Episode 827: Philosopher King MD LLB

SPEAKER_02 0:01

This is A Strategist, episode 827. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, another Sunday is amongst us.

Carter 0:11

It's the best of days, the Sundays, the days, especially the days after an election. I'm always excited.

Carter 0:17

Always. This is true.

Corey 0:20

ordinary election. It's more like a day in the middle of counting votes for an election. It's not over yet.

Carter 0:24

You've made a good point. This I'm going to wait two weeks before I open the ballots thing is uniquely angering.

Corey 0:32

Yeah, it's not on.

Corey 0:34

This was a bad idea.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Yeah. Do we want to delay this podcast by two weeks? Should we just – we can do that. That is possible.

Corey 0:43

who would notice? Who would notice? This is such evergreen content all the time that it just would be totally fine. This

Corey 0:49

This is true. There

SPEAKER_02 0:50

There is nothing about this that's current affairs or issues of the day. So it's totally fine, Corey. You're absolutely right. Carter, have you gone outside? I know listeners are dying to hear about your outside adventures now that it's snowing in Calgary.

Carter 1:03

Yeah, we were outside today. We went for a little stroll, but it wasn't our usual death-defying outside.

Carter 1:09

outside. We're waiting. Two more weeks, we can start skiing. That's when the fun really turns on. So I turned the house into a skiing zone instead of a mountain biking zone. It was pretty good. I

Corey 1:20

was hoping at your age, a hard bowel movement is death defying. So I

Corey 1:25

that means very much.

Carter 1:28

I take issue with you, but you're not that far off.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Okay, let's move it on to our first segment, our first segment, how the West was won maybe in two weeks. Okay, so we have an election results. We know John Horgan has become premier again of British Columbia becoming the first consecutive two-term premier for the NDP. It seemed like the difference maker for the NDP in this election was A, that they had an election, B, that they flipped old liberal strongholds, including those that the NDP were not competitive in for a very, very long time. But I want to talk about quite a few things here. And first and foremost, Corey, you know, this has been being covered in the media as a gamble. John Horgan's gamble paid off. He rolled hold the dice with this election, and it paid off. You know, 2020 hindsight being what it is, was this a gamble for John Horgan calling this election?

Corey 2:21

It might have been a gamble, but it was a smart gamble. And there wasn't an awful lot of downside risk. It's like when we look at the US election right now, and if you go to 538, it says Donald Trump has a, I think, 17% chance of winning right now.

Corey 2:36

And that's if everything breaks Donald way. You know, the reality is, if the polls are right, or even if they're not incredibly

Corey 2:42

incredibly wrong, Joe Biden will be president. Well, they

Corey 2:45

they were facing a very similar gamble when they were looking to run this election. There wasn't a lot of reason to believe that everything was going to break in Wilkinson's direction. Even if it did, odds were good that Horgan was going to win given the lead he had, and everything did not break in Wilkinson's direction. So I guess

Corey 3:05

guess the word gambled is overused in politics there's always chance when you make a decision like this certainly we especially as albertans we have seen people walk into the polls with big leads and just get clobbered i mean there's a reason why we don't have premier jim prentice right now and it was because he went to the polls one year ahead of an election with a lead that was somewhat comparable to the one that horgan had these things do happen but they don't happen that often and the tales we tell ourselves tend to be the outliers the reality is you go into an election with a a lead as big as John Horgan had, you're probably going to come out of it the other side, still the premier.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Carter, same question to you. Like I said, 2020 hindsight being what it is. Was this a political gamble by Horgan calling this election?

Carter 3:50

I had hoped that it was. I had hoped that there would be a political price to be paid for calling an election in the middle of a pandemic. But when you look at BC's pandemic numbers, he did very well through the course of the last four weeks of the election. There was no significant outbreaks. There has been significant changes in Quebec, Ontario and Alberta regarding the pandemic. So I think that he was able to emphasize the pandemic as a strength, whereas it very easily could have gone against him. Maybe it's because of good management. Maybe it's because of good luck that the pandemic didn't become the central issue of this campaign. I had thought that it was a dangerous thing to do because it very easily could have turned into Quebec, where your numbers skyrocket out of control. It could have turned into Ontario,

Carter 4:39

you're suddenly having record numbers. And the same here in Alberta, where we now have record numbers. Now, that may not have been enough to dislodge him. He had a good polling

Carter 4:50

polling record. He had a good reputation. People liked his government, and it was his to lose. I just kind of had hoped that the electorate would hold him accountable for doing something so nakedly

Carter 5:03

nakedly political at a time of great concern for Canadians, where we're still dealing with significant unemployment. We're still dealing with people's lives being upturned. But I guess that was just my hope. In hindsight, it's painfully clear. The polls did not move. Andrew Wilkinson did not put up a... I mean, Andrew Wilkinson spent three weeks talking about Bozo eruptions, for lack of a better term. You know, so, you know, whatever. I was disappointed, but no, he didn't pay a price.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

You know, Corey, we've talked about this in previous episodes, that Andrew Wilkinson should have been unbelievably formidable, at least from what you see from him on paper, right? The guy's got a degree in law, a degree in medicine. He's a Rhodes Scholar, if I'm not mistaken. I think you may want to correct me if I'm wrong on that particular one. And we have a premier who's called an election in the middle of a pandemic and you have a doctor on the other side. This should have been a perfect sort of recipe for Wilkinson. Give me your take. What do you think went wrong for him on the main here? And why do you think he couldn't necessarily get the message around what many believed was pure naked opportunism by Horgan and expose that much more?

Corey 6:23

for starters, naked opportunism is a bit of a process question. And while those are things that drive conversations in downtown Victoria, they drive conversations in capitals everywhere. Voters don't tend to sit there and discuss these things in such detail. And there is a truism that I think all political strategists need to remember, which is that the things that matter to you are not the things that matter to the electorate. and once it became clear to Wilkinson and the BC Liberals probably within the first week of the campaign that there was just no traction the ground was was

Corey 6:54

was just going to be slipping underneath them if they continued on this front they should have pivoted a lot harder than they did and

Corey 7:00

and look I'm not going to pretend that the BC Liberals spent the entire campaign talking about the fact there was a campaign it didn't get quite there but obviously they needed to do something different than they did and they needed to do a lot harder and a lot faster than they did um but

Corey 7:16

but but that's all easy to say the reality is he was always in a bit of a hole and

Corey 7:19

and so when we talk about wilkinson not to repeat content from previous episodes um he's

Corey 7:25

he's great on paper he was not such a stellar candidate in person he uh he failed to connect with people on a human level but that's

Corey 7:34

that's also what people tell themselves when somebody is losing like you know defeat becomes this reinforcing forcing narrative. And he never managed to change the story.

Corey 7:44

Certainly never in a way that would help his party. There was no movement in this election. It was one

Corey 7:50

one part, everybody distracted with the US election, which is obviously, you know, all fairness

Corey 7:56

fairness to our friends in BC, a much bigger deal right now than the BC election. And it was one part, there was no additional story to tell. It just it wasn't. And then finally, one part, people didn't care about the story that that Wilkinson was sending.

SPEAKER_02 8:11

Carter, same question to you. I know you've had a chance to kick at this a bit in previous episodes, but give me the dissection. What was the reason that Wilkinson couldn't close the gap here?

Carter 8:23

Well, I think, number one, he didn't go into this with a clear message of who he was and where he was going. Number two, he didn't ever

Carter 8:32

ever articulate to the people of British Columbia who he was. you know he he wanted to talk about how he's a doctor i mean he was still introducing his bio three years after he was elected leader that to me is is a significant problem if they don't already all know that he's a doctor i mean it starts to sound you know it's like dave rodney introducing himself and reminding everybody that he meets i climbed everest two times you know like if you're introducing yourself with a central part of your bio every time um that's not a great way way to win over people and supporters so for me this is the the uh the primary challenge that that wilkinson had he didn't get a narrative and then every time he started that maybe try and establish a narrative his own team took him off track um you know with with the two primary bozo eruptions and then when with the with the uh

Carter 9:23

uh the third one which is trying to make nathan cullen into a racist um

Carter 9:26

um those three things working together created significant uh challenges challenges uh so there you go that's that's that's why i think that it didn't work now um

Carter 9:40

i i wish i wish it was something better i wish it was like he was proposing a policy that people didn't like i just don't think they like them cory

Corey 9:46

cory you want to jump in here yeah

Corey 9:48

yeah the sales value of being a doctor and a lawyer when you want to be a politician is not as big as you think it is and i can't tell you the number of candidates i've i've worked with in the past who have insisted on putting, say, doctor on their campaign signs or otherwise emphasizing their MD.

