Episode 1256: Cross Canada Checkdown

Zain 0:01

This is The Strategist, episode 1256. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what is going on?

Corey 0:11

kind of as always. Yeah,

Corey 0:12

Yeah, I guess that's the first thing I'd say. Like, where's Annalise? Well, you

Zain 0:15

you know, who we have joined today is Taylor Swift has joined us. Okay, that is going to bring so many eyeballs to the podcast, Carter.

Zain 0:21

Carter. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm

Carter 0:22

I'm excited about it, as you can tell from my excitement level.

Zain 0:26

uh she's she's dating one of the three of us on the podcast i'm not gonna tell you which

Carter 0:31

works for me good it's good yeah

Zain 0:33

yeah is that a cul-de-sac that no one wanted to no that's

Corey 0:38

that's good you gotta time it with the uh you know the

Corey 0:41

the album releases so that you get like the just in love song not the breakup song when

Zain 0:46

when are we doing our eras tour carter we've talked about a live show for a while but i think we should call it the eras tour in fact we should purchase erastour.ca yeah if it already isn't taken here's

Carter 0:55

here's the problem taken

Carter 0:56

um i was supposed i was supposed to as you guys know uh yes

Carter 1:01

book the venue and uh okay i haven't i haven't done that oh

Carter 1:06

except for that the live show is ready to go are

Zain 1:10

are there any stadiums available we should try for a stadium this time even if we only get a couple hundred people i would prefer a stadium as part of the the eras tour well we

Zain 1:18

we will be doing heather

Carter 1:20

heather and i went and saw serena rider on friday night at the jubilee auditorium too

Carter 1:25

um and i thought to myself you know what this feels like a strategist place and then i looked around i thought nah too small for

Zain 1:32

too small indeed uh cory any any thoughts uh is travis kelsey on your fantasy football team and uh or is nick bosa on your fantasy football team because i feel

Corey 1:41

feel like neither is is on my uh fantasy football team but uh good convo shane

Corey 1:47

shane am i pronouncing the They're running back for Miami, who came out of nowhere. Dude. Small guy. Yeah. 2TD. He is. I picked

Corey 1:56

him up in like the ninth round.

Zain 1:58

round. Jeez. He's doing really well for

Carter 1:59

for me. Did I tell you,

Zain 2:00

you, Carter? I got to see Tua play when he was with Alabama. That was pretty impressive. Didn't

Carter 2:04

Didn't we all? Oh, that is good. I mean, didn't we all line up for that one?

Zain 2:08

Roll Tide, Carter. Yeah.

Zain 2:11

football knowledge is just far superior. Hey,

Carter 2:15

Hey, AFL championships this weekend. and Collingwood pulled it off over my Brisbane Lions, I'm still a pretty upset guy.

Corey 2:22

know you're an upset guy.

Zain 2:24

This is generally your vibe. I don't think the result has any

Zain 2:27

any relationship to it. Corey, anything else you want to talk about or should we get into it? We've got a lot to talk about. I think we just get into it. Let's just get into it. Carter, we're doing it. Our first segment, Coast to Coast Strategy Session. That is right, Carter. We do this once in a while. We

Zain 2:44

coast to coast. Do

Carter 2:45

Do we need to know more than just Alberta?

Zain 2:48

Oh, you do, Carter. We will

Zain 2:49

start with Alberta because BC

Carter 2:50

BC is not a

Carter 2:51

a real place. Let me just power up my browser. Hang on a second. Okay.

Zain 2:52

Okay. Your browser, yes. I'm

Carter 2:54

I'm ready to go.

Zain 2:54

Now, Carter, as I mentioned, we will be starting in Alberta because BC is not a real place. Yeah.

Zain 2:59

And we've acknowledged that on the podcast. It's a long-held belief on the podcast that BC is not real. BC, however, is united but not real. Carter, we're going to start with Alberta, and then we're going to move across the country. We might skip a few provinces in between, as we are known to do so, either because I want to or your collective limitations of knowledge, either or, will dictate which provinces we skip. But we'll start here in Alberta. Carter, we've got a new campaign by our provincial government. Tell the feds, Carter. Oh, are you going to tell them? Yes. Let's

Corey 3:33

Let's talk about this

Zain 3:34

a new campaign put on by our government here about the net zero conversation,

Corey 3:44

that fair to say? Put on by our

Corey 3:45

our government, but not just here, running ads across the country. Well,

Zain 3:49

in fact, I should say, I've sent you guys pictures of this. I was in Ottawa this week. And the day this campaign got announced, I saw the truck that was traveling around Wellington with the billboard, the virtual billboard that told me to tell the feds, sponsored by the government of Alberta, very clearly marked on that truck. truck. Can

Corey 4:10

Can I just say how proud I am?

Corey 4:12

Because I'm pretty certain I started that tactic

Corey 4:14

tactic with the Alberta government. Yeah,

Corey 4:16

a lot, bud. We've done that a few times. That's a stupid

Zain 4:17

think it's really dumb. We did

Corey 4:19

did that for NDP market access. We did that for the UCP market access. And I guess they're still using it. I guess they really like it. You want to know my favorite thing about that?

Corey 4:29

If it's the same truck, the truck has to drive from Montreal two hours away way in order to go to uh to uh parliament hill that's a great and just idle around

Carter 4:38

around that's a long trip to tell the

Carter 4:41

a really good saying like

Zain 4:43

it's a gas guzzler

Zain 4:44

i'm assuming to make its point yeah it is not going to be plugged in anywhere uh especially the zeitgeist that's

Corey 4:54

that's fair joke yeah

Zain 4:56

using german words hey car okay here's what i want to do as we go province to province i'm going to ask you guys two simple questions Do you see the strategy? And is the strategy any good?

Zain 5:07

Okay, we're going to keep it simple. We usually do when we go coast to coast. So Carter, we've got this campaign here in Alberta. Help me understand it. Do you see the strategy of it? It's an $8 million campaign to tell the feds it could be the first implementation of the Sovereignty Act. The things Canadians count on won't work when needed. Let's stop blackouts. We can't afford them. them, do you see the strategy of this $8 million pan-Canadian campaign? And is it a good strategy? Those are the two questions. Start with the first one for me. I'll go to Corey. And then you guys can tell me if it's good or not, based on if you understand what the strategy is. Well,

Carter 5:41

Well, I mean, first of all, if all it took was introducing the Sovereignty Act and in some fashion carving out some sort of new rules for Alberta, then we wouldn't need to run a national campaign, right? Because we wouldn't have to tell the feds anything, because all we'd have to do is is implement the Sovereignty Act and away we go, right? So the strategy of advertising across the country saying tell the feds that we don't want cleaner air, we want dirty air, that strategy wouldn't be required if the Sovereignty Act actually did what Danielle Smith has advertised that it does. So it kind of undermines the Sovereignty Act strategy. But so

Carter 6:22

so from that point of view, you know, it's not a great strategy. I also think it's a bit problematic going across the country and telling people who rely, you know, less on coal and more on nuclear or more on hydro,

Carter 6:36

hydro, that in some fashion, this is going to impact all provinces equally. I could see running this campaign in Saskatchewan. Ontario uses some coal, maybe Ontario too. But, you know, no, no coal, Corey? No,

Carter 6:51

really. Not the same way, right?

Corey 6:52

You're not entirely wrong. Well, I was going to have the same point. I might as well interject because you're fumbling facts and also you said nuclear instead of nuclear. No, I do

Carter 7:01

do it the George Bush way.

Corey 7:04

Yeah, it's an homage to moderate

Corey 7:06

moderate Republicans. I mean, like this whole podcast. Ontario's actual energy use, like when there's obviously there's overall production, there's energizers, all that crap, but their actual use is about 9% gas. So I kind of had the same thought, Stephen. And it's like, if you're an Ontarian, and you're not really seized with the need to kind of have certain supply on hand for times of peak demand, which is largely the value of gas, like, aren't you going to kind of look at this and be like, well, we don't really use gas. So we don't really care. You know, that was my first reaction to it. So,

Zain 7:39

So, Carter, can I add some clarity to your point? Do you see the strategy? This is supposed to be our campaign to fight against the timeline of 2035 for the federal government's net zero electricity system. It's their plans under the clean energy regulations. You don't see the strategy. Corey, can I get you on that same question? Hold on, Carter. You can tell me why it's bad. Go ahead in a second. Corey, do

Corey 8:05

do you see the strategy of

Corey 8:06

of this? You do? For sure. Absolutely.

