TORONTO — In a surprise, and potentially brilliant move, Toronto Maple Leafs’ General Manager Brian Burke announced today he was trading the entire Leafs squad for Buffalo Sabres’ goaltender Ryan Miller and two first-round draft choices. Although this would leave the Leafs with just one player to finish out the season, Burke felt it […]
TORONTO — Increasingly, there are three things I dislike about our modern mainstream news media. First, is the growing penchant to create scandal where none exists. Second, is the ubiquitous assumption that audiences are stupid. Third, is the mounting evidence that maybe we are.
Who needs a real scandal when we can make […]
TORONTO — Canada’s media are all aflutter over whether the country’s Own the Podium campaign was too… unCanadian. Some media pundits have suggested that:
a. the campaign failed because Canada is not going to score more medals than any other nation,
b. the campaign put undue pressure on Canadian athletes to excel, thus compromising […]
TORONTO — Has the sun set on Canada’s Parliament? For years, Canadians have agreed the nation’s Senate was obsolete. Some want it overhauled, others want it abolished outright. That no one could agree on how to fix it has resulted in its languishing, unchanged, for decades. With the recent false furor […]
TORONTO – Friday’s Globe and Mail carries a front page story by Campbell Clark that presents what I believe is the most credible scenario explaining the disconnect in Canada’s Foreign Affairs ministry on the Afghan detainee issue.
While most other journalists have concentrated on titillating “he said, she said” stories playing up every minuscule difference of […]
TORONTO – Just in case you missed it, dear Coffee readers, Toronto’s lame duck mayor David Miller has launched a class-action slander at the Copenhagen Climate Shindig. Claiming to speak for “all Canadians” he’s announced how “embarrassed” we are to be Canadians. Not to put too fine a point on it, allow me […]
TORONTO – I have remarked in the past that the only thing that makes Pakistan’s incompetent politicians bearable to the average citizen there, is the sure knowledge the democratically elected legislators are entirely irrelevant to real life in the beleaguered nation. The Army runs the country and the Army, by and large, is competent. […]
TORONTO – Yesterday, Canada’s Prime Minister was publicly rebuked by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao for prioritizing human rights above corporate profits. This bit of laughable political theater in China turned outright bizarre by the time news reached Ottawa, where opposition political leaders dutifully lined up behind the Chinese dictatorship to wag their professorial index […]
TORONTO — Toronto City Council today voted (29-12) to prohibit political donations from corporations and unions. As I discussed in my posting on 25 November, I applaud this decision.
There is no doubt this is the right thing to do. Donations to political campaigns weigh heavily on the outcomes of elections. While each vote is counted […]
TORONTO — Cable TV customers of Canada’s Rogers Communications Inc. will now be able to access their paid TV content through the Rogers web site and view it online. Rogers announced the new online service that further merges the TV and Internet worlds this week, and Coffee learned about it from ITBusiness.ca.
As an update to […]