The Musings of Bobby C.

As a proud Mississaugan, I take issue with the escalating costs of the judicial inquiry taking place at City Hall. As a constituent, I feel I was lied to about the costs going in.  As a voter, I feel I was lied to about the true costs of the inquiry during the campaign by the 7 councillors who banded together to call the inquiry in the first place.

Here is my letter to the editor about the costs of the inquiry in response to a recent article in the Mississauga News demonstrating the ballooning costs of the inquiry.  It’s a letter I doubt will ever get published by the News (submitted June 3, 2011).

RE: Judicial inquiry cost $6.2M (May 31, 2011)

I want my $25 back

I seem to recall during the 2010 municipal campaign many candidates and councilors including Carlson, McFadden and former councillor Parrish dismissing their opponent’s accusations that the cost of the inquiry would balloon to $7 million or higher.  In fact, councillor Parrish asked city staff in November to confirm the cost would not rise above $5 million.  Now, the cost is $6.2 million – or $25 per Mississaugan – and it is likely the final price tag will well exceed $7 million. If Mississaugans were given the truth up front and if they were told the cost of the inquiry would escalate well beyond the $2.5 million initially approved by Council, I doubt they would have supported it.  Carlson wants to, in his words, “end the good old days.”  Spending $7 million on a political fishing expedition with no regard for tax payers’ money seems like the good old days are alive and well.  Now, who should I see about getting my $25 back?

I couldn’t help but notice that the new Speaker of the House Andrew Scheer looks a lot like the character Paul or “Shitbreak” from the American Pie series.  Weird.

From a PR optics perspective, this looks great. But when you boil it down, all Tony Clement and his government are doing is shovelling smoke. There is actually very little they can do to control the price of gas, save from artificially keeping it low, but of course that would mean losing tax revenue from the GST and excise taxes applied to every litre.  They will sabre rattle, call executives before committee and look like they’re doing something, but in reality their ability to do anything is very little.

Perhaps it is time we pulled our heads out of the sand and had an honest discussion about gas prices.  The world supply of oil is decreasing and our ability to find new oil fields is becoming more difficult. At the same time, an increasing number of people globally are driving more and using more oil for manufacturing and other modes of transportation.  It’s really quite simple:

More demand + less supply = higher prices

Yes, we can debate why we don’t have enough refining capacity in Canada and why we do not consume domestically more of the oil that is produced in Alberta.  If we had larger refining capacity, perhaps the price would be a few cents lower.  But, if we eat into the export capacity of our oil sands, that also hurts our national economic bottom line.  Countries in the Middle East and South America have much cheaper gasoline, but that is because they domestically canabilize their oil exports.  In the long run (which is actually much shorter than it used to be), the oil will run out.  That is a fact.  It is a finite resource.

So, we can go on quibbling over the price of gasoline as it continues to rise – and it will only continue to rise – or we can have an honest discussion about how we can wean our society off of our oil dependency. Governments cannot legislate this change, although they can assist by investing in new technologies and markets that are not carbon based.  We have to decide as a society, before it is too late, that we must conserve and cut back and find alternative fuel sources.

Unreserved consumption is not sustainable.  Our North American lifestyle is based on oil and as the black stuff becomes more expensive, our way of life must necessarily change.  We can choose to pull an Ostrich, or we can take proactive measures.  It’s really quite simple.

I encourage you to read Jeff Rubin’s book Why Your World is About to Get A Whole Lot Smaller. It is eye-opening to say the least.  In 280 pages, Rubin lays out a compelling argument about why we must change our ways, and why we must change now.  Tying our way of life to oil will have serious consequences.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Tony Clement and the Conservatives can take the gas companies through the inquisition, fulminating about price gouging and company profits, but in the end they will just be having an argument on the deck of the Titanic.  The cost of oil will continue to rise and our ability to pay for it will decrease.  In the end, our society will have to change.  The question is do we want to be on the forefront of this change or play catch up.  If we choose the latter, the costs will be far greater than $1.41/litre.

Jeffrey Simpson wrote a book about a decade ago called The Friendly Dictatorship in which he argued that, among other things, Canadian Prime Ministers with majority governments are the most powerful leaders in a democratic country.  The ability to whip their members on votes, the ability to control the upper house through appointments and the ability to appoint the judiciary makes the Canadian PM very powerful, in many ways more powerful than the American president. Simpson wrote in reference to Chretien (in fact Chretien is on the front of the book) and used the term “friendly.”

Today, I think it’s safe to say we have an “unfriendly” dictatorship.  The Harper Conservatives have proven time and again over the past 5 years that if you are not with them, you are against them.  Not only will Harper have a majority, but the number of first time MPs elected from his party is high.  They will be easily whipped and they owe much of their success to him.  There will be little internal dissent within the Conservative ranks.

A majority government usually has some semblance of  a strong opposition party.  Jack, although a strong parliamentarian and leader, is only one man.  Aside from the 12-14 competent MPs in his caucus, his team looks far less orange than it does green.  Newly elected NDP MPs who spent most of the campaign out of their riding are hardly qualified to be MPs.  I will bet that some of the new NDP MPs, especially the students elected from McGill, have never been to Parliament.  It will take days just to find the bathrooms.  And when it comes to hiring staff, there isn’t a wealth of cultivated talent in the NDP ranks because they never have more than 30 seats.  The new NDP MPs will have their marching orders dictated by Jack’s Office.  Imagine a 21 year old trying to hire staff.

Jack is the NDP.  Without Jack, the surge would not have happened.  That’s a lot of pressure to put on one guy.  My point is that there will no longer be an effective official opposition to hold Harper to account.  He will have full, unfettered control over all levers of power for 4 years.  He will be even more powerful than Obama.

Sure, Canadians will be upset, but they will have little recourse.  It’s going to be one hell of a hangover for the next few years.