CBC-TV arrogantly thought it could handle a far-Right leader. It got handled, instead.


And it isn’t just me saying so. As HuffPo noted, your interview went completely “off the rails.”

Is it within your mandate to give an uncritical platform to a wasted hater like McInnes, who has written on The Rebel’s web site about how he hates Jews, calls blacks “monkeys,” calls himself “anti-Semitic,” says Jews should “get over” the Holocaust, and authors essays titled “I’m Not a Racist, Sexist, or a Homophobe, You Nigger Slut Faggot“? Is it?

No, it isn’t.  Get your heads out of your asses, The National and Power and Politics.

Screen Shot 2017-07-06 at 11.00.25 AM


Racist Proud Boys in the CAF: Sajjan does the right thing


And:

The members of the Canadian Armed Forces who disrupted a protest organized by Indigenous activists in Halifax on Canada Day will be removed from training and duties as the military investigates and reviews the circumstances, says the country’s top general.

We are the nation’s protectors, and any member of the Canadian Armed Forces who is not prepared to be the defender we need them to be will face severe consequences, including release from the forces,” Gen. Jonathan Vance, chief of defence staff, said in a statement Tuesday night.


Book news

I have been offered an international multi-book deal with a great publisher.  Wasn’t expecting this when I woke up this morning, but I’ll gratefully take it.

Wow, among other things.  Now, it’s back to work in the writing shed!


They’re white supremacist “Proud Boys” – and members of the Canadian military (updated twice)

Left to Right: Braidyn Pollitt John Eldridge, David Eldridge, Grant Gauchier, and Eric Maurice

Left to Right: Braidyn Pollitt – plus John Eldridge, David Eldridge, Grant Gauchier, and Eric Maurice giving white power salute.

These five individuals are all members of the Canadian Armed Forces.  And, on Canada Day, they went to a Mi’kmaw event in Halifax, held to remember missing and murdered indigenous women.

They weren’t there as members of our military, or to show support.  They were there because they wanted to attack the Mi’kmaw.  They were there because they said they are part of the white supremacist group, the Proud Boys.

The Proud Boys are a hate group founded and led by Rebel Media star Gavin McInnes.    McInnes has written on Rebel’s web site about how he hates Jews, calls blacks “monkeys,” calls himself “anti-Semitic,” says Jews should “get over” the Holocaust, and authors essays titled “I’m Not a Racist, Sexist, or a Homophobe, You Nigger Slut Faggot.”

The Proud Boys and McInnes are what they are: racist, anti-Semitic human garbage.  They’re on the record, and the record is clear.  That’s not the issue, here.

The issue is Messrs. Pollitt, Eldridge, Eldridge, Gauchier, and Maurice, above, celebrating after attacking a group of peaceful indigenous people, and four of them giving white power salutes in a Halifax bar.  That’s the issue.

Anti-Racist Canada has the right idea: all of us should contact their commanders, and demand answers.  Here’s where you can do that – and please let us know what response, if any, you get.

The Honourable Harjit Singh Sajjan: Minister of National Defence:

Royal Canadian Navy:
Vice-Admiral Maurice Frank Ronald “Ron” Lloyd:

UPDATE: Good news – it looks like CAF are taking this very seriously.

UPDATE: It is now up on HuffPo.


This week’s column: Happy —— Day

Canada’s 150th birthday has come and gone. Notice anything missing?

Like, say, a federal presence. If you live outside of Ottawa, you sure didn’t see much of that. 

In Ottawa, despite the many terrific Canadian acts available, the big moment at the big show was a single song performed by a couple members of U2 – a band, you know, from Ireland. There was an extended fireworks display, too – with the fireworks coming entirely from China. There was Gordon Lightfoot, who (despite previous reports on Twitter and credible news web sites) was decidedly not dead.

Elsewhere, local communities did their own thing. They have gotten used to a lack of help from Ottawa, perhaps. There was greeting the dawn in St. John’s. There was a canoe excursion in Toronto. There was the start of some totem-carving in Duncan, B.C. There was an ultra-marathon in Winnipeg. In Calgary, there was a giant snakes-and-ladders game (seriously). And so on. Lots of variety, lots of local initiative. Local.

The federal government, meanwhile, was mostly invisible. 

Contrast Canada’s 150th with previous big-deal years, 1967 and 2000. In those years, Ottawa was omnipresent, and in a good way.

In 1967, the centennial year, we had Expo ’67, a huge success. There was the Canadian Armed Forces’ immensely-successful Tattoo 1967, which travelled the country. A dove was added to the penny – remember those? The Caribana Parade launched in Toronto. There was a voyageur canoe race, with 100 contestants, paddling and traversing more than 3,000 miles. The centennial flame was unveiled on Parliament Hill. Gordon Lightfoot (then, as now, still alive) did a wonderful railway trilogy. And the federal government provided $25 million – now worth nearly $200 million, 50 years later – for local centennial projects.

