto. I was wrong. She is just older. She obviously has learned little during her last time-out from politics.

Olivia has done well by politics. She worked her way up the political ladder since getting elected to the Toronto School Board in 1985. Her mentor was far-left MP Dan Heap. He hired her as his constituency office assistant during a gap between her elections.  Nobody paid much attention to her until she tried the jump to city politics in 1985. Her political career tended to be two steps forward and then one step back.

I started to pay closer attention to her when she was fighting the expansion of the Island Airport for jet aircraft. I think the funniest incident though was when I was roped into working on Bob Wong’s campaign for the liberals in the Toronto riding of Fort York. It was a hard-fought campaign. What made it unusual was that that Olivia Chow was working for the returning officer. At the same time, she was living with fellow NDP Jack Layton who was doing something for the new democratic candidate in Fort York. (Olivia and Jack were married the next year.)

My stance was “so what.” We decided to let the conservative candidate or someone else complain, if they wanted to. I knew what Jack Layton would be doing for the NDP anyway. The funniest part of the incident was on election day. I had brought my wife to campaign headquarters and while I was out looking after a problem, the campaign manager sent her on an errand to the returning office.

When I got back to the office, the campaign manager was on the phone with my wife. The story, as I got it, was that my wife was sitting at Olivia Chow’s desk, on her phone, reading the information that we wanted off a white board at the desk. The information was useful, as it confirmed that we had already won the election.

This latest and belated step by Olivia to come back into Toronto politics is helpful in that it makes a clear demarcation between the conservative, liberal and NDP candidates for the mayoral by-election.

And here is the key question: Since we all know that the money, Toronto so desperately needs, has to come from Toronto voters, provincial voters or federal voters, what party should the new mayor come from?

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]

The Egress of the Elite.

by Peter Lowry

For conservative supporters who read this: An ‘Egress’ means a way out and an ‘Elite’ is a class of person who are considered as above others in their society. Some of these elites just have money, others have accomplished something that makes them stand out among their fellows in academics, in business or in sports or on stage or screen. The prime minister would know that. And that is who we are writing about today.

Not that I think you need to be told but Justin Trudeau holds court among the elites of Canada. He is not terribly rich but he is not going hungry because of the current inflation. He also draws a substantial salary as prime minister and has a number of nice residences available to him and his family.

It seems logical that most Canadians would not begrudge the prime minister the perquisites of his position. He has a stressful job and he carries a great deal of responsibility on our behalf.

But the leader of the opposition is paid just $100,000 less than the prime minister and has Stornoway as an official residence. Obviously, Mr. Poilievre, the current leader of the conservatives is a bit jealous and tells everyone that he wants Mr. Trudeau’s job. His only problem seems to be that he wants to spend all his time trashing Mr. Trudeau instead of proving to Canadians that he might do a better job in the position.

It looks like the nastiness of his treatment of Mr. Trudeau is based on the frustration of being a conservative from Alberta. In all the years that Mr. Harper was prime minister, he said he was going to do something about global warming. He never did. And obviously Mr. Poilievre, being a good conservative, will never do anything about global warming. And the same goes for universal dental care or pharmacare.

Mr. Poilievre has many words that he learned in his Calgary school but it seems ‘care’ is not one of them. ‘Caring’ about the environment, ‘caring’ about those Canadians who cannot care for themselves, are not part of Mr. Poilievre’s concerns.

But between the choice of a tight-assed, western conservative and an elitist eastern liberal, the liberal is going to win. He knows the real meaning of “Nobless Oblige.”

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]

The Way of the Weasel.

by Peter Lowry

It is hard to complain about the wife spending time with Facebook when she shows me cute pictures of newcomers to our wide-spread family. I have to admit that is useful, where most of the puerile content in social media is not. It is even more obviously juvenile when supposed grown-ups such as our politicians whine and cavort with Twits, Tiks and Toks.

But when politicians such as conservative leader Pierre Poilievre waste time and effort to promote their hates through such a venue, I can only assume he follows the Trump School of Confusion. If he has no respect nor understanding of the better news media available to us in Canada, he is obviously not trying to reach the more educated and erudite Canadians.

You wonder sometimes just where he is going to find the ignorant and unread among us to vote for him. His outreach to the “Freedom” convoy was as direct as it could get. Those people wanted to change our government but decided to party instead. I could have told them that they would have enjoyed Ottawa more in the summer months.

I guess some of his constituency like his stand on cryptocurrency. Soon after he started promoting Bitcoin over the Loonie, Bitcoin took a serious dump. The one thing that was clear is that uncaring politician Poilievre is no economist.

But he does know that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has an excellent reputation for impartiality. Obviously, he is not targeting educated Canadians with his campaign to defund the Corporation. We get the CBC for bargain rates in this country.

