Transcript
Zain
0:02
A Scissor Strategist, episode 1907. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Stephen Carter, Shannon Phillips.
Carter
0:10
Well, I've had better days, Zain. Yeah?
Zain
0:12
Yeah? Have you had better days?
Carter
0:13
days? Yeah, I just got back from the dermatologist. Okay.
Carter
0:17
Let us in. Let us in on that. Yeah, they zapped my head. They zapped my head with liquid nitrogen. It hurts. Jesus, that
Zain
0:23
that does sound terrible.
Carter
0:27
so if if i don't sound as smart as shannon today it's because my brain has been under attack what
Zain
0:32
what if what if we don't access your brain today and access your your your heart
Zain
0:37
access that's good yeah okay your
SPEAKER_02
0:40
yeah is rage your brain hard
SPEAKER_01
0:41
hard is fine okay
Carter
0:42
my rage is is there okay i've got rage but uh you
Carter
0:47
you know shannon doesn't like it when i bring the rage she said she said calm down you fucking lunatic the last time i lost it that sounds like
SPEAKER_02
0:53
like shannon to me that
Carter
0:54
does sound like shannon yeah it does well
Shannon
0:57
well now i'm just going to recommend a really good uh spf uh a good sunscreen for your overly exposed forehead it's tricky because there's dermatologist visits will be better the
Carter
1:10
the smallest amount of hair there and if you put too much sun it's it's tricky it's
Carter
1:15
it's tricky ow you need
Shannon
1:16
need one of those carter's carter is for sale hats i
Shannon
1:20
i have I have lots of hats. For the sunny days. Yeah, thank
Zain
1:23
in one way or another, they all say Carter is for sale. Okay?
SPEAKER_01
1:27
They all say the same thing.
Carter
1:31
Did you guys go to the convention this weekend? Did you? Oh, yeah. Okay. Let's just accessorize
Zain
1:35
accessorize Stephen Carter. The convention was had in Calgary for the conservatives. Pierre Polyev gets just sub 88%, besting Stephen Harper's 84% from 2005, the last time a conservative leader had to have one of these. Carter, the speech was did. The people were excited. Pierre Poliev effectively said, there are too many of them out there, these people who want us to abandon our conservative principles. His own convenient, poetic way of saying, fuck you, I'm not changing. That is my takeaway. Stephen Carter, was that your takeaway? And I want to very quickly, before we jump into the majority of this episode, which I want to spend on separatism related to this conservative convention. Tell me what you thought of Pierre Polyev and his tact there to ultimately say you have re-upped the messenger. Oh, and by the way, you've also re-upped the message, just so you, if there was any illusions, you know, you've also re-upped the message that you got prior to this.
Carter
2:36
I mean, our friend Katie Merrifield helped Pierre Polyev run his leadership race. And we thought, man, he's going to have to pivot back. He's going going to have to pivot back to the center if he's going to get have any chance of winning and katie said to us no
Carter
2:51
he's not gonna he's not gonna pivot back he's going this is who he is and this is what he wants to do he's not gonna pivot and we said that's an interesting strategy and then he rocketed up in the polls and didn't pivot and looked fantastic against trudeau and we we looked like
Zain
3:07
ones that were wrong yeah and that yeah yeah
Carter
3:10
then then he lost you know he dropped 20 20 points or whatever the numbers were and wound up uh coming into a second place and uh looks like he's still in second place um with the collapse of the ndp he he retains a fairly strong position but he is not polling very well for preferred prime minister in fact he's polling pretty terribly so i think that he should pivot but again he has said to us uh now through his speech this I will not pivot. I am not going to change. This is who I am. I
Carter
3:46
I am a conservative. I
Carter
3:47
I am a conservative's conservative. I am not a progressive conservative. I'm not a middle-of-the-road conservative. And I think
Carter
3:55
think it was well
Carter
3:57
well-received in the audience. The audience, the people who went were the conservative conservatives. The people who were in the room,
Carter
4:05
those were the conservative conservatives, and they decided that they quite like him. So, you
Carter
4:09
you know, Daniel Smith got a rousing review as well. I mean, I think that the conservative conservatives were in the room and the Daniel Smith, Pierre Polyev style of conservatism is going to continue to be very strong.
Zain
4:24
Jen, here's my tally for the weekend. What this was for Polyev was a good weekend. He got a number that started with an eight. It didn't start with a seven and nearly approached a nine. A nine would have been better, but it was good. It was solid. The room was with him. What it wasn't was a speech that was trying to take on Carney's Davos speech. I remember, Carter, you said, you know, this will be a speech that tries to, you know, compare the two. It was not that. And what it was wasn't an acknowledgment to maybe many people outside of that room. So I'm curious how you read it. There's much to that speech. But the real nub of it for me was people want us to change. We're not going to change. You have re-upped me and you have re-upped the message by extension. Was that your takeaway? And what do you think of that strategy for Poliev as his go forward plan? There
Shannon
5:07
There is no question that the message in Mr.
