Bruce Dowbiggin
The PM Who Tells “Made-Up” Stories To The World
Here’s a pro tip for Erin O’Toole if he wants to become PM. Promise you will never, under any circumstances, fly the flag at half mast on Canada Day.
Seems like a no-brainer, right? Well, not if you’re Justin Trudeau in the throes of white liberal guilt over residential schools. On July 1 he ordered that the national colours be taken to half-mast to honour the rez children who he said had recently be “discovered” in unmarked mass graves.
To emphasize the “perfidy” of the people who’d abandoned these children to the cold earth the trust-fund product posed, head bowed, with a teddy bear at a Saskatchewan cemetery. This was to underline the message he’d been pitching for years to the international community: Canada had executed a genocide on the native peoples of Canada. His nation was inherently evil.
That’s the way his paid-off media pals saw it, too. In the papers and on electronic media there were anguished calls for criminal charges, investigations of the Catholic Church. The suddenly uncovered “mass graves” (sudden to them at least) were proof of denying the past. Woke Toronto journalists competed for who could damn the killers of the Rez kids, who’d supposedly been murdered and dumped in shallow graves behind the school at midnight.
David Butt, a Toronto criminal lawyer writing in the Globe and Mail, claimed “The discovery of thousands of unmarked graves of Indigenous children on the sites of former residential schools…looks and smells like criminal activity.” Activist firebrand Robert Jago said anyone questioning the validity of his own genocide allegations should be considered equivalent to “Holocaust denial” and punished as a hate-speech purveyor.
International media— pumped by Canadian activists— jumped at the story, too. Here’s the UK Independent headlining “mass graves” being discovered and hinting darkly that TB deaths at rez schools wasn’t accidental.
Just one problem. The 751 graves in Saskatchewan are well known and may contain white families, too, says Cowessess First Nation band member Irene Andreas . “There is no ‘discovery’ of graves. We buried our dead with a proper funeral. Then we allowed them to Rest In Peace…To assume that foul play took place would be premature and unsupported.
“All your elders have knowledge of every grave. The Band office has records from the Bishop’s office, the Church board and from cemetery workers who were in charge of digging graves and burials… So please, people, do not make up stories about residential school children being put in unmarked graves. No such thing ever happened.”
In his brilliant analysis of the evidence that Trudeau and Singh hype, Hymie Rubenstein (who taught and wrote about Indigenous and other cultures at the University of Manitoba for 31 years) says there has never been verified proof of even a single child killed in the century-plus the residential schools operated. No name, no body, no second-hand witnesses.
Furthermore, the sobering death rates of Rez children were in line with the terrible mortality rates for children from all causes in the years the schools were employed from 1870-2000 . (For example, researchers found that all the Alberta native children waiting for entrance into residential schools in 1912 carried TB.)
As for the charge of secretive burials, children who attended the schools testified to having attended Christian burials for children who died. There was no disrespect in their burials. On the the issue of “unmarked graves’, native bands rarely marked graves after mourning the dead both young and old. That’s if they marked them at all. Chief Joe Pierre of the ʔaq’am in Cranbrook, explained, “Graves were traditionally marked with wooden crosses and this practice continues to this day in many Indigenous communities across Canada. Wooden crosses can deteriorate over time due to erosion or fire which can result in an unmarked grave.”
No matter. Trudeau is happy to foment international rage against the Church and the politicians of the day if it helps him get re-elected in September. His teddy-bear stunt served to deflect from his abject failure on the indigenous-peoples file and his high-profile firing of Kwak’wala member Jody Wilson Raybould as his justice minister. As always he knew a sympathetically curated media lie would be around the world before the facts (in Churchill’s words) could ever get their pants on. His purchased press would see to that.
The man who wants another mandate as PM so he can vilify Canada to the world has plenty of political cover. The NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, the bespoke socialist, visited the Saskatchewan cemetery to claim, “This is a crime of genocide, the worst crime possible. And what we need to do is prosecute it like a crime.” Looking to create an election issue he demanded an independent prosecutor.
