Transcript
Zain
0:03
This is The Strategist, episode 562. My name is Zain Velji, with me as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, how are you? Oh, you know, doing pretty good. How about you? Happy
Carter
0:13
Carter? Sorry, I had to get the lights. I'm feeling much better. You're good? Oh, it's my favorite episode ever! I don't know why you had to turn the lights off for
Zain
0:22
I'm a little concerned. I
Zain
0:23
Why were the lights off to begin with? That's the real question. It's
Carter
0:25
It's more romantic for when we're talking about this subject. oh my god we haven't even gotten to the subject how was
Corey
0:34
just a standard questions first mine was good i spent a lot of time thinking about how steven was thinking a lot of time about stv and proportional representation
Carter
0:42
representation i was all about stv all summer i'll break along man okay so
Zain
0:46
so like a normal person i was watching making a murder now have you guys seen that no
Corey
0:50
oh we can talk about that later but basically they released or they did not release a a lot of details that pretty much prove the guy's guilt he's guilty okay
Corey
0:57
okay well gorgeous ruins
Zain
0:58
ruins it for everyone well if you want to talk more about it you can you can tweet us uh because that's that's that was pretty much my entire break by
Corey
1:06
by the way since when is it spoilers to talk about current events that are in the news
Carter
1:10
news that are already this is true i mean this guy's actually done no
Zain
1:13
no one knew about it now
Zain
1:15
now it's coming to light and you've just ruined 10 episodes so it's
Corey
1:18
it's like world war ii don't spoil it for me the zane velgey story yeah
Zain
1:22
yeah that'd be unbelievable listen if there was a netflix documentary on world war ii and i was new to the subject matter i wouldn't want you to tell me what happened all right oh are the nazis
Carter
1:31
nazis gonna win oh
Zain
1:33
okay let's let's let's talk about this let's move it on to our first segment our first segment moving the goalposts steven carter this is your time what are we doing today late late on to people we
Carter
1:42
we are going to talk about democracy we're going to talk about how democracy works the types of democracy that are available to us what the pros and cons are of each different type and why you would choose one over the other. Because there's this kind of mythology that if you have a certain type of representation, it's going to be better than another type of representation. The proportional representation advocates are out there saying, PR will change our world. Yeah, it will change our world, but will it change it for the better? And the people who like single transferable vote, Or my favorite, the guys who love direct democracy.
Zain
2:20
favorite guys because they know that their system would be better. So Stephen, you're clearly on a high. This means a lot to you. This is your be all end all. This is your everything. I know there's probably some listeners right now being like, I don't give a shit about this. But let's tease them into it because this is an issue that matters more than just the one out of the 1400 days that you vote every four years. This is a huge, huge issue with implications politically, strategically, everywhere. Is that not true, Stephen?
Carter
2:48
Stephen? Well, I mean, I cannot remember, and Corey, you'll help me on this. I cannot remember the last time a governing party got a majority of votes.
Carter
2:55
I honestly don't know when the last time it happened in Canada was. I don't think it happened since the advent, essentially, of the NDP, and I'm not even sure that it happened before then. So we're talking at least 60 years. I mean, you
Carter
3:10
you know, Corey's busy Googling. So at some point, we'll have an answer to this question. Yeah.
Carter
3:16
we are not governed by a majority of the people when
Carter
3:19
when we are governed by a majority in government.
Carter
3:23
And that changes your outcomes. So in Alberta, we're used to majority governments where a majority gets the, you know, like oftentimes the progressive conservatives get the majority of the votes.
Carter
3:31
But in the federal level, that is not the case. It hasn't been since. Corey is silent.
Corey
3:36
1984. It actually hasn't been that. Oh, it hasn't been that long. But before that, I mean, it has been a very long time. The last election before that. So the only two times in kind of modern history have been Diefenbaker's big majority and then, of course, the big Mulroney majority. The big Mulroney win.
Corey
3:52
So only Tories can get over half the vote, apparently. So maybe they shouldn't be so concerned about proportional representation. We'll
Zain
3:58
We'll get into the models, but I want people to all be on the same page because I think that's really important. So, Corey, tease us a little bit. Give us a little bit of an understanding as to why this is a big deal. what's currently broken with the system carter told us a little bit about the majority but what else needs remedying in the current system i don't know i don't know about
Corey
4:16
about broken i mean that almost prejudges the issue but right now the liberals won an election and part of it was on a platform that included among other things that this would be the last quote first past the post election in in canadian history like we we were only going to elect first past the post one more time the liberals were pretty clear they were then going to change it to something else was Was it proportional? Was it a single transferable vote? We'll talk more about that mouthful in a minute, I'm sure. But Trudeau said, I think my preference is towards STV, single transferable vote. But it may be proportional. Who knows? And that was one of the promises that he was elected on. And if you believe that people vote for more than just hair, then you have to sort of say, OK, the liberals did say that was part of their platform. And they didn't say after a referendum. Actually, they said quite the opposite. No, this is it. This is done. This is the last election. This is going to happen. So now the conservatives are saying, murder,
Corey
5:08
murder, murder, murder. This is awful. How could you do this? We need to go to a referendum. What a bloody outrage. Well, which I think, by the way, and we can talk a bit more about this in a bit, is a little rich. First of all, internally, the conservatives elect by like a ranked ballot their leadership candidates. Yeah. It's funny. Right? So good enough for the party but not the nation. And the other thing is they tried to impose it on the nation.
Corey
5:30
We're not talking about 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 30 years ago. We're talking less than 10 years ago. the bill that was going to create Senate elections, the Senate elections were going to be by single transferable vote. Very interesting. There's no referendum on that. In fact, it was we're just putting some legislation forward. And let's see how it goes. Okay,
Zain
5:47
Okay, that's helpful. So for those who don't have the current modern day context, we've got the liberals who promised us we've got the conservatives against it. But Corey, you raised a very interesting point. I want to peel back for one second here, because you said I prejudged it when I said the system was broken. Stephen Carter, is the current first-past-the-post system broken? I
Carter
6:04
I don't think so. You don't think so? I don't think so, because ultimately what we're trying to do is, you know, what are we trying to do with democracy?
Carter
6:12
There's a sense that what we're trying to do is reflect the will of the people. But the will of the people is such that they can't project or predict what's going to happen within a four-year term. Okay.
Carter
6:23
So this idea that we're going to have a perfect democracy that represents our whims and our likes moving forward isn't the way it's supposed to work. It's supposed to work where we elect certain people, there's certain areas of conflict, and then that representative democracy works through those conflicts together.
