Connect with us
[bsa_pro_ad_space id=12]

Bruce Dowbiggin

Trump Goes Fishing, Catches A Prime Minister On The First Cast

Published

9 minute read

“I started a joke that started the whole world crying”. The BeeGees

Hands up all those who had Canada, Greenland and Panama as a parlay on their cards. No? Not shocked. We are at the start of a new U.S. foreign policy doctrine, and it has many in Canada panicking.

There have been famous doctrines over the years governing U.S. foreign policy. The Monroe Doctrine. The Truman Doctrine. The Reagan Doctrine. Now we have the Trump “You Snooze You Lose” Doctrine. The past and future POTUS  articulated this realpolitik in the weeks following his election. Tariffs on Canada. Border control. No foreign entanglements. It’s become obvious in the past week that his most vulnerable target would be dozing self-congratulatory postmodern Trudeaupia.

Which has now, suddenly, awoken to its jeopardy. Yes, the nation that lowered flags claiming it’s a genocidal culture, removed national symbols, ignored the PM dressing as Sinbad, locked down tighter than a gnat’s ass for Covid and threatened truckers with loss of jobs and income for not taking an experimental vaccine— these people who elected Trudeau three times as PM wonder why Trump has no respect for Canada

During Tuesday’s extensive presser Trump said he liked Canadians but summed up their weakness. “Canada is subsidized (by the U.S.) to the tune of about $200 billion a year, plus other things. And they don’t essentially have a military. They have a very small military. They rely on our military. It’s all fine, but you know they gotta pay for that.” The question is how much of Canada’s sovereignty will be sacrificed in this accounting?

In their alarm the maple leaf brigade forgets that, with the Apprentice star, it’s nothing personal. He loves to make deals. He likes to mock his opponents. And he likes to win. (After he beats you he shakes your hand and invites you to Mar A Lago.) Like a good poker player he looks for weakness to exploit. And in the Canada of Justin Trudeau he saw weakness everywhere. To paraphrase the Donald, the most weak weakness in the history of the world. Trump seasoned his jibes by proposing hockey star Wayne Gretzky to be governor of a 51st state (Gretzky demurred).

None of this is new. The imbalance between Canada and the U.S. has been longstanding. In July of 2018 we wrote “Sometimes An Ingrate Nation: Bitching About A Free Tab On America’s Bill”. We noted, “Canadians miffed with President Trump’s bracing assessment of Canadians as partners have decided that they will boycott America. Perhaps they are forgetting how lucky they are.”

The boycott fizzled, and it was business as usual. Luckily for slack Canadians no one in the Biden United States was willing to pursue the freeloader status of Canada. Too polite? Too preoccupied? Doesn’t matter now. Trump noticed. Much of what followed is bluff, like a poker player. But it hit a nerve.

When the notion of putting 25 percent tariffs on Canada was first broached there was brave talk of retaliation. Led by the dubious dauphin Trudeau humourless suits blustered about striking back. Instead of simply addressing the border issue Trump identified, Canadians vowed instead not to travel south again, to boycott American goods, denying the U.S. the CDN strategic maple sugar reserve.

Bad idea. A re-focussed Trump is now talking more seriously about a 51st state, an open border, a blended economy (an idea promoted by Canada’s Kevin O’Leary in his chats with GOP grandees). Sometimes it’s lighthearted. Tuesday it was not. He wants Canada to take border security seriously. He wants Canadians to pay for it. There is enough truth to Canada’s indentured state that hosers everywhere now realize their vulnerability under Trudeau’s progressive regime.

Because they fear Trump, Canada’s progressive howler monkeys instead beat up on Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, the presumptive PM. They call him a mini Trump and other things they’re too cowardly to hurl at Trump directly. Ottawa’s purchased media whine that PP won’t constantly stick his foot in his mouth like their beloved Elizabeth May, giving them lots of columns and panel topics.

It didn’t fool anyone. The Trudeau time line to hang on as PM till October was destroyed by Trump’s mockery about a 51st state. Trump’s agitation made it obvious that Canada could not trust Trudeau to negotiate with POTUS 45/ 47.  With PMJT absent, premiers like Doug Ford (Ontario) and Danielle Smith (Alberta) went around Surfer Boy to appeal to Americans for mercy.

Trudeau— who’d routinely maligned Trump for a decade— made himself the victim of the play, scuttling off to his governor general for a perogy prorogation. Now we have PMJT offering to resign, but only after playing parliamentary peekaboo into the summer. Leaving Canada in the lurch while Liberals leisurely solve their Trudeau problem.

