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Inside the Shocking Parliamentary Ethics Hearing That Reveals the Depth of Media Bias in Canada
CTV’s Richard Gray
“CTV spliced together three short soundbites… to create an entirely made-up sentence. Literally fake news that entirely changed the meaning of what Pierre Poilievre said.” — Michael Cooper
It’s no secret that the mainstream media is a propaganda machine for the liberal elite, but the recent Parliamentary Ethics Committee hearing exposed just how deep this rot goes. The first hour of the committee meeting was a clinic on media corruption, and guess what? CTV News is at the center of it. This isn’t some tiny newsroom mistake—we’re talking about the manipulation of news to actively undermine Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
Let’s break down what we saw in that first hour, because it’s a lot more than just journalistic malpractice—it’s corporate media colluding with Trudeau’s Liberals to smear their political opposition.
CTV Gets Caught Red-Handed
In September 2024, CTV ran a story about Pierre Poilievre’s opposition to Trudeau’s carbon tax. Sounds simple, right? Except that the clip CTV aired wasn’t Poilievre’s actual words. They spliced together three different soundbites, in a way that fabricated an entirely new message. They deleted Poilievre’s key reference to the “carbon tax election,” making his comments sound more benign than they were.
The outcome? Canadians saw a falsified version of Poilievre’s stance on one of the most critical issues facing voters. And, surprise, surprise—it conveniently played into Trudeau’s hands by diluting Poilievre’s criticism of the carbon tax.
CTV’s manipulation wasn’t exposed by some internal review or journalistic conscience. No, it was called out by a Conservative staffer. Let that sink in. The most trusted name in Canadian news, caught fabricating news to attack the leader of the opposition—only to issue an apology after being called out.
Michael Barrett Drops the Hammer
The star of this hearing? Conservative MP Michael Barrett. He didn’t pull any punches when he confronted Richard Gray, Vice President of CTV News. Barrett’s opening salvo hit at the heart of the issue: “We’ve seen a lot of examples of CTV acting as activism masquerading as journalism.”
And he’s right. Barrett systematically tore apart CTV’s defense, pointing out that this wasn’t some innocent error. CTV deliberately altered Poilievre’s statements to undermine him politically. Barrett challenged Gray to explain why CTV had turned into an arm of Liberal propaganda, essentially parroting Trudeau’s talking points in their coverage.
Gray’s response? The same tired excuse we’ve heard time and again—“It was a mistake.” Well, no, it wasn’t. You don’t accidentally splice soundbites together to create a new sentence. That’s deliberate manipulation. And you certainly don’t edit out key phrases like “carbon tax election” without knowing exactly what you’re doing.
Barrett’s performance was masterful, exposing Gray’s weak defense and making it clear that CTV can’t be trusted to cover conservative leaders fairly. And why would they? Their cozy relationship with Trudeau and his Liberal government guarantees them favorable treatment, including regulatory relief worth millions.
Media-Political Collusion Exposed
Here’s where it gets even more disturbing. CTV is owned by Bell Media, a corporate giant that benefits directly from the Liberal government’s policies. Andrew Scheer hammered this point home during his cross-examination. Scheer pointed out that while CTV loses millions in its news operations, Bell Canada profits off government regulatory favors—to the tune of $40 million in “regulatory relief.” So, you think Bell Media has an incentive to help Trudeau out? Absolutely.
This isn’t just about biased reporting. This is about a corrupt relationship between a corporate media empire and the Liberal government. Trudeau’s regime is propping up CTV with regulatory favors while CTV is turning around and attacking Conservative leaders. It’s not a conspiracy theory—it’s fact.
Richard Gray’s Pathetic Defense
What was Richard Gray’s defense? Predictable. He fired two employees and insisted that this was an isolated incident. But here’s the kicker—Gray never even spoke to those employees directly to find out their intent. That’s right, the head of CTV News didn’t bother to personally investigate the two people who altered the clip of Poilievre. Instead, Gray claimed there was no “malicious intent” based on an internal investigation he didn’t personally conduct.
Even Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, who was hardly interested in holding CTV accountable, pressed Gray on this point. Housefather rightly asked how Gray could possibly testify about the employees’ intent if he never personally interviewed them. The answer? He couldn’t.
Gray kept repeating the same line—that there was no malicious intent—but how could he know? The truth is, CTV got caught, and now they’re scrambling to limit the damage without addressing the deeper issue of institutional bias.
