Episode 1005: Life of the Party

Zain 0:02

This is a strategist episode 10.05. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, how is it going? It is a Monday.

Zain 0:18

Thank you, Corey. My finger slipped. Thank you for bringing that Sunday level of energy to this fine Monday.

Zain 0:25

Carter, you are back in Calgary and it feels weird. It feels weird for us that you are not in

Zain 0:34

the land of British Columbia. Why were you fired?

Carter 0:38

No, I was not fired.

Carter 0:40

I had been in Surrey for about four weeks and Heather

Carter 0:44

Heather decided it was time that I came home. And so here I am. And you

Corey 0:49

you just found a nice masseuse.

Carter 0:51

No, we're not doing that mistake again. That was a mistake. what

Carter 0:55

what is this why was

Zain 0:56

was there a very long quite you should have cut him off last time i had to i had to bear through that you

Zain 1:03

understand that the joy of having carter around is that if you cut him off he doesn't take it personally he just bounces right back on straight back a second yeah

Corey 1:11

yeah i'm gonna be honest with you zane i wasn't actually aware we were recording yeah

Corey 1:16

yeah when it went live

Zain 1:17

live there you go well that's fine um and cory everything is okay in in your world um you're you're you're doing fine i i think so um now

Carter 1:26

now i'm concerned for him like are you okay like that i

Corey 1:30

i did lose fantasy football

Corey 1:33

i know you care

Zain 1:34

so now i'm only just get out of your system carter before we have to move on please sucks

Corey 1:44

it's a-list content what's up what's up you know it's election night in quebec you

Zain 1:49

you know what i i should start there but i'm not gonna start there because let's move it on to our first segment our first segment the final countdown let's start at home there's some people tuning in who want the alberta content and guys we are here on monday october 3rd on thursday we find out if daniel smith is going to become the next leader of the united conservative party i'm

Zain 2:12

i'm gonna round this out mainly with a prediction but i want to actually give you guys some chances to show your work so to speak in terms of where this is leading

Zain 2:20

leading for you your strategist lens, how are you reading the tea leaves? How are you reading, whether that be the press conferences, the admission that the Sovereignty Act, you know what, Carter, may not be all that bad by some other candidates, the endorsements, the lack of final push, so to speak, by the other candidates. Stephen Carter, show me your work. Tell me what tea leaves you're reading and tell me what conclusion you are drawing towards as we head to uh to thursday well

Carter 2:53

well i mean i think i'm reading the same tea leaves that everybody's reading right everybody's everybody's sucking up to danielle smith we've already seen we've talked about the people who've crossed from one campaign to another including uh you know raj and sani's campaign chair uh ducking out the side door and running over to embrace danielle um there's been many people uh you

Carter 3:16

grabbing onto this thing and becoming part of Danielle's team, even though initially they thought that the Sovereignty Act was

Carter 3:24

was a piece of lunacy or that, you know, her today's commitment

Carter 3:29

commitment to get do away with vaccinations, essentially, you know, like mandatory vaccinations, you know, that were crippling our economy for some reason, you know, keeping people well. Well, there's stats coming out of the United States right now. The disproportionate number of Republicans have died because they're

Carter 3:47

they're being told not to take the vaccines. The vaccines are saving people's lives. And Danielle seems to be opposed to that. So, you

Carter 3:54

you know, I think reading all of those tea leaves are pretty straightforward. It says to us, it says to me, Danielle Smith's going to win on Thursday. So I jumped right to the prediction. Am I supposed to have done that?

Zain 4:05

No, that's fine. You showed me a bit of your work in terms of what you're saying. Corey, what have you seen, whether it's some of the same things Carter's looking at or

Zain 4:13

or some other things, to draw your final prediction for what happens on Thursday?

Corey 4:20

There's no question that the consensus view has become Danielle Smith is going to win. I

Corey 4:26

I don't think you'll find many pundits. I don't think you'll find many Conservative Party members, UCP members, who think otherwise. I am not 100% sure how everybody has become so very definitive about it. But if there are a couple of countervailing facts on the table, it's that the polls that we do have that are a little bit more member-based and a little bit less Danielle Smith campaign-based still

Corey 4:51

still show, well, Danielle Smith is likely to win, is that she's probably around 40% and she's going to need a bit of a roll-up as things go. Now, maybe that's true, maybe that's not. We have some limited data points on that. but if

Corey 5:03

if it is true it's not impossible somebody else wins especially as a bit of anybody but danielle fever overtook everybody in september um

Corey 5:12

um so yeah you know it's it's one of these things that i think everybody is acting very definitively about maybe it will be just a total crushing result uh maybe it becomes self-fulfilling at a certain point i'm

Corey 5:24

i'm less convinced like if you ask me to put a bet even money i would say danielle smith probably wins this thing but

Corey 5:31

but you wouldn't have to give me the craziest odds to say, okay, I'll maybe take some Travis Taves action there.

Corey 5:37

Weird phrasing. I regret it immediately. Yeah, I'm really

Corey 5:43

I stand by my comment. And one of the

Corey 5:46

things that makes me think- Give me some Travis

Zain 5:47

Taves action. Put on a shirt. Go ahead, Corey. Go ahead. One

Corey 5:49

One of the things that makes me think that's not crazy is

Corey 5:52

is sort of what Stephen was talking about, which is we haven't seen an exodus of MLA endorsements that were currently with Taves. there's been relatively few and relatively stable and uh yeah for reasons we've talked about a few times it's a lot harder to switch on somebody once you're there of course but there is as we've discussed a bit of game theory there and there is some value to switching if you think it's a sure deal and being one of the first switchers rather than one of the last i

Corey 6:21

i don't know i think people are still hedging their bets within the caucus or at least just deciding you know it's well this is probably 80%. It's not 100%. Maybe I'll take the same view.

Zain 6:33

That's interesting to me, Corey. Just so I'm clear, you're

Zain 6:37

you're saying still smart money, one-to-one odds, you're taking a Daniel Smith victory, that the confluence of all the commentary and all the other proof points that you've seen would still be there. The reasons you might be against is the lack of switching in terms of caucus

Zain 6:54

caucus endorsements. Is there anything else that, and like the 40% that you've kind of seen the polling, you've added that. Anything else that makes you think that

Zain 7:02

this could actually be a multi-round vote, that this Daniel doesn't have it in the bag, like anything else that kind of sticks out at you?

Corey 7:10

Well, simply that I don't even think Daniel Smith thinks it's going to be a one round vote. It does seem to be destined to be a bit of a roll up here.

Corey 7:19

And the conventional wisdom has been for a long long time, you need to, what, Carter, you used to always say 42% on the first ballot as the front runner.

Corey 7:27

Will that hold in this peril or a polarized world where there's clearly right-wing candidates like Todd Lohan, as well as Danielle Smith? I mean, actually, it's so crazy to say, because it's not like Travis Taves is some sort of progressive conservative, right? But there do seem to be lines that are divided along there. So I don't know if the 42% holds. If it does, Because I'm not 100% sure Danielle Smith has 42% of the vote. And as we saw in the last month, Brian Jean has been one of the harshest critics amongst the leadership candidates of Danielle Smith. And

Corey 7:58

if that vote is going to Taves more than it is Smith, I

Corey 8:02

I don't know. I mean, my original sort of thinking that maybe this thing's a little bit closer than we thought didn't really require Brian Jean's vote. I assumed Brian Jean's vote would go to Danielle Smith, by and large, and that you would see the Schultz vote and the, you know, Sonny vote in particular, see

Corey 8:19

see them roll up to Travis Daves.

Zain 8:23

Carter, I need to examine something. Corey mentioned the 42%. There might be folks wondering, being like, wait, is this some sort of science? Is this some sort of alchemy? Is this some sort of like Stephen Carter sort of like willing it into the universe? Walk us through that. Where did you come up with this 42

Zain 8:40

42%? Was it just, you know, you doing Stephen Carter things that Corey and I were definitely used to at Tilla Knowlton where you said something and we would have to then clean it up and or make it real?

Zain 8:51

Talk to us about that because there were

Carter 8:52

were- Very hurtful that you'd say that out loud. Yeah, trust me.

Zain 8:55

me. You hurtful to you? Fuck off. I feel like PTSD.

Zain 8:59

Doing PowerPoints about things that we never did at the firm. Let

Zain 9:02

Let me tell you

Corey 9:04

80% of my job at Hill & Knowlton was yelling at Stephen Carter after a meeting that we can't actually do that.

Carter 9:09

Yeah. But we did. And then the other 20% was doing it. Yeah,

Carter 9:13

And the other 20% was doing it. Exactly. Who did that? Oh, yeah. We were a special team. Hey, here's how you do the math. Here's how you do the math. Understand the psychology of not voting for the front runner. So when we have a definitive front runner, or when there's someone who is in front, it is very easy to vote for that person. It is very hard to switch your ballot to that person afterwards. If you were going to switch your ballot, if you're going to choose her number two, why wouldn't you just choose her number one? Right? Like everybody knows that Danielle Smith is going to beat Brian Jean. So why wouldn't I just choose Danielle Smith first? And so there's a psychology there of if you're going to choose the winner, you choose the winner on the first ballot. And if you don't choose that person, then that person slides down your ballot. So that's the first piece, the psychology of picking a second choice that's ahead of you. So generally speaking, that's just not something that you necessarily do with a front runner candidate. The second part of it is that the person who's in front tends to win not because of switchers, but because of attrition. And so attrition is when your ballot no longer has a viable candidate on it. So Corey and I both both marked our ballots. We're going to choose Raj and Sonny, Leela here and Todd Lowen. So those were our three choices. Oh my God, all three of them came off the ballots. One, two, three, but there's still four more people competing.

