Episode 1073: Comings and goings

Zain 0:01

This is a strategist episode 1073. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, happy

Carter 0:14

Yeah. Why are we recording during the day? Because like this is right on my nap time. I

Carter 0:20

I am exhausted. It's

Carter 0:22

It's so hot. I need a nap, a siesta, a

Carter 0:25

a little snoozy poozy. And

Carter 0:26

And you guys are making me record. important if

Zain 0:29

anyone strikes me as being european it is not you carter that is uh well

Zain 0:34

well you went from siesta to snoopy poopy what did you go

Zain 0:38

don't make him repeat it i hated it yeah every moment

Corey 0:41

moment of it yeah

Zain 0:42

yeah it was it was actually pretty bad i need a little you guys

Carter 0:44

guys don't have snoozy no you don't

Zain 0:46

no you don't carter carter do you want to tell people about the big news of the podcast or are we going to let cory do that no

Carter 0:51

no i don't even know what

Corey 0:52

what it is oh yeah

Corey 0:53

i think i do know know what it is uh

Corey 0:56

uh thanks to our interventions uh we did it we've won flares one uh swoop airlines there's no more yeah swoop

Zain 1:02

swoop airlines is dead we have cleared the runways carter for our sponsor not our sponsor but yes

Carter 1:09

that is pretty you

Zain 1:10

you know shutting down west west shut shutting down their discount airline swoop you know what that means carter we only have links to compete with if we can shut down links it's just a flare game baby one one player monopoly okay on the the discount rarely delivered service of getting people from point a to point b what do you think of this is breaking news and and i feel like we should be taking and i'm going to be humble here all of the credit

Carter 1:33

credit i believe it is all the credit yeah i mean how else would this have occurred

Carter 1:37

it's not like anything that's flare airline sets out to do is actually ever accomplished so it must have been us that's

Zain 1:45

that's true we are we are the swoop killers uh here cory cory Corey, any commentary you want to give to our incredible success as three white dudes behind podcast mics? You

Corey 1:56

You know, I think that our strategy, which very naturally built on Flair's strengths of saying, hey, if you never leave the gate, the other airline can't use the gate, was really the secret to this one here. What do you guys think? So good. So good. That

Carter 2:09

That was your multi-level chess thinking, Corey. That was all you, baby. Thank

Zain 2:15

That's good. Corey took the illegal screen and he made it into a strategy for a low-budget airline, and I like it, Carter. Carter, what's an illegal screen? An

Carter 2:23

An illegal screen is when you put up the yard screen to keep out the bugs, and you haven't got it cleared with your neighborhood association.

Corey 2:34

So, Zane, do you remember the synthetic basketball in the 90s that was cutting players' hands? Is this ringing a bell? Do you remember that? No.

Carter 2:41

No. It wasn't born in the 90s. like carter

Corey 2:44

carter do you remember basketball no i don't remember this it had more bounce unlike carter i don't i don't have i

Corey 2:49

don't like stern announced it with great fanfare like this was the new ball the ball of the future and they had to drop it like two months later yes

Corey 2:57

i don't remember it so it was the new coke of

Corey 2:59

it was the new coke of the nba and uh it allowed an entirely different type of game to be played for like two months and then all of the players revolted and demanded to come back so anyhow uh you

Corey 3:10

you know i can't remember who but some players got very good at like uh using the extra kick to kind of like spring it back to them in unique ways and other players were like i can't shoot this it makes my hands bleed so good

Corey 3:23

good is it just random fucking

Carter 3:27

tied it into to the episode today he's

Zain 3:30

he's really leading it

Corey 3:33

about white men it's

Corey 3:34

I mean, I can't remember what my point was, but there was going to be a better picture. It was a great

Corey 3:38

one. You kind of threw me off by not remembering it. No, well, thank you. It's your fault, Zane.

Zain 3:45

Of course, this segment was brought to us by Flair Airlines. We don't know what our point is either. Corey, let's move it on to our first segment. Our first segment, me and my 24 closest friends. Daniel Smith has announced her new cabinet. cabinet we've we've we've uh delayed recording this episode to a friday so we can react to that cabinet cory and now we have it 24 people 24 over 49 member caucus are now going to be serving as cabinet ministers uh the majority the vast majority of them being men the previous cabinet was 27 and we are seeing some pretty interesting names on the list everyone who was a cabinet minister minister before, retains a cabinet seat, although not the same one in actually, I'd say, most cases. Five women on the cabinet, Danielle Smith herself, Rebecca Schultz, Tanya Furr, Rajen Sani, Adriana Lagrange. Remember that last name? I'm sure many of you know it. I want to discuss her new role in health. We are also seeing the first Muslim minister of justice in Mickey Amory, Lebanese-Canadian. We're also seeing Mohamed Yassin, South Asian descent. He's going to be our new Minister of Immigration, if I'm not mistaken. It's a longer title than that, certainly. Corey, there's a lot that goes into making a cabinet, and I know we've done episodes in the past strictly at length about cabinet making, the triangulation of all the factors. Can we pare that down to a two-minute version before we jump into the specifics of this new cabinet by Danielle Smith? What are some of the considerations that a government and a premier has to make into cabinet making? And then, Carter, I'll get you to yes and some some of the things Corey puts on the table just for a couple of minutes here before we jump into the specifics.

Corey 5:21

Yeah, so historically, it

Corey 5:24

was really just what the Premier or the First Minister wanted, right? But what's happened over time is there's been an increasing number of considerations put on the table in terms of regional diversity. That's always been fairly important. But then there became gender diversity, ethnic diversity, diversity of different backgrounds of all sorts. And you ultimately wanted your cabinet to have a broad composition feel that reflected a lot of areas and from there i think we've seen a bit of a receding i think we saw that with the kenny cabinet that was much more calgary centric than you would otherwise expect and i think certainly that is also the case with the smith cabinet but those considerations are still there in a big way are you covering off your geography are you covering off your diversity and so far as you can from the components you have from your caucus uh but from there an important part to keep in mind is you do tend to like it's not like you put a doctor in health you put an educator in education that's not generally what you do but

Corey 6:19

but a minister or a first minister looks at it and says who are my rocks who are the people i want in certain positions and then they build their cabinet around that so the example i think i used maybe even as recently as last episode or two episodes ago was actually pretty prescient because i said hey for example if you want brian gene in energy synergy that means brian jean's not in justice and you only have so many choices there and i you know then you have to put amory in justice i think was even the example i used and it

Carter 6:47

it ended up being

Corey 6:47

being the case i didn't have any foreknowledge at that point but that was an example of how dominoes fall so that's the that's kind of the nature of cabinet making you you have your rocks you try to make it broadly look like the composition of the province depending on how you want to consider province and um and you go from there uh the size of it has always been a a big consideration. There are people who expect to be in cabinet, and if they're not in there, they get grumpy. There are people that if they're not in cabinet will be idle hands that could make your life miserable. And so on the flip side, having lots of ministers is kind of a pain in the ass sometimes. And so the size of it, the composition of it, who your rocks are, these are the things that you got to take into account.

Zain 7:29

Carter, in addition to that, there's some what we call big ministries, quote unquote, right, right? Especially as they relate here in Alberta, many call the finance ministry a big one or health or energy. And a few others can be kind of big ministries or senior ministries that require a little bit more experience, so to speak. Corey's kind of talked about it through your rocks and then the stones that kind of come thereafter. People you're taking a bit of a flyer on, people that maybe necessarily haven't proven themselves or are brand new to the caucus that you're going to take a bit of a chance on. Maybe you're just strictly reading their resume in a couple of conversations, even by proxy, if you're the premier around their competencies and capacities, you've had to make cabinets. So in addition to what Corey has said, give me what your 2012 ish, right? Or 2011 ish version of a cabinet making look like, give me some of the other factors you had to consider. And once again, not at length, but give me some of the other factors that you got, you had to consider back then. And I actually want to then fast forward it to today. We're

Carter 8:26

We're going to give you one thing that we had to consider and one thing that we didn't consider um so one thing that we had to consider was loyalty you know where is the loyalty to the leader is this person because and i think this is true today in the in the ucp um there are factions in any political party right so when you're putting in uh you know you've got a balance not over only the regional components but um you know the right wing side are we giving this a you know are we putting this person in as a nod to the center are we putting this person in as a nod to the right um so you're you're building your uh your cabinet not just to reflect regional diversity uh gender diversity ethnic diversity but you're also building it to reflect the diversity of your individual of your party so that the people who could get mad at you and and in politics there's lots of people who can get mad at you um are less inclined to get mad at you because you've put their their person into

Carter 9:23

into into a specific role that they are happy with.

