Episode 1808: Exceeding the moment

Corey 0:02

This is the strategist.

Corey 0:05

Can we do that again?

Carter 0:07

Yeah, try it again one more time.

Corey 0:08

All right. The energy was off, right?

Carter 0:10

Yeah. It's got to be like, this is the strategist. No,

Corey 0:13

No, that's way more than he brings. I just need you to know that. Yeah. So

Carter 0:17

So it's somewhere between the two. Yeah.

Corey 0:18

Yeah. What if we both say it at the same time? And

Corey 0:21

And I think it'll sort of work out that way, right? You ready?

Corey 0:25

This is the strategist. This is the strategist. Episode 18-0. no it's working just keep going 1808

Corey 0:32

my name is steven carter and

Carter 0:34

and i am cory hogan

Corey 0:36

and zane velgey will be joining us later but he really

Corey 0:40

he's watching the end of the of the hockey game what

Carter 0:43

what hockey game it's

Corey 0:44

it's not even basketball i don't know man it's really upsetting it's the one where the oilers are going to fall down to nothing in the in the uh the

Carter 0:53

it's called see what he's watching like maybe it's close if

Carter 0:55

if it's close i'll give one It's 1-1 right now,

Corey 0:58

now, or it was when I started

Corey 1:00

started this great intro.

Corey 1:03

your time. Take your time. Don't worry about it. Yeah,

Carter 1:05

Yeah, it was a really good intro. Listen, I've got the internet right here. Okay.

Carter 1:09

They don't seem to have scores on here. How the fuck? What kind of piece

Corey 1:15

Your internet is not

Corey 1:16

not internet at all, is it? It's your parents SMSing you important things they think you need to know.

Carter 1:22

Yeah, that's exactly what it is. They wouldn't let me have. uh it's one to two oh

Carter 1:28

florida panthers they're up to nothing oh they're they're

Corey 1:31

they're up because you know edmonton was up one nothing at one point what

Carter 1:34

what a comeback bad

Corey 1:35

bad trend line is what we say in the biz it's

Corey 1:39

it's all about trends isn't it it's all about momentum momentum

Carter 1:41

momentum is everything it

Corey 1:43

it really is you

Carter 1:44

you know one day we should do a whole episode on momentum oh

Carter 1:49

it's not going to be today though is it no man we don't feel it that's

Corey 1:57

so uh we don't know how long he's going to be although i am heartened to hear that uh florida's up which means it's less likely to go into overtime just

Carter 2:06

just how invested is he in this like is this a cash thing is this like like

Carter 2:11

like has he gone to vegas and put down some cash gambler

Corey 2:13

gambler i don't know i

Corey 2:16

don't like to ask a lot of questions about his personal life

Carter 2:20

i've got dinging here i have to turn off all my dinging okay

Carter 2:25

one did not disturb now every boy

Corey 2:27

boy how does zane do this small talk thing for like four minutes at the start i am exhausted makes

Carter 2:31

makes it all about himself so you try that ah

Corey 2:34

okay well i i could get behind that i

Carter 2:38

i heard about you camping do you want camping no

Carter 2:43

Aren't you glad that you don't have to camp most of the time? Sometime as

Corey 2:44

as a parent, you

Corey 2:46

you got to do things. You just got to do things as a parent. I

Carter 2:49

I sent Heather. I didn't do any of it. I

Corey 2:51

I was smart of you. I

Corey 2:52

I was real smart.

Carter 2:53

smart. No, Heather's like, oh, I like camping. You should go.

Corey 2:55

I am strongly of the opinion.

Corey 2:59

All of human history has been an effort to stop camping. That's what led us exactly to where we are today.

Carter 3:05

Hey, did you notice something that happened today? we

Corey 3:10

talking about shannon resigning our

Carter 3:12

our friend shannon phillips yeah but

Corey 3:13

but that broke yesterday is that even news at this point well

Carter 3:17

well it's within the last 24 hours okay doesn't it count yeah

Corey 3:22

yeah long time mla lethbridge

Corey 3:29

that's three terms she got elected three times in

Corey 3:32

as in as a new New Democrat in Lethbridge, talented

Corey 3:35

talented political operator. Very

Corey 3:37

Smart as hell, tough as hell, pretty

Corey 3:40

pretty fucking funny, good person.

Carter 3:42

She's only punched me a couple times, so things are pretty good. Well, not as

Corey 3:46

as many as you've deserved. Probably

Corey 3:49

as many as I've deserved. It's true. Shannon's awesome. It is not

Corey 3:53

not awesome that she's leaving politics in part because politics has become such a clown car, you know? And she in particular has had some of the worst you can imagine. So for those of you outside of Alberta in particular who maybe don't know the story,

Corey 4:10

Shannon was actually stalked by members of the Lethbridge PD who misused their police authority to get access to things to stalk her. And there was an ACERT investigation. That's the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team. So they're like the people who watch the Watchmen. They recommended charges against these police officers. The Crown prosecutor declined to

Corey 4:32

to kind of press those charges. We don't know all the machinations, of course, but I think the very fact that the ICER investigation found what it did tells you basically everything you need to know about how absurd, how absolutely absurd of a situation it was and how inappropriate it was for police, for political reasons, to be tailing somebody they perceived as a political opponent. when she was a minister of the crown to be clear to she was the minister of environment at this point yeah

Carter 5:01

yeah it was a crazy time it doesn't make uh any sense to me that uh the crown prosecutor didn't go forward with those charges but uh i wasn't i wasn't able to to join that prosecution i would have i would have in a moment been down there and supported but uh you know i mean her her time with that was a few years ago now seven years ago six years ago and

Carter 5:23

and it was a

Carter 5:24

it's kind of haunted her since uh but now she gets to leave uh join you and me on the outside uh wonderful

Carter 5:32

yeah poor thing you

Corey 5:33

you know i really appreciated her quote where

Corey 5:36

where she was i don't know what the lead-in was but her quote was jesus christ himself couldn't keep me in this job right that's

Corey 5:44

so you know shannon tell us what you really think you know tell us how you really feel

Carter 5:50

so do we want to talk a little bit about uh do

Carter 5:53

do you think first of all cory do you think nancy's got this leadership wrapped up i

Corey 5:57

i okay we are at the almost tomorrow is exactly but by the time most of the people who are listening to this are listening to this it's been three months since since Nahed Nenshi had this leadership race wrapped up, okay? He entered on March 11th, and

Corey 6:11

and it's June 10th, as we record. So, yeah, I do. Nothing has changed in the last three months that's made me think that he doesn't have this wrapped up. To be fair, I didn't know he had it wrapped up the first week, but once the first numbers came in and it was clear how

Corey 6:25

how many memberships he had sold,

Corey 6:29

I think most people sort of...

Carter 6:31

Yeah, it was pretty clear at that point. It was pretty clear at that point. But you were working with Racky, and you're a quitter. That's what I heard.

Carter 6:39

That's how I heard the story.

Carter 6:41

So here's my question for you, sir.

Carter 6:43

You and I have been involved in by-election politics in the past.

Corey 6:47

Yeah, once or twice. Does

Carter 6:47

Does Nahed Denshi push

Carter 6:50

push for someone else to step out?

Carter 6:52

Or does Nahed Denshi go to Lethbridge West when the inevitable happens, and he wins the leadership?

Corey 7:01

Okay, so there's a few schools of thought here.

Corey 7:04

one is he does and one is he doesn't but

Carter 7:08

thank you he either does he goes so i think there's actually three schools of thought oh

Carter 7:13

wow he goes in calgary he goes in edmonton or he goes in lethbridge but

Corey 7:17

but you think he goes like you don't think there's any like him from the outside because that would be a fourth school of thought the

Carter 7:23

the fourth school of thought is literally so stupid that even he wouldn't do it okay

Corey 7:30

i'm just checking the time stamp on that particular quote there okay can

Zain 7:35

we start with the lethbridge one well

Corey 7:37

well okay actually you're right no let's let's broaden you're taking the right approach here yeah

Corey 7:42

you're taking the right approach you are not hedonistic you are the leader of the alberta new democrats you do not have a seat in the legislature and

Corey 7:50

and now there is a by-election that's going to be called in lethbridge west but even setting aside the by-election for half a beat here what do you do what is your path to to the legislature. I know that we just said it'd

Corey 8:05

it'd be kind of dumb not to go to the legislature over the next three years, right? But can we expand on why it would be dumb for a minute? I agree with you it would be kind of dumb.

Corey 8:15

I'm going to hear your reasons and then I'm going to build on top of them.

Carter 8:19

Well, I think my reasons are it gives you a legitimacy. It also gives you the common experience with the MLAs that are currently sitting in the legislature. It keeps you close to them. You know, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. And MLAs in your caucus are both your friends and your enemies. They tend to be the ones who take you out if things go horribly wrong. So my view would be that you want to make sure that you're in the legislature. That's where the media happens. We've talked a little bit about dome disease and getting a little bit caught up in in the uh the the the

Carter 8:55

the parry and thrust of the uh of the question period stuff but i think that nowhead would be able to kind of keep things on the question of the day keep things focused on the media opportunity of the day and if he's in the legislature he's going to be able to take advantage much stronger yeah

Corey 9:10

yeah well i i agree with that i think that the the one for me that's the most important is and it can't be understated if he has a challenge going forward it's that he's He's an outsider and he's not necessarily known.

Corey 9:24

People will argue, people will disagree, but he's not known for being like the big team player who brings everybody in. He's known for the give

Corey 9:31

give the 45 minute speech and everybody surrenders, right? That would be kind of the version.

Corey 9:40

there's just a few challenges that he will have from the outside, I think more acutely felt than somebody else in a different situation. Somebody who was a lifelong New Democrat, somebody who's just more naturally collegial. I think being there is important because, A, it puts you in the trenches with them. It helps them see you at your best. You're very quick on your feet. You're going to be very good in the legislature. Dome disease will be a problem, but can I tell you something about dome disease? Your ability to pop it from the outside is zero because they will just think you don't get it and you don't understand. but if you're also there with the same stimulus the same inputs you are able to say hey listen i know we're all wrapped up in this right now but this is not what's leading the polls right now this is not what we're hearing at the doorsteps this is not what's coming through our various channels you saying that from the outside not also subject to dome disease just makes

Corey 10:31

sound like you're an arrogant prick who knows better than them which see my earlier points is one of those things i think he's going to need to watch i think that's his biggest risk here so it's really really important that he get in there. The other reason is a little more prosaic. You haven't mentioned it, but like, it's

Corey 10:46

it's a paycheck. And if you're not getting it from the legislature, the legislative assembly office, you're going to be getting it from the party. And let's just say you pay him same

Corey 10:57

same as the premier, which would be pretty normal. I think, you know, giving top-ups to get the same as the premier from official opposition, that's about 200 grand. You're going to just take that out of the party over the next three years, that's 600 grand. You know, there'd still likely be a top-up with him in the house but it would be tens of thousands not hundreds of thousands yeah

Corey 11:15

and that matters too people will say it doesn't but that matters

Carter 11:18

yeah no that's it's an excellent point and also your staff is going to be hired through the uh through the legislature so having the staff there uh as leader of the opposition they're there and you're there so again it's kind of like the mlas that's how you kind of keep things together so So now we've decided for our friend, Nahed Nenshi, that he is, he's in fact going to seek a seat. Well,

Carter 11:41

In order of the probability of a seat becoming available.

