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First published at True North on February 11, 2021.

The Canadian home shopping network Today’s Shopping Choice (TSC) has yanked MyPillow products from its catalogue, according to company CEO Mike Lindell.

In an interview on True North’s The Andrew Lawton Show, Lindell said he has always had a “great relationship” with the network, formally called The Shopping Channel, but accused it of succumbing to “cancel culture” by severing ties with his Minnesota-based pillow company.

TSC has joined what Lindell says is a “laundry list” of retail brands no longer carrying his products, which include pillows, mattress toppers, towels and bedsheets.

“We lost probably fourteen box stores, (Today’s Shopping Choice) in Canada, which I’ve got a really great relationship with,” Lindell said. “They did that. I mean, I couldn’t believe it. I’m going, ‘They’re not even in the United States.’”

A search for “MyPillow” on TSC’s website yields only results for competitor products, and pages for MyPillow products still listed in Google’s search results direct users to empty pages.

In recent weeks, MyPillow has faced growing backlash as a result of Lindell’s support for former US president Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rife with fraud. Last week, Lindell released a documentary titled “Absolute Proof,” which he claims lays out definitive support for the claims, which have not been proven in court.

Twitter suspended Lindell’s account, and later suspended the MyPillow account as well after Lindell sent a tweet from it.

Despite the controversy, Lindell said he is not backing down, noting the company is still expanding even with the retail challenges.

“Is it affecting my business? I have a laundry list of box stores where they attack them and they succumb to the cancer culture. They’re trying to cancel me out,” said Lindell. “We’re busier now than we’ve ever been. Ever. People are getting behind us, and we’ve hired 150 more people in two weeks. MyPillow is at an all-time high.”

Today’s Shopping Choice is owned by Rogers, which did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Lindell, a recovering drug and alcohol addict, founded MyPillow in 2009 after inventing the company’s flagship pillow design. The company has sold 41 million units to date, thanks in part to a marketing campaign that has heavily targeted talk radio and cable news stations.

First published at True North on January 28, 2021.

A panel on opening up international travel closed its doors to media and the public.

The Davos Agenda, a virtual summit hosted by the World Economic Forum to launch the global organization’s Great Reset Initiative, only made a portion of its Restoring Cross-Border Mobility panel publicly viewable.

Canadian Health Minister Patty Hajdu was among the panelists, alongside the director-general of the Airports Council International, the president of JetBlue and Commons Project CEO Paul Meyer.

The Commons Project is the non-profit behind CommonPass, an app that lets travellers communicate health details like COVID-19 test results and vaccination status with airlines and governments to satisfy travel requirements.

A spokesperson for Hajdu declined to provide a transcript of what Hajdu said in the closed-door session, and did not comment on why Hajdu felt it was appropriate to participate in it.

“The programme and format for this event was (sic) determined by the World Economic Forum,” said Cole Davidson, Hajdu’s press secretary and social media advisor. “I would recommend reaching out to them for further information.”

During the public portion of the discussion, Hajdu defended Canada’s “rigorous” travel restrictions, which close Canada’s borders to recreational travellers and require anyone entering the country to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival. All air travellers must also have tested negative for COVID-19.

“The 14-day quarantine is really the only sort of foolproof way to determine whether or not someone actually does have COVID, and we know that the pre-departure testing is a point in time,” she said.

Hajdu said despite some provinces wanting travel restrictions loosened, there are calls to further strengthen restrictions. She acknowledged the earlier remarks about the CommonPass and said the world needs to better work together.

“You’re hearing a lot in terms of digital tools and what that looks like. I would also say we need to collaborate more as a globe to actually combat the epidemic,” she said.

In particular, Hajdu called for “equity” to be front and centre in the response.

“So much of the travel in Canada is actually about family reunification. It’s about people moving around for work, and, you know, we’ve got a large, sort of, group of folks that move for reasons that are not recreational,” Hajdu said. “So I think we have to sort of stay focused on the equity issue and the systems that we design have to be designed through the lens that people from all around the world are going to be able to access this.”

The Davos Agenda concludes Friday. The World Economic Forum plans to have an in-person summit in Singapore in May.

