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

Trumping Trump.

by Peter Lowry

Our Canadian news media have been slow in comparing former American president Donald Trump and the new leader of Canada’s conservative party.  Maybe the media thought it could never happen here. But it has. And that boy, Pierre Poilievre, really thinks he is going to make it all the way.

Maybe there are major differences between Trump and Poilievre but both seem to see themselves as despots. Neither wastes time with truth to back their positions, nor are they populists. They are manipulators. Mr. Trump is a conman. Mr. Poilievre knows the politics. They both use the mantra of the political right to build their own fables. They are self-centred egoists.

In a different era, they would have their own Brown Shirts. Mr. Trump has his deplorables. They sacked the Capital for him. Mr. Poilievre has his truckers convoy people, who occupied Canada’s capital. To make sure of his ascendancy to leader, Poilievre signed up more than 300,000 of them to the conservative party.

Mr. Trump promises to ‘Make America Great Again.’ Mr. Poilievre promises ‘Freedom’ for fools in a country that is already free.

Both Trump and Poilievre decry the supposed elitists in their respective societies, yet they are, in themselves, elites. They both demand absolute loyalty among their followers. Their enemy is the liberal left. Poilievre directs his specious diatribes against the ‘Elitist liberal gatekeepers and corporate oligarchs.’ Mr. Trump builds towers in his name, claims to be a billionaire and denounces the media as the enemy. Their notion of news conferences are one-way events: ‘I talk, you listen.’ No Questions allowed!

Mr. Trump failed Americans when the pandemic started killing. He did next to nothing to help. Mr. Poilievre railed against the liberal government that did its best to help Canadians through the pandemic.

Mr. Trump makes friends of dictators. Mr. Poilievre attacks the Bank of Canada, Elections Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Neither builds on strengths. They use anger instead. The angrier their followers, the easier it is to manipulate them.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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What’s ‘Woke’.

by Peter Lowry

We need some help here. I thought I had figured out that the word ‘woke’ just meant you had awakened to something. Now I hear that the new leader of the conservative party has complained that the Trudeau liberals are part of a ‘radical woke coalition’. I assume that he means the agreement between the new democrats and liberals to have some stability of government through these difficult times. It makes you wonder what is radical about the agreement? It is hardly the first time that the new democrats and liberals have cooperated in the interests of Canadians.

As a progressive liberal I like seeing Justin Trudeau kept on the left of the political spectrum. I have never been too sure just where he fell. In the last dozen years, I have been both for and against Trudeau. When I first met him, I found that he was more like his mother than his father. His love of acting was also obvious. He has this ability to turn the act on and off. It is like he has a switch somewhere on his person that just needs a quick flick. He was tireless at that first meeting when he went around the hundred or so people in the room satisfying their needs for selfies.

One thing I determined right away was that nobody was going to drag young Justin to the constitutional table. He seems to be afraid of the subject. Maybe he sees it as a failure of his father. Yet, his father’s legacy for Canadians is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Prime minister John Diefenbaker might have beaten Pierre Trudeau to the idea but it was Trudeau who had the Queen sign it and lock it up with the constitution.

We haven’t always had sunny days with Justin, but I really admired the way he popped in and out of Rideau Cottage during the dark days of the pandemic. He was communicating with Canadians in a very direct and helpful way. I might have likened it to a cuckoo popping in and out of a clock but I thought we needed to make light of something at the time.

But a radical woke coalition is not a lightener, even for Mr. Poilievre. The new conservative leader is really a mean little man who has no compassion for Canadians. He is no populist. He is the beloved of the trucker convoy people and they are just as ignorant and selfish.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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‘Send in the Clowns’?

by Peter Lowry

When Steven Sondheim wrote “Send in the Clowns” for the musical “A Little Night Music,” it was not about circus clowns. It is a haunting song about the mistakes we make in life. It can also be easily applied to politics. Take the recent selection of a new leader for the conservative party.

You can easily visualize MP Pierre Poilievre with a whip and a chair inside a cage with the oversized pussy cats of the conservative party. And you know he will have them jumping through fiery hoops.  

But then you realize that to complete the job and achieve his ambition to be prime minister, they have to let him out of his cage. Will that be the time to send in the clowns? Will they be able to take away the image of the whip and chair or as Mr. Poilievre puts it, “Make the grand pivot”? His answer is no. He said “There is no grand pivot. I am as I am.” Or is it time to send in the clowns?