Corey 11:46

Bridge West. Oh, wait, we're going from zero. From

Carter 11:48

From 0%. Okay. I mean, we already have the 100%. All right.

Carter 11:52

So, and it's not quite 0%, but people have talked about Calgary MLA stepping down. The two names that I've heard most recently are Joe Sisi in Calgary Buffalo and

Carter 12:02

and Luann Luann Metz in Calgary Varsity.

Carter 12:06

So just for the interest, just for the interest sake, what I'm going to ask you is, what happens if a Luann Metz steps down in Calgary Varsity? Is that a safe enough seat? Oh, yes,

Corey 12:16

yes, that's a safe seat. Come on. You're

Carter 12:18

You're not about to

Corey 12:21

Varsity is one of the safest seats in the city. You know, if you were going to line up the seats, I think it would probably be number three or number four in terms, like, let's put it this You know, I know Anne McGrath well. You know I love Anne McGrath. She was the candidate in Calgary Varsity. She barely lost. It was just a handful of votes.

Corey 12:40

And that was despite her having run for the Communist Party of Canada, and she barely lost, right? Right? And look, if you're looking at, I think, the natural lay of these ridings, that's probably third or fourth to me. Like, it would be Mountain View, number one, easily

Corey 12:56

the most NDP riding in the city. Buffalo, number two, easily

Corey 13:02

easily the number two riding in the city. Then I think Varsity's immediately in the conversation. I

Corey 13:06

I think Varsity's in the conversation, or you're starting to look at Irfan's riding, right? Yeah, Klein,

Corey 13:14

Well, I don't think Klein or Elbow are in that next order. I think Varsity falls more naturally before them. So,

Carter 13:20

So, Luan, so let's say that, now,

Carter 13:23

now, here's the problem. Neither

Carter 13:24

Neither one of those two have stepped down.

Carter 13:26

Yeah. Right? So that puts the probability relatively low. Do

Carter 13:30

Do you wait, if you're not heading entry, for a potential seat in Calgary, given that the potential that either one of them steps down might be less than 50%? and a more risky thing could happen too, Corey, and that is that a rural MLA would step down.

Corey 13:49

Okay, well, we're going to get there. But look, it's

Corey 13:54

it's not the weather. It's not something you just sit and wait to happen. Like, you call them up. If you haven't had these conversations already as the Nenshi team, you're out of your mind. And it's not like you say, I want you to step down. You call and say, you

Corey 14:07

you know, we're thinking about charting his path forward and we want to understand your intentions. like what's and i'll tell you about both those names you mentioned uh luann and joe

Corey 14:17

for joe there's been rumors he's not going to run again since he first ran you know since 2015 so i think it's pretty safe to say like hey you know i heard maybe maybe you're thinking about hanging up the saddle or the spurs or anything else you might hang up there yeah

Carter 14:32

yeah anything cowboy related anything cowboy related you're

Corey 14:35

you're hanging out there joe i'd love to know because that's and we're considering in our path forward and that itself is often enough of a nudge if the person's there right um because you know then you could sort of naturally talk about now you want to be careful you can't induce somebody out of a seat but you if somebody's planning to leave anyways and they're thinking about how they do the transition obviously there are there are things you can you can say uh in terms of like hey it'll be okay like i've had to do it i'm not hedonistic i had to do that transition right um so that's one option luann metz there's been there's been been rumors for a bit you know how thrilled i am to talk about rumors but she she was happy to fight the good fight and be in the election these are the rumors it's not coming from any sources directly right but this is not the job she wants to do long term she's kind of planning to be one and done is the rumor and so if you're one and done you know half and done is not that that different right and so you can start to think about things in those terms so

Corey 15:32

so i like i just want to sort of challenge the assumption that it's going to happen or not and you sort of have to accept it we've talked about too but you could literally have that conversation with everybody kathleen ganley doesn't win the leadership she wanted to be leader hey kathleen what what are you planning to do next is

Carter 15:48

any is there any point in worrying about the seat is too safe yeah

Carter 15:54

you know we're not going to take mountain view because it's too safe and i'm the leader and i can take well

Corey 15:59

rachel Rachel Notley represents Edmonton Strathcona, so I guess not. Funny

Carter 16:02

Funny you should mention that, because the Edmonton seat that I'm hearing speculation about is Edmonton Strathcona. Kind

Corey 16:10

Kind of makes sense,

Corey 16:10

sense, in a way.

Carter 16:11

It does kind of make sense, but would you be, first

Carter 16:14

first of all, taking a Calgarian and dropping him into Edmonton? Would that create havoc? Or any more havoc than dropping him into Lethbridge West? East? East? West? West?

Corey 16:28

think it would cause less havoc because I do think that the smaller the the jurisdiction especially in I

Corey 16:37

think it's true everywhere but especially in Alberta like there

Corey 16:40

there is a huge difference in the population like Calgary and Edmonton are both kind of around one and a half million people metro Calgary a little bigger these days by 100 or 2000 but

Corey 16:50

but you know they're basically the same size cities then there's a big

Corey 16:55

big fucking drop off to the next biggest city and there is a lot of insecurity wouldn't be fair to them but they're certainly like hey don't forget about us lots of people live here chip on shoulder

Corey 17:04

feeling in a lot of the smaller population centers that i simply don't think exists in the same way in calgary and edmonton we have our we have our small rivalries and our kind of like chippiness but i don't i i don't know that somebody would actually hold that against you that you were from calgary in edmonton or vice versa i

Corey 17:23

i just i'd be curious your thoughts but i just don't feel that's that's as likely to trigger the same reaction you're gonna have the same like you're airdropped in you're not really from here but i don't think that there's like an

Corey 17:34

an extra or an inordinate amount of challenge with them yeah

Carter 17:37

yeah i'm gonna save my i'm gonna save my problems for uh or my opinions here for one more question and that's around lethbridge also

Corey 17:45

also can i just say like what are you worried's gonna happen in strathcona you drop 60 percent of the vote you

Corey 17:50

you might know okay i'm

Carter 17:51

i'm gonna drop in I'm going to drop in. Here's my thing. I

Carter 17:55

I think that if you have Luann Metzen and Joe Cici and Rachel Notley stepping down and you're not hitting Enchi, it would be really great to get three or four of your own caucus members.

Corey 18:06

Oh, so you actually think there should be more than one? You think you should be trying to

Carter 18:09

to create? I think, you know what? You're making the calls around. You talk to Rachel. She's definitely going to go. You talk to Luann. Luann's thinking in the next three to six months, she's going to go. Joe Sisi, you can't get him out of the pub. So you have no idea what's going on. go

Carter 18:25

well it was a funny it was funny to me um and then uh lethbridge west you already know that you've got an mla leaving so why not take lethbridge leave

Carter 18:36

leave those other two or three seats available for your own people to step into and and start to contain it start to show not tell what a nahad nenshi led government or party might look like fuck

Corey 18:49

fuck the caucus would love that huh like oh you're just slowly replacing them one by one no

Carter 18:55

no you're getting what you're doing is you're taking the opportunities that are arising anyways these are people who are to your point they're going to leave on their own accord you're not incentivizing anyone to leave you're not incentivizing rachel notley hey you should get the fuck out of here she's like i'll see you later jackass well

Corey 19:14

that's easy shannon even shannon's it like shannon's

Corey 19:19

shannon's gone gone through a lot and she has reasons to leave like good reasons you know not like the kind of cliche i want to spend time with my family although she has a family too right yeah but like she's got good reasons but even that one it's like well you're leaving just before nahed nenshi's coronation and and people have made the comment and that's part of where i'm sure it came from like well are you resigning because he's going to win i'm sure that was a question now

Corey 19:43

now if you have four or five people going doesn't that start to look not

Corey 19:47

not great if you're not heading edgy well

Carter 19:49

well that's a really interesting point i mean it is counter to mine which makes it less good but you know i just

Carter 19:56

just i think i think you know with if you've got these safe seats let's say that you called joe you called luann you called uh rachel let's

Carter 20:05

let's just say and

Carter 20:06

and each of the three of them indicated that they're prepared to leave if you wanted their seat and now you've got lethbridge west in the game

Carter 20:14

wouldn't it be smarter like if you ran a candidate from lethbridge in lethbridge what are the odds that you actually hold lethbridge i

Carter 20:24

50 50 what are the odds if you run not had nancy and you're not nancy in this question

Corey 20:31

so we're gonna i

Carter 20:33

no you're not had nancy you're playing the role of not oh then i think 100

Corey 20:38

100 then i think 100

Corey 20:39

then i think yes okay in

Carter 20:44

you see what i'm saying i

Carter 20:45

i do with this i

Corey 20:46

i you i think you know where i might take this after i think you might see the challenges that i see with this well

Carter 20:52

well take me take me down the path fine sir because i'm taking you to he's

Carter 20:56

he's gonna run a left bridge west because he knows he can win even

Carter 21:02

then he and then then he saves the safe seats for

Carter 21:07

people that he really wants to serve i i

Corey 21:09

i don't know man okay well

Corey 21:12

there's some interesting personality

Corey 21:14

personality dynamics there i don't know i mean like that okay we're

Corey 21:19

we're talking about lethbridge west now and i threw a couple of things on the table i said either he runs or he doesn't can

Corey 21:24

can we expand a little bit on that yeah

Corey 21:27

i'm going to talk to you about four potential things that could happen and they're pretty obvious but i think each of them is worth worth at least a second of conversation right the first is that he doesn't run there and the ndp lose that's

Corey 21:41

that's not great for him he loses a seat right out of the gate right really

Corey 21:46

not great for him the

Corey 21:48

the second is he

Corey 21:49

he doesn't run and

Corey 21:50

and they win i i actually think that might be the best outcome but let's just put a pin in that one right now right

Corey 21:56

now there's a new member of the southern in alberta new democratic caucus a bit of a refresh still a rural not rural but like small community caucus member yeah still a not calgary or edmonton caucus member which i think is like you lose that if you want run and win as not hit nancy right yeah

Corey 22:13

uh so that that brings us to the other two options like you run and

Corey 22:17

and you lose well

Corey 22:18

well i don't think that's fatal to a guy who got 83 percent in the leadership uh contest right but

Corey 22:25

but i do believe i

Carter 22:28

that is not let people know that you know what the answer is okay

Carter 22:33

if people are gonna freak out it's

Corey 22:34

it's gonna be so awkward if

Carter 22:35

if it's 83 now

Corey 22:36

now because they're gonna think

Carter 22:38

yeah they're gonna think how did cory know and then you're gonna have to tell them yeah

Corey 22:43

yeah that's right i'm

Carter 22:44

i'm from the future you know what it's all well why do why do you think i predicted jeb bush i

Carter 22:49

don't want that kind of pressure

Corey 22:55

right uh i called my shot he i called so he runs he loses not

Corey 23:04

not fatal but not great right

Corey 23:06

right and really hobbles him right out of the gate i think probably exacerbates some tensions some people will say is this actually what we need to win my goodness couldn't even hold a seat in lethbridge west what does this mean in edmonton what does this mean outside side of calgary have we gone too far right you start to have like the serious doubt set in which will not do you any favors with a caucus that you are still not a member of at this particular moment right and then you're almost in a panic to get to the legislature and that's that's not great and the other is you run and you win and i i mentioned one of the problems with that which is you no longer have that southern alberta voice like you've replaced it with your own voice yeah but there's another logistical problem which is you

Corey 23:48

you will have to spend a fair bit of time in lethbridge like even if that fair bit of time is like one day every two weeks

Corey 23:55

you know if you're leader of the party and you're trying to build it like that's not your home like i have nothing against lethbridge but there are two seats in lethbridge and it's not your home so like your supply lines are somewhat lengthened in that situation so i like is that actually a good thing for nahed nenshi if he were to win there so

Carter 24:12

so you're thinking that the best is that That he does not run there, but they still find a way to win. Yeah.

