Episode 822: Full court press

SPEAKER_02 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 822. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, happy Sunday.

Corey 0:10

Well, is it though, Zain? I'm not so happy. I don't know if you've been on the tubes, but I'm not so happy. There's

SPEAKER_02 0:15

There's a lot of stuff to not be happy about. Anthony Davis hit a wing three, and I thought Denver was going to win that game. Let's start there. But there's something else, Corey. There's something else on the tubes that you want to talk about. Yeah,

Corey 0:26

Yeah, and look, there's a lot of things you might be thinking it is. We've had the death of a former prime minister. Obviously, Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death is rattling us all. Aaron O'Toole, positive for COVID. But, you know, of all of the bullshit we've had to put up with for the past two days, I think the bullshittiest by far is when Pauly Lego said that the Hurley Burley was the best political podcast. Yeah.

Corey 0:48

Yeah. That's not justifiable.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Poly Lego known for its fake news. It's fake news delivered through Lego format. Listen, I'm not envious at all. Carter, do you want to get a word in? I mean, we're giving hot takes here, and you're just sitting back quietly.

Carter 1:04

The first minute of this show is the best minute we've ever had on The Strategist, and it's because I just shut up.

Carter 1:10

I just kept my mouth shut and let it flow. But let me tell you something, guys. Carter, you

SPEAKER_02 1:14

you had predicted a few weeks ago we would be the best podcast, so we should have known.

Carter 1:20

that's paid promotion that was paid promotion for sure i'm guaranteeing it

Carter 1:26

you know that's really keep laughing hogan just pull yourself back together brother jesus

SPEAKER_02 1:35

september 20th needs to be a national holiday going for forward considering schitt's creek has literally just swept the emmys that is actually quite incredible i don't know if either of you are watching this as we record on a sunday night but that is i don't think i've seen that in an award show in a very long time especially

Carter 1:50

especially one that's so so

SPEAKER_02 1:51

so deserving and positive and such a net contributor to the culture i don't know i like i i've only seen half of that show but i just ooze about it no

Carter 2:00

no i've seen the whole thing it is fantastic it doesn't start good it starts bad it starts bad opposite of good um but by the end i was just saying to cory by the end of the sixth season you are like rooting for these guys that you are totally embedded and the last episode of the sixth season is is could be the best finale finale uh

Carter 2:17

uh of a television show i loved it and i love the uh love

Carter 2:21

love the cast love the writing uh i'm super happy can you go canada is the best day yeah

Corey 2:26

yeah is the final season end with the hurly burly being canceled i think

Carter 2:32

think that's basically how it happens yeah well

Corey 2:34

well that would bring me tears of joy it

Carter 2:35

it was basically the

SPEAKER_02 2:37

whole the whole show is a subtext against canada led that's what the whole the

SPEAKER_02 2:42

the whole uh it's good i like i like you're just confusing

Carter 2:46

brown's cameo was fantastic cory

SPEAKER_02 2:49

cory i'm not confusing anything we've got a multi-front war we are fighting i don't think you understand how quickly you need to pivot the opponent uh you just don't understand okay let's take this let's take this energy into our first segment notorious indeed guys i want to talk about a massive, obviously, political development in the United States with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But let's talk about, you know, what has now become the story of her death, which is what will happen going forward. So, Carter, maybe I'll start with you with the simplest of questions. Does her passing away have the potential to change this election? and if so, how?

Carter 3:33

I do think it changes the election. I mean, I think that there's a couple of

Carter 3:37

ways of looking at this, and I haven't quite decided which way I'm coming down on yet, because there's many different fronts, right? So you've got, this

Carter 3:44

this could really polarize and push the Republicans. The Republicans have made pro-life issues their central thesis of elections for probably coming on 40 years now, right? Where the issue of abortion is at the forefront forefront of their political identity. So they have been able to take election after election after election and say, if you want this judge, you've got to make sure that you elect the Republicans. And what I'm finding fascinating is that they're walking away from the strategy. You know, you've got 40 some days left, you're able to dig in and make this all about appointing the next judge. And instead, they're going to ram the next judge in, which gives them an unassailable majority if they're successful. I'm surprised by that strategy, because I thought that they would have been in a more comfortable place to try and actually win the Senate. This feels like they're on some fronts kind of conceding the Senate. They know they're going to lose. The only way they're going to get this justice is to push really hard and take Trump's appointment and just ram right through the process in the exact opposite manner than they did in 2015 with Merrick Garland.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Corey, do you see it the same as Carter? Do you feel like that this is the Republicans in some way conceding the Senate?

Corey 5:04

Not really, no. I think they are certainly live to the possibility that they could lose this Senate seat. But in many ways, this is gilding the lily. They already have a

Corey 5:15

a 5-4 majority conservatives to liberals on the Supreme Court. Moving it to 6-3 does, to Carter's point, make it unassailable,

Corey 5:23

unassailable, in a sense. We are seeing that Chief Justice Roberts is being much more of a swing vote than I think the Conservatives had hoped for. But they already have a majority on the court. It's not as though the court has been hard

Corey 5:39

hard on Republican talking points, with limited exceptions, which I'm sure drive them up the wall. but

Corey 5:45

but I you know I to be honest I just I have a hard time imagining any universe where they say yeah let's wait I just that's that's not in their nature at all in any way shape or form so I I don't read it as panic I read this as the same opportunistic let's win now let's win at any cost fuck the rules fuck those guys approach that they've taken to governing for the path for the better part of a decade now so I don't I don't see it as necessarily a view of what they think Sticking

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Sticking with you, Corey, were you surprised to see, I guess, two big Senate figures for the Republicans, McConnell and then Graham? McConnell in his take of, you know, retracting what he ultimately said in 2016 and Graham multiple times saying, use my words against me if you need to. Were you surprised that both those senators, up for re-election, yet still solidly wanting to force Donald Trump and agree with Donald Trump to confirm someone immediately? immediately

Corey 6:44

no actually i think it makes perfect sense because the last thing they want is those words and uh well you know mcconnell didn't necessarily have words but he has the decision they didn't want that looming out there with a will they won't they and donald trump the craziest man in washington being able to lose

Corey 6:59

lose their lose his mind about them and have this major distraction so i'm sure mcconnell made the calculation and i'm sure by the way people had an inkling this was going to be the case that ruth bader ginsburg was going to die because

Corey 7:11

you know those things things don't tend to, you know, DC is a small town. These things leak out, right? I'm sure they thought about it. I'm sure they knew they would immediately say this was going to be the case. I'm sure Lindsey Graham came out and immediately said he would support that because he didn't necessarily want people calling into question his vote and putting that additional pressure on him. So in many ways, it was the smart tactical move for them because, well, I mean, it was ghastly. It literally, in O'Connell's remarks about her death, RBG's death, he's talking about bringing it for the nominee. But it's, you

Corey 7:44

you know, it was it was a way to kind of move that Overton window in real time, right? They did not allow a news cycle to land with people saying, Oh,

Corey 7:52

Oh, I don't think that you should allow a vote. And they certainly didn't want to have before McConnell came out and said, this vote's going to effing happen microphones put in front of every Republican senator asking would they or won't they? Because it only takes four. Yeah,

Corey 8:05

If you have four people say, no, I'm not going to support this, then they can't get that nominee through right now. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Carter, were you surprised by both Graham and McConnell in both their swiftness and the content of their response?

Carter 8:18

McConnell, absolutely not. I mean, this is who he is. He is an opportunistic bully with his leader position. He is absolutely prepared to use the Senate and wield the power that he has had. And he is a political animal. He wins at all costs. Lindsey Graham, I think, used to be a human being back in the day. I think that that is now basically gone. The political animal, the sycophant to Trump, you know, his words in 2015, 2016 about Donald Trump and how unsuitable

Carter 8:52

unsuitable he was to be the president of the United States, if that doesn't keep you awake at night, if you're able to bring

Carter 9:00

bring that level of hypocrisy to the most most important office of the land, then

Carter 9:04

then really there's nothing outside of your scope.