Pierre Berton called 1967 our “last good year” in one of his books. But 2000 wasn’t too bad, either, when one considers the degree to which the federal government participated. And lots of fun stuff happened. The good folks in St. John’s were again the first to greet the new millennium. In that year, the Mint produced a series of Millennium coins, and Canada Post a special stamp. There was a snowmobile parade in Iqaluit. A bunch of military specialists climbed the Peace Tower on the Hill. There was a huge firework display on Toronto’s waterfront. My former boss, Jean Chretien, wore an Inuit fur hat and parka and hosted a big celebration of Parliament Hill – and he did not apply the Shawinigan Handshake, despite requests. And no computers went down, really.

Contrast all that to 2017. Unless you live North of the Queensway, you can be forgiven for wondering what the federal government did with your tax dollars on July 1, 2017.

One really can’t blame the Prime Minister. Unlike his predecessor, but like the aforementioned Chretien, Justin Trudeau delegates authority to his ministers to do their jobs. And, in this case, Canada 150 was the chief responsibility of the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Melanie Joly. Her predecessors included giants like Sheila Copps and James Moore, who understood the importance of championing Canadian symbols.

Joly has a $3.3 billion budget for precisely the sort of things we are supposed to be celebrating in 2017, but aren’t. As such, she has been the most ineffective Minister of Heritage since Bev “Orange Juice” Oda, and that’s saying something.

Joly ran for mayor of Montreal in 2013, and was handily dispatched by Denis Coderre. It was a nasty race, with Joly running ads claiming Coderre “has no credibility to wipe out corruption.” She said she’d run again in 2017, but she didn’t. A couple years later, instead, Joly was parachuted into Ahuntsic-Cartierville, the favourite of the Liberal Party establishment. The riding’s nomination process was delayed to give her time to sign people up, and two rival candidates were pressured to drop out, and did. Her nomination win “wasn’t pretty,” the Montreal Gazette observed.

As Minister of Canadian Heritage, Joly has mostly distinguished herself as camera-loving, gaffe-prone, and possibly-doomed. In just one recent controversy, reports say she didn’t bother to consult with senior PMO staff about her choice for Canada’s official languages commissioner – although some of her staff had previously worked for her pick at Queen’s Park. As Chantal Hebert of the Liberal-friendly Toronto Star subsequently wrote, there exist “clouds of doubt [about Joly’s] judgment,” she has “egg on her face,” and she is “inexperienced” or “incompetent.” Ouch.

Meanwhile, things in Joly’s office aren’t much better. Global News has reported that her chief of staff has been lobbied by Google six times in 2017 – when she was, just months earlier, a senior executive at Google. Her chief of staff came into Joly’s employ straight from Google, where she served as director of communications for a number of years.

Google, now facing a massive $3.6 billion fine from the European Union for anti-competitive practices, probably doesn’t care. But Melanie Joly should: her ministerial accomplishments, one might say, are rather sparse.

And Canada’s 150th birthday certainly isn’t one. If it is remembered at all, it is will be remembered for what everyday Canadians – or their municipal and provincial governments – do.

It won’t be remembered for what Melanie Joly did, which is nothing.


So: Canada, eh.

Present view. Little flag on our swim dock.

Hey, Canada Day.

People always say their country is the best country in the world. Canadians, too.

But I don’t know if that is true. I haven’t been to every country in the world – and I don’t think there’s anyone else who has, either.

So we don’t know. Belize could be the best country in the world. Who knows.

Canada is a good country, but – like the others – imperfect. We pollute, we waste, we do bad things. We have children living in the streets, we have children who go to bed hungry.

Our ongoing indifference to those who were here first is a disgrace. As Dad to a smart indigenous girl, I believe that we will never be great until we remedy that. We will never be a great country – or perhaps even a country – until we pay the debt we owe First Nations.

So, we are not great. We are okay. We are not bad. When we compare ourselves to the alternatives – like, say, America, which is anything but great, now, and for obvious reasons – we are better than those alternatives.

Mostly, we are a work in progress. We are on the way.

So, I will acknowledge this birthday, this anniversary, in the most Canadian of ways – half-heartedly. Fist up, halfway. Quietly.

We are not great. We are not perfect. But we are better than many of the alternatives.

Because we’ve been to a lot of the alternatives, and all of us keep coming back to this patch of rock and ice and dirt.

Happy you-know-what, eh.