Carter 24:18

And he takes one of the ultra safe seats in Calgary or Edmonton. I

Corey 24:22

I do. And I think I can see where you're going with this. But let me just throw out like another set of four that comes out of that conference. Like if he decides, if he decides the best thing for me is

Corey 24:35

is I win, but I don't run. Like I get somebody else to win that seat. Right.

Corey 24:40

Yeah. So he either, he's there all of the time and he wins. in which case good for him or

Corey 24:46

or he's there all of the time and he loses i think you've got a lot of the same doubts and a lot of the same challenges and you have people saying why didn't you run there yourself uh he's not there at all and somebody wins that

Corey 24:59

that i think is awkward i doubt you're gonna have too much of a call for like why weren't you there i could do it without you or he's not there and they lose in which case everybody says well

Corey 25:09

well it's because you didn't lift a finger for us right yeah it's

Corey 25:11

it's not great either so in in my opinion the narrow path he needs to walk here is he needs to find a candidate that can win there and then do whatever he can to help that candidate win there and

Corey 25:25

and hopefully it's by a higher percent than shannon won by or else you

Corey 25:30

you know there will be some when you're creating this

Carter 25:31

this mythical person do

Carter 25:33

do you and in you know do you give them special powers do you uh make them superhuman do you allow them to see through walls i don't do you want them to fly i

Corey 25:43

i don't think you need a superhuman i and maybe he's got good connections and they've just done a leadership contest and yeah it was a sham because he won it from day one with 83 of the vote but but

Corey 25:56

he probably has a bit of a network in lethbridge as a result probably has some sense as to who he thinks might be a good candidate they also have a pretty strong wrong group of new democrats down there like they have for years they have before shannon won the seat right

Corey 26:09

right shannon was one of them but you know you've also got like rob maraschino yeah

Corey 26:13

ran and lethbridge east great guy there are others uh there are other people you could lean on and you could ask to run for you there who i think could deliver just

Carter 26:23

just for the record cory it is three to one with uh five minutes left zane's not joined us um this is not instilling me with a great sense of hope that he's actually going to show up but uh nonetheless we we we venture forward because we are trained professionals well and uh this

Corey 26:40

this is what five minutes to me says 15 minutes of hockey because there's going to be like all sorts of stuff going on and a five minute cry so that'll get him here at about the 45 minute mark oh

Carter 26:57

basically you're saying that nenshi should run in calgary or edmonton yeah

Carter 27:01

and then we should He should find a better

Carter 27:04

better candidate than Shannon Phillips in Lethbridge.

Corey 27:07

Not better than Shannon. I'm saying a candidate that, like, riding a bit of a Nenshi bump can

Corey 27:13

can get a higher percent of the vote.

Carter 27:16

And what if you're Daniel Smith?

Corey 27:18

If you're Daniel Smith, there is one thing you do.

Corey 27:21

You call this by-election right away.

Corey 27:24

Right now. Right now. As a courtesy.

Carter 27:26

As a courtesy to the NDP. Nahed

Corey 27:28

Nahed Nenshi and the NDP. Well, I noticed their leader doesn't have a seat. So obviously it's up to the people of Lethbridge, but he's, you know, I didn't want to leave this one languishing because, you know, obviously he'll want to get into the legislature. Just sporting of me to do that.

Carter 27:42

that. And you do this for like July the 14th, right in the middle of fucking Stampede. I

Carter 27:47

can't do anything but campaign in Stampede. All he can

Corey 27:49

can do is, or he just says, no, I'm not going to do it. In which case, like the premier gets to be like, oh, that's

Carter 27:57

I tried to help.

Carter 27:59

I tried to help.

Corey 28:00

Afraid to meet the voters of Lethbridge, are you? Well, I think that says an awful lot about what the Nenshi NDP is going to be about. They

Corey 28:07

talk a good game about rural representation, but you know what? Not confident enough to meet those voters.

Corey 28:15

I mean, isn't that what you would do? Or a version of that? Because that just sounds like fun.

Carter 28:19

I mean, there's only two options. You go, like, tomorrow.

Carter 28:22

Like, you go super-duper fast. And really try and put this thing, like, right in the middle of Stampede Week.

Carter 28:28

Like, really fuck them. That,

Corey 28:29

That, to me, sounds delightful.

Carter 28:32

delightful right like it can be called for the

Carter 28:35

the month the first monday of stampede and that would be outstanding um second

Carter 28:41

second thing you do is you drag it right

Carter 28:43

right you get through your i mean you get through your fall session and

Carter 28:48

and uh then you call it on december 31st and

Carter 28:51

and sometime in in january when

Carter 28:53

when lethbridge the the good folks of lethbridge love

Carter 28:56

love to come out to vote in the middle of january

Carter 29:00

they get to come out and vote for

Carter 29:03

for Nahed Nenji and

Carter 29:05

it doesn't matter if another person steps down, you still have six months to play with

Corey 29:08

with you have six months from when they did it you can make

Carter 29:11

one happen you can make one happen six months from now another one happen six months from the next person to resign

Carter 29:18

you don't have to put him into the legislature until 2025

Corey 29:24

pretty fun if you're the conservatives I did want to throw on the table the counter argument from the old strategist discord which would

Corey 29:33

would be you're danielle smith you've got a leadership review coming up you don't want to lose an election to not head an energy before that review so why would you go before yeah

Carter 29:43

yeah so this is why the six month thing looks really well

Carter 29:46

well really solid i

Corey 29:48

i just don't think she loses anything by not like

Corey 29:50

like it's an ndpc right At best, it's an NDP hold. At worst, for

Corey 29:56

for the NDP, it's an NDP loss, and it's a terrible black

Corey 30:00

black eye for Nahid Nenshi.

Carter 30:03

Yeah, and I'm just not sure she wants to take the risk prior to the review. I'm hearing rumors that there's nerves suddenly appearing in the Premier's office about the review. We're hearing a

Corey 30:13

a lot of rumors right now, but I'm obviously hearing a

Carter 30:15

a lot of the

Corey 30:17

I think Don Brady even has kind of hinted at some of it in some recent

Carter 30:21

well you know zane would never allowed such reckless speculation

Corey 30:25

he doesn't care for reckless speculation no

Carter 30:27

no he's a he's he's committed to the cause right we are stuck the strategy not to rumors like some common pundit um so okay

Carter 30:38

okay we've pretty much exhausted uh you

Carter 30:42

you still think he's

Carter 30:48

zane would probably be able able to say and on to our next segment so here's the next segment you

Carter 30:53

you want to talk about the next segment hold

Corey 30:55

are we do we have another segment we

Carter 30:57

we have another segment oh

Carter 30:59

right i'm going to do a segment because i'm pissed about it all

Corey 31:02

all right what's the segment is

Corey 31:05

soiling in the carpet the

Carter 31:07

the dog shit on the carpet okay

Carter 31:10

said let me tell you what happened the dog shit on the carpet and it was it was it

Carter 31:15

was a texture i've never seen before a

Carter 31:18

texture i've never seen before and the smell i can't even describe and

Carter 31:21

and so what i did is i walked up allow this

Corey 31:22

this to go i

Carter 31:23

i walked up and i put on rubber gloves i mean a hazmat suit what if i if i would have had it i

Carter 31:29

i scooped it all up but it

Carter 31:31

it stained the carpets we had to get the carpets cleaned so the carpet cleaner came in yesterday which is why we didn't record yesterday but

Carter 31:39

but i'm aware yeah

Carter 31:41

carpet cleaner we thought

Carter 31:42

thought he got we thought he said i got it all

Carter 31:51

anyways so there's a um big brown spot uh on

Carter 31:56

on the carpet pretty excited about it

Carter 32:00

so yeah heather's now trying um hydrogen peroxide and baking soda and that's taking it out step by step that's so is

Corey 32:08

is that what she's doing right now and

Corey 32:11

and you're and you're recording a podcast you're basically just talking to your i think yeah

Carter 32:15

yeah i that's shut up this

Carter 32:18

this is i get money from this this is this is revenue this is this is a job this is a job i'm

Carter 32:26

i'm just talking to my friend

Corey 32:30

yeah all right so

Carter 32:31

so that was not my second topic but that's

Corey 32:34

i'm really sorry to of the audience zane is much better at these transitions you

Carter 32:38

you know what i might do i might post the photograph in the discord no

Carter 32:44

that i might i might do that in

Carter 32:46

in the general category so if you're not currently a strategist podcast patreon member you

Carter 32:52

you know you don't even need

Corey 32:53

need to go to strategistpatreon.com and for as low as six dollars a month get access to our patreon exclusive episodes usually three or four a month plus our massive back catalog you don't even need to do that you can just go to the general channel is that what you're saying yeah

Carter 33:08

yeah here let me uh let me update you on a little story here uh

Carter 33:12

uh it is currently four to one

Carter 33:14

for the florida panthers that's

Corey 33:16

that's not good it's so over

Carter 33:18

where's our friend zane

Corey 33:22

i'm sticking to my timeline here it's fine it'll be fine yeah

Carter 33:25

so do you want to talk about a little uh little pipeline burst oh

Corey 33:29

oh see i thought we were going to wait for zane for that but yeah Yeah, we can talk about it. So do you want to tee

Carter 33:33

tee this up? I was prepared to wait for Zane, but it's like 34

Carter 33:38

And you're thinking he's going to be another 10 minutes.

Carter 33:42

think we just press forth.