NDP and Bloc MPs Play Softball
To no one’s surprise, the NDP and Bloc Québécois didn’t push CTV nearly hard enough. René Villemure of the Bloc briefly raised the question of whether CTV was dealing with just the consequences and not the intent behind the manipulation, but Gray dodged, and Villemure let it slide. Meanwhile, Matthew Green of the NDP expressed concerns about the incident undermining public trust but failed to dig deeper into why these mistakes always seem to hurt conservatives and help Liberals.
Here’s what the NDP and Bloc MPs missed: This isn’t just about one bad news clip. It’s about the systemic bias that runs through CTV and the rest of the mainstream media. These so-called “mistakes” always seem to happen when it comes to conservatives, don’t they? Funny how the Liberal government and its media allies get a free pass every time.
The Liberal-Media Swamp Is Real
This committee hearing made one thing crystal clear: CTV News is compromised. They aren’t interested in fair, unbiased reporting. They’re interested in maintaining their cozy relationship with the Trudeau government and attacking anyone who dares challenge Liberal orthodoxy.
Richard Gray’s weak defense and the media’s failure to self-police is just another sign that the swamp runs deep in Canada. Mainstream media outlets like CTV aren’t just making “mistakes.” They’re deliberately manipulating the news to protect their financial interests and political allies.
If you’re still watching CTV or any other mainstream outlet expecting fair coverage, you’re part of the problem. Turn them off. Find your news elsewhere. Because CTV—and the Liberal media establishment—sure as hell aren’t looking out for you.
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What is ‘productivity’ and how can we improve it
From the Fraser Institute
Earlier this year, a senior Bank of Canada official caused a stir by describing Canada’s pattern of declining productivity as an “emergency,” confirming that the issue of productivity is now in the spotlight. That’s encouraging. Boosting productivity is the only way to improve living standards, particularly in the long term. Today, Canada ranks 18th globally on the most common measure of productivity, with our position dropping steadily over the last several years.
Productivity is the amount of gross domestic product (GDP) or “output” the economy produces using a given quantity and mix of “inputs.” Labour is a key input in the production process, and most discussions of productivity focus on labour productivity. Productivity can be estimated for the entire economy or for individual industries.
In 2023, labour productivity in Canada was $63.60 per hour (in 2017 dollars). Industries with above average productivity include mining, oil and gas, pipelines, utilities, most parts of manufacturing, and telecommunications. Those with comparatively low productivity levels include accommodation and food services, construction, retail trade, personal and household services, and much of the government sector. Due to the lack of market-determined prices, it’s difficult to gauge productivity in the government and non-profit sectors. Instead, analysts often estimate productivity in these parts of the economy by valuing the inputs they use, of which labour is the most important one.
Within the private sector, there’s a positive linkage between productivity and employee wages and benefits. The most productive industries (on average) pay their workers more. As noted in a February 2024 RBC Economics report, productivity growth is “essentially the only way that business profits and worker wages can sustainably rise at the same time.”
Since the early 2000s, Canada has been losing ground vis-à-vis the United States and other advanced economies on productivity. By 2022, our labour productivity stood at just 70 per cent of the U.S. benchmark. What does this mean for Canadians?
Chronically lagging productivity acts as a drag on the growth of inflation-adjusted wages and incomes. According to a recent study, after adjusting for differences in the purchasing power of a dollar of income in the two countries, GDP per person (an indicator of incomes and living standards) in Canada was only 72 per cent of the U.S. level in 2022, down from 80 per cent a decade earlier. Our performance has continued to deteriorate since 2022. Mainly because of the widening cross-border productivity gap, GDP per person in the U.S. is now $22,000 higher than in Canada.
Addressing Canada’s “productivity crisis” should be a top priority for policymakers and business leaders. While there’s no short-term fix, the following steps can help to put the country on a better productivity growth path.
- Increase business investment in productive assets and activities. Canada scores poorly compared to peer economies in investment in machinery, equipment, advanced technology products and intellectual property. We also must invest more in trade-enabling infrastructure such as ports, highways and other transportation assets that link Canada with global markets and facilitate the movement of goods and services within the country.
- Overhaul federal and provincial tax policies to strengthen incentives for capital formation, innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth.
- Streamline and reduce the cost and complexity of government regulation affecting all sectors of the economy.
- Foster greater competition in local markets and scale back government monopolies and government-sanctioned oligopolies.
- Eliminate interprovincial barriers to trade, investment and labour mobility to bolster Canada’s common market.
