There must be a better way to spend a hot summer than arguing about how we vote for our federal government in Canada. Reading the transcripts or watching recorded hearings of the commons special committee on electoral reform, it is hard to tell if anyone appearing before the committee really knows how Canadians vote and […]
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: Bye Toronto Star, it’s been good to know you.
The writer has no inside knowledge about what is happening there but it was when reading the Toronto Star a few mornings ago that we got the feeling that there is little time left for it. It was not just the announcement of more firings and layoffs or the lack of weight to the complete […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Who owns this party anyway?
It has always seemed a Canute-like task of denying the tides to defend the Liberal Party. There just seem to be too many of the elements aligned against us. A party leader can work at destroying his or her party on whims and the rest of us are left with the pieces on which to […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Making sense on vote reform.
It was a delight the other day to sit and read a presentation to the special house of commons committee on electoral reform that made sense. The committee has been struggling along, wasting a perfectly fine summer, listening to mainly academics who have been touting a variety of proportional voting systems ad nausea. While reading […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The GOP’s ‘Charge of the Light Brigade.’
One of our favourite bloggers is a gentleman trained as both journalist and lawyer who writes under the pseudonym ‘The Mound of Sound.’ While claiming to be a disaffected liberal, he writes from a progressive perspective. The only problem with his frequent and voluminous polemics is that they are sometimes heavy wading. He recently wrote […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Death wish of the Wynne Liberals.
Some observers consider it just arrogance but the problems of Kathleen Wynne’s Ontario government could be based on a subconscious desire to end the sham. And they could end it if there was any plausible replacement government to them at hand. But maybe that is why it comes across as arrogance. Take this new Energy […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Remembering Mel Hurtig.
It might be the dog days of summer but we have some catching up to do. We were out of town recently and while you might think we write a new commentary every day for this web site, we sometimes have as much as a week ahead set to automatically roll out each day. Even […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: If it’s democracy, it must be a ghost.
It always seems strange to hear people talking about our democracy in Canada. You get the impression that our democracy is some sort of spectre. We talk about it but nobody has ever really seen it. And democracy is such a simple concept. It is based on recognizing the value of the human being. It […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Are we the happiest taxpayers?
According to the Ontario government your choices of booze, beer and wine are now at your finger tips. “We deliver” we are told. It all seems to be designed to sell more booze in a faux atmosphere of responsibility and restriction. What is annoying though is that it is all designed to add to the […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Brokering Political Power.
During one of the presentations to the special parliamentary committee on vote reform, there was an interesting remark on brokering power under different forms of voting. The speaker, an academic from Queen’s University, explained that in our first-past-the-post governments, the power brokering is usually done before the election, and, in a proportionally elected—which usually produces […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A ‘better way’ than what?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is changing how we select candidates for Canada’s supreme court. The Toronto Star gave the official announcement sufficient column space to explain the idea and then devoted much more space on the editorial page to extolling what might be the virtues of this ‘Better Way.” Frankly, the editorial would have been […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Jason Kenney’s double duty summer.
Do super heroes ever rest? Not super heroes such as Calgary’s Honourable Jason Kenney MP. He is doing double duty this summer with the challenges to save Ottawa for democracy and to save Alberta for right-wing politicos. The work of a super hero is obviously never done. In Ottawa this summer the fat and 48-year […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: You are just encouraging ‘What’s his name?’
Psychiatrists tell us that one of the motivations for jihadists is the notoriety. They seem to consider the death and destruction as a measure of their success. Maybe that is why the Republican candidate for the American presidency is feasting on his own controversy and building his campaign on outrageous lies. Every time he is […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Gratuitous advice on snapshots in time.
You know that you get what you pay for but this advice is free anyway. You should try not to get your knickers in a knot every time a poll is announced that says the Republican candidate might win the presidency in the U.S. As horrifying as the thought might be Canadians are resilient and […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Vote reform is not everyone’s cup of tea.
The Canadian government’s special parliamentary committee on electoral reform has now had a number of hearings. You can see some of them on computer at the cpac.ca website. While these hearings are engrossing for the Members of Parliament on the committee, the rest of the country can continue to enjoy the summer months. What is […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Betrayal by news media.
This is the “unkindest cut of all.” Luckily for William Shakespeare, he did not have to contend with the unkind vagaries of modern news media. Slipshod reporting and careless editing are feeding the problem but they are also helping the oil and gas industry to side-step the critics of shipping diluted bitumen through pipelines. The […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Mandatory voting is not in the cards.
It would be hard to think of anything sillier than for our Canadian politicians to make voting mandatory. They might just get more than they deserve. Anyone promoting the idea of making it mandatory probably has no idea of the why, when and how of voting by the general population. They might not realize that […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Road to November.
Last year Canadians were appalled at the beginning of August when they realized they were faced with a two and a half-month federal election campaign. Americans are faced with more than three months. They know they have a great deal to achieve in that limited time. The biggest challenge for the major candidates is pacing. […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Black Lives Matter organizers should get stuffed.
People who have worked with pop-up organizations over the years have learned to be wary. There are just too many that work the “poor-me” street and trade on Canadians’ instinctive succour of the underdog. While we have been trying to stay away from the subject of these people, it is clear that group calling itself […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Morning Line is Hillary by 2 -1.
It was during the Clinton White House years that many of us realized that the brains in the Clinton family are on the distaff side. And nothing pisses off ignorant men more than a smart woman. Which might help to explain why Hillary Clinton is the most despised Democratic candidate ever. But she is not […]
Continue reading