Episode 911: A C that feels like an A

Zain 0:03

This is The Strategist, episode 9-11. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what is going on?

Corey 0:10

Well, apparently enough that we record twice a week now. The

Zain 0:12

The people didn't ask for it. I was just going to say the people asked for it. Yeah, they don't ask for shit.

Zain 0:17

They didn't know. But you know, what's

Zain 0:19

what's the Henry Ford quote?

Zain 0:21

If you ask people what they wanted, they just want a faster horse. Is that what it is? Yeah, that's

Zain 0:25

that's good. Yeah. You don't ask the people. You just give them two episodes because they don't know they want it yet.

Corey 0:32

to be fair, a

Corey 0:34

faster horse sounds fucking sweet. It

Zain 0:38

It does sound great. If

Corey 0:39

If somebody said, Corey, you can have a car or you can have a super

Corey 0:46

I would get the horse. Faster horse? Yeah, I was going to say superhuman horse. That's what kind of tripped me up there.

Zain 0:51

That's fine. We'll let you go with it. Carter, what's going on with you?

Carter 0:55

I make old man noises. By the way, Henry Ford,

Zain 0:56

Ford, noted anti-Semite. Anyway, go ahead,

Carter 1:00

you stepped on my thing. You know, I make old man noises. That's what I've been told just before I started to record this. That's nice. So that set me off a little bit. I'm a little cranky tonight now. I was doing fine, but then, you

Carter 1:12

you know, Corey's making fun of me because I'm old. It's really upsetting. No, I'm making fun

Corey 1:16

fun of you because you make the noises

Zain 1:17

noises of an old person. Carter, what was your rationale, or why do you think we're recording twice a week now? I

Carter 1:24

was just told to be here, and I'm here, and I'm happy. I don't care. I just, you know, whatever you guys want, I'm just happy to be part of the team.

Zain 1:31

Well, that's very nice, Carter. That's extremely nice. I'm

Corey 1:34

I'm actually deeply confused how you found the invitation to this. I just sent it to Zane, but. No.

Carter 1:39

Heather got something. She told me that.

Carter 1:42

Okay, if I'm honest, I've been plugging in my microphone and logging onto the system every

Carter 1:49

Just hoping that you guys will show up. So tonight's a big night for me. I'm pretty excited. I'm

Zain 1:54

I'm excited, too. Let's move it on to our headlines. And we're going to start with our first headline from the Oklahoma Daily. Oklahoma trying to return its $2 million stockpile of hydroxychloroquine. Now,

Zain 2:10

COVID is not funny. This story, however, funny.

Zain 2:14

I say it's funny.

Corey 2:16

Listen, all they need to do is hold on to it until Oklahoma has its next malaria outbreak break and they're ahead of the curve i i say just stockpile it get ready yeah

Zain 2:26

yeah your recommendation do not sell the stockpile don't get rid of it no

Corey 2:31

no i mean just just keep it keep

Corey 2:32

keep it in a vault somewhere in oklahoma uh give give it to the thunder whenever they're underperforming use it as a threat use it as a motivator uh

Zain 2:41

uh so every game use it for the thunder okay carter

Carter 2:44

is absolutely no evidence to support what i'm about to say but i believe that that's what what jason kenney's doing with his cabinet uh as you recall he was a big fan of uh of

Carter 2:53

of the drug that i can't say the name of hydroxychloroquine

Carter 2:56

thank you very much and he also uh you know bought into the into the hype so i'm pretty sure he's just giving it to his cabinet members and that's the only way you

Zain 3:04

you think we could be buyers you think we here in alberta could be buyers we're

Carter 3:08

we're already bought in we're just not smart enough to try and sell it so

Zain 3:10

so i mean when you do 1.5 billion for a pipeline what's an extra two for some uh for some i mean

Zain 3:16

drugs that don't work that

Carter 3:18

that was thrown in it was like a sweetener yeah

Zain 3:20

it's like the bag of pucks i like it i like it okay we're moving on to our next headline cory i'm going to start with you for a very specific reason on this one this one comes to us from buzzfeed hot off the press people are accusing robin hood of stealing from the poor to give to the rich after it limited trading on gamestop shares we could spend the entire episode on this i mean we could spend the entire episode i could spend the entire episode So learning about this, I feel like I've got a rough sense over the course of the last 36 hours as to what's going on. But this most recent twist, which is the fact that the app that many of these retail traders on WallStreetBets have been using to buy their shares and boost the price of AMC and GameStop has now ultimately halted the purchase of said socks, I think is quite ironic in the grand scheme of things, of course, named Robinhood.

