Transcript
SPEAKER_02
0:02
This is The Strategist, episode 812. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, happy Sunday. Happy
Carter
0:10
Happy Sunday to you, Zain. It's such a pleasure to be here with you.
SPEAKER_02
0:13
Thank you so much, Stephen Carter. I appreciate it. Corey Hogan, is it also a pleasure for you to be with me today?
Corey
0:19
Yeah, I'm feeling very good about myself. I just passed my cognitive test, correctly
Corey
0:23
correctly identified a camel and a rhinoceros.
SPEAKER_02
0:27
it's uh it's multiple elephants actually that define multiple
SPEAKER_02
0:30
multiple elements on the test uh i mean joe biden couldn't do it i know we can but joe by joe biden couldn't do it i just want to let you know he emailed
Carter
0:38
emailed it to me but i couldn't open the attachment what
SPEAKER_02
0:43
a fucking weird interview can we start i don't know if we wanted to start with that is it a is
Corey
0:49
is it a segment or is this
SPEAKER_02
0:51
well i mean fuck it's not a segment because what do you want to say about it It's just insane. It's just in the category of Donald Trump passing what seems like a grade two's IQ test.
Corey
1:04
Well, Wallace seems to have have struck on a formula that I hope other people remember and take, which is just in the moment being so prepared you can challenge him on the spot. He doesn't know what to do. No, no. And
SPEAKER_02
1:14
And clearly no one has done this in press conferences. No one has done this on one on ones. even his whole segment with the uh with the biden and sanders combination plan to defund and abolish the police trump asked for an aid to get the the entire printout and of course it's nowhere to be found it's just boggling well
Corey
1:32
well i was the either he's just grossly uninformed about the contents of that or it was the mother of all bluffs that just just did not work like he was hoping wallace to be like no no no no okay we can move on never happened never happened his
Carter
1:45
his his whole Oh, modus operandi is a series of bluffs that he just blusters his way through and no one ever calls him on it. And I think that this is one of the first interviews where we've actually seen an interviewer who was prepared and was prepared to call him on his shit. You know, instead, you know, every press conference, he's able to just kind of sneak through it because he moves on to the next question, which he he lies about. And then he moves to the next question. He lies about it. It's like watching a toddler. It's just embarrassing. Speaking
SPEAKER_02
2:14
of another presidential candidate who is getting called out on his shit, Kanye West saying that Harriet Tubman did not free the slaves earlier this evening, which, by the way, is fucking insane. Just everything about this Kanye, can we call it a rally? Because he's out there in a security vest that says security on it, which I think is hilarious in its own right. And then he's just walking around just like, you know, night at the Comedy Cellar testing out some of his revisionist history material. Just real weird shit.
Corey
2:44
yeah i we were talking about it before you showed up because you were very late for this recording what's
Corey
2:51
and uh and and there's a lot to to unpack there there's a lot of crazy things he wants to give a million dollars to every pregnant woman to to get them to take their their unborn child to term uh wants to yeah uh he
Corey
3:05
he boasted about his 132 point iq he said he was going to stop potentially doing business with adidas and the gap unless they put him on the board in both cases and it goes on and on like it's it's a it was a weird time it was a weird weird time in the carolinas and i'm beginning to think call
Corey
3:25
call me i don't think he's going to win this one no
Carter
3:27
no i don't think he's really in the game i don't literally he is not in the game well
SPEAKER_02
3:32
well i mean he could drop out he can come back in again we'll talk about connie and trump in a bit but let's move it on to our first segment wheel
SPEAKER_02
3:39
wheel of fortune emphasis
SPEAKER_02
3:41
emphasis on we wheel of fortune my
SPEAKER_02
3:44
are amazing oh you're getting worse though no it's it's
Carter
3:46
i'm glad we can come back to it well
SPEAKER_02
3:48
well well you know now that i know that the toronto sun will steal these i want to make them below mediocre because i mean just to match the level of their paper um okay
SPEAKER_02
3:59
there's a lot that's happened in this past week, when we last left, we were talking about the We Media strategy, the Trudeau liberal strategy. And on the heels of us recording that podcast last Sunday, Justin Trudeau went out on Monday with the I'm sorry, apology tour. Let's start there. What did you make of that as the Justin Trudeau, I'm so sorry, I should have known apology tour that began on Monday, and then I want to get into We in a second. So Corey, over to you.
Corey
4:27
Well, it tells you that he didn't have an awful lot of moves left for starters and that this i i'm sorry is a look
Corey
4:35
look maybe maybe he's sorry maybe
Corey
4:37
maybe maybe it's as simple as that maybe he's screwed up and he's sorry but um it
Corey
4:41
it it also tells you that um that
Corey
4:44
that it was probably going to get worse if he didn't cut right now and just do a bit of a mea culpa the um the other shoes to drop were probably related to the testimony that that was coming. Fascinating testimony over the past week.
Corey
4:59
know, like the I'm a bad widdle boy defense, it doesn't actually work in a court of law. So I'll be curious to see how this plays into the ethics commissioner's review of this. But clearly, he just decided, I'm just gonna have to take my hits on this one.
SPEAKER_02
5:13
And Corey, do you think it's an admission of guilt and ultimately, knowing that the ethics report is going to come back in a scathing manner for him?
Corey
5:22
Well, it's obviously an admission of guilt. It's, I'm sorry I did something wrong.
Corey
5:28
It's probably not going to be a great ethics report, especially given that he has conceded this point. So the best he can do is say, yeah, I already acknowledged I was wrong on this. It's time to move on. Again, that doesn't really work with the rest of the world. You break the law. You don't just get to say, my bad, guys, and move on. So I'll be curious to see how this plays out from here. Carter,
SPEAKER_02
5:49
Carter, what is your first take on that Trudeau apology tour that lasted on Monday?
Carter
5:54
I think it fits into the framework that I was talking about with trying to get this all done in the summer when people just don't seem to be paying attention and don't seem to care. You know, it is a it's an admission of guilt, to be sure. The ethics commissioner is going to come back and find that this was not proper. I would be willing to put a significant amount of money on. um but at the end of the day i mean the money didn't go out the door there you know there well some of the money went out the door but for the most part they pulled it back as quick as they could they've been they ignored our usual double down strategy um and began the apology tour early tour early this was just one of the uh the final steps of the apology tour they want this over with quickly um that's a good strategy i think getting it over with quickly is probably your best call So, you know, an apology on a Monday, and hopefully you take a beating for a week or two. And then people forget what happens. Because as Trump has shown us, people tend to forget what happens.
SPEAKER_02
7:00
Corey, what do you think of Morneau in addition, going on his own apology tour and now him having a potential ethics investigation into his behavior as well?
Corey
7:10
Well, it's more of the same, right? And Morneau and Trudeau are the ones that seem to be in the most jeopardy. But what you're finding is that other ministers are also apologizing for their role, even if their role is not particularly apology worthy, I think. And
Corey
7:23
I don't know if that is intentional strategy or not. If it is, it's quite interesting. It basically is the I Am Spartacus approach to the We Charity, right? No, I did this, you know, we were all bad on this. Look, we all did these different things. And maybe just trying to make it look like volunteering
Corey
7:40
volunteering on behalf of the charity is the same as directing money to them, knowing that your mother is getting stipend from them. Those are not the same thing. Yeah,
Corey
7:49
but the but the liberals seem to be treating all of this is the same thing. And I think it is consistent with a strategy of just diminishing and saying this is this is a misdemeanor at worse. And it is the equivalent of just being friendly with these people. And so we're all going to apologize for it.
