Episode 556: The Cabinet Fantasy Draft Special

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategists, episode 556. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Gents, how are you?

Zain 0:10

It's a fantasy draft day.

Carter 0:18

Yeah, that's good. You didn't just pound

Zain 0:19

levels. You did not do that. Shiva bowl. Shiva bowl time. Anyone watch the league? Yeah. No one watch

Zain 0:25

watch the league. No, I love the league. No one watch the league. League is great. What is the award if one of us or whoever gets closest for the two of you? Is there some sort of prize at the end of the day? Listen,

Carter 0:33

Listen, here's how this is going to end. I'm going to lose. Okay. Corey will win through some sort of unbelievable luck, and then everybody will make fun of me.

Carter 0:44

is how predictions work every time we do predictions on The Strategist. This

Zain 0:47

This is true. That's why we're not calling it a prediction. We're calling it a fantasy. Fantasy

Zain 0:53

Carter has never been in a fantasy league before, so he's very

Corey 0:57

invited him for any sport in

Zain 0:59

in the past you need

Corey 0:59

need to have seven friends to enter it's true

Corey 1:06

don't worry carter has

Zain 1:07

has his own league on yahoo lonely man in calgary still too much ego in um so

Zain 1:14

so what we're gonna do today is is definitely

Zain 1:18

speculate but also give you rationales for who we think should be in justin trudeau's cabinet. So we will talk about the MPs that the liberals have elected, who deserves to be in, who are the locks going forward. And then we will we will try to argue it out over the course of the show. But before we get there, I want to talk to you, Stephen Carter, because you have done this before you have made a cabinet before, be it provincially, but the process is, I'm assuming largely the same.

Carter 1:46

Well, I think so. I mean, having never made a cabinet at federal level, but But the cabinet that you make is always the same process. You start

Carter 1:55

start off with the positions that you want to fill.

Carter 1:58

That's the way we did it. We said, okay, what positions do we want to have? Or

Carter 2:01

Or even better, how many do you want to have? Because that's going to actually dictate the types of cabinet positions that you create. So for the purposes of this exercise that we're doing today, we're assuming 28. Correct.

Carter 2:14

Based on the most

Zain 2:14

most recent reporting that's

Carter 2:15

that's come out. So, you

Carter 2:17

you know, then then you do your your what do we need to balance?

Carter 2:20

Right. Do we need to balance regionally? Do we need to balance gender? Do we need to balance age? Do we need to balance experience levels? Right. Right. Will we have senior cabinet ministers, even if we don't call them senior cabinet ministers? Will we have a select group of people that are kind of at the top end and a group of people that are that were nurturing and moving up that at some point, maybe after the next election or in the mid between elections cabinet shuffle, they're going to move up higher. So those are the types of things that you map out in advance, because that's going to help you tremendously when you actually get to choosing the individual cabinet ministers. One

Zain 2:56

One more question on this. What's the group like that's making Cabinet right now? If you were to give us the insight right now as to what Trudeau is doing by what you've done in the past, who is this group largely? actually.

Carter 3:08

These are people who have, I mean, you, you start with your loyalists. You absolutely must start with the people who've been there for you from the beginning. So you, you, I mean, the, the, the analogy is you take the large rocks and you put them in first, right? The people who matter the most to you. And then you, you add in the second tier of rocks, the smart ones, the people who, um, have to be there for a whole bunch of different reasons. Uh, they may not have been loyal to you in the past, but you, you grab those people and then you fill in the small sand. Uh, Those people that are virtually indistinguishable from one another but are being chosen for gender reasons or regional regions. So you'll find, I mean, I've put in a couple of people in my cabinet that in my notes I put last second edition because now I need this. This is the best person to represent Northern Ontario and can do the job. job

Carter 4:02

um so we pick that person instead of picking um you know it's it's almost indistinguishable from the except they've got this

Zain 4:10

this one trait that you're looking for the

Carter 4:11

the exact same person exists in newfoundland right

Carter 4:14

do you know what i mean so you you get they're they're small pieces of sand and they're identical to one another yeah

Zain 4:20

yeah cory i want to bring you in on this as well um carter was mentioning the the rocks the the smart people in the middle and then the sand i like that that's I like that, the three tiers. But what do you as an MP need to do to present yourself as a rock or a smart person? How do you present yourself as viable to get into candidate to the decision makers effectively?

Corey 4:42

Well, I'm going to be really curious to hear what Stephen thinks about this as somebody who was probably lobbied, if not officially, implicitly through different conversations with different MLAs before that cabinet was put together. But I think when you think about a country like Canada, and as big and diverse as we are, there is no doubt a pretty broad understanding that cabinets reflect regions. We go out and we make sure we have regional representation. But where I've seen MPs go off the rails in the past is that they believe just because they're expected to reflect regions that they should act regionally. and when you're building a cabinet especially for a country like this with so many diverse opinions think about alberta think about quebec think about the maritimes you need to make sure that you can put yourself in somebody else's shoes and think about these issues in a way you have to show you have a mind for cabinet in a country like canada this is not a very easy country to govern at the best of times and when it's divided it can be very difficult and that's what uh where i think think sometimes MPs make a mistake. Yes, they don't want to just be the champion for Calgary, for example. They need to be the champion from Calgary who can put themselves in the shoes of someone from Trois-Rivières. I

Zain 5:54

like that. A mind for cabinet, Carter. And

Carter 5:55

And I think that what happens is the people come, they shop your resumes to you.

Carter 5:59

I am an expert in

Carter 6:01

in education, right? Or I really understand natural resources. Oftentimes when you're making a cabinet, we saw this in Alberta, because our alberta uh special where we picked our cabinet ministers we tended to go with experience and then the cabinet was chosen the exactly opposite right which makes total sense well not exactly opposite but to a degree was different losing

Corey 6:22

losing his mind no

Corey 6:22

i was more like looking for the laudations that i got that cabinet pretty much right oh

Carter 6:27

oh yeah you were so good you were so good but the the uh this is where um you

Carter 6:34

you go against type sometimes right so do you need a a natural resources minister from Alberta. Everybody in Alberta is going to tell you you need a natural resource minister from Alberta. That's the last thing you need is a natural resource minister from Alberta. Yeah, because what, you're

Corey 6:47

you're going to sell natural resources to Albertans? They bought it. They bought

Carter 6:51

Imagine a natural resources minister from Quebec.

Carter 6:54

Changes the conversation completely. And that's what we need to do sometimes, is change the conversation completely. And I have a natural resources minister from Quebec.

Corey 7:03

what a way to foreshadow.

Zain 7:04

A little teasing us. Okay, so this is good. Good. This provides us, I guess, enough or provides us

Zain 7:09

enough sort of context for what goes in, what the inputs are. And frankly, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but this was difficult for you guys, was it not, to do this before we get into it? It was probably a tough exercise. The

Carter 7:20

The amount of research that went into this for me was in excess of the liberal strategy episode. I

Zain 7:25

I thought you were going to say it was in excess of the amount of research you put in when you formed your cabinet with the PCs. No,

Carter 7:29

No, no. Let's put that in perspective. Sure. I spent almost a week making the cabinet for the PCs. Right. And I think we had 19 in the first one. It might have been 21. It might have stretched.

Carter 7:40

So a smaller cabinet than

Carter 7:43

than this. And really, we knew the players a lot more.

Carter 7:46

One of the weaknesses that we're going to run into is there are names here that we are taking from media reports and we are taking from. Correct. There is no way that we can represent that we have met all 184 MPs in Justin Cabinet's caucus. Right.

Carter 8:01

Justin Cabinet, Justin Trudeau's caucus.

Zain 8:03

Justin Cabinet, I like that. Just

Carter 8:04

Just cabinet is the best thing ever. That's who's going to be choosing it on November 4th. But so we have to go from media reports. I knew all the MLAs that we were choosing. Right, right. You had interactions with them. Yeah, so it was a little bit, I

Carter 8:17

I want to say easier. This was a little bit harder. It might have made it harder

Corey 8:20

harder in some ways, though, because you knew them and you knew their strengths and their weaknesses. And

Carter 8:25

And we wound up putting a guy in cabinet, and I won't name, but I think people who listen to the show regularly will know who I'm talking about, who's

Carter 8:33

Absolutely useless. and i know him and i knew he was useless and

Carter 8:37

and we still put him in cabinet because of regional balancing and then we because we're the progressive conservatives we had to balance uh progressivism if you will yeah

Carter 8:47

and that was a further nightmare of balancing so

Corey 8:51

so before we go on on that point as much as i was as much as you were talking about that from from one side and i was talking about what does an mp do if they want to get into cabinet i

Corey 9:01

i want to ask you were there any times that you just totally regretted leaving somebody out like you had an impression of them you didn't really know them you're like that that person is not cut from the cloth we need for one reason or the other and you realize that was just you being foolish anything like that maybe where you regret it i

Carter 9:18

think when i look back i mean we didn't do much in the way of gender balance in redford's cabinet the thinking of course being we had a premier who was female we don't need to worry about gender balance and we left out uh i'll name her cindy 80 um

Carter 9:31

um and cindy 80 had been tourism minister and

Carter 9:34

and truth be told she's an excellent tourism minister uh i can't remember who we put in i might have been jack hayden um and

Carter 9:42

and leaving her out was a mistake but

Carter 9:44

but there's a number of reasons why she gets left out um nearing nearing the end of her electoral cycles right So,

Carter 9:51

So, you know, we

Zain 9:53

we need to bring in

Carter 9:54

in new talent, blah, blah, blah.