There is bad news for Singh’s pandering demand that charges be laid now using modern ground-penetrating technology. Kisha Supernant of the University of Alberta explained to the National Post, “What the ground-penetrating radar can see is where that pit itself was dug, because the soil actually changes when you dig a grave.” But bodies or evidence of foul play? As Supernant notes, the technology “doesn’t actually see the bodies (or coffins). It’s not like an X-ray.”
The final and most damning charge levelled by Trudeau and the radicals against their own nation is that of genocide. That from 1867- present Canada conceived and perpetrated a slaughter on the order of the Nazi Holocaust (1940-45) or the Armenian massacre (1915-17) or the Rwandan mass killing of Tutsis (1994). Despite the fervent support of progressive media they have fallen short.
According to the UN Convention’s formal post-1948 commentary, “To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice.” The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report, in 2015, tried hard to equate the treatment of natives in residential schools with genocide, before settling for the legally inert term cultural genocide, one Trudeau, Singh and the Canada haters immediately abridged to genocide.
While that has spurred radicals to destroy the name and statues to John A. Macdonald, the facts don’t support a charge of genocide against him and successive government. As Rubenstein points out, “Macdonald quadrupled Ottawa’s native budget to deal with the crippling Western famine in the early 1880s. This event was caused by the collapse of the Prairie bison herds, an outcome over which Canada had absolutely no control; nonetheless, Macdonald mustered substantial government resources to meet the challenge.
“Consider also that Ottawa successfully vaccinated almost the entire native community against smallpox at great expense and effort, virtually wiping out this highly contagious killer among a people with no natural immunity to the disease.” Hardly sounds like the actions of a government intent on genocide.
This led Irwin Cotler, chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, to note, “If we say everything is a genocide, then nothing is a genocide.”
Certainly the pain and tragedy felt by many Rez school children was real. And their treatment in regards to cultural and language issues, in the fullness of time, looks unacceptable by today’s standards. Like the 100,000 British Home Children shipped to Canada in the same era to work as indentured slaves to farmers and others— often against their parents’ wishes— there are many unknown graves of those who didn’t survive. It is a period we devoutly wish we had to do over again.
But the memories of those children are stained by the self-serving political theatrics of today’s politicians who seek to run a country they’re spent years denigrating to the world. Remember on September 20 that a vote for Trudeau and Singh is a vote for those who exploit innocent dead.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
“Take out the papers and the trash, or you don’t get no spending cash.”
Whether you’re in the stock market or real estate the question of when to sell is paramount. When to dump a tanking investment or sell a house in a bad market is an art form. Hence the expression, Timing is everything.
For the incumbent governments in Canada and the U.S. the time has come to make that risky decision of when to fish or when to cut bait with their respective leaders.
In Canada the federal Liberals, still shacked up with the NDP in a common-law embrace, have been doing denial for an extended period since they used the Covid-19 lockdown to sneak out a minority government in 2021. As soon as voters awoke to the lockdown hoax they’d lived through— courtesy of Justin Trudeau— they began to abandon him as a marketable product.
With five years to procrastinate, however, they indulged their radical agenda of climate and culture rather than address how they might be re-elected with Trudeau and his Quebec-dominated cabinet. They blew black holes in Canada’s debt load. There was a PR strategy to label Pierre Poilievre as a mini-Trump. And to buy up the floundering legacy media sources before there 2025 vote.
But for the most part the Liberals still saw Happy Ways where the mainstream saw an intellectual lightweight tilting at every Woke windmill. Since 2021 the polls have shown a steady erosion to the point where they see a Conservative majority— maybe even super-majority— if an election were called today.
Now all governments get tired over time. The biggest complaint about Stephen Harper from the talking classes in 2015 was the sense of fatigue he projected to Canadians who want their PM to be a rock star. But the collapse in Trudeau’s support has come via other very serious underpinnings from corruption (Lavalin, ME Charity, Chinese influence) to entitlement (the Carbon Tax, deficit).
