Jagmeet Singh denies relation to Eugenics Wars mastermind Khan Noonien Singh

New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh says he is in no way related to and has never met Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically engineered augments who attempted to dominate the planet in the 1990s, sparking the Third World War.

“I don’t know where that rumour started, but it’s total B.S.,” Singh said Tuesday while casually bench-pressing a school bus during a campaign stop in suburban Toronto. “The NDP doesn’t stand for war, and while we opposed the forced exile of these people on the Botany Bay as a cruel and unusual punishment, we find the concept of eugenics abhorrent.”

Mark Carney proposes “electoral easing” through printing of additional ballots

Liberal Leader Mark Carney says he has a solution to Canada’s democracy crisis: a process known as “electoral easing” that involves purchasing additional ballots from Elections Canada, pushing up their prices and lowering their yields. Doing so, he argues, will increase the supply of democracy in the electoral system and spur voters to show up to the polls and cast ballots.

“Our turnout rates continue to stagnate, and we need to stimulate the electorate,” he said at a campaign stop on Tuesday. “This is a responsible, calculated measure that will get democracy moving again while keeping vote inflation under control.”

Other parties didn’t hesitate to condemn the move as election interference, asking where the ballots would be stored and who would fill them out.

Carney promised all that information would be disclosed within 120 days.

Pierre Poilievre announces the Great Canadian Baking Show will be exempt from CBC defunding

Though he insists he is not softening his tone on defunding the CBC and its waste of a billion dollars of taxpayer money a year, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre clarified Tuesday he would protect taxpayer funding for the Great Canadian Baking Show.

“The CBC is a government-controlled radical leftist Liberal extreme woke communist propaganda outlet that needs to be eliminated once and for all, but Alan and Ann are just so adorable and I couldn’t possibly do that to them and their wonderful contestants,” Poilievre said. “A Conservative government would protect Radio-Canada and all other French-language cultural funding programs as critical to Quebec culture, and the Great Canadian Baking Show because it’s just an absolute gem.”

It’s unclear if the show would have to move to a different network, be available only online or if CBC Television stations would be kept operational solely for the purpose of broadcasting the eight hours a year produced by this show, plus the hour-long holiday special.

Bell begins dropping hints that CTV Montreal should move out of its parent company’s spare room

Bell Canada is making increasingly strong suggestions that CTV Montreal should move out of the Bell campus on Nuns’ Island, where it has been housed since a flood at its studio in August.

“We’re obviously prepared to help out in an emergency, no questions asked,” said Bell facilities director Jean-Sébastien Canoulart. “But we think it’s time for CTV Montreal to spread its wings and gain some independence again.”

CTV Montreal insists it’s not trying to just mooch off of free rent, and is contributing to the Bell campus’s upkeep, including taking out the garbage and doing the dishes. It notes that it’s doing way more than sister stations Noovo and RDS who also had to move into their parent company’s spare room.

Nevertheless, it says it totally plans to move out once it has some things taken care of, like the federal election. And maybe the municipal election this fall. And the provincial election next year.

Global News proposes to host 343 election debates for $102.9 million

Global News, owned by the cash-strapped Corus media company, says it is prepared to host 343 federal election debates — one for each riding — if the candidates agree to pay $75,000 each to participate.

The amount is the same TVA had requested from each of the candidates to hold a leaders debate that was ultimately cancelled after the Liberal Party pulled out.

Corus estimates each riding would have four major-party candidates on average, but opened the door to allowing independent and fringe-party candidates to participate if they are willing to pony up the cash.

Global’s chief political correspondent David Akin would personally host all 343 debates. He calculates that if they begin tomorrow, and last an hour and a half each, he would have just enough time to complete them all before voting day.

Police investigating if sudden increase in plane crashes is related to three-season Mayday renewal

The RCMP and other international police forces say they are looking into a link between a sudden increase in incidents of plane crashes, near-misses or other aircraft incidents and a recent announcement that the air crash investigation documentary show Mayday will be renewed for another three seasons.

“We’re not accusing anyone of anything, but we have some questions about some suspicious activity,” said RCMP spokesperson Foo Ladiue.

For example, a casting call for actors to play pilots was posted in late January, saying they should have passable American accents and be willing to hang upside down during some scenes. Weeks later, when Delta Connection Flight 4819 crash landed at Toronto’s Pearson Airport, a camera crew was spotted near the end of the runway that had links to Mayday producer Cineflix.

