Babel-on-the-Bay – Page 9 – Babel-on-the-Bay is the personal website of Peter Lowry. It is a vehicle for political commentaries.

Confounding the Critics.

October 21, 2023October 20, 2023 by Peter Lowry

The other day, a friend proposed a blog on how Ontario premier Doug Ford is hoping to get even with the critics who don’t want him making his friends rich with Greenbelt land. He suggested that this is with ministerial zoning orders (MZO) and the purpose would be to jam up municipal traffic everywhere in Ontario. The Ontario Tories have tested the idea in Toronto and we know it will work—Toronto has been in gridlock for most of the past year.

I can only address the driving around Barrie, Ontario. Between fixing some of Barrie’s worst streets, the usual new condos and other construction, and the infrastructure repair and replacement as well as with all the highway 400 bridges through the city being rebuilt, Barrie has discovered gridlock.

But I don’t think Doug Ford is mad at anyone in Barrie. We have two conservative members of the legislature who are both in the cabinet. Even the mayor in this town is a conservative embarrassment.

But everyone in Ontario should be concerned about MZOs. The idea for these orders was originally to protect sensitive land, not build on it. With our municipalities being creatures of the province, the MZO was simply a tool to provide help when needed. It was a solution to problems when a municipality needed help straightening out a zoning problem. It was never supposed to be a way for the government of the day to look after its friends with deep pockets. It was never considered a patronage solution.

In the past, MZOs have been used one or twice per year to assist municipalities. One that came to light in the past was when a grocery store in Elliot Lake had its roof collapse and the municipality needed to fast-track a new location. The McGinty government was asked to help and provided a MZO to expedite the process of approvals. It was done publicly, it was needed and it solved a problem for the community. In 15 years as the government in Ontario, the liberals had used MZOs only 16 times.

It was only since the Ford conservative government came into power in 2018, that more than a hundred MZOs have been provided. For some reason, we have not been able to find a list of them.

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Betrayal of the Father.

October 20, 2023October 19, 2023 by Peter Lowry

It was the balance that Pierre Trudeau brought to the use of language in Canada that his eldest son betrayed. In Bill C-13’s enactment by parliament in June of this year, Justin Trudeau forgot that his father had declared that the English and French languages were equal. You do not protect one language by downgrading the other. You do not promote one by restricting the other.

Justin Trudeau panders to those pathetic politicians in Quebec City who have to use the “Not Withstanding” clause to cover off their foolish attempts to force Canadians living in Quebec to use only French in their daily lives. There is no need for an additional federal law that encourages that bigotry.

I always found that for every French-Canadian who wanted me to speak French there were probably five francophones who wanted to practice their English on me. All in all, I am sure that if they had tried, I would be fluent in French. As it is, my French makes francophones cringe.

I always think of the Quebec City legislature as the fools who tried to take all the life out of Montreal and chased a quarter million anglophones out of Quebec during the 30 years from 1970 to 2000.

In the 1960s, my oldest brother had taken his family to Quebec to accept a promotion to Alcan’s head office. He became bilingual in that position but on his retirement twenty years later, he and most of his family moved to Ottawa.

What always seemed indicative was that there was also a smaller but companion emigration of francophones to other parts of Canada. While the politicians tried to offset this emigration with immigration from French-speaking countries, they continue to show their rejection of English. For example, by forcing unnecessarily higher fees for English language students from outside Quebec at the few English-language universities and colleges in Quebec.

Somehow this whole business with language in Quebec reminds me of an old adage about taking a horse to water. You still can’t make him drink.

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Bringing It Home.

October 19, 2023October 18, 2023 by Peter Lowry

It is obvious that the federal conservative party has more money than good sense these days. Watching their current $3 million advertising campaign, one can only think of the despair it could bring. What the advertising does not tell Canadians is the type of government Mr. Poilievre would try to institute in Canada.

This is a man who has never experienced a real wage-earning job. It is as though he ticks off the boxes to be acceptable to the average Canadian. Have wife and family: done. Win conservative leadership: done. Ditch glasses: done. Lose tie: done. Try to smile: in process. Muss hair: done. He is not a warm and fuzzy person.

Mr. Poilievre’s politics are to the right of his mentor Stephen Harper. He is a western Canada conservative from Alberta. His politics are more libertarian than conservative. He offers Canadians a new freedom, from what, nobody knows.

