Episode 1282: Three rooms

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 1282. My name is Zain Velji, with me as always, Corey Hogan, and of course, Stephen Carter. Guys, how are you?

Carter 0:09

I'm doing really well, Zain. I'm really excited about tonight. Hamilton's going to Ferrari. It's a big day. You know, people are talking about this, you know, on the Ferrari world. But then Andretti got turned down as a team. So I'm kind of, I

Carter 0:24

I don't know which way to feel. I'm kind of lackluster. Oh, I'm

Zain 0:26

I'm actually I'm glad you mentioned this. Speaking of locomotives, this episode is, of course, brought to us by our sponsor, Flair Airlines. Flair Airlines, you deserve a relaxing tax holiday. Corey, how is your life going? Everything's going well?

Corey 0:39

Sorry, Zane, I meant to mention to you before the show, Flair has run into a few problems tax-wise with the government. And so as part of their settlement, our sponsorship actually shifted to the government of Alberta as well. So you're going to need to do a, I'm

Corey 0:54

I'm not going to restart, but if you just, you know, if you can just redo that one for the government of Alberta. For the government of

Corey 1:00

Alberta? Instead of Flair. Okay,

Zain 1:00

Okay, yeah, maybe I'll do that at the end.

Zain 1:02

It's a little too much to swallow right now. I feel like it's a bit heavy, right? We were going for light and comedic, and then you just went dark and not comedic there by bringing the government of Alberta. If it was the government of Canada, we could laugh at that because that's pretty funny. But

Zain 1:18

what are we doing, Corey?

Corey 1:19

Well, you know, I assume they owe money to the government of Alberta as well as the government of Canada. You did hear

Zain 1:23

hear my promo for them was you deserve a relaxing tax holiday. I did. Then why did you feel like you needed to mention your part? Because I felt like I took care of all of it. Why are

Carter 1:31

are we fighting? What's going on?

Zain 1:33

on? I felt like I took care of all of it. I just felt like I nailed it. it and and cory you know what i'm

Corey 1:38

i'm just yeah i'm gonna settle in here your ocean is that an ocean spray yeah

Corey 1:41

yeah it's an ocean spray but i'm actually gonna make a bit of a mixed drink okay

Zain 1:44

okay that's good uh carter drinking for this episode

Zain 1:48

um carter all right is sunny d or capri sun

Carter 1:52

oh sunny d capri sun is like drinking vinegar that's

Zain 1:55

once again he's wrong cory capri capri sun or sunny d sunny

Zain 2:01

what is wrong with both these sunny d is oil and orange

Carter 2:04

And it tastes delicious. Oh,

Zain 2:06

Oh, my God, no. It's nothing but oil and orange. Again, like

Zain 2:09

like oil and orange. That sounds really good. What are you mixing? Is that mustard?

Corey 2:15

No, no, Zane. It's another part of my drink here. Which is, what is it? I'm a very sophisticated. There we go. Yeah, that's nice. It's ginger. I'm adding ginger to it. That's what's happening here. Oh,

Carter 2:29

Oh, great. You got stomach

Corey 2:30

stomach troubles? I was hoping it would be louder when I did it. It

Zain 2:32

It was not very loud at

Corey 2:33

at all. high effort bit it

Zain 2:34

it was it was nice well okay oh for two for cory hogan uh for those keeping track at home carter should we talk about what everyone is talking about should we should we jump into it sure

Carter 2:43

sure are we talking about andretti we

Zain 2:45

we are not talking about andretti cory have you anything to get out of the way before uh

Corey 2:48

we're talking about now i had nancy running for leader of the ndp oh

Zain 2:52

oh yeah we're talking about that i feel like that's what we should that's what we should talk about yeah

Zain 2:55

yeah um as i say as

Zain 2:57

as i say uh

Zain 2:58

uh purple is the new orange oh

Zain 3:01

that's That is what I say. Corey, no, we're not going to be talking about that, although we can at some point. We are going to be talking about, we're

Zain 3:10

we're going to be talking about, Corey, the

Zain 3:14

well, I don't even know what to call it, the Alberta's trans policy proposal. We're going to be jumping into that with our first segment. We're going to call this one, two, three, Corey, and here's how it's going to work. We're going to spend the entire episode on this one particular topic, and the one in that topic is I'm going to get your top-line reaction, one question to that. The two in the topic, Stephen Carter, is I've got two questions on strategy that have been swirling around kind of in the media orbit, but I think we would be doing a disservice to our listening audience if we didn't actually address the strategy questions to it. And then the three is I'm going to put you guys in 15-minute timed scenarios, one after another after another, you guys work together, where you are going to address how to react to this plan for this, strategize for this, for three very different groups. And so it's the one, two, three. And Corey, at the top, I mean, we can give folks a bit of an understanding in terms of what Danielle Smith has done and what she has announced. But the framing of her package, so to speak, or her video, which came out yesterday and we recorded on a Thursday, required parental notification consent for students age 15 and under who wanted to change their names or pronouns at school, while for teens 16 and 17, the parents would be informed but not need to consent. It would ban top and bottom gender-affirming surgeries for all Albertans ages 17 and under, and ban hormone therapy for gender reassignment purposes for those 15 and under, unless their treatment has already begun. gun. It would require parental notification, an opt-in requirement would teachers intend to teach about LGBTQ S-plus issues such as gender and sexual identity, and it would implement restrictions around transgender women participating in women's sports citing quote-unquote safety while suggesting expanded co-ed or gender-neutral league for trans athletes as an alternative. Corey, this was not just one thing. This was not just a parental rights, you know, suite of policies. This was far reaching. This was wide. This was extensive. We'll talk about the comms in a second. But Corey, your initial reaction when you absorbed outside

Zain 5:35

outside of the comms, the policy and what was being proposed by the Premier of Alberta?

Corey 5:43

Well, it was a lot, right? It was a lot in a lot of contexts. It was a lot in that I think everybody was getting ready for pronoun policy and everybody was getting ready for the parental notification policy. And certainly that's been teased for quite a bit. But it was many more policies than that. It became quite a suite of things. and uh it was a lot in that it's it's a lot like it it is quite um quite i'll just say i feels like an attack on transgendered people in alberta because as much as the framing that was teased out beforehand was parental rights the reality is most of the list you've just listed is not about parental rights not at all it is it is in many cases actually removing parental rights Right. For example, if you want to talk about hormone therapy, right, no longer a choice a parent makes with a doctor and the child. Now it's a choice the government has made for them. So, you know, there's not consistency on that front. If you're looking for consistency in this suite, it's consistency in that it wants to make it difficult to be transgendered in the province of Alberta. And I think that's, that's

Corey 6:52

that's a lot. That's, that's pretty damning. And that's, I think, it

Corey 6:57

it feels like even more than what the UCP base was looking for. So it'll be interesting as we get into this here. But I mean, quite

Corey 7:06

quite a battery and a lot of conversation online as to whether it's, you know, more than some American jurisdiction. Certainly people think this is as far as anybody's ever gone in Canada on these matters.

Corey 7:16

And I guess I also mean it's a lot in the third case, right? Which is, this

Corey 7:21

this is the entire government of Alberta, the, you know, $60 billion corporation that it is, coming down on an issue that affects relatively few people, but affects them deeply. And those people are often amongst the most disadvantaged and most discriminated against on the country, you know, in the country, in the province, for sure. And so that's pretty wild, too. Like, it's quite a wild use of government power to create blanket rules for cases that are almost, by definition, you know, edge cases, right?

Corey 7:54

Edge cases that require kind of nuance and thought and probably giving kind of personal consideration to instead of blanket rules. So, I mean, many people, I would put myself in this, feel a little bit overwhelmed by

Corey 8:09

They're not quite sure how they should process it. And we'll get into the politics of it, I'm sure, big time. But it

Corey 8:14

it also is kind of depressing, because you do know that the majority of Canadians, not just Albertans, are likely to support these initiatives, because most people won't think super deeply about it. these are minority rights you know by definition not in the majority and um yeah you can just say a couple of quick phrases like ah parental rights and uh and people people will support because that's that's how people do and that uh that kind of sucks too and it's an interesting

Corey 8:44

it's an interesting political decision the government made that it can have real ramifications on real people and it's going to cost lives i will say that right now with with certainty. It may have already cost its first lives, for all I know. This is a lot.

