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Our country has lost its way

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7 minute read

March 7, 2019 – Red Deer, AB

Opinion from Terry Loewen

Canada has lost its way in so many different areas. I’m not sure what the brave men and women that fought 2 world wars would be thinking right now, but I’m sure they wouldn’t be impressed and probably heart broken!

I’m not sure how this country has become so divisive in such a short period of time, but it is extremely concerning to me. There is plenty of room to disagree and debate with each other, but this pure hate is something I’ve never seen in my 48 years on this earth. It seems people have fallen so far right or so far left, there is no common ground. I believe all common sense has vanished and I consider common sense one of the most important tool per see that one can use in most situations. Whether its business, personal, political, environmental or any other decisions you may make or think about, common sense will usually lead you to the right answer.

Whether it is in Canada or the U.S., people are throwing absolute non-sense ideas around, trying to persuade their Countrymen to come to their far tilted side and its wrong in my opinion. If you believe full-heartedly that Climate Change is a major issue, fine, but do your research and come up with a sensible solution. Don’t come out as a leader and say no more fossil fuels in 10 years and no more cattle! If you believe that the Oil Sands in Alberta are an issue, then do your research on the project and come up with solutions rather than just protest its existence.

All parts of Canada have major challenges, whether its economical, social, environmental or anything else, that need to be addressed. Being stubborn and divisive is not going to help the best interests of society. Let’s come together as a nation and show empathy to one another, use common sense, find common ground.  Find and implement solutions! That’s what Canada is about. Not what is happening right now.

What is disgraceful is the actions of our leaders! They have taken an Oath to do what’s in the best interest of the people they serve, and may I remind them, pay their salary. They may belong to a political party and I understand that parties have certain beliefs, but that doesn’t mean every belief is a fit for your Constituents! They are to vote what is best for their people, not their party! That is what they took the Oath to do and if they don’t do it, they should be thrown out of office. Yes, there are times that the people don’t have all the facts and may not understand all the issues, but not many and certainly not all are that way.

The very fact that there are Premier’s and a Prime Minister in this Country that are not only NOT following the Oath they’ve taken, but they are outright lying to the people they serve. Its frankly extremely insulting! For them to think they can stand up in public and try and shove so many untruthful remarks to us Canadians down our throats is repulsive.

The Prime Minister is now using the words “erosion of trust”! He’s not talking about himself if you can belief that? The situation that is at the forefront now is should the government let a company off the hook for illegal activities to save jobs? Are we in a corrupt country? It seems like a dream to me that this is the basis of this most recent lie and deception of the people of Canada. The answer is extremely simple, NO! NO, it is not alright to give a free pass to a company on illegal activity. It sets precedent for every other company in this country to do the same thing. As well, if the government is going to protect 9000 jobs for this company, it damn well better protect every other job in Canada, big or small! We all know this isn’t possible so follow the laws. Its unbelievable that the people in power, that are responsible to make and uphold the laws are trying to give free passes to people breaking the law. UNBELIEVABLE!

It is truly time for the people of this Country to stand up and take our rights back to fair and honest representation. I don’t have all the solutions, but I believe if someone is sworn into office and they are dishonest and corrupt in anyway, they should be removed from power immediately and put in jail! This isn’t a case of a person going to work and not doing their job, this is outright criminal in my opinion.

In conclusion, it’s time for our leaders to come clean, do what’s right for all provinces and territories; all Canadians.  Let’s get on with rebuilding this Country that millions of human beings gave their life for. I’ve always been extremely proud to say I’m a Canadian, but right now I’m embarrassed! Enough self interest and everyone from the top down, need to use some common sense and get this Country back to being Proud, Strong and Free.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Hyperbole Is Dead. Big Brother Killed Him

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Antietam, Maryland: On Sept 17, 1862, the combined forces of the Union Army (under George McLellan) and the Confederate army (under Robert E. Lee) met on sleepy farmland west of Washington. When the ten hours of vicious fighting was done, there was an appalling 22,717 casualties. It still stands as the most lethal day in American military history.

