Babel-on-the-Bay – Page 97 – Babel-on-the-Bay is the personal website of Peter Lowry. It is a vehicle for political commentaries.

Those pesky preferential ballots.

May 13, 2021May 26, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It is always good to hear from loyal readers. And from some readers who enjoy arguing. One of the frequent arguments is over different types of voting. In more than 4,000 commentaries posted in Babel-on-the-Bay over the past ten years, I get the most comments about this aspect of our Canadian politics. The archived Democracy Papers on voting systems, from 2007, still draw daily interest from countries around the world.

One of my regular readers is true to his home town of London, Ontario. He wrote the other day to tell me, once again, how well preferential voting works for that city.

As much as I like and admire Ontario’s London and have visited the city many times on business, political activities and to see friends, I hardly think the city has had enough experience with preferential voting.

Let me explain a situation where preferential voting at the municipal level would have been a disaster. This is real: We had a situation in the mayoralty race in a city of similar size to London. The candidates included the incumbent mayor, a recently defeated member of the legislature, a previous, likeable mayor, two councillors hoping for a crack at the mayoralty and three other candidates in the ‘also ran’ category. The reality in that race was that nobody had much chance of getting 50 per cent of the vote.

The danger under preferential voting was that the candidate with the most second choice votes would be the winner.

The candidate I was helping was one of the councillors. He lacked the experience of the other four serious contenders. His campaign chair asked me to run the ground game for him. This involved analyzing areas of high turn-out to send the candidate to canvas, selecting polls for canvassers and for literature drops and then recording results for election day action, as well as analyzing the reports.

After a hot summer of canvassing, I knew my candidate would win handily under first-past-the-post rules. He did with 39 per cent of the vote.

But under preferential voting, my candidate might have lost. The former, likeable, mayor would have gathered most of the second-choice votes. If he had run a stronger campaign, under preferential voting, he would have been more of a threat to my candidate.

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Following the money.

May 12, 2021May 26, 2021 by Peter Lowry

You can’t track the money trail to Canadian politicians as easily as you can to American politicians. I finally have a theory on what is driving Jason Kenney in Alberta.

I have kept an eye on Kenney since he first appeared in Ottawa as a member of parliament for Calgary in 1997. He went through the iterations of reform, alliance and finally the conservative party of Canada. As a fat and forty, career politician, at the time, many thought he was gay but my opinion was that he was just dedicated to his profession. It seemed to be coincidental that he disliked women as a life-long misogynist.

When the conservative government was defeated in 2015, I was of the school that thought Kenney was assessing his chances in replacing Harper. When he set out to unite the right in Alberta, I was as surprised as anyone else. When I did not hear of him passing the hat in Calgary’s Petroleum Club. I got curious. I could not see where the money was coming from.

It was not until a few things came together, that I realized there was a logical source. Mr. Kenney was on course with the interests of Koch Industries in Canada. It started with a combination of factors. They try to be low key in Canada but there was the money Koch Industries invested in the Fraser Institute, their reputed million plus acres of Alberta’s oil sands as well pipelines.

Koch Industries are the second biggest oil company in the world. They are not just a New York-based family that pours hundreds of millions every year into extreme right-wing politicians, lobbyists and radical groups such as the Tea Party in the United States. They are also big men on campus in Alberta. They have tar sands to exploit, storage tanks to fill, pipelines and refineries such as the huge Pine Hills Minnesota refinery reachable by those pipelines. They were heavy investors in the Keystone XL pipeline.

It makes me curious when Jason Kenney also invested $1.5 billion of Alberta taxpayers’ money in Keystone XL in addition to guaranteed loans to the pipeline company for another $6 billion. He is obviously not as good at managing a pandemic for Alberta. That seems to be something outside his objectives.

But Koch Industries can buy what it wants. They invested heavily in Donald Trump in the United States, so they would hardly think small when they need political help in Canada. It makes you wonder what they might be promising someone?

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Just a voice in the wilderness!

May 11, 2021May 26, 2021 by Peter Lowry

The truth is that blogs get as much attention as just another mosquito in the wildness of Ontario. No matter what the readership numbers, you never seem to reach the readers who can do something. They are too busy to read blogs. And after all, it is just one person’s opinion.

