Bruce Dowbiggin
Don’t Fence Me In: Trump Soars, Trudeau Plummets, Canadians Melt Down
Don’t you wish VEEP was still on? So many new plot lines. Have you heard the one about the U.S. president who told the Canadian PM that his country was soon going to be the 51st state in the Union? But that the PM (who’d insulted him for a decade) could still remain on as governor? And the P.M. laughed? And, as a joke, the president wouldn’t let the PM stay at his swanky resort that night?
Or how about the one about the famous actor who staged a coup against a sitting president—in collaboration with Barack Obama? Yeah, and how the guy they were screwing got them back by endorsing his useless VP to replace him? And now the actor is furious with Obama for taking a powder now that the election was a disaster?
Oh wait… there’s also the one about the 45th president who was impeached for asking questions about how Ukraine was laundering hundreds of millions in natural gas profits using the previous VP’s crack-addicted son? Yeah, and how that VPOTUS, now POTUS, just pardoned his son for the clandestine activities everyone in the Blob claimed were false when 45 was impeached?
And last but not least, have you heard the one about that female VPOTUS who was thrown into the breach of a presidential campaign against a former POTUS? How, in subbing for her boss the president, she burned through a billion dollars while getting the electoral golden sombrero— losing the White House, the Senate and the House? And how the bottomless well of DEM donors is so pissed at her that they’re talking about never donating again?
Which one would you make into a Veep episode first? Decisions, decisions.
It takes a lot to impress veteran followers of politics in Canada, the U.S. and Russia. One of these Hey Martha stories in a year would be enough to fill a copybook with story ideas. But these four— plus a lot more just holding fire at the moment— all happening simultaneously? It’s an embarrassment of riches. Okay, just an embarrassment.
For the liberal left in Canada and the U.S. Donald Trump’s bare-knuckled diplomacy is to blame for all this. His rude, unyielding attacks on limousine Canadian liberals, the safe-space feminists and the radicals on the Left are to blame for a coarsening of society. It’s why they blamed him for “inciting” the Jan. 6 riots even though he specifically urged his followers to be peaceful.
It’s also why they so casually shrugged off the two assassination attempts on Trump during the campaign. The idea that any of the turmoil (see: summer of 2020 George Floyd riots) they encouraged themselves resulted in societal breakdown is simply preposterous. If they had any doubts the scribes and town criers of their media assured them it was all Trump, all the time. Not them.
But they also knew they’d reached a crisis with the re-nomination of Joe Biden. Increasingly addled and erratic Biden was threatening to blow the election. His polling stunk. So Obama convinced his noted thespian pal George Clooney to publicly call for Biden’’s withdrawal. If he balked they were to cut off the donations (then aimed at a billion). Cooney penned a traitor’s editorial. It worked, as Biden bitterly conceded when pushed out of the job.
But he left a little candy on the pillow in the form of Kamala Harris. Sadly this was a bitter treat. If possible she performed worse than Biden. When the dust settled on the electoral rout, Obama had left town, leaving Clooney as the fall guy in the coup. The friendly media softened the blow of his bad reviews by ignoring the nasty “coup” word. (It was also easier to hide when 60 percent of their viewing audiences disappeared post Nov. 5.)
Biden still wasn’t done with his revenge on Team Obama/ Clooney. For months he’d vowed that his respect for the law was so great he would not rescue his whoring son if he was in danger of jail. No pardon. Then, on his way out the WH door Biden dropped his bomb on those who’d fired him. No pardon become a big pardon. Not for just gun charges, but for anything he’d done dating back to starting work in Ukraine in 2014.
His admirers were left to explain how their fawning compliments to Biden’s judgement were now blowing upon their faces. As DEMs Senate leader Chuck Schumer said when asked about the about-face, “I’ve got nothing for you on that file.” Some tried to praise his fatherly instincts, defending his son. The came stories that his son had blackmailed him over the Thanksgiving Day holiday saying he was working on a book about the family shakedown business.
Which led swiftly to a pardon. And more embarrassing moments for the sycophants of Team Biden. Trump moved on quickly, declaring that he would slap 25 percent tariffs on Canada if Justin Trudeau didn’t abandon his Boy Scout badges and finally put his house in order. One noted CDN businessman suggested Trump look past Trudeau to PM-in-waiting Pierre Poilievere. “He’ll be getting whacked soon,” said Kevin O’Leary.
Which opened the door for Canada’s 25-percent-approval-PM to scuttle quickly to Trump’s Mar A Lago resort in Florida to forestall disaster. After pleasantries were done, Trump then dropped his little jibe about Canada going the U.S. if it was too expensive to solve balance-of-trade issues. For Trump it was a wakeup call to his neighbours. AI produced images of Trump standing beside a Canadian flag while surveying Mount Assiniboine (or the Matterhorn).
For gormless Canadians who’ve gotten their U.S. news from Rachel Maddow and the CBC for over a generation it was all too much. @jeancharest “If I were President Trump, I’d think twice before invading Canada. The last time the U.S. tried something like that— back in the War of 1812 —it didn’t exactly end well. Canada even burned down the White House.” (Editor’s note: Canada was not a country in 1812. The British burned Washington.)
