Episode 1879: The Coldplay Affair

Zain 0:01

This is a Strategist episode 1879. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Stephen Carter, Shannon Phillips. How are you, friends?

Zain 0:09

I'm just fucking livid.

Zain 0:12

Are you livid because the guy was like, they should have just pretended like no one was watching. Isn't that the number one rule of strategy? The number

Carter 0:21

rule of strategy is just don't ever make a spectacle out of yourself, and then it won't be a spectacle. but these guys were all like oh and they react and as soon as you react you got the spotlight on you all of a sudden chris martin's calling you out that must be an affair wow chris really fucking insightful we all figured that out right away i mean they were holding each other they weren't married it's

Zain 0:49

it's pretty good do

Zain 0:50

do we just want to end it there shannon do you want to get a word worded edgewise, or are you good for the pun? I

Shannon 0:54

I have no thoughts on Coldplaygate whatsoever. Why are we

Zain 0:58

we blaming Coldplay? This is

Zain 1:05

Yes, this gate. By the way, did you guys see the apology letter or the lack of apology letter? It is probably... We should pick that apart.

Zain 1:15

this show, how many have we done? We've probably done, over the history of this show, I'd say a dozen. At least. This might be the worst I've ever seen.

Zain 1:25

The first part, for those who haven't read it, let me give you a quick synopsis. It starts off fine, boilerplate. And by fine, I mean it's fucking fine. It wasn't good. I need to be a better man. But then, okay, paragraph three and paragraph four, you're not expecting what's coming. Paragraph three, without my consent, these musicians put me on the screen. Paragraph four, he fucking quotes Coldplay to end the letter.

Zain 1:51

my God. It is the worst thing I have ever seen, Carter.

Carter 1:56

There's somewhere in this world a PR person who had to do that.

Carter 2:00

And I'm just thankful it wasn't me.

Zain 2:02

I don't think a PR person did that. There's no way a PR person did that. You

Carter 2:05

You know what? There's a PR person who did that that charged $7,500 to write that letter. You know this is true.

Carter 2:11

They should have charged $75,000 and made it a good letter.

Carter 2:15

Navigator would have been right there.

Shannon 2:18

mean, Randy Dawson would have held him up. Would

Zain 2:20

Would have written it. Do we have to name

Zain 2:21

name names? What is our insurance

Shannon 2:25

insurance situation on this show? I'm just saying that if I was a CEO that was trapped in that, I would have probably hired Randy Dawson.

Carter 2:33

Or Stephen Carter. I would have written something better than that. What would

Zain 2:35

would you have written? Go ahead. We're going to give you a free shower. You saw everything that happened. You're more plugged into this story than you've been on most things in the last year. So, Carter, I

Zain 2:46

don't know why the story of an extramarital affair really has you in the sweet spot of paying attention. It's all over my

Carter 2:54

over my... Finally, something has knocked out all the thirst traps. I couldn't be happier.

Zain 2:59

Good. Okay. So you're engaged on the story, I guess is what I'm saying. I'm very engaged

Carter 3:02

engaged on the story. Go

Zain 3:03

Go ahead. I would

Carter 3:04

would have just simply written... Go ahead. I'm

Zain 3:06

I'm sorry. $25,000 letter by Stephen Carter. Here it is, folks. I

Carter 3:09

I am sorry. I was wrong. My apologies especially go to my wife and all those that I've hurt.

Zain 3:17

But which Coldplay song would you have ended with? Which Coldplay song quote would you have ended with?

Zain 3:24

Here's what people are missing, Carter. They think we're done with lastmealatswiss.ca, but we're not. Shannon,

Zain 3:32

just stay with us for a second. So there's been a lot of feedback, none of it positive, all about our competition, Carter. Our write-in show about, I'm just going to call it our summer contest. Oh,

Zain 3:47

Oh, yeah. This is the Strategist Summer Contest. We are trying to figure out how many last meals have been had at Swiss Chalet. And the problem is we've gotten some really good sourced responses. Carter, do you want to tell them or should I tell them what the issue is? Oh, I think it's up to you.

Zain 4:01

Okay. The issue is we actually don't know the number. So stage two, for anyone that has submitted, you have to actually now prove that your math is correct. You

Carter 4:09

You know what? If you can prove even one single death, you might win this.

Zain 4:16

you suggest they prove one single i think proving one single death is harder than proving a series of deaths that's what shall i oh

Carter 4:23

oh you think that one is harder than than a series i think that's you know one is is part of a series thank

Zain 4:30

you carter i feel like i

Carter 4:32

i feel like it's in the fibonacci sequence like twice isn't it like one is there is what i'm trying to get across shannon

Zain 4:38

shannon do you want us to save you from this or do you want to save yourself yourself i

Shannon 4:42

would like to talk about politics this is political if

Carter 4:47

the height of the political it'll

Shannon 4:49

it'll be political all right if we all get our asses sued by swish la how

Zain 4:53

many political or political adjacent figures have died with their last meal at swish la oh

Shannon 4:59

oh i would say zero no

Zain 5:00

no i disagree i disagree come on when these people are done from office don't you think they're They're spending all day at Swiss. I

Carter 5:09

ribs with Joe Clark there one time. He had sauces everywhere. It was touch and go. I'll tell you that. Touch and go.

