Episode 1264: The whole board

Zain 0:01

This is a strategist episode 1264. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, Corey, Wendy.

Zain 0:08

Wendy. Yeah, he's real. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah, it's real. Carter, this won't be real for you.

Carter 0:16

Because I think it's a flash in the pan. I mean, we have so much more of the season to go. And until we see, you know, a full season, I mean, how many of these guys start off hot? basketball season

Corey 0:25

season how long is a basketball season in games feels

Carter 0:27

feels like it's forever i believe it's 82 games there

Zain 0:32

78 is the correct answer for this season carter but i got hockey he was in there was hockey he was in there he was in there it was okay one fact uh what's going on carter we missed you uh we were doing a show with ryan jesperson yeah you were not around and it went really well yeah

Carter 0:47

no i i understand that i um i did a show i don't know if you know this but But Corey and I did a show on Friday night. I don't know

Zain 0:55

know this and most people don't know. That's

Carter 0:56

That's true. We did a show on Friday night. Do

Carter 0:58

Do you want to tease

Zain 0:58

tease this Patreon show that you guys did? We

Carter 1:00

We did a Patreon episode. This is drunk, drunk Carter

Zain 1:02

Carter and Corey. It was

Carter 1:03

was incredibly successful. Yeah, it was. Based

Corey 1:07

You know what? We run on vibe check. We decide whether we're going to proceed with something. Oh, so you and Nate Horner. Yeah, based on a series of, you know, indeterminate

Corey 1:15

indeterminate factors that are out there. That's how we decide whether we're going to proceed. Do you want to contextualize that at all,

Zain 1:20

all, Corey? No, absolutely

Zain 1:21

not. on no okay

Zain 1:23

this yeah that's would be on brand uh for the

Carter 1:25

the show contextualize we don't do people have to figure it out on their own that's why the discord's for that's

Zain 1:30

that's right uh carter any any other opening comments before uh we get going we got a lot to talk about well

Carter 1:36

well i mean i'm just really pleased to have you back zane um thank

Zain 1:40

thank you carter it's

Carter 1:42

it's nice to have someone to direct the show oh

Zain 1:44

oh well i haven't listened to the last show and i think oh cory please go ahead yeah on cue thank you cory i appreciate that we will

Zain 1:52

this show with our first segment our first segment this is a goodie you guys like this one why the fuck do we still do this uh this segment of course we've we've explored a few times

Zain 2:03

we talk we we go deep for

Corey 2:04

for a few minutes

Zain 2:06

yeah we have sometimes i mean that's that could

Corey 2:08

could be that that could be the subheading

Zain 2:09

subheading of this podcast

Zain 2:10

podcast we We have sometimes and

Zain 2:12

and inconsistently. Carter, in

Zain 2:15

in this segment, I ask the two of you to justify, to defend, to tell me why we still do a political thing. It could be a tactic.

Carter 2:23

tactic. Oh, I thought you were talking about the podcast. No, well, this podcast,

Zain 2:26

podcast, political podcast is not what we're defending today. Carter, here's what I want to talk about. Over this weekend, I heard the rural development minister, I think that's her title, federal one, on Vashie Capella's show on Question Period. And she said something that I've heard politicians say forever, which is we're not paying attention to the polls. We don't look at the polls. Carter,

Zain 2:45

I want to talk about why the fuck do

Zain 2:48

do we still have in a 2023 era where politicians say, I want to be data driven in how I make my decisions. Why do politicians still refuse to acknowledge that they look at polling? Carter, the question is, why the fuck do we still do this? Is this defensible in your mind? well

Carter 3:06

well i mean there's only one reason to do this and that is the polls are bad that you would never do this i don't want to talk about the issue i'm

Zain 3:12

i'm talking about no i'm talking about the issue of politicians refusing to acknowledge the polls regardless of issue yeah but

Carter 3:18

but you do that because there's only one reason to do it zane you would only do it if you were sucking in the polls if you're doing well in the polls you use the polls all the time you say well the polls show that we're doing a very good job and everybody loves us that's the you So when you ask, why do we do this? That's why we do it. Otherwise, we live and die by polls. I mean, we do polls all the time. I mean, I've had polls out all over the place the last few weeks, really, and each one of those polls is telling me a story. Now, they're not the horse race polls that we see trumpeted in the media, but nonetheless, they're super important. The data-driven side, as you've mentioned, is

Carter 4:00

is super important. We need to know exactly what's happening. So what you're asking me is, why does someone say that they're not important? Well, there's only one reason. Only one reason. They're getting killed.

Zain 4:14

Coy, I'm not sure I agree with Carter. I want to push back a bit. There's been moments, I think, in Canadian political history where political parties are up in the polls, and it's not even about their polls overall. It could be polling on an issue. It could be a subject. They almost refuse to talk about it. It's like this no-go zone. We don't want to talk about the public opinion. something, whether it is us or an issue we are championing. Is this defensible, Corey? In your mind, Canadian politicians, at least, not wanting to acknowledge the fullness of polls? Well,

Corey 4:42

Well, politicians want to be known as principled, right? And it's tough to be known as principled when it looks like you're just a weather vane and you could be replaced and your entire caucus could be replaced by a good contract from Ipsos, maybe backed up with another contract from another other polls just to be safe

Corey 4:58

and so that's a bit of why they do it but you're you're right it's absurd that of course they look at polls they sweat polls perpetually if you are within a political caucus hearing about a poll will send people scurrying like rats to cheese like oh my god did you do here did you hear there's this new poll by insert group x did you see the poll did you see the new poll oh i heard about the new poll but i didn't see the new poll did you see the new poll what's in the new poll did you see the cross tabs of the new poll when our numbers

Zain 5:28

numbers are coming out do we have numbers do we

Corey 5:30

we have numbers yeah yeah yeah exactly and so on and so forth where are the cross tabs do you think we can get like in my writing what it means shit like that happens perpetually all the

Corey 5:40

the time all the time and as a result because of the kind of crack

Corey 5:46

crack cocaine nature of polls to politicians and the way that they are used to kind of um end

Corey 5:51

end debates rather than in you know inform views on debates and we've talked about this

Corey 5:57

leaders offices tend to really clamp down on who has access to the polls that government runs and

Corey 6:02

i guess this is the point i would want to make government polls so

Corey 6:06

so much like all the time like every week there's going to be something in the field in some way shape or form that's out there doing things particularly if you're a federal government so you know what this

Corey 6:17

this is for the reporters out there next time a politician says oh we don't look at the polls deadpan them look them straight in the eyes and say why

Corey 6:25

why do you do them then what are we paying for them for why

Corey 6:28

why are you wasting our taxpayers money if you don't even look at these things and get really outraged about it this

Zain 6:34

this is kind of where i was coming from right carter like obviously and i know you wanted to lean into the issue and we will we'll spend the rest of the episode you asked

Carter 6:42

asked me a question about why we do this or why cutting

Zain 6:46

cutting his own carbon tax we'll talk about that in a second at

Zain 6:49

least that's how i i want to phrase it but

Zain 6:51

but carter to to this point right we know the behavior of politicians in fact i'd argue that the elected uh principals often are the most obsessed with the polls right they want to understand where they're going if they match up if they line up uh where there's you know uh what the what the what the margin of error is all the things cory's kind of put on the table yet they also kind of say that they want to be data driven etc. To me, it would be refreshing, Carter, if a politician said, you know, fuck, you know, we looked at the polls and we said, this is kind of not going well for us. And we made a course correction. And I think it's going to hopefully help. And we'll see if it's it would be refreshing to me, Carter. But tell me this. Would it be strategic? This is the question I want to ultimately ask, right, is why the fuck do we still do this? It would be refreshing. It'd be a breath of fresh air. But would it be strategic for politicians to say, fuck, yeah, I read the polls. I try to take all information, and currently what we're seeing is X, and that's why we're doing Y. Wouldn't that just make, even on this issue, such a simpler explanation for the Trudeau government in so many ways? So talk to me about this. Is it strategic?

Carter 7:54

No, it's not. The reason is that there is a balance, and we've spoken about it on the podcast a million times. We've talked about the balance that needs to be struck between leading and reflecting. Understood. And if you admit to leading by poll, then you are abdicating your responsibility as a leader in general. But so many do, Carter. I'm not arguing that point. I'm not arguing that point. The point you asked me, why do they do it? Keep going.

Carter 8:25

Whether it be strategic

Zain 8:25

strategic is what I asked you. Yes. I

Carter 8:27

I mean, it is strategic. You are saying, I can't let the people know that I'm just running to the front of the parade. I mean, that's one of the old jokes about politics is, you know, a good politician runs to the front of the parade. They're not necessarily, you know, always figuring this out on their own. They figure it out when they see the people massing and going in one direction. And a good politician is a weathervane.

Carter 8:55

But you don't see a weathervane standing up there saying, I'm a weathervane, I'm a weathervane, right? Do you? I mean, maybe, I don't know. Maybe I'm not up to speed with weathervanes. Yeah,

Corey 9:03

Yeah, talk it all. But

Carter 9:04

But a good politician doesn't want to give over their leadership to

Carter 9:15

of the pollsters. They just don't want it.