Corey 8:08

Lay it on me. Expand on that. Okay. You didn't let him expand, so I wasn't sure if you were going to let me expand.

Corey 8:13

I had Carter giving me a bunch of preamble. I want to get your yes. Let me give you my postamble. I do think, I see the strategy, but it's pretty clear that the strategy is not actually to change minds in Ontario. It's not actually to put pressure on the federal government. It's to say to Albertans, we're advertising to Ontario. We're taking the the fight to them. We're not on the defensive. We're on the offensive. Here we are now with our campaign in downtown Ottawa. Zane Velji, known political commentator Zane Velji, even saw it when he was in Ottawa, this thing driving around. And that is not necessarily a bad strategy. I just don't think it's going to be effective at changing the policy. It's a continuation of the fight with Ottawa, but it's not a way to win the fight. But I'm not sure that's the point.

Zain 9:04

Carter, Corey sees it as a strategy for us here in Alberta. Do you agree with that? You said you don't see the strategy play.

Carter 9:09

Well, I mean, I agree with what Corey has said. I mean, I think that this is not in any way, shape or form designed to change anybody's mind in Alberta, or sorry, in well, even in Alberta. This is this is about reinforcing a narrative to the existing base that that uh danielle continues to communicate with this isn't actually about changing the hearts and minds of the good people of ontario or or any other market this is about danielle smith being able to basically

Carter 9:38

basically say this is what she's trying to do um but it's not going to change anything and i think that that's where the strategy falls apart for me um the tactic Tactic is whatever. I mean, tactically, we decided to buy ads, whatever. But

Carter 9:56

strategy should be to actually put some pressure on the federal government to change their outcome, or their plan. Otherwise, it's rather hollow. And I think that it's going to, I don't know that it necessarily backfires, but I think that it is relatively hollow.

Zain 10:12

Corey, you see the strategy, you say it's not gonna be particularly effective. Tell me why expand a bit more on like, why don't think it's gonna be particularly? Well,

Corey 10:20

Well, so I think it will be effective in Alberta, I don't think it will be effective at changing the federal government's position or the minds of Ontarians at it. Because anytime you do one of these advocacy campaigns, and we've had this conversation on this pod before, there is the risk on the other side, like if you go out and everybody knows you spent a ton of money in Ontario and everybody knows you're blasting ads everywhere and nobody is using that form to quote unquote tell the feds jack shit, you've really kind of exposed yourself as being a total non-force and your argument being a total non-force in the good province of Ontario. So, you know, that's something that then the federal liberals will look at and probably even to a degree the federal conservatives and say, well, I'm going to have to take note of that. So there's always a risk of backfire with an advocacy campaign. And again, we've made this point before, but it's really worth underlining. And the more money you put into it, and the less you get out of it, the bigger the backfire. And when you're a provincial government spending literal millions, if not tens of millions, if you're not getting outcomes, you're

Corey 11:22

you're really putting yourself on the line. well

Zain 11:24

well we know they're spending millions of dollars in fact i believe it was announced at the press conference or on background that it was nearly a 10 million dollar campaign with the ad spend that they're which

Corey 11:32

which is not huge nationally i just

Corey 11:34

just want to say yeah tell me tell me actually that's a helpful point cory tell me what eight to ten can

Zain 11:37

can do nationally like like give me like maybe not what can it do but give it to me and like you say it's not huge yeah is it like is it mid-tier like give us a sense of this

Corey 11:46

this i mean it's it's not small but let me put it in this context like a pretty pretty medium-sized campaign in the province of alberta would probably be one two or three million dollars i i'd say one would be like for us

Zain 11:59

us like yeah for us

Corey 12:00

us when you're the government because you're trying to talk to everybody so you've got very broad demographics you're trying to knock you've you've

Corey 12:06

you've got to hit a ton of markets right and

Corey 12:08

and so the very lazy and very inaccurate shorthand i often use when i thought about these things was be like well okay well if like a two million million an average campaign that campaign blown up to the entire nation would be about 20 million but that's not even true because markets like vancouver toronto montreal quite expensive uh and that they incur additional costs going bilingual that incurs a lot of cost in creative as you have to start managing all sorts of additional properties that are going along there and i actually didn't catch if tell the feds had a had a french version i'm not sure that i've seen that it does i don't i don't see it

Carter 12:42

it yet it might tell

Carter 12:44

tell the feats yeah somebody

Corey 12:47

somebody just did a bad french accent right

Corey 12:51

we'll have to explain what the hell we're talking about in a second on that one but yeah anyhow the

Corey 12:57

reality is it like it would be noticeable but not massively noticeable at those spend points assuming that you're not also in the good province of quebec it depends on where they're focusing it i suspect they're probably focusing it more heavily in ottawa we would often for these campaigns in alberta when iran communications talk about doing a bit of an ottawa overspend right to make sure we're part of the national conversation also as part of an earned strategy i

Zain 13:22

i suspect that that truck is not traveling in every major city oh i'm sure

Corey 13:26

sure it's not it's not in montreal because it had to drive from montreal to to

Corey 13:30

to be there's only one

Zain 13:32

cory i don't know it's the same one anymore but

Corey 13:34

but uh the uh um

Corey 13:37

um the reality is you're going to play with the dials a lot of different ways and you're

Corey 13:43

you're going to play with them in particular when you're trying to get people to think that it's very big in um you know in certain markets so the question is not did

Corey 13:54

did the did the government spend seven and a half million i think it was seven and a half million sure sure sure the

Corey 13:59

question for me the follow-up question The essential follow-up question is, break that down to me, for me, by province. Because I suspect, I suspect if you did, you'd see like three or four million in Alberta, a couple million in Ontario, maybe a million in BC, and that's about it. Maybe in Saskatchewan too. But I

Corey 14:18

I would be very curious about that. Because the other thing you should watch out for, and this is the last thing I'll say before I hand you back the mic here, Zane. yeah it's

Corey 14:26

it's pretty easy to make a provincial campaign with absurd levels of spending look more reasonable if you just branded a national campaign right yeah

Corey 14:37

so if like i talked about two to three million dollars being you know a pretty fair size campaign in the province of alberta i'm talking over months here i'm not saying like you're gonna blow that money in three weeks or something like that um if

Corey 14:51

if you want to spend eight million dollars instead and and you don't want people to say, have you lost your fucking mind? Then you say, we've got a $10 million national campaign. And people

Corey 15:00

people kind of do the rough math and say, well, it's a national campaign, sort of makes sense. You got to watch out for that stuff, if you're an outside observer.

Zain 15:07

Carter, can I come to you? Actually, you know what? Get me started on this. I want to ask both of you this question, which is dovetailing off of Corey's audience and targeting sort of question. question.

Zain 15:18

If you were trying to be the most persuasive to

Zain 15:22

to the audience that this website is intended for, as described, right, maybe not the sub strategy of this is actually just for the Albertan crowd, but for the feds, is there a specific target like that you would look at? Like, would you just be like, well, let me throw a suggestion out there. Let's just heavily target swing ridings, for example, where the next election is going to be fought and tell the feds truly that those voters that they need are actually on

Zain 15:48

on our side on this issue how would you kind of look at something like like targeting and cory i want to get your thoughts on this because i know you said i'd be curious to know but i'm curious if you were designing it how you'd structure it with the the goal that we are presented though

Zain 15:59

though we know that may be a secondary goal carter your thoughts i

Carter 16:02

i mean if you were really trying to i mean if this was a private corporation doing this where they wanted to change people's minds you would absolutely start with swing swing ridings and especially because this is designed to be an advocacy campaign it is designed to cause people to interact with the government that is the the you know the goal of it um so therefore one imagines you're trying to get if if what you're saying is true you want people to change the minds of the federal government um there's only certain places where that actually even matters right

Carter 16:35

right you're not going to necessarily care if you change the people's minds in alberta i mean it's not like alberta alberta's sending you

Carter 16:42

you know hundred you know dozens of of mps to to ottawa um under the liberal banner we're

Carter 16:50

we're sending all of our most of our mps under the conservative banner so what it's not going to matter that if the conservatives are getting more upset um

Carter 16:57

um and so you

Carter 16:59

you know absolutely you'd be targeting places like uh the 905 uh the places where you've seen swing you'd be targeting the lower mainland land of british columbia um the

Carter 17:09

the problem is that a large number of those swing ridings are going to be really tricky to actually make any moves in right like it's it's not going to be like the lower mainland of british columbia we've been in the lower mainland of british columbia we've tried to change people's minds about different different you know alberta centric ideas and it turns out they're a little different than we are in alberta they value different things and um

Carter 17:34

i'm not sure tell the feds is going to be a super successful tagline. And I think that Corey's point of watching out for the backfire effect, or not the backfire effect, but a backfire effect by the feds saying, oh, you targeted my swing ridings and you made exactly zero impact. I guess I don't need to worry about you then.

