Episode 810: Carter gets fired

SPEAKER_01 0:02

This is a Strategist episode 810. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what's

Carter 0:13

It's another Sunday we get to spend together. I'm very excited to see Zain, mostly.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Let me tell you this. Twice in one week, it's too much. I'd say it's too much. I was really surprised we actually were doing this tonight, to be quite honest with you. You thought this was going to be canceled. I really did. I mean, Corey, everything is getting canceled these days. Pay attention. By the way, how Steven has not gotten canceled yet is actually a miracle. No,

Carter 0:44

No, it's because I'm a professional.

Carter 0:46

I'm a professional. Okay, yeah, right,

SPEAKER_01 0:47

You choose your words carefully. I

Carter 0:49

I choose my words carefully.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

I like that. I like that. Good feedback from last episode, I would say. We're hearing the people, hearing what they're having to say. No one outside of Corey got the poll, Carter. So, of course, we know it was just an intellectual exercise for us to go through.

Corey 1:09

That's not true. I've seen on Reddit some people got the poll. It's out there. The Redditors

Carter 1:14

known for their trustworthiness. Okay. Exactly.

Corey 1:17

I saw it on the QAnon forums. It's all close together.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

regardless whether it's real or not definitely fake um people seem to enjoy it and uh i think it was it was it was good uh good impromptu strategist episoding uh and speaking of impromptu episoding this one is also going to be exactly the same like all of our episodes uh

SPEAKER_01 1:39

made up out of nowhere so let's move it on to our first segment we are family guys yeah

SPEAKER_01 1:46

yeah i see i like that That's pretty good, right? That's good.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

the liberal marriage with WE has come to an end before it even started. They have decided to part ways, which sounded like a very poor pre-divorce statement. But regardless, WE will now not be administering the close to billion-dollar volunteer program that the feds had stated was the only charity in the country that was able to do this. So I want to focus today on this story in particular, but I also want to talk about scandals on the main. Corey, you've got your hand up.

Corey 2:24

Yeah, I mean, if we're going to talk about this conscious uncoupling, can we find a way to describe them other than we? Because I'm going to get really confused using

SPEAKER_01 2:32

What do you want to use? Do you have suggestions? Do you want to call them the Kill Burgers charity? Is that good?

Corey 2:38

Oh, okay, sure. Let's do that.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

It's a mouthful now that I think about it, but okay. As long

Carter 2:43

long as we don't have to say Kill Burger, I'll

Carter 2:45

I'll screw that up for sure. How

SPEAKER_01 2:47

How about We Charity? The Foundation or Charity? Okay, The Foundation. This is good. We're getting into the legalese all day already.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Now referred to there

SPEAKER_01 2:56

there on in as The Foundation.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

So, Corey, before we get started on the specifics of this story, talk to me about broadly what goes into creating a political scandal. Because the S-word is now starting to be used around this. by the opposition. But simultaneously, we've also got the ethics watchdog now investigating Trudeau, which seems to happen every every 18 months or so, like clockwork. But what goes into this, this cocktail of creating scandals and scandals that perhaps take governments down? I want to talk about that first before we get into the foundation.

Corey 3:34

Well, unfortunately, it does feel like you could set your watch to these at this point for the Trudeau government and the ethics Commissioner. A scandal, simply put, is absolutely in the eye of the beholder. It is entirely different. It's not always of legal foundation, although that's usually a big part of it. Often there's some suggestion that a law was broken, whether that law carries jail time or is just the way things are supposed to occur.

Corey 4:00

But a scandal can also be an amplified gaffe. It can be something where you have said something that is not illegal, but is deeply offensive to different groups of people or it could be a sex scandal ultimately it's anything that people in large enough numbers take an affront to and usually what's pretty foundational to a scandal is a denial by one side as well most of the time right uh where all of a sudden um what's very common to them is that there's there's a there's like a i don't want to use the word cover-up because i'm not suggesting that's what it is in this case but um you know the suggestion that there is no scandal is so Though part of there being a scandal a lot of the time, it's hard to separate the two.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Carter, anything to add as to what goes into the recipe of scandal making?

Carter 4:46

A scandal is two sides. I mean, I think that that's what Corey's saying with the denial

Carter 4:50

denial at the beginning.

Carter 4:52

You rarely hear of a scandal where someone says, you know what, that was a mistake. I misspoke and I'd

Carter 4:57

I'd like to apologize. That

Carter 4:59

That was something wrong and I'm going to move forward. The

Carter 5:01

The scandal always starts off, and this one with the We Charity, started off with, there's nothing wrong here. There's nothing to see. And because there's nothing wrong, there's nothing to see, the other side pushes. Now, I will say this, that in today's society, we're always looking to add the gate suffix. Everything needs to be a gate. And we're trying to find a way to make almost everything a scandal. And it's kind of diminished the real scandals, the true the true pieces of of corruption

Carter 5:32

corruption that we used to see. And we used to see a lot more of it, to be honest. Right now, most governments, I think, are relatively scandal free. And that's one of the reasons that when opposition parties push for a scandal and try and get something going, you know, they do push back pretty hard. And I think the other thing is that scandals ultimately can bring down governments. A real scandal can end a government's right to govern. And we've seen that only

Carter 6:02

only a few times in history where the scandal ultimately takes out the governing party.

Carter 6:08

Most of the time, though, these are little made up blips that if the governing party could pull their heads out of their tushes long enough, they'd be able to get past the scandal before it even develops any legs at all.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Corey, Carter said a couple of interesting things here. The first is, you know, real scandals can take down governments. And then the other statement he made was this idea that scandals are often engineered by opposition parties in some ways. So how do you kind of reconcile these two things? Like, as in what is a real scandal and how does this concept of engineering, you know, whether it's a gaffe to your point, Corey, How do you engineer and elevate that to a scandal if you're part of the opposition class or the activist class in this case?

Corey 6:50

Well, the defining characteristic of a scandal is public outrage. So if you want something to become a scandal, you need to increase the level of outrage.

Corey 6:58

outrage. And that usually means increasing your level of umbrage, talking about how this is morally wrong, how this is legally wrong, how this is part of the general degrading of Canadian fabric. You start to get yourself into the world of superlatives very quickly. often if you were trying to push for something being a scandal the worst ever you know the the the most corrupt ever things of that nature but um uh

Corey 7:21

uh but you know there's a challenge there which is i think and in a way sort of building on what carter said if if

Corey 7:28

if everything's a scandal nothing's a scandal because you can only turn that dial up to 11 so many times before everybody

Corey 7:35

normalizes their speakers right and your 11 becomes their their baseline like their standard audio level. And so where the opposition has to be careful anywhere, not just on this particular issue, is

Corey 7:48

so much of what we need to know in politics, we learned as children, the boy who cried wolf, right? You know, the emperor has no clothes, another great one, Trump fans. But if you say everything's a scandal, nobody is going to take you seriously when the true scandals come along carter

SPEAKER_01 8:04

carter to that point then does this situation with the foundation as we are now calling it does it have the right ingredients to to make a scandal i.e if you're sitting in opposition right now are you thinking yep these are this is this has got everything i need to start dialing up the volume does it have the ingredients well

Carter 8:24

well i mean first of all i i think that it fails on its first test which is and i said this in our when we talked about the first time. The connection between the Trudeaus and this charity is that they show up at the charity's events. They promote the good work that this charity does. How is that a scandal? I mean, bringing attention to the fact that the Trudeaus agree that youth should be more engaged. Are you suggesting, Mr. Scheer, that you don't think that you should be more engaged? I mean, this strikes this strikes me as um you know we've we've we've forgotten what what a conflict of interest actually means which is you know if if i get a piece of work from my wife you know that that looks like a conflict of interest because i'm financially benefiting from her handing something to me uh that type of conflict of interest i think is long ago been done away with we don't see it very frequently this

Carter 9:17

this is something that's striving to be that type of conflict of interest that doesn't have the remunerative component

Carter 9:23

component to it. It's

Carter 9:24

It's not like the Trudeaus are going to walk away with more money in their jeans. And now they're saying, well, they're friends. They're friends.