Shannon
5:11
Mr. Polyev's speech was actually contained within a line in it, where he had some kind of flippant line about the best part of being conservative is people come to realize that we're right all along.
Zain
5:24
Sounds very New Democrat to me, by the way. That sounds like
Zain
5:27
like definitely, speaking of things being stolen politically, Pierre Polyev probably gives some credit. it you
Shannon
5:35
know just like we're gonna lose but we're gonna be right yay you know um that no this is a speech that in the first couple of graphs busted out with a shout out to the convoy uh he had it had it all uh for polyamory you know like he had you know stupid lines like things should be dirt cheap because uh we have the most dirt you know just idiotic uh
Shannon
5:59
uh takes that he thinks are obviously obviously interesting and funny that's why it gets in there he has a decent defense offer but he has to wrap it up and we're not going to have warrior warrior culture we're going to have warrior culture we're not going to have a woke military right so he's like going full pete haggis there sounds like a yachts um he
Shannon
6:19
he links the nativism of alberta and quebec separatists together and then goes straight straight into a discussion of immigration um
Shannon
6:28
you know and he has to throw in New World Order in reference to China as he's talking about a pipeline to the Pacific. Like, where the fuck do you think that oil's going, bro? Like, it's just, you know, the pipeline that you have such a heart on for. Where do you think it's going? It's going to China.
Shannon
6:43
It's just, it's, you know, so it's mind-bogglingly stupid. There certainly
Zain
6:47
certainly were a few, like, this guy's a dumbfuck moments for sure. Like, he should have made that speech shorter than longer. I'll get to form in a second, but keep going, Shannon.
Shannon
6:55
Yeah, well, I mean, he repeated himself at least two or three times in Canada, a sovereignty act you know um but like so this was a a speech
Shannon
7:05
speech that essentially said to canadians you know it's it's your fault for not voting for me last time not mine uh
Shannon
7:13
uh and i'm not interested in in any more picking through the entrails of the 2025 election we're
Shannon
7:20
we're not uh going to think critically about it at all we're going to keep doing the same thing over and over again and And we're going to make sure that it's coded in the same convoy language. We're going to indulge the same things that scared people and that made New Democrat voters in particular stampede for the liberals and, frankly, made boomer voters stampede for the liberals in 2025. And we're just going to double down on that. And all you cucks who don't like it will come around eventually. You
Zain
7:51
Cucks Who Don't Like It, also the title of my own biography. photography uh but but carter here's i'm gonna i'm gonna try to distill what both of you are saying um
Zain
8:02
well i'm gonna actually park it for a second let me do this instead let me propose to you without any inflammatory language what i think the polyf strategy is and tell me if you can buy any of this okay the
Zain
8:13
the issue set right now is not with us the
Zain
8:17
the guy who was cast to deal with the issue set that's in front of us, foreign policy America, Trump is dealing with it just fine.
Zain
8:25
We have to wait it out until it is our issue set. So by re-upping Pierre, you're doing something very new Democrat, which is like, he didn't succeed, but you get another go. You get another go, right? Just keep going. We're not going to punch you.
Zain
8:38
And all we have to do is
Zain
8:40
is wait for this issue set to fade away for the guy to fail on it. And then we will be able to capitalize either with the cost of living frame or we trust Pierre enough to engineer the next cost of living inflation ahead of the next cycle. So rather than losing every single day to Carney and trying to compete on the Trump file with weird and awkward grins of likability, let's
Zain
9:03
let's let him have the moment because we're not competing for the moment. We're competing for the next election. Now, I'm not saying I know this. I'm not saying this is what they're thinking. I'm saying it's plausible that that this could be part of their headspace. Is
Zain
9:16
Is there any part of that, Stephen Carter, if you were part of that conference call with conservatives, that you'd say, I'm buying, and what parts are you not buying of that thesis?
Carter
9:27
I don't think it's too strong a thesis. I think that it's got too much behind it. I think that, instead, this is a reflection of polling of the membership, right? And the poll of the membership says, this is what we care about. and then the lines are developed around what the membership cares about and this isn't a thesis about where they're going to go in the future this is a reflection of where they are in the current and this group of people this this hardcore conservative bunch uh heard the words that they wanted to hear um that's i
Carter
10:07
so i i guess i'm rejecting your thesis uh primarily because Because I think it's just too smart saying. I think that this was just a reflection of the negativity, the Trumpism, the, you know, the 20% of Albertans that want separation were
Carter
10:25
were at that meeting, right? The 20% of, you know, there were no Quebec progressive conservatives. Let
Zain
10:33
Let me give that to you, okay? So let me give you that fact that, you know, okay, this is too smart for conservatives. You know, okay.
