Episode 1099: Young Folks

Annalise 0:01

Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1099. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.

Annalise 0:10

morning, guys. Thanks for being here,

Carter 0:11

here, Annalise. Gosh, it's good to see you today. Yeah.

Corey 0:14

It's so good. We're live on location. You're in a

Annalise 0:17

a good mood, Carter. Does your mood just turn sour as the day goes on and normally we talk at night? I've got a very good

Carter 0:22

good bowel movement and things are really going my way.

Corey 0:30

you're an upsetting guy i want you to know bowel movements

Annalise 0:33

do you want to move on to our first segment you

Annalise 0:37

you uh you just lined that one up did i because i haven't even talked about anything or anything

Carter 0:42

anything i mean do we want to talk about uh formula one in singapore or anything like that no

Annalise 0:47

no cory anything you want to get off your chest before we uh we jump into your favorite topics uh

Corey 0:53

i yeah this is great love it i'm so excited to talk about municipal issues and and local issues and let's just do it let's just rip this band-aid off let's just talk about housing carter's

Annalise 1:05

carter's been there that how long were you at city hall i was there till i was from 9

Carter 1:09

9 30 until uh until 7 30 9 30 to 7 30 right i

Annalise 1:14

heard a little rumor you were walking around like you you own the place i have

Carter 1:19

confirmation of that i don't i mean i'm a citizen as you know uh so i share ownership of that facility with uh with every

Corey 1:26

every other calgarian and

Carter 1:29

will concede i was busier than i expected to be i had a lot of people chatting with me uh i kind of i wasn't sure how i'd be received maybe you know maybe i'm going to be a pariah i don't know but uh turned

Carter 1:40

turned out to be pretty good how were you received like a fucking rock star like you know the coming of christ Christ, if I'm honest, it was, it was, it was, it was exceeded my expectations quite a bit.

Annalise 1:52

You love, you love rooms like that. That's why you stayed so long. No,

Carter 1:56

No, I, you know what? I

Carter 1:56

stayed so long to support the people who were actually doing the work and, uh, presenting to council. And, uh, you

Carter 2:05

you know, it seems like such a common sense position. Uh, we don't have enough housing. We should have more housing, but it's not common sense. There is no such thing. Wrong. So, yeah.

Annalise 2:15

uh okay cory's yawning already so let's uh let's actually move because he lives in chay he's

Carter 2:21

he's going to be directly impacted by all of this you know there's so many people want to live there in chay it's

Corey 2:28

we're looking forward to it we want new neighbors always no

Annalise 2:31

no one calls it chay

Corey 2:34

everyone knows it is chay no

Annalise 2:35

no one calls it chay speaking of speaking of chay how's the chay merch coming along there cory is is it just selling like hotcakes we

Corey 2:43

we have never had more popular merch that's all i'm gonna answer on that i'll

Annalise 2:47

i'll tell you something two

Annalise 2:48

two pins have been sold two pins oh

Corey 2:51

oh the pins aren't even for sale yet spoil the spoil the fact that there's jay pins coming two flags

Annalise 2:55

flags how many flags are we at more

Corey 2:59

flags than we've ever sold flags before two

Annalise 3:01

two flags guys okay let's move into our first segment our first segment is about e coli guys e coli outbreak and And a large one at that is being called Canada's worst pediatric E. coli outbreak ever. So more than 300 people are sick. More than 20 kids have been hospitalized, including several who are on dialysis.

Annalise 3:23

This horrendous case of food poisoning started in early September at some Calgary daycares who share a kitchen. Food

Annalise 3:31

Food safety reports have recently come to light that show several issues. Just terrible situation all around. and politics have become a part of it as you can imagine and that's kind of what I want to dive in with you in your expertise so it took more than a week for Alberta's chief medical officer of health and health minister to face the media on the issue it was also nearly a week before the premier or health minister even weighed in at all and when they did they offered their thoughts and prayers on social media so

Annalise 4:00

so I want to dive into this one you guys have been in those rooms where officials are dealing with a crisis and like a rapidly developing crisis where you don't know how bad it's going to get, you don't know what it looks like, you're trying to figure out who needs to speak, when, what they need to say, how bad things are going to get, all that. Stephen Carter, let's start with you on this one. Where do you think the first mistakes were made? I think we can all agree that comms have not been ideal on this, but where do you think the first mistakes were made?

Carter 4:27

Well, I think that government's in a really interesting position on this. They didn't do anything wrong, right? The government is, you know, as much as we love to crap on the government of danielle smith this is not her problem right this is even even when you get to the health minister and say well maybe they should be commenting on it yeah probably maybe but there's a process in place uh to deal with public health outbreaks and the minister isn't you know isn't going to jump onto his or her horse and uh ride into town and save the outcome or or in some fashion change the outcome for these individual patients and we've found i found ourselves in this a lot when you would be in government something's going wrong uh you know i think i've talked about when we had a young adult scalded to death um in a private home um you i mean heartbreaking

Carter 5:19

absolutely terrible right what

Carter 5:22

what what were we to do right and the the the media is trying to hold us to account you know what what are you going to change what are you going to do i don't

Carter 5:29

don't know i I mean, we could tighten up some regs, I guess, but this

Carter 5:33

this was a, you know, what are we supposed to do? What are we supposed to do as government? And what is government supposed to do about this? Now, I guess there can be a case made that government should be stepping up inspections and

Carter 5:43

we'll learn more about that. But again, if

Carter 5:45

if you're in communications, you should be advising

Carter 5:48

advising your client, be very careful about what you rush into in terms of communicating until you actually know what's happened, right? Right. You can't rush in and say, you know, we have to make sure that there you know, that there's more more analysis, more more inspections of these facilities. For all you know, there could have been an inspection 15 days before. And, you know, some of that's coming out now. There were inspections. There were problems. You know, we move. We're supportive of business in Alberta. Well, this is a private business. Maybe we have a problem. We we don't like regulation. We don't like red tape. Well, regulation and red tape are what prevents these things from happening. So how do you weigh in when you don't know what's happening? How do you weigh in when it goes against kind of the mantras of what you're talking about?

Carter 6:38

And then let's just finish on thoughts and prayers. I fucking hate thoughts and prayers. And to have thoughts and prayers come from literally an atheist premier, too. Like, this is just, you know, give me a break. But that's really all you have.