Carter 9:31

Okay. So everybody that you're a friend with can't administer a government program. The thing that was particularly challenging with this is it felt like it was soul sourced, right?

Carter 9:41

right? They went out and they found the only group that could do this. and

Carter 9:46

and again if killberger is walking away with a hundred million dollars of this 900 million in his pocket then that's a scandal but

Carter 9:52

but if nothing changes i mean it is a charity he can't take

Carter 9:56

take the money out of the charity there's a there's a reporting process all

Carter 9:59

all of these things would be followed i

Carter 10:02

i don't see where the conflict is and that's where the basis of the accusation lies the basis of the accusation lies in this is a conflict of interest otherwise conservatives

Carter 10:13

conservatives Conservatives should be jumping up and down. This is actually handing out to the private sector. Now, I guess there's no profit in this, but it's still handing out a large portion of work to outside the government. This is what conservatives are supposed to stand for. But, of course, they throw away that principle if it suits them in the moment, which in this case it does.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Corey, does your read the same or a little bit divergent?

Corey 10:36

No, I mean, I disagree. It's called a conflict of interest, not conflict of bank accounts. It doesn't just have to be about money. And I'll give you a very simple example. If I were to use my employer's resources to promote you and Stephen, that

Corey 10:49

that would be wrong, even though I wouldn't be financially benefiting from it in any way, shape, or form. If you try to advance your friends with public resources, that's a problem. Now, the

Corey 10:58

the question is whether that is what is happening here. There is a lot of ambiguity in this situation. There's a lot of gray. People

Corey 11:04

People know each other. Ultimately, it's very tough to find yourself in a world where you are the prime minister of a nation and the head of the only charity large enough to do work, if that is what's happening, is not known to you, right? I mean, like almost by definition, you're going to be traveling in

Carter 11:20

in the same circles.

Corey 11:20

circles. That's the reality of things. But giving

Corey 11:22

giving your friends things is wrong. Giving charities that you support, resources, soul sourced, if the reason is not truly because they're the only ones who can do it, is wrong. And you can easily see how this could actually become a financial benefit as well If you are an ambassador of this charity, you leave office or your husband leaves office if you're Sophie Trudeau, and you

Corey 11:50

you become a paid employee. You become their executive director or something, and it would be very difficult to not look at that and say, was there a connection somewhere along the way there? Now

Carter 11:59

you're imagining a future situation. This

Corey 12:01

This is my point, though, Stephen. It

Corey 12:03

It creates very, very ambiguous, dodgy background

Corey 12:09

background to all of this. And as the prime minister, he should have known better. I think

Corey 12:14

think that's what I would say. Corey,

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Corey, to the question I asked Carter, for you, are the ingredients there for the opposition to get loud on this, to try to elevate it to scandal territory? territory?

Corey 12:25

I don't know that I think on its own, it would, it would be something that I think is particularly damning. But as you mentioned, this is this is our third and three years of ethics investigations. And that becomes a bit of a challenge. It starts to look like, and they kind of carry a common thread of like, well, I was trying to do good or well, it was a charity. And while there's not financial upside here, right, whether you're going to the Aga Khan's Island, or whether you're, you know, you're just very cozy with people, right. And so So it starts to feed a bit of a narrative that if you're the liberals, you have to be careful about. You know, last week I said, I

Corey 12:59

I think they have to double down, right? They're, you know, it was a bad idea to do it, but now they're in it and they got to be in it. I'm kind of kicking myself for not bringing up exactly what they did, which is saying

Corey 13:09

we mutually agree to separate, because I think that was the right play right here to say it's become a distraction.

Corey 13:15

We don't need this anymore. And if I'm the Trudeau government, I am very quickly turning the page on this because Because, yeah, I think some of the fundamental ingredients are there. Now, that doesn't mean it actually will become a great, long-lasting scandal, but it certainly has those components.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Carter, I wanted to get into what Corey just mentioned, which is the strategic response. So look at the liberals for me. This mutual parting of ways, is that what you would have advised if you were the liberals? What did you make of their response?

Carter 13:43

Well, I mean, I think the timing was right for a mutual ending of this relationship. relationship. There's a lot of egg on this government's face for doing it this way. It was a bad choice to do it this way. An open process or, you know, a diffused, you know, type of implementation. This is a big program. And that is probably the piece that I overlooked in our first criticism of it or our first look at it. $900 million is a lot of money. It is a lot of money to give to any enterprise, let alone a social enterprise. Now, this is a big foundation. This is a big organization that manages and moves a lot of money, but still, something like $900 million that you're going to just turn into a program, it feels to me like we wouldn't have accepted it if it was handed to a business, unless it was oil and gas, in which case Albertans would have loved it. But we don't accept that because that's not the way the government's supposed to work. so i think

Carter 14:46

think that backing away i wouldn't have done it if it was in september october but it's july you know late june july um people

Carter 14:55

people aren't paying attention the same way and they got out of this almost before it became scandal worthy the better way of doing it well two two better options number one don't get yourself into the situation don't do it and the second is the second it looked bad walk away from it right but then you're then you put yourself in a position when every time the the opposition starts screaming that there's an ethical violation they can point to this situation and say see how quickly they backed away and I do think that this is going to haunt Trudeau and the Trudeau government in the future when they try and do something similar because let's be honest government gives a lot of money away to organizations whether they're charities Or for-profit corporations. And each one of them now gets to be held up as, is this another We Charity debacle?

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Do you think it has taken the shine off on the COVID bump, the artificial COVID bump that they have, this honeymoon-ish phase that they live in for their execution of handling COVID? Do you feel like this could kind of, you know, tarnish a bit of that?

