Transcript
SPEAKER_00
0:01
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1029. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan. How are you guys?
Corey
0:12
I'm not good. I'm really upset because Stephen is skiing still. He's been skiing for five days, which means he's going to be so loaded with stories about the outdoors. us.
Carter
0:22
No, because Annalise is here, I went fat biking because
Carter
0:25
Annalise and I like to talk about fat biking because it's biking on snow.
Carter
0:31
That's what you do. Yeah. How
Corey
0:32
How was it? You guys have lost me already. Well,
Carter
0:33
Well, I only fell about four times, but my favorite part of fat biking is seeing where everybody else has fallen and their body prints being in the snow. It's the best part about fat biking. You
Corey
0:43
You guys just continue. I'm going to be texting Zane about indoor things. Hey,
Carter
0:47
No one else cares, but does the NFL thing matter? at all corinne did you no
SPEAKER_00
0:53
no we only outdoor sports yeah no but
Carter
0:56
but i thought i'd give it a try with him he sometimes that was
Corey
0:59
yeah the chargers collapse i assume you're referring to i don't know did
Carter
1:04
did they really weren't they up like 27 to nothing i
Corey
1:07
think it was 29 either way yeah yeah it didn't didn't happen see one fact way to go annalise
Carter
1:11
annalise was asking what a one fact was and i thought you know what show don't tell show
Carter
1:15
show don't tell and uh that's what i did there
Corey
1:20
yeah way to go thank you perfect
SPEAKER_00
1:22
perfect uh do we have more sports talk or are we uh are we jumping into the politics i
Corey
1:27
i don't even know if any of that qualifies as sports talk there was
Carter
1:30
was fat bike i'm skiing in panorama right so we skied yesterday we're skiing tomorrow you know i'm an athlete this
SPEAKER_00
1:36
this is what we do you
Corey
1:37
you want to give your address uh and tell people where you're not currently at home too while you're at it no
Carter
1:42
no i don't because uh yeah
Carter
1:45
we'll be back soon you bastards they don't no one knows where i live you don't even know where i live i'm
SPEAKER_00
1:51
he's got two dogs now so they can that's true hold
SPEAKER_00
1:53
hold down that for and
Corey
1:54
they're hungry because he just left them go skiing yeah so yeah
Carter
1:58
uh we really do need to increase the patreon because
Carter
2:03
have to pay the dogs and uh i did get uh amazon prime so i'm pretty excited so oh
Corey
2:08
oh that's that so uh disney plus though still no still
Carter
2:11
still no disney plus annalise what's your thoughts on disney plus versus uh amazon prime go no
SPEAKER_00
2:16
no none of it just use your brother's netflix password for years and years and years at least you're like an adult right
Carter
2:23
you can't do that yeah yeah
SPEAKER_00
2:25
i don't i don't watch very often he's had the same password for years that's uh that's where we're at what
Carter
2:31
what is his password at least just out of curiosity uh
SPEAKER_00
2:33
uh i'm not saying it because it actually is an insult to me is what his password is and that's why i still remember it yeah that's
Corey
2:41
that's see that backfired on on him pretty bad yeah it
SPEAKER_00
2:43
it is yeah yeah yeah it sure did uh okay on that note yeah
Carter
2:48
we're now three minutes in that's our requisite three minutes of pissing off the uh the listeners yeah
SPEAKER_00
2:53
yeah we're gonna talk uh we're gonna talk politics uh first yeah that's what we're here for first segment uh smith's covid pardon promise this one involves a little background uh so bear with me but i'll I'll jump into some quick questions. It's okay, Zane. You just do what
Carter
3:08
what you need to do.
SPEAKER_00
3:10
So we're going to rewind to Thursday is when this all starts. Premier Daniel Smith is at a press conference in Edmonton, and she says that she had asked Alberta Crown prosecutors about charges related to COVID-19 health violations.
SPEAKER_00
3:27
She also said something similar to Rebel News in December, media rights stories. It's Friday. She walks us back. Her office sends out a statement. um they say she had discussions with the justice minister and attorney general and the deputy attorney general the statement says at no point has she communicated with crown prosecutors as she had previously said again media right stories and then it's saturday uh she does her little radio show that she does and she says on air that she has urged minister chandro and his deputy attorney general to consider whether the cases were in the public interest and whether there there was a reasonable chance of conviction before proceeding. So she's now told media three different things, and there are more stories. Before I jump into my questions, which is to come, I think it's just worth mentioning, former UCP Justice Minister Casey Maddow was temporarily removed as Justice Minister for interfering in the judicial process over a traffic ticket. So
SPEAKER_00
4:26
I'll leave it at that. Carter, let's start with you.
SPEAKER_00
4:30
What's going on? What do you make of all of this? Is she is she lying? That's what the NDP opposition say. Is she just being, you know, flip it with her language? Does she not know how the justice system works? What is what's
SPEAKER_00
4:44
what's Premier Smith doing? Well,
Carter
4:46
she was either lying the first time or the second time or the third time. One of those times she's probably lying. So that's an easiest Occam's razor type of understanding of what she's actually doing. But
Carter
4:58
But then there's another reason or rationale for what she's doing, and that is to ensure that she is appealing to her base. There is a base of people, like I'm not sure, Annalise, maybe you've been following these trials of the pastors that are promised pardons by Premier Smith. But I'm not following those trials. I'm sure they're somewhere, though. There's a very small group of Danielle Smith supporters that are following them. And her signaling to those folks of she's still trying to influence the independent process of the prosecutors. I
Carter
5:37
I think that the first lie, and I do think it was a lie. But I think that the first lie was told to win over that group of potential voters, because that's been her modus operandi. She always makes sure that she's signaling to her base, and then she moves away from it. And that's what she's done from Thursday until today.
SPEAKER_00
5:56
But she's premier now. Why does she need to signal to her base? Who are they going to vote for instead of her? Rachel?
Carter
6:03
Well, there's two experiences that Danielle Smith has gone through that always push her into signaling to her base. The first experience was when she won the Wild Rose leadership. She felt that the base carried her there, and she will always signal to that base because that base is the group of people that took her there. And the second thing is in 2015, as leader of the Wild Rose, when she crossed over, the reason that she was crossing over wasn't because she thought it was a great idea. It was because she was losing the caucus that she was leaving behind. There were essentially two caucuses in the Wild Rose. much the same way as there's two caucuses or three caucuses in the UCP. And she knows that by holding the base, she at the very least holds most of the caucus. So that's what she's trying to do, is hold the base and hold the caucus. And she will, I would be willing to bet that you would never be able to pry her fingers out of that base for as long as she serves as UCP leader.
SPEAKER_00
6:58
Corey, what's your take here? What's her strategy? And do you agree with what Carter's saying?
Corey
7:03
I mean, so you asked Carter, is she lying? Is she being flippant? Does she not know how the justice system works? Well, I don't think any of those are mutually exclusive and it's a combination. It's also a bit of that old radio host, tall tale stuff. I caught a fish that was this big. I talked to a crown prosecutor that was this convinced, right? And you got to consider who she was talking to when this story originally came out. It was Ezra Levant. And then, of course, she repeated it. And then everybody rolled the tape on Ezra Levant and said, wait, you've said this a couple of times. Maybe you shouldn't be interfering in the justice system. And I think that I agree. My gut is that she never talked to a crown prosecutor. And there's a simple Occam's razor version of that. How is she going to talk to a crown prosecutor? Does she have a bunch of them? Is she picking up the phone and just randomly dialing them? Is she choosing them? I feel like she would not be able to put together the pieces to do that. And the most obvious person she's going to talk to if she has a problem about this in the justice system is the deputy minister, the attorney general, the deputy attorney general. Not really sure that it's appropriate for her to be talking about a case with those individuals either, but here we are. And to be fair, it's quite possible, you know, to see your point about does she just not know how the justice system works, that she was using prosecutor in just this insanely general term, right, including the person who the prosecutors report to. the manager of the prosecutors, which would be the attorney general. So, you know, it's all very possible. But I think ultimately what comes down to is she knows that the people who put her in the job really
Corey
8:40
really want her to.
