Amanda Simard — the sole Francphone in Doug Ford’s caucus — has left Ford Nation. It should come as no surprise. During the election campaign, Marin Regg Cohn writes, Ford told Julie-Anne Lamoureau, Radio-Canada’s Queens Park correspondent: “It’d be important to be able to communicate with part of our country
Continue readingAuthor: Owen Gray
Northern Reflections: White Degeneracy
What passes for White Supremacy these days, Keith Kahn Harris writes, is actually something quite different. It’s really white degeneracy. That degeneracy is painfully obvious in the contrast between Barack Obama and Donald Trump: Consider the contrast between Barack Obama and Trump. Obama is not a perfect human being, nor
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: He Misses The Big Picture
GM is pulling out of Oshawa. And Doug Ford has rolled over. Martin Regg Cohn writes: No premier can force GM to cry uncle. But for reasons understood only by Ford, he has given up on the Oshawa decision, deferring to GM’s claim that it is final and irrevocable. GM
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: From Freedom To Fascism
Chris Hedges writes that neoliberalism has always been an absurd idea: Neoliberalism as economic theory was always an absurdity. It had as much validity as past ruling ideologies such as the divine right of kings and fascism’s belief in the Übermensch. None of its vaunted promises were even remotely possible.
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: This Is War
Doug Ford’s government has declared war on the environment. It has systematically dismantled the previous government’s environmental policies. Martin Regg Cohn writes: Welcome to Ontario’s upside down world of global warming — a province where Progressive Conservatives who once promoted environmentalism are now wishing it away. From one week to
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Mutiny?
A couple of weeks ago, the Ford government increased the number of seats necessary for official party status in the Ontario legislature to 12 from 10. Today, the Toronto Star reports the reason for that move: The Progressive Conservatives fear some disgruntled MPPs are set to cross the floor to join
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: What’s The World To Do?
Timothy Egan has been travelling California’s blackened landscape and he’s appalled: The story it tells is grim, a portent of nature altered and convulsive. It’s not just that this audacious experiment — a huge parkland on the doorstep of a metro area of 13 million people — is now on
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Ford Is A Gift –To Trudeau
Many of us in Ontario feel nothing but contempt — visceral contempt — for Doug Ford. But Tom Walkom writes that, for Justin Trudeau, Ford is a gift that will keep on giving: The Liberals’ real not-so-secret weapon is Doug Ford. In the morality play that is Canadian politics, the
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: An Amoral Chump
Donald Trump is a con man. But the truth is that he himself is easily conned. Tom Friedman writes in The New York Times: I really wrestle with this question: What is the worst thing about President Trump’s approach to foreign policy? Is it that he is utterly amoral or that
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Mais, Non!
Yesterday, Quebec premier Francois Legault came to Toronto to try to convince Doug Ford to reverse his decisions to cut the position of French Language Commissioner and to kill a new French language university. Ford refused Legault’s request, triumphantly marching backward. Andre Pratt writes: Not only will eliminating the position
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: We’ve Been Here Before
One definition of insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting a different result. By that measure, the current Government of Ontario is insane. Tom Walkom writes: Ontario Premier Doug Ford has completed the first part of the Mike Harris trifecta: He has declared a fiscal crisis. Now the province
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Reading the Tea Leaves
Stanley Greenberg is a pollster who has spent his career working for Democrats. In today’s New York Times, he looks at the election results and he says that, despite everything else, there is hope: At first, the results looked like something of a stalemate. The Republican Party retained and even
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: It’s Personal
During the Quebec referendum in 1980, the fight between Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Rene Levesque was personal. In the next federal election, the fight between Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford will be just as personal. Marieke Walsh reports that: Doug Ford is again putting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Conservatism Rips Itself Apart
There is a cautionary tale unfolding for governments which call themselves Conservative. Maxime Bernier is staging a frontal assault on the Conservative Party of Canada. And in Britain, Theresa May’s government is unravelling over Brexit. May was a Remainer. Yet she has been tasked with negotiating Britain’s divorce from the
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Selling Well
Doug Ford’s Conservatives are ripping away at each other. And Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives are engaged in the same self-flagellation. Maxime Bernier is attempting to blow up the federal Conservative Party. Tom Walkom writes: Bernier says his People’s Party has signed up more than 30,000 members. He promises to field candidates
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: When Government is Run By A Thug
Doug Ford’s government has only been in office for five months. But already it is engulfed in scandal. Robert Benzie and Rob Ferguson report in the Toronto Star that: Chaos is swirling around Premier Doug Ford with his right-hand man forcing a departure at Ontario Power Generation, costing taxpayers up to
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Quebec Goes Its Own Way
If Andrew Scheer was planning on making inroads in Quebec, Chantal Hebert writes, his opposition to a carbon tax has doomed his efforts: In Quebec, the anti-carbon pricing platform Scheer has been spending the fall shoring up is dead on arrival both in the National Assembly and on the ground.
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Trumpian Contempt
The President of the United States likes to trumpet his support for the military. But this past weekend, Max Boot writes, Trump showed his contempt for the military: On Saturday afternoon, the president was scheduled to attend a ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, where 2,289 U.S. soldiers are buried
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: On This Remembrance Day
Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the end of The Great War. It was supposed to be the war to end all wars. And it’s true that, since 1945, there have been no world wars. But there have been plenty of proxy wars — in Korea, in Vietnam and
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Desperate
Tom Walkom writes that Donald Trump is desperate to leave his mark: He wants to be remembered as more than just a crude blowhard with funny hair. All presidents want to leave a legacy. But Trump’s need for acceptance and praise is so achingly obvious as to be almost pitiable.
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