After years of concern about what a second Harper majority government would do to eradicate the rest of what I love about Canada, I’ve been able to reject fear and embrace change. But it was a long process that required coming to terms with Tom Mulcair. And I did. And
Continue readingTag: Mulcair
Babel-on-the-Bay: Mulcair: Canada’s pseudo Johnny Appleseed.
Tom Mulcair’s role for Canada’s New Democrats seems to include wearing a forced smile and offering band-aid solutions to problems. Other than his strange arithmetic about day care, he is spreading seeds of programs rather than anything that might bear fruit in the foreseeable future. To most voters he remains
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Go home Paul Martin.
Nothing grates a left-leaning liberal more than Paul Martin that skinflint former finance minister and briefly prime minister. Once a friend, Paul became a non-person when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien gave him the finance portfolio. He built his reputation for balanced budgets on the backs of the poor, the unemployed,
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Mulcair is wrong on the deficit: cozying up to the neocons
Louis-Philippe Rochon Associate Professor, Laurentian University Co-editor, Review of Keynesian Economics Follow him on Twitter @Lprochon First, it was his enthusiastic support and admiration of Margaret Thatcher; now it is his overzealous support of balanced budgets. What’s next? What is Mr. Mulcair ready to do to get the keys
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Paul Martin Gives Tommy Angry Beard a Well-Deserved Kick in the Ass.
Paul Martin was the finance minister who plucked the federal government from the brink of fiscal chaos. It was a tough time for all including the provinces, even the Canadian Forces, but he balanced the budget and paid down $90 billion of our national debt. He kept the bankers in
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Mulcair moves on law and order.
Canadian voters are still trying to get used to a New Democrat leader campaigning to the political right of the Liberals. And they hardly expected Thomas Mulcair to play the law and order card. In a direct steal of a Conservative campaign promise in 2008, Mulcair has promised to renew
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trudeau’s stop-gap Senate solution.
Babel-on-the-Bay is only giving Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau a conditional pass on his proposed Senate solution. The truth is that Trudeau just does not want the constitutional problems that the Stephen Harper or Thomas Mulcair solutions will cause. He is not his father’s son in that regard. Pierre Trudeau was
Continue readingLeft Over: A Prophet Is Always Without Honour In Their Own Country….
NDP candidate Linda McQuaig’s comment on oilsands stirs up hornet’s nest Linda McQuaig says ‘a lot of the oilsands oil may have to stay in the ground,’ in calling for environment The Canadian Press Posted: Aug 09, 2015 10:25 AM ET Last Updated: Aug 09, 2015 11:51 AM ET
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Bearding a bully.
Canadians watched a bully get his comeuppance last night. There were no knock-out blows or deathbed repentances but some solid points were made. In balance, the Greens’ Elizabeth May looked good, the New Democrat’s Thomas Mulcair was stuffy, the Liberal’s Justin Trudeau showed strength and the Prime Minister kept saying
Continue readingLeft Over: To The Left, To The Left…Second-Guessing The Youth Vote
Free to dream, I’d be left of Jeremy Corbyn. But we can’t gamble the future on him Here is a comment I made re an opinion piece in the Guardian by Polly Toynbee… This is an oddly similar discussion to one happening in Canada today..but we are just
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Will we let Mulcair destroy Canada?
It has been assumed for the last while that there are voters parking their votes with the New Democratic Party. That just means if anyone asks, they say they will vote for the NDP. And if they actually did that, this country would never be the same again. Sure, most
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Tommy trudges to the wrong tune.
It is very funny reading the apologists for New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair. They claim he has Quebec in hand and now needs to win the rest of the country. That could be helpful if he could really rely on holding on to the Quebec seats won in Jack Layton’s
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Left, Right or Liberal?
One of the best—and funniest—opeds we have read for a while was by Susan Delacourt of the Toronto Star. Susan’s first premise in her article (Liberals must win the middle…July 25) was that there are too many communications people in the Liberal Party. She then segues into a discourse on
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: NDP promise to change how we vote.
Ontario voters rejected a scheme for mixed member proportional voting in a 2007 referendum because the political parties wanted to appoint party faithful to the provincial parliament so that they would have representation according to the party’s popular vote. That is the scheme that New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair promises
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Is Mulcair peaking too soon?
Gosh, reading and listening to some political pundits, you would think that the coming federal election is already decided. It is all over but the shouting. It is one of those times when you wish you could take all those bets from the suckers. Frankly, this political apparatchik would not
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Excuse Me Mr. Mulcair, But What in the Hell are Middle Class Values?
I grew up in a family of the working poor, spending a good portion of my childhood in public housing. My dad did his best to provide for his seven children, but money was tight, and we lived from payday to payday. He supplemented his income by doing a bit
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The media feel the excitement.
Just about four months to the federal election and the news media can barely contain their excitement. Not since John Diefenbaker came out of the West like an avenging angel has an election been so fraught with possibilities. They have so many scenarios to write about. Change is in the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: NDP changing times, changing directions.
The CCF—the party of Tommy Douglas—represented the working man, the farmer and the socially conscious in an era of rapid growth and acquisition after the Second World War. We had little time for CCF concerns or socialism in those exciting years but the party was respected as a political conscience.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Canadians are owed answers on the Senate.
Do you have a mental image of the three major party leaders cowering in their campaign bunkers this year afraid of questions on the Senate? They will all tell you that they are in favour of Senate reform and just what that reform might entail and how they will accomplish
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Justin Trudeau brought his perfect game.
When somebody bowls a perfect game, you have to admire it. In politics a perfect game is a rare event. You have to remember that in politics there are people out there who are lurking to ridicule, there are professional scoffers and there are the people paid to deride any
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