Episode 1279: Sit there and be sad

Zain 0:01

This is The Strategist, episode 1279. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, we have done it. It is the whitest Orthodox

Zain 0:12

Orthodox New Year's Eve slash New Year's ever, Carter. And your prediction... Congratulations, Stephen.

Zain 0:20

We can't afford the

Zain 0:21

effects anymore, but we've got me just clapping, okay? We've got me clapping.

Zain 0:26

That's good. What did I do? That was not as... Well, Carter, do you not remember on the Holiday Spectacular? On the Holiday Spectacular. You named

Carter 0:33

named a Filipino person. No, I don't remember. I have actually blocked that one out. Yeah, I blocked that one out. Next

Zain 0:39

Next time, just be nicer

Zain 0:41

Jollibee, and you will be able to have the name of Filipino person in your back pocket, Carter. Okay? But

Carter 0:47

But you did it. I don't know what Jollibee is. Okay,

Corey 0:49

Okay, well. It's a Filipino chain. It's very good. Oh, my God,

Zain 0:52

Carter. That is actually

Zain 0:54

Now you're infuriating me even more. Or, how

Zain 0:57

how do you not know what jolly be?

Carter 1:01

mean, why would I know that?

Zain 1:03

Regardless, you knew other answers in the Holiday Spectacular, which, of course, 100% perfect predictor of how white Orthodox New Year's Eve slash New Year's Day would be. And here we are, Carter.

Zain 1:18

The whitest. We have absolutely done it. Corey, you know, despite his lackluster, albeit ignorant performance, some might say, Carter does it again. Okay, Carter does it again.

Corey 1:31

The man's got a gift. I'd never take it away from him. I

Zain 1:34

I wouldn't take it away from him. Speaking of things being taken away, Carter, let's move it on to our first segment. Our first segment here, lack of power to the people. Can we talk about this, Corey?

Zain 1:45

We sit here in... Yes, we can. I guess we can indeed. Indeed. We sit here in Alberta, which is not news to most people. I think they know that we sit here in Alberta. But

Zain 1:57

like all Albertans last night, I re-recorded this on Sunday evening, last night being Sunday, we had an issue, an alert that was issued to all of our cell phones, Apple Watches, iPads, televisions, across radio by the Alberta Electric System system operator urging all of us to reduce our electricity usage to essentials only to prevent what they would call rotating outages. The alert came a few hours after the Alberta electric system operator declared that the grid alert did extreme cold, high demand, and low imports, almost a perfect storm, as they tried to clarify in some of their communication, Corey, around what was going on and why us as everyday Albertans should probably unplug that electric vehicle, probably probably not use unnecessary appliances. This came to people on a 7 p.m. on a Saturday evening, right? Like this was something that hit all of us. Corey, there's the policy, there's the complication of what happened, why it happened. And then there's also the fun politics, and I put fun in air quotes, because people have already selected sides. When this alert came to you yesterday, talk to me about, top line, what you assessed from a political lens. You can get into the policy lens of it and around the system breakdown, et cetera, if you'd like. But from a political lens, when you saw it, did you chuckle? Did you sigh? And what was the chuckle and or sigh about?

Corey 3:22

Well, I didn't chuckle per se. I'd been sort of watching it all day since the ISO put out the alert in the afternoon talking about tight supply in the evening. And, you know, a lot of people were. And actually, it's funny, my sister texted me, I

Corey 3:37

I don't know, 10 minutes before this alert going out saying, hey, if you're not severely online, like if you're not on Twitter, how are you supposed

Carter 3:44

supposed to know that

Corey 3:44

that we're in a situation of tight supply? playing and so when i saw it my first thought was oh boy this is a this is new and b because it's new this this could very well be serious and we could be looking at rotating blackouts at a time when um you know if if you were not listening to this in alberta basically as soon as we release it you'll probably forget like the coldest day basically

Corey 4:08

basically recorded in calgary

Corey 4:10

calgary and edmonton right right? Very cold. And

Corey 4:13

while we all use natural gas to heat our homes, because Justin Trudeau won't pay for our heat pumps.

Corey 4:19

You know, we've got a situation here where those things still require electricity generally to kind of kick off and run and all of that. So yeah, my first thought was, oh, this might be pretty serious. And then my next one was curiosity, like, is this going to work? Like, is sending everybody in the province a turn off the lights text going to work? And And it seems like it did. But ultimately, while I'm grateful that we didn't end up in a situation where we were shedding load and having to curtail and or having to curtail, you know, through rotating blackouts or brownouts or whatever you want to call them. I think it's reasonable to ask how we got here. Certainly, while there was a lot of difficulty in a lot of other jurisdictions, Alberta seemed to be in a uniquely tight situation. situation but you

Corey 5:07

you know i say that but then i also know that a lot of people immediately went to well that's the problem with renewables we got rid of all of this coal generation wind

Corey 5:16

wind took over so much of it and it was very little wind in alberta and that is true there was very little wind so um i do think ultimately that alert and

Corey 5:27

and the conversation that will spill out of it is a bit of a political rorschach test like you're going to see in it what you want to see you're either they're going to see a government that has mismanaged the electricity file hand in hand with the uh with the aso with the electric system operator um for many years or you're going to see the folly of renewables or you are going to see uh that's just how severe the weather was here you know no matter what your lens is you're gonna you're gonna see something in this and we're gonna see all sorts of elevated politics as a result you

Zain 6:01

you know i i i will just extend on that that Rorschach test sort of analogy, Corey, because I agree with it. And I would also take it further to say the instance of the alert, getting an alert also is a Rorschach test in some ways, which is this is a government that is prepared, that's communicating, or this is a government that's going to a last-ditch effort because of the lack of planning, preparation, and or policy, and then kind of Hail Mary-ing it and saying, this is your problem now, help us out, do us a solid sort of thing, right? 7 p.m. on a Saturday. Well, yeah.

Corey 6:31

And look, I mean, the policy is super interesting. And yeah, some people are going to say that. And they're going to say, why is this? Now I've got to reduce demand. But I think actually flexible demand is going to be part of electric systems going forward. So it's super interesting. Carter,

Zain 6:45

Carter, jump in here. Give me your top line thoughts. And then I want to actually jump into the raw politics, which is, of course, what the show is focused on.

Carter 6:52

Well, I mean, power purchasing, the power market is a mess in Alberta, in part because we decided to make it a mess during Ralph Klein's tenure. And then it got more of a mess through trying to fix that. And we like to point to the NDP and say, well, the NDP screwed it up. Well, actually, you know, I remember being briefed on this because we had brownouts during my tenure as chief of staff to Alison Redford. I'll tell you something. It wasn't based on renewal. Did they

Corey 7:18

they interrupt your meetings with Mothers Against Drunk Driving?

Carter 7:21

Driving? Yeah, they were the intermittent meetings with power were interrupted by mad meetings. Also, just so

Zain 7:27

so you know, brownouts, also known as the Muslim ban in the US. Okay, keep

Carter 7:31

keep going. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Carter 7:34

But the PPA, like I kept saying to the people in energy, explain the PPAs like I'm an idiot, because I don't even understand why you would do it.

