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

In the Orthodoxy of the Right.

by Peter Lowry

Have our politicians really dismissed the orthodoxy of the right? Have we realized the dismal future of countries ruled by the cult of American president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher? It comes as a surprise to those of us that lived through the 1980s of Reagan and Thatcher’s reigns that an actor and a chemist could have had the impact they did on economic theory.

Nobody ever accused either leader of deep thinking. Reagan’s departure from the White House was accompanied by his mind dipping deeper into the mists of stages of Alzheimer’s. Thatcher spent her last years as prime minister fending off revolts from within her own political party. And yet their legacies live after them.

Today, Reagan is still an icon for republicans in the U.S.A. They call it Reaganomics. Many still believe that his slashing of taxes while building up the military was the right approach for the times. All he really accomplished was larger deficits

Thatcher was also a militarist but her tax cuts were less effective and she put too much effort in trying to bend U.K. unions to her will.

Where their economics did not work well was in Canada. While their friend Brian Mulroney was prime minister of Canada for the last half of the 1980s, his regime was reviled and decimated in the liberal return under Jean Chrétien in 1993.

But Reaganomics lived on in Canada under Chrétien’s finance minister Paul Martin. Shipping magnate Martin and Chrétien were not friends and the enmity between them sent many mixed messages to Canadians. It was not until Martin got his chance to become prime minister that Canadians could reject him at the polls. It was as though, if you were going to have to conservatives in power, why not opt for the real ones?

Canadians were inflicted with conservative economics for the next twelve years and were offered sunny days again in 2015 by Justin Trudeau and the liberals. They are still waiting for those sunny days to materialize.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

‘Show and Tell’ for Political Promises.

by Peter Lowry

Politicians in power tend to deal with problems by telling us they will throw our money at the problem. They have some confused idea that we will all feel good because the problem is being looked after.

That is not necessarily the case.

Sometimes, we look at the amount of money and we recognize that the amount is only a token and it cannot solve the problem. There are other times when we are annoyed because we recognize that it is costing far too much money to fix the problem. The politicians look stupid either way.

And speaking of stupid, there is a third problem with conservative governments. This is the problem created by the Harper conservatives when they were in power with a majority government from 2011 to 2015. This government was very good at guessing the amount of money needed to fix a problem. They would have elaborate news conferences and posts in social media about the amount of money they were going to use to fix this or that problem that had been brought to their attention.

What the Tories discovered was that even if you guessed the right amount of money to solve the problem, you did not have to actually spend the money. It was the MP for Parry Sound—Muskoka, Ontario, Tony Clement, who was president of the treasury board during the four years of the Harper conservative majority government. Most Canadians have no idea what the role of president of the treasury board might entail.

It is the treasury board that ensures that cabinet departments have the staff and funding necessary to implement government programs. As president of the treasury board, Clement could turn the funding taps on or off. Instead of running the board to implement programs, he used the treasury board to implement conservative ideology. He would pick and choose which programs got the money and which might be told to wait. It meant that the finance minister or the prime minister could make grandiose promises but nothing necessarily happened.

Listening to premier Ford of Ontario and some of his minions, it seems they have discovered the same solution. We should ask them at these promise sessions to show us the money.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Mr. Ford’s “Good Ship Lollypop.”

by Peter Lowry

Get it while you can. Like the career of Hollywood child star Shirley Temple that peaked from the time she was 3 to 13-years-old, the Ford government in Ontario is already on its downward slide. The conservative’s rearranging their cabinet crew is time wasted. Their Good Ship Lollypop is sinking.

While it might be foolish for Doug Ford to do anything stupid in the time he has left in office, we are sure to find more reasons to turf the Tories next June. You can re-arrange the deck chairs, offer more candy to the voters but the captain of this ship is going down.

And putting the pandemic behind us, is hardly going to save the premier from being roasted come election time. It was almost amusing seeing him repairing his tattered cabinet the other day. Sure, that pathetic Merrilee Fullerton had to get out of long-term care but to put her in the position of delivering her brand of incompetence to children, community and social services might embarrass the Ford brand even further.

