Federal Politics ← Progressive Bloggers // Blogues progressistes

Babel-on-the-Bay: The anger factor.

Jun

22

2017

A reader on the west coast asked the other day if we are seeing anger in Liberal ranks directed at Prime Minister Trudeau’s disrespect for the party? What was strange about the question was that most of that anger is building on the west coast. The flash point will be the funding and tooling up ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Trudeau: Poster Boy or Action Figure?

Jun

18

2017

Goodness! Is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau being criticized for not living up to his promises? Is he just a poster boy? Why is he not living up to his billing? He will have two years as prime minister in his pocket this October and some people are starting to have doubts. What is the problem? ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Chasing ghosts with Chantal Hébert.

Jun

14

2017

In the pile of books set aside for summer reading was Chantal Hébert and Jean Lapierre’s analysis of The Morning After. It is supposedly their take on the 1995 Quebec Referendum. By starting with their book, this might become a long hot summer. The book had come to the pile as a gift. It had ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: How would Harper have handled Trump?

Jun

11

2017

When listening to Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland give her very important speech on the new world order, there was one disturbing thought. It was a silly question as to how would our previous prime minister have handled the situation? The one thing for sure was that Stephen Harper would never have allowed his ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Tasking Tenuous Think Tanks.

Jun

10

2017

A friend sent an e-mail recently, attaching a 25-page report from the Broadbent Institute. This study supposedly refutes other think tank reports that say Canadians are overtaxed. He says that I am (inexplicably, he claims) adverse to Ed Broadbent and his institute but I should read the report anyway. In defence, I should explain that ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Planes and Trains and…

Jun

7

2017

Flying used to be glamorous. Not any more. It has become a demeaning and uncomfortable experience. Those people in line for security in their smelly stocking feet should bleat like sheep as they are fleeced by money-grubbing airlines. They are shoved into uncomfortable seats only to be abused by airline employees. There is no fun ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Choosing a Conservative caretaker.

Jun

1

2017

The Conservative Party hierarchy could not have the better fall guy for the next federal election. Whomever came up with the convoluted voting system that was used to choose this poor guy last weekend might have saved the party years in the wilderness. It will likely be 2023 before the Conservative Party comes roaring out ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: The Infrastructure Bank Conundrum.

May

29

2017

It has been surprising just how many writers are interpreting the Liberal Government’s Infrastructure Bank as a prop for public-private partnerships (P3). It has also not helped that the government included the legislation in the larger budget bill and that finance minister Bill Morneau has been slow to defend his proposal. When you are seeding ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: The parade of the Conservative losers.

May

28

2017

A political movement died out near the Toronto airport yesterday. It was the once powerful Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. The new Conservative Party of Canada, heir to the Reform Party, struggles on. It was a time of bad television and bad politics as the surviving party chose a new leader. By a margin of ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: We can blame Cousin Oliver.

May

26

2017

It is all Oliver Mowat’s fault. The myopic Father of Confederation had a mainly rural and agrarian Ontario to oversee in the early years of confederation. His picture hangs over our desk today, not as a distant relation but in the form of a preserved and framed, full front-page of a Saturday Globe published in ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: With thanks to Rona Ambrose.

May

25

2017

Rona Ambrose M.P. is cleaning out her desk. With a new leader to be chosen this weekend, Ms. Ambrose is packing it in and going home to Alberta. It is a smart move for her at the right time. And Canadians owe her special thanks for the job she did as interim leader of the ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: The infrastructure bank argument.

May

24

2017

As a general rule, it seems useless to respond to e-mails from readers that are longer than the original commentary. It also seems useless to try to correct someone’s misconceptions on the subject. Besides, if federal finance minister Bill Morneau is not interested in better explaining his new infrastructure bank to Canadians, why should others ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Why progressive elites are losing.

May

23

2017

The disappointment progressives have felt with the New Democratic Party over the last couple decades has been something we have argued about but maybe not understood as well as we should. Maybe Robin V. Sears of the NDP put his finger on it the other day when complaining in print about the ease with which ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: On the road to mediocrity.

May

18

2017

Do you know who will be the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada on May 27? With a third of the votes already in and more trickling in every day, it is a very frustrating guessing game to determine who will win. The problem you are facing is that the people who preferred ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: The poster boy and the NDP.

May

17

2017

Charlie Angus meet Jagmeet Singh. No doubt Charlie Angus MP, candidate for the New Democratic Party leadership has met Jagmeet Singh MPP, the newest candidate for the NDP leadership, before, but not likely as a competitor. The only surprise about this meeting is that both these gentlemen are in the same political party. What is ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Infrastructure bank belongs in Toronto.

May

16

2017

The good news is that Canada’s new infrastructure bank will be in operation by the end of this year. Despite the complaints of other centres, Toronto is the city where it belongs. The bank will be launched with $35 billion in capital from the federal government and will seek Canadian and foreign investors looking for ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Taking back our civil rights.

May

11

2017

You hate to have to remind our Liberal government in Ottawa that one of the basic tenets of liberalism is human rights. It is as though the cabinet members get elected and then forget what party supported their election. It is even worse when the Liberals on the parliamentary committee on public safety have to ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Conrad Black on Donald Trump.

May

9

2017

“He knows what he wants,” was the message by Conrad Black to a parliamentary committee examining the current situation on trade relations with the United States. The former Canadian and now an ex-convict and Lord Cross-the-Pond or some such title, was telling the committee about his friend Donald Trump who is currently President of the ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: In the Senate: “Some are more equal.”

May

4

2017

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm we were told that some animals are more equal than others. This makes it an appropriate analogy for the institution in Canada known as the senate. The senate was created 150 years ago as a chamber of sober second thought to rein in any excesses of the citizens elected to ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Speechwriters and old soldiers never die.

May

3

2017

This writer would have serious doubts taking on writing speeches for an old soldier such as Canada’s defence minister Harjit Sajjan. There are a series of problems involved, not the least of them being the mistake of trying to present an apolitical Sikh in the guise of a politician. There is no fit. The first ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Kevin O’Leary was never in.

Apr

28

2017

When TV personality Kevin O’Leary declared himself out of the federal Conservative leadership race the other day, it was a race he had never really been in. He came late to the party and left early. He brought nothing to it, he learned nothing from it and he left nothing behind. It was a was ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Buck Booking’s Blues.

Apr

26

2017

Some wonder how the time of the British Royals to visit the colonies is allocated across the British Commonwealth of Nations and other friendly countries. What if this was all funneled through a call centre at Buckingham Palace in London, England? Imagine a recently recorded call at the North American desk: “Buck Booking, Harry speaking. ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: The myth of being Liberal.

Apr

25

2017

One of our respected progressive bloggers from British Columbia wrote recently something less than a paean (song of praise) about the Liberals in that province. His thesis is that B.C. Liberals are just Conservatives in sheep’s clothing and now the federal sheep have joined them. He insists that the Liberal ideal has vanished from Canada. ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Is Justin the adult in the school yard?

Apr

23

2017

Has Prime Minister Trudeau been getting advice from psychologists on how to handle a bully? It is certainly to his credit that he is keeping his cool. Donald Trump continues to lob his ignorant taunts over the longest undefended border in the world and Canada’s prime minister just says, “We can discuss that.” As angry ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: Trump’s ‘Milk of Human Kindness.’

Apr

20

2017

“Once again unto the breach” (sorry Mr. Shakespeare) President Trump jumps into a situation of which he has absolutely no understanding. He is making a habit of it and this time he is trying to skewer the Canadians. He has pitted the free market, unfettered Wisconsin dairy farmers against what Trump calls the ‘unfair’ position ...