How do you like those phone calls you get from automated polling systems? The worst of them are the ones that want you to press one if you intend to vote conservative and two if liberal. I always have lots of fun with them by pressing numbers at random. But
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Babel-on-the-Bay: Keep to the left Ms. Wynne.
Not that she would necessarily listen to this writer but Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne needs advice on dealing with Doug Ford. There is always the hope that someone who reads Babel-on-the-Bay will mention it to her. We, of course, are expecting her and her Liberal government to continue to discuss
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: In defence of populism.
From the first time I met John George Diefenbaker, I have admired populist politicians. For the benefit of our younger folk, John Diefenbaker was a Prairie populist politician who served as prime minister of Canada from 1957 to 1963. As a young liberal, I did not agree with much of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Doug Ford is just Trump Lite.
It was made clear when we announced the winner that the new Conservative leader in Ontario was just Trump Lite. There are some interesting similarities between the two men and their many failings but there the similarity ends. To start with both men came into their wealth the old-fashioned way:
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The last adult has left the White House.
President Donald Trump has fired secretary of state Rex Tillerson. He fired him on that children’s program Twitter. And, in case Tillerson might not have checked Twitter, Trump phoned him from Airforce One and made sure he knew he was fired. Tillerson will, regrettably, go down in history as the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: There are some real royals.
It is too bad that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was too busy to meet with the King and Queen of Belgium when they were in Ottawa the other day. These are a somewhat different type of royal. They are useful. They are not just figureheads and dilettantes. The Belgian royals
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: See what preferential voting gets you?
Will they ever learn? The Ontario conservatives used preferential voting in their recent leadership race. Yes, they were rushed and used the same foolish system that gave them Patrick Brown as leader two years before. They used a system that fails to produce a leader. They end up with the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “What the world needs now…”
Got an interesting e-mail the other day from a fellow commentator on Canada’s left coast. He had an excellent suggestion on what Canada should do about the currently growing estrangement from a badly run United States of America. He sees it as an opportunity for an independent Canada to become
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Donald Trump Lite and the Ontario PCs.
After spending Saturday afternoon watching Rosemary Barton and CBC News struggling with the Ontario Conservative fiasco, I was not sure whether the party or the news media did the worst job. It was embarrassing. I actually paid the CBC $6.85 plus GST for the right to watch that screw-up on
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: ‘Chuckles’ Scheer, meet Donald Trump.
Did you hear that Andrew ‘Chuckles’ Scheer, Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in Ottawa, wants to move the Canadian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem? He must have heard that is what U.S. President Trump intends to do. That is a very bad move by Chuckles. The problem is that
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Ontario PCs in Wonderland.
Vic Fedeli is hardly the Alice in Wonderland who foolishly headed down the rabbit hole. Yet it was Interim conservative leader Fedeli who first let on that Patrick Brown might not have been telling the whole truth about party memberships. And with three of the four candidates still in the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “We stand on guard for thee.”
The last time our parliamentarians screwed around with Canada’s national anthem, they were trying to make it gender neutral. What they accomplished was to have some of us singing different words, others of us confused and all of us stuck with awkward phrasing. And it is tough to fake that
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The troubled travels of Trudeau.
Good advice is a treasured commodity in government. Bad advice is plentiful. It seems that our current prime minister has plenty of the latter and not enough of the former. It could also be that Justin Trudeau has lots of good advice but chooses to ignore it. That was how
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Bully Pulpit of Donald Trump.
President Theodore Roosevelt said, more than 100 years ago, that the White House is a bully pulpit. It means something very different to the bully in today’s White House. Roosevelt saw the bully pulpit as a position for good. Trump sees it as a position to abuse the less powerful.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Small men. Big rockets. Bad news.
What are the similarities between Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un? They all think they have the biggest, fastest, most invincible nuclear weapons. They all think of themselves as wielding immense power. They all fear for their position in a true democracy. How would Mr. Putin survive in a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The indignities of the indigenous?
It is important that we respect Canada’s aboriginal peoples but calling them ‘indigenous’ is basically stupid. Your Oxford dictionary will tell you that ‘indigenous’ means ‘produced naturally in a region.’ Canada’s aboriginal peoples have roots in Asia and were nomadic to the point of their early ancestors crossing ice bridges
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The bravado of President Trump.
Every time we have needed a warming thought in these blah days of winter, we have pictured President Trump running into a school to rescue children from a mentally ill person with a gun. It is similar to the bravado of a 12-year old suggesting that teachers be armed: ludicrous.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Which Tory Witch is dead?
The other evening, the wife and I gathered in the den to enjoy a streaming video of the Ontario Tory leadership debate from Ottawa. It was only when the hijinks started to encroach on our dinner hour that the wife started questioning the entertainment value of the program. Amazingly, the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The mild-mannered Minister Morneau.
To think that it was only during the last half of last year that I was calling for the finance minister’s head. This week’s budget hardly left me feeling fonder. I thought Bill Morneau showed his true patrician colours in failing to defend his budget last year. What the hell
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: First: Forget the pollsters.
If there was one piece of information that helps us handle the current political situation in Ontario, it is the knowledge that the pollsters cannot cope with turmoil. Even if some of your best friends forever are pollsters, there are times when their forecasts must be ignored. It is in
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