Babel-on-the-Bay intended to run a very sincere support today of Justin Trudeau’s eulogy for the late Cuban Leader Fidel Castro. It was ready for posting. And then we learned that the damn fool had announced approval of twinning the American-owned Kinder-Morgan TransMountain pipeline. All the kind words are off the
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: Lord Black lauds buddy Trump.
You get the feeling that there could be another boring book by Lord ‘Cross-the-Pond’ in this. Yes, Conrad Black came out of seclusion on his Toronto estate the other day to promote another book that will look good on your coffee table. He told the news media that his raison
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: That Tory Leprechaun Leitch.
You would swear that woman was a graduate of Trump University rather than a medical specialist. We are talking about Kellie Leitch M.P. here. She is the Conservative member for the next door electoral district of Simcoe-Grey. It is a rural riding of farms and small towns, including Utopia. (We
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A failure to communicate.
After a lifetime of communicating with government, we blew it. We really wanted to help the Trudeau government solve its problems with the leader’s promise that 2015 would be the last federal election using first-past-the-post voting. And dammit all we tried. When we knew that the MP for Peterborough would
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Will Toronto charge for parking on the DVP?
Did you hear that Toronto Council are now considering making the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway toll roads? This is hardly the first time the suggestion has been made and it is probably not the last. It shows you how desperate the city is for revenue other than
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Waiting for your train.
Ontario’s MetroLinx people came to Barrie the other day to talk about planning for the future of the GO Train commuter line to Toronto. The good news is that it is the intent to electrify and twin the line by 2025. The bad news is that it will take that
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It was not Trump’s win; It was Clinton’s loss.
We were all guilty. Our prejudice said Trump cannot win. We just did not look hard at Hillary. She thought she was winning. She acted like she was winning. She was running a losing campaign and we all got sucked in because we could not believe in Trump. Who could
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Does Wynne cry for liberalism?
Did you hear that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne got all teary at the Liberal Party gathering this past weekend? Not being there, are we to assume these were crocodile tears or tears of frustration? Or were they just a notation on her script saying ‘tears here’? You never know what
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Let’s have a tag day for journalists.
Professor Penny Collenette wrote in the Toronto Star the other day that “all news is not fit to print.” Frankly Penny, your problem is that you need to define ‘news.’ Do we really know how to separate bias, comment, opinion, speculation and reporting from the comic pages? And do we
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Take no solace in bad governance.
Did you hear that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is staying in her job? We were in Ottawa last week during the bye-election in Ottawa-Vanier. It was no surprise that the Liberal candidate won. These are happy days in Ottawa. The malaise at Queen’s Park appears distant and of little consequence.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ten reasons to support first-past-the-post voting.
This is an updated version of the paper of the same name from the Democracy Papers of 2007. With the special committee of the house of commons due to report soon on their findings, it is something the committee needs to consider. First-past-the-post (FPTP) voting is an awkward name for
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Party is Over?
The good news is that we are doing away with organized political parties. The bad news is that we are doing away with organized political parties. And one or both of these statements has the seeds of a problem in it. The bad news is that non-political people with very
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It’s the leadership, stupid!
Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star is usually a quite astute observer of Queen’s Park and the political machinations there. What we did not know about him was that he considers himself something of an economist. If he is not an economist, why would he suggest that the Wynne
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Breaking in the new POTUS.
POTUS is what the U.S. Secret Service, who are charged with protecting the President, call the President of the United States. The service has a long tradition of doing that job. It is a job that can involve four years of excruciating boredom and three seconds of horror. It is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The devil is in the details, Ms. Wynne.
The Ontario government’s water torture continues. There has been a reluctance to write about the so-called ‘reforms’ in political fundraising until we knew more of the details. We are still waiting. The Wynne Liberals like to dribble out their giving in to the inevitable over multiple news cycles. And the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The glass house of Ontario’s Conservatives.
Somebody in the Ontario Conservative party is going to have to take Ottawa-Vanier PC candidate André Morin aside and read the riot act to him. The guy thinks he is lawman Wyatt Earp. He actually describes himself as an anti-corruption and ethics expert. And that is the last thing PC
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The rise of the exurbanites.
Trump reached for it in America and the exurbanites coalesced behind him. With these new rural voters who have fled the cities and in sync with the traditional American Gothic farmers, he dominated state after state. These people resent and fear our conglomerate cities, the liberal attitudes they promote and
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Watching Justin suck and blow again.
One of our favourite progressive bloggers is on the West Coast and he likes to refer to Prime Minister Trudeau as ‘le Dauphin.’ He actually wrote that the Dauphin’s announcement of a $1.5 billion fund to upgrade responses to tanker and oil spills on the Pacific coast was a good
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Our electoral discontent?
There was an item among progressive blogs the other day that said Canada needed to change how it votes so that what happened in the U.S. did not happen here. The writer seemed confused by the way Americans elect their President. The reality Tuesday night was that Hillary Clinton won
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: People are not lab rats.
There is no question but that we have a high regard for former Senator Hugh Segal. But for God’s sake Hugh, you have got to stop treating people as laboratory rats. They do not and we do not need another damn test of how little people can live on. And
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