Episode 807: Channel Surfing on a Friday

SPEAKER_02 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 807. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan,

Corey 0:07

Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what is going on?

Corey 0:09

What isn't going on, Zain? Is there anything not going on in the world right now? Yeah,

Carter 0:13

Yeah, there was no rally going on for Trump outside of the Tulsa arena.

Corey 0:20

,200 people. Have you guys seen online showing the same arena for the Wiggles? Like it's the Wiggles versus

Carter 0:27

versus Trump. The Wiggles.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

reconcile that people show up for a Trump rally in the same city that they show up for the Wiggles. I guess only 6,200, so I guess that's the point you're trying to make.

Corey 0:38

That's the point I'm trying to make. I guess Trump was a little too juvenile.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

My God. Carter, you have said on multiple occasions that the end of the world is here. Is this clustering of things going on this week, is this just the beginning of the end, or are we going to get off

Carter 0:53

off that train? I have renewed

Carter 0:57

You know, everything coming together at one point, it just kind of makes me feel like maybe this is a period at the end of a sentence and maybe we can move forward. I'm renewed in my optimistic, as

Carter 1:09

as I always am, as people always comment, Carter,

Carter 1:12

Carter, how come you're so optimistic? Well, this

Carter 1:15

this this feels optimistic to me.

Carter 1:17

The Tulsa, Oklahoma rally has made me feel somewhat optimistic that we have a future as a community. well

SPEAKER_02 1:24

well you know what let's take that and let's go into our first segment our first segment sponsored by kkk pop oh

SPEAKER_02 1:32

oh there's so much going on

SPEAKER_02 1:33

on there that was actually probably i just want to say beautifully constructed on my part for those who know you know um so donald trump is holding his rally some may call it a white nationalist rally in tulsa oklahoma he promised of course a million people that wanted to go uh he then said uh this was two cameras a couple of days before that there was 19 000 people allowed in the arena another 15 or 20 000 people outside uh but that you know still the 995 000 other people just would not be able to come in and he apologized to them in advance turns out cory as you said 6200 people in a 19 000 seat arena um first of all before we we get started on what the hell stagecraft is because we should discuss that uh general thoughts on what happened well

Corey 2:20

there there's so many competing theories out there but i mean fundamentally what happened was they raised expectations sky high and they they they fucking failed and i think this is probably where you're going to go with stagecraft but i'm just going to say it right now

Corey 2:36

when one of the like the rule of political advance is that uh you get a room that's half the size of what you think you need, because

Corey 2:43

because empty rooms look bad. You know, you jam 100 people into a 50 person space, you jam 200 people into 100 person space, and so on and so forth going up 6200 people in a 19,000 person space. And in fact, having an overflow space that you have people

Corey 2:58

people taking pictures of you taking down because there's so few people there. That's about as tragic as it gets when it comes to tour and when it comes to advance. And oh boy, I can only imagine what the conversation was on Air Force One on the flight back. Corey,

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Corey, is this the biggest political stagecraft sort of fail you've seen, period?

Corey 3:18

I'd have to rack my brain and think of a worse one, but it's up there for sure. Just cavernous. Cavernous room, high stakes, big stage.

Corey 3:29

In fact, when you sort of consider that this was supposed to be Trump's big relaunch in, I mean, I would really have to scour the history books to see what was worse than this. But given expectations, moment, all of that, it's pretty bad.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Carter, you know, Corey was talking about some of the basic rules of political stagecraft. I remember back in 2012, if I'm not mistaken, it was Mitt Romney put up a little bit of a stage in a football theater. Now, it wasn't the whole thing or the football stadium. The whole thing wasn't about sitting in the bleachers, but he just had six or seven rows and he got panned for just selecting the location. this is significantly worse but but your general thoughts on what you saw last night or didn't see well

Carter 4:10

well i mean the stagecraft was terrible i mean you you the over promise or under promise over deliver mantra is central to advance um that is the advance mantra and for those who don't know what advance is advance are the group of people that then

Carter 4:25

then kind of manage the event logistics i think the other thing that was remarkable is that six of the advanced team for trump on this campaign actually came down with COVID-19. I mean, it just could not have gone worse. I mean, they literally were catching the pandemic by producing this event. I'm glad it failed. I mean, I'm glad it failed for two reasons. Number one, egg on the face of Donald Trump just makes me happy. And number two, we

Carter 4:53

we will see less spread of COVID-19 as a result of this debacle

Carter 4:57

debacle than we we would have seen if the 42,000 person space outside in the 19,000 person arena had actually been filled. I mean, 60,000 plus, uh,

Carter 5:10

Donald Trump, um, and Mike Pence would have been tragic. That's the other thing too. We always like to blame this on the Trump organization. This is the full Republican party. Everybody comes together for the Republican, uh,

Carter 5:21

uh, presidential campaigns. Everybody's supposed to be there. And they either walked away from him and allowed him them to flail, or they're as incompetent as the Trump organizers themselves.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

You know, Corey, one of the most, I guess, symbolically poetic parts of last night's rally was cameras panning across this arena, and all you'd see is blue seats, and you'd see more blue than red. And you just have the camera panning towards these Republican, whether they be congressmen or senators who also made the trip and just the sheer horror on their face. But the reason I think this was such a big fail was this concept that you'd mentioned up front, which was expectations. And expectations for this were set by Trump campaign manager, Brad Parscale, who went online, said this is the rally of like the century. A million people had registered. I want to talk about how the million people registered. So you have this guy who's the campaign manager talking Talking about a million people registering, boosting expectations up until mere hours before this thing is about to get going, is still tooting that horn, saying it's going to be this this epic thing that's going to be executed. I mean, can you put yourself in his head? What do you think he was thinking?

Corey 6:37

I don't think he was. There is no good reason for this. If you're going to have something like that, it

Corey 6:44

would still be better if he said, hey, you know, with everything going on, with COVID, with all of this talk in the media, basically all of the excuses they're now making after the fact, if they had provided them beforehand and said, you

Corey 6:56

you know, we're not really thinking the top bleachers will be filled. We're thinking maybe 5,000 people, which, by the way, is still a huge rally. Look at how sad Biden's rallies are. You could have done that. And then people would be saying, wow, Trump managed to exceed his expectations. he got over 6 000 people when he was expecting 5 000 and by the way if you actually end up with that hundred thousand number or whatnot they were expecting this looks like the biggest event since the beatles and um that would have been one hell of a launch in but all he managed to do was raise expectations to the point where like

Corey 7:27

like let's let's put it this way zane this

Corey 7:29

this event would have been a failure if he had twice as many people yeah

Corey 7:32

if he had three times as many people four times as many people, five times as many people, all the way up to 10 times as many people, this event still would have been a failure.

Corey 7:41

And that is unconscionable when you're a campaign manager, because you are entirely in the world of strategy and expectation at that point. I don't know. I mean, all

Corey 7:50

all the rumors are that Trump is a little frustrated with Parscale to begin with, and this is not going to be helping what I imagine is already a pretty tense situation. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Carter, anything to add to the line of what the hell is this campaign manager thinking? I mean, this seems Seems like one-on-one in

SPEAKER_02 8:04

in setting expectations to Corey's point, but any insights that you might have or any speculative insights?

Carter 8:11

There's an old rule. It says never read your own press releases, right?

Carter 8:15

right? When you're writing your own releases and you start getting caught up in your own hype,

Carter 8:19

it is the worst that can happen.

Carter 8:22

They got caught up in their hype. They saw all these people. And I have no doubt. Let me just say this. I have no doubt that a tremendous number of people signed up for this Tulsa, Oklahoma rally. Was it a million people?

Carter 8:35

I don't think so. But I think it very easily could have been over 100,000 people or it could have been 200,000 people who signed up. And I think that when you start seeing those returns on your database and you start seeing all these people who are giving their personal information, who are joining your campaign, it's

Carter 8:51

it's easy to get caught up in that. And

Carter 8:53

he got caught up in that because he literally doesn't have enough experience to know when he's been being played. He doesn't have the ability to know what the mistakes are because he's never made them before. And most of the time when you rise to this level, you've made all of these mistakes. You don't get to do your first and second campaigns at the presidential side.

Corey 9:14

Corey? Yes, Zane, you want to know the number of events when I was a political organizer I put on in rooms that were way too big?

