Bruce Dowbiggin
O Chi-Nada: The People’s Republic Of Dunder Mifflin
Former PM Lester Pearson once fashioned Canada as “honest broker” to the world. With its long history of showing up for the toughest fights, Canada had the credibility to referee between America and the world’s other nations from its perch in the U.N., NATO, the Five Eyes Group and more. Pearson’s crowning moment was negotiating an end to the Suez Canal crisis in 1956-57.
Today’s PM, Justin Trudeau, has turned Canada into the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company with him as Michael Scott, the vain, ridiculous manager of the outfit. As the recent Two Michaels hostage drama demonstrates, no one takes Canada seriously anymore. They even create new security groups (the recent AUKUS) just so Trudeau’s Woke frat party can be left out.
But in the best comic tradition, Trudeau and his coterie of activists and climate freaks don’t get that they’re laughed at. Like Michael Scott they believe that they’re in charge, the situation is not hopeless. Like Scott, who claimed to be “two-fifteenths” Native American, Trudeau pretends to be simpatico with the indigenous people and a supporter of women whom he molests.
If you were looking to sum up just how hollowed-out the Canadian dream has become under Trudeau and previous Liberal governments, the China file might suffice. The brazen kidnapping of Michael Spavor and Michael Korvig– after Canada put Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou under house arrest pending extradition to the U.S.— is the most public sign of how Canada is now a non-entity globally.
Trudeau made cautious statements about repatriating the men, but it was always timid, don’t-get-them-mad word salads. No one was fooled. NBA players show more gumption faced with the Chinese politburo— and they have none. While the rest of the Western alliance was rejecting Huawei to build 5G networks, Canada was an easy mark. No wonder China rejected Trudeau and his ambitious Sino-Canadian dreams package in December of 2017.
The Huawei/ Two Michaels pantomime is a small speck of an iceberg that has resulted from the Chinese infatuation established by Liberal PM Jean Chretien and son-in-law André Desmarais who planted their flag in China following leaving the PMO. Seduced by China’s abundant markets and “easy” profits, they created a China cult in Canada of business and political leaders drawn in by Communist Party “efficiency”.
The signpost that Liberals had it bad for the Chinese came in Trudeau’s infamous 2013 fanboy quote: “You know, there’s a level of admiration I actually have for China …. Because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say ‘we need to go green fastest…we need to start investing in solar.’” (How about that one-child policy, eh Justin?)
He wasn’t alone. In the 2019 federal election, John McCallum, the former Liberal cabinet minister and Canadian ambassador to China who took $73,000 in free trips to China, was free with advice on how the Chinese might manipulate that election. “Anything that is more negative against Canada will help the Conservatives, (who) are much less friendly to China than the Liberals,” McCallum told the South China News. “.. it would be nice if things will get better between now and (Canada’s federal) election (in October).”
Over the past generation (the majority of it under Liberal governments) Canada has become a dumping ground for Chinese Communists looking to launder money, steal copyrights and control Canada’s economy. With little pushback from Trudeau’s government. Anthony Campbell, the former head of the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat of the Privy Council Office, noted Beijing was spreading around so much money— and the federal government was so inattentive to the implications— “that nobody at the centre of power in Canada was capable of articulating what the words “national security” even meant anymore.”
The current panic over foreign ownership of Canada’s residential housing stock is symptomatic of the passive takeover of its economy.
It’s why Trudeau was happy to have foreign affairs left out of the Leaders Debates in 2021 in favour of the climate politics of 2050. Otherwise he might have had to reveal how People’s Liberation Army scientists managed to obtain high-level security clearances to undertake research at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg. And why they were spirited out of the country.
Such is Canada’s supine relationship with China that it is no longer trusted by its former allies. In one of his coherent moments, U.S. president Joe Biden said his country has no better ally than Australia, which has been insubordinate to the Chinese while Canada’s elite rolled over. Trudeau, dazzled by climate fantasies, doesn’t seem to notice when G7 leaders mocked him for claiming he was the “dean” of the group with Angela Merkel’s departure.
