Transcript
Zain
0:01
This is the strategist episode 1820. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, did
Corey
0:10
going on? Welcome back, Zain. Well, listen, I
Carter
0:13
I have been... We recorded it without you. I've been traversing... We cheated on you.
Zain
0:16
I've been traversing Europe, using that Eurorail pass, traveling around, backpacking with
Zain
0:25
That's very nice. Don't advise
Zain
0:27
it. Yep. Not a good idea. idea
Carter
0:30
my daughter's going uh next week she's going to europe to do the same thing
Corey
0:35
but without an 18 month old i assume unless we've missed some life milestones for you yeah i usually a
Carter
0:40
a month old okay
Zain
0:40
okay she can definitely take mine if she wants just to get the practice the reps and i
Zain
0:45
i spent time with your
Carter
0:46
your kid today that was plenty well
Zain
0:47
well listen there's there's multiple things to update on we'll start with today later um i was in europe and i have seen and on behalf of the podcast, I've done this as a strategist patron expense. I went to go see the heiress tour because I did want to see what the, or as I like to call it, White Hamilton. And this three-hour epic doesn't compare. It doesn't compare to what we put on a live show basis. It doesn't compare to what we put on a daily basis. I'm happy to report we're still killing it, guys. Don't
Corey
1:18
Don't worry. It was nice of you to do that competitor research. Oh, for sure. Yeah,
Zain
1:21
Yeah, no, no, no. I
Zain
1:22
I was prudent with the type and the number of tickets I bought, three. And you guys didn't show up, so I gave them to members of my own family, which
Zain
1:31
which I suspect is,
Corey
1:32
is, for sure, expense report
Zain
1:35
Corey. Okay, that's good. Secondly, Stephen Carter, now that we've got nothing to worry about with the quality of production that we put on on a weekly or once every 17-day cycle, you
Zain
1:48
you are attempting to be, speaking of white, the official white uncle of the Velji household. Is that not right? right?
Carter
1:56
Well, I was going for grandparent, but that seems to be off the table since your mother-in-law really came after me at the Ismaili breakfast, so I backed off. I'll take uncle, but
Carter
2:06
but she was pissed. She was pissed, so I
Zain
2:11
Okay, do you want to get to the heart of the matter, which is you were helping my child, the aforementioned 18-month-old, alongside myself, learn
Zain
2:21
learn how to ride a bike.
Carter
2:23
Yeah, it was pretty great. It was tons of fun. We did great. You did great. Hold on.
Carter
2:29
do you know how
Zain
2:30
how to ride a bike? So it's a complicated thing. The answer in short, I would say, is actually no.
Zain
2:37
that doesn't sound very complicated. I'm going to be
Corey
2:39
be honest with you.
Zain
2:40
The more complicated answer is kind of. And I thought it was killing it before I actually got on today. I'm like, I
Corey
2:47
I have no idea how to ride a bike.
Zain
2:49
No, I never learned. I never learned. And then I learned like three years ago, and then I never, I
Zain
2:53
I thought I learned, but turns out. Uh, yeah.
Corey
2:56
yeah. Cause you'd heard it's just like riding a bicycle. You did it once and you figured that was not the case for me.
Corey
3:01
Not the case for me.
Zain
3:02
I feel like, uh, Sufjan did much better than I did Carter today. I know you don't want to admit it cause you feel like you're going to hurt my, my ego, but I think he killed it.
Corey
3:10
Now, Zane, have you, are you moving up from the strider bike yet? Or are you just kind of, we're
Zain
3:14
using the same strider bike. So it took a long time. My son and I are using the same strider bike, but he is doing better than, than me carter he's
Carter
3:22
he's no no you you can turn he no not well but you can turn and uh he he went mostly in a straight line so i i'm proud of both of you i'm proud of both of you both of you you know brought
Carter
3:35
brought the uh i'll try it t-shirts and you did a great job zane
Corey
3:39
zane the the best thing a parent can hope for is their child to exceed them at things that they don't care about so congratulations that's
Zain
3:46
that's good that seems like a very rehearsed line on your part so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna to dig any further uh anything else going in your world um that we need to talk about before we jump into what is going to be an episode uh
Zain
3:59
uh you know this
Corey
4:01
this and that i've
Carter
4:02
i've been working on the bug out strategy and i'm currently pricing everything so i'm sourcing and pricing everything for the bug out uh it's going to be pretty expensive so i think that uh we're going to need some more patreons Now,
Zain
4:15
is if, to be clear, folks often on this show with their limited intellectual capacity aren't able to connect the dotted line that you often lay down on this podcast, Carter. This is if Kamala
Zain
4:29
Kamala Harris becomes president, right? That you've got a bug out. Okay, perfect. Just to make sure.
Carter
4:32
sure. When Kamala wins, here's
Carter
4:34
here's the problem. Yeah, what's the problem?
Carter
4:36
Trump's going to lose his shit. And the people who support Trump are going to be like, this was stolen. It's been stolen. and the reason i know this is because the last time they lost that is exactly what they did so uh and i think this time they're really going to lose their shit so i have uh i priced out most of the bug out strategy i cannot believe how expensive flour is um and you can't really get a discount for buying 500 pounds of it so you know i'm i'm working the i'm working the if anybody has a deal let me know send me a note like a flower guy pardon
Carter
5:10
pardon me organic this
Corey
5:13
this is really quite a turn this podcast has taken i think is it a
Zain
5:17
or is it back to regularly scheduled programming actually
Corey
5:19
actually i feel like this has been foreshadowed for about eight years stephen carter's slow descent into madness so yeah i i guess it's i actually don't
Zain
5:25
don't even know if you're being being serious or not that
Corey
5:29
actually planning for this stuff you know what it's like zane it's like how game of thrones was at one speed and then they just crashed through in the last couple of seasons and you're like that was unearned that was way too fast yes there were signs there but i didn't i didn't know it was going to occur so rapidly that's how i feel about um stephen carter becoming a prepper well
Carter
5:46
well i've got uh i i had a big we had a big conversation about toilet paper and the situation on toilet paper does one pack a lot of toilet paper no and hope for the best or does one uh not bring any toilet paper and get transferred over to leaves leaves and shit like that right away i
Corey
6:03
think you just you just go for leaves you
Carter
6:05
you just gotta go straight you just gotta go
Corey
6:06
for leaves right i'm
Carter
6:07
i'm taking the 96 rules it's canada
Corey
6:09
canada six months of the year you can just use the lake um but then you gotta use leaves the rest of the time yeah
Carter
6:15
yeah i know it's gonna be awkward let's
Zain
6:16
let's move it on to our first segment i can't stand this anymore carter carter there's so many things to talk about and there is no better way to talk about it carter than our classic, classics game
Zain
6:27
game of fine, fabulous,
Zain
6:29
fabulous, and fucked. But as I always do recently, Stephen Carter, I'm adding a fourth F.
Carter
6:36
My fourth F, Stephen
Zain
6:40
So it could be fine, it could be fabulous, it could be frustrating, or it could be fucked. Because not everything goes from fabulous to fucked, as you know, Corey. We've discussed this multiple times on this show. We always need a fourth. And in this case, we're adding frustrating to the mix. Stephen Carter, for the uninitiated, here's how this works. I will go through a list of things that I find fascinating from a Canadian political strategy level. It could be policies introduced at a cabinet retreat, for example, or it could be appointments made to the Senate, or it could be videos put out and then retracted by certain political parties. I will go through all of these, and I'll name you the party in question, and I'll ask you, is this fine for them? Is this fabulous? Is this frustrating, or is this fucked, so to speak? And Stephen Carter, let me start with this.
Zain
7:27
The appointment of one Charles
Zain
7:33
the Manitoba resident, the longtime former conservative talk radio show host, now a more moderate pundit on all things social commentary, politics, still very active, no longer with the evening radio show cross country, but still a name. that many people would recognize from their radio waves and their television. Stephen Carter, he was appointed to the Senate as a Manitoba senator for the liberals. Is this fine? Is this fabulous? Is this a masterstroke? Is this frustrating, considering some of the fallout? And I put that in air
Zain
8:07
Or is this truly and utterly fucked? Lay
Zain
8:11
Lay it on me, Stephen Carter. What do you got?
