Transcript
Zain
0:01
This is the Strategist episode 1285. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, this isn't going to be a surprise, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what's going on?
Carter
0:12
we did a show with Ochi. Did you miss it? I heard
Carter
0:15
it was horrible. Did you miss the show?
Zain
0:16
I heard it was borderline unlistenable.
Carter
0:18
No, that's not true. How dare you,
Zain
0:19
sir? That can't be true. That's what I've heard. That's the feedback I've heard.
Zain
0:25
Where are you getting this feedback? No one has told me this. Your feedback?
Carter
0:28
feedback? No one has told me
Carter
0:28
me this. You got to get on the Discord. No one has told me this
Zain
0:30
this before. You got to get on the Discord.
Zain
0:31
Why did you not tell me you're recording? Now, Corey, one of the things was I would have said no, because you know what I was doing? Yeah.
Zain
0:37
I was watching the generational talent that was- We talked about it on the pod. No, we didn't. We talked about it after. We talked about it after. No,
Zain
0:44
we talked- Oh, you guys talked
Zain
0:46
about it. Yeah, we talked about
Zain
0:47
you say? Did you talk to the audience about my Jersey choice? I didn't go into it. Okay,
Corey
0:52
so there's a Jersey choice. No, I didn't. I thought about it. I
Zain
0:54
I thought about it.
Corey
0:55
it. That was a good conversation we had. It
Zain
0:58
a good strategy conversation, frankly. Hey, Carter, here's what ended up happening, okay? Okay. I went to the game in Toronto, okay? Toronto Raptors basketball team. You know that. Went with a good friend of the show, Andrew Fung, by which I mean he never listens to the show. He listens every time. Well, we, you know, if it was on the public broadcaster, they'd force him to listen. But the fact is, if Fung doesn't get paid, he doesn't listen, okay? OK, that's just where he's at these days. OK, that's
Zain
1:29
that's nice. We go to the Raptors game, San Antonio Spurs, of course, my team for the last two decades, maybe more, probably more at this point. I have two jersey choices, Carter. I've got my classic Tim Duncan, 1999 jersey choice, the best Spur to ever put on a jersey. OK, I've got that classic. Well, the
Carter
1:48
the only one I'd be able to name. Or,
Zain
1:49
Or, Carter, I have a Mets 92. You're wondering, what is Mets 92? Well, they're a French team. I've got a Mets 92 jersey with Victor Wemben-Yama on the back. Oh,
Zain
2:02
Victor. And of course, everyone there, outside of the Raptors fans who show up, season ticket holders, like the guy beside me, everyone there, Carter, is there to see Victor Wemben-Yama. Which jersey choice would you ultimately choose?
Carter
2:14
Oh, I'd go with Tim Duncan, just so I could stand out and not look like a homer, right? That's what I'd go
Corey
2:21
go with. That's the wrong answer. Yeah, that's the wrong answer.
Zain
2:23
went with. Can't believe
Corey
2:24
believe how wrong that answer
Zain
2:25
answer is. Corey and I spent a long time talking about this. Yeah, we went through the pros and cons. We did go through the pros and cons. If I wear the standard jersey, and
Zain
2:32
and Corey, do you think we've lost every listener at this point?
Corey
2:35
No, no, no. We got probably five more minutes of this before we lose every listener. Oh, fucking,
Zain
2:38
fucking, okay, okay, okay. So if I go with the standard Spurs jersey, okay, I'm just another generic Spurs fan. However, if I go with Mets 92, and Corey, this is kind of the case you make, I appeal to the 10 to 12 people who are like, oh, shit. And Corey, do you know what happened? Yeah. approximately
Zain
2:53
approximately 10 to 12 people oh shit now oh shit now there's about 250 people that wanted to talk to the person i was with uh and take pictures with them but 10 to 15 10 to 12 people came up to me specifically had no idea who he was and were like nice nice jersey dude i'm like yeah very nice i like pretty good pretty good it worked out perfectly anybody recognize
Carter
3:12
recognize you from the pod no
Zain
3:14
no no one recognizes it's
Zain
3:15
it's really hard to be with someone who's more
Carter
3:16
more famous video which is which is Which is why you
Zain
3:19
you guys never invite me out. It
Carter
3:21
sense. Nice name drop, by the way. You remember Andrew Fung? Used to be someone in the early 90s. I don't know. When was he someone?
Zain
3:29
someone? 2010? You sound jealous. It sounds like the EDI movement is something you hate.
Zain
3:38
He made it on his own. Okay. What else are we talking about? What else do we want to jab about? Of course, we've got our post-Valentine's segment, Carter. We do it every year. This is a big one. But
Zain
3:52
But Corey, anything you want to talk about? We just did some Jersey strategy conversation. Once again, you proving that you know more about that than Carter does. Anything else you want to bring up before we jump in?
Corey
4:02
No, I just want to repeat that I know more about that than Carter. Okay,
Zain
4:05
Okay, excellent. Carter, is there anything you want to talk about that you know more of? And I've just received a note here. You can't talk about outdoors.
Carter
4:13
Now, they play that outdoors, but it's about to start up again. Things are getting exciting. Play it outdoors.
Corey
4:17
outdoors. outdoors play it outdoors next yeah
Zain
4:20
yeah next we have anything uh
Carter
4:20
uh mountain biking uh once again no next no swipe
Zain
4:23
swipe swipe left right which whichever one is the negative
Carter
4:26
negative i went and took a fruit basket to annalise sounds
Carter
4:29
like you have to go outdoors to go
Corey
4:30
go do that yeah
Corey
4:33
we haven't mentioned on this pod but i think we can because she's been in the discord yeah
Corey
4:38
annalise's absence you know
Carter
4:40
we can explain it now we
Corey
4:40
we can kind of explain it got fired
Carter
4:42
fired we're not themastic
Zain
4:47
that's what i was told i'm
Carter
4:49
i'm gladly showing up to
Zain
4:50
being like yeah finally
Corey
4:54
yeah she just she just had her second kid she just had her second kid so mazel tov congratulations we're only letting the patrons know we're not letting the yeah
Corey
5:03
yeah fuck the rest of them that'd be gross i
Zain
5:05
i mean you can do so much with your life after you get fired and
Zain
5:07
and like in her case
Zain
5:09
she got She had a baby.
Zain
5:10
She had a kid.
Zain
5:11
So good for her. I mean, that is great. Congratulations. And I'm never giving up this chair again. Carter, anything else you want to talk about? Sounds like fruit in two ways is an outdoor thing. Once again, grown outside. And then once again, delivering said fruit basket, an outdoor activity. Anything else you want to talk about? Her husband
Carter
5:28
husband let me in the house, though, which
Carter
5:30
which is better than what happens at your place when I show up. I'm not even let in. You are door-framed. You
Zain
5:37
door-framed treatment. Steven. You're pretty much patio door framed. You like it outside, so you get to stay outside. That's your penalty. Inside is for people who like it. Corey, every time he doesn't come, he gets to come inside. Okay? I always, whenever I don't go, I get to go inside. When
Carter
5:51
When was the last time he was at your house? He's never been over.