SPEAKER_02
8:03
We've seen quite a few developments this week, and I want to get to them. Corey, you talked about the testimony with the Finance Committee, the Ethics Committee also looking at trying to create their own investigation into this. But before I get into that, let's talk about we, because we also talked about them last week in terms of what their strategy should be. And like Clockwork, they came out on Monday with an entire Globe and Mail advertorial where they talked about their situation, how they're perhaps complicit in it, what what this meant for them, the internal reflection. What did you make of both the message but also the tactic of going to a full-page advertorial in the Globe and Mail? Carter, I'll go to you first on this.
Carter
8:42
I hate the tactic. If you recall, we were saying put your head down, let the political people try and figure this out and reemphasize your good works by actually doing the good works. again this is a show don't tell type of model but they they try to talk about all the good things that they're doing um that doesn't really matter right and and how you're going to change isn't changing so i think that they were going to be given a relatively i mean they're going to be suffering on their donor base um but that suffering doesn't go away because they published a full page ad in the globe mail and on top of that who are you targeting with a full page ad in the globe mail mail. When was that a good strategy? I've been in politics since 1997. I think that was a good strategy for the first four years of it. It's not a good strategy anymore. I don't understand what they were trying to achieve and what they hoped would be the outcome of it because it certainly wasn't going to be an immediate outcome. It was at the very best a first step towards something vaguely getting better for them. It's not going to get better. They've wasted a bunch of money on an ad that's not going to do anything and they still need to put in place the the second half which of the the plan
Carter
9:53
plan which needs to be show us all the good work you're doing now we're seeing the the rumors floating around about the financial health of the organization these are the things you do not want you want to uh be showing people why you matter in today's society not you know are we relevant or do we have money they that's not stuff you want to be talking about but they They opened up a lot of it by just jumping in and continuing with their, I
Carter
10:23
I think, ill-advised strategy.
SPEAKER_02
10:25
Corey, let's get your take on this, both the message and strategy. I'm going to ask you a triple barrel question, because I also want you to react to what Carter said, which is, in what's happened subsequently post-letter, do you feel like they've inflicted and opened the door to the conversation of their finances, their over-leverage on real estate, etc.? So triple barrel question, but start with whichever piece you kind of feel appropriate.
Corey
10:48
Yeah, when one of the accusations against you is that there's not a clear enough line between the different components of your business and you're spending money on things that shouldn't be priorities, having an ad under the name We that says, but this wasn't paid for by We, and spending it on something as expensive as a full page ad, it strikes me as kind of foundationally suspect. suspect. Now, not
Corey
11:13
not communicating is always an underappreciated strategy in communications. You always have the ability to keep your mouth shut. And I think they should have availed themselves of that at this point. However, I will say, it
Corey
11:22
it was clearly part of a one-two punch. They did that big splashy ad on, you know, a Monday, they dropped a news release of we're doing an organizational review on a Tuesday. I don't know if those were the actual days, but I'm just saying.
Corey
11:34
and I guess maybe like I can see how sitting down in a room with some high paid crisis crisis consultants, that would all seem to make an awful lot of sense. But they
Corey
11:44
they didn't really say anything on Monday, they dragged the spotlight right back to them for no real good reason. And fundamentally, I think the actions that they said that they would be taking are, I
Corey
11:58
I mean, about what I would expect, but also potentially a bit underwhelming, right? I mean, the big thing that wasn't there was the Keelburgers, right? It talked about, hey, we're going to review the board and And how we select board members and, hey, we're going to do an organizational review and we're going to postpone wee days for now and all of those things. And we have a former lieutenant governor who's going to do this other – also, what a weird thing, like only
Corey
12:23
in Canada. But I
Corey
12:26
I guess it's – I think the mistake they might be making is assuming that all of these pieces, everyone is going to follow the chain all the way through. and as a standalone component it failed in my opinion right
SPEAKER_02
12:40
right because you think
SPEAKER_02
12:41
people were observing them elementally they were kind of yeah exactly they didn't actually have the full episodic sort of yeah continuation but
Corey
12:48
but it's actually worse than that because it it could very much look to a layperson like they
Corey
12:53
they did the ad on monday and the reaction to the ad was so bad that they had to do the other activity on tuesday right
Corey
13:00
and so that's the problem when you're going to do something like this you have to keep in mind that these things have to work in isolation as well as end sequence and and i think they forgot that rather fundamental challenge of communications now depends
Corey
13:12
depends on what your audience is so i talked about not communicating always being underappreciated a newspaper ad is a statement right it's never been a good use of money if you're just trying to get impressions but the fun thing about newspaper ads the fun thing about billboards the fun thing about television you
Corey
13:27
you could literally have the same video on youtube or you could put on tv if it's on tv that itself will drive media coverage
Corey
13:34
And when you do a newspaper ad like this, you're trying to get earned coverage as well many times. Like a full-page ad, that's really the only reason you would do something like that. So, I mean, clearly all part of a strategy. I just don't know if it was a good one. Carter,
SPEAKER_02
13:45
Carter, what would you say right now? Because we did this last week, right? Help them stop the bleeding last week. The bleeding seems to be worse this week, especially for them as an organization, as it was revealed, you know, their over leverage on real estate, how much money they would make on this $900 million contract, which, by the way, was $44 million. So not an insignificant amount. You know, some old history about past libel issues coming up as well. Well, if you're trying to help them stop the bleeding going forward, what are some of the basic principles this week that you're implementing?
Carter
14:17
Well, I'm not going to change really my advice from last week. Go to the base of what it is that you do, right? So if you're a health organization, you go back to talking about how you're helping people stay healthier. You're doing health-related work. If you're an education organization, you go back to the students. If you are the Kielburgers, you go back to youth and making sure that you are showing and telling the story of youth and how you're making a difference through whatever your programs are, mentorship or work experience or whatever they may be, how you're actually making a difference in people's lives, because that's what charity is about, making a difference in people's lives. And all too often, we're not actually showing people how we make a difference when we're a charity because we become all about the charity, the donations, the money, the boards. that doesn't matter at all none of that really matters what matters is are you helping people and that's where kielburgers when they got their start you know they
Carter
15:18
they help people um now they're saying that they're going to focus their efforts out of out of north america into i think into africa well okay um then show us show us the difference you're making in africa show it to us now cory
SPEAKER_02
15:33
cory before i go to you carter i'm going to ask you a more direct question you've been given them the opportunity to work with we the board of directors has hired you they're asking you for your strategic advice are you telling them to fire one if not both of the brothers right now for organizational survivability no
Carter
15:48
no i tell them to get both the brothers onto a plane and send them to africa to
Carter
15:51
to do the work you
Carter
15:52
you know that if you're firing the brothers you're missing out your uh the brothers of the brand right like the brothers formed this thing they've made this thing I mean, it's really staggering what they've made. It is a big thing.
Carter
16:05
So I wouldn't fire the brothers, but I'd say to the brothers, we're going to remind you what we actually started here. We didn't start a charity to keep you guys making money or living the high life. They didn't do it that way. They started to help people. So put them on a plane, send them to somewhere, get the pictures, do all the things that they did at the beginning. They got people excited about the work that they were doing because at the beginning, it was about the work. And if it can't be about the work anymore, then they should resign. So
Carter
16:34
So those are two different things, right? Yep,
Carter
16:37
You resign because you actually don't want to do the work anymore? I can understand that. This is hard work. It taxes you. It takes a lot of energy.
