Bruce Dowbiggin
Unsustainable: How Covid-19 Blew Up Single-Payer

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In 1983, his authority gone and his popularity exhausted, PM Pierre Elliot Trudeau launched a global “peace” tour in which he presented himself in world hot spots as an honest broker for disarmament. The stunt failed, Trudeau quit the PM job, and the Liberals (now under John Turner) were clobbered by Brian Mulroney.
In 2022, his authority gone and his popularity exhausted, PM Justin Trudeau has launched a global Reset tour in which he presents himself as an honest broker for the worldwide ESG and climate-change agenda. Judging by polls this stunt will work about as well as his father’s grandiose pretension.
Which is inexplicable, because the nation that voted for JT (okay, 33 percent of the nation voted Liberal last fall) is a dumpster fire on many fronts. Let’s choose the one nearest to Canadian hearts: Healthcare. Or what’s left of it after Trudeau’s Covid policies.
This cri de coeur from a nurse on Vancouver Island sums up the current crisis: “Every med/surg nurse tonight that I know will have 8-9 patients. We are 3-6 deep in hallways. That is 8-9 sets of vital signs that need to be done at the very least every 4-6 hours, iv medications, fluids, flushes, line changes and starts that need to be going or happening constantly, pain medications, drains, catheters, sutures and staples, admits discharges, dressing changes, turns, toileting, brief changes, conversations with doctors, doctor’s orders, pharmacy, family phone calls, feeding, sips of water, operating room preparation, post operative assessments, double chart checks, emergency medications for pain, blood pressure, seizures, infections, not to mention charting alllll of those things, violence reports, being hit kicked punched on every shift by those we are trying to help, yelled at by family members because we aren’t doing enough or the family member is in the hall or they haven’t seen a doctor (who by the way are drowning themselves and doing the best they can). All of those things that need to happen, FOR 8-9 PATIENTS for 12 hours day, day after day after day for 35-50 dollars an hour!!!! this is not ok!!!!!! We can’t keep doing this! People will die!! It is not safe. We are only human and we are tired, over worked and leaving this profession at record breaking numbers.”
What to do? Whatever the Media Party might think, the Tommy Douglas dream of one-stop health care was done in by the Covid surge. Having 200 cases nationally in serious condition on any one day has led to this nurse’s despair. As many as a third of hospital beds in the northern states of the U.S. are filled with Canadians. There is deep cynicism. @StephenPunwasi “By the hospital, I mean in the hallway at best, since emergency healthcare is blowing up in every province across the country. We really need to elect people who aren’t just in office because they get off on dunking on their political opponents.”
Alternatives have been proposed— and ignored. Healthcare consultant Francesca Grosso says, “Hospitals should be for acute episodic care and care for extremely complex patients with high risks or highly complex, rare or risky surgery. Low-acuity surgery should be done elsewhere. We need to build community supports. Surgery, home care, better primary care (to provide 24-7 supports-yes this means bring back the good old on-calls). Stop sending everyone to emergency departments.”
In the G&M André Picard dares to dream. “Imagine if… we actually did something radically pragmatic and recognized, as a starting point, that there is a role for both public and private funding and delivery in health care, but neither is a panacea.
“Germany has better health care because it has extensive private health insurance; the Netherlands has a better public-health system because it offers extensive coverage of prescription drugs; France doesn’t have long wait lists, because it allows surgeons to practise in both public hospitals and private clinics; Denmark has the best eldercare because it offers home care and long-term care universally; and so on… In Canada, on the other hand, we have the worst of both worlds: a largely unaccountable public system, and an almost-not-regulated private system.”
Yet the Michael Moore romantics won’t acknowledge that their class-free dream is irretrievably fractured. So risk-averse politicians say they will never support tinkering with the healthcare sacred cow. For Trudeau and the invested parties in single-payer health care the easiest answer is to simply throw more money at the monopoly. (Printing money being Justin’s answer to everything.) If we just had X more nurses and doctors, goes the remedy.
No one in authority is blamed, no one is replaced. The medical boards for doctors and nurses refuse to liberalize their guidelines, leaving International workers out of the loop. In the case of Covid czarina Teresa Tam, she receives a whacking great bonus for needlessly locking down children. Media promote the unicorns at the expense of the herd. So Trudeau flies to Costa Rica or Tofino.
Interestingly, American healthcare— especially as it relates to the Covid fiasco— is experiencing an epiphany. The Centre for Disease Control has fallen on its sword, admitting its many failures on vaccinations, transparency and lockdowns. “To be frank, we are responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes. From testing, to data, to communications.”
The architects of the federal government’s Covid task force— Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx— are finally gone or going after their lies promoting vaccines were exposed. @GreenSmoke1776 “If you’ve studied vaccine development, you’d know the impossibility of making a Corona Vax, that they’d been failing on for 2 decades. But all of a sudden, MULTIPLE different companies develop one with different formulations within a few months?”
The background materials denied Americans about vaccines, masking and isolation are finally being seen. A judge has blocked the Marine Corps from discharging unvaccinated Marines. It can be done. Will Canada tinker with its vaunted healthcare system or actually reform it?
Trudeau Sr.’s departure led to NAFTA, the most dramatic departure for Canadian trade with the U.S. Could it be that Trudeau Jr.’s departure might herald a similar sea change toward better healthcare in Canada? Be still my restless heart.
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
2025 Federal Election
How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust

Breaking: CBC News admits that host Rosemary Barton was wrong on April 16 when she said “remains of indigenous children” have been discovered.
Call it the Panic Election. From The Handmaid’s Tale to Quebec alienation to plastic straws, the dynamic is citizens being stampeded in a brief six weeks by Big Brother. (There’s no Big Sister. That would mess with the narrative.) Prompting Covid Part Deux from the Laurentian media scolds.
Nowhere is this panic more keen than among aging Boomers who’ve pronounced themselves willing to ignore a decade of Justin Trudeau’s clumsy, unethical and sometimes criminal behaviour in the wake of Big Bad Trump. Even the threat of losing the country’s AAA credit rating can’t sway them from full-throated panic about being the 51st state.
The 51st state gambit is the window dressing. The real Trump panic is over him exposing the inadequacies of a Canadian society penetrated by China, dominated by globalist fanatics and more indebted every day. Specifically, Trump labelled Canadians defence dead-beats and entitled snobs who’d be crazy not to join the U.S. The insulting Trump framing has been a lifeline to those most recently in office— Liberals— to point at the Big Bad Wolf outside the door rather than the Frozen Venezuela inside its walls.
Integral to this panic is the role of Canada’s legacy media, a self-serving caste saved from bankruptcy (for now) by generous wads of public money. The 416/613 bubble ponies operate as if it were still 1985, not 2025. They’ve managed to preserve their status while society changed around them. For instance, CBC’s flagship At Issue panel features three people from Toronto and a fourth from Montreal.
It has worked perfectly in Boomer Canada. Until this past week, when the media guardians finally lost the plot. The combination of TV panel hubris and the incompetence of the Elections Commission exposed an industry more interesting in protecting its own turf than protecting the truth.
The meltdown was the notion that conservative social media— with its intrusive reporters and tabloid tactics— had no place in their sandbox. This hissy fit came after Wednesday’s French debate. Members of Rebel News, True North and other outfits dominated the party leaders’ scrums with obtrusive questions about Mark Carney’s opinions on same-sex sports and what constitutes a woman— questions the French moderator had neglected to ask.

For legacy reporters and hosts who take it as given that they be allowed the front pew this was an affront to their status. As purveyors of the one true political religion the talking heads on CBC, CTV and Global began speaking of “so-called journalists” and “far-right” intruders elbowing into their territory. Their resentment was all-consuming.
This resentment spilled into Debate Night Two when a shouting match ensued in the press room. A CBC source claimed (incorrectly) that Rebel Media leader Ezra Levant had been barred from the press room. A writer from the Hill Times screamed at members of their raucous rivals. The carefully chose panelists suggested that these outfits were funded by dark right-wing sources.
Before the debate had ended Elections Commission organizers— reportedly goaded by the Liberals— called off the post-debate scrum citing “safety” issues that seemingly included a Rebel reporter conducting a hostile walking interview with a furious Liberal official. This unleashed another torrent of Media Party vitriol about its position as the keepers of Canadian journalism.

In a show of irony, these complaints about right-wing misinformation came from people whose livelihood is dependent on Liberal slush funds or whose organizations have accepted government funds to stave off bankruptcy or whose union is an active shill for non-Conservative parties. The conflicts are never mentioned in the unctuous festival of privilege.
What makes this rearguard action against new media risible was the 2024 U.S. election where Donald Trump acknowledged the new day and rode the support of non-traditional media back to the presidency. His shunning of the legacy networks and hallowed print brands heralded a new reality in American elections. Poilievre has struggled to find this community in Canada, but for those with eyes it remains the future of disseminating political thought.
A perfect example of alternative media scooping the tenured mob on Parliament Hill has been the sterling work on China by Sam Cooper, a former Global employee who has independently demonstrated the ties between Chinese criminal gangs and the Canadian political structure going back to the 1980s. Working with others outside the grid he’s shown the scandal of a Liberal candidate urging Chinese Canadian voters to reap a bounty for turning his Conservative opponent to the Chinese Communist Party. A disgrace that Carney has forgiven.
Predictably Cooper’s work and the independent story by two retired RCMP investigators who implicated nine Liberal cabinet members in compliance with the Chinese communists has gotten the ‘tish-tish” from the Laurentian elites. Like the Democrats who buried the Hunter Biden laptop story to save his father in the dying days of the 2020 U.S. election the poodle media hope to delay the truths about China long enough to get the compliant Carney over the finish line.
For contrast to how it was— and could be— one only had to witness the moderator performance of journalist Steve Paikin of TVO. Largely unknown outside Ontario, Paikin overcame the skepticism of Westerners by playing it straight down the middle. Such was his honest-broker performance that Poilievre was heard telling him after the debate that he had no idea how Paikin might vote. (Ed. note: Paikin is a former colleague and longtime friend.) In other words, it’s still possible.
It’s a cliché that this election is a hinge point for Canada. Will it face itself in the mirror or indulge in more denialism about its true self? No wonder unaffiliated journalists joke that their stories today will be the lead on mainstream media in three months. Carney has promised to continue bribing the mainstream media, but their day is done. It’s simply a matter of fixing a date for the next panic.
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
Is HNIC Ready For The Winnipeg Jets To Be Canada’s Heroes?