Carter 7:42

So one company produces the power, you sell that power to another company at a reduced rate, that other company then sells it back into the grid at a profit. it and the citizens of alberta get fucked is that is that a summary of it yeah

Carter 7:56

yeah kind of anyways that's what we were dealing with we then had a cory doesn't like my description uh yeah at

Carter 8:04

well you'll get over it that's

Carter 8:07

had a power plant that was under construction or that was under maintenance and we're trying to find out why it was under maintenance and it was under maintenance because its primary you know it was selling electricity below cost um so that's why it was under maintenance and these things if you're going to have a free don't do that don't shake your head i was there no

Carter 8:32

don't shake your head i was there i was there briefing after briefing we wound up with no power in the exact same situation because the market uh the incentives sometimes don't work. And if we had a truly free market system, it might work. If we had a truly regulated system, it might work. But instead, we have a hodgepodge of a system that has been created by successive governments years over years, and it doesn't work particularly well. And then, because people are partisan, they get to point the finger and say, it's actually because of renewables. It's not actually because of renewables. It's because we haven't done a good enough job on our carbon capture and sequestration we haven't done a good enough job generating more electricity through renewables we haven't done a good enough job on our batteries we haven't even done a good enough job on hydro so there's many different things that we can do to ensure that we've got the power system that we're supposed to have but we haven't done them and cory now do you want to do cleanup on my stuff or do you want me just to to go back back and name names because i will i

Corey 9:36

i mean i beg you not to uh it's just that the company is not flush enough to deal with your your madness here but not

Corey 9:45

look i i think that there's a kernel of truth to what you're saying there's a lot of oversimplification the reality is alberta's electricity market is unique

Corey 9:55

unique in a canadian context and the way we approach it this electricity only market not a ton of inner ties to our neighbors and and so we sort of sometimes float on our own body of water here and things go up things go down and and it's not necessarily what's happening elsewhere it's what's happening here and there's a lot of challenges with that and like a lot of systems of of this kind of scale and complexity if they don't have care and attention to them if you're not thinking thoughtfully through them every step of the way things can can get out of whack in a hurry and look a lot of people can argue about the uh you

Corey 10:29

you know the capacity markets that the the ndp were going to introduce uh at the request of the aso that the county government then got rid of like did decided no we were not going to go to capacity markets capacity market is essentially paying somebody to have supply at the ready is this

Corey 10:46

kind of a simple way to put it and now we're in a situation where we didn't have supply at the ready and so you can kind of look at that and say, Oh, that's, that's a little fucked, right. But one of the challenges here is these, the reason why a capacity market was looking more necessary is because we were going to have more intermittent power sources with solar and with wind, and we were going to need the ability to have capacity at the ready when, you know, when a moment like this occurred, or if a gas plant went offline or something like that. And we didn't do it. So we changed half the system, right? We didn't change the other half the system. And half is even being too generous with my fractions here because there were so many other actions that are that are a so and that our government should have been considering over the past few years as we sort of look at what's ahead of us here and if there's going to be more intermittent supplies like we've got to be talking about smart grids we've got to be talking about inner ties to other areas we've got to be talking about the ways that we can just like the alert did although probably with less drama encourage people or direct people or pay people to reduce their demand at times when there's supply and we haven't done any of that that's

Carter 11:48

that's one of the things that really pisses me off about alberta i mean we don't have lower lower prices when there's lower demand we talk about being a market market based economy but you know cory you and i have electric vehicles because we're smarter than everybody else right and but we program our electric vehicles to charge when the demand is less because that makes sense it's better for everybody if you program your vehicle to charge when the demand is less and instead of giving us a lower price as they do in other markets around the world we are stuck paying the exact same rate even though we're doing the right thing for the system okay

Corey 12:26

yeah well and look again like hodgepodge of decisions some of them were made to solve problem a or problem b and it resulted in problem c and and i guess in some ways that's we're getting super deep down the policy hole yeah

Corey 12:39

i guess the point i want to return to is is everybody's got reasons to see the story they want to see in this, right? If you are somebody who buys into the Danielle Smith, tell the feds, nobody wants to freeze in the dark narrative, you can't trust wind, you can't trust solar,

Corey 12:55

well, isn't this a wonderful case? Let me start there,

Zain 13:01

because that's exactly where I wanted to go on the politics side. Carter, and I'm going to give you what Corey's put out there, which is tell the feds. how would you take the events of this weekend mold

Zain 13:12

mold them together and make them politically advantageous as a message for daniel smith and the ucp by the way i look at tell the feds.ca it's down right now which in its own right there's an irony

Corey 13:23

irony yeah um but carter uh

Corey 13:26

uh nobody wants to to get a 404 page on the web yeah

Zain 13:30

yeah that's right that's all the yeah tell the feds yeah um Um, well, Justin Trudeau took it down. I don't know if you know that. He fucked, he fucked him up, man. Carter.

Corey 13:38

Was it his climate police? It was.

Zain 13:39

was. It was Stephen Gilbeau on a bike.

Zain 13:42

Bicycle. Sorry, just so you're clear. Um, Carter, how do you mold this into a good story politically for the, uh, for the UCP this weekend? Corey, I'm going to get you to play the other side in a sec.

Carter 13:52

Well, I think that it just unfolds almost, almost as a good story. People who are, I mean, Corey's political. Naturally. Yeah,

Carter 14:00

you know, if you believe that this is something that could happen, and now it's happened. I mean, it happened not years from now, not years down the road. It happened mere months, mere months after Danielle Smith said that it might happen. And here we are in a province with 20,000 megawatts of generation opportunity generating 12,000 and being absolutely at our upper limit and no longer being able to supply Albertans with the power that they need. Look at that. We can't even go above that. If it gets colder, if it gets warmer, we're not going to be able to supply and protect just as Danielle said. And the line, just as Danielle said, could be could be your tagline for the next couple of weeks, because it looks like she was very much prophetic here and predicting that she, you

Carter 14:52

you know, this was going to happen. And now here

Carter 14:54

here it is. It has happened in no small part because of the decisions that have been made by government, as Corey alluded to. But nonetheless, it doesn't matter what the reason is. All that matters is that the outcome has has occurred as expected, as promised. Danielle is a truth teller. That's what I would say. Corey,

Zain 15:15

Corey, play the other side for me. What would you say if you're the opposing NDP or those with a political interest in ensuring that the UCP don't get away with the narrative, whether it's the same or similar to what Carter just put out there seconds ago with Daniel Smith becoming a luminary and prophet of the conservative circle?

