Transcript
Annalise
0:01
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1272. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Corey Hogan and Zain Velji.
Corey
0:11
Very exciting times. 20 minutes to landing. Shohei, in
Corey
0:15
in Toronto, accepted our offer. What's
Annalise
0:17
What's happening? You guys have been texting about this all morning. Just fill me in. No, no,
Annalise
0:22
domain did you buy? You
Zain
0:24
You tell us what's happening.
Annalise
0:24
happening. How about you tell
Zain
0:28
And then we'll just go from there. What domain
Annalise
0:29
domain did you purchase and what words are you saying and what's happening?
Zain
0:32
Well, that's kind of racist that you just don't know the words and the names. Wow.
Zain
0:37
That's really, really offensive.
Corey
0:39
Shohei is the domain that we registered. Pretty good. Because
Zain
0:45
Because we're... Pretty good. Thank you. Right?
Corey
0:46
Right? Guarantee that's the sun's cover tomorrow. 100%.
Annalise
0:53
Why did you register it?
Corey
0:56
Because that's what we do. do it it's
Corey
0:58
it's really distressing to me you have no idea what we're talking yeah i don't like like you're supposed to have your finger on the pulse of this country to ask the questions that matter to the peoples is this a bit and you don't even know is this
Annalise
1:10
this a bit no you got your job is to fill me in on what you've been texting about all morning and the domains you've been buying and then we can chat with you
Zain
1:16
you yeah you've been you felt like yes you've been in
Annalise
1:20
in the text did i you
Zain
1:21
you asked a bunch of topics and i said no show he's gonna take over most of the show and then you You didn't respond. Yeah, like multiple times.
Corey
1:30
Yeah, multiple times. He said, hey, we're thinking about talking about X. And we replied, no, we got
Annalise
1:34
got to talk about Shohei. He said, no, deep dive on this thing that you know nothing about. Yeah.
Zain
1:39
So, yeah, go ahead. Ask your questions about the rule.
Annalise
1:44
Pretend you're talking to someone who's never heard about any of this. No, the domain. How many domains do we have now, Corey?
Corey
1:52
I don't know. It's a number that's beyond human comprehension. It's okay. But
Annalise
1:55
But you were surprised that it was available.
Corey
1:58
Yeah, because, you know, this is literally the entire internet talking about this guy potentially joining the Blue Jays today. There you go. There's a little bit of a nugget for you. And somehow this one got missed.
Annalise
2:11
Okay. Okay. Anything to add? I
Corey
2:14
I can tell you're engaged on this topic. Yes, so engaged.
Corey
2:18
add before we jump into
Annalise
2:19
into news? There's lots of news happening,
Corey
2:20
happening, Corey. Just a warning. Yeah, no. 20 minutes from now, we might just hijack this show for whatever you've got planned. Yeah, for sure. And there's also a
Zain
2:29
a good chance that it's Robert Herjavec's plane, which is actually even more exciting that he's
Zain
2:34
he's coming back to town. I am so excited that one of the OG Dragon's Den losers is coming back home. So that could – well, I mean, Corey, this show is going to be hijacked in 20 minutes regardless. regardless i mean it's either shohei or like hardcore robert herjavec talk where
Zain
2:52
where we will go deep into his book okay i assume it's called something like driven let
Zain
2:57
me find out oh
Annalise
3:01
stay tuned listeners 20 minutes and then uh wait it is called driven
Annalise
3:08
what was the good guess you
Corey
3:11
zane you probably knew that somewhere in the back of
Zain
3:13
of your soul you do that he's also written the will to win uh but his newest one uh you don't have to be a shark oh beautiful oh good oh good which
Corey
3:23
is good for him which
Corey
3:24
is good for yeah
Corey
3:24
yeah i can see this one uh
Zain
3:27
uh which uh by the way is this a good time to announce the release of my new book uh you don't have to be brown uh
Zain
3:32
uh which uh you could still have the privilege cory you want to do it go ahead do it now
Zain
3:38
now thank you yeah okay there we go you
Annalise
3:40
you did it it all right zane's drinking from his bottle okay guys news today all week news has been happening i'm going to start with the most recent news uh a topic that is near and dear to your heart the alberta pension plan um today province announced they are pausing consultations including in-person town halls on the app why are they pausing them they're waiting until the feds give them the number of the share of assets and then they can continue on with the consultations So the province is saying this comes as the panel has consulted more than 76,000 Albertans in five telephone town hall sessions.
Annalise
4:16
And yeah, there's a pause. Corey, did you see this coming?
Corey
4:21
I don't know if I saw it coming at this particular moment. It probably makes sense before they go into these in-person town halls and get absolutely crushed and get the visuals of being absolutely crushed, right? It makes sense for them to retreat at this particular moment, at least for the time being.
Corey
4:38
One of the things that did surprise me was that in announcing this pause, Jim Denning was saying that half of the people they've talked to were opposed with about 20 to 25% supportive. Here's the thing. When you say 20 to 25%, you mean 20% in that particular instance. And when you say about half, you mean a little more than half. So this thing is just getting crushed, even in the channels that the government controls, even the channels that heavily have their thumb on the scale. People who are engaged are engaged in a way against it. And so they had to do something. They had to shake out of this. And one of the things they're getting killed on is that nobody believes their fantasy numbers. So we've talked a bit about this. But their best chance to get this back on the rails, if they want an Alberta pension plan, their best chance is
Corey
5:26
to get a number that nobody thinks is a joke.
Corey
5:29
That's, you know, and that's not to say that all of a sudden, they're going to be like in a place where people support it, but people will be able to mentally get past this absolutely ridiculous number they've put out there.
Corey
5:38
and for that reason what they're doing makes an awful lot of sense it also has the added benefit of just changing it into a fight with ottawa which is always kind of popular in the province of alberta so um in some ways if i'm surprised it's that they acted in such a kind of politically rational way rather than just waiting and getting killed on this a little bit more because there were a few signs they were gonna they were gonna languish on this until the spring it looks like they've decided to die a little bit faster on this or at least find a way to reset before they they continue the fight. Have
Annalise
6:08
Have you seen before, Corey, or maybe even a part of those conversations to release, I guess, a few questions. Is that 76,000 in five telephone town halls, big number, small number? And then the fact that, as you mentioned, they're saying, hey,
Annalise
6:21
hey, here's what we've found so far, the undecideds, the in favor, the not in favor, to release those numbers halfway through.
Corey
6:29
Well, big number, small number. I would say say smaller than i won't say i would have expected but smaller than if they had taken the same amount of effort in the past the reality is these things are much more likely to have engaged people five years ago ten years ago when they were a little more novel than they are now it's a bit of a played out technique and the content like if you're doing a telephone town hall on hey there's wildfires in your area you're going to get a lot of people if you're doing one on the government wants to talk to you about the government's pet project given the number of people they would would have called given the number of town halls they've held i wouldn't say that's like a stellar number it's obviously a big number of people to talk to for the length of time that they were talking to but we are kind of missing also the average amount of time that those 76 000 people hung out on the call because in my experience having run these for the government a
Corey
7:21
a lot of people dip in and say i'm out you know like five minutes 10 minutes 15 and so maybe they released the average amount of time on a call i didn't see it but i suspect those 76 000 did not sit and listen to every argument jim denning had to make but rather showed up for a little bit left
Corey
7:38
left after a while okay
Annalise
7:39
okay zane let's bring you in you're in the strategist's seat um this afternoon let's say let's say you're advising the feds uh like what do you tell them when should they release the number should they do it quick should they make it take months how what should that like talk to me about uh the how you would advise the feds i
Zain
8:01
take most of my advice from driven uh which is which by
Zain
8:07
by the way spencer thompson says is a total scam of a business book and there's no way that robert wrote this piece of hot crap uh i
Zain
8:16
feel like you have done nothing
Corey
8:18
nothing but read reviews of driven the
Corey
8:19
the whole time you were talking cory I
Zain
8:22
what you guys are talking
Zain
8:25
No, no, no. He's 15 minutes away from landing.