Annalise 6:54

Corey, you're the comms guy. What should someone do and when should they do it? In this case, I think the kind of heat's built up because it took just over a week before the health minister and the chief medical officer of health even faced media. And then Premier Smith, I believe today, so almost two weeks later, is when she'll be in front of media. you yeah

Corey 7:15

and you're right you have to watch the boil right you have to make sure you're not a frog in water where the temperature has risen so high and you just didn't realize it and then you say oh shit here we are here's what's happened right i

Corey 7:27

understand why government ended up in this place this happens all of the time when you're in government your first instinct is not and should not be to make somebody else's crisis your crisis but you know ultimately people do like to make things government's problem and they like to say what are you doing about a government we

Corey 7:45

can talk about this in terms of comms and we can talk about in terms of policy i'll

Corey 7:48

i'll focus on comms but i'll say on a policy point of view one of the first things you're going to want to understand is is

Corey 7:55

this systemic or is this a one-off is this something that's just a horrible tragedy that could have happened under any reasonable set of rules or is there something fundamentally broken about the set of rules that governs this and uh carter alluded to this inspection thing it's interesting there were inspections they they we've seen details from these inspections it seems to be if there's a challenge and i don't know there is because i just don't know enough about these particular things is what was the follow-through from the inspection what were the consequences of that inspection and so um you

Corey 8:27

you know in government the challenge is really just making sure as an issue that is not your problem evolves a you're You're watching angles to see if this can be hooked to government in any way, shape, or form. That's got to be your primary view if you're watching a major issue, because then it is kind of like policy

Corey 8:45

policy and in a kind of general expectation sense, your problem. But B, you also need to look at that general expectation sense, because when an issue hits a certain level of seriousness, even if it's not a government issue, it becomes a government issue. That's true in the economy. That's true in health care. that's true in private enterprise more generally, as we've seen here. It's just true. And so if there's a problem the government had right now, it's that they were clearly not reassessing from sort of baseline public view on a daily basis and saying, okay, this has hit either the metric that government is now involved

Corey 9:21

involved enough that we need to be involved, or the public expectation is just wrong because of the seriousness and so many children in the hospital that government needs needs to be involved.

Annalise 9:32

How do you go about deciding like when that right time is to come out and speak? In this case, you know, there was, I think there was a Globe and Mail column that was pretty critical of like, where are they?

Annalise 9:42

They spoke after that coincidence, who knows? Is that an hour by hour decision? Is that a day by day? Like walk us through in detail, how you should be making that decision of okay, when is our time that we got to go face the media? Well,

Carter 9:57

Well, I mean, we were very critical. I'm going to jump in, Corey, because we were very critical when Danielle Smith went and bought all that children's Tylenol or the knockoff children's Tylenol. There is a time and place. Corey said it very well. I wish I'd said it this well. I'm very disappointed in myself. This is someone else's problem, right? The government did not do this. The government was not responsible for this outcome. And it's tangential. influential so if you're going to put yourself into someone else's problem you need to have a very good reason for it because you you can't the other thing is you can't solve this problem it is a past event that is creating present problems you know past cory used to create all kinds of problems for for present cory and all the fortunately he's been married now and and things have settled down but you know things were crazy there for a while crazy where Where past Corrie would just absolutely fuck present Corrie. And that's what's happened here. There is no action the government is going to take that is going to make this better for the families that are impacted. There's just, there's nothing. So if you're going to decide to get into it, you need to have a very good reason to get into it. And what seems to have been the tipping point is when we got into hundreds of children and 20 kids in hospital. That seems to be the tipping point. I think that if they'd reacted earlier with the health minister, they wouldn't have had to react later with the premier.

Annalise 11:24

So you're saying they should have come out, you're saying hard to decide when it's not your problem, but they should have come out a lot sooner?

Carter 11:30

A little bit earlier, not a lot. I would just say a little bit earlier, a couple of days earlier, and I think they would have been fine.

Annalise 11:38

Corey, what's your take? And Carter didn't answer my question at all. So maybe you can try just in terms of that, like, is it hour by hour? You're reevaluating it. is it day by day? Like, when you have a rapidly evolving crisis like this, what are what are those backroom conversations like? Well,

Corey 11:52

Well, look, when you're the government, you have the inputs we can all see like social media, but you also have another whole set of inputs, including things like the premier's correspondence unit, you know, the correspondence unit and health is obviously very big, too, you can get updates on to whether these issues are organically evolving and becoming a thing where people are now saying you got to step in. And at the very least, I think they should should have had the systems in place where on a daily basis they were assessing whether that's the case generally speaking you

Corey 12:22

want to err on the side of it's your problem right because people don't like governments that pass the buck and you want to get there ahead of time but what steven said is kind of important here right which is the solution matters too you've got to come to the table with something because if you make something if you proactively make something your problem and you have no solutions, you're an idiot, right? Like you've essentially

Corey 12:45

essentially said, I'm culpable and I don't know what to do. And I think the government landing on $2,000 for the families, that's a solution, right? That's like, okay, this is a terrible thing. Government needs to be there in a compassionate sense.

Corey 12:58

That makes sense to me. And I think the

Corey 13:00

the only real error was timing. Like they should have been just a few days ahead of this because the reality is it was not their problem. And I don't know that I've seen anything that makes me think it's their fault. Nobody loves to hear this, but the reality is we're never going to do daily health inspections of kitchens, no matter who's involved in it, at least not government run ones. I think obviously a company should be looking through their kitchen every day. We don't have traffic lights at every stop. You know, there is kind of like this practical barrier to government action in day-to-day lives. And often what you see is a situation like this comes in, and it causes the government to make very big promises that become very costly and very difficult to back away from down the road. And so I don't really fault them on taking a beat. They shouldn't have taken two beats.

Annalise 13:51

Carter, it looks like you really, really, really wanted to say something there. Well,

Carter 13:54

Well, I've been chatting with a number

Carter 13:58

number of MLAs, both opposition MLAs and government side MLAs, and they're not hearing about this. This is the other thing. This is someone else's kid, right? This is someone else's kid. And 300 parents are making an awful lot of noise, and as they should. This is important to them. It is personal for them. But the general population is, you know, is not reacting in the same fashion. This isn't the outrage machine that's saying, how dare the government enable this to happen? It is seen as a private problem for private individuals. You know, again, I've been involved with some like the Strathcona-Tweedsmere disaster where we had the kids buried in the avalanche. That wasn't seen as a failure of public policy, right? Right. That was seen as a failure of an individual policy of of of the policy of a organization. And I think that that's why one of the reasons that we saw a delayed response to this is that the public outrage, there's public concern, there's public empathy. But I'm not sure that public concern and public empathy is necessarily manifesting itself in public outrage. age.

Corey 15:07

Yeah, sure. Well, look, I think that there's an interesting and awkward thing for governments here that we should call out because we we have the position where we can. A government's not going to say it, but the public sometimes demands something that doesn't make sense. They demand systemic solutions to one off problems that may in their own right cause more challenges might make it less likely that, you

Corey 15:31

you know, childcare can exist, or maybe it makes childcare more expensive. And, and

Corey 15:35

and sometimes by trying to, to make it like too big of an issue, you, you

Corey 15:41

you are causing a challenge for yourselves and for the good people of Alberta down the road. People don't want to hear that, though. People want to hear government has solutions to things. things. It's not

Corey 15:51

not an easy thing for a government to deal with, because I actually think part of being a responsible government is not overreacting to these things. And now, do not misunderstand me, super serious situation, hundreds of children sick, dozens of children in the hospital.

