Sure, it is almost five months until the federal election but everyone is out stumping anyway. You would swear that the election was in June and everyone is getting desperate. But there is no excuse possible for the blather we are getting from the conservatives. Who told conservative leader Andrew
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: Choosing Chuckles for Canadians?
Of all the ridiculous strategies for the coming federal election! Why should the liberals attack the conservatives when their real opposition in the October election is themselves? To waste time attacking conservative leader and Saskatchewan MP Andrew Scheer is assuming that he concerns Canadians. He never has been the problem.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Poison Ivy is also Green.
It has been very difficult to decipher exactly what Green party leader Elizabeth May has in mind. Our Ottawa parliamentarians were in an emergency debate on the climate emergency our scientists had reported. Being head of the Green party, Ms. May came out with a program to save the world—or,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: War Rooms from the political past.
It started back in the late 1970s and 80s when Senator Keith Davey, some of us liberal apparatchiks and the marketing communications experts, who volunteered their time, started to look on other parties as enemy combatants. I was even quoting Carl von Clausewitz’ On War when talking about campaigning to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Donald loves Conrad.
This is priceless. After serving just three and a half years of his sentence in the United States for fraud and obstruction of justice, Lord Black of Cross-the Pond (or whatever) has been fulsomely pardoned by the U.S. president. There you have it. All is forgiven. Conrad Black is no
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Danger signs of elitism in the Senate.
Prime minister Justin Trudeau is facing enough problems without his elitism coming back to bite his ass. We saw in the Senate last week where one of his elite appointees forgot who appointed her to the sinecure of the Senate. Supposedly independent senator Paula Simons from Alberta torpedoed the liberal
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Fake news on the opioid front?
We were reading a poster telling us about a community meeting to discuss a proposed safe injection site in the neighbourhood. It invited anyone who wanted more information or had concerns to come to the meeting. We had barely finished reading when a voice behind us said, “It’s all a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Scratch the Mark Norman affair.
If you are looking for something with which to attack the Trudeau government, do not bother with the Mark Norman affair. Norman was the vice-admiral of the Canadian Navy who almost went to trial over something to do with supply ship procurement. If Chuckles Scheer and his federal conservatives think
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A crying towel for the Beer Store.
The Ontario government must be serious about Doug Ford’s promise to open up beer and wine sales in Ontario. We have both the Beer Store management (at Brewers Warehousing) and the Beer Store union paying for TV spots complaining about possible lost jobs. I wonder why? This is an opportunity
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Ford folk play high-speed games.
What is a safe speed on a highway? That is a question that the Ontario government is trying to figure out. And they are wasting their time trying to answer it and they are wasting the public’s time. Most drivers have an inflated idea of their driving skills and tend
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Mayor Tory asks the rhetorical.
Asking a question rather than making an accusation is another piece of equipment in the politician’s toolbox. Mayor John Tory of Toronto should be an expert at this form of bafflegab. He would have learned it in his years as a disciple of Ontario premier Bill Davis. Bill never publicly
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Bankrupt Ontario.
You had no idea that Ontario was bankrupt, did you? We find that conservatives seem to have a very different definition of bankrupt than most bankers and economists. The other day Ontario’s deputy premier and health minister, Christine Elliott was on Global TV’s Focus Ontario, being interviewed by news anchor,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Requiem for the New Democratic Party.
After a lingering struggle, with the family in attendance, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) of Tommy Douglas and the New Democratic Party of the Broadbent and Lewis families has passed into oblivion. Funeral services will be a come as you are event at summer barbeques in each of the provinces.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Don’t get too excited Ms. May.
If you want an area of Canada where the Green party runs rampant, go to Vancouver Island. In fact, the entire area around the Strait of Georgia seems overrun with Greens, Druids and other pagan religions. Just standing under one of those magnificent, lordly trees on the Island fills you
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Doug Ford meet Mike Harris.
Philosopher George Santayana told us that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” That idea has obviously sailed right over the head of Ontario premier Doug Ford. Despite his father being a back bench MPP for the Harris government, the younger Ford is making the same
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Scheer Madness and Foreign Policy.
They wrote a speech the other day and ‘Chuckles’ Scheer, leader of Canada’s conservatives, read it. At the end of the day, Chuckles’ party had some foreign policy to show off and little was changed. The essentials of it were that Donald Trump and his friends were the good guys
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It’s not a game, Mr. Ford.
Ontario premier Doug Ford has yet to realize that he is not in a life-size game. There are repercussions and blowbacks and consequences for his whims at governing. Like the irresponsible Mike Harris, the premier of two decades ago, Ford has been busily downloading costs on the municipalities in hopes
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Who runs this country?
Like it or lump it, Canada is a confederation. And that means the parts of the country that created it think they are just as important as the whole. As many wise politicos have noted over the years, it makes the country a bitch to govern. The federal government got
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Is Kenney a Constitutional Crisis?
It seems that between Jason Kenney and his predecessor as premier of Alberta, Kenney has the shriller voice. When he goes to Ottawa to bitch and whine about how his province is not given everything it wants, he knows the buttons to push and the people to harangue. There was
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Pipe dreams and nightmares.
Nobody seems eager to address the questions of pipelines properly. Is it not possible that some pipelines can do good and some can commit unspeakable evil? Are we to be treated as idiot children incapable of sorting out the good from the bad? We should start with natural gas pipelines.
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