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Episode 1289: Sell me this budget

2024-03-04

Zain. Stephen and Corey get together to talk about the Durham by-election, the Alberta Budget and how two out of three of them had brunch yesterday.

Corey Hogan and Stephen Carter talk about candidates bragging about almost joining other parties before discussing Alberta's Budget - the sneaky austerity, how it's framed and the downstream consequences. Are there any good reasons for candidates to talk publicly about almost joining other parties? Did Danielle Smith get away with framing austerity as investment? Or is this budget all about "two unrelated facts"? Zain Velji, as always, picks the questions and keeps everybody in line.

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Transcript

Zain 0:01
This is the Strategist episode 1289. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan. Oh, and of course, Stephen Carter. Guys, how's it going? Well,
Carter 0:12
it's going great, Zain. I mean, we
Carter 0:15
we started to do another recording. My phone rang because apparently I'm very popular at 836 on a Sunday night, and Corey gave me shit.
Carter 0:23
Corey pretended like this is the first time it's happened, and he gave me shit. This is the 28th time it's happened, and I know
Corey 0:33
many times of those 27 before did I give you shit? Every
Carter 0:39
single time. And I feel belittled if
Zain 0:42
Corey's not who you think he is.
Zain 0:44
I'll just, yeah, he's
Zain 0:48
think he is, he's not. Speaking of things, and this is actually a great segue. segue. As you know, the Strategist Media Corporation, Corey, we are registered here in Alberta. I do.
Zain 0:58
If I'm not mistaken.
Corey 0:59
mistaken. Okay, that's good.
Corey 1:01
corporation incorporated under the laws
Corey 1:03
Alberta. That's correct. And I
Zain 1:04
know that our province, we'll talk about our most recent budget, likes to borrow some policies from the United States. So I just need to clarify in advance, episode 1289, let's mark a reference point. We are not a podcast. We are a bakery. bakery.
Zain 1:18
Okay, that is a deep
Corey 1:25
it's going to be zero people if they're listening to it a week later, but yeah, I'm down for that. Carter, did you like that joke?
Zain 1:32
Did you get that joke?
Carter 1:33
Didn't get the joke,
Carter 1:34
but this is not unusual for me. I just kind of go for it.
Zain 1:39
you know, you just need to hang back. Well, maybe I'll take you out to a Panera Bread one day and we'll we'll talk about it a bit more it's good I don't even know we're gonna explain why would we explain it to people why would we explain it our knowledge
Zain 1:50
knowledge base is greater than theirs they already know that and then we could just move on that's why I'm listening if
Zain 1:57
them be as smart
Zain 1:58
as we let them be as smart as they record their own podcast okay right yeah no we're not gonna we're not gonna let them do that
Corey 2:04
that it's good for Carter
Zain 2:04
Carter anything else to report before we move it on to our first segment ski
Carter 2:08
ski day today excellent yeah
Carter 2:11
almost got frostbite but i didn't but if my cheeks seem a little rosy uh for the for the viewers uh
Carter 2:19
uh if my cheeks seem a little rosy for the viewers then uh that's why because of the scheme yeah
Zain 2:25
yeah normally he looks as pale as it goes but he has he has dressed it up for for the viewers as he says for a collar yeah nice nicely done carter um cory anything to report before we move it on to our first segment
Corey 2:39
did not go skiing
Zain 2:40
the right thing to do that
Carter 2:42
i've offered to take cory skiing
Carter 2:45
he did offer has yet to be accepted weird
Zain 2:48
that yeah yeah straight okay great excellent thank you for for for really juicing the podcast with an extra minute of bullshit we're gonna move it on to our first segment carter our first segment why the fuck do we still do this this is the catch-all segment steven carter cory hogan that i put in stories of the day that are not Not necessarily stories of the day, but I ask you guys, the wizards, the sages of political strategy, ask you about a particular political policy point, a political practice that has become conventional wisdom, something that we see every now and then, but we just don't spend enough time on to maybe dissect whether it is a good idea or not, whether it is something that we value or we don't. It just so happens that it happens. Carter, I've got another example to bring us to today. We have a by-election happening tomorrow in Durham. That's not the focus of this. The conservatives are more than likely going to win. Jamil Javani, the Tory candidate, is more than likely going to be the next MP from Durham. It's been a seat held by the conservatives for a very long time. time. What interests me, Carter, is the liberal candidate. You guys don't need to know anything about him, other than the fact that his name is Robert Rugg. He's
Zain 3:59
And Carter, he flirted before becoming the liberal candidate, he flirted with seeking the conservative nomination in the riding. And
Zain 4:09
And my question to you guys is, we've seen this a few times, that there's a candidate that one party picks up and it comes out, or they voluntarily voluntarily disclose it. Like, I was thinking about the other party, just so you know, right? I was thinking about the other side was
Zain 4:26
fuck do we still do this, is my question. Is this helpful to anybody? Is this helpful to the candidate? Because you could think of this in a couple of ways. One way is that, oh, I was wanted by a lot of parties, but with our sort of greater sort of delta between our political parties these days, is it even useful to kind of say that I was being courted by multiple sides? Carter, Carter, why the fuck do we still do this is my question. This could be a short and or a very long segment. I'll leave that up to the two of you.
Carter 4:54
Oh, it's because there's an infinite amount of stupidity in politics. I
Carter 4:59
mean, could you imagine, you know, like you're going to the altar, right? You're about to get married and you say at the altar, oh, I could have married any number of women, but I chose you.
Zain 5:13
some level that's better. To be clear, you guys were at my wedding and I did. You did do that. I did say to my first wife what
Zain 5:19
what I did, which
Zain 5:21
which was actually correct. I still got in shit for it, but it was correct. Carter, keep going with your point.
Carter 5:27
Yeah, no, I'm just, that was it. That was the whole point. That was the whole
Carter 5:30
all there is left. So to be clear,
Zain 5:31
you feel like either a campaign or a party or a candidate disclosing and perhaps celebrating the fact that they were wanted by others, it doesn't help strategically. Or
Carter 5:41
Or is it situationally?
Zain 5:43
Is it situationally help? No.
Carter 5:46
no, because it basically says I am a political whore. I will go wherever someone wants me and I will go to the highest bidder. It's exactly how we got Corey on the podcast.
Zain 5:57
Corey, no, it's true. I was going to be on the Hurley. I can be on the Hurley Burley. You just you just fucking say it. And tomorrow's episode, I'm there. I'm definitely not there. Corey, now, in this particular case, I want to give Robert Rock, you know, the full scope of his comments, right? Right. He said, listen, I wasn't comfortable with the conservatives. They were moving hard. Right. Et cetera. Like most people would kind of see the writing on that wall when you would be considering the nomination for that party. But he said, you know, the liberals align to my values. But, Corey, same question to you. Why the fuck do we still do this? Is it actually a helpful political practice? Is it a strategic one? What do you think?
Corey 6:33
Can be. Can be. So, listen, there's I can think of three reasons right off the top of my head why you might do this. One of them we've already kind of talked about. But it's the ego getting in the way. They think they're such a big deal. They need you to know they're a big deal, that they had other options, right? So that's number one.