Carter 9:08

This is particularly important to Republicans. They know that by controlling the court, that is the area that they have their last stand. So they're playing a different game than everybody else. Everybody else wants to get elected this term. Everybody wants to get elected this session. If Lindsey Graham and McConnell and the rest of the senators thought, you know what, we're going to lose the Senate this time, but we're going to be able to keep the rules in place. We're going to be able to win our court cases over the next four years. They're going to be fine. They're prepared to make that sacrifice. And Lindsey Graham and McConnell are just two of the names. I mean, the number of ads, the number of senators that have been shown to be completely hypocritical under this situation is quite staggering. The number of quotes that have been circulating already. Ossoff in Georgia has a really good ad up using

Carter 10:05

using his competitors' words against him, trying to unseat him in Georgia. This may turn

Carter 10:11

turn out to be the thing that undoes the Republicans a little bit. That, obviously, coupled with Trump. Or it may not. But McConnell and Lindsey Graham don't give a shit. They want the justice. They're going to take the justice. justice and uh you know this may you know in a game of chess this may be giving up their queen uh but they don't give a shit this is the the calculation that they've made cory

SPEAKER_02 10:35

cory let's focus in on graham for a second you know he is in a much tighter race than mcconnell is in uh in his uh south carolina he's against jamie harrison a competitor there who in the most recent quinn pack poll is yeah

SPEAKER_02 10:49

is at a dead heat i'm just looking it up as we speak i think think they're in a dead heat at 48. So looking at Graham for a second, looking at self-preservation perhaps as the angle, if you're advising Lindsey Graham, would you have suggested that knowing his words were out there as such that he make the move that he did?

Corey 11:06

Well, he didn't have a choice. It will not help him in a Senate race to be the guy who's floating out there being bombarded for those words. It's better to rip the bandaid off now, unless he was was actually seriously considering not letting this nomination go forward, which just is unfathomable to me in the current Republican universe, then he had to come out hard and he had to come out fast, and that's exactly what he did. Now, is

Corey 11:31

is this, to Stephen's point, ultimately self-defeating? I guess we'll see,

Corey 11:35

right? But he was really between a rock and a hard place. Just imagine, play

Corey 11:39

play out the other scenario where he says, well, no, I

Corey 11:42

I said what I said in 2016 and I mean it, So this nomination is not going to be discussed in the Judiciary Committee, right? What the hell happens next? I mean, he loses committee chairmanship. He gets his ass kicked by the President of the United States who says he's weak, he's a loser. He is in a very tight race. That's not going to help with any of his base and any of his support that he needs to get out there. And given everything that we've seen lately, hypocrisy

Corey 12:10

hypocrisy is not something that people are holding politicians to account for right now. And so why not? Why not do that giant flip? This is an era of teams. And you're better off sticking with your team is the calculation that Lindsey Graham made than you are to betray

Corey 12:30

betray your team and potentially lose it all. Good

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Good point, Corey. Carter, I just want to ask you that same question. And if you were to advise Lindsey Graham, let's say he saw this happening, he knew it might be coming up. You know, he says, I've got multiple on the record conversations around me saying I would not do this. Should this happen? Would you be advising him to say, screw your previous words? Who gives a shit? You've got to do this.

Carter 12:51

I don't think you could. You know, McConnell or Graham is in a tight race. He's going to have some challenges, but he can't lose the Trumpers. right there's a reason that he made the decision wasn't made this week right uh lindsey graham's decision about whether or not he was going to support uh mcconnell and support trump this this decision was made really in the first year of trump's reign as as the the the resident lunatic in chief um that decision was made uh he chose that um he chose to go where he he went he He didn't take, you know, his good friend John McCain's advice and become the maverick. Instead, he just tore in and off they went. And so here they go. You know, Lindsey Graham

Carter 13:39

Graham has decided to go all in on this particular positioning, and he thinks it's going to deliver him the Senate vote on the 3rd of November, and it might. The other option is to go against President Trump, against the Senate, against McConnell. And I virtually would guarantee that he would lose his seat because

Carter 13:59

because he would what he would pick up an independent voters because you're not going to pick up a lot of independent voters, not in an election that is so already

Carter 14:07

already screwed up. Like people are moving to Biden, the presidential race.

Carter 14:11

You know, I mean, we don't want to be in the I certainly don't want to be in the business of predictions. I think me predicting a Biden victory would have our listeners losing their fucking mind. but

Carter 14:22

but you know right now um mcconnell needs to focus on getting his seat back and that's it uh he's he's absolutely not going to be making any choices uh beyond that one calculation and that was made three years ago so he's decided he's in with the trumpers and you

Carter 14:40

know there'll be a reckoning at some point i hope but but who knows maybe not cory

SPEAKER_02 14:44

cory let's zoom out for a second And very quickly, let's talk about Trump. Downsides of naming a nominee? Do you see any?

Corey 14:50

Well, this is the conversation that people are having right now. And you're seeing it play out in the media. And maybe it makes sense to hold this over Americans as this is the stakes. These are the stakes, I should say, if you don't have a Republican president and a Republican Senate,

Corey 15:05

well, well, maybe not even necessarily a Republican Senate, but then you're not going to get the Supreme Court nomination. So I need you to show up. If you're not motivated enough enough to show up you

Corey 15:13

you are giving the democrats back this seat but like i said i

Corey 15:16

i in some ways i think the democrats might be the ones who are more desperately motivated by this this uh court uh seat because it's a 5-4 majority right now and it is relatively even but it's you know it leans conservative you lose this seat and

Corey 15:32

and just even based on the ages of the people involved like you are you're in a lot of trouble if you're the democrats i mean i you know i guess clarence Thomas would be the next oldest one? I don't even know. I'd have to pull that up. So the point is, like, you might be waiting a long time, and an awful lot could change in America

Corey 15:51

in the intervening years. So there's maybe a bit of a sense of panic. I mean, for the first time, you could really truly see, with a 6-3 majority of conservatives on the Supreme Court, you could see Roe v. Wade being overturned. Like, that's not even a difficult

Corey 16:08

difficult thing to imagine with a 6-3 majority with 5-4 i think it was actually pretty difficult it was hard for me to imagine robert roberts was going to robert

Corey 16:16

overhaul uh you know abortion in the united states but um you know maybe put more restrictions maybe kind of this erosion but like the idea of just an outright um or opening the door to an outright ban is uh you

Corey 16:31

you know it's really on now so i think that there is the chance that it motivates the other way just based on what the breakdown of the supreme court is right now um if you are trump however there's another thing you've got to keep in mind right and it's um it's

Corey 16:46

it's that you've put out a list you've said that you're going to get ready for all of

Corey 16:50

i don't know if your supporters are going to sit there and understand you not nominating somebody that's the other thing here it's like yeah i've told you i'm gonna name one of these people uh

Corey 16:59

uh but i'm not going to do it until after the election what's your logic for that if you're donald trump that's going to work for your supporters like i I just I think he kind of had to.

SPEAKER_02 17:07

Carter, let's talk about Democrats for a second, because Corey mentioned that they're getting quite vibrant. They are almost out for blood. Biden's take still seems to be sticking with bipartisanship, you know, especially after the McConnell statement and the Graham reversal. A lot of Democrats are like, this means war. Like, we wake up tomorrow. We go to fight. You know, this is now this has stakes that are like even larger, bigger, even more extreme than they were before. If you're Team Biden, are you advising him to lean into the more liberal wing and become more fervent with your vocal sort of, I

SPEAKER_02 17:47

don't even know what to call it, tone around this issue? Or do you stick to bipartisanship?

Carter 17:51

You stick to presidential.

Carter 17:52

You don't worry about bipartisan. You don't worry about being

Carter 17:55

being perceived as weak or whatever. You should be treating this moment as you would treat any moment of being the commander

Carter 18:02

commander-in-chief. And that means not lurching from side to side. You've got lots of lieutenants that you can send out into this battle with their hair on fire. And if you look around, they're

Carter 18:14

they're out there. Their hair is all on fire. All the hair is on fire in the Democratic Party.

Carter 18:19

The voters need to see someone who's going to be in charge. And that's what I would advise Biden to do. Look like you're going to be the president of the United States.

Carter 18:28

Show what a bipartisan feel looks like. and then be prepared, as Chuck Schumer has done, to say, you know what, if they do this, gloves are off. But send Schumer out to do that. You don't need to do it yourself. What I'm hoping that they don't do is have Biden, you know, should he be successful on the 3rd of November?

Carter 18:49

Should they hold the Senate? Should they hold the House? Everything is, as Schumer said, everything has got to be on the table because there is no reason to light your hair on fire. Instead, there is just a simple reason to say, can we have a functioning government? And that's really what we're looking for. Really, the Supreme Court in the United States, I mean, obviously, we know more about the Supreme Court in the United States than we know about Canada's Supreme Court because it plays such an outsized role in some of its laws and some of its actions. But Congress is still ultimately in charge, And provided they stay within the realm of what is deemed to be constitutional, Congress has the power. So the president and Congress can still achieve virtually everything that Biden wants. So he should not be losing his mind and lurching

Carter 19:39

lurching from one moment to the next and potentially hurting his election chances.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Corey, same question to you around Biden. What should he be anything special he needs to do right now? Now, should he be leaning into to the animated base that he has around this issue? How do you kind of slice it and how do you strategize for him?

