You Had An Option, Canada. And You Settled For This?

Bruce Dowbiggin

Published

3 years ago

9 minute read

John Turner: “I had no option.”

Brian Mulroney: ”You had an option, sir, to say ‘no’ and you chose to say ‘yes’ to the old attitudes and the old stories of the Liberal party.” Federal Leaders Debate 1984

It is Weasel Time in the urban salons of the 416/ 514/ 613/ 604. With the growing realization that everyone outside Canada—and more specifically Eastern Canada— sees Justin Trudeau as a punch line the guilty who repeatedly voted for him are suddenly trying to cover their tracks.

“I didn’t want to vote for him,” they explain. “But I had no option.”

Let’s pause to consider that. Since he was elected in 2015 which Justin Trudeau did you miss? RCMP Obstructor? Captain Blackface? The Kielburger Kid? Ethics Offender? Be My Teddy Bear? “She Perceived It Differently”? Mr. Dressup? The Chinese Vaccine Swindler? Race Baiter? Cucumber Pants? Bollywood Justin? The Wizard of Winnipeg Labs? I’ve Got Your Credit Rating?

Now let’s consider CPC leader Erin O’Toole. Okay, there wasn’t a lot there. But there wasn’t a moral deficiency a mile wide that embarrassed the nation as when Skippy goes swanning about the G7 or G20.

The ethics commissioner wasn’t repeatedly finding him guilty for taking free stuff. His policies could charitably called Liberal Lite. He was trying hard to make the 416/ 514/ 613 like him by abandoning conservative policies. The worst thing his enemies could throw at O’Toole was his wife serving him a beer after he had a jog.

So please, Trudeau deniers, you had an option. Don’t put the blame for prolonging this long national embarrassment on anyone but yourself. And the NDP.

But if you still need a reason to think JTPM is the worst prime minister of the post-war era— perhaps ever— consider his execrable performance during the Truckers Convoy. Convinced only Nazis could disagree with his godlike status, Trudeau— and Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland— insisted that the only way the convoy could have quickly raised nearly $10 million on two crowdfunding platforms was if nefarious foreign actors were funding the protest.

Taking their leader’s cue, clueless Liberal jackanapes promoted the same libel of foreign funding interference in the debate over emergency measures. Adding to the chorus were the PM’s poodles at CBC who doubled down on the myth of foreign interference, reporting that thousands of suspicious donations came from foreigners. The CBC lap dogs added, “The donations identified by CBC News are likely only a fraction of all the donations made by people outside of Canada.” (CBC has now withdrawn the story.)

Trudeau used the scare to justify freezing the finances of people he disagreed with, jeopardizing their livelihoods and threatening them with criminal charges. “If you’ve joined the protest because you’re tired of COVID, you now need to understand you are breaking laws,” he said, conflating mischief with treason. “The consequences are becoming more and more severe”.

In a move criticized by many Western democracies Trudeau suspended Canada’s cherished traditions of free speech and dissent to silence his blue-collar critics. And invented a coup by people who had no weapons, never interrupted the running of government, never kidnapped a politician and never even darkened the door of the House of Commons. But honked horns a lot.

It was all bullshit, as we learned last week with the visit to Parliament by FINTRAC official Barry MacKillop. McKillop said there was not a hint of foreign threat to Canada’s democracy in the donations. “It was their own money. It wasn’t cash that funded terrorism or was in any way money laundering,” he told a Parliamentary committee. “I believe they just wanted to support the cause.”

This supported an earlier report from the funding platforms that also contradicted the PM’s paranoid ranting. The truckers weren’t feeding at the trough of outside actors. They were just “fed up”. But Skippy attacked them with all the weapons in a PM’s arsenal. According to Department of Finance officials, as little as $20 in donations was enough to trigger a bank account freeze and an investigation under the act.”

So, to recap for our friends who thought there was no better option than Trudeau. The PM hid from protesters, slandered them as Nazis and women haters. When that didn’t work he fabricated a story that evil outsiders were helping the people in the Bouncy Castles to mount a coup against his government. Using CBC (and other accommodating media) he created a national panic to suspend civil liberties in Canada. One hapless Corp bingo caller suggested they were Putin stooges.

When the enormity of this disgrace emerged, Trudeau fired up the public-owned jet, took his deputy PM, foreign affairs minister and a battery of cameras with him for a Cook’s Tour of war-torn Ukraine. The only danger he faced was overexposure as he lined up photo ops with embarrassed soldiers and politicians.

Trudeau took his glazed smile and stuck it into the lens so Canadians could see him rally NATO for Ukraine. Well, rally is a little strong. Trudeau is a go-cart while the other G-& leaders are F1 cars. The only person Trudeau rallied was his pilot.

The closest he or his coterie got to real fire was from a lonely CBC reporter who was under the impression his job was to ask questions to which Canadians wanted answers. Finance minister Freeland, grand-daughter of a Ukrainian Nazi sympathizer (she also bossed the financial freeze of the truckers and their donors), harrumphed, “No one is asking why we are here!” Oh yes there are, replied the intrepid reporter.

