Episode 818: O’Toole Time

SPEAKER_02 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 818. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, happy

Corey 0:10

Happy barely Sunday evening. Oh, yeah. And not really Sunday on the East Coast. Yeah,

Carter 0:15

Yeah, happy Monday morning to all of those east of Calgary.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Of course, we were watching playoff basketball, which is why we're here so late. Oh, Raptors! That's right. Nothing else going on. Who gives a shit? Let's just jump right into it. Who cares about the banter? We've got lots of banter about our first segment, postage not included. Guys, let's talk about what we saw with the conservative leadership race. I know we have a new leader for the conservative party. We'll park that for a second because I think what's become the story was this process. And maybe, Corey, I'll start with you getting your initial thoughts on on what was initially reported a couple hours before the 4 p.m., at least for us, 4 p.m., Mountain, 6 p.m. Eastern time slot, as a 90-minute delay that turned out to be, oh, I don't know, a seven-hour delay. Give me your overarching thoughts on what the fuck you just saw. And how charitable should we be to the Conservative Party? Maybe those two questions.

Corey 1:13

So let's be sure. First, okay, the story is not the process. The story is that Erin O'Toole has won the leadership, ship as predicted by you and i and not predicted by stephen carter that

Carter 1:23

that is correct so 813 minute 23 yeah

Corey 1:28

yeah just uh just keep

Corey 1:30

flogging that it's just like

SPEAKER_01 1:32

it sounds like a cry for help in code episode

Corey 1:36

episode 816 minute 66 how does that sound is my rejoinder to that um no the story is not the process the the the process was deeply painful to the media it It was deeply painful to pundits like us. It was deeply painful to the political class that have nothing better to do with a Sunday than whittle away seven hours in front of their computers and in front of their television screens. But I don't think the story is processed. That said, the

Corey 2:04

the process was pretty grim.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Let's talk about the process for a second because I want to dissect that or deconstruct it at least for a bit before we move on to Aaron O'Toole conversation, which we'll have in depth. But give us your thoughts on that process. says

Corey 2:17

what can you say i mean apparently the conservatives had a problem where the machine that was cutting open the envelopes with the ballots was resulting in ballots being cut and because the ballots have a barcode on them that tells you the writing and that's how their machine readable in addition to the ocr that tells you like this is my first choice second choice third choice um they

Corey 2:38

they ended up in a situation where they had to then manually reissue ballots because of of course, there's the barcode I mentioned, right? And so to get to the next step, you need to reprint a ballot, which means you've got to invalidate another ballot.

Corey 2:52

And that took a fair bit of time. I don't think we know yet how many ballots that actually occurred with. If it happened, I missed it in the rigmarole that was going there. But deeply

Corey 3:02

deeply embarrassing for the Conservative Party. This is the same system they used last time to open ballots, but now they're using smaller envelopes. And either one of two things happened. The one I suspect is they did test it and it has a failure rate of about oh i don't know three percent which is what people are reporting is is the you know the number of ballots that were sliced open and they just you know the ones they test it didn't get mangled in any way shape or form you also you can't put anything past the voter to wreck the process and put the ballot in wrong and do all of those things right um but the other possibility is they didn't test it and they just changed the ballot size So it's embarrassing, and I think that if you work at the Conservative Party headquarters and you now have new leader Aaron O'Toole, you're definitely making sure that you're finding all of your LinkedIn is up to date and you've brushed up your resume because there's no way the new leader is coming in with a good taste in their mouth about the operations at the Conservative HQ. Carter?

Carter 3:59

Well, I mean, Corey's done a good job, I think, of explaining the mistake

Carter 4:04

mistake that was made. And I don't think that anybody has any issue with the mistake that was made. What then compounded the problem was 90 minutes, 60 minutes. It's going to happen by 8 p.m. Eastern. It's going to happen by 9 p.m. Eastern, 9.30 p.m. Eastern, 10 p.m. Eastern. Kind of like our group chat

SPEAKER_02 4:20

organizing this podcast, by the way. It

Carter 4:22

It is exactly the same. We're waiting for you, 15 minutes late, Belgium. But this is the mistake. Problems happen in leadership and counting. I mean, leaders get announced at four o'clock in the morning. McGinty is announced at four thirty in the morning. We remember Iowa for the Iowa primary, which was a shit show. The Democratic Party has somehow managed to recover from that and pull slightly in the lead of Donald Trump. These things don't matter, except that the the problem to me was not saying we've got a problem. We don't know when we're going to have it fixed, but we're committing to having it fixed tonight. And we're going to give the networks 45 minutes notice or something along those lines, which would allow them to break away from their seven hours of coverage. This is where the two problems occurred, where Scheer got up and said, don't trust the mainstream media that we're broadcasting this thing live with like no economic incentive to do so. And

Carter 5:23

And then being lied to, perhaps inadvertently, but definitely lied to by the campaign, by the staff that were running the leadership. So those two things compounded to create a real problem that was, you know, yeah, there was an error. I mean, errors happen. That's the reality of leadership campaigns. This is not, that's not the mistake that was made tonight. night the real mistake was telling the media 15 minutes 30 minutes an hour an hour and a half two hours like that was bullshit and even the last 15 minute warning was bullshit and then the gap between the first and second ballots was

SPEAKER_02 6:07

agonizing agonizing oh it's terrible cory cory did it did it hurt their brand i

Corey 6:13

don't think so not in any kind of real way not in any kind of long-term way one of the nice things about a leadership contest zane is there's a whole new boss in town and they They get to bring in their people and they can say, oh, those were the fuck-ups under Scheer. That's not what's going to happen under Aaron O'Toole's leadership. So, you know, they get a bit of a pass on any party operations that go wrong on leadership days. And they go wrong so consistently. I would suggest more often than not, leadership results get delayed. And we, the media, everybody should just stop kidding themselves. These results are going to come in late. They always do. I think about how long it took the in-between ballots in the leadership for the NDP where Mulcair was elected. Sure. Agony. Even Jason Kenney, when he got the leadership of the UCP more recently in Alberta, very late results. It's just it happens because there are so many things that go into a leadership contest beyond the counting of the ballots that exacerbate these things. Now, you know, it's not wrong, though, what Stephen said about how they manage the issue wrong. And I really do mean, I think some people probably need to think about whether they've got future employment with the CPC going forward because this was a really bad performance by them.

Corey 7:25

They were either lying to themselves or their bosses or a combination of both when they thought they could fix this thing in 90 minutes. They need somebody with an operations brain who could say, okay, well, we're processing about X number of ballots a minute. This is not going to happen for several hours. And so let's talk to the media and let's regroup on this thing. because the idea of just stringing everybody along for so long is the most infuriating way to deal with that. It happens all the time, but

Corey 7:53

but it is the most infuriating way to deal with that. I agree with Stephen as well. I can't believe they made us wait for an hour between the first to the second ballot or what was pretty close to an hour. That was bananas. That was crazy.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

There's a lot of things to discuss. I think we got the process out of the way. Before I move on, was there anything different you guys would have done? Should this have been your process? Corey, you've run a party before. Is there anything you knew that if this was your leadership election that you would have kind of done differently? I want to go through that stream of questioning before we move on.