Corey 19:58

Well, I definitely think you want to be pointing out Republican hypocrisy. I definitely think you want to be motivating your base and animating them to come to the polls. His challenge right now is that if Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell do manage to do this, then they are going to have another appointee and the pressure on him to say he is going to stack the court uh so essential court packing is this idea that goes but one thing you got to know about the supreme which everybody knows if you're listening to this podcast you already know this but let's just recap the number of supreme court justices is not set in the constitution uh it's been nine since basically the civil war but it's been much fewer if you go on the tour of the you You know, U.S. Capitol, you'll see that very small house where they originally held court. And it was, I don't know, three, maybe five. But either way, it was not

Corey 20:46

not nine. And so

Corey 20:48

so there's nothing that says it couldn't be 11 or

Corey 20:51

or 13 or 15, except for an act of Congress. And if you're the Democrats and you take over the House and the Senate, you could conceivably just change the size of the court and appoint as many people as you want.

Corey 21:00

He has shown a bit of hesitancy to talk about that. And I think that's in large part because, you know, he's been around for a long time, and he has seen power shift back and forth quite a few times. And

Corey 21:12

And also, he has known that the norms, while they are failing us now, served Americans

Corey 21:16

Americans fairly well in earlier times. And if you get to a point where the

Corey 21:21

the Supreme Court becomes this thing that you pack as the Democrats in 2020, what's

Corey 21:26

what's to stop the Republicans from doing that in 2024? And then in 2028, you just have a flip back, and then there just becomes this deep politicization of the court beyond what we've seen. We've already talked about the fact John Roberts has actually looked

Corey 21:40

looked at the jurisprudence and come down on sides that are not just partisan or political.

Corey 21:45

That may go away entirely if you start packing the court. You might see the court just become a political football. Now, that

Corey 21:53

that means if you're Joe Biden, you're going to have to make a decision on this, right? You are going to have to either say we're going to just accept a 6-3 majority of conservatives to liberals or you are going to have to change that. And the pressure from your base is going to be immense to go the other way and say, OK, down with the rules. We have been absolutely screwed by these guys. This has been highway robbery all the way along. Corey,

SPEAKER_02 22:17

is there anything you can do to inoculate against that now?

SPEAKER_02 22:21

I don't know, Zane, but like,

Corey 22:22

like, you know, what I would say is maybe Biden just needs to sort of embrace the fact that the court is going to be a political football. Yeah. Feels like it's going that way anyways. And so maybe you just embrace it.

Corey 22:33

There's an argument that the court is way too powerful. It's not beholden to the people. Why is it the only major arm of the U.S. government that is not representative or responsive?

Corey 22:42

Hell, maybe Biden should just lean in. Maybe that's how he inoculates.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Carter, I want to talk about one final thing before we move on to the next segment. And it's this idea that if Trump names a nominee, would Biden be politically wise to perhaps do so as well? To telegraph to the people that if I become your president, this is who I would want. Do you see any advantage in potentially doing that? Of course, you having no powers to, you know, get that nominee through, but to almost dangle to the public that, you know, you've got this choice and you've got this choice. What do you kind of think of that political strategy as it may be?

Carter 23:23

well i mean as much as the judges become known uh they're not known now and with what is it 44 days to the election um i'm not sure i want to be introducing um an unknown to the american electorate and saying that this person is going to become your next justice you know your associate justice of the supreme court um and i would really fear naming someone that they didn't know right like there's a there you know there's rumors that michelle obama would be appointed to the court under a biden leadership that would be fucking tragic i mean uh to announce now i mean would it be bad to put her on the court i don't know you know like maybe a year into your term sure whatever but to announce her right now like that would that would totally make the next 40 days not about you but it's going to be a choice it's going to be another vote about whether the the obama legacy should continue so my view would be don't name it uh don't name it a replacement instead say you know um because because these things aren't going to be known instead focus on um health care focus on education focus on uh you know fighting covid and saying that you're going to have a justice that would be able to fill the the shoes of uh the notorious rgb

Carter 24:39

rbg rbg i got the initials backwards would

Carter 24:42

would you cory thanks same question

SPEAKER_02 24:44

question to you okay cory's good because cory's about to correct us so we got in there just before cory same question to you to round us off uh would you would you name someone if you were biden right now no

Corey 24:53

no steven's absolutely correct these justices aren't known you would just essentially be exposing yourself on another flank unnecessarily at this point unless you're going to pick merrick gardland I just it's not going to be anybody anybody knows and I can think of a dozen reasons why you wouldn't want it to be Merrick Garland yeah

Corey 25:11

because it would just look like a rehash of Hillary so yeah

Carter 25:13

yeah you'd be going backwards you're not going anywhere forwards yeah

Corey 25:16

yeah no it's it's probably not where you want to go uh I looked it up while we were talking here and the the next oldest justice even though he was appointed after Thomas is uh Stephen Breyer he's 82 so I guess yeah yeah

Corey 25:31

yeah so here's the stakes. I mean,

Corey 25:33

if Trump does get another term, and I think people might start thinking about the court now in some very serious ways, this could be a 7-2 majority of conservatives before you know it.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

Breyer is 82, which means he's just in time for the 2024 race. I feel like Breyer 2024 is what we need. We will leave that segment there. Much more to discuss. I want to talk about the Schumer strategy, the Pelosi strategy, how the media should cover that. All that and more will be covered on You the People, our other podcast where we discuss American politics exclusively for my unique Canadian vantage points. This podcast is always sponsored by You the People and Supercruiter, of course. But in this case, we're plugging it. We'll talk more about that on Thursday when we record You the People. Okay, let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, a penny for your thoughts. It's time for the strategy session, guys. guys. It

SPEAKER_02 26:26

your least favorite and my most favorite session that we get to do. We get to put your political strategy, your PR, your comms hats on all at once through a number of scenarios. Now, if you're new to the podcast, welcome. Here's how this works. I go through a scenario and a live wire that is currently happening in our political conversation. I also tell you which party you're representing and how you're spinning the situation for that party. So it might be a a hole you find yourselves in. It might be a dilemma. It might be actually a strategic option you haven't made yet, and I make you choose a direction. You guys cool?

Carter 27:02

Totally ready. Carter, I'm going to start with

SPEAKER_02 27:04

with you. Your enthusiasm is vivacious. Let's start with you. You're the Liberals, and you got two upcoming by-elections in Ontario. You want to, what, upplay expectations, downplay expectations? How are you communicating when the mic is put in front of you about how you're going to, you know, as government with the new agenda, the speech from the throne, how are you looking at these two by-elections and what they mean to your party?

Carter 27:29

I think I'm probably just saying that these are important. I think that they're both relatively safe seats. I think that they can, you know, they'll be fine. I haven't spent a ton of time looking at them, but the best way to manage it is to simply say it is imperative that these seats have representation in such a difficult time. We did not want to delay. We're moving forward and giving people their opportunity to have their say. It is always difficult for an incumbent government to hold a seat. It is more difficult for a minority

Carter 28:05

minority government to hold these seats. So I wouldn't necessarily be playing them up. I'd be just saying that regardless of the outcome, it is essential that they have their day and the constituents have a say in how Canada is going to be managed. And then I pivot back to talking about how the Liberals are proud of their COVID management.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

Corey, same question to you. How are you dealing with a reporter asking you about expectations for your upcoming by-elections? They're calling them must-wins to indicate your government's still popular. What are you saying?

Corey 28:42

Well, we know by-elections are not traditionally favorable to governing parties. parties uh they tend to be more like a negative option uh you

Corey 28:50

you know veto than they are than they are an actual election where people are looking at these things but it's important to us that the people of york center and the people of toronto center have representation at this very pivotal moment uh you know canada is is now looking at and debating actively a a bright new future under the liberal whatever the liberal plan is that comes out in the throne speech and uh these these These are two vibrant centers of Canadian activity, and they need representation as this plan goes forward. Now, stepping outside of that line for a minute and just talking here now, Zane, York

Corey 29:25

York Center – okay,

Corey 29:27

okay, well, let's put it this way. Toronto Center, there's no way the Liberals are going to lose that, or at least if they're going to lose that – By the way,

SPEAKER_02 29:32

way, that's the old Morneau seat, just so everyone knows.

