Transcript
Zain
0:03
This is a strategist episode 4014. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Stephen Carter, Shannon Phillips. Carter, have you even had a Valencia orange small?
Carter
0:13
I have. I have had a Valencia orange. I'm not sure I've had a small one. I'm like,
Carter
0:19
but to be truth be told, I'm not entirely sure. I've been fed oranges my whole life. I don't know what kind of oranges they are.
Zain
0:24
You've been fed oranges your whole life. Yeah.
Zain
0:27
Yeah. It reminds me of- That sounds like a life of lecturate. No,
Shannon
0:29
No, it reminds me of a Leonard Cohen lyric. She feeds me tea and oranges that come all the way from China.
Carter
0:35
at that. Little Leonard Cohen shout out. That's nice, Shannon. Really elevates the pod. Really, you know, takes us up a couple of notches. Do
Zain
0:43
Do you think Leonard Cohen ate Valencia's? Do you feel like whoever she was in that song provided him Valencia oranges?
Shannon
0:50
It was harder back
Shannon
0:52
back in those days of Suzanne, which
Shannon
0:54
which is what the song, the lyric is from, because they didn't have as many transportation networks and free trade just to bring things down to fucking boring from Leonard
Zain
1:04
God, Shannon. Wow, way to start the show in both the worst and the best way possible. Yes, thank you. We appreciate that, Shannon. That's the energy we're looking for. It's the Kash Patel in a U.S. men's locker room energy that we saw from you, which by the way- What?
Shannon
1:19
I don't even know what that means. Okay,
Zain
1:21
Okay, here's the thing. Let me list you the worst brown people in the world.
Zain
1:24
Oh. Rishi Sunak, okay? Yes, he is a bad brown person. That hedge fund loser, Suella Braverman. Yeah, he is a loser.
Shannon
1:34
She is a horrible woman.
Zain
1:35
Okay, so they're both Brits. Kash Patel, though, which, by the way,
Zain
1:39
I am sure that U.S. men's hockey team thought was Cal Penn.
Zain
1:45
The fucking worst. Have you guys seen this clip? So
Zain
1:47
So after the U.S. men's win the gold, Kash Patel, the fucking FBI director is in the men's hockey room, like, just partying. They put a gold medal on him. And then he puts Trump on speakerphone for two and a half minutes in which Trump starts doing stand up comedy about fucking
Zain
2:05
fucking everything. It is it is the wackiest timeline we are on.
Shannon
2:08
on. I'm not making this up. Brothers are like if they weren't hockey players, they'd be ice agents. Right. They're just the worst people in the
Zain
2:16
It was like watch. It was like a Bruce McAllister tweet. Carter, I had to check it five times just to make sure it was accurate. The
Shannon
2:21
best tweet I saw about the Kachuk brothers was that the funniest part about giving them a gold medal is they take 30 minutes to try to unwrap it to see if it was chocolate inside.
Zain
2:32
that was painful all around. Carter, not as painful as a ski cross was apparently for our Canadian men. Do we want to talk about
Zain
2:39
as our Olympic correspondent? That made some headlines. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01
2:42
Yeah, that didn't go
Carter
2:44
go as well as we would have hoped. uh reese uh reese howden is a uh great kid um but man he was pissed he was pissed and rightfully so this would not have happened can you update people for
Zain
2:56
for for people that were that were not into it he he was a metal favorite or had a chance to metal is that fair to
Carter
3:01
to say his qualifying run was a full second faster than anybody else's i mean just to give you a sense of uh and normally these are things divided you know by hundreds um they're defined right so he was crushing the field but But then it started to snow.
Carter
3:17
And when it starts to snow, usually we they call off the race. Now, people will say it's a it's a Winter Olympic race. What are you doing? You know, snow doesn't the snow impacts the courses so much that it is no longer safe usually to continue. And I think that that was the case in this in this race. If I was the chief of race, I wouldn't have gone forward. I would have postponed to another day. But nonetheless, Rhys Howden and the collective Canadian team didn't make it past the round of 16. It was a gong show and very disappointing for the men and for the women. Both sets just really struggled.
Zain
3:58
Would have been different if it was in Calgary, Carter. That's what I say. I think so. If Shannon Phillips hadn't blocked the Olympics from happening. Yeah, single-handedly. We would have had better times. He wasn't
Carter
4:09
attention in those meetings.
Zain
4:12
I don't know if we talked about this on the pod or privately, but there was a part of me that
Zain
4:17
that was like, hey, we would not be having a separatist talk if
Zain
4:20
if we were hosting these Olympics. I think we may have actually talked about this on the show. I don't know if we did.
Carter
4:25
No, I don't think we did. I think absolutely we wouldn't be having a separatist talk. I think that we would have had a great Canadian experience. We would have elevated our city and we would have invested hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in our infrastructure. And we would be, you know, we'd be talking about how great Canada and Calgary and Alberta are as a team. And instead, we now have these separatist freaks, in part because of our political leadership. And Shannon, I'm sorry to include Rachel Notley in that. I heard a man that we do a referenda on on something that was this complicated
Carter
5:03
complicated and difficult to understand. I mean, people today in my LinkedIn are saying if we'd only been more open.
Carter
5:10
Well, we were 100 percent open. No one believed us. No one believed that it would only cost about 400 million dollars for the city of Calgary.