And it is all the fault of those idiots out in Alberta who want to call diluted bitumen ‘oil.’ They are putting diluted bitumen through Enbridge’s Line 5 and calling it oil. That seems to be fine with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Her response is to order the shutdown of Line 5 where it crosses the Straits of Mackinac—the point where Lake Michigan flows into Lake Huron.

Governor Whitmer’s only experience with a pipeline burst is ten years ago when another Enbridge pipeline spilled diluted bitumen into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River in south Michigan. And even after spending close to a billion U.S. dollars plus millions in fines, Enbridge was unable to complete the clean-up. Bitumen in water is almost impossible to clean-up.

If a lake cargo ship dragged anchor through the shallow water at Mackinac, it would be guaranteed to collect a piece of pipeline in the process. If the line was carrying butane gas at the time, it would be the equivalent of our Canadian cows passing gas. It could also be equivalent to a month or so more of or even a year’s emissions from thousands of gas burning cars.

If the line was carrying refined real crude oil or gasoline, the released oil products would float and fast action could contain it. It could be cleaned up.

But if the line was carrying diluted bitumen at the time and the pipeline kept pumping long enough, the diluted bitumen would keep polluting even as it went over Niagara Falls. It could destroy the major source of fresh water for about 40 million Americans and Canadians as it made its way through the Great Lakes.

What the governor of Michigan needs to do is simply forbid the transmission of diluted bitumen through the pipeline. Anything else can be cleaned up.

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That pessimist Hepburn.

May 10, 2021May 26, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It is not that often that I argue with Bob Hepburn of the Toronto Star. He is a very knowledgeable commentator. He gets the big bucks! It is just that he recently wrote a column for the Star headlined “Five reasons (Ontario premier) Ford may get re-elected.”

That is a sad, sad thought. The fact that Hepburn might be right is even sadder. And I say this with the confidence that both Hepburn and I know that Ford is a horse’s ass. Ontario voters did a terrible thing when they elected him and decimated the long-serving liberals. We are paying a terrible price during the pandemic for that colossal stupidity.

But the liberals deserved a lesson in humility. I agreed with the voters that Kathleen Wynne’s government was autocratic and useless. The liberals needed a time-out. We just did not know there was a pandemic around the corner that was going to crush us. It was not a good time for such incompetence in the premier’s office.

I think some of Hepburn’s rationale for his comments was specious. For example, I will ignore the old chestnut about Ontario voters preferring liberals in Ontario when there are conservatives in Ottawa.

But I will agree that the after affects (hopefully) of the pandemic will leave us with some major questions that might not be clear even as the pandemic memory fades.

I see just two factors that could help Mr. Ford in the June 2022 election. The first helper is a lady named Andrea Horwath. How the hell could anyone view her as a contender? Horwath has made Ford look almost reasonable. Her opposition to Ford and his government has been pathetic. The new democrats should have dumped her four years ago.

The second factor in the election is the question mark of liberal leader Stephen Del Duca. He was my last choice in a limited leadership field. The only liberal with any brains in that contest was Michael Coteau, MPP for Don Valley East. Michael appears to have given up on Queen’s Park and is hoping to win a federal seat in Ottawa.

Del Duca’s actions as leader remind me of the failure of Julius Caesar to bring his troops with him across the Rubicon. Ask me around the Ides of March next year just where Del Duca is headed.

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Neither Respite, Nor Hospice.

May 9, 2021May 26, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It is called ‘Long-Term Care’ and I have never liked the words. Growing up in Toronto, the words said to me that this was warehousing for people unable to function with the rest of society, through no fault of their own. As president of the Multiple Sclerosis of Canada and head of public education and board member of the International Federation of MS Societies, I was often taken through local long-term care facilities during my visits to other MS societies around the world. It was never fun.

I think I saw every level of multiple sclerosis as well as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). I also had interesting talks with staff and patients in these places.

Surprisingly the most pleasant and best managed of these facilities I remember was near London, England. I was driven there by a lady with the title “Lady.” Her and her husband were patrons of this home and we received a warm welcome from a motherly woman who was addressed as “Matron.” The MS patients I met all knew my driver and we had some very open and frank discussions of the problems and extremes of multiple sclerosis. I already knew at the time, that MS is of high incidence in Great Britain.

