One of the most enduring concepts of the Presidency of Donald J. Trump will be the idea of “fake news.”

It is a hashtag, a witty comeback in debates, a child’s argument to a parent and I am sure a retort when called out by spouses the world over. And this week when CNN’s Jake Tapper presented a story detailing Justin Trudeau’s failure to properly secure Covid-19 vaccines for Canadians, it was the prime minister’s response.

A year ago, we all watched in horror as various nations and places around the globe became epicentres of the Covid-19 pandemic.

First it was Wuhan, China, with images of total martial law and vaccination water cannons going from street-to-street spraying apartment buildings.

According to ABC news the Oakland Zoo will begin vaccinating at risk animals, as soon as June, against COVID-19.

Primates and “large cats” will be the first such inmates of the zoo to receive the life saving vaccines. According to ABC news, “Due to the nature of primate communities, an outbreak could be devastating, leaving them with a high likelihood of quick spread.”

As Ontario’s finance minister rose in the legislature to present the government’s 2021 budget, it became painfully clear that the Ford government is acting like an ostrich with its head firmly buried in the sand.

Years ago I was sitting in a Royal Bank in Prince George B.C. attempting to finance a new car. The loans officer told me the application looked great, I just needed to verify my income. I asked her if I could use her computer for a second. She complied and I typed in my name […]

Something quite remarkable happened at Queen’s Park this past week.
When the Toronto Sun’s Brian Lilley asked Premier Doug Ford when youth sports might start up again, the Premier said “I’ve got to get the green light from Dr. Williams and the local medical officers of health.”

The Twitterverse has spoken and Premier Doug Ford is being told to oust young Sam Oosterhoff from Queen’s Park.

What the Tweeters don’t know, could fill an ocean, but in this instance they don’t seem to know the Premier does not have the power to remove the Niagara West MPP. He does have the power to kick him out of caucus so Sam could run as an unbeatable independent in the riding, likely gathering more from his social conservative flank to also take up the flag.

On July 12, 2004 then Alberta Premier Ralph Klein announced “never again will this government or the people of this province have to set aside another tax dollar on debt.”

The declaration was following news the province had paid off its debt in full. The result of several years of balanced and surplus budgets aimed at ridding Alberta taxpayers of the credit card balance.

Canadian household debt hit an all time high in 2020 according to Bloomberg and as a nation we have the highest household debt to Gross Domestic product of the G-7 – the group of the world’s most advanced economies.

Ontario’s minister of finance has his work cut out for him.
Peter Bethlenfalvy, who assumed the position in January, is taking on the role during tough economic times in Ontario. Businesses have closed and millions of jobs have been affected since lockdowns began last March. Meanwhile, provincial spending and debt are skyrocketing.

When Justin Trudeau announced he would be giving $600 million in handouts to media in Canada ahead of the 2019 election, there were more than a few crooked eyebrows.

Will Canadians head to the polls this year? The general consensus remains split down the middle. While the federal Liberals still out poll the opposition Conservatives, the vaccine rollout debacle has hammered the Trudeau brand with respect to voter preference.

In the words of former Welland MP Peter Kormos, an approved opposition motion and a toonie, that’ll get ya a ride on the TTC.

Basically, an opposition motion is only the opinion of the legislature or parliament, not the government. For it to be a position of the government the ruling party needs to adopt it, otherwise it’s just a statement, with the same power of a committee finding; which is to say none.

Give the Ontario government credit for this one, keeping schools open but delaying the regularly scheduled spring break was the right call.

Years ago I was standing at the entrance to the Tsuu Tina First Nation, bordering Southwest Calgary, on the day of the funeral for Connie and Ty Jacobs.

Oil and natural pipelines are like light switches on the wall. You take them for granted, along with the expectation that once flipped, your lights will come on. Thus, in normal company and in normal times, few people would, over dinner, discuss something as arcane as tubes and wires. The exception might be a convention of electricians and pipeline workers.

“Today’s announcement marks a responsible and measured approach by the government to ensure Canada’s housing market remains strong and to reduce the risk of a U.S.-style housing bubble developing in Canada” – Canadian Ministry of Finance

This quote was from 2008, following the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States that was created through a combination of deregulation, increasing interest rates and fraud.

The federal government’s economic statement contains the word “child” 238 times, but it doesn’t include a serious plan to reduce the national credit card bill our kids and grandkids will be stuck paying.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is spending $1.8 billion per day. That’s more than $20,000 per second. The national debt has surpassed $1 trillion, and by next year it will have doubled since Trudeau became prime minister in 2015. Doubled.

On Wednesday the front page of the newspaper of George Brown, the founder of the Liberal Party of Canada, declared his long-time successor is an abject failure in responding to COVID-19.

The Globe and Mail’s scathing editorial charged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s latest response to COVID-19 as “a day late and a Loonie short.” The paper also criticised the prime minister’s response on everything from international travel to testing to vaccines procurement.

Now that it’s been a full year since the first presumed positive case of COVID-19 was discovered in Canada we are also experiencing another not so positive first. This week will be the first week where Canada will have zero doses delivered of the two vaccines so far approved by Health Canada since they became available. This is not good news as the bulk of Ontario continues to be in lock-down and kids are forced to continue with on-line learning. Here in Niagara the case numbers have been climbing at an increasing rate, and at one-point last week, we had the highest reproductive rate of the virus in the province. It seems we continue getting hit on all sides.

Those who worked with former Governor General Julie Payette allege Rideau Hall was a “toxic workplace” with incidents of “yelling, screaming, aggressive conduct, demeaning comments and public humiliation.”

Ontarians remember the terrible stories of sky-rocketing hydro bills after the former Ontario government’s Green Energy Act sent hydro prices soaring. Everyday people had to choose whether to heat or eat.

Kathy Katula famously pleaded with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a 2017 televised townhall to help her with her $1,000 per month hydro bill that left her with just $60 for groceries.

In 2015, the last full year of the Barrack Obama-Joseph Biden presidency, the US relied on Venezuela for 11 per cent of its foreign oil.

In 2016, the third year of the Nicolas Maduro presidency in Venezuela and the last year of Obama-Biden, the amount of foreign oil from that country was 960,000 barrels per day. Let’s give Messrs. Obama and Biden the benefit of the doubt; they could not have seen what Maduro was becoming and what would happen to the nation he leads.

Take a deep breathe, take a valium, or whatever works, because this constant bombardment of COVID stories – about this model or that, predicting thousands more cases a day and thousands more deaths and the collapse of the hospital system in three weeks, no two weeks, no wait, it will be one week – is not helping.

This week marked nine months since Ontario and Canada began shutting down in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Additionally, it marked the second time in those nine months the province has entered into a State of Emergency. Many are questioning what that means because not a lot has changed in their lives.

Last year, 2020, there was much written and reported about how we ought to comport ourselves during the pandemic. In short, we were advised to be compliant, socially distant, wary of exaggerated or factually incorrect media and social media posts and, for the most part, encouraged to learn about the COVID-19 virus and its impact on our health and consequences for society.

Sometime mid-Afternoon Wednesday my phone began blowing up with texts of “Are you watching this?” streaming across my device.

So I pivoted from the desk in my home office to my TV and quickly turned on the sound as CTV News showed images of people storming the US Capitol buildings. Another series of texts streamed across my phone with, “Can you believe this is happening?”

With the Trudeau government’s deficit approaching $400 billion due to emergency pandemic spending, it goes without saying that will need to start looking for places to actually save money.

In his life before entering politics Peter Bethlenfalvy was responsible for downgrading Ontario’s financial rating.

Now as the province’s new finance minister Mr. Bethlenfalvy will be responsible for upgrading it.

For Ontario, the past year has been pretty well all COVID all the time. And despite fervent efforts and wishes to the contrary, it looks like COVID will dominate our lives well into 2021. The challenges this presents for the provincial government as it ramps up for the 2022 election are formidable.

Last year at about this time, I took it upon myself to make five predictions about what would be happening in 2020. After a long career as an economist, where predictions are typically guaranteed to be wrong and the only thing in doubt is by how much, I should have known better. I did however promise to revisit my prognostications of a year ago to see how far off they were. In most instances, the answer is – very.

When it comes to the environment I have been wildly more successful than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

It’s true. As Director of Caucus Communications in Premier Gordon Campbell’s British Columbia Government I helped usher in Canada’s first carbon tax. Plus, when I was working to earn money for journalism school I spent two months planting trees in Northern B.C. and Central Alberta.

It is a fact that the Canadian government is the only government in the world to raise taxes during the pandemic. On April 1, as Canadians were coping with the evolving crises of COVID-19, the federal government applied an increase to the carbon tax rate. Now Canadians have learned that the government has planned to clobber us with further tax hikes that will raise costs on gas pump prices, home fuel, and on all food and consumer goods that are transported – essentially everything.