Carter
6:42
With a majority system, we just have a far more efficient system. So
Carter
6:47
So the proper checks and balances system, which exists just to the south of us, where you've got multiple
Carter
6:53
multiple houses with multiple methodologies being elected for the presidency, the House of Representatives and
Carter
7:01
and the Senate, that
Carter
7:04
that puts checks and balances in place but doesn't make it better. I
Carter
7:07
I don't think it does. It slows things down. It surely slows things down, but it doesn't necessarily make things better. Okay, so Corey, are we going from fine to better?
Zain
7:16
better? It's not broken. Why are we here? Why are we talking about this? I'm just I want to make sure we have an understanding. I mean,
Corey
7:21
mean, I disagree with Stephen. I think he almost brushed past the, will this reflect the will? The question is not whether we're going to find the perfect reflection of will. The question is, is this the best one available to us? So again, look to the South.
Corey
7:33
They have two political parties. So the majority is also going to be your instant runoff. It's done. It just,
Corey
7:39
works that way. It's fine.
Corey
7:41
Most modern nations have more than two political parties, including Canada. Correct. Yeah. And
Corey
7:45
And most modern nations, excluding Canada and the United States and like a few outliers like the UK, elect in some way, shape or form proportionally by party or by single transferable vote as well. And you hear a lot of people derisively talk about the pizza parliaments. You know, Italy always had coalitions,
Corey
8:03
coalitions, right? Israel is obviously a famous example of this. It takes like 10 political parties to get to a majority. It's ridiculous. But there are stable versions of this as well. Germany has been ruled by a center-right coalition for a while now, which is one big party plus a couple of smaller ones they broker with. Most other nations have some way of reflecting that popular will. But I do want to say, and I just want to put this on the table right now, this is not an evolutionary thing. This is not like we will naturally end up at STV or proportional or that somehow that is the end of democratic history.
Corey
8:41
Alberta, many people don't realize, I think exclusive among the Canadian provinces, but Alberta had instant runoff in STV for most of the first part of the 20th century. We ran it from the 20s to the 50s when social credit got rid of it. We had STV in the cities, we had instant runoff in every other riding. By the way, when the Socrids got rid of it, there wasn't any damn referendum about it. They just did it. Now, part of the reason they did it quite crassly was that it was not in their favor to continue. There were a number of seats where they got the most votes on round one, but then lost. And that was a pretty obvious reason why they'd want to deal with that. However, there were some real pragmatic issues that also needed to be addressed. rest one was this was not the age of computers and instant balloting it took days to figure out who won an alberta election right
Corey
9:30
right that was very annoying the
Corey
9:33
other is that people found it confusing particularly in the cities where you were electing more than one member right because you were like there was a writing of calgary that had multiple members and and that got really weird and
Corey
9:44
and so they wanted to just streamline it simplify it they didn't want the cities voting different from rural they wanted everybody to vote in the same way dead simple mark and x go okay
Carter
9:52
okay let's be be clear there are many different ways you can elect representatives across the country right we have in in in calgary we have uh constituencies for our for our counselors but in vancouver uh those counselors are at large right
Carter
10:09
right so they represent the entire city of vancouver uh and you'll find that across the the the country where you see small ridings large ridings uh multiple members uh there was edmonton had a system where two counselors represented a single riding for a number of years yeah they've switched back to one one member per riding we
Carter
10:28
we this idea that we can have only a single system is completely wrong and i think that the voters have dealt with those different systems fairly well right
Carter
10:38
right it's not like they've gone oh i can't figure out the vancouver system because you know i have to mark eight it doesn't work for me whatever yeah yeah
Zain
10:44
yeah okay so i want to make sure we're a little bit summarized we've got the current political context that we talked about we've got the core you made a great point about the the the evolution. This isn't, you know, this isn't inevitable that we end up with one of these systems. And you've also provided some historical context. So you
Zain
11:00
you want to add something else? A little more
Corey
11:01
more is needed. This notion of proportional representation, two of our big four provinces, Ontario and BC, have thrown these to referendum. They have.
Corey
11:09
They both went down. Now, interestingly, the first time BC put it to referendum, it got like 59% of the vote, I want to say, and the government said they needed 60. And there was a certain number of like ridings it needed to happen into. The next time it went went totally down in flames as people got more more interested in it more uh more uh invested in what might happen ontario
Corey
11:30
ontario they were invested from the start and it went totally down in flames now both of those systems could be accused of being overly complicated it was like you elect these members this way these other members come in this way you have proportional but these aren't and people went their
Corey
11:44
their heads exploded and rightly so i think although a
Corey
11:47
lot of that is just this is is the first time you're hearing about it right
Corey
11:50
i mean the very system ontario rejected is used in a lot of countries and they they do just fine but i think
Corey
11:57
think that it was pretty obvious now there's two ways to look at it one is uh the charitable way that you could look at opponents of uh of a referendum like this right or sorry opponents of changing the system one is they see that
Corey
12:11
that the public will is just not there they don't want this system when we put it there it's been pretty clear so why don't we put it there put it to the question and see how people feel about it what's more fundamental than our voting system the
Corey
12:21
second though is that they've noted that uh
Corey
12:24
uh people gravitate towards this notion of uh of hesitancy they don't want necessarily to see change people's default position has proved to me the change is necessary and so they see referenda as a very easy way to kill change like this
Corey
12:39
this because they don't see it in their interest okay
Zain
12:40
okay so let's this is good this is good context that i think we've established i hope we've got some people hooked on it. Let's talk about the systems. Let's talk about what's at play. And I don't think we can do that without talking very quickly about our current system, First Past the Post. Correct, Stephen Carter? So
Carter
12:53
So First Past the Post is the current system we have at the federal level and most of the provincial and the provincial levels. And basically what it is, is the person who gets the most votes in a single riding is elected. I don't know exactly why it's called First Past the Post. It's like some sort of post that would be in the ground. But bottom line, person who's got the most votes wins. And it's a very simple democratic concept. The problem is when you have a majority versus a plurality of votes cast for you. So a large number of MLMPs this year would have had a majority of the votes cast for them, 50% plus one. But
Carter
13:26
another group of elected MPs would have had 35
Carter
13:30
35% of the vote, a plurality, the most votes, but not a full majority of the votes it's cast for them and
Corey
13:38
and then the problem is of course people argue that maybe the person who got that 35 percent was the last choice of the other 65 percent and if they'd had the chance to be like well
Corey
13:48
well if there was a runoff election right the 35 percent guy would have gotten 35 percent and lost and so the argument is is it really a good system if uh you're only getting the person who was the first choice of 35 percent but the last choice of 65 percent okay
Zain
14:03
okay so that's the the current issue with with the first past the post right carter which
Carter
14:06
which then leads us to proportional representation let's
Zain
14:09
let's get into that
Carter
14:10
sure so obviously the liberals did not get a majority of the votes uh cast this year but they did get the majority of the seats so proportional representation advocates say you know if if you get 35 percent of the vote you should get 35 percent of the seats correct
Carter
14:27
25 percent of the vote 25 percent of the seats uh five percent of the vote it seems to be the cutoff right if you're if you're if you're above five percent you get seats if you're below five percent you don't get no seats for you so the
Corey
14:39
the challenge with that particular system is you no longer have local representation there's just a big list of party members and it gets cut off where it gets cut off the other problem is somebody then has to decide who gets those seats correct and there are ways you can put it to the public but that then becomes very complicated again as they have to rank one list and then they have to go to another list And so that has led to people to start talking about maybe something that is in between them, like single transferable
Zain
15:05
transferable vote. Okay, so hold on. Before we get to STV, Stephen Carter, you were talking about some of the potential ways of selecting. I want you to talk about how messy this can get, unproportional, right? So talk to me about some of the ways of selecting who. Corey
Carter
15:17
Corey just alluded to it. It's really important.
