Bruce Dowbiggin
Three Books to End the Silence
From the Brownstone Institute
My first thought upon reading it was: I cannot believe that this was allowed to be published! That’s the interesting part. Despite every attempt by the national security state and the vast army of censorial bureaucrats, we still have enough freedom to get the word out, for now.
Think of this. In the time since the Covid crisis has passed, no aspect of any federal power that was deployed to wreck a functioning society has been repealed. Not one law, regulation, edict, or power.
Some courts have struck down certain bureaucratic practices, such as the nationwide mask mandate and the eviction moratorium, which were, respectively, huge attacks on bodily autonomy and property rights. Those were ruled inadmissible, at tremendous expense to plaintiffs.
Otherwise, the bureaucracy has not budged an inch.
At the onset of this disaster, the CDC started simply posting edicts. They started with washing hands and staying home if you were sick. Quickly, they got carried away. Every business needed stay-at-home policies, canceled meetings, posted signs warning of omnipresent danger, sanitizer stations everywhere, no sharing of pens and scissors, plus Plexiglas everywhere.
Any CDC bureaucrat with logins could add a point of “guidance” but for most people, they were law. What a rush for the rulemakers! The edicts were passed on to state health departments, which sent them to counties, and they landed in HR departments in every company. For practical purposes, these were law to most people, because the consequences of disobeying were essentially unknown.
What about now? The CDC simply deleted its webpage. No apologies, no repeals, no reforms, just a delete button. It was there then it was gone.
When first issued it looked like this. A year later, it became a vast machinery of control, as you can see here. With each new update, the screws tightened. (Someone could have a great time parsing every word of every iteration and documenting it.)
Complying with everything would require vast expenditure and a crazed kabuki dance of extreme germophobia, such that it is hard to see how business could get done at all. Every sentence talks of guidance and advice but none cites “science” much less any authority for how any of this was legal. And yet millions of businesses either shut forever or experienced massive financial stress, which hurt everyone. Of course some enterprises thrived: those lucky enough to be considered “essential” and received the bulk of federal funding!
It’s more than obvious that we cannot depend on the federal government to get us to the truth about what happened. Vast amount of content on Brownstone.org explores this daily. In addition there are three books that everyone needs to digest now to get a full sense of the whole. There was much more going on that simple bureaucratic incompetence.
Our Enemy, the Government by Ramesh Thakur is the most scientifically sophisticated and yet accessible account of the amazing screw-ups of public health during this period. Keep in mind that the policy response was mostly the same all over the world but for a few nations. Thakur’s focus is on Australia but people in every nation will recognize the pattern. Each chapter takes on a new element, from the wild exaggeration of the universal threat of Covid, to the faulty testing regime, to the death misclassifications, to the spending mania, to the flurry of insane edicts on masking, vaccination, and forced human separation. It’s a tour de force for the ages, and leaves a devastating impression.
Keep in mind that Thakur is not just some writer. He was once the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations under Kofi Annan in addition to being a famed scholar. He has risked everything in writing this book but once he started peeling away at the onion that is the Covid response, he simply could not stop. He had to do the right thing and go the full way. The book is overwhelming in terms of charts, data, evidence, and citations but this is what is necessary to smash the paradigm. His main concern is the health and well-being of the human population. It was this that was wrecked over three years.
Next comes Rand Paul’s Deception. Throughout these awful years, Senator Paul has been an absolute godsend, and for two reasons. He is a medical doctor and extremely smart, so he was never intimidated by Anthony Fauci’s pseudoscientific gobbledygook. He saw right through the guy from the very beginning.
Crucially, as a US Senator, he had unusual access to Fauci that enabled him to question him directly. This is something that Fauci had tried to avoid from the beginning. We know from his email and scheduling that Fauci was extremely careful through the whole period to grant only friendly interviews on captured venues. This was a main objective, and precisely why he got away with it. But with Rand in the Senate, he was entitled to a limited amount of time to ask questions. He used every minute well. The results are gold.
