NO MATTER THE WINNER -- MY CANADA IS GONE.

If lucky, we will save the carcass.

I was awake part of the night thinking about how awful this election campaign is. And not just because I am terrified that Mark Carney will win. No — it feels like we’ve crossed a threshold and there is no turning back. Ten years of Trudeau’s division, his utilizing of the culture and woke wars to make us hate each other. Ten years of Conservatives either firing back and keeping the war going or pretending to go along to maintain popularity with a propagandized population. This is the definition of a sick society. As I said, I will vote Conservative but I’m not going to exhale after I do it.

There are virtually no sincere appeals to reuniting the country after the COVID-19 debacle, Freedom Convoy, or any of the other politicized events that encircle our tribes. I’ve told you many stories about this reality.

Dinner parties have become almost impossible to navigate with important topics off-limits. What’s left? Movies, streaming series and sports. In between bursts of conversation there are heavy silences between people who love each other but reside in different conversational realities. This is the fault of pols and media. Full stop.

This clip of Andrew Coyne represents journalistic malpractice but also what many of our “elites” are thinking. They hate ordinary Canadians and populism. They have no clue what many voters are actually upset about. Carney himself said he was returning to Canada to “end populism.”

I just want my country back. Let me tell you a story.

In 1989, I was dispatched to Kuujjuaq, a tiny, freezing and somewhat desolate town in Northern Quebec. Scientists had just published a shocking study showing that Inuit mothers were testing positive for PCBs in their breast milk. How could this be in such a remote, non-industrialized village?

The Inuit mothers had been chosen as a pristine control group to study against PCB presence in mothers residing in Southern Quebec, near industry. The findings were completely unexpected and I was sent to report on them by the great James Cullingham, my boss at As It Happens.

I arrived at the tiny airport with my recording gear and was welcomed by the locals who set me up at a lodge. We couldn’t have been more different but I was treated kindly as someone who’d come from the CBC to help publicize their plight.

How did they become contaminated, way up there? It turns out PCBs travel in the blubber of animals that swim through polluted waters. Seal fat, which was a mainstay of the local diet is riddled with PCB’s dumped into the St. Lawrence hundreds of miles away.

Here is where it gets interesting — a day I will never forget. The local chiefs were meeting to choose a brand new word in Inuktitut to describe what they were dealing with. It seems the concept of PCB contamination was so foreign, they had to add to their lexicon to even discuss it and I was invited to attend.

I felt like an intruder from the rapacious south witnessing a tragedy that we’d inflicted on these sturdy, welcoming people. But they were gracious and open as they struggled to find a solution.

I left feeling grateful to be Canadian; to work at CBC and to have experienced the lives of others who shared this once-great land. I am nostalgic for a Canada, full of good will, even in times of tragedy — that no longer exists.

Meanwhile — the Liberal campaign and its supporters are reduced to looking for MAGA “dog whistles” at Poilievre events while at the same time being outed for “finding” MAGA buttons at a Conservative gathering in Ottawa.

Two Liberal Party staffers attended last week's Canada Strong and Free Networking (CSFN) Conference where they planted buttons that used Trump-style language and highlighted division within the Conservative Party.

The conference, often referred to by its former name, the Manning Conference, is an opportunity for conservative-leaning Canadians to talk about policy proposals and network. It was held at the Westin Hotel in downtown Ottawa.

We aren’t talking about Big Things or Inspiring Things. Or what we share as a people. We have been deceived. Pitted against each other and fleeced of our natural affinity for other Canadians, no matter how different. Canadian voters are victims of a home invasion robbery — perpetrated by legacy media and our gutless political class who play along for what some of them wrongly believe are high-minded reasons.

In the meantime, Mark Carney is clearly fixing to ban X and other websites that threaten his temple of deceit. For this reason alone, he must not win. But we are all losers regardless of the outcome.

This is perhaps the scariest clip of the campaign. They have failed at everything. The economy, COVID-19, retaining a semblance of democracy….but they have successfully brought us to the brink of collapse and separation. And their solution is to not fix it, but prevent us from talking about it.

Stay critical.

Thanks #truthovertribe