Transcript
Zain
0:01
This is The Strategist, episode 1098. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Corey, we are bronze certified. This country is now bronze certified. And you know what? We beat the United States while doing it. We did. Yeah,
Corey
0:14
Yeah, I mean, the United States does have a bad habit, though, of when they're out of the gold medal game, absolutely giving up. But I'm not gonna... That's very American of them. I like
Zain
0:23
like that. I like that American
Corey
0:25
American hegemony. Don't undercut our moment any more than I just did right there. We got the bronze. Hey, that's Canadian gold, my friends. That's
Zain
0:34
Carter, bronze has been Canadian gold long time ago, long time slogan of yours, third is first. Used to be two first, but you've just now said, you know what, third is first. I like that in your latter years. Any thoughts on Canada winning bronze at the FIBA World Cup for the sport of basketball? I
Carter
0:52
I was nervous when the Americans picked up the free throw at the end of the first, you know, at the end of the game, and then sunk the tying point. Like, it just felt to me like the Canadians were going to let this one slip away, as so often happens in Canadian sporting. But instead, the Canadians, you know, they rallied in the overtime and really made it spectacular. So very good to Canada. uh as you know we are basketball superpower now and uh i gotta tell you i've never been more into basketball into the b and the ball as we say in nowhere land one
Corey
1:28
fact can take you
Carter
1:30
that's what we learned right
Carter
1:31
right yeah that was really impressive we
Zain
1:33
we can also see its limits i'll
Carter
1:34
i'll tell you we can also
Carter
1:37
was out for a dog walk and i ran into a woman who who was wearing a Dino's Rugby sweatshirt,
Carter
1:42
sweatshirt, Corey. This is me promoting yourself. Dino's Rugby. And I was like, oh.
Carter
1:49
And so I start chatting with her. And
Carter
1:51
And I hit her with, so who do you think is going to win the World Cup? Because the Rugby World Cup just started. And then I was able to follow up with, do you think anybody can beat France? They seem to be able to score in so many different ways. She was so impressed. So impressed. She thought I was an actual rugby enthusiast. It was amazing. it was amazing are
Zain
2:12
are you not i'm a little bit that's all we fucking talk about at the beginning that's
Carter
2:15
that's afl okay yeah
Zain
2:17
yeah before we hit can we summarize can we summarize you saw someone with a hoodie and
Carter
2:22
and i hit her with the one that had
Zain
2:23
had the sport that you only the only sport you know anything about and you had a conversation with
Carter
2:28
with her about that
Carter
2:29
is that your opening story
Carter
2:32
afl sport like what is this cory
Zain
2:34
cory save us save us from this
Corey
2:40
i i can't zane that's your job um but i'm really excited for you to do your job because we've got a lot to talk about oh
Carter
2:48
oh my god do we really that's the bridge that's the bridge yeah no
Carter
2:51
that's not the bridge that was today literally
Zain
2:52
literally that's a little
Carter
2:53
little you guys should know yeah go
Zain
2:54
ahead let it let it go
Carter
2:57
go ahead my predictions this year exhausted
Carter
2:59
exhausted this weekend using my technique of asking heather which team names she likes the best
Carter
3:04
so that worked four for four so i'm now third place third
Carter
3:09
third place in my pool it's
Zain
3:12
there's no way we're not playing that game now go ahead which which laid on us laid
Corey
3:16
laid on us you had a perfect week and you're in third and you're four personally i mean is that what i'm understanding started
Carter
3:22
started off in sixth so i had some catching up to do but
Carter
3:26
but uh you know it was a big jump is what i'm trying to say you
Zain
3:30
you want to tell us do you want to quickly tell us the five teams so we can rank them based on which ones we like are we doing that four teams that won the
Carter
3:38
the lions based on their names
Zain
3:39
names are we doing
Carter
3:39
doing this so the lions won my brisbane lions won as one would expect um the giants won the uh uh
Carter
3:48
uh blues won uh and then melbourne lost to uh melbourne
Carter
3:54
melbourne lost to the pies oh
Corey
3:58
oh this is those pies really you
Carter
4:00
you know what the pies were first place in the league but they're barely hanging on barely hanging on you know what i don't have so
Zain
4:07
so whatever our strategy
Zain
4:09
strategy maximum pain welcome to our strategy for no maximum pain to cory hogan i'm just gonna keep this going for as long as i can anytime someone tells an immigrant to do their job they don't do I was
Carter
4:21
was outside all weekend. I went bike riding yesterday. I went down to Blairmore. Best bike ride. Let's move it
Zain
4:27
it on to our first segment. Carter, you're annoying the shit out of me, Carter. Let's move it on to our first segment. Our first segment, Pierre Potpourri. Guys, there are a couple of questions I want to talk to you about, Pierre-Paul. You guys did a deep dive on conventions on Thursday's episode. You did a deep dive on, I
Zain
4:43
I guess, using the conservative convention, which happened this weekend for those that weren't tuning into politics to talk about conventions. broadly. Well, now that conservative convention in Quebec City has happened. It's over. It's done with guest speakers, endorsements. There was musical entertainment. And of course, there was an hour plus long speech by the leader, Pierre Polyev himself in the round. Corey, I want to actually talk about a few things from this convention, a few things not from this convention, which is why I call the segment Pierre Potpourri. There's a few things to talk about about Pierre Polyev, interlinked kind of through the one connective tissue known as Pyropolyev. But let's start with your initial thoughts on his speech. Give me your thoughts on what he said this weekend in Quebec City. Was there anything interesting, anything politically resonant, anything strategically fascinating for you? Put some things on the table. We'll talk about this, and then I've got a couple of questions for you guys.
Corey
5:39
Sure. So I will start by saying I read the speech. I didn't watch it. I saw a couple of clips, so i got a little bit of a sense of his delivery but and you know your mileage may have varied depending on how you digested the speech and i think that's one of the realities that you're always dealing with with these kinds of uh major projects of communications these days are you seeing the whole thing you're seeing clips you're reading it are
Corey
6:00
are you hearing analysis about a lot of people have opinions about things just based on analysis i suspect even a few of our listeners will now be determining how they think about the speech they didn't listen based on ours might
Carter
6:11
might even be a strategist we
Carter
6:12
we don't know i
Carter
6:13
i mean there's no evidence might we
Corey
6:15
we might have listeners before that intro yeah that
Corey
6:17
that intro is excellent i think okay let's
Corey
6:20
let's go back yeah
Corey
6:21
maybe maybe in a bit maybe we can have an outro that rivals it for excellence there here's the thing it was my overall thoughts of the speech it was a really good speech it tells a very compelling story about a canada that has lost its way now if
Corey
6:37
if you scratch on it even a little bit if you put a bit of critical thought to it. I have to take exception with some of the things that he said, but let's put all of that aside right now. That speech should scare the shit out of the liberals because it effectively makes a fairly compelling case that things are a lot worse now than they were when Justin Trudeau took office. Ignores a lot of good, ignores things like the Canada child tax benefit, right? But talks about crime being up, talks about the cost of living being up, gives He gives a lot of personal stories about people being affected. I mean, we criticized in the Alberta election the lack of personal stories. This was the exact opposite. This was more personal stories than not, it felt like. You know, he
Corey
7:20
talked about people he met at the Sioux, you know, the 74-year-old who had to go live in his daughter's basement, potentially. I mean, story after story after story. And the fact of the matter is, I kind of remember them, and that is the power of those stories. and
Corey
7:34
we saw on display his real ability to craft a speech and so if i'm the liberals i'm thinking about the content i'm thinking about the structure and while i didn't see it the delivery i think will also resonate with canadians based on the few clips i saw pretty
Zain
7:50
pretty now yeah go ahead the
Corey
7:51
the last thing i'll say very strategically interesting how he approached uh you know trudeau's dance partners um really really funny like there was a line i can't remember exactly what it was but essentially he said something about like the trudeau sing alliance was like a disaster for canadians it was making you poorer and then he said let me repeat in french let's say and then
Corey
8:19
then he talked about the trudeau blanchett alliance and and this was actually something that he did a lot. Whenever he was speaking in English, he was talking about Singh and the NDP. Whenever he was talking in French, he talked about Blanchett and the bloc. And literally never the twain shall meet. Like if you go through the speech, there's not a lot of mentions of the NDP in French. There's no mentions of the bloc in English. So I mean, I'm not sure I've actually seen a politician so clearly divide in one speech and just act as though he's not saying different things.
