"CFL On Line 1? Tell Them I'm Out. Kielburgers? Put Them Right Through"
They say birds of a feather flock together, so it should be no surprise that prime minister Justin Trudeau and the WE pep squad for Woke teenagers keep finding themselves in the same nest. This past week saw the grifting Kielburger guys in Ottawa to finally respond to Parliament about their proximity to the ethically challenged PM.
Faced with allegations of fraud, misrepresentation, huge real estate holdings and coziness with the Trudeau family the Kielburgers lashed out, saying that everything that followed the revelation of their aborted $912-million student contract from the Feds is a political witch-hunt that doesn’t involve them.
They are holier than Mother Theresa. Cleaner than spring water. The attempts by guys like NDP member Charlie Angus to implicate them in nefarious activities is unfair. They never cooperated with the PM or his cronies on anything.
The MPs questioning them saw it differently. They see a close partnership between the Bros and Trudeau advisor Ben Chin (former CITY TV meat puppet), one borne out by social media communications made public.“ Conservative MP Pierre Pollievre rejected the idea that it was all a political affair.
“Why did you send him a message on LinkedIn on June 27th saying ‘Hello Ben, thank you for your kindness in helping shape our latest program with the government. Warmly, Craig’?”
When Kielburger demurred, Pollievre pursued. “Sorry Craig, this is your message, it is signed by you, and if I could be clear — it doesn’t just say ‘I wish you well,’ it says ‘Thank you for your kindness in helping shape our latest program with the government. Warmly, Craig.’ You sent that — did you not?”
Bloc Quebecois MP Rheal Fortin homered the point again in French: “How often do you thank people for doing nothing?” When Craig Kielburger suggested the text was just one of hundreds on a LinkedIn chain sent by an over-moist EA, Pollievre replied “ You’re in a lot of trouble here, my friend. You’re under oath. Perjury is a crime.”
Unsurprisingly, the Media Party gave the evisceration of more Trudeau malfeasance a pass. We know… you’re shocked. Those familiar with the WE shennaignas will remember our column last year describing how the federal government had tens of millions for the Kielburgers but bupkis for the CFL that was looking for a $30 million guaranteed loan to operate.
As a result the 2020 CFL season and the unbroken tradition of an annual Grey Cup game was smashed. While he had millions for people who’d used his family as frontmen, “What Trudeau the unifier doesn’t have money for is the 101-year tradition of the Grey Cup that has a significant TV footprint across the country and millions of fans in both official languages. (Or a contract with disgraced Chinese communications giant, Huawei.)
“The league wanted a $30 million interest-free loan to hold a truncated 2020 season in the bubble city of Winnipeg. It had a dedicated broadcaster in TSN. It had a feel-good message of Canadians becoming stars of the league.
“But it didn’t have the prime minister. Which is ironic because, in a previous attempt to pal around with the Canadian government, the CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie had adopted Trudeau’s gobbledygook notion of “diversity”, splashing the meaningless tripe all over its helmets, uniforms and coaches on the sidelines…
“This snub will have few reverberations on the Aga Khan’s island or Bill Morneau’s French villa or wherever the Liberal toffs congregate these days. But in the heartland of Saskatchewan or Hamilton or Edmonton or Winnipeg there will be a terrible void this Labour Day weekend or the final Sunday of November.
“Everyone knows that a fragile project like the CFL taking a year out of the marketplace is more likely to spell “goodbye" than “see you again next year”. Frankly the odds are lousy. But that’s what you get when you deal with Justin Trudeau.”
The CFL continues to struggle toward a 2021 season without meaningful Trudeau government support. This week it faced its own social-media controversy. The United Football Players Association suggested on Twitter that sources told it the league will likely cancel its 2021 and '22 seasons. This came about, in part, because the XFL (which has been talking about sharing costs with CFL) said it will put its own plans for a return in the spring of 2022 on hold.
CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie fired back. "The UFPA has no standing with the CFL… The claims being made in its name on our upcoming season are false. We plan to play this year. And we are working very hard towards playing this year. That includes working toward provincial and federal approvals for our health and safety plan.”
The UPFA was unrepentant. ”We would love nothing more than for you to come out and say there is no chance whatsoever that either 2021 or 2022 will be cancelled and has not even been considered. We hope what we are hearing is not true, but when half a dozen respected individuals mention it, we feel the need to bring it to light.”
Luckily for the prime minister few in corporate media want to bring his WE duplicity to light. Funneling money to the Trudeau family (paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the WE organization for speeches between 2016 and 2020) while claiming no complicity is just the price of doing business in Trudeaupia.
Starving the CFL? Sometimes you’ve got to break a few eggs to make a progressive omelette.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx