Babel-on-the-Bay – Page 409 – Babel-on-the-Bay is the personal website of Peter Lowry. It is a vehicle for political commentaries.

Mr. Harper’s China sale.

July 24, 2012 by Peter Lowry

There is probably no ideogram among the thousands of Mandarin characters for a ‘pig in a poke.’ It is more likely that the Chinese language has its own derogatory term for really dumb purchases. A case in point is the offer to purchase Calgary-based Nexen Inc. by the state-owned Chinese oil company CNOOC Ltd. for some US$15 billion.

Canadians should be delighted to see that Stephen Harper is really sticking it to the Chinese government. We figured he must be selling something to them but we never figured he would get such a hefty premium. There is more than US$4 billion in that deal that is pure profit for the Nexen shareholders.

Nexen has energy assets around the world that the Chinese want. What they might not have bargained for are the problems surrounding Nexen’s Long Lake tarsands operations in Northern Alberta. While part of Canada’s vast tarsands oil reserves that all countries are eying, Nexen has had constant problems getting into production.

Nexen has been using the solution of processing the tarsands bitumen into synthetic crude oil before shipping it. The company has been struggling with its refining processes and with production targets.

Other companies are counting on shipping unprocessed bitumen through the Northern Gateway pipeline across British Columbia. As designed, this Enbridge solution is really two pipelines. A smaller diameter pipe running parallel is designed to carry light crude oil to the Alberta terminus where it will be mixed with the tarsands bitumen to, in effect, grease the way, for the combination to be shipped at higher temperature and higher pressure to the terminus at Kitimat, B.C.

It was the same type of bitumen and crude oil slurry that was spilled in Michigan two years ago by Enbridge. What the company proved for all to see was that its inept disaster planning was inadequate, careless and irresponsible.

The recent demands of the British Columbia Liberal government seem to ignore the dual pipeline aspect of the Northern Gateway proposal. While it is hard to envisage all the conditions being met, it would appear that the demand for a better share of the profits from the pipeline shows us from where the provincial government is coming.

The Chinese might not be too pleased with their purchase if the only way they can ship their new tarsands production is through the American Midwest via TransCanada Pipeline’s XL pipeline to the Texas ports on the Gulf of Mexico.

Canadians will be puzzled to hear that Stephen Harper, super salesman, is now wearing the mantle of Stephen Harper, protector of Canadian ownership. We wonder how long he will take to approve his own deal?

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The silence of the politicians.

July 20, 2012 by Peter Lowry

In the heat of the summer, politicians head for the barbeques. They leave the cupboard bare for the pundits and commentators. It is a time of renewal and of contemplation. There is little to stimulate the writer.

Yet in Toronto, the guns of the summer are in play. Politicians posture. Police pressure. And people die.

The chair of the police services board in Toronto reads a written apology for the board not protecting the citizens during Toronto’s shame of the G20 two years ago. He apologized because of the report that was released that said the board did not do its job. He apologized and then walked back and sat down in the seat of the chair. He did not have the grace to resign. He did not do the necessary: call for Chief Bill Blair’s resignation.

But Ontario’s Whig Premier McGuinty has offered to solve the gun problem. It must be a measure of his desperation. He has offered to meet with the lame duck mayor who has absolutely no idea what to do to ask him what he wants to do. The premier is ready to throw our tax money at the problem. The mayor has already turned down that type of help from the federal government.

The mayor does not believe in community outreach programs for youth in disadvantaged areas of the city. He does not understand the need for role models to compete with the gangs in the hood. He does not understand the need for programs to compete with graffiti and vandalism. He does not understand the need for community programming that includes crafts, home making, sports, life skills and opportunity for positive social interaction for everyone. He cannot comprehend that it costs a few dollars to do it; it costs far, far more to not do it.

Canadians are, in the main, law-abiding and kind people. Newcomers to our country are eager to share those traits. That is one of the reasons they chose Canada. They did not escape hooliganism in other countries to see their children fall in with hooligan gangs here. There are more important opportunities and we have to make sure the opportunities are available to all.