Carter
5:53
But every time he hasn't
Carter
5:57
Yeah, exactly. Let's get this show on the road. Let's move it on to our first segment.
Zain
6:00
segment. Our first segment is our Valentine's Day or post-Valentine's Day special. Yes, Corey. Yes, Stephen, it is Lovebug. This is the segment that we do after every Valentine's Day. Carter, the theory is very simple. Oh, before we jump into our segment, I forgot. We have a new sponsor for this particular segment. This segment, Lovebug, brought to us by our sponsor, the Arrive Can app. Carter, the Arrive Can app. This is, of course, well, it's actually not brought to us by them. It's brought to us by the makers of the Arrive Can app, and we don't know who those are. So we've got some
Zain
6:33
some shadowy sponsors who
Zain
6:35
who are providing us money. it very well could be the case that flair airlines spend 67 million dollars on the impossible i
Zain
6:42
i feel like if you add the numbers together just a hot tip to ottawa that that yeah you know who knows where the money comes from but but they are indeed our sponsor carter every year after valentine's day i go through some topics that have been in the news and you guys tell me as political strategists do you love it or does it bug you okay
Zain
7:01
okay is it a love or is it a bug it's very simple some may even call it a shitty way of having the same conversation again but i don't i'm not that person carter it's great no and you know it's great no it's totally different from every other
Zain
7:14
different the innovation here keeps you churned out and let's start here with innovation carter did you watch this video with mark zuckerberg taking a shit on it okay can we talk about this this is a really interesting video and if you have not watched this video i can't really summarize it for you so hit pause right now google it or youtube tube it and watch this video it's mark zuckerberg sitting on his couch giving a takedown carter of an apple product and there's a few things that i think are interesting here number one it's mark zuckerberg who with massive shoulders this guy's been clearly working out number two it's no kidding it's a type of mark zuckerberg i have not seen before i think that's interesting what i mean by that it's not just physically just how he was conducting himself the pace this is really interesting and third it's a takedown of an apple product and like uh using his own core you may have to remind me what the what the meta equivalent of it's called the quest the quest the quest that they were three the quest three that that a colleague of his is recording on it's a really interesting piece of comms carter i think it's really interesting from the perspective of zuckerberg who's not universally loved if not now more universally hated going after apple which which has got a fanboy network. His words, not necessarily mine, but also mine. And at the same time, using a very methodical way to kind of break it down and try to go after the Apple Vision Pro, the newest product that Apple has released. Carter, was this a love or was this a bug for you? The Mark Zuckerberg three-ish minute takedown of Apple.
Carter
8:49
Well, I loved it. I loved it. I loved it for a couple of reasons. I actually went and Googled Meta's Quest afterwards and priced them out. And I actually think that we should get them to record the podcast. But that's a different discussion as we move forward because I loved it. I actually thought it was a great takedown. Keep in mind, I am a huge fan of the Mac versus IBM or Mac versus Microsoft ads from back in the day. This is the
Zain
9:18
right? Right. I like that. Yeah. Those ones
Carter
9:20
ones were funnier than the new AI version of Mark Zuckerberg.
Carter
9:26
But this AI was very impressive. It looked very human. He he you know, the size thing was a bit weird because I don't think anybody could believe that someone's that size. But nonetheless, I mean, using AI in that kind of a circumstance was spectacular. And then the script that they wrote for the AI, I thought was really well put together. It was a good takedown. It was It was damning with faint praise. It was comparisons on pricing. And it was comparing to their mid-level product, not their high-level product, which I thought was also very interesting. I really did love it. I really did.
Zain
10:04
Corey, in the biz, we call what Carter just did a hard, unsubtle pivot, which is he tried to deliver a joke. If you missed the joke, it's that Carter thinks Mark Zuckerberg's
Carter
10:15
Zuckerberg's an AI. It was a great joke.
Carter
10:17
It was a great joke. You both laughed. I saw it. We
Zain
10:19
We traded smirks. It's very different.
Zain
10:23
It is fundamentally a different thing. Hey,
Zain
10:26
you're like a communicator. You've often been a corporate communicator in the sense that you've kind of perhaps helped CEOs and others write scripts like what you saw Zuckerberg do here. I'm assuming folks that haven't seen this maybe have hit pause, watched that video, so I won't go into too much detail. But Carter's right. This was a head-to-head comparison being like, I've tried it out. I love a lot of Apple stuff. This I don't love. In fact, I think ours is better, like, and tries to give, like, this sort of, it was unprovoked. No one was asking Zuckerberg, be like, dude, you know, what do you say? He just made this video, put it out there.
Zain
10:58
Did you love it or did this bug you?
Corey
11:02
I loved it because it was drafting on what had become a PR moment. If you go on, you know, YouTube and
Corey
11:11
and you have any kind of tech proclivities, your stream is going to be filled with people who are assessing this apple product its strengths its weaknesses the pros of it the cons of it how it might be used in the future how you can use it today and there's just a big conversation about it and there's no question that apple has driven big conversation about vr in a way that frankly meta has not been super successful at doing they've invested a lot of money at meta to make vr a thing well
Zain
11:38
well literally but also by like like renaming their entire enterprise Meta to talk about the Metaverse. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Corey
11:46
That's right. And it's just like, it hasn't really, really worked for them. It hasn't really captured the public's imagination. And this has, like this has hit tech mainstream, right? The conversation. And I bet you it is frustrating for them because in many ways, Meta is ahead of the game on a lot of these things. And the idea that you're going to spend $3,000 on the Apple product, which is got some cool tricks for sure but is not a fundamental leap beyond the technology you can get for a fifth of the price that meta provides i'm you know that's that's interesting and so for me you know there's like kind of like cost benefit of an action like this and i think the cost was incredibly low if even negative you had the ceo just sit down and take this thing apart part like what would that cost in terms of time and energy and effort almost nothing and it becomes a big conversation and it's your way to elbow in to
Corey
12:42
to a conversation that's occurring naturally about this apple product and is it revolutionary or not and and that's really cool that's an interesting thing to do draft off your competition like that and remind people that you're also in the game in a big way now what i
Corey
12:58
i think is really
Corey
13:00
really kind of interesting about it is it also you talked about zuckerberg's brand i
Zain
13:06
i wanted to talk about zuckerberg's brand yeah like i hate it personally i think this is yeah i think
Corey
13:11
think this actually improved his brand i was gonna you know like yeah
Corey
13:14
like let's let's get to that in a minute here but i i think i don't know if he's just getting ready for this cage match he's supposed to have with elon musk that's never gonna happen or what but it
Corey
13:26
it actually did an interesting bit for him too he seemed you know he seemed less robotic to steven's
Corey
13:35
and so he managed to kind of work on his personal brand normally
Corey
13:39
normally when you think about a ceo doing something like this the one of the cost calculations is like are you debasing the ceo's brand are you doing this and then you can't do it another time but he seemed to actually improve his brand well
Zain
13:50
well was that and
Zain
13:51
and he got his product
Corey
13:52
product into the conversation. Corey,
Zain
13:53
Corey, let's talk about this for a second. Zuckerberg's brand. Carter, I'll come to you in a second. But Corey's mentioned the point, so I want to follow up here. Was part of this the permission structure that he had to do this, Corey, was that if your brand association
Zain
14:06
association is kind of in the basement, where the CEO is still the CEO, but from a public perspective, you're not loved, right? That if it's already so low, it can't really go any lower. Might as well take a flyer at this. And of course, it's not like you just take a flyer, just throw it out, you know, just shoot from the hip. But, you know, is that part of it versus other CEOs and other executives that might have something to lose? From a brand perspective, what the fuck was Zuckerberg going to lose? Like, I would hate him more for, like,
Zain
14:36
like, you know, for effectively giving us Trump. Like, and I know that's a bit of a stretch, and that's not my belief, but I'm being reductive on purpose. Corey, what do you think?