Zain
10:39
Let's say deliberately or not, this is where they end up. i'm
Zain
10:42
i'm really curious to get your analysis on this that like is it viable for pauliev to collaborate with carney look supportive when he needs to let carney steal the spotlight and and the shine on issues that he was centrally cast for and then you are in the background toiling away and try to make this issue set yours rather than competing on this turf which is squarely belonging to one guy like is there a there there whether they thought about it or not is what i'm curious about is that But is there any either strategic or tactical value to where they might end up here?
Carter
11:16
I think there's probably strategic value to it, where they end up. They may have to take
Carter
11:24
take a little bit of time to figure out where they actually need to stand.
Carter
11:28
There's always a question when you're doing politics, and that is, do you want to take the policy to where the people are, or do you want to bring the people to where the policy is? and Pierre Polyev just signaled we're going to bring the people to where the policy is and I think that that's going to be a real uphill climb for him
Carter
11:45
and that's the strategy that's been articulated not the strategy of we're going to wait this out it's the strategy of we're going to bring these people on board with us and
Zain
11:56
and you could see that there might be just Shannon to your point ignoring boomers saying fuck boomers we've got young people right when anecdotally what you saw in that room was a shit ton of young, predominantly men, but you saw young people in a way that maybe you haven't seen in a few conventions, conventions, regardless of party stripe. I'm curious to get your thought on this thesis that I've just thrown out there, which is Polyev just waiting out this issue set and engineering his own and saying only until we can win this thing on our own terms do we win. Fuck this sort of trying to compete day to day on a file we don't have any, any standing on or even really any credibility on. We're always going to be second fiddle on that front. I
Shannon
12:30
I think your thesis is strong and it's probably what they're doing and it is actually quite smart the problem is waiting around as you're waiting around for the other issue sets to become salient or vote more vote determining what
Shannon
12:45
what are you putting in the window for policy prescriptions and or do you look like the guy who can do that as well right
Shannon
12:52
right because i mean sure the conservatives win on affordability economy but you know not always anyways uh not in everybody's polling uh and it's pretty close and if the guy who's giving you those policy prescriptions even if you kind of like them seems like an asshole to you uh
Shannon
13:09
uh and and can't compete on a whole bunch of other things that are also important to you that's a problem uh
Shannon
13:15
uh and i mean a lot of what polyover is putting forward is hollow it
Shannon
13:20
it is uh just a mannequin in the window it's just get grocery prices down like okay um do it you know like you know uh he he He goes out there and lies and says, you know, our taxes have all gone up, when actually the objective fact is that the Liberal Party of Canada ran on another round of tax cuts aimed at middle-income people, and, you know, where most of us didn't come out ahead, but we are not paying the upfront carbon tax anymore. more we also lower income people don't get the rebates and so they've lost money uh relative to where they were at in 2024 but i mean so you know a lot of it is empty and if you're going to keep going with
Shannon
14:01
with what people perceive as empty sloganeering and is not the man for the moment which is why you're ending up in these two-thirds unfavorable or like flirting with two-thirds of canadians thinking that you are you um yeah yeah
Shannon
14:16
yeah uh you do need to show that either you can compete on the issue set because part of the not you is not you for trump so you need at least need to bring up your standing a little bit to make people go well maybe he
Shannon
14:32
right because the affordability stuff is pissing me off so much or
Shannon
14:36
or you also have to make your affordability your or other pitches, less Jordan Peterson, right?
Shannon
14:45
right? You know, people do want to talk about defense and Canadian sovereignty. I'm not so super sure they want to hear you sound like Pete Hegseth rambling on about a warrior culture while you're doing it.
Carter
14:58
I'm just, I'm intrigued by this whole thing. I'm trying to think of what is it, you
Carter
15:03
you know, obviously we're not the target audience, right? We're well outside the target audience.
Carter
15:10
without a pivot how does pierre pauliev come to uh speak to the larger voter set that have started to write him off and that's
Carter
15:21
that's what i'm interested in do they see something in the polling that i just don't see i think their
Zain
15:25
their issue i think their thing is just simply thinking through issue set that voters are fickle and then on this issue they like carney and on his issues they like him and as long as he can be first on those issues and he may need to rely on carney being as soft on cost of living as Trudeau was, which is, I'm not going to play on that game for months and months and months, which is frankly what the Trudeau era strategy on cost of living was. I think that's his thesis. I guess my question to you, Carter, is just as a general rule, let's zoom out from Polyev for a second. When you're
Zain
15:57
you're talking about issue sets and trying to get the public to care about yours, can
Zain
16:02
can you, in Polyev's case, recycle
Zain
16:04
recycle the one that got you there but didn't get you fully across the finish line, cost of living, let's just put it in that bucket, inflation, cost of living. Or do you think he has to unleash that superpower again and predict something before anyone sees it or engineer something before anyone sees it, kind of like he did with inflation, all credit to him, maybe with immigration or whatever that issue might be as the next? Do you think he can go back to the well or do you think he needs a new thing? And I know I'm asking a specific question when I ask for a general lesson, but I'm curious if you have a general lesson to give here as people think about how you know politicians try to converge people and and magnetize them towards their particular issues that they're advocating for
Carter
16:44
have a rule on this zayn and that rule is don't try and run the last election again this election right
Carter
16:50
that that's one of the core rules of politics um that has been why people fail i mean arguably that might have been why i failed in the municipal election in calgary it may have have looked too much like the election prior. And that's a legitimate critique.
