Transcript
SPEAKER_02
0:03
This is The Strategist, episode 809. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, how
Corey
0:10
Your Grace, how are you, my friend?
SPEAKER_02
0:13
Oh, let me tell you something. The state of the Dominion is strong.
Corey
0:18
if listeners are unaware, Zain Velji's mother-in-law just got named the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta. So, the vice regal representative, and
Corey
0:28
and of course, what do we call you, Zane? And how many forks were at your dinner today?
SPEAKER_02
0:33
It's vice son to the vice regal. Oh,
Corey
0:36
son to the vice
SPEAKER_02
0:36
vice regal. I think that is the official title. I get a government car. I was going to go with the less honorable.
Carter
0:44
honorable. I don't know what to do now.
Corey
0:50
You're well known for your vice, so I'm okay with your title. That's good.
SPEAKER_02
0:53
That's all hilarious. Hilarious. Why are we here, guys? It is Thursday. We're clearly not here to talk about this. We're here to power through that concept and talk about something else. Because I'm not going to call this an emergency episode as much as Stephen Carter wants me to do that. But I think it's a special episode. It is special.
Corey
1:14
Well, we're here because we were talking about – so I got a poll. I got polled. I got a phone call, a live pollster started asking me questions, and that never happens to me. By the way, that should never happen to me. They should probably ask at the start, do you have any one of these 12 backgrounds, nine of which I do, which would exclude me from a poll. But I got a live pollster who was asking about provincial issues, and I was talking to you two. And that happened today. That happened today. So I was talking to you two, and I thought, why
Corey
1:38
why not have this conversation in front of thousands of our friends and worshiping fans and not just with each other?
Carter
1:47
way more adorable when we're doing it together well
SPEAKER_02
1:49
well let's just jump into it then Corey and have you deep dive it for us let's go into our first and only segment call me maybe now
SPEAKER_02
2:00
I mean here's the thing I am very good at this job I think we all know that I feel like I feel like that was one of the best not as not as good as the rally sponsored by KKK pop which if you still don't get you will have to research okay cory talk to us about this poll you got one today live call can i ask you whether it was on i assume is on your cell phone right
Corey
2:23
right it was on it was on one of my phones yeah yeah
Corey
2:26
it was from the logic group or the logit group i can't remember now but i wrote it down they wouldn't tell me who the sponsor was i gave them a hard time about that which by the way i was a super annoying person to poll they really should have hung up on me multiple times when
Corey
2:39
when i started saying saying things like, that's going to introduce order effect, and that's a double-barreled question, and I'm not going to answer that. That premise is wrong.
Corey
2:47
But they didn't, because they've got quotas to meet, and I was a live body who was entertaining them.
Corey
2:54
And so I got a poll. I got a poll. And at first, I just thought, yeah, okay, because I was on the road. I was traveling today, and I thought this would be a good way to kill some time. And they asked me, how is the provincial government handling the economy? That piqued my interest.
Corey
3:08
How I was planning to vote in the provincial election, which is many years away. My views of Trudeau, Notley, and Kenney were the three people they asked about. And then a bunch of government-specific questions. So how is the provincial government doing on COVID? How's it doing on federal relations? How would I vote on the question of separating from Canada? Which may sound like, wow, but I'll tell you, that's something that the province has been polling on for quite some time at this point, because it's a bit of an alarming trend. See previous episodes. It was all really interesting. But like the bulk of the survey was on Alberta's fiscal situation, this giant deficit that we're facing down. We had a big one before COVID. We've got a
Corey
3:45
a huge one now, just huge. Like people are talking 20 billion plus.
Corey
3:50
So I had questions about how big of a deal this deficit was, if I thought it needed to be eliminated within five years, if I supported a plan to do that, something, some language like that. that. Now, where it got really interesting was, would I support a 5% wage rollback for public sector employees? It was pretty leading. It talked about government employees being half the budget, which is only true if you count nurses, teachers, maybe even doctors as government employees, which I don't think is really what people had in mind.
Corey
4:16
And then also said, hey, are you aware that wages in Alberta are 10% to 20% higher than everywhere else? Does that make you support wage rollbacks? And then there were questions like, would I support a PST instead
Corey
4:27
of having to cut services? Would I support a healthcare premium? Would
Corey
4:31
Would I support more private healthcare? But perhaps most
Corey
4:34
most intriguing of all, and all of those are kind of like, whoa, is the government considering all of those, right? But perhaps
Corey
4:40
perhaps most intriguing of all, in addition to those questions individually, I was asked them in conjunction. So how would I feel about a 5% wage cut, 5% PST, and reductions in spending rolled in as a plan, presumably for a five-year deficit goal? That's a lot of fives. That's very marketing speak, right? And so that's very very interesting. Being asked about a compromise plan isn't something you normally see unless somebody is actually considering the execution of a total package. So it's really interesting because somebody, and you can't really say with certainty who, is message testing some pretty specific messages.
SPEAKER_02
5:13
Carter, I want to get your reaction to what you just heard from Corey. Perhaps we'll get into the speculation of who this could be in a moment, but any basic thoughts on that survey construction, especially considering what we've talked about in the past with with uh what what proper survey construction looks like what are you what are you seeing here what are you sensing here in your mind well
Carter
5:33
well the five by five by five plan definitely has my interest peaked um i mean already it's branded i mean it's a five year or five percent wage rollback five percent pst and a five-year plan that's someone testing something that's thought through like this is this is now at stage two of the actual discussion instead of stage one Stage one is me and Corey sitting in the back of a room going, well, I don't know. Maybe it could work. But
Carter
6:00
But now you have to go out and you have to test it. And if you test it and it comes back with a certain reasonable numbers, like who's it going to upset? Who's interested? And that's why all those other questions are there because you're looking for all those crosstabs, right? The separatists. Well, you
Carter
6:16
you know, we can't get them anyways. So if they're angry, who cares, right? Right. Or, you know, this actually has a pretty strong crossover with former liberal voters or it's got a crossover with somebody else. So you can you can put together a package of ideas and this this testing, this five by five by five, which is now how I'm christening it. Corey hasn't christened it as such, but the five by five by five plan that's ready to be tested, that's ready to be rolled out, that's ready to be put into the balloon of whether or not this is actually going to go somewhere. so i'm dying to know who's going to actually test this i mean maybe it's us maybe we maybe the reason they called you cory is they wanted us to talk about this on the podcast we
Carter
6:59
we are actually doing the testing for whoever did this poll we are doing
Corey
7:04
bidding for them that is some galaxy brain stuff that's a good idea people should do that uh
SPEAKER_02
7:10
reminds me of the herman cain 999 plan Do you guys remember that from 2012?
