Episode 826: A Star is Born

Corey 0:00

Hey everybody, this is Corey Hogan, and I'm Stephen

Corey 0:02

Carter, and we have hijacked the start of this show to talk about an opportunity to be the co-host of You the People's election night coverage. Now, it turns out that our good friend Zain Velji both is not good enough and also under contract with CTV to provide election coverage for them that night, and we're looking for a third wheel that can help provide simple-minded bridging between the genius of Carter and I. Yeah,

Carter 0:23

Yeah, I mean, if you think that you've got a limited understanding of American politics and want to really dig deep into the basic issues that would be presenting themselves in the upcoming election, then

Carter 0:33

then you can join us as the host of You the People and bridge between the intellect of Corey Hogan and my capacity to really fill time. So

Corey 0:41

So here's what you do. You record yourself a quick promo where you are asking interesting questions. Maybe you're asking them of people in your life who are significantly smarter than you. and then you tweet this promo at steven and or i or at ytp pod to get yourself into the running what we'll do is on a future episode of you the people which is our other podcast broadcast on thursdays we'll let you know whether or not you've won and we'll give you the link that you can uh then follow through on on election night and

Carter 1:06

and remember you could be the next zane velgey and

Corey 1:09

and if you are we're sorry with

Corey 1:13

that why don't you enjoy episode 826 of the strategist a star is born

SPEAKER_00 1:21

This is The Strategist, episode 826. My name is Zane Belgey. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, happy Sunday.

Corey 1:29

Well, happy Sunday to you too, Zane.

Carter 1:31

Only two more Sundays until it's all over. The American election's done. I'm so excited to hear we're going to get hit by a meteor. Neil Tyson DeGrasse is promising that

Carter 1:41

we're going to be hit by

Carter 1:42

by an asteroid. First

SPEAKER_00 1:42

First of all, not his name. Secondly... Shit.

Carter 1:48

Did I get that wrong?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

You said the middle name and the last name. I don't know if it's the whole last name. You swapped it. You know what?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

You swapped it out. I

Carter 1:58

I got the general

Carter 1:59

general gist of it. That's generally all I need to know.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

That's good. I'm glad that as a white male in 2020, you were fine with general gist.

Carter 2:08

The gist of stuff is all I need. That's good. You just went through that.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

No, that's great. I'm glad you started going right into it first. Corey, anything you want to update us on? Your fantasy football team? I hope you didn't have Aaron Rodgers.

Corey 2:22

No, but it wasn't a very good week for me. I've only got a 24% chance of pulling this off on Monday night. I'm looking for a miracle. Saw Bill and Ted's Face the Music on Saturday on the old streaming service. They're pretty good. Is that with piano? You remember the old Bill and Ted. Yeah.

Corey 2:41

Maybe a little before your time there, Velji. But it was a simpler time. Strange things are afoot at the Circle K. As

Corey 2:49

Canadians, we can now embrace that more fully with the introduction of Circle K everywhere. It's really good. It's brought it into a modern era.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

And I'm glad, Carter, you said this is two more Sundays left. You should have just paused at two more Sundays left. I think we're at the last two Sundays of the world. So I'm so glad that we find ourselves in this moment where we have so much going on in the American political system. Yet we will talk about almost none of it because we'll move it on to our first segment. Our first segment, Hot Zoom Mic. Guys, I want to talk about what's happening in BC. We spent a lot of time last week trying to dissect the leaders debate in BC. We were talking about what could perhaps offset this election for John Horgan, who seems to be headed for a promising victory, more than likely majority territory. Well, we have something this week. I don't know if it offsets it, but I want to talk to you guys about it. And it's a notable candidate in BC, Nathan Cullen, former NDP MP, former NDP leadership candidate for the federal NDP, now running as a candidate for the provincial NDP in BC. Well, he was caught on a hot mic talking about a BC liberal candidate, about not being well liked in his community, making fun of his nickname. Carter, I'm going to go to you first, and talk to me about this story. Because when we usually, and we rarely have these pre-strategist podcast chats, but you said you wanted to talk about this, or at least floated it. Talk to me about this story and kind of what you make of it broadly. And then I want to dig into some ramifications, not just for this election, but broadly in our politics regarding situations like this.

Carter 4:27

I want to talk about it in a couple of different ways. The first is I want to talk about the nomination process that got us here. Because Nathan, Nathan Cullen, I think

Carter 4:37

think on anybody's chart is going to be considered to be a star candidate for any provincial party. Like so you take a former member of the parliament, someone who's run for leader, you ran through his his his accolades quite well and this is a real star candidate and so they want him to be their candidate in the region but there's

Carter 4:56

first nations person who's indicating that she may want that position now the end bc ndp put themselves in a really tough position by creating

Carter 5:06

creating a new set of rules a brand new set of rules that overlays their primary set of rules which is a person who runs in the nomination gets the most votes gets to be the candidate that's the way we usually run The other way that we run things is the leader's office or someone else gets to choose who candidates are. This is kind of a combination of both where if a male MLA steps down, the first group of people that should be consulted are female candidates and indigenous or people of color. Now that's great in principle, but when it came to actual practice in this particular case, the star candidacy of Nathan Cullen became

Carter 5:41

became the most important thing that overshadowed everything else. And now he makes a minor slip up. And Corey and I, I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about what the slip up is and how big or how small it is. But because he was the star candidate who was selected in this special process, now all of a sudden that slip up becomes much, much more significant and a channel changer for the BC liberals to try and change their way or

Carter 6:10

or change the channel on their big issue. So for me, this is a bunch of different things all coming together. Because if Nathan Cullen's just a normal candidate, I don't think this gets to the level that it is. But he's a star candidate chosen through a special process that ignored their own special process. And that's the genesis, in my opinion, of the actual controversy. I'm not sure. I mean, maybe Kinkles is a racist thing

Carter 6:37

thing to call people, in which case I'm cancelled. I'll check Twitter here as soon as the podcast drops to see if I'm cancelled or not. But it feels like the

Carter 6:47

the BC Liberals are reaching quite a far ways to make that particular comment into a racist one.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

I have actually parked the domain name cancelcarter.ca about 12 years ago, and I've been trying every single month with something. You're fucking Teflon as it relates to getting you canceled. Now someone's going to try, by the way, again. Someone's going to try again.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Corey's actually looking it up to see if I own it. I do not own it, Corey.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

You might as well get it now before one of our listeners does. Carter, okay, thanks for doing that. Thanks for bringing up the topics you want to talk about. How about we go this way? let's talk about the specific of this Nathan Cullen situation and the ramifications of this election. And then I'll expand out to two topics that I think are interesting. The nomination process, which you brought up, but then this broader notion, which you also brought up, you know, tongue in cheek of, of cancelling candidates, which we've seen much more in our politics. And I think that culture on that, especially in the political arena has changed. But Corey, over to you. The question I have for you is, you know, A, what do you make of this incident as this isolated incident with Nathan Cullen? And B, let's get into the politics of BC. Do you think this does anything for the BC liberals or provides them any sort of opportunity considering how far down they are?

Corey 7:57

Well, I don't think it presents them much of an opportunity. Let's talk a bit about what happened. And I think that one of the things I'll say right off the bat is it probably wouldn't be seen as much of a scandal at all were it not for the stacking of how Nathan Cullen got his nomination. Because it does, I mean, let's be frank, it looks a little dodgy. The BCNDP, like the rules, hate the rules, have rules that a equity-seeking group, I believe is how they put it, gets a nomination when a male MLA decides not to seek re-election. And so the

Corey 8:30

the BCNDP supposedly asked 15 people if they wanted to be the candidate from equity-seeking groups. They all said no. So they went to Nathan Cullen as number 16. Oh, sure okay i find that a little hard to believe that this was a totally straight up legitimate process but also there was an individual who put forward uh

Corey 8:49

her nomination papers but apparently two signatures were missing and rather than saying you could be one of the 15 that we just go to candidate who

Corey 8:57

actually put forward papers for this they

Corey 8:59

they just they jumped over it entirely i don't i confess i don't know the full story i'm sure somebody will fill me in on the full story but I will say, it

Corey 9:07

it does leave a bit of a cloud that perhaps the BC NDP is not as committed to equity and representation by Indigenous groups as, you know, the high-minded, you know, mandates that they create provide. So when you have that as background, and then you have what looks like candidates by Nathan Cullen being rather dismissive of the BC Liberals Indigenous candidate, that's where the scandal is. It's just this notion that the BC NDP is somewhat dismissive of Indigenous peoples. The reality is what – at least I will say as much as I can glean from the story, having read about eight different versions of it because I didn't really get it. Like is Kinkles a slur? I don't understand. Like that was my first reaction when

Corey 9:50

when I heard Nathan Cullen said, yeah, he's not well-liked in his community. He'll get bedrock 20%. God, his nickname is Kinkles. I thought, okay, well, what am I not understanding about this story? It just sounds like one candidate being dismissive of another candidate. But what it comes down to, in my opinion, Zane, is simply he's being dismissive of an Indigenous person when the party has effectively been dismissive of Indigenous peoples. So that's the stacking and how two non-scandals can become a scandal. And it's an interesting cautionary tale for how narratives are created.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Carter, what do you make of the – and thank you for that, Corey, in terms of laying out the context for the NDP and then why you think this has – been getting some legs. Carter, do you agree with the reason that Corey put out there? And more specifically, what do you kind of make of what this might mean to the fortunes of John Horgan and the BCNDP? You think this is something they have enough runway to recover from? Or are they in a moment of like hypocrisy, that this actually could extend the cycle, so to speak, for the next, you know, however many days we have left?

