Bruce Dowbiggin
Climate & Covid: How The Certainty of Elites Destroyed A Decade
It probably wasn’t meant as an epitaph for the years since 2008, but a speech from the recent movie Conclave might serve all the same. In the film, a British Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) must be deacon to the Conclave electing a new pope. He is hesitant to accept the responsibility in times of intolerance. His homily explains why.
“Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. .. If there were only certainty and no doubt there would be no mystery. And therefore no need for faith. Let us pray God will find us a pope who doubts.” (Spoiler alerts forbid further plot developments.)
Cardinal Lawrence might well have been describing the deadening effects of certainty since the election of Barack Obama (2008) and Justin Trudeau (2015). Under the guise of enlightenment Obama and then Trudeau have employed certainty as a battering ram. Those who expressed doubt were eliminated. Those bending a knee were spared— for now. Those at the top got great Taylor Swift tickets.
While artfully claiming disinformation/ misinformation as dire threats to humanity they used censorship to eliminate opposing views to their radical progressive agendas. The two most prominent of those agendas were, of course, the toxic twins of Climate and Covid.
While the global warming… oops, climate-change hustle had been around for some time it was only under the auspices of Obama and then Trudeau that it gained its ability to punish dissent. Who can forget Obama’s sneering admonition to doubters that 97 percent of scientists were onside with Al Gore and Greta Thunberg because The Science Was Settled? This was certainty on steroids.
In short order, newspapers banned letters to the editor disputing the manipulative programs of the UN and the IPCC (among the many drawing hundreds of millions in public funds). Opposing climate voices disappeared from CBC television panels. To dispute controversial claims was an invitation to disastrous law fare, as Canadian journalist Mark Steyn discovered. Our piece The Right To Criticize Climate Change Has Cost Mark Steyn Almost Everything highlights the decade-plus ordeal he suffered in D.C. courts for pointing out the fraudulence of Michael Mann’s hockey-stick oeuvre.
All for disputing the certainty of the science behind a global scheme to move billions from the first world to developing nations. (Which is then reportedly laundered back to the U.S.) Were Steyn’s case an exception we might grant his oppressors leeway. But the certainty principal of Obama and Trudeau on climate cost thousands of scientists their livelihoods, bankrupted others and blackened their life’s work. To no effect on climate itself.
In Canada, Trudeau named a convicted criminal and ruthless zealot as his climate minister. Steven Guilbeault took certainty to its illogical end, dragging the faculty lounge of idiots in Trudeau’s cabinet along with him. Again, career scientists and researchers were crushed by his onslaught of a useless carbon tax, EV mandates and ridiculous bans on workable solutions such as nuclear. Dispute was fruitless. They were that certain of their holiness.
But climate certainty was simply the appetizer for the banquet of Covid. Here both Trudeau and Obama (and his successors in the the U.S. health industry) wielded certainty into a script that not even Hollywood would have considered plausible in 2000.
Most now recall the Rod Serling scenario of an engineered Chinese virus somehow wiping out civilization. This plot was employed to suspend everyday activity and lock the population in their homes across much of the West and Asia. (Surprisingly Africa declined the invitation to insanity and survived nicely, thank you.)
Lock downs, masks, distancing, surface wiping, police raids, government bans— all were the poisoned fruit employed by bureaucrats and fanatics in service of their certainty. Everyone has their pained memory of overreach, from arresting surfers on the beach to locking arriving Canadian travellers into hotels to seniors dying alone in quarantined wards.
Citing the worthlessness of masks was always accompanied with the admonition that defying the new normal was a fatal threat to someone’s grandmother. It is a truism that people cannot remember the pain of dental extraction or childbirth. But the dystopian effects of Covid are likely to be carried to the grave by young people isolated from schools and grieving citizens denied a final farewell to parents.
While authorities sought to keep their grip, certainty finally began to erode. It was revealed that six-foot distancing was an invented standard, masks were useless in stopping the spread of the virus and the avalanche of positive tests were largely false positives and unlikely to make anyone sick. Soon Covid humour became accepted. Compliance was mocked. Citizens chucked the mask and re-started life.