Corey
7:16
has a COVID diagnosis. I
SPEAKER_02
7:18
I saw that. By the way, he also attended the rally, which is presumably why he got this COVID diagnosis.
SPEAKER_02
7:26
thought we'd be talking about Herman Cain on this podcast?
SPEAKER_02
7:30
Corey, how long did this survey take? I'm kind of curious. How long were you on the phone for this? Half
Corey
7:35
No, no. Maybe 10, 15 minutes. I think probably 15. It definitely felt on the long side. Probably
Carter
7:42
Probably would have been 10 if you hadn't been pushing back on every question. That's a leading question. I don't know. The ordering effect is going to come into effect there.
Carter
7:50
You should really ask me that later. What are you doing here, putting this in now?
Corey
7:53
Yeah, seriously. And the person who's just paid to make the call is just like, OK, man, that's great. But no, 10 to 15, I think. We
SPEAKER_02
7:59
We don't know who exactly commissioned this poll. You mentioned there was no sponsoring organization. Let's go through a few groups that that could maybe not have commissioned it, but perhaps could have but could also benefit from the value of the results of this poll. And let's start with the most obvious one, guys. Let's start with the UCP. So suppose this was them. This is the governing party in Alberta. They're putting this poll out. Corey, what are your thoughts? What are they what are they perhaps telegraphing or what are they trying to get out of something like this? It seems obvious, but I want to hear your thoughts in a more nuanced way, perhaps.
Corey
8:30
Well, look, there's actually a few reasons you might do a poll like this if you're the UCP. You might be planning to do something, but you must also consider the possibility you might be trying to prove something would be unpopular.
Corey
8:41
And certainly when you see a political party that has internal dissent on a particular issue, there's a saying with public opinion research in government, right? Public opinion research has been weaponized, and it ends arguments instead of starting arguments. So you come in and you have the numbers and everybody shuts up, which is why, by the way, premier's offices are so anxious about who sees polling when and how.
Corey
9:04
Because when it gets thrown in the premier's face, that's obviously suboptimal, shall we say.
Corey
9:10
But if you are the premier's office and you have a wing of your party, and I'm not saying this is the case at all. I'm just creating an illustration here. If you have a wing of your party who says we must do this, we must bring in a sales tax, we must put this bundle together.
Corey
9:25
and you want to prove that it's unpopular, you might also poll on it for those reasons, right? So you're able to walk into cabinet and say, you know, I heard you on that one.
Corey
9:33
I did a bit of polling, had some commission through the party. And by the way, it's supported by 13% of Albertans.
Corey
9:39
I think that'd be a pretty clear path back to oppositions. But the
Corey
9:44
the reason that you would normally do something like this is because you're thinking about doing it. Now, what is really interesting about this is it looks like they're thinking of doing it in a hurry. Because the right way to do this would be to do this in two stages. You pull on the individual components, you see what the support is for those levels or for those individual pieces, and then you put together a couple of different bundles and you see how people react to the bundle. The final thing you want to do a lot of the time, because who
Corey
10:11
who you are will also elicit different reactions, you know, the NDP can say some things that the
Corey
10:16
the UCP can't and vice versa, just based on people's pre-baked opinions, is you want to say, okay, now if this was the UCP asking you this, how do you feel about that?
Corey
10:26
So, yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. It really suggests that that there's some struggle with if it were the UCP, it would suggest there's some struggle as to what to do next. And what are Albertans going to do to us if we do this?
SPEAKER_02
10:37
Carter, I want you to answer the same question in terms of the UCP, why they would do this, but perhaps in two ways. Number one, about
SPEAKER_02
10:42
about the UCP in particular, and then number two, maybe
SPEAKER_02
10:45
maybe if you can comment about being the governing party and being someone who was in the premier's office at one point and how this research perhaps gets done if it was from the governing party and how it's fanned out and maybe that process, because I don't know if our listeners are familiar with that either. there
Carter
11:02
i think that it's super important to recognize
Carter
11:06
the reason i think the ucp is doing this at this particular point in time is that the
Carter
11:11
the the the rules of the game have changed since they got elected you
Carter
11:15
know they came in a year ago they got themselves elected they were all super pleased they had a plan to eliminate
Carter
11:20
eliminate the deficit uh by what 2024 or something like that it
Carter
11:24
it was it was all going to go tickety-boo just the way you wanted it to go and
Carter
11:28
and then we ran into a couple of problems that were more real than they thought they were. And that was, first of all, the absolute
Carter
11:36
downfall of oil and gas. That
Carter
11:37
That is not coming back. If you look back at,
Carter
11:41
you know, Ralph Klein's cuts in 1994, we were rescued out of that situation principally by rising gas prices, which
Carter
11:49
which enabled us to put in some significant surpluses that allowed him to buy his way out of the choices that he made. That's not happening this time. And in fact, the budget prices
Carter
12:01
prices that they expected to get for oil are
Carter
12:06
way higher than the actual prices
Carter
12:08
prices that we're receiving right now.