How seriously should Canada’s fainting goats take Trump’s agenda? After all he’s putting the full-court press on Greenland, Panama and the Gulf of Mexico/ America, too. Canadians should first understand that most of this thrust is for his domestic consumption. Facing the remnants of the lengthy lawfare campaign against him and having just one term to work within he’s cognizant of keeping Americans happy.

Those who recall the president before Mr. Senile will remember that Trump shoots high to settle lower on the expectation scale. He wants Canada’s resources, not freeloaders like Jagmeet Singh. Plus he needs an outlet in the eastern Arctic. And freer markets for America’s producers.

When the Gretzky jokes and Trudeau jabs subside there will be still be the matter of Canada paying more when federal governments have frittered away a legacy on vanity climate projects and healthcare that doesn’t work. If Trump offers Canada a way out of that bind there might be something new under the northern sun.

It won’t come without strings. He’ll say, “You’re broke, but maybe can work something out”. At which point Canadians will best summed be up by another BeeGees tearjerker, “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?”

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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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.

Follow Author

Bruce Dowbiggin

Why Best Friends Are Fighting: Tariffs Are Just Trump’s First Salvo

Published on

Trump is holding a mirror to a postmodern Canadian state that still thinks it’s Bob & Doug McKenzie and polite folk opening the door. Maybe it was at one time, but since Justin Trudeau spread his chocolatey goodness on the nation it’s now a world centre for money laundering that won’t pay its defence obligations.

The hysteria was mint this past weekend from panicky Canadians acting as if Donald Trump’s tariffs were a Pearl Harbor sneak-attack. They booed the Star Spangled Banner at sporting events, had conniption fits of self pity (‘we’ve been friends for so long!”) and generally acted like fainting goats by forgoing U.S. sun holidays.

Whatever the merits of Trump’s beefs the indignant reaction revealed a very unsettled nation. Punishing America by pulling wines you’ve already paid for off the shelves is baffling. Cancelling a Star Link contract with Elon Musk is just a self goal. (A chastened Musk replied, “Oh well!”) Alberta premier Danielle Smith, who’d used negotiating to get a cutout for Canadian oil, being roundly called a vendu by the righteous Eastern horde was precious.

Charter members of the crumbling legacy media outdid themselves in promoting Trudeau’s fanciful Team Canada theme. “This is a mind poisoned with grievance and resentment,” raged CBC panelist Andrew Coyne. “So coked up on his own bile that even in a moment of maximum national peril his first thought is how to use it to settle scores with the rest of the country.”

Well then. It was all rather unseemly. Noted Dilbert creator Scott Adams, “Canada’s response to Trump’s tariffs is to be publicly sad about it.” But are Trump’s concerns genuine? Is he picking unfairly on a longtime pal? The fact is that Trump is holding a mirror to a postmodern Canadian state that still thinks it’s Bob & Doug McKenzie and polite folk opening the door. Maybe it was at one time, but since Justin Trudeau spread his chocolatey goodness on the nation it’s now a world centre for money laundering that won’t pay its defence obligations.

Example: TD Bank was just fined $3B by US regulators for laundering fentanyl drug money back to Communist China. It’s the largest such fine in U.S. history.  A fine TD paid without complaint. Trudeau’s Canada is a credit-bubble real estate play inside a WEF construct wrapped up in an entitled clique that sits in first class but only pays economy. (And don’t get us started on the unsolved Sherman murders.)

Having gotten their news from CBC and Toronto Star, the average CDN does not understand any of this. While the Libs/ NDP swoon over climate and pronouns, Canada has become a place that Trump and other nations simply don’t trust. Security officials fear that anything said to Trudeau’s government will end up getting to China or other bad actors. And many of those same bad actors are domiciled in Canada at the moment. (The RCMP say there are over 4,000 separate groups dealing drugs in Canada.)

Canada’s exclusion from surveillance organizations like AUKUS and the G7 Quint talks is enough to tell you that Trump is not alone in distrusting Canada. Under the previous Obama doctrine, Canada was cool so long as it did DEI, ESG and had kittens over climate. Biden let the Great White North snooze away under Trudeau. The new American administration, however, has a higher bar of expectations.

Ones Trudeaupia has not met. How do you describe America’s sense of astonishment when it asked its “loyal friend” Canada not to import 5,000 undocumented Gazans during this current shooting war, not wanting terrorist sympathizers along its northern border. Then, out of spite, Trudeau’s response was to bring them in, give them healthcare and do photo ops with them?

