Transcript
Annalise
0:01
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1042. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan.
Corey
0:14
It is evening. I'm
Carter
0:16
I was working on a ski hill today and yesterday, and
Carter
0:19
and now I'm tired.
Annalise
0:21
life, Stephen Carter. Organizing
Carter
0:22
Organizing a ski cross race, Annalise. You can come out. I'll enter you in it.
Annalise
0:26
Okay, let's do it. beat against
Carter
0:26
against uh 14 and 15 year olds i like your chances okay
Annalise
0:31
let's do it sign me up yeah
Corey
0:34
it'll be fun okay that sounds like cory
Annalise
0:35
cory i'm not gonna sign you answer also well
Carter
0:38
well no because cory doesn't know how to ski it's
Carter
0:40
it's something i mean i do know
Corey
0:42
know how to ski but i uh i'm not gonna do that i don't know why i'm defending myself and my right to ski with 14 and 15 year olds right now i think no
Carter
0:50
no i would put you in i'd
Carter
0:52
you in the old man category there's there's a men's category i I think you'd do great. Category
Annalise
0:55
Category for you. Yeah.
Annalise
0:56
Why are you putting me with the 14, 15-year-old girls, Carter?
Carter
0:59
I think you'd win the open category. I think you'd just be too good. Let's do it. But the 14 and 15-year-olds, I think that they'd crush you like a small bug. Because they're mean. They're mean. Like the mean girls.
Annalise
1:10
girls. They're fast. They're up and down. Mean. They
Carter
1:12
make fun of me standing there in my suit, my Alpine Canada suit. They make fun of me.
Carter
1:21
Oh, well. We'll get through it. but
Carter
1:23
but I'm excited for the show today. It feels like forever to
Annalise
1:25
to be an analyst
Annalise
1:26
It's a Friday night show. I'm here. I'm back. I even have a new mic. Thank you to Corey. So that's good. Better
Carter
1:34
Better than the one you
Carter
1:35
you got me, Carter. Honest to God, you need to not record in a washroom because the echo is insane. I think
Annalise
1:42
think our listeners can
Annalise
1:43
hear it. I'm in an office. I just need more cushions.
Annalise
1:46
watch your mouth. One thing at a time. I got a mic that I don't have to hold in my hand for an hour. so baby steps carter okay
Carter
1:54
then we're gonna do a long podcast tonight or a short one so i can nap we'll
Annalise
1:58
we'll we'll see how much energy you bring and we'll take it from there i did listen i i didn't know you guys didn't tell me that i can just do an
Annalise
2:06
an episode on like one topic for an entire hour to hour and a half no
Corey
2:13
become zane's calling yeah
Carter
2:15
yeah let's be clear zane has done an hour on Dairy Queen with us so we're not usually fans of it but he he does have that skill oh that
Corey
2:22
that was a good one I was a fan of that one that was
Annalise
2:25
a seminal episode started listening was the Dairy Queen episode is what sucked them in seriously
Annalise
2:34
I got an email from a man who said that um
Annalise
2:37
um okay let's jump into it uh much to talk about it's been a while lots of is going on we're
Annalise
2:44
we're going to talk with uh one that you guys have talked about before i'm going to call this an
Annalise
2:50
an 80 million dollar mistake question mark uh
Carter
2:56
about it we found out we found
Annalise
2:58
found out this week all
Annalise
3:01
all that tylenol that five million bottles of kids tylenol from turkey cost this government 80 million dollars i think you two probably know this better than i the The breakdown is like $70 million for the Tylenol and $10 million for its shipping.
Corey
3:19
Yeah, you have to understand that it flew first class. Yeah,
Carter
3:22
both ways. The Tylenol.
Carter
3:23
Tylenol. Out and back, up and down. How much did
Carter
3:27
did it cost again? How many bottles and how much did it cost?
Annalise
3:30
So this, the bottles I don't have, but what I can tell you is that...
Corey
3:35
I think it's 5 million doses,
Corey
3:38
doses, 5 million bottles.
Annalise
3:38
bottles. Which works out to purchasing more than six full bottles for every child in this province who's under the age of 14.
Annalise
3:48
So yeah, just to recap, more than six bottles per child, $80 million. And we still don't have the meds. I think they were ordered in November or December. They're
Annalise
3:58
They're still not here. So I know we've talked about this before. I know you've talked about this before. I did actually go and try and get infant Tylenol yesterday and did not find any.
Annalise
4:09
But what are your thoughts here? And Corey, do you have an apology for Carter?
Corey
4:16
Oh, boy. I don't like this accountability that you bring to the show. Yeah, Zane
Carter
4:21
which is great. Zane
Corey
4:23
Zane's distracted easily. But yeah, you know, the last two times this came up when we talked about it, I said,
Corey
4:30
yeah, it was probably a bad policy, probably a waste of money. I didn't know how much money. I don't think we had those details at the time. But probably something that will do no harm to the UCP and maybe even benefit because people will remember vaguely there was a problem with Tylenol, vaguely that the UCP said they were going to do something about it, vaguely that the problem was largely resolved, right?
Corey
4:51
I don't feel that way anymore. Really? $80 million, a lot of money.
Corey
4:56
Steven, I don't know if you know this. Really? $80 million is a lot of money. Really? Is it a lot
Carter
5:00
lot of money? Yeah.
Corey
5:03
it's a lot of money yeah and um the idea that you would have five million doses and and by the way like the response by the health minister of we're going to try to unload some of this on other provinces not
Annalise
5:13
not unload it sell it sell it fantastic fantastic
Annalise
5:19
mark it up and sell it yeah
Corey
5:21
yeah so as has been observed by many people online at the 16 per per bottle that we are paying that's more than twice the
Corey
5:30
the wholesale price and for like name brand tylenol um
Corey
5:34
um and let's let's be clear we haven't really seen these bottles yet we don't know what it looks like but one of the reasons that's delayed is oh you know some pesky regulations like this children's medicine needed to be in childproof bottles oh and you know god that stupid late you know language laws that we have in this country wasn't in english or french you know so you were getting you know um turkish medicine with no no childproofing on it oh
Corey
6:00
oh and what was the third problem oh yeah they weren't entirely sure it was acetaminophen or they couldn't prove that it was there was like no shoot so i'm sure people will be jumping to buy double priced maybe acetaminophen with you know labels stickered on like that's that's gonna fly off the shelves like people are gonna sit there and they're gonna say oh i could get like the the life brand for oh i don't know like six dollars five dollars or you know no i I think I'm going to get this off-brand looking medication covered with, you know, a language I don't understand, stickered over with languages I do understand without childproofing or like ramshackle childproofing put on it there. That sounds great to me. Yeah.
Corey
6:43
So it doesn't sound like a win for the government. It doesn't even sound like a loss that they can blame on the federal government. If it had been a situation where it was like, there's just no French on the label, like, Like, yeah, then they can just go full Alberta and say, goddamn federal government, you know, with their language laws. It's such an impractical imposition.
Corey
7:03
Didn't have English. Didn't have childproofing. This is not a good one for the government. And the idea that they also purchased so much of it, like $5 million has a real, this is our minimum quantity energy to it. Like, yeah, you want to do this? You're going to have to buy $5 million. Just dreadful all around. Like, not a good look. And $80 million is so much money. really
Annalise
7:24
really that's a that's a long way of you saying carter was right yeah
Corey
7:28
yeah uh you know what i actually i think broken
Corey
7:31
broken clocks are right twice a day oh my god this is a great example of that
Carter
7:36
i mean this is so bad on so many levels the cost has just made it real for cory it was bad before when they were trying to solve a problem that they have no business trying to solve i mean if you try to solve every supply chain what was the next thing going to be toilet paper like every supply chain issue that occurred uh are we going to start making our own microchips like what What are we going to be doing? This is a solution.
Annalise
7:58
solution. We should start with microchips. Then we could actually sell those to other provinces. That's a good idea. That sounds a
Corey
8:03
a lot more marketable.