Corey 4:12

Robinhood's an interesting app in that they have a bit of a gamification of savings and stock investment. And one

Corey 4:19

one of the things that they will occasionally do is just give a free share to people. And about a year ago, I guess, they actually gave a free GameStop share to people who signed up. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, so there's all sorts of angles here. But ultimately, it's a pretty bad look when it looks like the app that you are using to make trades that the claim is it's in your control, it's in your power, it's in your hands. It says, actually, we don't like what you're doing here. You're kind of driving people out of business, so we're just going to limit that. Now, to be fair, they are somewhat saving these people from themselves. This is pretty mad house what is going on with these large investments into stocks that have no business being anywhere near the valuation level they are, really just to kind of stick it to people in Wall Street who are shorting these stocks. So for those who are not familiar with the story, when you short a stock, what you're doing is you're essentially selling

Corey 5:16

selling a stock you don't have and you're going to buy it back at a later date to make whole the market maker. and if the stock goes up your downside is unlimited you know the difference between what you quote-unquote sold it for and the the price that you ultimately buy it for and sometimes you're just forced to buy it that's what you owe so if you buy for example gamestop or you sell i guess gamestop at ten dollars a share and then you are forced to buy it at 300 you have lost 290 dollars a share so i

Corey 5:46

i mean you can see how this can drive somebody out of business however the flip side is Because in order for GameStop to get the $300 a share, people are buying GameStop at

Corey 5:57

$300 a share. It's a self

Corey 5:59

so to speak. It will ultimately come down. It is effectively, like so much of the market, a bit of a Ponzi scheme, a bit of a confidence scheme. But the fundamentals just aren't there. And when everything kind of comes crashing back down to earth, when it comes back to $10, you will have lost a

Corey 6:15

lot of money. So, Robinhood, I guess, was maybe trying to stop the poor from taking from the poor, just to continue your metaphor. But people didn't like it. And now all of a sudden, everybody is running to their competitors. And it's a rough time to be involved in crazy

Corey 6:36

crazy stock schemes, I guess. Carter,

Zain 6:39

Carter, as the as a person on the podcast, most demographically similar to a New York hedge street hedge fund manager, Wall Street hedge fund manager, your comments on this. I don't want you to be their ambassador, but I just know that you probably have the same feelings as they would.

Carter 6:54

Yeah, I mean, I was just shocked that people didn't know what a short was, right? Like, come on, like first

Carter 6:59

first day on the market, guys, like, come on, like, let's figure this stuff out faster. investor um no i just you know all

Carter 7:05

all of this stuff is you know there's a game theory to the stock market and um you like any game then you can you can mess with it and play with it uh all too often i think the assertion is that uh rich people play with it to make themselves a lot more money and there's there's certainly truth to that uh but i'll tell you something this is a game where if you're playing uh the the game stop rules and then you start playing with uh blockbuster stocks and and all the other stock that was being played with, you could very, very quickly find yourself trading Briex stock, and it's all over in a big hurry.

Zain 7:42

Thanks for bringing back that Alberta reference, Carter. I really appreciate it. I brought it home. The 90s, no less. No, that's good. Right on 14th Street in Kensington. It was just the heart of that block, that intersection. It really was. Thank you so much, Carter. No

Carter 7:55

No worries. I brought it home for you guys. No,

Zain 7:56

No, we genuinely appreciate it. You know what? The most interesting part about this, actually, actually, was the political comparison that I think a journalist wrote around how this memification of this stock, this irrational sort of like joyous sort of celebratory cult-like community that was built on Wall Street bets to kind of pump the stock price up was not dissimilar to what was happening in a less private corridor in 2016 around Donald Trump posts, right? People just pushing that stuff out on social media, incubating it in this sort of vortex and pushing it out there. The same sort of behavior of not necessarily caring about the outcome, or in this case, GameStop. I don't think any of these folks have an affinity to this outcome, as much as they care about memeing the process and having, you know, shits and giggles along the way, which leads to pretty shitty outcomes. Corey, you want to jump in before I move on to the next headline? Yeah,

Corey 8:47

Yeah, the parallel is really quite profound

Corey 8:50

profound when you think about it, because both of them are underpinned by a certain nihilism that's really more about tearing something down them building something up. It was Hillary Clinton and the, you know, the Republican establishment on one side, and it's Wall Street hedge funds now. And in both cases, you had people saying, we're not the nihilists, they are. Look how shitty they are. Look how much they've screwed me over. And I think that we've seen what happens when you kind of take this nihilism and you kind of fight fire with fire here. I would caution people against getting too excited and too gleeful about this the the market is absolutely um a strange thing and it is not always working for the benefit of main street let's let's just so i'll say that you might not agree with me but that