Corey 29:34

are going to lose everything if they lose Toronto Center. That's just a really, really strong Liberal seat. Before Morneau, it was Bob Ray. Before Bob Ray, it was Bill Graham. And actually, it was Chrystia Freeland in there for a while, too, I believe, because she had the by-election, right? Very close

Corey 29:50

Yeah, I mean, it's been liberal since the start of the Chrétien era. But York Center, they could lose. York Center, it's not inconceivable the Conservatives could win that thing, particularly in a by-election environment. So you definitely don't want to be talking about these as must-win. You just can't, because it's actually pretty easy for me to see a path to the Conservatives winning York Center. So instead, you really want to be talking about the fact that you just think it's important that these seats have representation. You do not want to be setting expectations you're going to win this thing.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Corey, you're playing for the Conservatives, the federal Conservatives, that is. A mic is put in front of you to say, oh, your leader got COVID. We're so sorry to hear that, first of all. Secondly, though, he's new. How is he going to actually, you know, represent your party's stance as it relates to this speech from the throne? How is he going to hold Justin Trudeau to account for what he doesn't agree with? You know, was this a mistake to not take more significant precautions? cautions? You know, has he put your party in jeopardy in a unique moment where their voice is necessary to talk about this speech from the throne and what they think needs to be done differently for Canada?

Corey 30:57

Yeah, it's really unfortunate that our

Corey 31:00

our leader ended up getting COVID and then couldn't even get a COVID test because of the ineptitude of the Trudeau government, which allowed

Corey 31:08

allowed this situation to potentially get out of control. And it's

Corey 31:11

it's very lucky that he was able to rattle a few cages and get some results and get a test for himself so that he could protect himself and the people around him. And you can expect him to rattle cages and get results no matter where he is, even if he can't be in the House of Commons. Expect the Erin O'Toole rejoinder to come to you directly

Corey 31:27

directly to your computers, directly to your living room, regardless of whether he is able to get to the House and do that. Now, the Conservatives, unlike the Liberals, are also not one

Corey 31:37

one person deep. They have one MP they trust to do anything, obviously with Minister Mr. Freeland here. That's not the case with the Conservatives. We have a number of able individuals who are able to stand up and represent this party and its values and the values of Canadians in the House of Commons when this throne speech comes forward.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

Carter, that was pretty well done. Same question to you.

Carter 31:58

You know, we don't blame the victims. We don't blame anybody who got COVID. COVID is non-discriminatory in terms of who gets it and why they get it. And, you

Carter 32:08

you know, the person, The fact that the leader has contracted

Carter 32:12

contracted COVID does not take away from the conservative strengths. We have just recently named probably the best shadow cabinet that's ever been named. We've got a leadership team that represents all of Canada that is prepared to stand up and ask questions in the House of Commons, make statements to the media, Stand in front of the Canadian people and show what we're going to do if the Conservatives are able to take power when the Liberals finally decide to call an election. We are going to oppose the speech from the throne. We are ready for an election, whether or not Aaron O'Toole has COVID or not, because we think this is an important time that Canadians have the opportunity to say what needs to be said. When that is that the Trudeau government is not doing a good enough job. Nicely done,

Carter 33:04

Yeah, so there it is.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Carter had even more to say. No, I'm

Carter 33:11

I'm done. I was done. I was just recycling. I

SPEAKER_02 33:15

Okay, good. Do you honestly think it's going to be a problem that O'Toole will not be in the House to actually speak to this from a political vantage point? Corey, maybe I'll start with you.

Corey 33:25

No, I think that very few Canadians actually get their response to the speech from the throne from reading the leader of the official opposition's speech in response to the speech from the throne. Most of the activity does happen kind of speech-adjacent, out in the Britannia. And there are a lot of people who can do that. And in fact, depending on—and hopefully he's doing well, can we just say? Yeah, for sure. It's really alarming and concerning that anybody— And

SPEAKER_02 33:47

And him and Yves-François Blanchet of the Bloc Quebec

Corey 33:50

Quebec are both of them

SPEAKER_02 33:51

them testing positive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:52

Carter, anything regarding the politics, the actual politics? Will this actually make a difference that he's not in the House, not able to speak to this directly, make a speech, even do the rotunda, you know, reaction right away?

Carter 34:03

No, I don't think so. In terms of the reaction, I am a little bit interested in the, you

Carter 34:09

know, the confidence vote. You know, so the confidence vote is, you

Carter 34:15

you know, I think it's bluster. I don't think that the NDP, under any circumstance, want to have an election. So I think that it clears the ground for the Bloc Québécois and the Conservatives to demand an election without any fear of actually having to fight an election.

Carter 34:31

But I do think that it does undermine that particular bravado when your leader is unable to be in front of the microphone and able to take the stage. I mean, I hope that this COVID diagnosis is asymptomatic and that Aaron O'Toole is not in a position where he gets sick. But, you know, with two leaders down, the two leaders being the ones that are demanding the election opportunity, it just feels like that's going to be relatively weak sauce. You know, like it's a brave statement without much bravado behind it.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

Corey, I'm going to you on this. You're playing the Liberals in the PMO. You've had all these premiers show up to Ottawa over the last couple couple of days wanting a top-up on on

SPEAKER_02 35:17

the the federal health spending they want more money for their provinces how are you handling this with all the pressures for remaking the canadian economy greening it all doing all that sort of stuff you've wanted to do as part of the new vision and remaking canada what do you what are you doing and what are you telling these premiers i

Corey 35:34

mean premier asks for health spending money is like dog bites man chases car you know it's just That's whatever. If you were the prime minister and this is shocking you like record stretch, wait. Premiers want more money? I mean, get out of here. Do what you always do, which is say, hey, we look forward to negotiating, blah, blah, blah, and moving on with your life. Like if you allow yourself to be distracted by this, if you're the PMO, I

Corey 36:02

I mean, what are you doing? Like truly what are you doing if you allow yourself to get distracted by this?

SPEAKER_02 36:07

Carter, same thing to you.

Carter 36:09

Yeah, I don't think you can get distracted. that I agree completely with what Corey was saying.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

Carter, I'm going to you on this one since that one was so quick. You are now the volunteer former campaign manager for Peter McKay. And you were asked, hey, you have a huge debt from that campaign you were supposed to win. And I hear your guy's running for MP. What do you got to say?

Carter 36:30

Peter McKay has always been interested in serving. Peter McKay serves his community. He's been a member of parliament before without being the leader of a party. And he served the good people of Nova Scotia ably. Him stepping forward to serve certainly isn't related to his $1 million debt that he'll never otherwise repay. You know what? I said that last bit wrong.

Carter 36:54

You know, I mean, Peter McKay has been an able public servant for I think it's probably going on 20 years. And him being outside of public office has been the anomaly, not being inside of public office. So I think that him returning to the

Carter 37:11

game that he loves isn't necessarily unexpected. I mean, obviously, I

Carter 37:16

I don't think he wants to be there. I think the million-dollar price tag would certainly push anybody. But if I was doing his spin, I think I could make a relatively reasonable case that he wants to be there.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Carter, we'll talk about that in just a second. Corey, give me your strategy or your communications for Peter McKay if you're a representative of his.

Corey 37:35

Peter McKay has always been interested in serving. He left politics after many, many, many years. He missed it. He realized how important of a role he could play there. He put his hat in the ring to be leader. He lost, but he's really excited about Aaron O'Toole's leadership and the path that he's putting forward. So he's very keen to get involved. And, oh, by the way, on that debt, conservatives make good on their debts. It's one of those things you can count on us to do, which is exactly why I know conservative membership will help us settle this debt so then we can then go and settle the real debt which is the debt that the Trudeau liberals have settled Canadians with. Except

Corey 38:15

He doesn't count He's not a real conservative

Corey 38:17

Exception that proves the rule.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

Let's take the hat off for a second Carter, you had predicted we'd never hear from Peter McKay after he lost that leadership race. Of course we're now seeing him. How big of a deal is this? Is it just funny? Is it like weird? Is this actually a problem in many ways? Like, how are you thinking about this from a political sense, like taking our now spin strategy hats off?

Carter 38:39

This is a massive problem. I

Carter 38:41

I mean, Peter McKay raised $3 million for leadership, which I think we can all agree is a staggering amount of money for a leader. Yeah. And then he overspent that by 33%, right?

Carter 38:53

right? Like, that to me is unbelievable. How do you miss that? i mean i've seen campaigns that miss a hundred thousand dollars two hundred thousand dollars half a million a million dollars one out of every four dollars spent was spent with on someone's credit card like what the hell is going on um the the the rules are supposed to be in place that we don't wind up in this type of situation this

Carter 39:14

this is a big deal um

Carter 39:16

um and with the rules that are in place if peter mckay did not enter public office he would be paying this off off over the next, like, 30, I mean, has Ken Dryden finished pinning his off? Like, did that happen? Yeah.

Carter 39:29

Because this is not a new problem. This is a problem that exists for all parties.

Carter 39:35

We've instituted these rules to keep big money out, but we have not instituted any rules to put big brains into the people spending the money.