Those certain in their power recoiled at the insubordination. Armin Rosen noted their stunned disbelief in Tablet, “Perhaps the higher levels of the American media complex, masquerading in the clothing of a different century, should embrace their essentially patrician urges and accept their permanent bafflement at the inscrutable, inexplicable passions of the American polity, thus exempting themselves from any deep concern about what the rest of us are up to.”
Donald Trump’s call to reject those who’d prospered in Covid found willing ears in the United States. His resounding sweep in the 2024 elections— every state in the union moved rightward in voting— was the final rebuke to those who preached certainty. The same people who sloughed off not one, but two assassination attempts on a presidential candidate as mere distractions.
It remains to be seen whether docile Canadians, always deferring to authority first, will shake off the certainty crowd in the next federal election. The Liberals are still hoping they can fool them with the Pierre Poilievre-as-Trump-as-Hitler narrative, a scare tactic that failed miserably down south. (One recent poll shows the Conservatives winning 240 seats, the Liberals with 19.)
Cardinal Lawrence’s appeal in Conclave to a higher purpose than certainty should be a stake in the heart of those who’ve oppressed their families and neighbours to no perceptible gain. The Trump comeback signals an opportunity with RFK Jr. and Elon Musk for a revival of healthy debate and skepticism. Whether it holds and prospers is still uncertain. But we have learned that uncertainty is a thing to be wished for.
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.
Longtime U.S. resident Mike Myers has become a hero to the over-50 SNL population in Canada. Myers wore a T-shirt saying Canada is not for sale. Perhaps. But 43 percent of millennials polled in Canada say they are open to joining Myers in the U.S. if the compensation is right. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is pulling a whopping 60 percent approval among the under-40 year old crowd in the latest Rasmussen poll. IOW (In Other Words) this effusive Save Canada debate is a sunset industry. You can’t defy the demographic clock.
But don’t tell the Laurentian elites. Outside emotional hockey wins and equalization, Canada is nothing like the place Myers left behind when he became a comic superstar in the U.S. last century. It’s now, in the words of author Mark Steyn, an unsustainable welfare state, with a side order of anti-spiritual solipsism. Oh, and a money-laundering den and a launching pad for extremists ranging from raging Muslims to pissed-off Palestinians.
Instead of dealing with the above the (allegedly) departing PM has flown to Europe to spoon with the Mass Formation Psychosis, also known as the EU, where they rail against Russia while also funding Russia’s war by spending billions of euros on its natural gas. It would be rude to repeat for the zillionth time that Trudeau’s jet spews the noxious CO2 of climate catastrophists like himself. But hey, we just did.
Citing Fintrac records, investigative journalist Sam Cooper highlights the current U.S./ Canada tension. “I honestly don’t know if it’s a drug war or a trade war. What I do know is the average Canadian has absolutely no idea how penetrated our banks, housing and institutions are by organized crime, but the U.S. military and police and intelligence know and are deeply concerned.”
In this collision of solitudes Canadians are putting aside Trudeau’s posturing or Mark Carney’s ‘oopsises’ on the campaign trial to link arms with Myers and Kumbaya themselves to death. Already Trudeau, spun up to insubordination by the EU globalists last week, is sniffing the rank air and hinting he might perform as a “caretaker PM” till Carney learns not to extemporize in front of open mikes.
After watching Zelenskyy slapped around at the White House he’s decided to play tough with Trump, swearing no retreat on either his own tariffs or carbon taxes. Leading good-old-days Canadians to launch a self-deception party not seen since the Covid panic. They’re stripping the shelves of American goods. They’re flying an airline that eschews American destinations. And they bloviate. How they bloviate.“ @ArpaSelect I love that Trudeau is taking an all or nothing approach to the tariffs. He’s standing firm and not conceding. This is the Prime Minister we need in this moment.”
