Somebody needs to rap knuckles around Toronto. People who should know better keep coming up with really dumb ideas and nobody tells them to stop being stupid. Once again the gremlins are trying to screw up the way people vote. It is so bad that even Mayor John Tory wants
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: “The enemy of my enemy is …”
There is something that needs to be understood by people afraid of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL): It is neither a state nor a country. It is an Internet and public relations savvy band of brigands and thieves feasting off the current civil war in Syria
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A requiem for our Democracy?
The other day, one of the more interesting progressive bloggers was discussing what he perceived as the three eras of Canada’s democracy. To discuss the three eras that interested him, he really needed to start with Canada at the end of the First World War. The reality is that Canada
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Is there nothing left for the finance minister?
Finance Minister Charles Sousa must have the easiest job in Ontario. He has Premier Kathleen Wynne making all the big decisions for him and TD Bank’s Ed Clark telling him how to handle the details. Which all goes to prove that in politics three wrongs do not make anything right.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Does the Hair want us to get a gun?
Canadians are getting mixed messages from their Prime Minister. His message last week to a gathering of rural municipal leaders in Saskatchewan was that there was a certain level of safety in having a gun in the home “when you are a ways from immediate police assistance.” Other than it
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Brown and Pèladeau, a political pair.
You really have to wonder at people in Quebec thinking of Pierre-Karl Pèladeau as being the person to lead the Parti Quèbècois. That is like the prospect of Barrie MP Patrick Brown becoming leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. It is a very bad choice but for entirely different
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Lessons for Canada in Israel’s elector impotence.
It looks like Benjamin Netanyahu has once again used the Israeli form of proportional representation to cling to power in the Israeli Knesset. Israel uses proportional representation that only allows the voter to select a political party. The representatives are then appointed according to each party’s closed lists. What it
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Why Photoshop Brother Brown?
It is hardly going to work. Artfully enhancing his photographs is not going to solve the problem. Patrick Brown looks like he looks. We have always considered his appearance to be a mixture of somewhere between adenoidal and nerdy. Adenoids can be fixed but we have to assume that being
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The NDP’s Mulcair discovers Toronto.
If there had not been so much ice in the harbour last week, they could have got some great shots of the New Democrats’ Tommy Mulcair arriving in Toronto. He could have been dressed in buckskins, cradling a musket and standing in the prow of a Voyageur canoe. He could
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Bowing to Brother Brown’s bluff.
The only conclusion that seems to make sense is that Barrie’s own MP Patrick Brown is running a bluff. He is working far too hard at winning over long-time Ontario Progressive Conservative members to be ahead in the provincial leadership race as much as he claims. He might have acquired
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The word is “convenience” stupid!
Ontario beer drinkers are foiled again. Now the Ontario government wants to sell beer and wine in large grocery stores. It should have been easy to predict an outcome such as that. After all, everyone knows how much the Liberal’s friends, the Weston family, owners of Loblaw Companies, need the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Common-sense thinking at Toronto City Hall.
What is this we hear about an upgrade of Woodbine Entertainment Group to a full-fledged casino? The operation deserves it. It was a bad move when Woodbine got caught in the battle between former Mayor Ford and the downtown cyclists. It was almost as though those downtown councillors had never
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: If this is not corruption, what is?
It seems that the foreign-owned big breweries took a pass on purchasing tables at the Liberal Party’s major fund-raiser this year. Of course, they tell us that it is not corrupt nor payment for services rendered for those breweries to always step readily up to the bar for tickets to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Principled politics are hardly passé.
Bad legislation is bad legislation and to approve bad legislation even temporarily is a denial of principles. The Harper government’s Bill C-51 supposedly to end terrorism is bad legislation beyond any possibility of repair or amendment. It is time for Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau to get up and speak for
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Redefining the Dauphin.
It was about time. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau prides himself on his ability as a stump speaker. With no notes and no prompts, he can keep a Liberal audience enthralled. And if all he had to talk to was Liberal Party members, no change was needed. But with the oncoming
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Rethinking Guaranteed Annual Income.
Maybe we all need to get involved in this exercise. In a world full of band-aids, we need to rethink our way to health. We are talking here about a guaranteed income for every man woman and child in this country. It is not an idle dream or a panacea.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Which wicket for social licenses?
There seem to be many ways to use the term ‘Social License.’ Natural resource extraction and pipeline industries use the term to describe the theoretical license the community provides to allow the necessary disruption of the environment in the process of extracting, processing and transporting our natural resources. The only
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: An apology to Casino Rama.
This blog rarely apologizes. And nobody has prompted this apology other than our feeling of guilt the other day. We just feel that fair is fair. It came like a rising tide while sitting at a blackjack table at the Niagara Fallsview Casino. We had taken a few days off
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Meet Cardinal Kenney and Brother Brown.
Ottawa is so bereft of excitement and speculation now that former Foreign Minister John Baird has flounced out of cabinet and gone home to Nepean. It leaves Minister of National Defence and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney as the last Bobbsey Twin standing. It leaves the obvious succession line for the Conservative
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Hang-em high Hair!
The Hair is playing the revenge card. The Prime Minister is appealing to that basic human desire to get even. He is recognizing that primal instinct to lock up evil doers and throw away the key. He knows that bringing back hanging might just please some of his base vote
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