Transcript
Annalise
0:01
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 12. Annalise, there's
Corey
0:04
there's no time. There's no time, Annalise. There's no time. There's
Corey
0:08
There's no time. We've got to talk about the country.
Carter
0:10
Yeah, the country's at stake, Annalise.
Corey
0:12
The country's falling apart, Annalise. We can't do it on a
Corey
0:18
looked at each other and decided... Actually, could you finish the intro, please?
Annalise
0:21
People need to know what
Corey
0:22
what episode this is. We have to get
Annalise
0:22
get going. 12.65, Stephen Carter's here, Corey Hogan's here. It's a Friday night, guys. How are you?
Corey
0:29
Well, pretty great. I think we should slow this down.
Corey
0:32
How are you doing?
Annalise
0:33
How was your Halloween?
Carter
0:36
Well, I had 20 kids. It was big. Nice. That's not
Corey
0:38
not a lot of kids, I got to tell you.
Carter
0:40
Isn't it? I got
Corey
0:41
got more kids than I was expecting. We usually get almost no kids. And that was not the case this year. And so my decision to start eating the candy the day before was starting to look pretty
Carter
0:53
Yeah, we almost ran out.
Annalise
0:55
have lots of kids. What do you do with their candy? once you like do you oh
Corey
0:59
oh i eat it yeah
Annalise
1:01
you know like parents nowadays do certainly like
Annalise
1:06
you you take it or you ration it or do you do like i know you're always into cool things like
Annalise
1:12
teaching them lifelong lessons like stealing
Carter
1:14
stealing from the children
Annalise
1:14
children is that what you're talking about do you do anything well
Corey
1:17
well no we just do that kind of standard i don't know if you're familiar with this there's this thing of the switch witch which kids do now so they get to have a certain amount amount of candy or their candy for a couple of days and then the switch witch takes the rest and leaves them like a stuffed animal or a toy and
Corey
1:34
this is not something that i'm that wild about because it's just part of that well
Corey
1:38
it's a general conversion of halloween from kids getting candy to parents buying candy for each other like we now just send our kids out to get candy which we then consume and
Corey
1:48
we give out candy to other kids that their parents are going to consume right we are are funding office sweet tooths everywhere uh with the activities of the modern switch which approach to halloween but the problem is there was an arms race in candy that occurred through the 90s and the aughts and all of a sudden every third fucking house is giving out a full-sized candy bar everybody is going so over the top even if they're giving kid size you're getting like three or four of them from each house and after like an hour after like an hour you've got like Like two
Corey
2:23
pillowcases, Che, man, it's where it's at. The kids have a good time in Che.
Annalise
2:26
Che. The good stuff's on the west side in Crescent Haze.
Corey
2:30
No, yeah, no, the west side's where you're going to get toothbrushes and oranges, folks. You stay in Che. No, the west side, they had an
Carter
2:35
an actual mini donut truck.
Carter
2:38
I almost went to it. Mini donuts,
Corey
2:41
not full-size donuts. You get full-size donuts in Che.
Corey
2:45
Listen, it's not a competition, but we're winning. point
Corey
2:50
halloween just it creates it creates candy surpluses and so parents have to deal with them by giving toys to their kids so their parents are thieves parents
Carter
2:58
parents are thieves you guys are thieves but
Annalise
3:00
but do you do like on um on election night you do that fun little voting thing like do you do any sort of like hey here's your candy tax or teaching them some sort of
Corey
3:09
of that that'd be such a great way to teach people about taxes like hey you
Corey
3:13
you know what also what services are you the most candy there's a progressive taxi you know candy tax right here so i'm taking 45 percent of all of your candy after the first i
Annalise
3:24
i don't know you
Annalise
3:24
100 pieces someone was gonna do it it might be true it does sound
Corey
3:27
sound like me but i didn't
Annalise
3:28
didn't do that no
Annalise
3:32
okay well now that we've chatted about halloween also
Annalise
3:35
also talk about the country's problems you
Corey
3:36
you can't use candy to
Corey
3:38
pay for road schools and hospitals the lesson would be incomplete they They would think of taxes
Corey
3:43
taxes as theft. They would grow up to become David
Corey
3:46
David Parker. David Parker, indeed,
Corey
3:49
Yeah, I think it's a problem. I just don't think you want to do that. All taxation is
Carter
3:51
is theft, says idiots.
Corey
3:56
You know, we live
Corey
3:57
live in a democracy. We have problems that are bigger than one person can afford to deal with. We pool our money. We collectively make decisions about how to spend it. This othering of government, as though it's this external force that takes things from us, that's a dictatorship. that's ridiculous that's not what we have in canada that's not what we have in most of the western world people
Corey
4:17
people need to grow up about taxes well
Carter
4:19
well you say that now but we haven't talked about david parker oh
Annalise
4:23
we'll get there guys we've got we've got lots to talk about we're gonna jump into our why did the show stall
Carter
4:27
stall what happened with the show we were going quick we
Corey
4:29
we started with some good energy our
Annalise
4:31
our first segment is called is it dead the
Annalise
4:35
the carbon tax guys oh
Corey
4:37
oh the the tax is
Annalise
4:38
is the carbon tax dead i know you guys have chatted about the recent heating oil exemption uh since it was announced you know that it doesn't apply to
Carter
4:45
to natural gas annalise i
Annalise
4:48
had no idea steven carter no idea
Annalise
4:52
uh there's been there's been some recent developments since you last recorded so i want to lay like a few different developments on the table and then there's many many angles we can dive into here first development scott moe um calling it unfair and saying the saskatchewan government government will stop collecting the federal carbon tax on natural gas in january unless the feds offer an exemption to saskatchewan another development trudeau has said there will be absolutely no further carbon tax exemptions there will be no more carve-outs um another development Parliament, Polyev has tabled a motion that will force all MPs to vote on whether the exception should be a policy. And another one today, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick at the federal finance minister, provincial finance minister meeting, they said they want the carbon tax axed.
Annalise
5:42
A whole bunch of different things going on. So what you're saying
Carter
5:47
saying is it's going great for Trudeau. Yeah.
Carter
5:49
Like, can I just cut
Annalise
5:50
cut to the chase?
Carter
5:51
chase? This is one of his best moves. Yeah,
Annalise
5:53
Yeah, this is savvy.
