Bruce Dowbiggin
Institutional Neutrality is Dead. Long Live Chaos

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Liberals believe that everyone is entitled to an opinion. Just so long as it’s the same opinion as theirs.— P.J. O’Rourke
Have you ever ordered from Skip The Dishes and then greedily savoured the taste of your food as it made its way to your house? And then, when the food arrived, the salad was wilted, the fries were mushy and the burger was overdone?
That’s probably how Republicans in the U.S. feel in the wake of the much-touted midterm elections on Tuesday. They ordered a mouth-watering portion of crushing Joe Biden’s Democrats. When their order was tossed on the stoop it proved a nothing burger.
Yes, the GOP appear to now (barely) control the House, which is no small thing. Biden’s legislative agenda goes through them. But the promised triumph in the Senate likely comes down to a woeful Herschel Walker winning a runoff in December with the incumbent Raphael Warnock to simply maintain a 50-50 status quo.
The GOP’s caviar dreams and champagne wishes were stoked by pollsters and TV pundits who promised revenge for two years of Biden calling them Nazis. Instead they got a cadaverous husk named John Fetterman, rendered non compes menses by a stroke, schooling TV doc Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s Senate race. Go figure.
The only upside was in Florida where governor Ron DeSantis led a true red wave, swamping the DEMs across the board in governor, senate and House elections en route to historic gains in the Sunshine state. The DEM drubbing was what had been promised— and never materialized— elsewhere.
Now, Republicans are left with the scenario none of them wants. The Mara Lago whale Donald Trump— whose wonky endorsements in the midterms face-planted in important races— stands as GOP kingmaker. He largely withheld his huge war chest from candidates who wilted against DEM media blitzes. And he has a fanatical base.
He believes he has the road open to a 2024 presidential nomination. Indeed, he thinks opposition to him would be disloyal to a former president. The only thing standing in his way will be fellow Floridian DeSantis, the favourite of those who live in a real world. Their clash— if DeSantis is willing— promises to be bloody. And highly entertaining for DEMs.
What leads conservatives in the U.S. to most despair in this conflict is the urgency of a cultural moment Trump introduced in 2016— a moment he seems to have allowed to pass in place of a cult of personality. As Pedro L. Gonzalez describes in in Chronicles Magazine: The Trump moment was a repudiation of the status quo through a legitimate democratic process. By subsequently denying that option to people through force and fraud, the establishment effectively removed a pressure relief valve.
It’s hard to explain what a disaster this is for the establishment… They had to radicalize the people who are most patriotic about this country and most reverent of its myths, symbols, and founding documents: Middle Americans. People no longer believe in institutional neutrality. That is bad for the regime. But it’s good for Americans who needed to be disabused of that illusion.
The abuses of the establishment against Americans have all but guaranteed the rise of a force that will be as bad or worse than what they pretended the first iteration of Trumpism was. It’ll be good and necessary when it comes.”
It’ll be good for Canadians, too, when Jagmeet Singh, the Happy Squanderer, does his democratic duty bringing down the Trudeau Tower. Read the previous quote and insert the Canadian establishment where Gonzalez referred to its American counterpart and the observation applies to Singh, Trudeau and the insatiable apparatus of the Capital Region.
As we have seen in the ongoing Emergency Measures finger pointing, institutional neutrality in Canada is mort. The entire exercise on display in Ottawa has seen the Usual Suspects demonizing working-class’ complaints as white supremacy. They are saying they have nothing to learn from their fellow citizens. Anything but blaming themselves for allowing the Convoy to metastasize on the steps of Parliament Hill.
The recent government disgorgements to failing traditional media— abated by the corrosive Bill C-18— make clear that the ruling elite in Ottawa think they have bought off dissent. Trudeau has an open field to dabble in his vanities.
[If you want to sample the self-absorption vibe, here’s Trudeau’s wife Sophie nuzzling with Meaghan Markle on her podcast: “This wasn’t our day of being the wives and moms, all perfectly coiffed with updos and pearls and demure smiles,” said Markle. “This was the other version of us both with wild curly hair and swimsuits and loose linen and huge belly laughs. Big cuddles with our little ones, quiet whispers of girl talk on the terrace, giddy like absolute schoolgirls.”
The only resistance to this twaddle— Sophie G. greeted Markle with the chummy African term “ubuntu”— remains social media, and the Trudeau government is moving quickly to head off that outlet, too, with C-18.]
The presumption being he can turn off all the pressure valves for opponents and ride out the storms of his corruption. As in, the Global News investigation of Canadian intelligence briefs alleging that China’s Toronto Consulate covertly funded a clandestine network of CCP-affiliated candidates in the 2019 federal election. A scandal that Trudeau let lie for 22 months while he told the UN that Canada is a genocidal state.
He needs to bear in mind Gonzalez’s prediction of “a force that will be as bad or worse than what they pretended the first iteration of Trumpism was”. While Ontario is still content to colour within the lines, a combination of western provinces is willing to provoke the biggest constitutional crisis since his Papa repatriated the constitution in the early 1980s.
Tread lightly, M. Trudeau. Skip The Dishes can’t save you now.
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 Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth 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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