Welcome to Queen’s Park. This is that island in the centre of Toronto that carries the weight of Ontario’s provincial government. The uniform of the day on this island of pecker heads is a blue suit. A white shirt or blouse is appropriate and a tie is obligatory for the
Continue readingTag: Ontario
Michal Rozworski: Is this the best they can do? The weak case against $14 in Ontario
Today the libertarian Montreal Economic Institute think tank released a short report claiming that Ontario’s $14 minimum wage is costing thousands of young workers their jobs and raising prices for everyone else. These overblown claims, based on skewed and cherry-picked data, came out—purely coincidentally to be sure—on the same day
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Chuckles’ confusion of conservatives.
Federal conservative leader Andrew ‘Chuckles’ Scheer knows that a bunch of whales is a ‘pod,’ and a group of geese a ‘gaggle.’ We are guessing that he has also found out that a collection of conservatives might be a ‘confusion.’ He was at a celebration with an Ontario confusion of
Continue readingThings Are Good: These CEOs Want Basic Income
Ontario Premier Doug Ford was elected earlier this year and already started implementing his plan to increase inequality in the province. Obviously, this is a bad a plan. One of the things Ford cancelled thus far was the basic income pilot program which was praised around the world, and before
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A government built on falsehoods.
Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star described the Ontario conservatives as ageist the other day. He believes that Doug Ford’s Tories are the party of only the old people. He comes to this conclusion apparently because the inordinate number of dumb moves the Ford government is making that are
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Follow the money to Brampton Brown.
He used to be Barrie Brown. His best friend, Toronto lawyer Walied Soliman describes him in the Toronto Star as the “hardest working person, I have ever met.” Those of us who have watched Brown manipulate his way through politics over the years are less complimentary. This is not the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Dougie did it!
There is an explanation for this. I have a younger brother whose name happens to be Douglas. When we were young, the standard answer to a bloody nose or a broken lamp was always “Dougie did it.” I can admit now that if the fresh blood was mine, I could
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Cost of challenging climate change.
The bills keep rolling in. Dougie and the Deplorables should take their show on tour and give things a rest at Queen’s Park. This provincial government, that ran on promises of saving us taxpayers money, ran up bills over the summer that make the previous liberal regime look like pikers.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Can Ontario liberals renew their party?
You can hardly package a new political party along with decaying fish and hope to win plaudits. And that was what it must have felt like last weekend when the Ontario liberals gathered to lick their wounds and look hopefully into the future. The first task was to understand what
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: How do you like Premier Ford so far?
When you throw a question such as that into the general chatter today, you can really stop people cold. Recently, I threw the question to a group of fellow poker players in Toronto with whom I have been playing for more than a quarter century. Back at our game in
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Climate Action hits a wall in Ontario.
To our chagrin and horror the Province of Ontario has turned its back on climate action. In a to-the-point report, environmental commissioner Dianne Saxe made her report to the legislature at Queen’s Park on Tuesday morning. We hear that nobody from the conservative caucus attended. In the afternoon, the environmental
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: No, Dougie isn’t done.
One of the Toronto Star’s better political writers wrote last week that Doug Ford’s motive (for interfering in Toronto’s civic election) might not be pique. That could be right. Doug Ford’s vendetta with certain people in Toronto politics goes way beyond ‘pique’ or even annoyed. And is Dougie done? Not
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: …Now, where were we?
It seems to me that we left off when premier Ford of Ontario pulled a rabbit out of his hat and told Toronto council hopefuls to stop running for 47 council wards in Toronto and just run for 25. Since people had been campaigning for weeks for the 47 wards,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Matt Phillips and Karl Russell write that the next severe financial meltdown may not be far away, and that student and consumer debt (along with new derivatives from corporate debt) look to be at the centre of it. And Stephen Long points
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Not your father’s Tories.
Back in the years when I was a frequent visitor to the legislature at Queen’s Park, the conservatives there were a different breed. There is no way we can compare to-day’s incumbent in the premier’s office to someone such as premier Bill Davis. In relations with Bill and his staff,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Gobsmacked by sex education.
There are a lot of people in Ontario angry and frustrated by the idiocy of our politicians trying to satisfy the wrong people with how we are teaching children about sex. What is wrong with honesty? Have we become a society of hypocrites? Or are the politicians just pandering to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “And miles to go before I sleep.”
It is rare that a politician(?) such as Doug Ford can remind me of a snatch of a poem such as the one published by Robert Frost in 1923. The haunting words are “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Dougie doesn’t define Ontario.
Watching the first session of the new Ford government at Queen’s Park was a letdown. It was regressive, loud, uncivil, sexually repressed and barely disguised in its bigotry. The sea of white faces on the government side is barely broken by any ethnicity. Dougie does not do diversity. And this
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Who says Dougie’s done?
Looking at the upcoming Toronto municipal election in October, you can end up with more questions than answers. The problem is premier Ford. This guy is not finished with his home town. And they are not finished with him. And they are wasting the taxpayers’ money fighting him. We seem
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Doing it the old-fashioned way.
We better face facts folks! Dougie and his denizens have four years to tear into the fabric of Ontario. Do you really think you will still recognize your province by the time you have a chance to get rid of them? Today, we have been looking at the cannabis market.
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