Bad Cop, No Donair

I may need to dust off my media criticism blog for just such an occasion as the latest crackpot Canadian nontroversy, because Mountiegate is as much an example of #CdnMediaFailed as it is a fantastic case for defunding the police. I'm not alone in thinking this way either, but how much will it matter?

. . .

So while the Prime Minister is still away from home (thankfully) on a tour of Europe to do adult statecraft like coordinating with G7 and NATO partners on climate preparedness and, especially, the ongoing war in Ukraine, seemingly out of nowhere another made-up "scandal" has hit the government, and is only now starting to pick up traction.

Plenty has already been written about the ongoing Mass Casualty Commission inquiry into the worst mass shooting in Canadian history, in which 22 Nova Scotians were killed and the families subject to gaslighting and obfuscation from an incompetent and secretive provincial RCMP force that had a lot of questions to answer, and didn't want to address any of them at all.

In the days following the massacre, Justin Trudeau and his government implemented swift gun control measures with the aim of something like this never happening again. Apparently, some members of the Queen's Cowboys (and the whole of the craven Conservatives) aren't happy about that, or about RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki's stubborn insistence that they do their jobs, because now that move in and of itself has been allowed to explode into another Trudeau summer imbroglio.

For those just catching up, this analysis piece, by a Nova Scotia lawyer who has been following the inquiry closely details just how badly the commission's findings were reflecting upon the NS-RCMP, who are quite deservedly facing a crisis of confidence and an existential crisis that is causing them to lash out at all the wrong people. It tells of paranoia, institutional failure, even drunkenness and sleeping on the job. "Read this and weep," wrote Liberal strategist Greg MacEachern on Twitter, himself a Nova Scotian who's disgusted with the attempts by the forces to deflect their embarrassment and cover-up onto a reformist federal government and the fed-up commissioner they hired to clean things up.

But what is to weep about more, even if you're not a Liberal by label, is how the police, with help from the national media, have been given a free ride to hijack that commission and divert the attention to "Trudeau bad!" just as things were about to get really, really ugly for the cops, and deservedly so.

 

The Canadian news media is the propaganda arm of the Conservatives. They will jump at anything they think can be twisted to make Justin Trudeau and/or his government look bad. They sacrifice facts on the altar of clickbait, ratings, self-congratulatory mutual masturbation and Trudeau derangement syndrome. And despite all this they claim that anyone who calls them out for it are damaging faith in institutions. No, because just like the Catholic Church, they're doing a fine job of that all by themselves.

I've mentioned Evan Scrimshaw here many times before as another writer who is always worth reading. He and I fundamentally, and that is to say one-hundred-percent, one-hundred-eighty-degree opposite disagree on the validity of the SNC and WE foofaraws, but other than that, he's usually spot on in his analysis of the severe weaknesses of Canadian institutions like the media and police (and the Conservative Party), and how they are corroding democracy themselves.

This week he's got not one but two thorough debunkings of Mountiegate and also the Canadian media's abject failure to properly cover it. "The RCMP are still lying," he wrote, when the "scandal" first hit the pages, courtesy of notorious Thomson billionaire media shit disturber Robert Fife. Then, when Fife uncritically reported that another RCMP stooge purportedly "corroborated" the murky allegations of so-called "interference" (he never heard the term "circling the wagons," apparently?), Evan published a second column that completely took the industry to the woodshed, writing, "the Canadian media is a cesspool and it is actively making our brains rot."

 

Evan is not the only columnist, or Canadian political personality, to be outraged at this exploitation of a tragedy by a corrupt and incompetent police force, their PR flunky, and a morally albeit not financially bankrupt national news media that didn't give two shits about these families or this inquiry until someone uttered the magic words "Trudeau bad."

 

Gerald Butts, who knows a few things about concocted nontroversies (from the poison pen of Robert Fife) damaging careers himself, and is also from Nova Scotia, tweeted, "if you’re accepting the word of the Nova Scotia RCMP brass at face value on anything related to Portapique, I’ve got some swampland in Pictou to sell you." He was promptly bombarded (as is per usual) by Conservatives accusing him of playing CYA for the PM, and promptly shut them down, albeit in the politest of Cape Bretoner ways.