Carter
8:12
It's flummoxing, Zane, because on the one hand, I'm hopeful for you, Because this really does make your opportunity to become a senator much more probable. And I like this as a career. Why
Zain
8:26
Why is that? Why is that? Please lay it on me.
Carter
8:28
Because really, you don't have to do very much, Zane. And that really fits your lifestyle. And I think that you'd enjoy it. I
Carter
8:34
I feel like you're going
Zain
8:35
going after my lack of biking skills very aggressively and very coded language. I
Carter
8:39
I had to bring your child to get you onto a bike. It took multiple years to actually get you onto a bike. So I would say it's flummoxing because I'm very hopeful for you. But at the same time, I mean, Charles Adler is, it's kind of like Paula Simons, who's from Alberta. And Paula, I think we can agree is a grade A number one senator. But we
Carter
9:02
we don't know how these people are going to be in the Senate, right? Are you going to get yourself a great senator? Are you going to get yourself a less great senator? And Charles Adler, I think, will bring a voice to the Senate, but I'm not sure how effective it's going to be.
Zain
9:18
Corey, he's in the past said that the Senate should not exist. The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs have come after him for some previous comments. The Conservatives have also been quite loud about it. Usually these Senate appointments are kind of annoying if you're not the government appointing them. They usually kind of then have a 12-hour news cycle, if any news cycle. This one's a bit different. Charles Adler's a bit of a name, especially in the political arena.
Zain
9:46
Fine, fabulous, frustrating, or fucked, Corey Hogan?
Corey
9:50
I agree with Carter. It's pretty flummoxing, because if you're the liberals, I don't understand. Just go away,
Zain
9:55
away, both of you. Just honestly. I
Corey
9:57
I don't understand. But listen, let
Corey
9:59
let me ask you. You actually laid it out pretty nicely there. He's made comments that the Senate should not exist. Yes. There are the comments on the record, which I'm sure showed up in the vetting, and while he has contextualized and walked back some of his commentary about Indigenous peoples, or that was interpreted in certain ways in the past that still exists, what
Corey
10:18
what is the upside, right? right? You have this, I don't know, can we still call it an experiment so many years on, but you have this- You mean the Senate?
Corey
10:27
Yeah, the Senate that was designed in 1867 to serve as a body of sober second thought, this cooling of the hot tempers of the public that has become this independent group of luminaries, at least that's the liberal vision of it. There's now only, I think, a dozen conservative senators, right? There's quite a few vacancies at this moment. But the Senate has wholesale changed, I guess, in the past decade, right?
Corey
10:55
I'm not sure what it is. But what I'm sure the Prime Minister doesn't want it to be is a headache. And it does seem like he's decided that he wants to make this particular Senate an issue again. And that confuses me. It
Corey
11:07
It does confuse me. And so I'm not entirely sure what anybody gets out of it. I suppose that as Canadians, we get somebody like uh you know chuck adler who i i have high regard i love a good uh principled conservative right somebody who's going to stand up against what they see as as the ills of their own party a principled any member of any party frankly and and he certainly is somebody who believes conservative things even
Corey
11:33
even uh when the conservatives are not and he's willing to call the conservatives out for it so that's great but if you're the liberals why why
Corey
11:41
why are you doing this Why are you approving this Senate appointment that's been put forward by the panel? Carter,
Zain
11:46
In your mind, if you're a liberal greenlighting this for Manitoba, and I'll read you a quick quote here by Dan Vandell, who's the MP from Manitoba, who's a MP from Manitoba, also the Northern Affairs Minister, saying, there are many eminently qualified Manitobans who are better suited to represent our province than Charles Adler.
Zain
12:06
do you think the liberals were thinking here? here? Because as much as it's like, ah, this is the GG's appointment, this is the PM making these calls, what do you think they were trying to do here? So Corey asks why, I'm going to ask you why.
Carter
12:16
Well, I mean, because this isn't someone being chosen out of the full population of Manitoba. The person has to actually apply to become a senator. It looks like Chuck applied, he put his name in, he threw his name in the hat, and he was selected. We don't know who the other people were that we've selected over. I assume it was, you know, people in prison. But no, you know, this is what happens, right? You can't pick from a list of the population when really it's just a list of those people who've applied. And I've heard scuttlebutt that they've struggled to find applicants from time to time for these positions.
Zain
13:02
Corey, what do you think their rationale was? Like, you know, I think the simple sort of
Zain
13:07
of logic that this goes against type, he's someone who's kind of reformed his opinions, shows that we're potentially open to that, we're trying to appeal to these types of conservatives. I see that. Is it just that? Or do you think there's something else here that
Zain
13:20
that they were trying to do with the appointment? I
Corey
13:23
I think that it's pretty easy to see, hey, it's reinforcing of the idea that this is truly a nonpartisan Senate. This is not somebody who's a liberal, historically, traditionally, even currently, I would say. But there
Corey
13:36
there are other, I mean, Stephen's right, you have to apply to the job. We don't know what the pool was. It's certainly not every Manitoban who would be considered or even eligible, frankly, under the rules of the Senate. But it
Corey
13:48
is interesting to imagine what the rest of the alternatives might have been and how the Prime Minister might have addressed that. But certainly, I think, especially
Corey
13:59
especially if you're going to appoint a couple of people who start to look a little liberal partisan, right, with a couple of ties to the Liberal Party, and maybe in the past or directly in the future, it's nice to have a bit of a palate cleanser in somebody who is clearly not a liberal. and you can kind of point to a number of things that show that if you're still trying to maintain that this is a non-partisan senate so i mean maybe that's the benefit i suppose but it still seems to me like you're creating a bunch of trouble you didn't need to have again i'm not i'm not down on his appointment as a senator i also think hey listen man people can change hey look we've got to have a diversity of viewpoints and frankly we're not trying to get the 105 best best canadians in the senate we're trying to create uh a cosmopolitan group that can reflect all sorts of considerations as they as they execute their constitutional right to review legislation to have committees to introduce legislation that's non-monetary like this is a at least on paper a very serious job right yeah
Corey
15:01
um so i i get all of that but i still wonder
Corey
15:06
if if this means we're going to be talking a little bit more about the senate and and what what the benefit of that is for the Liberals. Carter,
Zain
15:11
Carter, before I move on, give me your one Canadian Senate appointment magic wand.
Zain
15:18
It's the type of person you could appoint. It's a person in specific that you could appoint. It's not about, I don't want your magic wand to be a baller to the Senate. I don't care. In terms of raw appointment,
Zain
15:28
if you could do something, what
Zain
15:30
what would it be? And Corey, same question to you in a second before we move on to our next one then.
Carter
15:34
I want more senators like Ron Gitter. I
Carter
15:37
I want more senators who worked in the back rooms, got, you know, understand politics, worked hard to establish themselves, provide a huge degree of experience in politics, bring what is possible to the Senate, and can help make changes to legislation that makes sense without slowing down and, you know, wrecking government. government uh which you know in theory this the senate has the the the power to do um i i want to go back to partisan hacks you know i i sat i sat with kathy moore from from uh uh the canadian liberal party and and she's been in politics since the dawn of time and she understands things and she'd be a great a great senator she understands how politics works i am so fucking fed up with with this non-partisan shit. This isn't about being non-partisan. This is about being partisan with purpose. And the senators are going to outlast any one government. So why not appoint partisans that will reflect multiple governments, will reflect party principles? That's what I want to see. That's my magic wand.
Zain
16:52
Corey, what's yours? Is it the same as Carter's or is it something else?