Zain 9:01

talks about hate. We've talked about groups that have been disproportionately discriminated, targeted. Your thoughts when you first absorbed what

Zain 9:13

what our premier proposed? post?

Carter 9:17

My thoughts are number one, I think that she has gone very far in this and grabbed a whole bunch of things to mix up together. Corey's point about this not all being parental rights is bang on. Parental rights is not about trans women in sports. I mean, the league of their own for trans women to participate in is hilarious to me. It just makes me laugh. Like, what's everybody we going to do get on a bus and get together and and uh you know the

Carter 9:48

the people from northern alberta will be the one half like this is such a small group of people and and even smaller is the group of people who are participating in sports where we'd be talking single digits one of the things i've been thinking about is that in every school or every other school this impacts someone not

Carter 10:05

not a dozen people in every school not 20 people in every school in one in every other school And to pick on that class because they are so small is really overwhelmingly oppressive. The word bullying doesn't even come close to actually addressing the type of action that this is. And then the gender affirming pieces. I mean, she's lumped in pieces that are already in place and propose them as though they're brand new law. right um and if you've seen my twitter feed today you'll get a real good sense of how people think that you know children

Carter 10:44

children very young children are being quote-unquote mutilated um my twitter feed has gone crazy because the trolls are all over this saying that there's some sort of group

Carter 10:55

some enormous group of children that

Carter 10:57

that are being forced into gender reassignment surgery um you

Carter 11:01

you You can't get bottom reassignment surgery until you're 16. This is exactly what she's proposing, right?

Carter 11:08

right? She is proposing the rule that already exists and saying, look at this, I'm going to make this go away. Look at this, I'm going to make things better for trans people. She is, by

Carter 11:19

doing this kind of masterful communications job that she did, and let's be clear, it was a masterful communication because she has now framed the issue entirely into parental parental rights when it is really about bigotry and controlling a small group of population. And she's gotten some natural allies on that, on the parental rights thing, especially within various religious communities. And that to me is just, oh

Carter 11:45

oh man, it just is problem on top of problem on top of problem. Because now, you

Carter 11:50

us fighting back, a group of people fighting back are immediately going to be behind the eight ball because she's defined things so widely. That's why you'll see Corey and I, almost every time we do a strategy session, what do we talk about?

Carter 12:02

Frame the issue first. And

Carter 12:03

And Danielle Smith framed the issue, and she framed it exceptionally well. Sadly, she framed it for bigotry and hatred.

Zain 12:12

Corey, Carter's already hit on exactly what I want to go on, which was, I got your one, which was your guys' initial reaction. Now let me go into two strategy questions. And

Zain 12:21

And Carter's hit on and given me his response. I'm going to go to you on this. Was

Zain 12:25

Was this a masterful communications job? And for those who haven't seen it or haven't watched this seven and a half minute video, it comes with a video alongside a press conference today. We record on Thursday, February 1st. But in it, outside of it, and you can feel free to talk about the video itself and how it was shot and the language that was used, but the cloud cover of parental rights, casing a lot of these things, going after, as Carter mentioned, things Things that are already impossible to do or already legislated, making her sort of acts redundant. Was this, from your assessment, to

Zain 13:03

to Carter's point, masterful communications?

Corey 13:08

It was very workmanlike communications. I'm not sure it elevates to masterful, and I'll tell you why.

Corey 13:15

It was a layup, right? I alluded to this, but I want to put it out there. Canadians are already there. like canadians want to be informed if their children change pronouns canadians are opposed to the things that are already banned and carter's right um if you're under 18 you can't get bottom surgery anyways right so pretty easy to ban um but let's give some numbers here there's a lege poll in october 63 of canadians support schools having to inform of name or pronoun changes only 22 percent opposed that's it's almost a three to one ratio that's more popular than the alberta pension plan is unpopular and the alberta pension plan is pretty fucking unpopular that same poll also asked if canadians would support the use of the notwithstanding clause overriding the

Corey 14:02

constitutional rights and the charter of rights of freedom like we talk about the notwithstanding clause so casually now this is overriding constitutional rights yeah

Corey 14:11

now it's in the constitution but it's overriding the rights that would otherwise be guaranteed here nearly

Corey 14:15

nearly half of canadians support the use of that in that scenario and that you know more than don't and so canadians

Corey 14:22

canadians are there canadians are just looking for an argument that makes them feel like not incredibly squeamish about it so danielle smith's first two minutes where she showed compassion and said hey you know this is kind of you know these are complicated issues and tough to talk about blah blah blah for many people you

Corey 14:41

you know that is exactly where canadians want to be she she fed people exactly what they wanted to be fed and again i'm going to underline

Corey 14:49

those numbers i gave those are canadian numbers right that's

Carter 14:52

that's not alberta numbers

Corey 14:53

that's canada wide numbers so in that sense it was a bit of a layup so i don't i don't know like i would think masterstroke of communications i would i would reserve for either this being pulled out at a time that was more functional i'm sure we'll get to you know is there any kind of like political upside at this particular moment at some point or

Corey 15:11

or if you really kind of change people's minds on like a really big matter

Corey 15:16

matter that they felt very differently about at one point but but all she did was was tell people what they wanted to hear and she bundled it together with a bunch of other stuff that i'm sure will be fairly popular but um yeah

Corey 15:29

yeah you know i gotta say insofar

Corey 15:32

insofar as i if this was was their plan i'm almost impressed i hate using that word here like

Corey 15:38

like the idea of parental notification like that's not what everyone's talking about today right i mean that's just such a small part in some ways of everything else that went on and and

Corey 15:48

and so it's really kind of moved the conversation and the overton window if you will on this particular matter in the course of like 24 fucking hours can

Zain 15:58

can you help me with that what you said you're impressed

Zain 15:59

impressed with just so i i understand clearly what are you impressed with here exactly well

Corey 16:06

you've got you listed off seven things that were totally like

Corey 16:12

it feels like at this point even if the government were to retreat you would still have all of the parental notification things that we knew were coming this week right like the conversation is just it's just over in a different field than potentially we thought it was going to be at this particular moment and it just seems seems utterly impossible that parental notification is just not going to be the way things are, uh, for the next bit, right? You know, maybe they'll run into some weird speed bumps on the sports stuff. Maybe they'll run into the absolute logistical nightmare that is sending to the ministry, all of the content that has to do in any way, shape or form with a human sexuality. And by the way, the kind of the conflation of like sex and gender, like sexuality and, you know, the study of sex and gender, I think is a very intentional move to, to, to make it seem like it's all about sex. Right. And

Corey 17:03

then, you know, like those things I could see maybe falling or changing or shifting, but I just don't know that like the, the ultimate core of it, this notification is, is

Corey 17:13

is going anywhere. She's really shifted the window on this. Well,

Carter 17:15

Well, and that's the part that's the most dangerous too. But I think Corey's made a really good point in, in kind of by shifting the a window if she has to give up a few things if danielle smith has to give up a couple of the points of the 11 things that have kind of been listed off in this in this piece of legislation it's not even a piece of legislation these are now just principles yeah

Carter 17:34

yeah um what if she starts giving those things up she's not going to have to give up parental rights parental rights is right in the core of this so that's

Carter 17:44

that's also the most dangerous part that's the part that that will will cost kids lives, because we all assume that parents are responsible and parents are responsible for their children and they'll raise their children responsibly. That's a fascinating assumption. It's just wrong, right?

