Bruce Dowbiggin
The China Syndrome: The Cover-Up Catastrophe

A liberal wants happy endings. A conservative wants satisfactory endings. Liberal happiness usually involves great unhappiness. Conservative satisfaction usually means things that work.
In the Covid-19 crisis the West has sought a vaccine-powered happy ending where everyone goes to heaven but no one dies. As we see now, a more realistic end game— that conceded some death and hardship— was needed for a satisfactory ending. What produced the former and actively suppressed the latter was China.
As we wrote in April of 2020, only the Chinese knew what was happening on Covid-19: Repeat. No one but the Chinese knew anything till at least March (2020). (U.S. President Donald) Trump only knew what he was told by his crack science team of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Karen Birkx, Dr. Anthony Redfield and the armies of CDC and Health Department apparatchiks. Who said in March that masks were ineffective. But now science proves they’re boffo. (In D.C. opinions are like belly buttons. Everybody’s got one.)
Trump is not an epidemiologist. He’s a businessman, a salesman whose focus was on preventing a total collapse of the economy. So when the initial calming sounds from his advisors proved fatally wrong, Trump played for time. He mobilized supply chains, supplied states with ventilators, PPE and beds. Even his bitter enemy Cuomo, governor of New York, was forced to concede that Orange Man Bad had done alright by the people of the Empire State. His policies did “flatten the curve”, preventing an early meltdown of U.S. hospitals and their health system.
Likewise, Trudeau is not an epidemiologist. The PM got his talking points, largely, from his virus expert Dr. Theresa Tam (via the WHO). Reading from the Chinese script she scorned masks and the closing of borders. While Trump closed America’s borders and sanctioned China, Trudeau, Health Minster Patty Hajdu and senior public health officials insisted that the risk of transmission was low in Canada right up until early March.
“When the risk level suddenly jumped to ‘high’ on March 15, the government scrambled to impose an economic lockdown to curb the spread of the virus” reports CBC.ca.
Which is where we have been since the fabled 15 days in 2020 to flatten the curve— the first of many Orwellian bromides to deflect from the tragedy of executive overreach.Now we have an extensive article saying just that.
In the West’s abject panic over the virus, says Tablet magazine in The Masked Ball of Cowardice, the assembled political and health elites of the West took their marching orders from China’s carefully manicured script on how they beat a virus that most everyone now concedes they launched themselves. The script was a lie that launched an estimated 4.5 million deaths worldwide.
“At the heart of the lockdown madness was the collective fantasy of controlling a common respiratory pathogen—a feat the epidemiology profession had agreed was impossible and self-destructive just months prior.”
In The Masked Ball of Cowardice Michael P. Senger documents how the pandemic can be explained by initial gullibility on alleged Chinese treatment of the virus and the subsequent attempts by the West to cover their ass for being suckered. “…since “15 days to slow the spread”—from fear propaganda to masks to school closures and vaccine passes—has been a cover-up of catastrophe that was the original lockdowns and denial of insanity of trusting scientists and billionaires who treat information from China as real.”
A few samples from Senger’s blistering of the West’s elites. Starting with our favourite: the blunderbuss PCR tests.“Based on WHO’s guidance on COVID-19 testing, again citing Chinese journal articles, labs used, and continue to use, PCR cycle thresholds from 37 to 40, and sometimes as high as 45. At these cycle threshold levels, approximately 85% to 90% of cases are false positives.”
“The WHO’s PCR guidance was… quite possibly the deadliest accounting fraud of all time. According to coding guidance, if the decedent had either tested positive or been in contact with anyone who had, within several weeks prior to death, then death should be classified as COVID-19 death.”
Senger points out that in swallowing the Chinese prescription the West ignored the far-greater catastrophe of social costs. “In March 2020, the Dutch commissioned a cost-benefit analysis concluding that the health damage from lockdown would be 6 times greater than the benefit. The government then ignored it, claiming “society would not accept” optics of an elderly person unable to get an ICU bed.”
Figures from Trudeau to (now former) NY state governor Andrew Cuomo hopped on board the Zero Covid train early. As we wrote in April 2020: Justin Trudeau, has suggested that losing even one Canadian to the virus is not worth any economic benefit. In the U.S., the key health advisors to president Donald Trump talk about not being able to re-start society till the virus is stopped and no lives are in danger. This humanist position enjoys the approval of the mainstream media which has turned the Covid-19 death toll into a telethon of tragedy, bereft of context and precedent.
That implausible goal of crushing the virus at all costs has now resulted in a choked health-care system, untold millions dying or suffering from the isolation and desolation of lockdowns and, despite the buoyant stock market, the destruction of supply chains. To give just one example, August production of Toyota vehicles is to be slashed by 60,000 to 90,000 vehicles. Why? Microchips are impossible to source and petrified labour is staying home, not working.
We foresaw the supply-chain monster in March of 2020. One revelation that will not pass, however, is just how vulnerable North America’s indulged society is to events in China. The virus, which originated in Wuhan, has become the unwanted party guest who won’t leave till he’s soiled the carpets and broken the furniture as he plays air guitar.
But it’s also informed Americans and Canadians that almost all their prescription drugs and a host of other products come exclusively from China. Or near enough. So those high-blood-pressure pills we gobble— especially the generic brands— are 95 percent dependent on Chinese labs after successive governments in North America allowed the business to migrate eastward. And supplies are dwindling.
This dependence has been around for some time now, waiting to emerge. It just took the Covid-19 emergency to make citizens aware. You certainly didn’t hear it it discussed in media circles when the new North American trade deal was being discussed… We can see why now. Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau is too busy currying favour with the geopolitical swells to watch out for his nation’s vulnerability. Like ceding our sovereignty on energy to the Saudis or Americans, it was getting in the way of him winning a seat on the UN Security Council in his priorities.
As conservative radio host Jesse Kelly writes: I don’t understand. I was told repeatedly that you could just “pause” an economy as if it was Netflix. After all, someone got sick. Did “pausing” the economy and dumping trillions of unbacked currency into it cause widespread economic dislocation? Weird.
Weird indeed. And with Canada’s GDP dropping, about to get weirder.
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 Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Bruce Dowbiggin
Why Best Friends Are Fighting: Tariffs Are Just Trump’s First Salvo

