Episode 1804: Thank you (again) for your service

Zain 0:01

This is Strategist episode 1804. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Carter, we record while

Zain 0:09

while the hockey game between the Oilers and the Canucks is going on. I'll just ask you for your prediction on how this thing ends.

Carter 0:16

Oh, it's definitely going to go to the Canucks.

Carter 0:18

Canucks are winning for sure. 100%.

Zain 0:20

Put that in full sentences so that- What

Carter 0:22

What is the score right now,

Zain 0:23

now, by the way? Doesn't matter. Put that in full sentences so that we can archive it for later if we ever need to.

Carter 0:27

No, but what is the score? Do we know what the score is?

Zain 0:32

No, it's unknowable, the score. Hang

Carter 0:33

Hang on, I'm going to look on the internet. It's absolutely unknowable,

Zain 0:36

unknowable, the score, I would say.

Zain 0:39

Carter, do you want to just repeat your claim in just full? Yeah, we need a clean take.

Corey 0:46

you saying. Yeah, for

Carter 0:48

Look at that. It's a five to one for the Oilers.

Zain 0:52

you're going to have to. I'm

Carter 0:52

I'm just going to clap you

Zain 0:55

where the audio is. I'm just going to clap you in, Carter. just give me another clean take here definitely

Carter 0:59

definitely the the oilers are going to win oilers are going to win 100 there's

Carter 1:04

there's no question they're going to win five to one is my prediction well

Corey 1:08

well sorry to the oilers fans out there but here

Corey 1:11

here we go no it's i'm

Carter 1:12

i'm looking at the site is what i'm trying to say is that oh no hold on that was it's

Carter 1:16

it's three as soon as i made the prediction i'm looking at the wrong game it's in the second part look

Zain 1:20

look at that okay that's good that's good yeah

Zain 1:22

it's fine we'll just Maybe the 50th time is our lesson to be like, let's stay in our lane. One of those two teams

Carter 1:26

teams is going to win.

Zain 1:27

win. Thank you, Carter, for that tremendous value. Corey, do you want to add anything before we get started on the 1804 episode? Oh, yeah, of course you do.

Corey 1:37

The last 500 episodes are a bit of a blur for me, if I'm being honest. Yeah,

Carter 1:40

Yeah, I hardly remember them.

Zain 1:42

And I mean, at some point, did we get lazy in between them? Sure. Did we try new things? Absolutely, we did. This podcast is all about innovation, right? right? And one of the things we tried just

Zain 1:51

didn't go well. Carter is after... I

Zain 1:56

I think we had to spend about 80% of the Patreon money to get him out of prison for that thing that we did, but I feel like we got him out. We're in a position now where we're catching our breath,

Zain 2:06

breath, fighting our stride. We had that great episode in between there. I don't know if it's worth mentioning the highlights where the prime minister came and hosted. That was an incredible episode where he was excellent yeah and do you remember carter was fucking i do silent could

Zain 2:20

could not find could not find his tongue could not find any words not not not entirely

Corey 2:28

he did find the words yes sir thank you sir you've done a wonderful

Zain 2:31

wonderful job do you remember at the end yeah

Corey 2:33

you for your service oh

Zain 2:34

oh what a little huge bang oh my god he sounded like such a fucking suck up and

Zain 2:43

and we'd already ended the episode we'd already ended

Corey 2:48

he's come back from World War II

Carter 2:52

Rita O'Connor a little respect is what we're called for and I brought a little respect people

Zain 2:57

people can listen to that episode if they want to get it I don't know if anyone wants to but you'll find it it's the episode titled thank you for your service you will find it we're the Prime Minister host he doesn't even get a question before Carter starts starts invoking sir any

Zain 3:14

any regrets carter i mean we are we are debriefing this 300 episodes later but any regrets no

Carter 3:22

no not really i mean yeah i talked a big game before and then i figured it out that i'm uh i'm

Carter 3:28

i'm actually just a giant wuss i couldn't handle it i i buckled under the pressure of having him you know what it was is we could see him i think if i could just hear him i would have been able to ask the questions that i wasn't even about you asking

Zain 3:40

asking the questions you're bluster was all about shit you'd say to him unprovoked. And you got none of that out there. You got absolutely none

Zain 3:48

none of it out

Carter 3:48

out there. I have no...

Carter 3:49

Well, listen, let's occur. Not my finest hour. In that same spirit,

Zain 3:53

spirit, thank you for your honesty and thank you for your service. Let's move it on to our first segment. Our first segment. Are

Carter 3:59

Are we not going to talk about the Doug Wong episode where we brought Doug Wong?

Zain 4:03

We've had too many guests in the last 500 episodes. We've set the whole

Zain 4:07

fucking show. I don't want to mention this, but

Zain 4:09

but no one has ever seen of Doug since that that episode it's

Carter 4:16

it's true it's true i haven't heard from doug or hannah or anyone yeah

Zain 4:19

yeah no it's um it's it would be alarming if we were different people let's move it on to our next segment our next segment why the fuck do we still do this cory hogan we're gonna spend a lot of this episode on british columbia but before we get there can i talk to you about this uh you know this segment i usually use to talk about something we do conventionally in politics and today's topic To question, to stress test, to understand whether we should still continue doing it. Campaign co-chairs.

Zain 4:46

Trudeau has internally announced provincial campaign co-chairs for his next election. There are sources that say that he has named several MPs to serve as his campaign co-chairs for the different provinces. You suspect that there's going to be cabinet ministers in there. There are. You also see former senior cabinet ministerial staffer Kathy Moore, who now works as a navigator, has been appointed co-chair for Alberta. So you have a mix of political and like elected political and then, of course, like political staffer folks. Corey, this

Zain 5:19

this is just a gateway for me to talk about why the hell do we still do campaign co-chairs? And I know this might be rich coming from me as someone who's on a campaign, running a campaign right now that has several chairs.

Corey 5:30

Yeah, aren't you currently a campaign

Zain 5:33

no, no, I've got, I've got a more, um, um, um, um, I shouldn't say more to

Zain 5:36

to be very politically correct. I've got a different title on the campaign, Corey.

Zain 5:42

Uh, don't let anyone fill it, figure out what I was going to say after more. Okay. Don't let anyone try to guess. Okay. No,

Zain 5:51

I'm also an honest man. I want to stress test the principles of what we do. Why do we do campaign coaches? And should we still Corey over to you first, Carter, you are second on doc.

Corey 6:01

Okay. Okay, well, with the Liberal Party in particular, and I guess also the PCs, and I don't know what the Conservatives do currently, but why co-chairs existed was because they were supposed to be responsible for election activities within a region, and that aligned with how those parties used to be structured. So, for a very long time, the Liberal Party was a federation, right? The provincial liberal parties were all part of the federal liberal party, and the provincial wing was that, you know, was that part of the federal party, and the president of the provincial wing was a member of the federal executive, and so on and so forth. And from the 60s on, the provincial parties started separating from the federal party, and they were kind of replaced with provincial

Corey 6:49

that were still the federal party. So in Alberta, there's

Corey 6:53

there's the Liberal Party of Canada, and then there was the Liberal Party of Canada in Alberta was the provincial wing that was responsible for activities there. And they kind of managed the federal activities that were done by provincial parties in areas where the provincial party was still federated. That's a lot of nonsense. That's a lot of background. But at the time, the idea was, every party is going to be a little bit different, you're going to need some people on the ground.

