It is that time of year. Mid-summer is no time for serious. Even Elections Canada has joined the fun. In a television interview yesterday, an Elections Canada spokes person said with a straight face that she did not know what is being told to environmentalists about the rules of arguing
Continue readingTag: Doug Ford
Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Tom Parkin talks to Toby Sanger about the utter failure of corporate tax cuts to produce anything other than concentrated wealth and increased inequality. – Steven Greenhouse offers suggestions both as to how governments can level the playing field between workers and employers
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Big Brother baffles business.
Ontario premier Doug Ford claims he is really just a businessman. Prior to becoming premier, his only claim to fame was his second banana role for his late brother when Rob Ford was mayor of Toronto. Before that Doug was just a salesman for his father’s label printing company. Where
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Waiting for Doug Ford.
C’mon Dougie, Let’s see some action here in Ontario. You talked the talk. You walked the walk. Now, when do we see some action? A populist makes promises and people expect things to happen. We were promised beer in the corner convenience stores. Make it so! You might not have
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Diogenes, Leadership and SNC-Lavalin.
There is no time left for what might have been. Canadians are going into an election when what we so desperately want to say is ‘None of the above.’ Are we condemned to face a future of failure? Are we helpless? Have we found there is no honest man? Justin
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Symbolic MLA pay cut set stage for attack on public services – so why did the NDP support it?
Like neoliberals everywhere, Alberta’s Conservatives overrate the virtues of big business and undervalue those of democracy. This is not exactly news. This was a clear message yesterday from the vote of the Legislature’s Member Services Committee to cut MLA salaries by 5 per cent, and twice that for the premier’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Washington Post reports that July 2019 set new records as the hottest month ever measured on Earth. David Suzuki offers a reminder of the catastrophic consequences of failing to put and end to our climate breakdown. And Roger Harrabin warns against
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Andrew Scheer’s Desperate Medicare Scam
Andrew Scheer has managed to conceal what he really thinks about our medicare system, like he has managed to conceal so many other things.His religious fanaticism, his grotesque misogyny, his vicious anti-gay views. But he has been overheard in private excitedly discussing what he would like to do to our healthcare system
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Ainslie Cruickshank reports on new polling showing that most Canadians support a transition to a clean energy economy even without having received much information about the path to get there. And Yvonne Hanson writes that a Green New Deal will only work if
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The gang that can’t even sell pot.
It is hard to believe that Doug Ford’s gang in Ontario cannot even get a handle on the pot business. Is there no part of government in which they have some expertise? Did the late Toronto mayor Rob Ford fail to pass on some tips in drug marketing to his
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Injunction suspending application of Bill 9 leaves Kenney Government with egg on its face
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at United Conservative Party Headquarters last night! I imagine there were heated words spoken about Mr. Justice Eric Macklin’s decision just before the close of business yesterday to grant the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees an interim injunction suspending application of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The ‘Chicago Principles’ are code for the right of the powerful and privileged to shout down everyone else
“Free speech in universities” is nowadays a rallying cry for the snowflakes of the extremist right, who can dish it out but can’t take it. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that pushing post-secondary institutions to enforce the Chicago Statement on Free Expression, an ingenious manifesto that uses “free
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Brits are crazy too.
There is a pattern emerging. What particular hell we are heading for might still be a mystery but I fear the pace is accelerating. What you would have thought impossible a few years ago is to-day’s horror. To make matters worse, there is no discerning a rational path for the
Continue readingWarren Kinsella: The Hidden Conservative Voter
They’re hidden. They showed up, however, at Brexit. They showed up in the U.S. presidential race in 2016. They showed up in Alberta in 2019, and Ontario in 2018, too. They’re the THCV – The Hidden Conservative Voter. And they’re changing politics. June 2016: shocking just about everyone, 52 per
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Why are Conservative-run Canadian provinces turning down federal cash? The answer’s in the Republican playbook
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau observed back on April 16 that the Ontario provincial government led by Premier Doug Ford was throwing roadblocks in the way of Ontario municipalities accessing federal money for needed transportation infrastructure, Conservatives responded with angry denials, and not just in Ontario. The prime minister had
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Erika Beauchesne discusses the benefits of a wealth tax as both a means of reducing inequality, and a source of revenue for public priorities: Canada’s NDP has proposed a one per cent tax on wealth over $20 million as part of its
Continue readingAlberta Politics: More questions than answers in last week’s fallout from 2017 UCP leadership campaign
Eight Alberta United Conservative Party MLAs, five of them cabinet ministers, now admit they’ve been interviewed by the RCMP in the federal police force’s ongoing investigation into the curious goings on during the party’s 2017 leadership race, from which Premier Jason Kenney emerged victorious. Every time another UCP Caucus member
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne points out the options to make life genuinely affordable for Canadians – while noting that the Cons’ usual tax baubles don’t make the list. And PressProgress both reveals Doug Ford’s plans to slash Ontario’s already-insufficient housing supports, and lists Brian Pallister’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jim Stanford calls out corporate apologists for blaming workers for deteriorating working conditions and stagnant wages which have resulted from deliberate policy choices: Unemployed workers on the dole for months at a time? Clearly they aren’t looking hard enough for work. Low-wage workers
Continue readingMontreal Simon: More Bad News For Doug Ford And Andrew Scheer
In my last post I looked at a new poll that suggested that 60 per cent of people in Ontario now believe that Doug Ford's government is corrupt.And how the stench of that corruption was dragging down Andrew Scheer's numbers in that province. But that same poll also has some more
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