The other day the Toronto Star ran an editorial supporting Toronto’s Woodbine Entertainment becoming a full-fledged casino. It also supported a strange request from Toronto Public Health to restrict the casino to operating only 18 hours per day. And this is supposed to promote responsible gaming? This closing proposal is not only small minded but […]
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: Watching the Prime Minister suck and blow.
One of these days, our dear prime minister is going to have to make some decisions. Watching him doing selfies while trying for an even higher approval rating is getting boring. Some time, soon, he will have to take a stand. There are too many moves on hold. It is best exemplified by the pipelines […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Patrick Brown: Manipulator.
Why was Conservative Leader Patrick Brown getting all the attention in the final week before yesterday’s provincial by-election? It was while his party’s candidate in the Scarborough—Rouge River was convincing ethnic Chinese in the high newcomer ratio electoral district that their concerns about their children’s sex education would be addressed. We did tell you that […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Powering pipeline protestors.
Are you sitting and scratching your head over the pipeline protests in Montreal? The National Energy Board (NEB) hearings seemed to be planned to fail. Three years ago the Toronto hearings on Enbridge’s Line 9 shut down because of protests. And if you noticed that, why would you want the same outcome for TransCanada’s Energy […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: In the refuge of electoral reform.
There appears to be no relief for the confused in the hearings of the special commons committee on electoral reform. It has been heavy going to just watch the recorded sessions and read transcripts of those sessions not televised. Even in the odd bit of wisdom among the chaff of the academic opinions so far, […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Strike while the lane is HOT.
The Wynne government in Ontario leaves no stone unturned in its pursuit of taxpayers’ dollars. In a novel break from their usual attitude that they can always just do as they want, they actually asked our opinion the other day. It seems they took our picture recently while driving on the Queen Elizabeth Way past […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Doing Dr. Goebbels proud.
Sometimes when you see what the American Republican Party candidate for president is doing, you have to appreciate the origins. It also has to do with that old adage that those who ignore history are bound to repeat it. What we saw the other day was a classic use of the big lie. This was […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Mr. Harper, we hardly knew you.
As we read and listen to the various obligatory farewells to Canada’s former prime minister, there seems to be lots of hypocrisy going around. The Hair and his hairpiece have left the building in Ottawa and that is that. He was not liked while he was there and he left with no wisdom to share […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: FPTP: What if it is not broken?
As the first witness before the special commons committee on electoral reform Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef gave the committee eight principles for their task. These principles might be conflicting in some ways but they are definitely in conflict with the path the committee is taking. The first principle promoted by the minister is to […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Leaping nation building at a single bound.
In analyzing where Canada’s New Democrats are headed, we took another look at the LEAP Manifesto. Frankly LEAP stumbles on the first hurdle. It reads like the Regina Manifesto without the socialist ranting. It fails us. And where does this document get off treating Canada’s first peoples as some sort of pathetic wards of the […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Justin Trudeau has his Angels.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau certainly has his angels. We are talking the kind of angels that Charlie had in the old television series about Charlie’s Angels. Those were flesh and blood actors who supposedly made a living solving problems. While the fictional problems often involved murder and mayhem, Justin Trudeau’s angels are just supposed to […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Mr. Brown is no chess champ and no leader.
There is a big difference between a manipulator and a planner. Mr. Brown, the current leader of the Ontario Conservative Party, is a manipulator. He uses the system to his advantage. Maybe he does not play chess as that is a challenge that requires you to think ahead of your moves. Watching Patrick Brown in […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Heat is on to change municipal voting.
It seems the Ontario government is turning loose lots of bewildered voters in the 2018 municipal elections. In legislation brought forward earlier this year, the government is allowing municipal election officials across the province to use ranked ballots to select local councillors and mayoralty candidates. While supposedly to ensure some legitimacy to those elected, it […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: What’s up with Wynne?
It is certainly easy to forget about Kathleen Wynne’s Ontario Liberals during such a beautiful summer. They hardly do anything worthwhile the rest of the year but then they take the summer off and do less. The only member of the Liberal cabinet who has been putting in some hours has been Health Minister Erik […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A federal failure of FPTP.
It has been noted occasionally that first-past-the-post voting is not perfect. You get failures in the system such as has happened to the voters in the federal electoral district of Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte. Our elected member of parliament is an embarrassment. We like to think of him as a failure in strategic voting. Our MP is proof […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Destroying the American dream.
There is serious concern about what the current presidential campaign is doing to the U,S.A.’s reputation and position around the world. What is serious is the impact on the image of the once most powerful country in the world. It is holding the country to ridicule. It is destroying the American dream for all. After […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Elizabeth May, please step forward.
It has always been our opinion that Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is far smarter than anyone else in the Green Party. And she has certainly carried all those folks on her back for far too long. It is time now for Elizabeth to take on a real challenge. Surely it is obvious to her […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: When all else fails, bluster.
It is so hard to stay away from the farcical race for the White House in the United States of America. It is a writer’s dream. You are being fed a delight of one-liners. The candidate reorganized his campaign again yesterday with the claim that “I have to be me.” This guy is running a […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The bother of bloody bitumen.
It sure makes you wonder when two cities in Saskatchewan have to import clean water because of what the media consider a small spill of something they call ‘Heavy Oil’ but is really bitumen and a diluent. Citizens of North Battleford and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan have been finding out the difference between ‘Heavy Oil’ and […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Dark side of proportional representation.
It has been tiring over the years listening to people such as University of Toronto Professor Peter Russell selling proportional representation as the only voting system for Canada. The only good news about his ideas are that they are based on logical argument and not some of the outrageous claims made by organizations such as […]
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