Zain 17:54

To your point, perhaps even more revelatory to Corey's earlier point around the lack of impact that a targeted spend could have. Corey, same thoughts for you. Where would you target based on the stated goal?

Corey 18:06

Well, let's just build on Carter's point first. I would not target downtown Ottawa, right? Which tells us exactly that this is a statement. This is a statement that's part of an earned campaign. And it's a statement that I think was developed not for the people of Canada, but for the people of Alberta more specifically. specifically and so uh if i was doing this and trying to change minds and it's not super glamorous but it's just the hard work of advocacy i would be focused in the areas where minds could be most changed and if you wanted to layer on that additional bit that steven was talking about of the swing ridings i would do that too now it

Corey 18:44

it gets us into an interesting ethical quandary as to whether provinces should be targeting federal ridings and glad

Zain 18:50

i'm glad you're talking about i

Corey 18:51

i got more thoughts on that i got a big thing i want to say on that before we get out of this segment uh do it now do

Corey 18:58

i was going to go

Corey 18:59

do it now it's

Corey 18:59

it's it's a little bit of a tangent so let's just let's just finish the you

Corey 19:03

you know don't do

Zain 19:03

do it now it's probably not a great time cory i think now would be probably the worst time for

Zain 19:08

sure yeah no no it's right we're

Carter 19:10

we're gonna hold off on that and come back to it at some later date like we always promise to you for sure for

Zain 19:14

for sure yeah you know what we should do i'll probably forget i'll probably forget after this this is Which is why, this entire thing is... You know what, Zane?

Carter 19:21

Zane? I'm just going to say it now. Yeah, okay. I think that was a great time. I feel like

Zain 19:24

like now, like after that... I

Zain 19:25

don't know why you're fighting me

Corey 19:26

me on this. I'm just going to say it now. Really good right

Corey 19:28

Okay, go ahead. Say it right now. Go

Corey 19:30

Ottawa needs to change the third-party advertising rules right fucking now to include the provinces. So there is a thing about drafting federal legislation, which is that it doesn't inherently include provinces. Provinces aren't inherently subject to it unless it specifically says this includes the provinces. That's all that it needs to add to change this. But this is a loophole. This is a known loophole. This is a loophole we haven't seen people make heavy use of. But there is serious reason to be concerned that you're going to have provincial governments fucking about in the next federal election if you do not make this change during the writ, if you do not make this change right now. This is serious as cancer, guys. Without

Corey 20:14

spending limits. They could spend millions of dollars in swing ridings in different jurisdictions, not even in their own province.

Corey 20:22

Watch out for this one. Make this

Zain 20:26

It's a really interesting tangent. Carter, I want to get your thoughts on this, and I'll just add on top of it in a more basic way, Corey, which is I'm not sure how many folks fully appreciate different orders of government spending a lot of time to figure out how they lobby other orders of government. I was recently surprised and perhaps even naive to the fact that municipalities have significant resources they spend on hiring government relationships and lobbyists of their own to convince both the feds and, in this particular case, this example I'm going to present, I won't reveal it, but what the file was, but the province. Like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to hire several people to lobby the province hired by a municipality. And I don't think folks fully appreciate the intergovernmental

Corey 21:16

that happens. I mean, the entire mush sector, as we call it, is full of lobbyists lobbying the governments that fund them, right?

Corey 21:26

It's a massive, massive. Using

Corey 21:28

the money they receive. Using

Zain 21:30

Using the money they receive. Steve Carter, your thoughts on this. Like, you know, you've got a lot of thoughts on TPA's third-party advertising, as well as kind of multi-order lobbying and such. So give me your thoughts on this. Good point, though, Corey. I like it. You

Carter 21:42

You take a group of people, you

Carter 21:44

you know, so there's a group of people. Political parties are one of those groups of people. And you have now tied their hands, because the rules and regulations are very clear that you cannot spend over a certain amount during a writ period. But you haven't tied other people's hands. and in this particular case the other people's hands are the provinces um but because you haven't tied their hands they can do whatever they want and and there's this you guys and they can collude

Zain 22:10

collude and collaborate right so you could have three or four provinces say let's each kick in 25 million bucks i'm just throwing in a random number 100 million dollar 28 day writ campaign overpowers anything else that's been on the field or that is on the field from any of the parties total

Carter 22:25

total well Well, and, you know, we're asking this question, you know, we're asking this question about, you know, is it ethical? Is it ethical to do this? And one could make the case that this, you know, if the loophole exists, then you must use the loophole, right? You must do what is in the best interest or what you as a government believe to be in the best interest of your province. That's how you get ahead. That's how we make sure that you're taking care of the best interests of your province. So you must, in some fashion, do this. It is an incentive that has been created that's going to have some sort of perverse outcome because

Carter 23:05

because we have decided to try and regulate pieces

Carter 23:11

pieces of elections without understanding how it all fits together. other and may be thinking well the provinces would never would never try and lobby except everywhere you look there are provinces lobbying the federal government everywhere you look there are municipalities lobbying the federal government uh there are you know there are rules against municipalities participating in provincial elections you

Carter 23:32

know i don't think necessarily those same rules exist at the federal level so they

Carter 23:37

so you know all of a sudden city of calgary wants more of that housing money right city of calgary goes and places ads uh in swing writings about how important housing money is you know everything can be manipulated

Carter 23:49

manipulated and in some fashion it it is incumbent like i always believe very strongly that i must follow the rules but it is in partly in my job to find out where the limit of the rules are because those

Carter 24:03

those limits are where where you get gains. So if you're the municipality and you're listening to this, or you're the province and you're listening to this, and you really believe that it is your citizen's best interest, then in some fashion, you must actually push to get to the edge of the rules.

Zain 24:22

And Carter, you've been a long-held proponent of not unilaterally just falling on your sword or being like, I'm not going to do this because it's ethically not something I would do versus like someone else could take advantage of it sort of thing. Corey, your thoughts on this? And then I actually, I mean, with 21 minutes, we're barely going to leave this cross-country tour, is barely going to leave, which of course it's unsurprising because it's brought to us by Flyer Airlines. But

Zain 24:50

we saw that one coming from a mile away.

Zain 24:56

your thoughts here just on the baseline. You said, I've got thoughts on the ethicality of this, right? right? And what the Fed should do. Right now, as it stands, this form, 7.5 million, largely dedicated to a campaign advocating to the federal government. Do you have any ethical issues with how the campaign is structured as it stands right now?