It is becoming more and more apparent that the government decision to shut down bars, gyms, restaurants and small businesses for in-store shopping, has little to do with stopping the spread of COVID-19 from those establishments.

The real rationale behind the closures had one purpose, to get people to stay home by giving them nowhere to go. While no one has come out and said that in an honest, transparent and forthright way, I am – because it seems so evident.

During the ill-fated 1991 Saskatchewan provincial election, then Premier Grant Devine, hoping to secure a third term, would often say in his stump speech that if Tommy Douglas were alive today he would be supporting the Progressive Conservative Party. Devine said this knowing that it would rile the NDP however there was a bit of truth to his theory.

To no one’s surprise, least of all mine, the latest COVID-19 battleground to take shape isn’t in the halls of Canada’s hospitals, it’s in the corridors of justice.

Canadian Appliance Source, the Toronto International Celebration Church (TICC) and now one of the oldest of Canadian institutions – the Hudson’s Bay Company – is going to court to challenge pandemic lock-down rules.

Heritage Minister Stephen Guilbeault’s recent introduction of legislation that would impose a Netflix tax on Canadians is a blockbuster in all the wrong ways. It will do nothing to protect or improve Canadian culture, which is doing just fine. It will fail miserably in trying to regulate Canadians’ viewing habits. And, perhaps worst of all, it will end up gouging regular Canadians who just want to watch good TV of their own choosing.

Earlier this year the Conservative Party of Canada undertook a leadership campaign and once again played a dangerous game of appeasement.

Appeasement is something that seems to be a common trait of the CPC and most conservative politicians in Canada. The idea is a conservative cannot win without appeasing the social conservative ranks amongst their voters.

If news of your provincial budget disappears from the media a few days after its announced, old Finance Ministers used to call that a “a good budget.” Based on that measurement, Ontario Finance Minister Rod Phillips’ first full budget should get straight A’s as little has been said or written about it since its delivery-day headlines.

There are rumblings in the corridors of power in Ottawa that Federal Finance Minister and heir apparent Chrystia Freeland will earmark $1 billion for vaccine production on Monday.

Good thing, perhaps Canada will be able to start producing vaccines sometime in 2025. That is unless the billion dollars is just another empty Liberal promise, like the canoe in everyone’s pot, a promise made in the 2019 election.

If there is one thing Dr. Janice Giesbrecht has seen a lot of in her career as an oncologist, it would be change. Change in treatments, clinic size, survival rates and diagnostics just to name a few.
The Niagara-raised physician, who recently completed her second term as Chief of Oncology at Niagara Health and has handed the reigns over to her colleague Dr. Michael Levesque, has had a long and distinguished career navigating one of the busiest departments through numerous changes. But Dr. Giesbrecht didn’t always want to be a cancer doctor. It was essentially a summer job in Toronto that ignited an interest in caring for those with cancer.

On Monday morning as sections of Ontario had just gone back into full lockdown I did something I try to avoid. I read Twitter.

It was the typical political grandstanding common with the Twitter machine.
One thing the woke crowd, the Twitter pundits agree, is conservatives bad, socialists good. It all reads like monosyllabic Neanderthal speak, pounding chest, “me good, me fund hospital, you bad, you support business.”

When I was a little boy I remember going to the lunch counter on Kingsville’s Main Street to get a pop with my older brother.

We likely spent too much of our money on hockey cards so we didn’t have enough left over for food or drink. However, we got Pop Shoppe sodas – cream soda is still my favourite – and they cost 20 cents with deposit or 15 cents if we drank them in the store and left the bottles behind.

You see Pop Shoppe had this ingenious thing called manufacturer responsible recycling. You’d pay for the deposit and if you didn’t return the bottle you lost your money, so there was an incentive to recycle.

The number of known COVID-19 cases in Canada has grown to greater numbers than in the spring proving what we all feared – the second wave is in fact worse than the first.

I say known COVID-19 cases because parliament in Ottawa took the summer off instead of ensuring rapid testing is available for all Canadians before schools came back.

Late last week, it was revealed that US-based grocer Whole Foods had banned employees at its 14 Canadian stores from wearing poppies at work in the lead up to Remembrance Day.

While no specific reason was initially provided as to why, CBC News reported that an Ottawa worker was told by a superior that donning the ceremonial flower could be seen of as “supporting a cause” (and thus, in violation of company policy).

Every four years Canadians – and many others around the world I suspect – wonder out loud how much quicker U.S. elections would go if those doing the count were allowed to remove their shoes and socks.

This way you see, in most cases they could count up to 20.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland speaks during a news conference in Ottawa on Sept. 24, 2020. Photo: David Kawai/Bloomberg Considering the shape of Canada’s economy, you might assume Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s recent speech to the Toronto Global Forum would have contained some grim bits. But there was no sign of sobering statistics. She didn’t mention […]

The Saskatchewan 2020 provincial election is another one for the history books. The Saskatchewan Party led by Premier Scott Moe secured a very healthy majority government giving it another four year mandate.

The opposition New Democrat Party (NDP) lost its fourth election in a row with its fourth leader at the helm. Since 2007 the NDP has ran a different leader in each election. What was that famous Einstein quote about repeating things that don’t work?

Fighting climate change with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax is like fighting COVID-19 with essential oils. It doesn’t work.
Here’s proof.
British Columbia has the highest carbon tax in Canada, yet its emissions have increased by seven per cent since it got the tax. Emissions went from 63.4 million tonnes in 2007, the year before the B.C. carbon tax was introduced, up to 67.9 million tonnes of emissions in 2018, the last year of available data. Critics could argue that B.C.’s emissions may have been higher without a carbon tax, but that’s not what the Ontario example shows.

When Justin Trudeau was elected Prime Minister in 2015 he vowed to do politics differently.

This week he fulfilled that vow by attaching a confidence vote to a committee motion, something never done before in the history of Canada. The reason you ask? Well simple, he didn’t like the result of the last election because Canadians put a check on his power-mad, entitled government.

A retired but well-read journalist often says the four most dangerous words in the English language are “the science is settled.” True science is never settled.  It always responds and adapts to the latest evidence and recognizes that the answer to most scientific questions starts with “it depends.”

Over the past week, the quote has come to mind for this author as COVID cases have climbed, resulting in more provincial government-imposed lockdown restrictions in Toronto, Peel and Ottawa.

During the 2018 provincial election, one of the strongest voices for Ontario’s long-term care homes was provincial New Democrat leader Andrea Horwath.

It’s true; the NDP platform had several recommendations to improve – in their mind at least – the province’s failing long-term care system. The focus was, and still is, to make them all public.

Whenever Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants to solve a problem, his solution can’t be to hit families and businesses struggling to get by with even more costs. Yet, that’s exactly the approach Trudeau is taking with his second carbon tax.
As Postmedia columnist John Ivison reported, the Trudeau government is getting ready to introduce a second carbon tax through a regulatory regime called the clean fuel standard, which will “require all supplies of fossil fuel to reduce carbon content.” If companies can’t meet the fuel requirement, they’ll have to pay a whopping $350 per tonne carbon tax.

When the final book is written on the North American wide response to the COVID-19 pandemic a major contributing factor to why so many mistakes have been made will be partisanship.

This writer has said as early as February, there is no worse time for a pandemic to hit the United States than during an election year. No matter what the science says, no matter what kind of response is needed, the reaction will be based on politics.

The 2020 Saskatchewan election officially kicked off last week. Residents of the land of living skies go to the polls at the end of October to elect their government. Barring a major catastrophe for the governing party, another Saskatchewan Party government will be formed.

The Saskatchewan Party has governed the province since 2007 and during each election they have watched their seat total rise, which is almost unheard of in modern day politics. This will be the first time Premier Scott Moe runs in the general election as Premier and party leader. It will be interesting to see if he can add to his party’s seat count.

One of the criticisms I often heard about Erin O’Toole’s run for Conservative Leadership was he doesn’t have the charisma of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Mr. O’Toole doesn’t come from an ultra-rich super-white privileged family. He didn’t attend private dinners with Fidel Castro, Jimmy Carter or the Aga Khan.

Without competition, prices go up and quality goes down. That’s exactly what’s happening in Ontario’s public education system. And it’s bad for students.
Currently, only unionized teachers are allowed to teach in Ontario’s public schools. Applicants to the public system are forced to join a union as a condition of employment the moment they sign the paperwork for the new job.

If debt servicing were a ministry of government in Ontario it would be the third largest after health care and education in terms of overall cost.

The reason is Ontario has the largest sub-sovereign debt in the world. Like a household with runaway credit card bills, a massive portion of Ontario’s revenue is dedicated to service interest payments.

It is perhaps ironic that after all the criticism from teacher unions that the provincial government’s back to school plan would be a disaster, the first school closure because of a COVID outbreak was caused by a teacher with COVID symptoms. who came to work and mingled with colleagues who were not wearing masks. Over 700 secondary students in Pembroke are now out of school.

