Categories for Feature

Twitter, Elon Musk, CBC and the federal workers’ strike are all connected.

Stay with me, here.

A few days ago, Twitter’s troll-in-chief, Elon Musk – who attended Queen’s University in the early Nineties, and we suspect only ever listened to the privately-owned CKWS – slapped a label on CBC’s Twitter account. He’d done the same thing to PBS and NPR and BBC, but how he labelled CBC caused a great big stink up here in the Great Blighted North.

Musk affixed “government-funded media” on CBC/Radio-Canada’s Twitter account. It was partly true, because a big part of CBC’s budget comes from the federal government, as it did under socialists like Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper.

Much stürm und drang ensued, with a spokespersonage at Mother Corp. huffing and puffing about Musk’s mischievousness. “Twitter can be a powerful tool for our journalists to communicate with Canadians, but it undermines the accuracy and professionalism of the work they do to allow our independence to be falsely described in this way,” said CBC spokesman Leon Mar.

CBC thereafter announced it would be “pausing” its tweets on its corporate and news-related Twitter accounts. Musk, who most days strongly resembles a walking Irish bar fight, changed CBC’s label to “69 per cent government funded.”

With a war still raging in Ukraine, mass-shootings happening in the U.S. every single day, A.I. replacing humans, starvation and genocide reigning in Sudan, and – closer to home – China undermining our democracy, it’s comforting to know that the biggest news story is what Elon Musk calls public broadcasters, isn’t it? Yep.

So, let’s get serious for a moment and recall three unassailable facts, all addressed to the CBC.

One: good folks at the CBC, be under no illusion. Every sentient being in Canada knows you are government-funded. Saying you are “government-funded” isn’t news, as it were. It’s factual.

Two: CBC apparatchiks, was Musk implying that you are biased in favour of the government led by Justin Trudeau? Of course he was. Big deal. Millions of Canadians, Pierre Poilievre among them, say you favour Justin Trudeau several hundred times a day. Just as many say that this newspaper isn’t his biggest fan, which possibly has a partial ring of truth to it.

So what? Readers, viewers and listeners know what our biases are when they read/listen/watch us. Give them, us, credit for a modicum of intelligence, would you?

Three: CBC tall foreheads, take note – Elon Musk is, as noted, a troll. Like Yours Screwly, he likes irritating people. He likes provoking a reaction, even if it’s negative. In particular, he likes taking perfectly good social media platforms and reducing them to rubble, and he’s damn good at it.

Having a guy like that as a critic? That’s a badge of honour, boys and girls. If any label should be on your Twitter account, it’s that: “Elon Musk doesn’t like us.”

Which leads us, in a typically-circuitous route, to this point, addressed mainly to conservatives who have made it this far in this proudly-biased opinion column: I’d wager every single one of you is “government-funded,” too.

And, if you posses a Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or (God forbid) TikTok account, you should ‘fess up, too. If you’ve ever gotten something because of the Canadian Pension Plan, or Old Age Security, or the GST/HST credit, or Canada child benefits, or veteran disability programs, or treaty annuities, or any direct deposit whatsoever for any federal program whatsoever, ever, you’re kind of “government-funded,” too.

And – this where the aforementioned strike action comes in – you’re not going to be getting any of that “government funding” again anytime soon. Sorry. That may make you unhappy, and it should.

This final fact will make you even unhappier: guess who has received at least $4.9 billion in government funding since 2015? You guessed it: Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity.

You know, Elon Musk’s companies.

Comments (19)

As Andrew Coyne memorably said: they‘re just trolling us, now.

The Trudeau Liberals, that is. “Trolling,” generally, is Internet slang for a person who intentionally tries to instigate conflict, hostility, or arguments with someone else. In this case, specifically, it’s Justin Trudeau signalling – once and for all, beyond any reasonable doubt – that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass what you, his employers, think.

That’s the bad news.

The good news – and Lord knows we could use some, as you will shortly see – is that the CBC still knows how to publish stories that are highly, highly damaging to Justin Trudeau.

Just a day after Elon Musk’s Twitter labelled the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation “government-funded media,” thereby implying that the CBC is effectively on Trudeau’s political payroll, the Mother Corp. struck back.

First thing Tuesday morning, CBC’s French language news team broke a pretty big story:
Trudeau and his family spent the Christmas holidays at something called Prospect, an uber-rich seaside estate owned by the Green family in Jamaica.

Who, CBC reported, had previously made a huge donation to the Trudeau Foundation.