“We Canadians of all political stripes are very angry at this” tweeted a Toronto writer . B.C.’s minister of state for trade, Rick Glumac, tried comedy. “I guess, I got one message for president-elect Donald Trump – this is Canada, so take off, eh?” More sober commentators pointed out that admitting 40 million Canadian liberals would ensure a permanent DEM rule in the U.S. While Trump’s “light-hearted” suggestion died back it’s clear Trump knows what he wants and how to get it this time in the WH.
Which reminds us, did you ever hear there one about the president who was considered washed-up?
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. 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.
Sunday’s Super Bowl concluded another season of wagering on the sport made great by gambling. With billions wagered legally— and billions wagered illegally—the NFL is a Frankenstein of the betting industry. Everything is done to create parity while simultaneously promoting chaos. When other leagues talk about success they are talking about the NFL’s colossal gambling industry.
The penetration of betting has only increased with legalization in Canada (Ontario is the only “open” legal market at the moment) and the United States (38 states currently allow sports wagering). It has gotten to the point where sports bettors in Las Vegas, for decades the only legal spot for sports gambling, complain that Nevada is falling behind its neighbours. Some drive across state lines to wager on sports offerings not made in Vegas.
We could do a small book on all the new betting applications that have sprung up with sharps applying stock-market analytics and trading strategies to break down a football game. But for today we’ll concentrate on the device that has turbo-charged public betting in the past generation: Proposition bets. And the enormous risk they bring.
In the bad old days when gambling was underground, dominated by organized crime, football betting meant the money line (who will win), sides (by how many points) and totals (how many points would be scored in as game). The range of options within these parameters was limited. You could parlay (two bets), tease (two or more choices with alternate odds) or do future bets.
Then along came proposition bets (props). There are propositions on everything from how many yards player X will run for, how many interceptions Player Y will throw and how many touchdowns player Z will score. There are also team props. The range of props covers almost any result generated by a football game— and a few generated by halftime shows and coin flips.
When props first began to catch the public interest, they were a novelty. Snobs saw them as sucker bets for squares. In Vegas, books would stage a glitzy launch ten days before the game to announce their props. No more. The first props for SB LIX were out minutes after the conference final games were decided. The brushfire is now a conflagration.
The two weeks before SB LIX were saturated with experts breaking down the teams, their predilections and their models for predicting prop winners. In a game with no appreciable favourite this meant every microchip of data being examined. (We had at least a dozen props then added a couple more during the game to hedge against any losers.)
The great fallibility of prop betting is their individual nature. With totals and sides the results are determined by efforts of the 92 NFL players allowed to suit up each week. Outside of the QBs, kickers, coaches and perhaps the referees, no single person could determine a W or L. Not so with props.
A player can drop a pass or miss a tackle— affecting his prop— without anyone being the wiser. The NFL scrutinizes players for erratic patterns, but on a single basis anything is possible for a player who is being influenced by bettors. Integrity of the product is paramount for the NFL and its gambling partners. So a rogue player is like a communist in Joe McCarthy’s America.
There is also betting on non-football props concerning length of national anthem, colour of Gatorade used to douse the winning coach and clothing choices of the halftime performers. Here, bettors are truly on their own as the NFL has no control on Kendrick Lamar’s playlist. (Considering KL’s associates “in the hood” this a very Wild West way to lose money) own the colour of Gatorade used (yellow).
So far the NFL has avoided any public gambling scandal like the one that landed the personal translator for Dodgers’s star Hideki Ohtani in jail for tipping off gamblers. (So far MLB has managed to wall off Hideki from the crimes). But the possibilities are there in NFL and other sports where a player compromised by debts, drug issues or sexual activity can be leveraged for profit.
The league with the most visible prop problem is the NBA with its small rosters (15 players game day). For a reminder the NBA was forced to admit that there is a current police probe into player Terry Rozier, now of the Miami Heat. “In March 2023, the NBA was alerted to unusual betting activity related to Terry Rozier’s performance in a game between Charlotte and New Orleans,” NBA spokesman said. While the NBA has cleared Rozier police area not satisfied.
In the 2023 matchup between the Hornets and the New Orleans Rozier pulled himself from the game after just nine minutes. As a result Rozier finished well below his prop bet of 32.5 combined points, assists and rebounds. Bettors howled about the suspicious nature of Rozier’s exit with a foot problem.
What made cops suspicious was that the network of gamblers placing money on Rozier was the same network that had allegedly manipulated former Raptor Jontay Porter’s prop numbers. Porter has been banned for life over charges he shaved numbers for the nefarious characters cited in the rosier story. Police are still investigating him.
The NBA is still reverberating from the 2007 scandal of referee Tim Donaghy who used his knowledge of the NBA to bet on professional basketball games and tip off crimes figures. He was banned for life and sentenced to 15 months in prison. Now released from prison Donaghy continues to warn about the vulnerability of betting NBA games.
Then there is the risk associated with U.S. college athletics now that players are paid to attend a certain college. Money and temptation flow freely in the new portal system that allows players to transfer schools midway through their eligibility.
Sunday’s game produced a one-sided windfall for Eagles’ bettors and the usual controversial referee calls did not affect the outcome. But it should not be seen as a reason to be less vigilant, particularly with props.
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.
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.
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