🔒 New Democrats say Mark Carney should give them official party status ‘if he wants this Parliament to work’
Meanwhile, there’s a guessing game around the Liberals that has been playing out for months now.
Would they actually like to be in the position of fighting an election, not in the future, but right now? Some get tempted looking at polling numbers suggesting they’d win, and possibly a majority. Others warn that that kind of thinking has burned governments before governments that have lived to very much regret that gamble. It’s times like these where serious players look at the strategies they’ve used and consider what might happen if they tested them in an election. Check this out by Paul Wells in The Walrus:
Carney’s Pipeline Play Tests the Coalition That Put Him in Power
Meanwhile, over at the Conservative party, the memories of the fall strategy to fight the Liberals linger.
Did they have the right approach to deal with Carney and his new government? Well, one thing is sure, The Globe’s Robyn Urback wasn’t impressed:
🔒 Conservatives persist with cute legislative tricks, while the government tries to run a country
And Robyn wasn’t alone in that take.
Check out Lorne Gunter in his column in the Edmonton Journal:
Lorne Gunter: Poilievre Conservatives favour stunts over substance, and it's hurting them
One last piece to consider about our national political landscape.
This article builds the case that Mark Carney is rebuilding the Liberal Party in such a way that the overall landscape is changing. It’s an opinion piece in the National Observer, and the writer is Andrew Perez:
Mark Carney’s Liberals are building a new Canadian voter coalition
Time to insert some plugs for The Bridge podcasts this week:
Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson had some Good Talk about the year end and some assessments of what was accomplished, starting with the latest departure from the Conservative caucus. You can find the YouTube version here.
Earlier in the week, the popular Moore-Butts Conversation asked the question, Is Ottawa ready to fight a two front referendum battle? The audio is here.
We don’t run video pieces every week here at The Buzz, but we do make room for special ones. This is special.
Special because it's Robert Munsch, and if you’re a parent, you know who I’m talking about. I only have to say “Love You Forever”.
And special too because of this amazing interview Adrienne Arsenault did with Munsch that aired this week on CBC’s The National. It is a remarkable conversation, and if you didn’t see it, you can find out why I say that by watching right here:
Robert Munsch wants you to know he’ll be OK
The Buzz has run a lot of articles in the more than two years it’s been available to you, and many of those pieces have talked about the changing nature of television.
The television we grew up with is a long way from the television we see now. Nothing has been more impactful on TV than the Internet, and still is, which makes this Substack by the widely read Cal Newport really interesting. A Buzz reader sent it along for me, and I thought I’d share it with you:
Why is the Internet Becoming TV?
A frequent listener to my podcast, The Bridge, sent me something too.
Kyle Adey knows I find a lot of AI stuff interesting, so he sent this piece from Nature.com for me to read. He was right – it’s fascinating:
AI chatbots can sway voters with remarkable ease — is it time to worry?
I’ll always remember when I first saw the Pyramids in person.
I had arrived in Cairo in the dark of night. When I checked into the Holiday Inn Cairo, (seriously) I went straight to sleep, exhausted after flying for hours. When I woke up,
I pulled back the curtains and there, right outside the Holiday Inn of all places, stood the Pyramids. It seemed bizarre, but then again, you get over it. After all, you’re staring at one of the wonders of the world, and for me, that was a really big deal.
For a guy who still can’t figure out how they carried, pulled, slid all those huge boulders to enormous heights to build the Pyramids, how do you think I felt when I read this week what might be below the Pyramids?
Cue the Daily Mail:
