Episode 1850: Ruby Dhalla's Money

SPEAKER_00 0:02

This is the Strategist episode 1850. I'm Justin Trudeau. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, guys. Did

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Did I do that right? Was that correct? Oh

Carter 0:12

Oh my God, that's

Carter 0:12

that's the best one we've ever had. It was really good.

Carter 0:18

thrilled to have you here tonight. Thanks

SPEAKER_00 0:22

I'm thrilled to be here. I'm just really looking forward to finding out what's next and it might be podcasting. I was hoping to get on the show a little earlier. I did email info at thecraspoliticallymotivated.com, but I hadn't heard back from you guys. So I thought maybe I'd just reach out this way and get in touch. Justin,

Corey 0:40

Justin, as we talked about before we hit record, that was for liberal leadership candidates. Okay. That was not for just anybody off the street who wanted to be on the podcast. So appreciate it. Appreciate the enthusiasm. But there are rules. I know these things are foreign to you liberals, but there are rules in society. Okay. Okay.

Carter 1:00

Listen, he's here and he's doing a great job. That's all we can ask for. He didn't, you know, Mark Marney didn't fucking show up.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

And I'm here right now. And I think you guys are still looking for a host as far as, as far as I know. So.

Corey 1:17

Well, we were, but I actually got a text from Zane like 30 seconds ago while you were doing that.

Corey 1:23

I'm going to be honest, very performative introduction. And so I think we're going to have to pick this up again, maybe next week. We're never more than a few minutes away from Zane bailing on us. So stay close, but not today, my man.

Zain 1:38

Thanks for coming in, Mr. Prime Minister. I'm so glad I made it. Carter, anything you want to say before we leave to the Prime Minister? You want to thank him for his service or anything like that? Please go ahead. Now's the time. Some

Carter 1:50

last years have been some of my best years. So thank you very much, Prime Minister.

Zain 1:56

Guys, we are here. Justin Trudeau is not. Justin Trudeau is done as leader of the Liberal Party. First of all, how are you guys? You guys may have covered this with JT, but oh,

Corey 2:06

oh, good. You saved the can opening for me. I saved that for you,

Zain 2:09

you, bud. Oh, thank

Corey 2:09

thank you. I appreciate

Zain 2:09

appreciate that. It's like you knew I was coming the entire time.

Zain 2:13

You guys been well?

Zain 2:15

What's been going on? Oh,

Carter 2:16

good. We got a lot to talk

Carter 2:17

talk about. Super good.

Zain 2:18

We do. I want to create the agenda for the show this way. Let's focus the majority of it on what we saw over the weekend. I want to spend most of it on the now what, because I think that's way more interesting than what happened. But there are elements of what happened on Sunday, and I'm talking about the Kearney any landslide victory in the liberal leadership that I think are worthy of a strategist podcast discussion. And then I want to get into the now what. What does he need to do? Some of the moves he's already made, some of the things he's already said. How do they land for you guys? But Corey, let's start with what we saw. And I'll get to the results in a second.

Zain 2:53

Maybe I can start with this. Tell me about the production that you saw. What did you make of the liberal production that they put together as part of this leadership result? It was carried Carried by all the major networks, it was streaming online. They had intros for both Carney and Trudeau by their respective daughters. They had each of the candidates having a on-the-floor mic moment that they had. And, of course, they had a keynote, one would call it, or plenary, by Jean-Croix Chen, which probably ran 25 minutes more than anyone anticipated, except Jean-Croix Chen. So just to summarize for folks, that was, maybe not in that order, certainly not in that order, That was the liberal production. Corey, what did you make of it? And then Carter, what did you make of it? And then we'll get into the results and et cetera, et cetera.

Corey 3:41

I mean, I think it was an interesting mix of high concept and low execution, if I'm being frank. There was certainly more Canadian flags at that convention since any convention I can think of, right? And

Corey 3:53

the liberal palette is already very red heavy. It's the color of the party, obviously. I mean, it was just wrapped in Canadiana. You can absolutely see what they were going for. But it didn't entirely hit for me. I feel like they could have spent a little bit more of Ruby Dalla's money on the production values. That probably would have worked a little bit better for me. There were some things that felt a little bit janky, but let's be frank.

Corey 4:17

They were in the middle of a leadership contest. They pulled it off in lightning time. It is what it is. It was what it was. And as well, I could see why you'd have somebody like Jean Chrétien speak, but

Corey 4:29

but maybe somebody should have gone the next step and said, hey, former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, can I see your speech before you give it? Maybe? I mean, I get you're the man, but can I see that speech? speech oh there's a whole liberal policy platform in here that the next leader may or may not agree with maybe

Corey 4:47

maybe don't say that you know maybe that conversation could or should have happened along the parameters there and then there were just some basic things that carter is more equipped to talk about like the lighting seemed very off terrible i think part of it was the massive red light behind them that just was kind of washing everything and uh it wasn't a general wash as my friend steven carter would say it

Carter 5:08

it was not a general wash no not to be confused by general washington

Zain 5:11

washington um no different guy general wash you know zero slave owners zero slaves for general wash general washington several slaves too many slaves one would argue too many what's too many for

Corey 5:24

for you zane because i feel like one might just

Zain 5:27

no you can never ask a person to color that question cory

Zain 5:30

cory that's i think it's rude i

Zain 5:31

i don't think you can i don't know

Corey 5:33

know i don't know know why you get a pass i

Zain 5:34

i know edi is dead i know edi is dead but i think it's still pretty rude to ask a person to color that question cory it's

Zain 5:40

it's just okay wouldn't

Carter 5:40

wouldn't it be ironic if cory was the one who was canceled on this podcast that would be in a bird

Zain 5:44

bird canceling would be right carter what did you make the of the production uh general wash uh notwithstanding of course i

Carter 5:53

mean the staging was a little bit too one note with all the red uh it was it was everywhere it was every every where you could look and everywhere, every second shot. I mean, some black would have gone very nicely in the room. You didn't have to cover the whole thing in a red curtain. The speeches, I actually quite like the, you know, each of them coming in and doing their own speech. Prior to the results.

Carter 6:20

Yeah. I thought that was good. I thought that it gave everybody an opportunity to be seen one last time. And they kept them to the right length. They were less than five minutes long. I quite like that. I thought that Carney's introduction by his daughter, Trudeau's introduction by his daughter, both knocked it out of the park.

Carter 6:40

I do think that Prime

Carter 6:42

Prime Minister Chrétien was just way too long. And I'm not sure that a 91 year old, I mean, I was 91 by the time we finished. So, you know, I'm just not sure that that's the edge

Carter 6:55

edge you want to go with. in 1993 we were relevant um you know so you

Carter 7:00

you know i i was a little put off by how long he spoke i think if he'd spoken for five minutes he'd have been great but

Carter 7:07

but he just kept going and going and going and he's not the energizer bunny so it did not work for me um

Zain 7:15

i've got i've got anything yeah sorry add anything and then i've got like three two production questions and then i want to get into the vote in a second i

Carter 7:22

i was as much as i didn't like the lighting i i was i was pleased that the set didn't involve a human wall behind it. That was my favorite. Yeah,

Zain 7:32

That's nice. A lot of Canada flags, no human wall. Corey, I said these are production questions. They're not. They're more so questions in retrospect that are not about the result, I guess. So let me ask you this. One is a bit of a production question.

