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Bruce Dowbiggin

How Trudeau Media Skewed The Battle Of Bouncy Castle

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“From a positive and unifying approach, a decision was made to wedge, to divide and to stigmatize. I fear that this politicization of the pandemic risks undermining the public’s trust in our public health institutions. This is not a risk we ought to be taking lightly.”— Liberal MP Joel Lightbound

It’s perhaps fitting that Toronto Star publisher John Honderich passed away during the Battle of Bouncy Castle. The paper he and his family fashioned defined Canadian progressivism in the modern age. “With ink running through his veins and a bow tie ’round his collar, John Honderich was one of the titans of Canadian journalism” went the obit.

Give him props. He and his family defined the message in the post-war era, tilting Canada left. Enamoured by American liberal deities such as the Kennedys and Clintons— and welcoming to tens of thousands of Viet Nam deserters and draft dodgers— they (and CBC) created the Eugene McGovern state that Americans rejected in the 1970s.

Canadians now love feeling superior to Americans with their messy, tumultuous politics (even as Canadians took their free defence). Cheering on even the most embarrassing Democrats gave them a sense of identity versus their noisy neighbour. Canada’s worship of the American left drove right-wing competition out of business (Sun TV) or pushed others (The National Post and G&M) hard to the left. To say nothing of what they did to Conservative leaders Erin O’Toole, Doug Ford and Jason Kenney who defied the Star’s agenda.

Their slanting of the Convoy drama is a perfect example of Canada’s aversion to right-wing thought. The media, writes Jen Gerson,  “is presenting a version of reality that is wildly at odds with the protesters’ own self conception. It’s also not in line with people who have attended protests in other cities, and have reported to me that the vibe of these things is in fact mostly positive and welcoming. This further erodes trust in media, pushing a faction of the public further into information bubbles and away from mainstream reporting.”

Thus the Globe & Mail, formerly the paper of record for business in Canada, is now the conscience of Avenue Road and Lawrence. In a florid editorial it vilified the mostly peaceful protesters destroying the NIMBY dreams of their Ottawa subscribers. “The Ottawa occupation is the October Crisis revisited. Justin Trudeau must be bold“.

Forget that the 1971 FLQ crisis involved two kidnappings, a murder, escape to Cuba, threats of insurrection and people stoning Trudeau’s father. To the Globe that’s just the same as Bouncy Castles, hot chocolate and some yahoos honking their truck horns in the Glebe and Sandy Hill. Besides there’s a narrative to maintain.

Ottawa’s mayor Jim Watson has seen to that. In one cringing example he linked the protesters to thugs trying to set a fire in an Ottawa condo building. Even when corrected by Ottawa police he has not apologized. Anything to protect the PM’s wobbly authority.

On his behalf Family Compact Media want you to hit the protesters. Hit them hard. Drive them off the streets. Get the law to take their fuel and hotel rooms. Because we can’t let these… things.. make light of us with their impertinence and flannel shirts! This is seasoned with overheated university professors writing tripe about “a dangerous fringe element terrorizing our capital” and not be laughed off the faculty.

While the Mop & Pail gaslights a Costa Gavras political thriller in the PM’s refusal to meet unkempt middle-class truckers, it memory-holes Trudeau taking a PMO meeting with Joshua Boyle— under investigation by the police on multiple criminal charges.

Or that while he calls tax-paying protesters merchants of “antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia” he bestowed $10.5 M big ones on a convicted ISIS terrorist when he came back to Canada. Which is more than unvaccinated Canadians are entitled to.

As Sun writer Lorrie Goldstein asked on Twitter, “As I understand it in Canada, there’s a ‘right’ and a ‘far right’, but there’s only a ‘left’ and not a ‘far left’. Why is that?”

It’s why a prime minister who hides from protesters is now pushing for more restrictive rules on social media content (read: censorship). Having bought off the floundering legacy media he means to move his control to the internet next. All the better to push climate change and gender dysphoria as top agenda items— even as Canadians’ heating bills double, their gas pushes toward $2/ litre and inflation erodes their life savings.

No, the enemy of the state is the Convoy. But as @jengerson points the majority of the participants are not politically sophisticated. “The Freedom Convoy is not setting up a tyrannical blockade by their own lights, but rather an extended street protest-ey party, complete with DJs, bouncy castles, BBQ pits and saunas. They’ve organized camps for themselves, cleared the roads of snow and, by their own reports, ejected racist elements.”

This clashes with the PM’s fever dreams. Liberal MP Lightbound says this dismissal of average citizens has been divisive. “I’ve heard from a lot of people wondering why just a year ago, we were all united, in this together. And now that we have one of the most vaccinated population in the world, we’ve never been so divided.”