Corey
16:56
look if i had a magic wand and i could make changes my first change would be a ball it would oh yeah my first would be abolish the senate but if you're saying this is just about appointments yeah
Corey
17:08
really do think you could make the senate a body of ideas there's somewhere between partisan hacks and where we have currently where you say actually we just want to put the biggest thinkers uh in politics and and political discourse in the senate and have conversations and and allow Laos. Think of it almost as like a university with tenure, but for political actors, right? Where you say, man, they're always putting something interesting. Like you could put a person like Michael Chong in the Senate when they're tired of being an MP, and they would always be additive, right? They are always going to be adding something to the conversation. So I think that maybe that's the approach I would take. Failing that, if I wanted to re-energize the Senate, I would obviously appoint Keanu Reeves.
Zain
17:49
Obviously, Keanu Reeves and Steve Nash to the the senate i feel like that's right yeah um
Corey
17:53
um ryan reynolds as well yeah you
Corey
17:55
you know what they got a lot of vacancies we nash
Zain
17:57
never getting another coaching gig we know that um he's no chasen kid
Zain
18:01
um even though he was much better than chasen kid on the court as carter would know uh
Zain
18:06
uh and has pointed to multiple times in reference on this podcast i
Carter
18:09
i was very disappointed by steve nash's tenure as a coach no
Zain
18:12
no and uh and in which uh in which market um
Carter
18:16
one of the ones down south both phoenix yeah he
Carter
18:19
he was a phoenix son he
Carter
18:20
was he was a player yeah
Carter
18:22
yeah he and the laker
Zain
18:23
laker you're right absolutely yeah
Carter
18:25
yeah he he coached one of those he
Carter
18:27
he did not uh
Zain
18:27
uh let's move it on to our next one stephen carter i'm going to start with you on this one fine fabulous or fuck the conservative party of canada pure polyevs party uh pulling down a video um one of their their stock and trade videos that they had on X that had accidentally included stock images of Russian fighter jets when Pierre Polyev was speaking as part of the B-roll from the voiceover of a speech that he was given at the Calgary Stampede. Pretty standard issue video, like quasi-inspirational speech, stock footage. They had to pull it down.
Zain
19:04
I want to discuss this a bit in detail, but give me your initial thought here, Carter. Is this fine? Not a big deal. Is this fabulous? yes lean into the skid this is actually great is this frustrating for the conservatives or is this purely fucked because this opens up to something else stephen
Zain
19:18
stephen carter laid on me what do you have i
Carter
19:21
i once again find myself flummoxed i
Zain
19:24
flummoxed for a a bigger vocabulary seems
Carter
19:28
yeah it would appear yeah um but i'm or for other words
Zain
19:31
words that start with f your googling is not very quick no
Carter
19:34
no i was we're there's a it's a it's a thing zane you don't don't understand the whole thing i
Zain
19:39
i don't understand the thing i'm i'm a bit frustrated if i'm being honest i am frustrated yeah
Carter
19:43
yeah i think it's
Carter
19:49
this is so standard for the fucking conservatives how many videos do they you know like they throw out videos all the time the videos are are practically created by ai they are formula formulaic at best and they include things like vistas of the united states and russian fighters and and uh oh complete lies and false you know falsehoods fabrications uh there's two f words for you falsehoods and fabrications that happens over and over and over again and the thing that we make him take down the video for is is the the wrong images how about actually making shit up that's not true how about if we actually make that the thing that we make him take down the video for who's in favor of that i'm in favor of that that's why i'm flummoxed because the consequences for putting in the wrong image the wrong video is you
Carter
20:42
know are pretty significant the consequences for constantly fabricating and fibbing um three
Carter
20:50
three three efforts there i went through no
Zain
20:52
we noticed thank you thank you you're
Zain
20:56
are you gonna finish that sentence or are you just done you're just I'm just going to have to say three words
Corey
21:00
letter F. Are you
Zain
21:00
you just done? Like Sesame Street? Okay, Corey, do you want to maybe do a full thought with complete sentences and the whole like?
Corey
21:09
Carter makes a good case for flummoxed. I'm flummoxed for a different reason. Of course you are. Of
Zain
21:15
Of course you are. You
Corey
21:16
You know, it's because you're a prick. That's why. I don't understand how something like this happens simply because of what it is. At some point, somebody had to download stock imagery that had a bunch of tags on it, and nobody noticed it was like big fighter or anything like that. I'm not even asking them to necessarily know the difference between fighter jets, although you would think that the Conservative Party of Canada would have at least a few people there with the kind of the rah-rah military boosterism that they at least purport to have at their heart, would have understood that, right, as it's going out. But I guess I'm surprised. I don't know how it happened.
Corey
21:54
This is one of these things that it feels like there were going to be –
Corey
21:58
this happens in politics all of the time in all sorts of different ways. And, of course, everybody in Alberta of a certain age will remember when there was a campaign for the new Alberta brand, and there was an image of people on the beaches of England, right?
Corey
22:16
Or maybe it was somewhere in the UK. Yeah.
Corey
22:18
and uh and was passed off as albert people always like this is like a one-on-one thing at this point when you put up a campaign in politics someone is going to reverse image search someone is going to identify the source of it someone is going to tear apart your stock imagery and they're going to say this is what's wrong with it and this is why and so a big part of any construction that uses stock imagery is going through that are we 100 sure we're not going to look like dipshits test and And this has been true for a very, very long time. So I am confused as to how this could have occurred in an operation that is purportedly as sophisticated as the Conservatives is. And that was a fairly high polish video, right? So it seems it's confusing to me it occurred. And I think it might show a certain complacency, a certain laziness, certain we've done, you know, these videos and they've been so popular, we've stopped doing the very foundational checks on it and they got burned for it. But I am confused how it happened in the first place, because this has been a big deal so many times. Carter,
Zain
23:19
Carter, there's at least 13 inconsistencies in the video, including a Canadian dad driving through suburbs, which was from North Dakota, mountains, which were from Indonesia, signs that were from Venezuela. So people, to Corey's point, did the internet sleuthing and did the simple reverse image searches of stock video. What is your take, Carter, on modern day stock video that you can easily get from And I'll get a little bit into the details here that you can easily get from a royalty-free or a very minimal pay-per-use sort of site to generate these quick hit
Zain
23:54
hit videos. As video is becoming an even more needed, volumous, not a special occasion tool, but you kind of need it every day, political parties, practitioners are having to turn to these modes to procure. and often as practitioners you guys may also agree with this that you can't usually find stock footage of someone in canada making sure it's exactly the same like you know there's limitations so i i also want to acknowledge that from a practitioner's perspective and get your thoughts on this carter as video becomes even more voluminous what do you think of stock image is this gonna become forgivable one of those things that people are like whatever as long as it helps He tells a story where this is going to have diminishing returns of people soothing this, and parties will ultimately be like, ah, fuck it. Who cares if this is a mountain from Indonesia? We're just here to tell a story, and we put out a video every day. So we're going to put out another one tomorrow, so you can go fuck yourself sort of thing. Are we going to get to that point?
Zain
24:52
And what do you make of this? And Corey, same question to you in a second about the practitionership here.
Carter
24:57
What do I make of it? I mean, it's never been as easy to create a video as it is right now. I mean, you can subscribe to those stock video services. I mean, at one point, it was really high end to have a photograph, you know, Ken Burden style, and it was moving across the screen. Now you can find stock video for just about any circumstance. But the problem is that virtually any circumstance is generally not your specific circumstance. So that specific circumstance is really hard to find. can we find you know like there's a tremendous amount of b-roll in those you know all those calgary videos that get produced and
Carter
25:33
and and how do you find the b-roll for those calgary videos you can't just go to uh stock videos r us and throw in uh calgary video because you're going to get things that look like calgary or things that are close to calgary things that are something like it and those stampeding horses going across the plane may just be in montana right
Carter
25:55
right and and And sometimes you're not going to get caught. Sometimes you will get caught. I don't think it's ever going. Like, I think if
Carter
26:03
if someone just said, you
Carter
26:05
you knew what I meant, then
Carter
26:07
then you'd probably be able to get away with it. But at this stage, people aren't saying, you knew what I meant. So the apology is the problem, and the taking it down generates oftentimes more attention. And I'll throw it to Corey, who's hand is going to dispass. Yeah,
Zain
26:23
Yeah, Corey, give us your take on this, end to end. What are you thinking?