Zain
8:29
We got to know.
Zain
8:32
It's a good question. My instinct is you drag your heels. My instinct is you drag your heels. Yeah. That you have no incentive to give them a real number. Because if you follow Corey's logic, the real number is the best way that they actually boost support. support you ultimately don't want them to boost support for the app you actually don't want to give them any sort of political lifeline when it looks like they're already hanging so and frankly from a pure policy perspective if you don't want them to leave don't give them a you know a real number delay that as much as it can before this thing dies on its own so that's my instinct is that you you just don't play ball why why fucking play ball uh with them this is this is perhaps perhaps, helpful to you in your own way as the federal liberals where you are looking for your own political lifeline of finding something that the vast majority of folks are on your side on and looking to hit Alberta with. So don't give them a number.
Annalise
9:32
Corey, I guess, what do you think of that? And how long can you delay? Like, is this the sort of thing where every month we have reporters do a little check in? Hey, feds, where's the number? They say, like, we're still waiting. Hey, province, what's happening? we're waiting for the feds like how long can that reasonably go on for well
Corey
9:47
well it can't go on very long if all they do is have it live in kind of the actuarial world of the finance department in ottawa um they would need to somewhat expand it and say like oh you know there's some ambiguity we need to consult with the provinces so we've set a series of meetings for march april may um that's as soon as everybody could sort of get their calendars together based on those meetings we're going to have to do some stuff that's going to take us june july august we think in september after a final round of consultations to make sure we've reconciled everybody's views those might bleed into october then we'll probably be in a position by maybe november to give a bit of a number on here however that number we want to be really sure on so we might also go to the courts for a reference once we have yes see if they agree with our interpretation that's
Corey
10:33
that's going to take take December, January, February, March, April, May, June. And so, you know, maybe by around July 2025, we'll have a number for you. That'll be just in time for you to have that number for your referendums attached to the municipal elections, right, Alberta? So that should be a timeline that works for everybody there. Nobody loses any time. And that means that the province doesn't have like a year to respond to the number. So I guess, I mean, like, I could see a world where that's possible that might be pushing it for a bunch of reasons but um you know it's actually if you break out the steps probably not the most outrageous timeline either the
Corey
11:07
the question though is if you really want to be dealing with that problem for that length of time now i would argue if you're a cppib that might actually and they're not the ones who get to make this call the government be the finance department right
Corey
11:21
but like if that's your plan um
Corey
11:25
um it's it's okay right it's it's not gonna you don't really want to be fighting this for two years with the government of alberta out consulting and try to change all of these things but there is a universe where you are the liberals and you say i want to resolve this before the next election and because i want to resolve this for the next election we're going to give them a number quick we're going to hope that that the numbers still show that Albertans are very opposed to this, or perhaps even more so once the number is out, and then we can all move on with our lives, right? So there is a bit of a risk-reward argument probably to be made, you know, some game theory going on in terms of maybe it's a little bit riskier to give them a number early, but the payout could be this gets resolved very fast. Before the next election, we don't have this over our heads.
Annalise
12:08
Walk me through that, like why you would make, and Zane, jump in here, Why would you would make the decision, looking
Annalise
12:14
looking at the current data that the government is giving you and looking at, I guess, other polling stuff, like, if that would be a wise decision to try and resolve it before the next election?
Zain
12:24
I don't know if you do have that opportunity to, like, get it done relatively quickly. I mean, to me, I almost have the opposite instinct of Corey, which is that this is not a terrible election issue for you if you're heading to the polls soon thereafter in October, which is that you make this a conversation about a province trying to screw the rest of the country out of their pension. This is not so much on Alberta beating down on Ottawa as much as Alberta beating down on the rest of the country. And to me, that frame is
Zain
12:57
is interesting. It's the reason I kind of think about it as
Zain
13:01
as useful to them is because I really don't know what else the liberals can win their next election on. Unless they're looking to forge together a coalition on climate, which we could discuss the cap shortly, they're going to have to have events happen and have a series of things that can generate more momentum and aren't already capped out in terms of their political advantage for them based on either polling. So to me, there is a there is a school of thought to say that Corey's timeline, while it does make sense, and I'm glad he added the court aspect to it, because I suspect they're going to if they want to drag their heels on it further, depending on where they want to land the plane before or after, or for during this election campaign, so to speak, for them, I talk about federally, all things going planned for for the next federal election in 25. five, then I do see some advantageous value of a political campaign that liberals run that is based on broader unity, that is based on keeping the country together, that is based on, you know, what conservatism in action looks like, look at Danielle Smith and what she's trying to do to fuck all of you over, alongside Pierre Polyev. I mean, it's not a great argument, but it's better than most of the other ones available to them on the table right now.
Annalise
14:15
Is that a winner, Corey?
Annalise
14:18
mean here's the thing we
Corey
14:20
we really do need a little bit better sense of what the hell the liberals are going to be running on next time and this is a bit of a running theme of this pod now for months yeah like what is their strategy but here's my caution on what zane just said pierre poliev's messaging track is actually super clear he talks about gatekeepers right he talks about being the freest country on earth and he talks about canada being broken and you're a a little bit playing into the idea that Canada is broken if this is still languishing out there and there's the possibility that because Pierre Trudeau is at such odds with the provinces your pension is now at risk right so I think you all know me Pierre Polyev I'm the guy to come to accord with Danielle Smith and keep Alberta in the Alberta pension plan and keep everything on the tracks you know Pierre Trudeau or Justin Trudeau I should say second
Corey
15:09
time I said that that, Corey.
Corey
15:11
God, I know, right? But Justin Trudeau has been at the heart of every one of these federal disagreements since 2015. It's time to turn the page on this. That's an argument you can make if you're the conservatives, just
Corey
15:25
just with chaos. And yeah, it doesn't matter if this is conservative-driven chaos in Alberta. Chaos is chaos, and Justin Trudeau
Corey
15:34
Trudeau is going to wear some some of that chaos. And if you are Pierre Polyev trying to say that Canada's broken, you've just given yourself another proof point.
Annalise
15:45
Zane, do you have more book reviews for us, sir?
Zain
15:47
No, I'm just still tracking the plane right now. Let's just go with whatever Corey said, because Robert's written way too many books that I wasn't aware of. So let me just deep dive on this while you guys keep going.
Annalise
15:57
Corey, do you think this is a winner for Alberta? Like when, And maybe you can speak to how much when you set out to do something like this, you go down every track of like every single possibility. But for for Daniel Smith right now, you know, she said she's going to do this. She had the consultations. Now it's on pause. Like, is this right
Annalise
16:17
right now where it's at and the fact that they can just stay over waiting on the feds and then they can deal with the number when they get it? Like, is this are they coming out on top of this right now, even with the numbers that you said?
