Watching the news conference events last week at Toronto’s Liberty Village, you could not help but note what a modern setting it would be for a wedding. This must have been just a rehearsal though as Premier Kathleen Wynne and Finance Minister Charles Sousa delivered their promises. They even had
Continue readingTag: Provincial Politics
Babel-on-the-Bay: You can call it a ‘Wynne Win.’
Ontario’s political pundits are all running with scissors these days forecasting the resignation of Premier Kathleen Wynne. Quite properly, she is scoffing at these rumours and promising to carry on. It could be the death knell of the Liberal’s dynasty of the last 14 years. But is it? In a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trump’s ‘Milk of Human Kindness.’
“Once again unto the breach” (sorry Mr. Shakespeare) President Trump jumps into a situation of which he has absolutely no understanding. He is making a habit of it and this time he is trying to skewer the Canadians. He has pitted the free market, unfettered Wisconsin dairy farmers against what
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
William Shakespeare is a writer for most human experience. You could not help but think of that line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream the other day reading a commentary on guaranteed basic income. Who the writer was is not important. The approach was serious. He wrote of a guaranteed basic
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The bafflement of blow-hard Brown.
It is probably for the best that the Ontario Progressive Conservatives have a schlemiel such as Patrick Brown as their leader. They will be relieved when he goes. And here is the poor guy trying to explain the difference between carbon taxes and Cap and Trade to a political party
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Morning Line: B.C. Provincial Election – May 2017.
This morning line is not up to our usual standards. We simply lack the complete information needed to assess the public mood. All we can do is provide a baseline for betting based on what stats and performances are available. And there is no getting around the fact that B.C.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: When in doubt do nothing.
Is this the new political mantra? At all levels of government, we are seeing variations of stalactites and stalagmites frozen in their political positions as the world revolves around their caves. From their superior position hanging down from above, the stalactites in Ottawa are the most obvious. With the government
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Did April Fool come early this year?
We read in the Toronto Star the other day about some ‘go-bold’ re-election strategy being used by Premier Kathleen Wynne. We practically wet our pants laughing until we realized the item was written by Bob Hepburn. Bob has always been a quite astute observer of things political for the Star
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The silliness of slagging Sorbara.
This could have run Wednesday but there is really no point in running more than one commentary per day. The problem here is that it does not matter if someone has managed war rooms or washrooms there is absolutely no point to slagging former Liberal MPP Greg Sorbara for telling
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Kenney is running on ‘Empty.’
The new and unsurprising leader of the Alberta Conservatives is taking a trip to nowhere. He tells Albertans he is there to unite the right but there are two rights and those two rights do not necessarily make a new right or even a better right. And neither of the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Branding the PC’s Patrick Brown.
The Ontario Progressive Conservatives are trying to sell Patrick Brown. Since few Ontario voters know the Conservative Leader, they think it is important to introduce him. They call a recent series of YouTube ads, ‘Brand Brown.’ Mind you they want to paint him as something other than we know him
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: What will an Ontario pilot prove?
The possible acceptance of a pilot project in Ontario of the idea of government providing a basic guaranteed income to its citizens is long overdue. There have been previous pilots—opened with great ballyhoo and then quietly dropped when the political will failed us. But like all such pilots, they are
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Could Chantal Hébert be so diabolical?
Is it whimsy or a diabolical intent? Is Toronto Star political guru Chantal Hébert really that devious? She recently proposed that Rona Ambrose, the federal interim leader for the Conservatives as the ideal person to step in and take over the reins of the combined provincial Conservatives in Alberta. That
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A liberal look at leadership.
Ontario Liberals are finally realizing that there is a problem at Queen’s Park. It appears to be endemic. It affects every political party on the premises. It is the serious lack of leadership. Even the Liberal Party backbenchers are drawing lots to see who will be the Cassius who drives
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ontario is billing it forward.
If you have heard of paying it forward, you should have no problem with the concept of billing something forward. It is the reverse of paying it forward. It is when you take a bill, you had put off for tomorrow and you stick it in a drawer to pay
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Brown and Kenney: Contemporary Conservatives.
Conservative Leader Patrick Brown in Ontario and his friend Jason Kenney who is considered the front-runner in the race for the Alberta Conservative party leadership are surprisingly similar. They both lack political scruples, their lives are dedicated to their ambitions and they are not about to let anything stand in
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Repeating Ontario’s Train Wreck.
You sometimes wonder about politicians who get in trouble and keep going back to the guru’s who helped get them into trouble in the first place. It is like having a train wreck and continuing to send locomotives down that same track, hoping one of the locomotives will make it.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Is that Mainstreet or Elm Street?
Having started out as a young man writing scripts for telephone co-incidental research, we are not about to easily buy into Interactive Voice Response (IVR) polling. This is mentioned in that some recent political polls in Alberta and B.C. have the politicos excited. The polls were done with IVR by
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Nobody gives a damn about English.
It is only when you note the time and money devoted to preserving the French language in different parts of the world, that you start to wonder. Is the English language so pervasive that nobody worries about it? Only the dictionary publishers seem to have a vested interest so they
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Where are Ontario politics headed?
There have been some political polls in Ontario recently that have caused a buzz in the news media. If the media had just checked back to before the last provincial election, they would have seen a similar pattern in the public preferences a year before that election. It certainly supports
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