Zain 9:18

Corey, Carter makes good arguments. I'd

Zain 9:20

I'd also say we've heard them all before. And if this segment is about stress testing what we do sometimes on autopilot, I want to challenge you to kind of see if there's any part of Carter's argument that doesn't hold water for you in a 2023 world. world and ask you the same question.

Zain 9:35

It would be refreshing to me, but would it be actually strategic to say, you know what, fuck yeah, we do read the polls. We read the polls all the time. We commissioned a bunch of polls. And they're, you know, one of the things that we take into account.

Corey 9:46

So maybe you've talked about the, oh, we don't look at the polls answer, but I want to throw on the table one of their other popular answers are, you know, there are lots of data sources. And I've seen other polls that have asked these questions in different ways, and they tell a bit of a different story it's a little more complex than that you know so there's

Corey 10:04

contextualizing it with other data

Corey 10:05

data that you can't see

Zain 10:07

see right like oh there's other polls out there too i don't read the polls but there's also other polls that i'm aware of yeah

Zain 10:12

i've definitely looked into that

Zain 10:14

different story but we don't read the polls we don't

Corey 10:16

don't read the polls

Zain 10:18

aware of polls but

Corey 10:19

but i'm aware of other polls yeah sorry but

Zain 10:22

is not the same as

Zain 10:24

reading the polls that's right okay good

Corey 10:26

yeah i you know i think that

Corey 10:29

it's a great question like i i try to imagine somebody going up and saying like oh it looks like in the polls you're down and they're like yeah i mean that's a lot of why we decided we needed to look at this issue but

Corey 10:42

but you laugh because

Zain 10:43

because it's so no no it is because to me i was kind of watching and i was just watching this minister twist herself into a pretzel and she had a line that someone gave her right of course because capellos was just going and down at it you know like the polling says you're fucking up here and you've really been fucking up for a long time she's like i'm gonna stop you right there it's

Zain 11:01

it's not about polling it's

Zain 11:03

it's about people oh

Zain 11:04

oh i was just like okay right and then she had to explain that people constitute polls ultimately right so she conceded at some point but cory like i laughed but keep going because i i've got i've got a no

Zain 11:16

no i mean i've

Zain 11:18

a footnote on why i laughed like

Corey 11:20

like people aren't necessarily looking for that in their days let me tell you this but are we sure that like this is is the whole point

Zain 11:25

point of the thing are

Corey 11:26

sure they're not so i love the question quite sure but i will say this i don't know if i know i'm not a hundred percent where carter i'm not sure carter i will say this and this is kind of a global that i would probably apply to a fair number of things in this section so much of politics is predetermined theater it's you walk onto the stage where your mark is on the stage and you do the thing the audience expects you to do and there's comfort in that there's normalcy in that and more to the point there's safety in that so you say the things that you're supposed to say and they don't become potentially issues that you can't control one way or the other so the question then becomes what's the upside if you were to take the other approach right and maybe maybe you get like a bulworth thing you remember in the movie dave when bulworth did that thing beautiful yeah beautiful scene

Corey 12:12

yeah got out there and uh all of a sudden was speaking truth to people and they're like oh my god a politician who is uh speaking speaking truth uh

Corey 12:19

uh expropriating cultures and just uh really exciting us down to our core before he gets killed spoilers

Corey 12:25

spoilers for those who haven't seen uh dave yeah

Carter 12:30

that was a great dave i'd

Corey 12:33

i'd say it was the key to dave sure well there's

Corey 12:38

there's a chance if that's your brand and that's your story and you're being the maverick and you're being the straight shooter there's a chance that works really well for you but if that's not your brand if that's not your story if that's not who you are as a politician and you just say like oh yeah we're looking at the polls well then you're going to have people throwing at you they're unprincipled they're weather veins they're just following the polls uh you know they don't they don't actually know what they're doing here they're just running around chicken with their head cut off and so that can cut very easily against you as well so if it's not part of your brand and it's not part of your story to be the person who says i see that mark on the theater on the stage floor and i'm just going to walk over there instead i don't care where the floodlight is i'm gonna go stand over there if that's not your brand and you do that well then you risk actually more downside than upside and i i think that's the point to underline i'm

Zain 13:29

i'm hearing both of you say though right and correct me if i'm wrong if i'm misinterpreting your perspective carter that acknowledgement of reading polls is a slippery slope and and in politics almost equals leadership by polls right i'm asking for simple acknowledgement one of your data points not your yes not not how you lead but i'm hearing the two of you say

Zain 13:51

that that's one in the same you can get

Carter 13:53

get away with saying one of them but we we may not do it next time right

Carter 13:57

right so next time that's a good point the point the poll may be in the exact same spot with the in the shitter and

Carter 14:04

and we don't do it for whatever reason right maybe we're more principled about this particular point or maybe um we feel that the poll doesn't cover the whole story or you know any number of different things we again timeliness is one of the is amazing thing in polling you know one day the we charity

Carter 14:24

charity scandal is massive and important and the next day it's not so am i going to just simply respond to that poll just because it's in that moment a big deal that would be very short-term thinking and we create all kinds of flipping

Carter 14:40

flipping and flopping and and and moving about that it's just unnecessary in a government so

Corey 14:45

so i think it's a great point right you are actually kind of limiting your range of motion if you start saying i'm going to react to these things in this way but

Corey 14:54

now i'm trying to imagine this person that zane you've created here and that same person in that next interview gets thrown the pole again they're like yeah i'm not going to worry about at this time because i actually think the issue is going to die in a bit or i think no i'm i'm being kind of serious like yeah

Corey 15:10

if you're like you know what this this is this is not one of these things that we're particularly stressed about the polls we think is part of a bigger package canadians aren't going to care so much and it's part of it's important to us right like i don't know you

Corey 15:22

you know i don't recommend that anybody go out and try this like i think it's a bit of a crazy thing but as a thought experiment it's exactly what this is yeah this

Zain 15:30

this is this is to a test something we continuously do in politics that we always hear to cory's point it is in the script right it is in the it is in the standard issue script here is your manual

Corey 15:41

manual that is given to you exactly be a hack politician page exactly and

Zain 15:45

i i want to start breaking some of those things down and this one i think you guys are ultimately right on i'm curious to hear if there's other takes

Corey 15:51

takes i don't even know what my position

Corey 15:52

yeah no but i

Zain 15:53

think you made you made good points like especially carter less so you cory because uh you don't know where you stand i mean that's true um but carter you wanted to you wanted to add to your your glory on this particular one yeah

Carter 16:02

yeah i mean the other thing is that polls you know um you

Carter 16:07

can change them right like so you're going to if

Carter 16:12

if you get a negative poll on something that just means that you may need to do action or you may need to educate or you may need to change the way that people are looking at it the the response is you may see response inherent in the action that is not not driven by the poll you know what i mean like the the poll like there was some interesting polling today cory was sharing maybe we'll get to it later about how people are responding to um the the the israel uh palestinian conflict the

Carter 16:40

the question dictates the outcome so yeah i mean to cory's point earlier that he made where he said you know but we've seen some other polling that shows it a little bit differently i

Carter 16:48

i look at layers in a poll right i look at layers in a poll we look look at the give a fuck factor in a poll all of those different things are going to dictate our reaction to the poll and in the media we know that they're not looking at those layers we know that in the media they just take the top line of the poll and say you know in their crack addled little minds um this is the way that people think and they don't understand even what they're reporting so uh and yeah i just shit on media in general and annalise would be apoplectic

Carter 17:20

apoplectic but i i think that that's a true kind

Carter 17:24

of statement of the media when it comes to polling well

Corey 17:26

well it's certainly true that polls are both inputs and outputs and different questions serve different purposes right ultimately you want to track where you are on an issue and we talk about tracking polls and horse

Corey 17:38

horse race polls and if you're in a government because you don't generally track

Corey 17:42

track horse race polls in a government you track government approval and those become the numbers that you You watch, and they become sort of the identifier of overall trends and how well you're doing. But the inputs matter a lot more internally to decision-making, to Stephen's point, right? Who is movable on this issue? Have people made up their mind? Do people actually care about this issue? And those things will determine courses of action going forward. And if you sit there and you get a poll and it's like, oh, 80% of people are against me, they're deeply immovable. The only people that are movable are my people to the other side. Well, that tells you one approach of action. Whereas if you say, oh, you know, only 40% of people actually have made up their mind to any particular degree. The people who are really firm on it are my people. The people who are loose on their opinion are the other side's people. And they do seem to care about it. I mean, then you take a different approach, right? And so this is all very important stuff. And I guess there is an overall poll literacy challenge we have, not just with media, not just with the public, but with politicians that

Corey 18:45

makes it such a dangerous and volatile element in any conversation, which to get us back where you started us here, is part of why politicians are trained to downplay it.