Corey 16:24

You know, I actually don't believe so. Maybe a little bit. I guess it would be hard to say that it won't have a bit of an impact if we're saying there are some components, including the public, saying what is going on. But I think the bigger risk in some ways is almost is to

Corey 16:39

to come right now that the ethics commissioner is involved. If if the finding on this is that the government acted in an improper fashion, that is probably your

Corey 16:49

your bigger risk. If I am the Trudeau government, I am helping the commissioner get through this at lightning speed over the summer when people are paying less attention and just moving on and taking my beating. Because let's face it, there'll probably be a beating of some sort. That's just how ethics commissioners roll when they pick something up. They're at least going to wrap your knuckles and say, shame on you. You should have known the optics were bad. But it is the dead of summer. It is a charity. It's hard to get too outraged about this because it doesn't have that private financial interest that Stephen was talking about, at least not the direct one. So I don't know. I mean, it

Corey 17:24

it doesn't seem like the end of the world, but you can kind of see the end of the world from here. So they got to be careful.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Corey, back to you on this. Conservatives, what should they be doing right now? Let's say you're advising them at this moment. You've got three ethics investigations. You've got a leadership that's currently happening. What are you advising the party or specific individuals within the party to do right now with this situation?

Corey 17:47

I don't know if I'd advise them to do anything. Let's see what the ethics commissioner comes back with. Let's leave it for the new leader. It doesn't really make sense to go on a full offensive right now when

Corey 17:56

when they're still trying to solve their own leadership question. So, if things line up nicely and all of a sudden Aaron O'Toole or Peter McKay is the leader and the ethics commissioner report comes the next week and they can start clubbing

Corey 18:10

clubbing Trudeau over the head, that's obviously the best case scenario for them. So, don't go too far too fast right now. Save some of this ammo for the next leader because that's when it's actually going to be important.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Carter, same question to you. What are you doing if you're advising the conservatives right now?

Carter 18:24

Well, I don't really know what to do now. I mean, they're cleaning it up. There's going to be a report from the ethics commissioner to continue to bang on the drum. Seems rather pointless, but it does raise the question, why did they do it right then? Why didn't they allow it to kind of set in the public mind? It would have been really interesting to watch the Trudeau liberals spend some money, get some support for the program, start to put it out there, and then all of a sudden pull the rug out from under them that this was done improperly, didn't go through the proper processes. processes, um, that might've been a way, like it would have been a bigger scandal if people knew about it and man had, had invested in it. Uh, I might've advised them earlier, uh, to let it, let it develop, let it, let it unfold before you start to, uh, make a big deal out of it. Maybe, you know, whisper to a few people, this doesn't look good. Get a few people on the talk shows, uh, saying that they were concerned about it. But you know, the, the problem is the second it became a thing. They yelled about it. Now the wind's out of their balloon, and it's hard to put

Carter 19:24

put it back in.

Corey 19:27

Well, and part of that is because they're not the only opposition party, right? So the NDP were also on this, and that does create a bit of an incentive almost to get the scoop, to get out there and be the first one yelling about this, and maybe rightfully so. I'm not trying to be dismissive here, but to be the first one that is vocal on this matter, the first to email or write a letter to the ethics commissioner and certainly you saw even

Corey 19:50

when the ethics commissioner came back and said yes we're going to do that um you know barrett and the conservatives i think was the letter that triggered it but charlie angus said hey i wrote a letter too at the exact same time yeah almost immediately so uh you see this kind of like tripping over yourself opposition uh and they would have had to be a bit more coordinated if that was going to be the approach they take and i just don't see what the upside would be for both parties kind of a prisoner's dilemma thing there you

Corey 20:14

you know you scoop the other guy and you win so

SPEAKER_01 20:16

carter uh same question uh for you actually an extension of what cory said he said if you're the liberals right now you want to try to get this thing done at lightning speed with the ethics commissioner if you're the conservatives do you want to elongate this do you want to actually get it done at lightning speed as well where where do you kind of if you're if you're pulling the levers as as they sit with you in terms of cadence and speed what are you what are you advising

Carter 20:40

Well, the Liberals want it to happen in the summer. The Conservatives want it to happen in the fall. Anything bad that happens in the summer or in December didn't really happen.

Carter 20:49

Anything good that happens in the

Carter 20:51

the summer or December didn't really happen either.

Carter 20:55

So if you're the Conservatives, you desperately don't want it to happen until

Carter 20:58

until such time as you have your new leader in place. You can make some hay out of it. You can ask them in the legislature or in the House of Commons. um you you you get nothing from it happening in in the summer and the liberals get to say well we we we worked with the ethics commissioner we gave them everything that they asked for look at us working in cooperation and by the way the report came out in august and there was nothing there or if there is something you minimize it because it's in august and no one gives a fuck quite

Corey 21:28

quite anything dad well

Corey 21:30

well look the liberals may have had the best intentions in the world uh but they They didn't follow the rules that are there to protect us all. That is their exposure. And in a funny way, I think their exposure is more legal than moral, as I said. So if I'm the Libs, I'm getting through this quickly. If I'm the Conservatives, I don't even know what, quote unquote, lever I have to pull right now. I'm assuming I'm not even a witness. You know, it's going to be the Ethics Commissioner talking to people in government and what have you, or the WE Charity. So, yeah, you know, maybe you try to expand it. Say, hey, you've got to look at these angles, try to push things that go by the ethics commissioner's, you know, field of vision, I suppose, that they might feel they have to address in their report, which would make the report go longer. But, you know, otherwise, you don't have a lot to pull, you know, because we are kind of in a narrower definition of conflict of interest than perhaps the conservatives wish. Carter,

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Carter, finish us off with your perfect prognostication skills. You are betting. You're betting all-star level.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Will this story have legs? Will it become a sort of scandal that could reach sponsorship scandal territory? Where would you kind of place this in the spectrum of scandal? Hold

Corey 22:44

Hold on, hold on. Before you answer, I'm just going to play a clip.

Carter 22:48

Jeb Bush needs to survive this primary and compete in a general. Jeb Bush is not surviving this primary. He's totally surviving this primary. Mark it down on your calendar, okay? Stephen Carter said today, Jeb Bush is the guy.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Of course. Stephen, with that win behind your back, please answer the question.

Carter 23:10

I just don't think this is a big deal. I think that it gets dealt with and it's over before anybody musters the strength to be upset about it. But keep in mind that our southern neighbor is on fire because Trump is the president against my prognostication, perhaps wishful thinking. You know, and I think, frankly, it'd be relatively easy to change the channel on this thing. It just doesn't feel like it's going to muster much steam.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Corey, do you want to do you want to take a kick at the can? I want to make it fair. Give me your prognostication skills. What do you what do you think is going to happen?