Should we be surprised by left-wing victim media love? You probably have noticed that it’s Black History Month in Canada and the U.S. Our one-note media uses it to build a narrative about whites’ oppression of blacks. None of the Jimmy Olsens ever dare to ask the radicals, why it is that almost every murdered black person in Canada is killed by another black person?

Their bias on behalf of Trudeau is inescapable. In a testament to how liberal media have created a no-go zone for social-conservative issues, consider that a whopping 77 percent of Canadians are unaware there is no law governing abortion in the country.

But the Convoy’s persistence has threatened that security. The weakening of Omicron is running out Trudeau’s strategy. As the WSJ writes, “The lesson for the Covid-19 police is that when you’ve lost even Canadians, arguably the most law-abiding people on the planet, you’ve lost the political plot.”

For now it remains to be seen how far Trudeau will go to smash the Bouncy Castle people that he and his purchased press have demonized. Or whether the Liberals finally get off their power trip and move on from vaccine shaming.

 

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

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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

Be Careful What You Wish For In 2026: Mark Carney With A Majority

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“The unifying theme that enables the Liberal party to maintain its hold over Canada is persistent anti-Americanism…I hope Canadians finally mature, acknowledge that we are neither superior nor inferior to the United States, and abandon our collective national inferiority complex.” Conrad Black quotes a friend. 

Canadian media have almost always been reflexively anti-American. Fair enough. Abandoned by Britain they needed to push back. But the real fear of being consumed by the rebel colonies to the south has morphed into a fear of Donald Trump reminding Canada that it has been riding first class while paying economy.

Bashing noisy, bumptious America has always been good business if you owned a Canadian newspaper or television/radio network. The performative worship of Canadian leaders who cocked a snook at the Yankees led, in recent times, to the open-mouthed support for the fatuous Trudeaupian line of monarchs. As Ray Davies sang, “each one a dedicated follower of fashion.”

Since Pierre “The Bold” Trudeau succeeded Lester Pearson and ascended to the throne of the Family Compact in 1968, Canadian policy from Viet Nam to Trump has become “What are the Americans doing? Then let’s do the opposite”. Sample of spite: CBS TV pulled a controversial 60 Minutes news story —but it aired in Canada after being leaked by pissed-off CBS employees.

Yes, there was the brief Harper interregnum when Canada actually fought a military campaign alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan. But mostly it was Jean “Golf Balls” Chretien sitting out the Iraq War.

Alas, all good things must end. Or at least pause. People were starting to notice that Justy was a Chinese trusty, his Montreal riding campaign funded by hundreds of Chinese “businessman” from far away. The tragi-comic Trudeuapian succession hit a speed bump with Mark Carney being brought in to domesticate Canada in manner satisfactory to Brookfield and the EU.

But no one is betting the Libs won’t turn to a third generation of Quebec fashionistas— in the form of another Trudeau progeny— when all else fails.

As usual caustic Conrad Black sums up Canada best. With Quebec and Alberta talking separation he quotes a friend on the state of the nation. “What exists instead is a Liberal Party that manages — often quite poorly — the finances of a collection of provinces and territories, while relying on its media apparatus to shape and safeguard its narrative. It resembles a hedge fund supported by an image consulting firm.” (Insert your convict felon/ anglo wannabe reference here.)

There is no doubt that, as 2025 skulks out, the “image-consulting firm” painting rosy pictures of the Laurentian Elite is in for a a challenge. Justin thought using Trump as his pretext could achieve peace by buying up the lads and lasses of the fourth estate. It worked with Covid and the Truckers Convoy as the column writers/ panel hosts dutifully wrote it like he called it (even as the international press chided Trudeau.).

But even those good times didn’t last, forcing the Libs to do a presto-chango before Justin could lead them to a catastrophic defeat in the spring election. Once more, faced with Trump’s aggressive posture toward trade with Canada, the press closed ranks over Elbows Up, portraying CPC leader Pierre Poilievre as Dick Dastardly.

But new polling shows that the burst of enthusiasm for more Liberal pantomime is wearing thin. The new “new” trade deal promised with Trump has dissipated. The threat to private home ownership in B.C. by government’s indigenous land concessions has sent a chill through the middle class. The NDP fainting goats who bought Elbows Up are headed back to Crazytown, likely under Avi Lewis.

Now, at last, the reckoning promised by the Conservatives’ 20-point lead in polling this time last year may be at hand. While the diehards will go their graves mumbling land acknowledgements and 32 pronouns, there is hope that the under 60s— who emphatically support the Tories— will force change.

What change? Tristan Hopper in the National Post suggests that one place to start reforming the jalopy of Canadian government is in the oceans of money lavished on cause-related political leeches. Seeing the Bondi Beach slaughter by ISIS radicals many now question how long before Toronto or Montreal experiences a similar tragedy at the hands of jihadis who are lavishly supported by tax money.