Corey
14:45
i mean like what you're gonna think all of a sudden well mark zuckerberg's a dick never knew that before like you didn't watch the social network like you can't you can't figure that piece out it was actually i thought a pretty good way to capture uh you
Corey
14:58
you know and harness some of that dickish niche and it wasn't over the top like it's not like i actually thought any worse of him it was pretty clever so um yeah
Corey
15:07
yeah yeah i mean that's an interesting point it's an interesting calculation i think one of the things about a modern tech ceo is they all have brands they all have cults of personality zuckerberg has one musk for sure has one yes
Corey
15:22
um you know even guys who aren't in tech anymore and have kind of they were multiple ceos again ago like bill gates they have them it's just it's part of the brand of of being a tech leader these these days so um it's
Corey
15:35
it's not as though you wouldn't use it or it's unusual to hear from a tech ceo but i thought it was a really good use of it my
Zain
15:41
my carter what what why else did you love this and i'm not going to belabor the point i've got many of these sort of love or bug topics to hit on is there anything else you want to talk about i've got one follow-up question for cory because i know he kind of has a marginal obsession like me or about the tech world i
Carter
15:56
just don't want to walk walk past the idea that this might sell more products um i think that you know within the first 20 30 seconds of the video he was putting up his his core uh selling point that is different from the apple uh product and that simply was you know you can get my product for one seventh of the price that's a pretty good value proposition um he explained where the deficiencies were uh sure he probably took a very still you know kind of uh stilted kind of look at it to see you know what kind of what kind of uh deficiencies his own product had in minimizing that but still i
Carter
16:37
i can't emphasize enough zane i went and looked at the product like i'm not someone who has any
Zain
16:43
any need or to buy it you mean potentially i
Carter
16:46
i have not ever thought about buying a vr but you know Now I'm thinking I should buy a VR. And
Zain
16:53
And you should buy a meta one,
Zain
16:54
one, you think, over an Apple one, despite the fact you're in the ecosystem.
Carter
16:56
ecosystem. Well, I'm certainly not going to buy an Apple one because it's seven times more expensive, Zane.
Corey
17:00
Actually, this is a great point. In a funny way, what Apple has done by having this insanely expensive product has made meta's product look reasonably priced. Because I'll tell you, the conversation in tech circles a year ago was like, who's going to buy a $650 headset?
Corey
17:17
Right. You have to keep in mind, this was more expensive than previous headsets from Meta. And as they've been jamming more technology into it, the price has been going up. And of course, there was like the Oculus, you'll recall, right? That was kind of one of the more proto ones. That was about a thousand bucks. And people were like, insane, really expensive. But now they seem almost reasonably priced because there's this anchor out there, which is Apple's VR headset. So now you're like, oh, I don't want to buy the expensive one. I'll buy that. But then you're still talking about spending like $650 on this fucking thing, right? Yeah. That's a lot
Carter
17:51
lot of money. $650 instead of three grand.
Corey
17:55
all of a sudden I'm interested. It's entirely changed the frame.
Carter
18:00
Really interesting use of the anchoring effect. Really. Yeah.
Zain
18:04
Corey, I don't have the follow-up question for you. You've answered it in the heart of this question. I'm going to move it on to our next one. Stephen Carter. Let me start with you on this one, Carter. Okay. We have a rebrand, and I want to see if you love this rebrand or if it bugs you, because Carter, it is a rebrand of something that will never not be called the carbon tax rebate, because the
Zain
18:29
the climate action incentive payment has now been rebranded as the Canada carbon rebate. This is, of course, a rebrand by the liberal government, federally. A news article came out earlier this week saying, yep, that is indeed it. We are rebranding it. In some ways, they've kind of, like, accepted that kind of carbon is part of it, that, you know, they've tried to move away from that language for a long time. We've had things like revenue neutral show up. But, okay, it was called the Climate Action Incentive Payment. Did anyone ever know that? it's now called no i just wrote it down
Corey
19:07
down yeah as you were talking because i thought it might come up again
Zain
19:09
again it's now called the canada carbon rebate so they're making official what was already official in our minds carter do you love it or does it actually bug you well
Carter
19:18
well i'm bugged that it took this long i'm bugged that they thought that that the the first name which is so forgettable i forgot it again and i was like oh don't forget it and then i fucking forgot it because it's bullshit like call here's a here's a thing if you're going to name something name it what people are going to call it right like a headset for example is a headset it's not going to be called something other than a headset so call it a headset the same thing with this carbon refund it is a carbon tax refund if it were me i would call it the carbon tax refund but you can't because because it's not actually a tax blah blah blah but this is people cannot
Carter
20:01
cannot associate have not associated this refund with their um carbon tax payments and they think that they're getting hosed so you know you should never have called it something that people didn't recognize we were we talked about it in the past people would get this this rebate and not know what the fuck it was for thanks government i've got the money now i don't care what it was for You do care what it was for because you want to be able to show Canadians that you're putting money back in their pocket and it's more than the actual cost of the carbon tax in most cases. Corey,
Zain
20:37
Corey, in some ways, it's like an admission. In other ways, it's trying to save the tax. It's both got no teeth, but also a lot of pressure. I don't understand in some ways if this is ultimately the solution because this is not just about rebranding something that people call something else. This is about trying to, in the broadest sense, or the bigger sense, to be more accurate, trying to potentially save a signature policy, maybe. So, Corey, is it a love or is it a bug that the Climate Action Incentive is now the Canada Carbon Rebate?