Carter 9:57

And tourism, to be honest, I mean, it's like some of the ministries that you'll see in the cabinet that we discuss, you know, later, they're

Carter 10:05

they're less important. So you can put someone who's not as good into that ministry, put a good DM in, and that ministry will pretty much take care of itself to train a minister, to train someone to be decent moving forward. And

Corey 10:18

so there's there's two things i want to say before we leave this section okay one is uh about the experience points so the reason you don't necessarily put the experienced person in cabinet is because their experience blinds them you put a doctor in medicine they think they know how to solve it and they see it only through the lens of a doctor they're not listening to other stakeholders that they've learned to discount through years of training correct

Corey 10:39

right and that training is not necessarily good training it's just they were part of a tribe and there was another tribe right but

Corey 10:45

you do like broad experience so when you see a guy like andrew leslie who was in charge of the armed forces right or very senior in the armed forces

Corey 10:54

that's the kind of experience you might be i mean it's almost impossible not to nod to that experience at that point i feel but we'll get to that in a second the

Corey 11:02

the other is that when i think about the liberals right now and the liberals making their cabinet i do worry if there's not some bad habits of liberals that I think most of us have talked about in over the years you know the arrogance of liberals that liberal mold you know they think they're smarter the intelligentsia all of that which you

Corey 11:22

you can argue with whether or not it exists now or in the past I would argue it does and it did and there's still people who think they just got out of the penalty box and we're back to the liberal century to

Corey 11:32

to be continued but

Corey 11:34

I worry about that I think that the liberals need to not just revert back to old ways old habits old ministers and i will be very interested to see how hard they push themselves not just to include new people but to include new people not like liberal ministers in the past i've

Carter 11:52

i've tried to do that a

Carter 11:53

a little bit today and it's interesting because the people who get left off are

Carter 11:58

are some big names that we know uh we political followers or as people who do this, some might think are just absolute locks. And one of the things that I hope to see on November the 5th is an analysis that says, look

Carter 12:12

look at these people he's left behind, right? Look at these people who defined the Liberal Party during the Kretchen Martin years who no longer define the Liberal Party moving forward. Well,

Zain 12:22

Well, I think that's just a great teaser for us to get started. So, Corey, do you agree? Let's ratify Carter's sort of three tiers. I like that effectively. Let's start with what you've called the rocks, and I'm just going to slightly modify that to people that are locked in, that have to be on Cabinet. So, Carter, lay it on us with who you think your first couple are that have to absolutely, in this Trudeau government, be on Cabinet.

Carter 12:44

Okay, so I'm going to start with two, and I'm going to go not necessarily coast to coast.

Carter 12:52

Actually, I'm going to make it three. Make

Zain 12:54

Make it three. Start with your first three, and we'll

Corey 12:56

there. I think that Ralph Goodale has to be in Cabinet. cabinet

Carter 12:58

yeah ralph goodale is he's a he's a different type of liberal he's a prairie populist liberal um that's a big deal for this party as it moves forward he's a wicked smart guy really nice fellow very articulate yeah and i think that he needs to be in cabinet um i think that joyce murray needs to be in cabinet um

Carter 13:17

um joyce murray is uh a

Carter 13:22

bit of a pain in the ass uh to be honest i think that she's she doesn't necessarily um represent uh the trudeau liberal party but i think that that's important to have the dissension in the caucus in the cabinet uh room and that conversation and

Carter 13:38

and then mark darno um

Carter 13:41

mark darno to me is is just he's

Carter 13:45

he's amazing he spent time learning his story he's got so much experience in so many different areas that again that level of that him having that where he can speak around the cabinet table and none of those three are going to be seen as trudeau friends right

Carter 14:01

right because two out of the three ran

Zain 14:03

ran against trudeau for the leadership yeah

Carter 14:04

yeah i mean you'll yeah

Carter 14:06

yeah shortly yeah but there's other stuff there's other people like dominic leblanc who people are going to say well why don't you got him on of course he's on the big stones of course he's going to be in cabinet but he doesn't bring the same tools that the other ones do in in bringing different points of view as cory's alluded to and and some other big elements cory

Zain 14:25

cory i'll throw it to you uh here do you agree with the first three that carter's post i

Corey 14:29

i i'm not sure i do but let's put that in the parking lot for a minute there's there's at least one there where i'm thinking maybe not and that's joyce murray but uh

Corey 14:37

uh but actually you know what i revert entirely because i think already i can see we're gonna have a problem with gender balance i

Carter 14:44

i was just gonna say she's in there because of gender balance too ralph

Corey 14:46

ralph goodale for sure not only is he got a lot of experience but he is the only liberal mp from saskatchewan he's gonna be in there and mark garneau to me he's a no-brainer he he has the right stuff right

Carter 14:58

right whoa guys that's right and um the

Zain 15:06

one literally three people appreciated it and they're all around

Corey 15:10

the the ones that i think you didn't talk about uh that are locks Locks are some of the new ones, the ones that Trudeau is going to say. Yeah, tell us your new locks.

Corey 15:18

They are in my cabinet. Chrystia Freeland, I think, absolute lock. That's going to happen for a lot of reasons. And then I will also say Andrew Leslie, absolute

Corey 15:29

absolute lock. The guy is a star candidate. He was in commercials for them. I mean, it was all, it's a given.

Corey 15:37

well, I mean, that's sort of the end of the absolute, absolute locks for me. but after that there are some that are pretty much even

Corey 15:44

even because of let's

Carter 15:45

let's let's throw in dominic leblanc okay because i think that that's another lock isn't

Carter 15:49

isn't i mean unless you're gonna disagree with me cory but i think that you know this is the guy who stood beside trudeau during the leadership he stood you know he stood beside trudeau the entire way in fact prior to the leadership um this is the most trusted ally second only maybe to jerry butts carter

Zain 16:07

carter can can i can i i get your consent on on what cory said here leslie and freeland do

Carter 16:11

do you agree with both of them yeah

Carter 16:12

they're absolutely they're both in my in mine um uh

Carter 16:18

didn't have uh christia as a christia freeland as a absolute lock but i did have andrew leslie um

Carter 16:25

um and i have one more okay

Zain 16:27

late on us scott

Corey 16:29

yeah he's absolutely a lot scotty i think between representing the The right of the party, his bona fides in the organization, his charm, his popularity. He's a nice guy. You

Corey 16:40

You find a guy who doesn't like Scott Bryson, you're

Corey 16:43

you're not going to be able to do it. He

Carter 16:44

He worked his ass off on

Carter 16:46

on this campaign and in building this party. He's done a great job. He's not just been sitting there waiting for the next opportunity to get back in cabinet. I

Zain 16:56

I don't want to get too deep into this, but Carter, give me your basic recommendations for what portfolio some of these people may take.

Carter 17:03

Well, how about if I start off by saying which ones I don't want them to get? Okay,

Carter 17:06

that's interesting. Because I do not want

Carter 17:08

want Joyce Murray in Environment to save my life.

Zain 17:11

okay. Joyce Murray to me... Tell me why. I think a lot of people would think that's the natural

Carter 17:17

Exactly. Right. It's the natural fit for her, but it's also there's a stridency that she brings to that portfolio that I think is a mistake. stake um

Carter 17:27

will not budge on issues because of personal um points

Carter 17:32

points of view or personal principle is that

Zain 17:34

that what cory would call like the clouding effect of just being in it absolutely

Carter 17:38

i think that she i mean i have her in actually canadian heritage um

Carter 17:41

um which is not necessarily going to be a high profile cabinet uh position well so while i think she's a lock i'm not putting her in my top 10 cadena positions um

Corey 17:53

i have her i'm

Corey 17:56

uh why not fisheries and oceans oh

Carter 17:59

oh interesting because i stuck to the east coast and everybody does but

Corey 18:02

but uh i think

Corey 18:04

with oceans and the tanker ban and all of the things we're talking about in bc

Corey 18:07

it's very relevant yeah

Carter 18:07

yeah but i think she's gonna be a little strident on tanker bands too i

Carter 18:13

i don't think that's okay okay

Carter 18:14

let's not putting it so

Zain 18:15

so that's that's Joyce where do you got some of the other locks that you guys have uh placed Dominic

Carter 18:20

Dominic LeBlanc I think was the easiest for me to place where you have uh justice minister and attorney general you

Corey 18:25

see I didn't put him there where'd

Carter 18:26

where'd you put him I

Corey 18:27

I put him in a position you're going to think is maybe too junior for him but I think his closeness to Trudeau is exactly why he'll get this position it's

Corey 18:33

it's government house leader I mean he's going to be not by name but by practice a deputy prime minister and that role gives him line of sight of everybody else huh

Carter 18:41

huh that's see see who i have as house leader here number i'll see i have judy screw oh

Zain 18:48

oh interesting okay so

Zain 18:50

so that we got disagreement on dominic but obviously both agree that he's that he's a lock-in where do you got uh scott bryson carter uh

Carter 18:58

again i see this

Carter 19:00

this is a this is a tricky ministry there are three or four people that could go into this ministry it's finance uh

Carter 19:05

uh that i put scott um

Carter 19:07

um i put scott there because he's still young.