Annalise
8:04
marketable. That's one of the best
Carter
8:05
best ideas. Didn't we try that with Novotel at one point? Like, didn't we invest in Novotel and didn't it go, you know, like, weren't we like the only investors ever in this type of technology to lose money? I'm just saying government doesn't do this well. And government shouldn't step outside of what it actually does. And what bothers me about me saying that is, you know who says stuff like that? Corey Hogan says stuff like that. Conservative
Carter
8:26
Yeah. Corey Hogan says stuff like that because government should be government and government shouldn't be private business. And you know who really should believe that? Danielle Smith. Danielle Smith and the UCP should really believe that the government shouldn't be meddling in free market solutions. You're going to be able to find children's Tylenol before you're going to be able to find the Turkish knockoff brand of maybe acetaminophen or whatever
Carter
8:48
whatever it is. I
Corey
8:50
think it's probably acetaminophen. You know, like the Health Canada language was something along the lines of they needed to verify what was in it. I'm sure it's acetaminophen. that's
Carter
8:58
that's so great like it just fills me with confidence and and you
Carter
9:02
you know this is just one of those things where government runs off tries to do you know cory said this earlier you know it's a new government that's trying to stretch its wings and show everybody what it can do and all it's done is run headfirst into a wall and i'm not sure i mean i hope that people remember this i'm not sure it'll be the thing that everybody's talking about when it comes to election time but i do know that it's not going to be a win on any level ever for this government And that does bring me a bit of joy.
Corey
9:30
Yeah, well, look, I mean, here's the thing.
Corey
9:34
If it was the only thing, it would probably be a expensive gaffe. There is a real body of whoopsies that the conservative government has started to create in terms of the amount of money that they've spent on things of really questionable value here from the small and you can wrap your head around it like a $1,400 town car to take you from Calgary to Edmonton, right? right?
Corey
9:56
People can understand that. To a little bit more money, significant increases in the premier's office staff. That doesn't seem to be great value for money. To a $30 million a year war room that was a bit of a laughingstock a couple of years ago. It's sort of pulled itself up to, I forgot about that. That seems to be its current brand until we're reminded when there's an ad. Through here to $80 million on medicine that we can't use that seems real dodgy. If I saw that on these shelves, as it's been described in reporting, you
Corey
10:29
you know what? I'd be like, why am I shopping here? That would be my main reaction if I saw that. I care about my children. That's why I'm trying to get them children's medicine. Probably not that children's medicine. All the way through to the big dog, like $1.3 billion on Keystone XL, a pipeline that ultimately,
Corey
10:49
was a bet. It was a gamble on an outcome in the US election, and it didn't work. And And, you know, there's starting to be a very compelling case made that,
Corey
10:58
that, you know, the UCP government not spending money particularly well. And the problem they have is that I've run through the gamut of like 1,400 to in the billions. And we're getting to the point where it would be pretty hard to find a program that they've reduced or not funded or a priority they've passed over that you don't have a comp of them literally lighting money on fire.
Corey
11:22
literally lighting money on fire so it becomes like oh you know the i
Corey
11:26
i don't know what the cost would be of uh of the ndp announcement about covering contraception right don't
Annalise
11:32
don't worry we're gonna talk about that soon oh
Corey
11:35
stuff but if it's 30 million you got a number if it you know like you can compare it to a lot of money that's been lit on fire now and that that's a dangerous place for the government to be because basically priorities of any magnitude from a thousand dollars to a billion you can now say yeah but you look what you did here look what you wasted money on it's about priorities and your priorities are wrong yeah
Annalise
11:54
do you think too that the story has legs in the sense that it doesn't go away because like once eventually this medicine is on shelves and
Annalise
12:03
and people you know take pictures of it and post it and make fun of it or then like i don't like i'm assuming you two would know this better than i but there's a shelf life
Annalise
12:14
on children's medicine and like if they don't move then you're gonna see pharmacists saying Like, hey, here's a dumpster full of this medicine that we couldn't sell. Like, do you think do you think that I obviously this is like former journalists had on. But to me, this story is it's going to keep coming up. No.
Carter
12:31
Oh, I think so. I think that the issue, too, is that Annalise, I mean, you're a former journalist, but there's an awful lot of journalists that are kind of in your phase of life, if you will. You went actually shopping for children's Tylenol. You know who didn't go shopping for children's Tylenol? This
Carter
12:46
Right. I'm ancient. ancient. I mean, I'm looking for that really
Carter
12:49
heavy, high strength stuff that's sold only
Annalise
12:52
only to seniors. Yeah,
Carter
12:53
Yeah, old guy Tylenol is my kind of Tylenol. And there's lots of that. There's no supply chain there. But reporters
Carter
13:00
reporters are going to see this in their own everyday lives. They're going to see the bottles when they come out. They're going to see the packaging. They're going to see if it looks like a gong show. And they will bring it up again and again. And you're right, there is an expiration date on medicines like that. They will, you know, I can't see this being held on to until 2027 when we're trying to push out the last remnants of this type of medicine. There could be. And then the other thing I wanted to mention, this
Carter
13:28
this is filled with an area where there's people, where there's organizations and people that don't necessarily like this government, right? Like pharmacists may want to make a point about healthcare after the pandemic or after the way that they've been used or regarding their negotiations with the government of Alberta, right? Doctors may want to make an issue out of it. Pediatricians may want to, you know, more specifically. So you have all these groups that aren't necessarily enemies, but they get to have the opportunity to make this case. And Corey also makes the case. I mean, there's already been, you know, descriptions of all how this could have gone a long ways to help downtown Calgary. And of course, it could have gone a long ways to help downtown Calgary. Also could have helped a tremendous amount to build an arena. I don't care what your personal pet issue is. This would have gone a big way to starting that project, unless your pet issue is like building the Green Line North for Calgary. Or
Corey
14:22
Or the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
Carter
14:25
Well, we're going to talk about how much that's over budget. Maybe Annalise will ask us about that.
Corey
14:31
Yeah. You know what? That is ultimately, fundamentally the point. Usually when you're arguing about my priority versus your priority, you can argue the virtues of one or the other, or you can kind of turn it and say, you didn't think about this. This is why it's important. When you are lighting money on fire, in the examples that I've just described, that's really tough. In fact, in that list I gave, the only one that's remotely redeemable is the war room, ironically, because you can say, well, it's fighting for Alberta's oil industry, and don't you think that's important? stretch when
Corey
14:59
when you come to stretch
Corey
15:00
yeah sure and i agree but when you're talking about kxl when you're talking about a medicine that's not even on the shelves yeah
Corey
15:07
there's nothing there's there's nobody's going to argue for those things and the virtue of those things and and so you sit there and you just take your lumps and the more people can talk about it uh the worse off you're gonna but
Annalise
15:16
but at least with some of those lumps she can blame it she is in premier daniel smith can blame it on well that was a premier jason kenney move like this was one of her first moves oh
Annalise
15:28
When she became premier. Can I say, though,
Corey
15:31
that is a thing that people try to do when the leader changes and it's the same party. It doesn't work that well. I mean, it works a little. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't. But blaming your own party, keeping in mind most of that's the same cabinet because your bloody cabinet is just twice as big as it was before. I
Corey
15:48
I mean, that's pretty tough. Famously, of course, Paul Martin tried to do this with the Kretchen government, right, and the Gomery inquiry. So those were the other guys. Those were you. That was the liberals who did that, and that was ultimately the thing that I think was fatal to the Martin government, the failings of the liberal government, that he thought because he was so deep in it and because he thought people will see a difference between Martinites and Gretchenites, that he could just blame the last guy, but he just eroded his own brand. And so I don't think Daniel Smith can sit there and say, yeah, that was all Jason Kenney and that was a bad idea. Because so many of the people involved in that idea are still around her cabinet table. And it's just, it's not, you know, it's not easy to blame the last guy in that particular situation.