Carter
12:10
And the second problem, of course, is COVID.
Carter
12:12
Both of those things have undermined the economy. The deficit's going to be enormous. And they're not on a path. And Jason Kenney and his government actually believe believe really strongly that deficits are bad. That's an ideological thing that they believe, and they don't want this on their watch. And now they're trying to figure out how to get out of it. If this is a UCP poll, and I suspect it's more a UCP poll than an NDP poll,
Carter
12:37
I would say that what they're trying to do is find a way to come out of their problems. I do agree with Corey. This is definitely not, this is rushed. You know, you, first of all, five percent what's the wisdom of a five percent pst what's the wisdom of a five percent wage cut there is no particular like uh
Carter
12:57
when we did budget choice years ago with h and k we
Carter
13:00
we did it and we learned a lot about what people
Carter
13:03
people wanted like where were the variables and they could pick and choose what they actually wanted that gives you all kinds of different information like by
Carter
13:11
by just choosing one point on the dartboard where you threw the dart already you're now minimizing the impact of the research the research doesn't get to go the full way so that you could actually break down um you know should we do a four percent pst is six percent just as unpopular as six
Carter
13:29
six percent could be as unpopular as five percent in which case you do six percent because you need the revenue right if it's the exact same problem why not take the extra point but they're not testing on you
Carter
13:40
you know what the point is they're not testing you know they could have done a blind test i mean maybe Maybe this is a really good poll, and they've done three
Carter
13:47
three different sample groups. One got 5-5-5. One got 6-6-6, right? One's got 7-7-7. Could happen. We don't know. But normally, you would be doing some sort of structure that gives you much more data and much more understanding of the options
Carter
14:03
options that would be available to you because, let's
Carter
14:06
let's be honest, they don't have a lot of options. They should be testing on what the options could be and how people would react, how their base reacts and all of those other things. Corey?
Corey
14:17
Yeah, you know, if it is the UCP. So the one thing that makes me think maybe, well,
Corey
14:21
well, the big thing that makes me think maybe it's not is that the premier has always said PST
Corey
14:26
PST is a really bad idea. PST would require a referendum. There was a bill, one of the very first bills of the new government that
Corey
14:34
that effectively put into law
Corey
14:36
law that, you know, there's already a law in the books that says you need a referendum for a pst but
Corey
14:41
but added added to that law and said by the way also carbon tax so so the idea that you would not
Corey
14:47
not uh have a referendum on that seems really suspect so maybe this is a much longer lead thing where people go to the polls and discuss this and a number of other concepts but that seems weird um the other thing is this this was a lot of stuff that's not in the public conversation right now at least not in a real way a pst a health care premium more private health health care.
Corey
15:08
And there is a there's a adage that I always tell people when they're when they're looking at polls, you know, and that and maybe I'm sure I've said it on this before, beware of novel concepts, because opinions people come to cheaply can be removed cheaply. And if you just preload them with a bit of priming as hey, wages
Corey
15:25
wages are a little high here. Don't you think it should cut? Of course, everyone's going to rush to that option. But that option might be totally phony, You know, it might take almost no rebuttal in order to pull that out of people's minds. Like, you know, the NDP could come along and say, yeah, wages are, what,
Corey
15:42
what, 10 to 20 percent higher than everywhere else. But Alberta's GDP per capita is 40 percent higher than the Canadian average if you exclude Alberta. So by that measure, we're actually doing pretty great. Right. We've good job. We've really constrained wages. So you've got to be really careful when you start pulling on things that are not in the public consciousness. and you've got to see the limitations of that polling or else the poll will lie to you. And one of my other rules is never let polls lie to you.
SPEAKER_02
16:08
Yeah, yeah, you mentioned that before. Carter, I want to talk about strategy for a second. So let's take the assumption that this is a UCP poll and let's say should this podcast have not happened or a news story not come out of this, they wanted this to kind of go under the radar. Would this be a good strategy for them? Would this particular format, both as a tool and perhaps even the message, would you classify that as a good strategy for the UCP in terms of their troubles right now and how to get out of them?
Carter
16:33
Well, I think that it undermines their core strategy. The core strategy has been we're going to simply rebuild the economy and the rebuilt economy will lift us out of our problems. That is their core message. They've been consistent on it. Jason Kenney, I think he's got it tattooed on his left arm. He can just read it off. The economy, we will rebuild the economy and everything will be fine.
Carter
16:54
That's the way that he talks
Carter
16:56
talks to Albertans and that's his primary message. Any deviation from that primary message is going to undermine his strength.
Carter
17:03
It wouldn't matter what
Carter
17:04
what it was, right? So
Carter
17:06
So he is hurting himself by moving
Carter
17:09
moving away from his primary message if this is, in fact, his strategy. But it
Carter
17:15
it also comes with a recognition that this is reality. You
Carter
17:20
You don't move away from your primary strategy because you
Carter
17:22
you want to. You move away from your primary strategy because you're forced to. and
Carter
17:26
and this particular situation is is
Carter
17:31
say the least i wouldn't care what government is in there right now any government that is governing in today's environment is going to have a hard time so they need to figure out how to get themselves out of this um the idea of creating a five-year plan um i mean sure a little bit soviet era but whatever you know we just go with with that so the but it's it's at least a plan he's going to present a deficit when we get our next budget update that is going to be astronomical
Carter
18:02
astronomical it's going to be twice the size of anything that the notley government's
Carter
18:06
government's had and it's going to put him at a at a sizable risk but what
Carter
18:10
what else was he going to do he
Carter
18:11
he didn't have much choice he had to do that he had to do what he's done um
Carter
18:15
um every government in canada every government in the world has done what jason kenney did and it's the same situation Stephen Harper found himself in when
Carter
18:23
when he had to embark
Carter
18:24
embark on all his stimulus spending. It's not what he wants to do. It's what he has to do.
