Transcript
SPEAKER_00
0:02
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1031. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan. You know, we spent some time
Carter
0:13
time rehearsing that, and you still fucked it up.
SPEAKER_00
0:20
It's okay. We'll clean it up in post. Do you know whose microphone and headphones were working at the beginning of this? Mine. And whose were not? Yours. okay
Carter
0:27
that's an excellent point but my stuff's
Corey
0:28
stuff's not we always clean it
Carter
0:29
it up in post it's yeah i
SPEAKER_00
0:31
i i thought that was like having not listened much carter i thought the tech issues were kind of a shtick but i'm realizing that's just oh no the tech
Carter
0:39
tech issues are real and
Carter
0:40
and it drives cory crazy like cory you
Carter
0:43
you can actually see cory aging when i every time i drop off he gets older his
SPEAKER_00
0:52
decided to happen every time just fix it my
Carter
0:54
my computer does not support extra monitors so when
Carter
0:57
when i'm on this it gets really dicey but now can
SPEAKER_00
1:02
can you get a new computer
Carter
1:02
computer i've taken out all the monitors right so all
Carter
1:06
all i can see you guys on is one monitor it's very upsetting
SPEAKER_00
1:11
why do you need
Carter
1:14
well how am i supposed to
Corey
1:15
to do well he's got his sports bets open on one side and don't
Corey
1:19
pretend like you don't research google
Carter
1:21
searches while zane's asking is in really long questions both of us will be known to be researching and finding oh that's
SPEAKER_00
1:27
that's why you like the long questions the long question
Carter
1:31
question all coming together that's
Carter
1:33
because then honestly we're not listening to him at all when we're doing it so that's what's happening well that's that's 100 yeah
SPEAKER_00
1:39
yeah you're just doing google okay okay i got it google
Corey
1:43
image search heather won't let him turn off safe search but he knows the keywords they get close pretty
SPEAKER_00
1:54
uh that heather um you guys are good it's been a while what's what's new carter have you been doing outdoor sports no
Carter
2:02
no i didn't i had a terrible weekend where i had to do uh like you know around the house stuff and it was very upsetting so we're gonna do outdoor stuff this weekend we're just debating whether or not to go downhill skiing or uh or fat biking and it's supposed supposed to be minus 16 so heather's like on the fence her limit's minus 15 i don't understand it you
SPEAKER_00
2:23
you should go go rip those groomers cory oh hey hey this hey
Corey
2:30
this section is even more riveting than the previous section that's what i think
Corey
2:35
talking about the outdoors it
Corey
2:37
it was a good weekend it was a substantive weekend because i am an adult who does substantive of things that's not our experience with your office took care of business yeah okay
SPEAKER_00
2:48
okay well on that riveting note i think uh i think our two minutes you know what maybe we
Carter
2:54
we shouldn't do kibitz at the front anymore annalise
SPEAKER_00
2:57
out to be even
Carter
2:57
even more boring than zane i
Carter
2:59
did not even think that that was possible speaking
SPEAKER_00
3:02
speaking of zane have you guys got him a present i've had people asking me have
SPEAKER_00
3:07
have you dropped off food or gotten him a present his baby's like how
SPEAKER_00
3:10
how old two weeks old i
Corey
3:13
think it's like in high school or something i don't pay attention and
Carter
3:16
and he needs food heather and laurie uh listened to that episode and apparently they've gotten together and have chosen to do
Carter
3:24
do a uh gift certificate or something i'm not paying attention guys
SPEAKER_00
3:28
guys you're such mean friends what do
Carter
3:30
do you mean he
Carter
3:31
he didn't get me fuck all when i had kids what do you get you cory nothing
Corey
3:36
uh he probably got me something super thoughtful actually i just you know i don't remember because i don't i don't know that's just not our relationship um
Corey
3:45
um he probably got me something and because he worked for me at the time i then probably said that's great zane where are the deliverables that the client wants get back to work yeah
Carter
3:55
sounds like you okay yeah
Carter
3:57
yeah good start you're
SPEAKER_00
3:58
you're killing it today killing
SPEAKER_00
4:00
now the best cleared uh
SPEAKER_00
4:02
uh we we're gonna we're gonna jump in you know we've had uh we were supposed to record on sunday then we were supposed to record on monday and here we are tuesday night uh we're doing this yeah
Corey
4:15
yeah well we had to do a bit of a search through our emails to find the recording link and um we
Corey
4:20
we understand that that basically takes three days yeah and so we we got there uh using our non-partisan spouses but uh it took a bit of time to get there yeah
SPEAKER_00
4:30
for sure two days and uh and we we have the link here we are so uh on that note let's let's jump into it with our first segment our first segment is called is help on the way um on monday alberta's ucp announced more than 3 000 hip and knee surgeries will be contracted out to a private health care facility health minister jason copping stood at a podium sign that said help is on the way and he said this will reduce wait times the The opposition NDP say this will do lasting harm to the health care system, and it's a chaotic rush towards privatization.
SPEAKER_00
5:05
This comes after Doug Ford's government in Ontario announced plans to allow more medical procedures to be done by for-profit health care providers. That's a move that's worth noting Prime Minister Trudeau has called innovative, according to the Toronto Star. So I want to dive into this broader issue of privatizing health care from the strategy perspective. active. Healthcare, it's always such a conundrum for provinces. It's a big beast and it's not normal times, right? We've had almost three years of COVID, crises in hospitals, staff shortages, et cetera, et cetera. So Carter, let's start with you. Is allowing medical procedures to be done by private healthcare providers, is this a good strategy in Canada?
Carter
5:49
Yeah, it's done every day in Canada. If you go to your doctor, you're going to a private medical corporation. If you go and see a surgeon, you're going to see a private medical corporation. There are a few doctors that are on, you
Carter
6:01
you know, alternative compensation platforms. I can't remember the exact three-letter acronym, but there are a few doctors that are on that, but most of them aren't, right? So if you go to any clinic, if you go to your doctor's office, if you, you know, the walk-in clinics, you are going to privatize health care. If you go to a hospital and you are seen by a specialist, you are experiencing private health care. This idea of public versus private delivery, we have in the Canada Health Act, it is determined that we should have public administration. It does not say anywhere in the Canada Health Act that the delivery needs to be by some sort of public entity. And in fact, anywhere you go in the country, you will find private service delivering our public health care system. That is the nature of the game. It is unfortunate that we have not used it to inspire competition, but instead we have used it to reduce competition, which I think is one of the big mistakes. If you really wanted to do privatized health care properly, you would have health care organizations competing with one another, right? So when you go to get your eye surgery, there would be a competition competition because the technology changed and made it so much easier to do eye surgeries, but we kept the prices the same, right? Because we didn't have competition in the system to actually drive down the actual prices. Now, part of that no competition is because the doctor's unions or the doctor's associations, the AMAs of the world, are
Carter
7:32
are working really hard to make sure that we don't have competition from the private doctors. But this is a private world. And I will remind you, and I've reminded people before, when I fell on my mountain bike and separated my shoulder, I went and had to go get a private MRI at a time when the NDP was the government in Alberta, right?
