Bruce Dowbiggin
Rahm Gone: We Should LIV So Long
Rahm, Rahm, Rahm, you’ve been gone so long, you’ve been gone, gone, gone so long. — Chilliwack (sorta’)
Anyone who says they understand what’s happening in golf world doesn’t understand the golf world. To understate the case, these are not the best of times for the Tiger Woods-dominated PGA Tour. First, Tiger is hardly playing, and he’s still the biggest asset they’ve got. Second, Greg Norman’s LIV Tour is hemorrhaging money but still has a fortune to lure Jon Rahm. Third, NBC punted announcer Paul Azinger for not putting talcum on the backsides of players before he criticized them.
Fourth? Well, consider the past nine months:
After swearing a blood oath to players that he would never make any deals with the renegade LIV golf operation, commissioner Jay Monahan then cut his biggest loyalist, Rory McIlroy, off at the knees in June by announcing he’d secretly concluded a merger deal with the Saudi Arabian Investment Fund that underwrites LIV. (A deal that’s yet to be finally consummated.)
The pampered U.S. darlings of Tiger’s Tour were then eviscerated in September’s Ryder Cup in Italy, an event defined by Patrick Cantlay refusing to wear a team hat. Depending on whom you consult it either tore apart the U.S. dressing room or was no big whoop. (Cantlay lost his Goldman Sachs sponsorship soon after)

McIlroy— who almost came to blows with caddie Joe LaCava during the Ryder Cup— later announced that he was removing himself from his role as a dominant voice on the Tour Players Council. He claimed fatigue and frustration over dividing his concentration from golf itself. Jordan Spieth was announced as a short-term, very reluctant replacement.
That was followed by news that Monahan was out as commissioner just as soon as he completes the negotiations with LIV for the anticipated merger. A likely replacement will need the approval of the oft-injured Woods whose TV star power still dominates the Tour’s television ratings.

However Tiger’s game-but-lame performance last week on one good leg at his own event The Hero Challenge meant that his long domination of the Tour is probably dead and buried. As much as GolfChannel tries to put a smiley face on Woods playing once a month, there is no one to fill the celebrity gap that he leaves.
Which brings us to the worst news for the Tiger Tour: Spaniard Jon Rahm, arguably the No.1 player of the Tour, is taking his act to the dreaded LIV Tour— perhaps as soon as this week. After fervently committing to the Tour earlier this year, Rahm has apparently tired of the Woods/ McIroy cabal that dominates the Tour. Stories have circulated how he’s been frozen out of the south Florida cliques that dominate the Tour.

If he can get some adjustments made to LIV’s format he’ll be paid a reported a staggering $600 M to join his countryman Sergio Garcia’s team at LIV. Remember that Rahm doesn’t need money. He’s got tons. So this move would solely be about pride and reputation.
Perennial grouchy Golfchannel analyst Brandel Chamblee finds it distasteful to do business with the sheiks. “If it were offered to me by the mafia, or in this case at the behest of MBS/Saudis, knowing the money was derived from corruption and used for the benefit of some very bad people, the decision would be very simple. There is a difference between value and values.”

Not that he will disappear into the discotheque world of Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman. Rahm could still qualify for all the Tour majors next year while wearing short pants the rest of the time. The absence of the mercurial Spaniard at the rest of the Tour’s top-level events will leave a huge gap on a charisma-challenged tour. Current No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is about as exciting as The Weather Channel.
While LIV is still an unwatched work in progress, powered by the vast wealth of SA, a Rahm signing shows that the sheiks have no signs of backing off their challenge to the comfy traditionalists of the Tour. As we see in Gaza, memories go back a long way in the Middle East, and slights aren’t forgotten easily.