Then, a producer based in Busan, South Korea, was arrested at the local airport with matches and accelerant, and a search of their web browsing history discovered he searched “Airbus A321 fire tail consequences” a day before an incident involving an Air Busan flight.

Neither incident resulted in any fatalities.

“It’s ridiculous to suggest that we had anything to do with that rolled-over Delta plane, that tail fire in Korea or the miraculous no-engine landing in Kelowna on April 2,” said Mayday executive producer Charles Pêché, before asking if this interview could be embargoed until April 3. “We obviously wish for the safest skies and have no desire to see any risk of life, even if telling the story about it later might make us millions of dollars.”

He said producers approach their stories with the utmost care and wait at least 30 minutes after any plane crash before approaching pilots with consent forms for on-camera interviews.

Justin Trudeau to declare martial law any day now

You might think his choice to resign as prime minister, give up his seat in the House of Commons and leave politics means his reign of terror is over, but it’s all a smokescreen and a secret plan to declare martial law, cancel elections and enslave Canadians is still in the works, insists a leading Conservative political analyst on TikTok.

“I called it months ago, and it’s obviously going to happen,” said Andrew Gertson, who posts under the handle @ProHealthFoodSecrets. “People think getting his puppet Mark Carney to call an election means an election is going to happen, but they’re going to manufacture a crisis and implement the emergencies act that will suspend the vote and require everyone get another vaccine injection. Why isn’t anyone talking about this?”

The latest proof of this plan is polls showing the Liberal Party gaining support among the electorate. “The pollsters were all bought off so they would show a Liberal surge, and we know it’s fake because no one I follow has said they’re voting Liberal,” Gertson explained.

Here’s how it will work: On April 28, just before the vote, and after orchestrating some urgent crisis with the Trump administration, Trudeau and Carney will walk to Rideau Hall and order the governor general to cancel the election. She will do that and reinstall Trudeau as prime minister, citing the need for stable leadership. Once that happens, preinstalled strike forces will take over control of provincial governments, critical infrastructure and media outlets across the country. Of course I’m joking about that last part because Trudeau already controls the media.

Once control has been assumed, there will be another fake pandemic, either a flare-up of COVID or some new manufactured virus, and more vaccines will be made mandatory, vaccines conveniently endorsed by Brookfield and the WEF globalists.

There is some debate whether Trudeau’s martial law will only last a year, which Gertson heard is how long he can legally assume full government control without an election, or if it will be indefinite.

It doesn’t matter, though. The United States will step in and restore freedom to Canada, by force if necessary. And once we’re the 51st state we’ll get to watch Hulu.

Confused Bloc Québécois runs candidate in Regina-Qu’Appelle riding

A man who has become the Bloc Québécois’s only candidate outside of Quebec says he will remain in the race and sees a realistic chance of turning part of the Saskatchewan capital a light blue on election night.

Brandon Souris, 28, says he filed the required legal paperwork to become a candidate, and as the only person seeking the Bloc nomination in the Regina-Qu’Appelle riding he was automatically acclaimed.

“I believe in the Bloc’s values,” Souris said in an interview conducted entirely in French. “I want massive transfers of money and power to Quebec, to protect Quebec culture and prevent it from being overrun by dirty pipelines. And of course I’m for Quebec sovereignty.”

Asked about his candidacy, the Bloc’s official agent said he hadn’t realized Regina-Qu’Appelle wasn’t in Quebec and signed the nomination form. Revoking the candidacy would require too much paperwork, he said, so the party has decided to let it go and see what happens.

CBC launches new “run for Liberal Party” sabbatical program for employees

Responding to recent demand from employees across the country to leave their jobs to enter politics, CBC/Radio-Canada has introduced a new sabbatical program that will allow them to take leaves of absence from their jobs to run for the Liberal Party of Canada or their provincial equivalents.

“This isn’t an endorsement of any political party, it’s simplifying a process that’s already happening so we can more efficiently process all the leave requests that come in just before an election campaign,” said CBC HR specialist Apryl Poisson. “Employees would of course be expected to completely disassociate from the CBC after publicly declaring themselves to be candidates, and if they lose their elections will be welcomed back as insider political analysts.”

Asked if the program could also be used for employees seeking to run for the Conservative Party, Poisson looked confused and stood frozen for about 10 minutes before saying that hypothetical situation had never come up.

