Episode 1071: The Rapporteur Special

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 1071. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan. Why'd you lose, Zain? Why'd you lose? Zain, why'd

Carter 0:09

why'd you lose? Come on, Zain. Answer the question.

Zain 0:13

Do you want the real answer? Yeah. Welcome back, Zain. Why'd you lose? Lose.

Zain 0:20

We underestimated the Alberta party.

Zain 0:25

I don't know what to tell you, man. I don't know what to tell you. I thought, listen, Listen, if they didn't have Greg Clark or myself as leader, then it just wouldn't go anywhere. And it went somewhere, man. It went somewhere. It went

Zain 0:35

to, I don't know what it went to. I wish I had the number in front of me so I could say it went to. It's not a big number, Zane. It's not a big number.

Zain 0:42

And, you know, we spent too much. We spent both not enough and too much attention on the Alberta Party, Corey. That is what ended up happening. Okay. Well,

Carter 0:52

Yeah. That's a really good answer, Zane. Better than I expected. Thank you.

Zain 0:57

What went so wrong? What went so wrong with the Alberta Party? I heard you last episode, I think was one of you, you know, all the white commentators out there that you'll merge together. So I don't know which one of you. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah.

Zain 1:10

That said, is a rock dead? Is that you, Corey? That sounds like Corey. yeah that

Zain 1:15

was pretty good um is is is the fact that the alberta party um has become absolutely uh a meme and i think it has more meme value currently and is being sold for parts online rather than actually being a political party do you feel like carter after 10 years it's finally fulfilled its destiny end to end uh trying to it's almost like this 10-year office style mockumentary that finally had its final season where it was sold for parts to the twitterverse oh

Carter 1:46

oh no it's going to keep going i mean if the uh if

Corey 1:50

if we can just like the office

Corey 1:51

doesn't know when to

Carter 1:52

to quit exactly uh

Carter 1:53

uh if we can keep the alberta liberal party surely we can keep the uh the alberta party i mean both

Carter 2:00

both of them uh are still around it's it's quite staggering

Zain 2:04

uh listen i am back i can talk about alberta politics but who wants to look in the rear we do yeah i mean why why why do you actually

Corey 2:12

actually want to look at multiple

Zain 2:17

with you and you're

Zain 2:19

trying to digest the the election i feel like you got some good points in there that's all i'll say i feel like you got some good insights in there i did like you're saying i don't know if this was a patreon episode i i had a lot of time while i was in toronto a lot of walking in that city uh that one has to do um because if you take the ttc you will will be stabbed that's right here

Corey 2:38

not great i'm just gonna say that it's fine it's

Zain 2:42

it's fine i'm being facetious not

Carter 2:43

not that are you

Zain 2:44

you sounded extremely serious until you take the bus

Zain 2:47

until you realize what you said yeah that was a very carter-like moment for you cory um a lot of walking a lot of walking you're just liabilities just flash in front of your eyes uh and i heard that episode you guys did last time i like the one where you guys talked about advice that you'd given to each of the ndp and the ucp and what was wrong uh like usual carter uh really blew the segment up and the conclusion was you guys were perfect there was nothing you said that was wrong hey

Corey 3:13

spoilers for people who

Zain 3:14

who haven't listened to episode

Zain 3:15

1070 was okay well there you go let me just spoil it about the podcast sticks to brand oh there you go fucking

Zain 3:26

i will talk about the provincial election i'll talk about it maybe later but i do want to i will have a big segment on this episode where I talk about what happens with Danielle Smith going forward. That is the most fascinating. Oh, my God. Are we still doing this thing

Zain 3:37

where you're pretending the NDP doesn't exist?

Zain 3:40

No, no. You're really

Corey 3:41

out of this election coverage here. How

Zain 3:43

How much are you going to milk this for? The story is Danielle Smith

Zain 3:48

I want to talk about it. The story even more than that is one guy named David Johnson. Let's go to our first segment. Our first segment mr johnson goes to wash his reputation cory that's nice that's good you get it yeah mr generic white name goes to and then don't finish washington but go with wash your reputation that was this that was the construction this is what we missed

Zain 4:11

this is what we missed i mean

Carter 4:12

mean miss annalise just does topics and she doesn't try she doesn't even try and do jokes and fail so this is she's

Zain 4:21

she's she's mailing it in

Carter 4:21

in she's mailing it in kind of like jokes

Zain 4:23

jokes all by ourselves

Carter 4:24

ourselves and this is so much nicer to have you back yeah

Zain 4:28

yeah is it to is it nicer to have me kind

Corey 4:30

kind of though i did well

Zain 4:31

well take the lowest

Corey 4:32

lowest common denominator set the floor zane and then that that makes the ceiling look closer can

Zain 4:36

can we talk about this dude i don't even think we've talked about david johnson's coming out and saying i have done the shit and the shit says we're not doing a public inquiry have we talked about no we haven't because we're shocked okay we have not talked about that we have not talked about the response uh from the conservatives we've not not talked about the lack of response to the liberals, but I want to start here. David Johnston has actually hired Navigator. His office is confirmed on Friday. In an email to CTV News, his spokesperson said the special rapporteur has hired Navigator. When we kind of get further into the understanding of what we call in the consulting biz, the scope, Stephen Carter, we call it the scope. We're realizing that they're helping him with support as related to speeches, speeches media appearances uh you know uh helping him with social media analysis and drafting communications materials like press releases let's start here before we actually get to his conclusion because i think this is really interesting like the over the top line on his conclusion is that there was not a public inquiry we're not going to do one i'm the special rapporteur everyone said that there was a a crisis of credibility that he was facing he had to call public inquiry he said a public inquiry would be wholly unsatisfying canadian public so i'm not going to do one instead i'm going to do this panel and this traveling circus show to kind of examine what happens um but he doesn't call one and then carter he's now calling navigator to to help him and assist him talk to me about the hiring of navigator first and i actually want to go to the issues interestingly

Carter 6:09

interestingly i just rebranded my company from decide campaigns to decide uh crisis campaigns campaigns um when your crisis communication strategy needs a crisis communication strategy so we're going to pick up all the people who hire navigator and do their you know do the crisis communications for the crisis communications firm it's going to be fantastic it's really smart

Corey 6:30

smart you're like one of the little fish that sucks on the other fish yeah

Carter 6:33

yeah i'm going to make a fortune i'm going to make a fortune um i've

Zain 6:37

i've just announced a new firm which is uh whatever carter misses and And if you've heard of the pod, he misses a lot. We will pick up. We'll pick up. And we will help your crisis strategy. Corey, I'm going to you. I

Carter 6:50

I had a... Okay.

Carter 6:52

Initial comments will come back to you, Carter.

Zain 6:55

Carter. I know you've

Carter 6:55

got... You took my little joke.

Carter 6:58

Didn't like my joke. I took the

Zain 7:00

the joke as the response.

Carter 7:01

Yes, I did. Corey,

Corey 7:04

Look, it's obviously not a great idea to hire a crisis communications company whose slogan is when you can't afford to lose when you are trying to look like a nonpartisan representative who is trying to balance things equally. Like, I mean, this is fundamentally my problem. He has hired a crisis communications firm, well known and has built a brand and curates a brand and fosters a brand for trying to win. And that's just the wrong energy you need to bring to something like this, where you're the special rapporteur. Like what is winning here? What is winning for you, David Johnston? That's the question that I think Canadians are seized with when they hear that you are trying to hire Navigator because yes, well, I think that there is communications needs for any kind of job like this. Hiring Navigator and hiring Navigator with the brand that Navigator carries. I

Corey 7:48

I mean, hopefully Navigator's first piece of advice was you probably shouldn't have hired Navigator, but here we are with the contract and now let's try to do better going forward because it carries a bit of a charge that you are now going to have to deal with for however long this clown car continues to drive down the road.

Zain 8:05

It's actually a really Really excellent point. You know, since we're so intimately familiar with Navigator, that part really didn't even stick out to me that in the general public's eye, if they know anything beyond Gian Gomeschi and Peter Slowly and Hockey Canada, is that they kind of have this binary win loss positioning, which is which is fine and perhaps confident in like the political world or those binary situations where win and lose. to your point, Corey, is very clear that there's a charge against you, that there's a crisis where you got to kind of come out from under it and restore your reputation. In this particular case, I think you make such an excellent point that what is win for someone who says that they're trying to be above it all? Carter? Well,

Carter 8:49

Well, I mean, we've talked about this before. I mean, he is not we

Carter 8:54

were trying when we were just giving advice for what should happen or could happen. A lot of of the advice was trying to remove it from that political win-loss arena, where, you know, if you keep this entire project, entire process in win-loss, you're only hurting the country, right? Like, this is external interference in our elections, external interference in our, you know, electoral processes. And frankly, it shouldn't be dictated by wins and losses. It should be dictated by everybody stopping this from happening and stopping China from interfering in our our elections, but instead it has turned into a partisan political piñata.

Carter 9:33

piñata. And I just don't understand how, how we got to this place, both from the liberals point of view and frankly, from the, uh, from the, the conservatives and Pierre Palliev. I think that we should be above this type of behavior. And I, I certainly think that, um, David Johnson should be above it. Uh, cause he's supposed to be, he's

Carter 9:54

he's supposed to be literally the guy, uh, above the whole, the whole situation but he's just he's now as embroiled in the win and losses as trudeau and

Zain 10:06

yeah carter i want to get there cory respond to this and then i've got a question for both of you as it relates to crisis communications and david johnson before we kind of zoom out to the broader story so

Corey 10:17

so the hiring of a crisis communications firm is problematic to me because of all of the things i've said but also because it suggests that there is a managing of reputation that's going to occur, which I think when your job is to go turn over rocks and put light on things, it's not great.