Carter
15:21
right? So if 35% of the representatives are going to be from the Liberal Party, who
Carter
15:25
who is your representative? How do we actually choose which 35%? Now, there's three ways that I'm aware of. The first is a party list, right?
Carter
15:35
So the party actually submits a list to elections, whatever. So
Zain
15:39
So in this case, let's just assume last election, the liberal party would submit a list. And
Carter
15:42
And who's at the top of the list, right? Trudeau's the number one. So
Carter
15:46
So who's number two?
Corey
15:47
two? So if they get even one seat, Trudeau gets a seat. Right.
Carter
15:50
Who's number two? Well,
Carter
15:51
Well, this is where the politics starts to happen. Right. Number two, number three, number four, all the way down to number 308, right?
Carter
15:58
right? So you're the candidate that's listed number 308.
Carter
16:01
You're never going to get elected. Correct. Right? No one wins with 100% of the vote. Right. So you don't even have a chance. Right. So that system is very, very challenging and really puts a tremendous amount of power in the political party's hands. Very much
Carter
16:14
so, yeah. So most PR representatives or proponents say, that's not the way to do it. Okay, so we're
Carter
16:19
off with the party. We're
Carter
16:19
going to do it based on the percent, you know, who got the highest percentage of votes in their riding.
Carter
16:25
Well, this is where it gets interesting because the highest percentage of votes, is that more or less important than the person who gets the most votes? Right. So raw
Zain
16:34
number on one hand versus percentage on another. So
Zain
16:37
those are two very
Carter
16:37
very different ways of calculating how popular a particular candidate would be. And
Carter
16:42
And it changes the outcome.
Carter
16:44
And I've gone through and I've pulled out numbers in Newfoundland and Alberta just to kind of give people a sense because you
Carter
16:52
you can do it nationally, 338 ridings, or you can do it more
Carter
16:57
more locally, provincially. And I think that most advocates of PR, again, think that you should do this at a provincial level and
Carter
17:05
then you would aggregate and hope it would basically work itself out across the country.
Carter
17:10
But when you do that, let me just pick on Newfoundland for a second. If
Carter
17:14
If you were to say votes obtained, well,
Carter
17:16
well, all of a sudden McDonald gets
Carter
17:20
Whereas if you were to say percentage of the votes, McDonald's out.
Carter
17:24
Right. So suddenly the same MP would be different. And Jones jumps in percentage of the vote up
Carter
17:30
up to fourth place. But he's seventh place, or she's seventh place.
Carter
17:37
yeah. If she's in the, if it's percentage. I
Corey
17:39
I absolutely love where you're going to go with the Alberta example, because I know at least one name who is out, who would have been in under a system like that.
Carter
17:49
you're uh david you're digga right
Carter
17:51
right got 60 of the vote in
Carter
17:56
in alberta here in fort mcmurray yeah
Carter
17:58
but if you went on number of votes he's
Zain
18:02
he's out he doesn't
Carter
18:02
doesn't even make the cut 60 of the votes in fort mcmurray but because fort mcmurray doesn't tend to vote very much on a perv on an on an absolute number raw number of votes
Carter
18:11
he's out if you look at um in
Carter
18:14
in fact when you go through and you do the the whole thing based on the numbers there are so many anomalies right matt grant matt
Carter
18:23
matt grant would be under both the percentage of votes received and the number and the number of votes received in both scenarios matt grant wins and he's in first he's the first liberal in he's not currently an mp because
Carter
18:37
because he lost by a thousand votes
Zain
18:39
Okay. So hold on. We talked about number one, party list, riddled with issues. We tossed that out. Number two, where does the public stand on this particular percentage and number? I don't want to move ahead. Carter, you wanted to add something. Well,
Carter
18:53
Well, again, I mean, they seem to think that if you just do proportional representation, the problems solve themselves. Another example from Newfoundland. Sure. Give us one more. Um, Cleary got
Carter
19:03
got 16,500 votes or 37.7% of the vote. He's an NDP candidate. Wouldn't have gotten in. Right. Would not have gotten in. Um, however, O'Brien from the conservatives only got 18% of the vote.
Carter
19:18
6,500 votes would have been elected. Right.
Carter
19:21
Right. So Cleary gets 10,000 more votes and is out.
Carter
19:26
Right. Right. Best yet, Scott Andrews, who runs with a no affiliation.
Carter
19:31
gets 7,500 votes and
Carter
19:35
But O'Brien, with only 6,500 votes, is in.
Carter
19:38
So your representative, if you're from Newfoundland, is
Carter
19:42
is nowhere near a
Carter
19:44
a person that you think is popular or a person that you think should be representing you. Instead, it's just someone who happened to be the top of some sort of arbitrary list. And
Corey
19:53
And that's the arbitrariness, right? That should cause concern on that front. You just don't know, and there's just too many X factors and variables where ultimately it feels almost random who your representative is and why and i think that's one of the things that detractors of pr in this system point to like this is a little nuts um and
Corey
20:11
and you can argue maybe it's better maybe it's worse but it's it's more opaque yeah
Corey
20:15
you start talking about democracy and i think already people have a problem uh associating my vote led to action x if your vote doesn't
Corey
20:24
doesn't even lead to candidate with most votes winning i i mean it's It's very easy to get confused, detached, cynical about the system. Right.
Carter
20:31
Right. And it also is very biased urban to rural, depending on which one of those options you chose. Right. Right? Because if you were to choose rural, then
Carter
20:40
then you have to go by percent. Because if you go by raw numbers, rural ridings are always smaller.
Carter
20:46
But then you're favoring rural because it already got smaller ridings. Yeah.
