Bruce Dowbiggin
Is Crude Political Heckling Assault? Or The Price Of Holding Power?
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News Item: CBC News@CBCNews The RCMP says it’s investigating after Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was accosted in Alberta over the weekend by a man who repeatedly yelled profanity at her and called her a traitor.
In the past fortnight PM Justin Trudeau shrugged his shoulders when Germany came to beg for Canada’s abundant natural gas, assuring a disastrous 2022-23 winter for Europe. In addition, Brenda Lucki, Trudeau’s commissioner of the RCMP, apologized to the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission investigating the murders of 22 people, for her mistakes but denying politics played a role in how she botched the tragedy.
It was also revealed that his government had been employing a confirmed anti-semite as a “media consultant” at a generous salary. Finally, the PM showered $100 million on LGBTQ, two−spirit and intersex communities across the country for something-something.
But the story that dominated Trudeau-supported Canadian media? A lout in a T-shirt yelling “traitorous bitch” at deputy PM Chrystia Freeland as she walked to an elevator at the Grand Prairie, Ab. city hall. In the viral video the man follows her at a distance, loudly saying “You don’t belong here” and demanding she leave Alberta.
Could he have chosen a milder approach? Sure. But McDavid never attempted to touch Freeland. He didn’t threaten violence. He didn’t take away Freeland’s freedom as she has taken away Tamara Lich’s liberty. He had no weapon but his braying voice. The rude heckling, during which Freeland smiled grimly, was instantly labelled everything from a sexual assault to a threat against the state.
Media Party grandees outdid each other to elevate the incident into the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. Andrew Coyne lamented, “that frightening incident involving Chrystia Freeland – accosted as she entered an elevator by a large and plainly unhinged man, whose behaviour suggested he might turn violent at any moment”. Translation: He doesn’t look like one of us. Ergo, threatening.
Academics matched the vitriol with the inevitable Trump/ Jan.6 hyperbole about egging on a crowd. The apogee of exaggeration put it down to “rage farming”. “They know how to feed those narratives,” said University of Alberta political scientist Jared Wesley. Invoking an army of far-right militia men stalking the Peace River Valley.
Rage farming or heckling, the loud mouth was unapologetic. “Why did I do that? Because I want the rest of the country to wake up and realize that she is a traitor to the country. She is selling out the country,” Elliot “Moose” McDavid said last Saturday. Can’t imagine why anyone feels that way, say the arbiters of paid journalism huddled in the 416/ 613.
Hint: While others have forgotten, here’s a smirking Freeland invoking the Emergency Measures Act against the “other” people who honked their horns and parked trucks illegally in Ottawa.
Like it or not, McDavid’s crude, intemperate heckling was political free speech, something allowed in our society. The right to verbally humble kings and presidents was at the heart of the U.S. and many other revolutions. (Heckling is so accepted that Sesame Street created Waldorf and Statler to throw barbs from the audience.) Absorbing abuse was once the price for representing people. When you become deputy PM you are no longer a vulnerable woman entitled to serenity in a public place. You represent the state.
But now decrying rude language is weaponized by the Laurentian bien pensants against the Convoy crew. In the U.S. AG Merrick Garland is blaming The Other to sic the FBI on noisy parents at school board meetings. Calgary city council — led by pearl-clutching mayor Jyoti Gondek— have talked of making it a crime to heckle puffed-up politicians. Not to be outdone the governing Liberals have enlisted social media to censor private thought on the internet.
In safe-space land McDavid was “assaulting” the deputy PM. Freeland’s group and city employees were exposed to a “risk” presented by McDavid. He was inculcating rebellion among the unwashed Convoy community. (Oddly, no one fainted when Freeland’s boss was called the same and worse. Hmm.)
In the social-media mobbing, the understood distinction between a private citizen and the deputy PM of Canada was so much cisgendered white male privilege. On Twitter Vancouver broadcaster Jody Vance explained. “As a woman – I can tell you that this crosses the line to harassment. Let’s leave it there.”
The gone-native Conservatives who naïvely believe that joining this herd will win them a 613 Boy Scout badge also piled on. Even bête noir Pierre Poilievre, grudgingly said it was a bad look. And was still scolded for not trying hard enough to flagellate himself.
If the censors are successful in criminalizing McDavid’s heckling as “assault” it will be yet another triumph for “safe space” governance. The quaint notion that tender sensibilities of the pampered political class must be protected emerged from the school and university communities where “safe spaces” were established for hiding from contrary opinions. At first it was frivolous. A throw-away line. But when adopted by gender-studies majors, antifa warriors and BLM proponents it soon went viral.
Suddenly those feeling oppressed demanded more and more buffer between themselves and society at large. That meant removing free political speech from their reality. Enablers like Trudeau’s pet media weaponized the idea of “hate crimes” against public figures. The Calgary mayor wants to build an emotional moat around politicians.
For those like Gondek, safe space will also mean banning accurate speech that might be used as a weapon against their Wokeness. “If we permit contrary opinions they will be weaponized against us.” As in, you’re feeding secrets to the enemy.
The descent into Wrong Think and the entire Orwellian state control of thought needs only the occasional Moose McDavid to fuel its ambitions. As witnessed by this psycho-drama taking precedence over the threat of a global energy crisis or the ruling Liberals once again interfering in RCMP investigations they have the government-supported Media Party marching to their priorities.
To them, language is now as lethal as an AR-15. To paraphrase the old axiom, Ain’t that a bitch?
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). 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. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft YearsIn NHL History, , his new book with his son Evan, was voted the eighth best professional hockey book of by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted seventh best, and is available via 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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