Carter 9:27

Right. So you might see that with the oil and gas community being happy with Brian Jean being

Carter 9:31

being an energy. They know Brian Jean. They like Brian Jean. They don't think he's a lunatic.

Carter 9:36

So they they may be happy. Whereas, you know,

Carter 9:41

I'm fairly certain that the health community is pulling out their hair today. But we'll get to that a little bit later. One one thing that we did not look at. And this is going to sound really weird but you don't spend a lot of time thinking about knowledge or competency in the ministry right so as cory said you're not looking to put a doctor into health care you're not looking to put a teacher into education um you

Carter 10:06

you also didn't want you don't want to put people into the role that they'd had before necessarily because they may be solving the issues that existed before that may not be priorities for your government right the issue still may exist exist but it may not be a priority um or you know if in the case like when when the ndp uh when there's still a chance that they could win you know i was thinking you don't want to be putting ministers from eight years ago uh

Carter 10:31

uh into the same into the same portfolios because they'll be trying to tackle the issues that existed eight years ago not the issues that exist now so you're not looking for that you know that kind

Carter 10:42

kind of competence that kind of experience because ultimately that That can be challenging. You want people to solve the problems you want them to solve. They're all going to get ministerial letters, right? This is what we want you to focus on in your ministry.

Carter 10:57

That's what you want them to do, not freelance and find their own problems that they can find their own solutions to.

Zain 11:03

You know, there's a few things that have been put on the table. Let me kind of round up as many as I can, right? So previous cabinet experience or caucus experience, loyalty, as Carter mentioned. We've talked about geography. We already talked about gender. We've talked about race. um we we've talked about competency through the perspective less about the the role of the ministry but more so if i can call it general managerial or executive competency if that's fair to say um so to speak cory you know one carter talks to us about a 2011 experience i want to fast forward to 2023 there's one thing i've seen the last half decade more and you guys may correct me if you've actually seen it more if it's always happened but it's been the mapping of the ministries. Like we've just seemed to like have ministries created out of thin air these days. And then we've seen this on the federal side as well. I think the best example live wire right now is Bill Blair's ministry of emergency preparedness. He actually doesn't have a department that rolls up to him. He actually doesn't have DMs and bureaucrats and public service staff that report up to him. And we're seeing a bit of that today as well, right? Where where some ministries have been either remapped or renamed slightly to kind of meet the moment. So I'm just going to put that one on there. But any sort of new changes, last half decade changes that you've started to see? You've already mentioned perhaps in Alberta, the deprioritizing of gender in some ways. Like we have, you know, Kenny kind of stopped caring about that in some ways or started to even get rid of the status of women ministry as its own standing ministry. But talk to me about any recent changes you may have seen. And then we'll jump into what we're seeing today put on the table by Danielle Smith.

Corey 12:40

Well, first of all, Status of Women only became a ministry, like a standalone ministry under the NDP. So that in itself was a change. I'll tell you, it's interesting to me because when we were working on transition materials in 2019, in advance of that election, when I was in the public service, I remember there was this chart and it went back to like the 70s of every single ministry that had existed, You know, and it kind of had bars like,

Corey 13:04

these ones existed, these ones didn't all the way through. And certainly, there was a standard stable that sometimes got new names, but ultimately always went through. And it really did seem like in the last decade at that point, all of a sudden, there were all sorts of random new ones and random new combinations. combinations and i think that's even more so uh in the past four years right since jason kenney came in we got like things like the ministry of red tape reduction obviously we have a whole whole assortment of these boutique ministries that have occurred in the last bit and these boutiques that's a good way but boutique

Zain 13:37

boutique ministries i like i like that yeah and

Corey 13:40

i think that we have started to look at the cabinet as um you know as a communications like like the actual jobs as a communication vehicle to say, this is important to us. Therefore, we've elevated it to a ministry, and we've created a minister for it. And often we've created public service apparatus behind it. And that's, that's

Corey 14:00

that's maybe not optimal for the operation of government. But you can certainly understand why they do it. Because the average person in Alberta doesn't know the size of a ministry, right? They don't know, for

Corey 14:11

example, Justice has, I

Corey 14:13

I don't know, thousands and thousands of employees, and the Ministry of the Status of Women had like 25, right? It's two ministries, and it says that these things are important. And so the governments have sort of determined that just creating something as a ministry is a way to sort of elevate how

Corey 14:31

how the public perceives that you perceive that issue. issue.

Zain 14:35

Carter, last half decade, any other changes that you feel like have been material since the time you were actually

Zain 14:40

actually cabinet making a little bit more than a decade ago?

Carter 14:44

Well, I think that one of the big material pieces is who's

Carter 14:47

who's choosing to ignore and, you know, what type of balancing, right? So if we were doing balancing

Carter 14:57

balancing of, you know, gender, then that's one thing or visible visible minorities this there's certain types of government that are doing that balancing you know trudeau famously said this because it's 2015 because he when he balanced his his cabinet um you know allison did not balance her cabinet in part because she said she was the first minister and as such i mean she detained you know she'd broken through the glass ceiling uh she didn't need to uh to to kind of further that um you

Carter 15:29

you know this this is a cabinet that's totally ignoring that you know that that that those precedents that have been set by others i mean there's not even a nod to it uh there is a nod to geographic balance but i'm not seeing that same nod so i i think that you know in terms of the changes that have been made i'm less focused on the actual names of things because the names are always changing right you go back and you'll You'll find even the

Carter 15:55

the names are always changing. But how

Carter 16:01

they approach those things is more

Carter 16:04

more static, I think, or is also changing now. Let me just try that again. Hey, do we have the ability to do multiple

Carter 16:14

multiple takes on this show? No.

Carter 16:17

I'm just going to look like an idiot in that phase? Yeah.

Zain 16:21

That's what's going to happen there. That's absolutely what's going to happen. This

Carter 16:24

This is a Patreon though, right? We're only 1,000 people. Also not a Patreon.

Carter 16:29

This will be about 30,000.

Zain 16:32

At 1624, let's make that a meme. 1624 is now the

Corey 16:38

Saddledome has about 19,000 people it can hold.

Corey 16:40

More people will hear you fuck up than that. Oh my God. But

Zain 16:44

But the new arena, I mean, it's going to hold less. Corey, let's... Fewer. but yeah yeah less

Zain 16:51

less lesson see now

Corey 16:53

hear you fuck that up yeah

Zain 16:54

you're gonna be all

Carter 16:56

all over the discord zane less

Zain 16:59

less is the fewer north as the northeast viewer uh

Zain 17:03

let's jump into this cabinet guys i gave you some of the stats danielle danielle plus 24 she retains intergovernmental adrienne lagrange moves into health um

Zain 17:12

um nicolaitis moves into education horner no doug horner's not back. Nate Horner is going to be finance, right? We got Brian Jean in energy. You got Rebecca Schultz in environment. The list goes on from there. The first question I have for you, Corey, let me just start with you here. If the mapping of ministries is a communication exercise in the job that they're going to do, what they're trying to project to the people, taken as a unit in aggregate, what is Daniel Smith trying to communicate today?

Corey 17:42

Wow, that is the $64,000 dollar question i'm i'm not really sure i i think that it's that in a funny way i think it's stability like one of the things that really sticks out to me here is that there's not a lot of new cabinet ministers and there hasn't been a dramatic change in the size of cabinet and i think we were expecting certainly a smaller cabinet and probably different faces at the table and she said no to either and one of the reasons you might want to do that as a premier is internal peace as much Much as anything, right? We've talked about this in the past.

Corey 18:16

Elevating someone's great. They're going to feel very good about that. Demoting somebody is bad. They're going to feel bad about that. And so what she has managed to do is

Corey 18:25

is essentially maintain a certain level of comfort with her leadership amongst the people that were in cabinet. cabinet and so i you know for me the thing that sticks out the thing she's trying to communicate is not huge change right now a lot of different faces in a lot of different places and this is how she's kind of creating change but um by and large this is the same cabinet that we had before the rip was dropped with a few notable exceptions of retired mlas and if and a few defeated mlas

Zain 18:55

carter what is the collect 24 we talked the gender breakdown we talk a bit of the racial breakdown. We haven't talked about geographic breakdown, but Calgary gets good representation considering they only have a dozen folks to choose from there.