Which, as we all know, is now at the very epicentre of the metastasizing Chinese election and influence-peddling scandal.

Well done, CBC. Take note, Elon Musk.

The trip cost taxpayers – you and me – some $160,000 because of security and personnel costs. Trudeau’s staff, CBC noted, had been billeted at a nearby resort. All-inclusive, natch.

Trudeau’s fart-catchers will claim, and have, that the trip was cleared by the Ethics Commissioner. Said office now being led by the sister-in-law of one of Trudeau’s cabinet ministers, who also happens to be one of his best friends.

But nobody outside of Ottawa cares what the “Ethics Commissioner” says, anymore. From Whitehorse to Windsor, regular Canadians don’t need an “Ethics Commissioner” to tell them what is right and what is wrong.

Morally wrong, ethically wrong. Regular folks know Trudeau’s latest vacation on the public dime is wrong – and profoundly, deeply disgusting – for two big reasons.

One, it’s Trudeau – a multi-millionaire, remember – spending other people’s money recklessly. At a time when the vast majority of them can’t afford a trip to the grocery store, let alone an exclusive retreat in Jamaica.

Two, it’s wrong because it shows the Liberal Prime Minister’s utter disregard for the seriousness of the Chinese election and influence-peddling scandal. When the foundation that bears his family name has been used as a vehicle by Chinese agents to influence Trudeau, is it wise to spend the holidays at the Caribbean mansion of a known Trudeau Foundation donor?

No, it isn’t. And that much is obvious to everyone else – the leaders of the Conservative, New Democratic and Bloc Quebecois parties, included. They, like the rest of us, were shocked and appalled by what CBC reported. Even unnamed Liberals were disgusted. “We wonder why he goes to places like that,” a source told Radio-Canada.

Said another: “I can’t explain why he provides [the Opposition] with ammunition and feeds these kinds of attacks.”

I can tell you why. And it’s the bad news, mentioned right off the top.

It’s this: Justin Trudeau just doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what any of us think, anymore. He doesn’t give a sweet damn. And he’s going to keep doing things like this until he can’t anymore.

Which is up to us. Because, at the earliest opportunity, we need to vote the jerk out.

Enough is enough.

Comments (44)

Comments (12)

There’s a reason why Katie Telford is testifying before a Parliamentary committee on Friday, and why Gerald Butts is not.

Telford is smarter than Butts.

He, after all, had to resign in the midst of the SNC-Lavalin scandal. He said some things to Jody Wilson Raybould that he shouldn’t have said, and he had to resign in disgrace.

But here’s the interesting thing: Katie Telford also said some very unhelpful things during that scandal. She talked about engineering some fake news to protect her boss, Justin Trudeau.

But Telford didn’t have to resign. Butts did.

When you consider that Gerald Butts has been one of Justin Trudeau’s closest friends since they both attended McGill University, that is noteworthy. Telford only met Trudeau much later on, when she had abandoned the Ontario Liberal team in Toronto and moved up the 401 to Ottawa.

But she survived. And Justin Trudeau’s closest friend didn’t.

Why?

Three reasons, all of which need to be kept in mind when Telford sits down to testify about another Trudeau government scandal, the Chinese election interference one.

One, Katie Telford is not going to make a big mistake.  She has testified before Parliamentarians probing other scandals in the past. In every case, she did not lose her cool, she did not make a mistake, she did not even break into a sweat.

She knows that sounding as boring as possible is the best strategy in these situations. So count on her to be boring and avoid any pratfalls.

Two, she has more facts than the Parliamentarians. As the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister of Canada, Telford would be the only political aide who has sat in on national security briefings with the Prime Minister. She is the only one who knows the full truth and nothing but the truth.

Based upon some fine reporting by Global News and The Globe and Mail and others, we know – or we strongly suspect – that Trudeau and Telford were told about Chinese election criminality in both 2019 and 2021. And we know – or we strongly suspect – that neither of them did anything about it.

So, yes, she knows more than your garden-variety Member of Parliment. But, in fairness to her, it is against the law for her to disclose national security matters in public.

She would go to jail if she did so. So she may know a lot – but she can’t say a lot when she appears to testify.

Three, she isn’t going anywhere. When the last helicopter lifts the last Trudeau government survivor from the roof of the Langevin Block, like in Saigon in 1975,  Telford almost certainly will be the one leaving last.