Zain 7:45

surprise to see Trudeau

Zain 7:48

on stage giving a speech? I know it's conventional, but this was a race to run away from Trudeau. Any surprise that he got the spot he did in the time and and that he did no

Corey 7:59

no surprise i don't know how you don't have him at an event like that it's supposed to be a bit of a passing of the torch yes i'm sure that um

Corey 8:07

um the people who set up the event really wanted to make sure he had the moment in addition to it being the proper thing in my opinion like listen i i think that there is some truth to what you said and that people are going to be running away from the trudeau legacy the trudeau record i mean one One of the most absurd moments, in a way, was when Mark Carney in his victory speech said, oh, and we're going to, like, repeal the carbon tax. And a room full of liberals madly applauded. Totally.

Zain 8:32

was looking at Trudeau because they'd panned the camera to Trudeau in that particular moment. And you could study. Do you want to jump in on this, Carter? I

Carter 8:39

I want to say I was also a little disappointed that he talked about cutting spending and then immediately threw in that we're going to keep dental care and pharma care. Two programs that I think spend a lot of money without much in the way of results. I was surprised. I mean, he talked about the Trudeau legacy in a lot of different ways. But,

Carter 8:59

you know, he didn't distance the way that I would. While

Zain 9:01

While you have the mic, Corey, just hang on for a second. Were you, Carter, surprised that Trudeau got stage time in the volume that he did or the time that he did?

Carter 9:08

I don't think you get to dictate how long the guy on his way out gets to speak. and apparently you don't get to dictate how long the guy on his way out from the guy on his way out from the guy on his way out yeah

Zain 9:20

very little rules so no surprises there how did trudeau do cory

Corey 9:26

mean i think he did fine it is a pretty pat speech if i'm being honest this is the kind of speech you expect from a leader the tears at the start you talk about the legacy you move on with your life you don't you don't hold the stage so long that you're a bother to the person who's coming after you jean chretien take notes in that context i thought the speech was fine it it was not the focus of the night it's not the focus of my memories of the night and that is 100 the way it should on

Zain 9:53

on purpose there so there's a reason that chretien went after trudeau and not the other way around for example yeah

Zain 9:59

yeah in your mind you think that was strategic i

Corey 10:01

i don't i mean somebody definitely said we don't want it to be the next speech we

Zain 10:06

we don't want it to

Corey 10:07

to be back to the back carny

Zain 10:07

carny trudeau whatever yeah

Corey 10:09

yeah i don't know if we needed the 800 hour palette cleanser sure sure sure yeah yeah but you know we're kind of dumping on on jean-christian but he gets a great line bring the fire he had some great lines so like it just was too much you know it was just too long yeah

Zain 10:22

yeah carter how did trudeau do and and just before you answer he's still on right now i know he said he left but he's hoping that i have some sort of aortic heart disease on the show and that he could take over um so he's still on so just you know just you know go

Zain 10:37

go ahead just just so you know great

Carter 10:39

great speech one of the best speeches i've ever seen uh he he nailed it um you know his best performance ever and and i say performance in in the greatest with the greatest respect because i really felt like that was the first time we saw the real trudeau okay because you know i've i've i've

Corey 10:55

i've you've long been in

Carter 10:57

in the past i've you know been uh critical of the uh

Carter 11:00

uh the fakeness of Trudeau, but not this time. No siree, Bob. He

Carter 11:05

He came across You think he should have run for

Carter 11:08

If he'd run for liberal leader, I would have loved to have him as host.

Zain 11:14

also not a production question. However, I'm going to put it in here because I'll forget otherwise.

Zain 11:21

This was a two-month liberal leadership race. This was the shortest leadership race that we've had in this country. Should other parties take note about how short and perhaps perhaps, how robust and effective it was despite being two months? And do you think they will take note around the fact that you don't need to drag this thing out for nine, 10, eight months in the past? And the liberals, regardless of what you fucking think about them, may have proved that to you.

Corey 11:45

Oh, I hope they're taking notes. I got to tell you, even two months started to feel a little long in the last couple of weeks. But I wanted to ask, do you think that

Zain 11:52

that was just because

Corey 11:53

because of the timeline we're

Zain 11:54

living in, though? Is that just because of the political timeline we're living in, which every day seems like a week or do you genuinely believe that two months is enough

Corey 12:03

i actually now feel that two months might even be too much we are so used to these long contests and we have not tested in any meaningful way the ability to do a short contest in so long that when we got a short one it was an absolute breath of fresh air i mean i don't think that the liberals lost anything by having a short contest they got a lot of money into the race they got a lot of interest into the race i couldn't believe how many people registered to be voters yes most of them didn't vote because they were registered to vote for ruby dolla that's true and she had

Zain 12:33

had a good 250 in there for

Corey 12:35

clearly no you know what actually on that point if i can just say it had 38 turnout that was despite a pretty difficult voting process very difficult

Zain 12:45

registration system yes compares pretty

Corey 12:46

pretty comparably to the 2013 liberal leadership race where they had 43 turnout without those registration challenges. So, you know, pretty, they got as good as they got last time, I guess is my point. They got more people than last time. And they did it all

Zain 13:02

all in a fraction of the time. Carter, this is exactly where I wanted to go to the two things. Number one, because Corey's hit on the memberships, and that's where I wanted to go to next, the attrition. Big deal, not so big deal on attrition. Tell me about that. And then tell me about taking notes for a shorter race, If you're another party, provincial, federal, otherwise?

Carter 13:22

Well, I'll tell you, the process was onerous. It was onerous for a lot of people. You validate

Carter 13:31

It took me a week to vote, which, you know, I had to go back and revalidate myself. And my identity was verified by Canada Post. That went relatively smoothly. But the verification process took some time. and i didn't really understand it but i was i was going to vote and i was pretty uh committed

Carter 13:53

committed to it i have a friend who was very committed to it and spent two weeks trying to rectify the vote and

Carter 13:57

and was unable to to rectify the vote entirely so

Carter 14:02

onerous process i think we have gone too far trying to stop the one percent from people who were are going to come in and try and fuck with our our processes we we've gone way too far um to try and stop them from playing uh we're we're pushing out uh 15 20 percent of the population that wants to vote um so i think that uh we we've gone too far on on that piece i understand why it's done i don't understand why it was done to this extent and in terms of uh you

Carter 14:34

you know the the i

Carter 14:36

i can't remember the second half of your question so let's not worry about it you're

Carter 14:40

you're muted buddy yeah

Carter 14:42

you were saying you're well

Zain 14:42

well i was i was just so delighted by what you were saying and i just thought wow i need to go on mute so nothing interrupts carter the two-month contest versus the 10-month contest for example oh

Carter 14:52

oh that's what it was oh my god i've done the 10-month contest i

Zain 14:55

i think we both

Zain 14:55

have it to some degree yeah we all have it so yeah

Carter 14:58

yeah there there there's no there is absolutely no benefit to going for 10 months it would it appears that the money that is going to be raised in the because we know when the money comes it comes right off the bat and it comes in the last three weeks it turns out if you take the first two weeks in the last three weeks and add them together you still get two months right like this is a perfect length of time everybody should be taking this into account because they still charged that was this the large this is the largest leadership fee i think that's ever been charged by

Carter 15:29

liberals they charged it um

Carter 15:30

um was it higher for the conservatives i think it may i think it's i

Corey 15:34

i think it's the largest full stop oh okay you guys might be right

Carter 15:38

think it's the largest and they still got four people to well five

Carter 15:42

five to pony up 375 000 to make

Zain 15:45

make their gates you mean like

Carter 15:46

like yeah yeah like that's unbelievable um in a in a race like this for two months that was an unbelievable thing and i would i would suggest to every party henceforward if you're not going to do a delegated convention which is still the best type of convention or the same the best type of leadership, then do a two-month leadership, because the liberals have proven that it can be done, and it can be done extremely effectively.