Or when a secret vaccine-development agreement with China’s CanSino Biologics ended when Beijing reneged on the deal and blocked shipments to Canada.
If he were paying attention Trudeau might have been alert to the growing influence China exerts in Canada’s politics. The CPP think nothing of reaching across the Pacific to smack Chinese Canadians who veer from the party line on the economy, trade, Taiwan, Hong Kong and more. When the Tories’ platform said they would “stand up” to China on a list of issues by banning Huawei Technologies Co. from 5G networks and withdrawing Canada from the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank you knew there’d be pushback.
Sure enough, Conservative candidates In the just-concluded election saw votes hold steady in almost all constituencies across the country. But in ridings with a heavily Chinese-Canadian vote CPC candidates were bombarded by third-party claims they were disloyal Chinese for attacking the CPP. China’s ambassador, Cong Peiwu, said Beijing opposed politicians who were “smearing” China. Chinese state-run newspaper the Global Times described CPC policy as “toxic” and “hostile” to China.
On election night, Liberal preference in Ontario dropped 2.7 percentage points and the Conservative vote went up 2 percentage points. But not in ridings with heavy Chinese concentrations. In 2019, Conservative Joe Chiu won his seat over Liberal Joe Peschisolido, 41.7 per cent to 35.1 per cent. On Monday, he lost to Liberal Parm Bains, 42.8 per cent to 33.4 per cent.
In BC Richmond Centre, Alice Wong won in 2019 with a 20.5 point margin. In 2021 he was defeated by Liberal Wilson Miao, who led her by 39.4 per cent to 37.1 per cent. The drops were consistent in other heavily Chinese ridings across the country. The CPP had apparently won Trudeau re-election.
Not that Canadians are crying out for greater ties to China. Terry Galvin points out in The National Post: “ A poll carried out in August showed that two-thirds of Canadians want Ottawa to take a harder line with China. An Angus Reid poll released in March showed that only one in 10 Canadians agrees that Canada should pursue closer trade ties with China.”
For all intents and purposes the modern Liberal Party’s image of China remains lost in the gauzy Norman Bethune days of plucky Mao and the People’s Party. The damage to its sovereignty is incalculable— and getting worse. Not that the PM knows. As Michael Scott said, “I love inside jokes. I hope to be a part of one someday.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book with his son Evan is called InExact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
@PaulChampLaw So, Wayne Gretzky flew on an FBI jet in April 2025 with Kash Patel to watch the Capitals? We all make choices…
Canadians always liked to see themselves as a reflective people. Not hurried into extremes. Slow to anger, quick to act on danger. Humble guys like Wayne Gretzky or Bobby Orr.
If there’s one thing that pissed them off it was anyone sucking up to Americans. Unless… they make it BIG in the U.S.. There was a big exemption for Canadians like Gretzky or Orr or Mike Myers who went south to make a fortune. For them the standards didn’t apply. They were heroes of the nation.
Until Donald Trump. Any Canadian hero not calling him Cheeto or Orange Man Bad or Hitler can expect to receive the mark of Cain from the Left huddling in the Great White North. Anyone excoriating POTUS 45/ 47 , however, is given a lifetime hall pass. No exceptions.
As Gretzky has learned again. Sunday a new photo emerged of the greatest offensive star in NHL history playing golf with the president at his Jupiter, Florida, golf course— the one where Ryan Wesley Routh tried to assassinate Trump. This led to the same predictable rending of garments and clutching of pearls that greeted Gretzky’s earlier declaration of loyalty to The Worst Human Being Ever®. Traitor is now the mildest description of 99 chez nous.
Give the Gretzkys credit, they didn’t disguise their decision. After Trump’s stunning (to some) win last November, Janet Gretzky cooed, “Congratulations Mr. President Donald J Trump ♥️🤍💙🇺🇸 You did it, You deserved it, you earned every bit of it. The world is a better place to have you as our Leader. Proud to be an American. Thank you for being such a great friend. May God keep watching over you ♥️🙏🏻♥️ Love our family to yours !”