Carter 19:11

He's got more parliamentary

Carter 19:13

parliamentary experience, and he's not as inclined to just simply walk away from the other guy's ideas. I think that one of my arguments of late has been that we've been running one fiscal plan since the Mulroney era.

Carter 19:26

That fiscal plan continues to be in place. Martin followed it as finance minister. Martin followed it as the prime minister. Harper has tinkered around the edges and had to do some different things because because of the stimulus programs that he brought in, but it was returning back to the Mulroney plan.

Carter 19:42

And I think that Scott Bryson would be a good finance minister to recognize what's good in what Harper did and keep it, and also move them in a little bit new direction without tilting the country on its edge. Hogan,

Zain 19:55

Hogan, Bryson in finance, does that make

Corey 19:58

to you? No, we've got big infrastructure spending coming. We've talked about the sunny ways. I think that Bryson doesn't send that message. I think Bryson in industry, given his background, how quickly he made his millions, that to me is where Bryson belongs. Garneau

Zain 20:12

Garneau and Goodale. Carter, what do you have for them?

Carter 20:15

Garneau. This was my favorite one. Okay,

Zain 20:17

Okay, lay it on us. Because

Carter 20:17

Because Garneau is my favorite, I'll do Goodale first. Oh, Goodale

Zain 20:20

Goodale first. Go ahead. I

Carter 20:21

I have Goodale as a deputy prime minister.

Carter 20:24

I want his experience standing right next to Justin Trudeau.

Carter 20:28

And it's a nice nod to Western Canada.

Corey 20:31

What do you think, Corey? I don't think you're going to see a stand-alone Deputy Prime Minister to be continued on that one. I've got Goodale in Justice. Do

Carter 20:39

Do you really? I

Corey 20:39

I think Justice is a pretty good place for him, especially as we start talking about it. I think it's too limiting,

Carter 20:43

limiting, given his experience.

Carter 20:45

I think you've got to be realistic about Goodale.

Carter 20:47

Goodale. How have we not agreed on a single placement yet? You've

Corey 20:49

You've got to be realistic about Goodale. He's not going to be running forever. No, but

Carter 20:53

but that's the other reason I like him as Deputy Prime Minister. It's why

Carter 20:55

why I like him in Justice. He's not a leadership rival. rival he's in he he's supportive he's experienced i like him as deputy prime minister i'm going to stick with that he's

Corey 21:05

he's a lawyer he's seen it all he he knows not to overreact to things and guess what he's going to have to decriminalize marijuana and you don't want some long hair there that's

Carter 21:13

that's why dominic leblanc goes there no that's

Corey 21:15

that's exactly why he doesn't go ha ha late

Zain 21:18

garneau because i know you're excited to get to that one mark

Carter 21:20

mark garneau minister of natural resources ah

Carter 21:23

if we're going to have a pipeline to tidewater it's gonna have to come from a a voice environment minister that represents um someplace outside of uh natural resource

Zain 21:33

resource or environment sorry natural

Carter 21:36

so natural resources is the push fellow the guy who's making sure that it happens the poll is the environment minister um but

Carter 21:44

but you might as well that's where i have freeland ah

Zain 21:47

okay the push and pull i like that okay cory give us garneau and then we'll talk freeland as I've also got Garneau in natural resources.

Corey 21:56

Our first one. It makes a lot of sense. That's going to be a hot file with the Energy East pipeline. Mark Garneau has credibility on both sides of that issue, and he can walk in and not be seen as a shill for either side. That to me, and

Corey 22:10

and maybe this is just because as an Albertan, I value that pipeline so highly. Right.

Corey 22:14

But that to me is why you put Mark Garneau in that.

Zain 22:17

like it. Where do you have Freeland, Corey? Corey, Freeland and Leslie. And I'll come back to you, Carter, for Leslie. Okay,

Corey 22:22

Okay, well, I have Freeland in Foreign Affairs.

Carter 22:26

that seems like a good fit. Yeah, I mean, it's decent. I like her in environment, obviously, but Freeland is one of those people you have a ton of flexibility in. Right.

Carter 22:35

Right. She is a smaller rock than these kind of main ones. Oh,

Zain 22:39

She's a newer rock, but I'm not sure she's

Carter 22:42

she's smaller. Multiple, well, no, I

Carter 22:44

I don't mean less important. No, what I mean is that they... Fits into more spots.

Carter 22:47

Fits into a lot more spots. Oh, okay, okay, okay. right like i think that goodale doesn't fit into a lot of spots okay

Carter 22:53

okay so her agility

Carter 22:54

i think that joyce murray as much as i've put her in as a definite fits in even fewer spots oh

Carter 23:00

oh interesting right so when i say a smaller stone i mean easier to place okay not less

Zain 23:06

um good clarification so you got her in foreign affairs um leslie go

Carter 23:12

playing a little bit against type again because i didn't want to put him in defense now defense was hard for me And I'm just going to allude to it. I'll come back to it later because I don't want to give it away yet. But I found public safety to be very, very challenging as well as defense. And I think putting Leslie in defense was just – it was too predictable

Carter 23:33

predictable and it was too much – too many blinders. But public safety, with his experience, I thought would work well. This

Corey 23:39

This is fun because we're going to segue into what I think is going to be one of the more drawn-out conversations with your public safety pick. but first i'll tell you where i have leslie then i'll tell you who i have for public safety yeah let's

Corey 23:50

get into that that's fine so leslie national defense to me that just makes sense oh

Corey 23:55

right so predictable well it is but this is one of those rare situations where that expertise is a benefit without question he has he has broad view on all of this he understands it and more importantly he

Corey 24:06

he he buttresses a weakness for the liberals right you can't say that andrew leslie does not understand national

Corey 24:12

national defense that's just it's impossible to say well

Carter 24:14

well and that's why i put put john mccallum in there john

Carter 24:17

john mccallum to me i didn't want him uh anywhere he was he

Corey 24:20

he was minister of i know

Carter 24:21

know and i think you can go back to that and say this is a guy who's got the experience who can lead through this program

Corey 24:25

program kept us out of the iraq war very

Carter 24:27

very you know a smart savvy operator um and you know look at look at what has happened in hindsight and

Carter 24:34

and i don't want him in anything more high profile okay

Zain 24:36

okay give me give me one second here i want to ensure that we're all on the same page are locks freeland leslie leblanc bryson goodale murray garneau is that is that good yeah

Zain 24:46

okay let's get into the conversation about public safety because i want to get into this too cory who do you have in public state we'll flip it on its head rather than the person give me the position because i i'd be very curious to see the difference between the

Corey 24:58

the two i can't wait to see stephen carter's reaction who i have in public safety and he is in my second tier of people who you're gonna have to have in there as well right

Corey 25:06

is kent hair the mp for calgary center center so

Corey 25:11

think that uh i i might as well just spool this out we

Corey 25:15

have to just keep going

Corey 25:16

kent hair is one of the four mps who was elected here in alberta we had two in calgary two in edmonton what we all know in calgary what many of you will know in the rest of the country soon is that kent hair is a quadriplegic who was left in that position because he was the victim of a drive-by shooting right

Corey 25:32

so now think about this position for a moment and think about the liberal weaknesses on this position. That is that they're going to be soft on crime, that they do not understand the victims in these situations, and that they need somebody who will be tough in these situations. Kent Hare, when he was in MLA, actually introduced a bill to be able to, I didn't even agree with this bill, I thought it was a bit of a violation of civil liberties, but a bill that if they found a gun in your car during a routine traffic stop, they just took your car. And that was it. You You know, you didn't really get much of a grounds for appeal there, right?

Corey 26:06

Tough on crime. He's going to have to be there because he's from Calgary. And trust me, I mean, Kent Hare is an indomitable force. I think everybody around this table knows he is. Yeah,

Carter 26:16

Yeah, I mean, so the reason and rationale you gave leads me – I understand justice. Yeah.

Carter 26:21

But I don't like him in public safety. No, no. I

Carter 26:24

I did have Kent in an unusual spot. I

Carter 26:27

mean, one of the things about being a quadriplegic is that it's harder to travel. Is that fair to say? Am I allowed to say that without sounding like a dick? I mean, that's just logistically true. I don't want to sound like a dick.

Corey 26:36

That's logistically true. Yeah. But I will say, look, full disclosure, Ken's a very good friend of mine to the point where we've gone on vacations together, right? And he

Corey 26:46

he can travel. It's not like it's impossible for the guy to travel.

Carter 26:50

Sure, he can. Yeah. Sure, he can. No one's arguing that. I wanted to put him in a spot where he

Carter 26:57

he could stay in Ottawa and be the

Carter 27:01

the guy in Ottawa. And

Carter 27:02

And I gave him president of the Treasury Board. Ooh. Right?

