Lethbridge Herald

Trudeau’s days as Canada’s leader coming to an end

- Bruce Dowbiggin

The polls suck. His party is restless watching his constant gaffes. His NDP allies are similarly hoping he quits before he brings down their party, too. The public now laughs at his Happy Ways demeanour and lush living on the public dime.

It seems inevitable that Justin Trudeau is at the end of his runway as prime minister of Canada. If the polls are right, he could experience one of the greatest electoral repudiatio­ns when the federal election finally happens. Just as he replaced the dour technician Stephen Harper, Trudeau will be dismissed by the public, seen as yesterday’s man.

In desperatio­n, Trudeau has tried labelling his nemesis Pierre Poilievre as a Trump wannabe, a divisive alt-right force who would reverse the generous graft he’d bestowed on Canadians. His paid media have picked up the theme, calling Poilievre’s strategy “shameful” and “cynical,” and his “scorchedea­rth approach” is “contributi­ng to a breakdown in overall faith in the system”. You go with that.

What makes them mad are Poilievre’s insouciant takedowns of Liberal hacks and media flacks, best epitomized by the appleeatin­g destructio­n of a lazy B.C. journalist out for a cheap score to raise his profile. A host of self-appointed press figures lost their minds.

“You are not supposed to treat interviewe­rs this way!” Since that moment, Poilievre has repeated the formula on cabinet ministers and played-out press figures.

Leaving Liberals and their wind therapists in the press to wonder what Trudeau’s legacy will be in 10 or 15 years if he can’t control the messaging. Most look at the recent funeral for Brian Mulroney and the forgiving attitude of his former enemies. Indeed, those who watched Wayne Gretzky and others eulogize the 18th PM of Canada as a statesman assume that this charity will eventually be extended to Trudeau.

Sure, Justin told the UN his citizens are genocidal, installed felons to cabinet posts, applauded Nazis in Parliament and showered his pals with graft. But wasn’t Mulroney also found counting bribe money from paper bags in a hotel room? Surely the charity shown to Mulroney will also be extended to Trudeau in the fullness of time?

It would be if the media/government apparatus that existed in the Mulroney 1980s were the ones writing the epitaphs. “Let bygones be bygones.” However, this fantasy scenario misses the collapse of authority that the media/government apparatus has suffered over the past decade. A collapse Poilievre has duly noted.

While they rail against Poilievre’s dismissive attitude toward them, the Conservati­ve leader understand­s the new dynamic where voters – especially the young – get their informatio­n from social media, not the scrum theatre of the past, engineered by politician­s and the people who followed them. If Poilievre appears dismissive of their game, it’s because he knows they’re irrelevant to him.

This outrage from the Family Compact comes from people like the self-obsessed MSNBC staff who whined like babies at the thought of a GOP voice on their shows – an attitude parroted by their Canadian cousins fed money by the ruling class. No wonder Trudeau is rushing through laws to censor the internet. X hates him and he knows it.

After years of toeing the line, however, influentia­l journalist­s are suddenly recognizin­g the damage done by their obsessions – and the peril in which their business finds itself. NPR Senior business editor Uri Berliner shocked many with his confession that Trump-obsessed NPR “lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.”

A segment so deranged by Trump’s election in 2016 that it fed phoney stories about Russiagate and Hunter Biden’s laptop to its audience over Trump’s term. NPR’s managing editor for news dismissed revelation­s over Hunter spilling the beans on his dad: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractio­ns.” We now know this senior journalist helped bury a generation­al story.

Getting it deliberate­ly wrong is bad enough, continued Berliner, but “What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpa, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparen­cy from public figures and institutio­ns, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.”

As Berliner suggests, a population that understand­s the massive COVID deception is now dumping the news sources they long trusted.

Hollywood, too, is reaping the whirlwind in cables cut from the nightly Colbert Chorus of Insanity. A worried New York Times has tried a limited mea culpa on oversellin­g the pandemic (one of their reporters claimed in 2022 that COVID had “racist” roots), but the stain of its irresponsi­ble censoring of any critics endures.

The Wall Street Journal has noticed: “… the newspaper’s problems go beyond young staffers who learned in college never to tolerate reasonable viewpoints. With general election season upon us, even middle-aged Timesmen are giving every indication that they’re planning to repeat all the mistakes they made covering the first Trump administra­tion.”

In Canada, no one at CBC, CTV, the Globe and Mail, or the Toronto Star is even remotely close to owning up to their role in creating panic over COVID-19. (One prominent reporter even received the Order of Canada for supporting lockdowns and vaccines). They have ceased reprinting Trudeaupia­n propaganda on the virus and the vaccines. But the silence on their enthusiast­ic support for closing of schools, the isolation of the dying and the firing of those reluctant to try untested vaccines speaks louder than any mealy-mouthed correction.

So the next time the prime minister and his media pals try to portray the earnest – sometimes plodding – messaging of Poilievre as a new Dark Age, consider the source. And then move into the future. Because it won’t be written anymore by the people who assume their infallibil­ity.

Bruce Dowbiggin 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 eighth best profession­al hockey book by bookauthor­ity. org. His 2004 book Money Players was voted seventh best.

The opinions expressed by our columnists and contributo­rs are theirs alone and do not inherently or expressly reflect the views of our publicatio­n.

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