Carter 39:43

pea-brained people spending more money than they have, again, miss it by 50,000, totally understandable. I mean, and it used to be that the winner would call the loser and say, how much you got left? What's your problem? Let's try and figure this out. It doesn't

Carter 39:59

doesn't work like that anymore. The rules are so strict that you are really on your own. And it could take the better part of a decade to pay it back if you're not in public service.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

I think you make a very good point, Carter. And Corey, I'll go to you in a second. You mentioned one out of every $4 being spent on someone's credit card. It is quite literally literally someone's credit card in cases where you have such a broad campaign across the country. You know, as we've worked on leadership campaigns, often you're waiting a long time to get reimbursed with just your simple expenses here and there. No campaigns being mentioned, of course. Yeah, no, of course not. But Corey, same question to you. How big of a deal is this for McKay? It seems like a large number, but what are you thinking?

Corey 40:42

Well, great point, Zain. I don't know the nature of that debt. I don't know if any of us know the nature of that debt right now i'm sure that we'll see but if it is a large corporation that is owed three hundred thousand dollars and another one that's owed two hundred thousand and so on and so forth that's one thing but if it is the mckay

Corey 40:59

mckay volunteers across the uh nation uh that's another thing entirely and in some ways if it's the latter peter mckay might be luckier because that means aaron o'toole will have an interest in not having conservative volunteers getting burned coast to coast right so it's

Corey 41:15

it's um you know it's it's the big structured debts that people will say well figure it out peter you idiot how did you manage to get yourself into this hole but if it's a lot of smaller things then that pain is too broadly felt especially if you're thinking about having to fight in an election going forward uh you know you rely on the goodwill of your members coast to coast to deal with those uh to smooth those things out in local campaigns everywhere and And if everybody just shuts down and says, screw that, remember how we got burned by McKay? That's a problem for a political

SPEAKER_02 41:45

Go ahead, Corey, please.

Corey 41:48

Well, I'm just going to say Ken Dryden ultimately didn't pay back his debt. So in that case, what it was, and maybe this was the case with Peter McKay, because this is the other option.

Corey 41:57

Well, except it's not allowed, so I'm quite sure it's not. Ken Dryden just lent himself $300,000 and just said, I'm not going to pay it back.

Corey 42:05

And Elections Canada just said, well,

Corey 42:07

well, we can't really do anything about that. It's against the rules, but we can't do anything about that. And so that was how that settled. It didn't settle. But those

Corey 42:14

those loopholes have been largely closed in the intervening years. So, I mean, McKay is... You

Carter 42:19

can't do that anymore. It's a tough slog. You can't just loan himself a million dollars. You know, this is a

Carter 42:26

big mistake to wind up this far in debt.

SPEAKER_02 42:29

It's a tough game, and I don't think people realize it, both from the financial but also the ramification side of things. If you don't win, there is a cost to losing. And there's, in this case, quite literally a cost to losing. Let's do the last one of the strategy session, because I don't want to lose the thread of our segment. And, Carter, I'm going to you. You're putting your hat on for Jagmeet Singh and the NDP in this case, OK? Oh,

Carter 42:51

Oh, that's good. In this

SPEAKER_02 42:52

this case, the party members are reaching out to you saying, listen, we hear you're negotiating a bunch of stuff away to Trudeau. You're talking about pharmacare, childcare, et cetera. That's great. right, you might get some influence by doing that, but you're ultimately giving him the turf that is traditionally ours. How are you talking to both your party members, etc., about, you know, this negotiation in a minority government about what they see in a throne speech, when the criticism is that this is territory that we own, and now you're just letting them take it away from us as things that we

Carter 43:25

Did Tommy Douglas get upset when universal health care was brought in across

Carter 43:29

across Canada, not by an NDP government.

Carter 43:32

Tommy Douglas took the win.

Carter 43:34

Tommy Douglas said what's in the best interest of Canadians, and he did it, and

Carter 43:38

and he didn't worry about electoral success.

Carter 43:40

Ed Broadbent came in and was the leader of the Democratic Party and pushed for all kinds of reforms that we would not have seen if it hadn't been for a strong NDP third party. You know, we're not the opposition. We don't need to be the opposition. We are happy taking the win and making lives better for for Canadians. That is our position. That's the way we're going to work, especially on green policies, on health care policies, on labor policies, things that help Canadians. I don't care who gets the credit as long as every Canadian's life is better the day after these votes are held.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

Nicely done, Carter. Corey, same question to you.

Corey 44:18

Yeah, the electoral success comes from caring about people first. We've succeeded and steadily grown because we don't play these these games. The day I as leader make the decision to hurt Canadians

Corey 44:27

Canadians because of electoral advantage is the day you should be demanding my resignation. But until then, I'm going to continue fighting the good fight. And that means results. That doesn't mean anything else.

SPEAKER_02 44:37

Nicely done, both of you. Let's take the hat off for one second to discuss this particular element. Any validity in it? No, I mean, this

Corey 44:44

this is an interesting challenge for him. It is a longer term challenge. The liberals of today are not the liberals of the 1990s you know we

Corey 44:52

we just had the death of john turner the whole turner wing of the liberal party that that blue liberal yeah yeah

Corey 44:59

toys is becoming a

Corey 45:01

yeah it's becoming a bit of an endangered species um right now and uh and if the liberals just sort of morph into the left-wing party in canada i mean that's that's interesting for a lot of reasons uh not least of which is it i doubt that there's enough room for two parties that share the exact same political space maybe ultimately that leads to a merger maybe ultimately that means there'll be one party on that side but um you

Corey 45:26

you know it's uh it presents a challenge there's no doubt about it uh for the ndp what is their value proposition in a world with the greens in a world with the bloc quebecois resurgent in a world with the liberals all sort of fighting over the same political space at least on social issues and

SPEAKER_02 45:41

and in canada it historically has been a significant political space, about 50% usually in the last decade or two. So significant political space, but you make a good point. Carter, same question to you. Is this a valid concern for Jagmeet Singh and the NDP, what I just asked you to spin away? Or are you not as concerned?

Carter 46:00

Well, I think there was an episode two or three weeks ago, and I gave him the advice to start to stand for the working Canadian again. Because ultimately, I think that Trudeau is making a stronger pitch for that positioning.

Carter 46:13

And the standing that the NDP has done on

Carter 46:16

on the Green Party's platform isn't helping anybody, right?

Carter 46:20

one of the joys of being a liberal is being able to stand on any platform position there is. So one day you can choose that you can be Paul Martin, John Turner, and just stand on the blue liberal category. And the next day you can be be standing over and and fighting on on you know working canadian issues and the liberals have always shifted around to reflect the population as required uh it is one of their great strengths and i think it's one of the reasons why the ndp voters hate them more than they hate their conservatives uh because right there's no ideological purity uh to to to the the movements of the liberal party watching

Carter 47:02

watching the liberals take your positions taking your ideas and leaving you with little ground to stand on has got to be troubling. And even more troubling is knowing that there's a Green Party that theoretically could emerge from their leadership stronger.

Carter 47:17

Maybe realistically they're going to emerge less strong. But there is a Green movement that is continuing to be

Carter 47:26

be real in Canada that the Liberals, the New Democrats, the Bloc Québécois, and the Green Party are all taking advantage of. The NDP is squeezed. eased that's why there's no money flowing in that's why sing you know that's why the it doesn't have any particular attention right now it's difficult for them but they're going to have to step up their game um and and i would say that they're going to need to whatever's not in the throne speech is the most important issue uh for the ndp starting uh starting tomorrow you know on wednesday cory

SPEAKER_02 47:57

cory anything to finish this off you were you were signaling there i

SPEAKER_02 48:00

i was scratching my my head but i'll tell

Corey 48:01

tell you the um the

Corey 48:03

the the ndp made a what i believe to be a tactical error with the election of jagmeet singh and it's nothing against him personally but you

Corey 48:11

you know this is where we always say politicians and generals are trying to fight the last war and it was like the ndp went out and they tried to find their justin trudeau and i think fundamentally as

Corey 48:21

as we've seen that was probably a bit of a mistake now he is his he's overperformed arguably in the in the one election he fought relative to where he came into that election But there's no doubt that was an underperformance based on where expectations were when he was elected. And that's

Corey 48:35

that's a real challenge because he seems to be of an archetype that Canadians have moved past. And I think it will be very interesting to see if

Corey 48:45

if we do have a fall election or a spring election, where

Corey 48:48

where to from here, because I don't believe that the party will give Singh a third kick at the can. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 48:54

Yeah, you know, we were talking about this previously, and perhaps even off air, but this conversation that the only thing that saved Singh in many ways was he became one element of the balance of power in a minority government, right, giving him this leverage. And frankly, what would have happened if Tom Mulcair was still their leader, right? We talked about the playbook of the past, that you could have really seen a fiery legislator with the experience that Mulcair had could have been a really interesting foil for Trudeau in that 19 election. If you were Tom Mulcair, you must be, and in my case, I was sitting next to him on election night, just looking at how Sig was being celebrated that night and thinking of what your political fortunes could have been had you been the leader on that particular evening.