Zain
8:53
That's interesting. Carter, give me your reaction to Corey's statement of the Trudeau liberals should be scared shitless
Zain
9:00
shitless after hearing that speech. Do you agree with that? I'm
Carter
9:03
I'm terrified for them. I mean, message discipline is something that we talk a lot about. And Corey brought it up. We talked about we were begging for personal stories from Rachel Notley, begging for them during the podcast. You know, and Pierre Polyev has them. Pierre Polyev not only has the personal stories. He has them and he tells them in an engaging way, you know, but like like a lot of storytellers, his commitment to truth isn't necessarily there. Right. His commitment to honesty isn't necessarily there. But the problem with that isn't that he's lying. The problem with that is that we as as a species have a tendency to be very comfortable believing falsehoods
Carter
9:44
falsehoods that we wish to believe. And I think that, you know, Corey's
Carter
9:48
Corey's point, Corey saying that Pierre
Carter
9:51
Pierre Pallieva's painting a worse
Carter
9:53
worse off Canada is absolutely true. And some of these language choices, you know, the costly coalition, the painting the picture of housing as a right, not a right the way that we necessarily think of it for low income Canadians. I think he's posturing it as a right for low, mid-income Canadians, right? Traditional renters. You
Carter
10:15
You know, he has put forward an idea, he's put forward language that appeals to people, and he is delivering it in a very solid way, which really mimics kind of some of the most successful communicators of our time. And we can we can talk about the ethics of them. We can talk about, you know, what does it mean when you have some of these, you
Carter
10:41
you know, challenges that are associated with a lack of honesty in a leader. But it
Carter
10:47
it really doesn't matter. What matters is he he is hitting the notes that need to be hit. And Trudeau has not been hitting those notes. So if I'm in the liberal communications department right now, I'm
Carter
11:05
hitting alarm bells because if something doesn't change very, very quickly, then Pierre Pellievre is the next prime minister of Canada.
Zain
11:15
Corey, was this a kick in the pants? Do you feel like it's been a long time coming? We've seen a lot of things. There's been polls. I want to talk about polls in a second. Do you feel like this weekend would have been a kick in the pants if you're sitting in the PMO?
Corey
11:28
hope this wasn't the first time they realized Pierre Polyev is likely to be the next prime minister unless they dramatically changed their approach to things here. The speech was a good reminder about how governments incur baggage, right? One of the things that I, yeah,
Corey
11:42
yeah, you know, again, your mileage will vary, but one of the things that made me roll my eyes about the speech was the number of small ball things that the liberals had done, quips that Trudeau had made that had been repurposed into attacks and whatnot. And again, it's a good reminder, eight years in, you're going to have a bunch of them. But I wasn't, for example, thinking that we'd be hearing about ArriveCat in
Corey
12:03
in this particular speech, which got multiple call outs there. I didn't think we'd hear about the passports, which wasn't that long ago, but also wasn't that big. But, you know, you can almost go through it and check off the various things that the prime minister has said that then became the hook with which Pierre Poliev could talk about an issue. And the biggest one, of course, and to your point about if you're the liberals and you're watching this, is it's very clear they know where the liberals are going. The liberals are not being super
Corey
12:35
super artful on this. I don't think you need to be tricky or sneaky in political communications. But he kept talking about, you know, Canadians aren't angry. I met this person. They're not angry. They're scared. I met this person. They're not angry. They're anxious. You know, giving the, you know, the personal vignettes about working the extra job, Uber Eats, tiredness in their eyes.
Corey
12:56
and uh you know and then he kind of moved to i'm angry for them and
Corey
13:02
interesting right because first of all he he gets to say the
Corey
13:07
the prime minister is calling you angry how dare he but
Corey
13:10
but he's also giving himself a bit of a defense for when he is inevitably called angry he's like because he's saying i'm not i'm not angry for me i'm angry for you yeah i'm i'm a vessel i'm the vessel yeah and And I'm angry, you know, very Trumpian in that sense, right? Like, I am your retribution. I am your justice, is what Donald Trump would say. Pierre Polyev's miles from there.
Corey
13:29
But it is a similar kind of thought that you become rage
Corey
13:33
rage channeled into the political sphere.
Zain
13:37
Carter, did you see any new political muscles through this speech by Pierre, either through what he said, how he said it, how he looked? I mean, the look is interesting because it's kind of like a bit of old plus new, right? Like, it's the new look, clearly. clearly. He actually references it quite early in the speech, right? Like a guy who lost his glasses sort of thing
Zain
13:53
thing as a self-deprecating guy who lost his glasses.
Zain
13:56
glasses. Yeah, it's like a self-deprecating thing, you know, effectively saying his wife's out of his league
Zain
14:02
league sort of thing. But Carter, what he said, how he said it, did you see anything new? I guess this is why I asked a liberal question. A kick in the pants. Corey's right. They've known this for a while, or I hope they've known this for a while. Was there a new thing that you saw today that actually, to your Your words should make them feel terrified. New
Carter
14:19
New is interesting because I want to say that, yes, there is something new that I saw and that something new is in his eyes or it's, you know, whatever. But for me, it was actually the remarkable commitment to consistency that really was scary, right? Like he called on the CBC to be defunded. He said that the media works for Trudeau, you know, like these are these are things that he has said before and they are you know he's bringing them up and he's bringing them up and he's bringing them up and it's consistent and one
Carter
14:52
one i mean we know that messages repeated our messages understood and
Carter
14:57
he's pushing it out he used the big stage today he or this weekend he's the big stage to get his message out to people who were listening and would hear it now Now, you know, it
Carter
15:10
it doesn't need to be new to be effective. And I think that that's where I'm going to end it, because I don't think it was new. Corey may have more nuance. Corey remembers more than I do. But for me, it wasn't that it was new. It was that it was disciplined. It wasn't that, you know, all of a sudden he's throwing out the cost of housing. He's been talking about the cost of housing forever. He brings up things that happened in the past. He's a dog with a bone. He doesn't let anything slide. he grabs it he holds it and he will not let it go because he knows that that's how canadians that's how everybody frankly um learns to learns and brings in messaging
Zain
15:50
cory i got carter i appreciate how you kind of like took new and said you know that that's not it but that's not the point in some ways too cory but i'm going to ask you the same question any new muscles that you saw politically demonstrated by peer polyam and we know know how you consume this it was differently than carter yeah
Zain
16:03
and i don't in his speech he didn't talk about cbc
Corey
16:06
cbc he did in remarks around it so one of the things about the speech is he said certain things and he said other things in other venues and i'm sure we'll get into some of the conversations that occurred at the conservative convention here i
Corey
16:19
i said on thursday one of the things i would be looking for is how he addressed the issue of the environment if he had answers for climate change I'm
Corey
16:27
entirely sure I would say they were new answers for him, but I thought that the communications packaging was pretty solid and it's going to resonate with an awful lot of Canadians. Effectively, if I can boil down his message in his speech, it was that you've got this tax on everything, tax
Corey
16:46
Canada is coming in super badly on emissions targets. So effectively, he's saying two things, and he's acting as though they're causal in a way that, again, I would argue they are absolutely not,
Corey
16:58
not, right? But Canada has missed every emissions target, ranked 58th out of 63 in combating climate change, which he called the real problem of climate change. So, you know, there's no climate denial there.