Corey 16:06

Somebody should be held to account. There's got to be consequences to this.

Corey 16:10

I'm not convinced it's the government.

Annalise 16:13

So what do you make this broke Labor Day weekend i think it was the fourth today's the 15th we saw premier smith this morning and cory you just made reference to it announcing payment for families tougher regulations for kitchens that sort of thing so 11 days later her you know really inserting the government in this with with the financial money with the tougher regulations what do you make of that well

Corey 16:35

well i'll tell you i think she

Corey 16:37

she probably wouldn't need to do both of those things if they had talked a bit sooner so this does get us into that other classic problem of government which is if

Corey 16:45

you hand in your homework late it's got to be exceptional and people then tend to like over resolve the problem because they want to look like they are now getting back ahead of public opinion on this particular matter so um i honestly don't know if the tougher kitchen regulations are required i don't or if that's just a systemic response to a one-off problem like i was talking about i do think that the money makes the most sense to me because that's a one-off response to to a one-off problem. And so you're kind of matching like to like, but, and it shows a compassionate government that's there for its citizens. But I just don't know. I do know that she's in this situation and the expectations are higher because of the commentary around where was the government.

Carter 17:29

I mean, it's so small. I mean, the changing of the regulations isn't tiny, but the monetary commitment, while it may be meaningful to the individuals it's so small in the average scale of of health care like it's just or in the average scale of government um it's like the premier's office could probably afford to do that out of their own literal budget

Carter 17:49

uh yeah like it's just so small um which

Carter 17:53

which just kind of reinforces the problem of this type of scenario like it is just not uh it is a big deal to the impacted families it is a significant issue and we've seen other corporations run into this there was the the Peters Drive-In Marshmallow Milkshakes issue. Right.

Corey 18:11

Peters, by the way, institution in Che. I just think we need to shout out. Yeah, I was going to say Che Institution. That's

Annalise 18:17

That's why I brought it up. Che Hotspot causes traffic jams in Che. Tell

Annalise 18:20

Tell Carter, for those people who aren't, you know, Calgary locals, talk to us about that Peters incident. It was over a decade ago, was it not?

Carter 18:29

Yeah, it was a decade ago or so. I can't really recall, but basically it was the same type of idea. There was a large organization, in this case Peters, that served umpteen gajillion people. And the people who happened to go through and take a marshmallow-flavored milkshake were exposed to, I think it was E. coli. I think it was the E. coli, but

Carter 18:52

but I don't recall specifically. It was

Carter 18:55

was a long time ago. But that turned into a public relations nightmare for Peters. But again, that public relations nightmare for Peters was not necessarily a government problem. It was a problem of an individual company that didn't have proper food storage, or, you know, whatever safety requirements in place, and they paid a price for it.

Carter 19:19

And I think that that's...

Carter 19:29

You know, will it be an outrage in November?

Carter 19:34

I mean, if a kid dies, this is where things get really messy, right? No one wants to even talk about what the challenges are. The challenge of these communications problems is we are put into a room where we are then talking about a lot of things that no one really wants to talk about, right? What if? What if this happens? What if that happens, right? How do we minimize exposure if this happens versus if that happens, right? right? The premier's office probably knows a lot more about the individual health of these kids

Carter 20:02

than we do. And they may have made the calculus, the unpopular, unwelcome calculus that is made by politicians every single day that says, how big a deal is this today? Are we going to be able to manage it for tomorrow? And, oh,

Carter 20:19

oh, it looks like there's a sick kid. Okay, what action do we need to take in order to minimize that outcome. That's the unpopular reality of our

Carter 20:30

our communications gig sometimes. Yeah,

Corey 20:32

Yeah, I do want to say, I don't think anybody died in the Peters one. I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong. It was much smaller. There were nine people who got E. coli in that case. And I believe only one seriously ill, like put on dialysis, which is not to minimize it. That's obviously a very big problem. But to

Corey 20:50

to your point, and you opened saying this, Annalise, this is like a magnitude beyond. This is the

Corey 20:55

the worst ever kind of territory. This is hundreds of people.

Annalise 21:01

Yeah, and it was 2005, I think, when the one that we're talking about happened. So many, many years ago. The monetary thing, I want to pick up on that only because the media has been following this for two weeks, essentially. New story every day. They're looking for new angles. And the one this week was about parents saying like, hey, we're asking the daycare for refunds and they're saying it's going to be case by case. They're not giving us answers like it was kind of parents, you know, having issues with a daycare. Talk to me, I guess, two angles there, both from that private business, what their strategy should be doing, what they should be doing when they're dealing with all this. And then whether the $2,000 is just kind of an easy answer

Annalise 21:43

answer when it's apparent that parents are struggling financially and not getting the money from the daycare. Yeah,

Corey 21:48

Yeah, well, let's be really clear. You can't get blood from a stone. And I don't know the situation for this corporation, fueling minds or fueling brains or whatever it is. But they might likely not have the money to give back here. They have staff costs they've got to pay. I'm sure there's all sorts of additional costs that are being incurred right now. I'm not saying they shouldn't find the money, but they might not have it. And so this is actually an area where the government, frankly, doesn't have that problem. You know, the purse is pretty deep when you're in government. So in a way, I kind of like it because it's a solution government can come in with and say, like, we don't really need to concern ourselves whether this corporation can afford it. Here's some money for you. This is going to help resolve some of the challenges that we've heard here. In some ways, it's the perfect place for government when there is sort of a failing in an area that is, you know, the corporate sphere, the government can say, okay, we're going to get in. Now, I can hear the counter argument is corporate welfare. Sure. But again, if they don't actually have the money, what

Corey 22:50

what are you going to do? Right? And so not

Corey 22:53

not really kind of concerned about the government taking that step at this particular moment.

Carter 23:00

i mentioned earlier it's cheap action right

Carter 23:03

in the overall scheme of things it just is not a lot of money i mean 300 families getting a couple grand i mean it's just it's it's real money to them no money to the government so it shows action it shows movement um i

Carter 23:17

i don't like the optics of kind of paying families for suffering but you

Carter 23:22

you know what else like this is really i

Carter 23:25

i i think that i have empathy for the government in this situation that i don't have for the organization the government is is in real trouble the the

Carter 23:35

organization needs to restart you know like you you mentioned what what's the comms components and comms thoughts for the organization um they're in real trouble right like what

Carter 23:45

what does one do i mean not only did they is this a common kitchen the common kitchen shared common ownership. It looks like it's a corporate structure that has a daycare center and then a kitchen for those daycares. Those

Carter 24:01

Those two things are going to be problematic for them in the future, whether it's lawsuits or just loss of business. We mentioned the Peters example earlier, or I mentioned the Peters example. Peters is still around today. Peters is an enterprise that's It's grown since they had their incident.