Reminded that U.S. president Joe Biden was running America’s Ukraine effort from the White House while they were ignoring Canada’s soaring gas prices and inflation numbers, minister Joly said the plebes could never understand the intricate minds of luminaries such as her. Later Joly showed her grasp on Canada’ history: “ “Canada is not a nuclear power, it is not a military power, we’re a middle-size power”. Canada is “good at convening” she said. When tone deafness is an Olympic sport this crew will win the gold medal hands-down.

So when you hear the GTA chorus retreating from its Liberal crush, remember, “You had an option” last fall. Just ask the late John Turner.

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

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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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From Heel To Hero: George Foreman’s Uniquely American Story

2025 Federal Election / 2 days ago

Chinese Gangs Dominate Canada: Why Will Voters Give Liberals Another Term?

Bruce Dowbiggin / 6 days ago

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Bruce Dowbiggin

From Heel To Hero: George Foreman’s Uniquely American Story

Published on March 29, 2025

Bruce Dowbiggin

“The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know.”— George Foreman

For those who thought Donald Trump’s role progression (in WWE terms) from face to heel to face again was remarkable, George Foreman had already written the media book on going from the Baddest Man in the World to Gentle Giant.

It’s hard for those who saw him as the genial Grill Master or the smiling man with seven sons all named George (he also had seven daughters, each named differently) to conjure up the Foreman of the 1970s. He emerged as a star at the 1968 Olympics, winning the gold medal in heavyweight boxing. His destruction of a veteran Soviet fighter made him a political hero. In an age that already boasted a remarkable heavyweights Foreman was something unique.

Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Ron Lyle and Jimmy Ellis were still bankable household names for boxing fans— but on the downside of famous careers. They each had their niche. Foreman was something altogether different. Violent and pitiless in the ring. Unsmiling as he dismantled the boxers he met on his way to the top. He was the ultimate black hat.

With the inimitable Howard Cosell as his background track , he entered the ring in 1973 against the favoured ex-champ Frazier, coming off his three epic fights with Ali. While everyone gave Foreman a chance it was thought that the indomitable Frazier, possessor of a lethal left hook, would tame the young bull.

Instead, in under two rounds of savagery , Foreman sent Frazier to the canvas six times. Cosell yelled himself horse crying, “Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!” This was a whole new level of brutality as the poker-faced Foreman returned to his corner as the most feared boxer on the planet. For good measure Foreman destroyed Norton in 1974.

Fans of Ali quaked when they heard that he would face Foreman’s awesome power in Africa in the summer of 1974. They knew how much the trio of Frazier brawls had taken from him. The prospect of seeing the beloved heavyweight champ lifted off his feet by Foreman’s power left them sick to their stomach. Foreman played up his bad-boy image, wearing black leather, snarling at the press and leading a German shepherd on a leash.

Everyone knows what happened next. We were travelling the time in the era before internet/ cell phones. Anticipating the worst we blinked hard at the headline showing the next day that it was a thoroughly exhausted Foreman who crumbled in the seventh round. The brilliant documentary When We Were Kings is the historical record of that night/ morning in Kinshasa. The cultural clash of Ali, the world’s most famous man, and the brute against the background of music and third-world politics made it an Oscar winner.

But it’s largely about Ali. It doesn’t do justice to the enormity of Foreman’s collapse. Of course the humiliation of that night sent Foreman on a spiritual quest to find himself, a quest that took the prime of his career from him. It wasn’t till 1987 that he re-emerged as a Baptist minister/ boxer. With peace in his soul he climbed the ranks again, defiantly trading blows in the centre of the ring with opponents who finally succumbed to his “old-man” power.

Instead of the dour character who was felled by Ali, this Foreman was transformed in the public’s eye when he captured the heavyweight title in 1994, beating Michael Moore, a man 20 years his junior. He smiled. He teased Cosell and other media types. He fought till he was 48, although he tried to comeback when he was 55 (his wife intervened)

And, yes, for anyone who stayed up late watching TV there was the George Foreman Grill, a pitchman’s delight that earned him more money than his boxing career. HBO boxing commentator Larry Merchant commented that “There was a transformation from a young, hard character who felt a heavyweight champion should carry himself with menace to a very affectionate personality.”

There was a short-lived TV show called George. There was The Masked Singer as “Venus Fly Trap”. And there were the cameos on Home Improvement, King Of The Hill and Fast ’N Loud, delighting audiences who’d once reviled him. He cracked up Johnny Carson.

Foreman’s rebound story was uniquely American. Where Canadians are enthusiastically damning Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky for political reasons, Foreman never became a captive of angry radicals or corporate America. He went his own way, thumping the bible and the grill. Rest easy, big man.

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 . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

2025 Federal Election

Chinese Gangs Dominate Canada: Why Will Voters Give Liberals Another Term?

Published on March 27, 2025

Bruce Dowbiggin

There’s an old joke that goes, the Japanese want to buy Vancouver but the Chinese aren’t selling. Glib, yes. But with enough truth— Chinese own an estimated 30 percent of Vancouver’s real estate market— to pack a punch; Especially in this truncated rush to anoint Mark Carney PM before anyone finds out exactly who’s his Mama.