Corey
26:27
This came up all of the time in my tenure with government communications, right? And I don't want to be misunderstood. We used a lot of stock imagery. It's a good way to save money, frankly. And when you're thinking about public dollars, not everything should be an expensive, elaborate shoot, right? That becomes challenging in its own right. Sometimes
Zain
26:44
Sometimes in its own right, you're spending tens of thousands of dollars for a three-second clip sometimes.
Corey
26:47
Yeah, like absolutely. And is that worth it? Does that make any sense? the
Corey
26:51
problem with the ad for alberta was
Corey
26:54
was that it didn't show alberta so the beach that was not alberta was a problem because it was an ad for alberta right so that's
Corey
27:02
a big deal ad
Corey
27:03
ad for a health plan that doesn't show alberta maybe
Corey
27:06
maybe not a big deal like just generic actors somewhere that are looking practically
Corey
27:10
practically like healthcare professionals sure uh something that that is a picture of like, let's say, a piece of plastic that was recorded somewhere else, not a big deal at all, right? So there is a bit of a sliding scale here. And generally speaking, when you're using stock imagery, there's a few questions you ask yourself along the way. And this is not a complete set, but it's a good way to start. One, is it obvious, right? You don't want to pull somebody out of it and realize, well, that image is not here, that image is not that, that right to steven's point you wouldn't want a picture of uh calgary and it's clearly vancouver uh as somebody's walking around two do we care like does it really matter for this particular moment and uh the third one really is will
Corey
27:55
will anybody else think it matters and so you
Corey
27:57
you go through those things and i think where the conservative one failed and you did make me realize something as we were talking here steven maybe a way that this did happen um but you want to go through and say okay it would one of these stock images potentially offend people because of its stock nature and i think that the fighter jets isn't pretty obvious oh yeah but when you search for these various terms quite often even if it's not alberta people know you're looking for images potentially of anywhere on the plains right and so they will tag a picture that was taken in montana with alberta north dakota saskatchewan they want to sell their piece because they want to because they want to sell it and so and they get to pick what the tags are so if you're just very quickly like searching and and putting tags in and and saying fighter jets canada well that might actually have been what this was tagged with and somebody got really really sloppy and didn't necessarily look at that again baffling
Corey
28:53
baffling to me that it wasn't caught and that there weren't the safeguards in place but this is something that happens with stock imagery but you just have to you
Corey
29:01
have to to assess it almost issue by issue. I
Zain
29:03
I wish I'd asked the question this way, Corey, but I'm wondering, do you feel like it was that it didn't get caught, or it was a group of people that said, fuck it, we don't care? And I'm wondering if fuck it, we don't care is like perhaps like the new sort of where we're headed to some of this stuff, when you have to put out the volume of content that political parties have to put out. Yes, they got burnt this time, no doubt about it. It was not the right strategic call, right?
Zain
29:27
right? Yeah. But I do wonder, there's a part of me that wonders being like fuck it let's just let's just let it rip right because the the cost of trying to do the alternative and
Zain
29:36
and we don't even know we need to get this out today like fuck it like we'll take the hit if we get the hit the probability of it is five percent well that's fine like i could see that conversation potentially happening as well well
Corey
29:47
well i could see even more than that like you go on youtube and you see some youtubers right now they will often smash in stock imagery that still has the watermarks on it like they get no fucks they're like whatever you know this is this is like low effort to the point of meme ability and totally totally yeah
Corey
30:02
yeah and so i do think that that's also um you know maybe it's a little bit of internet brain where they just said stock image stock image stock image doesn't matter as long as it tells the story yes
Corey
30:12
and maybe miss the fact that some people would be offended by it if they did look at it and know what it was and put it in anyways that's
Corey
30:19
that's pretty crazy um that's not really understanding their audience and you do need to start with an understanding of audience for all of these things um and and maybe that to me says you got a problem with too many people who think the same way and not enough guardrails in terms of how it might come off with even your base like we're not even talking about how do not accessible liberal voters find it we're talking about the base being offended because of the you know the military just being mislabeled like the wrong military so uh but it's an interesting idea is saying that they just said yeah it is but who gives a shit it's
Zain
30:54
carter i'm gonna ask you this and cory i'll round out this as a final follow-up on this particular one um which is if you found yourself in this creative challenge carter any thoughts on what you would do like if you if you're if you're junior on your campaign team said i boss i could only find stock image like and and like our subscription only gets us this stuff and this is the universe we're playing with. How would you have dealt with this from a creative perspective? I'm just curious to get both of your takes being like, let's just say what the creative you had was what you had. What would you do? I just kind of think it through for me. Just give me some some tips, how you've done it in the past, and you in particular, Corey, you know, working within government and in large communications, Bureau Carter, any thoughts here, and then we'll move it on.
Carter
31:40
Yeah, I mean, the moving still image works, the Ken Burns style of moving moving still image. um that's one solution the other solution is that's actually a very good
Zain
31:49
good solution i like that yeah
Carter
31:50
yeah the the other one is to have a uh uh is to flip back to the principal talking right the principal like and i i just we just did one of these videos and and you sometimes don't have the perfect b-roll and so we just filmed the the principal
Carter
32:06
principal doing a walk and talk and uh the walk and talk generated
Carter
32:10
generated the video and and when we didn't have an image yeah we went to the principal you know it wasn't it's not the world's most complicated or or you know easiest you know
Carter
32:20
it's standard you know you you cut away from the principle and then you go to the principle when you don't have the image it's totally standard cory
Zain
32:27
cory any any other thoughts on this before we get on to our next question yeah
Corey
32:30
yeah if your narrator is present in the video cutting to the narrator is not bad uh it is a challenge right i can think of a number of times where we'd sit there and and how this was generally storyboarded is you would have the words and you would have the image you You want to do a company of the words almost in two columns, right? As you're going along there and, and occasionally you have to make sacrifices, right? You say, man, I really want a shot that looks like this. Well, to get that shot with drones right now, not possible. And Hey, we can't get stock imagery because the Canadian air force doesn't allow that stuff to be used for stock imagery. It's only for editorial. What we don't even know that could be another component here. That's true. That's
Zain
33:08
looking for it from somewhere that won't let
Corey
33:11
Like what's a proxy that's just military, right? Yeah. um and if you can't get that shot i find sometimes i'm certainly guilty of this myself like you're so you didn't get the shot you wanted and so you're searching for stock to get something that basically has the same feeling and you don't find it and you try to force it and it no longer actually works when you should say okay well what are the words is there another way we can visualize this is there another way we can say this and i think in this case there would have been a number of of options for them the the still with the moving still like the ken burn style sticks out pretty heavily if everything else is video i will say so you know you've got to think about that in the context of the construction of your video but it would have not taken very much of anything for somebody to go and like i can't remember the specifics of the video at that moment but you could get a panning shot of department of national defense headquarters right where it's looking at at the sign you could there's a lot you could do that would be pretty low cost and low effort and send somebody out with an iphone versus being stuck with stock of that nature so there are choices but i think the main one is just to step back what's the sentiment you're trying to push if you can't get the words to match the image exactly go to something more thematic and if you can't get that well then you just got to go with something entirely different or maybe you make those words, part of the last image, and you make your next cut before the next image.
Zain
34:36
I like it. Corey, I'm going to start with you on our next one. Fine, fabulous, or fucked, Corey, this has been going on for a couple of weeks, but I think, I
Zain
34:44
I don't know if it's reaching ahead, but it certainly is reaching a higher sort of frequency of conversation. The US turnaround, Democrat turnaround comparisons for Justin Trudeau.