The politician most invoked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the 2019 election was not his chief competitor, then-Conservative boss Andrew Scheer, it was Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

Attacking the leader of a lower level of government during an election is an incredibly distasteful act as premiers are the prime minister’s partners in governing Canada. It is the kind of thing you would expect from a leader like US president Donald Trump – then again I believe the two men are incredibly similar in there “do as I say, not as I do” attitudes, so it shouldn’t be surprising.

It has been more than four months since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Since then, we have seen historic levels of spending on emergency measures, record unemployment rates, and huge hits to industries in Canada, U.S., and across the world.
With the updated United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement now in effect, it will be more important than ever for Canada and the U.S. to take advantage of its benefits. The trade agreement will foster a North American economic recovery, strengthen regional supply chains, and most importantly, return manufacturing jobs to North America. Just as significant, a revitalized trade relationship will help lessen our dangerous economic dependence on China.

Growing up in the shadow of the Renaissance Centre on the banks of the Detroit River you learned the common refrain “as the General goes so goes the economy.”

General as in General Motors headquartered in that iconic building centred on the Motor City skyline.

The New Democrat Party affiliates in western Canada are going through an identity crisis. Their relationship with the federal NDP party is akin to a doomed relationship where they are only staying together for the sake of the kids. If they were to seek therapy the only viable advice would be for them to get a divorce.

Fuelled by collapsing oil prices and the economic impact of COVID-19, the Province of Alberta is projecting the largest budget deficit in its history at $24.2 billion.

The dwindling fortunes are mainly due to provincial revenues dropping by $11.5 billion and spending – COVID related – increasing by $5.3 billion. The province’s real Gross Domestic Product will decrease 8.8 per cent and see an unemployment rate of 13 per cent, with more than 170,000 jobs lost.

As Preston Manning used to say the last time the federal deficit was so big, when you’re in a hole the first thing to do is stop digging. Very soon now, the Trudeau government needs to put down its very large shovel.
Getting Canada’s $343 billion federal deficit under control will be a daunting task. Winding down emergency program spending represents the biggest chunk of money, but, at least in theory, it is also probably the easiest to do. Temporary measures justified because the economy was closed will no longer be necessary now that it’s reopening.

Each year when kids go back to school there is always a corresponding crisis in governments – flooded hospital emergency rooms.

My most intimate relationship with this fact came from my time running northern communications from Prince George for the British Columbia Government.

Jasmine Moulton is the Ontario Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. The Ontario government recently announced that it would be providing over $300 million for COVID-19 safety measures in schools as they reopen this fall. This funding will cover additional staffing, nurses, custodians, cleaning supplies, and personal protective equipment. This is the highest per-pupil investment […]

I want to start by congratulating the Liberal Party for finally appointing a woman to the most important ministerial position in Canada or even Ontario.

Ontario Progressive Conservatives have done it twice. The first was Bette Stepheson in 1985 and the second was Niagara Independent columnist Janet Ecker in 2003.

This summer we have been deluged with stories on the pandemic, the federal government’s WE Charity scandal, the first black female U.S. vice presidential candidate, not to mention the almost hysterical coverage of whether or not children can safely go back to school this fall.
Perhaps that is why the news that Ontario now has a $38.5 billion deficit — triple last years’ prediction of $9.2 billion, up over $18 billion from just a few short months ago – seemed to disappear after one day of coverage.

Almost as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, Canadian financial institutions rolled out plans to defer mortgage payments for homeowners.

In the case of banks the deferral period was six months and other, smaller institutions like credit unions, payments were delayed month to month. The month-to-month deferrals are a common option from most lenders and are usually allowed about once a year.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) is giving $250,000 to Generation Squeeze, an advocacy organization for young Canadians, to research ways to improve housing affordability. The group stated it will focus on “wealth generated by rising home values,” which incited fears the government is considering a home equity tax on the capital gains generated when Canadians sell their homes.

The problem with the idea of conventional wisdom is for a person to employ it they must first have wisdom and second, it must follow convention.

Given this, the idea that the lens we must use to suggest Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau will be out the door for his failings in the WE Scandal may be premature.

The year 2020 has proven to be an unprecedented time and has brought with it challenges the likes of which we’ve not seen in our lifetime.

With the onslaught of COVID-19, the normal course of life has been disrupted globally. This has included a major impact to the health and welfare of all. Physical distancing measures and restrictions, while warranted and necessary, have required us be apart from family and friends and work colleagues for a prolonged period of time. Unfortunately, this practice will need to continue for the foreseeable future. These changes are creating an unfavorable environment which may impact global health measures even after the conclusion of the pandemic.

For followers of my column you’ll know I have many times written about why the appearance of conflict of interest is essentially the same thing as an actual conflict.

It is not just some conservative howling in the wilderness saying this. It is actually the opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada. Yes the highest court of our land believes you have to avoid conflict and the appearance of conflict as well.

Parents can be forgiven if they are sitting in their socially isolated homes screaming at the ceiling in frustration.
After four months of watching the Ontario government handle the COVID-19 pandemic reasonably well, it is perplexing why they can’t seem to get a handle on how, if and when schools are to re-open this fall. And time is running out.

Everyone who has ever worked in a government office has been given the conflict of interest talk – everyone.

Simply put, to uphold the senior tenant of the Canadian Constitution – Peace, Order and Good Government – those elected and employed by government cannot use their position to personally benefit themselves. In Regina v. Hinchy 1996 the Supreme Court of Canada further upheld the standard, ruling a public servant could not award contracts to the benefit of their own company.

Municipal councillors want taxpayers to believe their only option to deal with the COVID-19 budget crunch is to hike taxes or slash programs. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario repeated this false binary in an emergency call for billions in taxpayer cash from the federal and provincial governments. But there’s a third option: cut the fat and focus on the essentials.
It’s not only possible to reduce and refocus municipal spending, it’s better for taxpayers.

Politics and money is a vile soup at the best of times and when you mix in family members and soul sourced contracts it can be downright poison as the ongoing WE charity scandal is showing us.

Warren Moon was one of the best quarterbacks I ever watched play in my entire life and he was forced to ply his trade in Canada with the CFL for one reason – he is black.

Prior to the mid-1980s there were hardly any black quarterbacks anywhere in the NFL. James Harris, formerly of the Buffalo Bills, Los Angeles Rams and San Diego Chargers, was the first black quarterback to play any significant number of games in the league from 1969 to 1981.

Regional Council’s recent decision to refer a request by local business leaders to have a discussion on COVID-19 financial implications on taxpayers and business owners was both encouraging and disappointing.
The disappointment comes from the immediate motion to refer which resulted in no discussion on the matter.

Systemic issues dealing with children in care are nothing new and there isn’t a government in Canada that can say they have been out front on this file.

So it should be no surprise Ontario Ombudsman Paul Dubé highlighted many of the issues in his first annual report since he took over the file last May.

Western Canada currently has three conservative and one New Democrat Premier spanning the four provinces. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba have center right parties while British Columbia is home to the only provincial NDP government in the confederation.

Premier Doug Ford’s decision to teach financial literacy starting in grade one is the most blatant and brazen political act he has pulled off since being elected June 2018.

Simply put, if you teach children how to budget, they’ll never turn into Liberal or NDP voters. That is the kind of long-term thinking we need in government.

After 100 days of life with the COVID-19 pandemic, what have we learned? 

We have seen both the best and the worst of our governments.  Ottawa and Ontario moved bureaucratic inertia aside to quickly help people cope.  But we were also hit by rules that didn’t make sense and red tape that got in the way; all reminders that it is not the size of government that counts, but its competence. 

When I was a younger much more left leaning individual still attending Journalism school – aka before I started paying taxes – I wrote a column extoling the virtues of former Prime minister John Turner.

For those who don’t remember, John Turner had a summer job as PM back in the mid-1980s after Trudeau the elder took his last walk in the snow.

Two-thirds of Canadians think members of Parliament should voluntarily reduce their pay, according to a recent poll. MPs should share the struggles of the people they lead. More importantly, doing so would give politicians credibility for the job they need to do next: reduce the overall cost of government employees.

Sometime in mid-October Canadians will be waking up to the sudden realization that bill payments have gone back to normal while large swaths of the economy are still stuttering and sputtering.

Former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau once compared Canada’s close proximity to the United States to sleeping with an elephant.

It has been almost three years since the Energy East pipeline was abandoned.
TransCanada cancelled the pipeline after the National Energy Board announced it would consider indirect greenhouse gas emissions in its review. The hostile and unstable regulatory environment created by Trudeau’s government drove away the Energy East pipeline as it almost drove away the TransMountain pipeline – which was only saved by a government buyout.

Canada has the most responsible government in the world, not only can we give the Prime Minister the finger, he can give it to us right back.