Carter 10:55

Well, I don't think this is going to have any impact, because I think that most people are going to do uh are going to look at this story the the way that cory and i have just described it um the the word racist is being thrown around in the bc media uh like no one's business this is a racist comment um so most of us are going to go look and we'll read the article and then we'll try and find the racist bit and

Carter 11:15

and then we'll go back and re-look at the article again and try and find the racist bit um because

Carter 11:19

because i i mean i've i've not

Carter 11:22

not experienced racism the way that too many people have. But this just doesn't feel like it meets a criteria beyond just one candidate dismissing the prospects of another candidate that they're off against. I mean, Corey said that. I agree wholeheartedly.

Carter 11:39

at the end of this, the

Carter 11:41

the primary sin that Nathan Cullen appears to have committed is to have been nominated over top of an Indigenous woman who may

Carter 11:50

may or may not have told the the party to go pound

Carter 11:55

when she left the last time. So my

Carter 11:57

my view on this is that I

Carter 12:00

get very discouraged when I see words like this is a racist comment or this racist tirade or this racist caught

Carter 12:08

caught on tape when it's not racist.

Carter 12:10

Maybe it is. And if it is racist, I really encourage people to tweet at us, let us know, put it on my Facebook page, just explain it to me. Because I don't see this as a racist comment. I see this as a political comment that now the BC liberals are jumping on, trying to change the channel, trying to get out of their own mess. But ultimately, it will fail because the general population's not going to grab onto it. This is the equivalent of crying political wolf. It doesn't exist. It's not a real thing. And the general population will be less inclined to believe you the next time it happens.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Corey, I know you put your hand up. You want to add something? I'll throw a question onto that as well, which is, okay,

SPEAKER_00 12:49

okay, we both, I should say you both, and we all agree that this will probably not have an impact to John Horgan in his election. Do you feel like this will have an impact to Nathan Cullen and his seat?

Corey 13:01

i don't uh the uh the president of the haida has has already come out and said nathan cullen has nothing to apologize for here so i think that's certainly going to to dampen any kind of suggestion that this is um this is a racially insensitive comment and it is fascinating to me what's what steven said is spot so first of all let me just say i agree it's it's likely not to have a significant impact in the bc election this is something that is is sort of difficult to And I, like Stephen, I really want someone to explain it to me, maybe beyond what I've sort of said, besides the fact that the party has arguably betrayed their equity mandate, how this individual moment in isolation is racist, eludes me a bit, right? Right. He Nathan Cullen said he wasn't well liked in his own community that that I don't think is inherently a racist comment or even racist after the first level of analysis.

Corey 13:58

What, however, Nathan Cullen has since done is apologize unreservedly for this comment. So in some ways it almost like I'm sure he thought, I don't want to be arguing about whether this is racist for the next bit. bit. And I'm sure John Horgan said, would

Corey 14:14

would you just stop right now? I don't want you fighting about whether this is racist for the next bit. But ultimately, that

Corey 14:21

that more than anything makes it look

Corey 14:24

racist of all of the things that I've seen the fact that Nathan Cullen himself has apologized for it. But I feel the apology came more from a place of trying to turn a page than it did out of any true contrition for the comments that were made.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

And Carter, this is exactly where I wanted I wanted to get to next. Why do you think Cullen apologized? Corey hit on it with his comments. Do you feel like we're in such a politically sensitive climate, especially with Cullen's base, which is a, you know, a party that, for lack of a better term, has like, you know, been very strong, at least in symbol and words on equity, on relations, on justice, etc. Do you feel like that's why he unreservedly apologized? Or what do you kind of think the political calculus was here?

Carter 15:07

I think that they just wanted to turn the page. I think that if you apologize now, then it's a one-day story rather than having the media follow you every day for the next three days until you ultimately apologize. So the question

SPEAKER_00 15:20

question I have is would you have advised the same, Carter? Would you have told him if you were Horgan's people, would you have told him to do the same?

Carter 15:28

Not in a million years. He didn't say anything worth apologizing for. Interesting. Yeah, I mean I think that Corey's point is pretty salient. you should only be apologizing for something you did wrong and you can make a pretty strong case that over the last week the BC Liberals have really put on a textbook clinic of what not to say on Zoom calls and this was this just didn't even get close

Carter 15:53

so I would have just said you know what compared to this statement compared to that statement this is not offensive or maybe just And do the, I apologize if you were offended. I'm sorry I offended you, kind of bullshit non-apology. But this

SPEAKER_00 16:13

I'm going to jump in for a second and push back a bit. You and I, and you're the one who's the first to tell me this, that there's a difference between being right and winning. In this case, being right seems to be the category that you're pushing up and promoting. Is this, you know, do you feel like that's perhaps going against a first principle of politics?

Carter 16:34

Not really, because I think that, keep in mind that a lot of people aren't going to read the full article looking for what the sin was. They're just going to see the apology. So they're going to assume the sin is real.

Carter 16:44

why put yourself in a position where people assume that the sin is real when the sin is so minor and inconsequential in the overall scheme of things? And again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is a big sin that I just don't see. I'm looking at this with the wrong set of glasses. But I don't think I am. I think I'm pretty tuned into what is

Carter 17:08

is offensive, what is not offensive. And I think the general population is going to be, yeah, I am because you're both laughing at me because I'm going to say shit that gets me canceled. I have to be very careful. So I'm being very

SPEAKER_00 17:22

very careful now. No, no, that's actually a very insightful comment. As someone who touches the edge for like decades plus now and has never gotten canceled, I feel like you probably know it better than we, Corey. In fairness,

Carter 17:33

I've been canceled at least two times.

Carter 17:36

resurrected myself because I'm that good.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Corey, you explained the NDP's justification here. I'm going to ask you the same question I did Carter. Would you, if you were part of Team Horgan, advise Nathan Cullen to do what he did? Apologize unreservedly.

Corey 17:53

would. I think it was the right move. It was let's turn the channel. I think it's a bit baffling and it makes them look somewhat guilty. But when

Corey 18:02

when you just absolutely surrender on the topic, how could this possibly sustain a news cycle for more than another day or two? Certainly well before the Saturday election, this will be not on people's radars. So it's time to play defense. And you don't want to be having this be the argument for the next week of the campaign, which is the final week of the campaign. Well,

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Well, tell me this then, Corey, if you're Team Cullen, and in this case, he's a candidate who probably has a team. He is a notable candidate. If you're being told by the leader's political team, hey, you better apologize. And they're probably thinking like, what the fuck? We didn't say jack shit. You're effectively telling our guy or telling Nathan to tell the public that he's ultimately a racist. Someone who's got a long storied political past, fuck you. Like, what are you using as a defense if you're if you're team Cullen on this? And I guess what I'm trying to ask you, in so many words is, do you feel like this was a contentious call on the inside?

Corey 18:59

very fact that Nathan Cullinan is such a sophisticated and seasoned former member of parliament and politician tells me he understands that this is not the time that you want to be touching these kinds of rails. Now, it is interesting because it's not as though this is an NDP, like,

Corey 19:17

like, total safe seat, right? This is something that they won by a fair bit last time, but it's not, you know, the seat is often within 10 points, I guess is what I would say. So you definitely don't want to be taking damage unnecessarily, but I assume they thought star candidate plus the basic fundamentals of this riding equals you can take this hit and it allows us to move on and not have the campaign subsumed. Carter,

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Carter, finish us off on this before we expand and talk more broadly about nominations.