Carter 18:00

right? 40% of kids on the street, keeping in mind that the LGBTQ population represents some 10% of the population, four times the representation that they should have. 40% plus are already on the streets. Parents aren't doing their jobs. They're not taking in this information and responding rationally or with responsibility. If parents were responding rationally with responsibility, then maybe we could talk about parental rights. But I'll tell you something. We are not going to talk about parental rights in this country. Not on my watch. Not without talking about parental responsibilities. So if your kid winds up on the street, I want you fucking charged. I want you charged with neglect. I want you charged. And God damn it. one of the things that she did is she talked about strengthening up those cpa the child protective services rules she this is why i thought it was a masterful conversation or masterful communication she was able to put out um the push and pull on on a number of different things and say oh don't don't worry about that we'll we'll get them after the kid is dead we'll

Carter 19:05

we'll get them then we'll get them after the kid and

Zain 19:08

and i know what you're referring to this is this is about, you know, in the rare, and I'm going to paraphrase the Premier, in the rare circumstance where someone's parent or parents are not in line with these sort of decisions, so to speak, you know, we'll just strengthen up the system-wide level to make sure it happens, is what you're alluding to, Carter. I'm going to move it on, because we're going to have an opportunity to actually tease out the politics with the scenarios I'll have. So that was question number one on testing out some things floating around. Carter, here's the second one. I'll start with you on this one. um

Zain 19:38

um on strategy okay

Zain 19:41

has she wedged the

Zain 19:43

the ndp in their leadership race to to be consumed about this and and maybe i'll maybe cory's pointing at himself uh and

Corey 19:53

gets this one he

Zain 19:54

he gets five veto points uh a year um offered to us by our sponsor uh the government of alberta flare airlines uh but cory uh you you'll take a veto on this has she wedged them or what has she what has she done by making this so prominent this week as the ndp entered their leadership race well

Carter 20:14

well i got absolutely nothing yeah

Corey 20:17

yeah absolutely nothing here

Corey 20:19

here can i can i tell you what i think is interesting about i feel like they were maybe even trying to wedge the ndp on this you

Zain 20:27

think there was an attempt like actually

Zain 20:29

actually like a contest

Corey 20:29

contest this is a contest for the ndp leadership. You can join the NDP. You've probably already made decisions on these particular matters, and you're probably quite supportive of transgender rights. So as much as I said, it was like 60-20. Guess what? Guess where the NDP membership base is from? It's the 20. This is going to fire people up. This is actually going to probably sell them more memberships. It's not going to be very difficult for the NDP leadership contestants to take that particular position, nor should it be, frankly. But it's not like there's a general election just around on the corner where you have to worry about those gen pop numbers. And this is an opportunity for them to remind themselves why they're all on the same team. And this is an opportunity for them to build their team with people who are going to be very animated on this particular issue. So like, I can't even imagine an NDP leadership candidate being remotely squeamish about this or remotely hedge about this. And I can't see how it would cause them any consternation whatsoever. whatsoever like they all know exactly who they are on this and there's just no problem before

Zain 21:30

before before i go to you carter and i know you wanted to jump in uh i

Corey 21:34

i was supposed to be first you

Zain 21:35

you were but but cory used one of his five vetoes given to us i used one of my vetoes yeah i'm gonna use two

Corey 21:40

two more tonight maybe oh

Zain 21:41

oh i don't know just

Corey 21:41

just i'm putting yeah

Zain 21:42

yeah they expire they expire uh february 1st of each year that's her that's her calendar you're carter uh hey i'll come to you in one second uh cory i am curious about exploring your comment around maybe even the government was trying to wage the NDP? Can you explore that for me? Like, what do you think they were trying to do? And I think that's the root of, like, perhaps where this comment from me comes from and like their attempt. What do you think the attempt was? If

Zain 22:07

If there was an attempt?

Corey 22:08

Well, look, the timing is suspicious, right? It's the first week after the NDP leadership rules come out. There is no obvious catalyst for this at this particular moment. What is the thing that has occurred where the government says oh february 1st middle of a school year time to act right like wouldn't you normally bring in policies that affect kind of notification and consideration like that at the i don't know end of a school year or if you there's legislation that's required wouldn't you do that i don't know when the legislation or the legislature is sitting why february it wasn't february 1st it was january 31st this all went down why what what is special about that what is magical about that you can create like fake reasons why but you can't create real ones, there is nothing that would recommend January 31st being the day you bring in a policy like this. And so you have to start looking at why else on the calendar you might have considered it.

Corey 22:59

Well, I mean, if I want to be incredibly charitable, they wanted to do it before the legislature was back.

Corey 23:05

But again, why would you do it this week? Like you've got four weeks before the legislature is back. If, you know, if I wanted to suggest that maybe they were just taking work as it was coming along and in the order of things then

Corey 23:18

then they would have done it last week because they started foreshadowing all of this shit last week they were clearly ready on their policy last week so no i mean like even if it was like we've got a range of five weeks let's pick this week they picked this week for a reason might not have been a great reason it might not have been the only reason they did it but let's be fucking real you know there was at least some consideration of that as this all went down carter

Zain 23:41

is this a wedge is it a good one is it one that will work

Carter 23:45

Listen, it's not a good wedge. It's not a wedge that should matter at all. I mean, Corey's exactly right. The side that is conducting its leadership should be united on one side. The challenge that this brought along was that sometimes people in politics aren't really good at politics. I heard a number of people talking about how

Carter 24:05

how the NDP lost in Calgary Cross and Calgary East because of this. Right. Well, no, no, that's not. Not, why they lost is their inability to address some of this, their inability to speak to some of these issues, but they didn't lose because of this issue. They lost for all kinds of different reasons, not because of this issue. Why'd

Zain 24:28

Why'd they lose, Carter?

Carter 24:29

I don't know, as a matter of fact, Zane, I was far more interested in hearing from you why they lost, but I guess we're never going to know. We're never going to know.

Corey 24:38

I'm dragging my heels for months. Can I also say, like, I don't think it's bad for the, even

Corey 24:44

even in the politics context, you've now got a bunch of leadership camps that are going to be talking about this in impassioned ways and figuring out the arguments that work best with the general population and kind of a low risk environment because they're not competing for the general population right now, right? right? Like they're working with the base. The base all agrees, right? So they can field test a bunch of different arguments. They can go out there and they can champion this issue in a lot of different ways. It's not as though anybody is going to hedge on it and say, oh, Danielle Smith's got a point. That's not going to fucking happen. But it does allow them to field test process arguments, allows them to field test moral arguments, allows them to field test an awful lot of things. And ultimately, because there's so

Corey 25:24

so many leadership contestants and only going to be one leader a lot of those can just be left by the wayside at a certain point right like it's just you know i don't think it's actually bad for the ndp whatsoever and like i said i think it could be quite animating for a prospective base who's gonna say yeah

Corey 25:39

yeah this is too much this is just this is just too much and i've got to get off the sidelines and i'm gonna buy a membership and you know i'm gonna support somebody on this particular matter carter

Zain 25:49

carter there is only roughly roughly 45 minutes left in the show do you know how i know that because we

Zain 25:55

we are going to do a timed exercise okay we're gonna we're gonna put 15 minutes on the clock this moves on to the part number three part number one i got your top line take part number two two strategy questions you answered for me part number three i'm gonna put you guys in three distinct scenarios time them out for 15 minutes and you come up with the best strategy and what we're gonna do is we're gonna going to actually play this like in real time. This is Thursday night. Each one of these groups is probably having conversations, whether it be on WhatsApp or iMessage, maybe doing a Zoom call, maybe even meeting in person, talking about what they need to do about this issue. You are going to help us in all three of those cases, but only for 15 minutes. So your level of expertise, your pithiness, how crisp you are, how sharp you are, that's all going to matter as we try to come out for the best strategy and the best strategies for these groups. Here's the three groups, okay? And I'll let you guys have some say in this. You can pick which one we do first. Stephen Carter, one group that we're going to address tonight is

Zain 26:55

is your best friend David Parker and Take Back Alberta.

Zain 26:59

What are they doing tonight? What is their strategy? Probably premier aligned. But what do they need to do? How do they need to think about things tonight as this moves forward? These are only policies. This is not legislation. They expect some sort of fight back from many groups. What do they need to think of? They are group number one. Carter, group number two. We've already kind of loosely addressed them, especially through Corey's last comments. You're an NDP leadership camp.

Zain 27:28

How are you thinking about this tonight? What are you thinking about? How are you thinking about doing it? Are you even thinking about drawing daylight on this issue between your leadership contenders? We'll discuss that. That's group number two. And Carter, group number three, you're a nonprofit, nonprofit charity maybe, who advocates for trans youth, LGBTQ plus S people. You have a $50,000 budget that a donor has put on your radar tonight and said, you know, maybe this can get you started on a campaign. Can you do something with this? And they have to discuss tonight because they want to launch a campaign Monday morning.

