Connect with us

Bruce Dowbiggin

No, Really. Carney Is An Outsider. And Libs Are Done

Published

8 minute read

The recent appearance of Liberal-leader-in-waiting Mark Carney on the Daily Show has delighted a small segment of the Canadian voting pool and enraged a goodly part as well. During his nuzzle session with a highly uncritical Jon Stewart Carney announced that he was running to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader and then prime minister for however long that lasts.

(If this distinction seems trivial we would recall that then-CBC vice president Kirstine Stewart once upbraided us for saying her actor husband was supporting Trudeauā€™s bid to be PM. A choleric Stewart said weā€™d got the story wrong. How so, we asked? Heā€™s supporting him to be Liberal leader, she thundered. Not the PM. As if this were a distinction worth making.)

Back to Carney. To understand the gravity of his announcement on the Daily Show one must remember that for a generation of concussed Liberals and NDP hacks Stewartā€™s show from 1999 to 2016 was the Yankee Stadium of talk shows. In their estimation, Stewart was Reggie Jackson, mashing the fastball, while CBCā€™s At Issue panel was Jesus Ramirez, striking out on the curve in A Ball.

So for Stewart to grant time to an unknown Canadian banker who still thinks Greta Thunberg is relevant was intriguing. Or someone paid someone. In any event, the gotchaā€™ line from the chat was Carney, formerly governor of the Banks of Canada and the UK and now advisor to PMJT, repeating Stewartā€™s suggestion that he was the ā€œoutsiderā€ in the race to succeed Trudeau.

For most sentient Canadians this was an epic humblebrag for the billionaire son of a former governor of the Bank of Canada whose wife does investment business with Trudeau eminence gris Gerry Butts. If Carney was an outsider what constituted an insider? It was to laugh.

Social mediaā€” that part not consumed by the visit of Alberta premier Danielle Smith and gadfly investor Kevin Oā€™Leary to Mar A Lagoā€” boiled with sarcasm and dismissal. Those wily Liberals arenā€™t going to fool us now, just as we are on the cusp of Pierre Poilievre taking power. No doubt Carneyā€™s teamā€” including PMJTā€” laughed in derision.

The Liberals culture club think that, if they could pass off Skippy as remotely capable, they can dress up Carney as an outsider for gullible Canadian voters.

But Carney may have accidentally have tripped over the truth. He is now an outsider. You see, the dotty Libs think the machine that selected/ elected Skippy in 2015 still works. CBC, G&M, Macleans, TorStar would decide the candidates and curate the process. Sadly for Butts, Telford and Skippy the Family Compact has been supplanted by social media both here and in the USA.

The turning point of Trumpā€™s victory in the U.S. presidential race was him pivoting away from the staged debates and ponderous Sunday morning shows of legacy media toward not just podcasts by Joe Rogan but also those of under-30 stars such as Theo Von, Adin Ross and Lex Fridman, among many. The cred he gained from the Gen X demo helped him sweep the Dems away. Elon Musk breaking the DEMs censorship strategy on Twitter (now X) also sent a shot at Team Kamala that the game had changed.

While Canada doesnā€™t have as many counter-culture podcasts as the U.S., there are enough young voters ignoring Canadaā€™s chattering class to bury the Libs under Carney or the rest of the Goof Troop. No one with a pulse and a vote under 50 buys the old rag bag. Itā€™s over for guys as exciting as a carrot expecting to harvest younger Canadians. Theyā€™re playing to an empty hall with the bespoke Carney.

This ironic twist is that all this is lost on Woke nobs who brag about their hip sense of humour. Who follow Stewart and MSNBCā€™s Rachel Maddow to keep up with Trump Derangement. Who record SNL Update to hang on the sophomoric stylings of Michael ChĆ© and Colin Jost. Who can recite extended bits from Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Now they are the punch line. The outrage over the Mar A Lago visit by Smith and Oā€™Leary is a perfect example of their dissociative thinking. The staged pictures had ā€œblood boilingā€ in many progressives. ā€œ@OrbitStudios Jan 13 So… Kevin O’Leary is arrested immediately for treason the next time he sets foot in Canada, correct? I’m absolutely being serious here.ā€ And thatā€™s a mild response.

These armies of Liberal bots fumed over the treachery of talking about the economy with the man about to become the U.S. president again. Awareness much? None of the howler monkeys reacted this way when heroes like PMJT and his cabinet burned clouds of carbon to lobby the eunuchs of WEF, EU and Davos in Europe. They were hot on selling out Canada to the globalist gangā€™s climate narrative, and they couldnā€™t get there quickly enough. Crickets from the bot community.

But this is different, of course. Sure. In the past their pals in the Ottawa Press Club could protect these hypocrisies, burying unfortunate stories by segueing to David Suzuki saving seals or Margaret Attwood decrying the medieval treatment of Canadian women in the 21st century.