He promises business and industry freedom from regulation. He promises the grocery chains freedom to charge what they want. He will do nothing to curb inflation. He doesn’t care. He wants unfettered capitalism. He wants less regulation.

We should never forget that this is the foolish member of parliament who welcomed the supposed “Freedom Convoy” to Ottawa. He took them donuts. When it became necessary to ask them to leave Ottawa, Mr. Poilievre was not to be found.

Lately Mr. Poilievre has been in parliament in the role of the leader of the opposition. This is a responsibility to make sure that government legislation meets the needs of Canadians. It is not just to oppose and ridicule any and all legislation.

This is a man who promises smaller, less intrusive government. He doesn’t tell Canadians what departments he would do away with. He fails to tell us where he will save money for his cuts in taxes. He seems uninterested in the wildfires that can devastate our logging industry. He seems to consider global warming to be inconsequential. He will cancel liberal attempts to decrease pollution and will give the tar sands exploiters in the west free reign to pollute the environment.

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Consent of the Governed.

October 18, 2023October 17, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Ontario residents have come to regret the lack of education of their premier. He is obviously not the only conservative politician these days who neither knows nor understands this basic concept of democracy. “Consent of the governed” is a concept that can be dated back to the late 13^th century in response to the Divine Right of Kings (and Popes).

Consent is not just in free elections. It is not just at the ballot box. As in the Hippocratic Oath of physicians, it applies to all acts of the politician in office. Which brings us to the obvious ignorance of Premier Ford and his government.

From the time Mr. Ford took office, neither he nor his cabinet seemed aware of even the thought of the needed consent of the governed. As one of his first acts in the premier’s office six years ago, Mr. Ford ordered the city of Toronto to reduce their counselors to half of what they considered adequate to serve their constituents. Did he think to ask Torontonians if they wanted the increase in service by the city?

Services to people are at the core of services provided by our provincial governments. Core services include hospitals and schools. Provincial responsibility includes inspections of equipment such as trucks, industrial machinery, elevators, amusement rides, building materials and municipal services such as providing safe water and safe disposal of waste. It also includes planning and building of highways.

The building of the Bradford bypass to link Highway 400 and Highway 404 has been going on for many years and the final link is in progress. To add a spurious Highway 413 to this building program is an attempt to please developers who have bought up land around the purported future highway 413 intersections. Studies of these highway developments include research into the needs of the people in the area and their travel habits. Those studies are part of the consent to be governed and should be public information.

Provincial governance is not subject to whimsy. What else would you call it when a provincial government takes time and staff resources to re-institute a patronage tool for lawyers, that was done away with over 30 years ago, to give loyal conservative party members a fallacious title such as King’s Counsel. It makes you wonder if these politicians have enough to do?

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Singh’s Slippery Slope.

October 17, 2023October 16, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Canada’s federal new democrats met in Hamilton the other day. It was a weekend of glad-handing and denial. It was a weekend of conviviality and self delusion. It was renditions of “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “Solidarity Forever” by a mixture of faiths and agnostics. It left a practising Sikh at the helm of a fated Argo.

There was no recognition in that gathering of why Jagmeet Singh has taken his party down the slippery slope to potential oblivion. The direction was clear. Singh’s eroding support has dropped to 81 per cent.

What few new democrats recognise is that Singh owes his first loyalty to his fellow Sikhs. He trained as a lawyer and the new democratic party is just his client. He represents the new democrats to their Canadian judges. He is a persistent advocate. He has to deal with distrust on both sides of the supply and confidence agreement he made with Justin Trudeau’s liberals.

Singh can point to the progress in dental care. His party can look forward to the anti-scab legislation for federally incorporated companies. Pharmacare remains a work in progress. And it all remains part of Trudeau’s legacy. Many NDP are also dissatisfied with the lack of universality in the dental care program.

Older NDPers have seen support for liberals before and lack any degree of trust in the arrangements Singh has made.

The crisis in the Middle East also bothered many party members. They wanted Singh to say whether he stood on the possibility of Israel committing war crimes. He made no commitments on one side or the other.

Singh also said recently that he was concerned that his family might not be feeling safe in Canada after the claim that agents of India might have been involved in the murder of a Canadian Sikh who was a pro-Kalistan advocate.

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Don’t Do It Here.