Zain 16:11

Corey, do we just feel that way? I said because of the political timeline as being one of those things, the Trump-generated timeline that is making a day a week feel like a week. But was it also, did two months feel like enough because the result was just known? If it was more competitive, and if it was more competitive on the money raised, on the membership sort of splits, on other metrics, on debates, on internal polling, et cetera, would we have felt, you know what, I wish Christopher Freeland had another three months of this because she could have really got a groove because all the other metrics were aligned for her, for example. So I just want to stress test this a bit before we jump into why we love the two-month or six-week version of a leadership race versus not, just because of the uniqueness of this one.

Corey 16:58

Yeah. Look, I think you could still optimize further from what the liberals have got i think you could have had some debates earlier i know that wouldn't be popular with the campaigns because they're all out hustling for memberships but i think you could do that i think you could have forums across the country there are ways that you could do more but i think the timeline was great and as we are talking this out one of the things that occurs to me is one of the reasons leadership contests were so long is because we built the leadership process process for delegated conventions. And we just slowly swapped out pieces as we got to one member one vote, online voting, but we didn't change the fucking timelines. And so necessity being the mother of invention, when the liberals found they didn't have the time, they realized they didn't need the time and that the process actually runs just fine in a one member one vote, online voting world with two months. All of the rest of that was there for processes we don't use anymore. It was to allow people time to have local meetings. It was to allow people time, you

Corey 17:56

you know, delegates who got elected to then plan to be somewhere else for a whole week, right? And that does take time, but it doesn't take time just to go online and watch a few debates and then to vote. Like, that just doesn't take the time. And so what we should be reminded by this is that sometimes you just got to reinvent something that you've just been slowly tinkering on. Like, You need to go and stress test it. In some ways, it's like classic operations management stuff. You put this process down, you say what parts of it are not adding value, and you take those parts out. And the liberals took those parts out. They took out the doldrums, and it worked fine.

Zain 18:35

Carter, any final thoughts on the length of the leadership race before we move on to the landslide result?

Carter 18:41

I wanted to address the idea that a second or third place candidate would be able to capture a wave in the second half. A more competitive. A more competitive

Zain 18:50

competitive second or third place candidate is my point. I

Carter 18:53

absolutely true. I mean, I think that Alison Redford stands as an example of someone who caught a wave at the end. But,

Carter 19:00

you know, is that really what you want? I mean, you can catch a wave at the beginning, too. You know, waves come and waves go. How long was that

Zain 19:07

that Redford one, Carter, that you ran? Was that, like, closer to, like, the conventional? Two

Carter 19:10

Two or three years of my life, I think.

Carter 19:13

seriously, was that closer

Zain 19:14

closer to, like, ten months, eight months? It

Carter 19:15

It was—we started in February. We finished in October. Yeah.

Carter 19:19

it was eight months oh fuck

Zain 19:20

fuck me really wow yeah it's

Zain 19:22

like a lifetime wow yeah

Carter 19:24

yeah it was a really hard race and i'll tell you something august wasn't great no one had a good time in august right

Zain 19:30

right because you're running a race and no one wanted to run a race yeah

Carter 19:33

i mean who gives a fuck at least in july you're going to you know whatever k days or whatever it's called you know i mean i'll

Zain 19:39

i'll go further yeah go ahead cory and and jump

Zain 19:42

jump in and i'll jump in with my thought

Corey 19:44

thought to the point At the point of like time in the last minute turn, the time between the two ballots was not eight months, right? And how much of the movement in that Alberta PC race occurred in two weeks? We went from 17

Carter 19:55

17% to 51% in two weeks. That's right.

Corey 19:57

So it's certainly possible to change your fate in two weeks within a two month contest, because you can do it in two weeks in an eight month contest.

Zain 20:06

Corey, would you have, as the liberals, wanted to dominate the airwaves for the conventional six to eight months and then head into an election like we're going to in the matter of mere days or weeks? Or do you like the two-month burst you got heading into an election? Talk to me now about more of that as we get real, and I promise I'll get to the vote results.

Corey 20:24

Well, that's not a real choice. I mean, I think that's what parties wish they had. They could have eight months of dominating the agenda. Nobody gets eight months of dominating the agenda. They get exactly the points we talked about. They get the wave. Start of the race, membership cutoff, debates, vote. That's it. That's all you get. And so why spread those across? I mean, that's not how we would run any other communications exercise. We would not just let them languish for a year. We would put them much closer. And

Carter 20:51

And we would take our budget and we'd spend our, like, we would look at a budget. If we were to do an eight-month communications exercise, we

Carter 20:59

we would not be spending all of our money equally on every week, right? No.

Carter 21:04

No. trying to get the same level of coverage yeah

Carter 21:07

we we would take our money and we'd say okay well we're we're going to do a spike here we're going to do a spike here this is why we're going to do you

Carter 21:13

know we're going to try and get attention in may and then we're going to shift into september and

Carter 21:17

and we're not going to push very hard in july and august um

Carter 21:19

um but you know like there there's

Carter 21:23

this way all the money got spent as quickly as we possibly could because you needed to run a two a two-month campaign. And I think that it works out so, so much better. And, you know, I guess some people may say, well, yeah, but there wasn't enough time for the underdogs to catch fire. Well,

Carter 21:42

that's not what the leadership's there for.

Carter 21:44

Leadership's not there to allow an underdog to catch fire. Leadership's there to elect the leader.

Corey 21:49

Right. Yeah. Well, and we say this all the time. You create the contest, you create the outcome. Yeah.

Corey 21:54

That's fine if you want to say, I'm trying to create a contest where anything can happen. That's fine. I guess that's a choice. Is that really what's in the interest of the party? And frankly, if you had leadership contests a lot faster, maybe parties would be a little less reticent to change leaders. So there's knock-on effects and there's considerations all over the board, but they're not all bad. The idea that you can get a new leader in two months, I think should be liberating for a lot of political parties. Oh,

Zain 22:19

Oh, yeah. Let's get into the results, Carter. You know, when I saw that there was 400,000 people registered and only 150,000 people that voted. I was a bit concerned for Mark Carney because you'd think that a lot of the folks that didn't show up were kind of that soft Carney support, knowing that his campaign had taken credit for a lot of the signups, so to speak. But that was not the case, Stephen Carter. 86% of the vote, domination in every single riding across the country, he won. He won the riding of his competitors handily. He had more More votes, interestingly, I'd say, and more people vote for him in Alberta than in Quebec. Of course, he won both. So it was immaterial, but interesting at the end of the day. This was a crushing. This was 86%. This was similar, actually almost identical to the race that the Alberta NDP here had with 86% for Nenshi. And the next place contestant, I believe, was at 8% or so, under 10. But it was a domination, Stephen Carter.

Zain 23:13

Talk to me about what

Zain 23:15

what impressed you or is interesting to you with the results from Mark Carney. And then we'll talk about the fate of Christopher Lennon, Green and Gold in particular.

Carter 23:24

I mean, you know, having won races or 51 to 49, you don't walk in with that. Everybody's behind me. Everybody's going to stand with me.

