Bruce Dowbiggin
Trudeau’s Trucking Awful Week In Hiding
“You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you/ All those pretty lies, pretty lies/ When you gonna realize they’re only pretty lies? — Joni Mitchell
Anyone born after the turn of the century was likely unsurprised by the news that Joni Mitchell and Neil Young (“who ‘dey?”) want Spotify to ban podcaster Joe Rogan for sins against the climate catechism. Cancel culture IS the culture to many brought up in the safe spaces of the 21st century.
But for those who grew up with Young singing “Rockin’ In The Free World” while Mitchell sang the virtues of a “Free Man In Paris” the concept of these iconic artists arguing for censorship is bracing. What happened to artistic freedom from the Laurel Canyon crowd?
Well, the Canadian (surprised?) pair are simply responding to the safe-space zeitgeist. For Neil— who fell into Darryl Hannah’s lunatic orbit— that means eliminating anyone with a differing view on the Climate Cult. As for Joni, she wrote her own epitaph. “All romantics meet the same fate someday/ Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark café.” The Safe Space Café.
Safe-space reality was spawned in the education system. Radicals used the schools to enforce their Woke dogma, shutting down opposing opinion under the guise of providing the indulged a place where they could escape the noise of debate or just have a good cry . In a room with only one voice singing you can quickly come to believe that everyone agrees with you.
Which brings us to Canada’s petrified PM, Justin Trudeau bunkered in his own safe space as the truckers eat his lunch on Parliament Hill. Like so many of the media he’s bribed, Trudeau was hoping for a January 6 replay when the truckers hit Ottawa. You know… rioters pushing their way into the Parliament buildings, chaos, fires and some deaths. Yes, lots of deaths.
Sadly the truckers wouldn’t comply, outside of a honking horns on Rideau Street and someone allegedly throwing a rock at an EMS crew. So it was necessary for him to scramble his media slappies and invoke Plan B. To convince Safe Spacers of the imminent threat there would now be stories— not of gunplay and coups— but of toothless KKK despoiling the Capital, a Bytown population held hostage, signs of Trumpism and white power trying to seize power.
Lord knows his lackeys tried. Host Nil Kuksal on CBC soiled herself, suggesting it was all just a Putin ploy. . Another gormless CBC host asked if dark forces within the crowd might be grooming hapless truckers into a white power rebellion. CTV tried linking the Truckers to the anniversary of the Quebec City mosque shooting.
Reporters from all networks spotted people with swastikas and rebel flags yet strangely forgot to ask any of them who they were or what they were doing. They chortled with glee as a CPC member of Parliament was photo bombed by some plant carrying a Canadian flag with a swastika. See, they’re all Nazis, went the ledes on the six o’clock news. Great reporting
Ottawa’s Mayor Jim Watson thought condescension might work, telling the protesters that they’d made their point, now GO HOME. Apparently beer-swilling francophones hopping on the cenotaph yelling “Liberté” is an imminent threat to the security of the nation. The right to peaceful assembly exercised recently by Indigenous peoples and BLM— and approved by Trudeau— was now trumped by getting to the LCBO on Elgin Street before it closed .
The cable TV panels and double enders all agreed. Playing footsie with the rowdy protesters was going to end disastrously for the Conservatives. Brave Sir Justin in his bunker would win the day— as soon as his Covid fever broke. Irony alert: the man ordering Canadians to take the magic juice— on threat of job loss and denial of healthcare— was now testing positive after he’d been fully vaccinated with the magic potions.
The protesters did notice, demanding that Mr. Doubtfire meet with them to hear their demand for removal of vaccine mandates and passports. Now it was serious. Chairman Blackface had to move to Plan C. Emerging like Wiarton Willie from his RCMP-protected lair Trudeau told a video press event he was never going to soil his hands by going to meet the protesters. They were merchants of “antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia” primed at any moment to spread Covid and explosives. They want to overthrow the democratically elected government!
Again the press stenographers taking Trudeau’s bribes united in cheering his master stroke, demonizing the demonstrators for the umpteenth time. (Oddly, the Bloq leader disagreed. ) They ignored polls released Monday that showed the percentage of Canadians who want to abandon Trudeau’s lockdowns, mandates and punishments had zoomed from 40 percent to 54 percent— in one month. IOW, they agree with the truckers.
