Is war just a telephone call away? Is it that simple? Can the Canadian Prime Minister just call up the President of the United States and say, “It’s okay. You can go to war with Syria. Canada is behind you. In fact, since we are hiding behind you, you might
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: The boring battle over bitumen.
It is really not our favourite topic. Bitumen is boring. The conundrum we are facing is that the Harper Conservatives are so bereft of any solutions to our country’s economic malaise that they are putting more and more reliance on selling the output of the Athabasca Tar Sands. As long
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Joining the Fords to defend democracy.
Issues often make strange bedfellows. You would have thought that the entire left wing of Toronto Council would have voted with Mayor Ford on Monday. Instead, most of these people just reacted to the mayor’s position rather than taking a position of their own. Anyone who believes in democracy was
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Marois bares Quebec bigotry.
Bigotry in Quebec has deep roots. In the past week, Quebec Premier Pauline Marois has been testing those roots. Her planned ‘Charter of Quebec Values’ is nothing but a bigot’s demand to ‘speak white.’ It hardly matters if her phony charter wins the approval of the Quebec National Assembly or
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Whoring with the Ottawa press gallery.
You used to be able to take a story to the Press Gallery bar. It was right there on Wellington across from the Houses of Parliament. The drink prices were reasonable. You met on the media’s turf. The conversations were relaxed and casual. It was a convivial relationship back then.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It’s always April Fools’ at the Fraser Institute.
You have to wonder how anyone could come up with anything as ridiculous as the Fraser Institute. For these people it is always April Fools’ Day. For the past 35 years, the Fraser Institute has been the antithesis of public policy think tanks. It has built its questionable reputation on
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Remember Justin, pot is just small beer.
Ok, point made. Moving on, Canadians have far more important issues to consider than legalizing marijuana. Let us not keep gilding the cannabis. Sure the news media are always in a rut with their questions but there is certainly more exciting news. What about the way Prime Minister Harper is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: How to tell if the publisher is angry.
The best gauge newspaper people have to tell the publisher’s mood is by the placement of his signed editorials. If it is on the editorial page, he probably has just a mild case of heartburn. If it is on page two of the paper, this is serious dyspepsia. And if
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Hair today, gone tomorrow.
The Hair is doing Canada’s north. That just might be the only part of this country where the Hair can find a friendly audience. He took his hairdresser, his wife and his PMO flacks, boarded his jet and headed for Whitehorse, Yukon. Only in front of a friendly audience of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Heavy-handed Heather hypes Torstar.
Having usually enjoyed Heather Mallick’s writing in the Toronto Star, there was some consternation the other day when reading her piece extolling Torstar’s electronic output. While you never blame the writer for the headline, “Beyond the paywall lies a beautiful vista” should have been warning of the confusing pap to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The environmental waiting games.
The games are endless. Only the representatives of the people change. The current combatants are President Obama of the United States and Prime Minister Harper of Canada. Both have finite time left. Harper will have to face election in 2015 and Obama will be out of office in 2016. The
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Will Wynne win with Waitzer?
The confirmation process of Ontario’s provincial government was shown up for how artificial and shallow it is the other day. A lawyer named Ed Waitzer appeared before the Standing Committee on Government Agencies because he has been chosen to head the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). Yet Waitzer appeared
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Buffett’s Berkshire buys into bitumen.
When the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, buys, Wall Street listens. That is why the recent $500 million investment in Suncor Energy Inc. by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway investment company was good news for all the companies in the tar sands. It certainly tells us that business interests are not the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Settling the Senate problem is only a start.
Reading the rambling discourses of the pundits, you would think that the current outcry against the Senate is easy to solve by simply abolishing the place. If it was that simple, we would have been quit of the foolish waste of money in the last century. What all these pundits
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: What’s with the turnover at the PMO?
Reading Andrew MacDougall’s farewell to the turnstile at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) yesterday, you have to be puzzled. You wonder that, after the experience of serving Prime Minister Harper as his communications chief, MacDougall is not only leaving Ottawa but leaving the country. How bad can that job be?
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Helping health units that hate gambling.
“For some individuals, gambling is a devastating problem,” says the Ottawa health unit. From this you can deduce that the unit is somewhat negative about the siren lure of casinos. This is in response to a recent question about casinos from the city council. With this level of response to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ontario’s Sousa is searching for solutions.
It’s a daunting task and we can only hope that Finance Minister Charles Sousa is up to it. He is travelling Ontario searching for solutions to Ontario’s economic malaise. Needless to say, our unemployment is higher and our economy is shrinking and only the ignorant among us think the answer
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Toronto’s ‘good-ole boy’ mayor.
You sometimes wonder where Toronto voters parked their brains when they elected Rob Ford as mayor of Toronto. What was understandable throughout that mayoralty campaign was that they wanted to vote against what was happening. The voters were searching for somewhere to park their votes. In this weird Monopoly Game
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: In the dog days of summer.
It must be the dog days of summer. That is when all the politicos, politicians, pundits and prevaricators take time out to refresh and recharge for the political wars. Because Babel-on-the-Bay has views on municipal and provincial happenings as well as federal, we use the time to advantage. Instead of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Big Brother becomes capricious.
You have seen the full page advertisements in the newspapers. You have wondered just who the big telecoms—Bell, Rogers and Telus—are trying to reach. And you also wonder why they are spending so much money in the process. It seems to all boil down to their not wanting to allow
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