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Testing Harper’s Conjecture
After winning a majority in the 2011 federal election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper conjectured that federal politics would eventually become a two-party system composed of a centre-right party (the Conservative Party of Canada) and a centre-left party (likely the NDP) and the Conservatives would win roughly three of every four elections. Harper’s reasoning was that…
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Academic Festival
Cue up the Brahms, please. Academics have been my major focus this week, with Convocation (aka Commencement in the US) for the University of Toronto at Scarborough (UTSC) Management Department on Monday and the department’s end-of-year luncheon on Wednesday. Between these events, I read Henry Rosovsky’s 1990 memoir and guidebook, The University: An Owner’s Manual.…
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Dale Eisler Explains Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is often on my mind. In graduate school I wrote economics papers about the settling of western Canada which, along with an evocative print of a prairie town, were the topic of a post last summer. In the Nineties, I co-authored a book about public management with Allan Blakeney, who served as Saskatchewan’s premier…
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Learning to Like Olivia Chow
My most recent blog post about the Toronto mayoral by-election concluded with a pessimistic assessment of Olivia Chow’s chances. But she is now the clear front-runner in the polls, with a lead of 10 or 15 percent over her closest rival, former Chief of Police Mark Saunders. As part of a rethink, I watched the…
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Marc Lalonde’s Grace Under Pressure
Hemingway defined courage as grace under pressure and JFK famously quoted him. Marc Lalonde showed that kind of political courage in a crisis when Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet, and indeed Canada’s survival as a nation, were under great pressure. With Lalonde’s recent passing, I think it is important to remember the crisis and Lalonde’s role in…
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Canadian Cinema’s Answer to The Social Network?
I just saw an advance screening of the Canadian film BlackBerry, hosted by the Rotman School of Management. To prepare for the film, I spent the day reading Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s 2015 book Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of BlackBerry, from which the movie is loosely adapted. My assessments of…
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Fighting Therme Group’s Toronto Spa
Yesterday The Globe and Mail published my critique of the contracting process for Therme Group’s proposed spa at Ontario place, comparing it to the flawed privatization process for Highway 407. Today, The Star published privatization critic Linda McQuaig’s critique of the spa. She, too, discusses Highway 407. She also deals with the spa’s business model…
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Toronto’s Mayor: Fear Unites, Hope Divides
Toronto’s on my mind. First, I’m joining the debate about the Ontario Science Centre and Ontario Place with an op-ed to appear in The Globe and Mail. When it does, I’ll link it to this blog. I’m also watching the mayoral by-election. The Mainstreet Research poll conducted in mid-April gave Councillor Josh Matlow 18 percent…
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From Smooth Operator to Prof with Backstory
Varian Fry was an American journalist who led a rescue network that helped over 2000 Jewish and anti-Nazi refugees, among them many preeminent artists and intellectuals, escape Vichy France. Based in Marseilles in 1940 and 1941, Fry did this at great personal risk. His story is reasonably well-known, having been the subject of several books,…
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A Modest Proposal: Convert Queen’s Park to Housing
As part of what it called in the 2023 budget “bold, transformative action to get 1.5 million homes built by 2031,” the Ford Government is rezoning parts of the Greenbelt and converting the Ontario Science Centre site to housing. Let’s take even bolder and more transformative action by redeveloping all 50 acres of the Queen’s…
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A “Wrecking Crew” of Fabulous Musicians
Looking at the dozen recent posts listed on my website, I see a pattern. Most of them are about the depressing political realities in Toronto and Ontario: the Ford Government’s apparently successful brand of Scott Walker Republicanism, the City of Toronto’s mayoral campaign that might be following the same script, and the invasion of monster…
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Will Brad(Ford) Own the Libs?
In the aftermath of John Tory’s resignation as Mayor of Toronto, I predicted that Doug Ford and his entourage would identify and covertly support a single candidate who represents Ford Nation values and that, in contrast, numerous progressive candidates would run, thereby splitting the progressive vote. A week after the opening date for candidates to…
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Deconstructing the Ford Government Budget
Contemporary government budgets are challenging to deconstruct for several reasons. Their tone is invariably upbeat and enthusiastic. They are financially complicated, involving numerous line items on both the expenditure and revenue sides, discrepancies between previous forecasts and current results, and complex calculations of forecasts for future years. They are enormously detailed, involving hundreds of existing…
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The Way We Live Now
The Way we Live Now, an 1875 novel by the English writer Anthony Trollope, condemned the overweening ambition and corruption of the nouveaux riches of Victorian England. It’s an appropriate title for this post, which follows my recent post about how the one-sided Committee of Adjustment process facilitates the construction of monster homes. Using the…
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My Globe and Mail Op-ed Just Published
Today, The Globe and Mail published my op-ed about the Ontario Government’s budget consultation survey. The article is behind a paywall, so this link to it only works if you are already a subscriber. If you aren’t a subscriber but want to read it, please email me and I will email the link to you,…
- I am Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto, having retired in July 2020 after a 45-year academic career.
- I continue to be engaged in research, writing, and giving professional presentations. With my co-author and spouse Beth Herst, I am completing a book on narrative and politics.
- On this website I post blogs about politics, narrative, and my life experiences.
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