Carter
5:19
that was a complete clusterfuck. And I
Carter
5:23
blame a little bit of it on Rachel, more than a little. I
Shannon
5:26
would blame the feds, too, honestly, because, you know, to be asking the provincial government to be carrying as much freight as the feds kind of put on the province, I
Shannon
5:37
I think was probably a bad idea. I mean, it's all we're all just, you know, going back and picking through the entrails of a decade ago. But I
Shannon
5:45
I went in and listened to that sprawl podcast that Jeremy Klaas did on this topic, and I thought it was really good. And it did remind me of a lot of things that I had sort of forgotten about because, you know, I joked that I wasn't paying attention. But the fact is, I did have other things to do. And that is real in a cabinet government is you don't want everybody poking in on whether their nose where that doesn't belong.
Shannon
6:06
But, yeah, it probably was a bit short sighted. I remain, though, very skeptical of whether Canada even still could have won the bid due to the absolute corruption and bribery that has to happen to put money in the IOC's pockets to win an Olympics.
Carter
6:25
That's scandalous. Scandalous. It's not FIFA, for God's sake. Yeah, it's the IOC.
Zain
6:31
IOC. They're fucking worse. We don't love the IOC, Carter. Come on. Now you're taking a strong point and making it a weak point. point we
Carter
6:39
we we wanted in the 80s free and clear we would have won it in the 2020s free and clear
Zain
6:45
oh god carter oh god hey shannon uh speaking of um what one does as a cabinet minister you want to give us a sense of what's going to happen or how one prepares heading into session because we're about to start
Zain
6:56
and i speak provincially here in alberta for those from listening from outside uh
Zain
7:00
uh that shit's about to start up again do you want to give us a sense of like what's going on in that universe right now as as danielle smith has obviously telegraphed um
Zain
7:10
budget related items last week with the separatist referenda and we'll talk more about that but give us a quick hit on on what's going on in the minds of of those preparing well
Shannon
7:19
well i think you know depends on whether you're in government or in opposition but some things hold true regardless of where which side of the aisle you're on like
Shannon
7:27
like first of all like you always go into session with a message frame because you've been out of the political like the political season i always think of is fall and spring right
Shannon
7:35
right so like once you're out in in early december you go back in in january and do a bunch of polling usually and you brief your caucus and you do your little caucus retreat and and
Shannon
7:44
and uh out of that generally comes some sort of message frame and it's the it's the thing that you're the the drum you're gonna bang anyway until situation uh like or or events change or or uh circumstances change so that's the first thing the second thing is you kind of as an opposition anyway you figure out what is the one or two issues that i'm going to drive uh
Shannon
8:05
uh through this session like you do that through polling but you also do it through a bit of your house strategy and you you've thought that through as well like am i going to go into this session and target one cabinet minister and see if i can take them down and do some psyops or or
Shannon
8:17
or you know like because that's all the house is good for right it's just drive wedges between your opponent i mean the government's doing that too right or are there any wedges that we can see in the opposition or is there any way we're gonna uh like over and above our message frame like try to cause
Shannon
8:32
cause confusion among the enemy uh
Shannon
8:34
uh and then you know like you're doing stuff like figuring out your logistics with your whip team right
Shannon
8:39
right with your house team like that's all very boring shit but like you can't miss votes and it's actually a pretty close house uh even as it is and you need to make sure everybody shows up to work on time so you got your house schedule and you probably your whip has to remind mind people that it is expected that they come to work on
Shannon
8:56
on both sides. Sometimes that can be a challenging conversation with MLAs because they forget
Shannon
8:59
forget that they, you know, have to drive to the legislature and go put their ass in a chair.
Shannon
9:05
And, you know, then you're figuring out like,
Shannon
9:08
basically, because it's political season, you're figuring out your fundraising and
Shannon
9:12
and your outreach calendar, because it's limited, because
Shannon
9:15
because you're kind of trapped in the house. But at the same time, you
Shannon
9:18
you probably have some outreach stuff that you want to do and some specific fundraising things you want to do in and around edmonton if you're the ndp anyway um and uh you're figuring out your leaders tour and your leaders whereabouts because there's going to be some big set speeches in every kind of uh in both political seasons fall and spring you're going to have municipal conferences or other chamber set pieces or whatever so you're going to kind of game
Shannon
9:44
game out your leaders tour and
Shannon
9:45
and then i mean ideally you're getting a baseline polling before you go in, and you get some polling when you come out, and you set yourself some goals for we're going to put five points on here or there, right?
Shannon
9:57
right? And you actually set yourself some metrics that you can decide on how you're going to get there.
Zain
10:05
Carter, I want to come to you, and I'll preview my question to you, Carter, in a second. Actually, let me preview it to you now so you can start thinking about it, which is what does this session need to look like for Nenshi? So construct for me a perfect session for Nenshi while I ask Shannon, this follow-up, which is, is that polling bump, Shannon, publicly discussed amongst caucus? Is that something the leader drives? Do you have chiefs of staff and campaign strategists come in? I'm always curious what the mechanics of this look like. How have you experienced in the past? And are they hard and fast? If we don't get here, none of this other stuff is useful. I'm curious how those things have been delivered to you. Does caucus form them together? Talk to me about that. The
Shannon
10:44
caucus doesn't form it together, no. But generally, caucus will be brought into the loop. At least we were in between. I'm speaking here of like the 2019 to 23 period, because I think that's the most, like,
Shannon
10:57
like, just like the most recent of my memory. Things were a bit, have been a bit different in other periods for us. But because,
Shannon
11:06
because, you know, some caucus members in the opposition, people like me, would
Shannon
11:12
would end up getting our mitts on polling and so on. You know, there was a decision taken that essentially, like, we'd be really open with whatever was out there. And that was really important, right, to kind of, like, level setting with everyone. And I remember specifically in when we went in in the fall of 19, right, we had just lost a bunch of seats, obviously, just lost government. And caucus was really amped up on our social media strategy, right?