Carter 10:40

Our ballots no longer count.

Carter 10:43

They're no longer given to someone. So that is now an attrition. So you've lowered the denominator of what it's required to get to 50%. So the lowering of the denominator is actually the the primary means by which leaders, you know, the person who's in first place grows

Carter 10:58

grows their, their percentage. They don't actually grow their vote. They tend to grow their percentage because of attrition. So because

Carter 11:05

because of that, um, if it's, if it's under 42, it's super hard to grow it through enough through attrition alone. Right? So you have to have some sort of vote switch or some sort of vote move. And so 42, 43 seems to be the line where the attrition isn't enough to get that first base ballot over the line. 47, you could get there after three ballots.

Zain 11:35

Corey, from your perspective, you mentioned something and I have to pick up on it.

Zain 11:40

The anybody but Smith fever that you talked about in September,

Zain 11:44

that seemed like a day-long fever that didn't seem like a week-long fever exactly what the hell happened there do you feel like it was and

Zain 11:55

and and like we expected some sort of any but the but smith campaign it certainly started to take off and then it just cratered it it died um you know just soon after takeoff brought to you by flare airlines cory what did what happened there that's

Corey 12:14

not brought no but um

Corey 12:18

let me tell you um we

Corey 12:22

we we talked a bit about this we talked about um the idea that maybe she just starved it of oxygen maybe what she did was by saying okay here's my sovereignty act it's as bad as you thought or it's as ill-formed as you thought there was just nowhere else to go nobody could say well show us your sovereignty You know, bring these details out into the open. And

Corey 12:41

And maybe that's how she did it. Maybe that plus the idea that people started hedging their bets and saying, well, if she wins, I'd rather still have a job. You know, I kind of like this MLA thing. You know, the combination of those two things perhaps softened the attacks as time went on.

Corey 12:57

But you're right. It did seem like all of a sudden everyone just said, okay, maybe we stop. up and you know zane the third option frankly is is maybe

Corey 13:07

the idea of self-preservation in a party sense like okay we

Corey 13:11

we are going so hard maybe we're damaging our party at this point and maybe we just need to cool it because if she does win like there's no coming back from this like we've gone and we've said we're not going to vote for this sovereignty act we've gone

Corey 13:22

gone out of our way to talk about how dangerous these things are and if we end up having to do these things or

Corey 13:27

or if we end up in a fight about whether we can do these things out in the public that's

Corey 13:30

that's it for us and it's going to be rachel notley returned to government and and that is also a pretty pragmatic possibility that

Zain 13:39

carter okay so you guys are both saying smart money on danielle smith on thursday by the way on thursday i will mention to the listeners we are going to be doing a a live stream of our podcast

Zain 13:49

seven o'clock mountain that's the plan right after we do uh cbc calgary for for an hour so we're all three of us are going to be on cbc calgary for an hour at six and then the plan Plan is to then jump on, do a live stream for some what we call bonus coverage. That's what we say in the biz, Carter.

Zain 14:04

But Carter, I got to pick up on this.

Zain 14:07

Yeah. Daniel Smith doing a press conference today and answering a lot of questions that are hypotheticals about the future. Like, I

Zain 14:14

I get it. Like smart money amongst the pundit class, perhaps the voter class, even her competitors.

Zain 14:20

that seem presumptive to you? Was that kind of weird to you? Talking about where she would potentially run, like by election. Actually, I know, and I know the media posed

Zain 14:29

questions to her, but it's not like she stood in front of a microphone and said, here's my plan once I win on Thursday. But did

Carter 14:35

you kind of think that was slightly weird?

Carter 14:37

Yeah, I mean, it's slightly weird, but it's not over the top weird. I think that there are a lot of questions about what does Danielle do when and if she wins? And this is what she's trying to do is put in place a reasonable plan, right? This, I could be the premier for the following reason. But don't we have a rule that you never lean

Zain 14:54

lean into the hypotheticals though, Carter? Like, isn't that like one of our standard campaign rules that we even talked about it recently, that you don't lean into the hypotheticals. It's not good form. But here you're kind of giving it a pass in some ways. You

Carter 15:07

You don't lean into the hypotheticals unless you need to lean into the hypotheticals. Right.

Carter 15:11

Right. Unless the hypotheticals that are being asked. Thank you for now.

Carter 15:15

there you go. I mean, the hypotheticals that are being asked actually add credence to her claim that she could be the prime, the premier, right? She's, she is saying, yeah, there's no problem. I can be the premier. I can, I can run in a by-election. I have had many people suggest that they would be willing to step down and I could take their seats. No, it wouldn't be Calgary Elbow because I'm a rural girl. It's hard to say rural girl. It's hard to do. But that's basically what she said, that she lives in a rural riding. And as a result, she'll be contesting a rural seat.

Carter 15:48

That was interesting to me, not because it

Carter 15:51

it was addressing a hypothetical. It was addressing a weakness. The

Carter 15:55

The weakness in her campaign is that she will not be a sitting MLA. And it'll be hard for her to be premier as a result. She addressed that weakness. She took it on head on, and she's now eliminated that as a potential weakness for her campaign. That's just good campaigning. You answer the hypotheticals that make sense. You don't answer the hypotheticals that are going to take you off track.

Carter 16:15

You'll see that. It's very convenient when most politicians say, I don't answer hypotheticals.

Carter 16:20

They don't answer hypotheticals if it doesn't serve the purpose.

Zain 16:24

cory why is carter a daniel smith apologist and

Zain 16:28

and and when did he become this um well

Zain 16:31

well but seriously i guess everybody's

Corey 16:33

everybody's hedging here there

Zain 16:34

there you go no listen i very meta carter but do you agree with carter on this no i don't i

Zain 16:41

don't i think there

Corey 16:42

there were a couple of mistakes that were made today by daniel smith the biggest one of course having this press conference at this moment was she bored did she have nothing else to do i don't think it was particularly added to the campaign and it

Corey 16:54

it did seem to be measuring the drapes here's the thing like today is the last day for mail-in ballots to be received for the ucp race it's not the last day to vote you can still vote in person at one of five locations on october 6th and i suspect there are still a number of people who have not voted and i don't know why you would at this particular like let's put it this way did anybody listen to daniel smith and say okay

Corey 17:17

okay i'm gonna vote for it no i mean if If anything, she raised certain concerns around, like, going to go back to the well, challenging the carbon tax again. You lose

Zain 17:26

lose at the Supreme Court, you don't get to go back. She even alluded to the fact, Corey, that I may not call an early election because there's a chance I would lose calling an early election, so to speak, right? It's like kind of talking about her. She didn't say those words, to be totally clear. No, yeah. But like implying that.

Zain 17:44

But keep going. You're kind of running a list through, you

Corey 17:47

She talked a bit about how she wants to add to the Alberta Human Rights Act, the idea of being unvaccinated as a protected group. Listen, if that's your thing, you're already voting for Daniel Smith. If it's not your thing, you've just been reminded and scared by it because the ramifications that are pretty significant. You think about the healthcare sector where

Corey 18:04

mandatory vaccination has been required

Corey 18:06

required for quite some time for quite good reason. For

Carter 18:09

For a lot of different things that

Carter 18:12

are really important. Yeah.

Corey 18:14

Yeah. This is something that is pretty fundamental to that basic standard of living and life expectancy we have here. Vaccines are one of these miracles, whether it be measles or pertussis or any of that, where we live longer as a result of this. And now we're saying it's kind of optional

Corey 18:34

optional in some of these settings where there are high-risk patients around. I mean, it's just the whole thing is a bit crazy.

Corey 18:40

that's the risk. The risk is that somebody hears that and says, well, you know, I was pretty disengaged. Everybody had said not really worry about it. But now I'm worried again. Now I'm worried about some of these things that had come up. So it felt to me a lot like jumping back into the fire after getting out of it in September.

Corey 18:56

Don't see the point. Now, is it going to be like this massive material thing?

Corey 19:00

I don't think so. So I think maybe we're talking about 1% or 2%. But if the scenario that I've weaved here is accurate, 1% or 2%,

Corey 19:08

it's possible the game is 1% or 2%. And

Corey 19:11

And so why mess with it? Like, what's the upside? I don't see the upside. I

Zain 19:15

I agree with Corey there, Carter. I want you to kind of, you know, refute what Corey said here or kind of, you know, give your take on it because he makes good sense. It's the margins of 1% or 2%. It doesn't look like great form in many ways. Would you have done the press conference to begin with if you were advising her? Like, I know the messaging is something you don't agree with in the sense of what she's talking about. I think that's fair to say for all three of us.

Zain 19:41

But would you have advised a tactic? Because you seem to argue that some of the hypotheticals she answered today helped her with that broader audience. I

Carter 19:49

I do think that they helped her with the broader audience. I think that her being- You think today was a net positive for her? I think it's a net positive. I do think that she's got some crazy positions. I think that the vaccination position is nuts. I think that the carbon tax position is nuts, and I think the Sovereignty Act is nuts. I am all

Carter 20:06

those positions, but I

Carter 20:09

I am not in a position to say that

Carter 20:13

it wasn't better for her to look like someone who was achieving the

Carter 20:17

the Premier's chair, and

Carter 20:18

and that's what she's achieving, is the Premier's chair. so

Carter 20:24

think that that's the point the point is that she

Carter 20:27

she wants to be seen as someone who can be the premier and

Carter 20:30

for that reason i think that what she did today on balance was better i think that made some good points um you know he he made some good points about where this

Carter 20:40

this could this could conceivably go off the rails but i come down on the side that says that overall it

Carter 20:47

it was about her

Carter 20:48

her her appearing to be a premier, and that was probably pretty good.

