Episode 1016: Status Games

Zain 0:01

This is a strategist episode 1016. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Stephen

Zain 0:06

Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, I am back. I am ready.

Zain 0:12

I'm ready to talk. Stephen Carter, how are you doing?

Carter 0:15

Doing better with you here, Zain.

Zain 0:19

you guys get up to yesterday? You recorded an episode yesterday. Did we? I'm sure. You listened to it, I'm sure. I did not listen

Zain 0:26

listen to it. I've listened to a grand total of zero episodes.

Corey 0:28

you always say that, but you listen. You listen and then you send mean words to us about what a shit episode it is.

Carter 0:35

Yeah, I didn't respond well to your criticisms.

Zain 0:39

Tell the people, tell the people. It's holiday season, Corey. We need to sell more Patreon subscriptions. Tell the people what quality content they missed out on yesterday. Lay it on them.

Carter 0:52

First of all, we launched the 35 days of strategists for Christmas. 35 days of strategist christmas now

Corey 0:58

admittedly we did it to it we did it to an audience that already all owns patreon

Carter 1:02

patreon we discussed that yesterday they don't all own it if they all owned it then this wouldn't be a problem the

Zain 1:10

wait is there piracy going on 50

Carter 1:12

50 of the people who download an episode yeah

Carter 1:16

of of the strategists on patreon yes

Carter 1:18

our actual patreon subscribers the other 50 are assholes now i'm not precluding the first 50 50 from being assholes as well but they're not paying for the content saying how do they get the content then we're

Corey 1:31

we're assuming shares the link

Zain 1:33

share the fucking link i'm sorry that's how this works there's just a link you get and you could share it around it's

Corey 1:40

to you it's like a it's like a personalized link but

Zain 1:44

you know it doesn't stop me from sharing it with other people that

Corey 1:48

seems like a real flaw in the system you know what i think we're telling a little bit too much about how to game the system here at the start

Zain 1:54

start carter what do you what do you do what do you i i'm i'm gonna stop paying what's going on carter i i don't know i had to that there was a way to just get get the patreon episodes it seems like this seems like the opposite of a sales pitch now carter i've discovered something very different but tell the people who would be willing to pay uh for the others who are not paying cory what they missed out on yesterday well

Corey 2:16

well gladly because Because it looks like Stephen Carter crashed, and it's probably-

Corey 2:21

At this point, it's a ritual. Rebooting.

Zain 2:23

Rebooting. At this point, I can't

Zain 2:25

can't tell. Yeah, so we

Corey 2:26

we decided to go deep into Twitter, right? We talked a bit about Twitter, and there was

Zain 2:31

was a bit of a- Which has become an obsession of

Corey 2:32

of yours, just to be clear.

Corey 2:33

Yeah, and rightly so, because it's the best thing on television. But what I did is I put on my Zane Velji hat, which

Corey 2:43

is a beanie like that,

Corey 2:44

like you're wearing right now.

Corey 2:46

Yeah. And I said, I'm

Corey 2:48

I'm going to draw you a picture. It's October 25th, and Elon Musk wants to talk to you, Stephen Carter, strategist, about how he can get done all of the things he's done, but in a less fucky way, right? Like, how does this all get

Zain 3:02

get done? And can I just say, if there was, and I know we make a lot of fun of Carter on the show, and he's not here. If there was a strategist that Elon Musk would call, Carter might be it. I feel

Zain 3:13

of strange alive it. I feel like that's one of those situations where the hypothetical isn't so hypothetical. If Carter was in the Rolodex, I think he'd get a call. But yes, okay. So you played God mode, which is generally my MO

Zain 3:28

MO on the show.

Corey 3:29

show. And you asked Carter to do what?

Corey 3:30

I asked him to build a strategy as to how Elon Musk could do the same things, like still change Twitter fundamentally, still maybe even reduce the

Corey 3:38

size of the workforce.

Zain 3:38

That's not bad. I like that. Yeah.

Corey 3:40

But how would he recommend that it all get done? and

Corey 3:44

i i jumped into because you needed help yeah

Zain 3:48

some help he needed some shaky answers

Corey 3:50

answers and they needed to be cleaned up a bit which is

Zain 3:52

is the role that i

Zain 3:54

i'm glad you did uh he's still not back uh which which makes his front end of the show the same every single time cory it's kind of a bit of a formula which is we try to kill more time now that he isn't here to say something absolutely outlandish uh and try to get himself canceled i suspect he will be back soon uh that being said the strategist

Zain 4:12

strategist 35 days of

Corey 4:12

of christmas what is this

Corey 4:14

the strategist 35 days of christmas is we just tell you to purchase uh for yourself and your loved one yes a subscription to patreon six dollars part yourself with six dollars buy it also for the person who's stealing it and and uh and yes stephen carter's back you know and so he can sit he can finish the rest of my thought he knows exactly where i was carter

Corey 4:35

go ahead and please if

Carter 4:35

if you if you uh buy that that extra subscription i can probably buy an extra computer which would enable me to sit through the beginning and the middle and the end of our pitch so that's

Zain 4:47

that's fine we're used to it that actually works way better when you're not there in the middle hey carter uh before we get going uh world cup predictions uh i just want to get that on the record the world cup has now officially begun in in qatar uh your world cup predictions for you carter and then cory i'm coming to you next well

Carter 5:01

well i mean it's got to be france right i mean france is the is the way everybody is leaning uh so i'm big on the french now i know that there's others that in the tournament like brazil uh that are heavily heavily favored but germany is going to be my pick this year because belgium looks great and uh i think that you can't put it past the croats the croats are probably going to pull it off so i'm pretty excited about it england is really going to be the team to beat in this year's uh world cup that's

Zain 5:31

that's a fuck up card cory world cup picks well what do you what do you got up for us uh

Corey 5:35

uh i i think that everything steven carter said was wrong so the opposite of everything that he said there perfect

Corey 5:42

perfect so the correct answer oh

Carter 5:48

oh that means it's time for a new segment okay

Zain 5:52

uh the correct answer of course was bc united let's move it on to our first segment our first segment smile you're on candid camera guys i don't think we had a chance to discuss this unless i'm I'm having an episode here, but we have to talk about the Xi Jinping, Justin Trudeau episode. Can I call it the episode? The pull aside that they had, the two leaders were in Bali for an international conference with the G20 Summit, I believe, or in Indonesia, if I'm not mistaken. second. She chatted with Trudeau in Mandarin while a translator was translating about a leaked discussion. It was clear that she looked very upset with Justin Trudeau. And then Trudeau at the end of this 20, 30 second lecture that he was getting said, you know, in Canada, we believe in democracy, a very tense moment, a very, Corey, if I can say novel moment, at least on the international stage. What did you see when you saw that particular clip of those two world leaders, our world leader and Justin Trudeau, and arguably the most powerful world leader, one might argue, outside of the United States, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in that particular clip?

Corey 7:14

Well, I saw dressing down and I saw a very intentional action taken. It was a situation where all of a sudden, we

Corey 7:22

we were reminded of a power dynamic that often goes unspoken. And let's be clear. I mean, it's not as though Xi doesn't have a bit of a point in that private conversation with the Prime Minister all of a sudden became leaked, and

Corey 7:35

and went out to the Canadian press and went on to the broader public. Now, it's not as though our Prime Minister doesn't have a point. We don't govern in the dark. This is a democracy. So when something happens, there is kind of a general expectation that we talk about it. Not always true in matters of statecraft, though. But what we fundamentally saw was a very powerful world leader, a leader of a country of 1.2 billion people, leader of the second largest economy in the world, very intentionally take our prime minister to task for what occurred there. And it was a signal. You know, I think it was as much about future interactions as it was the past interaction. It was saying, this is not something i'm going to put up with um i don't know what kind of games you're playing here but those games don't work for me not

Corey 8:18

not giving xi a pass i'm not saying it's appropriate for him

Corey 8:22

prime minister but it was it was quite clearly an act of states craft not peak like he was he was intentionally sending a diplomatic signal about what his expectations were going forward he was not he was not uh you know flying off the handle because he lost control of himself that That was pretty clear to me, or at least that's what I got out of it, because it was a controlled peevishness, right? It wasn't somebody who looked like they had just sort of lost their faculties.