Corey 10:04

Doctors think pretty highly of being doctors. And fair enough, right? It's a hard gig to do. And it's a hard gig to sustain. And the MCAT is hard and med school is hard. I assume I'm not a doctor. But I think they really oversell how much the average Joe and average Jane thinks that matters when it comes to being the premier of a province. The

SPEAKER_02 10:24

The prestige factor, so to speak, that they feel of like translates to a broader sort of group of people. Well, you know, there's

Corey 10:29

probably a story to be told here, and I'm not trying to take a round out of doctors, about that kind of this general pervasive arrogance that people associate to doctors to begin with. You think it's such a big deal that you're a doctor. It can be a bit off-putting to some people. So you got to be really careful about that. And

SPEAKER_02 10:44

And I mean, you know, these folks are dealing with people's lives, life and death situations daily. I'm sure part of that ego boost is, you know, perpetuated by patients talking to them about this all the time. I'm in that very concealed bubble that they live in. But Carter, you wanted to jump in here as well. And in fact, this kind of leads to my next question, if I can just fold it in here, Carter, is what does this moment, because I want to talk about the BC election less so from our analysis, and I appreciate what you guys have said thus far, but also from lessons learned. And what is maybe a lesson about candidates like Wilkinson that perhaps parties need to be aware of, maybe even liberals specifically going forward, need to be aware of going into their eventual leadership race? Is there a lesson to be learned around candidates that look unbelievable on paper like Wilkinson, but that just couldn't deliver? So maybe if you had some comments, jump in with that and maybe try to answer my question there as well. People

Carter 11:36

People want to vote for a person next door or they want to vote for someone who looks like them. Now, looks like them can be phrasing that can be particularly difficult when we're looking at, you know, race and gender. But let's just push that aside for a second and talk about what looks like them looks really means. looks like them means people who reflect what my reality is they reflect i want someone who has empathy for my socioeconomic status i want someone who has empathy for my job situation i do want someone who's a leader but i don't want someone like i worked for well i didn't work for a candidate but there was a candidate uh john lord ran for mla and he was a two-term mla he was running against dave taylor in calgary curry and in his brochure he put that he was a mensa member how

Carter 12:23

know like that is not what people are looking for and people don't want to elect the smartest kid in the class they didn't like the smartest kid in the class the smartest kid in the class was an asshole and that's where andrew doesn't really you know like he he wants to be the smartest kid in the class but he never ever reached out to people on their own terms it was always on a status play don't worry i was a i'm I'm a doctor and a lawyer, and I'm able to take care of you, isn't the person that we want representing us. And it doesn't matter if it's, you know, Andrew Wilkinson running for the B.C. liberals or if it's someone running for council. Everybody, we don't elect leaders. We elect representatives. And sometimes that's really difficult to kind of parse

Carter 13:09

parse because we do ultimately elect a leader. We want that person to be a leader, but we want them to reflect us. So we see in ourselves a better part of ourselves in that other candidate. No one was seeing themselves in Andrew Wilkinson.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Corey, I'm going to come to you in one second. Carter, I've got a quick follow up for you. How would you reconcile then perhaps the election of folks like an Obama or a Bill Clinton who, for all intents and purposes, were the smartest person wherever they went at every corner? Was it just that they had another tool, oratory or empathy in either of their cases, respectively, that perhaps kind of rounded them out and made them seem more normal? Give me your take on that.

Carter 13:50

Charisma, charm. They had the ability when they walked into the room to make you feel like you mattered to them. You know, Bill Clinton, you know, can sit 200 feet away from you. I'm speaking this now of my own personal experience with Bill Clinton in a room. He's surrounded by Alberta's political leadership, you know, from the premier to the mayors and all of that. And you could see a Martian could have been dropped into the room and the Martian would have been asked, pick the leader in this community. And it was the man sitting

Carter 14:17

sitting up there, Bill Clinton, he had a personality and a charisma that could play through the entire room. So it was not that he was better than us. It was not that he was smarter than us. It was that he made us feel better about ourselves and smarter ourselves. And that is the trick of the charisma. I think that Barack Obama is the same. Keep in mind, Barack Obama's famous campaign uniform, you know, a shirt that's not done up, no tie, his sleeves are rolled up. That was a new, you know, he brought a new look to it. And bringing that new look was part of his everyman. He was representing an everyman. You know, I mean, he did a great job for someone born in Kenya.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Sorry, you caught me off guard with that one. uh yeah he is he is like we we actually uh have a picture of him in our house as the most famous muslim we do adore him uh as

SPEAKER_02 15:16

our chief muslim uh cory nicely

SPEAKER_02 15:19

nicely done carter uh same to you uh what is a lesson if any to be learned from uh from wilkinson's leadership here um extrapolating it further perhaps for the liberals in bc or for other political parties that are watching across across the country.

Corey 15:34

Yeah, this is the cautionary tale of philosopher King MD LLB. Yeah. And it's not really about where you are. It's the journey. And the reason Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are different is their story, their narrative, they, they were smart, and everybody knew they were smart. And they had these incredible educational achievements behind them. But they had origin

Corey 15:53

origin stories that started in Hope, Arkansas. And, you know, with, with

Corey 15:59

with divorced parents, and, you know, a father who was from Kenya and had gone out of his life and the difficulty he'd had at different moments in his life and how he'd moved all of the way through that. And when you think about

Corey 16:11

province or a nation, even, what

Corey 16:13

what you really want from your leader is somebody who can take you somewhere, right? You don't want this person who was born on, well, I guess we have Donald Trump, so there's the counterpoint to that, but you don't want the person who's born on third and thought they hit a triple. And it's not about their credentials, it's about the way they got them and what that says about them. And I think when people

Corey 16:31

people are choosing their next political leader, and they're looking at the resume, what they've got to remember is it's not really about where they ended up, it's where they started and what it says about them that they got from point A to point B. And you see this all the time. And it's why you don't necessarily need, I mean, Ralph Klein in Alberta is a perfect example of this. Ralph Klein was not a Rhodes Scholar.

Corey 16:54

not somebody who was both a physician and a lawyer. But Ralph Klein had a pretty compelling story where he moved his way up from a scrappy reporter to this

Corey 17:04

this total dark horse who won city hall and so on and so forth until he was the premier of alberta and then some so

Corey 17:11

it's about the story you can't just read the last chapter and feel like you understand the book and so this is one of the challenges we have with leadership races as they are now where people elected from the general membership i

Corey 17:23

i i it's curious and i think one of these things we need to unpack, maybe not us, but some scholars out there somewhere, is leaders who were chosen by their MPs or their MLAs, their caucuses, do they tend to do better in these situations long-term than leaders chosen by the membership because they actually understand who that person is and they know whether they're personal, affable? Are those characteristics that matter more in the long-term than what they look like on a campaign brochure and that rather limited contact you're going to get if you're a member from 300 miles away and will never meet this individual? Carter,

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Carter, you know, Corey's analysis here reminds me of a candidate that we're both familiar with in Calgary, Marinara, and Nenshi, right? Someone who obviously had unbelievable credentials, but part of the story was what sold, you know, the credentials from Harvard and the fact that he was, you know, nailed his LSATs, etc., etc., right? All those side elements, too. Yeah,

Carter 18:15

Yeah, but when we constructed that story, we were very careful in how we constructed that story. We constructed the story because we went back to him being essentially, we called him essentially the child of all Calgarians. All Calgarians had helped him get to that place where he went to Harvard, right? He went to public school. He rode on public transit. He studied in our public libraries. He was the best of what we could give him, and he was a reflection of what we gave him. And I want to address one more other thing, one more thing that Corey brought up, and that's Donald Trump. Keep in mind that people were identifying with Donald Trump because Donald Trump speaks like I do. He talks the way I do. Right. And that that was part of this everyman quality is that he was saying things and getting away with saying things that people wish that they could get away with. so there wasn't every man quality to him because he's a fucking moron like well