Carter
20:52
And now they're more likely to elect their MPs. So
Zain
20:55
So I'll talk about the present-day political strategy and political context in a second, but Trudeau hasn't favored
Zain
21:01
favored or necessarily said that this is a system he would be willing to go to, correct? Well,
Carter
21:04
Well, I think that the people who seem to be most interested in proportional representation almost feel like Green Party members. Interesting.
Carter
21:11
Which I think is hilarious because the Green Party, if you went with this particular system with a 5% cutoff, the only province in which they would actually get seats is British Columbia. And they would go from one seat in British Columbia to three seats in British Columbia. So for all their advocacy, the proportional representation would give them. It
Carter
21:31
takes them from one to three. And the party it does the best work for is the Bloc Québécois, which goes from 10 to 19.
Zain
21:41
effectively doubling right which
Carter
21:42
which which shows us another problem and that is the regionalization of parties right we will see a regionalization of parties if this system existed there would be no merger between the conservative progressive conservatives and the reform party because each one of them would have such big blocks of voting power within their regions that they would have to stay together or
Carter
22:04
or stay apart right
Corey
22:05
right so there is other ways that you can do pr i think we should it not to and one of them is is like effectively voting on the party list at the same time as you vote for the party and
Corey
22:16
that by the way is how the liberals ran their last delegated leadership convention in 2006 how they elected delegates because think about delegates as members of political parties being uh you know the the person they're running under so
Corey
22:30
example in those heady days 2006 i was a stefan dion delegate i was running as one so stefan dion after it's all said and done uh
Corey
22:38
gets 40 of the votes in calgary center meaning
Corey
22:41
i think at the time that there were four or five delegate seats available to stefan and
Corey
22:46
so then you go to the list and you start looking at who has the most votes as an individual under the stefan dion list and you go down that way and what and layering by the way the liberals having like age requirements gender requirements all of that stuff it was a nightmare but it's a nightmare regardless because Because then you have very strange things happening, like members of one political party voting on the party side for their member, but on the list of the opponent's side, making the members that are most like their members higher on the list. So let me put it this way. Yeah, yeah.
Corey
23:18
Simplify it to the American example, Republicans, Democrats. You'd have them voting Republican, and then for the most right-wing Democrats. So they sort of salt the earth on the other side as they go along.
Carter
23:28
Yeah, it's a gong show. I mean, you could do this with computerized voting and computerized tabulations. So it's not the end of the world for counting, right?
Carter
23:37
right? We're in a world where we could count this relatively easily, but
Carter
23:41
but it's still a gong show.
Corey
23:42
And you have no local representative. Right.
Zain
23:45
Right. That problem remains regardless of who you choose, correct? You could see,
Carter
23:50
I mean, in a situation like what I'm talking about in Newfoundland, you could see two
Carter
23:56
two or three people
Carter
23:59
people being elected, or two people for sure, being elected from the same region and
Carter
24:03
and a riding being completely left out. Right.
Carter
24:06
Right. And you'll see that in the Alberta example. You do see that time and time again where the liberal and a conservative from the same area are getting elected and tons of ridings are
Carter
24:16
are being completely underrepresented. So
Corey
24:18
So PR, because of its complication, in fact, leads to a certain gamesmanship. When I talk about that same election in 2006 for delegates for the Liberal Convention, it was a very conscious decision of the Dion camp that we knew Dryden was going to get one vote in Calgary Centre. So we made sure at the top of the Dryden list was somebody who on second ballot would go to Dion, not
Corey
24:42
not to one of the other candidates.
Corey
24:44
And when you start playing those games and being a bit Machiavellian about it, it leads to a deeper mistrust, I think, of the system than people right now are fully considering. Right? I mean, as much as you say, hey, look, that guy only got 35% of the vote.
Corey
24:58
I feel disenfranchised. I was in the 65% who didn't vote for them. The fact of the matter is, you know, the person with the most votes won.
Zain
25:06
means something. thing it
Zain
25:07
okay i want to move it on to single transferable also known as the ranked balloting but before that i i want to kind of capstone proportional in a sense steven carter in your mind is this an upgrade from where we are in first pass to post because we've talked about the issues there but where do we stand with all the issues we just talked about with proportion i think it's a significant
Carter
25:25
significant downgrade i think however interesting and you're okay however significant downgrade here's a caveat to go ahead if we were to have an elected senate i would be a very large proportional representation advocate for the senate
Corey
25:37
i i don't know how you come to that conclusion yeah i'm that's
Zain
25:40
that's a can of worms
Carter
25:41
right now the balance of the check and the balance between so not identical system between the two the two well i
Corey
25:47
i will i'll say this in your defense even though i think it's a crazy idea thank
Corey
25:51
there is not really any point in electing two houses the exact same way they're either superfluous or they're one of them's wrong right so uh there's just not really any reason to to do that and and so for that reason yeah maybe you should consider a different voting system for the upper house if you're going to elect the upper house the
Corey
26:08
the the basic problem you asked me about yeah
Corey
26:11
but i'm going to give you my opinion no no i
Corey
26:13
i want i want to hear it is it just doesn't work in a country like canada we talked about urban rural we have different provinces we have all of these considerations uh a country like israel you can drive across in a day right
Corey
26:23
what is a local representative in israel there
Corey
26:26
there certainly such a thing exists but it's a very different concept uh when you start talking about pr and party lists and the notion you may be represented by somebody who's who lives hundreds of kilometers you know the essentially the equivalent of the distance across europe from you right
Corey
26:39
uh if you want to put it in a context like that like we have big provinces even if you start making them smaller they are sparsely populated and you're still going to have situations where you have somebody in a population center representing somebody who lives 500 kilometers away right
Corey
26:56
very problematic in a nation constructed the way canada is constructed i
Zain
27:01
i like that answer let's move it on to single transferable cory i'll go back to you on this you because you because you were the one who kind of introduced it with the alberta context so carry us through that give us an understanding of single transferable as as one of the systems yeah
Corey
27:13
yeah i mean let's let's talk about the two forms one is that you can have multi uh member writings which you can really do in almost any system you can even do that in first past the post the two people with the most votes go right but it's
Corey
27:25
it's been used in the past in alberta in in that you rank the ballots but there are multiple winners and and that can be complicated so let's just move that aside for a second because when
Corey
27:35
when most people table that first transferable in this country what they tend to be talking about is the notion of a ranked ballot right
Corey
27:42
which is pretty simple one
Corey
27:43
one for your first choice two for your second choice three for your third choice if your first choice is off uh
Corey
27:49
uh but nobody has a majority of first choice votes your second choice votes get reallocated and you see if that pushes anybody to a majority right
Corey
27:56
right opponents say nice things like that
Corey
27:59
that all of a sudden leads to uh politicians who have to be more affable friendly uh they have to not be so aggressive because you need all those second choice votes and certainly you've seen that play out in leadership contests across political parties being
Zain
28:11
being in number two steven carter do you want to talk to us eventually about that i'll jump in
Corey
28:15
but the other side is because you're always trying to be friendly with everybody it It pulls every single party towards the middle. You stop seeing bold positions because bold positions mean you are on the other side of other people and they'll just gang up on you. Right. So there is something to be said in a democracy for ideas. I think – is that fair to say? I mean I don't think that's an outrageous concept. And having a way that somebody can put forward ideas like that boldly without absolutely hanging themselves is maybe not something we want to totally dissuade. Now, I actually happen to like instant runoff a fair bit because I do think that it solves the problem of local representation. You're still electing a local candidate.