Annalise
16:40
let's leave it there i realized i was so excited to talk to you guys about this 80 million dollar price tag i forgot to bring up in our little opening podcast wars do
Annalise
16:49
do do you want to talk about what's happening with your live show and another unnamed
Corey
16:55
what's this your live show you're our live show yeah you're
Corey
16:59
actually live show you're
Carter
16:59
you're hosting the fucking show our
Carter
17:03
this is going to be your first live this is going to be your first live show on april 2nd at the grand theater tickets still
Annalise
17:09
do you know what it's going to be the first time i meet cory hogan in person no
Corey
17:13
that's not even true it's it's not true i can actually think of a time that we were discussing anyways we will follow up on that and i will say shame on you for clearly uh getting you lacking the feeling is yours yeah
Annalise
17:27
yeah okay so so carter put putting put in the plug for uh how how sold out is it it's almost sold out right it's
Carter
17:34
it's almost sold out there are tickets still available uh right now um cory and i were talking about it and we were discussing the fact that we'd rather be sold out than uh continue to try and flog these on a whole bunch of uh podcasts so we might just stop selling tickets because
Carter
17:51
because you know like it it reaches at some point the air of desperation like please come to our show we're not desperate we don't give give a fuck we never we never cared you have to choose to come to the show because it's going to be a great show not because we're asking you to give us money we don't care i
Corey
18:06
i love your energy cover fuck
Carter
18:08
fuck it i don't care anyways there's like there's like some tickets left um you can buy them they're in the last you
Carter
18:14
you know eight rows oh for some reason you
Corey
18:17
you know what i realized house
Carter
18:18
house right is really open house left is not yeah
Corey
18:22
yeah well because i i leaked that you were sitting on house house right and so that happened to you you know what i have sort of realized here what's that i i've put this together this
Corey
18:32
happened because you predicted it would sell out yeah this is a classic steven carter classic steven you said it would sell out by thursday oh you said it would sell
Annalise
18:41
sell out by thursday and it's friday you know what it's
Corey
18:42
it's gonna sell out
Carter
18:43
out by sunday i'm doubling down
Carter
18:48
not happening sold out by sunday get your tickets right now there
Corey
18:53
there are there are no bad seats seats except for the seats at the front that have already been sold yeah those
Carter
18:58
those people are idiots
Carter
18:59
the people who bought right at the beginning right at the right in the front row like who are those people like that's gonna sell them like
Annalise
19:05
your mom and all her friends carter no
Carter
19:08
no my mom's not coming uh not after
Carter
19:11
last time no uh no
Carter
19:14
we're not allowed to talk
Corey
19:15
talk about that little
Carter
19:17
um that we're still trying to get past okay
Carter
19:20
okay so the point
Annalise
19:21
point is buy tickets where can people buy buy tickets uh
Carter
19:24
where uh well online it's like it's
Corey
19:27
it's like everywhere you
Corey
19:28
you know you just walk around your life you're gonna find tickets it's no problem it's
Carter
19:32
it's floating around to everywhere you know
Corey
19:34
know what this is our patreon show check your email yeah i sent you a link vote
Corey
19:39
they can vote too
Annalise
19:40
is it is the voting still on or is it done i
Corey
19:42
i guess it's still on but i want
Corey
19:44
want yeah that's true when does
Annalise
19:45
does the voting when does the well hold on the people listening can still vote when does the voting end uh
Corey
19:50
uh whenever i get the result i want then i will close it yeah
Carter
19:55
that sounds right yeah
Annalise
19:56
okay let's move on to our next segment this one is called a 30 million dollar non-mistake question mark uh
Annalise
20:04
uh so on international women's day uh the ndp made a new promise that they're going to cover the cost of prescription birth control if elected this follows a program the NDP and BC recently announced. So I want to dive into this one. I'm curious your thoughts as strategists. I know there was certainly a lot of talk about this the last couple of days amongst my circles. And I'm curious if you think,
Annalise
20:29
think, I guess, publicly funded contraception is
Annalise
20:32
is good policy. And then if you want to talk about too, like the politics of when they announced this and the attention that they got for it.
Annalise
20:41
Corey, why don't you weigh in first yeah
Corey
20:45
i mean i do think it is good politics it's one of the these classic um pink taxes right these these costs that uh fall on you for the sin of being a woman uh that um the governments are becoming increasingly live too and of course you saw in british columbia the government taking action and you see now with the alberta ndp it's quite possible alberta will follow suit in this uh venture the other thing is it really so even setting aside that i just think it's the the kind of thing that it's like yeah fucking finally thank you why in the world am i spending this every month right doesn't seem fair uh i also think it has the added benefit of boy
Corey
21:21
boy these issues trip up the conservatives eh like they don't know what the fuck to do with these issues and um that's not even just true of the male conservatives although they
Corey
21:31
they are legendarily bad at this right but even danielle smith saying like well why don't they just get private insurance to cover it like what that is that's not a solution to this particular matter your suggestion of spending 150 a month on private insurance is more expensive than the thing so um you know it's just a it's just a great way to wrong foot them so smart politics good policy and you know it's hard to go wrong with tying those together especially on a theme day like international women's day which even you mentioned was that was a tie-in and had people talking carter
Annalise
22:05
carter you're shaking your your head yes you agree well i
Carter
22:08
think that it's really good politics i and for all the reasons that cory described you know the the ability to kind of come in on the pink tax the um you know the wrong footing the conservatives those are all those are all good things but i want to talk just for a moment about how good the policy is um there is a you know there poverty
Carter
22:26
poverty is an interesting problem and this is one of the things that i don't think that danielle smith can wrap her head around Not everyone can afford $150 a month for private insurance. And if you can't afford $150 a month for private insurance, if you can't afford $30 a month for contraception, or whatever the numbers may be, you are more likely to get further and further impoverished. And there is a direct correlation between poverty and lifetime ability in health, education, performance, if you will. You know, so if we have a real big problem with the impoverished population not being able to choose when they're going to have children, not being able to choose how their family is going to be constructed. And if you're, you know, we always talk about pro-choice in the context of abortion. And it's really, I think, very small minded in that sense, because it's actually pro-choice in the sense of when is a family going to choose to become a bigger family? When is a family going to choose to undertake that additional expense, that additional responsibility? And too many people in our society are having that responsibility foisted upon them without necessarily an active choice being made. And the cost to society, as well as to that individual family and that individual child, the cost to society is massive. $30 million? We spent $30 million on chickenpox vaccinations. This is nothing. This is absolutely zero. uh in the overall scheme of things and it will have real world outcomes that far and away outreach just the cost of the contraception well
Corey
24:04
well and it's the same price as the war room you know to the point the
Corey
24:07
the the other thing is uh in addition to all of that it fits into the story that you and i have both recommended for the ndp which is one that talks about health care yeah
Corey
24:17
right and and it is ultimately tied to the overall ndp brand of trying to create an alberta for all of us right right? And this idea of leveling everybody up. And so I just think in many ways, it's a big winner. And it puts a nice contrast in front of people that is on an issue people care about.
Carter
24:33
You know, the only problem with it, the only problem, and this isn't a criticism, was that the NDP in British Columbia went first. That
Carter
24:42
That is the only problem with it, because it's a
Carter
24:46
a little bit of follower syndrome. It looks like they
Carter
24:50
they didn't come up with it on their own. and i'm quite certain that they did come up with it on their own i'm sure they had this on the message calendar for quite some time but unfortunately the ndp the bc ndp did it before them and it just looks a little bit follower so
Corey
25:02
so i i disagree yeah
Annalise
25:03
yeah and i well cory go into why you disagree but i wanted to talk about that strategy of copying bc like carter you're saying it's a problem but what's
Annalise
25:11
what's wrong with like working
Carter
25:12
working smarter not harder and
Annalise
25:14
being like hey these guys had an announcement that got really good attention let's do that like i think even the cost um and i could be wrong on this but i believe one of the things i read said with the cost they were like well bc says it'll cost this much so we think the same sort of thing like what
Annalise
25:30
what what's wrong with that why is that a problem yeah
Corey
25:33
yeah like i don't think it's a problem at all a i think you're 100 right just steal what's good steal what works look around and i political parties need to spend spend more time looking at other jurisdictions for good ideas as a general rule in my opinion people care a lot less about where ideas came from than political parties think the second thing on that matter though is people are just people are just not that tuned into conversations about politics more generally and if you have in the zeitgeist an overall conversation about this you can draft on it right like all of a sudden there's national media about bc doing this and And now Alberta is doing this too. And you get the benefit of the overall national conversation about BC's move. Whereas if this had been an initiative that was simply done by the Alberta NDP right now, two things. One, it might have seemed less practical because people would be like, can we even do that? I don't even know if that's a thing government should do. Well, I guess they can because it's happening in BC. And the second thing is it just seems more real, right?