Carter 19:11

well never mind i'll leave that carter

SPEAKER_02 19:13

carter carter i'm gonna go with you for one more second is there anything you would have done because i i know you have a decent familiarity with wilkinson and his candidacy uh having haven't played a bit in bc is there anything you would have done to craft that story a little bit different than what the public saw rather than him you know to cory's uh point talking about mdllb constantly as the focal point of their story what else would you have What else would you have told as part of that bio with the oxygen that you had and the attention that you had with people? I

Carter 19:41

I think that I probably would have gone back to the beginning of the COVID problem and started to make him the explainer in chief. If you keep in mind, like the people who really got the big bumps were the Dr. Bonnie Henry's and the Teresa Tam's of across the country. I mean, there was a Bonnie Henry in BC. Anyways, those

Carter 20:02

those chief medical officers got a tremendous bump and Andrew Wilkinson could have been a bit

Carter 20:09

bit of an explainer in chief. And the interesting thing is because his party didn't take a strong opposition role to Horgan during the COVID nightmare, he actually was in a really strong position. I think that if you'd gone back and kind of started with at a time of need communicating what people wanted they needed to hear that maybe you could have made this useful you

Carter 20:34

could have made it useful to them in their journey and instead he

Carter 20:38

even explainer in chief is probably the wrong phrasing it's

Carter 20:41

it's not about explainer in chief it's about making it understandable making it something that that

Carter 20:45

can relate to because Andrew was never relatable even during the leadership he was the least relatable of all of the candidates at eights um but he he brought a gravitas so trying to make use of that gravitas would have been interesting i don't think that the team that i

Carter 21:04

i think the team he chose to surround himself with tended to just think that his gravitas was all that in a bag of chips you know and he

Carter 21:11

probably needed someone to humanize him cory

SPEAKER_02 21:14

cory do you want to jump in on that in terms of perhaps selling the wilkinson story any tweaks you would have made well

Corey 21:20

well stephen brings up an excellent point There are a lot of ways you can define a leader, describe a leader, sell a leader, but all of them foundationally have to be rooted in some sort of truth about the man or woman, man in this case, of course. And they probably were wasting their time trying to make, especially against John Horgan, who is the guy you want to have a beer with, the quintessential premier who seems like he's your buddy, right? You can't fight that fight. You've really got to find a different way to define it and a different way to separate yourself and make the conversation entirely

Corey 21:55

entirely about something different. That's what we talk about all the time with the ballot question. And yeah,

Corey 22:04

yeah, I guess there will be a lot of thought pieces written about what happened with this campaign, how somebody who had so much gravita going into it had such a poor showing. A lot of it is the circumstances. They are deeply irregular. regular. A lot of it is how he was sold. And a lot of it is the man himself, and perhaps the political limitations that he faces, you know, there, there is something different about being a minister or even a leader than a premier and the voters.

Corey 22:31

To get you past that final gate, you've got to have a bit of a touch that Wilkinson did not show he had at least this time. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 22:37

Carter, give me some telegraphing into the future. If you are trying to convince the BC liberals in in terms of the composite profile of their next leader, what are you telling them to look for? What are you saying now, knowing that the next election will more than likely be run against John Horgan, as Corey described, the perfect sort of let's get a beer sort of premier? What is the composite profile in your mind that you're strategically trying to surround the playbook with if you're the BC liberals heading into their leadership?

Carter 23:07

Well, I think that it's going to be really tough to find the right leader. I'm not sure that one One person can do the job. It's fairly evident that the B.C. liberals aren't working anymore. You know, this composite, you know, this is not a real party. This isn't a traditional liberal party. It's not a conservative party. It is a liberal conservative so-called consortium that has been compiled over time that has people who were attracted to being elected, not necessarily people. And so this happened in Alberta when we lost the PC party. When it collapsed, it was because ultimately if you're out of power for, you know, or if you, well, we weren't out of power very long. But if you have no common values except being in power, you don't stick around together very long. So getting a party builder is going to be super important. And getting someone who can grassroots build 87 constituency associations, find 87 candidates that appeal to their local communities, start to do the outreach that needs to be done as part of a community building exercise. Then the second problem is the media and politicking problem. And maybe

Carter 24:18

maybe I would put that one on the shelf for a little bit. Maybe I wouldn't worry about the second problem until we solve the first problem. them. I was chatting with people yesterday and a lot of people have no patience when it comes to politics. Politics, everything has to happen right now. We have to elect a leader. We have to be ready to run the next government. You don't. You have four years. So build

Carter 24:40

build the party. Take the party building process for the next four years and maybe ask Andrew Wilkinson to do that. Take two years of the four years. Build the party to the place where it feels like it has a a reason for existence. And when it has that reason for existence, then run your leadership because then you can see who the best leader is. And you know what? This one and done philosophy, I'm not sure it's serving us very well in politics. I'm not saying that Andrew Wilkinson should be kept, but I think that parties should be a little bit more charitable because this idea that the next winner is just around the corner hasn't really proven uh hasn't

Carter 25:22

hasn't really proven to be true and and good men and women sometimes just lose uh the odds aren't in their favor in that particular moment but they could be in their favor the next time cory

SPEAKER_02 25:32

cory same question to you and carter's brought us some interesting points here so perhaps going to double barrel the question some general rules for a party when they have lost what they should be looking to do uh immediately what they should not be looking to do immediately as what Carter mentioned, because there is an impulse to Carter's point around just, oh, my God, okay, we lost, we got to do something, right? Like, we got this buzzy energy, we need to start doing shit right away. So like, what do you need to be strategic about hold off on what you need to do immediately? And then to the first original question that I asked Carter, if the BC liberals are looking for a new leader, what's kind of the composite profile you think of what they should be looking for in that leader?

Corey 26:13

Yeah, there's no good analysis that can can be done today. As we alluded to, the votes aren't even concluded. We haven't finished counting the votes in BC. So it would be a bit of a mistake to say, I know exactly what happened in the BC election. I can tell you with perfect clarity, and I know what the prescription is to move forward here.

Corey 26:30

There is a general lesson to answer your question here that politicians, political parties, they need to be very careful about. The impulse is to keep fighting, right?

Corey 26:39

right? You're still running on adrenaline. You want to fight that election that you just lost. You want to fight on the the same issues that you just lost and and

Corey 26:47

that bleeds into your planning for the next election that bleeds into your leadership contests and often the impulse is to fight the last war and you got to remember it's

Corey 26:56

it's over it's done uh

Corey 26:57

uh the last war is done now wilkinson went from opposition and he lost and he's still in opposition governments often have trouble letting go when they become opposition because

Corey 27:06

want to be fighting and defending everything about their government platform even though it was rejected

Corey 27:10

rejected by the voters now the voters can reject it for a lot lot of reasons but you've

Corey 27:14

you've got to do a bit of a rinse before you can move forward and that means saying okay well we're

Corey 27:19

we're not going to fight the

Corey 27:20

the last election again we've got to find a way to fight the next election we need to keep our eye on where the ball is going not where the ball is and you know in a funny way i think the federal ndp are are one of the best illustrations of this i can i can think of um come

Corey 27:34

come all care love

Corey 27:36

love them hate them people there are people who do both simultaneously simultaneously frankly. He was a man who had like a lot of gravita, a lot of intellectual heft. He was seen as a bit of like almost a lawyer in QP in the sense that he would really hold the government to account. And then he was replaced by Jagmeet Singh, who was kind of like, in my opinion, the NDP looking for their own Justin Trudeau. So I don't think the BC liberals want want to find their own john horgan i think that's a mistake that's looking backward right that is fighting the last war uh you've got to think about what will voters be needing in four years after four years of john horgan what will they likely be exhausted with because i'll tell you it will

Corey 28:21

to an extent be his personality you know that that's just the reality of being premier for seven years people are going to start not seeing

Corey 28:27

seeing him the same way so don't have the same version of him that's not what people will be shopping for uh

