You do know, do you not, that in a time of pandemic, prime minister Justin Trudeau is quietly building an abomination of a pipeline across our magnificent Rocky Mountains. There is no excuse for this. It can hardly be to please those climate change-deniers in Alberta. They will hate the
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Babel-on-the-Bay: When our world is on hold.
Every morning when waking up to this pandemic, I challenge myself to remember what day it is. I never realized how confining a person to their home could be so cruel. I work hard at keeping alert and interested in our world. Some days the newspaper crossword is a challenge
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It’s not Christmas in May!
How many times now have we seen prime minister Justin Trudeau pop out of Rideau Cottage with another package worth billions to offer succor to this group of Canadians or that? When asked about seniors, he just said, “They’re coming.” Well, he brought forward what they are doing for seniors
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
It is part of being of the political elite. We have no royals like the Brits. And we have little of America’s Hollywood. We have to settle for talking and speculating about our politicians. We put them on pedestals and then complain when they take advantage of their position to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trudeau’s triumph.
Fess up, guys, Justin Trudeau has won. The wonder kid has changed his spots and been exactly what Canadians have needed. Santa Claus came early this year. Even Bob Hepburn of the Toronto Star says that the Trudeau haters have been proved wrong. While I pointed out a while ago
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It’s all about politics.
There was a suggestion in the news the other day that few of us are interested in politics at this time. The assumption was that the coronavirus has chased politics out of the driver’s seat of the daily news. In my humble opinion, that is just so much twaddle. The
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Justin’s magic bag of money.
Watching the daily news conference by the prime minister the other morning, I lost track of how much money he was promising. No doubt our news media people are keeping track. I was struck by the similarity to an election campaign without the opposition critics jumping on every announcement—to either
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The populism of the coronavirus.
We live in an age of populist political solutions but we never expected to have to deal with a populist pandemic. The problem is that a populism pandemic is blind. It strikes the rich and powerful one per cent as easily as the person in poverty. It can kill the
Continue readingNorthern Currents: Trudeau’s wage subsidy should have been the first to roll out, not the last
Share this: The new Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy is a brand new program created by the Liberal Party of Canada that would provide 75% of a workers wage to workers who have had significant cuts in hours due to the current Covid 19 crisis. Originally planned to be a 10%
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Lucking into leadership laurels.
You hardly need to check with pollsters to know that prime minister Justin Trudeau has aced it. He is getting lots of positive votes for his leadership in this time of crisis. You even talk to known conservatives and some of them tell you what a good job he is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Paying for Jobs?
After careful study over the past few days, listening to the ideas of others and comparing the programs, I have decided that it is all a terrible waste. The federal government’s big billion bailout for Canadian business is money down the drain. We can do much better. First of all,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Checking with the Cuckoo Clock.
We have a pattern emerging. Every day at 11 am Eastern, we are now tuning into a news channel or live streaming CPAC on the Internet. The opening shot, is of the front door of Rideau Cottage, on the grounds of Rideau Hall in Ottawa. There is often a wait
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trudeau is in the catbird seat.
Canadians have never seen anyone so well positioned at the moment than prime minister Justin Trudeau. Popping in an out of Rideau Cottage like a cuckoo in a clock, the PM has the stage to himself. The news media await him. In his self-imposed isolation and working from home, to
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Coronavirus: Facts, Anyone?
Perspective is helpful, and critical. Panic is not. Consider the figures: Japan: Just under 5,000 deaths per year from bathtub drownings; just over 5,000 deaths per year from traffic accidents; 27 deaths from coronavirus, as of March 16 Italy: 3,300 deaths from traffic accidents per year 2,158 deaths
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Riding the bubble.
It helps if you think of the main aspirants for the federal conservative party leadership as Bland, Blander and Who(?) This perception was highlighted the other day. It seems one of them promised—if chosen—that they would immediately try to force an election to rid the country of those despicable liberals.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Where have all the leaders gone?
You get the feeling that we are talking about a ghost. Everybody is looking for leadership. Nobody has seen it. Talking to a friend about it, he said the problem is that there are too many rowboat people and not enough canoeists. He explained it as most people row a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The gravitas of Justin Trudeau.
You do know that prime minister Justin Trudeau used to teach drama, do you not? Given the holiday time he had with family in the Caribbean over Christmas, he had time to work on both the new beard and demeanour. This is supposed to be a new Justin we are
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: When do we get back to the environment?
Between Mr. Trump’s tantrums, the concerns over Meghan and Harry and the disaster in Iran, the prime minister is not getting much done about the environment. And why would we ever be satisfied with just getting to a net-zero emissions target? Net-zero emissions is not a target, it is a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The grief of greed.
Many people share the blame for the shooting down of Ukraine International Airline Flight 752 over Iran. It is not the first time a civilian airliner has been brought down while carrying out its business. But what business, other than greed, takes a civilian airliner into a threatening war zone.
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