Corey
16:28
they're not coming out on top of this but sometimes you just want to lose a little bit yes and this is an opportunity to to lose a little bit less they um they've
Corey
16:38
they've if they have to end up retreating from this idea in a couple of months here it's it's not good like they'll try to spin it as a victory like oh we've raised the concern about how alberta contributes all of this we've elevated the issue this is what we're going to do we're always going to fight for alberta we're gonna try some ideas some of them will go somewhere some won't you know but that's what i'll always do stand up for alberta and look to get the best deal for alberta possible but i also listen and i heard what you said like they'll do that but make no mistakes a politician who introduces something deeply unpopular and has to retreat from that deeply popular idea did not win no matter how much they try to tell you otherwise let
Zain
17:14
let me add to cory's sort of like framing here like about losing less it's it's also about losing a little bit less early i would add that uh to the the mix right and in her mandate she is relatively early
Zain
17:27
right now so you might as well you might as well take this off the table uh and once again when we speak about motivations we actually fundamentally don't know the motivation here like we we have ideas like all of us like posit ideas around what her motivation is is it just that this was something along the tracks and she just wanted to see it to completion is the right flank of her base pushing it does she actually in her bones want this thing to happen there's a lot of speculations this is rob anderson another one of the grand ideas that stitches together their overarching philosophy of the Alberta universe. Who knows, right? A bit of all, maybe, sure. One of them deeply, possibly, right? Okay. But if this is something that you're okay to get rid of, if getting rid of this is on the table, of political options being like, fuck it, it didn't work, early is good, right? And you've also got other victories in your broader sort of frame against the feds that can still keep keep that narrative track going. So you don't really, if this is being viewed through the lens of shit that we're blaming the feds for, in its broadest terms, you already got multiple proof points in that bucket. You actually don't need another one from pure rhetoric. Let's park policy for a second. From a pure rhetorical perspective, there's diminishing returns to add APP to that list, because you already have other things that are active for you. And you've also had some victories with the courts coming back to you and saying, you know what, you know, you might be be right. So she's probably adding things like the Sovereignty Act and others in that sort of bucket of things we're going to fuck the feds over with. You don't need this from a rhetorical perspective. And if it's a policy loser, and getting rid of it is one of the options on the table, you know, once again, I'll make mention of speculation around how deep in her bones this is, then you lose it early, lose a little bit less early, which is what I'd add to Corey's point.
Corey
19:14
Well, and let's be clear, this is not just a Danielle Smith idea. This idea has been floating around for a while it's in the kenny
Corey
19:21
was exploring this idea
Zain
19:23
course this is like old school like this is a firewall folks right this has been one of the things on the
Zain
19:28
list for a long time agreed i just don't know her level of conviction and is the point i'm trying to make gory exactly
Corey
19:34
exactly right and i think it's an important one because if this is something where the people around her wanted her to give it the old college try well she's now done that and she could probably look at them and say like look even jim dinning we ran the consultations we ran our ads we're just not going to do this by the way that reminds me and i said this to you for sure zane and i'm not sure if i said this to you annalise but the other day i was on one of our a million strategist group chats and i was saying i've stopped seeing ads for this thing i
Annalise
20:01
i was going to ask about that as you as you were talking here in terms of the pause on consultation yeah do we i didn't see it in any of the news pieces i read today but do we know if that like the
Annalise
20:10
the pause on ads has anyone confirmed confirmed that?
Corey
20:15
haven't confirmed, but I'll tell you, I think there's been a pause on ads for at least a week, week or two. And one of the reasons is one of the ads that they ran fairly regularly, it was about the survey and I'd reply to it with some snarky comment. It doesn't really matter what, but whenever they were running ads every now and then I would just get another random like to this thing because of course they're pushing it up and it was one of the top comments underneath. And so
Corey
20:38
I had, I stopped getting those like a week and a half ago. So my sense was they at least pulled that ad out of rotation and it got me looking for other instances of the ads and so it does seem to me that the government has decided like let's just stop taking fire on this for a while let's find a way that we can move on from this particular thing do
Annalise
20:56
do you think that was always part of the plan like to build in this off-ramp of hey if we launch these and if the numbers aren't what we want we can just say hey we need a number from the feds uh
Corey
21:09
i don't i don't No, no, Zane, I'd be curious your thoughts, but I think that that's probably more like in the, in
Corey
21:15
in kind of the thrust and parry of it all, that became obvious as an option to them as everybody started talking about this. I don't know if they started on launch day thinking, ah, you know what, we can always say we need a number from the fence. I'm doubtful of that. If
Zain
21:28
If you look and examine how they've rolled this out for your natural political off-ramps, they've had several. They've had Dinning say it's simply a consultation, not a persuasion exercise. exercise. They've had Daniel Smith say this is multiple years away. They've had her telegraph this fact that we're just finding ourselves in right now, which is the fact that we're not going to do anything without a number months ago. So they've built in natural political off-ramps to this thing, right? But once again, this kind of comes back to the core question of motivation. How much political capital is she going to spend on pushing this through and making this a reality? The fact is, when they jam through a bill that says this has to go to a referendum, non-binding, as the legislation dictates, to me, it suggests, and this is a huge assumption, that this was something that they want to try, want to try early, see if they've got the political capital that they don't have to necessarily burn to spend and try to push it through if they can. If it isn't there, they get rid of it. And I think the timing on them, I would suggest the timing isn't an accident, because number
Zain
22:33
number one, you look at the time of year where people are just paying less attention.
Zain
22:37
You could effectively kill this thing, come back in the new year, and we'd almost kind of be like collective amnesia. Oh, yeah, that thing happened, right? Especially if
Zain
22:46
if it died. That was a year ago. Yeah, exactly. The second part of that, though, is like the string of small Ws that they've had over the last little bit, right? Like the usage of the Sovereignty Act as a rhetorical tool, despite the fact it's an unconstitutional piece of shit, actually kind of makes sense now in some way, weird, twisted, pretzel-y way. You then add the two sort of court victories sort of thing. You know, there's some Ws that you've had. So killing this thing while kind of still maximizing on the federal fight and keeping the rhetorical channel amped up to 11 is not a terrible idea, if this was fundamentally about, you know, getting rid of this thing or minimizing its scars that it would give to you as a government.
Annalise
23:33
Guys, I've got one more question, but I wanted to let you know it's 2.32. We know.
Corey
23:39
We've got lots of windows open.
Annalise
23:42
It's just waiting right now for you guys to take over.
