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

Defining Del Duca.

by Peter Lowry

Ontario premier Doug Ford would have taken the advice from his late brother Rob. The former Toronto mayor would have used the municipal measure of when a campaign begins. Hit your opponents in January and defeat them in October is the municipal election theory. Ford has gone on the attack this month in preparation for the provincial vote in June next year.

Describing the opposition leader, the new democrat’s Andrea Horwath, is the easy part: she’s boring, she’s ineffective, she’s going nowhere. What more need the conservatives say?

Defining liberal leader Stephen Del Duca is more of a challenge. Ontario wide, Del Duca is an unknown. And it was looking as though it could cost the liberals a lot to make him known. Just maybe, Doug Ford, with his inexperience, will do some of the job for them. He is going to introduce Del Duca as part of the cabinet of former liberal premier Kathleen Wynne. That might be more of a help than a hinderance.

After all, why would you want to attack a guy for being experienced? And they seem blind to the fact some of the Wynne government actions were in strong contrast to the Ford government actions when coming into power.

Take the minimum wage fiasco for one. The Wynne government had promised a raise in minimum wage to $15 per hour for 2019. Ford knocked that back to $14 per hour. It was this year when they took it up to $14.35 per hour. With the serious profiteering in the grocery stores this year, it is easy to see why many refer to the conservative action as purposely preserving poverty.

One of Doug’s most serious early mistakes was his spiteful attack on the democracy of the elections in Toronto, after the municipal campaigns were underway. It showed him as a petty person.

To maybe(?) help dispel that thought, his campaign is launching the idea of the Ford government as “the government that says ‘Yes.’” The opponents should be able to drive a truck through that idea.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Big Tent, Little Tent Tories?

by Peter Lowry

You often hear the conservative and liberal parties referred to as big-tent parties. We would therefore assume, in contrast, that the greens, new democrats and peoples’ party are just little tents. And that would leave the united conservatives of Alberta and the cranky bloc Québécois as pup-tents. Whatever size, we know that these tents are quite flexible and all parties like to think of their tent as being of the marquee class.

In our latest federal election, it was obvious that, conservative leader Erin O’Toole thought his conservative tent was ready to expand as he invited Canadians to step into his party. He had started through the leadership contest that was held for his party to tell everybody that he was a “true blue” conservative. This was taken to mean that he would accommodate everybody from the social conservatives to the progressive conservatives and even the united conservatives of Alberta. He assured these diverse conservatives that he would rid them of carbon taxes, gun control and abortions.

But, to our surprise, come the election, Mr. O’Toole sought to further enlarge the conservative tent. He really wanted everybody to be able to crowd in. He proudly pointed out to his fellow conservatives that he was from the greater Toronto Area (GTA) and he knew how to win there.

The O’Toole solution was simple. To win in the GTA, all you had to do is support carbon taxes, agree with gun control and go soft on abortions. And Mr. O’Toole was sure the conservatives who hated carbon taxes, hated gun control and probably hated abortions would understand if he made slightly different promises to voters in the GTA and in Montreal and in Vancouver.

To Mr. O’Toole’s surprise conservative voters were not all pleased with his solution. Some were so surprised at his changing promises that they decided to vote for Mr. Bernier’s peoples’ party and some did not even vote.

And to make matters worse for Mr. O’Toole, the conservative knives are out for him. If he thought ‘Chuckles’ Scheer got the bum’s rush as leader, he should not wait to test the party’s venom.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

At War with Michigan.

by Peter Lowry

The ongoing war with the State of Michigan is heating up. Canada’s federal government has now invoked a 1977 treaty that supposedly says that Canada can destroy the fresh water viability of the Great Lakes if it is in aid of ensuring self-sufficiency in oil to both countries. What we really need to do is resolve this matter before American tanks start rumbling across the Ambassador Bridge into Windsor, Ontario.

And the entire imbroglio is regarding the status of Enbridge’s Line 5 from Superior, Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario. The general on the American side is Michigan governor, Gretchen Witmer. The Canadian contingent is led by Calgary’s Enbridge pipeline people.