Corey 25:18

Listen, I've been in

Corey 25:20

in my employment deeply involved in campaigns like this for the province of Alberta. I've done it. I did it for years. This is a thing Alberta got pretty used to doing, right? Let's run some ads in British British Columbia about Trans Mountain. Let's run some ads in Ottawa about the value of the energy industry. Let's run some ads now to tell the feds about the electricity energy. This is something that the governments like to do for

Corey 25:46

for a variety of reasons. I would say that I feel the NDP were more about trying to change the minds of people across Canada. I feel that the UCP ones were maybe more about showing albertans that there was some fight in them

Corey 26:00

that's just you know that's that's just my kind of opinion that that's not stated by either party there um but it's clearly just a thing we do in alberta now and the problem with it is we

Corey 26:14

we put a lot of money into it and i

Corey 26:17

we really got a question we

Corey 26:19

we as a country now we talk about canada whether we think it's a good idea if provinces can spend money unregulated in other provinces to lobby them on policy changes. In

Corey 26:31

In some ways, this campaign by the UCP targeted or the government of Alberta targeted towards the federal government is almost a little more defensible than some of them because at least it's like an order of government that kind of layers on top. Sometimes we just go right into the backyard and we say, this is how we think as a province, this is what you should do, right? And so, again,

Corey 26:54

again, I'd be a hypocrite, but I'm not comfortable with it. I think that this has gone a little far. And so provinces and the federal government need to tighten up the regulations around political money to include other governments. We obviously wouldn't let the government of China interfere in Canada. I don't think we should let the government of Alberta interfere in Saskatchewan. We should just say that's kind of not our business. That's why they elect a government. And we have other mechanisms to make our concerns known. I'm not saying there's an equivalency between China and Alberta before anybody asks me on that. But there is a broader principle about not interfering in other people's elections.

Zain 27:32

Carter, your final thoughts on this as we wrap up and move on to the neighboring provinces of Saskatchewan.

Carter 27:38

I just say I'm going to finish with my opening thought, which is I don't believe this is actually designed to change anybody's mind and to really lobby the government. I think this is designed to increase the popularity of this particular government within its core audience group.

Zain 27:56

Let's move to Saskatchewan. Corey, Premier Scott Moe says he will use the notwithstanding clause to move forward on the pronoun policy requiring young students to obtain parental consent to change names or pronouns. announced he's not apologizing for potentially calling back the legislature to use this particular policy. Same two questions. I'm going to run that thread across the country. Do you see the strategy and is it a good one? Corey, start answering both those questions from your perspective.

Corey 28:24

Well, yeah, I mean, it'd be hard not to see the strategy because it's a strategy that's now been applied and employed by all sorts of uh leaders across this country right most notoriously we've got higgs in new brunswick who's decided maybe even go to an election on this right and

Corey 28:42

and potentially as early as next week yeah

Zain 28:44

yeah from what the rumors are and the

Corey 28:45

the reality is these things may poll more popularly than uh than they should you know when you when you start thinking about it and when you read the court decision in saskatchewan that triggered this it's pretty damning on the the government, because it just makes clear there's like absolutely no reason for the government to do this. Like all of the government's stated policy objections are bullshit, right? Like it's just, it's nonsense. And I'm going to do a very poor version of summarizing it slash morphing it with my own views on this. But the

Corey 29:16

the idea that you wouldn't tell your parents what your preferred pronouns are, is because you don't feel safe telling your parents for whatever reason. And so So the very people who this is likely to apply to are the people who most desperately need the protection. And it's everybody else who's going to get caught. Like, who's actually getting caught up in this? If you're in a loving environment, supporting environment, one where you can talk to your parents, your parents might disagree, but at least you're going to have that disagreement with them.

Corey 29:44

Then they're already going to know, right?

Corey 29:45

right? They're going to know. It's the people who are like keeping it so deep undercover, so buttoned up that it's like, I can't tell my dad, I can't tell my mom because they'll lose their minds. It could get violent, could get ugly, whatever it is, right? Those are the people that need the protection. And now to come in and say, you, you specifically, this group, because we're not talking about everybody else, right? Because everybody else, that's a different thing.

Corey 30:09

well, we need to get the parents involved in this. I just think, holy fuck, right? Like, what is this all about? And so when we were talking about this originally with Higgs, the

Corey 30:19

point I made, and I feel less sure of now, but I still hope to be the case, is that under the scrutiny of an election, as these conversations sort of unfold, this

Corey 30:29

this is a policy that at first feels like it's about parental rights and your rights as a parent. But very quickly, you can sort of understand there

Corey 30:37

are actually very serious reasons why you don't want to use notwithstanding clauses in this way, why you don't want regulations constructed in this way. And so, you know, hopefully, as that conversation unfolds, it will get to the result that protects the most children, which is one that affords teachers the ability to make these discretionary calls. But I

Corey 30:58

I don't know. There is some optimism in me based even in some polling on culture wars in the United States where they're a little ahead. People are pretty fatigued. It's not looking like a winner for the Republicans right now in a lot of jurisdictions. I'm hoping the same calculus comes here faster.

Zain 31:15

question to you. Do

Zain 31:16

Do you see the strategy? And effectively, there's two strategies here, if you want to parse it out, right? You talk about the wedge issue that Corey mentioned, also the now more common use of the notwithstanding clause as it grows across the province. Do you see the strategy? And what are your thoughts on it? From a political calculus, do you see the merits of what Moe is trying to do in Saskatchewan? on? No,

Carter 31:38

No, I don't. I don't see a strategy. I mean, I guess that there's this idea that parents have a certain right set. And that's interesting because I'm

Carter 31:48

I'm not sure that we do. And as parents, do we have a right to know everything that our children are doing? Not

Carter 31:57

That's not really what our job is. We have a responsibility as parents. And I sometimes think that we get at the word responsibility mixed up with the word rights. And it is our responsibility to parent our children safely. And a lot of us think that we can, and we don't really understand what it looks like in other places, what

Carter 32:19

what it looks like in someone else's house, what it looks like with someone else's value set, right? Most of us, I don't think, can imagine abusing our children, right where most of us can't see that right we we don't see how

Carter 32:33

how a person could abuse their children but it exists all over the place right and the balance is already tricky enough it is tricky enough balancing parental rights you

Carter 32:43

you know real parental rights which is to hold your children to keep your children in your household that is your parental right with

Carter 32:51

with the right of the child we do do that all the time we remove children all the time from situations that are dangerous it

Carter 32:58

is not your right to keep your child under every circumstance if you put that child in danger the state steps in and removes that child that is not so we already have limit on parental rights and if these children don't feel comfortable talking to you it's because they feel like that second right is going to is going to trump them and keep them in a dangerous situation now you may be saying we have no evidence that this is actually the case but we do we

Carter 33:24

have tremendous evidence that the the that

Carter 33:32

when their when their parents find out that they're lgbtq kick

Carter 33:37

kick them the fuck out of their house they

Carter 33:39

they exercise the right to kick the children out of their house or force them to leave through other means the largest percentage of our homeless youth identifies LGBTQ, right?

Carter 33:49

right? We can't continue to allow this to happen. And Scott Moe is saying, you know what we're going to do? We're going to force these children to live with these parents or we're going to allow these parents to kick them out onto the street and create a bigger homeless problem. Scott Moe is playing with a notwithstanding cause in order to put people's lives at risk because he doesn't know what the difference is between a responsibility and a right. And

Carter 34:09

And it's happening with Blaine Higgs. It's going to happen. And here's the prediction, kids. If Danielle Smith wants to stay premier of the province of alberta when

Carter 34:18

when david parker takes over her little board she's going to be bringing one of these things in the winter too so

Carter 34:24

so you just wait because it's coming here it's it's going across the country and as a perversion of parental rights

Zain 34:35

cory i want to get to you can you give me one sec to follow up with carter i have to follow up on that last point carter i'm

Zain 34:41

i'm going to try to say this in the way that let

Zain 34:43

let me just say it Are you surprised it isn't here yet already, knowing

Zain 34:47

knowing Alberta's reputation, knowing that in many cases this could be the hotbed of where something like this started or could have started? Are you surprised it's not here already? No, because

Carter 34:58

because we were podcasting during the Bill 10—was it Bill 10, Bill 11, Bill 9, whatever the debacle was— It was Bill 10, yeah.

Carter 35:06

—when Jim Prentiss tried to curtail GSAs. That

Zain 35:09

That was Bill 10. And

Carter 35:10

And all of a sudden everybody rose up and said, this is not going to happen in our province because it turns out our province isn't the redneck conservative that people think we are. We have tremendous tolerance for others. We allow others to be who they are. And you know what the amazing thing is? Danielle Smith is that person too. Danielle Smith doesn't have a bigoted bone in her body, but she will be forced to bring this if she's going to be able to remain premier. And that's one of the unbelievable things that's going to happen here in the province of Alberta. This is a contagion. And this is an illness that's been brought by conservatives thinking in some fashion, they need to bring

Carter 35:50

bring this forward to protect children when really all they're doing is putting children at risk.