Corey 7:17

political parties used to be a little bit more tailored region to region. And that was true of like, voter ID software, that was true of basically everything but the logo, right? Like you'd have different brochures in many cases. and um you know you'd also have to manage candidates in a local sense and so these local chairs did it but to your point i think zane especially over the past i would say 15 years

Corey 7:40

years that's largely been taken out of the hands of provincial organizers a lot of that has been centralized and nowadays you're kind of all walking to the beat of that central drum realm. So why do we do it? I don't know. One part history, one part somebody still needs to have the meetings on the ground. That would probably be my answer. I'll

Zain 8:02

I'll get to you on should we still do it. Carter, why do we do it? Do you have a different analysis than Corey? Is it as simple as keeping these people busy? Is it as simple as another thing you can give folks a title to if you didn't give them another title or another job or another responsibility? Is it to make people feel good? Is it just as simple as that? Give me your analysis, Carter, and then let's talk about Now, should we still be doing these?

Carter 8:26

Well, I mean, I remember back when I started in politics, we used to have provincial campaigns, like real provincial campaigns. The campaign was being run out of Edmonton or out of Calgary for the national campaign. There was a rapid response team, this is how old I am, a rapid response team that was working out of Calgary that did the entire province of Alberta. We would read the clippings that came in via fax and then write news releases that

Zain 8:55

I was just going to ask you that second part. Did you have to vet it? Did you have to get approved? No, if our

Carter 9:00

campaign co-chair would sign off on it, boom, away we go. Because

Carter 9:03

Because we ran a separate campaign. This was the Alberta campaign. campaign.

Corey 9:09

Yeah. You know, Zane, I think one of the things that our younger listeners and younger hosts may forget is that we weren't all connected to each other at the time. There would be like the faxes in the morning. There'd be the morning call of the various regional organizations. But you know, this is what the leader's doing. This is what's going on. But there

Corey 9:27

there wasn't, there wasn't even really like email. You didn't communicate perpetually with the national campaign. You basically, it was a practical reality that you had to manage things on the Carter,

Zain 9:37

Carter, what did you think of Corey trying to ageify himself up here to try to mask that as wisdom? Did you like that? Or did you feel like that fell flat? It felt pretty flat for me when he

Zain 9:45

he talked about being no email. I felt like that was disingenuous and trying to extract other people's lived experience as his own. But I'm just curious to get your take before I jump to you. He started when

Carter 9:56

when he was 12. He

Carter 9:57

He started when he was a child. And because of that, I will give it to him. Because I do, in fact, remember campaigning without a cell phone, campaigning without email, campaigning where the newspapers were still the number one thing that you worried about. You didn't really worry about did we drop brochures. so the campaign chair had to have relationships with the media right they had to know who the managing partner or who the managing editor was of all of the different uh newspapers and things like that like the the co-chair had those on the ground relationships and had done this a number of times so that they knew exactly

Carter 10:35

exactly how the campaign was going to unfold and

Carter 10:37

and it wasn't going to unfold unfold the exact same across the nation because there was no there was barely national we'd had a national newscast and that was about it there was no 24-hour news stations there was nothing that indicated that you

Carter 10:54

you know what was happening in the rest of the world it just didn't you just didn't resonate at the same level yeah

Corey 10:59

yeah you cared about what was in for us here in calgary the calgary herald you cared about what was on two and seven you cared about what was on cfcn these These are channels that do not exist anymore. CFCN is an affiliate of CTV, but it had like its own program and it had TV studios that created shows, you know, that were just for the Calgary area. The media market was so very different back then. And it was really a much more bespoke situation when it came to campaigning. So

Zain 11:28

So Carter, I'll start with you on this, then come to Corey.

Zain 11:32

Should we still do campaign co-chairs? You're running a campaign tomorrow. Are you putting some spaces at the top of the org chart for campaign co-chairs or campaign chairs or executive chairs, whatever we may call them, whether they be elected or unelected folks? Are you doing that if you're starting up a campaign tomorrow?

Carter 11:49

Oh, yeah, for sure. And the reason I would do it is there's two reasons. reasons. The first reason is to actually have someone chair the campaign, like to manage the meetings, to chair the events of the campaign, to be

Carter 12:02

be the liaison between the campaign and the candidate sometimes when difficult things need to be discussed. That campaign chair is a high enough status person that it makes sense. And the other way to use them is if you've got somebody who you want to put into the campaign chair or co-chair position that sends a message, that sends a signal to your voters you know this is someone who is worth us and if we have this person with us then maybe we're filling the progressive side of the ticket or if we have this person with us maybe we're filling the conservative side of the ticket right whatever you're looking for you can get by putting a co-chair into a specific market um you know that that's absolutely available would

Zain 12:42

would you do it today you starting a campaign tomorrow would you would you have co-chairs

Corey 12:48

yeah i kind of alluded to they still somebody to take the meetings there is actually a lot of work that a campaign co-chair does on the ground and it's a real job still it's maybe a different job and it's maybe not one that has sort of the same strategic authority that occurred in years past but it certainly is still a real job kathy moore here in alberta by the way has done it in the past i think she did it in 2015 if i'm not mistaken um but one of the things she did as campaign chair in 2015 was go around and find candidates to run in every Alberta riding and make sure that there were capable campaigns and capable organizations where they're needed to be for the party. And that's something that a provincial co-chair can do, a provincial campaign chair can do a

Corey 13:34

little more easily than a national apparatus, right? They're just not going to know the people on the ground. And if they do know them, they don't have the time or ability to to meet with them regularly. And one of the reasons why you want a leader-appointed chair rather than, say, the

Corey 13:48

the president of the local association or the president of the provincial or territorial association is you

Corey 13:54

you can actually trust them to be the competent political organizer you need them to be and go out and make the savvy political plays you need them to make. So there's local candidates, there's making sure that there's a campaign apparatus everywhere, everywhere and actually meeting with the people to make sure that it occurs. Historically, that job has also included chairing the Green Light Committee. So going through the candidate vetting process, meeting with those candidates that have come forward through the various mechanisms that are available. I don't know, even in my time, that was getting much more centralized. So I don't know that that's a huge part of the job now. But there's still work to be done. And there's still reason to to have somebody that you can trust on the ground to help make sure you've got a campaign in your province when that writ gets dropped, or when those writs are dropped, if you want to get, you

Corey 14:44

you know, pedantic. Carter. I knew someone was going to call me out on that. I

Zain 14:47

I know Carter was. I know he was paying deep attention. He wasn't dozing off at all. He was... No, I'm paying attention. I feel like Carter's time on this podcast is split in three ways. 33% active participation, 33% dozing off in Corey's lines, which I think both Carter and I do quite often. And then, of course, the final third, Carter, is

Zain 15:09

is thinking up lines that he would say to the prime minister if he ever had an opportunity.

Carter 15:13

me tell you, I call that the one-third, one-third, one-third rule. It's a good rule. I

Zain 15:17

I feel like it served you well. It served you well over time, Carter. Hey, Carter, can you have too many campaign co-chairs?