Corey 15:35

circle yeah well the first thing i would not do is try to say no no no renewables are are not intermittent like i i think you've

Corey 15:45

you've got to avoid that yeah the wind doesn't always blow yeah the sun goes down when the sun goes down and by the way we knew the wind wasn't going to be blowing at these particular times right these intermittencies are are a known thing right there There are capacity factors for electricity. It basically says, what percent of the time can you expect a plant to be up? And they're not super high for wind or solar. So when Carter talks about 20,000 megawatts of capacity, that's like the max possible. The capacity factors underneath that are always going to reduce that. And the more you have wind or solar in there, or frankly, even just unreliable old plants, you're going to see lower actual capacity factors take account here. you

Corey 16:27

do not want to get into the fight about whether the wind always blows or the sun always shines uh

Corey 16:32

uh and in fact i think if you can avoid um you

Corey 16:36

know the the idea that renewables are at the heart of this in general i think you'd say look there are a lot of other jurisdictions in canada and we are the only ones with this problem so you can blame the feds all you want but it seems the rest of our federation managed to weather this okay second thing i would point out is is the government themselves identified that there were problems as a result of canceling the capacity market. There were quotes from Daniel Smith to this effect. You can actually go back to Hansard and you can look at quotes that were done by then Minister of Energy, Sonia Savage, saying, oh, the government or the opposition is saying that if we do these things, these risks occur, but we think these risks are overblown. We've got 25% additional capacity. We're best in class right now. Now, honestly,

Corey 17:21

honestly, I'm not entirely convinced that the capacity market would have been the panacea here. But, like, the whole idea, if you're paying people for extra capacity, is maybe there's a reason to keep older plants online. Maybe there's a reason to sort of contemplate the time of year that these things are going to go down and, you know, govern yourself accordingly. It really depends on how you build these things out. But I think you've got to move it onto the ground of, like, this is actually not about renewables, really, at all, right? right? We knew the wind wasn't going to blow. And we still had projected that we were going to be fine. What happened intervening there? Well, the problem is we've got a little bit of a broken system. And it's broken because these guys broke it. And I think that that's more the argument you need to make. But I want to stress, it's a little harder. And I actually agree with Carter, I think that this is kind of a win for people who don't like solar or wind. I think that's just the way easier argument for the public. So

Zain 18:13

So here's a question ultimately for you guys. And I'll kind kind of get you to take your team hats off. And I'll start with you on this one, Carter.

Zain 18:21

Is this enough of a good story that the UCP should put political weight, capital, time, energy into it on the heels of this weekend?

Zain 18:31

Is this enough of a good story that they should, like, because I asked you guys to construct narratives, because we do this academically, but now in the real world, should they do more than that? Should they actually try to engineer this, make this a point, you know, do all the things that are available at their disposal as government and as a political party to

Zain 18:49

to lean into what happened this weekend? What would you say, Corey? I've got the same question for you in a sec.

Carter 18:54

Absolutely. I mean, first of all, it's not going to be much of a lean.

Carter 18:57

You're barely going to have to lean into it in order to make it a story. I mean, the news media is going to do some of this lifting for you. I mean, you know, people were told that they might have to turn off their toasters. This was a big deal. And because of that um they were scared and there is no more powerful force in politics than fear um so when they get scared and when they decide that this is not uh not good then you you if you don't take advantage of it you actually risk having it backfire on you this this this may be in fact a mandatory thing uh where daniel smith has to take advantage of it in order to ensure that the the proper enemy as identified and the proper enemy in this particular case would be uh justin trudeau you

Carter 19:47

you know that's the enemy let's go after him here we've got the proof and don't worry about you know cory's or cory hogan's arguments and discussions on twitter about you know why we may be in this situation with just took 10 whole tweets uh instead look at just the fact that people

Carter 20:04

people are scared and they know who to blame that person to blame shouldn't be you so you are therefore required to point the finger at someone else.

Zain 20:13

Corey, would you lean into this? You're advising the Premier tonight. Would you lean into next week and say, fuck it, let's go ham on this?

Corey 20:21

Yeah, well, look, I think one of the reasons why it would be very tempting for them to do it is, and

Corey 20:27

and a lot of people with a lot more knowledge in this space than I would say the same is, there

Corey 20:31

there is reason to believe what the federal government is trying to get Alberta to do in terms of this rapid transition is not likely to be successful unless you have the ability to bring gas online or uh you know otherwise uh sources of electricity that can be rapidly dispatched here and you know it's that kernel of truth now there's a there's it's wrapped in a bit of a lie here because there's nothing that actually precludes that you know if these regs are written in the right way or in a good way but like that kernel of truth i think is something that gives them sort of the legitimate ability to say like yeah this is not going to work like there are going to be days where this is not going to work and we can't all freeze right and again lots

Corey 21:14

lots of things people could be doing could be investing in storage battery storage could

Corey 21:19

be investing in you know policy changes we already talked about interties we already talked about all of this stuff but that's really like

Corey 21:28

like who's going to entertain that argument To Carter's point, you can just say, we hit a moment. We wouldn't have been in that moment if we had a different type of electricity generation. We had, at one point, a lot of coal generation. That coal generation is in

Corey 21:43

in the situation of being converted right now, and you're going to have more gas plants coming online and more conversions coming online, but it's not currently. And if you looked at, like, just generation by source in Alberta, you'd see coal fall off a cliff, you'd see gas go up. I'm going from memory here, I don't know, half what coal went down, and you'd see wind and cogen, I think, basically making up the difference there. So, like, you can look at these things, and you can have a set of facts, and you can actually make a pretty compelling case, like, hey, this is the risk if you go down this road. and actually

Corey 22:16

actually i kind of agree it is if you don't do a bunch of other stuff that is complicated and potentially unpopular and expensive and

Corey 22:23

and so i guess one of the pities here is that ultimately

Corey 22:27

it's like an argument about whether we think dispatchable electricity is good or not of course it's fucking good the real challenge is fossil fuels are killing the planet but that's also not an argument anybody wants to hear right now because that's just a little bit higher on maslow's hierarchy of needs than i need there to be heat in

Corey 22:42

my house so you know it's it's all a a bit of a mess if you are trying to take a more nuanced, a more thoughtful, or a more anti-government view. But if you're Danielle Smith, it's actually a pretty easy story.

Corey 22:54

Look at this. The wind doesn't always blow. Justin Trudeau wants us to rely on these sources of power which have proven themselves unreliable. You all got the alert. The experts are saying the same thing.

Corey 23:05

Asterisk, not really, but sort of, you know. And that's, of course, they're going to go ham on it of

Zain 23:11

of course they are carter what's the best immune sort of defense to this if you're the ndp official opposition right

Zain 23:18

you're anticipating it you've got someone you know you know there's a lot of minds and a lot of eyes on their their ongoing leadership but you got someone putting a couple of sentences together what are some of the points you'd say that need to make up their their defense against the point that both of you are making that you know this case is easy to lean into and the UCP should heading into this week?

Carter 23:38

The UCP can blame Trudeau all they want, but, you know, to quote a great premier of Alberta's past, if they really want to know who the culprit is, they need to look in the mirror. They need to make a decision about, you

Carter 23:52

you know, carbon capture and storage, for example. If we were to deliver our carbon capture and storage the way that we've been, you know, promoting it, if we were able to deliver CCS the way we've been talking about it, then then this wouldn't be an issue because we'd be able to store the carbon that is generated out of this natural gas switch. Yes, we switched significantly from coal to natural gas. That was an NDP initiative. That shift happened, but it still didn't eliminate the primary problem. And the primary problem was then was invested in many years before by Ed Stelmack. There's lots of opportunity to continue to generate the electricity that's needed without putting us in in the position where we have to worry every summer about smoke and potentially burning down one of our great cities.