His book is the full account of how Fauci worked from day one to avoid any culpability for the funding of the Wuhan lab through third parties that might have been responsible for the leak of the virus. The book, then, reveals the scandal of the century. Fauci has been enormously powerful, controlling billions in grant funding. He deployed all his power, money, and connections to avoid his direct professional responsibilities and scrub his record to make himself unaccountable. Rand has all the receipts, and bravely presents them in this important book.
To deepen the plot, we have The Wuhan Coverup by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. This is a much more focused and tighter work than his previous book on Fauci. I swear that anyone who grabs it and reads it will never think about government the same way. It’s that powerful and comprehensive. At issue for Kennedy is the US bioweapons program that began after the Second World War and continues to this day. It is responsible for vast corruption, the empowerment and entanglement of pharmaceutical companies, and the use of secretive classification powers to keep the American people in the dark.
If you suspected that the national security apparatus had some role in the pandemic response, you would be correct about that. This book is the one that has gone further than any other to document this scary reality. The Department of Defense and the CIA had a huge role in making rules for the rest of the population to prepare the way for the presumed antidote that was rolled out with tax funding and legal indemnification against harms, by companies that owned the patents and had publicly traded stocks you could buy. Nothing about this whole machinery has anything to do with things like freedom and democracy but there it is, malicious corporatism in a nutshell.
RFK has laid it all out in eye-popping page after page. My first thought upon reading it was: I cannot believe that this was allowed to be published! That’s the interesting part. Despite every attempt by the national security state and the vast army of censorial bureaucrats, we still have enough freedom to get the word out, for now. This is why it is so important to get this book now and digest its contents. There could come a time when we won’t be allowed to read such things. That is clearly the ambition in any case.
Did the pandemic response affect your life? Your kids? Your community? Yes, and profoundly. As a citizen you have every reason to care about how and why terrible things were done to us.
It’s not enough just to forget the whole thing like a bad dream. We cannot just delete the page from the history books, as the CDC has done, and pretend like it is over and done and nothing needs to change. We must deal with reality. And these books take us to new levels of understanding. That is the first step toward change.
Author
The week after Grey Cup is always a good time to look in for our first serious analysis at how Canada’s NHL teams are doing. So let’s take a quick… WHOA… what’s happening here?
If the playoffs were to begin next week (we wish) then it would be a cold breakfast for teams in Elbows Up. Just two clubs—Winnipeg and Montreal— would even qualify for the postseason. And the Jets have just found out their star goalie Connor Hellybuyck is unlikely to play much before mid-January.
The two putative Canadian hopes for a first Stanley cup since 1993— Toronto and Edmonton— are sucking on vapour trails. After being raked 5-2 by Montreal, the Leafs have just a 24.9 percent chance of making the playoffs. Conor McDavid’s Oilers have a better percentage but their same old goaltending woes and a ticking clock on McDavid’s back.
Granted that, going into the weekend, no team in the East was more than four points out of the wild-card spot while all but three teams were within three points of a playoff spot in the West. But the Canadian teams are stuck behind some premium teams and need lotsa’ luck so they end up like Max Verstappen not Lance Stroll.
Maybe a Canadian men’s Olympic gold medal can reduce the sting of no Cup, no future for another season. But it won’t save the jobs of coaches in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver unlikely to survive also-ran status. Let’s take a close look at the not-so-magnificent seven starting west to east.
Vancouver: The Nucks have a sterling 4 percent chance of making the postseason as of this writing. In the powerful Western Conference that’s still an insult to a franchise that hasn’t recovered from the hasty 2013 firing of GM Mike Gillis—who won… let us us see… two Presidents Trophies and six Western Conference titles in a row. Since then? Uh, bagel.
It’s nice that Elias Petterson has come back from the morgue this season. But it will come down to goalie Thatcher Demko staying healthy and whether ownership wants to go full tank or just a quarter-tank for a draft pick. Hard to see Adam Foote surviving as coach.
Calgary: Speaking of tanking, everyone in Calgary wants the Flames to do a teardown for the top picks in the 2026 Draft. Everyone, except, for the Flames absentee owner Murray Edwards and his robo-spokesman Don Maloney. They want the five percent chance at a playoff spot and a mid-round first draft pick. The Flames missed the chance to restructure in 2023 when Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk departed. But again, denialism in the management suite tried to make it an even trade with Florida, sign huge new contracts and keep pushing. Bad decision.
