Seeking “social license” for Alberta’s fossil fuel industry was said by the NDP government of former premier Rachel Notley to be a way to win approval for more pipeline capacity to Canada’s ocean ports. This was true enough as far as it went, and the idea getting such approval required
Continue readingTag: Doug Ford
Babel-on-the-Bay: Singh’s sendoff into the sunset.
New democratic party leader Jagmeet Singh is not going quietly. He caught some wind in his sails from that disgrace of an English debate this past week and is running with it. It was such a bad debate that Singh came out looking better than usual. And yet, it is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Jason Kenney: Doug Ford’s understudy.
Every actor needs an understudy. It just seems appropriate for the much-detested premier Doug Ford in Ontario to have a truly obnoxious stand-in during the federal election. It is conservative leader Andrew Sheer’s good buddy, Jason Kenney, premier of Alberta, who was standing in for premier Ford this past weekend.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Doug Ford: The man who isn’t here.
We hear that premier Doug Ford is low bridging this federal election. It is at the begging of his friend Andrew Scheer. Conservative leader Scheer did not want to be upstaged by his provincial supporter. Scheer’s handlers have enough trouble convincing voters that ‘Chuckles’ is not just a tool for
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Death by a thousand tax cuts.
Canadian voters are being nickel-dimed and conned by their politicians. Even Elizabeth May and her greenies have joined into the game of making promises, with funds, from where, they do not really know. It is a game that voters should not buy. Let’s face facts: Sheer is no savior, Trudeau
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “How dare you?” Greta Thunberg.
Somebody must have explained to the 16-year old from Sweden that you have to be brash to get noticed in North America. She would be quite unlikely to say ‘How dare you?’ to her elders back home in Sweden. Yet it worked at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: They’re not your father’s conservatives.
What happened to the red Tories? Is the decency of Ontario’s once premier Bill Davis a memory of the past? Whatever happened to the conservatives with whom I could share a joke? I used to like many of these people. They worked hard for charities. They were good neighbours. They
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trump tramples on our territory.
The other day something caught my eye on the opening page of Microsoft’s browser. The company was doing a survey to find out why people dislike their MSN News. I did the survey, but I was reaching for different ways to spell ‘crap.’ This is news lifted from news-gathering people.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Martin Regg Cohn writes that Doug Ford’s brutal austerity against the people who most need social support has been based on entirely made-up numbers. And David Climenhaga points out that Alberta’s civil service has been shrinking over the past decade, showing that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Sarcasm does not become a premier — especially as our placid boreal Dominion grows less gelid by the day
Methinks the premier doth protest too much! What else can we say about Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s bizarre 2,330-word public letter yesterday to Alex Neve of Amnesty International Canada, attacking Mr. Neve, the organization he leads, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, the Soviet Union, the Saudi royal family, the Qatari
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Lily Patchelder and David Kamin study the policy options available to increase public revenue by focusing on the wealthy, and find that there are multiple viable options: The U.S. will need to raise more revenues in order to reduce these disparities, finance
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: From Rae Days to Ford Years.
It does seem odd to think of current conservative premier of Ontario Doug Ford and former NDP premier Bob Rae at the same time. The other day Bob Hepburn of the Toronto Star tried to compare the two in an opinion piece. He failed. The reasons that Bob Rae failed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Kate Aronoff asks how much destruction is needed before we’ll start taking climate change seriously – though the answer at this point looks to be that no amount of damage will be enough to move a substantial number of politicians off their insistence
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Can Kenney, Curly (Ford) and Moe pull it off?
Conservative leader ‘Chuckles’ Scheer might not offer much of a challenge to Justin Trudeau but when you consider the three stooges running in the back field, it makes you think. Canadians, outside of parliament and his Regina riding, have little reason to have an opinion of Chuckles. Very few of
Continue readingMontreal Simon: How Stephen Harper Came Back To Help The Liberals
I have to admit that when I first saw the video Stephen Harper made for Andrew Scheer I was stunned.I couldn't believe that the Cons thought that Harper could help them.When to someone like me who spent so many years fighting him and his ugly regime it seemed more like
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Rick Salutin writes that Canada’s lack of accessible housing arises primarily as the result of general inequality. Derek Thompson notes that youth athletics are just one more sphere of activity in which concentrated wealth is driving out participation by people who don’t have
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – John Nichols interviews Bernie Sanders about the importance of resurrecting the principle of economic rights. Gallup examines how the American public is again recognizing the value of unions. And Simon Goodley writes about the positive effects of shortening the work week to 4
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Peter Wade reports on new polling showing that American voters remain angry about a political system which benefits a privileged few at the expense of everybody else. Jake Johnson reports on Bernie Sanders’ message that it’s time for workers to win the class
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how right-wing provincial governments across Canada are deliberately denying benefits to their constituents solely to try to avoid any credit going to the federal level in advance of this fall’s election. For further reading…– Murray Mandryk, Sarath Peiris and plenty of letter writers have already pointed out the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Repeating history with Doug Ford.
The worst of the mistakes made by Mike Harris, conservative premier of Ontario from 1995 to 2002, was the downloading of provincial government expenses to municipalities. It was a stupid and ill-advised. And despite the lessons learned, we now have premier Doug Ford following in Harris’ draconian footsteps. Where the
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