Zain 24:40

I like that. Corey, anything to add? I want to move on right after this.

Corey 24:43

Yeah, look, the UCP is trying to vilify those few megawatts of electricity we got from renewables that actually kind of saved our asses. If we didn't have them, we'd be in even more trouble. And the fact of the matter is simple. The thing we told you would happen, happened. We told you not to cancel the capacity market. We told you about the importance of reliability. ability and you said the market would figure it out well you and the market have been in charge for four fucking years and

Corey 25:09

it's not figured out and it's it's time for a better way to do these things a more thoughtful way to do these things this is a government that's been entirely sleep at the switch on the subject of electricity and they're playing distraction politics right now the simple fact is the thing we told you would happen happened and

Corey 25:25

and you told us we were wrong i

Corey 25:27

i like you're wrong

Zain 25:27

wrong classic messaging session we haven't done those in a while we're whiteboard out a message for both sides. It's

Carter 25:33

It's always fun to get to do the other side.

Zain 25:36

Carter, I never know with you who the other side is week to week, Carter. Who

Carter 25:40

You know, it's a good point. You're so convincing.

Zain 25:42

convincing. It's a good point. You're a chameleon either way. Carter, let's move it on to our next segment, Stephen Carter, our next segment on the house. I want to talk about something. We'll take a bit of a left turn here, Carter. This is an interesting story coming out of Ottawa. Well, not so much Ottawa, actually the West Bank. Bank.

Zain 25:59

There are Liberal and NDP MPs, Carter, that are going to be traveling to the West Bank to connect with Palestinians. This is an initiative completely paid for and sponsored by an organization called the Canadian Muslim Vote, a registered non-profit Muslim charity. Five MPs, as I mentioned, including two Liberals, are on this particular trip where they're going to meet with the Palestinian community, I should say, on the ground in the West Bank. The details of this are interesting, and I think it's worthwhile. And full disclosure, the Canadian Muslim Votes Organization, I've, you know, helped in the past and know of. But that's not what I want to discuss here. I want to go to the strategy, Carter, the political tactics when we talk about advocacy

Zain 26:42

of hosting. I find this to be fascinating. We've talked about things like government relations in the past, how to do good GR, how to move ministers on files, how to write a good and execute on good good persuasive letters, how to have a good meeting, how to go in for the ask. We've talked about all that extensively. We've talked about grassroots advocacy, this concept of building a public coalition so that MPs and others and decision makers are pressured to do the right thing, so to speak, because of the volume of their electorate and their voters that want a certain thing. And then we've also talked about the broader sort of tools of advocacy ranging in from one-on-one meet and greets, events, etc. We have not talked about paying for someone's bill to go do something, go see something, and host them, make them your guest in that way. We've done it in the small way, you know, attend my drinks sort of event in Ottawa at 5pm, you know, we'll host you on the hill. We've talked about that. But this is fundamentally really, I think, kind of different, Carter. And we haven't talked about the strategy of hosting, paying for folks that are elected officials to go see a thing, do a thing, engage with the thing that is important to you. And in this case, this is a strategy taken on by the Canadian Muslim vote that, you know, I would say parrots in some ways, a strategy that has been taken on by Jewish individuals and outright groups supportive of Israel for many, many years. But Carter, I wanted to get your thought on this? There's a sort of expenses paid question. There's an effectiveness of the strategy question. Start with either of those two lanes. If there's a third one you want to carve out, let's do that. But there's a few things to discuss here that I think would be worthwhile for the listener.

Carter 28:27

Well, first of all, I have no real direct knowledge of the effectiveness of it. I would say that Israel's been doing it for quite a long time. And I think that their metrics must must show that it's working because, um, they've, they've been doing it for, uh, for a long time. I'm not going to even venture a guess as to how long, because I think it predates me. Um, and you know, it, it, it's not just available to, uh, Jewish members of parliaments or Jewish elected folks. Anybody, uh, can wind up being hosted by the state of Israel or Israel, uh, associated groups and they will i think it's

Corey 29:05

it's the cija okay

Corey 29:08

it's the group that actually does it but yeah

Carter 29:09

yeah so they get they they have the opportunity to be hosted and and um you know see what's going on in israel see what the particular challenges are and now this particular group uh is is you know this uh you know muslim group is taking on the same opportunity to tour the west bank and i think that you

Carter 29:30

know that makes a lot of sense if if one side is doing a tactic that that is working do you know the other side should should look at whether or not they should embrace it now i don't mean to necessarily break this down into sides but i'm going to do that just for simplicity of the argument um i

Carter 29:46

i don't like this uh i'm very concerned about the ethics of this uh we have uh we've i think it's fair to say cory and you'll tell me if i'm wrong again um very strict conflict of interest laws. And those conflict of interest laws, you

Carter 30:03

ministers can get taken out for things like ordering too much orange juice, or,

Carter 30:08

or, you know, the price of the orange juice or whatever may be the case, let

Carter 30:12

let alone a trip to

Carter 30:13

to another country sponsored or paid for by a by a third party, a nonprofit organization. I struggle with how this is ethical and some of the other things that we do aren't um but i can't argue with the effectiveness of it i think it is a great way to showcase your issue um my problem is it may be too good a way to show showcase your issue because i think it gives almost an unfair advantage uh and some could say that the most you know if we really want to learn about uh israeli issues If we want to learn about West Bank issues, perhaps the best way to do it is for Canada to pony up and pay for the costs associated with these things, because frankly, they're important to all of us. And when

Carter 31:03

we ask for third parties to pay for something, they often come with, you know, there's biases that show. There's a curatorial

Zain 31:10

curatorial element to this on the ground as well, right? And let's be honest, like in this case and in other cases that there is an element of, yeah, we're paying for you, but you're also going to go through our regime or our program on the ground around what we want you to see, so to speak.

Carter 31:26

There's also biases that go with this. Like literally people can't separate the fact

Carter 31:33

fact that this was given to them. Like the fact that this is given to you means that you're going to have a retribution bias and it's going to, you

Carter 31:40

you know, it's going to put you in a place where you're going to favor someone because they gave you a gift. And human

Carter 31:48

human psychology is such that that's probably going to happen even if you're aware that it happens.

Zain 31:54

Corey, like on the specifics, I'll say only for myself that like I'm glad this is happening, that the folks at TCMV are doing this. But it's not even part of the story that we want to discuss. It's almost about the effectiveness of the practice, and then as Carter's brought up, the ethics of the practice overall. Where do you want to start? You want to hit up on ethics? You want to talk on effectiveness? Where do you want to go?