Corey 33:45

Well, do you want to tee this up for the people who are not in Calgary, who might not know about this issue?

Carter 33:50

For people not following in Calgary, here's what has happened.

Carter 33:53

We have a giant water main that brings a significant amount of water into the city of Calgary. i'm not entirely sure how much it is but it's 60 or so percent of the water that we use on a daily basis comes through this single pipeline it also helps big ass pipe it's

Carter 34:10

it's a big ass pipe how big we talking we

Carter 34:13

we could drive a car down the pipe how

Corey 34:15

how many times have you heard that in the past week it has

Carter 34:18

has been the single talking point that has been consistent everything

Carter 34:22

everything else has been an inconsistent so

Carter 34:24

we can drive a car down this pipe it is so big and it burst uh

Carter 34:31

uh a week ago sunday

Carter 34:34

a week ago sunday boom water

Carter 34:36

everywhere flooded uh not a drop to drink oh

Carter 34:41

that's so good yeah

Carter 34:43

yeah water everywhere drowned

Carter 34:45

drowned like flooded bone s uh flooded 16th avenue and uh it took quite a while just to get the water to stop flowing and i'm not exactly sure why uh because the communications have been so poor but um bottom line water

Carter 35:03

water explodes water goes everywhere water gets turned off now

Carter 35:07

now you're the city of calgary now you've got some problems so

Corey 35:11

so how are most calgarians introduced to this steven i'm doing a little bit of prompting for you here they wake up in the morning on

Corey 35:18

on friday and it's 6 40 in the morning emergency

Carter 35:24

is that how it actually happened because i was away yeah

Corey 35:26

yeah well like i mean people were talking about the day before i was vaguely aware that it occurred the day before i'm like oh that that's trouble but at

Corey 35:33

at 6 40 in the morning an emergency alert goes off to everybody in the city of calgary that's like in

Corey 35:39

in the most dramatic fashion you must conserve water do not shower do not run Run your dishwasher. Do not do anything. We're at the risk of critical failure, I believe were the words. I'm sure I can pull up the exact.

Corey 35:52

Well, I'll pull up the exact words in a minute. But yeah, it was like, it was the strongest phrasing that we heard. And it was the start. It started with some very, very strong words out of the gate.

Corey 36:03

But now that I know you were away, I am going to take you through the rest of the day. Okay,

Carter 36:07

Okay, because the day, I was away that day. I was in somewhere. I can't remember where I was, but I was not here.

Corey 36:15

okay you were in ottawa you're welcome no

Carter 36:18

no i don't know i made

Carter 36:21

it burst on sunday didn't it not friday no

Corey 36:23

no it burst on thursday and

Corey 36:26

and then on friday it's

Carter 36:28

been a long time man

Corey 36:30

yeah this is this is the most apocryphal podcast you know when we

Corey 36:34

start talking about actual facts here keep

Carter 36:36

keep going tell me tell me sir tell me sir what happened on that day okay

Corey 36:40

okay so right off the bat

Carter 36:41

bat day one plus one Do not bathe,

Corey 36:44

bathe, do not wash dishes, do not wash clothes. Critical failure, right? Real risks here.

Corey 36:52

And then immediately from the city, and kind of sporadically and intermittently, there starts to be kind of like softenings of the message. The mayor, Mayor Gondek, I believe you know her. I'm

Corey 37:04

Yes. Well, start saying things like, oh, no, no, you can bathe your kids. Contradicting the emergency response alert, right? Right. Yeah.

Corey 37:13

And so now people are a little confused. What are we allowed to do? What are we not allowed to do?

Corey 37:18

I'm handing it back over to you, Stephen, because now I'm editorializing.

Carter 37:21

Here's what, here's what I want to do, because I don't, you and I can do a criticism. Right now, I have spoken to probably 20 different communications professionals over the course of all that. And we're all lighting

Corey 37:30

lighting our hair on fire, right?

Carter 37:31

right? Every single communications professional is saying this is the worst communications they've ever seen. And that's

Corey 37:38

can i tell you can i run through why as a practitioner i think that there are some challenges with it just at a super high level and then

Carter 37:46

then super high because i think what we need to do is instead of doing this from

Carter 37:50

from a critical point of view yeah

Carter 37:52

we need to we need to show not tell we need to show not tell and we need to say okay we're in the war room what

Carter 37:58

what is what are the key priorities and what are the key deliverables that we're actually putting in place all

Corey 38:03

all right you know know what let's do it your way because i'm pretty sure that like you'll

Carter 38:07

you'll get to yours the

Corey 38:08

the contrast will come out pretty naturally here here's

Carter 38:11

here's so so cory uh

Carter 38:14

20 minutes ago a water main broke yeah

Carter 38:17

right you're on crisis communications response um and you get called into the uh the the emergency center yeah because calgary's got a very expensive emergency center yeah it's It's in Che. Did

Corey 38:31

Did you know that?

Carter 38:32

It is in Che. It's very exciting. It's in Che.

Carter 38:36

What would be your first order of business? What's your first, what is it you're actually trying to do in the first 10 or 15 minutes of walking into the room?

Corey 38:44

Okay, well, I'm the communications person in this context, right? In

Carter 38:48

In this context, you're comms.

Corey 38:50

Yeah, well, I ask because you do need to sort of figure out what the hell is happening as a first order of business. there's kind

Corey 38:56

i've said this i think recently but you know aviate navigate communicate right like first you want to make sure that the plane doesn't fall out of the sky then you want to pick your direction and actually start working the problem and then you want to start communicating with people so if if we're kind

Corey 39:11

at the communication stage or maybe this is all sort of not like right the first thing you want to do is is open those chains of communications you want to actively express you know the challenges with the issue right

Carter 39:25

so what you know so the very first thing is to actually find out what's going on yes

Corey 39:29

yes right very important so

Carter 39:31

once it sounds flip but

Corey 39:32

but it's very important no

Carter 39:34

no and and what type of communications are you doing prior to actually knowing what's going on uh

Corey 39:40

uh prior to knowing what's going on you communicate listen as soon as we know something we will tell you you likely want to set up a couple of like i'll touch base with you at at 8pm. I'll touch base at 9pm because one of the challenges that occurs in a situation like this is people start to feel there have been updates and they don't know them yet. So they start flooding you for that information. So you need to make very clear the minute you know anything, this is where the information will be. This is when you will be available. Even if the update is no update, you will provide the update at that time on schedule. And depending on the severity of the emergency, that

Corey 40:13

that dictates the cadence. So it might be, you

Corey 40:17

you know, it might be three times a day, it might be twice a day it might be once an hour depending on the nature of the emergency but you are making sure that everybody knows what's going on and by the way like i can you've done this professionally i've done this professionally you

Corey 40:31

with confidence put out if you're doing this right a lot of updates they're like no updates 8 p.m no updates because people start to think if you don't put up the update that says no update something

Carter 40:40

something else is an update

Corey 40:42

so you just got to continually tell them even when things have not changed the

Carter 40:46

the The first release I would write, and I would place it onto a number of different mediums. I'd put it onto X, Twitter. I'd put it onto Facebook. I'd put it on as a news release going out to the media. Banner

Carter 41:00

Right. There is a water event happening in Bowness.

Carter 41:05

We do not know what it is. As soon as we do know, these are the channels in which we will update you on. Right? right? Stay tuned to the channel that you are currently on, and we will update you as soon as more information becomes available.

Carter 41:18

And we will do regular updates at 8, 9, 10. The regular update thing, Corey, cannot be overstated.

Carter 41:26

You must be doing a regular update on top of the hour, bottom of the hour. In some cases, you try. I don't think that there's ever much utility to doing them more than every 30 minutes uh one once an hour loop

Carter 41:40

yeah once an hour um is probably best case scenario once every two hours uh is starting to see that the situation's slowing down right so within that first hour um you're going to want to really get to the bottom of what is happening you don't even need to have a prognosis yet you don't need to be able to say to people and this is what's going to happen next right you just need to be able to say to people we have a significant water event happening in bonus period

Corey 42:10

i will let you know as soon as we know right as

Carter 42:13

as soon as we know more these are the channels well

Corey 42:16

well and so these are the channels is something i want to pick up on here because you do need to well hopefully you've established beforehand you know you're activating channels more than you're establishing channels but right Right. And certainly for an organization like a city, that should be the case, right? You have plans for these kinds of things, but you want to be establishing those channels and making sure that they are all like of an appropriate fidelity. So one of the challenges with the way social media has evolved, even with like X over Twitter, like

Corey 42:45

like I'm not on Twitter anymore. If you're not logged in, you can't see threads. So you can only see the one tweet now. So that's a bit of a challenge the other is the way that many of them have started to prioritize content based on engagement rather than recency you might not be looking at the most recent updates so be aware of the strengths and limitations of these channels and this is why you want to maybe be controlling your own sources of truth and even if you have an update always ending it with like for most up to the minute updates go to calgary.ca slash pipe burst or whatever right like it doesn't even matter but

Corey 43:18

but what you want to do is make sure that you are signaling on these channels what your source of truth is and that you know check check against like the date and make sure you're looking at the most recent things if this is information you absolutely need yeah

Carter 43:33

yeah and i think that the next thing is um who's

Carter 43:35

who's going to be the spokesperson who

Carter 43:38

who is going to actually be carrying this information you've had experience with this where you've had to make choices of different types of spokespeople You and I have both been spokespeople for organizations, but there's also times

Carter 43:52

times when you push up the ladder and there's times you push down the ladder. This type of an ongoing situation, when would you say this is going to be the mayor or this is going to be the chief, the CAO, or this is going to be the wastewater management, the water manager?

Corey 44:13

CAO is the chief administrative officer. It's the city manager often would be the equivalent job. But yeah, it's

Corey 44:22

it's a double-edged sword the minute you bring politicians in, right? So you need to be very thoughtful about that decision. If you're trying to keep it at more of a technical level, if you're trying to say this is operational, then you probably want to deal with technical operational people. people now in this situation i probably would have brought the mayor in pretty soon because it sounds like you need to ask the city to do something so that would be i think one of the potential triggers of when you want to bring a politician in right um but generally speaking when a politician comes in you're signaling something and you're also activating a different set of skills you're activating in theory communication

Corey 45:02

communication skills and and here's the thing we

Corey 45:04

we are um i think

Corey 45:07

think we even us we have said like so many times like oh like you know an emergency occurs and the politician rises to the occasion and more often than not they do and we've we've certainly talked about this offline right oh

Corey 45:18

but the reason that i mean that's not a given

Corey 45:22

it's more likely than not to occur for a couple of reasons one is they have like the whole apparatus behind them at that moment right and two this is what politicians do we select them based on their communication skills. So when we need them to communicate, even bad politicians are generally very good communicators, very good communicators. And so it's a bit shocking when you find a politician who, for

Corey 45:46

for whatever reason, kind of stumbles at a moment like this, because what they're really doing is just trying to articulate in a very passionate and political way, political small p, like I understand what drives people way, I mean, the

Corey 45:58

technical advice of the people who work for them right but you know that's when you would bring in a politician

Corey 46:05

oh shit zane's here stop talking about nahid

Zain 46:07

oh fuck okay yeah there we go uh sorry my mic was on you guys uh did you catch all the insights that i was saying you

Carter 46:13

you were fantastic oh

Zain 46:15

oh my god that's it's such the best i've ever heard you oh it's probably some of the best work i've done uh hey carter um what did you think of my performance thus far uh

Carter 46:24

uh one of your best okay Okay. Well, thank you. Well, thank you. So it's unanimous across

Zain 46:27

across the board. I

Carter 46:29

I love it when you don't phone it in. That's what I've always said.

Zain 46:32

Well, Carter, listen, let me tell you something. As someone who's constantly seeking the limelight yourself, when do you make the way for a politician to come into a crisis situation? Have you ever actually made way for a principal to come in and ruin the Stephen Carter show?

Carter 46:49

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's all kinds of times when it needs to happen. We were having an emergency one time with the city of Calgary getting a windstorm that was breaking glass and dropping it onto the streets. At that time, we left it with the minister. But it's relatively straightforward. When do you need to move it to a politician? Well, you move it to a politician when you're asking people to do something,

Carter 47:15

trying to relate to the electorate in general, and

Carter 47:19

and when it's moved beyond a relatively small group of people who are impacted. uh so in the case of this flood uh you move it to a politician when you've got a uh when you're asking the entire city of calgary to uh you know flush when brown don't

Carter 47:39

don't flush when when yellow yeah

Corey 47:41

yeah that's the rhyme for sure flush when brown don't flush when yellow sounds like a children's book it sounds like a children's book what's the second uh what's the second rhyme what's

Corey 47:49

what's the second page of that there is a rhyme yeah what's the what's the rhyme if it's yellow let it mellow if it's brown flush it down oh

Carter 47:55

oh that's really good you know what would have been great cory if

Carter 47:58

if you'd been in the war

Carter 48:00

war room when that was decided how

Carter 48:03

how to communicate around flushing the fucking toilet because

Carter 48:06

i still don't know what i'm supposed to be doing that's

Carter 48:09

that's excellent since you arrived the the podcast got better i

Zain 48:14

i i bet it did um and and just to be clear i've I've been here the whole time. Corey, here's the thing. I want to get your take on two things. I know you can handle two things at the same time. Carter, one thing enough for him, too much. When do you bring in a politician is question number one. What is a Corey Hogan playbook on this? And number two, I think more interestingly and perhaps even more importantly, does your politician, does your principal need to be the explainer in chief? Do they need to be the summarizer in chief? Or do you leave that to your experts? Like, what is the role they want to play, right? And I know we in Calgary have seen politicians play different roles. They stand up and then they cede the mic to others. They're just there for introductory comments. Some are more explainer-in-chief style. Others are more, hey, trust the experts. Others kind of lay down the law, being like, you fucking heard what this person said. Follow what the fucking person said. What is your model for a politician in a crisis? First, when they should come in. Secondly, what is their job, Corey?

Corey 49:14

Well, I mean, great question. And I think that the way I answered it just before you came on is probably the strongest answer one can give. But if I were going to recap and take, like, a second swing at this particular one, I would say politicians are the conduit. I would never tell you I didn't like it the first time, so this is how I do it.

Corey 49:32

Politicians are the conduit to the electorate. It's like what Stephen said.

Zain 49:36

said. Because this is the third

Zain 49:37

third time we're doing this. Okay,

Corey 49:39

Really emphasize the point. You elect a politician, and the politician brings your views forward to government. But it's also a necessary and essential function that you sort of distill and summarize and communicate government back to the electorate as well. And obviously, and especially in these very charged times, we tend to think about that largely in terms of like torque and spin, but there is a foundational communications role to the job. So when you need to activate that role, like when you actually are asking people to do something and not just like say, oh, that's interesting that X happened, then that's the time for politicians. And what I was saying, which I better just get out here now, before you came was, we're

Corey 50:19

we're so used to politicians doing that well and effortlessly. It's a bit shocking when politicians don't, right? Like even a bad politician is usually a great communicator, because that's how they got the job. That's how they get selected into the job.

Zain 50:34

in times of crisis, is their job principally being the person, like the one point of contact? Or are they kind of like a head of a team that they kind of draw attention to something, that their job is to kind of be like, listen to these experts? Or do they have to indeed assume the role of quasi expert to kind of be the explainer? And this may sound like semantics, but I think this is perhaps at the heart of, you know, some basic crisis communications in terms of what the role of a politician is. What do you think from your perspective?

Carter 51:04

I think you need to surround the politician with actual experts. I think that our ability to respect expertise is certainly lower today than it ever has been. But nonetheless, we still need experts to tell us what's going on. And I want to hear from an expert who understands what the problem is to

Carter 51:26

ensure that I'm getting the best information. And I know that the best information isn't necessarily going to come from a politician. They're going to give me to-dos. They're going to give me what happens next. But they're not necessarily going to give me the best information of why

Carter 51:44

why this happened or what's happening in general. role.

Carter 51:46

So my view would be have a politician who is then surrounded by a team of people who actually know what's going on. And that team may be one person.

Carter 51:57

In the case of like a fire chief that stands up, we've seen this a lot in the fires that have occurred in Alberta. Or in the case of the large floods that have occurred in Calgary, it could be a relatively significant team of of people who are communicating on behalf of fire, police, water services, and other services that are essential for the city to continue operating.

Zain 52:20

Corey, this may seem like an obvious question, but I have to ask it.

Zain 52:23

A public servant, an expert in the field, we're talking about water in this case,

Zain 52:30

if they're a better communicator than the politician, is

Zain 52:34

is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Corey 52:37

Well, they should probably

Corey 52:38

probably run for office. It's not a bad thing that they're good at communications, but it's not just their

Corey 52:44

their capacity and competence, it's also who they are. That's really important. I mean, let's put it this way. All three of us in any organization we're on would be just the spokesperson all of the time if that was the only consideration, but there are other considerations at play here. and and it's not just technical competency either it's like it's the gravitas it's the heft it's the fact that you are the person who can marshal resources and it creates confidence when you are the decider and you are telling them this as well so that matters and and one of the things that you're always trying to do in every presentation i've said this before and i'll say it again you like you're trying to fill to the level needed for four buckets you want to make sure that you've established your credibility on a matter you want to establish comprehension of the matter. You want to establish the relevance of the matter to you, the listener, and you want to establish urgency. You want to establish the need to act, right? That's what you're trying to do in every presentation to varying degrees. Like if you go in and you're like a professor of medicine, you probably don't need to spend a ton of time explaining that you know how the human body works, right? Credibility comes pretty full.

Corey 53:49

Don't need to go too much further. On the other hand, if you're that same professor, but the setting changes and you're at a medical conference, You might actually need to push that credibility up a bit. So you're always sort of trying to assess where those are. And one of the things that a politician brings is, strangely,

Corey 54:05

strangely, maybe counterintuitively in these times, credibility. Like, I'm the person who decides it. So when I tell you this is the thing, you get to understand that this is actually going to happen. But to be clear, I'm not talking about technical competency.

Corey 54:18

competency. I'm talking about credibility when I say, if I say A, A is going to happen. If I say B, B is going to happen. Because I'm the person who gets to decide that. You don't need to worry that you're playing a game of telephone. phone they also have a great deal of strength with creating uh relevance and urgency and comprehension frankly like this this is their skill set so um it's it's kind of important that that you have a politician involved when it hits a certain level for a bunch of reasons not least of which is they're the boss but also because they naturally have this skill set when you talk about like the broader need to communicate though most

Corey 54:55

most people are only going to follow the first like two minutes of the update, the summary that's in the Calgary Herald, the tweet, the

Corey 55:02

the politician can handle that level of detail. If you're going to have to get into like technical details about like, oh, this pipe is 1.950, you know, centimeters or I don't know, don't fucking know. Like, it doesn't matter. The point is like the minute you get to that more technical stuff, yeah, step away from the lectern and let the other person do it.

Corey 55:19

Only like the super nerds will be listening at that point anyhow.

Zain 55:24

I want to dissect what Corey we said here on being the decider for just a second and you could tell me if this is a moot point and we should move on because i've got a ton of other questions as i've been offering insight on and asking throughout the show uh but here's here's my question being

Zain 55:38

being the decider versus leaning into the fact that you're running the show is

Zain 55:44

is there a difference

Carter 55:48

yeah i think so i think that the reality is that decisions are going to be made by people who actually know what the hell they're talking about but

Carter 55:55

but the the the person running

Carter 55:57

running the show is

Carter 55:58

is the mayor and council and the city administrator let's

Carter 56:02

let's be honest i mean david duckworth is the cao in in calgary david

Carter 56:06

david duckworth doesn't have a real clue on how to replace this pipe right it is just not going to be in his his uh his his bailiwick and the same is true with with any politician that's chosen to become the spokesperson. But there has to be a degree of authority felt. And that degree of authority is what I think Corey's trying to articulate. That these people are saying,

Carter 56:31

saying, you know, we are fixing this as fast as possible. And I am making sure that this is as fast as possible. There are no issues getting in the way that are slowing us down. Because I've made the decisions and I've cleared the decks and I've made it easy. That's kind of what the authority is, Zane, versus the decision making. making.

Zain 56:55

Corey, there's a reason I asked that question. I don't know if you've caught on it, Corey, from your perspective, but there is a particular reason, which is, you know, as a politician, is the advice to say, I triangulate and I ultimately make the call? Or is it to say, in times of crisis, I'm running this show, and I run this city, right? At the end of the day, you know, I'm not a domain expert on everything that goes on, but I put on the jacket and I run run this city? What is the right posture for someone in that? Because I think that headspace posture, I think, is important to some degree.

Corey 57:33

Yeah, it's a little different for a mayor and a premier because the mayor doesn't run

Corey 57:37

run the city in the same way. I was going to mention to you, by the way, Stephen, David

Corey 57:41

David Duckworth might actually know what the hell's going on with the pipe. He's a civil engineer by training. I

Carter 57:48

saw the other day, he was completely confused. confused yeah but like

Corey 57:53

like you want i you want to convey that there is a layer of decision making that is beyond the technocratic applied on top i think that's maybe the best way i can put it right yeah

Corey 58:05

and that might be like absolute authority like a premier well which is not absolute but you know what i'm saying like very strong central authority or it might be more you know i'm the chair of council and i can tell you this is the view of council and i can kind of relay and i can and do these things as it is with the mayor of calgary with kind of our weak council system or weak mayor system but

Corey 58:25

but um but you know the the kind of core element to both of them is you are you are sort of articulating that there is sort of a hand steering the thing yeah

Corey 58:35

and yeah there's a whole boiler room full of people and yeah there's a navigation crew and yeah there's people on the deck swabbing them right like everybody's doing their job sure sure but somebody somebody is is looking at it from kind of this holistic, citywide, in the interests of the public view. And that is the job of a politician, right? Like, to represent the public interest, the elected politicians. Carter,

Zain 58:58

Carter, can we talk about winning? Like, we were talking about crisis management. Can we talk about winning, how politicians win? And I want to lay out three audiences that they're trying to win, if

Zain 59:09

if that's cool with you. And then you may want to add in more, if that's okay. Sure. Okay, let me lay out the three. Sure. Audience number one, the public, right?