Corey 6:51
Number two, getting more into the forgivable and understandable space is to say, I'm a moderate, you know? I'm not one of those crazy liberals. I'm a liberal who could have been a conservative in
Corey 7:02
But, you know, I'm a moderate. And so you, the good voters of Durham, you can vote for me. I know you usually vote conservative. I have those conservative values, but I'm voting liberal because they're too crazy. So that's number two. And the third is actually a word that came out of your lips already, Zane. Disclosure. If he was actually talking to the conservatives at any point along the way, it's a ready-made attack for them to say, yeah, he's a political whore. He was just going to go run for us until we didn't want him, until we got Jamil Javani. So now he's going to run for the liberals. so he's defanged that by disclosing like one of the things that we always say in the green
Corey 7:39
green light process which is the process through which you validate candidates is you
Corey 7:43
know there's not a lot of automatic red lights in it there's not a lot of things where you're like well you can absolutely not run you
Corey 7:50
can run with a criminal record
Corey 7:52
you can run if you've had a bankruptcy you can run if there was some sort of like weird academic fraud at some point in your past as long long as it's part of your story, and it's been addressed, and it's been disclosed, right? And so if you are sitting there, and you're contemplating running for the liberals, and you fill out all of the paperwork, and you say, full disclosure, I was also talking to the conservatives at one point, it's not crazy to me that a campaign organizer of some sort would say, that's fine, but it needs to be disclosed, so that we can get out ahead of it. And you can use it as a bit of an attack on them, as he's done there. So those are the three reasons that I immediately... Because Corey's kind of a little bit more aligned
Zain 8:29
aligned to where I would be, which is situational. There could be some situational strategy where it kind of makes it useful, kind of where it makes it helpful. But you've disagreed on the situational argument. Yeah.
Zain 8:42
Do you want to respond to Corey on this?
Carter 8:45
The only one I can wrap my head around is the disclosure one, right?
Carter 8:48
right? If you feel like it's going to come out anyways, and you want to disclose it, I can, in fact, wrap my head around that. everything else that came out of cory's mouth was unmitigated bullshit um why
Zain 9:03
moderate one not you've
Carter 9:04
you've always been my favorite the moderate one why does that one why why because
Carter 9:08
because this is because they're extreme because
Carter 9:10
the conservatives are extreme and they can't we're we we always go with uh the team it's team playing now guys we don't get that we don't get to play with both teams we this is a one team one time type of situation and you don't get to go and just jump Jump around and be on whatever side you want to be on. This is a one-team, one-time type of situation. And you can't, in today's society, say, I almost played for the other team. Almost did. Almost did. Almost went to the Hurley Burley.
Zain 9:42
Carter, they wouldn't. Let's just be clear.
Corey 9:45
Carter, out of curiosity, how many political parties have you worked for in your life? Just all of them.
Zain 9:51
Yeah, it's either one of them or all of them.
Zain 9:54
It can't be. no no it can't be we can't i
Carter 9:56
i am but guys guys let's be clear political
Carter 9:59
political whore yeah you're
Zain 10:01
political yeah the charge the charge would be made and and fully accepted yeah
Corey 10:06
and accepted yeah carter would yes end that charge with
Zain 10:09
with his improv his improv skills you're welcome you know carter makes a good point um around the team sport element right like like the liberals are not going to win on monday like there's a very good chance that like they're not going to win on monday right But they're not going to win on Monday. So if you are not going to win, don't you just want a partisan? Don't you just want someone who kind of bleeds red in some ways rather than the guy that's like, yeah, I could have gone to the other side sort of thing. Fuck, I may go to the other side after the end of this thing. Fuck it, I'm here for 30 days, so who the hell knows? Now, of course, he hasn't said that, right? But I'm kind of extrapolating this case. Don't you want someone who's a team player, like who's kind of bled with the same colors as you you if you if you don't have a chance to necessarily kind of take this one i
Corey 10:56
mean i think if you do have a chance you want that like there there is a reality that politics is about in theory at least getting the things you want done done and so saying yeah we're going to throw a conservative up there i actually if i was a party member if i was a liberal in ontario i would feel more comfortable about throwing them out to lose than i would risking them becoming an mp and having any influence policy liberal strategy i actually think what
Corey 11:20
what carter said is is something that you have to take into account we live in very charged times and the idea that you are going to say you know what i could have been a conservative you
Corey 11:31
know i think that would have worked in the liberal party of the 90s i don't think it would work in the liberal party of the 20s that into
Zain 11:36
into the the current sort of political graph would that work from an ndp liberal story like if someone asked me if someone asked saint belgi to be like almost almost ran for the ndp federally uh but i I ran for the liberals instead. Is that work just because they're cousins and, frankly, in a formal relationship at this moment?
Corey 11:52
Well, when you say cousins, a lot of people's heads will explode. Oh,
Carter 11:59
They are. Talk about kissing cousins.
Zain 12:01
Trust me. They are in a formal relationship together, whether they want it or not.
Carter 12:07
They're in a formal relationship together, Zane. They're miles apart. They're
Zain 12:11
They're miles apart. Yes, sorry, sorry. Ideologically, yes, of course. No,
Carter 12:13
No, no, no. It's not about ideology. ideology it's about how much you like or dislike the other the ndp you you'll see far more orange blue switching then you'll see orange red because
Zain 12:22
because of because of how hardened some of those yeah positions are yeah
Corey 12:26
yeah well let's talk about the politics of small differences here too right like in many ways you will find that uh when there is less separating the position that's when it can get nastier and uglier and you will say over my dead fucking body it's actually part of why i would say some of the most vicious fights that i'd seen in politics before kind of this orange all bets are off time that we're in right now no red oh interesting you know in leadership right you got to keep in mind you know i was a liberal during some pretty charged and polarized times correctionites markets that kind of stuff and and so the
Corey 13:01
closer they are sometimes the worse it can be to put
Corey 13:04
put it the other way though i will say if we want to treat them as actually normal human beings and not political machines. There is something to, like, I'm looking at this party, I think I could run for them. No, I've decided not, I'm going to run for this one. And you will realize that it's often said, like, there's no zealot like a convert, right? Somebody who was there, and now, all of a sudden, they're on the other side, and they're letting it all hang out. Of course.
Zain 13:29
Carter, I conclude this segment generally by asking you, do we need more or less of this in politics the same. You're fine with it as being a current practice. Let's just park disclosure from a second and let's use a strategic lens. More or less the same. What is your take on this particular, I could have gone either way, other parties were courting me, FYI sort of thing, from a strategy perspective?
Carter 13:51
We need to have exactly zero of this. Carter
Zain 13:53
Carter is less. Corey, you were more situational in your analysis. Are you situational in your go forward in terms of more or less or the same from a strategic lens?
Corey 14:03
I think we need less because as much as we'd like to pretend it's about being strategic, I'm not convinced it's good strategy for all of the reasons we've talked about. I think that I can understand the strategic conversation that goes to show you're a moderate, use this as a proof point for it. But there's so much downside, right? There's so much doubt, like how demoralizing for the volunteers and how demoralizing for the party. I just don't see the, I don't see the upside overwhelming it. I don't think voters are like, oh, he was thinking about being a conservative. There's also
Zain 14:33
also this element to it that I find interesting where when
Zain 14:38
when you try to showcase that you're wanted, it almost tries to engineer an element of you being more than just a normal candidate. Is this person maybe a star some way? Why were two or three parties wanting them? And you've seen this happen in the past, right? Where certain candidates have kind of floated out, all three parties wanted me. and you fucking are lucky that I'm here sort of vibe and maybe they don't enter with that vibe per se but we've seen that in our orbits and they're trying to almost engineer they're not a star candidate from all of the and we've had a whole episode on what defines a star candidate so I won't bore people with that but they haven't engineered star candidates in any other way and they're trying to use this as kind of part of that
Corey 15:21
saw that in 2015 Laurie Blakeman who was the incumbent liberal MLA got herself nominated as a liberal as a green and as an alberta party i believe she ran under all three banners she lost she lost the
Corey 15:36
the ndp one yeah because
Corey 15:37
because at the end of the day just being a little bit focused counts for something too and there is something to be said for mission and campaigns that also depend on relatively few people and you need them to live and die for you and show up day in day out and work those phones and hit those doors and be the people who do all all of those random E-Day tasks. And that's a lot harder to do when it looks like you're not really a member of any team and you're some sort of political dilettante floating about. We're
Zain 16:02
We're going to leave that segment there, move it on to our next segment. Take that smoke and plug it into your charger. Carter, we
Zain 16:11
we have got so... I
Carter 16:13
I don't even know what that could be.