She has been discreet, she has been low profile, and she has been – more than anyone else – unwaveringly loyal to Justin Trudeau. If she wants five Senate appointments for herself, not just one, Justin Trudeau will give them to her.

She can ask for anything her heart desires, in fact, because she has been able to do what Gerald Butts could not.

Namely, stay out of trouble, stay quiet, and stay loyal.

Expecting fireworks when she testifies tomorrow?

You will be disappointed.

Comments (20)

When the news broke that the board and leadership of the Trudeau Foundation had resigned, en masse, Justin Trudeau – he whose surname is affixed to said Foundation – was all sad face.

Alighting in Toronto for a meeting about something or the other, Himself sniffed: “It is a shame to see the level of toxicity and political polarization that is going on in our country these days.”

Dramatic pause.

“Those people who are trying to get short-term political gain by increasing polarization and partisanship in this country, by launching completely unfounded and ungrounded attacks against charities or foundations, must not succeed.”

Well, if that’s what “those people” are doing, they’re in fact succeeding, big guy. The Foundation’s board and the CEO all resigned, but not because of “completely unfounded and ungrounded attacks.” Nope.

Nor did they all quit, as the Foundation itself claimed – in a press statement that was as full of self-pity as it was devoid of self-awareness – because the “political climate…has put a great deal of pressure on the Foundation’s management and volunteer Board of Directors, as well as on our staff and our community.”

Well, no, folks. You all had to resign because of you. You, and your apparent inability to conduct business with a modicum of ethics and morality.

So, if the “political climate” has changed, it is because of the aforementioned Justin Trudeau. No one in Canada has done as much to dismantle the good reputation enjoyed by the Trudeau Foundation – and it possessed such a reputation, at one time – than the boy-man whose name is affixed to it: Trudeau.

But that fact always escapes the Trudeau-era Liberals, doesn’t it? When you bona fide oppose one of their policies, they will say you are a mouth-breathing troglodyte. When you critique them, you are accused of being against Canada itself. When you inevitably raise your voice, because you are frustrated that they never change and never listen, you are called racist.

A pithy illustration of this belief that Canada is the Liberal Party and the Liberal Party is Canada was found, comme toujours, on Twitter. After the Trudeau Foundation’s board resigned, having been caught covertly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a man who now very much resembles a Chinese agent, an otherwise thoughtful Liberal MP, Anthony Housefather, tweeted:

“WE charity improved the lives of thousands of kids. The #TrudeauFoundation has helped thousands of students. While charities need to be accountable & merit scrutiny, politicizing them & turning them into punching bags cannot be what is best for Canada.”

See that? To express legitimate concern – about the Chinese regime’s thuggery and criminality, about the willingness of certain elite Canadians to smile and accept graft – is to be against “what is best for Canada.”

Again: no. We’re not.

We – the entire Canadian media, the 72 per cent of Conservatives and 71 per cent of Liberals, respectively, who want a public inquiry into Chinese election malfeasance – are Canada, actually.

We believe, too, that the casual corruption of the Trudeau cabal – as seen with the Aga Khan, with SNC-Lavalin, with the WE “charity,” and now with the Trudeau Foundation – reveal a pattern of casual corruption that is replete with self-dealing and palm-greasing.

So who is to blame for the collapse in trust of government, now hovering – pollsters say – around 80 per cent of us?

It’s not the pesky news media. It’s not the political Opposition in the House of Commons. It’s not the federal ethics commissioner, who quit a few weeks ago, telling the National Post: “The public has to believe that ethics are taken seriously, and they have yet to have any big evidence of that since 2018.”

“2018.” Which precisely coincides, Mr. Trudeau, with your term in office. With you, and your cavalier and craven approach to the most basic rules of conduct.

Want to know why charities and foundations are no longer trusted, sir, and why they’ve been “turned into punching bags,” quote unquote?

Look in a mirror.

You did it.

Comments (22)

Comments (15)

Charging Donald J. Trump with crimes — as he was, Tuesday, with nearly three dozen offences — was a really, really bad idea.

The prosecutor is a card-carrying Democrat — so the charges look like political payback. And the unprecedented decision to criminally charge a former Republican president, whose career and fortunes were decidedly on the wane until he was indicted, has unified Republicans like never before.

The State of New York vs. Donald J. Trump may well guarantee Trump the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, in fact.

And that’s why — in a dark, dastardly and Machiavellian kind of way — it may be a stroke of political genius. Legally doomed to failure, yes.

But politically brilliant. Here’s why.

