Bruce Dowbiggin
Civil Liberty: The Hard Is What Makes It Great
Across Canada sports teams are falling in line with the idea that public health is best served by customers showing proof of a double-vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test. (The policy is also being extended to restaurants, theatres, gyms and government offices.)
The best way to mange this policy is by government-issued health “passports” to tell ushers, waiters, towel boys, maître’d, security people and other healthcare “professionals” that the bearer has been good and succumbed to the coercion of the past few months. (The author has had both vaccine shots— Ed.)
In the sorry annals of “flatten the curve” solutions to the virus, the “passports” notion takes the prize for blunt-edge hysteria. Coming on the heels of “you must be vaccinated” and “you must be vaccinated twice”, and “Oops, you need a booster”, the idea that your personal health record be made known to people with no professional reason for having access is a concept that, pre-Covid, would have been laughed at.
The same Nancy Pelosi who saw health passports as fascistic in 2019 (“we cannot require someone to be vaccinated” and “it’s a matter of privacy to know who is and who isn’t [vaccinated]”) and “The Resistance” as a noble calling now want to build education camps for those who disagree on exposing your details to the unwashed.
If we might sum up the arguments for the passports they fall into a few categories:
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You already allow access to personal data for taxes, banks and other instruments of the state. What’s the big whoop? This is the equivalent of saying, “Hey, you’ve been stabbed five times, what’s so bad about a sixth time being run through?”
2) Your reluctance to seriously accept the Spanish Flu Inquisition is going to kill me— despite this paper masks, furious hand scrubbing, six-foot distancing, being locked in a basement for the better part of a year— and getting vaxxed twice. This the vanity position of you being the boss of me and everyone else when it suits you.
As we wrote last week in “Everyone Wears The Ribbon”, the SJWs ignore that we now know the vaccinations are not the promised Raid to wipe out Covid. We know from testing in Israel/ UK that increasingly we are seeing double-vaxx people testing positive for the virus. We know that one or more boosters are coming. We know that these are the latest distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies from the “passport” people in authority since early 2020. The people, like Bullwinkle the Moose, saying, “This time it’s got to work.”
We know that this is now a healthcare crisis, not a Covid-19 crisis. That’s why they don’t tell you the seven-day moving average Covid deaths in Canada is 11. In a nation of 38 million. Instead, to scare you, they give you phony PCR positives. (PCR tests are the trawler-net of healthcare, pulling up old boots, sharks, floating plastic, dolphin, oil drums and yes, a few of the fish you’re looking for.)
Hospitals are full of collateral victims of 2020’s flatten the curve, because clinics and doctors won’t see people with virus symptoms. They’re also jammed with psychiatric patients traumatized by the failed solutions of the WHO, CDC etc. They’re packed with cancer, cardiac, stroke and other patients who went untreated in 2020 and now have accelerated symptoms.
3) The passport will, in the words of an eager booster this past weekend, make it “easier” to identify the pox-ridden unvaccinated. It’ll be like buying beer or dynamite. Just flash the card and you’re a member of a preferred class. Maybe get AmEx to sponsor the cards?
The problem with the “easy does it” method is that it is inspired by the abject and often irrational fear of Covid-19. (“Kids’ll die by the thousands, you can get it from table tops, CPR tests are not wildly inaccurate”) Fear makes us do almost anything to protect ourselves. And it makes us vulnerable to smiling governments and healthcare officials telling us only what they want us to know. So the Family Compact downplays the selectivity of victims and hypes the unicorns.
The founders of democratic nations with liberal values understood the power of fear. The Declaration of Independence was forged in the midst of the American Revolution. Its authors would be hanged if it failed. They knew fear. That’s why they made it so damned difficult to circumvent the rights to person and privacy when people get nervous. They knew “easy” would get a lot of traction in a moment of stress.
