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Strategic Voting in Don Valley West
The constituency (riding) of Don Valley West is a rectangular slice of suburban Toronto containing 100,000 people in 30 square kilometers. It includes some of the richest and most famous (Drake) as well as many recent immigrants; only 55 percent of its population speaks English at home. An economist would note the vast disparity between…
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Ontario Election: A Whole New Ball Game
The delay in the imposition of U.S. tariffs by at least 30 days, that is March 4 or later, dramatically changes the Ontario election campaign. Doug Ford will not be directing Ontario’s response to tariffs. He won’t be able to do photo ops in front on empty shelves at the LCBO or shut-down production lines…
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Emperor Donald I
When Justin Trudeau had dinner with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago last November, Trump asked what the impact of tariffs would be. Speaking as an ally and a friend, naively it now appears, Trudeau said they would have a severe impact on the Canadian economy. Since that dinner, Canadian governments have responded to Trump’s original complaint…
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Pickering: The Airport that Never Was
Last week Transport Minister Anita Anand announced that the land the federal government expropriated half a century ago in Pickering, northeast of Toronto, for a second Toronto international airport would be transferred to Parks Canada to expand Rouge National Urban Park. With the news cycle dominated by the Trump tariffs, Liberal leadership campaign, and Ontario…
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Doug Ford: All Hat, No Cattle
It’s no secret that Doug Ford has been planning to call an early election for some months. That would explain, among other things, the $200 per person handout to Ontario taxpayers due to arrive this month. But he has decided to use President Trump’s tariff threat to justify the election. In effect, he is trying…
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Greed is Back
Listening to Donald Trump’s inaugural address as a Canadian, indeed as one of the more than 95 percent of humanity who are not U.S. citizens, I was reminded of the iconic “Greed is good” speech in the movie Wall Street. To quote from its peroration “Greed works, greed is right. … and greed, mark my…
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Ontario’s Kafkaesque Freedom of Information Regime
This post is coauthored with Elsa Lam, Editor of Canadian Architect, so we refer to ourselves jointly in the plural and individually in the third person. Sir Humphrey Appleby, the fictional senior public servant in the iconic satire Yes Minister knew that one of the best ways to hide embarrassing information was to bury it…
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Auschwitz, Third Time
The third time I encountered Auschwitz was at the exhibition Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away that opened at the Royal Ontario Museum on January 10 and that will be there until September 1. It was developed by the Spanish exhibition producers Musealia, using a variety of sources, most notably the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.…
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Speaking to Americans
When Justin Trudeau resigned, I was invited to contribute a post on a college classmate’s blog, explaining why and what would be the implications for the US. The classmate, Peter Sage, had a distinguished career in public service and investment advising, now operates a family farm and winery, and still has time to write a…
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Churchill at War: A Docudramentary
One of my holiday entertainments was the new Netflix docudramentary four-part series Churchill At War. What is a docudramentary, you ask? It is a mixture of documentary and docudrama. As a documentary it employs archival footage and talking heads with varying degrees of expertise about Churchill and World War II, its chronological focus. It is…
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Why Government Budgeting Has Gotten So Hard
The part of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s resignation letter that most resonated with me was her declaration about the importance of “keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war. That means eschewing costly political gimmicks we can ill afford, and which make Canadians doubt…
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Ontario, Canada: Your Junior Partner?
A week ago, the Government of Ontario began an ad campaign in the US. It was planned in anticipation of a new administration and is not an explicit response to President-elect Trump’s (in)famous tariff threat. As I mentioned in my previous post, a government that spent $105 million on feel-good ads about itself for Ontarians…
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Ford to Auditor-General: Drop Dead
In 1975, the City of New York was on the verge of bankruptcy, but President Gerald Ford refused to consider a bailout. The New York Daily News summarized the situation with a famous headline: Ford to City: Drop Dead. Yesterday, the Ontario Auditor-General released a report that, among other things, was scathing in its criticism…
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How to Bias a Budget Survey
I just completed the Ford Government’s latest online budget consultation survey. I discovered it when I was looking at the government’s fall economic statement, which includes the $200 demogrant I discussed in my blog post two weeks ago. My conclusion after completing the survey is that the government has slanted it to enhance support for…
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Death by a Thousand “Efficiencies”
Conservative populist parties have a real hate on for universities, for two reasons. The one that has received the most attention is that university faculty tend to be liberal and support liberal causes such as diversity, equity, and inclusion and what disparagingly is called wokeness. The second, which I think is more fundamental, is that…
- I am Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto, having retired in July 2020 after a 45-year academic career.
- My latest book, Public Representations: Screen Stories, Narrative, and the Public Sphere, co-authored with Beth Herst, was published in April 2026 by University of Toronto Press (open access).
- On this website I post blogs about politics, narrative, and my life experiences.
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