Corey 18:56

it's this dangerous thing that they don't fully understand. stand they're like a child with their fist around a firecracker and so it's easier just to just to just set it aside and not use it finish us off on this carter well

Carter 19:10

well i was just going to say i mean talk about politicians illiteracy on polling um we presented a poll once about uh um politicians taking the uh committee pay for a committee that never met it was called the no meat committee and uh we presented polling that showed that uh in general albertans don't think in alberta

Carter 19:30

yeah albertans don't think that politicians should get paid for not doing anything um and because it was done as an ivr poll um my illiterate colleagues called it a a push poll um because push polls as you know cory are conducted by pushing the buttons on the poll or on the telephone and

Carter 19:54

i would love to tell you i'm making that up but that is an actual true story okay

Corey 19:58

well yeah there is there is the danger in that and that's an interesting one i guess that's the other thing i can't tell you the number of times in my career i've had my hands on a pole and i've looked at it and i've interpreted one way based on some of the underlying things and the piece the person i've handed it to has read it so foundationally different right yeah

Corey 20:17

i I mean, some of that is these things are up for interpretation. And some of that is sometimes people can't get past top lines. They can't see the big picture. They can't sort of identify. And the big one we always talk about on this show is, is

Corey 20:29

is it popular is one thing, right? But who's it popular with is the thing that actually matters.

Zain 20:36

It's a lot of mind-bending stuff. Thankfully, most politicians never read polls or acknowledge their existence. We're going to leave it there. And I'd probably expect to see a lot more of that. bad politicians on television, radio, and all platforms denying that they have knowledge or acknowledge any sort of polling. We're going to move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, climate change. Speaking of change, Corey, a big change by Justin Trudeau. One might even call it,

Zain 21:00

like me, an undercutting of his signature policy, Corey. I might be inclined to, yeah. Yes. Well, the Canadian government is doubling the pollution price rebate. We're all top up. That rate is going up. We should mention that. But what's capturing the headlines, lines, Corey, is they're implementing a three-year pause to the federal carbon price on deliveries of heating oil in all jurisdiction with the federal fuel charges in effect. This is what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Thursday. A couple of matters of fact, home heating oil, primarily Atlantic Canada. That's where this announcement was made. And, Carter, more importantly, to be clear, in simple words, this is a carve-out. This is a carve-out of the carbon tax policy that This government announced, I believe, just mere weeks ago, maybe even earlier, that they would not be doing. This was not under consideration. And yet here we are, Carter. So the question I have to start this off is, is this actually undercutting your signature policy or are you looking at it differently? Right. Just even my sort of like editorial sort of thumb on the scale. Am I fair in putting it and positioning it that way or am I wrong in doing so, Carter? Oh,

Carter 22:06

Oh, I think it's absolutely undercutting the signature policy. I mean, but but keep in mind that Corey Hogan, you remember Corey Hogan, he's a member of this podcast. He said at one point that the liberals need to steal policy ideas from the conservatives and steal they did. it um you know like this is one of their ideas this is something that uh will probably work in atlantic canada i mean uh and it won't work in other places so that to me is uh it it is an undermining too like let's not let's not kind of get too far away from that this is something that really uh undercuts the objectives of the carbon tax and really under under cuts all of the primary messaging especially around the idea that the rebates were giving back the money that was collected and there was so much more money collected that everybody was going to get more more money in their pockets uh corey and i in our fantastic podcast all the way back on friday yeah

Corey 23:09

yeah uh such a long time ago yeah

Carter 23:11

yeah it was really good i mean we we talked about this and um Um, Corey informed me in fact, that this was not on my, uh, natural gas.

Carter 23:23

Uh, what? So I went and checked and Corey was right. And that's just infuriated me, uh, as you can imagine, cause I don't like it when Corey's right. So I'm just furious that this is the way that they're going. Cause we talked about many different options. Like this was not a required back down in my mind to begin with. And the carbon tax wasn't a required, the only solution to the climate issue is this type of action. This was the one that many economists pushed forward. But in terms of voter impact, this maybe isn't the best solution. But now we've moved to the place where the

Carter 24:02

the liberals are going to be getting pressure, and I'm sure you'll bring this up in a second, pressure from everybody to...

Carter 24:11

to change their own policy. Corey,

Zain 24:13

Corey, am I right? Is this undercutting your signature policy? And then give me a second answer to this, if it is.

Zain 24:19

What's the blast zone on it politically? Where do you think this kind of goes? Carter's alluded to other provinces now bickering about their carve-outs that they want. Is it an undercutting of your signature policy, or am I overstating it? And give me just your political blast zone right now. So

Corey 24:34

So undercutting their signature policy, I mean, I don't 100% know. no, I think you can debate it. Does it take what's supposed to be a neutral price mechanism and change that? Does it send a signal to the market that if things get really bad, don't worry, the government's going to back down on these things? I'm not wild about it, but let's let the economists continue to have that conversation. My personal opinion is it probably undercuts the policy, but more interesting to me is it undercuts their signature politics. politics and so here's the here's the bottom line folks you can't run around for years saying this thing is a net positive to the good people of canada who are subjected to it and then say oh we recognize your hardship because of this so here is a holiday from it like those two things do not jive it was hard enough for the liberals to try to sell the carbon tax as revenue neutral because of the gap between you getting the rebate and you actually uh you know feeling it at the the pump on a daily basis like there's just like there's not a good alignment there there's no matching there right so that's a challenge but um then when you then go around and say but we acknowledge this has become a an affordability hardship and present it in this way by actually giving a holiday from the tax because of affordability and because of the pressure on affordability you've blown up your comms on your biggest piece of politics uh arguably arguably full stop right there are other things that the liberals have done that are significant policy initiatives but they're not the things that we're talking about they're not the things on which discourse floats those are things even the child care thing the

Corey 26:14

the conservatives don't want to talk about it because they know it's fairly popular right legalization

Corey 26:18

legalization of marijuana yeah

Corey 26:20

yeah it's it it's done and nobody's really chatting

Carter 26:22

chatting about asking for it back this

Corey 26:25

is the sun that

Corey 26:27

we all orbit around this climate policy this carbon tax and the conversations from acts the tax on the polyev side to the you know the existential you're a climate denier if you resist this rhetoric that came out of justin trudeau on you know four weeks ago in terms of talking about carve-outs and people asking for exemptions from these things that is impossible for me to reconcile from a political communications point of view i think they really up i think they really up in in a way that matters more, frankly, than the 20-some seats in the Maritimes, they have absolutely lit themselves on fire on arguably

Corey 27:05

arguably the biggest issue of our time and certainly the biggest issue of our day.

Zain 27:09

Carter, the way I said this on Jespo on Friday was a ton of political capital spent erecting this policy, arguably even more to keep it alive from both the policy and the politics of the comms as the missiles came against the price on carbon. And then the biggest win that conservatives got was when Biden implemented the IRA, no price on carbon. In fact, he went with more of a tax incentive, which we're now also competing in, to be totally clear, in that lane to get battery plants and others. but carter like to this point we see this math right even i see this math right which is why i was so confident about it the

Zain 27:47

the trudeau government must see this political math i'm not talking about the policy anymore the political math give

Zain 27:54

give me your best like in

Zain 27:57

in the head of the pmo what the what the play here is like and and i threw out a stupid idea like on friday on jespo being like oh this is just like them wanting to kill it like this is just the first they're gonna slash it and And then, you know, the leak from the tires and be like, this policy sucks. They get rid of it. They kill it. I don't think that's what's happening. But give me your take here. You see this in Atlantic Canada. What's step two? What's step three?

Zain 28:21

Play it out for me.

Carter 28:23

I have no idea, Zane. I mean, the problem with this policy is that step two, step three become very, very challenging. So assuming that they don't want to erode it completely, like, what do you do? because now the pressure comes from everywhere everywhere including your own space right keep in mind that we were already seeing liberal mps voting against things because they've felt that the the carbon tax was was hurting people um so they you already had opposition within the within your own crew uh so normally what you would be trying to do is you would you would make a considered

Carter 29:02

considered retreat and that

Carter 29:04

that considered retreat would would either stop the bleeding or open up a new angle of attack right this

Carter 29:13

this does neither because it doesn't stop the bleeding because now everybody's going to say well i'd like this particular carve out which was entirely predictable it also does not open a new line of attack it's not like you can go around to to 338 different ridings and say you know look at this action that we took on heating oil uh we're really hearing you um it's really

Carter 29:39

relevant only in in about 40 ridings um maybe more you know i think there's probably some in montreal and and other places where this will will make some difference but it's

Carter 29:51

it's a very very difficult thing i don't do anything in

Corey 29:55

in montreal all because they they're not under the federal carbon tax like this is really just going to be the benefit from this so

Zain 30:03

so so carter but your first answer here if i might be if i'm trying to like put my best effort at crafting a

Zain 30:09

strategy for the liberal your first answer here was you know this is sure zane this is undercutting their signature policy but this might work can

Zain 30:16

can we start there that they feel like the cost like the benefit of this uh perhaps reclaiming or having a shot back at their Atlantic Canada seats is a starting point. And while we might dither at the cost being too high, that it starts there. Do you want to go back on your sort of theory that this is going to perhaps produce victory? And I go to Corey, you're eager to jump in too.