Carter
18:29
He ran so many deficits that was outside of his norm, but that's what you have to do in these circumstances.
SPEAKER_02
18:38
Corey, what do you think of the strategy here? If this is UCP, is this a good strategic or tactical move on their part?
Corey
18:44
Well, it's better to go into something like this armed with a little bit of data than no data at So in that sense, sure.
Corey
18:51
What our listeners may or may not be aware of, certainly those outside of Alberta are unlikely to be, is we just got yet another credit downgrading from Fitch this week. So there's a real problem. And for many, many years, I mean, I was in government for years, right? I ran communications for the government for years. And we
Corey
19:08
we got really used to saying, yeah, yeah, okay, the deficit is this, but it's the lowest debt to GDP ratio in the country still. because of course we started from a point of no debt just not too many years ago that
Corey
19:18
that ain't true anymore right
Corey
19:20
right like our debt has rocketed out of control here and if it continues on this trajectory
Corey
19:25
i i don't know i don't know how you come back from it so the
Corey
19:28
the deficit is a problem it's a real problem that needs to be addressed in some way shape or form and
Corey
19:33
and uh you know you might just be jason kenney sitting there saying well shit gotta do something right if it's the ucp which again Again, there's not enough evidence to say that. This is our reckless speculation part. I love it. Yeah, me too. And
SPEAKER_02
19:49
And let's continue the reckless speculation by speculating whether if this is the NDP, why they'd want to do it. So on that front, Carter, I want to throw this to you. What would your take be if this was the opposition, the NDs, throwing this poll out there?
Carter
20:05
have to discount any of the opposition parties. First of all, most of them can't afford it. But
Carter
20:10
But the NDP could afford a poll like this, but you wouldn't be testing on the specific ideas yet because your job is not necessarily to present a pass out of the deficit. Your job is to present a solid opposition to whatever the plans are of the government.
Carter
20:25
You don't need to solve the deficit if you're the NDP. You just need to point out that there's a massive deficit. That's all your job is. So you don't have to come up with a five by five by five plan, especially when one of those fives is completely against what you stand for, which is the cut to the public sector. You would never have proposed a five percent wage cut. You're not going to propose now. You're not going to propose it in the election. I don't even think you would propose it if you were in government. It's just not what you would do. So I don't think the NDP put this poll out. And, you know, one of the questions, if it's not the UCP, who is it? because
Carter
21:05
it ain't the NDP.
Carter
21:08
99.9% certain it's not the NDP.
Corey
21:13
So I agree, but let's talk about that 0.1%. So if it's the NDP, it's crazy, unless you
Corey
21:19
you have really strong insight into what the government is planning. If somebody dropped on your desk, the government is putting together a package like this and it's going to be communicated in this way because then that
Corey
21:28
that information is pretty useful to you. You can tell exactly how Albertans are going to react to it. I don't think that's the case. Let me just be really clear on that.
Corey
21:35
There's so much about how the poll went through and just the way it phrased things and tried to lead you in certain ways. It makes it seem unlikely. Now, when you are doing your opponent's message, you always do want to test the strongest, best version of your opponent's message. Where political parties can run into trouble is almost creating a caricature of their opponent, you
Corey
21:56
you know, where they start pulling on, do you support our well-reasoned plan to balance or the socialist experiment of the opposition? no you've got to you've got to because
Corey
22:04
because that's not going to work
Corey
22:06
work in the real world right you've got to give their actual message versus your actual message best versions of both and seeing which lands strongest um
Corey
22:14
but i just can't see that like if it were an ndp one the temptation to add additional questions that were along what you wanted to do would be too high who's going to pay for a poll that is exclusively on the other guy's message
Carter
22:26
message where's the carbon tax where's the the energy tax like why why were you would test if you were the ndp you would test bringing back the carbon tax in some force you know some fashion it
Corey
22:36
it would be a better poll across the board if you tested on a variety of income measures including things like increasing corporate taxes increasing
Corey
22:44
increasing personal income taxes
Carter
22:46
taxes above certain brackets yeah
Corey
22:49
so you have to to assume you
Corey
22:52
know the 99.9 is right carter is absolutely right on the point one um they
Corey
22:58
they need to have a serious talk to whoever's constructing their poll if it's the point one but i don't believe that's the case yeah
SPEAKER_02
23:03
yeah and on that front cory i want to separate the two parties the ucp and the ndp with government so could that also be the the the the player here and of course as someone who's run government communications can you perhaps explain to our listeners who may not be aware the difference between what we've been talking about in terms of the ucp and maybe even even the premier's office versus government, perhaps commissioning a poll like this? And second part to that question, could they be a likely suspect to this poll and what their motivations might be?
