The Ontario government would like to blame the behaviour of Ontario’s citizens for this disaster implying somehow we are so much worse than the citizens of other countries, and even other provinces, that are at the end of this crisis as we enter the worst of it. The fact is
Continue readingTag: Doug Ford
Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Anya Zoledziowski discusses how we’re only facing a third wave of COVID-19 due to avoidable political choices, while the Globe and Mail’s editorial board laments the epidemic of political negligence which has resulted in severe consequences for public health and welfare. Elizabeth
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Gary Mason writes that our leaders appear to have learned nothing as we face a third wave of COVID-19. Hasan Sheikh and Munir Sheikh point out how the insistence of right-wing governments in taking ineffective half-measures rather than action which could actually provide
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Locked down or locked up?
It feels like being kept after school because some one else broke the rules. It feels like a piling on of detentions. Now premier Doug Ford has added another four weeks of lock-down for the entire damn province. It never would have happened if the jerk had known what to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Picture That.
Ontario premier Ford likes to bring some back-up when he is doing a Covid-19 presentation. It was a surprise last weekend when one of the smirking faces in the conservative back-up was that of Brampton mayor Patrick Brown. Oh, how well we know that weaselly countenance. He was even wearing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Julia Wong reports on the building third wave of COVID-19 in Alberta. And Ricardo Tranjan examines how little the Ford PCs actually put into the education system to address the additional demands created by a pandemic. – Dana Nuccitelli discusses new research showing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Nazeem Muhajarine, Cory Neudorf, Kyle Anderson and Alexander Wong each point out the desperate need for Saskatchewan to keep people healthy in the face of new COVID-19 variants, while Zak Vescera discusses the contrast between what experts and recommended and what Scott
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Bruce Arthur discusses how Doug Ford could prevent a third wave of COVID-19 in Ontario, but is choosing not to. John Michael McGrath writes that we need to stay vigilant in doing everything we can to limit the spread of the coronavirus even
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Do we give Del Duca a chance?
Having never met Ontario liberal leader Steven Del Duca, I have not had much on which to base an opinion. All I know is that he never impressed me much in Kathleen Wynne’s cabinet. As transportation minister, he stuck his foot in it when he appeared to be pushing Metrolinx
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Feeling the sting of Ford.
It reminds me of the story of the dog and the scorpion. “It’s my nature,” explains the scorpion before they both drown. In Ontario, we are seeing the nature of premier Doug Ford that is taking Ontario into a corrupt past. In the same way as Donald Trump found to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Christo Aivalis rightly points out that the NDP needs to be a party of labour and fight to ensure workers’ needs are central to Canada’s political discussion, rather than amplifying the rhetoric of the exploitative corporate lobby even when it’s in the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Stephanie Taylor reports on the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s warning that we can’t afford to loosen the province’s COVID-19 rules – which of course was followed immediately by Scott Moe loosening the province’s COVID-19 rules. And Matt Gurney points out the need for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Kenyon Wallace reports on new modelling showing a real risk of yet another wave of COVID spread in Ontario – even as widespread immunity just a few months of remotely responsible government away. Julie Steenhuysen and Kate Kelland point out how an increasing
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: ‘Dougie did it!’
Mother did not like those words. The youngest of my brothers was Douglas. Of the six kids, he was mother’s pride and joy. She hated to hear the words, ‘Dougie did it’ from everything such as a raid on the cookies to blood splatter. I think she stopped blaming the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Andrea Horwath has an easy job.
Other than being insulted occasionally by Ontario’s premier-in-training, the new democrat’s Andrea Horwath seems to enjoy her continuing role as leader of the opposition at Queen’s Park. The biggest complaint we have heard about her recently is that they never answer the phones in her riding office in Hamilton. You
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Andrea Reimer examines the power dynamics at play in government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the limits of formal political power where it isn’t paired with knowledge and networks. And the Globe and Mail’s editorial board rightly questions the dubious math
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The silence of Doug Ford’s lambs.
Sometime in the next couple months, the province of Ontario is expected to offer me the opportunity to get one or two jabs with a needle. This knowledge alone is helping to lift me out of some of my covid-19 doldrums. As I am considered to be among the more
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Matt Karp writes about the connection between heavily polarized politics, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of people whose interests are served by voters rooting for laundry rather than holding meaningful input into policy choices. – May Warren reports on the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jonah Brunet points out the wide variety of definitions of the term “lockdown” in response to COVID-19 – with imprecision in the meaning of basic terms being used to drive anti-social complaints about even the most minimal public health measures. And Nisreen Alwan
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Joe Vipond, Malgorzata Gasperowicz and Christine Gibson discuss how it’s entirely feasible for Alberta (or any other province) to be COVID-free if its leadership bothers to pursue that goal. And Alex Ballingall and Tonda MacCharles look into the history behind our inability to
Continue reading