It started when the Michigan governor realized that the same material that caused a major catastrophe on tributaries of the Kalamazoo River in southern Michigan was being piped under Lake Michigan at the Straits of Mackinac. This is a particularly sensitive area where Lake Michigan flows into Lake Huron and down through the Great Lakes.

The culprit in this case is diluted bitumen from the Alberta tar sands. From where Line 5 crosses Lake Michigan, it delivers the diluted bitumen to Detroit as well as Canadian refineries. It was close to a million gallons of Albertan diluted bitumen that destroyed the fishing on the Kalamazoo River for years to come. After spending close to a billion US dollars in the clean-up attempt, there is still bitumen polluting the Kalamazoo River.

And nobody needs to be a scientist to guess what would happen if there was a major spill in the Straits of Mackinac. It is not just the fisheries on the lower Great Lakes but the fresh water for millions of Americans and Canadians that would be at risk.

The fact that Enbridge has already acknowledged the danger is made clear in its current construction of a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac to eliminate concerns for any spills. They really need a compromise by ensuring that no bitumen be allowed to flow through the current pipeline. And it might just end the war.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Dougie Dimes Us.

by Peter Lowry

Ontario premier Doug Ford must think he is John D. Rockefeller. That was the Rockefeller who built Standard Oil of New Jersey into the industrial bemouth of today. It was always assumed that Ivy Lee, a pioneer of public relations in the United States, had advised his client, Rockefeller, to always carry a supply of dimes to give to people he met—to counter the common view that the Rockefeller wealth came from being a skinflint.

But what is a dime worth today when Ford’s conservatives just raised the minimum wage by 10-cents an hour. After scrapping the liberal promise to jump the minimum wage in Ontario to a basic $15 per hour three years ago, Ford found it in his stone-cold heart to raise the minimum wage to $14.35. It is, of course, less for teenagers and restaurant servers.

The best description we have heard so far to this increase is that the Ford government is working to maintain poverty. More than 600,000 people in Ontario work for minimum wage.

Ford considers himself a populist and is famous for his foolish promise to his followers of “a buck-a-beer.” That never panned out either.

One of the frequent lies in social media today is that the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), that was initiated during the worst of the pandemic, has been responsible for people not rushing back to work for minimum wages.

In the Ontario market, where single family dwellings are routinely selling for over a million dollars, the minimum wage is an insult to anyone to whom it is offered. Nobody should need to work for so little.

And there is little sympathy for restaurants where servers have to rely on tips to put together a living wage. Nobody should have to rely on the generosity of customers to fill their earnings needs.

The worst example of people working for a minimum wage are the seniors who cannot pay their rent if they do not earn some extra money. For them, the Ontario minimum wage is particularly demeaning.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

(more…)

Have you kissed a farmer today?

by Peter Lowry

Reading the latest statistics about the urban-rural divide in Canadian politics the other day was a disappointment. It seems the split is becoming more pronounced. In Canada, our rural voters are becoming the mainstay of conservative votes while mostly urban voters are supporting the liberals. The trend has been obvious for many years. We never seem to learn.

My problem is that I go back to the days when the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was led by Hazen Argue, a farmer from Saskatchewan. When the deal was made by Tommy Douglas and David Lewis to bring their new democratic party under the auspices of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), it lost much of its farm vote.

The liberals certainly tried to win the farm vote. The smartest move by Pierre Trudeau as prime minister was when he appointed my late friend Eugene Wehlan as minister of agriculture. Gene did more for farmers in Canada and around the world than any collection of conservative agriculture ministers had ever done. He was a strong advocate of supply management and worked hard to ensure that farmers had the benefits of advancements in technology.

And what is annoying today is that the conservative politicians take the farm vote for granted. They use them. When they wanted to keep my riding from voting liberal, it was a simple effort to convince the commission that did the rebalancing of ridings to gerrymander the Barrie ridings by splitting the city in two and adding a rural third to each of the riding’s voters. The closest we came was in the 2015 federal election which went to a recount.

I took part in that recount because I wanted to see what the impact was in the rural vs. urban vote. A nobody conservative won the riding by 86 votes. It proved out in a random recount of rural and urban polls that the conservatives would win the rural polls by a higher percentage than the liberals were getting in the urban polls.

