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Progressive Bloggers // Blogues progressistes

Author: Peter Lowry

January 23, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: The hollow triumph of Jean Chrétien.

They lionized former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien the other evening. Many Conservatives were there to honour him. Not all liberals attended. Some could not afford the $400 per plate tab. Some even disagreed with him being a great prime minister. It did not always seem that he was doing the

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January 22, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: What does the Hair know about anti-Semitism?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was born too late. There was little left of the anti-Semitism of the 1930’s and 40s in Toronto when he was born in 1959. He lacked the opportunity to learn first hand what it means. He had no understanding of the images he was using when

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January 21, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: A not quite raging argument on royalty?

Always looking for material pro or con the royals, there was a web site discovered the other day that looked like a goldmine of liberal thought on Canada’s relationship with the monarchy. The immediate disappointment was that the last posting was over a year ago. Regrettably the search was in

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January 20, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Québéc’s PQ feeds on bigotry.

The Québéc government’s Charter of Values proposal is earning the province ridicule. Premier Pauline Marois and her Parti Québécois government think it will make francophones in the province hunker down and blame everything on the rest of Canada. But it is their own supporters who are making out the péquistes

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January 19, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: The Hair takes a full Airbus to Israel.

We hear that Prime Minister Harper filled his A310 Airbus for his historic trip to Israel. This marks a new trend in tourism for the Prime Minister. Until the trip to Nelson Mandela’s funeral, he was content to take his hairdresser and a few lackeys to help carry his luggage.

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January 18, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Ontario needs a dose of reality.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has committed. She has called for pointless by-elections in the electoral districts of Thornhill and Niagara Falls in February. It is a waste of time, money and political capital. She could have done the right thing as a politician by calling a provincial election. But, frankly,

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January 17, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Who can afford what tar sands offer?

It was a headline in the Toronto Star Business Section: “Now or never for oilsands, executives say.”  The answer that came immediately to mind was “How about never.” The Toronto Star story was quoting Brian Ferguson, chief executive of Cenovus Energy  and Russ Girling, chief executive of TransCanada, the pipeline

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January 16, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Better a random act of kindness.

In a rushed lead written in Twitter yesterday, there was some unnecessary meanness. It was not intended. It just appeared in the Twitter space and was carelessly left there because there were other things needing attention. What started as humour became something else. It is a very human fault. The

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January 15, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Causing Conservative Controversy.

Is a Conservative Party uprising in the offing? No. Is there dissension in the ranks? Yes. The importance of this for their opponents is that we have to pay attention and help keep the scabs from forming over these tears in the fabric of Canadian Conservatism. Nobody wants to smooth

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January 14, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: The Tory’s Hudak is now an illusionist.

Ontario Opposition Leader Timmy Hudak has a new career in mind. He wants to be a carnival illusionist. In an op-ed opinion page article yesterday in the Toronto Star, he was proposing a Million Jobs Act. This act, as he describes it, would be a masterful illusion in the category

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January 13, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: In this star-struck age?

It was back in the 1970s in an advertising agency boardroom in New York, the president of the Canadian Multiple Sclerosis Society was being given a preview of that year’s proposed advertising campaign for the U.S. Multiple Sclerosis Society. The ads, headlined by Frank Sinatra and similar luminaries, were slick

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January 12, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Choose early, repent longer.

It really is foolish. There was a commentary the other day by Bob Hepburn of the Toronto Star that Toronto liberals are in a quandary about this year’s mayoralty race in their city. Bob is a bit early in suggesting that liberals need to make any decision. The problem for

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January 11, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: If you believe in true, can you sell bitumen?

A news story yesterday told us that an international public relations firm has won the first stage of what will be a $22 million contract to promote the output of Canada’s tar sands. Natural Resources Canada has announced that the Ottawa office of Fleishman-Hilliard has been awarded an initial contract

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January 10, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Fixing The Best Laid Plans.

Reading Terry Fallis’ book, The Best Laid Plans in 2008 was a chore. Not writing the requested review was diplomacy. It seems to be an ideal book for people who like their humour about three metres wide and a centimetre deep. We can hardly advise it for people who seriously

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January 9, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Looking for Mr. Mayor for Toronto.

In the 1977 Richard Brooks movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar, the character played by Diane Keaton might as well have been looking for a mayoralty candidate as for someone to share her bed. Either way, it seems to be a self-destructive quest. In looking for a mayor for the city

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January 8, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Why are Lac-Mégantic murderers at large?

Is Canada some third world country where people can break the law and nobody seems to notice? Can a business knowingly break the law and kill Canadian citizens? When a train rolled free into Lac-Mégantic last year and killed some 47 residents of that picturesque Québéc town, it seems the

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January 7, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: What’s a true Tory to do?

A surprising number of Conservatives read this blog. And sometimes it upsets them. Talking to one of these upset people this morning, he admitted that he had run out of alternatives for the coming Ontario election. The recent blog on Premier Wynne’s worries had convinced him that he had nowhere

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January 6, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Mulcair previews his 2015 campaign.

When New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair was on Tom Clark’s West Block show on Global this Sunday, the wife remarked that the Opposition leader seemed to be testing campaign lines for 2015. He was. Tom Clark even thanked Mulcair for the preview. The only problem for Mulcair is that the

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January 5, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Stephen Harper’s legacy is his ego.

If an historian a hundred years from now writes a book about Canada’s 22nd Prime Minister it is more likely to be on the man’s ego than any accomplishment while in office. That is too bad. Stephen Harper had it in him to do much while in office but it

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January 4, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Why Horwath has Wynne’s Whigs worried.

It has not been a well kept secret. The Queen’s Park Whigs are worried. They cannot seem to understand why Ontario voters like New Democrat Andrea Horwath more than the Whig’s Wynne. And if they do not figure it out soon, the Whigs days are numbered. Ontario has now had

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