Zain 59:17

Audience number two, and let's make this realistic to this particular scenario, okay? So audience number one, the public, right? How do you win them over? What does victory look like?

Zain 59:28

Audience number two, your

Zain 59:29

your council colleagues, right?

Zain 59:32

right? Independent votes on their own. They don't get the mic. They don't get the ability to do briefings, press conferences, put on the emergency management jacket. it symbolically and literally so how do you win them over and perhaps and maybe even most important the third audience the

Zain 59:50

the public servants executing and managing the work how

Zain 59:55

how do you win them over and

Zain 59:57

and and we're taking a municipal eye to this thing so might as well keep it in that lane so pick which one is most interesting to you of those three and and give me your thoughts and then i'll do the same with with cory and then we'll we'll knock off all three of them but and And of course, if there's more audiences that you feel like you want to add to it, let's do it. But I think those three are interesting to me. The public, your council colleagues, and then city admin slash the public servants executing and doing the hard work.

Carter 1:00:23

Yeah, I mean, council is actually relatively easy, so I'm just going to answer it first. Of course you'd go with easy. That makes sense.

Carter 1:00:29

What council is looking for is information. They

Carter 1:00:31

They want to be able to answer the questions that you're answering to the general public, to

Carter 1:00:36

to their constituents in real time. so

Carter 1:00:38

so before you do a briefing to the general population like

Carter 1:00:42

like if you've got an eight o'clock briefing you should be doing a 750 briefing to your colleagues right

Carter 1:00:47

right i'm about to step out on time you know and tell them the following three things so your colleagues are just always one step ahead of the public briefing you know it doesn't have to be anything more than that but they need to have information and

Carter 1:00:59

and the currency that they're going to be trading in is whether or not you're sharing information with them on a reasonable basis now in terms of the public servants. This is really interesting because I would say that the biggest thing is to not have

Carter 1:01:15

associated with the situation, to be respectful, to

Carter 1:01:19

to be professional, and

Carter 1:01:21

and to be consistent.

Carter 1:01:22

And I would argue those are also going to be your winning categories for the public.

Carter 1:01:30

If you can make sure that you are not blaming, you're

Carter 1:01:34

you're being consistent, you're being respectful and professional the general public will start to see you as a uh as

Carter 1:01:42

as a as a trusted member of the of their of their world and that's really what you're trying to do is get into their space and tell

Carter 1:01:52

tell them you know how many times can i take a shower let

Zain 1:01:56

let me let me come back to this concept of blame let's park that for a second i think i'm curious if blame has any purpose

Zain 1:02:04

purpose whatsoever from a politician's mouth whether it's through adding context or even factual but let's park that i don't give cory a shot on these three cory the general public your council colleagues uh and the and the fine civil servants doing the work yeah

Corey 1:02:20

yeah uh with the public you're really thinking about it across two two kind of like axes too right like you're thinking about does the public comprehend and are they doing the things i need them to do in an emergency like Like, we so quickly go to the place of, like, is this good for my poll numbers? I'm not suggesting that's what you're doing, but I'm saying generally people often judge politicians' actions in that sense. But there is actually a, are we going to get through the emergency, whether or not people are happy about it, sense that we need to consider as well. So

Corey 1:02:52

So there's that. And what's important there is clear communication, clear direction, and not having any kind of, like, fuzziness as to what you're supposed to do. And I think the most dangerous thing in a moment like that, and this is where I'll sort of pick up specifically on this Calgary situation, is, man, I'll tell you, like, if your direction is strong and then it weakens and it goes strong and it weakens again, as I would argue has been the case with some of the communications in Calgary, people will not know where they are. Like you can go from like very strong and kind of ease off. You can go from eased off to very strong. But if the fact base has not fundamentally changed otherwise, like to seesaw back and forth, it's just going to be confusing for people. It's going to have confusing conversations across households, across the city where people say, hey, we should give the kids a bath. and the other spouse says no i don't think we're supposed to do that right now and the other spouse says no they need to and i think the mayor said it's okay and the other one says no i actually don't think it's okay right now and we don't really need to like they're not that dirty right like people are legitimately confused at a moment like that and so you do need to think about what's going to get us through the crisis because like

Corey 1:04:00

like we're talking about the calgary situation right now it's not done we got like the rest of the week at least before

Corey 1:04:06

this thing is going to be resolved and in the meantime we all have to conserve water uh but then there is also the the like, oh, are they winning matrix, right? Like, oh, they've come out as a strong leader. And what's needed there is really almost more the sense that they manage the crisis than them actually managing the crisis. And we can pick that apart a bit later, but they're not always the same thing. Can we start now?

Zain 1:04:30

Talk about it now. Talk about it now.

Corey 1:04:33

Yeah, well, look, people think they want tough, decisive leaders who give very clear direction, but sometimes that clear direction is, bad

Corey 1:04:42

like oh the nuance is complicated so i'm just going to do the simple thing right and

Corey 1:04:46

and if the simple thing actually puts you more at risk and you're rolling the dice that might not be the right move right like you might actually need to or let's put or let's put it this way i'll give a different example because i think it'll be maybe more illustrative imagine if there was a forest fire barreling down on a town and

Corey 1:05:03

and your emergency professionals are saying well there's like a 30 30% chance that it's going to hit this part of town. Let's say lower. Let's say 10% chance it's going to hit this part of town. That's above our threshold. We think they've got to evacuate.

Corey 1:05:14

But as a politician, you're like, that's

Corey 1:05:17

that's going to be really disruptive. And it's only 10%. And I just don't want that kind of confusion. So I'm not going to tell them to evacuate. I'm going to decide not to, right? Yeah. You might not have pissed off as many people with the evacuation order for a place that didn't burn down, but

Corey 1:05:32

but you have put those people at risk. And so at the end of it, they might judge you high on the political side, but you've probably gotten very lucky to get through it in a sense where you've actually managed the crisis. So they're not always the same. And I think that it's dangerous sometimes to start for that reason. And

Corey 1:05:50

And people call this out all of the time, but I think that they do it almost for political reasons. But the reason we don't want people to play politics during a crisis is we don't want them thinking about the takes and puts of politics at a moment when lives are on the line, when reputation's on the line, when money's on the line, right? You want them thinking clearly and exclusively about the matter in front of them.

Zain 1:06:12

Corey, any thoughts on, I'll let you have your shake at counsel and

Zain 1:06:17

and public servants. Give me those and then I'll go back to Carter and I want to talk about blame in a second here.

Corey 1:06:22

Oh, Carter's 100% right. You keep them one step ahead of the public briefings. You almost have rolling briefings. This is what I'm going to tell is how I'm going to provide it. That's true at the provincial level too, right? And you see it, it doesn't necessarily manifest in the same way. Like you're not letting the official opposition know the minute before you tell everybody if the provincial operations center has been activated. That simply does not happen. And do

Zain 1:06:44

do you agree with Carter that like what they're looking for is just information? Is there anything else that they need? And frankly, can you overcompensate by like giving them too much or bringing them into the entire sort of fact base or those sort of things in a spirit of collaboration or transparency? I'm kind of curious if just the raw facts early is simply all they need.

Corey 1:07:05

no i certainly not um although i think that might be all they need but it's not all they want is maybe a better way to put it right they they want to be involved in it they think their judgment is better than yours that's the nature of it they think they do a better job of running the government that's why they're running against you for the government so they want to hear they're going to believe that like them putting out the like one thing on facebook was more impactful than you using the entire apparatus of government to communicate something like oh i talked to bob And Bob said he wouldn't know what the fuck to do if it wasn't for my Facebook posts. Yeah, no, Bob could have figured it out. In fact, was probably more confused by your Facebook posts if he had just gone to the government side, right? But you do want to make sure they're informed because they are, at this moment, if politics are aside, part of the team. Team communicate. Team communicate what needs to happen. And they need to be able to answer those questions. And especially because their bias is not necessarily going to be that you're such a super smart person, you need to spend the time and explain these things and make sure that they also have the information they need. But it would be bonkers to have counselors running around also giving like updates to the mayor's briefing. That's chaos. You know, we often say in crisis communications, you know, many brains, one voice. You may have

Corey 1:08:20

have heard that before. and you want to make sure that there is not a bunch of confusion as to who's actually speaking out there a

Zain 1:08:28

a final one cory in terms of

Corey 1:08:32

terms of the public servants that's a super interesting question it's one that obviously interests me as as somebody who was a public servant right you hmm you

Corey 1:08:43

you you know you don't necessarily always 100 trust the politicians but in my experience the public servants really appreciate the skill set politicians bring in a crisis and i think this is actually true of the communications industry more generally people will often look at us and think oh it's just fluff oh it's just like you know putting the right color on the brochure until there's a fucking crisis right and then everybody is staring at you and saying what do we say how do we say it and that's when you can really step up and explain the value of communications and we've already talked about the fact politicians are communicators first and foremost.

Corey 1:09:18

And I generally think that public servants are generally fairly grateful for politicians at these moments. Again, because politicians are often willing to accept the expertise more so at that moment too. They also want to know what the solutions are. And everybody is just sort of rowing in the same direction with a single cause. You've got experts, you've got everybody back at the operations center, you've got the people on the ground who are performing the work, and you have the politicians doing politician things that you need them to do. and so it really does create a sense of like team like with everybody going on and in terms of how you maintain that and ensure that that's happening as like the communicator in chief who's out there you don't fucking throw your team under the bus that's like that's just it right like you you make sure that everybody knows that you're all working together and it's certainly not a time for recriminations ever

Corey 1:10:08

and by the way like again we'll jump back to the city here when the mayor is saying like the communications has been bad i

Corey 1:10:14

agree with her but

Corey 1:10:16

but it didn't sound like she was saying her communications were bad

Corey 1:10:19

sounded like she was blaming the communications team and that's not going to make anything better during a crisis or after you own your part in it well

Corey 1:10:28

well like that you deal with it after like if your communications was dog shit after the crisis fix it but you're not gonna you're not gonna fix it by publicly condemning your communications in the the middle of it i understand the need to do a hard reset sometimes and say hey you know what we didn't do it right we got to do it differently and hey maybe the communications team proposed like hey just just put it on comms it's fine everybody always does all problems manifest as communications problems i heard cory hogan say that once he's a super smart guy maybe that's how the conversation went down there nope didn't

Corey 1:10:59

didn't feel that way though did it no

Corey 1:11:02

no and so like you've got to be careful not to throw your team under the carter

Zain 1:11:05

carter i want to talk about blame you need I want to talk about blame.