Corey 27:05

Okay. I'm not diminishing his abilities. I'm going to steal Zayn's job for a minute, and I'm with you. Explain why that's a good job for him. I like that. That's an interesting pick.

Carter 27:14

The president of the Treasury Board is essentially the person who controls the government spending. everybody wants that person to help them get more money for their ministry get more money for their pet project there

Carter 27:27

there is no more social guy in the world than kent hair and making you feel like you've been listened to even

Carter 27:33

even when he's rejecting you so

Carter 27:35

so when he's saying you know what you know what you know what i'd love to give you the money but

Carter 27:40

but i can't yeah

Carter 27:41

you're my guy though you're my guy right

Carter 27:46

is exactly the position either

Carter 27:48

no but it's a no position not a yes position yeah

Corey 27:51

yeah it's it's where you have to be mr no in fact that's what former like treasury board presidents have been nicknamed right

Carter 27:57

right you know dr no

Corey 27:59

no mr no whatever yeah and you've

Carter 28:00

you've got this guy

Carter 28:01

unbelievably personable though is a great retail politician insanely

Carter 28:05

personal and you you could say well hold on well who are my constituents in this particular case well it's the 184 government members that are now your constituents that can't care gets to manage

Carter 28:15

manage gets to hold on to and

Carter 28:18

and in full disclosure this isn't necessarily my idea this came from my good friend robert hawks okay

Carter 28:24

whose father was should have known

Corey 28:25

known it was a good idea yeah that's

Carter 28:26

that's why i came from someone else who's who and ironically never listens to the podcast so won't hear me doing that shout out was a yes totally totally

Zain 28:34

totally useless to the ether

Carter 28:35

you know i thought maybe whip or something like like that but those he you know the treasury

Carter 28:40

treasury board recognizes almost all of kent hair's inherent strengths and puts him in a place where he can manage those and stay in one principal location cory

Zain 28:50

cory go ahead one more comment on kent hair this

Corey 28:53

this is uh this is going to be interesting to see where they put him when i was talking about but are we both agreed he needs he needs to be on here in

Corey 29:00

in cabinet i absolutely believe that but let's get to that in a second because i i see carter being like maybe he's

Carter 29:05

he's my last second edition okay hold

Corey 29:07

hold on cory go ahead first and then we'll talk when i was saying a bit earlier that i will be curious to see the types of people the people who don't match that traditional eastern liberal mold kent hair is as far from a traditional eastern liberal as you will ever meet you will ever meet he is

Corey 29:23

fantastic he is you could describe him as a ham and egger he's the guy who's happy in the dive bar hanging out with people populist politician Politician, always hustling, and like going out working, not working an ankle,

Corey 29:35

is hardworking, he's personable, but

Corey 29:39

but he is not the typical Eastern elite. And I will be very curious to see whether they recognize that as a strength or if they see that as a weakness.

Zain 29:48

So he's in for you, Corey.

Zain 29:51

Carter, give it to me quickly. Is he in or out? Last second edition, what does that mean from your vantage point for you? Well,

Carter 29:57

Well, I was trying to fill everything out and get the right regional representation and get all of those things. I'm back and forth as to whether Alberta gets two cabinet ministers or one cabinet minister. We haven't talked much about regional balancing yet. We will in a second. That's our next phase, right? We start with our big rocks. These are the people we need to have in cabinet. Now

Carter 30:13

Now we start worrying about things like regional

Carter 30:15

regional representation. Does Alberta get one or does Alberta get two?

Carter 30:20

There's an argument to be made that Calgary and Edmonton are two distinct markets. Let's just talk about this. Let's just start with Alberta as our first region.

Carter 30:28

homegrown here. That's alphabetical.

Carter 30:31

big market. Start with Alberta. What do you think? It's a big market. You've got very different representation.

Carter 30:36

Corey has alluded to this

Carter 30:38

this idea of suburban and urban in terms of how these seats were elected. The

Carter 30:43

We've also got – we don't have gender diversity in Alberta. It's one of the two provinces for Justin Trudeau where only men were elected. So that creates a bit of a problem. We've got ethnic diversity. But we have ethnic diversity. So

Carter 30:58

me, it became, okay, at

Carter 31:01

at the last second, I put in the second county minister from

Carter 31:04

from Alberta. And that was Kent. Kent is a great guy. We love Kent. We know Kent. And maybe I'm blinded by knowing him too well.

Carter 31:14

But he was not in my top.

Carter 31:18

He was like 28th on my top 28.

Corey 31:21

No way. I'm way higher for a lot of reasons. I

Corey 31:24

I know you do. We all do. I know none of us are not connected. I mean, that's the other thing, guys. You will literally not find somebody who's politically connected in Alberta who does not know and love Kent across the spectrum. Doesn't

Carter 31:35

Doesn't matter left or right. Corey, what's

Corey 31:37

what's the Alberta take for you? Well, Alberta, I mean, of course we're going to get two. Of course. I'm wondering if it's two or three. We're almost 12% of the population. We're like 20% of the GDP. You

Carter 31:48

You can't do three for gender balance. Well, that

Corey 31:50

that makes it very difficult on that front. but there

Corey 31:52

there are other regions that can make up that balance here's my problem if

Corey 31:56

if they don't i went on this rant last time so i'm not going to redo the whole rant but look alberta

Corey 32:02

calgary in particular right now is hypersensitive to representation in cabinets provincially and if it becomes a problem federally too you are going to see the right in this city turned on in a way that is not going to be helpful to either level of government over the next four years i'm not not saying Justin Trudeau needs to buttress, you

Corey 32:21

you know, Rachel Notley's cabinet. That's absolutely not what I'm saying. What I'm saying, he can't be daft about the reality here, which is he's got two seats in Calgary for the first time in almost 50 years.

Corey 32:34

You give that up if you do not have at least one minister from Calgary, a city, by the way, a city proper of 1.3 million people. So hold

Zain 32:41

hold on, Corey. I like that. I like the philosophy behind it. Have you put, I guess should i should ask you since you think it's two or three who's your second one on the list for for cabinet in from alberta okay so my second one is emerjit sohi who

Corey 32:56

who just won his

Corey 32:56

his judicial recount yesterday he like 90 votes or something he's the new landslide annie apparently um

Corey 33:04

but to be honest i was going back and forth between him and randy boss no right and and the question becomes what

Corey 33:11

what they value and when i talk about that typical eastern liberal thing and And this is not a knock against Randy. I love Randy. He is more that typical Eastern liberal mold than anybody who was elected in this province. And I can see them instantly being like, you're our guy. Corey,

Zain 33:25

Corey, I don't mean to drill on that point, but lay out to us what you mean by that typical mold, in a sense. Well, he's

Corey 33:32

he's a Rhodes Scholar. He's bilingual. He's very intellectual. He's very—I don't want to suggest the other guys are not thoughtful. That's not what I'm saying. But he's almost— He's hyper-thoughtful. He's hyper-thoughtful. Thank you.

Corey 33:43

That's much better. He's,

Carter 33:44

He's, you know, he's going to be the guy you're going to be seeing and walking around. Like if you were to do

Carter 33:48

do a caricature of him, you give him a glass of wine that he's swirling around and saying, well, let me think about that and tell you what I've

Corey 33:54

I've got. Well, and he's also, he's very, he's, he's very urban. He's, he's very networked into arts communities and whatnot. Correct. He's an awesome dude. I love Randy. Yeah, we all, we all do. Give

Carter 34:04

Give him a parliamentary secretary and make him happy. When

Corey 34:06

When you look at the other three people he was elected with, you've got two very popular regular mlas kent hair elected two-term neither of which lost by the way both of which just didn't run again they're on federally yeah kent

Corey 34:17

kent hair uh who was downtown calgary and darshan khan who was northeast calgary which is one of the the more ethnic communities in calgary calgary skyview won by a huge margin the most of any liberal yeah they called him first

Corey 34:30

they're like he's a lot

Corey 34:31

and and then you have amarjeet sohi who was a very popular counselor in edmonton with just a a crazy backstory a really cool backstory amazing backstory yeah my point is just if you looked at just the the resumes not not like the end of the resume hobbies and interests and stuff like that you would have to say those other three are ahead of randy but if you look at personality characteristics and what the liberals have traditionally valued you kind of got to jump randy right to the top of that list okay

Corey 34:57

so i do think because of the the ethnic balance and the The urban-suburban balance, it will be – first of all, I think of that list, of the four, Kent is by far the biggest lock. We can talk about why you don't necessarily think that in a second, Stephen, but I think he's the biggest lock because he's got the experience. He's got the backstory. He's top 40, under 40, all that crap.