Corey 9:34

that doesn't mean you want to kind of just you

Corey 9:37

you can build anything when you burn something down for sure that's true but you know there's the burning down that still happens and that's a very painful process that uh that i'm not sure that we all want our retirement savings our our friends and families' retirement savings, our investments writ large to go through. So I

Corey 9:55

think in general, the markets are better when people are calmer about them. I'm not giving a pass for any shitty hedge fund that just makes money off of human misery, but let's not spread the misery further. How about it? Hey, guys. Hey, gals.

Zain 10:09

I think that's fair. Let's move it on to our next headline, Carter. I want to start with you on this one. Not so much funny, but just on a serious note from the CBC, BBC data error means completed Ontario COVID-19 vaccinations, only half of what was reported. The Ontario government says that only only it was it has only fully vaccinated half the people it had originally reported due to a government data error, according to the Ministry of Health, rather than providing a data on the number of people who've been fully vaccinated, which would require the two doses. They've inadvertently indicated

Zain 10:40

indicated the amount of vaccines scenes that have been administered. Carter, your take on this, the impact that this will have to the continuing narrative on the vaccination stuff, which we're going to talk about next, but also how this error was handled, just going straight and to the public. Do you feel like that was the right strategy here on this headline?

Carter 11:00

Well, it absolutely is the right strategy. I mean, you make a mistake, you own up to the mistake, and you move forward. That's the best practice of making mistakes. And I've, I've made a couple and that's the easiest thing to do just to smart asses grinning at me. So you own up to them, you move forward and you say, you know, you say you're wrong and you move forward. You know, this reminds me of when Chester got our subscription numbers wrong in the earlier versions of the strategists. And I mean, we had to let them go because the mistake was so big, but you know what, we rebuilt the audience and everything worked out. This is a A little bit different because it's people's lives, you

Carter 11:37

know, but this is still vaccinations that aren't happening fast enough. The challenge that we've been talking about vaccination on this show now for weeks because I've been saying that this is going to be the metric by which Trudeau is going to be measured as well as the provincial health ministers. And you can see now everybody just pointing fingers at everybody else. It's not going well. We're way behind the OECD countries. countries. We're not doing as well as the United States, which has been a gong show on every metric of COVID. We're going to need to see some significant improvement or Trudeau and these premiers are all in trouble.

Zain 12:15

Corey, your take on this?

Corey 12:18

Very similar to Stephen's. I think that ultimately, what could the province of Ontario do except for correct the mistake and move forward could you imagine if they held on to that even for a day two days you know they could get they could have just gotten crushed but uh this is a growing narrative and a growing concern for many canadians um the vaccine numbers are not where we optimistically hope they would be the government has yet to really revise down numbers i think as recently as this evening i saw the federal government say no no no we're going to get our four million by the end of march don't don't worry about what some of those numbers we provided you said provinces but we haven't hit a single

Carter 12:55

single metric yet not

Carter 12:56

not a single one of the we'll talk about it yeah

Corey 13:00

continue well i i think that's sort of the end of what i got to say on that i i would be very worried if i was the trudeau government carter

Zain 13:07

carter we're going to start this next headline with you for obvious reasons well for reasons which will become obvious in a second i should say this one comes to us from the hill florida makes big makes a bid to host the olympics if tokyo backs out now

Zain 13:25

florida it's covid rates spiking

Zain 13:27

spiking through the roof uh florida the obvious meme of the united states making a bid to host the olympics if tokyo backs out i want to get your take on this well

Carter 13:36

well i'm in if marjorie taylor green actually lights the olympic flame with her head that would work for me i'm in for that so if if she does that then i think we we should do it.

