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
“I think our reverence for the truth might have become a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done.” Katherine Maher (NPR CEO)
If Ms. Maher finds the new Donald Trump autocracy uncomfortable, fact-wise, she should apply to replace magenta-haired Catherine Tait as CEO and president of CBC. Ratings? Deficits? A pish-posh distraction. She’d fit right in.
In the wake of the Nov. 5 election, Justin Trudeau’s diehards draw strength from a leader who also eschews reality. He rejects financial accounts in favour of an accounting of the heart. In his attempt at “finding consensus and getting important things done” Canada’s 23rd PM continues to assure Canadians that he will resist the dread Trump agenda by employing not policy but his tantric approach to governance. One where he is the yogi and Canada is the one getting penetrated.
With an unassailable mandate for at least two years Trump has momentum. As seen by the dramatic Trump cabinet appointees, this divine mission will be sorely tested as The Donald loads up his tariff wagon and demands that the freeloader on America’s back pay its share to NATO. And prepare to accept a northward flood of undesirable immigrants.
Trump’s new border czar Thomas Homan has clearly identified Canada’s border weakness. Fear not, says Mr. minus-38 percent approval in polling. Our hearts are pure and our motives unquestioned. Sure. You go with that. (Ontario premier Doug Ford isn’t waiting for Trudeau to smell the Trumpian coffee. He’s warning Mexico about its trade deficiencies, threatening to kick them out of the free trade deal.)
Like America’s ruling class before the 2024 election, Canada’s brahmins are blithely unaware they are being fitted for a rope in 2025. Confident they know best, they issue columns that declare that the public sometimes gets it wrong in elections (ignoring the culpability for Joe Biden). They faint in the face of Elon Musk making X into a dominant political force. They assume the public is still listening.
The result down south couldn’t possibly be replicated here, because Canada has a ruling class of the first order. And a media paid to repeat that claim. That’s what Americans thought, says Mark Steyn. “The first problem with America’s ruling class: they don’t live where you live; they don’t even want to visit where you live; they have no desire to set foot where you live. And, in consequence, they know nothing.”
The same can be said for Canada’s know-it-alls. They don’t live where you live. They don’t want to live in Brandon or Cornerbrook. They have no desire to set foot in Sturgeon Falls or Fort St. John. The only real places they see are out the car window as they speed away to their cottage in the Laurentians or Muskoka. Ergo, they know nothing worth knowing.
But they know who you are. They clean your homes. They serve you in restaurants. They drive your Ubers. They laugh at your vanities. But the Laurentian elites remain unaware. As a consequence they can say, like Space Cadet No. 1 Melanie Joly, “our border is extremely effective and extremely well guarded” when the U.S. ambassador to Canada warns that the millions of anticipated deportees need to get out of America. Has Joly seen the Portal crossing into Saskatchewan? The St. Stephen-Calais crossing in NB? Fortress Canada couldn’t repel a determined surge of 50 illegals, let alone 500 or 5000, fleeing deportation in the U.S.
And still the balm of Liberal confidence buoys Canada’s upper middle class. They happily ingest the most ludicrous unctions from their government about Trump. Even as their CNN and MSNBC voices are discredited they believe. As we wrote recently, over 50 percent of Americans saw through Kamala Harris and the DEMs coup narratives as complete bushwah. Probably 90 percent of Canadians, however, still lap up these narratives of competent governance.
Their biggest fear remains that the populist revolt against authority in the U.S. might threaten Canada’s faculty lounge cabinet. As we wrote the Chinese spying allegations are typical of the decaying media’s water carrying for the elites. “No one drawing a Liberal support cheque worries aloud that Trudeau knows the truth contained in this files, that it’s injurious to him and the NDP, that Canadians need to know the names of MPs and senators taking bribes, why a police request sat on a minister’s desk for 54 days unopened.
It’s Poilievre/ Trump who’s untrustworthy. It’s a strategy that the Libs and NDP pray Poilievre will fall for. Pierre’s sin is he doesn’t believe the public should depend on government for everything. That’s heresy in Canada’s Family Compact, and so the Trump comparisons”.
