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

Marrying the Canadian left.

by Peter Lowry

The bringing together of the left of Canadian politics will not happen overnight.  No left of centre party is going to take up housekeeping with another.  The truth is there are no truly left of centre parties in Canada.  Neither the Liberal nor New Democratic parties are totally on the side of socialism.  While the left wing of the Liberal Party is open to a marriage with the NDP, it can only happen when the NDP is weaned from its long-standing union domination.

The Liberal Party of Canada has campaigned as a centrist party for many years but not since social activists such as Alan MacEachen, Lloyd Axworthy, Jean Marchand and Herb Gray served in the Cabinets of Pierre Trudeau, has the party shown a truly left-of-centre bias.

If the NDP were the natural offspring of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), there would be little question that the party of Tommy Douglas was socialist.  The problem is that the NDP was born from the alliance of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the CCF.  The CLC were hard-nosed labourites.  They worked for labour, not for social needs.  They dealt in conflict.

Canada’s labour movement is not really home-grown.  We imported it.  We brought it up from the United States as the excesses of international business generated international unions.  We imported it from the crucible of middle Europe where business and government allied to repress the workers.  We imported it from the British Isles, from where it also brought a bloody history.  And we burned the struggles into our conscience with the Winnipeg General Strike.

But the struggles are over.  They are largely of the past and today’s wage earner sells his or her skills in an open market of knowledgeable business.  The excesses of the board room and some private owners still go on but long-settled accommodations or destruction of labour have turned private sector labour unrest into rare events.  It is in the public sector that old battles are still fought.

The public sector unions always had an abused ally: the public.  The denial of services is indirectly against the political bosses but felt by the public.  It is usually a question of how much the public can endure before shifting the blame to the politicians.  That is the point where political resolve collapses.

It was the strength of the public sector unions that demolished Bob Rae as NDP Premier of Ontario back in the 1990s.  He was unable to deal effectively with his own supporters and it left him a failed politician.

The NDP ties to these public sector unions today are a barrier to left-wing Liberals seeking to unite into a viable social democrat party.  We have to wait until the need is obvious.  It will be when we have to stand against the rampaging right of Stephen Harper and his friends. It will be a rampage, we will regret.

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

Comment for today.

by Peter Lowry

The media make much of the new parliamentary bed fellows,

Jack an’ Stephen, getting along like a couple of ordinary Joes.

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The Democracy Papers.

by Peter Lowry

This is the third of the Democracy Papers written in 2007 in answer to the Ontario referendum that year on electoral reform.  The referendum was defeated but the need for reform continues to rankle.  We believe Canada must have an elected Constitutional Conference.  Electoral reform is just one of the topics to be brought to the gathering.  For this reason, the Democracy Papers are being updated and rerun.

Chapter 3 – Vote for a new system without knowing cost?

If ‘mixed-member proportional’ (MMP) voting had come to Ontario, it is taxpayers who would have had to pay, and pay, and pay! The Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform that came up with this aberration seems to have ignored the costs.  And you do not just multiply the number of appointed members (39) by $110,775 per year that was the current annual pay for MPPs. (They had recently given themselves a nice 25 per cent raise.)  The salaries for the unelected supernumerary legislature members would only be the beginning.

To $4.2 million in salaries, you have to add far more for the care and upkeep of these party stalwarts.  For example, if you have not parked a car in downtown Toronto in the past few years, you might have no idea how much it costs to park all the MPPs’ personal autos at Queens’ Park.  Suffice to say, if they all travelled to the legislature by Toronto Transit Commission, we could probably buy each of them a nice compact car every couple years from the savings.

And do not forget that they have a subsidized lunch room and paid meals if the legislature sits late.  This is even a better deal when the legislature is not sitting.  The MPPs collect additional pay and expenses for each day of committee meetings they attend during those times.  If the chair of the committee can arrange it, they also can get excellent perks by holding meetings at luxury locations with decent golf courses.

