Federal New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair has reason to be worried. It is fairly obvious now that he cannot hold half the Quebec seats won by Jack Layton in the Orange Wave in 2011. He needs to win seats in Ontario next year and he sees Ontario’s provincial New Democrats
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Babel-on-the-Bay: Death of a political party: Absolving Andrea.
Maybe we are becoming jaded by politics but what is happening to the Ontario New Democrats might be momentous. We are watching a bastion disintegrate. It is like a news clip of the imploding of old hotels on the Strip in Las Vegas. Ontario New Democratic Leader Andrea Horwath ran
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Death of a political party: NDP and leadership.
Looking more closely at what is happening to the Ontario New Democrats you realize that the signs have been there all along. This is a party without the will to exist. It has lost impetus, direction, raison d’etre and is adrift without effective leadership. Maybe, as political apparatchiks, we see
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Death of a political party: NDP and the unions.
What always divided Canada’s social democrats, be they liberal or socialist, was never dogma or heroes. It was the unions. The liberals saw Canada’s unions as regressive. They were reactionary, self-centred, living in the past and, in too many cases, tied to international unions that worked against this country’s nascent
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Charles brought the lovely Camilla to tea.
It must be a condition of having a broadcast license in Canada: When Royals visit, you have to gush a lot. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales came for a visit the other day and he brought his lovely wife Camilla to have tea with his Canadian subjects. The
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Ontario NDP has a platform?
And here we thought the New Democrats were going to wing it through this election without a platform. They fooled us again! Here we are with three weeks more to go and Leader Andrea Horwath has announced a platform—such as it is. The New Democrat document seems to be mainly
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Is Canada supporting racism in India?
It can happen. In our eagerness to support democracy, we sometimes get put in a position where we appear to be supporting causes that we would never support back in Canada. This is obvious in the enthusiasm and support Barrie’s Conservative Member of Parliament Patrick Brown has displayed for India’s
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Making common cause with the voters.
This should be a standard lesson in Politics 101. Have we all forgotten it? Why have we stopped making common cause with voters? Looking at the municipal, provincial and federal political scene lately, the only common cause we see is ‘Screw the voter!’ And common cause can exist. Look at
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Hudak had the answer and blew it.
All along, we were assuming that Ontario Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak was saving his ace in the hole for late in his campaign. He would have had it as his clincher. It was allowing the sale of beer and wine in convenience stores. It was assumed that he intended to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Learning Timmy Hudak’s ‘rithmatic.
One of the problems politicians face is that voters often take you literally. If you are stupid enough to tell voters that you are going to create a million jobs by firing another 100,000 people who are working, you leave them struggling with the mathematics. The key to this is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The pollsters also need to get real.
Here we are less than half way into the Ontario provincial election and the pollsters are getting more attention than the politicians. Get a life folks. This is far from over. Where does this election stand when as many as half the voters are not even aware of when the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Rosie vs. Justin: seems like a fair fight.
While we rarely waste time reading much of Rosie DiManno’s columns in the Toronto Star, her piece Friday on Justin Trudeau was a rare treat. Maybe it is because they were both brought up Catholic, that it seemed to be a fair fight. Man, did she skewer him! But Justin’s
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Let’s give the voters a time-out.
The City of Toronto is in the most trouble. It really needs a break. The city and even the province are suffering from hyper-politicossis. It is a rare disease that can happen when too much political activity drives the voters to distraction. Even worse, they take out their frustrations on
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: We’re waiting for the slowpokes in Babel.
Members of the provincial Liberal Party in Babel are watching their e-mail in-boxes. We are waiting for news of our Liberal candidate for the June 12 election. You would think that with all the support Kathleen Wynne got from this riding in her run for the Liberal leadership, it would
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: And the best of luck to Adam Vaughan.
But just a minute! Is this the Adam Vaughan who was handed the nomination in the federal riding of Trinity-Spadina by Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau? Is it not the riding of Trinity-Spadina where Justin said Christine Innes cannot run because her husband Tony Ianno was accused of doing something wrong?
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: How the Hair will save Whitby-Oshawa.
We all know him now. He is not Stephen Harper, mystical leader from the nether world. He is the Hair, the only Prime Minister of Canada to keep a hairdresser on staff. In fact, the hairdresser is the only member of the Hair’s staff with tenure. The Hair is the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Hudak’s odds are now 100,000:1.
There must be a rule for Conservative Party leaders in Ontario that, during an election campaign, they have to commit some form of political suicide. Ontario Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak came to Barrie last Friday and did the deed. Timmy not only proved he is a failure in economics but
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ms. Horwath wants your vote.
On that two-deck-high campaign bus, Ms. Horwath’s picture has been reproduced bigger than life. The Ontario New Democrat leader looks good. In fact it is too good. It seems to be trying to lay a patina on the New Democrat campaign that does not exist. It appears that Andrea Horwath
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Justin Trudeau: Dictator or Leader?
What has gone wrong here? Why is Justin Trudeau screwing up the one clear promise he made to the Liberal Party? Did we so artlessly choose someone who does not understand the role of party leader? How worried should we be? What is wrong when Justin Trudeau tells potential Liberal
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Is this as you like it Ms. Wynne?
There is a wonderful old expression, still in use today: “Hoisted by your own petard.” It simply means that the schemes you used to harm others can be used against you. And when you consider how wrong it can be to allow third parties to advertise in Ontario elections, the
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