History records it as a draw, although the Union army stopped an attack by Lee’s 30,000-man army on the U.S. capital. Walking the rolling lands alongside the Potomac River with Matthew Brady’s grisly photographic record in mind a modern visitor would ask how did it come to this slaughter? What issue was so divisive that it led to this?

The issue as seen today was slavery, although the Confederates would say it was states’ rights. From the day the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence the issue of slavery pointed to that day in 1862. Attempts to reconcile the issue of the South’s dependence on slavery produced failed compromises (The Great Compromise of 1787) and the creation of the Republican Party.

It all failed. The reason? For 75 years, the two sides divorced themselves from one another, demonizing and distancing in escalating rhetoric and political corruption. With the election of Abraham Lincoln, an abolition-sympathetic Republican, war was on. Before it ended in 1865 there were 828,000 Union casualties while the South experienced 864,000 casualties. There were almost a million civilians and free slaves left dead as well.

This ominous historical note is relevant today as the two sides in the American and Canadian debate slide inexorably toward a schism. With a presidential election this November and a Canadian federal election likely next year, the sides have given up on policy. Oh, they still make a show of plans for the economy. Or housing. Or the military.

But the real battlefield is the war on information. Who will be censored? Who will write history? As a picture of intolerance it has reached DefCon 4. No better example exists than the hissy-fit from employees of the NBC News department at the attempt to hire Rona McDaniel, former RNC chairwoman as an employee. The sanctimonious stars of NBC and MSNBC news— several of them Obama-era employees or Democratic fundraisers— launched a collective insurrection against the hire, saying McDaniel was a purveyor of lies and disinformation in the service of Beelzebub aka Donald Trump.

Never mind that Racial Maddow and Joyless Reid and Chuckles Todd spent the past eight years carrying water for Hillary Clinton’s demented RussiaGate and Hunter Biden’s laptop hoax. Former Republican Joe Scarborough spoke of the “sacred trust” with viewers as grounds for forcing NBC to fire McDaniel after about 48 hours.

No one is now allowed to pollute the minds of Morning Joe viewers. A narrative is a narrative, and no niece of Mitt Romney is getting in the way of that carefully crafted line as we head to November. Trump World is a cesspool of Nazis and enemies of democracy, and they’re going to play that card.

Viewers of last Sunday’s 60 Minutes saw a more subtle version of demonizing the other. In the fusty Tiffany Network style they introduced  Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington and a leader of a “misinformation research group” created ahead of the 2020 election. Who gave her that title is left to the listeners’ imagination.

Naturally Ms. Starbird did a hit job on Jim Jordan and the GOP. Naturally, 60 Minutes neglected to mention Starboard is a longtime Democrat donor and foot soldier in the 2024 Biden Army. Naturally, the divide was widened further. The effect was achieved. Anyone voting Trump is a dedicated Nazi.

It will only ramp up from here because, with no successes to brag about and Biden’s polls plunging, fear is king. (Adding Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to siphon left-wing votes is another threat.) They know Biden is a millstone in efforts to eradicate Trump. And 40 percent of the U.S. population thinks this is reality, much the way the opposing sides at Antietam saw the devil across the Bloody Ditch and Antietam Bridge.

The federal Liberals in Canada have been paying attention. With polls that even Biden would faint over, Justin Trudeau is ramping up the disinformation dodge with the same fervour as the MSNBC fainting goats. Skippy has added a little Russian sauce to his equation, claiming that Putin has Conservative leader Pierre Polievre in his control, manipulating the public to abandon Ukraine.

How Ukraine figures in Canada’s national interest isn’t explained, but if Canadians elect the Tories next year Western society will collapse, pace Trudeau. The PM’s lightweight posse is jumping in, too. Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland, who applauds Nazis in Parliament, is predicting a bleak future for the country unless the evil-thinkers to the Right are brought under control.

