Bruce Dowbiggin
Saving CBC: Do The Liberals Believe They’re Saving Themselves?

News Item: A senior government official told CBC News the government is in the final stages of drafting “major legislative and regulatory changes” to better position CBC for the future as it grapples with seismic developments in the news and broadcasting space.
Having shovelled billions into the maw of CBC for almost a decade to keep its creaky mandate going amid “seismic developments” it seems an odd decision for the Liberals to now re-define that same mandate. With less than a year left till an election (it could be a lot less) in a bureaucracy where time is measured in decades (unless it’s climate) the idea of getting anything this profound done before Pierre Poilievre gets his hands on the Corp is risible.
Poilievre has made clear his intentions to stop the billion-dollar gravy train to CBC. Clearly the rethink is a political feint to assuage its aging progressive base that remembers the good old days of Peter Gzowski and Don Harron. Sure, the model is broken, but if we call Poilievre a mini-Trump and demagogue Elon Musk often enough (and have our paid scribblers repeat the charge) can we turn this scow around in time to save our hides? Desperate times call for disparate measures.
So what is going on here? Has Team Trudeau just realized that the gig is up for the CBC’s traditional media structure? Do the threats about jailing purveyors of alternate narratives indicate they’re doubling down for their pals in big Telcos? In dumping CEO Catherine Tait have they gotten the message that global communications giants don’t give a flip about the Liberals’ protectionist plans?

Example: Netflix is pulling its financial support of programs in the Canadian film and TV sector due to the new Online Streaming Act, Trudeau’s hapless attempt to make foreigners prop up Canada’s failing print and TV production. Out of sight, out of mind. Spotify also announced it was increasing prices in Canada— because of you-know-what.
While French-language Radio Canada might still have a cultural argument in Quebec to make for its continued existence, no such imperative faces English CBC services anymore. The private production side and the digital world are perfectly capable of finding the next Schitt’s Creek or Pottery Challenge without air cover from the feds. So the Libs survival strategy now is attack, attack, attack.
Perhaps if enough captive media slappies demonize Poilievre (“The Conservative leader’s rhetoric seems tailored for a media climate that rewards maximum drama” whines CBC) protectionist intimidation could halt the growth of internet opposition.. Likely not. As blogger Mike Benz notes, “The best way to start the story of Internet censorship is with the story of Internet freedom.”
Will pumping CBC’s tires/ banning internet critics actually stem the tide? CBC’s national news division is compromised beyond recognition. In concert with the huge private telecommunications firms they’ve also hollowed out local/ regional economies, leaving skeleton operations beholden to head offices in Toronto and Ottawa. And now that independent podcasts and sites emerging since the 1991 privatization of the the internet are filling these gaps Trudeau thinks it’s time to re-think CBC so it can finish off his antagonizers?
While the precise strategy of Trudeau’s hubris remains opaque, in the United States the issue between old media and new media is now existential. With Elon Musk coming out in favour of Donald Trump and a new coalition with RFK Jr. Hillary Clinton has raised the banner of jailing those whom she believes purvey “disinformation and misinformation” (translation: things she disagrees with) .

In the past the Grift Queen needed only to make some phone calls to insider media to get her agenda bannered across the major press. Her acolytes would go to the Sunday Morning TV panels to spin her take on affairs. The FBI would cower. Now she’s a remnant of a toppled order. She seems to be saying, why can’t they all be like Kamala Harris and follow my orders?
But new digital media defies her by aligning with Trump. One need only look at the polls indicating that the 18-35 year olds are moving toward Trump to see the demographic peril for the Clinton/ Obama insiders. No wonder the U.S. Defence department and Homeland Security are funnelling millions to prestigious American universities to “study” what can be done about “misinformation” from critics like Trump. Spolier alert: jail time.
Their old order is dying. Even reliable squishes like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are having second thoughts about Harris. This past Saturday SNL savaged Harris, Biden and Tim Walz in a skit that was unthinkable even six weeks ago. And that pillar of Democratic orthodoxy 60 Minutes broadcast a damning clip with Harris in which host Bill Whittaker asked her tough questions— which she fumbled. (CBS quickly scrambled to bury the clips.)
You’d almost think the Media Party are looking to distance themselves from a Harris train wreck. So Clinton and her shell-shocked allies want arrests and pronto. Indeed Musk confessed this week that should Kamala Harris prevail next month he will probably be in jail in six months from the new administration taking office.
One of the favourite claims of the old media looking to rough up Trump/ Poilievre is the Hitler meme. We are told that they read his book, follow his agendas and want to eliminate their racial enemies. But the more apt comparison of eras is not Germany 1933-45 but revolutionary France in the late eighteenth century.
There, dissolute snobs with a hereditary claim to being obeyed suddenly found themselves outflanked by people they hardly deigned to acknowledge let alone understand. Expecting protection from the trappings of their power they never saw the Reign of Terror till it walked up the stairs of their palaces. The guillotine ended their pleas for privilege.
It may not be that bloody in modern terms. But the last gasp of a dying elite will look a lot like Marie Antoinette clutching her pearls on the way to meet Madame Lafarge.
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.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Eau Canada! Join Us In An Inclusive New National Anthem