The reference of course is to Trudeau Senior’s long past actions, and while I don’t agree with them, it is a truism that makes us Canadian. We have the right to tell the prime minister what we think of him or her without the threat of detainment or a firing squad and he can tell us what he or she thinks of us right back.

In early May of this year, as the world grappled with the fallout from COVID-19 and stayed hunkered down in place, soon to be former federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May took it upon herself, with an assist from the separatists, to tell us what has happened to the oil and gas sector. Apparently, according to May, it is dead.

One would have to presume that Kelly McParland had his tongue firmly in cheek when he penned a recent column for the National Post on the glories of working for the government over the private sector. Recent experience with the COVID-19 crisis would certainly support this premise, however, as we see the carnage in private sector employment while the vast majority of public sector workers are underworked, if they are working at all, while enjoying full salary and benefits courtesy of taxes paid by the beleaguered private sector.

Look up “accident waiting to happen” in the dictionary. It would not be a surprise to see “long term care homes” listed. The steady increase in COVID-19 deaths in Ontario’s nursing homes over the past weeks begs the question, how could we have possibly gotten it this wrong when it comes to running and regulating our long-term care system.

Yesterday Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped out of his cottage to announce his latest relief package, $470 million for fish harvesters.

I am not now or have ever been a fish harvester and I am sure they are facing challenges, as are most industries. But can someone, anyone, even the Prime Minister explain to me how fish harvesters get $470 million yet farmers are splitting just over half of that – $252 million?

In 2019 the World Bank estimated there are 270 million immigrants around the world who remit a combined $689 billion US to their native countries each year.

Canada has the fourth highest remittances in the world behind the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy. Spain and France round out the top six.

Everyday, Canada’s federal, provincial and municipal governments publish – and the media obligingly report – daily COVID-19 numbers that tell us a lot of what we don’t need to know, and just a little of what’s important.

As we struggle to contain COVID-19, virtually everyone is paying the price while the economy faces an unprecedented storm. Many members of Parliament are sharing in that sacrifice by donating their automatic pay raise to charity. The rest need to not only follow that example, but go one step further by taking a pay cut.

There is a story circulating right now about a truck driver who stops for the night at the only hotel in a small town of Nowhere, Ontario.

He walks in and asks to see the room before he rents it and as a deposit he puts $100 on the desk. The hotel owner gives him the keys and the truck driver goes upstairs.

As the pandemic continues to shut down economies and societies, social isolation causes one to contemplate many questions that arise about the aftermath.
It is clear there was no real rule book for this, no off-the-shelf manual or box on the wall with the reassuring letters “in emergency, break glass.” Our leaders are making “lifeboat” decisions on the fly, based on the best available information they can obtain about this new threat.

After the 2019 federal election, many westerners were despondent over the results. The lead up to election day showed that the Conservative Party led by Andrew Scheer would pull off a win, more than likely a minority government. That was what conventional wisdom was showing in the west. The Trudeau Liberals have hammered the western economy since taking office in 2015, especially in the energy sector and to many western Canadian voters the election was going to put a stop to anti-energy policies coming out of Ottawa. The Trudeau Liberals won the election as a minority government from support in the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario. As for the west, you can drive from Winnipeg to Vancouver and not cross through a single Liberal held riding in-between those two cities.

Take a tour on any social media site and any number of posts appear from the most generalist of social media “experts” on how best to manage through the COVID 19 Pandemic. Let’s be clear, we are in the throes of a pandemic – defined clearly as an outbreak of a disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time. And which has spread across a wider geographic range – more so than an epidemic. This pandemic has affected a significant portion of the population in almost every country on earth!

In the doom and gloom health and financial forecasts peppering every news channel and daily media briefing it is tough to think there is any good news out there.

Brief moments of levity, like Premier Doug Ford proclaiming the Easter Bunny an essential service, are far too rare – and somehow criticised for making light of something in dark times.

We find ourselves in an unprecedented time with the COVID-19 pandemic. It has dramatically altered our lives as we know them. I have never been more proud to work with such a committed group of people and more grateful to live in such a caring and generous community.
At Niagara Health, we are all working our hardest to provide the best and safest care to our patients. We could not have a better team in place – their professionalism and dedication are beyond measure.

We have by now accepted the reality that all governments are spending our money like water with our full support in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that is upon us. All of this money will be added to our collective debt, and will need to be paid back at some future time. Despite the current turmoil and the imperative to get money out the door quickly, it is still worth examining where this money is going and whether it is truly being used constructively and for valid pandemic-related matters.

When praising emergency services workers, typically firefighters, police and paramedics – people often use the description ‘they are running into a burning building while the rest of us are running out’ as a way of explaining their heroism.

On January 31, on this news site, I pleaded with policymakers to enact immediate travel restrictions and strict quarantine measures in order to repel the novel coronavirus from gaining a foothold on our shores. I knew, back then, that the early statistics behind pandemics can be deceptive, and that the precautionary principle, as elucidated by Nassim Taleb, is the most scientific way to respond to such a threat.

What’s with the toilet paper, people? In the midst of what is shaping up to be the worst world pandemic in the last 100 years, the obsession with amassing vast quantities of toilet paper doesn’t speak well of our ability to set the right priorities. Stock piling hand sanitizers and disinfectants, now that makes sense.
But setting that aside, let’s consider several important lessons from past experience that are impacting how we handle today’s pandemic.

Yes, it feels slightly wrong to issue yet another column criticizing Justin Trudeau. But with no end in sight for the Corona virus shutdown, offended readers are even less likely to come to my house with their complaints. If they do, I could really use some flour.

Both the South Niagara Chambers of Commerce and the Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce (GNCC) are doing what they can to help local businesses try and survive the massive negative impact the COVID-19 global pandemic has had on Niagara’s small and medium sized businesses.

“We’re making calls to all 2,000 of our members,” said Dolores Fabiano, executive director of the South Niagara Chambers. She said while there’s no doubt her members are feeling the tight squeeze of little to no revenue they are trying to stay positive. “If you’re a business owner you’re resilient.”

There was a positive sense of glee across Premier Doug Ford’s face during his Wednesday presser as he spoke of the Beamsville, Ontario distillery Dillon’s.

For anyone who has not heard, the Beamsville distillery is changing course somewhat to turn its booze making apparatus into hand sanitizer production. According to reports the sanitizer will be provided for free to health care workers and first responders.

This may be a total shock to my readers, but I am going to say something nice about the Ontario Liberal Party.

Right now the number one challenge to Premier Doug Ford’s Ontario PC government does not come from the official opposition – the Ontario NDP. The biggest challenge to Mr. Ford comes from the party of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne – now under new management.

Most Canadians are becoming painfully aware that there is a distinct movement underway to undermine our resource economy and with it, undo the achievements of Aboriginal community leaders who have been successfully reconciling Aboriginal rights and title with the Crown for the past 15 years.
Many of those lining up against the Coastal GasLink pipeline are non-Aboriginal, while some are even from south of the border.

During the 2018 Ontario Election campaign PC Leader Doug Ford said he would open up the mineral and economic riches of the so-called “Ring of Fire” even if he had to bulldoze the road himself.

The “Ring of Fire” is roughly 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay and is said to possess multi-generational economic potential. Key finds in the area are chromite, nickel, copper and platinum.

Nearing the wind up of his presidency Barrack Obama lamented he did not do enough to heal partisan woes in the United States.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times he invoked Voltaire, the French philosopher, who warned not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The results of provincial election 2018 changed the province of Ontario forever.  Gone are the governments of Dalton McGuinty – Ontario’s sixth longest serving Premier (after iconic Premiers Mowat, Davis, Frost, Whitney and Robarts) and Kathleen Wynne (who holds the distinction of being Ontario’s first elected female Premier and the tenth longest serving Premier of all 26 Premiers ever elected in the province).

These are great accolades but in 2020 not such great ones to celebrate per se.  The Ontario Liberal Party has held office in the province for a generation  – 2003 to 2018.  This writer has been on record in media during and after Election 2018 admonishing that the Liberal Party should have spent more time celebrating its accomplishments while in Government rather than attacking its opponents.   After all, fifteen years in power is a lifetime and a party with so much promise, authenticity and good fortune seemed to squander it with scandal, terrible political judgement and poor communications.

I sat down and spoke with my 13 year-old daughter the other day and I was immediately struck
with two profound takeaways.
One, school is still a hotbed of cliques, class war and identity crisis with kids under pressure,
yearning to be noticed. Back then it was Valley girl, today it’s VSCO, but take your pick.

Nearly two years ago B.C.-based newsman Tom Fletcher wrote an interesting piece about hyper-organized protests targeting the Canadian natural resource industry.

His article cited leaked documents obtained by the BC Liberal opposition describing well-funded and even better organized professional protestors targeting Canadian energy projects. The writer of the document, “Action Hive Proposal,” was Cam Fenton. Mr. Fenton is a Vancouver-based writer who works for 350.org – an environmental protest group based in Oakland, California.