It’s fair to say everyone in hockey wanted the Winnipeg Jets back in the NHL. They became everyone’s darlings in 2011 when the Atlanta Thrashers, the league’s second stab at a franchise in Georgia, were sold to Canadian interests including businessman David Thomson. (Ed.: Gary Bettman’s try number three in Atlanta is upcoming.).
Yes, the market is tiny. Yes, the arena is too small. Yes, Thomson’s wealth is holding back a sea of inevitability. But sentimentalists remembering the Bobby Hull WHA Jets and the Dale Hawerchuk NHL Jets threw aside their skepticism to welcome back the Jets. The throwback uniforms with their hints at Canada’s air force past were an understated nod to their modest pretensions. It was a perfect story.

The question now, however, is will the same folks get dewey-eyed about the Jets if they become the first Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup since (checks his cards) Montreal and Patrick Roy did it in 1993. It would be helpful in this election year if something were to bind a nation torn apart by politics. The Gordie Howe Elbows Up analogy is more than shopworn, and Terry Fox can only be resurrected so often. So a Cup win might be a welcome salve.
But the approved script has long dictated that the Canadian team to break the schneid should be one of the glamour twins of the NHL’s Canadian content, the Edmonton Oilers or the (gulp) Toronto Maple Leafs. The Oilers and their superstar Connor McDavid barely lost out last spring to Florida while the Leafs, laden with superstars like Auston Matthews and William Nylander, are overdue for a long playoff run.
Hockey Night In Canada positively pants for the chance to gush over these two squads each week. When was the last time Toronto played an afternoon game so HNIC could showcase the Jets? Like, never. Same for the Oilers, who with their glittering stars like McDavid Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent Hopkins are the primary tenants of the doubleheader slot, followed by Calgary. Winnipeg? We’ll get to them.

But there’s going to be no ignoring them in the spring of 2025. The Jets in the northern outpost in Manitoba were the top team in the entire league in 2024-25. They’ll comfortably win the Presidents Cup as the No. 1 squad and have home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. They have the league’s best goalie in Connor Hellebuyck (an American) and a stable of top scorers led by Kyle Connor and Mark Schiefele. Because Winnipeg is on a lot of No Trade lists, they have built themselves through the draft and thrifty budgeting.
But will the same people who swooned over the Jets in 2011 now find them as adorable if they ruin the Stanley Cup plot lines of the Oilers, Leafs and Ottawa Senators? Will the fans of Canadian teams in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal not making the postseason take the Jets to their hearts or will they be as phoney as the Mike Myers commercials for the Liberals?
In addition, the Jets will be swamped by national media should they proceed through the playoffs. It’s one thing to carry the expectations of Winnipeg and Manitoba. It’s another to foot the bill for a hockey crazy county. We remember Vancouver’s GM Mike Gillis during the Canucks 2011 Cup run bemoaning the late arrivers of the press trying to critique his team as they made their way through the playoffs.
It will be no picnic for the Jets, however strong they’ve been in the regular season. No one was gunning for them as they might for the Oilers or Leafs. They will now get their opponents’ best game night after night. Hellebuyck has been a top three goalie in the NHL for a while, winning the Vezina Trophy, but his playoff performance hasn’t matched that of his regular-season version.
Already the injury bug that sidelines so many Cup dreams is biting at the Jets. Nikolaj Ehlers collided with a linesman in Saturday’s OT win in Chicago. Defenceman Dylan Samberg is also questionable after stopping a McDavid slap shot with his leg. A rash of injuries has ended the run of many a worthy Cup aspirant in the past. Can Winnipeg’s depth sustain the churn of seven weeks of all-out hockey?
As always for the small-market Jets time is of the essence. Keeping this core together is difficult with large markets lusting after your players. With the NHL salary cap going up it remains a chore to keep their top players. Schiefele and Hellebuyck are tied up longterm, but 40-goal man Connor is a UFA after next season while Ehlers is not signed after this season. Young Cole Perfetti will be an RFA in 2026. Etc.
So how much do Canadians love the Jets if they sneak in and steal the hero role by winning a Canadian Cup? Lets see Ron MacLean pun his way through that one.
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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