Corey 8:28

you know, every leadership contest is its own special little creation. They're snowflakes, right? They have different rules, they have different technologies. And there's two things I can say about that. One is it's very hard to pass judgment as a result standing somewhere else you know what we did at the time i ran a leadership contest was use technology literally in this exact same way it had been used in other leadership contests to try to minimize the amount that something could go wrong on that front and then we hired a former chief electoral officer to be our you know auditor you know we just really tried to belt and suspenders it and avoid any kind of great grief um but if you were trying to even when you're doing that I have some sympathy. So they went to smaller envelopes. We went to a different system we had in Alberta. The origins of the Liberal Party's supporter system, the idea that you can just register as a registered Liberal and vote and everything, that started in Alberta. And the leadership contest I ran was the first one we did that. And it's different. I mean, there are so many different complications that go in there. So even when you're relying on tested and true technologies, things can and will go wrong. And there will be delays. And there will be angry leadership contestants. That's just the reality of the system. So I say all of this.

Corey 9:39

Have some sympathy for your party apparatchiks, because they even when they're doing the same old, they're not doing the same old. These things are always different. And you're always creating them from scratch. anything you

SPEAKER_02 9:51

you want to add to that well

Carter 9:52

well i mean i went through this in 2010 i mean our leadership the results were coming in late we had a uh a person who was supervising the vote in one of the ridings because we ran 87

Carter 10:02

87 ridings you could have polling stations in each riding and some rural areas had more than one polling station and one of the people who was running the dro the deputy returning officer uh was running the station and she took the ballot box with her because she had had to go combining so someone

Carter 10:16

someone actually had to run out into into the field to try and get her uh to get the the ballad box now the difference is and this is where i would have recommended that peter mckay and aaron o'toole and the party get together um

Carter 10:29

um we were in negotiations with gary marr i mean we basically knew that we'd won now gary's team was holding out some sort of hope

Carter 10:35

hope that there would be some sort of miracle in that magical ballad literal miracle

Corey 10:39

miracle on the prairie yeah

Carter 10:40

yeah literal miracle on the prairies because field

Carter 10:44

field of dreams so

SPEAKER_02 10:44

so many other we

Carter 10:46

we were we were negotiating with them the whole night saying okay we we've

Carter 10:50

we've won we know we've won you know let's go out there together he wouldn't he

Carter 10:55

wouldn't go out there together he waited until we had the ballot box and everything was known and and that i think hurt him uh in the same fashion that i think that the

Carter 11:04

the o'toole campaign and the mckay campaign and and even the lewis campaign if they'd gotten together and said okay what

Carter 11:12

what you know know in the party office what's the freaking result you know who's running this election tell each of our our campaign managers this is what's happened we are going to skip the following things we are not going to do the province by province rundowns we're running straight to the leadership we're we're going to put aaron o'toole in front of the microphone as fast as humanly possible so we get something vaguely resembling an audience uh when he does his speech that is what should have been done between to rectify the process problem and that could have been done on

Carter 11:43

probably, you know, an hour and a half before Aaron O'Toole actually got to hit the stage to do his speech. I mean, we're not watching his speech right now. I'm not sure that anybody is because it's, you know, it's 1.30 in the morning Eastern time. This is not when you want to be making a speech and introducing yourself to the Canadian public public as the presumptive next prime minister, which is what you want people to think of you as. That's where the mistakes were made.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Carter, I'll get to the strategy of what O'Toole should do. But before that, two very quick things. You know, one of the things that all three of us got to do over the seven hours was watch a lot of media analysis and how the media filled the airspace. I want to quickly talk about that. What was your general take on how that was filled and the conversations that ever had because cory i know for you it was hair pulling uh so before i get to o2 let's talk about this well

Carter 12:39

well let me let me open it up with just saying tremendous amount of sympathy for everybody who is trying to fill um

Carter 12:45

um hours of time so you're going into a broadcast and you fill out certain amounts of time and then you probably would would double it because this isn't their first rodeo either they know that things take longer uh so they're going to plan for an hour and a half long broadcast. They're going to jump that. They're going to have programming for maybe up to three hours.

Carter 13:05

When you're hitting the fourth and fifth hour of your live broadcast, there is nothing left to say. And this

Carter 13:11

this is, again, where I come back to the party mistake that was made, was not giving the networks the opportunity to break away and come back. I think that CBC would have come back. I think they have the responsibility to come back. I'm not sure that CTV comes back, but But

Carter 13:27

regardless, this needed they needed the opportunity because those those those pundits, the media personalities, like they were lining up people that they didn't even have lined up. Producers were working the phone lines, bringing in people just to fill time. And there's nothing to say. There's nothing to say except this is going to happen. And that's that's a really, really negative spot. and it falls back to me as

Carter 13:56

much as some of the the analysis was a little cringy um i have nothing but empathy and sympathy for them because there was no way of doing it otherwise okay

Corey 14:05

i mean god love them i watched cbc and carter's right they had so much air to fill i i and we've all done this for them we've all been pundits for the media in those situations and had to help them stretch time as you're waiting for something else to happen but

Corey 14:20

but there is a limit to the value and And you really got diminishing returns. In particular, I was struck. I don't know what hour this was. Very – not that close to the end. It felt like it should be close to the end. But I think we're still hours. It

SPEAKER_02 14:32

It was what we call the mid-end.

Corey 14:35

Yeah. It was like, you know, not the – you know, it was the beginning of the end maybe. But Eric Grenier was there doing some poll analysis for CBC as he does. That's his gig. And like they're just – they're running out of questions. Is there anything else I can ask you? was literally almost

Corey 14:51

a question that kind of put out.

Corey 14:54

And I can't remember who was asking it, but when you're sort of so clearly expressing on air that you don't really have anything else to say, it's just time to call it, right? But they didn't have that option for a number of reasons, not least of which is Andrew Scheer did his broadside against the mainstream media. Let's

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Let's talk about that, Hogan. Let's talk about Andrew Scheer, because that was the bucket I wanted to get into before we talk about O'Toole. So he gives his goodbye speech. It turns out to be some sponsored content for the post-millennial and the True North. So

SPEAKER_02 15:25

So Andrew Scheer has already begun his career as an influencer with his hashtag ads. But what did you make of what seemed to be a very strange negative speech by Scheer? Corey, you got going, so continue the thread on that, and I'll go to you right after.

Corey 15:41

You kind of stole my thing. You threw it as a bit jokey, but I do wonder – and I don't think he's actually being an Instagram influencer, but I wonder if he's not trying to carve himself kind of a more right-wing persona and

Corey 15:54

introduce himself in that ilk and become a bit – well, talking head doesn't pay very much in this country, Andrew, so maybe think twice about that. But he seems to want to still be an opinion leader but has decided that where there's any currency – and I mean this in the literal dollar sense – where

Corey 16:12

that exists is on the further right because that was quite – that

Corey 16:16

that was very strange for me. The idea that he was so angry about the quote-unquote mainstream media, I

Corey 16:24

I think often when people lose an election, they blame the media, right?

Corey 16:27

That's often a big part of it. But even in the context of that, I mean, it was a fairly classless response.

Corey 16:34

response. It was pretty wild to see a party leader go out on that note, a former speaker, somebody who has been very, very well regarded in the past.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Carter, give us your take on both what you heard from Scheer, what you saw in terms of what Corey's saying, in terms of what he may have telegraphed, but also the content of what he was saying.