Former British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell believed strongly that to create economic prosperity in Canada’s more westerly province the government first needed to resolve long-standing disputes with First Nations.

As a communications officer assigned to the Attorney General and Minister Responsible for Treaty Negotiations in 2004 I saw the potential first hand. My position was issues management and press secretary and as such I dealt with the good news – agreements and negotiations – and the bad news, blockades and protests.

Niagara Regional Council is beginning the process of hiring a new Chief Administrative Officer (CAO). In my opinion, the process needs to lead to a CAO with fresh eyes and no local baggage or connections.

Over the years, senior positions like the CAO and Commissioners of the major departments at the Region have seen inconsistent hiring practices. For instance, when Debbie Zimmerman became Chair of Niagara Region she wanted to work with a new CAO. Mike Trojan was simply appointed to the role, without any competition, after his predecessor Michael Boggs was moved aside to a ‘lateral’ position.

Anyone growing up in the late-1980s or early 1990s no doubt saw the hit movie starring Christian Slater – Pump up the Volume.

The premise of the movie is basically, after moving to a new town, Slater’s parents got him a short-wave radio to talk to his friends from the old town. Slater’s character was clearly brilliant and figured out how to turn the short-wave radio into a pirate radio station – it’s been 30 years and I have no clue.

As of this writing, the novel Coronavirus (nCov) has infected thousands of people, and killed over 170, mostly within mainland China. There are currently three cases in Canada — each of which passed through our airports without proper medical screening. NCov, which started infecting people in December of 2019, is clearly a fast-spreading and enigmatic virus. A former U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director has gone on record saying, “We don’t know how infectious [nCov] is, we don’t know how severe it is, and we don’t know how it’s spreading.”

Indeed, we know hardly anything about this new virus, and yet public officials keep telling us to remain calm, and that the risk to the public is low. Even a child knows that we cannot calculate the risk of an unknown phenomenon. These naive public servants may as well compute the trajectory of an angel or fairy, as it orbits their empty heads.

Many Ontarians are struggling to get by.
A recent Ipsos poll revealed 48% of Canadians are $200 or less away from financial insolvency at the end of the month. But the last thing they need is more government because taxes are already the single largest expense for the average Canadian household.

Anyone following the ongoing labour dispute between Ontario teachers and the province has heard about the wage-increase legislation. Or at least that is what I would call it if I was working for Premier Doug Ford – I am not.

The Ontario Government in an attempt to quell unsustainable budget increases has decided to allow for an increase of one-per cent for public sector unions. This type of wage increase has been attempted before in Canada and this writer in fact lived under a zero per cent cap while working in government in the past.

Well, that pretty well makes it unanimous. All four teacher unions are now participating in rotating one-day strikes and work-to-rule actions that limit such things as report card writing, administrative tasks, extracurricular activities and organizing the province-wide Education Quality and Accountability (EQAO) tests.
How we ever came to this sorry state where extracurricular activities and report cards are not core duties is a long story, but here we are.

You would hope even most ardent anti-Ford partisans would concede the Premier’s tone has changed greatly in his second year of office. Yet there are some that still see him as the devil incarnate and they will never change so let’s not focus on that rabble.

Then again I doubt that cabal would read anything I write anyway, so let’s start over.

Who doesn’t respect the United Nations? Or maybe it’s better to ask, who doesn’t respect them – until they really mess up?
For almost 75 years, beginning with just over 50 member states, the UN has helped hold the world together, labouring to express the will of now almost 200 countries on issues as diverse and politically charged as the economy, the environment and social development.

It may surprise people in the Niagara Region to learn that when you speak to people in Ontario – well Toronto and Queen’s Park – they think credit unions are a western Canadian thing.

It may surprise those people in Ontario’s capital to learn that not only are credit unions an Ontarian thing – they began in our province. And today the Ontario credit union system is the second largest system in Canada outside of Quebec.

Let’s start with an obvious premise: it’s possible to both value and respect teachers while simultaneously questioning the viability of their unions’ demands. Indeed, it would be irresponsible for any society that values the public education system not to question how money is being spent therein to maximize value. So let’s consider one of the […]

The holidays have ended and no doubt everyone who spent time with family heard what is wrong with Ontario and Canada. More often than not how to fix it also got thrown in.
Whether it’s that one uncle or perhaps granddad going over the top complaining about this tax or that program, there is always an opinion. Sometimes it leads to arguments, sometimes others muttering, “would they please shut up” under their breath, sometimes more eggnog.

It is no secret that the housing market within the Niagara Region is booming.
Our region currently ranks the 5th best place in Canada to purchase real estate, with a population that is projected to double by the year 2041.

These statistics may seem encouraging; however as more and more residents continue to call Niagara their home, new challenges arise. These challenges include housing inventory and housing prices which average families can’t afford nor continue to maintain financially.

Anyone who has ever taken an economics course or watched a TV program that discussed economics or read a book – any book really – understands the law of supply and demand.

Basically if you have demand for something than the market will produce supply. Transversely, if you have supply of something a demand can be created through others means – i.e. no one wanted to buy sliced bread until they could get it.

The recent passing of drastic property tax increases speaks loudly to the need for compensation restraint within the municipal civil service.
The Province’s Bill 124 imposes a one per cent limit on compensation increases for provincial civil servants. It was put in place specifically to help deal with high unsustainable annual deficit and huge accumulated debt at the provincial level. However, the bill does not apply to municipal employees.

In 2002 the newly minted Gordon Campbell Government in British Columbia introduced the Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act, effectively tearing up a wage hike agreement that B.C. nurses cut with the former NDP provincial government.

The nurses’ deal was considered unsustainable and nothing more than a political tactic of a failed government trying to save the furniture in the 2001 B.C. election. They didn’t save the furniture – just two seats – and Mr. Campbell’s B.C. Liberals swept to a 77-2 election thrashing of the NDP. Opposition to the nurses’ deal was part of the B.C. Liberal’s campaign strategy.

The federal election and all its craziness and vitriol are now behind us. Canada has spoken and it has given the Liberal Party a mandate (sort of) to form a government. Canadians gave “Team Trudeau” the opportunity to form a minority government meaning that the opposition parties in the collective have more seats than the Party who formed the government.

One of the largest complaints of provincial regulators I fielded while working for the credit union trade association was the swiftness of authorities to resolve issues with unhealthy institutions.

Not underhanded mind you, but institutions whose revenues have flat lined or retracted. Often the institutions, once salvageable, had become more of a burden to rescue than a benefit. If the regulator had the power to act more quickly then the credit union that is taking over the merger could be in a better place.

There’s an old science fiction movie where the aliens take over humans’ bodies, one by one.  The individual still looks like the person they once were, but their behaviour changes, spawning the cult saying “who are you really and what have you done with so and so?”

Observers of the Ontario government’s recent behaviour will be forgiven if they are asking the same of the Premier – who are you really and what have you done with the old Doug Ford? 

There are more than 10,000 people on the Niagara Region’s affordable housing wait list and that number is bound to get bigger with the economic success of the province.

Sure, that sentence likely doesn’t make sense, but the fact is, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association, homes in the region have appreciated by more than 80 per cent in the past five years. New pressures including the expansion of the Go Train will bring more and more families to the region – even some whose breadwinner or winners work in Toronto.

For Canadians who endured an election that often felt like a stomach flu, here’s something to make everyone feel better: the overwhelming majority of MPs agree we need an income tax cut.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to save the average family about $600 every year by increasing the basic personal income tax exemption from $12,000 to $15,000. Except for the high-income earners he leaves out, it’s a broad-based and truly helpful break for Canadian families. In his first press conference following the election, Trudeau confirmed the tax cut is coming.

In my opinion, the latest City Council meeting in St. Catharines demonstrated three key areas of failure. While much of the aftermath has focused on the negative message that St. Catharines is not actually open for business, I would propose the three paramount mistakes include the following:

Hidden amidst the announcement of more money for health care, education and accelerated deficit reduction in the 2019 Fall Economic Statement Nov. 6, was an interesting comment on environmental programs in Canada.

Most people who are active on social media – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the like – probably think that the main downside of social media is the many opinionated, argumentative and downright distasteful trolls you are bound to encounter along the way. The recent Canadian election revealed a much darker element of social media networks as it became clear that a very deliberate and surreptitious effort was underway to censor and distort information that was not favourable to the Trudeau Liberals. As these networks become more pervasive and influential in our day-to-day lives, this should be of great concern to anyone who values free speech and fair elections.

I want to address statements made in “Ford’s Municipal Flip-Flop” published in the Niagara Independent on October 29, 2019.
Earlier this year, our government conducted a review of Ontario’s eight regional governments and Simcoe County, including Niagara Region. Municipalities in the review have experienced significant changes since regional governments were first established over 50 years ago. We wanted to ensure that the current system was respecting taxpayers’ dollars and working efficiently for Ontarians.