Corey 10:32

And let me just throw, I think, a not too unrealistic hypothetical at you here.

Corey 10:37

David Johnson has come out and said, we don't need a public inquiry. It would be unsatisfying. That's the same excuse I use to not give my children the things they want too, right? But say

Corey 10:47

say he got to a fork in the road now, and there was additional advice that came out or or something turned up that made him think an inquiry was now necessary. And

Corey 10:56

he's suddenly facing a choice between his reputation or the security of this country.

Zain 11:01

feel like there's a conflict there?

Corey 11:04

there's always going to be that challenge with things like this. But when you hire a firm whose job is to curate reputations,

Corey 11:11

that raises that challenge in my mind a little bit more clearly than perhaps if he was just going to say, I'm going to let the chips fall where they may. Yes, I need communications assistance for this. Yes, I'm going to make sure I don't say something stupid That might actually cause challenges for everybody. But when you hire a firm who has the reputation Navigator has, you know, I'm not even talking win-loss here. I'm talking about the reputation to be pugilistic, to fight, to go out there and to say, we're going to get you to the finish line no matter what.

Corey 11:41

And your job is decidedly to make choices as to whether you should even get to the finish line. Your job is to decide what's in the best interest of the country, even if you can't tell the country everything, right? Isn't that exactly why we're not doing this inquiry to begin with? Because there are some things you just can't bring forward. Like there's just such a disconnect for me when I think about those two things.

Zain 12:00

There's three threads I want to talk about. There's the liberals overall. Carter brought up this point around like, you know, how liberals and David Johnson were caught flat footed. There's the overall sort of decision point, why Johnson kind of led into this decision. And there's a bit on the legacy in terms of like, how do you repair that in some ways? Because Johnson is a guy who's got a story, right? And he's got a legacy prior to this. And how do you ensure that this is not a legacy defining moment? moment but before that carter can i get nerdy about yes political

Zain 12:28

political like the politics of hiring an agency maybe that's the best way to put it like why do we know that he hired navigator like the three of us worked at a consulting firm where there was multiple layers of security to ensure that certain clients did not have public exposure oh yeah and i'm just trying to figure that out from my perspective like did he feel like this was a good strategy or like even to confirm that that this is what the case was. Talk to me about this because there's the mechanics here that also there's the hiring, which I'm in agreement with your guys' perspectives on that, by the way. But there's also the mechanics of this we're intimately familiar with. There's multiple layers of institutional security at these firms to ensure that something like this can remain deeply confidential should that be the client's wish. Let's

Carter 13:14

Let's be clear. I mean, to be honest, hiring a communications firm is probably probably wise in terms of what the special rapporteur is doing and what the next phase of this is going to be. Going out and holding these hearings, you're going to hire a communications firm, right?

Carter 13:29

right? And the previous firm that we worked at, H&K, or even Navigator, could

Carter 13:34

could fit that bill under the engagement services that are traditionally provided. Because keep in mind, Navigator doesn't just do crisis communications. They do the full suite of communications that everybody does, because they they do what all of us did which is take all the money right yo you do that type of we do too well that is we do too yeah

Carter 13:53

yeah that was basically our slogan at h and k we do that too so you know we get you

Carter 14:02

you hire navigator to do your engagement structures right

Carter 14:05

right are we are we going to be fussed by that maybe not maybe maybe it gets spun but there wasn't even a there wasn't even an attempt to say, well, we didn't hire Navigator for crisis communications. So someone has let it slip that they've hired Navigator to do not just communications, but crisis communications. I mean, that's ridiculous. That's kind of unheard

Carter 14:29

unheard of in the crisis communications field. But it makes me wonder that someone wanted it known. And I don't know which side wanted it known, but whoever the side was, was pretty stupid.

Carter 14:43

doesn't seem to help anyone.

Zain 14:44

Corey, you've got any thoughts on

Corey 14:45

Yeah, well, simply, the government can't generally hire a confidential contractor, and a government RFP is going to define the scope in a way that's pretty hard to avoid. So guess what? If you hire them for crisis, that's probably going to show up in some way. And yes, I understand you can just say general communication services. But the reality is, if they've structured it in a way that specifically speaks to crisis communications, well, let's put it this way. what's worse than hiring navigator looking like you're trying to hide the fact that you hired navigator and there might have been a desire to say well this is coming out anyways we're going to manage this coming out and we're going to put it out in a way that we think is a little bit more confident maybe not even controlled but confident as though we're saying this is a communications firm we have communications needs and now we hired navigator they're one of the best who's going to dispute that well

Corey 15:31

well you know what i i think that the challenge is we've already gone through But I can understand the logic train, flawed though it may be, that led them to this particular moment.

Zain 15:41

Oh, I'm glad we got a bureaucrat on the show. Yeah, thank goodness. This is good. Very helpful. Yeah, no, thank God. Thank for buzz killing that conversation.

Corey 15:48

Corey, while we're on.

Zain 15:51

tinfoil hat and I put it back in the drawer using some very bland government tease here. But

Zain 16:01

Hey, Carter, let's talk about this. Let's talk about legacy. Because I did say it was one of the three things on my list. And it is how does how does Johnson prevent prevent

Zain 16:10

prevent this from being the defining point of his legacy? He probably has to use the broader instrument of time to help heal some things. But is what can you do right now while you're in it? As you think of David Johnson, the you know, just the the the the former governor general, the law dean, the guy who's written volumes on on what it means to be Canadian as a treatise. Like, how does he prevent this from being what defines him at the end of it? I

Carter 16:36

think just by the sheer volume, we're going to remember a lot about David Johnson.

Carter 16:41

But it's going to be difficult because this is going to be a chapter for sure. And I think that if you wanted this to not be the defining moment of your career, you really needed to approach this differently. You needed to understand the particular political dynamics and come back. Like, I don't disagree with David Johnson. I don't think that this is going to be satisfactory if we hold this inquiry in the public eye. I think that there'd be so many times that they'd have to say, I'm sorry, we have to go in camera. We're going to have to ask everybody to leave. Then you come back in and you're back in for about four and a half minutes. And then you have to go back in camera because we're going to, you know, we're going to hear some more testimony from another person who can't be identified. And this is public, blah, blah, blah. I

Carter 17:21

totally expect that the public would be totally pissed if this was a public inquiry, but

Carter 17:28

this needed to become not political. And when Justin Trudeau appointed David

Carter 17:36

David Johnson to be the special rapporteur, David Johnson, we knew that this was going to be a political problem in

Carter 17:46

X number of weeks. David Johnson should have known that as well. And David Johnson should have done what needed to be done to take the... Do you struggle saying Jonathan?

Carter 17:55

Jonathan? I just feel like I have... Every time I say it, I get a dick.

Carter 17:58

And I can't stop.

Carter 18:03

It's the worst. I am having trouble saying Jonathan.

Zain 18:08

were going to offer you some support there, but then it just became just

Carter 18:10

just weirder. Make fun of my speech. I'm not done. Here's the thing. I think that he should have tried to take the political sting out of this i don't know if he reached out how would he reach out to jagmeet singh you reach out to uh pierre polyev and you sit down and

Corey 18:26

tried do you remember the letter the letter then

Carter 18:29

then then you gotta then you gotta go back to the prime minister and say i'm not able to take the political stain out of this and and don't do the work if you want to protect your legacy you don't do the work and say this isn't going to work because we've got these these political people who want to make this a political process, and therefore it must be resolved in the political lens.

Zain 18:52

Corey, let's talk about the early days on this. Do the liberals just underestimate how much the friend of Chalet Buddy, Trudeau Foundation, close friends line would penetrate and how it would actually undermine credibility? Because I take you back to our initial text conversation, right? Remember when I said, I'm like, this is is great and you were like uh not so quick i

Corey 19:17

i think i was very quick to say this was thank you zane for once again pulling back the curtain and showing that you

Zain 19:22

you were right well

Zain 19:24

well no i think i think my instinctive response with like one second to think about it right like the article came i'm like smart like it and

Zain 19:33

and then like with five more minutes to think about it i was like oh yeah this is probably problematic especially because i didn't i didn't i didn't know about the foundation stuff and like many so did you just feel like the liberals kind of did a version of my thinking being unimpeachable, whatever. They didn't take it seriously. I know we discussed a bit of that, but walk me through it now seeing the results. Do you pinpoint it to something else? Well,

Corey 19:55

Well, it's not so much in my opinion. The foundational challenge is not that they underestimated how much of a rocky ride he would get. It's that they overestimated how clever a choice he was. And we talked a bit about this on the pod.