Carter 19:51

what ministers and governments do um the the anything that happens behind closed doors is fine but when the uh first minister asks a minister and cabinet to uh to apologize they they just do so yeah

Corey 20:26

is the audition you want to be right nathan do you want to be right or do you want to win that's

Corey 20:31

that's the conversation and it's over so

SPEAKER_00 20:34

carter let's talk about nominations you brought this up right um what would the ideal process of structuring nominations for star candidates look like? Because part of this was not necessarily a vetting error, right? We've seen vetting errors in the past, and we can talk about that specifically as it relates to in Toronto Centre right now in the federal scene with Marcy Lenn and some of her comments coming out in the past where she's supported a 9-11 truther video. So this particular case wasn't necessarily a vetting error. But what does it perhaps elucidate for our listeners? What does a nomination process, if you can even call it that, for a star candidate looks like, for the parachuted candidate looks like, because we've talked extensively on this podcast about nomination processes, green light committees, but this is like the short circuit or the shortened pathway. What sort of things do you have to look out for? And what sort of things do you have to mitigate against when introducing a star candidate into a nomination process? Well,

Carter 21:28

the first thing you want to do with a star candidate is you'd like them to win a democratic process right so that would be the perfect in the perfect world your star candidate shows up against all other comers and because they're so good they win um but that doesn't happen a lot of the time a lot of the time there's other candidates that have stronger uh local roots or they have a group that they can pull on and that's where the the green light committee starts coming in first of all because there are a lot of candidates that do say the wrong thing or have have tweeted the wrong thing, or bring the wrong background that doesn't represent the party values. You don't have to be a

Carter 22:05

a person who represents the party values to win a nomination race if you've got enough people who will buy the membership to support you.

Carter 22:14

So the Greenlight Committee gets put in place to ostensibly take those really bad apples out. But then it becomes pretty evident that it's easier for the Greenlight Committee to take out not just the bad apples, But the apples that can beat your guy. So

Carter 22:29

So you take, you know, you go through and you say, I really want Nathan Cullen to win. Now, we went through this when

Carter 22:36

when Farouk Adadia was running in 2012. The premier wanted Farouk Adadia to be her next justice minister and the next government. He was going to be the next the next justice minister. So we ran him in a democratic process with a really diffused group. And he lost. bust uh so then we went to another riding and we said to the next riding um you know we really would you know because it was a nomination race that had just collapsed under its own weight there was cheating accusations it was it was tragic it was one of those things where you know people were bussed in and everybody was angry and we thought well why don't we just make farouk dadi the the candidate and everybody everybody universally told us to go fuck ourselves because that wasn't going to happen in this democratic party and so we finally get him nominated in like the totally wrong riding for him. And

Carter 23:23

And let's just say that if his name had been Frank Atkins, I'm pretty sure he would have gotten elected. But Farouk Haddadia just didn't plan. I'm not saying there's a race problem in Calgary, but

Carter 23:32

but there's a race problem in Calgary.

Carter 23:36

that's what you want to avoid. I mean, you don't want Nathan Cullen having to bounce from constituency to constituency to constituency trying to find a nomination. What you do is you shut down everybody else. You say that you went through the steps of your process to try and find an indigenous female person of of color but unfortunately you couldn't find any of those people who met their criteria it's not your fault you asked and then you just say that nathan cullen's our guy because i mean you want nathan cullen in your cabinet i mean who doesn't want nathan cullen in their cabinet he's got everything you want he's experienced he knows the ropes he knows how to play the game this

Carter 24:09

this is the reality that we should be that that i'm sure that corgan

Carter 24:13

corgan went through when he went through the the

Carter 24:15

the uh discussion but the problem is it wasn't democratic so

Carter 24:18

so you wind up right back in the the beginning where you go through that hellish experience that we went through in Alberta trying to get Farooq Adadi elected. You know, there's no winning on these nomination processes if you're not courting, if your high profile star candidate isn't also your most democratically electable star candidate.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Right. It's a good point because often, you know, political parties are willing to pay the price that they fly someone in, drop them into a riding. All that really happens as a political price is the six people that wanted to run there grumble, grumble. They leave the party. They probably say some stuff, but they don't have a big enough profile to really make any sort of splash or harm it. But this is a little bit different. Corey, same question to you. What are things that a party needs to be aware of when parachuting in a candidate? And we're kind of seeing a live example of this right now.

Corey 25:07

Yeah, and we have no shortage of examples across Canadian history, across history of political parties that use a similar system. It's this broken promise of democracy, this broken promise of equity that

Corey 25:19

that leads to these awkward moments. It's not the actual act. It's how the intentions and the act do not jive at all. These high-minded values crash against this political expediency, and it sort of exposes political machines for what they are, which are crass

Corey 25:31

crass operations designed to win elections and to govern effectively. So

Corey 25:35

So we haven't really talked about the value of star candidates because a legitimate question that can and should be asked is, well, if they can't win a nomination clean, and if If they can't win within the rules and align with the party's values, are they actually a star candidate? But candidates are not the same as governors, and I don't mean governors like heads of states. I mean there are certain skill sets that are really desirable for when you're putting together a cabinet. Nathan Cullen would be fantastic in a cabinet. But Stéphane Dion, fantastic

Corey 26:05

fantastic in a cabinet, probably would have been an atrocious candidate trying to win a nomination clean.

Corey 26:11

And so this is why political parties start saying, okay, if I'm either cabinet-making or just trying to create an appearance of my political party to the general public of look at all of these rock stars, I want these people there. Democracy be damned. So again, that's that kind of that crash

Corey 26:25

crash against the high-minded values. So here's the thing about star candidates though, Zane.

Corey 26:31

We call them star candidates. That's a broad topic. It just means a very desirable candidate. But they often have roles where they can't be a public candidate for a year. They can't fundraise. They can't sell memberships. Doing so would often require them to step down from their role if it's like a very senior role at a corporation or in a public body or whatnot. And so they don't really have a clean shot at a nomination. So parties tend to go through these very disingenuous steps like we have seen here, right? Either, yeah, we talked to 15 people. Nobody wanted it. We had to go to the white man. Sure, I doubt it. I mean, maybe after some persuasion that was the case, or maybe that was a very cherry-picked list. But I seriously doubt that somebody said, NDP nomination, NDP held seat. Yeah, I don't want that across the board. I'm sure there was a more, shall we say, persuasive conversation that occurred.

Corey 27:23

So parties do that. They lean on you. They talk about, hey, be a team player. they deny other people nominations all of a sudden nomination rules get enforced that have never been enforced in a political party before about you know an i being dotted a t being crossed they deny membership sales these membership sales suddenly don't conform despite the fact the party would have loved to have those memberships any other kind of situation and then they do uh the ultimate move which is hold the nomination until the very start of the campaign and say well we're out of time we just have to appoint you know we didn't let you have a nomination contest now now you're out of time, and now we're going to appoint a star candidate.

Corey 27:57

All of these create kind of a sense of ill

Corey 28:00

ill will. But all of them are somewhat inevitable in the political processes that we have. And so I guess, I think the real unfortunate thing is, is the kind of the absolutist high minded language, if political parties were just a little more honest and said, yeah, we're going to appoint occasionally. And I have seen some political parties say, the leader can appoint up to 10 star candidates in their constitution. I think the Alberta party of all parties had that here in alberta uh but you know like if we could just be real about there's a reason why you might want to hold some writings for some people to be star candidates uh and not over promise and create all of these statements that you can't live up to i think we would be in a better world carter

SPEAKER_00 28:39

carter do you think this process of parachuting will ever change no

Carter 28:43

no i don't think it'll ever change because it should it change no

Carter 28:45

no i don't believe that it should ever change because Because the world's not perfect. First of all, there are lots of people who are going to run for a seat for your political party that you don't want, that don't represent the values of your political party. So you've got to have the green light committee. And then there's also a lot of people, as Corey has said, that can't campaign until a year before. So what you will often get is you can get somebody who is able to campaign really early in the process and attract a lot of support, but doesn't necessarily attract support for your party. There's all kinds of examples where people have come from

Carter 29:28

outside who have maybe a large church presence or a large community presence outside that just basically come and take over the Riding Association. You have to have the ability to put these candidates in place. And the star candidate is super important because ultimately the premier needs his or her team. And

Carter 29:46

And his or her team does not necessarily mean the democratically supportive group from all 87 ridings that is, you know, British Columbia. That is not necessarily the best way to get things, the best candidate.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Coy, should and will it change? change?

