It was great wrap to the Pride month the other day when Toronto’s Pride Parade made its way down Yonge Street. It was also good to see Canada’s Prime Minister taking part. The only glitch in the day’s proceedings is when a group invited to be specifically honoured by the parade got carried away with […]
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: It’s okay to pollute if you need the money.
Have you ever watched two avowed tree-huggers fight over who is the more devout conservationist? When they do it in your local paper you at least do not get whiplash trying to follow the ball. It all started last week when the Town Greenie served up an easy lob in his weekly op-ed piece that […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Separatist threats are a Canadian custom.
It has always seemed that the more serious threats of separation in Canada come from the West. There have been times when you barely had to scratch the surface in Calgary to find another cowboy or cowgirl who would rather partner up with the folks to the south. There are even people out in Victoria […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The new and few principles of Mr. Brown.
Ontario’s provincial Conservative Party leader should have a clearly lettered sign on his chest saying ‘Help send this boy to the premier’s office.’ That way people would have a clue who he is and know that he will do or say anything to get there. If he thought discarding his long pants and painting his […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Electoral Reform: A “Road” to nowhere.
If you are old enough, you might remember the Dorothy Lamour, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope series of Road movies that cashed in on Lamour’s looks, Crosby’s crooning and Hope’s humour. The all-party parliamentary road show on electoral reform is supposed to be invited by all MP’s to 338 town halls in every constituency in […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Did we cause a kinder Canada?
It was last year on Canada Day that Babel-on-the-Bay asked if we could consider a kinder Canada. We never said it was based on getting rid of Mr. Harper and his awful Conservatives but we might as well have. And we did it. That was a heady time late last year when Justin Trudeau and […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Amigos, meet the elephant.
The so-called Three Amigos met in Ottawa this week. It was nothing more than a public relations exercise. Nothing substantive could be resolved. The American, Canadian and Mexican leaders simply tried to ignore the problems their countries face. They certainly did not want to talk about the elephant in the room; Donald Trump. With Barack […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Are referenda democratic?
It was a surprise twist in an otherwise boring CBC National News panel the other night. It was an argument over whether a referendum was really democratic or redundant in a representative democracy. While it was not the well respected At Issue politically expert panel, the argument held enough interest to mull over as we […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: PSST, there’s cider at a few grocers.
The Province of Ontario slipped that in when we were not looking. They are allowing the few grocery stores selling some beer to also sell apple cider. And we are talking the hard stuff here; not your baby’s apple juice. The announcement from Premier Kathleen Wynne’s office was all socially responsible, quiet and designed to […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Scotland the brave will carry on.
You have to admit that there might just be more smarts in Scotland and Northern Ireland than in the rest of the United Kingdom. With a 62 per cent vote to remain with the European Union, Scotland is unlikely to go the route of Brexit. And if the only way to remain is to separate […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: What’s Jason Kenney doing? And who cares?
Yes, the Conservative Party of Canada is having a convention in a year or so to pick a new leader. After all, the party could hardly allow temporary leader Rona Ambrose time to get comfortable at Stornoway. So far, it is a very thin field of applicants. Though what would you expect when the leader […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Is there life after Brexit?
While Babel-0n-the-Bay was urged to produce a morning line on the Brexit vote, the decision was made that it was far too close to forecast. And it was. Along with the disappointment of the morning after, the in-box contained a 1900-word diatribe on our ‘pompous’ Brexit commentary. Never has 400 or so words of comment […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: On curiously confused commentary.
Not being a regular reader of the right-wing National Post, we are not as familiar with commentator John Ivison. He appears to be a believer in conspiracy theories. In his commentary of June 22, he wrote of Linking pipelines to planes and CO2. According to Mr. Ivison, it all appears to be a dastardly Liberal […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Donald Trump supporters discovered.
It has been written numerous times that the measure of a person’s intelligence is based on how much they agree with you. And having a political science professor agree with this political apparatchik is doubly gratifying. You have to admit it is a rare occurrence. Too often we get into the typical argument with political […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Pennies for a pension plan.
Did we all forget how conservative Liberal Finance Minister Bill Morneau can be? As MP from one of the most conservative electoral districts in Toronto, he is considered a Member from Bay Street, not Main Street. He proved it for all to see when he bargained improvements in the Canada Pension Plan down to the […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: BREXIT is not a breakfast cereal.
It is supposedly friendlier to call it “Brexit” than it is to refer to it as telling the European Union to “Get stuffed.” Yet it is amazing how the polyglot peoples living on those beautiful isles have been squabbling on and off since the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Most recently our Scots cousins had […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Vote Reform Primer: FPTP.
The following is an updated primer on First-Past-the-Post voting from the Democracy Papers of 2007. This is the fourth of the vote reform series. First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) voting is an electoral system that we have known for hundreds of years. While some people tell us that FPTP is flawed it is hard to pin these people […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Donald Trump’s White House?
You might be tired of hearing about Donald Trump. That is understandable. He is definitely a Johnny-one-note. There are still miles to go before the November election. The one way to reach people who see him as a solution instead of the problem is to ask them to imagine Trump in the White House. It […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: If Canadians had their druthers on the Senate…
The delays are over on the government’s Bill C-14 on assisted dying. The Senate showed its true colours: cowardice. After one effort to help fix the flawed bill from the Commons, the senators surrendered. It is disappointing to report that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s solution to the senate seems to be working. When he was […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Who is reforming policing?
It seems everybody is in on the act these days. The Province of Ontario is reviewing the Police Services Act. The City of Toronto keeps appointing committees to solve its budget problems with policing. And the cops are just digging in their heels against change. But the question that has to be asked is, “Who […]
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