Zain 8:48

Carter, what did you see from our prime minister? You know, many are saying that this is kind of what Corey has called previous things on this podcast, the Rorschach test, right? Where if you wanted to see a defiant, positive, upstanding, democratic defender in Justin Justin Trudeau, you saw that. Or if you wanted to see a strident dressing down of a prime minister of a country disproportionately smaller than China, you saw that.

Zain 9:23

In your take, what did you see, Stephen Carter? Because there's a strategy question here I want to talk about what leaders can do in moments like this. But give it to me on the baseline. What did you see?

Carter 9:32

Well, I can't believe that Xi did it to begin with. Really? Really? Oh, yeah, because I think that you

Carter 9:38

you talk about the disproportionate size, right? Canada and China, you know, China is the second largest economy in the world. It has, you know, ambitions to dominate around the world. And he's taking the time to scold

Carter 9:53

scold this pissant prime minister that's been around for almost as long as she has. And instead of folding under that pressure, the prime minister just looks at him and stares right in his eyes and just takes whatever beating is coming his way and actually pushes back and says and doesn't accept the criticism. I mean, as much as the right is, you know, making a case to Corey's earlier point about, you know, this being a Rorschach test, I think it's actually it's valuable to see Justin Trudeau standing up for Canada and Canadian principles. I think that it did play. If we lived in any other time except the time right now where everything is political and everything must be interpreted in the left, my team or the other team kind of zeitgeist, I think that this would have been a really positive interaction for Canada. Forget about for Trudeau, forget about for the Liberals. This was a positive interaction for Canada to stand up to a bully. And this bully is someone that we've seen bullying across, you know, around the world more and more. So being able to stand up to China, as we stood up to Russia, as we will, you know, stand up against those that try and oppress others, was really good on Trudeau. I thought it was excellent. one.

Zain 11:10

Carter, to be clear, before I go to Corey on this, are you saying that in any other era, this would have been viewed as a net positive home run style moment for the leader of the country, but it is not in this one? Am I understanding you and hearing

Zain 11:24

hearing you correctly? I

Carter 11:24

I think that this is the challenge. I think that these are the problem that we have is that we've made everything so political that even when overseas, even the prime minister doesn't have of our wholehearted support. It used to be that when the prime minister was domestic, the prime minister would be attacked. The prime minister could be looked at through our partisan lens. But when the prime minister would go across to a different country, they would have our

Carter 11:56

wholehearted support. And that's gone away. That's not there for us because we've allowed out partisanship to define outcomes. And I think that it's

Carter 12:06

it's really sad because Canadians should be aware that China is playing in other elections. China's trying to influence world politics. China's trying to bring the world to them, and they're being very, very successful. And it's up to democracies like Canada, especially in light of the United States being a little weakened or a lot weakened depending on the trump debacle um that

Carter 12:33

that we have to stand strong for democracy and justin trudeau did that cory

Zain 12:38

you see it that way that that in any other era this would have been viewed domestically as a unifying holy shit rpm hit it out of the park good for him moment oh um i

Corey 12:50

i do think there is something to the idea that it

Corey 12:53

it so there was this uh republican senator in the United States just after World War II, Arthur Vandenberg, I think was his name.

Corey 13:01

And he gave us the phrase, politics stops at the water's edge. And the idea was that the country should present a united front in foreign affairs. So Democrat,

Corey 13:10

Democrat, Republican, all American when it gets down to it, and you've got to trump it and you've got to support American interests overseas. And there's got to be that united front in areas of foreign affairs so that that you're not giving daylight that your opponents can then kind of get their fingers into and pull at.

Corey 13:26

Reality has always been a little different. I mean, it's not as though we've failed to criticize opposition or government on foreign affairs in the past. It's just a reality that there have always been differing views as to how foreign affairs should be conducted. And some of the big fulcrums of democratic politics over the past 200 years have hinged on them. You think about the United States, this idea that politics stops at the the water's edge the idea of do you support france and revolution anybody who's seen the fucking you know hamilton

Corey 13:55

hamilton knows that that was an area of contention to the early

Corey 13:58

americans like since day one this has actually not been the case but

Corey 14:02

but there is something to be said for not wanting to weaken your country overall by taking petty political games into overseas conversations and that's really i think where

Corey 14:12

where this rorschach test stuff comes in and i think even what steven was was talking about there in terms of the premiers or the prime minister seemed to do fine there

Corey 14:20

and and it's it's kind of it's

Corey 14:23

it's just partisan attacks and i know those partisan attacks potentially weakening us now i'll tell you this though you

Corey 14:29

you can judge politicians by the situations they find themselves in and you can judge them by how they react to them and

Corey 14:35

i give justin trudeau very low marks for the situation he found himself in because it was a situation of our making he could could have had that same conversation with the media a day later when he wasn't seeing Xi the next day. And it could have had the same effect with domestic audiences, right? He could have just kept it buttoned down for a couple more days of international conference. But when you talk about the situation he then found himself in, where

Corey 15:01

again, it's a Rorschach test, but in my opinion, he looked coolly at the Chinese premier and he said, well, basically, I disagree, or that's not how we do things in Canada.

Corey 15:11

I give him fine marks for that. What did we want from our prime minister? The exercise I'd almost throw back at you is what would you want Justin Trudeau to do in that moment where

Corey 15:21

he would have had kind of like a better outcome than the one that he got?

Zain 15:25

That's the exercise I want to engage in in a second. But I also just want to mention that this segment, of course, brought to us by Flair Airlines. Flair Airlines, we also stop at the water's edge uh carter no

Zain 15:38

no but why would they go over water it's just it's the insurance doesn't cover it yeah thank you this is the read they're giving me this is the read they've given me carter what

Zain 15:47

what what skill was that there was some skill involved in that like what i'm really intrigued about is there's there's obviously listen there's

Zain 15:54

there's complicated politics here right like there's the whole concept of chinese infiltration and mp offices the uh you know crippling of democracy, the broader democratic conversation. But Justin Trudeau must have known the camera was on. This is why the segment is about candid camera, right? Xi clearly knew the camera was on, right? One had an agenda and other, to Corey's point, had to react to that agenda. I think that much is pretty much clear. I don't think that's debated. Tell

Zain 16:23

me what skill that was that Justin Trudeau presented there. Was that just the improv skill? Was that the political bone? Tell me what that is. Is that coached into a leader? Is that taught? Do you exercise that? I'm just trying to think about what's the teachable strategic skill there. And one of my favorite parts of that video when you watch at the end is not exactly what Trudeau said, but how he walked away, kind of knowing that this was a moment that needed a conclusion and a finality. There's almost like a theater element to it. And you can almost see, I believe it's Katie. You can almost kind of see Katie also knowing that the camera is on and looking side by side as the prime minister walks away. Talk to me about what we saw there from the theater aspect, from the improv aspect, from the aspects of political, as Corey calls it, statecraft, but stagecraft in some ways, despite the fact this is not on a stage and a pull aside. It's