Trudeau has also lectured Americans for electing Trump and not a woman in 2024. No wonder Trump played them last weekend about their lax border security. One of the “brilliant” ripostes on borders — repeated by all the clever people— was that only one percent of America’s fentanyl comes from Canada. For those who think that’s a mic-drop moment consider: that’s fentanyl seized by America at the border.

Here, Canada’s international crime agency destroys the one-percent argument. Canada is a major manufacturer and distributor of fentanyl. How major? There is a technique used by international drug and money launderers called the Vancouver Model.

As a recent discovery of 8 Kg during a truck stop in Swift Current illustrates, the amounts undiscovered in Canada and the U.S. that originate from shipments to Montreal or Vancouver are way more than the CDN media parroted over the weekend. For those booing the Star Spangled Banner, note that 8 kg. is enough for four million deadly doses of fentanyl. (B.C. NDP premier David Eby had to confess he can’t even begin to inspect all the drugs flowing through Vancouver).

This story of a Punjabi driver arrested in Manitoba with $50M in meth in his truck gives you the flavour. Last month, Toronto police seized 835kg from a truck and stash houses across the city. And, say experts, there are more terror suspects coming from Canada to America than from Mexico. Now tell us why the unchecked importation, distribution and profits from the drugs are not significant in a trade deal.

Speaking of truckers, Canada’s explosion in newly arrived cross-border truck drivers is another huge issue for Americans. As Toronto business writer Stephen Punwasi @stephenpunwasi explains a good portion of the “students” coming into the nation are getting a very different education on life in Canada. “Canada had no checks or balances for its study program. No background checks or school verification. Just show up at the airport w/ proof of funds, and a letter they won’t verify. That’s it. ” These “graduates” quickly end up in a rig running contraband drugs, guns and tech to supplement their minuscule earnings.

“Between 2017 & 2024, Ontario went from 80 truck driving schools to 280. The province has 6 auditors for 600 private career colleges—almost half for trucks, apparently. No enforcement standards.

“To recap,” continues Punwasi:

  • “money laundering capital of the world

  • – no school regulations

  • – criminals run certifications

  • – desperate folks from developing countries w/no standard of entry

  • – no scrutiny for x-border traffic”

Canadian trucking executives know the problem in the industry. They say new entrants make no money trucking, but they do make for easy “‘runners’. It is rampant. One executive says his firm has virtually exited the cross-border business, because of the changing demographics. These truckers— many of them speaking no English— are housed in suburban neighbourhoods in Brampton or Mississauga or Surrey, stacked by the dozens in barracks homes in between their sorties to the U.S. and the ROC. Attempts to restore local zoning laws are fought by the ringleaders.

But hey, says CBC, Trump exaggerates the problem. He’s also contemptuous of the current attempt to slide climate alarmist Mark Carney into Trudeau’s seat. The dread of being lectured by a CBC-approved suit like Carney is only leavened by the prospect that he can deal with Pierre Poilievre when— if— the Liberals ever let Canadians voice their will. This is what Canada’s Left call progress. Save the tundra and the Arctic swallow but crater the economy.

A final feature of the pearl clutching this past weekend was the idea that Trump would somehow invade or otherwise claim Canada as a 51st state. Canadians seem to feel that Trump’s job is to pacify their feelings, not act on behalf of those Americans who decisively elected him and his mandate. Like victims of a high school break-up Canadian progressives are now tearing up all the letters and sending back the jewelry from their tryst. Memo to Canada: Being U.S. president is not joining a book club. As such you don’t elect a trust-fund poseur.

Whatever Trump’s jest, the last thing he wants is the culture nightmare of Quebec, the vast land claims of the native tribes, the welfare status of the Maritimes and the unbearable smugness of the Flora MacDonald Marching Band in Ontario. If Canada or Canadians are to join America it will be because they’ve asked in, not be captured. Trump would dictate the terms, and he doesn’t want a dozen new Mississippis, especially ones with poutine.

For now, the 30-day pause in tariffs allows time to drop the theatrics and get on with the reality of an economy that will consume Canada’s economy at the present rate. By week’s end even Trump’s vitriolic critics like the Globe&Mail were offering backhanded acknowledgements that, however crude they found the president’s tactics, he did wake up Canadians to the issue of Canada’s lassitude on defence and the border. Doomberg summed up the conflict. “The economic wisdom of applying tariffs is worthy of debate, but the threat of tariffs has proved the perfect instrument for the task. Having weighed 250 daily American deaths on the scale of trade-offs, Trump’s actions have finally acknowledged reality. Godspeed’.”