 

National Observer journalist Sandy Garossino was quick to point out the sexism of the old-boy donut shop network's strategic use of a telegenic female PR operative to discredit a female boss who they probably never saw as being a legitimate hire in the first place. "When a police or military organization targets a woman or minority leader, we’re supposed to know enough by now to be skeptical," she tweeted on June 22, when the story went to print. She was most likely comparing this to how the stubborn inaction and complicity of the Ottawa Police Service during the first "Freedumb Convoy" saw the ouster of their Black chief, Peter Sloly, who prior to the occupation had sought reforms in the forces on issues like racial profiling. "It’s a bit convenient to take down a woman for being angry & having a sneaky agenda," she continued. "Do we have to get suckered every single time?"

 

Then today, Dale Smith at his blog Routine Proceedings concurred that the allegations of "interference" still don't add up, while columnist Robert Hiltz at Passage condemned the media for not giving a damn about the inquiry until the name "Trudeau" caused their ears to perk up. Meanwhile, on a local scale, probably the best actual journalism on this whole matter has been coming from a humour and gossip magazine, Frank, and crime writer Paul Palango, who penned an entire book about the chaos of that fateful day and the police response, that currently sits in the top 10 nonfiction listings of both the Star and (yes) the Globe. But of course, nobody at the Irrational Post or CTV or especially Fife the Knife is going to pay any attention to these voices, because it would expose them, the "important" news people of Official Ottawa™, for being completely shit-the-bed wrong.

All of this tempest-in-a-teapot in Canada comes amid the backdrop of, well, many things. The first is the second "Freedumb Convoy" aided and abetted by the Conservative Party making its way to the nation's capital for Canada Day, and the broader issue of right-wing radicalization happening all over the country. The second is the collapse of institutional trust on both sides of the 49th parallel, in everything from the U.S. Supreme Court to policing to, yes, the fourth estate, and efforts to maintain that trust even though the institutions themselves are to blame (but will never examine their actions introspectively).

 

The third, and not necessarily in this order, is the ongoing right-wing war on women: not just the absolute explosive U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and essentially declaring open season on adult human females, but how this situation came into being in the first place (Hillary derangement syndrome); and how it all connects with other examples of attacking and discrediting women (White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's explosive testimony at the January 6th committee, and the concurrent smear campaign against RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki). There's a broader story to be told here, through multiple lenses, if only there was anyone willing to tell it. Well, there are, as noted above (and I highly encourage everyone to read all of those linked pieces). But to give them a national spotlight would mean doing actual journalism and admitting that "the brass" fucked things up.

The fourth, I should add, is the radicalization of policing itself, and revelations that their role is not necessarily to protect and serve those who need protecting and serving. According to author and criminologist A.J. Somerset, law enforcement agencies in Canada have grown accustomed to using the jeopardized-investigation argument as a crutch to avoid being forthcoming with details that could help the public. The public's only method of accountability is through their elected officials enacting policy, which creates an inevitable clash of cultures when the public's right to know (and elected officials' interest in comporting to their constituents' needs) brushes up against the police's insistence that they're the only ones who can "get it right."

 

There is also a serious problem, revealed by the convoy, that a rogue element of the forces are dangerously complicit with these decidedly anti-institutionalist movements and have a disturbing hate-on for the incumbent PM. Canada is in dire need of a proper public inquiry to reveal how many other Daniel Bulfords are active within the ranks — the disgruntled member of Trudeau's own security team who quit in protest to become a convoy organizer because he was pissed off about vaccine mandates (and, presumably, other imagined grievances of white male rage).

And there's also the possibility that this entire brouhaha was a ruse to sabotage other gun legislation, as suggested in a recent Hill Times article about the proposed handgun ban that was supposed to take effect before the summer break, but got cockblocked (Glock-blocked?) by the public safety committee shifting its focus to (read: being hijacked by) Mountiegate. It's no shocker the likelihood that a whole lot of paranoid cops are also paranoid gun enthusiasts who support the party of paranoid gun enthusiasts. I'm not a big believer in coincidences, not anymore. I'm not necessarily saying that it was planned this way. But it sure did work out conveniently for the RCMP, the CPC... and the gun lobby.

So, what does this all add up to, politically speaking? The truth is we just don't know. As of right now, at least, it appears that if the Liberals are in a (mild?) funk, it's probably down to general malaise about the economy (which the government has also had to struggle to squeeze into their schedule, not just because of the the RCMP foofaraw, but the Emergencies Act committee that the CPC are hell-bent on hijacking, just like Republicans with the January 6 hearings).