Carter 17:15

It's one of the oldest improv games in the book, and it's a status game. and the status game is to try and have higher status than the person who's opposite you in the scene and in the games what you do is you take the status and you try and elevate it or lower it through the course of the of the game so in a true status game you would play it so that uh your status zane and i you and i are in the scene zane your status is going to start off super low is this an actual improv game this is an actual improv game this is definitely something that he has done before. And so what he's able to do- Wait,

Zain 17:49

wait. Okay. So let's start again. Just so I could capture it. Okay, okay. Start

Zain 17:52

one more time with this actual game. So

Carter 17:53

So the actual game is to try and make yourself higher or lower status using the physicality and your voice and your eye and your presence so that you are trying to actually change your status through the course of a scene. So the traditional way of doing it is you start as low status, I start as high status. And then by the end of the scene, we will have reversed ourselves. selves you'll be the high status person and i'll be the low status person and of course comedy ensues but where that becomes valuable if you're uh approached with someone who's who's who's trying to bully you or trying to take a high status position is you actually know the physicality of a high status positioning you know to hold i you know to hold uh eye contact to lean in to be taller to be physically you know the stature that was presented to be ramrod straight those are are the types of things that that justin trudeau brought into this either instinctually or arguably from actually playing a status from playing a series of status games as part of his drama dramatic teaching and i will tell you that is something that i could see that

Zain 19:00

that by the way you could you could actually see that in that in that clip well

Carter 19:03

well absolutely that was a status game on steroids that was an actual game so interesting from um well i learned it from uh keith johnson the founder of theater sports so

Zain 19:16

yeah yeah yeah like a legend in the in this in this domain like a real legend but carter before i come to you cory you were saying you've you've learned this yourself talk to me about this i'm fascinated by this well

Carter 19:27

well i mean it's no secret that cory and i dominate you right and the reason what

Corey 19:33

i love is he brought me in on his side i know right right? Because

Carter 19:36

Because why? Because status, right?

Carter 19:41

So the status game is to, or the status idea is to put oneself above the other, right? And to do that, there's a lot of people who have inherent status. We've chatted with a lot of them. There's a lot of other people who have inherently low status. And it does not matter in terms of leadership. This is not a leadership skill but some people have high status some people have low status and each one can be used to generate outcomes from people that you're chatting with wait

Zain 20:12

wait if it's not a leadership skill what sort of skill would you define it as i

Carter 20:16

i would just simply describe like some people will present as low status to be disarming right

Carter 20:20

right so so you may meet somebody who's incredibly powerful in real life but they present themselves as low status just to be disarming and people don't know exactly what to make of them because that person is now low status. And so how am I supposed to treat them? How am I supposed to interact with them? Other people will put on an air, you'll see this in local politics. You'll go and meet with a local politician and this person has just been elected as counselor for, I don't know, Ward 7. And they're just sitting there and they're playing with their pencil, trying to show themselves, well, that one, you know, and they'll talk all all the way through the meeting because they have all the thoughts and all the information. And we've seen these people. We've met with these people. We know exactly who they are. And they're just playing a status game with us where they're trying to show us their high status. Ironically, that high status is then interpreted as low status by us. So both statuses can be used as a leadership or lack of leadership, depending on how they're utilized. So in my mind, Trudeau used his high status game to elevate himself in the eyes of Xi. And that, to me, was a pretty good use of some theater sports technique.

Zain 21:36

Corey, I just want to get your reflections on that. I mean, Carter clearly seemed to have a treasure trove of information on what I thought was a flyer of a question. But I'm curious to hear your reactions to this. It does check out. You could see even in the physicality of Trudeau and how he leaned in, almost like he knew that he was armed with a response, that quiet confidence. You could kind of see that he knew the camera was on, that this was a moment that could make or break him, or at the very least, he'd have to be neutral on it, that he couldn't lose this moment. So there's some of those elements that Carter's teased out that you could see. But your thoughts to Carter's sort of positioning here on high status, low status, and in your mind, did Trudeau kind of do a good enough job to neutralize the situation?

Corey 22:20

Yeah, I wouldn't have gone to improv because I don't have the background. Stephen does. Super interesting. And I think it is an example of what we've talked about in the past, that often what we're looking for in politicians is not policy

Corey 22:31

policy smarts. It's not the ability to command in

Corey 22:34

boardroom, but it's the ability to present. And this was a good example of somebody leaning into a bag of tricks and presenting. Yeah, I would have probably used a metaphor like junkyard dogs. Everybody's jockeying and trying to show that they're the person who's in charge here. They're the person commanding the situation. And you talk about physicality. Can I just say, like, the one advantage our prime minister absolutely carried into that, above and beyond any improv training, is, like, he is physically much more imposing than

Corey 23:01

than she. So he does not need to do more than stand his ground, you know, to look intimidating relative to him. You know, even leaning in almost becomes too much in some contexts, right? Because he's big, he's tall. We know that he knows how to throw a punch just based on the way he boxed with Brazeau. He's not a guy you're going to be able to physically intimidate. And I think if I was going to offer G

Corey 23:24

some strategic advice, it's that he came in with kind of the energy of somebody who's trying to, quote unquote, pick a fight, right? And for the cameras, the prime minister ended up getting the upper hand because the prime minister had that sense of space. He was clearly not intimidated. intimidated. The other thing is, he has been prime minister for seven years. You mentioned off the top, he's been in his job almost as long as she's been in his. And that

Corey 23:52

that is a skill in its own right. That's a power in its own right. If this was his first year, if this was his first international conference, the risk of intimidation at that moment would have been high.

Corey 24:03

He's seen too much. It's once you've gone around the sun a few times with a job like this, you're just not going to be struck by the same things that you were the first time around. So fascinating

Corey 24:13

fascinating review on the improv thing. It makes me want to hear Stephen Carter's yes and take relative to Ukraine and NATO. But yeah, I mean, we've got ourselves quite a powerful metaphor there, and I think the prime minister did okay.

Zain 24:29

Carter, final question here, and this is really the focus here was really about the

Zain 24:33

the pull aside and how you kind of strategize for this. How do you prepare for this? Have you ever had to strategize for this with a leader around, and maybe even more broadly, how to prepare for when the camera's always on and how to perhaps, you know, take advantage of that moment when knowing the cameras are on? You know, you can plan stagecraft, and we'll talk about that in a second with our next segment, in a highly produced way when you're giving a 20-minute television address, for example. But when it's a 15 second clip and the camera could be on, how does one prepare their principle? How does one prepare a politician for that? Because we know the world of presentation training. We know the world of delivering to a large room. We've talked about how to deliver to a room of 10. We've talked about how to be charismatic one on one. But how do you plan? How do you strategize in the unpredictable organic moments that actually might be disproportionately more important to your political career or maybe even more defining to your political career than all that formal training that you have going into it? Talk to me about that a bit, Carter. Well, you practice it just

Carter 25:39

just like anything else. You practice it. I mean, we used to practice gotcha interviews, right? And so one of the things with media training, and so anybody who's done media training knows that for

Carter 25:49

for the most part, you're training for the sit-downs, right? You're training for the long form interview where you're going to be presenting this information or this positioning or whatever it may be. And so you do your long form interview and you get that person person up to speed with, your

Carter 26:06

your principal is going to be up to speed with what the questions are going to be and what the answers are. When you go to that next level, when you're working with a politician for quite some time, you're now working on the gotcha interviews, the ones where you're exiting and coming in and out of the car, right? So you're at the car, you're not expecting a question all of a sudden. And the example we always used to use was Charles Rousnel here in Alberta. He's kind of a interesting

Carter 26:27

interesting politician, you know, a political reporter. He comes in, He has his agenda and he smacks you right on top of the head with whatever his question is going to be.