But what struck me about this place is that it was not a “facility.” It was “home” to the people I was meeting. Their private rooms were individualized for them. Bright and airy, they reflected the person’s interests. They were all different. There were none of those multiple bed rooms or hospital-like feelings to the accommodations. We had a very interesting and cheerful afternoon. I often wished other places I saw were as pleasant and as thoughtful of the people who were looked after there.

It was not something I ever saw in Canada. I often thought that when the Canadian MS Society had the resources, it might be able to encourage a number of health agencies in Canada to help pay attention to the needs for long-term care in Canada. We could have done some good.

But I was a volunteer president with a demanding job and a young family at the time. My objective was to get multiple sclerosis recognized as a major health concern and get it the millions needed to carry out a growing program of research toward a cure.

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Peering into the abyss.

May 8, 2021May 26, 2021 by Peter Lowry

There is not much we can say for the Internet’s overabundance of time wasters. In early iterations of Facebook and Twitter, I tested the programs and found the idea wanting. You can find the remains of my testing somewhere in that vast realm of garbage. Life is too short to waste any of it on social media.

I will admit though that in this time of not travelling to see distant family, I do appreciate the wife pointing out pictures of new family arrivals and updating pics of wide-spread family and friends, so dearly missed.

But I was horrified the other day when she asked me to take a look at a posting on Facebook of a video clip. It was posted by an acquaintance who should know better. The clip was of a motor-mouthed jerk pretending to be in front of a football play board. The football line-up was supposed to be of covid-19 vaccines versus the human immune system. What he was saying on that Facebook posting was that the vaccines would destroy our immune system. I figured that was all the anti-vaxxers needed.

I have heard from a few anti-vaxxers and, mostly, their arguments have been so stupid as to be laughable. This one is dangerous. This could be in the same category as shouting ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre. There are people gullible enough to believe something like that. I posted on it that it was crap but he just brushed off my objection. I guess he found it amusing.

It is like some bloggers who think they are reporters. They can give blogs a bad reputation. I was shocked years ago when I found that some bloggers were attempting to get news media accreditation to political events.

Blogs are, at best, an interpretation of events. At least I tell you up front that this is nothing more than a commentary, mostly on politics. I spent many years absorbing and digesting Canadian and American politics. I have travelled back and forth across Canada and the United States and visited many countries around the world. It can give you a perspective that I am willing to share.

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Trumpeting for the Trumpers.

May 7, 2021May 26, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Those provincial premiers from Alberta and Ontario must be taking all their cues from former U.S. president Donald Trump. They have both got their asses in a sling as they lead their provinces from confusion to catastrophe. They are both on a slippery slope to impeachment before they can do any more harm. While both have about a year left on their party’s mandate, their parties owe it to their voters to get rid of them.

I am surprised to be saying this about Jason Kenney in Alberta but that guy has really screwed the pooch. We can just see former prime minister Stephen Harper shaking his head in horror at the depths to which his acolyte Kenney has sunk. He went back to Alberta to save it from socialism and has taken the province and its people on a dangerous downhill ride ever since.

Like his hero Donald Trump, Jason Kenney is an autocratic, misogynistic blowhard. Kenney’s questionable use of public funds to try to salvage the pipeline economy of Alberta has thrown away billions the province could ill-afford. His attention to the scientific advice about covid-19 seems limited to the attention span of a four-year old.

It looks as though Doug Ford in Ontario is close behind his friend Kenney. The difference between the two is that Ford is what the kids mean when they call someone a dumbass. This guy is so ignorant that we can all pin our own tail on that donkey. He just has a bigger playpen, with more voters, than his buddy in Alberta. His government can cause more to be killed by an out-of-control virus.

And it is largely because of Ford’s ignorance, his failure to follow the science, his use of the blame game. In the past two years, I think he has aged his health minister by thirty years. His science advisers all want to quit in protest but they are not sure how bad things might get then.

The other day, that pathetic minister of Ford’s who is responsible for long-term care facilities in the province, looked liked she was about to burst out bawling in the legislature. I think Ford was hiding, at the time. All he wants is for the pandemic to get over with so that he can get back to his right-wing mission.

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When every vote counts.

May 6, 2021May 26, 2021 by Peter Lowry

There are Canadians I know in the Jewish community who tend to come down hard on me if I criticize Israel. It just cannot be helped though when that country’s government, the Knesset, is such an interesting example of proportional voting. It looks now as though Mr. Netanyahu and his Likud party cannot form a government out of the 13 parties elected in the most recent of five elections in about two years. And people wonder why proportional representation would be a destructive way to elect our governments in Canada.