Zain
23:45
The answer, Annalise, is to read Shark Tank Jumpstart Your Business. now this is a book of how you can launch and grow your business from concept to cash which i think is perfect
Zain
23:55
which is wonderful this is co-authored by all of them wow
Annalise
23:58
wow okay my question with the ads and we've talked about this before on the podcast cory is how much they can change um public opinion like we saw the polling at the beginning of what people thought of the alberta pension plans and then this blast of ads is the fact that they've paused ads does
Annalise
24:15
does that do we read into that that like hey those ads were not working they were not changing public opinion you
Corey
24:22
know one of the things about ads even if they're like in support of you is they can also entrench public opinion right because there is this sense that you just you reject the message and you get angrier about it as you see it and i'm not saying that's what's happened in this case but they might have started to say we're
Corey
24:37
we're not moving anything perhaps they even saw opinions getting firmer and they said okay we better stop and we better regroup and we better rethink our approaches here and if they were doing their jobs they were probably identifying why people had challenges with things and i suspect they were and i suspect what they found was ultimately the number was too big a hurdle for many many people right maybe those same people would have had other reasons they would have complained or not liked it but the number was the thing people were sticking on so they said well let's let's maybe reassess let's maybe reconsider maybe the fact that our ads were running so much that said a pension could provide this what you know could people were often noting was doing a hell of a lift uh because we just didn't know the world and so maybe they just felt they needed to get into a place of more concreteness and and that the ads were just entrenching people on one view because they weren't able to provide what people wanted so
Annalise
25:29
so do you like regroup and change your ads like does that yeah
Corey
25:34
if you want to or you take this as an actual off ramp and you say okay we're not going to do this anymore we're going to stop throwing good money after bad but it certainly makes sense if the consultations are stopping. You're not trying to drive more people to sign up for these things that are not going to happen, right? It certainly makes sense that you would stop ads at this particular moment and then realign them to whatever the universe looks like after. Now, I'm not even saying that means waiting for the federal number. I'm saying maybe now your ads are, Alberta
Corey
26:01
Alberta needs a federal number. Tell Ottawa, right? Tell the feds.ca now has a new purpose, something like that. But yeah, you wouldn't want your two streams doing totally different things okay
Annalise
26:13
okay last question on this predictions where you know i love the predictions where do you see like how do you see this playing out and and what is the conclusion over the next six months year i
Corey
26:25
think the feds will either provide a number or they will drag their feet on the number and sometime in the new year the government of alberta will
Corey
26:34
will take the federal government to court to get that number and that will just kick it for another year but it will will allow the fight to continue. That's what I believe. Court.
Annalise
26:42
Court. Okay, that's Corey's prediction. Zane, what's your prediction? It's 2029. The
Zain
26:47
The Alberta NDP are still hosting Alberta pension plan town halls.
Zain
26:51
At this point, they're so popular that the Alberta NDP are proposing the Alberta pension plan to Albertans as a 81-seat majority government. Thank you, Annalise. Love
Annalise
27:03
it. Yeah, let's see which one happens. Okay, next topic,
Zain
27:05
topic, guys. No, all of that will happen. Okay,
Zain
27:08
Okay, that's a good one. next topic
Annalise
27:09
topic uh i think you mentioned it zane the federal emissions cap one of you mentioned it um we're
Annalise
27:15
we're kind of working backwards of news that has happened this week so yesterday feds announced their weighted new framework to cap oil and gas emissions um
Annalise
27:23
um says we'll set emission limits without restricting production q
Annalise
27:27
q instantly fighting between the feds the prairie provinces oil and gas sector as
Annalise
27:34
zane do you have like initial initial
Annalise
27:37
initial thoughts I mean,
Zain
27:41
He's on runway five. Okay, that's all I know. He's literally... Yeah, that's all I know. I was doing that too. It's
Annalise
27:47
It's going to be good. Yeah, you're going to tell me all about the strategy of federal emissions cap while tracking that plane. Whose
Annalise
27:58
know who we're talking
Zain
28:00
Either Shohei Otani or Robert Herjavec. Dragonstone. Yeah, Robert. We're talking
Zain
28:06
amazing would it be, Corey? It's like Robert Herjavec just walks out.
Zain
28:10
And then the Blue Jays sign him for
Corey
28:12
for like $600 million. They're like, fuck it. Let's
Corey
28:14
Let's just give this guy. Whoever's on that plane is getting the contract. I like it. It's
Corey
28:18
It's quite possible. Your question was, what was
Zain
28:26
At least I'm respectful enough. Carter would have just started answering anything. He would have been like, yeah, that's right. Carter's secret.
Annalise
28:31
secret. Okay, my question is, how do you make everyone happy in this, Zane? Oh, you
Zain
28:35
Yeah. yeah you act like that i'm not trying to be flat you don't and so the question like that i've been struggling with is that i
Zain
28:44
think secretly like industry is gonna be like fine with this if not even like celebratory that it's not as onerous or that it's actually like i think one of the most interesting things is that it's not a carbon price it's this cap and trade system right so
Zain
28:59
so i think that's where they might be at their external voice is clearly more like muted we'll see what what they're, you know, you'll see where Pathways comes out next week and how aggressive they are, for example. Clearly, you've got the premier of the province being the most, like, rhetorically extreme, like, out, like, outright winging the corporations in terms of, like, what's justifiable. But the fact is that many of these oil and gas companies have said kind of the ballpark of where these regulations have, or this framework has landed is doable. So, you know, know, for them, they're going to never be, they might be happy, but they'll say that they won't. For the Premier, she's never going to be happy. The question I have is, is where does the larger environmental movement kind of fit on this? I suspect that they have right-sized their expectations with this new version of the Trudeau government post-pandemic and what it means and the political pressures that they face. So, you know, this is not as ambitious as many of the environmental groups wanted it to be. But it seems like, from what I'm seeing, either they're muted and are waiting to unload unload their response next week and take some time but from what i've heard it seems like from for them this is fine so but the fact is pleasing everyone this political environment definitely not possible cory
Corey
30:14
cory were there were there any surprises
Annalise
30:16
surprises um for you on this one like i mean i think from kind of a high level it was pretty predictable it's like smith and mo are mad at the feds and
Annalise
30:24
and you know cap says what they want to say environmentalists say what they want to say fed say what they want to say chambers
Zain
30:29
chambers say what they want to say yeah yeah
Annalise
30:31
like i i think it was it was long awaited and people were waiting to see and then it happened and it was like yeah everyone kind of played their roles and did what they were supposed to did you were you surprised by any aspects of it um
Corey
30:45
don't know if it was surprising to your point this has been telegraphed for so long that it was occurring i will say it was immensely frustrating to me because it it just This sort of speaks to the continued policy confusion in this space for the liberals. We have a carbon tax. The whole idea is we're supposed to have this market force where people will look to reduce the price or, you know, their activity that produces carbon based on that price mechanism. But now we also have this ceiling and we're trying to work these two systems together. There are some disparities between provinces. It's all gotten just
Corey
31:17
just confusing. And, you know, it's the carbon tax is going to have proponents. it's going to have detractors. I'll be frank, I don't know how I feel about it. I think that sometimes it's not the way to get done what needs to be done. But there was an elegance to the system that's just gone. Now, there is no elegance to this particular system. It's just a bunch of systems smashed together. And we're just hoping that from a distance, it looks like an environmental Are
Zain
31:42
Are you are you telling me that that the ability to exceed your cap and then buy emission credits and then earn credits with the carbon capture and storage and then transport your excess production production elsewhere isn't elegant, Corey? Is that not elegant enough for you? Easy
Annalise
31:56
storytelling right there, Zane.
Corey
31:57
But like, look, it's a hat on a hat.
Corey
32:00
You know, they could have just stuck with one mechanism.
Corey
32:04
And they could have done, they could have just like really leaned into that and made it better. But they're eroding that they're creating new caps, there's all sorts of regulatory things floating about. If you happen to live in one jurisdiction, you're going to get a great new heat pump. If you live in another, nope, sorry about that. Right? Like, I just I can't, I can't stress enough how confusing this is and and that bothers me on a policy point of view but i think where the liberals need to be incredibly careful is from a communications point of view it's insane right i get that they're trying to use these all as proof points of we care about the environment we're acting on climate but it's insane it's very confusing and i just don't know that this is going to get them what they want and ultimately a system that looks this rickety and And this weird is doomed to be taken apart by a future government. So
Annalise
32:52
So then you get into my continual question that never gets answered. Like, what are the liberals doing? What are
Annalise
33:00
they doing, Zane? And we can get into
Annalise
33:01
into the comms, and I want to get into
Zain
33:02
into the comms a bit,
Annalise
33:03
bit, but like, high level, like, why? What are they doing?