Corey
8:42
Well, and actually, let's just say she believes this. Right. I mean, she stood up there and she said that she thought that people who did not get vaccines were the most discriminated against people in history. History is a pretty long time. In her lifetime, I think she actually said, to be fair. Still a pretty long time. Don't be fair.
Corey
9:03
So I think it's a combination of she believes this. She doesn't quite understand the system. She was exaggerating the details.
Corey
9:11
It's all of the above.
SPEAKER_00
9:13
So what next? Do we think there will be repercussions? I know there's chat of look at what Trudeau did with the SNC-Lavalin controversy. There's talk of Madhu. Like what next, Corey? Let's kick it to you. Yeah.
Corey
9:28
Yeah. I mean, you know what I always think about when I think about situations like this?
Corey
9:34
I don't think there is a next, I guess is the short answer. And the reason is because the standard is different for her and her supporters. I think about Barack
Corey
9:46
Barack Obama. So Barack Obama, you remember his whole like the birth certificate, the birther movement, The idea that he wasn't actually born in Hawaii, but he was in fact born in Africa, right?
Corey
9:57
There was some suggestion of this. We're familiar with the
Corey
9:59
Yeah. Well, here's the thing.
Corey
10:01
Even if he was born in Africa, it would have been to an American citizen and he would have had instant American citizenship and he would have been eligible to run for president of the United States. Like
Corey
10:12
Like Ted Cruz. This is my point. So Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, our hometown, and
Corey
10:19
and he was born to American citizens and instantly had citizenship and was eligible to be president of the United States. Ted
Corey
10:26
Ted Cruz actually lived the life that Barack Obama was accused of living, just swap Africa for Canada, and we can talk about the racism inherent in all of that too. But basically the entire birther movement was to try to prove something that would have still allowed Barack Obama to run for president and, to my point, something that they were happy to give Ted Cruz a pass for because Ted Cruz was on their side. So I don't think there's a next because I think that it's just not a line of attack that you're going to find as many people willing to trump it. And I don't think that's a good thing. I think that's a bad thing. But they're going to give her a pass for this.
SPEAKER_00
11:05
Carter do you agree well
Carter
11:07
I think I have to I mean but not necessarily for the same reason as Corey I mean who's who's they right who is it that's going to come in I mean if she had spoken to uh the prosecutors then maybe there would have been you know some sort of consequence a la uh Casey Maddow as you brought up Annalise but that um first of all Casey Maddow was a minister not the premier and the difference between being the minister and the premier is significant. I mean, our friend Kent Hare was a minister in Trudeau's government. Trudeau and Kent Hare faced similar accusations at similar times. One of them's still prime minister and one of them's a failed federal politician. That is
Carter
11:47
is just the way that it works. She's the prime minister. She's the premier, the first minister. She's not going to face any ramifications except for those that the electorate chooses to deal out. out and i'm not sure if the electorate actually chooses um to uh
Carter
12:07
to deal out any consequences at all based on that particular issue there are way more pressing issues that the electorate's going to keep in the front of them in the front of their brains when they're choosing who to actually well
Corey
12:19
well i mean let's be fair the other thing is it's in the case of the trudeau one that happened right like everybody's pretty clear that happened one
Corey
12:28
of the things we're talking about here is we're not even convinced that she actually called a crown prosecutor in a funny way she she flexed and created a story of something that was against the law that she didn't actually do it's like she's a 13 year old talking about all the weed she bought last week right like it's just not you know it's just like trying to look cool for her friends i guess i don't know yeah um so it's not so clear-cut and it's a little harder to to pin this one down is
SPEAKER_00
12:53
is that i guess do you think we're going to see more of that we're what middle of january elections at the end of may we've got four more months is there going to be if this is who she is is
SPEAKER_00
13:04
is there going to be a lot more flexing we're going to see the you know day of media story the next day the pundits do
SPEAKER_00
13:10
do we have a lot more of this to look forward to yeah
Corey
13:14
yeah i mean yeah well and there's a lot of this here one of the things that's interesting about what we've seen in daniel smith since she became premier is um this
Corey
13:24
this is kind of a rhythm there's a bit of a running joke now about how there's just a template for the walk back in the smith office right it's the statement the reversal of the statement you know there's variants of the reversal but it's pretty clear that she she
Corey
13:40
she speaks before she thinks about the consequences of this and i think that's perhaps a consequence of have been been a pundit a radio host which is exactly why you know we can never run for office uh but it's it's filling air she's filling air and then she's realizing there's consequences and she's having to walk it back and we've seen lots of versions of that but we've seen that basic plot half
Corey
14:02
half a dozen times at least at this point how
Carter
14:04
how quickly cory forgets christy clark christy
Carter
14:07
christy clark became premier after doing this shit we
Carter
14:11
we can do anything we
Carter
14:15
sure tell annalise that her future career is over she's
Carter
14:18
she's gonna get elected next month and
Carter
14:20
and that shit's done
Carter
14:22
it's over now anyways i
Corey
14:24
i meant you i meant you specifically no i can't run i pretended i meant all of us but it's one of those things where it's like you know steven it's the person who it's like you know i say it for all of the group but i really mean for one no
Carter
14:35
no i i misunderstood that that was my own bad uh
SPEAKER_00
14:38
uh steven Stephen, put your strategist hat on. Let's say it's Monday and she's going to go talk to media again. Media will ask her about this. What's the strategy? What's your advice for her? What should she do or should she answer the question? Should she ignore it? Should she tell
Carter
14:58
I think she should just simply double, double down, right? And she should say, I have answered the same question three times the same way. And you guys are hearing it different. it's
Carter
15:07
it's not my issue that you're hearing this differently than i mean it i mean it the exact same way every time i say it and what i'm trying to say is that the general population doesn't give a shit about this and i'll tell you something they don't care right now about whether or not you know which words i'm using to cover prosecutor or anything like that general population wants to move past covid and i think that that's where people are going to do
Corey
15:33
yeah i don't know what do you mean i'll tell you this that's really good stuff
Carter
15:35
well because like is it is that's just going to kick the story potentially again all
Corey
15:39
all of a sudden there's a headline danielle smith like fight you know robots fights you know i i don't know i i think that that's a problem oh
Corey
15:47
danielle smith gets another
Carter
15:48
another headline is a problem for danielle smith has
Corey
15:51
that ever been this is your headline sure
Carter
15:53
sure it is it's no problem danielle smith says she's She's been entirely consistent, is now the headline. It's
Carter
15:58
It's a great headline.
SPEAKER_00
16:00
Is that the headline, though? I
Corey
16:01
I guess. I don't think that's the headline.
Carter
16:03
Annalise would totally write that headline.
SPEAKER_00
16:06
I don't know about the headline.
Corey
16:09
You just shut it down. You don't fight with them. You say, listen, my statement from yesterday stands. My statement from yesterday stands. I have nothing to add to my statement from yesterday.
