Bruce Dowbiggin
The Folding Lawn Chair: PMJT The Worst Negotiator in Canadian History

Stop us if you heard this before. Justin Trudeau talks tough but folds like a cheap lawn chair. His current spasmodic response to Donald Trump’s tariff threat should look familiar. He’s been here and backed down before.
The defining crisis of his time as prime minister– the 2022 Trucker Convoy in Ottawa– is the blue print for his handling of stress. For those with poor memories— or Liberals trying to forget—his arbitrary handling of the Covid vaccine crisis created a massive pushback among voters. Having forced everyday Canadians to take— under threat— an unproven vaccine he was faced with an unprecedented display of impertinence to his majesty.
In better times the pushback might have originated with a media offended by his high-handed ArriveCan fiasco and locking citizens into hotels against their will. By this time, however, PMJT had paid off large segments of Canadian media and was on his way to paying off many more. So it fell to independent truckers to expose Trudeau’s arbitrary undemocratic behaviour.
They came to Parliament Hill armed with truck horns and Bouncy Castles. There were no guns, no bombs, no assault vehicles. Just your garden-variety 18 wheelers who’d come from across the nation. This made Mr. Tough guy catatonic. As the truckers neared the capital he called them racists and Nazis intent on overthrowing the government. He baselessly claimed (in French) that their supporters were anti-science.
This faux-tough talk surprised many who recalled that, only months before, he’d blithely stood back, brows knit, as indigenous radicals blocked the main railway lines for months in protest of oil pipelines (more on this later). It was all soothing words and grovelling imprecations to understanding from Skippy. Maybe billions were lost, but at least he hadn’t upset Canada’s “first peoples”.
But when truckers protested in his home city, it was Code Red for our hero. Rather than meet protesters when the trucks arrived, hearing their grievances and agreeing to negotiate— as he’d done with the trainspotters— a cringing Trudeau hid, vilifying the invaders from inside his Covid cottage. It was all no quarter, no surrender, no show.

Canada’s media dutifully covered his flank, shopping numerous fake stories about Nazi/ Rebel flags and arson attempts. (For which they’ve never apologized.) In parliament he and his NDP service animals invented stories of huge donations from evil right-wing forces in the U.S.
Not surprisingly, giving Truckers the vaunted Trudeau middle finger did not send them scurrying back to their homes. Quite the opposite. Instead they hunkered down in an 18-wheel version of Woodstock. It was a rock n’ roll party that Ottawa police were dumbfounded how to stop. Noisy but non-violent.
This infuriated the burghers of Ottawa, those making their livings from government and the National Capital Commission. They were losing sleep in their cozy cribs. “Someone must pay!” A still-bunkered Trudeau then played the Dad card, sending in federal cops and suspending Canadians rights while seizing the financial livelihoods of the Convoy leaders.
His suspension of historic civil rights invited international censure. It would later be declared illegal in the courts. The use of the Emergencies Act “does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility,” Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley wrote. No matter. He’d proudly used a sledge hammer on a flea. People charged with mischief were off to jail for five years. Cosseted by the huzzahs of the purchased media he gave himself a W and went surfing.
Fast forward to 2024 when Justin was about as popular as scrofula in the polls . Entering 2025 he was trying desperately to hang onto power till the end of his term in the fall, when his handlers at the WEF would rescue him with sinecures and flattery. All domestic attempts to shame him into quitting failed. It seemed he had a clear path to make his own exit.
He never anticipated a re-elected, vindictive Donald Trump, never planned for the implications. Yes, this was the same Trump he’d casually ridiculed and insulted for most of the decade. Least of all, he was unready for a Trump armed with serious tariff threats unless the post-national PM shored up his defence and propped up the border. Oops.
Shades of the Truckers, the tariff skirmish could have been resolved by working with Trump on the border issue. But that’s not how PMJT rolls away. Trump invited him to Mar A Lago post-election, only to ridicule him as “governor” of a new 51st American state. A butt-hurt Trudeau then shut down Parliament and blamed Alberta’s energy cash cow, getting the other premiers to insist that the province block oil sales to the U.S.

