News
“Arguably the best Canadian Derby field ever assembled”
The 90th’s running of the Canadian Derby takes place on Sunday at Century Mile next to the Edmonton International Airport. Doors open at 11 am and the first race is set to begin at around 1:30. Here is a story supplied by Horse Racing Alberta – written by Curtis Stock
Earlier this year Final Jeopardy was considered strong enough to be on the Derby Trail. Only that was the Kentucky Derby Trail. Now, Final Jeopardy is back on the Derby Trail. Only this time it’s Sunday’s $250,000 Canadian Derby Trail at Century Mile and then the $250,000 B.C. Derby in Vancouver.
In what is arguably the best Canadian Derby field ever assembled with a classy group of 12 entered, Final Jeopardy would still – despite all the talent on each side of him – appear to be the much the best. After all, Final Jeopardy, now owned by Peter and James Redekop of B.C., is a horse that ran second to Code of Honor in his last appearance in the Grade 3 Dwyer Stakes at Belmont, New York.
If you aren’t familiar with Code of Honor you should be. Code of Honor just happens to be one of the top three-year-olds in North America. He was placed second in the Kentucky Derby; he won the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth in Florida and he ran third in the Grade 1 Florida Derby. Furthermore, Code of Honor is one of the main threats in next week’s Travers Stakes.
Talking about the Dwyer which Final Jeopardy lost by just over three lengths, Final Jeopardy’s jockey Irad Ortiz told Blood Horse magazine “He ran so good. I don’t have any excuse, we just got beat by a better horse. We were second-best today. He never gave up. It’s just that the winner is a good horse, too. He gave me everything he had.”
“He should be favoured,” said Dr. Bryan Anderson, racing manager for the Redekops. And he is with the morning line on Final Jeopardy set at 8-to-5.
Another Vancouver horse, Explode, who won the last local prep for the Canadian Derby, is the second favourite at 4-1. Miltontown, one of two horses that trainer Robertino Diodoro has sent to Alberta is next at 6-1 while Journey Man, who has won his last two starts at Arlington Park in Chicago, is the fourth choice at 8-1.
But the story line is still all Final Jeopardy, who as well as running second in the Dwyer in his last start, July 6, also finished fourth in the Peter Pan. He was also good enough to be entered in the Wood Memorial, one of the Kentucky Derby’s main prep races. Final Jeopardy ran sixth in the Wood but he had excuses getting squeezed at the start of the race.
“He looks like a monster,” said Diodoro, who has won three of the last six Canadian Derbies which would have been four of the last six until a judicial review by Madam Justice J.M. Ross disqualified 2017 Derby winner Chief Know It All on Tuesday afternoon. “On paper Final Jeopardy looks to be five to six lengths the best horse,” said one of Miltontown’s owners, Clayton Wiest, who also co-owned Chief Know It All and last year’s winner Sky Promise. “If you ran the race 10 times, maybe Final Jeopardy wins it nine times,” said Wiest, hoping that the tenth time is going to go Miltontown’s way.
How exactly does a horse like Final Jeopardy wind up in Edmonton? “We heard the horse was for sale,” said Anderson. “The previous owners, Gary and Mary West, have too many horses. They buy 50-60 babies a year at auction and they are almost only looking for Grade 1 and Grade 2 winners. “Our main veterinarian happened to be in the area; he looked at him and liked what he saw. Then trainer Phil Hall went down and looked at him and he liked what he saw too.” A sales price was not disclosed but sources indicate it was around $450,000.
Another reason why Final Jeopardy is in Edmonton is the $250,000 Derby purse which is up $50,000 from last year and $100,000 from two years ago. “I’m sure the purse had quite a bit to do with it,” said Hall. “And the Derby distance – a mile and a quarter – should help too. Jason Servis, who was Final Jeopardy’s previous trainer said a mile and a quarter wouldn’t be a problem.
“He’s a Cadillac,” said Final Jeopardy’s exercise and work rider Brad Cuthbertson, son of the great W. Canadian jockey Alan. “He’s a very nice horse. He’s big. He’s strong. He’s got a nice move to him. He just looks the part of a good horse. Horses like him have confidence; they know they’re the best.”