Corey 9:20

Countless. Embarrassing. every time it was a fail doesn't happen anymore when i put on events because i've learned those lessons the hard way and you learn to manage those expectations and i think carter's exactly right he simply does not have the experience to be playing at this level and

Carter 9:34

and cory this is the difference between you and me i i only had one event that had a major feel like fail you had dozens and well

Corey 9:42

well you were a

Corey 9:43

and i i was a liberal

Corey 9:45

yeah i guess a liberal in

SPEAKER_02 9:46

alberta has a little harder time you just

Carter 9:48

just rent the boardroom when you're a liberal yeah

SPEAKER_02 9:51

yeah yeah boardroom and then with or without table is a game time decision um

SPEAKER_02 9:58

would go to you on this because carter just brought up something very interesting and and political data is a bit of a theme for for today's show if we ever have a theme which we really never do uh but but in the sense of

SPEAKER_02 10:11

part of every sort of offline activity on a campaign is as much of a data collection exercise exercise as is your Facebook ad, as is a petition signature. This is a data collection exercise as much as it is having people have bums in seats. And

SPEAKER_02 10:24

And it seems like it was an epic fail on both fronts because not only did they have this fail in the seats, but it seems like we're hearing that the data may have also not been there in the sense that there's a lot of people going in on subreddits on TikTok, K-pop fans, hence the segment title, that were just going in and mass subscribing to getting seats. So can you just comment a little bit about like the data and how you see it?

Corey 10:49

Yeah, I don't actually buy that the data was the important thing here. I guess I'll start there. So yeah, let me explain. I'll take a step back and say that generally speaking, data is very important. You've got to build lists and you get those lists then to become

Corey 11:03

supporters. They're the people that you get out to volunteer. They're the people that you ask to donate. They are the people that you pull to the polls if you can't manage to get them to do those those other two things, right? That's how you build your lists.

Corey 11:14

I got to remind you all, we're talking about a rally in Oklahoma. You're not actually worried about losing that. The data is not that valuable to you. It is only for fundraising. I think that's the one thing I would give you there. But the reality is this was supposed to be the set piece. This was supposed to be a national communications moment.

Corey 11:34

And that's what it was actually about. And today after then say, no, this was about the data and it's not as bad as you think. And our data was real and it's It's really all the things Parscale is saying today. He's basically saying all

Corey 11:44

all of this K-pop stuff is a lie. The data is great. And it was really all about the data. It was not really all about the data. That is an after the fact spin, I think probably for an audience of one. It's probably so that Donald Trump does not fire Parscale because it doesn't really make sense when you think about the fact that Oklahoma's electoral votes are not really in dispute here.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

Interesting point, Corey Carter. Do you buy what Corey's saying?

Carter 12:07

Well, I'll tell you, I didn't when he started talking. And but by the time he brings up Oklahoma, I mean, that is that's

Carter 12:12

that's probably the Trump card.

Carter 12:13

Forgive me for using that expression. But he

Carter 12:18

is no reason to launch a campaign from a strong state unless you're losing.

Carter 12:23

You launch from from a place that you

Carter 12:26

you want to show surprising strength.

Carter 12:28

That's that's where you should. You know, if they launched in Pennsylvania,

Carter 12:31

Pennsylvania, they launched in even Florida. um

Carter 12:34

um you know if they'd launched but

Carter 12:36

but the reason they can't launch in florida is because they've mismanaged the covid crisis so poorly um they you know they can't

Carter 12:44

can't go to wisconsin because you know the only people going to show up are going to be wearing body armor and you know ar-15s um this is the uh

Carter 12:54

they went to oklahoma because they thought they could they could present a uh spectacle and and the spectacle failed. The data should have been good as

Carter 13:04

as a fundraising list, as a million new names. And I'll disagree with Corey a bit here. A million new names is a million new names. I really don't care where they come from.

Carter 13:13

They can be making phone calls out of state. Those people can be turned into vital volunteers. Obviously, we're working on a virtual campaign structure for much of this election campaign. Putting a million people on a telephone, I'm in. Like, let's go. A million texters, a million donors. Like, there's

Carter 13:31

there's a lot of things you can use a million of in a presidential campaign.

Carter 13:35

Turns out they didn't have a million of them.

Carter 13:38

I would be willing to bet if you gave that same list over to Joe Biden's team, it'd be a pretty workable list. And there'd be a lot of a lot of activity that came out of that list.

Carter 13:48

But right now it's just it's junk. And, you

Carter 13:52

you know, Parscale has to throw it away. Throw it away.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Corey, you know, you both of you actually mentioned this around skill set. I think Carter, it was you first saying Parscale does not have the skill set to be running this campaign. I want to maybe take this as an opportunity to take a step back and talk about the skill set required for campaign management in some ways, because what's interesting about Parscale that many people, especially inside the Republican Party, were celebrating was that he was the digital organizer, the digital lead for Trump in the last election. And of course, the myth around Trump and the story, however much you want to believe it, was that digital is what won the day in 2016. So having him run the entire campaign seems good on the surface, but probably comes with some deficits. Corey, can you maybe perhaps talk to us about some of the other skill sets required on a campaign, even though we're in this COVID era where digital and virtual are much more important? Talk to us about some of the other skill sets that maybe someone like Parscale or someone else who kind of comes from the digital world may not have.

Corey 14:50

it's really fascinating. And when you look at even a local campaign, ultimately, a campaign is made up of a couple of fundamental skill sets, right? You've got your data team, you've got your digital team who are doing the advertisements, you've probably got some version of tour or advanced that's out there, you've got a communications team. And, you know, there are other skills you can layer in, I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple of big pillars right now. but um generally speaking uh

Corey 15:16

uh you become the campaign manager because you're good at one of those other things along the way right you you specialize at some actually there's nothing sadder and sillier by the way than somebody coming in and being like i want to be the campaign manager it's

Corey 15:29

it's like okay well go get a list go knock some doors go prove you can do something then prove you can manage that something and then go on so forth but um to

Corey 15:37

to to hand everything over to the the digital side risks losing an entire stream that is logistics at a certain point if you're going to be running a campaign like this a certain amount of cross-training is necessary you need to understand what the logistical considerations are like clearly the guy has never done advanced at any substantive way before if he's going to make a mistake like this you need to understand a bit more even about communications in different media than digital because there are other considerations that go along with that and and really i would say that if you're a campaign chair or campaign paid manager at that level uh you've

Corey 16:12

you've got to be a bit of a polymath you've got to have a bit of an understanding of all of these things you don't need to be great at all of these things you can be great at the one thing that got you the job in the first place but you've got to know how all of these other things work and i just feel that uh that there's just no evidence that parscale brings that and as much as we have moved more to a digital space what we are learning today is that a fuck up in the real world becomes a digital problem and

Corey 16:36

so you can't just sort of say it it doesn't matter. He's a digital genius. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Carter, anything to add to that? You've held these positions in the past yourself, campaign chair, campaign strategist, manager, anything to add around this delta of skill sets that we're talking about?

Carter 16:51

Yeah, I mean, no one starts at that position, right? The campaign manager especially is

Carter 16:58

is literally in charge of moving the pieces around and making sure that everything is getting done.

Carter 17:04

The best managers in my mind, and this is where where David Plouffe kind of comes from in the old Obama model, is

Carter 17:09

is someone who actually has managed the organizers

Carter 17:12

organizers and the old organizer

Carter 17:15

of actually pulling together people, working with human beings, because that ultimately is what a campaign is comprised of. It's not about buying ads. Yes, you buy ads. Yes, without a good digital campaign, you can't win.

Carter 17:29

Yes, without a good traditional media campaign, you can't win.

Carter 17:32

But the surefire way to disaster is

Carter 17:35

is not having the ability to work with the people who

Carter 17:38

who had everything up.

Carter 17:39

And those organizers come from all kinds of different places, the

Carter 17:44

the different types of caucuses or different types of groups that you're reaching out to.

Carter 17:49

Literally hundreds and thousands of people will

Carter 17:52

will be the people that the

Carter 17:54

the campaign manager needs to speak to, if

Carter 17:58

not individually, then certainly as a collective. And this is where, you

Carter 18:02

you know, being the head of digital doesn't

Carter 18:04

doesn't get you there. The head a digital can

Carter 18:06

can literally be done out of the basement of someone's house. I mean, we've seen that over

Carter 18:10

over and over again, where you get organizers

Carter 18:13

organizers who are, you know, become

Carter 18:14

become good at digital, who

Carter 18:16

you put them in the basement. You don't have to worry as much about them interacting. They pick up the same information, but it's

Carter 18:22

it's not the same as going out and trying to motivate a

Carter 18:25

a group of 250 door knockers tonight,

Carter 18:29

you want to learn your campaign skills, try and get 250 people to show up on one night to do one thing.

Carter 18:35

That'll teach you your campaign skills because that's a pain in the ass.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Corey, let's zoom back into the Parscale story for a second. So you are helping Trump crisis manage this situation right now. Let's say you're a campaign chair, you're a Paul Manafort, perhaps not in prison, but you were playing a Paul Manafort style character and you're helping Trump kind of get through this. What advice are you giving him right now in terms of the sustainability of his campaign? Does Brad Parscale need to go? Does the head need to roll to begin with? What do you need to do right now?