Zain
33:07
I feel like they're doing a couple of things. Number one, they're trying to do what the art of the possible is versus the art of what, you know, the most elegant or the most ideal
Zain
33:22
ideal solution is. This to me seems like one of the, okay, let's like right size this with the cost of living or the fact that we've fucked ourselves on the carbon tax. So that's not every time we mentioned that word anymore, we're just going to have another all nighter debate findings that let's just do it this or whatever. Like, I feel like they've kind of like thrown in the towel from a pure sort of like, here's what we can do with the power of government, and have now really leaned into the here's just what's possible in the moment. And I feel like to me, to be honest, like as reductive and as dismissive as I sound, that may not actually be too far from the truth in terms of like how a policy like this finds itself. Like, I feel like if they had not done the carve out on carbon tax, that would still very much be the system that we could have seen if it wasn't just so politically toxic right now in this moment.
Zain
34:13
Secondly, I think that different ministers in this government are trying to carve out different legacies for themselves as they see a sinking ship. So for Gilbo to announce this at COP like he did, maybe it was always part of the plan, but I think it especially became part of the plan as he defines who he is in the broader sort of climate movement. Going forward, you see different ministers, different folks in this government trying to figure out what their next gig is. And I don't mean that directly. I mean that indirectly about how they're positioning certain things, running victory laps on certain wins, becoming even more clip chasing and how they're trying to present themselves. I feel like that's also going on. None of these are great signs, but I feel like they're kind of sub to a broader point that they're just trying to survive and find their footing before they have an opportunity to even take a shot at thriving or figuring out what's next. next.
Annalise
35:08
Corey, do you want to speak about that? Like Zane's points about just trying to survive in different ministers on the sinking ship, kind of trying to carve out their their identity there, but like how dangerous
Annalise
35:18
dangerous is it to
Corey
35:21
Jesus, really dangerous. One of the things that I'll often tell people is never mistake action for direction, right? Like there's this desire when you know that your back is against the wall, that you're going to get clobbered the next day the person you're going to talk to is going to give it to you just to do stuff right like just to show your acting just to get out there and and put something out there right but that's that's usually the the thing that precedes your demise because you're no longer being strategic you're no longer being thoughtful and you're no longer trying to tell a story which is ultimately what this business is about this business of politics it's telling a story and yeah i guess i can squint and say it's about i wouldn't even say art of the possible but they're doing things on climate right like clearly they want to be able to say we're doing things in this particular area but that's not enough and i think that the more they make it inexplicable to people like god it's hard enough with the carbon tax to say yeah we're taking money we're giving it back to you but this will still affect behavior because of these price mechanisms and all of this right now we're saying oh but we also have this system that will also limit how much carbon can be and you can trade it and you can offset it and all of the things that just make it inscrutable to the the average voter. And it just starts to feel like, what the fuck's going on here? How is this going to work? If I run a business, I'm probably just frustrated and confused, even if it doesn't really affect me, because I'm worried it might affect me, because I don't understand this bloody system that the government's brought in. So, you know, I think it's really, really dangerous, to your point. They've got to step back, and they've got to say, okay, it's election day, it's 2025. We are trying to tell them the story of what the liberals have been, and what we're going to be going forward and that includes these three components and here's all of the activity we've done in the last three years that tell that story and reinforce it and reinforce our brand versus the brand that pierre polliev has tried to create here setting up those ballot questions we talk about it they've got time to do it still do they they're in a hell of a hole oh well look they're in a hell of a hole but governments have come back from holes like this dalton mcginty uh Christy Clark immediately come to mind on the provincial level.
Corey
37:29
It can happen, but
Corey
37:30
but it's not going to happen if they just do shit. Like they've got to step back and say, what are we trying to do? Zane,
Annalise
37:35
Zane, do they have time?
Zain
37:37
They have time. They have time. The argument will then be, do they have the right leader? Do they have the right suite of policies? Have they carved out the right lane? Have they taken all the daggers that have been effectively hurting them for the last number of months, including on things like housing and the carbon tax itself and removed all those objections, they need to get back to neutral before they figure out actually how much runway they have. I think that's part of it, right? It's like, as you try to survive, you need to kind of like find a territory to be like, okay, like we now have used to be two years, 16 months, 12 months, eight months, but like they're slowly running out of time. It may seem like two years. It's not two years. You need to get out of a hole and then figure out how to equalize. And then from there, figure out how to have some sort of advantage that maybe if you're Christy Clark, surprises everyone and peaks on election day. But I mean, conventional wisdom says they're done in so many ways right now. Now, I think the one thing going for them is that, you know, frankly,
Zain
38:38
frankly, this is, I can make both sides of this argument, and I have, is that they have spent very little time or energy defining Pierre-Paul Lievre, and you might say that a lot of that is now, like, the train has left the station, it's over, you lost your opportunity. The other way to look at that is that people have only gotten one side of the argument on who Pierre-Paul Lievre is, so you have some opportunity on the negative. But Corey makes a good point. Like, I called it the art of the possible. you could call it just saying conflating action with progress. But we see that with tired governments. We see that with tired people, right? Like, we see that with like, just fucking do whatever, just do something, right? And we've been in those situations where we often conflate even the smartest of us from like a pure logical perspective that doing
Zain
39:23
doing anything is better than doing nothing. And I think this is often a political mistake that you find yourself in, and you're trying really hard to convince yourself that it is directionally appropriate action when it actually could be just the opposite.
Annalise
39:39
Look what happens when there's no Stephen Carter here. You guys have like these great, art of the possible, never mistake action for direction. You've got like good minds. You're like,
Zain
39:48
like, look what happens. It is show hate, by the way. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to all Robert Herjavec fans listening. It was not Robert. It is actually, Corey, I'm not even bullshitting. Is it actually? It is actually show hate. Bane,
Annalise
39:56
Bane, what's happening? Tell us what's happening. Now listen.
Zain
39:58
listen. No, no, no. Is this a good source or is this just random Twitter guy? No, no, no. This is multiple people. And now there's three tweets that I'm seeing, including from someone with a blue checkmark. So that must be suggesting that
Zain
40:11
that the Jays have a press conference today at five.
Zain
40:14
Oh, I heard six, but yeah. Okay. Yeah. Four o'clock our time. Yeah, I'm hearing five o'clock our time. Corey, this could be real.
Corey
40:22
That's exciting. Now, here's a question, Annalise,
Zain
40:24
Annalise, for you, as I take back the host chair. Would you make the entire frenzy of people tracking his playing part of the Canadian Heritage Minute that you produced?
Annalise
40:33
produced? Yeah, absolutely. Okay,
Zain
40:34
right answer. It's good. Tell
Annalise
40:36
Tell me what's happening, Zane.
Corey
40:38
Well, you know, we're all just trying to figure it out. We're all just trying to figure it out.
Annalise
40:43
I'm just trying to, honestly, I'm honestly looking at the clock, just trying
Zain
40:46
trying to time out. I'm just trying to time out.
Zain
40:49
Annalise, I don't know if it shows.
Annalise
40:51
You guys are both smiling. I think it's happy. It's good news.
Zain
40:53
Oh, yes, yes, yes, Emily. So far. So far, so good. Yeah, it's great news. So far. I mean, honestly, I'd be a little sad
Zain
41:00
it was Robert Herjavec on the plane. I think I'd be a little sad.