This past week has seen (some) Canadians celebrating their heritage— now that Mike Myers has officially reinterpreted Canadian culture as a hockey sweater and Mr. Dressup. This quick-change was so popular that Canadian voters even forgot an entire decade of Justin Trudeau.
In the United States, the people who elected Donald Trump– and not Andrew Coyne– to run their nation celebrated Independence Day with stirring renditions off The Star Spangled Banner, although few could surpass the brilliant performance of the song by the late Whitney Houston at the 1991 Super Bowl.
The CDN equivalent is some flavour of the month changing the words to O Canada at the Grey Cup game. Canada’s national anthem has always been open to interpretation by people who may or may not have Canada in their hearts. At the 2023 NBA All Star Game Canadian chanteuse Jully Black became the latest singer to attempt a manicure to the English lyrics of O Canada, penned for the 1880 Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day ceremony ( Calixa Lavallée composed the music, after which words were written by the poet and judge Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier. The English lyrics have “evolved” over the years, just like the dress code for the CDN PM..)

Black amended the first line from “our home and native land” to our home ON native land”. Because something-something. But this creative license is nothing new. Unlike Chris Stapleton, Marvin Gaye or Whitney Houston with the Star Spangled Banner, interpreters of O Canada have seen fit to amend the lyrics to their sensibilities. Roger Doucet, famed anthem singer of the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970-80s, tried to add the words “we stand on guard for truth and liberty” in place of the first “we stand on guard for thee”.
In 1990, having nothing better to do, Toronto City Council voted 12 to 7 in favour of recommending that the phrase “our home and native land” be changed to “our home and cherished land” and that “in all thy sons command” be partly reverted to “in all of us command”. (The latter was officially adapted.)
While those attempts had mixed outcomes it appears it’s just a matter of time till Ms. Black’s class-conscious culling of the words is accepted. Being generous we here at IDLM thought we’d short-circuit piecemeal attempts to create a throughly Woke version of the anthem that would last till the latest fad come along. Herewith our 2023 definitive O Canada that even— maybe only— Justin Trudeau could love:
“O Canada” (Ignores the French fact in our culture) Change to “Eau Canada”
“Our home on native land” (ignores indigenous land claims) Change to “Get off our land, settlers”
“True patriot love in all of us commands” (Only true patriot love? There were officially 78 kinds of relationships in Trudeaupia. And commanding love?) Change to “Love the one you’re with”.
“With glowing hearts we see thee rise” (rise suggests triumph of white triumphalist dogma) Change to “Non judgementally we oppose the crushing impacts of Euro-based autocracy”
“The true north strong and free” (How can anyone be strong or free when we support America’s killing fields?) Change to “Heteronormative thinking must be stamped out at our borders. If we even have borders anymore.”
“From far and wide” (Body shaming) Change to “Obesity is a disease that is not helped by putting it in the national anthem.”
“O Canada” (biased against A, B, AB blood types) change to “Science Must Be Believed”
“We stand on guard for thee” (Spreads hate against the non ableist community) Change to “Please remain seated.”
“God keep our land” (God? God? What is this, the Reformation) “Change to “It’s your thing”
”Glorious and free” (Glorious harkens to the bourgeois subjugation of Indigenous thought processes by white Christian priests) Change to “A genocidal state if there ever was one”.
“O Canada we stand on guard for thee/
O Canada we stand on guard for thee” The denial of trans rights is used twice here to emphasize the intolerable burdens faced by people of the LGBTQ2R community as they seek respect and compensation for the evils of the founding oppressors.) Change to “Eau Canada, after 6.5 hours of intensive lectures on the gender, race and dissociative application of class war on your citizens you may someday come to understand that this song is a manifestation of your bigotry and exploitation of minorities— and why rhyming lines like “thee and free” is the work of the devil or J.K. Rowling, whomever comes to mind first.”