Carter
16:45
But if you still feel the passion, they should be doing the work.
SPEAKER_02
16:49
I wanted to jump in so eagerly there, Carter. Corey, I feel awkward. I feel weird. Carter has shown heart and soul with his last response. uh i thought he would he would give them the proverbial guillotine he has not um so on that front what would your advice to them be this week right they've run this ad the bleeding continues more stories are coming out seems like jesse brown and canada land are not stopping with their uh you know with their trip campaign against uh against we what are you advising them this week well
Corey
17:15
well jesse brown and canada land at this point it feels a bit like a vendetta i mean they they've definitely found something in the and they're going forward on it that
Corey
17:24
that over leveraged on real real estate, the covenant stuff. I don't think that's a big deal. Covenants are only a big deal if the banks think they're a big deal. They get written in. There's a lot of reasons why companies can be in violation of their covenants. COVID right now, I guarantee you, half of the major companies on Bay Street are violating bank covenants in one way, shape, or form.
Corey
17:43
But some people will think it's a big deal. And those people will make decisions about contributions. Some people will make decisions on contributions based on the interactions with the federal government some people will make contributions based on or not contributions i guess i should say based on the rumors about we being involved in you know extrajudicial killings i mean that was the most extreme one that we saw out of africa and i guess my point is this there's a lot of reasons why you might stop and not donate to we right now and um that does not help by you bringing the spotlight on you more like you can do no right at a moment like this and it might be time to go to the mattresses and uh part of that is getting back to your core mission carter is absolutely right uh the the stuff that the kielbergers did originally this idea of stopping child labor and helping african communities out of poverty and uh helping build communities that are self-sustaining even after the charity has left you know their five pillar approach that's all good stuff right uh me to we we day these were always kind of odd extensions and i think they're the extensions of restless executives and what they need to do is exactly what steven said which is do you actually want to be in this business stop trying to find ways to be in other businesses that sort of look like the charity business because those things are getting you into a lot of trouble and you need to stop okay
SPEAKER_02
19:08
okay i'm gonna i'm gonna leave that there on the weave front let's go back to the political parties for a second and let's talk about the conservatives Because the highlight of this week was Pierre Polierev and Charlie Angus and others of the NDP on the Finance Committee grilling Minister Bartosz Czajger about this particular contract that was revealed, as I'd mentioned earlier, that we stood to receive close to $44 million, which was double the $20 million mark that the government had initially said that we was going to receive. Steve. If you're the liberals right now, Corey, you clearly have to weather
SPEAKER_02
19:41
weather this storm of the Finance Committee. But they also did something else, which was they filibustered on the other committee, on the Ethics Committee, so as to delay that particular committee and their investigation. So what do you kind of make of the current sort of dance that the conservatives and liberals are doing on the committee level, back and forth? I just want to get your thoughts and see where you you think uh they're making the right or the wrong moves well
Corey
20:06
well it's tough to know without knowing exactly what was happening behind the scenes but if the liberals believe that more information will ultimately help them look a little bit more innocent then delaying the ethics committee makes sense right you you another week there's a bit more detail that detail is helpful to you um if your strategy is a rip the band-aid off strategy though why delay it why why delay this ass kicking doesn't it seem like
SPEAKER_02
20:28
like antithetical though to the rip the band-aid off which is what what Morneau and Trudeau seem to be doing?
Corey
20:34
Yeah, no, it does. So that's what I'm saying. It seems unusual, but maybe they think that there's more to come out. Maybe they think the sequencing of these committees will be helpful. You talked about Bardish-Chagger, and that's a minister that I think doesn't really have a ministry, at least not a department in the strong sense. And so I don't know that that's really where you're going to find the real, real answers, but you're right. Right. Like, actually, I will say that as the testimony came out, I sort of, as a recovering bureaucrat, said to myself, I guess that's possible. Like, it wasn't the most outrageous story that was woven by the government as to how this contract could be created and how people could think we was the right people to do it. By the way, that $44 million, that was on like $200 out the door because it's not like the original contract was apparently for $100 million. So those are some pretty rich ratios there. um it
Corey
21:27
it it does seem confused but it's hard to say without knowing exactly what the details are yeah
SPEAKER_02
21:31
yeah carter what do you think of the the current roles that the conservatives are playing with the liberals on this committee song and dance i
Carter
21:40
i i'm always a critic
Carter
21:41
critic of all the the partisanship you know and so the partisanship brings a theater to it and pierre poliev i think I think it's the worst practitioner of the political theater. Charlie Angus may be the worst of the NDP, but he doesn't quite come close to Pierre and his theatrics of outrage. So I think that that puts people off and people don't hear what's being said as much because it's just it strikes us of the same old, same old. And this is some of what we were talking about, I think, two or three weeks ago, where we were talking about standing up and crawling everything, a crisis and everything is a, you know, the worst thing that's ever happened.
Carter
22:26
This is a thing. This has been a thing for quite some time since we found out that it wasn't just for volunteerism. But they've been screaming at the top of their lungs from the very beginning. So it's hard to have the attention span to care all the way through it. um this this is this is something that they're
Carter
22:45
they're trying to make into something i mean in the 44 million dollars like like
Carter
22:50
like i don't understand it often
Carter
22:52
these numbers are reported in a fashion that makes it sound like the charity is making that but
Carter
22:57
but let's be clear charities don't make money right
Carter
22:59
right like there is no profit distribution uh to shareholders the charity gets the money they can distribute it however they wish but it's for administration it's for the actual doing of the work that's outside of the work so you know even every every private company there's a cost of administration um that that every company carries and they pay for it from the revenues that they get that's the same thing with a charity it's just that sometimes they report it separately i find this to be again the
Carter
23:29
conservatives work so hard to make sure that i don't care about something right they work so hard to make sure they push all the buttons that will will make me go, oh, it's just little Pierre doing his little stunting. You know, show me that it's actually mean something. Show me a better way of questioning. Show me a deeper insight than the usual outrage. Corey,
SPEAKER_02
23:52
Corey, on that point, if you're advising conservatives right now, what are you telling them to do at the committee level? Are you telling them to amp up the political theater? By the way, Stephen Carter denying political theater and not wanting to fire the Kielburgers in one episode. It's just getting me off sync. I've matured.
Carter
24:08
I've matured. Well, I don't
SPEAKER_02
24:09
don't know if we call it that.
SPEAKER_02
24:11
But Corey, if you're advising conservatives right now, is it to dial up the volume on the theater as to what Carter is advising against? Is it to kind of strip
SPEAKER_02
24:20
strip out partisanship? What would you be telling them to do?