Carter 26:40

So you practice that style. You literally practice that style. Now, how is that different than a world leader coming in? It's just situational, right? The world leader comes in and you're all of a sudden on camera. You've still got to respond in your character and what it is you're trying to carry forward. You're still showing the character that you want to be. Keep in mind that these prime ministers, these premiers, these counselors, these MLAs, MPs, MPPs, none of them, none

Carter 27:09

none of them are actually the

Carter 27:12

the person we see on TV, right? The prime minister in that situation was playing the role of prime minister at that moment, and he was able to respond in prime ministerial role. And I think that that's just him having years and years of experience where I don't think he would have been as successful at doing it, you know, had he not, I mean, ironically, had he not faced off against Brasso. I think that that's actually an excellent point, Corey. You know, this is a man who's been in hand-to-hand combat and is harder to intimidate because he actually trained hand-to-hand combat. back. He's harder to intimidate because he has trained in theater. He's trained in the art of response, the art of appearing powerful, maybe when you're not feeling powerful. And I think that that's all training and making sure that you're ready for whatever's happening.

Corey 28:03

Well, look, it's not just theater and fighting though. He's won three elections. And

Corey 28:08

And during during those elections, there were very contentious times. Experience matters too. I'll go back to,

Corey 28:14

I don't think 2015 Justin Trudeau would have handled this. And I actually think even if he had done the exact same thing in 2015, it

Corey 28:21

it would have come off different. It would have

Carter 28:23

have come off a

Corey 28:23

a lot more wet behind the ears. But when you've got seven years of experience, not only do you have a certain savoir-faire, but your audience thinks different things of you.

Zain 28:33

Maybe I'll ask you guys this to finish off. If you could each choose one professional development opportunity for your political candidates that you work for, or you have worked for, and this is a universal one, right? So don't think of a specific candidate. But if you could say, wave my magic wand, go do this course, go do this professional training, what would it be? And I jump off a question, not to put the thumb on the scale for Carter, because improv clearly seems like one of the answers Carter might give. And maybe that is your answer, Carter. But I'm curious, as it relates to politicians and your ability to mold them, especially in light of moments like this, what would that be for you, Carter? Maybe I'll start with you and then close off with you, Corey. If there was one professional development, if they could only take one, what

Zain 29:19

what would it be for you that you'd make sure that they'd have in their belt as it relates to the function of being a political leader in this country? I'm

Carter 29:29

I'm going to make mine simpler than just improv, because I think that improv is too broad. I would go with status play, because

Carter 29:36

because status play is when you kneel down beside the woman in the wheelchair, and you put yourself below her, and you're listening to her when she's explaining to you her life story, or you go up to the new parents, and you tell them your stories and you listen to their stories. I

Carter 29:55

I mean, it's more than just empathy, right? I mean, I think that what we interpret that as is empathy, but

Carter 30:00

but it's actually a status technique where you're putting yourself into a more diminutive role sometimes and a more expressive or stronger role other times. And that status play, people don't even understand how it's working on them and you don't want them to understand how it's working on

Carter 30:17

You want them only to see the power or the fragility or the, you know, whatever that relationship is that you're trying to communicate at the one time. So it's not just an improv game. It's about putting yourself into the

Carter 30:32

status that maybe people don't expect in that particular moment. I think this is one of Joe Clark's great weaknesses. The man always had, like, always stood ramrod straight, always was fiddling with his French cuffs. you know he didn't have the ability to put himself into he

Zain 30:50

was always the prime minister always the former prime

Carter 30:52

prime minister of canada even

Carter 30:54

even before he was the prime minister of canada um and i think that that's that was detrimental to him and his ability to interact with quote

Carter 31:03

quote-unquote real human beings yeah

Zain 31:07

yeah that's fascinating cory from your perspective if there was a a magic cory hogan one, the Corey Hogan consulting one for political candidates, what would you tell them is the one professional development thing you would force them and make sure that they go through? What would it be for you?

Corey 31:23

So Carter gives a pretty good answer for the general candidate, right? Like if you want to be an MLA, a counselor, an MP.

Corey 31:31

I will say for leaders, I have an entirely different answer. And

Corey 31:36

would be general management or HR. It's how to lead people. people. And even if we want to keep it anchored on this conversation that Justin Trudeau had with Xi, you

Corey 31:46

you mentioned that Katie Telford was right there, Steve. I believe she was.

Zain 31:50

I'd have to watch the video again. I haven't since

Corey 31:53

since I came in. It doesn't even matter. The point would be we define these people not just by who they are, but the people they surround themselves with. For

Corey 32:00

For good and for ill, that defines their destiny. And

Corey 32:04

And so you get the job of leader because you're good at those status plays, as Stephen put it. you're good at the theater of politics. You're good at the glad handing. You're good at the rubber chicken circuit. Those are the skills of an MLA or an MP, but the hard pivot to leader is really quite something or even a leadership candidate because where most leaders I have worked with have failed, I would say most, it's the building of the team. It's the managing of their caucus. It's making the right hires, knowing how to delegate, knowing when to lean in and

Corey 32:31

and knowing when to lean out. And this is not just about politics. It's the Peter principle. We make people managers because they're good at their job, and

Corey 32:38

and then we ask them to do an entirely different skill set. Of course.

Corey 32:41

But governments live or die based on the size of the team and the way that the team operates and how things flow. And so for me, I

Corey 32:50

I think politicians are good at politics. I think what they're bad at is the management, the unsexy parts of the job. And that is the thing that I wish more political leaders had training. I

Zain 33:00

I want to spend an entire episode at some point talking about why political leaders have historically, and this is going to be a broad brush, but I'll say it

Zain 33:10

it anyways, have been so poor at building teams. And it makes you wonder around when a campaign or your political career focus so much on you, do you even have time for the we as it relates to the broader conversation? And we'll stress test that later. We'll move it

Zain 33:27

next segment, Smile. Are you sure you want to be on candid camera?

Corey 33:30

oh thank you thank you it's a new thing

Corey 33:34

it's a new thing that's when you

Carter 33:35

you listen to yesterday this is probably what you learned it'll

Zain 33:39

that a is that a group of people on a flare airlines flight clapping you know the type of people fly flare airlines probably the type of people who clap okay at every landing you know those people carter

Carter 33:49

carter i'm just saying i mean i

Zain 33:51

i have gotten over the miracle of of modern flight like two weeks ago everybody's

Carter 33:57

everybody's over except the people who fly flare carter

Zain 34:01

carter our next segment is smile are you sure you want to be on candid camera stephen carter the premier of alberta danielle smith just to remind folks that is our premier tomorrow tuesday night we'll be giving a televised addressed a state of the province like address 6 30 p.m ctv global news as well as online stephen carter i want to talk to I want to talk to both of you about the tactic, the strategy and tactic, I should say, of the televised address. We have seen it be used. There's a few memorable televised addresses in the last decade in Alberta politics. I can think of the famous Alison Redford one, and I can think of the famous Jim Prentice one, some might say, beginning of the end.

Zain 34:50

but Carter, let me start here. Is the televised address a doomed political tactic in Alberta? Let's start here. Let's let's go on that. Oh,

Carter 34:58

Oh, no, I don't think it's doomed at all. I think it's an actual fantastic way to control your message structure. You know, you get it once or maybe twice. It is not something you can do daily or weekly. And I'm looking forward to Quarry's point of view as one of the people who would have have had to organize these uh as opposed to you know the the view that that i had is just i was uh peripherally involved with the allison redford uh bitumen bubble um experiment that we did uh that's where the the phrase bitumen bubble uh coined by stephan what was his last name but it was a um uh

Corey 35:36

of you're so painful what yeah

Corey 35:39

but you know this is it's an interesting Interesting point. We'll have to get to that because that one was outsourced to a company. Yeah.