Carter 23:34

86, everybody's with you. You've got everybody. There is no small faction of people that aren't going to stand with Mark Carney. they're all with mark carney they

Carter 23:44

they they they showed that by um you know jumping into this so massively um like it is unheard of to be able to win the entire country in this fashion normally the way you would you know work

Carter 23:58

work through this type of a leadership is you would say okay where am i where's the weak spots that i can start to really gain some traction

Carter 24:05

traction where am i not going to focus where am i not going to spend effort and

Carter 24:09

and it would appear that the carney team didn't have to make that kind of trade-off and

Carter 24:13

and if they did make that kind of trade-off and we did this with nenshi in 2010 uh uh zane we didn't pull we didn't drop any brochures in ward six right

Carter 24:24

we were quite confident that we weren't going to do well in ward six there was uh two counselors from ward who'd previously represented represented ward six that were running uh barb higgins kind of had a big a big you know group

Carter 24:37

group of people that were supporting her in ward six nenshi won every every poll in ward six, that

Carter 24:44

because sometimes things just take off on you and

Carter 24:48

things just took off on, on Mark Kearney. He, uh,

Carter 24:53

people were hoping for first ballot. People were hoping for 60, 65. I

Carter 24:58

I don't know that anybody was walking around, you know, saying it's

Carter 25:01

it's going to be 80, 86. Was Keto Maggie saying 80, 86 on main street? No.

Carter 25:06

Polling? No, he was not. not okay i just wanted to check sorry

Carter 25:10

for keto yeah we feel bad for um cory

Zain 25:14

cory cory what's more interesting to you the 86 for carney or the eight for freeland well

Corey 25:19

well so that was 86 in points he got even more yes he did like on the raw basis that's correct yeah

Corey 25:26

yeah i mean it was just an absolute domination and um i certainly well beyond what i had imagined would happen i thought it would be 60 to 70%, I think is where I pegged it. That was clearly underestimating the guy. It is fascinating that the percents of points mirrored almost identically the Alberta NDP contest. I think it's one of those great political coincidences. But I also think it's not that much of a coincidence. Parties are looking for saviors and parties are willing to push behind saviors at this point. But there is a day after that saviorship. And I think what we've seen with Nahid Nenshi and the the alberta ndp is it's it's not a guarantee of general election resonance or success right certainly not in the short term and all the liberals have is a short term so what i'm most struck by is that

Corey 26:15

that that we don't even seem to think of it as that big of a deal anymore maybe it's just because we're albertans but like we should we said pierre polliev was absolutely killing it at 68 percent right right right pierre polly pierre polliev's numbers look pitiful compared compared to Mark Carney's numbers here. But there's just this expectation that the leader gets these massive numbers, I think, these days. And that's a weird thing for me, right? Because there are going to be leaders who win, limping out with 55%. And they might just forever be toast now. Like, we just might not be able to hold on to a leader who doesn't win by such a commanding margin. That's

Zain 26:51

That's interesting, especially when you're kind of suggesting that that might be the new sort of political era that we're in. Carter,

Zain 26:58

8% and 11,000 votes for Chrystia Freeland. I know we can go back to the he or she who stabs the lady, you know, doesn't get to wear the crown. I get it.

Zain 27:09

this is more than— Because you're about to ask a question about it. But I think this is not about that. What I'm most interested in, Carter, is that it's not like Christopher Freeland didn't have a bunch of organizers, MPs, others helping her out. How does that only amount to 11,000 votes? Like, skip the 8%. I want to look at the raw numbers here. How does that only amount to 11,000 votes and 11% in your own riding?

Carter 27:33

I mean, that was just brutal.

Carter 27:35

brutal. She just took the, you know, took an absolute shit kicking. I think that Martha Hall Finley did better. I'm just taking a look right now. Look at that. My name's mentioned in her Wikipedia.

Carter 27:51

Who knew? It doesn't say how much she did. Yeah, story

Corey 27:54

story time with Stephen Carter here.

Carter 27:56

Yeah, so story time with Stephen Carter. But listen, this

Carter 28:01

this is not a reflection on Christa Freeland as a human being. And I don't believe this is a reflection on Christa Freeland, the uh the judas who who sat and uh um uh you know took out trudeau um i think this is a reflection on mark kearney and mark kearney alone people

Carter 28:19

people were looking at the situation and they decided i am quite certain that if you looked at christopher freeland's voter id numbers they were 10 or 15 percent higher than

Carter 28:30

than the 11 000 yeah

Carter 28:31

yeah uh no 10 or 15 percent higher in percentage I would bet that they would be double, triple what actually her voter ID. But I think that she did what we did, like what I've done with different campaigns, too, which is get out the winner's vote because

Carter 28:47

because the bottom line is the winner has been determined by something bigger than you. And that would be my word to Chrystia Freeland if she was listening today, if she wanted to host the podcast. I'd say, you know, Chrystia, this isn't about you. This was about Mark and this was Mark's election. sometimes you don't win uh because you can't win yeah

Zain 29:07

nicely said carter but cory 11 000 votes across the entire country of canada yeah

Corey 29:16

i think that there

Corey 29:17

there were signs right if you looked at it looks like fundraising was perhaps the most predictive sign in this particular leadership contest and a you know mark carney beat her 10 to 1 in fundraising and then he beat her 10 to 1 votes. And we'll probably need to keep closer eyes on fundraising numbers going forward when we get these midterm numbers, because they probably actually tell us more about the state of the race than perhaps we like to pretend sometimes, right? And yes, you can play with it, but you can't change the macro story there. 11,000 votes is rough. But

Corey 29:50

But there is a phenomenon when you

Corey 29:53

you are, are let's call it 30 when you're below 30 support you might as well be at zero because you you are acutely aware you're in the minority like you can talk to your friends and you'll realize oh they have a different opinion than me and in a political party which is a bit cult-like to begin with i'm just saying political parties in general not just the liberals yeah

Corey 30:15

that's that's that's a pretty big pressure that's a pressure to say well i mean if eight out of ten of my friends are voting for Mark Carney, I

Corey 30:22

I can't even convince myself that I'm the majority with other people who are just silent. Like, it's clear everyone's voting for Mark Carney. And the bottom can really fall out of a campaign like that. Because then people want to get on the winning team, they start saying, well, I don't want, if he's going to win anyways, I don't want him to have a number that in any way jeopardizes that leadership or make it look weak. These are thoughts that normal voters are increasingly having, but partisan voters and political parties are definitely having. They're They're not just thinking, what's the result I want? They're saying, if the result is what the result is, what's the best result for the party?

Carter 30:57

This is one of the things that I try and set up in a campaign, and that is, can we look like the winner?

Carter 31:03

Because if you look like you're going to be the winner, you're going to get a disproportionate number of votes because people like to vote for the winner. Uh, low, low information, uh, low, low engaged, lowly engaged voters, uh, will use, oh, I think that person's signs are the best. I think that they had the most signs out. I think that they're going to be the winner, so I will vote for them.

Zain 31:29

hate to predict future, but this is why I'm going to start with you, Carter. Does this dampen Gould or Freeland's future within the the liberal party a showing this rough no

Carter 31:39

no i don't think so i think they're both going to wind up with very interesting cabinet positions you think i think they're both oh yeah oh

Zain 31:47

cory do you believe that that both of them are going to get cabinet positions and and and the broader question do you think this poor result for them impacts their future within the liberal party or maybe even politics are they done yeah

Corey 31:57

yeah i think freeland will probably be offered a cabinet position because it would be bad form not to offer her a cabinet position i think

Corey 32:05

think she's done like there's not like she doesn't get to win next time like it's if this is as high as it gets for her she can be a cabinet minister that's fine gold is probably uh done herself some favors by being in the race but let's be clear she

Corey 32:21

she pretty dramatically outperformed the buzz or underperformed the buzz underperformed the buzz i was absolutely

Corey 32:26

deeply underperformed the buzz there there was was sort of an Ottawa bubble that was really quite taken with her. And, you know, it was never my cup of tea. It felt like she was the continuity candidate, felt like she had all of the liberal branding of Trudeau. She had the approach of Trudeau. She also felt like the candidate after

Zain 32:43

after the Liberal Party fails and rebuilds sort of candidate. She really sounded like that.