But social media obliterated the insider game. So much so that Trudeau and his cabinet cronies began banning speech as fast as possible. But itā€™s too late. Like the ghost leg syndrome, the script to shove an unelected climate crazy into the PMO will seem real to the Libs. But donā€™t be fooled. The end is nigh for the old way. Just look at Stewartā€™s ratings to see just how dead it really is.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public BroadcasterĀ  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

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. Thatā€™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 doorā€” a la Covidā€” to those citizens ā€œharmedā€ 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 Canadaā€™s GDP collapses some more.

For the moment, however, let us concentrate on what Justin Trudeauā€™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 earlyĀ  21st century. Despite efforts then to create a Canadian fund to save teams, two clubsā€” Winnipeg Jets and Quebec Nordiquesā€” 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 movedā€” to Washingtonā€” 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 youā€™re really talking about raising $750,000 million in CDN revenues to meet the demand. Multiply those jumps over a 25-man roster and youā€™re talking a huge jump in payrollā€” or being consigned to after-ran status.

While no oneĀ  is about to hold a tag day for Toronto it will make the Jaysā€™ 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 todayā€™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 todayā€™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 Oilersā€™ resources will be stretched thin to accommodate McDavidā€” 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 Oilersā€™ 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 Canadaā€™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 BroadcasterĀ  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

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 itā€™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 itā€™s now a world centre for money laundering that wonā€™t pay its defence obligations.

The hysteria was mint this past weekend from panicky Canadians acting as if Donald Trumpā€™s tariffs were a Pearl Harbor sneak-attack. They booed the Star Spangled Banner at sporting events, had conniption fits of self pity (ā€˜weā€™ve been friends for so long!ā€) 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, ā€œOh well!ā€) Alberta premier Danielle Smith, whoā€™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 Trudeauā€™s fanciful Team Canada theme. ā€œThis is a mind poisoned with grievance and resentment,ā€ raged CBC panelist Andrew Coyne. ā€œSo 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.ā€

Well then. It was all rather unseemly. Noted Dilbert creator Scott Adams, ā€œCanadaā€™s response to Trumpā€™s tariffs is to be publicly sad about it.ā€ But are Trumpā€™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 itā€™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 itā€™s now a world centre for money laundering that wonā€™t pay its defence obligations.

Example: TD Bank was just fined $3B by US regulators for laundering fentanyl drug money back to Communist China. Itā€™s the largest such fine in U.S. history.Ā  A fine TD paid without complaint. Trudeauā€™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 donā€™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 donā€™t trust. Security officials fear that anything said to Trudeauā€™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.)

Canadaā€™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 ā€œloyal friendā€ 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 ā€œbrilliantā€ ripostes on borders ā€” repeated by all the clever peopleā€” was that only one percent of Americaā€™s fentanyl comes from Canada. For those who think thatā€™s a mic-drop moment consider: thatā€™s fentanyl seized by America at the border.

Here, Canadaā€™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 canā€™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, Canadaā€™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 ā€œstudentsā€ coming into the nation are getting a very different education on life in Canada. ā€œCanada 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 wonā€™t verify. Thatā€™s it. ā€ These ā€œgraduatesā€ quickly end up in a rig running contraband drugs, guns and tech to supplement their minuscule earnings.

ā€œBetween 2017 & 2024, Ontario went from 80 truck driving schools to 280. The province has 6 auditors for 600 private career collegesā€”almost half for trucks, apparently. No enforcement standards.

ā€œTo recap,ā€ continues Punwasi:

  • ā€œmoney 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 trafficā€

Canadian trucking executives know the problem in the industry. They say new entrants make no money trucking, but they do make for easy ā€œā€˜runnersā€™. It is rampant. One executive says his firm has virtually exited the cross-border business, because of the changing demographics. These truckersā€” many of them speaking no Englishā€” 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. Heā€™s also contemptuous of the current attempt to slide climate alarmist Mark Carney into Trudeauā€™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 whenā€” ifā€” the Liberals ever let Canadians voice their will. This is what Canadaā€™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 Trumpā€™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 donā€™t elect a trust-fund poseur.

Whatever Trumpā€™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 theyā€™ve asked in, not be captured. Trump would dictate the terms, and he doesnā€™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 Canadaā€™s economy at the present rate. By weekā€™s end even Trumpā€™s vitriolic critics like the Globe&Mail were offering backhanded acknowledgements that, however crude they found the presidentā€™s tactics, he did wake up Canadians to the issue of Canadaā€™s lassitude on defence and the border. Doomberg summed up the conflict. ā€œThe 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, Trumpā€™s actions have finally acknowledged reality. Godspeedā€™.ā€

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public BroadcasterĀ  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