Corey 19:07

Well, that's tough because you also don't want to have a campaign that just reeks of death, although obviously Donald Trump made a few senior campaign staff changes in 2016 and he managed to survive that just fine.

Corey 19:20

My recommendation would probably be if he's good at digital, let's put him in digital. He doesn't even need to necessarily lose the title, but he can't be calling these shots and he certainly can't be opening his mouth about this anymore and so start to build the campaign artifice around him uh

Corey 19:34

uh you mentioned the idea of a campaign chair perhaps who can come in this happens on campaigns all the time and by the way if the campaign chair is no good add a campaign co-chair put them back in charge there are really two questions here one is about the actual functional operations of the campaign and you need to get parscale off of them if he's making mistakes like this and the other is about optics And if it becomes an ego thing and you're worried about looking like, you

Corey 19:58

you know, there's this bit of failure that's associated to the campaign, if you have to get rid of Parscale, leave him in the job, but take the job away from him.

Carter 20:07

Happens all the time. You wind up with a campaign manager who's not the campaign manager anymore. He just never gets fired. You

Carter 20:13

You remove a whole bunch of their responsibilities, and all of a sudden there's a campaign manager of

Carter 20:19

of people in process, a

Carter 20:21

a campaign manager of

Carter 20:22

of traditional advertising, and a campaign manager of digital.

Carter 20:28

there's a campaign chair, a

Carter 20:30

a new title of some sort, who's actually in charge of the campaign.

Carter 20:35

It just essentially demotes your

Carter 20:38

your top guy one level down without changing the titles.

Carter 20:44

know you can't fire him not not at this stage cory

Corey 20:47

cory cory closes off on this i

Corey 20:49

i think trump's gonna fire him it's his style right he just fires people any normal campaign they would do the maneuvers we're talking about uh slowly move them out of the day-to-day flow maybe get him into a different position two months from now trump's just gonna fire him that's what he does last

SPEAKER_02 21:05

last question on this is is there anything here that biden or a progressive pack should do to leverage this fail? Of course, they're going to throw it into ads. They're going to make content about it, but is there anything in particular that you see an opportunity here for? Carter, I'll go to you first.

Carter 21:24

Let your surrogates do this. I've said this a couple of times on the podcast. Your opponent is destroying themselves.

Carter 21:31

Allow them to destroy themselves. There's all kinds of surrogates. Already, the Liberty

Carter 21:35

Liberty Pack has put up a commercial based on last night's rally i mean this is not how it's it's happening in real time biden needs to focus on biden's campaign um which

Carter 21:47

which apparently doesn't need to be that good to be in a position to win um and it's not that good but

Carter 21:54

he the last thing he needs to do is do something where he's attacking trump takes

Carter 21:58

takes a misstep and then has an unforced error um

Carter 22:01

um let the liberty group take the unforced error

Corey 22:06

Yeah, Joe Biden's not exactly packing them in, so I would be very careful if I was him. 6,200 people is still an awful lot of people, and I'm not seeing those at the Biden rallies right now.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Okay, we'll leave it there with that segment and move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, has Aaron O'Toole become a Karen O'Toole?

Carter 22:25

Guys, I am killing

Carter 22:27

week. You're killing it today. And I feel like your reactions...

SPEAKER_02 22:29

reactions... I mean, Carter's overly enthused, but I mean, anything will make Carter laugh. But Corey,

Carter 22:33

Corey, you make me laugh. That's true.

Carter 22:35

Your mere presence makes me chuckle.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

I actually stole that from a Twitter friend, Matt Combs. I'm giving him a heads up. He sent me like 15 headlines to use, and this was

SPEAKER_02 22:46

my favorite one. I want to talk about Aaron O'Toole. Of course, coming off the heels of his poor French debates, coming off the heels of an English debate, where we have titled about him as being viable, saying that in second place, there is a chance that Aaron O'Toole could be the next leader. So let's talk about him. And then he, on Friday night, wages an allegation against the McKay campaign. He says that in a late night news release Friday that he has filed a former complaint with three police agencies seeking investigation into Peter McKay's campaign, suggesting that there is a data breach. And then he names a organizer for the McKay campaign, Jamie Lahl from Alberta here, suggesting that there's a data breach and this individual had kind of stolen data from the campaign. Corey, you know, before we get into the strategy and if there is any, what do you kind of make of this from O'Toole in this moment in time of the race?

Corey 23:43

it's fascinating. You know, I was just saying last week, it's very hard to move people's first choice support once they've already bought a membership for them. And I'll just reiterate, just because they bought the membership from the campaign doesn't mean they bought the membership for the campaign. All to say, it's tough to move votes once those membership purchases are locked. This is the kind of thing that can lose votes. This is the kind of thing where people can look at Peter McKay and say, oh, my goodness, this is just shady. I can't have anything to do with it. Alternatively, if it turns out these are entirely unfounded allegations, These are the kind of things that can make people run screaming from Aaron O'Toole because it starts to sound very tinfoil hat-ish if it turns out that there's just absolutely nothing to it and no reason to believe it. Now, I know nothing of the substance of these allegations. None of us do because all the campaign has put out has been that one-page press release. But, I mean, now we're at a moment where I think everybody is looking around and saying, what the hell is happening? Carter, let's talk to me about the strategy

SPEAKER_02 24:38

strategy because Corey's gotten into it a bit already. already, is what's the perspective strategy here, right? We don't exactly know what the O'Toole organizers are thinking, but they know they're probably in second place. They know they're not outright leading this thing. There must be some strategy at play here. Can you kind of suggest, at least in your mind, what you think is going on?

Carter 24:58

Yeah, I think that there's two strategic elements. The first is they needed to change the channel after two bad debates. So you put out a a a statement

Carter 25:08

statement about a police complaint and

Carter 25:11

and all of a sudden the channel has changed we're not talking about the debates anymore now what we're doing is we're talking about um

Carter 25:18

you know did peter mckay's campaign do something unethical

Carter 25:22

unethical right so it's a channel changer that's that's the very first thing uh there's no reason to announce it publicly you

Carter 25:30

you go to the police the police begin in their investigation and the police do their work if

Carter 25:34

if you don't think it hurt i mean the

Carter 25:36

the substance of the data breach sounded like it it stole aaron o'toole's strategy uh here's aaron o'toole's strategy in simple terms get more votes than peter mckay like i don't i don't really understand um what they think was stolen on the zoom calls and uh on top i mean i'm not sure i'm following um this

Carter 25:57

this is being a great uh political misstep if

Carter 26:02

if they think they can they can paint

Carter 26:04

paint peter mckay as the bad guy in this then they will uh jamie law's uh very short denial i think was very effective you know not a word of this is true

Carter 26:16

um and here's the problem it's gone to the police services uh the the police services that are still still investigating whether or not Jason Kenney's teams and our candidate

Carter 26:25

candidate that really wasn't a candidate here in Alberta actually did

Carter 26:30

did anything wrong. That was years ago. The investigation's not over. So this isn't something that's going to be rectified or proven either to O'Toole or McKay's benefit before the voters help. So I think if I were in McKay camp, I would have put something out already that changed the channel from that channel change. I think all it was, was a channel change off of a crappy debate

Carter 26:57

debate performance. And I wouldn't be surprised in

Carter 27:03

two to 20 years when the RCMP finishes investigating these types of political breaches. We don't hear

Carter 27:09

hear anything more from it.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

Corey, Carter makes an interesting point here, which is we've seen here in Alberta that these investigations can take a very long time. There's a good likelihood that this does not get proven right or wrong before this leadership race takes place. So does that not challenge your sentiment that like if if O'Toole puts this out, he you know, and if it's if it's false or if it's misleading, that there's a political price to pay because it'll it'll be baked before then. So don't you think that this is an upside regardless?

Corey 27:39

Well, it's a fair point, but obviously any advice taken to the extreme starts to fall apart here. And if people look at these allegations and they see this less as a cloud on McKay and more as just a desperate move by O'Toole, that

Corey 27:54

that will not help him. And I don't know that we have clear sight yet on how people view this. There's a couple of things that I think are worth noting about the letter that came out on Friday night. The first is it came out on Friday night. Who

Corey 28:07

changes a channel on a Friday night? That's what

SPEAKER_02 28:09

what you take out the

SPEAKER_02 28:11

per se, right? Well,

Corey 28:12

that makes me think they were a little nervous about it. And so in a funny way, that actually makes me think the allegations are more founded.