The Canadians who died fighting Nazi oppression likewise knew what happens when you just shrug your shoulders and go along with the herd who are coercing you. It’s why, when they defeated the powers of a totalitarian state, they enshrined the right to privacy and independence of speech in our laws. They didn’t want it to be a Dixie cup casually thrown away in a time if fear.
They knew there would come a day when some glib suit would say surrendering your health record was the “easiest” thing to do. That the media would take the path of least resistance. They knew saying no to the mob would be hard. They understood, in the immortal words spoken by Tom Hanks in League of Their Own, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it. The hard…is what makes it great.”
Holding your principles when everyone around you is going along to get along is an exhausting process. It is like the free-speech laws now being trampled by Twitter, Facebook, the Liberal Party and others. We protect free speech not for the people we agree with— but for the people with whom we disagree.
In the paranoia and power grabs of today those principles are being forgotten in the rush to “make it easy”.
A final thought: our blessed media— who now include censorship in their quiver— continue to hammer the public with numbers about the unvaccinated, extrapolating dark right-wing QAnon figures as the source of the resistance. And while a certain segment of the resisters are conservatives and even zany, a very large tranche of those saying no comes from the black, Asian, east Asian and other minority groups.
Seems they don’t trust our diversity PM not to introduce some poison into their bodies. But because the media and the PM are such dedicated patrons of cultural diversity you’ll never hear a peep that vaccines and passports are anathema to the people they’re lionizing. Instead you’ll see resisters pictured as white, lower-middle-class gun owners and dirt-bike aficionados. Easier to get the petrified sheeple on board that way.
The early polling for Canada’s September election shows that these elites might— might— be in for a reckoning. If so, it might be the first positive thing to come out of the virus. Just don’t expect them to give up easily.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
With the Canada/ U.S. Tariff War going from talking conflict to hot trade war on Feb. 1 there are numerous predictions as to what might happen if the dispute drags on. As the sides in the Ukraine War will tell you very few of the outcomes so far were foreseen by the sides when the shooting started. That’s the nature of these conflicts.
One immediate byproduct seems to be the continued descent toward 60 cents by the Canadian dollar. If Trudeau and his anointed successor Mark Carney are true to character it will also involve billions in cheques going out the door— a la Covid— to those citizens “harmed” by the Liberals stumbling into a highly predictable and easily avoidable trade war. If past is prologue, vast amounts of that money will disappear as bad actors find a way to access the funds. While Canada’s GDP collapses some more.
For the moment, however, let us concentrate on what Justin Trudeau’s ineptitude might be costing Canadian professional sports teams in American-based leagues. On the purely trivial level it means that your beer at the park/ arena will be Canadian suds exclusively. Not cheaper or better. Just Canadian. Owners will stock luxury boxes with Canadian wine, etc. A road trip to see the Canucks in L.A. or the Canadiens in NYC will balloon, too.
But on a more serious level the showdown between Donald Trump and Trudeau could well return Canadian teams in the NHL to the bad-old days of the early 21st century. Despite efforts then to create a Canadian fund to save teams, two clubs— Winnipeg Jets and Quebec Nordiques— were forced to sell because of a dollar that bottomed out around 62 cents U.S. Winnipeg went to Phoenix/ Quebec City went to Colorado as a result
In Montreal the MLB Expos also moved— to Washington— after 37 years, because no one in Quebec would/ could pony up the money to make up for the declining dollar or repair the disastrous Olympic Stadium. Expos fans then had the cruel fate of watching Washington win the 2019 World Series after the Expos had never gotten that far. (Nordiques fans saw Colorado win two Stanley Cups after escaping Quebec.)
Why were these teams forced to move? Because while teams collect revenues locally in Canadian dollars almost all their payroll and other costs are paid in American dollars. So when you see the Toronto Blue Jays facing a possible US $500 million price tag to keep star Vladimir Guerrero you’re really talking about raising $750,000 million in CDN revenues to meet the demand. Multiply those jumps over a 25-man roster and you’re talking a huge jump in payroll— or being consigned to after-ran status.