Zain 15:24

Let's just use this national Trudeau context. context he's

Zain 15:26

he's doing a couple per province some provinces one i mean this is not a full list this is like a sources say sort of article that i'm reading from the hill times but but just give me a sense of like when's

Zain 15:39

when's too much when when's too little like from a national context you may even want to boil it down to your provincial experience and then secondly i want to kind of talk about is there a better way to highlight what both of you are saying which is the work Work that needs to be done and the profile that these people bring. Is there another way outside of campaign co-chairs that you're able to highlight? Because that's where I want to go next and then we'll get to VC.

Carter 16:01

Every campaign has a hierarchy

Carter 16:03

hierarchy and status associated with it. And one of the things that you will often see is you will wind up with too many of something, right? And oftentimes it's too many strategists or too many co-chairs. I'm going to put this, I'm going to lump those together just for now, because you've got people who wish to direct the strategy of the campaign. And, you

Carter 16:23

you know, Jim Dinning's campaign jumps out at me. They had everybody and their dog sitting at the top table and

Carter 16:30

no one was doing any work. No

Carter 16:32

No one was actually going out and selling memberships. No one was really doing the heavy lifting that needed to happen. So yes,

Carter 16:37

yes, you can have many, too many co-chairs, too many strategists, too many people trying to dictate the overarching strategy for the organization. And I think that you can see some campaigns that struggle under that weight. If you don't have one person calling the shots and having everybody listen to that one person, then it gets a little bit confusing. And I mean, and when I say the one person, like that one person can be, you

Carter 17:05

cajoled or, you know, change

Carter 17:07

change directions through interactions with the other people on the team. But someone has to call the ball, right? Someone has to say, this is where we're going to go. this is the direction that we're going to aim at and and make the the actual decision i

Carter 17:19

think that was one of the problems with the ndp campaign who

Carter 17:22

who was making the decisions was it the campaign manager was it the co-chairs was it the leader right and and sometimes you can see those interactions really create some significant havoc but zane i would never take this opportunity to ask you why you lost that would be cheap it would be cheap i i

Zain 17:39

i would never take this opportunity to answer that question uh cory would you um would you say there's a maximum number of co-chairs the same question i asked carter and is carter when he references the dinning campaign effectively talking about the 0304 lakers when peyton and malone joined shack and kobe

Corey 18:01

great great working backwards great question um i think that we actually need to distinguish between different types of campaign chairs at this particular moment when you're talking about campaign chairs on a national campaign and you're talking about the the provincial chairs for that national which is what the start

Zain 18:20

start of this topic was yes that's right yeah

Corey 18:23

you're generally talking about like doers right and i do know that there are a lot of mps on that list i found that that's an interesting evolution in its own right um you know sometimes you would see senators because you would appoint the political hacks to the senate but to have mps doing it is i don't think unprecedented but it's unusual how many mps there are in my opinion but normally i think about campaign co-chairs on a national campaign like that is the person who is going to be doing that work on the ground so meeting with those candidates getting that full slate uh coordinating to make sure that everybody is is just like humming along right all cylinders being fired so that's one type of campaign chair it's like a super savvy senior organizer and i would put kathy moore the chair that was mentioned in alberta in that category right she was a former senior staffer she knows what the hell she's doing and

Corey 19:16

and then there's an other type of campaign chair and that's the more honorific one right like i'm like i've got my campaign i've got my campaign manager i'm gonna do my thing but i want to show that my campaign is connected to this individual so i'm going to to call them a chair or a co-chair or an executive chair or whatever it

Corey 19:34

may be but honestly the campaign will run just fine without them right it is just it is like a sinecure it's just a title that is given to somebody um to show kind of connection and

Corey 19:47

and i think you do need to distinguish between them because on on

Corey 19:52

you know a leadership campaign you tend to see more like the honorific style on like a big national campaign where there's work to be done and you've got to coordinate efforts i do think historically it's less of an honorific although as we've talked this out and i think about all those mps i do wonder if that's not changing too uh especially in regions where the party has more staff on the ground such as on carter

Zain 20:13

carter in your experience provincially where does it sit so let's put leadership aside let's put federal aside provincial general election campaign Where does it sit with campaign co-chairs? Where is like the modern use

Zain 20:23

use of them? Are they more honorary or are they actual organizers?

Carter 20:30

I think that the answer has to be both, Zane. I think that I can find examples of really solid organizers who take the title of chair or co-chair. And I can think of many examples of people who've taken the chair or co-chair title that are titular. and that is all they're expected to do is is the is just to be there and to attend the meetings just to add some gravitas or some heft to the overall meeting um you know we had i don't know if you know i'm just thinking back to the 2012 campaign we had a lot of different people who were responsible for things i'm not sure we called them co-chairs but we wound up having to have a you know a meeting of the co-chairs before we'd have a meeting with the uh with the campaign teams because everybody wanted to go running off in 13 different directions and there were only seven of them so how do you how do you do that how do you manage them uh becomes quite a challenging

Carter 21:25

yeah nightmare they always just used to call and try and get me fired uh it was upsetting the

Corey 21:31

very fact you talk about how you manage them tells me they're more that second they're not actually running the campaign if you're trying to manage them and keep their efforts i mean

Carter 21:38

mean I mean, arguably, yeah.

Carter 21:40

yeah. I mean, they're still doing things, but you have to manage the organization. You have to – you

Carter 21:45

you can manage up as much as you manage down. But with all that being

Zain 21:47

being said, Carter, your answer

Zain 21:48

answer was you would take them on – you would do this again. Even if it was in the honorifics lane that Corey is outlining, you would, if you upstarted a campaign tomorrow, have campaign coaches, right? And I guess the question I have for you as a follow-up to both of you is, is there a better way to do that? If we're talking about the not the doer lane, but let's say leaning more to the honorific lane, Corey, is there a better way, a better position than campaign co-chair? Or is it actually a nice, convenient, even modernly right-sized spot to put people in?

Corey 22:21

I think if you're talking honorific, it's great. It's a perfect title, right?

Corey 22:27

For me, the bigger question is the other.

Zain 22:29

other. It's on the doer

Corey 22:29

doer side. Like, what do you do if you actually want a doer, right? And it's like a volunteer doer, generally. Right. Like if they work for you, it's generally like a director or something like that. But but,

Corey 22:40

you know, it's it's a good title. It's fine. And I think that it's been around long enough and used in enough ways that, well,

Corey 22:49

well, it's a good honorific for people outside of politics. People inside of politics are pretty conditioned to be like, well, is that actually who's in charge and and

Corey 22:56

and kind of assess around. Yeah.

Carter 22:58

I was running a campaign tomorrow, I would have campaign co-chairs and I would have a leadership committee that the campaign manager, me, would report into. And those people would be responsible for my actions. I would be telling them everything that I was going to do, but I would not expect any of them to stop me.

Carter 23:17

you know like they'd be there they'd be someone I mean if there was something that they had a difficult time with you know like we had the same thing with the Gondek campaign and there were people on the leadership committee that were absolutely furious with me especially when we were doing the uh anti-Jason Kenney stuff but

Carter 23:36

but it didn't matter I was running the campaign they were just in the leadership committee yeah

Corey 23:40

yeah like let's be clear you yourself are on a campaign I'm not not asking you to respond to any of this don't worry but you're on a campaign right now where you're like co

Corey 23:48

co-director or something to that effect there's like an executive campaign chair it's raki pancholi if somehow you blew it and you blew this sure thing where nenshi should win with 100 of the vote we wouldn't have raki on here saying why'd you lose raki we'd be asking you zane why you lost right like that's that's just a reality of it and people are kind of used to knowing that the chairs are not necessarily doing the day-to-day those

Zain 24:13

those are the stakes and that's That's why it's not over.