Corey 30:03

Should it change? Well, it

Corey 30:06

it could change. I'm not sure it should change. Or at least if it changes, it should change slowly. And it should change at the same pace our political system is changing. So here's the thing. Historically, as opposed to America, where in America, candidates pick parties, you just say, I'm a Democrat, I'm going to run in the Democratic nomination, or I'm a Republican, I'm going to run in the Republican nomination. Here, historically, parties have have picked candidates and um and and so we are in a bit of a transition here there's been a lot more power given into the individual members and into the public at large you see this with the liberal supporter system you see this in general with the opening of party memberships and the you

Corey 30:41

you know the democratization of the parties uh where you have everything from like party platforms to candidates to everything just sort of being picked by the quote-unquote grassroots

Corey 30:50

arguably not as much as they claim all the time but the reason why i think they need to be very careful is political

Corey 30:58

parties do have an interest in a level playing field for candidates. And that's impossible to create if somebody can start two years before the other person. If you have a two-year lead on selling memberships, that doesn't make you a better candidate, doesn't make you a better politician, doesn't make you better as a minister down the road if you find yourself in that position. It just means you had more time. It actually may mean you're less qualified in some of these things. Maybe you didn't have a job. Maybe you had all of the time in the world to just sort of wander through, whereas the other people are tied to something different. So you

Corey 31:28

can't say you can't sell memberships, you can't try to control the nomination contest, there is a reality that the party has to have some safeguards against. And those safeguards, parties

Corey 31:39

parties just need to be a little more forthright about, frankly, and not allow the crown jewels of their kind of nomination process to just be gamed by anybody under any consideration.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Carter, I wasn't going to go here, but I might as well. Riddle me this for a second. We rarely kind of give strategic advice to individuals that are not existing politicians or political parties as an academic exercise. What if someone's listening right now and is thinking of running in a nomination, party agnostic? And let's just suppose they're not a star candidate or a parachuted candidate. What are some of the things they need to know? Because it seems like even from what we're saying that depending on the writing, like disappointment is part of the equation. It's something you need to have as a scenario that ends up happening. You knock on doors, sell memberships. A year later, you just get punted out with just straight up disappointment. So tell me if there's any merit going in this direction. But I thought I'd open that up and see if you have any thoughts with your experience and with Corey's experience being very senior in political parties. and probably having to maybe in some cases deliver bad news to that person that was door knocking for a full fucking year and then was told that, oh, by the way, we already have a star person that we want to put in. So any comments to people or any past experiences I'd just be really curious to hear about?

Carter 32:58

And it may sound a little bit trite, but I don't think it's that difficult to be the star. For example, if you've been door knocking for a year, if you're able to actually bring memberships to the table, If you're actually able to host a leader's event where you do a fundraiser for the leader, if you're able to be a political operative where you say, I am part of this political process for the leader and for this team, guess what? You're a star. Being a star does not mean that you've worked, you know, that you're Bill Morneau and you've worked in industry and you're a millionaire. What being a star means is that, you

Carter 33:35

know, how many young women candidates were Justin Trudeau parading around as stars because they were young, they were smart, they were new to the scene, they had constituencies that supported them, they were exciting, they spoke super well. I don't think that this is a difficult thing to say to someone to be a star. Here's the steps to it, though. Don't just come out of your garage one day and say, I'm going to be a political candidate.

Carter 34:03

Start your work early. Get known in the political party. Be of the political party that you wish to serve. Get to know the people who are the players in that political party. this is not a complex or high bar to get over most of us for example know that the number of real volunteers on any campaign or any any political endeavor is actually much smaller than the number of people who say that they volunteered on any political campaign that's true so actually getting involved actually getting to know people elevating yourself to for example to a campaign manager or campaign communication director or something like that Matt. It's as simple as volunteering as early as possible.

Carter 34:42

So becoming the star is relatively easy in the overall scheme of things. It just takes patience and it requires that you start thinking ahead. You can become a school trustee before you decide to become an MLA. You know what that makes you? A star.

Carter 34:56

So just make these choices so that you're the star and you're not the one getting punted out the door because you haven't done your homework. The people getting punted out the door, my humble opinion, are most often the people who haven't done their homework and haven't done their homework within the existing process.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

I'm so glad I went down this path, Carter. I love that advice. Corey, anything to add or to comment on what Carter said?

Corey 35:20

completely agree with what Carter said. It was a great summary of it all. A star is born, right? You can create yourself in that sense. Become the president of your community association. association join and become a great volunteer in a dozen different contexts to get you a dozen different you know groups that can help you out um

Corey 35:38

um be you know embody the values that the party is talking about if they're talking about youth and change and you're young and you can bring change and you're a star you represent what that party wants to represent and and

Corey 35:51

and uh well i don't necessarily agree entirely that all of the time if you're put aside it's because you don't you're They're not a star. You know, there are so many examples, especially here in Calgary, I think, and maybe just my background when I worked for the Federal Liberal Party of very hardworking, very smart, very talented, even relatively high profile liberals being put aside for higher profile liberals. But that's really the result of for so long in Calgary, there being one seat that the liberals might be interested in or like might think they have a shot at maybe two, maybe three. But still, you

Corey 36:25

can be a star. It doesn't necessarily require you to be the head of a Fortune 500.

Carter 36:33

Don't be the star. Like, don't think that you're just going to become the star at the federal level at the first try. I mean, there are levels of being involved in politics. You can be on your community association board. Then you can become a school trustee. Then you can become a counselor. Then you become the mayor. Then you become, you know, an MLA or a cabinet minister. Each step along the way brings you more star credibility. Most of the stars that are being kind of pushed out of the way don't have multiple levels of community involvement already. They have one level and then someone else with a higher level comes and pushes them out. I think from my point of view, there

Carter 37:12

there are many, many stars and it's just a matter of you

Carter 37:17

you working to recognize your own potential.

Carter 37:19

Corey mentioned that, you

Carter 37:21

you know, if a party is looking for a certain type of candidate, be that candidate. So and maybe, you know, maybe they're not looking for a white male candidate in this riding. Fine. Be the

Carter 37:35

the campaign manager that helps a young female or person of color get elected. That could be that could be your your ticket to becoming a star within the party. and there's lots of things that you can do like

Carter 37:47

like Corey for example who never existed in the political world yet of elections but you

Carter 37:53

you know exists you found him I gave him life I made him something bigger than he was

SPEAKER_00 38:01

yeah yeah and he thanks you every day before we start this podcast every single day Corey does a moment of grace it is a little awkward it's redundant he hasn't changed it for a while Well, no, thanks for that, guys. I mean, the rest of your Udemy course is available behind the paywall, but I think that was actually very interesting because you even convinced me that someone who's just inkling to get involved can position themselves with the right steps and organization to be that star candidate. I want to try to make a bit of a bridge here, and let's see if it's even going to be successful. You know, and you can see just by the time we're doing, I want to deep dive on this topic today. But there is

SPEAKER_00 38:44

is something else here that I found interesting, which was comments made by political figures, and how those are tested in the political zeitgeist these days. You know, half a decade ago, Carter, you and I were actively talking about this concept in Alberta called Bozo eruptions. These tweets, these comments made primarily in a past life that got someone one canceled or punted out of a nomination process or out of their outright, you know, general election. And we've seen that be a successful strategy in some elections. Carter, you were the beneficiary of a 2012 election here in Alberta where that, I shouldn't say was the sole reason, but let's say changed the narrative and helped you guys win that election. You know, in 2019 here in Alberta, it was a large part of the NDP strategy. And so while what Nathan Cullen did was not that. Perhaps what Marcia Lenn, the star liberal candidate, is doing in Toronto Centre in the by-election, some of her past comments have come out of supporting a 9-11 truth or film. So this is not a racist comment. This is not something that she said, you know, that was sexist or demeaning. But, you know, the movement is out to try to cancel her and to try to, like, minimize her. So I wanted to get your general thoughts on where you kind of think political political cancel culture has gone over the last little while? Has it changed from where it was a decade ago? Carter, I know you'd mentioned very recently that one day, you know, these social media, you know, posts that people make will no longer be a fireable offense. Are we getting there? Are we inching towards there? Have we retreated? I'm just kind of curious, maybe using the Cullen and the Lenz story to kind of lead us into that conversation a bit more.

