Babel-on-the-Bay – Page 6 – Babel-on-the-Bay is the personal website of Peter Lowry. It is a vehicle for political commentaries.

The Theory of the Tax.

November 22, 2023November 21, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Pierre Poilievre might not be the smartest politician in Ottawa. He stumbles around without his glasses, probably walks into walls and tells his foolish followers to “Axe the Tax.” What he does not seem to understand is that this levy, that he wants to axe, is based on the most successful tax the federal government ever kept raising. It was the tax on cigarettes. And it worked.

Frankly, it was not pictures of tumours in the lung that did the job. I was well aware of the medical reasons not to smoke long before I stopped smoking.

But the constant increases in the price of a package of cigarettes certainly caught my attention. It was a long cycle. I remember when 20 cigarettes cost less than 50 cents. When the cost past 50 cents, I scoffed and said “so what,” and kept on puffing. When I saw a person pay over $10 for a pack of cigarettes recently, I was glad I had quit long before that.

And that is the reason, we are told that today, less than one Canadian in ten lights up. It puzzles me though that our aboriginals account for so much of the smoking that seems to be on their reservations.

But the point of this commentary is that this carbon tax which Mr. Poilievre spends so much time attacking is not even a tax but it is having an impact in terms of reduced greenhouse gasses. And most of the seniors I know welcome the Climate Action Incentive that goes into their bank account every quarter. It might not mean as much to younger recipients but it is going to continue to grow—unless that Mr. Poilievre wins his dream of becoming prime minister of Canada.

I guess it depends on his caucus having the testicular fortitude to force him to keep that Climate Action Incentive flowing into Canadians’ bank accounts.

I really do expect though that some of that money needs to be diverted to charging stations across Canada for electric vehicles. Until we see an easy drive anywhere in the country with adequate chargers, it will be hybrid cars getting the nod.

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Telling Trudeau to Go.

November 21, 2023November 20, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Belling the cat has always been the problem. Back in the 1960s, the conservative party of Canada had a problem with leadership. It was leader John George Diefenbaker, who declined to go quietly into the night. He was fighting with his own party. His nemesis was conservative party president Dalton Camp. I could not say it publicly at the time but I really liked Dalton. And, until he shot down the AVRO Arrow, I liked John Diefenbaker.

It left me in the envious position of giving liberal commentary on Toronto’s best radio news station for the penultimate conservative leadership convention at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1967. Dalton ran the events from the lounge in the Gardens and engineered the win by Robert Stanfield from Nova Scotia. One of the delights of the event was wandering around the darkened grey section of the Gardens and finding fellow liberals there, enjoying the show. I was always ready with liberal comments on the convention and even had some that were breaking news.

I was sitting in the board room of the liberal party’s advertising agency for the announcement by prime minister Lester Pearson of the next year’s liberal leadership convention. I had lost my bid for a seat in the Ontario Legislature but there were some interesting opportunities for the upcoming liberal leadership. I took the offer from Bob Winter’s group mainly because the Ontario party president was his campaign manager and he wanted me to look after the media and the convention.

Nobody had told Mr. Pearson that it was time to go—unless it was his wife who really hated politics. Nor did we feel any urge to suggest that Pierre Trudeau take his walk in the snow. He set his own schedule. He tried to rid himself of that demanding job twice. My advice to all politicians as well as with actors: Is leave them laughing.

I am concerned that Justin Trudeau does not have the acumen of his father. He has worn out his wife who probably told him it was time to go long before the marriage fell apart. Justin lacks the timing that his father had. When you pile on the failures in office, people start to believe your nay-sayers. Justin Trudeau’s time is up.

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A Cinderella Solution.

November 20, 2023November 19, 2023 by Peter Lowry

It is really the best solution for the Ontario liberals. They need Bonnie Crombie for the ‘coup de grâce’ on the Ford conservatives. One term for a pragmatic liberal such as Bonnie is all we need from her. She understands how the Ford government has squeezed the municipalities and where the weak points are in support for hospitals and education. She can get the home building moving with support from the municipalities across the province.

The tall order for Bonnie will be the act of going from eight or nine liberals in the current liberal caucus to a majority liberal government in Ontario. That has always been a tough job. It will take hard work and daring. Her first order of business is to get into the legislature. It is the only place she can tackle Ford on equal footing as party leader to premier. Ontario voters need to see her in action in the legislature, not just as a very popular mayor of Mississauga.