October 16, 2023October 15, 2023 by Peter Lowry

There is no honour among those who hate. There is little honour in the Middle East. Hamas is but a tool for the hypocrites in Arab states that fulminate war in fear and hate of Israel. The Jews of Israel forget that the Semite nations of the Middle East are their brothers and they have failed to commit to the pursuit of peace. Politicians who take the hard-line beget a hardening of relations in return.

And don’t bring these conflicts to Canada. We can support Ukraine against Russia. There is no honour in the Kremlin under Putin. The honour belongs to Ukraine that is fighting for its very existence. Canadians know the difference.

Canada offers no place to fight for the Sikhs seeking a refuge in a Sikh Khalistan. This is not the place for foreign agents to seek to silence protest. Nor is it a place for other countries to try to influence our politics.

Canada is a country populated by the diasporas of the world. Canada is a safe haven. It is not a zone of conflict. It is no place to rage against oppressions of the old country. We should never forget the past but we do try to leave it in the past.

There is no place in Canada to march against peace. If your concern is for the old country, let it be in the old country. Be it religious quarrels, or ethnic oppression, or the need for land, or imagined insult, ancient feuds have no place in Canada. We have a verdant land. Come and help till this land with us.

Canada remembers the old countries by honouring the food specialties of the old countries. We also remember the dances and the songs, the writings and the entertainments. We often name streets and places for old country memories.

We well appreciate the concerns of Canada’s Jewish population for the safety of those in Israel. There is no safety in retribution. Only the death toll rises from enabling further conflict.

Peace comes to those who can deal with the past. The path to peace requires swallowing pride. The only real tribute to those who are gone is in creating peace.

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Leadership Down.

October 15, 2023October 14, 2023 by Peter Lowry

It was interesting to read the other day that the Jerusalem Post believed a poll that indicated that four out of five Jewish Israelis blame prime minister Netanyahu for the armed incursion by Hamas into Israel. It also comes to mind that an honest poll in Russia would be likely to show that the Russian people disapprove of Putin’s armed incursion in the Ukraine. And is anyone pleased with the upcoming presidential contest in America? Closer to home, we can record conservative displeasure with the nastiness of the conservative leadership in Canada. Nor is anyone paying attention to the growing liberal party members who think that actor Trudeau has run out of support for his clinging to the role of prime minister? Dissatisfaction abounds.

My best guess is that enough Canadians are frightened by the pathetic Mr. Poilievre that an election might prove nothing.

In a world struggling to recover from a pandemic, there is anger in the air. There is distrust and scepticism for political solutions. Everyone is struggling with inflation. Blame is scattered to all quarters. There are no adequate answers. In runaway inflation, people are failing to pay their usurious mortgages. There is more stealing in our stores. Organized crime believes it has license. Politicians think more police are the answer. They promise harsher sentences. And they continue to fill the streets with the disadvantaged and complain that the police are not doing their job—while the police wonder what their job might be. Mental health challenges our hospitals while the hospitals struggle to return to a normal that nobody remembers, understands or believes.

The demand on our food banks is growing while the cost of food challenges our wages. Labor unrest is becoming a staple of democracy while the unrest with democracy threatens its continuance. Fear becomes just another equation of living. We challenge children to make adult decisions when they only want to play. The arts of the adults turn dystopian and morose.

We have politicians who would rather reward their cronies with billions rather that meet the needs of a family—evicted, hungry, with no place to go, nowhere to turn.

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Conservative Curmudgeons.

October 14, 2023October 13, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Somehow, through the years, the conservatives in Canada have taken a wrong turn. From a basic ideology of conserving the qualities of life for Canadians, the conservative leadership has taken on a vindictive stand in favour of dog-eat-dog capitalism. Truth has suffered, and there is no excuse for it.

To yell distortions and lies across the floor of the House of commons belittles those conservatives who have given of themselves to this country. To not honour the leadership of conservative Sir John A. Macdonald in creating this country is a betrayal of history.

A conservative party that places such importance in fiscal responsibility should wonder about the transgressions of provincial conservatives and the last federal conservative government that routinely lied to the Canadian public about what they intended to spend.

For a party bent on conserving the past, conservatives make little to no effort to forestall global warming. It makes no sense to make minor motions towards preventing pollution in the face of wildfires, floods and the rising of the oceans.

