It is more important than we knew. We are talking about the environment. Our environmental poster boy Justin Trudeau has made too many promises that he has no way of keeping. Our Pollyanna environment minister Catherine McKenna makes promises she cannot keep and quotes government policy that will never happen.
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: In John Tory’s Toronto…
It was fascinating to read the Toronto Star municipal reporter’s opinion on the current mayoralty race in Toronto. It was as though he wanted to go backwards to gain ground forward. He damned Tory for stepping down into the mayor’s role and not growing in the job. What the reporter
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “Never trust anyone over 30.”
Hearing from readers in attendance at the recent Ontario liberal gathering, most were impressed by the numbers of younger attendees. Those are the ones to rebuild and revitalize the party. What they hardly need is us greybeards. We have had our day at the helm. Use us for cannon fodder
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: In praise of political palaver.
Blessed with a large family and very interesting siblings and life experience, whenever we get together, we have never been reluctant to have lively discourse about religion or politics. The very range of political leanings in the family is in itself an important part of the dialogues. With many of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The sinking ship Singh.
Taking a positive stance when your chief of staff quits, can be delaying the inevitable. It happened to federal new democrat leader Jagmeet Singh the other day and all he could do was gain a little time. The truth was that the federal NDP needed to keep his chief-of-staff and
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Can Ontario liberals renew their party?
You can hardly package a new political party along with decaying fish and hope to win plaudits. And that was what it must have felt like last weekend when the Ontario liberals gathered to lick their wounds and look hopefully into the future. The first task was to understand what
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: How do you like Premier Ford so far?
When you throw a question such as that into the general chatter today, you can really stop people cold. Recently, I threw the question to a group of fellow poker players in Toronto with whom I have been playing for more than a quarter century. Back at our game in
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Legault’s likely legacy?
Back in August, Babel-on-the-Bay ran a column discussing the anger of the electors that can result in poor choices in politicians. At the time, only Donald Trump was discussed but it was assumed readers could see how the disease is spreading. A few readers questioned me at the time as
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trump’s deniers call for the ‘End of Times.’
And here we thought the Christian Bible was there to forecast the End of Times. The Donald Trump administration in Washington has taken over in the forecasting business. They appear to believe that the End of Times is set for the year 2100. They are so convinced of this date
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Donald Trump’s Win?
We might as well let Donald Trump think he won. You hate to give a bully the victory but he would just go away and pout if we did not. What he really got was the right to rename the deal. That way, he can tell his claque that he
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Doctors are doubling down.
A few weeks ago, we wrote about the troubles the medical specialists are causing for the Ontario Medical Association (OMA). To make matters worse, there is now a breakaway movement among the specialists. Nobody seems worried about our hard-working general practitioners (GPs). This is a fight between specialists. It seems
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “What fools these mortals be…”
Just to show how consistent we humans are, we can use the words of William Shakespeare to describe more recent events. What brings this to mind was a recent Ryerson University democracy forum. Chaired by Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star, the debaters were campaign heads for the three
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Perchance, a prophet’s pipeline pays profits?
If there is bad news among the brochures delivered in the post this day, is the bad news to be blamed on Canada Post? And should a government encourage the building of a pipeline for the transmission of natural gas to replace more seriously polluting coal-fired plants to produce electricity?
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Dragging down the dialogue.
That Donald Trump is at it again. The diplomats laughed at him in the United Nations in New York the other day. Prime minister Justin Trudeau of Canada was walking by in the U.N. building the next day and did not want add to the American president’s discomfort and stopped
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Getting elected in Toronto.
The ‘Hey Rube’ at Toronto city hall is over, for now. Candidates for the 25 wards are busy candidating. The next big event will be municipal election day on October 22. Similar to Halloween, it will be a scary time. And they have the nerve to call it democracy. It
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Climate Action hits a wall in Ontario.
To our chagrin and horror the Province of Ontario has turned its back on climate action. In a to-the-point report, environmental commissioner Dianne Saxe made her report to the legislature at Queen’s Park on Tuesday morning. We hear that nobody from the conservative caucus attended. In the afternoon, the environmental
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: No, Dougie isn’t done.
One of the Toronto Star’s better political writers wrote last week that Doug Ford’s motive (for interfering in Toronto’s civic election) might not be pique. That could be right. Doug Ford’s vendetta with certain people in Toronto politics goes way beyond ‘pique’ or even annoyed. And is Dougie done? Not
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “Some animals are more equal…”
George Orwell’s Animal Farm told us more about humans than about animals and why some pigs are more equal than others. This subject came readily to mind the other day when reading about our liberal government’s attitude regarding protecting political party databases. Having worked with some of the earlier and
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: …Now, where were we?
It seems to me that we left off when premier Ford of Ontario pulled a rabbit out of his hat and told Toronto council hopefuls to stop running for 47 council wards in Toronto and just run for 25. Since people had been campaigning for weeks for the 47 wards,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The con of the carnival barker.
I remember as a child listening with awe to carnival barkers. I had learned young that the bearded lady and world’s tallest man were just hot air to impress the gullible. What impressed me even then was the glibness and ease with which the con man lied to the public.
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