Corey
21:11
I guess it's a bug. Listen, let me just say this. I think it's very workmanlike communications, and I mean that in a very positive sense. I want to get back to why I think it's workmanlike. but also you can't get past the point that steven said which is like where where was this years ago right like if you hand something in a week late it better be good you hand something in four years late you it better be fucking awesome right and so the expectations for this name were pretty high like we all knew there was going to be a rebrand and i think that some
Corey
21:42
some people and maybe even i'll include myself we're sitting around waiting to be like well i can't wait to see what they come up with it's gonna have to be pretty fucking impressive it's gonna have to be pretty fucking clever it's
Corey
21:53
right listen it hits all the boxes the last one right the climate action incentive payment a name i only remember because i wrote it down on my notepad and i would have a zero percent chance of remembering it despite us saying it multiple times at this point people
Corey
22:08
people got and it showed up in their bank accounts in a lot of different ways and they said i don't know what the fuck this is so you need the word carbon carbon being in there hits where colloquially it's discussed right yeah you need the word canada you can't just say carbon rebate because you need to know the money is coming from the federal government so you have the word canada in there well isn't that wonderful and you have rebate and there's only so many words you can pick here in terms you know if you don't want to say canada
Corey
22:33
canada carbon money or free money or something which would just sound weird and phony and stuff so they picked a word that works rebate now i could quibble with it i could be a pedant about it and say like are we getting carbon back you know we gave too much carbon and now we get some carbon back but i think the reality is colloquially it makes sense people will get it it's just it's so much clearer now oh this is the carbon money oh i got my carbon money now i can go spend my carbon money and by the way it's becoming a lot of money i was thinking about this the other day in the context of like
Corey
23:06
like these quarterly payments are hundreds of dollars at this point you know and so uh
Corey
23:11
uh it's it starts to feel a lot more real and it's a lot more substantive and and now you got a name that works it's not amazing i don't know what amazing looks like it's
Corey
23:21
it's just fine and it's a good foundation but you don't like it's four fucking years okay it's too late like people have set their minds on these things and that's i think that's ultimately why it bugs me like you couldn't have come up with canada carbon rebate four years ago like you didn't have the brilliant minds in the room to do that four fucking years ago i think what's what's
Zain
23:41
what's also interesting i'm gonna add a piece to this carter and i'll let you react to it was that like one of the elements here is
Zain
23:50
80 of people get this through direct deposit and
Zain
23:52
and the name on their direct deposit was nondescript like canada fed or dn canada or depending on your bank or etf deposit from Canada and like have we talked about that because I know
Corey
24:07
a lot about this particular and
Zain
24:08
and for sure and I I'm happy to talk about it I guess the point I'm trying to make is on the broader broader branding this government was giving away billions of dollars without actually having any ability to take credit for this so this pithy name hopefully makes more sense and allows people to understand fundamentally that there's money coming back because Carter as we know if you're getting of money from canada fed right you're just like well fuck i don't know what this is about you know and most people be like i'm not getting a fucking rebate like what the fuck are you guys talking about stop lying through
Carter
24:40
through my bullshit i got nothing yeah
Zain
24:42
yeah yeah yeah but carter your your reaction to this uh for to what cory's kind of put put on the table here and cory i want to go back to i'll go back to this the the direct banking as well as the workmanlike comms here well
Carter
24:55
well i was just thinking you know we we named the family care clinics and we were looking four months for a better name uh than family care clinics. And we couldn't come up with anything, because we went through the name and said, okay, what's it about? It's about family. What are we giving? Care. Where is it going to be? It's going to be at the clinic, right? If you compare that to a primary care network, what the fuck is a primary care network? People barely know what primary care is, but they know what family care is. They know where a clinic is. They know what, you know, what's a network. but so telling people exactly what something is is probably your best bet in political communications and you're almost never going to get it when you're dealing with uh bureaucracy they're going to try and find an acronym right
Carter
25:40
right cory yeah you've been there i
Corey
25:41
i i for sure have and so what happens if i can i just say because in some ways what i think is more interesting than the new name is how the world they come up with the old name yeah
Corey
25:52
like they were were sitting in a room they're like yeah okay well so
Corey
25:55
so we want them to take climate action and it's an incentive for it but it's a pain like all of it's insane right like i can only imagine the conversation that led them to that particular moment and of course what happens is people jam words into these things to try to say as much as possible about it because
Corey
26:12
because one word doesn't quite do it it only gets you 80 percent of there you want to get 100 of the way there but you know what happens when you add that extra word to get 100 of the way there all
Corey
26:20
all of a sudden it's a phrase that nobody can remember or it becomes an acronym which means literally nothing and you've lost all branding communication so there is really something to what steven said i i really think it's worth underlining if you can get to what people are going to call it anyways or if you can get like five different names that people can that you could imagine people using that's probably where you should start your list and you know maybe you want to tweak it by 10 degrees one way or the the other. But you don't just create something whole cloth that no normal non-AI Zuckerberg would ever use in a conversation. So
Zain
26:56
have a question for both of you. Carter, I'll start with you here. Based on this sort of like really silly, very long bureaucratic name that it had, are
Zain
27:05
are you more or less impressed with Pierre Polyev's axe to tax, which is kind of cool in two ways as a three as a three sort of word phrase like not just from the language of it three letters three letters three letter or three you know a sort of thing but also we know exactly which tax words he's talking about and
Corey
27:25
and it's also not actually
Zain
27:27
actually a tax like so so based on like how the liberals initially put this out and how it was delivered and the fact that we were all getting money in our bank accounts are you more or less impressed with the with the carve and the the strategy that that polyev put on the table in terms of his sloganeering um and this just kind of comes up as like a natural response to to what i think is the bigger point as i mentioned which is this is this tax on its deathbed sort of thing i
Carter
27:55
mean you can rhyme any two words if you're prepared to not tell the truth about something and
Carter
28:00
and that's always been my problem with pierre
Corey
28:01
pierre technically not well
Corey
28:03
well that's not how it works well
Carter
28:05
well nobody no okay
Zain
28:07
okay give us a word like You can rhyme any
Corey
28:09
No, you rhyme. This is
Zain
28:11
is like Eminem on that. You can find any two
Zain
28:12
rhyming words. Have you seen Eminem on the 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper? You guys.
Carter
28:18
You can rhyme any two words. And so people will get all excited about it. And they'll say, oh, yeah, axe attacks. And it's just so memorable. It's really good. But it's only one side of an equation, right? Right. The
Carter
28:35
The liberals have done such a shitty job defining what the other side of the equation is. He get Pierre Polyev gets away with it. But, you
Carter
28:43
you know, he's ultimately not telling the truth about the overall product. Now, the liberals have allowed that to happen. Maybe this name change takes it one degree closer to actually being understandable by Canadians. but right now um
Carter
28:59
axe attacks is a great communications vehicle because it gets people excited gets people moving in a direction even if it's the wrong direction and
Zain
29:10
and cory there's a great video of uh anderson cooper interviewing eminem where he talks about how he can make anything rhyme with not anything rhymes man
Corey
29:17
man yeah man slant right
Zain
29:18
right yeah orange door hinge you can do you can can do it all man that's what it's the name of our episode orange door hinge carter uh
Corey
29:25
uh oh that's good it's
Zain
29:27
good it's an episode not about the ndv called orange doorage um yeah hey hey carter even better react to this and talk to me about the workman comms that you wanted to i
Zain
29:38
i didn't forget yeah i think that
Zain
29:40
that um and pierre poliev sort of the poliev thing that's what i want you to react yeah yeah
Corey
29:44
yeah he understands the simplicity is an important core to communications and what people actually call things matters like i'll tell you this if you said oh i got a real problem with that tax the government brought in nobody would be like what tax what are you talking which is really
Corey
30:03
i think also this is one of the funny things like this is something i remember even from my time in government right because we had a carbon levy and it was a carbon levy or it was a carbon price but it was never a carbon tax and nobody wanted to say tax but but everybody called it the tax. And so you feel like you're communicating with one hand behind your back because you're talking about like the carbon levy and people, a certain percent of people, a significant percent are like, what?
