Conservative Leader Patrick Brown will do anything to get himself elected premier in the next Ontario election. Making blatant use of Ontario’s doctors is just another sleazy tactic for an unprincipled political manipulator. And he is appealing to their greed. Truth and honesty be damned. Brown wants to use a
Continue readingTag: Provincial Politics
Babel-on-the-Bay: For whom the Tolls Toll.
The premier’s office at Queen’s Park in Toronto has many roles. One of those is as a woodshed wherein one disciplines recalcitrant municipal minions who fail to realize that the provincial party in power makes all the rules. There was an awkward bit on a news clip last week of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The more things change…
There has been a reluctance here to comment on the current leadership race for the Alberta Conservatives. It is not as though the outcome does not seem obvious but our best insight into Alberta Conservatism died last year and she is irreplaceable. It has left a serious sinkhole in our
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The proud pomposity of the Toronto Star.
There are few things funnier than a Toronto Star editorial that lambastes the Ontario government for all the wrong reasons. And nothing deflates the pomposity better than getting their facts wrong. We are looking at the Star editorial demanding an end to the proposed increases in community college presidents’ salaries.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Myths of Ontario’s cap-and-trade system.
An associate professor at McGill wrote an interesting op-ed last week in the Toronto Star seeking to answer the four major myths about the Ontario-Quebec cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gasses. The only problem with Christopher Ragan’s column is that most of the myths he attempts to debunk are answered
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Sometimes the answer is in plain sight.
Writing about the problems the Barrie Liberals face in the 2018 provincial election recently, we should have stated the obvious answer. It has been there for the past seven years. The problem is that there will be two electoral districts covering Barrie for the 2018 provincial election. These are identical
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Who is worried about Patrick Brown?
This advice is just for Ontario Progressive Conservatives. They are the ones who need to worry. The reason for this is the statement made last week by Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown’s good friend and campaign chair Walied Soliman. He is reported as saying, “We know that the Liberals are
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Premier Wynne: Colour her gone.
It seems more and more likely that Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Ontario Liberals are on the slippery side of the slope. Nothing says it more emphatically than the situation in which we find ourselves here in Babel. (You know Babel as Barrie, Ontario.) We are less than two years
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Not everyone hates Premier Wynne.
It is too bad that Ontario Premier Wynne has no politically smart advisors or staff. Here it is the first week of 2017 and the foolish lady is deep in the do-do of her own making. By selecting the beginning of January to launch her ill-fated cap and trade program,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Brown’s beliefs bewilder.
After the Legislature of Ontario rose for the holidays there must have been a press gallery gathering to talk about how to handle PC Leader Patrick Brown. The discussion might not have got very far but there must have been general agreement that the socially conservative website LifeSiteNews has a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Happy New Year to Casino Rama.
Many of us have a local pub, restaurant or Legion hall where people know you and make you welcome. We feel that way about our local casino. We have gotten to know many of the staff over the years and they know and welcome us. And we do that knowing
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ontario: The little engine that could in 2017.
There are many versions of “The Little Engine That Could.” There are also various claimed origins of the inspirational children’s story from as far as more than a century past. There are also many adult versions of the theme by many writers, prominent among them (and the most prolific) was
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Who chose who?
It is grating when we read about Ontario politics and a careless reporter refers to Patrick Brown as ‘winning’ the leadership of Ontario’s Conservatives. He hardly won it. It would be the same as saying Donald Trump won the most votes on November 8, 2016. He did not win the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Andrea Horwath, where are you?
We were starting to think of our naughty or nice list for the holiday and realized that we had written nothing about Andrea Horwath for many months. We are talking about the leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party. She has simply been missing from the news. How do you
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The grandstanding of Patrick Brown.
People who prefer to grandstand in politics can be a pain in the ass. There are times when a politician should to take a stand on an issue but that is when you can reason and suggest alternatives to help solve the problem. Our Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition in
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Waiting for your train.
Ontario’s MetroLinx people came to Barrie the other day to talk about planning for the future of the GO Train commuter line to Toronto. The good news is that it is the intent to electrify and twin the line by 2025. The bad news is that it will take that
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Does Wynne cry for liberalism?
Did you hear that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne got all teary at the Liberal Party gathering this past weekend? Not being there, are we to assume these were crocodile tears or tears of frustration? Or were they just a notation on her script saying ‘tears here’? You never know what
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Take no solace in bad governance.
Did you hear that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is staying in her job? We were in Ottawa last week during the bye-election in Ottawa-Vanier. It was no surprise that the Liberal candidate won. These are happy days in Ottawa. The malaise at Queen’s Park appears distant and of little consequence.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It’s the leadership, stupid!
Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star is usually a quite astute observer of Queen’s Park and the political machinations there. What we did not know about him was that he considers himself something of an economist. If he is not an economist, why would he suggest that the Wynne
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The devil is in the details, Ms. Wynne.
The Ontario government’s water torture continues. There has been a reluctance to write about the so-called ‘reforms’ in political fundraising until we knew more of the details. We are still waiting. The Wynne Liberals like to dribble out their giving in to the inevitable over multiple news cycles. And the
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