Have you ever wondered at how Member’s of Parliament can keep on speaking while being constantly heckled? It seems it is all part of the theatre that parliament provides and is a big part of the daily question period. There will always be exceptions but the chaos heckling creates can
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: Fleeing to Florida.
We are in November and many Canadians are contemplating their trip to Florida for the winter. Why, we do not know. Are you not aware that Floridians hate Canadians? They voted for Trump you know. And why Canadians think they have some God-given right to go waste our Canadian loonies
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The anti-women legacy of Patrick Brown.
Patrick Brown was first elected to the ultra-Conservative Barrie, Ontario city council at age 22. As a Barrie councillor, he fit right in. It took him another four years to win election in the local federal electoral district and be part of the back-bench yes-men for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Does Donald Trump even like America?
If President Donald Trump takes any pride in the United States of America, he has a funny way of showing it. Did he run for the presidency as a joke or to get even? Maybe he was tired of being considered a joke? In his ignorance, Trump is giving the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ten reasons for first-past-the-post voting.
The following has been retrieved from the archives of Babel-on-the-Bay. It is part of the Democracy Papers and has been the most read item in our web site. Thousands of readers have searched for and presumably read the content. It was originally written for the Ontario referendum on mixed-member proportional
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trump’s Triumph.
It could become a bigger parlor game than Monopoly. It seems appropriate to introduce it on Halloween. Our latest board game enables players to have fun ridiculing U.S. President Donald Trump. We are calling the new game Trump’s Triumph. It is both hilarious and horrifying—and how can you beat that?
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Excessives beat Progressives in Alberta.
Friends in Alberta have been asking why this commentary had nothing to say about the race to run that province’s United Conservative Party? It was not because we did not have an opinion. It was sleazy, it was corrupt, it was predictable and we wanted no part of it. I
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Caesar’s wife must be beyond suspicion.
Recently we wrote that federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau is in the role of Caesar’s wife. The simple point of that is what Julius Caesar said when he divorced his wife Pompeia: “My wife ought not even be under suspicion.” That statement has meant for centuries that those who seek
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Curating the consensus of the crowd.
It is most unlikely that Maude Barlow and the membership of the Council of Canadians see Canada’s future as being a pastoral society. It just appears by the collective’s recent policy consensus that this is what they want. What it might be telling us is that Maude’s days as curator
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: There’s more to life than apples.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s main man Finance Minister Bill Morneau is still playing the role of Johnny Appleseed. He seems to have the sole role of a single program like the character in American folk lore who introduced apple horticulture to a large swath of North America. There is nothing
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Bad bodings for Brown.
A large piece of the Ontario provincial Conservative’s election campaign went bye-bye the other day. Brown and his buddies must have been sitting around the party headquarters war room contemplating what might have been. The directed verdict of a Sudbury, Ontario judge cut the campaign off at the knees. The
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Joly jilts journalism.
Every government for the past 50 years in Canada has wrung its collective hands over the state of Canadian journalism. We have had studies, expert reports, editorials, analyses, speeches and diatribes over the news media and its state of disrepair. What we have failed to do is come to any
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A potpourri of politics.
This writer has sometimes been accused of wandering off topic. Let us make it clear from the beginning that this series of comments is a mixed bag. It just seems to be a topic de jour. We can start with the interesting observation that Justin Trudeau has certainly done a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The wounded of the wild, wild west.
Got an e-mail from a fellow blogger on Canada’s Left Coast. This guy is a superb writer and progressive but he is feeling less and less friendly these days to Justin Trudeau and the eastern establishment that tries to run this country. He confirms my thoughts that Quebec separatists are
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Bad business at Bombardier.
You sometimes wonder what kind of business people are running Bombardier. They got sucker punched by Boeing in the United States and they ran crying into the arms of Airbus. This was a desperation move and was too soon. Airbus smelled the fear and they ended up owning the Canadian
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The tiny, tidy minds of reformers.
Reading about the recent report on political reform for our cities from the University of Manitoba, reminded me of my old friend David Crombie. It was almost 50 years ago that he was still a nascent conservative and teaching at Ryerson and I was handling communications for the Ontario Liberals.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Morneau mourns mendacity.
Having worked with many politicians over the years, you always have to be aware that the higher you climb the political ladder the more prone to attack you become. It is not whether Finance Minister Bill Morneau deserved to be attacked, his position made it likely. Bear baiting never has
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Horse Race Journalism and 2019?
It is unlikely that Jaime Watt was talking about Babel-on-the-Bay in a recent op-ed piece. The Conservative political pundit referenced “horse race journalism” as being premature and meaningless in discussing the next federal election. Well, it is too early and he is right about that. But we like the horse
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Does blogging have purpose?
After working on this blog for the past nine years, I am starting to wonder what the hell is the objective. As much as I call it a commentary, it is what it is: a vanity blog. It is just a hobby. It is an opportunity to vent and to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Will Singh say something serious?
With a new party leader established and MP Charlie Angus taking over the New Democratic Party house leadership, and Thomas Mulcair retiring, the new leader, Jagmeet Singh, is free to roam the country. He can meet Canadians everywhere and press the flesh at local labour halls. The only question is
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