Help Me: How Carney Upstaged Joni Mitchell's Big Night

“You like pretty men to tell you all those pretty, lies pretty lies. When you gonna realize they're only pretty lies.” Joni Mitchell, Last Time I Saw Richard

It was a day we had hoped would never come. Joni Mitchell, one of the great creative artists anywhere the past three generations, used as a prop by the grasping Liberal party. As Joni might have said, “It's a shame, it’s a shame, it's a crying shame.” 

From her earliest appearances in black-and-white 1960s CBC films to today she has taken the genre of singer/composer. and made it an art form. Ladies of The Canyon. Blue. For The Roses. Court and Spark. Hejira. Mingus. The output is prodigious. And it still sounds fresh today. 

It’s hard to precisely quantify her originality, but almost every female singer/songwriter/artist owes her a debt for breaking through the inanity of Top 40 records to create the album form. Yes, The Beatles were creative, but their peak lasted less than a decade. From her beginning in Fort McLeod Alberta, Joni has made original music and painting for over a half century. 

The money-making machine known as Taylor Swift is the latest woman to till the ground that Joni opened up— with a fraction of the talent. Fifty years from now Joni will still be mentioned. Taylor will be wallpaper. We can still remember first hearing her album Blue when travelling in Algeria in 1974. [Our poem about that night is in our new book In Other Words.]

For much of her early work Joni was involved with 60s U.S. politics, the energy of the times in Nixon’s America. Ohio, Big Yellow Taxi and They Paved Paradise are samples of the material. But at some point she veered away to construct her own art, incorporating jazz and painting into something totally unique. Unlike Carney, who clung to her Suinday, she was the definition of a free spirit, often imitated but never duplicated.

So it was with utter chagrin that we saw this towering figure used as a prop by the cynical governing party of Canada, a background figure to legitimize Mark Carney at the Junos. Ostensibly lured into this trap to be rightly honoured for her career, she— seated next to the Elbows Up man—  was an adjunct to Carney’s drive to win by-elections and gain a majority in the Commons. 

Hosted by a predictably they/ them comedian, the current edition of Juno DEI darlings wobbled and wailed with throat singers and pretentious Gen X mannequins. But Joni sat placidly among the opportunists such as Carney kept inserting his smug countenance into the shot. When brought on stage by Carney Joni politely complimented him. Then she supplied a pro-forma-left Liberal excoriation of Trump’s America and praise for a Canada that disappeared with Justin Trudeau’s daddy. 

That brought out critics @frankgrimes_jr “Man who hasn't lived in Canada in over a decade presents woman who doesn't live in Canada an award, woman criticizes the United States, the country she chooses to live in instead of Canada, and praises the man who left Canada to make more money internationally.”

All true.

And avoidable for the 82-year-old who nearly died in 2015 from a brain aneurysm. She doesn’t need this manipulation or criticism at this stage in her life. But there you have Canada in 2026 where everything is now a Liberal party infomercial. Hey, what’s Mike Myers doing? Get the old lady Joni up there to say nice things about a guy who talks of partnering with there thugs in China. 

If that didn’t cause despair this past weekend the public self destruction of Canada’s third used-to-be major party completed the sordid portrait of a nation coming unglued. Already video clips of the NDP’s coronation of radical Avi Lewis are flooding social media internationally. Here’s just one of the struggle-session comrades engaging with someone who may or may not be a fake.

And here is a selection of the Pokemon Equity cards the delegates are trading in hopes of finding a socialist paradise. With a bottle-blond Chair-thingy sporting a Hitler hair style and lineups of ultra-empathetic delegates crying about being passed in the speakers’ line, the NDP meltdown was a humourless testament to self indulgence, not a policy proposition for Canada. In case the people who popularized safe spaces weren’t safe enough, the organizers had a food court of quiet rooms for those overwhelmed by life. 

Will anyone in Canada suggest, “Hey, this is what the country really needs”? No. When the very white man Lewis vowed to assist the election of Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi, Nenshi couldn’t get away fast enough from the Fellini parade of  dysphorics and deadbeats.

The source of all their anxiety was not how Carney was shoe-horned into office but that fellow delegates are talking too fast for the translation software. Into this Oompa-Loompa Land delegates paused to thank the man who accelerated the NDP slide to oblivion. Elected as a “visible minority” Jagmeet Singh’s choice only highlighted that many of the new citizens of Canada hate each other from grudges going back to the old world. 

When Jagmmet’s work was done a party that held official opposition status as recently as 2015 was reduced to just six seats and dropping. But he was empathetic and, for this party, that’s enough. Provinces voting to separate? Pshaw.

Which leads us to the 2025 love note delivered by singer Jann Arden to her fellow Albertans considering getting a better deal outside Confederation. “"Hey, Alberta. Hey, you bunch of fu-king separatist wackos…” It doesn’t get more conciliatory than that. The woman who is known for the song Insensitive then orders Albertans to perform unspeakable sexual acts with a side helping of vulgarity. 

In an earlier Canada it would have bee a career killer. But in Carney’s Canada— where trans is supreme— it’s just marking time till the nations of the world pick off a bankrupt Canada like a rummage table.  

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 2025 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 Top 20 greatest professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1770415300?linkCode=gs2&tag=uuid0a1-20 His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700