Zain 16:15
be. Oh, yeah. Well, listen, Carter, you'll pay more if you smoke, vape, or if you own an EV in Alberta, Carter. But that's just the tip. Yeah, that's just the headlines. Those are just the extractions. Carter, we have a new budget. It projects a $367 million surplus here in Alberta, I should say, but we'll also borrow cash to meet those obligations that they have outlined. line. The average Albertan likely doesn't have time to shift through the hundreds of pages of financial tables, but it includes the income tax delay, the election promise, the taxes that I mentioned on vaping, smoking, and electric vehicles, specifically a $200 tax to apply to electric vehicles to make up for the fact that they don't pay the fuel tax, and a new levy for land titles registration as well. But Corey, the headline is really the fact that there's a spending cut. When you look into the fact that Alberta will grow, population will grow, inflation adds current numbers when you take the government for their word, there's a spending cut. And the reason I know this is because of you. You've done a lot of tables. You've done a lot of math. You've kind of put this out on Twitter. So, Corey, maybe start us from where you want to start us in terms of your analysis of the budget. And then I want to get into a bit of strategy
Zain 17:27
strategy here here for for for the uh for the ucp yeah
Corey 17:32
yeah the budget has a name like a sensible budget for growing province or some nonsense like that um here's the here's the we should talk a bit about names for budgets at some point but here's the challenge it's it doesn't keep up with the growth or the inflation that we're seeing here and budgets ultimately just show you how many billions of dollars are being spent, or how many millions of dollars are being spent. And if a government doesn't want you to understand what that means, it's pretty easy for the government to hide what that means. But when you do that math, when you say, okay, well, what are we expected to grow by? And those numbers are in the budget. If we say, well, what do we expect inflation to be? And those numbers are in the budget, it starts to tell a story of an austerity that I don't think the government wanted us to be talking about, and certainly not one that they wanted to be be putting in the front window and so i'll give you kind of the top lines here in 2024 dollars like if you want to adjust things for inflation the government is spending per albertan you
Corey 18:32
know this year or this fiscal that just passed twelve thousand three hundred dollars government's
Corey 18:37
government's big government spends a lot of money in
Corey 18:40
in three years it'll be a thousand dollars less than that like it'll be a big drop from that like seven percent and it's because they're not spending enough to keep up with inflation they're not spending enough to keep up with growth the upshot of that means you're going to have less money spent per student you're going to have less money spent per patient and you're
Corey 18:58
you're going to see worse services in those things things do not get better with less money and hope they just don't i know that people like to think out there all we got to do is trim the fat and we've just got to get that one super bureaucrat in a room who can work extra hard and run the entire fucking department but it doesn't actually work like that and when you get right Right down to it, there is less money per student and less money per patient. Healthcare is going to get worse. Education is going to get worse. Most things as a result of this budget are going to get worse.
Zain 19:27
worse. Carter, have they fumbled into austerity as a message or is this exactly where they wanted to go?
Carter 19:33
Well, this is exactly where they wanted to go. They didn't want to do a spending budget. But what's fascinating is how cleverly
Carter 19:40
cleverly the austerity is covered. Right.
Carter 19:43
Right. Like if you look through the budget highlights, you're going to see and
Carter 19:46
and we're spending this and we're spending that and we're spending this and we're spending that. But it's it's actually shocking how little some of those spends are. You
Carter 19:54
You know, they're highlighting a 20 dollar, 20 million dollar increase in in in some health care areas, you know, other education areas. is they're talking about some increasing capital expenditures. But realistically, this is not a budget where people would look at it and go, oh, wow, I see my problem's going to be addressed. Just about every situation, this budget does not keep up with population growth, I think with the notable exception of recovery services. So if you want to get recovery, if you're an addict right now and you want to get recovery, that is an area that they're spending a lot more money in. uh but only if you get the right type of recovery if
Carter 20:37
if you get the wrong type of recovery you get nothing and you're expected to die on the street so it's a bit it's
Carter 20:43
it's a bit of a jesus what
Zain 20:45
that's right we meant and we meant that would probably be your best option at that
Carter 20:50
for sure but that that is that
Carter 20:52
that is honest to god what's happening with with our budgets here i mean this is a lot of it
Carter 20:58
seems like a lot of money but it's not really even when you look at what was forecast like if you're looking at the revenue numbers and what was forecast um the forecast for 2023-24 was five billion dollars higher than the actual budget is something is going on something is weird in this budget and part of it is what do you mean like
Zain 21:18
like tease it out for me like are you saving that for like a like a punchline like what do you mean what do you mean something's going on
Carter 21:24
well i think that what's going on is that this is a budget that predict that is is forecasting forecasting lower revenues than were originally forecast, in part, so they don't have to spend as much money. You know, there's nothing quite like being in the second quarter and being absolutely shocked that you've got a $5 billion surplus. How many times have we seen it, Corey? I mean, almost every time that oil goes up in price, we get a significant bump in the amount of money that comes into the treasury, especially now that we've reached payout on so many projects. I mean, look at those bitumen numbers they're you know bitumen royalties are over 12 billion dollars except they were report you know they were forecast to be over 14 million so we're
Carter 22:05
we're the fork obviously the forecasts are wrong forecasts are always wrong but this is this continues to be a situation where we're watching the um we're watching these numbers uh get adjusted into
Carter 22:18
into a new forecast that that puts it down much lower why is that could be that
Carter 22:25
that they're expecting the revenues to be lower could be just that we're expecting the revenues to be lower we've adjusted the forecasts we're expecting it to be lower or could be if we showed a five billion dollar surplus it's going to be super duper hard to uh project um you know to do this level of spending uh because this amounts to cuts across the board as our good friend cory hogan has got the spreadsheet that proves cory
Zain 22:51
can you do me a favor can you like read the play for me me yeah like you had last week's sort of like premier's address you have this budget you got some of these small spending items you got some of these niche taxes where what's what's the play like read to me like what the play is here what are they trying to do like of course you've got and by last week's address that big savings sort of ambitious savings plan that that that she wants to put us on course what do you think they're trying to do here like how would you read this
Corey 23:23
used to well i still have a friend i have a friend who used to do this thing that i would call two unrelated facts right so if he wanted to go for a beer after work he would call his wife and he would say uh busy day at work today anyhow i'm going to be home late both
Corey 23:39
two unrelated facts right and and i feel the same way about the premier's budget address and this budget thing we
Corey 23:46
we got an address about how we need to get off the royalty roller coaster and then we got a budget that really tries to tamp down spending those
Corey 23:54
those are unrelated facts there is nothing in this particular budget that gets us off the royalty roller coaster in fact we've never been more on the royalty roller coaster the numbers steven's talking about like 12 billion from bitumen holy ever-loving fuck that's like three times as much as all royalties were in the uh rachel notley days when we were
Corey 24:14
at entirely different prices of oil and none of these projects were in payout like this is so much money i cannot stress to everybody listening how much money alberta's rolling in from royalties right now two billion dollars down from where we were is still like the second most we've ever had it is is like an unreal amount of money and this is still what the budget looks like like we have really painted ourselves into to a corner here between like the jason kenney cut on the corporate income tax down to eight percent the uh the fact that our you know our other income taxes don't come near addressing this we've we've
Corey 24:48
we've reduced all sorts of things over time the spending's still there and
Corey 24:54
you know there are there are things that the government decided we just can't touch it would be politically disastrous and i'm glad they didn't touch them things like age things like the seniors benefit but by and large, most things are getting less money, you know, in real terms, and certainly per Albertan as things go forward here. But I think the government is trying to hide that austerity in the suggestion that
Corey 25:15
saving more. But they're not saving more. You know, it's really quite interesting. It's quite an interesting political gambit.