Corey
23:31
So in this case, the premier's office and the public service are largely bound by the same rules. So when you talk about government, government polls all the time on all sorts of matters. Right. And very consistently on whether government's on the right track or the wrong track, looking
Corey
23:48
looking at it on economic measures, anything that they're, you know, sort of tracking, such as, you
Corey
23:54
you know, support for separatism, anything along the lines of, you know, that's an example, but it could be anything. It could be, how do people feel about motorcycle helmets? How do people
Corey
24:03
people feel about budget measures more generally? We always tried to make them, you know, when I was running communications there,
Corey
24:11
feel super generic, like it could come from people pro or con a lot of sides. But government's polling all the time and
Corey
24:18
and so in a sense you could immediately say maybe this is a government poll but for for two things right two
Corey
24:25
two very important things one is they asked about party support that is a clear red line that is not an appropriate use of public funds uh that that is using government money for political
Corey
24:37
political gain uh and look for some things it's in the eye of the beholder right you know you run an ad campaign and does it seem like it's too boosterish of the government government, people
Corey
24:48
people can argue about that. There was some ambiguity on
Corey
24:50
on something like this that is such a clearly defined, literally written down rule that you cannot do
Corey
24:56
do partisan communications with government money, that you'd get yourself in a lot of trouble. I mean, remember the sponsorship scandal? That was literally government money given to an organization for one purpose that was in turn funneled to party interests. That is what the sponsorship scandal was. And just to put like an an underline on this because i i suspected this was going to come up it's
Corey
25:17
it's fraud everyone this is the literal definition of fraud in the criminal code everyone who by deceit falsehood or other fraudulent means whether or not it is a false pretense within the meaning of this act defrauds
Corey
25:27
defrauds the public or any person whether ascertained or not of any property money or valuable security or any service is
Corey
25:35
is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to a term of 14 years if it's over or $5,000, which this certainly would be, or two years if it's not. Like, it's not the government, because let's just assume nobody is that stupid, right? If the
Corey
25:49
the government was being
Corey
25:50
being levered in that fashion, people
Corey
25:52
people would be at serious risk of jail time. So it's not the government. I don't believe it's the government. The other thing I will say is
Corey
25:58
is that they asked me my full postal code and first name, which is enough to ID an individual. So that tells me it's also being used for voter ID. And when I thought about it afterwards, I don't believe they ever told me it was going to be an anonymous survey, right?
Corey
26:11
And I didn't give them my first name, by the way. Anybody who gets a question like that should not give the first name. But that
Corey
26:18
that kind of data collection cannot happen under Alberta privacy laws.
Corey
26:22
So, you know, I gave fake first name and I moved on with my life. But, you
Corey
26:26
you know, they said they wanted the first name in case a supervisor needed to call or something. That's ridiculous. It would never fly under the government's privacy privacy laws.
Corey
26:33
So it just, it can't be government. It just, it can't. People
Corey
26:37
People would go to jail.
SPEAKER_02
26:38
Anything to add to that?
Carter
26:40
I mean, Corey's right. I mean, you just simply couldn't ask these questions. I mean, you can throw in stuff like, you know, is the government going the right direction, wrong direction, you know, but it's not about the party, right? The political entity. It's difficult for people to realize that there are kind of three entities sometimes in the, or all the time in these discussions there are the political parties there
Carter
27:03
there is the legislature and there is the government those are three distinct elements and that we often just
Carter
27:11
smush together because that's the way we think of them right the ucp is the government well the ucp is the party the government is jason kenney's cabinet the
Carter
27:20
the legislature are the mlas those are are different and distinct elements uh you can't use money from the government to do research into how your party is performing uh so part of me of course of course wishes and hopes that this was a government survey but but
Carter
27:37
but there's no way it can't be so um we we've kind of you know we've eliminated the ndp we've eliminated the other two opposition parties if
Carter
27:45
if they're still around and
Carter
27:47
and now we're left
Carter
27:49
And we've eliminated the government. So what
Carter
27:52
what could this be?
Carter
27:55
the UCP, I don't think we've eliminated. I think it could be the UCP. But I'm
Carter
28:01
I'm also wondering if this is some sort of third party group.
SPEAKER_02
28:04
Yeah, I want to get into that in a second, Carter. Corey, did you have anything else to finish us off on this particular element of the government? I saw you feverishly darting your eyes. I want to make sure you get in before we move on to special interest groups. Well,
Corey
28:18
only other thing I will say, because I didn't really answer your question about talk about those differences, and Carter sort of partially answered it, political
Corey
28:28
exist for these political gains. Governments exist for a totally different purpose. And, you know, it's just it's it's it's unrealistic to think that government money would be spent in this way because it would just be one fourth request away to show that this was a government poll. And then you are screwed. You're just screwed. Like literally people go to jail screwed.
SPEAKER_02
28:52
Carter, let's start with special interest groups. You brought it up. Explain to me why that they could perhaps be both behind this and the value that they could get from this data.
Carter
29:04
Well, I mean, think about a chamber of commerce or something along those lines where you have an expectation from your members that you're going to lobby the government to
Carter
29:16
to try and come up with better policies that take you out of the current problem that you're in.
Carter
29:20
Right now, we have a significant problem. Businesses are going to look at what's happening in Alberta, the
Carter
29:24
the credit downgrades, the situation
Carter
29:26
situation that we're in, and
Carter
29:29
and they're going to make choices about whether or not they come here. it doesn't matter how low the taxation rates are if the taxation rates two years from now four years from now are going to be substantially higher in order to pay off massive debt that is being accumulated at this moment so
Carter
29:45
chamber of commerce could do something like this and take a look at what they think in
Carter
29:49
in their wisdom is a reasonable way out everybody suffers a little bit this is a great way out we can do this in five years if we had a five percent pst and
Carter
29:59
and a five Five percent wage rollback. See, the
Carter
30:02
The public service suffers. Everybody wins because everybody's suffering.
Carter
30:06
In fact, it feels a little bit like that. It feels a little bit like someone's policy that they came up with without
Carter
30:15
regard to the political consequences, without thinking about the plebiscite legislation that's been passed, without thinking about which side is actually going to buy into this. You know, there's something untenable for the UCP. There's something untenable for the NDP. You
Carter
30:31
You know, so there's not necessarily a lot of political
Carter
30:34
political opportunity in this. But I'd
Carter
30:36
I'd like that kind of well-meaning third party. Like, the other thing is that it's, I don't think it's, what is the Manning Center now called now? The We Want to Be America Foundation. foundation um those those guys would have put their finger on the scale in a different way they would have put you know a 10 cut for the public service and no tech and a tax decrease for for albertans don't you want that don't you want a tax decrease we should take these guys down by 10 and you pay less taxes i
Carter
31:07
could see something like that from the uh um the right-wing freaks that worship Preston Manning. But this feels to me like a well-meaning third party that's trying to figure out a
Carter
31:24
a way out, and they want to present it to government and say, see, 46.3% of the population want this.