Zain 19:07

What's the message you wanted to send? I

Carter 19:08

I actually don't know. I think that in terms of a message cabinet, this really doesn't show much of a message. It is more like a shuffle in my mind than it is like a brand new cabinet. So you've shuffled your people around. You move some people into different spots. No one really really got demoted no one really got you know promoted i mean with the notable exception of jason nixon who is is you know still there but very much on the outs um this cabinet doesn't have a bunch of of shifting sands shifting new new people into new places yeah i mean ariana like ariana ariana lagrange what are we are we just going to call her lagrange um i'm just killing this is my best episode um the you know she her in health is a statement right um because the ideology that she brand she brought to education uh arguably was very very devastating now

Carter 20:08

now she's in health care does she bring the same type of ideology to it i'm also interested in brian jean and todd lowen battling with uh rebecca schultz you

Carter 20:18

you know which vision of the economy which vision of the environment is going to to win out um you know that that is something that is is an interesting thing but none of this is a script written by danielle these

Carter 20:33

these are interpretations that we're putting on on top of this danielle really didn't write much of a script about what it is that she's hoping to achieve in with this cabinet she put people into place it was very much much um matter

Carter 20:48

matter of fact perfunctory almost and here we are i i think that this

Carter 20:55

this is not an inspired cabinet that is telling an inspired story this is just people being put into places where daniel smith wanted them cory

Zain 21:06

cory you know you don't daniel what message would you have wanted to send if you were her today would it have been the stability one that you say that she seemed to have gotten across well

Corey 21:15

think so i i think that she needs to call him some horses here it was a tense election it was a tough election it was a divisive election for the province and in many ways this election or this cabinet is consistent with the first half of her election night speech of like okay we're all just going to kind of work together and she's not introducing a lot of new variables arguably the lagrange one is is the newest variable in that there's a new minister But I want you to consider this for a minute. When we talk about stability, and maybe in her mind, that was also a continuation of stability.

Corey 21:47

When you think about the ministries of government, the biggest in complexity, the biggest in dollars, for sure, no question, healthcare.

Corey 21:55

But number two, in both dollars and complexity is probably education, right? right? You could make some arguments for some of the other ones. You could talk about the power of the purse that exists at TBF. I would entertain those conversations. But arguably, if you're going to say, all right, we're not going to rock the boat and we're going to keep the relative seniorities in place. Let's just move her to health. That's one that's kind of easy. You know, you're just getting the minister who had the second most complex, the second biggest dollars, and you're moving them into the first most. And one of the interesting things here is that when

Corey 22:26

when you think Think about the people that Daniel Smith lost going into and coming out of the election. They were the people in those senior ministries, right? You lost your minister of finance. You lost your minister of health. You lost your minister of energy. And so that does allow you to kind of keep this general pecking order, but just sort of slot everybody up. And the minute you start jumping people over and giving them to different ministries, that's when you have the potential of creating those real hurt feelings. siblings and so i i actually don't think that that's crazy and i would also point out that nicoletti is moving from advanced education which is the fourth biggest in terms of dollars to education or the third biggest maybe i i don't know i'm lost now but it's not a huge step to go to education if you want to look at it through that lens too and so there is kind of a look you can squint and sort of say she just didn't want to change things a lot in the creation of this cabinet. And that was probably right, knowing that she's got to calm some horses in a societal sense, as well as calm horses internally looking towards a leadership review.

Zain 23:30

Carter, same question to you. What message should Danielle Smith have tried to send today with her cabinet collectively? And if you were advising her on this, knowing the election she's been through, what message should she have tried to send? I'm

Carter 23:43

I'm governing for all of Alberta. I'm governing- How

Zain 23:47

How would she have done

Carter 23:48

done that? I think the way to do that would have been to appoint people that weren't going to cause, you know, consternation within the electorate or within her party. But I think the electorate needs to be the bigger group right now. You know, LaGrange

Carter 24:07

LaGrange is going to cause people to freak out in health care, right? I would have put her somewhere where she could have caused less havoc. You know, children's

Carter 24:16

children's services or something like that. You know, where she could have brought her, you know, her points of view and her biases and not kind of scared the shit out of everybody.

Carter 24:30

You know, we were talking not that long ago. I think it was the last episode or the last Patreon

Carter 24:35

Patreon or something like that. We were talking about how small this victory was and how that meant that I think that she needed to think about who she was serving a little bit differently. and this is not that cabinet. This cabinet is her party, her party first, maybe a nod to Calgary with some over-representation, but certainly not a nod

Carter 25:01

nod to Calgary that there's going to be a significant amount of power here. I mean, we don't have the finance minister, we don't have the minister of energy, we don't have the minister of health, arguably the three most important ministries in this government. They're not in Calgary. so you

Carter 25:17

you know and i'm not i'm not sure that people are going to be thinking you know what you know just the sheer number of ministers that we have makes up for things so again i think

Carter 25:26

think that the message should have been i'm here to govern for everybody but um instead it was very much a partisan partisan piece gory

Zain 25:34

gory we talked last time about cabinets where you kind of have variance and perhaps loyalties or rivalries um and it's staff is where you just be like these have to be your folks, right? And I think you guys both impressed upon me at the end of that episode that that's just the way it should be. Talk to me to Carter's earlier point where he talked about the loyalty element of it. What does this cabinet say about loyalty to you? Does it have a bit of a keep your enemies close, keep your former rivals close element to it? Does it not? Talk to me about it through that lens, and then I want to get into individual ministers.

Corey 26:07

Oh, 100%. And I think one of the benefits of a large cabinet is it does allow you to keep your quote unquote enemies close while still rewarding your quote-unquote friends. And listen, it's always shifting alliances in these things, which is why I'm giving a bit of that quote-unquote treatment to it here. But there's a thing about cabinet that's pretty basic, but pretty important, which is cabinet solidarity. When you make a decision as cabinet, you go outside of cabinet and you support it 100%, no matter what's collectively been decided. And as we've talked about in the past, it's not like there's votes at cabinet. It's the premier reading the consensus

Corey 26:39

room and saying, this is what we're going to do. So effectively, by putting somebody in cabinet, The premier has, for the price of, you know, loyalty, said, you have to support everything I do. Absolutely. 100% no hedge. And she now has- Do you think that conversation happened? That's interesting to me. It doesn't happen like that, but aversion does happen. And it's maybe delivered not so much by the premier, so much as the chief of staff or some of the people around as you're onboarding people to cabinet roles. And by the way, not a lot of new cabinet ministers, so most of them already know this, but they will for sure talk about the importance of cabinet solidarity. And they will say things and, you know, there's this, you know, there's this old thing in communications where nothing matters before the word but, right? So they will say, in this room, we have robust discussion, we disagree, we fight, we are going to have the tough conversations, but the minute we leave this room, we are united behind the decisions that have been made. And that is so foundational to the cabinet experience that one of the real advantages of a big cabinet is you have created, by having half of your team in cabinet, an

Corey 27:50

an unbeatable block in caucus, frankly. Like you go in there and you're the majority of people and you are going to stand together on every decision that's made.

Zain 27:59

Carter, talk to me about how you read the loyalty aspect of it, a point you brought up earlier. And feel free to like inject some of your experience with this, right? You have browbeat people into loyalty in the past. It didn't last long, if I look back at the 2011 experience. But tell me about some of your experiences. And I'm really curious about that conversation Corey referenced. Of course, not in such explicit or even ham-fisted terms. But talk to me about if that conversation happens around, I give you this and you give me that. Yeah,

Carter 28:28

Yeah, I mean, generally, again, it's not that explicit, but it

Carter 28:32

it is understood that if you're going to be a part of cabinet, you are bringing loyalty. That is, that's the price of admission into cabinet. And that's one of the great things about having a large cabinet. You know, you have an awful lot of loyal friends. I once had this idea that it would be great to put the Alberta government into five or six cabinets.

Corey 28:57

David Johnson resigning as special rapporteur on foreign interference. Happy Friday. Keep going. No,

Carter 29:02

No, I sent it to you guys six minutes ago.

Carter 29:05

Like, I don't understand. I sent

Carter 29:07

it to you. Oh, my God. Breaking from the

Carter 29:10

Corey, is what I sent to you. Oh, there we go. From the DMs.

Zain 29:14

read. Is it navigator.com or .ca?