Zain 35:57

Corey, this is a tough topic to talk about, and I think all three of us are on the same page as it relates to the analysis, and I really appreciated the analysis both of you have put on the table about this situation and the hopes that we have for how it evolves. That being said, as we dissect the strategy, it seems like this is one of those rare social conservative, if I can put that in quotes, policies that seems to have more public backing based on the current frame that is being applied across the country. Talk to me about how you ingest that and answer my second question of whether this is a good strategy for someone like Scott Moe, or even, let me extend it, someone like Blaine Higgs who might run an election or at least kick off an election on the back of this.

Corey 36:42

well i'm not really sure why scott moe is in such a burn-on to do this politically right yeah to me i don't i don't actually see the great catalyst or the great impetus and it seems to me if i if i were scott moe and i i had the world views of scott moe i would and but like the political instincts of of somebody i would probably say let's see how this works out for higgs first before i go all in on a strategy like this like what

Corey 37:10

why am i doing this now what what is the point of that and maybe there's something going on in saskatchewan politics i'm just not tracking close enough that would explain that or answer that question for me but it does seem like you could just wait probably six weeks and have an answer to that question and understand whether that popularity has any kind of durability at all um it it really does seem like distraction politics. It seems like the kind of thing that is so deeply consequential to the affected kids, but so not consequential to everybody else who should just butt out or not worry about it so much. And I mean, I loved your analysis, Carter, between like rights and responsibilities,

Corey 37:51

because I think that that's the kind of nuance that exists in reality, right? There's rights and responsibilities and other people's rights and responsibilities, and none of them are absolute. And, you

Corey 38:00

you know, the right that our children have to exist and be who they are does sometimes get into conflict with societal rights, parental rights, all sorts of rights. And tough calls got to be made and judgment needs to be applied. And when the government comes in with like blunt, stupid instrument, like the notwithstanding clause and says, screw all that, here's a universal rule for this particular situation, it makes me want to lose my mind. This is government at its worst. This is taking a nuclear weapon to get rid of an ant infestation in your backyard. And I'm sorry, I don't mean to use that language to kind of diminish it or demean the issue. It's a very important issue. I sort of mean in terms of government's policy responses here. Like

Corey 38:41

something, you can go in and sort of address like specific challenges and concerns you have, or you can just level the whole fucking city. And they seem to be going with level the whole fucking city. It's crazy. Carter,

Zain 38:51

Carter, talk to me about this. This overcompensation, this sort of disproportionate response, this level of moving so quickly, calling the legislature back October 10. To Corey's point, you've got to wait six weeks to see how Higgs responds. Why the urge, the desire to be a leader on this particular file, on something so divisive? What do you kind of see? Like, do you see – this is where I kind of like, do you see the dotted lines to the political strategy here and the upside here? Talk to me about this. I mean,

Carter 39:21

mean, traditionally, there has been fantastic upside for attacking a small group. There is upside for going after a small group and taking them

Carter 39:33

them down. It's just really, really unbelievable that the small group that Scott Moe is trying to go after. And let's be clear, it's a small group, right? Like it is a very tiny group. It is a very tiny group of very

Carter 39:48

very young people who have no power in this situation, who are being targeted. And it appears, you

Carter 39:59

know, without really putting it to a test, it appears that it's

Carter 40:04

it's an easy group to attack, right? Right. Like that parents will buy into this idea that if you say the words parents' rights, then, you know, parents will go, yeah, fuck, that's right. I do have the right to know what my children are doing. They believe that. I mean, parent activism in schools has never been at a higher level. But, you know, just because you say that doesn't make it so. And attacking a group like this, you know, if the population and this is what happens with Bill 10. Right. If the population suddenly comes to see what is happening, the rallying power of it, the rallying attack could be devastating for a political party for quite some time. It sticks to you. And so I would expect that if if Mo starts to get pushback, that pushback could last for a very long time and be very, very challenging for him in the future, which is good because that's what happened to Jim Prentice. And that stink didn't come off.

Zain 41:09

I actually want to talk about that last point, Carter, around the lingering of a political move in a second as we move to Manitoba. But Corey, let's finish off this segment about Saskatchewan, the notwithstanding clause on this. It seems like the argument that Carter's mentioned around parental rights, even as a buzzword, seems to be gaining more momentum than the other side of the frame. frame, the vulnerability of these kids, the fact that this is not necessarily about how you would parent, but about other situations that you are necessarily not privy to, but hopefully you can have empathy for, that side of the argument seems to be losing, at least from public opinion polling, at least from sentimentality. What needs to be done to shift the frame? What would you start suggesting needs to be done to make this argument perhaps more representative of where the population should be versus where they are with the parental rights frame that's being applied to it across the country.

Corey 42:08

I don't know if there's an easy answer to that, Zane. As you asked the question, I think about all of the tactics I would normally suggest when a minority group is being attacked, including

Corey 42:20

introducing people to the stories of these individuals, having these individuals be spokespeople. But we are talking about children here, and a lot of those tactics aren't there, Which is part of why, in my opinion, this is so gross. Because the group is not in a position to stand up for itself. We are talking about children again here. And we are talking about the premier of Saskatchewan, the most powerful person in Saskatchewan, deciding to take this just like absolute heavy handed approach to it. And it's totally wild to me. so if anything's going to change if any frame is going to be redone it's going to require i think taking it and just shifting it as little as possible to make as complete as possible an argument here right so maybe it's not so much yeah we are all for parental rights and i have the right as a parent to know that the school is looking after my kids interests first and not the interests of the premier of saskatchewan and that's what i would expect of them in any situation situation maybe it's as simple as that maybe it's more complicated than that i suspect it's more complicated than that but i think at this point it's not to just try to counter it with the the exact opposite that's playing into the parents right

Corey 43:31

it's basically saying no there's a limit to parents rights you don't have those parents rights it's a little closer what steven was saying which is sort of getting to the point of complexity maybe not as

Corey 43:43

as a communication strategy say no you actually have responsibilities and as the state i might come I mean, if I think you're not doing good enough, right? But more to say, yeah, we do have rights. And one of those rights is to keep a heavy handed government out of making absolute decisions about the education of children more generally.

Zain 44:01

Carter, any final thoughts on this on reframing for this campaign, but I guess for the other side of this argument against the parental rights frame that seems to be winning out? Yeah.

Carter 44:14

Yeah. I mean, I think that this requires really significant grassroots engagement. You know, Mike Morrison, Richard Anderson did a great job when Prentice tried to do stuff like this in our schools. They did a Save Our Schools campaign. There are people out there that have these skills, that have the capacity to do this. And you

Carter 44:39

you know what? They shouldn't have to again. end. They should not have to dig deep and go through all the trauma and the horrors that kind of come along with this. But Scott Moe and Blaine Higgs and ultimately Danielle Smith are going to demand that they step up to the fucking plate one more fucking time. And grassroots advocates, grassroots people just need to make shit happen because we can't have this. We cannot have more more children put at risk and and that's that's

Carter 45:09

that's where we are that's absolutely where we are we're going to put more kids into homelessness more kids will die on our streets and uh all in the name of a right that just really doesn't exist packing

Zain 45:22

packing our bags going to manitoba carter elections on tuesday yeah public polls say that wab canoe and the ndp are poised to win government although we we hear it's quite tight um which means that the incumbent manitoba pcs are

Zain 45:38

are behind and carter they seem to have pulled out quite the ad campaign i want to discuss one of them and then the other one next one of them's hilarious and one of them's not so hilarious let's

Zain 45:48

let's start with the not so hilarious one carter and and by not so hilarious i mean really a a a something i have not seen so the leader of the manitoba pcs heather steffensen she's launched a new campaign it started last week We see it as an ad campaign on both digital and a full-page ad in the Winnipeg Free Press. It's a full-page ad that says, Stand firm. For health and safety reasons, the answer on the landfill dig just has to be no. And this is on the heels of her continual opposition to searching a landfill for the remains of two Indigenous women believed to have been murdered by an alleged serial killer in that landfill. is where their remains are suspected to be. The Manitoba PCs have said for a while, they've been mealy-mouthed about it and then firmly know about it, that this is not what we want to do. They faced protests in Winnipeg over the summer. But now, Carter, taking out an ad campaign, digital billboards that we have seen in Winnipeg, we see the full-page ad, we see digital ads about this particular thing. Carter, I'm going to go back to the same two questions. Do you see the strategy here, and is this a good strategy? Start us off with that, and then I've got a third question on this particular one that I want to ask.