Corey
24:22
I don't think my advice is different from last week. I really do think they need to be careful about where they're picking their moments and be laser focused on what actually matters. And I don't know that these committees are helpful to them using
Corey
24:33
using myself as a focus group of one um if this committee hadn't had i actually i just told you that i could sort of see that after the committee meeting when i step back and say okay like forget
Corey
24:44
forget all of this committee talk at the end of the day the government
Corey
24:49
got a proposal from a group they put together a plan the same day that group put a plan together and the prime minister who has family ties that are getting benefiting from from that charity, like that, like when you get to the core of the story, it's a bad story for the liberals. I actually think the more they let the liberals explain this, the more confused I get about the matter. And, and if other people feel the same, if media feels the same, then the conservatives didn't do themselves any favors last week. So I do think that what happens right now is it's got to be less about giving the liberals a platform to tell their story. If you're the conservatives, it's got to be more about, okay, let's make sure that the ethics commissioner has that's what they need. Let's make sure this seems very serious. Let's strip out the theatrics a bit and just talk about how important and how serious it is. And, you
Corey
25:34
you know, I mean, in a sense, I do think they tried. I just don't think they hit the mark. And I do think that they gave the liberals way too much of a megaphone with their committee theatrics. Carter,
SPEAKER_02
25:45
Carter, let's end it on this particular line of questioning, which is about the future of the Liberal Party. So if you are someone like, let's say, oh, I don't know, Christopher Freeland right now, who may have future ambitions within the Liberal Party. You, of course, have to play team ball right now, stick with Justin Trudeau. But how are you kind of observing this scandal? If you're advising her right now, if you're strategizing for her future run to be leader of the Liberal Party, how are you advising her to kind of play her cards right now? Is it strictly, hey, just go with the team, that's all that you can do right now? Or are you telling her to hold some back, maybe maneuver in certain ways? I'm kind of curious to hear your advice if I've got got future ambitions within this party?
Carter
26:23
If you've got future ambitions, you can't be seen to be maneuvering. The maneuvers will ultimately get you beheaded. Everybody who's ever come after the king gets decapitated. There's a reason Jim Dinning never became the premier of Alberta. He was the guy who was maneuvering against Ralph Klein. You can't be seen to be maneuvering. Gary Marr was maneuvering against Ed Stelmack, didn't become premier of Alberta. If you want to become the next king, you can't be caught. So what you need to be doing is spending time with the caucus. You got to be everybody's friend. You've got to make sure that you're on the team.
Carter
27:00
when you're talking to the rest of the teammates, you can be the person who's hearing their complaints, hearing their issues and reminding them that, yeah, this is a difficult situation, but we're going to be here for the party in the long run. And you and I will still be here long past when he's gone. That's what we're going to be doing. We're going to have those those conversations within the caucus, not even in the caucus meetings, just you and me just chatting amongst the leadership. And Corey, whatever
Carter
27:24
whatever Corey's about to say is going to be wrong because he's wrong. He's
SPEAKER_02
27:29
He's removed his hat multiple times. Corey, same question to you. What are you doing?
Corey
27:33
Well, I thought Carter's answer was right until he told us what he actually wanted to do. You can't be like, you've got to be loyal to the leader. And so have a a bunch of private meetings with people saying yeah this sucks this is
Carter
27:47
is this is how this is how people talk man this
Corey
27:50
this is this is exactly what what hung those leaders you talked out to dry uh on you know if you are the person who comes and
Corey
27:58
and starts just fermenting that or even not knocking it back it will come to bite you in the ass eventually look the leader is the leader until they're not and it's ultimately very short-sighted for somebody who aspires to be leader to erode the authority of the leader writ large right i mean that just just you're going to find a knife in your back within minutes if you just stuck the knife in somebody else's back and i think that all aspiring political should keep that in mind and they should uh keep
Corey
28:25
keep the knives in the knife drawer um the
Corey
28:27
reality is the system works best when when the chain of command is intact and obviously all advice taken to extreme can be hazardous to your health but um but
Corey
28:37
but you can really do some serious is damageable to your party and your own personal prospects if you are seen as somebody who is undermining the leader a worst case scenario i
Corey
28:46
don't even know it's the worst case you you
Corey
28:48
you are not even considered because you're seen as the disloyal bastard who caused such trouble to your party uh the best case scenario is you win but
Corey
28:58
but you have also now created an environment where people feel like they can have quiet meetings with caucus members and say yeah i mean i think we've got to think about the future of the party and all of that because that's going to hurt you you.
SPEAKER_02
29:09
Carter, thank you for redeeming yourself, getting your Machiavellian teeth back at the end of that. Thank you so much. I feel like we're much more normalized. Heading into our next segment, our next segment, getting your way. Guys, I want to talk about advocacy campaigns. You know, we touched upon this during the Black Lives Matter movement. But I want to do a little bit of a not a deep dive, but a little bit of an introspection as to where we sit with the state of advocacy advocacy organizations. And using it to jump off is a campaign here in Alberta, our home province, of course, by the Alberta Federation of Labor, which is a union. And they're putting together this campaign called Defend Workers' Rights. I think it just launched recently, if not today, if I'm not wrong. And the campaign is an outright attack on Jason Kenney, saying Jason Kenney is tipping the scales against workers. He's wanting to protect himself and his rich donors, give them them more power. And it's really, you know, then a pretty standard suite of tools that visitors can engage in. So before we get into the tools of advocacy, which I also want to discuss, talk to me about this current message. Let's talk about the specifics of this campaign. And maybe give us some context, Carter, as to why the unions might be upset, and then what you make of the effectiveness of this message that you're hearing from the AFL.
Carter
30:24
Why are the unions upset? Well, because the Kenney government is absolutely targeting unions. they've decided that unions are going to be the enemy and they are going to go after them they're going after them in terms of what they can say politically they're going after them about where they can say it they're going after them about how much money they can get from their members and how they can spend the money that they do get from their members it is maybe not an all-out attack we didn't become a right-to-work province so there is one more step that certainly could have been taken but the kenny government has decided to make an enemy of unions and now the unions are responding in kind by making jason kenny the enemy of all unions um which is interesting because you know the the sided
Carter
31:14
sided battle seems to be won by jason kenny like you have to ask yourself how do you wish to move the government you know a government that has a majority a state a strong stable stable majority isn't going anywhere and uh the strong stable majority that comes from you know the the phrasing that comes with the steven harper era yeah
Carter
31:34
they use that with intent uh that was to tell their adversaries we are here you cannot take us out um and jason kenney is there he cannot be taken out i mean john john horgan has a minority government next door in british Columbia, he could be taken out by a confidence vote. He's not going to be taken out by a confidence vote, but it could actually happen. Jason Kenney is, for all intents and purposes, a dictator for four years, and he's one year in, and so taking him on, making him the enemy, you have to have a pretty good strategy on how you're actually going to succeed, because right now, it looks like the battle could just be three years of yelling.
SPEAKER_02
32:16
Corey, what do you make of this message? Before we get into the tactics, what do you make of the message that the AFL is proposing against the Kenney government?