While post positions don’t mean a lot in a mile and a quarter race on a one-mile track like Century Mile, Final Jeopardy drew post eight at Wednesday’s post draw.
From the rail out the posts are:
- Call It a Wrap. Owned by the powerful Riversedge barn and conditioned by Alberta’s leading trainer, Tim Rycroft, Call It a Wrap finished second in his last three starts including the Manitoba Derby in his most recent appearance and then twice to Alberta’s top three-year-old Sharp Dressed Beau. A contender to finish in the top 5.
- Parking Permit. Third to Sharp Dressed Beau in the Count Lathum two starts ago. A definite longsot.
- Karizanga. Missed by a nose in his most recent start at Indiana Downs. Won a starters allowance at Churchill Downs. Should challenge for the show position.
- Ranger Up. Still a maiden but finished second in straight maiden races at Monmouth Park, Kenneland and Gulfstream. In the middle mix and could surprise for a bigger piece.
- Miltontown. Claimed for $50,000 at Churchill Downs expressively for this race. Same connections won last year’s Derby with Sky Promise. Trainer Diodoro said to throw the last race out as the horse got caught too far behind a speed-biased track and had traffic problems. Hard to ignore the Diodoro factor and gets the services of jockey Rico Walcott. Has been working extremely well including a half mile work in :47 seconds flat. In the top 4.
- Explode. Has won five of his last six starts easily taking two open stakes at Hastings Park and then completing the hat trick at Century Miles when he just got up in the mud in a race where he was looking around down the stretch and appeared to jump the starting gate tractor tires. Main contender.
- Journeyman. Never worse than third in six starts including back-to-back wins at Arlington. Third choice.
- Final Jeopardy. Top choice for obvious reasons.
- Equivocal. Scored a nice allowance win at Century Mile two starts ago but showed no run last time out. A longshot.
- Senor Friday. The other Diodoro pupil. Won the Harry Jeffries in Winnipeg in his last start. Earlier this year won the Turf Paradise Derby by open lengths in Phoenix. Middle threat.
- Flatout Winner. Had excuses in the mud in his last appearance when he was bumped hard leaving the starting gate losing several lengths at the break, made a good wide move down the backstretch before being taken back to the rail where he flattened out. Moved off the rail again he started to run again. The longshot play.
- Sharp Dressed Beau. Won the Western Canada and Count Lathum stakes at Century Mile looking very impressive. Third in the mud to Explode last time out. Distance is the question and post doesn’t help. In the middle mix too.
STOCK REPORT– There are three other stakes races this weekend. All powerful races. On Saturday there is the $75,000 Northlands Distaff for aged fillies and mares and the $100,000 Century Casinos Oaks for three-year-old fillies. In the former, Good Luck to You heads a strong field of nine. In the latter, Summerland makes the trip to Edmonton. She has won eight of 10 lifetime starts including a six-for-six run. Throw out the last race where she had breathing problems. Looking to topple her is Im Evin Im Leavin, who came so close to knocking off Exploded and the boys in her last trip. Throw out the Sonoma start where he really acted up in the starting gate. Also a factor is the well-conditioned Exactly sent out by Elige Bourne.
On Sunday in addition to the Derby is the $75,000 Century Mile which attracted a very solid field of 11 including Sir Bronx, who drew the outside post. Sir Bronx was last year’s champion sprinter and aged horse and he appears to be even better this year. The morning line favourite is Gato Guapo, whom Diodoro has also brought to Century Mile. Gate Guapo rarely misses a cheque.
Post times for the first race on Saturday and Sunday is 1:45 p.m. The Derby is the 10th of the 10-race card.
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It’s been nearly a year since I last wrote about the CBC. In the intervening months, the Prescott memo on bias at the BBC was released, whose stunning allegations of systemic journalistic malpractice “inspired” multiple senior officials to leave the corporation. Given how the institutional bias driving problems at the BBC is undoubtedly widely shared by CBC employees, I’d be surprised if there weren’t similar flaws embedded inside the stuff we’re being fed here in Canada.
Apparently, besides receiving nearly two billion dollars¹ annually in direct and indirect government funding, CBC also employs around a third of all of Canada’s full time journalists. So taxpayers have a legitimate interest in knowing what we’re getting out of the deal.