Carter 47:09

ask. Yeah, so the strategy seems to be reliant upon the idea that

Carter 47:14

that there are voters out there for whom the primary question of this election is, who's going to stand against the digging up of this garbage dump to try and find the human remains of two or more people? that

Carter 47:28

that that's the strategy right the strategic implication of doing this is saying if we dig you know i am going to vote for the party that says no right

Carter 47:37

right that there are no other issues there are no other voting questions and i think that that's ultimately the problem where the reason i can't see this strategy right this is um you know the adage if you're explaining you're losing um they're explaining and they're losing and you know i don't i'm i'm not commenting really on the on the idea of it what i'm saying is there's no voters out there making this decision like there are no voters out there saying the group of people that decide not to do this is the group of people that i'm going to vote for it's just it's an illogical assumption in a bad strategic play um you know and then we get into the actual heart of the matter which is the the politics and the and the the

Carter 48:22

issue itself and and i'm just going to avoid that for now because i think that the strategy is just so stupid on its face that you

Carter 48:29

you know it's it's i don't

Carter 48:32

don't want to i don't want to kind of dig into the actual issue because the the politics of it are just so bad on its face that that, you know, it's just impossible to imagine this making sense on any given level.

Zain 48:47

Corey, you know, Federal Crown Indigenous Minister has called it heartless. The NDP have said it's a serious mistake. Amnesty International said it's indefensible. Grand Chief, AMC Grand Chief has said it's showing a disregard for respecting human rights and protecting reconciliation, promoting reconciliation, sorry.

Zain 49:06

That all being said, do you see the strategy here?

Corey 49:10

I mean, I guess. Here's the thing I will say, maybe as a preamble to all of this. Like, this to me is a great example of how even

Corey 49:18

even just two provinces over, like, politics is so local. Like, the beats are different, the subtext is different. And I think it's pretty easy from the outside to look at this and say, well,

Corey 49:30

well, this is insane, right? And listen, it's pretty- someone would wage

Corey 49:34

wage an ad campaign would wage a campaign in this way and and look i think a lot of people inside the province of manitoba are saying the exact same thing right because it just seems weird like this is this is what you're going to do you're running your campaign you're kind of presenting almost as like your ballot question it feels like and i don't know if i would go that far but let's just say for fun well

Corey 49:53

time why are you making this a why are you making this your closing argument is an interesting question right but you

Corey 50:00

unpack this a little And you'd

Corey 50:04

you'd mentioned before that the PCs were a little mealy mouth before, and now they're kind of hard out against it.

Corey 50:09

mealy mouth makes sense to me, because generally, I would imagine a government being in a situation where there is a moral call to do something that is morally right, and the government saying, fuck,

Corey 50:20

fuck, but that's actually really expensive and really complicated. complicated and usually that's the part that the politician doesn't want to say out loud but they

Corey 50:27

are now deciding that they are going to say this out loud and so let's let's talk this through a tiny tiny bit here right please let's say there's two sides to this argument right one is there is a group of people who are saying this is a lot of expense and effort like landfills are landfills are really big right like they're fucking huge and every day they deal with a lot of garbage they're full of garbage and uh very hazardous and there are no guarantees you're going to find what you're looking for and it could be a lot of expense it could be a lot of effort you know and the price tag of 184 million dollars is is the high-end version i think there's one that's kind of like 60 million i might be off by 10 million or so and you know again take one to three years i suspect the serial killer trial will be over by then it's not over yet i think that the next court dates in november but you know three years is a long way away so a lot of people are saying, you know, this is not likely to materially change the outcome of that particular case or anything like that. There's another group of people, and I would generally count myself in it, that says, like, you know, that's not the point. Or maybe even that is the point. Like, it's a lot of expense and effort, but we will go through hell and back for justice. You know, evidence that can strengthen the case, whatever. Justice includes closure. It includes undoing as much of the the indignity of the murders this can be undone and the government's going to say we

Corey 51:47

we are going to move heaven and earth to make sure that this kind of overarching sense of justice gets felt and found and the

Carter 51:53

the idea that you're like oh

Corey 51:54

oh man but it's going to be tough to you know go

Corey 51:57

go through the landfill is just it's not very compelling right so the

Corey 52:03

price of recovering two bodies versus like the price of the system and knowing that the system will fight like hell for you maybe that's an uncharitable way to the other side but that's that's kind of what it's coming down to. And I don't know. I mean, it's interesting to me because we rarely have that conversation out in the open. And I think it's been a long time since we've sort of tested that particular conversation. Obviously, the Manitoba PCs have some reason to believe that it's going to resonate with the people that they needed to resonate with to win this election. But I don't know. I mean, it

Corey 52:36

it does seem to go against kind of the built-in morality of people and the moral injustices that that we tend to bring as just a citizenry more generally. Like we like to believe that

Corey 52:48

never stop a police chase because the cost of the fuel was too high. And we like to believe that we wouldn't stop a

Corey 52:53

a grand theft auto investigation because the

Corey 52:56

the investigation costs more than the car. We like to believe that, but reality is sometimes depressingly different. I just, there's a reason why public bodies tend to ignore or avoid or push off to the side of those conversations. Super fascinating it's being brought open to the open. And I'm going to try to leave that moral outrage out of it and just sort of analyze it and say, it's

Corey 53:17

it's an interesting one. I don't know if we've seen a pitch like this anytime soon. And there are a

Corey 53:22

lot of racial undertones and there's a lot into it that feels pretty gross. But I've

Corey 53:27

I've not seen the idea of like, it's

Corey 53:31

it's not worth the cost of justice before as an argument out there in an election. I

Zain 53:37

would be remiss on the racial undertones to not mention that that has been a big part of the Manitoba PC's sort of case against Wab Kanu, too, right? Like, as an indigenous... Well, a lot of the ads are pretty

Zain 53:51

rough. They have gone very, very, not dark, but they've gone very aggressive. I think that's a fair word to use.

Corey 54:02

yeah and so look i think that there's another subtext i'll throw on the table here which is

Corey 54:07

i gave kind of a charitable read as as to this here but i think that another part of this is

Corey 54:14

there are a lot of people who see the searching of the landfill as as somewhat performative and not worth the cost that i talked about right and i think a bit of the subtext is you can expect more of this from wap canoe you can expect performative forever you will be digging up up landfills forever you will be doing anything like this spending any hundreds of millions of dollars to do it that's that's a good point and that's that's a bit of the subtext that we

Zain 54:37

have seen that version of the subtext specifically around residential school survival residential school sorry um sites right where where children make it necessarily um and survivors advocating um that you know i went to school here there's a site here we found something and politicians not having the reaction that they did a mere 16 18 months ago which was let's do it no matter what the cost um so fair points but cory carter i have a different question for you okay

Zain 55:07

best way i guess to introduce this is if

Zain 55:09

if the pcs lose could

Zain 55:12

could this be something that has a longer term lingering effect this is almost taking words out of your mouths from the from the previous segment right maybe akin to a barbaric cultural practices where if you're a a political observer, you know, you could go be like 2015 Harper campaign, like you could pretty easily do that. Do you feel like stand firm, the landfill dig, if the PCs lose here, this could have significantly longer term effects for a party here? Or do you feel like we are in a very different sort of cultural political space, that you do whatever it is to get elected, if you win, all is forgotten. If you're lost, there's no lingering side effects. You just come back four four years later, as a new thing. Talk to me about that. And I'm not saying this is a perfect comparison, because we don't even, we're not even at Tuesday yet. We don't even know the outcome. We don't even, to Corey's point, we're not even on the ground. So I'm now kind of trying to take this and maybe use it as an example to talk about this broader concept of lingering effects. Give me your thoughts on that first, Carter, and then you, Corey.