Carter 16:52

want to pick up on Corey's point about the former speaker, because it's quite the pathway from former speaker. Because I would suggest that when Andrew Scheer was speaker, he was fairly well respected. I mean, Corey, no one's going to disagree with this point, I think. Like, you know, speaker is a role that requires a certain, you

Carter 17:17

know, way to carry yourself. And he carried himself, I think, very well for that particular role, which one would think would lend oneself to being a politician. And since being elected, you know, the leader, his pathway has just gone down and down and down to, I think, the lowest point, which was this particular speech. speech um this speech was not um a

Carter 17:40

a coming together of the conservative party uh of canada and and ultimately a bit you know there needed to be a conversation about uh andrew sheer standing in front of the of his members and saying please don't do to me or don't do to our next leader what has been done to me not in those words but that should be the tone we are together we are bringing this forward regardless of who the leader is and instead it was an insular the only people you can trust are are media outlets that don't that don't even matter in the overall scheme of things uh that no one's falling i mean how did he leave out the rebel how i mean there's got to be pissed this is you know but that's that's who he's trying to get votes from it's

Carter 18:22

it's weak it's small it's tiny and that's who he is weak small and tiny and and now he leaves the national stage where really his best gig is going to be writing op-eds for candace malcolm i mean it's just it's It's just sad.

Corey 18:36

Corey, finish us off on this. Well, this was definitely not Washington's farewell address, right? I mean, it was a small speech. I mean, Carter's exactly right. And it was bad advice. That's the other thing to keep in mind. If the conservatives were to heed his recommendations, I think both members and party, like, let's focus on these outlets, that would be effing terrible advice. And it would pull them away from the mainstream that they need to get elected. Here's the bottom line with Andrew Scheer. He almost became prime minister, despite himself. He did win the popular vote, but for a few seats, he would be prime minister. But he has to take responsibility for his failures here. He exaggerated his employment and his education. And worse than that, he walked into an election with those things still hidden and holding over his head. So he's got to accept a certain responsibility and not just blame the media for this. And the conservatives need to – and I think the conservatives are savvy enough and I think Aaron O'Toole and the people around him are savvy enough to know you're

Corey 19:32

you're not going to all of a sudden put all of your efforts on post-millennial, right? That's not the plan. But can you

Corey 19:39

you imagine? You think about the statesman-like beginning and not beginning, but you were the speaker and you leave on this note.

Corey 19:47

Your grandchildren find this in a hundred years or your great-grandchildren. God, how embarrassing for you.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Yeah. Yeah. Let's move it on to our next segment. Oh, Tool Time. Get it? Tool Time. Tim Allen. That's really good. It's really

SPEAKER_02 20:01

That's one for the Toronto Sun to steal. so i know they listen so i'll let them i'll let them have that uh ronald's

Carter 20:08

ronald's son that had to go and publish early uh and and kent doesn't have a picture of otul on their front cover there's

SPEAKER_02 20:14

there's no way he's getting in that was actually what the editor-in-chief said there's it's too late it's too late we can't pivot uh cory let's start actually carter let's start with you on this how did we get here give us the the the play-by-play in your mind as to what got us here to an Aaron O'Toole victory. You know, we talked about many times on this podcast, if McKay was not at 43, 44, 42 in that first ballot, he was screwed. I think that played to what you saw here. But what else did we see that kind of led to Aaron O'Toole now being our leader for the Conservative Party?

Carter 20:47

Well, I think the first thing that we saw was the unbelievable strength of uh leslin lewis who really did amazingly well on the first on the first uh ballot um and derrick sloan also did i think amazingly well on the first ballot uh the two of them together were approximately 30 33 34 percent of the vote um they

Carter 21:10

they got one third of the vote as as frankly

Carter 21:13

frankly um two people who were running on a very socially conservative platform um they together uh

Carter 21:21

uh have had the plurality i think of votes uh east of ontario um i'm sorry west of ontario they they they were dominant in uh all of the western provinces which gave which says says that the party that is the cpc no longer represents the parties that used to the people who used to include the pcs because that's where peter was coming from and

Carter 21:45

and ultimately the end

Carter 21:48

end game uh with with O'Toole winning, was just a simple matter of picking up and cleaning up all those second choice votes. Those people that were voting for Sloan and Lewis were simply never going to vote for McKay. That was the thesis that we talked about in episode 813 at the 23-minute mark. And that's the thesis that carried them through to this particular moment. Because Because McCain, the problem with the frontrunner campaign, as we discussed in episode 813 in the 23rd minute, is the frontrunner has to win on the first ballot. So

Carter 22:25

So if you don't win on the first ballot. Is this like a hostage

SPEAKER_01 22:29

you're putting out there?

SPEAKER_01 22:32

What goes on at 813 at the 23rd,

Carter 22:34

Mark? My loyal listeners will go back and listen.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Are you being abused at home? What's going on? is no it's my my my

Carter 22:42

my the don't interrupt me belgium i'm talking the

Carter 22:49

point is that that i had no idea i don't even know that the pundits had a particularly solid idea even people talking about the numbers didn't have an idea that fully one-third of the of the voters in this cpc election were going to be really really right wing and

Carter 23:03

and that if you know if you told you you that up front mckay doesn't even throw his name in because with one third of the voters being voting for lewis and for uh sloan there is no path to victory and that was the that was the thing that we didn't see until the actual results were announced tonight um and i'll tell you something if lewis had done you

Carter 23:25

know two more months of heavy publicity like she's gotten in the last two weeks i honestly think she'd have been there um because she got a ton of publicity even in the last seven days, which were kind of, you know, too little too late. But, you

Carter 23:40

she rocketed up at the end.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

Corey, you know, we talked often about McKay selling the most memberships, having the most membership sales, fundraising. How did he end up in a situation where he didn't just lose narrowly? This was the O'Toole strategy in the sense, hey, let's just chip away, ensure we're close on the first ballot. They were very close on the first ballot. And then And by the third ballot, it was a significant margin. I think 3,000 or 5,000 in between there. You may want to correct me. But this was not a small, let's just sneak it through on the third ballot. He killed him on that last one. What would you make of the fact that he was supposed to win this thing with membership sales and money?

Corey 24:18

Yeah, well, I'll say frontrunners do not win with 34%. And that's what McKay got on the first ballot. Because everybody runs against the frontrunner. I think that's some of the analysis we heard in episode 813 at the 23-minute mark, right?

Corey 24:35

notorious 813, 23-minute mark.

Corey 24:39

And you really saw that. The way that the votes aggregated up, in some ways, McKay did better between the first and the third ballot than I may have expected otherwise, right? He ended up with, what, 43%-ish at the

Corey 24:52

the end of the day? So he moved from 34 to 43. he moved up nine points uh meanwhile

Corey 24:57

meanwhile O'Toole moved from 32 to 57 that's 25 points and and that's that's

Corey 25:03

that's actually not bad for Peter McKay on on additional ballots from from people who have dropped out on the right of the party and um how he how he managed to lose this is that he never had the enthusiasm he never had the hearts he never had the excitement of the party which is what the knock has been against Peter McKay since the day he entered this race right there was there There was no diehard McKay stans out there. They were never going to be that engine of enthusiasm that even Sloan, frankly, had with some of his supporters. He was always seen as a person who made a ton of sense on paper. He was the old Red Tory. And I don't know if people were looking for a Red Tory.

