Bruce Dowbiggin
Criminalizing Speech: The Moral Panic Sets In

“Hatred means the emotion that involves detestation or vilification and that is stronger than dislike or disdain.” Bill C-38 defines hate speech
Canada’s proposed Bill C-38 is a product of morally panicked people who think “too many people in Canada are victimized by hate speech and hate crimes and we have to make sure we are tackling this”. Whose hate? What is hate? Hands up if this reminds you of the U.S. Supreme Court trying to decide what constitutes pornography in The People Vs. Larry Flynt?
Is this truly a crisis? Not really. But having expanded hate speech from Holocaust denial to “suspend the financial records of people who criticize the PM” the radicals behind the legislation have been able to create “crisis” statistics for gormless media to regurgitate. But it’s just a start on repressing speech.
C-38 wants to make even thinking about alleged hate into a crime— and it will allow a third party to anticipate this. “A person may, with the Attorney General’s consent, lay an information before a provincial court judge if the person fears on reasonable grounds that another person will commit (a) an offence under section 318 [advocating genocide] or subsection 319″ [inciting or promoting hate, promoting hatred].”
In doing so Canada’s Moral Panic Police have jumped the fence and are now about to root around in your recycling bin for material to use against you. The urge to cancel culture (it’s now a verb) pervades every corner of discourse these days. Thinking you’ll escape the moral arbiters is delusional.
Example: This week I on was on the popular Toronto Mike podcast to talk about— wait for it— Tony Bennett versus Frank Sinatra with my old running mate Steve Paikin, he of TVO renown. I’d been on twice before and enjoyed the format.
Unbeknownst to me, before we began Mike felt it incumbent to read a cheeky disclaimer: “The following episode of Toronto Mike is not an endorsement of Bruce Dowbiggin or his tweets. The host and producer of this podcast does not share in Bruce’s constant praise of Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Nor his support of the Freedom Convoy and recent criticism of Ukraine president Vladimir Zelensky. Peace and love and vaccinations for all… “
I give Mike credit (even though the Donald Trump shot is fantasy). He was resisting the moral panic police in having Heretic No.1 on his show in spite of what “Bruce is spewing on social media”. In this climate defying the mob is not an insignificant thing with listeners who say things like, “How can you have him on the show?
I also give him props for letting me respond before we delved into Tony’s bel canto and Frank’s phrasing. I referred him to a recent column I’d written on my Groundhog Day experience in understanding the West. I then reminded him and his listeners that Woke Toronto is a cult of elitist centralist snobs— just ask Jordan Peterson, a proud Albertan transplanted to Toronto. The West’s pushback is going to happen, says Peterson, “given Trudeau’s antipathy toward the economic engines of the west. It’s absolutely inevitable. Wake up, Toronto.”
Mike asked Steve if he thought my moving to Alberta had changed me. Steve smartly chose a safe ground between us, saying my politics had evolved over the years as I moved from Montreal to Toronto to Calgary. But unless I said something illegal he had no problems with me. Then we talked about Tony and Frank for 90 minutes. And I didn’t get cancelled. For now.
The takeaway is that, in a time of C-38 moral panic, when people are mortified to remove their face diapers, we now must have disclaimers when we leave our safe spaces to duel with contrary opinions. That’s if we duel with them at all. The bullies have cleansed public discourse.
As I wrote last year, veteran broadcaster Wendy Mesley losing her career in June of 2020 over using the N word in a story meeting is no longer an outrage. “Looked at from a June 2021 perspective it all seems of a piece. Snitches are now running amok, stories are progressive narratives and censorship of perceived enemies is cool. Snobs Rule.
“Everything is identity politics. Try getting a white male bank president on the Corp or TVO these days. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than have an inappropriate political messenger soil the lineup sheet dominated by the downtown Toronto aristocracy. Most alarming is that the Canadian media, culture and government are all located there, imposing their tortured worldview on the nation.
Which brings us to the PM who consistently uses his own hate-speech aggressions on those he fears. Racist, Nazis, misogynists, science deniers, purveyors of misinformation and conspiracy theorists were just a few of the bouquets he tossed at the truckers who forced him into hiding. Yet Canada’s purchased media considered this petulance all part of his charm. And pounced on the truckers.
Apparently Trudeau’s charm escapes journalists abroad. Concurrent with Trudeau’s UK jaunt, watch this evisceration of the PM by Brits not resident in the 416/613/604. (BTW: It was the second nomination for Plank of the Week for Trudeau.) Luckily for these Brits they’re out of the long reach of C-38.
Trudeau is Plank of the week in Britain. Total disdain. But none of Canada’s gelded media will concur. They’re too busy covering up for him hiding. Best to boot the truckers so Skippy will love them. Pathetic. Then they talk about how brave they are. https://t.co/He3AYmVjIm
— bruce dowbiggin (@dowbboy) March 9, 2022
So are Dutch journalists. Befuddled by Trudeau’s word salads, they were grimly annoyed at how PMJT won’t any answer questions directly. But then, he is protected by a Media Party who use Trump as a punchline for their witticisms. But then apply an entirely different standard to Trudeau, master of disguise, occupant of hiding places, punchline to anyone outside the Canadian knowledge culture.
If Canadian media need help on punchlines or how to proceed maybe they could ask American comedian Andrew Schulz. Schulz has also been watching Canada’s PM in hiding and has some thoughts that might fall afoul of C-38. Will there be a hate-crime charge waiting Schulz if he ventures north to Canada for JFL in Montreal? Would the Liberals caucus not consider this mockery to be hate?
Roasting Trans-Punjabi Justin Trudeau in Toronto…#TheInfamousTourhttps://t.co/ESE9SE2nxn pic.twitter.com/UZsxhbFfEl
— Andrew Schulz 👑HEZI (@andrewschulz) March 8, 2022
But Canadian self-pitying media are far too busy feeling the “hate” themselves after the Convoy fiasco. Edmonton bingo caller Sarah Ryan: “I am shaking I am so mad right now. When we got into journalism this was not the norm. This hate towards the media is being perpetuated by people in positions of power and it needs to stop NOW”.
Sure. Just as soon as C-38 gets passed.
{Update: Let’s not leave out Trudeau’s wonderful C-67 Bill which thrusts CRT into Canadian schools under the guise of racial harmony.}
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on 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.
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
Ottawa Confirms China interfering with 2025 federal election: Beijing Seeks to Block Joe Tay’s Election
-
Energy2 days ago
Indigenous-led Projects Hold Key To Canada’s Energy Future
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust
-
Energy2 days ago
Many Canadians—and many Albertans—live in energy poverty
-
2025 Federal Election14 hours ago
BREAKING: THE FEDERAL BRIEF THAT SHOULD SINK CARNEY
-
Business2 days ago
Canada Urgently Needs A Watchdog For Government Waste
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
Real Homes vs. Modular Shoeboxes: The Housing Battle Between Poilievre and Carney
-
2025 Federal Election15 hours ago
CHINESE ELECTION THREAT WARNING: Conservative Candidate Joe Tay Paused Public Campaign