What is a councillor’s role?
A question was asked of me recently about the appropriateness of the Deputy Mayor being at a meeting last summer to discuss the possible purchase of the new recreational facility…
Provincial Politics
A duplicitous Charles Sousa?
An old friend down in Windsor has posited in a blog that Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa is running a covert campaign for Kathleen Wynne’s job. While it is a…
Do you expect a humbled Hudak?
The Ontario Conservatives’ hapless leader Timmy Hudak is a continuing problem for his caucus and party. Ontario pundits have continued to have their say about him and nobody knows anything…
Marois bares Quebec bigotry.
Bigotry in Quebec has deep roots. In the past week, Quebec Premier Pauline Marois has been testing those roots. Her planned ‘Charter of Quebec Values’ is nothing but a bigot’s…
Will Wynne win with Waitzer?
The confirmation process of Ontario’s provincial government was shown up for how artificial and shallow it is the other day. A lawyer named Ed Waitzer appeared before the Standing Committee…
Ontario’s Sousa is searching for solutions.
It’s a daunting task and we can only hope that Finance Minister Charles Sousa is up to it. He is travelling Ontario searching for solutions to Ontario’s economic malaise. Needless…
Our Tories are troubled tra-la!
When writing about the ‘Dump the Dummy’ campaign among Ontario Conservatives a couple days ago, we could hardly imagine the Tories having any choice. It gives you serious pause though…
Who speaks for Babel?
The question was posed the other day as to whom Ontario Premier Kathleen listens. She is very obviously getting very bad advice. From her first moves in cabinet building to…
Ontario needs a Dalton Camp.
When Dalton Camp died in 2002, Canada lost an intellectual giant and a giant killer. Dalton was always our favourite Conservative. He was fun as a person with whom to…
Ford wins one for the PCs.
If you look at the positions of the three principal parties in the Ontario Legislature as an interminable game of Go, you would recognize that only New Democrat Leader Andrea…
Is it Hudak-Ford or Ford-Hudak?
The Ontario Legislature feeds on the politics of Ontario municipalities. You have to get under the skin of a number of key municipal politicians before you can fathom the directions…
Wynne whistles for by-election wins.
Wishing for it might not do the trick for Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. She desperately needs to win at least three of the five by-elections in Ontario this Thursday. That…
Helping hold on to Hudak.
You realize of course that any win for the Conservatives in these five current by-elections in Ontario is just going to encourage Conservative leader Tiny Tim Hudak. Is that fair?…
Casting runes in the heat of summer.
Political polling has never been an exact science. It has always required an overview of common sense, mathematical probability, historical data, statistical smoothing and wishful thinking. Then, and only then,…
Political donations do ads for Whigs.
An e-mail came from the Ontario Liberal Party the other day. It was from Deb Matthews and Tim Murphy, campaign co-chairs for Wynne’s Whigs. This e-mail explained that since becoming…
Casinos redux
First let’s clarify the terms. A “casino” was never really in the discussion, although just about everyone used that term. What the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (OLG) offered was…
Giambrone rises for Scarborough by-election.
It was good for a bit of a belly laugh the other day watching the television news. It was about one of the upcoming provincial by-elections in Toronto. Lo and…
Troilus and Cressida
I’ve always found Troilus and Cressida a difficult play. The characters all seem jaded, cynical, opportunistic, stuffily sanctimonious, lecherous or simply underhanded. Some are merely unpleasant, others are despicable, reprehensible.…
Wynne’s Whigs deny democracy.
It is probably the most anti-democratic news out of Queen’s Park since Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty quit and prorogued the Legislature last year. It was bad enough that Premier Kathleen…
The bother of bitumen.
It should be made clear: bitumen is not oil. Distilled, bitumen becomes asphalt pitch, refined it can become synthetic oil. Bitumen is not ‘heavy oil’ and it is a lengthy,…