Zain 24:15

You've already won. That's why it's not over. I've already got you. Carter, you're a little slow. It's definitely over. Carter, you were caught that one third of having Corey bore you that you couldn't really get the line out. Yeah, no, that's fine. He went a little long. Yeah, no, it's fine. He existed in a time when there was no email. Just, you know, he's old, but he's also wise, guys. Just he wants you to know that, okay?

Zain 24:35

He's not insecure at all about his place in

Corey 24:37

If you don't mind. If you don't mind remembering that. listen i had email from like 1991 92 on the whole world did not use email

Zain 24:45

email at that you had email in 1991 just

Corey 24:49

yeah man i had email before there was a worldwide web

Corey 24:54

actually couldn't tell you like i don't remember it was at uh cad vision i think carter what was your first email address that was a or a nucleus maybe uh

Carter 25:02

uh giant dick at

Carter 25:06

can't remember where i was at microsoft

Carter 25:09

microsoft msn no that's not right okay

Zain 25:11

all right yeah it's good thank you it's

Zain 25:14

it's good no one's gonna ask

Zain 25:15

let's move it on to our next segment our next segment okay what was your first email train at hotmail

Zain 25:21

okay i may still own it

Zain 25:23

still there i still have it forward i actually say i may i actually do not know the answer to that i may still have it forwarded okay to uh to my to my personal email let's move Moving on to our next segment, next segment, a summer in British Columbia. Stephen Carter, let's

Zain 25:38

let's talk about B.C. politics.

Zain 25:40

Do you want to talk about B.C. politics? You've just come back from

Zain 25:42

from British Columbia. So you are a local expert. We actually spend considerable resources after we replenish the Patreon funding to send you out and do a foreign correspondency in British Columbia. be uh yeah hey

Corey 25:58

hey zane do you know i realized how infrequently we talk about the fact we even have a patreon

Corey 26:03

just that people keep going

Zain 26:03

going yeah okay just okay let me do right now uh sign up to the patreons no i think this might i think this is a patreon episode

Zain 26:12

well if it isn't sign up to the patreon sometimes we do stuff there okay carter um

Zain 26:19

you have reporting for us us on the ground what are you seeing what are you hearing give

Zain 26:22

give us more well

Carter 26:24

as you know i'm

Carter 26:25

i'm an outdoors guy um i saw 11 people on the trail today and not one of them talked about the potential conservative party merger so conservative parties merger so i

Carter 26:39

bring that to you because it looks like the world of the united is not as united as that

Zain 26:43

that seems like a waste of our patreon resources to send you out there for that long weekend trip carter that is the that is the most minimal amount of reporting i've gotten back in a long time uh

Carter 26:55

it's pretty bad sorry this isn't

Carter 26:57

isn't my best episode i'm just i apologize to

Zain 27:00

everybody cory could be coming in bc's political landscape as backroom talks uh kind of became public in some ways uh a deal between the provinces two right of center uh parties if you can call them that one i'd say a right-wing party, one party trying to figure out who it is, or maybe it does know who it is and is trying to ensure that the public knows who it is, well, the talks are underway. And Corey, the question I have for you before we get into these details is, let's

Zain 27:30

let's talk about this from David Eby's angle.

Zain 27:34

this now become public that the conservatives want to consolidate, potentially to ensure that there is no vote splitting because they see a possibility to defeat Eby who's been up in the polls for a long time but we've seen some softening poll numbers over the course of the last number of weeks heading into the summer months you then have him taking a bit of a lump on the decrim file which we can get into as well uh which has been a talk of the the town in the province of which carter has zero reporting for us on uh but cory if you're david eby if you're the ndp campaign right now you're sitting here in may you go to the polls in october how

Zain 28:07

how you feeling are you concerned are you anxious are you stable and steady give me a feeling both of you give me a feeling and then we'll talk about their their their sort of like what they what they are feeling what they should be feeling and then let's get into the details of the of the conservatives in British Columbia well

Corey 28:26

well for sure I'm anxious and one of the things that's making me very anxious is I don't know what I'm going to be facing in October because yeah you can adjust to either their situation eb talked about like can't you know can't direct the winds but we can adjust the sails fine

Corey 28:41

fine but if you don't know which direction the wind is blowing things get pretty tough pretty fast right and are you dealing with a bc united bc conservative deal where they're splitting up the seats are you dealing with a merged party with a new leader there's people who want that i'm a little doubtful they'll be able to pull it together not saying it can't happen or are you you dealing with these two parties just kind of floating out there um in which case there's a real chance bc united collapses it all goes to bc conservative there's a good chance bc conservative under the limelight they

Corey 29:13

they collapse or that they they stumble at least and some of that comes back to bc united anyways different

Corey 29:18

different strategies for all of those right different strategies for all of them if you're talking about a merger then it's probably uh just having to deal with the situation in front of you if you're talking about two parties that have a deal then you're probably trying to paint the bc united people with the brush of the bc conservatives because likely that deal has the bc united party running in areas where they're competitive with the ndp not with bc conservatives and and if you're dealing with both parties then you're trying to keep the bc united up and the bc conservatives down and you're trying to thread the needle and so the challenge you have if you're eb is what are you preparing for what's your strategy because

Corey 29:57

because you just don't know what the situation is so what you want more than anything is i think certainty so you can start moving accordingly and in in the meantime what you need to do is just maintain that range of motion and not box yourself into one strategy over the carter how you feeling if you're eb right now well

Carter 30:15

well i mean you're up by six you're feeling pretty good um the conservatives have never done this well in terms of what you know the bc conservatives they've existed for years um They've done election after election, but it was always dominated by the B.C. liberals. B.C. liberals became B.C. United. I'm not sure that this is causal, but Corey, is this causal?

Carter 30:43

It's certainly correlation, but as a part of that, all of a sudden the B

Carter 30:51

.C. conservatives take off. off and my view is right now it doesn't matter if they conserve if the merger talks are on or off and in today's media they're kind of off again on again off but the fact that the bc conservatives are called the bc conservatives makes it look like they've merged anyways and the john rudstad leadership has made it a much more realistic option for British Columbians. And I think that that's going to be the more important element

Carter 31:30

element of this overall merger discussion. I think that people are going to think whether or not it happened or not, the BC Conservatives are the winners of the of the negotiations and you

Carter 31:43

know right now the bc conservatives are batting just just above the margin of error of the green party or the bc united just above the margin of error of the green party and and that's quite a shift cory are

Zain 31:56

are the bc conservatives the winners do you agree with carter let's say this doesn't go through do they still quote unquote win because they got to have this conversation have their name out there almost position themselves as more more moderate, the fact that this was even being considered, makes them a bit more viable in that sense that there was maybe even some shared priorities between a party that was the BC liberals that governed the province for a very long time and this populist conservative, quote unquote, upstart, despite it not being one. What do you think?