Nobody should complain about the cost of constant travel by members of the legislature if they are going to and from their ridings.  They represent the people in those ridings and need to meet with them on a regular basis.  The proposed political appointees to the legislature will only represent their party.  Can we hope the 39 political appointees will all be from Toronto?

The really expensive travels for our MPPs are on what are called ‘fact-finding missions.’  These are often arranged by the party whip after the doors are locked at party caucus meetings.  Imagine, if you will, the whip or party leader asking, “Who hasn’t been to Europe yet this year?  We have a lovely cruise down the Rhine for those who want to look as though they are checking on municipal sewage solutions.”

The party stalwarts get their pick of these plums.  Conversely, the caucus bad apple that made the mistake of arguing openly with the party leader will get offered a fact-finding mission to examine policing for unauthorized weapons on the streets of Baghdad.  (This probably explains why so few politicians are seen to argue with their party leader.)

As the 39 party appointees would obviously all be good party people, we can assume that they could get first pick at the travels if they are not kept busy with cabinet appointments.  That is its own expense item as cabinet members are not only paid more but do not have anything as mundane as parking problems.  They are driven at the taxpayers’ expense by government-paid chauffeurs.  No cabinet member is allowed to worry about things such as having toonies and loonies for parking meters.  (Mind you, what you really need for parking in downtown Toronto is a paid-up, no-limit American Express card.)

The good news for party leaders with the citizens’ assembly proposal is that they can list all their potential cabinet ministers at the top of what the citizens’ assembly calls ‘list seats.  (Political people are calling them ‘loser seats.’)  That way, if the cabinet hopeful loses in his or her riding, the leader still gets a chance to get them into the legislature.

Mind you, if out of the 90 members to be elected from ridings, your party gets 50 seats, you would expect to feel like a winner.  Yet, you might be a loser if you do not get as high a percentage of the party vote.  If the voters perversely only gave your party 40 per cent of the party vote, the complex formula might refuse you any list seats.  You need to have 65 members in total for a majority government.

Obviously there is endless speculation among political junkies about what could happen under MMP voting.  It is a potpourri of ‘what-ifs?’  Luckily for them, the citizens’ assembly did not have to worry about any of this.  The assembly members were chosen by lottery on the basis (one voter from every riding in Ontario) that they probably knew nothing about politics or voting systems.  And it appears that they really knew nothing.  They were indoctrinated and since they did not want to appear to be wasting the taxpayers’ time and money, they chose one of the options presented to them.

It was left to the voters to reject the concept.  During the 2007 election campaign, neither the Liberals nor Conservatives commented.  Most backroom politicos had other fish to fry at the time.  The NDP and the smaller parties embraced it.  That was understandable.

©Copyright 2007, 2011, Peter Lowry

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

Comment for today.

by Peter Lowry

The Tories are giving the price of gas a look,

Admiringly, on that the east can make book.

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Liberalism might not be dead.

by Peter Lowry

It is easy to be a liberal.  Being a liberal most of your life is not a particularly demanding challenge.  You do not have to hate anybody.  You can live and let live.  You can accept diversity—of lifestyle, of sexuality, of thought, of religion and even of political persuasion, within reason.

Having known many members of the Liberal Party over the years, it has always been amazing to note the breadth of that acceptance.  Last year, listening to Michael Ignatieff promote his ‘Big Red Tent’ approach to the party, one could wonder who was excluded from squeezing under that all-enveloping canvas.  At least the tent illustration is better than the one about the need for the right and left wings of the party to flap in unison.

One of the observations made over the years is that there are right wing members of the Liberal Party who can embarrass a conscientious conservative.  No Conservative finance minister in the last 100 years could have been more ruthless than Liberal Paul Martin during the 1990s.  He did not just rename the unemployment insurance system, he gutted it.  If he had wanted to destroy Medicare, he could not have done it more damage than he did by stripping its funding to the provinces.

When Martin replaced Chrétien as Liberal Leader, the left wing of the party had been decimated.  Paul had rejected their pleas for some common sense in his crusade to cut the deficit.  They, in turn, rejected his pleas to continue to support the party.