Carter
7:50
right? The NDP took no steps to reduce the amount of privatization in healthcare in Alberta, because it turns out that it's one of the most efficient ways of actually delivering healthcare. Now,
Carter
8:00
Now, it would be more efficient if the government could actually figure out how to get competition. But right now, no government has been able to figure out competition in healthcare, care especially in the united states where they have private health care with very little competition so
SPEAKER_00
8:14
so your your lines of um that
SPEAKER_00
8:17
that the private already exists and we see it in in clinics and such sound we hear that from the ucp we hear that again and again
SPEAKER_00
8:26
the ndp is coming up strong and hot with this you know we're going to push back against gains privatization.
SPEAKER_00
8:33
This is a chaotic rush, etc. We've got an election in a couple months here in Alberta. Do you think, from a strategy perspective, what do you think of the NDP's framing of this issue?
Carter
8:46
Listen, the NDP have done nothing to address privatization in healthcare in Alberta. They've done nothing. When Sarah Hoffman was the Minister of Health, she didn't reduce the number of private clinics. The private clinics went out of business because they went bankrupt. corrupt. I would imagine that we'll probably wind up bailing out more private operators as we move through this. But there was no reduction in the amount of private care. All it is is a difference in how much private rhetoric there is. And rhetoric doesn't make our healthcare system better. If you want our system to be better, I'm fine. If you want to actually remove private care, then you're going to have a battle with the doctors like we've never ever seen. Because the doctors want to be private enterprises. I would argue that we shouldn't have private care in public in the especially in the delivery of primary health care. But the
Carter
9:38
the way we're set up, almost all of it's going to be delivered by private care.
Corey
9:44
mean, Carter, as usual, is wrong on the facts. I'm not wrong on
Carter
9:48
on the facts. I'm kind of wrong
Corey
9:49
wrong on the theory. Oh, my God.
Corey
9:51
Here, you know, and the funny thing is, I don't even know that we're We're going to ultimately disagree a ton, but let's just have – if you want to have an honest conversation about health, let's have an honest conversation about health. First, it's not like the NDP did nothing to make it more public. There was the creation of Alberta Public Labs, the idea being that you would have this big public provider of all lab services, became Alberta Precision Labs under the UCP. Did it actually happen?
Corey
10:15
Yes, and then it became Alberta Precision Labs under the UCP, and now we've got more private activity that's going in there. They put more doctors under contract, which you yourself was just talking about instead of fee-for-service. A
Carter
10:26
A small percentage. There were steps. A small percentage. Okay.
Corey
10:29
Tiny. Look at those goalposts move right in front of our eyes. No. Nothing done to not very much done.
Corey
10:38
you know, I think ultimately my problem with the UCP answers, the NDP response, even your random ramblings that we've just been subjected to here. And
Corey
10:48
And frankly, Canadians as a whole, the way we talk about healthcare is that we talk about it in like the
Corey
10:55
the laziest, most superficial way humanly possible. Healthcare is over 12% of the GDP of this country. More than $1 in $10 of the GDP is related to healthcare. And we just say healthcare, right? We talk about healthcare, the Department of Healthcare. That includes so many things procured in a baffling number of ways. And you're right. Right. There's a lot of private interest in health care. When we go out and we buy bandages, we put them out to RFP, and if the price of bandages has gone down, we pay less. When we talk about custodial services, we've seen all sorts of C-sign back and forth between what is done with public employees versus what is done with private sector. And when we talk about doctors, maybe not physicians directly, but there's reverse auctions for lots of things here. What I think really frustrates me is that people
Corey
11:45
people have this knee-jerk reaction to privatization. And Carter, you're right about one thing. There's a lot of private healthcare delivery in this country, right?
Corey
11:55
it's not like – there are situations in healthcare where private delivery makes sense and there are situations in public healthcare where private delivery should make us all very nervous. I'll just throw out a couple of examples here. If there is an activity that I would call defined action, defined outcome, that's
Corey
12:12
that's actually pretty good for private health care, right? You find those efficiencies of scales. You get business people thinking about how they're going to deliver it. You reverse auction those services. You get it as cheap as possible. MRIs, x-rays, those come to mind pretty immediately. There was a time when it required a lot of expertise and a lot of time, and so you were stuck paying big bills.
Corey
12:33
The price has not gone down as the costs have scaled down,
Corey
12:36
right? Right. So that's the one people point to a lot. That's pretty evident. But there are situations where I'm not really convinced that I want a private interest sitting there thinking, OK, I'd like to get them out of the office so I can get on to the next patient now. Diagnostic medicine. What's wrong with you? Well, I can make a diagnosis in five minutes and make X dollars or I can make a diagnosis in 20 minutes and I'm only going to make a third of that. Don't love that. Don't love that at all.
Corey
13:00
And there's many things in between. There's chronic care. There's all sorts of things we can support. And frankly, this is my point, we've got to have a more honest conversation about healthcare, but that begins by saying healthcare is not just healthcare, healthcare is a million things. And some of them we need to treat differently than other parts of it to keep the system intact, but also to keep the system sustainable. Corey,
SPEAKER_00
13:21
Corey, how do you have that? Like, how do you have that in talking points?
SPEAKER_00
13:29
You're the comms guy. How do you go about like more of a fulsome conversation when we know the political environment that we're in both provincially as well as nationally?
Corey
13:41
Well, you don't have it before an election. And so what makes sense about what the NDP is doing is they're latching on to something very real in the Canadian psyche, which is an anxiety about creeping privatization of health care. And we have this like crazy negative example just south of us. I mean, what's so funny about this continent is we have in Canada like an insanely extreme example of public delivery. Like we lock you out of the system if you're not fully in on public. And in the United States, we have this insane example of private where if you don't have the money, you're going to die, right? Like we just – we will not pick you up no matter what happens. But most of the world doesn't act like either of our systems, right? You've got French model. You've got the UK model. You've got the German model, just to name a couple of countries that could be considered peers, that can allow for more interplay here. But because we share a continent with this insane country, any privatization is seen as very scary. So the NDP knows that, and the NDP has latched on to that. And the NDP has decided to take the position that they're going to use the specter of private health care. And I don't blame them. I think it's pretty smart politics because the conversation I talked about, even if it's what I thought the conversation was that the UCP wanted to have, And I don't actually believe that's what they're driving towards here. That takes years or decades even. Like, that's a long lead conversation. And that requires a certain amount of public education and an investment in it. And also putting aside the political cheap points for a couple of years, maybe right after being elected, now is not the time for that conversation.