There. That wasn’t so tough, was it? Flows trippingly off the tongue like Mark Carney refusing a special inquiry into China buying the electoral process. Or perhaps we should simply accept a literal translation of the original French lyrics:
“O Canada!
Land of our ancestors
Glorious deeds circle your brow
For your arm knows how to wield the sword
Your arm knows how to carry the cross;
Your history is an epic
Of brilliant deeds
And your valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights.”
Yikes. That’s downright fascistic. But it’s Quebec, and we have to allow them their peccadilloes. So circle your brow with glorious deeds, grab a cross and a sword and valour steeped in faith. And remember we must be adaptable in the new era.
Unless it’s Alberta using the adapting to fuel its CO2-belching machines. In which case it’s man the battlements and follow Mike Myers into the fight.
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.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Canada Day 2025: It’s Time For Boomers To Let The Kids Lead

So how did you spend your first Canada Day under new PM Mark Carney? If you’re CBC, freed from the clutches of Pierre Poilievere, you do a fawning interview with ex-pat comedian Mike Myers, whose Elbows Up appearance on Saturday Night Live and whose partisan hockey sweater appearance with Carney were pivotal moments in the recent election. (Saving CBC from drastic budget cuts— not that they mentioned it.)
After Donald Trump’s bellicose 51st state comments, Myers’ nostalgic harkening to the days of Gordie Howe and Mr. Dressup pivoted Boomers’ voter preferences in Canada. Soft Quebec sovereigntists petrified by Trump abandoned the Bloc for the Liberals. Progressives ditched the NDP for the Grits. And some wobbly Conservatives moved to Carney’s side, too, after the charm offensive by Myers, who hasn’t lived in Canada since the 1980s.

The result? Liberals vaulted 20 points in the polls and barely missed a majority in their fourth consecutive election win. Boomers were exultant. Their subsidized media was joyous. And the rest of the world asked if Canada was a serious country after the Libs naked substitution of Carney for the loathed Justin Trudeau. After all, hadn’t the U.S. Democrats tried the same thing and been summarily spanked by voters?
More to the point, had Canadian voters missed a great opportunity by sticking their heads in the ground on Chinese gangs using Canada as a drug launch pad, Canadian banks being fined billons for money laundering, immigration flooding social services, cratering GDP and Palestinian protests clogging the streets?
This at a time when the under-50 generation has lost faith in its destiny within Canada. As we wrote in March 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? Where upper-class products of liberal education— the future professional class— have taken to wearing keffiyehs to the convocations and demonstrations. Where housing is an unattainable goal in most major Canadian urban centres.
It’s not hard to see them looking at the Mike Myers obsession with a long-gone Canada and saying let’s get out of here. The signs are there. Recently former TVOntario host Steve Pakin attended two convocations. The first at the former Ryerson University, which switched its name to Toronto Metropolitan University in a fit of settler colonizer guilt. The second at Queens University, traditionally one of the elite schools in the nation. Here’s what he saw.
“At the end of the (TMU) convocation, when Charles Falzon, on his final day as dean of TMU’s Creative School, asked students to stand and sing the national anthem, many refused. They remained seated. Then, when the singing began, it was abundantly noticeable that almost none of the students sang along. And it wasn’t because they didn’t know the words, which were projected on a big screen. The unhappy looks on their faces clearly indicated a different, more political, explanation.

“I asked some of the TMU staff about it after the ceremony was over, and they confirmed what I saw happens all the time at convocations. Then I texted the president of another Ontario university who agreed: this is a common phenomenon among this generation at post-secondary institutions.”
At Queens, where Canadian flags were almost non-existent, O Canada was sung, but the message of unrest was clear: “Convocation sends a message of social stability,” Queen’s principal Patrick Deane began in his speech. “It is a ceremony shaped in history. You should value your connection to the past, but question that inheritance. Focus on the kind of society you’d like to inhabit.”
You can bet Deane is not telling them to question climate change and trans rights. As Paikin observes, “if we fail to create a more perfect union, we shouldn’t be surprised when a vast swath of young people don’t sing our anthem the way so many of the rest of us do.” So why are the best and brightest so reluctant to see as future in becoming the new professional class that runs society?
In the Free Press River Page searched the source of their discontent. “If the Great Recession, Covid-19, and the spectre of an artificial intelligence-assisted ‘white collar bloodbath’ has taught the professional class anything, it is that their credentials cannot save them. This insecurity, compounded by the outrageous cost of living in many large cities, has pushed the PMC’s anxieties to the breaking point.
“Add that to the triumph of identity politics in professional class institutions like universities, corporate C-suites, non-governmental organizations, and media—itself a byproduct of inter-elite competition as many have observed—and what you have is the modern left.
“… they’ve already come to the baffling conclusion that there’s no difference between class struggle and child sex changes. More to the point, the socialist mantra “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” has only ever stood the test of time in Anabaptist sects. It requires a religious devotion to self-sacrifice that is not characteristic of this anxious and hyper-competitive class—as many actual socialists have spent the last decade warning.”

As we wrote in March Boomer nostalgia is a dead end. “It’s time that Canada’s aging elite ceded a greater voice in the national debate to younger voices. 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?” Because we’re now seeing the likely answer to that question everywhere in Canadian society.
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.
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