Annalise
41:04
Okay, last kind of just thread on the federal mission stuff is it calms the storytelling and narrative. And I know we talk about those things a lot on this podcast, but how, like, look at where the liberals are right now and then look at, you know, Polyev and Corey, you mentioned it earlier, Like that gatekeeping, that Canada is broken, the housing stuff. I know you guys did that deep dive into the videos. Like how,
Annalise
41:28
if you were the liberals, do you get out of this hole when it comes to the comms and the storytelling and the narrative on specifically kind of emissions, carbon tax, what they've been doing in recent weeks and months there?
Corey
41:42
Yeah, so here's the thing.
Corey
41:44
Are they going to run on this next time? I mean, at one point, this was a climbing issue. This was something of growing concern. But for the last bit, we do know that polling has been seized. Has Canadians seized with affordability, with housing, with things of that nature? And this does kind of seem to cut against that. But maybe you're looking out two years and saying it's going to be a different picture. We're going to have different activities there. Maybe that is your plan. Maybe you're playing a bit of a long game. You're saying, well, everybody else lost their focus on this. Canada continued to push on this particular thing.
Corey
42:12
Maybe you think it will be politically advantageous. maybe politics is is taking a back seat to kind of the morality of it for your point of view and so you're trying to run this thing through an entirely different prism if that is the prism you're going through then you're not trying to maximize conversation you're trying to minimize conversation you're trying to do things in such a way that it doesn't blow them up you obviously want to make them a positive when they do come up but you're not running big ad campaigns reminding people of the actions you're taking on climate you're not uh you're not otherwise kind of turning like a smaller thing into a bigger thing which is uh you know part of the art of politics so you know i
Corey
42:49
hate to always come back to this but the fundamental question the liberals need to ask themselves is what do they want to be when they grow up because if it is about climate then that it suggests a certain communications approach if it's about affordability a different communications approach if it's a third thing still it's
Corey
43:04
it's going to be a weird mix zane
Annalise
43:07
you've got something to say you had
Corey
43:09
had your hand up yeah this
Annalise
43:11
this is gonna be good i'm
Zain
43:12
i'm just stop stop stop the show let's take a moment of silence so we can get to the one hour mark and then go back to what we really want to do uh which is watch shohei otani enter an airport with his translator here's
Zain
43:25
here's the thing you know what i worry about i worry about three things for the liberals in in the in in this order number one with the third being the most important in my mind number one their communications communications policy to policy. We've talked about their inability to have their rhetoric or their story from policy to policy, action to action tie together. Number two, I am worried about, as we've talked about, what they're going to run the next election on or what suite of issues they're going to run the next election on that is going to be a winner. I mean, climate is still available to them. Like, if you still poll this particular sort of emissions conversation in places they need to win, it is a winner. But can they ultimately make it supersede other things that also seem to be a winner, but are not in their current sort of strengths, natural strengths, so to speak? Housing should have been a natural strength. I think they've given that one up months ago, just by fungally inaction and Polyev just snatching it away for them, to be honest. They had the power of government, they had the pandemic, they had the ability to spend, they had the ability to both tell a story policy-wise and actually spend government money on fixing and putting putting housing on a trajectory. Polly has just taken that away from you. And we've talked about that. But you know what I have a larger issue with beyond those two things is I'm actually fundamentally concerned because that they're going to actually land on a suite of issues. They'll get better on the policy communications, that they're actually going to have political opportunity and figure out what they want to run the election on. But their inability to tell a cohesive story, the top line story, the visionary story without without being so technocratic that they've been like over the last three to four years, that's my biggest concern, that they're not able to stitch together one policy to the next. They're not able to cross stitch environment to housing, to economy, to you as a person, to your pocketbook. My concern is that they're going to get better at what they need to get better on, but it's not going to be enough because they've lost their core muscle of telling us any any sort of story that matters or resonates with us about this place, this country, my place in it, in this country, my life, my children's life in a meaningful way, what I am for, vision-related stuff. And that sounds simple, like, oh, why can't they just stitch together 15 different things and put a 30-second elevator speech together? But Corey and I will both attest, and I'm sure you can too, Annalise, as a communicator, that's sometimes the hardest stuff and takes the most amount of skill. So I
Zain
45:52
think with their recent hires, perhaps if they get a bit of a break, as Polyev starts getting defined on perhaps some less sort of charitable terms, they'll get better and they'll find their lane on what a good election issue is or series of issues is, they'll be better at the comms. But I think my biggest concern is that they don't have the big vision storytelling ability that I think they will need.
Corey
46:16
need so my question for both of you and for everybody out there is like when were the liberals last good at this you you
Zain
46:24
never been like in
Zain
46:25
the in the weeds liberal core you tell me i
Zain
46:28
i thought 2015 was decent as a reaction
Corey
46:30
reaction i was gonna say you've got to but
Zain
46:33
it was purely reactionary because it became about what's a canadian i don't think they let we started that campaign that like grueling what was it 100 day campaign or
Zain
46:42
or so being like we're we're going to define this as a, what does it mean to be Canadian? I think Syrian refugee crisis and like that child washing up to shore and terrible interviews given by the conservatives led to them kind of naturally occupying that leftist sort of progressive lane as Mulcair tried to flirt with the right. I don't think it was like a Telford, Jerry Butts, you know, like narrative architecture that they set up the campaign with. No offense to
Annalise
47:07
to them. Are they not? Like, Corey, do you think they're not good at it? Is that what you're getting at? like that there hasn't been a time where they have no
Corey
47:15
no no no no no no no no i guess what i'm saying is like they should probably be looking at the last time they were and you can make the argument so here's my theory of 2015 and look it's been a long time since the 2015 election but poll after poll after poll showed that canadians wanted to change it was a change election and stephen harper went into that election not leading right uh i i depending on when you want to sort of count when the election began.
Corey
47:41
All kicked off. It was Mulcair in the lead, and then it was, you know, for a while. But his whole path to victory for Stephen Harper was to keep the liberals and the NDP somewhat balanced, right? You couldn't have one too hard ahead of the other. And so he tried to calibrate his actions to make sure that they wouldn't support one party over the other very much, right? And he was actually fairly consistent at maintaining that balance until the first French language debate.
Corey
48:06
And then things got a little bit weird. And there There was, you know, there was all sorts of, like, look, you can get into it, you can talk about what moved it or not, but ultimately, inexplicably, the Liberals, well, not inexplicably, it was a lot of hard work by a lot of people, but the Liberals presented themselves as a party of change, real change. The party that governed Canada for 70 of the last 100 years at that time became the Change Party somehow. And they did that on a platform full of things that were changed, things like promising there was going to be electoral reform. The way they approached various topics was very different. And meanwhile, you had Tom Mulcair trying to look like the establishment because
Corey
48:45
because he wanted to show that you can trust the NDP. And I think ultimately that might have been a tactical mistake. But nonetheless, everybody is kind of balanced until ultimately the Liberals got a little bit of daylight ahead of the NDP. You can argue why. And Canadians collectively said, well, if we want change, they seem to be the party that's best positioned to give it. And then the Liberals won.
Corey
49:04
And I don't think anything I've just described was a lucky accident for the Liberals. I think that they worked really hard to get themselves in that position.
Corey
49:12
But it was a cohesive story that was backed by a bunch of points. And they're just in a different place now, right? They're in a different place for a bunch of reasons. Their promises have changed now. First of all, we're back in a change election, but now they're the government. Second of all, any promises have changed by them.