Carter
28:56
your people, one of your candidates in your
Corey
28:57
your riding will win. And two,
Corey
29:00
two, it does mean that at the end of the day, the majority of people at some point will have begrudgingly accepted this candidate in one way, shape, or
Corey
29:10
But there are drawbacks. Stephen
Zain
29:11
Stephen Carter, before you get into your anecdotes here, tell us what your take on single transferable is. Corey, you gave great context. Any other color you want to add to that? Well,
Carter
29:20
Well, the idea that we want to get to a place where the majority of people have spoken to choose our representative is partially valid because, you know, right now you feel like your vote is either it is for the winner or it is a waste. And in fact, you see a large number of people who vote for who they perceive to be the winner. And I'm not sure. I think that single transferable vote will cloud how that will work better. You know, like we won't necessarily know who the winner is going to be in any particular riding because it's not necessarily going to be clear from our polling structures. Now, we've been polling on second choice, third choice for a long, long time.
Carter
29:58
And it's not as simple as one would think it is. Right. It is not, oh, well, you're a conservative. Your second choice could never be New Democrat. Right. In fact, we see a tremendous amount of times a green person will have a second choice of conservative or a Democrat will choose the conservative or the conservative will choose a new Democrat because at a local level, you may know these people and it changes your outcomes and it changes your choice. People
Corey
30:26
People are complicated. It's not so easy to say. And I think that anybody, A, any liberal who thinks this solves their electoral problems for a generation, think
Corey
30:34
think again. B, anybody who thinks this gives the liberals the elections for a generation, think again. Because there have been elections in the not distant past where the new Democrat voters and conservative voters have ganged up on the liberals. Think Paul Martin. But I would also say this.
Corey
30:49
People who say everybody's
Corey
30:51
everybody's invested and it's a majority will, I think you really have to be realistic about this. How invested are you in your second choice? And the answer is it's a significant drop off from your first choice. And you may even be making some of those second choice votes in a gamesmanship way, again, like PR. Right.
Carter
31:05
Right. Well, so let me jump in there and I'll talk about gamesmanship in a second. Yeah. My my personal experience with a single transferable vote.
Carter
31:12
The second ballot in
Carter
31:14
in the progressive conservative leadership in 2011 was
Carter
31:18
was a single transferable vote. There were three candidates running. You indicated your first and second choices. Obviously, your third choice was whoever was left on the ballot. And that would
Carter
31:27
would dictate who was going to win. Man, we
Carter
31:30
we were able to gang up on Gary Maher. He had the most votes going into that ballot, but
Carter
31:36
but we were able to bring in Doug Horner's votes, who is in third place.
Carter
31:41
We'd asked him to endorse us.
Zain
31:44
You made a plea. We made a
Carter
31:45
a plea for him to endorse us, and he didn't.
Carter
31:48
He would not endorse either Gary Maher or Alison Redford.
Carter
31:52
So instead, Alison Redford endorsed him.
Corey
31:55
Which was a good move. Which
Carter
31:56
Which was a move that said, we like Doug Horner a lot, and the Doug Horner supporters said, oh,
Carter
32:02
oh, you like Doug Horner? We like him too. We'll vote for you on your second ballot. Now, the gamesmanship piece is an interesting element. Because a large number of people didn't
Carter
32:12
didn't vote, didn't pick a number two choice, which especially the Gary Maher supporters, when you kind of look back at the ballots, they
Carter
32:19
were only choosing their number one and they were not thinking about a number two. So the idea
Carter
32:25
idea that you're just going to get to a majority, not
Carter
32:27
not necessarily true. What you're going to do is you're going to reduce the number of people kind of having their ballots counted and that's how you get to your majority. Yeah, that's
Corey
32:33
that's a great point. And in fact, when you looked at conservatives and who their second choice was in the last election, near the end of the election, there was no second choice for most of the, not most, but a strong chunk of the conservative voters. It
Carter
32:45
It was conservatives or bust.
Corey
32:47
On that note, the
Corey
32:49
the nice thing about STV is it is backwards compatible, right? So you can rank them one, two, three, or you could say, no, I'm going to vote the old way. I'm going to put an X next to my candidate. And that's just saying that's my first and only choice.
Carter
33:00
First and only choice. So you don't actually have to participate in STV completely. You can participate as just a superficial, I'm only going to choose my first choice candidate.
Carter
33:09
Or let's say that there's four or five candidates. You may go one and two. You
Carter
33:13
You don't have to go through and rank them all.
Carter
33:17
people who seem to think that this is a cure
Carter
33:20
cure for everything, I mean, it is, or the people will get confused. You don't have to be confused. This isn't confusing.
Carter
33:27
Pick the candidates you like, mark an X beside their name or a one or a two or a three, and you're done. Okay. Okay. So,
Zain
33:33
So, well, let's tie the bow a little bit. This system, is it fair to say, is the one that now Trudeau hasn't tipped his hand, is the one that he's considered the most broadly in terms of implementation, Corey? Yeah,
Corey
33:44
Yeah, I think so. I mean, his comments in the election were certainly along the lines of, I haven't prejudged, but that's basically what I think.
Carter
33:51
think. I think it's probably a little bit of a bastardized version of it called an instant runoff,
Carter
33:55
which is the only two people who go forward are the top two candidates. Now, in a three-party system uh which is you know i mean the green party people will will call and yell at me here in a second but essentially we have a three-party system yeah
Carter
34:08
um in a three-party system it
Carter
34:10
it is always instant runoff because the third party person falls off right
Carter
34:14
but when you're dealing with black quebec wine green and independence you may have six people everybody
Carter
34:19
everybody but the top two are dropped off in an instant runoff right
Carter
34:24
and then all of their second choices count okay
Zain
34:26
okay so So here's where we stand today. We've got these systems on the table. We've got some background context. And now the controversy erupts in the political world. People are saying, how dare the liberals with 40% of the vote just make this happen? And that's where we get into people wanting a referendum, which in its own right, in a very meta fashion, is direct democracy. So people want direct democracy to choose their system, with direct democracy not being one of the popular choices on the table well i
Corey
34:57
i mean and so let's talk
Zain
34:58
talk about where we stand today i
Corey
35:00
mean people always see and again this is this kind of sense that we're always ending up in somewhere or the history marches in a direction but they see direct democracy is the best purest form
Corey
35:09
form of democracy right yeah just get everybody to decide no representative straight to the bottom and i say i use bottom purposely because the problem with it is explain that explain that Most issues are – listen,
Corey
35:21
listen, do you think that the best law is direct law, like cut out the lawyers? I mean the reason we hire representatives to do things is that they have the time and inclination and skill set to do those things. They can go through and consider the nuances. They can spend their days meeting with people to think about the other side. On your behalf. That's right. On your behalf. And this is somebody you put your trust into. Yeah.