Corey
17:09
And, you know, kind of ignoring the fact that we are sort of starting from a really shitty position, too, because, of course, this is a very cold country, blah, blah, blah, all of these things going on. But it's enough, I think, for a lot of people to say, you're paying this tax.
Corey
17:24
Nobody knows about their levies. Nobody processes that anyways. He doesn't need to do a lot of lift there. He's saying, you're paying this tax, and
Corey
17:32
and we're 58th out of 63. And then he goes on to essentially leverage some of the same overarching communication he's made on the need to eliminate the gatekeepers, to sort of free Canadians from the yoke of government. And that's where these solutions will come from. And so, you know, he talks about how they want taxes, I want technology. He wants to free people to build all of these new green energy and electricity production things that will solve our problems. By the way, talks a lot about the various electricity alternatives out there, doesn't mention solar, doesn't mention wind, talks about nuclear, talks about hydro, and essentially is creating a conservative version of how you can approach climate change, which is to get rid of the regulations and taxes that the government has provided. Now, a lot of steps missing in between there, a lot of gaps. The suggestion, though, that we would be more green if government got out of the way, fucking
Corey
18:32
fascinating to me from a communications point of view, because
Corey
18:36
because it effectively takes a message that environmentalists have been using for a while, the idea that these things have actually become economically competitive, and it's turning its head and saying, so
Corey
18:48
so if you're Pierre Polyev, you're saying, yeah, I agree, so government should get out of the way. We shouldn't have to tax you. We shouldn't have to do any of this shit. We should truly let the market figure it out.
Zain
18:58
I want to get to my four themes on this parade. Let me start there because I like these initial thoughts. We can duck in and out of his speech to do this. Carter, let me start with you on this. Today's September 10th, 2023.
Zain
19:10
Pierre Polyev became leader on September 10th, 2022. Today's the one-year anniversary. I recall that the lead up to that one-year anniversary question, even the day he won in a major way, let's not forget how much of a thumping his victory was, was that even with the analysis, it was about a party divided. Where's the soul of the conservative movement? What's going to happen? Are they going to be able to stitch these two halves that don't belong together together in a meaningful way? Carter, that conversation seems to have died out, if not been completely wiped off the table. The first thing I want to talk is a strategy around unification. Your thoughts around it for Pierre one year later, are you impressed? Are you not impressed? Do you feel like there's still risks? Give me a couple thoughts on this as a first sort of topic in Pierre. You
Carter
19:57
You know, we were told very early on that the strategy for Pierre Polyev would be to, you know, go to the right to win the leadership and then move back to the center where, you know, and pivot back, pivot. He's just going to pivot. My problem is is that he hasn't really pivoted, right? He remains kind of the relatively far right guy out there. And people like Peter McKay are absolutely willing to sell their soul to him just to be a part of the team, just to say.
Zain
20:30
Just to be clear for folks that didn't watch, McKay was at the convention, stood up on stage and endorsed Pierre, something that many may not have expected, considering Peter McKay's sort of more PC sort of stripes. Yeah,
Carter
20:42
Yeah, I mean, one question is PC stripes and whether or not he seemed,
Carter
20:46
seemed, you know, I just think that there are some people who are willing to sell themselves to keep
Carter
20:51
keep the whole and you don't need many. You don't need many, like, the
Carter
20:57
the people that I knew that used to go to these conventions didn't go to the convention, right? They just didn't go. Now, that's
Carter
21:04
that's okay. They had 2500 other people who went to the conventions. you don't need everybody but all you need is some tokens to put out front to say see look everybody's with me now everybody's playing the game with us everybody's paying attention and pierre or pierre pulled out peter mckay you know way to go pete um you know way to stand by any principles you may have had at one point but this is also the guy who sold the pcs out to uh to Stephen Harper. So I guess we shouldn't be that surprised. But you know, so
Carter
21:37
so do I think that it's party divided? Not really. Because the population at large is embracing them. You know, people like me don't matter in this case, right? Like the the 2500 people that would have been at the convention if it was Jean Charest as the leader versus the 2500 people that would be at the convention with Pierre Polyev, it's irrelevant. What's relevant now is that Pierre Polyev has been successful in rallying the people. And the people are in the midst of speaking. And it'll be interesting to see whether or not, well, I'm sure he's going to get a bump even out of this convention, regardless of how high he was before.
Zain
22:21
Corey, he didn't moderate. He didn't pivot. He stayed true to who he was. He was that person that many said would not be viable or tenable. He seems to be up in the polls. Talk to me about how impressed you are around his quote-unquote strategy of unification one year to the day of him assuming leadership of the conservatives.
Corey
22:41
I mean, we can run the tape, but I do think that both Stephen and I were pretty confident that he would have a united party because he won so dramatically. You
Corey
22:51
really have to worry about 20% of the party turning on you post leadership race right he just he had such a commanding lead here he won by too much for unity to have been a real risk or a real challenge the question became like whether you could maintain that goodwill as you get down you know into the act of making yourself appealable to canadians and that's where the you know the mckay thing comes in here it
Corey
23:17
wasn't about unity in the party it wasn't about red tories and blue tories it was about them putting together a media moment moment to talk about the palatability of them to Canadians and again defend themselves against those Trudeau accusations those liberal accusations that they're extreme you know that they are they are too far to the right which they know are coming and they are building just with blocks around it defenses about that they're finding the right messaging or the messaging that works for them in terms of the angry right and they are finding the right allies and people they can point to like peter mckay to say no we're not some crazy brand of conservatives we got this endorsement from this pc and there will be more i'm
Corey
23:58
as they go through here but i you know i think and we talked a bit about this on thursday the
Corey
24:04
idea that they're going to wrap
Corey
24:07
everything that they're doing as common sense and we've sort of lost touch with the things that made canada great and the legacy that was canada and the opportunity that we could present ourselves and our children it's
Corey
24:19
it's going to have a lot of fans and and steven's 100 correct the
Corey
24:24
the more that shows up in the polls the more the people who were sitting around and maybe not willing to give him that shine and that support are
Corey
24:32
are going to be running right back into the tent and
Carter
24:34
and he's mixing up carter
Corey
24:36
carter respond i want to jump to
Carter
24:37
to the next mixing up positions too right like he's not right
Carter
24:39
right wing all the time i mean his positioning on housing like having scott atchison and michelle rempel weigh in on the calgary housing question and then watching little greg mclean uh kind of we we we all the way back home because he didn't have enough balls to stand up on his own um i mean it's fascinating because you know young voters are moving to pierre poliev in a way that you wouldn't expect but but they're hearing the message that he's giving he's giving them the message that they want to hear they too can be part of a prosperous uh canada and they've been been left behind that's what they want to hear it's the same as trump you know giving those messages um to you know union workers in in pennsylvania they believed it they followed it and it didn't matter even if it didn't come true they're still with him because he's the only one who's saying those words he's the only one saying those messages pierre polyev is the only one talking about giving back to this generation that which we took for granted in previous generations
Zain
25:42
Corey, finish this off in here.
