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Ontario’s Auto-Maniacal Budget
Government budgets must be understood incrementally. Well over 90 percent of last year’s spending will be repeated this year. The thing to look for is changes at the margin, because they reflect shifting government priorities. This is especially true for an election budget such as this. The budget’s title – Ontario’s Plan to Build –…
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Remembering Andy Graham
I get the print edition of The Globe and Mail on Saturdays, and the first part I read is the lengthy obituary section. I’m interested in some of the life stories, but apprehensive about seeing a name I know, especially if it is unexpected. I was shocked and saddened last Saturday to read of the…
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Fighting Ford on Handouts and Secrecy
I’ve posted two new election messages on YouTube. The first attacks the Ford Government’s abolition of licence plate fees with the “billion-dollar hole in the budget” and “driving is a privilege, not a right” arguments. I suggest using the money for social change, not private consumption. The social change I want is the defeat of…
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Getting My Political Message Out
I’ve done it. I’ve launched my YouTube channel and I’ve posted three political messages. They are all minute-long attacks on the Ford Government, my own attack ads. It’s a start. The first criticizes Ford’s environmental record. The second criticizes the Ford Government’s record on science and research. The third criticizes the Ford Government’s authoritarianism, its…
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The Empire Club – A PC Party Stage
As I foreshadowed in my recent post about the licence plate refunds, Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy spoke at The Empire Club of Canada yesterday. The speech was entirely political. Bethlenfalvy started by discussing why he recently got into politics, which led into a comprehensive attack on the Wynne Government. After completing his attack, he…
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Remembering Masahiro Horie
A decade ago I was reading an article in The New York Times about the Japanese Government’s attempts to avert a meltdown of the reactors in the tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant. One of the experts quoted was Masahiro Horie, then dean of international affairs at Japan’s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS). The name…
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Getting and Spending the Refund Cheque
When I wrote my blog post about the Ontario licence plate fee refund, the cheque was in the mail. Last Monday it arrived. Studying it carefully revealed a few things about how this goodie was implemented. Doing the Math The covering letter says that the “cheque refunds your licence plate renewal fees from March 2020…
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Selling Your Vote? Ford’s Buying
One of the major pre-election goodies the Ford Government has recently rolled out is free auto licence plate renewals, which will save drivers in southern Ontario an annual fee of $120 (and drivers in northern Ontario $60) and cost the Treasury approximately $1 billion. There is more than meets the eye here. How it Works…
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Learning Spanish Painlessly
I confess to spending too much of my time doom-scrolling, but there is so much to doom-scroll about: the pandemic, then the trucker protest, and now the war in Ukraine. And my blogs are often an extension of my doom-scrolling, attempting to come to terms with the bad news by trying to look behind the…
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Russian Exposure
When I taught public management, I always devoted a session to crisis management, which gave me an opportunity to concoct a plausible military, economic, environmental, or epidemiological crisis scenario. When the Eurozone seemed on the brink of dissolution, I imagined that Spain announced on New Year’s Eve that it was leaving, creating its own currency…
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Rigoletto in a Time of War
In a time of crisis and war, I often feel compelled to blog about the stories making headlines. I’ve written several posts about the Freedom Convoy, whose fifteen minutes are now up. The Ukraine war will be with us for as long as it takes the Russians to pound Ukrainian cities into submission or the…
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Putin, Time’s Up
Whatever the eventual military outcome, the invasion of Ukraine is a disaster for Russia. It has already incurred substantial military losses. If the Russians conquer the Ukrainian cities, the cost of holding them will escalate, with a guerilla/resistance movement continuing to fight using an abundant supply of arms from the EU and NATO countries. Ukraine…
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Doug Ford’s Latest Election Ad
The Ontario election is just over three months away and the campaign hasn’t officially started. But Doug Ford has already started advertising. You won’t see his name or the PC Party on the ad, but it walks and talks like an election ad. It is titled “Ontario is Getting Stronger” and it is being shown…
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At the Primal Scene
A late middle-aged mom is having tea with her adult daughter in the parents’ living room. We glimpse the father for a second, walking awkwardly. The daughter asks, “what’s wrong with dad?” The mom replies, “he threw his back out yesterday.” “I think it’s time you and dad moved to a smaller place. I bet…
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The Awesome Weapons of Office
The legendary Canadian documentarist Donald Brittain referred to the election of the Parti Quebecois in 1976 as giving Rene Levesque “the awesome weapons of office.” That phrase comes to mind today. The invoking of the Emergencies Act is intended to give the federal government additional weapons of office to end the insurrection in Ottawa. Does…
- 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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