Corey
16:18
You just starve it of oxygen. It's not necessarily the most noble or the boldest strategy. But what else do you have here? And people will say, well, what did you mean by this? I have nothing to add to this statement. And it's just a lot harder to write a story on that than it is to write when somebody goes full ham at the microphone about how you dummies aren't listening to me. I've always been consistent. I mean, that's just that's crazy. That's
Carter
16:42
That's fantastic. We should do an online Twitter poll. And Elon Musk this.
SPEAKER_00
16:48
Corey, is the strategy then just to avoid media for a few days and wait until the next issue?
Corey
16:55
I, we're never that far from the next issue. And I suspect instead, what she will do is just move to it. Maybe it's a void. Maybe that's the right phrasing of it. But I,
Corey
17:08
I, well, what do we got? We've got the legislature coming back at the end of February. There's nothing really that forces you to take questions before then, unless you put yourself in front of it. Danielle Smith has shown she's absolutely fine with saying that's not on the topic. I'm not going to answer that. So, you know, her version of avoiding could even physically have her in the room, frankly, over the next bit. But, yeah, I mean, if there's one thing we've learned from the first few months of the Danielle Smith premiership, actually, if there's one thing we've learned since 2016, and maybe we should have learned it before, is that we
Corey
17:42
we all move on so quickly, right? Right. Just think about the Carter
Corey
17:47
Carter and I were talking about this in the last episode. We did a bit of a Patreon special talking about about an Alberta election preview.
Corey
17:56
There are so many things that happened in October. The poll numbers for Danielle Smith were terrible and they all rebounded by the end of November, start of December, because nobody cares. Like nobody, nobody can hold a care about it long enough, it seems, in order for it to have a significant consequence. consequence and as long as she's not going to be held to account by her party by the caucus i just don't think the public has enough of a care carter
SPEAKER_00
18:21
carter you want to jump in there
Carter
18:21
there yeah i mean you you you in your preference you know preface to the question which was uh agreeably short so thank you
Carter
18:30
you were essentially asking you know are we going to see this every day and i do think that we addressed a bit of that in the last episode which was yes we are going to see this every day because because this is Daniel Smith. This is how she operates. She screwed up in 2015. She screwed up in 2012. She'll screw up. And, you know, like she screws up at every step of the way is part of her story because because she's offside with a large chunk of the Alberta population. She is on message more than we think that she's on message. But and this is where we were at the beginning saying she was lying. Yes, but she was lying with a specific intent to bringing along along her core audience. This is what she needs to do in her mind to ensure that she's able to maintain her core audience and the people that she thinks she needs in order to win the next election. I would argue they're an anchor. I think Corey would argue they're an anchor. But, you know, who are Corey and I except one really good strategist that wins and Corey?
Corey
19:32
one of the things that's been interesting about these last couple of days is you're starting I'm starting to see tweets from that core of Danielle Smith saying, oh, same old, same old, just like Kenny, Kenny 2.0, not actually going to stand up, not actually going to put doctors in jail. I mean, that last one's a bit of an exaggeration. Not much.
Corey
19:53
I don't know. That base, it can be a little bit fickle, too. They do have a bit of a history of eating their own. So it's going to be a wild ride, I think, over the next bit.
SPEAKER_00
20:05
i have more there but i am looking at the time i have been told not to to make this last for hours and hours so let's move on
SPEAKER_00
20:13
on to our next topic for a second yeah yeah okay we're doing it we're
Carter
20:17
we're doing you don't take stage direction from cory and i okay this is the way this is not the way this works cory and i are um we're just passengers you
Carter
20:26
you call the shots we just answer the question i'm
Carter
20:30
that damn right you are so if you got more questions zane Dane has made an entire episode out of a fucking Dairy Queen. So you can do anything you want.
SPEAKER_00
20:40
Well, it sounds like you covered some of it in the Patreon episode that I did not listen to because I am not a Patreon. What?
SPEAKER_00
20:50
is very upsetting. End of episode right there. Yeah, this is
SPEAKER_00
20:55
Okay, well, let's just go to one kind of super insider thing here. And it was, Corey, I think you had mentioned it. This is not on topic, right? She's in front of media. She's answering, says it's not on topic. I'm not answering it. Again, both of you strategists had on. Is that effective? I know as a former reporter and someone who still stays in touch with reporters, they hate it. It pisses them off a ton. But general public,
SPEAKER_00
21:20
public, do they care? Does it matter? Or can't you just keep doing that?
Corey
21:25
don't think the general public – well, listen, Stephen Harper did this forever. And I remember in the – what was it? The 2011 election, Michael Ignatieff versus Stephen Harper.
Corey
21:37
And actually Jack Layton ended up coming in second. So maybe I should say Stephen Harper versus that. But Michael Ignatyev would make a big show of taking everybody's question until exhaustion, absolute exhaustion. And Stephen Harper would say five questions, and no matter what those five questions were, he would answer whatever the topic of the day was that he wanted people to hear. And reporters fucking
Corey
21:59
fucking hated it. They loathed it. It made them really upset. And I think reporters wrote
Corey
22:04
wrote a few process stories about Michael Ignatyev's process versus Stephen Harper's, and they were pretty complimentary about Michael Ignatyev's accessibility. versus Stephen Harper. But here's the problem.
Corey
22:14
Stephen Harper's strategy did work, right? I mean, one of the things that is just a truism is, it's
Corey
22:22
it's very hard to write a story if nobody's willing to play with you and give you a quote. I mean, you can say this better than I can, Annalise. But they, you know, there were so many random and not helpful stories for the liberals that came out of that 2011 campaign, in part because Michael Ignatyev would answer any question. And so when we talk about message discipline, usually we talk about what we're intentionally putting out there and trying to make sure that those things are of a consistent package. But it is also message discipline on the receiving. So if somebody asks you a question, how do you turn that question into the answer you want to give?
Corey
22:55
Michael Ignatyev and Stephen Harper both gave very extreme examples of that. Michael Ignatyev gave the extreme example of, I will answer everything exactly as you asked it.
Corey
23:04
It turned out to be deeply unhelpful because it created a very confusing campaign for the liberals, created a bunch of stories that were not helpful. Stephen Harper gave the extreme the other way, and that was the, I don't care what you asked, I'm just going to tell you about the thing that was here today. Daniel Smith's is a step beyond that because Stephen Harper would just
Corey
23:20
just turn everything into that, right? Right. You know, it would be like, well, what's important here is this. Danielle Smith will just actively say we're not answering questions on that. But I never saw the public care that much. And maybe it would have been more consequential if the
Corey
23:36
the baselines had been a bit different. But I think that the media was fairly frustrated with the Stephen Harper approach before the election. And so it's not as though there was a lot of charity lost. They were starting at a zero tank of charity. And Harper just said, well, OK, I'm just going to run it to maximum message discipline then. And I think where Ignatiev really screwed up was
Corey
23:54
was thinking that filling that tank of media charity beyond where it was would do him any good whatsoever.
Carter
24:04
Yeah, I mean, I went, I'm really glad you asked, because I was worried there for a second that just Corey was going to get a chance to answer that question. and I went off and uh today
Carter
24:16
today you know on my mountain biking my mountain biking trails I went to two different places and the first place wasn't as good it was kind of slushy and icy but the second place um wow and at least you got to see the snow the snow was fantastic it was really deep um and super uh well formed so I had really good traction uh without studs which I thought that was fantastic. Anyways,
Carter
24:39
Anyways, thanks for the question. And we'll just move on, I guess the next topic.