Carter 24:20

Strathcona-Tweedsmere is around today, right? They survived that unbelievable, horrible situation, but they had different things. It wasn't as competitive a marketplace. It was a, you know, in the case of Strathcona-Tweedsmere, it was a generational school where, you know, generations of kids went. And

Carter 24:38

I'm not sure that this organization is going to have that same type of positive outcome. come. It's going to be very, very difficult for them to get out from under this rock. And

Carter 24:50

maybe that's coloring some of their decisions too.

Annalise 24:52

Let's, let's jump into that with Corey. I just, just clarification on the Peters thing. It was 2005, a teenage girl spent nearly a month near death in hospital, battling a host of ailments, including renal failure, pancreatitis and liver dysfunction after having the marshmallow shake. So no death, but she was very sick. Corey, jump, jump in with the, the Peters Che, how we compare it to, to recovery here example yeah

Corey 25:14

yeah well look and for our non-calgary listeners i i mean it's

Corey 25:19

it's a funny thing but you got to know peters is kind of an institution it's a thing that calgarians will know for burgers and milkshakes it's it's one of those places every city has places like that that you're like this is a thing really it's just a random burger joint you know but it's not even that great

Annalise 25:36

it's not very good the

Corey 25:37

the milkshakes are fantastic you're all out of your mind i i can't milkshakes

Carter 25:42

brainwashed. I can't have a milkshake. There's so

Corey 25:46

so many flavors. It's so good.

Corey 25:48

age? Strathcona Tweedsmere, an institution.

Corey 25:52

Fueling Brains, I think, is the name of the organization. Fueling Minds is the kitchen, I think. Not an institution. I will say that when it was Kids U, it recently went through a rebrand. My daughter did go there for a year, and I really liked it. I thought it was a fantastic child care place. But it's a pretty big hurdle to get over, pretty hard to forgive mass poisoning of children. So, you know, different outcomes, different kind of culture that you've got to lean on there. And that's going to drive different corporate strategies. And that's going to drive different actions by the government as well. Like the variables play such an important role in a situation like this.

Annalise 26:33

So just kind of to wrap this one up, looking to the days ahead, what will you, Premier Smith today, Friday has spoken. spoken um kids i think numbers are still going up if not kind of they've peaked i think

Annalise 26:45

think there was yeah the thought was that the peak would be around this week like what i i think we will continue to hear a lot about this in the coming days what will you what will be you be looking for do you have kind of any advice from that policy or comms um strategy angle yeah

Corey 27:02

yeah look i mean i

Corey 27:04

i have thoughts for government i have thoughts for the organization they fundamentally come from the same place these are children these are the people we have the biggest responsibility to take care of and it's hard to over support in this moment it would be hard to hit a moment where you're like well that's too far they don't actually need that and so if i'm the government if

Corey 27:23

if i'm that corporation i am doing anything to make good the other thing i'm trying to do is making sure that information is shared openly and freely uh i don't know how a company like fueling brains comes back from this I really don't. Maybe they can, maybe they won't, right? I don't know how deep their pockets are. I don't understand, you know, the legal shields that may or may not exist. But I do know that there are people who work at those organizations. And if they're thinking about their future in this industry or any other industry, they better be acting better

Corey 27:54

better than St. Peter. Like, they have got to make sure that their actions hold up to any kind of scrutiny, and they act the way that when this story is written, they're not going to be embarrassed showing that story to their children. And look, I think it's a tough one, and I know nobody wanted this to happen, but it did, and now we just got to do right by the kids and provide the support to them and their families as much as we can. And I am not a thoughts and prayers person, but, oh, my God, am I really thinking about the kids that are there and the families that are going through what's happening? And I just hope they get the support they need, if not from the corporation, then from the government.

Annalise 28:33

Carter, your closing parting advice, words, that was nice from Corey.

Carter 28:38

Yeah, obviously, I'm uncomfortable with the empathy. I know.

Carter 28:43

uh you know i mean i think that you know if i i'm

Carter 28:49

don't know i'm supposed to be a progressive conservative right and progressive conservatives you know like watching what's happening with daycare um you know funding daycare is the way that justin trudeau has i'm actually a big fan of i'm a big fan of enabling people to do what they need to do uh in life what they want to do in life um but

Carter 29:09

but i'm also kind of a big fan of not over regulating things and i i think that that's where the the the

Carter 29:16

the smith government's going to run into a little bit of trouble because they have done some deregulation around daycares and now you know it'll be interesting to see if smith backtracks on any of that um as a you

Carter 29:28

you know a nod to the idea that especially if if an organization's feeding children and most restaurants feed children uh maybe we need maybe we need some some more, some bigger conversations about what

Carter 29:40

what is the appropriate regulation? How can we fund public health, the ugly stepchild of the healthcare system, a little bit better so that we don't face this in the future? That conversation might be very difficult for a quote-unquote conservative government. On the other hand, it doesn't appear that Danielle Smith has an ounce of true conservatism in her so who knows where we wind up um yeah

Carter 30:06

yeah but mostly i'm just kind of uncomfortable with cory's uh empathy you

Annalise 30:10

you didn't you didn't answer at all listen i have a question for you annalise

Carter 30:14

annalise annalise can i ask you a question you're the only one with the with uh with the daycare age child right

Annalise 30:21

he's in daycare right now yeah what

Carter 30:23

what what how is it as a parent like how does this impact you that's going to be different than than for example the way that cory and i are responding is you know we're putting our kids in in you know my daughter's in university i'm not i'm

Carter 30:36

i'm not thinking about this maybe the same way that you might be thinking about it yeah

Annalise 30:41

yeah i don't i mean i think it it hits a little close to home but it's like i also drive my car and then you hear about accidents happening right like it's it's it's one of those things i think obviously amongst my friends who have kids in daycare you're like man heartbreaks for these these parents what a tough thing they're going through um

Annalise 30:58

but I don't I I think I think anyone with kids probably has a similar reaction which is uh to Corey's empathy point just like this is horrific terrible they're going through this seeing little tiny bodies in big hospital beds is heartbreaking can't imagine what those parents are going through and like I mean it's to Corey's point not thoughts and prayers but empathy and compassion and um I think kind of wait and see where it all lands boy

Carter 31:25

boy you guys are both making my skin crawl holy crap we're

Annalise 31:28

we're nice people carter so

Carter 31:29

so much empathy we're

Annalise 31:31

we're nice people uh okay we can move on to our next segment housing housing housing cory's favorite topic a