Carter 30:40

Corey, start us off because I'm not actually predicting victory. No,

Corey 30:42

No, I mean, I think he was more than anything trying to take a dig at the advice even we've given on this show, which is sometimes you steal from your

Corey 30:50

your opponents to kill an issue. you but obviously the big difference is you do

Corey 30:53

do that on the small stuff you do that on the stuff you don't care about you do the stuff that you're bleeding on that's not in your message box so you can just eliminate the conversation you don't do it on your big thing you know you don't it's unfathomable to me it would be like if you're i mean i struggle even to find like this is where

Zain 31:13

i think too many times on this show we've said i hate i don't i just don't understand stand it and i've let you guys move on can

Zain 31:20

not let you let us

Corey 31:21

us yeah no that's fine like let's let's talk about this because i actually think it's really interesting yeah

Zain 31:25

yeah yeah yeah go keep going cory i

Corey 31:27

i i just i can't so

Corey 31:29

so you have to like let's talk about how this happened for sure like it's not a mystery here tons of pressure coming from the atlantic caucus saying yeah

Corey 31:36

we're really getting hurt on this uh this is now taking effect in the maritimes across the board here breakout mp

Zain 31:43

mp who voted against it

Corey 31:43

it as well just a couple weeks ago well that's not the maritimes that That was Atlanta, Canada, but not the Maritimes. But yeah, fair ball, you know. But all of a sudden, we've got a situation where you're hearing about it, and you're hearing about it, and you're hearing about the affordability challenges, and you're hearing you've got to do something about this.

Corey 32:02

Just make a small tweak. It's different because of reason X. It's different because of reason Y. People haven't had the opportunity to get off their heating oil. I mean, kind

Corey 32:11

kind of true, I think, with all of the heating things that are around here. I'll tell you, I'll just use myself as an example. My furnace is not long for this world and a heat pump is something that I'm actively considering here, at least as part of the formula, maybe with an electric heater backup here.

Corey 32:28

You know, those things only come around once every 10 years. I don't necessarily see how the logic applies in the Maritimes and or Atlantic Canada more broadly and doesn't apply here in Alberta. But you're hearing these things. You're hearing that we just need a little bit of time. We're not telling you to get rid of the policy. We're just telling and you give us a stopgap measure come on this is all relatively new anyways what's the big harm that's what you're hearing and

Corey 32:51

and so then you're having conversations and you're having conversations with people who are saying this will undercut the policy and you're having conversations with other people saying well i'm not so sure about that and we really need those seats in atlantic canada and you're having talk with your pollsters even though you don't read polls because you're a politician right and you're saying hmm you know only only atlantic canada can afford us even a narrow path to victory at this point and you start looking at these things really fucking narrowly right you start looking at these things really fucking narrowly and you start convincing yourself that the broader view is something you can manage or you hand wave it away and you say that's that's fine but i'm looking at this part of it right now not the whole thing and this tunnel vision is something that occurs when governments hit a certain level of panic mode right because they start trying to save the individual pieces rather than playing the whole whole fucking board and so you know you asked me how this would happen and i've ended up criticizing them here but i'll tell you this is this is super common in governments when things this is super common in life man when things go awry people latch on to the small things and say i don't know what to do about this whole fucking mess i've got but i know what to do right here that will make this situation marginally better you know doesn't matter if it has the long-term ramifications and actually cuts against your broader thing human

Corey 34:09

human behavior and so i can easily see how this happened

Zain 34:12

happened carter get in one second but cory could this be as simple as morale

Zain 34:18

like internal like could like could it just be as simple as i like these people or if these fucking people are against me on this i just need to make sure like and i'm fucking willing to trade if the if the price is this fuck it like could it be and i'm i have no idea that's

Zain 34:34

although there was items in minister mr hutchings interview today that was really interesting i mean like really congratulating the atlantic caucus over and over again about their lobbying efforts to the prime minister right so could this just be morale or like or like a people

Corey 34:48

people issue let's talk about this a bit like there is clearly a strategy yeah where they are trying to say having a liberal mp delivers results and i'm sure we'll fucking get to some of the comments that were made that cut the other other way there because they've just gone way too overboard with it but

Corey 35:03

but if you're listen

Corey 35:06

listen if if it's it's over if it's morale like if you're like oh my god the atlantic caucus wants to slit their wrists you know we gotta do this to kind of keep them in the right headspace it's over like it's over like go go home let somebody else be the leader do the wholesale change you need to save this because like this kind like this isn't even saving the copper from the walls like this is a brutal way to approach governance i

Zain 35:32

i am speculating here fully admitting but i also don't want to let us off the hook carter of being like we don't understand this one this one's different because this one's so big and i want us to spend time so carter give me your your theorized take your best like take in terms of trying to get into their head a bit well

Carter 35:48

well i mean the only way into this particular head is that someone who's making this choice is assuming that this is the last move of the of the game right if we make this move we've solved the problem like that's the only way that this makes sense because anyone looking at this from a you know a chess point of view instead of a checkers point of view would look at this and say okay i'm going to make this move and my opponents are going to make the following move right and if

Carter 36:17

if i say i'm doing this because of great advocacy from liberal MPs.

Carter 36:23

Well, now I've traded off climate, which is a huge issue in British Columbia. Am I not going to get advocacy from British Columbia? Are people not going to say, you know, this is a really bad thing? Are people in Montreal, like Heather's in Montreal right now, she's saying EVs are everywhere. Everybody's driving an EV in Montreal because Because their plan offers a tremendous number of incentives for EV purchase. Are they not going to advocate for more? This implies that every important region of the country isn't going to have some sort of reaction. And then as they react, there's going to need to be action to placate. So how are you supposed to get to the end of this conversation? like i and my critique of the liberals to

Carter 37:16

to this point is often centered around the idea that they don't understand crisis and this to me is a reaction to the to a crisis that is the entirely wrong action so yeah there i i struggle with this because it could have made sense if it was the last move it absolutely does not make sense if anybody imagines a move following point

Corey 37:41

yeah you know let's let's just apply that same principle of charity here they also probably thought a it won't be seen as a back down because this is this is relatively new the application at this particular moment in this particular situation and

Corey 37:58

um we we can uh we'll wrap it around like it's just a delay it's not like it's not happening here we're just going to delay it and so they created a whole line of messaging around this and and i mean they're weak as messaging by far is this notion that they're strengthening the national climate plan because this is them being responsive well holy shit i mean that could apply in a million different contexts there are so many flash fires on these things as albertans we might be hyper attuned to them but they exist everywhere like there are problems with this everywhere and the thing i just cannot get past is okay

Corey 38:32

okay i understand you don't actually give that much of a about your electoral chances in alberta you know sorry randy sorry george but you've just been thrown onto the pyre here right including by this minister who by the way said you could maybe get

Zain 38:47

get a couple more people in alberta like almost implying yeah

Corey 38:51

yeah we got to to get there at some point because that's a brutal message we but like um ontario

Corey 38:58

ontario is subject to the federal carbon tax ontario mostly heats with natural gas or electricity i just don't understand why they didn't think that this would be a problem in other jurisdictions it just it boggles me yes

Zain 39:14

yes let's let's let's try to be strategic for a second on on their behalf can we help them here for a second so we don't know we don't actually here's a couple things we don't know we don't actually know if there's a part two to this we don't know if the prime minister is flying across the country and doing regional carve-outs but i'm going to assume he's not okay i'm just going to make the assumption that he is not it's a safe assumption

Carter 39:33

assumption that he would

Zain 39:35

would not take the hit over the over the weekend um and and and um you know uh not announced that this is all happening at the same time which would you know death by a thousand cuts to his policy so we know we know but we don't know if that's actually true but we know um carter

Zain 39:50

carter can we help them what

Zain 39:51

would you suggest you are you have not heard the bang unless i'm wrong you guys have caught i have not heard the banging of the drum uh coming from ontario just yet for their their carve out i've heard alberta right

Zain 40:04

right uh i've heard danielle smith clearly i've heard the alberta ndp if i'm not mistaken largely aligned with the ucp on this one uh as a collective front um

Zain 40:15

we're going to hear the other provinces and

Zain 40:17

and to carter's point we're going to hear bc take a bc particular stance that's going to be regionally specific to them maybe even criticizing the government for allowing even the first carve out like so they might get it from the other end on it yeah how how are you thinking about this on a sunday night heading into next week carter if you're the the pmo right now you you if you're being charitable as cory used that word you maybe didn't expect this reaction you should have seen it but you didn't see it how are you starting to process this today and what are that some of the moves that you want in place in order to

Zain 40:51

prevent any further bleeding or further erosion on on this

Carter 40:58

zane there comes a time when government a person who is in charge of a government needs to just recognize that the way that they're leading the government is no longer working and

Carter 41:11

and this should be that moment for this for this prime minister um brian mulrooney stuck to his guns on the um gst gst and he did so a great personal cost um and arguably the the cost of the conservative party um does

Carter 41:32

does justin trudeau want to ride the liberal party into the exact same fate i

Carter 41:37

think that if you

Carter 41:39

you know we remember when we were talking about how the the the polls needed to improve um for the prime minister you know after the cabinet shuffle for the prime minister to stay on um

Carter 41:50

they didn't and he fucked it up again so

Carter 41:54

so you're asking me to come up with a strategy to save a guy who i can't think of a strategy to save right

Carter 42:01

right and this isn't a cop-out out i know that you you don't want me to be you know you don't want me to cop out zane

Corey 42:06

zane i don't know about you but i i kind of feel like this is

Zain 42:08

is not a cop what

Carter 42:09

what it is is a recognition of the situation that the liberals are in the liberals right now are in a you know like we but when the liberals were really in the tank in in 2015 we came up with a liberal strategy episode that broke down how the liberals would recover from the situation that they were facing uh regionally and, you know, in kind of an ideological fashion.