Zain 20:06

pod. We did. We did talk about that. This

Corey 20:07

This notion that it was as soon as you use Johnson because he was appointed by a conservative, conservative everybody was supposed to lay down their swords and say oh well i guess he's perfect then as

Corey 20:17

as though because you've appointed somebody for one thing in the past 15 years you're therefore obliged to accept them for all things going forward like that's just not how the world works and i think steven is absolutely correct um about saying okay this is a political challenge it's got to be settled in the political arena but let's not fucking kid ourselves the liberals tried to to make a political decision in the appointment of Johnson. That was a gotcha moment they were attempting to set up. Like, fuck you, you're going to have to accept Johnson. So let's not pretend the conservatives are the only ones with blood on their hands as we're talking about the death of this particular integrity around the David Johnson inquiry here. And look, I think that is fundamentally the problem. It probably would have been better if the minute, and

Corey 21:02

and I can understand why all of the parties would want to fight this, but the minute that Pierre Polyev made clear he was not going to meet with him, he was going to be that shitheel who was sending these snarky comments to David Johnson, David Johnson should have said, you know what? The entire purpose of this is to build confidence, and it's clear to me that we will not have the ingredients to build confidence as long as the House is not willing to entertain conversation.

Carter 21:29

It is much easier for David Johnson to say, I do not have the confidence of this House, than it is for Justin Trudeau to find out he does not have the confidence of this House. And

Corey 21:37

And by the way, he literally does not have the confidence of the House. The House has voted on this particular matter. On this particular matter. In some way, talk

Zain 21:46

talk to me about Johnson's decision, right? So we talked about the liberal side. Corey, I'm going to give you a shot at the legacy. I'll just do that at the end here. But let's talk about Johnson's decision, right? He comes out, they have a press conference, and he ultimately concludes that we're not doing a public inquiry. To me, there's a bit of like, you know, you know hiring navigator is on one end of like a win-loss binary but in some ways there was like no winning strategy that he like he must have known or he must have not cared about the political sort of ramifications of him coming out many weeks later as this tension has been getting uh you know as it's been getting even more tense i should say and the temperature has been getting higher and higher and then saying yeah we're not doing it um do you feel like from

Zain 22:30

from your perspective perspective like how would you counsel a person who's going to make that decision know that there's a political consequence to it and while they can't be partisan they do have to not they have to at very least be you know politically not tone deaf like what was the line how would you've coached and counseled johnson as you would have was about to kind of make that that announcement a few a few weeks ago now yeah

Corey 22:53

yeah in some ways i think there's a parallel to crime and i'm going to use it because we've talked a lot about crime in the last bit about how there's the actual actual physical safety and then there's the psychological safety and that's an important component of it here too and so when people are talking about yeah but crime stats say in the 90s crime was worse blah blah blah that's okay but people don't feel safe and you've got to look at the psychological safety that people are feeling dented similarly i would say to david johnson

Corey 23:19

and david you're right honorableness whatever you're supposed to call a former gg listen

Corey 23:24

listen i understand that you're looking at this particular matter and you're looking at it through a lens that says based

Corey 23:29

based on the evidence you have at hand you don't feel the need for these things but there is a psychological safety about canadian elections that you are not fully considering at this particular moment here or maybe that's not even fair maybe the thing i would be saying to him zane is i really need you to think about the psychological safety of canadians in these moments here too the psychological comfort canadians have that their elections

Corey 23:50

elections will be free and fair and that has to be a serious consideration not just the nuts and bolts It's not just whatever you're hearing from CSIS, the RCMP, from the departments, from the prime minister's office and the interviews you've had. You need to think about this country in broader sense, because we are in a democracy. And fundamental to all of it working is that we have confidence in the systems, and that requires involving the people who are using those systems. Yeah.

Zain 24:14

So Carter, Corey would have used psychological safety as a way to kind of make the political point to him to make sure he doesn't blow this up politically, which we all kind of agree he did. Carter, your take on that and what would you have advised John? I think

Carter 24:26

think the problem with with Corey's take is that at the end of the day, it is not going to be effective for for

Carter 24:35

this to come to a public inquiry. Like the problem is you're dealing with a national security like the from the very beginning. What was called for in a public inquiry is not the tool that should be used to fix this particular problem. You are essentially bringing a hammer to a screw. it will you know maybe it'll get in but it probably won't uh or actually more more aptly

Carter 24:57

aptly probably bringing a hammer to an ice pitcher um like it's just it's a it's not going to work uh you can't do this type of thing in the public eye and johnson recognizes that um i think that i think that trudeau recognizes that and frankly i think that pierre polyev recognizes that but

Carter 25:17

but they don't give a shit because like pierre polyev doesn't give a shit because he's winning political points and that's a significant problem carter

Zain 25:26

carter will tell me let's me put this in a binary what is politically better for the liberals a wholly unsatisfactory public inquiry or no public inquiry whatsoever because

Zain 25:38

because of the fact that it could be wholly i have

Carter 25:39

have no idea what do you pay a larger

Zain 25:42

larger political price on you don't we

Carter 25:44

we are so far down this this rabbit hole there we are so We are in such a problem for the liberals. I'm not sure what actually works for them in this particular moment. And I will defer to my good friend, Corey Hogan, who no doubt has a better answer than I have no idea.

Zain 26:00

Corey, I just try to make it a binary, even though it's not a fair one. What's better for the liberals politically? A wholly unsatisfactory public inquiry, kick the can down the road, punt it, right? The guardrails or what we could or could not say in that public inquiry were already determined for us. Sorry, fucking we kind of told you that. Or the Johnson track right now where they're taking even more kicks to the shins, but it might actually have some upside for them because it may have been the right call to not go down the public inquiry route from a pure political, political strategy perspective. You have a thought on that? it

Corey 26:32

it yeah well i'm quite sure what they're thinking is we just take our lumps we keep our head down we don't fuel this fire we don't talk about it because we don't want to be the people who throw gasoline on this particular bonfire and we'll get through this we just need to get through this kind of calmly and quietly and patiently i'm quite sure that's the liberal strategy and it remains to be seen whether it will work or not but i have a lot of reason to believe it will not work let's start start with the obvious it's a minority government and jagmeet singh has made a pretty absurd comment about how he doesn't want to have an election well there are challenges with the election i i mean let's all try to point out the logical flaw in that if the challenges with the election might be with the people who are in power right maybe we'll set that aside for one particular moment a little bit of a loophole to let the liberals in government forever because people don't have confidence in them pretty

Corey 27:22

pretty weird but i'm going to set that one aside for a minute so we'll

Zain 27:25

we'll discuss i said it's shortly yes yeah minority

Corey 27:27

minority government big challenge okay number two we've talked about this china is not going away there are going to be other issues on china you're not going to be able to ride this out because five months later there'll be something else five months after that something else because the world is not staying still and i guarantee you there's a whole bunch of shit that we don't know about challenge three the

Corey 27:49

the people that do know something about it have have clearly shown themselves to be leakers. There are leaks in the security apparatus somewhere, and we're going to continue to be kind of fed a drip, I believe, anytime anything kind of comes out on this front. And frankly, one of the strongest reasons to have a public inquiry, in my personal opinion, is because we've got leaks coming out of our national security apparatus. I want to know who the fuck is doing that, and I want them to go to jail if they've been doing it illegally and for political reasons. Simple as that for me, right?

Corey 28:17

Yes, we have police. Yes, we have people who can investigate these things. But you know what is also a pretty bad look?

Corey 28:24

Arresting people, and you don't know why? Because it has to do with national security. So it's time to have this in the light of day. The Inquiries Act, I would challenge most people to even to tell me what the Inquiries Act allows and affords. here's the bottom line it affords certain powers of subpoena and oath and it's going to bring professionals together to look at an issue that frankly probably needs some looking at and the problem the liberals have is that foundational reality is at odds with their strategy and when your strategy is at odds with reality you're

Corey 28:55

you're more likely than not going to lose yeah

Carter 28:57

yeah maybe the challenge with that cory is that you know you're talking about people being arrested not being able able to be seen in the light of day you're

Carter 29:04

you're still not going to be able to be seen in the light of day because so much of this public inquiry is not going to be public i

Carter 29:10

mean how do you hold a public inquiry where a

Carter 29:14

a percentage pick a percentage i don't care what the percentage is but a significant percentage of that public inquiry is going to be held behind closed doors because it turns out that if you talk about it in in you know open session um the chinese will be listening and the chinese are in fact the problem in this i mean you

Carter 29:34

you know the liberals aren't the problem the liberals aren't the issue the chinese are the issue and yet the liberals have somehow managed to make it about themselves again you

Corey 29:43

you know it's just the

Corey 29:45

the well the liberals might be the issue i don't

Corey 29:47

of reject you coming to that come on

Carter 29:51

on we've been spied upon by the chinese so it's obviously the liberals fault they've

Carter 29:56

they've been impacting our elections they've been pushing the buttons so it's the liberals fault they push everybody's buttons here's

Corey 30:03

here's where we're starting the accusation the thing that is behind all of this the challenge that we have right now is that china may have been interfering in elections to the benefit of the liberals and the suggestion is the liberals didn't do enough because it was to their benefit so yeah i mean that would fundamentally be a problem with our governing party it is not proven that is a pretty big charge that's been leveled out there but it's a charge that's been leveled and i think we need to get to the bottom and there's no way to

Carter 30:28

to We need to get to the bottom of it in public, in the public, in

Carter 30:31

in the public. Yeah, so

Corey 30:31

so we're going to let the government do it? No,

Carter 30:33

No, we can't. How do you want to do it?

Carter 30:36

You're going to do a public inquiry, and we're going to do what in terms of solving it?