However you see these issues they have led to the point where Liberals, more than half of whom will lose in the next election, must decide if they want to go to Davy Jones locker on the HMCS Skippy. Many of them will qualify for federal pensions if they hold on to the bitter end with Trudeau in October of next year. So he has that assurance of support. But if he is punted by the party he resurrected in 2010, who will succeed him? The taint of Trudeau on his most loyal sycophants will disqualify anyone in cabinet from being taken seriously for the top job.
Outside the immediate junta, names like Mark Carney— former Bank of Canada head— and deposed justice minister Jody Wilson Raybould have been put forward. The problem for anyone aspiring to replace Trudeau is they will have to face his fanatical loyalists in the PMO who’ve slapped down any pretenders so far.
The most recent forlorn hope for Trudeau was that the Federal Budget might calm the waters. Running up the deficit to perilous numbers with a menu of profligate policies to slake the restless NDP was going to force Poilievre on the defensive. So were limp attacks such as this from Trudeau cabinet pal Marc Miller.
For a brief fortnight the polling seemed to stabilize. But now more recent polls show that Trudeau’s popularity bottom was not a bottom at all, just a transfer station en route to the Marianas Trench of politics. Leaving the question of who and when as the only measurables in the equation. How much runway does he deserves and how much his successor gets are the operative problems when Liberals spend the summer in their ridings.
Meanwhile Joe Biden’s faint hope of putting his opponent in jail before the November election has done nothing to move his polling. If anything the prosecution of Donald Trump as he runs against Biden in 2024 is seen as a distinctly underhanded tactic by many outside the MSNBC mouth breathers.
While polls are a mugs’ game, the news that Biden trails Trump in all seven of the swing states he needs to be re-elected has sent shock through Team Obama, which runs the Democratic Party at the moment. There are a lot of sinecures and cushy salaries at risk here. The addition of Robert Kennedy Jr. to the presidential ballot in key states like California is further diluting the DEMs base. While RFK Jr. draws from both parties it’s expected he’ll hurt Biden most.
As if that wasn’t enough the recent pro-Palestine occupations by students and paid agitators is seen as a referendum on Biden’s support for Israel among the fanatical left-wing base of the DEMs. And polls indicate the effect has been disastrous.
Unlike the Liberals who have time to effect a palace coup, the DEMs are up against the clock with their convention coming in July. While he still plays to the Hollywood and Wall Street donors, the general public sees Biden getting more decrepit by the day. His persona as a pleasantly dazed crossing guard has worn thin.
While replacement scenarios have dogged Biden since his election (saved only by the utter dislike for his VP Kamala Harris) the party pros are talking about one last pierce of theatre: letting Biden take the nomination in July, replace Harris with a star candidate like Michelle Obama or Tom Hanks and have Biden then take a knee for health reasons.
Let the untainted replacement take on Trump, who produces a puke-in-your-mouth reaction with half the American electorate. A squishy Obama/ Bill Clinton replacement could rout Trump in a debate and bring single white women and blacks/ latinos back home to the DEMs. Seems like a longshot?
This is the party that orchestrated at least four separate legal assaults on Trump, coincidentally in the year of the election. Don’t under-estimate their chicanery. And while they didn’t pay off the media as Trudeau has done, they don’t need to. They get the love for free.
Give them credit if they do, because doing nothing is a ticket to four years of The Don.
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. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin . Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
Who knew when we tuned in Saturday night to Hockey Night In Canada that we would be witnessing playoff history. Nay, not just playoff history but hockey history. According to what we saw and heard on HNIC just ONE TEAM played on Saturday. And they lost. It goes without saying that the team was HNIC’s beloved Toronto Maple Leafs.
Those of us who’d stuck with the telecast all evening could’ve sworn there was another team on the ice in black and gold. Rumour has it they were the Boston Bruins, but don’t quote us on that. Also, take it as a rumour that Boston’s 3-1 win gave them a 3-1 lead in games over Toronto heading back to Boston for what most expect will be the coup de grace for the blue and white. Again.