Corey 28:31

uh so start thinking about that really intentionally. And don't just go out and try to find your own version of what worked last time. You've got to think much more about the long term, the next election. You're not fighting the last election. Don't make the mistake of preparing to fight the last election. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 28:49

Carter, to round us off on this segment, let's talk about some lessons learned from Horgan's win here. Maybe let's split them up in two folds. Campaign strategy lessons, maybe like tactical lessons. If there was anything you saw during this race that invigorated you, and maybe the The fact that there wasn't is a lesson in its own right. And then secondly, maybe strategic lessons if I'm a Justin Trudeau watching the results here. Now, we talked about opportunism. We talked about, you know, electorate maybe not paying the price for calling a pandemic election. But is there anything you wanted to add to either of those two buckets on either campaign tactics and strategy and then more so like political strategy about elections more broadly? I

Carter 29:26

I am really interested to see who or, you know, what kind of a skew there is on the mail-in ballots. You know, and it's a bit of a punt to say, well, I want to wait for two weeks to

Carter 29:37

to be able to really answer that question. But I think that, you know, the GOTV action that occurred in the in-person vote seemed to favor the NDP. So getting voters, you know, and Corey made the point, I think, in our last podcast that GOTV might be a little bit overrated. But for me, the NDP

Carter 30:01

NDP were winning, right? Like the NDP were winning through the campaign, through the election. The

Carter 30:06

The results yesterday kind

Carter 30:08

kind of reflected the exact expected results, maybe a couple extra seats for the NDP. But the general direction of

Carter 30:17

of the NDP was set in stone. But I want to see if there's difference in the mail-in votes. I want to see if there was maybe more of a GOTV lean in mail-in ballots for older voters. And older voters were voting more for the BC Liberals. So, you know, will a few seats flip? Will there be a few more seats? Obviously, the government's not going to change. The gap is just too big.

Carter 30:45

in future elections, we may be running more and more elections on mail-in ballots. and that type of campaigning where people are voting two and three weeks in advance, either using mail-in ballots or using in

Carter 30:59

in-person advanced voting. Already, for example, the U.S., they're nearing

Carter 31:06

nearing 50% of their total vote total from 2016, and there's still nine days to go.

Carter 31:12

It's unbelievable how many people are voting in advance or

Carter 31:15

or voting using mail-in ballots, And I think that that might become a

Carter 31:18

a new trend that governments are encouraging, parties

Carter 31:21

parties are encouraging, and

Carter 31:22

and campaigns will fundamentally change. So that's the tactic that I'll be keeping my eye on.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Corey, tactically or strategically, any lessons here if you're observing this election going forward and perhaps you're a political leader or political party? Marty?

Corey 31:40

Yeah, well, if I'm Justin Trudeau, I've definitely learned a lot. And I will just say a federal election feels to me completely inevitable at this point. If polls stay the way they are, Trudeau is just going to continue to push Singh around until Singh feels he has no choice but to vote against non-confidence. And I wouldn't be surprised if we see something like 2011, I guess, where at a certain point, Trudeau just says, because

Corey 32:04

because they'll play games like, I don't support them and I'm going to vote in confidence, where he'll just go to the GG and say, well, they said they didn't support me. So I just want an election now. Let's be done with it. Because the lesson here is that there is no consequence to having an election during COVID. I think that's the biggest lesson here for any government that is thinking maybe this COVID bump is something they can turn into real seats and real ability to govern. I

Carter 32:26

I really wish I could disagree with Corey. I really wish that, you know, what he said doesn't make perfect sense to me, but it totally makes perfect sense to me. And that's really, really angering me. So don't do that anymore, Corey. Thank you.

Corey 32:41

Yeah, I think we can all agree the real problem is Wilkinson didn't have an MBA. And also, the

Corey 32:48

the LSAT is a poor man's GMAT. I just want that on the record. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 32:51

Yeah, that and the fact, lack of a textured Kenyan past, I think really did him in. We should have called

SPEAKER_02 32:58

He should have converted to Islam in week one after he realized it wasn't going well. He could have actually had a backstory that could have been interesting. That

Carter 33:05

That would have been interesting. At least to

SPEAKER_02 33:07

to some people. At least to some people.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

Let's move on to our next segment, corrupting our youth. Guys, I want to talk back to the federal scene here, and I want to talk about the conservative motion on the special committee to probe Trudeau's government's ethics, specifically to the We Charity scandal. It was an anti-corruption committee

SPEAKER_02 33:26

committee that they wanted to effectively kickstart. The liberals, this seems like weeks ago, but it's just last week, the liberals declared the vote on that conservative motion a matter of confidence. which then put Jagmeet Singh in this box. So I want to talk about strategy. And let's go through all of the key players that we saw here. And Corey, you've alluded to some political outcomes already in your previous answer. So let's hold off on that for a second. First, Carter, I'm going to go to you. What did you make of the federal liberal strategy, the government strategy, Trudeau's strategy, to make this committee, the kickstarting of this committee, a confidence motion? What did you make of that strategy? Good strategy, bad strategy? And either way, why? I guess

Carter 34:08

guess it worked. So it must be a good strategy. The Trudeau strategy appears to be this is over now. And it seems to be in line with what generally Canadians seem to think this is over now. There was a time when maybe this was a big issue. You know, we'd watch the polling trends and the polling trend would have little peaks for the conservatives and things would start to get close. But now I don't think anybody cares. I don't think that anybody is looking at this thinking this is still the thing that Andrew Scheer told us it was. And Pierre Polyev hasn't become any more effective at selling it to us. So the liberals

Carter 34:46

liberals say, how can we dispense of this? I know, let's amp it up. Let's increase the consequence of voting yes by making it a confidence motion. And we'll force, I mean, as Corey alluded to, just bully Singh into supporting the government and problem solves itself. And they were right. Problem solved itself. It didn't have any negative consequences. I mean, maybe we'll see two weeks from now that there's a shifting in the polls. I just don't think that's going to happen. It was really good strategy. It was one of the stronger pieces of crisis management that we've seen from the liberals. but it also shows that the strength of their crisis management comes about two and a half months after the crisis. So that's not great crisis management, but they're getting out of it now. And if they can use this or something similarly benign to launch an election campaign, I'm sure that they'd be delighted.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

Corey, good strategy by the Liberals. What do you think?

Corey 35:42

Yeah, I mean, it's easy to win a game of chicken if you don't care if you crash your car. That's the lesson here. They seemed

Corey 35:49

seemed more than willing to go to an election. In fact, a lot of the commentary that was coming out of Ottawa in the night that we all thought maybe an election could happen was that it didn't seem to be a lot of good faith bargaining by Justin Trudeau. It was like, no, we're not going to do that. No, we're not going to move on this matter. And Singh decided to back down. He blinked. He veered. He swerved into that ditch. And Justin Trudeau drives on. gone the the thing is though i continue to believe that the liberals if the liberals were willing to fight an election on this they are willing to fight an election on most anything they are going to govern like a majority for sure for the next few months unless these polls change in in any kind of material sense and um they're not going to take shit from anybody they're just going to run through anything in their platform they think is mildly contentious and effectively dare people to vote against them especially if they think that the thing they're moving through is something That could have resonance with the public. Because again, let me say, if you were willing to fight an election on the opposition parties running an anti-corruption committee on you because of a legitimate scandal that you did, you

Corey 36:55

you don't care if somebody wants to call an election because of something that was actually in your platform. So they're going to go hard at this point. And I do feel a federal election is just a matter of weeks or months away, depending on how often Singh capitulates. I do not think this parliament is lasting six months at this point. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 37:16

Carter, do you agree with Corey that the liberals don't care what issue they go to an election on? Perhaps they've stopped giving a shit as to what issue they go to an election on, maybe as a lesson from what they saw in BC as well. Like, it doesn't really matter. There's no real blame to be had for going to the polls. B

Carter 37:32

B.C., Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan. I mean, Saskatchewan we've identified as a little bit different because they were mandated to with their Elections Act. You

Corey 37:41

think of New Brunswick, too.

