Public opinion polls can never replace voting. And the provincial election is not going to happen until New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath says it will. So, you might as well cool it. There will be lots more promises made and polls taken before the voters make the decision. Ontario voters
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: Is public speaking a dying art?
Listening to a political speech the other day was a disappointing experience. The speech was by someone who already had our vote. You just wished he cared enough about the audience and his speech to do it properly. And a proper speech is not that difficult. It takes preparation and
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Rogers discovers customers.
Some Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) hearings remind us of acts from Shakespeare’s MacBeth. You can count on the weird sisters—commonly referred to as witches—to be there. You know them as Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus. And the CRTC is their cauldron of witches’ brew. It used to be
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Mac’s Convenience should sue The Beer Store.
Why not cut to the chase? The Beer Store advertising that is currently running on television is slandering every convenience store in Ontario. It is wrong. It is unfair. It should be stopped. If it takes a lawsuit: so what? What do you think lawyers are for? Sure we have
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Rt. Hon. Herb Gray, P.C., C.C., Q.C. 1931 – 2014
Herb Gray was smart, funny, wise, impish, a mentor and a friend. And it was a friendship that lasted over 50 years. We met over copy he had sent to the then party publication Liberal Action in the early 1960s. He had just been elected to parliament in Windsor West
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The return of the F-35 Lightning.
We thought the aircraft deal was dead. After months free of hype for the purchase of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning (II), we thought the civil servants, the military and the Harper government had finally put finis on buying that aircraft. Maybe that was only until they are sending some
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: But what if Tom Walkom is wrong?
Toronto Star writer Thomas Walkom has been an icon for progressives in Canada for many years. If there is a left-of-centre stance possible on an issue, Tom will most often take it. Readers expect it of him. Those readers must have felt let down when they read his take on
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: They always blame First-Past-the-Post.
They call our Canadian voting system First-Past-the-Post. Some people use more scatological terms for it. Others just castigate the system when it does not work the way they want. It frustrates them. Their problem is that they cannot come up with a better system of voting. Many of the people
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “If they just want to play politics.”
In an ill-conceived television commercial introduced Friday, Ontario’s Premier Wynne accuses her political detractors of playing politics. The commercial makes it look as though she is striding after a moving camera, trying to keep up with the teleprompter. It is an overall badly written and badly produced effort. It is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Wrong again, Justin Trudeau.
Even in Julius Caesar’s day, the Rubicon was a very shallow river. Caesar’s legion waded across. Justin Trudeau dives in and ends up looking silly. When writing about the metaphorical Rubicon that young Trudeau faced in Toronto’s Trinity-Spadina riding, we were talking about his relationship with the Liberal Party. Instead
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Conservatives confuse justice and retribution.
You can see the desperation of the Conservative government in the bills it is trying to pass while still in office. You can see it in the names of their bills. The name of the bill has little to do with the content. It is intended to confuse—to give one
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Justin Trudeau is at his Rubicon.
When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River with a single legion, he and his soldiers became outlaws under Roman law of the time. It was the Roman mob that saved him from arrest on his arrival in Rome. He was still their hero. In that sense Justin Trudeau is still
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: You should take up gambling Sousa.
Occasionally this commentator gives advice to Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa. It is because we actually like him. He is a nice guy. He is kind of like a slow relative whom you always want to help along. He tries your patience but you keep making the effort. It is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The boredom of bitumen.
The wife does not want to read another commentary on tar sands bitumen. She thinks that some people who worry about bitumen should get a life. You have to admit that it does give one pause when writing yet another commentary on bitumen, its producers, its pipeline devotees and its
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Goddamn the CPR; God save the CBC.
One of our favourite Canadian journalists, Allan Fotheringham, wrote years ago about a Saskatchewan farmer who had everything go wrong who ends up blaming all his problems on the CPR. That is understandable. The Canadian Pacific Railroad has been a major factor in the economy of our west since Confederation.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: You get what you pay for Charles.
The Ontario Liberals have called in another blue ribbon panel to tell them how to make more money from provincial assets such as the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), Ontario Power Generation and other crown corporations. The panel will be chaired by Ed Clark, president of TD Bank and
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Shoring up the declining empire.
If you are destined to become a saviour of the British royalty, you start young. It was eight-month old Prince George who flew in to wow the colonials in New Zealand the other day. Somehow his mother, the Duchess of Cambridge, carried him down the steps of the aircraft without
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Reading the entrails of the Quebec election.
When you kill the beast, rip out its guts and use them to foretell the future, all you really need to do next is have a long, cleansing shower. And that shower is what all the pundits need after Monday’s provincial election in Quebec. The election was a watershed. It
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: More musing on TO’s mayoralty marathon.
Obviously the Olivia Chow campaign team must know something we do not. It is hard to believe that John Tory’s mayoralty campaign is that far ahead? It is the only excuse we can think of for the unrestrained and vicious anti-Tory campaign from Chow at this time. Until now we
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Thomas Mulcair has been found lacking.
In a recent commentary about women and politics, we left out Catherine Pinhas, New Democratic Leader Thomas Mulcair’s wife for the past 47 years. The reason she was not mentioned is that she is not political. She takes him away from the political world and is not your typical mistress
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