Corey 32:26

Yeah, for sure. I think in general, you look at the arc of the last couple of years, the BC conservatives have done an incredibly good job of making themselves credible. what was it the 2013 bc election in the lead up to it the bc conservatives were polling very well as well you know 20 25 percent in some cases ahead of the bc liberals i believe or like within a couple of points in any case and um everybody sort of said this was their moment and the bc liberals were in a lot of trouble but as you found uh the election approaching a the bc liberals were in government that helps but b the

Corey 33:04

the infrastructure that existed for the bc liberals and the donations and and just the you know the existence that had occurred over generations really helped uh you know push them back into the conversation a big way and the bc conservatives just paid it they just didn't and

Corey 33:21

for a while i think if you were bc united in the past couple of years you you could tell yourself the story that was going to happen again they're not real right it's just the the name conservative, give it some time, when it comes back, they have no ability to deliver, they're crazy, they don't have the donations, but that's all changing. And the idea that all of a sudden, we're at a situation where BC United is sort of having to acknowledge the power of this, even implicitly through the conversations around maybe deals as to where each party runs. That

Corey 33:54

That makes them real in a way that I think a lot of people have attempted to deny for a very long long time for

Corey 34:00

for a very very long time and i just don't think this ends particularly well for bc united i've thought for a while they're probably at this this point where it would be pretty easy for them to collapse to basically zero like just the diehards who are i

Corey 34:14

i don't even know if you could say diehards like because this this quote-unquote party is brand new this bc united right like i just don't know what keeps them alive at this point where they're so low in the polls polls and and we're in this era where people just want the bc ndp to lose or a lot of the bc united voters and and they look like they have a much more viable vehicle and they know their vote could make all of the difference carter talked about a poll it was an abacus poll that had the bc conservatives back six from the mvp well

Corey 34:45

well you put that bc united vote on top of it there and all of a sudden it's bc conservatives that's

Carter 34:49

that's not how votes work i'm

Corey 34:52

i'm aware but i also know that That if you're a voter sitting there saying, what the fuck do I care about BC United, you

Corey 34:59

know, if I shift my vote to BC Conservatives, there's a good chance that that party can win. That's going to be pretty easy for voters to see and process. And that, I think, reinforces the risk that BC United has. Carter,

Zain 35:13

Carter, is it too early, despite not knowing the fall results, to really highlight that BC United might be the biggest political own goal in Canadian political history?

Corey 35:29

And you see, you said own goal, which was double good, because they named themselves after like –

Zain 35:34

– Oh, I understand that completely. And it was absolutely deliberate. I put a lot of mindshare into this podcast, as you know. This is not just a

Carter 35:44

yeah no we we understand that we know how much you get paid um

Zain 35:49

carter is here i wanted to go down that path because i wanted to let you take so which

Carter 35:54

which is it kevin falcon or the name change kevin

Carter 35:57

kevin falcon or the name change kevin falcon or the name change is that even a debate

Zain 36:02

name change how is the leader even part of it right now it's a question because

Carter 36:06

because the leader The leader was elected 15 seconds before they changed the name because

Carter 36:12

Kevin Falcon comes in and says, we need to show that we're more like the United Conservatives, right? We need to show that we're united. Well, they can't call themselves conservatives. So they just take the united part of United Conservative Party and they say, we're now BC United, except BC United is a soccer team, right? So they didn't

Carter 36:31

didn't signal the right thing. They didn't signal the right thing at all. Well,

Corey 36:36

Well, we talked about this at the time, but the problem with the name BC United, in my point of view, is it's talking about themselves. It actually says a lot about the state of the party, which I think is the fundamental problem. They're very obsessed with who they are and not what they can do for British Columbians, right? And so they named themselves something that said, no, no, no, we're united. Rather than talking about an ideology that they are presenting to British Columbians, rather than talking about the future of British Columbia. Nobody in BC is sitting around saying, man, you know the problem with this province right now? We're so fucking disunited. If only there was a party that was offering us unity. yeah right man i'm so sick of

Corey 37:14

of the island in vancouver

Corey 37:15

like just like just fighting all the time the interior and and you know the kootenays which is in the interior so jesus but it

Corey 37:25

it almost underlines the absurdity of it all like it's just a it's just a silly name like what the name says nothing to british colombians nothing so

Zain 37:32

so so tell me this cory stick with you on this one um

Zain 37:36

um late Late May, October election, let's say this merger catches fire, possible, like logistically, mechanically possible, in your mind, to pull this off, rebrand a party, start it up, and have electoral chances?

Zain 37:52

chances? And this might be one party being consumed into another. And I ask you this because you've had a bit of experience with trying to get something like this off the ground, but you look at the timetable, my first question to you is possible, and then please opine on whatever other elements you'd like to.

Corey 38:07

i guess i would say possible but a caution a lot of effort might be spent trying to make it happen and it might not happen and then you might be sitting there as either bc united or the bc conservatives in september saying fuck

Corey 38:20

fuck i wish i had the summer back there's an election coming next month right and that's a challenge for i think any political party that's going into these things at these moments but there is also a cadence to negotiations and the 11th hour is pretty pretty powerful, saying, hey, you

Corey 38:36

want to win or you want to lose? And we can win if we all hang together. And so that

Corey 38:40

that could make a deal more likely. In terms of nuts and bolts, whether it's possible, for

Corey 38:46

for sure, it's possible. You actually have two organizations, and you can pick and choose the best parts from either. But realistically, it would probably look something like what you've got, or like what you've laid out there, which is one party, quote unquote, takes over but imagine

Corey 39:03

imagine you have these

Corey 39:05

these two groups uh at local level working individually and there'll be some weird meeting where they all come together the big challenge is nominated candidates i think at this point yeah

Corey 39:14

if you're going to do something like that but um yeah

Corey 39:17

yeah totally doable campaigns are funny like when you talk about like an actual local campaign they

Corey 39:24

they are not built for the duration they're built to work for 30 days and so can you build one in the next four months yeah for fucking sure you can from scratch if you needed to you could start a new political party tomorrow if you had all of the people and you could figure it out do

Zain 39:40

do you disagree with the quarry

Carter 39:42

yeah i do because there's nominated candidates there's egos there's there's all kinds of different things that are going to stand in the way of this and you know it doesn't take many ridings to have a conservative candidate already nominated and a BC United MLA. And you're just not going to see the play, right? The pressure will be, how do I get to save myself? And the selfishness of politics will ultimately come to play. And, you know, I talk about selfish voters all the time. Selfish voters pale in comparison to the selfish politicians. It's just one of the the realities that we deal with in politics uh people are self-motivated to ensure that they keep their gig and you

Carter 40:29

you know giving up giving

Carter 40:32

giving up your seat giving up your nomination is a tough thing to do it's something that you've probably thought a lot about and uh making that choice is is certainly going to be a challenge well

Corey 40:43

well self-interest is important in politics and i I think if you're a BCU MLA and you're sitting there thinking you are going down, you

Corey 40:53

might be more interested in trying to figure out a deal. Even if that deal is see if you can get the BC conservative nomination once everything integrates or, you know, once everything gets reopened there. Because let's

Corey 41:05

let's face it, where they are in the polls, like very,

Corey 41:08

very, very few of them are being returned and they all know that. What

Zain 41:11

What does the fact that this is now public mean for the cadence and the success of this in your mind, Corey? Does it help it? Does it hinder it? Does it advantage one of the two negotiating parties? Does it advantage the governing BCNDP? Like, what is the fact that this is now public mean for the next, let's call it four months, so to speak?