Carter
31:30
One third comes from people who will never vote for you. The other third comes from people who are voting to separate. And the last third are your supporters supporters, that now think you're actually doing this, so you should probably do it.
SPEAKER_02
31:44
Corey, special interest group, what do you want to take from what Carter said here around their, both their value that they would get from this and perhaps the plausibility that they might be behind something like this?
Corey
31:53
I think it's cogent analysis. The idea that somebody would put together something like this from like a chamber of commerce or an economist party kind of view, somebody who is talking to well
Corey
32:04
well-meaning economists who are always pushing the idea of a sales tax. I'd love to talk about why.
Corey
32:11
I don't know if that's a great idea. And a lot of it has to do with popularity. I've pulled
Corey
32:14
pulled on sales taxes for a long time. They've never been very popular in this province. There would have to be like a sea change of public opinion in the past six months.
Corey
32:24
But I'll tell you, if
Corey
32:27
it's an interest group, they are very keyed into what the government is saying and doing because some of the framing, some of like the padding off the top, Even some of the questions that were asked that government routinely tracks on, like right track, wrong track, which is useful for comparing between results, is, I mean, that's quite convenient, I suppose I would say. I actually don't know where I land on this because it does seem like such an incredulous thing that Jason Kenney would propose a sales tax to me. But almost everything else sort of says maybe it's the UCP. And
SPEAKER_02
33:02
And hold on. Before you jump in there, Carter, you know, one thing you had mentioned is that this could potentially be a special interest group, as you alluded to, that could then take forward their findings to government as a way to lobby them about a policy direction. direction is there anything in your mind where this could be a half measure the other way where government or in this case not i shouldn't say government i should say the ucp or the premier's office may have this idea but doesn't want it associated with them could they throw this over to a friendly third party group to go stress test something like that do you feel like
SPEAKER_02
33:33
that could be part of what's happening here completely
Corey
33:36
completely absolutely possible they have to be very careful about that because it could be considered a contribution to a political party right so you you can get yourself into some legal hot water very, very quickly there. So the level of collaboration cannot be very high in a situation like that. But, but
Corey
33:52
but don't kid yourself that that kind of conversation has happened since the dawn of time, right? Like,
Corey
33:58
Like, you know, a premier's office mentions offhand, boy, I'm thinking about this, but I don't know if it's popular. And an interest group says, well, I really like that. Maybe I'm going to put that together and give it to the premier's office. It would have to be a fairly moneyed interest group, though, because
Carter
34:10
because of the The use
Corey
34:10
use of live callers, like, you know, online polling, obviously,
Corey
34:14
obviously, auto dials, those
Corey
34:17
those are cheaper forms of polling. But to have live callers, random digit dialing is as expensive as it gets. So like this is this is a pretty premium product. So that's that's interesting to me.
SPEAKER_02
34:29
Carter, what do you think of that? That theory of perhaps this being the premier's office or UCP, you know, porting this over to a friendly third party as an option?
Carter
34:39
Well, I think that, you know, we learned this in two weeks when we see who floats the trial balloon, right?
Carter
34:44
right? I just don't think that the trial balloon is going to come from Minister Taves. He's not going to stand up there and say, you
Carter
34:51
you know, this is what we should do in the province of Alberta. And this is something that happens all over the place. Like the government wants
Carter
34:59
its people, its agencies, its third parties to
Carter
35:03
to lead them to the solutions. Government doesn't need to come up with all the great ideas. ideas.
Carter
35:07
Great ideas can come from third parties and
Carter
35:10
and the government can respond to them. In fact, that is one of the great
Carter
35:13
great ways to prove to the people that you are listening,
Carter
35:17
Mothers Against Drunk Driving comes and says, this is what we're going to do, or
Carter
35:21
or this is what we want you to do.
Carter
35:22
Great. Build the parade, right? Charter schools. You want more charter schools? Good. Get out there and lead the way. Tell us, bring the people to us so that people know know how good we are and how responsive we are um and
Carter
35:36
and maybe this is like maybe this is chamber of commerce saying we need to get ourselves out of this uh deficit we
Carter
35:43
we know you needed to do it but by
Carter
35:44
by god we got to get you there so
Carter
35:46
so you know a week or two 10 days right after stampede
Carter
35:52
there is no stampede but okay you
Carter
35:53
you know right right in the middle of july someone testing it not a lot of pain not a lot of pain if it goes poorly um
Carter
35:59
um people will have forgotten by mid-august
SPEAKER_02
36:02
You know, if you were playing strategist bingo at home, 35 minutes in, Stephen Carter has mentioned Mothers Against Drunk Driving is, of course, the only meeting he took when he was at the premier's office. I think he met with them every day for
SPEAKER_02
36:15
for eight hours a day. That is the only thing I'm concluding from your tales. Very
Carter
36:18
Very important piece of legislation. I understand that. It saved people's lives. It saved people's lives. And if you're going to live up to being the vice son of the vice regal, you're going to have to step up a little bit.
SPEAKER_02
36:33
that sounds like a very defensive person to me i don't know what you hear cory uh
SPEAKER_02
36:36
uh cory on that front do you feel like there's any other groups that we're missing here like we've we've bundled special interests pretty broadly like could this be i'm just throwing this out there like academia any other sort of institutional group that may want to perhaps get results of this is there anyone else in your mind that they may have value in getting data like this i
Corey
36:55
i i don't think it's academia the cost alone would be quite prohibitive on that and there There are better things you can spend your limited research dollars on than live
Corey
37:03
live callers for something like this. I mean, there's obviously a place for research, but my goodness, this survey would be probably
Corey
37:11
probably 10 questions longer, and the
Corey
37:14
the phrasings would involve a lot more $20 words if it was written by an academic.