Shannon
11:37
right? Because when we were in government, it sucked.
Shannon
11:39
No shade to Corey, but it kind of did. And we didn't have the social media presence that we believed we needed. And we were just being completely
Shannon
11:48
completely brutalized by Jason Kenney's specific social media presence, right?
Shannon
11:53
Because he had big, big megaphones. This was back when it mattered. And so we kind of set ourselves going into the fall session. We set ourselves goals on, you know, increasing Rachel's reach on a number of her different channels, the type of reach
Shannon
12:09
reach that we'd have. And we sent ourselves some some
Shannon
12:11
some a key message around the government's corporate income tax cut.
Shannon
12:15
And you'll remember that every single thing that came out of our mouths was
Shannon
12:19
was the sentence was finished with. And that's because of the four point six billion dollar tax cut corporate tax giveaway that that Kenny did. Right. Like you can't have nice things because fill in the blank.
Shannon
12:31
And so we did all of that. And it turned out, you know, we went in at a certain sort of like UCP honeymoon number. And we were able to beat them down by five or ten points. And it was very clear. And we decided at that caucus retreat that we were going to do it through a super tight message and a focus on Rachel's social presence in particular. And a few other things, like making sure that the central message of the day was shared out through the caucus and through our, you
Shannon
13:08
you know, even staff and volunteers and influencer kind of channels, right?
Shannon
13:15
People that were, you know, part of our universe who had big channels. professionals
Shannon
13:21
yeah and and uh but i think you know like caucus isn't going to come to caucus with that kind of uh it's not in their dna that's
SPEAKER_02
13:32
that's that's what i figured but i
Shannon
13:35
is a good way to put everyone on the same page because you have to remember when you're when you've been out in the great beyond you're
Shannon
13:42
you're you're out there you're talking to people you're getting your own ideas as as caucus members that's never a good thing
Shannon
13:49
um and when you come back into the house it's time to figure out like you know if you've been grouchy out there in in the you know in the hinterland of your your seat if you've been not grouchy if you talk to other people it's time to get that group that team back together uh get all on the same page decide who the real fucking enemy is which is the guys across the aisle uh and go into battle knowing
Zain
14:11
all of this and shannon that's extremely helpful and and and very Very appreciative for you to kind of break that down from an inside track perspective. Carter, let's
Zain
14:19
let's talk about Nenshi. And Shannon, I'll give you a shake at this as well. He's back. He's got a lot of meat on the bone in terms of potential things they're able to use. Separatism, referendai, plural,
Zain
14:30
nine questions on that. Healthcare still remains notwithstanding. All the stuff is there.
Zain
14:36
The raw ingredients to make hay seems to be there.
Zain
14:38
How are you focusing this live session? You could even use some of the metrics that Shannon suggested in terms of goals. You could talk top line message. You could talk about tour and strategy. You could talk about in-house versus out-of-house sort of stuff that they do over the course of the next six weeks. Carter, start giving me a bit of a framework, and then I'll get Shannon to agree or disagree and add some more.
Carter
14:58
I think that the only measure that's going to matter is how you're doing in the polls in six weeks, right?
Carter
15:02
right? And the polls right now, I think it was Max Fawcett in his article that mentioned that the NDP haven't been in front on a single poll. This is at a time when we see Main Street and then today
Carter
15:16
today we also had another polling firm come out that
Carter
15:19
that showed the federal liberals gaining
Carter
15:21
gaining tremendous ground. And one
Carter
15:24
one would think that if the federal liberals are gaining ground against the federal conservatives, that the provincial NDP should be able to whittle away at what I think should be a fairly unpopular government. Now, you ask how, you know, that's the only measure that I would put up. I would say we are going to be in the lead for
Carter
15:45
the first time since
Carter
15:46
since Nenshi became the leader.
Carter
15:50
We're going to be in the lead by
Carter
15:51
by two points, four points, doesn't matter. Just a small lead is fine. But we're going to be in the lead. And here's how we're going to do that. We are going to focus on the
Carter
16:03
It is the most immediate
Carter
16:06
immediate thing that has been brought forward. we're not going to go back into that health care well and try and make health care a thing again we're
Carter
16:15
we're not going to go back and try and make separation a thing again the
Carter
16:18
the referendum is what separate you know the referendum and separation will go hand in hand if
Carter
16:24
if you want to do health care you do health care by saying this is what she's focused on is the referendum
Carter
16:29
referendum not the health care debate if you want to do education this is why education is suffering because she's focused on the referendum debate.
Carter
16:38
Everything should be coming back to the principal point, and
Carter
16:42
and that is the referenda.
Carter
16:44
And that to me is the single
Carter
16:47
single thing that they should be focused on in order to generate a positive outcome in the polling. And I don't believe that they've had that type of single unifying direction in the time that Nenshi has been leader. Nenshi needs to say to his chief of staff to his to his political organizing team this is what the outcome is that i expect how
Carter
17:10
how are we getting there and
Carter
17:12
and then there should be a plan this
Carter
17:14
this plan should have been articulated three
SPEAKER_01
17:15
three weeks ago but
Carter
17:17
but the plan should be this is how we're going to get to
Carter
17:20
to two points above uh
Zain
17:23
and and i saw aggressive head nodding almost bowing on
Zain
17:28
on your part to you know i would never I
SPEAKER_01
17:29
I think that was
Zain
17:30
was part. I was almost it was prostration. Is that right? It's a religious term.
Zain
17:37
It's almost like King Carter just spilling out the wisdom. Seems to me at least in part you agree with Carter here and then add on what you want.