Our youth are not lambs for the slaughter. The politicians have to speak out in the silence.

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Looking for scapegoats in Scarborough

July 19, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The shock of the shooting in Scarborough the other day is reverberating throughout Toronto. People are angry. Their leaders are the losers. Everyone pontificates and nobody has any answers.

Do the kids with guns have to kill as many people as are killed in Chicago to convince the mayor there is a problem? Only a fool plays the numbers game. In a perfect world, one death is wrong. Mayor Ford has his priorities. He was elected to halt the ‘gravy train.’ When he found out there was no gravy train, he could have had the decency to resign. He remains a lame duck politician, mouthing platitudes.

Toronto still has not fired Bill Blair. The Toronto police chief disgraced the city two years ago at the G20 and has been posturing ever since. He beat the politicians to the news media gathering on the Scarborough shooting scene. In full regalia, he promised action, retribution and raised public fears of gang retaliation. The Toronto news media faithfully reported his words.

One problem is that these wannabe Toronto hoods seem to be consistently lousy shots. It keeps the death toll low but it is hell on bystanders. It is never open season on the innocents and it turns the entire community against the malefactors. If there were a properly organized organized-crime element in Toronto, you would think they would have a few surreptitious pistol ranges where the future fodder for gun wars could learn something about gun safety and marksmanship.

But our first priority must be the innocents. It offers opportunities. It opens up entire new lines of clothing for children. Can you just imagine the cute little play suit with Kevlar lining that the child can wear when going with mummy to the Eaton Centre? Or the steel helmet worn rakishly when having the tyke’s face painted at a local barbeque.

Toronto is a big city. It offers freedom and opportunity to people of all races, religions, cultures and interests. It is a city that can do better than a Rob Ford for mayor. It is a city that does not need a posturing mouthpiece for a police chief. It is a city that needs to care about opportunities for the individual in our society. Making that happen is critical to the city’s future.

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Canada cursed in Kandahar.

July 16, 2012 by Peter Lowry

They no longer think kindly of Canada in Kandahar. The Canadians have left the building. Their promises no longer heard.

Oh, they marched so bravely up the Khyber Pass (figuratively) past the Pashtun tribes of Pakistan into the reality of the Pashtun peoples of Afghanistan. The image of the Canadian soldiers following the skirl of the bagpipes up the pass gives death time to mark those who would be his.

Turn the clock back 200 years and those are British troops marching up the pass. They marched up the pass to make the world safe for the growing of the opium poppy on the Northern Frontier of India—now Pakistan. The British East India Company had ready markets in China for opium back then and the safety of the growing fields was important.

Little has changed in the succeeding 200 years. The Afghans have learned to live on the rations of foreign troops and the opium poppy crop in the country has become the largest in the world. Only under the Taliban has the opium poppy crop been reduced but they became the enemy when they would not turn over Osama bin Laden to the Americans.

Despite the efforts of foreign troops in Afghanistan to kill off the Taliban, there are ample new recruits for them in the Madrassas of Pakistan. These religious colleges are indoctrination centres producing a steady stream of zealots eager to smite the infidels in the name of the Prophet. And the profits of the drug trade pay for their weapons.

In the ten years of Canadian military taking part in active fighting duty in Afghanistan, nothing has been accomplished. Soldiers have died. Pashtun fighters have died. The drug trade continues. The Afghan warlords stay in power. Nothing is resolved.

Canada also has shipping containers full of materiel for its troops left behind in Afghanistan. Trucking this materiel to Karachi in Pakistan for shipment to Canada will take much time and many bribes. Luckily, the Chief of the Defence Staff tells us there is nothing essential in the containers.