Corey 49:32

evening. Arguably, he better met the moment, right? We had a couple of relatively light, well, I mean, I can't call a sitting prime minister a political lightweight, certainly not, but you had Justin Trudeau and you had Andrew Scheer, again, a former speaker, but neither of them, you know, they don't have that ultra

Corey 49:52

-serious Tom Mulcair vibe, right, that maybe would have been a better suit for 2019. Okay,

SPEAKER_02 49:59

let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, what does he really stand for? Guys, I want to now take a, not a bit of a deep dive, but a cursory start to a conversation I perhaps want to extend over a couple of episodes, which is to our listenership, providing some ideas and knowledge as to... Are we doing story arcs now? Like, what's going on? We are doing story arcs. And this is part one of a story arc using some of the situations that we're seeing this week in our home province of Alberta, and perhaps giving people a better sense of who Jason Kenney really is, you know, an interesting political figure in our country who's been on the federal side of things, but often compared to what I think and we've discussed as misnomers, right? Donald Trump, Doug Ford, is he any of those things? Is he his own thing? And I think I want to start discussing that a little bit, especially with what we've seen here in Alberta this week around Aish, around him going to Ottawa, around the rejuvenation of Fair Deal. So perhaps, Carter, I'll start with you. The comparison that's made about Chase and Kenny is the comparison to Trump or to Ford. Are either of those two accurate? Let's start here.

Carter 51:08

don't think it's accurate. In fact, I don't think you can directly compare Jason Kenney to anybody. You certainly can't compare him to Klein. You can't compare him to Stephen Harper.

Carter 51:19

Maybe Harper might be the closest, but Stephen Harper, I think, was far more pragmatic and far more willing to push certain ideologies to the background in order to retain power in Canada. jason kenney doesn't

Carter 51:37

doesn't want to do that jason kenney's primary motivation is to his ideology and that thing that he believes is right and on some levels you've got to admire that because he's not doing these things because he thinks you know just for shits and giggles or they're going to be popular he's doing these things because he fundamentally believes them he's

Carter 51:59

You know, everybody remembers Ralph Klein from 19, you know, 1993, he goes through and he cuts the budget significantly in 94. And there's a group of people, the backbenchers called the deep six, that are going to make sure that they hold him to those budget cuts, and that he doesn't blink. Well,

Carter 52:17

Well, by the time Ralph Klein leaves in what in 2005, four, we've got the highest per per capita spending in Canada, right? Ralph Klein not only has blinked, he has closed his eyes and arguably fallen asleep. And that was

Carter 52:32

was celebrated by the Progressive Conservative Party of the time. Jason Kenney is not that guy. He's not doing these things to reverse them in three years. He's doing these things because he fundamentally believes that they're right. He believes that public servants get paid too much money. He believes that the people who are on AISH, the 10,000 additional people that we're paying on AISH this year is because 10,000 people have come to Alberta to steal our money because we have the highest payments of anywhere in Canada.

Carter 53:02

That's what he believes. And that's why these actions are being undertaken.

SPEAKER_02 53:08

Corey, let's start with the fundamental question. Carter, you mentioned AISH. I want to get back to that in a second because there's a listener question about it that I'll weave in. But Corey, Corey, let's start with the motivating factors. Are the comparisons to a Trump or a Ford in line with Jason Kenney? Is he what you'd call, another word thrown around with him is populist? Would either of those labels apply in your mind in terms of perhaps his motivation or his political profile?

Corey 53:33

No. So I don't know Donald Trump, and I don't know Ford. But I do know Jason Kenney a little bit. And he's not a populist. He's a philosopher king who plays a populist on TV. He's from the policy wing of conservatism. He's more comfortable with the Heritage Foundation crowd than Roughnecks. And he is, I will tell you, one of the smartest, most affable, most charming people I have ever met. and

Corey 53:56

and like i and he he drives around in a pickup truck and he rolls up his sleeves and he does that because he thinks that's what alberta is and i'm not really sure that is what alberta is anymore but

Corey 54:07

but you have to know that while he is comfortable dipping into that bucket of populism he himself is

Corey 54:13

is is quite a cerebral individual like almost to a fault like he's very very thoughtful about everything so i just i don't i don't think that kind of this lazy brush rush from afar, that is, well, he's right-wing, so he's like Trump, or he's right-wing, so he's like Ford, is in any way an accurate presentation of Jason Kenney in any way, shape, or form. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 54:33

Carter, you know, maybe I'll stick with you because you started this thread. There's a listener question from Garrett here, where he talks about AISH, right, this recent development in Alberta. And he says, you know, why would the UCP and Jason Kenney hemorrhage so much much political capital on an edge case like Aish, which has so little to be gained from a budgetary standpoint. You know, of course, Alberta going through hard times, everyone acknowledging that Kenny telegraphing, obviously, and for a long time that he's going to look at everything. But why look at something that I think all of us in one way, shape or form have called the third rail of Alberta society? What is your take on that?

Carter 55:11

I honestly think that they they believe So what the signal seems to be coming out now is they're not going to cut H for individual recipients. They're not going to cut back what the recipients are getting. Now, this is only two years after the Wild Rose or the UCP all agreed that indexing

Carter 55:30

indexing H was important, right? Kind of like indexing old age pensions and those types of things where you get more money as inflation increases the costs around you. So now they're not going to cut. Well, that means they're probably not going to increase it by through the indexing. But they are looking at reducing the number of people who get it. And that's because, like I said earlier, there is this foundational belief that there are people in society who are trying to steal from us, right? And whether it's the union member who doesn't really do a full day's work and gets the full day's salary anyways, or, you know, has accumulated some pension that they're not really entitled Or any of these types of other right wing, you know, melodramas that are spun in these coffee shops that Jason Kenney drove his blue pickup truck to in one of the greatest farces of all time. He is interested in stopping

Carter 56:27

that fraud. He does believe that

Carter 56:29

that there are certain people who, like

Carter 56:31

like Ralph Klein said, don't

Carter 56:33

don't look like they're severely handicapped. And

Carter 56:37

And he's trying to, you

Carter 56:39

you know, Matt Wolfe really tweeted out, I think, their actual belief, which is there's, you know, the growth of age in the last five years dramatically outpaces the growth of the population. Now, what this doesn't take into account are the fact that we have many new diagnosis that severely handicapped has significantly changed. And the growth, just for example, of autistic adults in our population is dramatically different today than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago. um that's you know no one's no one's defining themselves as autistic so they can get 1600 a month it's just not

Carter 57:19

not that's not how we you know people think but the

Carter 57:23

the way that the conservatives think is that there are a group of people who are trying to scam us out of this that ronald reagan uh

Carter 57:30

how did he put it i can't remember the ronald reagan phrasing of the of the welfare mom who was who was the welfare queen is that it was the

Carter 57:38

the The welfare queen that is raking in all this welfare money to make herself, you know, king of the—that just doesn't exist. It didn't exist in Reagan's time. It certainly doesn't exist today.

SPEAKER_02 57:53

Corey, same question to you from Garrett, right, our listener here, around edge case politically, spending a lot of political capital, getting burnt from all sides. Why do it? Does it speak to a core philosophy, perhaps, of this premier? year well

Corey 58:09

don't i don't know i mean i i'm not gonna i'm

Corey 58:12

i'm not gonna try to peer into the man's soul and say whether or not that's the case but i will say that ace

Corey 58:17

ace is one of those programs that you look at and you say oh boy like

Corey 58:21

like this is getting pretty expensive if you're in government like it is 1.3 billion dollars right now right

Corey 58:26

right and caseloads have increased by almost i think 20 percent in the last five years and there are reasons for that i'm not suggesting otherwise and I don't want anybody to think that I'm implying otherwise. But certainly you sit there and you say, well, okay, how are we going to get this under control? What is this program doing? How does this program relate with other programs? This assured income for the severely handicapped, is it doing what it was intended to do? And, you know, see my earlier comments, right? He really thinks about the policy of these things a lot. And when you see this kind of growth that's happening, if you're a conservative, okay, Okay, I'm going to greatly simplify, but it's pretty easy in a conservative worldview to say, have I accidentally created an incentive here? Have I either through a combination of the level of the support that I'm providing plus the accessibility of that support created a way for people who this was not meant to help, people have started using it in lieu of other things that they could be doing, whether it is getting support from their community, their church, their society around them to get back up on their feet. what what is going on and is this program actually being used right and um and