Corey
49:28
They've broken too many promises over the past, but governments always do. They will let you down. Never meet your heroes, kids. This
Corey
49:35
This is what happens. And so they just don't have that available to them at this particular moment. They're going to have to find a different path.
Corey
49:43
they've got to pick a path. They just can't run the path they did before. And I'll just say like kind of as a bit of a wrap on this rambling here, political parties get to government by communicating like political parties.
Corey
49:55
But then they start communicating like governments, and they lose government. It is the way of things in communications here. They start to be too nuanced, they start to be too hedgy, they start to be too dense. And the liberals are very much in that. Oh,
Zain
50:07
Oh, they've experienced the limitations of government as much as they've experienced the power. What's funny about government is that you've got all the possibility, because you literally control the purse strings, you control the power, you have the ability to do real things. But you also, I think it's part of like the human psychology, also remember and are guarded by the limitations. And the limitations of running as a political party or opposition are never really imposed upon you. That hasn't tasted what power looks like. You have your imagination runs wild. You have an ability to talk about things. But you often see governments, especially running to be reelected for successive terms, are generally doing expansion pacts on what's already worked, right? Modest expansion pacts on, you know, maybe a bit more of this and a bit more of that, but the track remains the same. And I think for the liberals that they're going to have to grind a victory out should they be in a position to even be competitive this next election. But it is going to take some sort of story. And I'm not talking just purely positive, aspirational, visionary story, like, without having the sharp, crisp attack on the other side against the other guy. But they don't have that muscle right now, Corey.
Corey
51:20
Yeah, I'd be curious how many promises they could unbreak in the next two years, too. Maybe we could have electoral reform. Maybe we could, you know, go back to some of the commitments that they made back in 2015. But
Annalise
51:31
But what do they run on? Like, is it to the point that's come up a few times that the
Annalise
51:37
the next election is not that far away?
Annalise
51:40
Should they be kind of narrowing in on that narrative and that what you run on in that story right now?
Corey
51:46
Yeah, well, they have to, right? Like, it feels like there's a lot of time. But again, as we've said, it's not.
Corey
51:53
Incumbent governments don't really get to run on change. You know, even when they get a new leader, they're sort of stuck with it. There are exceptions. I would actually argue, you know, in some ways, we have one of the bigger change candidates just won an election despite being an incumbent in Danielle Smith here in Alberta. But I
Corey
52:09
would say you generally run on kind of like stability and good governance and making the tough decisions. And the roadmap for me is
Corey
52:18
is Dalton McGinty, that election he was never supposed to win.
Corey
52:22
maybe Jean Charest and the election he was never supposed to win. But, you know, the elder statesman approach where it's like, you don't need to love me. I'm going to do what's right. Here's the things that I've done. I've got your back. You can kind of count on it. There's a certain reliability to my approach here.
Annalise
52:38
Okay, let's leave that one there because we could be talking about this for hours and I know, Zane, you've got to go. You've got things to do. Oh, we all should
Zain
52:45
should be going. We all should be ending the show. So we're
Annalise
52:48
we're going to move into the lightning round. My first topic is, I would say, a meaty one for the lightning round. So I will ask kind of an open
Annalise
52:58
open-ended question and you guys can take it where you want, but let's not spend too much time because we've got that deadline, Zane. So a local city hall story here in Calgary has made national uh headlines the past day and a bit um long story short mayor jody gondek uh put out a lengthy statement wednesday night at 8 30 p.m explaining that uh the 35th annual menorah lighting at city hall for hanukkah was
Annalise
53:23
was repositioned as an event to support israel and thus she would not be going menorah lightings happening at city halls across um across this country and it turned Turned into a really big story yesterday. Gondek did. She spoke to media. Conservative MPs put out a statement. Calgary Jewish Foundation, several others. Like lots of people had statements, had opinions. There's been a lot of columns about this. Again, lightning round. I don't want to get super in the weeds. I think there are many higher level kind of strategy and comms questions on this one. And I think that we can save that for another time. But Zane, just in terms of starting on this one, keeping in mind lightning round, keep it short. If you were advising Mayor Gondak throughout this situation, strategy
Annalise
54:08
strategy wise, what would you have done differently?
Zain
54:12
um if this was your intent to make this statement like this which i will say that that is not um especially around like like if you boil it down as in its essence talking about innocent palestinian lives which is what she's trying to say not supporting israel in in in the war okay if that's what you took out you know the rest is kind of like you know about hanukkah etc okay if that was your statement if
Zain
54:36
that's what you wanted to make um
Zain
54:38
um you would have either done done that independent of this event, made that statement, made your intentions clear. There's political risk and cost at that, but it wouldn't be muddled, right? It would be clear you'd make your point, and you could make that in one of many ways. You were the mayor of the city, after all. You can make that statement. I think there'd be many people celebrating. I think there'd be many people not celebrating you, but there'd be clarity. If your intention was to actually fundamentally change
Zain
55:02
change the dynamics or actually what happened what happened at this event, what was being supported, etc. There's the concept of just reaching out saying, you know, I would like this to change. If you still want to have it at City Hall, I'm really uncomfortable with this one particular tenant. For example, I'm uncomfortable with the sale of Israel bonds, so to speak. I know it's happened in the past. We live in a different political time. If you could remove that, I'll be there. I'm happy to be there, etc. etc.
Zain
55:27
Third option would have been to show up at the event and make some of the comments that she did in the spirit of bridge building, whatever, in her letter on site. I think all three of those, and fourth option, just not show up, right? Just not show up, sort of thing. I would once again ask her what the political goal is, because it's a little bit muddied, I think, so to speak, for me in terms of trying to dissect it. I got a sense of it, and I believe I have a sense of sympathy around it, especially around ceasefire, as we've talked about on this show, especially around uh not not you know uh fully supporting um uh the the the stance that the israel government is saying but i think the conflation here doesn't help the fact that the goals seem you know uh conflating both the israel and and and um the the jewish people of calgary uh they would argue that that that she would argue potentially that the event did that she didn't do that but once again i think the fact is that leadership here um could be um perhaps flexed in a few different ways i I have a lot of sympathy for the mayor, to be totally honest, around what she tried to do. I just don't know if she was able to land the plane with a clear set of goals here.
Corey
56:28
She 100% did not land the plane, in my opinion. Look, I mean, I got a lot of kind of tactical thoughts about this. The first thing I'll say is, it
Corey
56:38
it is the 35th menorah lighting, right? It's the 35th, an event that's gone on for 35 years. Nobody gets to entirely own and define, including the organizers for any particular year. And I think that's an important point. So this all hinged on a poster that said support Israel on it, which got the mayor to say, well, I'm not going to show up. Well, the reality is, it's
Corey
57:00
it's an event that's been going on for 35 years. It is not an event that is about supporting Israel, you can show up and you can make the event what you want to make it. And nobody can really stop you from doing that, because there's an inertia to that event well beyond what anybody decides to put on a particular poster. So I think Zane's point is a good one. Like you could have shown up and you could have made whatever comments you want about like the spirit of, I don't know, the spirit of Hanukkah, but like how you're hoping for peace and that there's, you know, there's be no more deaths of any innocents anywhere. I don't know. but i
Corey
57:29
i do think that that was probably a better approach if that was your goal than to send out a very long and very confused letter like the letter she sent didn't hang together at all in my opinion i feel like it contradicted itself within itself let alone with facts that were outside the letter that were easily brought into it here and
Corey
57:50
and i will just say in
Corey
57:52
in general when you you have a controversial matter.
