Bruce Dowbiggin
China Rules: Will Trudeau Give Beijing Olympics His Blessing

Q: How many Canadians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Two. One to ask permission from CCP boss Xi Jingping and one to then screw it in.
The tennis world has been roiled by the sudden absence of Chinese star Peng Shuai. Peng seemed to have gone missing for two weeks after publicly accusing a high-ranking Communist Party apparatchik of sexually assaulting her. The repercussions of her reported abduction could have wide-ranging effects—including on the upcoming Beijing Olympics.
Her sudden disappearance drew the ire of Serena Williams (“Devastated and shocked”) and the World Tennis Association. Steve Simon, the president of the WTA, says “`I remain concerned about Peng Shuai’s health and safety and that the allegation of sexual assault is being censored and swept under the rug. I have been clear about what needs to happen and our relationship with China is at a crossroads.”
Simon says the WTA is so concerned that it is willing to forgo billions from China if the case is not properly resolved. (This in stark contrast to NBA stars such as LeBron James who talk social justice about Kyle Rittenhouse in the U.S. but cravenly capitulate to Chinese authority when their running-shoe endorsements are threatened.)
The tipoff that China is concerned that Peng’s absence might hurt the Olympics came when she was made available Sunday via conference call to IOC President Thomas Bach, IOC Athletes’ Commission Chair Emma Terho, and IOC Member in China Li Lingwei.
Peng thanked the committee for its concern and explained she is “safe and well” in her home in Beijing and would like her privacy respected. But it was hard to know who controlled her words— especially as the interview was staged with IOC suits, who stand to lose a lot from any Olympic boycott.
Also lending credence to the conspiratorial nature of Peng’s condition was the news that China has temporarily blocked CNN’s feed in the country to prevent the network reporting the story (If it’s true it would be the first story CNN has reported properly in a long time.)
The Peng kerfuffle is the latest example of China’s tin ear on human rights. It comes as many are questioning whether nations should boycott the Winter Olympics, slated to start in February. Even U.S. president Joe Biden, who is hopelessly compromised on China by his son’s grifting, has said the U.S. might do a diplomatic, not athlete, boycott to protest China’s high-handed attitude lately.
There could be more. Many are now saying having the Games in a nation that sponsors concentration camps and suppresses democracy in Hong Kong is comparable to staging the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin where Hitler was allowed to whitewash his regime even as it geared up for genocide.
It also recalls the reaction of the West in boycotting the Moscow Olympics in 1980 over the Soviets invasion of Afghanistan. The IOC has been traumatized ever since about politics and— witness Peng’s sudden “appearance”—wants this snowball stopped.
Clearly the IOC— which awarded the Games to China— will make no stand itself on Peng. The collection of princes, plutocrats, klepto-rulers and time-serving criminals has never let a little human-rights violation get in the way of profit. Whether it’s rewarding China or Putin (Sochi) it has major concerns when the IOC’s alleged brotherhood hurts the bottom line.
For a struggling Biden, whose polling is tanking, the boycott issue could provide an easy win. Keep the politicians and state actors home, let the athletes have their medals, snub Xi and appear to be taking the high ground. (Better yet, send Kamala Harris and don’t bring her back.)
The question will then be what will Canada do if the Americans engineer a diplomatic boycott? After the detention of Wauwei executive Meng Wanzhou and resultant Chinese retaliation would Justin Trudeau dare tangle with them again, particularly after earlier saying, “There is a level of admiration I actually have for China, Ahh, because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime”?
Why wouldn’t Xi feel confident that no one in Canada will push back? After all, he kidnapped the two Michaels for almost two years and Canada’s prime minister acted like the men had simply gone on an extended Carnival Cruise. Better yet, Canadian voters then rewarded said PM with another term. Xi is laughing.
Plus the federal Liberals are so far up China’s butt they can see Hunter Biden’s shoes. Former PM Jean Chretien and his family connections have long sought to appease the Chinese to protect investment there. Chretien tried to interfere on behalf of the Chinese in the Meng case. As Macleans wrote in 2019, “given the respect Chretien enjoys among senior officials in China, the fact he’s advocating for the Trudeau government to interfere in the court case to make China happy will only serve to embolden Beijing.”
With so much Canadian capital riding on smooth relations with Xi— plus the need to bring China into Trudeau’s daffy climate schemes— does he dare anger the regime by insulting their Olympic propaganda coup? Canada knows this: If Trudeau shows backbone in a tough international dispute it will be the first time.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand 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
What Connor Should Say To Oilers: It’s Not You. It’s Me.