Corey
25:43
Yeah. You know, Donald Trump didn't have solutions. The modern Republican Party doesn't have solutions. But
Corey
25:51
But they're not fucking wrong that people in the Midwest who used to have good middle class jobs working in factories have been absolutely fucked by the past 20, 30 years, if not a little bit more here. And I think that that's the thing that Pierre Polyev also has in his court here. Are people frustrated that they might not be able to have a home? That they're not going to be as prosperous as their parents? They fucking are, and it's true. Like, this is one of those things where it's not just spin. There is a fundamental reality here that Pierre Polyev is pointing out, and Justin Trudeau is the prime minister as that reality has taken hold.
Corey
26:29
Some of these are bigger problems. They're global problems.
Corey
26:33
Doesn't mean they're not Justin Trudeau's problems. It doesn't mean they're not real.
Zain
26:38
I've got three things in addition to what we just talked about that I want to discuss in this segment. So Corey, let me start with one of them. Polls.
Zain
26:44
Nine-point aggregated lead is what it sits right now. But
Zain
26:49
But there's always a conversation of, are you peaking too early? We've talked about this in a more global way on this podcast before, but now we've got a specific. Pierre Polyev, no election expected until 2025. Is he peaking too early? As a strategist, would you be concerned he's peaking too early if you're helping him out? Give me your thoughts on this. Carter, same question to you in a second.
Corey
27:08
Yeah, I mean, not really. We certainly have seen tons of instances in the last bit where the government has looked like a dead government walking two years out from their mandate. And that's just how it's going to be. I would rather be here than 10 points behind. All of the pressure is on Justin Trudeau right now. I almost said Pierre Trudeau. I think he's okay. I don't think people are putting the pressure on him as it stands. But there is a question as to whether Pierre Poiliev might be going out on certain policy limbs. I don't think the consequences are going to be high. But for example, to talk about how he's going to tackle inflation, it's quite possible in 18 months, inflation will have tackled itself. I mean, not itself. A lot of hard work by a lot of people, not trying to, you know, denigrate the good work of the Bank of Canada here. But But we might be back at 2%, you know, by the time the next election comes,
Corey
28:02
year over year. And so if that's the case,
Corey
28:06
don't know, maybe you're handing the liberals something to say, he was chicken little, he wanted to do all of these extreme things. He wanted us to cut off the tap on the programs you care about. We stayed the course, we made sensible, prudent decisions, inflation got back in line, and you have childcare, and you have those other supports that we've created along the way. and so you know that's a possibility i don't think it's a big one and i also think people can overthink some of those things this is something he's got now there's a moment it's hurting justin trudeau that hurt will pay dividends in its own right we were just talking about how sometimes you can get in virtuous cycles where people who were your critics internally become your best pals you know once you start to show a little bit of daylight in the polls between you and your opponent. But yeah,
Corey
28:50
I think he's fine on that front. Things to watch, nothing major.
Zain
28:55
Carter, I'm going to let you have a shot at that in a second here, but I did want to quickly plug our sponsor, Flair Airlines. Flair Airlines, you can never peak if you never rise. Carter, same question to you on this.
Zain
29:11
Give me your strategist wisdom. Is this entire notion of peaking too early, like a media pundit analyst narrative, or is it actually like strategist truth? You know what I'm saying? Like in our line, like we put on multiple hats. Sometimes we do punditry and we maybe have said, I'm worried. I actually said this on Thursday. I'm like, you know, this is going to maybe create more attention on him. I don't know if I actually fundamentally believed it. Like put on your strategist hat. The wisdom as an operative is peaking too early real. And what do you think of it and its application to peer quality?
Carter
29:41
quality? Is peaking too early real? Yeah. I mean, we can think of many different scenarios where we've seen a political party uh kind of reach their height um you know a month a year let me
Zain
29:51
me phrase it is it a risk to be mitigated let me
Carter
29:53
me don't go oh shit you know let's set out something unpopular so we can drop down seven points uh
Carter
30:00
you know that that's
Carter
30:01
what you do no
Zain
30:02
no but let's let's let's slow our climb how
Carter
30:05
how do you do that you know that's
Carter
30:06
that's how do you do that
Zain
30:07
i mean this is not
Zain
30:09
the heart of my question
Carter
30:09
question this is a science or this is an art not a science like we we can't predict predict necessarily how everything is going to land and sometimes we wind up way out in front and then we've spent everything all the capital all the things that we had and oh no what are we going to do uh other times we get way out in front and it holds um you
Carter
30:30
you cannot predict and you can't hold back you
Carter
30:34
you know the great risk i don't think the great risk is that people are going to look at pierre polyev and not like what they see i think that the great risk is that suddenly suddenly the wizened group of leaders within the Liberal Party say, OK, it's time for Justin to take his walk in the snow. And that might create a different dynamic. All of a sudden, you're geared up to run against Justin Trudeau and the Liberal elite, the wrenching elite, get rid of Justin.
Carter
31:05
That's a risk. That's a real risk. Um, and
Carter
31:09
and frankly, as someone who doesn't want to see Pierre Polyev as prime minister, especially at a time when we have Danielle Smith as premier, um,
Carter
31:19
I hope that it's something that, that, that actually happens. I hope that there are wise people around, uh, Justin Trudeau who, who say to him, you know, you've got until January and if you're not moving in January, you're moving out in January.
Zain
31:36
carter i want to stick with you for the next thing on my uh pierre putt perry list it's there it's his ads so over the weekend media has reported uh through conservative sources that they've got more ads they've got more creative in the in the can ready to go one thing we know from the polls carter at least from a couple of polls is that the ads seem to be working they seem to have this sort of um ability at least as much as ads would right at least from some of the tracking that they have done to soften Pierre's image, to present him more of the family man. The goals that they had are being met. The question I have, and in that same vein of strategist wisdom, which is, if it's working, do you add more stuff to the mix? I don't think the three of us would agree that furthering the ad campaign is a bad idea, unless you do. Chump in on that. But adding new creative when the creative that you have is already working, give me your thoughts on that. What's your line to kind of make that decision? I know it could be an entire episode on its own, but it's come up this weekend and I wanted to just get your take on it. It seems to be working. They have more. What should they do? Give me the strategy.
Carter
32:40
There's a big difference between changing the creative and changing the messaging.