Last year, in the lead up to the midterm elections, Democrats were trailing everywhere. President Joe Biden was extremely unpopular, Democrats were fighting amongst themselves in the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the party did not seem to have a clear message on the economy.

And the U.S. economy was not doing well, thanks to surging inflation.

The only group that seem to be more unpopular than the Democrats, in fact, were Trump-affiliated MAGA Republicans.

So, Democrats got to work doing something that had never really been done before out in the open: supporting Republicans who were seen as close to Donald Trump. The ones who denied the 2020 election results, the ones who said the most outrageous things, the ones who embraced the most extreme policies.

As political strategies go, it did not seem very ethical or moral. After all, how can you claim to object to Donald Trump when you are helping out Donald Trump’s closest allies?

But help them they did. In New Hampshire, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Illinois, Arizona, Democrats quietly schemed to fundraise for MAGA Republicans, run ads promoting them, and get their names on the ballot. They spent millions doing so.

Incredibly, the dirty-tricky strategy worked. NPR analyze the results following the midterm elections and concluded: “In high-profile races where Democratic candidates or groups successfully used the strategy during the primaries, all of the Republicans they helped have either lost or are trailing, two days after Election Day.”

Added NPR: “The strategy seems to have paid off.”

Many Dems didn’t care. “It’s dishonorable, and it’s dangerous, and it’s just damn wrong,” said Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips. But the results told a different story: boosting Trump-linked MAGA types in Senate, House and gubernatorial races worked, big time.

And, quietly, Democrats may well be doing it again, with the biggest MAGA Trump Republican of all: Donald Trump himself.

They know that Biden isn’t nearly as popular as they’d like. They know he’s seen as too old by too many voters. They know Biden could lose, badly, to Florida’s Ron DeSantis.

So, they’re putting their Democratic fingers on the scale, and quietly scheming to get their biggest asset back on the presidential ballot.

That is, Donald J. Trump — the guy who will likely win in a court of law.

But who will almost certainly lose in the court of public opinion as a result.

Comments (32)

Comments (23)

Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best.

“When you strike at a King, you must kill him.”

The parentage of the American essayist’s words have been claimed by many, but one thing can’t be denied: if you indict a former president of the United States, you’d better not lose.

And this writer – who worked, full disclosure, for Hillary Clinton in three states in 2016, including at her Brooklyn headquarters – thinks Manhattan’s District Attorney is going to lose. Badly.

As everyone is noting, this has never happened before: a president – or a former president – being indicted for a crime. In the 247 years that the American republic has existed, no president had ever been charged with a crime. Ever.

Impeached, yes – Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton, once, and the aforementioned Donald J. Trump, twice. But arraigned, fingerprinted and photographed like a common criminal? That’s a first.

It also won’t succeed. As much as this writer detests Trump, the fact remains: successfully prosecuting a president – any president – is doomed to failure.

Forget about the “no one is above the law” piffle. If O. J. Simpson showed us anything, it’s that celebrities in the United States are judged by a different standard. And Donald Trump isn’t just a celebrity – he’s arguably the biggest celebrity of this era.

I also think he’ll walk. Five reasons.

One, if you read any of the news stories about Trump’s indictment, you will repeatedly see two words:  “legal theory.” The “legal theory” relates to whether it was inappropriate to mix Trump Organization funds – and presidential campaign funds – in some Byzantine way to pay off a porn star.

If you are ever going to try out a “legal theory,” best not do it with a former president in front of an international audience. Experiment at home first, sure. Not on the front pages of the world’s newspapers.

Two, the principal source of the allegations against Trump come from one man: his former lawyer, a convicted criminal. Michael D. Cohen was the one who allegedly arranged for the hush money to be paid to porn star Stormy Daniels. Problem: Cohen is a crook, a convicted fraudster and perjurer. He’s been jailed for those crimes. Why would he be believed now? For the prosecution, it’ll be a big hill to climb.

Three: the other star witness is one Stormy Daniels, a porn star. The pneumatic Daniels is no dummy – she showed a rapier wit on social media – but she is also a bit of a loon. Among other things, Daniels bills herself as a “paranormal investigator” – and stars in the “Spooky Babes Show.” She has testified previously that her house is haunted by “a non-human thing with tentacles.”

While those of us who have gone through divorce can empathize with that description, it isn’t going to do much for Stormy’s credibility on the stand. Spooky, indeed.