 

The prime minister has been away for some time; it's summer, people are going on vacation (or trying to, at least, while the lazy and feckless media incorrectly blames the government for why their flights are delayed); and this matter doesn't seem, as of yet, to have exploded in the same way as Jody's tantrum or the disgraceful conspiracy theory that was WE-Ghazi (when people were stayin' the blazes home in front of TV during quarantine, and paying a lot more attention).

 

I don't think it'll become an election issue, certainly not for an election three years out. It doesn't seem as of yet to have dented Liberal polling in the Maritimes, where people know enough not to take the crooked cops' word at face value.

 

But even if it ultimately amounts to the nothing that it truly is, the real scandal, the real disgrace, is how 22 people were murdered, only to have the police who failed them, and Robert goddamn Fife, exploit their deaths to score political points. And the bigger scandal by far is how in doing so, they fired a whole series of shots at democracy and truth itself.

Dudley done wrong, all right. And trust in Canada's institutions has plummeted... Due South.

A Soft Landing?

In my last post, I wrote about the turbulence that it appears our heroes in Ottawa are heading into. There certainly seems to be a rough patch ahead that they are already on. But like other crises of a previous age, this too shall pass — even if it takes a little (or even a lot) longer than usual...

. . .

Some mixed polling is in for the Liberals, with the trends not looking particularly attractive, mostly due to Carville's law of economic anxiety. The crappy economy is a global problem, but as the saying goes, all politics is local, and Canadians are no different from citizens of any other country when it comes to landing an outrage punch at the incumbent whether they're responsible for the glum conditions or not.

That being said, the sage contrarian of Canadian politics (not yours truly) makes some very good arguments for why it's neither permanent nor catastrophic, not even in the present moment:

"They" being the Blue Meanies of the CPC, who current polling shows an illusory "lead" on the topline margins but a murky and inconclusive picture below the surface. Polls are never predictive, and campaigns do still matter, especially since there's no election for three years yet — and it's not a foregone conclusion in the least that the present conditions are still going to favour the Tinfoil Trucker Tories by 2025.

It's the economy, stupid — and when comes the time, the CPC might not even be able to run on that.

 

But what about a recession? Olive has that covered too, and says that Canada's position is such that it might very well be able to avoid the worst of the storm.

The post-pandemic economic aftermath was always going to be a rough go, which is all the more reason it wasn't "pointless" at all for Justin Trudeau to have an election at the time he did — he knew what was coming down the path and the reckoning that he and his stalwart Liberals would have to face, and even though his own party came just barely short of a majority, thanks to some crafty finagling with the NDP, he still managed to stave off that collision course for another four years as though he had.

The problem is that just like with the "vaccine hangups," the party is going to be experiencing a lull for quite some time, perhaps longer than the all-but-forgotten nadir of when the Globe et. al. (and Jake Tapper) decided to disregard things like jurisdictional civics and supply chains and foolhardy actions of previous Conservative governments to lay the blame at the feet of no one else but Justin Trudeau. It could take at least (at least) a year to dig out of this. And of course, we don't know what else could crop up in the meantime. Did anyone have World War 3 on the bingo card, or monkeypox?

Of course, none of these factors has precluded the usual, useless suspects of the pundit class from offering their own unsolicited opinions or conclusions as to the trajectory of Justin Trudeau's career, or for that matter the next election (which are, obviously, intertwined). You've got Paul Wells advancing the "rudderless Liberals" narrative, and you've got John Ivison stooping so low as to excoriate the PM for being so "unprofessional" as to hurt a dictators feewings with a joke about riding shirtless on horseback. (Personally, I'm disappointed that Justin didn't actually ride shirtless on horseback.)

Funny how they focus almost exclusively on the PM and the Liberals instead of how their preferred party seems to be headed for a nasty divorce? Skippy is so bad that his crew has shoved Michelle Rempelthinskin into full-on in vino veritas mode spilling all the tea about the CPC and its junior league in Jason Kenney's Alberta. In fact, Skippy is so bad that he pissed off Harper's grandma. Ouch.

My advice, for what it's worth? Ignore the pundits, ignore the polls, and always read Scrimshaw.

The Conservatives don’t have compelling answers to the questions that will be the ballot questions in 2025 – Pierre Poilievre won’t be able to compellingly attack the Liberals on economic competence because of crypto, the economy will be better then than it is now, and Poilievre will have to contend with the fact that he has to grapple with two parties that hate each other under one tent.