For the first time, at the announcement of the new leader, many conservatives were shown Mrs. Poilievre. She did a carefully scripted introduction for her husband on national television. Call her ‘clown number one.’

I remember another Pierre. Some of us communications people tried to get Pierre Trudeau to bring his wife and first son, Justin, to more events. Our pitch was rejected in very clear terms.

Yet, to make the point even more obvious, Pierre Poilievre brought wife and son to meet the conservative caucus a couple days later. Call the baby ‘clown number two.’

But who are the clowns who can humanize Poilievre for Canadian voters? What we know already is that only a small percentage of Canadian voters would consider him for prime minister. The majority do not think he is trustworthy. Women, particularly, dislike him. Assuming that there will be little need for members of parliament in a cut-down Poilievre parliament, are they just the clowns?

And, after all, what is he offering us? He wants a lean, mean government that leaves Canadians to fend for themselves. He wants fewer bureaucrats and a small civil service. He has no plans to try to alleviate climate change. And he can hardly fix the problems at the passport office or at airports or at border crossings with fewer people.

But there is no doubt that Mr. Poilievre wants to be prime minister.    

We will have to keep telling him: “Well, maybe next year.”

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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The Quest for Quebec.

by Peter Lowry

The Quebec liberals have something the Ontario liberals lack. It is leadership. They have leader Dominique Anglade and she is busy doing her job in the current election campaign in the province. It is almost as though she is running against the news media, the political scientists, the new conservative party, Québec Solidaire, the Parti Québécois and Legault’s CAQ. As leader, she needs to take her party away from the others and run a campaign that sets her party apart.

What I think she needs is a direct attack on Francois Legault’s striking out at the English language when he knows it is only going to hurt Quebecers. She has to say that bilingualism is better. She has to acknowledge that prosperity for Quebec is based on bilingualism. The point is that Legault is hurting the economic potential of Quebec. Bilingualism is better. Bilingualism creates more jobs for Quebecers. French only limits the potential jobs. It has been proved too often that narrow, unilingual strategies have reduced the opportunities for young people. This narrow approach has driven people out of Quebec instead of welcoming opportunities.

And she can hardly lose ground to Éric Duhaime, leader of the mainly libertarian Quebec conservative party. When Duhaime holds news conferences that are half in English and half in French in Montreal, you hardly need to guess whose vote he is going after.

Anglade has to also make the point that to deny Quebecers their rights to their religion to hold a job with the province is the worst kind of bigotry. The National Assembly is a place to ensure Quebecers of their rights—not to deny them their rights. You have to recognize that there are four parties in the assembly that support Bill 96 regarding religious symbols. The party that understands that it is just another piece of roadkill for the supreme court is being honest with Quebecers. And that in itself will be a novelty.

And if you believe the pundits and reporters in Quebec, who say that Anglade’s campaign, as it is, is a loser, you know that Anglade has nothing to lose. Legault can be afraid of the truth but she needs to show that she is not.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

The Anguish of Anger.

by Peter Lowry

The new conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has told the news media that he does not pivot. That presents an interesting problem for his speech writers as we head down the road to the next federal election. That election could be as far away as three years. Will the anguish of the pandemic still be with us? Can prime minister Justin Trudeau be goaded into calling an election while the anger still rides high?

Are these extremes of anger still those that came with the pandemic? Was it the confusion of the lock downs and the isolation and the loneliness? Was it just the fear of some people of vaccines? Or was it the medical assumption of 100 per cent participation in being vaccinated? Maybe it was the fear of crowds, the fear of contamination? Or the fear for our lives? Yet this type of anger will ease over time. Some might never lose it. Others will control it.

As the pandemic gets less of the news cycle, world-wide inflation and the war in the Ukraine are feeding fresh anger. Mr. Poilievre has helped build that anger when he blames inflation on prime minister Trudeau and threatens the governor of the Bank of Canada.

Mr. Poilievre needs that anger to feed his campaign. He needs to hold on to that stridency and urgency. He uses the anger. He uses it as a replacement for clear and logical plans for Canada’s future. He has none.

Without the anger, people will realize that Pierre Poilievre is a sham. He is no populist. The last Prairie populist to be leader of the conservatives in Canada was John Diefenbaker. I admired John Diefenbaker. He really was a man of the people. I was doing on-air commentaries at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens as a liberal observer in 1967 when the conservative party chose Robert Stanfield to replace him as leader. One thing, for sure, Pierre Poilievre is no John Diefenbaker

Populism is simply not compatible with conservatism. Speaking out about vague elites is hardly an endorsement of populism. Saying that the prime minister could be personally responsible for inflation in Canada is rabble-rousing. Threatening to fire the Governor of the Bank of Canada is neither populist nor conservative. It is laying blame for inflation where it also does not belong.