Carter 13:47

Listen, I mean, it doesn't make any sense. If the Olympics aren't safe to be held in Tokyo, they're not going to be safe to be held anywhere. And they will be held if they are safe. There is a giant economic engine behind the Olympics, and that engine isn't going to allow these things to fail. So there will be a Tokyo Olympics. It may not be on the dates, but I do do expect that it will be in the 2021 year the 2020 olympics will occur in 2021 well

Zain 14:16

well thank thank you carter for that unbelievably succinct and concise conclusion to your analysis cory your take on florida putting their hand up saying that if tokyo backs out don't worry we can do it

Corey 14:29

i i i'm not even really sure what to make of it you i haven't read this story is this can't possibly be something that the ioc would even consider is it this has got to be just random saying yeah we can do it is

Corey 14:41

is that is that the case pretty much

Zain 14:44

it's folks in the in the um in in the state house they're saying that uh the obvious next pick would be florida oh yeah not even

Zain 14:54

even we're in florida florida mar

Carter 14:56

mar-a-lago come on we

Carter 14:58

we know these things

Corey 15:01

go ahead totally baffling totally baffling it's not going to happen i think that anybody

Corey 15:06

anybody who's been involved with the olympic movement in any way shape or form and i was on the board of directors of an olympic bid corporation can tell you like the politics run deep and you don't just say okay uh japan who's been waiting and and patiently trying to get the olympics going during a pandemic um we're just going to take them and give them to america now you know yeah

Corey 15:27

to a different hemisphere, go to the U.S. That just, that does not happen. You know, something really strange would have to occur for that.

Zain 15:32

We're going to finish it with this final headline from Vanity Fair. Ted Cruz suggests everyone just get over Trump's fascist little coup. That's right. Ted Cruz, the

Zain 15:42

the guy that still exists, the one that tried to partner with AOC this evening on the GameStop, you know, stuff, is now just saying we need to just get over it. Get over the fact that Trump tried what he did. We need to move on. on it's time to move on of course Cruz being one of Trump's allies in that in that vote uh or in that uh certificate certification process Carter your thoughts I

Carter 16:06

mean this is like it's

Carter 16:08

it's like the United States is being abused by the Republican Party right

Carter 16:11

right like it's not our fault it's your fault just move past it we you know forgive me move on this is it's it's absolutely horrific I made that Marjorie Taylor Greene joke earlier yeah she's an absolute nutcase Ted Cruz is only only one step away from absolute nutcase and they are being protected by the republican party and i mean

Carter 16:30

mean not only that i mean don't even get me started on the republican you know the arizona gop like people have lost their fucking minds and we've

Carter 16:40

we've been talking about the idea that there was going to be a price that was going to be paid and

Carter 16:44

and there has been no price and

Carter 16:46

and to watch them go after biden after all the things i mean the the attacks on the number of executive orders i mean did you you just lose

Carter 16:54

sight of what happened for the last four years are you fucking kidding me i can't i can't anymore that's it i just can't i can't the republican party cory

Zain 17:05

finish us off on the headlines with the headline from vanity fair ted cruz suggests everyone just get over trump's fascist little coup uh

Corey 17:14

uh do you ever see the uh the show on netflix i think you should leave i feel like it would be up your alley there uh there's a sketch that's called the it's the hot dog car sketch watch that it's it's basically ted cruz um and i will post it for people to watch but listen it's just you know yeah i mean we should just all move on it's not a big deal let's go find the guy who did this you know this is um this is nonsense but um in

Corey 17:40

a funny way i hate to say it i i don't think we should move on i don't think we should forgive and forget but i also don't know how much We need to spend on this. The Republicans have made it clear they're not going to vote to

Corey 17:55

Ted Cruz is not right. I mean, he's so wrong that it circles back and it kind of gets to the same place. But, you know, the fact that the Republicans in procedural motions made it exceptionally clear that only about five of them are open to open to conviction. even open

Zain 18:10

open to it yeah

Corey 18:11

yeah like we're just wasting our time here we're

Corey 18:13

we're wasting our time and the and the more time we think about post

Corey 18:15

post the trump era rather than the trump era like if we're not going to get anything good out of it if it's actually just going to embolden this guy further because he's once again get a pass by the republican party to

Corey 18:25

to be frank i would rather they spend zero effort zero time not even not even get to the vote no

Carter 18:30

no that's just wrong that

Carter 18:31

that is just wrong there was an insurrection i mean maybe i object to the word insurrection but there was an armed mob that that attacked the Capitol, that took over the Capitol, that threatened the lives of the lawmakers within. You don't just walk away. Hey, listen. You don't just walk away.

Corey 18:49

Guess what, Carter? They're going to not just walk away, but they are going to formally walk away. I would much rather it look like it was just dropped than it looks like he skates. Sometimes you don't want to call the question. You have to call the question. Because the answer is more, fuck it,

Carter 19:04

it, you're crazy. Because these people are, no, I'm

Carter 19:06

I'm not the crazy one.

Carter 19:08

You don't let the mob boss get away with the crime. You have to go after the mob boss, regardless of how hard it is to get the conviction.

Carter 19:18

Get him on his fucking income taxes. I don't give a shit. You go after this fucker.

