Bruce Dowbiggin
EU To Canada: Next Time Try Sending Your Best
Living in the people’s republic of Trudeaupia you’re often told that you live in the greatest place on earth. From its bovine media to its placid middle class the inhabitants of the nation are one contented lot. Now they have the added bonus of an alliance between a party leader going nowhere (NDP) and a party leader going anywhere he can but Parliament (Liberal).
We speak, of course, of the Liberal/ NDP Grand Alliance cast this week with the goal of making sure never is heard a discouraging word about the PM. In fact, one of the organizing principles behind the Grand Alliance is creating new laws that allow the government to better police pushback from those who cause Trudeau dismay. Like Truckers.
This new legislation has emerged from Trudeau’s faculty lounge… er, caucus… and has caused almost zero perturbation from sea to sea to sea. Yes, the usual cranks like Jordan B. Peterson have pointed out that Bill C-38 etc is totalitarian in tone, but they’re always on about something. Just listen to PM Skippy: Canadians are the most envied people on earth. They have me.
Except if you choose not to take his vaccine that sorta’ works on days that don’t end in Y. Then “they are extremists who don’t believe in science, they’re often misogynists, also often racists. It’s a small group that muscles in, and we have to make a choice in terms of leaders, in terms of the country. Do we tolerate these people?” These comments—made in French— only seemed to upset truckers and their like at the time. In the urgency of the Convoy coverage it was more important to find KKK members or alt-right militias, not the Where’s Waldo PM.
Which is probably why dozing Canadians are a little miffed to see the rude welcome afforded the PM at the European Parliament where he came to drop pearls of wisdom about freedom and democracy. Seems a few at the MEP have caught Trudeau’s vaxx vituperation and were less than happy to see his smug countenance in their midst.
Even if Canadians don’t mind, the EU members saw his suspension of liberties, his use of police tactics, his manipulation of state media and his freezing of bank accounts as something un-Canadian. One after the other they got up to denounce the effrontery of a man who had fabricated a political coup coming to lecture them on liberty. A Croatian member tweeted, “Trudeau, in recent months, under your quasi-liberal boot, Canada has become a symbol of civil rights violations. The methods we have witnessed may be liberal to you, but to many citizens around they seemed like a dictatorship of the worst kind.”
“He’s exactly like a tyrant, a dictator. He’s like Ceaușescu in Romania,” said a Romanian speaker. “Trudeau is terrified by the fact that populism is taking root in Canada and giving ordinary people a voice. He ignores the fact that he and the Liberals have driven Canada into the gutter. Populism is only a reaction to our elites who have lost the plot.”
“Spare us your presence here,” added a third. The invitation to Trudeau, noted a fourth EU member, is to someone “who’s been trampling on human rights.” (Naturally Canadian media on the payroll concentrated solely on PMJT’s speech, not the condemnation.)
Even more embarrassing, no one in EU high office stood up to denounce the battering Canada’s PM was taking. Let’s just say that this is not the sort of thing that happened when Lester Pearson went abroad to represent the country. Remember, too, that these were representatives of nations where democracy was—and is— still hard-won and costly. As opposed to the price paid by the trust-fund PM and his Woke acolytes who’ve lived charmed lives.
Just as telling as the barbs thrown at Trudeau was the repudiation of the coverage he’d received from his own purchased media back home during the Truckers Convoy. We made the point at the time that the images from the streets would stain Canada internationally. All the PM’s calls for order would be lost.
Yet the media of the time played the PM’s tune. They praised police. While Trudeau hid in his bunker they concentrated their wrath on the truckers, building them into a swastika- waving subversive group bent on insurrection— as opposed to a rowdy group democratically protesting in the nation’s capital. The real victims, according to the Liberal media, were the poor condo dwellers of Central Ottawa, their sleep interrupted by honking horns.
This week’s EU Parliament fiasco (who does Trudeau’s advance work?) exposes the game going on in Ottawa. The World can see. Canada was only fooling itself. Now the world mocks the PM and Canada. And that will now go on for another three years.
