@Sheila_Copps

Not sure which election you are watching. The Liberals are winning in double digits. Not bad for a party this is supposed to be 20 points behind on the national polls. https://x.com/Sheila_Copps/status/1805439460110135640

One of the truly wonderful things about X is its ability to capture the privileged in full regalia, exercising their entitlement in real time. For this purpose no one struts quite like Sheila Copps, the Madame Lafarge of the Liberals’ Sponsorship Scandal, the disaster that reduced her party to such a low estate that only pusillanimous Justin Trudeau could be their saviour.

Ms. Copps was tossing around cringeworthy headlines Monday night/ Tuesday morning concerning the by-election in Toronto St. Paul’s riding. Reading them (“If Coppsy says it’s over, it’s over”) we went to bed thinking her insider PMO candidate Leslie Church had eked out a small but necessary plurality.

Only to wake up to the former deputy PM wiping free-range egg from her face as the Conservatives stole this bedrock riding. And while Ms. Copps tried to play the Libs as a plucky underdog, the party HQ threw everything and everyone into the riding to rescue them from Justin Trudeau hate. It wasn’t enough. In fact, their desperation worked against them.  Door-front canvassing was hazardous as the Forest Hill set, apprised of new capital-gains taxes, told cabinet ministers and other party hacks they’d rather boil in a Tim’s Dark Roast than support Sinbad the Black Face PM anymore.

While Copps spluttered about how fate was against Liberals, she couldn’t blame low turnout. A 45 percent turnout for a by-election in central Toronto, where a drive to the corner store can take 30 minutes in YYZ gridlock, is decisive. Which leaves the Liberal Party as currently constituted under Genocide Man in a bad place. Or, more accurately, no place.

The paid scribes at CBC tried to soften the blow. “The Liberals’ poor showing in a stronghold like this could prompt some soul-searching for Trudeau..” Could prompt? Some soul searching? That’s like saying Napoleon is having second thoughts about invading Russia. The CBC writers acted like he’d gotten a speeding ticket, not a ticket to political oblivion. Or to the WEF, his true constituency.

As many have noted, the only one thinking that Trudeau should stay is Trudeau himself. His teenaged angst thing doesn’t allow for contradiction. Except it’s not his call anymore after St. Pauls. If the hollowed-out Libs can find anyone willing to do the Kim Campbell Caretaker To Disaster role, they should change the locks on the PMO now.

Bespoke banker to the privileged Mark Carney is the name they mention, because he combines Liberal arrogance with taste for the Green Apocalypse. But current backbench MPs trying to stretch the writ till their pensions are assured and those who want Senate jobs after the collapse aren’t likely to pop their heads up with any risky ideas.

The Freeland-led Cabinet, which currently resembles the faculty lounge at a third-rate community college, is widely despised and as unelectable as a rabbi in Gaza. Sad. It all seems just days ago when the Laurentian elite in St. Paul’s was soaking up Sunny Ways policies like Diversity Is Strength as if handed down from the Oracle.

In the overlap from Stephen Harper, when all things could be blamed on The Prince of PMO Darkness, the niggling lapses like Justy as Calypso King or firing his indigenous female Minister of Justice could be blithely dismissed. The RCMP were diverted. When Blame the Harp was gone, he morphed into Justin the Terrible, a full-blooded caudillo arresting truckers and shutting down society for vaccines. He was now a titan of moral authority hiding under his desk from working people.

His vaunted immigration project (“Do I hear 40 million?”) dovetailed nicely with his distaste for traditional Canadians like truckers and farmers who live without private jets. When multi-generational Canadians protested about the housing bubble this created he staged a cemetery photo op to tell the world that his constituency is genocidal. The hubris was epic.

But in time it all caught up to him. His Prince of Araby mask was ripped off, and the facts of his turpitude finally became undeniable. His ultimate failing was probably the Diversity Dance, which postulated that he could import millions into the nation, allow them free rein on religion and culture, and house them in tiny houses. The bar was low, but the pomposity was high.

This Skippy scam was based the great liberal pathetic fallacy. By extending reason and understanding to people who want neither you will bring them around to your thinking. And voting for you. You need gullibility to believe this stuff. Luckily for Trudeau he had the purchased media to make this sound like a good idea.

But all good things must end. People who worshipped Diversity eventually realized it separated people and fractured Canadian society. Instead of uniting Canadians behind shared goals it perpetuated grievances, creating a victimization pecking order, each complaint more pathetic than the last. It caught up to him in St. Paul’s.

One other satisfying element from St. Paul’s was the inability of Trudeau’s common-law political partner Jagmeet Singh to exploit the antipathy to Trudeau. The NDP live in permanent hope that a Liberal crater represents their chance to seize the political middle. But Singh’s Uriah Heap performance in propping up Trudeau’s ethics breaches and suspected illegalities isn’t fooling anyone. Least of all the fashionista lefties of Forest Hill or Yonge & Eglinton.