Carter
15:08
I just wish that we could stop talking. I mean, the real big issues in Canadian health care aren't about private delivery versus public delivery. Private is – private one. One, private's all the way through it. What we should be talking about is how we're going to increase access and how do we ensure that we've got the comprehensive system that we want. We talk about a fully comprehensive system, but we stop at the teeth, right? We won't help with food, but we'll get you a new hip, which costs 100 grand or whatever, but we won't give you food. There's a lot of holes in the system that are kind of giant
Carter
15:40
giant places. We've been talking about pharmacare for the last number of years. if privatization of certain services in health care under
Carter
15:49
under a public administration enables us to be more efficient to do more with the system i'm for it but cory talked about diagnosis diagnostics one of the great areas where we are really stuck in a private health care model is in primary care it is a fee for service model where the more people you pump you get the same fee regardless of the diagnostic challenges so when you go in you'll now see primary care physicians saying one ailment at a time. The problem with one ailment at a time is that they all might be connected. And all of those ailments that you might have actually might be something that is complicated and difficult. And complicated and difficult is not rewarded in today's system. And that's one of the big... Want to know why we've got an opioids crisis? Want to know why we've got mental health crisis? Because those things aren't compensated for properly within in our primary care system so
Carter
16:37
so we've got this part of
Corey
16:38
of the reason i'm
Carter
16:41
i'm going to do the whole thing i'm going to bring i'm going to bring out prescription for healthier and go through everything page by page it's a podcast we simplify all
Corey
16:48
all 12 of the gdc yeah let's go i'm
Carter
16:51
i'm talking about primary care i've already simplified i mean we've got we've got intensive care for palliative care we've got in palliative care intensive care beds in alberta that is literally an oxymoron you can't have intensive care palliative care but we have it here in alberta because we haven't designed the system we haven't talked about what we want in the system because every time we start talking about what we want in the system we get dragged off into this discussion of public versus private which doesn't help one single patient get better care if
Carter
17:23
if we want to have a conversation about care we need to push away this public administration thing it's all going to be publicly administered ministered who delivers it i don't care the fact is what i want is better care for canadians better care for canadians should be what people are talking about so
Carter
17:39
do you mean yeah
Corey
17:39
you know here's the thing that i do worry about where profit motives might be in the health care system i just don't like there at least you you put me in charge of the world i'm going to make some things in the health care system much more public and i'm going to make many things much more private and and to my point is it's not a one-size-fits-all solution here and we've got got to get past the idea it is because otherwise we're just going to be shouting past each other you're going to have people on the right saying look at mris you're going to have people on the left saying look at what happens how they churn you through primary care but both can be true you can have both conversations at the same time and we're not as a country and that's a very dangerous place so we're
SPEAKER_00
18:14
we're angrily making the same point yeah
SPEAKER_00
18:18
better care for canadians um is is the timing though i just want to dive into the timing a little bit because healthcare and youtube two both know this history much more than i do like it's it's long been an issue and we now have a time where the spotlight has been on it for several years um people are perhaps talking about doing things differently like where does the timing fit into this well
Carter
18:42
know we used to call i mean back in 2000 when i was working with joe clark we called healthcare the third rail of canadian politics and it remains the third rail you touch it and you die um you know the the only only reason that the UCP is touching it now is that they believe the majority of Albertans are on their side, right? They believe in privatization. They think that most Albertans believe in private health care, or in certain elements, at least being delivered privately, to Corey's point.
Carter
19:09
But really, any substantive change to health care is going to be extremely difficult to do. I used to be the board chair of a hospice here in Calgary. And people are so unaware of what happens within the system. They're so unaware of our bodies and how we actually die and what the processes are that it doesn't really matter how good you think you're doing. You're going to wind up with unbelievably complex problems because in healthcare, people die, people get sick, people don't make it. And anytime that your auntie passes, you're going to be pretty cranky at the system because we have this mindset today that everybody lives forever. And because everybody lives forever that the death shouldn't happen and then they you know when skin gets bruised when people are dying they don't understand that the skin is an organ and the organs are shutting down and people don't drink water when they're dying so they look you know they think that they're getting you
Carter
20:02
you know killed by lack of hydration people
Carter
20:08
and we don't have a we don't have a mature conversation about health care we can't have a mature conversation about health care because we're stuck on these base principles that are meaningless to the overall discussion of healthcare.
SPEAKER_00
20:22
So how do we move past that?
Carter
20:25
We had a plan in 2011, and the plan was to do the family care clinic. And the family care clinic model was going to be designed to give people confidence again, confidence within the system. Because I think that the greatest problem that people have is that they, if you ask ask anybody, how was your experience within the healthcare system? They will tell you it was great because most of the time they have a great, a great interaction with the healthcare system, especially if you're very sick. If you're very sick in Canada, we will take unbelievably good care of you.
Carter
20:56
But if you're not very sick, if you are barely sick, you, you're not going to have a very good experience within the system. And that undermines people's confidence in their entire higher system because most people don't get very sick most people barely get sick and they have bad experiences that
Carter
21:14
that that we have to find a way not necessarily reversing that because i don't want people who get sick to have bad experiences but i want us to put more emphasis on the barely sick so that they feel like the system supports them too and that they will then have more confidence within the system so
Corey
21:30
so the problem with that though the problem with that especially in in our system I mean, let's just call it like it is here, is in
Corey
21:37
in our system, because we don't charge you for it, in order to make sure that there's not, like, an incredible demand on everything, we don't charge you money. We charge you time. We ration you through time. You think that you need this hip replacement. Nobody else agrees with you. Well, you're going to be on a list for 12 months, right? You think that you need to go to the emergency room. Triage has decided you're actually fine. You're going to be in the waiting room for 14 hours. And, yeah, should it be 14 hours? No. Right. But but we we intentionally and through design use time to reduce demand on the system because the alternative is there's just far too much demand and far more than is warranted by sort of the medical underpinnings of it all. So it's complicated, right? Like all systems have to deal with scarcity. And the way we deal with scarcity in the Canadian system is if, to Carter's point, if you really need it, hey, guess what? You're at the front of the line. You're there. We're going to take care of you. If we don't think you necessarily really need it, we're going to make you wait a bit. challenge being doctors
Corey
22:34
doctors are fallible sometimes they're wrong sometimes you really needed it and sometimes you were on a waiting list for six months well
SPEAKER_00
22:41
well cory as you said it's complicated but then you're we're also throwing politics into the mix and we're throwing you know a new uh an election every four years or whatever so you you mentioned kind of this knee-jerk reaction to
SPEAKER_00
22:55
to privatization let's talk about alberta specifically and with the election coming up
SPEAKER_00
23:00
where where do you think kind of what the UCP is doing right now and how the NDP is NDP is reacting where is that sitting with voters so
Corey
23:09
so the UCP has talked about we have to see more about their plans but there is this idea of help is on the way and we're going to give support for health care and we're going to fund these things some
Corey
23:19
some of that will be very popular the funding of additional you know you could imagine for example there is more primary care in your neighborhood Or maybe even they'll go as far as like, hey, parking at AHS sites is free or going down or whatever they come up with. They'll put some popular things in the bundle. But what they appear to be doing is bundling it with some things that Canadians will have like a visceral knee-jerk reaction to, Albertans particularly here. And
Corey
23:44
And let's just get some ground facts out here. Albertans are not nuts about private health care, right?
Corey
23:48
right? We're not different from the rest. If you're listening from somewhere else in this country, you might think like, well, Albertans probably want private health care. We don't. We don't. And the polling shows that. And in fact, if you ask Albertans who you trust to run the health care system, they're going to tell you the NDP. And in part, that's because of the NDP's strong opposition to private health care. So what I think is interesting about the UCP's approach here and
Corey
24:11
and probably fundamentally dangerous is we often have talked about the risk of the NDP running into the UCP's message box, talking about oil and gas too much.