Corey
26:34
right? Like, okay, like now I can point to that as like an actual costed out thing that I can compare to. to.
Carter
26:41
Well, this is just bugging me.
Carter
26:43
This is just bugging me because I want to agree with some of Corey's points. Like, right, you should take more ideas from other jurisdictions. You know, there's some excellent work being undertaken by the BCNDP to take responsibility for the opioid epidemic and homelessness, mental health illness. That's really fascinating. And it may move us in some really different directions than people thought. institutionalization and big questions and i do think that we should be looking and stealing from those um those jurisdictions but i still don't like this and i don't like it i think because of the time i think it's because of the timeline i think the timeline is we announced it on thursday you know they announced it thursday we announced it the next tuesday and i
Carter
27:28
i just don't want to be that much of a follower i want i want the headline cycle i want to be the first one the first mover on it having said that yeah i'd rather follow on this and and have the right thing than pass by i wouldn't be saying well you know what the bc ndp announced it last week so fuck it we can't ever announce this that would be the wrong play so i'm kind of somewhere in the middle i'm not i'm a little bit mushy the more mushy than i want to be you know like zane like
Carter
27:55
like zane most of the time right but
Annalise
27:58
also like when do you think they should have announced it because we
Annalise
28:01
we had budget days on the same day like don't don't you think they get better headlines and it's more of a story doing it on international women's day making the point of doing the video with
Annalise
28:11
with all the the women caucus members like isn't that kind of an fu to the ucp i don't know i
Corey
28:18
it's also just like the most it is
Corey
28:20
is in the best sense of the word it's the most conventional media hook you found an issue people are going to be talking about everywhere and you've made an issue that you want to talk about tie into it that's just that's just good communication that's smart did
Carter
28:35
did you not hear that i'd said that i was in the mushy spot why
Carter
28:37
why are you driving on the
Annalise
28:39
bushy you said why are you driving in on the bushy but
Annalise
28:40
but before that you said there's one problem and then your problem is like not a problem at all uh
Annalise
28:48
do you think next topic okay
Annalise
28:50
okay cory this is just the annalise and cory podcast now do you think uh do you think this is a vote getter
Corey
28:58
yeah i i mean listen i'm not the target audience for it uh for a bunch of reasons um but this is uh this to me seems like it's it has a couple of characteristics that make it an obvious vote getter one of them is it it addresses something that people feel is a little unjust the other is that it puts money in their pockets and the third is it addresses a broader approach to health care that says we're going to cover more things so and we know healthcare is a big issue for people and when people are talking about healthcare and answering polls no i don't think that they're necessarily thinking about contraception but i think they're generally speaking about a system that is frustrating and doesn't always get people what they want when they want so uh it's also a great hook in to talk to the overall ndp uh healthcare strategy so yeah i mean for 30 million if you want to be crass about it for 30 million dollars it seems like a great return on investment in terms of vote getting yeah
Carter
29:52
yeah i mean it's just the only complaint about it is that this is supposed to be a quote-unquote an individual responsibility um okay whatever i mean and the thing that kills me about this i don't think this is going to be necessarily a huge vote getter within um you know that impoverished population that i was talking about and doesn't necessarily even need to be a huge vote getter with women who you know could access this it's there's going to to be a lot of people who say this is just good paul you know this is just a good idea i don't expect to get anything from it but it's just a good idea and uh i love it i think and 20 the 30 30 million bucks i mean rounding error in health care truly is
Corey
30:33
is the cost of a war room i heard is
Carter
30:35
is it really a cost of a war room wow
Corey
30:39
yeah look at that what
Corey
30:40
what are your priorities steven do you want the war room do you want free contraception well i personally
Carter
30:43
personally i'm all about tom olson keeping a job i've always been that way so more
Annalise
30:49
more room okay bold choice carter
Annalise
30:52
nice that you did rejoin the podcast by the way full choice um but on on that vote getter piece like and maybe you guys are dudes i'm i'm a woman we're talking about this but like i found it interesting amongst my circles the number of men that were like i had no idea how much birth control cost you
Corey
31:10
you know there were a few tweets about that where i from
Corey
31:14
from people who should have known better like you know married men and whatnot i thought like what what are you doing like you are just exposing your bare ass right now like pay a little more attention to the world but it's true like a lot of people don't think about these things and um and it was like there were a lot of people in my circles who are like well is this really a thing i won't mention the co-worker but i was talking to a co-worker who reacted kind of cynically to the bc
Corey
31:38
bc announcement and then when the alberta one came they
Corey
31:42
they were like well i looked up a few more details and i had no no idea you know like oh wow that's
Annalise
31:47
that's honestly what i found most surprising about this announcement was like how many dudes out of themselves heard saying i have had no
Annalise
31:54
no responsibility for birth control ever
Annalise
31:56
in my life like uh that was wild but i i mean that that gender divide and can we get into that a little bit as we talk about like alberta election and ndp ucp it's going to be tight do
Corey
32:09
do you know i gotta am i mistaken i might be but it wasn't i think my vasectomy was covered
Corey
32:14
It was covered by
Corey
32:14
by Alberta Health. Oh,
Annalise
32:16
Well, I did not know that, but I
Annalise
32:19
I did read a thing that said that vasectomy was covered. You didn't know specifically that
Carter
32:24
that his vasectomy was covered by Alberta Health? Not my personal
Annalise
32:27
personal vasectomy. I did not know that Corey Hogan, who I've never met, his
Corey
32:30
his vasectomy was covered. I'm sharing
Corey
32:30
a lot of stuff on this podcast about myself right
Carter
32:33
right now. Yeah, that was deep.
Carter
32:36
That was deeper than I expected it to go on that. I
Corey
32:38
I think I had to pay an extra $100 for the white glove treatment. I hope they actually wore white gloves. them so i don't know yeah
Carter
32:45
yeah i hope you paid extra is what i'm trying to you're probably the reason why we had 84
Annalise
32:50
yeah pulled back really get the goods on these episodes worth at six dollars a month diving into course white
Annalise
32:57
white glove vasectomy treatment um no but but on that gender on the gender issue like is this i
Annalise
33:05
i don't know you guys are the strategist tell me about the strategy going into the election um should does the ndp need to be trying to get more votes from um like is there this gender divide or is that oh yeah yeah
Carter
33:20
the gender divide is huge and the gender divide happens on two sides there's a side that is um men men are more likely to vote for the ucp than the ndp um so there's that and there's also a reluctant ucp voter that tends to to be female. So two-thirds of reluctant UCP voters are female. And so if you can mess with those reluctant UCP voters, either keeping them home or shifting them over, that's a significant upgrade on the number of potential voters that you have or reducing the number of voters in the field. So the gender divide, first of all, it's been huge for a long time with women trending towards a little bit more progressive in general and then the you know in Alberta at this moment there's actually a fairly significant gender divide that is kind of exacerbated by COVID and economic recovery being a little different for women than it is for men
Annalise
34:23
so are there other or I guess are there policies that as we're as we're you know hearing election election announcements in the next couple months that
Annalise
34:32
that have that gender divide in them the way that this one does or i guess can you think of other examples like in other other
Annalise
34:39
other elections where if you if you're trying to get those people in the middle or keep those people at home go
Annalise
34:47
go for it so
Corey
34:47
so there's there's a lot of issues that divide on gender uh and they don't need to be kind of like the stereotypical gendered issues we certainly don't need to be talking about contraception i'll tell you the the big one i always think about is even when the economy is an issue and this was at least true at a certain moment in time a couple of years ago um when i was doing polling on well all sorts of matters for the government pretty regularly here is the economy was number one issue for like from 2015 to 2020 in alberta maybe even going a little bit into 2021 although you you know, COVID obviously breaks some of the math there.
