Welcome to the weekend and welcome to The Buzz.
So, what will the next election, which will be fought at some point in the next year, be fought about?
Throw the bums out? Throw Trudeau out? The country is broken? Poilievre isn’t worth the risk? Time for a change? Axe the tax? (catchy slogan, but really THE issue?)
I suppose it could be about any of those. OR all of those. But two people who know the country, care about the country, and worry about the country, are saying “Get real.” They say there’s only one real issue and we better wake up and realize it. The issue is the economy. That’s right, the old Carville to Clinton saying in 1992: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
So, who are those two and what do they know anyway?
One of them is Kevin Lynch, who served as Clerk of the Privy Council, the country’s top public servant, under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as Deputy Minister of Finance under Liberal Finance Minister Paul Martin. And the other is Paul Deegan, a former senior executive at BMO and CN.
They wrote this opinion piece this week for the Financial Post:
Opinion: The next federal election needs to be about the economy, stupid
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There used to be a time when prime ministers and opposition leaders were very selective about how often and with whom they would sit down to do a face-to-face interview.
Usually, it was with a major television network and often it was only once or twice a year. That was thirty years ago. Then it changed to half a dozen interviews a year, but still only with major outlets. All those days are long gone now.
We live today in the land of podcasts. It seems everyone has one now (yes, even me). Some are popular with millions of listeners, some have next to no listeners, and the rest fall somewhere in between.
Justin Trudeau seems to be trying them all out lately, as he looks for the pathway to recovery from a near collapse in the polls. Okay – it’s more than a “near” collapse. It’s a collapse.
On one of his latest ventures into podcast-land, he visited one of his own MPs, where he ended up being more forthcoming than he’s been anywhere else.
The Toronto Star’s Tonda MacCharles wrote about it:
Justin Trudeau dishes with Liberal MP on where he went wrong, what he did right and why he’s the one to beat Pierre Poilievre 🔒
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There’s more on all this on Good Talk with Chantal Hebert, Bruce Anderson and me this week. Our YouTube version is available at nationalnewswatch.com
Have you been reading about the fact-checking debate going on in the United States?
It reached the point of ridiculousness the other night in the US vice-presidential debate, when Republican candidate JD Vance seemed more than a little upset when he was fact-checked by the moderators and he responded by whining something like, “You promised not to fact-check.” You’re kidding, right JD? Come on buddy.
Anyway, this all started when CBS, the host network, suggested earlier in the week that they would leave the fact-checking to outside monitors or the contestants themselves. Then a CBS icon from the past stepped in with a Substack hit job on CBS from the outside:
Facts Need To Be Checked
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So why do these debates need to be fact-checked at all?
Simple. Politicians, many anyway, like to stretch the truth. They’ve always done that. Of course, nowadays “stretching” is just too polite a term to use. It’s lying. Out and out lying. We all know Trump is a full-on liar, always has been, but sadly his success (i.e. no consequences) has led others to believe lying is okay and so they go for it now too. And not just in the States. They have to be challenged… all of them.
Helen Cox Richardson has a popular Substack called “Letters from an American” and this week she dealt with this post-truth politics angle to lying and the impact it’s having:
Letters from an American: October 2, 2024
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If there's a story I never tire of, it's the fate of the 1845 Royal Navy Franklin expedition into Canada's Arctic.
Everyone on the mission perished, exactly why and how is still being determined. I’ve covered the story for years and have been to many of the sites involved more than a few times. Every year or so, new details trickle out and this year is no exception. First, it was the CBC a few weeks ago, now it’s the NY Times picking up the trail:
Researchers Find Cannibalized Victim of 19th-Century Arctic Voyage
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I remember in the early 2000s, an assignment had me flying in and out of New Delhi, crisscrossing parts of southeast Asia.
On one flight, the pilot came over the sound system and announced that passengers on the left side of the plane (that was me) were about to have a glimpse of the 29,030-foot-high Mount Everest peak. The highest point on earth. I was excited. Ever since I was a little boy living nearby in what was then Malaya in the early 1950’s, I’d been thrilled with the Everest story. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay hitting the summit together in 1953, and never declaring for the rest of their lives who actually stepped on the top first. I have a first edition of the book Sir Edmund helped write, “The Ascent of Everest” by John Hunt. I get excited just touching the book.
Tenzing Norgay on the Summit of Everest. Credit: Sir Edmund Hillary, 1953.
Okay, Peter, you are rambling again. Surely there is a point to you telling this story.
Yes! There is. The history books will have to be rewritten because guess what, Everest has grown taller:
A Himalayan river may be making Everest taller
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So, what’s the significance of this or better still what are the consequences? Does it mean that as the height keeps going up, every new summiteer sets a new record and is somehow the new Hillary or Norgay of our time? I sure know I’d try to claim the title if I ever made the climb – but no fear of that!
That’s it for The Buzz this week. Have a great week and we’ll meet again in seven days.
The Buzz is a weekly publication from National Newswatch that shares insights and commentary on the week’s developments in politics, news and current affairs.