Elbows Up: Massive Land Transfers to Indigenous On Horizon?

There was a time when the great unwashed loved pro wrestling for its outlandish plot lines, cartoon characters and political incorrectness. It stood against the sober, restricted norms of society. But the collapse of public trust after Covid has changed the scenario. General society is now one big wrestling scam with no one believing the plot lines. Instead they revel in heel turns, outlandish characters and fake blood. Authenticity is dead.

As an example, take Elbows Up. Not sure that when Team Carney coined his Elbows Up narrative it also meant no bending of the elbows for bourbon, Napa Valley cabs or Oregon pinot noirs. But that’s the byproduct of Canada’s latest fainting spell. On the heels of Covid 19 crisis and unmarked Rez graves, the fatwa by Canada’s well-meaning on some of its favourite U.S. tipples is another group psychosis.

The disappearance of U.S. liquor and wine from Canadian stores (outside Alberta) has dovetailed with the self-imposed “Hell No, We Won’t Go” travel ban on the US of A. It’s meant as a stinging rebuke of Donald Trump. AKA Beelzebub. Many otherwise sane people sincerely believe their abstemious stance on California chardonnay and Kentucky bourbon will bring Orange Man Bad to his pudgy knees. 

Or that forgoing your camping spot in the American South this winter will collapse Trump’s new economic model. Erstwhile Conservative premier Doug Ford of Ontario— who should know better— has boiled over in rage: "Sorry, I'm getting a little passionate today about this, because that guy drives me crazy down south, I'll tell ya.” 

The thought that Trump is attacking the Boomer Wives of Toronto obsesses them. It’s a notion common only to elitist Canadians. Nary a day goes by without a friend or neighbour telling us with a sigh how we must set an example for the world against Trump by joining China as the only other nation to employ counter tariffs om America. 

They’ve created a Rod Serling scenario that, should they go south of the 49th parallel, they’ll have their phone confiscated, their purses turned inside out and maybe be forced to spend a night in a cold jail cell with Ghislaine Maxwell. 

There is a naive sincerity to all this that harkens back to previous hysterias that gripped Canada’s ruling class.(Remember taking the vaccine because otherwise you’re killing grannies?) Hypnosis works. Once the influencers on Team Carney realized the benefits of amygdala flooding and neurobiological hijacking— creating fight-or-flight response— in the middle class… well, they kept pushing that button. 

Properly employed, bypassing the prefrontal cortex (which works in the rational part of voters’ brains) promotes knee-jerk reactions. So Mike Myers in a Team Canada sweater = forget everything the Liberals mismanaged for a decade under Skippy the postmodern PM. Now, feed those same people another. Say, Trump tariffs = ignore that the BC Supreme Court just declared huge swaths of the land in the province not covered by treaty belong to the indigenous communities.

Among those properties is the Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, B.C.. How slick is that? A government that ran on protecting Boomers’ primary residence cashboxes has now managed to put the entire notion of fee simple home ownership at risk.

As blogger Liam Harlow writes, “Indigenous people will now have an unprecedented, parallel title to private property in that area, a legal first of its kind in a court declaration. This title is declared a ‘prior and senior right to land,’ implying a stronger claim, with the court fundamentally asking "what remains of fee simple title after Aboriginal title is recognized in the same lands?”

It doesn’t stop there. Under UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) the UN will hold any properties acquired "in trust" for all “aboriginals” as they bicker among themselves for supremacy. Whether Canada’s natives will actually get the land, they will have served as a convenient vehicle for the progressive Left to expand its jurisdiction.

The glass half full holds that Canada’s politicians negotiate a fee with the new owners to stay on these properties. (Good luck getting a mortgage with the Haida Gwai as co-owners on title.) The glass half empty is your equity goes bye-bye. 

The decision shocked many earnest Elbows Up types who had no idea their elected government had fumbled the ball this way. As we wrote last week this is the culmination of decades of Liberal acquiescence on the Indigenous file, incompetence highlighted by Trudeau’s pandering visit to a graveyard that contained no murdered babies. Or his refusal to re-open the main rail lines in 2020 when natives blocked the CP tracks.

But when you’re busy banning Paso Robles merlots from Canada or refusing to cross the U.S. border to protect the dairy cartel there’s not much room in your prefrontal cortex for legal wrasslin’ at the UN. Or noticing that the Saugeen nation is claiming title to Sauble Beach, Ontario, lakefront. Or that China has put 75 percent tariffs oil Canadian canola, a huge part ion the Western economy in Canada.

While politicians can at least be excused for burying these stories in their self interest, what to make of the bought/ paid for media that supposed to keep Canadians apprised? As always they are blissfully distracted by their pet causes.

Here’s American writer/ critic Mike Doran on today’s journalists: "The press has always been left wing, but it used to be an independent center of power, full of very, very talented, educated, and experienced people who knew a lot about how the world worked, and they had their own independent base of authority. 

“There was a kind of independent audit of politics that was conducted by the newspapers, and by the intellectual world. That is gone. The internet destroyed it by destroying the economic basis for this independent sort of journalism.” In short, media is self-censoring at just the moment the government is pumping out new heavy-handed censorship plans under the guise of “free speech”. 

With that we’re going to re-watch the tape of WWE Summer Slam to get some reality in our diet.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.