Zain
34:58
The good part is, is, oh, this illustrates what can happen when a party turns itself around in a number of mere weeks. But of course, there's a Biden element. He had to go in order for it to happen. And it's Trudeau, our Biden. For Justin Trudeau, the party in question, is
Zain
35:13
is this fine, this comparison? Is this fabulous? It's the lifeline he may have needed. This is frustrating. Or is this totally fucked? What is your strategic political read for Justin Trudeau, the Democrat revival? And we won't even talk about their fortunes, but there has been a sense of revival. That much is clear. That being translated and projected onto Trudeau, is it fine, fabulous, frustrating, or fucked for him? If you're one of his strategists, which one of those categories would you be reading it into?
Corey
35:44
I mean, it's interesting, right? Because you could make a case that it's good for him, because it shows how quickly fortunes can turn around. Although, as we've said, we've spent a lot of time on this pod saying, let's
Corey
35:55
let's wait and see if this is actually real it's still very much a race all of that very
Zain
35:59
much so yes yes but
Corey
36:00
but it's also interesting because it shows what a change of leader could do so i'm not sure if i would embrace it or not i guess i'd be pretty flummoxed myself you would wouldn't you yeah yeah
Zain
36:11
because you're yeah yeah you're you fuck yeah
Corey
36:16
it would be tough like do you embrace it do you not embrace it i don't i don't know like do you actually not know are you just
Zain
36:22
just is this a bit too this is also also another terrible bit that you and carter are doing no
Corey
36:27
no look we talked about this a little bit a couple of weeks we did but now i feel like it's just like
Zain
36:30
like the fact that the dems have had a solid like well
Corey
36:34
well and at the time we said hey listen there's a story you can tell yourself and you can tell yourself it's a story of change and how rapidly things can change now
Zain
36:41
now that it's hitting a higher level which one would choose a lane which one would you be trying if you were advising trudeau which would you say boss embrace this boss stay away from it i
Corey
36:51
i think it is such a big narrative you don't really have a choice but to find some way to embrace it right you can't deny the thing that's happening here now if
Corey
37:01
if come november she loses you've got yourself a pretty good way to say see it doesn't always work to change the leader but if come november kamala harris wins you've got to find a way that that doesn't tank you too so i i would be confused as to which way i need to approach this but i think i would be approaching it cautiously not knowing knowing how things are going to play out in the United States. Can
Zain
37:21
Can I go into over-analytical progressive math here? Is the, and by math, I don't mean like numbers, but in terms of like, you've just said it, is the best federal
Zain
37:33
federal liberal scenario this democratic resurgence in the short term followed by a loss?
Corey
37:42
I don't know. I don't think so. No, you don't think so. That's a really interesting question. Well, here's my problem with that.
Zain
37:48
And Carter, I'll ask you the same question on the tail end of you responding. But Corey, keep going.
Corey
37:53
I think that will break the soul of progressives. They will be so crushed. Even translating up here, you mean? Yes, I do. Absolutely. And then I think the idea that you go and you fight Donald Trump.
Corey
38:06
I don't know. I've never been wild about that. I've never thought that was a particularly strong liberal strategy. strategy. But I don't know. I don't know. I mean, you could make a good argument for it. And I suppose I'd hear it out. But my gut reaction is, I
Corey
38:18
I don't see how that helps them to have her. Carter, I'll ask you for the ideal liberal
Zain
38:22
liberal scenario in a second. But I don't want to lose heart of the of their question here. Fine, fabulous, frustrating, or fucked. The democratic comparisons being projected upon Justin Trudeau, which which one is it for you? it's
Carter
38:35
it's got to be flummoxing for him i mean he's in a position where he he he has to make a choice about whether he should stay or where he should go and the enthusiasm and the excitement that has been generated in the last you know 30 days has been exceptional and one imagines that that's in part because it's kamala right but keep in mind that she wasn't all that in a bag of chips tips 38 days ago, right? When this was all starting off, one of the concerns was, well, who would it be? Who would it be? There's no one to step into the shoes of President Biden. I mean, he's impossible to replace. And then, you know, next thing you know, we're all dancing along with Kamala Harris, you know, and listening to Oprah Winfrey and, you know, all hell's breaking loose. I mean, what if the next person is just sitting there? We just don't know who it is yet. Um, I mean, if I'm, if I'm Justin Trudeau, I'm literally flummoxed. And then, so,
Carter
39:34
so, so I, I am, I'm a little bit confused.
Zain
39:37
Before I ask you the question I did, Corey, uh, I'll, I'll just bypass the, the,
Corey
39:42
the calling you a dick, um, for
Zain
39:46
flummoxed. I'll just bypass that completely.
Zain
39:48
Do you, as a strategist, does this give you any sort of pause or does it snap back into to focus for you this sentiment that the heir apparent could just be right there. We just haven't seen them in the right light. Am I overstating that? Like, you have always had a philosophy that leaders are made. They're not just born sort of thing. And do you feel like in your bones, Stephen Carter, that there is an underrated or not even underrated, but just a person we haven't seen in the right light that we haven't added the right sort of political seasoning flavoring um you know ammunition to that's sitting on the liberal benches that's right there that can win this thing against pierre like do you actually fundamentally in your strategist bones feel that that's the case if
Carter
40:33
if you'd asked me 40 days ago whether or not it should be harris or um the governor of california whose name is escaping me at the moment newsome um i would say oh it's got to be newsome it's got to be newsome i mean probably would have been Harris has been in the public eye for three years and has not taken off. But sometimes the change is just all the excitement that you need. So is there someone available? Sure. It could be literally whoever wins the next leadership, especially if it's a short leadership with, you know, a lot at stake. Suddenly everything is looking a lot different, especially if you're in Justin Trudeau's shoes. You know, he could have made the case. listen, these short-term leadership things, they never work out. Boom. Kamala Harris has arrived. Does
Carter
41:21
Does she win in November?
Carter
41:24
hope so, because then I get to implement my bug-out strategy.
Zain
41:28
Talk to me about that, Carter. Wait, so you want- The bug-out strategy? Carter wants to implement it? Yeah, I don't- Well, at this stage, there's a lot- It's unclear what he wants. I think he's going to do it regardless. He's invested a lot in flour and toilet paper. Zane, there's
Carter
41:40
there's a lot invested. And when one invests this much time, one almost wants to follow through on it even though it means the end of western civilization so
Carter
41:50
you know i mean where does one source rechargeable electric lights that aren't headlamps that's one of the things i'm looking for i'm
Zain
41:56
i'm your man to ask hey carter um tell
Zain
42:00
tell me about this i'm not going to ask you to will it into existence but tell me what's
Zain
42:05
what's the optimal liberal scenario is it the one that that we've outlined this amazing rush of of democratic momentum translating
Zain
42:12
translating over to the The liberal side followed by a loss so that Trudeau can be, look, show you so. No. What is it?
Zain
42:19
Talk me through it. What is it?
Carter
42:22
Listen, there's just too much at stake. I mean, if this was Romney versus Obama again, you know, oh, we lost to Romney. How horrible. But this isn't Romney versus Obama. This is Donald
Carter
42:36
Donald Trump versus the fate of the Western world. So I think that, you know, no one can think the best possible scenario is going to be the collapse of the left progressive side. I think that everybody just goes into hiding if Donald Trump wins. And I think the best case is that Kamala Harris wins and progressives around the world pick themselves up and start doing the right things and doing their strategies better.
Carter
43:04
There's probably a little siren going by here. Yeah,
Carter
43:07
the end of the world. The end of the world may have started already. We don't know.
Corey
43:11
I heard about your hoarding of flour and toilet paper. Yeah.
Carter
43:14
Yeah. I actually found a great source for toilet paper. Things are going our way. What
Carter
43:20
It's an Amazon deal where you can get 32 rolls in a single package. So I'm buying three of those. So I'm going to have 96 rolls of toilet paper.
Zain
43:33
So your amazing deal is just
Corey
43:35
just buying three rolls of... Just buying on the world's biggest marketplace. Way to go.
Zain
43:40
That's the deal? You know a guy. I thought you had like a Facebook marketplace hookup.
Carter
43:46
Listen, man, if you want to pay markups, that's the way you go, right? You have to get the TP straight from the source. And that's what I'm doing.