Corey 32:16

yeah well let's talk about the rules you know the ethics in a in a kind of a more philosophical sense have to be maybe considered separate from that but this is allowed under the rule i mean it almost does feel like a loophole to steven's point here but mps are allowed to accept what's called sponsored travel from groups and this sponsored travel uh you know essentially covers the costs of the trip and their accommodations and the activities that they they were doing there and the purpose is i think to allow them to learn from these groups that obviously seems to be the basis of it it is a it is an exemption in the rules around gifts for parliamentarians and it's a pretty fucking big one because i

Corey 32:55

i just while carter was talking i looked up some of the stats i think from 2022 is what i found and basically it's an average value of like ten thousand dollars yeah it's not insignificant that's that's significant well that's a significant amount of money there and that's the amount of money that has to be reported it actually doesn't fully capture the cost of of that curation you're talking about saying you know all of the work that goes into making those events the events that they are here now

Corey 33:21

now ministers can't take it it's only available to mps who are not ministers or parliamentary secretaries but it is like like carter said kind of a kind of an eyebrow raising uh you know exemption because it does allow uh groups to sort of circumvent what are otherwise like super low like 200 or something like that is the gift limit you know two hundred dollars is the gift limit unless they're taking you somewhere in which case it's it's unlimited you know it's ten thousand dollars plus

Carter 33:50

plus a donation limit cory a

Carter 33:51

a donation limit i mean that is the equivalent of like not you know nine donations eight donations from individuals that you'd have to get all coming from one group just to fly you somewhere and and you know take you on a tour i i it is a big big loophole i

Zain 34:09

guess cory you know well and so go go ahead and jump in on this look

Corey 34:13

look i'll just say that like they're not paying the money out of

Corey 34:17

they're paying the money because they they want to expose you to something they want to expose you to a point of view they want to you know it's it's classic tin staple stuff there's no such thing as a free lunch you're gonna have to listen to the timeshare pitch if you show up and uh i think we should be a bit mindful that when mps do that they are going to hear one

Corey 34:37

one side of things one of of the interesting things i think you should always ask when you get a pitch from any group is and sometimes i i've even directly asked the group right like the person who's opposed comes in right after what are they going to say about this thing that you've just said right like what was the counter view but that's not really something that happens on these particular trips and so you know there is something to be said about you

Corey 35:00

you know how how balanced the diet is how broad-based the diet it is, whatever word you want to choose when somebody is digesting the worldviews and narratives of an individual group.

Zain 35:11

I guess putting our advocacy hats on, our practitioner hats on, Carter, would you advise people to do this more? Because I almost look at sponsored travel as a technical word. I almost look at this as like sponsored experiences. They don't have to be overseas. They don't have to be about this particular issue, right? To Corey's point, if I take you somewhere, come see my site, come see the operations, I'll fly you over to wherever. Those sort of things for these backbench MPs, which are not an insignificant group to lobby and persuade and convince, would you make this more of your advocacy diet when you talk to clients about it? Because $10,000 is a lot, but we know the hundreds of thousands that are often spent on grassroots lobbying, on government relations, on other things. And to be able to isolate someone for a period of time, to Carter, to go back to one of your, to maybe even work it too well, to have that, you know, like attention for almost exclusively, there is value here. So as you look at it as a practice, and we haven't discussed this on the pod before, what would your take be as a practitioner advising a client, advising an institution on whether to do something like this, engaging in something like this more?

Carter 36:26

yeah i mean uh you know start a start a business over i mean this is this is just good good relationship building um as i said you know there's there's going to be biases there's going to be uh relationships developed that will be intangible but certainly valuable um i would suggest that this is a you know this should be something in every practitioner's toolkit toolkit and it's going to be helpful uh if you have you know the ability to to spend ten thousand dollars per backbench mla um and it's going to be way more than that but if you're spending uh a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in in government relations anyways um this is a lot you know talk to your government relations agency and ask them how to how you can get this make this a part of your mix, because this is a lot better than just asking that GR agency to set up a meeting with the parliamentary secretary or some sort of junior minister.

Zain 37:33

Corey, what do you think? As you kind of like assess this as a practice, I'm curious if you've got any thoughts. I mean, this particular topic is just out of raw curiosity for me, and so I'm curious to get both of your perspectives. Would you make this greater greater part of your mix if you were in the position to advise organizations or institutions or charities or even nonprofits around, you know, how to persuade, how to convince, how to relationship build.

Corey 37:59

Yeah, let's be clear. This is not going to be a tactic available to every nonprofit. You've got to have some fairly deep pockets to pull off something like this. And, you know, that's one of the reasons I think we should approach it a bit cautiously in a public sense right when this is being occurred but um yeah if you can afford it it does seem to be you know we used to talk a lot about uh carter will remember this for sure zayn you might too about like kind of the durability of communications based

Corey 38:27

on like how deep the connection was yeah with individuals right and so you know it would be the metaphor i always used is like if if i uh

Corey 38:36

walked by uh you know and said to carter like hey hey carter what's the weather going to be today and he said oh it's gonna be minus 30 degrees right move on with my life maybe i'd remember he said it was minus 30 maybe i wouldn't right that's not a very durable conversation but if we end up in this thing where all of a sudden it's we're stuck in the same room for four hours and he's like i actually have a weather machine let's control the weather together let's talk about what the weather could be i'm

Corey 39:01

i'm gonna remember it right and it's just kind of the length and the intensity and the back and forthness of the conversation when you have somebody on a trip like this which is going to make it much it's going to make the point stick in your mind much stronger even if you don't really anticipate it to right and and that's just human nature that's the reality of any you know it's in some ways it's like uh what do they call that when you know spaced out learning like you hear something you hear it again you hear it again yeah you hear it again like you've

Corey 39:28

you've just got the time for

Corey 39:29

for those particular uh engagements at that at that moment Now, I separated rules from ethics specifically a little bit earlier, though. Yeah.

Corey 39:41

I'm wondering, though, especially, you know, it was an exemption created for good intentions, I have no doubt. But the more people become aware of this exemption, the more people use this exemption, I think the more you have to question the ethics of this exemption. And I'm not saying that this particular moment is where any line is crossed. I'm certainly not. What I'm saying is, you know, if all of a sudden everybody is saying, well, all we got to do is just make it a trip somewhere and it's sponsored travel and we're all good.

Corey 40:08

I mean, I have pretty significant problems with that.

Zain 40:11

Oh, yeah. No, I get what you're saying. And I appreciate that. You know, and there is to both of your perspectives, there's an important reason I brought this up now, not just because it was a headline. line. And I knew the elements of it not being accessible or permissible for ministers or parliamentary secretaries to engage Carter. But for months on this show, and the Canadian political pundit class has been talking about a change in government. And so when you are looking at the opportunity here to pursue the other side of the house, the conservatives, these are future ministers, exactly, future ministers, future leaders. And when you look at it, And I appreciate your point fully, Corey, that not all nonprofits or charities would have the access to $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 a pop. But some of them do. Some organizations and institutions do. And for many that are trying to get multi-billion dollar public policy change, $50,000, $200,000 all in is a drop in the bucket for the type of change that they're looking or the type of relationship they're looking to build, even more importantly, perhaps. And so this is why I kind of bring this up when we talk about a government in waiting. That isn't necessarily government. And by extension to the rules, even graze out the ethical conversation even more, which is like, well, are these future ministers in waiting? Because we could pick them out right now. Six, eight of them. We kind of know who's going to be on the front bench in a couple of years. Should everything head in the direction we think it's going to head in, Carter?