And it was nice to be reminded why the overly-entitled Rod Phillips was needed back in the cabinet. He is the guy who follows the Ford ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ code to the letter. He showed off his communication skills while covering his tracks last Christmas while holidaying in St. Barts. We hear that you can get some quite decent accommodations on that Caribbean pleasure island for as little as a $1000 a day. Was he getting tips on how to improve long-term care facilities in Ontario?

It was no surprise that former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s kid was kept on in transport. Caroline Mulroney is in an ideal position to drive the new highway 413 through Ontario’s vanishing wetlands.

But the most egregious staying-in-place was keeping my parachuted MPP Doug Downey where he can do Ford’s bidding in the attorney general’s office. That was almost as bad as keeping that know-nothing Stephen Lecce in the education portfolio That guy is hated by teachers and parents of school-age children with equal enthusiasm.

But the truth is that the most serious need for change in Ford’s cabinet is Mr. Ford himself. He is 90 per cent of the problem.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Sajjan Is Not the Sex Police.

by Peter Lowry

The opposition parties in Ottawa have voted for a politically motivated censure and are demanding the resignation of Canada’s defence minister Harjit Sajjan. The opposition parties are complaining that he has not done enough about the senior staff of the military having or wanting to have sex. To his credit, it would seem that Mr. Sajjan is not interested nor involved in the sex lives of Canada’s generals and admirals.

And, frankly, everyone in parliament should follow Mr. Sajjan’s example. They should realize that that celibacy is not required in our armed forces. We have a military that is made up of Canadians looking for travel, organization in their lives and a reliable paycheque. The military houses them, feeds them, clothes them and looks after their health. They lead a nice life and rarely go in harms way. And if you get some sex occasionally, life can be even better.

But, as in any organization, there are restrictions on the sex. The boys have to stay out of the girls’ barracks and the girls have to stay out of the boys’ barracks. And, like in many organizations, men and women with authority over another person cannot demand sexual favours from the people who report to them. In the military, this is considered an offence under the Queen’s Regulations for the particular military service. And, as each military service has its own quasi police force, offenses that become known are handled, so to speak, and disciplined within the service.

There is more of a problem when you hear of complaints within the ranks of generals and admirals. These are the people who make the rules and it is very awkward when they break them. The problem is that people of this rank are expected to know when to defend themselves and when to capitulate.

People who rise to this level in the services are expected to know when a person of sexual interest to them has said yes, no or maybe. They are also required to know when the relationship could be considered improper.

The only body that can deal effectively with indiscretions at this level is the general staff of the military. The defence minister has to accept the decision of the general staff or appoint a new general staff.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Ottawa: The Greens have a Problem.

by Peter Lowry

Sorry Justin, your liberals will have to delay your election plans. The Green’s have problems with their leadership, membership and people jumping ship. And it is partly your party’s fault. You really did not need to have that Green party member from Fredericton jump to the liberal party so soon.

Admittedly, the greens are never very good at elections but you might need two or three more greens to jump ship after the election to keep you and your family in Rideau Cottage. You never know when some green might be useful.

And just think, with the current green leader, you could get a Jewish woman and a black environmentalist. That is sure covering a lot of bases with just one MP. Besides, you could arrange for her to run in a winnable electoral district.

I think it is likely that former green leader Elizabeth May would do a better job of running the liberal party. Between your dress-up family holidays, rich friends, ‘We’ friends, pipeline envy and mistreatment of female MPs, it would be good if the liberals had a ready replacement standing by.

And there is no good reason to call the election in August anyway. Everyone will just blame you for spoiling their summer. And political canvassing is tough enough in cooler weather. In a hot August, all you get is sunstroke.

By October, we can probably have the pandemic behind us and be ready to get serious about an election. Nothing is guaranteed but no other party has done as much for Canadians lately as your liberals. We even have a few articulate liberal MPs from Quebec who understand our constitution and are willing to speak out about it.

We have noticed that you have been unwilling to address constitutional issues and your opponents in parliament, Messrs. O’Toole and Singh, are equally ill-equipped to address them. After the election, you might want to step down and let the liberal party choose a more competent leader.