Corey 32:48

Yeah, well, definitely. And certainly, maybe that would have been fine if the Liberals had no hope. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The Liberals found hope and they started to thinking maybe they can win this next election and so you know she really underperformed there too certainly

Corey 33:04

certainly i would say a week ago there were a lot of liberals kicking themselves and saying fuck

Corey 33:08

fuck why didn't i enter the race even if i didn't win i could have increased my profile

Corey 33:13

i don't think those same liberals are feeling the same way today i think they're saying ah that didn't really work out for her like frank bayless almost got more points than her so you know i just don't think that this is the view of it is the same today i don't think she damaged herself but But I no longer think she helped herself. I think there's a certain criticism and a jaundiced eye that now looks at that campaign. I'm

Zain 33:33

I'm kind of with Corey on this one, Carter. What do you think of Gould and her political future?

Carter 33:38

Like she gets a great cabinet position. She gets a great opportunity.

Carter 33:41

What do you mean now? I

Zain 33:42

I mean, you said that before, but do you feel like this has been a neutral exercise for her? Or do you think she fundamentally— I

Carter 33:48

I think it's been a better—I think that a name that I didn't recognize is now a name that I recognize. And

Carter 33:55

And I think that that's good for her.

Carter 34:02

mean, she got half of what Martha Hall finally got.

Corey 34:05

Zane for leader could

Corey 34:06

less than a third of what Joyce Murray got.

Zain 34:09

I've forgotten about. Zane for leader could have gotten 0.1%. Isn't

Carter 34:11

Isn't that interesting? Could

Zain 34:12

Could we have gotten 11,000 votes for Zane for leader? And not just to be clear, not for me, but just Zane for leader.

Carter 34:18

Yeah. Oh, no, Zane for leader, yeah. Zane

Corey 34:19

Zane for leader for sure could have gotten 11,000 votes. There's no question in my mind. I think we definitely could have mobilized. Okay.

Zain 34:24

That was the what.

Zain 34:28

When should he call the

Zain 34:32

What's right away? Let's get specific about this. So we sit here on a Monday. What's a right away?

Corey 34:38

Well, there are a couple of variables that I'd let them play with, but I think within a week and a half. I think if by not this weekend, but next weekend, it's not clear buzz in Ottawa that an election call has either happened or is imminent, that would be a real mistake. You just keep the plates spinning. You keep moving. You do not allow the inevitable cycle of meet the leader. Oh, wait, do I actually like the leader to occur? You just keep moving. I also think it's consistent with Mark Carney saying we got to defend Canada because, well, I think the liberals have done a good job of moving things along and not allowing any time for, you

Corey 35:13

you know, doldrums would have been fatal for that. We talked about this in advance, but

Corey 35:17

but doldrums would have been fatal for the liberal campaign because Poliev could have pointed to them and said, geez, it would have been great if we had a fucking government, if we had a legislature, if we had the ability to pass laws. None of that happened because everything moved so quickly.

Corey 35:32

You want to maintain that sense of urgency and speed because at the end of the day, it

Corey 35:36

it is still actually an enormous problem that Justin Trudeau left us in this position. We still do not have permanent leadership right now dealing with Donald Trump at a very dangerous time for our nation. And we don't want people to have time to remember that. We can't fuck about. And so it's time for Mark Carney just to, if he's got enough moves to propel for one week of media cycle, go for it. Whatever, man. I'm not necessarily convinced that I would appoint a cabinet. Sounds like he's going to. I'm not necessarily convinced that I would go through the steps of appointing the Jean Charest of the world. Bet you we're going to talk about that in a bit.

Corey 36:12

But if he wants to do that, I guess he's leader. I guess he gets to do that. But get to an election and get to it quick. Can

Zain 36:17

Can I pick up on one thing before I ask you, Carter, when he should go?

Zain 36:23

Corey, does he not have to, like,

Zain 36:26

like, appoint a cabinet?

Carter 36:29

well he could keep the existing cabinet yeah

Corey 36:31

yeah i mean from a technical point of view absolutely not from

Corey 36:35

from a politics point of view you could make a case to me that you should but the problem he has is he's inevitably going to have to make it out of pieces of the existing cabinet right and what

Corey 36:45

what what does that look like like somebody's in somebody's out somebody's in pierre polyev hits you with them somebody's out hurt feelings and it it disrupts morale although with with your commanding victory, probably not the hugest problem you have. I just, I just will be frank. I'm not sure cabinet members get you enough to make it worth your while, unless you're willing to go really crazy and go outside of the existing MPs. But that presents challenges as well.

Corey 37:10

Because you'll have trouble vetting them in time. You don't know if they're good political operators. And if they're not good political operators, they're not a benefit. A week after they've been appointed, they become a liability.

Carter 37:22

heard a rumor, Zane. Yeah.

Carter 37:25

Corey Hogan's going to be appointed to cabinet and has to run in Calgary Confederation. Oh,

Carter 37:31

it on a podcast,

Corey 37:31

podcast, did you? I

Carter 37:32

I heard that on a podcast. Okay.

Carter 37:35

Yeah. I'm thinking it's going to be big. But the thing is, he's going to be- Do

Zain 37:39

Do any of us get ambassadorships? Do you think that's possible?

Carter 37:42

Oh, yeah. You're going to get one. You

Carter 37:46

Not a good place.

Corey 37:46

place. No, a bad place, for sure.

Carter 37:48

A bad place. Yeah,

Corey 37:49

Yeah, a real bad place. Iceland.

Carter 37:52

Iceland a bad place? Actually, Iceland feels

Corey 37:56

It's a problem, you know?

Carter 37:59

It's okay. He's been stuffed up for four years.

Zain 38:03

When should he call

Zain 38:06

call an election, Carter?

Carter 38:09

I think he has to. Here's my timeline. He has to call the election before the House prorogation ends. so that to me is the uh march march

Zain 38:21

march 24th or 23rd yeah

Carter 38:23

yeah yeah i think he he can't go back into the into the into parliament uh and the house of commons i think that that would be um very

Carter 38:33

very very tricky to to get to that stage so sometime between the next two weeks i guess because what's today the 10th yeah

Corey 38:41

yeah can i tell you why he can't go back in my opinion as maybe this is an expansion of carter's thoughts maybe it gets to the same place in a different way because jagmeet's ready to make

Zain 38:49

make a deal as long as there's support for

Zain 38:51

workers jagmeet singh is willing to probably give you until october if you need who yeah who who the guy

Zain 38:57

guy you need apparently or need it no longer need

Carter 39:01

yeah don't remember that he can go fuck himself the

Corey 39:04

problem you have is that point of urgency i've been talking about you can't run a campaign that's like i'm here i'm going to defend the country it's different times it's crazy times and then go into the house of commons to only do a throne speech and then either go across and it looks cynical if you if you do it yourself and it looks like you're inept if you're brought down by the government or sorry by the opposition after reasonably thinking that you could hold the parliament for a couple more months right so like like what's the upside there you either look like calculating and cynical which cuts against your authentic brand that you're trying to build i'm not a politician i'm not the slick guy like Pierre Palliev, or you look like you can't get a deal done with fucking Parliament, and you're thinking, go ask Canadians to let you get a deal done with Donald Trump. Like, that doesn't make sense to me. So just don't waste your time.