Corey 41:34

yeah so i don't have any intel on this i can tell you looking at it from the outside i read it a little bit differently i read it as the

Corey 41:42

the you know business community was not getting what they wanted this thing was maybe at impasse and there was just not going to be the kind of coordination and collaboration that the bc business community wanted so this was floated almost to break the impasse right uh they put something out publicly with the hopes that it would propel the conversation a little bit further or show a path forward that maybe maybe one party or either party was not inclined to put out publicly and it's pretty easy to convince yourselves especially if you're not particularly politically attenuated to say

Corey 42:17

hey if the public knows this brilliant idea then this brilliant idea will happen like the the mass will just kind of go right and that's how i sort of read it like it it seems like quarter-baked at best. Like, I don't, I don't know, like, I'm sure the mayor of Port Coquitlam is a popular guy, but he's also the mayor of a city of 60,000 people. And you're suggesting, yep, for sure, slam dunk next premier. And I don't know, like, a lot of political organizers, especially those who have spent their careers in provincial politics will be a

Corey 42:47

a little less enthused to just do that, right? Like, there'll be a conversation and that you're going to drop somebody as leader is, well,

Corey 42:55

well, for sure, probably a prerequisite. But I don't know, it felt almost like too much it's almost like it reminded me just like if

Corey 43:01

want to say like well

Corey 43:04

well you say like merge and we'll find a new leader and and there are some interested parties but just to just kind of put the whole package together like that just felt like too much so

Zain 43:13

so it was cory's right the the letter from the business community it's almost reminds me of pure polyev's letter to the business community was definitely meant for them and not

Zain 43:21

not meant for the general public just so anyone make

Zain 43:24

make sure that they know that and

Zain 43:26

and i can't believe i'm talking several hundred episodes ago that

Zain 43:29

that was so long ago it was a long time hey carter um

Zain 43:35

what does the public nature of this mean to you who

Zain 43:37

who does it who does advantage it's over it means it's over tell me why it

Carter 43:42

it means it's over it

Carter 43:43

it means no a public pro any process like this cannot um cannot withstand public scrutiny right all of a sudden the number of egos the number of people who are involved just you know

Carter 43:56

know almost infinitely increases and how are you supposed to get everybody to follow the same direction this needed to be super duper tight the

Carter 44:05

the second it gets big your donors are going to start calling everybody's going to start some are going to be thrilled

Carter 44:10

thrilled begging you know telling you to give up everything don't worry about it man just go and you know fall under john john's great someone else is going to say i'm only going to be i'm only going to do this of Kevin's in, the fact that it became public and the way that it kind of became public with the Port Coquitlam mayor saying, you know, I've been asked to be the leader. Does anybody believe that? Did anybody think that that was true? I didn't think that was true. I think that John Rustad's comment was exactly right. We approached him to be a candidate and all of a sudden he's out there saying he wants to be the fucking leader. Like, come on, guys. I just don't buy. I just don't buy it. But Corey,

Zain 44:47

Corey, from a pure strategy perspective, if you're the conservatives, do you want to just drag your heels on this as long as you can? This is free earned media for you. This is elevating you in a way that maybe matches where the polls are at these days. How do you want to play this? If you're each of the parties, now that it's public, how do you want to play it? I'll give you EB's response in a second around how he's playing it initially, but give me advice for all three, at least the NDP, the United, and the Conservatives, the three players in this. And let's start with the Conservatives, Corey.

Corey 45:20

Yeah, if I'm the Conservatives, I can't be distracted by this. One of the challenges that we've talked about is that lack of organization. So you can't spend the next three months seeing

Corey 45:30

seeing if you're just going to end up with BC United's organization. organization you've got to go out there and you've got to work hard to to build all of this and if people want to continue having those conversations i mean in the public about how this is the only path forward for bc united that wonderful but you also have polls you can point to and say we're we're six points away we don't need a merger uh we need uh common sense conservatives who are still with bc united just to realize they have a home with us and i'm working on building that home and i'll spend the rest of the summer and the early fall building that home for everybody there and that's that's it that's all you need to do that's all you should do and you really need to play down kind of the the activity that's going on in terms of building the merger probably saying things similar to what i've said which is we

Corey 46:15

we don't have time to fuck about with this right now we are right on the precipice here we can make this happen but we can't make this happen if we start chasing another strategy for three months that may or may not work out um we can't direct the winds so you know let's build our sales carter how did how How did the conservatives play this short

Carter 46:36

How did the conservatives play this? I think that they should just walk away from it. If I was the BC conservatives, I would just say— You've

Zain 46:41

You've got your maximum benefit from it? Yeah.

Carter 46:44

You're six points out.

Carter 46:46

The only person—the only group that needs a merger is the BC United guys. This is just—we're four points out, or six points out. We can win this. We probably could win this. With a dispersed vote, even like the NDP is going to be so strong in certain places, that we can win in a lot of places that people wouldn't think that we could win in. If we just get

Carter 47:13

get to work and actually build the party, we're

Carter 47:16

we're not going to acquire a party, we're going to have to build a party. So let's

Carter 47:20

let's go do that. And they have enough time to build from the ground up the operation that they need for October. Carter,

Zain 47:27

Carter, what should BC United do here? They're clearly in the position of maybe needing this a bit more, if the two of you agree. Clearly, that is your take, Carter, you've just mentioned it. But how do they deal with this? Do they try to keep this up front and center? Do they need this to keep hope alive? Should they also be cutting the cord as soon as this became public and getting back to trying to figure out how they carve out a path? How would you advise them going forward?

Carter 47:53

i mean is the bc liberal name still available like

Zain 47:57

talk to me talk to me that would

Carter 47:58

would be my seriously

Zain 47:59

seriously for a second we just talked about the mechanics of setting up a party in this you know short time span cory said it's technically possible you had some political considerations which i think cory came around to could they go back like let's actually seriously explore that for a second could they take their lumps and be like you know what fuck it we are the bc liberals

Corey 48:20

funny to think about why

Zain 48:21

why not think about it like carter you you you were saying the stone-faced so tell me are you serious and

Zain 48:27

and if even if you even if you're not let's just talk about it seriously that

Carter 48:31

that can that which can be done can be undone i mean it would be only hubris that would be stopping you we knew this is the right thing to do we're not going to change you

Zain 48:40

you have to lose a leader that you

Zain 48:41

you think you have to lose a leader yeah

Carter 48:44

it'd be a lot easier to lose Talk

Zain 48:45

Talk to me through these steps. Give me the Stephen Carter back-of-the-napkin plan for how you do this. Which one do you do first, leader, or do you go back to the party? Falcon

Carter 48:58

The party appoints an interim leader. The interim leader says, we've always been the liberals. What's made us great is the ability to welcome people from all the different political colors. BC has known that the BC liberals were not the federal liberals, and this is how we can make our province run the best, is to return ourselves to the natural governing coalition. And,

Carter 49:26

you know, hopefully that works. I mean, there's enough time to take. I think it's a hell of a lot easier than selling them a brand that, you know, Corey has made an eloquent case about why it doesn't work. You

Carter 49:40

know, my case has been it sounds like a soccer team. Both cases are right. It does not work as a soccer team or a political party. So it's not working. It's not going to work. Jump back into the pond that you actually are the big fish in. Corey,

Zain 49:55

Corey, any thoughts on going back to BC Liberal? And then I will get your take on what United needs to do here.

