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. 

We got approved messaging this week from the Ottawa consultant class that examining in-depth how the PM and provincial premiers cratered democracy is a loser in the next federal election. We are told the public has no appetite for exposing the politicians and bureaucrats. Move on, we are told. They want other shiny objects.

As has been noted before, justice must not just be done, it must be seen to be done. And this patch-up job excusing a high-handed episode will reverberate for generations as leaders grasp at a life preserver to crush opponents’ rights and liberties. It was a decision to send a chill down the back of any civil libertarian. 

It was hoped that the gross overreach  in the Emergency Measures from this time last year might have swayed Mr. Trudeau and his faculty lounge of compliant stooges from another attempt at locking down more of what was once a liberal, free society. Guess again. Like all good party members and fellow travellers Trudeau’s constituency is elsewhere, not in Canada. 

Guess which Canadian political leader is not having his statue toppled, his likeness removed from schools and his reputation sullied? That would be Justin’s daddy Pierre Trudeau. As PM in 1968 he proposed in a white paper to eliminate native status and turn indigenous people into ordinary Canadians, thereby abrogating all the treaties they’d signed in good faith with the Crown. 

Not to be outdone by the NAC, Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille has its own Black Out Nights when even those willing to absorb the turgid agitprop onstage may not enter if they are un-black. Should someone wish to “self identify” as black they must undergo a gauntlet of staffers who will instruct them in the proper right-think.

Free speech and freedom of movement are being subordinated to elite cadres of the unelected State in public and private spheres. Digital ID that would have made Erik Honeker jealous is being pushed by Canada’s PM. People who wish to express opinions or dissent with the ruling class must pass through a Checkpoint Charlie gauntlet of apprehended disloyalty and suspected subversion.

You could tell just how vexing the dilemma was by the fact that Notley took 15 days to respond to Trudeau’s provocation. She had to find the right line— in the right time— to make room for herself between the PM and the premier. Room the Alberta voters— particularly the women’s vote in Calgary— are comfortable voting for.