This was how the U.S. Left acted till Nov. 5. Now, the pendulum there is swinging against the administrative state apologists in the U.S. Earlier this month, Boeing’s newly installed CEO, Kelly Ortberg, quietly dismantled the DEI department and accepted the resignation of the office’s vice president. Canada thinks it can still resist this correction with kind hearts and coronets.
A typical example of denial was on Toronto radio this week on which a food shelter advocate and the host discussed the sky-rocketing demand for food hampers in the GTA. They postulated various ideas why this is so. No doubts they were sincere. But in the entire seven-minute segment no one suggested that the Liberals’ mass importation of millions into the city the past five years might have had some impact on these services.
You get the government you deserve. And, as a consequence, you get media you deserve. People like Maher who echo Trudeau’s reverence for China’s ability to get things done outside the democratic sphere. And climate loons who excuse China’s unregulated belching stacks as being under control due to Western examples of carbon pricing and higher taxes.
Perhaps when Trudeau is finally pensioned off by Poilievre we will see some of his still-in-denial women folks, enraged by Little Trump’s victory, adopt the protest tactics of 4B, a South Korean feminist movement in which women swear off dating, mating with, and marrying men. Then we will see if anyone notices that they’ve left the grid. Here’s betting we don’t.
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.
It hasn’t been the greatest month for Wayne Gretzky. One one hand he has a Putin pal, Alex Ovechkin, systematically stalking his record for the most regular-season goals in an NHL career. After a slow start The Great Eight is now tracking Wayne like Carey Price tracking a mule deer (more on that later). When this is over he could have only 60 NHL records left!
On the other hand, his secret about supporting Donald Trump got out in the wake of Orange Man Bad re-possessing the White House. Yes, Gretz is a MAGA man, right down to the hat. While his son-in-law, LIV golfer Dustin Johnson, tees it up regularly with The Donald (they’re neighbours in the Palm Beaches) most of the hockey sweats were unaware that No. 99 votes for Trump. (In Wayne’s defence he votes GOP in the Hollywood congressional district which is like using a hair blower to melt the Columba Ice Field.)
Then, after Trump’s stunning (to some) win on Tuesday, pictures emerged on the Great One with his family at Mar A Lago celebrating the win. Janet Gretzky cooed, “Congratulations Mr. President Donald J Trump ♥️🤍💙🇺🇸 You did it, You deserved it, you earned every bit of it. The world is a better place to have you as our Leader. Proud to be an American. Thank you for being such a great friend . May God keep watching over you ♥️🙏🏻♥️ Love our family to yours !”
The secret (to some) was out. Then hero of the Great White North, which has elected Justin Trudeau three times, melted down. Like this. “People should burn all their old hockey jersey and cards of this guy. A shame”. And those were the nice ones.
University of Alberta professor Robert Summers @RJSCity: “He’s been a pretty unlikable guy for a long time, this just further solidifies it. He was an amazing hockey player.” @ktownkeith: “Gretzky is disgusting and pathetic. I will celebrate when Ovechkin breaks his record. Also FYI, Mario was the best hockey player ever, not Whine Gretzky.”
Dave MacIntyre @dave_macattack: “Wayne Gretzky being at Cheeto’s inauguration party is disappointing in ways I can’t properly express in a tweet. And no, I don’t care that hockey culture is conservative. Being fiercely opposed to a fascist dictator should be the absolute floor for anyone with a conscience….He ain’t the GOAT for me anymore.”
“Not sure this guy is the Canadian icon and encapsulation of Canadian values that many think he is. The first red flag was his very partisan support for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives starting in the mid-2000s. No thanks, Wayne!”
Globe & Mail columnist Andrew Coyne, who was on an 0-50 heater during the election weighed in. @acoyne: “I have no problem with Gretzky being a conservative. I do have a problem with him hanging with Trump. Who, for starters, is not a conservative.”
There were some who defended him. My pal Ted Bird chirped back. @manofbird: “The pissants complaining about Wayne Gretzky attending Trump’s victory party are the same people who would’ve snitched on their own kids for playing road hockey during COVID.”
But it’s safe to say that as Canada prepares to defenestrate Trudeau in the next federal election, Gretz will not be invited to Rideau Hall for beaver tails with Justin. It’s likely he’ll experience the Bobby Orr blackout, becoming a non-person in Canada for getting too close to Trump.
In Orr’s case it was his published endorsement of Trump’s losing 2020 campaign that led to the shade being drawn over the greatest defenceman (IMO player) ever. “He’s the kind of teammate I want”.
Much like the Gretzky tsunami of condemnation, Orr took it in the cup, especially in liberal New England where he made his bones. “Not that Bobby Orr will care, but his endorsement of Donald Trump is one of the most disappointing things I’ve ever read in my life. I guess all I can say is that he seems to have a weak spot for conmen/future convicted criminals.”
In Canada it was no better for Orr. Here was Vancouver columnist Daniel Wagner: “In other words, Orr faces no harm from a Trump administration and is likely insulated from the harm that others have experienced. That doesn’t excuse his endorsement, but goes a long way towards explaining it.” In the Hockey News Ken Campbell tied Orr to the Jan. 6 riots. “Bobby Orr Was Part of the Problem. Now He Can Be Part of the Solution”.
In our column of Nov. 8, 2020, we pointed the wee hypocrisy of the liberal-left press box. “Just weeks after giving LeBron James’ political activism a tongue bath, the Globe & Mail sent in the goons for Orr. “Neither Bobby Orr nor any other athletes should be leading the political conversation” thundered Cathal Kelly.
Sure. Leave it to us. Other Canadian sports media called Trump a “monster”, a “racist” and “a totalitarian”. You could heat most of the GTA with the steam emitted by their indignation at Orr having the temerity to speak out. Others swore to sell off their precious Orr memorabilia as if Orr had been accused of throwing a Stanley Cup Final.”
A bitter Orr has taken a low profile since as even some in his hometown of Parry Sound wants nothing to do with him. “Poor Parry Sound,” tweeted Mary Lou George on Oct. 31, 2020. “What a disgrace #BobbyOrr has turned out to be. Guess he believes bragging about assaulting women really is just locker room talk since he wants Trump on his team. Sad.”
Longtime fans in Parry Sound dumped on him. “I just assumed that he was a good guy. Honestly it was heartbreaking for me to learn this about him. It just shattered my impression – I guess it was an illusion – it just shattered it… It kind of now, makes me rethink a lot of my hockey heroes … it’s just disappointing.”
The message is that in progressive Canada it doesn’t pay for even the greatest hockey heroes to diverge from their Trudeaupian orthodoxy. As Canadiens star goalie Carey Price learned when he dared to disagree with Trudeau’s plans to seize guns.
“I love my family, I love my country, and I care for my neighbour,” Price wrote in a published post. “I am not a criminal or a threat to society. What @justinpjtrudeau is trying to do is unjust… Thank you for listening to my opinion.”
We commiserated with him in our column at the time. “Good luck with that, Carey. Coming in the week when Quebec commemorates the 2014 École Polytechnique massacre, the political message backfired. Quebec’s media exploded against the man who was so recently their hero. Price tried to clarify his stand.
“My views are my own, and I do believe in them,” he tweeted. “The only reason I bring up this issue is because it is what’s being brought up now and not out of disrespect to anyone.” That brought the Habs belatedly to protect him. “Carey was not aware of the unfortunate timing on his statement. The Montreal Canadiens wish to express their sincere apology to any and all who have been offended or upset by the discourse that has arisen over this matter in recent days.”
But the message is clear. Whether you’re Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr or Carey Price, Canada’s Woke chorus will not abide insubordination to their cause. That includes much of the media. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men , they can’t handle the truth. So shut up and pass the puck.
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.
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