There was little choice for the voters in 2006.  You had the real right wing of Stephen Harper or the de facto right wing of Paul Martin with its thin veneer of left-wing promises.  As the marketers of Coca-Cola can tell you, people opt for the ‘real thing.’

But it was obvious that nobody trusted Mr. Harper.  It took him three tries to get a majority.  And even his working majority on May 2 is no ringing endorsement of him, his party or his platform.

The Liberals had good reason to dump an unrealistic Dion after the 2008 disaster.  They should have taken more time.  The rushed imposition of Ignatieff on the party was a serious mistake.  There should have been a proper leadership convention instead of a coronation.  The convention would have served to introduce Ignatieff more effectively and short-circuited some of the effectiveness of Harper’s attack advertising.

With the time the party is now contemplating taking to find a new leader, we will have lots of opportunity to consider our wishes.  Instead of settling for one of the contenders now emerging, we should build a model of what we want and then we can look for someone to fill those shoes.

One thing for sure, we must find a leader who recognizes the need for democracy in the party.  The new leader must agree to only authorize candidates for an electoral district who have been chosen democratically by the members of the Liberal association in that area.  We must also have a party hierarchy that works for the people in the electoral districts.  Liberals can do no less.

Liberals must rebuild.  They must decide what they represent.  They must democratize the party.  And then they can choose a leader who can speak for that party.

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

Let’s face facts about Canadian politics.

by Peter Lowry

“I grew so rich that I was sent

By a pocket borough into Parliament

I always voted at my party’s call

And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.” 

W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan (1878)

Little seems to have changed since Gilbert and Sullivan twitted the English about their corrupt politics during the Reign of Queen Victoria.  Canada has been mired in the same corrupted political system for almost 150 years.  Sure it has had some band-aids applied over the years but it has never had the thorough housecleaning that it requires.

We now have a Senate that is a permanent joke.  We have a Governor General who does what the leader of the party in power says.  We have created an imperial court surrounding and protecting that leader.  Through the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), we have concentrated the national news media into a tightly controlled and corrupt group of sycophants.

But the voters must share the blame.  Sheep to be shorn show more spunk.  We accept vicious and untruthful attacks on politicians.  We believe scripted and controlled news events that bear so little evidence of truth.  Party leaders used to go out to meet the voters and now they travel to avoid them and we allow it.  We, ignorant and uncaring, vote for the party without questioning the candidates.

In their sweep of more than half of Quebec seats in parliament, there were NDP candidates who did not even need to be in the electoral district to win.  There was one candidate where it was claimed if her constituents had met her, she would not have been able to communicate comfortably in French which is spoken by most voters in the area.

And absentee candidates did not happen just in Quebec.  It was claimed in the Toronto Star that one winning NDP candidate in Toronto was absent during the election campaign, running a campaign for another NDP, in another part of the province.

If we ever needed to point out what is wrong with Canadian politics, this recent election certainly makes the case.  Centralized political parties appointing candidates are preventing and discouraging the involvement of citizens in the political process.  The party hierarchies do no due diligence in terms of the quality of candidates to fill slots in those last throw-away electoral districts.  The quality of MPs elected is in the dumper.  Nobody cares as they vote for nobodies, thinking they are voting for the party leader.  We are willing to pay nerds, nobodies and ne’er-do-wells $157,000 per year with all expenses and a generous pension to sit in our parliament and pick their noses—and nobody cares.

The Canadian news media conglomerates, that are leading us by the nose, are greedy, lazy and uncaring and provide no insight for voters to help them assess local candidates or their leaders.  The news media print and broadcast spurious polls for their shock value as news, not their authenticity.  Media executives curry favour with those campaigns with the most money to spend and the biggest lies to tell.  The Toronto Star editorial board, the supposed last bastion of integrity in the news media, decided to screw the Liberal Party and in the process of their vindictiveness, screwed the Canadian public—giving us a majority Harper government.

There is much wrong with Canadian politics.  We need to do some fixing.