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COP29 was a waste of time
From Canadians For Affordable Energy
The twenty-ninth edition of the U.N. Climate Change Committee’s annual “Conference of the Parties,” also known as COP29, wrapped up recently, and I must say, it seemed a much gloomier affair than the previous twenty-eight. It’s hard to imagine a more downcast gathering of elitists and activists. You almost felt sorry for them.
Oh, there was all the usual nutty Net-Zero-by-2050 proposals, which would make life harder and more expensive in developed countries, and be absolutely disastrous for developing countries, if they were even partially implemented. But a lot of the roughly 65,000 attendees seemed to realize they were just spewing hot air.
Why were they so down? It couldn’t be that they were feeling guilty about their own hypocrisy, since they had flown in, many aboard private jets, to the Middle Eastern petrostate of Azerbaijan, where fossil fuels count for two-thirds of national GDP and 90% of export revenues, to lecture the world on the evils of flying in planes and prospering from the extraction of oil and natural gas. Afterall, they did the same last year in Dubai and there was no noticeable pang of guilt there.
It’s likely that Donald Trump’s recent reelection had a lot to do with it. Living as they do in a media bubble, our governing class was completely blindsided by the American people’s decision to return their 45th president to the White House. And the fact that he won the popular vote this time made it harder to deny his legitimacy. (Note that they’ve never questioned the legitimacy of Justin Trudeau, even though his party has lost the popular vote in the past two federal elections. What’s the saying about the modern Left? “If they didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.”)
Come January, Trump is committed to (once again) pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords, to rolling back the Biden Administration’s anti-fracking and pro-EV regulations, and to giving oil companies the green light to extract as much “liquid gold” (his phrase) as possible, with an eye towards making energy more affordable for American consumers and businesses alike. The chance that they’ll be able to leech billions in taxpayer dollars from the U.S. Treasury while he’s running the show is basically zero.
But it wasn’t just the return of Trump which has gotten the climate brigade down. After a few years on top, environmentalists have been having one setback after another. Green parties saw a huge drop off in support in the E.U. parliament’s elections this past June, losing one-third of their seats in Brussels.
And wherever they’ve actually been in government, in Germany and Ireland for instance, the Greens have dragged down the popularity of the coalitions they were part of. That’s largely because their policies have been like an arrow to the heart of those nations’ economies – see the former industrial titan Germany, where major companies like Volkswagen, Siemens, and the chemical giant BASF are frantically shifting production to China and the U.S. to escape high energy costs.
But while voters around the world are kicking climate ideologues to the curb, there are still a few places where they’re managing to cling to power for dear life.
Here in Canada, for instance, Justin Trudeau and Steven Guilbeault steadfastly refuse to consider revisiting their ruinous Net Zero policies, from their ever-increasing Carbon Tax, to their huge investments in Electric Vehicles and the mandates which will force all of us to buy pricey, unreliable EVs in just over a decade, and to the emissions caps which seek to strangle the natural resource sector on which our economy depends.
Minister Guilbeault was all-in on COP29, heading the Canadian delegation, which “hosted 65 events showcasing Canada’s leadership on climate action, nature-based solutions, sustainable finance, and Canadian clean technologies—while discussing gender equality, youth perspectives, and the critical role of Indigenous knowledge and climate leadership” and stood up for Canadian values such as “2SLGBTQI+” and “gender inclusivity.” Once again, in Azerbaijan, which has been denounced for its human rights abuses.
And no word yet on the cost of all of this – for last year’s COP28 the government – or should I say the taxpayers – spent $1.4M on travel and accommodations alone for the 633 member delegation. That number, not counting the above mentioned events, are sure to be higher, as Azerbaijan is much less of a travel destination than Dubai, and so has fewer flights in and available hotel rooms.
At the same time all of this was going on, Trudeau was 12,000 kms away in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, telling an audience that carbon taxation is a “moral obligation” which is more important than the cost of living: “It’s really, really easy when you’re in a short-term survive, [to say] I gotta be able to pay the rent this month, I’ve gotta be able to buy groceries for my kids, to say, OK, let’s put climate change as a slightly lower priority.”
This is madness, and it underscores how tone-deaf the prime minister is, and also why current polling looks so good for the Conservatives that Pierre Poilievre might as well start measuring the drapes at the PMO.
He has the Trudeau Liberals’ obsessive pursuit of Net Zero policies in large part to thank for that.
The world is waking up to the true cost of the Net Zero ideology, and leaving it behind. That doesn’t mean the fight is over – the activists and their allies in government are going to squeeze as many tax dollars out of this as they possibly can. But the writing is on the wall, and their window is rapidly closing.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
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