Carter 41:39

zane i mean so

Carter 41:41

so so lovingly naive i love this about you you're a wonderful guy um cory is it about non-profits non-profits are the group that can bring uh mps like

Carter 41:52

like or does it have does it have to be a non-profit because if it has to be a non-profit specifics because

Carter 41:57

because if it has to be a non-profit we'll just make a non-profit we've got a non-profit over here like if i'm a for-profit corporation i can make a non-profit in about 15 seconds and in fact i'm pretty sure that most non-profit most for-profit organizations have an industry association that's probably non-profit there's lots of different ways of getting around this where suddenly you know like if you're the insurance industry right

Carter 42:23

right the insurance industry you just you have a non-profit organization you fund the non-profit organization and you can fly 100 mps down to florida and explain the insurance crisis to them uh in florida because you know first of all that's where it really matters yeah shit's really happening in florida um and then you can fly them all back to canada and explain that the same thing's happening here it's amazing the opportunities that are available no i mean we are not held up by the resources problem because the resources problem only exists in one small segment of this the

Carter 42:56

the lobbying world the 360 degrees of the lobbying world

Carter 43:01

is over-resourced, not under-resourced, in general.

Zain 43:05

Yeah, and listen, this is a broad conversation within the confines of the lobbying rules, and we're new that new rules could be coming up shortly and what that may mean to these trips, so to speak. But Corey, any comments on here or any thoughts on here as it relates to us finishing off this topic on sponsored travel?

Corey 43:24

Well, just that I don't know that there's any rule

Corey 43:27

rule rule that says it has to be like a registered non-profit or anything like that there might be again I don't know enough about the rules if there is that's news to me but you know the whole check and balance on this thing is supposed to be that these lists are posted and that people then look at the list and say oh look that MP took a trip from that organization and to Carter's point

Corey 43:49

like yeah okay maybe you don't want to take a trip from RBC and I'm just picking RBC because it's the biggest company I could think of right Right. But maybe you'd pick it from like Canadians for, you know, the

Corey 44:03

middle class or something. Canadians for middle class banking. Right. Yeah.

Corey 44:07

And then all of a sudden, no problem. Easy peasy. And yeah, this is the problem with these rules based systems. They essentially also create a roadmap for, OK, well, if that's not allowed, but I'm trying to do this thing where I am really influencing this individual. Well, what is permissible under these rules? And then, you know, it allows people to build out these approaches that maybe fail that ethics test, but pass the rules test.

Carter 44:31

Yeah. We're going to leave that. There's almost no rules that we can't get around in some fashion, right? That's just the nature of human beings.

Zain 44:40

Nicely done, Carter. Way to, you know, add punctuation to that final. I'm glad I didn't just move it on and I didn't trip over you there. I'm glad. Hey, listen, can

Carter 44:48

can we go back for a second and just talk about that a little bit? yeah

Carter 44:51

yeah no i'm fine you want you

Zain 44:53

you want to do a you want to do a review you want to do a live action keep

Carter 44:55

keep going keep going brother i'm with carter i'm

Zain 44:58

i'm gonna move on to our next segment look this is gonna be a three segment episode look at this we're gonna power through another segment just like the good old days oh my god like quick efficient um deep in certain cases carter you know not me standing in

Corey 45:12

in the way remember when uh zane

Corey 45:14

zane used to make us do like haikus and stuff that was don't bring

Carter 45:17

bring it up again because if it comes back i'm i'm gonna you know what we're

Zain 45:19

we're We're going to do it right now. Let's move it

Carter 45:21

to our next segment,

Zain 45:22

segment, Carter. Our next segment, payback time. Oh, now that's got two definitions, Carter. Good, good. Here's what you're going to do, okay? You're first going to give me your political analysis, and then you're going to write statements for me on behalf of the Canadian government, okay? And I'll tell you what this topic is in a second. It will reveal itself. Carter, the Canadian government had 900,000 businesses sign up for the CBO loan, and that deadline, Stephen Carter, is coming. Now, many of those businesses are advocating that the feds give them more time. They're in a lot of debt. A lot of restaurant owners over the course of the last week or so have been advocating publicly that most of us operate at a loss. A lot of us are in significant debt. We need more time in order to pay back our CBA loan from the pandemic. Carter, let's talk about the politics. Don't worry about the haiku so much, but it's coming. Carter, let's talk about the politics. Should

Zain 46:16

Should the federal government entertain this? And what's the political risk of not entertaining it? This is what I want to get to. You've got nearly a million businesses. You've got, of course, lobby groups like the Canadian Federation of Independent Business calling on Ottawa to extend the CIBA deadline. Carter, should they extend the deadline here? Is it easy for them to do so? And what risks are there if they don't, politically?

Carter 46:40

Well, I think that there are way more risks for not extending the deadline than there are from following the deadline. I think that because of the volume of the businesses, the number of businesses that got this, we're dealing with kind of that heart of the economy, the small business people. And small business people currently don't have a tremendous amount of love for the Trudeau liberals in the first place. This gives them an opportunity to remind

Carter 47:09

remind people that during the pandemic, businesses would have folded. Businesses would have disappeared. Had it not been for the federal government and reminding

Carter 47:18

reminding people that we were there for you when you needed us and we're going to give you another year or another 18 months, perhaps with an incentive that if you pay back your SEBA loan today, we'll give you 5% off, a 5% discount, something along those lines to encourage some payback because I'm sure that getting it paid back will have some sort of economic consequence. But the economic consequence compared to the political issue, it's inconsequential. Extend the deadline seems to be the smart play, which means, of course, if we agree that it's the smart play, it means the Trudeau government will, of course, impose the deadline. So we know that for sure.

Zain 48:07

It seems like the obvious thing to be like, yeah, let's kick the can down the road. Who's going to actually, you know, care, so to speak? Like, do you agree with Carter that it is a smart political play here to kick it down the road? Or would you hold firm to this deadline coming up in about four days or so?