Corey 28:18

The other thing that I want to point out is that they named a specific staffer. Now, you might think that is simply for precision, but in some part, it seems to be relying on people having questions about Jamie Law's character. He was barred from running provincially by a judge for not filing. filing uh he was not allowed a nomination by the pcs um at

Corey 28:41

at in and the same election i believe it was for 15 and then he ran as an independent i seem to recall i could have that wrong but the point is you google jamie law's name you're going to have these questions coming up so i i feel like in some ways they're trying to bolster the case by naming the specific individual there's no other real reason you would do that because boy

Corey 28:59

boy alive that is that is very i mean that's libelous if if you can't back that up so um

Corey 29:06

those were both very remarkable things about the letter

Carter 29:15

i i didn't like it when the letter came out i mean i don't like these types of accusations being made publicly i mean i would like to have known a little bit more about how the hack was detected uh and how they came to the conclusion of a specific individual. You know, someone else, it just, it just makes it, it

Carter 29:33

it makes me very nervous. I was very skeptical of the release right from the beginning. And I, I still am skeptical. I don't trust the campaign

Carter 29:42

campaign that, that, that is crying

Carter 29:45

crying wolf. And I don't trust that the wolf himself in the McKay campaign didn't do it. I mean, campaigns

Carter 29:53

known for trying to get

Carter 29:55

information about other campaigns but this feels like it's uh a

Carter 30:00

little bit a little bit more suspect

Carter 30:04

in my mind i'm not about i'm not a big believer of this i do concede cory's point that the naming of the specific individual did cause my eyebrows to go up a bit cory

SPEAKER_02 30:16

cory yeah you just finish this off on this because what do you feel like the mckay response here should be should it it just be what they've done right now, which is calling this hogwash, universally denying it, saying it's not true, because to Carter's earlier point, the truth will not be necessarily revealed until this cake is, even after this cake of this leadership race is baked. What would you suggest to them and advise them right now?

Corey 30:40

Absolutely untrue. Happy to work with the RCMP. Great example that Aaron O'Toole does not have the judgment or temperament to be leader of the the conservative party that he would throw these absolutely unfounded baseless and unsubstantiated allegations around carter yep

Carter 30:55

yep cory's right pains

Carter 30:57

pains me to admit okay

SPEAKER_02 30:59

we're gonna move it on to our next segment our next segment it's the strategy round so guys we've done this in the past when we've had a shitload of stories i'm gonna go one case after the next and i want you guys to give Give me your two-line or your 30-second elevator pitch style strategy. So I will list this incident, and then I'll tell you which party you're strategizing for. So how about we start like this? Carter, I'll start with you. You're the liberals, okay? You're strategizing for the liberals right now, and you are trying to spin the fact that you did not get a UN Security Council seat. What are you doing?

Carter 31:36

The UN, I mean, who even knows about the UN? I would minimize the UN. When I would focus on, I've returned to, this

Carter 31:43

this seat came up at a time when we were doing COVID and we

Carter 31:47

we dropped our, you know, we were dealing with the world's most challenging economic circumstances. And we refocused on that which matters to Canadians, which is their health and their economy. And if we lost the seat, we lost the seat. I'm just not, we're not going to shed tears over a nice-to-have when our needs-to-haves aren't being met.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Corey, once again, same question. You're the Liberals and you're spinning the fact that you you lost the UN Security Council seat.

Corey 32:13

I would say everything Carter said there. And then I would also probably say something along the lines of, you know, Harper's approach to world politics has taken its toll, and it's going to take some time to get back from that. And certainly we saw some positive signs in our conversations with our allies out there as to how we've advanced things. By the way, look at all of these metrics out there that show Canada's reputation has improved since 2015. But we've got more work to do in this area. We know We also know that this simply wasn't something

Corey 32:42

something that we were

Corey 32:44

were that fixated on right now. Very happy a strong ally got the seat. Corey,

SPEAKER_02 32:49

Corey, I'm putting you in the seat of the NDP, something you may not be all that unfamiliar with, but you're advising Jagmeet Singh and you're giving him advice internally as to how he maintains this momentum of what many would call his call out within the House, where he called one of the block MPs racist for refusing to support the systemic racism motion. What would you tell him right now, your snappy elevator pitch strategy to extend the life cycle of this or to pivot into something that only he could lean into?

Corey 33:25

Well, you've got their attention now. So what can we do to make a durable gain here? This is a good opportunity to really cleave that difference in Quebec with the bloc. And it's a great opportunity also to show that you're willing to be more of a champion of these issues than the Liberals would ever be. It's a good chance to really kind of crystallize and polarize as it is. And fundamentally, I think what he's got to do is back it up with a very substantive motion of some fashion that effectively says, no, this will not be stood for in the Parliament of Canada. of does. So put the Liberals in an uncomfortable place where they effectively have to vote to silence a Bloc MP, a

Corey 34:01

a Quebec MP at that, for voicing an opinion that has a

Corey 34:06

a certain cachet and popularity in areas of Quebec that the Liberals are courting. Stick

Corey 34:10

Stick the screws to the Liberals right now by putting something concrete in the rules of parliamentary procedure. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 34:15

Carter, same question to you. You're strategizing for the MP and Jagmeet Singh.

Carter 34:19

I think that I don't

Carter 34:20

don't disagree with Corey's strategy. I mean, I think that that'd be a a really good part of it. But I would also go and say, you know, we have to take this beyond Jagmeet Singh and take it to the

Carter 34:32

the hundreds of thousands of Canadians and millions of Canadians that experience racism on a daily basis and

Carter 34:37

and trying to figure out how we

Carter 34:41

make an example of this

Carter 34:43

this individual situation that

Carter 34:47

resonate with all of those who are experiencing racism on a daily basis. This is the opportunity to be seen as the standard bearer for a

Carter 34:58

a movement. And what I'm seeing him

Carter 35:01

him do right now is that he's, you

Carter 35:03

you know, Singh is primarily focused on his affront. This isn't about him. It shouldn't be about him. You don't enter politics to further your own end. You

Carter 35:12

You enter politics to further others,

Carter 35:16

others, those who are trod upon. And I would think that this is a perfect opportunity and i'd really focus in on

Carter 35:21

on british columbia and

Carter 35:23

and trying to uh

Carter 35:25

uh take the the beachhead that the ndp has in british columbia and

Carter 35:31

this isn't the first time in the world that politics from another region are used in a different region to try and win over votes and that's what i would recommend to them i

SPEAKER_02 35:40

i love this you guys are doing excellent so far okay let's keep it going cory the next one is the liberals again so you're strategizing for the liberals once more. And the story this time is that the Liberals allowed MP Marwan Tabarra to keep running in the 2019 election despite sexual harassment investigation. So the Greenlight Committee

SPEAKER_02 35:58

flagged something. They let it through. They let him run. He's now an MP and he gets into trouble again. How are you spinning this for the Liberals?

SPEAKER_02 36:08

These are not easy. And I have to remind our audience, I do not prep you at all for these questions. So I am actually quite impressed press sitting here listening to you two guys uh what is it called bullshit me uh with these answers but they're actually quite excellent um

SPEAKER_02 36:22

said that now i'm gonna think of something to say here on

Carter 36:24

on this one by the way and

SPEAKER_02 36:26

that's the answer that's cool like i think there's something interesting about that but uh

Corey 36:32

uh green light committee made a mistake we made a mistake uh this is where i think that the right move is to sever as quickly as possible uh we don't know when the next election will be but this is something that is going to languish for a while. As has been pointed out in a different context today, courts take some time.

Corey 36:48

And I think the opportunity to just move on and say, well, this is out there and while there is some uncertainty as to who knew what, when, where, why, I

Corey 36:58

I think we just need to move on.

Carter 37:02

Yeah, I would probably do that. And then I'd tag on, we're going to update and improve our processes. And here are three ways that we're going to do it. Number one, we're going to

Carter 37:11

sure that our green

Carter 37:13

green light committees are at the very least gender balanced and racially diverse. And

Carter 37:20

And then the second thing we're going to do is we're going to have our candidates go through a

Carter 37:25

a fast process to get them up and running and a slow process that will make sure that all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed and we don't miss anything like this. And we will not be afraid to remove a

Carter 37:38

a candidate if they've done something, even the day before the election, because doing

Carter 37:42

doing the right thing is more important than not doing the right thing.

Carter 37:45

And then some third thing that I can't think of,

Carter 37:50

doesn't make sense. You have to do three.

SPEAKER_02 37:52

Corey, you had a comment before to finish this up?

Corey 37:55

Well, no, I've sat on a green light committee before and it is

Corey 37:59

is a tough job. It's an interesting job. And the green light committee is actually in the constitution of the liberal party. They should just, they should update it. I agree. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 38:10

Okay. We're going to the conservatives next. So put on your conservative strategist hat. And one of your two leading contenders in your leadership race, in this case, Aaron O'Toole, has effectively denied by not stating and agreeing that systemic racism exists in Canada. Is this a big enough deal? What do you guys do? Do you issue a statement? You're asked as a party, what's the party stance? Your two leaders are effectively divergent on this issue. What do you say? Carter, I'm throwing it to you.