Zain 29:17

.ca. I need to go. Sorry.

Carter 29:20

But they were fired. So maybe they give them different advice.

Zain 29:24

Navigator does a Kelowna web design company since 1993. So big ups to them. Go ahead, Carter, please jump in.

Carter 29:33

I'm not going to lie to you. This

Zain 29:34

This is a hell of a Friday. Is this a hell of a Friday?

Zain 29:37

Yeah. A hell of a Friday. Aren't you happy recording? Carter, here's my question to you. Here's my question to you. How does this cabinet... Actually, you know what? Let me get more specific.

Zain 29:44

Who are her friends and who are enemies in this cabinet? We know, right? Right. Like, let's let's if we're talking about loyalty tests, team of rivals, like, do you feel like the Sonny's and the Schultz's of the world have just climatized and are like, fuck it, we're no longer against this woman, despite the fact what we said in the leadership? Or do you think they're actually fundamentally enemies? And then who are her friends? I

Carter 30:04

I think her friends are more the rural, the rural side of this list. I think that the people who are probably against her, Jason Nixon has certainly been against her from the very beginning and would have been the president of the 805

Carter 30:20

805 Club that Corey referenced regarding Christy Clark the last time we chatted. it um i

Carter 30:28

think also rebecca schultz raj and sani uh you know uh maybe rick mckiver would have been people who who would be very in you know could sit outside of this caucus and be very very influential but let's also not forget the far right the todd lowens of the world that have stood outside of this caucus on principle before putting him in cabinet and giving him uh forestry in parks, I guess it's a fairly significant, uh, significant thing. And speaking of someone who enjoys riding his bike and Brad Creek, uh, that name terrifies me, right? Um, they're just gonna, they're gonna just take

Carter 31:05

take down all the trees and Brad Creek, uh, with Todd Lohan running the show. So I mean, I'm, I'm, I

Carter 31:13

I think that she's, she's still sitting in the middle of two of two different sides. Honestly, Corey, the flash, the fleshlight needs to go away. It's very distracting.

Zain 31:23

you know what else needs to go away it's a fucking smirk this fucking smirk on his face and i and i've known this guy long enough to know that the fucking smirk on his face means that he read the johnson letter and there are elements of what he suggested last time that find itself we

Corey 31:38

we could have written

Zain 31:39

last time i know i know

Zain 31:41

that's what he's so distracted

Zain 31:44

yeah cory do you is is being right on this podcast like about 80 of your your ego and identity at

Corey 31:50

at this point look i said

Corey 31:52

said that he wasn't going to resign in the next month so i can't really i made you

Zain 31:56

you guys write letters for a monday resignation do i recall that yeah

Zain 32:00

and and and okay let's just talk about it because he'll be distracted the

Corey 32:04

so we'll take no no next segment we'll do it next segment

Corey 32:07

segment there's no next segment

Zain 32:08

segment we're gonna talk about right now fuck this show carter's already fucked up like six to eight times who gives a shit it's really hurt yeah

Corey 32:14

yeah this is uh we're gonna this

Corey 32:15

this is the stream of consciousness we offer Yeah.

Zain 32:18

Yeah. Remind anyone listening to never allow us on live television because this is how we head on.

Zain 32:25

Okay. Okay. So it's happened. But should we continue on? Who are her friends? It's not the natural question when there's breaking news. Corey, let's talk about David Johnson because I know you want to. Okay. He's written a letter. It's one page. He's written it to the prime minister. It's dated today. It was sent today. Prime minister has to accept this resignation, doesn't

Corey 32:44

doesn't he? Oh, 100%. There's no way not to. And effectively, it says, hey, I wanted to be the guy who could help bridge this partisan divide, but I can't. So I got to go. And, you know, me and my legal team are here to help if you need anything. And that sounds an awful lot like with the letter we told him to write. So good for us. Bad for me in that I said he wasn't going to resign. However, something big happened over the last week, and we just haven't had a chance to talk about it, which is it turned out that Navigator was

Corey 33:17

by Handong earlier in the year to be the crisis communication support for him in terms of his particular challenges with the accusations made against him that David Johnson is the rapporteur looking into, right? Right. So that didn't look great. And it just all became too untenable. A couple of days ago, Johnson announced through his staff that he'd fired Navigator effectively, not because there was anything wrong with them, but because this was, you know, an optics challenge. And and that just wasn't enough, obviously. And here we are. So, wow.

Corey 33:53

wow. Here we are. What do you guys

Zain 33:56

I got distracted. My wife is feeding my son cantaloupe for the first time and I told her explicitly not to. uh carter okay here we go yeah

Zain 34:04

by the way it's

Zain 34:05

it's not a good terrible worst fruit it's

Carter 34:08

it's a great fruit if

Zain 34:09

we want to open another open another bracket the only thing worst is worst honeydew worst fruit what no no honeydew is terrible all

Zain 34:17

all the melons are bullshit oh my god they're all the melons

Corey 34:20

melons are you know we gotta throw out the run now we gotta talk about melon melon power rankings now watermelon number one agreed uh

Carter 34:27

uh yeah i think that's agreed yeah it's

Zain 34:30

it's like you're You're, like, ranking people on the substitution list of the G League team, but okay. Sure. Yes, watermelon, number one of a very shitty category. Wow.

Carter 34:42

Cantaloupe is the list. Number two.

Corey 34:43

I only know three melons, so this

Carter 34:45

this is going to be pretty short. I pretty much only know that. Number two. There's a couple of different honeydew-like melons that are really tasty.

Zain 34:52

Okay, fine. Let's just get a list of all the melons. They're really

Carter 34:54

really good. Hold on. so basically any melon that it costs extra um

Carter 35:00

is uh is is you know

Zain 35:02

know allmelons.ca is available if we well it was available

Corey 35:06

available it's not anywhere yeah by

Zain 35:09

time people listen to the show it

Corey 35:10

be available yeah allmelons.ca yeah

Zain 35:15

hold on let me find all right

Corey 35:16

right you know what this is why we don't record during the day too many distractions keep going zane zane what's

Zain 35:20

what's the show about what

Corey 35:21

what are we talking

Zain 35:22

here's here's something that's gonna blow your mind

Zain 35:25

there's something called a musk melon and there's zucchini is listed in the melon it is

Zain 35:31

it's blow my mind

Carter 35:32

yeah it's essentially is a

Corey 35:34

a melon same i

Corey 35:34

i can't handle that i don't want to talk about the fact that zucchini is a melon zucchini is a member

Zain 35:39

member of the melon family yeah the actual fuck this

Zain 35:44

this is more shocking than the david

Zain 35:47

david justin stephen carter let's go back to david john so let's close the bracket on melons let's let's leave that conversation till next time we know You know what?

Corey 35:52

This is like Inception.

Corey 35:53

We did Melons, and now we're elevating up a level back to Johnson, and then we're going to elevate back up a level to Captain. I

Zain 35:59

every bracket. Don't worry

Zain 36:00

worry about it. We're fine here. This is a high wire act for you, not for me. Okay.

Zain 36:04

Okay. Okay? I'm one of those Melinda people. Ended well for them, right? Yeah, they all

Zain 36:17

Yeah? Talk to me about Johnson. Let's do the quick political math right now. This letter came out 10 minutes ago. We literally read it right now.

Zain 36:26

Let's talk about the three sides very quickly. What are the NDP doing right now? What are the liberals doing right now? What should the conservatives be doing right now? This is rapid strategy session live wire as it happens in front of us. What should each party be thinking about right now to maximize the political gain of this resignation? Or in the Trudeau case, minimize the hurt. So talk to me about some them rapid fire strategies put them on the table cory i'm going to come to you the same thing right now breaking it right

Carter 36:54

right so i think that uh i think that the the the

Carter 36:57

the conservatives should be just going after him after him this he was the wrong choice from the beginning this is the wrong that he was the wrong person the fact that it's ending in tragedy and and tears is absolutely no surprise and the

Carter 37:10

the reason for that is that's their existing strategy why would you walk away from your existing strategy, just when the you know, you kind of are getting the ball over the line. So you may as well just keep banging on the poor guy.