Zain 39:53

let's start putting the pieces together for what the election strategy should be in your mind. And I want you to build with Corey here. You can start with anything you want related to geography, brand, message, also the added sort of element of how much should Mark Carney be doing the job of prime minister while he campaigns versus running to be prime minister. And I look at the Ford playbook of what he did in Ontario, which go down to Washington, do the job, I'm premier, like I got to do the gig. And then, you know, spend four or five days doing that. How much, and I'm just giving you options to consider and comment on. But Carter, give me your sense of what the campaign strategy here in Broadstoke should look like. And I'm going to ask Corey to refute and then potentially build.

Carter 40:41

Well, I think that there's no really big secrets here. Atlantic Canada is jumping out into a significant lead. So you're going to go there one time. I don't think you're going to go to the United States. I don't think you're – if you're going to go anywhere, I'd say go to Europe. And I wouldn't go to Europe during the election campaign. and I'd go to I'd go to Europe next week um that would be my play um the rest of the time I would be in Quebec and uh um

Carter 41:11

and then in the lower mainland of British Columbia and

Carter 41:14

and on my way to the lower main mainland in British Columbia I'd land one time in Edmonton and one time in Calgary maybe one time in Regina one time in Saskatoon well

Corey 41:25

really going to need him to show up that one time in calgary yeah

Carter 41:28

yeah well for you no i think you've got it i

Carter 41:30

think as the uh

Carter 41:32

cabinet minister for uh energy um

Carter 41:35

um you're probably going to do just fine makes

Carter 41:39

absolutely i mean this

Carter 41:40

this isn't a bad idea and i'm thinking i'm going to i'm just you guys talk for a second i'm going to make a call okay

Zain 41:48

it's probably it's not all that connected we know that cory right you've seen this on we know we've seen this on previous calls probably be called the george hall of all people and i got a mute it's like george do you have mark cartney's number do

Zain 41:59

do you have mark's number i feel like yeah i feel like you could give it to me now uh he's

Corey 42:04

he's actually he's actually taking your call yeah he's actually on a phone right now so this is oh he was actually let you all know

Corey 42:10

by the end of the episode oh

Zain 42:11

oh my god what hey listen cory um start answering this for me your

Zain 42:16

your take on what you've heard the campaign strategy you've heard a lot of things from carter he does not need to hear what you've said uh he rarely does anyways uh

Zain 42:23

uh that's true what is the campaign strategy for you in your mind well

Corey 42:28

well um i i think that the contrast you're setting up is between polished and not uh credentialed and not yep and you're saying i'm a serious person for serious times and so your actions need to follow accordingly right you can't look overly political you have to make sure that you're leaning into your wonkish nature and frankly you don't have enough time to become good at politics and one One of the things we didn't talk about was the quality of Mark Carney's speech. Yes, I won't forget that at

Zain 42:56

at the end, but yes, jump

Corey 42:57

jump into it. I thought the content was fine. I thought the delivery was not fine. I thought it actually showed a certain lacking of political communication skills. And I don't mean it's boring. I mean the ability to convey information. So we should hop back to that. But I'll say this. You don't have time to get good at that. So you're going to have to turn that vice into a virtue. You're going to have to say, yeah, I'm not a polished politician. I am a public servant. I care deeply for this country. And I am putting all of my efforts into this. I'm deeply connected. I have the skill set that's required at this moment. And yeah, it's not creating three word slogans. Sorry, not sorry about that. Like that has to be your plan. And I am one of these people who believes once you figured out that brand, all questions are answered by brand. All your actions are dictated by brand. And that means you don't do the throne speech bullshit that Carter and I have already discounted. it means you don't go around with the glib sayings you've just got to comport yourself accordingly and and that's what he's got to do and and there is really if we're talking about election call in the next week two weeks here we are only talking about seven weeks until this is all done and there's a whole new late

Zain 44:01

late april early may yeah

Corey 44:03

yeah there's a whole new parliament so so you don't need to go for long but you need to make sure that you're consistent in that time because the last thing i'll say on this point your

Corey 44:12

your brand is pretty durable if for four years you act one way your brand is in a lot of jeopardy if people have known you for 30 seconds and you start acting in a different way so he has he has less margin for error than a politician that we've known for a long time by

Zain 44:32

it's a very sharp phone call it seemed

Carter 44:33

seemed like an incoming call but you know i'm not gonna question

Carter 44:38

it's good it was it was an outgoing call and uh it looks really good for cory okay

Zain 44:42

okay how did you mention the not zane i noticed one thing the iceland thing that i wanted yeah

Carter 44:47

yeah i did spend i did spend a little bit of time talking about you zane yeah uh it didn't go well for you did

Carter 44:53

did he acknowledge that he knows me

Carter 44:58

not really it was more along the lines of i know him i

Zain 45:02

know him and that's all that matters carter oh let me let me tell you something let me tell you something i've

Zain 45:06

i've got two actual questions Questions about strategy here. You guys have given me your roadmaps and, Corey, a bit on messaging, Carter, a bit on where and what you do.

Zain 45:15

Let's start with this one.

Zain 45:16

Is Doug Ford a friend to

Carter 45:20

Carney in this election?

Zain 45:21

Talk to me why. Carter, you go first, and then Corey. Corey?

Carter 45:26

Number one, the history of the Liberals and the Conservatives splitting the government in Ontario. This is a real historical trend where if

Carter 45:38

you have a Liberal government in Ontario, you have a Conservative majority of MPs going to the House of Commons from Ontario. So I suspect this is going to mean that there's going to be a very good number of seats for the the liberals plus doug ford has turned into captain canada you

Carter 45:59

you know and and cory's recommendation that you know he get appointed to something uh to manage you know negotiations on behalf of the government i mean i think it's going a step too far but i don't think it's going too far i think mark carney was on the phone to to doug ford uh probably within 24 hours within the 24 hours since the uh since the election victory in

Corey 46:20

in fact we know they've talked and and doug ford has said things Sounds like we're on the same page on this one here, right? And you know what he's doing there? He's providing some of his shine, because Canadians really like what Doug Ford's done. Pauling tells us that. On to Mark Carney. And yes, the people who have that kind of power to give have that kind of power to take. And you should be a little bit cautious about what Doug Ford might do. And it's pretty easy for him in a campaign to say, oh, geez, at the end of the day, I'm a conservative. And of course, I'm going to vote for Pierre Polyev. Shucks, I like Mark, but I'm obviously not going to vote for him. I don't see him eye to eye with him on all these business things or whatever the fuck he wants to say, right? But if you tailor your relationship knowing that that is probably the most likely outcome in week five of the election, he can't hurt you that much. You give him a job or maybe you don't formally give him a job. You say, Doug and I don't see eye to eye on everything. Our politics are very different, but we both love Canada, right? And so you've put it in a little little bit of a box you've put your blessing of him in a box you've put his ability to hurt you in a box and um and his ability to help you right now far exceeds his ability to hurt you

Corey 47:32

and i don't see any reason to believe that he is going to step away from that captain canada role so as long as he's saying nice things about the country and working with you you're in great shape

Zain 47:41

cory let's start with you on this um how do you keep the team canada slash tariff slash donald Trump singular threat ballot box question alive over the course of an entire bit period? Or do you? Or do you allow it to go to things like housing and cost of living and other things before you take it back? How do you, if you're Carney here,

Zain 48:05

ensure that it's about the thing that is giving you the viability to

Corey 48:11

Well, you have a couple of set pieces, right? You know, April 2nd will be a big date for tariffs. You can look at the calendar and find other You can build other flashpoints, frankly. I don't mean like get another opportunity for us to get tariffs, but you can look at things that are happening in the United States and lever onto them. You can also take a lot of at-bats and see if you can get something really interesting. Like, I've been thinking for a while, is there anything that would be better for Mark Carney and the Liberals than if they could get through friendly media or people asking in the right format of Donald Trump, if they could get Donald Trump to make the statement, Canada is broken, how

Corey 48:52

how much would that help the Liberals? Because I think, like, all the help, right? If somebody just said to him, Mr. President, the conservative candidate says Canada is broken in the Canadian election. Do you agree Canada is broken? And you go, oh, yes, I absolutely believe Canada is broken, right? And, you know, then you have a video that you run in

Corey 49:13

in the closeout week of the campaign, Canada is broken, Canada is broken, Pierre Polyev, Donald Trump. I

Carter 49:19

I mean, it writes itself. Did you do Jimmy Stewart both times you did impressions?

