Author: Peter Lowry

Maybe we are becoming jaded by politics but what is happening to the Ontario New Democrats might be momentous. We are watching a bastion disintegrate. It is like a news clip of the imploding of old hotels on the Strip in Las Vegas. Ontario New Democratic Leader Andrea Horwath ran

Looking more closely at what is happening to the Ontario New Democrats you realize that the signs have been there all along. This is a party without the will to exist. It has lost impetus, direction, raison d’etre and is adrift without effective leadership. Maybe, as political apparatchiks, we see

What always divided Canada’s social democrats, be they liberal or socialist, was never dogma or heroes. It was the unions. The liberals saw Canada’s unions as regressive. They were reactionary, self-centred, living in the past and, in too many cases, tied to international unions that worked against this country’s nascent

And here we thought the New Democrats were going to wing it through this election without a platform. They fooled us again! Here we are with three weeks more to go and Leader Andrea Horwath has announced a platform—such as it is. The New Democrat document seems to be mainly

All along, we were assuming that Ontario Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak was saving his ace in the hole for late in his campaign. He would have had it as his clincher. It was allowing the sale of beer and wine in convenience stores. It was assumed that he intended to

One of the problems politicians face is that voters often take you literally. If you are stupid enough to tell voters that you are going to create a million jobs by firing another 100,000 people who are working, you leave them struggling with the mathematics. The key to this is

Here we are less than half way into the Ontario provincial election and the pollsters are getting more attention than the politicians. Get a life folks. This is far from over. Where does this election stand when as many as half the voters are not even aware of when the

The City of Toronto is in the most trouble. It really needs a break. The city and even the province are suffering from hyper-politicossis. It is a rare disease that can happen when too much political activity drives the voters to distraction. Even worse, they take out their frustrations on

Members of the provincial Liberal Party in Babel are watching their e-mail in-boxes. We are waiting for news of our Liberal candidate for the June 12 election. You would think that with all the support Kathleen Wynne got from this riding in her run for the Liberal leadership, it would

There must be a rule for Conservative Party leaders in Ontario that, during an election campaign, they have to commit some form of political suicide. Ontario Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak came to Barrie last Friday and did the deed. Timmy not only proved he is a failure in economics but

On that two-deck-high campaign bus, Ms. Horwath’s picture has been reproduced bigger than life. The Ontario New Democrat leader looks good. In fact it is too good. It seems to be trying to lay a patina on the New Democrat campaign that does not exist. It appears that Andrea Horwath

There is a wonderful old expression, still in use today: “Hoisted by your own petard.” It simply means that the schemes you used to harm others can be used against you. And when you consider how wrong it can be to allow third parties to advertise in Ontario elections, the

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne must be annoyed. Can you believe the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has pre-empted Kathleen’s fight with the Prime Minister? That leaves Kathleen in the dust as the crowds rush to view the battle of the titans. Few will ever remember what Chief Justice Beverly