Corey
35:42
And that to me is a pretty good system. Direct democracy is, of course, famous for referenda, right? Yeah. uh plebiscites on whether it be anything from uh fluoride to should quebec be a sovereign nation after you know that incredibly long crazy question but
Corey
36:00
but incredibly long crazy questions is the problem you can game a question i mean steven how many times have we done a poll where we have asked a question five different ways and gotten five different responses based on what
Carter
36:12
what you wanted to
Carter
36:12
how you craft the question dictates the results pollsters know this uh we know this as political uh operatives um i think anybody who's ever worked in marketing knows this yeah
Carter
36:23
yeah um so you craft a question to get the result that you want and
Carter
36:28
that's just the way it goes right
Corey
36:30
that's well somebody picks the question and so there are a lot of great examples in canadian history of people picking the question and either changing the result or coming damn close 95 in quebec yeah obviously a great example we were within just a few votes of this country ceasing to exist at least as we know it today uh but newfoundland when newfoundland joined confederation by the way also a runoff election uh pretty fun but it was gamed in such a way that they they
Corey
36:56
they narrowed the options right they had two rounds of balance so the options were join canada become a republic or continue being a commonwealth and so
Corey
37:04
so by playing those games someone has to set up the balloting right and they've got their thumb on the scale so direct democracy is not as clean as everybody thinks and it really kind of bothers me when when people say, like, that's the purest form of democracy. In fact, that is the most gameable form of democracy.
Zain
37:20
Okay, so why – let's tether this to today. Why on this issue are individuals who may see that first past the post is a system that might be riddled with a few issues? Despite that, why is there such a large call for referendum to be the solution to figuring out which voting system we go towards, Stephen?
Carter
37:39
Referendum tends not to approve these things. right
Carter
37:42
right the reason they want to go to a referendum is
Carter
37:45
is that it's the only way to stop it
Carter
37:47
right and i think right now the conservative party views uh single transferable vote or any change in the system as a way that they will actually lose seats so cory talked about this
Carter
37:57
this in a sense in my world that's not actually what's going to happen but that's fine uh
Carter
38:01
uh i think that they're wrong i think that you know ganging up on the government is still the big sport and so this may in fact turn out to be a real bad thing for governments they may it'll make Make them less stable. Less stable and they're not going to last much more. But people forget. I mean this is the government. The Conservative Party was the group of people who last changed democracy for us. Sure, they didn't change the way that we voted but they brought in the Fair Elections Act which had significant changes in terms of the way that voting happened. One thing that happened was that we suddenly could broadcast the results across Canada. Correct. In real time. British Columbia, all
Carter
38:36
all of a sudden ridings that were leaning New Democrat, the very last ballots that were cast when it appeared like it was going to be a large liberal majority, all flipped into liberal, right? That happened in BC because they could see what was happening in the east. Now, one could argue this is the real world, blah, blah, blah.
Carter
38:54
Yeah, but when it happened on Twitter, it didn't – in the previous elections, it didn't change the outcome. come yeah
Corey
39:00
yeah like i think that people need to understand the
Corey
39:03
the concept of democracy is not synonymous with the concept of voting right
Corey
39:07
we make that pretty clear democracy includes more than just marking an x we are not voting on democracy we we pass changes to democracy all the time the fair elections act had hundreds of changes yeah
Corey
39:18
it was rammed through parliament there wasn't even debate in parliament on this and uh the conservatives were just fine with that you talk about wanting to change the pure fundamentals of a democracy talk about fundraising laws eliminating corporate donations shook the earth in a way perhaps that stv will not to be honest yeah
Corey
39:36
and and like but we're fine with those there's however this sense you ask why this is such a big deal yeah it's because at the end of the day as much as i said just said all that people do feel that democracy is synonymous with voting and
Corey
39:50
and that and that makes it seem sacrosanct like Like you can't change that without their blessing or their permission or consent. So
Zain
39:56
So do opponents of, you know, just having the liberals change this system, you know, and in 18 months we've got a bill passed and next election we're voting in a different way. Do opponents of that who are calling for a referendum have any other leg to stand on other than politics, Carter? The constitutional argument is there on this one that they're trying to make, that this is a constitutional change. And for that, we need to ask the people directly. I don't want to simplify their argument. I want to give them at least some credence potentially.
Carter
40:23
Let's look at what governments are elected to do.
Carter
40:25
Governments are elected to go in and do and to govern, to actually make changes. We make all kinds of changes all the time that impact people far more than
Carter
40:34
than this particular type of democratic change, right? The taxation changes that were brought in. This
Carter
40:39
This system, at the very least, was something that was campaigned on, right?
Carter
40:43
At the very least. There have been many changes brought in by many, many different governments that weren't campaigned on. For example, the Fair Elections Act, not
Carter
40:53
not something that was campaigned on by the conservatives. The bringing in of the
Carter
40:59
the budgets, the omnibus budgets, not
Carter
41:02
not campaigned on. It was a tremendous disservice to democracy, but they just did it. They didn't campaign on it. They didn't tell us they were going to do it. They just did it. The
Corey
41:12
problem is it seems academic to some people, right? People see this as the err change. Like all of those other changes you've talked about come from the system we have and that system is fundamentally rooted in casting a ballot, right? And that is fundamentally the problem the liberals have right now. Now, it is seen as, I mean, on its face, it's a very reasonable argument by opponents. Yeah. Like, you know, they say, look, you got 40% of the vote. You're talking about changing how 100% of votes are cast going forward. And I get that. And I actually think that there's some legitimacy to that point of view. I think, however, there are a great number of people abusing that legitimate concern for equally selfish aims,
Corey
41:50
They see this not because they're great defenders of first past the post. The conservatives don't give a shit. about first past the post and frankly if tomorrow first past the post or stv was the system that guaranteed their democracy uh would lead to their election they'd be okay so
Zain
42:06
so this is great cory's opened the door to strategy steven if you are the conservatives right now you see your your lifeline as being referenda as one end do you suggest that they keep on hammering that if you were advising them today what do you tell them to do what do you tell them to keep their hopes Because you guys have both alluded to the fact that STV may not mean their ultimate demise. You guys have both said that, you know, think again, this is not the progressive solution of voting. But in that sense, Carter, what do you tell them? Someone
Carter
42:34
Someone tweeted at me when I was kind of like tweeting
Carter
42:37
tweeting about how the conservatives were losing their minds on this and I was confused by it. Someone tweeted at me that said the liberals were elected to govern and
Carter
42:46
the conservatives were elected to oppose.