Carter 20:52

Her getting treated like the premier by the media isn't bad.

Zain 20:56

But would you advise that she do this today?

Corey 20:58

No, I wouldn't. I understand what Stephen is saying. But if you take her at her word, and she doesn't intend to go for an election until the spring, and it's going to be May 29th, 2023.

Corey 21:09

She couldn't wait. She can wait three fucking days, four fucking days to act like a premier, because, you know, otherwise you do risk upsetting a cart that seems to be really laid out for you. I don't understand why you would put that risk in at this point.

Zain 21:24

Carter, I'm going to ask the same question Corey just introduced, which is what's our biggest risk between now and Thursday, right? Corey's mentioned that people can still vote for Daniel Smith today, right? Smart money with you guys, the pundit class, the political class, the chattering class, all those put together. It all seems to be converging, Stephen Carter, that this is a done deal. What's your biggest risk between now and Thursday? Well,

Carter 21:45

Well, I think that this is a different process. So like when we won in 2011, we had everybody voting on the day of the count, right? And so everybody went to polling stations throughout the province and those polling stations were super busy. And so if you were saying something three days before, that was going to be a major

Carter 22:05

decision because that was going to be heard as everybody was heading to the ballot box. I mean, it's the same thing that we talk about in

Carter 22:12

in a general election. Like we have the

Carter 22:14

the Surrey election, the advanced

Carter 22:15

advanced vote starts on the 5th.

Carter 22:17

You don't want to screw up and screw up your advanced vote. The difference is in

Carter 22:22

in this type of a case, Corey

Carter 22:23

Corey actually has brought this up before. How many votes are actually left to be cast?

Carter 22:27

Corey has brought that up in different places as we've been doing different leaderships. How

Carter 22:31

How many votes are left to be cast? And my argument would be in

Carter 22:34

in this particular case,

Carter 22:36

I'd already heard that they've gone over 50% of

Carter 22:39

of the membership voting.

Carter 22:40

I don't expect it to be anywhere near 60%. But

Carter 22:43

But let's just say for shits and giggles, it does get to 60%. That means that maybe there's

Carter 22:50

of the electorate voting. I mean, what are you giving up when most of the votes are already cast? What are you giving up?

Carter 22:58

might just be some pre-positioning, taking it early.

Carter 23:04

Do I advise her to do it? Probably not. But still, I don't think it was as bad as Corey thought it was.

Carter 23:09

And Corey, jump in

Corey 23:10

Yeah. So I do generally agree with, I guess, myself, because you're quoting myself from an earlier one, how many votes are left to be cast. But the big difference here is when we were talking about the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race, it was you could only vote by mail. And so when you started getting into those final days, it's like there's relatively few people who are waiting to mail at the absolute last minute because there are risks and you don't know how long it's going to take the

Corey 23:36

the big difference here is there is an in-person option there

Corey 23:39

there is an in-person option so there is going to be the type of voter who's like i'm just going to go in person

Corey 23:44

right how many i doubt that many because i think for most of the race the expectation was just vote by mail but a

Corey 23:51

a few a few will and uh and it's going to be a little bit different i i think your percents are not necessarily wrong i think five five

Corey 24:00

five percent of the membership is probably Probably the total high end of what I think would vote on the last day.

Corey 24:05

But again, game of game of inches, potentially.

Zain 24:09

Final question here, and I was going to wrap up earlier, but this this.

Zain 24:13

This press conference, I can't get over it.

Zain 24:16

And what does it say about OK? I think you may have answered this in some way, but I'll ask it anyways.

Zain 24:21

What does it say about Daniel Smith's instincts or political instincts? Because

Zain 24:25

I think you and you and Corey may have different things to say about that. But I think that's the heart of what I wanted to get to with the press conference question, to be totally honest. And I'm finally getting there now, which is what

Zain 24:35

what did today say about her political instincts? Because I think it was presumptive. You don't. But so spell it out for me. I

Carter 24:41

I think her political instincts are trash.

Carter 24:43

I think that this could have worked out for her, but

Carter 24:45

but I don't think that this is a good political instinct.

Carter 24:48

I think that the political instinct, she's chasing 20% of the electorate, hoping

Carter 24:52

hoping to win a majority government.

Carter 24:54

And I think that that's a ridiculous way to try. Ryan. I mean, I'm watching people do that in Surrey. It doesn't work.

Carter 25:00

I mean, the only way you can chase 20% and hope to win isn't in leadership.

Carter 25:06

But her leader, she's going to become the leader. This is a leadership. No, it's not a leadership. It's not a leadership. You don't just become the leader of the party to trash that. You don't want to be the Kim Campbell.

Carter 25:17

You do not want to be the Kim Campbell. I mean, arguably, and I don't agree with this argument, but I'm going to put forward the argument that has been put forward by Pierre Polyev's people. Pierre

Carter 25:25

Pierre Polyev's people have said, we

Carter 25:27

we have enough time to recover from this disastrous leadership and the policies that he's put forward because we have three years to start to pivot towards what the general population wants. And we will see the pivot. Are they saying that? Because

Zain 25:41

they're saying that at all. I

Zain 25:43

think they're saying double down on what we just, more of what we just did for the last several

Carter 25:47

several months. It suits my narrative, guys. So we're going to go with that. Okay?

Carter 25:56

What do you mean not okay?

Carter 25:58

Corey gets to be inconsistent all the time.

Zain 25:59

time. Why do I have to be consistent now? Yeah, but he's way more articulate when he does it. Okay, it's true. My point

Zain 26:06

point is simply this. You're getting somewhere. You're getting somewhere. Yeah,

Carter 26:09

Yeah, my point is this. This is not great for

Carter 26:14

for setting her up to be the person who wins the next election. Corey

Carter 26:18

Corey and I talked about the polls and where the polls were showing holes in Calgary on And the last Hogan

Carter 26:23

Hogan and Carter, or whatever we called it,

Carter 26:26

it's Hogan and Carter, right?

Carter 26:27

Great show. It's Carter and Hogan.

Carter 26:29

Great show. Either way,

Corey 26:29

way, it is a great show.

Carter 26:32

But I think that this is a, I

Carter 26:35

don't like her instincts because her instincts have always, since the day I met her, her instincts always take her to a small percentage of people instead of to the larger percentage of people. It's how she wants to be. It's how she wants to be seen. She loves fighting for who she feels is the persecuted minority. She felt that way when she was advocating for property rights. She felt that way when she was fighting against the government's electricity programs. She feels that way today when she's fighting for people's vaccination positions. That's who she is. That's what she likes to fight for.

Zain 27:08

Corey, any comments on her political instincts as we round this out?

Corey 27:11

Yeah, I mean, I'm going to have a little bit of humility here and say that she has exceeded our expectations multiple,

Corey 27:19

in this race. Including in this race, but even before this race, even her entry into the race, I think we were pretty dismissive of her jumping into the race so quickly, even teasing it out ahead of time she was probably going to be in. The way that she managed the narratives was kind of wild, but with the

Corey 27:37

the benefit of hindsight, it was pretty effective. And even the way she managed to stomp out conversation about the Sovereignty Act, At the time, I said, well, this is going to satisfy nobody. It's just as bad as we thought. But it just sucked all the oxygen out of the room. So is it intentional?

Corey 27:53

intentional? Is it accidental? At a certain point, it doesn't matter. She naturally finds herself in these politically advantageous situations. situations. Now, it

Corey 28:01

hasn't always worked for her. Of course, there's an election that Stephen Carter and I will remember quite well, 2012, where

Corey 28:07

where it all sort of fell off the rails for her at the last minute here.

Corey 28:11

Absolutely possible that happens again. Probably, again,

Corey 28:15

again, smart money wouldn't be that it falls off the rails in the leadership, but yeah, she

Corey 28:19

she has set these ticking time bombs for herself all over the place. Nonetheless, we have said so many times, you know, you

Corey 28:26

you got to do these things in sequence, right? You don't want to paint yourself into a a corner, but you can't worry about winning the general until you've won the leadership. And she's decided this is how she wins the general. And if that scenario I spun out was accurate, if it is close, and I'm not saying it is for sure. I don't want to be misunderstood on that.

Corey 28:47

barely getting over that hump,

Corey 28:48

that shows that she ran a pretty optimal strategy. Maybe she wouldn't have won it all if she hadn't.

Corey 28:53

So in that sense, maybe it's not so wild what she's doing. So

Corey 28:56

So I guess I'm going to throw a little bit of humility here. She has has exceeded my expectations for the past eight months or more.

Corey 29:03

And so I'm certainly not going to start disparaging her political sense.

Zain 29:07

Well, you can certainly catch the non-humble versions of us once we think we know the results on Thursday, which we will be doing our live stream, 7 p.m. Mountain Time. That's right, Stephen Carter, 6 p.m. We're on CBC Calgary to talk for the hour. Yeah, Carter, you want to jump in on something? Do

Zain 29:22

you want to talk about Pierre

Carter 29:23

Pierre Poliev's pivot strategy? Go ahead. I'm

Carter 29:25

I'm shocked that Corey has humility.

Carter 29:28

I've never seen it before.