Carter 38:36

I'm working for the party. I'm not working for the leadership. You're working for the party.

SPEAKER_02 38:39

party. You're the conservatives. That's right. You're the you're the party in

Carter 38:42

I dig a hole. I say that this is about the voters. This is the this is the opportunities for the members to speak. They're going to make their choice.

Carter 38:50

I'm not going to get involved as a political party and

Carter 38:54

anything that could influence

Carter 38:56

influence the outcome of the race. And I want that all off the record and make sure, please not to quote me.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

famous last lines cory anything to add to that or

Corey 39:10

or anything yeah i mean you're damned if you do damned if you don't right because let's just play this one out a bit let's say that you say uh no aaron o'toole is wrong well then the aaron o'toole campaign can use you in fundraising look at these guys the the the fix is in uh you know the party apparatus is lining up with mckay but i have you i don't need the party apparatus donate show up vote all of those things if you say

Corey 39:35

no uh you have the exact same problem the other way and it seems much less likely and if you say nothing at all um uh

Corey 39:42

uh you're going to get beaten senseless but you're you're going to get beaten senseless uh by people who are going to hurt less frankly so you just you say nothing you kick it you you do exactly what carter said opportunity for members to speak i encourage you to reach out to the different members and our different MPs and whatnot, because this is the time when their voices are heard, not the voice of a party apparatus.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

Okay, I'm going to give you guys the last one. And it's a softball. But here it is. Anyways, you're the liberals again, you're strategizing for the liberals. The Bolton book comes out on Tuesday. And of course, one of the passages says that Trump does not like Trudeau. You get asked by this by a journalist or by a team of journalists to issue a comment. What are you doing, Carter?

Carter 40:22

I'm saying thank goodness. this um

Carter 40:24

um we're standing up for canada i put canada before trump's america um

Carter 40:29

um because i don't know you know we're we're this

Carter 40:32

this is a difficult relationship and and we're not in this to be popular we're in this to make sure that uh canada's interests are served and

Carter 40:38

and uh him not liking us uh

Carter 40:40

uh the people he does like tend to be dictatorial uh totalitarians i'm

Carter 40:46

i'm okay not being in that club.

Carter 40:48

I'm in the club that wants strong democracies with

Carter 40:52

with strong public health care systems and

Carter 40:58

Trump doesn't like that, well, I'm

Carter 41:01

I'm just terribly sorry that I couldn't make it a little easier for him.

Corey 41:07

Yeah, the premier and the prime or the prime minister and the president are from different generations. They're from different parties. It's not surprising that they don't necessarily get along on a personal level but

Corey 41:17

the important thing is they get along on a professional level and we have to make sure they have respectful relationship based on facts and our common commitment uh to the world western worldview blah blah blah fill in the facts but did you just what you do is you essentially did you

SPEAKER_02 41:30

you just actually write that statement right now yeah

Corey 41:33

yeah yeah why not it's what i do i work with words but it's the important thing here the pith of this is that you're pivoting off of the personal and onto the professional. And then you can say all of the nice things, Carter. I

SPEAKER_02 41:45

I'm going to leave that segment there.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

there. We need to do that more often.

Corey 41:48

often. And let's move it to our

SPEAKER_02 41:50

Yeah, for you. For me, it's just like, I don't care if it's a train wreck. I really doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 41:55

It doesn't affect my reputation whatsoever.

Corey 41:59

You know, before we leave this one, Zane, I got to tell you, if I'm Jagmeet Singh, I say something along the lines of now that I've had had five minutes to think about it.

Corey 42:07

If the rules allow racism like this to go unchecked, the rules need to be changed. I am calling on all parties to join me in supporting procedural changes that will allow the naming and shaming of racism in the house as we would expect it to be named and shamed everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 42:20

Look at that. Carter, did you write multiple statements in the span of the last 25 seconds?

Carter 42:25

No, my answer was pretty good right off the bat. uh

SPEAKER_02 42:30

let's move it on to our next segment our next segment true notes strong and free of drew barnes uh this is this

SPEAKER_02 42:38

this is of course for our alberta crowd uh for those who are interested in the um no

Corey 42:43

no i think this is for all yeah yeah let's

SPEAKER_02 42:46

let's start it as an alberta specific issue because it is but the ramifications to your point cory i agree are much larger than our province and it's surrounding this thing called the Fair Deal Panel. And Carter, do you mind just giving our audience a bit of an understanding, especially those who may not be from Alberta, what the Fair Deal Panel was in genesis, and then kind of maybe just a couple of highlights of what it produced as a few of its outcomes?

Carter 43:14

Yeah, so I mean, the idea of the Fair Deal Panel comes from Kenny's primary thesis of the election, we're getting screwed by the rest of Canada. So there were two theses in the election.

Carter 43:27

election. One was the NDP destroyed the oil and gas economy, and the other was we're getting screwed by the rest of Canada. Equalization became the primary whipping horse so that we've paid $600 billion more than we've gotten back. And the we in the statement is always Alberta. Alberta has paid money. Of course, it's a false premise. But it's then been expanded to include things like, should we have an Alberta Provincial Police Department? Should we have a provincial firearms czar? Should we have an Alberta pension plan? There's a theme to this, and you can see the theme is that, should we put Alberta first? You know, how do we get Alberta

Carter 44:09

Alberta to the center of all of our challenges? challenges. It centers on equalization. But then there's a couple of good things too. And one of the good things is the idea of fairer trade between provinces. I think that a

Carter 44:23

a lot of governments have talked about fairer trade between provinces. It's hard to get because it turns out that everybody has an equal voice. I'll leave it there because I'm almost starting to go down the answer to your next question, Zane, which I'm sure will be insightful as always. But I find this all all very frustrating because it

Carter 44:44

it plays to the wrong instincts in our electorate and

Carter 44:48

think that the whole fair deal panel even the way that it's structured the fair deal panel

Carter 44:52

panel implies that we don't have a fair deal uh

Carter 44:54

uh to begin with so that's

Carter 44:56

that's the the short summary i mean there's i think there's what is there 19 or 20 recommendations cory

Carter 45:02

cory i mean each

Carter 45:03

one of them a little bit um

Carter 45:06

know, more navel gazing than the last.

SPEAKER_02 45:10

Corey, I want to actually just pick up on what Carter said, which was this concept of Alberta having a fair deal. Does

SPEAKER_02 45:15

Does Alberta have a fair deal? Was this was this report necessary? Or was it a political, you know, instrument to try to, you know, magnetize some of the separatists in Alberta? Can you give me your comments on kind of both of those questions, I guess?

Corey 45:34

Well, what's fair? There's no way you can answer that definitively, but I'll tell you, I'll just lay a couple of facts on the table here. One is that Alberta

Corey 45:41

Alberta is by far, even now at these economically depressed times, the wealthiest province in Canada, right? It's not even close. Like when you look at GDP per capita, it's just so significantly above most of our neighbors. And so when you think about something like equalization, it's right there in the name. It's about equalizing the standard of living across the country. How do you give more equalization

Corey 46:05

equalization to a country or a part of the country that already has a higher standard of living than everywhere else? That doesn't make any sense. It is prima facie stupid, right? But that all said, there's no doubt that Alberta has gone through some hard times lately. And those hard times have not been helped by the policies that are in place and have been enshrined that deal with the transfer of money between the federal government and the provinces, because they were really never designed for a thing like this. When you look at equalization, there's all sorts of, like,

Corey 46:37

like, I can't go into the whole formula, A, because I'd be beyond my depth, and B, because we would lose every listener here, even if I went to the level of my depth. But, you know, Alberta's resource-based economy plays into the equalization formula differently

Corey 46:51

differently than the economies of other provinces do. And there are real areas of contention.

Corey 46:58

But it's funny because it's like on the specifics, Alberta has a point. And on the general, Alberta

Corey 47:04

Alberta has absolutely no point whatsoever. I mean, that's fundamentally the challenging thing about this conversation right now.

Carter 47:10

Yeah. And I think if you were to jump in and say, okay, let's take Corey's point as fact, and we're somehow disadvantaged because of our resource base. Well, let's play with the numbers. Are

Carter 47:21

Are we in fact going to suddenly stop giving

Carter 47:24

giving all all this money to, you know, to the other side. I mean, we still make the most money. I mean, I always like to boil it down to the simplest inputs of the formula, not the most complex inputs. The

Carter 47:36

The simplest inputs of the formula are we have a higher base level of household incomes. We have a higher taxation capacity than

Carter 47:43

than almost anywhere else in Canada. You

Carter 47:45

You know, everybody complains about Quebec. I ask them, I ask simple question, would you rather be in Quebec and make less money and

Carter 47:52

and pay higher taxes? Or would you rather be in Alberta, make more money and pay lower taxes?