Corey
30:27
And then you have to be the tax. And they're like, oh, the tax, you know? And like, that's not helpful to government communications. And so would you have advised
Zain
30:33
advised government to be like,
Zain
30:34
like, can we just fucking own this thing? So then we can give them a tax rebate. We can give them a tax holiday. I mean, I believe I did.
Corey
30:41
But like, you know, it just, it was like not technically a tax. so people didn't want to go there, right? And no, that makes it sound like the money's not coming back to you. But
Corey
30:49
But you know, that is kind of a, that's a reality. And it's a little bit complicated for people. And again, you're communicating with one hand tied behind your back. So you get back to the workman-like communications of it here. This is not complicated.
Corey
31:02
But I do think that one of the things, this is true of so much about brand, right? I can't tell you the number of times I've had conversations with people about brands, either brands I've created or brands other people have created that people stand up as really impressive brands, you know, positioning statements, all of this, where some voice will say something to the effect of, oh, that's kind of obvious, isn't it?
Corey
31:22
And you go, good,
Corey
31:24
good, right? Like that, the amount of work that goes into making communications feel obvious, I cannot overstate. Because if you don't do that work, and you don't think about it, and if it doesn't naturally flow, and if it doesn't naturally roll off the tongue, and it doesn't seem like something something you can immediately remember with some sort of mnemonic power, then
Corey
31:42
then you end up with climate action incentive payment. Again, a thing I only remember because I fucking wrote down. And in fact, I had to increase the size of the font so that I could read it in a comprehensible way because the words just stilt when I look at them, right? And so a certain obviousness is actually super powerful in communications. And I think too many people look for clever or amazing or unique you know
Corey
32:09
know what i hear when i hear clever and amazing and unique i hear no one's gonna or or
Zain
32:13
or limited audience for you've already sliced the audience down even further because they have to be on the inside of something or have some contextual knowledge or or have a a base of knowledge that that that not many will have or a significant fewer amount will have
Corey
32:28
and this will not solve all of their problems right there's still the reality that only one person in the household household gets the money they you know in my household it's me i don't you know my wife doesn't see that money sorry laurie i've spent it all at the track every three months for
Corey
32:42
in so much trouble
Carter
32:43
trouble right now no
Zain
32:43
no who are you betting on and then uh i
Corey
32:47
i i like to bet on the smallest pony because i think they got the most spirit
Corey
32:52
that's my that's my way to
Corey
32:53
you up or down time absolutely yeah oh
Corey
32:56
oh i've lost it okay that's good every time never one yeah it's
Carter
32:59
it's okay we send her we send her your strategist money so it works out
Zain
33:04
well after we send it through the domain company yeah anyways it's a long story
Corey
33:07
story the domain company gets a lot frankly you know the domain company gets a lot.com is where you can find out more about
Zain
33:14
about that we should that's actually where our full list of domains will be cory the domain company active list of domains which is you know what i looked at it today we have 48
Zain
33:22
48 active here's what we should do the domain company what's what's our domain called domain company gets all the money dot com the domain company gets a lot the domain company gets a lot dot com here's what we do we go to that you go to that website where you're gonna have to build this tonight um and we
Zain
33:36
we list all our domains except here's the thing cory they're all linkable so when people click on them they land on our domain but they're not just going to land on another hover site no we're going to actually have programmatic advertising for
Zain
33:46
for the podcast oh my god so we're actually going to make back the
Corey
33:50
it'll be a long night for me yeah this is is going
Zain
33:52
going to be tough. You can figure it out, okay? Just use Zuckerberg AI and you'll figure it out. The domains can pay for themselves, Carter. We could be revenue neutral on the domain. We
Zain
34:01
We could actually have the domain levy. It's almost a levy on us. We can have the money back, Corey. It is. It's not really a
Corey
34:06
a tax. It's more of a levy, I think. We should start referring to the $6 Patreon fund as the domain levy, I think. That's
Corey
34:12
That's probably the right... Let's
Zain
34:13
relabel it. Corey, add that to your tax list today. Zane's advisors are gone. It's now domain levy and then the other categories.
Corey
34:22
won't solve all of their problems um a
Corey
34:26
lot of people won't get it because it goes to one person in the family a lot of people it the money will just drop in their account and they won't see it and they won't remember it right i'll tell you there's there's an interesting phenomenon where people aren't always on top of their money even to the degree you think they should be and so
Corey
34:43
that is a reality of it too and then i think it's it's also just the case that until they actually fix that separate problem you guys were talking about can fed you know yeah federal government canada revenue agency
Corey
34:56
agency etf we have
Corey
34:58
ccra whatever it is right or cra now um geez how long ago was it the ccra a long time ago yeah
Corey
35:08
that it's still gonna have that problem with it showing up and hitting your kind of account differently although interestingly enough when i was tweeting about this, was it today or yesterday? Chrystia Freeland quote tweeted me and said they were working on it with the banks. So I imagine they're going to try to do it. But I will tell you a bit of a story from my time here in Alberta.
Corey
35:27
This was a problem in Alberta. It drove me up
Corey
35:30
up the wall, right?
Corey
35:31
right? The same problem because the money hits accounts, but it was even worse because it would be ETF, Canada Revenue Agency. You wouldn't know it was even from the government of Alberta. You or or rebate or whatever and
Corey
35:45
and there it seemed unsolvable like the banks were like uh well first of all our finance department was like ah the banks can't do it second of all the banks were like ah it's really complicated because money comes from cra just as cra money we don't know why the cra is sending the money in this way right so you're just gonna have to sort of accept it shows up that way the money comes in and it just gives a generic canada revenue thing that sort of accounts for it that's how rebates come that's how it always is we're not going to change it for you alberta i remember having a conversation at one point quite animated with somebody being like do i need to get on a fucking plane to toronto and just start going to banks and having meetings with people like this is fucking unreal i cannot understand this and sorry it never happened and never got resolved you
Zain
36:29
you were putting your comms head on just from a pure branding and comms perspective to be like we need to take ownership of this this is like money that yes of course Of course. Yeah, listen,
Corey
36:39
listen, I ran communications for the government of Alberta. I believe very strongly in a mantra about public communications, right? Which is that the people have a right to know and the government has a duty to inform. And underlining that mantra is the things government does need to be clear and understandable to people. And if you have money just kind of floating in and you think it's from the federal government, billions of dollars here kind of just being allocated through. That's really bad. That damages public policy, as we saw, because nobody could fucking understand what the hell this money was that was coming in. Nobody really appreciated it. I mean, it's so funny, but in a way, the carbon tax may die in Canada because the big five banks couldn't be fucked. Isn't that a funny thing to think about? Right,
Corey
37:24
Right, with their labeling, which is
Zain
37:25
is simply with their
Corey
37:27
absolutely. Like, if this had been resolved in Alberta in 2016, if this had been resolved Canada-wide in 2019, right, maybe we wouldn't have the same problem. Like, we're talking about what they're going to brand it until this other bank problem is resolved. It sounds like they're working on it. Yeah, that's kind of the point. It's not resolved. It's still going to show up as can-fed for a lot of people. So that's really interesting.