Zain 5:16

Were those sauces from the restaurant?

Carter 5:19

Yeah, Swiss Chalet. Jesus,

Carter 5:20

Jesus, so it's where you get the extra sauces.

Carter 5:24

You're the worst. I'm

Carter 5:26

I'm just clarifying. He's not a CEO at a Coldplay concert.

Zain 5:32

Shannon, let's save you some yourself for this. What

Zain 5:35

I personally think was one of our better intros

Zain 5:41

I can't trick your word for it You don't listen But Carter and I, I

Zain 5:46

I don't listen either

Carter 5:47

That was one of our top ones I

Zain 5:48

I think it was pretty good Thank

Zain 5:55

Let's move on to our first Our first segment Which dumpster fire would you want to solve? Stephen Carter, Shannon Phillips Phillips, there's a few dumpster fires, a varying degree. And I want you to rank them first for me, and we'll dive into each of them in our own special strategist way. But I'll ask you, which one of these political dumpster fires of the past week is the worst for a particular political figure in our country or province? And as a operative strategist, former elected official, person who knows this space, people who know this space, which one would you want to work on? Does that make sense? Yep. Right? So we've got the Alberta Next panels, which are going splendidly thus far in Alberta. That, of course, is paired alongside the survey scandal of Daniel Smith, where they have to kind of go back and edit some surveys. You've got Mark Carney and C5, which is now facing some Indigenous backlash after his one-day meeting today. We can dive into that. We've got this by-election for Pierre Pauliev, which is, it's

Zain 7:03

it's straightforward, but it's not as straightforward as you think. You've got this independent candidate who's starting to make some noise, give some media interviews, etc.

Zain 7:11

And finally, you have Pierre Pauliev in the line of fire again with his buddies in Ontario trying to fuck him over by having their convention on the exact same day as his leadership review. Did I get that last part right? Their convention on their leadership review. Is that correct? Yeah. It's

Shannon 7:28

It's so delicious. I just, you know, I want to just

Shannon 7:31

just put it in a bowl and spoon it up. It is gorgeous.

Carter 7:35

gorgeous. So which is the... Which is the worst?

Zain 7:38

worst? Which is the worst?

Carter 7:39

Which is the worst dumpster

Zain 7:40

dumpster fire? And which one would you want to work on? And then we'll hit all of them in our own way. But Carter, you want to start?

Carter 7:45

I think the worst dumpster fire has to be the Alberta Next panel.

Carter 7:50

It is turned into almost a literal dumpster fire. I mean, these people were brought in from the back alley where the dumpster is, and they were asked to come in and provide

Carter 8:03

provide their opinions and feedback. And I got to tell you, the people who are standing beside the dumpster fire are, you know, the people we called out before, Trevor Toome and Adam Legg. They were going to bring sanity to this. And I would like to see where the sanity starts and ends, because I don't think that anybody can bring sanity to this nightmare. Hold

Zain 8:22

Hold your fire. I want to ask Shannon if she's on the same page. Paige, if she is, we'll dive deeper into this. Shannon, which is the biggest dumpster fire of this past week politically?

Shannon 8:31

Oh, I think in terms of it being a problem, actually,

Shannon 8:34

actually, like a foundational problem for the party in question. Yeah.

Shannon 8:41

Oh, interesting. Scandal. And the, not

Shannon 8:44

not only do I just want to contradict Carter, you know, sort of recreationally, but I also, I think. Pierre

Zain 8:51

Pierre in the by-election or Pierre with the shit in Ontario? No, no, the by-election is Easy

Shannon 8:56

Street. He'll be fine.

Zain 8:58

it matter to you, Shannon, if he doesn't get 82 and he gets 71? I don't think

Zain 9:02

think it matters one little

Zain 9:03

bit. Okay, so you're talking about Ontario then, the

Zain 9:06

the Ontario fuckery. I'm talking about Ontario

Shannon 9:06

Ontario PCs putting their convention at the same time as Pierre's leadership review. Not because it's going to necessarily change that many humans going to Calgary as opposed to the PC party. But it

Shannon 9:18

shows a, like, generally

Shannon 9:21

generally speaking, when Conservatives are successful,

Shannon 9:24

successful, the big blue machine out of Ontario is powering the Conservative Party of Canada to a great extent. A lot

Carter 9:33

lot of the brain

Shannon 9:34

brain trust, a lot of the organizers cut their teeth there. You know, a lot of folks came out of the Harris years and then went across the country and federally and worked for, right? Right. And that is a is a big place with a lot of political horsepower. And to

Shannon 9:53

to show the depths of the animosity that way, like it's just it's just a giant, big foam metal thing, middle finger. Right. To the federal party. And as

Shannon 10:07

Alberta New Democrat, I

Shannon 10:10

I can tell you that having unhelpful relationships with the federal party is, you know, unhelpful at the end of the day. Having somebody trying to, you know, basically kick your feet out from under you every two minutes. It might not be a short-term problem, but you bet your ass it's a long-term problem. them

Zain 10:30

carter let's let's let's you know we'll get to alberta next shannon's convinced me i want to talk about this first but before i do can i can i get both of your takes on which of these problems would you like if you were still in politics carter i know you still are um but if you were working for these folks who would you which problem would you most be intrigued or interested to work on or to solve carter can i start with you just give me a quick answer and then shannon and yourself and then we'll dive into the ontario pc cpc stuff i

Carter 10:56

i would take the battle river by by-election, because I always like a win.