Corey
32:25
Well, if I'm remembering what the message is, it's essentially that, hey, you've got to defend your workers' rights. They're trying to move rights to your bosses. I think it's really tough for me to determine whether the message is right or the tactics are right until I really understand what the objectives of the campaign are. If it's a broadcast campaign, I've got some doubts. right? I do worry about its ability to resonate with Albertans writ large, if it is a campaign that is designed to get your union enthusiasts mobilized, well, then maybe it's exactly where it needs to be. Certainly, the campaign uses language that you find in the labor movement, less or more than you would find in in the way people talk about these things more generally. But, but,
Corey
33:11
but, you know, maybe they're just maybe they're just doing it wrong. I just don't know, No, like, it's always tough. And I guess this would be a caution, I would say, and applying the principle of charity more generally, you never really know what people are trying to do with campaigns like this and who they're trying to mobilize. And they had a hashtag defend worker rights. And they tried to get people to tweet on it. And it's a couple hundred people, there's not a lot of engagement on it. But I suspect if you went through those people, they would be, they
Corey
33:39
they would be labor activists. this now you
Corey
33:41
describe the afl as a union which is incorrect it's a federation of unions and i think if you're the afl one of the things you are always trying to do is make sure you are relevant to the the unions and the union representatives that that are voluntarily members of your organization so
Corey
33:57
maybe it's great i guess is what i'm going to say uh i just don't know and it really depends on what their outcomes are and
SPEAKER_02
34:03
and this is where i wanted to go to run goals because cory you've We've hit exactly where my next line of questioning is, which is, Carter, tease out in a campaign, in an advocacy campaign structure, what some of the goals could be. Corey mentioned a few, right? We talked about mobilizing and engaging your base. This is not about convincing government. It's just about getting your base active. You know you can't change shit, so why not just get them active? All the way to the other side of the spectrum, which I think is more like, hey, let's actually get something done. Let's change policy. So can you perhaps kind of give us the overview as to where, you know, the advocacy goals are and what you kind of see advocacy goals as being?
Carter
34:41
Well, I think we can use Black Lives Matter as a really good example of a movement or an advocacy group, perhaps it's a part of it's really well formed part of it's not, that's just really grassrootsy. That's actually trying to change the world. They want legislation to be brought in, they will change certain elements of today's society. And they will measure success and failure by whether or not they were able to get those pieces of legislation or the changes in tactics or the changes in society to actually occur. And they will be measuring that on a timeline that is relatively human, right? We would expect to see change in months or, worst case scenario, years, but a small number of years, right? You're going to actually make the change happen. We've seen it happen before with LGBTQ issues. And in fact, when you look back at the marriage equality work that was done, it started relatively slow. But the measurement was state by state are gays and lesbians getting the right to marry in those states. And you could see them falling one by one. And once they started to get that momentum, then it was unstoppable. And the change was actually happening. And
Carter
35:58
And so the other type of campaigns, and I put the AFL campaign into this, is this desire just to get people angry, just to get them angry, knowing that you're not going to actually have any real impact.
Carter
36:09
You mean like policy or
Carter
36:12
Yeah. I mean, the last time this happened in Alberta. So Ralph Klein makes significant cuts and changes to in 1994 to people's salaries. And we lose five percent of nurses salaries and doctors salaries and teachers salaries and everybody loses five percent.
Carter
36:30
That all went through. The outrage was still there. People were angry, but no one was blinking. And Ralph Klein himself said, I'm not going to blink. You know, he's not he wasn't walking away from those changes. It wasn't until we got to I think it was Bill 13 that was a, you know, an attack on health care or increased privatization on health care where general population saw that their lives were going to change, that they were actually able to move on it and stop that bill from being passed. When it was just the union movement, when it was just unions, it wasn't successful. When it became about everyone, it became successful. And this is where the objectives model looks at, right? Like if it's always about if it was just always about a small segment of society, then I don't think it's going to be successful. And arguably, the first Black Lives Matter, certainly no less important than today's Black Lives Matter, both of them equally important with the exact same type of messaging. This one's being far more successful because it is about all of us. Each one of us has to recognize the challenges in our society of racism. And when it
Carter
37:39
it becomes about all of us, it becomes far more powerful. And that's where the unions choosing to accept the terms of Jason Kenney's duel is
Carter
37:51
is lunacy, because Jason Kenney's got all the gunpowder. He's the one who's able to succeed on this front. And the unions, I think they even know that there's nothing they can do. They're just going to rattle their sabers, they're going to be loud, and they're going to piss away a bunch of money.
SPEAKER_02
38:06
Corey, I want to talk about how to, you know, construct the model campaign, an advocacy campaign for if your goal is the latter that we were mentioning, this concept of changing the world, actually getting things done. But before we go there, can you perhaps, you know, talk to our listeners about what you see as the value of a advocacy campaign that may not necessarily have a pathway towards policy or legislative change, but its main purpose is riling up their members? Can you talk to us about where you kind of see some of that value coming in and what sub-goals there might be in a situation like that?
Corey
38:40
Well, I think foundationally, if you're an advocacy group, you are trying to change something. And it's really about time horizon. And perhaps what you need to do as a first step or an intermediate step is to mobilize your core supporters, arm your core supporters, train your core supporters. Get them finding a bigger universe that they can then go out and make your secondary level of supporters to allow you to down the road make the change that you want to make. And so that would be the main reason that you might want to do something like that. And perhaps it's as simple as changing the conversation or moving the weight of it. You know, the Overton window people talk about further
Corey
39:18
further left or further right and have people react to your point of view and make your point of view more mainstream, which makes it more likely to be picked up in the long term. So I
Corey
39:29
I think fundamentally, it's either about equipping yourself to take the next step or changing the conversation overall so that that next step will happen more organically. Somebody else will pick it up. The overall frame of reference has changed. Those are the two reasons you would do something now knowing that you cannot exact change now. Carter,
SPEAKER_02
39:48
Carter, let's talk about this model campaign for advocacy in the time we find ourselves in. And I want to start with the tactics. So let's reference back to this AFL campaign. They've got some very specific suite of tactics. They've got signing a petition, emailing your MLA, calling your MLA, tweeting your MLA. As the former chief of staff who met with only one advocacy group, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, during your entire time, this question is not suited for you. But let's say you had more than one meeting while you were chief of staff. Do these tactics work, Stephen? Do these tactics of sending letters, sending tweets, phone calling, you know, they're advertised and promoted as the lever to getting change. But do they actually work from the decision-making capacity that you've seen them in?
Carter
40:35
I think we were proposing to log some area in Bragg Creek. and we were getting 3000 form emails a day at the peak of it. And each one of those form emails got the exact same response from me. I don't care. You know, a form email doesn't show me any real thought. When we got an actual email, like from someone who actually crafted what their reasoning and rationale was for opposing a policy, it got far more attention from us because it actually represented their thoughts rather than some organization that paid some money to advertise and got someone to fill in a form. The same kind of goes with these petitions because the petitions don't mean anything. They're really just a data gathering exercise and people gather the data. They put everybody onto a nation builder database and then they start segmenting them out. And this is no different than, you know, what Rob Anders was doing in 1997, 1998, you know, to 2001. The list work that was done by the right wing is now the list work that's being done by the left wing.
Carter
41:49
It doesn't really matter that they're putting these things together unless they're growing some sort of an audience. and and we've seen list work like this work um you know support for gsas uh was a massive undertaking where people jumped in and started to do a big push and people want that type of tactical outcome but they're not sure how it got there so the tactics that they put in place actually don't um don't
Carter
42:18
don't work because they're not audience focused instead of being audience The tactics are, I want to build a database. Well, you don't build the database unless the audience wants to give you the data. So get the audience to give you the data. And that's where I think the AFL campaign falls completely short.
Carter
42:35
I don't know who sees themselves in that copy. I don't know who sees themselves in that type of creative. But I don't think, given the number of people who are tweeting about it, that it's finding itself a real significant movement that it can spark an uprising with. It just doesn't seem like it's functioning. Also, to launch it in the summer, Jesus, like, push
Carter
42:57
push the rock higher and heavier up the hill, man. Like, that's just, it's so much work.