Carter 29:30

think it was me

Zain 29:30

me either. It's a little weird. Yeah, that came off as increasingly insincere. If you ever want to know if Corey's made for politics, the answer is no, because that didn't deliver, Corey. Fair enough. Let's

Zain 29:42

Let's move on to our next segment. Our next segment, Can't Let Go of Legault.

Zain 29:46

Stephen Carter, Francois Legault, is back, wins the majority government tonight in Quebec. His party, the CAQ, has secured a resounding win in the Quebec legislature.

Zain 29:57

But, Corey, that's not the full story. is it because i want to use this as a jumping off point to talk about well

Zain 30:03

well not necessarily quebec unless you guys want to talk about it a bit and if there's anything interesting cory i'll let you go first on that as our um french canadian quebec correspondent um but yeah chief chief correspondent

Zain 30:15

chief francophone correspondent yeah thank you which is actually we've expanded the title this

Corey 30:18

this is pretty good i'm not even a francophone but uh no i

Zain 30:21

i appreciate that on this podcast you are you got two barely two

Zain 30:25

two barely unilingual people in carter and i exactly we barely get by in lean on you, Carter.

Zain 30:32

I want to talk more broadly about political parties. I want to talk about the resurgence, one might say, of the conservatives in Quebec, kind of tie that into maybe a broader themes that we're seeing across the country in terms of fickleness

Zain 30:45

fickleness of voters around political brands, where we kind of stay on brand health on political party. Are they as robust or can we

Zain 30:53

we be as romantic about them or sentimental about them as we have been in the the past. But talk to us about Quebec first. I'll give a bit of a roadmap to the listeners, but give us your take on what you saw tonight in Quebec with François Legault.

Corey 31:05

Yeah. Well, so you talked about the... First of all, Legault managed this pretty brilliantly, and he effectively ended the campaign where he began. He kept his opponents evenly divided, shockingly evenly divided. I was just pulling up the most recent

Corey 31:18

have Quebec Solidaire at 14.9, Parti Quebecois at 14.8, the Liberal Party, PLQ, is at 14.4 and the conservatives 13.1 that's super tight clustering for

Corey 31:31

opposition parties and it's kind of we know

Zain 31:33

know who's going to form the official opposition yet yeah

Corey 31:35

we do it's going to

Corey 31:37

be the liberals um

Corey 31:38

and and one of the okay so you're you're stepping all over some of these interesting insights i want to i want to lay on you they're not that interesting but you

Corey 31:46

you talked about the conservative party um being resurgent

Corey 31:50

resurgent and that's true i mean this party basically didn't exist until 2009 and it was taken over and it was used to um will effectively be

Corey 32:00

be a vehicle for eric duheim who is going to you know be this champion of conservative values now he lost in his riding as we are recording uh it looks like they may have been totally wiped out not gotten a single seat despite getting just a like percent of the vote behind their their opponents there but

Corey 32:17

but tbd because we're still waiting for results from both both north or or Bost Nord, I suppose, and Bost South is

Corey 32:25

pretty close, but I think that one's probably locked up at this point. I don't think it's called. Both

Corey 32:29

Both could potentially go conservative. That

Corey 32:31

That would be interesting because then they would find themselves in the House, the National Assembly.

Corey 32:38

let's talk about these other ones here. The Liberals have basically become a regional party. They are only competitive on the island of Montreal and some areas outside of Ottawa. or uh ottawa and

Corey 32:50

and um they well they managed to get 23 seats which is not too many less or fewer than they had uh

Corey 32:57

uh going into this election i think they at this solution they were at 27 they're

Corey 33:01

they're they're running fourth and fifth in like most of the rest of the province like they are just they're just way run off the table uh you have uh quebec solidaire which is going to end up it looks like with 10 seats which is what they went into it i believe uh first time in a while they have haven't actually increased their seat count. Parti Quebecois almost wiped out three seats, but they were almost wiped out last time with seven seats. So we'll see what happens there.

Corey 33:26

And, you know, at the top of it all, you got CAC, who is just shy of 90 seats currently, right? 89 seats. And

Corey 33:34

And what blows my mind about CAC is they didn't exist two elections ago, right? I mean, you know, like they're this whole party that Legault just created around himself. You pick up the constitution of that party, and you know what it says for leadership, like leadership election? It just says, Francois Legault is the leader of the party. That is hard-coded into their constitution.

Corey 33:58

And down the road, maybe there'll be a different way, basically. But for now, he's leader of the party.

Corey 34:03

Meanwhile, you've got this kind of, you know, we've already talked about Duhaime's, you know, conservative party, which is essentially just a vehicle for himself, essentially

Corey 34:11

essentially using a brand that did not exist in Quebec in anyone's history or,

Corey 34:16

or, you know, because,

Corey 34:18

because, you know, those who follow Quebec politics will know for a lot of the 20th century, the early part of it, the Union Nationale was trading back and forth with, you know, the liberals. rules. The union part of that was it was, you know, the conservatives were part of that union. There was no conservative party at that time.

Corey 34:34

And so this is just like a whole new construction that's brought forward. And

Corey 34:38

And so I think maybe where you're bringing us to, Zane, is when we look at the overall results here, we look at the percentages in Quebec, the majority of Quebecers are voting for parties that did not exist 15 years ago, did

Corey 34:51

did not exist 15 years ago. And, you know, Quebec solidaire barely existed at that particular moment. So if you want to throw them into the mix, all of a sudden, two-thirds of Quebecers for parties in the past 20 years, they were created effectively.

Corey 35:04

And what does that tell us about politics? Is it unique to Quebec? Is it a bigger point?

Zain 35:10

don't think it's unique to Quebec. I'll let you jump in a second. But before that, Carter, en français, Corey, please.

Zain 35:17

What you just said. Thank you.

Corey 35:19

That was all in French, actually.

Zain 35:20

You're just so good at it, you didn't notice. I

Carter 35:22

I didn't understand a word of it. That's perfect. I always knew

Zain 35:23

knew I'd think in

Zain 35:25

French and listen in French. Carter, what does it say? Because one could argue that the degree

Zain 35:32

degree we're seeing it in Quebec with multiple new brands, parties being created, is

Zain 35:40

But it's not necessarily unique. We look at our home province, the Conservative Party, majority of Albertans voted for a party that didn't exist until, what, four or five years ago? In that two

Zain 35:51

two-horse race in 2019. But

Zain 35:52

But your thoughts on this, Carter, from a party and brand perspective and what it maybe says about voters and what it says about the moment we're in. I

Carter 36:00

I think we're seeing more party fluidity, right? Like the CPC didn't exist that long ago. The

Carter 36:10

creation of even the Reform Party under Preston Manning.

Carter 36:15

We have fluidity in politics. We're now watching the B.C. liberals decide whether or not they should be B.C. united, which, you

Carter 36:24

you know, it's... We'll get to.

Carter 36:26

to. Yeah. I mean, all of these parties are forming. And I do think that it

Carter 36:32

requires courage, right? Say what you will about Legault, but, you

Carter 36:37

know, sure, it's almost dictatorial in terms of how he's created the party, but he created the party.

Carter 36:42

He chose this as a path. And I think that if

Carter 36:45

if I were sitting on the

Carter 36:47

the wrong side of Danielle Smith's creation and I was concerned as an MLA or I was concerned as a senior party organizer that I

Carter 36:57

I didn't like where this party was going, I would be looking around and saying, you know, it

Carter 37:02

it wasn't that long ago the Saskatchewan party was created. It wasn't that long ago that the

Carter 37:07

the United Conservative Party was created.

Carter 37:11

People are willing to step out of the brands that we know and choose new brands. They are, in fact, I would argue, looking for new brands because they do not feel like the old brands represent them. And that is a tremendous, if you will, marketplace opportunity. If you have five or six MLAs right now that are dispirited or upset with what's going going to happen you know what five or six mla is a party doth make cory

Zain 37:38

cory i won't get your feedback

Zain 37:39

on this but to the point of do

Zain 37:43

you think people are looking for new brands like have we had enough proof points in this country and perhaps even western democracy if i could be so bold to expand it out uh as far to say people

Zain 37:55

people are looking for for new brands i want to get still examine the why why political parties are doing this, because I think the Legault example is maybe not a unique one, but it's one of the lanes. There's other reasons. But tell me about Carter's hypothesis here, that in fact, voters are looking for new constellations, new brands, new feelings to perhaps guide them and motivate them to vote.

Corey 38:18

So you might see this as a distinction without a difference, but for me, it's not so much voters are looking for new brands, it's that they're repelled by current brands. We are in a situation where negative partisanship rules the day. You're not defined by your love of party. You're defined by your loathing of another party.

Corey 38:36

And there are people who have realized, well, my God, half the population hates the liberals, half the population hates the conservatives. Or if you're in Quebec, half the population hates the liberals, half the population hates the PQ. Why don't we just build something new here? It doesn't have any of that negativeness and we can just run it entirely on a brand that carries is no baggage because we're we're in an era where it's all about what you hate right and so i think in an era where it's all about what you hate the appeal of a new brand is very very strong the

Corey 39:06

the other thing that can't be discounted is when you think about why lego went this route rather than trying to take over an existing party correct

Zain 39:14

correct which which has been the route in the past yeah

Corey 39:17

yeah yeah absolutely uh it's it's no doubt because of like control and authority and i don't want to to fight like this vanguard battle with somebody who you know voted for the other guy and doesn't really like me and i'm spending half of my energy dealing with internal party strife the party is my views hell in legault's case the party is me and uh you can get on board or you can get the fuck out of here and i'm just not i'm not willing to tolerate anything beyond that i mean my god your constitution says i am the leader you know what do you think the review process is for that zane spoiler there isn't one like you're in the party if you support legault and you're not if if you're not.