Corey
35:22
And when you looked at how people communicated their anxiety about the economy, you saw men would communicate their anxiety as the economy. Like what's the top issue in the province? The economy. And when you asked women, what's the top issue in the province? Jobs, right? Like it was more about like the people impacts. And look, but like you'd have people in both, but there was an obvious gender skew there. So So when you start thinking about the demographics that you need to win, and I think there's almost a growing cliche about the idea that it's like the suburban female voter is who's going to determine this election. Even when you are taking something that is an overall issue, there are ways that you can package it that is going to land better with that audience. And so maybe it's not even the question you asked, but whenever you're putting anything forward like this, there's the product and there's the packaging. packaging and there are products that are going to be more appealing depending on your demographics depending on who you are and there's going to be packaging that's more appealing depending on demographics and who you are but you
Corey
36:25
you know the product of fighting with ottawa much less popular with women than it is with men right and you see that reflected and the voter support and there's a bit of tail wagging the dog in some ways too but if you were to go almost issue by issue on any poll that you know abacus puts out or anything like that you would see there's there's probably a gender gap. And that plays into some of the strategic decisions that have to go.
Annalise
36:50
Carter, do you think suburban female voters will decide the 2023 Alberta election?
Carter
36:56
I absolutely do. I think that there will be, you
Carter
36:59
you know, when we, the geography alone dictates that. I mean, the more intercity, we know that Calgary is the battleground. We know that the intercity ridings are more likely to flip immediately, right? Like, there's probably no doubt that the calgary curry is going to go there's no doubt the calgary elbow might well i
Carter
37:16
don't think well if
Corey
37:16
if there is the ndp wouldn't win the election but i think we all sort of agree those are those are very strongly likely ndp seats based on the current state of polling well
Corey
37:26
that doesn't mean they can take their foot off the gas but i don't have a lot of uh doubt that they're going to pull out wins and writings like that so
Carter
37:33
so just geographically you start to move into the into the suburbs right because now you're into a geography that you know the inner city is starting to flip so the burbs is the only part of calgary left that you can battle these you know that the ucp ndp battle is and men tend to make up their minds earlier and hold that position women are a lagging decision maker they tend to make more they tend to take more information in and they also tend to take more of the the view of their total community in so there's more of of a collective decision-making approach rather than this rambly thing that men do like cory and i cory and i have an opinion immediately right
Carter
38:16
right um before we even know we've got an opinion we've got it we're spouting the fucking thing out of our mouths women are much more uh keenly aware of the impact of that opinion on their on their peer group so they check in that you know and i've told the story a thousand times who is that what do you think about this nenshi guy was the question that we could almost track in 2010 around the city because women specifically were having the conversation what
Carter
38:45
what do you think about nancy it wasn't i'm going to vote for nancy and i think you should too it was do we collectively agree and when you have that collective decision making it has obviously more power because i can be bombastic and say i'm voting a ucp but if i can't convince cory then it doesn't then it's just one vote but if women are able to bring six eight twelve fourteen votes um and then and the way i put it is they women influence up down and uh side to side so they're influencing up to their parents down to their children and side to side to their peer group can
Annalise
39:21
women influence on that side to side thing their their male spouses And I ask that because during
Annalise
39:30
during the 2019 election, I heard stories often of women at the doors who would say, yeah, totally, I'm voting NDP. And then the door knocker would say, cool, do you want to sign? And they say, absolutely not. My husband cannot know I'm voting NDP. And
Annalise
39:46
And that was not like a one-off. That happened like a
Annalise
39:49
a lot in the 2019 election. So on that side to side, when you say their peers can,
Annalise
39:53
can, like, does that happen where, you know, the man has made up their mind, I'm voting UCP, the
Annalise
39:59
the woman decides I'm voting NDP, she's bringing her peers or other people your directions, but can she convince her spouse?
Carter
40:07
Spouses are hardest, I
Corey
40:10
You know, I don't know about that. I think that the reality is, and we
Corey
40:14
we all have spouses, that it tends to be a slow burn with spouses. Over time, I think the opinions drift together and will move left or right together. And you certainly see that. But in the moment, it can be harder to convince your spouse than like anybody else, right? right? You know, and but this kind of goes back to overall theories about persuasion. And the reality is, we don't live in a post-truth world as much as we think we do. People are not as nihilist as that. Arguments do change minds. But arguments also tend to ossify opinions in the moment. And so, you know, you can track changes over time more readily, when people are in debates, like when they're really setting their ground. And, you know, a lot of marriages have dynamics where it's like, well, I'm going to argue with them about this or I'm going to hold my ground and we're not just going to do that. And so, I don't know. I think it's complicated. I think marriages are complicated and it's not so simple. I think it's actually kind of a good thing that we can't just assume a household is all like one way voting anymore. I think it's a little weird if your spouse doesn't know how you're voting, frankly, but that's kind of weird to us as people who think and talk a lot about politics you got to keep in mind a lot of people it's not the dinner conversation and so um you know we also shouldn't judge on that particular matrix it's
Carter
41:34
it's tricky there's a lot of factors that go into spousal communications that aren't related to politics and um that means that you know just you know getting it is far easier for us as a for me as a campaigner to ask women to influence their friends and uh social networks than it is for me to ask them to influence their spouses um there's
Carter
41:59
there's just a lot of dynamics that we aren't ever going to be a part of what's your relationship look like how is how strong is your relationship is this something you talk about whereas i know that when you go to pick up the kids after school or you go to this hockey game or you go to the book club whatever your social network is i know things that matter to you will come up. And we used to dismiss them kind of as gossip, right? Women go and they gossip at the school or they gossip after, you know, it's not gossip. It's foundationally important communication. And they are collecting and sharing information that is incredibly valuable to them. And it is done in such a fundamentally different way than men do it that for forever,
Carter
42:40
forever, we just didn't understand it. And
Carter
42:42
And now that we can see it and we understand it,
Carter
42:45
It might be the most powerful force in politics. And when you think of any major political leader in the last 20 years in
Carter
42:54
in North America, or at least in the United States and Canada, most likely they were elected by women.
Carter
42:59
Jason Kenney was elected by women.
Carter
43:02
Justin Trudeau was elected by women.
Carter
43:04
Gondek, Nenshi, I would argue even Trump was elected by women. It was when women moved to him en masse from those small Midwestern towns that had been without work, and they were moving to protect the jobs of their families. It was a very simple kind of equation going way back to one of Corey's earlier points. So women move votes in a way that men just don't.
Annalise
43:31
Wise words, some marriage advice from Corey, some deep
Annalise
43:36
deep stuff from Carter. no marriage
Carter
43:38
marriage advice for me i can guarantee that
Annalise
43:43
um okay let's do one more quick segment and then uh it's friday night guys we'll wrap it up but i do i want to talk i
Annalise
43:52
to talk briefly about uh uh
Annalise
43:55
uh political babies the story out of white horse um where there's a city yeah i've been raging about this all week and i'm curious curious um about your perspective so there's uh for those who aren't aware white horse city councillor young city councillor her name is michelle friesen um she was elected in 2021 i believe and was the first indigenous woman to serve on white horse city council she had a baby in july so about seven months ago sometimes she brings them to council meetings and community events when her partner is out of town for work so both cbc and yukon news had stories this week week, quoting
Annalise
44:29
quoting Councillor Michelle Friesen, saying she's being pressured to stop bringing her baby to meetings. And then the mayor of Whitehorse confirmed that she's talked to the councillor and shared concerns and colleagues because, you know, the baby was like quiet when he was brand new, but now he's thriving and he's busy and he's a distraction.