Annalise
5:54
Let's get into it, guys. like what i guess just top line thoughts and then and then about the development since since you've last talked about this topic and then like i want to get into that like is it dead and what were they thinking steven carter let's start with you well
Carter
6:10
well i mean i'm going to open it up with the law of unintended consequences now politics is often likened to a chess game right we we have to think multiple moves in advance and by thinking multiple moves in advance we we imagine what our our opposition will do where we'll imagine what canadians will respond with and then we know we can just by kind of game planning through this we
Carter
6:31
we know what the expected outcome will be what the problems might be and it would appear that in the prime minister's office they did none of that they did no how
Annalise
6:41
did they not do that i
Carter
6:42
i don't know annalise because when we talked about it last time we talked about how if you take just a few moments and you think about the strengths of the federal government the strength the number one strength of the federal government is its fiscal power it can send everybody a check i don't know if you're aware of this but we have this epidemic thing or this pandemic thing and everybody had to stay home and
Carter
7:01
and you know what the federal government did they sent us checks and it was great everybody got checks money came in it was fantastic then we had inflation blah blah blah who cares i'm talking about the checks the
Carter
7:12
the government can using its own own fiscal power just
Carter
7:16
just send people money i'm sorry you have to heat your house with oil boom here's a check no problem but instead they take their number one thing the number one thing that everybody hates not everybody hates but the opposition party hates and the carbon tax and they start fucking around with it and by fucking around with the carbon tax they open the door to every other person trying to play chess and let's be honest scott moe can't play chess and And yet he's beating the fucking prime minister at it. Okay,
Annalise
7:43
Okay, but so like, this is what I think people are having a hard time understanding. How did they not see this coming? Like, it's their signature policy. Corey, we'll bring you in.
Carter
7:54
Please, Corey, try and answer this. There's not
Corey
7:56
not a good answer to this, right? I keep thinking about that line in the movie, Dave, right? Antoine might not have expected Marcellus to react the way he did, but he had to expect a reaction. I don't know why the federal government seems so flat footed by the most obvious next steps possible. Hey, who's going to be pissed off about this? Hey, what that might they do? I mean, I'm floored. I'm truly floored that the next move was not some sort of Alberta Sovereignty Act reaction that was identical to Scott Moe's but done here in Alberta. I think that it shows enormous restraint and maturity that I didn't know that we could do here in Alberta. And then
Corey
8:33
then it was also incredibly foreseeable that this would not be fundamentally satisfying for people in Atlantic Canada. And while the governments you mentioned are maybe not natural friends of the Trudeau government, you had to expect that too. You had to expect that these conservative governments who weren't going to do the carbon tax in the first place were then going to say, this is insufficient, and you'd have a bunch of critics who were rallying opposition and reinforcing your opponent's messages right there on the ground. And it blows my mind that the Liberals seemed so lost on this particular issue before it even began.
Corey
9:09
It's a good reminder that sometimes staying the course is
Corey
9:12
is pigheadedness, and sometimes we're pigheaded for a reason. it
Carter
9:17
like to think that there's some uh staffer in the prime minister's office who is just walking around like a peacock because you know she was the one who said uh this
Corey
9:26
this is a really
Carter
9:27
really dumb idea i don't think we should do this and uh everybody's like oh come on now this is going to work out great this is going to be fine she's like no what about this this and this and they're like no this is this is going to be great and she's you know basically had the whole thing blow up and now she's just walking around going told you it was going to blow up told you it was going to blow up uh
Carter
9:47
uh which is right you know the next day usually you get fired um so not that i have any experience in those types of but
Annalise
9:56
like it does talk
Annalise
9:58
talk to me about what those conversations behind the seat like does this just speak to what a bubble you can be in when you work in
Annalise
10:06
in in you You know, politics and federal politics that no one in the room like put up their hand and said, hey, let's let's let's think this one through.
Carter
10:17
Well, this is the fatal flaw of almost every government,
Carter
10:20
By the time you get to this long into the into the mandate, right, you're you're in your third election or your third government period. You've you've gone through the A team, the B team, the C team. Now you're on the D team and the D team is, you know, they're good people. they're super smart but one of the reasons that they got to be the d team is that they never said no to the c team and they never said no to the b team and they never said no to the a team right so the
Carter
10:46
the d team comes in and they've never said no that's how they got it they got the job they're oh that was a great idea you know what that dan arnold's a great guy oh katie you're so good jerry jerry i love you jerry man you're the best that's how they got the job that's how they got the job and then they go then it comes along and trudeau or someone says you know what we should do
Carter
11:10
this carbon tax which doesn't really add very much money to everybody's heating bills but we're going to pretend that it does and we're going to pretend that a cut to it is really going to be meaningful to people so
Carter
11:20
so that's what we're going to do that's how we're going to win votes in the in atlantic canada let's
Carter
11:25
let's go for it and the d team who's never said no to nothing said oh
Carter
11:30
oh that's a a great idea that's
Carter
11:32
that's how it happens and i'm not even joking like people surround themselves with sycophants so quickly so
Annalise
11:38
so so where what do you do from here like what do you do behind carter you you can speak to this what do you do behind the scenes when it is the the d team and you've you've like screwed up it's been a week it's been one bad story after another now now how do you get out of this well
Carter
11:58
well i mean in this let's move from this specific incident incident because i'm not sure i have the answer for this specific incident but i and i will move it to another thing and the way to get out of this is to change the channel and normally what we try to do is change the channel back to something that's more positive right um but you
Carter
12:19
you know um trump has taught us actually that you can actually do something else that's stupid that everybody will will draw everybody's attention away and won't be as stupid as this so a channel changer to something that is more stupid or that is stupid but not this stupid might be in order right but at this particular moment um
Carter
12:41
um these guys are like i
Carter
12:43
i think the only like i don't i can't think of a good channel changer the
Carter
12:47
the only way to get off that was going to
Annalise
12:48
to be my next question what what is your what's the channel change that's stupid, but not as stupid.
Carter
12:54
I would imagine that a channel
Carter
12:57
channel changer might be a staffing change, a
Carter
12:59
a significant staffing change. A channel changer might be uncovering an MP who's done something horrible and kicking them out of caucus. I think that those types of things would be negative channel changes that might be big enough to take us off of this.
Annalise
13:15
Corey, what's your take? When you've dug the hole this deep, what do you do next?
Corey
13:22
Well, we talked a little about this last episode, but you've got to sit there and you've got to take inventory of what your actual problem is, because it is very easy in the situation that Stephen outlined. And let's be clear, we don't know what the conversations were. For all we know, even
Corey
13:37
even a majority of the staffers were like, this is a bad idea, and here's the 22 reasons why this is a bad idea.