You showed a lot of promise in the spring of 2015. It was just too bad you had no follow-through.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Bell Canada Tolls for Thee!

by Peter Lowry

Looking at a two-page, aren’t-we-nice advertisement for Bell Canada in the Toronto Star yesterday, it brought memories of a friend who passed away some dozen years ago. When I first met Max, he was a reporter covering the National Assembly in Quebec City for the now defunct Montreal Star. He had great stories to tell and many insights into Quebec politics. We renewed our acquaintance after the Montreal Star folded in 1979 and Max moved his family to Toronto where he had been hired as an editorial writer by the Toronto Star.

It came as a surprise, after a year or so, when he said he was moving to Ottawa to work on public relations for Bell Canada. It did not strike me as a great career move.

After Max and his family were settled in Ottawa and I was there on business with the government, Max invited me to tour his workplace at Bell. What I saw was a public relations operation that was larger than most public relations firms in Canada. And this was just the part dealing with the federal government. I would swear the staff promoting Bell Canada outnumbered Canada’s members of parliament.

It could hardly be said but it was obvious to me that Max did not see the operation as a collegial newsroom-type environment. This was a factory.

For a company that had always been respected as a stock for widows and orphans, Bell Canada has fallen into disrepute with Canadians. They see the company as immodest, greedy and uncaring. More people seem to hate the company than respect it. Maybe that is the reason it has so many people working at trying to win friends for it.

But putting all those people to work on its image does not seem to solve Bell’s problems. Maybe if it learned to treat its customers with more respect, the company bosses would learn something about customer relations. It does little good to have all those people telling members of parliament how important the company might be when the MPs go home to their ridings and hear what Canadian telecoms are now doing to reap more money from their voters.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Teaching Tolerance

by Peter Lowry

Running home in heavy rain as a youngster, I noted, while passing a small black lady on our street, that she was wearing a raincoat just like mine. When I got home, soaking wet, I found my mother had given my raincoat to that lady who had been visiting her at our home. Mother made the point that she had told me it was going to rain and I should take my raincoat. Since I did not think I needed it, she had given it to someone in need.

That was mother’s approach to charity. With six kids to raise by herself in downtown Toronto, it was a while before I got a new raincoat.

I remember my siblings and I making jokes about mother over the years because of her childhood in Chicago. The least of the jokes was that if a black family moved in next door, mother would start packing. It could not have been further from the truth. She would have been the first at their door with a casserole. We children said that was cruel—mother was not a good cook.

My kid brother and I were the youngest and we got the brunt of her training in tolerance. She was rising quickly with her growing company and would occasionally accept dinner invitations from co-workers who wanted to show off their ethnic cooking.

I remember the first time she took two of us with her to dinner with a Hindu family of the mother and two children. Her kids looked on wide-eyed as my brother and I enjoyed what they considered as routine. In our honor, the lady served apple pie for dessert. After we left, we told mother it was two thumbs down on the Indian apple pie.

But, living in Toronto in those days, as it transitioned to becoming a truly metropolitan city, we learned tolerance, acceptance and good food. How can you hate someone after a decent dinner together? The experiences also taught us that there was more to life than mother’s overcooked roast beef, boiled potatoes and canned vegetables.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Crocodile tears from Bell Canada.

by Peter Lowry

The new owners of the Toronto Star should be ashamed. When reading an article on a business opinion page on the weekend, it became apparent that I was reading an advertisement. This was not balanced reporting. It might be something that the company sends out in a news release but was not a report by an impartial and knowledgeable reporter. The source was obviously some public relations person writing on behalf of the president of Bell Canada’s residential and small business services!

This was purported to be an article about the recent reversal of a 2019 plan by the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to make deep cuts in Bell Canada’s wholesale rates for use by resellers of Bell’s Internet infrastructure.

Bell Canada’s near-monopoly position because of its copper wire and fiber optic networks allows the company to charge what the market will bear for its Internet services. And those rates are substantially higher than those charged in other developed nations for similar broadband services.