Annalise
44:52
So what do you guys think? should babies be allowed in council chambers across our great country carter oh
Carter
45:01
oh good you came to me first that's great that is so good i am so happy you came to me first listen i think that um who
Carter
45:11
was it was kathleen ganley that brought her baby onto into the legislature when
Carter
45:15
when when her baby was first born i think that we you know we would rage to the end you know to the end of the earth if if there was a municipal leader who was uh who took a maternity leave from their public service right i think that we would lose their our minds um so it strikes me that bringing a baby into uh council chambers is probably a very good idea especially at the the beginning of of you know that relationship uh or you know when the baby's first born and the you know it's mom Mom was bringing the baby in. That's great.
Carter
45:51
But I want to add a but, and I want to add a but, and I would like to point to all the really smart feminist things that I said earlier in this episode before I add the but.
Corey
46:03
God. You're going there. Are you sure? There comes a time. Carter. This is the last off-ramp, but last off-ramp. Carter,
Corey
46:10
are you sure? There comes
Carter
46:11
comes a time when in a professional organization, organization um
Carter
46:16
um and i think that council is a professional organization oh
Corey
46:19
oh boy you have to
Corey
46:20
wait to respond you
Carter
46:22
you have to um you know put put it put the damn baby down put the damn baby down carter
Annalise
46:30
carter when does that time come i don't
Annalise
46:33
what's the age i
Carter
46:34
think that's probably up to the mother to decide or the parent that's bringing the child into the council so
Annalise
46:39
so in this case do you think that time the baby's seven months old has that time come i
Carter
46:44
i don't know i I don't know this kid. Sounds like it's pretty precocious.
Carter
46:50
Fucking nightmare child. All right.
Annalise
46:52
Corey, Corey, let's hear it. You know what?
Carter
46:54
The audience is on my side on this one, Hogan. Just know that. Just know the audience loves
Annalise
46:59
No, but you didn't say what the cutoff was. You're like keeping it super open-ended. Six
Corey
47:03
Six months. I mean, he's in the mushy middle again. Six
Annalise
47:06
where I want to end it.
Annalise
47:08
Six months and then no more babies. Deeply
Corey
47:11
Deeply arbitrary. Deeply arbitrary. Should have at least tied it to a development. milestone once
Annalise
47:16
once it's walking yeah yeah
Corey
47:18
yeah you've done you've done it barry carter listen
Carter
47:20
i wouldn't want you would you want zane's kid on this podcast right now i mean sure it would up the intellectual capacity a little bit but would we want zane's kid on the podcast i ask you okay
Corey
47:30
okay so here's the thing it
Corey
47:33
it you said a professional it's fuck this is ultimately going to come down to people for their philosophy about government right i personally believe a council is not a job I think it's a little bit different than that. I think in general, democratic service is not a job. We expect different things and we offer different things. And one of the reasons we are all doing it is to support the next generation and bring them forward. I don't think it's a bad idea to have kids around elected officials and remind them of, frankly, the next generation. and you talk about kathleen ganley yeah i
Corey
48:07
was a cabinet level official for the government of alberta kathleen would occasionally not always i wouldn't even say often bring her baby to cabinet best cabinet meetings best cabinet meetings because when there's a kid there people
Corey
48:19
people behaved better they modulated they were happy they were passing the baby around it
Corey
48:24
it was just it was a great energy and no one
Carter
48:26
one wanted to hold the baby too
Carter
48:27
too long they always wanted to get rid of the baby Just throwing that out there.
Corey
48:34
And, you know, ultimately, I don't believe if there's going to be council meetings in the evening and we're going to have these random events that we should say the kids shouldn't be there. God, I think you should be able to take your six-year-old to council and have them sit there and color and watch things. Well,
Annalise
48:50
Well, what Corey's saying actually is important context, Carter, and maybe I'll lay it out there because maybe your opinion will change. But these are evening meetings in Whitehorse. They're evening meetings.
Carter
49:01
babysitters don't work in the evenings in white horse
Carter
49:06
i'm now i'm doubling down i'm doubling down on this now yeah
Corey
49:10
not this is not a normal
Carter
49:16
yes it is do i pay you yes i do right is the meeting going to go ad infinitum no it's not do
Carter
49:21
do waitresses get to bring their child to to work no they do not not like which i mean again i mean zane's kid looks pretty sedate i mean we saw him at that religious indoctrination thing and you know it
Carter
49:35
it was out it's out yeah right
Annalise
49:39
right yeah for for as someone who recently also had a child for the first few months they spent a lot of time sleeping and they can do that on you and yes when they're six or seven months old they're a bit more active but This
Corey
49:54
comes down to a philosophy about government. No, it doesn't. It comes down to a philosophy about work. It
Carter
49:58
It comes down to a philosophy about, you know, are you able to give us your whole attention for four hours when we do a meeting?
Corey
50:08
hours when we do a meeting.
Corey
50:09
That's my fucking point. Your belief is that this is work. I do not believe it's work. You know how I know
Annalise
50:14
know it's work? I don't believe that public service is this nature.
Carter
50:17
We pay them to
Annalise
50:18
to do it. We didn't always, and by the way, Which
Annalise
50:21
Which would you rather have? An elected official sitting in council chambers, playing
Annalise
50:27
playing online poker for the entire council meeting, or
Annalise
50:30
or an elected official sitting in council chambers and their baby is occasionally there? I
Carter
50:35
I love the idea of
Annalise
50:35
of a baby being there. If it's work, should everyone not be doing work? i
Carter
50:38
i love the idea that a baby is there i do i honestly do but
Carter
50:42
but i think that if a disruptive baby is there then that's a different point isn't it am i just crazy am i just thinking you know like you
Carter
50:50
you know you go to the movie theater and aren't
Annalise
50:53
all babies disruptive like what's the definition of disruptive you've made an excellent
Carter
50:57
excellent point that that in the in in the first in the first few months you
Carter
51:03
know babies are very sedate they're very they're very chill and and it would would have virtually sometimes
Corey
51:08
sometimes you know what
Carter
51:09
what and when they're not i take a break go go outside the room no problem
Annalise
51:13
problem so here okay here's a question this up or you go ahead and then i'll i'll
Corey
51:17
i'll ask carter another question do you believe do you believe a council should be representative of the population absolutely
Carter
51:25
absolutely but i don't believe that a six-year-old should serve as a as a counselor right
Carter
51:33
-year-olds if we agree
Carter
51:35
mean that that would be more You
Corey
51:36
You said something really
Corey
51:38
really important, Stephen, and you didn't even mean to because that's just who you are. I'm just so good all the time.
Corey
51:45
You said something really important. You're paying them. Do you know why we pay politicians? We didn't always pay elected officials. Do you know why we pay elected officials? To
Carter
51:52
To enable those who can't afford to serve to serve.
Corey
51:56
Don't even make it about money. To enable those who wouldn't otherwise be able to serve to serve. That's what I said.
Corey
52:02
word did you change? None.
Carter
52:03
None. I agreed with you. Afford.
Corey
52:05
Afford. i took the word afford out because it's not about afford it's about ability it's about access and
Corey
52:10
and if we are going to have representative democracy we
Corey
52:14
need to be thinking about access in all sorts of ways the same way we would not say hey that counselor has a wheelchair but our council chamber is not meant for wheelchairs ergo they can't be a counselor we would agree to that absolutely not absolutely
Corey
52:29
sure so we agree to that wheelchair
Carter
52:30
wheelchair was to come that in your wheelchair wheelchair was to come in and
Carter
52:34
in the middle of the meeting shit itself i'm just throwing it out there in the middle
Corey
52:38
middle of the meeting do what did
Carter
52:39
did you say shit itself shit
Corey
52:40
shit itself the wheelchair shit
Carter
52:42
shit itself and put shit all over because it's not one of those normal shits it's
Corey
52:46
it's not the one i could not disagree with you more strongly here i could not disagree with you more strongly and if the
Corey
52:52
the voters believe it should be disqualifying that's going to be their choice to make but it's not
Annalise
52:56
choice for another three years here's the question here's a question for both of you is a four-year-old
Annalise
53:02
-year-olds to this no but
Annalise
53:03
but but i don't do we
Corey
53:04
we put a lego station do we put a lego station
Annalise
53:06
station up front i
Corey
53:07
i think we should we should first
Annalise
53:09
it didn't say in this article but i do want to just like as the recent mom put like a star on this conversation conversation of like the breastfeeding aspect of like if she's still breastfeeding or seven months old that could be a reason why she has them in council um so let's just like put that And I reiterate,
Carter
53:26
I don't have a problem with them being in council. I have a problem with them disturbing council. I
Carter
53:32
I have a problem when
Corey
53:33
when- They're a kid. They're a seven-month-old. Exactly. Man. Exactly.