AM talk radio broadcasters have had a “run for the Conservative Party” sabbatical program for several years now, citing people like Jamil Jivani and Greg Brady as success stories.

The alternative St. Patrick’s Parade awards

Sunday was the annual St. Patrick’s Parade. While most people stand and watch the fun floats and pipe bands and dance troupes, officials at the reviewing stand near the end of the parade take notes so they can hand out awards later.

That’s great and all, but I don’t care about which is the best media entry (it’s CHOM, they have a live band, though Virgin gets an honourable mention for the Pink Pony Club theme). So here are some alternative awards from the media personalities who walked and waved through downtown:

Continue reading

Michel Mathieu, the radio guy

Michel Mathieu with K103’s transmitter in 2014.

Broadcasting is full of characters, most of whom are in front of a camera or microphone, or maybe in sales. As someone who follows the CRTC closely, I get exposed to more of the boring types, the ones who speak in legalese when they’re submitting filings to the regulator, always polite and formal.

Michel Mathieu was different. For years after everyone had moved to electronic filings, Mathieu was still filing handwritten documents to the CRTC by fax. While the highly-paid consultants were making bank off the major broadcasters, producing flashy extensive reports, Mathieu was working for the little guy, helping campus and community radio stations get on the air and upgrade their facilities.

Even just in the Montreal area, I don’t think I can come up with a complete list of radio stations he has had some hand in. K103 in Kahnawake, the Kanesatake community station at 101.7, CJLO 1690 at Concordia, CJLV 1570 in Laval, CFNJ in St-Gabriel-de-Brandon, CJVD-FM in Vaudreuil, Radio Humsafar 1610, CPAM 1410 AM. He’s consulted for all of them at some point, and more.

He brought the call letters CJMS back to the area, getting a licence for what would then become 1040 AM in St-Constant — it fell into some hot water with the regulator after he sold a controlling stake in the station, and then made the case to the commission that its licence should be pulled, which it eventually was.

His contributions weren’t just on paper. When K103 moved to its new building in 2014, Mathieu set up the broadcasting facilities, including a series of physical relays to switch between microphones, something few others would dare to even try nowadays.

Mathieu was also very vocal about his opinions. He didn’t hold back when he thought other broadcasters weren’t doing what he thought was right. Whether defending his clients or just the broadcasting system as a whole, he repeatedly intervened with the CRTC or just vented to me and others.

We had various discussions over the years about broadcast engineering, about things that could be done to improve the industry. One of the topics I’ve had on the back burner for a while is expanding access to the FM band in large cities by opening up the 76-88 MHz band previously used for VHF television channels, and allowing second-adjacent channels (existing stations have a de facto veto on these channels two spots away from their signals, which is why we don’t have stations at 96.5 or 98.1 in Montreal, for example). He agreed with the ideas and promised to tell me more about ways to reform the band next time we talked.

Unfortunately I won’t get that chance to pick his brain. Michel Mathieu died Feb. 20. He leaves behind various family members, people he worked with, and a legacy of community radio stations he helped get on the air and stay there.

Syd Gaspé, who has spearheaded the return and upgrades to the Kanesatake station, credited Mathieu as a mentor in a Facebook post this week. Mathieu also spoke highly of Gaspé and the work he has done in the Mohawk community.

A memorial for Mathieu will be held Sunday, March 2 at 2 p.m. at 2159 boul. St Martin Est in Laval. His family has invited people in the radio sphere (both professional and ham radio, as he was also a ham operator) to share their stories about him there.

The great Canadian specialty TV shuffle begins, but it’s not going well for you

It’s New Year’s Eve. In a matter of hours, a great realignment takes place as Canadian rights to U.S. specialty TV brands owned by Warner Bros. Discovery change from Bell and Corus to Rogers.

We’ve known about this change for more than six months now, and yet we still have many unanswered questions, including whether you’ll be able to watch HGTV and Food Network content if you’re not a Rogers cable subscriber.

So here’s what we do know:

Continue reading

Hate won’t change people’s politics

This week would be a good one to stop consuming a lot of media.

Like many, I was glued to the internet and TV on Tuesday night to watch the results of the U.S. presidential election. I watched as states that were expected to be easily blue took a while to call, and swing states all turned red. I knew of the effect of the “red mirage” where ballots from larger cities or from mail-ins took longer to count, leaving open the possibility that the races would get closer. But then that didn’t happen, or didn’t happen enough, and eventually the math got to the point where, one after another, those critical states were called and the result of the election could be declared.