Just like Dad in the old days there was no reciprocal ask of Ontario blocking its auto industry or Quebec its aluminum industry. Branch-plant Alberta would carry the burden. He coerced media and other parties to give him cover, vilifying anyone refusing to go along. He closed Parliament till March so his party could sort out its next move. This divide-and-retreat strategy has left the country on verge of dismemberment. But he acts like he had time.
Trump says Trudeau has till February 1 to cut a deal. Instead of negotiating Trudeau is threatening. The PM bravely supports “the principle of dollar-for-dollar matching tariffs” against the U.S. Conceding that this a terrible tactic he says the feds would be “there to support and compensate businesses”. Using public money to compensate for the negligence his progressive agenda has left behind. Can you say Covid.2?
What’s the difference from his Truckers Convoy dithering performance? Trudeau had simple truckers then, without power. In Trump, however, he has a freshly elected president with the hammer of Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House. Who can’t wait to crush Trudeau and his Liberal snobs as freeloaders on the American dime. “Exporters of terrorists, drugs and contraband into America”. Trump now has a unified front of social media billionaires while Trudeau has only a burned-out cabinet and Laurentian loyalists. What couldn’t go wrong?
If Trudeau lets this go past Feb. 1 without a deal or an election call it will be the worst constitutional catastrophe since conscription in WW I and II. Expect no mercy from down south. Every turn of the screw on Canada increases Trump’s polling. The Family Compact ain’t saving you, Skippy. And they won’t save the midwits who elected Trudeau PM three times.
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.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Are the Jays Signing Or Declining? Only Vladdy & Bo Know For Sure

We were watching the Los Angeles Dodgers home opener on Thursday. The defending World Series champs came from behind to beat Detroit 5-4. The big hit was a three-run homer from a player named Teoscar Hernandez off AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal

If that name sounds familiar, Teoscar was a Toronto Blue Jay from 2018-2022. He pounded 121 homers in the span as part of the Jays’ order. But when Toronto decided it needed bullpen help he was traded to Seattle in 2022 for pitchers Erik Swanson and Adam Macko. While Swanson has battled injuries and Macko is no-go, Hernandez keeps pounding the ball.
In his one year in Seattle he had strikeout problems but did hit 26 homers with 93 RBIs. In the winter of 2023-24 he signed as a free agent with the aforementioned Dodgers. Batting behind Shohei Ohtani he launched 33 homers and 99 RBIs. He won the All Star Home Run Derby. His key hit in Game 5 of the World Series propelled L.A. to the title. The stacked Dodgers liked him enough to give him a three-year, $66 million contract.
Why are we telling you this? Because the Blue Jays also started their 2025 season at home, matched against the Baltimore Orioles. And while there are reasons to believe the Jays will not replicate their 74-win disaster of 2024, there remain the old bugaboos of injuries and pitching. In the four games against the division rivals they need to beat, Jays’ pitching gave up 24 runs while scoring 18—nine of them in one game.
The splashy acquisition of 40 year old HOF pitcher Max Scherzer has already gone sideways as a bad thumb has put him on the IL. The new stopper, Jeff Hoffman, was rejected on medical grounds by two other teams before Toronto’s money made him healthy. The rest of the bullpen— a disaster in 2024— got off to a rocky start with Orioles hitters playing BP against them. They’ve already DFA’d one pitcher and called up two more from the minors. The re-made pen performed well in Game 4, but how it holds up in their next 158 games is a mystery.
On offence, while their rivals in Boston and New York added sexy pieces to their rosters the Jays were only able to acquire veteran switch-hitting Baltimore slugger Anthony Santander. More typical of their other signees is ex-Cleveland 2B infielder Andres Giminez who in 2023 had the lowest average exit velocity of all AL batters (84.8 mph), and led the AL in percentage of balls that were softly hit (21.7%). He does play a slick second base.
The winter story line for the Jays offence was what to do about Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, the erstwhile star-dust twins who were— along with Cavan Biggio— supposed to guarantee titles when they emerged in 2019. Biggio is gone, so the other two carry the credibility of the management team of Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins. From the outside the Jays seem paralyzed to act.

