There is real cause for urgency. Shareholder value, the bedrock of these investments, is now a piggy bank being robbed by outside players who use ESG, DEI and other nefarious acronyms to intimidate said CEOs, boards of directors and investment experts into doing their bidding.

Sure, there are still many who see Justin as he wishes to be seen— and as they see themselves. Visionary. Brave. Bespoke. But there are increasing numbers who see the botched pancake flip, not the globalist leader, as closer to the truth. A stick figure surrounded by incompetents who can’t put one foot right. An actor in his own failed psychodrama.

Apparently the only ones who couldn’t see this outcome from shaking down Facebook and Meta were Trudeau and his faculty lounge of mediocrities like Rodriguez. They are left with an unworkable solution to a problem that the market should have been left to correct. Maybe Pierre Poilievre will follow through on his promise to end all this. Maybe not.

Mao, revered by the Left, used children to create the Great Leap Forward in China. Children indoctrinated in state schools via Mao’s Little Red Book turned in (or killed) recalcitrant parents and leaders in an effort to purify the state. When that was done, an estimated 30 million were dead and the society was destroyed.

The NHL and #SJW membership was always a heavy lift. For a league whose core is largely wealthy owners, middle-class conservative whites and Orthodox Eastern Europeans, the idea of donning the symbols of #LGBTQ or Climate Change or one of the myriad hip causes du jour was a stretch.

Is backing Alberta sovereignty in the oil patch a vote-loser for a federal conservative party still looking past “Hate Trudeau” as an election platform? You could see Poilievre rationalizing that he’ll get the seats in the West no matter what, so why not leave Trudeau to wrassle the Alberta bear alone? 

For those who get their Canadian history from the current CBC grievance culture, Bush Runner’s even-handed adventure story will shock with enough twists and turns to keep even the best screenwriter occupied.  It reinforces the impossibility of changing the past. But it also offers the promise of a better future if Canadians understand how far they can go if they embrace the true history of this wild land.

The Left still see themselves under threat of right-wing extremism. The spectre of The Handmaid’s Tale speaks to young women of extreme privilege. The trans movement makes them see themselves in the wrong body. They live in fear of cow farts and gas stoves.  The fading American dream is now just the hook to a popular Paul Simon song.

It’s a losers game to always play in then other team’s end of the field. Maybe Pierre Poilievre and his comms team can come up with something that changes the game. Like going directly to the electorate with their message. And leaving the bought-and-paid-for national media outside the door.

To those with keen memories the comparison between the blubbering, inconsolable Roman Roy in Succession and Canada’s current PM Justin Trudeau are inescapable. Skippy, too, was delegated to eulogize his real father, Pierre. The result was a teary cascade to rival the Lachine Rapids.

Advance polling has now begun with the election results coming next Monday. Polls indicate that it will be close, with urban Calgary the swing factor (Edmonton being NDP and the rural area UCP.) But voters will go to the polls with most of the water-cooler topics viewed as too toxic by consultants and thus beyond debate. 

It was Veep meets Succession— punctuated by a howling media that have shouted “The Walls Are Closing In” and “Blockbuster” since 2016. Russiagate makes Watergate look like Bonny and Clyde hitting up Dust Bowl banks. It’s hard to overstate the epic scope of this parade of venal, crass actors using the apparatus of government to strengthen their grasp on power. 

if Canadians are to be stuck with Charles and the Windsors we should at least be able to laugh at them. It’s our constitutional right to enjoy the Fools In The Crown. 

It should come as little surprise that Tucker Carlson is a bridge too far in the cozy world of Canadian journalism. While there are notable exceptions, most of  Canada's media bien pensants have no idea that touching the third rail, as Carlson did, was journalism. At best, what they do is filling space between the commercials.

When it was Anne of Avonlea or even The Beachcombers there were recognizable Canadian themes and performers. Now, however, with the success of international marketing, Schitt’s Creek and Hallmark films are exemplars of a uni-culture, a smash-up of comedic tropes, romantic plots and cop shows that could come from anywhere. Gradually, CBC management began to see its real audience as a market like Hollywood or New York City, not Thunder Bay.

From Dr. Fauci to the fools on SNL or the smug laptop class at the Toronto Star, they closed ranks around a lie to bolster their importance. You paid. They skated. That’s one truth you can’t mask.

Before anyone ponders the Dylan Mulvaney/ BudLight nexus too deeply it’s best to remember that petrified corporations don’t advertise products anymore. Nor do they fixate on shareholder value. That’s so last week. Guided by their armies of high-priced gender and race consultants they now advertise attitudes and empathies. They promote virtue and inclusion. Sturm und Drag.

Look, every movement has its loonies. (Witness TrumpWorld.) But the percentage of progressives who have suddenly gone from “I love Benny Hill” to deciding trans rights is a hillside for them to die on is stunning. But such is the nature of hysterics. The Salem Witch Trials were generated by Christian fervour, the current fervour is driven by secular liberals casting about for quasi-religious meaning.

There was a time when live-and-let-live guided society. Or, as they like to say, the Good Old Days. Now, the needle monitoring live-and-let-live swings like a Hillary Clinton polygraph. If you’re with safe-space generation, no micro aggression is too small, no affront to LGBTQ-2 too slight to put off national calamity, no enemy too small to to squash.