Once the suspense was over, I stopped watching TV. On social media, particularly platforms like TikTok, I first saw a lot of videos of people being shocked, or sad, or angry, or happy. Then I started seeing people offering their analysis of why Kamala Harris lost the election.

She wasn’t aggressive enough against the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza. She didn’t do enough to court Jewish voters. She was too tied to the Biden administration. She didn’t spend enough time defending the Biden administration. She was too far to the left, alienating centrist voters. She was too centrist, alienating her base. She wasn’t a good communicator. She focused too much on abortion. Blah, blah, blah. All sorts of theories, very little evidence behind them other than gut feelings.

About the only thing everyone seemed to agree on is that she and her campaign failed. It doesn’t matter if she got 47.5% of votes when the other guy got 50.8% of votes.

In a sense, of course, they’re right. He won. She lost. But what bothers me is that we’re focused on 130,000 votes in Pennsylvania, 80,000 in Michigan and 30,000 in Wisconsin, instead of asking questions about the other 150 million or so votes. We’ve become so consumed by the horse race mentality that we ignore the big picture.

On the day after the election, one common sentiment I saw from people I don’t know is that yes, it is perfectly acceptable to paint more than 70 million Americans as racist, sexist, transphobic, horrible people for voting the way they did. It is perfectly acceptable to hate those people.

And in a free country, you are allowed to dislike people for their political views. You can dismiss them or ignore them or call them names.

But you’re not going to change anyone’s mind by hating them. And you’re not going to win elections if you can’t change minds. And you’re not going to change the world if you can’t win elections.

Continue reading

How your media is changing this fall

Welcome back to the school year. There’s been some changes announced in media locally and nationally. Here’s a snapshot of things that have recently changed or will in the coming weeks and months.

Radio

99.5 is now QUB (kinda)

The station formerly known as WKND has replaced its daytime schedule with content from Quebecor’s QUB Radio, and is airing rock music on evenings and weekends. People who like the WKND format can tune in to the station’s HD Radio sub-channel, which rebroadcasts WKND 91.9 in Quebec City.

The new 98.5

At the same time as 99.5 adds talk radio, the talk leader in the city has a new lineup. Paul Arcand, the most listened-to morning man in the country sometimes, has moved on to other things (though he’s still getting up way early and reading the news) and Patrick Lagacé has been promoted to the morning show, news first announced a year and a half ago. Marie-Ève Tremblay takes over late mornings, and Philippe Cantin (also of La Presse) takes over Lagacé’s old spot on afternoons. While the host chairs have been shuffled, the vibe is the same, with most of the same collaborators, though there is a bit of bad blood.

Lee Haberkorn joins The Beat’s morning show

Suspiciously six months after he left Virgin Radio to spend more time with his family, Lee Haberkorn has joined the morning show at competitor The Beat, with Mark Bergman, Kim Kieran an Claudia Marques. He fills the hole left by the departure of Stuntman Sam in December.

Chantal Desjardins takes a break from CHOM

Though she had been absent for a while, Chantal Desjardins made it official that she was “stepping back” from her role as co-host of CHOM’s morning show as she focuses on building a family. Her second child is on the way.

Tony Marinaro in French

The man once known as Tony in LaSalle has completed his transition to the other language and has relaunched his Forum midday show in French on BPM Sports, 91.9 in Montreal, 100.9 in Quebec City and 96.5 in Gatineau.

TV people on the radio now

In case you missed it in the spring, Frank Cavallaro took over as morning man at Lite 106.7 in Hudson/St-Lazare, filling the job formerly held by Ted Bird, while Mose Persico, formerly of CTV Montreal, started a show on Mike FM 105.1.

Other moves

Changes elsewhere in Canada

TV

The Great Specialty Brand Shift

The announcement from Rogers that it had signed new deals with Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal is going to radically change Canadian specialty channels over the coming months, with some details still unclear due to a legal dispute.

The first impacts have already been felt:

  • Corus, which lost the rights to brands like HGTV and Food Network, has already pulled the plug on the Canadian version of the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).
  • Rogers has rebranded OLN as Bravo, putting its deal with NBCUniversal into place.