Only question here is when does the purge begin and what can they get to help Dustin Wolf— signed for seven more years— in net?
Edmonton: We’ve written at length here and here about the McDavid saga. He and the management team halved the baby with a short-term deal to pretend he’s staying in the Chuck. Their healthy chance of making the playoffs (75.5 percent) says one thing. Their play in the putrid Pacific— they’re given up six-goals-plus five times in just 24 games— says another. But as long as McDavid and Leon Draisaitl stay healthy they might still finesse a ticket to a their third straight Finals ride.
But if they get near the trading deadline and the postseason is a mirage the noise to trade McDavid will be deafening. And the offers staggering for a capped-out team.
Winnipeg: Last year was supposed to be the Jets big year. Okay, that didn’t work out so well. The Jets kept their core together for another chance at finally making a serious playoff run. So it will all come down, as it has in the past, to the health and playoff juju of Hellybuyck. Their ticket out of the Central Division lies in beating powerful Colorado and Dallas and, if that happens, staying healthy.
The Jets would probably just as well their stars didn’t go get beat up in the Olympics, but that’s unlikely. There’s always been a karma about Winnipeg breaking the Canada Cup jinx. Still a long shot.
EAST
Toronto: So you’re saying Mitch Marner wasn’t the problem with the highly rated Maple Leafs never getting as far as the Conference Finals? They’re 3-5-2 in their last ten, their captain is still a sulky figure— only now his output doesn’t make it worthwhile. And the Toronto media is trying to do the players’ will to get coach Craig Berube fired for them. The same problems remain from years previous: dubious goaltending and a shallow talent pool on defence.
The biggest problem for the Leafs is their closing window for success. They’re old, have few tradeable assets in the system and have traded top picks away for short-term gains that never appeared. Expect fireworks after the Olympics if this crate doesn’t get moving. New MLSE boss Keith Pelley has no ties to the current administration and will sweep clean.
Ottawa: The Sens have managed to survive the loss of captain Brad Tkachuck to a broken finger. How? Ottawa have gotten goals from 17 different players which means they have balance. And so far they are above average 5-on-5. All good. They’ve also taken advantage of the mediocrity of the Leafs and other Eastern teams to stay afloat.
Their Achilles heel? Between the pipes. Both goalies have a save percentage under .875 and that ain’t going to cut it come spring. As always finances will limit their trades and manoeuvrability.
Montreal: The Habs were the fashionable pick before the season as the Canadian team most likely to get to the Cup they last won in 1993. Defenceman Laine Hutson is all that he promised last year. The dynamic top line of Cole Caufield, Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovsky have cast back to the days of the Flying Frenchmen. Managing expectations in Montreal’s rabid hockey culture— where a misplaced apostrophe can cause chaos—means never taking anything for granted.
Now if only goaltender Jacob Dobes can keep up his play long enough for Sam Montembault to regain his form the Habs could be a thing in the spring. At this rate they might be the only thing.
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.
The Liberals’ first budget under Mark Carney— about nine months overdue— snuck through Parliament with Green Party leader-of-one Elizabeth “Margarita” May as the deciding vote. (All it took was a commitment to her insane climate targets.) A quick review of the Book of Revelations does not reveal this as a sign of the Apocalypse. But to Canadians who voted for a change in the spring it’s a rude reminder that no one is minding the store in Ottawa.
The Parliament Hill media has largely shelved discussion of Carney’s budget ‘guzintas (the PBO said there is a “less than 10 percent chance the government will keep its deficit-to-GDP ratio on a downward track through 2029-30… and Finance Canada has “changed its reporting of deficit financing, separating capital from operational spending.”) Translation: If Carney keeps on this track till 2030 the total GST collected from Canadians will not be enough to service the federal debt.