Corey 23:41

I think that the liberals will be fairly successful

Corey 23:47

successful at being able to push this thing quickly. I

Corey 23:50

I think the ethics commissioner will know exactly what the liberals will be up to and might even just drag feet for

Corey 23:55

for the heck of it. And in

Corey 23:58

in the meantime, we haven't talked about the

Corey 24:00

the poor We Charity, which I know is a bit of a lightning rod in the nonprofit sector. But, boy,

Corey 24:05

boy, talk about just being dragged through like a brutal situation here. like they they had to pull out because there was no way they could succeed in this environment any inability to do anything but a hundred percent success would have been held up as a sign of of deep deep problems like they had to get out of this thing so okay

SPEAKER_01 24:26

okay well we'll leave that there and we will we will see to be determined uh if stephen carter keeps batting a thousand on his prognostication uh let's move it on to our next segment i wanted to go into the alberta strategy strategy scale, guys. We've done the strategy scale before. For those of us who are, for those of you that are new to our program, here's what we do. So guys, I'm going to go through five things happening in Alberta right now. They're all UCP centric, i.e. you're working for the UCP. So put that hat on right now.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Okay, so Carter, it's a natural for you. Just go on Carter's Twitter account. You'll see how much of a perfect fit this is. I'm going to give you these five situations. patience i want you to dispassionately give me on a scale of one to ten how big of a deal is it one is not that big of a deal it's fine no issue here 10 this is really bad okay and then i want you to talk about what you would do as a ucp strategist get that is that cool one to ten give me the rating and then tell me what you would do as your ucp strategist cory i'm going to start with you uh you as the ucp and jason kenney have still not fired you're arguably racist homophobic speechwriter uh how bad of it is this on a one to ten and what are you doing

Corey 25:43

think it's a c minus the challenge that you have is um there is a bit of a a trickle here there you have additional indigenous communities coming forward all the time adding to a bit of your uh a bit of the narrative that look people want what this bill of gone um what i am doing doing is I look at this point, I think you've, you've got to do more than just have third parties say the man has changed. He, you know, maybe Paul needs to come out with a bit of a letter of contrition. Like, listen, there's been a lot of talk about my words, which I think is really unfortunate because I'm here to

Corey 26:21

to help other people with their words. It's not about what I think or what do, but I want to share with you how I have evolved and what has triggered that evolution in in my points of view because I know that a lot of what I said was deeply painful for people and you know frankly in my previous life part of my job was to kind of shock and titillate and write things that would provoke and

Corey 26:41

and you got to know that's

Corey 26:43

that's not really who I am at my core and I deeply regret that I did these things simply to shock and titillate and drive forward these narratives you know

Corey 26:52

know five years ago this thing happened to me whatever your story is that that actually actually reinforces why you changed uh and then just say look i uh the last thing i want is is to be a distraction to the important work that this premier is doing um and uh you know i i i hope that people will forgive me i reaching out to treaty six i'm reaching out to treaty eight i'm going to give them my personal for you know apologies on this matter um but uh you know i just i feel terrible about how this all is that that is what i would do i

SPEAKER_01 27:23

i mean listen cory hogan Logan is the speechwriter to speechwriters, and he's clearly provided a service right here. Carter, what are you doing? First of all, on the 1 to 10, Corey's given it clearly a C-. I'll let you guys at home decode that. How bad is it on the 1 to 10, and what are you doing?

Carter 27:40

Well, it's a fail, Zane, for sure, because the

Carter 27:43

the challenge that Kenny

Carter 27:47

Kenny has is that he's trying to reestablish different terms of reference for the relationships with Alberta's indigenous population. It is important to the development of what he sees as a resurgent industry, which is oil and gas. So if I'm sitting there, I'm not thinking necessarily about the public relations nightmare and the furor that is bubbling here in Alberta about this particular individual and what particularly what he has said i'm thinking about uh

Carter 28:16

uh treaty six and treaty and treaty seven and i'm trying to figure out how i

Carter 28:21

i can on the one hand rebuild

Carter 28:24

rebuild a relationship uh with those nations

Carter 28:27

nations the way that that needs to happen uh

Carter 28:30

uh for alberta to be able to access um oil

Carter 28:34

oil and gas product uh or wind product or pipeline access or whatever else i mean the supreme court decided not to hear case about Trans Mountain because the vast majority of First Nations were in approval or agreement with Trans Mountain. What happens when First Nations in Alberta start saying, you know what,

Carter 28:58

we'd love to support you, but we can't while you've got this person in your office, or we can't support

Carter 29:05

So if I was with the UCP, I really liked Corey's apology tour idea. Now I've been forced to make apology tours, uh so i'll tell you they do come with a double-edged sword uh because as soon as you start the apology um then if you don't apologize exactly right you're done and in the apology

Carter 29:25

right now we know certain things about what mr bunner has written um he knows everything um the fear that i would have is that you you apologize for three quarters and then the last quarter comes out and you're you're hung out so if you're doing Cory's apology tour solid strategy make sure you're apologizing for everything and ideally everything including a couple things that the general public public don't know today because then you're taking full accountability for your actions and you are trying to make things better the premier has to speak to treaty six and treaty seven uh you know he has to have some meetings he has to um show not tell that this is uh this is in the past for this government carter

SPEAKER_01 30:13

carter i want to go back to you on this second uh issue that we want to discuss same rules one to ten and what would you do uh the energy war room jason kenny and the ucp's energy war room putting out an ad today on facebook which i believe if you found and texted us to us very early in the morning and then it took off as a tweet uh uh So so props to you, Carter. But this tweet, this this Facebook ad ultimately siding with is it fair to say climate change denying in some ways, you know, citing some research in that in that domain. So first, maybe you want to add more context. I'll let you do that. Give us the one to 10. And then what would you do?

Carter 30:49

I stole this from the breakdown. Let's get that clear. I stole this already. OK, but the the what would I do? I'd shut it down it's brought me nothing but pain if I'm Jason Kenney I am now what am I, nine months into this thing and every month something that they do hurts and obviously there seems to be no oversight from the government because they have separated it it is a separate entity it is the equivalent of the We Charity it's a non-profit society that exists outside of government that gets $30 million a year that is governed by three ministers as private citizens. So that's problematic. The governance structure is a disaster. And obviously, the people leading it, Tom Olson specifically, seems to fit right in with Matt Wolf in being incredibly incompetent. So if I'm Jason Kenney, I'm looking at this and saying, I can't find a competent communicator to save my life. I'm going to shut this thing down because every time it opens its mouth, it hurts. And let's be honest, the $30 million a year can be spent doing a lot of other things that will actually have some impact. This

Carter 32:02

has been a disaster. It will be a disaster. And I think that the ideological blinders that enabled them to set this up need to be taken off because they can try all the promotions of the oil and gas industry that they want. They've already signaled that they're moving to a diversification strategy.

Carter 32:18

Double down on it. Take the $30 million that you were putting into oil and gas and put it into diversification.

Carter 32:24

Communicate about tech. Communicate about opportunities.

Carter 32:28

opportunities. Communicate about the mountains being so close to Edmonton. Those

Carter 32:32

Those are your options, and that's what I'd recommend.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Carter, hold on. Before I pose the same question to you, Corey, okay, so this is an institution that's causing nothing but pain for the government. How much pain? Give me that scale on a 1 to 10. Is it a 3? Is it a 10? Is this a big deal? where do you place it well

Carter 32:50

well i think it's probably it's probably a c minus like it's not killing you but what it's doing the question what is what it's doing to you is that it's it's not doing what it's supposed to do so so sure maybe this little bit of pain because they found an ad that you're targeting to people who are likely to disbelieve climate change in the first place um so you're they're playing with that psychology fine that makes sense but they're

Carter 33:17

they're not winning over the institutional investors. They're not changing the way that people are thinking of Alberta's oil sands. They're not changing the way that they think of our oil and gas industry. They're not making it easier to build a pipeline.

Carter 33:29

So what are we spending the $70 million for?