Zain 28:06

So group number one, David Parker, Take Back Alberta. group number two you are nine o'clock discussing with your leadership team around what we need to do as an ndp leadership candidate group number three you're a small little non-profit or charity in this province and a donor is giving you 50 grand can this maybe kickstart a campaign to do something carter

Zain 28:27

carter i'll give you the first take because i let cory use a veto which

Zain 28:31

which uh which group are we going to first as we as we spend 15 minutes on each of these um carter i'm

Zain 28:38

i'm going going to choose NDP

Zain 28:42

I am going to hit go on the clock, Carter. What we'll do is we'll do this back and forth. You give us one element of a strategy. I'm not even going to list them out for you. Give us one element of strategy, Corey. You build on it. We'll try to go back and forth. I will try to help mold questions along the way, maybe ask questions. And then at the 15-minute mark, we'll summarize and we'll move on. We're

Carter 29:03

So the first strategic question that most people will be asking in the leadership camp is does this help us or hurt us and let us dispense with that question relatively quickly this helps you because you're trying to reach a very very small group of people you're not trying to reach a huge large number of uh people in the leadership um i would imagine the total number of ndp members will be around 50 000 maybe 55 or 60 000 if they're doing really really well. So where do you find, you

Carter 29:35

you know, 20,000 pissed off people? Well,

Carter 29:38

Well, you find them in the LGBTQ community.

Carter 29:41

I would have come out with a strong statement the first moment you can on the perverse nature of this policy. And I pick it apart piece by piece. I wouldn't necessarily go after every all 11 pieces because I think that that might be too much. But I would be digging in on the parental rights and the risk to children. And you can pick any number of different talking points. But once you address that first strategic question, does this help us or hurt us? You got to choose help. And I'll give one example. We chose AISH. Why did we choose AISH when Alison Redford was running? Because there's 60,000 people who get AISH in the province of Alberta, and there are six people that care about each one of those 60,000 people. Now, in this particular case it's not just the trans children it's chance it's trans activists it's trans people it's it's lgbtq it is a huge population base that if you can be the first mover and

Carter 30:39

say this is fucking wrong then

Carter 30:41

then you have the opportunity to immediately start bringing in uh memberships and selling memberships at a time frankly when selling memberships is quite tricky cory

Zain 30:50

cory your thoughts on this do you need to be first here is one of the things carter is explaining and do you need need to highlight what's wrong? Do you need to explain what's wrong? Answer a few of Carter's questions or build on Carter's questions and give me your own thoughts.

Corey 31:03

I don't know if you need to be first, but you need to be strongest. And often being first is somewhat tied to that, I will admit. You know, the thing I would say is think about the UCP and their election and how anti-vax sentiment sort of animated them and pulled them forward. Well,

Corey 31:23

think about what animates the NDP similarly like you wouldn't look at the anti-vax movement and say that's generally good politics

Corey 31:29

politics overall with the general population right but it's certainly animated kind of base energy right and it brought forward base energy i think the same is true here for the ndp so i agree with what steven said about how this is likely to bring people out to buy memberships to vote but what i think is interesting here and where it does not track to the anti-vax considerations You know, even setting aside kind of the moral considerations around that is, in

Corey 31:56

in the UCP race, that was a bit of a wedge, right? There were shades of the view. What's different about the NDP race is there is no wedge. Like, they all believe the exact same thing. You know, all of us, we all know all of them. There is not a bit of daylight between their positions, right? They are all outraged tonight. night every single one of

Carter 32:18

those five caucus members that are in you

Corey 32:19

you know in that race unofficially right now are furious about this particular matter and they don't have different policies from one another and so i do think each of the camps is going to have to think about how their particular action on this portfolio reinforces the brands that they are trying to create for themselves right so some of them it will be more natural fits than others and you know If you're looking to be – if you're Kathleen Ganley, for example, and you're looking to be – let's just say your brand was the Calgary Candidate. I'm not sure it is.

Corey 32:51

We'll have to revisit some of these things from the outset at some point because apparently

Corey 32:54

the economy is about people, I keep seeing on Kathleen's feed. So whatever that means seems to be her brand. But if

Corey 33:03

if you were the Calgary Candidate, this is less of a natural fit for you. This is not sort of working for you in the same particular way. right if you're Sarah Hoffman and your brand is like we are going to be so true to our values a little bit more of a natural fit right if you're a Racky Pancholi and it's you know I am going to be the candidate that grows this party and makes this party as inclusive as can be and like expands it yeah this is pretty natural fit for you too right which is again not to say that somebody is going to be on a different side of this issue but it allows you kind of to to tell your story while doing the things that you want to do and you feel you need to do anyhow here. So maybe I'll just leave it there. But my first thought is, it's not a wedge. And so it is going to change a little bit how you kind of look at it. But I do ultimately agree it is an animating issue.

Zain 33:49

Great insights already. We got 10 minutes left on the clock, Carter. I want to test this though. So Corey talks about, you guys both agree, this is positive, right? Like from a pure political basis, right?

Corey 33:59

right? Just to be

Zain 33:59

be totally clear with people who are listening. I'm not saying, like yes i'm not saying this is but this is good for you okay good we're talking about politics here um daylight i like what cory's talking about that there's minimal daylight carter do you agree that there's minimal daylight i want to test this with you if any daylight between the candidates and then how would you advise a candidate to to draw distinction if there is no daylight how do you draw distinction there's many ways to do that there's the approach there's how you you know So there's many, but I'm kind of curious.

Corey 34:28

I'm using my second veto here. What the fuck is going on

Corey 34:34

That is not the way that you want to approach this. Like when you're talking about the need to hang together, the idea that you would try to create a wedge, I think is a problem. Go, Stephen. Oh,

Zain 34:42

Oh, I'm curious if this is actually the root of my question. It's whether, not how, right, to Carter, which is, Carter, should you be trying to create to wedge here even in even in approach in in how you'd approach actually

Corey 34:57

know i'm gonna use the

Corey 34:58

leadership my third veto okay okay apologize to steven for interrupting and offer him my fourth veto that he can use oh wow he's fit tonight no

Carter 35:08

i'm not gonna use any fucking vetoes because i'm just gonna start talking carter's

Corey 35:11

carter's got six he's got a pocket veto here's

Carter 35:12

here's the thing here's the thing they

Carter 35:17

don't want to wedge this within the ndp itself you want to make this of values defining moment and i'll tell you something if i was in in the campaigns of um

Carter 35:26

um you know sarah hoffman rocky pancioli uh kathleen ganley i'd actually be trying to wedge this against nahad nenshi nahad nenshi did not have a particularly good night on twitter last night um and even even the sainted cory hogan was tweeting at the purpleness um this is a wedge about who the fucking ndp is at its core this is this is this is who we are fundamentally and if you don't believe that this is who we are fundamentally then you can't be a part of us and i think that that's great i think that 40 of the population is fantastic for them uh to go and get in the leadership uh bring this in make it make this defining and don't make this about anything bigger than um then this is what the ndp stands for and we will stand together on this i like them i like them doing it all at once um but i also like someone being the first mover and fucking defining it and owning it if you can't be the first mover then piggyback on everybody else don't try and wedge within the party cory

Zain 36:31

cory what what does if there's no daylight can i ask a clarifying question what does strongest mean when you said the strongest what what does that mean to you on something like this? It doesn't mean the loudest,

Zain 36:40

loudest, right? Just so we're absolutely clear. No,

Corey 36:41

No, no, no. I mean, here's, and this is why I made the comment about, you got to think about how it works into your brand frame too, because you don't want to just sort of elevate an issue in a way that actually speaks to your opponent's strengths in a particular leadership race. Although again, like this is one of those things that sort of tips into kind of like the principles and the morals of the party. And so we, you know, you got to be careful that you're not being too calculating about it too. You've got to not, you've got to put your ambition second to the stance on this particular one um because that is so important to the party and that goes to steven's

Corey 37:12

although i do want to say like what not had then she was getting burned online for was saying that it was really really good and i think thoughtful or something communications or something and people said hey yeah he she he yeah she kind of fucked over trans kids i don't want to hear that but you know to be fair to not had steven and i have made similar comments now on this podcast tonight about about the communication

Carter 37:33

communication yeah but we're not running for the leadership that's a very

Corey 37:36

very good point uh but like that's you know that's that's the issue we're talking about lest anybody think that nah had said something like wild there right um it was

Carter 37:45

was still pretty wild not to just come out and you know call it down for a person who's considering the leadership it

Carter 37:52

it was a pretty it

Corey 37:53

it was a pretty bold like you know allegedly we will never know um

Zain 37:58

can i know sorry well

Zain 38:01

you about strength here uh i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm I'm going to look at the clock because I'm going to... Six minutes. Corey, launches are coming up.