To Justin, it was all mob terror staging a coup. Again, Convoy leaders assured the fourth estate they didn’t want to take over government. They wanted an end to infringements on their charter rights. They wanted their elected representatives— Conservatives included— to hear the voice of the common people. They wanted Erin O’Toole to ignore the Globe & Mail and show leadership (too late to save his job BTW).
And they wanted the acquiescent media to stop acting as the Pravda wing of the PMO. (CBC: “Experts suggest containment, fines and giving protesters a deadline to leave”) Because the safe space created for the Family Compact is its last line of defence for this regime. The scribes and experts intoning mournfully about the death of civilization are actually lamenting the demise if their own class.
FOX TV’s provocateur Tucker Carlson spent 22 minutes at the top of his Monday show— the highest rated in U.S. cable TV— mocking this pretence of the comic opera on Parliament Hill, lampooning the PM’s costume changes and the failures of media such as CTV’s Paula Newton to stop writing for each other. If CBC’s 22 Minutes were still funny they’d do this piece.
Gimlet-eyed observers of the human condition, the media fail to see the ground shifting beneath them. The privilege of defining the world from downtown Ottawa— a privilege they’ve assumed for decades— is ending. Talking to your NIMBY friends is not reporting. As Carlson noted, the truckers are the messengers, but the crowds supporting them across the nation are the new reality.
If Trudeau weren’t buried in his bunker fighting manfully against Covid, he might see that, too. But that is asking him to grow a pair and leave hiding. The good news? Till the truckers leave he can listen to Joni Mitchell and Neil Young on a Russian DVD sites. Take that Spotify!
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
This week we are heading over to Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida, to see how MLB is getting along with its new ABS system for calling balls and strikes. According to our source at MLB the challenge system is being readily accepted by fans. If it goes as well as the time clock and catchers callig pitches elctronically it will be welcome.
In planning for seeing a game we had a choice between seeing the homestanding Miami Marlins or St. Louis Cardinals, who share the stadium in the spring. Our 16th-row seats for the Marlins/ Washington Nationals game are US $16 each. Had we chosen a Cardinals game versus Washington the next day that same seat would cost US $79.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is called dynamic pricing. The unloved Marlins can’t draw flies. The Cardinals— even a bad Cardinals team— are still a big draw. The gap between the two realities is growing fast. Leading many to say, What about parity?
As we wrote in December of last year, “MLB has seen parity and proclaimed, “We don’t give a damn!” Okay, they didn’t say that. In fact they insist the opposite is true. They’re all about competition and smaller markets getting a shot at a title. But as the 2024 offseason spending shows, believe none of what you hear and half of what you see in MLB.
Here’s the skinny: Juan Soto‘s contract with the NY Mets — 15 years and guaranteeing $765 million, not a penny of which is deferred. Max Fried signed an eight-year, $218 million deal with the New York Yankees. Later, Nathan Eovaldi secured a three-year, $75 million contract to return to the Texas Rangers. Blake Snell (five years, $182 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers) and Matthew Boyd (two years, $29 million with the Chicago Cubs) added to the splurge.
There’s one more thing that stands out. MLB has no trouble with the financial big boys in New York, Los Angles, Texas, Toronto, Atlanta and Chicago shelling out money no small market dare pay. In the MLB cheap seats, Tampa, Pittsburgh and Miami can’t send out quality players fast enough. But MLB is cool with that, too, as those paupers get a healthy slice of TV money.
So yes, they’re all about talking parity with their luxury-tax system. But to keep the TV, digital, betting and marketing lucre flowing they have to have large media markets swinging the heaviest bats come postseason. The question is, do MLB fans care anymore the way they used to about parity? It says here they don’t. More want to seed best-on-best more often. Which is brutal but refreshing.
Their sister leagues, married to draconian salary cap systems, are still pushing parity, even as they expand beyond recognition. In our 2004 our book Money Players, legendary Boston Bruins coach/ GM Harry Sinden noted, “The problem with teams in the league, is that there were (then) 20 teams who all think they are going to win the Stanley Cup, and they all are going to share it. But only one team is going to win it. The rest are chasing a rainbow.”
