Politics can be full of strange happenings. Canada had an election seven months ago. The guy who was prime minister is still prime minister and doing very well, thank you. He lost 20 members of his party caucus and his party came second in popular vote. You would think he
Continue readingTag: Conservative
Babel-on-the-Bay: Same-old, same-old Tory party.
This conservative leadership contest is a disaster. What started out to be dull and boring has been made doubly dull and boring. We are now advised that we will know who has won the conservative party leadership on August 27. Surprise, surprise, Peter MacKay will likely be crowned. Boring wins
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Glen’s coat of many colors turns Green.
Former mayor of Winnipeg, former member of the Ontario legislature, former Ontario cabinet minister and former executive director of the Calgary-based Pembina Institute, Glen Murray, has a new quest. He wants to replace Elizabeth May as head of the Green Party of Canada. It might not be one of his
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Give Ford the credit he deserves.
Premier Doug Ford of Ontario had two choices. He could continue the bombast and bluff of his usual approach to politics, or he could learn from his mistakes and tone down the rhetoric. His new approach is far from perfect but it shows that unlike his first year as premier,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ontario NDP: A party of survivors.
If you came to Ontario recently, you would have a problem figuring out what goes on at the provincial parliament at Queen’s Park. With that big blowhard who seems to be running things, this seems to be a one-party government. And you are even more convinced when you are told
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Blame Alberta’s Jason Kenney.
You would think that one of these days, the people of Alberta are going to catch on to their premier Jason Kenney. Those of us who consider him something of a snake have known about it for years. We watched him in Ottawa. We watched him when he returned to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Is Chuckles shooting blanks?
The lame duck conservative leader and leader of the opposition in parliament, Andrew Scheer, has a problem. Is nobody paying him any attention? Is it that difficult for him to squeeze past all the articles about the coronavirus and covid-19? Is the pandemic more important? The answer to all three
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Learning to love your local MP.
In our time of need, do you not love the attention we are getting from our local politicians? I am thinking here of your federal member of parliament. This person is your lifeline to the decision makers in Ottawa. No matter what party they might represent, they also represent you.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A phony Ford forges forward.
It is hard to believe that it is so easy to con Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star. The provincial affairs specialist wrote a piece the other day admiring the new version of premier Doug Ford he is seeing at Queen’s Park. What Regg Cohn is missing is that
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It’s the Tory party that is self-destructing.
Last weekend, Chantal Hébert wrote her regular opinion piece for the Toronto Star. She was ruminating on the idea that presumed front-runner Peter MacKay’s campaign for the conservative leadership might be self-destructing. Not that MacKay was heading anywhere in particular anyway. He is hardly the saviour of Canada’s conservatives. If
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Dougie dumbs it down.
You get the impression that our Ontario premier goes to the office each day hoping to find new things to screw up for Ontario residents. Despite the tantrum he threw the other day over a high-priced grocery store overcharging for sanitary wipes, I never get the impression that he is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The imperfect timing of Doug Ford.
It seems that no matter what he does, Ontario’s premier Doug Ford, finds that it always costs more than he saves when he makes cuts in Ontario’s government budgets. It costs him money to fire people. It costs him money to cancel projects. It costs him friends when he cuts
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Doug Downey doubles down.
That nice guy, Bill Davis, one-time Ontario premier, must be having some sleepless nights. Those idiots in his conservative party are busy destroying Bill’s legacy. They spend more money on their dumb ideas than any other Ontario government in the past. And they never get anything right. From the premier
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “Most stupid people are conservative.”
This will be of small comfort to premier Doug Ford of Ontario. A friend reminded me the other day of the quote from 19th Century philosopher John Stuart Mill that “Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Riding the bubble.
It helps if you think of the main aspirants for the federal conservative party leadership as Bland, Blander and Who(?) This perception was highlighted the other day. It seems one of them promised—if chosen—that they would immediately try to force an election to rid the country of those despicable liberals.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The downhill dance of Doug Downey.
It is all Caroline Mulroney’s fault. Nobody wants a member of the legislature who constantly embarrasses the people in his riding. We sure got that in spades in Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte. And if only Caroline Mulroney knew more about Canadian and Ontario legal traditions, she would still be attorney general. Instead, Ontario
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Where have all the leaders gone?
You get the feeling that we are talking about a ghost. Everybody is looking for leadership. Nobody has seen it. Talking to a friend about it, he said the problem is that there are too many rowboat people and not enough canoeists. He explained it as most people row a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Buffalo Declarations and other Bull.
There is an odour emanating from the politics of self justification in Alberta. And it is not that of the wild prairie rose. It is the greed and the false tears and it is the manure that helps it grow. I remember as a young man, standing at the government
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A debutante ball for John Baird?
It is difficult to explain what kind of an event this will be. It has always been evident that John Baird wanted to make some kind of a statement in his lifetime. Nobody really believed it was his final act when he left the Harper cabinet. He always seemed to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Is it ‘The Peoples’ Pipeline?
After checking further, it is confirmed that Global Television news anchor Dawna Friesen actually called the Trans Mountain pipeline, ‘the peoples’ pipeline.’ I suppose it seemed appropriate when the following story was that the federal government estimates for twinning the line were now running at 12.6 billion dollars. Remember that
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