Carter
17:10
Pierre Polyev running the same playbook for
Carter
17:16
2029, whenever the next election happens to be, I think will be a giant failure. If the election is sooner than that, it may even be a bigger failure because we won't have had the time for the for the issue to come in and go out and come in right these things go on uh on wavelengths and and you know you bring up immigration immigration was also the last one he has to be able to figure out the next one right what is the next election and what is it going to be because right now the next election seems to be do we like mark yes yeah
Zain
17:53
yeah it's ending up being referendum style and to shannon it's you know
Zain
17:57
being in politics all of us in one way shape or form it's hard to predict what the next thing is going to be own it and
Zain
18:03
and then have people vote on it right
Zain
18:05
right so predict own and then be vote determining to a term you used just earlier look
Shannon
18:11
look so much of this is shades of new democrats of your sounds
Zain
18:15
sounds familiar doesn't it
Shannon
18:17
it for as long as i've been alive uh at both the federal and the provincial level voters have identified health care as their top either top one or top two or at least top three priorities one
Zain
18:30
one through five depending exactly yeah exactly and
Shannon
18:32
and you know and who do who do voters also tell pollsters that they trust most with their health care well that'd be new democrats and yet here we are you know uh alexa mcdonough in fact did not become prime minister in 1997 when she ran a campaign entirely or was that 2001 or the two it was entirely on health care i think it was the 2000 campaign and it was just so bad right um and uh look so like that's the problem with looking at the issue set and going oh well we went on this one so off we go and it doesn't matter who the messenger is it doesn't matter the relationship of trust that you've built up either in communities or with the leader uh over time uh and it doesn't matter the kind like what the overall narrative is uh for that particular election or that particular particular zeitgeist, because that's actually the piece that is just as much about, you know, sort of listening to the electorate and getting a sense of where they're at. It's not just a categorization of one through eight, you know, issues, and please rank them according to their salience in this focus group, right?
Shannon
19:37
So, it seems a little bit mechanistic to me to be sort of thinking, well, it doesn't matter about all of his, like, sort of personality glitches and downsides, because he's talking about the thing that people want him to talk about. I've been a New Democrat a long time and we've been talking about the thing that people want to talk about and yet people don't vote for us. So we need to think about why. Yeah, no,
Zain
19:57
no, you make such a good point, especially with that history of experience with the New Democrats, because you could argue that the electorate sent a very clear message, which is Pierre-Paul Lievre, we already bought your issue set. Thank you for elevating it. Thank you for putting it on the agenda. The liberals just promised that they will take care of most of those for us. We actually gave you a very clear verdict, which is we like what you guys are talking about we just do not like you and then this weekend the conservatives
Zain
20:21
conservatives are like we're gonna re-up the guy we're gonna re-up the one thing of our entire ecosystem that they do not like which is the guy and he's like thank you that means validation on everything including me now getting to say the same shit and you could argue that the transaction was already made but it like happened you know just under a year ago we bought what you were selling we just just wanted to reject the carcass that was selling it and now they've taken this this lesson. So I'm not saying that what I'm trying to posit is where their headspace is at, but I think given the fact that a lot of these folks, their job is to self-preserve and preserve Pierre Pauliev, they might just be waiting for another issue set or the same one to emerge again. Okay, I want to go to this. I want to talk about separatism, and I want to break us down into
Zain
21:02
some of the things that have happened over the last three, four days, over the weekend, where we look provincially, it's focused provincially. Danielle Smith is now on the the record thanks to some comments that she gave at the convention once again repeating the release valve line that the separatist referendum is a release valve saying that she doesn't really want to police her mlas for signing the referendum she doesn't know she hasn't audited she doesn't whatever like doesn't really have any sort of claim to that so those two things are new especially after the reporting came out from the financial times as we discussed on our patreon episode that said that the the separatists had met with the american state department and that they had acknowledged that MLAs from Danielle Smith's caucus were on it. So Danielle Smith's now come out saying she doesn't want to demonize the 30% of all burns. This is Justin Trudeau's fault that there are folks potentially on the list. I don't know. I can't care. I don't know. I haven't seen the list. That's where she's at. Simultaneously, the New Democrats, they've
Zain
21:57
