The Buzz June 8th 2024: Mercury poisoning in Grassy Narrows, Bank of Canada cuts its interest rate, Mexico’s first female president, and more in The Buzz.
Welcome to The Buzz for another week and quite a week it was.
The D-Day 80th was all it was expected to be, emotional and timely given world events. If you still want more remembrance, check my podcasts - The Bridge (available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts) - on Monday and Tuesday of this week.
Alright, onward.
Why does the clock tick so slowly when it comes to Indigenous issues?
It’s a question residents of the Neskantaga First Nation, well north of Thunder Bay, have been asking for almost thirty years. They still don’t have safe drinking water. But if you think that is bad, and it surely is, then what about those living near the Wabigoon River system on the Grassy Narrows First Nation just north and east of Kenora, Ontario?
It’s been more than fifty years that they have been fighting for justice. The issue is their claim that mercury contamination from industrial waste has polluted their way of life. The story has been well covered for decades. I mean look at this picture of a young reporter surveying the waters for a news story on Grassy Narrows 51 years ago.
That piece didn’t make a difference back then and nor have the dozens of stories since.
This week, a new attempt by Randy Turtle, the Grassy Narrows chief. Willow Fiddler was on the story for the Globe and Mail from Sioux Lookout:
Grassy Narrows First Nation sues Ontario, federal governments over mercury poisoning 🔒
Perhaps the story that affected you, your family, or your friends the most this week was the Bank of Canada’s cut in its prime interest rate.
It was a bulletin, stop the presses moment, for a lot of the country’s media. Now, it was only a quarter of one percentage point - which doesn’t seem like much, even though it was the first drop in a long time.
That was one reason for all the attention but it’s deeper than that. For a lot of Canadians with mortgages, they are about to face some very difficult renewal decisions over deals they signed at much lower rates. Some Canadian homeowners, especially young ones, are really scared about what may be just around the corner.
So, let’s break this down and our go-to person on this is the journalist who is the best at this type of stuff. It’s Andrew Chang of the CBC’s “About That.” This isn’t short, it’s about twelve minutes long, but it’s worth it:
Why banks are bracing for a mortgage renewal cliff
Tom Mulcair must have been watching Good Talk the other week when Bruce and Chantal wondered aloud about the former NDP leader’s seeming praise for Mark Carney.
That followed some tough talk from Mulcair about Pierre Poilievre. Well, darned if the politician-turned-analyst didn’t do some backflips this week to see a different side of the Conservative leader. Here’s his opinion column for CTV this week:
Tom Mulcair: Pierre Poilievre proves to be a quick study when it comes to damage control
More on this, plus the latest on the issue of unnamed Parliamentarians giving questionable assistance to foreign actors about Canada, on this week’s Good Talk with Bruce Anderson and Chantal Hebert. It’s available on YouTube through the link at nationalnewswatch.com.
Lots of attention this week to the election result in Mexico.
For the first time in that country’s history, in fact, for the first time in North American history, a woman has been elected by the people to the top job.
But is there more to the story than that obvious headline? David Frum thinks so and wrote about it this week in The Atlantic:
Polls, polls, polls. We talk about them, we write about them, some people live by them. But not everyone.
I get a lot of letters from listeners to the podcast and readers of The Buzz – they’re sick of polls. Well, this piece may surprise you - and them.
Nate Cohn is, as they say, “highly regarded” in the polling business. Yet, he is not going overboard about what he’s seeing so far in the polling of the US presidential race. Benjamin Hart talked to him for The Intelligencer:
This event was supposed to be a walk in the park. It turned out very differently and it’s a reminder for all of us to be careful about making assumptions going into an election: any election.
In this case, it’s India. Here’s how Business Insider handled it:
Shocking Indian election results are a crushing blow to Modi
So, imagine this: the CBC, desperate to find its way after some disastrous decisions at a time of major restructuring in the media landscape, lands a new boss. And that new boss is not a Canadian.
OMG, I can hear the thunder now. And worse still - it’s a Brit. Yikes. What’s happening? Are we going back to being this little outpost where they send some has-been from another era over to the colonies to show them how to do, in this case, broadcasting? (Full disclosure – I was born in Britain!)
Laugh not my friends. Just look south. It appears our American neighbors have decided it’s only Brits who can save their equally troubled television landscape.
Daniel Thomas and Anna Nicolaou wrote about this in The Financial Times:
US newsrooms are in trouble: are these British journalists the answer? 🔒
Here are fifty restaurants to choose from, but you’ll have to leave the country to go to one on this exclusive list. They are supposedly the top fifty restaurants in the world and not one of them is Canadian. How could that be? They’ve obviously never gone to Gia Cantina in Ottawa (is it important to note that I’m a part-owner?)