While the Jays dithered, the price for players like Guerrero and Bichette soared. Using Juan Soto’s Mets $765 M deal as a yardstick Guerrero turned down a Jays offer of just under $600 M, saying he was done talking during the season. If Shapiro/ Atkins had anticipated the market Guerrero would have cost a lot less in 2023-24. If there is no progress by the trading deadline the Jays will be forced to get what they can in a trade.
Shortstop Bichette— a gifted player who battled injuries in 2024—is likewise up for a new deal. He has started strong in 2025 and would command a handsome return in a trade. He says the Jays are waiting to see what happens with Guerrero first. Having sold the pair for years to their loyal fans, having to trade them will be a massive PR blow. And while Jays’ national audience can be an advantage, having a whole country pissed with you is devastating.
The rest of the secret sauce for a Toronto comeback revolves around one of their hitting prospects taking a step forward. Any/ all of Will Wagner, Alan Roden, Addison Barger or Leo Jimenez can have a job if they show their bats are for real. Otherwise Shapiro and Atkins will hope that Dalton Varsho, George Springer and Alejandro Kirk can find a little magic in their aging bats.
A failure to retain talent may prompt fans to recall that Rogers decided that Shapiro and Atkins, who dumped Teoscar, were worthy replacements for the previous GM who’d walked away. The man Schneider and Atkins were hired to improve upon— Canadian Alex Anthopoulos— has made the Atlanta Braves a dominant team. Since AA moved to Atlanta they’ve won 90, 97, 38 (Covid year), 88, 101, 104, 109, 89 games. They’ve won a World Series and two other playoff series. They won six straight NL East titles before injuries sank them last year.
The Braves have developed young everyday superstars like Ronald Acuńa Jr. who don’t get picked off second base. They have built a pitching staff largely from within, not splashy FA signings. They have swagger without cockiness. They are set for years to come.
The Blue Jays? Since AA left they’ve won 73, 67, 32 (Covid), 91, 92, 89, 74 games. They’ve won zero postseason games while missing the playoffs in four seasons. The players they traded are starring for other teams in the postseason. They are again employing an inexperienced company guy as manager.
While it’s true that the sun can’t shine on the same team every day, Jays fans believe it would be nice if the great orb would find their club as it did back in the 1992/93 World Series days. Instead of the reflected glory of past stars winning for other teams. Patience is thin. And time is ticking.
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.
2025 Federal Election
Chinese Gangs Dominate Canada: Why Will Voters Give Liberals Another Term?

There’s an old joke that goes, the Japanese want to buy Vancouver but the Chinese aren’t selling. Glib, yes. But with enough truth— Chinese own an estimated 30 percent of Vancouver’s real estate market— to pack a punch; Especially in this truncated rush to anoint Mark Carney PM before anyone finds out exactly who’s his Mama.
The advertised narrative for this election is Donald Trump’s vote of no confidence in the modern Canadian state. A segment of Canadians— mostly Boomers— see this as intolerable foreign interference in the country’s sovereignty. So rather than look inward at why Canada’s closest partner is fed up with them the Liberal government has chosen a pep rally rathe than any uncomfortable questions.
Namely about Chinese interference in Canada’s politics, the distortion of real-estate prices in Canadian urban markets, the exploitation of banking and the thriving drug trade that underpins it all. And how it’s driving a wedge between generations in the nation. As we like to say, Canada’s contented elites have been sitting in first class for decades but only paying economy.
They’d like you to forget insinuations that Canada is a global money-laundering capital. Better to blame Trump for the “willful blindness” that has Americans and others losing trust in Canada to keep secrets and contribute its fair share tom protecting against the growth of China. (The same geopolitical concern that saw Trump kick the Chinese out of the Panama Canal Zone.)
Thanks to the diligent reporting of journalist Sam Cooper and others we know better. And it’s ugly. An estimated trillion dollars from Chinese organized crime has washed through Canada since the 1990s. They’ve used underground banks and illegal currency smuggling to circumvent the law. They’ve bribed and intimidated. And they’ve poisoned elections.
This penetration of the culture/ economy by well-organized Asian criminal gangs have been around since the 1990s, but under Trudeau they hit warp speed. By the time Trump inconveniently raised the issue of border security in January, Canada’s economy could fairly be characterized as a real-estate bubble with a drug-money-laundering chaser. The Chinese Communist Party now operates “police stations” in many Canadian cities to supervise this activity and report to Beijing.