And that was before the expansion Vegas Golden Knights won a Cup within five years while the third-year Seattle Kraken made a run in those same 2023 playoffs. There are currently 32 teams in the league, each chasing Sinden’s rainbow of a Stanley Cup. That means 31 cranky fan bases every year demanding changes. And 31 management teams trying to avoid getting fired.
Maybe we’ve reached peak franchise level? Uh, no. Not so long as salary-capped leagues can use the dream of parity to sell more franchises. As we wrote in October of 2023, “If you believe the innuendo coming from commissioner Gary Bettman there is a steady appetite for getting a piece of the NHL operation. “The best answer I can give you is that we have continuous expressions of interest from places like Houston, Atlanta, Quebec City, Salt Lake City, but expansion isn’t on the agenda.” In the next breath Bettman was predicting that any new teams will cost “A lot, a lot.”
Deputy commissioner Bill Daly echoed Bettman’s caution about a sudden expansion but added, ”Having said that, particularly with the success of the Vegas and Seattle expansions, there are more people who want to own professional hockey teams.” Translation: If the NHL can get a billion for a new team, the heck with competitive excellence, the clock might start ticking sooner. After all, small-market Ottawa just went for $950.”
It’s not just the expansion-obsessed NHL talking more teams. MLB is looking to add franchises. Abandoned Montreal is once more getting palpitations over rumours that the league wants to return to the city that lost its Expos in 2005. Recent reports indicate that while MLB might prefer Salt Lake City and Nashville it also feels it must right the wrong left when the Expos moved to Washington DC 19 years ago.
The city needs a new ballpark to replace disastrous Olympic Stadium. They’ll also need more than Expos draftee Tom Brady to fund the franchise fee and operating costs. And Quebec corporate support— always transitory in the Expos years— will need to be strong. But two more MLB franchises within five years is a lock.
While the NBA is mum on going past 30 teams it has not shut the door on expansion after seeing the NHL cashing in. Neither has the cash-generating monster known as the NFL where teams currently sell for over six billion US. The NFL is eyeing Europe for its next moves.
The question that has to be asked in this is, WTF, quality of competition? The more teams in a league the lower the chances of even getting to a semifinal series let alone a championship. Fans in cities starved for a championship— the NFL’s Detroit Lions or Cleveland Browns are entering their seventh decade without a title or the Toronto Maple Leafs title-less since 1967— know how corrosive it can be.
Getting to 34, 36, maybe 40 teams makes for a short-term score for owners, but it could leave leagues with an entire strata of loser teams that no one—least of all networks, carriers and advertisers—wants to see. Generations of fans will be like Canuck supporters, going their entire lives without a championship.
In addition, as we’ve argued in our 2018 book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports and How The Free Market Can Save Them, watering down the product with a lot of teams no one wants to watch nationally or globally seems counter productive. The move away from quality toward quantity serves only the gambling industry. But since when has Gary Bettman Truly cared about quality of the product? So long as he gets to say, “We have a trade to announce” at the Draft, he’s a happy guy.”
When we published Cap In Hand we proposed a system like soccer with ranked divisions using promotion and relegation to ensure competition, not parity. Most of the interviewers we spoke to were skeptical of the idea. But as MLB steams closer to economic Darwinism our proposal is looking more credible every day. Play at the level you can afford. Or just watch Ted Lasso. Your choice. “
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.
Breaking: “Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum believes she will have a deal to avoid U.S. tariffs by next Tuesday. Meanwhile Canada’s PM Skippy McDoodles— he of 22 percent approval— is flying around Europe delivering billions to the Ukraine bribery-recycling mechanism and chatting with 18% approval Macron in Paris. God help Canada.”
For a party that consumes language the way Prime Minister Trudeau’s plane consumes jet fuel the ruling Liberals seem willfully— blissfully— ignorant of the meaning of the word Urgent. As in, get something done yesterday.
While Mexico seemingly recognizes the value of time in coming up with a deal by March 4 to avoid tariffs and Trump’s displeasure, viewers of the Xanax Liberal debates on Monday and Tuesday were treated to a government languorously floating down a river of polite debate, staying inside the guardrails of good taste.