Carter
42:49
And there's a certain truth to that. So I think that in terms of what the conservatives are supposed to do in this particular moment, it is probably to oppose this. I think that opposing it by suggesting a referendum is opposing it without putting forth the actual arguments. What they should be doing, if I was advising them, I
Carter
43:11
I would do what we just talked about in this podcast, which is what are the pros and cons of the various systems, right? What are the best things? I mean, should it be STV or should it be an instant runoff? So search someone who winds up in third place, stay on the ballot, and
Carter
43:29
and maybe get elected, a la Stéphane Dion, a
Carter
43:33
a la Ed Stelmach, who both of them had STV runoffs and both of them went from third to first. Or
Carter
43:39
Or should we have an instant runoff, which essentially was what Alison Redford had, where the top two candidates were held on and Alison wound up winning from second place. Yeah, and in 2006,
Corey
43:50
2006, in a parallel universe with instant runoff instead of STV, the liberals pick either Bob Ray or Michael Ignatyev, probably Bob Ray based on the way things unfolded there as they went out. So
Corey
43:59
So as far as the conservatives, and that's fine, and the job of opposition is to oppose, and I'm not suggesting for a minute that they shouldn't. I'm saying that maybe we all need to take a deep breath and be a little careful about how both
Corey
44:13
both discussion in favor and in opposition to this unfolds. because ultimately we're risking undermining the legitimacy of the system right if if we say this is a travesty any election that is elected under stv is illegitimate even
Corey
44:26
even if it's the conservatives who win the next election do we not have a problem at that point i
Corey
44:30
i think we need
Corey
44:30
to i think we need to dial down the rhetoric and just be like look we can disagree about the importance of different things we can talk about how it's best to be implemented from a process standpoint but ultimately all of these systems are going to result in something that's a democracy correct
Carter
44:44
correct Going back to the crux of your question, which is what would we advise? I think that Corey and I both come down on the side of we should be a pragmatic opposition that was trying to make things better as opposed to a wild rose conservative style of opposition, which is just trying to oppose. And they ramp up rhetoric and they push things to the highest heights of negativity when really what they should be trying to do is show us that they in fact are an opposition party that is the government in waiting. And that to me is where the best opposition parties come from. Let's
Zain
45:17
Let's talk about another party on the other side that isn't the liberals. This is the NDP, right? Right. So they're sitting here. I'm just looking at some comparatives from this election. If we had proportional, they would be plus 24. if we had another system i think that the values that they maybe could have gained in this system they're sitting here right now quietly
Zain
45:36
cory hogan what do you tell what do you tell the ndp to to advocate or what do you in this
Corey
45:40
this situation vote your conscience i don't know if the ndp can go wrong on this one i think
Zain
45:44
think there are reasonable
Corey
45:45
reasonable arguments on both sides one of the things that was inescapable when you review the election at
Corey
45:50
at the last election and the polling going into it is there was a point where the new democrats got too far behind the liberals and everybody race to the liberals that
Corey
45:58
probably wouldn't have happened in say a single transferable vote system because you could have stuck with your first choice you could have voted your heart you could have voted ndp and had your liberals as your fallback yeah
Corey
46:07
i think that people look at it to in too facile a sense right because voters make these decisions as they're going along that's not to say the people who voted uh liberal would have for sure voted liberal maybe under a system that was more proportional they would have voted ndp on the other hand uh there is a party on the right and maybe it's an easier path for them to get to the liberals just as – like maybe the liberals are best positioned in a system like that. Just be thoughtful about it. Think about it. I don't know if the NDP necessarily lose in either system. I mean I think there's reasons that both of them could work for them. They just have to decide what kind of party to be. I
Zain
46:43
I like what Corey's got. I wish we could do a whole episode on how you would change the nuances of campaigning with each of these systems because there are nuanced changes that you make in strategy, right? The NDP can
Corey
46:53
can be a far more left-wing NDP under first-past-the-post. Right.
Corey
46:56
Right. That's just a reality of how a single transferable vote and instant runoff yanks everyone to the middle. They can choose their spot. Yeah, but they already chose
Carter
47:02
chose to jump to the middle in the last election anyway. So
Corey
47:05
So that's kind of my counterpoint, right? Right. They'll be fine under STV if they're willing to be a centrist party anyhow.
Zain
47:11
Carter, what do you advise the NDP? Any words of wisdom? Corey had some interesting ones. Anything you want to add? I
Carter
47:15
I would advise them to try and not appear self-serving, right?
Carter
47:18
right? The reason that they like the proportional representation before is because they knew that there'd be a lot of minority parliaments where the NDP would essentially be the swing vote. And that is self-serving. And I think that Canadian voters and Canadians understand when parties are simply trying to do something that is self-serving to them. The liberals would be well advised not to choose a system that is tremendously self-serving. And the New Democrats would be well advised not to push a self-serving agenda as well.
Zain
47:48
Okay. Finally, let's just talk quickly about the strategy for the liberals. Corey, if you're them right now, do you power through? Is there any nuances in strategy that you change? You've got a minister for democratic reform. All these are the current state of affairs. What
Zain
48:00
What do you do? I
Corey
48:01
I think there are innovative
Corey
48:02
innovative ways to deal with this. I think that maybe, okay,
Corey
48:07
okay, there's two paths I would take. One is I don't take a referendum, and there are many other reforms, and I try to make it about a bundle of things that people had no interest or expectation to vote on, including online voting and whatnot, and you bring them all in, and you make it clear this is just like a big overhaul. An
Corey
48:24
sorts. Well, yeah. I mean, ultimately, then it becomes a question of, we
Corey
48:27
we can't vote on all of it. We've done omnibus election reform. There is a precedent of this. The Conservatives kind of set it. And you make it a smaller part of a bundle. And
Corey
48:34
And the bundle as a whole looks like something Parliament can vote on.