Bonnie obviously has the blessing of the Toronto Star. It will be nice to have the paper on board for a change.

And Bonnie is the fresh face that the liberals need. Liberalism is a tough sell these days as it emphasizes individual rights in a vitriolic political environment. Both federal and provincial elections coming up in the next three years are going to be hard fought against conservatives taking their lead from well-funded American Republican leaders such as Donald Trump.

At the same time political ethics are shifting as promises seem to always be in the maybe category. It is making voters more and more weary of politicians’ promises that earn substantial distrust.

Despite some early missteps during the overly long provincial liberal leadership campaign, Crombie has recovered well and certainly understands that Ontario liberals want to be proactive in progressive policies that will improve Ontario’s economic situation. And we can certainly expect that from now on, the Ontario Greenbelt will always be respected by all Ontario parties.

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Promises, Promises.

November 19, 2023November 18, 2023 by Peter Lowry

You can compare the current leadership race for the Ontario liberals to a schoolyard race. There is still time for somebody to get tripped. It’s a mixed race. It’s the boys against the only girl. Call her Cinderella, if you wish. She is running against her two wicked stepsisters and her fairy godmother’s coachman.

Obviously, we are talking about Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie. She thinks she is in for a first-ballot win. Which is possible—if she gets lots of her party sign-ups to vote. Crombie might be the only candidate who really understands the mathematics of the race. By no stretch of the imagination can this be called a ‘one member-one vote’ election. The last riding anybody needs to have new sign-ups is their own riding. As soon as you have 100 members, you have hit your limit. More voters than 100 is just diluting your relative strength.

What particularly annoys me about ranked balloting is when there are a larger number of candidates, the less likely the best person wins. If people would stop to think about it, they would realize that it is a method of picking the best-known candidate, not the most qualified candidate. It is a chance for your second or third best to win. The deeper you get into the count, the less likely that any substantive thought or consideration goes into the choices.

And the most amusing aspect of this degrading count-down is that by the time you get to the fourth or fifth count, you can be letting less than half your voter base make the decision. How many people can even guess who is their fourth or fifth choice?

But don’t pay any attention to me. Do your own countdown on this race. The first ballot will see up to 12,400 votes allocated to 124 electoral districts Those with less than 100 members will have all their voters counted. Voters in strong riding associations have to share their votes on a percentage basis. If there are 300 members voting, for example, each of their votes will only count for 33.3 per cent.

And there is another problem with this that nobody seems to be concerned about. There is no membership fee involved. Of all the mistakes Justin Trudeau has made as leader of the liberal party, I think that was about the stupidest. I bet the candidates’ people went to the easiest people to get memberships. What motivates these freeloaders to vote? Good luck candidates!

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The State of the Statues.

November 18, 2023November 18, 2023 by Peter Lowry

There are stupid people in this world who think they can upset long-standing statues with impunity. My favourite statue at Queen’s Park in Toronto is that of King Edward VII astride a horse. It is one damn fine horse. And as far as I’m concerned, the guy on the horse is just another horse’s ass.

I mention this as the Ontario government has wasted public money on a statue of the late Queen Elizabeth II. Why they should waste money on this is beyond me. I am confident there was no hue and cry saying; you must do this. It is not even a decent statue. I would swear that a man posed for the face. Queen Elizabeth had much softer features. I have always thought of her as something of a nebbish. Not as much as her son Charles but he was a prince only a mother could love.

And in this time of reminding Torontonians of our country’s colonial past, we have poor old John A. Macdonald all boarded up to protect him from the stupid people who would try to splash paint on him and tear him down. Tearing down Sir John because of the residential schools is a particularly dumb move. This is the guy that pointed the way to creating the Canada that exists today. If it had not been for Sir John, Canada would just be the back lot for the American or British Empire. Toss a coin for which one.

For my part, I suppose I should spring to the defence of Oliver Mowat. His statue is on the west side of the legislature building at Queen’s Park. He is an early relation. My paternal grandmother was a Mowat. Everything I have ever heard about that side of the family tells me not to expect much from my Mowat genes. My late friend Keith Davey had a laugh on me one time when he and wife Dorothy where at the Aberfoyle Market out in Puslinch Township. They found an 1893 copy of the front page of the Saturday Globe. It had a large picture of Sir Oliver Mowat, honouring how long he had been premier of Ontario. Keith gave it to me and said now he knew where my big nose came from. That front page was preserved for me and framed. It hangs on the wall today above my computer screen.