Zain
37:51
like that rant, Cory. Carter, I'm going to move it on to our next one. But you know what? This wasn't on my list, but this episode is almost starting to become about, like,
Zain
37:59
branding and comms. So can I ask you this one, Carter? Sure. I said our sponsor is Arrive Can. Let me go there again. The current version of the scandal, it's not Arrive Can Gate. It's Arrive Con, Carter. Do you like it? It's a bad name. Love or bug in terms of this sort of slim moniker that I guess the conservatives are propping and owning. And, Corey, if ArriveCon.ca is not taking it, it certainly should be at this moment. Carter, love or bug on ArriveCon? Bug.
Carter
38:37
Bug. Oh, it's the bug. I'm curious to hear your take. Because I have to think too much about it, right? I have to think too much about what is it that it actually is. well i have to think about it now for a minute or two um the problem i don't like the gate suffix right but the gate suffix automatically tells you it's a scandal oh my god it's a scandal it's a gate so you know whether you love it or loathe it you know how to process the the suffix gate um arrive con i mean what is this con air all of a sudden it's just it's very difficult to process says you don't have that yeah
Carter
39:15
the convention as bad as as you know the gate is that convention actually works arrive
Zain
39:23
arrive con is actually a convention of uh of the the major canadian airlines of course flare airlines uh never invited uh because their lack of arriving on time cory um arrive con love
Corey
39:40
yeah it bugs me i it bugs you i think it's yeah it does bug me because like um
Corey
39:46
just i can immediately i think it should be app scam right it's like old enough to remember okay yeah app scam you remember app scam no no i don't yeah carter's like no you don't what's
Carter
39:57
no that's good like
Zain
39:58
like are you saying app scam yeah
Zain
40:01
yeah yeah yeah what was was this referring to and why do you want to bring it back it's
Carter
40:05
it's it's a play on ad scam back in the uh paul martin trying to cover it up days wasn't it well
Corey
40:11
well so ad scam was a play on ab scam ab scam
Corey
40:15
which was from the 70s right oh my
Corey
40:18
yeah so like rich
Carter
40:19
rich okay i don't remember things from the 70s i will concede you
Corey
40:23
you were doing a lot of drugs back then i understand i
Carter
40:25
i was was hammered all the time it was a rough rough period no
Corey
40:30
no no no listen um i don't like arrive con because
Corey
40:34
because it ends with con and you're the conservatives and it just seems weird to me but maybe that's being overly reductive that's
Zain
40:41
interesting i never even
Carter
40:42
even know i don't think so
Carter
40:43
that's i think that's i thought
Zain
40:44
thought both of you guys were
Zain
40:45
were going to go into love that that it's a very really i
Carter
40:51
drum how could you be so wrong wrong
Carter
40:53
this is why we had this is why we had to go to annalise right there i
Corey
40:56
i mean yeah i mean i'm what do you think she's you've got kids grown up yet do you think she's available wonder yeah yeah maybe i
Carter
41:02
i mean she's probably looking for a way to get out of the house but she'd probably bring her fucking kid into the fucking studio you know
Carter
41:07
know we'd have to put up with that so maybe that's a yeah it's
Zain
41:11
it's true into the studio callback
Carter
41:15
that's a real callback is that a city hall second episode with her like
Zain
41:18
like a city hall thing yeah that's a reference
Zain
41:21
reference to uh You've
Carter
41:22
You've really got to start listening to the other podcasts. I don't
Zain
41:25
don't listen to any podcasts. You really do. I have nothing. Look, it's a deep
Corey
41:31
Even if he'd listened to it.
Zain
41:31
it. Okay, I thought you were both going to love it. You both hate it. I'm going to move on. Corey, I'm going to start with you. The APP, the government of Alberta, says it won't be releasing the results of a survey as to whether the province should establish the APP. A freedom of information request was effectively denied by the government, says it was recently told by this post media it wouldn't be getting the requested information because a section of the FOIP Act which allows for exemptions or exclusions based on advice proposed recommendations analysis or policy options would be triggered. Corey, do
Zain
42:02
do you love this? Does this bug you from a strategist perspective? It
Corey
42:05
It more than bugs me. It's just it's wrong. Okay, so my
Corey
42:10
context is this. I ran communications for the government. I was you know essentially the head of the public body in a day-to-day sense. Technically it's the the minister, but my job was to sign off on all of these FOIP requests. I had to manage a fair number of them in my role.
Corey
42:24
And that's not what the section allows. So the section involves, it's called section 24, and it's kind of notorious in government. It's advice to officials. So effectively, the purpose of this section is if you solicit advice from somebody, that advice cannot be released. And
Corey
42:40
And the intention is you do not want to create a situation where people are thinking of their advice as a communications tool they're not actually saying what they think because they know it might be released they don't want to embarrass the government and they want to make sure that that advice is is robust and it's willing to say the things that the government doesn't want to
Corey
43:01
and so you'll often hear the phrase fearless advice faithful execution that's the role of the public service right and so you write a lot of memos especially when you're more senior levels telling people things they don't want to hear telling people things that if they they got into the public, if the government decided to do otherwise, would embarrass them. And so you don't want that. You don't want that. I guarantee you, Albertans, you do not want that as citizens. You want your public servants to be able to give advice to elected officials that allows them to make decisions without fear of embarrassment. Okay?
Corey
43:32
But section 24, advice to officials, has a whole list of things that are not considered advice to officials, which is called Section 24-2.
Corey
43:42
And I'll tell you something, there is no way to read Sections 24-1 and 24-2. And also the Privacy Commissioner has ruled on a lot of these things and clarified them over the years. Section 24-2 specifically says, surveys
Corey
43:56
surveys are not considered advice to officials, right? It says statistical surveys are not advice to officials. The OIPC, which is the Privacy Commissioner, has clarified over the years. There was a really clear clarification of it in 2008. somebody sent me on twitter that effectively says this is not that it is not advice to officials when we talk about like if you sent a survey to four people in your department saying we want to hear what you say that would be considered for protected but you just opening the floodgates for everybody that's not everybody in alberta giving advice to officials that's statistical data you fucking release it that's the responsibility and by the way i would bet a lot lot of money that at the end of this process the privacy commissioner is going to say you have to release this but the system is so slow the government is just playing with it you
Zain
44:44
you think that's happening here the government knows i know that's what's
Corey
44:47
what's happening here listen again
Corey
44:51
ran surveys for the government of alberta when somebody foiped a survey we would say well it's statistical data here you go and the only time that there would be kind of an exception to that is if there was like a big open text field where we thought that um it
Corey
45:05
it might reveal personal information like p personally identifiable information pii we call it right in which case we would have to redact those things so in that situation we would say well we got to go through them all that's going to be a little expensive here's what it would cost right it's not a choice you have to release statistical data and for the government to suggest it is a choice and to do this is like i can't even say it's a bad interpretation there is no way they don't fucking know this okay it's like clear as day it's black and white it's in the act if you wanted to squint and pretend you didn't understand what statistical data was or like oh is it really statistical if it's open-ended by the way this survey wasn't all open-ended data a lot of it was you know like select on like a slider scale even
Corey
45:50
even if you wanted to make that argument the oipc's made it pretty clear that's not the case and that these open text boxes are fair game so like there
Corey
45:58
are professionals at the government there is a foip office there are people across all of the departments who have understanding of these things this
Corey
46:07
this is not a real thing you get to do as the government this is bullshit this is them just grinding out the process so that they don't have to deal with it for a year and they're hoping that the issue is resolved one way or the other and they're not quote-unquote embarrassed here. But I want to say, Zane, my
Corey
46:23
the people have a right to know, the government has a duty to inform, is not just about making sure that bank statements show up properly. You don't get to hide this shit from the people of Alberta. This is our data. We paid for it. We should get to see it.