Corey 35:20

then you say, who's next? And it's got to be Sohi to balance off Kent. If you don't care about that balance, it's Randy maybe. If you really like Randy a lot, because Edmonton will certainly have to have one. So

Zain 35:29

So I'm going to go to a baseline question. question carter do you have a second one from alberta i do you do okay so you agree largely with the philosophy that cory's i had

Carter 35:37

did so he before

Carter 35:38

before kent okay so the difference that that cory and i have is that i had so he in before kent um

Carter 35:43

um but you both got

Zain 35:45

got him in and i yeah

Carter 35:46

yeah but i put him in because it was a filler position from where'd you put him in international trade international

Zain 35:51

international trade cory where did you have armageddon so in i

Corey 35:54

i had him in citizenship and immigration oh

Carter 35:56

oh see that's a good pick too but i had another person there it's a good fit Yeah, I mean, it's sand,

Carter 36:04

sand, right? There are four guys like Amarjeet Sohi across the country. They

Carter 36:09

They all look the same in

Carter 36:10

in terms of resumes, not look the same in terms of looking. We

Corey 36:14

We started getting started with some looks. Holy shit, just

Carter 36:16

about got in trouble. No, but the resumes. Good save, Carter, good

Zain 36:22

The political character, et cetera. Yeah, the capacity.

Carter 36:26

But I ultimately put him in. For Edmonton. For Edmonton, for Alberta. Okay,

Zain 36:32

Okay, and for Alberta, indeed. That is our elongated segment

Zain 36:36

Alberta. And frankly, we're from here, so we take the time to do that. Let's move on to our next region. Carter, where do you want to go?

Carter 36:42

Let's go to BC. BC is wacko. We are going alphabetical. So let's go to BC.

Carter 36:46

BC. Who do you list me? I should ask you, how many do you have from BC, first

Carter 36:52

That's a good question. Two, four, five from

Zain 36:54

List us to five, and

Zain 36:56

and we'll take it from there. We'll see what Corey's got from BC. So

Carter 36:59

So remember when Corey was saying you can make up some of that gender imbalance in different regions? Is that what you're going to do

Zain 37:04

do right now? Yeah,

Carter 37:05

Yeah, it's Quebec and British Columbia that you can make up gender imbalance. And congratulations to the voters of Quebec and British Columbia. A lot more gender diversity in both of those areas. Right, right. So I already have Joyce Murray. So we've talked about her. We've got one

Zain 37:18

one dad in Murray, yeah. I

Carter 37:19

I have Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, the former mayor of West Vancouver, in

Carter 37:29

And it just kind of worked out that she got public works. I don't care if she gets public works. When you start to get down to the actual putting in of these people, it became very challenging.

Carter 37:38

Jody Wilson-Raybould is First Nations chief, former chief.

Carter 37:44

Spectacular. I can't imagine that she won't be. I mean, on one level, you can almost put her in as a lock. Into lock category,

Carter 37:50

But she is super

Carter 37:52

super experienced. And my last woman from British Columbia is

Carter 37:56

so cool. I couldn't get past her story. She's a blind Paralympian. Oh,

Carter 38:00

Oh, no kidding. Named Carla.

Carter 38:03

I'm going to get the last name spelled or pronounced incorrectly, Qualtrough.

Zain 38:08

Where's she from? Do

Zain 38:10

Do you have any idea? If you don't, that's... Vancouver.

Carter 38:11

Vancouver. Victoria, I think. Okay. Victoria.

Carter 38:16

all of those those those four four women where i put them is less important right so um but

Zain 38:23

but just for kick shits

Zain 38:24

giggles where did you where did you throw them in carla

Carter 38:25

carla was uh democratic reform okay uh jody was aboriginal affairs and northern development uh pamela public

Carter 38:34

and joyce murray of course we talked about in canadian heritage you could easily switch those two And have Joyce in Public Works and Pamela in Canadian Heritage. And you had a fifth. I had a fifth. Harjit Singh Sajjan is a former police officer and former soldier. And I put him as the Minister of Veteran Affairs. Veteran

Zain 38:57

Veteran Affairs. Okay, very interesting.

Carter 38:58

Now, I don't know that we've had a visible minority in

Carter 39:06

have a tremendous history of visible minorities serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. Right. And I think that it would be a really fitting place to put someone with his resume and his experience into

Carter 39:17

into that position. So I was actually kind of happy with that position because it was, you

Carter 39:23

know, I think it was a little bit outside of the box. Yeah, I like that. But at the same time, when you look at his resume, it totally works. I

Zain 39:30

I like that a lot for him. And he was one of those candidates that, near

Zain 39:34

near the end of the campaign, was appearing quite often for the Liberals on public media in BC, etc. So I like that choice. He's super solid.

Corey 39:41

Corey, who do you got coming out of BC? Well, my list is not very different. Just the positions. And I think this is where we sort of get into those who

Carter 39:51

Yeah, I mean, my sand analogy. Yeah, right.

Carter 39:54

These people are talented people who would be able to tackle a number of different positions. So I put

Corey 39:58

put Jody Wilson-Raybould in democratic reform. I think having an aboriginal representative in that. Right, okay. You know, our problem is not just one of proportional representation. We have very low turnout rates on First Nations communities.

Corey 40:13

communities. Sure, yeah. And beyond that, there is a lack of engagement that needs to be addressed, not just at the ballot box, but in democratic institutions. I've got to tell you, that's very smart. I like that a lot. Yeah.

Corey 40:24

Yeah. Yeah, and then

Corey 40:26

then beyond that, I mean, I'd have to scan through my list. President of Treasury Board for Pamela Goldsmith-Jones. Okay. But really, that was kind of a just drop somebody in somewhere position. Okay. Yeah,

Corey 40:37

I mean, and I didn't have the last name, but Carter sounds like a solid position. It's not who I have in Veteran Affairs, but we can talk about that when

Zain 40:46

when we get to my serial. That's BC. Five from BC, four women. So, Carter, you're right. You are making up on that. And frankly, that's the only one that Trudeau has promised, which is gender parity, right? The other ones are a little bit more behind the scenes, effectively. And disclosure,

Carter 41:00

I imagine I'll have to publish this list somewhere because people aren't going to be able to remember them. Yeah.

Zain 41:06

But I'm off by one. You are off by one.

Carter 41:09

one. I am off by one. I pulled Yvonne Jones out of Newfoundland, who is a former leader of the Newfoundland Liberal Party. Right. Who served as leader of the opposition. position um i pulled her out because i i i put shamus in instead right

Corey 41:24

right okay we'll we'll get to that it's interesting the most irish name any canadian has ever had you have to put him

Carter 41:30

him in yeah okay

Zain 41:31

okay where are we going to next regionally carter where do

Carter 41:32

do you want to go newfoundland let's jump all the way over because i just started to preview it what the hell um and i only have one minister from newfoundland when i had two it was easier there are three there are in my mind there were kind of three that i could have gone to in newfoundland uh judy foot is the third one um

Carter 41:49

and I wound up going with Seamus and part of it is, I think there's a promise that's been made.

Carter 41:55

In what sense? Well, so one of the things that we do, Seamus O'Regan was one of the first people to come in as a star candidate to the Trudeau liberals. Correct.

Carter 42:03

Um, and one of the things that happens is sometimes those star candidates are recruited by promises.

Carter 42:10

If we get there, you're going to be with us, right?

Zain 42:13

We will take in care

Carter 42:14

care of it. I would be willing to bet a nickel anyways. that there was a promise made.

Carter 42:19

And they're not going to back out on that promise. And it's going to be to Yvonne Jones' detriment because I don't think you can put two ministers in from Newfoundland. Why don't

Zain 42:29

don't you think you can put two? And I'm curious as to that rationale. Well,

Carter 42:32

Well, because you've got so many in Atlantic Canada. It's seven

Corey 42:35

seven seats in a region, if you want to say Atlantic Canada, of 33. And honestly, in a country of 338, you should get 10% for the entire region. when you get down to seven seats that's that's much that's many fewer seats than uh and in modern size city cory

Corey 42:51

cory are you also at one for for um the region i'm the same one actually i thought i put seamus oregon and actually this was i thought one of my more interesting takes where

Zain 43:00

where did you put them in finance

Zain 43:04

card i don't think i got where you put

Zain 43:05

put them in by the way fisheries

Zain 43:06

fisheries and oceans the stereotypical fisheries man from newfoundland finance tell us why finance hogan well

Zain 43:14

not i guess and

Corey 43:15

and that's it that's the

Corey 43:17

no i mean no fair it's all about the messages you're wanting wanting to put out there um and this one has less to do with past experience obviously a journalist and finance people are going to say that's on but it's more about the region right newfoundland and it's and it's giving a very important economic portfolio to atlantic canada which i think probably

Corey 43:36

probably there's a justification for yeah

Carter 43:39

and so when you go back and you look then at our three in Atlanta, Canada, right?

Carter 43:43

Scott Bryson from Nova Scotia, Seamus from Newfoundland, and

Carter 43:47

and Dominic LeBlanc from New Brunswick. Right.

