The Buzz May 17th 2025: Does Carney's Cabinet Bring the Right Kind of…

The Buzz May 17th 2025: Does Carney's Cabinet Bring the Right Kind of Change?

Welcome to the weekend and welcome to The Buzz.

As far back as I can remember, there’s always been a debate about whether journalists or broadcasters make good candidates for public office.

Political parties have long wondered about that and, as a result, have offered some the opportunity to run for them. In my own case, I can honestly say that at different times in my career, and at different levels of politics, I’ve been offered the chance to consider running for each of the three main political parties. Every time I’ve said “no,” convinced my role in life was not to be one, but to cover one.

Our election history has seen lots of examples of winners and losers.

Don Jamieson was a well-known Newfoundland broadcaster and eventually became a well-known Liberal foreign affairs minister for Pierre Trudeau. Peter Kent was a terrific correspondent and then anchor, and a Conservative cabinet minister for Stephen Harper. Ron Collister was perhaps the best-known parliamentary correspondent in the country, considered a shoo-in for election with Robert Stanfield. He lost. So, no guarantees.

Why do I raise this?

Two words.

Evan Solomon. An old colleague from our CBC days. He had immense talent as a journalist, always learning and never shying away from a story. We had our differences about some of those stories, but never about his talent.

So, this week, when Mark Carney unveiled his cabinet lineup, I circled Solomon’s name as my pick for the best new choice in the group.

He’s young. He’s smart. He’s experienced. And he’s perfect given his background for the new cabinet portfolio of Minister Responsible for Artificial Intelligence. It’s the issue that is changing our world at a dramatic pace, unharnessed in some places, but hopefully not here…that will be the challenge.

Don Lenihan wrote this piece on Solomon for National Newswatch:

Evan Solomon and the Department of What Comes Next

Nice things being said about Evan Soloman is one thing, but overall, it’s not easy to find nice things being said about the new cabinet in its entirety.

In fact, some of the discussion is not flattering at all. Who got in, who got tossed, and who got ignored is getting a lot of headlines. Like this one from Justin Ling in the Toronto Star:

🔒 With His New Cabinet, Mark Carney Is Going for the Wrong Kind of Change

Here’s a different angle to the cabinet story.

It’s the power balance angle. Daniel Beland is a political science professor at McGill University’s Study of Canada. He wrote this for Policy:

An Expanded, Diverse Cabinet, Still Dominated by Central Canada

So, in the past year, how often have you read stories in our major newspapers or heard reports on national newscasts that explain their journalism was helped by unnamed sources?

They’re keeping the source names secret to protect them. That’s been a common practice for decades. Think Woodward, Bernstein and Deep Throat. Then it was not common, today it’s very much so. You okay with that?

Well Corey Larocque is not. He wrote this for the Nunatsiaq News:

Excessive use of unnamed sources undermines reporting

Meanwhile, the counting and recounting and official counting is still going on in some ridings where the results are really close.

And while there are extremely strict rules around recounts about the process, you’ll never guess where the pushing is coming from. It’s a dangerous game, writes columnist Max Fawcett in the National Observer:

🔒 Canada’s Conservatives are flirting with danger

Good time to plug our YouTube podcasts for this week because they deal with some of this stuff: First up, Smoke Mirrors and The Truth with Bruce Anderson and Fred DeLorey, which you can find right here. And then of course, Good Talk with Chantal Hebert and Rob Russo, which you can find here.

If you watch our shows on YouTube, you are part of a growing movement.

New numbers in the US show the trend is undeniable. Here in Canada, we’ve watched the numbers for say, Good Talk, grow from 30-40 thousand in January to over 160 thousand in April.

The New York Times has a piece on the YouTube podcast phenomenon:

🔒 Which Podcast Rules YouTube? A New List Comes With Surprises

After last year’s US presidential election race, most people decided that celebrity endorsements really don’t matter anymore.

After all, Kamala Harris racked up endorsements of real celebrities in numbers far exceeding the Kid Rocks on Donald Trump’s side. But Trump won. That kind of took the stuffing out of many celebrities who have been on the sidelines since. Not all. Not Bruce Springsteen, who was on this side of the Atlantic this week (I’m in the UK at the moment, Scotland to be specific). Springsteen didn’t hold back in his blasting of Trump, and along with his music, that made the headlines in Manchester:

Bruce Springsteen is pissed off as he makes explosive statements in historic Manchester gig

This next one is the kind of story that has always fascinated me because it’s the kind of story that usually floats around low-grade news sites and never turns out to be true.

But this time, it’s on the BBC. That’s got to mean something.

But really, could this be true? Could anyone really blow a goldmine like this?

Cut-price Magna Carta 'copy' now believed genuine

I’ve got the copy of the script I read on my last National on June 30th, 2017 – that’s got to be worth millions! Have a great week, The Buzz will be back 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.