Carter 37:42

Anyways, yeah, I made

Carter 37:45

made a mistake. But all of these campaigns, no one's paying a price. So why would they think that they would pay a price? And on top of that, they've got really good polling. and as much as Corey and I both think that O'Toole has done a pretty decent job as leader of the opposition since he's been elected, our view seems to be in the minority in terms of Canadians. They're still auditioning him for the role of opposition leader. They're not prepared to cast him yet. So at some point they may, but it seems to me that that might take longer longer um than cory's six-month window i mean as we're talking about it i'm trying to envision um

Carter 38:31

do the liberals care if it's an election in the middle of winter probably

Carter 38:35

do the liberals care if it's a spring election probably not they

Carter 38:37

they can probably pull this thing off over christmas we've had elections over christmas they can do the same thing this

Corey 38:43

this yeah those weren't really good for the liberals no but

Carter 38:47

i just don't think that this is one of of those things. I think that right now, they're not afraid of anything. And that gives a government tremendous power. They can now push for what they want.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

So hold on, Corey, go ahead, jump in on your answer. Well,

Corey 39:02

Well, listen, they are not afraid of anything they might want to be. I'm not at all convinced that they won't regret their cavalier attitude going forward. Because O'Toole is an unknown commodity. And they are basically making the bet,

Corey 39:15

bet, the assumption that O'Toole will be seen as a negative commodity once an election happens and they frame him out, I am not convinced of that at all. And I think in particular, if their cavalier attitude shows through, if the

Corey 39:27

the disingenuousness through which they dealt with the NDP last week becomes the disingenuousness through which they deal with opposition parties for the next couple of months, Canadians are going to see right through that. O'Toole could actually ride a bit of a wave here. And wouldn't this be just kind of like the The perfect irony for 2020 slash 2021.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

Carter, Corey answered the question I was going to ask anyways, which is, should they be concerned about something? Is this too cavalier to use in Corey's term for the liberals? If you were helping them strategize, would you tell them to maybe be a little bit more cautious than they are being right now?

Carter 40:00

Yeah, I don't think they're good at campaigns. I think that, you know, campaigns still matter, despite the fact that they didn't matter in B.C. So I think that campaigns matter. And the

Carter 40:12

the federal liberals have a leader that is a celebrity. And the path of celebrity is filled with significant peaks and valleys. So one day he could be very, very popular. And the next day he could be very, very unpopular. So I don't like going

Carter 40:30

going into any election with a celebrity candidate that hasn't, you know, and the liberals may yell at us. they may be listening to this podcast right now and screaming, look at all the great work he's done in COVID and all of this other, you know, all of these other things. Fine.

Carter 40:45

That's fine. He can make that case to the Canadian people. But what I see is someone who is mostly popular still on the strength of their celebrity status.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

Carter, sticking with you, talk about Jagmeet Singh. What did you make of his strategy in this entire, what he called a farce? What did you make of I mean,

Carter 41:04

mean, it was weakness. It was weakness personified. I mean, if you're going to sit it out, you know, so we're not going to take part is one day's message. And the next day's message is we're voting. We're voting against this, right? We're going to make sure that the government survives. Where's the confidence in your situation? Where's the confidence in your principles? principles um this is the problem with the ndp uh corey articulated this with the the leadership discussion about andrew wilkinson and the bc liberals don't go and try and find someone like horgan um

Carter 41:32

um the bc ndp didn't need to find someone like justin trudeau they needed to find i mean maybe they didn't need to find uh thomas mulcair but they needed someone who was going to be uh defining new democratic values uh for canadians and jagmeet singh isn't he's not sitting out a

Carter 41:53

he's not giving us a real new definition of what it means to be a new Democrat in an age where being a green is now a thing and where everybody is a green and everybody and and the liberals have co-opted a large part of the organized labor market. So my view is that it

Carter 42:11

it was weakness personified last week. It was weakness personified the week before. It has been weakness personified essentially since he won the leadership.

SPEAKER_02 42:21

Gauri, do you agree with that analysis as to what Jagmeet Singh did this past week with not just how he ultimately ended up voting, but also the mechanics that followed of kind of like this suspense that he left people in as to, okay, we're not going to, you know, support it, give the liberals the election they want. Then everyone had to wait another two hours to kind of figure out how they voted. What did you make of both the outcome and the overall strategy, but also the mechanics of what you saw from Jagmeet Singh? Well,

Corey 42:47

Well, I think Carter's analysis is a little harsh. Where I will agree with him is I don't think Singh has done a particularly stellar

Corey 42:55

stellar job of setting his party up for success, but when you talk about just the moment in isolation, it's

Corey 43:01

it's not a particularly smart strategy to go and get an election called that you are not in any way equipped to fight, right? And so sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. The problem that Singh has here, though, is this really is the if you give a mouse a cookie, they're going to ask for a glass of milk situation. They've really made it pretty clear that

Corey 43:24

they will collapse on these matters, right, at least for the next bit. And now if you're the liberals, what consequences? You do not feel these votes are in any way up for grabs. There's no risk for these votes, I guess is what I'm saying. So I don't know if he had a choice in the moment. I think his actions leading up to the moment set him up for a bit of a, you

Corey 43:44

you know, he made the best of a bad situation, but it was a bad situation in part of his own making.

Corey 43:49

I just don't know how he gets out of it from here, right? When you see NDP commentariat

Corey 43:55

commentariat going on about Singh making these principled decisions to keep out of an election during COVID and saying it doesn't always need to be about getting something, I think like, well, we are really kind of spending nothing at this point. Singh got nothing. And when you get nothing in exchange for support, expect nothing in exchange for support going forward. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 44:16

Carter, let's talk about the question Corey raised. What does Singh do? do um you know how many times can he play this game of once again using cory's analogy this game of chicken where the other side does not give a shit if they crash into you right like in fact they may even want it um so so how how how are you advising sing right now you know you you're also trying to take stock of your electoral resources and your war chest while simultaneously looking at some of these strategic decisions what what high level sort of strategic rails are you putting around Jagmeet Singh and the NDP right now, if you're helping them?

Carter 44:51

I think that the biggest challenge that they face is they don't have a specific audience. I think we talked about this before. I'm not going to vary that much from my earlier advice, which is to rebrand and reconstruct the NDP as the party for the working person. I think that right now they could be the party of the unemployed person, the party of the unemployed, the underemployed family, the party of people who are struggling. struggling um he

Carter 45:17

he he just doesn't have much time right so if if if

Carter 45:22

the government's going to go to an election he's only got like it to cory if we stick with cory's timeline maybe six months but i've even that so he's got to move quickly to start to redefine the party and stop worrying about the politics of um the parliament that is not something that people reflect on very much when they're making their votes they vote on brand they vote on relationships with the party that they're voting for sing

Carter 45:47

sing has uh maybe 90 days to really start to define what the ndp is in this new environment i'd stop defining it on green terms and i would start defining it um on on terms of work the same way that for example green initiatives in the united states are not necessarily being now defined by uh carbon offset they're instead being defined by look at all these great new jobs. Be

Carter 46:12

Be the party of look at all these great new jobs. Put forward a platform that says we can put the 16% of Canadians that are currently unemployed back to work. He needs to do something bold, he needs to do something believable, and he needs to do something quickly.

SPEAKER_02 46:32

Corey, I've given you a couple of seconds to think about it. So do you want to add anything to this Singh liberal puppet issue that he faces? Any strategic advice you'd have for him?

Corey 46:42

i would say that the it's unfortunate in some ways we're recording on sunday the 25th because tomorrow there's two by-elections in toronto center and york center and depending on how the parties do that that may change some of my analysis here and if the liberals do particularly poorly they may think twice about um about

Corey 46:59

about their election lust shall we say but um assuming that the situation ends with the liberals winning maybe even by less no big deal they look okay it's a a by-election they tend not to be great for governing parties then i think um then

Corey 47:14

then i think really what singh needs to do is you know let's continue the metaphor he's got to make it clear that his car is big enough to hurt and that uh if the liberals uh drive into it in this way that there are some consequences to it and that's going to hurt the party so if you're if you're saying you better be making sure that the next vote you're orchestrating here is something that that the Liberals not giving you your thing is going to hurt them. So building on Stephen's point about what you want the party to be, there's a lot of things the party could be, and there's a lot of things that the NDP could extract from the Liberals, but they should be trying to extract them now, and effectively almost daring the Liberals the other way. Are you going to burn this coalition of working-class Canadians, of green voters? Here's the thing we're putting on the table. This is part of the confidence motion that we are bringing to you, rather than just fighting on the liberals' turf and losing, losing, losing. Now is the time to orchestrate the next crisis on your ground, ground that will hurt the liberals a bit more, so you can at least reassert yourself as not that easy gimme vote.