Zain 35:44

Yeah. I want to talk about that too. How

Corey 35:45

How these are done,

Corey 35:46

done, the mechanics of it. This is fun at being at internal.

Carter 35:51

line, the technique and the tactic are very powerful. What you choose to say at it, you can undermine yourself very quickly because much in the same fashion that you're now getting an audience of, I

Carter 36:05

I don't know that it's much more than an extra quarter million people who are going going to be watching it on

Carter 36:11

on global and ctv at the time that it's broadcast maybe it's a bit more cory may have more uh recent data on that but oh

Carter 36:19

oh you're going to be the talk of the town the next day because the news is going to cover it everybody's going to be focused on that one moment in time and that one moment in time can can make or break you as you alluded to with jim prentice and even allison redford i i thought that allison we i thought we did very well with allison um but that could be also pointed to as the beginning of the end

Zain 36:40

Corey, is it a doom tactic? I'll ask you the same question I asked Carter. Is it a doom tactic in this province?

Corey 36:46

Can I tell you the main reason why I think the tactic actually makes a great deal of sense? And we can talk about

Corey 36:52

whether the best way to deliver it is through CTV and Global. I can tell you in my time at the government, we did the same, right? And in fact, I think Global produced them at least one occasion for us because they

Corey 37:03

they have a certain skill set. And then you're able to kind of distribute it to whoever you need and you can use it online.

Corey 37:10

But there's just kind of a feature in the parliamentary system that makes something like this more necessary than even in the United States context, right?

Corey 37:20

So we call this the state of the province, and that's

Corey 37:23

because we're drawing a parallel to the state of the union. Well,

Corey 37:25

Well, the state of the union is an address by the president of the United States to Congress. The

Corey 37:29

The actual parallel here in Canada is the throne speech. One

Corey 37:33

One big problem with the throne speech, if you're a politician, you're

Corey 37:37

you're not the one giving the speech. Yes. Right? Indeed. It's being done by

Carter 37:43

Yes, you are. Someone's mother-in-law has hijacked the process.

Corey 37:47

And the way they deliver that speech is going to affect how those clips come out. It's going to affect the way that it's packaged and as a result, the way it's received. And so the appeal of the State of the Province Address, if you're the premier of a province, is it's your opportunity before the throne speech to put it in your words with your spin. in. And you're also not stuck to this very kind of formal Westminster system where you can't put anything overly, not even partisan. I mean, political in the small piece and political in the voice of the vice regal representative here. So

Corey 38:20

So having something produced where it is you as the premier telling the story of that session that's about to come up, the story of the government that you're going to lead is really nice. It also has another benefit, which is the throne speech is all about the bills that are coming, right? And we used to tie ourselves in knots creating a bill. Like it was just anybody who's worked in government, this will just, you bring you back sweats of what's bill one gonna be, right?

Corey 38:45

And you would often have, go ahead and go look in your province federally, look at what the first bill is. I guarantee you at least 30% of the time doesn't even need to be a bill. Could

Corey 38:56

a reg, could be a policy of government. It was turned into a bill just to say, this is our first bill. because

Corey 39:02

because you are locked into only being able to talk about the

Corey 39:05

the bills. And so the state of the province also gets you out of that box. It allows you to say what you want about what you want. And there's some real strength to that. So I don't think the tactic is going away. I think the tactic has already begun to morph. I can tell you the streams of these in my time in government. I led government communications for almost four years between premiers Notley and Kenney.

Corey 39:30

the the stream version of it was growing in importance and the television version was shrinking carter

Zain 39:37

carter so so both of you are saying that the tactic isn't doomed is

Zain 39:41

is the tactic appropriate where daniel smith sits right now politically in this province of alberta oh

Zain 39:48

oh yeah 100 absolutely

Carter 39:50

in a heartbeat this is the perfect time

Zain 39:52

time to do it cory

Carter 39:52

cory and i i actually are now advising danielle smith and we've decided that she should do this

Zain 39:59

you've folded like a cheap tent both of you no

Carter 40:02

it's not a fool yeah that was just zane there is no other side that says okay you're

Carter 40:06

you're rachel notley right now and we offer you the opportunity to have 20 minutes or 15 minutes on primetime television she's taking it tell

Zain 40:18

let's talk about that let's talk about if this is a

Zain 40:21

if this is a something you you got to do cory

Zain 40:24

cory to be clear on carter's point i want to make sure you agree this is not something you can do every week there's a limited span of how how often you can do this to be effective or do you not agree with that because i

Corey 40:34

i want to get a baseline with it so we okay i don't know how deep in the weeds you want to go and i know we've actually talked about this i was going to ask you about process so

Zain 40:41

so so go ahead jump into the weeds because i do want to get a bit there go

Corey 40:44

yeah so when it's on ctv and global i assume i haven't dug into the details here, the government is almost certainly buying like a 10 minute block from each of those at the start of the hour. And then yes, they'll report on it as news at like the 610 mark and forward from there. But if the government is doing it in a way where it's entirely their message, entirely pre-recorded, government's almost certainly paying for that placement. If it's a situation where it's a news conference and they have the ability to ask questions of the premier afterwards, words, the government's probably not paying for it. And so there's often a bit of a negotiation because I've defined two worlds, but there's often gray in between like, yeah, you can have a couple of questions or yeah, it's going to look like this, but

Corey 41:26

but generally speaking, it costs money. So that would be kind of my first point. You can't afford to do it every week. It is a fairly expensive tactic and it should be used sparingly. But the second point would be, it would not have nearly the impact if you did every week.

Corey 41:41

And just think about the premier's radio call-in show that Jason Kenney, and then Daniel Smith was doing. The first couple were news.

Corey 41:49

They were talked about on Twitter, in the actual mainstream media, and just broadly reported upon.

Corey 41:57

I bet you I surprised you a bit that they were even still going on. I

Carter 42:00

I didn't know that Daniel did it.

Corey 42:03

So I don't know if they're still continuing, but she's certainly done at least one of them. And it's because after a while, it just doesn't have that same punch. So you've got to use these these things somewhat sparingly, or else they're just not going to have the effect you want them to have either.

Zain 42:17

Carter, talk to me about how you mold them. So if you're saying this is the right strategy, what does she need to do to make it the most effective use of the strategy? Give to me her playbook for what this should look like tomorrow evening. Let's actually remove message from it because I want to save that. But talk to me about the scaffolding around it. How long should it be? Talk to me about how it should be framed. Should there be people around her? Is Is it her just to the province? Are there others in it? How are they making use of companion websites and digital and clips? Like, talk to me about your framework and I'll get Corey to add or remove from that. And then we'll get into message what she needs to say. Personally,

Carter 42:51

Personally, I think it should be very simple. I think it should be the premier behind the premier's desk, much

Carter 42:56

much the same way that the state, you know, like the, you know, the big announcements, this is a presidential, yeah, the big presidential announcement where, you know, she's reading off a teleprompter. It should be no more than 12 to 15 minutes. And it should have a singular style of topic. When people walk away from it, they are talking about a single message. And this is very different than the speech from the throne, where the speech for the throne, as Corey's alluded to, has this overall, this is what we're going to legislate. This is the direction that we are going to go in. These are the bills that we're bringing forward. And this speech should be about the problem we're trying to solve. solve the problem we are trying to solve should be encapsulated into one idea

Carter 43:40

if it's four or five different problems right we've allowed the bureaucracy to become bloated we've allowed whatever she may be pulling it should be one idea not here's what we're going to do in health care here's what we're going to do in post-secondary here's what we're going to do in head education here's what we're going to do in seniors you know here's what we're going to do for the economy of me it needs