Corey
57:56
Communications 101 here, less is more. You do not provide a page of broadside that people then can take exception to, right? Listen, I don't think she should have done what she did. I don't think she should have done it by a letter. If she wanted to do it by a letter, it should have been one paragraph saying, regrettably, because of the change of the nature of this event to become more about one side, I'm not attending.
Corey
58:19
Done, right? Instead, this long meandering thing came out and
Corey
58:24
and she was destined to be doomed on that front the
Corey
58:28
final thing i will say and
Corey
58:30
and why i think this is actually a bit of a big deal even putting aside the subject matter is a fundamental skill that's required of a mayor of a premier of a leader in a political context is being able to navigate issues where stakeholders have mutually exclusive views in a way that
Corey
58:49
minimizes the damage not maximizes it we
Corey
58:53
we talked about this a little bit earlier in politics there's an art of making things bigger than they are right where you're like this is a small issue i'm going to make it the biggest thing ever we're going to be talking about my thing for the next bit pierre polyev does this wonderfully on certain matters uh you know jody gondek has done this wonderfully in the past on certain matters but there is also an art to making things small small to saying okay this has the opportunity to be a real big flash point this has the opportunity to consume conversation for the next week i can have columnists writing about my opinions on these things and i don't want that and i need to make this small so this goes to zane's point about how she could have picked up the effing phone and sort of fix the individual challenges she had with it she she did not seem to appreciate that she had the ability to make things big or small all and that she was choosing to make it big and if she did i'm gonna end right where zane started what is the fucking goal what are you trying to do here why did you decide you wanted to blow up at this particular moment on this particular issue because i think it was unintentional but if it was intentional why
Zain
59:59
yeah and and the point there is you know like hey if you wanted to ask for a ceasefire and and you know we've been as a collective group uh marching on the streets for weeks now, please feel free to join us, right? If that was your goal, like I'm trying to, I'm being crass to make a point, right? Like if that was what you wanted to communicate, this letter was not the way to do it. And so, you know, you're able to do that. But let me take it out of this particular context. What I have been struggling with and probably even struck with, it very much is in line with Corey's concept of like making things small, this concept of smoothing things over, making people feel that even if the delta is big, that it actually is surmountable, that it is actually more common ground, etc. That as a political tool skill, unbelievably
Zain
1:00:44
unbelievably underrated political skill,
Zain
1:00:47
right? Like unbelievably underrated for people to have this skill of just people making feel like they're heard, and that the cleavages are smaller. But I also I've been even struggling with this concept of power. And I think this this like notion that that many in leadership positions have perhaps a wealth of experience, academic, maybe even lived around what leadership looks like, very few have been able to fully understand what power is and how to use it. And I think we've often thought of power as like, to Corey's point, the loud voice, the like, let me put up a statement here because I can, versus the soft voice, versus the phone call, versus the behind the scenes, underneath the sort of, you know, using the cliched, uh you know iceberg example the things we never see and i think this concept of power of of being able to persuade of being able to change tweak torque um just through a couple of words phone calls etc that if you fully experienced it and seen how it's done is its real use of power and i wonder that and and and this is now me getting into speculative territory and i will for a second, because this is actually a concept I've struggled well beyond with, even this mayor, that those who have historically not had access to power, perhaps racialized people, perhaps women, perhaps folks that have been in minority communities, have perhaps a cliche understanding of what power is. And once again, I'm not charging this to the mayor, I'm just kind of making this broader concept. I struggle with this, right? Having an ability to chair a few organizations and boards fully trying to appreciate, you know, owning up to what power looks like, like how to use it appropriately, when to use it, when not to use it. And to me, there's this broader conversation that is just so worthy having around the delta between leadership and what using power in pure political circumstances actually means versus its cliche of what we think it means or versus its caricature of what we think it means. And I think to me, the ability to avoid issues as much as confronting them is power in its own right, so to speak. So it's a really interesting case study. I, you know, and personally, I have a lot of sympathy for what the mayor was trying to do and trying to say. I just think that it opened up a world of hurt, unfortunately, that is now maybe going to haunt her for at least a little bit here. And hopefully there's some course correction that can be done.
Annalise
1:03:17
Kate let's um good lots to pick apart there and I think as I say we could we could chat about this for ages but uh let's not because Zane's got places to go so last lightning round question all-nighter guys MPs are up all night um marathon voting session in the house as conservative MPs have vowed to not let MPs rest until the carbon tax is gone Corey you're smiling what do you think Think of this, of when we do these tactics where we force delays and make a big spectacle and theater of it. What
Corey
1:03:54
I'm of two minds. I think that this is part of our kind of, you
Corey
1:03:58
you know, it's part of our political culture. I guess I'd start there. And in the broadest sense, we look at things like Mr. Smith goes to Washington, this idea of the filibuster, the idea of somebody standing up to a government off the rails and, and doing the thing that's inconvenient and our system allowing those voices to be heard, right? Not just about the majority, but it's about making sure that everybody can be represented and taking the bold stand. And frankly, it's beyond our political culture. It's kind of just our culture, like the idea of like, you see it everywhere. You see it in the movie 300. You see the idea of the doomed stand against the thing that you perceive as tyranny, right? That's just people like to see that sometimes. times so on on one hand i'm like yeah why not it's what always happens it is kind of the theater of politics it's it makes sense that you would be trying to write yourself as a movie character in these particular moments so that's the that's the kind of like cultural lens on it the operational lens the old bureaucrat is like what the fuck is the point of all of this right what a waste of time we've got real problems in the world that we need to be wasting our time on all of these agenda items that are just not particularly compelling, like 135 amendments. There's other things people could be doing. And let's be clear, he does not have the ability to sort of drag everything through the Christmas season. He can drag them to Friday night. That's the most he can manage to do under our particular system. So exhausting. But when I try to reconcile those to it's like whatever it's a day and a half it's politics it is what it is it's dumb politics is sometimes dumb and that's just my bottom line on it here so but i will say maybe
Corey
1:05:38
maybe we need a different frame for politics because a lot of what is just kind of baseline politics these days would
Corey
1:05:44
would be considered sociopathic workplace right like we just need to start being
Annalise
1:05:49
being a little more human
Corey
1:05:50
human to each other zane
Annalise
1:05:51
zane what's what's your bottom line on pricks
Zain
1:05:53
pricks do pricks things this guy's a prick this was a prick move and he just ultimately is just like whatever i don't give a fuck let me bring in mickey d's at 1 a.m uh let me clip chase on that
Corey
1:06:06
that apparently stinking up the house of comics whatever and
Zain
1:06:09
and then the other side played along and like okay great it's all stupid theater um yeah
Zain
1:06:17
great no one's gonna remember yeah
Corey
1:06:19
didn't really make anybody's lives better it's december there's not a lot of political news by the way while i was watching to see like this blue jays watch here i did see that the government of alberta is still apparently running ads for the alberta pension plan really i just wanted to correct that before you say that's a wrap but
Corey
1:06:35
but uh we can
Annalise
1:06:36
can use yeah they
Annalise
1:06:37
they are still running i just
Corey
1:06:38
just still don't know what's happening name was shohei but uh that's fine guys
Annalise
1:06:42
guys that is a wrap on episode 1271 of the strategist my name is annalise clean bill and with you as always cory hogan and zane belchie