While no one is about to hold a tag day for Toronto it will make the Jays’ job of competing in a division with the big-spending New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox that much harder. With a national market of almost 40 million now to exploit they still have resources. But will American players want to play in Canada during a hot trade war between the nations? Now that yahoos fed by a doltish CDN media have started booing the Star Spangled Banner in Ottawa and Vancouver before games do you think that will encourage American stars on teams there to stick around?
But the NHL is where the biggest losses will be seen. Already there have been concerns about the Jets.2 surviving in Winnipeg. Last week it was revealed that after years spent coming back from Covid revenue shortages, the NHL is going to raise its salary cap from today’s US $88 million to as much as an estimated US $115 million in three or four years. The news that players will no longer have escrow payments held back to compensate owners for revenue shortages was greeted with cheers by players and their agent.
The boost in the cap will likely mean that today’s US$14 million peak (Leon Draisaitl) will also advance to somewhere just beneath US$20 million a season. And while that figure is a few years off, teams will have to start negotiating today with their stars with that figure in mind if they wish to retain them.
The test case will be superstar Connor McDavid who is due for a new contract after 2025-26. For the small-market Edmonton Oilers that will mean creating a template that buys him out of estimated salary later by boosting his salary before the cap arrives at its peak. With Draisaitl already pulling down top dollar the Oilers’ resources will be stretched thin to accommodate McDavid— while still paying the rest of the roster.
Could the drop in the dollar produce another Gretzky-like trade for Edmonton when the Oilers were forced to dump the greatest scorer in NHL history to L.A. because his worth exceeded the Oilers’ ability to pay? We chronicle the trade in depth in our new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey.
The fate of hockey stars will be only a small piece of any future U.S. trade deals. But they will be highly visible to Canada’s hockey fans. Not being able to satisfy them is a political price no pelican wants to face. But given the current intransigence by Justin Trudeau scrambling to stay in office it is far from improbable.
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. 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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
In case you missed it, the Hubris party has halted the business of Canada for three months in the heart of the biggest existential crisis since NAFTA. The reason? Justin Trudeau called timeout to allow banker/ green advocate Mark Carney to slide into his chair before the next election becomes Bull Run.
Who is Carney? In September Justin Trudeau appointed him a “special advisor” to the Liberals. He then asked for— and received— $10 B for Brookfield, the private hedge fund of which he was chairman, so that he might sprinkle it on the Green Agenda. There’s more, but this tells you why Libs think he’s ideal.
In his introduction to a nation that didn’t know Mark Carney was a solution to anything, Carney insisted that Canadians want new ideas, new energy, new purpose. (In his defence his opponent Chrystia Freeland is mumbling the same contrition.) And who were the architects of the malaise requiring such an overhaul?
The Liberals themselves. Okay, the NDP rates blame for polishing the Liberal apple in a minority government. But Canadians have long ago consigned Jagmeet Singh to a deserved obscurity. Yes, the denials choir at the Toronto Star and CBC are trying to harpoon Pierre Polievre for ruining the Parliament that Liberals prorogued. While the Flora MacDonald Marching Society cites Donald Trump’s tariffs for the crisis. Deny, deny, deny.
It’s not working. Consult the polls. Even the staunchest supporters of Canada’s self-appointed national party are fed up with PMJT and his legacy. In fact it is stunning to see how wobbly the Liberal platform is under Carney. All the massaged polls and handshakes with Olympic heroes on the Rideau Canal cannot disguise that their legacy issues are now DOA. As we wrote last week the challenges come on a many fronts.
Trump’s tariff challenge/ 51st state tease is the most public challenge— and the one the Liberals believe they can whipsaw to their favour. #OrangeManBad simply tore away the PMO’s artifice of postmodern Canada. By threatening tariffs and gleefully laughing about Canada joining America he exposed an entitled political elite unwilling to admit that the world has changed.