Corey 59:37

and so i think that it's really tough i think it's like a mental itch for many conservatives to say i

Corey 59:43

i gotta scratch this like this this this just does not seem right to me why is this growing so much further than the population and how can we fix this and is it a system problem is

Corey 59:52

is it worth it absolutely not worth it absolutely not worth it first of all these are truly the most disadvantaged people in society society, truly the most disadvantaged. The level of support they are getting, as was pointed out by many on Twitter, is less per month for their entire living situation than our politicians get as a living allowance when they have to go to Edmonton, if they're not an MLA from Edmonton, right? Like, Albertans are just, they're not willing to have the conversation. It's just, it's not enough money. There's no one in Alberta who looks at it and says, yeah, two grand a month, Look at them living high on the hog, right? If anything, Albertans skew their minds the other way, and they think 100 grand is barely getting by, which is also ridiculous. But I think that to try to tackle this issue when there is so much else going on is

Corey 1:00:43

is beyond dangerous. And it's also just, frankly, another front in what has become an incredibly multi-front war for the UCP. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 1:00:52

Carter, let's finish on these two questions, at least for now, as we just scratched the surface on philosophy of this premier in Alberta. I want to talk about the Fair Deal panel, and I want to talk about the commission that Steve Allen is running on foreign interference. Do you think those are driven by the premier's sort of agenda and true belief that this is what we need? Or do you feel like that's something that he's doing as part of this, you know, this is what Albertans are like, and I want to kind of mimic that language. I almost want to try to see if the outcome of this segment is can perhaps at least start to decipher core philosophy and belief versus political convenience, perhaps. No,

Carter 1:01:29

No, you've hit on two that are really tough for me because the

Carter 1:01:33

the Fair Deal panel, this idea that the Harper transfer payments are in some fashion unfair

Carter 1:01:41

unfair to Alberta only

Carter 1:01:43

only when Trudeau is in charge. charge um you know jason kenney was in cabinet when these essentially these transfer payments were agreed upon um it

Carter 1:01:52

it wouldn't matter really what formula you had in place alberta is just never going to get them right so this this idea and the the language that was used this week of a reverse transfer um i find it very upsetting because you know we're the richest population why do we pay more because we're richer um you know people fall into well we'd have a balanced budget if we weren't transferring this money to Ottawa. So

Carter 1:02:14

So you want to pay your federal income taxes to Alberta? This is

Carter 1:02:18

is crazy to me. You want to pay more provincial income tax? Is that what you're saying? Is that your point of view? Jason Kenney

Carter 1:02:26

Kenney is essentially saying we're undertaxing by six and a half billion dollars. We now want that back from Canada. The way that he's doing that, Matt, the Fair Deal panel I find particularly frustrating because it doesn't really speak to, I think, his core beliefs. This is where his populism, his

Carter 1:02:46

his pretend populism, his core, he has essentially articulated, becomes particularly dangerous. Ralph Klein started this fiction in

Carter 1:02:55

in the 90s that we are in

Carter 1:02:57

in some fashion under-receiving

Carter 1:02:59

-receiving something that we should be getting from Ottawa. That continues on. Klein set this idea that we send checks to Ottawa. That remains, I think, the general

Carter 1:03:09

general feeling of the people of Alberta. And

Carter 1:03:14

Kenny, to my mind, is just taking advantage of it. He's building an enemy the way that we've seen mayors build enemies of premiers and premiers build enemies of prime ministers for government after government. The

Carter 1:03:26

The Steve Allen panel, though, is a little bit it different um i actually think that he thought it would be more successful um i don't think he tapped steve allen to lead a uh an inquiry that he thought would ultimately fail and what i'm seeing kind of what i'm interpreting watching what's coming out of the steve allen inquiry steve allen inquiry is that it's floundering it's failing and it's an absolute shit show um and And Kenney thought he was playing a populist game, and he found himself actually just stuck in a shit show, which is absolutely wonderful for me to watch. Loving it. Loving it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:06

Corey, let's end this segment with you giving your thoughts on those two items in particular. Do you feel like they're politically driven or perhaps the core philosophy of this premier?

Corey 1:04:18

I think you can have them be both. Look, everybody likes to throw back in Jason Kenney's face that he was in cabinet when the transfer payment scheme was created.

Corey 1:04:29

But Alberta was doing an awful lot better at the time. And when you start looking at those kind of like, well, what if scenarios, let's be real, you can call them asleep at the switch, but how many people actually go through all of those scenarios, especially for something like that and say, okay, this is good for every contingency. there

Corey 1:04:44

there is a kernel of truth to the the core

Corey 1:04:48

core listen the transfer payment argument is bullshit we don't write a check to ottawa right but there is a core element of truth that alberta has been a net contributor to confederation for a very very long time and alberta is now in

Corey 1:05:00

in some relatively tough times and everybody seems to say oh well you

Corey 1:05:04

you're pretty rich and it's true we are very rich uh but revolution occurs when there's a relative change in stature not when there's an absolute change in stature if that makes sense right like if um if we thought that uh if

Corey 1:05:20

if we thought that none of this ever mattered then then we could take a pretty nihilistic approach to a lot of government but the fact is people

Corey 1:05:26

people build their worlds around a certain status status and like amount of money and then when that falls apart their lives get hard and we don't laugh at them then we try to help them. That's what we do because we're decent human beings. And I think that that can be applied to provinces as well. The other thing I would say is with the Fair Deal panel, he is undoubtedly believes, and I would incline to agree, like he is trying to balance some dark forces here. Like there is a separatist bend in Alberta. It exists. It's not a fake thing that Jason Kenney created. Whether he is making it worse, that is a conversation, I think, for another day. but if

Corey 1:05:58

you believe that um that

Corey 1:06:01

that there is kind of this nasty anti-canadian wave

Corey 1:06:06

you try to kind of wait ride it and bottle it right you try to veer it towards outcomes that are not so

Corey 1:06:12

destructive to the country and uh and and absolutely he believes that that's part of what the fair deal panel is doing like canada has to work for these people or else things are going to get a lot worse and you ain't seen nothing yet so i i believe i'm going to be be fully sincere there i also believe there are some politics involved there that that seem like a why the hell not why would you not have this conversation it seems to work for albertans on the on the inquiry i think steven's absolutely right i don't think that anybody i i have not talked to anyone in government about this i don't think anyone in government thinks this is going particularly well this looks pretty embarrassing yeah on the outside and it's certainly not what was promised you know the uh the notion that we were going to drag into the light all of these These mistruths spoken about the oil industry has become, yeah,

Corey 1:06:57

yeah, we're just going to do an accounting of people who don't like oil talking about the fact they don't like oil, even though it's not illegal. And by the way, there's a lot of money that comes into this jurisdiction that's pro-oil as well.

Corey 1:07:07

You know, we're not going to look at that. I mean, the whole thing has just become a joke. I don't even know what purpose it serves now. It's just a joke. So I suspect that that's not one of his deeply held beliefs that, like, I love this and I can't wait to do more inquiries. So we'll

SPEAKER_02 1:07:21

we'll see. We'll leave that there and we'll continue this, as Corey calls it, this story arc in future episodes. Garrett, thanks for your question on AISH. We'll keep touching back on that subject as well, seeing where that lands as the Kennedy government touches on some of its more specifics on future budgets. Okay, let's move it on to our over, under, and our lightning round. Guys, are you ready? So ready.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:42

Carter, I'm starting with you. Are you in or out? I suspect I know your answer, but let me specify it a bit more to actually make you think about it a bit more. Are you in or out on the tactic? Are you in or out on the tactic of trying to remove Matt Wolfe, Jason Keddie's issues manager, through a petition? petition uh so there's a petition going out right now saying matt wolf should be removed from the government payroll make the ucp pay his salary i think i know what what you might say uh you could surprise me but are you in or out on the tactic of a petition to try to make that happen it's

Carter 1:08:16

it's ridiculous i i mean this it is the biggest fail in the history of community like i as everybody knows matt wolf's biggest fan right here um i i think that everything he touches matt wolf

SPEAKER_02 1:08:30

wolf tweeted Matt Wolfe tweeted me this week. He was actually quite nice. He actually has a very friendly interaction.

Carter 1:08:35

Matt Wolfe isn't going to be removed by a petition.

Carter 1:08:39

He's not going to be removed by tweets. He's going to be removed by making an enormous

Carter 1:08:43

enormous mistake at some point either on Twitter or on

Carter 1:08:47

on Facebook or in a speech or something like that. But he is communicating

Carter 1:08:52

communicating on behalf of the premier.