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Hype and Hypocrisy.

November 17, 2023November 16, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Canadians are going to need a truth and reconciliation commission to understand conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and his failure to debate legislation with honesty. The other day I was watching a television clip of his discussion on Bill C-234 which is now before the senate. This polyester politician can lie so routinely to Canadians, it makes your stomach turn.

To tell you about this, you should be aware that Bill C-234 was probably written on the request of the leader of the opposition’s office. The basic intent of the bill is to eliminate the levy on greenhouse gas emissions for all propane and natural gas used on farms to heat buildings. In simple terms, this bill would cancel out the effort the government is making to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across Canada, and all the while, to eliminate the expense for those who cannot afford it.

The most amusing part of the Poilievre speech was his claim that a chicken farmer, who spends $40,000 over the winter heating his hen house cannot afford the added expense of the carbon levy. To begin with anyone spending $40,000 to keep their chickens warm and cozy is doing it as a business expense. And any hen house that expensive to heat would probably be the equivalent in size to a 40-home subdivision. He is talking about a million-dollar business. And it would definitely be included in those businesses that should be moving to lower-cost heating systems.

What I did not understand in Poilievre’s speech was that he talked about the heating oil levy as only being omitted in the Atlantic provinces. The Atlantic provinces probably still have many homes that need to move away from oil heating. The moratorium on the oil heating levy applies to other provinces as well as in the Atlantic provinces. It is for three years to give people using home heating oil time to find more efficient methods of heating their homes.

But Mr. Poilievre does not seem to be paying attention to what is really going on and it seems more important to him to misrepresent what the liberal government is doing. Canadians are starting to become impatient with Mr. Poilievre. He wants to blame the liberals for everything and has no solutions of his own.

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Whose Mess Is It?

November 16, 2023November 15, 2023 by Peter Lowry

It was no fun. I recently spent some time digging into what the pollsters have been telling us. They can be such a dreary bunch. And if they don’t like something, they tend to lay it on. They sure have not been giving good news to liberals. They tend to blame it all on Justin Trudeau. We might as well blame him for everything else that is going wrong.

The other day, for example, we found that the Canadian Mint was going to introduce the new King Charles III Canadian coins. Not that many Canadians give a damn but how will they get those big ears on a dime? So, just blame Justin. He gets blamed for everything else these days. The first time I met Justin as an MP, he turned me off because I wanted to do something about the Canadian constitution. He sure doesn’t want to get involved in that circus.

I could always blame the conservative’s Poilievre. That poor schmuck actually wants to be prime minister. He is the one going around the country saying that “Canada is broken.” I guess I will never understand him. Imagining Canada with him as prime minister is a mean and cruel country.

It would be a Canada with no place for charity. He wants dog-eat-dog capitalism. He doesn’t like rules—not even those promoted by the Marquis of Queensbury.

And what is that damn fool going to do about global warming. He hates spending money on things like water bombers to fight the out-of-control wildfires that are consuming our forests. What would he do about the floods that destroy our roads and bridges? The damn fool thinks he can solve all our problems with more police and longer prison sentences.

The conservatives are sure spending a lot on this guy. They have spent the last year trying to make him into something that Canadians would vote for. He sure squints a lot without his glasses. The wife and kids look like they came from central casting. Now, if they could only come up with a humanity pill for him. Frankly, I don’t think he is a very nice person.

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Reap What You Sow.

November 15, 2023November 14, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Does it come as a surprise that the most serious antisemitic incidents in Canada since the October 7 war was launched in the Middle East, have taken place in Quebec? After all, why should we be surprised in a province that routinely promotes discrimination against people who speak languages other than French? As the kids said in the school yard: “He started it.”

The provincial government of François Legault should not be so surprised. This is a government that routinely uses the ‘Not Withstanding’ clause in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms to try to prevent interference in their discrimination against their English-speaking citizens. And it is not as though it is racial discrimination. English and French speaking peoples are, for the most part, from the same racial origins. Many slurs in both languages have been slung over the English Channel over the centuries of history.