SPEAKER_02 25:42

Carter, you know, I'm stealing this from our buddy Evan Solomon, but he said on TV that his criticism of Andrew Scheer, McKay's that is, was that Andrew Scheer had an open net and couldn't score. score would that same analogy apply to peter mckay here like what do you think do you agree with cory's analysis of the enthusiasm gap being the reason that he just couldn't put this thing in um and and score yeah

Carter 26:03

yeah i mean i think it has to be i mean how do you let aaron o'toole beat you in quebec right like there had to be some sort of strategy failure or some sort of uh campaign you know misunderstanding about how the campaign was going to actually unfold um you know this this this campaign should have broken through where, you know, McKay's going to look at the Western Canadian ridings, which were divvying up pretty solidly with going,

Carter 26:29

going, you know, going to O'Toole and say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to try and do 25% in there and I'm going to really focus in on Ontario, Quebec and East, you know, the Eastern, the

Carter 26:39

the Atlantic provinces. Well, he didn't do that. I mean, he didn't get anywhere. I mean, he got beat by Lewis in Alberta. Like it just, And

Carter 26:49

Lewis, I think, won Saskatchewan. I just glanced at the results. I was like, she's

Carter 26:56

she's won Saskatchewan? Those two things should have been pretty good for McKay in some respects because those votes should have come out of O'Toole's total. And if he'd done what he was supposed to do in Ontario and Quebec, then he's swamping through. But when O'Toole wins Quebec, that's the ballgame because McKay should be pulling it off pretty handily. But I don't know if the population came back just was tired

Carter 27:21

tired of McKay. They knew him too well. But there was a campaign strategy failure for sure in some sort of implementation in that space.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

You know, Corey, last time the Conservatives had a leadership race, Scheer won, I believe it was on the 13th or 12th ballot against Bernier. And many called him an accidental leader. Do you feel like that's what happened here? Do you feel like the process created an accidental leader? Or is this pretty definitive, that O'Toole walks out of this thing saying, nope, I, fair and square, won this thing? Like, what's the kind of narrative you see coming out of this? Because last time it was very much an accident had kind of happened because of the process. Same thing this time, or is it different for you?

Corey 28:00

I think he won one. The only thing that might make me think otherwise is the raw vote counts. So if we find out McKay actually got, if McKay, quote, unquote, won the popular vote, right? Something the conservatives have been bragging about in the last election. Yeah,

Corey 28:14

that could potentially throw a bit of a wrench into the engine for O2. I don't think a bad one. I mean, ultimately, I agree with Stephen. There was clearly a strategy fail here. If that's

Corey 28:25

that's the case, even more so, right? Because that would mean you exerted an awful lot of effort in areas that were not getting you a ton of votes. And just looking at where Lewis and Sloan did well, I would say they obviously did well in areas that were outside

Corey 28:39

outside of the major centers. So I think it's going to be interesting to kind of see how they impacted McKay's support in some of those areas as well. because it could be like very relatively few votes could have changed this thing when it gets down to it we just we don't have enough information yet and that will come in the coming days i think but yeah i mean mckay um mckay

Corey 29:01

mckay blew it carter

SPEAKER_02 29:02

carter did is this is is this a legit authentic strong win by o'toole can he take this to the bank with just a strong leader perspective that i am now the definitive leader of the conservative party this is not an accident well

Carter 29:16

well i think so because i think I think that there'll be a couple of narratives that come out of this. First will be the narrative that we're talking about that Peter McKay has blown it. And I expect Peter McKay will then slink off away from the limelight. And Leslyn Lewis will step right in. You know, she's going to be, I think, the secondary storyline of this. And in some cases, she might even be the primary storyline. line. So she's going to be a big opportunity. And her votes, because her votes went to O'Toole and Sloan's votes ultimately went to O'Toole. There's a real strong sense that you helped get them there. And so her voters and the people who are supporting her and Sloan, I think will feel represented in this decision. So you're not going to see the same collapsing of the party the way you saw it under Scheer and Bernier. So I think that this is going to be a good

Carter 30:13

good thing. And there's not going to be any doubt, like Scheer faced a tremendous amount of doubt after the 700 candidate, 6 million ballot vote that was the last CPC leadership.

Corey 30:27

So it was a convincing win. And I don't think that the nature of the win in any way hurts O'Toole. It obviously gives him a free hand with the party. That's a good win, especially in a field of four where everybody's credible. But kind

Corey 30:39

kind of everybody was credible. So here's the bigger problem. The conservatives fundamentally had about a third of the vote go to social conservatives, a third of the vote go to the former red Tory, and a third of the vote go to Aaron O'Toole on that first ballot. And that does speak to a party that has some factionalism. And I don't think it's something that's insurmountable. But I do think that Aaron O'Toole is going to have his

Corey 31:05

his hands full as leader of the Conservative Party, because there are obviously some components of the party that see themselves as mutually exclusive with the others. And you see that even – and, you know, I did say McKay actually got more of that vote than I thought he would. But you see that even with how few people were willing to go to McKay. And what McKay represented to a lot of conservatives was that red Tory, right? He wasn't running as a red Tory, but he was seen as a red Tory. And similarly,

Corey 31:30

similarly, I think that if in some parallel universe we could see how Peter McKay's votes drop off, I bet you almost none, zero,

Corey 31:39

zero, go to Derek Sloan and very few go to Lesley Lewis. So, that's a problem, right? You've got these two camps, and Aaron O'Toole is nicely positioned in the middle of them. That's good, good for him, that's a good opportunity, but that's not something without risk. risk.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

Corey, I think you bring up an excellent point. Carter, maybe I'll go to you on this, which is the orientation of Aaron O'Toole as a true blue conservative is what he kind of branded himself as. Then the social conservatives flanking him to the right, Peter McKay flanking him a bit to the left. All four of them ran to the right, to Corey's point, which is how do you think this is problematic, if at all, for O'Toole now that he has to come out of this, has a a coalition that feels like they predominantly are responsible for getting them over the top, the social conservatives. How does this translate when we consistently, you know, after the halo effect and the glow of today for the conservatives might look at themselves tomorrow and be like, oh, fuck, now we have a viability problem again, because we've got this group disproportionately propping us up. How do they kind of look at this from the broader perspective of the next election? Because today feels great that they got through a process and thank God They're through it, but there's still those problems around viability that they had with Scheer and his social conservative values in the last election.