Corey
24:21
It's like the example here. Like it's the one that overwhelms all the other ones I think about here. The
Corey
24:26
The UCP can make the same mistake, and they appear to be making the same mistake. Elevating the importance of health care and elevating a conversation about health care based on everything we know about public opinion does, to me, seem to play into the NDP. Like, if you make the ballot question about health care, they're not going to say, good job, Danielle. They're going to say, well, we better put Rachel Notley in charge.
SPEAKER_00
24:49
Carter, you're nodding. You agree with Corey there?
Carter
24:52
Yeah, I do. I mean, I think that, you know, in terms of messaging opportunities, the NDP has a much stronger position. I do think that the NDP's rather simplistic say no to privatized health care is the right position to be taking. Corey's not wrong in that. I mean, first of all, it's a much simpler message. I just think they have no leg to stand on because they haven't really, you know, taken care of the lack of, you know, the privatization that existed in the market before. but i think that you know the ucp the the primary problem with the ucp and danielle smith is that danielle smith thinks that people think like her and the ucp think that people think like her and that means that they think in their circles private health care is great private health care will help deliver will solve all the world's problems and so they they they jump in thinking well albertans agree with us and to cory's point they don't albertans are actually pretty reluctant to just, you know, rubber stamp privatized care. In fact, one of the only really great protests we've ever had in in Alberta history, in my recollection, and others may remember differently, was the Bill 13 protests when Ralph Klein was bringing in the opportunity for more privatization in health care. So I think, I
Carter
26:12
I think that Danielle has to be very careful what what she's pushing, what she's pushing for, because she could find herself, to Corey's point, really on the wrong side of a significant issue that people vote on. People do vote on health care. We've seen it a number of times. In fact, it was one of the reasons I think that we beat Gary Maher. Gary Maher was far more for private health care in 2011. We beat the shit out of him. And ultimately, Alison Redford became the premier.
Corey
26:40
Yeah, you know, it's so funny. It's one of those issues that I think the political class often has to almost make themselves interested or excited about
Corey
26:50
right? Because they care about things that nobody else cares about, like electoral reform and democratic renewal and all of this shit. But health care touches our lives. We all get sick. We all lose loved ones. We're all going to die ourselves to Stephen's very dark earlier point. Hey, happy Tuesday, everybody. Fucking cheerful strategist today. You're
Corey
27:14
You're going to die. Sooner
Carter
27:15
Sooner than later. You're welcome.
Corey
27:17
Well, but so we touch the health care system and it affects us in a way. It makes us anxious. We don't want to mess with it. And I think
Corey
27:26
think that politicians forget that. And the UCP often forgets that people care about this and it shouldn't be messed with or it's messed with with peril to Stevens like third rail point. And the NDP sometimes forgets and starts talking about other issues that have much less resonance with the general public. But these are the things, you know, the famous line in 92 in the election with Clinton was, it's the economy, stupid.
Corey
27:51
That's a very American answer to that. But I would argue that in the past 30 years in Canada, it's health care, stupid, has probably been as resonant in elections, at least on the provincial level.
SPEAKER_00
28:02
Carter, just briefly, and then I want to move on to our next segment. Can you just expand a little bit more on Bill 13 and Klein and those protests for those who it was before our time, especially given that in Alberta, we're not a protest environment. Like, it's hard to think of times where a lot of people have come out to protest. Remember
Carter
28:21
Remember that had been 2003, 2004, Corey, when... 2000.
Carter
28:27
Yeah. So Ralph Klein, this is the heyday of Ralph Klein. So Ralph Klein, you know, as people may not remember, but he barely won his election in 1993. In 1997, he was in his heyday. He'd done all the things that he promised to do. And he had a boom and he started to spend money. But he also wanted to curtail health care spending because at that time, I'm not sure where health care, it was Bill 11, actually, not Bill 13. I just always assumed it was an unlucky number. uh i'm remembering now that bill 11 is cory's uh unlucky number um but what happened was they were bringing in i don't remember the specifics of the bill in terms of what it would privatize but it basically opened the door it wasn't a specific this is what we're going to privatize it was an opening of the door to more privatization and the public serve the public service coupled with um concerned
Carter
29:20
concerned albertans like this wasn't just a huge union movement i think the union the unions would want to
Carter
29:28
to claim, obviously, some responsibility for it. But it was much bigger than just a unionized protest. And it generated significant pushback to Klein so much that he actually backed away from it, which was one of Klein's superpowers, the ability to say he made a mistake and back away from things. And I
Carter
29:50
I mean, I think that that's the risk that Danielle runs runs, if she goes too far, I'm not sure that this particular bill would be going too far, but or
Carter
29:58
or these these changes would be going too far, the copying is announced, but still, you have to be careful.
Corey
30:06
Yeah, you know, it's so funny, that was a bill that was kind of a
Corey
30:09
maybe early is the wrong word. But we think about all the time, these Orwellian bill titles now, but that was called the Healthcare Protection Act, which was part of I think, you know, you got all of these colleges up in arms about it, really was very interesting to see.
Corey
30:23
The only protest I have seen that was comparable or maybe even larger in
Corey
30:28
in my time was the climate protest in Edmonton. So I kind of also feel, by the way, watch this space, because especially with younger generations, climate and the climate crisis is as big or bigger of an issue than health care. And, you know, maybe it's not changing elections now, but it's the only other thing I've seen galvanize people to that degree.
Carter
30:47
I agree with that. okay
SPEAKER_00
30:49
uh let's leave it there and we'll move on to our next segment which is called no one got cartered yet um this segment title is a reference to our last episode which was a patreon exclusive i
SPEAKER_00
31:02
i thought you were gonna say this is brought
Carter
31:04
brought to you by flare airlines nobody moves
SPEAKER_00
31:07
no you you can say that i was gonna give a plug for our patreon uh there card yeah i yeah Yeah. Well, do you want to do the Flare ad first?
Corey
31:17
No, I just did the Flare ad. It's over now. No,
Corey
31:19
No, but they're not our sponsor.
SPEAKER_00
31:23
you should get on Patreon. Listen to our last episode. I wasn't on it. Corey got me on it. It's good. You get perks. You get like this Discord group. Discord's not just for gamers. You can chat with political nerds. Loads of perks. Get on Patreon. So no one got Cartered yet. We're going to talk about the Premier Smith's office Crown Prosecutor interference story. It's not going away. So a tiny bit of background and then we'll jump into it.
SPEAKER_00
31:52
On Thursday, CBC comes out with a story. The headline says Alberta Premier's office contacted Crown Prosecution about Coote's case's sources. Again, we really dived into that on our Thursday episode. Go get it. Friday, surprise. surprise, no one got fired from Smith's office. Then it's Saturday, Smith does her chorus radio show. And she announces on the radio show that the government's IT department will do its own investigation. They'll probe staff emails. She says there's 34 staff members in her office, 400 crown prosecutors. So this will take a few days. Also on Saturday, there's an emergency caucus meeting and surprise, there's no leaks out of it. Then
SPEAKER_00
32:35
Then it's Sunday, some MLAs are in Calgary for Lunar New Year celebrations, including Brian Jean, who tells Global Premier Smith has the support of caucus. Then it's Monday, yesterday, the results of the investigation are already ready. Surprise! Almost 1 million incoming, outgoing, and deleted emails were reviewed, and the province says there's no evidence of emails between Crown prosecutors and the Premier's office. So that's my quick recap. Lots going on here. Where do we start? You guys aren't pundits, you're strategists. So let's dive into the announcement on Saturday that there would be this investigation. I know some people looked at it as this is Smith buying time. She's trying to buy herself a few more days to figure out what to do here because she doesn't want to get rid of a a senior staff member. Corey, let's start with you.