But that is no excuse for the suppression of English in Quebec. It is probably the only jurisdiction with more than eight million population today that does not accept English as the lingua franca of today’s world. The truth be known is that many educated francophones in Quebec want their children to learn English, as it will enable them to have more opportunities in their business career. And come to think of it, what percentage of the members of the Quebec legislature are able to communicate in English?

These are the people who regularly pass laws that limit the availability of English language education in the province. To add insult, they have raised the annual rates for English-speaking students from outside Quebec to attend their English-language universities and colleges to beyond reasonable.

And is our federal government standing up to this discrimination in Quebec. Of course not. The conservatives and the liberals are both thinking of an election in the next two years and are soft-pedaling the objections they might have to this Quebec bigotry. And what else do they have in mind, while they have the feds on the run?

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Big Plans: Small Minds.

November 14, 2023November 13, 2023 by Peter Lowry

There must be some amused apparatchiks at the Ontario Legislature. These are the conservative ones in the premier’s office, charged with keeping Doug Ford out of harm’s way. To them, harm’s way is any commitment to give money to the city of Toronto. You tend to think of Toronto as some sort of orphan after Olivia Chow was elected mayor earlier this year. There is no question but former mayor John Tory was treated as the son Doug Ford had never had—treatment such as Chow does not get.

You have to admit that Doug Ford was hardly rooting for Olivia to be the last person standing out of 102 candidates for replacement mayor. The very fact that Ford had agreed to a working group to find funds for Toronto could be the full extent of his being agreeable for this year. In the meantime, Olivia Chow is bicycling herself to work every day at city hall—in high hopes that someone above her pay grade will pay attention to her calls to senior governments for funding.

At her frequent news conferences, Chow takes a positive attitude. Her big plans for Toronto require a big budget. She keeps her hopes alive. While the municipalities are creatures of the province, there is no guarantee that the conservatives consider her pleas to be worthy of their attention. The premier has told her she needs to raise taxes. He wants her to take the blame for the increase.

Did you notice recently in the list the media produced to show which municipalities were meeting their commitments on housing starts that Toronto was well ahead of the game. The province promised municipalities who met their targets would get extra funding. She is well within her rights to demand some of that prize money.

The situation with the federal government is different as it is more of a moral issue. Toronto is the destination that many immigrants want and subsidized housing is the only answer until these immigrants have been established in a job with decent wages. The feds also have people awaiting hearings on their immigrant status that need emergency housing and the city cannot continue to pay their bills.

Quite frankly, Olivia has put herself in a lose-lose position. She might as well increase taxes as well.

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Trying Trump.

November 13, 2023November 12, 2023 by Peter Lowry

The trial that Donald Trump and his co-defendants are currently undergoing in New York City is not a question of guilt or innocence. The State of New York knows that Trump and the others committed the offence. They know that Trump properties and other assets were overstated in value in a continued effort to deceive banks, lenders and fellow Americans as to the real wealth of Mr. Trump. This trial is seeking an appropriate penalty.

It has been obvious to observers for more than five years that Mr. Trump had a reason to conceal his real wealth. Where former American presidents were willing to release their financial figures, Mr. Trump refused. He lied to Americans. Any thinking person would realize that the only reason to hide the real figures is to cover up the fiction that he is a multi-billionaire. He has no bragging rights to such wealth.

Mr. Trump is a property developer. Regrettably, there is a tendency in that business to over-inflate the value of properties to cover mortgages and loans needed to finance development projects. The truth has never been a Trump ally.

As much as we might want our politicians to tell the truth, Mr. Trump carried this penchant for creative falsehoods with him to the White House. While some people might assume that all politicians lie, the truth is that the voters would prefer that they were not told lies.

Americans have never before seen anything like the final days of Mr. Trump’s time in the White House. It was his time of denial. He denied that he lost in his bid for re-election. He claimed he was cheated. He asked loyal followers to join in insurrection. He instigated the January six attack on the Capitol He took classified documents with him when he had to leave the White House. It was not an orderly transition.

Mr. Trump is still complaining.

Mr. Trump still wants to be president. He is planning to run next year. He is planning to run despite the verdicts of the courts. He is planning to run despite many American Republicans who do not want him to be their candidate. The arguments will continue over the coming year.

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