Carter 30:40

Not a damn thing. So here's the thing. The things that you want to solve. Let

Zain 30:44

Let me add my general cynicism back to it. Who cares about solving it? Talk to me about the politics of it.

Zain 30:51

Can the liberals successfully just kick this down the road? Which is why I go back to my original question. is a public inquiry despite it being wholly unsatisfactory the right political play here let me just impress upon that one more time to see if there's any clarity i have from you carter on this and corey you wanted to jump in first but carter think about that in

Carter 31:08

in the yeah oh corey's gonna jump i'll tell you yeah

Zain 31:11

yeah this is jumping first

Corey 31:11

first this is where whatever

Carter 31:12

whatever you've got in your hand looks like a johnson it's

Corey 31:16

it's a flashlight it's a dick okay a

Corey 31:21

Here is the thing. Everything I said, reality

Corey 31:24

reality is going to be their enemy on this particular one. Can they just continue to ignore reality? Can they continue to go down this until their government falls or not?

Corey 31:34

Yeah, it's certainly- Like we think it's not going to definitely- Well, we'll see. Like at a certain point, the absurdity of his position might force him into a challenge. No,

Carter 31:42

No, that never happens.

Carter 31:43

Not what I'm saying. Yeah.

Corey 31:46

look, I think that's the problem.

Corey 31:49

Is it victory if you just say, man, we managed not to have an inquiry, but our government fell and we lost to Pierre Polyev and now we're the third party because the liberal vote is so efficient that we get zero seats when we don't get the government. I mean, that's a problem too. And that's a challenge that they have right now. It's time to start cleaning up this particular fucking mess. And they have a lot of bad decisions in front of them. They had better decisions several months ago when they could have just called the inquiry and managed it and shaped it. And given Pierre Polyev, his particular moment in the sun,

Corey 32:19

because frankly, you give a man enough rope and he can hang himself in those situations too. Just ask McCarthy about that. But there is, you know, there's not a lot of good choices now. You're going to have to pick the least bad choice. And frankly, your

Corey 32:34

your least bad choice is still an inquiry. you

Carter 32:37

know what really pisses me off about what cory just said like the cory you know cory being so emphatic cory being so comfortable you know certain that the least bad choice is to host the public inquiry the the absolute confidence that that prick had when he said it you know what really pisses me off he's

Carter 32:53

he's absolutely right at this stage there is no other option and cory also said and this oh cory

Carter 33:01

cory said months ago right that if you if you're sitting there and you're doing crisis communications and you say where will we be at some point don't fight being at that point just get to that point and here we are there

Carter 33:14

there was probably going to need to be need to be a public inquiry because pierre because your primary opposition is prepared to play politics with national security and by god if you're not using that fucking line and they haven't been they They haven't been – they're

Carter 33:29

they're so bad at this, Corey.

Carter 33:32

They're so bad. Yeah.

Corey 33:35

Yeah, well, and look, and I think one of the things the liberals have fallen into a bit of a trap on is they're sort of bemoaning privately

Corey 33:41

privately Pierre Polyev's behaviors. But what are they doing about it? And so, like, here's the thing. He's not going to change his behaviors. You continue to go down this path. Everybody can see where this is going. so either you

Corey 33:54

know you pick up your baseball bat and you do your best uh you know de niro in untouchables yeah

Corey 34:00

right oh shit i didn't say dave well

Carter 34:03

well it was the you know it's it's because it was predated people today predated you know the unofficial

Corey 34:12

or you know or you change your strategy here and changing your strategy might be accepting that inquiry but what what they're doing right now.

Corey 34:19

I don't get it.

Zain 34:21

Corey, I'm going to give you an opportunity on this. I didn't come to you on this. Round us out on if you were in the position right now as a communications and strategy expert to help David Johnson with his legacy and crystallizing what he can. And of course, legacies are crystallized, you know, further down the line and in many different parts and many different volumes. But you are trying to help him ensure that this isn't a defining or focal point of it. What

Zain 34:46

What are you doing? Carter gave us a bit of an answer. I want you to build on that.

Corey 34:50

Yeah, so there's a middle term and a long term answer. And the middle term one might actually be better. I'm sure he thinks long term, if he just does what's right, history will redeem him, right? If he just follows the facts as they are, does the things, history will redeem him. Well, I would suggest to him that if he wants to be seen as impartial, he's going to to need to make a little bit of a show of impartiality. So next time he's at disagreement with the government, next time they withhold something that he wants to see, he should let us all know about it, right? And if he wants to start rebuilding his reputation, what he needs to show is that he's not Justin Trudeau's lapdog on this particular matter. But frankly, that's

Corey 35:27

that's going to be pretty weak tea at this particular moment. I feel

Corey 35:30

feel like it's going to be tough at this point, but probably

Corey 35:33

probably the best way to manage your reputation going forward. You want my honest advice on this yes of course minimize

Corey 35:40

minimize how much you're involved in this going forward allow the weight of your career to be being the president at waterloo being the law dean at western being the governor general don't allow the weight of it when somebody googles david johnson to become

Corey 35:55

this fucking like you know rapid how about

Zain 35:57

about this let me throw this out there could could could a version of that stephen carter if you agree with that premise be

Zain 36:04

be sending a note to the prime prime minister and the media at 9 a.m. Eastern, Monday, June 5th, saying that he's done?

Carter 36:12

I think that if I were in the brain trust in Navigator, that would be one of the options that would certainly be on the whiteboard.

Carter 36:21

And in fact, I think I'd have it as my first. Would it rise

Zain 36:23

rise to the top? I think so,

Carter 36:25

because the other options to reverse yourself, and

Carter 36:29

and you can't reverse yourself, but you can say I've made my recommendation and perhaps I'm not the person to lead this. i've offered my resignation to the

Carter 36:37

the uh the prime minister get

Carter 36:40

get the fuck out how would

Zain 36:41

how would you write that resignation letter cory if if you if that were to rise to the top as a solution this evening in the david johnson chat that he's having with with his counsel uh communications and otherwise what would you say there would you leave gracefully would you point to the issues of the opposition would you point to the credibility how do you kind of if legacy is the goal which which we've done a few times on the show with different folks, but if legacy is the goal, how do you leave correctly if that has become the choice you're making?

Corey 37:12

You say that the, we'll find the exact words in a moment. We'll walk towards them together.

Zain 37:17

Give us a sentiment. Yeah,

Corey 37:18

Yeah, yeah. You say this work that you're doing is incredibly important and you're not stepping away in the middle of it and you remain at the disposal of whoever will be leading this work going forward, But it's clear to you after the vote of the House of Commons, and it's clear to you after discussing with, I don't know, I wouldn't say friends and family per se, but, you know, discussing with, you know, other people close to this particular file, that you are not the person at this moment who can help Canadians have the confidence in the democratic system that they so richly deserve. deserve and while you remain at the disposal of this country in any way they see fit you cannot be the person leading this work anymore and you thank the prime minister for your trust in him he's put in you and you um and you say i i remain at the disposal of this government thank you um

Corey 38:11

end right and i think that becomes the tone where it's like i am still here i want to solve this problem i want to do this but i understand my own particular limitations in terms of brand And my end goal, which you define in this letter, is that we have confidence in our democratic systems once again, and that we have protected these democratic systems in both real terms and in perceived terms against the threats, foreign and domestic.

Carter 38:35

Yes, and I would also say this is absolutely serious. Much of what will need to be described will not be able to be held in the public realm, as I've indicated, because of the serious nature of this. But this is happening. These are real issues with real consequences, and we cannot ignore them. There must be action. I just cannot be the person at the head of the spear of this action, but I will be there supporting whoever takes this on.

Zain 39:05

I like it. We're going to leave that segment there. Nicely done, guys. Moving on to our next segment. Our next segment, Danielle Summer, a Knives Out mystery, guys.

Zain 39:17

Listen, we have to talk about it. We're going back to provincial politics. At least I am. You guys have always been there, but I'm going back to it. I want to talk about Danielle Smith. I want to talk about the fact that she's now Premier Corrie, and it is clear by the election result that she was a liability to the party. and that there was many conversations at the doors, many conversations in the chattering class and conservative circles that said something like, well, you know, once we get elected, once we get the mandate, we'll ensure that we swap out the leaders, you know, say that silently. We've heard that once or twice. And we know that there's that sentiment. You look at the results, you see that, you know, the NDP were able to make gains significantly. Many people think that's on the back of Danielle Smith. You might disagree. agree yeah but i think the knives might be out and i want to help us craft a strategy for daniel smith it should be the gift that we give her carter the daniel smith how do i keep my job for as long as possible strategy that is what we are doing and it's going to start with the scope of the summer and she's got a lot of stuff happening this summer she's of course going to get her cabinet sworn in she's probably going to choose staff she's probably going to have to deal with some big questions around uh folks that um how to deal with edmonton how to deal with calgary I want us to kind of collectively work together in the sandbox to help Danielle Smith keep her job as long as possible. Corey might think the knives, one of you might think the knives are actually not going to come out this summer, that they might wait for a bit. But there is a sense that these knives come out. We know this because it's Alberta and it's a conservative party in government. And we know that this is going to happen. So I want us to work on this project together. So Carter, I'm going to start with you. Give us one thing, put it in the sandbox that That allows us to start molding it together around how Danielle Smith avoids having the knives coming out for as long as she can. How does she keep her job for as long as she can this summer? And what is the first thing she needs to start doing this summer? Stephen Carter, over to you. She

Carter 41:14

She needs to work on every one of the 87 candidates that was in this election campaign. The truth is, at this point, those 87 candidates are still the strongest people in their respective ridings. So they theoretically would be the ones who would be, you know, marshalling people to go to the conventions and, you know, the person, the people that she can call upon to,

Carter 41:38

to, you know, we used to call upon different MLAs and different leaders within the constituencies to, you know, marshal, you know, rustle up a couple thousand people to attend the, to attend the leadership review and make sure that they're all voting for me. but you know right now you're fighting against take back alberta as well right so you can you can suck up to take back alberta or you can suck up to your mlas my my experience is that mlas will probably be more effective in general um and with less backlash so if you suck up to take back alberta you very well could find yourself on the outside looking in because there's another group of people who are organizing um to get you out from the other side but But your MLAs, theoretically, your MLAs and candidates are all on the same side. They all literally stood with you for the last six weeks trying to run this election. Get on their side. Get them all into your office. Make sure that they understand that they're the real power in this party and that you will be listening to them moving forward. Essentially, you are taking half of your power and you are saying, I'm giving it to these candidates and these MLAs. And that's it. it. I'm giving as much power as possible, because if you don't, if you try and make a strong premier's office, if you try and do a deal with TBA, you're going to find yourself on the outside looking in at the leadership review, which will happen, I think, in the next, it won't necessarily be this summer, but it will happen sooner than later.