SPEAKER_02
43:03
Corey, you know, we've, you know, collectively worked on campaigns in the past, advocacy campaigns, have been privy to some of these tactics. This is, you know, not easy work always to get through, to penetrate. Do some of these tactics that are now becoming staple of the digital advocacy universe, in your mind, do they have efficacy? Do they work? work
Corey
43:23
do these tactics work yes again what are they trying to do they're trying to build lists and they're trying to move people up a ladder of engagement you know you sign up to a list awesome you then take a very low friction step such as doing a form letter or form tweet that tells me something about you i can continue to curate that relationship carter
Corey
43:42
carter talked about that pretty well but also these tactics just work um form
Corey
43:48
form letters obviously have far less resonance But I'll tell you, as somebody who ran the correspondence unit for the government of Alberta, if
Corey
43:55
if I got an email or a conversation just in my office door from the
Corey
44:01
the executive director of Insights who said, hey, heads up, we got 300 emails on this topic this morning since 8 a.m., and they all seem organic, that's
Corey
44:09
that's something I'm going to bring up with the premier's office. That's a real flag, right? And that's a real way you can make a difference there. there and and you have to essentially the less personal it is the
Corey
44:20
the more form it is i guess it says the more you're going to need numbers to impress me right it's not going to be 300 emails if it's a form letter it's going to be 30 000 emails and uh those form letters can actually change things too we've certainly seen uh previous governments in alberta and governments in canada back away when they get just way too much pressure because it looks like it's
Corey
44:40
it's not just form letters from the usual suspects but all of a sudden it's such a big number it's form letters from albertans writ large and what the hell is that telling us about that all
Corey
44:48
all of that said however um just because these tactics can work does not mean they always work and just because you can do them does not mean you should always do them they form letters are a great way by
Corey
45:00
by the way form letters tweets like this they're also a great way to show how weak you are so
Corey
45:04
so if you go and you put a bunch of money in and i can clearly tell you're running an ad campaign to
Corey
45:09
to send form letters to the to the premier's office or to tweet at the premier and like 10 people take you up on that the emperor has no clothes you have exposed yourself as absolutely ineffectual especially if it's a member organization it tells me your members aren't with you they're not doing the thing you want them to do and that is very dangerous because you have just taken all of your leverage away at that point cory
SPEAKER_02
45:31
cory you bring up two lines of questioning that i think only the two of you that i know could perhaps answer number one did you guys ever when you were you know cory in your your sense, running PAB, whatever it was called recently when you renamed it. And Carter, when you were chief of staff, did you guys keep stock of like what was going on? Like in the sense being like, hey, here's the advocacy campaigns moving up or down. Here's who might be throwing money into it. Like, give me a sense of like what your internal sort of tracking was on the inside.
SPEAKER_02
46:01
Yeah, I mean, I think for us, the answer is obvious. I don't know if it is for our listeners, right? Which is like, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah.
Corey
46:07
Yeah. So when you email the premier, when you do any of that, it goes to what's called the premier's correspondence unit. There's an equivalent in every ministry in every province with the federal government, all of that.
Corey
46:17
And professional correspondence writers take a series of different form responses and they tailor them as necessary and they get back to it. But one of the other things they do is
Corey
46:26
tag and they categorize things. So it's on this issue, it's positive, it mentions these things. That would be some simple categorization examples, right? And you get a report every
Corey
46:36
saying, okay, this is a trending up. This is an abating issue. These are things that we're watching right now. Here's some interesting correspondence. Correspondence teams will often also then give you a sampling of correspondence if it's a larger thing and it's more personal in nature. So you can get a sense of like the texture and the quality of it as well, which goes to the premier's office in many cases. So, yeah, I mean, these things matter and they are tracked. and um you
Corey
47:02
you just have to be aware however that
Corey
47:06
volume is not necessarily going to impress the correspondence unit it gets a lot of emails yeah
Carter
47:11
yeah and then the other side of it is you know how much money is being spent to get that you know you can tell when a big campaign is being launched by a big organization to try and generate um you know to try and lobby if you will the government to change their their policies on something you also can tell when it's truly a grassroots piece um and the true grassroots piece is going to get far more attention than something that is that has uh tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars put behind it and to cory's point earlier if you see that something's got hundreds of thousands of dollars put into it and it's not generating sweet fuck all then you're like uh
Carter
47:49
uh you know because none of that none of this happens in a vacuum we've got polling data that told us what to do or you know how much of an an uphill slog we were in. We already know the give a fuck factor for the general population because of our polling and the data and the research that's been put into things. So if you can't move the needle on the give a fuck factor, if you can't move the needle on the number of people that are caring, then I'm basically walking into the victory because I already knew that it was a winning hand. I already knew it because I had more information than you. So you didn't bring anything to the table. You didn't change anybody's mind. And now you think I'm going to change my my position go fuck yourself i'm already winning i'm i'm the government you're nothing as
SPEAKER_02
48:29
carter said for the 15 minutes he was there cory yeah
Corey
48:33
yeah well so let me give some advice to advocacy groups uh and and give them some some positivity on this front premier's offices prime minister's offices very sophisticated operations uh they are not going to be impressed right not easily Easily, at least, right? They have many ways to tell whether it's real or not.
Corey
48:53
If you actually want to make a bit of a difference, look at who some of the squirrely or caucus members are who might not be used to getting mass campaigns against them. And look at ways that you can make even form letters seem more personalized. Look at options where you can have, you know, like 30 different paragraph versions, whatnot, and see what you can do to really rattle somebody who does not get 10
Corey
49:13
10,000 emails a day, right? right? If all of a sudden your email, and by the way, 60
Corey
49:19
60 emails an hour,
Corey
49:21
500 emails a day
Corey
49:23
feels like you are under total siege if it is an actual inbox that is being dealt with by one human being like the constituency manager. Bing, there's an email. One minute later, bing, there's an email. You are going to feel like the sky is falling. So pick your targets as well. Pick them wisely. Make sure there are people who can actually apply pressure on the premier's office or make things difficult for the premier. But don't kid yourself. The premier's office is sophisticated and knows exactly what to make of both the inputs and the outputs that go with form correspondence. I
SPEAKER_02
49:54
I want to talk about this one final element before I go back to the AFL campaign to close. And this element is this concept around the celebration, which is if you want government to do something, you're lining up advocates to, of course, apply pressure. But Carter, you're also Also having advocates in place in a voluminous way to perhaps celebrate government victories or government policy changes. So talk to us about that in terms of what advocacy organizations should be doing in terms of that mix or that tension between ask, ask, ask. And by the way, you know, we want you to do this. And here's some of our muscle that we have. How do you, how have you kind of dealt with that both from both angles that you've been in both in government, but also, you know, on the campaign side of things?
