It had been another hard day for Ontario premier Doug Ford and he drove his truck to his late mother’s house. The doctor had told him to self-isolate because one of his worker bees had come down with covid. Feeling sorry for himself, he got into an old pair of
Continue readingTag: Provincial Politics
Babel-on-the-Bay: Leadership Lacking.
We are not getting much provincial leadership in Canada these days. Despite liking both Andrew Furey in Newfoundland and Labrador and John Horgan of B.C., I cannot say much for the premiers in the mushy middle. I must admit that I really dislike Doug Ford of Ontario and Jason Kenney
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A Mea Culpa on Small Nukes.
The other day I really wanted to write something positive. I feel guilty about writing so many negative comments about politicians today. It was an old friend who suggested to me that I could make up for my past criticisms of nuclear power. This guy is a retired university professor
Continue readingScripturient: Time of Use Billing is an Assault
By returning to the money-grabbing time-of-use (TOU) billing, Ontario’s Hydro One continues its unrelenting assault on the province’s seniors, stay-at-home parents, the unemployed, night shift workers, those under lockdown, and every business and industry here. Time-of-use billing has always been nothing more than an egregious money grab by the service
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Ford Agenda.
It is hard to tell if the pandemic is helping hide premier Doug Ford’s agenda for Ontario or just slowing it down. His plans seem to be everything except the stuff you would hear in a speech from the lieutenant governor. It is enough that he keeps confusing Ontario residents
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Small Nuclear? Think Ships.
Anyone who is worried about small nuclear reactors being promoted by four Canadian provinces should check out the nuclear ships using nuclear reactors. The world has had nuclear ships now for over 65 years. The four countries who use nuclear powered ships tell us that they have about 160 ships
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Requiem for the Beer Store?
It was mentioned yesterday that the Beer Store in Ontario is supposed to be losing money. Well tough cookie! If you follow the bouncing ball of this story, you might be as curious as I, as to how this company can lose money by selling its product: Beer? All we
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Recriminations: We have a few.
At finger-pointing time, politics in Canada slips away into a morass of regrets. Wending your way through the reports on the pandemic, you have little to console yourself. We think of our politicians as the bickering class. There has got to be a light somewhere down damn dark tunnel. What
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Canute-like Kenney confronts Canadians.
In the supposedly moralistic story of King Canute of the North Sea Empire, Canute was demonstrating that even a king could not control the tides. It is somewhat strange that premier Jason Kenney of Alberta never paid attention to this story when in grade school. Instead, Kenney challenges the facts
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Locked down or locked up?
It feels like being kept after school because some one else broke the rules. It feels like a piling on of detentions. Now premier Doug Ford has added another four weeks of lock-down for the entire damn province. It never would have happened if the jerk had known what to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Picture That.
Ontario premier Ford likes to bring some back-up when he is doing a Covid-19 presentation. It was a surprise last weekend when one of the smirking faces in the conservative back-up was that of Brampton mayor Patrick Brown. Oh, how well we know that weaselly countenance. He was even wearing
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Billions to nowhere.
It seems strange to have a provincial budget that spends close to $200 billion in the coming year and ignores the most vulnerable among us. It is a budget that will increase the provincial debt by about $33 billion and raises no taxes. You have to remember that this is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Kenney sugar coats dishonesty.
We get lots of promotional stuff in our Internet in-boxes. It usually only takes a second to click on the little garbage-can icon. But the other day, with my finger hovering, I took a minute to think about one of them. This promotion was by the Canadian Energy Centre—better known
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Befuddled Bureaucracy.
It happened this past weekend. The Ontario government bureaucracy lost me. I was due for my second shot of the Pfizer vaccine. Since the first shot had no adverse effects, I was looking forward to the capping shot. While it is still a matter of four to six months to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Some advice to Ontario politicians.
This is important. If you think of ending separate schools, do not do it to save money. First of all, you are not going to save anywhere near one and a half billion. It will probably cost more because the real need is to end all faith-based and private education
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Not your father’s Tories.
This has probably been said before but it bears repeating. I used to know conservatives that I liked. Not that I would ever vote conservative but these were actually likeable people. I lived next door to a member of the provincial conservative cabinet. He was a good neighbour. I always
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Do we give Del Duca a chance?
Having never met Ontario liberal leader Steven Del Duca, I have not had much on which to base an opinion. All I know is that he never impressed me much in Kathleen Wynne’s cabinet. As transportation minister, he stuck his foot in it when he appeared to be pushing Metrolinx
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Feeling the sting of Ford.
It reminds me of the story of the dog and the scorpion. “It’s my nature,” explains the scorpion before they both drown. In Ontario, we are seeing the nature of premier Doug Ford that is taking Ontario into a corrupt past. In the same way as Donald Trump found to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: When is Day One of this plan?
It is sad to admit that I am not overly enthusiastic about the Ontario NDP’s environmental plans for 2035. Most people tend to be skeptical of plans for when they are in their 90s. Those of us who realize we are getting older every day, tend to be more interested
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Uneasy sit the bums at Ford’s cabinet table.
That is a tough one. The quote from Shakespeare is something about ‘Uneasy hangs the head that wears the Crown.’ It just seems even better when you are referring to the bums that sit around the cabinet tables of scary martinets. And, of course, we are talking about their anatomical
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