But when time came to discuss the game afterward the Toronto-based panel told us that the Leafs had beaten themselves. Yes, in some hockey version of metaphysics Toronto had transcended the third dimension. The Bruins were like The Fugitive, lurking far out of sight. Brad Marchand had had nothing to do with breaking up Toronto’s neutral-zone speed nor Charlie McAvoy clearing the front of their net. Jeremy Swayman, who he?
Instead the talking heads dissected the loss in shades of blue.
For those who were washing their hair or another vital task on Saturday, the Leafs had more story lines than a season of Curb Your Enthusiasm (insert your joke here), They finally got their migraine-afflicted star William Nylander back in the fold before a delirious Scotiabank crowd who’d probably paid about a $1000 a ticket to attend. But their star sniper Auston Matthews (allegedly) had food poisoning or a gall stone or a tee time next week back home in Scottsdale. Hard to say.
There was also a goaltending controversy, a Mitch Marner controversy and a Keith Pelley controversy (more on MLSE’s new CEO in a moment). And the, you know, 1967 thing. Despite the hysteria of their long-suffering fans at puck drop, postgame analysts hinted the Leafs seemed to be disinterested. Or, to those who actually watched the game, they were schooled by a better Boston team.
By the middle of the second period, despond and a 3-0 deficit had settled on the Leafs. Despite being the ONLY TEAM on the ice their well-compensated stars were bitching at each other on the bench. While Matthews looked glumly at his pals, Marner had a hissy fit throwing his gloves to the floor. Nylander lip-synched a rebuke to Marner along the lines of Grow up, this ain’t junior hockey. Did we say the crowd booed them off the ice after the second period? Yeah, that too.
Which led mild-mannered Kelly Hrudey to scold Marner for a bush-league behaviour in the break. Remember, Hrudey’s the nice guy on the HNIC panel. Where others see an alligator chomping on their leg Kelly sees a chance to get up-close with nature. So the rebuke for Marner was incendiary. By the time they dropped the pick for the third period you’d have thought Bob Cole wasn’t the only person to pass away this week. Gloom.
Making matters worse, Matthews was nowhere to be found. (According coach Keefe, the doctors had pulled him from the game. Whatever.) When the contest ended with a Toronto loss, the postgame chatter was once more obsessed with Toronto’s failings, as if another team were not having its way on the ice. Where was the effort? Where was the intensity promised when Leafs management spread dollars like Easter candy among its Core Four?
Kevin Bieksa, typically the most salty one on the panel, reminded everyone there was a Game 5 Monday and that 3-1 leads have been overcome. But with Toronto’s success in comebacks being nil he sounded like a guy trying to sell you a penny mining stock.
The dressing-room afterward was mint. “You know what, that’s just the way we are,” Nylander said. “I mean we expect a lot from each other, and we love each other.”
“I don’t think there’s any (frustration),” Marner added unconvincingly. “We’re grown men. We were talking about plays out there that we just want to make sure we’re all 100 percent on and know what we’re doing… We’re not yelling at each other because we hate each other.”
Chris Johnston of The Athletic called it the end of the Maple Leafs as we know them. “They’re making more mistakes at five-on-five, they’re soundly losing the special-teams battle, and they’ve transformed from being one of the NHL’s best offensive teams in the regular season to one that can’t score more than two goals per night in the playoffs. Wash, rinse, repeat.”
Coach Sheldon Keefe, whose shelf life has about 60 minutes left, was enigmatic in the face of cruel destiny. “You can question a lot of things; you can’t question the effort,” he said.
He’s right about one thing. When this first-round ends in ignominy there will be plenty of questions from Pelley, newly installed at the top of the MLSE pyramid. Such as, why should I keep this management team that teases Waygu beef in-season but delivers ground chuck in the playoffs? It’s long been said that the league the Leafs have been built for doesn’t exist in the postseason. So why keep pretending it does?
For those not in the know, Pelley has spent the last few years dealing with the Saudi’s LIV golf enterprise in his role as CEO of what used to be known as the European Tour. (Insert your barbarism reference) So he’s used to dealing with nasty situations.
Maybe his first act on the Leafs file is reminding everyone that two teams play each other in the playoffs, and it might be a good idea to learn from what the winners are doing.
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. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin . Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
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