Carter 56:11

what we want is we want there to be a cost to a political party for taking an action that is not overly popular, right? We want there to be a situation like with Jim Prentiss when he lost in 2015, when the stink of the Bill 10 debacle kind of hangs in the air around the party for a long time.

Carter 56:33

Except it doesn't often work that way. Jim Prentiss is kind of the exception, not the rule. You know, instead what we see is politicians say what they say, and sometimes

Carter 56:44

sometimes what they say and sometimes what they do is deeply offensive. offensive and it

Carter 56:50

still works right or or if it doesn't work um we don't have the memory for it and part of the reason is most

Carter 56:58

most of the time when we make these these aren't these aren't slips these are ideas that fit into our

Carter 57:05

our overall zeitgeist this is who we are as a as a people we are of course deeply flawed as individuals we're deeply flawed as a society we have have inherent racism that has existed from the beginning of time and shall exist, sadly, until the end of time, one suspects, given our kind of natural tendencies towards in-group and out-group behaviors.

Carter 57:31

This racism, when we play to the worst of ourselves, when we play to the worst of our society all

Carter 57:40

all too often that worst in society is just it's if we're not rewarded necessarily we certainly aren't punished and i suspect uh

Carter 57:50

much in the same way that you know the conservatives you know the conservatives haven't been losing since uh 2015 or whatever the year was that harper did it uh um because of the cultural barbarics you know barbaric practices hotline they've been losing because of a system you know a series of reasons um and

Carter 58:13

and now it would appear with through pierre paliev that even some of the things that that we may have thought were indefensible before he's coming back and rephrasing them at a different time and all of a sudden they become more palatable so no i don't think that the stink stays i think the stink sadly is removed because we as imperfect people um Um, you

Carter 58:35

you know, we were, we reflect this sometimes we are more racist than we should be. We are more bigoted than we should be. And we have a memory of a gnat.

Zain 58:47

Well, yeah, I bring up barbaric cultural practices because it was what, 2021 that, that Tim Uppel and others apologized on the conservative benches for their role in those policies and that campaign sort of promise that, that, you know, that lingering effect, that sort sort of cultural, sort of like, I know what that word or that phrase means, lingered with the conservatives. Now, to Carter's point, did it have a political effect? Maybe, maybe not. But I'm curious, from your perspective, not to predict if we're headed there with that, because that could be a discussion after Tuesday, perhaps, but your thoughts on the world we live in, whether that exists anymore, that a loss on terms that you're like, that was beyond the pale, and you're now going to pay a political cost for that even after an election is over. What

Zain 59:32

What do you think?

Corey 59:33

Well, I just generally don't believe that these things stick to parties all that much. Individual actors within parties sometimes have to wear it for a little bit longer. But one of the virtues and vices of our system is we get to put out the garbage with the past leader and everybody can blame Stephenson for everything that happened here if she loses. We don't know. I mean, the polls do show the NDP in the lead, but not by a massive

Corey 59:59

massive amount. It's certainly possible we wake up Wednesday to a PC government again, right?

Corey 1:00:06

Look, when you lose, there will always be a group that says we lost because of X, and there will always be a group that says we lost because we didn't go far enough with X. and so i have no doubt that a lot of people will say that this was a this was a gross campaign what was she doing this was a mistake and i suspect that will be the majority of the pcs if she loses if she wins everybody's gonna be like masterfully played well done you know and just watch everybody run back there

Corey 1:00:38

there will however be

Corey 1:00:40

be a group of people who say otherwise uh you know and say the problem Problem was, didn't

Corey 1:00:46

didn't go far enough, wasn't overt enough with it, didn't actually say what she meant, was talking in code, should have said it more, right? And so I guess we'll have to wait and see just how screwed we are. By the way, super offlifting episode so far. Yeah, it's been really good. I think I've

Zain 1:00:59

I've nailed it. Yeah. And

Zain 1:01:00

And now we've got a flight cancellation to Ottawa, so we can't even get to the good stuff, Carl. So that's, I mean, this is what happens when we travel with our sponsor. Yeah, exactly.

Carter 1:01:08

That's why I was going to book the venue too. Fuck. they're

Zain 1:01:10

they're very good at the uh at the prairie tour yeah they let us down at certain points yeah

Corey 1:01:17

anyhow i think um i think that that risk is often overblown um and we just don't live in a world of such severe consequence let's put it this way daniel smith's not owning the stuff that daniel smith did before the election let alone the stuff that jason kenney

Corey 1:01:30

kenney did i remember

Zain 1:01:31

remember you guys telling me that right i came off the heels of that election and i was like okay yeah but now how how do we hold her accountable for all the crazy poppy Nazi stuff? And today people are like, give me the reference point. What the fuck are you talking about? That was like, I don't even remember, right? It's over. She won. It's done. Like done with, right? Like you're not going to be able to wage that attack again. And if you do, it's just wasted energy. And to be clear then, Carter, to round out this point by Corey, if she wins on Tuesday, does

Zain 1:02:00

does she pay any price for this? Like I know the answer, but I just want you to say it to me and tell

Carter 1:02:04

tell me. I have to be the one to say it. Explain it, right? Why don't we make Corey say it? Yeah, say it. Corey has to say it. Say it. Does she pay any price for this? No, she doesn't. Because winning absolves one of all sins. And that is the nature of our system right now. You know, you say

Carter 1:02:18

say what you need to say to win. It doesn't need to be true. It doesn't need to be something you follow. I mean, geez, you know, Danielle Smith told us that the pension issue wasn't going to come back up. Oh, just kidding. um you know like you

Carter 1:02:31

you when you win uh

Carter 1:02:32

in our system right now you get a carte blanche opportunity to rewrite history and we

Carter 1:02:39

we don't hold anybody to account so it we don't hold them to what they campaigned on we don't hold them to you know what they said what they meant what they you don't know that happens so if she wins you

Carter 1:02:52

you know maybe she takes it as a mandate maybe she She doesn't, you know, but for the most part, this is, you know, if she wins, the PCs get to rewrite

Carter 1:03:03

rewrite their story any way that they want.

Zain 1:03:07

We're going to have to leave that there, Carter. You know, I did say that we have a flight delay, so we're not going to be able to make it. Sorry, flight cancellation. Yeah. They don't delay. I mean, every delay is a cancellation for airlines. Carter,

Zain 1:03:19

it is an eventual cancellation. I don't know any delay that they've, people can prove me wrong. wrong but carter we're not going to make it to ottawa and we're not going to make it to washington dc unless folks want to go to the patreon because carter we have found we have found a high quality reliable airline to take us to the patreon to take us to washington to take us to ottawa uh that will be of course exclusively on the patreon i feel like a i feel like a salesman am i

Zain 1:03:44

i doing a good job selling this yeah

Zain 1:03:47

feel like yeah i feel like people people can know when it's not my idea and

Zain 1:03:50

and this is this is not my idea but we have a lot to discuss in ottawa justin trudeau the the fallout from the the nazi comment uh from the from the nazi uh sort of whatever you want to call

Zain 1:04:04

the apology the speaker strategy and i want to go down south to washington dc to talk about what just happened with the uh avoiding of the government shutdown and the fallout on kevin mccarthy and the democratic strategy what the dems need to do in the house there there's some some interesting politics that might be at play in the next 48 hours, one might say. Yeah,

Corey 1:04:22

Yeah, we might be proven.

Corey 1:04:24

might make some bad

Zain 1:04:24

bad predictions tonight. No, that's

Zain 1:04:26

going to be exciting. That is all going to be on the Patreon strategy, patreon.com, but let's move it on to the over, under, and the lightning round. Stephen Carter, we

Zain 1:04:35

we do this for you. Oh, we do? Okay. Yeah, even when we're staying up late and we're finding alternative travel arrangements, we do this for you. Carter, your one

Zain 1:04:44

one-line strategy for the NDP heading into election day on tuesday record on sunday there's not much you can do your one line your one word your one headline strategy for the ndp in manitoba heading into tuesday get

Carter 1:04:56

get out the vote um work work work this is this is the base uh baseline of what politics is all about is getting the people who said that they're going to vote for you out to vote for you uh make sure that everybody understands that there is a um there

Carter 1:05:13

there is a chance that you could lose if they don't participate.