Yes, not all Muslims in the West are terrorists. But almost all terrorists in the West are Muslim. Hate-spewing Hamas groupies from college faculty are regularly allowed major intersections with police protection as they promise to wipe out infidels. Till now it’s been poor form to even mention, let alone criticize, this pantomime.

Withdrawing financial aid to these groups and their academic fellow travellers would immediately rob these brigands of their impact. The cries of despair from cutting the cord would also expose those in the Commons who have coddled these vipers with grants and ministries.

Similar hacking at the slush money aimed at every other form of leftist posing— from trans to indigenous to illegal immigrants— would also mark the end of free money. Of course there will be caterwauling from the Elizabeth May Free Lunch crew. But with the threat of Canada coming apart with Quebec and Alberta/ Saskatchewan headed for the door those usual dissenting voices will be muted.

Only one thing stands in the way of this culling. That is PM Mark Carney coercing one more MP to cross the floor to his party, cementing its majority status for up to four more years. While the At Issue panels slap their flippers in glee at Poilievre’s demise, the rest of the nation will be less enthralled with the new realities of censorship, trade and housing.

As Stephen Punwasi states. “People in Canada can’t afford homes & prices can’t fall because debt was securitized with widespread fraud—so taxpayers will subsidize foreign speculation. It’s like they hired the mayor of Vancouver to run housing. Oh—they did, eh? Kids, run.”

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 2025 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 new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Hunting Poilievre Covers For Upcoming Demographic Collapse After Boomers

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For those not familiar with hunting seasons in Canada it may come as a surprise that the nation has a year-round hunting season. That would be the targeting of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre by the massed army of Liberals, their bots and the richly endowed media pack. Forget he’s never held power. He’s to blame for the ills in Canadian society.

It has been a good hunt. After floor-crossing by dissident CPC, the Liberals are one seat from the majority that Canadian voters denied them in the spring. (They’ll likely get the majority soon.) MPs who a day earlier were at Conservative Xmas parties suddenly sang the praises of Carney. MPs in ridings targeted by the Chinese suddenly joined Team Elbow Up.

All the while the media corps landed blows from their perch. Robert Benzie: “I know that Premier [Danielle] Smith is very unhappy privately with Pierre Poilievre because she thinks that [MOU motion] is undermining this [pipeline] project.” The nadir of the media dog pile was formerly eminent scribe Robert Fife who sniped, “Conservatives persist with cute legislative tricks, while the government tries to run a country.” Run a country. That’s rich.

From his lips to Liberal brains, however. “.@CBCNews and @AlJazeeraWorld viewers consider themselves uniquely informed, says @ElectionsCan_E report. The two TV networks were named by self-described “informed” voters when asked where they got their news.

It is, seemingly, a great time to be a Liberal. Or not. While Operation Poilievre was gathering steam for Xmas polling revealed that Liberals and Conservatives remain locked in a tie, and Canadians continue to express ambivalence about the country’s direction, mixed feelings about their leaders, and sharp divides by generation, region, and policy concern. These generational discrepancies continue to be buried.

As was the case in the spring, the Liberals are supported only by the Boomer generation that swallowed Elbows Up nostalgia like a fat man on a donut. The under 60s demo at every level shows the current Carney agenda is a loser for them. In the segment of house-rich Boomers the Libs lead 50-31 over CPC. But in every other category it’s “how can I get out of here faster?”

The 45-59 demo it’s 46-36 Conservatives; 30-44 it’s a whopping 48-31 CPC; 18-29 it’s 40-39 CPC. A healthy chunk of Liberal supporting from the collapse of NDP vote. Where they used to poll in the 20s, the highest demo shows 11 percent support. Otherwise Poilievere would be PM.

Meanwhile, research now finds that 54 percent of Canadians say the growing number of newcomers to the country threatens our traditional customs and values— an increase of sixteen points since 2020. Over the same period, the share of Canadians who say immigration strengthens our society fell thirteen points to 35%

In short, the Carney Circus of marrying Canada to China and the EU is a card trick that will be exposed shortly. But where do we see the Ottawa press corps attention to this impending demographic snow plow? As we wrote in March  “It’s not hard to see the (under 60s)  looking at the Mike Myers obsession with a long-gone Canada and saying let’s get out of here. 

Recently former TVOntario host Steve Pakin attended two convocations. The first at the former Ryerson University, (switched 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.”

The tsunami over immigration has caused severe dislocations— as PM Steven Harper predicted in the 2015 election debate. He was shouted down by the dopey dauphin Justin Trudeau who opened the sluice gates to every kind of progressive nonsense. Which is now evident.

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?” 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 2025 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 new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books

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