Carter 33:33

Or the $30 million a year? $120 million over four. Are you going to get the return on the investment or could you deploy that money better and

Carter 33:43

and win a lot more hearts and minds? You know, they're closing 30-plus provincial parks, and they're saving themselves $5 million.

Carter 33:53

Let's keep the provincial parks open.

Carter 33:56

I'm just throwing it out there. Like, let's get a public relations win instead of a public relations loss by my public relations agency.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Corey, put yourself in the same position. One to ten, how bad? And then if you're a UCP strategist, what are you doing?

Corey 34:12

you know it's bad if you are an insider and i define insider actually

Corey 34:18

actually not just political insider but also industry insider right now like it just you know it's it's not great and to pick up on something steven said you really have to ask yourself what is the purpose of the canadian energy center well

Corey 34:29

well there's a stated purpose which is to make uh you know to combat you know all of the things that are in there combat the lies and myths that are said about you know canadian

Corey 34:37

canadian oil oil and gas industry. There are, you know, a number of other purposes underneath there. And then there's, it's what I would say is almost it's, it's more likely purpose, which is to show Albertans that you're fighting for their, you know, their largest industry and throughout their, you know, successfully bloody noses. And

Corey 34:55

And I think you have to, if you're looking at this kind of honestly, you're failing on both fronts right here. And it's pretty, pretty easy to say, maybe it's time for Tom Olson to sit down and write two letters. If you're familiar with that old khrushchev joke but

Corey 35:10

you know i think there is a way out of here where the government can save face and and make it look almost like you're just uh moving from one win to another win and move on with your life which is to broaden the mandate expand it to match uh you know the um

Corey 35:25

actually i didn't actually know what the hook was as i was thinking about this is but as steven talked about it i think the diversification could be a bit of a hook here so i

Corey 35:32

i have an expanded canadian energy center put together a new board put tom on the board so he can save face and so it can look like you didn't think the thing was a total effing failure bring in other board members from oil and gas from the renewable sector from a number of other energy diversification interests out there bring in other provinces if you're the canadian energy center bring in other groups that exist outside of alberta and and effectively say we're

Corey 35:56

we're making this bigger right and use the opportunity to make it bigger to absolutely reset the whole bloody thing and also take Take the opportunity to look at new ways to fund it so that it is only funded exclusively by industry contributions. There's no tax dollars going into it. And ideally, also perhaps money coming in, again, from other provinces or whatnot. This is how you get out of this box. But you have to get out of this box because this thing is just sitting here, popping up, and being embarrassing every three months. And, you know, God love them. You know, the people involved in it, they're

Corey 36:27

they're so – you

Corey 36:31

know, I don't need to get into it. But I don't doubt their intentions, frankly,

Corey 36:35

right? I just worry that they don't know what they're actually trying

Corey 36:38

trying to accomplish right now. And you just need to reset. You need a hard reset on this entire thing. Carter,

SPEAKER_01 36:45

Carter, on a similar vein, the next one is the extension on the timeline of the foreign funding of Alberta and anti-energy campaigns. So similar sort of issue, right? You had Steve Allen, who is the former chair of CED here, leading this panel. And on a Friday afternoon, the Minister of Energy says it's going to be delayed for four months. It requires an extra million dollars. And the mandate has changed to say if there is any anti-Alberta energy campaigns going on by foreign entities, then this report will come out and showcase it rather than definitively saying there was prior to. So I know we're getting to very much inside baseball. We've probably lost all of our listeners. It's fine. If you're in Alberta, thank you for sticking with us. But Carter, I want to talk about this because it's very interesting and it's a cousin to what we just discussed. One to 10. And what would you do?

Carter 37:40

Well, I think that first of all, coming back and asking for a million dollars more when you gave a million dollars to your son's legal firm is a little, or sorry, 900,000. I shouldn't exaggerate. It's kind of a big deal. Still, I'm interested

Carter 37:54

interested in this because the actual impetus, the thesis that they are basing their new report on was completed by Vivian Krause from her house, right? She did all the research that was required to create the thesis basically by herself, no outside funding, and she was able to do it all for free. Why

Carter 38:17

Why are we spending millions of dollars on this particular inquiry that may or may not deliver the outcome that we're looking for? I mean, I

Carter 38:26

I hope Steve Allen comes back and says, yeah, there's foreign funding into reducing pipelines

Carter 38:33

pipelines and fossil fuel usage. Tons of foreign funding. It's also happening everywhere else. I mean, today, just today, there was a pipeline on the eastern seaboard that was cancelled. These things are happening around the world. The Western democracies is where they take off because it turns out we have freedom of speech and those types of things. A little less successful in Russia. But, you know, this is how it works. And the money is being spent because the population and certain segments of the population don't like fossil fuels. How is that a conspiracy? It exists. It's out in full force. why do we have to spend millions of dollars another million dollars on the exact same thing now if i'm a ucp person this

Carter 39:17

this goes back to what cory said i want to be seen to be fighting it because i said i was going to do that but i also said i was a fiscal conservative and

Carter 39:25

and the only place that fiscal conservatism seems to have a role in this government is if they're talking about being anti-union that's

Carter 39:32

all the rest of the money is flowing out of this government as fast as possible. And

Carter 39:36

And it tends to be flowing to people that they know and like, and

Carter 39:39

and to no one else. The number of appointments, the number of people who are getting rich

Carter 39:45

rich off of this government, it's just, I'm

Carter 39:48

I'm very frustrated by it. So I didn't do a very good job of your question. And I think Corey, frankly, is a way, way better UCP strategist than me at this stage. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Yeah, Carter, you'd be fired on day one. Corey, what are you giving this on a one to 10 in terms of it's it's how big of a deal it is and then what are you doing oh

Corey 40:09

oh i don't think it's a big deal at all look i'm gonna get into my answer i want to say the foreign funding argument is to me it's hilarious because it's not as though there's not a ton of money coming into this jurisdiction that is pro-oil you know it's like people get involved in this fight in all sorts of different ways and there's nothing inherently in my opinion nefarious about that um i don't know that one million more is a big deal but can i tell you what my personal theory is as to the extension of the timeline i think that people have misread exactly what's going on here my theory is that extension of language the idea that it is if there is any foreign influence that

Corey 40:44

that is for legal purposes and the extension is there for legal purposes as well so it doesn't look prejudged what you want to do is make sure that you've inoculated this against any kind of review that says this was a kangaroo court and if you ultimately put into your terms of reference this has already happened you

Corey 41:01

you are probably at more legal jeopardy of that but

Carter 41:03

but it is a kangaroo record, right?

Carter 41:05

right? Like they're not interviewing both sides. They're not digging into actually how it's gone. I mean, and I know Sabora

Carter 41:11

Sabora Berman is like the devil in Alberta, but she's offered to

Carter 41:17

to speak to them. She's not been reached.