It will be interesting to see who Justin Trudeau will choose for the agriculture portfolio in his new cabinet.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Blah, Blah, Blah.

by Peter Lowry

I have never paid much attention to that young Swedish environmentalist, Greta Thunberg, but she certainly has good writers. The other day there was a clip on the news about her announcing the upcoming world environmental conference in Glasgow. All she said on the clip was: “Blah, blah, blah.” And that will likely be the sum of what is to be said.

And why are we wasting our time? We all know that prime minister Justin Trudeau is a hypocrite. He is going to Glasgow on another holiday. He will hob-nob with his betters among the world’s elite. He has no meaningful contribution to make.

In the meantime, before heading for Scotland, he has to reconstruct his cabinet. And if Trudeau places gender equality ahead of competency again, we will know, he is a damn fool. Canadians would not care if he had an all-female cabinet, as long as it did its job.

Which reminds me. This is a bit off-topic but I would love to know who is the humourist in the prime minister’s office. I was sending some material to the Canadian Radio Television-telecommunications Commission (CRTC) the other day and I looked up the current chair and commissioners to see who I was sending it to. Would you believe that the male chairperson is the typical long-time bureaucrat and all the regional commissioners are women? They are mostly lawyers, of course.

But back to the climate conference. While Mr. Trudeau is in Scotland, might be the right time for cabinet to cancel the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Just think of the tonnes of carbon that would not be sent off-shore to help destroy our planet. By not sending those millions of barrels of Alberta tar sands bitumen around the world, to be turned into ersatz oil and its by-products, our world might have a few more years of life left to it.

Maybe if Greta Thunberg’s writers find out about our prime minister’s pet pipeline project, they might get some people to pay attention. Nobody seems to listen to the usual environmentalists.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Lessons for Conservatives.

by Peter Lowry

My advice to conservatives among us is just to be what you are. That might be simplistic but there is concern that your party’s philosophy is wandering too far off the mark. One meets many conservatives over the years and I think the problem is that you are losing track of what conservatism is all about.

If your objective is to only win elections then you might consider changing the name of your party to something more upbeat and modern. At one time, your conservatives changed the name to ‘progressive conservatives.’ That was an oxymoron. I think the first progressive conservative I ever met was a populist from Saskatchewan, John George Diefenbaker. He was prime minister at the time. I found him interesting to talk with but when I remembered what he did to the Avro Arrow interceptor project, I was less impressed. I simply did not consider him very progressive.

Being from Ontario, I liked William Davis when he was premier. Bill understood the need to be progressive. He might have talked the talk of being conservative but he was a long way past the austerity of former premier Leslie Frost. Bill had a sense of humour.

But, being a progressive and a liberal, I found that it was better to encourage the progressive liberals and discourage the hide-bound conservatives. To me, the conservative philosophy was a basically selfish approach to life that said “I will look after you after I have looked after myself.” That attitude seems to also encompass the union attitude of “I’m alright, Jack.” Which might explain why people who have so little will vote conservative—against their own interest.

Yet recent experience in the 2021 federal election was that conservative leader Erin O’Toole would promise you anything if you would just vote conservative. I think this confused Canadian voters.

It must have seriously confused many conservative voters. In the Prairies, for example, where more than 50 per cent usually vote conservative as an article of faith, some stayed home and others voted for the extremist right-wing parties. Mr. O’Toole’s pseudo liberalism might be the reason that the extremists have been enjoying a bit of a renaissance.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Fair Vote’s Fancy.

by Peter Lowry

A reader sent me some literature from Fair Vote Canada the other day. This piece was complaining about the number of Canadians who did not vote in the recent federal election. I am not sure what they are complaining about. In our electoral system, people have as much right not to vote as they do to vote. It’s a statement in itself.

Of course, there are many reasons for someone not voting. If they died, they really should be excused. If they were sick and went to the hospital instead of the polling place, they might be excused. We need not list the millions of reasons for millions of people to fail to vote.

But I hardly think imploring people to get out and vote, without considering their wishes in the matter, is a good idea. It does seem ridiculous, for example, to beg people to get out and vote when they might have absolutely no idea what the election is about and no knowledge of the people on the ballot. Why would you want people to vote stupid? That will happen anyway.