Zain 43:08

Corey, can I come to you in one second? I just have one clarifying question for Carter, and I'm just simply clarifying. Carter, what do you mean, give them power? What do you mean by these candidates in MLA? I

Carter 43:16

I will listen to you. oh you guys think that the deal i did let me get tactical the deal that i did yeah the deal i did with the uh with the flames in the city you guys don't like that anymore it's

Carter 43:27

it's done it's gone um oh you guys don't think that we should you know you don't like the curriculum you heard a lot about that at the doors it's changed what else do you got right

Carter 43:37

right like how oh we we have can say if we have consensus within this group of

Carter 43:42

of something that we should do i'm listening to you 100 of the time I

Carter 43:46

am not going to listen to my advisors. I'm not going to listen to my pollsters. I am going to listen to the people who have the voices. That's who I'm going to listen to. Because if you start listening to your pollsters, your advisors, pollsters and advisors don't get people to leadership reviews.

Carter 44:08

Candidates get people to leadership reviews.

Zain 44:12

Interesting first point thrown in there, Carter. I'm going to dig a little bit deeper on the tactics there because I find them quite interesting. Corey, did you want to respond to that, add to that, and then give us your first item to add to the summer sandbox for Danielle Smith and how she keeps her job for as long as possible?

Corey 44:28

Okay. Well, I do think we need to start by saying, hey, it's kind of funny that we're talking about Danielle Smith being at jeopardy here. She did win the election. We could do

Corey 44:37

do a version of this talking about what's going and on in the ndp although i personally believe rachel notley's in absolutely no jeopardy because of how she's built that party but let's just sort of start there like this is kind of a funny thing to do like she just won let's talk about how fucked she is is is it

Zain 44:53

it a funny thing to do and

Carter 44:57

you were so right in the last segment to

Carter 45:00

to throw that all away to

Carter 45:02

to throw away how right you were actually let's

Corey 45:05

this is this is i mean it's it's kind of silly no because the the fact of the the matter is... I don't think it's

Zain 45:10

it's a silly exercise at all, but I'm

Corey 45:11

I'm actually... The caucus is almost entirely going to be made of rural MLAs plus a few Calgary MLAs, who she will certainly be sure to reward. I think you can imagine who will be in there from cabinet. It'll be very strong. But here's the other reality. Take Back Alberta's power has never been stronger. Take Back Alberta supports Danielle Smith. Take Back Alberta controls the board. She has control on things actually that even Jason Kenney had challenges controlling right now. So, you know, it's funny because everything steven said is good advice and that you want to talk to the candidates they're the ones who are going to drive it that's a nice supplement to take back alberta that can be part of a longer term strategy to build your own power base which you desperately need to do because live by taking back alberta die by take back alberta otherwise right um but you know it's uh it's almost overkill it's almost unnecessary at this point because she won she

Corey 46:02

she won the fucking election And it's going to be very difficult for

Corey 46:06

for people to move against her.

Zain 46:08

I'm happy to blow this up. Let's actually explore why you think it's difficult for people to move against her. You think it's simply because the fact that it's not 60 seats and it's 48 and it's disproportionately rural? Carter, you're losing it more than me. I'm actually just curious about this. So go ahead. Stephen,

Corey 46:23

Stephen, can I ask you a question? Do you remember the 801 Club? Yeah, I remember the 801 Club very well. Do you want to tell our audience what the 801

Carter 46:30

801 Club was? was going to be the group of people who went after christy clark uh at 801 after she lost the which election was it it was 2012 13 2013 2013 2013 they were

Carter 46:42

were all going to come after her you know what happened she won right absolutely

Corey 46:45

absolutely then what happened they

Carter 46:47

they didn't come after

Carter 46:48

then what they did not

Corey 46:49

not come after her did anybody come no

Carter 46:51

no but you're you're you're this

Carter 46:52

this is not the same No, no. How dare

Carter 46:57

interesting to me. How dare you, sir, make this sound the same? First of all, when was the last time that a conservative leader in Alberta led back to back elections? I'll wait. You take your time. Oh, yeah. A guy named Ralph Klein. That was the last time. we're

Corey 47:12

we're talking about the summer i'm talking about the summer

Carter 47:15

be to be fair to fair to cory i am coming after him coming after her it doesn't matter if it's in the summer doesn't matter if it's in the fall doesn't matter if it's in the spring doesn't matter if it's fucking christmas they are coming after her and she needs to prepare now because they are coming after her for sure

Zain 47:33

let's ask that baseline question because i assumed it would be a prepare now now conversation. Corey, do you reject prepare ever, or do you just reject prepare now? I actually want to get your thoughts on this. I

Corey 47:44

I mean, Stephen's right. People don't live long in that job, right? But especially

Zain 47:49

especially her, though. Don't

Zain 47:50

you think that there's something here? No, I

Corey 47:52

I don't think there's

Zain 47:53

there's anything uniquely special

Corey 47:54

about her at this particular moment. In fact, I think a smaller caucus is a bit of her friend, because a lot of the people who would be the natural standard bearers that people would rally around in terms of being a moderate conservative. They don't exist anymore. And by the way, when we talk about people going down, Ralph Klein was just a little long in the tooth, a little bit different there. But all of the other ones that have been ousted have been ousted from the right. Even Jason Kenney inexplicably was ousted from the right. But we have Danielle Smith, who has decided pretty clearly that she's going to hang out on the right. And what's the threat? That she's going to be ousted from the left?

Corey 48:32

does anybody think that's a real threat yes

Carter 48:34

it's because the threshold is absurdly low it is there is no real mechanism for these uh leadership reviews to be held by the leaders like

Zain 48:47

like this is part of me thought yeah

Zain 48:49

part of me okay so can i give you my yeah i usually don't give any opinions oh yeah

Carter 48:54

never yeah we never know because the question structure is so i

Zain 48:56

i take my my conclusion to this episode let's just blow this segment out who gives a fuck uh my conclusion here was going to be she would try to cater to and prepare like carter would and hopefully quarter you would have jumped in on this and would have been excellent and would have had a great segment great value for the audience she

Zain 49:12

she would have catered she would have done things this summer yeah right she would have tried to strategize this summer she would have taken her relatively what she called mainstream moving alberta forward sort of policy book and kind of enacted that quickly she would have moved quicker than maybe if there wasn't, you know, any sort of attack. And then I think the strategic sort of fail for would have been that she was going to get ousted from the right, that the right would start hating her. This is kind of like the story that I feel like we might be heading into. And maybe just react to my premise here. I'm

Carter 49:44

I'm loving that you guys are calling it there's one right. I just think that's hilarious. It just proves to me you've never worked in conservative to politics the right though i

Carter 49:53

agree the singular right there are 15 minutes there are so many little groups of the rights and she won't have and you feel like a so then

Zain 50:02

then correct me you feel like a version of the right of the far right is now taking control how

Carter 50:07

how would you define them for her whether

Carter 50:10

whether it's led by this one or you know david parker's or the craig chandler's or the the alan hallman's or there are so many names of so many people that can rally 20 to 30 percent of the uh of the leadership group and boom she's done she's

Carter 50:30

it doesn't matter if she's taken out at the like if the leadership's this i mean i think frankly she'd be way better to move quickly and have the leadership this summer i mean

Carter 50:38

mean jesus move before they move act

Carter 50:41

act before the the act before like don't call the legislature i

Corey 50:45

i completely agree with that don't

Carter 50:45

don't bring the legislature back until until october leadership

Carter 50:49

leadership review in in july i'm thinking i'm thinking edmonton sometime in the first two weeks of july who's with me yeah let's do that that that's 100 smart

Corey 50:59

smart but it's smart not because she's at risk right now because she might be at risk

Corey 51:06

because she well if she's at risk right now then it's not smart no

Carter 51:08

no but you did you hear calgary the first two weeks of july that's

Carter 51:13

that's how she gets out of this here

Carter 51:18

no but i mean you

Carter 51:19

i said it'll be in edmonton because calgary has a little show called the stampede you