Carter 40:26

yeah i mean i think that there there are different levels now of comments that people make right so some are just unforgivable you know you put forward a uh a racist comment uh when you were younger you're going to be found out you put that on your your facebook page um it's screen grabbed and someone's able to run it and now you're you're excluded from the process uh and i think that that's probably fair. A tweet in anger at someone I think is going to be less controversial. And some of these things that have been outed that maybe we shouldn't see like nude photos and things like that of candidates. I think that's having less impact now than it has in the past. We haven't seen any because I think we're also getting better at cleaning these things. um in

Carter 41:15

in fact it gets to the point where a major party chooses someone for a by-election and they've said something in the past that's kind of stupid you're kind of like how did that get past vetting right like um especially in a by-election when really you're choosing from the all all of toronto uh to fill that particular seat you know cory mentioned earlier that in calgary you have one uh one or two viable seats uh in toronto during the by-election that's the the one viable seat and i'm sure there were multiple star candidates that were star in quotation marks candidates available uh but this particular candidate fit the one that the the liberals were looking for uh and to find that that she said uh

Carter 41:55

uh things in the past maybe isn't surprising because i'm sure we've all said things in the past that were regretful for um but uh

Carter 42:02

uh it will be it's interesting to me how these

Carter 42:06

these things weren't cleaned up before you know cleaning them them before you become the candidate is really the time to do it. Put your apologies out early, people, before you're under pressure as the candidate to apologize. It's a lot easier when you're able to put out the apology tweet a year before you're actually the candidate.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Corey, Carter mentioned a few interesting things here, you know, one of which was this concept of clumping. We've clumped all sins as being relatively equal in terms of this political cancel culture, right? Like whatever you did, it's this, you got to get canceled. And And the second part I'd want to introduce is the fatigue of the public, right? We've also seen in certain cases, and I think the 2019 provincial election here in Alberta was a good example, the first three or four candidates that the UCP, you know, had remarks or social media comments on, Jason, can he let go? There on after, he didn't. It just seemed like he made a political calculus that it doesn't matter, regardless of what the sin was or the gravity of the sin. so any comments from you as to where we kind of sit with our current political culture on this topic yeah

Corey 43:10

yeah it's like you can see the notes i'm scratching out to myself here zane what are the unfortunate consequences of all of this ramping up in this outrage that's the same whether it is something that happened uh 10 years ago or 10 hours ago whether it's a big problem or a small problem is

Corey 43:26

is a certain numbness has occurred to all of it here and so half the world's getting more more outraged, and we'll be outraged at everything. And it's probably not half, but you know, the, you know, the warrior class in the political world, and then the rest of us are just sort of getting numb to it all. And not that's not a good thing. That's, that's not something that I applaud here. We really do need to find nuance again, you know, the record loses context over time. But some things, you know, the statute of limitations should be longer on certain comments, certain actions absolutely should be considered for a longer period of time. The problem is, We haven't really figured out what that is or how we're supposed to process this or come to a standard that is somewhere between everything's

Corey 44:08

everything's cancelable and nothing's cancelable, right?

Corey 44:11

right? And it's really tough. And I think it's something we're going to fumble through for many years to come here. But ultimately, look, in a world where it's now impossible to forget, we will ultimately need to get to a point where we can forgive.

Corey 44:23

And we do need to get to a place where we can say that was 10 years ago and judging on all other things, that's not a huge deal, without just whitewashing the big things without saying that was 10 minutes ago, and it was a huge deal, but I don't care. Because right now we are a bit lost.

SPEAKER_00 44:39

And Carter, to finish it off with you on this topic. I mean, I think the elephant in the room in this situation is Donald Trump and what he's done to our political Overton window of acceptable discourse, comments, etc. But perhaps let's circle back to what we talked about But initially, if you're setting up the structure for a 2020 Greenlight Committee, what are some of the base rules or comments that you would consider differently than you did than perhaps when you were running a Greenlight Committee in 2012, eight, nine years ago? What has changed for you that – what's that bar look like that's different both from commentary and past behavior, but either from vetting? Maybe finish us off with – and I know I'm putting you on the spot, so I do apologize. But any general thoughts you have as to what a 2020 modernized green light committee looks like would be really fascinating for me to hear. Well,

Carter 45:31

Well, I put things into minor offenses that have been that we haven't seen and been ignored. I do minor offenses that have been apologized for, that there's been some sort of reconciliation around. And I would look then for major offenses and the major offenses if they have been dealt with. If the offense has been committed against an individual and an apology has been made or there's been some sort of attempt at reconciliation, then I think that major offenses can be in

Carter 45:58

in some fashion reconciled. You don't have to say that this major offense is going to follow you forever. But if I'm a candidate, the

Carter 46:09

case that I would ask or if I'm working with a candidate, the case that I would ask is, have you actually done the reconciliation that is required for you to then leave that that mistake that you made, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago or whatever behind you? because if there hasn't been a reconciliation attempt, then it's still today, right? Then it still exists out there today. And Corey's point about something that is said today versus something that was said in the past, there should be a distinction from something you said five years ago and something you said yesterday. And the distinction in my mind is five years have passed and you've had the time to make an apology without the glare of public scrutiny, right?

Carter 46:52

right? You've been given the opportunity to make it right without the

Carter 46:55

the media coming down on you, the Calgary Herald picking up the phone, the Vancouver Sun coming after you, global television putting a camera in your face.

Carter 47:02

You have the opportunity to make it right away from the spotlight. So make it right. Go through your own social media if you're a candidate. Do your pre-vetting. And then when you get to the Green Light Committee, make sure you articulate each one of those things. That, to me, is the new process. Not, did this person say something that was wrong? But, of course, this person said something that was wrong. We're all saying something that is wrong, and especially given that the goggles with which we look at this change from time to time. Things that we said in the past that were perhaps deemed to be part of the societal norms are now looked at as they're not part of the societal norms 20 years later. So that's fine, again, but making

Carter 47:47

making sure that you're apologizing for that, making sure that that you're awake to what you should be saying and who you should be apologizing to is super

Carter 47:56

super important. I don't think, though, that just

Carter 47:59

just saying that everything that comes out of a person's mouth is racist is going to be a very strong solution for the future of politics.

SPEAKER_00 48:09

Corey, finish us off on this segment. Any advice or any notes for what a 2020 modernized Greenlight Committee kind of needs to look like? uh, with respect to, to social media comments, past behavior, et cetera.

Corey 48:25

Well, Stephen's right. Everybody's going to have something that's going to be a challenge going forward for all of us, right? It's just, think about us. We have 826 episodes where Stephen Carter has gone from a

Corey 48:38

a far right reactionary to a far left activist. It's amazing how we can change over time. People

Corey 48:43

People change over time and you know, we don't necessarily, that's not a bad thing. change is a good thing and

Corey 48:49

and um you know when we have a record of all that old stuff that doesn't necessarily mean it's what you believe today so for

Corey 48:55

for me as a green light committee that's

Corey 48:57

that's important understanding the evolution over time understanding how those comments may have changed how you may have a track record to show that you are sincerely different from the comments that have previously been made and having that record readily available if and when it becomes a discussion you know i have served on green light committees and it used to be one of the big things we asked ourselves was is it in the public domain is it hidden is it unrecognized or is it something that's already been discussed actively well now everything is in the public domain every thought we have every utterance is out there on a record on on insta or on facebook or on twitter uh or or in your dms or anything like that it's all out there it all exists in some way shape or form there's a big record of everything that has ever occurred in your life from about 2007 on and that's pretty fucking weird But as a result, that's no longer a great litmus test because you can't just say, well, obviously it was public. I tweeted it to the world. So we need to understand what

Corey 49:54

what is the trumping sentiment and is that trumping – is that enough given the severity of it? So don't be surprised if political parties actually start to formalize this in the next five to ten years.