Zain 38:09

Do you make this a cornerstone of your launch? Are you like tonight being like, fuck it. Let's just like take everything out. Like this is a campaign. How are you blending this in? Talk to me about that a bit.

Corey 38:18

Yeah. Like, so what is strength in this particular situation is people are going to say, holy ever loving fuck, look at this government. And oh my God, we're on the mat again, where we being kind of some broadly defined progressivism in Alberta.

Corey 38:35

can best champion here who can best stand up for us here and then there are flavors of that and this is why i say it goes back to brand two there are going to be people who say it's the person who brings the most brimstone the most righteous indignation you

Corey 38:49

know just absolutely destroys danielle smith for her for her moral grounds on this and there are going to be people who say the strongest means they are actually able to move the meter on this they have managed to persuade albertans who were at first supportive of this that these are bad ideas and so they've They've shown that they can actually talk to people and bring them into the tent, and they can articulate an argument that moves the dial in some way, shape, or form, or they show a certain thoughtfulness, right?

Corey 39:12

These are different flavors of strongest, but the point of it is you are going to need to define it in a way that works for your brand, and you're going to need to make sure that that is sort of how the issue is addressed, and, you know, people will make their judgments based on who they are and what they believe. But that's what we mean when we say strongest. And, you know, in some ways, fire and brimstone is kind of the most satisfying, right?

Corey 39:33

oh, you really, really punched her in the gut there with that particular comment about how shitty she is because of these things that she's brought in. There will be a huge audience for that.

Corey 39:44

But I think overall, this leadership race is about what gets the NDP to the next step, right? Like, what's going to get them the equivalent of those 6,000 votes that they lost by?

Corey 39:53

Won't be the same votes, won't happen in the same way.

Corey 39:56

And so I think there'll be also a big audience of people saying like, okay, well, we got a tough one. So who can show that they can lead Albertans on this and actually shape opinion in Alberta and maybe move opinion polls on this particular matter? And what does that look like? Carter,

Zain 40:12

anything on launch? If not, I've got a question for you on strategy related to how do you communicate here in

Zain 40:19

in a empathetic, compassionate way, but still want to transact with people with an NDP membership? Bridge that divide for me or bridge that gap. And you may say there isn't one, but either on launch and then talk to me about how you go from authentic,

Zain 40:34

authentic, compassionate to buy a membership.

Carter 40:38

Yeah, so I think that brand needs to be the primary focus on the launch. And I don't think anybody wants to build their entire brand around this issue. I think this is a great issue to sell memberships. I don't think this is a great issue to define your brand on. You could define your brand as children, right? We defined our brand for Redford. Everybody knows this. Mother of young daughter, daughter of aging parents, right? That was the definition of the brand. Obviously, this would fit into that brand. but that's where the launch needs to go the launch needs to fit into the brand of the overall candidate not this not any any sort of fake fight uh just to get attention uh and that's what you know politics is it's it's pro-wrestling a lot right um sometimes pro-wrestling with consequences um but nonetheless it's still a lot of theater uh by bad actors so that i don't think the launch A bunch needs to fit into that. And I've cleverly forgotten the second half of your question.

Zain 41:35

How does this transition from compassion, authentic communications to membership sales?

Carter 41:41

I think it's a two-step process. You know, if you're a leadership candidate and you're not running a petition site on this, I don't think that you're worth your salt. and then you flip it over and start looking back and emailing those people and bringing them down your engagement ladder until or your membership funnel whichever metaphor

Carter 42:01

metaphor you choose to use cory

Zain 42:03

cory same question to you on membership and then two minutes left so i'll let you guys jam in whatever else you want on this before we move on yeah

Corey 42:11

yeah like i don't think this is actually a a gross or a you know i've so i've consulted for and i've worked i currently work for a registered or charity you know sometimes when you work for groups like this you often think oh

Corey 42:24

oh there's something kind of squeamish about asking for money in the in these cases like no you're a charity right like people understand that you are trying to fundraise for charity yeah this is not a big deal and i feel the same way in a political party like if you're trying to sell a membership to somebody who's an active yeah you're a political party you

Corey 42:44

go and they're like oh i'm so mad about this well we are too come join us right like i'm i'm running for leader come join us you know get involved in this camp i'd love to have you help me fight on this particular matter like it's not hard like i don't think you need to

Carter 42:57

to overthink this one like

Corey 42:58

like yeah i'm fucking mad buy a membership you know that's actually a pretty natural step and i don't think it's gross or calculated it's that's literally why the political party exists it's a fight back it's literally the existence distance so you just you just underline that and you say yeah that's amen you know that's that's what we do here so please join us carter

Zain 43:19

carter final minute anything else you want to jam in into the the ndp uh scenario before we move on yeah

Carter 43:24

yeah i just want to say that you know you're going to swing at this pitch this time you don't have to swing at this pitch all the time right um you know you're going to want your primary communication structures to be on brand if you can incorporate this into your brand uh all

Carter 43:40

all the power to you um and then you can swing at the pitch more frequently but i think it's a good pitch to hit cory

Zain 43:47

cory final thoughts yeah

Corey 43:49

yeah actually stevens are great you um you know this is a moment this is a leadership race you're in if they were trying to mess with your race or make you seem like a bunch of extremists in the race i mean what the fuck okay look it's an eternal party race right um don't sweat it too much and certainly don't don't overthink it and don't try to play chess with them and not react to it or anything like that. This is why you exist to my earlier comments. So, you know, remind yourself of that and, you know, stiffen your spines and fight the good fight.

Corey 44:18

Doesn't mean you are always going to be so cavalier about the gen pop politics of it. And you don't want to walk into every conversation about this, but this is a time for righteous anger. If you're a political party, that's in a leadership contest.

Zain 44:32

Nicely done guys. All right, Corey, I'm going to give you the next shot do you want to go we

Zain 44:38

we were just chatting about charities do you want to go the fifty thousand dollar donation to a non-profit charity and what their advocacy or campaign or whatever looks like uh over the course of something launching on monday which is the scope i've given you or do you want to go david

Zain 44:52

david parker take back alberta that group meeting tonight and what they need to do next which direction are we going cory yeah

Corey 44:58

yeah well i don't want to end on on david parker so why don't we do you

Corey 45:02

you know it's like burying the the bad argument in a in a position paper right let's let's do

Carter 45:08

do you're so lucky we get to do this one oh

Zain 45:10

oh you are lucky carter well cory you picked it i'm gonna let you start give me your first sort of consideration here your first sort of strategic thought carter will build on it and we'll we'll start the clock as soon as you start talking here well

Corey 45:22

well i think if you're take back alberta if you're david parker the first thing you need to determine is what you're trying to do at this particular moment. Seems right now what they're trying to do is take a victory lap, because they're not even seeming to try to push things further. As I said, this is even further than a lot of the policy recommendations that had come out of the UCP policy convention went. But David Parker right now is going just nuts online. He had a tweet that I pulled up here as after you announced he would would be one of our subjects you're welcome yes

Corey 45:52

yeah teachers of alberta you no longer have permission to indoctrinate our children into your ideology you are legally required to inform parents before teaching their children queer ideology if you do not inform parents we will know like every one of these sounds like it's like the edict of like you know some grand inquisitor from a bygone era and um he he just seems to be really quite on the offensive in every sense of the word offensive like he's just offending he's he's saying like you disgust me to people and now we're watching you and we know what you're up to and by the way mercifully

Corey 46:28

mercifully for danielle smith most of alberta doesn't follow david parker's twitter feed but like has absolutely undercut all of her you know attempted compassion in her message there right so i think um i

Corey 46:42

i think he needs to think about what he wants and if all he wants is to take a victory lap uh that's one thing but But if he actually wants to push this further, make Take Back Alberta more mainstream, push the agenda even less mainstream, you know, whatever that definition is, that's step one. Because if you don't know where you're going, you're going to end up somewhere else. And right now, he's just online being a dick. And he's not being a dick for a purpose. And, you know, quite often, he's a dick for a purpose. Right now, it just seems to be, like, high on what happened, not thinking about the broader strategic considerations.