Trump is holding a mirror to a postmodern Canadian state that still thinks it’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 it’s now a world centre for money laundering that won’t pay its defence obligations.
The hysteria was mint this past weekend from panicky Canadians acting as if Donald Trump’s tariffs were a Pearl Harbor sneak-attack. They booed the Star Spangled Banner at sporting events, had conniption fits of self pity (‘we’ve been friends for so long!”) 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, “Oh well!”) Alberta premier Danielle Smith, who’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 Trudeau’s fanciful Team Canada theme. “This is a mind poisoned with grievance and resentment,” raged CBC panelist Andrew Coyne. “So 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.”
Well then. It was all rather unseemly. Noted Dilbert creator Scott Adams, “Canada’s response to Trump’s tariffs is to be publicly sad about it.” But are Trump’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 it’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 it’s now a world centre for money laundering that won’t pay its defence obligations.

Example: TD Bank was just fined $3B by US regulators for laundering fentanyl drug money back to Communist China. It’s the largest such fine in U.S. history. A fine TD paid without complaint. Trudeau’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 don’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 don’t trust. Security officials fear that anything said to Trudeau’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.)
Canada’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 “loyal friend” 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 “brilliant” ripostes on borders — repeated by all the clever people— was that only one percent of America’s fentanyl comes from Canada. For those who think that’s a mic-drop moment consider: that’s fentanyl seized by America at the border.
Here, Canada’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 can’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, Canada’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 “students” coming into the nation are getting a very different education on life in Canada. “Canada 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 won’t verify. That’s it. ” These “graduates” quickly end up in a rig running contraband drugs, guns and tech to supplement their minuscule earnings.
“Between 2017 & 2024, Ontario went from 80 truck driving schools to 280. The province has 6 auditors for 600 private career colleges—almost half for trucks, apparently. No enforcement standards.
“To recap,” continues Punwasi:
-
“money laundering capital of the world
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– no school regulations
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– criminals run certifications
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– desperate folks from developing countries w/no standard of entry
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– no scrutiny for x-border traffic”
Canadian trucking executives know the problem in the industry. They say new entrants make no money trucking, but they do make for easy “‘runners’. It is rampant. One executive says his firm has virtually exited the cross-border business, because of the changing demographics. These truckers— many of them speaking no English— 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. He’s also contemptuous of the current attempt to slide climate alarmist Mark Carney into Trudeau’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 when— if— the Liberals ever let Canadians voice their will. This is what Canada’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 Trump’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 don’t elect a trust-fund poseur.
Whatever Trump’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 they’ve asked in, not be captured. Trump would dictate the terms, and he doesn’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 Canada’s economy at the present rate. By week’s end even Trump’s vitriolic critics like the Globe&Mail were offering backhanded acknowledgements that, however crude they found the president’s tactics, he did wake up Canadians to the issue of Canada’s lassitude on defence and the border. Doomberg summed up the conflict. “The 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, Trump’s actions have finally acknowledged reality. Godspeed’.”
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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
The Limping Loonie: Are Canada’s Pro Sports Team In Trouble Again?

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. That’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 door— a la Covid— to those citizens “harmed” 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 Canada’s GDP collapses some more.
For the moment, however, let us concentrate on what Justin Trudeau’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 early 21st century. Despite efforts then to create a Canadian fund to save teams, two clubs— Winnipeg Jets and Quebec Nordiques— 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 moved— to Washington— 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 you’re really talking about raising $750,000 million in CDN revenues to meet the demand. Multiply those jumps over a 25-man roster and you’re talking a huge jump in payroll— or being consigned to after-ran status.
While no one is about to hold a tag day for Toronto it will make the Jays’ 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 today’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 today’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 Oilers’ resources will be stretched thin to accommodate McDavid— 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 Oilers’ 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 Canada’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 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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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