Zain
43:55
I'm wondering if anyone's selling toilet paper on Facebook marketplace. Is that an appropriate Facebook marketplace item to sell?
Carter
44:02
Now I want to check. No,
Zain
44:03
No, you don't want to check. You have to check. And while you check, Corey Hogan, fine, fabulous, or fuck, Justin Trudeau announcing just a few hours ago, yeah, that Canada will hit China with the EV tariffs that match the United States going up from 6% to 106% on the Chinese EVs matching the US, as I mentioned, on those tariffs. fine fabulous
Zain
44:31
fabulous frustrating fucked this is a straight policy question but it's also wrapped up in in trudeau kind of playing catch-up which seems to be a bit of the theme of this cabinet retreat or at least some of the policies that they're announcing but from your perspective as an ev owner not a chinese ev owner but an ev owner nonetheless fine fabulous frustrating or fucked that's
Corey
44:52
that's it i hadn't actually heard that so you're hitting me with some new stuff here but that's a policy that um it
Corey
45:00
has consequences you can understand why a government would want to do it to protect uh industry from chinese dumping where they are just bringing in a bunch of uh vehicles that are basically below the cost and undercutting the market and destroying the north american market especially at a time when so much money is being spent on battery plants on trying to get the auto manufacturers here in North America to build electric vehicles and build the infrastructure for them. And so you've got a bit of a protectionist rationale there, but it seems clearly at odds with the environmental rationale that the liberals have as well, right? And I think that's going to be a challenge in any jurisdiction that's looking at Chinese EVs because, I mean, I've never actually driven one, but some of them look fairly impressive. Certainly, we're all familiar with BYD, which is one of the big manufacturers in China, being able to build these vehicles that started at one point as knockoffs, but now look better than the vehicles that they're knocking off and coming in at way lower prices. Just coming
Zain
46:00
coming back from Europe, I was amazed by the amount of BYDs on the road. And I was in a couple of them as Ubers, and I was impressed.
Zain
46:07
impressed. I obviously wasn't driving them, but I was impressed being a passenger in them. And storefront sales, copying the Tesla strategy, frankly, copying the Tesla playbook as Elon Musk sought to find manufacturing later into the pandemic offshore to reduce costing, etc. They've built a market. It's real, and it's sizable.
Corey
46:30
Well, and I think that my basic bias is that putting up these barriers long term doesn't, doesn't, there's a place for you sometimes need to protect nascent industries, and you've got to be able to bring them in. But long term, I just don't think that they are viable solutions, right? You're not going to be able to hold up these walls forever, because people will start saying, why am I paying so much for this vehicle? These tariffs are entirely a government decision. That's basically a tax on us. Let's get them down. down the wall comes down your home industries that have been propped up by a government policy all collapse it's actually a little bit bloodier i'm a bit of a free marketer in that sense like i think you need to manage the the variances in environmental and labor policy and you've got to deal with that in a fairly standard approach so i can i can kind of get my head behind that but but
Corey
47:15
i don't know i mean i guess i'm i'm a little confused as to how i feel about this you you might I might say I'm... What
Zain
47:20
What would I say that you are?
Corey
47:22
You know, I'm a little frustrated that I don't know why... You're frustrated.
Zain
47:26
Thank you so much. Thank you for going with frustrated. Yeah.
Zain
47:29
Fabulous. Frustrating. Fucked. Chinese EVs, their tariffs are going from 6% to 106%, matching the policy of the United States. Corey's right. Despite not hearing about this story, it was both the environmental as well as the labor standards that Christopher Freeland cited that leads to this move. Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that, but it definitely does start there, or at least have a bit of a presence there. What do you think? You seem frustrated.
Carter
47:55
frustrated. Don't allow yourself to be flummoxed by this one, Zane. I won't. Don't allow yourself to be flummoxed.
Zain
48:00
flummoxed. And don't force the flummoxing, you know? Like, that's one thing I would say.
Zain
48:03
you don't need it. Here's
Carter
48:04
the thing. It's a question of
Carter
48:07
of environmentalism versus protecting your investments. And I think that the liberal government has chosen to protect their investments. How many billions of dollars have been thrown into battery plants in Canada? How many billions of dollars have been thrown into our automotive industry? You start bringing in these at-cost or below-cost vehicles, and suddenly those investments
Carter
48:32
investments look really stupid. And I think that that's what we're that's what we're facing here is that those investments become less valuable because because
Carter
48:44
China has figured out how to make a product for less money and people, it turns out, tend to like things for less money. I don't like this. I don't like the matching of the tariff because I'm coming down on the side of the environment right now, not necessarily the side of the auto producers in Canada and North America.
Zain
49:04
Carter, I'm going to start with you on this next one. Let's keep it with Trudeau, and let's keep it with this Liberal Party for a second. There's some great political reporting by Marika Walsh in the Globe and Mail saying that the
Zain
49:15
the Trudeau group, the Trudeau cohort, the PMO, the current brain trust of the Liberal Party, whatever you want to call it, the inner circle, they
Zain
49:24
they are not planning a major reset in the face of these persistent headwinds. You can look at this as a response to, and them saying, you know, they've already rejigged priorities, they've moved away from the big programs per se, and they're now looking at housing, cost of living, you know, even looking at immigration today, which we'll get to in a second as a policy that they've introduced today. fine
Zain
49:53
frustrating or fucked if you are the liberals uh and if you're reading this is this from your perspective stephen carter is this fine this is the the right strategy a shake-up didn't work out last time is this fabulous this is exactly you need to project confidence is this frustrating frustrated that you're not or is this actually totally fucked that you're not looking at any sort of quote-unquote major reset shake-up another sort of like start again you've You've had a few of these, right, in the past where we've talked about a budget. We've talked about a cabinet shuffle. We're not seeing one of those. We've talked about these things happening over the course of the last 16 months. They're saying officially they're not doing it again. Stephen Carter, fine, fabulous, frustrating, or fucked?
Carter
50:34
I mean, I'm frustrated by it. I
Carter
50:37
don't understand. Are they looking at things and saying, oh,
Zain
50:45
Sorry, your overlord, Corey Hogan, had to call you out on it through his piercing eyes.
Carter
50:50
at me with those eyes. Couldn't extend the bit into
Zain
50:53
into minute 50, could you?
Carter
50:54
No, I forgot. The drowsiness
Zain
50:59
That's what happens when you're riding bikes outside with people who are terrible at it.
Carter
51:05
Corey, are things going really well for the liberals right now?
Corey
51:08
They're not going great, Stephen, now
Corey
51:11
you mention it. why
Carter
51:11
why would you why would you go down a path uh that you know doesn't lead towards success
Corey
51:19
you know it's interesting to me because they did a bunch of big swings and zane to your point they didn't work but
Corey
51:26
but there's a lot of ground between big swing and no swing that they seem to have skipped over here yeah
Zain
51:32
is that it is that where we're gonna go is
Carter
51:35
that's all i had i i I decided not to answer the question because I got flummoxed. You did get flummoxed.
Zain
51:40
Corey, is there anything else you want to throw in here? Like, talk to me about why you don't think they're trying to do this. Is it because the previous ones have failed and that announcing another reset and having it fail is not what they need rather than just doing shit? Like, this announcement, like this political conventional wisdom of announcing a reset, right?
Zain
51:58
right? If I were to frame
Zain
51:59
frame it in a different way, it would be that segment of why the fuck do we still do this? Why the fuck do we still have political parties announce they're doing a reset rather than just reset? And so I'm kind of curious, like, from your perspective, because the actions might be the same, but the announcement of this is a reset is not happening. Your thoughts on that? And Carter, coming to you after this.