Carter 37:24

The NDP strategy is going to be a little bit different. I think the NDP should take the thank you for your service. It's a shame that the Prime Minister didn't know how to manage this better. But this isn't a David Johnson problem. This is a Prime Minister, a Prime Minister Justin Trudeau problem. That's the way I would do it if I was the NDP and the T and the

Carter 37:46

the Trudeau liberals need to figure out if they're going to walk

Carter 37:51

walk towards a, an inquiry, or if they're going to continue to walk away from the inquiry, because if they're going to walk towards the inquiry, then their best bet is to, is to thank, um, you know, the

Carter 38:03

the right honorable Johnson, uh,

Carter 38:05

uh, for his time and his service. and then to

Carter 38:12

to call an inquiry next week.

Zain 38:16

Corey, what do you think? Rapid strategy. Conservatives, NDP liberals.

Corey 38:21

Well, Stephen's absolutely right about the conservatives. The thing that the conservatives have to do is take their victory lap and say, this is evidence of the things we were saying that he wasn't the right person to job. Do they take credit

Zain 38:31

credit for it? Would

Corey 38:32

take credit for it in a statement? I would take credit for it. And I would say, you know, it was because we kept the pressure up and we pointed out the conflicts that were here, and we continue to keep the light on this particular matter, that we have gotten this, you know, adequate, however, very late resolution to this. And now, absolutely, the Prime Minister needs to call the inquiry. Enough screwing about, it's time to call the inquiry. And the beauty of the strategy from your point of view, if you're Pierre Poilievre, is if David Johnson defends himself, he's validating that you were right. He's too partisan. See, now he's fighting with us, the Conservative Party. And so you just continue continue going down that road. The NDP do have the option of saying, oh, this is all very unfortunate. Very, very unfortunate. Now is the time for the inquiry. And just striking a bit more of a balanced tone, if you're the NDP, right now there is blood in the water with the Liberals. You obviously have the complexity of your supply deal with them and you've got to be careful that it doesn't become a situation where that becomes untenable and you feel forced to do the thing that you don't want to do. But if the Liberals are just taking body blows and it's just shaking things up to your advantage, why not let the conservatives continue to be the heavy on this particular one and move forward? If I were them, I would just keep my options open. For me, it's about optionality. It's not making definitive statements. It's allowing this thing to unfold in a way that lets me pick off liberals, allows me to support the liberals if I decide I need to down the road, and try not to get pinned in by either party or by my leader's absolute statements. And I think it was a real mistake of Singh, just to take a shot at Singh on the way here, when he said, for example i'm not going to call an election until this is resolved because he's he's causing himself future problems if he decides no actually i wouldn't mind an election at this particular moment if you're the liberals i think you say shame on the conservatives for besmirching this public servant this is just embarrassing for all i am going to continue to take johnson's advice his very good advice at the end to find somebody who is adequate so i would reverse the onus and i would say okay it's time for you to come to the table in a serious way pierre poliev you need to put some names forward that are acceptable to you let's have a conversation about this and yeah i mean he's gonna pick some like total assholes but let's let's let him be the one who's having to put some things forward for once instead of just throwing rocks from the side let's have some of his names come forward and be open to criticism instead of the liberal names coming forward and being open to criticism and let's see if we can't get out of this in a different fashion the

Zain 40:55

question i have for you on the liberals is any sort of taking a beat recalibrating assessing assessing the situation, acknowledging that publicly, is that a sign of weakness?

Zain 41:05

do they have to commit? Do they have to? Exactly. Is that a public sign of acknowledging weakness, right? Do they have to commit to the process going forward? This is to Carter's last question. Do they have to pick that lane now? Okay, let's

Corey 41:18

let's actually zoom out for the liberals, right? Because in some ways, I fell into the mistake that the liberals make daily, which is trying to win on tactics daily without a clue of where the fuck they're going on this particular matter. They need to zoom out. This has been our advice for literally months on this particular matter. They are being dragged, bloodied to an inevitable conclusion. They should have gotten there many months ago. The public inquiry, shape it, get out of it as soon as possible. Instead, we have gotten to the precipice of this in the most painful fucking way possible. And the outcome is not in doubt. The outcome has never been in doubt. And they should have gotten to that painful outcome sooner rather than dragging themselves through a more painful journey to that outcome so if i am the liberals yeah i am inoculating myself against the initial immediate charge by the conservatives of we were right because david johnson's leaving and saying no you've actually done a very bad thing here and you've caused some uh you know chaos where no chaos was necessary but i am thinking about how i get myself to that inevitable conclusion in a way with as little additional damage as possible at this point because this is too this too much like you're going to have the next rapporteur the next rapporteur will either agree with johnson or not if that next rapporteur disagrees with johnson it just sort of reinforces the idea johnson was maybe partisan and reading it wrong if that next rapporteur agrees with johnson well you haven't actually managed to do anything except get back to where you were a month ago and you're going to continue to be taking the hits and as soon as something comes up on china again that's going going to be called into question again. I mean, to me, this is very frustrating to watch because it's very obvious how this is all going to play out. And like I said, they can continue literally forever not to call this inquiry, but

Corey 43:00

but they'll just lose the next election. They need to find a way to get out of this conversation before the next election. They should have called the inquiry months ago.

Corey 43:08

Carter, your thoughts on

Zain 43:09

on this in terms of liberals having to pick that lane right now, right away?

Carter 43:13

Well, I've always thought that the best possible outcome for the country was to to lift this above partisanship. I think that the partisanship that is being displayed on this issue is hurting the country, period. Unfortunately, the liberals have not been able to paint Pierre Polyev as hurting the country through

Carter 43:33

through his actions, which is a

Carter 43:38

a failure on their part, because it would have been relatively easy to point out that the person who's making this a partisan spectacle is the one who's putting our our national security at risk but they failed they failed in that and they failed not once not twice but really from the beginning all the way through now they are in a spot where the the choices that there are left aren't their choices the they are going to need to do this i would i wouldn't necessarily worry too much about how to score points against the liberals or how to score points against the conservatives or the the ndp and instead i would say i would simply be focused on how do we minimize the pain that we're suffering right now and if they minimize that pain they will be fine because sometimes it's not about winning it's about just stopping the bleeding and the well put you know the bleeding is there the bleeding is continuing um so get out get

Carter 44:35

get out get out of the burning house yeah

Corey 44:38

they continue to try to win yeah again we said this for a long time and sometimes it's not about trying to win it's about trying to lose less and they should have taken more of a defensive stance on this from the start now

Zain 44:49

now cory let's say they accept that premise today and and we rarely do we get to deal with the situation live so this is exciting because we can actually compare it to what happens

Zain 44:59

o'clock Eastern right now as we record, right now on Friday, June 9th. It is the summer. David Johnson has strategically probably put out this letter after hours, right, on a Friday. Take out the trash day. Well,

Corey 45:10

Well, you have to keep in mind he no longer has communications assistants to help him write it on time.

Corey 45:16

This is so true. So it's probably just

Zain 45:17

just a late paper, Corey.

Zain 45:21

What needs to be done now in terms of getting something out, Corey? Roy. Does speed matter if you're any of the three parties that we mentioned right now? Of course. Okay. So talk to me about speed, especially heading into a weekend in summer, so to speak, officially not summer, but like a weekend in June. Tell me about speed. Tell me about tactics here. Last question on

Corey 45:41

on this and we'll get back to Alberta. Well, the prime minister's office obviously is going to know that this was coming. And so the prime ministers should have a response roughly concurrent with this letter being released, right and it should have all of the liberal messages in it and if they don't i mean that's

Corey 45:56

that's pretty weird um the um the conservatives and the ndp though they want to make sure they're right in the story and they're trying to frame this thing right from the top and uh zane king

Corey 46:06

king of multitasking you are you sent some notes that one of the things that johnson has has talked about is that he's been getting informal advice from liberals and new democrats doesn't sound like conservatives conservatives and so i think that there are some reinforcing facts here that allow the conservatives in particular to say this is not non-partisan right you've got the liberal ndp alliance and you've got conservatives and he was only taking advice from people in the liberal ndp alliance um and so yeah get all of those facts out there frame the story you want and try to make it try to make it clear to canadians that this is as a result of of him failing short of that or We're falling short of that nonpartisan standard that was expected of an independent special rapporteur, rather than allow it to be entirely framed by Johnson and the liberals as, you

Corey 46:56

you know, the environment has just become too toxic. I've got to get out for the good of the country.

Zain 47:01

Carter, talk to me about what the liberals need to do tonight, if anything.

