Mark Bourrie is a Canadian journalist with an impressive resume. After he earned a BA in history, Ontario universities awarded Bourrie a diploma in public policy and administration, a master’s degree in journalism, a doctorate in Canadian media history, and a law degree.
Bourrie publishes Fair Press, an interesting site for personal opinions about media and current events. I enjoyed the piece about Jesse Brown’s Canadaland. Bourrie mentions other failed attempts at serious media criticism:
- The CBC had tried it, but network TV has cultural, managerial and regulatory constraints that are impossible to overcome.
- The National Post had Warren Kinsella as its media columnist, but that was more of a bad joke and an exercise in payback of real and imagined Prince o’ Darkness enemies than a real effort.
- Simon Houpt did excellent work on that beat at The Globe and Mail, but there’s always an inherent conflict. Anyone on a media beat, working in a media organization, has boundaries that often prevent them from telling the whole story.
Bourrie was an early supporter of Canadaland, as was I. Bourrie subsequently decided that Brown’s Canadaland was unworthy of support, as did I.
This week, The Walrus published a commentary by Mark Bourrie. He says Pierre Poilievre, the “Canada Is Broken” candidate, faces a changed national mood.
Poilievre has taken anger and frustration that should be directed at the chartered banks that earn billions, grocery chains that earn the same, and the rest of the gougers and redirected it at Trudeau, his successor, and at Liberals in general.
Hard-core right wingers in Canada’s regions, unfamiliar with the realities of life in Ontario and Quebec, echo Poilievre’s prattle about “Laurentian elites” as though everyone in Central Canada lives a sheltered life in Walkerville, Rosedale, Rockcliffe, and Westmount. These elites are, in the new Conservative discourse, unfamiliar with hard work and oblivious to the lives of people who, as Poilievre has said, shower after work instead of before.
Change can be mistaken for breakage. Demographics will make Canada a very different place this century, and that change has already started…
The challenge, which is a big one these days, is to separate real problems from hyped ones and fix the things that are broken…
But it’s not the fault of drag queens reading books at some library a thousand miles away, no matter what right-wing media say or the algorithm feeds you. It’s just as hard for a middle-aged government worker or lawyer to find work as it is for a fifty-year-old factory labourer. Myths that “elites” somehow escape discrimination have taken over politics.
…Is Canada broken? Certainly, it’s challenged. Canada was always a hard project. It defied geography. …There’s always been language fault lines, especially between Quebec and the rest of Canada. Each region is different, and our federal state evolved to give very limited powers to the national government. Earlier challenges, like the conscription crises in the world wars, the pain of the Great Depression, and the threats of Quebec separatism, hurt the country, but they did not break it.
Politicians, including Trudeau and Poilievre, have exploited class, gender, and racial cleavages in society. The Conservative leader has exaggerated them in ways that he thinks will help his party.
…The pandemic became political when Poilievre and the Tories opposed financial help for people who’d lost their incomes and then supported the anti-vax movement…
But is Canada really broken, or is it just changing so fast that a large part of the population wants someone to hit the brakes?
…The never-ending bitching and arguing of political partisans and doomsaying academics, business leaders, and media commentators stops the political class and the nation’s people from finding and agreeing on solutions.
In mid-July 2024, the International Monetary Fund predicted that, in 2025, Canada would have the fastest-growing economy of the G7 group of industrialized nations. This fact was reported in the Financial Post, but if anyone read it in the newsroom of its parent company, the right-wing Postmedia newspaper chain, they ignored it in their political coverage. Frank Graves, president of Ekos polling, surveyed Canadians and found a country riddled with distrust fuelled by disinformation. The number of Canadians who thought the economy would be healthy in the medium term had reached an all-time low.
In 2025, the answer to the question “Is Canada broken?” is, frustratingly, “It depends.”
…Poilievre is a pro-American libertarian who moralizes the sufferings of the marginalized, insists the free market has inherent genius, drives wedges between the regions of the country, and exploits class envy.
By the early winter of 2025, the political gears of the country changed. The political fight in Canada quickly became about who was best to face the external threat and whose ideas were best to help Canadian families and businesses at a time of real danger…
Poilievre Finally Gets the Election He’s Been Dying For. But Is It Too Late?
Categories: Conservatives (CPC), Journalism
in-sights.ca 
Is Canada broken, you say?
In June the “Eye” suffered a heart attack, phoned 911 at 11 am and by 6 pm the same day I was enjoying a dinner at a regional hospital after 3 stents were emplaced. Later I had about 16 weeks of cardio rehab.