Carter
32:44
There are a thousand different ways to say the same thing. Most people on this podcast have heard Corey do it. So when you don't have anything new to say, you just repeat that which was there before. um so there's a you know he's not this isn't pierre polyev's going to change the message it's pierre this mess this messaging set is working pierre polyev is going to change the creative and keep the messaging to keep it fresh push out new ideas push out new messaging and win over new audiences um you know far be it from us you know who are involved in communications who are involved in advertising to suggest on any level that advertising doesn't work. This is well-tested advertising that is performing as expected in the market. You know, that's our bread and butter. That's what we're supposed to be doing in our campaigns. But, you know, Pierre Pauliev has got... And keep in mind, this is one of the unintended consequences of, you know, spending limits during the writ. Oh, we get to curtail how much money is spent during the writ. it good for you now you've made it so that there is no curtailing the amount of money that is spent outside of the writ um so you
Carter
34:01
it's it's lunacy how we think that we can control
Carter
34:04
control these things and different outcomes will happen pierre polyev is successful in his communication strategy
Carter
34:11
he will continue to put out more communications cory
Zain
34:17
cory give me your thoughts on this right like Like the conditions as we know them, they have an ad campaign. It seems to be working. They've got more ads. They want to do another buy. The real question is, give me your wisdom or how you'd make a decision around swapping the creative or adding new creative if what you already have seems to be doing the job.
Corey
34:35
It depends on what they're trying to do. And they are going to have much better information than us whether it is still doing the job. So when you talk about advertising, there's two things that are, I think, relevant to this particular conversation because we're talking about ad creative and we're talking about more ads there are diseconomies of scale and economies of scale in advertising the economies of scale come from obviously
Corey
34:58
obviously your creative costs per placement are a lot lower when you run that ad a ton of times and you use the same creative right
Corey
35:05
but you run into diseconomies of scale at a certain point the ad stops working and you can throw more money at it but you're no longer getting the efficacy you're used to and so you see a bit of a tapering off in its ability to change minds as it goes along here so they have a better sense of whether they've hit any kind of ceilings in terms of well that creative is not necessarily working anymore saturation
Corey
35:26
have they hit that saturation point have they not if
Corey
35:29
if they're spending that kind of money i'm sure they're doing market research and i'm sure they're understanding that a little bit better and you have to assume from the outside and i certainly do that they're not idiots and they've sort of figured out that they uh you know know can push this further by switching up the creative but there's a couple of things i want to say there one
Corey
35:46
one is you do have to say it's part of a strategy like where do
Carter
35:50
do they want to
Corey
35:50
to get with what why and
Corey
35:53
and when right and and that's an interesting question for me because do you want everybody to feel this way about pierre poliev to like the highest degree in november of 2023 well why what what's that going to do for you is it because you expect a liberal counter-offensive to come and you want to make sure you're in market at the same time so you don't want to risk flighting your advertisements and for those who don't know flighting is a theory of advertising where you go in heavy you taper out a little bit and you come back heavy a bit later just to get back to top of mind at the point where it really matters and it's very
Corey
36:26
common in political advertising the idea being you set the issue you keep it at a boil you remind people of the relevance at the time that it matters and maybe they've decided that won't work because there's another player on the field here the other particular component is maybe they were always potentially going to run advertising through here and maybe their creative costs aren't marginally consequential maybe this is all being done in-house maybe they're paying the video team anyways and
Corey
36:53
so they might as well be doing something and if they change it up maybe you'll get some earned media from that as well and it's all part of the communication strategy like we We simply just don't know enough from the outside,
Corey
37:03
but I will say it's
Corey
37:05
it's not crazy to me that they would switch up the creative given that any of those things that I've talked about might be on the field right now.
Zain
37:12
I love that analysis. This is why I wanted to kind of jump into it, right? As folks who, you know, between the three of us who've placed, created, scripted, done all of that sort of stuff, bought media in certain cases to place advertising. I guess the question I have, if I can spend a few more minutes on this, Carter, is, you You know, have you seen a play where because new creative for advertising was on the menu of what we do next, it was the next thing we're supposed to do, that it's actually undercut what's been working. Change doesn't necessarily equal progress. Talk to me about that. That's kind of at the heart of the issue, what I wanted to get to. And I know we can't discern from like one source that that's what's happening here, but that's kind of the conversation I wanted to have. Like, give me your experience where simply the change, because it's the next thing we're supposed to do undercuts the progress that you seem to be already making with your existing. And it could be advertising, it could be strategy, it could be messaging, but that's kind of the heart of the issue here.
Carter
38:05
here. I'm trying to think back to when we've seen an advertisement completely fuck up. And the one that's popping into my head was the anti-John Kershian ad that the conservatives ran.
Carter
38:18
And that was an ad of desperation, right? They were already falling. The ad was designed to be an attack. uh it made fun of his facial um uh paralysis as a result of i think it was a stroke i am i'll be corrected in the discord uh i
Corey
38:36
i think it was
Carter
38:36
was yeah that's right thank you cory um but you know this is a this isn't his choice this is you know they were making fun of a physical disform deformity but they felt like they had to throw the bomb into uh into the ad creative because they were struggling and i think that that's that's
Carter
38:57
that's really scary when you're behind and you've got creative that you could uh blow up the campaign with um there is also a chance it blows up your campaign i don't think that this is the situation that pierre palia finds himself in right now he's
Carter
39:12
he's on top his ad is working things are going the right way why wouldn't he put out another another uh tranche of ads because they are working and they will be able to monitor you know the the way that we monitor advertising has completely changed because especially in politics where you've got um you know interaction as one of your key outcomes from almost all your ads uh because you're not just running them on television you're also running a a set of ads on online, you can see what's happening. You can see what the interaction rates look like. And if things start to go suddenly wrong, you just pull them. And I just think that
Carter
39:55
where Pierre finds himself at this point, he's not facing any real challenge on this being potentially negative in any way, shape, or form.
Zain
40:08
Corey, the last question on this one to you too, same one, right? Any experiences you may have had where you've either seen the desire to do something just because it's on the plan undercut the progress you're making with your existing creative, existing message, existing plan, existing sort of tactic that you're employing?
Corey
40:26
Oh, I mean, for sure. You can flip out creative too frequently and undercut yourself in the process. One of the things that we often see with politicians in speeches is they get bored and they want to change it up. And those of us who work in communication say, no, just Just read the same fucking speech, because by the time you are sick of saying it is maybe when people are starting to pay attention to it. And repetition is just such an important thing in order to deliver any message, certainly in politics as well. And so if you're flipping creative out too frequently, you're maybe not giving it time to land any advertising strategy. You're going to be talking about breadth and depth, right? And frequency, how many times you are going to be hitting the same people. so you know you you might have uh you know a reach of 50 000 and you're going to hit each of those people three times that might be part of your strategy you might need to hit them 15 times with a political ad in order for them to start feeling it and hearing it that's just the realities we deal with in politics that's what we deal with with advocacy and trying to change people's opinions here it's not quite the same as this
Corey
41:30
this is where you go when you want to buy an rv right you're not just
Zain
41:33
just trying to plant
Corey
41:34
plant one thing and you're trying to like really hammer in some conceptual shit and so um those are some of the things that maybe lend you to want to leave an ad in a little bit longer right you you put the ad in and you just let it run to the point where anybody could repeat it to you back if you were so inclined to do it cory
Zain
41:53
cory i'm going to start with you on this last one if you don't mind so i talked about we've already on this segment talked about the the polling we've talked about the advertising we've talked about his convention speech last last thing i want to talk about is convention policies and
Zain
42:06
and you guys made a bit of a discussion about this on thursday but now we know what happened there was a few social conservative policies right they they had high levels of support from the floor uh you know they approved a a policy uh banning medical or surgical intervention for children experiencing gender dysphoria that had about 70 approval uh they also had a another policy in the same vein i'm just just trying to pull it up here. That was around 80%. While you guys give me a response on this, I'll pull up exactly what it was. But social conservative policies that one may argue detract from the economic message, maybe detract from the speech.