On Wednesday, Nov. 6 Ontario Finance Minister Rod Phillips will give his mid-year report card on the province’s finances during the Fall Economic Statement (FES).

It will go something like this: “Thanks to the hard work of Ontario’s all star ministers the province is ahead of schedule to balance the budget within four years. By targeting efficiencies, and not cuts, the province is protecting the services Ontarians need most, and thanks to the great work of Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli, making Ontario open for business, we have been able to increase revenues all the while lowering taxes.”

From his grave in Sleepy Hollow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American essayist, almost seems to be aiming his words at Canada. Election 43 is one for the history books and many have an opinion about its outcome.

Over the past week, many political observers , pundits and those in media have suggested Canada is in for a rough ride in the coming years. Western alienation, they say, is at an all-time high, Quebec nationalism, they say, is on the rise and left of centre politics, they say, will consume the policy agenda in Ottawa.

Well-funded union advertising campaigns have convinced many Ontarians that Premier Doug Ford is making cuts to education that are hurting our kids.
Is this true? No.
These claims are demonstrably false. The current government has increased education funding by $700 million beyond what the previous Liberal government spent, including a $1.6 billion Teacher Job Protection Fund to ensure that no teachers would lose their jobs due to a change in class sizes over the next four years.

More than 7,000 Liuna members from across Ontario marched on Queen’s Park to protest the government and hear the leader of the official opposition speak.

It was April 23, 2018, the government they were protesting was that of Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne and the opposition leader they were there to hear speak was new PC Leader Doug Ford.

Score one for the provincial government. At the eleventh hour, Ontario’s Education Minister Stephen Lecce reached a deal with the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) who represent 55,000 education system support staff.
In an unusual move, CUPE had quickly abandoned its work-to-rule efforts and decided to take its members directly into a strike. This would have shut down hundreds of schools across the province, leaving frantic parents scrambling to make alternative child care arrangements.

Joe Biden served Barrack Obama for eight years as his vice-president. By all accounts he wasn’t a total disaster and from what I know he never wore black face.

Mr. Biden is in the fight of his life for the Democratic Party nomination in the United States, the same country Mr. Obama was president. So you would expect the former leader of the so-called free world to support his friend, former running mate and fellow American. Nope.

There is an old adage in politics that you complain up. Anyone who has watched a Niagara municipal council meeting understands that. And when a senior level politician complains down it is often seen as petty almost oafish.

Then there we were Wednesday. Justin Trudeau used Doug Ford’s name nine times in a single announcement. It wasn’t the most he has invoked the Premier of Ontario, that was on this writer’s birthday, Sept. 23, when he said “Doug Ford” 13 times.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation released its policy wish list in advance of the 2019 federal election.
“We believe these 19 policies – some small, some big – will leave more money in the pockets of Canadians, give them better value for tax dollars spent and hold our politicians more accountable,” said CTF Federal Director Aaron Wudrick “We encourage all parties to steal any and all of these proposals as part of their 2019 campaign.”

Hidden deep in April’s budget delivered by then finance minister Vic Fedeli was a commitment to modernize credit union rules in Ontario.

The decrepit Credit Union and Caisses Populaire Act, 1994, was written before, well, the Internet and is one of the few surviving relics of the Bob Rae era in Ontario. So if you happen to be one of the half-million or so on the Niagara peninsula and Golden Horseshoe that is a credit union member, take comfort knowing that Rae-days may be gone, but the rules governing your life savings remain largely the same.

Summer days are fading. Labour Day is over. Kids are back in school. Must be time for another labour dispute in our education system!
Ontario’s parents may be forgiven for thinking they are in a sequel to the movie “Groundhog Day”, when the hero wakes up every morning to repeat the day before. Lucky for him, he uses the repetitive time to learn important life lessons. It would appear the teachers’ and educational workers’ unions have not.

My initial reaction was visceral. Seeing the Prime Minister of Canada in blackface – at nearly 30 years of age while working in education no less – was profoundly disturbing.
In the days since, my feelings are more reflective and personal and have allowed me to put the pattern of Mr. Trudeau’s behaviour into perspective.

The value of debates during an election campaign has long been in question and never moreso than following the MacLean’s/CityTV Leaders’ Debate Sept. 12 in Toronto.

The strategy of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau skipping the debate was pretty simple. It was a frontrunner strategy where he saw no upside as the NDP was floundering; the Greens were cutting into their votes and the Liberal attack on the Conservatives hadn’t changed since the 1990s – just go with ‘hidden agenda’.

We are now coming up to the one-year mark of cannabis being declared legal in Canada, so the retrospective analyses have started to come in. The Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation (OCRC) recently announced that it had incurred a $42 million loss in its operations to date. Ever-critical of the Ford government, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) used this occasion to lambaste the government for incompetence, claiming that if the government had followed through on the Wynne government’s plan to have a cannabis retailing network left in government hands, such as the province largely does with liquor, things would have been much smoother. It certainly is refreshing and unusual to hear a large government employee union express concern over competence. After all, they are typically preoccupied with fleecing the vast majority of Ontarians who are private sector taxpayers to the maximum extent possible and ensuring that any additional money thrown at government services goes into union coffers and more compensation for already-overpaid bureaucrats instead of improving the quality of public services. This is indeed a rare and welcome change of pace for OPSEU. But, as always, the true concern of OPSEU is not really competence of a government entity, but its ongoing frustration with the election of the Ford government and the consequence that it was not able to put its hands on yet another big pot of union dues in the form of a government-union controlled cannabis retail network.

The World Justice Project 2019 Rule of Law index ranks Canada 9th in the world with high-scores for “no improper influence” and “no corruption.”

I wonder what next year’s rankings will find given the SNC-Lavalin Scandal and the ham-fisted way the government mishandled it and continues to do so. The amazing thing about this, if it was ever really about jobs, is that there was a way to do it properly.

They say, when delivering negative feedback, to use the sandwich approach: compliment, criticism, compliment.
So when it comes to the Ontario Progressive Conservative party’s financial performance, let’s start by commending the government’s Fiscal Sustainability, Transparency and Accountability Act, which improves transparency in public reporting. That includes the recently released first quarter report. Fixing the fiscal mess in Ontario requires being transparent with the populace about just how dire its finances are. So great work there.

Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has been damned if he does and dammed if he doesn’t for most of his tenure at the top of Canada’s natural third party.

First off, Queen’s Park’s former best-dressed Member of Provincial Parliament decided to introduce himself to Canadians before running for a seat in the House of Commons. This was decried by some as a bad move because Ottawa was where the national press is. So he ran and won a seat in Burnaby – a place he has no ties to and doesn’t represent an NDP power-base because it’s on the wrong side of Canada for national media attention.

Shortly after the 2011 provincial election I made the decision to take the Queen’s Park Golden Parachute and move on to greener pastures. My numbers may be wrong, but I clearly remember they were a grand total of 12 to 14 weeks and the paycheque I cashed was nowhere near the $450,000 plus two senior staffers to former Premier Kathleen Wynne pocketed.
So I was a little incredulous to see the former premier defend the decision saying it was in line with other jurisdictions, when from my experience it wasn’t even in line with her own – albeit the opposition side of things. I immediately felt what it is in line with is the entitled way her government acted for many years when dealing with Ontarian’s money.

The pundits will be chattering about the political impact of federal Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion’s bombshell report into the SNC-Lavalin affair until election day. But this is also an opportunity to strengthen government accountability to prevent a repeat of the circumstances that gave rise to the scandal. Dion concluded Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke conflict-of-interest laws by pressuring former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to intervene in a decision not to defer criminal prosecution of the firm.
Whichever party forms government after Oct. 21 must implement two key reforms: separating the roles of the attorney general and minister of justice; and, putting an end to omnibus bills, which prevent proper parliamentary scrutiny.

The Ford Government has given Ontario gas stations until Aug. 30 to place stickers informing motorists of the cost of the Federal Carbon Tax.

The idea of course is to inform motorists and carbon consumers of the additional tax. The number one issue for Canadian voters heading into this year’s election is the cost of living and new taxes, well; they increase the cost of living.

An old politician once said that “voters rarely vote for what they say they want.” This fall, when Canadians choose their next federal government, they will have a chance to prove the truth or falsity of that statement. They need to think carefully about the signals they will send to politicians at all levels of government about what they consider acceptable conduct.
In 2015, Canadian voters chose a leader who promised sunny ways and a government that would be more accountable, more transparent and more ethical than the last one.

For months we have heard about the dangers of the spread of misinformation and disinformation on the internet as we head into the federal election.
Minister Karina Gould has even threatened shutting down certain sites during the writ period to combat the problem.
Earlier this week, we saw a troubling example of a kind of disinformation we should all be concerned with and should all do our part to debunk and combat.