Corey 39:54

And when you think about how a political party needs to put its energies towards a general election, I

Corey 40:01

I mentioned a friend of mine who said that the reason why Rachel Notley won in 2015, Justin Archer's his name, is because she was the only one dressed for the bus when it came, right? All these other political parties were so mired in their own bullshit.

Corey 40:13

This model of just creating a new party in the Legault model, which is not quite the same as the Saskatchewan party model or the bc united let's just change the brand model effectively

Corey 40:24

means you can spend all of your time getting ready and none of your time fighting you

Corey 40:29

fighting i don't know how am i going to continue this metaphor fighting with your spouse to get into the closet i don't know carter

Corey 40:33

carter clean that one that

Carter 40:34

that was the world's worst metaphor i

Corey 40:38

i i don't even know what it is i'm right now

Carter 40:40

now thinking there's a lot of issues going on at the hogan household i'm very upset carter

Zain 40:46

carter i've I've got many follow-up questions, but one that's teased out from Corey's point

Zain 40:53

Have political parties, are they now perhaps looking at themselves as disposable

Zain 41:00

Like as long as it serves the purpose of the next three races or this leader or this particular moment. Fuck it. Who cares? I don't care if it's a corpse in 10 years. Is that too crass and perhaps too simplified? Or do you think we're kind of in that moment that, fuck it, we're just going to change brands every decade. Might as well make this one about me, per the Legault model. What do you kind of think of that?

Carter 41:25

I think that most people involved in political parties don't have enough, like, don't give it any thought at all.

Carter 41:31

I don't think that there is nearly enough thought given to the

Carter 41:35

the brand structure of a political party, what it stands for, how it's supposed to act, how it's being received by the population at all. I think that far

Carter 41:44

far too many brands are focused on how do we win the next election, not who are we and what is the market need.

Carter 41:51

Forgive me for using words like market need, but that I think is really what politics misses sometimes. I think that far too many politicians want to serve their own needs and don't look at the marketplace and say, in the marketplace of ideas, where do we actually fit here? And

Carter 42:08

And I think that's the real opportunity

Carter 42:10

opportunity that they can bring is, you

Carter 42:14

know, if they thought of themselves as a brand, they could say, you know what, let's blow this brand up in 12 years. There could be an argument that says the Canadian, you know, the Liberal Party of Canada, after

Carter 42:26

after Justin Trudeau, you

Carter 42:28

know, should be thinking about what is our brand

Carter 42:31

brand position and what are we going to do? do. They won't. Instead, they'll elect a leader and do leader-style politics, because that's basically what we do now.

Zain 42:40

Corey, same question to you, based on your point. Are we a disposable party?

Corey 42:44

Carter's last point is exactly the point I wanted to make here. This is, in many ways, a natural consequence of leader-centric politics.

Corey 42:52

You talk about political parties changing their brand every decade. They do. They

Corey 42:55

They change their leader. And then the whole look of the party, the whole policy of the party, everything about the party, who's in charge of the party, Who's the candidate to the party? Everything changes. And I think as long as we are running these strong leader models, there's going to be a great appeal in just creating your own party. Because, you know, I mean, I think about the Federal Liberal Party going from basically the 70s through to

Corey 43:17

to kind of a collapse of this in the 2000s.

Corey 43:21

But we're just traded back and forth between wings of the party, the business wing of the party, the more socially progressive wing of

Zain 43:26

of the party. This non-ideological morphing sort of nebulous, we can be whatever we need to be in this particular moment, read the room sort of thought that the

Zain 43:35

liberals were. Yeah, well, and it worked

Corey 43:36

worked as long as everybody just sort of grumbled and sat there, and it started to fall

Corey 43:40

fall apart when they weren't willing to do that.

Corey 43:42

But imagine – it's not actually that hard to imagine a scenario where Paul Martin, rather than trying to get the Kretchen Liberal Party to work with him, if this was 20 years – I mean, if

Corey 43:55

if it was 20 years later and if he was a different person, you know, just saying, well, I'm just

Corey 43:58

to create my own party.

Corey 43:59

Right. I don't have to deal with any of that. Yeah. I've still got those people mad at me, but we'll just, we'll just pick over the carrion here. And, you know, this

Corey 44:07

this leader centric politics colors

Corey 44:09

colors everything about it. And because we're no longer like candidate centric or party centric, it

Corey 44:16

it just, you know, in a way, I mean, in a funny way, I think it's weird that people do hold onto the brand so much. I really do. You know, we've gotten to a point where they seem so much less consequential and we hold on to them because we as party people are invested in them. But the public seems to just hate

Corey 44:35

hate party politics and is willing

Corey 44:37

try the new thing.

Corey 44:40

it seems to kind of hold you back and fight with it. And despite me even saying all of this, it sounds ludicrous to me on a certain level. level

Zain 44:48

right so let's talk about the the party

Zain 44:50

party can we talk about the mechanics of this this is what i mean i'll kind of leave this bracket open that we've kind of have right now sure

Zain 44:57

sure you know they they like they talk about like entrepreneurship these days it's so easy in some ways right like all you need is your idea your phone and your laptop and for most ideas you can get started there has

Zain 45:07

has starting a political party become easier or is it that same annoying upstart that that it was 50 years ago, that, you know, that it was the pain that many took to start the Alberta Party or a project we are all in some degree familiar with.

Zain 45:23

Like, talk to me about the pains of doing this, because have we made it easier in some way to upstart a party in terms of what it looks like, how to set up brands, how to set up operations? I want to get mechanical here, because I think that's what ultimately also feeds the fact that we might see, at least in our our political futures, a churn of brands and an introduction of, of new upstarts?

Carter 45:45

Well, it's not actually gotten any easier technically, right?

Carter 45:49

right? So forming a technical party is actually relatively straightforward. Um,

Carter 45:54

Um, you have to, you know, have

Carter 45:56

have candidates if it's an election. So you can form it during an election where you need to have 50% of the candidates. You

Carter 46:02

You need three seats in the legislative assembly. So, you know, I was talking about this, if you've got five people in the UCP who don't like Danielle Smith, they can be a new party tomorrow. And that new party would be recognized by Elections Alberta. The hard way of doing it is to complete a petition containing at least 8,473 names from eligible

Corey 46:27

And should we be worried you had that number at hand?

Corey 46:30

Carter's literally used to that number. It's like he counts sheep. Steve, Stephen

Zain 46:35

Carter, how many political parties have you tried to start? I may have

Carter 46:39

have shown too much of my hand.

Zain 46:42

Of course you have.

Zain 46:44

Of course you have, yes.

Carter 46:46

No, I mean, I can work the Google machine while Zane talks, as well as anybody, Corey. That's

Carter 46:52

I'm proud of you. But the point of the exercise is that to do that last one is really quite challenging.

Carter 46:57

Because now you're looking for, you know, 10

Carter 47:00

10,000 people who want to put their names on a petition to sign a political party. The success rate in Alberta has been very low for that. Traditionally, it's been done by people on the right.

Carter 47:12

And the rest of the parties have been in place forever. The Marijuana Party or the Rhinoceros Party or the Communist Party. We actually, I think, have two Communist Parties. It wasn't enough to have one. But once they're formed,

Carter 47:25

they're very easy to maintain. You just have to file the appropriate paperwork and ensure that that you're raising money appropriately. They

Carter 47:32

They can live forever.

Carter 47:34

So once a party is formed, it's much easier to take over that party. And so that's what Brian Thiessen and Chima and a few others

Carter 47:42

others did when they took over the Alberta party around

Carter 47:45

around the time that Nahed Nenshi was elected in 2010, 2012.

Carter 47:49

And that's why the Alberta party started to zig and zag into becoming a new a new entity um at that time it was not created it was taken over uh

Carter 48:01

so it's it's hard it's hard to do on some levels find three mlas that want to do it that's tough um but

Carter 48:08

but it's it's actually ridiculously easy on the other on the other hand right

Zain 48:13

right and talk to me about this the mechanics of party up starting of startup starting up a party in that sense is it is it akin to like easier

Zain 48:21

easier easier to start a business today or to start your own little tech company? Or is it just as hard as it used to be?

Corey 48:27

yeah. I mean, I think that there's probably, it's so fast. Okay. So let's just say this. The Alberta party is such a fascinating example, I think, of the opposite of what Legault did, right? Like they started a political party, but they did everything else the opposite.