Carter 43:50

That's all I have. Now, the problem with that, if

Carter 43:52

if you're following along at home, those are three men from Atlanta, Canada. From the Atlanta provinces,

Carter 43:58

So, and I didn't put anyone in from PEI. I

Carter 44:03

I had PEI on my short list, but PEI, I

Carter 44:08

I can't put a guy named Bobby in. I just can't. Can't have a minister named Bobby. That's just the rule. So I left out PEI. Okay,

Zain 44:16

Okay, so let's recap where we are. We have got our locks with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 locks. And we have Alberta with 2, BC with 5, Newfoundland with 1. And we are currently at 14. So we're halfway there. Let me just count quickly. uh the women we got one two four in bc and in our locks we got freeland uh as our as our one

Zain 44:42

so four in bc plus christa freeland as part of our lock category at the top we are five out of 14 on the female side as well so just giving everyone an update as to where we are i

Carter 44:51

i will make up some ground we will go back

Carter 44:53

back and well let's just do you

Zain 44:55

you want to go there right now

Carter 44:55

now i want to do i got i want to throw in a wild card first of all i want to do manitoba let's

Zain 45:00

let's go into manitoba

Carter 45:00

manitoba can't skip Yep, Manitoba. We've got Goodale in Saskatchewan. That's the only MP, so it's easy. We have one female MP

Carter 45:07

MP in Manitoba. Marianne, I'm going to get this last name wrong. Mihichuk?

Corey 45:16

You live in Alberta. You should be better at these names. Okay,

Corey 45:20

you do it. I think it's Mihichuk, but I could

Carter 45:22

could be wrong. Okay, there you go. Maybe I'm wrong. Mihichuk. I'm

Corey 45:25

I'm probably wrong. And

Carter 45:26

And she's qualified. qualified i put her in into cabinet and i have her in human resources so i took um let me just refer back to my notes here i took human resource there's been an employment ministry and a human resources ministry human resources was during uh kretchen's time employment during harper's time so i combined those and created human resources well

Corey 45:47

well that's pretty close to me because i put her in employment okay

Corey 45:50

i didn't have them as as a fused

Zain 45:53

where are we going to next guys we got manitoba out of the way well

Carter 45:56

well we only have quebec oh i have a territorial oh

Carter 46:00

oh a territorial just

Carter 46:02

just because you cannot have a guy named hunter tutu in

Carter 46:07

in your caucus and you and not put him

Carter 46:09

him into your cabinet now tell

Zain 46:11

tell us about hunter tutu first

Carter 46:13

first nations obviously okay um that's a big deal but he's a businessman and he's been in cabinet before in the territorial governments oh prevent oh no not provincial but territorial so he has he has experience and um i thought what an interesting place to put someone again first nations uh dissent uh intergovernmental affairs intergovernmental okay right so i thought that that was i actually get i'm pretty proud of that one i think it's kind of inspired um so i like that and i'm gonna keep that one no

Corey 46:40

no i i mean i get it but i i think that being in a territorial government is i mean that's like being a i

Corey 46:48

i don't I don't know. That's a very small area. You

Carter 46:50

You were just singing

Carter 46:51

singing the praises of Amarjeet Sohi, who's

Carter 46:54

who's on a town council. He's

Corey 46:56

He's on a town council that is – his ward was twice as large as the entire territory's population.

Carter 47:02

But the territory did have to deal with issues like health care, education, big broad issues, First Nations issues, big challenges, and he is a star. Look,

Corey 47:12

Look, you've got three northern MPs. Traditionally, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development have been put together. i think it makes sense to to knock off what that ministry that combined ministry with one of those three and he was my choice for that okay

Corey 47:26

oh so you have

Zain 47:26

have him on as well yeah

Corey 47:27

yeah you do indeed okay okay so we are which by the way it's like larry bagnell would be a more obvious choice i think for cabinet so i actually thought i was being a bit out of the box but

Carter 47:35

but how do you go away from a guy named hunter tutu what

Carter 47:40

we did so i

Zain 47:41

i mean you can't you

Zain 47:42

can't it can't be done you have to go with that okay we've reached consensus so far now let's move it on to what do you want to do carter we've done well saskatchewan we've done with good ale do quebec go

Zain 47:52

go straight to quebec the big one how many do you got from quebec let's

Carter 47:55

let's uh let's see one two three four actually it was one of the things that i had a problem when i was doing my my numbers i have an imbalance between quebec and ontario so in ontario i have 10 ministers and in quebec you've got quebec i have four including the prime minister including the prime minister that's way too few

Zain 48:14

few that is way too few okay

Carter 48:15

okay well there we go well there's going to be some conflict here because it i know it's a weakness in the cabinet that i've selected yeah

Carter 48:21

um but when i look back at who i've left out of quebec um

Zain 48:25

um well first tell us who you've got in and then we'll talk about who's out and then we'll compare it with cory so tell us who you've got in let's just start there as a basic principle

Carter 48:31

principle okay who have i got in um

Carter 48:34

this one i think is easy melanie jolie from montreal she came in second Second in the mayoral race in Montreal. I have her in infrastructure because God knows if there's a place that needs infrastructure improvement, it is, in fact, the city of Montreal. I like that pick. I have Marie-Claude Bibu.

Carter 48:54

Someone with a French accent will fix that. Multiculturalism and la francophonie in something of a stereotypical pick. And we've already talked about Justin Trudeau and Marc Garneau.

Zain 49:05

Okay. So you've got Trudeau and Garneau as your other two. Yeah.

Carter 49:08

Yeah. Yeah, so do

Carter 49:09

you want me to tell you who have I left out? Yeah, might as well. I mean, Corey, is that okay with you? Yeah, I'd be curious to see because there are some pretty

Corey 49:15

pretty obvious choices there that you didn't go with. Who

Carter 49:17

Who did you leave

Carter 49:18

leave out? Because that's

Carter 49:18

that's only two people. So people are talking – well, I know. That we haven't listed. I listed – so again, we have a good friend. We have a good friend in Quebec, Steve McKinnon. Yes,

Carter 49:28

we do. Yes, we do. I had Steve in my cabinet until

Carter 49:31

until the last possible second. Well, he's in

Corey 49:33

in Metro Ottawa. That's the knock I got.

Carter 49:35

And I just can't get him there. I hope we get something like Whip, Deputy Whip, but I just couldn't get him in the cabinet. It was too hard, even though he's a buddy of ours. I then dropped off a number of women and one male, two males. So the two males are Nicola DiLorio, Italian,

Carter 49:54

Italian, Canadian, who has a tremendous popular, you know, very popular, and Stéphane Dion. dion

Carter 50:01

so dion is probably the biggest name i've left off um but to me uh

Carter 50:07

uh you know cory is talking about that eastern liberal this is the guy this is the guy who stands out to me as as as

Carter 50:16

as part of the old part of the old i mean you may as well you know reach back and start grabbing all the martin era cabinet

Corey 50:21

cabinet ministers and he's

Corey 50:23

he's got a lot of baggage it's funny you think of him as a martin narrow minister oh

Carter 50:27

oh he's really a crutch in there yeah but um and then i've left off linda lapointe

Carter 50:36

anyways i'm screwing up the last names um

Carter 50:40

bottom line i don't know them from a hole in the ground i know very little about them and

Carter 50:44

and but why did they hit your radar

Zain 50:45

radar in the first place is is

Carter 50:47

is that fair to ask when

Carter 50:48

when you go back and scan the various all the media outlets yeah so they're being touted they're being touted number one number two they were used used as kind of beacons. So people looked at them, you know, like they

Carter 51:10

They were very noticeable. And leaving them out, having, you know, these are the types of decisions that will be made. I'm probably wrong in Quebec.

Carter 51:20

I'm probably wrong insofar as at least one more woman is going to be picked from that caucus. Right. Um, it's a very strong female caucus. Well,

Zain 51:28

Well, yeah, I like to speak and I hope our listeners do chime in on this and, and tell us what they'd want from Quebec. But Corey, where, what's your Quebec stance right now? Where do you sit? So

Corey 51:35

So I have Mark Miller in public works. No.

Corey 51:38

Mark Miller in public works. Left Miller out completely.

Corey 51:41

Uh, I have Alexandra

Corey 51:42

Alexandra Mendez in, uh, a combined heritage multiculturalism in La Francophonie.

Carter 51:50

So not even, I don't even have her on my list. No,

Corey 51:52

No, she's great. uh she's uh she is a former mp so she's got some experience and uh and

Corey 51:59

and uh i think that'd be a good fit for her and who else do i've got to scan the list i have pablo rodriguez in national you kept pablo yeah he's back and

Carter 52:06

and you've kept him okay yeah

Carter 52:07

he's another one i've left out

Corey 52:09

you know and you know in the dion era he was he was one of the squeaky wheels shall we say and he's not necessarily as a result my favorite person in the world but he's a very confident guy and i think he he deserves to be back in cabinet and and we'll see where he goes from national revenue i don't think of that as a particularly great portfolio i

Carter 52:30

i mean national revenue is one of those places you put somebody you can't figure out where else yeah and

Corey 52:34

and that's that's sort of how he ended up there he was kind of you know we're bouncing by province now but that's how he ended up there now

Corey 52:40

now of course mark garneau and uh julie i had in labor you

Zain 52:44

you had her in labor okay but

Corey 52:45

but you had her on both of

Zain 52:46

of us have joey yeah

Corey 52:47

yeah well i and i think just her legal background although she was not not a labor lawyer. I wouldn't necessarily want her to be, but, you

Corey 52:52

you know, there's some negotiation and hard-nosed that needs to happen in labor that I think she would be a good friend

Carter 52:57

friend of. I like her in infrastructure for kind of the same thing. I think she can say no to people.