Naturally, corporate president Marie-Philippe Bouchard has solemnly denied the existence of any bias in CBC reporting. But I’d be more comfortable seeing some evidence of that with my own eyes. Given that I personally can easily go multiple months without watching any CBC programming or even visiting their website, “my own eyes” will require some creative redefinition.
So this time around I collected the titles and descriptions from nearly 300 stories that were randomly chosen from the CBC Top Stories RSS feed from the first half of 2025. You can view the results for yourself here. I then used AI tools to analyze the data for possible bias (how events are interpreted) and agendas (which events are selected). I also looked for:
- Institutional viewpoint bias
- Public-sector framing
- Cultural-identity prioritization
- Government-source dependency
- Social-progressive emphasis
Here’s what I discovered.
Story Selection Bias
Millions of things happen every day. And many thousands of those might be of interest to Canadians. Naturally, no news publisher has the bandwidth to cover all of them, so deciding which stories to include in anyone’s Top Story feed will involve a lot of filtering. To give us a sense of what filtering standards are used at the CBC, let’s break down coverage by topic.
Of the 300 stories covered by my data, around 30 percent – month after month – focused on Donald Trump and U.S.- Canada relations. Another 12-15 percent related to Gaza and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Domestic politics – including election coverage – took up another 12 percent, Indigenous issues attracted 9 percent, climate and the environment grabbed 8 percent, and gender identity, health-care worker assaults, immigrant suffering, and crime attracted around 4 percent each.
Now here’s a partial list of significant stories from the target time frame (the first half of 2025) that weren’t meaningfully represented in my sample of CBC’s Top Stories:
- Housing affordability crisis barely appears (one of the top voter concerns in actual 2025 polls).
- Immigration levels and labour-market impact.
- Crime-rate increases or policing controversies (unless tied to Indigenous or racialized victims).
- Private-sector investment success stories.
- Any sustained positive coverage of the oil/gas sector (even when prices are high).
- Critical examination of public-sector growth or pension liabilities.
- Chinese interference or CCP influence in Canada (despite ongoing inquiries in real life).
- The rest of the known galaxy (besides Gaza and the U.S.)
Interpretation Bias
There’s an obvious pattern of favoring certain identity narratives. The Indigenous are always framed as victims of historic injustice, Palestinian and Gazan actions are overwhelmingly sympathetic, while anything done by Israelis is “aggression”. Transgender representation in uniformly affirmative while dissent is bigotry.
By contrast, stories critical of immigration policy, sympathetic to Israeli/Jewish perspectives, or skeptical of gender medicine are virtually non-existent in this sample.
That’s not to say that, in the real world, injustice doesn’t exist. It surely does. But a neutral and objective news service should be able to present important stories using a neutral and objective voice. That obviously doesn’t happen at the CBC.
Consider these obvious examples:
- “Trump claims there are only ‘2 genders.’ Historians say that’s never been true” – here’s an overt editorial contradiction in the headline itself.
- “Trump bans transgender female athletes from women’s sports” which is framed as an attack rather than a policy debate.
And your choice of wording counts more than you might realize. Verbs like “slams”, “blasts”, and “warns” are used almost exclusively describing the actions of conservative figures like Trump, Poilievre, or Danielle Smith, while “experts say”, “historians say”, and “doctors say” are repeatedly used to rebut conservative policy.
Similarly, Palestinian casualties are invariably “killed“ by Israeli forces – using the active voice – while Israeli casualties, when mentioned at all, are described using the passive voice.
Institutional Viewpoint Bias
A primary – perhaps the primary job – of a serious journalist is to challenge the government’s narrative. Because if journalists don’t even try to hold public officials to account, then no one else can. Even the valuable work of the Auditor General or the Parliamentary Budget Officer will be wasted, because there will be no one to amplify their claims of wrongdoing. And Canadians will have no way of hearing the bad news.
So it can’t be a good sign when around 62 percent of domestic political stories published by the nation’s public broadcaster either quote government (federal or provincial) sources as the primary voice, or are framed around government announcements, reports, funding promises, or inquiries.
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In other words, a majority of what the CBC does involves providing stenography services for their paymasters.