Corey
53:37
This is a- No. No. This is very- You will never- Legal implications.
Corey
53:41
If I'm a seven
Corey
53:46
Yeah. Can I tell you a story?
Corey
53:50
My mom was a banker for
Corey
53:52
for many, many years. Now she works. She lives in South Carolina. But
Corey
53:56
she was a banker for many, many years. And when I was born, she was a banker. And she, when she was talking to my wife, when my wife was pregnant with our first kid, talking
Corey
54:06
talking about like parental
Corey
54:07
parental leave coming up, right? And of course, again, South Carolina, America doesn't have the same culture of parental leave to begin with. And Canada didn't back in the day when I was born. um and and so my wife is saying yeah i'm gonna take this year to to stay home with the child and raise the child and do the things you do during a parental leave and my mother's response being you know was like a you know powerful 80s lady she's like that's what you know four weeks after cory was born i i was breastfeeding him at my desk as i was doing job reviews for my staff right you know it's just this idea that like the beat goes on the work goes on right and there was It was this kind of norm that you couldn't actually distract
Corey
54:49
distract yourself by raising a kid, so you just plowed through. You're taking almost the opposite approach here. I'm not
Carter
54:55
not making that case. I'm saying— I
Corey
54:57
I know. You're taking almost the opposite approach. You're saying you don't plow through. You disregard this part of your life, and you avoid it. There are solutions all
Carter
55:07
is what I'm saying. What are the solutions? I'm just simply saying that the business of being a counselor— When someone comes in front of council, you're not just talking about what color the plant should be this year. You're determining the legal outcome of someone's application. You're determining whether or not something should be built. You're determining this is important stuff that if people are finding themselves being distracted by the child and unable to perform their duties, i think that it's important enough that people should say like i'm sorry we can't do this if if there's no distraction if there's no distraction i'm not i don't think there's a problem i
Carter
55:51
i love is there
Annalise
55:52
there not a whole is there not a whole world of distraction by the nature of people having cell phones and laptops in front of them i'm telling you
Annalise
55:59
you like there's lots of counselors that text the entire the entire council meeting like having sats through a lot of council meetings as the city hall reporter there's a lot of distractions that are not seven month old babies
Carter
56:11
someone who's bad counselor doesn't mean that you know that
Carter
56:14
we have to that that you
Carter
56:16
you change the rule i mean if i'm sitting there and and there's a crying child and i'm trying to figure out whether or not we should move forward on a land application i may not be able to give it my full attention okay
Annalise
56:28
okay but do you not think about like the future of that land is because there's like the future generation in front of you you've got like a no
Corey
56:34
no think about the generation here's the thing if you if you need to have an actual somebody to
Carter
56:38
to figure out whether or not your job's important i i question whether or not you should be serving okay
Corey
56:44
here's the thing yeah if
Corey
56:45
if somebody was serving in council you're so wrong i'm not wrong if somebody was serving in council and
Corey
56:53
got an accident and they became a paraplegic absolutely and the council chambers were not designed. Changed it. We would expect, right? And we wouldn't make that person pay to change it, would we? No, of course not.
Corey
57:06
So I think that there's also part of this conversation we haven't gotten to. Are you
Carter
57:10
you making the case for council paying for babysitting? I could get my head around that. No,
Corey
57:15
No, I'm making the, I'm getting, making the case, that's one solution, but I think I'm making the case for council finding a way to accommodate. It's not the counselor's problem. problem if council is going to be representative of many different people who are going to have many different needs and many different pressures that needs to be considered by council as a whole not the individual counselor so
Carter
57:35
so but how's the individual counselor that is on it like there's 17 counselors four counselors six counselors whatever the
Carter
57:43
is and there's also all of the staff and all of the people who have to come in there each
Corey
57:47
each of those people it's white horse but yeah listen this is
Carter
57:50
is a count what
Corey
57:50
what do you think like what do you think this looks No,
Carter
57:53
but oh, you're arguing it's okay for Whitehorse, but it's not okay for Calgary? No,
Corey
57:56
No, I'm not. I'm saying like
Corey
57:58
you're painting a picture of like an army of people like it's the U.S. Congress. We have a number
Carter
58:02
number of younger counselors now. In walks Jasmine Meehan with
Carter
58:05
with a baby in three years, right? Fantastic. I couldn't
Carter
58:10
more happy for her. Honestly, honestly couldn't be more happy for her. But if that baby is acting up and distracting and we're unable to conduct the meeting of counsel because the baby is acting up, I mean, no one is making the case that Courtney Penner should bring all of her kids in.
Carter
58:28
She's got as many kids as you, Corey.
Annalise
58:30
Even the word acting up, it's not acting up or misbehaving. It's a seven-month-old baby.
Carter
58:35
Yeah, they're not like heckling, man. And there's lots of places for seven-month-old babies. Seven-month-old babies belong in lots of different places.
Annalise
58:44
Yeah, but when you have meetings— You guys are going to be forced to write a written apology
Carter
58:48
You know it. When you have meetings, don't. You know you're going to have to write a written apology. That
Annalise
58:51
That happen in the evening outside of like normal daycare hours and you have daycares that are not taking. How elitist
Carter
58:57
elitist of you to assume that there are normal working hours for people.
Corey
59:04
hours of all the day. You going on the offensive is amazing. People work all
Carter
59:08
all hours of all the day and they don't have these options. Just because there's an elected counselor,
Annalise
59:13
they should have the opportunity to
Annalise
59:16
Find me a 24-hour daycare. They're few and far between in Calgary. Maybe
Carter
59:23
of Whitehorse, the great city of Whitehorse, I might add, should pony up for 24 hour daycare. I'm fine. Sounds
Annalise
59:31
Sounds great. And then what, the counselor jumps the line? Like,
Annalise
59:34
Like, where are you going with this? What
Carter
59:36
What do you mean the counselor jumps the line? What
Annalise
59:39
about the waitlist at these 24 hour a day daycares?
Corey
59:43
I'm going back to this. This is my core position.
Corey
59:46
You have a different view of what council is than I do. I believe council is a representative body, and that means we put a premium and we enable representation in all of its messy forms. In all of its messy forms. You seem to think it's a day job because you're a middle-aged white guy. No, I'm not thinking it's
Carter
1:00:03
it's a day job at all. I'm just simply saying, I am simply saying, there is a time and a place for everything. Very
Corey
1:00:09
Very simply. Okay, so
Annalise
1:00:10
so here's my last question on this, because apparently we could talk about this late into our Friday evening. Carter, you really surprised me with your thoughts on this. Well,
Carter
1:00:20
Well, I had to go first,
Carter
1:00:20
first, and this is your own fault for making me go first.