Corey 25:22
But it is ultimately, I think, also a fairly transparent one.
Zain 25:25
So if that's the case, first of all, do you agree with that, Corey's analysis here in terms of what they're trying to do? And if that's the case, you know i hate to always come down to the conclusion of like you know but do the comms just override all of the facts here but do the comms override all of the facts here that they could just try to tell us something is happening knowing that most people will not do the research around it and that the story can overpower the reality once again is this is this from that playbook or is this an entirely different play in your mind i
Carter 25:55
mean let's take a look at some of the headlines i mean the headlines were you know tax uh tax going up on tobacco tax going up on vaping tax going up on evs those are the tack those are the things that were covered not the
Carter 26:09
the spending is going to be dramatically below population and and you know population a great point i mean so all the headlines were overtaken by um you know these little taxes oh my goodness we're gonna have to pay a new a brand new levy well we're i think cory pointed this out as well we're still a ridiculously low level of levy when compared with the rest of the uh of the rest of the country on the
Carter 26:37
i mean what are we looking at here like
Carter 26:39
like what we're talking about is a uh a budget that really just kind of screws everybody um because it again it looks one way and it is communicated one way and that way is look at all this new money and all this new spending but really what it is is it's quite a cut and not only that not only is it a cut they're
Carter 26:59
they're actually dictating where the spending is going to occur so the increase in spending is taking away even more from areas that aren't getting those increases so if you don't see your favorite project in the the budget highlights of increased spending you're
Carter 27:15
you're not getting increased spending in fact that seven percent cut that cory's talking about that's for the good shit the stuff that isn't getting like some stuff could be seeing a cut of up to 15 just based on inflation and population growth depending on how those numbers shake out over the next three years so this is a budget that has been exceptionally well communicated to a press corps that is that is overstretched and unable um to dig in and actually understand what's going on here's what's going on cory's analysis is absolutely correct we are seeing a significant budget cut over the next five years period
Carter 27:54
period jump in quick and
Corey 27:55
and look reporters i i beg you i beg you reporters next budget day have your spreadsheets ready calculate using the government's own numbers they're in there they will have all of their assumptions in there calculate the expenses per albert and take Take them all, do it for Albertan. You've got one guy who works for the Edmonton Journal, who understands Excel, bring them to the lockup and get them to do it for the entire press corps. In a rapidly growing province, even with moderate inflation, it can look like they're spending more and they can be gutting the place. Like they can be taking the copper out of the wires. Now that said, I don't know that this spin is going to be sustainable over the next three years. They can't hide this. People are going to see it in their kids' classrooms when they walk in and say, Jesus, there's 40 people in here. People are going to see it in the ER waiting rooms. They are going to hear the horror stories out there. It's not the kind of thing you can hide from because the one thing we haven't mentioned here yet is it's already in pretty bad state. The, uh, the amount of spending on K to 12 is already per student, the lowest in the country. And it's going to go lower now. It's going to go lower now. And you can't hide that forever. It's like if it's like, Like if your kitchen's on fire, you can't hide that forever to the guests that are sitting in the living room. So I think that's a reality that this government is going to have to contend with within this election cycle. So I certainly, if I were them, hey, congratulations, pretty good communications job. You are not out of the woods yet by any means. And one more thing that I think I need to say, and maybe we'll go here if you want to or not, Zane, the
Corey 29:31
the revenue is so good right now
Corey 29:34
And we can't do it.
Corey 29:36
What is the plan? What is the go forward plan for the UCP? I don't even mean for the province. What is their plan before the next election to not just be facing a lynch mob? Carter, there's so many questions
Zain 29:46
to ask here. But like the one, like in the sense of the opposition, the media, the groups that want to be critical of this budget, that want to actually understand the truth behind this budget, where would you start?
Zain 29:58
Would you start where Corey is starting around like, you know, there's a few schools of thought. Let me just lay them out there. Extremely like rudimentary, right? One is people will see it. So like, we don't have to actually spend a lot of our time oxygen right now. This will be felt. and it's better that they feel it later than now because they're still early into their mandate.
Zain 30:17
Another school of thought is you do it now, you don't let them get away with it. Why the fuck would you let them get away with it? They got away with it on week one, quote unquote, right? You can't let them get away with it. And then the other sort of school of thought is, you know, it's a bit of both, right? You chip away at what's important now and then once people feel it, you bring in another wave and say, it's what we told you so. Go back to, you know, previous comments. We've been on this beat for a while. How would you start thinking about this? And not to say that the media is the natural sort of opposition they're not right like they're but they're the accountability mechanism and the official opposition how would you start thinking about it around which questions you'd ask and when and and how carter well
Carter 30:52
well what i would start off with is is fundamentally how is this different than any other budget that might have been presented in the last you know 40 years since in since uh since klein uh i guess it's 30 years since klein 20 years 20 years since Klein kind of gutted the revenue structure and created a revenue model that just does not support the spending that we're looking at. You can take personal income taxes and add them to all your personal income taxes and add them to your business income taxes, and it doesn't equal health care spending, right?
Carter 31:29
right? One department in the government. All
Carter 31:31
All the other departments.
Carter 31:33
Big department. But, you know, all your personal income taxes, all your business taxes are not equal to the actual spending in one department.
Carter 31:46
At some point, that becomes unsustainable. That has been the case for 30 years. We want to build up a $250 billion heritage savings trust fund. How are we going to do it when the spending for one department exceeds the revenues from the average Albertan and their businesses? How are we going to get there is the question that I have. And that's the one that I would be asking if I was a journalist. How does this make sense? Is this budget fundamentally different than Ed Stalmack's? Yeah, it spends less. Is it different than Alison Redford's? Yeah, it spends less. Is it different than Jim Prentice's? Not really. Is it different than Rachel Notley? Not really. Here
Carter 32:30
Here we are. Corey,
Corey 32:34
Yeah, there is a thing, there is a chart in the Alberta budget that as an Albertan, it just makes me want to light my hair on fire. And like I worked for the government for four of these budgets that we're talking about here. And it made me want to light my hair on fire there too. But, you know, Treasury Board really loved it. We always put it in there. And it's this chart about Alberta's tax advantage, the Alberta advantage over other provinces here. I want to paint a bit of a picture, especially for our non-Alberta listeners, but I actually think it's important for our Alberta listeners, too. In our budget, we brag that all of our taxes, all of our fees, everything put together, they
Corey 33:11
they are $19.6 billion lower than if we were to go accept the taxes and fees and structures of literally any other province. The next lowest province, we would raise $19.6 billion. We use that
Zain 33:25
that as a brag. We use
Corey 33:27
that as a brag. If we went to the next lowest tax rates in the country, we have such a tax advantage over everywhere else. If we went to the next lowest tax jurisdiction, we would raise just shy of $20 billion.