The economy will be better than it is now. We're talking three years, an epochal eternity in politics, not this November when Joe Biden and the Democrats are likely to be faced with a pummeling, or even next year when poor Jacinda Ardern will probably struggle to convert her Julia Roberts smile and compassionate governance into a third term in office. We're talking the literal middle of the decade. Skippy will have picked up more baggage than an employee of Pearson Airport (on top of what he already has, plus the petabytes of material given to the Liberal war room by jailbirds Pat King and Tamara Lich).

Justin Trudeau will get to go out on the hustings, still a spring chicken at nearly 54 years of age, and talk about childcare, pharmacare and dental care. He'll also get to run on Roe and the Conservatives' unwillingess to shut the door on it. He'll get to run against a possibly resurgent Donald Trump or "Florida Man" Ron DeSantis. Skippy, meanwhile, will get to talk about crypto, camping, some Bluenoser (or brownnoser) cop who nobody cares about, and the no-longer-extant "JustinFlation™."

Chrystia Freeland, meanwhile, is already talking about the prospect of a "soft landing" for the currently embattled economy (and, not so subtly, for the government presently overseeing it). That's what the next election will be about (in addition to right-wing extremism next door), and not the doldrums of 2022.

It'll take awhile to rebound, perhaps the longest while ever for a "situation" that this government has faced, and perhaps the most challenging situation of Trudeau's entire tenure. But the economy will rebound, and with it, so will the Liberals' fortunes. For sure, the landing won't be the grace under pressure of Captain Sully on the Hudson. Just like the vaccines, and the gravel-thrower election, and the ad-hoc majority parliament, it'll be messy, but it'll get done.

It'll be more like Ted Striker.

Justin Trudeau, this is probably going to be the lousiest landing in the history of Pearson Airport. But some of us, particularly me, would like to buy you a drink and shake your hand.

Municipal bonds, Justin. The best investment in Canada. Surely it's better than being kicked in the head with an iron boot.

 

Stormy Ways, My Friends?

Every now and then I get a bad feeling that trouble is on the horizon for our man in Ottawa and his team of happy warriors. Lately I've been feeling more glum than usual. So are dark clouds really on the horizon for Dearest Justin or is this just a passing shower for now? Let's discuss, shall we?

. . .

CTV's resident malaka broke out his moneyball machine yet again to come up with reasons behind what his calculator is showing: bad news for the Liberals and a bump for the "leaderless" Cons. He argued that the Liberals seemed tired and nearing their "shelf life" and that if Canadians didn't stop feeling "grumpy" about the incumbents, the shadows could grow a lot longer as the time goes on.

I mean, OK, whatever, that's one data point from a wonky phone poll. But then the usual suspects of the full-court press started churning out their hot takes on why Trudeau fils est finis. And then the inflation report appeared, and someone hatched another manufactured nontroversy that boils down to a he-said, she-said Podunk PD cop drama, and...

Well, it's not out of the realm of understanding why any Liberal might feel down in the dumps.

But let's take this piece by piece, shall we? Even if it does ultimately amount to "hopium" on my part.

The economy is stupid

And it's not really the government's fault, but that doesn't mean people won't be pissed off about it. The aftermath of the pandemic coupled with war in Russia, a supply-chain crisis and corporate price-gouging have all made for a perfect storm of affordability headaches for ordinary people, not just in Canada but elsewhere in the world.

The inflation rate as of June 22 is 7.7%, still lower than peer nations U.S. and U.K. but comparative rates aren't much of a small comfort for people feeling the pinch. It's not like the Liberals (and the Bank of Canada) aren't aware or aren't trying to figure out ways of ameliorating it. But whenever there's a crisis it seems people take out their anger on the incumbent, whether it's fair or not. Hence the bad polls.

Why am I unhappy, but not yet ready to hit the catastrophic panic button? Because timing is everything and there won't be an election for three years. Rate hikes are coming, and some senior economists say that Canada's relatively good economic position apart from inflation could see it avoid the recession storm. (Could, mind you.)

There is, of course, always more that can be done to at least cushion the blow, advice the government should take into account. Max Fawcett writes that the Liberals need a messaging overhaul and he makes a good point. You can do lots of good things but they won't amount to much if you don't tell anybody about them. Meanwhile, Mike Moffatt and Kevin Milligan have some plans for actually tackling the file with the limited levers the federal government has. Above all, it's important to "show, not tell" the public that the government "gets it," which they do, but they need to be a little louder in letting people know. Other than that, Justin Trudeau would have to storm into Moscow and off Putin himself.