Then came the news that the PGA and the R&A in Britain have finally announced that the juicing of golf balls will be stopped. Going forward balls used in competition will have five percent less distance, reducing the threat the supersonic balls pose to the traditional golf courses on Tour, which bombers have brought to their knees with driver/ wedge strategies.
This satisfies Woods, the Tour’s upper echelon and some golf-course architects. For the rest of humanity the decision to remove the most visceral thrill in the sport— knocking the daylights out of your driver—is less positive. Once again, Chamblee is leading the snark (although we agree with him this time). “I appreciate the governing bodies and what they mean to the game, but on the roll back issue they are not only out of touch with the game they govern, but the people that play it. It is a very small number of people that are in favour of a roll back…
“But take the fun out of the game ( FYI, long drives are fun), and demand falls. And, there is absolutely no reason to lengthen golf courses to challenge the best players. Lengthening golf courses is a knee jerk reaction that only makes the “problem” of distance gains worse.”
One small ray of sunshine for Canadians. The Tour has finally gotten the Canadian Open away from its slot the week before the U.S. Open. This year’s week-long celebration ion Nick Taylor’s 72-foot putt will go in the last week of May. Hopefully this will bring a better field. So we got that going for us.
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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. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new 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 http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Bruce Dowbiggin
Be Careful What You Wish For In 2026: Mark Carney With A Majority
“The unifying theme that enables the Liberal party to maintain its hold over Canada is persistent anti-Americanism…I hope Canadians finally mature, acknowledge that we are neither superior nor inferior to the United States, and abandon our collective national inferiority complex.” Conrad Black quotes a friend.
Canadian media have almost always been reflexively anti-American. Fair enough. Abandoned by Britain they needed to push back. But the real fear of being consumed by the rebel colonies to the south has morphed into a fear of Donald Trump reminding Canada that it has been riding first class while paying economy.
Bashing noisy, bumptious America has always been good business if you owned a Canadian newspaper or television/radio network. The performative worship of Canadian leaders who cocked a snook at the Yankees led, in recent times, to the open-mouthed support for the fatuous Trudeaupian line of monarchs. As Ray Davies sang, “each one a dedicated follower of fashion.”
Since Pierre “The Bold” Trudeau succeeded Lester Pearson and ascended to the throne of the Family Compact in 1968, Canadian policy from Viet Nam to Trump has become “What are the Americans doing? Then let’s do the opposite”. Sample of spite: CBS TV pulled a controversial 60 Minutes news story —but it aired in Canada after being leaked by pissed-off CBS employees.
Yes, there was the brief Harper interregnum when Canada actually fought a military campaign alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan. But mostly it was Jean “Golf Balls” Chretien sitting out the Iraq War.
Alas, all good things must end. Or at least pause. People were starting to notice that Justy was a Chinese trusty, his Montreal riding campaign funded by hundreds of Chinese “businessman” from far away. The tragi-comic Trudeuapian succession hit a speed bump with Mark Carney being brought in to domesticate Canada in manner satisfactory to Brookfield and the EU.