Zain 1:11:08

And actually, you know what? In fact, before I talk about blame, Corey's brought up something interesting. He often does on this show. Occasionally. Yeah, occasionally. For a while.

Carter 1:11:16

Broken clock. Have you

Carter 1:11:17

been able to, as

Zain 1:11:18

as a communicator, leverage a crisis to show your longstanding or longer term value?

Zain 1:11:25

Because what I find this interesting, right, where Corey talked about how communicators or communications professionals often struggle to, or others often struggle to see the value in communications until it's a crisis and they all turn to you. And if you perform, have you found longevity from that, Carter? Have you found like from me? And you could talk about this from a political perspective, a client perspective. I'm just kind of curious if you found longevity in proper crisis comms to like the larger body of work of what you as a professional perform.

Carter 1:11:57

In general, I think that it's appreciated. I think that Corey's correct in that. but there's

Carter 1:12:03

there's also professional conflict

Carter 1:12:05

conflict that occurs in in in these situations uh the professional conflict that i think is probably the most troubling uh from my point of view is the professional conflict between lawyers and communicators um that

Carter 1:12:22

that is a specific and very difficult thing to get around lawyers are trying to protect your organization from long-term legal impacts. And professional

Carter 1:12:32

professional communicators are trying to protect your organization from immediate

Carter 1:12:38

crisis, you know, crisis in the communities. So, you know, I sadly had to do the communications for the Strathcona Tweed Smear avalanche, where they lost a number of children. And, you

Carter 1:12:51

you know, that was a terrible

Carter 1:12:53

terrible situation that I think we were managing quite well until the lawyers got there and

Carter 1:12:57

the lawyers shut down the hourly briefings and the lawyers changed the language that we were starting that we were using because they did not want to be seen

Carter 1:13:05

seen to be accepting any blame and all of a sudden this organization that was being to be seen and to be open and forthright suddenly started to be closed and cut off and it changed the outcome uh for you know the the the school in general now they've they made it through obviously but But other organizations may not be quite so lucky.

Zain 1:13:29

Corey, any thoughts on that around like building long-term goodwill, street cred value as a communications professional when you perform during a crisis?

Corey 1:13:40

Yeah, look, I think that crises are just in general good at elevating people who are good in a crisis and people

Corey 1:13:48

people also see who are not good in a crisis. I want to be really clear, like, not everything in life is a crisis. And there are really brilliant people who just suck at crises. We talked about this fairly recently.

Corey 1:13:58

But because it is such an essential thing at the moment, like that urgency is so high, if you can do it, and you can kind of show the value of it, it can pay long term dividends, I think. Like, your judgment really gets to be put on display. And if you rise to the occasion, great. And if you don't, well, that kind of sucks for you, I guess. but again like it's these are not easy things and this is often a 60 40 business and you make calls with the best information you have and they're not always right like no crisis i've ever worked would i say like i played error-free ball no

Corey 1:14:32

but you know the one thing i want to say is

Corey 1:14:35

carter's not wrong about some of those like tensions that can occur between legal

Corey 1:14:39

between operations people who don't want to be providing you

Corey 1:14:42

you know information that they consider is

Corey 1:14:44

imprecise or like, yeah, you're right 99.9% of the time, but 0.1 it works a bit different. So we're going to have to add that complexity in. You have different goals. No,

Corey 1:14:54

No, it's not the right way to say it. You're doing different things, trying to get to the same goal. And, and that is not always a comfortable place to be, but that's exactly why organizations, smart organizations practice these things. They run tabletop exercises. They go through it. They make sure that that the first time that the general counsel and the head of communications have to hash it out isn't the real thing. And you can start to work through some of those things kind of in a safer environment and identify some of these challenges ahead of time. And that you have a certain amount of camaraderie by the time you sort of hit the real show, right? But those tensions are fucking real. Like I laughed because it's like, yeah, I mean, tell

Corey 1:15:34

tell me about it. You know, like the number of times I've been in a crisis and I've been lucky. I've always gotten along really well with the general counsels i've worked with but the number of times it's like i want to do something and they want to do the exact opposite and we go 12 rounds and generally you know comms loses because the lawyers get to pull the lawyer card but not always right that's just that's reality that's just reality in any organization people have different concerns that they are charged with being concerned with and

Corey 1:16:03

and then you've got to work it out carter

Zain 1:16:05

carter accept or reject this frame before i get to the blame conversation sure

Zain 1:16:11

pay and value our political leaders for their performance in times of crisis okay

Carter 1:16:17

okay um i reject that okay

Zain 1:16:21

okay i'm trying to end the reason let me let me give you the backstory right which is like cory's talking about like you know times of crisis really showcase people we should we

Carter 1:16:30

we should pay them for that if we If we paid them for that, each counselor would be making $250,000 and the mayor would be making $750,000. Do we

Zain 1:16:40

skill when we're doing their job performance, i.e. the

Corey 1:16:42

the election? Yeah, 100% we do. Oh,

Corey 1:16:45

totally. Yeah, we've talked about this in the context of how we would change the leadership debate. And it's like throw scenarios

Corey 1:16:53

at them and see how they react,

Corey 1:16:54

right? Yeah, we've talked about this, like the case study approach.

Corey 1:16:57

I think there'd be some real value to it. But I like to say around work, especially at times of a crisis, like, hey, they pay us for the bad days, not the good. Sure. They don't pay politicians for the bad days. They pay them for the good, right?

Corey 1:17:10

right? Like, it's not a job that gets, you know, relative to what we ask them to do. The compensation is just wildly off track, wildly off track.

Zain 1:17:20

Yeah, we judge them on 16 hours a day of not rote work. That may sound charged or have a connotation to it, but it's the rinse and repeat. That's what we pay these folks for, so to speak. It's fascinating, and I suspect that that's where you'd go. Carter, is there room for blame at all from the principal politician? Blaming another order of government. We've talked about blaming civil servants, blaming your own comms team, blaming your predecessor. predecessor, and I'm not saying that all of this has happened in this particular case, but as we try to expand this out, I'm kind of curious where blame is acceptable. Is it acceptable in context? Is it acceptable in the aftermath? But during the crisis, tell me,

Zain 1:18:07

where is it acceptable? Or is it a simple rule for Stephen Carter, you

Zain 1:18:13

you take ownership of everything in that moment?

Carter 1:18:15

Stephen Carter's rule of crisis is that crisis crisis is not a time for blame.

Carter 1:18:20

One of the rules of crisis communications is that the crisis means that your

Carter 1:18:26

your communications are changing, right?

Carter 1:18:28

right? If it was, you know, it's not a crisis if your communications remain static. So if your communications are changing, then

Carter 1:18:38

then who you're blaming could very easily change. And you

Carter 1:18:42

you have to be really careful, not saying that any politician would ever do this but say you for example blamed

Carter 1:18:47

blamed the pipe burst on oh i don't know the provincial government um and it's just not just to say just as hypothetical this is hypothetical and uh you

Carter 1:19:00

you know the it's not a provincial government issue in fact you know it is very clearly a municipal government issue and the you

Carter 1:19:08

you know the the premier has a radio show that she can can go on and say that every

Carter 1:19:14

that would be bad if you blamed her and then everybody said well you

Carter 1:19:18

you know the ricochet is going to be pretty solid and land right back at you so you

Carter 1:19:23

you know blame is a really tough thing to do in the middle of a crisis when things are shifting i would say that we will get to blame when we get to figuring out what actually happened we have all all kinds of great examples of crises that have led to really

Carter 1:19:39

really good and in-depth evaluation. The Challenger disaster, where

Carter 1:19:47

really dug in and figured out what was actually happening. I mean, who is to blame can be done through that.

Carter 1:19:54

There is absolutely no advantage to pointing

Carter 1:19:58

pointing the finger or throwing blame when it

Carter 1:20:01

it very easily is going to come back and land right in you. Corey,

Zain 1:20:04

Corey, this is, of course, not unique to this situation. We've seen politicians continue to be, well, politicians, partisan politicians in times of crisis. Most recently, I look at the provincial side, not even most recently, but a recent example, I think it's fair to say, when Danielle Smith blamed Stephen Gilbeau for the cold snap and the electrical grid conversation that we were having in Alberta in the broadest strokes, she took to that as one of her primary talking points. But I want to get your like guide on this. Do you share the same view as Carter that there's it's airtight, no blame, or even in providing context or providing, you know, when people want to know the why of something happened, shouldn't you just be honest, even if that means you're blaming another order of government, your predecessor, etc?

Corey 1:20:51

you in a crisis want to be confident and

Corey 1:20:55

blame looks like panic. blame looks like your concern is your reputation and not the matter at hand which is part of why you don't like it's just a bad look when you're at the lectern there right you raise an interesting question in terms of like if a situation gets directly put to you how do you answer it but

Corey 1:21:12

but the reality is any politician worth their salt should be able to answer in a way that answers

Corey 1:21:17

answers but sort of deflects the the pain of it right like there are ways you can phrase sentences there are ways you can move the intonation of your voice so it doesn't sound so much like you're blaming the other person and it sounds like a dispassionate spewing of the facts here right now

Corey 1:21:32

now your question though was like when can you blame and

Corey 1:21:35

there is an answer to this when

Corey 1:21:37

when you were blamed so

Corey 1:21:39

so if somebody throws you and steven sort of talked about this you're you can spike and volley it right back and if you do it smartly quickly and with just the right amount of acid it like not too much and not like you are now on the defensive a

Corey 1:21:54

a you've sort of diffused it b you've put them on blast and c you've delivered it in a way where they are going to take the heat and i actually think we see a good example of this here in calgary you're

Zain 1:22:04

you're talking about during a crisis where mayor gondek

Zain 1:22:06

you're talking you're not talking you're not talking about after you're talking about during the crisis i

Corey 1:22:10

i am talking about during and i actually think the gilbo smith example and on the electrical grid is a pretty good example of this right Right. So when people start saying, oh, well, this government wasn't ready for renewables, well, then she gets to smash it right back in their face, right? And say, well, your rules were way ahead of where we were. And that's how you, quote unquote, get away with it, or that's how you lessen the pain of it. But again, here in Calgary, we saw Mayor Gondek somewhat suggest that the province wasn't paying enough and that's why this occurred. And then the Premier smashed it right back in the Mayor's face saying, why don't you focus on the things actually the city's responsible for instead of stuff like upzoning, right? And so that

Corey 1:22:53

that was pretty quick. It was pretty painless by the Premier and was quite a blow. That was a tough one for the Mayor to take. Carter,

Zain 1:23:00

Carter, I have a question for you. In the middle of a crisis, can you and should you, as a strategist, worry about the reputation of your principal? Or is that a day after problem?