By stirring Canada to some united economic response against his audacious measures Trump has shown Canadians how little they have in common. Ontario and Quebec want Alberta to put on the hair shirt. Alberta wants Quebec to pay its fair share. etc. Trump’s new Commerce secretary says it would be an easy ask to avoid tariffs. But Trudeau/ Doug Ford would rather posture and preen. Canadians, after years of sitting in first-class but paying for economy, now find themselves exposed to the world. As we said in 2018, Canada is an ingrate nation living off Trump’s America.
The destruction of Liberal DEI legacy doesn’t stop with tariffs. The PMO pretends that they can still use the Climate inquisition to hammer Canadians. But Trump has moved the West away from the Al Gore/ King Charles doomsday consensus. By taking America out of the UN Net Zero scheme he’s produced a landslide of financial institutions and governments escaping the draconian conditions imposed by this once-mighty body. Trudeau’s precious climate supports are toppling almost as fast as Sir John A. statues.
Trump has forced the high and mighty in banking, investment and government— who’ve been wedded to these principals— to escape his climate wrath. Trump used the election to remind voters of deadlines for catastrophic weather that come and go with only elites getting rich. During the 2024 vote he heard from average people who no longer believe the Greta Thunberg countdown clock to ruination. And he said, Drill, Baby, Drill.
CO2-obsessed Canada, meanwhile, is still dithering on its commitment to what CBC and everyone in Parliament stubbornly call the “climate crisis”. Carney talks about moving away from the sacred tablets of climate change, but only to find a new green euphemism for draining the public purse.
Another sacred cow of Trudeau’s Disaster Run has been his stewardship of Covid 19— a talking point he brags about openly but whose Emergency Measures Act are condemned by the courts and public opinion. Again, Trudeau’s flank has been protected by purchased media and a smothering censorship program.
But now Alberta’s Covid Task Force has ripped the province’s actions in the two-plus years of virus, vaccine and vexation. The Davidson Report demonstrates how The Science was used to defend government overreach while health officials used faulty data to deceive the public about the reality of Covid. (The criticisms apply to the federal response just as easily.)
One example cited in the Task Force report was one we wrote about continuously from 2020-2023. Namely the media’s daily positive CPR tests that purported to show massive numbers of infected Canadians. The truth was 80 to 90 percent of the “results” were false positives or samples too small to be transmitted or make the carrier ill. Even when they knew in 2020 no one bothered to let citizens in on the scam.
Want more? Another sink hole beneath the Libs is the Rez Schools “murdered babies” libel they used to cast Canadians as genocidal. Trudeau sought to criminalize any doubt on their veracity. Turns out that the money allocated for exhumation of alleged graves of victims has turned up nothing. Instead the “$12M spent to find purported 215 children’s graves at an Indian Residential School was instead spent on publicists & consultants with no graves found to date. “
There’s more. Environment minister Stephen Gilbeault was found guilty of violating federal rules in siphoning $254 M to a company he owns. While Conservative MPs continue to call for the release of “green slush fund” documents, Trudeau continues to defend his minister by burying the records. Then there is the $187 B in infrastructure grants supervised by former Lib cabinet minister Catherine McKenna that is unaccounted for.
Wait, there’s more. On the celebrated immigration front nearly 50,000 international students failed to show up at their designated colleges and universities in Canada during March and April 2024, according to government data.; No one can trace them. And let’s not forget the government’s seeming impassivity to the crowds of pro-Hamas fanatics crowding Canadian streets each week calling fore the death of Canadian Jews and anyone else trying to stop the intifada.
We could go on, but this seems like weak sauce on which to launch a new leader of the Liberals. But they’re going to try. And with Singh’s flip-flop, now refusing to bring down the government, it will have a puncher’s chance in the Liberal heartland. Expect them to try stretching the mandate till the fall and later while spitting out more federal aid money, a la Covid, to compensate Canadians for this stupidity.
The only question then, who volunteers to bell the cat? Can you say Convoy.2?
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. 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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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