Carter 51:25

you remember that okay

Corey 51:26

okay so here's why i think it's smart to do something like that and this kind of pulls back almost to what you want to talk about but in a different way here zane it's smart to do something like that because something

Corey 51:38

something will happen in the future she will fuck up again i i want to be really clear she just won the election all her previous fuck-ups washed off the table they're not going to carry any currency anymore nobody's going to be able to point to things like her conversations with uh what's his name he's already gone from my memory uh palowski arthur palowski is that nobody's going to be that is how it works that is how it works so it's going to take something new and when that something new inevitably does happen start your engines it's coming actually then she could be in potential challenge right now but but

Corey 52:15

she's not in a challenge right now she's not in a challenge situation she should be using the time that she's not in a challenge situation to be building herself a coalition that will allow her to survive the next challenge which is why steven's idea was smart call your 87 candidates tell them you're going to work with them make them feel important use their authority use their power use their networks use their lists in order to strengthen yourself long term that is how you separate yourself from take back alberta and build your own power base and short term you know that's just uh that's just good politics and by the way that is what she's doing with this kind of talk around like i'm going to get the defeated candidates from edmonton

Zain 52:50

edmonton i'm going to ask them

Corey 52:50

them their ideas that is what she's doing just most people wouldn't say it publicly they would do it privately i i mean but that's just politics that's not because of any specific moment of crisis she might be facing. She doesn't face one. She

Carter 53:03

She does face one. She's got to try and game the system so she gets to survive longer than 15 minutes.

Corey 53:10

She will face one. She doesn't face one right now.

Zain 53:14

But you are preparing in the summer for one that is TBD, internment. If I'm a conservative

Corey 53:19

conservative leader, I'm always preparing for that. And I think one of the lessons of the past couple of decades of conservative politics is control your party, control your constituency associations always be able at the moment's notice to win a majority vote of the membership that's something we never used to have to think about but now you must always have those things because of the volatility that exists with a very fickle very populist base totally

Zain 53:43

carter i'm gonna i'm gonna go through a few things here in terms of additional things you might need to think about this summer for you know and i and i used the summer period mainly as as a period to prepare for the eventual side, whenever that might be. So I don't know if we're that far off in terms of what I wanted to do and what we are doing. However, Corey said something very interesting that I just want to examine with you, which is, Carter, does an election absolve you of any past sins, winning an election? Is that the rule? Corey kind of said that's the rule, definitively 100%. I want to just get your take on that before we move on to the Danielle Smith summer planning.

Carter 54:16

It's more the rule than it should be.

Carter 54:18

You know, it really does absolve view of most things you you get to say well that was known when the electorate elected me and and uh they decided it wasn't that big of a deal and it's true we you know like the alberta electorate decided that the uh premier being called a threat to democracy uh wasn't a particular

Carter 54:38

particularly large deal for them so you

Carter 54:41

you know she is in some fashion cleaned of that sin

Zain 54:46

carter talk to me about cabinet i'll stick with you anything she needs to do for for this eventuality we'll call it we'll you know when she selects her first cabinet in here anything that she needs to think about as it relates to the lens singular lens right let's go singular lens of survival right there's the politics of but the singular lens of her own survival talk to me about i mean

Carter 55:07

mean i just think i mean and i don't really know enough about the individual mla is the i'll do some more study on that in the coming coming weeks as we get closer coming days, I suppose, as we get closer to a swearing in. But what I would be doing is just trying to figure out who are the most effective people. Who ran the best local campaigns? Who's got the best ground game? I wouldn't necessarily be appointing people to cabinet because of their skills and capacity. I'd be appointing people to cabinet because of their ability to protect me and to keep me in the office that i've just won and that means that they're going to be you know everybody's going to be a complicit in this and they're all going to be on my side and i will be on their side this is part of the team building this is part of you know you definitely do not want to put like we put doug horner into finance um don't don't do that danielle do not put someone who will fuck you um into one of the most important a horner

Corey 56:08

horner has been elected you could you could have have a horner in finance again if you want when

Carter 56:13

haven't we have a horner in finance

Carter 56:17

horner in finance that's that's sounds

Carter 56:19

sounds funnier than it is really it's

Zain 56:22

it's not very funny no i don't know why i'm giggling cory anything on cabinet that she needs to think about we

Zain 56:29

this a bit on west of center i was on west of center on

Corey 56:31

on friday and uh and west of center

Corey 56:34

dot ca is where you access

Corey 56:36

no actually but west of center dot ca is a place to get a quality podcast for sure oh yeah check it out okay it's good yeah uh yeah so what

Corey 56:45

what i said there and i believe is it's kind of easy to tell who's

Corey 56:49

who's going to be in cabinet like you're going to be able to guess 80 of them if you sit down with their resumes right like oh they're a pretty serious player oh that seems like an individual who should be in cabinet and of course you don't know the variable of how big the cabinet's going to be but if you can ballpark in there you'll get pretty close.

Corey 57:05

It's a lot harder to tell who goes where. And it really depends on what Daniel Smith wants to focus on. So I think one of the fun things when a cabinet is decided upon is we then get to read the tea leaves and say, what does this mean? Brian Jean being put in energy tells us one story. Brian Jean being put in injustice tells us a different story. Brian Jean being put in health tells us a third story still. And we'll get a sense of what Daniel Smith's governing priorities priorities are and what she's looking to do in the next bit in part based on this cabinet. So I can't wait to see it, but I don't have a clue who she's going to put where. I mean, it's just so hard to do unless you happen to know exactly what she's thinking and how the wheels are turning.

Carter 57:44

I mean, I was working with a premier for

Carter 57:47

for months and when it got down to the final cabinet selections, I didn't know.

Carter 57:52

Like there were changes because she was thinking things that were different than the rest of the transition team.

Corey 57:58

Yeah, totally. But I'll bet you the list list didn't change that much. The MLA is in question. Let me

Zain 58:03

me ask a more specific question. From the lens of survivability, you look at the Calgary candidates that she has, and remind me guys, is it a dozen? A dozen or so Calgary candidates? It might be 12. Exactly. It's fair to say they're not the TBA crowd, for the most part, at these Calgary folks. Would you oversample on Calgary, Carter, or would you oversample on rural when you look at her own survivability? This is my more specific question that I want to ask. If you have have your kind of more moderate conservative folks that in today's light might even look a little red tory to you considering where the party might be going and they're not to be clear uh most of them would you oversample on them would you oversample on rural how would you kind of look at that if once again your survivability is is what you look at this through carter

Carter 58:47

carter then this is why i was joking that i think if i was tyler chandra i would i'd ask them not to conduct a recount you know i'd just lose by six and be happy because i think that they're gonna she's is going to under sample on Calgary. Um, Calgary is not where the vast majority, like this is a lesson I learned the hard way working with, um, uh,

Carter 59:05

uh, Sandra, Sandra's, uh, Sandra Jansen's campaign. When we saw the busloads of, uh, kids from the private Catholic schools showing up, uh, we pretty much knew we were done for. Um, and that's what happens with the, with the rural organizers. The a degree of strength that the urban organizers aren't going to have. And when that strength gets executed, it's going to be really hard. Like Danielle needs people to protect her from that or needs to co-opt that. So I would think it would be under sampling.

Carter 59:41

But, you know, time will tell.

Zain 59:44

Corey, any thoughts on that before we move on to the final sort of thing I wanted to ask her, ask you guys about what Danielle Smith may need to do over the summer?

Corey 59:51

Well, I think if she's going to take a consistent approach here, she should dance with the people who brought her, which is the rural Albertans and the rural caucus. And so that's got to be the kind of the bulk of her cabinet, in my opinion. It would be a bit hazardous to do otherwise. But of course, you're still fighting for Calgary and you're still fighting for Edmonton. So you're going to pick, obviously, Nate Gloobish right on the edge of Edmonton. We'll get to be an Edmonton cabinet minister. You know, maybe Searle will get a nice promotion. oh i

Carter 1:00:19

i have him in service alberta for sure searle

Carter 1:00:23

service alberta are two people

Carter 1:00:26

people made for you know like that's just it's marriage made in heaven because

Corey 1:00:30

because it's such an exciting i

Carter 1:00:31

i mean could you imagine searle doing an announcement about license plates oh

Carter 1:00:35

oh don't even tease me i can't i know right was

Zain 1:00:39

was this on the

Zain 1:00:39

was this on the pot or over lunch i actually don't even remember but

Zain 1:00:43

but i asked you guys if you're if if you're an up and i think that was at lunch yeah i think that was at lunch yeah yeah right we didn't record this because i wasn't talking about alberta but what what portfolio would you guys suggest to an up-and-comer and why and you guys both said service what have you said and one of you like very strongly agreed yeah

Zain 1:01:01

well because the way

Corey 1:01:02

way you framed it to us at this lunch talk about a zag from where we're going but the way you framed it at this lunch was hey i'm i'm like a junior cabinet minister i want to build my portfolio and i want

Zain 1:01:13

want to build my profile

Corey 1:01:14

profile and i want

Zain 1:01:15

want to be something

Corey 1:01:16

and so kind of baked into it was the idea that like you're not getting health you're not getting finance and and those are dangerous ones to begin with by the way i'm

Zain 1:01:23

i'm a rookie that was the phrasing you're the

Corey 1:01:24

the point that we both made was service alberta everybody has to work with you because it like it touches basically every other department you generally get good news announcements you get baby names you get to talk about like the new driver's license you get shit like that right unless something goes horribly amok with kind of one government experience anybody from government will know what I'm talking about there. But, you know, it's not such a bad one to allow you to network, to be out there, to build that profile, to do the things you want to do if you want to go from junior cabinet minister to more senior cabinet minister.

