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Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Jeffrey Bernstein Ph.d
Tarik Cyril Amar
Moussa Ibrahim
Penny S. Tee
Muhannad Ayyash
John Nosta
Rachel Marsden
Andrew Silow-Carroll
The Hub is getting increasingly desperate to boost the flagging Cons
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. Photo from Flickr.
Pity the poor Hub. Mere weeks ago, it appeared that the Conservative Party it cheers on so ardently would cruise to victory in the coming federal election. Canadians had tired of Justin Trudeau after nine years as prime minister and new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre had rocketed up the polls by promising to defund the CBC and cancel the subsidies our news media have been collecting for the past five years. But then Trudeau resigned and was replaced by the more cerebral Mark Carney, whose acumen puts career politician Poilievre to shame. Donald Trump then slapped massive tariffs on Canadian products, sparking a trade war that has brought us together like seldom before. Given this newfound spirit of nationalism, axing the CBC is about the last thing voters want to sign off on. Worst of all, Poilievre’s right-wing policies hew a bit too closely to Trump’s and he rightly suffers from guilt by association.
This is thus shaping up as a one-issue election, rendering moot much of the groundwork laid by The Hub, which was founded four years ago by two faculty members of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The school was controversially named after Barrick Gold founder Peter Munk, who actively promoted far-right policies including environmental de-regulation, in exchange for a $6.4 million donation in 1997. Munk gave it another $5 million in 2006 and $35 million more in 2014, which sparked controversy not only for the $16 million tax credit it somehow returned him, but also for its secret provision that the Munk School take advice from Barrick’s advisory board, which then included former US President George H. Bush and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. The Canadian Foreign Policy Institute has argued that Munk’s donations resulted in the school being “shaped in his hard right image.”
The Munk School has become highly influential with its vast resources, sponsoring an eight-month Munk Fellowship in Global Journalism for 20 applicants........
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