Shannon
17:44
Yeah, I absolutely agree that you do have to focus on what they've put in the window. There's going to be a temptation to be like, oh, but we don't want to talk about what they want to talk about. We don't want them to set the ballot question. We want to do it. Well, guess what? You're not the government. You're going to have to respond to what they're doing. And I'm going to fist on the table again for the benefit of the listeners who maybe didn't catch on the first time. It's not a distraction from health care and education. It is their priority instead of health care and education, which gives you an insight into who they are. Who
Shannon
18:18
Who they are are people who don't give a fuck about your health care, your education, your pocketbook, your power bill, your insurance. They care about this other stuff that is not consistent with what you care about, Joe voter. And that is a fundamentally different message. It tells you a story about who the opponent is.
Shannon
18:38
It doesn't say that, you know, that you should somehow ignore these kinds of cultural red meat issues that they've put on the table. but you can go straight into them then and you can go find yourself friends with them. If this is what they have decided to spend the horsepower of government, the bandwidth of government on, then you need to go into battle on that ground. You can't go in and decide you're going to fight a different war. You simply don't have the resources. And that is just the playing field that it is. So if they're going to lay out the terrain, then you're going to pick them up or take them up on it, I think is what you have to do. And yeah,
Shannon
19:17
yeah, I mean, obviously, the NDP, I do think need to focus on like what the leader is doing on any given day.
Shannon
19:25
And that part needs to be relentless. And the reason why I put in my list of how you're getting ready is you're thinking about the outreach that you're doing as
Shannon
19:35
as you are driving the referendum message.
Shannon
19:39
You're thinking about employers
Shannon
19:41
employers that that are affected by this. You're thinking about business improvement zones and other places up in South Edmonton and North Calgary. You're finding small business owners who have had wonderful success bringing in temporary forward workers and then getting them into the provincial nominee program and getting them a more permanent track. You're talking to those small business owners about how much extra this would cost If they have to pay for, you know, health care and education for these or health care and other services for these folks, you are finding every possible way to make friends around this government's agenda. And as things come up, sure, health care is going to come up. Health care always comes up as provincial politics. You
Shannon
20:29
know, you can talk about it at that time, right, and respond to the issues of the day, but you've got to have that central organizing frame and
Shannon
20:39
and build your fundraising, your outreach, all of your logistics around it.
Zain
20:46
Is there another school of thought here that it's aligned with what Shannon's phrase, guess what? The other side's the government. They get to define what happens. They have the biggest microphone. They have the greatest grasp of attention. perhaps by default as the incumbents in the seat. You don't get to necessarily set the frame. So in other ways, talk to me about your risk appetite, Carter. If the other side is setting the frame, setting the question, do you actually have broader bandwidth on doing things that are considered maybe more traditionally risky or trying things or your experimentation? I guess what I'm trying to say is that do you have to play it safe? You don't have to thread a needle like like they do, don't you have greater latitude in some way, because it's their question, you're trying to attack it from 50 different angles. And maybe you only get the points on the two or three that are successful, not on the 47 L's that you make on it. I'm just thinking like more abstractly. But tell me, is there a there there in terms of how much bandwidth one gets as opposition when you when you are focused on a singular thing, you may have put in the front window what you're trying to do?
Zain
21:52
Do you get a lot of shots at doing it?
Carter
21:55
Yeah, I mean, you do get the opportunity to take a few more risks. The government takes risks and then they get hammered, right? The opposition takes risks and they get ignored. That is a very different outcome. So take more risks, but stay focused, right? I think that when you do your 50 and 47, you know, 47 things that fail, I think that you're describing an awful lot what has happened with the NDP in the past. They do 50 different things and they are 50 unique and different things i would like to see 50 different attacks on the same focus yeah that that would enable us to be you know maybe 47 of them don't get picked up but three of them do yeah
Carter
22:35
you gotta stay consistent you gotta be within your realm but but
Carter
22:38
but take risks in terms of how you do that message structure you know shannon was talking about finding groups well find a group that doesn't fit into your normal, you know, your normal everyday group. Pollution. Yeah. The, the, Shannon found that when, when she did the carbon tax, you know, uh, the ruined the entire province and possibly the
Carter
22:59
country. Um, but, uh, we're
Carter
23:02
reeling from having to pay a tax on carbon. The key is to make sure that you've, you're, you're doing things that are risky, um, but you're doing things that are focused. Uh, that, that to me is the primary outcome. come.
Zain
23:15
Janet, what are your thoughts on that?
Shannon
23:17
Well, I give you one Pierre Poglieva until very recently was quite successful with this model.
Shannon
23:22
He picked up inflation, and it wasn't like the federal liberals put inflation in the window, but cost of living they understood was in the window. That's why they kept doing these massive GST giveaways and other enhancements to other things. They understood that it was an issue.
Shannon
23:37
And they were always banging on about the middle class and everything so what uh polyever did was he lifted that frame um
Shannon
23:45
um and uh just started you know banging the drum of inflation and yeah i mean there were some things that he did that were you know demonstrably silly like remember the two by four video when he was like you know uh getting very intimate with it it was weird um but but you know we all remember it um They they did what, you know, is called out party innovation, where they tried a whole bunch of different things on the same like inflation and carbon tax. Right.
Shannon
24:14
And it wasn't like the federal liberals, again, were running, quote unquote, or on carbon tax. But what they were doing was putting forward, you know, some kind of green agenda. Right. So the Tories pulled out of that the thing that was the toughest in an inflationary economy. And they just banged the drum relentlessly.
Shannon
24:32
relentlessly. Now there comes a point where it doesn't work anymore. That's what we're seeing today. But you cannot tell me it did not work.