Annalise 31:39

lot has happened on the housing front in recent days and cory it's not just municipal stuff so close to home for our calgary listeners marathon public hearing is happening at calgary city hall started yesterday at 9 30 a.m i think it went past 9 30 last night carter was there for most of the day calgarians are lining up to speak about housing and push for or against i think we'll see the against voices today against rezoning that would make it easier to build duplexes townhouses and row houses on lots across the city at the same time this is federally a hot topic housing is a big one so the federal conservatives have been talkative on the issue, including at the Calgary municipal level. Polly have released his party's housing plan yesterday, which will build more homes, not bureaucracy. And on the same day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the feds will remove sales tax from new rental construction effective immediately. They're

Annalise 32:36

They're calling on provinces to do the same. There was also a letter to council in Gondek from the feds about funding and what it'll mean depending on this vote that they make. So So a lot happening on the housing front. Carter, why don't we start with you? Because I know you, you love this topic. What do you make of it? And especially the fact that like the feds in municipal, this is like kind of all happening at the same time. I'm

Carter 33:03

I'm absolutely gobsmacked by the interest

Carter 33:07

interest that everybody's putting into this. I mean, this has become a very significant issue in a very short period of time. It would appear that my advice to the liberals, the Justin Trudeau liberals, my advice, Corey, that they steal some of the policies of Pierre Palliev was heard and listened to. I just,

Corey 33:30

just, I remember that

Corey 33:31

coming from someone else, but that's okay. We

Carter 33:33

We can, we can. My advice. I, I play

Carter 33:36

play back the tape. Do we have, oh, we don't have that tape. Okay. Because it shows

Corey 33:40

shows that I was smart. Do you want me to find the tape, Stephen? Is that really the lip you want to go out on? I don't want you to find that tape. Okay. I,

Carter 33:46

I, I, I take it back. My point is that this is, this has turned into a really significant issue. And yet there are still people. I mean, there are people who, who are conservative MLAs. There are people who are conservative councillors. You know, there are lots of people who are who are standing on the kind of the NIMBY side on their relatively what I consider to be weak, weak ground, fighting against their own parties, fighting against what

Carter 34:15

what people are universally across Canada. And I think not just across Canada, we're seeing big movements around in kind of our Western world about housing. um and

Carter 34:27

they're fighting against that so i think that this

Carter 34:30

this housing problem may be happening in calgary but it's happening in ottawa it's happening in toronto it's happening in the lower mainland this is a a nation a national situation um where local nimby respondent councils are being uh

Carter 34:49

you know scolded by the by the federal politicians and they're not And rewarded. I mean, basically, the federal liberals have offered to fund projects in Calgary if they go through with this RCG piece. This is huge. If we rezone, we get millions of dollars. And still, the people who bought an arena for the same rationale are balking

Carter 35:15

balking at this because they don't want to face the potential wrath of the NIMBY in their communities.

Corey 35:22

yeah so rcg right like this is gonna be such a fun not at all painful conversation for people um they're talking about it reason our

Carter 35:31

our audience loves this they're

Corey 35:32

they're talking about rezoning the entire city effectively to allow a higher density of development by default right like that becomes the new default that's my that's my very short summary of it here like

Corey 35:42

like i think this is a really interesting conversation and there's a thousand ways we can go at it i mean on on one hand i want want to say it's a national issue. It's obviously a big local issue here in Calgary. But it's also and well, I think I've noted on this podcast, we hit a very grim milestone this year in Calgary, where a median income was no longer enough to support a median mortgage for a median house, right? That's bad. I don't like to see that. I don't like to see that as a Calgarian. I think one of the big advantages of Alberta has always been, we keep an eye on that affordability. And we try to make sure that you know, that the goal of home ownership, which so many of us have is available to many people. And that's part of, I think, the Alberta ethos in our thing, right?

Corey 36:23

It's not as bad as Calgary as elsewhere. And so I'm thrilled that we seem to be on the vanguard of this. Calgary and Edmonton, even though it's not as bad here, we're saying we don't like where this is going and we're moving forward on various solutions. But what I want to say is kind of weird for me, and I'll talk local and then maybe I'll talk with the liberal, is, and

Corey 36:43

i mentioned this to you guys in our group chat this

Corey 36:46

this is yet another time the progressive side of politics has decided that they're going to do the market solution thing and

Corey 36:52

and i'm going to talk locally obviously pierre polyev's all over this but locally the conservative side has been about regulation and we saw this on climate change with a carbon tax which to me seems much more naturally like a conservative solution to these things and there seems to be a weird realignment that's happening on a few of these issues, where all of a sudden people who have historically been opposed to market solutions are all about the market solutions. And people who have historically supported the market solutions are very opposed to those market solutions. So I wonder if this is kind of a canary in the coal mine for a bigger realignment, like we sometimes see where the parties flip. It's happened a lot. Like if you go back in Canadian history, you look at the liberals were in favor of free trade in the early 20th century, they were opposed to free trade by the the end of the 20th century, you

Corey 37:39

you know, and then kind of has pulled back to a different place there.

Corey 37:42

I just wonder if we're seeing something bigger here that we should be keeping an eye on too.

Corey 37:47

last thing I want to say about Pierre Polyev and the liberals and the liberals taking on some of these solutions.

Corey 37:53

Smart politics of the liberals just to say, yeah, we're going to do those things too. Takes it away from Pierre Polyev. I think, to

Corey 37:59

to be fair to Stephen, we both recommended this on the podcast. Doesn't

Corey 38:03

who said it first and best. That was me, but that's It's OK.

Corey 38:08

But it's also a sign that the Liberals are really backs against the wall on this issue. Right. They don't have solutions. They need the other person's solutions because the other person's solutions are popular.

Annalise 38:20

Is it too little too late from the Liberals? I mean, Polyev has been going hard on this for a couple of months. We've seen recent polling. You've seen polling, especially among young people. Like, is this going to be too little too late from Trudeau?

Corey 38:35

yes and no. You're always trying to kind of optimize the solution from where you are, not where you wish to be. And I think this is fairly optimal from where they are. Now, they're really in a hole and they're going to have to dig out of it over many, many months. Like you don't get in a hole immediately and you don't get out of a hole immediately in politics here. And in fact, it's often much more of a long climb out than it was a fall in.

Corey 38:59

And obviously, there's also a bunch of things you can point to and say, liberals,

Corey 39:04

liberals, you fools, like this was actually a liberal party commitment, this idea of removing GST from rentals in 2015, which they dropped in 2017. And now here they are again. And so they also have the curse of it being a clear flip flop on the particular matter, too. They can't even say, you

Corey 39:23

you know, we eventually got there. We think this is a good solution, too. They intentionally said they were going to do it. They intentionally said they were not going to do it. And now they're back at saying they're going to have to do it. So that's a bit of a challenge for them.

Carter 39:35

don't think it's going to be enough

Corey 39:35

enough for them to recapture housing, but it might be. It's a tourniquet. It's going to stop some of the more fatal bleeding that they've been doing on this issue.