Zain 47:13

Carter, what's a strategic consideration, then, that he should start thinking about right now? now

Carter 47:17

he should start thinking about um you know what tools he has and what he wants to get next i mean this is a guy he's lost the alberta pension plan it would appear but he has many other areas that he wants to to try and influence policy uh he got the renewables ban last time maybe he wants to aim now to get keep the renewables ban we got to be getting up to the six month uh

Corey 47:40

just did a survey there was a government survey a bunch of people got

Corey 47:43

on that by the way asking a bunch of questions

Carter 47:46

hopefully you know we're we're able to move forward off of that but um

Carter 47:51

david parker you know he controls the uh the ucp board he controls the rural caucus and he he has the ability to set the agenda so what is it that he actually wants to achieve next because if this is the pinnacle then

Carter 48:06

then just achieve it step down like this is it this is the ball game but i don't think this is the pinnacle for him i think that he He thinks that he can reshape Alberta politics to look like make Alberta, you know, make Alberta great again. I think that there will be red hats for sale this summer that we can all hop on or maybe they'll be blue because we're Alberta. But nonetheless, all of this to say that this is a guy who's currently re rejigging all of Alberta politics and he has the power currently and right now he hasn't overreached. so while you've got the power if you're david parker you've got to figure out how to best apply that power how to get it to the next level how to get it to the next level and that's why things like um you know abortion rights uh you know women's rights other you know other things that that have been perceived to be off limits um this trans rights discussion opens the door to all of them specifically you know especially abortion so we could be seeing an awful lot of of david parker's next things coming much much sooner because you don't want to give up that power over danielle smith cory

Zain 49:17

cory jump in here and i've got a follow-up question for both of you yeah

Corey 49:21

yeah well you had asked about david parker i turned it into take back alberta fair point there is a distinction right um and is there you know one of the things i'd say steven is by all accounts take back alberta is not this homogenous group that you've talked about there there's like petty messy bullshit between the founders and the leaders all of the time you know people being cut out of whatsapp groups also it's like classic tech crunch

Zain 49:45

crunch stuff except it's it's a

Corey 49:47

a right-wing political group yeah you're totally right so you know i think if we want to think about what david parker wants one of the things might be actually consolidating some of his support within take back alberta a movement that you know he you know doesn't always have the firmest grip on and you know there's is also conversations about how much of a firm grip Take Back Alberta has on UCP politics or whether it's more like, you know, common causes intersecting and, you know, everybody's worried about the supporters that back both, right? There's many kind of questions here, but there might be some kind of consolidation that's possible there as moving forward. The other thing I will say is, I don't know, it's very possible to me that they got more than they asked for on this particular matter because Daniel Smith's about to disappoint their base in another way right so if

Corey 50:35

that's i'll be curious to see if that's

Zain 50:36

that's the case then cory do you not take the victory lap as strongly and as aggressively as you can because you don't know if another one's coming or do you try to like extend this victory and thin it out over a longer period of time because you don't know if there's another one coming i

Corey 50:53

don't know that's a good question i i guess there's two

Corey 50:56

two schools of thought there right one is again it depends on your goals like if if you're trying to show your effectiveness, then yeah, you just sort of take the victory lap. But if you are a true cause politician, if you are actually trying to change the government in big, strong ways, well, then you've got to, you've got to sort of look at this, assess this and say, if this is what's happening, I want to make sure it doesn't happen. So you've got to kind of put people on notice. You've got to remind people of how popular this particular motion was. If it ends up being like it's super early days and a lot of the commentary, including ourselves have obviously come very scathingly down upon this. And we'll sort of see how it lands, but I suspect it'll still land popular. That's my gut. That's my instinct. And

Corey 51:36

And so maybe you say, see, Albertans actually want a right-wing approach to things. See? And then, you know, put that pressure on it to make sure that it's not so easy to walk away and make clear that you don't feel sated. Like this is not enough for me. You know, what's enough is that we actually have a consistent distant right-wing vision in Alberta, or whatever. Carter,

Zain 51:55

Carter, you're talking about power building, what's next. Corey's talking about consolidating power, both excellent points. Can I throw something at you and see if you think this is strategic consideration?

Zain 52:06

How important is it for Parker and TBA to make sure this is as painless for Smith and as celebratory as possible? If they want more victories, do they need to show her that, like, they're thumbs-upping this, they're, like, going out, they're fighting the war, proverbially speaking, against the left, right? They're minimizing dissent, they're making this a

Zain 52:30

a positive, outright win. How much of that, I guess is the right way to phrase it, is that of a strategic consideration for someone like TBA to be like, look, you delivered and we made it as frictionless as possible for you to do something difficult, come again, sort of thing. How would you kind of put that in its strategic framework? Do you even think that's not a consideration here?

Carter 52:57

I'm not sure that that's the right play. I think that the play is to make it as painful.

Carter 53:03

You remind her that it could be very, very painful not to do. I mean, this is this is a this is a even after she

Zain 53:11

she potentially over delivered. Yeah,

Carter 53:12

Yeah, this is a hostage taking, Zane. This isn't some sort of equal negotiation. She is concerned that the board is going to call a leadership review that she can't win. That is why, because this isn't the Danielle Smith that I know. Corey and I have talked about her in the past. I, you know, I would have considered her a friend. I don't any longer in no small part because of what's happening right now. But this is I think that this is a true, simple power play. and david is going to look at this and and take back alberta is going to look at this and say we've got power now what should we do with it next and and that's why i've been very focused on the next achievement not just how this one unfolds but what are we going to do next because it's never going to be enough for these people what danielle does not realize what i think i realize about this is that she's trying to placate the right because the last time she tried to move to the center, she got killed.

Carter 54:20

But what she's going to find is that there is no such thing as placating the right. They're never, ever going to be happy. That is the definition of who they are. And I think that that's not going to change just because they want to make it less painful for Danielle to bring in really unpopular. Keep in mind, they think this is very popular and the numbers maybe support them on that. But they're

Carter 54:42

they're doing this. They're doing this to to inflict pain. They're not doing this because, necessarily, just because they ideologically believe it. They do it because they can. Corey,

Zain 54:52

Corey, do you agree with that? I mean, I've seen enough hostage movies to know that even if it is a hostage scenario, shoot the hostage in the face. But before you do that, you sometimes give them a nice meal every now and then. Do they play nice for a bit? Do they celebrate? Do they give her some level of adulation? Or are you with Carter here, that this is is the only way to keep this going is to keep us tight of a grip and the threat as active as we believe it to be?

Corey 55:22

Probably a combination of both. Probably public adulation, private threats is the short version of it, right? Because you do want to sort of not create an environment where people say, oh, fuck it, no matter what we do, these guys are at our throats, so we don't need to listen to them anymore. It's actually a lesson I think Alberta needs to learn. A certain and responsiveness to events is kind of essential if

Corey 55:43

you want to be bought off right if you want to be supported right because if it's all sort of costed in then everyone's like yeah like think about justin trudeau there's he can't he can't quote unquote buy alberta he bought he spent tens of billions of dollars on a pipeline and people still think he wants to shut down the oil industry for christ's sake yeah

Corey 56:00

so like that's just not gonna happen uh and you don't want to be in a position where people just feel that way about you feel the way i'm sure Justin Trudeau does about like you know any kind of major infrastructure in Alberta and so um yeah you want to be publicly like and I think he has been like this is great congratulations Premier Smith but privately saying what's next what are we going to do now you know this is just the start you got to keep the momentum going if you're not moving forward you're being pushed backward and you know we really want to be moving forward and and I one of the things that I think we haven't talked about in this context because we've talked about take

Corey 56:38

take back alberta we talked about daniel smith but

Corey 56:41

but there's a whole caucus and there's a whole cabinet that i couldn't help but know that weren't actually standing with the premier they were not today no i don't think that's because they didn't support her i

Corey 56:50

i think that's because they wanted to say the premier's really busy has to go and there's no one else to answer questions once the premier goes oh good point

Zain 56:56

point like when right right right right

Corey 56:58

yeah but um i do think that there are probably people who have varying degrees of comfort with what just happened. And so, now is also maybe a time to consolidate power, kind of, not just deeply, but broadly, and increase the number of people who are,

Corey 57:15

sort of acknowledging your strength in these areas. Carter,

Zain 57:19

Carter, three minutes on the clock. Anything else you want to talk about? I think you've hit on risks nicely. Risk is victory laps, no next steps. What else do you want to hit on? If you're tonight meeting this group on their Zoom call, as they meet, they celebrate, bray what else would you put a bug in their ear to make sure they talk about uh from a strategic standpoint well

Carter 57:39

well i would be talking about strengthening the membership um you know this is you know cory's pointed out the polling uh this is a popular issue this is a take back alberta initiative there's no question of that so why not go out and try and take credit and strengthen the membership i'd recommend they do it with less lunacy um but they're probably not going to listen to me anyways so um this is a great opportunity to build the organization and build the organization also uh as cory's articulated under the leadership of david parker as opposed to under the leadership of uh the crew or the the small collective that was leading it it's parker's entity he's the one who should be taking control of it and uh that way we We know who we're attacking, too, which is very helpful.