Corey 48:26

Yeah, man, I don't know. Is there like a door number three here? Because all of it seems like it's loose, loose. So my understanding is extending the deadline a year would cost the government about a billion dollars, right? There was a forgivable component to this. Not all of it was forgivable. Well, I think about a third. Yeah,

Zain 48:44

Yeah, it was max of 60, and you get 20 back if you – Yeah, there you go. So a

Corey 48:52

Yeah. So there's like – the

Corey 48:55

the government has given a little bit already on this particular front here, right? But, you know, here's the reality. One in five business – more than one in five businesses fail in their first year. Only 50% survive five years or longer,

Corey 49:09

longer, and only a third get to 10 years. and so you

Corey 49:12

you start to think like man you kicked that can too long and they're just not even going to be there and i

Zain 49:17

i think actually that is

Corey 49:18

is part of the problem but i think that is part of the problem yes some of these businesses are struggling some of these businesses are not able to make it back but a lot of businesses are struggling at any given time and so yeah it's pretty rough from a political point of view because some businesses that were prepared to fail anyways are now just going to fail yeah but from a policy point of view like that's that's challenging for me like what kind of moral hazards are you creating when you start saying well you know if the loan just becomes unpopular we'll give you the money for free like that the next time something like this happens is anybody gonna think they have to pay it back but

Carter 49:53

it's not for free cory i mean we're asking for it to be paid back and this is a political show this isn't a bureaucracy show Tell Corey this episode.

Carter 50:03

Yeah, I mean, can we actually afford, if we're the liberals, can we actually afford another, you

Carter 50:12

you know, mark on our record, a stain on our record here? Especially

Zain 50:16

Especially on the economic side. This is kind of where I was going, is like when you bundle economy, small business, these are like, not necessarily the most helpful coalitions for the liberals, Corey. What do you kind of make of that in terms of the argument Carter's trying to make? what can

Corey 50:31

could you potentially do like you're going to pay half the penalty interest you normally would like is there not a door three here is what i'm saying where like you continue to do it but you look like you're moving a little bit and you haven't totally taken leave of your senses on these things because you know it is also challenging you say it's about politics not bureaucracy but you

Corey 50:53

have got to get a little bit of longer term thinking into all of our politics here or else we're just creating future traps for ourselves and i don't i don't know how

Corey 51:02

you allow such kind of a capricious application to to flourish when

Carter 51:07

when you're like 18 months from the next election future self is really not that important right

Carter 51:12

right yeah but it's not

Corey 51:13

not about like the next fucking seba carter it's like the next time somebody can't pay their taxes the next time a sympathetic group can't pay their taxes and they say well you did it for the seba loan and so i I just don't think that the government has the option of moving here. But because of its like once-in-a-lifetime, hope-to-God-style event that it was, maybe there's a way to say, yeah, we'll give you a bit of a grace on interest. You're still going to have to pay interest. It's still going to be like this rate. But, you know, you're accruing interest now. That's just how it is. Carter,

Zain 51:44

what would you do if you were Pierre Polyev on this?

Carter 51:47

i would reiterate that uh you know the the toronto or the trudeau liberals uh have never understood small business the very first thing they did was come in and take away uh small business profits through eliminating many uh very solid and very important uh tax havens and opportunities to to manage tax load for small businesses now they're going to take away the loans that have basically kept businesses alive, you know, they are driving the economy into the ground instead of driving, I think, the Canadian economy forward. If there ever was an example that would show that the Liberals

Carter 52:30

Liberals don't understand what's happening in the Canadian economy at this particular moment, this policy would be that example.

Zain 52:38

Carter, how would you put that in a limerick?

Zain 52:43

just while you're preparing your while you're preparing your limerick carter the this is a uh five uh that's a haiku is a five seven five you remember what a limerick is right uh no okay

Zain 52:54

okay do you remember you don't remember what a limerick last week

Zain 52:59

what do you mean by that do you want to explain that to people didn't

Carter 53:02

didn't i do a limerick the other day or Or during the big special?

Zain 53:06

I don't think you did. You did, however, desperately throw a Hail Mary heave and name a

Zain 53:14

a Filipino person. So congratulations on that, Carter. Carter, a limerick, often humorous, sometimes rude. Five line, okay? There once was a man from Nantucket, right?

Zain 53:25

right? Who kept all his cash in a bucket, but his daughter named Nan ran away with the man. And

Zain 53:29

And as for the bucket, Nantucket, okay? There

Corey 53:32

There you go. That's an example. Okay,

Zain 53:33

Carter. So, Corey, don't jump ahead for years. You're not going to do a Pierre Polyev. You're not doing a Pierre Polyev. How about this? Limerick, Corey? Don't get excited about this. Corey's now deleting something from his computer. Okay? Corey, yours is going to come in a second. I'll give Corey a bit of a preview. Corey, you're the CRA. Okay? You're doing a CRA holding firm. Okay? Stephen Carter, five lines. You know what a Limerick is. Pierre Pauliev, in limerick form, for

Zain 54:00

for the Ciba Loan political message. Go ahead, Carter. The floor is yours, please.

Carter 54:08

There once was a man named Pierre. When businesses faced trials severe, Ciba

Carter 54:15

Ciba came through with support, it's true, and

Carter 54:19

and now Trudeau's fucking everything up with fear.

Zain 54:24

Not bad. Not bad. Pretty good. Pretty good. I'll take it. I mean, considering all you had was my verbal delaying for you and buying you time, Corey.

Carter 54:32

I fucking hate this. I've always hated it. Don't

Zain 54:35

Don't worry about it. We're great on a curve, okay? Because we've got Corey Hogan here who's had time to prepare. I think he's written two limericks because he was also going down the peer track. But I also let him know that he's going to be representing

Zain 54:49

January 18th, they're telling these people give us our fucking money back. Corey, lay it on us. lay it on us said

Corey 54:55

said cra to ceo all that money in our hands must go to mind for you see your taxes can't flee the government needs all that dough not

Zain 55:05

not bad pretty good on

Corey 55:06

on a curve i

Zain 55:06

i give it to carter

Zain 55:07

uh i give it to carter carter

Zain 55:11

leave that segment there we're gonna move it on to our over under in our lightning round speaking of things i meant for stephen carter stephen carter the iowa caucuses the republican ones are tomorrow um

Zain 55:21

over under on eight weeks okay

Zain 55:26

okay over under in eight weeks which would mean it's

Zain 55:29

it's january 15th tomorrow let's use eight weeks roughly being march two months okay

Zain 55:37

15th or so over

Zain 55:39

over under in eight weeks ron de santis's his republican presidential career well

Carter 55:46

well i mean he'll be uh nicky haley's running mate i'm pretty sure uh listen

Carter 55:51

listen i'm going all in on nicky haley nicky haley tomorrow is going to is going to exceed expectations cory

Carter 55:58

cory can you mark this one down because nicky haley's going to exceed expectations she's going to go into new hampshire she's going to win new hampshire outright south carolina home state she's going to take south carolina and with three states in a row with Trump underperforming, boom, Nikki Haley with Ron DeSantis in her back pocket. So Ron DeSantis is done in eight weeks. We know that. Everybody knows that. But Nikki Haley was going to be the next presidential nominee for the president of the United States, for the Republican Party of the United States. Carter

Zain 56:29

Carter dropping bombs, which, by the way, he will be dropping more of these on Tuesday. Is that right, Carter? Tuesday. We are going back. Are we promoing? I think we are promoing. We're going back to this.