Carter
50:36
government wants to win right
Carter
50:37
right government's job is to win and they want victories um you know the the the line of uh you know the french aristocrat who watches the the parade go by and says he has to run to the front so he can lead his people that's politics right and and if there's going to be a popular movement and if you can get the government to be the front of that popular movement, then you can get your thing much easier. If it is a conflict, if we are in conflict around it and we are fighting around it, it is much harder for you to actually get the thing that you want because governments are predisposed, as I think we all are. I think all of us are predisposed not to back down. You know, if
Carter
51:19
if we're fighting about something, I'm not going to give in. I'm not going to tell Corey his point was really well considered and my point was shit. that doesn't make a good podcast right like this is it's it we are predisposed our only formula
SPEAKER_02
51:32
formula by the way our only formula in this camp but
Carter
51:36
but if if if cory sets it up and says oh you know as as steven said this is really smart which he does i mean most of the time then i'm able to say well thanks man and we and we together we move ourselves towards a different solution that the idea that you can move a government towards something simply by fighting with them now Now, sometimes they need to be aggressively pushed into a direction, but you better give them a place to get out of their current position. You have to give them a place where they can land and have victory. This is, for example, we are having a huge, every provincial government has a huge deficit. The federal government has a huge deficit. You know, how are you going to make, you know, if you're a union, how are you going to make sure that that huge deficit you're not not the enemy of that we're all in this together like this is a this is an opportunity it's not great opportunity but it is an opportunity that's how you build a successful movement when you want government involved um and and you know i've i've chatted with many many different groups about this in the past you know find out what the government wants and see if it remotely is tied to what you want because when they when you both want the same thing significant
Carter
52:45
significant things can happen the the jason County government wants more charter schools. Charter schools are going to be, you know,
Carter
52:52
get on board, push for the charters, right? Like there's successes that can happen for a lot of different organizations. And those successes are tied to government, you may as well throw yourself in on them.
SPEAKER_02
53:04
Corey, I'm going to throw that over to you in terms of what would you kind of make of the celebration base that one's advocacy vehicle needs to build? And then perhaps if if you've seen any good examples of what good celebrations for government have looked like in the past.
Corey
53:21
Well, Carter is spot on. And I see
Corey
53:25
see what I did. Nicely done. Look, how
Corey
53:28
how does your narrative fit into their narrative? Your thing is not, it's the most important thing to you, but it's not likely the most important thing to them. And your ability to get your thing is to make it something that is about their thing and when you stand up and you celebrate with them what you're really doing is saying my success was part of your success and vice versa and we're all on the same team and we're all trying to do the same thing here and so in many ways um the most obvious version of this is when it's incremental towards what you want or it's what you want part of what you want you're going to go further but you can even stand up and celebrate with them when it's in the right direction when when you celebrate their priorities because you make it clear that it's your priorities as well so yeah uh we came to be a validator of the government um introducing this labor legislation because uh we also believe that uh we need to have more economic freedom in this province and while this is not our thing this is a thing worth celebrating and we're going to come and do it and it's basically your way of tying yourself to them at the hip and you're reminding them that your thing fits into their narrative as well so So it's a bit like, you know, to use that – remember the movie Dave? No one remembers the movie Dave. Everybody
Carter
54:37
Everybody remembers Dave. It's such a good movie.
Corey
54:40
He goes through the lineup. You guys like the West Wing. I like the movie Dave. It's comparable. He says, like, why are we helping people advertise the car they already bought? Well, because you want people to feel good about the things that they already bought so that they go and they buy again. Actually, that was probably Dave's worst work as president, fake president, usurper. But go watch the movie, everybody. buddy. I'm sure this made no sense to most of you. Great
Corey
55:06
But the idea is if you can stand up with them and create that friendship and that bridge and that coalition, you're more likely to see success in the future.
SPEAKER_02
55:13
Carter, I want to close it off. I'm not going to go back to the AFL campaign because I think we've talked enough. Any good celebrations you have seen as chief of staff of organizations that have come with you to applaud a decision, whether that be digitally, whether that be in person? I'm kind of curious to see tactically if there's been any interesting interesting celebrations that advocacy organizations have really impressed and delivered on.
Carter
55:36
Oh, man, now I'm on the spot. I can't actually think of any. Corey, rescue me.
Corey
55:41
Mothers Against Drunk Drunk.
Carter
55:42
Drunk. I knew you were going to say it. I knew you were going to say it. I purposely stayed away from it, and you both are dicks.
Carter
55:52
Both of you are dicks. I
SPEAKER_02
55:54
I actually didn't even have a question there. Let's move it on to our final segment, it, our over, under, and our lightning round. Guys, are you ready?
SPEAKER_02
56:02
Okay, good. Thanks for speaking on behalf of both of us. Carter is struggling for words. On a scale of 1 to 10, Corey, I'll go to you first on 1 to 10. How bad is this situation with the Bloc Quebecois leader Blanchet denying sexual assault allegations? Of course, he came out with a press conference today, today being Sunday. His caucus stands behind him denying any allegations of of sexual assault uh is this is this a thing for him how bad is this well
Corey
56:28
well i'm i'm of two minds on this um one of them is i find it remarkable how as soon as it's a party leader who is under accusations like this everyone just says no no i mean obviously he's telling the truth here right like political expediency trumps those uh those principles it feels like every single time um and and we've seen this with too many leaders even to count like here in the united states everywhere and so i'm deeply cynical about uh everybody rallying to him at this point um but you know there's there's also there's an awkward thing that nobody really wants to talk about which is like you know we say believe her and you should believe victims
Corey
57:08
victims of abuse who come forward but as
Corey
57:10
as i said earlier all advice has to be you know all advice taken to his extreme can become a bit absurd here and i don't know if this is absurd i haven't read enough of the the details here. But it was over 20 years ago. It's going to be very hard to prove anything one way or the other. And accusations like this, especially those made anonymously, they
Corey
57:30
they can be made, right? And is the
Corey
57:33
the expectation now that a leader has to step down under that cloud or whatnot? Because I do worry about it being weaponized at a certain point. So I don't know. And I think this is one of those issues that nobody loves talking about. Because foundationally, you want to be an ally and you want to be supportive but um you
Corey
57:50
you really do have to wonder like where is the line and how would i feel if it was my party leader or anything like that like what is a fair set of principles by which we should run this what is the statute of limitations on an accusation of this nature and um maybe if nothing else what we'll get out of this zane is that we will start having that conversation and stop treating it as sound bites in both directions carter
SPEAKER_02
58:11
carter one to ten and the Blanchett sexual allegations?
Carter
58:17
less of two behinds than Corey because I think that an anonymous accusation on a Facebook page isn't an accusation. And Blanchett's response of, okay, take this to the police, file a report, is exactly the right one. If this is real, if this actually happened, then there is a process to deal with it. I'm not aware of the legal implications of going on Facebook and just saying something. thing i will tell you that people have posted stuff to about me on twitter um that would make your hair fall out it has made my hair fall out it is um the accusations uh you know i don't want to repeat them because they're horrible um but anonymous accusations on on social media hold almost no weight for me because um anyone can make them um you know i've had i've called the The police have been involved in a number of these things to find out who's made these accusations because they're horrible.
Carter
59:16
So this is a horrible accusation. If this is a true allegation, then it needs to go through a proper protest or process. That process has failed women in the past. the changes that we are making today as a society I am hopeful that we are now better prepared to deal with these and that the police will investigate these accusations so
Carter
59:41
make the accusations to the police you'll find something really funny about that it doesn't go to the media right
Carter
59:46
right you go to the police the police do the work and then if there's charges laid then it goes to the media right until that time you can do this as quietly as it needs to be done i don't understand um this being a real accusation and having to live uh on the anonymous you
Carter
1:00:05
know walls and facebook i mean that to me is is just um it undermines the importance and the uh the seriousness of of sexual assault and we can't have this be the new standard cory
SPEAKER_02
1:00:19
cory you want to respond well
Corey
1:00:20
well yeah look i mean there's a criminal bar which is is obvious it's It's much harder to prove something that's occurred 20 plus years. I don't believe there actually is a literal statute of limitations for the criminal charge here, but there is, there's kind of the next thing. It's like, I don't want to go through that. I don't have the evidence, but I want to say my piece and, and they are not necessarily the same thing. And so I do worry about just saying you're off ramp is entirely legal here.