Zain 53:00

Okay, so tell me this. Corey, you also do not have Stéphane Dion.

Zain 53:05

Or do you? Yeah,

Corey 53:06

Yeah, well, that's... I do. Oh,

Corey 53:09

do? And he's back in environment. No! Fascinating. Okay,

Corey 53:15

-worthy in a sense.

Carter 53:15

Carter shakes fist at Corey Hogan. Or he also

Corey 53:18

also yells no very loudly he is he's in the mold of um he's

Corey 53:23

he's in the mold of our former prime minister

Corey 53:27

joe clark joe clark who who went on and was our foreign affairs minister under malrooney but

Carter 53:31

but look at what malrooney did he

Carter 53:33

he put him as far away as humanly possible from the government of canada no

Corey 53:37

no but that doesn't like there were different concerns there and there were different considerations and i don't think anybody and

Corey 53:45

and i this is a virtue of stefania on a device but But nobody is sitting there and being like, Stéphane Dion is going to try to usurp the leader and undermine the leader from inside the caucus. That's just never going to happen. He's going to be a great foot soldier on that. He has a real passion for the issue. The one knock and the reason why I almost didn't put him in there is a big one was the green shift.

Carter 54:04

Well, that's why you don't put him in there. And what message that puts

Corey 54:06

puts in there. But I think given the liberal plan of it's up to the provinces, I

Corey 54:11

kind of like Dion being there. I

Carter 54:12

I don't like it.

Zain 54:13

it. So what's our consensus in Quebec? It's not a lot, is it? we've got joe lee both of you've got yeah

Carter 54:18

yeah we uh mark arnaud and justin trudeau and justin three that we agree on and then we have you

Carter 54:23

have only have one more you

Zain 54:24

you only have one more which

Carter 54:25

which is wrong i know i know i'm

Zain 54:27

listen the goal of this is not to to have a completely solidified 28 by the end of this episode but we want to discuss the options

Zain 54:33

and the rationale so this is fine i

Carter 54:35

i would expect to see at least one more woman off of my you know and you've admitted that

Carter 54:39

yeah but i've also got a bunch of women the

Carter 54:41

the one that would come so i'd lose people out of

Carter 54:44

ontario because i've got too many ministers in ontario 10 yeah

Carter 54:48

yeah and that's too high and

Carter 54:49

and i don't know who to take out like i've got some really good names well

Carter 54:54

well maybe jane philpot okay i'll get there later we'll

Zain 54:55

we'll get there later cory anything to add finally on quebec it's it's importance it's salience this is kind of the province that was going ndp for a very very long time is there anything any other political considerations that you don't need to make here yeah this

Corey 55:08

this was the The first time Quebec went liberal in almost, well, over 30 years, I guess. The last time Quebec went liberal was 1980.

Corey 55:16

think that with that in mind, the same considerations I said about Alberta, and you have to reward people. I think I overrepresented Quebec when you divide out the numbers.

Carter 55:24

Yeah, what did you put in, six? You've got, Corey's got one,

Zain 55:26

one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, six, I believe. Yeah, so six.

Corey 55:31

So I've got Trudeau, Dion, Miller. Oh, you've got eight if you include

Zain 55:34

include Garneau and Trudeau. Yes, that's

Carter 55:36

that's right. So that's too many. No,

Corey 55:38

No, I disagree. I think there's always a special place in Confederation for Quebec. Always. And I think, if anything, the names may change, but I'll bet you there's eight ministers, including the prime minister, when this cabinet's done from Quebec.

Zain 55:52

The rationale is interesting, right? The political rationale that Trudeau needs to tend to

Zain 55:57

to Quebec. Yeah, but he's also

Carter 55:57

also throwing in a bunch of retreads.

Carter 55:59

You know, Dion, Fernandez, and Mark Miller. Rod

Carter 56:03

yeah. Yeah. What did I say? Fernandez? Rodriguez? Rodriguez. well

Corey 56:07

regionalism within quebec is something that my list didn't really address so i will not be surprised at all if my list changes dramatically yeah

Carter 56:14

yeah i mean we

Carter 56:15

mine is wrong yours

Carter 56:17

yours is more wrong uh

Carter 56:19

uh let's and with that let's move on to ontario let's

Zain 56:22

let's do it carter you have told us you've got 10 um listed

Carter 56:26

listed off a bunch

Zain 56:27

yeah lay them lay off the ones that you've have listed already at till the end who are the new ones from ontario that you you wanted to to fill us

Carter 56:34

us i think that everybody thinks that bill moreau is going to be in cabinet um again i i have him in there in industry not in finance i think that that suits his experience levels better um i mentioned uh judy's grow how do you even say that i'm just terrible on names um i have her in his house leader which we we referenced earlier what's her back do you have anything on her background well she's been in parliament

Carter 57:00

seven thousand years or something I mean, she's got, and that's why I put her in his house later. She's got experience in there.

Carter 57:09

Northern Ontario is a bit tricky. So I took Patty Hajdu instead of Bob Nault. So Bob Nault's been around forever and was Indian Affairs back when it was called Indian Affairs and not Aboriginal Affairs. I thought he suffered a lot in that portfolio and I've left him out of cabinet entirely and gone with someone, a woman, a new woman. and adam

Carter 57:31

adam vaughn we referenced briefly um

Zain 57:34

um what's vaughn come in for you at out of toronto yeah yeah

Carter 57:38

yeah citizenship and immigration just because it's so important a lot of people go to toronto right off the bat um to

Carter 57:44

to be honest fascinating rationale interest to be honest adam vaughn to me is a piece of sand really

Carter 57:50

really yeah i i mean star candidate blah blah blah very important at that that particular moment in time. Yeah.

Carter 58:02

elect too many men to balance a cabinet like this without leaving some really qualified male candidates on the sidelines, which does not imply that the female candidates that are going in are less qualified. It's just that we have 40

Carter 58:17

40 people. I had 41 people on my list of people who are qualified for cabinet and 28 spots to put them in. And I wouldn't be surprised to see Adam Bond. actually left out okay

Zain 58:28

but he's but for now he's part of your yeah

Zain 58:30

your 10 that come out of ontario i've

Carter 58:32

i've talked about andrew leslie um selena

Carter 58:35

selena caesar chavnez chavans chavans i don't know fuck i don't even care how these names are pronounced remember um when uh cory was referring to a minister of revenue yeah

Carter 58:49

uh this is our minister of revenue what's

Zain 58:51

what's her background do you what do do know on her um

Carter 58:53

i had it handy and i've lost i've kind of that's fine that's fine yeah

Zain 58:57

yeah you've got it

Carter 58:58

i mean she's a talented woman who's got a pretty decent resume i can't pull it back i'll pull it up here very quickly uh

Carter 59:04

uh and then i have navdeep baines you

Zain 59:06

you do okay yeah

Carter 59:07

yeah in labor which again for me is one of those spots where you're just putting it's

Carter 59:12

it's a cabinet minister um but you'll know that it has you know what's the difference between labor and human resources horses um two ministries to put two people uh

Carter 59:20

uh that's the difference so that's kind of where

Carter 59:23

where i went with ontario oh and i've skipped over um jane

Carter 59:29

who is a physician

Carter 59:31

and i actually did put her in health oh

Carter 59:33

oh you put a physician in health wow okay so which is i'm playing against type and i usually hate that especially

Carter 59:40

especially at the provincial level tell me why you've done it this time

Corey 59:42

time i used it as an example at the start of don't do that and i did the exact accent thing yeah

Carter 59:47

yeah did you have jane there as well i do yeah okay

Zain 59:49

okay so interesting um

Carter 59:50

um and then i have katherine mckenna as my final one i was gonna

Zain 59:53

gonna make sure um

Carter 59:53

um and she's a i

Carter 59:56

put her in transportation again whether she's in transportation or not is really irrelevant um she's a exceptionally international trade

Carter 1:00:04

yeah and she could be in an international or governmental type of position

Zain 1:00:09

but you want her on i

Carter 1:00:10

i put her in i just wanted her in and transportation was available okay

Zain 1:00:13

and then who were your your locks from ontario as well just to make sure we recap you had freeland freeland

Zain 1:00:19

leslie leslie okay added on top of that list a

Zain 1:00:23

a mouthful cory what uh what's your ontario look like right now well

Corey 1:00:27

well um i think we have some of the same people in there let's uh let me just run down my list yeah run your list and health okay uh we have of course leslie we already mentioned i have von and infrastructure i

Corey 1:00:42

i have throw in transportation really

Corey 1:00:45

now i picked toronto area for both of those because it's that's when we talk big things yeah those those are big big projects infrastructure for

Zain 1:00:52

for for von is interesting because of his affordable housing background etc

Corey 1:00:56

and um and then as we go down the list oh i have bill blair and veteran affairs oh