they've upped their ante. They've now put out a new video having members from their caucus saying, I've signed it. I've signed it as Danielle Smith signed it. It's in her inbox. She has not done anything. Separation is a distraction separatism uh it won't get hospitals built it won't get roads built it won't get schools built etc why is she not signing it why is and then they name specific ministers not signing it i
Zain
22:17
i want to do two things in this separatist fight i want each of you to represent a side stephen carter you are going to represent the alberta ndp because why not um you're going to help nahid nenshi you're going to analyze what they've done over the last little bit and give me some recommendations on what would have made this last piece of uh creative and messaging better But more importantly, I want you to project forward what their next plays are here. We've talked about the escalation, but I want to think about it a little bit more strategically. Shannon, give
Zain
22:44
give me a take on what Danielle Spitz has said over the course of the last number of days. The release valve comment, the demonizing of 30%. But I think most interestingly, her not saying that there's going to be any penalty,
Zain
22:57
penalty, fault, issue, follow-up regarding her MLA signings petition. And then similarly, I want you to look ahead. head. So Shannon, can I start with you? And maybe let's focus on this comment of Danielle Smith saying, yeah, I don't know if my MLS are, I've signed it. They're free to do whatever the fuck they want. Like, and that's it. End of question. And even after being pushed, no real change in response. What do you think of that strategy? What would make it better for her if your job is to help her and advise her, which I am making it for the purposes of this segment.
Shannon
23:27
Yeah. Um, well, obviously she's afraid of something because otherwise she would just say, no, nobody's signing this. It's dumb. We're proud Canadians, right? It's really actually really probably the easiest thing in the world to just, you know, answer the question with no, I stand on guard for thee and I'm out of this conversation. It is the easiest question to answer. So she is afraid of probably a good chunk of the caucus if she answers it in any other way. So that tells me that if you are running scared like that, then you are doing what you absolutely have to do. It may be also that she actually believes this and that this strengthens her hand vis-a-vis the federal government going into the MOU. Because like a lot of the MOU outcomes are quite imminent, right? April, May, June, essentially. essentially. So she figures that her approach to tantrum federalism has yielded results, and she's going to keep riding that until she gets what she wants out of the MOU,
Shannon
24:35
both in terms of effective carbon price and what comes out of the electricity regulations, because I think those are pretty important to some of the vested interests that she listens to a lot. And so I think what I would do, the only tweak I would give her is I would maybe roll out someone This is not in the Premier's Office's DNA to roll out other ministers, but if there are any with spine, which is a tall order, I mean, have you seen these people,
Shannon
25:08
I would roll out one or two to stand on guard for thee. and and you know if it's not her then it's just some you know maybe some some off-handed remarks or in their writings or that kind of thing or facebook statements that are you know no i'm i'm a proud canadian and uh i will not be signing this separatist uh thing i mean that might be if we had an actual functioning media it would be the opening of the door to everyone chasing down everyone else but we don't have it actually functioning media and there is no capacity to to do that so it might just help out like in calgary and places like that if if this if the thing really starts to if the tires really start to bite in the snow you
Zain
25:51
you may have answered it with your last statement but i want to clarify how do you think this helps smith if she has a few people saying i'm canadian doesn't that just like open the floodgates of like having people launch websites and being like we're doing an audit here's the response we received thus far putting money like you know even if it's not the media not
Shannon
26:06
not if it's only one or two and
Shannon
26:07
and i think they have the the the luxury of staying pretty quiet uh just what benefit does it give them well it gives them the benefit of like i i would be a little bit twitchy on what is going on uh
Shannon
26:19
uh in in calgary on
Shannon
26:23
uh and uh going too far in to separatism either up in the northeast and in you know like kind of calgary fort like uh whatever the northeast those northeast ridings you know for like fort all of those uh and even um some of the the ones that they could potentially either take back or fight over depending on how the uh redistribution happens down in the southwest i i i would be a little bit twitchy about that you
Zain
26:50
you don't have any issues with i mean for the role you're playing here you don't have any issues with smith saying fuck it i haven't seen the list or you know i'm not going to penalize people whatever just like water off her back sort of thing well
Shannon
27:02
well because Because of the media environment, she's not going to have to take questions every day on it, right? 20 years ago, you could not get away with this shit. People would hound you to the ends of the earth. Five years
Zain
27:12
years ago, you could probably make the same argument, but point taken, point taken.
Shannon
27:17
But you can get your skates on so much easier now.