Zain 1:05:18

Corey, your one-line strategy for the Manitoba NDP heading into Tuesday's election? There's

Corey 1:05:23

There's no better advice at this time of election than what Carter's already given, so

Corey 1:05:27

I'm just going to say it better.

Corey 1:05:30

say it better. Not better.

Corey 1:05:32

I said it shorter. I think you said it identical. I think you said it identical. I think it was identical, personally. His infliction was different. It

Zain 1:05:39

It was different, and it cost him. Corey, I'm going to stick with you on this. $10 million, tell the feds, what would you structure as a campaign it's

Zain 1:05:49

it's not an over under lightning round question but we i didn't actually get to ask you guys this right what would the alternative be if you had this seven and a half to ten million dollars spend give me the framework of a campaign of

Corey 1:06:00

of what you would think

Corey 1:06:00

okay well so is my goal to actually make the feds change their mind or is the goal a domestic political bump i'm

Zain 1:06:07

i'm gonna i'm gonna actually let you choose the goal but i if i were were to choose it would be the latter okay

Corey 1:06:12

okay well because i think we all believe it is the

Corey 1:06:15

latter yeah i think

Zain 1:06:16

all believe it's cased in the the fed thing but we think we think all i think it's the latter so

Corey 1:06:20

so i actually don't know that they're too far off of what's probably optimal for this you got a 10 let's say it's a 10 million dollar spend i would make most of it in the province of alberta uh some of that would be geographically targeted some of that would be demographically targeted to to groups that we just know happen to be much more proportional in alberta but it would have the upshot of about 80% of the spend being in the province of Alberta. And then I would have some showy PR pieces in downtown Ottawa, downtown Toronto, downtown Vancouver, so people felt the nationalness of it, so that we could then internally talk about how we have a national campaign. I would have a couple of pieces in French coming out as sort of a sustaining PR strategy in the next week or two. So all of a sudden in downtown Montreal, we're talking a bit about this now obviously the challenge there is they don't really use gas at all right uh so you're going to need to kind of create the the local quebec flavor but this is your chance also to just change the creative a little bit and say like this you know ottawa wants to come into our backyards and tell us how to run a provincial industry tell the feds you don't think ottawa should come into the backyards of provinces and run a provincial industry and run something like that that also puts ottawa on blast a little bit that you are um you are willing to expand and extend this campaign in interesting ways and uh and then yeah then just focus that money in alberta making sure everybody in alberta knows you are trying to uh you know wreck justin trudeau like a cheap pinata carter

Zain 1:07:50

carter 10 million bucks let's say the goal is the one that we've just talked about uh boost your your cred in alberta what do you do differently what do you do the same as as to what cory's but i

Carter 1:08:00

i would just simply not do the tell the feds part i would just do a straight cost of living this is going to cost more we can't afford it and uh ignore the whole advocacy piece just do a straight ignore the

Corey 1:08:14

the whole send a letter i think that's a mistake i think part of how you sell the cost to albertans is the advocate that's the call to action that's

Carter 1:08:21

that's the reason you're sold i think that they believe that this needs to happen anyway so you just go out and you just do it and you don't give you don't give your other side any opportunity to see that it's negative

Zain 1:08:33

what's your call to action then i don't

Carter 1:08:34

don't have a call to action you

Zain 1:08:36

just do a straight brand brand

Carter 1:08:38

awareness we're getting targeted you're getting screwed and justin trudeau is costing you more money

Corey 1:08:44

you gotta have i this

Corey 1:08:46

this will not be a lightning round if we go down this road any any further interesting

Corey 1:08:49

interesting thoughts carter better

Carter 1:08:51

better thoughts than yours i think is when you say interesting like that you seem

Zain 1:08:55

seem to you guys why do you think i have to stick to format why does it need a call to action cory like you what you you literally were in charge of green lighting these campaigns if carter came to you with that pitch what would your retort be if he was a junior which you would be uh in your office uh

Corey 1:09:10

uh if he came to you with that players down i'd be like who are you who do you nice uh

Corey 1:09:16

would say this is public money and you don't get to do that but that's maybe more of a moral what's the purpose of the ad what's the purpose run that ad give me i would ask the person who pitched this to me to say okay give me oh he's right here give me the 30 seconds here's the 30 second

Corey 1:09:31

pitch the full 30 second script all

Carter 1:09:33

all of canada believes that that uh cost of living is too high they

Carter 1:09:37

they just need to understand that the cost of energy is too high and the reason that the cost of energy is too high is Justin Trudeau. That's all I need. I need them to know where to point the finger.

Corey 1:09:46

That's not a script. I don't need a script. What's the script? The script... My point I'm making, Carter, is the script does not work without a call to

Carter 1:09:53

to action. You don't need a call to action.

Carter 1:09:56

a call to action. You

Zain 1:09:56

You could... What if it... Let me be on Carter's team for a second. What if it just said, visit, like... To learn more? Trudeausfuckingyou.ca to learn more or whatever.

Corey 1:10:06

That's fine, but then what's on Trudeausfuckingyou.ca? the gas is too high it's

Corey 1:10:11

it's just the cost of electricity is too high just

Corey 1:10:13

the ad the ad is just a fucking then

Corey 1:10:16

ad on the website tells

Corey 1:10:17

tells you to visit the

Corey 1:10:18

website are we gonna have to buy this domain now that's

Corey 1:10:20

that's uh trudeau's fucking dude no okay are you sure it's

Carter 1:10:23

it's not taken oh no i don't

Corey 1:10:29

don't think it works i think you i think you're gonna run into creative problems i think you're

Corey 1:10:32

run into justification problems you're gonna be creating a broadside that's absolutely unnecessary because all you needed to do was spend two minutes to think of a problem

Carter 1:10:40

problem is that now you're going to be reinforcing just how fucking weak you are you're going to be showing everybody how weak you are congratulations

Carter 1:10:50

is the problem the problem is that no one's going to go to this fucking site and fill in the no no

Carter 1:10:55

no you know what

Corey 1:10:56

what that's showing the feds how weak you are no

Carter 1:10:58

no one's going to do the feds

Corey 1:10:59

feds might already know that and if you're actually not trying to change the policy that's irrelevant you're talking about domestic politics

Corey 1:11:05

lost focus on the goals, Mr.

Carter 1:11:07

Oh, my God. Who

Corey 1:11:07

Who did you say you reported to at CPE?

Carter 1:11:10

If I ever worked for CPE, I would just be so devastated that my career had taken such a dive.

Zain 1:11:17

That's good. That's going to be playing in the halls of CPE tomorrow. That's good. Just to make it the mandatory government ringtone. Hey, Corey, I'm going to start the last one with you.

Zain 1:11:26

Carter predicted this. I know his take. I want to get your take.

Zain 1:11:30

the the gender pronoun policy that we are seeing play out in new brunswick that we've seen flirtations within ontario that is clearly uh trying to be fast-tracked in saskatchewan will

Zain 1:11:44

will we see it here in alberta yes or no i

Corey 1:11:46

i mean you will see people try to push for it i don't actually believe you'll see it no i just don't believe it's our particular brand of conservatism there have been times we've flirted with this social conservatism in recent history obviously Obviously, you know, same-sex marriage comes to mind in the early 2000s. But Alberta is not what you think it is. I guarantee you, if you're outside of the province of Alberta, this is an idiosyncratic place. This is like one of the largest collections of atheists in the country, as well as one of the largest collections of fundamentalists. And, you know, the balance of power does not live with social conservatism here.

Corey 1:12:23

It rests with different

Corey 1:12:25

different type of conservatism. Write

Carter 1:12:26

Write it down. It's going to happen. Write it down.

Carter 1:12:30

This is better than my Jeb Bush prediction right here.

Carter 1:12:34

Write the fucking thing down. There is a follow-up conversation

Zain 1:12:35

conversation on this that I want to pick up, Carter. We're going to do it because we've got a long via rail to Ottawa. So that's the alternative that I found. We're going to pick that up on the Patreon, strategistpatreon.com. But for now, we'll leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1256 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we'll see you next time.

Corey 1:13:02

Hey, do you think on the non-paid version of this episode, it started with an ad from the provincial government?

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