The one thing you always assumed in working against the New Democratic Party in an electoral district during an election was that the NDP would get their vote out. If that was one of their targeted ridings, you knew that they would do the job. That was why today’s leadership convention was full of surprises.

With a claimed membership of over 120,000 across Canada, to have an average of only 50 per cent vote for leader was not expected. It made no sense. If you sell a membership to someone, do you not take them by the hand to make sure they vote for your candidate? If they are a long-time NDPer and voting is sacrosanct with them, you still leave nothing to chance. Even the Conservatives know better than that!

The NDP embarrassment could be creating concerns for the Liberals. The Liberal Party is planning to have a vote by every member at their upcoming leadership convention. If the Liberal executive gets cold feet, they could try to pull it back into a delegated convention. That would be a smack in the face for democracy in the Liberal Party.

Mind you there was one aspect of the NDP voting that caught us off guard. The party officials promised the news media that the first ballot results would be announced at 10 am EST. And, to everyone’s surprise, they were.

Liberals almost pride themselves on never doing anything on time. That never was a problem at Liberal conventions because we always had spies in communication to keep us fully apprised on how the vote count was going. If you did not have the figures in advance, you did not feel involved.

Even with the very long voting times needed to handle the vote, it was an impressive, well run convention. You might criticize the organizers for not having enough bandwidth and servers to handle the traffic but you have to realize their first concern was security. With only about half the potential votes to handle, it makes you wonder about the simulations that they surely must have run.

The convention hall in Toronto presented some awkward logistics with which the organizers did the best they could. The candidate bleachers, where they could present a wall of signs, were a rather dated approach but the NDP is also dated. And as for the drummers for Thomas Mulcair’s entrance to speak on Friday, that was the same stunt we used 44 years ago to shorten Liberal leadership contender Robert Winters’ speech to the essentials. Mulcair’s only mistake was to try to talk fast.

The NDP have chosen. M. Mulcair is their new leader. It is certainly going to be a new beginning to some interesting times.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

If there is a lower-class, sleazier way of conducting themselves in office, the Conservatives under Stephen Harper will find it. The latest is that they have dug into the taxpayer-provided Heritage Ministry funds to pay a salary to the Conservative candidate-in-waiting for Montreal’s Mont Royal electoral district. And the guy has the audacity to complain to the news media that he is not being paid enough!

Remember that Stephen Harper and friends just recently cut off government funding for the opposition parties. To then use public money to blatantly pay a political wanna-be to harry a sitting MP is chutzpah that only gonnifs like the Conservatives would attempt.

Liberal MP Irwin Cotler has served Canada and Mont Royal well for the past 12 years. A highly regarded law professor and a human rights advocate, he has been Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. The Conservatives were way out of line in using one of their call centres to recently lie to Liberals in the electoral district that Mr. Cotler was resigning. As an attack on Cotler and the Liberals, it made no sense.

It seems to be all the Conservatives know how to do is attack. It must be some sort of pit bull instinct. It is like the current attack on Liberal Interim Leader Bob Rae. Why? Do they think they are going to have to run against him soon? Bob Rae is laughing at them. If those are the nastiest things they can use against him, they are years behind the times. Stupid attacks like that might encourage him to run for the Liberal leadership.

The point that the Conservatives are missing is that you have to be a better than average representative for people to win election against the money and dirty tactics that the Conservatives use in elections. People such as Cotler and Rae are elected by the people in their electoral district to represent them in our Parliament. As an MP and as a representative of those voters, they deserve respect. They are hardly the nebbishes that the Conservative Party encourages to run for them and then do nothing in Ottawa but vote for Conservative bills when told.

As for this person Saulie Zajdel who ran for the Conservatives in Mont Royal in the last federal election, we have little comment. As a ward healer in the Cȏtes des Neiges area of Montreal, he spent a number of years on city council. If he wants to be paid as much as a Member of Parliament, maybe he should get a real job.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Never tell a Canadian they do not have a country worth fighting for—not unless you want to start a fight.

But we have many problems eating at our country and we need to find a way to fix them. You cannot write a constitution in the 1860s and expect it to meet the needs of an entirely different type of country in the 21^st Century. We have left the country to fly on autopilot for far too long.

The changes made in 1982 did nothing more than remove Canada’s constitution from the British parliament and bring it home to Canada. It left us with impossible conditions for modifying the document and a country that is harder and harder to govern.

A paper written about 20 years ago makes the point that most of the formal discussions on the constitution have been about economic matters. Since the destructive effort of the Macdonald Commission was undertaken in 1982, Canada has had nothing but failed attempts at addressing our constitution. We had the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord, then the Beaudoin-Dobbie Report and the Allaire Report and proposals for co-operative federalism and asymmetrical federalism. Canadians had every right to be thoroughly disgusted with the business of trying to build a country. They feel it is not worth the hassle and the upsets watching politicians fight for territory.