Disparaging the CBC is one of Mr. Poilievre’s western traits. You cannot grow up in Calgary without hearing the CBC put down. Mind you, I spent much of my childhood just up Jarvis Street in Toronto from the English language CBC headquarters of that time. We always laughingly called the red sandstone building “The Kremlin.” It was also the home of the first television station in Canada. I never liked it when they built the new headquarters on Front Street—though I sometimes used the parking lot when going to Blue Jay games at SkyDome.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]

Got an Extra $100K?

by Peter Lowry

The good news is that for that $100,000 you can run for the leadership of the Ontario liberals. There is another $25,000 that is refundable but I am not sure why. And you can only spend $900,000 on your campaign. All of these rules have been announced by the Ontario liberal party executive for a leadership contest that will end with voting by ranked ballot on November 25 and 26 by all members and announced on December 2 this year.

There will likely be an admission charge for those liberals attending the leadership announcement party but that is still to be announced. The only really bad news in this announcement is the ranked ballot for the new leader. Hopefully, if the number of candidates stays within reason, at four or five candidates, the results of the voting will most likely be similar to using first-past-the-post.

But the best news of all is that if you have 50 or 60 thousand close friends or followers on Facebook in Ontario, who want to vote for you, there is no charge to becoming a member of the liberal party.

And this is the dumbest part of the entire exercise! Instead of the members of the party paying through their membership for the costs of the leadership campaign, it is the leadership candidates. I think the members of the party would be much happier to get one or two pitches per year for extra funding in support of the party. I, for one, find the constant requests for money annoying.

Yes, I will admit that the ability of the leader to be able to raise substantial funds for his or her campaign is important but it is hardly the most important. Leadership is also gathering a team that can work together to win. It has to be a creative team. It has to be a hard-working team. It has to be a team that can draw support to liberalism, to serving our communities.

Babel-on-the-Bay.com will welcome the candidates and help readers to get to know about them. We will probably do a Morning Line presentation to give our impression on where the candidates stand. We have to defeat Mr. Ford and his friends.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]

The Cowbird’s Quest.

by Peter Lowry

The ornithologist might study some strange birds in a lifetime, but there are also some strange birds in politics. There is that breed of cowbird, for example, that prefers to lay its eggs in other bird’s nests. That seems to be happening in the current mayoralty by-election in Toronto. It is a practice that attempts to draw from the vote for a viable candidate.

If you are worried about the 40 plus other candidates for mayor, don’t be. There are possibly ten real candidates and all the rest are running for a wide variety of reasons. Anyone in this second group who really believes they can win the mayor’s job would be better off spending time with that nice doctor who asks all the funny questions. It might not be too expensive to get your name on the list as a candidate but a contest such as this is very, very expensive to win.

And don’t ever think that the news media are going to do the job of promoting your candidacy. The news media are mainly in the business of reporting the news and selling advertising. Giving you free advertising does not keep them in business.

The candidate that made me think of the cowbird is Celina Caesar-Chavannes. She is a former liberal and a former member of parliament. She left the liberals in a huff and was defeated in the 2019 election as an independent. I think she might have been misled to think this by-election in Toronto would help her sell copies of her book. And the fact that she has no chance make’s it a bad career choice as well.

My major problem in the coming weeks is to sort through the backgrounds and credentials of 10 or 12 credible candidates for mayor and come up with a usable Morning Line. I am still going to target May 5.

I have been asking my conservative friends for advice and they all admit that there are far too many conservatives in the race. It doesn’t look like Olivia Chow will make it to the starting line, which could mean she is smarter than I thought.

Someone ran a poll the other day but it is meaningless at this point. We haven’t even got all the horses into their gates.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]

What’s the Big Idea?

by Peter Lowry

It would be a shame to tell all those people running to be mayor of Toronto that they are doing it all wrong. This is not a long campaign. It is unlikely that voters are going to chase candidates down the street to see where they stand on the issues. And what are the issues. Is it the individual issues that matter? It is time for those 40 plus people to wake up, sniff the air in Toronto and ask the simple question: “Why.”

And maybe it is; Why are they wasting their time? There is no second-place money in this race. One person is going to get all the lolly. And that is the person who knows the “Why.”

Because the “Why” is not an issue. It might be safe streets. I wouldn’t bet on it myself. The former police chief in the race owns that issue and has to run on it. Thankfully it doesn’t often work. People who have spent their life in police work make lousy mayors. They are too authoritarian and narrow in their focus. They often don’t know how to compromise.

I always encourage candidates to have great ideas to talk about such as playgrounds, parks, building codes, housing, etc. It gives the voters who pay attention something to think about but it rarely makes much difference.

It simply does not answer the “why” of the candidate.

And personally, I would stay far away from this strong mayor foofaraw. It is for conservative candidates who don’t mind being kissy-kissy with premier Ford, as long as he can stay in office. You can only use those undemocratic powers when the premier says you can. And there are too many conservatives running.

Frankly, I think Toronto needs a person with good experience federally or provincially and knows the difference. That is where the city has to get the money to do the job that needs to be done. Toronto has to get building. You cannot afford to have a city where people camp in the parks or sleep on sewer grates. Toronto is the business centre of Canada and a smart mayor knows how to play that to the city’s advantage.

Toronto is the place to be mayor. Toronto is the place to raise children. Toronto is a place for tourists. Toronto is a fun city. Toronto is an open city. Toronto matters. Now think about it and tell us that “Why.”

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]