Shannon
24:39
It was it absolutely just beat the government down. And when you look at where Danielle's favorables are at and unfaves, they're not great for her. and some really focused, interesting messaging where you're trying literally everything,
Shannon
24:57
you know, the worst that can happen, as Carter says, is you get ignored. Carter,
Zain
25:02
Carter, is there anywhere to look for lessons for the New Democrats? Like, you're
Zain
25:06
you're paralleling an interesting one, which is the
Zain
25:08
the liberals in Alberta gaining, and I won't talk about Carney and the liberals in a second, that's my next topic, but the liberals gaining in Alberta, the Alberta NDP not necessarily making those corollary gains
Zain
25:18
gains as well, Um, is there something to steal from the federal liberals? Is there something to steal from, for like, where are you looking for inspo right now? If you're them in terms of the, the mood board, if I can call it that of ideas, tactics, messaging, how, um, we can see certain people's influences. And I also believe that in this world, there's really very little new, it's all iterative, uh, in terms of how people innovate, uh, but enough iterations creates a new innovation. So where are you looking to for inspiration if you're the NDP in the circumstances that they're in right now?
Carter
25:52
Pierre Palliev's Conservatives against Justin Trudeau. That was the most effective opposition we've seen in this country for some time. If you compare that to the NDP in Ontario, the Liberals in Ontario, the Conservatives in British Columbia, the NDP in Alberta, they're not as focused. They're not as strong. wrong.
Carter
26:15
Pierre Polyev put his efforts into communications over house performance, and he performed still in the house. I mean, let's not take anything away from his performance in the house, but
Carter
26:26
but he performed better
Carter
26:28
better in communications. And
Carter
26:30
And I think that that's where Nenshi has
Carter
26:32
has a real opportunity.
Carter
26:33
Nenshi is a born communicator. For
Carter
26:35
For some reason, he has chosen not to communicate for
Carter
26:38
for the last year and a half.
Carter
26:40
That's interesting to me. I would like to see actually start to model
Carter
26:45
what the conservatives did. They picked their issues. They found them. They defined them.
Carter
26:51
I think they defined them perhaps
SPEAKER_01
26:53
perhaps a little bit erroneously,
Carter
26:55
erroneously, but they nonetheless defined them and
Carter
26:59
and they were destroying the liberals. They were going to win the next election. And then, unfortunately, everything changed for them,
Carter
27:07
fortunately for the rest of us. But, you know, nonetheless, if you
Carter
27:12
you study what Pierre Polyev did in that period, you'll do much better than if you study John Rustad or any of the other leaders that you want to point to. Yeah.
Zain
27:24
Shannon, I'm going to make you key advisor to one Danielle Smith. You can expect a version of what Nenshi, what we've suggested here today to be the Nenshi Alberta NDP playbook for the next six weeks or so. What is your rebuttal to that? Or what is your, maybe not a rebuttal, but how do you prevent that? What is your sort of strategy to allow them to not get the traction and the desired goals that they're after? I
Shannon
27:48
I think I put Danielle out as often as possible, Because
Shannon
27:51
Because I do not believe that any of the other yutzes
Shannon
27:55
yutzes that occupy her particular turnip truck, if they bounce off it, if they would be able to not sound like, you know, just like Nick Fuentes on a podcast, right? Like nobody is as good as she is as making the, you know, the absolutely abhorrent sound acceptable and get a head nod out of people. So I would have Danielle everywhere.
Shannon
28:20
And I would take a page out of what Klein used to do back in the day when my first communications job was back when Raj and then Brian were leaders and I would have to attend Klein's 3pm availability after question period back when all of these things mattered every day. And so we would do question period and then Klein would go up. And what he'd do is he would rag the puck with all of the journalists until basically filing deadline of like, I
Shannon
28:46
I don't know, around, you know, like they'd have to go and file it around four. Right. And it was it was a media room full of media, again, because that was the time we lived in. And he would just go on and on and on. And then it was the opposition afterwards and they would be talking to an empty room.
Shannon
29:02
I would do a version of that pretty well every day. just suck up the oxygen with Danielle, because she will not fuck it up.
Shannon
29:11
Like, I think we can take that to the bank. I'd put money on it. That she will continue on the same message and be able to glide them through whatever needs to happen and whatever the kind of the cut and thrust of the day is. So that's what I'd be doing with her. And I'd throw a sheet over the rest of them because, whew, I wouldn't trust them.
Zain
29:36
What's the UCP strategy? And then to a great point that Shannon made, a question for you around the NDP. Do they need a secondary spokesperson too? Do they need a secondary tertiary team-based approach here? Or does this have to be Nahed versus Danielle in terms of the frame-up? I'm curious how you think about the NDP, but also give me the UCP strategy heading into this session.
Carter
29:57
Normally, it would be just the leader. You would put the leader out and the leader would do everything. Unfortunately or fortunately, We saw Raki kind
Carter
30:04
kind of do a spectacular, much better communication last week. And I think that maybe we should be putting Raki into the mix because
Carter
30:14
because right now she's communicating better than Nahed Nenshi is. Either Nenshi chooses to become the communicator that I think that he can be and should be, in which case he's fine. fine. Or he needs to step aside, not necessarily step down from the leadership, but step aside and allow his deputy leader to get the attention that she earned versus
Carter
30:40
versus the attention that he isn't turning.
Zain
30:44
On the UCP, what do you think their strategy needs to be in order to prevent the NDP from getting the traction that they'll probably so needily
Zain
30:52
needily want in the next six weeks?