Compare to the USA where over 400,000 people die every year due to not being able to afford to have health care insurance and just recently a hospital in the USA allowed a woman to belled out in a parking lot for fear of criminal charges.
I would say the USA is badly broken and Canada is not!
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Poilievre doesn’t know the difference between wanton demolition and thoughtful deconstruction. Likely because he’s never built anything worthwhile with his own knowledge in the first instance.
The demolition of democracy and decency (how else does one describe armed and hooded thugs kidnapping people off the streets with no due process) currently underway in the US is an example of what happens if a wrecker is elected when a builder is required.
We shouldn’t make the same mistake.
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Mr. Edwardson.
Is it time to promote US Secretary of State Mario Rubio as another stellar political example of ideologues who learned nothing from WW2?
https://crooksandliars.com/2025/03/marco-rubio-people-deemed-unproductive
“Marco Rubio: People Deemed ‘Unproductive’ Sent To Prison”
“Rubio’s words are straight out of Nazi Germany.”
“Here’s a tweet from the Auschwitz Museum explaining how the Nazis handled “unproductive” people”
“During selections of deported Jews, SS doctors sent to gas chambers everyone who in their opinion was unfit to work: babies and children (up to certain age or height), pregnant women, older people as well as people with visible disabilities or who simply looked weak & sick.”
Not to be left at a disadvantage – Florida dials back the clock.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/03/25/florida-child-labor-law-bill-2025/82657143007/
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and state legislatures have been working to fill a void left behind in the wake of the state penalizing employers who hired undocumented workers. A new bill, SB 918, shows that child labor is their answer.”
“Yes, we had people that left because of those rules, but you’ve also been able to hire other people,” DeSantis said during a panel discussion last week. “And what’s wrong with expecting our young people to be working part-time now? I mean, that’s how it used to be when I was growing up.”
“Now, Florida lawmakers will discuss yet another bill, which is titled Employment of Minors and aimed at rolling back child labor laws in the Sunshine State.”
Yessir, that Donald Trump fella, he surrounds himself with only The Best People. No prejudice in him at all!
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I suppose expecting the Secretary of State to be a statesman of the highest order was always going to end in disappointment. In keeping with the rest of this administration’s cabinet nominations, the people got one of the highest odour. It’s as if the very purpose of each and every cabinet pick was to install the least qualified but most cruel and odious of the obsequious pool available.
Everywhere we look, in every department under the thumb of Trump, it resembles a pantry being attacked by a colony of rats. They’re into the flour one day, the sugar the next, now the cereal, they’ve chewed through all the supposedly secure containers and they’ve even managed to corner and consume the cat we thought would keep them at bay or at least slow them down. Perhaps most distressing is that when contacted, the pest exterminator revealed she herself is a rat, and proud of it.
But as bad as it is now, it’s going to get much worse before something causes a cure. History tells us that, and also that we aren’t going to enjoy that “something”.
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Associated Press is reporting on one of Trump’s odious appointees:
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Wasting public money probably does not set her apart from most other public officials, but her penchant for cruelty surely does. Whether it’s shooting her pet dog to death, hunting animals purely for sport, or kidnapping people and sending them to an inhumane detention camp (from which they may never emerge) in a foreign country without any due process, this skank deserves our contempt. And using them (many of whom are undoubtedly innocent) as a photo op to show off her handiwork and her $50,000 Rolex confirms her status.
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/shows/top-stories/blog/rcna198394
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Mr. Farrell,
Remember the joys of high school and adolescent psychology?
“You afraid of me? You afraid to prove you’re a man? You’re not Chicken, are you?”
Wherever the neighbourhood, whatever the grade, there was a malevolent goon looking to fight someone smaller. Before an audience. This was his Prove Your Manhood game. A zero-sum image game which much later was commericalized to become the gladiatorial booze and circuses, WWE, A drawn out spectacle requiring an audience warm up.
With microphone in hand, each combatant gets his slot to boast about his brilliance, greatness, and shout insults, trying to intimidate and provoke his opponent. What for? To ensure the crowd gets what it paid big money to feel – an adrenaline rush.
Pavlov’s dogs, 101.
The bout begun, thankful masses provide thunderous applause in a perfect regression – back to the schoolyard shouting, Fight! Fight! Fight!
Donald Trump? His image mentor was similarly combative, Roy Cohn,
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/19/roy-cohn-donald-trump-documentary-228144/
“Roy Cohn, who has been described by people who knew him as “a snake,” “a scoundrel” and “a new strain of son of a bitch,” is the subject of a new documentary out this week from producer and director Matt Tyrnauer. It’s an occasion to once again look at Cohn and ask how much of him and his “savage,” “abrasive” and “amoral” behavior is visible in the behavior of the current president. Trump, as has been well-established, learned so much from the truculent, unrepentant Cohn about how to get what he wants, and he pines for Cohn and his notorious capabilities still. Trump, after all, reportedly has said so himself, and it’s now the name of this film: “Where’s My Roy Cohn?”