And, oh yes, we should also mention that the Americans started the current war against the Afghan people because the Taliban in Afghanistan would not give up Osama bin Laden. The Americans attacked and removed the Taliban and established a group of warlords in their place. As for Osama bin Laden, he was killed by some U.S. Navy Seals and C.I.A. operatives on May 2, 2011. He was hiding in his home in Pakistan.

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The boring bureaucrats of Babel.

July 15, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Big city or small, the bureaucrats are the same. When the council members want to get rid of an unwanted idea, they send it to staff, for study. It is the route to oblivion. The idea is unlikely to ever surface again.

This is brought to mind by the machinations this week of Toronto’s antediluvian city council. They were trying to kill the first sensible plan for public transit since the first subway was built up Yonge Street more than 50 years ago. The council guaranteed many more years of traffic gridlock, lost hours and human tragedy in Canada’s major city. All they did was send it to staff to study.

It is the same in Babel. The best advertisement for this city that has ever been conceived went to the staff to study two years ago and will probably never see the light of day again. Every time they are asked about the particular idea, we hear that another study is in process and it is awaiting the findings. This idea is from a private group that wants to fund a single wind generator on top of the town dump. Visible for many kilometres, the turbine would say to the persons passing through town on the provincial controlled-access highway that Babel is an energy conscious city—a green and conserving city.

Speaking of conserving there was a very interesting proposal to divert the compostable garbage that Babel trucks some hundred or so kilometres away from town. This material is free bio-energy that can be used to generate heat and cooling for large groups of industrial and multiple dwelling buildings. With the city’s new lands that it obtained from a neighbouring municipality, it has the opportunity to plan and do things properly. The city can pre-plan the area allowing for underground piping of high and low temperature water to and from a central facility. The energy source can not only function without smell or noise but could be visually hard to find as well.

In a recent presentation at city hall of updates planned for the local sewage works, the city staff engineers and their consultants found that some local residents were well ahead of them in considering ways to improve efficiencies. They were given various recommendations for improving the volume and usage of the methane gas normally generated. While heat and energy needs of the facility are being offset, they were given several suggestions for expanding the capability and providing low-cost heating and cooling for nearby condominiums.

Oh well, maybe they will see the value in the ideas some day.

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Calamity in Kalamazoo can cancel B.C. pipeline.

July 14, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Enbridge blew it! The company can kiss the Northern Gateway Pipeline through British Columbia goodbye. It is not going to happen. It all came down to a report out of Washington by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). In July of 2010, Enbridge pumped over three million litres of bitumen slurry from Alberta’s tar sands into the Kalamazoo River in south-east Michigan and nobody will ever let the company forget it.

Of course, we have known about the spill for two years. There has been a clean-up—of sorts. The damage is more or less permanent. The company spent more than $800 million to clean up the carrier oil—the lighter crude that they mix with bitumen from tar sands crude to help it flow. The tar is settling into the water table, becoming part of the wetlands of the area. It will take a long-term study to determine the permanent damage.

The NTSB report was scathing. The board actually found that Enbridge kept pumping for 17 hours after the first alarms. It was a third-party that finally convinced the company that there was a serious spill. And the company did not even have clean-up equipment available for a bitumen spill. It had some equipment for the floating crude—not the stuff that sinks.

Would anyone trust this company to say it is never going to happen again?

The chair of the NTSB said the company’s response to the spill reminded her of a Keystone Kops effort. That is an image that Enbridge will wear as long as the company continues to operate under that name.

It leaves Stephen Harper and his pseudo environment minister, Joe Oliver, hung out to dry. It is a win for Thomas Mulcair that he did not earn. It leaves acting Liberal Leader Bob Rae with egg on his face. He was trying to find a compromise position on the issue. There is no compromise available. You just lose support from people on both sides of the issue.

Enbridge has given inestimable ammunition to the anti-pipeline forces with this report. It could bankrupt the company. Back when we knew the company as Consumers’ Gas in Toronto, there was a high level of trust. The NTSB said that Enbridge had known for five years that there was a corrosion in that pipeline through south east Michigan. And then they put more corrosive, higher temperature tar sand bitumen through it at higher pressures. That was a death wish.

