@Sheila_Copps

Not sure which election you are watching. The Liberals are winning in double digits. Not bad for a party this is supposed to be 20 points behind on the national polls. https://x.com/Sheila_Copps/status/1805439460110135640

One of the truly wonderful things about X is its ability to capture the privileged in full regalia, exercising their entitlement in real time. For this purpose no one struts quite like Sheila Copps, the Madame Lafarge of the Liberals’ Sponsorship Scandal, the disaster that reduced her party to such a low estate that only pusillanimous Justin Trudeau could be their saviour.

Ms. Copps was tossing around cringeworthy headlines Monday night/ Tuesday morning concerning the by-election in Toronto St. Paul’s riding. Reading them (“If Coppsy says it’s over, it’s over”) we went to bed thinking her insider PMO candidate Leslie Church had eked out a small but necessary plurality.

Only to wake up to the former deputy PM wiping free-range egg from her face as the Conservatives stole this bedrock riding. And while Ms. Copps tried to play the Libs as a plucky underdog, the party HQ threw everything and everyone into the riding to rescue them from Justin Trudeau hate. It wasn’t enough. In fact, their desperation worked against them.  Door-front canvassing was hazardous as the Forest Hill set, apprised of new capital-gains taxes, told cabinet ministers and other party hacks they’d rather boil in a Tim’s Dark Roast than support Sinbad the Black Face PM anymore.

While Copps spluttered about how fate was against Liberals, she couldn’t blame low turnout. A 45 percent turnout for a by-election in central Toronto, where a drive to the corner store can take 30 minutes in YYZ gridlock, is decisive. Which leaves the Liberal Party as currently constituted under Genocide Man in a bad place. Or, more accurately, no place.

The paid scribes at CBC tried to soften the blow. “The Liberals’ poor showing in a stronghold like this could prompt some soul-searching for Trudeau..” Could prompt? Some soul searching? That’s like saying Napoleon is having second thoughts about invading Russia. The CBC writers acted like he’d gotten a speeding ticket, not a ticket to political oblivion. Or to the WEF, his true constituency.

As many have noted, the only one thinking that Trudeau should stay is Trudeau himself. His teenaged angst thing doesn’t allow for contradiction. Except it’s not his call anymore after St. Pauls. If the hollowed-out Libs can find anyone willing to do the Kim Campbell Caretaker To Disaster role, they should change the locks on the PMO now.

Bespoke banker to the privileged Mark Carney is the name they mention, because he combines Liberal arrogance with taste for the Green Apocalypse. But current backbench MPs trying to stretch the writ till their pensions are assured and those who want Senate jobs after the collapse aren’t likely to pop their heads up with any risky ideas.

The Freeland-led Cabinet, which currently resembles the faculty lounge at a third-rate community college, is widely despised and as unelectable as a rabbi in Gaza. Sad. It all seems just days ago when the Laurentian elite in St. Paul’s was soaking up Sunny Ways policies like Diversity Is Strength as if handed down from the Oracle.

In the overlap from Stephen Harper, when all things could be blamed on The Prince of PMO Darkness, the niggling lapses like Justy as Calypso King or firing his indigenous female Minister of Justice could be blithely dismissed. The RCMP were diverted. When Blame the Harp was gone, he morphed into Justin the Terrible, a full-blooded caudillo arresting truckers and shutting down society for vaccines. He was now a titan of moral authority hiding under his desk from working people.

His vaunted immigration project (“Do I hear 40 million?”) dovetailed nicely with his distaste for traditional Canadians like truckers and farmers who live without private jets. When multi-generational Canadians protested about the housing bubble this created he staged a cemetery photo op to tell the world that his constituency is genocidal. The hubris was epic.

But in time it all caught up to him. His Prince of Araby mask was ripped off, and the facts of his turpitude finally became undeniable. His ultimate failing was probably the Diversity Dance, which postulated that he could import millions into the nation, allow them free rein on religion and culture, and house them in tiny houses. The bar was low, but the pomposity was high.

This Skippy scam was based the great liberal pathetic fallacy. By extending reason and understanding to people who want neither you will bring them around to your thinking. And voting for you. You need gullibility to believe this stuff. Luckily for Trudeau he had the purchased media to make this sound like a good idea.

But all good things must end. People who worshipped Diversity eventually realized it separated people and fractured Canadian society. Instead of uniting Canadians behind shared goals it perpetuated grievances, creating a victimization pecking order, each complaint more pathetic than the last. It caught up to him in St. Paul’s.