Carter 41:21

The number of environmental organizations that are standing there with their hands up. And if I was running an NGO that was involved in the the environment i'd put my hand up right now and say you know here i am investigate me i want to talk i want to be heard and the it will be a kangaroo court for certain a three and a half million dollar four million dollar whatever the hell it is kangaroo court if it doesn't speak to both sides and it doesn't it doesn't appear that it's the least bit interested in speaking to both sides carter i'll tell

Corey 41:52

tell you that oh go ahead cory well i'll tell you this my experience in government government is that government quietly changes bills, quietly changes regs, and quietly changes terms of reference all the time and almost always for the same reason, which is that more robust legal analysis has come in that

Corey 42:05

that has suggested there's

Corey 42:06

there's a problem with the initial bill, reg, or terms of reference from a legal review point of view.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Carter, our next one is the recovery plan. Jason Kenney's recovery plan making a $10 billion investment, $7 billion of which has already been announced, $1.5 billion of which is for the pipeline to the south, which may get cancelled depending on what happens with Sleepy Joe. Am I the only one using it? No, it's

Carter 42:29

it's catching on. Everybody's

SPEAKER_01 42:31

Whatever happens with Joe Biden, that pipeline could be canceled. How big of a deal is this considering the reviews that are coming in for this plan? And what are you doing as a UCP strategist?

Carter 42:42

I mean, I wrote a tweet stream right when COVID started about the steps that were going to need to be taken in order to ensure that we could come out of this. And one of the last steps is to make sure that we've got out a significant infrastructure investment that gives us an opportunity to pop out of it. And ideally, it comes out of it with an opportunity to build off of economic opportunity. Because the economics of this are that we're in trouble in Alberta, we're in trouble in Canada, the world is in trouble. Our biggest neighbor is still got a tear on fire. That's our biggest customer. That's That's everything that matters to us. It comes from there. And they're in real trouble. So I'm

Carter 43:25

I'm not super stoked with the way that the money has been allocated. I really like the Banff-Calgary train. Big fan of that. I think that would be great for tourism. I think it would be great for also

Carter 43:40

also removing cars from a particular highway. But that seemed to be the only thing that was a little bit outside the box. box i would have loved to seen something that was more outside the box from jason and that's where i think he tends to fall down there's not a lot outside the box um even the green line which has already been approved right i mean you've pointed out that the government loves to re re-announce things that have already been approved uh they're now doing an analysis of it well here's my analysis there's going to be i think 20 000 calgarians uh to work on the project and this is the same if you're living in vancouver or you're listening in toronto every project that you've got needs to be dusted off and and funded because across the country we need to put canadians back to work and jason kenney's plan uh falls short of putting enough albertans back to work carter

SPEAKER_01 44:30

carter i've already fired you as a ucb strategist on the last question but i'm going back to

SPEAKER_01 44:34

as as you're as you're no you're it was like it was a good critique of the government experiment by

SPEAKER_01 44:38

by you that one

Carter 44:39

one was good horrible

Carter 44:41

that was good i said i

SPEAKER_01 44:42

i said be different i

Carter 44:46

why you don't like this to me cory what are you doing he's always so nice to me

SPEAKER_01 44:51

me how big of a deal is this what are you doing oh

Corey 44:55

don't know that it's a very big deal repackaging is is pretty common governments are pretty good at this and to be honest the confusion everybody had that was like, is this new? Is this not? Was, I

Corey 45:05

I think, a sign that it worked. It was a fairly successful strategy. People probably got very little beyond the sticker headline. Although there's

Corey 45:13

there's an old rule of news releases that I think they forgot, which is that if it doesn't work without the number, it doesn't work. And ultimately, if there is not a lot of new infrastructure down the road, it's not going to look like a particularly compelling infrastructure plan. And there's going to be an awful lot of trouble if Calgary, for example, doesn't have a green line. So, So, you

Corey 45:31

you know, I think it was enough to get through the day. I don't think it is a sufficient infrastructure plan if you truly want an infrastructure plan. I'm not sure you do. I'm not sure that there was anything beyond the need to show that there was a plan. And in that sense, it was a pretty successful component of it because nobody knew what it was and they knew it was big.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Carter, you're a former UCP strategist. You're taking your box after day one, putting it into the trunk of your car. I find you just about to leave the parking lot. lot. And I say, Carter, how big of a deal is it that Jason Kenney is doubling down on the Alberta pension plan, asking the government officials to do a deep dive of pulling out of CPP? And

SPEAKER_01 46:10

And I'm saying, Carter, we're short staffed. So come back to us for 15 minutes. What are you going to do? What are you going to do as our newly hired 15 minute UCP strategist? Really push yourself in that headspace for this last one, Carter.

Carter 46:22

I would prefer to be an issues manager if I i could get the title i think that uh um you know i think that the problem the

Carter 46:31

the problem with all governments is you start to fall in love with shiny objects right and so whatever your shiny object was that you that you that you loved

Carter 46:38

loved at the beginning you're

Carter 46:40

you're still going to love and it's really hard to walk away from them so the

Carter 46:44

the shiny object for jason kenney is is the firewall letter that was created oh

Carter 46:49

oh man how many years ago before stephen harper became the leader of uh of the the Conservative Party. I mean, it was when he was toying around, you know, this was him and Ken Bozenkul and a few other notables. They created the firewall letter that

Carter 47:02

that became the basis of this. And part of that firewall letter, now some almost 20 years in the rearview mirror, was the Alberta pension plan. And it may have made sense 20 years ago. It may have made sense 25 years ago. It does not make sense in this particular moment in time. And not only that,

Carter 47:20

forget about what I think about it ideologically. Forget about what I think about it as an idea. Ask yourself which Albertans are clamoring for this as a solution to a problem. Ed Selmack used to do this. He used to find a solution to a problem that no one knew that there was a problem to. The very first rule is you must establish that there's a problem. Then

Carter 47:39

Then you can solve it. And Jason Kenney did a great job with this with equalization. And I would say that if you want an Alberta pension plan, the first thing you need to do is destroy the Canada Compension Plan. You need to make it seem unfair towards our people and our people being Albertans. It has not

Carter 47:57

not been seen as unfair. So stop calling

Carter 48:00

calling for the change and start calling for the problem. Point out the problem and then you can bring the change. Is that better, Zane? Do I sound like a right-wing freak now? Is that what you wanted?

SPEAKER_01 48:11

30-day contract, no benefits. Nicely done, Carter. You're rehired. Corey, same question to you. the doubling down on the Alberta pension plan to explore it to see if we need to go down a referendum. How big of a deal is it? And what are you doing if you're a UCP strategist right now?

Corey 48:27

Well, when it comes to pensions, when it comes to any kind of major investment, how size matters, right? It's why the province likes it so much. It would increase our financial heft so dramatically. We would move into this stratosphere of large financial houses. People fail to appreciate that these enormous canadian pensions are just like world class in size right you've got case you've got cpp ip you've got teachers hundreds

Corey 48:51

hundreds of billions of dollars in all cases just so much money that like you could sit there and think about it all day you'd never be able to fathom it so

Corey 48:58

so that's why the province likes it but that's also why it's a bad idea because size matters and we are better off as part of the cpp we have a young population yeah that could mean lower premiums right now we are the only province where boomers are outnumbered by their children But here's the problem, that bulge will retire someday. And the, you know, that bulge, of which I am, you know, just on one tail of here, you

Corey 49:20

you know, my kids are going to have to pay enormous premiums to cover the fact that they've got to keep this fund solvent. And yeah, I mean, you can look at projections out into the 40s, 50s and 60s and say, it doesn't look so bad. But it really is pretty dependent on us continuing to grow as a province, which

Corey 49:35

which may or may not be the case. We are pretty invested in an industry that's at a weird infliction point right now. So I would say politically, maybe it's

Corey 49:44

it's an interesting thing to the UCP base. I think just from a public policy point of view, it's a bit terrifying for me. So if I'm the premier, I'm not getting in too deep with this because I worry if

Corey 49:59

if I'm the premier that the more people hear about this, the

Corey 50:02

the less they're going to like it. Like, there's an awful lot of reasons that this is a bad idea, and I'm worried that if they come out and

Corey 50:08

it's my idea, that's going to fall on me politically.