Conservatives are great believers in smaller government being better government. All they have proved over the years is that when in power, they fail to do the job for Canadians. They let people starve on the streets in a climate with a cruel winter. They fail the elderly, they fail the children, they fail the infirm, they fail the destitute. How big should government be? Big enough to do the job! Let capitalism grow, but be regulated. Let capitalism build, but be inspected. Let children be children, but properly fed. Let medicine do its job, but make sure it has the funds.

Don’t preach to Canadians about law and order. World order requires we fund a full range of an adequately-equipped military. And don’t preach to us about false news when your platform is based on it.

And that old conservative chestnut about reforming the Senate of Canada is still with us. There are many other reforms needed in how this country is governed. The very worst thing a Canadian government could do is only change the Senate.

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Coalitions; Like Good Sex.

October 13, 2023October 12, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Former new democratic leader Ed Broadbent was talking on the CBC recently about the current liberal-new democratic supply and confidence agreement in Ottawa. He thinks this agreement should have been shorter. Not to just be contrary, I think it should have been for much longer. It comes down to the assertion that a long-term relationship is much more satisfying than just a night of passion.

In fact, I have always been a strong believer in a permanent relationship between the two parties. The NDP has gone through its socialist phase as the CCF and more recently its labour-related phase has brought it to maturity. It is ready to take the responsibilities of an adult in society. It might even be available to procreate.

And we have seen what the new democrats can achieve as a provincial government. It bombed in Ontario in the 1990s. It almost saved Alberta from itself. It is ready for better times in British Columbia. It has launched itself in Manitoba. All it needs is to combine its passion for progress with experienced progressives.

The progressives available for liaison in Canada are in the liberal party. And I give you fair warning, not all liberals today are progressives. Yet, if you combine the new democratic and liberal progressives, the combination can dominate Canadian politics for years to come. Think of it. Don’t just salivate at the thought. Look to the nights of bliss. Think of how much better Canadians can fulfill their destiny.

But always bear in mind that like good sex, a coalition works when there is mutual respect. This has always been the formula for good relations. It is not something short term. Dominance builds despair. Philandering causes straying on both sides. Combining experience and knowledge builds strength and security.

What needs to happen is for the federal new democrats and liberals to launch planning groups who can study how to enter the arrangement. This is not a shotgun marriage. It is adult to adult. It has the seeds of discontent for some of us. Nobody believes that everyone will be on-side to the arrangement.

But it can and should be done. Canadians need to look around. Do they want the discontent and divorces of the Americans, the fustiness of the Brits, the unguarded passions of the French, the coarseness of the Russians. We have something very good going for us in Canada. We can show the rest of the world how it is done.

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The Tory Trap.

October 12, 2023October 11, 2023 by Peter Lowry

Only the Ontario liberals could fail to look ahead. They decided to have a leadership contest, so leisurely, it is putting the party to sleep. They need to wake up and understand the provincial political situation. Instead of having the time for this wrongly planned leadership, the party could still be running a leadership race in the midst of a provincial election.

This possibility has been evident since the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) tossed the Greenbelt ball to the federal Mounted Police. It was deemed too political a situation for the police controlled by the provincial government.

The watch dogs of the Ontario legislature might have no teeth in their arsenal but they can write scathing reports. Their reports on the Greenbelt scandal make the best ‘whodunit’ reading. They did not report malfeasance lightly. And they showed a clear path of blame to the premier’s office at Queen’s Park.

We have all watched as the scapegoats were selected and led to the slaughter. The public was offered the underlings who could be rewarded for their loyalty later.

But the game is not over. Scapegoats are not the prize that the RCMP will accept to prosecute. They want bigger targets. And we all know who are the best friends forever of Ontario’s premier. Arranging for your BFFs to be put in a position to make more than $8 billion in such an egregious manner could be considered a criminal offence. And it could only be carried out from the premier’s office.

And, wonder of wonders, some of these developers, being in position to make such profits, are BFFs of the premier. Some of them had befriended him in the four years he spent on Toronto City council being taught politics by his late brother Rob Ford, mayor of Toronto at the time.

The evidence goes back to when Doug Ford was first running for election to Queen’s Park. The news media reported that Mr. Ford had a secret meeting with some of Ontario’s developers. He was reported to have told them that he would open up the Greenbelt for them. All the Mounties need to do is to get one or two of those developers to turn state’s evidence and they can go to a judge for arrest warrants.

Doug Ford’s resignation would be expected before he goes to trial. The Ontario election would quickly follow.

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