Corey 33:39
$20 billion. Okay. And by the way, this is part of the explanation of why we're in such an insane hole right now, because we have like record breaking royalty revenues, or pretty close to it. But that's only what $17 billion, a mere $17 billion. it's not even enough to fill the fucking hole we've created for ourselves here we could literally raise taxes to the lowest in the country still put
Corey 34:05
put everything in the heritage fund and still be paying lower taxes than every other province that that's how big of a tax hole we've created for ourselves hey carter can i ask you this you
Carter 34:15
you can ask anything all answers are probably different the ucp
Zain 34:17
ucp get away with it help
Zain 34:20
help help them devise a strategy to continue getting away with it what does that look like if if if this last five days was a success we're focusing on even my headline evs and and smoking and all that sort of stuff help
Zain 34:34
help them get away with this what would you do i'd
Carter 34:37
i'd point to all the money we're spending all the small all the small dollars that are going in i mean take a look over over but of course
Zain 34:43
course over the three years where things will start crumbling and changing like like help me okay start there but i just want to make sure you you understand the scope of what i'm i'm i'm tasking you with dude
Carter 34:56
shit's been bad for for for four years we didn't re-elect uh we didn't elect rachel notley's ndp every indication is that we will take a conservative government no matter how bad the services are right 40 kids in my classroom fucking school board the the the you know um health care is falling apart oh i hate that ahs those guys don't know what they're doing so much administration right oh you know my my my second cousin who's on ish isn't isn't able to survive fuck man this is a tough time it's a tough time it's expensive everywhere inflation's killing everyone right there's an excuse for everything so all i need to do if i'm building the the the plan for the the ucp just keep pointing to the excuses pointed the ndp killed our oil and gas industry except we've got the highest fucking royalties we've ever seen right i mean maybe not ever i think the natural gas under klein was higher but like this is huge amounts of royalties and they're not going anywhere either because the bitumen is going to come out at 45 royalties like this is fantastic all we need to do is just keep pointing the finger at everybody but ourselves and this audience this audience of conservatives is willing to believe it the school board fucked you on the number of students ahs is screwing you on the on the downturn in health care and you know that's
Carter 36:24
that's just one those are just two of the examples but i could come up with 15 more depending on which departments we wanted to talk and
Zain 36:30
and cory do a bit of yes and on this how would you start dividing this devising the strategy i should say to help the ucp quote-unquote get away with it or stick to their to their narrative lane they've been trying to sell since budget day yeah
Corey 36:44
yeah well one of the other things that's concurrent in this budget is the notion of choice right and what carter hasn't talked about and i mean look people go people press this button way too quickly but i i think you do need to kind of acknowledge there are investments in private education there are going to be decisions made that open up uh the health care system and one of the villains to the large large classroom story or in the large classroom story and one of the villains in the long wait time at the hospital story is going to be the public service it's going to be the notion that you've got overpaid and all of that and
Corey 37:22
and and so they'll find that other villain and they will do that and and they can even point to some things that are working really well because they are not being starved of funding that are more private options and that'll be part of the story too if If they want to tell Stephen's story. You asked me to yes and, so that's me yes anding. But I do want to throw out there, I don't think it's going to work this time. It works every time. Why don't you think
Corey 37:46
it's going to work? Yeah, but we talk it.
Corey 37:47
I'll tell you, because we've never actually been in a hole this deep before. So Stephen talked about all of those other premiers and the budgets that they had. Healthcare was not, or sorry, education was not last in the country at those times. It wasn't. Now it is. Now it is. And that's tough. That's a bit weird. Like, I got a little smug talking to friends in Toronto about them having to struggle through health care and, you know, education malaise and morose. But that's not going to be the case anymore. Now we're going to have some clearly
Corey 38:19
clearly worse services, especially in the
Zain 38:21
the free. This is where I kind of, you know, converge with Corey Carter, which is you could win the next couple of months. Maybe even you win the next year with a bit of like, you know, and this word is often used incorrectly, but with a bit of apathy. you may even get through a little bit longer but then
Zain 38:37
then when shit hits the fan how do you kind of like regroup how do
Carter 38:41
guys are cute you guys are cute I love you guys if
Zain 38:48
if you and Danielle were tag teaming again would you just be like don't worry about it would that literally be like I get the don't worry about it vibe from you like would you just be like fuck it just whatever every
Carter 38:59
every conservative only one conservative premier has ever lost to another candidate and that you know that was when the the right and the left were split right or you know the right the two rights were split yeah i'm i'm i don't believe this for a second but i'm just going to throw this argument out there uh two so there was a split vote and that's the only reason that the the ndp won so if we keep the right together we'll win forever and the way to keep the right together is to curtail spending because if anything if if there there is one group that
Carter 39:31
believes in curtailing spending it is albertans they will not object to this and if they do object we have villains there's so many villains we can just point to them one after the other now
Carter 39:43
now i happen to believe that that we're not that conservative of province but still i anticipate that daniel smith will have no problem selling this vision of
Carter 39:50
of what alberta needs to look like in the future and to throw up that
Carter 39:54
that there's going to be privatization to go along with this. What a victory. Privatization. That's exactly what we needed. Private services of what the conservatives have been calling for, for the better part of 30 years. I mean, I remember beating Gary Marr because he said we needed more private health care. This isn't new. It continues on and it's going to continue under Danielle Smith, except now she's done the right work. She starved the system of resources. And so now she's starved it of resources. And the only solution is privatization. And obviously, this is all going to work out for her. I
Carter 40:29
I honest to God think that if the NDP doesn't figure it out and doesn't figure out how to align their values with the values of Albertans, we're stuck here for probably another decade.
Zain 40:42
on this vein, help
Zain 40:44
help me select a metric that
Zain 40:48
that the UCP can start pointing to as a metric of that would help them?
Zain 40:54
Is it the savings number? Is it the surplus? You could choose any of these conventional used sort of metrics that we have, right? And when we talk about the storytelling exercise, we often talk about how the numbers support a story that was going to be told regardless of the number. But which number would you start focusing on? Which number would you start engineering, tweaking, torquing, you know, to kind of say, this is what matters. What matters is this story that we're selling you, the Stephen Carter story, all these villains, and what number, what series of numbers justifies it, are these ones. If you were helping the UCP right now, what would you elevate in your mind?
Corey 41:36
Government has no shortage of metrics they can choose from to tell the stories that they want to tell. And of course, they have the ability to influence them pretty significantly here. So as you're sitting here in 2024, you want to be a little bit open into changing your metrics as it goes along but let me paint you a not unrealistic scenario here you
Corey 41:54
you you start sitting there and you realize in 2026 actually our math scores are better than they've been in like 10 years maybe because you've told people to direct all of the resources into math and away from the social sciences away
Corey 42:08
arts all of those things and so then you're saying you're talking about starving the system we've never had higher math scores we've never had had higher postgraduate employment rates here this province is booming this province is diversified and it's thanks to us and there you are not even a financial metric education yeah education's
Corey 42:26
education's not looking so tricky and again like the parents who are sweating through their kids being ignored in a 40 person classroom yeah maybe they're lost to you or maybe they feel that's not part of your winning the fact that you're like well or
Zain 42:41
i could see yeah
Corey 42:43
yeah must must be my fucking school this fucking school's terrible other schools are doing great in some ways
Zain 42:48
the school board make it local
Corey 42:50
it a local problem same
Corey 42:51
same with same with health care though zane there are what i don't know 50 metrics that you can get from kai high pick the one we're doing okay on there and just use it as the proof point every single time you're talking about health care and then you also get to talk about and by the way we have more choice than ever before we're spending less than these other jurisdictions and we're number one we're we're fucking awesome. Like, we're just the best. And so this is how you start to tell the story as you move into the next area. And again, if
Corey 43:17
if your mother died in the waiting room, yeah, you're not going to vote UCP. But this is how you tell the story to the people who are not directly impacted. This is how you spin that.
Zain 43:26
Carter, I was thinking of a financial metric. Corey actually presented like a really interesting sort of case around like how you kind of use the outputs of what you're doing. What are you thinking? Like, I'm asking the same question on metrics.