SPEAKER_00
24:44
Why are you biking not skiing? Is the snow that bad for skiing? Okay,
Carter
24:48
Okay, I'm very old. And we can't ski two days in a row. Okay, but thanks for embarrassing me. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00
24:55
Not that's not the answer. I was expecting it's quite icy. You could have just said the snow is bad. It's quite it's actually not too
Carter
25:00
too bad up top. Up top was pretty good.
Carter
25:04
groomers are pretty fun in the the morning groomers
SPEAKER_00
25:06
groomers oh carter uh
SPEAKER_00
25:07
uh moving on just in the morning
Carter
25:09
morning annalise i will that's it we're going skiing i'm going to ski you into the ground young lady moving
SPEAKER_00
25:14
moving on to our next segment uh let's chat staff a couple different parts to this on friday ryan hastman who was chief of staff for minister rajan sani and most recently a director in smith's office he said on twitter he's leaving the legislature. But that's not all. We also saw this week that UCP MLA Pat Wren, he officially says he won't be running for re-election in Lesser Slave Lake. For those listeners who may be thinking like I was, who is Pat Wren and why do I know that name? He
SPEAKER_00
25:47
He was kicked out of caucus for six months in 2021. That was after local leaders complained he was actually never in the constituency. And you may have also seen the Facebook photos that made the rounds in 2020 of have him in a cave in Mexico, wishing
SPEAKER_00
26:02
wishing everyone a Merry Christmas at the time when the government told everyone to stay home during that COVID Christmas. So anyways, two different, obviously one of those is a staffer, one is an elected official. But I think there's different threads here that we can dive into. Let's start with the staff departure. Corey, we'll start with you.
SPEAKER_00
26:22
Were you surprised by this? What do you make of this? You were a few months before an election.
Corey
26:30
I was surprised and not.
Corey
26:34
It's surprising that he took a job in Daniel Smith's office and then months later was gone. That certainly strongly suggests it just didn't work out in some way, shape or form, right? Right. Either he was dissatisfied or they were dissatisfied. But it rarely says everything is fine when somebody leaves that soon after taking a job. But on the flip side, somebody leaving this close to an election, super common. Right. You start saying, well, maybe this is as high as my stock's going to be. Who knows what this election is going to happen? You know, what's going to occur during this? Maybe I'd rather test the corporate sector market now and see if I can find myself a
Corey
27:14
a job where my government connections mean something than risk there being an NDP government and my government connections actively hurting me in that particular role. So super possible there, too. But the combination of the two, it's tough for me to see exactly where the balance is. But on net, because he just started the role, I have to assume that there just wasn't a fit.
Corey
27:34
To me, it would be kind of weird
Corey
27:37
weird otherwise, because even if he had signaled, hey, listen, I'm thinking of leaving, but I'm not thinking of leaving right now, you
Corey
27:43
you wouldn't have given him the role he got. You would have just kept him as a chief of staff somewhere. God knows they need a lot of them. How many bloody ministers they have right now. And so that was a bit confusing.
SPEAKER_00
27:53
Carter, do you think this is the start of more? You know, let's just back up and think timelines here. She became premier in October. You've got the first couple of months. December is kind of a write off with Christmas, New Year, election in May. Do you think we're going to see more of these sorts of staff departures as we get closer to the election?
Carter
28:14
Not necessarily staff departures. You know, we just had a significant staff departure when Jason Kenney left. Most of his staff left with him. The premier's office, I mean, essentially every minister's office was up for grabs and everybody was able to be shuffled into the positions that they wanted to have, whatever those positions might be.
Carter
28:35
This was a position, I think, that Ryan Haspin wanted. It's in the premier's office, it's in the center, but I don't think that he was leaving because it turned out to be such a great job. I think, in fact, he was leaving because it turned out to not be the job that he wanted. it. There's a lot of rumor and innuendo that things aren't going well in that office, that it's a hard office to be in. You can see that with your previous topic, you know, three different days, three different messages, isn't an office that people that are trying to run the show really feel comfortable in. And I want to separate, Corey did a piss poor job of this, but there's two, there's two different things that were happening. The first is the staffers is leaving. Seeing staffers leave is totally unexpected. Seeing MLA's leave, this is when they leave. They leave in the last six months. They make sure that someone else can get nominated. And this was a candidate that
Carter
29:29
that wasn't supported by his area. I'm not sure if a nomination race had been held. I'm assuming that it hadn't.
Carter
29:36
And I think that he would have been facing severe challenges. So him leaving, absolutely on par. That's when it's supposed to happen. And Ryan Hastman had choices three months ago. He made his choice to be with Danielle Smith. And now he is looking for the first available exit. And
Carter
29:56
And so and, you know, I guess we could also take the assumption that maybe this wasn't his choice. um provincial politics
Corey
30:05
politics you don't know that but when you so this is one of the things that i would say that ryan leaving is enough to raise an eyebrow but it's probably not in itself enough to kind of guarantee a narrative or a story like we just don't know there's just too many things that could be happening uh because of course ryan was there before and it worked for sonny and and all of that yada yada but if we start seeing that cast of characters that smith herself brought in
Corey
30:30
new if you start seeing shuffling there changes there that really tells you a story of discord within the organization and it's something to watch out for because there is a there is a arc right there is a way this happened i can tell you this is the story of everybody who's ever been in daniel smith's position and starts fucking up the
Corey
30:49
the first time is blame the people that are here that were here before and you see this happen with the public service and you hear see this happen with political staff they're not really on board premier that's our problem they're not on board we got to have your people in these positions boom all of a sudden they're right and i don't know that's what happened i just want to say but like this is the first chapter in this particular book boom
Corey
31:09
boom all of a sudden the political staff who were there before they're gone public
Corey
31:13
public servants same deal the reason why we're having so much trouble they don't really believe in you that's page one page two is her staff you
Corey
31:22
you know all of a sudden it becomes premier we'd support you but But your staff, there's a real problem with your staff and you got to switch them out too. And then chapter three is the chapter you don't want to read if you're premier because that's your job. That's the one that happens next, right? You may have ministers in there as kind of like a chapter 2B, but
Corey
31:39
but this is how it goes. It always starts, you know, it's a blame game and it starts with the people that is easiest to blame and it moves towards the people hardest to blame. So
SPEAKER_00
31:47
So what's happening behind the scenes right now? Like, let's let's just go down the path. Obviously, we don't know what happened, but let's go down the path that this is the start of more. Someone has left. It's raising eyebrows. She knows that the people close to her know that other people in that office are also not happy. They're thinking of leaving. You guys have been in those back rooms. You've been in those offices. What is happening behind the scenes? What is she doing?
Carter
32:11
I think that the number one thing that she's doing is trying to figure out where everybody's loyalty lies. This isn't an office that's been staffed from her team. This is an office that's been staffed from outsiders. You know, Corey talked about the staffers that were with you. I mean, if you look back to Ed Stelmack, that was his undoing. You know, everybody would go to Ed Stelmack's office and say that the problem's Ron Glenn. You know, the problem's Ron Glenn.
