Prime minister Trudeau asked for party unity last week. He was at the Ontario liberal gathering in Mississauga. It was a friendly crowd. He told them that liberals fighting each other only helps the conservatives. I cannot argue that but before agreeing with him, Justin needs to learn to listen
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Babel-on-the-Bay: The Alberta that God forgot.
“O outcast land! O leper land! Let the lone wolf-cry all express The hate insensate of thy hand, Thy heart’s abysmal loneliness.” From the poems of Robert Service. Jason Kenney won the Alberta election and the embittered battles over bitumen are drawing clearer lines. He joins the blow-hard conservatives of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Chuckles checks conservative campaigns.
You would expect that one of these days, conservative leader Andrew ‘Chuckles’ Scheer will have to take the training wheels off his federal election campaign. He was out on the hustings with Jason Kenney in Alberta last week and little new came from either conservative. The signature complaint we have
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: In the arrogance of ignorance.
You saw the big beaming smiles on their faces. If not in the newspapers or television news clips, you can imagine the smugness that Ontario’s conservative government felt bringing in their first budget accounting for Ontario’s billions in revenues. Despite their promises of efficiencies and despite the braggadocio, they failed
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Tories take a try at Toronto transit.
You really need to be a Torontonian to recognize the absurdity of the Ontario government’s latest plan for Toronto transit. It seems to be a right of passage for Toronto politicians that they all have to give transit another kick in passing. Premier Doug Ford should be passing out cigars
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: In Alberta, vote, wash hands, wash hands again.
With less than a week to another Alberta provincial election I cannot forecast the vote. It is one of those times you can only vote against. There seem to be few positive options. The entire campaign is a disaster and a disappointment. It is a given that I despise Jason
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: If Harper is a bully, what is Trudeau?
The last two prime ministers tell us much about this country of Canada. In June 2015, I wrote a comment on PM Stephen Harper, accusing him of being a bully. It seemed to be his way of making up for his deficiencies as a human. A reader reminded me of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Even a stopped clock is right twice a day…
As inept and foolish as the Ford government in Ontario might be, you have to admit it when occasionally the chuckleheads do something right. It is like when the impossibly ideological Mike Harris government in the late 1990s amalgamated the city of Toronto. The province did it for the wrong
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ontario’s going to Hell in a handbasket.
There are various opinions about ways of getting to Hell but my American mother liked the phrase about a handbasket and I first heard it from her when I was quite young. It seems appropriate now that we have elected a Ford as premier, that the province is heading for
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: This just in: Nuttall’s out.
If there was ever an individual in the wrong place at the wrong time, it was Alex Nuttall, the M.P. for our electoral district of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte. Alex was Patrick Brown’s hand-picked successor on Barrie city council and subsequently in the back benches in Ottawa. On a recount of ballots, in
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: ‘Scheer’ Foolishness.
It is to be hoped that someone in the Scheer family is keeping a scrapbook of the positive commentaries on Chuckles’ prospects in the federal election in October? It is a shame to get the poor guy’s hopes up. The scrapbook will help prove to his grandchildren that he really
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Instead of Whinging About Boomers, Explain Yourself.
Millennials and Gen-Xers are fond of blaming the Boomer generation for their woes. Cheap talk from people who vote for parties that keep the Canadian petro-state locked into fossil fuels. That means young-ish Conservative supporters, and young-ish Liberal supporters, their NDP counterparts to boot. Don’t complain about your condition, don’t
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Jason Kenney’s Quest.
There is something about being the big dog in a small kennel. It brings the walls to you and it feels all warm and snuggly. It must be what Jason Kenney thought of when he saw that the years of posing as heir apparent to former prime minister Stephen Harper
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ford Forestalls Hillier’s Hussars.
It might not be up to the standards of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade but somebody should have warned Ontario premier Doug Ford before he got into a squabble with the caucus bad boy of the Ontario Tories. Oh well, Ford is due for a drubbing anyway.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Nothing New about a Stalking Horse.
Oh, to be in Alberta when the politicos are running! Have you heard the latest about that sleaze Jason Kenney of the united conservatives? With premier Rachel Notley about to pull the plug on the provincial election, UCP leader Kenney has got his jeans in a twist. It seems people
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Comics in the Op-Eds.
I had a really good laugh the other morning when in the Toronto Star’s opposite-editorials page there was a headline saying: Brian Mulroney is our greatest statesman prime minister. I quickly checked the calendar. No, it was not April Fools Day. This guy might be serious. Since he might also
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The perils of punditry.
Despite putting the idea aside a number of times, I have made the effort to stay away from comparing Pierre Trudeau in 1972 to Justin Trudeau in 2019. I was sitting in the boardroom of the principal advertising agency for the liberal party that evening in 1972 when Pierre announced
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The storms on the Yellow Brick Road.
As we battle our way to the Land of OZ and the looming federal election, what we are hearing across the land is becoming more and more concerning. When normally respectful and erudite people vent with expletives, they are angry. When the prime minister of our country calls a public
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Reefer Madness in Ontario?
It is too bad premier Doug Ford’s younger brother died. The late Rob Ford might have been a wealth of information about the marketing of street drugs. As it is, it will take years to straighten out the mess the Ontario conservatives are making of legal retailing of cannabis. But
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: How great is it going to be?
Do you really want to trust a politician who insists on telling you how great it is going to be? When the Ontario government announced its health care reforms this week, everyone was left wondering just how they were going to accomplish these great results. That was all we got,
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