Zain
27:20
Shannon's giving me her tweet going back. I'm going to ask for both of your plans going forward in a second. So take into account what you've heard from her. Look to the NDP, Carter. starter. They've started the petition, you know, strategically timed when the FT sort of leak came out, and they have that now. They're signing it. They made their own reels and videos trying to let everyone know they've started this initiative, this simple one-pager. We're signing it. It's so fucking easy. Why can't everyone do it? They've now come up with a bunch of MLAs in their caucus saying, we've signed it. We've sent it to you. What tweak would you make looking back before we go forward well
Carter
27:57
i wouldn't sign anything at
Carter
27:59
at a time when people are signing a separation uh petition i
Carter
28:03
i think that you know it gets very confusing we've signed it well what did you sign we've
Carter
28:08
we've we've signed the stay in calgary in canada petition uh statement we haven't signed the leave canada statement right well it's very confusing what i would move towards i think that's that's how
Zain
28:20
how many people are in low information mode right now that when they they hear a video and see content being like i've signed it i've signed it people are like what the fuck is this you think you think that's where the environment have
SPEAKER_01
28:28
have you met people
Carter
28:29
have you met people i mean i think there's people standing in line to sign the separation agreement that's
Carter
28:34
or the separation one that don't understand point
Zain
28:36
point taken i think it's an interesting point i never i never crossed my mind which is why i think it's an interesting point to raise okay so that's that's one tweak keep going the
Carter
28:45
the other tweak i would make and this is moving more forward is i would i would move into a wrap yourself in a flag in the flag uh movement especially over the month of february when you've got the olympics and
Carter
28:57
and you've got the ability to literally wrap yourself in the flag that
Zain
29:00
that starts like what next week right like very so starts
Carter
29:03
friday well the events are starting tomorrow fuck
Zain
29:06
fuck can we just all take a second to be carter
SPEAKER_02
29:09
that could have been here but
Zain
29:11
but thanks to people but thanks to people like shannon it is not okay let's uh let's go mostly
Carter
29:16
mostly shannon phillips fault i am so
Carter
29:18
so frustrated i wasn't
Carter
29:20
of those meetings i i cannot
Carter
29:21
cannot believe that we do not have the olympics here this
Carter
29:25
this is uh this should have been our time and
Zain
29:29
it's not i know
Zain
29:30
yeah i i can't skate i can't ski i don't give a fuck i was so into this anyways for many reasons anyways carter keep going keep going so olympics this is a good idea wrap yourself in the flag the new wrap
Carter
29:40
wrap yourself in the flag yeah
Carter
29:42
because that that sends the message without having to say, I signed it. I signed it. Like, how do you send the message? Wrap yourself in the flag. And this is a time when people are going to be wrapping themselves in the flag. Lululemon is going to be selling their Olympic gear to everybody. Everybody's going to be, you know, waving flags and watching opening ceremonies and closing ceremonies and curling and whatever other ridiculous sports that people like, like ski Ski Cross, where my daughter's boyfriend actually qualified. Very
Carter
30:13
exciting. Watch for Gavin Rowell on Ski Cross on the 20th of February. The whitest
Zain
30:20
whitest white boy name if I've ever heard one.
Carter
30:24
He's from Prince George. He is the whitest of all the whites. Yeah,
Carter
30:27
Yeah, it is pretty great.
Zain
30:29
I like this tweak of go forward on wrapping yourself in the Canadian flag. Like, you're not just issuing a problem definition of the fact that these are separatists, but you are, and I'm going to come back to you in a second, Carter, and here's a question I want you to think about while I go to Shannon, which is, when
Zain
30:46
when is it time that your, they're not going to sign, they haven't signed, turns into, if they don't sign, they're separatists, or now we have our answer. So think about that for me. When do you start unleashing the, we have our answer, and how, on the NDP side? Shannon, coming back to you, you made a tweak going backwards in terms of what it might look like. You've also suggested you probably want a few of your MLAs to come with some Canadiana. You know the NDP are going to do a version of what Carter has said, right?
Zain
31:17
right? Wrap yourself in the flag, whether it's literally, metaphorically, probably multiple iterations of that. Canada is probably going to get behind a lot of its athletes.
Zain
31:26
That headwind of the Olympics, that timeline is coming at you. How do you weather it? What do you do? How do you think about i'm kind of curious a on that and any other suggestions you have for your side going forward
SPEAKER_02
31:38
look i'm not changing anything
Shannon
31:39
you are you really aren't at all no no i'm not changing anything the polls haven't changed really uh since um september of 2024 uh
Shannon
31:50
uh at all and uh so as a result you know because there was like a bit of an initial bump but other than that the overall horse race has remain the same there's been some noise with some pollsters but in general uh particularly the stuff that uh you know i think conservatives are more likely to look at it's
Shannon
32:10
it's not telling them a whole lot uh of uh uh change and so i i'm just going with uh exactly what i have been doing on this topic uh because it seems to be hitting the right place uh for conservative voters and people who who are likely to vote conservative.
Zain
32:29
Carter, Shannon's not changing. Let's say that's the tack that the UCP take.