Carter 47:57

I think that everybody would choose to be in Alberta, making more money, paying less taxes. That's just the reality. And the other thing is that all taxation is equalization.

Carter 48:08

Even a flat tax, which is on its face supposed to be designed to be fairer, right?

Carter 48:13

right? We're all going to pay 10%. It doesn't matter how much money we make. We're all paying 10% of our income.

Carter 48:18

It is going to take more money from the person who makes $100,000 than the person who makes $10,000. That makes it an equalization idea because the services that we receive,

Carter 48:30

whether they're roads or they're healthcare or they're education, are all designed to be equal.

Carter 48:38

And we as Canadians have made a thoughtful decision that says that we would like everybody across the country to be able to enjoy similar sets of services in key areas. And that is the core concept behind equalization.

Carter 48:54

Those of us who make more money will

Carter 48:57

will always be paying more taxes.

Carter 49:00

Therefore, we will always pay more than our quote unquote fair share under a fair deal. It's like a multimillionaire complaining that he's paying too much money through his property taxes um because

Carter 49:13

because he still he doesn't have a roadway that's paved with gold like

Carter 49:17

like suck it up princess this is the way it is we all pay taxes based on our means to pay the taxes and then we we all get the same services we aren't a feudal society with lords and serfs we are equals under our system and that is what equalization is about end

SPEAKER_02 49:39

hold on this is great because i think you guys have really teed up uh the the the the political sort of aspects i want to now go a little bit further in terms of strategy aspect cory what was the fair deal panel in your mind trying to sell to albertans what was you know of course it was trying to sell in certain cases a referendum on equalization we've heard that as as a headline item uh but of course the possibility of

Corey 50:01

of that let's talk about

SPEAKER_02 50:03

about that because the possibility of that referendum requires several hoops to be jumped through, many of which I can probably classify as impossible. But Corey, to you to comment on that referendum.

Corey 50:16

This is one of those things where I think both sides are shouting past each other. So I'd like to sort of lay on the line what the argument for a referendum on equalization would be. I will say right now, I do not agree with it. But it is not as simple as it's sometimes time presented, which is the government of Alberta wants to have a referendum on something outside of an area of provincial control. So

Corey 50:39

couple of facts, everybody will throw on the table right away. So I'm going to do it right now. Equalization, as

Corey 50:44

as Carter sort of alluded to, this

Corey 50:46

this is not the province of Alberta cutting a check to a different province. This is not the province of Alberta cutting a check to the federal government who then in turn redistributes it. That's not what equalization is.

Corey 50:56

Equalization is a federal spending program. It is the federal government using the federal tax base, so what they're collecting in federal income taxes, which are the same whether you live in Alberta or Saskatchewan or Ontario or Quebec or wherever, but

Corey 51:11

but deciding how to distribute that money in a way that makes the country more equal, essentially helping top up, you know, the health and social capacity of different provinces, right? That's what equalization is. So when one of the recommendations is the notion that we ask to remove equalization from the constitution a provincial referendum on this people i think immediately say well how in the world is that even alberta is like like that's not alberta's decision to make that's a federal decision that is 100 correct however

Corey 51:42

the argument is this the

Corey 51:44

the supreme court in the 1990s while we were dealing with questions of quebec separatism and whatnot said that if a province holds a referendum on an issue about the constitution the

Corey 51:54

the federal government is obliged to negotiate with that province on that matter that's

Corey 51:59

that's that's how you would separate from the country but that same mechanism could in theory not

Corey 52:03

not a theory i necessarily agree with be

Corey 52:05

be applied for anything else in the constitution including section 36 which is equalization so you hold a referendum as albertans the majority of albertans say yes i want this removed that

Corey 52:16

that would then trigger the federal government having to negotiate that's the theory it's

Corey 52:21

it's wrong it's absolutely wrong because it deals with every other province and it's just it doesn't actually hold even like kind of a first sniff test kind

Corey 52:28

kind of passed. But it

Corey 52:29

it is not as simple as Alberta saying we're going to change the constitution on our own. Nobody is actually saying that. And I think we need to put that out there so we're not dealing in the world of caricatures.

Carter 52:38

caricatures. No, but we are dealing with the world of caricatures because of the way that the question is being framed,

Carter 52:43

right? This framing began with Ralph Klein in the 1990s as though we were somehow issuing a check and

Carter 52:50

and we have decided that we're going to fall into it.

Carter 52:53

And the government of Alberta, Jason Kenney as premier, if he's going to be intellectually dishonest, you're presenting an intellectually honest discussion about it.

Carter 53:05

And if we had an intellectually honest discussion about the equalization referendum, then maybe I could even buy into it. But

Carter 53:12

But here's the problem. It's intellectually dishonest. It's intellectually false

Carter 53:18

to carry this all the way through. And And it doesn't allow us a fair playing field to try and even fight back. If the three of us decided that this was the most unfair referendum question in the world, how would we even fight it?

Carter 53:34

Right. Because the poor me drama that's been created over the last 25 years around equalization in Alberta has set the playing field in such a fashion that we can never get an

Carter 53:47

an actual honest to God question about

Carter 53:49

about the Constitution of Canada. Canada and

Carter 53:52

this is what it's about this is about us as Canadians and what we stand for but we have chosen to put the Republic of Alberta first and it's the Republic of Alberta that's going to ask the question and uh it's not even going to be framed properly because Jason Kenney knows he can't frame it properly because if he does um he doesn't get the outcome that he wants because

Carter 54:13

because Because he's an asshole.

Corey 54:20

won't be our only referendum, by the sounds of it. You know, we might have a whole bunch of things to vote on as Albertans, all of which are designed to increase provincial powers. No. Some of them.

Carter 54:31

them. All of which are designed to increase turnout of right-wing to elect different right-wing councils. I'm sorry, I had to interject.

Corey 54:38

End it. But we'll have the side effect of increasing provincial powers. Yes. Yes. No,

Corey 54:41

No, no. I mean, like you can get into you can talk about intent and you can argue intent on a lot of these. I think the CPP one, the idea that Canada would create or Alberta would create its own pension plan is one of the most interesting. But maybe

Corey 54:53

maybe I'll just stop there and turn over hosting back to Zane, who looks like he has something. No, this is good,

SPEAKER_02 54:57

good, because I think Carter just brought up the point I did, which is the political and strategic motive here seems to be to attach some of these referendum, referendai, I don't know what the plural is, referendai, look at that, attaching them to the upcoming municipal election. And kind of what do you guys make of that strategy by Kenny? It seems pretty nakedly obvious. Am I reading it too simplistically? Do you think there's more nuance there? What do you think, Carter?

Carter 55:23

let me let me argue it from Jason's point of view. We're already having an election. When we when we elected Senate seats,

Carter 55:30

seats, we would just tag it on top of the municipal

Carter 55:32

municipal election. This is what we do. It saves us a ton of money. We don't want to have an HST referendum like they had in

Carter 55:41

British Columbia. We certainly don't want another Olympic plebiscite. Right. You know, these are these single issue one time elections don't get us to what we want. We'll

Carter 55:48

We'll just tag it on to a municipal election, except

Carter 55:51

the other side of the coin is that this

Carter 55:53

this fundamentally changes the tone and tenor of the municipal election.

Carter 55:58

it is going to be an Alberta versus country election.

Carter 56:01

election. And now candidates for councils, candidates for Reeve, candidates for mayor

Carter 56:09

are going to find that they can take a electoral shortcut by being for or against one of these against these questions. And my problem is, I think that we're going to see being for or, you know, being against equalization is going to be a much easier electoral

Carter 56:29

electoral path than being for equality of all Canadians, which just pisses me off. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:37

Corey, talk to me about that same question, the politics here of not just this referendum question, but of the of the report at large. What do you kind of see its impact potentially being, whether that's be attaching it to a municipal election or other sort of, you know, domino effects that it could cause?

Corey 56:52

Well, you know, it's

Corey 56:54

it's not clear to me that this is inherently and inevitably going to result in more, quote unquote, right wingers showing up. This is polarizing on both sides. I think that there's an awful lot of people who are thinking, take CPP away from me over my dead body.

Corey 57:10

And as far as the idea that there will be councillors running on, I support recommendation eight or whatever. I think that's unlikely because I think that council elections are so low information to begin with. with.

Corey 57:23

Unless you were going to combine with it this notion of a councillor also having a party label for the first time, I think that would be, it's a difficult sell for me that it's going to fundamentally change the outcome of council elections. Maybe mayoral, but I don't know. I mean, I just find it, I find it, I

Corey 57:38

I actually believe that Carter is right. And this is probably all about getting the certain type of turnout out. I mean, that's the most obvious, but I

Corey 57:45

I just don't know that it's going to play out that way in the real world. Carter, any other

SPEAKER_02 57:48

other political goals this government may have with this report that you want to throw out there outside of turnout for a referendum? Anything else they want to do?