Zain 10:59

Okay, interesting. Shannon, which political project would you want to jump on, if you were jumping into this? Probably

Shannon 11:04

Probably that one. I've lost track. We have Alberta NAC's by-election. Oh, Carney

Zain 11:08

Carney C-5. Alberta NAC's by-election, Carney C-5.

Zain 11:11

I'd call it a saga, but it could be a small fire that turns into a larger one. We shall see. No,

Carter 11:17

anytime you involve, you know, this type of situation, it's easy to solve.

Carter 11:22

Shannon could probably do it in a weekend.

Zain 11:24

Yeah, I don't sense any sarcasm coming from you. No,

Carter 11:27

No, none, none at all. Okay,

Zain 11:28

Okay, okay, fine. So you guys are both going to the by-election. Let's talk about this Ontario PC thing. Carter, let me just update the listenership. Ford's campaign manager, Corey Tanik, states that the provincial convention dates were chosen for fundraising reasons aligning with Ontario's new fiscal year. He denied any intentional conflict with the federal party's schedule. Stephen Carter, are you going to ring the big bell? Is this classic fuck your buddy?

Carter 11:54

Oh, this is classic fuck your buddy. even having the well this aligns with the new fiscal year end beautiful work i mean cory tonight you think that's is

Carter 12:03

he's a pro he's a pro there is no one no one here is going to say that this is an amateur uh he knows what he's doing he uh he's playing fuck your buddy at a whole different level and uh i'm just really thankful that his his guns aren't pointed at me so

Zain 12:19

ford in the past has criticized Polyev's campaign as being political malpractice for losing the strong public lead that he had. Carter, walk me through what's at play here. We've been flirting with the Ford wants his job for a long time. But at some point, it may not even be replacement. It could simply just be displacement.

Zain 12:39

Get rid of the guy as much as it's like, you know, the two-step prong. Because we always think of Ford wants his job. It's a two-step process, displace and replace we might just be simply being like let's create optionality let's just displace and then see whatever the fuck happens next could it be as simple as that in your mind i

Carter 12:55

i don't have to want your job to hate your guts you

Carter 12:58

you know like i

Carter 13:01

hate your guts i mean pierre polyev is not a likable

Zain 13:04

likable character better said he's

Carter 13:05

he's he's not a likable character he's someone that that uh you

Carter 13:09

you know in in genders uh an attitude of distrust and dislike um you

Carter 13:15

you know and has been like that for 20 plus years um he is not someone that people go oh pierre paliev nice guy like have you ever heard that i mean pierre paliev talented operator pierre paliev a talented politician these are things i've heard i've never heard someone say you know i really like him as a person yeah

Carter 13:35

he did no one says that for me once

Carter 13:37

there was that time that he helped me out yeah

Shannon 13:40

i can phone him up if i have a flat tire no that ain't pure uh

Shannon 13:43

uh look um there is clear clear animosity between these two political organizations now. It is an interesting problem to solve, because it's, it does seem like it's a bunch of dudes just, you know, backstabbing each other. And it might be as simple as, you know, neither of us are going to win the next election if we continue to do this to each other.

Shannon 14:08

I do not think that Doug Ford wants

Shannon 14:11

wants to run federally. People always think that federal politics is some sort of promotion, but it is not when you are running the province of Ontario.

Shannon 14:18

Doug Ford is happy to be the mayor of Ontario. He is happy to be running Canada's largest economy. He's happy to have the relationships with the United States that he does, to be in this problem-solving space with the looming tariffs and so on.

Shannon 14:39

There is no way on God's green earth that he would want to go and be the official opposition leader. And it's just, it's not, it's not his style. It's not his, you know, it's not his bailiwick at all.

Shannon 14:50

So I would be very, very shocked if that's the motivation. There might be people around Ford that he thinks would be better for the job. I'm sure there are now that we're a year into them sniping

Carter 15:02

sniping at each other.

Shannon 15:03

But I also think that Doug Ford is a super transactional kind of politician. politician and he doesn't like it when people are just like so crazily partisan you know he liked having a good relationship with christopher freeland he you know i i called her his friend uh publicly and he did not like that hyper hyper partisanship um

Shannon 15:24

um that was coming out of paliaver you know and those criticisms of him being a liberal just because he you know had a transactional uh

Shannon 15:32

uh uh sort of friendship with someone at the federal level

Shannon 15:36

Doug Ford is a much more of an old school conservative.

Shannon 15:40

Palliova is a new conservative. And by which I mean, there are no facts. There is just a partisan fight to the death. And there's no sort of shared sense of the public interest or the public good in any way, shape or form. There is just burn it all down. Use whatever you need to use to do it. But it is. And it's, you know, the worst of of Trumpism, urbanism, all of these sort of, you know, far right movements that have now become mainstream.

Zain 16:14

Carter, you know, when when Polly have lost that last election because it was so close, I

Zain 16:19

I think many people were like, well, you know, this was this was not the liberal majority that that that was being predicted. Pierre made massive gains in the 905. He looked like, you know, someone who was at least on the path of trying to make some changes, acknowledging some mistakes. And

Zain 16:36

And then when the weeks went by and

Zain 16:38

no one really came with a shiv to try to take his job when the body was still warm, so to speak, I thought it was over.