Carter 43:38
Keep in mind, I disagree with Corey. I think that the person who has their mother die in the hallway is just going to blame the administration and the NHS. I still think that that's the case. I've seen it. I've heard it. I've heard purple people talking that way. And in terms of the metric, wait until, again, you know, second quarter, all of a sudden, we're going to have $3 billion of extra money that's going to go into the Heritage Savings Trust Fund. Isn't that pretty great? I mean, it's the equivalent of running up your credit cards and putting your money into the rrsp i mean it's it's it's
Carter 44:10
it's there it's it's something you can do yeah
Carter 44:14
you know it's it's not necessarily the best strategy for a long-term uh financial gain for the province and and i mean we can see debt increasing as they go through this their their projections um debt increases but it does go down by as a percentage of gdp these these These folks are interesting because they're playing these games that the liberals play and they're playing them, I think, just better at it by focusing on, you
Carter 44:44
you know, GDP to debt instead
Carter 44:46
of real numbers to debt, right?
Carter 44:48
right? And also the net debt goes down considerably because you are increasing your assets. Corey,
Zain 44:53
Corey, let's talk about the revenue. You put it on the table earlier. We'll kind of get out of the strategizing for the UCP mode for a second here and take those hats off.
Zain 45:04
There's no way she could do a PST, is there?
Zain 45:07
I mean, I'm just saying, maybe I'll phrase it this way.
Zain 45:10
Is she, would it be Danielle Smith, of all the premiers we have seen, that could maybe get away with the PST? Let me start the revenue conversation there, and then let's expand it to where you want to take it.
Corey 45:23
I think that it's always possible to do these things if you're willing to do other things. So could Danielle Smith bring in a PST? Sure, if she got rid of income tax, right? There's an interesting right wing idea. There's a way that you cause
Carter 45:37
cause less pain in
Corey 45:37
in the system, right? So yes, it is possible. Is it probable? No, because the conservatives themselves are the ones who passed the law that says that it's got to go to referendum. And I mean, that's a big lift. Like when you look at the polling around a sales tax, like two thirds of Albertans oppose it. I think depending on the poll, you'll maybe get like 40% if you're
Corey 46:00
you're lucky, if you find like a really good poll. But when the rubber hits the road, we've
Corey 46:05
we've seen no evidence ever that Albertans will support a sales tax. So I don't know how she passes that through the system. She'd need to ignore her own law. It would be a bit suicidal to attempt. And
Zain 46:15
And the reason I start the conversation there is you brought up this $20 billion next best province sort of marker sort of thing and wearing that as a badge of honor. How do we make up the gap
Zain 46:27
even in these frothy times?
Corey 46:30
This is the thing. This is kind of – this
Corey 46:32
this is the simple-minded conversations we've fallen into here. It's
Zain 46:35
It's not just a sales
Corey 46:37
sales tax. So many
Corey 46:38
not. Like, we could bring in a sale – no, I don't even mean so many other ways. i mean you could bring in the sales tax and you'd close like half that yeah
Carter 46:45
yeah less than half right
Corey 46:47
so like it's like everything we do in this province and by the way you could have a budget that was not starving all of these systems with just a couple billion more dollars you know a few billion more dollars you don't need to raise 19.6 billion dollars and close this tax gap entirely we still have the 17 fucking billion dollars or whatever it is from the royalty revenues you just need a few things you just need a couple of smart tweaks here so like with that in mind why on god's green earth would daniel smith say what we need is a sales tax which is going to raise way more revenue than i need all of a sudden i'm going to have massive surpluses even if i'm paying for health education right
Corey 47:26
like that's a pretty bonkers idea that'd be a pretty dumb thing to do i think so i just can't imagine that that's carter talk
Zain 47:32
talk to me about corey you lay out the revenue gap between the next province versus the need, perhaps, in terms of what it means to have some of these programs function better than what they would be with the current dollar amounts that they're going to be getting. Carter, how do you think of the revenue challenge for the UCP here in these frothy times? And what's the political line of attack for you?
Carter 47:54
Well, I think that the challenge for the UCP is that they come in thinking that it's a spending problem and very very quickly because keep in mind this has been the conservative talking point for the better part of 20 years it's a spending problem it's a spending problem it's a spending problem we spend so much more per capita than any other market except we're not anymore right to cory's point and cory's starting to show that the the the the expenditures are now part of the problem not part of the solution um so we are uh you know
Carter 48:26
know we're a little bit screwed and and and And now that I've done my preamble to the answer, of course, I forgot the question. Oh, yeah, that's fine.
Carter 48:32
Yeah, it was a memorable question, but I'm
Carter 48:37
tired. I went skiing today. No, that's
Zain 48:39
that's fine. And we could see it in the rosy cheeks, Carter, and we can see it. It's not makeup.
Carter 48:46
makeup. That's not makeup. I didn't put makeup on. Our California
Zain 48:48
California bakery sells pastries of that color. Corey, once again, I'm not going to let go of that joke, which is going to be topical for two days. That's good. okay it's gonna be topical for two days um
Zain 49:00
um finish this off here with with the ndp strategy carter alluded to a bit carter's
Zain 49:04
carter's like they need to get the game together right like figure out a values alignment with albertans i don't want to speak for you but in some ways i almost sense that like you you feel like the ucp won't get away with it this time would that be kind of part of your your advice the ndp here in the sense of like know that that's a case like there is some like confidence the ndp should have in terms of like you know that there's a fair portion of the at least the urban been electorate that voted for them but how would you kind of help
Zain 49:30
help them think through this
Corey 49:34
well they do need to break apart the spin that the government is throwing out here they cannot take the bait on things like the ev tax right there's 200 on registration that steven and i now need to pay for our ev starting 2025 don't take that fucking bait don't do it don't do it if somebody's buying an ev they're voting for you anyways probably don't fucking do it right um and And you don't want to look like you're out of touch or somehow suggesting that EVs shouldn't have to pay their fair share for the roads. Don't take the bait. Don't take the bait on any of the shit. Do you think all this is
Zain 50:04
is bait, to be clear? A lot
Corey 50:07
lot of it is bait. Keep your eyes on the big story and the big picture, the things people actually care about. Break apart the government's kind of mystique and obfuscation around healthcare, around education, around the services that people actually rely on and care about. And make it clear to Albertans. however you do it through your communications that these things are being starved that is actually the story that you need to tell and that is the message that you need to put in the foreground it can't be a million other things it can't be by the way what i saw earlier which is the uh ndp twitter account there was tweeting about shame on the government for increasing the land transfer tax right
Corey 50:50
yeah such a like i get what they're thinking hey it makes It makes a house more expensive.
Corey 50:56
Okay, right? You're sort of missing the entire point of this budget. But this has always been a bit of a critique I've had of the NDP's communications, like, focus
Corey 51:05
focus on what fucking matters and stay on it for five days, for 50 days. You don't need a new thing every goddamn day. And so I think that that is my advice to the NDP and frankly, any of
Zain 51:16
of the leadership. Same question. And Corey, thanks for adding leadership candidates. Your advice to the party and then any of the folks running for leadership?
Carter 51:25
uh shannon phillips should be in charge of everything um she said health care is doomed just keep saying that right just keep saying how health care is doomed you can you can switch it up every once in a while and say our children are screwed um you know we have to we have to take care of our schools we have to take care of our health care system um and just keep going back I mean, right now we know that we have a new mental health department and a new primary care department. How the fuck are they going to be funded through this thing? What's going to happen with them?