Carter 32:59

Well, I think it's a really tough strategic question because it's not as though conservatism is the same across Canada. You know, a conservative in Quebec is not looking the same as a conservative in Atlantic Canada. The same applies in

Carter 33:13

in Ontario and, of course, Western

Carter 33:15

Western Canada is its own special brand of crazy conservatives. So each one of these conservatives needs to be brought together. Now, even

Carter 33:24

even then, even if you bring all the conservatives together, you still have the problem of trying to bring the voters in. And

Carter 33:30

And ultimately, this is where the conservatives have failed. They are far more comfortable speaking to conservatives than they are speaking to potential conservatives. And I think that that's where this particular leadership,

Carter 33:45

leadership, if you look at what all four four leadership campaigns did, they went after conservatives. No one thought, you know what, are there potential conservatives out there that would buy a membership and choose to vote in this process? Get

SPEAKER_02 33:58

in the fold, right. And

Carter 33:59

And that was the Alison Redford strategy. We had no interest in bringing in just conservatives when we were running in that progressive conservative leadership. We were focused on bringing in people who shared our values. And we thought that there was a bigger group out there than just the conservatives. Now, I would argue, given how the conservatives have performed in elections since Stephen Harper has left as leader, that they don't have right now the ability to appeal to people who aren't identifying as conservative. And that's where the strategic tradeoff has to happen. Is O'Toole prepared now to say, I'm going to go find the voters that I wish to appeal to? Or is he going to take the Andrew Scheer model and say, the people People we really need to be talking to are reading True North and reading the Postmillennial and subscribing to Rebel News. Because if that's all you speak to, if that's your vote universe, you're not going to make it. And there was polls published this week that said, you know, 49% of Canadians are prepared to vote for the Conservative Party.

Carter 35:02

That's called the vote universe. And I don't think that 49% is a particularly large number in a vote universe. I think if you're trying to compete for government, you really want to be in the 55% to 60% vote universe. Otherwise, you're not going to get there. Just to

SPEAKER_02 35:19

to clarify for people, that's just a consideration, right? That's not we're going with you. We would legitimately consider you. Yeah, I

Carter 35:25

I have two ballots. I have two choices that I would go with. I could consider the Green Party. I could consider the conservatives. Those two parties would then get you in their vote universe.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

Corey, I want to talk the same question to you, right? Right. The McKay's sort of fall off. Now you've got O'Toole and you're thinking about, OK, how do I construct the future coalition when perhaps the social conservatives have propped me up to this victory? What does that balancing act perhaps look like?

Corey 35:54

I think he's very well positioned. I know I just talked about him being in a risky position between those two groups, but he is seen more by many on that, you know, that true blue social conservative side than not. not so he has a bit more currency to spend with those people he can he can burn a few more of those policies if he decides he wants to move towards the middle andrew sheer he's

Corey 36:16

he's a weird dude and i i think he he kind of played his cards wrong along the way um but i also just don't think he was necessarily um mentally

Corey 36:24

mentally tough enough you know i i like aaron o'toole is a serious man and and canadians don't know him and i look i'm not predicting the next election but if an election were called today, I believe Aaron O'Toole would win that election because he is, he's more, he's impressive and people don't know him yet. And, you know, he's a former Air Force captain, he's a lawyer, he's an MP. And when you talk about vote universe, Stephen, two things I would say about that. One is 49% would be a bad number for the liberals. It would be a bad number for the new Democrats. It's not so far off where the conservatives usually are when they win, because the conservatives do tend to see their vote as more mutually exclusive, right? When you you think about the way canadian federal politics divides the liberals and the new democrats see their votes as more interchangeable than the conservatives who will give much higher percent who say my second choice is no choice at all so

Corey 37:13

so they've got a

SPEAKER_02 37:13

a guaranteed base that shows up for them it's

Corey 37:15

it's a much bigger guaranteed base and 49 means you've probably got a serious shot at 49 49 for the liberals means good luck you're getting 30 at best right uh that's not what we're talking about here so um i i hear what he's saying and i would want to see that number a bit higher But I think that could also bump up a bit on my second point about Vote Universe.

Corey 37:36

He's not a known commodity to Canadians. And if they get to know him, if they decide they like him, that number is going to move very quickly.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

I want to loop back to the O'Toole strategy. But before I do that, let's actually talk about some of the other players in this race, because everyone after a leadership race has a bit of strategy that they need to play, right? Whether it's their off-ramp out of politics, whether it's their on-ramp into politics, right? If you're Leslyn Lewis, for example, right? In a meaningful way in elected office. So let's talk about some of those players that we saw. Derek Sloan, what does he do first? Just very quickly on him. him. He actually outperformed what many people were thinking as well. Does he have some sort of leverage or credibility? Carter, if you were advising Derek Sloan, which I know you would take in a heartbeat as a gig, but he comes to you, he says, listen, I performed much better on that first ballot than many people thought. People thought I was a write-off and a candidate that wasn't going to win. Well, I didn't win, but I performed quite well. What leverage do I have? What should I be doing within the party right now?

Carter 38:36

It's tricky for me because I would prefer prefer to be advising O'Toole on this particular question. I'll get to that question

SPEAKER_02 38:42

question in a second.

Carter 38:45

so if I'm Sloan,

Carter 38:46

Sloan, what I'm afraid of is I'm going to be used, like I'm afraid that my particular brand of social conservatism is going to be a little bit further than O'Toole wants to go. And I think that I've been out there enough that people know what my particular brand of conservatism looks like. So I'd be meeting with the new leader and talking about what role I can have and how much my voice is going to be listened to. And then I would suggest to Sloan that there may not be a future for him in the party. He

Carter 39:22

He needs to look at his – he's got some pretty good capital right now. He can move himself to a Max Bernier-style party, if not to the Max Bernier party. And actually have a voice the way that when Elizabeth May used to be the only Green MP, she got a voice. So I would really look at that. And I think that if he truly believes this and believes that he shouldn't be silent and shouldn't have to couch his words in order to not offend the snowflake conservatives, the not true conservatives. then uh i'd probably advise him to move cory

SPEAKER_02 40:06

cory same question derrick sloan what what would you advise him to do with this capital my

Corey 40:10

my advice to derrick sloan is is almost the the thing i would encourage derrick sloan not to do is the thing i would encourage aaron o'toole to help derrick sloan do so i will just say off the bat if i am sloan i'm saying you

Corey 40:23

you have to be careful here don't overplay your hand um you'll find yourself outside of the party very quickly if you do so be incremental show that you're willing to play ball early on push your advantage slowly you have this constituency make sure you curate this constituency continue your list start talking about how you can build

Corey 40:42

build up for next time the areas where you didn't win ask yourself why the areas where you were strong reinforce that strength and don't immediately come to Aaron O'Toole's door and start demanding things I think that would be a mistake because he's going to throw your ass out of the party and you're going to look like a sore loser you know he could he could just essentially create a crisis that allows him to put you out like Maxime Bernier and just look like you you're gone because you can't play ball you need to make sure that you have a couple of months of credibility within the conservative party before you start pushing your more conservative agenda and so the things you want to be saying off the bat are yeah no I'm I'm willing to be a team player it was a leadership race I want to get my views out there I understand Aaron that that's not the party that that you're going to run right now, six

Corey 41:26

six months from now, nine months from now, 12 months from now, that's when you start putting the screws to them on different policy and start waving around your constituency.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Corey, back to you on this. Lesley Lewis overperforms on the first ballot based on, I'd say, everyone's expectations, if not her own campaign's expectations, although many people were touting the fact that she had the most amount of individual donors and a significant amount of money raised, so performed really well, and could be said to have delivered the victory. for Erin O'Toole on that third ballot. What is she doing? If you're advising her going forward? You know, is she angling for a position? Is she angling for leverage? What would you advise that she do on the heels of what happened tonight?