Zain
32:35
How are you thinking about this? And then come back to the question I wanted you to think about, which is when are you unleashing and making it clear this side is separatist? And is that your ultimate
Zain
32:44
ultimate trump card or is that actually a trap for you? Because I could see that two ways, right? It could be a trump card because you could add clarity. You have now proof that suggests they haven't done it. You have months that go by, weeks that go by where they haven't offered any comments on it. It is now clear. It can also seem, even though it may not align with the evidence, a bridge too far for many people, especially low information voters, as we were just chatting about on the concept of sign it. So two things. Shannon's not doing anything. What are you doing? And then how are you introducing the fact that if they haven't signed it, they're separatists or you're not flirting with that at all?
Carter
33:20
Flirting with it right away. Wait, I actually liked Nahed's statement on the weekend that this is the party of separation. The UCP is the party of separation. And how do we know that? Well, Danielle Smith's not stopping her MLAs from signing it. That means that she's got MLAs that are signing it. She's admitting it. The organizers are admitting it. When the PQ
Carter
33:44
PQ and the Bloc Québécois are advocating separation, the other parties come together to advocate against separation because you're either for it or you're against it. And what Danielle Smith has said is she's for it because she can't say that she's against it. And that is a foundational difference between the NDP and the UCP, and it needs to be exploited. She can't say she's against separation, so
Carter
34:17
so she must be for it. That is it, period. And her weak-ass statements just don't go where they need to go to create a comfort level with the general population. And I think that was the first communication that I saw from Nenshi that I went, yeah,
Carter
34:36
yeah, finally, we're getting somewhere.
Zain
34:39
Carter, stick with me for a second. Shannon, I'll come to you in a bit, knowing that Carter is going to label your side as separatists and this is a part of their path. I want to get your comment on that shortly. But Carter, let's say what Shannon suggests happens. This doesn't move shit for you, right?
Zain
34:54
right? Right. So my question is, strategically, is you escalating the conversation and staying on this issue of separatism? Does it have to be, to use a term Shannon mentioned earlier, vote determining? Or are you in a chip away, chip away, chip away sort of mentality that there is benefit for us to be here on this issue, on the Canada flag, on these things? There's probably also a temptation to go to health care and the insanity that's happening there. So I'm curious how you're balancing this. If doing this immediately and in the next couple of weeks, wrapping yourself in the flag over the olympics okay another two weeks if this doesn't move your numbers carter how
Zain
35:28
how are you thinking about this are you going back to try it into a health care are you saying no there this canada is too big to like we have to be i'm kind of curious how you're gamifying there's nothing gamifying strategizing this for yourself and then understanding what levers you have to pull oh
SPEAKER_01
35:43
oh i mean shannon
Carter
35:44
shannon and i don't believe they're going to get enough signatures to force a referendum right
Zain
35:48
right and i do so like to be clear once again fourth week in a row i do but okay Okay, keep going. But nonetheless,
Carter
35:53
nonetheless, but Shannon and I are the strategists here. You're the host and, you know, it's different. Fair enough. You know, we're different. We're different. We get paid more. I don't think that's true. I
SPEAKER_00
36:03
we just have a good faith
SPEAKER_00
36:04
disagreement. We get paid
Carter
36:04
paid a lot more than Zane. But nonetheless, I think
Carter
36:10
think that there's going to be a referendum anyways, because I think Danielle Smith is going to put it on the ballot, regardless of whether or not there's enough question or enough signatures.
Carter
36:19
she can use the Forever Canada version of it and say, listen, Albertans are interested in this. They want the question. And then the question for the actual election is going to be, are you a separatist or are you a Canadian? know, a Canadian.
Carter
36:35
And so this sets up the NDP to be the pro-Canada party in an election where the question might be, are you pro-Canada or pro-Alberta?
Carter
36:46
So I think that it doesn't need to move the needle tomorrow for it to be effective. I think it will move the needle in the next four months, but it doesn't need to move the needle in the next four months for it to be effective. It can be effective when we get to the next election, which many people are still speculating is going to be earlier rather than later.
Zain
37:06
Arnaud, does it worry you at all, at all, that people won't view this as Canada versus leave Canada, but they'll view it in a much simpler frame? Status quo in a system that isn't working for me versus change, and change may not always be progress or whatever, but it is something. Doing something versus doing nothing. This is how they win on health care. Doing something, privatization, versus doing nothing, protecting a private... This is how they win on their things that are not very popular because they choose we're change. And these guys want to just hold the levers of the status quo machine. Do you feel like they could fall into that trap here as well on that question?