Zain 43:59

to be not a laundry list one

Carter 44:00

one thing one talking point that everybody can remember and take back cory

Zain 44:05

cory i'm going to come to you in one one second i do want to have a quick follow-up so carter you've now introduced this whole concept of status games so explain to me what's the status game for for a television address are you leveling with people are you formal and owning your position as premier what's the most effective to get a message across in a televised address when When you don't have a constant tactile feedback loop, you have to pre-record this thing and hope it levels or hope it actually resonates. Give me the feel. If you're advising it on that, is this the tone and the vibe of you on one knee talking to the young child in the family, or is this you owning all of the accoutrements of being premier? You

Carter 44:48

You are the premier. And it could be anywhere

Zain 44:49

anywhere in between. You

Carter 44:50

You are the premier, right? This is why I'm not saying you're going to do it. You don't do cutaways to someone of the other ministers talking. You don't do other things. You don't do little vignettes of people playing in the park or whatever or showing the impact, anything like that. This is the person sitting behind the desk in the highest possible status positioning, moving their head very little, looking straight into the camera, owning that opportunity to communicate directly to you. And I'm talking to you as the premier. I have the status. I am the person that occupies this office the same way that Jim Prentiss or that Rachel Notley or that Jason Kenney or that Ed Stelmack or that Ralph Klein occupied this office. And we are speaking directly to you because this is important. And I would not interrupt your evening news for anything less than the most important discussion the province of Alberta can have today. And that is the same tenor

Carter 45:46

tenor and tone that comes from every state's address

Carter 45:52

address to their people, whether it's the provinces, the state, you know, President Zelensky in the Ukraine, all of them put themselves into this position where I am addressing you as this with a very specific outcome. I am the leader and I am telling you what the problem is.

Zain 46:10

Corey, add to that, remove certain things from that. Carter's saying pretty formal, short, singular topic, easily to understand narrative thread, owning the fact that you're premier. What are you taking away? What are you adding? What are you perhaps contouring a bit from what you heard from Carter? Yeah.

Corey 46:29

Yeah. So I would argue that the throne speech, if well-constructed, also has one theme, right? You may do many things, but it's towards one thing. Well-constructed, very few are. But

Corey 46:41

it would be, for example, getting Albertans back to work. Now, here's the 10 things we're doing to get Albertans back to work. That would probably be a throne speech of the past, but it's an example here. Similarly, I think you can say a lot of different things as long as there's a theme to them. And so look for Danielle Smith, I think, based on early reporting to have that theme be about affordability. And so if, for example, the Alberta Sovereignty Act comes up, it should be because we're trying to create the prosperity necessary to do the generous things or like, you know, they're going to bundle unlike topics together under a theme. And

Corey 47:16

there will be some that seem like a real stretch to get into that theme, but I guarantee you they will still be there because you're going to want to set the table on a lot of different issues if you're paying for that time.

Corey 47:26

And you're paying for that time. It is an ad. And one of the reasons why you want to be sitting at the desk in the premier's office and looking so, you

Corey 47:38

premierial. I don't know. Is that a word? It's

Corey 47:41

It's a good word. I like it. I'm in now.

Corey 47:43

Premierial's good. Yeah. Is it needs to feel like news, not an ad. So if you have a bunch of cutaways to you hanging out with kids in a park, eating ice cream, doing the Vulcan salute. Like

Zain 47:54

like produced. If it

Corey 47:55

it feels like an ad, you're going to get more backlash than if it feels like news.

Corey 47:58

And you generally want Albertans to have this feeling, not of paid placement, but the premier, to Stephen's point, interrupted the news because this is important to tell us about the things that need to happen. And I've got a lot of sympathy for the communicating part of it. I mean, we are a democracy. I said earlier, we don't govern in the dark of a democracy. Government does have an obligation to tell you about the things it's planning to do so you can react to it. I don't have a big problem with this particular tactic.

Corey 48:26

People have a right to know and the government has a duty to inform. But you

Corey 48:29

you have to be careful that it comes off as information and not spin.

Corey 48:35

so that's part of the reason why you select the format that every premier does, which is, I'm at a desk, cut away to a chart. I'm at a desk, cut away to a different chart, telling the story, but in a kind of a serious way. by

Corey 48:46

by the way changes to those charts on the last day and sweating as they render and you're just like i've got 10 minutes to get this to the uh to the news uh channel that's

Corey 48:56

that's that's a feeling i will not miss now that i'm out of the government

Zain 48:59

and cory give us before i go back to carter give

Zain 49:02

give us the very quick version of when a premier's office says go what does someone in like your former position have to do to get that stuff off the ground because i don't think people appreciate or I'm sure most do, but some may not, that this is not going to be Danielle Smith, UCP leader. This is going to be Danielle Smith, Premier of the province. And there's a difference in terms of what things activate when she gives it from wearing that hat.

Corey 49:27

Sure. I mean, in the most foundational sense,

Corey 49:32

sense, what I would say to any Premier, and they will come to you with varying degrees of like, this speech is ready. And like I said, it's often starting from the throne speech. So it's

Corey 49:42

turn this plus a few things that wouldn't work into the throne speech into it. So there's probably a bit of a brief where you're told these are the kinds of things I want in the state of the province. They may come with the speech. They may ask you to do a draft. Either way, there's an exchange of drafts at different points as you start thinking about how it's going to be built. But fundamentally, and to Stephen's point about the singular narrative, it's about a theme. It's about a story. What I would tell all to anybody making a presentation in any context.

Corey 50:08

Every presentation is a story. So think about protagonists, think about antagonists, think about the narrative you want to bring people through. Think about the feelings you want to leave them with.

Corey 50:16

And at the end of the day, think of the moral of your story. And if you can do that, the rest of it should fall into place. Once you've got that, you've got the speech. You've already got an understanding of the audience. It's a general population audience, right? You know how they feel about you. You've You've built your speech. You start then putting on the production elements on top of it. Are there going to be charts that you need? Are there animations that need to occur to illustrate complex concepts? Same as if you were doing a PowerPoint at work, right? What do

Corey 50:44

want on the wall behind you? Do you need a chart that illustrates, for example, with the bitumen bubble, Steven? I can think about those charts because Hill and Knowlton was hired to do that work and I had to mock out those charts. So I've done a lot of these, even outside of the time I worked in government.

Corey 51:01

And, you know, it would be like lines of like, this is the price that we're getting for a barrel of oil. And look, look at it go down here.

Corey 51:07

here. Right. Oh, my goodness. Isn't this concerning?

Corey 51:10

And so that is all like bolt on stuff.

Corey 51:14

But that is then you've got an idea. The premier then records it. Premier may be making last minute edits.

Corey 51:22

Both the premier, I guess all three premiers I've worked on in this sense have done a version of that. And then you've got to layer in the animations on top of it. and

Corey 51:29

and that is sometimes where the stress comes from because often the

Corey 51:34

the premiere will not be recorded until like the day before

Corey 51:37

because they want to be using the most current information and you've got to layer in all of that production after the fact and

Corey 51:42

and sometimes it requires. Have

Zain 51:44

Have you ever had to walk, you don't have to name names, have you ever had to walk anyone back from what you thought was a terrible idea for something like this, either conceptually or messaging wise? I don't think

Corey 51:53

think so. Certainly it doesn't spring to mind where I think like, oh my God, thank goodness I talked Rachel Notley out of that, or thank goodness I talked Jason Kenney out of that. That's not really what happened because

Corey 52:03

because the message track is built earlier, right?

