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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.

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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.

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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.

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