Hence Bill-63, the Liberal/ NDP diktat to criminalize WrongThink on the internet and what’s left on the traditional media. Not only in the run-up to what may be the Waterloo for Trudeau and NDP fashion model Jagmeet Singh. Freeland’s bill gives faceless bureaucrats the right to criminalize future behaviour as well. Holy Karnak!

There will be many attempts to pretend that permanently silencing the opponent is not the key issue of 2024-2025. Don’t believe them. People who just a few years ago laughed at the images of Mao’s purges in the Cultural Revolution now have succumbed to a new Little Red Book. They praise their heroes Obama and Clinton and demand jail for Trump. Hyperbole is dead. Big Brother killed him.

circa 1970: Chinese Red Guards reading from the little red book of Thoughts of Chairman Mao before starting their day. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

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, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new 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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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Trudeau ‘finished what his father started’ driving Canada into failing freefall

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Linda Slobodian

In 2015 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau scorned Canada — a country that afforded him so much, yet to which he had contributed nothing of notable significance. His disdain for those on whose backs Canada was built was clear. History and European national origins had to be blotted out.

Canada was a “post-national” nation with “no core identity,” he arrogantly told the New York Times. The reckless socialist ideology he spat out was an omen of the division, fear and attack on so-called privileged (white) Canadians that hit like a storm. It hovers over us like a choking toxic cloud.

If Trudeau’s vision was a Canada “completely splintered,” with Quebec a nation unto itself “separate and distinct,” English-speaking provinces “fractured into oblivion” and breaking up our “common culture” — then mission accomplished.

“He’s finished what his father started,” said Lt. Col. Dave Redman (ret’d), who served 27 years with the Canadian Armed Forces and headed Alberta’s Emergency Management Agency.

The Trudeau concept of a post-national state is “dangerous and misleading.”

“It implies that democratically elected national governments are no longer relevant.”

Redman explained Canada’s “shifting socio-political landscape” with powerful clarity in Canada 2024: A Confident Resilient Nation or a Fearful Fracture Country? in the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Canadians know something has gone terribly wrong beyond mounting financial struggles and trampled rights. Our nation’s rife with “apologies and internal divisions,” said Redman.

“Confidence has been turned into fear and shame. Canada has become irrelevant on the world stage.”

Canada’s in a “failing” freefall.

“Why will no one invest economically in Canada? Why are people leaving Canada? Why are people not believing that Canada has a future? Why are our allies ignoring us and holding us in disdain? Because we are a threat to their national security because China can get to them through us.”

Canada’s at a “critical juncture.” Until politicians and Canadians unite with common values and defended borders —necessary for a successful nation — Canada will be “stumbling from one crisis to another.”

Until Canadians hold them to account, politicians will fixate on minor “wedge” issues — such as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) — to divert attention from critical national concerns they want us to ignore.

Convincing people to feel bad about themselves makes it easier to manipulate guilt and usher in destructive, ideological programs with obscene price tags.

Canada must foster national pride, prioritize national interests and protect national security to secure its future, said Redman.

“A nation is successful when a group of people live in one country with defended borders and share common values, even if they vary in cultures and languages.”

Redman’s six-point framework for national interests includes unity, national security, good governance, protection of rights and freedoms, economic prosperity and growth and personal and community well-being. He offers strategies on how to achieve these critical objectives.

“I believe the current sitting government truly does believe that the World Economic Forum’s concepts and ideals of post-national states is what Canada should be and they have started it.”

“I believe the current government of Canada is intentionally walking each of those six national interests away from Canada in a way that will allow Canada to become part of a broken world.”

It’s up to Canadians to decide what direction we head in.

“The reason I wrote this paper was to make people think about our country in a 20-to-25-year vision. And not let the current government which loves to use divisive, tactical issues to destroy the larger picture conversation. And in doing so, destroy our economy, destroy our unity, destroy our national security by focussing on tactical issues,” said Redman.

A vision for Canada involves citizens who are optimistic about the future, have self-respect to follow through on their ideas, and courage to stand up for their culture and ideals, he said.

Trudeau and his band of self-serving renegades unleashed an ideological curse on Canada.

But we let them.

