It’s easy to get lost in the tariff forest and lose sight of the cultural trees these days. For instance, American lefty comic Bill Maher used his show to lampoon the Oscars’ tribal-recognition piety. (“’I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again—either give the land back or shut the f*** up!’). In the past this impertinence would have meant instant excommunication from the Woke culture. But “made man” Maher remains employed.

As DEI wanes around the U.S. this sort of apostasy is becoming more commonplace in America. For many voters a weight has been lifted since Donald Trump exposed the Left’s vanities in the 2024 election.

But with the Liberals’ selection of Mark Carney as their new leader, it’s certain Woke mafia will remain firmly in place in Canada. Example: a conservative politician in BC was canned by his own party for having the temerity to admit that the $20 million directed from government turned up no residential school murder victims in a B.C. graveyard. Which is an undeniable fact, but irritating to David Eby’s designated victims groups.

A nervous Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has made noises about ending DEI and de-fanging the media’s gotcha industry. But with Trump now diverting Canadians’ focus from the Liberals decade-long failure to doing O Canada donuts in the parking lot the chances are slim that PP does a DOGE purge like the one down south to free Canadians from the progressive mania.

While the Trump is putting paid to the American Woke circus— he’s gutting the EPA as we speak— a Mark Carney Canada will keep the Trudeau scold culture going full-bore. Judging by his disastrous turn at the Bank of England from 2013-2020  (by the time he left, UK inflation spiked up to a peak of 11.1 per cent compared to 5.2 per cent in France, or eight per cent in Italy that means heavy doses of climate hysteria, DEI observance, unchecked immigration and printing money for pet projects.

Former UK PM Liz Truss is more succinct. She says that Mark Carney’s mangling of her economy with zero emissions and a busy printing press will not be good for Canada. Carney is trying to divert from his radical resumé, saying America must show Canada “respect” before he deals with them. Carney may be new to this Canada thing, but he might want to know that his predecessor recently chided Americans for yet again not electing a woman president. And he secretly counselled Zelenskyy to embarrass Trump’s peace deal in the Oval Office. And he mocked Trump about Canada defeating the U.S. in hockey.  Respect? Sock it to me.

But this skirmishing hides the real story. Why are 43 percent of 18-36 male CDNs telling pollsters they would accept U.S. citizenship if they were guaranteed full rights and financial protections? While these young men may appreciate Canada they’re not motivated by the Boomer nostalgia for the Canada of 1967-2000 that is powering the current patriotic spasm. The pivotal cultural battle against DEI will likely be fought among the under-40 demographic brought up with political correctness— but now souring on its stultifying effect on their earning power.

Why? In the National Post climate expert Bjorn Lomborg has a guess after Carney’s wild accusation that Poilievre would “allow the world to burn”. “Nearly half of young Canadians believe we’re doomed because of climate change. No wonder. They’ve grown up bombarded both by footage of natural disasters, and by activists’ claims that climate change is making the planet unliveable. The flood of disaster porn is terrifying our kids and skewing our perception, and that can only lead to bad climate policy..”

Millennials also experience the futile struggle to afford a home while Canada’s bureaucrats announce $272 million to Bangladesh for 1) Intersectional Democratic Spaces 2) Gender-Responsive and Inclusive Education 3) Community Resilience through Locally-led Inclusive Adaptation. Say what?

There is also fear that the former captain of the United Nations’ global net-zero carbon emissions will destroy the financial prospects for under-40s by clinging to CO2 hysteria when the world wants Canada’s fossil fuels. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said Monday that with new pipelines, her province could increase exports to the U.S. by two million barrels a day. Carney is dead-set against it.

While the Media Party is not talking much about them the fight for these younger minds will come down to the debate. Which leader will move under 40s to vote for them? They’re not as moved by patriotic O Canadas citing the 1972 Summit Series or Terry Fox. Will they choose Banker Carney, who takes his climate policy cues from an teenaged Swedish psychiatric patient, or from PP, the apple-munching Pit Bull?

It’s time that Canada’s aging elite ceded a greater voice in the national debate. They need an intervention of the type Trump is now performing on Canadians addicted to sitting in first class but paying economy. He brought them into a room with the chairs and levelled with them about getting the free stuff they assumed was their right. Defence, security, trade, medical access. He’s the first president to do this in half a century.

And like all people addicted, CDN Boomers don’t want the truth. They want performance theatre, T-shirts and hockey games. They blame Trump for their predicament, caught between grim realities. Will they take the 12 steps? Or will their kids have to tell them the facts as they escort them to the home?

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.

Have you heard the latest message-board trope from Team Liberal? As their polls allegedly soar in the wake of Donald Trump and his 51st state comments they are trying to censor social-media posts that PM Mark Carney’s 24-year-old is a gender radical.

Take It Down,” pleads one poster. “It’s his kids, we need to leave family alone, you can attack Carney all day long as hard as you want but please just leave his kids out of it. Carney decided to run, his family isn’t running. This is a mistake on many levels”.