Corey
48:38
Maybe a little counterintuitive. yeah
Zain
48:39
yeah the other interesting the
Corey
48:40
the other option is the opposite you
Corey
48:43
have a bunch of things that go to referendum you take the heat off stv you you put some more extreme examples out there more extreme changes that are going to be voted on and the natural canadian inclination of moderation will say like stv like changing the voting system to stv is a change i can get behind but this radical restructuring of how parliamentarians
Corey
49:02
parliamentarians are chosen or something else that's on there they won't and and they will try to naturally balance things and they'll put stv forward Oh,
Zain
49:08
Oh, so you haven't entirely closed the door on referendum as one of your options, strategic options.
Corey
49:13
options. No, I actually think a referendum is a great way to kick a ball, right? Like governments do it when they're candidly
Corey
49:20
candidly cowardly, right? Yeah. When they're like, oh, God, I'm going to be hung no matter what I choose here.
Corey
49:24
So you have, for example, in Canada, you
Corey
49:29
you know, things that are unpopular politically with certain groups that you're just like, oh, we'll go to a referendum. Like that way there's no risk whatsoever. over i think fluoride in particular on that one because that's a no win because everybody is screaming for both sides on that issue and so uh municipalities everywhere like that's your decision calgary you make
Zain
49:47
it happen yeah you
Corey
49:48
you you figure it out and i'm not going to lose my seat over this steven
Zain
49:51
steven the liberal strategy cory leaves the door open on referendum which i found fascinating and interesting where are you at what do you suggest to the liberals right now how do they move this forward i
Carter
50:01
i would look at doing some of the really interesting consultation elements that have been done before. I mean, the citizen panels that were created in British Columbia as kind of some of their work up to the electoral reform, I just don't like the idea of ending with a referendum.
Carter
50:16
do a consultative process, do a true consultative process, and then show us what comes out at the end.
Carter
50:22
None of these systems are going to guarantee that you're going to be in power for 50 years. None of them are going to guarantee that you're going to be out of power for 50 years um proportional representation is probably the worst um but you know even
Carter
50:36
even then you can you could manufacture it so that it could work final
Corey
50:38
final word i mean if i'm the liberals realistically do i care i mean i just won an election or first past the post i won 70 of 100 years in the 20th century under first past the post why why does anybody think that the liberals changing the system is to the advantage of the liberals the system has served the liberals better than any political party like let's just be very realistic about this and so in that same sense saying if it goes down in a referendum i'm
Corey
51:06
i'm like all right that's fine i'm just going to go back to winning elections the way i always have i mean like this is not a win or die they
Carter
51:14
they don't call it the natural governing party for no reason okay
Zain
51:16
okay well we will leave it there controversial topic a lot of voices to be heard on it and it's in the zeitgeist right now so if you want to talk to us about it you should tweet us and we will uh we'll we'll get back to you hopefully right no maybe maybe okay well cory's a maybe let's move it on our over under our lightning round our in and out guys are you ready yes okay so independent mla deborah drever has been the subject of you're in alberta has been the subject of a lot of assault recently in terms of just getting you know a whole bunch of vitriol thrown at her She gave a recent interview to Don Braid explaining her past. This week, are you in or out on her, Corey?
Zain
51:55
didn't read the interview. Maybe
Corey
51:56
Maybe I should have. But I think in general, she's done some good work. But I'm going to keep my toe on the line. I don't know. She's still got to prove a little. She's done everything she should have done after she was kicked out of the NDP caucus.
Corey
52:10
I don't know if there's not another shoe to drop with her still, though. I mean, I just think that, like, I want assurances that this is it. There are no other pictures. There's nothing. Stephen Carter, you're smiling.
Carter
52:20
I think they did a good job cleaning her up. This is a paper candidate that should never have been elected. We've seen these people elected. The NDP, the orange wave in the last federal election, or I guess two federal elections ago. We saw this before. We've seen it where people put their name on a ballot not expecting to win, and then they win. Sometimes they turn into great MPs like Ruth Ellen Brousseau, and other times they turn into Deborah Drever. Corey,
Corey
52:47
Corey, you wanted to quickly add? I mean, I think I'm not trying to diminish what she's done at all. She has done very well. But I'll tell you right now, I'm still – this
Corey
52:57
this whole situation is just a little fuzzy for me still. And I just – I don't know. I don't know if I'm in or out.
Zain
53:04
The political – the media party has a permanent leader for power in politics, Rosie Barton. She's taken over power in politics. Scale of 1 to 10, what do we think? She
Carter
53:12
stepped in wonderfully. I still love Evan. I'll just say it. I thought he was excellent. But Rosie is an admirable replacement.
Corey
53:22
She's never had me on her show, so I'm going to get
Corey
53:24
get it. I've been on exactly one
Zain
53:29
Yeah, okay. Yes or no? Yes or no? Oregon militia, terrorists, yes or no? Are they terrorists? Terrorists, yes.
Zain
53:37
Corey because he's been on Twitter all weekend.
Corey
53:41
fascinated by this. Can I just say right off the top, this is the most amazing story to me. But you know what? They are armed losers having a sit-in in a bird sanctuary. That's what they are right now. I reserve the right to upgrade them to terrorists if they fire those weapons or if they threaten to fire those weapons. Give
Zain
53:57
Give a ranking, 1 to 10, on our fellow strategist, Rob Silver, leaving his job from a company he founded, Crestview, because his wife, Katie Telford, is chief of staff. Did he have to do this? 1 to 10. Carter, what do you think?
Carter
54:07
I think it was a 10 in terms of ethics. I think it was a 1 in terms of financial stability. you know i mean he's founded a tremendously important firm in canada uh for public relations yeah public affairs public affairs and and government relations and he stepped away from it because his wife is a tremendous political campaigner and uh very ethical very stupid financially cory
Corey
54:31
cory well i can't add to that answer i don't know how stupid it is i hear the chief of staff does okay i think he'll be just fine and if the genders were reversed yes i just played that card nobody would think this was a great sacrifice the way it is and there's a bit of shame
Zain
54:46
he just opens up the gender card are we in or out are we in or out on gender parody in the senate stephen carter oh
Carter
54:52
oh my god i'm
Carter
54:56
i'm in going best
Corey
54:57
you're in going forward yeah
Carter
54:58
yeah i don't think
Corey
54:58
think they should drop in however six women exactly
Zain
55:02
over under six to ten what we saw justin trudeau um in question period what do we think over under on a six out of ten Corey? I'm holding the line. Holding the line on six. Carter?
Carter
55:13
I will go over just because, you know, what the hell.
Zain
55:16
Final question. In the next 18 months, on a scale of one to 10, one being not very likely, 10 being very, very likely, in the next 18 months, have we passed a bill for
Zain
55:25
for a new way of voting in this country in the next election? Stephen?
Zain
55:31
Yeah, totally. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. Yeah.
Zain
55:34
There we are. That is episode 562 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belgy. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.