Carter 50:13

Well, I just think that, you know, the sheer number of things right now that he's trying to pull back to Alberta. I mean, this Alberta first mentality that's never been articulated as Alberta first because the branding would be, I think, tragic at this moment. But it's a number of things that will not

Carter 50:30

be popular, I think, in the end. it's easy with equalization, right? Equalization is they're taking something from me and giving it to someone else. That's been characterized that way since the 1990s with Ralph Klein. So we're preconditioned for that.

Carter 50:48

I think that everything else that he layers onto it is actually going to undermine his primary argument, which is the equalization argument. So on some levels, you know if i if i retain my sanity maybe pile everything on maybe at that point you can start making what the case that jason kenney just wants to separate and it becomes a simple argument

SPEAKER_01 51:10

we're gonna have to leave that one there let's move it on to our final segment our over under and our lightning round guys are you ready to not answer my questions totally yeah

SPEAKER_01 51:18

yeah of course i i see you've got practice from the last segment uh cory i'm i'm going to you first on this one on a scale Scale of 1 to 10, scale of 1 to 10, 1 being nope, perfect,

SPEAKER_01 51:29

perfect, amazing, 10 being horrible. How bad from a comms perspective was it that the Edmonton Eskimos decided, yeah, you know what? We're not going to change our name.

Corey 51:41

that if you are going to make that deeply unpopular decision, just keep your mouth shut. Like, why do you need to send out a tweet talking about how you're just going to disappoint people? It's also just, like,

Corey 51:51

like, talk about the last horse over the finish line. it's fucking inevitable just get get your head around it now you don't want to look like you're dragged into it um yes i i understand tradition you know i've also seen fiddler on the roof but uh remember how that one ends too guys remember how it ends so by

SPEAKER_01 52:11

by the way best headline uh analogous to this uh from the onion uh stating that uh you know kicking and screaming washington Edmonton Redskins changed their name to D.C. Redskins.

SPEAKER_01 52:24

Carter, on a scale of 1 to 10, what are you giving this? 1 being not so bad, this is totally fine. 10 being, I

SPEAKER_01 52:32

I guess what Corey's just said, because you guys are not going to give me numbers, so I have to just decode this in real time.

SPEAKER_01 52:37

What are you sending, Carter?

Carter 52:39

Well, I think that this is an absolute fail again because you're going to get there.

Carter 52:44

I understand. I mean, I understand. First of all, it's a lot of money that the Edmonton, CFL team doesn't have, uh, they don't have money to do a complete rebrand. Um,

Carter 52:54

Um, they're going to have to rebrand everything and they don't have that type of cash, especially right now, the CFL is in trouble. Um, so they don't want to do that rebrand, um, but they're going to be doing it anyways. So I would almost, you know, crowdfund the, the, the rebrand, rebrand, figure out how to get this done because you're not going to be the last one after the, the Redskins, the Indians, I'm missing a couple but you know they're all going to be done in the next if this continues it'll be 18 months absolute max why put it off why not be the first to go instead of the last to go Corey

Corey 53:32

well if they're reaching about for names I hear Golden Bears recently became available oh

Corey 53:39

for the Alberta crowd I

SPEAKER_01 53:40

I don't think I'm part of the Alberta crowd what's the reference what am I missing oh

Carter 53:44

sports Zane this is why you don't understand I

SPEAKER_01 53:47

I understand i understand sports that's the u of a name is that university

Carter 53:51

university of alberta that's

Corey 53:52

that's your alma mater they've suspended their sports programs because of budget so

Carter 53:59

kenny's budget cuts is the way that we phrase that carter

Carter 54:02

carter once once again fired

SPEAKER_01 54:03

fired from a big ucb strategist again 30-day contract is over uh carter to you over under on three months over under on three months the length of kanye west's presidential bid um

Carter 54:17

um it's going to go the distance baby because if i'm wrong about donald trump i want to be wrong about kanye west my

Carter 54:26

my god and and if elon musk isn't his vice presidential candidate i don't know what's wrong with the world because the first tweet

Carter 54:36

supporting this was like elon musk saying i'm with you the whole way and my head exploded loaded i

Carter 54:43

mean this is i'm done with 2020 i'm done i'm

Corey 54:53

i don't know um you know i've been thinking about it all day and obviously

Corey 54:58

have yeah and he's made comments in the past about how he's gonna run and whatnot and with kanye of whom i'm a big fan especially his earlier albums um you

Corey 55:07

you never know how much of it is just performance art right but i was thinking like holy shit what if he's totally serious about all of this and uh you know one of his last discs was jesus is king and i'm like what if that was him trying to shore up the christian or his thought that this would shore up the christian right and i just started thinking like what if he's fucking crazy it is

Carter 55:27

is fucking crazy well

Corey 55:29

well but you know it just made me reevaluate an awful lot about everything that he's done in the past bit uh uh i don't know man um he might go all the way and

Corey 55:42

really that's just gonna be weird to me you

Corey 55:44

think that i think there's a chance he's go i think there's a chance that he drops out in a month comes back in two months later and is there in november he's

Carter 55:52

he's gonna make ross perot look like he was fucking sane like that is the way this is gonna unfold god

SPEAKER_01 55:59

god okay uh cory i'm I'm going back to you on this, uh, the second last one on a scale of why to what the fuck. Uh, so just remember the scale, uh, why to what the fuck, uh, explain to us, uh, Dominion day, what the hell happened on Canada day? What the hell was that? I am very confused, but perhaps you have, you have some, uh, uh, tethering to, to what the hell we were just witnessing with a conservative onslaught of not wishing Canada day to anyone, but happy Dominion day. So

Corey 56:28

So I'll give it a three. I mean, I didn't have any idea. I didn't have any idea whatsoever that this was a held grievance by anybody. You know, so Dominion Day was the historical name for Canada Day for, you

Corey 56:41

you know, celebrating when we were created as a dominion. And the short version of the history is when they were trying to decide what to name Canada, they thought it needed something at the start of it. And they thought, well, Kingdom of Canada might antagonize the Americans.

Corey 56:55

And they found within the Bible, he shall create a dominion from sea to sea. They thought that sounds a bit like Canada, so they used the word Dominion, which

Corey 57:01

which is a synonym for control. So I have no idea why everybody thinks it's really important that we keep this word around. But, you know, as early as kind of the mid-20th century, people were realizing this was a bit problematic. It certainly wasn't really in keeping with the idea of an inclusive Canada.