Zain
42:44
a big issue now that you see what kind of laid out there. If you're in that Pierre sort of debrief, convention debrief strategy room, you see some of the headlines. You got a lot of good ones. You got a lot of solid ones. You got a lot of like halo from polling, but you also have a couple of these. how concerned are you?
Corey
43:00
I'm not. I think they knew exactly what they were doing. The reality is, if you poll on these issues with certain phrasings, you are going to find 70% support amongst Canadians, right? And so the Conservatives have picked the kind of the social grounds, the social justice grounds that the Liberals are on the least firm ground on when it comes to overall national public opinion, and allowed those to go forward. I think in some ways, it was a pretty fascinating strategy i believe it was entirely intentional i'll call it a lightning rod strategy where they knew that this issue would generate a lot of media feedback and blowback they knew this would generate a lot of commentary at feedback and blowback but they knew that when it gets down to it and you pull canadians on it they're probably not really that out of step with where the majority of canadians are that's just a simple reality you know we're not talking about something that is about the acceptance of transgender people more generally we're talking talking about surgeries with children, not fully reversible in some cases. And that makes a lot of people very, very nervous. And I think that the conservatives calculated,
Corey
44:06
calculated, if they're going to be talking about a social issue, they know the media is looking for something to come out of their policy. They
Corey
44:12
They would just as soon it be this than any of the other shit that might have come forward. And by doing this, they also have somewhat inoculated themselves from the internal charge that they are trying to keep all of those policies off the floor. So
Zain
44:24
So let me put words in your mouth. You're saying that if you're in that debrief room tonight for Pierre Polyev and his team, not only are you like, this is not an issue, but you might even be saying, great, we did our job. It worked.
Corey
44:35
Yeah, like if I'm Pierre Polyev, I'm definitely not walking any further on this particular issue. I am certainly not making it a situation where I'm talking about it for the next two weeks if it's of my own ability not to. But I also don't think that it hurts me that much if people are saying, can you believe the Conservatives passed this policy? Because there's a silent group of Canadians who probably feel exactly the same way. Okay.
Zain
45:01
Carter, the other policy that the delegates voted on was nearly 90% of them supported a plan to demand single sex spaces that are only open to women, which they had a definition of as a female person. So that the imported American debate, or at least what started in the US about a biological woman has found itself here as well.
Zain
45:21
same question to you. You're in that war room tonight with Corey. Are you saying this is exactly what we wanted? Or are you a bit concerned that this is also finding itself out there as much as some of the accolades for the weekend that i think
Carter
45:34
think there's i think that the trans pay the trans issues um with
Carter
45:40
with children have a big audience i think that cory's exactly right you know you start asking about children parents you know rightly or wrongly feel like they they should have a a voice in their children's lives and and we can discuss that a million different ways um but you're not going to change that today right like the liberals aren't going to change that um trans
Carter
46:03
trans bathroom stuff like this this stuff that is a negative and i think the other negative is around the covid vaccination question and the covid act vaccination question when they're starting to talk about bodily autonomy um bodily autonomy to prevent vaccination i mean are they talking about the same bodily autonomy when availing opportunities for abortion distortion are you talking about the same bodily autonomy for people who identify as trans like it's very the
Carter
46:32
the the conservatives are self-selecting things very much uh to fit their own hypocrisy if you will and i think that that can be a bit of a wedge now having said that compared
Carter
46:44
compared to the economic issues that they're talking about these are really small wedges and cory's point holds for the most These are expected outcomes of a convention that has conservatives at it. That
Carter
46:58
That doesn't mean I like it, but it is an expected outcome. And expected outcomes generally don't hurt people in the future.
Zain
47:07
Corey, you look at this, it's attractive if you're the liberals, right? And race-based hiring, you got these two high numbers that they have voted on as it relates to the gender dysphoria as well as the definition of what is a woman and the safe spaces, as they call it.
Zain
47:26
Where do you go if you're the liberals on this? Do you go? Do you pick any one of these lanes and say, you know what, this is a scab. And even though they may have wanted this, We've listened to this podcast. Corey might be right. This is a lightning rod. This is what they wanted to put out there. It's still a liability. It's still a vote getter. We're going to run with it. Is there any of these three or is there anything else or even is there anything out of the convention that you'd say, there's some soft tissue here and I want to go for it from a pure political basis as the liberals attacking the conservatives? Yeah,
Corey
47:54
Yeah, well, I think that modern politics we all appreciate is about coalitions of many, many groups. And for sure, I'm doing stakeholder reach out to various groups. I'm for sure making sure that I make at least one firm statement about these policies. But I think I'm thinking about whether this
Corey
48:12
this is ground that the conservatives want to be on or not. And if it is, it probably means it isn't for me, which is not to say that I changed my values or weakened my principles. But you've ultimately got to ask yourself, if you're the liberals, what
Corey
48:26
what are you trying to say? What are you trying to do? What is your story? And I think this is a bit of a challenge that the liberals have right now. they had this cabinet shuffle it was ostensibly because they wanted to put more of a focus on the economy i'm not sure any of us bought that right but i'd be curious what their story actually is what they're going to be planning to say in 2025 about their government versus pierre pauliev because it feels to me right now what they're going to say is that he is scary and angry and out of touch with the mainstream and pierre pauliev is going to say i'm
Corey
49:01
i'm all about out common sense. And I want to get back to where we were before you took government, Justin, I want to make sure that, you know, the next generation can have the opportunities that we had. I think it's unconscionable that our GDP per capita has actually declined over the time that you've been prime minister. And then what are you going to do? So I
Corey
49:21
I guess I don't have a problem if they decide that they want to get into this and fight on this, as long as that is part of the story that they are trying to tell but i think they need to be a lot more intentional about their communications and they need i said earlier and i really mean it these are not secret plans you don't have a stealth
Corey
49:39
political strategy here if
Corey
49:40
if steven and i and i look and it's not just us many people have made the same critique but like we're kind of professional strategists we do this for a living i do communication strategy for a living i don't know what the fuck their communication strategy is that's a real problem for them right
Zain
49:58
right like it's got to be a
Zain
49:59
clearer what they're trying to do here that is such an interesting point like it's it's so simple but it's so interesting and i do want to underline it for a second right like i always credit steven as as at least in my sort of political life as being the the author of the open source strategy right i'd always say because carter you would like literally be like here's a document anyone who wants it on the team can have it please email it to your friends please send it to any donor uh please like oh if the The opposition asked for it. Just let them know, right? Like, this is what we're going to do. We'll let them know when we do. And I'm exaggerating, right?