Carter 42:38

that answer. I just don't have it because this particular move has undercut them.

Carter 42:45

You know, like if we're looking at the actual...

Zain 42:47

actual... Okay, okay, okay, I get it, I get it, I get it. Now I'm going to stop you. No,

Carter 42:49

No, I'm not, I'm not...

Carter 42:51

I just think that this is it. This is the ballgame, man. He's done.

Zain 42:55

I'm going to paraphrase what you're saying. He's done. This symbolizes he's done. this is a hallmark of when a politician is done is that fair it's

Carter 43:04

it's more than just a hallmark

Carter 43:06

it it's it's desperation it's trying to save one's own skin over this over the okay um so the the issue of the country i

Zain 43:15

i want to give i want to give cory a fair shake at this and if his answer

Carter 43:19

lackluster i wouldn't give him a fair answer is

Zain 43:20

is lackluster i actually think there's there's something we can dive a little bit deeper on at the 43 minute mark why

Carter 43:26

why not of course it's going going to be lackluster that's great unfair pressure for cory sunday night you

Zain 43:31

you didn't thursday to sunday you need a strategy for monday yeah it doesn't have to be extensive but give me a few pillars it doesn't need to be

Corey 43:38

be it's so it's it's actually fairly straightforward here uh as a principle i think you've got to clean up some of the messes that you've built around this and you've got to find a way um you know to not allow this thing to be you

Corey 43:52

you know you find a way to declare victory even in your defeat here by the way doug ford did comment on this and said basically like hey ontarians don't use heating oil but it was effectively the short version it's

Corey 44:02

it's not his exact words he said we use natural gas and we're still gonna have to pay the carbon tax the

Corey 44:06

the solution is actually dead simple now

Corey 44:09

now it is eating a lot of crow if you're the liberals but i think there's a way you can actually run this first

Corey 44:14

first days you exempt all heating right

Corey 44:16

right right now you exempt it and you say you're working with BC and Quebec and

Corey 44:22

whoever you need to, who's part of the federal plan to make an equivalency within their systems because affordability matters and you are acknowledging that these are exceptional times. Now, the

Corey 44:32

the next thing you need to do is create a massive incentive to resolve this problem over the three-year term. You need to find the money for heat pumps, for electric furnaces in those areas of the province or of the country that use choose cleaner electricity you need to find the ability to essentially turn over the page on this so when this thing kicks back in the future there are no excuses i mean massive incentives i mean largely basically covering the fucking cost of this and make a big show of this is canada well

Zain 45:01

well yeah or you

Corey 45:02

you know all kinds of equivalents right you know but like the idea is super high efficiency natural gas i think should be on the table all of those things because there's massive differences even in the efficiency of like

Corey 45:13

like a 20 year old well nobody has a 20 year old furnace in this country but a 10 year old furnace and a brand new furnace massive differences in the efficiency there so you go all in on this on this massive consumer upgrade that's also going to create jobs for all of the installers and it's going to generate a lot of activity it's going to cost you tens of billions of dollars but you do it so

Zain 45:32

hold on that becomes so

Corey 45:33

president all of a sudden you're

Zain 45:34

you're pivoting to a brand new green strategy you're

Carter 45:39

i'm on the fly and you're You're saying this is simple.

Corey 45:41

I'm exempting all heating from the carbon tax, and I'm giving the biggest fucking incentive you have seen in the history of green incentives in this country for heating. And it's all going to go down in the next, let's say, five years, so I'm not putting a gun to my head. And you're doing this this week?

Corey 45:57

I'm doing it this week.

Corey 45:58

Here's the thing, Carter. And then I'm pretending it was always the plan, Zane.

Zain 46:02

Here's the thing. I like it. I don't know. Thanks for giving me an answer like someone else. Carter, I'm going to give you an opportunity. That is a fucking unbelievable.

Carter 46:07

unbelievable. unbelievable cory's cleaned up

Zain 46:09

up the policy uh the policy for me he's

Carter 46:11

he's not though he's he's he's made up an answer he's made up an answer absolutely tactically impossible to do hey

Corey 46:18

hey let's chat this out man it's

Carter 46:20

it's not i mean

Carter 46:21

we were able to do the

Corey 46:21

the serb in in so i

Carter 46:22

i mean you're creating a policy structure that

Carter 46:25

that is are you insane can

Zain 46:27

can i actually ask you then cory by extension to what you said you are kind of killing but you're moving away

Carter 46:34

away from the carbon tax it's over the carbon tax is is dead you don't

Corey 46:38

don't you don't let you don't say it's dead there's still this thing called the carbon tax but obviously the minute you start doing things like this it's evolved dramatically well

Zain 46:45

well carter real me this cory

Zain 46:48

cory i'm gonna go back to what you said right this is this is not undercutting their principal policy this is undercutting their principal politics carter cory's solution does

Zain 46:59

bridge over does it heal the the politics or and help me heal the politics here because that's what i mentioned cory that's a great policy answer sir help me heal the politics of lying side of it right so and what i'm hearing is ambitious right

Corey 47:12

right like no no man the politics are the incentive like the the idea that you're gonna get it you know you're gonna save money even relative to your current pre-carbon tax heating bill by using all of these super high efficiency heaters we're just gonna drop on your lap i

Carter 47:25

i think the problem with it is i'm

Carter 47:27

just problem with it is is that there's a difference in different pressures across the country obviously the electricity costs in alberta are insane because of the way that we ran our electricity system has nothing to do with the carbon tax but every you know the the the that doesn't matter what things have to do with the inflationary process pro you know the inflationary pressures dictate action across the board you're not going to get away with just saying well we're going to make this about heating because then people are going to say well you you know that's great but i'm getting i'm actually getting clobbered on electricity rate i mean at this point you you know you just you're

Carter 48:10

you're following i mean i i don't actually object to the to the strategy this is one of the things we talked about on on being sold

Carter 48:16

on no this is what we talked about on i can tell we

Carter 48:19

we talked about this following love

Zain 48:21

love we're actually watching i'm

Zain 48:23

to fucking kill you i'm

Carter 48:24

i'm coming to your houses tonight and i'm going to end you well

Zain 48:29

That sounds like a guy about to fall very

Zain 48:31

defensive of his crush.

Carter 48:33

We talked about this on Friday night. We talked about how the carbon tax was not the only solution. This could have been a solution. The Biden solution was available to Trudeau. And now he just, it's not as simple as just saying, well, now

Carter 48:51

now we adopt the Biden solution. Sure it is. No,

Carter 48:54

No, it is not. Okay.

Corey 48:56

Hold on. Here, let me just expand a little

Zain 48:58

little bit. I've let you, I let you guys go on Friday. Can I, can I add some structure to this? Yeah, sure, for sure. Oh

Zain 49:03

goodness. The way I add structure, Carter, is I deviate completely and I'll come back to this in a second because there's something else on my mind. I

Zain 49:10

I was, I was thinking about this over the weekend. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to leave this bracket open. Trust me, I'm coming back to it. But I want to go to our province for a second. Corey, I actually want to go ask you specifically on this. Would the provincial government from a pure strategy move be smart to convert their entire Tell the Feds campaign to the carbon tax right now?

Corey 49:28

wow that's interesting and i hate giving free advice if it's good but i know i was thinking like would

Zain 49:36

the whole electricity thing and say fuck it we've got an opening let's go after it

Corey 49:39

it one of the critiques that we have had of this is like why

Corey 49:42

why are you there's

Corey 49:43

there's so little carbon intensity in ontario's power generation like what does your campaign

Corey 49:48

mean there you know like you're worried about the carbon tax on electricity you're worried about converting net zero on electricity in Ontario like that I mean it's not even about the carbon tax it's about like electricity like reliability and as we've said before yeah actually gas is a really important part of reliability there but to the average Ontarian looking at like a pie chart of where does electricity in Ontario come from they're going to say what

Corey 50:12

what the fuck do I care how does this have anything to do with me this

Corey 50:16

this might have something to do with them tell the feds it's not not fair.

Corey 50:20

You were saying when this first came out, wow, what an evergreen URL. That's true.

Corey 50:25

And maybe the government of Alberta should contemplate whether there's a more resonant message that they can use that could have some of the same policy objectives.

Corey 50:34

thought I had a smart idea.

Carter 50:36

It was a good idea. Let it out in the world. Hey, Carter. The electricity thing is just way too narrow. I

Corey 50:40

I mean, let's be clear though. Like the policy objective of Alberta is just to put pain in the federal government. If you switch it, you're switching it away from electricity. This

Zain 50:47

is exactly it. This is exactly the same sort of MO I was thinking about if they're thinking on those terms. I do want to hit on the province. I do want to hit on the Alberta. There's so many things on here. But let's clean up what we've put out in terms of the Fed strategy. Corey's

Zain 51:01

ambitious Fed strategy here. I actually want to go through how you were thinking about this, Corey, because I think that's even more interesting than the materiality of what you've said. Carter, you kind of hit a wall in some ways, and I just find more interesting in moments of limited optionality. What was your thought process here, Corey? Were you just like, I'm just going to power through this and just go big and kill what I... Talk to me how you thought about this. And Carter, I actually want to dive deeper into your struggle as well. Oh,

Corey 51:28

Oh, this is fun.