Corey 48:40

They spent all of their time being a party rather than a vehicle to win elections. They got together, they debated policy. They fought about the idea of a strong leader every every step of the way. They didn't want a strong leader. They were constantly hemming in their leader and reducing the authority of the leader. They spent a lot of time even debating whether they should be a political party, let alone what their policy should be. They were basically like this drawing room conversation turned into an electoral vehicle and just fucking surprised it didn't work, right? I mean, maybe it could have worked in a time where we

Corey 49:12

we were in more party centric times, but we were in leader centric times and they could never figure out the leader part of the equation. And whenever they had a halfway competent leader, they were always trying to

Corey 49:22

either fetter that leader's authority or look for a better leader, right? They were never satisfied to just get on with the business of trying to be a political party or

Corey 49:32

or even being defined and clearly articulating who they were to the market. And I think fundamentally,

Corey 49:37

the Alberta party is so flawed to its core, it's barely worth talking about except as a negative example as we are right here, right? But this has been the case for so many political parties like Stephen has mentioned, those random, like the marijuana parties and whatnot. They're these organizations that

Corey 49:53

that are just sort of, they exist to perpetuate themselves rather than the idea of elections. They're there to have conversations about marijuana, a substance now legal in this country. There's still a marijuana party, right? And so that's not very productive. What Legault did was the opposite lego said i don't want to deal with this shit i just want to run i just want to do it my way i want to get it done and that's what i'm saying i can't believe there's not more of i actually think there's far too much of creating political parties the other way that are just you know talking about resetting the chairs well let me

Zain 50:28

me let me read to you and there's just i'll let you get in just let me be clarify cory's point and when you say you're you're surprised there's not more of it where a leader establishes

Zain 50:37

establishes a electoral winning vehicle

Zain 50:41

in their image that's what you mean right somebody says i

Corey 50:45

i want to fucking run they're like well what party it's like fuck that let's just make it my party well for sure and even when we think about like people who would maybe 30 years ago run as an independent to your point about a laptop a phone and a dream or whatever the hell it was yeah some you know now you can You can be an ambitious independent. You can effectively say, yeah, you know what? But you need a certain level of public persona in order to pull off those kinds of things, which Legault certainly had.

Corey 51:11

there is a lesser version of this I don't want to lose, which is just saying, we're going to make something new. We know you hate the old thing, like

Corey 51:18

like the negative partisanship, so we're going to create something new. Like

Corey 51:21

Like that's the other big pressure we have that creates the Saskatchewan parties and the BC Uniteds and the UCPs because they are getting rid of the, you know, the divine PC brand and, you know, the BC liberal taint, you know, and ultimately, obviously the PCs and the cronyism here in Alberta and how that was perceived. and

Corey 51:41

and they do it to flip the page. And so

Corey 51:44

so that's another version that we're seeing more and more of as people are trying to run away from baggage as much as they are trying to define themselves by something.

Zain 51:52

Carter, you wanted to respond to something here. Jump in on this. And then I've got two follow-up questions around prospects of what you guys have talked about here.

Carter 52:00

Well, I was just going to say, I mean, Corey's absolutely right about the new parties being formed. I mean, there are seven new parties being formed right now in

Carter 52:06

in the province of Alberta, including the Alberta Statehood Party and the Alberta National Party. So these parties, the parties that are being formed, and also Land and Labour Party of Alberta, but

Carter 52:19

these are all parties that are being formed. And I would be willing to bet that three political strategists on this particular podcast who are supposed to have our ear to the ground on politics in Alberta, we

Carter 52:29

we had no fricking clue. Is

Zain 52:32

Yeah, Land and Labour. On elections in Alberta, do any of them need a leader?

Carter 52:38

All of them do, as a matter of fact. Okay,

Zain 52:40

Okay, so Corey, can we just arrange to have some posters sent over to them? Yeah, sure. Can we just fill in? But Carter, I have a question for you. Question for you on this.

Zain 52:49

Was Quebec a unique wet clay moment, or do you feel like this prospect exists across the country? And I guess at the root of that question is, are we in leader-centric times forevermore? And is this opportunity equitably accessible across the country?

Zain 53:08

Like, for example, let me throw you an example. If a prominent Albertan came to you after the next election and said, I want to run, but I don't see myself as either orange or blue, you

Zain 53:18

you said, well, screw it. We can just do it here. Would you feel like that opportunity exists here as much as it did for Legault in Quebec, or if so, if not, why?

Carter 53:27

Stop reading my mind, Velji. Yeah, it totally exists. It would be very easy to create a plan that would have a new party that would be immediately competitive in in the in the election in 20 uh 2027 be

Carter 53:43

be very easy especially if uh

Carter 53:45

uh the end if you have the leader

Zain 53:46

leader you mean yeah

Carter 53:48

yeah but the leader is yeah you

Carter 53:50

you know like the leader's the hard part right like the

Carter 53:53

the leader's the hard but

Zain 53:54

i'm hearing no it's not it's but what i'm hearing is that the leader's the main part it's like 80

Zain 53:59

of it it's the

Zain 54:00

majority of it if

Carter 54:01

if nenshi wanted to form a party tomorrow then she forms a party tomorrow and he's immediately viable even in this election.

Carter 54:10

because he's got the name recognition and he's still got a big enough following.

Zain 54:13

You're not saying that this is a unique Quebec moment. Corey, do you feel like this is a unique Quebec moment that we saw? Do you feel like there's challenges elsewhere in the country that may not necessarily keep this opportunity that we've seen Legault lean into open?

Corey 54:26

Yeah, I don't think it's unique to Quebec, but Quebec has a few things that made it more likely to happen there. One is that it's kind of a discrete media market, right? So you become a a personality there, you're

Corey 54:37

you're a personality there. It's not as diffuse. It's not as consumed by American culture. There's a way that you can become prominent in Quebec.

Corey 54:43

It's just not available to an Albertan, frankly, even if they become sort of equivalently important. It's just going to be diluted by all of the other media that's coming from the rest of the country, from the United States and so on. The other thing is there really was a very exhausting kind of bipolar

Corey 55:00

bipolar politics in Quebec between sovereignists and federalists, and people were just kind of done with it.

Corey 55:07

And they wanted to flip the page a bit. One of the interesting things about this election is

Corey 55:16

Solidaire is a sovereignist party. The Parti Quebecois obviously is outright separatist, although in varying degrees.

Corey 55:26

this really wasn't an election about separatism in any way, shape, or form, right? Right. Which is, you know, even

Corey 55:32

even when it's not about it in the past in Quebec, it's often been right behind the surface there. And almost the threat, like you might like the PQ and I know they're saying no referendum, but you give them the power and you might have a referendum. Right. And it was always lurking there.

Corey 55:46

And it just really wasn't this election in the same way at

Corey 55:50

all, at all. But there was. And so it.

Corey 55:53

Well, so my point is just that, like, there was this mold that Quebecers wanted to break. They were sort of exhausted with the mold. And so that was one of the reasons why it was more likely for Lagoa, more likely for the CAC.

Corey 56:07

in? There are corollaries here. Yeah, go for it. But

Corey 56:11

I'm just saying it's possible in other places.

Carter 56:13

places. I just think that it's really interesting. Like one of the core planks from the CAC was pride,

Carter 56:19

right? So the pride of being from Quebec, the pride of being in that kind of unique Canadian, Canadian. That was a significant part. I mean, it was, you

Carter 56:30

you know, and I just kind of quickly glanced through it, but I thought, you

Carter 56:33

you know, again, I don't mean to bring everything back to the election in Surrey, but Surrey's always had this kind of inferiority complex to Vancouver, right?

Carter 56:43

Pride is a fascinating thing when dealing with place. That's one of the reasons that the Saskatchewan party has been so successful. It's very interesting to have pride of the place that that you're from. Uh, and I think that that, that,

Carter 56:54

that, that is a, uh, a fundamental element that pulled away from the sovereigntist movement because you could still have pride and remain in Canada. And that was something that Legault brought. Uh, and that was one of the things they were chanting tonight when his victory was announced.

Carter 57:08

Um, so it obviously had significant impact.

Zain 57:12

Carter, let's talk about the voters, which we don't like to do on this podcast. No, never. Sometimes we're forced to.

Zain 57:22

I call this a new era? Or does this moment or does this opportunity present

Zain 57:27

present itself as some sort of solution or at least band-aid for those that we're hearing more and more across the country? to Corey's point that, you

Zain 57:38

you know, if they're partisan, they're negative partisans, or they just are tired of the old political brands, or they say even further, Carter, and I don't love this term, but it's used often that I'm politically homeless, right? I just don't have a home. Do you feel like this moment, this opportunity, this ability to upstart behind a leader to create election winning machines that may not be parties, so let's see a downside there for electors in that in that particular way. But do you see this as hopeful for the voter? Or do you see this as just another transaction piece that the voter has to feel like for a moment that they've got some control or see themselves in, but really its purpose is to get you to mark an X and then move on.

Carter 58:16

Corey, do you have any sense of how many voters showed up in Quebec and was it higher or lower?

Corey 58:21

It was a little bit higher than last time. I think it was just under 70% last I checked, but I can track

Carter 58:26

down. Well, then I would suggest, Zane, that without really having done done a bunch of work into the numbers. It does appear to me that new parties, new structures do avail new excitement and,

Carter 58:36

and, and, and people feel like they're in on the ground floor. Um,

Carter 58:39

Um, I do think that that's possible. Um, especially

Carter 58:42

especially when you're looking at younger people.

Carter 58:47

I, I'm not, I don't have enough data to make that a hundred percent a, uh,

Carter 58:51

uh, a conclusion yet. I just, you know, I

Carter 58:54

I do think that people can see themselves in that. Um, but

Carter 58:59

but I'm, I'm dying to see how things ultimately unfold.

Carter 59:03

I'd love to see a new political party here in Alberta. I'd love to see a new political party in BC.

Carter 59:09

And I think that there's room for a new political party, even in Ontario, where

Carter 59:14

where the Ontario Liberals have been.

Carter 59:16

And the Ontario Liberals and the NDP have struggled

Carter 59:21

struggled to capture people's attention.