The Toronto Star article was written to make it appear that the CRTC decision in 2019 was some flight of whimsy. The reason the 2019 rates were never implemented was that Bell Canada and other networking telecoms had the rates challenged in court, denounced to politicians and anyone else willing to listen. Heaven forbid the Canadians ever get a fair shake in Internet pricing.

The facts are that the CRTC had set the previous 2016 wholesale rates so high that savvy customers saw that the resellers rates were no lower than Bell’s or other telecoms. There was no wiggle room for a better price.

A great deal of study and evaluation went into the 2019 figures. What the telecoms claimed as serious cuts were in fact the cuts that were needed to give the resellers an opportunity to carve out a piece of the Internet market. Internet customers are not about to organize a tag day for Canadian telecoms.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected] 

Time to retire Mr. Olive.

by Peter Lowry

Some of the basic skills you look for in reporters is their ability to research, to learn and to explain for readers. It is therefore with regret that we report that David Olive of the Toronto Star is overdue for retirement. If he must insist on writing the same errors in his opinion pieces about Canada’s fossil fuel industry, he is not keeping pace with the needs of his readers.

One of his most egregious errors is to refer to Alberta’s tar sands product as ‘heavy oil.’ If he just once referenced the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) information on that subject, he might learn something. USGS defines oil by its viscosity—how easily it flows. Bitumen from the Athabasca and Cold Lake tar sands does not flow well enough to be called heavy oil. That bitumen has to be mixed with a diluent to send it through pipelines.

And that is why the Gulf Coast refineries in Texas are not interested in Alberta’s bitumen. The Texas refineries can get Venezuelan bitumen—that has a much better viscosity rating than the Canadian product.

The reason to send the Canadian gunk to the Texas ports was to fill the holds of ships that were heading back across the Atlantic empty. There are many other refineries in this world interested in cheap—though highly polluting—sources of oil.

What is really annoying about Mr. Olive’s lack of research is his claim that Canada has never had a national energy strategy. Maybe he was too young in 1980 to remember the National Energy Program introduced by Pierre Trudeau’s liberals. If he had ever been to Alberta, he might have been given an earful on the local reaction to that strategy. It was not well received there.

It does much to explain the reason that Pierre Trudeau’s son bought the TransMountain pipeline and is wasting billions on twinning the pipeline to carry diluted bitumen to an environmentally sensitive shipping point in the Burrard Inlet. It might not impress many Albertans. It certainly does not impress Canadians who care about our environment.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

The Trump of the West.

by Peter Lowry

It is a long way from Mar-a-Lago Resort in Palm Springs, Florida to roof-top dining in Calgary, Alberta. Nor is former president Donald Trump likely to be confused with Alberta premier Jason Kenney. They are just kindred spirits.

It might be that Jason Kenney enjoys being linked to the much more successful (and more vilified) Donald Trump. They both share a vision of conservative politics far to the right of anything practical. They both share the autocratic attitude that some might confuse with leadership.

But they make fools of their followers. Their followers are but log jams on the rivers of life. They are there to be used by these losers. They march to the off-beat of their drums. Born again or biker, they are there to support the sacrilege of their leaders.

Kenney and Trump share visions of thrones that are there for them to seize. They believe we should all prostrate ourselves before them. And we should all tithe to them. For what is ours, they consider as theirs.

The difference between them is that Jason Kenney spent his formative years learning of politics. He learned how the politician can use the unwary. He was Stephen Harper’s go-to guy in using groups of ethnic Canadians.

And yet, the political nuance is of no interest to Donald Trump. He is a user. He is a gross communicator. He preens for his audiences. He uses women as disposable. He is only impressed by power and billions. He looks down on America’s allies and honors its enemies. He cares nothing for the environment, turning loose billionaire friends to plunder the land of its high-carbon contents of coal and oil. He let millions die in the pandemic because of his ignorance.

Kenney sees himself as an oil man. He puts on his ten-gallon hat and swaggers into the Petroleum Club. He wastes more than a billion of taxpayers’ money on a losing pipeline. He is also of little use during a pandemic.

Messieurs Kenney and Trump are both losers.

-30-

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]