Zain 19:22

This is interesting, because while we speak, Kevin McCarthy and other leadership are trying to patch things up with Trump, who's saying he's going to make a comeback for, you know, obviously campaigning in the midterms and otherwise. So they're trying to do their thing. This

Carter 19:36

This is the point. If you don't end him, he's going to end American democracy. And this is really important to us because American democracy, they are a giant shit show right on the southern border.

Corey 19:49

You're not going to end him. What happened last time Donald Trump got impeached and then not convicted? What did he learn there? He learned that you can send a mob with guns to the Congress. And what is he going to learn when the people don't hold him to account for that? And Carter, as much as I agree with you that he should be held to account, the fact is, if he is actually going to be set

Corey 20:10

set loose, formally said, no, we will not convict you on this, I think that's a worse outcome than just saying, you know what, we've fucking moved on. You're not president anymore. We'll let the state of New York sue you, right? Corey, are

Zain 20:20

are you actually suggesting that if you're advising Senate Majority Leader Schumer, that you would suggest walking away on this? Oh,

Corey 20:28

Oh, it's too late now. They're going to just have to carry through with it. But yeah, with the benefit of knowing how this vote went, I probably wouldn't even have submitted the articles of impeachment. I would have said, you know what? Who cares? He is a private citizen now. He's irrelevant. We're moving on.

Zain 20:43

We're moving on to our first segment. Our first segment, arms race. Get

Zain 20:48

Get it? Because it's an arms race for the vaccine, but the

Corey 20:51

the vaccine goes in your

Zain 20:51

your arm. The vaccine goes in your arm. So it's an arms

Corey 20:53

arms race. I feel

Zain 20:54

feel like someone's going to steal that from me because it's like really clever. And it's two words. Corey, on the other hand, not impressed, not impressed at all. Does not really care for it much. He's

Carter 21:03

still mad at me for talking bad at him. He's still angry. I

Carter 21:07

feel like I had to let it go. He

Carter 21:09

like it when I'm right.

Zain 21:11

Corey, I'm going to start with you on this. You were talking about, both of you were talking about the timelines that Trudeau has been doubling down on, saying that Canada is on track to receive our 4 million doses by the end of March. Once again, restating the September timeline.

Zain 21:25

Smart politics from your standpoint? Like, are you convinced that even if he's got assurances from the inside, the unpredictability of everything we've seen thus far, you know, the factory in Belgium wanting to retool, the little hiccup and pseudo heart attack that folks had around the EU having some issues with shipments. Do you feel like doubling down on milestones is something that you would do if you were advising Trudeau right now?

Corey 21:56

I think so, if you are actually confident that it's going to happen. I

Corey 21:59

I believe that what we've got right now is an awful lot of anxiety out there that Canadians have. And to say, well, maybe not, maybe you're right, maybe this will not come through would not be helpful in this moment. if

Corey 22:13

you are 100 certain as the federal government that that everything that you've said is true that these these vaccine doses will actually come through that everything will ramp up according to plan asterisk with the hiccups that have occurred you know on the you know week by week numbers but you know when you step back and you look at the months everything will be just fine um

Corey 22:33

and and really zane i just based that on

Corey 22:36

if all of a sudden uh he was to to come out and say yeah it doesn't look like we're going to be able to hit those march numbers we're going to have to revise those things people

Corey 22:44

people would have no confidence in any of those long-term calculations projections ever again and so um whereas

Corey 22:51

whereas normally the advice in politics is under promise and over deliver uh i

Corey 22:57

hope that that's already been done i hope that they've adjusted for this and that they're able to provide because um he

Corey 23:03

he uh it's not just about him it's not just about the Liberal Party. It's not just about the political machinations back and forth. But

Corey 23:11

people are trying to determine when to reopen their businesses, right? There's long term plans being made by major institutions.

Corey 23:18

And all of a sudden have no confidence in any kind of schedule going forward would be a

Corey 23:23

a disaster, I think, for the economy. Carter,

Zain 23:26

Carter, when I asked Corey that question, I could see you shaking your head. No, that this is not a good idea to double down on milestones. Qualify that for me. I might be I might be interpreting just on what I visually saw from you. But what are you thinking? If you were advising Trudeau right now, you know, he's set the March and the September milestones to Canadians, knowing the uncertainties, and of course, not having the information he does as leader of our country and within government, what would you be suggesting to him around communicating on milestones?