Zain 1:01:59

Carter, I'm going to ask you this last sort of thing around Daniel Smith in the summer, and it's going to happen relatively quickly. How important is... Go ahead, Corey, you want to jump in on something? Yeah,

Corey 1:02:09

Yeah, I mean, I never actually finished my point. I'm not an analyst. I don't give a shit. I'm just moving on. I don't care if you'd answer the question or not. So majority of cabinet's going to have to come from rural.

Corey 1:02:18

But I think that there is probably a need to put some marquee cabinet ministers in Calgary. So look at Rebecca Schultz probably getting a nice job. Demetrius Nicolaitis maybe getting a promotion, maybe not. You know, Advanced Ed's a pretty good portfolio too. to. But I would imagine there's going to be a few you can point to that are ministers you hear from all of the time that will be from Calgary, because Calgary will sort of demand it. A dozen MLAs is not an insignificant number of MLAs. And there's kind of a lesson here. Joey Smallwood was the premier of Newfoundland when it joined the Confederation, right? And obviously, Newfoundland was going to need to have when they elected a couple of liberal MPs, somebody in cabinet. And Joey Smallwood, being very practical, said, well, just give them like one of the junior Secretary of State positions, because most people are familiar with the American system. Secretary of State seems really senior, but it's actually pretty junior. Like there are levers you can pull like that, where it's like sounds like a big job, not actually doing a ton in that role. And I expect Calgary will get an outsized number of those ministries.

Corey 1:03:24

Carter, I'm going to start

Zain 1:03:25

start this last one with you her staff how

Zain 1:03:27

how how important our staff you just talked about how you just talked about like listen my advisors are bullshit fuck my advisors fuck my pollsters you are the heartbeat okay barring

Zain 1:03:39

barring all of that how important our staff and how strategic should she be about thinking about staff i.e staff from other teams staff from different sort of political dispositions on the entire conservative family does she go in court to one side of it does she bring people Talk to me about your philosophy, I guess, more specifically, rather than the exact people, right? Let's not name names. Let's just talk about the philosophy. Yeah, let's talk philosophy here. If you're Daniel Smith, and once again, I'll put this on the table, survivability is the goal.

Carter 1:04:09

one, you know, so whatever the team is put together, you

Carter 1:04:12

you need to have one team, one vision. So

Carter 1:04:15

So when I had my senior staff, I had two deputy chiefs of staff, I had myself, and then we didn't have a principal secretary. But let's assume that there is a principal secretary. Let's assume that there's an issues manager, because that's a new thing since, since I was there. um we're

Carter 1:04:31

we're all aligned whatever

Carter 1:04:33

whatever one of the five of us or the six of us that are the senior levels whatever one of us is with the premier at any point gives the answer for the team not gives the answer for themselves right um i ran into a problem where where allison was getting feedback from her ea that was different than feedback from her senior staff now normally that wouldn't be a problem because normally the the premier

Carter 1:04:57

premier or the first minister would be listening to their you know their senior staff in this case allison didn't listen to the senior staff so you know we

Carter 1:05:07

we need to have one voice and cory will know this from from uh the civil service side as soon as there's multiple voices everything just grinds to a halt because who are we taking our instructions from now we got to go and wait for the premier to weigh in on everything and there's a lot of things so one voice senior staff when they're speaking with the premier when they're speaking with the uh the um the the deputies one voice yeah

Corey 1:05:37

yeah i couldn't could not agree more here's

Corey 1:05:39

here's the thing we're

Corey 1:05:41

we're not saying it's group think we're not saying there's not disagreements in the staff ranks but we're saying that everybody has the same mission right everybody is driving towards the same point everybody is willing to lay down on the ground on hot coals for the premier it's so important you know you talk about bringing in opponents you talk about building out coalitions you do that shit with ministers you don't do that shit with staff you trust your staff you need to trust your staff your staff need to be on the same team and frankly the minute you find yourself having to do that with staff i think is is a bad moment for you when you're a premier because That's when shit starts going awry. That means all of a sudden your apparatus, your power as premier has been diminished because your power is executed through your staff. Your staff are the ones that make you look like a genius in a speech and make sure you're there on time and are doing all of the meetings to coordinate people and make sure that everybody feels like the premier is giving them a love. The less that you have your people in staff, the less authority you have as premier. You see it get diminished and eroded over time as people start saying, you got to bring in this person you got to bring in that person you got to bring in this other person do i if i'm premier well if i do that probably means my power as premier is not as big as it was the day before yeah

Zain 1:06:53

carter is this concept of staff from out of town overblown like they don't have domestic knowledge they don't understand alberta it's so idiosyncratic like it's it or is is the end of day it's like who gives a shit like if they work well with the the principal if they work with well with that person and they got their trust i don't give a fuck where they're from what's your your take on anybody

Carter 1:07:10

anybody who comes in from out of town is going to have a harder hill to climb with getting people to trust them in town but anybody from in town has a hard hill to climb with getting people to trust them from in town because it's

Carter 1:07:23

it's not like you

Carter 1:07:24

you know you don't come in with baggage i mean my baggage was i wasn't known i mean you could all

Carter 1:07:31

all the baggage still exists even if are you serious you

Zain 1:07:35

don't know if you're being facetious there so i'm actually going to interrupt you and be like you weren't known

Carter 1:07:38

known i wasn't known when i went in with redford the

Carter 1:07:41

the pcs didn't know me people didn't i mean i come from i mean i i never attended a pc event i

Carter 1:07:48

i ran a pc leadership and won and never had given a money to the party

Zain 1:07:56

don't even think i knew that yeah i don't think i knew that either that's why like i wasn't sure if you're just bullshitting me i mean so imagine

Carter 1:08:01

imagine imagine that you've never gone what issue did did that have on your credibility actually i'm

Carter 1:08:05

not curious what issue did

Zain 1:08:06

did that have on your credibility i've

Carter 1:08:07

i've never gone to robin campbell's fundraiser you know in hinton i've never given him 150 bucks of my own hard-earned cash you know i don't have that relationship with dave hancockson's dirt you know where dave hancock's a frat brother with randy dawson right like literally a frat brother like it's a different relationship they've come up together they own the same relationships for a hundred years and i'm coming in as the guy who was like oh i can't believe thank god klein left and fucking stelmac's a disaster and i'm coming in and

Carter 1:08:40

and i'm not of the family and stephen shapiro who was my deputy was last there in 1993 um

Carter 1:08:46

um you know and and you

Carter 1:08:49

you know and then alan mcdonald we hired from uh mars team and to her never

Carter 1:08:53

never-ending credit she was uh she was was a team player jumped right on our team right from the right from the get-go that's

Zain 1:09:01

that's so interesting cory any comments you might have on on staff or as philosophy as a philosophy like the one team stuff you kind of mentioned but like anything else related to like how daniel smith in particular might need to think about this the trust element is is interesting that you mentioned like you don't do that with the staff team you shelve out the whole you know doris kearns goodwin thing around a team of rivals, linking stuff to your ministers. You don't do that with staff team. Any final thoughts on this before we kind of move it on?

Corey 1:09:30

Yeah, staff, I just really want to underline is an extension of you. So you need you to trust you. But when we start talking about building a staff, especially if you are coming in and you didn't necessarily have control of the party in the same way, yeah, inevitably, you're going to need to go look further afield. You're going to need to find experts from different provinces, maybe even from different countries. And that's fine. I think that they bring probably deep functional expertise that enrich most premier's offices. And also, they will not have the same blind spots as the people who've been there as true believers all the way along the way. It's useful to have a couple of cynics who say, wait, what the fuck are you talking about? What

Zain 1:10:08

What are we doing?

Corey 1:10:09

doing? Is this what was actually happening right now? As long as they continue to be on the same mission, right? Again, disagreement's healthy. Disagreement's good. You just want to make sure you're all on the same side. the

Corey 1:10:20

the a teammate entirely of people from away though is going to suffer from some pretty immense challenges and so

Corey 1:10:28

so you do need to make sure you have some of that on the ground almost corporate expertise what it means to be involved in politics in alberta there are just things you're not otherwise going to catch and um you will find yourself maybe recommending the name for a budget that's been used by a very ominous budget 20 years ago right or or something like that. Like you just need to have some of that history when you're in a premier's office too. So generally, I recommend a mix, insider, outsider. I would recommend that in any corporate environment too. Some promotion from within, some external hires.

Corey 1:11:02

Diversity of viewpoints is good. This is just another example of where you want to be thinking about diversity of viewpoints.