Carter
32:33
The problem was never Ron Glenn. The problem was that they didn't have access to the premier. year uh and that was the you know the way that they were trying to get it so in this particular case you know danielle's trying to figure out i mean
Carter
32:46
mean even everybody back up to and including her chief of staff is unknown to her right
Carter
32:50
right it's not somebody who was right there helping her actually get elected um that's one of the reasons why you
Carter
32:56
you try to bring the people who are closest to you into office now i am a shiny example of the failure of that but in for the most part you're You're at least trying to bring in people. You bring the people who got you there. And, you
Carter
33:10
know, Danielle hasn't brung any of those people. She doesn't have those people. And that, I think, is making for a very challenging environment for people to work in and for people to figure out where they fit. So that's kind of my initial take is that these aren't her people. And because they aren't her people, she doesn't know them and they don't know where they fit themselves. ourselves so if we see more if we see any more uh it will be a
Carter
33:39
a tremendous admission of defeat i think
Corey
33:42
well so here's the here let me throw another narrative on the table just so we don't go recklessly speculate down one direction why wouldn't we do that
Carter
33:49
that all of a sudden like we've always recklessly speculated no
Corey
33:52
no you've always i mean yeah i guess me too but okay it's
Corey
33:56
it's also also possible that ryan didn't want to be there the minute daniel smith won
Corey
34:01
won but ryan didn't have an immediate option available and ryan had a mortgage and ryan had bills to pay and so ryan took a job that was offered to him because his alternative was leaving the government at that time like we just don't know right and then a few months later he gets his ducks in a row he finds the next thing he wants to do or he just says too
Corey
34:20
too much right too much too much and decides to leave leave there but this is you know this is a time of reflection for staff and it's a time of reflection for elected officials as well we talked about pat wren and one of the reasons why he was keen to leave obviously was going to be his nomination could
Corey
34:40
could be challenging if it didn't already happen i actually don't know but
Corey
34:43
then there's the general and on both carter and i's lists as we were comparing them on the last patreon for the election preview we both saw lesser slave lake as like Like probably in the seats between 45 and 50 to fall if, you know, towards an NDP government. Part of that was because of Wren, though, right? And him leaving makes it more likely for the UCP to hold that seat. So it's the time. It's the time when the tough conversations happen with those people saying, you know, I actually don't think there's a place for you here. And it's also a time when you have the tough conversations with the premier and you say, you know, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm out.
Corey
35:21
We can expect more of it, and I think what she'll probably be doing is trying to frame it all as a narrative of, well, there's an election coming and people have to make choices and just bundle them all together and try
Corey
35:31
try to avoid the ones that are particularly messy and try to conflate them.
Corey
35:35
You know, the one with staff, with Ryan, is messy.
Corey
35:38
messy. It's complicated. There's questions that come out of that. The one with Pat Wren, not so messy, not so complicated, not so many questions come out of that. So combine the two. And when somebody brings up Ryan Hasman, you say, well, yeah,
Corey
35:51
yeah, let's not forget Pat ran left too. Like this is a time people make choices and you just muddy the waters like that.
SPEAKER_00
35:56
that. Carter, on the MLA
SPEAKER_00
35:58
MLA front, do you think any of these guys will go to the feds instead they'll run federally?
Carter
36:05
Well, I think that, you know, for a while the Calgary Heritage nomination
Carter
36:09
nomination has been the most sought after nomination from sitting MLAs in Calgary. Calgary every every MLA virtually in Calgary you hear associated with the potential of running in Calgary heritage so I think that you know they're off cycle though right like the the federal election just happened a year and a half ago you
Carter
36:28
know that being off cycle makes it more challenging to have the next place to land so
Carter
36:34
so what they're probably trying to figure out now is where do they go if you were to leave the provincial government or the yeah the provincial government right now, you really don't have a place, right? You're going to sit idle for at least six months. And that's a really difficult place for an aspiring politician. It is not a very difficult place for a retiring politician. And so I think that we will see people retire who leave politics altogether. But we will, the
Carter
37:04
the people who are going to stay, there'll be more people who stay than I I would project or predict, um, because they're just off cycle and being off cycle means that, you
Carter
37:15
you know, you don't go without a pay. You can't go without a paycheck for, for two and a half years. It's just, you know, um, you know, with, with maybe the notable exception of, uh, Jeremy Farkas, who's, uh, out climbing all the mountains, just
Carter
37:27
just like you, Annalise, climbing
SPEAKER_00
37:30
I'm actually going to climb a mountain with him on Friday next week, Carter. so
SPEAKER_00
37:35
so on purpose or like
Carter
37:36
like you're being chased are you being forced to do something blink twice if
Carter
37:39
if this is some sort of blink twice if this is something you
SPEAKER_00
37:43
you don't want to be
SPEAKER_00
37:43
no we're we're gonna do a little hiking interview uh for go outside my substack newsletter carter and uh yeah yes oh
Carter
37:51
nice promo of your substack didn't
SPEAKER_00
37:54
didn't we actually expressly
Carter
37:55
expressly prohibit the substack isn't that in the contract uh
SPEAKER_00
38:01
just to jump back to one thing that i forget which one you said it carter it was probably you so if it wasn't you can jump this to cory but just was
Corey
38:10
was it stupid or smart that's usually
Corey
38:11
usually how you tell carter
SPEAKER_00
38:13
walk me through um what you want that stuff what you want that office looking like you know right now election in may i i'm no i don't have the the years of experience you do, but you would think that you want people, a cohesive team and people that are loyal to you and that sort of thing. Like what, what
SPEAKER_00
38:32
what should that office be looking like? And how, I guess, how big of a deal is it that it is doesn't look like that.
Carter
38:38
It's a big deal. Um, because what you want this office to look like is an election campaign. Um,
Carter
38:43
Um, you may not be campaigning. You may not actually have run the campaign yet. You're not inside the uh the the you know the four-week writ period but the election's on right the election's on right now everything that comes out of this government between now and uh may the 30th or may the 28th or whenever the date of the election is is going to be election fodder so you
Carter
39:07
you don't want um you
Carter
39:09
you don't want a group of people who are interested in their uh you know making things a three-year plan you're making things a three-month plan everything is like that and the other thing that we had. So this is very similar to Alison Redford in 2011, 2012. We also had people who brought together the caucus. We'd hired, um, uh, you know, Alon, uh, McDonald, who was Gary Maher's campaign manager, because we needed someone to be able to talk to the 35 MLAs that had endorsed Gary Maher. Uh, we brought in people who, who were from inside people who from outside of government. We made sure that we knew every person in the government. We could pick up the telephone and call everybody that we needed to i mean right down to the fact that my executive assistant was ron glenn's executive assistant because i needed someone who knew everybody in that government because lord knows i didn't know anyone and
Carter
40:02
and she was able to i mean she was amazing help to me though that's the type of thing that you need is some a group of people who are thinking about the election and a group of people who are thinking about how we can use the levers of government for that election and
SPEAKER_00
40:15
and are you saying she doesn't have either i
Carter
40:18
think that she's probably run into more um institutional challenges than we did when we did when we were there with redford i suspect that cory hogan's public service as much as they are trained professionals who generally speaking do not pick sides i suspect that they are waiting to see which side they're serving in mid-2023. So there's probably a lot of doors that are just simply opening slower and I will leave it to the mighty Corey Hogan to contradict my statement on that.