The incensed Canadian left swung into action. “University of Alberta professor Robert Summers @RJSCity: “He’s been a pretty unlikable guy for a long time, this just further solidifies it. @ktownkeith: “Gretzky is disgusting and pathetic. I will celebrate when Ovechkin breaks his record. Also FYI, Mario was the best hockey player ever, not Whine Gretzky.” “People should burn all their old hockey jersey and cards of this guy. A shame”. And those were the nice ones.
The bile harkened to Orr supporting Trump in 2020. In our column at the time we noted the furious aftermath from Canadian hockey worshippers. Canadian sports media called Trump a “monster”, a “racist” and “a totalitarian”. You could heat most of the GTA with the steam emitted by their indignation at Orr having the temerity to speak out politically.
Orr has taken a low profile since, as even some in his hometown of Parry Sound wants nothing to do with him. “Poor Parry Sound,” tweeted Mary Lou George on Oct. 31, 2020. “What a disgrace #BobbyOrr has turned out to be. Guess he believes bragging about assaulting women really is just locker room talk since he wants Trump on his team. Sad.”
As with everything in the current McCoys vs Hartfields feud between the countries the venom launched at Gretzky’s decision to support Trump is underscored by the quaint notion that Canada is anything like it was when Gretzky’s 1988 wedding was a national celebration in Canada.
As the polling from the 2025 Canadian federal election showed young people are fed up with their Boomer parents’ nostalgia for the nation that smuggled the American diplomats out of Iran in 1979. They want economic opportunities and the ability to buy homes. What successive Liberal governments have given them is trans insanity, cities overrun by Hamas protesters and national debt backloaded on their shoulders.
To say nothing of Chinese infiltration of the economy and trade. No wonder they keep trying to change the words to O Canada all the time.
The decisions by Gretzky and Orr, among many expats, is partially due to Trump’s contrarian stance. But it also reflects a distance from the land where they grew up. Mike Myers and Elbows Up played on this sentimental loyalty to help Mark Carney succeed Justin Trudeau. But as more and more financial and talent stacks head south for opportunity (see Nutrien’s decision to ship Saskatchewan potash via the U.S., ignoring B.C.) it’s becoming clear that a reckoning is coming.
Trump’s brusque brushoff of Canada as no better than a 51st state was like an intervention with a friend or family member who’s gotten lost. It was a chance for self examination as we said in this 2018 column, Sometimes An Ingrate Nation.
Instead they bought the fake line that Trump would “invade” the country. Canadians lamented their treatment of “loyal old friend Canada”. But since the Iran heroics what has Canada done to help the U.S.? America has guarded Canada militarily. It has protected the trade lanes where Canadian goods are shipped. It has accepted hundreds of thousands of health patients unable to receive timely treatment in Canada’s single payer system.
It has encouraged Canada an automobile industry. It has allowed Canada’s film and TV industry subsidies. It has (so far) tolerated Canada’s dairy cartels. And it has welcomed Canadians by the millions to holiday or invest in America.
Now list the selfless deeds Canada has performed for America since Ken Taylor squirrelled the diplomats out of Tehran. Um… give us time. We sent Orr and Gretzky to the U.S. to jumpstart hockey. And all the SCTV folks. Canada also became the home for every foaming leftist in America seeking to escape Trump. Beyond that? Diddly squat.
So instead of the prolonged lamentations of the women and men and others of Canada, perhaps Elbows Up should listen to VPOTUS J.D. Vance. “And with all due respect to my Canadian friends, whose politics focus obsessively on the United States: your stagnating living standards have nothing to do with Donald Trump or whatever bogeyman the CBC tells you to blame. The fault lies with your leadership, elected by you.”
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.
Ottawa and Alberta have reached a memorandum of understanding that paves the way for, among other things,. a new oil pipeline in return for higher carbon taxes.. How’s it doing? B.C. and Quebec both reject the idea. The Liberals former Climate minister resigned his cabinet post.
The most amazing feature of the Mark Carney/Danielle Smith MOU is that both politicians feverishly hope that the deal fails. Carney can tell Quebec that he tried to reason with Smith, and Smith can say she tried to meet the federalists halfway. Failure suits their larger purposes. Carney to fold Canada into Euro climate insanity and Smith into a strong motive for separation.
