You cannot have all that cast-off material from a barnyard without a pony in there somewhere. The speech-from-the-throne writers must have figured that if you have to use weasel words, you might as well use a lot. So, if you could stand one more reading of that speech, that the
Continue readingTag: Liberal leadership
Babel-on-the-Bay: Running in place.
The serious jogger does it when blocked by traffic or a stoplight. It is called running in place because your legs keep moving but you are not moving forward. By keeping up the motion, the jogger is not cooling down or loosing that high of a good run. This is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Objectives other than winning.
Some people scratch their head and ask why someone will enter a political leadership race when there is little chance of winning? The truth is that there are different reasons and we have seen many of them over the years. Just the positioning of the person within the particular party
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Never trust a guy with a pipeline.
The prime minister can joke about it if he wishes but there are lots of people who will not vote for a guy with a pipeline. If it was just the old Kinder Morgan line that spanned the Rockies, we would not be as worried. It is all that pipe
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Slicing and dicing Justin Trudeau.
You should always remember the plaint of the writer that what you write in haste, you might regret for the rest of your life. It might not be fair to say that John Ivison of Postmedia erred in all of what he wrote about the prime minister in his new
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Butts is back.
Gerald Butts and company are back to drive the liberal campaign bus. One can only hope that a few lessons were learned from their past four years in Ottawa. After all, it has to be tough to remain arrogant when you have screwed up as often as the crew in
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: When you are ready, Justin Trudeau.
Facing facts is not a favourite pastime for our prime minister. No doubt there were many old-time liberals who have told him he is heading for trouble. He has made a mess of a one-time strong party. He said you did not have to pay a membership to be a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trudeau should listen to McCallum.
John McCallum was building a very solid career as a professor and as an economist when he took a misstep into politics in 2000. While it took him a while to learn the ropes, his greatest political success was in Justin Trudeau’s government as immigration, refugees and citizenship minister. He
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Singh scans the Six.
Canada’s new democratic party leader has been seen in Ontario. Party leader Jagmeet Singh is engaged in a desperate rear-guard action this summer for some Toronto area ridings. Faced with the possible loss of their party standing in the house of commons, the NDP have realized that the Toronto area
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The inscrutable ‘Chuckles’ Scheer.
Conservative leader Andrew ‘Chuckles’ Scheer sent a letter to prime minister Justin Trudeau the other day. He has come to the conclusion that Justin needs help in foreign affaires. He is particularly concerned that Canada is being bullied by the Chinese. “Chuckles’ is full of helpful tips—he seems to think
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Now pinch hitting for Canada: Donald Trump.
We really need that. Can you think of anyone less able to speak for Canada to the Chinese? Donald Trump was grandstanding with Canada’s prime minister in the Oval Office in Washington the other day. The media had been allowed in for some quick questions and to get their pictures
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends…”
And once more Ontario liberals found that they were not masters of their own destiny. Ontario liberalism is a fiefdom and the serfs were told once more last weekend what will be. Whatever you might wish to call it, it is not democratic. It is not run by or for
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Circle your wagons; they’re on the warpath.
And here we thought war rooms in politics were a thing of the past? Now we see that the Toronto Sun has resurrected the idea with a one-time liberal in command. This must be the companion war room that PostMedia, owners of the Sun, promised Alberta premier Jason Kenney to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Together, we can.
Prime minister Trudeau asked for party unity last week. He was at the Ontario liberal gathering in Mississauga. It was a friendly crowd. He told them that liberals fighting each other only helps the conservatives. I cannot argue that but before agreeing with him, Justin needs to learn to listen
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Tip-toe through these tulips (Part 2).
Was it spite? The story of Jody Wilson-Raybould and her side-kick Jane Philpott has yet to be fathomed. What benefits them? They both had so much to offer. Wilson-Raybould was the first woman of aboriginal ancestry to serve in the cabinet. Her people needed her wisdom in that role. They
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Tip-toe through these tulips.
This is a story about women of a certain age and how a man has to tip-toe carefully to explain or be maligned and castigated as sexist. It is just, by now, we should all be tired of the sexist claptrap surrounding the ongoing one-act play of Jody Wilson-Raybould. Yes,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ontario liberals need a leader.
It is good to see that there are a number of worthy contenders already at the starting line for the upcoming leadership contest for the Ontario liberals. More important than the names of those individuals, at this point in time, are the rules for the race. And the simpler the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: ‘Scheer’ Foolishness.
It is to be hoped that someone in the Scheer family is keeping a scrapbook of the positive commentaries on Chuckles’ prospects in the federal election in October? It is a shame to get the poor guy’s hopes up. The scrapbook will help prove to his grandchildren that he really
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: First pick a direction.
It is ridiculous that people are speculating about the possible leaders of the Ontario liberal party so soon. We do have a choice. And the old adage says, we can decide now and repent at leisure. As we have mentioned before, we first want to figure out where the party
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Parsing the political petulance.
Had an opportunity the other day to measure the mood of local liberals after the humiliation of last June’s provincial election. It was the annual meeting of the provincial party for Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte in central Ontario. All you had to do was mention premier Doug Ford and eyes rolled and teeth
Continue reading