SPEAKER_02 48:16

Carter, let's talk about finally Aaron O'Toole and the conservatives. They brought forward this motion to the table. O'Toole's message was that he doesn't trust the liberals to govern, doesn't trust how they've been governing, but doesn't want an election. What do you think of their strategy in this entire saga this past week of introducing the motion? Do they do they take a victory lap or any credit for, you know, trying to point to how scared the liberals are on it? And then what do you kind of make of O'Toole's messaging on not wanting election? I want to get your assessment on what sort of, you know, marks you're giving O'Toole this week. Well,

Carter 48:50

I don't know where he's going. I can't see the strategy and I don't understand where he's going. I mean, does he want an election? Yes or no? I mean, I think that if he was to say I want an election because I want to put my ideas about how to govern this country, how to get people back to work, how disastrous Justin Trudeau has been. I want to put that to the people. Then at least it comes from a position of strength. Um, this isn't the time or, you know, these weak, these weak positions always anger me. I don't like weak positions. I rather, you know, I don't know if people have noticed, but I'd rather take a strong position and be wrong than take a weak position and be right. And I know most people probably haven't. But

Carter 49:29

But I do think that taking a strong position for Aaron O'Toole is essential to making us understand who he is. One of the challenges of running a long leadership is you would assume that people know who you are. You're

Carter 49:41

You're not well known yet. And you're certainly not well known on the terms that you want to be well known, which is, you know, outside of the, you know, trying to appeal to the right wing in order to get the right wing votes. And now he moves to the center.

Carter 49:57

So define what his center needs to look like. Define for us who he is would be my advice. And I

Carter 50:05

would do that by putting up the strong opposition that says, you know, Justin Trudeau is not doing the job and we're prepared to. And I wouldn't put Polyev

Carter 50:13

Polyev out there to be the person who says we are prepared to. I wouldn't put Michelle Rempel out there to do it either. I'd start looking at the people around the table that were serving Andrew Scheer through their rather

Carter 50:24

rather extravagant language and say, OK, we're going to find new people. He's got a very talented caucus. He's got quite a bit of a talent in there. So change it up. Start to show us who the new conservatives are and hold to the idea that I am

Carter 50:41

am ready to be the next prime minister of Canada.

Carter 50:44

Should be every every decision that is made should

Carter 50:47

should be is this making it look like I am ready to be the next prime minister of Canada? Yes or no? If the answer is no, don't do it. If the answer is yes, do it. it.

SPEAKER_02 50:57

Corey, same question to you. Let's round it out with your assessment of Aaron O'Toole's strategy this week.

Corey 51:04

just don't see it the way you two do. I don't think that I don't want an election as mutually exclusive with having an election, right? You cannot want something but know you need it. Look, you're Aaron O'Toole. You say, I don't want an election. I want stable government. But there are things I want more than stable government. I want ethical government. I I want government that's going to be there for Canadians, that's going to work for Canadians through this pandemic. That's fine to me. I don't actually see this as a big contradiction. And, in fact, the Conservatives voted on

Corey 51:35

on this resolution knowing that it was seen as a no-confidence motion. I don't think that they are in an awkward position here. Whether they truly want an election or not, or we're just waiting for the NDP to come and capitulate, it's an interesting question. I'm not sure I know the answer to that entirely. But I'm sure they're much more prepared to go to the polls than the NDP are, and they should be. Because frankly, otherwise, this is going to be a pretty grim minority parliament and the conservatives are going to lose a lot of face. I've seen that play out the other way, where Stephen Harper had the minority government and the liberals just didn't feel like they could do anything except capitulate. It's tough. So you're

Corey 52:13

you're going to go to the polls anyways in that situation, you might as well go strong and go on your terms. And I think Aaron O'Toole is doing those things. He's got those moves set up. So I just don't read it as it being a particularly contradictory thing for him to say or do.

SPEAKER_02 52:28

Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, not enough fish in the sea. Guys, I want to talk about the issue that is currently active in Nova Scotia with the Mi'kmaq indigenous people and the commercial fishermen out there. So to summarize this story, on one side, we have commercial fishermen who say that the indigenous Mi'kmaq are threatening their livelihoods by trapping lobster outside of the federally regulated lobster season. And on the other side, we've got the Mi'kmaq lobstermen who say they're being attacked with impunity for exercising their legal right to hunt and fish through rights negotiated in a centuries-old treaty and backed up by a decades-old court decision. It's currently, you know, started as an escalating fight that's now seen certain elements of fighting, certain elements of physical violence. We've seen police escalation in the sense of more officers there to try to control what has become a very tense situation out in Nova Scotia. And then on the political side, we've seen an emergency debate in parliament. Carter, going to you from a high level, how big of a deal is this for the liberals? I

Carter 53:38

I think it's a very big deal. I think it's a big deal on two fronts. I think it's a big deal, obviously, on the indigenous rights issue and how

Carter 53:48

those rights get interpreted and how people who are then impacted by those rights being angry because

Carter 54:00

if you're a commercial fisherman and your livelihood is being impacted, you're not really caring about the deal, the treaties and the deals that were made by governments past. You should care. I mean, you should. But of course, you're going to be very fixated on on the immediate economic hardship that you and your family are going to be facing. policing um so then the second issue is that of policing uh

Carter 54:23

uh the police have not been have been criticized dramatically for a lack of response in this particular issue and um you know it is a provincial federal issue um so the federal uh

Carter 54:36

uh the federal rcmp is a federal police

Carter 54:39

police service that is governed

Carter 54:40

governed by uh the provinces you know they report to the provinces and the provinces have a tremendous

Carter 54:46

tremendous amount of say. So but it's one of those things that is

Carter 54:48

is immediately confusing on its face.

Carter 54:51

Who is who is directing the RCMP response?

Carter 54:55

Well, the RCMP are okay,

Carter 54:56

okay, well, who's directing the RCMP? Well,

Carter 54:58

Well, the RCMP are directing the RCMP. Well,

Carter 55:01

you know, politicians should have the right to input and tell people how to do these things. They do a little bit. But realistically, we don't want our ministers telling our police services who to arrest and what for? Generally, government

Carter 55:15

tries to avoid that. So on those two fronts, I think those are both bad issues for Justin Trudeau. I think both of those issues make him look, the policing issue makes him look weak. The Indigenous rights issue, my goodness, is Indigenous rights ever a good topic to be talking about if you're a federal politician? It's an issue that is pervasive. It has no easy solution. And when it flares up, it takes a long time for us to walk away from it and figure it out. So I think that both of these issues, both sides of this issue, if you will, are problematic for Trudeau. And I don't see an easy solution. I don't think that we can just simply say to people, well, you know, this is the indigenous right. This is the indigenous right to do this and say to the fishermen, you know, good luck. But that's the answer. I mean, this is an indigenous right. But what now do we then do for the commercial fishermen? Because when people are facing economic strife, they get scared and they get violent and they get angry and they shouldn't necessarily do those things. But I don't know how else they're going to react given the situations that they're facing.

SPEAKER_02 56:32

Corey, same question to you. And maybe I'll add another one there as well for you to consider. How big of a deal is this for the liberals, the initial question? And secondly, perhaps a little naively, how much of this is a product of the liberals being the party on the center of the political spectrum? They kind of get squeezed from both ends in a situation like this. They can't lean too much left. They can't lean too much right. They're trying to maintain this central position. I mean, they haven't on many policies. But I just wanted to throw both of those things to you for consideration?