Corey 51:30

so when you face a problem like this you've got to start saying okay what is the actual problem in front of me and you can't just say the the policy it's bad right you have to say okay what are the major lines of critique that i am actually feeling quite

Corey 51:43

quite um quite on the defensive on here and so i i see a few different problems i'll just name a couple of them here for the purposes of brevity one is there's a fairness problem it really looks like cynical politics that you've You've created a policy that you're pretending is about a type of fuel, but is in reality about a

Corey 52:01

a kind of rural geographic

Corey 52:03

base in Atlantic Canada,

Corey 52:05

right? So you've got a fairness problem. You've got to clean that up. You can't pull back the policy, so all you can do is extend it to other people. That's basically the only way I see out of that particular box. The second challenge you have is you have a policy problem. You have people saying this is going to undercut your environmental challenge. i guess i'll say policy problem is like the people who want to see environmental action are probably the most jaded and disgruntled about this right now so you've got to fight through and you've got to say this is how i'm going to make even bigger impact on this particular thing now you have especially if you're addressing the fairness problem you know you're really kind of monkeying with that kind of market effect where it's supposed to be let the market determine the best way to reduce the price of carbon or reduce carbon output because you've got a price on it and if it's a lot of carbon it's going to cost more and if it's less it's going to cost less and so the whole idea of a carbon tax is you dust your hands as a government and you let the market figure it out that's why economists love it it's why you think of it as more historically a right wing idea but you've clearly walked away from that and to be fair because of construction and because of another you know million choices we've made along the way it's never been like a pure market mechanism right i think we can acknowledge that so this is just saying i'm

Corey 53:18

i'm not going to get the economist back on side but i think i can get the environmental core back on site so if you want to deal with the fairness by extending it as far as possible and if you want to deal with the kind of the environmental zeal and the policy or however you want to describe it then you're going to have to go deeper right you're going to have to go into this farther and so what can you do that could have like a dramatic effect and

Corey 53:38

and then the third problem i want to put on the table is affordability which is driving all of this and so it's not even fair to put it third the whole reason you're you're feeling the need to act in this particular fashion is because you're getting fucking crushed on affordability. Stephen said it last on Friday, and he's 100% right. What boggles my mind is that they actually did this through the carbon tax. Why didn't they just create a new affordability measure for people in rural Atlantic Canada? What the fuck stopped them from doing that as an economic development thing in Atlantic Canada? But

Corey 54:10

But they didn't. And so now, how do you deal with the affordability thing writ large and so that's where the big spend to reduce overall bills comes in and so by tying you know this one policy or the series of policy steps could effectively deal with all three of those things so when you ask me why or how i came to these conclusions it's that it's saying okay what are the actual problems in front of us why are people reacting the way they are why did we feel we needed to do this in the first place and is there There's something we can do that can check all of these boxes. Now,

Corey 54:43

Carter's not wrong that I've grossly simplified some of the downstream stuff, shall we say. Sure, sure,

Corey 54:48

But if you want to get out of a hole, the first thing you need to do is realize what kind of hole you're in. And so that's the first thing I do.

Zain 54:56

Carter, you know, I'm going to blow some smoke and then I'm going to ask you the hard question, which is you're one of the most creative, strategic minds I know in this stuff. And I know your default answer was just be like, fuck it, man. like this guy's done why was it that versus like and i know you've got like the intellectual capacity to go down cory's stream but i'm just really curious like from like a thought process perspective like if you were in the room cory was like okay p.m we can do this and then this and we're gonna go big here and then you know he's good and you'd be like fuck man you're done why like i'm just really curious about the thought process here yeah well

Carter 55:30

well like or what were the blocks like what were the because

Zain 55:33

because the optionality like the you i i presume you saw doors closed and you're like fuck it it's done like i can see four moves ahead and it's done yeah

Carter 55:40

yeah because when you're looking at the moves right when you're looking at the moves the best way to do this is just to simply put cash in people's pockets right and it's it's not uh a super easy thing to do at certain levels of government but it is super easy to do at the federal level of government so you can you don't ever have to undermine the carbon tax you can say the carbon tax from you know we're just going to keep doing the carbon tax but we're also happen to be implementing some sort of a a new idea or a quick subsidy on you know those who are heating using heating oil and that subsidy is going to time out in three years right but for now everybody who heats with heating oil is going to get a subsidy it has nothing to do with the carbon tax it's actually just messaging right and and that's why i'm so so convinced that this government is done because they didn't even think of that they didn't go to the easy way they went the hard way well we've gone and we've done ourselves a carbon tax so now we have to undo the carbon tax in order to make this other thing work where does it say that in the rules right the rules of politics don't say you've got to do the The you know, you've got to make sure that the the your primary policy initiative is undermined by your actions subsequent to the policy initiative being implemented. Right. There's no fucking handbook.

Carter 57:09

It's not a handbook. Right. So the handbook doesn't have you got to fuck yourself in order to, you know, do good politics. In fact, the policy handbook generally says you should try not to fuck yourself when you're when you're getting yourself out of a problem. And this government, for whatever reason, however they chose to make the decision, they decided that the best course of action for them was to fuck themselves. Now, personally, I think that that's pretty stupid. it corey by his definite you know by the way that he walked them out of it by walking them out of it straight into you know straight into essentially biden's plans which by the way i think we discussed on friday and ultimately was my idea but whatever corey i mean whatever you got to do to give yourself up but you

Carter 57:55

you know the buying

Carter 57:57

buying your way to freedom steven

Carter 58:00

buying your way to freedom is the power of the government and there is a question to be had you know does this make sense when you're just you

Carter 58:08

know should you buy your way to freedom if you're in government the answer is probably not but

Carter 58:14

but fuck me man this is what trudeau needs to do he only has this available to him he should be buying his way to freedom but instead of doing that he fucked himself on the carbon tax like

Carter 58:26

how hard would a subsidy be for atlantic canada freedom

Zain 58:29

freedom just so i'm clear you should bought himself to freedom yeah

Zain 58:32

let the carbon tax on rather than buy yourself to freedom as a response to undercutting your own carbon tax just

Carter 58:37

just so i'm clear the purchase to freedom isn't isn't i have to fuck myself on the carbon tax the purchase to freedom is hey everybody in atlantic canada that's using heating oil we're putting in place a special three month three year subsidy uh to protect you from uh rising home oil costs or whatever the hell you come up with and then everybody goes well that's really upsetting but i don't use home oil so i guess i understand that this is a particular and a local thing and you know it's it's not ideal but it's yeah you

Carter 59:09

know i'm not gonna get too uptight about it because there's always been special subsidies for the good for the good people of atlantic canada i like this carter

Corey 59:16

carter hogan yeah like here's my time machine policy i i absolutely love what steven said i totally agree i don't understand why they tied it to their own carbon tax you could have actually gone out and said good people of canada that we know climate change causes more extreme weather and we're going to see more extreme cold as a result of this and so we're introducing a new government policy when it dips below 10 degrees any day it does or whatever like whatever your trigger is your number pick

Corey 59:42

pick your number you're going to get x number of dollars a day direct subsidy off of your bill we're working with all of the providers there's only a few you know there's dozens not thousands right and so you can kind of figure those things out as a government and by the way you've got all of the data to do that because you own environment canada right the weather centers and and so like there were so many creative options available to this government that actually could have reinforced rather than reduce their key climate arguments here and so that's what i think is the is

Corey 1:00:12

is the absolute shame of this like i don't i don't understand why

Corey 1:00:17

why they well i do know we talked about this but they were seeing this way too narrowly like when you're the government it's just you have all the pieces you you have to see the whole board because sometimes one can fly in right from the left and resolve that check that you're worried about out there see

Carter 1:00:32

the whole board a quote from the west wing i mean i go excellent

Zain 1:00:35

excellent quote from the west wing um hey like in some ways right like you can almost sense if you piece it together that this was lobbied for like this was like this is what we have lobbied this

Zain 1:00:49

was whole internally right internally and

Zain 1:00:51

and this was kind kind of wholesale okay like rather than being like but to carter's point or your point cory okay you want these outcomes here's how we get to these outcomes without kind of like fucking ourselves as you guys have

Zain 1:01:03

right and there and there is like when you talk about myopic behavior there may have been some myopic or sort of limited lack of whole board thinking behavior in in that regard too because this may not have been something invented versus something lobbied for and then wholesale just copy paste let's do it sort of thing yeah

Carter 1:01:18

yeah and maybe missing

Carter 1:01:20

some Some dumbass said, you know, this is how we're going to solve the problem in Atlanta, Canada. But that is fundamentally different than

Zain 1:01:26

than actually uprooting your own policy. You've been erecting something on your

Corey 1:01:28

your own and seeing all the angles, right, Corey? Brilliant point. Because essentially what you had was somebody come to them with a solution saying, we're getting killed on affordability, so we need you to pause

Corey 1:01:40

A proper, you know, really savvy PMO, and I'm not saying that they didn't at least explore some of these things, but I think they should have ended up there and said, said okay root concern affordability atlanta canada what are we going to do here do we mind if we make it more affordable for other people too well that's expensive are we willing to do that like that's the see the whole board stuff right yeah

Corey 1:02:00

and instead of instead of that they said people feel there's an affordability challenge with this carbon tax so we're going to get rid of it and that was ultimately undercutting of their message and i would love you know what i need a few thousand words on this i need the inside story of what the hell happened to get to this point

Corey 1:02:19

i need like the guilbeault temper tantrum i need the trudeau indifference i need the telford intervention i need the whole fucking story because i'm so fascinated and understanding what happened will tell us a lot about the state of that particular government in the state of that particular pmo i'm

Carter 1:02:36

i'm i'm less interested in that because the outcome is the same because at the end you know when we look at the tea leaves when we look Look at how this is all going to unfold.