Carter 57:58

Well, I mean, this is the oldest style of politics in the world, and it is us versus them.

Carter 58:02

We build our tribe by attacking some other tribe. And that's the model

Carter 58:06

model that we're going for. You

Carter 58:09

You know, we've done it primarily with Quebec. It goes back to the Lahi days. I think Quebec used us. We used Quebec.

Carter 58:19

the nature of of our human

Carter 58:25

to put ourselves into in group and out group.

Carter 58:29

And at times of economic distress, especially, it becomes very attractive to

Carter 58:35

to to try and hoard that which we perceive as our own.

Carter 58:38

And here we are. We're scared. The economic future is in jeopardy.

Carter 58:46

must protect ourselves from all of those that are outside of us and different than us. And that is a natural human instinct. And Jason Kenney knows this, and he's going to try and take advantage of it as much as he can. And

Carter 58:57

And that's the common theme.

Carter 59:00

The Alberta pension plan, we can do it better than them.

Carter 59:04

The Alberta firearms, we can protect your guns. And

Carter 59:10

And then ultimately, Drew Barnes taking taking it a step further by saying, you know, maybe we should start

Carter 59:15

start thinking about not being part of Canada. And ultimately all of this, all of this is whether Jason Kenney says it or not, ultimately all of this is a, is a, is a massive step towards separation. And it's just, it's because he's playing us as Albertans before us as Canadians and that bothers me.

SPEAKER_02 59:35

Corey, we started this, this podcast, this episode in particular around communication strategy with stagecraft. I want to end this particular segment with the communication strategy of how this report was released, which I find quite humorous. It was, of course, authored by the panel members, Donna Kennedy-Glanz being one of the chief writers and kind of being the de facto spokesperson when it was released. But then you had Drew Barnes, who's an MLA, also part of this report, coming out and almost disagreeing with the executive summary, so to speak, and saying, this needs to go further. This needs to go even further than what this report says. How do you kind of, just from maybe my amusement sense, but what do you kind of make of how this was released?

Corey 1:00:20

Well, it tells me that it was not a very comfortable report crafting process, and it probably was a fair bit of effort to avoid a minority report from Drew Barnes, because whenever you see attention like that, that suggests to me that it was a negotiated piece. People very carefully chose words, and the minute either party says something beyond the words, that informs you. I don't think there was a broad consensus there, and it may have been everybody versus Drew Barnes. That certainly wouldn't shock me, but my suspicion is that it shows that behind the scenes, there was a more aggressive force there. And I think that I want to mention something in

Corey 1:00:57

in response to what Carter said about taking a massive step towards separation.

Corey 1:01:03

you know maybe but

Corey 1:01:04

but there are drew barnes types in the world out there and if you are a federalist who is deeply concerned about it i'm

Corey 1:01:11

i'm it's not my strategy but i can understand the strategy of saying okay we've got to take a couple of steps forward to appease and to sort of take the steam out of this and to give a bit of an off ramp and and

Corey 1:01:23

it's also possible many of these steps are an attempt to legitimately refound confederation in a way that takes takes a lot of the steam out out of separatist movements, because I don't know if Canadians have been paying enough attention to this. And this is why I started by saying, I hope all Canadians do take note of this. But

Carter 1:01:39

But this takes us back to the genesis of this particular equalization agreement, which

Carter 1:01:43

which was created by Stephen Harper. And at that time, he said he would not give any province a veto.

Carter 1:01:49

This is a Alberta prime minister with Jason Kenney as a senior member of the cabinet.

Carter 1:01:56

cabinet. And And it passed.

Carter 1:02:00

I mean, I have no idea what happened in that cabinet meeting, but

Carter 1:02:03

but it came out as the as the process and the legislation. It's been minimally changed since then. And the reason it's been minimally changed is because it works. And, you

Carter 1:02:13

you know, I just think that Jason

Carter 1:02:15

Jason Kenney is a political genius at figuring out how to ensure that he's got his base and his group following him. He knows he's the only, well, there's two premiers that didn't get a COVID bump, him and Brian Pallister. He needs something. And he's using the fair deal panel, fair

Carter 1:02:34

fair deal panel, I can say it, that came, you know, that was put in place because this is what he does. And Drew Barnes, I mean, my God, if that guy is a member of the government. step out

Corey 1:02:45

out of the weeds for a minute stop talking to me about who was responsible for what equalization formula we've

Corey 1:02:56

fundamentally the problem is alberta separatism is running amok right now and it's manifested in a lot of different

Carter 1:03:01

different ways the wild

Corey 1:03:02

wild rose party which

Corey 1:03:04

which was not jason kenney it's manifested in a million different separatist initiatives and what i am saying now is we all have to be very careful at this moment people People are still looking at this with a certain amount of eye rolling. This is fucking serious. This is serious what's happening right now. Alberta is about to have a referendum on equalization, on creating its own pension plan, on creating its own provincial police. Basically, every tool that sovereignists have used in Quebec, many of them brought on by non-sovereignist governments to try to reduce the amount of separatist activity in the province. We're there. And it's time for the rest of the country to pay attention to this, because this is all fundamentally rooted in a pretty serious problem, which is the economic troubles

Corey 1:03:43

troubles and tribulations of Alberta. We need some help here, because this country is at a serious moment, and people have got to do more than just roll their eyes. So,

SPEAKER_02 1:03:51

So, Corey, I have to ask you then, as a follow up to that, do you genuinely believe that this deflating the balloon metaphorically is what this government is doing? Do you feel like that is their genuine intent here? Or do you feel like what you've said is perhaps a justification for moving through? Because I want to make sure we divorce those two things if they do require that.

Corey 1:04:12

yeah i mean i think that there's some combination of that some combination of thinking an alberta pension plan could better invest in alberta interest some combination of just you know that standard right wing laundry list but i think a big mistake would be to say this is just pure political calculation let's

Carter 1:04:27

let's go back there's something real alberta pension plan i mean they want to put those alberta they want to put more pension funds into investing in alberta's interest that's fine except that i think that the only interest that they see is oil and gas gas

Carter 1:04:39

so there's going to be no diversification there's going to be continued focus on oil and gas and that scares the hell out of me it

Carter 1:04:45

it scares the hell out of me because it starts to go down a negative vortex that takes us further

Carter 1:04:50

further and further away from the Canada that we grew up with the Canada that we understand and the

Carter 1:04:56

the Canada that we understand we were the heroes in the story and

Carter 1:05:00

and the heroes in the story were the ones who wanted to stay a part of Canada and keep Quebec in and now we're turning into the villains of the story and the villains of the story are the ones that want to remove alberta because we're selfish and our major industry is undergoing a tremendous threat so

Corey 1:05:17

so alberta pension plan prop up our economic interest it's an insane idea it's a bad idea it's doubling down uh

Corey 1:05:24

uh on an industry that is already deeply distressed but carter my point is it's rooted in economic panic and

Corey 1:05:30

and we need some help with that economic

Carter 1:05:32

economic but you and i can economically panic the premier of the province of alberta has to be above the economic panic they have to fucking lead they have to fucking lead and he's not a leader he's a loser

Corey 1:05:48

on this issue i'm

SPEAKER_02 1:05:49

i'm gonna leave that there that is not how i thought it would go but that's exciting nonetheless all righty let's move it on to our final segment are over under in our lightning round guys are you ready totally

SPEAKER_02 1:05:59

yes yeah there you go it's it's everyone's calm everyone's chill who knew what

Corey 1:06:04

happened hold on what happened to reader questions oh

SPEAKER_02 1:06:07

oh i mean did you do we not did you did you actually think we were going to read those questions i

Corey 1:06:14

mean i read once yes i absolutely the

SPEAKER_02 1:06:15

the only note you gave to me is hey zane read those questions ahead of time and then i read them and

SPEAKER_02 1:06:21

and they were fine all right i mean like i read the questions i know you perhaps may have wanted me to say some of those questions aloud but that was is not the note you gave me i'm just letting you know i

SPEAKER_02 1:06:30

i read those questions so distressed do

Corey 1:06:33

your do your lightning round do your lightning rounds you're

SPEAKER_02 1:06:36

ruining everything it's just we had such good flow this

SPEAKER_02 1:06:39

this is great it was going awesome but now you throw we

SPEAKER_02 1:06:42

don't do this for the listeners what is wrong with

Corey 1:06:45

with you cory you've lost you've never been okay

SPEAKER_02 1:06:47

okay over under our lightning round here we go first question on a scale of one to ten uh how loud should joe biden and his campaign team get about the firing of the Southern District of New York Attorney General. So one of the things lost over the past couple of days is Trump unanimously just fired another person, this time the Attorney General of the Southern District of New York, who was investigating a lot of Trump's what

SPEAKER_02 1:07:10

what you'd call allies and close sort

SPEAKER_02 1:07:14

sort of counterparts. How loud would the Biden campaign want to get on this, Carter?