Corey 50:02

it's just i mean it's

Corey 50:04

it's interesting it part of me is like that's so fucking crazy but a big part of me is like i guess why not you know it's not working i i you know you could do it if an old leader came back right it doesn't sound like christy clark's on the table sounds like she might be an enthusiast for a merger but if christy clark came back and you ran as the bc liberals i think you would immediately jump 20 points in the polls i do because then you just you've almost said like we're undoing all of this nonsense we're going back to kind of the traditional bc liberal route or roots but it becomes hard if it's not that like old leader old flag sort of works new leader old flag i think you're going to have the challenges that led you to bc united in the first place and then it seems like you're actively choosing liberal as well which is not a brand that in the west has a lot of currency like for our listeners out you know what brand

Carter 50:53

brand doesn't have a lot of currency in the west you know what current you know what doesn't have a lot of currency in the west bc united does

Carter 51:00

does not have a lot of yeah not

Carter 51:02

a lot of currency it's not you know

Corey 51:05

it's probably worth it's not a novel observation but it's probably worth talking at some point about the fact that the brand liberal is dead in

Zain 51:13

lot of places in the west right

Corey 51:15

right everywhere in the west for sure and and also you know not looking great and in a lot of other regions too but they

Carter 51:21

they thought it was the name that was polling poorly and it turns out it was just the party in general so

Corey 51:28

it's a challenge but i i think that you'd need to do like a full reversal not just a reversal give

Zain 51:33

give me your uh let's let's get out of the the name change lane what what would be your advice to to bc united uh

Zain 51:38

uh perhaps outside of the name change specific

Corey 51:40

specific to this the specific

Zain 51:42

to this merger being public now i'm not telling you to solve all their political issues but knowing what there's but

Corey 51:48

political issue knowing their political issue they are so fucked they are so fucked

Corey 51:56

right like look at where they are on the polls but also by even going down this road a bit by even acknowledging there's been conversations it's so much harder to say that the bc conservatives are a different and be like too scary and too far right wing which you know falcon tried to do again here saying like oh it'd be tough with people saying like vaccines are the same as nazism it's like yeah yeah you fucking sat there and were willing to merge with them by the sounds of it here like by even going down this road i think they might have just put the final nail in their coffin because they have effectively said we're the same as them or at least there's enough closeness that like we can work together

Corey 52:36

they're not nearly as kind of competitive or relevant as the bc conservatives in the polls so what are you going to do like if you've got two groups that that are both by their own kind of acknowledgement taking the same space but one of them is viable and the other is not

Corey 52:53

mean it's not fucking rockets they're fucked they're just fucked i can't believe how far this is unbelievable to me how badly they yeah it's

Carter 53:01

it's the stupidest thing ever was to sit down and actually negotiate yeah they

Corey 53:06

unless they were willing to surrender everything and get that merger no matter what the cost they never should have sat down because they they don't have a hand like what hand are they playing they've picked up five coasters and three of them are covered in beer other two dog shit like they've got nothing they have absolutely nothing

Zain 53:25

they're screwed cory cool

Zain 53:26

cool your jets for a second carter what

Zain 53:29

what is what does he need to do here this is this is what he said what

Zain 53:33

what does he need to do falcon let it slip that powerful interest we're trying to arrange a marriage of convenience between them while i've got a message for these lobbyists rusted and falcon the next election will be decided the kitchen table not at the the boardroom table that's his current message right now um talk to me about his message talk to me about his strategy does he does he want this thing to keep you know bouncing around in the media and the public consciousness or is he also satisfied with a quick death to this conversation uh so to speak you know in some ways you could argue as much as they're not talking about you it's not it's not a terrible time for you in in in that regard no

Carter 54:08

no i mean it's not been been bad for eb as this is unfolding but um you know there is a real risk that this actually did happen i mean if there was only two parties that were viable and legitimate oh hang on never mind there are only two parties that are viable and legitimate it's not like united's going to jump up and take over uh in the same way that it's not like the greens are going to jump up and take over so my

Carter 54:32

my thinking is if if i were running you

Carter 54:34

you know eb's campaign i wouldn't do this kitchen table bullshit i don't know what that is about uh instead i'd be saying uh listen it looks to me like uh united is has agreed to cross over to the side of uh the people who think vaccination is the same as nazism uh that's according to uh that's according to you know the leader of the united uh the united party so bc united i can't even get the name of it out because it doesn't even make sense to me so i think i would go on the offensive a hell of a lot more than eb's going uh and and stop trying to use things like uh stupid fucking lines like um you know it's going to be decided at the kitchen table not the boardroom table i think it's just fucking gross yeah like write better what

Zain 55:25

what do you think you have the same thought on the messaging cory i'll let you pick up on messaging and then then let's talk about his strategy as it relates to this merger what he needs to do how he needs to navigate this what it what advantages him uh in in the short and i'm talking short term here short term sense yeah

Corey 55:40

yeah i mean this is one of these questions where i was jealous steven got to go first because of course like of course we're going to end up in the same place um if i were eb i would claim the merger is basically already done in all but name yeah they might be fucking about deciding you know which vehicle it's going to be who's the leader are going to be but let's be clear this the bcu leadership has decided that they're just fine being bc conservatives and in my opinion that means bcu leadership has lost their way well the good news is the ndp have a home for reasonable british colombians who are business friendly who didn't see themselves as bc new democrats but look we've managed to you know deal with the finances fairly well we've managed the economy fairly well we are a home for reasonable business business-friendly British Columbians, and it's pretty clear that BCU is not. It's not a home for reasonable people anymore.

Corey 56:34

So, welcome, but this is the fight now. It's us versus BCU. Do you have

Zain 56:39

have a strategic sort of concern

Zain 56:42

concern or even like low-burn anxiety, if you are, E.B., that by doing that or saying that or acknowledging that this is a two-horse race, that you don't open

Zain 56:53

open up the vote split? split that that yeah

Corey 56:56

yeah right like and to

Zain 56:57

put to your point here

Zain 56:57

like how do you

Zain 56:58

navigate that then is is my follow-up question i

Corey 57:02

think that one of the risks that i know carter doesn't

Corey 57:05

in the vote split so

Corey 57:06

up with you on

Corey 57:07

there's no such thing as well

Corey 57:10

don't have a crystal ball and i'm not on the ground in bc and maybe it looks very different there but i would say one of the temptations you're going to have as the bc ndp is

Corey 57:18

is to to think that you can build a strategy that props up bc united and allows you to thread the needle for for longer than it's viable and then you realize too late oh fuck it's like this is just not going to happen like we're not threading the needle and so you've got to read it and make the determination at a certain point if if what i've said is accurate like if bcu is fucked if it is going to be a two-way race with the bc conservatives well then you've got to start thinking about how you manage that two-way race And this goes back to where I say, if you're EB, the frustrating thing for you is not necessarily does this merger happen or not, it's the uncertainty. So if I'm EB, all I can control is to try to eliminate that uncertainty by basically almost acknowledging that it has happened, right? So for you, then you just run that strategy the whole time. I think that's not an unreasonable thing. I

Corey 58:09

I would certainly entertain arguments that it's high risk, but I think that that's probably what BC NDP need to do if they don't want to be sitting there at like E-Day minus five saying, well, shit, we're now five points behind BC Conservatives. Carter,

Zain 58:20

Carter, what do you think of this? If you're EB, obviously you guys are aligned on message. Would you yourself, if you're advising him, say,

Zain 58:28

say, sir, lean into the fact that this is a two-party race going forward?