Zain 58:31

Corey, final thoughts on TBA, Parker, their strategy session tonight. What else would you want on the agenda?

Corey 58:38

Yeah, that's enough for them. We will leave him with

Zain 58:41

with 13 and a half minutes of strategy, not a full 15. But you know what? That sounds appropriate. Carter, we're moving on to our final one. The nonprofit charity that's got a $50,000 donation, they need to launch something by Monday. The donors asked for that to happen. Can we get something? And of course, it's not a hard deadline. They're giving them some time to think about it. But they're maybe hundling their folks today and tonight saying, listen, we've got this. This is an existential threat, this policy. You know, it's probably going to be a session coming up. Not this particular one, but one down the road. Do we have to contend with this? What do we do? Do we spend all the money now? Do we spend it later? What do we do? How do we think about it? What's our strategy? Stephen Carter, I've got 15 minutes on the clock. Can you start with your key consideration for this group as they grapple with how to think about advocacy and campaigning from their particular perch?

Carter 59:34

Well, number one, I'd break this into smaller pieces. Don't go after the whole thing. This is a parental rights issue. This is a, you know, parental rights polls. Well, where do we want to go? I would make sure that I'm not escalating this too far. You know, know we don't want to make this about the entire transgender issue we want to make this about children and protecting children we want to make sure that people are reminded that uh responsibility comes with rights um you know that that this is a tremendous opportunity to re uh re-engage parents on what it is and how they they should be parenting um i think that there's all kinds of different ways to do it and i think that the number one thing that i would recommend that they do is test a number of things um you know all too often we run out with the messaging that we think appeals to us um just because a message appeals to to you and me and to well probably not cory because he disagrees with everything but just his nature yeah

Carter 1:00:35

yeah i mean he's just un-fucking it's impossible to work with him anyways um you

Carter 1:00:43

have to test you have to make sure that the The language that you're using actually replies. So I would set up probably three or four different surveys or petition sites and see which ones perform the best and see what language works the best. And then I would double down on that language and begin a media relations campaign and a digital

Carter 1:01:07

digital campaign trying to find the people who are most likely to sign that petition. mostly to do additional fundraising from the second audience rather than trying to rely on large-scale donors to carry the organization. Corey,

Zain 1:01:23

Corey, how are you thinking about this? Carter's talking about separating the issues into chunks, media relations, digital advertising, advocacy petitions, growing a database, growing a list, getting yourself ready for at least a mid-haul. Maybe it's going to be a long haul. You don't really know in terms of how long you're going to have to sustain an effort or a campaign like this. Are you thinking of things on a similar vein, different vein? How are you thinking about them?

Corey 1:01:49

think that's good advice. The focus group stuff in particular, I'm not sure that needs to be one group, but you should be putting a little bit of your money into maybe some coalition research there, getting folks together, understanding

Corey 1:02:01

how people feel about these issues, how much it takes to move people to different views on this. We've talked about this in a lot of other contexts, but you have to be aware of novel novel concepts, right? A lot of Alberta hasn't thought about this before. It is, of course, been in the kind of the national conversation for a bit now, but not in any kind of robust way. And here it is here in Alberta in a significant way. Now, go find out what people actually think and go find out what it takes to make them think differently. Learn that quickly and then do a lot of that before opinions get ossified. And everyone's just decided, well, I've always thought this was a good idea. I have for six months now, 12 months now, whatever it is. Certainly, Certainly, you do not want to wait for this to take hold as conventional wisdom. So you've got to know what you're working with, and you've got to get the data to do that. And for fucking sure, be aware that if you are in a group that is a small nonprofit that fights on these issues, your views are almost certainly not going to be mainstream on this particular matter. And so you do need to be able to open your ears and hear those arguments and not just immediately call somebody a TERF or whatnot if you're looking to change opinion, but actually say, okay, well, let's talk a bit about that and let's sort of understand and bring up some of the stats that Stephen Carter did in these focus groups. Like, well, are you aware, like X percent on the street and so on and so forth, or X percent of, you know, youth on the street are transgender. And just get people to sort of understand the issue with a little bit more nuance and compassion and complexity. And once you've landed that message, then you take that message, whatever you've determined is the thing that is most likely to work. and you

Corey 1:03:38

you use that other 45 000 because i'm stretching my dollars by working with people in your i'm breaking your rules saying and

Corey 1:03:46

you do something that is likely to get media interest because 50k is not enough for ads it is probably enough to start doing the stakeholder work steven said but i think that there is a lot of people who will be doing that i think you need to go and you've got to find a way that you can make your point in a big way like if um if people are really kind of captured by the idea children have died because of this in the past and children will now die at a higher rate i mean i don't know go for shock like say you know we've put a documentary together where we're going and interviewing people about what it was like when they told their parents who they were very concerned wouldn't accept them about what it was and then smash cut to a bunch of you know tombstones for fuck's sake of people who are no longer with us because everything went really badly and maybe it wasn't their parents that did it but they were on the street they were all of a sudden addicted to drugs or whatever the fucking story might be and and the point is there's serious fucking stakes here

Corey 1:04:43

there are real lives that are going to be damaged and i think people need to be hit in the face with this because again otherwise it's just like yeah i should know what my kid's up to and by the way the

Corey 1:04:53

the idea that there is basically two things that might happen one total acceptance by your parents or two you know you might have to call protective services on them is just so fucking offensive and insane right

Corey 1:05:04

right like there are so many you're going back

Zain 1:05:06

back to the premier's remarks here i'm

Corey 1:05:08

i'm going back to the premier's remarks here like like there there are

Corey 1:05:12

are going to be parents who will be accepting but they're not ready yet and the kids know that and they need some space to talk it out and think about it even maybe sort of workshop the way they're going to introduce this to their parents there are going to be parents who are dead opposed but they're not going to hit you right they're just going to create an environment where your life is hell and there is just so much gray in between here and uh you know it's just i find it just offensive the idea that you would just say like well you know call protective services or or something to them we're

Zain 1:05:39

we're gonna make that more robust or whatever she said you know yeah yeah it's gonna be better than anyways that was an aside well i don't worry i paused the clock for you to do the aside because because i'm people i

Carter 1:05:48

i think he wasted my time no

Carter 1:05:50

he just jumped in again and he wasted my time that's what he does find

Corey 1:05:53

find your core message and And blow it up using

Corey 1:05:57

using whatever tactics you have that can grab attention. Carter,

Zain 1:06:00

Carter, this is interesting to me. I'm glad we're having this particular discussion because we've almost had three very different discussions on strategy. This one's kind of actually leading a bit more tactical, but I think interesting tactical to me, which is I think you both have – you're not saying different things, but you're kind of saying slightly different things, right? And let me pick on one of Corey's points to illustrate that. right carter's talking about like organic not organic but like slow methodical list building versus shock value right and in carter in our world we'd call that conversion versus you know outright reach frequency brand related stuff right whatever you kind of want to put in that bucket corey probably has better words more accurate words um are

Zain 1:06:40

are you thinking about shock at all are you thinking about big or are you thinking about like let's like extend this dollar as much as we can be methodical the only asset we have is who we have in terms of an email database and who we can reach out to and then grow from there or are you saying you know what let's take a bit of a flyer and let's try to go go big with limited resource and this is why i kind of gave you guys a 50 grand budget because

Zain 1:07:03

i didn't want to make it like you know impossibly high or impossibly low it's like it's a realistic number that someone might get in their bank for a campaign on the heels of what we've seen over the course of the last couple of days.