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The Trudeau argument goes on.

July 13, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Whenever two or more Liberal Party members meet, the argument rages on. It starts with ‘will he?’ and deteriorates into ‘who else?’ Justin Trudeau has yet to make up his mind, again. He made it up once and most Liberals accepted the decision. He said he was not ready and would not contest the party leadership to be determined early in 2013. It was the right decision.

We have watched him working the Liberal faithful. He is good. He is a relaxed and easy speaker. He gives the party faithful all they expect and more. He needs only to develop his message. He needs direction and we have no idea where that is going to come from—if he decides he needs it.

He is not his father. He lacks his father’s passion. He lacks his father’s distain for the political realities. The intellect is nowhere near as sharp. He has some of his mother in his thinking process. You can see him shift moods. He is easy to read. He is no poker player. When he whaled the tar out of that Tory senator in the boxing ring some months ago, you were pleased that he did it but you were embarrassed by the juvenile behaviour.

Remember his father was almost 50 when he contested the Liberal leadership in 1968. Justin can wait another six or eight years. He also saw what his father’s job did to his family. He rightly wants to protect his wife and young family from that.

The major problem with Justin Trudeau is direction. Where does he want to go and where does he want to lead the Liberal Party? He has that Quebecoise sensitivity to constitutional issues without his father’s intellectual curiosity. He is wary of English-French biases in the simplest of constitutional discussion.

If he does decide to go for the leadership at this time, there are many questions. The party need not to not only listen to him but we really need to know to whom it is that he listens. People who liked Jean Chrétien needed to know that his main mentor was Mitchell Sharp. They thought Chrétien was left wing. Sharp certainly was not. Chrétien’s promises were shallow and rarely kept. What was his legacy? Was it Paul Martin’s budgets?

We have no idea what the full field is for this leadership contest. Members of the party would be wise not to leap on the first bandwagon passing through town.

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What do you get for $60 million?

July 12, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Ontario Energy Minister Chris Bentley announced last week that it cost $180 million to move the under-construction Greenfield Power Plant from Mississauga to Sarnia. That sets a new price on a seat in the Ontario Legislature. The move, ordered by Dalton McGuinty’s campaign team, saved at least three Liberal-held ridings in Etobicoke and Mississauga. It sets a new level for the cost of a seat in the Ontario Legislature. It is a clear indication of what is wrong with political parties today.

It is only over the past 25 years that highly centralized political parties have become the reality in Canada. When the McGuinty campaign team, under MPP Greg Sorbara, decided to cancel Greenfield, the team spoke with the authority of the Premier. The three seats it meant on the Liberal side of the Legislature were critical. The three Liberal candidates involved stuck to the party line.

So, what do you get for $60 million today? You get a lot less than you got 25 years ago. At that time, we still had members of the legislature and in Parliament who could think for themselves, who could represent their constituents—not as a ward-healer but as an advocate—and who stood up to the Premier and cabinet in caucus and committee. It was a time when elected people held the reins and the paid staff members were the workers.

It is hard to believe that members for all parties yearn for the day when the party leader was beholden to the members who supported him or her. Having the leader as boss of the party destroys our political system. It turns a highly successful bottom up political system into a travesty of bossism and regression.

But leave a little of the blame for this on the news media. It is not that they are lazy or less knowledgeable. They are basically cheap. It costs them far less to only follow and report on the leader of the parties in the legislatures and in parliament than it would to properly report on the political mood and the actions of local candidates. Local candidates are never allowed to concern the local media with facts.

Never having met a political candidate worth $60 million, we are a bit nonplussed at this serious rate of inflation. Maybe Sorbara’s excuse is that he really was showing how decisive McGuinty could be in wasting $180 million of the taxpayers’ money. Beat that Tiny Tim Hudak! Beat that Andrea Horwath!

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The effete followers of Stephen Harper.

