Doing the cha-cha with Mike Harris.
Get into the rhythm folks. It is one-two, one-two-three when you do the Chartwell Chair cha-cha with former Ontario premier Mike Harris. If you have a mother-in-law you hate, convince…
Provincial Politics
B.S. for the Beer Store.
You wonder sometimes if anyone is ever going to tell the truth about Ontario’s Beer Store. For more than 90 years, this restrictive system of selling beer has been foisted…
Ghosts of Pandemics.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…