Corey 52:06

right? You're working on that for months as you're talking about the story that's going to be told. And yeah, there may be elements you need to work in. And certainly this, we're talking about the state of the province version, but there were also ones that were in reaction to big dramatic moments. Like all of a sudden we

Corey 52:19

we don't have enough takeaway capacity for oil in the province. And what does that mean? Right. And then dramatic government action. So curtailment was one that that Rachel Notley had to do. This idea of actually telling oil producers that they could only produce less.

Corey 52:32

And so there are considerations in all of that in terms of what the story is going to be and you give advice on it, but the broad strokes are there. I've never had somebody come to me with a notion that's just like fucking

Corey 52:43

fucking insane. And it's like, we just should not do this. Like that has not happened. It's more around the edges of, I think this chart would tell that story better. I'm not so sure about that.

Carter 52:52

Yeah. I mean, if there's going to be anything killed it's

Carter 52:54

it's killed in the premier's office way before it gets to the public service no this is the wrong tactic for this person for this for this idea we can't just go out and say we're going to do a public address on whether or not there should be sky palace you

Carter 53:09

know like it's just not

Carter 53:10

not going to work not that that ever happened but if it did that would be a pretty good story

Zain 53:16

garter tell me about as we finish this off tell me about the messaging for tomorrow and expand beyond what topic she should be talking about. Expand to what supplemental tactics look like on web, on digital, on, you know, how do you get to proliferate this message? How do you have maximum capacity? How do you build maximum capacity and maximum output with an announcement like this? Well,

Carter 53:37

Well, I would imagine that what you're going to do is you're going to build it into the, this is the beginning of an actual communications campaign.

Carter 53:43

So from the 22nd of November until the 15th of December, there's going to be radio ads. there's going to be television ads, there's going to be a webpage that's put up about the premier's message. When is she bringing in the throne speech? A week

Carter 53:59

tomorrow, the 29th or something like that?

Carter 54:02

believe, yeah. So the 29th, she'll have the throne speech. So there'll be pre-communications prior to the throne speech. There'll be post-communications after the throne speech. Everything will all be put into a communications arc. It will include digital. It'll include, and this is really Corey's area. So Corey, I'm sure is listening to correct me momentarily, but it includes all the various mediums that the government has available to it. And in a perfect world, you've also, whatever she's going to talk about tomorrow, you've got third party validators signed up, right? So that was always one of the biggest challenges. If you're going to go out and talk about, you

Carter 54:36

you know, the bitumen bubble, or if you're going to talk about tightening

Carter 54:40

tightening your belt or what the deficit situation looks like, blah, blah, blah. You have to have a bunch of other people that understand and the problem that can speak to it outside of your voice. So all of that will be prearranged by the premier's office so that you're able to, as premier, make this statement and then have everybody, all of a sudden, all of your talking points are being echoed by your MLAs, your cabinet ministers, your, you

Carter 55:07

know, everybody up and down the line so that everybody has the capacity to hear this story over and over and over again uh so that by the time you're going into christmas you're not just singing deck the halls with balls of holly you're you're you know you're talking about whatever the hell uh daniel daniel smith talks about tomorrow boy

Zain 55:26

boy expand on what carter said here add add things from your experience what's been the best use of expanded sort of tactics to to leverage and maximize the the blast zone or the radius of of a speech like this what would you suggest on that as well as messaging for uh for tomorrow going forward yeah

Corey 55:43

yeah so the third party validators is really the political side of the house so i'm going to throw that right back to the stephen carters of the world but yeah you you take this master product and you you cut clips you create web content that supports it you do social media often using some of those cut clips and you do follow on paid placement now one

Corey 56:00

one of the things that i mentioned is that the global and ctv stuff costs

Corey 56:04

costs a lot of money.

Corey 56:05

So what happened over time, it used to be like global, CTV, CBC, everything. But it's

Zain 56:10

it's not coming from the party. It's coming from the government. It's coming from

Corey 56:13

from the government. But

Corey 56:14

here's my point. One that I think we did with Jason Kenney, if I'm not mistaken, we only did global. And we took the money that would have gone to CTV and we put that entirely into boosting it through social. So all of a sudden, the state of the province is running on pre-roll for people. We're promoting it via Facebook. And that's what I mean when i say that those web channels were growing in importance because that became almost the third leg of the stool from

Corey 56:37

from like a broadcast point of view you put that same money into social and you're getting different audiences in more depth and i believe we did even do pre-roll with youtube where not even like the clipped versions but there was like you could watch the whole state of the province if you happen to be i

Corey 56:52

i don't know watching a youtube video and it happened to come on and forgot to hit skip ads well no surprising numbers actually stuck out for a few minutes there but But, you know, obviously that was just one version and we were always testing those things and seeing what the pickup was. And generally speaking, on the social channels, you would clip it. You would have the bundles. You would tell single parts of the story. But, yeah, there's the whole wraparound game that happens here. And then there's, you know, there's the controlling of the conversation around it, both in advance, as we've seen even today, people

Corey 57:21

talking about this upcoming state of the province. And it will be afterwards, too. Was what she said interesting? trustee let's talk about this again in different contexts and follow-on activity from ministers and mlas who are going to be then scattering out in advance of this throne speech to make sure they're landing yeah

Carter 57:37

yeah i mean all

Carter 57:39

all the lesser-laid pundits are all going to be immediately talking about this too i mean no one else but the strategists are talking about this the day before it actually happens because they don't have the balls so

Zain 57:51

so true carter so true what are are we going to hear tomorrow carter tell me tell me the most popular word that we're going to hear tomorrow and daniel smith's uh state of the province speech go ahead i

Carter 58:01

i don't have a fucking clue i

Carter 58:03

i can't put myself in her head zane i honestly have no clue what she's going to talk about because there's no one through line that i can see in all of her statements to this point because i feel like she's a little bit like elon musk tackling twitter you know everything all at once all the time wasn't there a movie like that that just came out that we just tried to watch Yes,

Carter 58:21

it's nothing to do with any of

Zain 58:22

of the two. It

Carter 58:23

It was nothing to do with Elon Musk

Zain 58:24

Musk or Daniel Smith. I

Carter 58:25

I cried during that movie so bad.

Zain 58:27

incredible film. What are you talking about? Corey, what's

Zain 58:30

what's the biggest word in the word cloud tomorrow for Daniel Smith?

Corey 58:34

I think it's affordability. It's certainly what the ground has been softened somewhat on. By the way, you

Corey 58:40

you will also see some, I think, some leaks around this as one of the additional tactics coming on where people start talking about what's going to be in the throne speech. You think by tomorrow morning?

Corey 58:50

Well, maybe by tomorrow morning, maybe it's part of their follow-on strategy. It is a bit of time between now and the throne speech, and they're going to want to have a sustaining communications plan that will get them all the way there and control the narrative all the way there.

Corey 59:02

But yeah, it seems like affordability. We're almost certainly going to be told that we're given direct money, the Danny dollars, we've talked about them, the Ralph Bach equivalent.

Corey 59:11

That's a real likelihood, I think. But don't be surprised if there's other things. There's been some suggestion, and this is, by the way, the fact that we know this is part of the leaking process that happens around this. This is all

Corey 59:23

intentional strategy to make us want to tune in as Albertans.

Corey 59:27

But utility rebates and elimination or reduction of the gas tax again.

Zain 59:35

We're going to leave that segment there. Stephen Carter moving on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Corey 59:44

promise this is not going away unless you make me stop doing it another

Zain 59:47

another flare airlines flight has successfully landed you know how many times we haven't clapped in between segments it's

Carter 59:53

it's not been good

Zain 59:54

good hundreds hundreds i feel bad for all those probably

Corey 59:57

probably literally thousands yeah

Zain 59:59

thoughts and prayers with all those flights uh

Zain 1:00:14

your one sentence, capstone

Zain 1:00:17

capstone it. I'm going to make you go first. Carter, I always make you go first, so you've got some time

Zain 1:00:23

Corey, your one sentence of advice for Justin Trudeau heading into his testimony for the Emergencies Act next week. What is it going to be to you? for you, by you, I should say, for the prime minister. Thank you. I got it out there.