Corey 42:09

I would advise that she demand, well, not demand, but she organized that she gets herself a safe seat somewhere in the GTA that the conservatives always win. Don't throw yourself against some sort of liberal firewall. That's silly. they

Corey 42:22

they might try to pitch that to you like hey you're such a star now you could win nope i want the safest effing seat possible because i want to be able to go out there and go throughout the country and build my own brand right which you do not get to do if you're pinned down in your own riding thinking whether you can win it or not the

Corey 42:37

the establishment loves you right now you're you remind them of brian mulrooney for those old enough to remember brian mulrooney the the business leader type who came from nowhere and could inspire the party you are a person of color You're a woman of color in the conservative party who has shown that she can be a leader. I would also be learning French if I was her. That would be a pretty significant component. And I would be getting a tutor and helping with that. And then I wouldn't be exaggerating the amount of French I know. I would almost be saying like, oh, I don't speak French and then busting out near perfect French in a year's time as a result. Just be like, oh, this? No, I mean, this isn't really French. I've got a lot to go still, right? Try to manage expectations around there. And when this next election comes around, you want to make sure that you're positioned to gracefully move into the front benches of either Aaron O'Toole's shadow cabinet or cabinet, depending on how things play out.

Corey 43:29

You have much more of an incentive to play ball than Derek Sloan does, I guess is what I would summarize my advice

Corey 43:35

as. There are a lot of things a party can give you if the party's on side with you, and you can get them all. Derek Sloan will never get those things. But you should take advantage of the things they'll give you, and you should position yourself to be the heir apparent. Aaron O'Toole, because you can be the heir apparent.

SPEAKER_02 43:51

Corey, you know, there is an interesting wrinkle here, which is what Carter brought up earlier, which is for many people, O'Toole is going to be the headline. But for some people, she's going to be the headline tomorrow morning. And so the short term advice to her, does she go out to any media about how she overperformed? Does she go out, try to extend any of those, you know, leads that come in in the short term? Or is she, despite her overperformance, taking a backseat saying it's all about O'Toole today? I'm not a story. What do you think?

Corey 44:21

She won't be the headline. This is not the New Hampshire primary. People will talk about her in glowing terms, but she will be the second story. The first story is Erin O'Toole as leader.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

Carter, same question to you. Lesley Lewis, what are you advising her if you're in the position of giving her some free counsel around what she should do going forward?

Carter 44:38

She just jumped over 100 members of parliament parliament uh in terms of the overall ranking in the conservative party yeah um she needs to decide that she's playing ball with this leader uh his policy is her policy um that's going to be a bit of a step for her because her policy and his policy don't necessarily align um and then she's going to uh have to make a decision about how how she can get into um into the into the house and how she can be more seen uh without undercutting uh the leader um you know we've seen there's two problems with it as soon as you get made a spokesperson an official spokesperson you're using your own own capital uh we've seen michelle rempel up here out here uh become the the talking you know broadcaster and she's taken on all the lines and all the difficult things to say to the the media. And she's taken a lot of the hits. Lewis won't want to do that. She's going to have to put herself in a position where she's above some of the fray, and she is as seen as the shining light that needs to be protected. And the best way for her to do that is to become the number one lieutenant to the now leader of the Conservative Party. She needs that positioning right away because the worst thing that could happen to her is that she's forgotten in six months, and it could happen. Who was she? There was a woman. That could happen, right? We have a tremendously short memory. We don't remember these things well. So if she isn't in the public light with O'Toole, she's going to find herself in trouble.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

You know, when Carter says Michelle Rample is over here recording, Carter of course, has traveled to Oklahoma to record this episode. So thanks so much for doing that on our behalf, Stephen. Really do appreciate it. Carter, I want to go back to you. Peter McKay was supposed to win this thing, air quotes. You know, are you advising him to run? Are you telling him to leave graceful exit? What's the what's the off ramp when you were supposed to win? What is leverage doesn't seem to be any but I'm really curious to hear what you would be telling Peter He says, hat in hand, Stephen, what do I do? What do you tell

Carter 46:54

I don't think that Peter McKay will be Joe Clark to O'Toole, like to Brian Mulroney, right? So Joe Clark sticks around under Mulroney's leadership, becomes the minister of everything who's out solving problems and doing external affairs and has the ability to have his own voice in the international stage. and is doing, you know, all of these negotiations, none of that exists under O'Toole for Peter McKay. He's not going to be the number one, you're going to be my solving all of my problems minister. That's just not going to happen. So my suggestion for McKay is

Carter 47:34

is have a lovely chat with

Carter 47:36

with O'Toole, listen politely. At

Carter 47:38

At the end of that chat, say, okay, I've decided that I'm going to leave. leave what's the best way for me to to leave uh and give you the best send off uh it's probably to slink away in the night which he's done before so i i don't see it being a problem for him just to disappear you're

SPEAKER_02 47:54

you're saying he should be used to this cory what are you uh what are you advising mckay i

Corey 47:59

mean like stick around he's not around he he didn't run last time so just just disappear you're done yeah

Corey 48:06

it's over you gave it a good shot yeah

SPEAKER_02 48:08

yeah there's nothing to be said and let's Let's move it on to O'Toole. We talked about it a bit, right? And Carter, I want to go to you first, which is we talked about all the three players that he was dealing with in this leadership race. Any advice you'd give to him about how to deal with them? What's your overarching sort of counsel of everyone, whether it's the three candidates you ran against or anyone else that now starts begging for favors and jostling for favor, currying favor with you? What is your overarching counsel to O'Toole on that front?

Carter 48:37

Well, my counsel would be look at where the the seats are uh and then you know decide that that's not what you care about right now um so you're not going to come back and figure out how you're going to win rewind um saskatchewan and alberta uh you're going to figure out british columbia you're going to figure out ontario and you're going to figure out quebec uh if you can figure those three things out then you got yourself a ball game so then i would say who's important to me in those areas um how am i going going to build this team and this structure. It looks like you've got a pretty good team in Quebec, so there's something to build from. It looks like Ontario, you've got some work to do, and in British Columbia, additional work to be done. So my view would be, you know, find your heroes in those spaces and find a way to make yourself known. My

Carter 49:26

My fear is that the party, the party apparatus is very centered towards trying to appeal to Jason Kenney and the the Western Canadian Conservatives, and I think that that would be ultimately O'Toole's failing. He has the opportunity to define the Conservative Party totally differently. And then I would also advise him to look for any opportunity, any false step from Sloan, because he would be easy to throw overboard and say, this does not define the Conservative Party moving forward. Because defining what you're not at this point could be as important as defining what you are. Because Because as long as you're carrying around the baggage that Sloan's going to bring, I think it's going to be very difficult to define what the party looks like for the future.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

Corey, extend your comments on the unity stuff that you were mentioning earlier with O'Toole, perhaps being in that perfect position you had alluded to earlier. What is your advice for him and what's your counsel for him around those that want to kind of curry favor and perhaps his first sort of big strategic move that you would perhaps tell him to make?

Corey 50:31

Well, my advice isn't very different from Stephen's. I agree completely about Sloan, and I think this is part of solving a bigger mental block Canadians may have with the Conservative Party right now, which is this concept that perhaps it's become a little bit too right-wing, a little bit too beholden to ideals of the past and not ideals of the present or hopefully future. So you may need to have a fight with Sloan at some point, even orchestrate one. So when I was saying if I'm Sloan, I go a little slow, I don't go too far, too fast.

