Finance Minister Jim Flaherty bought new shoes the other day. It is part of the traditional run-up to delivering a federal budget. Somehow, he found one of the last companies in Canada still making shoes. He bought an inexpensive pair of steel-capped safety shoes. He is going to need them
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: Ontario’s Beer Store fights back.
There was a robocall from The Beer Store the other day. The cheap bastards would not spend a nickel to call in person. They sent a recording to do a man’s job. (That is not sexist, it was a man’s voice.) They want to talk with Ontario beer drinkers and
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: No support here for Royal Victoria Hospital.
They must be Babel’s most successful thieves. They are the parking meters and parking lot gate machines at our local hospital. The amount hospital visitors have to pay to park is disgusting. It is nothing more than a tax on our health and love and caring. It is bad medicine.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Tories seek to subvert Elections Canada.
Having crossed swords with Elections Canada in the past, it is easy to understand the Conservative disdain for the bureaucrats of Elections Canada. What we should question is the desire of the Harper government to add another layer of bureaucracy to what is already glacier-like policing of elections. Instead of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Saving the NDP—and the Senate?
It took some digesting. Long-time New Democrat Robin Sears tried his hand in the Toronto Star the other day at damning Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau while hoping to rescue NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair. As a long-time Liberal Party apparatchik, we can only admire Sears’ pluck in taking on the task.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Are we just self-appointed hall monitors?
It takes years of writing a blog to realize what you are really doing. You do not want to be a nag, but you are. You are not just a writer desperate for an editor—but oh how you need one! You sat down at the computer this morning with the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Revving up the Keystone pipeline controversy.
It is called doublespeak. Bureaucrats use it to leave themselves open to whatever their political bosses prefer to do. They have not said yes and they have not said no. The American State Department issued its Final Environmental Impact Statement on the last day of January and leaves everyone in
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trashing the tacky of tradition.
Speaking of mixed metaphors! Thinking of trashing Conrad Black over his recent bereavement brought to mind both the BBC’s Downton Abbey series and musical Fiddler on the Roof. It really takes both to put Conrad Black in perspective. Downton Abbey is a period piece despite the fact that it was
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Don’t send a cop to do a politician’s job.
Julian Fantino is in trouble again. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is so bereft of talent in his Conservative Party ranks in Ottawa that he felt he had to give former Toronto and Ontario top cop Fantino the Veterans’ Affairs portfolio. That choice could haunt Harper long after he is thrown
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Harper has his hair, Trudeau has balls.
Canadians now know the definitive difference between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. And it is not just that Trudeau takes action and Harper takes your money. Harper only talks about Senate reform; Trudeau does something about Senate reform. He has kicked the Liberal Senators out of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: In Ontario, if it is worth doing, do half.
Premier Kathleen Wynne and her government have a unique approach to solving Ontario problems. If and when enough of the right people have told them that something needs to be fixed, they form a committee of the right sort of people to study the situation and await the committee’s recommendations.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Welcome back, Mr. Harper and the Sweathogs.
In the late 1970s American TV sitcom, Welcome back, Kotter, the character played by comedian Gabe Kaplan returned to his old high school to teach a remedial class of misfits. Somehow, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Senate misfits seem to be replaying the series. They are not only almost as
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The might, the right and the fight.
Back in the 1800s when Oliver Mowat was Premier of Ontario, he had his best fights not with his provincial opponents but with the federal government. His skill as a politician and his knowledge of how to pick his fights kept him in the premier’s office for 24 years. It
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Measuring the generation factor.
Pollsters must pull their hair about it. They cannot get reliable readings on the under 30s. They are not sure they understand the mindset. These young people are not easy to survey. The pollsters know that this age group will be a major factor in the next federal election but
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: By-elections that matter to the news media.
It is all part of the game with the news media. It is their opportunity to interfere in events. When it comes to reporting on politics, the news media and their pals, the pollsters, are combatants, not spectators. And they relish the role. Consider their positions in the current provincial
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It is all in the flag you carry.
It was wonderful to hear that Hayley Wickenheiser will be carrying the Canadian flag at the Sochi Winter Games. The four-time medal winner in women’s hockey will be tall and proud with the pride of carrying our flag. But there seems to be a flag missing in the planning for
Continue readingBabel-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
Continue readingBabel-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
Continue readingBabel-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
Continue readingBabel-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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