Zain 59:26

right, same question to you. Is there hope hope for voters here or is this just another transactional electoral election winning machine that that really kind of doesn't bypass the voters but it just uses them for for maybe temporary transactions i

Corey 59:41

mean in a way it uses voters the exact same way that political parties present themselves to voters these these leader-centric vehicles you know the leader's name on the sign you're electing a premier you're electing a prime minister no you're not right yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Corey 59:56

They you know, that is sort of the model that they actually get at the end of the day. And in a funny way, it's a little bit more honest. Now, I don't I don't share Carter's enthusiasm for new parties because unlike Stephen Carter, I believe in a thing called vote splitting because we use first past the post. And and, you know, I think one of the reasons why it would be less likely to happen in a geography like Alberta is because it is so deeply

Corey 1:00:19

deeply competitive in a high stakes way. Like there are major differences between the two major parties in Alberta. right um

Corey 1:00:27

and and so there would just be a lot of frustration on both sides now are there people who wish that there were options that were neither yeah because i think we live in a world of high negative partisanship and when we look at the negative numbers for leaders they're super high they're super high in alberta they're super high in the united states they're super high in canada we generally seem to dislike and you know dislike leaders uh more easily than we like them these these days but um but you know there's there's a lot at stake too i think i one of the things that um we should note is that this this often does not work too but you know

Corey 1:01:03

know it's it's it's a shifting paradigm and maybe it's not even brand new because

Corey 1:01:08

because i think back to the teens and the 20s when i wasn't alive so maybe think back is the wrong phrase but um you

Corey 1:01:15

you know we were creating new new coalitions new parties the progressives were all of a sudden thing the ccf is a thing social credit's a thing you

Corey 1:01:22

you know it happened back then too in different ways carter

Zain 1:01:25

carter remembers it well yeah and

Corey 1:01:28

the relative stability of our federal parties even our provincial parties is you know it's

Corey 1:01:34

it's not the norm i guess is what i would say but

Corey 1:01:36

but i do think that we are feeding some of this and we're creating some weird incentives by having such leader-centric organizations and having parties that are perpetually fighting with themselves it starts to make the equation like of being a party uh you know stalwart different

Corey 1:01:52

different like does it make as much sense these days carter

Zain 1:01:56

carter the only way to solve uh vote splitting which isn't real according to you is uh just get 42 42 and there's no vote splits that's what i've heard i'm

Zain 1:02:04

taking away let's move it on to our final segment are over under in our lightning round steven carter we do this for you You are the best at taking this segment, which should be about 30 seconds, and expanding several minutes. This is not for

Zain 1:02:18

for me to take

Carter 1:02:19

take any blame for. I did your entire podcast the other day in like 48 seconds.

Carter 1:02:24

recounted and was better in 48 seconds. Carter, this

Zain 1:02:28

this could take a while. I don't want it to take a while. If it does take a while, I will move it on to another episode. Stephen Carter, are you in or are you out on

Zain 1:02:39

Tell me why. I'm going to give

Carter 1:02:40

give you a bit of time. Tell me why. Oh, you want me to tell you why now?

Carter 1:02:43

Because it literally sounds like a soccer team. And I just don't like, I think you've got a number of soccer teams. Would you have

Zain 1:02:50

have preferred United BC? Would you have preferred United BC?

Carter 1:02:53

Not sure. I like the United piece. I don't think that it really implies what the BC liberals are. I think they want to be united between the conservatives and the liberals, but I'm not sure that they are anymore.

Carter 1:03:05

You know, Kevin Falcon isn't that guy.

Carter 1:03:08

I would have preferred, well,

Carter 1:03:10

well, I'm not sure what I would have preferred. I haven't spent a moment's thought of it. I just don't, I would prefer that they don't sound like a soccer team.

Zain 1:03:17

Corey, BC United, are you in or are you out?

Corey 1:03:19

Look, I'm out, but I'm not going to be harsh about it. These are so hard to do, these rebrandings, and you've got to bring in all sorts of considerations to them. My big concern with BC United, besides the fact that, yes, it absolutely seems like a soccer team, is that it puts the emphasis on the party rather than the voter right like you

Corey 1:03:39

know the attribute is i'm united you know rather than saying you're going to get policies of this nature or we're going to do this kind of thing for you like even when you think about uh you know cac coalition

Corey 1:03:49

coalition for the future of quebec right it's

Corey 1:03:52

it's the about the future of quebec it's talking about like a value proposition to the voter exactly

Corey 1:03:56

makes a lot more sense to me uh and the mbc united is is like clearly a name of a party that's anxious about its internal politics. The same reason we got the United Conservative Party here in Alberta. Pretty

Zain 1:04:07

Pretty navel-gazing in that regard.

Corey 1:04:09

navel-gazing. And ultimately, if we think about the name as being part of the marketing, and if you're willing to treat it as part of the marketing and change it up, as the BC Liberals are doing,

Corey 1:04:18

you should follow that thread all the way through and say, what does my market need? What are the people who are accessible but not currently voting for me? What are they looking for? Is it prosperity? Is it progress? Is it energy? Like, I don't know what the hell it is, but this is the kind of thing you deep dive into with focus groups and tests

Corey 1:04:34

and, and you, you really, you try to get a

Corey 1:04:38

a little bit of a bump out of it rather than pick a name that you think will just sort of keep everybody. I mean, it's navel gazing. I could have probably done it.

Carter 1:04:47

Carter, I want to, I

Zain 1:04:48

want to pick up on something Corey said here, and I know this is the over, under, and lightning round. So I'm, I'm now kind

Zain 1:04:53

kind of undermining my hatred towards you about this. So quickly, he said.

Zain 1:04:58

what do you think of why is the cac the only party that at least that i know of and you can correct me that actually explicitly uses the word coalition i found that fascinating like from the perspective of just acknowledging we're a coalition acknowledging that there's like we're stitched together that you can be different often we talk about that with our inside voice right like what is our coalition for the x party are we going to what are you just your baseline thoughts they They don't have to be deep because they never are. But your baseline thoughts on this concept of it being coalition

Zain 1:05:30

coalition with your outside voice. I just thought that was interesting now that Corey just mentioned it. Well,

Carter 1:05:34

Well, I think that that's what they're trying to do with United as well. I mean, they're trying to bring some sort of a, you know, if you were to, you know, you have a place here because we all fit here. You know, that is the message of the coalition word.

Carter 1:05:47

And I think that's also trying to be the message of the United. I think Corey's point is bang on. Corey is right. Those are more reflective of the internal politics than they are of the external politics. The coalition does seem to have more of an outward focus, and it also seems to denote how it comes together, right? Right.

Carter 1:06:07

You know, again, I think that the,

Carter 1:06:11

Corey made a very good point about the future, right? Like what does this party exist for? And I think that the parties that we have, we've lost the sense of what liberal and conservative mean. And so we're now walking away from those words and we are trying to tell everybody that they have a place and coalition may be the most successful word in Canada. As of this election, in this moment, we'll see whether it holds.

Corey 1:06:37

Yeah, there's a deep irony

Corey 1:06:38

irony because of course, it's anything but a coalition internally like Legault. Well, maybe it's not irony. Maybe it's exactly what we're talking about being externally focused, but Legault runs it like a dictator. But coalition is a way of saying, I think the name is brilliant because it's like saying, we're not asking you to be a partisan. Being a member of a coalition seems like you're keeping a certain autonomy over your of yourself and what you

Corey 1:07:01

to the table yeah

Corey 1:07:02

absolutely and then to talk about quebec's future we were just talking about this log jam between liberals and party quebecois and it's it's like it's a way of saying stop arguing about the past we got to get on with it we got to talk about the future like legault was a pq cabinet minister right

Carter 1:07:17

right and he just

Corey 1:07:18

just said like no enough of that like we're moving on yeah

Corey 1:07:20

and so So I think it's a really inspired name. They

Corey 1:07:24

They do so many things in the marketing sense right in Quebec. We were talking about this a little bit earlier. This is a good example of that. They've

Corey 1:07:32

treated it like a creative brief, and they've run down a name that says the things they needed to say.

Zain 1:07:40

Boyd, I'm going to stick with you on this. As we enter the final hours of the UCP leadership race, we're going to see, of course, GOTV. We're going to see, you know, those standard elements of the final days. One of those standard elements is what we've been called the closing argument, the

Zain 1:07:57

the final sort of overrated or underrated, the closing argument in a leadership race. In your mind, the summary argument or the summary of why I'm here, what I could do, all that sort of stuff in a leadership race where in this case, most of the votes are in the closing argument. I don't mean to put my thumb on the scale, but curious to hear your thoughts. Overrated or underrated?

Corey 1:08:19

So overrated, different again from when we were talking about the conservatives, because it's not just that back,

Corey 1:08:26

back, you know, with the conservative race, it's like the lowest information voters are the least eager are going to be the ones to get it in last. And, you know, how many of those are there and blah, blah, blah. I mean, run the tapes if you want. But in

Corey 1:08:36

in this case, I think it's overrated because there is more risk than reward.

Corey 1:08:41

And I think that's the problem I have with Daniel Smith's commentary today. you go out there and you summarize things that were controversial don't be surprised if you bring back the controversy and you know there's there's some risk there carter

Zain 1:08:54

carter same question to you closing arguments overrated underrated in your mind underrated

Carter 1:09:00

underrated i think that in general you need a closing argument in the last three days because people make up their mind so late in the specific instance of this particular leadership i think that the closing arguments were probably should should have been made two weeks ago and designed to be a little less controversial.

Zain 1:09:17

I'm going to make you guys work for these final two questions, but I think we're going to have a good time. Stephen Carter, first to you, starting with you. Who

Zain 1:09:24

Who in Canada's political history

Zain 1:09:27

could have created their own party rather than run for an existing political institution or party? Who in Canada's history do you think, and they could have been a winner, they

Zain 1:09:40

they could have have been a loser. It could have been someone that only a few people heard about because they wrong place, wrong time, wrong party, wrong strategic move. But who in your mind would have been better off?