Four: the Manhattan prosecutor in the case, Alvin J. Bragg, is a registered Democrat. He went to  Harvard, he’s a good Dad, he taught Sunday school. No matter. The Right Wing Death Machine is about to pluck Bragg from obscurity, and pop him into a political Cuisinart. Every mistake, every misstep that he has made in his 49 years is about to get the proctologist’s treatment. He is going to become a human piñata, and fodder for every Republican presidential candidate.

Five: and that is the biggest reason why indicting Donald J Trump is a mistake. It will unite all of the GOP presidential aspirants like nothing else. A black, Harvard-educated Democrat prosecuting a Republican former President who still tops most polls?

That’s not all. A line has been crossed on Thursday in Manhattan.  When the GOP retake the White House – and they will – they will return the favor, with extreme prejudice. They will indict Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton – and the Kennedy brothers, if they can.

The criminal prosecution of Donald Trump will unleash a Civil War in American politics like has never been seen before. It’ll be ugly.

Trump is a crook. Everyone knows that.

We didn’t need a doomed-to-failure prosecution to remind us.

 

Comments (23)

Budgets? Who cares.

These days, voters mostly don’t. 

Polls consistently show distrust about everything government does and says – including budgets like the one released by the Trudeau government earlier this week. It’s the boy-cries-wolf effect on a grand, fiscal scale: citizens have been lied to so many times, they increasingly tune budgets out.

It’ll be noteworthy, in fact, if details about Chrystia Freeland’s 2023 budget are remembered by most folks by this time next week. If a majority of voters can recall a single salient factoid about this week’s federal budget – Freeland making some cuts, Freeland raising taxes (she actually did both) – it’ll be a political miracle.

Why? Because citizens simply don’t believe budgetary statements anymore. And not just in Canada. In Western democracies, everywhere, budgets are falling victims to what experts call the “fiscal illusion.” 

Keynesian types say “fiscal illusion” is created by some governments, and how they deal with ballooning debt. The creation of too much debt – and the Trudeau regime are recognized experts at that – can, sometimes, stimulate the economy. Yes. But that’s all short-term.  

The Trudeau approach creates a momentary illusion of prosperity, and thereby boosts consumer spending. But, sooner or later, the debt has to be paid – and that’s why Trudeau-style budgets are a fiscal illusion.

There are other reasons why Freeland’s budget won’t instill confidence. Here’s five.

1. What’s in a billion? A pollster once told this writer 40 per cent of Canadians don’t know how many million are in a billion. Even if that’s an exaggeration – and it may not be, by much – one thing is true: most of us have never held a billion of anything. Which tells you that governments (and corporations) are literally expressing debts, deficits and dollars in a way that most folks don’t comprehend. So they tune it out.
2. It’s never right. Going back to the Jean Chrétien/Paul Martin era – which was the last time, notably, that Ottawa actually made the cuts that needed to be made – the numbers that seep out of the Department of Finance, pre-budget, are often wrong. Martin turned this strategy into an art form – ensuring his budget day numbers would look better than the pre-budget leaks. After a few years of this sleight-of-hand, however, media and citizens tended not to believe any of the figures coming out of Finance.
3. Too much, too often. For years, federal budgets have tried to reach too many different audiences too often. And when you have 1,000 different messages, you don’t have any messages at all. It’s simply too much for the average voter to comprehend. So, voters regard all of it as data smog and carry on with their day.  Simplicity, repetition and volume work (ask Donald Trump). But too many federal budgets are too complex and convoluted.
4. Consensus is gone.  During the pandemic, many bad things happened.One of them was the collapse of consensus about certain basic truths – ie., public health is good, vaccines work, etc. The same phenomenon is at work with budgets: there too many opinions being offered, too often, by too many “experts” that are completely contradictory. Post-budget media coverage accordingly becomes a communications traffic jam. So, citizens choose not to believe any of it.  
5. It’s all B.S. As noted above – that Trudeaupian economics is based on a fiscal illusion – the one unassailable truth about budgets is this: there is no truth in budgets. Voters have been spun, or flat-out lied to, so many times that the budgetary credibility gap is bigger than Canada’s debt – by the time you read this, about $1,215,000,000,000 according to the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation. It doesn’t matter which party is in power anymore: an estimated 75 per cent of Canadian voters say they don’t believe in what governments say or do.

And that is the biggest problem of all: truth. For most of us, we don’t think budgets contain much. Debt and deficits, yes. Truth? Not so much.

Sorry, Chrystia Freeland. But it’s the truth.

Kinsella was Special Assistant to Jean Chretien

 

Comments (52)