Zain
46:37
Carter, anything to add or can I move on? Because I feel like you're not going to top it, unless
Zain
46:42
unless you're going to... Here's
Carter
46:42
Here's all I'm going to say. We should do a segment one time on all the ways that I try and get around the FWAP Act and Corey tries to follow the FWAP Act. That should be an episode.
Zain
46:53
Well, we could do it here today. If you're in now, Carter, you want to do it? No,
Carter
46:57
No, not right now. We're not doing it here. I have to review the act again. I do have a... And I have to go through stuff. I
Zain
47:03
I do have a specific chief of staff, former chief of staff question for you, though. Okay, hit me. Has any of this kind of made its, or made it way through your desk in the in the way of um you know knowing the types of questions you would commission green light execute upon that you know that could be publicly released i'm kind of curious how you thought about this when you were in your in in government in that regard well there's
Carter
47:27
there's a guard rail before you even get there though some of the questions that you'd like to ask you're not allowed to ask because you'd be doing political work so you know when really you're you're you're primarily polling on things that are of the public interest and already you know you're you're you're
Carter
47:47
you're not going to get data that is so revolutionary like it's it you know the data that was released by lege uh what was it two three months ago isn't that different from the from the government's data that's the other thing that baffles me about this publicly available polls have told us exactly how unpopular the Alberta Pension Plan is.
Carter
48:10
Do you think the publicly available polls are going to differ radically from the government's own polls? That's just not how polling works. So the poll,
Carter
48:22
we weren't able to create questions that would enable us to do, you
Carter
48:26
you know, anything too particularly nefarious that I'd want to hide. And if I did want to hide it, I had a whole party apparatus. at us you know what the party could do the
Carter
48:36
the party could do polling and the polling that the party did could be political so we had we knew what the guy where the guardrails were and we also knew how to get around that particular guardrail um i mean the advice to officials guardrails used all the time uh the transitory nature of information is used all the time just to get around foips right Right. Well, that that email that you sent to me, that was just, you know, it was just us organizing ourselves. Delete, delete, delete.
Corey
49:09
Yeah. You can do that before the FOIP. I want to be clear. Like,
Corey
49:13
don't get to delete. You don't get to say, oh, it's transitory. Delete. But
Carter
49:15
But I know politicians who delete every
Carter
49:17
every email, every text, every Friday.
Carter
49:22
Gone from this. Hey, Carter,
Corey
49:23
Carter, I did that every Sunday night and it wasn't a nefarious thing. One of the problems with FOIP is when you get all of this data dump, it lacks all of the context, right? So you are not allowed to delete final decisions and permanent records, but kind of the back and forth and the musings and the conversations that are half conversations. Yeah.
Carter
49:45
it's the same reason- It's a bad act in many
Corey
49:47
many ways. Well, look, it's the same reason I just auto-delete my tweets after six months, although that broke because Elon Musk broke everything, is because these things lack context after a while. And so you just want to have tidy files where you've got the decisions, you've got the relevant inputs, but you're not, you're not dealing with, like, I can remember one FOIP that came out in my time, you know, near the end of my tenure where I had a staff person. So, like, I think it was the National Observer, might
Carter
50:16
might not have been the National Observer, might
Corey
50:18
might have been a different, you know, organization, but they were polling, or they foiped about, like, some decisions that were made in market access.
Corey
50:28
And this got released, and there was this assistant director who had made some speculative comments, and she was wrong, frankly, right?
Corey
50:35
She was wrong to do it, but she was also just wrong, like, it was not accurate. And so somebody asked, like, why are we doing this? And the assistant director said, oh, I think it's because of X. And then that became the story. Now, unfortunately, that assistant director reported to a director who reported to an executive director who reported to me.
Corey
50:51
And, you know, she was a little removed from the decision, and she didn't have a clue. And I actually quite resent how the outlet suggested
Corey
50:57
suggested that she did know, right? Because it just kind of took a more middle manager person and ran them into the mud. but you know
Corey
51:04
know this is the context i'm talking about that you lose and this is why you want to clean up your files it's not
Carter
51:10
not talking about cleaning up your files i'm talking about every single email every single communication yeah
Zain
51:16
yeah which is which is fundamentally which is fundamentally very different stephen carter you know what we will continue we'll continue this segment into the over under in our lightning round you know why because i want to i want to try to i want to try to get it all very neatly just started cory talked about neat files he talked about you know He talked about keeping things neat and orderly and tidy, and that's exactly what I'm doing on this show, Carter. Carter, I've got one over, under, or lightning round question, and it really kind of follows the same theme. Some might say that I'm actually just bastardizing the over, under, and lightning round and just trying to ham-fist it into whatever I need it to be. And the answer would be yes. Yes, I am, Carter. Yeah,
Carter
51:51
Yeah, we're aware of you. I
Carter
51:53
I want to know. Not our first rodeo. My final question is
Zain
51:58
not about a policy. It's not about a thing that happened. happened although it kind of is informed by a thing that happened it is about a person it is about a person in our politics and i want to get a sense on whether you love what they're up to or it bugs you now i feel like i know your natural response both of you to whether where you're going to go with this but i'm going to try to frame it in a way that tries to be a little more even even-handed carter stephen gilbo he
Zain
52:26
said a shit ton of things this week including the same minister who um to cory's point said people have a hard time remembering the climate incentive
Zain
52:34
incentive action payment program i think i got it right i'm pretty sure i didn't no
Zain
52:38
um yep okay close close i think i added another p he's the same minister this week stephen carter that said the feds will stop investing in large road projects which caused uproar across the country being like this fucking environmentalist doesn't want to invest in roads do
Zain
52:54
do you love this for the liberals because in some ways, they get to have a rogue environment minister that they've effectively, like Rife can, outsourced and let him be an activist, do his thing, push their agenda, which some of them probably believe in, but can cut him and say, you know what, he never really worked out? Or is this bugging you, like actually this bugs you that he is still around, still there, still holds this portfolio? I don't sense a lot of love for Stephen Gilboa, but I want to try to give this an even-handed take. So, Stephen Carter,
Zain
53:28
Gilboa, love it, or
Zain
53:29
or does it bug you?
Carter
53:31
It really bugs me. I've met Stephen Gilboa. I tried, Corey. I tried,
Zain
53:35
Corey. You tried. I tried so hard. You did your best. I tried so hard.
Carter
53:38
hard. He's a good man who has very steadfast beliefs about the environment. I can't fault him on that. I find myself moving more and more towards those same steadfast beliefs. You do, don't you? That's
Zain
53:51
That's where I kind of find myself.
Zain
53:52
That's kind of the spirit of my question in some ways, underneath it.