The endgame cocktail they’re encouraging has been long brewing. Back in 1986 when Canadian publishers still believed in conservative books Peter Brimelow’s The Patriot Game: National Dreams and Political Realities was clearly pointing the way Trudeau senior was taking the nation that his son is now deconstructing.
Ex-pat Brit Brimelow, then a financial/ business writer in Toronto, labelled Pierre Trudeau the most impactful PM in Canadian history— though not in a complimentary terms. Identifying Trudeau’s championing of bilingualism, unlimited immigration, re-orientation away from the Crown, socialist financial policy and the liberal victimization hustle (later echoed by Barack Obama) he saw portents of endgame for traditional Canada. At the time this was published, the opinion of a TDBS library consultant was, “disturbing, often thought-provoking”
The book received little attention once Jean Chretien became PM, and Brimelow slipped south to the U.S. where his take on the fate of Western Judeo Christian society has had him labeled as racist by rackets like the Southern Poverty Law Center. His DARE website (named after Virginia Dare, the first white English child born in the New World ) was hounded out of business by the U.S. government.
Canadians have little clue about any of this impending doom. You can hear Brimelow on my 2017 podcast The Full Count, as the first Trump administration ramped up hysteria among liberals.
If Brimelow weren’t warning enough, Mark Steyn’s prescient 2006 America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It was also warning of pending decline. The Canadian author/ broadcaster forecast the downfall of the Canada and the West due to “internal weaknesses” and Muslim incursion into liberal Western countries and the world generally. His predictions— derided by the liberal Canadian media of the time— are now as obvious as a Muslim prayer session in a busy Canadian intersection.
“We’ve elevated the secondary impulses over the primary ones: national defense, self-reliance, family, and, most basic of all, reproductive activity. If you don’t ‘go forth and multiply’ you can’t afford all those secondary-impulse programs, like lifelong welfare, whose costs are multiplying a lot faster than you are.”
Which is how we have ended up with ex-pat actors in T-Shirts stirring sentiment for a Canada that no longer exists. And re-energized Liberals pushing to have an emergency crisis “delay” the next election till unelected place holders decide how to stack the cards. in the words of Stephen Punwasi: “Not a lot of people know this, but in Canada democracy is whatever the elites feel like that day.”
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 . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
This week we are heading over to Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida, to see how MLB is getting along with its new ABS system for calling balls and strikes. According to our source at MLB the challenge system is being readily accepted by fans. If it goes as well as the time clock and catchers callig pitches elctronically it will be welcome.
In planning for seeing a game we had a choice between seeing the homestanding Miami Marlins or St. Louis Cardinals, who share the stadium in the spring. Our 16th-row seats for the Marlins/ Washington Nationals game are US $16 each. Had we chosen a Cardinals game versus Washington the next day that same seat would cost US $79.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is called dynamic pricing. The unloved Marlins can’t draw flies. The Cardinals— even a bad Cardinals team— are still a big draw. The gap between the two realities is growing fast. Leading many to say, What about parity?
As we wrote in December of last year, “MLB has seen parity and proclaimed, “We don’t give a damn!” Okay, they didn’t say that. In fact they insist the opposite is true. They’re all about competition and smaller markets getting a shot at a title. But as the 2024 offseason spending shows, believe none of what you hear and half of what you see in MLB.
Here’s the skinny: Juan Soto‘s contract with the NY Mets — 15 years and guaranteeing $765 million, not a penny of which is deferred. Max Fried signed an eight-year, $218 million deal with the New York Yankees. Later, Nathan Eovaldi secured a three-year, $75 million contract to return to the Texas Rangers. Blake Snell (five years, $182 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers) and Matthew Boyd (two years, $29 million with the Chicago Cubs) added to the splurge.
There’s one more thing that stands out. MLB has no trouble with the financial big boys in New York, Los Angles, Texas, Toronto, Atlanta and Chicago shelling out money no small market dare pay. In the MLB cheap seats, Tampa, Pittsburgh and Miami can’t send out quality players fast enough. But MLB is cool with that, too, as those paupers get a healthy slice of TV money.