Major political parties all have their ‘Get Out the Vote’ (GOV) program for when the advance polls and regular polls are open. Instead of the olden-days solution of bribes, today we use persuasion. We either phone or send someone to the door of people friendly to our party, to urge them to come out to vote. We offer them transportation, baby sitting, whatever is needed to encourage them.

But obviously, we do try to restrict this effort to people whom we think will vote for our candidate. We try to be practical. It takes people power and organizational effort to mount an effective GOV program in every electoral district. When you lose a riding by less than 100 votes, you know your GOV activities were not good enough.

And when you see a riding wherein the three major political parties are all working hard on their GOV effort, you know it will be a close race.

When you think about it, if Justin Trudeau had just spent more effort in building the membership of the liberal party, instead of just asking liberals for money, he might have had a GOV effort that could have given his party, at least 12 more seats—and a majority government.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

A Bicycle Built for Two?

by Peter Lowry

The usual chorus is at it again. They are the ones unhappy with our first-past-the-post voting system. They think first-past-the-post is a bicycle built for just two political parties. And that is wrong. The number of parties is not the point.

The Canadian system of voting is designed to elect a representative parliament. Our parliament was created to make sure the provinces, cities and towns and rural areas and people across Canada are represented. Political parties were the afterthought.

There is a long history in our voting and a great deal of experience. At first, the idea of a parliament was to represent just land owners. That quickly became a system wherein all men voted. Later, women were included. And then we asked Canadian aboriginals to vote. More recently, we have been lowering the voting age and currently Canadians, 18-years and older, can vote. Canadians have a well-run and secure system of choosing our representatives.

Our system is also open to improvement. For example, we could save a good deal of money by moving to a computerized voting system. There are still concerns about security and ensuring that the voter is whom he or she claim to be. As these considerations are resolved, we can continue to innovate.

One of the concerns of those who are asking for change is the growing number of political parties. There are differing views in Canada and they all have the right to be heard. There is no limitation on the number of political parties but there are conditions to be met. In addition, any citizen can pay the same fee as a party candidate to have their name on the ballot in an election.

With the growing number of parties, we have seen the lowering of the number of votes required to win a plurality. There are a variety of ways to ensure that the ultimate winner has majority support. The very best is run-off elections for the top two or three candidates. The worst is the practice of preferential voting which nobody seems to take seriously.

But until Canadians can address the question of electoral reform in a citizens’ forum, we are best to stick with the first-past-the-post system we know.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Lessons for the NDP.

by Peter Lowry

You know what they call people that keep repeating their mistakes, election after election? They call them new democratic party members. There was an op-ed in the Toronto Star the other day by a NDPer complaining about the party always repeating its mistakes. It is like the Catholic Mass or the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. It is dogma. It is always there and it assures the same mistakes and the same losses.

The op-ed writer was particularly adamant about the idea of the NDP positioning itself as an alternative government. The party once won the government in Ontario by accident and it ended up, four years later, losing to the worst, most unpopular conservative government in 50 years.

The truth is that if everybody knows you are not going to win, you look silly running for the top job. It was like in the 2021 federal election, the pollsters and pundits kept saying that the NDP was poised for a breakthrough in the number of seats it might have in parliament. It was all B.S. and anyone who had laboured in political fields knew it. The NDP percentage vote was actually lower than most pollsters predicted. 

I mentioned the other day the aberration of Montreal-born Jack Layton leading the NDP into the Orange Wave. Quebec voters took the opportunity to give conservatives and liberals the Canadian salute of one finger by voting for the NDP. The party hardly made similar inroads in the rest of Canada but it earned Layton a state funeral.

I agree with the writer though that Jagmeet Singh would have gone a lot further if he had picked up on some of the major liberal promises. He would have got more votes by promising his party would make sure that the liberals lived up to those specific promises.

Along with the writer, I never agreed with Tommy Douglas’ fable of Mouseland. The conservatives and liberals are definitely not the same. I also share the op-ed writer’s view that the biggest mistake of the last campaign was Singh’s foolish suggestion to the news media that the NDP might support a conservative minority. That was the kiss of death on a wasted campaign.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]