SPEAKER_00
33:30
What did you see as the strategy here with the investigation? And I guess, do you think it was a good move?
Corey
33:38
Well, there's a lot to unpack. Some of it she did well, like just from a strategy point of view, and some of it I worry for her that she just kicked the can down the road and it's going to come back and haunt her, right? Let's Let's just start with some of the basic messaging around it here, which I can kind of sort of immediately discount is probably not super durable. The idea that you searched a million emails in two days, here's the thing. This is such a funny one because in a way that investigation should take five minutes, right? You just do a simple log query, has this person emailed that person, right? Like any competent IT professional could do that.
Corey
34:16
So in some ways, like two days is way more time than you need. But if you're going to get like deep and forensic and start looking at all of the angles, then you're going to need way more than two days, right? You talk about a million emails. If you did one email a second, that would be 11 and a half days of emails. So that's not exactly a deep, thorough investigation. They're clearly like talking about searches at scale and really padding their number there. And I just don't think it's a very durable number for those reasons. Like, you know, all you need is another shoe to drop, an email coming from somewhere else. And all of a sudden, you're not just back where you were. It's worse because it starts to look like a cover-up. But things that I think she actually did pretty well on here, first of all, engaging her caucus in this matter. The fact that there were no leaks is one thing, but the fact that she actually got them all together and said this is what's going on,
Corey
35:04
some suspicion just based on the time and all of that, that she must have managed to at least convince them in some way, shape, or form that there was not too much to it. I think that that's good. like the instinct to bring the people in and not hide from them but say okay well let's have it out let's have this conversation let's not let rumor win the day very smart very smart internal management maybe it was necessary maybe she didn't have a choice maybe there were calls for it but that's the kind of thing you would want to see a leader doing with their caucus there and um and then in terms of like where are we right now i don't know i mean like the cbc kind of putting the proviso of oh but we haven't seen the email i
Corey
35:40
i don't think we assumed they'd seen the email i I think, in fact, in the Patreon, we were like, well, it doesn't sound like it. It sounds like they talked to multiple people with firsthand knowledge.
Corey
35:49
But that's starting to get a little bit awkward for CBC, and it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. Because they don't even need to be wrong, right? But now there's sort of a message track that you're going to start seeing conservatives follow about, like, you can't trust CBC. They did this reporting inappropriately. Your mileage will vary on whether that argument works for you. But you now have like a whole other front and one where you're on the offensive in part because CBC acted with integrity and then said, you know, just for clarity, this is the state of the play here. But let me tell you, it's
Corey
36:20
it's hard to assess the strategy of this without knowing what happened.
Corey
36:25
If we are in a situation where this did happen in some way, shape or form through private emails, you know, somebody else sent it. It was a phone call, not an email. And there was just some sort of miscommunication on that.
Corey
36:36
This is a bad strategy. Because you are ultimately increasing your pain.
Corey
36:41
If it didn't happen, this
Corey
36:43
this is actually a pretty good strategy because you're at least hedging and you're checking, like, the probabilities. And, like I said, you've brought your team on board. And maybe you even made a common villain of the media. Damn the media, right?
Corey
36:55
I have personally sort of come to the conclusion, and it's just a guess. Like, it's not even speculation. It's a guess.
Corey
37:05
like maybe it's been right in front of us this entire time daniel smith we talked about
Corey
37:11
going on these shows and saying oh yeah i called the crown prosecutors yeah right and then walking that back significantly almost this bluster like yeah i gave him what's for talking we talked about like it's like a teenager making a statement that they can't actually potentially back up with a friend if
Corey
37:26
if that's true why do we think rob anderson or anybody else on that senior staff would have have acted any differently right they probably would have engaged in the same bullshit games i can easily see a senior staff person for danielle smith walking into a room and saying oh these prosecutors are lying but you know what tell you what i wrote him an email gave him what's for you know like basically i got to second base with a lady you
Carter
37:47
know the teenager thing
Corey
37:49
thing where he's like okay it's bullshit right it
Corey
37:52
it might just be all bravado it might very well be the case that it was announced in a room and there's firsthand knowledge and it might be that it's bullshit it because bullshit seems to be the name of the game when we're talking about this particular father what's
SPEAKER_00
38:03
what's your your take on the strategy and i guess it's worth noting like we're still talking about this this is the third episode um that i've been with you guys and i believe we talked about it on the first one we definitely talked about it last time like it's yeah and
Corey
38:16
and we've done like four other episodes with zane and we've we've been talking about it
SPEAKER_00
38:19
it yeah it's not we're
SPEAKER_00
38:20
we're still talking about it oh those yeah because the baby's crying throughout them right right yeah wait yeah zane
Carter
38:28
zane is all the time yeah because we're picking on him um
Carter
38:31
um listen uh cory's not wrong this is a great strategy if it didn't happen um and it's actually a pretty good strategy with her with her base uh keeping in mind that a large chunk of her base thinks that the cbc is justin trudeau's lying mouthpiece i can tell you that i've certainly seen a my fair share i i put up a tweet today that's apparently been seen by 96 000 people um elon i think your counter's broken um but nonetheless you know how
Carter
38:59
how a large number of those people uh agree that you
Carter
39:04
you know daniel smith is is being framed by a mouthpiece of justin trudeau's right anything that comes from the cbc is wrong cbc are just liars now the rest of us in the real world um look at the cbc and look at the jump the hoops that they have to jump through in order to publish a story like that with anonymous sources, because it is a different level of, you know, confirmation that's required when you're going to keep the name of a source quiet,
Carter
39:32
know, I think that this is still a true story. I think that this isn't the bravado stuff that Corey's talking about. And I think that because of that, Danielle Smith may have opened herself up to a world of hurt as she moves through um as
Carter
39:48
as she moves through this i think that she's going to find that this didn't doesn't play well uh outside of her own base um probably in a week or two so i i'm less bullish on her strategy maybe than cory is um but she's she's getting through it except that she just her continued ability to take a three-day story and turn it into 12 days
Carter
40:14
it's chef's kiss beautiful beautiful work it
Corey
40:17
is incredible the way she manages to bounce these things forward um but i will say sometimes
Corey
40:23
sometimes when you're dealing with internal enemies nothing helps more than external enemies so we know if we know nothing else we know that there were people in daniel smith's orbit who
Corey
40:33
who were leaking things to the media yeah
Corey
40:36
a i think that's going to to make people close ranks and say how dare they but b all of a sudden now uh you can point to the media and say shame on them tut tut now we have an external enemy and now we're all sort of united again there and that's interesting well and you guys like i don't think we can discount what's happening internally and the dynamics that it might be you can see that even with rick
Carter
40:56
rick mckiver rick mckiver coming forward and saying that everything's going well within the caucus as um that had me almost fall over i could not believe it yeah
Corey
41:05
yeah blink twice rick blink
SPEAKER_00
41:08
i want to talk you guys have both um you've both you've both mentioned it and i think it's a key piece of this is the um the fact that it was cbc who broke this story um and i want to dive into that a bit more because it comes at a time when and i guess i'm speaking with my former post media reporter had on here, where media continues to be cut and cut and cut. We saw today, J Source reported PostMedia is cutting 11% of its editorial staff. This comes after it was announced last week, 12 Alberta weekly papers would go online. The big old Herald building that at one time had 800 staff members, it's been sold to U-Haul after 10 years on the market. There's a tweet I saw this evening about the PostMedia layoffs today from a reporter who said, They actually don't even know who's been cut yet. They're going to find that out tomorrow. And I think that's like a key piece of this year is that I think some are framing this as CBC versus Smith. Do you guys think the strategy would have been different on Smith's behalf if it was, say, Western Standard that broke this story or if it was, you know, a Rick Bell that broke this story? How does the fact that it was CBC play into the strategy? Carter, do you want to take first up?
