This is just an idle thought for a bleak February in Barrie. It is what a difference leadership can make. This comes to mind with the sour grapes announcement by Laurentian University that they are dumping their partnership staff and students at Georgian College. It reflects the abysmal failure of the Ontario Ministry of Training, […]
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Babel-on-the-Bay: It’s a Wynne-Wynne for wine in Ontario.
It was like a fanfare of trumpets and drums for the announcement of the coming of some decent wine to Ontario grocery stores. Not immediately and not all at once and with a myriad of confusing rules but foreign and domestic wine will be available in some grocery stores this fall and more in the […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Does a Pope trump a Trump?
This must be the divine intervention that American Catholics have been praying for. Having a younger brother who is (in his order of importance) Republican, Roman Catholic, an American citizen and a retired business professor, we have absolutely no sympathy for the current conundrum he faces. It seems that he has been struggling with choosing […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Is Ottawa thinking outside the box?
We should send an ‘Attaboy’ to the Trudeau Liberals in Ottawa. It seems they are trying to stretch the thinking in the Finance Department to find new ways to fund high- technology start-ups. They are giving serious study to a report recommending ways to support Canada’s weakened high technology sector. The hope is to move […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: An Honourable Member from Barrie.
In writing about the honourable members we elect to our legislatures and parliament yesterday, an image kept coming to mind of our new Member of Parliament for Barrie–Springwater—Oro-Medonte. It is not a positive image. The honourable gentleman who now represents the riding is an acolyte of Patrick Brown, the new leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Honourable Members All!
A reader brought up what he considers a serious weakness in first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting yesterday. It is the assumption that we elect “honourable members’ to our legislatures and the House of Commons and select the same for our Senate. The member we elect with at least a plurality is assumed capable of representing all voters […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: But what if FPTP isn’t broke?
You almost hate to ask the question. What is wrong with the way Canadians vote? There seems to be an assumption by some people that first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting is a failure. Does that mean you have to dump FPTP and take a flier on some other theoretically improved voting system? And why is it better? […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Justin marks a hundred days.
The wife wanted to send our prime minister a Valentine card. She is a fan. Maybe we both are in our different ways. She only wants him to lose the rock-star role and start to look more prime ministerial. She is right in that. It is time he got down to the real job and […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Incremental inclinations of the incompetents.
The banker has been heard from. The other day we noted that Ontario wine drinkers were waiting to hear about liberalizing wine sales in Ontario. We have been waiting for a long time for this and it seems that we will be waiting even longer. It is turning into a bravura performance of incrementalism. The […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Sometimes you do not want to be right.
So, do you feel better after the Whitby-Oshawa provincial by-election? What do you expect when only 25 per cent of the voters would brave the cold to vote? Frankly, the results might have been the same on a warm spring day. Nothing changed. The only good news for the day is that auto repair places […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The perils of political predictions in by-elections
A friend called the other evening. He wanted to know who would win tonight’s provincial by-election in Christine Elliott’s former electoral district of Whitby-Oshawa. Once again we had to patiently explain that it is impossible to predict. The opinion polls that say the Conservatives have the best chance are useless. The big rally the other […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A road without remorse for Rona.
It was obligatory on Monday for the news media to check with Opposition Leader Rona Ambrose on Prime Minister Trudeau’s announcement of the change in Canada’s role in the partnership against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Rona gave them the obligatory Conservative position. “Shameful,” she said. The news media knew what […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Should everyone have to vote?
Many years ago a senior public relations guy gave a tongue-in-cheek speech to a service club about the people we elect to parliament. The theory he presented was that we should also have stupid Members of Parliament because stupid people should be entitled to representation. As politically incorrect as the message might have been, it […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: WHERE’S THE BEER?
Do you have beer in your grocery store? Are you one of the favoured few in Ontario? Here in Barrie we are being discriminated against. We are being denied a proper university here in central Ontario and we cannot even drown our sorrows in grocery-store beer. It is not as though our Liberal MPP can […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Can Trudeau open the sepulchres of government?
Can Canadians have an open government? Do we want one? Can Trudeau deliver it? They are all good questions. The problem inherent in the questions is Justin Trudeau’s understanding of how Ottawa really works. He might be biting off far more than his limited experience can handle. Of note is the fact that Justin’s father […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Minister Monsef ‘s measure.
How would you like to have a job based on proving your boss is right? It seems the same as Canada’s Fraser Institute that is always commissioning studies designed to prove the Institute’s right-wing theories. Now we have a cabinet minister trying to implement her leader’s campaign promise that Canadians will never again use first-past-the-post […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It’s not the pipelines, it’s the bitumen.
Thank goodness for mayors who can call a spade a spade. Not every city enjoys that luxury. The only problem is that mayors and their municipalities have no jurisdiction over pipelines. What they do is posture for their voters and then conveniently remember it is not their bailiwick when the going gets tough. Toronto Mayor […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: What if nobody voted in the by-election?
We had a by-election for council in a Barrie ward the other day. Admittedly it was the middle of winter but you would think that more people would have voted. Out of almost 10,000 potential voters, only 17.5 per cent bothered to vote. It makes you wonder what the heck the city would have done […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ontario Premier Wynne wins India.
Patrick Brown MPP eat your heart out. You are no longer India’s darling. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has won the media wars in the world’s largest democracy. In homophobic India, a lesbian politician from Canada was a big hit. It never occurred to us Canadians that Kathleen Wynne taking her husband Jane with her was […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: How fast can the Trudeau team pedal backwards?
It was all the fault of the Global team that had parliamentary reporter Vassy Kapelos filling in for Tom Clark on his West Block program on Sunday. She was a distraction. It started with Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion saying that we would soon know what the Trudeau government will do about bringing the […]
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