It won’t go away Doug. The Ontario Greenbelt will live on, long after you are gone. What Ontario’s premier does not recognize is that Ontario’s Greenbelt has its roots in conservative party planning. It got its start with the Niagara Escarpment plan when Bill Davis was premier. It got its
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay : Leave No Cliché Unused.
Does Pierre Poilievre, our little boy blue and leader of Canada’s conservatives, now have some conservative concerns to help him do his job? He met with conservatives in Quebec City this past weekend and they were supposed to tell him of their concerns and policy wants. They even thought they
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Tell It Like It Is Paul.
Ontario premier Doug Ford thinks he has chosen well. Telling the truth has never been a strong or notable habit of Ontario’s new housing minister. I told you the other day about his crying jag in the House of Commons, when he was a member of Steven Harper’s government. It
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Poilievre’s Posturing.
Where does conservative leader Pierre Poilievre get off referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a foreign dictator? That was what Poilievre inferred in his speech to the conservative party meeting in Quebec City Friday evening. It was important enough for him to be read from a teleprompter instead of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Good News, Bad News.
There was a note on Pierre Poilievre’s desk when he reported in after his summer holiday: Sire: We have good news and bad news. It seems that the generation Zee or Zed voters prefer that you be elected Canada’s prime minister. The bad news is that this is the most
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : The ‘Truthiness’ of All.
The word ‘Truthiness” has come into heavy play. “Truthiness” applies to the relative truth of what we learn from the Internet and other questionable sources for news. ‘Truthiness’ is truth, as defined by people without facts, logic or concern for verification. There is, for example, the truthiness of the climate
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Who’s Right?
It is not just who’s holier than thou in Alberta. It is who is further in commitment to the right-wing loonies. I was inclined to give up on my high regard for Alberta when Jason Kenney put on his fat-boy jeans and ten-gallon hat, bought a truck, drove west and
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Steve, We Hardly Knew Ye.
Sometimes a boy from Brockville gets overlooked but Steve Clark had an impressive electoral record before Ontario premier Doug Ford made him minister of municipal affairs and housing. Steve had even served three terms as mayor of Brockville before putting in an appearance at the Ontario legislature. He also served
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : The Importance of Being Liberal.
Oscar Wilde published The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895. It was a farce for its time. The importance of being a liberal is something of a farce for our time. What annoys me the most is that I have no proof of being a liberal today other than the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : On a Bicycle Built for Two.
Okay Toronto, how are you and your new mayor doing? Is she getting all those Torontonians out of their cars and onto bicycles? Has she had Dundas Street renamed? Is she keeping us seniors out of High Park on the weekends? High Park is a remarkable asset to Toronto. It
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Say ‘No’ to Singh.
Federal new democratic party leader Jagmeet Singh wants the liberal government to come up with another one-time benefit payment of $500 for low-income families. This is the same as the payment in 2022, that the liberals had issued to Canadians to ease the impact of inflation. It did not do
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Integrity be Damned.
Integrity is a catch word for accountability. The report of Ontario’s integrity commissioner does much more than impeach the honesty of the minister of municipal affairs and housing. It brings into question the decency and honesty of every single conservative party member in the Ontario legislature. These are the people
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Guilbeault’s Guilt.
If, by some miracle, the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline is completed this year, where will the tar sands bitumen come from to fill that greedy sucker? On one hand, federal environment minister Steven Guilbeault ignores the need to recover at least a portion of the $30 billion cost
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Confusing Conservatives.
It is hard to compare the conservatives in opposition in Ottawa and the conservatives in power at Queen’s Park for Ontario. The main difference must be the anger in opposition and the arrogance in power. In neither case does it speak well for the conservative party of Canada or its
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Singh’s Song.
New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh’s turbans might be bright and colorful but his beard is graying. It is also showing a little more trimming, in contravention of the dictates of the tenth Sikh Guru. Canadians might never choose the NDP for governance under an observant Sikh but they are
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Time To Go Justin Trudeau.
Your sunny days are done, Justin. And few voters want to watch you being defeated by the Ottawa cowboy, Pierre Poilievre. We hear that your effort to provide Alberta with a pipeline for its tar sands product over the Rockies has now become a $30 billion plus disaster for our
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Let Me Entertain You.
Listening to Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie the other day was a surprise political event. It was the first time I had seen her give a speech to an audience. She was working without notes and she had that audience of liberals in the palm of her hand. This lady is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : No Rest for the Wicked.
No, premier Ford, the Greenbelt fiasco is not going away. Firing Ryan Damato was just the first of many steps back you need to take. Not that you hurt his feelings by saying he was fired. He was probably the recipient of some unexplained miscellaneous funds from the premier’s office,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Ford Fails Fallacious.
He cannot win his Greenbelt argument and he doesn’t know when to shut up. Every time the Ontario premier opens his mouth in public, he sticks a foot in his mouth. Mind you, what we are hearing from him is grade school sophistry. He can hardly tell us that the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay : Ford’s Fall Guy.
In the time-honoured tradition of sleazy politics, Ryan Amato, who, until the turfing, was chief of staff to the Ontario housing minister, got turfed out the back door at Queen’s Park the other day. I would suggest though, you save your tears for his supposed disgrace. He obviously got the
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