Carter 1:07:19

Well, I wouldn't turn up the megaphone. I think that the The the challenge with it is that it's a relatively small moment

Carter 1:07:25

moment in time. And Trump has a tendency to

Carter 1:07:30

He'll be 13 issues down before you could cut an ad.

Carter 1:07:33

You know, it's just it's so many things, so many moving parts. Another Friday night massacre. What is it? You know, Nixon had one Saturday night massacre. Trump's had like six, seven. Like, it's

Carter 1:07:48

it's the entire system, not the individual. Maybe do up an ad of all the different people that have lost their jobs, you

Carter 1:07:57

know, because they're investigating the Trump family. That would be interesting. But I don't think I'd turn the megaphone up very loudly.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:04

Corey, same question to you. How, on a scale of one to 10, how loud does the Biden campaign get on this particular firing?

Corey 1:08:10

11. This one's different. And you can tell it's different based on Trump's response. The statute says only the president can fire the position. And you know what?

Corey 1:08:20

He's so terrified to say he's the one who actually made the decision. He says, oh, well, it was, you know, it was Burr's decision. And because he knows that he would be interfering in a criminal investigation for his own benefit, if he draws too close of a connection there. so get as loud as possible force him to react to it as much as possible the more he's on the record the more legal jeopardy he puts himself in uh this is not just about optics this is actually about setting those chess pieces up to put this fucker in jail down the road look

SPEAKER_02 1:08:49

at that cory's fire he's taking out the fact that i didn't have questions on this it's good it's good

SPEAKER_02 1:08:56

cory i'm going back to you over under on six over under on six how big of a deal was it that that every single conservative leadership candidate struggled with their French at that French debate. How big of a deal is it for the party over, under, on six?

Corey 1:09:12

It's definitely a big deal.

Corey 1:09:15

You have to have a pretty short memory or be under a certain age to forget in the 90s when Preston Manning was sitting in those French debates,

Corey 1:09:26

just how pitiful that was and how limiting that was for the Reform Party's chances in Quebec. back the reality is if you can't speak the language you can't talk to them both

Corey 1:09:34

both literally and metaphorically and um and the conservative party cannot afford to write off a quarter of the country if they intend uh

Corey 1:09:41

uh to contest for government carter

SPEAKER_02 1:09:43

carter same question to you over under on six on how bad it is for the conservatives yeah

Carter 1:09:47

yeah i mean it's a d minus absolutely you can't write off you know 76 seats or 77 seats could keep in mind too there's there's seats in new brunswick that are francophone uh

Carter 1:09:56

uh you know even in calgary we have a population of 10 francophone uh

Carter 1:10:01

no we don't keep

Carter 1:10:02

going i'll pull it out for you i'll get you the statistics um there's tremendous there's a tremendous francophone community across the country and it is something that we are um that we are proud of and they

Carter 1:10:16

can't do it so it's it's a a significant fail i'm

SPEAKER_02 1:10:22

i'm waiting half a beat for cory to pull up his stat but in the meantime cory i'm going to get you to double task for a second and

SPEAKER_02 1:10:30

and give me a give me a response to this how big of a deal is it for the trudeau government on a scale of one to ten so one more time on a scale of one to ten how big of a deal is it for the trudeau government that their budget or their current deficit number sits just north of 250 billion does the deficit matter anymore how big big of a deal is this i

Corey 1:10:48

don't think it matters at all it certainly matters less than carter's screw up when he improperly said that the 1.5 percent of calgarians who have french as a mother tongue were 10 percent

Carter 1:10:57

percent it's just not something people care about nine percent uh 84

Carter 1:11:02

84 i'm off by two percent 7.9 you're

Corey 1:11:05

you're you're looking at you're not looking at mother tongue they're not francophones just get

Carter 1:11:09

get out of here i'm looking at you don't get to define the right lawyer you lawyer carter

SPEAKER_02 1:11:16

big is the is the is the budget deficit thing for

Carter 1:11:21

don't think it's that big i mean everybody's going to be announcing massive deficits um

Carter 1:11:26

doesn't matter which government you're in which uh you

Carter 1:11:30

you know which democracy it is they're going to they're going to be having massive deficits anybody who tried to fight covet and anybody who's tried to uh

Carter 1:11:37

uh keep people economically sound is just going to get hammered

Carter 1:11:42

that's just the price of doing business.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:44

Carter, I'm going back to you for our final question. On a scale of 1 to 100 decibels, once again, on a scale of 1 to 100 decibels, how loud were the gasps in

SPEAKER_02 1:11:54

in the New York Times newsroom when they saw Justin Trudeau got a haircut?

Carter 1:12:01

Well, I'll tell you something, and this pains me, but to me, it was at least 76 decibels.

Carter 1:12:08

I answer your question with an actual number because they have measurements they actually did measure it in the New York Times office because apparently all they care about is Justin Trudeau's hair and they have some sort of source that not only tells us about Justin's hair but how we all feel about his hair so yeah it was very very important to them 76 decibels that

SPEAKER_02 1:12:31

source was all Canadians of course Corey same question to you how loud were the gasps in that newsroom?

Corey 1:12:39

don't know are they um have

Corey 1:12:41

they stopped gasping yet can we actually say that i i mean the breathlessness of the new york times about all frivolity is canadian and this this just total fictional i i want to live in the world of canada that the new york times describes this whimsical place with all of these crazy ass concerns we have but you know they just i don't know i don't know what the new york times does they're they're distressing can

Corey 1:13:04

can can we do a whole episode on how how much the new york times is off the rails or what we

SPEAKER_02 1:13:10

only after we do an episode of how distressed you are about almost every single item on our list today or lack thereof our

SPEAKER_02 1:13:18

our actual final question cory goes to you and it's a listener question so for all the complaining that you were doing we actually have a listener question for you like you think i'd forget okay this question comes from from us yeah well you're welcome uh donny ed a five-star review thank you you so much donny ed uh of course that's the only way we read these questions by the way i should mention before we get into the questions uh our our promotion can you call it that cory uh is that if you leave us five star review we may ask your question in this case lucky person is donny ed uh he was the only person to ask us the question because

SPEAKER_02 1:13:53

that tens of thousands of people uh saw this ad uh you know several hundred clicked through uh only only donny ed Ed asked a question. So I feel like what I'm saying is we need Brad Parscale on this podcast to really help us with our digital advertising game. He might be looking

SPEAKER_02 1:14:09

some work. It could

SPEAKER_02 1:14:11

could be a great fit. I wouldn't let him speak. I don't know. He would probably not

SPEAKER_02 1:14:17

not know what he's talking about. Okay. So here's a question by Donny Ed. He says, my question for the mailbag, a huge majority of the social conservatives and especially the Alberta conservatives seem to be voting for Aaron and O'Toole in this conservative leadership race. If McKay wins, do you feel like there's going to be a greater chance of a conservative split going forward? Corey, I'll go to you first, because of course, it is a listener question. The pleasure is yours.

Corey 1:14:43

kind of want to go to Carter first, based on the look on his face as you read the question. Go ahead, Carter.

Carter 1:14:49

There's always a chance of a conservative split. The conservatives cannot help themselves. themselves they do not want to stay together to win they would rather be apart to lose because that is their natural state so uh just as in 19 late 1980s early 1990s preston manning creates his reform party to bring the west back in i mean this is this absolutely hangs over everybody but i'll tell you something here's the truth it has nothing to do with aaron o'toole and peter mckay and has everything to do with crazy ass conservatives they're the crazy people they've

Carter 1:15:23

they've gotten crazier and uh that's why they could split thank

SPEAKER_02 1:15:29

sermon by carter twice in one episode what a lucky sunday cory finishes off

Corey 1:15:37

no they're not going to do that it

Corey 1:15:38

it just it wouldn't make any sense

Corey 1:15:42

the the 90s no the 80s and 90s thing carter is talking about was was triggered by very real policy differences. Right now, you really have more style differences. As much as Peter McKay

Corey 1:15:57

is probably at his core less conservative than Aaron O'Toole, he's been tripping over himself to prove his conservative bona fides. That was not the case in the late 80s, early 90s. And everybody remembers what it was like being in the wilderness with two conservative parties trying to take out their Liberal Party, which managed to just get returned to office with 40% of the vote time and time and time again. And so that's just not going to happen. It's, you know, ask me again in 10 years. If this is still a problem in 10 years, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:24

All righty, Donny Ed, you can resubmit your question in a decade. But for the rest of you, leave us a review, ask a question, actually ask a question, or else this segment will have literally no legs whatsoever. It'll be a one and done. But we'll leave it there. That's a wrap on Episode 807 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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