We’ll have more in. our next column. In the meantime, another Alberta initiative on healthcare has stirred up the hornets of single payer.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Canada’s health system is the worst in the world. Except for all the other systems.” If there is anything left that Canadians agree upon it’s that their provincial healthcare plan is a disaster that needs a boatload of new money and the same old class rhetoric about two-tier healthcare.
Both prescriptions have been tried multiple times since Tommy Douglas made single-payer healthcare a reality. As a result today’s delivery systems are constantly strained to breaking and the money poured in to support it evaporates in red tape and vested interests.
But suggest that Canada adopt the method of somewhere else and you get back stares. Who does it better? How can we copy that? Crickets. Then ask governments to cut back and create efficiencies. No one wants to tell the unions they are the first to move. As a result, operating rooms sit empty for lack of trained nurses and rationed doctors. The system is all dressed with nowhere to go.
There are many earnest people trying their best to fit the square peg in the round hole. But so far it has produced a Frankenstein quilt of private clinics in other provinces handling overflows and American hospitals taking tens of thousands of overflows or critical cases. Ontarians travelling to Quebec for knee surgery. Albertans heading to eastern B.C. for hips and shoulders. Nova Scotians going to Boston for back surgery.
To say nothing of the legions of Canadians on waiting lists for terminal cancer or heart problems who, in despair of dying before seeing a specialist in 18-24 months, voyage to Lithuania, India or Mexico to save their lives. Everyone knows a story of a family member or friend surgery shopping. Every Canadian health authority sympathizes. But little solves the problem.
Which has led to predictable grumbling. @Tablesalt13 if the Liberals hadn’t surged immigration over the last 4-5 years and if all of the money spent on refugees and foreign aid was redirected to health care how much shorter would Canada’s medical waitlists be?
And if any small progress is made the radical armies opposed to two-tiered healthcare raise a stink in the media, stopping that progress in its tracks. Suggesting public/ private healthcare systems is a quick trip to a Toronto Star editorial and losing your next election.
Into the impasse Alberta has introduced Bill 11 to create a parallel private–public surgery system that allows surgeons to perform non-urgent procedures privately under set conditions, moving ahead with the premier’s announcement last week. The government says the approach will shorten wait times and help recruit doctors, while critics argue it risks two-tier care.
The legislation marks a major shift in healthcare reform in Alberta and faces (shock) strong opposition from the NDP which is pairing these reforms with the province’s use of the notwithstanding clause in banning radical trans surgery and medication for minors in the province.
There are examples of two-tiered healthcare elsewhere in the West. France, Ireland, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany, among others, use a dual-tracked system mixing public and private coverages. Reports FHI, “In the most successful European healthcare systems, e.g., Germany and Switzerland, the federal government handles the PEC risk, via national pools and government subsidies, sparing the burden on individual insurers.” While not perfect it hasn’t produced class warfare.
The Americans, meanwhile learned to their chagrin with ObamaCare (the Affordable Care Act, that government healthcare is not the answer. The U.S. heath system replaces government accounting with health insurance rationers as the immoveable force. Many Americans were outside this traditional system, paying out-of-pocket. Under the Obama plan everyone would be forced into a plan, like it or not.
The AFI continues, “ACA has a flawed design. Its architects meant to appeal to the public, promising what the old system could not fully deliver – guaranteed access to affordable health cover and coverage for pre-existing conditions (PECs). But they were wrong about being able to keep your doctor or your old policy if you wanted.
Previously individual policies had to exclude PEC coverage to be financially viable. Yet employer group policies often covered it after a waiting period, but the extra costs were spread over their fellow workers – a real burden on medium and small-sized companies. Under Obamacare, the very high PEC costs are still spread too narrowly – on each of the very few insurers who have agreed to stay as exchange insurers.”
In other words getting a universal system that helps the needy while not degrading treatment is illusory. Alberta is willing to admit that fact. Like agreement on pipelines it will face nothing but headwinds from the diehards (pun intended) who still believe Michael Moore’s fairy tales about a free system in Canada. And will do nothing to bind Canada’s warring factions.
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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