Speaking of media party games, you’d be a brave person in Canada to also express a negative thought about Ukrainian PM Vladimir Zelensky these days. Such is the Western reverence for his defiant performance in the current Russian invasion of his country that he’s been compared to Churchill or FDR.
Certainly no one in modern military history since that pair has made a more compelling cause for his cause. Using video, photo ops and Congressional/ Parliamentary addresses to politicians in Canada, the U.S. and U.K. Zelensky’s been called a Titan of democracy, the best friend the West could have. A bulwark against Russian terror.
All this laudatory media outpouring comes from fanboy press that seems to take Zalensky love as a loyalty oath. “The Western intelligence apparatus won the information war in Ukraine before a shot was fired” tweeted Pedro L. Gonzalez. If this were simply a battle for minds, the Russians would be TKO’d already.
The reality is less commendable. Zelensky is not simply the former comedian-made-good. Elected as a reformer, Zelensky set about enriching himself and sidelining his enemies. Even as Canadian war hawk David Frum gushed that Zelensky’s Ukraine was “the first example in human history of a country that under the pressure of war is becoming *more* tolerant and *more* liberal” the PM suspended 11 opposition parties, merged all TV channels into one controlled by him and imposed censorship.
Hey, it’s a tough neighbourhood. The point is not whether Zelensky is too toxic to justify his Western support . The U.S. is used to dealing with the devil they know. Clearly the West will support him in the face of the cruelties imposed on his nation. The question is why does legacy media need to promote a false image of Zelensky as a democrat and reformer when the facts don’t support it?
Yet the Media Party has made any recognition of Zelensky’s foibles into Putin love. Here’s Frum trying to put dissenters into line: “I’m trying to recall a single instance of a resignation of conscience at Fox News over the network’s support for Putin’s war.” (Fellow Canadian John Roberts had to remind Frum that FOX had had two employees killed and another seriously wounded on the job in Ukraine. “You used to be better than this.”)
You get the drift. Too many people are invested in the Zelkensky Method to back down. The same overwhelming desire for Canadian media consensus that led Trudeau to his EU humiliation is now also at work in sanctifying Zelensky. As he old expression goes, when faced with a choice between the facts and the legend, print the legend.
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
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.
Good news if you like the way Rogers Sportsnet covers hockey in Canada. You’re about to get a whole lot more of it. In a move that sums up Gary Bettman’s unique broadcast philosophy the NHL has awarded the Canadian TV/ digital/ streaming rights to Rogers for the next 12 years. The price tag? 12 billion U.S. dollars (about $16.B CDN dollars).
While the pattern in modern sports broadcasting rights has been toward sharing the wealth among competing bidders— the NFL has six distinct partners— Bettman the contrarian has opted for a different notion. He’s all in with one Canadian partner, and let his critics STFU.
As opposed to the previous CDN national monopoly awarded to Rogers in 2013 this one bestows national rights in all languages across TV, streaming and digital for all regular-season and playoff games, plus the Stanley Cup Final and all special events. This extends to coverage in all regions. There are some concessions for Rogers to sell limited cutout packages, such as the Monday Night Amazon package they’ve created.
Presuming Pierre Poliievre doesn’t get his way with CBC, Rogers will likely piggyback on their time-sharing agreement for Saturday Hockey Night In Canada to get CBC’s network reach. (There remain many hockey fans who still think CBC has the NHL contract. Go figure.)
Translation: there will be no regional packages for TSN to produce Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators or Toronto Maple Leafs games, for instance. But there will be regional blackouts, because nothing says we are proud of our product like denying it to a larger audience. Conn Smythe would be proud.
At the presser to announce the deal Rogers and Bettman were coy about how much they will charge consumers for the honour of being inundated by content in what now seems likely to be a 36-team league by the time the deal expires. Will costs be added to cable/ satellite packages? How much for streaming? With stories circulating that Rogers massively overbid for the package to get the monopoly it’s apparent that the phone company will be turning over every nickel to make it worthwhile.