Carter 47:05

Well, I kind of disagree on the speed thing that Corey was talking about. about i think that you know in speed is is an interesting thing because what i'm probably going to recommend would be seen as speedy um in most in most environments but i don't think that there needs to be a specific response tonight i think that the response that needs to be managed for is the monday or tuesday response which is we are now announcing this the the the inquiry um if

Carter 47:35

they continue to stick through their guns and uh

Carter 47:38

uh if they're going to stay where they are then maybe tonight's the night to respond but uh you know it's 35 40 minutes since the thing since this already came out uh and frankly to cory's point they should have known it was coming um if they didn't then that's another uh fail point but assuming

Carter 47:58

assuming that they knew it was coming then they should be putting it out right now like literally i was just checking twitter just to see i'm

Carter 48:05

i'm doing the same thing if they put something out because it

Carter 48:09

it's a two paragraph three sentence uh response right uh we're sorry to see uh david johnson resign we agree with him that uh that a public inquiry would be challenging uh given that most of the source material is classified classified we wish him the very best and thank him uh given the difficult partisan times that we're all in or we're saddened that the partisan uh attacks from uh from

Carter 48:37

from those who would put part you know partisanship ahead of the country i don't know something like that um but that that stuff pretty much writes itself and they didn't write it so why i don't understand it nothing

Zain 48:49

nothing from trudeau jugmeet saying david johnson has done the right thing now the prime minister must call a public inquiry so that we can restore trust in our democracy and nothing from pierre pauliev just yet as we talk about this story live as we were recording what i find interesting and i said that was the final question but how many times have i said that before not stuck to it harder um is there any strategic advantage for pierre pauliev to hold his fire because people anticipate and want to kind of like be like oh man that guy's gonna go fucking nuts on this is there any strategic value in holding off trying to do something more slowly trying to do something more strategically to try to milk this for all it's worth rather than a Twitter thread, which could come up any second now after I refresh. Talk to me about that. If you were advising Pierre. We

Carter 49:31

We haven't seen the stories yet. What we've seen is the letter, right? And all the media are posting the letter. What they're doing right now is they're writing their stories. In about two hours, we're going to see their stories start to pop up. My guess is Pierre Polyev is going to function at the front of those stories, right? David Johnson, Pierre Polyev, Justin and trudeau are all going to be the characters in the beginning of the story uh jagmeet singh released his statement so he could get into the into the story if if pierre paliev is smart he lets that story go without him having to inject into it then

Carter 50:05

then he responds to those stories tomorrow morning tomorrow mid-afternoon with his own statement pierre paliev is the one who's got the most time because he's

Carter 50:16

he's going to be in the stories there's i can't imagine a scenario where he doesn't, he's not one of the stars of whatever stories are being written right now.

Zain 50:25

Corey, any strategic value of Pierre to Waite?

Corey 50:29

I think Stephen has somewhat convinced me that maybe what's required is a bit of marination for a bunch of different parties here and seeing how people react to all of this and seeing what other fact base comes on the table. One of the things that might lead the Prime Minister's office away from responding is is if this was preemptive of another shoe to drop, right? Like if there is some other reason David Johnson resigned, and so you don't want to say, Johnson resigned, shame on Pierre Polyev. Oops, actually, we didn't know this thing about David Johnson or something to that effect there. And also, if you are thinking about changing strategy and zooming out and saying, okay, what do we actually need to do to extract ourselves from this for the benefit of the country and for the benefit of our party? You know, when thinking about those as two independent things and hopefully lean on the country one first, but let's be real, they'll be thinking about the party too. Let's, you know, maybe that requires a bit of an assessment of the reaction to all of this as well and seeing where things go. And frankly, it's a real good chance based on his actions along the way that Pierre Poliev goes too far, right?

Corey 51:34

Says something that's just way beyond propriety. And it might be interesting to see what that is before it goes on. I generally feel in these moments that you know a lack of alacrity can be very very dangerous but perhaps this issue is too formed and perhaps this issue is just timed perfectly for a sunny summer weekend smoky out east but still uh you know so you just you just forget it you know just not forget it but you just don't jump to the pump and

Zain 52:04

and forever we will mark this day friday june 9th 2023 as the day that the The special rapporteur resigned and Swoop Airlines.

Zain 52:17

Danielle Smith, 24 of her friends. What's the most surprising cabinet pick? What's

Carter 52:21

What's the most surprising cabinet pick? Yeah.

Zain 52:24

We talked about LaGrange. We talked about Horner in finance. We talked about Shelton Sonny, you know, Gene in energy. Friend of the Paul, Cyril Turton is in children's services. Most surprising pick, though. It doesn't have to be any of the ones I've just mentioned. You see the board, and you probably have it in front of you. What's most surprising? Maybe let me add a second word to it, surprising or interesting from your perspective. I think,

Carter 52:45

think, well, I'm going to choose the trio that I mentioned earlier of Schultz,

Carter 52:51

Schultz, Lowen, and Jean. I think that that's set up for some battles, and I'm really interested to see how they manage that. The other one, probably, if I didn't choose that, I would have to pick Lagrange to health.

Carter 53:08

I dislike her with an intensity of a thousand suns. So it's unbelievable to me that the ministry that is the largest in any government is led by such

Zain 53:25

Corey, most surprising or interesting pick or picks for you as you analyze this 24-member cabinet? Yeah,

Corey 53:32

Yeah, and maybe the surprise should have been in the cabinet that Danielle Smith originally created. But I think for me, especially

Corey 53:39

especially given the lack of Edmonton representation, I was surprised that Nate Glubish didn't have a more prominent ministry. So he's Minister of Technology and Innovation. People will remember he was like the first minister who supported Danielle Smith for her leadership and either the first or the second MLA, I believe, in terms of, you know, jumping on that bandwagon. And normally, that's

Corey 54:02

that's really important. And normally, you reward people like that. And that plus the fact that you would imagine having an Edmonton adjacent riding would set him up to

Corey 54:10

allow himself to speak in some way, shape or form for the Edmonton region. Just surprised, you know, technology and innovation is not nothing, but it's not huge. And I kind of expected if somebody was going to get a bit of a promotion. promotion.

Corey 54:24

Well, there were a few names, like I thought Schultz would get a bit of a promotion, and she did. But I also thought that perhaps Gloobish would find himself in a more prominent role.

Zain 54:39

Is it a real thing? Because Mike Ellis is our new Deputy Premier.

Zain 54:42

And he stands right beside him. Daniel Smith had two Deputy Premiers in the past. You guys will have to remind me, Casey Maddow and was it Newdorf?

Zain 54:50

Newdorf, yeah. Yeah. Newdorf. Right. Newdorf no longer retains deputy premier title that he had in Daniel Smith's first cabinet. But Mike Ellis, Calgary West deputy minister, deputy premier, minister of public safety, emergency services. Talk to me about deputy premier.

Carter 55:06

Well, I don't think the deputy I mean, deputy premier really isn't a thing. Like, why do it? Why do it? You need an attack doc. That's why you do it. You're picking the person who is going to be able to stand up and step up to the microphone when when you're in shit and you don't want to step up to the microphone and you send your deputy premier out and deputy premier has enough sway and knowledge and capacity to speak to whatever you want them to speak to. Right. So by making a deputy premier, that minister is no longer constrained solely to their ministry. They are able to take a swing for you. And that's why you appoint one. We had Thomas Lukasik out there for for Alison Redford. You know, there's any number of people who can who can fill those roles. But you're

Carter 55:53

you're mostly just looking for someone who's going to go out and defend whatever

Carter 55:56

whatever indefensible thing you've done as premier. Like you can't defend yourself from send

Carter 56:01

send out the deputy premier. It's really a version of send out the clowns.

Corey 56:08

deputy premier, any value?

Corey 56:09

Yeah, Carter has really put his finger on the main value. you. I maybe just want to say it a slightly different way, which is you have somebody besides the Premier who speaks for the government as a whole on the political side, right? Otherwise, you're almost picking the lens that they're talking through. Like, are they talking as Minister of Health? Are they talking as Minister of Public Safety? No. I mean, at this point, Mike Ellis, he's here with his Deputy Premier hat on, and he's going to talk on behalf of the government. And it's just kind of a cleaner way to do that. And it allows you to do the things that Stephen's talked about. But it also allows you to provide just a different voice than the premier has so if the premier for example is very light on details and you need a very detail oriented person you could pick a deputy premier like that whatever works for you it just allows you to kind of fill out your communications calendar the other benefit of course is that external view of it all and if you know the the prominent thing about mike ellis is he is from calgary and i think that's the main reason he is deputy premier you had to pick somebody from calgary to be deputy premier because calgary remains the battleground calgary remains very very important in terms of assembling a government in this province. And so that just made great sense.