Corey
40:57
Corey Hogan No, I agree with it. I don't think – so the public service truly does not pick sides in my experience, right? I think one of the funny things that occurs amongst political set is they assume everybody Everybody cares about politics as much as them, and surely if they work in government, that must be the case. But a lot of public servants, it's a job, and they're doing it, just like if they worked at Pepsi or for the Calgary Herald or for IBM, whatever it may be. And they may have like kind of a general affinity for their organization, but it doesn't mean they live or die these things. Interestingly, we are more able to assume that people just not even punch the clock but just do their job and can compartmentalize in basically everything but government. But government is full of people who are just doing their job. Now, the reason why the public service often starts to slow walk things around this time of year is not because of any antipathy towards the governing party. It actually goes back to that I'm just trying to do my job thing. I want you to imagine any other workplace where you're handed a file and you know in four months any
Corey
42:01
any work you might have done on it was totally irrelevant and, in fact, probably hurt you because now you've got to reverse yourself and you've got to go back and do it again. it's simple workplace dynamics like if you know that this is this deep ambiguous moment and everything might be totally different in three months where's your get up and go you
Corey
42:18
you know where is your sense of purpose on all of these things things naturally slow down around that time and frankly your job becomes a lot harder if you make it harder
Corey
42:28
harder if you decide that you're going to do all of these things and potentially have to undo them all for the next person who's going to say well why the fuck did you go so far with that you knew there was an election coming so there's a a practicality that drives the the public service slowing down on that i
SPEAKER_00
42:41
i just want to push i
SPEAKER_00
42:43
i just want to push back on one thing you said there cory with the public service not picking sides is how do you not pick sides when you have um
SPEAKER_00
42:51
um a premier who when she was running essentially said i'm going to cut your jobs like how how
SPEAKER_00
42:57
how do you square that yeah
Corey
42:59
yeah well okay well that's a fair point um that's
Corey
43:02
that's a really interesting point i'll tell you as somebody who sort of sat there between Between a transition and all of a sudden there was a UCP government, I
Corey
43:12
I was going to observe, I thought that the public service managed to flip to being not like partisans, but all of a sudden sort of being like, okay, this is what we're doing now pretty quickly. Exactly. And people voting against their interest happens a lot more than you might think. And there were certainly, I mean, there's always been a lot of conservatives in the public service, despite the conservatives arguably not being, you know, deeply invested in the public service. But I guess one of the things that makes people compartmentalize
Corey
43:43
compartmentalize and just say, like, that's my politics. And again, maybe that's not the biggest part of their life. Maybe they wouldn't vote for them, but it's not going to change the way that they act at work is because that's really dangerous. And you don't want to stick your neck out like that either. So you're just going to kind of do your job, right? And if your job allows you to slow walk because everyone's expecting change or because you've got to get transition documents ready anyhow, that's the other thing.
Corey
44:07
Part of why it goes so slow right now is the public service is already really deep in another stream of work, which is very exhausting, which is getting ready for transition.
SPEAKER_00
44:18
Okay. Let's leave it there. I like
Carter
44:21
like you taking Corey to task, though. That was fantastic. I
Carter
44:24
can just beat the shit out of that. That's an interesting point. Don't let him get an ego. ego if you get the ego it's impossible to work with interesting
Corey
44:29
interesting point because it's not as though they don't have opinions and
Corey
44:32
and it's not as though when they vote they're not going to necessarily
Corey
44:34
necessarily bias one way or the other you
Carter
44:36
you skipped over the easiest answer and
Carter
44:38
and the easiest answer is it's always somebody else that's going to lose their job everybody
Carter
44:42
everybody has a sense that they are safe no one else you know there's there's very few people in the in the public service that are sitting
Corey
44:50
they would never cut me do you know how important it is yeah the thing that Everything that I
SPEAKER_00
44:55
But some people must know that their job is less essential.
Carter
45:00
Sure, but it's very far down. It's
Carter
45:03
It's very far down. It's not like layer one. It's not the people who are actually now slow walking these things. The people who are on the front lines of the public service are doing the same thing they did yesterday.
Carter
45:14
They're processing as many people through age. Right now, they're in the midst of trying to make sure that everybody gets their hundred bucks this month. don't forget to apply annalise there's a hundred dollars sitting right
Carter
45:26
right there for you right what a fucking nightmare cory's gonna get like i
Carter
45:30
i don't know what do you get like 1500 you're taking my next segment
SPEAKER_00
45:32
segment carter stop okay segue segue
SPEAKER_00
45:36
jump in our next segment danny dollars this week starts wednesday mark your calendars january 18th you get to log onto this government portal you apply six hundred dollars if you're eligible um and you'll get Get it in monthly installments of $100. You can also go in person to any Alberta registry agent. In total, about $900 million is going to go out. 2.5 million Albertans will benefit. Wednesday, what could go wrong is the question. So Stephen Carter, will
SPEAKER_00
46:13
will it be smooth? Will people be able to log on easily and fill out their info and get their money? or is it going to be a big old dumpster fire?
Carter
46:23
When I've done a new implementation of technology, Corey's always been my technology guy. So it's always gone super well. It's a super easy process, especially for government. And this government, you
Carter
46:39
know, has a history of not blowing it significantly and having it, you know, Thomas Dang, I think, might be looking for another opportunity to break into the system. So I imagine him getting like some fifteen thousand dollars a month or something just to prove that it can be done, not to do anything malicious. Of course, he would never do that. But I think that this is what this is. You know, this is a big rollout and choosing this path is more dangerous. Annalise, is it going to work perfectly? I don't know. My crystal ball is broken after the Jeb Bush situation. But nonetheless, I'm
Carter
47:14
I'm still confident. it.
Carter
47:16
The fact that Annalise didn't laugh at my Jeb Bush joke has me so upset right now.
Corey
47:23
can add a laugh track after, bud. Don't worry about it. Thank
Corey
47:26
Thank you very much. 47-30. Yeah.
Carter
47:30
But yeah, I think that I don't remember where I was going because Annalise didn't laugh at my joke, so I've lost my train of thought.
SPEAKER_00
47:36
You're really revealing how to bother you, Carter. I'm enjoying this. yes uh
SPEAKER_00
47:40
uh cory they've been working they've said that they've been working on the system for two months like developing this portal that that's why it's been taking so long it's not going to happen overnight they've got to like do their due diligence make sure it's safe and secure um do you buy it is it is it going to be smoother are we going to have like many headlines about how people who need their 100 per month can't get it
Corey
48:04
i i don't believe it will be okay first of all they better have been working on an existing technology stack because if it's just from scratch in two months government can't even get your outlook calendar to sync in two months that's just like that's not a thing right uh but assuming they were working on some sort of solution that already existed maybe they were building it for things like wildfires government's often having to give out money for example when people have to evacuate so let's just give them the benefit of the doubt and say they
Corey
48:31
they had something they needed to modify it slightly, they were able to move forward. Will it be smooth? No, it's never smooth. By the way, those wildfire payments are never smooth. Just to give an example there, there's always problems that arise that are unanticipated. And when you're doing it for the first time new, triply so. One of the things about government that
Corey
48:52
that I always like about government is that it's, you know, when it's working at scale, and when it's ramped up, it generally works pretty well. And people People don't think too much about it, and it really takes something breaking badly to make them think about it. Like the passport office was chaos. How many people were thinking like on any given week 70,000 passports have been issued forever, right? Like it just moves. It moves. It moves. And that's true of AISH. That's true of driver's licenses. That's true of everything government does.
Corey
49:23
But the ramping up of those things is always a nightmare. It's always a nightmare because it's the first time that government systems have to interact with other government systems, that somebody who's interested in defrauding the system is going to get a chance with it. They're going to be able to shake it out and see what money falls out of it. The start is tough. Government is a difficult startup environment. It's OK when it's established and it's moving forward. And so I don't know why any government would subject itself to creating a new process for such a signature initiative. Like it's a roll of the dice. Even if they manage to make it work,
Corey
49:55
it just doesn't seem like it's worth the risk. You know, one of the things you were saying to me that I didn't know is that you could go into an Alberta registry agent.