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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Continue Reading

Bruce Dowbiggin

The Limping Loonie: Are Canada’s Pro Sports Team In Trouble Again?

Published on

With the Canada/ U.S. Tariff War going from talking conflict to hot trade war on Feb. 1 there are numerous predictions as to what might happen if the dispute drags on. As the sides in the Ukraine War will tell you very few of the outcomes so far were foreseen by the sides when the shooting started. That’s the nature of these conflicts.

One immediate byproduct seems to be the continued descent toward 60 cents by the Canadian dollar. If Trudeau and his anointed successor Mark Carney are true to character it will also involve billions in cheques going out the door— a la Covid— to those citizens “harmed” by the Liberals stumbling into a highly predictable and easily avoidable trade war. If past is prologue, vast amounts of that money will disappear as bad actors find a way to access the funds. While Canada’s GDP collapses some more.

For the moment, however, let us concentrate on what Justin Trudeau’s ineptitude might be costing Canadian professional sports teams in American-based leagues. On the purely trivial level it means that your beer at the park/ arena will be Canadian suds exclusively. Not cheaper or better. Just Canadian. Owners will stock luxury boxes with Canadian wine, etc. A road trip to see the Canucks in L.A. or the Canadiens in NYC will balloon, too.

But on a more serious level the showdown between Donald Trump and Trudeau could well return Canadian teams in the NHL to the bad-old days of the early  21st century. Despite efforts then to create a Canadian fund to save teams, two clubs— Winnipeg Jets and Quebec Nordiques— were forced to sell because of a dollar that bottomed out around 62 cents U.S. Winnipeg went to Phoenix/ Quebec City went to Colorado as a result

In Montreal the MLB Expos also moved— to Washington— after 37 years, because no one in Quebec would/ could pony up the money to make up for the declining dollar or repair the disastrous Olympic Stadium. Expos fans then had the cruel fate of watching Washington win the 2019 World Series after the Expos had never gotten that far. (Nordiques fans saw Colorado win two Stanley Cups after escaping Quebec.)

Why were these teams forced to move? Because while teams collect revenues locally in Canadian dollars almost all their payroll and other costs are paid in American dollars. So when you see the Toronto Blue Jays facing a possible US $500 million price tag to keep star Vladimir Guerrero you’re really talking about raising $750,000 million in CDN revenues to meet the demand. Multiply those jumps over a 25-man roster and you’re talking a huge jump in payroll— or being consigned to after-ran status.

While no one  is about to hold a tag day for Toronto it will make the Jays’ job of competing in a division with the big-spending New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox that much harder. With a national market of almost 40 million now to exploit they still have resources. But will American players want to play in Canada during a hot trade war between the nations? Now that yahoos fed by a doltish CDN media have started booing the Star Spangled Banner in Ottawa and Vancouver before games do you think that will encourage American stars on teams there to stick around?

But the NHL is where the biggest losses will be seen. Already there have been concerns about the Jets.2 surviving in Winnipeg. Last week it was revealed that after years spent coming back from Covid revenue shortages, the NHL is going to raise its salary cap from today’s US $88 million to as much as an estimated US $115 million in three or four years. The news that players will no longer have escrow payments held back to compensate owners for revenue shortages was greeted with cheers by players and their agent.

The boost in the cap will likely mean that today’s US$14 million peak (Leon Draisaitl) will also advance to somewhere just beneath US$20 million a season. And while that figure is a few years off, teams will have to start negotiating today with their stars with that figure in mind if they wish to retain them.

The test case will be superstar Connor McDavid who is due for a new contract after 2025-26. For the small-market Edmonton Oilers that will mean creating a template that buys him out of estimated salary later by boosting his salary before the cap arrives at its peak. With Draisaitl already pulling down top dollar the Oilers’ resources will be stretched thin to accommodate McDavid— while still paying the rest of the roster.

Could the drop in the dollar produce another Gretzky-like trade for Edmonton when the Oilers were forced to dump the greatest scorer in NHL history to L.A. because his worth exceeded the Oilers’ ability to pay? We chronicle the trade in depth in our new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey.

The fate of hockey stars will be only a small piece of any future U.S. trade deals. But they will be highly visible to Canada’s hockey fans. Not being able to satisfy them is a political price no pelican wants to face. But given the current intransigence by Justin Trudeau scrambling to stay in office it is far from improbable.

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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Continue Reading

Trending

X