Zain 1:11:09

I've got one follow-up on this and I wasn't going to, but it's now Corey's mentioned something that piques my interest. Carter, we usually don't see the campaign manager find themselves in the premier's office i think you were a rarity if i'm not mistaken that you were like one of the few guys and and maybe because like we haven't seen it since that like tandem relationship like the campaign manager of uh was rod love and ralph klein like they you know attached to the hip of course he was going to be his principal advisor i'm kind of curious your thoughts on that like the campaign manager very different set of skills or campaign director whatever they're called in each of these parties finding themselves in the premier's office any Any reflections on that and the core competencies? The reason I ask is to make a finer point on it. Over lunch, you and I were kind of discussing the campaign strategist role inside the premier's office. We've seen that happen in the United States and other jurisdictions. We don't necessarily see it labeled as that within the premier's office. I'm just kind of curious if you have any reflections on that in the modern reality and what you'd be kind of looking for to occupy that positioning. And I will move on. I

Carter 1:12:11

I think that the campaign should not be run from the premier's office. So if you're asking a campaign manager to run the campaign, then you need to put them from the party office.

Zain 1:12:19

And I'm talking about as a reward after the campaign or as a landing spot after the

Carter 1:12:24

the campaign. I'm not calling it a reward, but I think that in some cases it makes perfect sense to bring the campaign manager in. In other cases, it doesn't. The rap

Carter 1:12:35

rap I've been given is that I don't know how to govern, right?

Carter 1:12:39

right? And that's bullshit. I totally know how to govern. The problem is I want to move at campaign speeds. And those two things are fundamentally

Carter 1:12:49

fundamentally different. And it can sometimes work really well when you have a thing that you wish to drive through very

Carter 1:12:59

That can get done, I mean, especially at the provincial government. And I'm watching, you know, we're going to have a loud car ban in Calgary sometime

Carter 1:13:05

sometime within the next year. And I'm like, man, if we were doing this in the public service in the province of Alberta, we'd have it in 15 minutes. Like the public service is super at the at the provincial level. They are amazing. And they make the city of Calgary look like a bunch of yokels. But you can't

Carter 1:13:24

can't run at that speed. You can't run that all the time with the bureaucrats. And a campaign manager style person may try

Carter 1:13:35

try to run the thoroughbreds a little too hard. That's

Zain 1:13:38

That's a very good insight. Very good insight. Corey, anything to add on that? And I'll move on right after this. Well,

Corey 1:13:42

Well, I do think that government takes a certain amount of patience. And that's why it's not always a nice transposition of skills the way somebody might hope. And let's be really clear, there are some skill overlaps between needing to be a senior strategist, a campaign director and running a premier's office. You've got a lot of things moving, you got to keep them coordinated, you got to keep people motivated, you got to go. No. But yeah, there are different intersections. There are different interfaces. And government's different. Government's very different. And it's hard to run at speed for four years. I always think about campaigns as something that's built to last for 28 days. And it's built to be as big of a spectacle as possible. So for 28 days, it's just got to work. And you are trying to get all eyeballs on you. Government's a little different. Government is built to be durable. It's supposed supposed to last for decades centuries you know generations we talk about when we talk about building government systems you think that's a joke we're still using magnetic reel-to-reels for our health care records from like the 70s or at least we were when i was lasting government a couple of years ago but i'm pretty confident they're still there because government's fucking slow sometimes right but it's slow because those things are supposed to last and work and always work and move forward and

Corey 1:14:58

and government is not always about making a spectacle one of the things you need to be able to do in government is you need to take a spectacle and turn it into absolutely nothing. And while that is a campaign skill, it's not the primary campaign skill. It might actually be the primary skill in government. So they are different.

Zain 1:15:15

That's really well said. I'm going to leave that segment there, move it on to run a final segment. Stephen Carter, our over, under, and our lightning round. Oh, you know, just a quick hour 15 on two topics. Everybody's so glad

Zain 1:15:25

Just doing a tight hour 15. Stephen Carter, overrated, underrated in your mind. Daniel Smith having no MLAs in Edmonton as a political problem, as a strategy problem, as a governance problem. Flash forward the next four years as your timeline. How big of a problem is this overrated, underrated that she does? No one.

Carter 1:15:46

Underrated. I mean, overrated. I just don't think that it's going to matter that much to her and uh i mean to cory's point she won the election that was what she was after cory

Zain 1:15:57

cory the problem overrated underrated to you in

Corey 1:15:59

in terms of governing over the next four years overrated i also think the thing about edmonton is unlike calgary there are you

Corey 1:16:07

areas outside of edmonton that are population centers such as sherwood uh

Zain 1:16:14

wanted to say Sherwood

Corey 1:16:15

Sherwood Forest so badly there. And Stony Plain and St. Albert. And while they don't have St. Albert, they do have those other two that I mentioned here. And that allows you to get or have representation, at least parts of it in the case of Sherwood Park. And that allows you to sort

Corey 1:16:30

sort of build something out, right? That allows you to say, ah, it's kind of Edmonton-ish and you've got the Edmonton representation. And the other reality is they only had one seat going into it. They lost one seat in Edmonton. It's not the end of the world for the UCP in

Corey 1:16:43

in four years. In the longer term, to not be competitive in one-third of the seats, like the rough one-thirds we do here,

Corey 1:16:51

that's a problem. And the UCP do need to think about how they get their way back into the city of Edmonton, because they've been frozen out for a while at this point.

Zain 1:16:59

Corey, do I have just a veto to create products in the strategist store? Because I want Sherwood Forest to be a nice men's fragrance that people can buy over

Zain 1:17:10

over the summer. That's great, yeah. Yeah. You know, like after after those. That's great. I just

Corey 1:17:15

just I don't know if

Corey 1:17:15

we have a favorite fragrance provider, but I'll look into it. Yeah,

Corey 1:17:19

please. I don't care what it smells like. Just as long

Zain 1:17:22

Sherwood Forest. I feel like that's very classy. Carter, I think it's classy. I'm in. Carter. I always say yes. Of course. Of course, you're in. Carter, I'm going to start with you on this one. Jagmeet Singh. Let's talk about this very quickly. He's defending his party's decision not to include biting orders in its foreign interference motion, which called for David David Johnson to step down as special rapporteur, saying that an election does not make sense if the goal is protecting Canada's democracy. Are you in or are you out on Jagmeet Singh's sort of strategy here? And I'm going to put strategy in air quotes because you can kind of tell where I am.

Carter 1:17:56

Yeah. Can we just

Carter 1:17:58

just stop the question a couple of words earlier? Am I in or am I out on Jagmeet Singh? I am out. I'm out on Jagmeet Singh. I have been out on Jagmeet Singh since the last election. I didn't agree with this co

Carter 1:18:13

co-mingling or whatever the heck they've done, the agreement between the liberals and the NDP. And he's made it actually worse, worse. It's unbelievable. He just keeps getting worse.

Carter 1:18:27

So, yes, I do not agree with his strategy.

Zain 1:18:30

Corey, I'm going to assume you're out as well. So let me just save you your breath unless you're totally in for some weird reason. What advice would you give him knowing that this is his current line right now?

Corey 1:18:39

Well, it's not a very tenable situation here. And I actually think even from a politics point of view, why would you take the gun off the table in terms of what an election might be? I think you say, I expect some changes. And if that means an election, that means an election.

Corey 1:18:56

He's got to find a way to revisit

Corey 1:18:58

revisit the question. So the minute something else happens on this particular file, no matter how small, he should say, well, now my feeling's entirely changed. And now everything's up for grabs again. And here's why. He should extract himself from his current position yesterday.

Corey 1:19:15

Corey, I'm going to start this last question

Carter 1:19:16

question with you. You mean like leader of the NDP? Because that's what I was meaning when I said.

Corey 1:19:22

I was meaning his position on David Johnson. Okay, we're a little off.

Corey 1:19:25

off. You know, calling an election or not.

Corey 1:19:27

not. Okay, we've got

Zain 1:19:27

got different positions. Boy, you said the magic words there, David Johnson.

Zain 1:19:31

It's June 4th. July 4th, one month from now, when the United States of America celebrates its 247th birthday, Corey, will David Johnson be holding the title of Special Rapporteur or will he have sent a letter saying,

Zain 1:19:46

saying, I'm done. This is over. I'm at your disposal if you need me. But it's clear that I don't have the, pretty much the words you'd put in that letter. One month from now, David Johnson, Special Rapporteur, yes or no, Corey?

Corey 1:19:59

well, I'm obviously going to do exactly the opposite of what Stephen says. So whatever I say, whatever I

Corey 1:20:04

I say in the next 30 seconds here.

Zain 1:20:06

here. Why'd you lose? Why'd you lose? Why'd you lose, Corey? Why'd you lose? Whatever

Corey 1:20:09

Whatever I say in these next

Zain 1:20:10

next 30 seconds. You didn't win the election. Yes or no, Corey? I have victories

Corey 1:20:13

victories contextual. It was there. Victories contextual. It was there.

Corey 1:20:18

Yes, he will be special rapporteur. And I'll tell you why. He will be because I just don't see another trigger point between now and then that, you know, unless Singh dramatically revisits some of his previous positions.

Zain 1:20:32

Carter, special rapporteur, July 4th, 247th year for the United States of America. David Johnson, still their special rapporteur.

Carter 1:20:40

Zane, I'm not sure if you followed the Strategist podcast over the last month.

Carter 1:20:48

has not been good.

Carter 1:20:50

I went five for seven in my AFL predictions. I did not go five for seven in my predictions for this election. So here's what I'm going to tell you. I am no longer in

Carter 1:21:00

in the prediction game.

Carter 1:21:02

I don't make predictions. Don't count on my predictions. Don't ask me for predictions. But David Johnson will be gone.

Zain 1:21:13

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1071 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Veltri. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

Transcript