Corey 57:19

And people started calling it Canada Day. And it became, I guess, an early culture war back and forth. You call it Canada Day or Dominion Day. And in 1982, the Liberals in the dark of night, well, in

Corey 57:29

in Parliament one day, when nobody was there from the opposition, just rammed through three readings in a heartbeat.

Corey 57:35

Let's just formally change the name to Canada Day. Now, a lot of people were already calling it Canada Day. This was 1982, so we just repatriated the Constitution. There

Corey 57:42

There was some logic to the move at the time.

Corey 57:44

And like I said, it's not like nobody was using that name beforehand.

Corey 57:48

I had no idea anybody still cared. We've had conservative governments since then. Nobody has really taken this up as a thing. And, like, this was 40 years ago. Like, this was a long time ago. I just, I don't understand why all of a sudden in 2020 people are busting out Dominion Day and suggesting that we refer to Canada as a Dominion. Again, synonym for control. A

Corey 58:09

A little weird, especially if you're, you know, a freedom-loving conservative. And yet here we are. We're talking about Dominion Day. And, I

Corey 58:18

I don't know, just get over it. Just change. Like, things change. Things move on. I hear that views can evolve over time. Tommy Douglas called it Dominion Day. Doesn't mean we got to call it Dominion Day anymore.

Corey 58:28

Did he do it before he died?

SPEAKER_01 58:32

Because I just want to make sure. Carter, on a scale of Y to what the fuck, explain Dominion Day to us.

Carter 58:40

What the fuck? This kills me. This makes me like, let's play it out, right? We're going to harken back to a previous time. How far back are we going? Are we going to relitigate the Canadian flag? You know, the red maple leaf. I mean, that was a disputed, challenged process by which we came up with our Canadian flag. I think everybody stands with it. The people who aren't are, you know, they tend towards racist. You know, the red ends is not exactly picked up in your neighborhood. Well, I was going to say not in your neighborhood, Legion, but that actually might be where it is. But it is, you know,

Carter 59:21

know, it's a past that doesn't exist. um that we don't want to go back to we we are very proud of our canadian flag i think we're very proud as canada day and i

Carter 59:31

don't understand other than other than the theory that you're just going to own the libs because they're going to get all angry and like i

Carter 59:38

i can almost understand that i can almost understand that but i cannot understand uh

Carter 59:43

uh especially these guys that are less than 40 years old um standing up and pushing for it i mean i'm older than 40 years old and and And, you know, I

Carter 59:54

I don't remember ever calling it Dominion Day. You know, this is not a thing that my parents were like, oh, well, back in the day, we used to call it Dominion Day when we smoked a pack of cigarettes around you infants.

Carter 1:00:08

is not a past that we want to go back to. So what the fuck? I don't understand. I'm confused. Go

Corey 1:00:14

ahead. Finish this off. Not having to wear seatbelts in cars, paying with charge X, Dominion Day. They're all part of a past that we've long since moved on. When I

Carter 1:00:22

I used to sleep in the tire well, you know, on the car, you know, like we

Carter 1:00:27

used to always call it the Dominion place, you know, like that's the – oh, my God. It's so stupid.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:33

stupid. Look for it next June, the Strategist Podcast Dominion Day Starter Pack, which we will provide and sell at a premium. Okay, our last question here, a listener question. Of course, you're wondering, wait, we do listener questions? we do at the simple price of a five-star review cory i've become such a slut for these things

SPEAKER_01 1:00:58

here's the question and it's a good one uh from jtf mason similar to carter's idea of running a federal election during the u.s election would the liberals be too crass to run the election at the same time as the alberta referendum on equalization perhaps forcing the conservatives to take a stand on the Alberta separatist movement and the prospective leanings. Carter, I want to go to you first on this. You're hearing the question for the first time, but thoughts on tethering the conservatives and forcing them to take a stand on separatism?

Carter 1:01:28

Well, I'm really pleased that you're being generous with the compliments and saying this is a good question. Not a great question. Not going to happen.

Carter 1:01:39

Oh, I'm so bored. Am I supposed to be nice to the audience? Wait,

SPEAKER_01 1:01:42

this the message you want to send? I'm getting

SPEAKER_01 1:01:45

mixed messages. Leave us five stars. So we can crank

SPEAKER_01 1:01:49

Lock in the five stars,

Carter 1:01:51

stars, and then we'll take a shit on you. Did I misread this? You know what? You've got to send a briefing note. No, the problem with this is that the

Carter 1:01:59

the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, the big one, the one that Peter McKay is destined to lead as his birthright,

Carter 1:02:08

even if the election was being held at the same time as the referendum, They're not going to touch this with a 10 foot pole.

Carter 1:02:14

They're going to stay the hell away from it. And, you

Carter 1:02:17

you know, maybe they'll come up with a couple of tinkers that will satisfy the we're going to change the equalization formula that don't make them appear like separatists. The problem is that we read into it the separatist nature, but I don't think that everybody else is going to read into it the separatist nature of the equalization referendum problem.

Carter 1:02:39

Trudeau's, I don't think that the government of Canada is going to be looking to tag on to a series of municipal elections in Alberta that's going to have a crazy, stupid question that no one knows

Carter 1:02:53

knows how it's going to play. They don't know which side is going to be up and which side is going to be down. And

Carter 1:02:57

And I think also the Trudeau liberals would actually like to win a seat or two in the Prairie Provinces. So being

Carter 1:03:05

being outside of this discussion is going to be way better than being inside this discussion. Corey,

Carter 1:03:10

Corey, same question to

Corey 1:03:12

Well, I think just even from a national unity point of view, the liberals would be pretty hesitant to turn

Corey 1:03:19

turn Alberta into a formal opponent during an election. I think that would be deeply problematic and might turn people off in the rest of the country. But if I'm the Conservatives, I don't even feel like I'd be trapped by it because they don't need to say the Alberta complaint about equalization is correct. They just need to say equalization is broken. They'll blame Trudeau for letting things get to this point. They're going to say, yeah, it's an injustice. I understand Albertans are mad about it. Equalization has been used as social engineering.

Corey 1:03:42

Provinces know what's best for them. We definitely review equalization. We feel fundamentally Trudeau has let down Canadians on this point. That's not in any way disharmonious with what would be a campaign message for the Conservatives. And so I just don't think it's much of a trap. I think that it becomes very easy for them to say, of course, I support Canada. But supporting Canada means working with the provinces. And we've got a prime minister who has let things get to this point. So, in fact, it would reinforce a narrative about Trudeau that things are really bad with Western provinces. It wouldn't be to their advantage to do it at that point. Keep

SPEAKER_01 1:04:18

Keep leaving us your five-star reviews. Keep sending your questions. Carter, you're going to jump in. You've got to retort. I

Carter 1:04:23

I promise I'll be nice next time.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:27

We will try not to take a shit on you.

Corey 1:04:29

you. I promise you he won't be nice next time.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:32

Leave us a review. That's a compelling message to end the episode. That's a wrap on episode 810 of The Strategist. My name is Zayd Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

Transcript