Annalise
1:00:25
And I say this as a young woman who has worked in politics, has covered politics. Yeah, much younger than you, Carter. Very
Annalise
1:00:36
but if we, if, if we want our elected officials to look more like the people they represent and be more diverse and be young and be female and, and et cetera, et cetera,
Annalise
1:00:48
is this not going to be more of a common thing? And, you know, Corey brought up that example of, um, minister Ganley in, in the legislature. And I was her press secretary. I started the job when her baby was like eight weeks old. she was the third um cabinet minister with the ndp to have a baby like and that that was celebrated and that was cool and i think there was a lot of young women who were like wow look at this you mentioned young counselors um but as as we see our elected officials you know perhaps be less like old and and stale and white and male than they were 10 20 30 years ago did you
Carter
1:01:23
you just call me stale did you just call me stale yeah i like i like to have stale Is
Annalise
1:01:27
Is this not, it was just for you, like, is this not going to be something that we're going to see more and more and outside of Whitehorse? I've
Carter
1:01:35
I've tried to convince women to run for office. And one of the women I was trying to convince did talk about how she wanted to have a baby. And I did tell her that having a baby should not be in any way, shape or form an impediment to running for office. But
Annalise
1:01:49
But now you're saying you can't bring that baby into your chambers. I'm saying that
Carter
1:01:53
that if the baby
Annalise
1:01:54
baby is misbehaving. yeah
Carter
1:01:56
yeah because at some point there is a point there is a place time and a place there's
Carter
1:02:02
there's all kinds of resources do
Annalise
1:02:03
do you remember what having a seven month old baby was like like they misbehave like on and off all the time i
Annalise
1:02:10
sweet angels one second and then they misbehave i
Carter
1:02:14
i do remember i remember being that parent also who said things like i will never take my child into a suit you know into a into a grocery store because it's so disruptive i've been there i've seen it all and then when I took my
Annalise
1:02:26
my children shouldn't be allowed in grocery stores oh no I I did I did
Annalise
1:02:31
children should not be allowed in grocery no
Carter
1:02:34
no this was back
Annalise
1:02:34
back before I had kids back
Carter
1:02:35
back before I had
Carter
1:02:36
had kids I thought man that's okay I
Corey
1:02:37
I understand what you're saying no no you thought before you yeah
Carter
1:02:41
yeah before I had kids it's like man why would you even bother you know just I mean I understand the challenges you're like just leave them
Annalise
1:02:46
them at home by themselves I've
Carter
1:02:49
had dozens of children And I've done a lot of work with when I have kids and my wife has also worked. We didn't have the benefits of maternity leave because we were entrepreneurs and we didn't get maternity leave when Heather, like Heather one year with the second kid missed out on maternity leave by I think 25 working hours, something ridiculous and got zero maternity leave for it. I've juggled all of these things that we're talking about, irregular hours, all the different things that happen. happen. I understand that it would be a hell of a lot easier to be able to take a kid into all these different situations. But I couldn't. And it wasn't wrong that I couldn't take them in. And your idea that you're simply drawing a circle around it and saying, see, it's different, Corey. See, it's different. That's not real world, buddy. That's not the way the world works. That's not the way the world's going to work. And it's not how we
Corey
1:03:42
design. You know what you're doing?
Corey
1:03:44
You're doing the thing where it's like, well, when I was a kid, my
Corey
1:03:48
my dad knocked me around and I turned out fine. When I was a kid, we didn't wear seatbelts in the backseat and I turned out fine. Don't do that. Don't deny people better than what you had because what you had wasn't very good. What you described there, it sounds like it sucked. And
Corey
1:04:03
And I'm sorry that you had to deal with that. that but
Carter
1:04:04
but you know what
Corey
1:04:05
what that doesn't mean other people need to deal with shitty situations i'm
Carter
1:04:08
trying to give them a shitty situation i'm
Carter
1:04:10
i'm trying to be able to
Carter
1:04:11
do the work in place that you grew up do the work of the elected office and and i think that rules that are set up that say you must attend every you know you must attend every meeting or if you miss three meetings in a row you're kicked off council those are the things that we should be addressing not this kind of window dressing of whether or not they they you know a kid should be able to attend uh a a council meeting. If you really want to make some changes, and I'm with you, let's make some changes. But if you really want to make changes, then address the ones that are actually prohibiting people from having children. And those are the rules that say you must leave. If you miss three meetings in a row, you're off council, right? Those are the ones that are actually prohibiting you from actually having a child. Whether or not you bring your child to council has no impact on on your ability to be a good or bad counselor. And that is my final argument.
Annalise
1:05:07
We're going to leave it there. We're not here all
Annalise
1:05:11
all night. Yeah. Cause I, there's much more I want to say, but I want to go enjoy my Friday. Less angry
Carter
1:05:16
angry or more angry.
Annalise
1:05:18
You may be more angry. I don't know about Corey. I can't tell based on his face. I'm
Corey
1:05:22
I'm so fed up.
Annalise
1:05:24
yeah, that, okay. You know, we're not even going to do lightning round tonight. No,
Corey
1:05:29
No, I think we should, we have to do like,
Corey
1:05:31
she's so angry she doesn't
Carter
1:05:32
doesn't even want to continue
Carter
1:05:32
this could be the last annalise i've
Annalise
1:05:34
i've only got one lightning round question oh
Corey
1:05:37
oh it's gonna be
Annalise
1:05:39
i hope it's about uh
Corey
1:05:40
uh children in council i hope so me too yeah
Annalise
1:05:44
uh see it's not even good anymore after the argument we just had lightning round we found out this week uh the mayor of edmonton and the premier of alberta met for the first time um
Annalise
1:05:55
um smith has been premier for five months
Annalise
1:06:00
Carter, let's start with you
Annalise
1:06:06
right time for a premier to meet the mayor
Annalise
1:06:11
mayor of that province's second largest city? Like how should that happen? Like a year into the term, a week? When is the right time for that to happen?
Carter
1:06:21
Well, I do know that managing the schedule is tough and, you know, back and forth like that. But generally speaking, you should be able to meet with the mayors of the top two cities and maybe like a joint meeting at a mayor's conference or something like that with the smaller cities within, I want to say, a couple of months. It's important to meet with the mayors. It's also, I think, really important and incumbent upon any premier or mayor to just arbitrarily throw a child into that meeting. And just to remind you of the importance of the issues and the impact that they're going to have on future generations.
Annalise
1:07:10
Corey, when is the right time for a premier to meet with the mayor of that province, the second largest city?
Corey
1:07:17
You know what? Carter's not wrong about the schedule. It is really difficult to coordinate schedules for premier's offices. And it's easy to say like, oh, they're the mayor. Of course you should meet with them right away. It's like, okay, well, what about the minister of health for the federal government? What about the premier of British Columbia? What about the prime minister? You know, you got a lot of important meetings you got to slot in.
Corey
1:07:38
I agree it should be in the first couple of months. I would argue it should probably be in the first month. And if it's not in the first month, you're probably signaling something. And it's not even so much about the month, but it's the things that have happened in those five months that make me say, well, how? How is this possible? Because it's not as though the legislature is in some remote city in the middle of nowhere. It's in Edmonton. And we've gone through a session of the legislature and we're in a second one here. And it feels like, yeah, maybe if you're in Calgary, it's a little harder to get up to see the mayor because you're coordinating schedules, but you're not necessarily in Calgary all the time. right but the seat of government is in edmonton you are in edmonton all of the bloody time you must be able to find some time to to pull together with this individual and again not
Corey
1:08:25
not just about the time also about the issues they're dealing with you have put sheriffs into downtown edmonton you made a big show of it you didn't meet with the fucking mayor of edmonton to do it that is what's a little bit weird to me right yeah
Corey
1:08:39
because you want to be able to say you've consulted with people before you take actions or else those actions are really not for their benefit they're clearly theater
Corey
1:08:47
theater so so yeah i'm shocked by the length of time i feel like that's outside of what i would consider normal bounds for the mayor of edmonton i am shocked by uh you know the number of like events
Corey
1:08:59
events that occurred physically in edmonton uh that would have occurred in that time period where they couldn't find a time to coordinate those two busy schedules and i'm shocked that based on the subject matter and some of the investments and some of the things they've done in edmonton that they haven't sat down with the mayor of edmonton so like on three categories i'm it's a bit of a head scratcher and i don't quite understand how with all of the very big priorities going on they didn't find the time and i will say like i feel like if it was a conservative mayor of edmonton i don't think it would have taken five months i think some of this is politics i think a lot of it's politics and uh and that's unfortunate because government works best when government works together and the cities are an important part of the equation but
Carter
1:09:38
but you would have have had a child put into the meeting right like just 100
Corey
1:09:44
i would have i would have probably brought all of
Annalise
1:09:46
of my kids like many babies into that meeting okay we're gonna leave it there that's a wrap on episode 1042 of the strategist my name is annalise blingfield and with you as always steven carter and cory hogan