Carter
53:55
No, I'm moving that direction, but I would never, like, let's assume that he's right. They're not going to put any more money into road projects. Why wouldn't you just say our focus right now is on large scale transit projects? That doesn't mean we're not doing roads, but right now we're really pushing on transit projects. Transit projects are our focus. While you're going to build more roads right now, we're talking about transit projects. Did you hear me talk about transit projects? why would he bring up the negative why would he like what who trains these people does anyone train these people do we have any evidence that anybody has trained these people especially people like Stephen Goubeau this is not something that made sense on any level it destroyed stories and it took um it took the government off of its story of the day and that's just that's
Carter
54:47
that's the greatest sin that a minister can create and so no i'm i'm not i'm not all that big a fan of it cory
Zain
54:53
cory do you love it that they could outsource their their environmental activism to steven gilbo and then cut bait if they need to or does this bug you does
Zain
55:03
does he bug you i
Corey
55:05
bugs me because it does seem a bit like the most wishful of thinking that you can disassociate yourself from your minister i mean that's what it comes down to
Corey
55:15
right so you don't really get down so Actually, if he were just a backbench MP, I'd be like, well, maybe there's a place for that, and you get a bit of an outlet for it. But not a minister, right? And Carter's right. We talk a lot in communications and issues management about leading
Corey
55:32
leading with your chin, right? Where you put the weakest part or the defensive parts of your argument first, and you're basically just asking for trouble. And this is a great example of that. Why would would you talk about the things you won't get what is the upside for that and i actually kind of don't mean that rhetorically i think we should ask ourselves did they think there was an upside to that did they think they were mobilizing because i'll tell you something the idea that we're not gonna have
Corey
55:57
have or use roads and i know he didn't say that no
Corey
56:00
okay he did not
Corey
56:01
but the but the suggestion that roads are going to be infrastructure that that disappears and we're going to move to it that's not that's not any shade of mainstream right and in fact you can can have roads and
Corey
56:14
and decarbonize the economy yeah
Carter
56:17
carter and i are
Corey
56:18
are in the process we
Corey
56:19
do that right we have evs right oh you guys have evs yeah
Corey
56:23
you should get we've ever mentioned it on the show before but yeah
Zain
56:26
it's a big deal sorry i forgot that in keeping track of proud
Zain
56:30
i mean there's so much leaves my hand as i try to remember the climate incentive action program payment can i get it no
Zain
56:39
that's fine and you don't you don't need to because nobody cares that's called the canada rebate tax yeah
Corey
56:45
yeah yeah it's the canada rebate tax the the thing is
Corey
56:51
it's just it's not very mainstream what it implies is not very mainstream it's the kind of thing that you're just begging to be cut by the conservatives and used in a campaign video well
Corey
57:02
these guys are so out of control they don't think we should have roads you know and that's um not helpful to the liberals.
Carter
57:10
liberals. He shouldn't be in cabinet if he's going to be that irresponsible and reckless. Why
Zain
57:14
Why don't you think they just cut him at this point, Carter?
Zain
57:16
Carter? We've never actually dealt with this question head on. Give
Zain
57:20
me your final thoughts here, and then we'll round it out. I actually
Zain
57:24
actually agree with you guys on this. I wanted to try to put this in the framing in the most charitable light. I actually like him a bit more than a lot of people. He is very strident, very very activist, comes from that. I don't think he's ever learned how to play nice in cabinet. None of what I'm saying is a secret to people who are kind of political followers. But why have they not just cut bait, Carter? There has to be a good reason.
Carter
57:49
They seem to have forgotten that there's two sides to every coin, right? And they only look at the one side. And that is that if we cut one of our cabinet ministers, we are in some fashion conceding failure, right? We are conceding the opposition's message. But they have forgotten gotten that the other side of that particular coin is you're showing leadership right
Carter
58:07
right you are saying that you know this government is justin trudeau's government justin trudeau is the one who's determining whether or not roads will be funded in the future the irony is what stephen gobo said has made funding roads more likely in the future right
Carter
58:22
right like fuck man you dumb ass that's
Carter
58:25
it's true it is true so if you're going to you know justin trudeau if when he's listening and i know that he is he should be saying do i want to be the leader or do i want to be the follower and if he wants to be the leader then he needs to cut this minister and i don't say that with any any joy i quite like stephen gubo i think that he's his heart is in the right place but you don't necessarily put someone who understands the issue every
Carter
58:51
every every which way into the portfolio you put them into fucking innovation or something like that yeah that's That's what you're supposed to do with them.
Zain
58:59
them. Corey, talk to me about the same question. Yeah, we've talked about this. Why they're not getting rid of them.
Corey
59:05
Well, so what Carter has described there in terms of don't put an activist in the portfolio that they're an activist in is, I think, good foundational advice. One of the things about our system is our minister doesn't run the
Corey
59:20
the department. Our minister is like the chairperson of the department, right?
Carter
59:23
right? And there's a
Corey
59:23
a CEO of the department. That's the deputy minister that reports to them. and you coordinate activity and it's a bit of a different relationship and there is really a giant risk in knowing too much or thinking you know too much about a particular file like you you almost want that chairperson to be like okay what do i not know explain this to me i need to decide these matters it's not a perfect metaphor because of course the decider but you know it's it's a little bit different than uh than you know having a deep knowledge can really lead you astray in government i guess is the point i'm trying to make why don't they cut him loose at this point because the signal you would be sending to environmentalists i have to imagine their calculation is they're like oh my god we would have holy hell from environmentalists if we cut him you know he's the only environmentalist
Carter
1:00:11
environmentalist in their government is this is this the message i just i just i don't believe that's
Corey
1:00:15
that's true i don't believe that's true i
Corey
1:00:19
i think that they're still that's the calculation at least to a degree and
Corey
1:00:24
maybe they just don't want to you know and this is an interesting point too sometimes
Corey
1:00:30
sometimes the right there's
Corey
1:00:32
there's something i like to say to people especially like new managers right that which must be done eventually must be done immediately and this is advice i think that the federal government should take more often because they are so stubborn and so resistant to fail and even when they know where things are going they will drag it out rag the puck live that that false hope, be in total denial of it, and they just bleed along the way to the inevitable conclusion. And I think about the foreign interference inquiry as a really perfect example. This one is rapidly becoming one for me too. You have this slow moving crisis, and you're probably better off having a fast crisis that we've all forgotten about in six months because we have the brains of goldfish. And they just, they have to stop bleeding so on things like this. On this issue, if Justin Trudeau believes I really need him, he's really great for reasons we don't understand. Maybe he's the conciliary that makes, maybe he's the straw that stirs the drinks, eh? And he makes everything great in government. I don't think so. But if Justin Trudeau decides he's the guy and he needs him, that's fine. But the overall advice stands. If you only get to pick so many dumb things to keep doing, stop doing so many dumb things. things clean your government up.
Zain
1:01:48
Nicely done, Corey. Nicely done, Carter. We, of course, today discovered a lot on this episode, including the fact that door hinge and orange rhyme,
Zain
1:01:58
That's the biggest takeaway for everyone. That's a wrap on episode 1285 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belger. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we will see you next