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Bruce Dowbiggin

This Recession Brought To You By PMJT, WEF & ESG

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A simple proposition: Ask your family, your friends, your neighbours to tell you how they’re being directly affected by changes in the climate. Tell them you don’t want to hear media jeremiads about melting glaciers or promises of annihilation from Prince Charles. Or supply-chain headaches or other man-made  conditions.

No. How can you feel, see, smell a difference in your physical world. Is your lake lower, your air harder to breath, your availability of food scarcer? Does it rain/ snow more? Are those around you suffering from respiratory problems unlike the past? Are storms worse, better or the same?

Likely you’ll see a greener world. Thank CO2 for that. Compared to London in the 1950s or Hamilton in the 1960s your air is cleaner. Atlantic hurricane levels are way down from the 1930s-50s. So are tornadoes. There are a lot more people and— thanks to aggressive immigration levels— a lot of different races in your city/ town. But you live happily with that. Even if enviro scolds don’t.

What’s changed is that Justin Trudeau now wants you to believe you are killing the earth with nitrogen. William Jennings Bryan said mankind wouldn’t be crucified on a cross of gold. But Trudeau believes his voters should be crucified on a World Bank cross of green. The answer to every question of his government ends like this from deputy Liberal leader Chrystia Freeland.“$200 (gas) fill-ups are why we have to work even harder and move even faster towards a green economy.”

That’s why they’re pricing carbon up to $170/ tonne by 2030 and making you pay. In the thrall of globalist technocrats and One World Marxists, Liberals are Jim-Jones deep in what Rob Henderson has coined the “luxury beliefs” of the elites. All to push Canada’s Energy Sustainability Governance (ESG) number into a level Klaus Schwab can appreciate.

Forget that Canada’s impact on the world’s environment is miniscule. Trudeau and his purchased Media Party are bombarding the bewildered population with guilt. As Tom Nelson tweeted, “97% of climate scam propaganda involves dreaming up claims that sound kind of plausible to people like Bette Midler.” So Trudeau and his Fossil Fools can feel sanctimonious on their private jets.

The latest from the laptop class is the lunacy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizers in Canada to 30 percent below 2020 levels by 2030. This after his government’s target of reducing Canada’s greenhouse emissions to 40-45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 and to net zero by 2050. The levels are absurd. And they threaten to wreck the world’s food supply, a miracle that keeps 7 billion alive.

Why? Trudeau’s ESG fetish— and Bill Gates’ version of the food chain— come first. No wonder the PM has to sneak Into Calgary’s Stampede for photo ops with the Green mayor Gyoti Gondak. Liberal hacks must be pictured with him in remote parking lots. He’s surrounded by dense security, shaking hands only with approved stooges. It replicates his bunkered no-show performance during February’s Convoy— a crisis that he precipitated.

Most telling about Trudeau’s collapsed Man Of Science image was the use of Canadian flags as a rallying symbol for Dutch farmers faced with expropriation over… wait for it… fertilizer pollution. It comes as no surprise that Dutch PM Mark Rutte is a fellow chorister with Trudeau in the WEF One World Choir. Faced with people who get their hands dirty he’s replicated Trudeau’s pecksniff performance. from February, turning the police loose on lower-caste demonstrators.

It’s not going as planned for Rutte. His private jet was stolen from a government hangar by angry farmers. Newsweek reported, “Current polls indicate that the Farmers Political Party, formed just three years ago in response to the new regulations, would gain a whopping 11 seats in Parliament if elections were held today. Moreover, the Dutch Fishermen’s Union has publicly joined the protests, blocking harbours with fishing crews holding signs that read Unity Creates Strength.”

Holland is the world’s second-largest agricultural exporter after the United States. No matter. Its economy is now a lab experiment. It must be bent to the World Bank’s ESG regime.

To see what happens when reality strikes, just look to Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel championed the WEF’s Green energy scheme that proposed a transfer to renewable technologies offered by the Euro Geniuses. Coal and nuclear were out. Smug German officials laughed heartily at U.S. president Donald Trump when he warned in 2018 that it would leave Germany’s outdated economy vulnerable to Vladimir Putin.

Guess who’s laughing now? The war in Ukraine has exposed Germany’s creaking industrial base dependency on Russia. “Most of Europe’s 100 largest companies were founded in the 1980s or before, which means that the old continent has entirely slept through the digital revolution of the 1990s and 2000s.”  With gas supplies dwindling and renewables unable to cope, Germany is scrambling to re-open coal-fuelled generators.

Major cities like Hamburg are already preparing for rationing of gas and warm water supply. Robert Habeck, the Green minister of minister of economics and climate protection, has predicted that “the whole market is in danger of collapsing at some point.”  Oh, and Germany is also villainizing traditional fertilizers as a polluter.

So is hapless Sri Lanka— with disastrous results. Sri Lanka drank the WEF kool-aid in 2021, going full natural fertilizers. Bad idea. “The underlying reason for the fall of Sri Lanka is that its leaders fell under the spell of Western green elites peddling organic agriculture and ESG,” writers Michael Shellenberger.  Like the Dutch farmers, Sri Lankan farmers have rebelled against attempts to seize property, violently overturning the government and forcing its leaders to flee the country.