Corey 51:01

If I am O'Toole, I'm giving him a little bit of rope to hang himself with here because if he does something stupid and I can throw him out and I can say to the social conservatives still within the party, that guy was an effing idiot. He was a loose cannon. I had to do what I had to do. But to the public, it looks like you have purged the party of somebody who maybe

Corey 51:19

wouldn't even have been allowed to run under previous versions of the party, right?

Corey 51:25

right? So I think that that's good and it's part of work. It could maybe even be a set piece, but there's a mental block. You have to make the party not look unreasonable. And so on that front, you should consider whether there's a signature policy that, let's be honest, you don't, you have nowhere to go but down in a lot of these prairie provinces and you should take that. You should take that trade because you don't need to win with 30, 40, 50% margins in these ridings, right? So consider what your plan is for the environment, I think would be a big one. I think that would be a huge totem in the minds of Canadians. I am not saying carbon tax, because he's been pretty clear on that. But I don't think it's incongruous to say, I think we need to act on the environment. I just don't believe the average person should have to pay for it. I think you can even lean into the populism and say, we're going to make, you know, these fat cat entitled, you know, elites in downtown Toronto pay for it or something along those lines. And if

SPEAKER_02 52:22

if you recall, during the leadership, he did throw us a curveball when he started to talk about climate.

Corey 52:26

Yeah. Yeah, because I think he sees that story. And I think he sees a lot of the same things I'm saying right now. And then the other thing, honestly, you may have a good team in Quebec, but you're French. If you want to be prime minister of this country, you got to do something about your French, because I think that would be a significant stumbling block for him in any kind of general election. I

SPEAKER_02 52:46

I want to get your thoughts, Corey, very quickly about O'Toole's relationship with Kenny. You know, he was his most vocal and perhaps first high profile, probably highest profile overall endorser of O'Toole's campaign, did it early, did it often when he could. What do you think of his relationship with Kenny going forward? Would you like Stephen say, perhaps keep it lukewarm and distance? Or are you leading into that? Because you know, Kenny has appeal across the board. And, you know, it's something to, to, to perhaps not shy away from well

Corey 53:18

i don't think you need to lean into it or lean away from it it is what it is the the conservative party is is tarred and feathered by the actions of all of the conservative premiers right that's just that's the reality of it and i think there's no sense in playing too cute and even if jason kenney isn't popular in ontario you're never going to convince people that jason kenney is not in some way shape or form associated with you but that does also afford you an opportunity to do a bit of kabuki theater here if you find it advantageous to you know you're never going to get to a full-blown fist fight but if if jason kenney and you come to an agreement where you can say well i just disagree with this but i'm disappointed with him but you know doesn't clearly cleave with it doesn't sort of fuel the wexit party this idea of a western separatist party there's maybe opportunity there because he is a friend of yours and because he is close and this goes back to this only nixon could go to china thing again right? Because he has that relationship with Jason Kenney, he can have conversations that Peter McCain ever could. Maybe that's a good thing for Canadian Confederation.

SPEAKER_02 54:22

Corey, I'm getting a sense you're quite bullish on like what O'Toole's leadership could mean for overall viability. And I'll get to that question later on. But it seems like all your comments overall are like, this could really work for the Conservatives.

Corey 54:34

Oh, I think it absolutely. Listen, I mean, I would, I am not a Conservative. I wouldn't out for Aaron O'Toole. But I think that he has an awful lot going for him. And if you're the conservative party, I think that there's a real opportunity that he presents that you would not have had with Scheer.

SPEAKER_02 54:51

Carter, I want to pick up on this last thread of the O'Toole angle, which is, you know, on the attacking Trudeau, defining Trudeau over the last couple of months has been almost squarely in the hands of someone like Pierre Polyarif, a.k.a. you have a pet name for him, which I'll repeat momentarily. uh but uh you know folks like that i've got two questions for you how do you as a leader now the new leader of the party snatch away the mantle of of saying i want to be the principal attack dog a do you do that or do you leave someone like peer in that role so you can in the first couple of months can stay you know above the fray or uh to my second question related when do you do that if not now when are you as leader starting to go after trudeau is that immediately Is that after? And are you taking over the mantle of principal attack dog? Or do you leave someone like Pierre Polyev to kind of do his things on that side? Because a lot of this is going to be about framing Trudeau in these very vulnerable times heading between now and what's going to be the throne speech. And there's going to be a lot of activity we expect in between these, you know, right now and September 23rd throne speech as well. So I want to get your thoughts on that and the strategy leading up to now and then just setting that context. text okay

Carter 55:59

okay well first of all you leave the attack dogs this goes back to my point about michelle rempel is she's you know she's willing to carry your water then let her carry it she can go on all the television shows she can do the committee work she can make sure um that that she's attacking and she's defining the negative uh pierre is great at that as well um you know he his his attack lines uh perhaps should be refined under your new team that you're going to bring in to to run the official leader of the opposition's office. So you'll have better, ideally, you'd have better lines, and you'd have a more sustained attack on issues that matter to Canadians. But I

Carter 56:41

don't think that that's O'Toole's problem. I don't think O'Toole's problem and the Conservative Party's problem is that they're not attacking Trudeau hard enough. I think that their problem is that they're still not presenting their vision for what Canada should look like and will look like like under their leadership. I mean, I know that they don't like a carbon tax, but what are they going to do about climate change? You know, O'Toole has nodded towards taking an initiative on the climate. Well, what is it? What are you going to do? Because fixing the climate is not something that comes without a cost and consequence. So figure it out. Tell us what it is. And I think that that's where O'Toole could really shine. And I'll tell you something. I know the Bloc Québécois want to have a confidence vote.

Carter 57:27

If I was O'Toole, I think I might be tempted to, you know, to side with the Bloc Québécois and try and push for an election. I'm not sure that without a fully articulated positive plan for Canada, you're going to be in a position to actually win after a six-week campaign. Six weeks of negative is hard to do without a little bit of positive.

SPEAKER_02 57:51

Corey, same question to you, right? This concept of taking over the mantle against attacking Trudeau, and how does that kind of shape into what you're doing between now and the speech from the throne come September 23rd?

Corey 58:04

well you need to introduce yourself people don't know you and people expected mckay to win so let's not overestimate how familiar canadians are with aaron o'toole i don't think they're familiar with him at all and on that note i i think you have to be very careful about how much spotlight goes to the the pierre polyevs of the world and it's nothing against pierre polyev and it's nothing against his ability as an attack dog it's that um you

Corey 58:29

don't have this baked in advantage mckay did where you could say okay game on here we go you know me i'm around i mean he was otul was minister of veterans affairs that's um that's not exactly somebody who's on the the news every day so

Corey 58:42

so we need to um we we need to start there i guess as a starting point when you talk about bringing the fight to justin trudeau this

Corey 58:52

this is an opportunity for them to do what we've proposed all along which is to do more by doing less this is where you can have Aaron O'Toole carry some very pointed direct arguments but just leave them like it doesn't need to be every day a fight about this and and and then introduce himself as this this steely-eyed lawyer who can who can just be the adult in the room in um in an Ottawa that is overrun with children I mean this is the opportunity he has to present himself I'm not saying that's that's the reality I'm saying that's that's what what the conservatives could weave here. And that inherently means it's more about you and less about you, lieutenants, right? You're now in charge. You're taking control. Everyone's going to stop talking. You're going to say your piece and you are going to articulate a vision. And if you do it right, you can be almost like stern, angry, disappointed. Here's my vision for the country. This makes a ton of sense, Canada. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 59:50

Carter, to Corey's point right here, both on vision as well as introduction, Does introduction of you as Aaron O'Toole need to happen before vision, or can you do them concurrently? If I'm asking you as Aaron O'Toole's team, saying, Stephen, help me out, what are you kind of etching out for us between now and September? What ratio is intro and get to know Aaron? What ratio is putting out policies that take the fight to Trudeau? How do you interplay both of those things in such a rapid timeline?

