Is finance minister Chrystia Freeland deliberately fooling conservative leader Erin O’Toole? It seems like she has more important tasks ahead of her. Maybe she is forging ahead with her plans and ignoring what O’Toole has to say. He accuses her of ideological and a reckless budgeting. She might be one
Continue readingTag: Federal Politics
Babel-on-the-Bay: Our failing democracy.
We are all responsible. We are failing to support democracy. We are making bad choices in leaders, bad choices in who represents us and failing to demand that they protect our democratic institutions and customs. And we can only blame ourselves. We need to face the facts: our political parties
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Where are you Jagmeet Singh?
Jagmeet Singh has a job as leader of the federal new democratic party. With parliament shut down, he has virtually disappeared. Canadians have forgotten about him. Only voters in Brampton, Ontario remember what he looks like. Mind you, he represents Burnaby South in B.C. these days. Maybe somebody there has
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Canadians are on to O’Toole.
Every time I look at conservative leader Erin O’Toole, he reminds me of cartoons of the bloated English capitalist. What makes me laugh though are his on-going attempts to create a conservative party more acceptable to the mainstream of Canadian voters. And I hardly think tossing Derek Sloan out of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trudeau’s chance to kill TransMountain!
It’s no secret. If U.S. president Joe Biden can cancel the Keystone XL pipeline, why cannot Justin Trudeau cancel twinning of the TransMountain pipeline? The single line can still be used to ship fully refined petroleum products to the U.S. west coast states and to Vancouver. We should face the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Payette is Trudeau’s mistake.
It was ten years ago when I made the argument with Justin Trudeau that the governor general was an anachronism that we no longer needed. It was like he brought down a wall between us. I realised too late that he was afraid of questioning the constitution. Justin saw it
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Quebec racism is no surprise.
When people grow up with incipient racism, it is no surprise that they slip into it occasionally. This happened the other week when a news release from Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet was claimed by liberals to be racist. It should come as no surprise that someone born in Quebec
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The lies from the tar sands.
It was a brief remark our Canadian ambassador to Washington made on Global Television’s West Block show last Sunday. I was trying to remember where I had heard it before. Kirsten Hillman said that, as ambassador, she could tell the Biden administration that Alberta has already shown it can reduce
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A tip for Chrystia Freeland.
It might not be her usual task but we understand that the wunderkind and finance minister of Canada’s cabinet is busy planning for federal government investment to help our country to recover from the pandemic. This is despite many of us wanting all-hands-on deck, to get us through the pandemic
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The solidarity of the right.
Is Erin O’Toole a fool? The conservative leader would not be so stupid as to reject the support of the extreme right of the conservative party? Yet we read that he does not think he needs them. It was that kind of thinking that enabled Preston Manning to create the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: America, we hardly knew ya!
While some desperate Canadians still manage to flee south to escape our bitter winters, we have not been seeing Americans breaching our locked-down borders in any large numbers. American tourists used to come in droves for the pageantry in Toronto of our Caribbean festival and our gay days and maybe
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The pandemic that killed small businesses.
It has always been obvious that while our politicians will say positive things about small and entrepreneurial businesses, the big box stores are all they can see. And nothing has culled the field of small business faster than the second wave of the pandemic. But it was not covid-19 that
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It’s not your father’s liberal party.
When Pierre Trudeau resigned his leadership of the liberal party in 1984, it was a robust organization with supporters across Canada. The president of the party was B.C. liberal Iona Campagnolo. She was the party president that when the new leader John Turner was caught by the media patting her
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Politics of the pandemic.
It has been fascinating watching politicians learning about the politics of a pandemic. It has been a learning experience for all of them. Some take naturally to the challenge, while others find it a struggle. Thinking of the positive ones first, I have to admit that prime minister Justin Trudeau
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: In praise of liberalism.
Being a liberal is not just some fuzzy feeling. It is a commitment to life. It matters not the color of your skin. It matters not whether you are rich or poor. It matters not the extent of your education. It depends on your caring. It depends on your ability
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Who’s paying for the bitumen Trudeau ships?
It struck me, listening to the news from Ottawa on Friday, this whole plan for $170 a ton for carbon by 2030 is bullshit. Who is going to pay for the disgusting amount of carbon prime minister Trudeau and his friends in Alberta are hoping to ship from Burnaby, British
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Are any conservatives listening?
It is something of a wonder that Jason Kenney, premier of Alberta, Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, and Erin O’Toole, federal conservative leader, are members of the same political party. The only similarity between the three gentlemen is that they all blame Justin Trudeau for their problems, provincially and across
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Decidedly Different Discipline.
Many Canadians are intrigued by the discipline of political parties. Not that it seems to matter within the parties themselves but it does seem to matter in the caucus of elected party members in the federal and provincial parties. There even seem to be differences when you are the government
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Please, Spend, Spend, Spend.
This is a skill testing question. How are we going to spend our way back to a healthy economy? I have been doing my best at Ontario’s liquor control board stores. That enterprise has been pleased with our upgrading to single malts and better wines despite the pandemic rules that
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Looking mean and meaning it.
That was dumb. Watching finance minister Chrystia Freeland deliver her financial update was more of a tribute to my interest in politics than any immediate need to hear her deliver it. What left me annoyed though was the rank stupidity of our opposition parties’ responses. While the speech itself was
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