And yet, the writer of the paper felt that Canadian voters had learned from it all and were using unemployment levels, the rate of inflation and the rate of economic growth to judge the performance of government. The writer, an academic and an economist, obviously knew nothing about government or voters.

Even those who understand voters find it easier to tell you what voters do not want than what they want. For example, Canadian voters do not want the constitution to be discussed behind closed doors. They do not want it left to politicians. They do not want it wrapped in academic mumbo-jumbo. What they might accept is an open and transparent process that ensures them a vote on any and all proposals.

What that process might be, needs to be debated. And we need to decide on the process before we get into the specifics of what needs to be discussed. We need to accept the premise that anything related to our country has to be free to be discussed. There are no sacred cows. The future makes no guarantees.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Canada used to have some rules about concentration of news media. Mr. Harper and his pals have sold us out. With the announced sale yesterday of Astral Media to Bell Canada Enterprises, Canada’s news media are now mainly concentrated under the control of four huge companies. And these four companies hardly have the best interests of Canadians at heart. Nor are they politically neutral.

While the Astral deal still needs approval from the Competition Bureau and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), this will be a pro forma exercise. Both federal agencies have been gutted by the Conservatives and will do what they are told. Harper and friends work on the be-with-us-or-be-gone approach with supposedly independent federal agencies. With the early dismissal of CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein, the Harper government has made the point very clear.

And Bell Canada knows it. When von Finckenstein made too much of Bell’s buying CTV network, Harper’s people made it clear that if the CRTC did not agree, the Cabinet would override the agency. Today, the CRTC is there to act as a servile head waiter, ready to meet every demand of the four media giants.

All four of the companies are quick to support Harper’s Conservatives on the federal level. The only television holdout left is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Radio-Canada and Harper’s friends at Pierre Karl Péladeau’s Sun Media are waging war against the CBC on Harper’s behalf.

Quebecor’s Péladeau might be Harper’s friend but he still supports the separatists in Quebec with his major Quebec print media. He is hardly a wise choice for broadcasting licenses by a federal agency.

But not liking someone does not seem to be the criteria today. Bell Canada has long deserved its position right up there with Canada’s most hated corporations. Consumers have been bruised, berated and belittled by that corporation for years and Bell continues on because the banks will give them all the money they need to buy whatever they want.

Shaw’s Global almost looks politically neutral until you note the position the Wildrose Alliance leader’s husband holds in Global’s Calgary operations. Maybe that is why Danielle Smith has those TV programs to promote her cause.

Recently Rogers has become more aware of its competitive position in trying to become more hated than Bell. Roger’s call centres are starting to work on being nicer to customers. It is a very pleasant change.

Mr, Harper put these four corporations in their current position of power and he is getting full court press from them to promote him. You have to wonder why it is not working.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

The message is clear that Lockheed Martin’s F-35 will not fly! It must have been the Almighty or somebody who finally let Prime Minister Harper and his minions know that they were not on the list for F-35 stealth fighter plane delivery. It is just as well. Canada never needed that type of fighter aircraft.

Despite the repeated assurances of Defence Minister Peter Mackay and his junior minister, former cop Julian Fantino, Canada does not need any F-35s at this time or probably ever.

Why Canada’s military would even consider a short-range, single-engine, stealth fighter is a mystery. Those of us who have served in the military always understood Canada’s aircraft needs were determined by having the best way to patrol our borders and that is a lot of borders to patrol. It was not until the Harper government sent some of our F-18s to Libya that our pilots got a chance for live-fire experience in a ground support role. How often do we want to get involved in somebody else’s war?

Canadians have made it very clear over the years that they are proud of their military being peacekeepers. We are not mercenaries. There is nobody whom we wish to fight.

If the Harper government is serious about cost cutting, they can always consider the Swedish offer of some of their Saab JAS 39 Griffin multi-purpose fighters. The Swedes would cut us a very reasonable deal.

But if Canada could have its druthers, we should ask the Americans if they will sell us a couple squadrons of F-22 Raptors when they are in a deliverable condition. The F-22 will be far more expensive than the F-35 but, penny for penny, it is better suited for Canadian needs. And a dozen F-22s would still be less expensive than 65 F-35s.

The F-22 Raptor (also being developed by Lockheed Martin) is a twin engine fighter platform with the advanced electronics for patrol assignments. Capable of speeds in excess of Mach 2.2, the F-22 can fly higher and faster than virtually any other fighter.

While the airframe for the F-22 has been shown at air shows, much of the inner workings of the aircraft remain cloaked in secrecy. So far, the Americans have been reluctant to admit to discussing this fighter with any of its allies.

But we could always ask. If the Americans cannot trust Canadians, who can they trust?

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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