Carter
13:44
There's one woman walking around saying how smart she is. that
Corey
13:48
that is that is specific enough it makes me wonder if you do know but i know
Carter
13:52
know everything but the
Corey
13:53
the uh you know when you when you get to that next day you actually have to avoid the i told you so's you have to avoid the recriminations and
Corey
14:03
and what you need to do is you need to work the problem in front of you unless you happen to have a time machine you are where you are and you've got to figure out how you get to where you want to be and so identify what your actual problems are who Who are the stakeholders you need to get back on side? Who are the stakeholders you're not so worried about? What are the policy issues at play? However you want to break it up, you've got to break it up into a series of manageable tasks, knowing that even though you fucked this up in one swing, you are not likely to be able to rebuild this with one act. And so maybe it requires a certain approach in Saskatchewan and a different approach in the Maritimes and a different approach still in Ontario and Alberta. murder. And you've got to look at the various constituencies you're trying to keep on side or not. Maybe you actually don't give a flying fuck if you're fighting with Scott Moe because it plays for some of your strengths elsewhere, but you are quite worried about the Ontario situation or you're quite worried about the Maritimes. You've got to break it into a series of actions, right? And a series of... You've
Corey
15:03
You've got to create a theory of what's going on and how you're going to get out of it. And that does actually require you to be pretty clear-eyed about it all and uh and to look at the problems in front of you and not just see it as one
Corey
15:12
one big insurmountable thing that you're all going to panic about
Carter
15:17
i don't know panic seems pretty viable to me right now
Annalise
15:22
so let's uh let's talk about some of these specific things trudeau saying there will be absolutely no more exemptions no more yeah he's
Corey
15:29
he's lying yeah he's a good good
Annalise
15:30
good idea bad idea like Like, why come out and say that?
Corey
15:34
Well, he has to. But I also feel like he shouldn't have, maybe paradoxically here. I think in general, you want to avoid absolute statements in politics because they're a way to look absolutely stupid.
Corey
15:48
You go out there, you say, I'm never going to do X. Some crazy edge case comes up that requires you to do like the most modest version of X. And people are going to throw that in your fucking face for the rest of your life. Yeah,
Carter
16:01
Yeah, read my lips, no new taxes. And
Corey
16:03
And so now he has said no new carve-outs.
Corey
16:06
If he even just tinkers with some sort of like very small part of the program going forward, people are going to say, ah-ha-ha, I got you, you know, here you are. but to go back where i started here he kind of had to say it because the whole way these carbon taxes work is they modify behavior by acting as that price signal and you have to be able to expect that in the future that carbon tax will be there if it's going to modify your behavior right you can't have canadians saying well i'm not actually going to upgrade my furnace because i think that they're going to buckle and that this is going to be exempt from the carbon tax in the next bit if that's what they think they're not going to modify their behavior as a result they're not going to take what are in some cases expensive upgrades that pay over the long term if they think six months from now that tax is going to be gone anyhow so
Corey
16:55
so he didn't really have a choice but it does leave him in like the least sustainable position ever in politics which is the position of never or always because you never you always end up regretting the nevers could
Annalise
17:09
could he have come come out like strong as you're saying he should have without using an absolute i
Corey
17:16
mean then it wouldn't have been strong that's the box he put himself in by doing this he
Carter
17:22
he he he's really in trouble because there is no uh half-assed way to get out of this that's why it's a channel changer not just an explanation out right you got it you're losing on this issue this issue is not something that canadians are looking at and saying well i think that they've really managed this well except for the communications problem um
Carter
17:41
um you know canadians are looking at this and saying well i thought
Carter
17:44
thought we had a carbon tax i thought it was meaningful but i guess it's not meaningful for those guys that group because everybody else is still subjected to it so um now telling everybody they don't you know this was the only carve out i'm going to do you you're just digging yourself into a deep big bigger and deeper hole and one of the first rules is you know when you're in a hole stop digging um the now the way to stop digging is in fact to say you know we're not going to do this anymore but him
Carter
18:15
him he's just he's just screwed on that message that message is just it's not going anywhere so how do you get yourself um out of that spot i mean it's going to be super difficult for for the prime minister to do so okay
Annalise
18:31
okay so back to the kind of i've asked a bunch but i will continue need to ask it do the like do you when when someone has this idea of hey let's introduce this exemption do you play it out like do you should you like what oh yeah what is missing that didn't happen that they didn't expect they would be in this position a week later
Carter
18:51
well i just i mean what's missing is the the everybody's sitting down and saying okay um what
Carter
18:57
what would you do like who's the oppo team so one of the things that you would normally do in this type of situation is ask your team to divide itself into two one group is going to talk about all the good reasons to do it and one group is going to talk about all the bad reasons to do it and that oppo team should be coming in and showing them okay you
Carter
19:16
know what's the your first move right the oppo team should be saying okay i'm going to think like pierre pauliev what's pierre pauliev going
Carter
19:23
say when this happens or what's who are our various stakeholders who are against us in this so one of the things we do is we draw up lists of stakeholders who are for it how are we all going to get them on side it appears no one took that step right like i'm not seeing cory maybe you're seeing it but i'm not seeing a great uh
Carter
19:41
uh group of people coming forward and saying no this is the best idea ever like the environmental groups aren't running out and saying oh we we finally agree with justin trudeau on something um so there are no group of stakeholders that agree
Carter
19:54
know the negative side should have the list of stakeholders that are going to be aggrieved by this it's going to be provincial policy i mean i cannot believe the municipal politicians aren't jumping all over this right now i'm actually stunned that we're not seeing more out of municipal politicians but they've got lots of things to fight about and maybe they're being uh placated by the housing uh piece of the housing money but this is this
Carter
20:17
this you should always have an oppo team within your within your own strength within your own policy group and it would appear here that that
Carter
20:24
they just don't you keep asking us how this happened but the truth is we don't know because we haven't seen something well something this stupid um for quite some time you
Corey
20:36
you know it's interesting you say that steven because i actually think one of the reasons why people like you and i and other political pundits out there who have worked in politics are so offended
Corey
20:47
offended by this is is is actually even beyond the policy. It's kind of like the malpractice that clearly underlines an action like this. You know, what you talk about, the idea of like an oppo team, you know, we've called them red teams or blue teams in the past, depending on, you know, where you are, what your politics are, right? You do that for big things, not small things. So as you're talking, even, it makes me wonder, like, did they not realize this was a big thing? Like, that's one of the things that I kind of contemplate. But to answer or to build on what Stephen was talking there in in terms of like what fell down or what would you normally do yeah i'll tell you literally everything that goes through community government has a communications plan maybe it's one page maybe it's 100 it's probably not 100 that'd be a fucking terrible comms plan but the
Corey
21:36
the basic sections i can tell you at the government of alberta is not all of them and maybe it's changed a bit in phraseology over the time is key messages sure makes sense counter messages anticipated counter messages and rebuttals to those counter messages including proof points right mitigations so what are you doing to try to manage the downsides that people are complaining about because you want to make sure the comms plan is not just trying to solve things with words but actually looking at some of the policy levers that might be available because what ends up happening is you'll have like a a communication.