Carter 23:56

Well, I think that communicating

Carter 23:57

communicating on milestones is all well and good, but you can't, I mean, this has to be under promise and over deliver. It has to be. And And the problem that we have right now is that we didn't hit December. We're not going to hit January. People don't have a lot of confidence about February because of the Pfizer reductions. We're nowhere with Moderna. I mean, we're not seeing the actual implementation of the plan that he's articulated to date. Because of that, I don't have the

Carter 24:24

the faith that Corey's talking about, right? Corey's basically saying, if we revise the estimates, I might lose some faith. Faith lost. Faith is gone from this guy right here. And I think that faith is gone from a lot of Canadians who are saying, you know, may not be your fault that this is happening, but you're not making me feel good by not changing your numbers.

Carter 24:48

Make me feel good, Prime

Carter 24:49

Prime Minister. Make me feel good. Give me a degree of confidence, because right now I have less confidence than I want. want.

Zain 24:56

Carter, you make an interesting point around, well, feelings, certainly, but around confidence. And this question might sound silly, but I'll ask it anyways.

Zain 25:05

Is the Prime Minister's calculation that the output is the only thing that Canadians care about a good one? That if by March, through whatever way we get our 4 million, that is political success? Or do you think the process to get to 4 million, or the process to get us to full vaccination by September also matters just as much? Because right now, could we have a scenario where we get to $4 million, but the goodwill, the trust, and the confidence still erodes? Can we divorce those two things? And should, in

Zain 25:38

in this case, Trudeau also be factoring in the process element, not just the milestone and the goal element? You

Carter 25:45

You don't have kids, so you've never had to buy the hot Christmas toy, right?

Carter 25:49

right? So you can go and you can buy the hot Christmas toy, and you can all stand at the doors of toys or us which i don't know if they may not even exist anymore who who even knows my kids are so old doors

Carter 25:58

doors open everybody runs to the fucking aisle trying to find the toy that they got or you have a nice orderly process where numbers are handed out everybody follows numbers and they walk into the store and they for everybody gets access based on the number that they were in line at the time in which they arrived which process you mean you get the you You get the toy anyway because you're a nasty person. Your elbows are up. You're grabbing the fucking toy. It's

Zain 26:23

It's like Jingle All the Way. Have you seen that movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger? It's pretty

Carter 26:25

pretty good. Fantastic movie. Here's

Zain 26:27

That's how we shop in the Northeast all the time. Northeast

Carter 26:30

Northeast shopping. Northeast shopping is this analogy right now because if you get the toy, you don't feel good about it, right?

Carter 26:37

right? You want to feel good about the process, right? Apple always manages their processes perfectly, right? Right. You the whole shopping experience is better because Apple's managing it better than Toys R Us. So that's why my kids this year got AirPods from Apple. Only two hundred and forty nine dollars available now in the Apple store. Thanks again, Apple.

Zain 27:04

it turned out that we have a new sponsor on the show. I

Carter 27:08

I have a sponsor. You guys don't. I got new Apple AirPods. airpods i've

Zain 27:12

i've got uh i've got i'm holding up these uh airpods from aliexpress uh so i have

Zain 27:18

have these even though jack ma's missing who cares let's talk about that later cory um process do

Zain 27:24

do you agree with carter's point that process also matters and do you feel like that will be part of people's political calculation if i can put it so crassly when they assess the trudeau government on on vaccination delivery so

Corey 27:37

what exactly would they assess negatively about process if we've got four million at the end of march uh is it just like they

Corey 27:45

they they felt a lack of confidence and then it happened anyways but

Zain 27:50

but it was a rocky road to get there that that you know certain cohorts didn't get it on time that it didn't allow and throwing this out there right as hypothesis that it didn't allow the runway that as we've talked about on previous episodes to have those that are really pro-vaccine to actually have the airspace to talk about uh they're getting the vaccine because all All we talked about was, oh, my God, when is it coming? So that runway to talk about, I love the vaccine to your friends and family, to then try to convert the vaccine-hesitant folks wasn't available. It's that level of stuff that, at least in my mind, that when I asked the question, open-ended. Two and

Carter 28:23

and a half million doses available in the last three days of March isn't going to make this effective.