This just in. Connor McDavid is on track to be the greatest hockey player ever. Apologies to the Gretz/ Orr/ Howe partisans. But if he stays healthy and gets the hell out of Edmonton he will be hands-down the best ever. He is equal measures of Gretzky’s intuitive genius, Orr’s 200-foot impact. Howe’s sandpaper attitude. It’s an honour to watch him.
We know, we know, if he is so great why couldn’t he get the Oilers over the hump, particularly the past two seasons against Florida? Gretz, Orr, Howe all won Stanley Cups while leading their teams. So did Mario Lemieux. Fair point. But Howe in his prime never played more than two series in the postseason. Orr often played just three. Gretz teams often bagelled opponents for years.
McDavid’s teams the last two years have had lengthy paths to tred. Just getting to a Final is a huge accomplishment. Repeating that feat (going seven then six games) in the Final is humungous. It’s exhausting, mentally and physically. That’s why so few teams do it.
Still, that’s not the point. We have been asking since 2018 how long McDavid will hobble his legacy by staying in Edmonton. Those early columns were talking about a team that missed playoffs or did a Maple Leafs fold early on. The current iteration of the Oilers has gotten to the brink. They have players who’ve been around a while. And fell short.

Now the Oilers are an old team, the oldest in the regular season, the oldest team in the playoffs this year. Teams carrying more than two plus-30 players have a miserable track record of winning Cups. And the Oilers have zero Grade A prospects in the pipeline. At 28, McDavid is a young guy on their roster. Not good.
As the hockey world knows he can sign an extension on July 1 to follow the contract he has now. Money will be no object as the NHL salary cap (finally) goes up. Term will be forever if he wants it. His running mate Leon Draisaitl is tied up till age 36. The Oilers desperately want him to stay after the Gretzky fiasco in 1988. So what is he going to do? He’s got national endorsements in Canada, but in the U.S.? Connor who? The sky is the limit.
Oilers fans palpitating over the future of their star were looking for hints as to his mindset when he met the media following the Oilers loss in six games to Florida. It was a chance for him to say he’s staying, he loves the place, his wife is committed to freezing every winter in the Alberta capital. He could have cried and said “Mess told me not to do that”.
What they got was a lot of maybe. Yes, he kept the doors open, but he said he needs time to see the landscape till the clock tolls on July 1. He needs to examine whether this veteran team has a future. Because in a few years they’ll be like Howe’s Detroit teams in the 60s, a played-out dynasty.
Under NHL rules no team can contact him about signing. But he will know that everyone will want him at a max deal. Some will offer no state income tax. Some will have teams on the cusp of the Cup he desires (see Matthew Tkachuk to Florida in 2023). Some will be giant U.S. media cities with the ability to make him what Gretzky became in L.A. Some will offer warm weather and anonymity away from the rink.
These are all knowns. For the impatient, teams can approach the Oilers now about a trade. So he’s holding all the cards. It’s prom night and he gets his pick. Unless Edmonton (gulp) jumps the gun on a trade.

Let’s play Peter Pocklington for a minute here and see this from the Oilers’ POV. Pocklington traded Gretzky, because Peter was broke. That’s not Darryl Katz’s problem. His problem is his team is about to get ancient. There is no McDavid for Draisaitl on the horizon. Plus, you’ve tied up several players (Nurse, Nugent Hopkins) to contracts they can’t hope to play up to. And youngish players coming into free agency.
He must address the other side of the 1988 Gretzky equation. How to get full market value for a superstar? Which means getting another star to help Draisaitl going forward. You could let the two play out the string together in Edmonton, of course. But with so many strong teams in Colorado, Vegas, Dallas, even Winnipeg that would be a hard slog. And by the time you realized that it would be too late.
The smart play, as Michael Corleone would say, is move fast. Trade McDavid before the start of next season for a boatload of young players to supplement Draisaitl. Take a short-term PR hit but live to compete another day.
Of course, Katz is not going to trade McDavid. He’s a fanboy owner. He’ll throw the Rexall kitchen sink at him and hope that’s enough. McDavid will be patient (if he’s smart). The “will-he-sign?” drama will bleed into the next season, a millstone for the team. The distractions will mount before Edmonton realizes that an unsigned McDavid is a liability. And Connor on a max deal with a minus team is no bargain either.
Remember the re-structured Oilers won a Cup in 1990 using Mark Messier and the players they got for Gretzky. Think about it, Edmonton.
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
FUBAR: How Trudeau & Trump Rewrote This Century’s Political Handbook