Zain
50:29
for a fact, right? Pretty much,
Zain
50:32
you're right. Like, you're making the point that because they haven't telegraphed or indicated what they're going to do, right? Like, and we don't know it. And this is where I'm going to add a bit in, Carter, and get your take on this same point that Corey's made. It's almost indicative that there isn't a plan, that there isn't a strategy, that it's not working. Because stealth is not the goal, right? You actually want to lay down the tracks. That is part of the goal. You want people to know where you're going. It actually helps the outcome when people know what's next, when they have a sense of what's next, so to speak. So Carter, your reaction to this?
Carter
51:05
Well, I mean, I think that I'm
Carter
51:07
I'm going to add a little bit to what Corey said. And what Corey said is we don't know what the communication story is going to be. I'm going to go one step further. I'm not sure I could articulate what it should be, right?
Carter
51:19
right? Right. Like we had a time we had a time when they were going through and saying, you know, this is we're going to be essentially we're going to be the party of, you
Carter
51:28
you know, working moms. And we're going to make sure that we've got the, you know, these great child care programs are going to put dental care in for for low income families. I mean, some really interesting ideas that were brought forward that that that took the Canadian family, especially out of the the pandemic, into a very strong position, except
Carter
51:51
except now the Canadian families there and they're kind of going, yeah, not that strong because it turned out the dental care. Yeah, we want that. But we'd want to be able to own a house, too.
Carter
52:03
liberals are like, yeah, but I gave you $10 daycare.
Carter
52:07
that's great. I like $10 daycare. I thank you for that. That was last year. What are you going to give me this year?
Carter
52:14
And that's where things are really falling apart for the Trudeau liberals. The next, what's next? Not what did we do last? It's what did we, what are we going to do next? And they're struggling with that. They don't have the answer. And, and, and as you know, quote unquote, skilled political advisors or observers, I'm not sure I know what it should be right now. um because
Carter
52:39
because the land cory mentioned this in in earlier you want to fight on land that makes sense for you not fighting on land that makes sense for the other guy and pierre palliev just took all the good land he's on the high ground and you're looking up at him going oh fuck well that didn't work out yeah
Zain
53:03
yeah i mean carter you now you're saying that listen you don't know know what the plan should be.
Zain
53:08
Almost to me means, Corey, I think we're teeing
Corey
53:12
the next liberal strategy. How
Zain
53:13
How do they get back to parity?
Zain
53:15
I feel like that's their next goal. How do they get back in it? Because right now they're not in it, right? They are not in it right now, Corey. You wanted to jump in here. Jump in here and then I'll move it on to some other things.
Corey
53:28
Well, yeah. When they were elected in 2015, there was this notion that they They were real change, and they had this focus on the middle class. And when you looked at the demos and who was supporting them, it was pretty even across age groups, fascinatingly even, in fact. You had a lot of new Canadian majority communities, immigrant majority communities that were voting for them. And I think that was like a very natural consequence of some of the decisions the Conservatives made during the particular campaign. pain um but but otherwise it seemed to be socioeconomic as much as anything it was like the middle class brought them there the
Corey
54:06
the middle class has had a rough fucking go in the last eight years and in some ways that that coalition has fallen a bit to pieces and when you think about child care the
Corey
54:15
the whole idea with child care is it was going to be make your life more affordable but if on net your life is less affordable yeah child care is great but my mortgage is twice as expensive child care is great but i can't even afford a home you
Corey
54:27
know you're not actually going going to be any further ahead based on your stated policy goals with that particular policy, right? And this is a challenge just fundamentally, and this gets back to the fundamentals suck for the Liberals right now. And there was some really fascinating abacus polling on where the Liberals were and where the government was, and the answer is basically nowhere on the issues that matter to Canadians. But we also have past performance that I think should give the the liberals a lot of pause and i think about going into that last federal election which i can tell you know i would say to this day erin o'toole could have won that election but for a couple
Corey
55:08
of very stupid things that that occurred let's
Zain
55:11
let's not forget from a raw vote perspective he did win that election yeah well he got the majority
Corey
55:15
majority yeah he got a plurality of votes but guns and health care killed him based on decisions that he made right and and that was ultimately the story of that election for me the liberal strategy that election seemed to be you'll
Corey
55:29
you'll recall there was a budget a few months earlier we got the child care you know those deals were coming in left right and center it
Corey
55:35
seemed to be look at everything we did wait for applause and when the applause did not come last time the liberals were down in the polls looked like they were going to lose that election then
Corey
55:47
then they started going real aggressive and real negative and it didn't really work the the first week, but they got a bit of an assist from the conservatives themselves the second week and beyond. And they managed to squeak it out, but squeak it out, right? The thing about the last election for the liberals, and we said it, you can run the tape is, I don't know what their strategy is. I don't know what they're trying to do here.
Zain
56:10
Even more so, we don't even know why they called the election when they called the election with all control in their court as to when and what that election was about without a definition for that election the first week.
Corey
56:20
I'm beginning getting to feel they're a party with too much history. They can't get past their own history. They think they should get credit for all of the things they did, you know, laudable things in the past few years from the perspective of themselves and the majority of voters, but maybe not germane to the moment that we're in right now. So the liberals really do need to knuckle down and say, what is the story? What is our coalition? Where are we going to win? Because they've been retrenching to major cities, and they've been retrenching to fear of the conservatives for for just too long. And, you know, that's not a strategy that works time and time again. People get bored of that strategy. So you got to tell them a little bit more.
Zain
56:57
We're going to leave that segment there of Pierre Potpourri. We're going to move it on to our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, of course, this segment is brought to you by you. We do this segment for you, and it's always been done for you, Stephen Carter. Let me ask you this, Carter. Give me a ranking, scale of one to 10, for Mr. Pierre Polyev for his performance this weekend. All in. Policies, where they landed in the polls, his speech, the endorsements, the production, the mileage, using a Corey Hogan word from this episode, that he will get from all of this going forward. Roll all of that up and give me a grade between 1 and
Carter
57:32
and 10. A grade between 1 and 10? It was an A+. That
Carter
57:36
It was an A+. It's an A+, yeah, okay. I mean, what
Carter
57:38
what else— High, by
Zain
57:40
by the way. It doesn't get higher than that. What
Carter
57:41
What else are you going to leave with?
Carter
57:43
Like, if you're Pierre Polyev, what could you reasonably expect to leave with out of this weekend than what he's actually leaving with? He's dominating the headlines. He's up, you know, 14 points in some polls. The aggregate average has him up by 10. He's...
Carter
57:59
Nine. I round up. I mean,
Carter
58:02
he's... What more does he want? Like, what does he want? Does he want the Jack Layton happy ending? Because that's the only thing he didn't get this weekend. That's the only thing he didn't get.
Zain
58:15
Corey, are you going to make a note to see if you want to edit that part out?
Corey
58:19
I mean, I'm more making a note of maybe that's an episode title. Okay, that's good. I don't know.
Zain
58:25
Corey, roll it all up. What's the score for you?
Corey
58:29
look, I agree it was a really well done convention. I don't think that there are too many things where he could have gotten more advantage. perhaps some of the policy stuff could have been managed a little bit different a little too soon to say i guess we'll see what occurs in the next couple of weeks in terms of consequences for that as i said i don't think there'll be many and i think that they made a conscious decision that if they were going to take the hit on policy they were at least going to pick the ones where they thought you
Corey
58:54
know they're going to either be with the majority or close enough or it's low enough intensity of opinions out there that you know the plurality of canadians that it's not going to hurt them too much. And as Stephen said, a lot of this stuff is costed in. It
Corey
59:07
It was, though, a political convention two years from an election in September, as everybody's dealing with back to school. And so I'm not sure that Canadians as a whole were gripped by it.