The chattering class is, however, full speed ahead on their Pierre Poilievre deathwatch. The leader of the CPC is one of their more anodyne figures to lead a party since Mackenzie King. His earnest kitchen-table schtick is about as dynamic as a cheese sandwich. Even when he famously defenestrated a blundering BC journalist in an apple orchard he never raised his voice. (What page am I taking from Trump’s book?”)
In the House of Commons, he has performed a monotone strafing of Liberal policy since becoming leader in 2023. He hasn’t elbowed aside a female NDP member. In the fine tradition of the House he does mock the Liberals front bench, throws water on their fevered policies and acts like a vice-principal of a small high school disciplining a student.
But in the judgment of today’s febered media— okay, the Liberals— he’s “rage-farming” or “rage-baiting” when pointing out that Canada’s debt is out of control, its real estate is a bubble waiting to burst and the relationship with the U.S. is flat lining. In fact he’s all rage, all the time, for their purposes. According to Carney’s bots, Poilievre stoops “to stirring and riling up ‘white-trash’ elements in society into hateful rhetoric against the prime minister. “
Team Carney has gloried in his travails since Donald Trump upended the spring election by cozying up to Carney. (Poilievre didn’t help himself taking pot shots at Trump who then dismissed Poilievre). CBC/ CTV/ Global savants who spit every time they mention Trump bizarrely were suddenly in enthusiastic approval of Orange Man Bad spanking PP for them.
The tone about his performance as opposition leader is vitriolic. “Pierre Poilievre’s rage-baiting and empty slogans aren’t what Canada needs”. His slogans (stolen by Carney during the election campaign), his by-election win in Alberta, his insistence on core issues— it drives the panelists on talk shows to fits for pique.
Which is funny when you think about it. Those with longer memories can recall the hijinx of the Liberals’ Rat Pack in the 1980s and 90s. Led by Sheila Copps (dubbed Tequila Sheila by Tory justice minister John Crosbie), Don Boudria and John Nunziata they were an early version of Polievere and Melissa Lantsman and the CPC front bench. Just more obnoxious.
Except the wind therapists were amused by them. Instead of rage monkeys they were the subjects of puckish CBC features. Copps could speak Italian with her (Hamilton) constituents and also had “perfect French,” said reporter Jason Moscovitz.” But she needles Mulroney in plain English,” he added, as Copps introduced a question for Brian Mulroney by comparing him to to Johnny Carson.
The irreverent Rats even produced their own T-shirts to wear in the House. “Other MPs say he’s sleazy, slimy, and a snake,” said Moscovitz, of Nunziata as he donned one of the T-shirts. So Nunziata used the same words in the House of Commons.”Sleazy, slimy Tory patronage!” he proclaimed on the floor of the House.
Laugh? We could have died. It was entertaining in the collegial debating club of the time. The sparring of the feisty Copps and her target John Crosbie was mint.
But now that the Liberals are entering a second decade of mismanaging the nation, their appetite for impertinence has disappeared. So the clever ripostes of Copps are now Poilievre “rage” farming and “rage baiting”. Some people have noticed the contrast: “Caucus unrest treated as a calamity when it involves the Conservatives, while Liberals get a pass” But the bubble-bound Canadian public only hears one slant.
In the U.S. there are hopeful signs of a bubble breakthrough. Hip TV host Bill Maher was forced to tell Woke comedian Patton Oswalt that his BlueSky world was strangling him. He enlightens an oblivious Oswalt on the UK grooming gangs. He also brought him up to reality when Oswalt said the Left never orders gender off of passports.
It’s not much, but it’s hopeful, at least in America. Here in Canada the information corridor is so thoroughly policed by the culture Stasi (using their dreaded Trump guns) that nothing can get through. Singing O Canada and not abusing the lyrics is considered a sacrilege on the Left. Daniel Smith is a Trumpist etc. Carney is intent on importing British hate speech convictions, not AI chips and nuclear energy.
If that isn’t enough of a bummer remember that Carney is just a stop-gap, a guy to rag the puck for a few years till the Liberals have groomed Justin’s eldest for the PMO. Where he can complete the Woking of traditional Canada that Grandpapa Pierre started in 1968.
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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