First published at True North on January 27, 2021.

Elections Canada was inundated with media requests, emails and social media engagement after the agency’s Twitter account was retweeted by former president Donald Trump in November, internal documents show.

Emails obtained through access to information show Elections Canada bureaucrats scrambling to respond to media inquiries after the retweet, which two officials called “unfortunate.”

“Yes, this is quite unfortunate and not at all intended,” Chief Electoral Officer Stephane Perrault wrote in response to an email from his counterpart in British Columbia. “Our social media team was simply responding to persistent questions and inaccurate stories about how we use Dominion. We have nothing against Dominion (or tabulation where it is warranted).”

In another email, deputy chief electoral officer Anne Lawson calls the tweet “very unfortunate, to say the least.”

“The only good thing about this: we’ve just been retweeted to 88 (million) followers,” one official wrote.

Included in the documents is a screenshot from an internal Slack messaging group, in which someone reacted to an article about the Trump retweet with a poop emoji, an image depicting a smiling pile of feces.

The catalyst was a tweet from Elections Canada responding to a surge in questions about vote-counting machines made by Dominion, a Canadian company put under the microscope by prominent Republicans following the 2020 presidential election.

“Elections Canada does not use Dominion Voting Systems,” the tweet said. “We use paper ballots counted by hand in front of scrutineers and have never used voting machines or electronic tabulators to count votes in our 100-year history.”

“THIS SAYS IT ALL,” Trump said in his retweet. 

One internal email suggests the initial tweet might not have gone over well among Elections Canada staff.

“Do we know yet who is approving the tweets we are issuing?” wrote one senior director.

“I do not know. This is the same thing that I saw on Facebook which I also reacted to,” her colleague replied.

The response generated was greater than Elections Canada had ever received, even during an election, one staffer noted.

Emails sent to Elections Canada from the general public show a combination of support for the message and criticism for seemingly meddling in a presidential election.

This concern was echoed by an impassioned media request from a Wall Street Journal reporter.

“I need answers immediately about a tweet that Elections Canada issued on Nov 16 about using paper ballots and not using the Dominion Voting System,” the reporter said. “Why did Elections Canada believe it needed to insert itself into a US electoral dispute?”

First published at True North on January 25, 2021.

Canadian deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland and Health Minister Patty Hajdu will be among the world leaders and global elites speaking as the World Economic Forum officially launches its “great reset” this week.

Freeland is scheduled to participate in an “Implementing Stakeholder Capitalism” panel Tuesday evening, which aims to examine “how investors and governments can work together to advance stakeholder capitalism in their region.”

Health Minister Patty Hajdu will be speaking on Thursday afternoon’s “Restoring Cross-Border Mobility” panel, which looks at the “policies, practices and partnerships…needed to reopen borders and enable essential travel in a safe and sustainable way.”

Neither Freeland nor Hajdu responded to a request for comment from True North.

Normally held in the Swiss alps, the World Economic Forum has adopted a virtual model for this week’s series, which kicks off the Great Reset Initiative and asks global leaders to “choose innovative and bold solutions to stem the pandemic and drive a robust recovery over the next year.”

“The time to rebuild trust and to make crucial choices is fast approaching as the need to reset priorities and the urgency to reform systems grow stronger around the world,” the World Economic Forum says.

The World Economic Forum’s “great reset” argues the world must adopt a new form of capitalism as it rebuilds from the economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The week’s first keynote speaker was Chinese chairman Xi Jinping, who spoke about the importance of expanding globalization and supporting the United Nations-led world order. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres spoke Monday afternoon, calling for countries to embrace a “new social contract and global deal,” plus a form of multilateralism that goes beyond existing international organizations.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised eyebrows in September when he spoke about the pandemic’s “opportunity for a reset” at a United Nations conference. When Conservative member of parliament Pierre Poilievre pointed out the similarity between Trudeau’s remarks and the Great Reset Initiative, Trudeau accused the Conservatives of spreading “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories.”

The World Economic Forum is hosting its annual meeting in Singapore at the end of May.