Annalise 39:45

Carter, is it too little too late?

Carter 39:47

It's never too late to do the right thing. um you we need this action uh will they get rewarded publicly or will they will the population reward them the reward is actually just moving it off the the top of people's minds um if this starts to show and give people a little bit more comfort that things are actually happening you don't have to reach a full solution for them to reach partial benefit so this could be enough just to get them out of, uh, the crosshairs for a little bit. And, you know, maybe, maybe that's all they need right now is, is just a little bit of an act, a little bit of action just to get them out of the, out of the crosshairs and, um, they're

Carter 40:28

they're not going to solve anything, but they may just get it off the front page.

Corey 40:32

I would recommend to a lot of people in a lot of contexts that sometimes you just need to give yourself breathing room to lower the temperature on the issue and also to give your time space to find the solutions that you need. You know, it's true in bargaining. It's finding space for a deal. It's true in politics. It's making sure that you can look at these things with clear heads and not be reacting as we saw, I would argue, the premier have to kind of overact on. So

Corey 40:58

So finding space is a good thing. It's an important part of a strategy. And I think the liberals are

Corey 41:03

are trying to find themselves space. This can't be their only solution on housing, But it means they're no longer debating with Pierre Polyev whether these are good actions. They're no longer, you

Corey 41:14

you know, taking the defensive on why they're not taking these particular actions.

Annalise 41:19

What about when it's a topic like this where lowering the temperature, like, takes a while? And I'm thinking to bring it back to the municipal context, even if this passes on Saturday, if

Annalise 41:29

if it passes, there's still several more hurdles. And it's not like we're going to start seeing, you know, this flood of housing anytime soon. It's still going to take a while. there's still people that are having a heck of a time finding a place to live the

Annalise 41:40

the rental market is insane etc etc so in terms of that lowering the temperature when it's something like this where it's not like okay we can make changes and then we'll see the results tomorrow like does this just keep building up and get worse oh

Carter 41:52

oh i think it does i think that the the challenge is that this is a four-year solution with a two-year timeline right like you you've got a it's going going to take years and years for this to start to show any you know fruit um and and so you know the best time to act was some time ago but you didn't so now you just have to act uh as quickly as possible um that's just reality so all

Carter 42:19

all you can really do is hope that in the future the future case uh avails a different outcome right the future situation you

Carter 42:29

you know now we're going to to be worried about something different in the future we we always

Carter 42:33

always are worried about something uh inflation just happens to be the thing that it's today so try and address try and address this as fast as possible but don't get too hung up on it because you

Carter 42:46

you can't fix what you can't fix how

Annalise 42:48

how does it work though when there's an election in there and i'm speaking both municipally and federally let's say you said four-year problem to two-year like

Annalise 42:57

like or however however you put it. But let's say that an election in two years, and you're only two years into your plan of how things are going to get better. Like, do you want to speak on that, Corey, of when you throw in the the politics of an election in there?

Corey 43:10

Yeah, this I mean, housing, there's a lot of issues like this in government. It's, it's kind of the curse of running a democracy that has election cycles like we do. I mean, you know, in some ways, it's

Corey 43:21

it's even worse in the United States, where you elect a lot of these people on two-year terms, but you're always trying to deal with immediate challenges. And so it kind of naturally pushes you away from keeping your eye on the horizon and seeing these like looming storm clouds that you want to veer away from.

Corey 43:38

On an issue like this, it's just so hard to turn the boat and it's going to take a lot of time before it actually happens for a lot of reasons, right? People need to make the decision, yeah, I wouldn't mind redeveloping this land or selling it to somebody who does there's also only so many people who can build houses it's not as though we don't have shortages of skill try

Corey 43:57

try just try to hire laborers for certain roles in this uh in this city right now i've been i've been literally trying to get somebody to replace a pipe in my house for

Corey 44:07

for six months or more and i call them and the job's just not big enough to get their interest and it's in an older house and so you know there's more risk and they think maybe i don't want to spend my time on this. We have shortages of these people already. It's not as though they're going to miracle out of nowhere and then build a house or come to a city where it's so expensive to live to build a house, right?

Corey 44:27

It's going to take time.

Carter 44:29

Speaking of which, I am available in September to help you with the roof.

Corey 44:32

Oh, thank you. We do need to do that.

Annalise 44:35

Heather's going to let you do that, Carter?

Annalise 44:37

She's not, but I'm going to do it anyways. I thought that was a hard no.

Annalise 44:41

Carter is not Not allowed on a ladder. Yeah.

Corey 44:44

I mean, this is a real thing, though. Like, I have, I hired, like, last... Tell

Annalise 44:47

Tell us about your renovations in Chincord. This is a whole separate... People want to hear. This is entirely

Corey 44:51

entirely separate from the pipe, but I can't find somebody to replace the roof on my garage to save my life, because it's just not a big enough job. There's just too many people doing these things. And so Carter and I are going to get up there, and then we'll have the In Memory of Carter episode after that, I'm sure. It's going to be fine. It's going to be great. I'm

Carter 45:07

I'm going to be fine. I'm the athlete of the group, right?

Carter 45:09

right? Like, I'll be fine.

Corey 45:11

You're the aging athlete of the group, Stephen. Yeah, that's true. When

Annalise 45:15

When you say that, Carter, it's just that image of your bike on top of you. But look,

Corey 45:19

look, I don't want to lose your question.

Corey 45:22

What do you do with an election in two years? These

Corey 45:24

These houses are largely not going to be built, no matter what aggressive course comes out of it. You've got to be able to point to things and say, there

Corey 45:31

there are indications the solution will work. More building permits than ever before is a pretty obvious one here. more construction underway than you could possibly imagine it's been difficult but we got ahead of this and oh by the way let me contextualize this versus toronto or vancouver we saw this coming we acted as a council look how awesome we are and

Corey 45:52

and uh and now we see indications that this is going to resolve itself i mean that's all you can do at this moment talk

Annalise 45:59

talk to me about oh carter did you want to i want

Carter 46:02

this is this is also about setting the question right like the The liberals, if the liberals run their election campaign on how well they solved housing in two years, they're probably going to lose. Yeah.

Carter 46:13

Because, you know. No, I think.

Carter 46:16

Yeah. So you change the question. You try and set a different question to get a different outcome. You make it about Pierre Polyev's opposition to LGBTQ issues or you make it about, you know, his new look. Nobody trusts him. Although that worked really poorly for the

Carter 46:36

the Conservatives against Kretchen. But, you know, you can create a different question. And if you are campaigning on the wrong question, you definitely lose. That's why we work so hard on crafting what a question should be in any given election.

Annalise 46:54

Talk to me about the age divide here. And I don't, I don't want to stereotype, but I think it's a word, a point worth bringing up that a lot of, I mean, there was a protest outside city hall yesterday. We saw like dozens of speakers, a lot of young people, right? A lot of people talking about how I'm in my twenties, I'm in my thirties, I'm living in my parents' basement. I can never like afford a place to live.