Corey
52:19
Well, it's interesting. So if what they're thinking is we just don't get out there and nobody can get mad at us and nobody can critique our reset, that's very dangerous. like that's that's the most dangerous mindset in politics when you start getting so insular that you you don't want to hear from other people you don't want to do things because you think that they'll just invite criticism you are just hiding that is the most dangerous place to be in politics and it's so self-defeating and if that's where they are they just need to quit like they just need to quit everybody who's got that mindset needs to go do something else it's a big world politics ain't that great there are a lot of other things you can do with your life once you get outside of politics but i think that there's probably some more obvious reasons why they wouldn't be announcing a full reset at this moment one is and we've talked about this in the context of as like last year when they did the cabinet shuffle one of the big critiques we had at the time was you only get to do this once right well so they've done that they can't do another cabinet shuffle that looks foolish right they had their uh we're gonna move this budget uh or we're gonna going to move public opinion through this budget thing didn't really work you can't really keep announcing the same thing over and over again and uh if there is another card to play and i'm of the opinion there's really only like one if you're going to keep going and that's a big big change at the top it's you know it's it's either a new chief of staff or maybe a new deputy prime minister certainly there's been some reporting that uh mark carney might be in the mix for finance and so So maybe that just shuffles things up a little bit.
Corey
53:52
You don't do it before you take another hit. And I don't know if the Liberals are going to win the Montreal by-election or not. I haven't been following it very closely. Certainly, polling them by-elections is notoriously difficult.
Corey
54:05
But if they lose it, well,
Corey
54:09
well, you don't want to have done your reset just before you lose it. You do your reset after you lose it. So just give it a couple of weeks and see where things are.
Zain
54:16
Carter, what do you think of this concept of a reset? Why do we still have this in politics as something you announce, you declare, you make clear of your intention?
Carter
54:27
Because you're trying to find a way to get people to forgive you for your sins of the past and enable you to commit new sins in the future. And the reset is the way of doing that. Versus
Zain
54:41
Versus just changing your behavior versus not doing that step. Talk to me about that. Politics
Carter
54:47
If you don't change the people, your behavior change may not be noticed, right?
Carter
54:51
right? Like I was making the case for a long time that, you know, Rachel Notley should change her cabinet before she went into her election in 2021. That change of a cabinet could have signaled a change in behavior. So what you're trying to get, you know, behavior change is ultimately the end game. But
Carter
55:10
But your cabinet ministers become very accustomed to behaving in the same way. You
Carter
55:15
You do a shuffle, and suddenly everything is reset. And now you can, you can now allow behaviors that would have been unallowable under the previous regime. game
Zain
55:26
carter yeah okay finish this off here well
Corey
55:30
when you're thinking about change there's an art to change and there's an art to making people feel change and an art to people not feel change and sometimes you really don't want to give a sense of chaos and you want to keep everything calm and steady and maybe that's part of what's informing their decision here right they just say hey listen we've got a plan we're sticking to the plan the plan's all good sometimes
Corey
55:49
sometimes you really want people to feel the change. And I think in politics, quite often, it's that, right? When you're looking for change in general, you look for easy change, you look for change you can feel, you look for change you can see. Politicians are pretty addicted to that for the reasons that Stephen said, which is it allows them to shake the etch-a-sketch, get it all clear, and get to draw all sorts of new lines on it, right? And get back to that place where they have the goodwill and the charity to do the things that they want to do. So that's why you often see them announce the change. It's It's because they want everybody to know they've changed. They make a show of the change for either internal or external purposes, depending on what's going on.
Zain
56:28
Corey, I'm going to start with you on our next one, which is sticking with this Liberal cabinet retreat. There's some policy announcements coming out of it, and one fascinating one is around housing. The Liberals are proposing to build 250,000 new homes by 2031 on public lands. They're actually creating something called the Canada Public Land Bank and have a new public lands for homes plan, which they want to build these 250 quarter of a million homes on properties that they deem surplus, underutilized in the federal government's vast portfolio. This is something being pushed, not exactly, but, you know, versions of this has been pushed previously in the past, has been certainly pushed by the conservatives as well. Well, fine,
Zain
57:10
fabulous, frustrating, or fucked? You could see a lane in each one of them if you want to. I'm curious as a strategist which one you are seeing for the liberals here.
Corey
57:23
I think that this, first of all, this is, in some ways, it's just a re-announcement of what's already been announced, with a little bit more specificity, but it's not talking about it. And it's also very consistent with saying, what are some of the things that the conservatives are saying that we should do? Let's just do them. And then we can take it off the table. And I think that Pierre Poliev is doing himself a bit of a disservice trying to find ways to critique it because it's not the conservative implementation of it, right? So these incredibly long-term leases rather than it being something that you can own outright.
Corey
57:55
Like, I understand where Pierre Poliev is coming from in the sense that, hey, you'll rent forever, you won't be a homeowner. I think homeownership is a good thing. I think that sometimes people are too easy to dismiss the value of it. But, you
Corey
58:07
you know, ultimately, it does align with everything that both we've been telling the liberals they should do on housing and what the liberals have already said they're going to do on housing. So I'm flummoxed. Like, I'm just not used to them actually executing. Oh, yeah, I know. Of course you are. Yeah,
Zain
58:22
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get it. You're flummoxed. For sure. Yeah. I don't care what you have to say after that. I just wanted you to get flummoxed. It's the whole point of the show anyways, isn't it?
Zain
58:30
Just to hear that you're flummoxed.
Carter
58:32
That's why people tune in.
Zain
58:34
Cut you off right there, Corey.
Zain
58:35
carter are you flummoxed as well i
Zain
58:38
okay anything else to add no
Carter
58:40
no i don't have anything else of course
Zain
58:42
course you don't have anything else to add this will solve the housing crisis won't it stephen carter listen
Carter
58:46
listen uh do you like
Zain
58:47
do you actually like this no
Carter
58:48
no there's 56 properties we need 560 properties i mean this is you know where the fuck is the harry hayes building are we still even using that thing like let's tear it let's give it over let's make some let's
Carter
58:59
let's make some big changes these are all really tiny want to give
Zain
59:01
give away the harry hayes building it's
Carter
59:04
i want want to give it away would
Carter
59:06
would you would you live in
Corey
59:08
would you live in the harry hayes building he
Corey
59:10
harry hayes building i've
Carter
59:11
i've been there for six years he's been waiting
Corey
59:13
waiting for his passport for yeah
Carter
59:16
yeah it's been uh it's been it's not
Carter
59:19
no it's good this
Zain
59:20
very very very poor ending to the show um okay we're gonna move it on to it cory do you have anything to say now that i cut you off well i
Zain
59:27
i felt bad they
Corey
59:27
they are not actually going to fix housing with this to steven's point although it is a pretty significant dent relative to some of the other projects they've been traipsing out like hey we've got 100 units here hey we've got 200 units there like this is a much more meaningful contribution to that and it is maybe part of a basket of things that will occur and maybe it will take some of the pressure off the market overall these things are always marginal right decision making occurs at the margins you combine that with some changes to the temporary foreign worker program that have occurred you see perhaps an easing of immigration rates in the country so there's maybe a little bit less demand at the same time you're building all this supply it may yes we need millions of new houses for sure but we might start to see relief well before that and in fact we should and um it
Corey
1:00:13
it we go back to something we've said for a while the real challenge the liberals have is how are people going to feel that relief before these houses are built and so they're going to have to get creative and think think about ways to do that. But this is obviously a major component of it. I'm not going to knock them for building houses. I agree with Stephen, it's not enough. And I also believe it's not fast enough. And that's a political consideration as much as anything. But I'm not going to knock it.
Zain
1:00:42
Let's move on to our final segment, our over under our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we still do it for you. I know it's been a few weeks since I've been on the show, but we still do this for you. And I want wanted everyone to know that. Are you in? Are you out on Trudeau announcing this week, actually just today, that the Temporary
Zain
1:00:59
Temporary Foreign Worker Program is going to be reducing its intake. A rapidly growing population has put a strain on housing, public services, health care. This government has been criticized in the past for increasing immigration without bolstering these services. What do you think of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals' plan to put a chill on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program?