Carter 52:00
The nurses want 25% increase in their wages. What's going to happen? How long do we think that strike's going to last? What's going to happen to patients during that time? What's this government's plan to deal with this inflationary pressure? You know, you
Zain 52:15
you guys both make an interesting point about this, which is give me your advice to the NDP and leadership candidates on tone.
Zain 52:23
Like, I get, like, area and content, but, like, would you be angry or would you look unhinged if you're angry? Would you be pugilistic or would you look like you're overreacting if you're pugilistic? Like, give me your advice on tone here. Like, would you use expletives or would that be over the top? I think this is an interesting conversation when you're trying to refocus a bunch of spin. You clearly don't have the resources of the government. You have a leadership race, but you don't have the resources of the government to counter spin and change weather patterns like they're trying to. So when you break through, I think tone is almost as important as content. Advice for the NDP. Corey, you first and then Carter.
Corey 53:03
Well, when you asked would I swear, I wouldn't swear. I'm giving hypotheticals. Actually, Carter and I were talking about this. Well, Carter and I were talking about this yesterday at breakfast. in a totally different context.
Carter 53:15
Talking about you. No,
Corey 53:19
No, it was related to something unrelated to you, Zay. Like, why can't you confirm?
Carter 53:26
a contract. I can't do the work. I'm subbing it to Corey. He's going to take care of it.
Corey 53:31
I could do the work, probably.
Corey 53:33
No, you really couldn't. You for sure could not do the work. Why couldn't I do the work?
Corey 53:38
Skill sets, mostly. yeah yeah if we're gonna be feels like a racial thing yeah yeah
Carter 53:44
yeah in fact that's what it was it was a racial thing yeah continue uh white
Zain 53:49
white soup brunch okay keep going so you were at your white soup brunch wait that's right you're discussing this yeah okay
Corey 53:55
okay yeah he told me he was
Zain 53:57
knows you know he could be at brunch look
Corey 54:02
in a corporate setting you could be angry yes you can swear you cannot swear when you're angry like that's that's sort of the rule that's where you start to look unhinged to your point and so what the it's
Corey 54:14
it's a it's an interesting question you ask like you need to be able to throw a punch but i do think you want to be able to throw a punch in a way that's not entirely off-putting to everybody else and you do need to also be able to calibrate right yeah this is a three on the dial this is a 10 on the dial this is a six on the dial and you got to be able to say what's appropriate to the particular moment here and again you can't take the bait but i think that what you generally want in a politician globally is somebody who can uh hit you and then you just sort of realize afterwards that you were hit because it was done with kind of like a charm or a cleverness and that's um yeah that's a skill set i think that all of the ndp candidates should be aspiring to build but um yeah like it's an interesting question you ask because it almost assumes like it's a mutually exclusive thing like either you're an optimist or you shit on daniel smith and there's ways you can optimistically shit on carter
Zain 55:08
carter i wasn't uh i wasn't doing anything until 12 30 yesterday i just checked my calendar while cory was speaking just uh just so you know um
Corey 55:16
oh our lunch was
Carter 55:17
yeah we were we had it we could have let you go for sure it was uh really good i had hot cakes uh we were trying we were also discussing french
Carter 55:25
what was the difference between a hot cake and a pancake cake a pancake
Carter 55:29
pancake yeah yeah couldn't quite get through it um i would go with sympathetic as
Carter 55:33
as a really you
Zain 55:35
wouldn't go like aggressive
Zain 55:36
assertive you wouldn't you wouldn't take that lane i
Carter 55:38
i think sympathetic well i'd be really feeling bad for albertans i mean they're this is the first year of four this is the first year of four this is going to have you know cory's point i mean we're at 30 plus students now what's it going to look like uh in four years what's it going to look like in healthcare in four years. We've got a cancer center we're barely using. We still have the floors not being used in the South Health Campus. We've got one of the most expensive hospitals being built in Edmonton that's ever been built anywhere. And it's still not going to be able to be utilized because we won't have the staff. We
Carter 56:19
We won't have the people.
Carter 56:21
This is, I mean, what are Albertans going to do? I feel bad for them. I feel bad for Albertans i feel bad for albertans who didn't vote for the ucp and i feel bad for the albertans who did vote for the ucp because i don't believe for one second this is what they voted for not
Corey 56:40
that's a really important point yeah
Corey 56:43
that's you cannot blame people for the decisions they made we talked about this i think even as recently as i said you can't but it can't Can't be, can't
Corey 56:53
can't be, I told you so. It's, it's, it does have to be sympathy for the people who voted for the UCP. Like, my goodness, you know, sold a bill of goods, uh, this, and not like you're a sucker for falling for it. Shame on them for lying to you. Shame on them for misleading you and suggesting that you were going to get a different budget than you got here. But don't worry, we're going to, we're going to hold them to account, right? And we're going to put forward something that you can support in 2027. And we're going to make sure between now and 2027, we're doing whatever we can to slow down the damage they're doing to the system.
Zain 57:24
system. We're going to leave that segment there, move it on to our final segment. Stephen Carter, our over, under, and our lightning round. We do it for you, even if you don't invite some people over to brunch. It's fine. It's fine, Stephen Carter. You might have discussed all these topics ahead of time. What do I know? I wasn't part of it. We
Zain 57:39
Hey, Carter, did it work or did it not work is the frame for this question. Danielle Smith holding a press conference telling David Parker to get some help and
Zain 57:50
that she is not beholden to him. She effectively said, listen, I hope he deletes his Twitter account. I hope he gets some help. I want nothing to do with any kind of comments that are personal in nature. David Parker going after Pierre Pauliev and others. We should not just be putting up with that in the public square. Did it work or
Zain 58:07
did it not work in your mind, Stephen Carter, what Danielle Smith was trying to accomplish?
Carter 58:12
It did not work because in November, she's going to be beholden to this guy. I mean, you can't just simply say, you know, I'm not beholden to him. I want him to get mental health help. I mean, the guy does not seem well. I understand that. And I understand the reason why she said what she said. but when we you know every single board member as
Carter 58:33
as is is a take back alberta person they can flood the meeting in november and take her out if they choose to she's going to be nice to him under every circumstance i'm sure there was a phone call that
Carter 58:47
that day or the next day david
Carter 58:49
david i really do care about you i really do want you to get help but no don't worry your agenda is still my agenda Thanks. Love, Danielle.
Zain 58:58
Corey, did it work or did it not work? She effectively said, I'm going to read you a quote here, right? She says, listen, I have to be absolutely clear that nobody tells me what to do as premier. The only people I take marching orders from are Albertans.
Zain 59:14
Did it work or did it not work? The distance herself from David Parker. What do you think?
Corey 59:20
I think what's more noteworthy is that she ended up having to say anything at all. But really, the commentariat class in Alberta for a good week was just really all over Parker's increasingly surreal comments. And, you know, I do actually think there's
Corey 59:37
there's something not going great in that guy's life, that this is how he's lashing out. This is a bit wild. And who acts like this in a general sense? And is this how he wants to be remembered? a guy who, you know, calls himself a Christian and calls himself a conservative and saying very unchristian things while fighting with conservatives. It got a little bonkers there, right? The idea that you should get off Twitter and get help is good advice for hundreds of millions, frankly. I don't think that it hurt her all that much to say it with that base that Stephen's
Corey 1:00:09
know, let's see. Let's see where we are in a couple of weeks here. because if it just falls back into the patterns, those words mean very little, right? And by patterns, I mean, if she continues to be implementing the Take Back Alberta agenda, seemingly at the behest of David Parker and others, it means very little. But it might've been enough to get her through the week and at least stop the story from ending up in
Corey 1:00:32
in her office. It's probably just at the doorstep, thanks to the comments. Corey,
Zain 1:00:35
Corey, I'm going to stick with you for this next one. As far as political bait or political strategy goes, goes, what did you make of the $200 EV tax? It was clearly engineered to get people calling Stephen Carter and then laughing on the phone, which is what I did after you didn't pick up my call. But as it relates to what it was trying to be, and to be clear, it is also a $200 tax, which is what it is, but there's also political calculus to it. Are you in or out in terms of of what it was trying to do for the UCP.