July 11, 2012 by Peter Lowry

How can Prime Minister Stephen Harper even begin to create a new cabinet? There is no second tier of his caucus ready to step up to the task. In fact, it is hard to tell the bottom of the barrel from the contenders. The word ‘effete’ comes to mind when considering Harper’s Parliamentary caucus. To say they are just tired and feeble is to compliment them. The Conservative caucus is a sorry lot with sorrier prospects. And yet all the pundits are calling for a cabinet shakeup.

Bev Oda’s recent resignation from cabinet was the first improvement to the cabinet in a long time. Mind you, promoting a cop such as Julian Fantino to handle international cooperation is an obtuse gesture. It is as though of Harper were to take the podium at the United Nations and give the rest of the world the finger!

And then there are the Bobbsey twins? They represent Canada to the rest of the uncooperative world. We think of these Bobbsey twins as lemmings rushing for the precipice. They are Foreign Affairs’ John Baird and Citizenship’s Jason Kenney. You are forgiven if you get these two ideologues confused.

Kenney is the twin in the news recently for winning the award for self aggrandizement. There really is a form in his web site where you are invited to compliment him for saving taxpayers money by not helping refugee claimants with medical problems. Luckily most of Canada’s doctors have signed the version of the Hippocratic Oath that promises to do no harm.

If you think about it, you realize that this Harper cabinet minister has disgraced our country and its reputation for less than 0.000001 per cent of national health care costs.

We keep waiting breathlessly for Prime Minister Harper to consider the MP from Babel for his cabinet. What this kid really wants is Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s job. He wants to have his picture taken in a mock-up of an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. He could send autographed copies, suitable for framing, to every Babel voter.

Another wannabe on the back benches, waiting for Harper’s call-up, is Chris Alexander, MP for Ajax-Pickering. He spent many years in Canada’s foreign service and was considered the go-to guy with Afghanistan’s tribal leader Hamid Karzai. If anyone knows how much it will take to bribe Karzai to release Canada’s war materiel that was stupidly left in Afghanistan, Alexander should.

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

Building a new liberalism. Part II:

July 10, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The Liberal Party of Canada is far from dead. Pundits prattling about its demise do not make it so. Nor has it succumbed to wounds so grievously inflicted by friends such as the Toronto Star. Being deserted by voters in the last election is a wake-up call for the party to heed.

Existing means choices. And the Liberal Party has choices. The choice of the middle of the road is gone. The voters know it is meaningless. They do not trust it and they are smart not to. Wishy-washy will not work. You have to stand for something.

And liberals have always been good at standing up for the individual in our society. It is where we stand for access to education for all. Where we stand up for women’s rights and daycare and national dental and drug plans. This is equal opportunity for all that means something. And that road is on the left.

Neither Stephen Harper nor Thomas Mulcair’s parties work for the individual in our society. Mr. Harper’s Conservatives could care less. Mr. Mulcair leads a party that looks at people only in the collective. Mr. Harper treats people as commodities—to be manipulated and used and discarded. Mr. Mulcair’s New Democrats are dominated by the NDP’s member unions.

You hardly need to be a mathematical genius to know that the day the Liberal and New Democrat parties unite their votes, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives will be defeated. We can welcome the NDP to work with us. We can keep an open door.

But in the meantime, the Liberal Party needs a new leader. It will have to be a leader pledged to having an open party. It will be a party where ridings pick their candidates without interference from Ottawa or regional headquarters. It will be a party where policy is decided by the rank and file in effectively and democratically run policy conventions.

The new Liberal Party leader will be able to hold out the olive branch to New Democratic Party members who share our respect for individual rights in a caring society.

The new leader must also hold out the olive branch to all Canadians to ensure that our citizens share equally in the bounty of our nation. That we work to having a balance of resource and manufacturing strengths to support a vigorous and growing economy. That our farmers have the marketing assistance they need to ensure a healthy agriculture base to support our food supply. And that is a beginning.

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