Carter 1:00:18

Well, you have to ground the policy in the values of the man, right? Right. So you have to ground the you know, I've got a position on let me let me tell you why I value a hard day's work, you know, and the value of hard day's work and and the freedom of choice to go and have the job that you need to have to support your family. I was raised by blah, blah, blah. Right. Like whatever the the policy is, you have to be able to ground that in yourself and ground that ideally in something that is easily understandable. understandable uh and memorable so um you know one of the things i talk about frequently is is redford's branding positioning and how strong it was associated with her when she was uh you know mother of a young daughter daughter of aging parents that brand structure could accommodate any policy position so when we defined her we always told her story in those terms about how being a mother has made her focus on education or being a mother gave her these views on health care that brand structure of who you are as an individual then leads to the policy elements and if if if O'Toole does that then he's in a really strong position if instead he just says the conservatives or you know the conservative party will never allow a carbon tax because carbon tax is bad you know I just don't think that that really binds him to the position and and makes the party his it's just it's rhetoric instead of instead of values

SPEAKER_02 1:01:50

right let's move it on to our final segment our over under and our lightning round guys are you ready so

Corey 1:01:56

so ready to go to bed yeah

SPEAKER_02 1:01:58

there you go come on get some energy okay i think these are good you're gonna like these corey i'm gonna go to you first on a scale of one to ten how uh how would you rank the cpc helping their chances tonight with the election of aaron o'toole heading into the next election one to ten how much did they help their chances tonight on the viability front to win the next election i

Corey 1:02:20

i they picked the right candidate in my mind they they kind of flubbed the entry into the world which isn't a big deal except for the fact that it does rob them of that sunday night speech i'm gonna say a nine pretty

Corey 1:02:30

pretty good carter what do you think i

Carter 1:02:33

i think that they've really improved their chances if for no other reason And then they got rid of Shearer, who was obviously tanking. So this, you know, this is a big step forward. I think either Peter or Aaron would have been able to do what is going to happen now. I think that if Leslyn Lewis had won, maybe this is a totally different ballgame. But the ballgame is on anyways. It's still going to be, it's going to make things interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:59

Carter, a yes or no question. I'm going to you on this. I got Corey's answer from his last one. Did the Conservative Party do better tonight by selecting O'Toole over McKay? Was this a win if they selected O'Toole over McKay for their viability and their chances in the next election going forward?

Carter 1:03:16

I think it's a push. I think that either one would have done fine and been compared favorably to Scheer. So I think that those two, for me, would have pulled about the same, would have come out about the same.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:30

Corey, over to you on this one. once again on a 1 to 10 scale, did the speech that Scheer gave tonight hurt or hinder, or I should say hinder or help his legacy going forward on a scale of 1 to 10? And I say legacy in the long garb, political and otherwise. We talked about perhaps some of the economic benefits you could see with this pivot, but what do you think, 1 to 10?

Corey 1:03:49

a scale of 1 to 10, was it one word or the other? What is this? Who's up late now, Zane? What

Corey 1:03:54

What are you talking about?

Corey 1:03:56

Okay, it's a 1 then. i one

Corey 1:04:00

is hinder 10 is help okay and what's five out of

Corey 1:04:06

and a three uh

SPEAKER_02 1:04:07

uh three is pretty shitty okay

SPEAKER_01 1:04:10

gonna go with a two

SPEAKER_01 1:04:11

what the fuck i was not expecting you guys actually think about the scale why are you answering these questions on the scale this is this is unbecoming

SPEAKER_02 1:04:18

unbecoming of the whole

Carter 1:04:19

whole process okay after midnight this

SPEAKER_02 1:04:22

this is fucking insane fuck you Okay, Carter, you don't even get that question. Carter, you get this question. Over, under, on six, how worried is Team Trudeau tonight with the Aaron O'Toole election as leader of the Conservative Party?

Carter 1:04:36

If they are not shitting their pants right now, then they don't understand Canadian elections. Really? First of all, it's not necessarily about Aaron O'Toole. It's about newness. It's about shiny. It's about something. This is why I had Peter and Aaron as the same. I mean, Aaron's less known, I think, than Peter McKay was. But nonetheless, neither of them are as well known now as Trudeau was. Right. And it doesn't take a strong narrative to win over the Canadian populace. We will vote for anyone. So this this is a massive problem for the liberals. And they were in trouble already. So there's going to be a bump for the conservatives in the next round of polling, which is probably commencing tomorrow night. and we'll see how real this is. But the Liberals need to not fall in love with their recent polling. They need to decide that they're going to win the next election.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:35

Corey, same question to you, over, under on six. How worried is Team Trudeau tonight?

Corey 1:05:38

I'm probably under. I think it should be over. And I do think that this is a time where the Liberals have to remind themselves not to fall into caricatures, right? They're going to say, oh, he's so right-wing. Canadians will see him as so right-wing. oh we got it now or there's some will i actually don't know if that will be the prevailing view obviously we're just taking guesses here but um that's not how it works to steven's point there's this question of newness he will seem reasonable relative if you think he's gang is gone coming in he's definitely not gang is gone and um and there's a lot of risk in that there's a lot of risk in that so they have to be very careful cory

SPEAKER_02 1:06:14

cory final question to you and you alone how wrong was carter about any of these questions how will how will the test of time hold up to even some of the most subjective questions i refer you

Carter 1:06:23

up to episode 813 minute 23 carter

SPEAKER_02 1:06:28

carter i do this i do this for no money and even less glory so i need to ask this question cory please give us uh give us a test of how these will hold up for carter going forward steven

Corey 1:06:37

steven carter has a superpower uh that we should all take advantage to steven i'd like you to go and pick uh several million numbers the lottery you think will win so that we can all exclude them and get rich tomorrow because it's amazing you're so

Corey 1:06:52

good at this you

Carter 1:06:52

you got this wrong all i need to do is pick the loser all

Carter 1:06:55

all i need to go is pick one this number is gonna

Carter 1:06:58

this is the ticket it's gonna lose and

Carter 1:07:01

you know if i did that then i'd be set so

Carter 1:07:03

so you got some

Corey 1:07:04

some numbers for us can you end on some numbers no i

SPEAKER_02 1:07:07

and i with that being said i cannot wait until prime minister sloan takes over our country for what Stephen calls the Maxime Bernier party because no one remembers it. But we're all tired and we'll leave it right there at episode 18. That's a wrap of episode 18 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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