Premier Doug Ford was elected to clean up the fiscal mess in Ontario, but his government’s attempts to do so have been hard to watch. If Ford doesn’t fix his strategy, he may lose his chance to fix the province.
Ontarians want less spending. We just have one request: save smarter.
Here are a few ideas.

In the past 20 years of covering elections, working on elections and managing politicians there is a common thread of top issues. It is always health care, health care, and health care. Unless of course, as former President Bill Clinton famously said, “it’s the economy stupid.”

So small wonder the federal parties seem to be tossing about to figure out an agenda that has neither of those issues as number one. Health care, because everyone says it in polling regardless of the reason, I suspect, so they don’t feel stupid, is sitting at number two on the latest Abacus Data issues poll July 15.

We may have just hit the halfway point of summer but Canada’s political parties are already revving up their campaign engines. As we enter the last full month before the writ drops H+K’s political strategists, Anne McGrath, Melissa Lantsman and Omar Khan share what you need to know about each of their party’s paths to victory.

Despite being in the summer doldrums when most folks are more concerned about hanging out on the dock with a cool beverage than paying attention to the news, there was a bozo eruption from the left this week that got some undeserved media play. The whole thing started with a story from an online so-called news service called Queen’s Park Today, concerning a story on the Ontario Conservatives’ online Ontario News Now outlet about Premier Ford having paid a visit to an Ontario winery, namely Pelee Island Winery, and saying good things about the Ontario business. Another politician visiting a business during the summer months when legislatures are not sitting and making some complimentary public statements about it is something unremarkable that happens every day. That should have been the end of it and, if it had been a Liberal or other non-Conservative government in power, it likely would have been.

The next time you see pipeline protesters chaining themselves to a bulldozer, know that your taxes may have paid for their activism.
The federal government has given $2.5 million of your money to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives so it can “shine a bright light on the fossil fuel industry by investigating the ways corporate power is organized and exercised.”

Recent coverage of the political appointments’ controversy in Premier Doug Ford’s government brought to mind George Washington Plunkitt, an infamous New York politician in the early 1900’s who once said, “I never accepted a dishonest dollar.” As long as his voters received good value for the money spent, “honest graft” was okay.
While such an attitude is frowned upon today, federal and political governments inevitably get dragged into similar controversies about “cronyism” or “corruption” when faced with the daunting task of appointing literally thousands of individuals to various roles on government agencies, boards and commissions.

If we believe the worst predictions of the climate change alarmists, we may be able to grow bananas in Canada in the not-too-distant future. However, it seems that policies of the Trudeau government are on track to deliver Canada into the ranks of banana republics much sooner.
Last week the final report of the pompously-named “Journalism and Written Media Independent Panel of Experts” was released. This is basically the group that was selected to oversee doling out $600 million taxpayer dollars to struggling old-school newspapers that are, like so many industries in this day and age, being made obsolete by advances in technology. The panel is composed of a number of different journalist, news organizations and Unifor, the avowedly anti-Conservative union that represents journalists in a number of publications. Calling this group “independent” is laughable at best, as their undoubted bias in giving out tax dollars effectively to themselves is basically akin to putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank. Adding pro-Liberal Unifor to the mix at election time is nothing short of disgraceful, and should appall all Canadians.

Canada’s public broadcaster should be ashamed of itself.
Word got out recently that the CBC was exploring the idea of doing a series about the horrific and brutal 1991 and 1992 killings of Kristen French, 15, and Leslie Mahaffy, 14. The man charged with those murders also admitted to raping more than a dozen other women between 1987 and 1990. His wife at the time, who, by all accounts, played a very significant role in those murders, and the killing of her own sister, is now enjoying her freedom and has been for several years. He continues to serve a life sentence for abduction, sexual assault and murder.

Here’s an under-reported tragedy: it’s a one-hour drive to a luxury golf course from the nearest airport. Cue the mournful Sarah McLachlan ballad. It’s such unnecessary suffering.
The Cabot Links golf resort is a luxury facility set amidst the landscape of stunning Inverness, Cape Breton. It’s $125 for a plate of caviar and $320 for an 18-hole round of golf. The Cabot website says the links are a “scenic two-hour drive” from the Sydney airport. For chartered flights, the Port Hastings airport is only 80 km away. Helicopters are also available. The course confidently claims: “getting to Cabot is easy.”

Imagine a tax so bad that it’s uniting Alberta and Quebec. With all of the heated rhetoric over pipelines and equalization, that sort of unity seems like an impossibility. But it turns out the tax is all too real and it’s Ottawa’s carbon tax.
The Trudeau government has been busy uniting the provinces against its economically damaging policies. Six premiers wrote to the prime minister urging him to change or scrap legislation that bans tankers on the West Coast and makes approvals for future pipelines virtually impossible. And following the Alberta’s government’s announcement to challenge Ottawa’s carbon tax in the courts, the Quebec government is now taking on the tax by intervening in Saskatchewan’s Supreme Court challenge.

Is the cart before the horse? Regional Council agreed on June 20th to use the Municipal Price Index (MPI) to guide on-going automatic budget increases and directed their staff to prepare a bylaw to replace an old policy that had used the lower Consumer Price Index (CPI) escalator ahead of approving budget committee recommendations.
The Budget Committee approved base budget increases as follows; 2.7% for Regional Departments; 3.0% for agencies, boards and commissions (Police, NRH and NPCA); and 2.1% for waste management. This was based on an MPI that includes a 3.3% compensation increase and adds up to 2.85% overall tax increase.

We all want Kawhi Leonard to keep playing basketball for the Raptors. We want him to stay so much badly that even Canadian politicians are getting into the polite pleading.
“I see lots of businesses offering Kawhi Leonard free food, an apartment and even a houseplant if he stays with @Raptors. So I feel that I should do my part. Hey Kawhi, if you stay we’ll give you free health care!” tweeted Health Minister Ginette Petitpas-Taylor.

Imagine pouring billions of dollars into a business and not being able to tell if you got anything back in return.
That’s the real-life story of Canadian taxpayers’ relationship with Bombardier, the hapless Montreal-based aerospace company, which last week announced it was selling off its money-losing regional jet business to Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for $550 million.

A couple of weeks ago I participated in a great race in Niagara-on-the-Lake known as the Niagara Ultra. I highly recommend it for any of the runners out there. It’s well organized, has a great route down the Niagara Parkway and back and you can select from a number of distances including 10km, half and full marathon and even a 50km distance.

This year had an added special touch. Upon crossing the finish line runners were handed a water bottle and their finisher’s medal by members of our Canadian Armed Forces. There were at least six of them, maybe a couple more. They were young, wore the uniform with pride and very gracious and humble.

Once again Ontario Premier Doug Ford left supporters and critics alike very surprised by his unprecedented cabinet shuffle – unprecedented in both timing and scope. Governments often tweak a cabinet from time to time, but rarely do you see such massive changes so early in a mandate. And even rarer is a change in Finance Minister.
Affable, well-liked and considered competent, Vic Fedeli has been moved to the Economic Development portfolio; admittedly an important post for a government focused on being “open for business” but a significant demotion from the second most important position in government.
What gives? The good news is that the Premier is admitting his government has problems that need to be fixed. Three public events where you get roundly booed and half a dozen public opinion polls showing your support heading downwards can do that to you.

In early 2018, Prime Minister Trudeau appointed former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins to chair an advisory council on the implementation of a national pharmacare program.

This week, the council issued its final report recommending a top-to-bottom overhaul of prescription drug coverage that would effectively wipe out the existing workplace and private drug plans that cover more than two-thirds of Canadians, and replace them with a one-size-fits-all government plan for everyone, at a cost of $15 billion per year.

Several months ago The Niagara Independent started publishing articles from time-to-time about a piece of legislation that was getting little attention in Ontario but a lot of attention in Western Canada. Some readers thanked us for shedding light on the issue while others wondered why we cared so much about an “Alberta issue”.
Well, that Alberta issue has now become a Canadian issue which means it’s an Ontario issue. And people in this province should pay attention.

Niagara Region Council is set to hold a Budget Review Committee of the Whole meeting on June 20 to discuss 2020 budget guidelines for staff to follow. This is the most important budget meeting of the year for Council. Staff are asked to prepare detailed budgets for each department based on the guidance provided to them by council based on the percentage increase or decrease council wishes to see. This meeting decides between zero based budgeting or budgets based on a percentage change from last year’s budget.
The discussion will be different this year because the provincial funding changes for 2019 will now likely be imposed in 2020.

In a move guaranteed to pump up the volume of public sector union caterwauling – if that is even possible at this point – this week the Ford government decreed that core public sector wages would be capped for the next three years with a maximum increase of one per cent. During last year’s election campaign, the Conservatives spoke in generalities about the need to constrain the growing cost of government as an essential part of any strategy to get the province’s financial affairs back into balance. What they meant by that just got real this week.

For several days last week, barbs were traded over the Trudeau government appointing a Unifor representative to a panel that will decide which news organizations will receive $600 million in government funding over the next five years. Unifor’s membership includes 12,000 journalists working at media outlets across the country.