Corey 49:26

my my jimmy stewart sounds uh i'm

Corey 49:29

i'm afraid to do it now yeah

Carter 49:31

yeah i can't do accents there's a really good reason why i can't yeah uh zane would be a geneva convention i would not be offended go

Zain 49:40

not once again not offended on behalf of all the people go

Carter 49:44

no the scots will be angry oh

Carter 49:45

because i did a scottish accent one time wound up seriously in the wrong continent

Zain 49:51

Carter, how does he keep the ballot

Corey 49:52

box question alive? How does he do it? Zane, we're going to have to hear that. No,

Zain 49:56

but sorry, in that

Zain 49:57

Sorry, I'm getting there.

Carter 49:59

No, I'm not doing it.

Carter 50:01

I sucked at accents.

Carter 50:06

It's going to be a ballot box question about the United States, but it's going to be how do you translate that United States ballot box question to everyday Canadians? Canadians how do you make sure that it applies to everyday Canadians so yes we're going to be talking about the the tariffs now we're going to be talking about cost of living because the cost of living with the tariffs is going to be a significant issue we're going to talk about housing prices we're going to talk about housing starts because now we've got um we've

Carter 50:36

we've got to change the way that we look at building these houses uh we've got to change the way that we're They're looking at constructing everything in our country. So all of a sudden, everything is going to be put into your primary slogan. And your primary slogan is, I'm better than that guy. I'm better than Trump. I can take Trump on. But now you're going to bring it into everything else. And I'm doing a really poor job of explaining it. But when I was doing Alice in Redford's campaign, everything was able to be put into the frame of mother of young daughter, daughter of aging parents.

Carter 51:12

Mark Carney needs to be able to put things into the frame of, I can take care of you better against Donald Trump.

Zain 51:20

can we talk about Pierre Polyev? So this is our weekly visitation of have they found their lane yet? They still have a scattershot carbon tax Carney lane, which is about him talking about the shadow carbon tax and being just like Trudeau. They've got the fact that he's sneaky, which seems to be an underlying element around how he's sneakily going to bring the carbon tax. They've got that he's weak, because he's going to sell out Canada like he did Brookfield and their headquarters to New York, rather than keeping it in the United States. And of course, now Pierre Polyev is saying, not necessarily an ad format, yet, that he's got major conflicts of interest, that he's profited off of American companies, rather than keeping his money in Canada, etc.

Zain 52:04

So I don't know if I'm being charitable with the descriptions, because i'm trying to be as literal and with the descriptions but have the conservatives found their attack line yet do you feel like there's there there finally for for them and and we're seeing a lot of ads because they're trying to get money out the door before everyone is equalized in terms of their spending power when the writ happens in

Zain 52:21

a matter of days but where are the conservatives at at least on the paid media side that you've seen with some of the messages that they're trying you

Corey 52:30

you know i've really been thinking a lot about this sneaky claim that the conservatives is continue to try to lay at um mark carney's feet and some of some of its uses are absurd the idea that it's sneaky that the liberals replaced their leader with mark carney that's not sneaky the whole country wanted him to resign he resigned they got a new leader what the fuck is supposed to happen besides that but they are so fixated on sneaky and they're trying to shoehorn sneaky in so much i think it's partially because there's

Zain 52:58

there's a clip that like his face looks like

Zain 53:00

like i I don't think that's why. Yeah, you don't think so? I don't. I'm curious. No, I think,

Corey 53:04

yeah, well, look, they all, Stephen Carter just described a message frame and trying to fit everything into a frame. Yes. You build those for your opponent, too, and they clearly think they have something, maybe not with the word sneaky, but the sentiment behind it. And you have to know they focus group this. You have to know that they went in there and they put a couple of material in front of people and they put a couple of arguments in front of people and said, how does this make you feel? And if I had to guess, if I had to guess what is driving the Conservatives' obsession with sneaky, which to me feels like an attack that's not quite found itself yet, I think that they've probably put a couple of comments in front of people like, did you know Mark Carney hasn't fully disclosed X? He hasn't disclosed where all of his sources of money are. What do you think of that? Oh, that makes me feel not good as a Canadian. here's a clip of him answering a question about that at his campaign launch now that was not a great clip for him in my opinion and he got a little bit defensive in ways i don't think he needed to do and uh i think it was the weakest moment of his launch it wasn't even that week of a moment but it was clearly the weakest moment of his launch similarly what do you think about the fact that mark carney chaired a company that moved a headquarters out of canada into the united states oh i don't like that very much well let me show you a clip of him answering those questions And you see him be a little bit defensive. I also think Mark Carney bled is an exaggeration. He had a paper cut for a couple of days on this particular issue, but it showed a certain weakness and an inability to answer a question or not show the best side of him, when I frankly think he could have answered that much more plainly and much quicker than he did. but that the conservatives lacking significant ammo in other ways have found some things that people don't like and they're saying well what's the what's the combination what what ties this all together and so they're trying right now to find a way that they can bundle this general feeling of like don't

Corey 54:54

don't be so comfortable with this guy he's not being entirely forthright with you

Corey 54:58

they haven't found it they haven't found it but they think that there's something there and i will be curious to see if they stick with what to me seems like a fundamentally not not clicking message track, or if they keep fumbling around in this space until they find it. And

Corey 55:13

And if they find it, you know, the

Corey 55:16

the game's different. But right now, it just kind of feels clumsy. Carter,

Zain 55:19

Carter, where are they on their journey? You're a trained communications and political practitioner. From what the products that you see them putting out on pain media, where do you think the conservatives are on their journey of finding something or finding a series of things that work as a line of attack on Mark Carney?

Carter 55:35

they're still throwing the shit against the wall and hoping something sticks uh i don't i don't agree with cory i don't think that they've they've narrowed it down to one thing that's going to work i think what they're doing is they're trying to take four five six different ideas see which one works see which one shows up in their focus groups next week and then they'll start to hone in and that's okay that's okay to be throwing everything against the wall when you've got millions of dollars to spend every single week so you may as well give it a try and then do a focus group set that next week and see which one actually starts to have resonance can i tell you that's fine can

Corey 56:08

can i tell you why i don't think i mean the only reason i don't agree with you on that is because they're so clearly trying to shoehorn things that are not sneaky into the sneaky frame and i don't you don't do that if your message doesn't you don't try to force you could

Zain 56:21

could also look at it the same way with their just like justin which they've ended up multiple ads on oh like carbon tax carny which they've ended multiple ads on so you know it does seem like they're still in journey mode Like, they're just trying to figure out what is working for them. But the second part of this question, Corey, is any advice for the conservatives who have, to Carter's point, millions of dollars to spend and a limited time horizon to do so? What would you advise them to do? Is it doing what they're doing right now, which is throw things out in multiple tracks and then maybe, you know, as the writ approaches, maybe have a nugget of wisdom that you can go on? What would you advise them with the resources that they have that outstrip the other political parties?