Ditto Ghana, another self-sufficient state in the early 2010s that signed on for WEF reductions in fertilizer for more macro biotic means. Now the country is on rolling blackouts, food is scarce and the economy is in a shambles.

These are the canaries in the coal mine. But WEF lapdogs like Justin Trudeau sleep happily, knowing they’ve pleased their real constituents.. The Davos jet set.  The rest can freeze in the dark, to quote Ralph Klein.

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

 

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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Bruce Dowbiggin

Canada Day 2025: It’s Time For Boomers To Let The Kids Lead

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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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Bruce Dowbiggin

The Game That Let Canadians Forgive The Liberals — Again

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With the Americans winning the first game 3-1, a sense of panic crept over Canada as it headed to Game 2 in Boston. Losing a political battle with Trump was bad enough, but losing hockey bragging rights heading into a federal election was catastrophic for the Family Compact.

“It’s also more political than the (1972) Summit Series was, because Canada’s existence wasn’t on the line then, and it may be now. You’re damn right Canadians should boo the (U.S.) anthem.” Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur before Gm. 1 of USA/ Canada in The 4 Nations Cup.

The year 2025 is barely half over on Canada Day. There is much to go before we start assembling Best Of Lists for the year. But as Palestinian flags duel with the Maple Leaf for prominence on the 158th anniversary of Canada’s becoming a sovereign country it’s a fair guess that we will settle on Febuary 21 as the pivotal date of the year— and Canada’s destiny as well.

That was the date of Game 2 in the U.S./Canada rivalry at the Four Nations Tournament. Ostensibly created by the NHL to replace the moribund All Star format, the showdown of hockey nations in Boston became much more. Jolted by non-sports factors it became a pivotal moment in modern Canadian history.

Set against U.S. president Donald Trump’s bellicose talk of Canada as a U.S. state and the Mike Myers/ Mark Carney Elbows Up ad campaign, the gold-medal game evoked, for those of a certain age, memories of the famous 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the USSR. And somehow produced an unprecedented political reversal in Canadian elections.

As we wrote on Feb. 16 after Gm. 1 in Montreal, the Four Nations had been meant to be something far less incendiary.  “Expecting a guys’ weekend like the concurrent NBA All Star game, the fraternal folks instead got a Pier Six brawl. It was the most stunning beginning to a game most could remember in 50 years. (Not least of all the rabid Canadian fanbase urging patriotism in the home of Quebec separation) Considering this Four Nations event was the NHL’s idea to replace the tame midseason All Star Game where players apologize for bumping into each other during a casual skate, the tumult as referees tried to start the game was shocking.

“Despite public calls for mutual respect, the sustained booing of the American national anthem and the Team Canada invocation by MMA legend Georges St. Pierre was answered by the Tkachuck brothers, Matthew and Brady, with a series of fights in the first nine seconds of the game. Three fights to be exact ,when former Canuck J.T. Miller squared up with Brandon Hagel. (All three U.S. players have either played on or now play for Canadian NHL teams.)  

“Premeditated and nasty. To say nothing of the vicious mugging of Canada’s legend Sidney Crosby behind the U.S. net moments later by Charlie McEvoy.”

With the Americans winning the game 3-1 on Feb. 15, a sense of panic crept over Canada as it headed to Game 2 in Boston. Losing a political battle with Trump was bad enough, but losing hockey bragging rights heading into a federal election was catastrophic for the Family Compact. As we wrote in the aftermath, a slaughter was avoided.

“In the rematch for a title created just weeks before by the NHL the boys stuck to hockey. Anthem booing was restrained. Outside of an ill-advised appearance by Wayne Gretzky— now loathed for his Trump support— the emphasis was on skill. Playing largely without injured Matthew and Brady Tkachuk and McAvoy, the U.S. forced the game to OT where beleaguered goalie Craig Binnington held Canada in the game until Connor McDavid scored the game winner. “

The stunning turnaround in the series produced a similar turnaround in the Canadian federal election. Galvanized by Trump’s 51st State disrespect and exhilarated by the hockey team’s comeback, voters switched their votes in huge numbers to Carney, ignoring the abysmal record of the Liberals and their pathetic polling. From Pierre Poilievre having a 20-point lead in polls, hockey-besotted Canada flipped to award Carney a near-majority in the April 28 election.

The result stunned the Canadian political class and international critics who questioned how a single sporting event could have miraculously rescued the Liberals from themselves in such a short time.

While Canada soared because of the four Nations, a Canadian icon crashed to earth. “Perhaps the most public outcome was the now-demonization of Gretzky in Canada. Just as they had with Bobby Orr, another Canadian superstar living in America, Canadians wiped their hands of No. 99 over politics. Despite appeals from Orr, Don Cherry and others, the chance to make Gretzky a Trump proxy was too tempting.

We have been in several arguments on the subject among friends: Does Gretzky owe Canada something after carrying its hockey burden for so long? Could he have worn a Team Canada jersey? Shouldn’t he have made a statement that he backs Canada in its showdown with Trump? For now 99 is 0 in his homeland.”

Even now, months later, the events of late February have an air of disbelief around them, a shift so dramatic and so impactful on the nation that many still shake their heads. Sure, hockey wasn’t the device that blew up Canada’s politics. But it was the fuse that created a crater in the country.

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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