Carter
37:18
Plus, it wouldn't have involved some of the challenges you were describing with the ordering effect and a few of the other issues. That's true. Yeah, I mean, if it was academic, it would have
Carter
37:27
gone through a peer, not peer review process for the actual study, but the study would have been reviewed to
Carter
37:34
to ensure that it wasn't doing anything that wouldn't negate the research afterwards.
Corey
37:40
Well, so to answer your question in a way that doesn't really answer it, but maybe can get us all thinking, you have to ask yourself, who
Corey
37:46
who would benefit? To what advantage? And Carter was talking a bit about this, and it's why something like a Chamber of Commerce does make a fair bit of sense. You start to take the long view of the economy and the fiscal structure of the entire province. But whose
Corey
37:59
whose interest is it to have a 5% PST? Whose interest is it to have a 5% reduction in public sector wages? There's not a ton of people that kind of sit at the middle of that diagram. So, they
Corey
38:14
they have to be kind of broad interests or very UCP aligned. Like, that's basically your two buckets to choose from. Well,
Carter
38:21
Well, the other side of this that could have been there is unions, right? The Alberta Federation of Labor could have put something like this out. But
Carter
38:28
But they would have wanted different language. They
Carter
38:31
They would have wanted different outcomes. They would have wanted, I
Carter
38:34
I mean, sure, maybe this five by five by five plan gets
Carter
38:38
gets an 80% rejection
Carter
38:39
rejection rate. I don't think it gets an 80% reduction rate given
Carter
38:43
given the way you framed it, given the way you've taken us there.
Carter
38:49
first of all, there's a lot of easier ways to get an 80% failure
Carter
38:53
right? The AFL could have written
Carter
38:54
written a totally different survey that comes up with what they want.
Carter
38:58
And never underestimate the power of these surveys. This is one of the lessons
Carter
39:01
lessons that I'm hoping the people who are listening to this, especially those that are listening from outside of Alberta, who are like, what the hell did I just listen to? This is a technique for communications. This is how everything gets made. This is the process that you don't see.
Carter
39:18
If the test happens, how the test is framed dictates how the test is going to be tested,
Carter
39:24
tested, what the outcome of that test is going to be.
Carter
39:28
if it's well constructed, you
Carter
39:31
you can develop a policy that will stand for decades. If it's poorly constructed, you get the answer that you want, but then the policy itself falls down.
Corey
39:41
Choose your question, choose your answer. And it's one of the reasons why we've been so critical of referenda in the past, right?
Corey
39:48
Because you can really change the outcome based on the language you use.
SPEAKER_02
39:53
So before we jump off and end this episode, this special episode, where we've deep dived on this, Corey, I want to take a few minutes to talk about the content and a very high level of what we saw. There's a lot that you mentioned here. So perhaps what I'm going to ask you to do is say the one or two things you found most surprising or most intriguing as related to the content of this survey. And by that, I mean the policy instruments that were presented. We've kind of done a drive-by on a few of them, but is there anything that you wanted to just mention that you were pretty surprised to find within this live call?
Corey
40:27
So there was only two questions, and they didn't dwell on it. There's two things, right? One is the health care stuff. So would you support more private health care? In the survey, it was put like they have in B.C., you know, really trying to minimize it. But being very explicit, it was private health care options.
Corey
40:41
And then the other was the notion of a health care premium, which Albertans will know has been quite a contentious conversation. And when Jim Prentiss was premier, when he called the election that he lost to Rachel Notley, part
Corey
40:52
part of his package that was so unpopular was a health care premium.
Corey
40:56
And there's some history in Alberta that I won't bother going into. to but the other thing the thing that i will say that i'm i am struck
Corey
41:03
struck by and not in an entirely negative way is it's like oh wow are they actually thinking they're going to fix this problem for once you know and look it's not the solution i would do i hate sales taxes and and they're regressive people say yeah okay but they get you know payback
Corey
41:19
payback you know the government gives them you know gst rebates problem is you got to file your taxes for that and a shockingly high percent of people do not file their taxes i think it was about 14 when i last checked don't file any kind of reasonable interval um
Corey
41:33
um and guess what that 14 disproportionately lower income so these things are more regressive than people realize even when you put in those things i i tend to be more of a fan of income taxes because you
Corey
41:44
you know even though a sales tax may be frictionless as economists say you know it's better for the economy i don't care just about the economy you know it's it's the line goes up argument who cares like is it better for people but the
Corey
41:56
the fact that they are willing to actually entertain a grand bargain in
Corey
42:01
order to solve alberta's economic or sorry fiscal challenges
Corey
42:05
really fascinating and i guess it also tells me if i'm the ndp i better have my own grand bargain in my back pocket carter
SPEAKER_02
42:12
carter any any thoughts on the content or the messaging slash policy that you saw with presented within this poll that you want to pick up on i
Carter
42:21
i i think it's just really interesting this everybody must suffer model and mantra that's coming in. Whoever designed this particular question, specifically the five by five by five problem. First of all, the idea that we have to eliminate the deficit in five years, pretty arbitrary, right?
Carter
42:39
right? It doesn't need to be eliminated in five years. It
Carter
42:42
be eliminated in 10 years.
Carter
42:43
Ralph Klein, I can't remember his initial plan, but I don't think it was nearly designed
Carter
42:49
designed to go as quickly as it did. It just happened so quickly because of the natural gas changes. The second is the 5% PST. Obviously, that means that all of us who buy stuff have to pay more. We're all going to suffer. But
Carter
43:03
But then that's tested against the 5% rollback for all public sector employees. All public sector employees, and the way they've characterized it, is
Carter
43:12
is that that's 50% of government spending. Like
Carter
43:15
Like that is a tremendous amount of money. That is a different way of looking at what the public sector looks like. And that includes teachers, then that includes nurses, then that includes doctors. So if you're going to go that far, you're going to have a war.