Zain 1:23:12

In the middle of a crisis, can you and should you? Corey, I'll come to you with that same question, right? Like, is reputation management important? I know, Corey, you're talking about the optics of ensuring that it doesn't look like you're doing things for reputation and you're here to solve the issue that is in front of the electorate. But I want to actually get a strategist's sense of reputation management in a crisis, especially when things are not going well. If things are going well, it's easy to kind of like retweet, oh, like you're a hero, et cetera, all those sort of things. You find ways to make sure people are reminded of that. But when it's not going so well, what

Zain 1:23:47

what do you do and how do you think about that in the moment?

Carter 1:23:52

The moment is that you can't be thinking about this is the Super Bowl, right? You go into the Super Bowl and if you're thinking of it as just another game, the odds of you performing at your highest are much higher than if you're going in with the added pressure of this is my make or break moment. Yeah.

Carter 1:24:10

And I think that politicians that see this as their make or break moment tend to break. Whereas politicians who come in and say, this is my, you

Carter 1:24:21

you know, this is my job. This is what I need to do. And I'm going to listen, I'm going to learn, and I'm going to do my best. They're the ones who perform their very best. um

Carter 1:24:32

is it is clear that people who are trying to exceed the moment um or be defined by

Carter 1:24:42

yeah i mean your reputation is going to be defined by it um anyways

Carter 1:24:46

anyways you don't have to try to do anything you just try to you need to try to not be an asshole cory

Carter 1:24:51

cory do you agree with that i'm

Zain 1:24:52

i'm kind of curious if if you kind of buy into that same frame as carter which is that that those who kind of say, fuck it, this could make me or break me, and I'm up for the fight sort of thing versus being like, okay, let me just be a student. Let me do my job. Let me just get down to it. The outcome's the outcome in terms of what my reputation's at. I'm kind of curious if you buy into that latter school of thought that Carter promotes.

Corey 1:25:15

I mean, I think I do. I said earlier, all problems manifest as communications problems, and that's an axiom I live by. Here's what i would say it's easier to spin good work than bad work so just focus on doing good fucking work during a crisis

Corey 1:25:31

crisis and and that's the most important thing to do and if you do it well you know what the politics will take care of themselves not not automatically but you'll be able to go in and you'll be able to deliver the messages you need to deliver the people will sing your praises who need to sing your praises that will all work out just fine for you if you focus And where I think what Stephen was saying about this notion of like, you know, you go in and you treat the Super Bowl like a regular game.

Corey 1:26:00

I would say the way I think about it is more this. You only have so much capacity, you know, mental capacity, physical capacity, just capacity. And if you're trying to do two things at the same time, and one of them is incredibly taxing and incredibly difficult, like managing a very complex crisis, don't throw on trying to manage the politics at the same time. You're going to fuck it up. Like just, you know, acknowledge also your limits as a human and focus on the thing that matters in front of you. And I do believe ultimately, if you do that well, it's much easier to do the politics. Carter,

Zain 1:26:33

Carter, I want to take this out of Calgary for a second, and there's an area of crisis. Hey, Zane,

Corey 1:26:39

Don't want to interrupt you, but you know we did like a whole fucking podcast before you... No,

Zain 1:26:44

No, I was here the

Zain 1:26:45

and I didn't like most of it.

Zain 1:26:48

Yeah, okay. I didn't like most of it. It's 40 minutes in. I'm just going to get us out of here. Carter, do you want to put this in the over in the lightning round? Do

Zain 1:26:55

Do you want to just do that just so we can appease Corey? Because you guys apparently did a whole podcast that wasn't very good. That's what I heard.

Carter 1:27:01

No, it was fantastic. fantastic the

Carter 1:27:02

we've ever mixed reviews

Zain 1:27:03

reviews here's from you can

Carter 1:27:04

can i can i before we leave this topic oh there's

Carter 1:27:08

there's more to this a little

Zain 1:27:08

little bit about what did you want to add carter yeah i

Carter 1:27:11

just want to add a little thing about honesty um

Carter 1:27:15

because one of the challenges i think that we run into in a crisis communication is

Carter 1:27:21

how honest should we be and

Carter 1:27:24

there's a limit there is no there

Carter 1:27:26

is no way in a crisis communication that you can be 100 honest because if you were 100 honest honest you would be communicating um all

Carter 1:27:35

all about the the dysfunction and the challenges that are occurring and let's be honest dysfunction and challenges occur in in these situations that's a good

Carter 1:27:44

right so you want to put forward a degree of honesty and i think that that's one of the areas that this has stumbled in is that there's this sense that there is a right answer on how many flushes there needs to be um there is no right answer what there is is a definitive answer and

Carter 1:28:02

and the definitive answer is the one that we are actually looking for um

Carter 1:28:06

um because if you can be defining uh you don't need to be 100 percent you

Carter 1:28:12

you know and i think this is cory made a point very quite a while ago where people in inside the field are going to be like well i mean and there's a 99.9% chance, but in that 0.1, here's what we think about. You don't ever communicate the 0.1.

Carter 1:28:29

You're always communicating the 99.9, even

Carter 1:28:32

even though that might not be 100% accurate.

Carter 1:28:35

So I just wanted to kind of get that across because I think that that's something that has really impacted

Carter 1:28:41

impacted this communication structure. Is this, well,

Carter 1:28:45

well, I'm going to try and be 100% and honest okay

Carter 1:28:48

well we want you to be honest but recognize that that might be an unattainable goal

Zain 1:28:53

carter i'm going to move it on to the over-under and lightning round but this is not an over-under and lightning round question of course

Zain 1:28:58

course cory's putting a thumb up cory are you are you excited for this is that what this is going on i'm excited you're excited you

Corey 1:29:02

you want to go to bed i'm giving it one thumb hey that's good that's pretty

Zain 1:29:07

mean cisco and ebert they each only had one

Corey 1:29:10

to put up most

Zain 1:29:11

most people don't know this they each only had one hand that's how they found each other they're

Zain 1:29:16

they're both film critics with one hand yeah

Carter 1:29:19

yeah they're both dead so they could have given four thumbs

Zain 1:29:23

thumbs up but it was only two thumbs up did you no one ever asked like wait do these guys each only have one hand and the answer is yes they only did uh cory here's the thing um

Zain 1:29:33

i want to talk about winning in a final way which

Zain 1:29:38

which is not necessarily winning as As the politician and the audiences that we dissected, and I think you guys did a great job on, I want to talk about winning as an opponent or an opposition of the person that's in the moment.

Zain 1:29:52

What does that look like? Can you win? Are you able to win? Can you neutralize their win? What are the goals and how do you do it? So, for example, let's look at the city. You don't like Jyoti Gondek. How do you win? or

Zain 1:30:08

or if this is a premier, provincial, federal, you know, someone is working a crisis, what do you do as the opposition? Do you just sit back and support government messaging because we're all in a crisis and you yourself drift on crisis-level leadership? Do you play politics? Do you not? Give me some of this framework for what victory-winning success looks like for those opposed to the person that is charged to lead.

Corey 1:30:39

well it's tough and i know you were busy at the time but this

Corey 1:30:43

this fucking happened at the very start of the provincial election the most recent provincial election i was

Zain 1:30:50

was going to bring it up there was a situation yeah with

Corey 1:30:52

with with forest fires and um you

Corey 1:30:56

you know the former premier rachel notley offered to meet with premier danielle smith and and share her wisdom on it and essentially put put aside some of the some of the like campaign difficulties

Corey 1:31:08

difficulties and you know we said at the time fuck that's tough and i firmly believe you know you've never answered why you lost zane i think a huge part of it was that forest fire i think that the momentum killer on that weekend and through where all of a sudden danielle smith gets to be commander in chief danielle smith who who is a brilliant communicator, gets to put her skill set on full display and talk through a crisis. And

Corey 1:31:36

there's the opposition leader counseling you as you move forward. Danielle Smith had problems looking like a premier. She got to look like a premier that weekend. And it just dulled a couple of very good attacks coming from the NDP at that particular moment. So I think you could reasonably ask, is there something different Rachel Notley could have done? and i

Corey 1:31:57

i don't know that there is i think that you're in such a bloody box as an opposition politician at these moments because the expectation is you set politics aside the expectation is you help but all your help is ultimately helping your opponent succeed and

Corey 1:32:11

and that's fucking tough

Corey 1:32:13

but it's still probably the right thing because at the end of the day lives are on the line you know people's lives are on the line and you're in theory in this because you want to do good in the the world so

Corey 1:32:24

it's fucking tough but i remember at the time uh you know carter and i having arguments about this so i'm curious his thought carter

Zain 1:32:29

carter is is cory right is is is it's a is it tough and b is your only real path helping the person you're competing against succeed in

Zain 1:32:37

in in this micro moment yeah

Carter 1:32:39

yeah i mean absolutely your only real path is to uh to be a team player because you will be judged harshly i mean yes lives are at stake all of those things blah blah blah, blah. But we're political strategists. And as political strategists, we have to say what the political consequence would be. If you are seen to be taking political opportunism

Carter 1:32:59

opportunism out of a crisis, you know, God forbid something goes wrong. You know, someone dies, someone gets hurt, someone gets stuck in the pipe when they refill it. I don't know. Shit happens. People die in crises. That's one of the things that we use to define whether or not it's a crisis. And if you are seen to be taking advantage of that, you

Carter 1:33:22

are going to be judged so harshly. So my

Carter 1:33:26

my bet is just stay out of it, or try and be a team player. And if it means you lose the election, it means you lose the election closely instead of in a landslide. Is

Zain 1:33:37

Is there any exceptions to your rule? Let me throw out a few, and I haven't brainstormed these in advance, but you've

Zain 1:33:43

you've got expertise. expertise you're

Corey 1:33:45

you're known for your prep so this you've

Zain 1:33:47

you've got expertise on the file you feel like you're a better communicator you feel like you may have uh an ability to to talk to or persuade a particular audience that that the principal would not any one of those things which on the surface could be helpful but also lead to political upside for you would you would you make exceptions for anything cory you first and then carter then we're done with this with this show you're

Corey 1:34:12

you're a a politician you think you have the expertise you think you've got a better audience you believe that all of these things are that only

Zain 1:34:19

only you could speak

Corey 1:34:21

only you can speak it's

Corey 1:34:22

it's still a mistake it's a problem it's a challenge and you are going to tie yourself in knots thinking of the clever way you can show that you are actually the person with all of the skills and the chops but it's just it's not worth it it's just don't try to create a moment out of it your best case scenario is it just gets managed fine and you're able to move on with your life carter

Zain 1:34:43

you neutralize their moment?

Zain 1:34:47

There's nothing you could do to put a cap on their upside.

Corey 1:34:51

Not if it's coming to them. You know, it's so much more about their actions than yours at that moment.

Corey 1:34:57

Unless you do something really stupid.

Zain 1:35:00

That's it. I'm going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1808 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velge. I've been here the entire time. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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