Corey
59:19
great convention. He maximized it in the context of being a non-election year convention.
Zain
59:25
Corey, I'm going to stick with you for our next one. How much credit would you give to the the Liberals, on a letter grade basis, they have a new head, or they, as in they have been able to, but while consulting the other parties, find someone else to lead the allegations of foreign interference in Canada's affairs over the next 16 months. The report is going to be due in February
Zain
59:48
February sometime. It is a Quebec Court of Appeal judge, Justice Hogue, who's going to lead it. she's going to start work next week how
Zain
59:58
much credit do you give liberals what letter grade do you give them on their redo on their resubmit revise and resubmit that they were uh asked to asked to provide to the canadian public yeah
Corey
1:00:08
yeah i mean they get a very average curved grade on this but unfortunately when it's six months late let's just say you lose a letter grade for every month before you do the thing that you should have known that you were supposed to do six months ago So they get an F. They get an F, not because this was a particularly bad decision, but because it was particularly bad that the decision happened so long after it should have happened.
Zain
1:00:33
Carter, any credit the Liberals deserve on the revise and resubmit? Again, this is a
Carter
1:00:41
a letter grade, correct, Carter. They get a three. You know, they absolutely should.
Zain
1:00:47
Three out of four letters isn't
Carter
1:00:48
isn't bad. They should be way ahead on this. I mean, it feels like this is the last judge standing. It's like, okay, this is the only judge we haven't asked yet. Let's ask her if she's in. Okay, thank God we got someone.
Carter
1:01:04
It just doesn't feel like there's strength, right? It feels weak, and I'm giving it a three.
Corey
1:01:12
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I do want to say one of the things that was observed is she doesn't have national security expertise. And I believe that the line from the liberals was, well, but she brings fresh eyes, right?
Corey
1:01:23
That's not super compelling. And I think that unfortunately, for the liberals, if
Corey
1:01:27
if this all does go awry, people will be able to point to kind of that original sin of not having the expertise that was required. Not saying that's going to happen. I suspect she'll do a fine job with this. but that doesn't stop the
Corey
1:01:39
but if for whatever reason the report sucks yeah people are going to point to this and say people should have known or
Zain
1:01:45
or it's late the process is bullshit it feels like it's politically tainted all those sort of things right like it may not be the david johnson sort of like personal attacks that this process faces going forward but there's still a bunch of other things that it could face should pierre poliev or even jagmeet singh and or on others kind of want to make it a live wire issue uh cory i'm going to stick with you on on this I want to talk about the Manitoba election. We'll save that for next time. Let me instead talk about Elections Manitoba. They've actually put out an ad campaign for young voters, a series of advertisers, one of which says, some choices mean more than your fit check. Go out and vote. I'm just curious, are you in or out on our nation's sort of electoral institutions with their vote mobilization campaigns, especially, and now more so, they've largely been targeted at young people? Give me your take on this. Are you in or out when these bodies try to make appeals? They almost are the rock the vote of themselves in some ways. Are you in or out when they try to do this? And Manitoba is just another example. Alberta had their own version of this. Like everyone's doing their, they're trying to go viral with some fun hip, put hip in air quotes campaign. In or out, Corey? uh
Corey
1:02:56
uh yeah i mean i mean in on concept out on execution but the line between clever and cringe has never been blurrier than it is in 2023 and i i don't know i mean i hope that they tested these i hope that they did well in that sense but i suspect that they didn't i suspect that it was a well-intentioned but under-equipped electoral body determining that this would be what the the youths want to hear and that kind of sucks like if you're going to do it you got to do it right you got to hire the right ad firms and you you got to figure it out you got to know your audience carter
Zain
1:03:33
carter are you in or out on on elections authorities uh also getting into the the game of of youth voter mobilization i
Carter
1:03:40
i mean if we want to if we want to incentivize some sort of uh voter turnout model then incentivize it come up with an incentive uh this isn't an incentive this This is like an awareness campaign, which is going to generate an outcome of delivering some people to the polls, but not all people to the polls. So therefore, it's inadvertently going to help someone. Elections Manitoba doesn't know who they're helping. Elections Alberta didn't know who they were helping. City of Calgary doesn't know who they're helping. And I'm told, I'm not an expert in this, but I'm told that the outcome isn't necessarily determined by the voter turnout. out so why don't we just focus on getting people out that want to vote and fuck the rest of them they can bitch and complain afterwards i
Zain
1:04:25
just want to read the last line of this article so far young potential voters have mixed reactions to the ad campaign but the results won't be clear until it has its own fit check after election day
Carter
1:04:34
that's tragic who wrote that is
Carter
1:04:37
it a known writer i'm
Zain
1:04:38
i'm not gonna no
Carter
1:04:39
no we got it we got a shame name and shame brother name and shame we
Zain
1:04:43
we don't do that that on this show carter we don't do that on this show hey carter i'm gonna start with you on this because
Carter
1:04:47
because i did that jack late give me
Carter
1:04:48
your and it makes me feel like i did a little name and you didn't do
Zain
1:04:51
do that jack lane then you
Zain
1:04:52
you did well this is a you policy not a policy carter listen
Zain
1:04:58
listen i i asked you earlier if this was a kick in the pants that the liberals needed this weekend uh one would expect it's one of the several kick in the pants hopefully that they that they get to finally act act.
Zain
1:05:09
Your advice for them.
Zain
1:05:11
Give me your advice for them after this weekend. Give it to me succinct. Give it to me clear. Give it to me as bold, assertive, profane as you need it to be. You're talking to them directly. You're talking to the PMO directly right now. You're giving them one sentence of wisdom in terms of what to do, why to do it.
Zain
1:05:30
What is it? Two
Carter
1:05:31
Two sentences. Number one, campaign started.
Carter
1:05:37
you got to do better this time. Because last time, it just wasn't good enough. Just wasn't good enough. And you're going to lose. So I think they need to understand that they're not good at this, and they need to bring in—they
Carter
1:05:52
in—they need to make changes. They need to shake it up. They have to have a new approach for Quebec. They have to have a new approach for the West. Because if they use the approach that they used last time,
Carter
1:06:03
I'm with Corey. This does not look good. Not look good at all.
Zain
1:06:09
Corey, I gave Carter a chance for profanity, and he didn't take it. I'm giving you the same opportunity. that crisp one sentence of advice if you're directly speaking to them right now you have one chance to get a message over to them after what you saw this weekend after the ad campaigns the polls everything what is it it
Corey
1:06:26
it is the advice that was given to us originally by yogi bara uh toby keith then wrote a song that also gave it to the world if you don't know where you're going you're gonna end up somewhere else and so figure that out so good
Corey
1:06:41
from there the other pieces is man
Carter
1:06:42
man that was good holy shit my nipples got almost
Zain
1:06:45
almost beautiful as the the game of afl
Zain
1:06:48
and dinos rugby oh what a what a beautiful closing now we're gonna leave it there that's a wrap on episode 1098 of the strategist my name is zane velgey with me as always cory hogan stephen carter and we will see you next time