Corey 57:02

so i mean i would absolutely say go out there and test go out there and survey go out there and run focus groups they should be running them nightly they should be running them in every region of the country they can't bring this money into the campaign in if they've exceeded like the amount that you're allowed to spend in the campaign so just just go nuts try to make sure that when you hit the campaign your ads in that more finite spending realm they're all hitting they're all all cracking at a hundred. And I don't know. I mean, I don't know if they're doing that right now. Maybe this is what that looks like. Maybe we'll hear about it in books afterwards. It's like, yeah, we just, we ran a million fucking things and we look like a disjointed mess. But behind the scenes, we were getting data. We were getting really important data that allowed us to run this motherfucking campaign that just put the boot to this guy's throat. Maybe that's what we'll see. But between them trying to shoehorn things into a frame and between them running ads that have everything which makes it a little hard to disaggregate i'm

Corey 57:59

i'm a little less convinced of that carter

Zain 58:01

carter any advice for the conservatives as they have these resources to spend over the next let's say week you

Carter 58:09

you know it's a problem for me zane as you know i'm a winner

Carter 58:14

as a winner when i give advice people listen yeah i don't really want to be giving advice to uh pierre polly f listen test focus group spend your money go crazy um don't leave of a nickel in the bank beyond what you need to spend in during the RIP period and learn as much as humanly possible.

Zain 58:34

you'd advise to spend money on that isn't just paid ads?

Carter 58:38

Strategist advertising. I mean, is that a paid ad or is it a sponsorship? Title sponsorship?

Corey 58:43

sponsorship? I think that we would

Zain 58:45

would take... Pierre Polyev

Carter 58:46

Would we take a...

Carter 58:46

a... One week. Pierre Polyev sponsorship? Depends

Zain 58:49

Depends on the number.

Zain 58:50

Okay, I got a number in mind. I got a number in mind. let's all say our number at the same time so just to be clear the terms are a one week

Zain 58:58

title sponsor on behalf of pierre pauliev and the conservative party of canada on this program

Zain 59:03

okay ready on the count of three our number one two three twenty five ten thousand dollars

Zain 59:09

i was at 25 grand which means i have the highest

Corey 59:11

highest thousands too low actually i wouldn't do it for 10 grand 25 that would be tough i would do

Corey 59:16

25 grand i would do it for more I would

Carter 59:18

for $25 and an airfare on Flair Airlines to and from Vancouver.

Corey 59:25

Well, that is consistent with our other title sponsorship. I'm upping it to $250,000.

Corey 59:30

Okay. Yeah. That's okay. I

Corey 59:31

I could work with that. Okay,

Corey 59:32

Okay, good. Carter, could you work with that?

Zain 59:36

If they are interested and they are listening at the 59-minute mark, info at the CRAsPoliticallyMotivated.com. We won't filter your message out like the other guy that we filtered. Can

Carter 59:46

Can I just say that for listeners, we have, in fact, faced this problem in the past.

Carter 59:51

And Zane is the one. Yeah, it did not resolve itself. Are you surprised

Zain 59:54

surprised that I'm the one that said no? Yeah.

Carter 59:58

Well, it wasn't the conservatives, but

Carter 1:00:00

I'm glad I don't have that money in my pocket. Are

Zain 1:00:01

Are you? Yeah, so am I. You're welcome.

Zain 1:00:06

Let's move it on to our Over, Under, and Our Lightning Round. Stephen Carter, we do this for you and your bedtime. time. Are we going to see any new, new, net new cabinet ministers in the Carney cabinet? So these are people that have never been in cabinet over the course of the liberal lifetime of the last 10 years. Are we going to see any of those names in the Carney cabinet?

Carter 1:00:26

Yes, we're going to see Corey Hogan from Calgary and Calgary Confederation. Man. Corey,

Corey 1:00:30

Corey, are we going to see any new names? You're going to see new names. You're going to see new names. Because otherwise, what's the point? Like, you don't want to look like you are the exact same team. You are writing Pierre Polyev's ad for him if you do. Corey,

Zain 1:00:41

Corey, on a scale of 1 to 10, how did the Liberals do pulling off this leadership race in your mind, 1 being, of course, the lowest, 10 being the highest?

Corey 1:00:49

I'm going to give it a 9. I mean, you've got to give a little bit of space for improvement. But really, I've got to tell you, if you had said to me in January it would go this smoothly, I would have said that's pretty wishful. like things always go wrong in leadership contests and frankly nothing fucking went wrong i know that there's like an article today saying why didn't these people vote but i already talked about it like the the open contests that the liberals do really low entry like and it's very frictionless at the front end and then the friction is introduced when you vote and people drop off it was 43 percent in 2013 when the alberta liberal party did one in 2011 i think it was 32 percent who voted that's the nature of contests like this that the media doesn't understand that is not the liberals fault that's the system that they had going in they didn't pick that system and man i gotta tell you like they set what i thought was too high of a price point they got five fucking candidates for it they set a timeline that seemed really ambitious maybe

Corey 1:01:53

you know like it went just totally fine they had a online voting method they brought in canada post i know that there were challenges with it but those challenges disappear pretty quickly and they did it like they landed the plane and they did it with all of the passengers still alive that is no small feat and the liberal party board and the liberal party office should be very proud of what they accomplished because i've run leadership campaigns from the party side that was impressive really impressive work by the liberals carter

Zain 1:02:22

carter cory's giving it a nine what are you giving it

Carter 1:02:25

I'm giving it a B plus, Zane.

Carter 1:02:27

I think that the problem was that the Canada Post verification was just too onerous. But other than that, I thought it was a very good, very good leadership.

Zain 1:02:38

Carter, let's end here. One note.

Zain 1:02:41

No, that's not what I'm calling Mark Carney's speech. I'm telling you, give him one Stephen Carter strategist note. It could be anything about the content. It could be about the substance. distance. It could be about how he said it, what he said, how long he said it. What is the top note you would want to give to Mark Carney after hearing his victory speech at the Liberal Leadership Race?

Carter 1:03:03

Smile in every event the way you smile at your daughter.

Zain 1:03:06

Hogan, what's the one note?

Corey 1:03:10

try. You don't have time to get better.

Zain 1:03:14

Corey, do you want to actually give one? Well, that

Carter 1:03:16

that is the note that he's also given to Zane. That is my one note. It worked out perfectly. Listen,

Corey 1:03:19

Listen, let me expand on it, but you know this. We all work together at Hill & Knowlton. We used to do training for people, you know, corporate clients, media training. They get so much fucking worse when you try to make them better until they get better. He does not have time to go through the journey of getting worse before he gets better. That's a really good

Corey 1:03:38

good piece of advice. He should ignore every note that his team gives him for the next seven weeks. You don't have time to strip someone down to the stats and then build them again. You don't. That's what you're saying. That's exactly what I'm saying.

Zain 1:03:49

Uh, Jean Trey. Make it a virtue. This is just, I'm just going to throw his name out. Any comments?

Corey 1:03:54

Well, we don't even know what he's being potentially offered. So just

Carter 1:03:59

was offered Calgary Confederation. That's what I heard too. That's

Zain 1:04:02

That's what I heard. We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap. That's episode 1850 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velgey. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. And thank you for that very nice cameo, Justin Trudeau. We shall see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:20

guys hey hey guys are you still there listen

SPEAKER_00 1:04:24

I didn't send Zane to Iceland if it means that I can host the show I can make that happen I also know mark so think about it you

SPEAKER_00 1:04:31

you know I'll check in next week

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