Zain 16:47

Am I wrong? Did I misread this? Like, I guess what I'm trying to say in a very long-winded way is I'm not as certain about January as I was six weeks ago for Pierre Polyev. Are you in the same camp as me?

Carter 16:59

Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not at all convinced that Pierre Polyev survives the leadership review, nor am I convinced that he doesn't survive the leadership review. First of all, what is a survivable number? Jason Kenney's tried to reset what the number looks like.

Carter 17:12

You know, is it going to be 66 percent? Is it going to be 56

Carter 17:18

know, if it's if it's 82, if 86, 88, then

Carter 17:21

then then he survives no problem. But there's a big gray zone now, a much, much bigger gray zone than there used to be when Joe Clark decided that 66 wasn't going to quite cut it.

Carter 17:33

That is a big

Carter 17:37

question mark for Pierre. Will he survive it?

Carter 17:39

But the other part of this is who wants it? Right.

Carter 17:43

And I think that there's a lot of people who want it. Doug Ford may not be the person, but I'm quite certain that there's someone in someone's orbit that is currently plotting and trying to figure out how they would make sure that Pierre Polyev doesn't get the number that they want. And there's a really believable story as to why he shouldn't get the leadership review. First of all, the ruthlessness of the Conservative Party has been well noted. This is not a party that tolerates losing. It

Carter 18:11

doesn't matter if you did pretty well, if you almost got there. The leaders are taken out at a regular basis because there's just so many different factions within the Conservative Party that there is almost no way that a faction isn't plotting against the others, similar to Chrétien versus Martin back in the day for the Liberals.

Shannon 18:41

there's only really three ways that a leader gets taken out membership

Shannon 18:44

caucus events right like you know some unsavory activity or whatever and you have to he

Carter 18:50

he was the ceo at a cold play concert yeah

Shannon 18:52

yeah there's three ways um i

Shannon 18:55

i remain we added third way

Shannon 18:58

fairly convinced that he'll probably be okay through january because

Shannon 19:02

because uh the caucus is uh uh you know going to simply essentially be the coalition partner uh to the liberals through the fall uh session um

Shannon 19:12

um and they will be sort of moving some of the uh you know the power brokers will be moving themselves around a little bit but it's it's too soon uh

Shannon 19:22

uh likely to organize for january uh so there's the caucus there's the party members uh and those are the people who were showing up at pierce rallies and fainting like they were at a revival meeting right uh

Shannon 19:34

uh generally speaking they're going going to do there he's he's okay there right um uh

Shannon 19:40

uh and so that's those two um

Shannon 19:42

um events you know if we go into a more trumpy time with 35 or those kinds of uh that you know it may become increasingly clear to the caucus probably not the party that he's not the man for the hour i

Shannon 19:57

think he survives january regardless very likely uh i mean i could revise my opinion starting in, you know, October, November, like, let's get back to it. But that's a six month window, right? What's not clear to me at all is if he lasts two years, right?

Shannon 20:10

right? It took them, I think, 14 months to punt O'Toole, I want to say, or a little bit shorter, maybe it was 14 months to punt Scheer.

Shannon 20:18

So it's not going to happen right away, even if it does happen, right? It's not going to happen at, you know, E plus 10. It's just not.

Shannon 20:25

Unless it's, you know, devastating, stating, right? Losses. It's going to happen over the course of a couple of sessions, persistently low numbers, and then one of two things has to happen. Party has to mobilize or caucus. I did say when we talked about this before that I thought that his challenge would come from the right and

Shannon 20:46

and from the more fringy, you know, that kind of world.

Shannon 20:51

Given this stuff off with the Ford people, I'm

Shannon 20:53

I'm not as convinced of that anymore.

Shannon 20:56

And, I mean, it could still come from

Shannon 20:58

Lulu Wright, right, and the people who are unmoored from reality. It could still come from there.

Shannon 21:05

But it may come from the more Chamber of Commerce conservatives that find a home in the Doug Ford PC party, who are seeing the success of a Carney government and thinking, I want some of that, too.

Shannon 21:20

let's talk about the Carney situation

Zain 21:21

situation here, because usually you would think that the the other party in the situation, in this case, the governing party, would not really have an impact or an influence. And you guys may still answer that

Zain 21:29

that that is the case, say that the Carney government's not going to have an influence on this. However, Carter, let me let me put it bluntly. Carney's gotten more conservative.

Zain 21:39

This right. He's asking for massive cuts, which we can talk about 15 percent over three years. You know, he's pushing aggressively, spending a lot of political capital on pipeline and building infrastructure. It's not like he stopped that. He's actually plowing through more aggressively. There's even conservative political columnists calling a progressive conservative or a conservative progressive sort of thing.

Zain 21:59

Is there a Carney impact here? Like in the sense of the home that this guy is also building, could that actually have maybe marginal, maybe not so marginal, maybe none? I'm just to posit the theory. Could that have an impact on what it looks like for Pierre and who shows up to oust him um good or bad uh come january in terms of what the new liberal machine or what the new carney liberal machine looks like in terms of being a lot more historically conservative than we've seen in the in the last decade certainly i

Carter 22:27

think that the way that it shows up isn't necessarily overall very excited that uh prime minister carney is a progressive conservative prime minister which i accept i accept the premise of that that statement

Zain 22:40

statement sure yeah but

Carter 22:41

but um i would suggest that That Prime Minister Carney has

Carter 22:46

has a far more impact, not because of him being a progressive conservative prime minister, but because he's a popular prime

Carter 22:54

The popularity, the approval ratings, the, you know, we would prefer to have Mr. Carney as prime minister over Pierre Polyev.