Corey 57:02

I think it's a huge deal, because it shows just how hollow the liberal position is on Indigenous rights, right? It's something that they are happy to pay lip service to. But when it comes to actually making a decision that

Corey 57:14

that is difficult in support of Indigenous treaty rights, they're just they're clearly not willing to do it, at least not with the intensity and with the financial backing needed to make it happen here. because let's let's really be super clear here this

Corey 57:28

is a treaty right this is a treaty right that has been backed up by the supreme court and a treaty right is

Corey 57:34

is not something that we think whether we want to do it or not every

Corey 57:37

every 10 years right it is in perpetuity and contracts in perpetuity are

Corey 57:41

are not novel they

Corey 57:42

they are not novel our entire economic system is based on them here when you think about a company yeah they can take a loan but

Corey 57:48

but they might also sell a share And a share is essentially in perpetuity.

Corey 57:52

perpetuity. I am giving you something in exchange for something. And there are so many examples beyond just, you know, base ownership that exists here. And we can't act surprised when people say, yeah, I know, we agreed to that hundreds of years ago, and it's still the deal. Like, it's still the effing deal. We agreed to that, and it's been reaffirmed on multiple points and, you know, clarified by the Supreme Court here. so

Corey 58:12

so the proper response for the federal government is to hold up their end of the bargain you know in in their role as the you know the the queen's government you know the queen being the person the deal was signed with originally here or the crown i guess i should say but that's expensive right because uh you know the real answer is you've got to somehow assure the livelihoods of of uh of the non-indigenous um you know lobster trappers and that's that's not that's not easy obviously there's no um there's

Corey 58:42

there's you know that alone will not solve the problem people don't want a handout they want a livelihood right and god knows we've tried and failed so many times in the maritimes to do these economic diversification plays but let's just call it what it is this is um this is absolutely the right of the indigenous peoples in the area to to do so suck it up and you know what it is in no right of anybody to start burning shit down and getting violent here. And when the RCMP sits there with bullsidism, I think it's just, it's abhorrent. And it is, you know, essentially the federal police service there. And we should expect better. And if we want to have true reconciliation in this country, it starts with acknowledging that we have certain obligations.

Corey 59:26

And those obligations are by definition, not always going to work out the

Corey 59:30

the way that, you

Corey 59:31

know, the average person on the other side of the treaty, the non-Indigenous side of the treaty want right but we are all treaty people i mean we've all heard that but it's fucking true so how about we hold up our end of the bargain how about we send the police in to deal with the violence and and how about the federal government just put up or shut up because i don't want to hear them talking about being champions of indigenous peoples and reconciliation

Corey 59:54

if this is the bullshit that's going to be going on in nova scotia and they're going to allow it

SPEAKER_02 59:58

carter i'm going to pick up on a thread cory mentioned here with uh with my second question around the conservatives, because their line in the emergency debate, which I personally thought was quite effective, so I'm putting my editorial spin on this, was, Trudeau is afraid to make a decision. When it matters most, Justin Trudeau just can't make a decision. Now, they haven't said which way, right? But they've actually kind of pinned him to this, that this is a guy who delays, you know, says things, but just can't act. And I wanted to get two things from you. Number Number one, a response to what you heard from Corey, but number two, the effectiveness of that line of Trudeau's inaction or Trudeau's lack of action on big ticket items, on value items like this that require more than just symbolism, so to speak. I

Carter 1:00:44

I think the line's very effective, but I think that the problem with the line is that it implies that there was an action that he should be taking.

Carter 1:00:51

What is he supposed to do, right? There are social services and social safety nets for people who aren't able to fish. So the commercial fishermen that are outside of their fishing window, they're

Carter 1:01:05

they're not able to fish. So if that means that they have to be on CERB

Carter 1:01:09

CERB or EI or any of the other programs that we have, then

Carter 1:01:13

then that's what they should be on. And maybe this is a time to talk about a guaranteed basic income, which is interesting. We're not a universal, but a guaranteed. um

Carter 1:01:23

sure he could talk he could make that decision but there's no decision to be made right now he

Carter 1:01:28

he should not direct the police to go in and put in late charges i mean maybe he's he he directs the rcmp commissioner uh that this kind of both sides ism is it's over now uh we saw it here in alberta when an anti-racism uh protester just got it got charged but the the uh the racist that hit or didn't um so you

SPEAKER_02 1:01:50

fuck me like this is this by the way i i i hate to say that that is a perfect encapsulation of albright it's really

Carter 1:01:59

don't think it is

Carter 1:02:00

well pieces of it pieces

SPEAKER_02 1:02:01

pieces of it pieces of it uh

Carter 1:02:02

uh this happened in red deer i'm allowed to get i will concede um

Carter 1:02:09

isn't the position of the of the prime minister to to step in and make a decision. The decisions have all been made. There are laws that are supposed to stop this shit from happening. Get them enforced, put people under charges. You know, so maybe the decision is I have to walk into the RCMP commissioner's office and lay down the law, you know, remind them of what the laws are and what their job is in this country. And one more RCMP staff sergeant or whatever the titles are, who stands out and says, you know, essentially there are good people on both sides, as they did here in Alberta, that's the ballgame. You're done. We're getting a new RCMP commissioner who can come in here and fix this force up. Maybe that's the decision. But there is no decision. As Corey has said, their rights are black and white. This isn't an untested right. They have the opportunity to fish these waters. The only thing that Trudeau can do is make the law enforcement stronger.

Carter 1:03:07

That's the only decision that's left.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:10

Corey, do you agree that there's no decision quote unquote to be made here uh you know what do you kind of feel like trudeau should be doing here let's just put on the strategy hat as we often do what should trudeau be perhaps doing here well

Corey 1:03:25

well there is there is one decision which is the definition of reasonable which will then be tested by the courts when you talk about just the volume of fishing and it is true that trudeau has been a bit or the government you know i suspect this is something that's even you know it's the department that's been floating about and not quite sure what to to do on here but you know that doesn't change my fundamental analysis here and i agree with steven entirely um what justin trudeau should be doing is is talking to the rcmp commissioner and saying i am not going to tell you how to enforce the law but i do expect you to enforce the law we'll leave it up to courts to interpret it that's not your job so let's uh let's get real here and let's make those tough decisions and um and look they're tough and if i'm the rcmp in uh nova I know exactly what they're saying. They're saying, hey, listen, man, we don't want this situation to get worse. We don't want to exacerbate tensions here. We have to work and police in this community long after the politicians have gone away onto their next issue. And if you just burn us with all of the fishermen around here, that's not going to help anybody in the long term.

Carter 1:04:25

Yeah, I guess that's

Corey 1:04:26

that's always a pretty easy thing to say when you want to be picking or not trying to pick sides here. But the federal government needs to be there in a big way and say, we're going to

Corey 1:04:38

to live up to our side and we're going to take this tough medicine because doing the right thing ultimately pays dividends in the long run here. Now, look, fishermen are scared and

Corey 1:04:48

and lobstermen, I guess. Boats could be stranded assets. It's one thing to say, yeah, okay, we're going to give you a livelihood, but those boats are pretty bloody expensive.

Corey 1:04:59

federal government fixing that problem will get even

Corey 1:05:02

even more expensive. And like I said, it won't be enough for a lot of people because it's just taking a check.

Corey 1:05:09

And what are you doing? What's your livelihood? What does it look like in that part of Nova Scotia? There's not a ton of things to do here. I don't think I'm going to shock you all. So, for listeners who don't know, I spent the first decade of my life in Nova Scotia, and that's where my family's from.

Corey 1:05:22

That's just a reality here. But, you

Corey 1:05:26

you know, there's no easy answers here. And Trudeau trying to sit in the middle of it is ultimately going to result in failure.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:33

Carter, round us out. I think you've given me a bit of your response, but more specifically, the Trudeau message. So, maybe not the Trudeau action, but the Trudeau message. What does it need to be beyond the policing? Does it need to be greater than that, broader than that? What does he need to say?

Carter 1:05:49

He needs to point out that these are treaty rights. You know, stand strong and in support of Canada's indigenous people. This is where we are. This isn't the time, you know, when we're disputing these things. You know, we did that. It's over. Courts have ruled. The treaties are clear.

Carter 1:06:11

You know, there is still work to be done. The Indigenous issue in Canada has really been ignored, and it's a really tough issue. I mean, it's like trying to figure out children's services, right? Like, we've got too many children who are impoverished. We've got too many children who are abused by their parents.