If the humiliation from St. Paul’s riding was poison for Trudeau and the Libs then it was worse for Singh and the Deepers. A new day is coming. Unlike climate change it will get here soon.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

It’s not often that we get new traditions every day in the NHL playoffs. We’re used to octopus on the ice. Plastic rats, too. Ron Maclean using obscure Blue Rodeo lyrics to explain the icing rule. But now there is a new tradition, unlike another.

Bitching about betting ads during the broadcasts of games. Get any group of plus-50s fans together to talk about the playoffs and you’re guaranteed to hear a volley of complaints about the incursion of gambling commercials now peppering the HNIC playlist. Or, for that matter, the TBS hockey playlist in the U.S.

The grievances range from the interference in the play (“I just want to watch a game, not a pitch for the over/ under on Stu Skinner goals-against”) to corruption of youth (“We are teaching a generation of young people that gambling is okay”). Some are annoyed by the presence of Connor McDavid who has morphed from a punchline in Wayne Gretzky’s gambling resumé to a serious dude warning kids about responsible gambling.

The reliance on advertising from casinos and gambling sites is a swift jolt for sports broadcasters who clearly see a golden goose and are not going to let it get away. As we’ve said before, we have yet to have a signature funny commercial for gambling that takes it mainstream. Right now, in Canada particularly, the quality of ads is lame.

But. Let’s discuss the “corrupting youth” argument that seems to be the loudest voice from non-gamblers. As we discussed in the Shohei Ohtani case, gambling— in the form of betting, fantasy sports, office pools, pick-a-square etc.— has been a vast underground source of gambling that the abolitionists ignored for decades. Legalizing it has removed much of this action from the grip of organized crime. As Ohtani’s case showed, the sunlight of public betting allows for (mostly) better monitoring.

As well, the leagues don’t share in the betting revenues, removing any question about the integrity off the outcome. They do promote betting sites and casinos where betting takes place. But the earnings from that belongs to others, not the leagues.

Second, the generations of pecksniffs deploring these ads have watched ads for alcohol on sports broadcasts for decades. In case you’ve been on Mars, alcohol is highly addictive and a drain on society’s healthcare resources. Yet none of them made a puritanical peep about protecting youth from ads for beer that financed HNIC for 50 years. Consistency in this griping would be nice.

Third, there is a fundamental misunderstanding about gambling that most of the opponents miss. Yes, the money is staggering. It has brought to pro sports league revenues so they can pay NFL QBs $50 million a year. With the threat of regional cable broadcasting— and its revenues— collapsing in North America, a new source of profits is imperative.

It also favours the house. Winning 57-58 percent of your bets is considered excellent. But here’s something no one talks about. Recreational gambling is an answer to the problems created by bloated leagues of 30-plus teams. The chances of your favourite team winning the Stanley Cup or Super Bowl have shrunk to microscopic in most cases. As we pointed out in our 2021 book Cap In Hand, the pressure of salary caps has led organizations to adopt either a “we’ll go for it” stance for a “tank for a top pick” approach.

What used to be a healthy middle class in leagues— fifteenth place—is now a ghost town as teams either rise our fall accord to their title hopes. Trading deadlines midway through a season allow teams to dump big contracts or gather depth for a playoff run. By the end of the season the standings are a sandwich with no filling.

So how are broadcasters to maintain interest in lame squads losing at a prodigious rate? What do you say to keep fans coming back even when they know the inevitable result? Enter recreational gambling. The NFL has floated its boat on the power of pools, fantasy and illegal wagering for years. It knows its TV numbers would plummet without people tuning in to see how their fantasy teams, props bets and parlays are doing.

Allegiances to your bets are the coming thing in sports viewership. Not for nothing does ESPN— an NFL, NBA and NHL rights holder— feature a “Bad Beats” section on its sports desk coverage every night. It highlights the outcomes where winning and losing defies imagination. Canadian networks are still treating their betting tips as stand-alone segments, not incorporating a betting win/ loss segment. But with the Blue Jays and Raptors floundering they’ll need alternatives to recognizing the inevitable. Enter betting.

As well, the playoffs—usually a windfall for teams/ leagues—leave considerable inventory unrealized. Quick series make for diminished handles and lost ticket sales. For instance, in this year’s NHL playoffs, the losing team in the 14 series so far has averaged just 1.78 wins per series. The NBA is far worse. Losing teams in this year’s postseason are averaging just 1.2 wins per series.

It’s anticlimactic and predictable and expensive for leagues. So if you’re paying the kind of money the stars now command you have to get the secondary sources of revenue cranked up. That spells betting. Like it or not.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.