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

Comment for today.

by Peter Lowry

In March we said we read the Toronto Star,

Yet in May, we find the Star’s far below par,

Misleading voters, the editors went too far.

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The Democracy Papers.

by Peter Lowry

This is the second installment of The Democracy Papers that were written in 2007 in answer to the Ontario referendum that year on electoral reform.  The referendum was defeated but the need for reform continues to rankle.  We believe Canada must have an elected Constitutional Conference.  Electoral reform is just one of the topics to be brought to the gathering.  For this reason, the Democracy Papers are being updated.

Chapter 2 – The wasted vote and other myths.

In 2007, there were many myths told as to why we should have mixed-member proportional (MMP) voting in Ontario.   This form of proportional representation was on the ballot for the provincial election.   The referendum question was: whether the voter favoured the first-past-the-post electoral system or would they like to have MMP voting that was proposed by Ontario’s Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform?

The first of the myths told by the pro-MMP people is the suggestion that you have been wasting your vote when your candidate does not win.   This myth is spurious.   They are saying that your opinion has been treated as worthless.   You went to vote so that your voice would be heard.   You went to vote to express your belief in democracy.   You went because you and the other people in your area had a choice to make as to who would represent you.   Win or lose, you were expressing your democratic opinion.

You can be pleased when your candidate wins.   You can be disappointed when your candidate loses.   Your vote is never worthless.   Candidates, politicos and statisticians spend many hours pouring over those results.   Winning and losing candidates learn from them.   They can help the loser to be a winner next time.   They can show trends.   They can be extrapolated by parties to forecast results in newly formed ridings.   They are used for years to help academics learn from the past to forecast the future.

The most seriously flawed myth is that the selection of list candidates (the people whom they want to appoint to the legislature to represent parties) will be open and democratic because the parties have to disclose their process of selection.   The process of choosing all parties’ candidates has been corrupted for years.

The rule in Ontario is that no person can be a candidate for a party without the signed approval of the party leader.   That means that despite the occasional attempt by a riding association to make the decision on their own, the leader’s campaign committee is the de facto selection committee.  Any other explanation is nothing more than window dressing.

In most cases of mixed member proportional voting, you can count on a list that consists mainly of persons running for election in electoral districts.   These are people the party leader and advisors want to be sure are in the legislature.   If they lose in their electoral district, the list will be their second chance.   It guarantees that many of the list candidates to be selected are losers.   They have been rejected by the voters in their electoral district and are now available to be appointed.

The silliest myth of all is the one that the selection of list candidates will bring more women and minorities into the legislature.   The implication is insulting.   The political parties have done a much better job in recent years of encouraging women to run for office.   The financial barriers have been mainly overcome with the use of taxpayers’ money.     Many well-qualified women have run for office and won in their ridings.   If you think there should be more, get to work and be sure they are nominated and then work even harder to make sure they are elected.

Minorities are a different matter.   This has good and bad implications.   There are no barriers.   Ethnic background, race, religion, sexual persuasion or physical handicaps are not a problem but only representing a specific minority group is a problem.   Every group is welcome vote for whom they wish to be in the legislature but, in the legislature, these elected people need to deal with many diverse issues and they need to be able to represent everybody in their electoral district.

The myth that is the most confounding is the one that proportional voting systems such as MMP promote broader participation in government and more ready acceptance of government policies.   That, they believe, would seem to make it very worthwhile.   It would, if we really want a lacklustre, do-nothing government.

The myth continues that MMP-type government will feature bargaining, will be inclusive and will include compromise.   There are a few ingredients of good government that are missing.   They forget about ideas, drive and ambition.   And they forget about leadership.   If you want this bland, non-competitive type of representation, you could have got the same thing by making the citizens’ assembly that selected it the Ontario government.   The assembly would do just as good a job.

©Copyright 2007, 2011, Peter Lowry

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

Comment for today.

by Peter Lowry

The Toronto Star blames the deed on Jack,

During the debate, Jack did Michael attack

A rude, unworthy and scurrilous comment,

Showing Jack is not ready for government.

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