Quite frankly, proportional representation in Canada would be a disaster. Can you just imagine the potential number of political parties we would have? I can assure you that the Toronto liberals would have no truck with those Tories in Quebec who call themselves liberals. And Albertans would have their own gun-toting right-wing cowboys and cowgirls. I figure there are at least three potential parties currently holding the Bloc Québécois together. And the Ontario rural voters would resurrect the latent farmers of Ontario party.

It is mind blowing to think of the different interests and potential demands of the number of small parties needed to create a workable government. And that, in essence is the problem in Israel. Now, you could argue that we might not have a situation such as Mr. Netanyahu’s, where he has the largest group of supporters in the Knesset, but is also under some form of indictment for corruption at the same time.

You would think that Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud would also suffer from his hard right-wing attitude. You have to admit though that it is extremely difficult to maintain a graceful approach in a region with millions of people who dislike and distrust you. You can assume if he held out an olive branch, he would probably lose his arm along with the branch.

But if you want to balkanize Canada and turn it into a bunch of inconsequential states the size of Israel, just keep on trying to switch us to proportional voting. Think of what can build this country. Think of how we can get the leadership this country needs so desperately.

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A snapshot in time.

May 5, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Nothing is more foolish than to read the opinion polls of today and apply them to a general election somewhere down the distant road. The polls are nothing more than a snapshot in time that will change and wander until the voters have a chance to have their say. Nobody can forecast the future, even though we all try.

At this point in time, the poll tracker service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation tells us that the liberals might be enjoying a 50 per cent probability of forming a majority if an election had been held. The liberals could have also got that same nice warm feeling from collective incontinence.

The truth of the matter is nobody can predict the outcome of an election if we have not achieved a common agreement that the end of the pandemic is just around the next corner. Until then, the feeling of distrust and frustration with our politicians is palpable and real.

And, despite the suggestion that the conservatives might have had little solace in the six per cent likelihood of them winning a recent election, there is a drift in the polls that is concerning.

I think the recent over-rated, over publicized and over-written budget from our lady finance minister was a colossal waste of time and effort. Selling our provincial conservatives on day care is not the same as negotiating a free trade agreement.

Basically, I think Ms. Freeland blew the opportunity. We all need a little more excitement in our lives and that budget was practically incomprehensible. It was overloaded with too much housekeeping.

That budget needed to be uplifting and give our country something to look forward to besides more diapers to change. It needed to challenge us to excel. And it certainly needed new revenues. We need to get the money from the rich before it leaves the country. The budget needed to kick start new ideas and give Canadians something more to look forward to than the same-old, same-old. It came across to me as the garbage bin where all old ideas from the finance department come to die.

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As the cow farts.

May 4, 2021 by Peter Lowry

To be honest, this little story is more about burps than farts. Farts are more amusing. It is about the ability of both milk and beef cattle to produce large quantities of methane gas. It has something to do with their complex stomachs that can digest things that a human stomach cannot. It causes them to burp and fart a lot. And since the State of Wisconsin in the United States claims to have more cows than all of Canada, we will point the finger at the Americans. They have got to do something about those burping, farting, methane producing creatures.

It is absolutely serious when you consider that, world-wide, milk and beef cattle are responsible for about ten per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions. I suppose most of us will indulge the environmentalists by eventually switching to electric automobiles but I will be damned if I am going to give up on good steaks and hamburgers. I have already given up drinking milk with lactose, in hopes of lessening my own production of methane.

I hear the Australians have found that feeding their cows some special seaweed can help solve the problem. I am waiting to hear about the milk from cows fed a diet with seaweed. My own experiences with seaweeds have been to label them as inedible. No doubt scientists will eventually find the magic ingredient in the seaweed and put the magic ingredient in small capsules. Seniors everywhere will certainly thank them. Whether cows can swallow capsules is another matter.

The problem is though that the world’s taste for beef has also been growing. It is reported that in the world-wide increase in greenhouse gases, cattle are responsible for nine per cent of the of the increase in gases, at a time when we are trying to reduce the problem.

I guess Babel-on-the-Bay will have to follow up further on all this free-form farting at another time.

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