Carter 1:02:47

The liberals have just done, you know, like they were in deep, deep trouble to begin with. We've talked about how deep the hole is that they were with. And it's not like we're cheering for Pierre Polyev to become the next prime minister.

Carter 1:02:58

But man, like you don't have to fucking give it to the guy. You know, like just put

Carter 1:03:05

some thought into this. Let

Zain 1:03:06

Let me get into that for a second. And let me actually just move this to our over, under, and our lightning round. I'm going to do an expanded version of this, Corey. cory i want i've got some really pointed questions that i'm putting in the over under lightning round and i want you guys to to answer them a little relatively rapid fire carter of course sorry didn't mean to

Corey 1:03:21

uh just drive by we do this for you um

Zain 1:03:23

i'm gonna start with you hey cory

Zain 1:03:26

any redemption left in the messaging that the carbon tax is revenue neutral yay

Zain 1:03:31

yay or nay i

Corey 1:03:35

it's a serious new

Zain 1:03:36

new messaging question actually i have Is there any stock to get back to this point? Because I think they've, when I say undercut, like on the politics, they've undercut that. For sure.

Corey 1:03:46

Look, they're going to try. They're going to say this was a specific situation. But the problem is, every time, revenue neutral was always tough. It was being undercut by all sorts of analyses. All the time. They never. They spent a

Zain 1:03:56

a lot of capital.

Corey 1:03:56

They went so hard on, like, look at the PBO analysis. And, you know, they never should have done that. but now you're just going to have the added benefit of somebody saying like the rejoinder is so simple and so fast like oh yeah it's so revenue neutral you had to shield people from it if it's revenue neutral if it's putting people ahead of the place you don't actually need to shield them from it and that's the other thing and this is being totally buried at least in the online discourse they also doubled kind of the rural rebate right yes yes

Corey 1:04:25

why they felt they needed to do both of these things at the same time also tells us and

Carter 1:04:29

and step down right oh

Carter 1:04:31

step on them so that no one understood. They

Corey 1:04:33

They could have actually done the doubling of the rural rebate as a step two after everybody got mad about the... I don't even know. But yeah, no, now you're just going to have that rejoinder thrown in your face. It was always a weak line. It's just become that much weaker.

Zain 1:04:48

Carter, any redemption left in the messaging of revenue neutral? The reason I ask is I always love to examine what people have spent a lot of political capital on and this seems to be one this particular messaging art the the time and the energy of trying to make this work from

Zain 1:05:03

from like a rebate perspective and what revenue neutral means but where we stand right now carter any redemption left in it no

Carter 1:05:09

no revenue neutral was always a bullshit kind of idea to begin with it was something that was was uh designed to say and you're not going to take any more money out of your pocket girl that's great isn't that exciting i'm not going to take more money out of my pocket but you're paying it the gst was also supposed to be somewhat revenue neutral because it was illuminating text yeah

Carter 1:05:29

yeah and and no one saw that because it didn't fucking matter because at the end of the day my i walked up to the cash register and it cost seven percent more seven percent more is not revenue neutral and that's the same way that we feel about this this tax i like the way that the ndp in alberta did it the ndp in alberta did it they basically said yeah we're we're gonna take the money and we're gonna going to spend it on things that buy us happiness and buy people and will buy their love doing things that that they will like and that's what this government should have done right from the get-go they should have just bought the love of the people cory

Zain 1:06:12

i'm going to start with you on this next one advice

Zain 1:06:14

advice and cautions is the theme two questions back to back first question advice Advice and cautions for Pierre Polyev, the Axe to Tax campaign. It seems like, Carter, you alluded to this. This is handing it over to Pierre Polyev. Corey, what advice would you have for him and what cautions would you have for him in this moment in time as he probably salivates at what is to come on this particular file?

Corey 1:06:40

Well, I don't know I have a lot of cautions at this particular moment. Obviously, you can overplay any hand, as Pierre Polyev often

Corey 1:06:47

often has shown us in the past, although recently he's been a little bit more controlled but

Corey 1:06:52

but yeah this is this is the time like all of those pre uh pre-planned events where you're going around saying ax the tax you've just been giving your narrative here and even justin trudeau realizes now what a terrible tax this has been but you know what's worse good people of uh pickering ontario good people of downtown edmonton wherever you are that you're talking and that you're on the offensive here he's decided that that he cares much more about buying votes in Atlantic Canada than treating Canadians the same coast to coast to coast and for shame on him. And it actually allows you to have, like one of the challenges the Axe the Tax campaign has always had, in my view, especially with younger demographics, is it's the moral low ground. It's that we don't want to act on the environment because it's expensive and it's making things hard for me. That's not moral high ground. Now you can wrap it in, I don't know how I'm going to make things work for my family. i'm just trying to get by this is making me all of a sudden in a precarious situation but it is you know grabbing that moral high ground isn't isn't innate for a lot of the audiences that pierre polyev wants and needs to connect to but

Corey 1:07:56

but it's pretty easy to understand they're buying votes in atlanta canada and you're getting screwed and that is moral high ground to say there's a problem with that the prime minister acknowledges this carbon tax is a challenge like We all agree about that now, apparently. But where he and I strongly differ is I believe it's a challenge as much in Alberta as it is in Halifax. I believe it's as much of a challenge in Ottawa as it is in St. John's. And so that all of a sudden opens up this whole other righteous lane for you if you're Pierre Polyev going out there.

Zain 1:08:30

Carter, your advice and your cautions for Pierre Polyev.

Carter 1:08:34

Well, I think my advice is a caution. my advice is don't take this as a victory lap uh remember this isn't about you this is about the people that you hope to serve so don't take this as a victory lap instead take this as a uh the beginning of a victory for the people of canada because you know they were always on the right side they

Carter 1:08:55

they were always on the right side oh

Zain 1:08:58

maybe that's one time i'm gonna ask

Zain 1:08:59

ask you in the why the fuck do we still do this uh not take victory laps i don't think you guys have ever ever given the advice, take a victory lap. And victory laps...

Carter 1:09:07

laps... Oh, no, I think I may have given myself that. Yeah,

Zain 1:09:10

Yeah, victory laps are often taken in races. Okay, Carter, I'm going to start with you on this one. Advice and cautions.

Zain 1:09:18

MPs from other regions, but specifically those that are liberal MPs.

Zain 1:09:25

Advice and cautions to them, how they process this. And we've seen issues in the last couple of months that have kind of fractured the liberal caucus. Gaza-Israel being an interesting one with the 22 MPs signing the ceasefire letter. This seems to produce that same opportunity, perhaps, if you want to call it that. So advice and cautions to them as it relates to that advocacy. And we could talk about the drive-by that Minister Hutchings gave to Alberta, Corey, as well during this part, our Alberta MPs. But what would you suggest to them in this moment of time where it's kind of being molded what the future looks like for this tax and for this signature policy going forward?

Carter 1:10:03

My advice would be don't take any fucking talking points from this PMO.

Carter 1:10:09

PMO. I mean, everything they're touching is turning toxic. And then the caution that would go with that would be don't think you can push out a prime minister and not suffer a consequence. So be very, very careful. But the talking points that are coming out, if you had more mlas or mps and more ministers then you'd be more heard i mean fuck george

Carter 1:10:33

george sahal's an mp he's not in fucking cabinet like what do we need to do here there's

Carter 1:10:39

there's just so much fucking stupidity from this government at this moment cory

Zain 1:10:44

cory advice and cautions on on this particular thing mps overall like where many of them will be like salivate

Zain 1:10:50

salivate i mean use that term again using this as an opportunity to say yeah the people of uh whatever my writing and whether whether it be in Ontario or BC or Alberta or Manitoba, also are hurting, Prime Minister. But specifically those in government. I'm kind of curious to hear your advice and cautions.

