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.
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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