Zain 1:09:51

That's the underlying sentiment. Who in your mind would have been better off had

Zain 1:09:55

had they created their own party in their image rather than run for an existing political institution? And the reason I'm going so slow is to give you, Stephen Carter, or some time to think.

Carter 1:10:10

already got it. I have two answers, and I'm not sure I'm happy with either.

Zain 1:10:15

show us your work, though. I'm curious to actually see your work on this.

Carter 1:10:18

Yeah, I mean, I think that John Charest

Carter 1:10:21

could have formed his own party when he took over the Quebec Liberal Party and also when he ran to be the leader of this Conservative Party. He could have formed a Quebec-based common-sense party that would have been reflective of his time serving as the youngest cabinet minister in Canadian history. The other person I was thinking about was

Carter 1:10:45

If you eliminate his father, just for a thought exercise-

Corey 1:10:48

- No way. Go on.

Carter 1:10:49

If you eliminate his father as a thought exercise, the guy was a celebrity, right?

Carter 1:10:53

right? He didn't need the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party needed him. And I think that he would have been more successful Well, had he just started off as a, you

Carter 1:11:02

know, a builder of a new thing, it would have also shown that he could have done something.

Carter 1:11:06

Building the new thing would have been far more effective for him in the long run, I think.

Zain 1:11:11

Right. Who in Canadian political history would have benefited from his

Zain 1:11:15

his or her own political party rather than running for an existing political banner? Could be provincial, could be federal. Who's

Corey 1:11:26

So Carter took my first answer, but he didn't go all the way. I think Jean Charest on three different occasions could have created his own party. I

Corey 1:11:33

think he could have done it after the 93 election.

Corey 1:11:36

he could have done it when he ran for Premier of Quebec, when he went to join the Quebec

Corey 1:11:41

Because remember, there was a real courtship to get him there too. And I think he could have done it in this most recent time when he was running against Pierre Polyev and said, we need to create a new central alternative. And

Corey 1:11:52

that's pretty amazing because it really speaks to the power of his individual. Him

Carter 1:11:56

Him as an individual. How much is tied

Corey 1:11:58

tied to it, right? And he was this young cabinet minister. There was this moment where the conservatives, the PCs, I mean, were just wiped out. There were two seats. It would have been very easy to walk away and say, we're building something new,

Corey 1:12:11

right? Yeah. How the hell hard would that be? And similarly, I think with the liberals, you could have shaken things up in Quebec. That one's probably the hardest lift, frankly, because that was quite the infrastructure at the time. And it was so soon after the Quebec referendum, I think it would have just made everyone anxious to think that this champion of a united Canada was being monkeyed with in that particular way. The

Corey 1:12:37

The other one, also not too far away, but I think is illustrative of the type of person who really succeeds when they create their own party.

Corey 1:12:45

And in a way, I actually think this would be an utter disaster as well. So I hesitate to put it on the table.

Corey 1:12:54

guy like Kevin O'Leary, who just instead of spending all of his money to lose a leadership race, creates a party and gets a certain type of individual. He says he knows business. He's always going to do. There's a model there. there i

Corey 1:13:06

i you know i almost could have said brian mulrooney because

Corey 1:13:09

because he was also yeah but

Corey 1:13:11

but like he was also like just a party operator in such a smooth way like i think it would be not making use of all of his skills cory

Zain 1:13:19

cory i'm going to stick with you for our next one give carter a bit of time to think who right now on the current canadian political playing fields this is an active player they could have high profile low profile they could be provincial they can be federal would

Zain 1:13:31

would you want to take and say i'm going to make your own you need you need to get out of this you need need to get out of this system. They could be a leader of a current party. They could be a cabin minister. They could be an opposition. They could be government. It doesn't matter. That you'd want to pluck out and say, these institutions, these brands, these colors, these current models are not working for you. There's a party in your image, your DNA that we're going to create. Who would that be for you, Corey? If I can say the active players, the active roster imposter of Canadian politics right now. Yeah.

Corey 1:14:04

Yeah. So having thought about it for exactly 15 seconds, I'm going to say Mark Carney.

Zain 1:14:09

You think Mark shouldn't lean into the liberal brand?

Corey 1:14:12

Well, I'm saying that there's an opportunity for Mark to create his own brand.

Corey 1:14:17

And there's a gap that we've identified between a more increasingly right-wing conservative party and

Corey 1:14:24

and an increasingly left-wing liberal party. And if you could get some of that establishment and the support around you um i don't know i mean it's i think your odds are better than taking freeland on head-to-head if it's something you actually want that's

Zain 1:14:37

that's an interesting one i mean carter

Zain 1:14:39

carter when i said active roster of political players i guess cory's right like speculated political players and or currently you know participating in politics so i'll allow it cory oh okay yeah yeah i'll allow it you know the sanctity

Zain 1:14:51

sanctity of the system i know is really important on this show It matters. It matters. Carter, your

Zain 1:14:56

your take. The active political roster. Let's include the rumor mill that Corey has addressed and plucked out from, but also the active players. They could currently be leading a party and you'd say, you know what, you're actually better off shedding this dead weight and being your own thing. They could be a cabinet minister. They could be federally. They could be provincially. They could be anywhere across the country. Stephen Carter, who is it for you?

Carter 1:15:21

well i mean i think that um you know if we were looking locally don

Carter 1:15:25

don ivison was someone who i certainly thought had that that skill set to lead a provincial party and build it in his own in his

Zain 1:15:32

his own image that

Carter 1:15:33

that was not one

Zain 1:15:34

one of the gregor

Carter 1:15:34

gregor gregor robertson out of vancouver always struck me as someone who didn't fit you know he's running vision vancouver which had a left of center bent to it but it didn't fit straight into the liberals or to the ndp um

Carter 1:15:48

you know i think that You can look at these big city mayors and say, okay, there's something really interesting there. But I guess the big one, and the big one especially now, is probably John Tory.

Carter 1:15:58

John Tory would have the capacity to step in and build a new...

Corey 1:16:03

What is this nonsense? What

Corey 1:16:05

It's like you tuned out on John Tory's popularity and overall vibe five years ago. He

Carter 1:16:10

He is so popular. You're just sort of coasting.

Carter 1:16:12

He is so popular.

Carter 1:16:13

Everybody loves John Tory. Right, Zane? Yeah.

Corey 1:16:15

Yeah. You remember when he ran a political party?

Zain 1:16:19

Hey, that was an excellent point. Corey, I'm going to loop back. I'm going to, this is round two on this. Corey, and do you want to change your answer, modify it, add to your answer?

Corey 1:16:25

answer? I don't want to change my answer. I want to give a bit of a framework for it. Like, when we talk about if somebody could do this and whether it would be successful, there's a few things you need. And we've sort of talked about them throughout there. There needs to be a

Corey 1:16:36

a gap, like a reason, like something either on the left, the right, or in the middle.

Zain 1:16:40

middle. Carter's argument, this

Corey 1:16:41

this is marketplace concept, right? Yeah, you've got to find the market fit.

Corey 1:16:45

You need to have the right personality. personality that's only part of it and then you need to have a reason why it will not work with the existing structure because i'll tell you as you were asking this question as i'm sort of scanning through my head the people who immediately come to mind and it's like no

Corey 1:16:59

no they're already leader of a party they're already leader of a party they will be a leader of a party if they just sort of keep waiting in that particular moment there and

Corey 1:17:06

and i don't see a lot of reason for them to break away and create their own apparatus carter i think had the right model thinking about mayors i think business people would also make sense but it's people who you you know, are

Corey 1:17:18

are not necessarily coming in with any party currency. If they got to build it anyways, why not build it for themselves?

Zain 1:17:25

We done? Carter, you wanted to close, finish this out here.

Zain 1:17:28

Yeah, I mean, I was,

Carter 1:17:29

was, I thought of another person, and that's kind of like the Shannon Phillips of the world. Shannon,

Carter 1:17:35

I think, has always been someone who, you know, I was trying to think of someone who existed inside of a political party. And I'm not implying by any stretch of imagination, this is something she's thinking of.

Carter 1:17:46

because I think she fits very comfortably within the NDP. But I also think that she

Carter 1:17:51

she could make a case that she could lead a more rural,

Carter 1:17:57

Southern Alberta style of left-wing party.

Zain 1:18:02

Fascinating. Final question to both of you. You guys both said Danielle Smith on Thursday. Over the course of the last hour, any changes of perspective, change of heart, change of mind, behind any reflections you've come up with or are you both locking it in at the end of the show that daniel smith will win on thursday carter to you first i've

Carter 1:18:22

i've never been wrong on a prediction

Corey 1:18:27

i you know what i i'm not locking it in i think um it's likely but you

Corey 1:18:33

know if anybody out there wants to give me good odds the other way let

Carter 1:18:36

let me just tell you this this is why cory never makes it like cory hedges everything cory is there oxygen in the atmosphere atmosphere yeah

Carter 1:18:44

yeah but i mean nitrogen nitrogen's the big thing nitrogen

Carter 1:18:48

yeah you gotta look at the nitrogen in the atmosphere you know yeah i'm not gonna make a definitive statement here

Zain 1:18:56

that's a wrap on episode 1005 the strategist my name is zade belgium with me as always

Corey 1:19:06

time that was the wrong button again do you

Zain 1:19:07

you want to strike it no

Carter 1:19:09

i think we're good we're out

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