SPEAKER_00 50:04

I was going to say, do you think there could be a truce between political parties heading into a cycle? I think there's

Corey 50:08

there's already a truce,

Corey 50:10

truce, Zane. I think there are certain things. It's always been the case. I'm not going to get into it, but where political parties will say, you

Corey 50:17

you know, actually in the 90s, it was quite literally, I won't out yours and you won't out mine, right? When the

Corey 50:23

the idea of homosexuality was a little less evolved than it is now. But this is going to be something where, you

Corey 50:31

you know, I expect political parties will actually look at it and say, okay, well, if it's a comment of this nature and it's more than five years ago, we expect an apology. If it's more than 20 years ago, you've

Corey 50:40

you've got to be prepared to deal with it. If it's something that happened last week, that's no good, red light, you're not going to be approved as a candidate. Because the problem is, also, there's an inconsistency to the application. And that inconsistency is appropriate, because we're all different human beings, and we all have different situations and circumstances. But I think political parties are just going to say, it's a lot to ask of our volunteers on a regional basis or even to centralize. We're just gonna have to set some guidelines around this. I suspect that is a real possibility in the next five to 10 years. we'll

SPEAKER_00 51:12

we'll put a pin in that there and leave it that segment and let's move on to our next segment meanwhile in ucp land guys i want to go through a bunch of items that the last couple of weeks have put together in the ucp universe i want to get your guys's take so we're going to do this rapid fire style like we generally do when we have a miscellaneous or potpourri bag of items i'll go through something that the ucp has done and you will give me your one to ten scale on on whether you like it or not, one being total shit, ten being this is a good strategy. And you need to put on the hat of a UCP strategist to provide them with that charity, so to speak. But Carter, I'll start with you and see how we do. The first one is right hot off the press, Jason Kenney saying that resource project financing depends on climate progress. So an article comes out yesterday where Jason Kenney puts this out. So 1 to 10, if you're Kenny, what do you think of this strategy of acknowledging climate process, so to speak?

Carter 52:12

Well, I think it's a needs improvement, Zane. I mean, it's a little bit late to the game. He's been talking. I mean, this isn't a new problem. This is something that has been around for a long time. Other governments have started to talk about it, whether it was going back to Prentice's government, Redford government, Stelmac government, of course, the Notley government. and all of a sudden Jason Kenney awoke

Carter 52:37

awoke in the last 48 hours and decided that all of a sudden climate change is a real thing and he needs to start figuring out how he can be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Carter 52:47

It's too late. And on top of that, when

Carter 52:50

government is still running the war room, maybe the research has come back from the war room and the only way that they can talk about oil and gas and get people to buy into the exploration that's happening in Alberta is

Carter 53:06

is to point out that we're

Carter 53:08

we're aware of climate change and taking action to try and address it, which, frankly, the major companies in Alberta have been doing for at least a decade.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

Corey, what do you make of this strategy for Jason Kenney?

Corey 53:21

Well, look, I don't think it's entirely fair to suggest he's never thought of this or that the province of Alberta hasn't been concerned with ESG, you know, environmental, social and governance issues underneath Jason Kenney's watch. I can't tell you the number of products that I saw come through development and across my desk when I ran communications for the province. Well, still, you know, under Kenney, talking about the actions that the government of Alberta was taking and had taken on this front, because it's always been understood that this is a growing requirement in the capital markets and beyond. So I sort of of reject the premise that everybody out there is saying this is a major sea change by jason kenney the thing about jason kenney's position though i'm not going to give a total pass on here is that

Corey 54:06

jason kenney uh and the conservatives and the conservative supporters for whatever reason could never hear rachel notley when she made this argument any more than now rachel notley can hear jason kenney on this neither

Corey 54:17

neither side is saying anything that different they're arguing about a carbon tax and they're arguing about extremities and degrees uh certainly my own personal philosophies we need to do more the world is in a lot of trouble but uh but you know alberta was the first jurisdiction to put a price on carbon that happened under a pc government ralph klein was the premier when when the legislation was originally passed on that um there there have been strides made to reduce the amount of coal production the amount of um the amount of uh you know intensity on emissions is it enough no i would argue it is absolutely not enough but But it's

Corey 54:50

it's not as though these are words that conservatives have never said in the past, and this is something that conservatives have never understood. So let's talk about why I think this might be a very good thing for the planet, if no one else, and hopefully for the conservatives, because that would show that there's some validity to taking these pro-environmental approaches. And this goes back to this only Nixon could go to China thing.

Corey 55:12

I want this province to take the actions that were being taken on the environment under under or like, let's just say the degree doesn't need to be the same ones, but the level of action plus what

Corey 55:22

what Rachel Notley did. And if Jason Kenney is willing to do this, and conservatives are willing to go along with it, because it's Jason Kenney doing this, I think that's a good thing. Only

Corey 55:30

Only Nixon could go to China, only Jason could go to carbon pricing. I'm fine with that.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

Corey, I'm going to stick with you for our next one.

Carter 55:38

Only Corey can defend everything that Jason is doing, right? Like, Corey's the one who's now all of a sudden gone from being the orange apologist to being the Kenny of watches. Fuck's sake. And I don't know what to do with it. I'm still a little bit lost. Did you ignore all

Corey 55:54

all of the words

Carter 55:54

words in between? No, of

Carter 55:56

course I didn't. I'm following along. I've got my cheat sheet in front of me. It's

Carter 56:00

It's good stuff, Corey. Good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

Corey, I'm going to stick with you on this one. UCP virtual AGM this past weekend. Policy number 11 is all anyone wants to talk about. Policy number 11, about private health care. A slim majority of delegates at the AGM

SPEAKER_00 56:19

support an exploration of private health care. The UCP have come back, the premier's office more specifically, saying they've made a guarantee and a pledge, but might look at some of the outcomes of the AGM for their next platform. What do you kind of make of that? You can obviously add your comments and commentary and context to privatizing health care, especially at an AGM. But I want to talk to you more specifically on the scale of 1 to 10. What do you make of the premier's office response that this is not something they'll do now, but it might be something worthy of consideration, the broader policy package coming out of the AGM down the road?

Corey 56:56

Oh, I think it's a problem. I think it's not necessarily the response that's the problem, but policy 11 itself and that it got this far and then that it passed. It's a very bad thing. And look, I've been the executive director of political party when a resolution passes that you thought for sure was going to die on the floor, and you were actually kind of hoping it would die on the floor because then you could point to it and say, look, the party's not behind that. this is a very bad thing uh for the ucpa we do know that private health care is a deeply unpopular

Corey 57:26

proposal a deeply unpopular thing to put forward in

Corey 57:30

in alberta in quebec in bc in ontario anywhere in this country because people start saying all right if there are two streams and there is the good health care over here and if you're rich you can get that what is going to happen to my health care and so uh they are going to have to be dealing with this now going forward in a you

Corey 57:49

you know in a dozen different situations and a dozen different avenues and and this goes so see my earlier comments about nominations the problem is the ucp talks about grassroots guarantees and talks about making sure that you have individual members voices but here again you have high-minded values crashing against political reality and political expediency this the

Corey 58:11

truth of any policy convention that i have ever seen is policy conventions result in words being written that could put on a binder somewhere in the leader's office on a shelf somewhere it doesn't actually result in in you know it's not as though tomorrow this is the policy of the government of alberta but

Corey 58:28

you've got now a a group of ucp members who have endorsed this that's going to to create pressure for more private options that is not going to be popular with the public as a whole and as a premier's office i i think you needed to go um well you couldn't really go any further you'd put yourself in a bit of a box here uh with with the grassroots guarantee and all of that but yeah we've got the canada health act we've got the the pledge about health care but now the question will become what about next election what about next election what do you really want to do what are you setting up for what are you trying to to move pieces around to allow down the road. And even moves that I'm sure the Kennedy government would like to do on the privatization on delivery

Corey 59:09

delivery will now be seen in the lens of is this just setting up for private funding and true two-tier health care?

SPEAKER_00 59:16

Carter, same question to you. And I'll add Corey's response as part of it. How much of a problem, first of all, is this? And secondly, what do you think of their strategy to say nothing will do now, but this might be informative for for 2023?

Carter 59:30

Well, I think that Corey's

Carter 59:32

Corey's exactly right. Members have their own ideas about where they want to take policy, and that is a long ways away from the legislature. There's all kinds of history of policy being proposed and approved by political parties that is then ignored by the governments that represent those political parties. So I don't think that this is in any way, shape, or form binding on Jason Kenney. I do think that his ideology leans towards privatization, even if it remains with public administration. My own personal feeling is that public versus private is the wrong argument to be having.