But no one is betting the Libs won’t turn to a third generation of Quebec fashionistas— in the form of another Trudeau progeny— when all else fails.
As usual caustic Conrad Black sums up Canada best. With Quebec and Alberta talking separation he quotes a friend on the state of the nation. “What exists instead is a Liberal Party that manages — often quite poorly — the finances of a collection of provinces and territories, while relying on its media apparatus to shape and safeguard its narrative. It resembles a hedge fund supported by an image consulting firm.” (Insert your convict felon/ anglo wannabe reference here.)
There is no doubt that, as 2025 skulks out, the “image-consulting firm” painting rosy pictures of the Laurentian Elite is in for a a challenge. Justin thought using Trump as his pretext could achieve peace by buying up the lads and lasses of the fourth estate. It worked with Covid and the Truckers Convoy as the column writers/ panel hosts dutifully wrote it like he called it (even as the international press chided Trudeau.).
But even those good times didn’t last, forcing the Libs to do a presto-chango before Justin could lead them to a catastrophic defeat in the spring election. Once more, faced with Trump’s aggressive posture toward trade with Canada, the press closed ranks over Elbows Up, portraying CPC leader Pierre Poilievre as Dick Dastardly.
But new polling shows that the burst of enthusiasm for more Liberal pantomime is wearing thin. The new “new” trade deal promised with Trump has dissipated. The threat to private home ownership in B.C. by government’s indigenous land concessions has sent a chill through the middle class. The NDP fainting goats who bought Elbows Up are headed back to Crazytown, likely under Avi Lewis.
Now, at last, the reckoning promised by the Conservatives’ 20-point lead in polling this time last year may be at hand. While the diehards will go their graves mumbling land acknowledgements and 32 pronouns, there is hope that the under 60s— who emphatically support the Tories— will force change.
What change? Tristan Hopper in the National Post suggests that one place to start reforming the jalopy of Canadian government is in the oceans of money lavished on cause-related political leeches. Seeing the Bondi Beach slaughter by ISIS radicals many now question how long before Toronto or Montreal experiences a similar tragedy at the hands of jihadis who are lavishly supported by tax money.
Yes, not all Muslims in the West are terrorists. But almost all terrorists in the West are Muslim. Hate-spewing Hamas groupies from college faculty are regularly allowed major intersections with police protection as they promise to wipe out infidels. Till now it’s been poor form to even mention, let alone criticize, this pantomime.
Withdrawing financial aid to these groups and their academic fellow travellers would immediately rob these brigands of their impact. The cries of despair from cutting the cord would also expose those in the Commons who have coddled these vipers with grants and ministries.
Similar hacking at the slush money aimed at every other form of leftist posing— from trans to indigenous to illegal immigrants— would also mark the end of free money. Of course there will be caterwauling from the Elizabeth May Free Lunch crew. But with the threat of Canada coming apart with Quebec and Alberta/ Saskatchewan headed for the door those usual dissenting voices will be muted.
Only one thing stands in the way of this culling. That is PM Mark Carney coercing one more MP to cross the floor to his party, cementing its majority status for up to four more years. While the At Issue panels slap their flippers in glee at Poilievre’s demise, the rest of the nation will be less enthralled with the new realities of censorship, trade and housing.

As Stephen Punwasi states. “People in Canada can’t afford homes & prices can’t fall because debt was securitized with widespread fraud—so taxpayers will subsidize foreign speculation. It’s like they hired the mayor of Vancouver to run housing. Oh—they did, eh? Kids, run.”
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 2025 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 new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700
Bruce Dowbiggin
Hunting Poilievre Covers For Upcoming Demographic Collapse After Boomers
For those not familiar with hunting seasons in Canada it may come as a surprise that the nation has a year-round hunting season. That would be the targeting of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre by the massed army of Liberals, their bots and the richly endowed media pack. Forget he’s never held power. He’s to blame for the ills in Canadian society.
It has been a good hunt. After floor-crossing by dissident CPC, the Liberals are one seat from the majority that Canadian voters denied them in the spring. (They’ll likely get the majority soon.) MPs who a day earlier were at Conservative Xmas parties suddenly sang the praises of Carney. MPs in ridings targeted by the Chinese suddenly joined Team Elbow Up.
All the while the media corps landed blows from their perch. Robert Benzie: “I know that Premier [Danielle] Smith is very unhappy privately with Pierre Poilievre because she thinks that [MOU motion] is undermining this [pipeline] project.” The nadir of the media dog pile was formerly eminent scribe Robert Fife who sniped, “Conservatives persist with cute legislative tricks, while the government tries to run a country.” Run a country. That’s rich.
From his lips to Liberal brains, however. “.@CBCNews and @AlJazeeraWorld viewers consider themselves uniquely informed, says @ElectionsCan_E report. The two TV networks were named by self-described “informed” voters when asked where they got their news. “
It is, seemingly, a great time to be a Liberal. Or not. While Operation Poilievre was gathering steam for Xmas polling revealed that Liberals and Conservatives remain locked in a tie, and Canadians continue to express ambivalence about the country’s direction, mixed feelings about their leaders, and sharp divides by generation, region, and policy concern. These generational discrepancies continue to be buried.

