This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Emily Atkin offers a reminder that the people with the least stand to face the most severe costs of climate change. But lest we take that as a signal that there’s an irreconcilable gap between countries, Eric Levitz writes that even in
Continue readingTag: Doug Ford
Alberta Politics: Jason Kenney’s Passage to India is nothing more than a nice fall holiday with two friends
United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney and UCP MLAs Prasad Panda and Devin Dreeshen took off for India yesterday. The main problem with the UCP passage to India is that, no matter how Mr. Kenney describes it, the six-day visit is really nothing more than a nice fall vacation in
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: The Notwithstanding Clause: A Gift from Doug Ford to Jason Kenney
Sometimes silence speaks louder than words. Last week Doug Ford went straight to the nuclear option when a judge told him no Doug, you can’t downsize Toronto city council in the middle of a municipal election just because you feel like it. Mr Ford says he’s going to invoke the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Matt Phillips and Karl Russell write that the next severe financial meltdown may not be far away, and that student and consumer debt (along with new derivatives from corporate debt) look to be at the centre of it. And Stephen Long points
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Why Doug Ford Will Be A One-Term Premier
I'd hate to meet Doug Ford after midnight, because as I'm sure you know, he's bestial enough in the daytime. Crude, ignorant, demagogic, drunk with power, a bully if ever there was one. A puppet of the Harperite cult one should definitely try to avoid.But sadly, many decent Toronto City councillors
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Thank you, Doug Ford, for making it clear our Constitution isn’t worth the paper it’s written on!
By making use of the Canadian Constitution’s Notwithstanding Clause to wreak petty vengeance on his old adversaries at Toronto City Hall, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has actually done Canadians a favour. After 36 years of delusional complacency, we have now had confirmed what anyone who was really paying attention knew
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Krugman discusses how Republican obstruction undermined both the shape and size of the U.S.’ efforts to recover from the 2008 economic crisis. And Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schularick and Ulrike Steins document how the crisis ant its aftermath exacerbated the U.S.’ already-alarming level
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Doug Ford achieves the impossible: he’s gotten Canadians interested in constitutional reform!
Office-holding Conservative politicians and operatives of their well-funded Astro-Turf and think tank support network across Canada have now virtually to a man and woman jumped aboard Ontario Conservative Premier Doug Ford’s runaway constitutional train, defending his use of Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ override clause to gerrymander electoral districts in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the needless use of the notwithstanding clause is just one more of the ways in which Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party is dangerously similar to Doug Ford’s PC government. For further reading…– CBC News reported on the Saskatchewan Party’s own use of the notwithstanding clause to avoid a
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Doug Ford and the Harperite Conspiracy
It was a scene I never thought I would see in Canada. It could only happen in Doug Ford's Ontario.And it can only be called fascism.Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government has tabled legislation that uses the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause to push through a bill slashing Toronto council in half because
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Flawed Ford Logic On NWS Clause
Of all the scenarios out there where I’d envision a provincial government in Ontario invoking or trying to invoke Section 33 of the Charter (the “notwithstanding clause”) to override court decisions based on the Charter… a situation involving a BIll that shrinks municipal government in Toronto wasnt in my top
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Not your father’s Tories.
Back in the years when I was a frequent visitor to the legislature at Queen’s Park, the conservatives there were a different breed. There is no way we can compare to-day’s incumbent in the premier’s office to someone such as premier Bill Davis. In relations with Bill and his staff,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The era of Notwithstanding Clause restraint is over … get used to it!
The era of Notwithstanding Clause restraint is over. Get used to it. To borrow someone else’s felicitous metaphor, Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was always an unexploded bomb lurking in the rubble of our country’s constitutional history like a decaying munition under the modern-day pavements
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: This Says It All
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Continue readingMontreal Simon: Doug Ford and the Day of the Dictator
When I saw the look on the faces of Doug Ford and his Con handler, I didn't need to turn up the sound on the TV to know what he was going to say. I had predicted what was about to happen long ago. And sure enough I was right.Read more »
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Notwithstanding common sense, no one should be surprised by Doug Ford’s use of Section 33 to shore up his lousy law
No one should be astonished Ontario Premier Doug Ford plans to use the Canadian Constitution’s Notwithstanding Clause to wiggle out of a judge’s scathing ruling declaring his hurried and sloppy legislation to cut Toronto City Council from 47 to 25 members to be unconstitutional. Mr. Ford and a lot of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Gobsmacked by sex education.
There are a lot of people in Ontario angry and frustrated by the idiocy of our politicians trying to satisfy the wrong people with how we are teaching children about sex. What is wrong with honesty? Have we become a society of hypocrites? Or are the politicians just pandering to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “And miles to go before I sleep.”
It is rare that a politician(?) such as Doug Ford can remind me of a snatch of a poem such as the one published by Robert Frost in 1923. The haunting words are “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Doug Ford and Andrew Scheer’s Assault On Our Universities
At first glance, you wouldn't think that Rob Ford had anything in common with Andrew Scheer.Scheer is a sinister religious fanatic and alt-right sympathizer, who despite the creepy smile that he glues to his face every morning, is consumed by his hatred of Justin Trudeau.While Ford is a brutish political ape,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Calamitous cost of change.
Talking, the other day, about how lawyers are the only ones happy with the Ford government in Ontario, you have to admit that is our own fault. Did we really have a clue as to what it would cost the voters to throw out the McGinty/Wynne government? This might be
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