Zain 1:01:02

oh so bill blair is the interesting one right that's bill blair out you left bill he did and why

Carter 1:01:08

did you leave him out i think he's a controversial guy uh

Carter 1:01:11

uh and i don't think that he adds former police chief

Carter 1:01:15

having said that when i was struggling with defense it

Carter 1:01:17

it probably would have gone bill blair or

Carter 1:01:20

or john mccallum in defense i chose mccallum right

Carter 1:01:23

one of those two would be out in my cabinet making yeah

Corey 1:01:28

uh you know what to be honest bill blair was a bit of a tough one for me too because uh gender balance i uh you know the gender

Carter 1:01:35

gender and age i mean he's he's the

Corey 1:01:37

the shame of mine right now is that i am one woman short of gender balance so i

Zain 1:01:41

think carter you're significantly more than that if i'm not mistaken one off

Corey 1:01:44

off as well okay um

Zain 1:01:46

who else did you have nevdy baines part of your your cabinet yes

Corey 1:01:49

yes he was uh international

Corey 1:01:54

thought that was a good fit and you know i mean there's katherine mccann i had in international trade again that was one of those yeah

Corey 1:02:01

of it's almost a no-brainer you know the expertise but that's again we can play against type

Carter 1:02:05

type or you can play with type yeah yeah

Corey 1:02:07

the thing that the trudeau cabinet makers will have to consider of course maybe

Corey 1:02:11

maybe more than some in the past you know i think back to the cretien cabinet which i think had a lot of people who played two type the first one and that was because there was this knock against him as being you know the

Corey 1:02:23

the the the intellectual lightweight relative to some of the people, never particularly fair.

Corey 1:02:28

But if they're following that same mold of the

Corey 1:02:31

the cabinet actually has deciding power as an important, you do, you do need to think about where

Corey 1:02:36

where there's potential pressure points and make sure you have a competent person. Carter,

Zain 1:02:39

Carter, what other considerations does Trudeau need to give to Ontario right now?

Carter 1:02:43

Well, I mean, Northern Ontario, right?

Carter 1:02:44

right? We always pretend that Ontario is one big market. It's the same. And it's not, you, if you don't include someone from Northern Ontario, Ontario, you've got the same problem if you didn't include someone from Atlanta, Canada. So that's why I chose, I took my glasses off here, which is probably a big mistake.

Carter 1:03:03

Yeah. Again, it could have been her or it could have been Nault, but we've got lots of old white guys.

Zain 1:03:11

Fair enough. Where do we take it from here? I mean, this is effectively...

Carter 1:03:17

Well, now we've gone through, we've picked out our 28-person cabinet. Yeah. Right? um we both know that they're not perfect right no mine is is light in quebec cory's i think is light in ontario a little heavy in quebec how

Zain 1:03:28

how many do you have in ontario that's a good point yeah not i'm gonna have to go through i

Zain 1:03:32

by province oh gotcha okay so but you're you're a little bit you're shorter than carter on

Carter 1:03:36

on the 10 yeah so i'm like at five i'm at 10 and he's like at five right

Zain 1:03:40

you're at like he's at eight in quebec you're probably at you're at four i'm

Carter 1:03:43

i'm at four so we have these kind of these little mess we've made little messes for ourselves but this is the problem right and this is this is the process right

Carter 1:03:51

right this is the trade-offs

Corey 1:03:52

-offs that now have

Carter 1:03:53

to be honest where we would be now we'd be on day one of the cabinet making selection we would put these names up on the wall with the positions that they might want to go in and then we would have to address the ones that we left off

Carter 1:04:04

right so do you want to talk about that i want to do the ones we left off because the ones we left off are some pretty good names i've already talked about uh von jones i've talked about bob nalt uh i've talked about bill bill blair um randy

Carter 1:04:19

was you know he's wicked and he's nowhere on my on our cabinet list darshan kang is a you know been in mla for years in alberta super strong great ties to to communities uh across canada um uh

Carter 1:04:35

uh jim carr would be another one out of manitoba who's just kind of screwed by gender uh judy foot and yvonne jones i talked about in newfoundland um pei is not represented in my cabinet and bobby morrissey everybody's talking about that uh i went through the list from uh uh from quebec and really you know and then mark holland wow

Corey 1:04:56

mark holland is the one that breaks me i actually think we we have not mentioned that we need to have a speaker this is correct yeah holland

Corey 1:05:05

holland i think holland would be a great speaker that's

Carter 1:05:07

that's a great idea oh

Carter 1:05:09

oh that's a good idea

Carter 1:05:10

anyways it solves some some problems because some of these people that we've left off like steve mckinnon for me deputy whip if

Carter 1:05:15

if not the whip right he's based in ottawa he knows everybody he's been around forever well

Corey 1:05:20

well that's the other thing there's other positions deputy house leaders uh you know regional yet i don't know if you call them ministers if you're trying to keep a tight ministry but you know

Corey 1:05:29

know but they've been talking about parliamentary

Carter 1:05:31

um you're gonna see at least 15 parliamentary secretaries right which we haven't gotten into a lot

Carter 1:05:37

of people let's not

Carter 1:05:39

yeah yeah there's a lot of people on our list that we may have met we may have elevated to a cabinet minister who who may wind up and i think i think of selena caesar chauvin chauvin and he's keep trying i'm not even gonna try anymore uh or to have deep pain yeah i mean there's some really good people who might wind up as parliamentary secretary cory

Zain 1:05:59

cory who's on the outside looking in for you is there is there a few notables on your mind that you are having a had a tough time squeezing in and may have some regret leaving out i

Corey 1:06:08

i have a ton of regret about a lot of people this actually did drive home to me how how deep the bench is for trudeau yeah

Corey 1:06:15

and this is going to be a i you know normally your first cabinet's small because you've got to train people up but he's got an embarrassment of riches here there are two former national directors of the liberal party that did not make the cut oh who were those uh well greg ferguson steve mckinnon all right of And then

Corey 1:06:32

there's just great veterans and there's all sorts of people who I just don't know where they would go.

Zain 1:06:43

and professional pedigrees on

Corey 1:06:44

on both ends. Hopefully, committee chairs do get a lot more authority. And hopefully, some of these people are given committee

Corey 1:06:50

committee chairmanships with a lot of force behind them. Because it would be a real shame if they weren't also in leadership positions at this point.

Corey 1:06:59

Yeah. But I mean, what do you say? what do you do this is not going to be an easy job the gender balance will be difficult not because there's not enough qualified women but because gender

Corey 1:07:09

gender balance is always difficult when you're trading off it also is with regional balance and everything else what

Zain 1:07:13

what else do we want to talk about here do we want to talk about who might be the most senior ministers in this in this cabinet do you want to go there where do you want to go carter well

Carter 1:07:22

i think the senior ministers are actually relatively easy to predict yeah

Carter 1:07:25

right um part of them are going to be relationship i mean you go back to those big stones the

Carter 1:07:30

yeah we have you

Carter 1:07:31

you know so garneau has to be there goodale has to be there uh leslie scott bryce and dominic leblanc joy i had joyce murray but i could easily see um like

Carter 1:07:42

like a christia freeland just because of her relationship with the leader um you know these types of people bill moreau just everybody's talking about him i mean he is he and i don't know him from a hole in the ground so

Carter 1:07:56

he's got a ton of experience earlier

Corey 1:07:58

earlier drafts of my list yeah had um two

Corey 1:08:01

two deputy prime ministers both which were ministers with portfolios and they were not the same people in there and that's why it was removed in later drafts but it was deputy prime minister environment deputy prime minister economy effectively and the notion was that he was going to be sending a strong signal that both were quite important but of course this that emphasized too much the fantasy and not enough the cabinet so that's why they were removed and here we are today but there's a lot of interesting choices that he can make that we haven't even considered he

Corey 1:08:32

he is not by any means tied

Corey 1:08:35

tied to the structure that we've talked about simply because former prime ministers have done this okay whatever he wants he's prime minister designate so

Zain 1:08:41

so frankly our conclusion is this was tough number one number two an embarrassment of riches stealing your term cory holy crap right what a time to be prime Minister for Justin Trudeau. What a time to be alive. Indeed. I mean, like, seriously, he's got the opposite problem that many governments have is finding people who are competent or are able to speak articulate, have a pedigree. He's got the opposite problem going into this. And finally, tell us if you agree or disagree. Reach out to us on social media, etc. Let us know where you think we've got it totally wrong. If you are from one of the regions where you think we've given given short shrift to let us know about that um we'd be happy to to hear from you uh and especially steven who will hear from you and probably respond in hate so i love my

Zain 1:09:24

but we'll leave it there that's a wrap on episode 556 of the strategist my name is zane velgey with me as always cory hogan steven carter and we will see you next time listeners

Zain 1:09:38

listeners of the strategist podcast Remember,

Zain 1:09:41

Remember, we are on iTunes and Stitcher, so make sure you subscribe to our podcast on there. Also, we're on Twitter at StrategistPod and individually at Corey Hogan, at Carter underscore AB, and at Zane Velji. Also, our episodes are available on our website, thestrategist.ca.

Transcript