Zain 57:16

Carter, let's talk about the opposition, the NDP here. What would you go after? And would you go after the naming of a cabinet? How would you do that as opposition? Because the NDP have, and I'll lay out a few things that they've tried to criticize, the lack of diversity, the premier for not appointing ministers directly in charge of housing, labor, climate change, change uh and and also as as quoted in the cbc article that i'm reading that right now also criticizing that no one is responsible for representing the concerns of francophone albertans um and and the quote here is the point is very little has changed and i fear what that means for our province under this government yeah if you were the opposition ndp you you formed the largest uh opposition in alberta history you look at this cabinet what would the soft tissue be to you for you and would you be attacking it at the same this i mean

Carter 58:04

mean i'd be setting them up i'd be be expecting great things from this group of people you know this the i'm expecting that this group of people will be able to serve all albertans um you know ariana lagrange is that right adriana it ariana ariana anyways lagrange

Carter 58:22

has now been tasked with we've just stopped correcting

Carter 58:24

uh daniel smith's al just

Zain 58:26

just go with al there's ariana grande and that's

Zain 58:29

what's that's confusing Very different.

Carter 58:32

That's what's confusing me. One is

Zain 58:34

is a vocal genius and the other one

Zain 58:38

Arianna Grande. No, I'm sorry. Why would I do that? Why would I do that? I love Arianna. here's right set

Zain 58:42

set her up love to my brother

Carter 58:43

brother they said they said you know daniel smith said that they they agreed on primary health care well we expect to see what our primary you know how are they going to implement um you know our joint idea of family care teams how are they going to you know how are they going to protect education now that that minister has been removed will the new minister go you know protect uh and remove the the old curriculum set them up for things that actually matter the the ministries that are missing yeah i get it right after i mean climate change is a big important thing instead of saying where's the minister responsible for climate change why not just assign it to rebecca schultz rebecca schultz is now responsible for climate change and how is she going to keep the ministry for you know the minister for forestry and the minister from energy from destroying the planet you

Carter 59:31

you know give them the responsibility don't oh

Carter 59:33

oh oh, you know, we didn't see that person there. You know, fuck. I mean, the one thing that hasn't changed is the NDP's inability to actually come up with a message that matters to Albertans sometimes. It just fucking makes me crazy, Zane.

Zain 59:50

Corey, what's the, like, I said this, use this word for Carter, what's the soft tissue here? How would you be attacking it if you were the NDP?

Corey 59:57

Well, Carter's point at the end about messaging is the point I wanted to make. I think the NDP, I get it. It's post-election. It's hard to say, you know, we did that narrative. Maybe that narrative didn't work. Obviously, we didn't get the government we wanted. But you can't entirely lose your narrative thread the day after an election. What I'm challenged by, by the criticisms you laid out, and you shorthanded them, and I didn't see the exact language they were framed in. And neither did I.

Zain 1:00:23

me too. And I'm reading them from the CBC article.

Corey 1:00:25

Yeah, for sure. And if you were going to put somebody in like a sensory deprivation chamber, and they heard none of this, and they walked out and said, okay, give me what you think an NDP critique of this would be, they would say like, oh, yeah, diversity, gender, you know, the francophone issue feels like even a step beyond that in terms of like, do we actually think that that's what's going to be top of mind for a lot of Albertans? pretty fair ball but also definitely not top of mind for most albertans and it almost feels like kind of the the stereotypical attacks of what a new democratic uh government in waiting is going to be trying to do there and while those are all very important issues to consider i don't know if they help elevate and expand the story of the new democrats everybody's going to assume that the new democrats have you know those viewpoints i would have preferred to see something that was a little bit more take the issue and turn it you know like you know it's really important that you know we We have a cabinet that is going to, I'm

Corey 1:01:22

I'm challenged. I was about to say like, you know, reflects a modern Alberta, but I feel that would be taken as an assault against the rural representation there. So I wouldn't necessarily use those words, but I'd say like, hey, listen, we really need a cabinet that's going to be thinking about how we build opportunities for everybody in this province. And we're just not seeing that. We're seeing the same people who were afraid of opportunity for the last four years, and And we're going to hold them to account, and we're going to be talking to them daily in the legislature about what they're doing to make sure that everybody in Alberta can succeed and be pulled forward. Because you look at this cabinet, and it doesn't necessarily look like a we-want-everybody-to-succeed cabinet. I think that's the way you can make a kind of foundationally similar attack, but in a way that tells the story that expands the NDP brand.

Corey 1:02:08

what I would be looking for.

Zain 1:02:09

Carter, just coming off a campaign myself, it's easy. you hear a lot of criticisms about messaging, right? You should have done this, should have said that. So Carter, I'm going to pose the same challenge that Corey just took on his own, which is write me a better message for what the NDP should have said today. Write me a better message right now of what their criticism should have been, just like Corey did.

Zain 1:02:25

Build on it or write your

Carter 1:02:26

your own. There were so many things that Albertans agreed upon, right? We agreed upon a healthcare system that required significant change. Is this the minister who can actually deliver that change? we recognize the need for collectively both the NDP and the UCP recognize the need for significant diversification of the economy are these the ministers who can do this we expected more to be honest we expected a higher level but having

Carter 1:02:55

having said that we're not going to give them the out we're not going to let incompetence or lack of visibility be the out for these for these ministers we're going to stand up we're going to hold them to account and we're going to make sure that they deliver uh the promises that that they made uh the promises that albertans expect that's what we're going to do that's how we're going to do it um you

Carter 1:03:19

there were so many things that could have been better so many things that could have been done and instead we wound up with this group right

Carter 1:03:27

go after go after the common promises That's what I would have done.

Zain 1:03:32

Let me leave it here. I'll get to this cabinet in the lightning round. But Corey, advice to the NDP as they build their shadow cabinet. We've talked about the varying importance of shadow cabinets. Sometimes they're irrelevant. Other times they add a bit of structure to your side. Advice you'd give to the NDP as they build their shadow cabinet. It could be about how you map those, how you elevate certain folks, new people, old people, messaging. Talk to me about it. In the past, Carter, we've even discussed, do you give your shadow cabinet ministers mandate letters of their own. But talk to me about some advice you'd give Cory Carter. These are just options I'm just putting on the table. Feel free to take none of them. Right? And question to you, Carter, coming up right after Cory.

Corey 1:04:10

Yeah, I think it does still fundamentally go back to story. So you're trying to say this is what an NDP government would have looked like. And you want to leave Albertans almost wanting in that sense, like, oh, that would have been better. You know, that would have been cool. And it's a challenge because and we have talked about this. Do you match them person person for person, like they picked the ministers. So we're going to pick shadow ministers to be the same. Or do you, do you go a little off script and you say like, well, you didn't have a standalone status of women. We think that's important. So we're going to have status of women, but you've got to, you've got to be very mindful of the story that you're going to be bringing forward here. And that's what should be reflected. And you also do have the advantage like in hockey, where you're setting your line second. So you should also think about who's actually going to be a good matchup against these people in the legislature. Uh, if you've got somebody who's got a incredibly thorough understanding of the details on one side you might not want to have somebody who's only going to blob platitudes in question period towards them right like they're going to have to be able to spar and think on their feet and go back and forth and so there's considerations like that as well you're setting up the communications moment which is saying this is what the cabinet could have looked like and wouldn't that have been cool but you're also setting up the exchanges in the legislature day by day and we've talked so much about how not important important question period is generally. But we've also talked about how that can set the tone overall for the media and the tone overall in the house, and how that can bleed out into things. And you've got to be thinking about that as well. Because you don't want to set up the communications moment of the shadow cabinet, only to have it be totally useless for you on a day to day basis in terms of QP and going forward.