Let’s ignore the roar this month and take a spin in the Wayback machine to a decade ago this week. Both the U.S. and Canada were on the precipice of momentous decisions WITH new leaders who resonate today. In both cases those leaders, for better or worse, changed politics irrevocably. They are going to be the most impactful people of their century so far. One made his party into the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. While the other brought populist nativism and reality TV to the voters.
So who’s crying now? In the case of Donald Trump this week marks a decade since his descent on the gold escalator in his NYC tower. As this shows, most of the popular press were amused by the decision of the mogul/ TV star to seek the GOP leadership and, eventually, the presidency. They laughed. Oh, how they laughed.
In the minds of the DC media party, the 2016 election was going to be Jeb Bush, brother of George W. and son of George H.W., for the GOP. He would run against Hillary Clinton, the DEMs slam-dunk candidate. So why was Trump wasting his money on a “vanity” candidacy? Anyone with a brain could see he was throwing away his money. The media, who’d been his pal, felt pity.
Except we now know that Trump had identified a significant segment of the GOP voting population who were mad as hell and were not going to buy Jeb’s “compassionate” approach or Marco Rubio’s DC-centric policies. They wanted to close the border, stop foreign wars and protect U.S. industry. To, ahem, Make America Great Again.
The rest is history. Into this void Trump launched a MAGA movement that terrified the establishment. Where once he’d been on their talk shows, making wise with big shots and dining out on “You’re fired”, he was now the target of a massive smear campaign alleging racism, sexism, homophobia and leaving the toilet seat up. None of it worked as it was supposed to. In fact, his obstinacy in the face of it all endeared him to his followers.

Trump won a historic victory over Clinton in 2016, absorbed four years of impeachment, criminal charges, Russia collusion hoaxes and more. Buttressed by MAGA, he outlasted them all, Then COVID hit, the DEMs “found” 17 million “new” voters , and it seemed Trump was a spent force.
Not so fast. Having spent all their energies on replacing Trump with a man with the mental capacities of a carrot, the DEMs and their followers were left with Kamala Harris. IOW nothing. Then came the thunderbolt of Elon Musk buying Twitter (now X) breaking the legacy media’s stranglehold on information. People learned how the media grandees had cooked the books. Unable to control the press Trump’s fanatical opponents resorted to hoping someone would shoot Trump. Even that failed. Twice.
Now we have Trump.2. His legacy is still under siege from his enemies and some of his former friends. He’s stage managing a potential nuclear war with Iran. He’s redefining the world economy. He’s cutting the financial ties that support radical political action. He’s still furiously tweeting. It could all go terribly wrong.
But the fact remains. Love him or hate him, he’s the most impactful American in the 21st century. His polling is better than in 2016. A random sample of his hubris, here’s this note threatening Khameini while adding, “thank you for your attention in this matter”. Incorrigible.

Put simply, he has changed how politics functions in the America. Just ask these Bush Republicans. His audacity and pitiless style— thought to be political poison— have re-written the book on what works. Politics will never ever be the same down south.
The same can be said for the style of Justin Trudeau, scion to the legacy of his father. He, too, was dismissed as a lightweight when he made this political aspirations clear. While Trump could at least cite his business and TV career, Trudeau’s resume was wafer thin. Ski instructor. One-term drama teacher. A fanciful D’Artagnan he posed and preened for the cameras. A combination of his mother’s intellect and his father’s vanity he could easily have crashed and burned.
But by 2015 his father’s Liberal party was in big trouble. On the heels of the sponsorship scandal, they tried re-create PET in Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff. Bad idea. In the face of extinction, all it had was Trudeau’s vedette appeal and a population bored with Stephen Harper. Lucky for Liberals, Canada’s elites craved the novelty of Boy Trudeau on the cover of GQ.
Trudeau played the Sunny Ways card into a decade as Canada’s PM. His modest accomplishments— a dental plan, assisted suicide— were buried in three Woke terms of climate hysteria, corruption, fake Rez murder genocide, creating a real-estate bubble economy, allowing China to set up a money-laundering in the major cities and the explosion of drug trafficking to where the fentanyl El Chapo and his pals took up residence in Toronto. The RCMP were discouraged from investigating any and all his uglier conflicts.
His three successful elections owed a lot to mediocre CPC leaders and a perpetual fear— stoked by friendly media— that Trump would get them all killed. He was also buoyed by a Family Compact that sloughed off his many gaffes— standing O for a Nazi in Parliament?— while portraying Pierre Poilievre as a robotic Trump clone.

Like Trump, Trudeau defined a style of politics for Boomer Canada, long on Woke platitudes, short on concrete policy. When CDNs showed they didn’t care about defence, balancing budgets or rule of law in those three votes, Trudeau took the hint. He squashed the Truckers, forfeited their savings, locked them in prison for “mischief”. And got the NDP to go along.
When his own bill finally came due, he skedaddled to a cozy pension and an afterlife in the ranks of international NGOs. Leaving Mark Carney a toxic legacy. Leftist politicians will be trying to emulate his escape act for decades.
Right-wing politicians will do the same after Trump. Some might even be Trumps themselves. So dismiss these two at your peril. For their nations and the world they called the shot. Bullseye.
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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