Fans are apprehensive and over-saturated with hockey content already. For that reason, the NHL is now desperately looking for ways to lessen the tedium of the 82-game regular schedule with midseason content like the 4 Nations Cup or a World Cup format. In Canada’s hockey-mad environment Rogers will have a passionate market, but even the most fervent fans will only spend so much for their fix.
Already, Rogers is trumpeting its re-acquisition with commercials featuring Ron Maclean doing his breathy feels-like-home voice about how Sportsnet is the natural landing spot for hockey until many of us are dead. Bettman made cooing noises about Rogers’ commitment at the announcement.
But let us cast our minds back to 2013 when the last Rogers/ NHL deal was concocted. We were the sports media columnist at the Mop & Pail at the time and much was made that Rogers would be a technological marvel, re-inventing the way we watched hockey. There would be new camera angles, referee cams, heightened audio, refreshed editorial content etc.
As hockey fans now know Rogers dabbled in the brave new world briefly, blanched at the cost of being creative and largely went back to doing hockey the way it had always been done. Taking no risks. On some regional casts that meant as few as three or four cameras for the action.
But if you were expecting dashboard cameras and drone shots you were sadly disappointed. Similarly there was a brief stab at refreshing the pre-, mid- and postgame content. Hipster George Stromboulopoulos was brought in as a host to attract a larger female audience.
But pretty soon Strombo was gonzo, replaced by the anodyne David Amber (whose dad was once the leader of the journalist union at CBC). Women like former player Jennifer Botterill were brought in to change the gender balance on panels. They then acted pretty much like guys, chalk-talking viewers into numbness. Appointment viewing has become a fallback choice.
The move away for anything controversial came in 2019 with Rogers’ axing of Don Cherry’s Coach’s Corner in a flap over the former coach’s continuing ventures into political or cultural content. Maclean slipped the knife into his meal ticket and continued on the show. After time in limbo, doing location shoots, he was returned full-time to the desk.
As we wrote in June of 2022, the one exception to the standard “serious, sombre, even a touch grim” tone is former defenceman Kevin Bieksa. “Bieksa has been a moveable feast. His insouciance with media has become his ragging on the fellow panelists during intermissions that used to be as much fun as skating in July.” His banter with “insider” Elliotte Friedman is now a lone concession to wit on the show.
Intermissions are numbingly predictable, and Rogers’ stable of analysts and play-by-play announcers outside of HNIC is unchallenging to the orthodoxy of PxP being a radio call over TV pictures. Name one star beside Bieksa that has been produced by Rogers’ “safe” broadcast style since 2013. They’d fit in perfectly in a 1980s hockey broadcast. Now compare it with the lively Amazon broadcasts hosted by Adnan Virk and Andi Petrillo.
This leaves a lingering question. What happens to TSN? Many prefer the editorial and studio profile of TSN on Trade Deadline Day or Free Agent frenzy. TSN locked up its stars such as James Duthie and Bob McKenzie when the last deal was signed. But there isn’t enough live content this time to support keeping a full roster anymore. Who will stay and who will go? (TSN’s president Stewart Johnson is the new commissioner of the CFL).
And with Rogers taking full control of MLSE (Maple Leafs, Raptors, Argos, Toronto FC) TSN is left with the CFL and packages of NFL, golf, tennis, some auto racing and international soccer. Is that enough on which to float a network? There have been rumours that Bell, owner of TSN, is interested in divesting itself of the high cost of sports broadcasting. Should that happen— who has the money to replace them?— the effect will be seismic in Canadian broadcasting.
For now, watch how much pressure the NHL puts on Rogers to up its game. More importantly what will happen when Bettman finally retires and the league has a new vision since 1992? Rogers has sewn up its end. Will the audience go with them?
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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