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer argued that Unifor is a “highly partisan group with highly aggressive and partisan goals,” which has “made it clear their objective is to help the Liberals win the next election.” He said that Unifor’s appointment to the panel was part of Trudeau’s plan to “stack the deck” in the Liberals’ favour for the election. Liberal heritage minister Pablo Rodriguez deflected the criticism, accusing Scheer of “playing a dangerous game” by implying that journalists can be bought with government handouts.

We Canadians are a fortunate people. Throughout our history we have been the beneficiaries of a consistently strong economy, based in large part upon the sheer good luck of having abundant natural resources that are in demand in the rest of the world. We are also geographically blessed, being located in a part of the world not often subject to natural disasters and next door to the most robust free enterprise economy in the world which, despite many Canadians’ closet resentment of anything American, has been a boon to our country in many ways. Looking at the chaos happening in much of Europe currently as a result of the migrant crisis, ongoing violence in the Middle East and other global disruption, we should also be thankful that we are insulated from much of that turmoil by having large bodies of water separating us from those catastrophes. The hard work and ingenuity of Canadians has surely played a role in our national success as well, but we also have to recognize the important of sheer dumb luck.

“There’s no place for the state in the newsrooms of the nation.”

To borrow a phrase from none other than the current Prime Minister’s father, Pierre Trudeau, which itself was borrowed from a 1967 Globe and Mail editorial – there’s no place for the state in the newsrooms of the nation.

I say this, not only as someone who is diametrically opposed to the Liberals politically but also, as someone who spent more than 20 years working in news media.

Ask most teachers in the kindergarten to grade 12 system what they think of outcome-based metrics or system-wide testing and you will be greeted with a less than enthusiastic, even hostile response. Their unions have fought the provincial government for years over anything that would provide sound data on the quality of teaching, the progress of students as a group or the performance of a school.
But as any manager worth his or her salt knows, whether in the public or private sector, what gets measured gets done, to use the old canard. Most employees outside schools are familiar with the annual exercise of goal setting for themselves and for their organizations.

I would like to update our community on work happening to protect and maintain services at West Lincoln Memorial Hospital (WLMH) until we can rebuild it.
Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) leadership and WLMH site physicians are working around the clock, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, to determine how best to address challenges in meeting the appropriate standards of care in the surgical and obstetrical areas of our facility, with the safe storage of supplies being a particular challenge.

Since the province announced it would be reviewing (and perhaps amalgamating) Ontario’s eight regional governments back in January, many have wondered aloud what such a restructuring may look like locally.

Although several options have been tossed about, one particular model for reform seems to be getting more airtime than most.

They say misery loves company and for the Trudeau Liberals that apparently includes miserable tax policy.
It hasn’t even been a month since Ottawa imposed its hated carbon tax on much of the country and lo and behold, it already has another new tax on the table.
Last year, Environment Canada commissioned accounting firm Deloitte to undertake a study of Canada’s $35 billion plastics industry. The resulting report, released earlier this month, noted that only 9 per cent of plastics are recycled.

Some cockroaches hiss as a defence mechanism. It’s startling, but any bird that realizes the hissing is harmless can have an easy lunch.
Right now, The Beer Store is busy hissing about beer sales expanding into corner stores.
Recent reports cite “beer industry insiders” as saying that expanded sales would be a breach of a 2015 contract between the provincial government and The Beer Store that guaranteed what is essentially a monopoly on sales. These insiders claim the taxpayer liability for breaching this contract could be in the “hundreds of millions” or even up to $1 billion.

While British Columbians mutter profanities as they watch gas prices soaring as high as $1.79 a litre, carbon-tax advocates who should be popping champagne are instead quietly avoiding eye contact.
Anyone who wonders if gas prices matter to ordinary people should spend an afternoon watching a busy border crossing. British Columbians are flocking to Washington State to fill up, where, even after the exchange rate, they’re saving about 50 cents per litre.
For a vehicle with a 70-litre fuel tank, that works out to saving $35 per fill up. Multiply that by two fill ups a weeks for the average commuter family in Langley (not a lot of people can afford to live downtown with outrageously high housing costs) and suddenly you’re looking at either spending in Canada or saving in the States $70 extra per week — or $3,600 per year.

For those who thought Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s first budget would be a “blood-on-the-floor-slash-and-burn” exercise, there was disappointment.
For those who thought the still-new Ontario government would exercise strict fiscal discipline and eliminate the budgetary deficit in four years, they too were let down.
Thus, Finance Minister Vic Fedeli’s promise of a “Goldilocks” approach, balancing the budget not too quickly nor too slowly, was indeed kept. Either direction is a gamble for the government – too fast risks significant damage to services, but too slow means the budget might not be balanced before the next economic downturn occurs.

“A new hospital is on the way,”! Premier Doug Ford announced at West Lincoln Memorial in November. His commitment was reinforced again last week in the government’s first budget, appropriately entitled Protecting What Matters Most. It’s a very welcome commitment, given the long history of neglect and underfunding the hospital has faced from past governments.
We are thankful to be planning the rebuild and talking with our provincial government partners about getting shovels in the ground as soon as possible. The fact is we cannot wait any longer. The single most important thing we can do to keep the hospital open and thriving for years to come is rebuild it – and soon. Every day it gets harder to manage the risk of trying to provide modern health care in a crumbling 75-year-old building.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is cautiously optimistic about the provincial budget recently tabled by Ontario Minister of Finance Vic Fedeli. The budget includes a plan to achieve a balanced budget by 2023, which is one year after the next provincial election. The current deficit is $11.7 billion, down from $15 billion when the government took office.
“Today makes it clear that balancing the budget is a core goal of this government,” said CTF Ontario Director, Christine Van Geyn. “We are concerned that the commitment will not be fulfilled within this government’s first term, but the government is moving in the right direction without imposing any new or higher taxes. While more restraint should have been shown in the first year, overall, the plan looks good for taxpayers.”

Ontario Place looks like the set of some futurist film about an apocalyptic wasteland. The pods sit empty, the small children’s village has been shut down for 17 years, and the winter light offerings are more meagre than an average suburban street at Christmas. Tumbleweeds might as well be rolling down the unoccupied paths on the west island.
The problem is that governments make bad landlords. For proof, consider the Auditor General’s report that found the government spent $19 million in 2016-17 to maintain over 800 empty buildings. Ontario Place is just one of many neglected government properties. It received an over $2 million operating grant from Ontario taxpayers in 2016, the most recent numbers available. And operating expenses increased by more than $1 million between 2016 and 2015.

The most critical date in the life of any government is the day they unveil their first budget. This is where reality strikes — what did we really mean by this campaign promise or that? What takes priority? How can we afford it all?
For voters, it’s the first real chance to assess a new government. Seeing where the government puts taxpayers’ money shows what the government’s real priorities are. Its choices offer important insights into how the government makes those decisions and how transparent it is about it.
For example, is it clear what is being spent on which program or are details buried deep in the budget papers and appendices?

The famous marshmallow experiment at Stanford University studied the lives of children who were offered a choice between one marshmallow immediately, or two marshmallows if they could wait for 15 minutes. The children who could wait tended to do better in life, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment and even body mass index.
The lesson of delayed gratification is one that the new Ford government should keep in mind going into its first budget on April 11. The previous Liberal government’s failure to learn to put the long term ahead of the short term resulted in the province’s $13.5 billion deficit and $324 billion provincial debt.

In speaking with a number of wine industry leaders and combing through numerous studies, financial analyses and reports one thing is clear; Ontario’s craft wine industry is at a crossroads and the Ford government needs to make sure they choose the right road when making changes to legislation regarding alcohol sales in Ontario.
Simply putting booze in big box stores isn’t going to help. In fact it will do more harm than good when it comes to craft wineries. While many Ontarian’s, particularly in Niagara, fancy themselves sophisticated wine connoisseurs the fact of the matter is more often than not they will reach for $9.99 import bottle instead of the $14.99 VQA offering.

Last weekend I attended the Manning Centre Conference, an annual event chaired by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning. This get-together is often referred to as “Woodstock for Conservatives”, but without the great music, unfortunately. Needless to say, much of the discussion in the corridors pertained to the unfolding soap opera with the Liberals and the SNC Lavalin scandal. The formal sessions focused on everything from immigration issues, the impact of social media, pipeline politics, environmental policy and digitizing government, among others, and there were keynote addresses by former George W. Bush senior advisor Karl Rove, Andrew Scheer, Doug Ford and General Rick Hillier. All in all an interesting weekend of conservative-oriented discussion and networking.

Most people don’t expect their governments to be perfect. But they do expect governments to make some effort to honour commitments, be straight with taxpayers and make the best of circumstances as they come.
In the 2015 election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised he’d run “modest” deficits for a few years, then balance the budget in 2019.