Corey
22:09
And that communication will then get a counter message that's about a very specific thing. And rather than just talking back to it, you've preemptively thought about the mitigations that you're going to create. You'd have anticipated stakeholder reaction, you would have who is responsible for managing each stakeholder, you would have audience specific messages, you might have stakeholder specific messages, and you would have the research that's necessary, as well as ways you would evaluate performance as it goes through. And you've probably i mean you've seen this and you
Annalise
22:37
you worked for the government this is my point right like and i i think this is why i'm having such a hard time understanding it is like having worked briefly in provincial like on the the justice minister side i've
Annalise
22:51
i've seen dozens of those comps plans i've i've helped write them and just on the comp side you're always thinking worst case like Like, how, how did this get through?
Carter
23:03
Well, every government makes mistakes. I mean, like everybody, everybody makes mistakes. Yeah.
Carter
23:09
And so, you know, the problem with this particular government isn't that this is just another mistake. I mean, this is another mistake in a long line of mistakes. It's just that it's the same mistake. Now, of course, it's not the same mistake in that they'd done the carbon tax before. for it's the same mistake insofar as they still don't understand crisis and they don't understand crisis communications they don't seem to recognize when they're going into it and they don't seem to be able to figure out how to get out of it it's therefore it feels like we lurch from communications crisis to the communications crisis and that is why you know it it feels so tenuous um and that's why i mean i've i've reached the conclusion that there is no way out of this the only way out of this is a resignation from the principal and
Carter
23:53
and every once in a while you
Carter
23:55
you will get to an issue that is so big you will get to a mistake that is so big that you know you have to take all the other potential remedies off the table and consider the
Carter
24:06
the resignation of the principal as the um
Carter
24:09
um you know the last the last measure that's available to the team and i think that that's you
Carter
24:16
you know i said it i I said it on the last podcast and I would say it to Justin Trudeau's face. I'm sorry you've made this many, you know, I'm sorry you did this, but there's a, you know, here's the consequence now because the consequence, these
Carter
24:29
these consequences are real. Corey,
Annalise
24:30
Corey, you want to say something?
Corey
24:32
Yeah. Part of why this feels like such a tenuous thing to do, such a reactive thing to do, such a head scratching thing to do is
Corey
24:39
is because of the bigger problem that the liberals have, which is nobody is quite sure what they're planning to run the next election on. And I don't mean in like a specific policy on Tuesday sense. I mean, what is the Liberal Party planning to be? And we've talked about this literally dozens of times over the past year, right?
Corey
24:57
These things need to be parts of a story, and they need to be thinking about the story that they want to tell at the next election. And when you have one day this action and four weeks earlier, a mutually exclusive action in the other direction, it creates this sense of like, even if this makes sense based on their strategy that nobody can sort of seem to figure out from a distance, that's problematic for them. because right now it's just looking like a government in total scramble mode. I actually think you can get away with reversing a great number of things if you are consistently reversing them towards one story and kind of one foundational objective. But what we're seeing from this government is not that. We're seeing selective reversals. We're seeing decisions sometimes to retreat, decisions sometimes on the same topic to run into the wall in front of them. And as a result, like, it's hard to say that there's any strategy to this whatsoever. And when there's no strategy, that's when you kind of assume panic.
Annalise
25:54
Okay, so let's talk about the Saskatchewan Scott Moe piece of this. What
Annalise
26:00
What do you think of the strategy that he's going with by saying, hey,
Annalise
26:05
Saskatchewan, directing the government, the Crown Corporation to ask energy to stop collecting the federal carbon tax on natural gas? Corey, what do you think of this strategy?
Corey
26:17
Well, I think it's horrible that we have provinces actively saying we're not going to follow the law, no matter how irritated they are. I would have actually felt much better with it if they're like, that's outrageous. We're not going to make our people pay that. And so that's going to be something that we're going to deal with the feds. But to put Sask Energy in that situation, to kind of flout the law, I think is a problematic stance for any premier to take. And it's part of a growing and worrying trend with Scott Moe, I think, in terms of just not actually thinking that these things apply to him. And so he'll use a notwithstanding clause if he has it. And clearly, he's not even limiting himself to kind of the emergency release valves of our legal framework. He's just now breaking the law. And that's a real problem for me. uh i do
Corey
27:03
do also think it's interesting that this was only an option available i was saying earlier i'm shocked that alberta didn't do it but the the main reason i think alberta didn't do it is we don't have a crown corporation for energy right and i think um it's fascinating to me that we are now seeing free
Corey
27:20
free market conservatives start to use socialized crown corporations to to make these And I wonder if it's not going to have some interesting effects and some longer-term policy impacts. I've already heard people here in Alberta say, well, maybe we need options that provide X, Y, or Z, and this might just include that or ramp up that talk.
Annalise
27:43
Carter, what do you think of the Saskatchewan strategy? I
Carter
27:46
think that's the Saskatchewan strategy. I agree with everything that Corey said, but I would just add that it's entirely predictable. Scott
Carter
27:54
Scott Moe. I mean, my very first reaction was, does this apply to my natural gas heating bill? Oh, my God, it doesn't. um and and every everything one of the things that i have talked about one of my consistent themes is the electorate is selfish and that selfishness need if you play to it as a politician it of course limits you but also it's it's a recognition that the electorate puts
Carter
28:21
puts themselves first um i think that that might be if a feature not a bug from our system um um but regardless of whether it's a feature or bug we can have that philosophical discussion some other day but the truth is that scott moe knows that they're selfish and they're saying well why am i not getting my uh trick-or-treat too and so by doing this it's good politics cory's raised an excellent point about you know the the the flaunting of the law which is i think modestly problematic um but you
Carter
28:55
you know scott moe doesn't give a shit about that he he's he's a grandstanding um you
Carter
29:00
you know clown really and he's and there he is he's he's another another in a long line of uh grandstanding clowns out of uh saskatchewan um my favorite of course being brett wilson just
Corey
29:13
just red catching strays here uh look i think that one of the things that is really fascinating about this is that for many many people despite the fact that he is breaking the law and jeopardizing kind of the framework of this country. I know that's going to sound very over the top to some people, but I don't believe it is. He's got the moral high ground in a lot of people's minds because we've got a federal government that looks like it's treating citizens very selectively based on where they live. Like, this is really the worst kind of policy that the feds brought in. Like, we've talked about the reactions, but kind of from a more fundamental point of view, they are geographically targeting and
Corey
29:54
and pretending they're not because they're saying oh no no this is about heating oil right well very convenient only used in one region of the country in any kind of significant and
Corey
30:04
and it's not like heating
Carter
30:04
heating expenses haven't gone up across the country on all kinds of different things yeah
Carter
30:08
you know electricity expenses are you know quadrupled in alberta now that's in part due to our government's policies but nonetheless it's expensive you know our government's policies it's not entirely our fault that we elect oh yeah i guess it is our fault that we like never mind bad point okay but
Annalise
30:26
but but all all of all of these points and like carter you saying that what scummo was doing is predictable come back to the question that i keep asking and i guess maybe just are you gonna expect a different answer this
Annalise
30:39
but like but to cory's point those you know those people on the just on the calm side who are doing the counter messaging and saying like hmm this is one region how are the the other regions gonna gonna react like you guys both like carter genuinely you just think this was a d team and they didn't think steps ahead on this well
Carter
30:59
well i well can you think of anything else annalise i mean you're you're i'm
Annalise
31:03
i'm asking the question oh
Carter
31:04
oh you chicken shit you chicken shit no
Carter
31:08
no there's no there's there there is no other explanation other than someone the government made a huge mistake and didn't seem to think more than two steps in advance well
Corey
31:18
well look i think they expect so i do wonder if they knew it was going to be as big somehow and that would be a huge mistake that would be misreading it if they thought that they could just be like oh this is a small thing nobody's gonna notice west of miramichi like that's just not gonna happen right but
Corey
31:34
i i you know i i continue to think they must have anticipated a reaction just didn't
Corey
31:40
when did they think was gonna happen when they announced it was
Carter
31:42
was a triumph right
Carter
31:43
right like they're not announcing this This is a week, you know, as a, as a comedown, this
Carter
31:47
this was something they were going to do to help people. This was them coming forward to help us. This was them riding in on their trusty steed, you know, and then getting bucked off and being thrown into the water.