Then COVID-19 demonstrated how quickly rights and freedoms “can be trampled on, eviscerated and dismissed.”

For a glorious moment in time Freedom Convoy truckers rejuvenated Canadian pride, united Canadians and emboldened us to fight for freedom. Peaceful protesters who waved the Canadian flag were punished.

Yet the silence is deafening as people who despise Canada’s core identity — yes, Trudeau, we have one — hijack our nation and our children’s future.

Redman points to “diaspora marching routinely in the streets of our cities supporting illegal terrorist organizations demanding the death of both citizens here and abroad.”

They wave flags but never the Maple Leaf. They support other countries “but do not march for Canada.”

“Unity is the core value for a country. A cultural unity is based on common shared ethics, values and beliefs. People wishing to become citizens of a country must understand these principles of belief and join the country because they wish for the same to be the foundation of their daily lives.”

“Many who come to a country, not wishing to join the cultural unity of that country, are enemies, intentional or otherwise, who work to erode or destroy this unity.”

Immigration is part of national security.

“You’re pouring people into our country who do not share our ethics and values. And you’re doing it intentionally. That will destroy unity and while it’s destroying unity it will destroy economic prosperity and growth.”

“Our police and courts take no action or in fact support these illegal acts.”

“Our current federal government, many of our provincial territorial governments and our municipal governments stand silently by, or in some cases support the destruction of our values, laws and national interests.”
Redman said the question is, what do Canadians want Canada to be? Will we stand up and root out infectious ideology? Is it too late?

“My paper is about how to overcome what’s happened. It’s happened, we can’t change that. But it’s how to get politicians and Canadians to change how they think about our country. And to have a process to put in place, a vision for our country and have elected officials explain what they see the vision to be. Canadians can make a choice between visions.”

Citizens, academia, public and private sector organizations, unions, religious and non-religious groups need to get involved to break down national interests into “clear and attainable objectives.”

Politicians must explain what unity and democracy means to them. That’s not happening.

Many Canadians are pinning hopes on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre forming the next federal government.

“My line to Poilievre is I understand his tactical four bullet plan you know that inflation’s up, the cost of living’s up, that housing’s bad and people need more money in their pocket.”

“I get it. He’s beating that drum over and over. But we’ve got a year before the election, he needs to start talking about his vision for Canada.”

Canada was once internationally respected, trusted and consulted. Now we are pitied by shocked outsiders witnessing woke ideology and crushed free speech forced upon us.

“We’ve been taught to be ashamed of our history instead of proud of it, or even to learn from it.”

“We have completely shattered democratic institutions. Our election system is in question. Our legislatures are in turmoil, our courts, our schools, our medical system. The mainstream media is completely partisan. Our economy is broken. People can’t meet bills at the end of the month and we’re ignored and shunned by our allies.”

Redman addressed good governance, offering guidelines on how to “strengthen and preserve the democratic way of life in Canada.”

“Good governance to me means defence of democracy, where in other countries it can mean absolute control of a totalitarian government.”

Redman’s suggestions to stop Canada from being completely “shattered” include a 100% immigration policy review; halting funding to universities that are “domestic threats” and removing Marxists professors; establishing a monitored election process; and ending government-funded media.

Agencies that counter external threats must be “equipped to work individually and cooperatively, with each other and our allies.”

Stop foreign aid that counters our interests and national security.

“While Canadians are challenged to put food on the table and to have a house, they watch as the federal government sends hundreds of millions of dollars to international organizations and specific countries that do not share our democratic aims or our national interests.”

There must be “a wall of people hitting” politicians telling them to listen or face defeat.

“In 25 years will Canada be a democracy? Or will it become a country led by an authoritarian government that uses fear and threats to remove imaginary risks from the daily lives of Canadians who have lost their self-respect and courage?”

Look at what eight years did.

First published here.

Linda Slobodian is the Senior Manitoba Columnist for the Western Standard based out of Winnipeg. She has been an investigative columnist for the Calgary Herald, Calgary Sun, Edmonton Sun, and Alberta Report.

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