Carter
30:54
I'll be honest. I think their strategy is absolutely horrific. And I can't believe that it's not costing them more straight off the bat. So I'm not sure I can advise them because my advice wouldn't be do nine referendum questions. My advice wouldn't be make it appear like you're a separatist. My advice would be, you
Carter
31:14
you know, dig back into the Captain Canada positioning, follow along the realm of good government. But this
Carter
31:21
this government has taken too many lessons from Trump and they are doing it too well. So I guess I guess if I'm if I'm really working for Danielle Smith, I'd say keep keep on trumping it up because the Trump stuff is working for Danielle. Unbelievably.
Zain
31:38
Shannon, I'll give you a final. Yeah. Final thought on Carter's response and then the NDP spokesperson voices question for you as well. Yeah,
Shannon
31:45
Yeah, I'll just take that one um one of the things so government has uh a lot of the attention uh share and of course the money to be able to uh drive a message but what the opposition has is an ability to be far more human and make far more connections across the province they also uh can get themselves well you can get the leader out of the house because you have very good house uh organization in and christina gray and the rest of the team there right so like you you can use uh the house a bit for your leader and then get him gtfo uh for the leader and get him out of there uh to be able to go do other things um you have you have it everything under control there with a team of very high functioning adults um
Shannon
32:32
but what the other thing you have is opposition is other
Shannon
32:34
other people to go and deliver the message i
Shannon
32:37
i do believe that that raki can go out there and deliver the message without, you
Shannon
32:41
you know, going over the top with like Nazi analogies or whatever.
Shannon
32:45
There's a couple more in that caucus that can do that work too, right,
Shannon
32:48
right, without getting driven into a cul-de-sac.
Shannon
32:51
And they should be put out there to do it because more is always better
Shannon
32:58
when you're the opposition, especially now. And for kind of the template, I would look at what Carla Beck is doing in Saskatchewan. They have been able to, even
Shannon
33:07
even though they're up against just absolutely insane campaigns, finance and election finance and party finance laws uh in saskatchewan they have been able to use this model of wheel and spokes uh and sending mlas out into uh the great beyond in order to till the soil to get candidates to increase attention share to focus the the glare on local issues that kind of thing but you can do it uh
Shannon
33:31
uh on one particular topic as well uh and they should And again, that goes down to the logistics and the whip of the caucus, right? Because you're going to at once want to keep an eye on people getting pissed off that some people get to leave house duty and some people don't.
Shannon
33:47
But also to keep your numbers correct and all of that. It is a big game. It's a big chessboard
Shannon
33:52
chessboard to be moving 38 people around. But they have an opportunity to be able to do this on this issue in particular.
Zain
34:02
Carter, can I move it on to federal politics? There's two strategy questions that I'm hoping to get your guys' mind on. Let me start with the more sort of, not
Zain
34:11
not simpler, but more sort of streamlined, isolated thing, which is Carney's floor crossing his way to a majority, more than likely, it seems like at this point. And we could discuss the merits of that. And there's other places for people to kind of discuss whether that's in our parliamentary tradition, whatever. I don't give a shit. I care about the message that Team Polyev seems to now be at least through surrogates presenting, which is, you know what?
Zain
34:36
You know what, Carter? A
Zain
34:38
A majority isn't terrible. It allows Pierre Polyev to have some time for stability.
Zain
34:43
It lets him know that there's a guaranteed three-ish years left on the clock. It lets him kind of have these things happen. And they're really going with the silver. And I've heard this all week through Punditland, conservative Punditland, that this is their argument. A majority, not as much of a bad thing as you might think. Carter, what's wrong with that message? And if needed, can you rehabilitate it for me to make it better?
Zain
35:05
I've got my own opinions on it, but I'll let you have the first shake. And then Shannon, the same with you. The
Carter
35:10
majority six months ago was bad.
Carter
35:13
A majority six months ago would be a negative because Pierre Polyev was still competitive. A majority now gives him three years to rebuild to where he needs to be without facing another election and perhaps losing significantly. Because I think that you need to look at this not
Carter
35:32
not just as a majority versus a minority, but
Carter
35:36
the actual question is, is this a majority versus an election?
Carter
35:40
And I think that a majority versus an election is
Carter
35:42
much more beneficial than the actual, you know, the
Carter
35:45
the majority is way beneficial compared to the election.
Carter
35:48
The numbers that are coming out, my goodness, you know, you're looking at 15, 20 seats that you're going to lose minimum, and all that's flowing over to the liberals. They're going to have a significant majority if
Carter
36:01
if things continue along the way that they are. are. So my view is
Carter
36:07
is that this shouldn't be compared to majority versus minority, majority versus election. A majority is better than an election for Pierre Polyev.
Zain
36:18
Okay. So you don't mind. Is it fair to say you don't mind this sort of talking point on their part?
Carter
36:25
It inherently shows the weakness, right?
Zain
36:29
about the circumstances in a second. But
Carter
36:31
I don't think you can go around and say, well,
Carter
36:35
well, this is really shitty for Pierre Polyev. It's not as bad. You need to put some sort of positive spin on this ball. And it is not as bad as an election. An election would be tragic for Pierre Polyev right now.
Zain
36:49
Shannon, I'll let you have a shake on what you think of this message, its veracity and its effectiveness. And then let's get to the Carney side of the equation based on the numbers that we're seeing right now and how we should navigate this. So on the Polyev side, do you like this? Do you like this message? Despite all it reveals and exposes, do you feel like it's a good one or at least a quasi-effective one?