Annalise 47:15

skews younger and then I'm sure today when we hear from the opposition they will skew older you know those people I've been in my community for years and years and years I don't want to upset what you know the the character of my community whatever the lines are going to be how does that play in when you're looking at winning an election in a couple years and and who usually turns out to vote and who you need to come out to vote like talk to me about the age dynamics of this specific housing issue when there seems to be this attitude amongst younger Canadians that older Canadians don't care because they have a house, they have an affordable mortgage, this doesn't affect them. Like this is a young issue.

Carter 47:54

I think if you can change the turnout model, if you can change who votes in an election, then you change, then

Carter 48:01

then you're far more likely at winning if you have that age advantage. It's just very difficult to change the age um you know outcome i mean people said when nenshi won in 2010 that it's because we brought out all these young people when you actually look at the statistics we did not bring out a whole new group of young people um young people were talking to older people older people said oh the young people seem to like this guy so we will vote for him um it was just it was disconnected because younger people tend not to vote will this change that issue maybe

Carter 48:35

maybe realistically Statistically, probably not. So if you are a young person who wishes to see this issue actually get changed, then you have to really advocate amongst your peer group to do the thing. The only thing that will guarantee changes in policy is to have changes in governments. And being

Carter 48:56

being active and putting those threats in place and following through on those threats is how seniors have stacked the whole system in favor of themselves. You know, seniors don't pay for prescription drugs, right? We've got whole systems to take care of seniors. Seniors get assistance for their housing. We've got whole systems to take care of seniors for that. Seniors, you know, basically have everything added to them on a platter. Why?

Carter 49:22

It's not because we give a shit about aging people. I can tell you that as an aging person. person what they give a shit about is

Carter 49:29

is who's going to vote for them and buying the vote that they need to get so if the young folks wish this to be an issue if young folks wish this to be to have impact then what they need to do is they need to say that start playing in the system that we have instead of the the system that they wish we had so

Annalise 49:48

so what does that look like how do they start playing in this system vote

Carter 49:53

you know pierre polyev got nominated at what 14 14, 15 years old. I mean, the guy was involved in politics before he could walk. And the reason he you know, the reason he's successful is he integrated himself into the system as it existed. And there's a lot of examples of that of really conservative young people. There were some examples of that in the in

Carter 50:15

the orange wave in Quebec. I can't remember the young woman's name who was the waitress. you know she that was great young people got involved in politics it'd be great if young people could get involved in politics now even uh uncle mitt romney is suggesting that we need generational change so let's get involved and get that generational change to happen and if you really want it um

Carter 50:37

um cory's telephone number is no i better not do that better not give them cory's telephone number sorry cory okay

Annalise 50:44

cory do you want to do you want to jump in after carter's inspirational message of the morning yeah look

Corey 50:52

seniors are a big demographic and they vote that's a reality it's not i think a blinding insight but it's a super important one that people care about things that affect them directly and if you have a house the idea that a house is unattainable i mean no it's not by definition you have one right it's it's fine and so yes they're gonna look at these things not through so much the access lens as the other things in their lives And, you know, part of it's going to be about maintaining the things they like about their house. Also not shocking. But I

Corey 51:22

do think that this is like, this is not an issue where politicians should sit idly by and think, well, you know, older folks, they'll still support us. We can do whatever the hell we want on this. Younger voters are pissed. They will come for you. This is the kind of thing that's going to get people activated. My God, it's got younger people voting conservative.

Corey 51:42

That doesn't happen, right? Right. Like you say

Carter 51:44

say they're going to vote conservative, saying

Carter 51:45

they're not actually voting conservative yet. Well,

Corey 51:48

Well, we'll see. But, you know, this is this is something that is driving fundamental views of person and character. Like, well, I want a house so badly I'm going to I'm on Team Polyam for this next one. Right.

Corey 52:00

The other thing I would say is it's not as though young people just appear in a field somewhere. Parents care about their kids. Parents also care about not supporting or housing their kids forever. And this is an issue that is going to have generational effects up. right? Where people are going to say, I don't want Bobby in my basement forever. Or I think it's absolutely disgraceful that they can't access these things that were available to me. And that will have an effect on the election as well. So yes, there will be seniors who are looking at it more through their lens, perhaps older, where their kids have houses as well, right? People in their 70s. But there's going to be a generation too that says, I got a house, but this feels super tenuous and I don't want my kids to move. I want them to stay in Calgary. I I want them to stay near me. This is going to be a big one because, look, rent's going up 40% plus in a year.

Corey 52:48

That's going to drive behavior, and it's going to drive behavior in a way that's going to make parents a little uncomfortable too.

Annalise 52:55

Just last one on this I think is worth asking. Where is the province and what should the province be doing? And, Corey, it goes to your point, which I find super interesting about how you have progressive

Annalise 53:05

progressive people and councillors municipally pushing this, And then the federal conservatives are almost their biggest ally. Like when Michelle Rempel came out pretty hot, that was what changed this, the municipal vote the first time and why we're back in this position anyway. So we haven't really heard from the province. What is the province to do when it's kind of this issue that is uniting both certain progressives and certain conservatives? Well,

Corey 53:32

Well, I mean, the province has a huge responsibility. I generally support the idea that cities should have more rights and authorities. But the reality is the province dictates all of that. They also control things like building codes, and they control things like overall rules around development. And I think it's actually hilarious how much the Alberta government has skirted responsibility on this issue, because we have the feds talking about it, we have the municipality talking about it, and we have the province kind of whistling in a field, like, not my thing, don't look at me. And I don't think that's true. I think that people should be looking to the province for some of the considerations around here. Massive landowners, right? So they could take that Pierre Polyev, let's get some of that land back into the hands of people. They are a massive regulator, and they are also a massive funder. And so if you want to have things like MSI, you know, municipal grants, whatever they've evolved into, flowing freely and richly, the province could put some big strings on that in terms of housing as well. And, you know, I'm sure those conversations are happening. Province should be looking at that storm cloud on the horizon, too. But it is pretty remarkable how little of this conversation has focused on the provincial government.

Annalise 54:44

Carter, province, what should they do?

Carter 54:46

Well, I mean, what should they do? They should be focusing on different aspects of the housing problem that they can solve. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that Premier Stelmack had a 10-year plan to end homelessness. There is no plan to end homelessness currently. You know,

Carter 55:01

know, the low income housing is something that the province can act on right away. And instead, what this government has been doing is unloading their low income housing assets. They've been taking the exact opposite action and being able to skate through it. I mean, I think that Corey's point that they're not being dragged into this conversation is really good because it is interesting that the group with arguably the most money on arguably the most skin in the game, is the one that's the least likely to be acting on it. Premier Smith should be jumping at this opportunity to show Calgary and Edmonton that she understands and cares about their issues. And right now she's just not. And I find that I find that odd. I think this is a great opportunity for the for the provincial government to jump in and actually start doing what needs to be done.

