Share this: While the coronavirus pandemic started spreading across the globe, many governments were caught off guard and had to act quickly. Those countries that elected to put their top scientists in charge and listen to their expertise were more successful in flattening the curve than those that didn’t. Photo:
Continue readingTag: Doug Ford
Northern Currents: The Conservatives are hostile towards those we need the most
Share this: While the coronavirus pandemic started spreading across the globe, many governments were caught off guard and had to act quickly. Those countries that elected to put their top scientists in charge and listen to their expertise were more successful in flattening the curve than those that didn’t. Photo:
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Matt Gurney laments Ontario’s utter failure to use months of lead time and information from around the world to make any meaningful preparations for a foreseeable fall wave of the coronavirus, while Bruce Arthur notes that Doug Ford is too busy denying the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ford cures covid-19 numbers.
Premier Ford of Ontario has a salesman’s way with numbers. You want fewer people with covid-19 from the coronavirus, he gives you lower figures. He can even flatten the curve. The secret is in the number of tests. He has it all figured out. He has found that he who
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Mr. Ford is enjoying the game.
Doug Ford has come a long way for a guy who made his mark selling labels for his father’s printing company. Today, in the midst of a pandemic, he is immersed in the multi-billion dollar health and education business of the Ontario government. And with no effective direction or even
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Tom Kibasi examines how the UK Cons’ mismanagement – both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic – has resulted in disastrous public health consequences. And Denna Berg and Karin Taylor find that right-wing governments in general have seen far worse outcomes than
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Lauren Pelley discusses the importance of making it a habit to weak a mask to protect against the spread of COVID-19. And David Rider points out the giant loophole for private workplaces as sites of community spread, while Jason Warick highlights the futility
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta takes over as Canada’s political Crazytown; privatized health care suffers a setback
VICTORIA — When I was growing up here in Lotusland, British Columbia had the reputation of being the Crazytown of Canadian politics. The late Allan Fotheringham, the Vancouver Sun columnist we all read religiously, famously summed up Canadian politics like this: “In the Maritimes, politics is a disease; in Quebec
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ontario’s petulant premier.
After more than a year of silly stickers on our gas pumps, Ontario voters have got the message. And the Ontario Court System has finally got around to noting that that the Ontario government’s stickers are in breach of the retailers’ Charter rights. Is this a fair resolution to the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: I’m Ba-ack.
The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. I have spent the past three weeks in hospital. I remember waking up after an operation to put my ankle back together. I was completely disoriented but conscious of the need for a washroom. I remembered where I was when a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Michal Rozworski writes that we need to respond to the coronavirus pandemic with investment in the society we want to build for tomorrow, not austerity to punish us today: Our economy is ripe for transformative reconstruction. The key now will be both how
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Paola Frelich writes about the uber-rich whose habit of being strictly isolated from anybody else has allowed for life to continue as usual while workers face the risks of a pandemic. And Dominic Rushe comments on the split in the U.S.’ economy
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The economics of small nuclear reactors, touted by Jason Kenney as a ‘game changer,’ just don’t add up
When Alberta Premier Jason Kenney says small nuclear reactors “could be a game changer in providing safe, zero-emitting, baseload power in many areas of the province,” as he did Sunday in a tweet, he’s pulling your leg. For a variety of economic and technical reasons, the scenario Mr. Kenney described
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Urgent need to squelch political fallout best explains Jason Kenney’s oddly timed nuclear announcement
A Friday in August sure seemed like a peculiar time for government like Jason Kenney’s to announce it had signed onto a multi-province effort to sell natural resources and encourage the development and sale of a new generation of Canadian technology. But there was the Alberta premier on Friday, accompanied
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Murray Mandryk writes that any responsible government has to be willing to prepare for renewed restrictions on activity if the spread of COVID-19 requires it – though sadly, Scott Moe is falling short of that standard while reiterating his determination to prioritize
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ford follows mentor Trump.
From the low of being booed at the Raptors’ celebration in Toronto last year, Ontario premier Doug Ford feels it is time to hear some applause. After all the exposure he has gotten from the pandemic, he is ready to go on the road again. Like Donald Trump in the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Robert Reich discusses how Donald Trump’s insistence on pushing reopening without a plan to alleviate an ongoing pandemic has led to disaster both for the U.S.’ economy and its public health. And the Economist highlights the need to make basic health precautions into
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Anca Matei writes that the coronavirus pandemic has provided us with another vivid example of how the accumulation of wealth (particularly in a small number of hands) has little to do with social health and well-being. And Rosa Pavanelli writes about the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Dougie has “lost the plot.”
A chap from ‘Ole Blighty’ was talking the other day about the United Kingdom’s prime minister Boris Johnson. He said “Bo-Jo has lost the plot.” The description fits too many politicians today. Johnson is just one of many. America’s Trump certainly fits the part. The Donald seems to have never
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The new Ford is still a Model T.
Not to be confused with products of the Ford Motor Company, today’s comment is about Ontario premier Doug Ford. It harks back a hundred years to that time when you could have any colour of Ford Model T, as long as it was black. And you need to face facts
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