Zain 28:30

it was an open question, right? Like, I didn't come with an agenda. I was curious about it. Yeah,

Corey 28:34

Yeah, no, I asked the question because the parallel universe we're talking about here is where we have the same vaccines, but the government says, actually, this is going to go much slower. Like, if

Corey 28:47

if we theory this out and say, okay, they actually are on course to get the 4 million, how

Corey 28:54

how are they benefiting by changing

Corey 28:57

changing that 4 million number at this point? like let's say that we say they do want to over promise or sorry under promise and over deliver what how how

Corey 29:06

how would that help like i don't understand why they would change course at this point if they feel confidence i'm not trying to be obtuse but like i don't think it will help the process how

Carter 29:13

how can they feel confidence when you keep missing it when you miss your early deadlines when you miss one deadline that's a little bit of a mishap i gave them total no

Carter 29:22

no problem no problem at the end of december now

Carter 29:25

now it's the end of january right

Carter 29:26

right not only have they missed their deadline now Now we've got production problems. Now we've got supply issues. Now there's other problems that I'm not blaming them for, but

Carter 29:34

but I'm aware of.

Carter 29:36

And, you know, now I'm starting to worry. We're going to miss January. Are we going to miss February?

Carter 29:40

And them not revising their numbers makes me think that they're being more obtuse and just kind of sticking to that number than they are being, you know, strategic and actually understanding what the future problems will be. I'd rather have someone who knows what the future

Carter 29:56

future problem is and gives us a better outcome.

Zain 30:02

I want to talk about this, you know, over

Zain 30:06

over sort of this delivery of being able to ultimately meet these goals. Is there anything to be said around Aaron O'Toole and his political strategy right now, asking for more transparency, hammering the government on these delays that he could perhaps overcompensate and that this government could deliver on time? Is there any risk to O'Toole being very loud and boisterous on this particular vaccine accountability, if I can call it that, Corey?

Corey 30:35

I mean, yeah, absolutely. Exact same analysis as last week. Nothing has fundamentally changed here. The reality is the conservatives

Corey 30:42

conservatives are well positioned if the vaccination rollout doesn't go well, but they have to be very careful that they don't sound like the party that cried shortage if this all works out in March. And

Carter 30:54

And you don't want to be perceived as the group that is cheering against the vaccination of the country, right? And they're almost coming across like gleeful that the Trudeau government's not able to deliver. I mean, I know that's how Trudeau's government, or sorry, Kenny's government sounds. Kenny's government sounds like, thank God we finally got an enemy we can fight. You can almost hear glee in their voices.

Zain 31:19

And so tell me, Carter, on this particular point, then, you know, one of the things that the Trudeau government is, and we talked about this at the end of last episode, and we've got a little bit more meat on the bone now, is that they're saying new travel restrictions will be introduced soon. They've been telegraphing this for the last four days. Many critics are calling this as a compensation to the fact that we don't have vaccines. So you're trying to do one thing where as a replacement or as a mitigating factor when you don't have vaccines to deliver, What do you kind of make of this and what do you kind of make of the political both strategy and perhaps even cost that the Trudeau government might have on the new travel restrictions?

Carter 31:55

Well, first of all, stop signaling. This is really personal for me. I've got a coach for our team in Europe right now, not knowing what the fuck is going on. They're

Zain 32:05

very vague. They say if you have plans, cancel them. That's been the advice from Trudeau

Carter 32:10

now. We sent him weeks ago, and now he's sitting in Europe, and he doesn't know what the hell to do because he's working out with a national team doing ski racing, and we don't know what to do with him. Do we bring him back now? We're not sure that he's going to be en route, but just tell us what the fucking rules are. Tell us what the rules are so we can follow the rules. This kind of insane hinting at the rules. He started hinting at the rules on the 22nd of January. It is the 29th of January.

Carter 32:44

Make up your mind. Tell us the rules so that people can follow them. This is absolutely insane to me that these rules can't be more clearly articulated. And it's a failure of this government that we've talked about before. Can't seem to manage crisis.

Zain 33:00

Corey, you're shaking your head. What do you think? I

Corey 33:02

I think this is nuts. Nats, you're talking about it's been a week and we don't have clarity? Where the fuck have you been the last year, Carter? Why do you think that this situation is something that illuminates itself in the course of six days? Make

Carter 33:13

Make a decision. We're afraid of the European variant. What do you mean?

Carter 33:20

When you say make a decision,

Zain 33:21

what do you mean? Do you mean just like announce what the policy is?

Carter 33:24

Here's the policy. We're bringing it into effect on January 31st. Why do you think they're not doing that? Because I don't think they know what the policy is. I think that they don't know what the policy is.

Zain 33:32

Interesting. Corey, from a strategy perspective, before you get into the analysis, from a strategy perspective, I think there's a salient question here. Why do you think they're not announcing what the restrictions are?