Corey
1:00:43
I don't know what the right answer is here. And I would love to have this conversation more, not us, but like more broadly as a society to say, how are we supposed to deal with these things?
SPEAKER_02
1:00:50
Carter over to you over under on seven over under on seven. since i know you're gonna give me a number uh the trudeau liberals saying the blue jays can't play uh in in toronto uh going forward what do you kind of make of that that particular uh conclusion by the liberal government it's
Carter
1:01:06
it's an absolute a plus um
Carter
1:01:07
um the the the reality of bringing uh teams from the united states from all over the united states to the to canada um you know that's just not going going to fly. What the NHL is doing, I'm not a big fan of what the NHL is doing right now. We have NHL players testing positive for COVID all over the place. I don't want there to be major league teams flying into Toronto to
Carter
1:01:33
to play some baseball and
Carter
1:01:35
and exposing players. I mean, we've had many, many players already exposed to COVID. This is not the time that we want to be bringing Americans up up uh into canada and they're coming i mean the first series was supposed to be tampa bay uh does
Carter
1:01:51
does this make sense to anybody does anybody want to bring 35 random floridians up to canada um i'm you know if you do then you can stand by them i don't want to stand by them i don't want them in the country i want us to uh i want us all to wear masks i want us to you know this is i i appreciate the importance of sport i i've enjoyed watching f1 get back together but they're doing it in a bubble and that bubble needs to be brought for major league baseball it needs to be brought for um hockey it needs to be brought for basketball i
SPEAKER_02
1:02:24
don't want them in in this country is of course a famous tagline that you've used on previous campaigns yeah
Carter
1:02:32
picking on carter i'm sorry
SPEAKER_02
1:02:35
it's just too easy too easy yeah it's too corey corey um same question over under on seven for the trudeau government uh in this decision with the blue jays i
Corey
1:02:45
think it's the only decision they could have made for all of the reasons steven said it's um yeah
Corey
1:02:50
yeah it's one of those things where it's both over and under depending on your frame and uh and
Corey
1:02:56
and for those reasons i believe i will also give it a a plus oh
SPEAKER_02
1:03:00
oh of course you will okay on on one to ten carter i'm going to you of course you had your uh absolutely brilliant this is where we praise you anthony fauci strategy last week on a scale of one to ten of course he did not end up hiring you because he took all your free advice or some of it on a scale of one to ten how do you rank his week because he's been going out doing live streams he's been going to the atlantic giving one-on-one sit-downs he's deviating his voice is loud he hasn't sat there like a bureaucrat uh i'm curious to see what your take is on on how he's come out this week well
Carter
1:03:31
well he he hasn't landed a single knockout punch what i was trying to describe last week was a significant significant one punch type of thing that where you would go through and release like a chapter a week right we talked about the serialized book um
Carter
1:03:46
instead what he's done is he's done i am available for every media interview everywhere everywhere i will sit down with everyone even the most partisan of podcasts like he's showed up on the pod save america feed like yeah
Carter
1:03:59
like He is saying, I will fuck you right now, Don, and he's doing it. Jesus Christ.
Carter
1:04:07
It's fantastic, but I don't think it has the same weight because he's doing everything. It doesn't have the same weight as doing the one thing perfectly.
SPEAKER_02
1:04:18
Corey, what do you make of the Anthony Fauci week? You're shrugging your shoulders.
Corey
1:04:23
I think he's decided, probably rightly so, that he's fired. fired so he's gonna he's gonna act as though it's already occurred and that's why he's going out everywhere um he he like many public servants who immediately are
Corey
1:04:37
are thrust into the limelight doesn't quite know that it's okay if you're if
Corey
1:04:41
if you're gonna do this you do this the whole way you don't do this part of the way so it will be interesting to see how he opens up over time uh but he i mean trump's made it pretty clear he's done with fauci one way or the other okay
SPEAKER_02
1:04:52
okay let's move it on to our our last question of course a listener question uh this one coming to us from a drift in a sea of blue alberta specific question thank you for leaving us your five-star review in fact you've not only left it to us you've called it a five-star bribe for a question and uh indeed that is what it is and we still continue to accept those all righty here's the question guys given the popularity of the ucp is higher than that of the premier in this case jason kenney is there a realistic possibility and this is an age-old question i think you know where you're going where i'm going with this Carter, is there a realistic possibility that disgruntled MLAs start a coup, start another party, etc, etc, etc? I want to go to you on this because we've answered a version of this question in the past, but do you see anything changing in this moment in time?
Carter
1:05:38
No, I mean, I think it's relatively, leaders are above their parties sometimes and they're below their parties other their times. But their parties remain loyal because ultimately, until such time as you have to kill the leader, you don't kill the leader. It's fraught with danger. Jason
Carter
1:05:58
Jason Kenney's a tremendously talented politician. He's throwing all kinds of scraps around to people and giving them lots of reasons to love him and lots of loyalty. I don't see any way that he is deposed. Now, a breakaway caucus led by Drew Barnes, sure,
Carter
1:06:20
why not? I mean, the far right wing of lunatics, and let's be clear, Drew Barnes is the craziest of the group. You know, it is hard to keep a caucus together of Alberta conservatives because Alberta conservatism doesn't come in one flavor.
Carter
1:06:39
So I could see something like that happening, but I don't actually see that happening probably for another two years. It'd be a break off like you've lost us now before the election. You know, they're going to try and leverage it to get some significant payout of some sort. But Kenny is too good.
SPEAKER_02
1:07:00
Corey, Breakout Caucus led by Drew Barnes, by the way, great arthouse film title. Corey, what would you what would you give this this question in terms of a response? Is it possible? Is it viable?
Corey
1:07:10
Look, it's always been, I don't know about always, but for most of the history of the UCP, it's been true that Jason Kenney has been less popular than the political brand. And I don't think that's that surprising given Alberta sees itself, self-identifies as conservative. But here's the thing. It's always been true. And they got the most votes ever in the last election. So if I'm Jason Kenney, A, I can point to that and say, yeah, I mean, so what? Big deal. This works for us. This whole thing we've got going on is pretty nice. The other thing is, I'm quite confident that it was always the plan to do the things that were – because it's the plan of every government, to do the unpopular things early, get them done, and then try to come back. And it's pretty easy for them to say, this
Corey
1:07:52
this is the plan. Political capital is meant to be spent. You can't put it under your mattress. You've got to use it now or it becomes diminished with time. We've talked about this in the past.
Corey
1:08:02
so we're doing it. We're spending it. Stick to the plan, everybody. buddy it only fails if we fall apart if we stop supporting each other and uh yeah the drew barns party is definitely possible i think in part because he's not in cabinet you know he probably expected to be in cabinet he's not in cabinet he's gone pretty rogue to begin with he's given a lot of indications there but they've
Corey
1:08:22
they've got a healthy majority they'll be able to survive a few and frankly it's it's usual in alberta to have a floor crossing every session we've had had relatively few the past couple sessions. So, I mean, you'll see a couple, but I don't think it's going to be fatal to them.
SPEAKER_02
1:08:38
Adrift in a sea of blue, thank you for leaving us your question, your five-star review. We will be accepting more of these, of course, in perpetuity. There is no deadline. Leave us all of your five-star reviews, and I will continue to just sadly read your questions as trade-off. And we'll leave it there for episode 812 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.