Corey
31:57
how else, how else do you possibly like, it
Corey
32:01
it seems ridiculous, of course, but how, what are you going to sit there and be like, oopsie, you know, we fucked this one up. No, you're going to pretend it's like, you're going to do everything they did stand up and And say, this is your government delivering for you, even though it's absurd because it's protecting people from the government, right? Yeah, I mean, like all of it is ridiculous, but there's not really any other way to do that once you've decided to do that than say, we're proud of it and it shows a response of government. And
Carter
32:27
And returning to Scott Moe, I mean, making Scott Moe the hero in this particular story, it's just staggering to me that they've given that opportunity away. way you know like some
Carter
32:37
some people just are unable to think of okay who's the you know who's the hero who's the villain if there isn't a hero am i the villain you know am i the bad guy um maybe i'm the drama see that's a cultural reference to tiktok cory um okay thank
Corey
32:58
what's your what's your for you page looking like these days by the way um
Carter
33:03
okay. I'm down on thirst traps, which is good, but apparently all I am getting is the Kelsey brothers. So the Kelsey brothers are 80% of my feed right now.
Corey
33:14
I have follow-up questions, but I'll take them after the show. We
Annalise
33:17
We got to stream your feed at some point, Carter. No, we're not doing that. We are. We've talked about it before. We're doing it. Yeah, we're going to do it. uh
Annalise
33:26
what about poly of what do you think of kind of how he's um how he's playing this and what what he should be doing right now with kind of this gift that has been handed to him
Corey
33:37
it's a gift you know and he doesn't need to do an awful lot in order to get credit for it at this point and he certainly sees the initiative and talked about how this is uh this is this is now a government on its death's door and he said we should have an election on the carbon tax good Good luck on that. I don't think the government's going to play ball on that particular matter here. But of course, all he needs to do now is sort of perpetuate it and put his political, maybe not even primary opponents, but like tertiary and secondary opponents into difficult situations, doing things like the motions that he's brought forward here. And he gets people on the record. He creates discomfort within their coalitions. And yeah, I mean, that's good opposition work here. This motion that the Conservatives brought forward that's going to have NDP support, or at least it was going to when I was looking at it earlier,
Corey
34:29
that's got to be uncomfortable in the NDP caucus. And that's got to be uncomfortable with a lot of NDP voters. voters and things
Corey
34:35
things like that are just like no loss if you're a guy like pierre polly f because either one of three outcomes is going to happen either they're going to stand united in favor of the carbon tax which is great for you they're going to stand united opposed to it which is great for you because it makes an election more likely or it's going to split them into fucking splinters which is great for you so i mean one of the things that he has to his advantage right now that not even the liberals have anymore inexplicably is clarity on this issue they know exactly where they stand they are a hundred percent opposed to it and that is causing him to have all sorts of options available to him that the ndp don't have the liberals apparently don't have as we've seen from their retreat on heating oil here i
Corey
35:22
i mean this is just ground he can do nothing but win on at this point so of course he's going to stay on it as much as humanly possible
Annalise
35:29
Kate, what about, Carter, what do you think of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick coming out today saying that they want the carbon tax axed?
Carter
35:37
Well, I think that, you know, I think that it's, again,
Carter
35:41
a relatively predictable outcome. The challenge for me is what do you want instead, right? And no one's asking that question because the federal government's on its back foot and the provincial governments aren't inclined to help the feds out here. um you're not seeing doug ford ride to the rescue you know i mean who would we even expect to jump in on this uh the the the bc
Carter
36:04
bc ndp aren't aren't inclined to save justin trudeau from his own nightmare so because there there's no other allies because there's no one else who's going to you know run into the rescue here i just think this this is kind of just a i
Carter
36:20
mean i've said i just just keep saying it's a predictable outcome and i just think that you know pierre pauliev's
Carter
36:26
positioning is so strong and everybody's just going to watch him do his thing and not take any big stands because they don't want to get hit in the head well
Annalise
36:35
well and you continue to say it's predictable just keep coming back to my question so i we can end this segment we'll end with one question which is what i started with is it dead do you think have the liberals destroyed their signature policy it
Corey
36:50
was probably dead either way after the next election based on the current state of polling uh i just didn't think it was going to die such a such a graceless death right at this point it looks like even if the liberals win it's not going to be there anymore and i and you know i there's just no it doesn't exist in its same form anymore even with this carve out which many people would argue is modest the reality is now people think differently about this entire program and project and it's going to require additional modifications like if they've done nothing else if you want to give like the most charitable read maybe there's polls in atlanta canada that say atlanta canadians love this and they flock back to the liberals and they're fucking geniuses and the rest of the country is idiots for not seeing the political savvy here even
Corey
37:36
even if you want to say this they
Corey
37:38
they have destroyed the rationale for the tax or at least uh not the rationale but the the communications for it which was you get more than you give with the carbon tax most of the time nobody's going to believe that anymore they have gone out and they have created a program they've created a carve-out to save people from the tax that they said actually left them better off financially that's fucked it's over like at the very least they're going to need to create additional financial supports they're going to have to parachute in money they're going to have to create more carve-outs they're going to bring in regulations they're going to create new incentive programs to save you from the tax that they previously said you did not need to be saved from is
Annalise
38:20
is it dead carter don't
Carter
38:21
don't only is it dead justin trudeau's dead right justin trudeau's days as leader are over in two years there's there's so there's only two ways that this is going to go right justin
Carter
38:33
justin trudeau leaves before the next election and puts someone in and a new liberal leader kills the carbon tax and brings in uh regulation and and uh incentives um which is fine you know we can still solve climate change by taking strong action in different ways um
Carter
38:52
the other way is that he loses the election pierre poliev kills the carbon tax and uh he has to resign as the liberal leader uh i mean he's gonna his exit's gonna make jim prentice look like he stuck stuck around to the bitter end you know so it's
Carter
39:07
it's it's just going to be a very quick exit for that guy when the election's held and well
Carter
39:11
well i mean you
Carter
39:12
see projections right now like he's not even in the ball game okay
Annalise
39:18
let's leave that segment there guys and move on to another topic our favorite topics i
Carter
39:22
i thought we would just stay on that we could
Annalise
39:25
could i could continue to ask why don't you ask because I
Carter
39:28
I still don't get it. Why or how
Annalise
39:29
how did this happen?