Nor is the Bank of Canada planning on going into the cryptocurrencies business. Mr. Poilievre should listen more carefully to the bank’s official statements.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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Darkness Falls.

by Peter Lowry

They say that bad luck runs in threes. The Queen died last week. Justin Trudeau said he was staying as leader of the liberals for the next election. And Pierre Poilievre won the leadership of the conservative party. That is certainly a hard-luck week.

Queen Elizabeth II has been the rock that anchored the United Kingdom for many years. Even in the depths of the roiling public concerns over Diana’s death, she was obviously evaluating options available to her. She, and the rest of the royal family, got on board the bus and rode it to a fresh acceptance. Charles cannot not compare with her and will soon start to wear on the family’s mystique.

Justin Trudeau was probably never able to understand his father’s relationship with Canada’s liberal party. Pierre Trudeau recognized in his second election that Trudeau mania was not reality. It was his realizing that he had to work with the party that gave him the majorities needed over most of his time as prime minister. Justin Trudeau’s weakness is that he has no respect for the liberal party. He has taken away its annual membership fee and turned it into a faux automated teller machine to which he can turn to for financing.

What the younger Trudeau fails to understand is that the liberal party is not just a financial backer but the workers who can validate party policies, do the door knocking, distribute the literature, erect the signs and bring out the vote.

To nobody’s surprise, MP Pierre Poilievre won the conservative leadership. It was a carefully orchestrated, overly long and unappealing event. What felt wrong was the lack of a future vision of Canada. Poilievre sits on the extreme right of Canadian conservatism. He spells out an austere and cruel vision of small and uncaring government. Despite the obvious objectives of the carefully crafted speech on the teleprompters, Poilievre lacks the warmth and personality needed in the party leadership. He has no life accomplishments to justify his new position. Using his wife to overcome his personal limitations is unlikely to help.

So those were the low points of the week. And the kids are back in school, so please drive carefully.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

A Farewell to the Royals.

by Peter Lowry

It was sad to hear of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. She was a remarkable lady. What intrigues me about the whole business is the antipathy many people feel towards our new king, Charles III. They think that because his son William looks like a nicer bloke, we can just bypass Chuck and make his son King. Sorry folks, it just does not work that way.

The royals are a family business that has been handed down for many centuries.  Despite the beheading of Charles I, who was also disliked, the practice has been forbidden since. And even though the lineage has been refreshed when needed from the Houses of Orange and Hanover, it has been remarkably durable.

As kids in Canada, we were taught to sing There will always be an England, during World War II. Just how that helped English morale while being bombed by the Luftwaffe, I am not sure. I think that the fact that the royal family stayed in London during the war did much more for morale.

But the royals do nothing for Canada. We are not a real constitutional monarchy. We have a faux Governor General playing the role of head of state. We have the English monarch’s face on our coins and $20 bills.

Canada has a constitution suited to the needs of the late 1800s with only the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to modify it. We fail to recognize and relish the complexities and accomplishments of our country and our stature in the world of today. The world is at our doorstep, waiting for our invitation. We have arable land to farm, roads to build, businesses to build, homes to create for more people.

Canada is sanctuary. Canada is a land of forests and waters. Canada is a great country that can partner with the United Kingdom, yet it owes no loyalty or homage to that country.

Canada is a land of opportunity. It does not need royalty. It should never encourage tradition or privilege over the rights of all.

We can honour Elizabeth II for her charm, her selflessness, her attention to her duty. She was an example to us all. It is suitable time to end the monarchy for Canada.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

The Stalking Horse.

by Peter Lowry

The stalking horse is a strategy that has been used in politics over the past 200 years. A stalking horse in politics appears to be a candidate for an office who builds a base of support but delivers the support to another candidate in the actual vote. We will soon know if it worked in the Canadian federal conservative leadership being decided later today. The stalking horse was former MP and Brampton mayor Patrick Brown. He was doing the stalking on behalf of his friend, former Quebec Premier Jean Charest. The prize at the end of the game was for Charest to win the leadership against MP Pierre Poilievre.

While people such as former prime minister Brian Mulroney were working the conservative party sign-ups in Quebec for Charest, Patrick Brown was signing up temporary conservatives across Canada—supposedly for his own campaign. His main target was the sub-continent diaspora of almost 2 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs who are concentrated in Toronto and Vancouver and other cities such as Montreal in Quebec and Brampton, Ontario. Brown signed up more than 100,000 temporary conservatives and renewals.