Shannon
37:11
For all the reasons that Carter talks about, what they're doing here is they're bargaining in public, as we say in Labourland. They're bargaining in the media because essentially what they're also saying through this is, oh, no, don't use committees as a pretense to go to an election. Right. We'll figure it out and we'll let your bills pass through committees because right now everything's stalled. Oh, no, don't worry. You know, like we're going to take away any of your excuses to go to an election because
Shannon
37:39
because they know that what the liberals are casting a vote for is
Shannon
37:43
is an explanation to the people that
Shannon
37:45
that that meets a head nod test. And that, you know, allows the
Shannon
37:49
the Liberals to get over the conversation about, quote unquote, early election within
Shannon
37:54
within about two days. Unlike
Shannon
37:56
Unlike what happened in 2021 when the
Shannon
37:59
the Trudeau Liberals were twisted around the axle for like two weeks on this topic and people actually did kind of, the first time that I had ever seen it, kind of did punish
Shannon
38:08
punish them for going early. um
Shannon
38:12
and so that's what uh they're trying to take away from them right now and
Shannon
38:17
and the bargain that they're making is that this gives them a little bit more time for the shine to come off carny they're seeing a longer honeymoon because of the trump effect and they figure that um probably ever has enough of a grip on both the party and the caucus that that uh neither neither entity will knife him in the meantime uh
Shannon
38:36
uh because with these numbers it's you know the knives are sharpening Right. And of course,
Zain
38:40
you could argue the race is already on with Giovanni and being maybe the first person out the gates. Sure.
Shannon
38:45
Sure. A few stumbles. But, yeah, I take your point. And so what they're trying to do is take away the liberals excuse for going to the polls. But like there was a liaison that just came out this morning. I think it's an embargo till today around this time. so I can talk about it, that has nationally decided vote 45 to 33.
Shannon
39:07
And the Liberals with a significant lead in both Quebec and
Shannon
39:12
and B.C., which are the two places where they have to hold on to the seats that they won in
Shannon
39:18
in order to build that majority. So they're going to be looking for a trigger.
Zain
39:25
Carter, let's talk about this.
Zain
39:27
Answer me the rapid fire question first, which is should Carney go early and
Zain
39:31
dependent on your answer, actually even independent of your answer, craft me the best rationale to go early, okay?
Zain
39:38
okay? Because we're also hearing that it would be a political crime with numbers this good to not go, to
Zain
39:43
to not go. And this is just one poll, but we're seeing a version of this drumbeat across multiple polls, and we're frankly even sensing it in the air a bit. So should he go early?
Zain
39:55
And then independent of that answer, craft me the best rationale to go early to the public so as to not get hammered on week one, where you then end up with that lead back into a narrower or perhaps more vulnerable situation for your party?
Carter
40:10
I think that the electorate is tired of elections. I think that going in early could be a significant problem. I think he didn't
Carter
40:18
didn't do as well in the 35-day campaign as he would have done in a 28-day campaign. The last seven days did drag him down. In the last election, and there needs to be a lesson learned from that um
Carter
40:31
um i would recommend crossing
Carter
40:33
crossing my way to a majority um
Carter
40:35
um i mean the
Carter
40:37
the the the the trick is with
SPEAKER_01
40:39
with an election the
Carter
40:41
the polls don't stay the same i mean cory hogan would say to us you know the the here's
Carter
40:46
here's what's happened in the last 10 elections um the polls that were before the election basically were
Carter
40:53
were the polls of the end of the election right
Carter
40:57
interesting um but i just don't think that that's necessarily enough to go on. We'll ask Jim Prentice how things were for him. You know, I mean, things didn't go well in that campaign when you choose to go early. And I think that the
Carter
41:12
the fact, I mean, on the other hand, I mean, I guess I can talk my way into both sides because on the other hand, Doug Ford went early and did very well.
Carter
41:22
Going early has a risk. risk, and so does, I guess, holding on. Both of them have risks, but you
SPEAKER_01
41:30
you always end up Are you
Zain
41:31
in real time convincing yourself? I'm
Carter
41:34
I'm in real time confused.
Carter
41:35
I'm in real time, I don't know what the best course of action is. Shannon will though, so let's just go to Shannon and see what she thinks.
Zain
41:42
thinks. Let me get to you in a second, Shannon. I'll let you get your bit more thinking time. Carter, independent of going early, construct to me your best strategy to go early, because you You have floor crossers that might
Zain
41:53
might be in a pipeline somewhere waiting to go. You have the NDP still in the middle of their race, so they're non-players. You have Polyev in this sort of like flux of today, just today, talking about asylum seekers and their health care, which to me seems quite desperate. So you've got this sort of rationale, but you also have what you've said. This is less than a year, and Canadians are sick of elections, and the scope of the threat with the Americans is fundamentally active, chaotic, and unpredictable, and you already already are governing like a majority in some of the most real ways that you could think. So you've got some things playing for you. You've got some things playing against you.
Zain
42:27
Give me the pieces to make the best case to go early, and then, Shannon, I'll get your take on should he and what the best case is. Carter.
Carter
42:37
Why do you keep coming back to me when I'm this picture of indecision, Zane? Like, I'm a picture of indecision right now. I have nothing to offer. I throw it back to my good friend Shannon Phillips. Well,
Shannon
42:50
Well, let me help you out there, Carter. Zane, we have the picture of an aggrieved white man who would like to not be aggrieved. You keep grieving him,
Zain
42:59
We both have our new merch line as well as our new episode, I Have Nothing to Offer. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen Carter.
Shannon
43:05
Carter. I Have an Aggrieved White Man.
SPEAKER_02
43:09
to Offer. That's very good. Give
SPEAKER_00
43:09
Give me a break. Shannon, please,
Zain
43:11
offer us more than nothing.
Shannon
43:15
I'm just going to go whole into it and be like, you know what? He should go. And here's why.
Shannon
43:21
You have the Kuzma review period and a deadline of July 1st. Right.