So yes, they’re all about talking parity with their luxury-tax system. But to keep the TV, digital, betting and marketing lucre flowing they have to have large media markets swinging the heaviest bats come postseason. The question is, do MLB fans care anymore the way they used to about parity? It says here they don’t. More want to seed best-on-best more often. Which is brutal but refreshing.
Their sister leagues, married to draconian salary cap systems, are still pushing parity, even as they expand beyond recognition. In our 2004 our book Money Players, legendary Boston Bruins coach/ GM Harry Sinden noted, “The problem with teams in the league, is that there were (then) 20 teams who all think they are going to win the Stanley Cup, and they all are going to share it. But only one team is going to win it. The rest are chasing a rainbow.”
And that was before the expansion Vegas Golden Knights won a Cup within five years while the third-year Seattle Kraken made a run in those same 2023 playoffs. There are currently 32 teams in the league, each chasing Sinden’s rainbow of a Stanley Cup. That means 31 cranky fan bases every year demanding changes. And 31 management teams trying to avoid getting fired.
Maybe we’ve reached peak franchise level? Uh, no. Not so long as salary-capped leagues can use the dream of parity to sell more franchises. As we wrote in October of 2023, “If you believe the innuendo coming from commissioner Gary Bettman there is a steady appetite for getting a piece of the NHL operation. “The best answer I can give you is that we have continuous expressions of interest from places like Houston, Atlanta, Quebec City, Salt Lake City, but expansion isn’t on the agenda.” In the next breath Bettman was predicting that any new teams will cost “A lot, a lot.”
Deputy commissioner Bill Daly echoed Bettman’s caution about a sudden expansion but added, ”Having said that, particularly with the success of the Vegas and Seattle expansions, there are more people who want to own professional hockey teams.” Translation: If the NHL can get a billion for a new team, the heck with competitive excellence, the clock might start ticking sooner. After all, small-market Ottawa just went for $950.”
It’s not just the expansion-obsessed NHL talking more teams. MLB is looking to add franchises. Abandoned Montreal is once more getting palpitations over rumours that the league wants to return to the city that lost its Expos in 2005. Recent reports indicate that while MLB might prefer Salt Lake City and Nashville it also feels it must right the wrong left when the Expos moved to Washington DC 19 years ago.
The city needs a new ballpark to replace disastrous Olympic Stadium. They’ll also need more than Expos draftee Tom Brady to fund the franchise fee and operating costs. And Quebec corporate support— always transitory in the Expos years— will need to be strong. But two more MLB franchises within five years is a lock.
While the NBA is mum on going past 30 teams it has not shut the door on expansion after seeing the NHL cashing in. Neither has the cash-generating monster known as the NFL where teams currently sell for over six billion US. The NFL is eyeing Europe for its next moves.
The question that has to be asked in this is, WTF, quality of competition? The more teams in a league the lower the chances of even getting to a semifinal series let alone a championship. Fans in cities starved for a championship— the NFL’s Detroit Lions or Cleveland Browns are entering their seventh decade without a title or the Toronto Maple Leafs title-less since 1967— know how corrosive it can be.
Getting to 34, 36, maybe 40 teams makes for a short-term score for owners, but it could leave leagues with an entire strata of loser teams that no one—least of all networks, carriers and advertisers—wants to see. Generations of fans will be like Canuck supporters, going their entire lives without a championship.
In addition, as we’ve argued in our 2018 book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports and How The Free Market Can Save Them, watering down the product with a lot of teams no one wants to watch nationally or globally seems counter productive. The move away from quality toward quantity serves only the gambling industry. But since when has Gary Bettman Truly cared about quality of the product? So long as he gets to say, “We have a trade to announce” at the Draft, he’s a happy guy.”
When we published Cap In Hand we proposed a system like soccer with ranked divisions using promotion and relegation to ensure competition, not parity. Most of the interviewers we spoke to were skeptical of the idea. But as MLB steams closer to economic Darwinism our proposal is looking more credible every day. Play at the level you can afford. Or just watch Ted Lasso. Your choice. “
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.
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