In his 2021 book Willful Blindness (and subsequent reporting) Cooper patiently records this evolution with brazen Asian gangs using casinos in BC and Ontario as money-laundering outlets to wash drug money and other criminal proceeds, turning stacks of dirty twenty-dollar bills into clean hundred-dollar bills or casino chips. (When Covid closed the casinos they used luxury mansions as private casinos.)
All financed by underground banks and loansharks. This process became known internationally as The “Vancouver Model” to help establish Chinese proxies overseas and extend the CPP ‘s reach. Hey, the real estate kingpin is named Kash-Ing. (Kaching!) It’s currently being used to buy farm properties in PEI, much to the anger of residents (who will still vote Liberal to protect their perks.)
While investigators and some authorities attempted to expose the schemes the perps were protected by compromised government officials, corrupt casino employees and the inability of courts to deliver justice. It’s why Canadians were so shocked that TD Bank was fined $3B in the U.S. for allowing money laundering. “Not us! No way! We’re Simon pure”.
Much of this money ended up in Canada’s feverish real-estate market, with vacant properties creating insane price spirals across the nation. It’s driven the inability of under 40s to buy homes— another major crisis the Liberals are trying to disguise under Mark Carney the compliant banker. Still more of the proceeds were used to build stronger drug-supply chains between Asia, Mexico and Canada— with heroin and fentanyl then distributed to the U.S. and in Canada.

Against this explosion of housing and drug debt were stories of the political influence of these gangs into the Canadian system. The sitting Canadian prime minister, who praised the Chinese form of governing before he reached the PM post, has been seen in photos with underground Asian gang figures. As were previous Liberal leaders like Jean Chretien who made no secret of his lust for the Chinese market. Chinese money was used to build extensively in Chretien’s Shawinigan riding.
Donations to Trudeau’s Montreal riding association and to the Trudeau Foundation were favourites of shadowy Chinese figures. “In just two days (in 2016), the prime minister’s (Outremont) riding received $70,000 from donors of Chinese origin, and at the same time, the government authorized the establishment of a Chinese bank in Canada,” Bloc leader Yves-Francois Blanchet said on Feb. 28.
Donations to Trudeau from all across Canada constituted up to 80 percent of the riding’s contributions that year. In May 2016, one such fundraiser saw Trudeau hosted by Benson Wong, chair of the Chinese Business Chamber of Commerce, along with 32 other wealthy guests in a pay-for-access event. The patterns exposed by Cooper finally prompted a commission by Quebec justice Marie-Josée Hogue looking into Chines interference in Trudeau’s successful 2019 and 2021 elections.

An interim report released last year by Hogue determined that while foreign interference might not have changed the outcome of Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections, it did undermine the rights of Canadian voters because it “tainted the process” and eroded public trust. So petrified was Trudeau of the full Hogue Report that he prorogued parliament for three months and handed in his resignation rather than test his 22 percent approval rating in a Canadian election. Or his luck with the courts.
Luckily for Liberals Trump came along to smoke out Trudeau and allow for the current whitewash of the party’s record since 2015 under Carney. So instead of agreeing with Washington about Canada’s corrupted economy Canadians have decided to engage in a Mike Myers nostalgia fest for a nation long gone. A nation overly dominated by its smug, satisfied +60 demographic that sits back on its savings while younger Canadians cannot get into the economy.
Reaching past the sunset media to those people is Pierre Poilievre’s task. He has a month to do so. For Canada’s long-term prospects he’d better succeed. The Chinese are watching closely.
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.
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