Carter
37:45
I don't think so. I think that it's going to be, I think it's going to be, um, I don't think that that type of bad change, I think you can fight back against bad change. And I think that Nahid Nenshi is going to be in a position to do that. um danielle
Carter
37:59
danielle smith is going down the path of a lot of negative changes and at some point you're going to need to show results from it and i don't think that she can actually show results and that's where the the difference is going to be you have now had x number of years what have you given me not a fucking thing that's
Carter
38:15
that's when the and and i think the ndp is still going to have to come in with their own change mandate don't get me wrong versions
Zain
38:22
versions of what the future looks like yes right
Carter
38:25
Because I think that ultimately people are going to say, Daniel Smith has failed.
Zain
38:30
Shannon, he's going to call you a separatist early. He's going to call all of you separatists early. So you expect that to happen. You can probably maybe put some ad money behind it, probably put some activations, other campaigns, et cetera, behind it. And you can see that their long-term pathway is to shape this as a pro-Canada versus anti-Canada or leave Canada sort of battle, maybe not even for the referendum, but for the election. So you know a bit of their inside thinking based on Carter.
Zain
38:59
How are you dealing with it? Is it still, nope, doesn't affect me, one off my back, on my merry way? Or are you thinking of any go forward pivots based on what you've heard?
Shannon
39:07
Well, my loyalty to Canada is demonstrated through having just negotiated a really good deal through the MOU. We're going to get a pipeline, or we're going to be able to talk about something that looks like a pipeline, even if it isn't, you know, the full-blown new Northern Gateway. Maybe it's some other route. Maybe it's some other thing. I'm going to dine out on that. I'm going to say, look, I have a strong Alberta within a united Canada, and I had Nancy, you know, raise taxes a whole bunch of times or whatever the usual old saws are, and you can't trust him with the economy. And you can trust me with the economy, because look what I just got on the MOU.
Zain
39:46
Carter, you're shaking your head. Are you finding that being on the NDP side, that's a tough thing to fight?
Carter
39:53
Listen, everything that Nahid Denchi has tried has failed. Your point about the polls have remained basically the same continue. I mean, this province defines themselves as conservatives so
Carter
40:08
so deeply in their souls. They have no real construct of what it is they want other than the the branding of being a conservative so i suspect that uh shannon's strategy is is bang on just
Carter
40:22
just keep being keep on being yourself
Shannon
40:26
there are uh ways uh to chip away at it and to sow doubt and uh to put those three or four more points on in the edmonton metro uh and uh well i mean the calgary numbers are the ones that that worry me, frankly, more when I see the regional breakouts because when I see the NDP falling behind in Calgary, like that right there, that's your, you
Shannon
40:51
you know, your past or your majority. You've got to sweep the city, essentially, if you're going to get it.
Shannon
40:55
But, you know, so there are some ways that, like, the NDP can move into those 40s, and a lot of that was doubt about Danielle Smith and
Shannon
41:09
and her character, I had asked Philippe Fournier to send me the aggregate from 2020 through to 2024, just to see like when the party actually bumped up over the UCP. And those were in times of, it wasn't just right after COVID, but it was, you know, kind of in 2021, 2022, when, you know, Kenny was really fucking up COVID. And then when Daniel Smith came in and some of those moments of really questioning her character and motivations, it was then. And so they can recreate that because all of those doubts about her still exist. exist uh it hasn't but i i think that it doesn't happen in kind of the old way i don't a lot of people were critical about you know sort of the this going straight at kenny and straight at daniel smith as being the sort of you know like the second coming of mephistopheles you know like and then when people got a look at her uh at the debate she didn't have horns and they went oh she's not so bad um right so i i do think there are ways to do this though uh and uh that because there's not been a lot of money put behind it those kinds of things right uh you're still seeing the numbers stuck once you can put some money behind it it might change very
Zain
42:32
very quickly your side's biggest opportunity shannon i'll close it out with you with that same question your biggest opportunity on this file carter being
SPEAKER_01
42:40
being pro canada this
Carter
42:41
this is the biggest opportunity is to be seen as the pro-Canada party.
Zain
42:46
Shannon, your biggest opportunity. As you are the party that constructs this, that allows this to happen, that moves it forward, what's your biggest opportunity?
Shannon
42:53
I keep the lunatics in my caucus quiet and in my base quiet, and I still come off sounding like I care about the country.
Shannon
43:01
That's the biggest opportunity. And you use the MLU to do it.
Zain
43:05
The pipeline MLU. Carter, what's your biggest risk here?
Carter
43:09
Everything that we throw against the wall continues to slide down it. Nothing is sticking.
Zain
43:14
Shannon, what's your biggest risk?
Shannon
43:17
Well, some of it isn't good enough for the far right in the caucus, and a couple of them walk. And she has to move further into the pro-separatist camp to keep the coalition together.
Zain
43:31
We are going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1907 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belge. With me, as always, Shannon Phillips and, of course, one Stephen Carter. And
SPEAKER_02
43:43
And we shall see you next
SPEAKER_01
44:08
1907 let me just stop recording for a second