Corey
50:03
What are they getting out of that? What is that costing us? What the hell are
Corey
50:07
are we doing on
SPEAKER_00
50:09
that? Well, Corey, some people don't have computers.
Corey
50:12
Well, that's true. So if you don't have a computer.
Carter
50:16
The registry debacle goes way back, Annalise. I mean, this has been money for friends for a long, long time. and uh you
Carter
50:25
have to pay them right
Carter
50:26
right so that's a hundred you
Corey
50:27
you know it's a lot of money do you know who has phone phones though and like phone numbers you can call it's a little organization called the canada revenue agency that would have been willing to give out that hundred dollars if uh if we were so interested that's
Carter
50:40
that's where the interest is the is is the interesting choice i mean uh yeah we're already we've got you know people in our lives that qualify for this right and so my mother-in-law qualifies for this. She does. You'll be shocked to find out, Annalise, she does not have a computer. And if she did have a computer, we bought her an iPad once. Anyways, it's now my iPad because she couldn't use the iPad. Two-year-olds can use the iPad, but you know, Ruth couldn't.
Corey
51:06
Shots fired at the mother-in-law.
Carter
51:11
I'm going to tell you something. She's not going to fucking listen, is she? She's not listening. She doesn't have a computer.
Corey
51:17
Was she listening on? Yeah, I guess that's a good point. she don't even
SPEAKER_00
51:20
don't even know give us all the dirt on ruth that's right yeah how
Carter
51:25
we're gonna apply for ruth has been a topic of conversation in the house um not one i paid attention to i'm sure there's a solution but well
SPEAKER_00
51:33
you can do the registry and then ask them when you're there how but i how many people like two months from now if
Carter
51:39
if i'm the opposition what they're getting paid
Carter
51:42
one but two months from now if i'm the ndp i am just going around to seniors homes. And I'm asking seniors or I'm going to, you know, long term care or something along those lines. Did you get the money that you were owed? And
Carter
51:56
And I'm going to find people who are in wheelchairs and they're sick and they didn't get it because it's a new process that takes too long. And
Carter
52:04
And I'm going to trot those people out one after the other. And each hundred dollars is a failure on this government's point of view where it could have been Justin
Carter
52:11
Justin Trudeau's failure that
Carter
52:13
that it could could have been justin trudeau's failure and instead it's going to be danielle smith's and that type of own goal in your last five months before the election is just fucking stupid
SPEAKER_00
52:24
do you think a hundred dollars though like it's a hundred dollars a month is that that's really going to make as big of a splash
Carter
52:30
splash and impact as you're saying such an elitist such an elitist look
Carter
52:36
look who's coming from a double income family okay you don't have miles positive little this is
SPEAKER_00
52:43
lot of money for a lot of people yeah there's
SPEAKER_00
52:46
there's a lot of
Carter
52:46
of money for a lot of people okay
Corey
52:49
uh you know i don't know i i kind of agree like a hundred dollars might be spreading a tooth and i don't know why they didn't do 600
SPEAKER_00
52:55
600 at once like that like i'm not saying that that money's not going to make a difference i get the 100 bucks you're going to get it in your april you're going to get when you may june 600
SPEAKER_00
53:04
600 sounds a lot flashier like ralph bucks man i was I was in junior high, I think, when those came out, and we all got $400. It was amazing.
Carter
53:13
were in junior high. Yeah.
Carter
53:15
upsetting thing you've ever said. I was in
Corey
53:15
in my 20s. I
Corey
53:16
I got $400, and
Corey
53:19
and what I did is I bought an iPod with it, and I was very excited. Yeah, iPod
Carter
53:22
iPod sales went through the roof in Alberta that month.
SPEAKER_00
53:24
What do you do with your $400, Carter?
Carter
53:27
I don't know, because I had like 600 children at that point. I'm sure we just put it into diapers. You know, like it was an expensive time in my life.
Corey
53:37
the okay hold on diapers
Carter
53:41
don't know what we put i
Corey
53:42
want you to do some math here how
Carter
53:43
how what year was it that
Corey
53:45
was like 2004 2005 i think sammy's
Carter
53:47
sammy's slow sam took a long time
Carter
53:54
keep in mind keep in mind in 2012 that's right he didn't say who they were for that's a good he's
SPEAKER_00
54:00
answering the question he's doing that thing that we teach in media training what are
Carter
54:03
are you doing now?
Carter
54:05
But I'll tell you something, like when we did the age increase, we did the age increase in 2011, 2012. But when we sold it during the leadership in 2012, it was the idea that someone shouldn't necessarily be able to, you know, go to a movie and buy a bag of popcorn, but they should still be able to go to a movie. And those types of small ball, like keep in mind, we are a people that reacted to Bevo to $16 glass of orange juice. $100 is going to mean something to a lot of people and a poor person not getting it is going to be staggering staggeringly challenging for the government to deal with yeah
SPEAKER_00
54:41
yeah but but but those nobody's disputing yeah don't don't you nobody's disputing the value of those headlines i i agree great plan i hope the ndp's listening they should totally do this but those headlines are going to be punchier when it says like poor
SPEAKER_00
54:54
poor senior didn't get six hundred dollars instead of their like the splitting it up into $100 increments. It
Carter
55:00
doesn't matter. It's all the same. It all adds up to $600. At the end, you can say $600 or they haven't gotten $100. It doesn't matter. The money hasn't gotten into their pockets. It's gone somewhere into the provincial government that Danielle Smith runs that is not working for the people of Alberta. That's all you need to say.
Carter
55:21
Why are you guys making this so complicated? Why are you making it so hard?
Corey
55:24
Why are you making it so complicated? You want it to be like separate payments. Just Just give them one payment, 600 bucks. Oh, sure.
Carter
55:29
sure. I could. That's
Carter
55:30
It's just, it's going to get blown faster.
SPEAKER_00
55:33
So you are agreeing with us. Ralph Box had been
SPEAKER_00
55:35
six. No, I'm agreeing with Scott
Carter
55:36
Scott Reed and his comment that this is all about popcorn and what was
SPEAKER_00
55:44
That's fantastic. Here's the thing. If Ralph Box had been $100 times four months, you couldn't have told me that you bought an iPod with it because you wouldn't have saved the first, you know? That's
Corey
55:53
That's just it. Right?
SPEAKER_00
55:54
Right? So it's splashier, the bigger number. how it works also
Corey
55:59
also did you just throw beer and popcorns wasn't that from like the 06 election it
Carter
56:03
the same election wasn't it these it was the same election that uh warren kinsella did the one smart thing that he's ever done yeah
Corey
56:09
yeah that was 17 years ago and that was not the warren kinsella one was in the 90s was it really he
Corey
56:14
only did one you
Corey
56:15
gotta really update your political references here he's
Carter
56:19
he's still a political pundit holy
Carter
56:23
it was It was part of
Carter
56:24
dinosaur, if you're wondering, Annalise. It goes back to when you were in play
Corey
56:27
school. The year 2000. It was election in the year 2000.