So, using this logic we shouldn’t report on the Hunter Biden scandal? He wasn’t running for anything either. No? Where is the journalistic dividing line? Sasha is a 24-year-old public figure who was long-listed for a CBC poetry prize with some tortured pentameter about baking and dysphoria.  Sasha is a grownup who is not trying to escape the limelight. Quite the opposite. Sasha is pursuing it, and Daddy’s leap to PM is seen as good news back at the gender studies lab.

This Liberal pity party over protecting “the kids” is what happens when social media confuses journalism with safe spaces. To the hush puppies trying to censor this issue on public media, we offer a terse: You’re out of your lane.

There are times in journalism when it’s unethical to cite the children of famous people. When they are not used as props for a photo op in India. When they don’t trade on the family name to get the job as prime minister. When they spend weekends reading instead of calling Canada a genocidal nation. Leave them alone.

Just not this time. There is a compelling cultural story surrounding non-binary Carney, however. Sasha is just one of a dramatic spike of young middle- and upper-class women who are engaged in a mass psychosis over dysphoria. With or without the help of parents they are hacking themselves surgically or castrating themselves chemically. Radicals have taken them up as a cause célèbre.

(Which apparently includes domestic terrorism. Three of the four recent Tesla attacks in the U.S. are reported to be radical transgender groups. And a recent murder of a border patrol agent in Vermont has been attributer to another cell of radical trans activists. Police officials say they are a growing safety menace.)

From the outside this rejection of their birth identity is absurd. As one wit says, 98 percent of us wake up each morning and are unhappy with what we see in the mirror. This is why a fashion industry exists. But the Sasha Army  represents an enormous challenge to traditional society. It is no laughing matter till it blows over— as bulimia appears to have done.

Twenty years ago— when a similar demographic of young women was starving itself with bulimia— the transexual community in the U.S. and Canada counted about 0.01 percent of citizens. Now, bulimia has largely disappeared from public attention while these gender-obsessed young people from ages 6- 26 are counted in staggering numbers. They have a Marxist fanaticism about their unalterable identity decision in Grade One or Two. And a censoring media that bulldogs anyone trying to bring sunlight to little Tinkerbell.

As just one example we spoke to the parents of a recent female graduate of Queens University. She reports that four of the seven young women in her group are having gender re-assignment or becoming non-binary. These are not marginal people making these brutal decisions in a vacuum. They’re often the products of elite schools and loving, stable families. Surrounded by university-educated teachers.

Go ahead and ask your daughters, nieces and other young women their experiences in liberal-arts colleges and faculties. That 57 percent figure is likely consistent with other anecdotal reporting in the demo. Modern Woke women, allegedly freed from their chains by feminism, are struggling with self-image.

Pew Reports says that 80 percent of white liberal women have been diagnosed by a medical professional as having a mental-health condition in the past five years. Over 50 percent of liberal women under 30 of all races have sought help. Older white women account for 58 percent of people who’ve used anti-depressants the past five years.

Polling by the Washington Examiner during the 2024 election highlights the isolation of this demographic. It showed during the 2024 election that married men are 59 percent Republican. Married women are 55 percent Republican. Unmarried men are 52 percent Republican But a whopping 68 percent of unmarried women backed Kamala.

This imbalance is multiplied disproportionately by the Democrats media stenographers using propaganda such as The View to perpetuate the gap. In the words of Robert Tracinski in The Federalist, these women have immunized themselves against hostile messages. “(F)or years, the left has trained itself in the habit of assuming that the only reason anyone disagrees with them is because of racism.

“As a consequence, those who live in this bubble tend to reflexively dismiss anyone who brings them a contrary message from the outside world.”

While minute fluctuations in global climate are parsed intently, this exploding trans community goes largely unreported by the Media Party in Canada and the U.S. If it does get air time it is unfailingly worshipful. Parents, doctors and teachers who object  are faced with social scorn and loss of jobs— not unlike the shaming of Covid skeptics and vaxx deniers. The prospects of a majority of young white women opting out of childbearing will be catastrophic to society.

Much of this gender war can be traced back to the movements to “safe spaces” for young people having trouble coping in colleges and universities. Marxist academics— many of whom fled to Canada to avoid American conservative politics— employed the safe-space mentality to isolate vulnerable groups such as women and visible minorities from contrary messaging.

When they graduated this Red Guard transferred the safe space model to the general public. Factionalism by demography frayed the social contract. This new victimization trope was employed by Barack Obama and later Justin Trudeau to control voting blocs and criminalize Bad Think. For almost a generation they held sway.

With the election of Donald Trump America has finally begun pushing back against radical gender indoctrination.In other countries the reaction is the same. But Canada under dedicated EuroGlobalist Carney shows no sign of relenting on the insanity. If anything Carney would push DEI, LGBTQ+ and ESG ever further.

It’s not an exaggeration that given a Carney government, Canada may be the final nation clinging to this DEI/ LGBTQ construct in the future. As we were told by one dedicated follower of dysfunction, “Someone has to set an example”.  Maybe Sasha Carney can write a poem about it.

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 latest book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon and at http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca. 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.