Carter 1:07:15

Corey's talking about changing people's minds. I'm not interested. I'm not interested in changing people's minds. I'm interested in finding people that already agree with certain premises, not necessarily all of my premises. You know, that's one of the interesting things about doing this the way that Danielle Smith did it. I can probably find two or three of those elements that go to a audience that I can find them and get them to believe and buy into what I'm saying. I don't have to get them to buy into all 11 different items. I can get them to buy into a small subset of them. And so because of that, I can change the mechanism or change the numbers. 70% may feel one way, but because I'm able to dig in, I can get the 70% going the other way. And that's, you know, gay marriage is one of those things. They gave up on, you know, the, the, the LGBT community really dug in on gay marriage and it made, and they made a very simple argument. They made that the argument on equality and fairness and people really value equality and fairness. How

Carter 1:08:22

How do we make sure that this isn't a quality and fairness issue, right?

Carter 1:08:26

Stay away from trans sports, probably, right? Probably stay away from certain elements of what was discussed, not because we don't value value it. Not

Carter 1:08:34

Not because we don't value it, but

Carter 1:08:36

but because others don't necessarily value it as we do. And we can't change people's values. It's just, it's nearly impossible to do.

Zain 1:08:45

Corey, what were your thoughts on that? And Carter's saying, don't really care about changing minds.

Corey 1:08:51

Normally I would agree with him on that. But I think that the difference on this particular matter here is I don't think the ground's firm yet. I think that there is still opportunity to to shape this issue and yeah let's be realistic i don't think you're getting from 60 20 to 60 20 the other way but if you can even move that to kind of a 50 30 issue by just hitting people with a framing that speaks to those values steven's talking about and don't just let sort of the government define this and don't just let the discourse define it for a while and the incrementalism define it and groups who say like i agree with part of this but i think this goes too far but actually kind of throw a softball across the field and say no we're playing the the game over there fuckers right we are going to talk about dead kids or whatever it is i i think is um there's a place for that and when you talk about an ecosystem of of people who support a cause broadly speaking there are going to be the incrementalists and the revolutionaries and we haven't really defined what one this group is but i think all other things being equal at the the very start of an issue revolutionary

Corey 1:09:57

revolutionary is underrated right like i think a lot of people's instinct in the face of a new thing like this is to say well let's find something common let's find that equal ground you know because that tends to be the thing that works when the issue is locked and you've got to start you know moving those chains slowly but when an issue isn't locked go big right it's not locked yet and maybe it will be locked in a month and probably it will will be locked not to your favor but just try to move it big now do your air game before your ground game um you got a chance at this moment you got a chance to define things i've

Zain 1:10:30

i've got i've got one very specific question for both of you which might take a quick minute and then i've got a follow-up question on something both of you suggested carter

Zain 1:10:38

how directly are you going after the premier i

Carter 1:10:42

think that she's a negative personification i'd go after her very strongly cory

Zain 1:10:45

cory how negative are you going after the premier on something like this

Corey 1:10:50

don't know um her overall approval numbers are fine they're not terrible they're not great you know it's

Corey 1:10:58

it's basically like the level of radiation at chernobyl it's a reference you know for anybody who likes a good hbo miniseries or or

Zain 1:11:06

or a piece of history you

Corey 1:11:09

because hold on did that actually oh wow yeah holy shit well

Corey 1:11:14

well we'll educate you afterwards yeah cory jesus christ boy all

Corey 1:11:19

that sounds like it'd be a

Corey 1:11:20

really bad thing you know like having an explosion like that in a nuclear reactor zane which

Zain 1:11:25

which is why we're all oil and gas trill baby trill cory the

Corey 1:11:27

the metaphorical nuclear reactor explosion here in alberta

Corey 1:11:33

is uh you know it's not clear to me that she's the easiest or best villain or even that you need her to be the villain frankly because of the first two minutes of her video right she has shown that that she can talk

Corey 1:11:45

talk about these issues in a way that for public consumption will not make her come off as a fire-breathing lunatic. And again, I go back to the thing I said about, you've got to focus group these things. And I think one of the things you focus group is the premier's position and all of this and how people feel about it. Not the caricature of the premier, the real premier, show them that two minutes, right? That best two minutes, give them the best version of her, make your counter arguments, see how they feel about her then. And if they still feel fine about Carter, maybe she's not your villain in this story, right?

Zain 1:12:16

This picks up on exactly what I wanted to hit on, Corey, your last statement here, which is message testing, Carter.

Zain 1:12:23

Both of you, in some way, shape, or form, have advocated for this. But I also want to right-size this to a charity who's talking about this tonight, trying to figure out what to do. They've been motivated to act. And someone on the call, let's say it's Steven, who jumps in and says, we should do message testing. We've been in these conversations, right? Where a group is like, but message testing, how, where, what? Carter, can you explain how, where, what, but also the why and why it's so important, even with such a small, relatively, $50,000 is a lot of money, but in this world of advertising, reach, et cetera, such a small budget?

Carter 1:13:02

Yeah, we're not going to do a full message testing survey. We're going to do probably a couple of informal focus groups. And then I would throw up, uh, essentially different pages because web pages are cheap now, right? Throw up, you, you, you know, you've, your group's got a website already throw up four different landing pages, put, uh, you know, some ads together, throw $5,000 into the ads and see which ones perform the best, which ones do we actually get the most engagement with? This is pretty old school stuff. It's just AB testing times four. like it's not it's not complicated and you can test really radical things and then narrow it down because you you can keep changing the text to see how things are are performing this is not a um

Carter 1:13:50

um this doesn't need to be expensive it just needs to be done cory

Zain 1:13:54

cory it's a great do you agree with everything carter's put on the table look

Corey 1:13:57

look message testing if

Corey 1:14:00

if you have a huge budget sort sort of begins with creating some mock creative and having focus groups and maybe doing some broader quantitative research once you've kind of felt a

Corey 1:14:11

more comfortable if timelines allow in fact if you're waiting for monday as is in this scenario probably time doesn't allow but he's he's exactly right you can create five messages today that are orthogonal and make five different arguments here and you can a b test them all on a platform like facebook with with an audience that you think needs to be moved, right?

Corey 1:14:32

right? Or based on your research, because there is now research, like we know which groups are sort of on the fence on these things and whatnot. You can go put it to them and you can see what

Corey 1:14:40

what seizes them. What are they clicking on? What are they actually looking at? Are they staying on those landing pages you create that make the argument more in long form? Are they clicking through to anything else? That kind of stuff can be spun up fairly quickly these days, if you've got some

Corey 1:14:54

some talented people and you've got motivation and i think um i i think that's not a bad idea at all and frankly more groups should take actions like that especially again as i say in a moment like this before everybody's so firmed up yes

Corey 1:15:08

on this file or

Zain 1:15:09

or just see where everybody is and

Zain 1:15:11

if you can move them carter last 90 seconds on this particular scenario risks considerations anything you want to jam in here as final advice to this group yeah

Carter 1:15:20

yeah i mean just don't communicate to yourself you know we we were talking earlier about communicating, you know, the NDP leadership candidates could communicate to their small groups. That's not your job when you're the nonprofit, you're not just going to be talking to your own existing membership, you have to reach outside of that membership and have a bigger play. Because this is a super important issue and making sure that you've got a bigger coalition is ultimately going to pay off later. To Corey's point, I'm not I'm I'm still not necessarily convinced I'm doing a big splashy thing that makes big impact. But I do like the idea of it. Figuring out who you can talk to, figuring out the bigger and bolder audience is ultimately going to pay significant dividends.

Zain 1:16:10

Corey, final word to you on this. Any final considerations, any final thoughts for this group as they sprint towards trying to get something off the ground?

Corey 1:16:17

I'm going to repeat because it's so important. You are not talking to yourself, right? A group, especially at a moment like this, where you are feeling some, as I'd say to my kids, some big feelings, right? You got to remember what you're trying to do here, which is either some version of incrementalism or some version of really reframing things. But either way, you're already with you. You're talking about people that by definition are not. And so you've got to find some arguments that work for them.

Zain 1:16:45

Nicely done, guys. Three scenarios out of the way. Carter, any reactions to what we just did? Because we're done.

Carter 1:16:52

No, I'm super tired. You

Carter 1:16:54

You know, it's well after 10. You know, I don't even know how I stayed up this late.

Zain 1:17:00

I think you did it. I think you did it. Corey, I think you did just fine as well. But of course, not as good as Carter. I hope you enjoyed your ginger drink with your Capri Sun. It was good. Yeah, that's fine. We're

Corey 1:17:09

We're going to leave

Zain 1:17:10

leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1282 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velgey. With me, as always, Stephen Carter. Corey Hogan, and we will, of course, see you next time.

Transcript