The Buzz May 3rd 2025: "Govern like you have a majority"

The Buzz May 3rd 2025: "Govern like you have a majority"

Welcome to the weekend, and welcome to The Buzz.

So, when the counting was over, the party leader looked at the results and while it hadn’t been a majority win, it sure was close. Just a handful of seats - you could count them on the fingers of one hand - separated his party from the kind of full control a majority government would give him. But there was a smaller party that had been reduced to a half dozen seats that surely he could convince to give him support as he set out to do the many things he felt the country needed to make it great. He would, he decided, govern like he had a majority.

I’m not talking about Mark Carney, at least not yet. I’m talking instead about Joe Clark in May of 1979. That election night produced 136 seats for Clark, just five shy of a majority, but well ahead of Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals. The Social Credit had six seats; the cushion Clark needed to move ahead with his agenda. Well, it didn’t work out that way as Clark and his PC party failed to gain Social Credit’s support. Instead, it fell a few months later on a budget vote and then fell again in the resulting election.

“Govern like you have a majority” has been a collection of dirty words for all minority governments ever since.

So, I had to smile when I saw it in a headline greeting Mark Carney this week as he came ever so close, closer than Clark did, to forming a majority. The story is from Andrew Phillips in the Toronto Star, and it kicks off The Buzz this Saturday morning:

🔒 Why Mark Carney Needs to Govern as If He Won a Majority

None of this would have even been a talking point if the Liberals had not underperformed in Ontario.

They did and it was a surprise to many of their top strategists, not to mention the pollsters, and it cost Carney his majority.

Mark Gollom of the CBC explains what happened:

How the Liberals came up short in Ontario — and lost their majority bid

So, what about Pierre Poilievre?

ow could he blow what appeared back at the beginning of the year to be certain victory? It all came down to a “moment,” writes Robyn Urback in the Globe:

🔒 Pierre Poilievre was the right man for the moment. Then the moment changed – and he failed to adapt

Poilievre is going to be hearing a lot of advice on what he’ll need to do, not only to save his job, but to move his party forward.

Some of that advice will be good, some not so much. Advice from former Harper confidant Ken Boessenkool is from the former column not the latter. He offered it in an opinion piece in the Globe at the end of the week:

🔒 As Canada moves to a two-party system, the Conservatives need new strategies

Jagmeet Singh led his party to a disastrous result, and he, like Poilievre, lost his own seat in the process.

But should that be his political obituary? Not so writes Althia Raj:

🔒 Jagmeet Singh Might Be Remembered as a Better NDP Leader Than Even Jack Layton — Despite Brutal Loss

There are many priority items on Mark Carney’s “to-do” list, but one has to assume, given his own roots, he’s got to be concerned about the growing resentment in the West towards Ottawa.

Sure, it’s not new, but it’s growing, and with pushes coming from two premiers, clashes are incoming with no end in sight. Here’s an Edmonton-based column from political commentator and freelance writer Graham Thomson:

🔒 Danielle Smith tries to cloak her threats to Mark Carney, but Alberta’s intentions are clear

There’s lots more on all this in our two YouTube shows from this week.

You can find Chantal Hebert and Rob Russo with Good Talk right here.

And you can find Bruce Anderson and Fred DeLorey with Smoke, Mirrors and The Truth right here.

The first face-to-face between Prime Minister Carney and President Trump is set to take place in the White House on Tuesday.

What should we expect? Well, don’t expect a repeat of that pathetic Trump-Zelensky firestorm in the Oval Office a few weeks ago. My bet is that if Trump tried anything like that stunt on Carney, the Canadian would just up and walk out. Carney may be a rookie PM but he’s not a rookie to high-level, high-stakes meetings. And Trump needs the look of a win, at least in tone, especially after a very rough start in his first 100 days.

Keeping in mind that London’s Telegraph is very much a right-leaning newspaper, check this assessment of how Trump has performed so far:

Trump’s attempt to upend the global order has already been defeated

You saw the golf ad, right? You couldn’t miss it or all the jokes that were made about it.

Well, guess what? While some of us were laughing, others were thinking, and it seems to have worked. Eric Blais writes about it on his Substack:

The Conservatives’ best-performing ad was probably their most derided

One of my career highlights goes back to 1978 when Walter Cronkite introduced an item of mine on the CBS Evening News.

My hero, everyone’s hero. Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, saying my name! But enough about me. The story was about a Soviet satellite falling out of orbit and crashing in the Northwest Territories. It was a big deal, and CBS wanted someone close to the story to do their item. I guess they had a map in their New York City newsroom, and Ottawa was only two inches from the NWT on the map, so they asked me. My item led their broadcast and I was beyond proud. I still have the tape. Anyway, as I was saying, enough about me.

I thought about the story this week when I read this:

Russian Nuclear Military Satellite Spinning Out of Control

And that wraps our first post-election The Buzz for this week. We’ll 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.