Carter
42:25
Well, I think that, you know, so let's, I mean, we have to look at the whole media environment. When Corey and I used to work at H&K, we talked an awful lot about the media environment. You know, we used to talk about how 25, you know, less than 25% share wound up with your show being canceled, right? That was Star Trek.
Corey
42:43
Yeah, Star Trek 1969 was canceled. Nobody watched it. Only 22% of the market watched it. I saw that
Carter
42:50
the new Night Court got a 1% share and is being hailed as a success. smashing massive hit um
Carter
42:56
um so the the whole media landscape has changed whether it's entertainment or news or otherwise and the the the problem is that the only people who are going to be able to break news are going to be the uh you know the cbc um right now the citizen journalist whether it's the western standard or the breakdown or whatever the heck you know these other things are the sprawl. They're just not able to put the resources in. And they're also not able to take the liability risk.
SPEAKER_00
43:29
Yeah, I was gonna say that the lawyer piece is huge here, right? You
Carter
43:33
You know, I mean, I've pitched stuff to to some of the smaller media and the smaller media just look at me and say, I can't there's no way I can run this story. Because if this is if this turns turns out to be even off by a little bit the entire the the media is lost right and uh so that leaves you know an open field for the rebels and if you know and and their false reporting um and leaves you know puts real reportering and real issues uh in a really difficult spot and and it's
Carter
44:05
it's always going to be the cbc from now on right it's always going to be the cbc there aren't you know the post reporters that used to be at city hall the post reporters that used to be at at the ledge you know there were multiple reporters at the ledge there were multiple reporters at city hall and now it's kind of like one on a half day you know covering the the actual you
Carter
44:26
you know stuff that's happening well the stuff that happening isn't often news the news is the stuff that you can't see that's happening beneath the surface and i just think you
Carter
44:36
you know we are a real bad spot for news reporting yeah
Corey
44:41
yeah you know it's so true the the herald building for anybody in calgary it's a very big building uh for those outside of calgary it's on the side of a major road everybody's seen it everybody knows it over
Corey
44:52
over the decades you could see it go from that's the herald building to oh herald and a bunch of other stuff is in there too right like all of a sudden there's other logos and and then uh you know i was last in there in march of 2020 just before Or the pandemic really kind of hit in a big way. I was there for an editorial board. You have to walk upstairs to get to the editorial board. And my God, it was like being in like a zombie movie set. Nobody was there. And you just walk by cavernous, empty spaces until you get to the editorial board room. And then there's like apparently the only eight people who still work at the Calgary Herald or who you're talking to. And when I think about even in, you know, I'm
Corey
45:30
I'm in my 40s. But I can think about 20 years ago being in that building. and it was buzzing there's people everywhere you know there's just massive teams of people and i remember at the time people talking about like the big change being moving to these digital prints and like or digital production presses and and maybe outsourcing it and but like it went from like that whole area was full of presses to not very much of that space was taken up by them i remember that was the big thing and just to see this decline has been fascinating but to carter's point it's
Corey
46:01
it's concerning because it's not like something else has come in that can fill the spot because you know companies rise companies fall but there's this kind of i think very chaotic naive sense that will be saved by citizen journalism but big media outlets are good they have their place because they do have the the ability to say you know what we're going to stand up we're going to do this anyways think about the pentagon papers in the 70s do you think think that like an independent blogger could have gone up against the pentagon and said we're going to publish these anyways fuck no you know they would have been tied up in court it would have been over before it began you need the new york times of the world you need the washington post you need the calgary heralds because these are the people who can stand up and put the resources in and speak truth to power it's not just about finding the story it's standing by the story and it's saying i will not be bullied and it's a lot easier to be bullied when you're that citizen citizen journalist. And it's a lot easier to be spun around when you're that citizen journalist. Is there a place for them?
Corey
47:00
Absolutely. Can we get by entirely on citizen journalism?
Corey
47:04
Absolutely not. So do
SPEAKER_00
47:05
do you guys think Smith is using this to her advantage, like with this story specifically, the way the media market is in Calgary right now, Carter? You
Carter
47:15
You have to broaden it. It's not just Smith using it to her advantage, right? Obviously, i don't think she's doing a particularly good job of turning it to her advantage she's only been able to turn it to her advantage with her prime or core supporters who are already anti-cbc but if you look at what's happening behind the scenes now um you know with within governments we we don't see what we need to see um instead we are we're fixated on small stories or you know uh people will find small things and make it into a story that really isn't a story. And that becomes, you
Carter
47:54
you know, and I think that, you know, guys like Charles Rusnell always kind of are
Carter
47:58
are kind of the people I point to for this. He will be distracted by some small little thing and miss a completely important
Carter
48:04
important major issue because he's track tracking down this tiny little piece of a story. And because
Carter
48:12
because there's only a few investigative journalists, journalists um you miss out on on the bigger broader picture of what actually is going on in government uh you
Carter
48:24
you know and we can now see governments whether it's the city of calgary the government
Carter
48:29
government of alberta the government of canada that are just simply controlling the media by
Carter
48:35
releasing things out of order getting you know spinning when we saw just the spin just the other day about the the just transition where three of our top journalists at the post were spun on the numbers and they didn't actually report the story properly because they reported the spin not the truth and that to me like that happens all the time now and government can do it opposition can do it um campaigns can do it you know it's relatively easy to spin something into to truth that isn't that isn't true at all yeah
Corey
49:09
yeah you know it at the government of alberta ran communications for the government um at cpe it's called communications and public engagement i oversaw a team of 324 people whose job it is to tell the government's story and that's not the only communicators in government there were also the political communicators uh that worked in the premier's office and when you think about the resources that they have that they can marshal to any individual story and you put that up against one reporter who's got to file three things before the end of the day well
Corey
49:41
well they don't stand a fucking chance right and i think that's a real tragedy and it's a real problem and it's something that there's got to be a corrective some way along the way or else you know we're in a lot of trouble because you can talk about things like transparency and openness and government i'll tell you something there
Corey
49:58
there used used to be times we would put things on the government portal in terms of like severances that are paid you know the compensation the number of people on the sunshine list and
Corey
50:06
and in you know in my early years there we'd be like waiting for the reporter to come in and say okay like this just dropped within a few hours we're going to get a phone call about it we're going to have to have answers we're going to have to have key messages fast
Corey
50:18
fast forward four years we
Corey
50:20
we dropped those things no reporter called there
Corey
50:23
there were no questions nobody has the time to be digging through that open data You've got a situation now where people are just buried and they have no ability to put kind of that analytical processing on top of it to say, is there a story here or not? And tragically, too many very talented journalists are becoming almost stenographers for government flags who go out there with all of the resources in the world to tell exactly the story that they want to tell. And many great journalists stand up against it and try to get the other side. But boy, those scales are getting more unbalanced by the
Carter
50:54
the day. And the person who spin, like, again, the spin, right? It's not just the spin of the story. It's the spin to the story. This is important. You know, I'm picking up the phone, I'm calling someone, this is an important story, you got to cover this story. You know, that in and of itself is shifting the way that we look at the government, right? It's actually, I mean, if Danielle Smith was more skilled, she could use something like this to cover off all kinds of other activities. She doesn't have that experience right now. She's not skilled enough. And I think that we can see that in different levels of government where they're using one thing to detract or distract from other issues.