Shannon
43:27
Right. So, you know, Trump is going to start going like crazy
Shannon
43:31
for lack of a better public policy term. I think that's the the actual term for what he's about to do. He's just going to start going off the wall on us and Kuzma. So that provides the perfect trigger, I think, to be, you know, especially if on one level as, you know, our new trade negotiating staff and everybody start and it looks like there's
Shannon
43:57
there's there's nothing like like Kuzma sort of irretrievable. Trump's already said it's irrelevant to him, but you need to
Shannon
44:02
to goad him into saying, you know, I'm not re-upping this agreement. Fuck this agreement. You
Shannon
44:07
You know, you need him to turn his back on that. And then that is your, essentially,
Shannon
44:13
essentially, your trigger to be able to have, well,
Shannon
44:17
well, a tried and true tradition in this country, which is a free trade election. And so I think that's the first thing, right, is that you can put then a negotiating like sort of at least vibe and ethos and strategy and approach personified in Mr. Carney versus Mr. Polyavra. So I think that's that's the trigger. That's the that's the lever you can pull. Why would you pull it? I think because the longer you go, the longer they might knife probably ever and put someone normal in the chair. I mean, however slim that or at least someone who's like likable. Right. That's always a possibility. The other thing you can do if you're the liberals is get rid of some of these old Trudeau people who were just slapped on the ballot because,
Shannon
45:08
you know, they had like a month to prepare. And so
Shannon
45:12
so they just renominated most of their incumbents. And you can even put more of a stamp on the team and have your people in
Shannon
45:19
in there than you have now. Right. Like you can retire guys like Steve Vinkiebo. You can, you know, kind of do a bit of a refresh. The other reason you might want to go early is that March 29th is the leadership of the federal NDP. And you're going to want to bury them if
Shannon
45:36
if you're the federal liberals. And to worry about that, the
Carter
45:39
the federal NDP are very themselves. Yeah, they're
Shannon
45:43
they're busy. But I
Shannon
45:44
I think there's there's a temptation there to to to be astride the political ideological spectrum from left to right. They are seeing that that's their path to being able to out-compete the Conservatives going into the future, is that they have moved that 10 points into their column.
Shannon
46:07
And there will be a temptation to do that in
Shannon
46:12
in the month of April, May, as the Kuzma stuff rolls out.
Zain
46:16
Janet, any message you have that can make it persuasive in terms of why you're doing it? But
Shannon
46:21
you're going to have to point to Trump having a tantrum in the White House and just be like, we need to renegotiate this thing, especially if he is goaded into essentially publicly, quote unquote, ripping up Kuzma or saying, I'm not getting back to the table. And like this disagreement is null and void or something like that. You're seeking
Zain
46:39
seeking a stronger mandate for Trump in a sense. That would be it.
Zain
46:44
Carter, do you agree with that? I'm curious if you've got any thoughts now that now that Shannon's done the hard work of putting more than nothing. the table i'm curious if you want to help mold
Zain
46:52
mold that in any way i
Carter
46:54
fucking thought in my head um i mean i'll just riff because i can um i i just find it really difficult i i can see things
Carter
47:04
things falling apart in june and july and
Carter
47:07
and and then trying to do an election in the fall um
Carter
47:09
um when when things have already gone horribly awry with the uh the
Carter
47:17
but i and but things are going to to go wrong with Alberta in that period, too. And things will go wrong in other realms. I mean, I just think that maybe the best way to go is to hang on for four years. I'm really reluctant to trigger an election, even with Abby Lewis coming into the federal leadership of the NDP, even with the NDP not growing anything, even with Pierre Polyev being at relatively
Carter
47:48
uh his lowest point i'm
Carter
47:50
i'm still reluctant to call the to call the question when
Carter
47:55
um i don't know how a 35-day campaign is going to go for me we
Carter
47:58
we haven't even seen how his by-elections go um
Carter
48:01
um so i'm not sure that i want to i
Carter
48:04
i want to risk risk everything when another surefire path
Carter
48:10
path to a majority appears available and that's what
Carter
48:13
what is it rumored now five more
Carter
48:16
coming in the next couple of weeks, if you listen to Chantelle Hebert,
Carter
48:19
why not just go and get the majority?
Shannon
48:21
Why not just go and get the majority? The
Shannon
48:23
problem there is, you know, if people think there's an election coming, they might not necessarily cross because they won't get the four years, right?
Shannon
48:33
right? So, I mean, there's a sort of like, there's a catch-22 happening. But the reason they can't wait till the fall,
Shannon
48:39
I mean, sure, there's the Alberta referenda on October 19th, But I believe it's early October is E-Day in Quebec.
Shannon
48:47
So for that reason alone, the federal government won't sit on top of their election.
Zain
48:55
We're going to go to one final lightning round question, Stephen Carter. April 28th, 2025 was the last federal election, 10 months ago, roughly.
Zain
49:03
Do we have another federal election triggered before
Zain
49:06
before one year, Stephen Carter? Carter. So before April 28th, 2026, are we going to be in an election period, yes or no?
Zain
49:16
No. Before April 28th?
Zain
49:18
No. Two no's. Shannon, do you think he's going to go early? If it's not the year, do you think he's still going to go early?
Shannon
49:24
I think there's a very strong possibility. It allows them to hit refresh on a lot of things and then he gets five years to implement his agenda.
Zain
49:35
Carter, similar question to you. Do you have anything to offer? offer.
Carter
49:38
No, I have nothing to offer.
Zain
49:40
Perfect. Thank you for reiterating. We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 4014 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velgey. With me as always, Stephen Carter, Shannon Phillips, and of course, Valencia Orange is small.
SPEAKER_02
49:51
We'll see you next time.