There are many theories as to why Brown was turfed from the conservative contest. There were rumours of illegal acts and there were rumours of rules violations. I think Patrick Brown set up his own ejection from the race. The problem was that with his sign-ups voting for him on the first ballot, he was risking coming second to Pierre Poilievre. For the stalking horse effort to work, Jean Charest had to come first or second on the first ballot. All was lost though if Poilievre had more than 50 per cent of 338 electoral districts on the first ballot.

Brown had no problem asking his temporary members to vote for Charest second to him. They would also accept his advice to vote for Jean Charest after he was out of the race. It did not matter that his name was still on the ballot. It is his second vote that is counted.

What is not clear is the obvious animosity between Brown and Poilievre. Neither of the two men are particularly likeable. Neither has much life experience. They both have had a life dedicated to politics with a conservative flavour. Brown’s conservatism is that of a smarmy, middle-of-the-road retail politician and Poilievre’s is to the extremes of the right wing of conservatism.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

The Hypocrisy of Premier Ford.

by Peter Lowry

Has Ontario premier Ford found out that organized labour matters? As much as it might gall some Ontario voters, there were conservative members of the Ontario legislature in Labour Day parades this year. They were marching with the workers. They want you to believe they are pro-labour. They are far from pro-labour.

Conservatives such as Doug Ford know little about organized labour, its origins, its reason for continued existence or its objectives. What Ford and his cronies want are the votes of organized labour. What begs the question though is why does the Ontario government mistreat some of the largest union groups in the province?

This is where the hypocrisy is hard to take. The treatment of nurses by the Ford government is discriminatory and has been driving vitally needed nurses out of hospitals. It is hampering the efficacy of our entire healthcare system. We are not out of the pandemic yet and we have growing numbers of medical procedures becoming urgent. Hospitals are being forced to turn patients away from poorly manned emergency departments. Entire wards are without staff and they are closed.

What the Ford government has done is broken faith with the people of Ontario to provide an available, fair and competent healthcare system. And the threat to send convalescing patients to long term care facilities is risking the lives of patients without adequate medical staff and facilities at hand. And what long term care facility has the physiotherapists and equipment to get these people up and back in their communities?

 And the gamesmanship continues in the education system. Some of the largest and determined unions in Ontario are the teachers and the support staff. They are in a game with the government where neither wants to be blamed for children missing any more of the education they need as they grow.

The Ontario government has insulted the first group of teaching assistants, caretakers and clerical staff with an offer of two per cent for those earning less than $40,000 per year and the others just 1.25 per cent.  

Facing rampant inflation, the teachers and support staff are faced with no choice but upcoming strike votes. The first 55,000 Ontario education workers could be out on strike for Christmas.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Protesting Protests.

by Peter Lowry

Every day someone, somewhere has come up with something new to protest. Maybe there needs to be licensing arrangements for protests before it gets completely out of hand. The latest annoyance this week was the people protesting the fighter jets at the Canadian National Exhibition.

If I had been down to the Ex this year, I would have gone to see the air show. As a one-time member of the Canadian air force, I am fascinated by the latest fighter aircraft. And, of course, they are powered by pollution-creating fuel.  Let’s face it, war is hell in more ways than one.

But I can assure you, RCAF pilots probably waste less fuel than a teenager with his first car. And the very idea that people who have been in war zones would not want to see friendly planes up close, is ludicrous. Besides, those jet planes you see at Canadian air shows have probably never fired a shot or projectile in anger.

And while we are at it, I have a word for people who think they have the right to block roads or trains or in any other way to block fellow citizens from lawful entry or egress. I’m not sure I am spelling it right but it sounds like pssssssssfffffffffft.

Of course, I am fully in agreement with your right to inform others of your displeasure with an employer or a government.

And I reserve the right to ridicule those who insist we defund the police. I agree that police are not suitable for certain calls. I very much want them to be accompanied by people trained in handling mental illness and anger issues. You just better be prepared for the costs of that next time you pay your municipal and provincial taxes.

Speaking of that, just wait until your community ratepayers take your nimbyism too far. If you want to block reasonable in-fill, moderate apartment projects, granny flats and other schemes to provide more reasonable accommodation for people in your community, please be prepared to pay the real cost. Status quo has to be taxed too. There are no gated communities in Canada where you can hide from the realities of life and death and taxes.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]