Corey
51:36
You know, your question, though, was fundamentally one of strategy. And as we're prone to do, we ignored it entirely and just lamented the death of the media. But in terms of Smith using this strategy because it's CBC versus another strategy because it's various outlets, I think absolutely. I mean CBC is a four-letter word. It's three letters that are a four-letter word in huge swaths of Alberta. You can just say CBC and there's this presumption that they've done wrong to many people. And I don't agree with Stephen that this has only hit the right-wing base. I think CBC's integrity benefits us as a society but hurts them as – unlike these one-off basis because any footnote is seen as weakness or an admission that maybe it's not the total story. And so when you have all the bravado in the world coming from the premier's office and they've gotten increasingly sure-footed as
Corey
52:24
as they've gone through the last couple of days, maybe
Corey
52:27
maybe there's nothing to find. Maybe they're just convinced nothing will be found as time goes on, right? Right. But you put that against CBC saying, well, yeah, I mean, we talked to a bunch of sources with firsthand knowledge, but we didn't see it ourselves. And the government is going, oh, there you go. See, look at the damn CBC again. And I think there's a lot of people who are looking at it and saying, well, they didn't see the emails. OK, maybe they don't exist. And so the strategy that she's playing, I think, A, works in general because of the integrity that CBC is taking to this. And I'm partial. I like the CBC. I do commentary for the CBC and stuff like that. And but I think that it's doubly effective because it's the CBC and not post media or the Western Standard.
SPEAKER_00
53:06
Well, yeah. And I think we're seeing it boiled down already to CBC versus Smith and kind of people choosing sides, including people who I've
SPEAKER_00
53:16
I've seen tweets from people who, you know, have have been on media, know how this
SPEAKER_00
53:22
this sort of stuff works. And they're saying, well, hey, CBC, reveal your sources, show where this is from. like that's not how this works and and those those reporters in those newsrooms know the layers of approval and like lawyering that goes into a story like this being published but do you think that boiling it down to cbc versus smith who wins there well
Carter
53:46
well depends on your audience i
Corey
53:48
i think unfortunately i don't i don't think it does i think if you're just going to take a broad scan of things i think
Corey
53:54
think probably smith no right
Corey
53:57
i mean that's that's the reality you look at polling for like should cbc be publicly funded in alberta it's been a while since i've looked at that pretty low in alberta right i i mean one of the things daniel smith has been doing as a conscious strategy over the past bit is picking uh
Corey
54:12
uh other other villains right whether it's justin trudeau deeply unpopular in alberta jagmeet singh deeply unpopular hell why not throw our crown broadcaster into it why the hell not and and as long as you're you're
Corey
54:26
you're keeping the focus on that and not the matchup where maybe you're on less sure footing yourself versus rachel notley you're probably doing yourself a favor right you like one of the things and we've talked about this in other contexts when you switch the frame you don't need to switch from unpopular to popular you just need to switch from deeply unpopular to less unpopular and that's still a net strategic advantage to you it's
Carter
54:49
i'd like to argue more but i'm i'm unable to which frustrates me okay
SPEAKER_00
54:54
okay well that's that's the depressing note uh to end that you've really taken
Carter
55:00
taken us through the you've really made this a really happy episode you know we've talked about
SPEAKER_00
55:05
about death and dying you're gonna die you know the media is dead uh might as well end with the lightning round guys oh
SPEAKER_00
55:12
oh okay uh yeah lightning round do we
Corey
55:16
we still do this let's do it because we zane always said we you know what i didn't believe
Carter
55:20
believe it anyway i just know
Corey
55:21
know you have doing the lightning round
Carter
55:23
um she's the one
Carter
55:25
who really is trying to get more attention to herself right now
Carter
55:30
yeah because she talks more in the lightning round oh
SPEAKER_00
55:34
i'm just the host here carter and the lightning round is about short snappy yes no quick answers um
SPEAKER_00
55:43
um i don't think it is lightning actually annalise
Carter
55:46
annalise no i disagree
Carter
55:48
with your premise i'd like to argue that well
SPEAKER_00
55:51
called the lightning round uh yesterday in calgary city council and ucp mlas had a meeting this
SPEAKER_00
55:59
this is newsworthy because it doesn't happen very often so overrated or underrated overrated uh we'll start with you cory overrated or underrated strong relationships between municipal politicians and provincial counterparts um
Corey
56:16
underrated in terms of delivering things for us who live in cities i mean it's really important and there's a lot of things that are below the waterline it's not the iceberg you can see it's the stuff below super important uh
Corey
56:28
uh deeply overrated in terms of politics in fact it's often helpful to have an antagonist at a different order of government for both parties like the the city can be like damn province and the province can say damn cities carter
SPEAKER_00
56:40
carter you're gonna ask me the same question
Carter
56:42
question or you're just gonna look at me what are you gonna do
SPEAKER_00
56:44
do i just asked you the same question but you said yeah oh here's
Carter
56:49
here's the thing uh one would argue that bronconia's term was actually the most successful term uh for getting things for calgary and getting provincial funding and he was fighting the provincial government every year of his nine years um he fought he he he fought for calgarians he would tell he would say you know if the alberta government doesn't fund this they don't give a fuck about calgary and you know what it worked so yeah you want to have relationships behind the scenes but that that adversarial relationship i think is has has got far more value if you actually want to see things get done. And I think that that's what Albertans expect, or Calgarians expect from their local government, is getting things done. And this government hasn't
Carter
57:37
hasn't really advocated, this city government hasn't really advocated for
Carter
57:41
for anything from the provincial government, which I think is a significant
SPEAKER_00
57:47
Carter, you didn't answer the question. question overrated or underrated yeah
Carter
57:56
don't have to answer the question right like cory like has she seen the show before
Corey
58:00
before no she gets to ask the questions we get to
Corey
58:03
to say things like
Carter
58:03
like we talked about this the other day about you know you don't have to accept the premise of the question didn't we i mean at
Carter
58:09
at least what's this media background you're bringing to this we're
SPEAKER_00
58:11
we're next one carter we're we're next one lightning round okay it's short and sweet uh
SPEAKER_00
58:18
uh this i don't know if you guys got this keeping alberta affordable pamphlet in the mail um so
SPEAKER_00
58:25
so little brochure got it in the mail today it's from the government of alberta it says keeping alberta affordable on it and then there's a little tagline saving you money for what really matters uh there's some pictures on it there's like some seniors, a nurse, a guy in a hard hat, a family maybe playing games, eating some French fries. Anyways, lightning round question. There's an election in a few months. Yes, no. Does this work?