Corey 1:00:38

Less is not always more. What you need to avoid is looking like you are just trying to get out of it. You want to give the sense that you have absolutely nothing to hide. Your answers

Corey 1:00:49

can't be expansive to the point of suicidal, but they can't be as tight as I would normally recommend in a moment like

Zain 1:00:56

Carter, what's your one sentence advice?

Carter 1:00:59

The subtext should always be that it wasn't solved until we did this. We did this and it was solved. So follow along in the lines of Bill Blair today, who I think made a very good study

Carter 1:01:13

study of, sure, it's all very easy to second guess this, but it wasn't fixed until we did this.

Carter 1:01:20

That's the subtext. In that sense,

Zain 1:01:22

Carter, follow-up question, are you owning this now as the Liberals? Are you saying that your first line was that we were requested to deploy the Emergencies Act? Is now a little bit more ownership of the Emergencies Act to the story of Blair and perhaps what we might see in terms of the Prime Minister? Well,

Carter 1:01:42

I think it's a stronger line. I think that, you know, we were asked to come in when you don't have Doug Ford out there explaining how you were asked to be coming in, you know, weakens yourself. Why not take that power that you projected to the Chinese and just put yourself onto the stand and say, you know what, if this could have been solved by others, they would have solved it, but

Carter 1:02:07

but they didn't. and

Carter 1:02:08

and don't use that flip attitude that that's not the right tone but

Carter 1:02:13

know we were pleased to be able to make this decision uh and we were very pleased that it was able to succeed and no one else was succeeding so when

Carter 1:02:23

when asked in the future um you know i think we have better protocols now but i think that we can still make the decision that needs to be made Right.

Zain 1:02:31

Corey, same question to you in that sense. Are you owning this more than you did initially?

Corey 1:02:40

No, I actually think that's a big risk for the liberals. They almost seem to be getting a bit cocky about this. And let's be clear about two things. One, not

Corey 1:02:50

not all of the facts are required to come out during the inquiry. There can always be other shoes to drop. And you've got to think about upside versus downside risk and i just don't see a ton of upside in you being the person

Corey 1:03:02

who owns this anymore carter may disagree but i feel like it's just too far in the past yes in the city of ottawa it might mean more yes with certain groups there's an insistence that we absolutely must uh you know continue to trumpet this but the

Corey 1:03:16

the the facts on the ground are a bit different and it shows canadians i i think becoming

Corey 1:03:20

becoming more indifferent about this as time goes on. They were quite opposed to the convoy in

Corey 1:03:25

in March. Now it's become just

Corey 1:03:28

just another political divide issue. So be careful. You don't fall into that trap and start feeling too cocky.

Corey 1:03:34

And be careful that you don't think that this is a winning political issue if you are given all the credit for it. Carter finishes off on this.

Carter 1:03:41

think that there's a really interesting opportunity for the liberals to take a strong law and order plank out of the conservatives. conservatives. We are the ones who said enough is enough and we stopped this. People do not want protests like this on their streets. They don't want this type of demonstration. And the liberals were the ones who stepped in. And I also think that there's more in the law and order, and this is a different topic for a different day, but there's a lot more in the law and order framework that the liberals have given away that can be picked up as a result of taking a strong position on this particular issue but

Zain 1:04:20

but carter and and i don't mean to get into a long discussion on this because we are in the lightning round we do it for you this is

Carter 1:04:24

is the lightning round um

Zain 1:04:26

carter is the goal here to win or is the goal here to neutralize and not lose the

Carter 1:04:31

the goal is always to win and

Carter 1:04:33

and the only neutralize and don't lose when you can't win cory

Corey 1:04:38

always should be asking yourself whether this is ground on which you will win the big fight right is this something that that makes a government, or is this something that's a distraction? But this is my

Corey 1:04:47

point. I think this is a distraction.

Carter 1:04:48

distraction. But this is my point. I think that there is an opportunity to go after law and order in a way that hasn't been channeled by the conservatives. There was a survey released here in Calgary this week that said people are more concerned with rising crime rates, even though they're substantially down. They're

Carter 1:05:06

They're substantially down. And when people are concerned about something that doesn't exist, that is a existential threat to government.

Zain 1:05:16

stephen carter are you in or out on elizabeth may as a new leader of the green party the new old and new leader of the green party

Carter 1:05:21

party is there any position further out than out can we go further away from like are you fucking kidding me uh is the response that i have and and to the to the whopping 3 000 people who voted for her who the fuck are you and secondly why are only 3 000 people people electing the next leader of the Green Party. This is embarrassing. Elizabeth May should be embarrassed for herself and the party.

Zain 1:05:48

Corey, are you in or out on Elizabeth May as a new leader, a new old new leader of the Green Party?

Corey 1:05:52

It was inevitable. Even when she was not leader, she was controlling too much of the organization. I guess I'm in on her actually being leader instead of pretending she's not leader, but she should really go. At a certain point, this has become the Elizabeth May Party, not the Green Party, and that's not healthy for them. And it's not an area where it's going to lead to future growth.

Zain 1:06:14

Corey, one to 10 scale, Justin Trudeau's performance in that clip with the leader of China, Xi Jinping, what would you give him?

Corey 1:06:22

I'll give it a seven or an eight. Let's not go nuts. But I'll also say he

Corey 1:06:27

he could have avoided that. Discretion is often the better part of valor. And he could have arranged his life and he could have arranged his political political machinations around it to avoid that confrontation altogether which i'm not convinced wasn't smarter idea carter

Corey 1:06:43

one to ten what

Zain 1:06:44

what are you giving justin trudeau

Carter 1:06:45

i'm going to give him a a

Carter 1:06:47

c i'm expecting more depth i'm expecting to see more range uh and i was a little disappointed um to not see that i mean i don't even think he could remember his lines to be honest i think he just did it physically instead of actually using the lines that were written for him

Zain 1:07:04

stephen carter you find out tomorrow that there is an opening in group f for bc united your favorite soccer

Zain 1:07:12

team so what you're doing as principal advisor to danielle smith which is what you do yeah

Zain 1:07:16

is you're leaving you're leaving to and you're saying you're sending one final text message to danielle smith tonight with a one word text message as advice for tomorrow what does that that text message say uh

Carter 1:07:27

uh one word how

Carter 1:07:29

how about one sentence one word strength

Zain 1:07:32

do one word and then i'll see strength

Zain 1:07:34

strength okay now do you have to explain it to me now you have to explain it well i

Carter 1:07:38

i mean i think that you want to be sitting behind that desk daniel smith

Zain 1:07:41

smith responds and says question mark what are you responding back with carter high

Carter 1:07:45

high status be a premier show the world that you're a premier, not just the person who won the UCP leadership.

Zain 1:07:55

Before I shoot forward to Carter's message with a question mark, what is the one word text message you were sending to Danielle Smith in advance of her state of the province?

Corey 1:08:04

I'm running the words mainstream and competence together as though I think it's one word, because I think both are very important.

Corey 1:08:11

What she needs to do is she needs to think about the

Corey 1:08:16

concerns Albertans have about her And the conversation that's been around her is that she's been extreme and that she has crazy ideas and she needs to show normal ideas and she needs to show that she can deliver them in a sensible way.

Zain 1:08:30

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1016 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we will see you next time.

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