Carter 1:00:12

There's a tremendous amount of privatization already within the system. This isn't necessarily going to change that. What this does do is open up the idea that there can be private payment for the same services that you you can get it in the public system and it passed what 53 to 47 like this is not an overwhelming mandate i'm not certain

Carter 1:00:29

certain that uh the minister of health or the uh or

Carter 1:00:32

or the premier will be taking this uh to the bank but just

Carter 1:00:36

just yet another reason why we shouldn't be asking the members of a party to make any goddamn decisions cory

SPEAKER_00 1:00:42

cory you've got a comment and then i'll go back to you carter for our next one well

Corey 1:00:45

well there there is a reality here that steven tipped on and i i just want to talk about a bit, too, which is we talk about health care in this country with an amazing lack of nuance. It is by far the largest part of government. I think the government of Alberta is spending about $25 billion of a $55 billion budget this year on health care. And that's just health care. We call that health care. But there's so much underneath it. And I am quite opposed to the idea of of two-tier health care and just just uh in general allowing uh the wealthy to get better health care than than uh the non-wealthy but uh the reality is when you when you unpack health care a little bit there are things that you absolutely do not want a profit motive in for sure right it would be crazy diagnostics you don't want people running you through the door as fast as possible you know uh certain types of care that are ongoing and sustaining you don't want somebody saying i'm just checking this box and you're you're now done and i'm moving on to the next client but there are things in health care that are defined action defined outcome things like taking an x-ray and seeing you have a broken bone and

Corey 1:01:55

and and i guess you could probably introduce market mechanisms into that without breaking the entire system but like we can't even have that conversation it becomes such a third rail because people don't want to talk about private

Corey 1:02:07

private health care and i get that because it feels like the thin edge of the wedge and it's going to lead to all of of these other things that really jeopardize care and you only need to look south of the border to see how horrible that can be for the majority of people it's great if you got a lot of money but it's pretty horrific for for everybody else um but we

Corey 1:02:24

we are going to need to have this conversation at some point because if we are publicly going to pay for all of this we do need to find a way to make sure we need to do everything we can to make sure we're getting bang for our buck i guess that's what i would say there as long as it is not jeopardizing care so So a more nuanced health care conversation would be a great thing to have down the road. That said, two-tier health care, that's

Corey 1:02:47

that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the fact that we actually procure a lot of services in this system, and there are probably other ways to do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:56

Carter, I'm going to move it on to you for this next one. On the heels of Jason Kenney himself taking a 10% salary cut, his MLA is taking a 5% salary cut. He's now come out this week with political staff that work for his government, taking a 7% salary cut. So strategically, as a former political staffer, I'm curious to get your take on this. What do you think of this move? Do you feel like it accomplishes its agenda? Do you feel like it's targeting the wrong people? Give me your response. I know you may not even give me the scale, but I've stopped caring just like you now.

Carter 1:03:27

No, I care a lot. And, you know, this is a 2.0 on a 4.0 scale. scale um

Carter 1:03:35

here's here's my first of all let's just take a moment to to think about poor matt wolf who who is taking a seven percent cut all right which is gonna be like almost 14 like a thousand dollars a month a thousand dollars a month the poor guy's gonna have less in his jeans and i feel bad for him um this is a signal that's being sent across the uh the government to tell public services that that we're coming for you. And it was received loud and clear. You

Carter 1:04:04

You know, my pushback on it is, if you accept that the issues managers were probably overpaid anyways, the 7% rollback doesn't really matter all that much. But the government's position, and Ken Bozenkul, my friend Ken Bozenkul, will say this frequently. He says that in Alberta, we pay too much for public services like nurses, teachers, when compared to British

Carter 1:04:26

British Columbia. Columbia my pushback is well then they'll go work in British Columbia I'm told that it's really nice out there so there's a really big outside you know you can go outside and do things you guys wouldn't like it but I'd love it uh but this is this is a signal that's all it is it's a signal that says we're coming for you guys and um I'm I'm really not looking forward to the battle that's going to happen uh about this in in uh in

Carter 1:04:52

in March in the spring and although some are saying it It could come as early as this fall. I think it's going to come in the budget.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:58

Corey, before I go to you, Carter, what do you make of the strategy then? If this is a telegraph to cut more, what do you make of the strategy of Kenny taking his cut, his MLS taking their cut, and now his political staff taking the cut? What do you make of those three as a political strategy to telegraph that? Do you feel like it's effective?

Carter 1:05:14

Absolute textbook. This is what you do. You make sure that there is no one who can come after you later and say, well, you're not sharing the pain that is going to happen to these public servants. you've taken the pain before them and that

Carter 1:05:25

that that gives you some credibility to come back and say you know we're we're suffering as much as everybody else and I think that that's a message that really resonates in Alberta I think it's a wrong way of thinking of things but I think that people in Alberta think you know I've suffered and now it's time for those goddamn teachers to suffer too and I think that that's just wrongheaded but I don't get to decide how how everybody thinks.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:53

Corey, same question to you. The political staff taking that 7% cut, what do you make of this strategy on that scale of 1 to 10?

Corey 1:06:01

Well, it's pure theater and it's a bit ridiculous. Putting aside how little money it saves in the grand scheme of things, you know, 7% reduction, you

Corey 1:06:09

you could have just given them contracts that paid 7% less when you hired them to the job about a year ago,

Corey 1:06:15

right? In a way, aren't you sort of saying, I paid them too much This is not like MLA salaries or premier salaries that were set ahead of time. You decided this is what these individuals were worth. So why are they now worth 7% less? The answer to that question is obvious. It's exactly what Stephen's saying. It's that you are foreshadowing to the broader public service that reductions are coming. and

Corey 1:06:39

and that i think will be um interesting because of course you've got uh collective bargaining going on with basically everybody under the sun over the next bit and if the seven percent reduction is the flag you're planting in the ground there i

Corey 1:06:53

i don't know any union in this province that's that's looking to

Corey 1:06:57

to go back to their members with a seven percent reduction you know two three percent maybe the government can get through hard bargaining but seven percent forget get it it's i mean you're basically declaring either

Corey 1:07:06

either labor war or the the threat that you're you're going to look at some interesting options such as legislation to get exactly what you want on this front which is a possibility it's it's not something that is without precedent in this country although there are some some legal considerations there so

Corey 1:07:22

so um i don't know i mean it could easily be part of a budget implementation steven you could be absolutely right it could also be a piece of standalone legislation this fall this could all be uh you know because here's what what I would say. If it is foreshadowing for the budget, that's a long time in between those two actions. That's quite a long time. And it makes me think that maybe this is coming sooner rather than later.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:45

Corey, I'm sticking with you for this next one. A recent report said that 43% of new COVID cases in Alberta have no known source as to where they're coming from. And simultaneously, the federal government's now updated COVID app doesn't work in Alberta. How big of a deal is is this uh how big of a problem i should say is this for the kenny government on that one to ten scale i

Corey 1:08:08

i i think it's a five because um you

Corey 1:08:13

you know it's it's just not something that's showing like it's it's getting people moved and agitated in big ways you're not seeing big online conversations about it but if we start to get a real runaway and if the app starts to show that it is useful in other jurisdictions but

Corey 1:08:28

like here's the reality not enough people are using the app anywhere for

Corey 1:08:31

it to be like the game changer we need it to be but it's

Corey 1:08:34

it's still to me a bit baffling that after all of this time we have not managed to incorporate the federal app into our existence there are so many advantages to using a federal app for starters what if somebody comes from another province and gets sick and that app allows us to do that for for second the way it exchanged codes that's that's very privacy sensitive it makes an awful lot of sense i do understand the alberta app has been updated it doesn't have some of the problems it originally had. But it

Corey 1:09:00

it doesn't necessarily resolve the fundamental challenge. You know, they talk about 270,000 downloads in Alberta.

Corey 1:09:06

Well, I was one of them and I deleted it because it was broken and I've never reinstalled it. I wonder how many people fall into that category. It just, like, this is not the kind of thing that you want to have provincial autonomy on. This seems to be autonomy for the sake of, I just don't understand why we wouldn't play ball on this very important important thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:26

Carter, same question to you. How big of a problem is this for Kenny on one to 10?

Carter 1:09:29

Well, I think that it's probably a three in terms of public perception, but it's more like an eight in terms of public health policy. So the public perception Corey's gone through in fairly good detail.