Corey
58:57
Yeah, I mean, it's a question that we often struggled with. I can think of a couple of things that were put out in my time there under both the UCP and the NDP, these direct mail pieces that it drop and how much does it change people's attention or minds sometimes
Corey
59:11
sometimes it invites a lot of backlash i can think when there was the rate cap that was introduced on electricity there was like the whole province was sort of carpeted with if you're on the rro the regulated rate option it's capped at you know these number of cents and i don't know i never really got the sense like you you get a lot of like negative feedback from the people who see it and i think it's bad policy or or whatnot. But it's tough to measure. And it's tough to disaggregate unless you're getting deep polling in there. I don't think it hurts. I mean, ultimately, so much of what we do should be measured, but is fundamentally based on a sound theory. It's the theory of communication, which is if you say a message, and
Corey
59:51
and you say it enough times, and you say it at a high enough quality, you change people's minds, right? Now, you can argue about the quality.
Corey
59:58
But I think that But they're trying to do their volume game and they're doing their message game when they drop something like that.
Corey
1:00:04
I will say – and I haven't seen the piece besides the fact that you waved it in front of us on this audio media. Wouldn't it be great
Carter
1:00:10
great if we had –
Carter
1:00:11
wouldn't that be spectacular?
Corey
1:00:15
But the idea that – it sounds like they have even multiple tags, keeping Alberta affordable, saving money for what you really matter. Like pick a tag. Just pick a tag. That's just a pet peeve. But this
Corey
1:00:25
this is the kind of thing government does. it will be interesting to see how much more of it it does in the next bit because this is the second direct mail piece in a month we got one on health care and now we're getting this one
Corey
1:00:37
don't even have a mailbox so i just you know it's not gonna shake my world but you know
SPEAKER_00
1:00:43
just to be clear it is um it is government of alberta it's not ucp why don't you have a mailbox
Corey
1:00:48
oh i mean i've got a community
Corey
1:00:51
but like i go to it once every two two weeks and i say oh this is the junk mail i'm just going to get rid of it as soon as i you
SPEAKER_00
1:00:58
you got to move to the northwest uh carter your your thoughts what the yes the yes no question she did
Carter
1:01:04
a really good job
Carter
1:01:06
sliding right past the you got to move to the northwest hey yeah
SPEAKER_00
1:01:09
slid right past that yeah if you don't want community annalise and
Corey
1:01:12
and i both live in the same community we live in crescent heights and she lives on one side of center street and i I live on the other, and it's just an outrage. Northwest
SPEAKER_00
1:01:21
Northwest is where it's at. No
SPEAKER_00
1:01:25
Northeast. Carter, your thoughts, your quick thoughts. On the Northwest or the Northeast? The lightning round. The Northwest,
SPEAKER_00
1:01:30
Northwest, for sure. I prefer
SPEAKER_00
1:01:31
the Northwest. Northwest, okay. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect.
SPEAKER_00
1:01:34
Perfect. It's settled. Last lightning round question, and it's just something that Corey brought up when you were talking. You said, did I hear that right? 324 people in CPE?
Corey
1:01:48
At one point. So when I left, because we were slowly reducing the size of it, I think it was down to 290,
SPEAKER_00
1:01:55
287. Okay, so around 300. My lightning round question is, Carter, we'll start with you. How many journalists do you think are left in Alberta?
SPEAKER_00
1:02:06
How many did you say?
SPEAKER_00
1:02:08
Seven. Are we talking real
Carter
1:02:09
real journalists or are we talking like the people who get paid?
Carter
1:02:12
Because there's seven real journalists left in Alberta.
Carter
1:02:15
And then there's a lot of people who get paid.
SPEAKER_00
1:02:17
What's a lot? But how many of these other people are there?
Carter
1:02:21
There's like 70 total journalists, I think, now.
Carter
1:02:23
70. Okay. Corey? Depends. There's still journalists with the Banff-Craigan Canyon. There's still journalists with... It depends on what you're
SPEAKER_00
1:02:33
you're counting. Yeah, but there's like two there. Yeah, but that can't...
Corey
1:02:37
can't... So I'm going to say... There's a lot
Carter
1:02:38
lot of papers like that, though.
Corey
1:02:41
Between CBC, between post-media channels, some of the independents, I would put the number probably at about 250 to 300 would be my guess.
SPEAKER_00
1:02:49
guess. I'm going to look it up. I think it's less than 300. I don't know the answer.
Carter
1:02:55
I jump in here, though? You know how many people work in communications at the City of Calgary?
SPEAKER_00
1:03:01
Tell me, please, Carter. The former City Hall reporter in me just loves this sort of stuff. Please tell me. About 400 people.
Carter
1:03:09
Yeah, it's insane. Right?
Carter
1:03:11
Cory was running communications
Carter
1:03:13
and at the city of calgary we have the same number of communicators as cory had province-wide yeah
SPEAKER_00
1:03:19
yeah and yet and yet you you try and get an answer out of them as that journalist who's like writing three stories a day where well you're waiting to find out if you got fired and they just hand you from person to person to person to person and they take days to get back to you it's insane their
Carter
1:03:34
their job is to not communicate like seriously
Carter
1:03:37
yeah it was one of my great pet peeves um i would i mean they were horrible they are horrible they're terrible communicators and we pay them a shit ton of money each and uh we get terrible communications out of it it's not like cory's shot all right well so our shop
Carter
1:03:54
was fucking grade a baby it was great i
Corey
1:03:58
i want to make sure people know that the shop that i worked there with there was was cpe is just a brilliant brilliant bunch of professionals. And, and really, like, I know, because we've talked about kind of the idea of flax and spinning and the cynicism that might engender, most government communication is not like the prestigious political stuff that you think of that's deeply salacious, right? It is running programs, it's running consultations day in, day out.
Corey
1:04:24
There's a mantra at CP is something I like to say all the time, you know, the people have a right to know and the government has a duty to inform.
Corey
1:04:31
Those guys are awesome. So if you're going to slag the city, I don't know, no, I didn't have to work with them. I'm going to tell you, CPE are
Corey
1:04:37
are the best. And I'm not going to argue with
Carter
1:04:39
with you. I think that CPE and before it, Public Affairs Bureau, were both excellent communications. This is not a slag on government communications. This is a slag on the city of Calgary communications, which was amongst the worst communications I've ever seen.
SPEAKER_00
1:04:54
We're going to leave it there. I'll leave that fight
Corey
1:04:56
fight to you. We're
SPEAKER_00
1:04:57
We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1031 of The Strategist. My name is Annalise Klingbeil, And with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.