If you are old enough, you might remember the Dorothy Lamour, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope series of Road movies that cashed in on Lamour’s looks, Crosby’s crooning and Hope’s humour. The all-party parliamentary road show on electoral reform is supposed to be invited by all MP’s to 338 town halls in every constituency in […]
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Babel-on-the-Bay: Did we cause a kinder Canada?
It was last year on Canada Day that Babel-on-the-Bay asked if we could consider a kinder Canada. We never said it was based on getting rid of Mr. Harper and his awful Conservatives but we might as well have. And we did it. That was a heady time late last year when Justin Trudeau and […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Are referenda democratic?
It was a surprise twist in an otherwise boring CBC National News panel the other night. It was an argument over whether a referendum was really democratic or redundant in a representative democracy. While it was not the well respected At Issue politically expert panel, the argument held enough interest to mull over as we […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: What’s Jason Kenney doing? And who cares?
Yes, the Conservative Party of Canada is having a convention in a year or so to pick a new leader. After all, the party could hardly allow temporary leader Rona Ambrose time to get comfortable at Stornoway. So far, it is a very thin field of applicants. Though what would you expect when the leader […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: On curiously confused commentary.
Not being a regular reader of the right-wing National Post, we are not as familiar with commentator John Ivison. He appears to be a believer in conspiracy theories. In his commentary of June 22, he wrote of Linking pipelines to planes and CO2. According to Mr. Ivison, it all appears to be a dastardly Liberal […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Pennies for a pension plan.
Did we all forget how conservative Liberal Finance Minister Bill Morneau can be? As MP from one of the most conservative electoral districts in Toronto, he is considered a Member from Bay Street, not Main Street. He proved it for all to see when he bargained improvements in the Canada Pension Plan down to the […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Vote Reform Primer: FPTP.
The following is an updated primer on First-Past-the-Post voting from the Democracy Papers of 2007. This is the fourth of the vote reform series. First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) voting is an electoral system that we have known for hundreds of years. While some people tell us that FPTP is flawed it is hard to pin these people […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: If Canadians had their druthers on the Senate…
The delays are over on the government’s Bill C-14 on assisted dying. The Senate showed its true colours: cowardice. After one effort to help fix the flawed bill from the Commons, the senators surrendered. It is disappointing to report that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s solution to the senate seems to be working. When he was […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The braggadocio of the blogger!
That is one way to describe it. There is a hollowness in the endeavour. It is not just a hobby or an interesting way to waste away a few hours in your day. A daily commentary develops a life of its own. It is not like a Facebook page that you tend like a garden […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Vote Reform Primer: Preferential.
The following is a new primer as we did not consider preferential voting a factor in the Democracy Papers of 2007. This is the third of the updated series. Preferential voting is a system that is also known as alternative voting, instant run-off, ranked voting, transferable voting and other variables that have been considered and […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: He wanted an independent Senate; he got it.
We told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that this independent Senate of his would bite him on the ass. And it happened sooner than anyone expected. But to make the point on the assisted dying bill was pure justice. The Senate has challenged Justin on a key provision of this ill-considered bill. It is the very […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Politicians are just like us.
Maybe it is because they are never a hero to their valets that we have never been overly impressed with politicians. As a publicist and confidante to many politicians over the years, we have found that they share the same foibles, failures and frustrations as anyone else. Nobody is perfect and the person offering to […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Minister Monsef, hurrying to do nothing.
It looks like someone in the Trudeau cabinet came to the aid of the party and exerted some influence on the vote reform file. It is not that the Minister of Democratic Institutions was causing anything to happen. Ms. Monsef has been looking like a deer caught in the headlights. It is about time someone […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Bill Blair, won’t you please come home?
We never have been able to find Bill Blair when we needed him. Back when Bill was Toronto Police Chief in 2010, he was nowhere to be found when his police officers were busy kettling innocent citizens out for an summer’s evening walk. Now as Justin Trudeau’s Minister of Pot, he is nowhere to be […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “This is Justin Trudeau’s Party.”
Those were the wrap-up words from Toronto Star reporter Susan Delacourt from the Winnipeg Liberal convention to Global reporter Tom Clark whose weekly show was originating in Vancouver at the Conservative convention. Delacourt had told viewers that Justin had arrived from the G-7 in Japan during the convention and seemed to be everywhere dominating his […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Liberal Party is not computer competent yet.
Before you think the writer is a computer Luddite, it should be mentioned that we spent a lengthy business career explaining computers and computer software through the media. Our last company was a pioneer in database development that helped usher in the excesses of the Internet era. It was only when Katie Telford told the […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trudeau misspending his capital.
In Winnipeg this weekend, Justin Trudeau is misspending his capital with liberals and the Liberal Party. Mind you, he fully deserves the plaudits for his remarkable determination that took his party from third place to a majority last October. It is his follow through by trying to change the nature of the Liberal Party that […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Harper goes “quietly into the night.”
That line from Shakespeare’s Henry V is a haunting phrase that can give deep meaning to a legacy. The only problem for Canada’s failed and former Prime Minister Stephen Harper is his lack of a legacy. He united the right and rode that tiger into power. Yet he could never dismount. He ruled firmly from […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A Richler’s epiphany on Toronto.
In a somewhat rambling op-ed for the Toronto Star the other day, Noah Richler tells us of his experience as a sacrificial lamb (candidate) for the New Democrats last year. He also explains (sort of) why Bombardier cannot seem to deliver Toronto’s streetcars. Being a Montrealer by birth, Richler’s decision to run in Toronto-St.Paul’s was […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Experience needed to do a Morning Line.
Just like the racing experts who produce a morning line for the day’s racing card, a morning line for a political race requires considerable experience. And nobody would be so foolish as to try to create one without knowing and studying the performance of the horses in the race. That is why we are a […]
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