Zain 56:43

I mean, I may or may not be there. I

Zain 56:44

I don't know. Yeah,

Carter 56:45

Yeah, as you weren't last time, right? Like, did you show up at all

Zain 56:49

all last time? I killed it last time. You should read the reviews. You the people. That's

Zain 56:53

That's right. Our American podcast. We're going to kick that off again now that the Iowa caucuses are here. New Hampshire is soon to follow. Carter's mentioned South Carolina. This is going to be a fun time to cover U.S. politics. You the people. We'll start that on Tuesday evening. Corey, over under eight weeks, Ron DeSantis is.

Zain 57:11

republican presidential career uh

Corey 57:15

uh it's got to be under like if he comes in third tomorrow he put everything into which is where he's pulling right now most recently

Zain 57:22

recently to be clear yeah yeah

Corey 57:24

yeah like he had he put he

Corey 57:25

has an operation on the ground and i think all 99 counties in iowa he has spent all of his money there if he comes in third to haley there he has no path forward like what's his operation in new hampshire gonna do he said sit there and be sad that it's all over before it even got to that.

Zain 57:42

He's rumored to be skipping

Zain 57:43

skipping out on a lot of New Hampshire.

Zain 57:45

So there'd be sad. Does seem like a very Ron DeSantis situation. How one year changes things. Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the big star, and it turns out he might be less than eight weeks away from, you know, ending his, you know, national political career. Carter, that question stays where it is. Carter, next one. Are you in or out on the following? following. Jean Chrétien had his 90th birthday. The Liberals did a big celebration. There was a cake. There were speeches. Are you in or out on political parties celebrating their luminaries? You know, and then, of course, Jean Chrétien gets, you know, a couple of days of media, goes out on the talk shows, talks about Trudeau's career, talks about how politics are so different now you can't say certain things anymore. Are you in or out, more broadly, on political parties celebrating their luminaries publicly as a sign of whether it's loyalty, celebration, whatnot.

Carter 58:41

Yeah, I'm very in. I've been to a couple of Joe Clark birthdays. I think that it makes sense for the party because it brings people back together again. It re-engages them. It reminds them that they like each other. It's why Corey and I do this podcast. It reminds us that we kind of like you. you know like otherwise

Carter 59:03

otherwise we'd become distant zane because you never you don't call you don't write it's it's upsetting i

Corey 59:09

i try not um

Corey 59:09

i mean i talked to zane earlier today actually now that you mentioned it he was extremely transactional though yeah

Carter 59:15

yeah no but it's very hurtful because i did not get any calls

Zain 59:20

you did not get a phone call are you in or out on political parties you know spending time attention on the past i guess that's another way to put it celebrating their luminaries you you in or out on this i i'm

Corey 59:31

i'm i think i'm in these things matter cultural fabric of political parties matters they also matter for the country it's easier for us to look back on the the past leaders and be charitable to them no matter where we stand on the political spectrum obviously the other big one this week was of course ed broadbent and and everybody talking about his legacy and very positive words said about him from you know the bloc quebecois from the conservatives from the the liberals and of course from new democrats and i think these moments as much as they can often make me roll my eyes when they're about like the person who just lost the election like oh and they're a great albertan you know the person i was saying was terrible for the last four weeks i i now think they're okay they're a wonderful canadian now that they're no longer in a place to become you know a part of government i hate that shit but i think when you're talking in 10, 20, 30 years out in some of these cases and the legacy they've provided and that we can all look more charitably on it, that's useful. That's how you build a country, right? You have people you can point to who are role models to us all, not just role models to new Democrats and role models to liberals or role models to conservatives. And I think that's great. So by all means, lift them up. Should we be doing

Zain 1:00:47

doing more of it? You guys are both in. I'm just curious, should we be doing more of this sort of stuff? This like cross-partisan celebration? Like, Like, Carter, what do you think?

Carter 1:00:55

I think we should be doing delegated conventions. I think that, you know, once a year, everybody should come together. I think that there

Carter 1:01:02

there should be a political elite of the people, not a political elite of the, you know, of a small group, but a political elite of 10 or 12 people per riding that

Carter 1:01:13

that go to conferences, that fundraise for themselves to go to these events, that are a part of the team. because those positions become valuable and people become invested in achieving them. So I think we should do more. I don't think we should do less.

Zain 1:01:32

Coy, any thoughts before I move it on to our final one?

Zain 1:01:35

We'll take that note.

Zain 1:01:38

Our final question, Coy, I'm going to give you a shot on it.

Zain 1:01:41

It's a prediction. So

Zain 1:01:42

So do you want me to let Carter go first so you can come second? Actually, I'm going to let Carter go first. Carter. Yeah, you let Carter go first. Yeah, I think, Carter, you've given us your answer on this. who wins the Iowa caucuses on Monday?

Carter 1:01:54

Winner. Like, okay, so we'll say winner.

Carter 1:01:57

winner is Donald Trump. Don't give me,

Zain 1:01:58

me, okay, you're going to go with Trump. Donald

Carter 1:02:00

Donald Trump. I mean, by, I would suggest 17

Carter 1:02:03

17 and a half points.

Zain 1:02:05

See, he did not need to do the second. That would be quite an underperformance. That would be a massive underperformance. Here's a question, Carter. Let me actually rephrase the question.

Zain 1:02:12

Donald Trump, and does he get above 50?

Zain 1:02:16

Does not get above 50. I think it's

Carter 1:02:16

it's around 42. Okay.

Zain 1:02:21

Okay. We'll watch and see if Stephen Carter eats crow on Tuesday night. Corey, it's

Zain 1:02:26

it's tomorrow, Monday, the caucuses.

Zain 1:02:30

And if it's Donald Trump, does he get above 50?

Corey 1:02:34

It has to be Trump at this point. You have to think. He's up by like 30 points in the polls right now.

Corey 1:02:40

Does he get above 50? He's hovering right there, I think. I think he's kicking around like 50 to 55% in most of the polls. I am going to say that he does not, because I do believe that caucuses can surprise, and I think that quite often caucuses surprise with candidates who are, you know, a little more under the radar. And I'm not subscribing to the idea that Ramaswamy is coming out of nowhere, but I think perhaps Nikki Haley will outperform. I think perhaps the well

Corey 1:03:10

well let's put it this way for a guy who's ahead by 30 points Donald Trump has actually spent a surprising amount of time in Iowa relative to what he said he would spend

Corey 1:03:18

he's been there about twice as much as he said so maybe he is going for that knockout blow maybe he just wants an overwhelming victory in Iowa or maybe he worries that he's a little bit soft in some areas and I think that if I had to guess it was more that and I'm

Corey 1:03:33

I'm not saying he doesn't win by 20 points, but I'm saying I don't know if he wins by 30.

Zain 1:03:38

Carter's put his hand up, so this must be really good. This has to be really good. This is going to be excellent, because this is going to close the show right now, Carter. So here we go. Let's tee it up. Stephen Carter, take us home.

Carter 1:03:49

It's minus 24 degrees in Iowa right now. It is going to be freezing. I think we'll see low attendance at the caucuses. I think low attendance benefits Haley.

Zain 1:04:02

you for that weather report. We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1279 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belger. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we will see you next time.

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