SPEAKER_00
56:30
that note, lightning round. I've been told this is the thing that happens at the end of episodes. I don't know. I hope so. I hope you
SPEAKER_00
56:37
did a good job on
SPEAKER_00
56:39
Well, we're going to segue into what we were just talking about, which is these payments. So when the payments have come before, like the carbon tax, whatever, people always talk about what it shows up on your bank statement, right? Right. And I know it's a big thing with
SPEAKER_00
56:55
with the was it the NDP, their rebates and what it showed up, et cetera. Let's say you guys are running the Danny Dollar system. You're running the six hundred dollars. What what is it showing up on people's bank statements as what is your flashy branding that's super going to help them as we go into the election? Carter, let's start with you. oh
Carter
57:15
oh starting with carter you bastard cory um
Carter
57:18
um this is obviously going to be uh some sort of government ease because that's the type of thing that uh the daniel smith government's famous for so it's going to just simply go in as government of alberta miscellaneous payment um and i think that that should be the one that that shows up on people's bank statements because i can't think of that's anything
SPEAKER_00
57:38
anything better that's what you're saying it should be well
Carter
57:41
well no that's what it's going to be No,
Carter
57:43
that's the question. You always said what it should
Corey
57:43
should be. That wasn't the question.
Corey
57:45
You didn't listen to
SPEAKER_00
57:45
the question. You panicked. You
Carter
57:47
You didn't listen to the question. We've never listened to the question. No, the question
SPEAKER_00
57:50
question was, you're naming it. You're naming it. You're in charge. You're the strategist. You're in charge of what this is going to be called that's going to help them win the election because people are going to be so pumped about the $600. What does it say on the bank statement?
Carter
58:04
It's going to be called the inflation fighter.
Carter
58:06
The inflation fighter payment.
SPEAKER_00
58:09
Okay, inflation fighter payment. I don't know. I haven't gotten anything.
SPEAKER_00
58:12
Uh, Corey, you had a couple more seconds to think about that. What's it going to be called?
Corey
58:17
Yeah, well, maybe I'll start by saying I, I have the scars from us trying to figure it out with the bank during my time with government when there was the the carbon initiative that the NDP created, that landed in the bank account as like CRA debit or whatever it was like, it just it for the life of us, we could not figure out how to change it. I remember at one point saying, does somebody just need to hop on a plane to Toronto? Do we need to talk to a bunch of banks? But each of the banks got to determine this and the CRA system, there was something with it that, you know, they couldn't differentiate why it was coming from the CRA at that point. It's obviously resolved now because I don't know about you all, but as Albertans, we got our, you
Corey
58:57
you know, climate incentive and it showed up as climate incentive in the bank. I think for the first time, at least for me, in this most recent one here.
Corey
59:06
But assuming that the government of Alberta can figure it out and can get something on it, I actually think that you don't say inflation
Corey
59:14
inflation fighter. You know, it's got to be like that's talking about the feature, not the benefit in some ways. Like it's got to be, you
Corey
59:23
you know, affordability, Alberta affordability or Alberta cares or Alberta cares about you if you get that many characters. I don't know. I mean, that's getting really far into it. But, you know, I think that there's an opportunity to actually talk about what the benefit is and what the policy intent is, instead of just dropping it in in the name of the program.
SPEAKER_00
59:42
Okay, we should do a Twitter poll. Inflation fighter versus Alberta cares about you. Which
SPEAKER_00
59:47
Which one is better?
SPEAKER_00
59:50
I'd like it to be for you with the number four.
SPEAKER_00
59:52
four. Get that on the Twitter. Yeah, with that part. I don't have the password. Probably Zane.
Corey
59:57
Probably Zane. Chester and Zane have the password. Yeah,
Carter
59:59
Yeah, somewhere. where uh
SPEAKER_00
1:00:00
uh lightning round another week we talked about it at the beginning another walking back of comments from premier smith um the question is simple yes no question will she say something this week that she shouldn't have and then come out the next day and walk it back and correct it carter yes no well
Carter
1:00:17
well she shouldn't but she's probably going to and i think that you know the the the framework of yes no has always been something that angered me so i'd prefer to say She shouldn't, but she probably will.
Corey
1:00:33
No, she's not going to. I think that she has enough opportunity to avoid the media over the next bit. And if she's stacking an error upon error, even
Corey
1:00:44
even in this world
Corey
1:00:46
world we live in where she does that all the time, I don't think that's likely.
SPEAKER_00
1:00:49
Second last one. Another yes, no, because I know Carter likes them. And we're going to go municipal. municipal you
SPEAKER_00
1:00:56
may or may not have heard calgary city council has an exciting public hearing um this week about single-use plastics business leaders have already voiced concerns um yes no does council end up going through with it cory
Carter
1:01:18
first of all can i just say that cory hogan actually falling into your little trap of yes no has really upset them one word that's what we're going for what he's doing is
Carter
1:01:28
he's he's taking the cheap way out and the question really should be is this really required given the federal government's implementation uh starting december 30th or 31st of its own single use plastic uh requirements my thinking is that this is just grandstanding by a city council that It doesn't have any real vision. So they will do the grandstanding, but they won't do anything visionary.
Corey
1:01:54
sorry. Mine was actually just the start of my answer because I could only use one letter. But no idea what city council is thinking at any time is my point. I
Carter
1:02:02
I believe the actual better answer is no idea city council is not thinking at any time.
Carter
1:02:07
That's probably actually better.
SPEAKER_00
1:02:10
they're saying it will work in tandem with the federal um the federal rules which uh we'll see what that actually means yeah what that means
SPEAKER_00
1:02:20
you know what that
SPEAKER_00
1:02:23
but well you're smarter
SPEAKER_00
1:02:23
smarter than we are public hearing and find out um last one it's about the outdoors it's a topic that was in the news a lot at the beginning of the week moraine lake um
SPEAKER_00
1:02:36
um the famous famous lake in Banff National Park. Is it overrated or underrated? Does it live up to the hype? Carter, Moraine Lake, overrated, underrated?
Carter
1:02:46
I've always felt that if you could just get to Lake Louise, it's the same as going to Moraine Lake. There are so many better lakes to go to that people don't go to. So just go to Chester Lake or go to any of the other tens of thousands of lakes that we've got in the Rocky Mountains. Stay away from Moraine Lake. Stay away from Lake O'Hara as well. That's just slippery. It's slippery out there at Lake O'Hara. So
SPEAKER_00
1:03:06
So you're You're saying it's underrated and it's on the same caliber as Chester Lake? There's
Carter
1:03:10
There's so many lakes out there is what I'm trying to say, Annalise. Just go
Carter
1:03:12
to the other lakes. Don't go where the people are. I don't like where the people are. Do you like where the people are?
SPEAKER_00
1:03:19
question was overrated or underrated. I think it is overrated. But Chester Lake? Let me
Carter
1:03:24
me ask you the question. Do you like where the people are? Answer the fucking question. No. No.
Corey
1:03:34
my wife took my kids to the lake and took a picture of them there once and it looked pretty nice you know so i assume it's a good lake i don't know who can say it's
Carter
1:03:42
it's a long way to go just to get a picture of your kids at a lake you
Carter
1:03:47
have i didn't have to do it you could have gone to fish creek yeah
SPEAKER_00
1:03:50
yeah same thing maybe fish creek maybe
Corey
1:03:52
maybe i was at fish creek while they were at moraine lake
SPEAKER_00
1:03:54
lake you could have just photoshopped that they probably didn't even leave uh
SPEAKER_00
1:03:58
uh we're We're going to
SPEAKER_00
1:03:59
to leave it there. It's all about the geotagging
SPEAKER_00
1:04:02
That's a wrap on episode 1029 of The Strategist. My name is Annalise Klingbeil. And with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.