Annalise
39:31
Guys, Alberta Pension Plan, finance ministers, they met today virtually.
Annalise
39:36
Federal Finance Minister Christia Freeland said a few headlines came out of the meeting. She said that Alberta would need to negotiate international agreements if it quits the CPP. She also said that she's asked the chief actuary to determine Alberta's share of CPP, which is something Alberta has been asking for.
Annalise
39:57
want your guys' take on this. I guess, Carter, just the fact that this meeting happened in the first place and that it was about the Alberta pension plan with, I think, kind of that saying,
Annalise
40:07
saying, like, this is all we're talking about. I know others wanted to talk about the carbon tax there. And she's like, no, we're just talking about Alberta.
Carter
40:14
Yeah, I mean, I think that's actually a really smart play. I think focusing on the problem child is pretty wise. uh no one else is it feels particularly strongly or positively about this this isn't a good thing for other provinces um and it creates um challenges for the for the provincial government in in it creates a common enemy i guess and the common enemy is danielle smith and her government also we learned that by putting in specific rules about what how these things are supposed to go helps the federal government. It helps the country. So whether it was the Clarity Act or some other vehicle talking about how future referendums are going to be managed, this is going to be a referendum. It's a provincial referendum, but nonetheless, it's not all that much different than the separation one, except that you're not leaving Canada. You're just leaving a fiscal instrument. instrument nonetheless uh there should be questions as to which act should govern the the referendum should it be governed by the feds or should it be governed by the provinces these are all things that need to be talked about at the um government levels at the at the political levels and starting early i mean this
Carter
41:33
this our government's not saying when they're going to bring this to referendum or even if they're going to um it's right now just kind of uh a political hot potato. So I think it's pretty good that the feds jumped on it and are starting to take actions.
Annalise
41:50
So on that note, one of the pieces I was reading today said, which this was new to me, maybe you guys knew this, Smith has recently said she won't go ahead with a referendum until governments or the courts deliver a hard number on how much Alberta gets if they leave. Corey, talk to me about the strategy. I know Horner's been asking for a while for like this hard number. There was the commitment today to get the hard number like talk to me about the strategy of what that hard number from the feds um should or or could or will look like well
Corey
42:23
well this is one of those interesting things because she can say she's you know freeland can say she's reached out to the chief actuary to get a number but this is not like a
Corey
42:32
a spreadsheet you just go boop and like the number comes out There are so many interpretations
Corey
42:37
interpretations of the act that are on the table. And so I think this is one of the interesting challenges. This is part of why the government came up with its rather absurd calculation, or LifeWorks did, that, lest we forget, it actually originally calculated that Alberta should get more than the entire value of CPP based on the formula. And then said, but that seems crazy. So we're just asking for half, you know, like really great
Corey
43:03
great defensible argument there, guys. But there
Corey
43:07
there is interpretation and interpretation and interpretation. And the chief actuary is going to have to ultimately make some political decisions or provide a list of like a million permutations here. And I'm actually not sure that that necessarily serves the federal government. Although, if the chief actuary came back with a number that was super low and said, I just put it in the spreadsheet, and this is what you're owed, Alberta, maybe that does. But that, you know, I'm curious to see what the next move is here. I worry this is the chess of the federal government once again, where they're not necessarily thinking all of the moves ahead. Because play this out a tiny bit.
Annalise
43:44
Yeah, do that. Play it out. Yeah,
Corey
43:46
Yeah, federal government comes back with a number.
Corey
43:49
Let's say that number for fun is 150
Corey
43:53
150 billion. Like it's still more than you would think based on our proportion of like input in because of all of the various calculations there.
Corey
44:02
Well, that might actually be enough to give Danielle Smith what she needs, which is to say, okay, well, now I can run a less bullshit laden campaign for an Alberta pension plan. Because if I ignore any of the challenges with risk, and if I just keep narrowly focused on like the year that we're in, what contributions could be like, maybe I can tell a story about this Alberta pension plan leaving more money in Albertans pockets. And it allows her to sort of reframe things and get out of the box that she put herself in, which is this absolutely absurd number, which
Corey
44:33
which I think was a problem for her and a bit of malpractice in communications because it just became unbelievable. believable well now the feds have provided a believable number like it might still be fake what the provincial government comes back on but it might be a believable number or
Corey
44:48
or maybe that number comes in even lower and it can't actually provide all of the magic and ice cream and unicorns that we've been promised by the provincial government and now the provincial government has what they probably want more than a pension plan which is a fight right like a fight with the government saying this is unfair once again you're being unfair show your work i'll see you in court and
Corey
45:07
and maybe they managed to convert this issue entirely and just sort of walk away from it but not walk away from it and change the ground that they're on i
Corey
45:16
don't know i mean i'm not quite sure my big concern is this is all happening a little early like if this is a if this
Corey
45:23
this is a referendum that in best case scenario is going to be in 2025 the feds are going to come out with a number now and
Corey
45:29
and the conservative uh government here in alberta has like years to deal with that number Yeah,
Carter
45:35
Yeah, but the number's not going to come out. I'm not sure that tactically
Annalise
45:38
The number's going to come out later. How soon do you think it comes out, Carter?
Carter
45:43
I think it would take six to eight months for the number to come out.
Carter
45:49
How long did LifeWorks take to write this report?
Corey
45:53
I doubt it took them that long to come up with the number. Well,
Carter
45:55
Well, it's because they were throwing dice to get the number. I mean, it wasn't like it was a real number, but
Annalise
46:01
nonetheless. Just pause on that. You genuinely think six to eight months before the feds give a number?
Carter
46:06
Absolutely. There's a lot of complications that have to go in there. There's consultations that need to happen with other provincial finance ministers. The feds can't just come up with a number and say, this is the number. The feds have to go through a whole bunch of different steps because everybody is invested in the number in a way that no one was invested in Alberta's number, right? No one really cared what Alberta's number was. Or Alberta didn't care what anybody else thought. The feds have to go through a whole bunch of discussions about all the variables, all the assumptions, and that's going to take, it's going to take a long time to chat with each of those people to come up with the methodology by which this number is going to be calculated.