Carter 1:09:43

No one really knows no one compares. It's not like Albertans are running

Carter 1:09:47

ensure that our next election is that is held on the terms of whether or not we followed and downloaded Teresa,

Carter 1:09:53

Teresa, you know, Theresa Tam's version of the app that we haven't downloaded here in Alberta. You know, because we didn't download the Alberta one either. So it's

Carter 1:10:03

it's not a big deal. I do think that this creates a significant public health issue, though, because we're

Carter 1:10:09

we're not taking this seriously. And this is just but one area that Jason Kenney's government is proving that he's not taking this seriously. I would like to see some real action from the from the Kenney government that that shows that they

Carter 1:10:24

they understand and care about the

Carter 1:10:27

the covid problem and this would be one way

Carter 1:10:31

way of just trying to do contact tracing a

Carter 1:10:34

a little bit cheaper and a little bit better so

Carter 1:10:36

so that people in the province of alberta can have confidence uh that we're moving the right direction right now he's signaled he's not signaled he said it outright it's all about individual responsibility he's not going to mandate uh changes uh to manage covid anymore and that's part of this is is the app and it scares the shit out of me carter

SPEAKER_00 1:10:57

carter last one and i'm going to you first on it uh on on the heels of significant protests and an upcoming lawsuit uh now the federal health minister of canada is calling on jason kenney to reconsider the closure of the injectable opioid treatment program which he says he's going to do uh when the funding runs runs out this spring. How much of a political problem is this for Jason Kenney? We can talk about public health as well, stemming from your last point, but how much of a political problem is the closure of this going forward, now knowing that the volume on it is being dialed up and the advocacy against the closure is being dialed up as well? What do you think?

Carter 1:11:34

I don't think it's nearly enough. I don't think it's nearly enough political pressure. Two times as many people died in the second quarter as died in the first quarter. I think this could be single-handedly the worst policy decision uh in the short term that jason kenney has made um it's costing people real people their lives and uh to to be this uh ideologically focused on one solution um like i do think that kicking the habit and getting into addictions treatment is the best option but not everybody's at that place where they can get to this obviously they can make it going to happen. We're seeing a significant ramping up of deaths. And I think that the federal government's entirely right to put the pressure on. But I just don't think that

Carter 1:12:18

that Albertans who are, like everybody in the country, worried about their own issues, are going to line up to try and make this work better in the future. This isn't going to be the ballot box question in the next election, sadly.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:36

cory finish us off on this how much of a political problem is this for jason kenney on a one to ten scale i

Corey 1:12:42

don't think it's a huge problem for him um i i think fundamentally in injection sites safe consumption sites there they've always been a difficult sell for the public they are they're absolutely like you know from the view of a ucp strategist as you're asking me to put on my hat not of a public health policy pundit here the um the

Corey 1:13:03

people of alberta i think are a little squeamish about uh consumption sites they there is so much evidence that they work that they save lives that they are better for people but uh they're also the kind of thing nobody wants in their backyard and it does feel like you're endorsing the use of drugs and that's not something that straight-laced albertans are particularly excited about so i just think from a polling point of view it's probably not much of a problem for the county government and certainly when you start thinking about the consumption sites that everybody in canada knows vancouver's east side you've got a picture painted for you that is something that you don't want in your city now again i really want to stress from

Corey 1:13:41

from a public policy from a public health point of view these things save lives they are good they are important but from a political point of view i'm I'm sad to say, I don't think they're going to pay much of a price for it. Not at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:54

We'll move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Guys, are you ready?

Carter 1:13:59

Totally ready. I'm always ready. I'm always the first one to say I'm ready. Corey just doesn't even care, really.

Carter 1:14:05

really. I'm the one who cares.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:06

cares. He hasn't acknowledged his readiness yet. I'm starting with you, Stephen, because I know you're ready. You look ready. This

SPEAKER_00 1:14:12

where I want to go with you. Okay, I get it. I think you're ready. Are you in or out, Stephen? Are you in or out, Stephen Carter, on the liberal strategy to filibuster on the WE committee? What do you think of their strategy? So initially, you know, they're they're holding back a bit. They're dragging their heels. They're ultimately filibustering. What do you make of that strategy right now?

Carter 1:14:29

I'm in. I think that it's lost all the wheels so that the public outrage isn't

Carter 1:14:35

isn't the same. So why bother? Why allow it to gain any more traction? So I'm in on this strategy.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:42

Corey, same question to you. Are you in or out on the liberals dragging their heels, filibustering on on we?

Corey 1:14:48

Well, I'm personally out. But as a strategy I'm in, I think it makes sense for all of the reasons Stephen said. This is something that the public seems to have moved by. Probably public shouldn't have moved by it, but the public has. And so why risk it getting back into the discourse in a big way by allowing committees to continue their work in any kind of fashion? Corey,

SPEAKER_00 1:15:07

Corey, I'm sticking with you. Trump's advisors have come out earlier this week, in fact, I believe earlier this weekend, saying that he's going to tone it down at the next debate, ultimately telegraphing to the media that he's going to tone it down. You're going to see a different version of the president. As a political strategy, what are you on an over-under of seven? As a political strategy for Trump, do you feel like this is a winner or not so much?

Corey 1:15:32

under why would you say you're going to tone it down this is one of those things where it's show don't tell i mean now you've set up a situation for yourself where if somebody tunes in and it's not tuned down or toned down then then

Corey 1:15:43

then you just look like a fool right and if uh if it is it would have looked that way without the comments ahead of time why not just deal with those expectations where people think trump is going to come in one way and when he acts more reasonable then everybody can write their breathless pieces about this new donald trump who doesn't act like a total total lunatic caveman here, which is what happens every time this guy shows even the slightest amount of decorum. I don't know why they would suggest it because all they're doing is moving their own expectations in a way that if he fails to meet them, we'll just reinforce narratives instead of defeat narratives. Carter,

SPEAKER_00 1:16:17

Carter, same questions here over under on seven on the Trump advisor saying he's going to tone it down for this Thursday's upcoming debate.

Carter 1:16:23

It's a total failure, Zane. These guys aren't good at politics. They never have been, then they never will be.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:29

Okay, well, let's talk a little bit more about debates, Carter. I'll stick with you. Last week, we were jostling slightly at Premier Horgan's comments on Racer Mark saying that he didn't see color. What score do you give him on a 1-10 for how he's dealt with that in terms of post-debate? He came up right away saying, that's not what I meant, that's not what I heard, seems like it's a non-issue, but I'm kind of curious what grade or what score you give him um for for spinning and handling that going forward well

Carter 1:16:59

i mean he got out of it right away i mean you have to give him an a i mean he he he came in he screwed up in the debate first thing he said when he got to the microphone in the in the post-debate interview uh was to clean it up for personally i don't think they should have let him off the hook um the thing he said first was the thing that he actually meant this thing that he said second was his cleanup so but they They let him off the hook, and he came

Carter 1:17:23

came out of it with flying colors. It was pretty impressive, actually.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:28

Corey, same question to you. What do you give Horgan and his team on post-debate spin for his remarks on race?

Corey 1:17:37

Silver star with an extra bar on it. He stomped it quickly, and we're the only ones talking about it right now. Everybody's moved on.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:44

Well, there you go. I like to be the only one talking about it. Okay, let me end with this one, Corey, the final one. Are you in or are you out? on the Trudeau strategy slash policy saying he's going to target higher immigration despite pandemic travel curbs. So it's come out saying that the Liberals are targeting to bring in 351,000 new permanent residents in 2021, the most in a century despite COVID. From a political standpoint, what do you think of this? Are you in or out based on all the uncertainty and the border closures, et cetera, that we face?

Corey 1:18:17

I am absolutely in. This is the greatest opportunities Canada's had to steal a generation of global talent, I think, in my lifetime with America acting the way it is with so many countries across the world, shutting borders, not allowing people to have that experience, not allowing people to come in and join their societies. Let's do it, man. We've got a point system in this country where we give points based on education, your ability to integrate all of that. And I guarantee you those points will be higher than we have seen in years past as we bring in all of the best and the brightest from across the world. Carter,

SPEAKER_00 1:18:52

Carter, same question to you. Are you in or out on the Trudeau strategy for more immigration this coming year than

SPEAKER_00 1:18:57

than in a century to Canada?

Carter 1:19:00

Immigration is our strategic advantage. The more that we have, the better we are. And if you can bring in, as Corey's saying, the best and the brightest at a time when our neighbor has decided to walk away from this

Carter 1:19:13

this wonderful opportunity, this is amazing. People who want to come to North America are going to come to Canada, and we have the opportunity to have a new generation of talent. I'm all in. It's 100% good.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:26

that's a wrap on Episode 826 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji, with me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

Transcript