Carter
43:30
You're going to have a war. If 5% rollback of all of those groups, holy smokes this is 1994 again and
Carter
43:36
and no sign of a bounce back by
Carter
43:40
by 1997 so it's
Carter
43:42
it's going to be a gong show if this is the way you want to actually go cory
Corey
43:46
yeah that's that's almost one and a half billion dollars you've taken out of wages that's nuts and um you know the gdp per like if this is actually on there's going to be a lot of conversation about this but i mentioned the gdp per capita of alberta is 40 higher than the canadian average i want to give some context to of that.
Corey
44:03
GDP per capita of Alberta to the rest of Canada is what Canada's GDP per capita is to Puerto Rico. So it's not comparable, right? You can't say, yeah, we're 10 to 20% higher. That's not a relevant... Some categories it is, right? Some you're going to move between provinces, you're going to get the job here, you're going to get the job elsewhere. But most are actually only comparable within the province, the private sector alternatives. And if you were going to reduce wages to a point where nobody wants to work for the government, you're going going to introduce longer term problems as well big
SPEAKER_02
44:34
right let's move it on to our final segment our over under in our lightning round guys are you ready so ready vice carter i'm going i'm going to you first vice i'm going to you first uh question for you over under on 10 uh did cory just make up this poll so he could uh rally us on a thursday night to this
Carter
44:55
This is absolutely made up. This whole episode is based on a fiction of an imaginary telephone call that Corey had in his head when he was driving today. There is no way this is real. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you again next week.
SPEAKER_02
45:10
This is a good strategy. For those who don't know, I don't know if we explained it, but Corey does try to huddle us around multiple times a week with different strategies. This is the most creative one we've seen thus far. uh and uh if it is indeed the case uh i i will give him kudos uh cory i'm not going to ask you that question because we already know the answer uh but this one is to you cory uh which is yes
SPEAKER_02
45:34
yes or no speculate for us do you feel like this is the ucp who do you feel like put this put this poll out you
Corey
45:40
know i really don't know um if i had to put chips down right now i would say
Corey
45:47
maybe i don't even want to do that like like there are just components of it that i think are are so not on brand for jason kenney i i have it's it's incredibly hard for me to imagine i
Corey
45:56
i i think it's got to be somebody who's the closest of arm's length from the ucp carter maybe it's maybe it's merit maybe it's a chamber of commerce i don't know
Corey
46:05
carter what do you think who put this pull up yeah
Carter
46:07
yeah i mean if i had ten dollars to bet on it i put six dollars on the uh you know the alberta chambers of commerce and uh four dollars on the ucp you
Carter
46:16
you know and then spin the wheel let's see how it goes i
SPEAKER_02
46:19
should have asked the question that that way nicely done i mean that's the that's the only time that's the only time your answer has been more innovative than the question and i don't just mean it the lightning right i've done
Carter
46:33
some great shit on this podcast by
SPEAKER_02
46:36
by the way your your entire strategy of having the liberals run uh their next election in parallel with the u.s election had a lot of praise last week i
Carter
46:42
i know people love me
Carter
46:43
me i want to give
SPEAKER_02
46:45
cory final question and i'll go to you right after this, Carter. Corey, does the 555 plan find the light of day? Is it trial balloon? Do you see yes or no? Do you see this finding an existence beyond the podcast of the strategist?
Corey
47:00
I mean, you know, this might actually be how it finds the light of day. We're talking to thousands of people right now.
Corey
47:07
But yeah, I think that once it's out there and it's a packaging of ideas that were already out there, people are going to talk about it, which is another reason and why I think the NDP needs to have their own plan.
SPEAKER_02
47:17
Okay, let me be more clear, Corey. Do you feel like government or third-party group trial balloons this as a strategy?
Corey
47:25
Well, I don't know what the poll is going to come back with. I
Corey
47:28
I suspect, unlike Carter, I actually think it's going to be fairly unpopular. Sales tax is not a popular proposition. It's a bit of a poison pill to any kind of plan. I've seen polling in the 20s, the 30s at best, but you compare that to some of the other income. options that are available to people. By the way, people will always say raise taxes on the person who makes a dollar more than I do. That's just a truism.
Corey
47:53
But that leaves a lot on the table, right? I mean, you can basically get majority support from about $75,000 upward for income support or for income taxes.
SPEAKER_02
48:04
Carter, do you feel like this finds the light of day with the government or the UCP government or a third party group?
Carter
48:10
Oh, I really hope it does. I really hope it does because all I want to do the day that this thing gets trial ballooned is
Carter
48:16
is tweet the link to this episode.
Carter
48:18
I want to do it all day, every day. This is
Carter
48:22
is going to make my life full
Carter
48:24
full and happy, and I hope it gets trial ballooned. I think it's
Carter
48:31
it's a very reasonable possibility it doesn't, but someone invested a shit ton of money in this, so it's hard to do that poll and not actually release
Carter
48:40
release it in some fashion.
Corey
48:43
well look thank you both for coming together tonight i think it was a good opportunity to talk about some of the some of the things foundational to the construction of polls for political parties and interest groups and whatnot and some of the stuff that goes into that so uh you know do your that's a wrap thing now zane but uh yeah it was fun yeah
Corey
49:00
yeah okay well before i do that cory here's what i'm gonna do i'm
SPEAKER_02
49:04
i'm gonna beg for some more five star reviews i am gonna tell you the listener do a couple of things leave us five star review ask Ask a question on that review and tweet us or find us on Facebook. If you've also received this poll, we want to hear from you about that, because I think that'd be very interesting. Did you hear the 555? Did you get, as Carter speculated, a different number? Was it a live call? Did you find it out in another format? Just send us your notes. If you if you have heard about this poll, it'd be really interesting. And we want to jam on this further. So that's a wrap on Episode 809 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.