Carter
1:01:23
Well, I guess I'm in on it. I think that this is a good decision. I think in a perfect world, we'd have the facilities to accommodate temporary foreign workers. They are a vital part of our economy. But given the strain on the economy that is occurring right now, I think that we have to slow down temporary foreign workers. And we may have to reduce our overall number of immigrants in total. Immigration, I think, is a net benefit to society. I've said that a thousand times. But right now, society also needs some housing starts. Ironically, a large portion of those temporary foreign workers and immigrants are working on the problem of actually building us more housing. Interesting.
Zain
1:02:08
Corey, you in or out, there's potentially more immigration related announcements that could come this week from the Liberal cabinet retreat. But on this particular one, slowing the temporary foreign worker program in
Zain
1:02:22
in or out from your perspective?
Corey
1:02:25
Well, I do worry a lot about the
Corey
1:02:27
the unintentional consequences that Stephen alluded to there and what it might mean for our desire to build more houses. And so I hope that it gets approached with a certain amount of nuance and we look at how we might be able to meet some of our objectives in the housing space. because like Steve and I agree that immigration is a good and it is really important we find a way that Canada can continue to grow continue to be welcoming continue to benefit from people from all over the world and if our solution is well we're just full and we don't resolve the housing challenges like maybe you can convince me to support an overall easing of immigration while well, we allow housing stock to catch up. My fear is we
Corey
1:03:14
we don't do the other thing, right? Like we have an easing of immigration and we don't resolve the housing problem because all of a sudden that moment of crisis is gone. And so I'm not wild about that. And like I said, I am worried about the unintended consequences.
Corey
1:03:29
Although, you know, ultimately I've never been a massive, massive enthusiast for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, at least in some of its implementations because it can also be quite exploitative and so maybe this is also an opportunity to reset on that and think about it and see if it's doing the things that make sense for our country make sense for our communities make sense for the for the temporary foreign workers cory
Zain
1:03:50
cory i'm going to start with you for our next one give me a scale on a scale of one to ten give me a number i should say one being not very concerned ten being ring the alarm alarm,
Zain
1:04:00
you're the BC NDP right now.
Zain
1:04:02
Yeah. BC United is doing their nosedive as they have been slowly and then fast and then slowly again. And the Conservatives seem to have a bit of staying power, the upstart BC Conservatives. You as the NDP were slated to win this election in British Columbia coming up in the fall here. Your level of concern right now, one being, eh, not too you're concerned. 10 being, ring the alarms, it's almost September, and we're in a single-digit
Zain
1:04:31
election with the BC Conservatives, and who knows where they can go from here. Where
Corey
1:04:36
Where are you at?
Corey
1:04:37
Well, in fact, there's been some polls that show the BC Conservatives leading.
Zain
1:04:41
Yes, there have been, yes.
Corey
1:04:44
Yeah, I mean, I would be very concerned. I don't know if we've had this conversation on air. We've certainly, the three of us, had versions of this conversation. We share a lot of BC polling, all the time in our group chat, because it is such a horror show to see how the BC United Party has just utterly collapsed and what that's meant. That's mainly
Zain
1:05:02
mainly the point of interest. Yes, it's less so the BC NDP. I mean, it's really just, holy shit, someone's got to write the book on BC United.
Corey
1:05:13
Well, and the conversation I've had, and I've had this debate with friends in British Columbia too, is I've long been of the opinion a total collapse of bc united and the bc conservatives getting almost all that vote was maybe even probable right because you hit a certain point where you just don't look viable and everyone says well that's not actually a thing anymore and everybody just bails on you and what the bc united was uh i don't even know you call them bc united the bc united party like like whatever this their name is a dumpster fire in a lot of different ways right
Corey
1:05:52
we've kind of assumed for a long time that their infrastructure would keep them in this to a certain extent they'd have so many incumbents people would think well the incumbent might have a chance but when you're polling in single digits nobody thinks you've got a chance and meanwhile if you've got a very very close race between the bc conservatives and the bc ndp people will start start making choices. And when you had it reported that you were negotiating, potentially merging with the BC Conservatives, with your BC United, you lose even the ability to say, they're
Corey
1:06:23
they're not like us, they're different, they're a scary thing, because you were more than willing to become bedfellows with them at one point, and now you're not. So I do think that all of the conditions are there. All
Corey
1:06:34
All of the conditions are there. BC United having super low support, BC United signaling that that B.C. conservatives were maybe close enough to be in the same party with them.
Corey
1:06:43
That total collapse of B.C. United is a probability at this point. And in that case, the B.C. NDP, that's
Corey
1:06:52
that's a rough place to be in, right? This could be a race that they lose pretty easily if that's the case.
Zain
1:06:59
Carter, level of concern. If you're the B.C. NDP right now, you're the government, you've got Eby, you had Horgan prior too. This was supposed to be pretty straightforward. I'm not going to say it was supposed to be not challenging, but straightforward, I think is perhaps the right term. It's no longer straightforward. I think that much is clear. The BC Conservatives were not supposed to be your principal opponent. They are, and they're surging. And the other party, to Corey's point, is near a collapse. Where are you on the panic scale between 1 to 10?
Carter
1:07:27
Oh, I'm pretty panicked. I'm probably at least at least a plus on the panic level right now, because you have to realize that if an election comes down to change versus more of the same, if the change has multiple options, it changes your number that you're going to need to achieve. achieve this is now a single option change has so you need to get 50 plus one and that's just not going to happen if you're the bc ndp right now so 50 plus one is off the table and uh the bc conservatives look like they are are the ones tracking towards it so this change election becomes really really difficult for uh the bc ndp and
Carter
1:08:09
and no cory i did not describe vote split vote split yeah it seems
Zain
1:08:12
seems like vote splitting to me feels like vote splitting wow no i did not
Carter
1:08:16
not describe it seems
Zain
1:08:17
seems like there's two conservative options right
Zain
1:08:20
right and there's a change oh interesting i'm just putting it together yeah no that's a classic vote split definition carter yeah
Carter
1:08:27
yeah but they're wrong oh
Zain
1:08:29
oh they're wrong okay
Zain
1:08:32
yeah who's they the
Carter
1:08:33
the people who are not me all
Corey
1:08:35
right that makes sense to me that track no
Zain
1:08:37
that no tracks yeah no it's good uh the brooklyn nets carter he coached the brooklyn nets and he wasn't why would you take that for that possible job
Zain
1:08:46
he I wasn't going to
Zain
1:08:47
throw it in his face, but he's just, you know, he's flummoxed at this moment and I needed to give him some stability.
Zain
1:08:54
Carter finishes off here.
Zain
1:08:56
Some words for advice for Justin Trudeau. How should he land the plane of this liberal cabinet retreat? What would you what would you want for him for him to do? It doesn't have to be specific. Just words of wisdom. Anchor him with some with some of your strategist wisdom in terms of how he should land the plane from this cabinet retreat. He's not doing a reset. He's not doing a cabinet shuffle. awful uh he's clearly announcing policies more on immigration expected knowing all of what we do know which is not everything give him some advice cory sam do you and we'll finish it off
Carter
1:09:26
write two letters i don't i i i don't know um i i i think that the the challenge
Carter
1:09:33
challenge for trudeau is that i think there's a lot of smart people around him who literally don't know what he should do next i And I would count myself, while I'm not around him, I would certainly feel like I have no idea what he should do next.
Carter
1:09:51
Heading into this session, I don't know what the topic, like what the theme would be that actually wins anything back. What is the theme? What is the, you know, how does he do this other than change? I just don't know how.
Carter
1:10:03
Corey, you have an idiast?
Corey
1:10:06
yeah i mean it's like in the movie dave when he's talking to his son and he says you know you me or nobody is going to hit as hard as life but it ain't about how hard you hit it's about hard you can get hit and keep moving forward how much you can take and keep moving forward that's how winning is done i you know it's what he needs to hear right now i think no steven's thing i
Zain
1:10:25
i agree that was actually um directly lifted for me steve nash brooklyn nets That's coaching pep talk. It
Corey
1:10:32
It was. Which was also in the extras of
Zain
1:10:34
We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1820 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velge. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we will see you next