Annalise 55:54

Well, does it put her in a tough position, though, when she's siding with like the left side of Calgary?

Corey 55:59

Calgary? So this is what I was going to say. take a bit of courage, because this is an issue that's kind of scrambled everybody up, right? It's not so clearly left and right. But I do think that especially if you're Danielle Smith, and there's a libertarian bend to you, insofar as there is kind of an ideology, right? Stephen argued, maybe not that ideological in some of her approaches here.

Corey 56:19

I mean, and actually, this goes back to the comments I said at the start, it sort of blows my mind that this has become the quote, unquote, quote, progressive stance on this particular matter, because I remember in the 90s

Corey 56:30

90s and 2000s, we would look at cities like Houston with their absolute lack of zoning and be like, this is outrageous. Now, this is not Houston. You know, this is not the idea that you can build a skyscraper next to a single family home. It's so far from that. It's miles from that. But it is clearly a flip of position. And I do think it's fairly consistent with Danielle Smith's worldview that you should be allowed to do the things that you want to do. But it would take courage. You You know, it would be an interesting part of a play to rebrand herself to cities and say, this is how my particular philosophy is relevant to you in the city of Calgary, you in the city of Edmonton. And I just don't know if we're going to see that.

Carter 57:09

Keep in mind that Danielle Smith's first really foray into politics was that of a property rights advocate. She was advocating for owners of property to have the ability to do with that property as they saw fit and not be trapped into these kind of false paradigms of what they can do or should do with their own property. If she wishes to show that she is the woman that, you

Carter 57:33

you know, she said she was when she was doing all of those actions and activities, this is simple, very low-hanging fruit for her to show and, you know, to win back an audience. giving control to property owners that's the right wing messaging about removing

Carter 57:52

removing these zoning constraints and she can take that right wing messaging as polyev as michelle rempel as scott etchison she can take that and be that property rights advocate that she claimed to have been uh in the early 2000s um i fear that that was mostly just an act though so i don't stop the

Annalise 58:12

the the gatekeepers stop them carter um

Annalise 58:16

let's move on to our lightning round first question steven carter what was your favorite part of being at council all day yesterday um

Carter 58:25

um people who listen to the podcast coming up and comparing me and cory uh you

Carter 58:31

you know i mean i got what did

Annalise 58:32

did they say what did the fans what did the fans have to say about cory hogan there

Carter 58:37

there was one who liked him that

Carter 58:38

that was weird weird um it was

Carter 58:41

was unexpected i did not expect that to be honest uh but the rest you know they were very complimentary of him and they they liked his uh his commitment to the podcast um one of them said he was really smart but i discounted her opinion uh didn't feel like she was really feeling it when she suggested uh

Annalise 59:02

cory because i don't think you were tuned in to the council yesterday i'm gonna ask you a different question well i was tuned into our discord which

Corey 59:08

which couldn't shut up

Corey 59:11

the council meeting it was

Annalise 59:12

was like having a

Corey 59:12

a live stream of it yeah tell

Annalise 59:15

tell what was your favorite part of the discord's conversation my favorite

Corey 59:19

favorite part of the discord's conversation was them talking about the guy who was apparently shilling his app while

Corey 59:25

while he was out there oh

Annalise 59:25

oh yeah i saw that it was nuts did you see that carter no

Annalise 59:29

i didn't it was like a full-on like dragons listeners it was like a yeah full-on like dragons den style uh style app pitch it was good yeah it was good um okay next lightning round question alberta update do you guys know alberta update it's a new show on youtube oh yeah it started yesterday

Annalise 59:47

so for those who don't know about alberta update basically it's a weekly 30-minute youtube program uh

Annalise 59:54

uh bruce mcallister who's executive director of mcdougall he is giving alberta which for

Corey 59:59

for For those not in Alberta, and

Corey 1:00:01

and even Calgary probably, the Southern Alberta Premier's Office is called MacDougall. It's in MacDougall Centre. He's

Annalise 1:00:08

He's like the most senior guy in the Calgary office. So he's giving Albertans a behind-the-scenes look at how the government is taking action on issues that matter to Albertans. The first episode launched yesterday. It has about 1,000 views. Stephen Carter, good idea or bad idea?

Carter 1:00:27

Oh, man. Man, I mean, we've seen this. This is a movement that is happening. We have governments that are taking control of their own communications, whether it's through tweets or whether it's through buying ads or whether, you know, and Corey, you know, was part of this propaganda empire. And this is just another step in the propaganda. I just think it's a little bit too direct for me. I don't mind the tweets. I think they were more factual. this this feels a little bit more like opinion than it does just simple facts but uh those thousand people i'm sure are getting their money's worth when they watch their free youtube do

Annalise 1:01:05

do you think it's any different than the radio show carter like

Annalise 1:01:08

like the the weekly well it's all part

Carter 1:01:10

part of the same it's it's all part of the same gig right like it's all part of if we control

Carter 1:01:16

you know we can't get our message out through the traditional media anymore but

Carter 1:01:21

but we can using using different tools and techniques, get our message out directly to Albertans or Canadians or whatever. And every government is weighing back and forth on this. And when

Carter 1:01:33

when I like it, it's good direct communication. And when I don't like it, it's propaganda. And in this particular case, it's propaganda. So there you go.

Annalise 1:01:43

Corey, this is your jam. Good idea, bad idea. What are your thoughts. I

Corey 1:01:47

mean, it's fine. It will not shock you to hear I have a little bit more of a nuanced view of it than Stephen does. This is done by the political side of communications. So within government, there is the apparatus that is like the department that is communications and public engagement, which is what I led. And that is really seized with making sure that Albertans have the information they need. And yes, there are other campaigns that are more about out here's the things that are going on and you need to understand them, but bound by a lot of rules in terms of what's appropriate and what's not. Obviously, politicians are always touching that electric fence to see if it's still on. And you know, there is an appointment, the person who's doing my job now came from the premier's office, I suspect it's probably a little bit more political charged. I don't know that for sure.

Corey 1:02:33

But I would say that ultimately, the people do have a right to know and the government does have a duty to inform. So let's not throw all communications into this bucket here this

Corey 1:02:40

this particular show is

Corey 1:02:43

is a former mla whose political staff interviewing the premier my expectations for its actual nutritional value are super

Corey 1:02:55

and i don't know who are the thousand people who uh who are watching it but i suspect they are the the most diehard of it and it's probably a way to arm your supporters with messaging gene. I just don't, I don't know that it's going to be changing minds in any kind of material way.

Annalise 1:03:12

Okay, we're gonna leave it there. That is a wrap on episode 1099 of The Strategist. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil. With you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.

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