Corey 1:11:04

Well, I would imagine that there were KMs delivered. And I bet you the top of the list, like the overall key message that they want everybody out there saying is liberal MPs deliver. And I'm sure they created a list of regional projects that they could point to. So if, for example, you're George Shaw, you're like,

Corey 1:11:20

look at the millions invested in orphan well cleanup, that board look at the millions invested in this particular technology that's going to allow this particular outcome like carbon captures you know and sequestration right and everyone's going to have that list and it's all going to ladder up to this idea that liberal mps deliver where i think that the liberal party has gotten themselves in like the most serious of trouble and this is going to pay negative dividends for a very long time it's one of those lines that you just the minute i heard it or heard i didn't see it live but i heard of it i'm like that's an attack ad forever was this notion uh you know that you know the regional development minister is saying like well you know they should elect more liberal mps you know the liberal mps are what get it because you can see how they got there like liberal mps deliver we got a lot of liberal mps that's how we delivered so much so the problem with the other regions like almost

Zain 1:12:08

almost like they're not part of the government right like these

Zain 1:12:10

mps man they got in there and they told this government hey man

Zain 1:12:14

need this and then the government did it like the fuck man you're part of

Corey 1:12:17

government you almost needed to have like a line on that key message document that's like liberal mps deliver that's not that liberal mps don't fight for everybody but they really make sure that they deliver for their area but they clearly screwed that up and instead they left it feeling like it was a protection racket like oh it's a shame you don't have any liberal mps guess what happens to your province is gonna be pretty grim right and that and by the way like if you're saying hey having Having government MPs matters, that's a great argument to be voting for Pierre Polyev, basically everywhere based on the criticism polls.

Zain 1:12:51

can see how this morphed

Corey 1:12:52

morphed and twisted awful way from the Liberal MPs deliver key message. So you've got to make sure that people are a lot tighter and smarter about this. So I guess to get to your question in this extended lightning round, if

Corey 1:13:06

if you're George Chahal, if you're Randy Boissoneau, if you're any of the Liberal MPs elsewhere who might be feeling a little chafed about all this. You're bickering. you're in

Zain 1:13:12

in you're outside of ottawa

Corey 1:13:13

it doesn't even matter yeah right you're

Corey 1:13:16

you're not making the same mistake uh steven made a comment about like don't forget there's a consequence to this you know if you lose a liberal prime minister yeah

Corey 1:13:23

yeah that's true and you're you're on this ship and so don't don't follow a fuck up with a fuck up you know you'd say i'm really disappointed with my colleagues lines about that of course regardless of who you voted for this government's here for you as liberal mps we take pride in making sure that we are on the ground listening and delivering on those issues and here's the examples from my list from the key messages that's what i'm doing because there's no let's

Corey 1:13:48

let's put it this way if everybody starts fracturing and running away i mean then i actually revise my advice to stevens then it's over right like if the prime minister has that little authority over his caucus it's fucking over yeah

Zain 1:14:01

which leads me to my final question cory i asked you about redemption of revenue neutral answer me this redemption of the carbon tax i

Corey 1:14:10

mean it's just it's going to be a rebrand we're going to call it a carbon tax and it's going to apply to like nothing and we're going to have a bunch of incentive programs and we're effectively going to be in the american

Zain 1:14:18

american yeah i know that's your idea do you think actually that's where we're going or is this going to be a government that says fuck it this is legacy this is principle we're going to spend more capital we don't have on this i'm actually genuinely curious yeah like is there any redemption in the carbon tax after what happened on thursday well

Corey 1:14:33

well nothing Nothing in life is as good or as bad as you think it is. And I doubt that like the absolute final chapter on the carbon tax has been written. I'm sure that it will apply in many different ways. But I could easily see, especially a government looking at an election in 2025, them making additional tweaks, shall we say, to it now that they've opened that. And the question, it's kind of like George Washington's axe, right? You replace the handle, you replace the blade. Is it still George Washington's axe? You're just doing it bit by bit. i'm not sure it's going to look anything like it does today just based on the action or like i guess i mean a week ago based on the actions of this government but

Corey 1:15:11

but that doesn't mean there won't be something that's still called a carbon tax that exists in canada is

Zain 1:15:17

worth redeeming politically carter is

Carter 1:15:20

is it worth redeeming um yeah that's

Zain 1:15:22

that's a slightly different question i'll give cory a shot at that one too the

Carter 1:15:26

the so so if we go back to what cory was saying the the the point of the exercise was to actually reduce carbon emissions okay we forgot about that

Carter 1:15:36

you know they forgot

Carter 1:15:37

that so if if the if that's the point of the exercise i mean it may have been moving too slow in any case um and there's an argument to be made that incentives might be a faster and stronger way to do it so maybe

Carter 1:15:55

maybe it's time to to do away with the carbon tax and And instead bring in a highly subsidized, um, you know, push to, uh, reduce the amount of, uh, CO2. You know, I, I, Albertans

Carter 1:16:08

Albertans will lose their mind, but, um, if we didn't like the carbon tax, just wait until we start getting all the regulation. We're going to have a great time.

Zain 1:16:18

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1264 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belger. With me as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we will see you next time.

Zain 1:16:48

So my question is, if you're in the PMO tonight, you're Katie Telford, right? You're the prime minister. You're on the WhatsApp chat with the PMO. Someone pitches this idea, right? Either as a voice note, long form, whatever. As a chief of staff, am I just like being like, fuck it, let's actually do this? And of course, it's not gonna be that flip, but it's like, let's go. I think there's something here. Or do I have to like, you know, am I like responsible for generating these ideas? This is actually like more of a culture question than anything else. Yeah. or a division of labor question, but whose responsibility is to solve this issue?

Corey 1:17:28

I want to hear Carter's answer too, but I'll tell you, it really depends. And if you have a principal secretary or somebody who's supposed to be the tall forehead, then you probably test these things as a group. You run it up the flagpole to see if the prime minister immediately kills it or not. And if they don't, then

Corey 1:17:45

then you go work with the department and you try to put put something together but

Carter 1:17:48

but the problem is the the prime minister immediately killing it and this you know like so the idea let's be clear the idea does not come from the pmo right the the the

Zain 1:17:59

the prime minister from the pmo at all yeah

Carter 1:18:01

yeah the well from the pmo at all i mean these guys are running around like chickens with their heads cut off i mean uh and they've and they're tired and they've been there for a long time they didn't replace jerry butz there is no so okay so the question question is where

Zain 1:18:12

where will an idea like this come from if if cory's not hired by them

Carter 1:18:17

but it's got to come it's got to come from uh you know it's usually a young person who's who's reaching way above their station to come up with an idea and and then that young person or or that uh tall forehead as cory has described them uh carries it up and it it makes it through the ADM and it makes it through the DM and then it

Carter 1:18:42

it makes it through the chief of staff and ultimately onto the prime minister's desk. And the way that Corey just described it is the problem. It doesn't get killed by the chief of staff or the prime minister.

Carter 1:18:56

The chief of staff and the prime minister are mostly in the business of saying no, especially the chief of staff. So if this thing's actually going to happen, it requires such a lift, such a significant lift by others in in that space like this is a super costly investment for the for the government another signature policy and

Carter 1:19:17

and it's not coming from from the from the people who were there already so you

Carter 1:19:23

you know if we were thinking of this just as a as a exercise

Carter 1:19:27

exercise in you know uh organization yeah this type of thing has to come usually after a change in management Lee Iacocca is hired by the Chrysler board to be the new CEO. He brings in all the new ideas and some of them are great and some of them suck, but the new ideas are fostered

Carter 1:19:48

fostered and enabled by the change in management.

Zain 1:19:53

take on this too. yeah

Corey 1:19:55

i mean i think that's true for general operations it would really depend on if the the pmo had the same read as we do which is like holy fuck this is actually a pretty big problem for things that are maybe not even entirely manifest as we speak right but you have undercut your policy you've made this like unfair situation across the country that is going to create all sorts of ill will and funny ways that you don't even fully understand you're

Carter 1:20:23

aware of of them yet but you

Corey 1:20:23

you are but you are um you are increasingly aware that you fucked up right like and if it was that kind of situation i could see a prime minister saying

Corey 1:20:33

saying to their chief of staff i

Corey 1:20:34

i need solutions here not so different from what you did here on the podcast saying well fucking quit whining about it how do we get out of here right like what's the solution and then i could see that chief of staff pulling together a meeting of senior staff and saying no

Corey 1:20:51

no bad ideas is what are we going to do right now what are we thinking about anybody heard anything out there who are you talking to probably not even necessarily considered to be resolved at that moment but it's like we're going to talk now and we're going to talk again in six hours and i expect three ideas each from each of you in six hours and we're going to fucking figure out what the hell we're going to do here i

Carter 1:21:11

i can think of two times i've been in that meeting i

Corey 1:21:13

i can think of a couple myself and

Carter 1:21:14

and um one of them was on taxation strategies uh in the 2014 budget i think uh wound up being a three or like a multiple like an eight hour meeting really um where we were brainstorming and another time when we were trying to figure out electricity rates and i'll tell you i think on both of those counts we failed uh and

Carter 1:21:39

and we got lucky because we moved past the issue because because I think we froze electricity rates and we just ignored the fact that our taxes weren't paying for our revenues or our taxes weren't paying for the expenses. You know, what you're describing, though, it's so hard to do because you're already in your own groupthink, right?

Carter 1:22:03

right? Everybody's in their groupthink. I mean, obviously, it sounded like I was pretty critical of the prime minister's office. I am critical of the prime minister's office because I've been there and I know how hard it is to get out of that group I

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