In the new year, assuming Corus and Bell don’t succeed in blocking it, Rogers will take over as the Canadian rights holder to HGTV, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Magnolia Network, Discovery Channel, Discovery Science, Animal Planet and related brands. What happens to the Canadian specialty channels with those brands currently is up in the air, though Corus has said it plans to keep its channels running.

UPDATE: Corus has announced it is rebranding Food Network as Flavour Network and HGTV as Home Network as of Dec. 30.

Rogers, meanwhile, has announced that it will launch linear TV channels for HGTV, Food Network, Discovery, Discovery ID and Magnolia in addition to rebranding OLN as Bravo. That leaves Cooking, OWN, Motor Trend, Animal Planet and Discovery Science whose content will only be available online on Citytv+ in Canada.

Cuts at Global News

The loss of Warner/Discovery brands to Rogers was just the latest in a string of bad news facing Corus, which is struggling to stay alive after Shaw was sold (also to Rogers) and it lost millions in regular cross-subsidies. It’s renegotiating debt and a staff rationalization plan that hopes to cut a quarter of positions has meant a series of layoffs at Global News across the country.

The most visible cut is Kim Sullivan, who did weather at 11pm for Montreal and the Maritimes. But the online desks have been slashed and longtime Montreal station manager Karen Macdonald retired in the spring.

Meanwhile, Global Kingston has essentially ceased to be its own station, with 95% of its staff laid off. And Global has decided not to order any more seasons of Big Brother Canada. More than 100 people have been laid off by the company so far.

CTV Montreal backup plan

A water main break near the Jacques-Cartier Bridge flooded the basement of the Bell Media building housing CTV, RDS and Noovo studios, forcing them to move off-site while things are cleaned up and rebuilt. They lost vehicles and camera equipment and access to their studios, so they moved in to Bell’s campus on Nuns’ Island, where they’ve been operating from ever since.

After being able to manage only short pre-recorded newscasts in the days after the flood, CTV Montreal is back to its regular schedule of 5pm, 6pm and 11:30pm newscasts. (Noon newscasts were cancelled in budget cuts in February.)

But the anchors will have an unfamiliar backdrop until they can get back to their usual studio.

Quebecor merges Club Illico and Vrai

Videotron is merging its two streaming services into one — or more accurately folding its nonfiction service Vrai into Club Illico, which will be renamed Illico+. Each service costs $15/month nominally but various discounts are offered for Videotron subscribers. This is mostly a recognition that trying to sell people on two separate subscription services when there are already so many streaming services out there was a losing battle.

The new APTN

APTN has implemented its new two-channel system, replacing the somewhat confusing East/West/North/HD system with APTN and APTN Languages, the latter with at least 100 hours a week of programming in Indigenous languages. The change also comes with a hike of its mandatory per-subscriber fee, to $0.38 per month from $0.35.

Other changes

Print

Saltwire is now Postmedia

My employer has closed a deal to acquire the assets of the bankrupt Saltwire Network for $1 million. The Atlantic Canada print media assets include the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, St. John’s Telegram, PEI Guardian and others. The Telegram has been turned into a print weekly, and it’s still unclear how many of its employees will remain on the job in the long run.

Other changes

Corus’s Slice picks up Canadian rights to The Daily Show

Jon Stewart is coming back to Canadian television.

Corus announced Tuesday morning that its lifestyle and fashion specialty channel Slice will be airing The Daily Show starting Sept. 9, just in time for the 2024 U.S. presidential election and its second presidential debate.

The show will air at 11pm Mondays through Thursdays, and will be available on Corus’s streaming service StackTV.

For the past year, after it stopped being available on Bell Media channels, the Daily Show has only been available here on Paramount+ (plus whatever clips they post on social media).

According to Playback magazine, the show will continue to be available on Paramount+ in September, even though Corus says Slice will be “the exclusive home of the Daily Show in Canada.”

Corus, which will lose the Canadian rights to big U.S. lifestyle brands like HGTV and Food Network to Rogers in January, is scrambling to find new programming to entice Canadians to keep its channels. The Daily Show might be enough to convince people to subscribe to Slice, whose total revenues dropped 10% from 2022 to 2023, according to CRTC data.

Corus could also add The Daily Show to the Global Television schedule if it wanted to, but it really needs people to subscribe or stay subscribed to its specialty channels if it’s going to survive.