For now, I'm looking at this doldrum as 2022's version of the "outrage punch" given to the government when the media's bogus vaccine-failure narrative was taking hold. And lo and behold, that faded away too. Polls are not predictive. They're also meant for dogs.

Bad Cop, Worse Cop?

But as if this weren't bad enough, another foofaraw seems to have emerged during the tail end of what's called summer silly season. Another non-scandal that the usual suspects of the broken media are hoping to escalate into SNC 2.0, apparently because they're desperate for ratings to feed to the outrage machine. Evan Scrimshaw has a good explainer of Mountiegate, and why it's really an indictment of both the (provincial) Nova Scotia RCMP's credibility and that of (yet again) #cdnmediafailed generally. It's too soon to tell, but it may not gain much traction (at least for right now) because Parliament has broken for the summer, the prime minister is on a foreign-diplomacy trip until Canada Day, and the Conservatives weren't able to muster a last-ditch effort at forcing another grandstanding "debate" on their latest conspiracy theory. So file this one on the back burner for now.

Kudatah Trucks Klan

I'm going to have a more detailed write-up later about the escalation and emboldening of the Covidiot Convoy. If I were a betting girl I'd say this is actually my bigger immediate worry. The cynic in me says that more outbursts from the Republicans North and their eighteen-wheeler of deplorables is a liability for them and a potential salvation for the good guys in office. But the pessimist in me says that 1) they won't face any consequences because #cdnmediafailed to deliver them any, and 2) that the only way they ever will is for #cdnmedia to have to be shocked awake by something really, really awful.

And even then I'm not so sure they'd know how to handle it. Not when everything in Canada's broken political media complex is filtered through the lens of "strategy" and the gods-damned horse race.

But in a more general sense, this is really the darkest thing on the horizon: the normalization of this kind of discontent. And if the more reliable moneyball machines are telling the truth, this is only the beginning and it's only going to get worse.

Mixed feelings

So I'm of two minds right now. One is that obviously the right-now position for the Liberals isn't good. At all. No two ways about it. The other is that predictions are hard, especially about the future, and we just don't know what's in store for 2025. At least as of recently, Trudeau was not in as much trouble (election-wise, at least) as it "felt like" he could have been; whether that changes from here on out remains anyone's guess. 

 

That being said, it's always a mistake to underestimate Justin Pierre James Trudeau. His political obituary has been written countless times, and he's been called increasingly worse things by increasingly irrelevant people. Campaigns matter; the economy could still brighten up, and there's always a good possibility that Skippy le Trump could very well fracture the CPC.

But therein lies the rub. As David Frum says, if conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism; they will abandon democracy.

And what they do when that moment comes is impossible to forecast.

I just hope it doesn't lead to the ultimate heartache, for Canadians and so many others. The one that I confess I've been fearing since about 2018 and the one that, no doubt, a growing and determined segment of the Covidiot Party of Canada wants to see happen:

A "Justin Fitzgerald Kennedy" moment, because it's 1963.

 

I'll try to not get too glum about polls, the economy, and Butter Emails unnecessary sequels.

But dearest Justin needs to take care to keep himself safe.

 

Living Next Door to an Elephant

By now, millions of people in the U.S. and abroad have watched the damning testimony of the January 6th Committee documenting the attempt at a "kudatah" by Donald Trump, his MAGA mob, and crooked cronies. Americans of course should be paying extra close attention, but so too should our neighbours north...

. . .

Since this blog mainly covers Canadian politics (albeit from the perspective of an American observer), I'll avoid going on at length about what was said and uncovered at the first night of hearings on the Capitol Hill Putsch. Suffice it to say it was as graphic and incriminating as one might have expected it to be, if not more so. But what concerns me more is the relative inattention to the same factors and personalities taking root in Canada too, since after all so many of us here in the States have often looked to Canada as the "northern star" of guidance (and a hoped-for sanctuary) when things "go south" down here. That sentiment in turn breeds a sense of "Canadian exceptionalism," one that unfortunately seems to have bred a sort of complacency among our neighbours above the 49th parallel. Canadians point to all that's gone wrong with America and breathe a sigh of relief that "well, at least we're not so bad."