The advertised narrative for this election is Donald Trump’s vote of no confidence in the modern Canadian state. A segment of Canadians— mostly Boomers— see this as intolerable foreign interference in the country’s sovereignty. So rather than look inward at why Canada’s closest partner is fed up with them the Liberal government has chosen a pep rally rathe than any uncomfortable questions.

Namely about Chinese interference in Canada’s politics, the distortion of real-estate prices in Canadian urban markets, the exploitation of banking and the thriving drug trade that underpins it all. And how it’s driving a wedge between generations in the nation. As we like to say, Canada’s contented elites have been sitting in first class for decades but only paying economy.

They’d like you to forget insinuations that Canada is a global money-laundering capital. Better to blame Trump for the “willful blindness” that has Americans and others losing trust in Canada to keep secrets and contribute its fair share tom protecting against the growth of China. (The same geopolitical concern that saw Trump kick the Chinese out of the Panama Canal Zone.)

Thanks to the diligent reporting of journalist Sam Cooper and others we know better. And it’s ugly. An estimated trillion dollars from Chinese organized crime has washed through Canada since the 1990s. They’ve used underground banks and illegal currency smuggling to circumvent the law. They’ve bribed and intimidated. And they’ve poisoned elections.

This penetration of the culture/ economy by well-organized Asian criminal gangs have been around since the 1990s, but under Trudeau they hit warp speed. By the time Trump inconveniently raised the issue of border security in January, Canada’s economy could fairly be characterized as a real-estate bubble with a drug-money-laundering chaser. The Chinese Communist Party now operates “police stations” in many Canadian cities to supervise this activity and report to Beijing.

In his 2021 book Willful Blindness (and subsequent reporting) Cooper patiently records this evolution with brazen Asian gangs using casinos in BC and Ontario as money-laundering outlets to wash drug money and other criminal proceeds, turning stacks of dirty twenty-dollar bills into clean hundred-dollar bills or casino chips. (When Covid closed the casinos they used luxury mansions as private casinos.)

All financed by underground banks and loansharks. This process became known internationally as The “Vancouver Model” to help establish Chinese proxies overseas and extend the CPP ‘s reach. Hey, the real estate kingpin is named Kash-Ing. (Kaching!) It’s currently being used to buy farm properties in PEI, much to the anger of residents (who will still vote Liberal to protect their perks.)

While investigators and some authorities attempted to expose the schemes the perps were protected by compromised government officials, corrupt casino employees and the inability of courts to deliver justice. It’s why Canadians were so shocked that TD Bank was fined $3B in the U.S. for allowing money laundering. “Not us! No way! We’re Simon pure”.

Much of this money ended up in Canada’s feverish real-estate market, with vacant properties creating insane price spirals across the nation. It’s driven the inability of under 40s to buy homes— another major crisis the Liberals are trying to disguise under Mark Carney the compliant banker. Still more of the proceeds were used to build stronger drug-supply chains between Asia, Mexico and Canada— with heroin and fentanyl then distributed to the U.S. and in Canada.

Against this explosion of housing and drug debt were stories of the political influence of these gangs into the Canadian system. The sitting Canadian prime minister, who praised the Chinese form of governing before he reached the PM post, has been seen in photos with underground Asian gang figures. As were previous Liberal leaders like Jean Chretien who made no secret of his lust for the Chinese market. Chinese money was used to build extensively in Chretien’s Shawinigan riding.

Donations to Trudeau’s Montreal riding association and to the Trudeau Foundation were favourites of shadowy Chinese figures. “In just two days (in 2016), the prime minister’s (Outremont) riding received $70,000 from donors of Chinese origin, and at the same time, the government authorized the establishment of a Chinese bank in Canada,” Bloc leader Yves-Francois Blanchet said on Feb. 28.

Donations to Trudeau from all across Canada constituted up to 80 percent of the riding’s contributions that year. In May 2016, one such fundraiser saw Trudeau hosted by Benson Wong, chair of the Chinese Business Chamber of Commerce, along with 32 other wealthy guests in a pay-for-access event. The patterns exposed by Cooper finally prompted a commission by Quebec justice Marie-Josée Hogue looking into Chines interference in Trudeau’s successful 2019 and 2021 elections.

An interim report released last year by Hogue determined that while foreign interference might not have changed the outcome of Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections, it did undermine the rights of Canadian voters because it “tainted the process” and eroded public trust. So petrified was Trudeau of the full Hogue Report that he prorogued parliament for three months and handed in his resignation rather than test his 22 percent approval rating in a Canadian election. Or his luck with the courts.

Luckily for Liberals Trump came along to smoke out Trudeau and allow for the current whitewash of the party’s record since 2015 under Carney. So instead of agreeing with Washington about Canada’s corrupted economy Canadians have decided to engage in a Mike Myers nostalgia fest for a nation long gone. A nation overly dominated by its smug, satisfied +60 demographic that sits back on its savings while younger Canadians cannot get into the economy.

Reaching past the sunset media to those people is Pierre Poilievre’s task. He has a month to do so. For Canada’s long-term prospects he’d better succeed. The Chinese are watching closely.