Carter 23:04

Ultimately, that's what the members are going to look at. The

Carter 23:07

The members want to see victory and they're going to look at it and say, do

Carter 23:10

do we have someone here who can rebound? And

Carter 23:13

they don't seem to give a lot of, you

Carter 23:16

know, a lot of opportunity to people to rebound. You know, it's it's one and done. And that seems to be the nature of it.

Zain 23:24

Jen, any thoughts on the Carney impact here to what peers fortunes maybe then let's move on to Alberta next. Oh,

Shannon 23:29

Oh, I mean, it's just that they continue to get buried in the polls, people are going to look for an alternative. And it's not just that he doesn't have a seat. It's not just that he wasn't in parliament. It's, it's, it's, you know, is he the man for the moment. And a lot of the terrain that

Shannon 23:43

that Mr. Carney is opening up for criticism is

Shannon 23:46

is actually New Democrat terrain, which,

Shannon 23:48

which, and, you know, we have there.

Zain 23:51

want to talk about this. Yeah. Yeah.

Shannon 23:52

Yeah. So, you know, that too might sort of like, what are they left with? You know, they were screaming today about the public safety minister not, you know, personally being a public safety officer in a correctional facility, right, and preventing a stabbing. You know, they were just screeching off topic. Meanwhile, you know, you've got half a million unemployed people in southwest Ontario. Like, it just is not commensurate with, you know, the moment at all. And if that kind of stuff continues, Canadians are going to be like, I don't even know what you're talking about. And then there will be a push to move him up. Now, the

Shannon 24:27

the unpopularity is one thing. It's where the push comes from that is super curious to me.

Shannon 24:34

And that's where, like,

Shannon 24:35

like, yeah, a few weeks ago, I would have said to you, no uncertain terms. It's coming from the right. If anybody can organize it, it's them. I'm not so certain anymore.

Zain 24:43

Yeah, I tend to agree with you. And I think the ability or inability of the Polyev campaign subsequent to the election to continue to build and court that working class economic populism that they at least got a part of. at the expense of the ndp i don't know if they're putting any effort into that doesn't necessarily seem like they they are in a real way especially when the issues are so meaty and so aligned with the political jurisdiction they can make gains with you

Shannon 25:12

jamil giovanni busted out with a temporary foreign worker and the temporary foreign worker program

Shannon 25:16

petitioned like right after the election he

Zain 25:19

he did yeah and

Shannon 25:20

and uh we haven't

Carter 25:21

haven't heard from him since

Zain 25:23

this yeah and also is same dude giovanni not getting his um what

Zain 25:27

what many thought would be an obvious sort of shadow ministry carter let's move it to alberta because i do want to go to carney and i do want to kind of knock off some of the other things i have mentioned here um

Zain 25:38

talk to me about the inevitability of this going the way it has thus far and then i want to talk about from a strategist perspective what the fix to the alberta next panels looks like from steven carter's perspective The train has left the station. So redesigning the program is not on the table per se, but what would the midstream adjustment look like? So talk to me about, was this inevitable?

Zain 26:00

And then talk to me about the strategic adjustment that you would be making, Carter. So

Carter 26:05

So we did a budget choice exercise with the provincial government.

Carter 26:09

And one of the things that we did early

Carter 26:11

early on is we wanted to create some sort of a benchmarking because

Carter 26:15

we were certain that it would be taken over by either

Carter 26:18

either the left or the right, but we wanted to make sure that we had a benchmark. So we did a 2

Carter 26:22

2,000 or 3,000 person sample size in order to create a benchmark.

Carter 26:28

Danielle Smith needs to create a fucking benchmark. This thing is being taken off by, what are they calling them, the bratty children in the room. And

Carter 26:39

And the people in the room, the people responding to her online survey are people who are the

Carter 26:46

the disaffected. they are not necessarily well they are not at all representative of the general population and we were terrified of that when we did the budget choice exercise because if you do an exercise of public consultation and it suddenly goes the way of are you fucking kidding me crazy then

Carter 27:03

then how do you get back to sanity when it comes time to write the report you're not going to be able to ask trevor tomb to write with sanity because trevor tomb is going to be stuck there saying well if i'm writing what people actually said rather than what's actually true true then i have to write this crazy ass report and that was you know that's where things were going to go wrong that's where they've gone wrong right now and i just don't know that she's even thought about getting a benchmark and trying to figure out how to bring this back to reality how

Zain 27:32

how how has it gone wrong shannon because they've done red deer edmonton sherwood park they've got their online surveys initially perceived to have some bias so you can't oppose their propositions Those have gotten 30-some-odd thousand responses thus far. So the engagement is there, but it still has gone off the rails. So explain to me, like, what has gone off the rails? I know it might seem obvious, but I think it's important to, like, highlight what we think the source of the problem is, or if you even believe in the premise that there is a problem with the Albert and X panels.

Shannon 28:02

Has it gone off the rails?

Shannon 28:04

Is there a problem?

Shannon 28:06

point here is not to find consensus. It's not to arm people with facts. It's

Shannon 28:11

It's not to issue a report.

Shannon 28:14

It's not to do any of those things that are in the public interest, regardless of one's partisanship.

Shannon 28:20

It's not. It is to create an alternate reality for your, essentially, your separatist agenda. agenda and so you

Shannon 28:29

you know they are by all accounts at least it's been reported and i don't know if it was independently verified but they are uh

Shannon 28:35

uh sending invite invites out to ucp membership list before uh and letting them register before general public again

Shannon 28:43

i want to caveat that because i don't know if it was independently verified by two sources all those things no

Carter 28:48

no but zane and i believe it to be true well yeah

Shannon 28:54

But I mean, so you've got like also who's showing up in mid-July. You're going to get some pretty highly motivated partisans and but

Shannon 29:04

and then a smattering of, you know, well-informed folks who, you know, retired that lovely woman, the retired CPA who got up there and talked facts about the about the Canada pension plan the

Shannon 29:13

the other night. I saw her clip.

Shannon 29:16

But the point here is not to resolve anything. It is to continue. No,

Zain 29:19

No, it's a bolster.

Shannon 29:21

Bolster, yeah. And to provide some

Shannon 29:23

some cover for it. And the only cover that matters is people screaming in the streets and on the internet. This is not, from Daniel Smith's perspective, a tire fire at all for her. For Trevor Toome, I should hope it's a tire fire. And he leaves as soon as he can because reputationally, this is an absolute, it's a mess. And he is the one person up there. The one person whose literal job description and

Shannon 29:51

and employment contract explicitly says in it for, let's be clear, hundreds of years because he has tenure that he can say no to government. He could have said no to this and he still can and he should because he last night he

Shannon 30:07

was correcting some folks on some erroneous statements.

Shannon 30:17

The Sherwood Park one.

Shannon 30:35

messy and it like dumps her numbers down a little bit and like reinforces the separatist thing like over like august september

Zain 30:47

september she's facilitating it and such okay

Zain 30:49

you don't think that's enough she

Shannon 30:50

she can distance herself from that even at that point so yeah we heard albertans and now we'll focus on something else that

Zain 30:56

that level of i on the surface i would not agree with shannon but that level of gaslighting has historically happened with danielle smith that she's been able to say something start it continue it you know spark it's it's fire light it's flame and then back away from it what's

Zain 31:11

what's bullshit carter because i i'm buying a lot of behavior is bullshit

Carter 31:15

her behavior danielle smith's behavior is absolutely complete bullshit she has turned into uh the most disgusting form of of of partisan that there is one who creates their own facts and uh and tries to enable um you know it is government propaganda what they've done and the fact that they've moved the old uh

Carter 31:37

you know cory hogan's old department into the premier's department doesn't

Carter 31:40

doesn't exactly make me feel even more confident that we're not going to be just fed a steady stream of propaganda by government ministries. I

Zain 31:48

I want to get to the strategic question here because Shannon answered it from her perspective. Carter, is this a tire fire for Daniel Smith or is this just as planned?

Carter 31:56

I think it's a tire fire for Daniel Smith because I think that

Zain 31:58

that most Albertans will

Carter 32:00

will be put off by this and they'll be put off by the crazy. The crazy makes makes sense in danielle smith's world danielle loves the crazy she's a big embracing of the of the crazy gen pop hasn't seen the crazy now gen pop gets to see the crazy up close and this is this is going i mean the only thing that's going for her is that it's july and no one's paying attention but if the ndp has half a brain which is arguably questionable then

Carter 32:27

then the ndp will in some fashion be in a position where they can take advantage of this well

Shannon 32:31

well and i think they have I like to be fair to the NDP you know they why would

Carter 32:35

would we start have

Shannon 32:36

have launched you know they're they're sort of they're better together nice branding tight message they've got some town halls so I mean it shouldn't

Carter 32:44

shouldn't be town halls though like well

Shannon 32:46

well I mean they're doing that response to these ones yeah but

Carter 32:49

but that's fine I don't know

Shannon 32:50

well I mean as long as you're doing

Carter 32:52

doing I'm disappointed right

Shannon 32:53

right but you have to do

Carter 32:53

do a response I

Shannon 32:56

don't like and I will also say that the CPP town Fountain Halls were enormously successful when we did them in

Shannon 33:01

response to this, you know, ridiculous propaganda exercise when they threw $8 million at Albertans around the Alberta pension plan and it blew up spectacularly in their faces.

Shannon 33:12

So, you know, I think they have to do something in response. And this is one way that they can kind of engage their membership as well. So and, you know, sort of and we'll test Carter's theory of whether Gen Pop is down with this or not, based on some of what the New Democrats do and what kind of, you know, soil they can till. That is why the New Democrats probably need to round out this Better Together campaign, which I really liked and I think is effective, with some other ways that people can plug in, survey stuff, whatever, right, to kind of slipstream behind the government's bullshit process and demonstrate a, you know, a more good faith approach

Shannon 33:53

approach to hearing people out.

Zain 33:58

shannon let's say you and the premier on friendly terms you're a strategic advisor to her she calls you tonight she says listen you probably saw some of the shit that happened in edmonton red deer sherwood park do i need to change anything or am i good should i just keep plugging along what's your answer to her i

Shannon 34:15

i i would say if if what you want to do is validate your position that uh there's a lot of separatism out there uh and uh we just need a better deal for Because it's the only card you have because your health care system is on fire because you're perpetually at war with your education system. You're going into a bunch of labor disruption. So you're going to want a nice distraction and something that can continue to raise the kind of money that the UCP has been raising, which is significant.

Zain 34:48

Carter, same phone call to you right after. She says, Carter, you know, you've worked with me for a long time. Part of that is true. uh you've worked with me once before uh do i need to change anything carter uh going forward yes you need to

Carter 35:04

to be honest i mean if you're going to do a consultation process you can't let it be taken over by crazy people and who are uh ill-informed you must tell the truth and this is something that applies uh not just to this panel but it applies to books and libraries it It applies to how the health care system functions. Everything that Shannon's talking about, you know, that is going to turn into an absolute shit show isn't going to be made better by telling falsehoods and lies.

Zain 35:35

OK, I'm going to I'm going to leave this segment there and move it on to our over under in our lightning round. And I'm going to group in some of the things I mentioned that you guys did not pick up on on this and just get your takes on it relatively quickly. So we'll do an expanded over under in a lightning round. Carter, let me start with you. Pierre Poliev's by-election. If you're him, are you concerned at all? Is this like a mosquito bite or is this actually like an irritant beyond that? The number that you're trying to reach, this independent candidate that's set up, the timing of it,

Zain 36:04

irritant, not so much. What are you thinking of it?

Carter 36:06

I think it's a mosquito bite. I don't think it's something that's going to matter in the long term. Generally speaking, the independents get a lot of attention and then they don't get a lot of votes.

Zain 36:18

what do you think? Yeah,

Shannon 36:19

Yeah, it's nothing. Anybody who thinks the independent is going to do much beyond the usual, you know, 10, 15, whatever, is spending too much time on threads.

Zain 36:30

I'm going to put C5 with the broader sort of position that Carney's coalition, at least the one that that opportunistically voted for him, that probably included quite a few new Democrats. is Carney abandoning progressives and is this going to cost him Shannon like from what you've seen thus far with the cuts being requested with the cuts of the CBC and via rail also included in that with the c5 and the mealy-mouthed and I'm maybe not being as generous as I should be sort of talk that he has regarding indigenous consultation the abandonment of progressives I think was inevitable at some point it seems to be happening a lot quicker in my mind I'm curious to get your thoughts on this in terms of if you think this is the start of the Carney progressive abandonment.

Shannon 37:15

We haven't seen it in the numbers yet.

Shannon 37:17

So, you know, there's a lot of chatter about that. But look at his numbers. And his numbers are extraordinary. And so I would argue that, you know, C5 and even the request for cuts, nothing's actually happened yet. No one has had a reduced service because of a decision that was made as a result of a budget the past No one yet has seen a large project. No one has had any environmental assessment or other rules waived. And so, in fact, no one's even seen the first, you know, project or two move

Shannon 37:51

move through the major projects office, which is in any case not probably going to be set up until after

Shannon 37:57

after the summer is over. So, the honeymoon continues right now, and there's a bit of chatter, I would say, you know,

Shannon 38:06

know, coming from the left. But because he hasn't done anything yet, to Carter's point about Gen Pop, Gen Pop isn't seeing the problem yet. The material conditions of their lives or the presence of government in their lives has not changed yet.

Shannon 38:18

once it does then i think we'll uh we'll see because he really did get elected on kind of a you know and all things to all people right uh so rubber will meet the road uh and it will can uh depend on how uh effective

Shannon 38:31

effective the new democrats are in scooping some of that up as well

Zain 38:36

carter i use the word abandoning let me use the word alienating is carney alienating progressives

Carter 38:41

well the six or seven of them that are left probably feel pretty bad um but there's just It's just not that many who are identifying as that progressive at this particular moment in time. Most people seem to be in a relatively pragmatic mood. That's a fair

Zain 38:56

fair answer, given the numbers. Let me ask the question slightly differently and interrupt you partway, which is, could Carney's moves and requests reignite the progressive movement? Of course, the natural sort of home for that would be the New Democrats and their leadership race coming up, being kicked off, so to speak. But do you feel like some of his actions could actually kickstart that and potentially even catalyze the progressive rebirth a lot faster, Carter?

Carter 39:22

Well, I'm sure that it could if there were competent politicians in the NDP who are actually trying to take advantage of that. Fortunately,

Carter 39:28

I haven't seen any as yet.

Zain 39:30

Shannon, I want to give you the same sort of opportunity

Zain 39:32

opportunity at the B side of this question, which is could this catalyze the reinvigoration or rebirth of the progressives across the country with Carney's moves? moves.

Shannon 39:43

Absolutely. Both within the Liberal Party of Canada caucus, if their numbers start to slide a little bit, because

Shannon 39:48

because they exist there too.

Shannon 39:50

And it could very well really help the New Democrats raise some money and get through this really tough time. And so it is there. But right now, we don't have that because the New Democrats are leaderless. The race hasn't started yet, And so

Shannon 40:11

so pushback is going to have to come from, well,

Shannon 40:15

well, kind of three places. The LPC caucus not happening in the first few months of a mandate, or

Shannon 40:22

or even as we saw with the Trudeau government, even in the last few months of a mandate, it was still pretty thin in terms of caucus actually finding a spine and a brain. um

Shannon 40:32

um second of all uh it can come from civil society and from labor uh and basically from the street and so i i think that's the the most likely scenario right now uh once they start making decisions in the fall and i would say more likely in

Shannon 40:53

in spring of 26 is when you're going to see uh rubber meat road just given how much time it takes to do things and so on uh

Shannon 40:59

uh and we haven't seen uh

Shannon 41:02

uh out of uh some of the indigenous activity a lot of like blockade or other stuff

Shannon 41:09

stuff happening yet it's

Shannon 41:10

it's in summer when that those sorts of things happen we we haven't seen a lot of it coming out of ring of fire and northern ontario where it could uh that's not to say it won't um

Shannon 41:21

that'll That'll be the first places where the where the indigenous street, if you will, probably starts to move. And that will far precede whatever is happening in the House of Commons.

Zain 41:33

Carter, I'm going to go to you for our next one. Are you in or are you out? Out. On Pierre Poliev slamming Carney over his investment disclosures. This is that ethics screen, which is now public. Carney's now, sorry, Poliev, I should say, is arguing that the PM needs to sell his assets that the prime minister has transferred to a blind trust. And it's evidence that the Liberal leader wasn't being honest with Canadians on the campaign trail. This is a item that Polyev went out and did a whole presser on this past week, tried to make it and drum it up as a larger issue on ethics. Are you in or are you out with the Polyev frame on this, both in terms of how he's framed it, but also in terms of making this a top priority story and trying to go after this? i'm

Carter 42:14

i'm totally out first of all i'm out because i don't think that it will resonate with canadians i think that canadians understand what a blind trust is and they have long understood that politicians put their assets into a blind trust while they're serving in government uh the second reason i am out is that what do you expect them to do turn all that into fucking cash he's just going to walk around with briefcases full of full of you know you know cold hard cash that he walks fucks around with like what the fuck he has to have a portfolio everybody's entitled to have an investment is pierre polliev not going to have any investments to what what is he doing with his with his assets oh he probably doesn't have any because he's been a career politician for 20 fucking years i mean this guy who hasn't achieved anything is out there trying to uh humiliate someone who's only done you know great things and just kicked his ass in the fucking election Pierre Polyev, stand down. You don't know what you're doing. It's

Shannon 43:13

Everything that Carter's just said is true, but I am super in on this strategy just because what the hell else is Polyev ever going to talk about? You know, if it's not this, then he's what, like, screaming at the public safety minister because he didn't personally prevent a stabbing at a jail? Like, I mean, the kind of small ball... You think this

Zain 43:29

this is more on message than that other thing that you were

Shannon 43:32

were talking about? Well, otherwise, it's just small ball bullshit. It's all small

Carter 43:35

small ball bullshit that doesn't have any meaning

Shannon 43:38

meaning for... It's not the gift that keeps on giving is the issue. It's not the issue today. And Canadians, yes, they understand the

Carter 43:43

the concept of a blind trust. I'm disgusted. But

Shannon 43:46

But the fact is, is that, you know, you've got a treasure trove of name brand companies and you can, you know, spin up a yarn of self-dealing. And it's not today that it's the Achilles heel of the Liberal Party of Canada is self-dealing and, you know, perceptions

Shannon 44:02

particularly having to do with, you know, kind of central Canada, Laurentian elites, all of that. it's something and when you've got nothing uh having something that you can build a narrative off of yeah for sure it's

Zain 44:15

it's probably a third time in the show carter that chance sold me on something that i was indifferent on or lukewarm on i

Zain 44:20

to agree with completely wrong

Zain 44:22

on this particular issue

Zain 44:24

i mean if if if the she couldn't

Carter 44:26

be more wrong if it's

Carter 44:27

we have to have a system that enables people to have assets when they run for office sure and to manage those opposition leader

Shannon 44:34

leader your job is to criticize the government and find no it's

Carter 44:37

it's not it's not it's not to tear down the prime minister let me ask let me ask the question they have that are being done properly if they were being done improperly if it was the fucking we charity then maybe we could start seeing something like that but this is fucking bullshit let

Zain 44:52

let me ask the question this way carter downside risk for peer on this well

Carter 44:57

well one day he may have an asset and when he does have an asset he's He's going to have to put that asset into a blind fucking trust.

Zain 45:04

I'm hearing none. He

Shannon 45:05

He does have an asset. It's called a defined benefit pension that's one of the most generous. It probably is the most generous in the country. Yeah, but he argues against it.

Shannon 45:14

That's all he gets.

Carter 45:14

He said he was only going to serve two fucking terms. The guy's a fucking bald-faced liar is what he is. Carter,

Zain 45:21

Carter, do you want to end on that energy?

Carter 45:23

I can keep going. It's up to you.

Zain 45:26

Do you have anything else you want to talk about? I feel like you need to get something off your chest here. I thought I was driving for a bit, but I feel like you really want to...

Carter 45:33

No, I'm pretty upset about the cold play, CEO. We're

Zain 45:36

going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1879 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Shannon Phillips, Stephen Carter, and we shall see you next time.

Transcript