Maybe not as overtly. But it's getting there — and two unfolding events that have made headlines in just the past week alone should raise all kinds of alarms. Indeed, for all those who say "it can't happen here," would it surprise you to find that maybe, just maybe, it already is?

Committee of the Assholes

The first item to pay attention to is the ongoing inquiry into the precedent-setting declaration of the Emergencies Act, in response to the Covidiot Convoy that seized Canada throughout the early spring. Unlike the January 6th Committee, which holds two heterodox Republicans — Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — impugning their fellow GOP partisans for disgracing democracy in service to an abjectly terroristic disgraced president, there are no such honourable Conservatives in Canada willing to hold the likes of Pierre Poilievre, Andrew Scheer, and Candice Bergen to account. It has instead devolved into a cancerously partisan and unprofessional shitshow aimed at painting Justin Trudeau as a "dictator" who, in what likely qualifies as the most bizarre, shark-jumping leap of logic for a Western democracy since, well, "Stop the Steal," purportedly invoked the Act to quash "peaceful demonstrators" in a "bid to maintain power" that is not unlike Trump's attempted coup in and of itself.

Once again we see the Conservatives' DARVO narrative that Trudeau is "Bizarro Trump" being on full display. A truly credulous thought process for them of all people to take, considering the plurality of their own voters who adore Trump (but hate Trudeau) and even their own members (like the deputy-turned-interim party leader) enthusiastically going full MAGA complete with Trump swag.

The other problem with this committee is that Canada does not have a media landscape that even attempts to be "fair and balanced," unlike the United States where CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post (they of Watergate I fame, now covering Watergate II: Proud Boys Boogaloo) and nearly all other "mainstream" outlets are invested in showcasing the utterly depraved sabotage of democracy committed by a president and party on the political right. (Fox News, not so much.)

In Canada, the media is overwhelmingly tilted in favour of the Tinfoil Trucker Tories, and now attempting to game the outcome for them by seizing upon semantic arguments that would seek to undermine or poke holes in the government's presentation before the committee. Like Postmedia's Matt Gurney and the ever-contrarian attention-seeker (and embittered Trudeau cousin) Andrew Coyne of the Globe & Mail, portraying public-safety minister Marco Mendocino as having been "dishonest" before Parliament when offering his explanation as to the catalyst and justification for the government implementing the Emergencies Act. At such a crucial time when the full sedition of their preferred party is about to be exposed, they jump right away to an insignificant matter of phraseology and start sounding the call for him to resign.

Unlike the Canadian media's other manufactured nontroversies, i.e. WE-Ghazi and the STFU-Lollygag Affair, the public is overwhelmingly on the side of the government's actions taken in this situation; in fact, they were more upset with the prime minister and his team for not sweeping away the chaff a lot sooner. It's really only the most ardent supporters of the seditious cons themselves demanding heads on a platter (literally) for what they already believed was "dictatorial overreach" by an "illegitimate" prime minister who was reelected in a "pointless campaign" and holds no claim to his title because he "lost the popular vote" and "formed an illegal coalition" with a smaller party in a hung parliament.

It's risible nonsense, of course. But that kind of rhetoric has consequences. Which brings me to issue number two that can't be ignored even as Canadians rightly express their horror at the events being recounted just to their south.

What would you do for a Klondike bar? According to two Conservative "fixers" turned whistleblowers, taking out a contract on Justin Trudeau is the request they just couldn't carry out.

Klondike Solidaire

This week, a bombshell series of accusations arrived in the form of the "Klondike Papers" — more than 6,500 documented interactions involving high-ranking backroom operatives and bagmen in the Canadian right-wing movement, courtesy of onetime party henchmen David Wallace and Nathan Jacobson. The massive, tangled web of corruption and stoking of fascist flames centres around the cryptic, arch-conservative religious organization and schmooze network known as the "Plymouth Brethren Church" and attorney Gerald Chipeur, who is deeply connected to major players such as disgraced Alberta premier Jason "Cartman" Kenney, the CPC's own godfather Stephen "Fat Cat" Harper... and none other than the party's incipient antichrist himself, Pierre "Constipated Stool Pigeon" Poilievre.

Thus far, the only media outlets that have reported on anything involving the Klondike Papers, let alone acknowledged their existence, have been the independent progressive outlet Press Progress, and the not-easily-categorized podcasts of bloggers Dean Blundell (The Dean Blundell Show)

and James DiFiore (Blackballed).