One other satisfying element from St. Paul’s was the inability of Trudeau’s common-law political partner Jagmeet Singh to exploit the antipathy to Trudeau. The NDP live in permanent hope that a Liberal crater represents their chance to seize the political middle. But Singh’s Uriah Heap performance in propping up Trudeau’s ethics breaches and suspected illegalities isn’t fooling anyone. Least of all the fashionista lefties of Forest Hill or Yonge & Eglinton.

If the humiliation from St. Paul’s riding was poison for Trudeau and the Libs then it was worse for Singh and the Deepers. A new day is coming. Unlike climate change it will get here soon.

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.

At a time when the Florida Panthers needed a break in Game Six of the Stanley Cup Final Series, they got something more like the Zapruder film. Blurry, inconclusive, dramatic and very, very upsetting. Trailing Edmonton 2-0 before a braying Oilers fanbase, struggling Florida thought they’d scored in the second period to make it 2-1.

Hope of a comeback sprung eternal on the Panthers’ bench. At the Oilers’ bench, however, rookie coach Kris Knoblauch was peering down at something on his digital tablet. Could it be the bang-bang play at the Edmonton blue line was offside? Knoblauch decided to risk it all on a challenge. If he won, Florida’s momentum would be stopped. If he lost, it would be a one-goal Oilers’ lead with Florida going on the power play—the penalty for a wrong challenge.

For the next minutes the NHL video review officials in Toronto pondered the play from multiple angles. In the booth the announcers called it too close to call. Several angles seemed to show the play was indeed offside. On the TV broadcast viewers could see the arbiters of angles cogitating about the call in their studio. Others were not so definitive. Time passed like days, not minutes.

After an excruciating wait, the goal was disallowed, the crowd went wild, and the Oilers rolled to an easy 5-1 victory, tying the Final series and forcing Game 7 in Florida. In your grandfather’s NHL, the losing coach would here have exploded in rage against technology, homer refs and the summer solstice. At first Maurice gave an Oscar-winning performance as the aggrieved coach behind the bench.

Afterward, however, a more-composed Maurice was more sanguine on whether the video system had worked properly. “I have no idea. It may well have been offside,” he told the postgame presser. “The linesperson informed me that it was the last clip that they got where they made the decision that it shows it’s offside. I don’t have those (clips). So I was upset after the call, based on what I see at my feet and what my video person looks at.”

He then explained that he was most concerned by the possibility of a penalty for a failed challenge. “There was no way I would have challenged that if (the situation) were reversed,” Maurice told the media postgame. “There was no way I thought you could conclusively say that was offside. I don’t know what (angles) the Oilers get. I don’t know what the league gets. I just know that (if) I had to challenge that based on what I saw, I would not have challenged.”

Maurice, who’s noted for his wit, then added, “I’m not saying it’s not offside. We’ll get still frames, we’ll bring in the CIA, we’ll figure it out. But in the 30 seconds that I would’ve made that call, I would not have challenged.”
So how to make replay better? Those watching the ongoing EuroCup24 soccer tournament can see that soccer, the most hidebound sports for decades, is using technology to get their byzantine offside rule called properly. In one game, Belgium’s star Lukaku had, not one, but two goals nixed by the technology.

There have been ponderous delays for review, yes, but there is no question that the calls when finally decided are correct. Much like the Hawkeye technology for calling lines in tennis, soccer’s tech is impartial and unequivocal. And it largely removes the tinfoil-hat contingent from spreading conspiracy theories.

Nothing illustrates the schism between the modern hockey fan and the Original Six more than video replay (they dropped “instant” replay for obvious reasons). People born to the digital age see no problem with getting it right, however long it takes. The only thing wrong is that they can’t (yet) control it with a joystick.

Old-timers like the “human element” romanticism of allowing blown calls, like the phantom tag at second base or the football barely crossing the goal line in a pile of bodies. They want the free flow of the game not to be interrupted (unless by a fight). They insist that lengthy delays, like betting commercials, ruin the sport’s purity.

In this they’re like the MLB folks who are still resistant to having their ABS system call balls and strikes. While old catchers and retired umpires wax lovingly about the art of “framing pitches” (translation: tricking umps into wrong calls) the home viewer can regularly see umpires missing 8-10 percent of the calls in a game. Yet commissioner Rob Manfred still drags his feet on the imposition of a system that is already working in the minors.

The reality is that, in this time of betting and network domination, there is no excuse for getting it wrong. As we have mentioned on numerous occasions, there is no allowing for doubt when you’re taking hundreds of millions from the betting industry.

So let’s see the NHL introduce an offside technology like that in soccer. Let’s see the NFL install a chip in the football that sends the first-down “chain gang” to oblivion. Let’s see MLB get the calls right. Even if the old-timers can’t stand 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, 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.