As was the case in the spring, the Liberals are supported only by the Boomer generation that swallowed Elbows Up nostalgia like a fat man on a donut. The under 60s demo at every level shows the current Carney agenda is a loser for them. In the segment of house-rich Boomers the Libs lead 50-31 over CPC. But in every other category it’s “how can I get out of here faster?”
The 45-59 demo it’s 46-36 Conservatives; 30-44 it’s a whopping 48-31 CPC; 18-29 it’s 40-39 CPC. A healthy chunk of Liberal supporting from the collapse of NDP vote. Where they used to poll in the 20s, the highest demo shows 11 percent support. Otherwise Poilievere would be PM.
Meanwhile, research now finds that 54 percent of Canadians say the growing number of newcomers to the country threatens our traditional customs and values— an increase of sixteen points since 2020. Over the same period, the share of Canadians who say immigration strengthens our society fell thirteen points to 35%
In short, the Carney Circus of marrying Canada to China and the EU is a card trick that will be exposed shortly. But where do we see the Ottawa press corps attention to this impending demographic snow plow? As we wrote in March “It’s not hard to see the (under 60s) looking at the Mike Myers obsession with a long-gone Canada and saying let’s get out of here.
Recently former TVOntario host Steve Pakin attended two convocations. The first at the former Ryerson University, (switched to Toronto Metropolitan University in a fit of settler colonizer guilt.) The second at Queens University, traditionally one of the elite schools in the nation. Here’s what he saw.
“At the end of the (TMU) convocation, when Charles Falzon, on his final day as dean of TMU’s Creative School, asked students to stand and sing the national anthem, many refused. They remained seated. Then, when the singing began, it was abundantly noticeable that almost none of the students sang along. And it wasn’t because they didn’t know the words, which were projected on a big screen. The unhappy looks on their faces clearly indicated a different, more political, explanation.
“I asked some of the TMU staff about it after the ceremony was over, and they confirmed what I saw happens all the time at convocations. Then I texted the president of another Ontario university who agreed: this is a common phenomenon among this generation at post-secondary institutions.”
At Queens, where Canadian flags were almost non-existent, O Canada was sung, but the message of unrest was clear: “Convocation sends a message of social stability,” Queen’s principal Patrick Deane began in his speech. “It is a ceremony shaped in history. You should value your connection to the past, but question that inheritance. Focus on the kind of society you’d like to inhabit.”
You can bet Deane is not telling them to question climate change and trans rights. As Paikin observes, “if we fail to create a more perfect union, we shouldn’t be surprised when a vast swath of young people don’t sing our anthem the way so many of the rest of us do.” So why are the best and brightest so reluctant to see as future in becoming the new professional class that runs society?
In the Free Press River Page searched the source of their discontent. “If the Great Recession, Covid-19, and the spectre of an artificial intelligence-assisted ‘white collar bloodbath’ has taught the professional class anything, it is that their credentials cannot save them. This insecurity, compounded by the outrageous cost of living in many large cities, has pushed the PMC’s anxieties to the breaking point.

“Add that to the triumph of identity politics in professional class institutions like universities, corporate C-suites, non-governmental organizations, and media—itself a byproduct of inter-elite competition as many have observed—and what you have is the modern left.
“… they’ve already come to the baffling conclusion that there’s no difference between class struggle and child sex changes. More to the point, the socialist mantra “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” has only ever stood the test of time in Anabaptist sects. It requires a religious devotion to self-sacrifice that is not characteristic of this anxious and hyper-competitive class—as many actual socialists have spent the last decade warning.”
The tsunami over immigration has caused severe dislocations— as PM Steven Harper predicted in the 2015 election debate. He was shouted down by the dopey dauphin Justin Trudeau who opened the sluice gates to every kind of progressive nonsense. Which is now evident.
Like all people addicted, CDN Boomers don’t want the truth. They want performance theatre, T-shirts and hockey games. They blame Trump for their predicament, caught between grim realities. Will they take the 12 steps? Or will their kids have to tell them the facts as they escort them to the home?” We’re now seeing the likely answer to that question everywhere in Canadian society.
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 2025 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 new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books
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