Corey 1:01:08
Listen, I don't even think it's a crazy policy. It is true that I don't pay any fuel taxes as an EV driver. Now, in Alberta, they just go into general revenue. They don't actually pay for roads directly. And most jurisdictions say, hey, that's a cool incentive. That'll help get people onto EVs. If Alberta doesn't want to do that, that's fine. But I actually don't think it's particularly punitive. I did kind of napkin calculations. And while I don't think that I would have been spending the equivalent of $200 if I were driving a truck, you know, it was close enough. It was like 150 bucks or something like that. So whatever. It actually doesn't bother me very much. I
Corey 1:01:45
I actually would like to see them go all in with this idea. Okay, we want to register and pay on registration for the damage that's done to roads. Fucking bring bring it on. Let's do it by weight. Let's do it by kilometers driven. Let's do this. Do you want to do this? Let's do this. I'm all in for this. I want to see the people driving their F-250 super duties have to pay this thing. I want to see, you know, everybody have to make the choice about how many axles they have and what the impact is. If we want to be consistent with this policy, I'm all in on this policy. I think it actually makes a great amount of sense that on registration, you pay for these kinds of things, but let's fucking do it, right? Now that's the policy in terms of bait wonderful bait because what they're doing is actually pretty reasonable see my previous comments and so anybody who freaks out too much about it just looks like an entitled smug cocktail environment electric people owning that's why
Corey 1:02:40
should engage on this particular one and i'll tell you my fellow ev drivers we
Corey 1:02:44
we can pay this we should pay pay this it's not doing okay is the last line he wanted to say uh carter
Corey 1:02:51
no i'm saying it's
Corey 1:02:54
it's how we pay for roads we're gonna use roads let's pay for saying that
Corey 1:02:57
it's not how we
Carter 1:02:58
we pay for roads but that's he's
Zain 1:03:00
he's saying something about our individual bank accounts now yeah that's right yeah i don't know small things yeah um carter are
Zain 1:03:07
are you entering out from a political strategy on the on the ev tax
Carter 1:03:11
listen i i am totally in and i'll tell you why we pay tax on alcohol we pay tax on uh cigarettes we pay tax on vaping and we pay tax i i mean we should pay tax on every single one of the things that
Corey 1:03:25
that we commit and
Carter 1:03:26
and there is yeah
Carter 1:03:27
is no sin greater than driving an electronic vehicle in the province of alberta and you should pay an
Carter 1:03:33
an electronic he doesn't stand
Corey 1:03:35
stand for electronic electronic doesn't
Carter 1:03:37
what does he stand for electric
Carter 1:03:41
oh the electric vehicle it's still a sin cory doesn't matter what you call it porn is porn right and sins are sins and we should pay our tax carter
Zain 1:03:50
carter over under pierre poliev is is when you look at some of the recent polling it looks like about 15 points ahead justin
Zain 1:03:59
justin trudeau oh yeah
Zain 1:04:01
over under let's use 15 the
Zain 1:04:04
the conservative win in in in durham tomorrow in the by-election over under on 15 over
Zain 1:04:11
cory over under on 15
Zain 1:04:15
oh we're gonna we're gonna hold you to it there's an accountability mechanism it shows up at one point i'm gonna record an episode where i hold you accountable for all your comments over the last several years that's never gonna happen because you'll have to listen to
Carter 1:04:26
to all the episodes once
Zain 1:04:27
uh once jeff bush goes for his third term we'll do it then uh carter we're
Zain 1:04:32
we're gonna start with with you for our final one. Brian Mulroney has passed away. Let's end on a grateful note. What will his legacy be? It's so interesting to see some of these tributes on the Sunday morning programs or even later in the day on Thursday when it was announced that he had passed to kind of see the Globe and Mail had put out an accidental tweet talking about his, I think the word was contentious or divisive. Other people thought it was NAFTA and free trade, the GST. Some people People thought it'd be what it'd be afterwards and his sort of statesman-like behavior. But for Stephen Carter, longtime political observer, longtime political strategist, what is the Mulroney legacy for you?
Carter 1:05:14
The fiscal framework. I mean, you talk about NAFTA, you talk about the GST, but there was a fiscal framework that he created together with Michael Wilson that Kretchen
Carter 1:05:26
Kretchen campaigned against, but
Carter 1:05:28
but Kretchen and Paul Martin continued, right? Right. That fiscal framework continues. We can still see the the bones of that fiscal framework today in the federal government. This is even Stephen Harper didn't undo the fiscal framework that was created in the 80s and into the early 90s. That fiscal framework is Brian Mulroney's legacy. And it is something that Canadians
Carter 1:05:54
Canadians punished him for. that's
Carter 1:05:55
that's the that's kind of the double whammy of what are we going to remember uh what are we going to remember him for we're going to remember him for being
Carter 1:06:03
being hated bringing in the gst getting punished for the gst and then ultimately every other prime minister uh wrapping themselves in the same fiscal framework and i'm not just talking about the gst uh free trade gst um expanding our our economic influence over our, some of, you know, what we'd had in the past, which was our peacekeeping initiatives. So a fascinating fellow, punished tremendously for that, which we wound up embracing in Canadian history. Corey,
Zain 1:06:36
Corey, also a very interesting sort of like political culture conversation around whether he was conservative or a moderate, would he have fit in today? Would he have not? All those interesting sort of like, you know, let's transplant him to today and see where he would of fit-style questions, but for you, I'll ask you the same broad question I asked Carter. What is the Mulroney legacy?
Corey 1:06:57
Anybody who's around that long is going to become a bit of a Rorschach test, and people are going to read into the legacy what they want. It's so interesting, like on Twitter I saw people saying yeah, Oka, that's what he should be remembered
Corey 1:07:10
Fuck that guy. And then I saw people saying he
Corey 1:07:13
he stood up, you know, against apartheid South Africa, and And he did that more so than anybody else. That should be his legacy. I heard some people talk about his commitment to democracy and that free vote on the death penalty, but then him giving impassioned speeches against a death penalty. Maybe that's it. Obviously, NAFTA. Obviously, his environmentalism. You know, there are so many things you can say about him. Obviously, the GST, the fucking collapse of the PCs that followed with Kim Campbell. All of this can be laid at his feet. He was a very, very impactful prime minister. He was a very important prime minister. I think I've said on this show, I think the two most important prime ministers of my lifetime were Mulroney and Trudeau the Younger, only because I was born after the big drama of Trudeau the Elder. But, you know, he
Corey 1:08:01
he was really a big, big deal. You know, Meech Lake, Charlotte, my God, there's so many
Carter 1:08:06
many things I haven't even mentioned
Corey 1:08:07
as I rattled this all off here, right? Right.
Corey 1:08:11
it's, it's so tough to, it's so tough to unpack a legacy like that. And I think, uh, you know, that's a bit of a cop-out, but ultimately he's a Rorschach test. I thought he was an interesting guy because I like politics and he did a lot of interesting plays. He moved a lot of chess pieces in unexpected ways. He took big fucking swings and sometimes he fell on
Zain 1:08:33
on his his face doing it. But
Corey 1:08:34
But yeah, he was quite a prime minister.
Corey 1:08:38
Not just good, not just bad, but quite a prime minister. We're going to leave
Zain 1:08:41
leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1289 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Veljoo. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.