Carter
46:50
Because this is complicated.
Corey
46:52
I don't. I think that might have been the case if Freeland said, yeah, we'll go get you a number. But what she did is she said, I'm going to go get the chief actuary to get a number. and that is ultimately math at the end of the day that's it's kind of why you go to an actuary is
Carter
47:06
is based on a common understanding of variables and this is not going to have a common understanding of variables well
Corey
47:12
well and maybe that's the answer maybe the chief actuary's response is this is really fucking complicated these eight million things need to be figured out so you're going to have to go talk to everybody under the sun and actually if that's their strategy it's not a bad one i'll say that but let's hope that is their strategy because otherwise i'm worried this number will come out too quickly. And, and it just gives like too much, too much space for the Conservatives to regroup and, and turn the page on, you know, the very challenging number
Corey
47:42
number they provided for themselves with that 334 billion.
Annalise
47:47
Carter, let's, let's play that out. Do you think they come back and say,
Annalise
47:51
we don't yet have a number because we have to do all this other work first? Yeah,
Carter
47:55
Yeah, I think that it's going to embark on a process. That process is going to be articulated. And then as they move through the process, they will give periodic updates. We're currently discussing with the premiers or the finance ministers, what the various variables should look like and how they're commonly understood. And we anticipate the following challenges and the following questions. And we'll have a fulsome answer sometime in 2024. 24 so
Annalise
48:24
so do do you think smith has a number to your point cory if if the numbers you know half like it's that whole kind of low expectations if she sets a number really high and they come back with do you think she has like a set number of like yeah as long as it's this around
Annalise
48:40
around this or more uh then we go to referendum like that that the provincial government knows kind of what they're looking for well
Corey
48:48
well i'm sure she has a number but i doubt it's the number we're getting from the the government it's the number of albertans that support this thing and whether she thinks she can move them and
Corey
48:57
and so where she might run into trouble is if the government of canada comes back with a number and she says oh yeah we can work with that and we're not changing any of our promises and then people might rightly say well hold on you you based that originally on 334 billion now we're talking about half that much money and you still say we can get all of that and it might further call into question the numbers. So it's not as though she's got a totally like open field here. But I do think what she
Corey
49:26
she needs to desperately do, and I suspect is part of the strategy that the UCP has, is mix
Corey
49:32
mix up this conversation on Alberta pension plan, which right now is
Corey
49:37
is orbiting around this star called ridicule. Like people just do not believe the numbers that that are there there is deep cynicism and skepticism there is this you
Corey
49:48
you know almost guffawing reaction from people when you're like yeah and alberta thinks it should get half of the you know the the canada pension plan that's
Corey
49:56
that's that is not the stuff of dreams but if you can get out of that if the feds can help you out of that box by providing you a more rational number which will allow you to go forward and let's be clear like a lot of what the lifeworks report in the government said is true alberta does currently have a young population that could potentially lead to lower contributions and higher payouts at this moment now yeah
Corey
50:20
there's risk there's the cost of administration which would be significant there's the fact that there wouldn't be the mobility of this pension necessarily between provinces let alone international agreements which freeland put on the table too but 100 correct and there's the fact that bigger funds just outperform because So there's still a million reasons that this is a bad idea, but she can deal with those things sort of on a one-on-one basis if she can get out of the box she's put herself on, on the big fucking number, which is why I go back to, I hope the feds know what they're doing here, because if they provide a number, they might be playing into the communication strategy that will allow her to, in
Corey
50:58
in my opinion, continue to sell something that is not worth selling, but in a new invigorated way going forward. so
Annalise
51:06
based on our previous conversation do you think they know what they're doing like when you say you you hope that they're thinking ahead and they know what they're doing like based on our first segment do we do we think that that is happening
Corey
51:20
i it i hope so i i have nothing but hope for you right now annalise i don't know carter
Annalise
51:26
does it happen oh
Carter
51:26
oh yeah no that whole carbon tax thing's very isolated incident incident they
Carter
51:33
have this thing nailed down i have 100 confidence in uh the whole team the whole team yeah
Corey
51:41
yeah you sound like a gm of a failing hockey team um
Carter
51:44
um listen i'm 100 committed to my f1 drivers uh we will not be making any changes they will be uh both driving for us in 2024 okay
Annalise
51:54
okay guys let's uh Let's move into our lightning round. I've got a few quick ones for you here. First is UCP AGM is in Calgary this weekend.
Annalise
52:06
What are you looking for? Is there something specific you're looking for out of the UCP AGM, the 3,000 delegates that are in Calgary? Carter, what
Annalise
52:18
what are you looking for?
Carter
52:19
Sanity. But it's not going to be sane. I'm looking to see who wins the presidency. I'm looking to see, you know, I've looked at the board candidates trying to figure out who are the, which of the four people are, you know, is going to win. Is it going to be my old friend, Rick Orman, who ran for the leadership against Alison Redford? And, you know, is it going to be him or is it going to be like, who is the person and are they going to be associated with the Take Back Alberta group? uh you know who's who's going to be claiming victory and who's going to be claiming defeat this is a very interesting thing because it strikes me that there's just it's factioned and anytime there's factions um it
Carter
53:05
it just means that the the happy family leaves could
Carter
53:09
could be leaving in a very unhappy way and
Annalise
53:12
and cory what are you looking for i
Annalise
53:13
i know i know you've had to read through the policy proposals oh
Corey
53:17
oh yeah i i you know i'll just say off the bat one of the things that strikes me about the policy proposals the governance proposals maybe
Corey
53:26
maybe the governance ones less so it's an interesting grab bag and it's worth reading through but it certainly creates
Carter
53:32
creates just not an
Corey
53:35
an impression of a party a
Corey
53:38
a very kind of paranoid
Corey
53:40
paranoid party party of government uh skepticism, which is funny when you think that they're the governing party, right? Like when you look at the various things that are in there and the concerns they seem to have, you could, you almost have to forget that they've been government for the last four years and I don't know, 45 of the last 50. So it is an interesting read in that sense. An awful lot of stuff that looks like it's been ported up from the United States. I'm curious to see how many of those things actually get support from alberta conservatives you know small c conservatives here because they don't really seem consistent with previous
Corey
54:17
previous versions of the party and i'm not saying the pcs even i'm saying the ucp of four years ago yeah
Carter
54:23
yeah but the ucp of four years ago is not this party this
Carter
54:26
this party is not that group of people um it's easy to assume that this is the the i mean you lumped in the redford government with this group of looney tunes and we were our own set of looney tunes my friend um we had our own issues but but uh you know being against 15 minute cities wasn't one of them um you know like it's it's it's looney it's insane to me i mean you shared a couple of these and you were like this is my favorite no this is my favorite no this is my favorite none of them were my favorite they