Carter 1:06:31

There's no easy solution.

Carter 1:06:33

You know, we have to figure, but we have to do better. And the same goes for Indigenous, the Indigenous issues. years um there are a lot of reserves nations where economic opportunity is really constrained um we have to figure this out and figuring

Carter 1:06:49

figuring this out starting with a place in like nova scotia where you've got indigenous

Carter 1:06:54

indigenous uh fishermen working um

Carter 1:06:57

um and and earning a living and hurting others at

Carter 1:07:00

at the same time it's not easy but

Carter 1:07:02

but it needs to be done so i guess leadership of standing up and picking, you know, telling people how important this is. Maybe we could see, but I just don't expect that we'll see any of that.

Corey 1:07:13

Corey, finish this up.

Corey 1:07:14

This isn't a choice of giving Indigenous peoples a right or not. It's their right. And it's probably their right to be poor stewards of lobster populations, frankly, if that's what they choose to do. The real question is whether

Corey 1:07:24

whether we live up to our side of the bargain, whether we truly believe in law and order, whether we truly believe in process, and whether this government actually means it when they say reconciliation matters.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:35

We'll leave that there. Let's move it on to our final segment, our over-under, our lightning round. Guys, are you ready?

Carter 1:07:41

I'm not going to say I'm ready today because Corey doesn't do it. And if I just don't say anything, it's going to be a big blank pause. I don't

SPEAKER_02 1:07:48

don't think Corey wants to be here. He loves

Carter 1:07:51

us. He loves us. I don't know. I don't know if that's true. This is what he does on Sundays. Look how happy he is.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:57

He seems happier now that you mention it. Corey, I'm going to you first. Over, under, on one. Over, under, on one. The amount of seats the Liberals win tomorrow in the two by-elections that they are in.

Corey 1:08:10

Over. I think they'll win them both. I may be wrong. I don't know. I don't know that there's been any polling in those areas, but I suspect they'll win them both. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 1:08:19

Carter, same question to you. Over, under, on one. The seats that the Liberals win tomorrow in the by-elections. They win

Carter 1:08:25

It has been said. Well,

Carter 1:08:26

I want that. It has been stated. Yeah, great. rates it has been stated write it down kids write

Carter 1:08:31

write it down i've i've realized i've got a prediction

SPEAKER_02 1:08:35

i'm realizing i've got quite a few predictions here so carter might as well get it over with going back to you we also have the saskatchewan election tomorrow 61 seats in the legislature the saskatchewan party currently has 46 so my question is very simple over under on their current seat total for the saskatchewan party tomorrow two

Carter 1:08:55

two seats over two seats over write it it down you don't need to you don't need to be

SPEAKER_02 1:09:00

be that specific you don't need to be that specific i give you the leeway of course cory same question to you uh 46 seats is where they currently stand for the saskatchewan party over under for what they get in tomorrow's election in saskatchewan

Corey 1:09:14

don't have a clue i don't know i mean i i looked at some of the most recent polling main street had a poll recently that showed at a 17 point race which was the tightest of the polls i don't know i don't have any seat models in saskatchewan i could give you a number but it'd be pure fiction just absolutely a fabrication so i will suffice to say i think stephen carter is wrong that's good enough for me you

Corey 1:09:35

seem quite pissed off that i'm asking you these

Corey 1:09:37

these like what do i like what do i know exactly how many seats saskatchewan's legislature is going to return that's fucking something within my grasp that's that's

SPEAKER_02 1:09:49

person tells me the exact number the other one yells at me at a follow-up one

Carter 1:09:55

one of us is good The other one is you, Corey.

Carter 1:09:58

There we go. It's

SPEAKER_02 1:09:58

It's a very interesting therapy session I'm just going through. Corey, I'm going to stick with you. On a scale of 1 to 10, the strategy here by the conservatives, they called for a motion for a sweeping probe of COVID-19 as we are in the midst of what many are calling the second wave. The strategy here by the conservatives on a scale of 1 to 10, what do you think?

Corey 1:10:19

think it's a 7. It's solid workmanlike opposition. I would be disappointed in an opposition that wasn't looking at such massive spending and framing it all in such a way that allows you to then start chiseling away at something that's clearly a strength for the government right now. They get high marks on their COVID-19 response. That's just good sense because you want to be starting to take that away from them because that is obviously a big asset for them if we do find ourselves in an election. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 1:10:45

Carter, Corey gives it a 7. What do you think on a scale of 1 to 10, the conservative strategy to call for the sweeping probe on COVID-19? I'm

Carter 1:10:51

I'm going to give it a D minus. It doesn't have I mean, it's a hard issue. It's a hard test. This isn't something that you're necessarily going to to win on. So doing something is probably the right thing. It is a pass, but it's not it's not going to change the outcome of the of Corey's anticipated election.

Corey 1:11:11

Look, it's not inspired, but it's good workmanlike

Carter 1:11:15

what I'll upgrade to is a C minus. Yeah,

Corey 1:11:19

you go. It's better. Well,

SPEAKER_02 1:11:20

Well, thank you. Thank you for negotiating. Go bust each other. That's good. It's better when I'm not needed here. Carter, sticking with you. Today, it was announced that Husky Energy was selling their assets to Synovus here in Alberta for $3 billion. Over, under, on four, over, under, on four, the impact of this on Jason Kenney's jobs, economy, pipeline, sort of narrative and mantra that he's been living in. What is the impact, if any, on over, under, on four? The

Carter 1:11:48

The impact is that he blames Justin Trudeau again, right? He blames that he doesn't recognize that the core issue is that we're in the midst of a fundamental shift away from fossil fuels and especially away from high carbon intensity fossil fuels that are expensive to get out of the ground. so there's a flight of capital uh husky energy uh wasn't that long ago was was valued i think it's somewhere near uh 20 some billion dollars more than the sale was today um this is a significant issue in the province of alberta uh jason kenney uh should be looking at this and seeing this as a sign that that he needs to shift the strategy but i don't think that he will so So I can't remember the question.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:36

Okay, fantastic. Thank you, Carter. Thank you. Your ability to fill time, once again, really rears its head. Courtney, I'm going to stick to you on the question. Over, under, on four, the impact this is to Jason Kenney and his political agenda?

Corey 1:12:48

Well, with such a clear scale, Zane, I can be very precise and say it's a three on your over, under, on four out of a scale of who knows with polls of who God knows what. So he's got two options here, right? He can say this is good.

Corey 1:13:02

He can say it is good because it is creating a powerhouse that will allow Alberta to be even more competitive in the oil industry. And I

Corey 1:13:10

I think that's rather unlikely because it will result in job losses. And if he says it's good and there's job losses, well, that's embarrassing for him. Or he can say it's bad.

Corey 1:13:18

And if he says it's bad, he's going to say it's bad because of that damn Justin Trudeau stranding oil

Corey 1:13:24

oil here because we don't have any market access. Which is actually not a hard story to tell in the situation where, you

Corey 1:13:33

know, because Husky almost bought Mag Energy a while back and then didn't and blamed the inability of getting oil to market here. Now, that sort of burned Husky for any future acquisitions, which is part of why Husky is now the one who's going as the acquired to the altar. But the problem with that is that that oil company, now very large, Synovus plus Husky, is not going to want you to say it's bad. And so if you are Jason Kenney, you're kind of between a rock and a hard place here. You're not going to want to say anything at all. You're not going to want to say it's good because it results in job losses. You're not going to want to say it's bad because you're essentially saying this very large corporate presence

Corey 1:14:11

presence in Alberta now is bad. And they're not going to like that. And that's uncomfortable for you as the premier, especially a conservative premier. So I expect he will say very little about this. Very little indeed. Indeed.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:22

We're going to leave that there. Just a reminder to our listeners, please do leave us a five-star review to ask questions. We haven't got any questions recently. We've got a ton of five-star reviews, which by the way, doesn't surprise us at all. They're well-deserved and we know it. But next time you leave one, or if you have a question on your mind, leave us a review on iTunes with your five stars and ask your question. We're happy to read it as part of our over, under, and our lightning round. And that's a wrap on episode 827 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji, with me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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