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Bruce Dowbiggin

Rogue Populism: The Road Less Travelled

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‘You’ve got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?’—Dirty Harry

We have been staying up late trying to figure out the fatal flaw in the approaches of new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and new Alberta premier Danielle Smith. From the amount of abuse being thrown at the pair you’d think they were a Van Gogh painting. They must be doing something terribly wrong.

Or not. There are many possible culprits in our search, but we have settled on one highly controversial initiative the two employed to gain power in their respective parties. It would appear that both Poilievre and Smith spent a long time away from the seat of power talking to ordinary people with no connection to the posh set.

They assiduously courted folk who’d been locked up in Covid quarantines and— suspiciously— a number who’d been buying gas that cost almost double the price of a year ago. They listened to voices that rarely get squeezed into the lineup on The National or receive guest editorials in the Toronto Star. Rumour has it they even spoke to people who’d been in the truckers’ convoy last February. Sedition.

They did almost all of this in-person research without using internet trolling as the means of communication. Then they signed up tens, even hundreds of thousands of new party members by telling them they’d articulate their feelings if elected. And they won.

As anyone familiar with the political game can tell you this populist stuff was a huge mistake. First off, if you want to hold high office in Canada you need to court the Media Party at its HQ in the Ottawa/ Toronto axis. Read the sage wisdom from Andrew Coyne, Susan Delacourt and Heather Mallick.

Next, you must flatter the gods of TV/ radio by appearing on their panels with the bien pensants and agreeing with hosts like Rosemary Barton or Nil Kuksal that Jean Charest was the smart CPC choice. The candidate with aspirations to being elected then must take a cross-section of their opinions, find a middle ground to flatter the press. They must piss on the Trucker Convoy while saying Trudeau was right to hide in a bunker away from the rabble.

Finally— and this is key— you have to steer clear of the “unrestricted information warfare practices” of the new data age. This neither Poilievre nor Smith bothered to do en route to office. When they raised the complaints they’d gained from ordinary voters about the Carbon Tax or the equalization plan they were deluged with constitutional arguments and legal opinions from the 613 chattering class.

When Smith had the temerity to raise the spectre of aggressive new Western sovereignty demands within the Federation you’d have thought she’d said nasty stuff about Anne Murray. Heads exploded in Toronto newsrooms. The tone was “all this populist stuff emulates Donald Trump’s improbable rise to power in 2016”. And when we say Donald Trump in proper Canadian society we are talking about Beelzebub, okay?

Yet here we are today. Both Poilievre and Smith have defied the odds. Smith is forgiving those who didn’t take the dodgy vaccines. Poilievre is laying traps in Question Period for the PM on the Emergency Measures overreach. Naturally, the Family Compact insist that the pair are symptomatic of rising white supremacy in the land. The truth is anything but. Not that it will protect them against the Resistance.

Smith properly divined that her predecessor, former federal cabinet heavyweight Jason Kenny— supposedly the perfect candidate— had lost the faith of his base during the Covid-19 disaster. Intimidated by alarmist health authorities (and their media pals)  Kenney was swallowed by events. “The hard truth is,” writes Smith confidant Laura Pentlebury, “the members of this government watched as Public Health in Alberta terrorized small businesses and long-term care facilities into compliance. The ‘lax’ restrictions came at a terrible price to the mental well being of many Albertans.”

What made Kenny’s failure so ironic is that he was Stephen Harper’s man on the ground with immigrant groups in the 905, listening when Liberals took their votes for granted. He helped Harper to 10 years as PM. Yet he couldn’t translate this experience to save his career.

Taking a page from Quebec’s book, Smith— along with Saskatchewan— will not launch legal challenges in Ottawa’s swamp, either. Instead, she will wait for the feds to try to lay their hands on Alberta’s protected grain, guns and energy. Then she will tell them to get lost while inviting them into Alberta’s legal swamp for a mud wrestle that will last five years.

Poilievre performed as the nerd in the coffee shop, willing to listen to people who saw no signs of Climate Change beyond the Carbon Tax and the Green fanatics on CBC/ CTV/ Global. He made simple economic arguments in campaign ads— ads that were predictably ridiculed by 22 Minutes. He taunted the fatuous Trudeau agenda of “Do as I say, not as I do”. See: $400K trips to Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.

Keyboard elites are now scrambling to excuse them as outliers. But the municipal elections last week told a different story. Progressives were thumped for the mayor’s chair in Vancouver and Ottawa. School boards were rocked by parents outraged by the #trans #abortion #hateCanada curricula in public schools. Only Toronto did status quo (surprise!)

Outside Canada the same post-Covid backlash has begun with elections of populists in Italy and Sweden plus a likely swing rightward in the U.S. midterms Nov. 8. They all have the same resentments after Covid crackdowns were followed by financial hardships. Or unbalanced outcomes in courtrooms and corporate offices favouring the flavours of the day against everyday folk. The stigmatization of the middle class. Outrageous inflation and interest-rate jumps. 32 pronouns. Dozens of genders.

You’d hardly know this by watching the media & culture community. The great new world order can’t get here fast enough for the refined class. Just topple some statues and take drag queens to Grade 1 classes. Racism! Racism! Racism!

Poilievre and Smith are not steeped in skullduggery. They will make mistakes. The media party will savage them for it. (Smith was pummelled by the policy wonks for previous opinions on Ukraine.) The UCP faces a tough election against a sassy NDP next spring. Poilievre won’t get a crack at Trudeau till 2024— or until the NDP get enough coin to run another federal election.

Nothing is guaranteed in a non-confrontational country like Canada that worships authority. However their fates unfold in the next decade you can say one thing for certain. They have at least met the people they represent on their home ground. They’ve heard the pain and resentment of Covid authoritarianism. They’ve seen through the corruption practiced in Ottawa’s salons.

If Canada rejects them then it will be rejecting itself. And have hell to pay for it.

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 YearsIn NHL History, his new book with son Evan, was voted the eighth best professional hockey book all-time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted seventh best, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca

 

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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2025 Federal Election

How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust

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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.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Is HNIC Ready For The Winnipeg Jets To Be Canada’s Heroes?

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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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