“What Cohn could, and did, get away with was the very engine of his existence. The infamous chief counsel for the red-baiting, Joseph McCarthy-chaired Senate subcommittee in the 1950s, Cohn was indicted four times from the mid-’60s to the early ’70s—for stock-swindling and obstructing justice and perjury and bribery and conspiracy and extortion and blackmail and filing false reports. And three times he was acquitted—the fourth ended in a mistrial—giving him a kind of sneering, sinister sheen of invulnerability. Cohn, Tyrnauer’s work reaffirms, took his sanction-skirting capers and twisted them into a sort of suit of armor. “
Is it still a surprise when twenty-first century DJT must – never back down, never admit error or defeat, always appear on top of everything?
The importance of masculine image? Even after a failed assassination attempt Trump shook his fist in defiance and screamed, Fight! Fight! Fight! Meaning? Mere bullets couldn’t bring down God’s Chosen One. A Hero defied death and won!
Those multiple felony convictions which should have made MAGA voters hesitate? Fake jurisprudence!
Who did Trump appoint Education Secretary?
Linda McMahon. Who?
“Vincent Kennedy McMahon is an American businessman and former professional wrestling promoter. McMahon, along with his later-estranged wife Linda, is a co-founder of the modern WWE, the world’s largest professional wrestling promotion.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mcmahon-trump-dead-serious-that-he-wants-me-to-fire-myself/ar-AA1BQUay?ocid=BingNewsSerp
“Education Secretary Linda McMahon said President Trump is “dead serious” about wanting her to dismantle the department and put herself out of a job in the administration.”
“When he asked me to serve as the secretary of Education I knew exactly what his mandate was, which is to close the Department of Education,” McMahon said during a Thursday interview on WABC 770 AM’s “Cats & Cosby.”
McMahon nodded to Trump’s comment at the White House last month when he noted he had told her, “I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job.”
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/media/federal-prosecutors-drop-criminal-probe-vince-mcmahon/index.html
“Federal prosecutors have ended their criminal investigation into whether former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO and chairman Vince McMahon tried to cover up allegations of sexual misconduct with multiple former employees, his lawyer said Tuesday.”
“In 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported McMahon had paid more than $12 million to four women formerly employed by WWE over 16 years to silence claims of sexual misconduct. This included one former WWE wrestler who claimed McMahon had coerced her into performing oral sex, only to demote and eventually opt to not renew her contract after she declined subsequent sexual advances.”
MAGA!
So much winning!
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Canada is not unique with it’s issues.
The world is struggling with the after effects of covid, and the present effects of climate change with its disruptive weather and the mass movement of populations, forest fire and more.
Sadly there are many politicians will to use these issues as a wedge to gain influence and power.
When these politicians do succeed with these dividing tactics and are elected they then change course and tell everyone that they have never had it so good.
TB
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“I would say the USA is badly broken and Canada is not!”
Agreed.
Consider newly minted, “Canada Is Great!” Uber Patriot Mr. Poilievre’s latest saturation ad campaign and his Vision of Canada.
And it’s um, Promise.
“That anyone from anywhere can do anything—That hard work gets you a great life, in a beautiful house, on a safe street, wrapped in the protective arms of a solid border, defended by brave soldiers under our proud flag; To preserve that flag and its promise we must work together, fight together and win together.” (Quick! Show The Flag!)
“That is what it means to put Canada First!” (wild applause off camera)
Rather than list how much craziness is embedded in his spiel let me offer the following..
https://www.powerthesaurus.org/crazy_nonsense/synonyms
For starters who but vote-seeking politicians could state, let alone expect adults to believe, that anyone from anywhere can do anything? Know anyone like that? Ever?
Or are the latest Tory come-ons just imported Republican Party Talking Points delivered at first by a guy in a business suit, who stops shouting then changes clothes to appear in a working class Tee-shirt in front of a waving flag?
Where did this Rugged Individual nonsense originate? Horatio Alger. Mussolini, Josip Stalin. Mao Tse Tung..
It’s an “Arbeit Macht Frei” appeal minus Goebbels and Himmler.
And of course there ever-positive Donald Trump.
In the Globe and Mail: “Trump says tariffs will make America so rich, ‘you won’t know where to spend it’”
No. Canada isn’t broken. Twenty first century Politics certainly are.
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