Corey
54:58
they are scary as fuck um
Annalise
55:02
um cory which one was your favorite of this the several that you sent uh
Corey
55:06
uh you know the 15 minute cities one does make me laugh a bit you know because essentially it's not even real well it was about uh zoning if it was effectively about like we won't allow zoning to occur in the way that will allow 15 minute cities but you can read it in a way and it's like okay well that says nothing because nobody's gonna say you must be in a city but another is is like
Corey
55:26
like we we have this policy that's being presented and let's be really clear it doesn't mean it becomes government policy just because the party passes it but it becomes this policy of like you are not allowed to build amenities close to homes like like is that where we're going here like it's just it's so funny well
Carter
55:43
well and it's based on
Corey
55:43
on so funny the
Carter
55:44
the city of oxford so you go and do 15 seconds of research and it's very clear that the city of oxford isn't even doing this right because the city of oxford in england they specify that because that's important to to specify it's
Corey
55:59
it's called oxford to be fair yeah
Carter
56:02
yeah i mean well because it's across the pond and they're
Carter
56:06
they're doing something so we have to protect against it like
Carter
56:10
they're doing all kinds of things like driving on the wrong side of the road you know like just because and they're not even fucking doing it these people if they spent how does someone in the resolutions committee enable this to get to the floor when it's based on such a false premise i just i'm just baffled um by the party and i will be watching for the looney tunes stuff because that will be the stuff that the media grab onto yeah
Carter
56:35
and our the reports on monday are going to be uh the ucp passed a motion saying that uh you're not allowed to have a grocery store within 15 minutes of your home congratulations
Corey
56:48
so there's in oxford alabama oxford arkansas oxford colorado oxford connecticut oxford florida oxford
Corey
56:57
oxford indiana oxford iowa could
Annalise
56:59
could have been any of those places oxford
Annalise
57:01
uh next lightning round question mark oxford
Annalise
57:04
mark carney told the globe of mail he hasn't ruled out a leadership bid uh for the for the federal liberal leadership partnership uh good idea bad idea better
Carter
57:17
better than this guy
Annalise
57:20
cory good idea bad idea you know
Corey
57:22
know what it's interesting we get characters like this every now and then i'll be curious if he actually runs right i think about bernard do
Annalise
57:29
do you think he will always think he'll actually frank mckenna
Corey
57:32
yeah i think some people really like to be asked around i think he is actually going to run though i i do get the sense that mark carney has been moving moving the pieces around himself to allow that.
Corey
57:41
also heard that he's going to be basing
Carter
57:42
basing it out of Edmonton Center. Edmonton
Corey
57:44
Edmonton Center, yeah, I heard that too. I heard it on a podcast. Yeah.
Corey
57:52
But, you know, some of these comments that went with it made it clear. He's even thought a bit about what his story will be, you know, where he said, oh, I'm tired of these career politicians, effectively. They don't actually understand markets like they think they do.
Corey
58:05
Well, I don't know. I can think of one career politician who's leading the conservatives that he might have in mind there. I ultimately think that that's kind of a ridiculous message, but it's, you know, he's clearly taken around for a spin. Some of these messages he might use to talk about himself going
Annalise
58:22
Okay. Last lightning round question. I don't, have you guys seen the transcript of Doug Ford's first presser in several weeks? Do you know what I'm talking about? I
Corey
58:31
Didn't answer a thing. Yeah.
Annalise
58:33
Yeah. So for those who haven't seen it, it was going around um twitter x but basically reporters ask him questions about like specific things he answers with just totally different topics like hey here's a specific question about specific property owned by a friend of yours and he's like hey everyone it's halloween tonight so drive safe like
Annalise
58:54
like it's it's wild the former journalist in me reading it and then also the current comms person so lightning round question like
Annalise
59:03
like do you do you have to answer the reporters quite like is this evidently
Corey
59:08
evidently not no you
Carter
59:10
you never have had to annalise welcome to the real world we've never answered your question
Annalise
59:14
question but everyone have you not listened to the podcast i didn't answer a single
Annalise
59:19
one of your questions
Annalise
59:20
like no but but to that point no to carter's point and i say this is someone who does like a lot of media training in my day job it's like you don't but you do you're still you're still within it you're bridging and you're still within the actual topic you're not like hey here's a question about 15 minute cities and hey everyone drive safe it's halloween tonight like is this do you think we're gonna see
Annalise
59:42
more of this i don't cory what was your reaction when you saw this transcript that i'm talking about i i
Corey
59:46
i mean it i it was hilarious because obviously when somebody does something new like this. It works for real good the first time because nobody's quite sure what to do and nobody's quite sure how they're supposed to respond or react to this. I think ultimately the media will realize all they need to do is play the exchange, which is not something you do when you're putting together a television program, for example, right? You're going to get the, you're looking for standalone statements that do not require context. And you do media
Corey
1:00:16
I do media training. I bet even Steven has done media training. I've been media
Carter
1:00:20
media trained actually but
Carter
1:00:22
one of the things this is me on my best behavior how
Annalise
1:00:25
how did that go your hour and a half sprawling yeah
Corey
1:00:28
yeah one of the things i always tell my clients in addition to the fact that there is also an oxford main is that is
Corey
1:00:37
that there is an art to being quoted and there's an art to not being quoted and to be quoted on television you need short context
Corey
1:00:45
context independent statements and if you you don't want to be quoted give long context dependent questions you know if somebody asks a question and you just respond yes that also demands context to a way that you can't actually use on the media so like i think what's fascinating to me about this is um like
Corey
1:01:02
like that only works in certain media what doug ford's done like yeah they can't really use that for television but the print journalists will rightly have a field day with that the more he does it the more they'll call him out for it and it just looks it's a bad look for a government in the long term and And ultimately, television even will just say, we're just going to run the question in the clip and show how ridiculous this guy's being.
Carter
1:01:23
Carter, do you... Not going to work for us with Trump again? I can't recall.
Carter
1:01:27
I'm trying to remember. I
Corey
1:01:29
I don't, you know, he was real stream of consciousness, but I don't think he ever actually literally just answered a different question.
Carter
1:01:36
going to start doing this? In my political history,
Carter
1:01:37
history, I wish there were a number, there's a number of questions I wish we could go back and just simply not answer. So, I like it. I'm a big fan. Carter.
Annalise
1:01:46
Okay, we're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1265 of The Strategist. My name is Annalise Klingbill. With you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.
Annalise
1:02:13
a lot of oxford
Annalise
1:02:20
you haven't caught up oxford
Corey
1:02:21
oxford junction iowa that shouldn't be on the list there that's just okay but then there is an oxford ontario and
Corey
1:02:29
and there's an oxford nova scotia and there's a community called oxford and edmonton which is a little closer to home wanted
Corey
1:02:35
wanted to end on that nice home note there perfect