Here are just a few examples:
- “Federal government apologizes for ‘profound harm’ of Dundas Harbour relocations”
- “Jordan’s Principle funding… being extended through 2026: Indigenous Services”
- “Liberal government announces dental care expansion the day before expected election call”
Agencies like the Bank of Canada, Indigenous Services Canada, and Transportation Safety Board are routinely presented as authoritative and neutral. By contrast, opposition or industry critiques are usually presented as secondary (“…but critics say”) or are simply invisible. Overall, private-sector actors like airlines, oil companies, or developers are far more likely to be criticized.
All this is classic institutional bias: the state and its agencies are the default lens through which reality is filtered.
Not unlike the horrors going on at the BBC, much of this bias is likely unconscious. I’m sure that presenting this evidence to CBC editors and managers would evoke little more than blank stares. This stuff flies way below the radar.
But as one of the AI tools I used concluded:
In short, this 2025 CBC RSS sample shows a very strong and consistent left-progressive institutional bias both in story selection (agenda) and in framing (interpretation). The outlet functions less as a neutral public broadcaster and more as an amplifier of government, public-sector, and social-progressive narratives, with particular hostility reserved for Donald Trump, Canadian conservatives, and anything that could be construed as “right-wing misinformation.”
And here’s the bottom line from a second tool:
The data reveals a consistent editorial worldview where legitimate change flows from institutions downward, identity group membership is newsworthy, and systemic intervention is the default solution framework.
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Is Updating a Few Thousand Readers Worth a Half Million Taxpayer Dollars? |
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| Plenty has been written about the many difficulties faced by legacy news media operations. You might even recall reading about the troubled CBC and the Liberal government’s ill-fated Online News Act in these very pages. Traditional subscription and broadcast models are drying up, and on-line ad-based revenues are in sharp decline. | ||||||
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From the Daily Caller News Foundation
CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is reportedly planning to dramatically change the network’s coverage to eliminate left-wing bias and make the newsroom more efficient.
Weiss has been handed a mandate for change by Paramount SkyDance’s David Ellison, the CEO of CBS News’ parent company, which bought her company, The Free Press, for $150 million, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Ellison wants Weiss to bring “news that reflects reality” and journalism that “doesn’t seek to demonize, but seeks to understand.”
“I wanna blow things up,” Weiss has reportedly told her colleagues during meetings.
During the hiring process, Weiss has reached out to outside talent directly rather than speaking to their agents, which is considered the traditional method of communication, according to the WSJ. She has also reportedly been highly involved in booking guests in an attempt to fix the network’s ratings and make a lasting change.
Weiss is focused on trying to reshape “CBS Evening News,” which has consistently ranked third place in comparison to the evening programs on ABC News and NBC News. “CBS Evening News” typically averages around 4 million total viewers. On the week of November 3, the program garnered 4.2 million total viewers and 564,000 viewers in the 25 to 54 key demographic, while “NBC Nightly News” and “ABC World News Tonight” averaged 7.2 million and 6.6 million total viewers, as well as 929,000 and 883,000 in the 25-54 demo, according to AdWeek.
John Dickerson, who currently hosts “CBS Evening News,” announced on Oct. 27 that he will be departing the network in January. Weiss has reportedly considered poaching CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Fox News’ Bret Baier, though Baier said he will remain at Fox News in the short-term since his contract goes through the end of 2028, according to the WSJ.
A source close to Cooper told the WSJ that the CNN host is not interested in hosting “CBS Evening News.”
“CBS Mornings” host Gayle King’s contract is up in early 2026, prompting Weiss to reportedly consider finding a cheaper alternative to her $15 million salary, according to WSJ.
The median age of viewers who watch CBS News is 58 years old, according to a Pew Research survey.
When she stepped into her role, Weiss sent emails to staff asking them to outline their jobs and provide feedback on “how we can make CBS News the most trusted news organization in America and the world.” Weiss said she would have had to “throw in the towel a very, very long time ago” if she were concerned about the negative press her decisions will receive.
Approximately 100 staffers were laid off once Weiss took over in October, which were part of Paramount’s layoffs of about 1,000 employees. The CBS News Race and Culture Unit, founded in July 2020, was completely wiped out as part of the layoffs.
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