Sadly, intrepid investigative journalist Amy MacPherson of Free the Press Canada, died of cancer on March 27th of this year, her surgeries placed on the backburner by selfish covidiots clogging up the hospitals. The last story that she was working on before she passed involved this nexus of "Daddy" (?) Chipeur and hollow-eyed orphan Damien "The Omen" Poilievre. But others have thankfully picked up the torch to continue reporting on this important and far-reaching story that, just like the January 6th plot, participants in the "vast right-wing conspiracy" (as Hillary Clinton once said) are quick to label it a conspiracy theory itself. But that won't stop real, hardworking journalists and the layperson's samizdat from continuing to dig further.

On Blundell's website, you can read DiFiore's summary of the explosive revelations from Jacobson,  described as a "political asset for former Prime Minister Stephen Harper" who also "counts Benjamin Netanyahu as a friend." Jacobson, a business mogul and former Mossad agent, and Wallace, a "fixer" for the Conservatives, assert that they were tasked with the unthinkable by a high-ranking member of the Plymouth Brethren Church: to "take out" Justin Trudeau "by any means necessary."

The whole story is an incredibly fascinating and horrifying tale of political intrigue, greasy money-handling, and religious evangelism, somewhere between Tom Clancy and Dan Brown — and yet all too real. It seems there is very much an active movement afoot to have Justin Trudeau be Canada's own JFK. Just like the Donald's calls to "hang Mike Pence," it certainly appears that Stephen Harper's I.D.U. inner circle are hell-bent on carrying out someone's wishes to "hang Justin Trudeau."

Now, one might think that something so astonishing involving the leader of a G7 country (especially one who is equally as much an internationally-renowned celebrity as he is statesman) would be front-page news all across said G7 country, right?

But this is Canada. The Peyton Place of the G7. Just like the "friendly sausage maker" who attacked Rideau Cottage and whose violent assault upon the prime minister's domicile was ignored; and the "hard-luck roughnecks" at the United We Roll dry-run event getting pep talks from the then-opposition leader, the current frontrunner to lead the second-largest party in Parliament, and a Nazi camgirl who received 25,000 votes for mayor of Canada's largest metropolis (a strong bronze-medal finish), were ignored; and the myriad other threats to, and now attempts on, the prime minister's life and that of his young family, including several being posted on the official social media pages of the Conservative Party itself, continue to be ignored... well, guess what: the #cdnmediafailed yet again, because other than the indie outfits, this, too, is being ignored.

The Road Not Taken

Now, I'm not sure what needs to be done to get this out there, or to break the disturbing and shameful omertà of the broken establishment-media cabal in Canada that functions like a dime-store equivalent to Fox News, but something needs to be done, because this is simply untenable. I'm not about to sit around and let another Oswald incident claim yet another progressive leader in his, well, prime. I can only do so much from my corner of the Internet. But I have a voice and I'm going to use it. I'm not sure who will read this blog entry, but if they do, I hope they'll use their voice too. That they'll "do their own research," and not in the way that the antivaxers and conspiracy theorists emboldened by the likes of Scheer and Poilievre and amplified on right-wing hate sites (like... the Conservative Party's official Facebook account) are wont to do.

Follow @KlondikePapers on Twitter (and the hashtag #KlondikePapers). Amplify independent progressive voices, and contact the legacy scribes to push them to "show some grit," as reporter Sean O'Shea encouraged his colleagues to do after he was given the bum's rush by Doug Ford and his bums. Tell the Star and CBC that you want to see an in-depth report on the Klondike Papers, the Plymouth Brethren Church, and the International Democrat Union, and all the connections to "mainstream" Conservatism in Canada and throughout the world. Tell them that as journalists you are calling on them to speak truth to power, the real power-brokers behind the scenes, and not just focus all their attention on one party. Appeal to their selfish nature if you must: tell them that this is the story that could make careers, that if they really aspire to be Canada's version of Woodward and Bernstein, there's a perfect opportunity — and it could save lives in the process.

To paraphrase from Liz Cheney, on the opening night of what could be this summer's biggest blockbuster (that doesn't have Tom Cruise in the cast): There will come a time when Justin Trudeau is gone. But for all those who choose not to do the right thing now, their dishonor will remain.

Don't settle for less, and don't think "it can't happen here."

Because it can, and if nothing is done to nip this movement in the bud, it will.