CBC shoots itself in the foot twice in one day...

Trouble at the State Broadcaster, Trump's travails, fixing the longest ballot and allergies among the Amish.

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CBC is in the news again for all the wrong reasons.

The Toronto Sun’s Bryan Passifiume has a story on how they spent tens of millions of dollars on pay hikes while crying poor. Meanwhile, at National Post, Adrian Humphreys has a piece about CBC trying to silence one of their own journalists.

Neither story is a good look for Canada’s state broadcaster, but it won’t matter to the new Carney government which has promised them an extra $150 million per year.

No strings attached, just keep the positive Liberal coverage coming.

As Passifiume notes, the raises at CBC come just after they promised to change their outrageous bonus program for executives.

In access-to-information documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the CBC handed out no bonuses in 2024-25, but awarded $37.7 million in wage hikes to 6,295 employees.

That’s an average of $6,000 per employee.

CTF Federal Director Franco Terrazzano described it as “sleight of hand” by the CBC.

“The CBC isn’t saving people money if it’s replacing taxpayer-funded bonuses with higher taxpayer-funded pay raises,” he said, noting the raises more than offset the cost of the eliminated bonuses.

CBC isn’t good at handling money, just spending it.

What’s funny about the other story where we see CBC trying to silence one of their own journalists, Travis Dhanraj, is that the issue was over CBC’s budget. The former host of Canada Tonight with Travis Dhanraj was hauled off air and into a disciplinary meeting over trying to question former CBC President Catherine Tait about potential budget and job cuts.

Those cuts were coming at a time when CBC bonuses for executives were still going out. Dhanraj asked for an interview but was denied. He stated publicly that he had asked and been denied, but would continue to seek answers.

CBC executives didn’t like that, they thought it made “the corporation” look bad.

Listen to the leaked audio here.

It’s crazy to hear CBC executives be squeamish about their budget being discussed because when I googled Mark Carney’s election promise for more CBC funding, all the top stories and videos on this from Google came from CBC sources.

Translation, talk about when CBC is getting more money and promote who is giving us more money. Never talk about potential cuts, especially job cuts while executives are getting bonuses.

Expect to hear more from the Dhanraj files in the future.

Great Canadian books that have been or will be profiled soon on Full Comment.

Making the impossible possible, but at what price…

I’m all in favour of getting a deal with the Americans to lift the tariffs that are damaging our economy and killing jobs in some sectors.

The question is at what price.

As I have written here and here, the idea of a deal without tariffs looked impossible a week ago. The Americans now say it is possible…if we open our economy up to them.

We need to know what that means, we need to define terms.

I’m all in favour of doing away with some of Canada’s protectionist measures both tariff and non-tariff that are based in the 1960s and 1970s nationalistic view of the economy. I think Canadian companies, given the right environment, can compete on the world stage.

But we need to know what is at stake, what is on the table. So far, Carney hasn’t told us.

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We need to fix this long ballot thing...

There are now 138 candidates running in the Battle River – Crowfoot by-election that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is running in. A total of 132 of those candidates are affiliated with a group that calls itself The Longest Ballot Committee.

Elections Canada needs to change this garbage ASAP.

The 91-name ballot presented to voters in the suburban Ottawa riding of Carleton, on Friday, April 18, 2025. Photo by Bryan Passifiume /Toronto Sun

Unfortunately, they can’t do it before the by-election on August 18 because everyone registered so-far is following the existing rules. Under existing rules, they can’t be disqualified because they are pulling a political stunt, or once again targeting the Conservative leader.

In order to change the rules – which is an easier way to do this than legislation – there would still need to be periods of consultation.

As much as some people want this fixed by decree, I don’t think having unelected bureaucrats reporting to a Liberal government, making decisions without any oversight is a good idea.

This needs to be fixed, Elections Canada and the Carney government need to be pressured to fix this as soon as possible, but that won’t be before the by-election.

Of Amish, Hutterites and allergies...

A really interesting piece on how doctors are studying Amish farm families, and other traditional farming communities to find out why they don’t have allergies at the same rate as the general population.

Allergies are of course on the rise, though I think some of it sees some people being overly sensitive. Even taking that into consideration, allergies to pollen, pet dander, peanuts and other common elements is going up in the general population.

But not among the Amish.

A really interesting part to note in the piece is that while the Amish have little in the way of allergies, other traditional farming communities, like the Hutterites have allergies at a higher rate.

The prevalence of allergic sensitization – the development of antibodies to allergens and the first step to developing an allergy – was six times higher in the Hutterites. The researchers first ruled out a genetic cause; in fact, an analysis showed that the Amish and Hutterite children were remarkably similar in their ancestral roots. Instead, the main difference between these two populations seemed to be the amount of exposure as young children to farm animals or barns.

“The Hutterite kids and pregnant moms don’t go into the animal barns. Kids aren’t really exposed to the animal barns until they’re like 12 or so, when they start learning how to do the work on the farm,” Ober said. “The Amish kids are in and out of the cow barns all day long from an early age.”

It’s a longer read, but very interesting.

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