Carter 1:08:55

He is taking heat for the ministers. He's doing his job. I think he's horrific at it, but a Twitter

Carter 1:09:02

Twitter or a petition, an online petition, is going to have absolutely no impact on his future employment. So get better. Corey, are

SPEAKER_02 1:09:15

are you in or out on the tactic of using a petition to try to get Matt Wolfe out of his job? And I know

Corey 1:09:22

know you've got a lot to

Corey 1:09:23

Yeah, no, listen, I'll say this. I guess I'm in on the tactic because people are jumping on it and saying, yeah, look at that. Screw these guys. And it's just like this red meat thing that it's hard to come to the defense of Matt Wolfe, right? I'm going to come to the defense of Matt Wolfe. First of all, I will say that almost nobody that listens to this podcast actually knows Matt Wolfe. I know Matt Wolfe. He's not bad at his job. He's very good. I don't know how he's been the last six months. Stephen, hold your thoughts. He's a very competent individual. He's also not such a bad guy, right? You know this caricature of Matt Wolfe. His job is not to tweet. Can we just start there? His job is not to tweet. You see his tweets. You think that's his job. That is not his job. Nobody works harder in any government of any stripe than the director of issues management. I swear to God that is the case. They are the first people in the office. They have read all of the news, and they've come up with all of their rejoinders before 7 a.m., and then they are the last one to leave the office. They're a personality type,

SPEAKER_02 1:10:17

type, aren't they? Yes,

Corey 1:10:18

they are. They are. And by the way, one of the things that I always find very funny is I know Rachel Notley's most recent director of issues, Jeremy Nolis, her chief of staff, and I know Matt Wolfe, and they are almost the same person personality-wise one-on-one when you get to know them. They both are workaholics, very funny, very tough, and they are very smart. So let me just start there. His job is not to tweet. His job is to do a bunch of crap you never even get to see. he tweets on his random rejoinders waiting for somebody in the oval room you know uh who's going to meet with him or he's going to dress

Corey 1:10:55

dress down someone or he's going to talk to the premier or whatnot there's a lot of downtime in government you spend so much time waiting in halls for people so when you see tweets throughout the day don't be surprised so let me just start there uh it

Corey 1:11:07

is so easy to beat up on staff and say these staff are an example of everything that is wrong but as as I've said on this show before, you

Corey 1:11:15

you don't really get to see them. And there's no way that the premier is actually going to drop Matt Wolfe because of a petition like this. That would be outrageous. And in many ways, people, you've probably, even if Jason

Corey 1:11:26

Jason Kenney was thinking of making a change, you've probably guaranteed him a few more months of employment because there's no way Jason Kenney is going to want to look like he's responded to this petition. So as a tactic of riling people up, great. If you actually are trying to get Matt Wolfe removed, pretty dumb tactic.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:40

Corey, while I have you on this, I wasn't planning to, but let's just do it. Let's talk about the allegation that a lot of the people in Kenny's office were not in the previous office, they're net new employees. I know we've driven past this, but it kind of bubbled up again this week. Do you want to quickly comment on that?

Corey 1:11:57

Yeah, well, so I saw this on Twitter as well. People have had a list of positions in Jason Kenny's premier's office, and they've highlighted like these positions didn't exist under rachel notley's primers on well except they kind of did in some cases right i you know you can you can look at these things and you can cut them a thousand different ways but you know was a was a director of x now or previously called a deputy chief of staff was the was the director of policy or what was previously the director of policy has maybe become the principal advisor like they don't keep the same titles between these things sure Sure. But you've got to look a little beyond that to the function. And I think it's kind of silly to sit there and say, look

Corey 1:12:38

look how much bigger it is. Maybe it is bigger. I haven't actually looked for a bit. These things do tend to grow over time. They don't tend to get smaller. But it's not as though, can

Corey 1:12:48

can I tell you, somebody was there six months ago, I thought, wow, there are so many more people around here. I'm not necessarily saying it was staff proper.

Corey 1:12:55

I'm just saying that's kind of a silly thing to say. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 1:12:57

Carter, I'm going to you on this over under on seven, over under on seven. What you make of Rachel Notley's week? She had a poll late last week saying that she was effectively tied at a dead heat with the UCP. There's a solid write up for her in the Calgary Sun, kind of riding a bit of a high. And the message seems to have really kind of changed back to a premier in waiting, rather than, you know, gutsy opposition. What are you kind of making of her week over under on seven?

Carter 1:13:27

Well, I mean, any any time you get Rick Bell writing something good about you, I mean, that's got to know. I mean, it's just it

Carter 1:13:33

doesn't matter if you have a good week after, you know, in the middle of year two. That is when you're supposed to have good weeks when you're an opposition leader, because the government's trying to push through all the shit that they have to get through. You know, this is the middle of covid. This is, you know, Jason Kenney is the lowest ranked premier in the province in the country in terms of overall popularity. And, you

Carter 1:13:57

know, Rachel Notley has pulled even. I mean, if I was advising her, I'd be saying, you know, don't get excited. This doesn't mean anything. And frankly, you should be five or six points up. Just being equal doesn't get you anywhere at this particular moment. I mean, Jason

Carter 1:14:12

Jason Kenney's popularity is really not there. And on top of that, no one asked the second question, right? Right. This poll that was released didn't talk at all about how committed each voter was, you know, each each voter was to each of the parties. I have a suspicion that this is mostly a vote against the UCP that's with the NDP and a vote against the NDP that's with the UCP. I think that they're both way weak votes and the world could shift dramatically in the next two and a half years.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:40

Corey, same question to you. Are you over under on seven on the week that former premier and now opposition leader Rachel Notley had?

Corey 1:14:48

Phenomenal week. Phenomenal, phenomenal week. There's been rumors and chatter and murmurs of private polling showing a situation like this for quite some time, but it has not been reflected in public polling until now. And why that matters is as soon as it's public, narratives can shift on these things. And nothing wins like a winner, but nothing loses like a loser. And if it all of a sudden looks like the UCP is plummeting in the polls, that can create kind

Corey 1:15:13

kind of a vicious cycle where more people run away, more people start questioning the leader, more tensions happen behind the scenes and uh what was previously a united front can fall apart so even just setting aside the ink that she got if only because it is likely to make things more anxious for the ucp they will start to lose their nerve everybody talks tough when they're a new government they're going to come in they're

Corey 1:15:33

they're not going to care how unpopular things are they're going to fight for what's right they're going to let the chips fall where they may and then they're going to you

Corey 1:15:39

you know just deal with the consequences that

Corey 1:15:40

that falls apart pretty quick when you start seeing poll numbers that question your existence as government right and now we have poll numbers that question the existence of the UCP going forward as government. Beyond that, I think you're absolutely right. You're starting to see some of the regular columnists, I wouldn't say running away yet, but Rick Bell, kind of hedging his bets. He's gone from the full-throated superstar champion of Jason Kenney to I'm

Corey 1:16:06

I'm going to give some good ink to Rachel Notley every now and then. And you're going to see a little bit more of that because the last thing that a columnist like Rick Bell wants is to prove himself irrelevant by not actually catching on to a populist wave. So he's going to start, you start seeing a bit of a cycle there. She had a great, great week. And I think that this is going to be quite a spur of activity for the NDP to come.

Corey 1:16:27

There's going to be people who start saying, oh, maybe, maybe I should run for the NDP. Maybe I should donate for the NDP. Maybe I should volunteer for them.

Corey 1:16:33

And by the way, the other great thing about this, if you're Rachel Notley and the NDP, is it shows you on top without any nonsense merger conversation with the Alberta party or the liberals or any crap like that, you are just straight on top or arguably on top. There's no reason to merge. Everybody get on board with the NDP. That's the message from there.

Corey 1:16:54

And you've got to be feeling great if you're Rachel Notley. Corey,

SPEAKER_02 1:16:56

Corey, let's finish it off here with the final question. I'm going to you first. Lock in your throne speech with a simple yes or no. Are we going to see that ambitious green plan that the Trudeau government had floated? it seems like months ago now, but weeks, let's just say it was a week or two ago, but just prior to that retreat. Are we going to see that greening of the Canadian economy as part of this throne speech as what's once seemed almost guaranteed? Yes or no?

Corey 1:17:24

It'll be pitched as it, but it won't be as ambitious as we were led to believe weeks ago. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 1:17:28

Carter, give us your prediction. Yes or no? Are we going to see this greening mandate as part of the speech from the throne coming up on Wednesday? day yes

Carter 1:17:37

yes i well i'm hopeful we do because i i think that it's the strongest and most important initiative that we're going for for canada right now that's

SPEAKER_02 1:17:47

that's it we're gonna leave it there that's a wrap on episode 822 of the strategist my name is zane belgiu with me as always stephen carter cory hogan and we'll see you next time

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