Carter 58:34

yeah I mean two-party race is exactly what it is like you don't have to lean

Carter 58:39

lean into anything that is make-believe you're leading into the thing that is and that thing that is is is kind of scary to you because um you

Carter 58:50

you know the the conservatives there's just they

Carter 58:56

used to be crazy and now Now they're being seen as sane and that has changed the entire makeup of the provincial election in my mind. So the conservatives need to continue to grow. They will probably be strong enough in enough places that, you know, the BC

Carter 59:14

BC NDP are really going to be facing an uphill battle just to hold on to government, even with a four point lead or a six point lead. So my thinking would be for David Eby to put on your fucking punching gloves and try and punch a little bit better, then

Carter 59:30

kitchen table is where things are going to be decided.

Carter 59:33

God, I'm still struggling with that.

Zain 59:36

Struggling with a lot of things, Carter, but we're going to leave that segment there, move it on to our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we do this for you. The entire show is for you. About time. Yeah, you're really fading here, so let me get the most important questions out of the way, Carter. Overrated or underrated, the political hurt EB is going to feel, you think, heading into this election on the recriminalization. So this is after weeks of troubling stories about the problematic street drug use in hospitals, parks, bus stops. B.C. asked the federal government to recriminalize the use of drugs in these public spaces. How much is this going to hurt? Is this an overrated political story or is this an underrated political story as it relates to EB's and the NDP's political future?

Carter 1:00:19

I think it's underrated. I think that organizations that don't understand that addiction is not a criminal issue, it's not a mental health issue, it's an addiction issue. Addiction is troubling. It is impossible to manage for other people. It's hard enough to manage for yourself. And this idea that decriminalizing was going to solve an addiction issue hasn't done so. and it hasn't made the streets safer and it hasn't made uh crime go down it hasn't made everything work the way it should so my thinking is that uh you know eb is going to be dealing with this for quite some time because it was absolutely the wrong call in in the same thing with oregon i mean um or oregon oregon um you know this is it's not a question of whether it's legal or not not the addiction doesn't care. Addiction doesn't care if it's legal or not. So, um, you better be able to find ways to manage the consumption, manage the addiction, manage the, the, the drugs. And I just don't think that it's going to happen, uh, with this new set of drugs that have happened that are, that, that they're beset upon our population. I'm tremendously

Carter 1:01:35

tremendously empathetic to those who are going through it, but, uh, you know, decriminalization was never the answer answer to addiction. Corey, in

Zain 1:01:42

in your mind, from a pure political perspective, overrated or underrated political story for EB's future heading into the fall?

Corey 1:01:51

Underrated. My sense of these issues is it's one of these things like PBS,

Corey 1:01:58

PBS, where people claim they are more supportive of it than they actually are when push comes to shove. And I think people could intellectually get to a place of, hey, we've got to have compassion and decriminalization is the approach but it it hits a little different when you're driving down east hastings and you see just kind of like blocks of human misery it hits a little different when the needle is in your local park and unfortunately for the bc ndp um they they were pretty hand wavy and beyond on why there was logic to decriminalization suggesting that anybody who who raised concerns to it you

Corey 1:02:37

know there was a lot of overheated rhetoric that was effectively like well you just don't care about people if you don't support decriminalization you're just treating these people like criminals and and reality is a bit different and people are a little more selfish and um people don't want to see hard drug use in their city and that's just a reality as much as they can intellectually understand the arguments for being more compassionate um

Carter 1:03:00

decriminalization isn't compassion though yeah you

Carter 1:03:03

you know compassion is compassion like You say that different things, but

Corey 1:03:06

but I feel like you were in some way sort of dancing around the reality from the voters point of view, which is they don't want to see that shit. That shit makes

Carter 1:03:13

makes them feel uncomfortable and

Corey 1:03:16

they want the police to have the tools to arrest people if that's if that's occurring near their house.

Carter 1:03:20

Even if they are arrested, it doesn't matter under

Carter 1:03:22

under today's criminal codes. None of this matters.

Carter 1:03:26

You know, we've got we've built a system that doesn't work on any level, whether

Carter 1:03:31

whether it's legal or medical. um all of these the both of those levels are completely broken for addiction and rehabilitation works for some people thankfully but it's certainly not working for everyone and

Carter 1:03:47

i i just think you know that we're approaching it all wrong we need we need to come up with some different and better solutions um but obviously decriminalization wasn't one of those solutions and i'm not sure it was ever going to be one of those solutions well

Corey 1:04:00

well so the challenge is with everything you just said is

Corey 1:04:05

you have to offer a solution then not you but like a politician who goes down that road right and if you are somebody who just says we've got it we can't indulge this we can't allow this to occur in our cities which is kind of a traditional you know small c conservative view of that that's pretty easy messaging and that will find a lot of resonance with people and so

Corey 1:04:26

to go i mean this is this is a hell of a lightning round question but i

Corey 1:04:30

i i think it's a huge issue for For the BCNDP. And I think it's a bigger issue maybe even than people are picking up on in the various listening mechanisms we have out there. Two

Carter 1:04:38

Two words, Corey. Consumption camps. Leave it there. Move on to the next round.

Zain 1:04:44

Corey, in or out on the Prime Minister announcing his campaign co-chairs provincially. Are you in or out on this? You may not say it matters, but I'm just curious. Do you like this? Do you not like this?

Corey 1:04:56

i think that part of it was not to talk about the campaign co-chairs it was to talk about the fact that he's sticking around right he's so sticking around that these details are now coming out and uh subsequently i am out carter

Zain 1:05:11

carter are you in or are you out on the pms making the announcement of his provincial co-chairs or at least the fact that he has done so not not so publicly but but he's done so it seems like as

Carter 1:05:23

as i meant to say to him when we were chatting on the pod um i'm i'm i think that he needs to leave at this point and it's sad but it is what it is and uh i do think this is reinforcing that he's going to be staying so i am out

Zain 1:05:40

out well we can you know even if he stays carter we can continue because there's no limit on this to thank him for his service.

Carter 1:05:48

Okay, I did that. It was respectful.

Zain 1:05:52

If you think so. Carter, final question to you. Who is the ultimate political winner of the merger talks? Is it the conservatives in BC or is it the BC NDP? Who does this help more at the end of the day? Stephen Carter, your take.

Carter 1:06:08

I think it helps the NDP more, but they're going to find a way to muff it up.

Zain 1:06:11

Corey, who does it help more? The conservatives or the NDP?

Corey 1:06:16

The conservatives, it makes them look less scary. And it also makes it look like there's less daylight between them and BC United. And like I said, if there's two parties that seem pretty similar and only one is viable, the other will just cease to exist. We're

Zain 1:06:30

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1804 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velge. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we will see you next

Transcript