The prevailing take was “we f**ed up the past decade, okay? But you know us and can depend on us to keep pandering to your romantic notions that don’t include Chinese money laundering, drug kingpins and cyber crime.” Apparently that should be enough for Canadian Boomers to flock to them like the swallows at Capistrano.
As most know by now the elders of the party disqualified two leadership candidates, Ruby Dhalla and Chandra Araya, from the debates because they couldn’t be relied upon to spare the cadaverous banker Mark Carney who famously has three different passports, a passel of corporate board seats and a halting grasp of French.
But who needs debate? The Liberals have settled on their enemy and it’s not Pierre Poilievre. It’s Donald Trump. They’re convinced themselves that targeting Beelzebub Trump, not addressing the tariff crisis, is all they need to expunge the Trudeau Follies and win a March election. Instead of engaging in serious talks (see: Danielle Smith) they’ll talk amongst themselves. The recent hockey win over over Tyrannus U.S. has apparently inspired Canadians to reward Liberals with another five years of sitting in first class while paying economy.
Emboldened 1A) candidate Chrystia Freeland, the former Finance minister and Truck Convoy caudillo, blasted Trump on Tuesday, urging Canada to join with… Denmark. “The U.S. is turning predator, and so what Canada needs to do is work closely with our democratic allies, our military allies. I would start with our Nordic partners, specifically Denmark who is also being threatened.”
Maybe she can do an anti-Trump rally at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen? The problem being— for those who applauded Nazis in the Visitors Gallery— this fatuous nonsense all makes perfect sense. The capacity for denial in the Libs aging Boomer base seems inexhaustible. Currently they’re memory-holing the Rez School buried babies claims that the PM recited before the U.N.
While the social-justice Left was routed in America in 2024, Team Carney is acting as if Canada’s culture cancellation scheme still works. Meanwhile the Libs seem unaware or uncaring about South of 70— the collapse of the CDN dollar— and the hollowing-out of Canada’s GDP (the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period).
Economist @TrevorTombe writes that it’s Code red time. “Real GDP per capita in the U.S. was 43% higher than in Canada in 2023. In 2024, I estimate this gap will widen to nearly 50% … This stunning divergence is unprecedented in modern history.’ But no sweat, Carney will print all the money Canada needs to keep diversity programs functioning.
It all mirrors the last desperate, flailing attempts by the U.S. Democrats to save their grasp on ultimate power in the 2024 election. Having used the Media Party that hid Biden’s bribery schemes to disguise the senility of Joe Biden for four years they discovered they would be wiped out by Trump in the voting. Presto change-o, they tossed the primary results, threw Biden into the dumpster, got friendly pollsters to make its look like Kamala Harris was ahead.
In the American model the DEMs still got smoked—every state voted more for Trump than 2020. Trump easily won the Electoral College. But Canada’s Libs seem assured that they can make an end run on the CPC’s big lead. Already the Media Party pollsters are showing a Lazarus-like ascent from Trudeau’s 22-percent approval to a lead in some polls and a closer call in others.
There are no Rasmussen polls as there were in the U.S., which consistently showed Trump on the road to his win. And Canada has yet to digest the full Carney record. Already his controversial record on climate and printing money has started to trip him up, as in recent revelations that he lied about his role in sending Brookfield’s head office from Canada to the U.S.
If all else fails Canada can still repatriate Wayne Gretzky. Donald Trump has made him a “free agent” again. “He’s the Greatest Canadian of them all, and I am therefore making him a ‘free agent,’ because I don’t want anyone in Canada to say anything bad about him… He supports Canada the way it is, as he should, even though it’s not nearly as good as it could be as part of the Greatest and Most Powerful Country in the World, the Good Ole’ U.S.A.!”
Besides, there are other Canadian fish for Trump to fry: “@Tablesalt13 If Donald Trump really wanted to hurt Canada he could offer (vetted) citizenship to any Canadian with an advanced degree or a sought-after skill. 40-50% of skilled Conservatives would leave… and only the socialists would remain….. This would be extinction level.” Just don’t call it urgent.
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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