Zain 1:05:43

Carter, advice as they set up their shadow cabinet in the coming weeks? Well,

Carter 1:05:46

Well, it's almost the opposite of the advice that we would give for setting up a cabinet. um you do want people with expertise you know like for example putting uh sarah hoffman in education makes a tremendous amount of sense because sarah hoffman knows the education file backwards and forwards and isn't going to such a great

Carter 1:06:03

you know isn't going to need to be

Carter 1:06:05

briefed by uh administration on everything because so

Zain 1:06:10

so you're so you're just so i'm clear domain expertise here is an asset right well you don't have a department yeah

Carter 1:06:16

you're not not going to get briefed by you know 12 smart people be you know every day on

Carter 1:06:20

on what's actually occurring in your in in your ministry you're

Carter 1:06:24

you're going to have like you

Carter 1:06:25

you know one harried issues manager running around uh trying to figure out what questions we should ask today so you know knowing your your file knowing when an answer is bullshit um enables you to ask the second and third question with a lot more specific attack to it right so you know sarah into um education shannon maybe into health um you

Carter 1:06:51

you know uh court ellington into economic development um you know where people are strong put them najwan against uh against brian jean is like a match made in heaven right a rookie who knows more about oil and gas than brian jean bring it bring

Carter 1:07:08

bring it bring Bring it all day long. It's going to be, first of all, just the images alone are going to be spectacular. Raki taking on advanced education. Like there's a lot of different places you can put people where it's

Carter 1:07:22

it's going to look better. Frankly, your group of people are going to look stronger and smarter than the ministers that have been put in place. Forestry is another great example. Given the fact that the fucking province is on fire, people are going to be paying a lot more attention to forestry. Going after Todd Lowen suddenly becomes a viable option. And Todd's not going to be doing great. So match strength against him. Put in someone, you

Carter 1:07:49

you know, put in someone, maybe a Kathleen Ganley. Or

Carter 1:07:52

Or I'm not as familiar with Sarah, whatever her name is, from Banff, Kananaskis. But I'll tell you, Banff, Kananaskis, you know, there was a fire in Banff. The towns are scared shitless of forest fires. And there's going to be clear-cut logging in Brad Creek. Banff, Kananaskis, having the critic for forestry and

Carter 1:08:14

and parks could be really a lot of fun.

Zain 1:08:19

Corey, you wanted to jump in here before you move on.

Corey 1:08:22

Yeah. The reason the construction is different is important to underline here because the shadow cabinet really does have a role outside of the house. But the main role you think about it is kind of in the house. And yes, they're going to meet with stakeholders there and they're going to talk about all of these things. but you could you could have almost anybody do that in almost any setting one of the cool things though is that you're on the attack you're looking for the soft underbelly and having domain expertise really helps in that sense when you're a minister you're looking to duck and weave and that's just being good on your feet that's just good communications expertise that's being able to take a brief so it is a bit of a different job when you think about it in the confines of the house plus

Carter 1:09:03

plus the networks uh the relationships are super important right so all of a sudden you know know sarah hoffman's able to talk to all the teachers unions because she knows them all super well um shannon's got relationships with the with the nurses or whomever right you want to have those relationships and ideally they're not colored by your past performance as a minister right

Carter 1:09:22

right you don't want sarah hoffman's performance as the health care minister now she's the health critic

Carter 1:09:28

all of their primary stakeholders are still pissed at her from what she did four years ago you

Carter 1:09:32

you want to have a nice clean break into all of those areas so where you have existing existing relationships dig

Carter 1:09:40

dig into them big time we're

Zain 1:09:42

we're going to leave that segment there move it on to our final segment or over under our lightning round steven we do this for you this entire world has been custom built for you yeah we

Carter 1:09:51

we just agree that the end of my the end of this podcast has been stronger than the beginning can we just concede the point yeah

Carter 1:09:59

need to feel a little bit better about myself as

Zain 1:10:01

as the evening settles in you are are picking up steam well you are you were

Carter 1:10:05

yeah i was really sleepy i'm less sleepy now so feeling better we're

Corey 1:10:10

yeah it's good yeah that was a solid performance by you thank

Corey 1:10:14

yeah very solid thank

Carter 1:10:15

thank you for carrying me for the first half cory

Zain 1:10:19

carter uh here's here's the thing carter uh i gotta ask you riskiest pick in this cabinet go go.

Carter 1:10:27

Oh man. Uh, I think it's Lagrange in, uh, in health. She is an ideal log. I

Zain 1:10:33

I don't need justification. We got, we got, you've said it before. Corey, riskiest pick in cabinet.

Corey 1:10:37

It's AL buddy. It is AL because it's not as though if things go wrong, there wouldn't have been warning signs from education. Oh

Zain 1:10:44

If, if any of us ever form government, let's make a bond on this podcast that we will be asking Ariana

Zain 1:10:50

Ariana Grande to be in our cabinet. Okay. I feel like, done i feel like that'd be pretty exciting so cory i'm gonna i'm gonna stick with you on our next one most

Zain 1:10:56

most inspired pick the

Corey 1:10:58

most inspired pick well uh

Corey 1:11:01

uh i think it's al and health so uh because it was just part of a strategy listen because it was part of a strategy of just sort of elevating up right and it was the one that avoided the most glory goes

Zain 1:11:12

goes with the classic double ed sword like a total fucking cliche carter most inspired pick uh

Carter 1:11:18

uh cyril turton as the the ministry of children and family services uh one of the worst right worst ministries to get because uh we've spoken about it in the past and some people have misinterpreted this it's not a question of how important it is it is a question of how difficult it is it is super difficult to find the right balance between uh parental rights first nations issues other things that impact children in this province and and uh protecting children in this province it's it's damn near impossible and our good friend searle has now uh been tasked with that i've already sent him a note uh you know basically uh commiserating

Carter 1:11:58

he's very excited to get the night why

Corey 1:12:00

why would you yeah

Corey 1:12:01

yeah why would you torpedo his career like that by mentioning that yeah he

Carter 1:12:05

he said he said he said to me thanks for the encouragement and the dose of realism because i call them a poor soul carter

Zain 1:12:12

i'm going back to you how fucked are the liberals on a scale of one to ten uh

Carter 1:12:14

uh they are three level fucked they are they're going to be forced to do the right the the wrong thing for the wrong reasons uh but they are they're going to be there yeah

Zain 1:12:26

yeah cory uh can you tell me how fucked are the liberals on a scale of one to ten i

Corey 1:12:31

i i think only a c minus because there's still a lot of time at least in theory to the next election they can recover they can pull it out but they've got to they got to do it now they've got to realize where they're going and they've got to say yeah not optimal yeah yeah, we don't even necessarily think it's the right thing per se, or the best way to get at these answers. But I'll go back to the point I made about psychological safety. Canadians right now, they want to have this inquiry because they want to get to the bottom of some very concerning things. So they, you know, they've got time. They've got time to turn it all around, but they've got to stop. They can't run the last four months or the next four months like the last four months.

Zain 1:13:10

Corey, final question. Here we are. By the end of day Monday, will Justin Trudeau have have called a public inquiry yes

Zain 1:13:15

yes or no god

Corey 1:13:17

god well i was wrong about the the stepping down so assuming that i will be wrong again i will say uh no he will not have core

Zain 1:13:28

core carter a same question as

Carter 1:13:30

as i mentioned in the last podcast zane i am no longer making predictions due to my dubious prediction capacity uh having said that of course uh there will be a public inquiry called by 12 noon eastern time on monday fantastic

Zain 1:13:44

fantastic getting even more specific i appreciate it carter zucchini is not a melon and i will fight that till the death that's a wrap on episode 1073 of the strategist my name is zane velgey with me as always cory hogan steven carter we'll see you next time

Corey 1:14:04

can you fucking believe he didn't even ask us about donald trump i

Carter 1:14:07

i mean it's like like what

Carter 1:14:08

what now there's how many indictments has the guy got like it's like over 60 total like over 70 indictments 37 of them come down like

Carter 1:14:18

like yes yesterday night last night finally released today just before the podcast we had all the information and zane's like let's

Carter 1:14:25

let's talk more about ariana no adriana adriana lagrange fuck

Corey 1:14:33

yeah you know it's it's uh it's tough it literally the guy was accused of hoarding nuclear secrets and you know defensive plans of the united states but no we got to talk about uh who the big surprise picks in the danielle smith cabinet

Carter 1:14:50

who shocked you the most all of them zane i mean like there's

Carter 1:14:54

there's no fucking talent and

Corey 1:14:55

and yet none of them yeah

Carter 1:14:56

yeah i mean oh rick mciver municipal affairs oh that really stepped out of of the box you know who to thunk it rj sigurdsson in agriculture oh we're gonna hear a lot from him i bet rj

Carter 1:15:09

rj is gonna hold a press conference once a week what

Carter 1:15:12

what a mess ridiculous

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