Corey 33:43

Because they don't know what to do yet. This is so rapidly evolving. They're tracking whether these variants are coming through. They're looking at the numbers. They're looking at the statistics. They're seeing first cases in Canada. They're seeing if they're going to lead to second cases. Jesus, you'd think that we were just sitting here thinking about the political ramifications, but there's a public health emergency underneath it. I'm so sorry that it takes seven days to figure out whether we need to do something or not.

Zain 34:05

So to that point, would you start

Corey 34:10

So would I condition people to think that is a real possibility? Yeah, I would do basically exactly what the federal government is doing. But that doesn't mean that

Corey 34:17

that they are going to then immediately have to do it the next day. They may not end up having to do it. The conversation around this is evolving rapidly. And you seem to think that they have a definitive solution from the 22nd that they're just not sharing with us. And I just do not believe that's the case. Corey,

Zain 34:32

Corey, do you feel like the, do

Zain 34:34

do you buy into any element of the political criticism that the travel restrictions are an offset for the lack of vaccines that were getting delivered?

Corey 34:44

Yeah, well, look, I mean, that's not even necessarily a political thing. You've obviously got a bigger problem, the more people who can potentially get this variant. So these issues collapse on each other, they lean on each other. And the government needs to look at the whole package and say, okay, well, you

Corey 34:58

you know, it's It's very different if, for example, you have – let's imagine we had 80% vaccination rate right now. Well, obviously, travel is going to be less of a big deal, right?

Corey 35:09

But we don't. We don't have anywhere near that. So travel is going to be a much bigger deal. And all of this is

Corey 35:16

is just one big story. And the government has got to manage these things and follow these things carefully. And when you make a decision like closing the borders, that's not a decision that should be made lightly. There is an awful lot of economic activity still ongoing. going there is the fact that you are isolating families from each other extended families um nobody wants to do these things i know you

Corey 35:36

you know dropping the hammer is um depending on your personal circumstances perhaps easier to do than others if you are a a single person who has no ability to socially interact as a result of this it's a bigger deal than it is perhaps for me who has one million children as you have all observed yeah

Zain 35:51

yeah no it's close to close to what

Carter 35:53

what yeah you're You're a busy fella. You're busy.

Corey 35:55

If you live in Montreal but your family lives in France or Brazil, it's a bigger deal to you, right? And we just have to keep in mind that these – we

Corey 36:06

we have to do the right thing and we have to keep people safe. But

Corey 36:09

But it's not always clear what the right thing to do is and it's not always clear when the right thing to do is. And so like I've got a lot of sympathy for governments trying to balance this. What I would always want my government to do is tell me when options are on the table and under active consideration, which is what they've done. I don't think we should be in the habit of punishing governments for letting us know things could be a possibility. Carter,

Zain 36:30

what's your what's your retort to that?

Carter 36:33

I mean, I just think that, you know, this has been ongoing for a year. We know that the constraining and constricting travel is probably the best play when you've got a hyper spreadable variant. variant um so tell us what you're going to do tell us you're going to shut down travel tell us you're going to put a two-week quarantine in place tell us what the rules of the quarantine are allow us to make the decisions that we need to make as uh as people who are you know living in a living in a complex world i mean we simplified it as much as we can but there still are questions that need answers to and the government can do a better job a year after starting to figure out out how to do this i

Zain 37:11

like this the fiery one already i love this i love this um okay i'm two more things i want to discuss on here one of them is hypothetical i'll save that till the end last time we talked about this we analyzed o'toole strategies i now maybe wanted you guys to perhaps strategize o'toole strategies yeah strategize

Zain 37:26

strategize yeah that makes sense uh cory yeah carter actually carter i'll start with you because because you finished off on this one what

Zain 37:32

what would you be suggesting he do right now do you think his focal point needs to be on vaccine delays do you think Do you think it needs to be on milestones? Do you think it needs to be on the travel restrictions? Or the other sort of, I'd say, avenue he's opened up this week, which I thought was quite interesting, was going after Freeland on her budget or prospective budget as being a radical experiment to remake Canada. So he's opened up, if I can call these, multiple swim lanes. Would you, you know, if I can ask you for a rough, you know, your rough sort of take as to where he would divide his attention? Equally amongst all of them? Squarely in some of them? What would you be thinking right now, knowing this reality that you face as we record here on Thursday evening? evening i

Carter 38:17

think if i was the uh leader of the opposition i would want to run on vaccination i want to run on government's efficiency on back you would want

Zain 38:26

want to make this a referendum on vaccination yeah

Carter 38:28

yeah i would you i

Carter 38:29

i would roll the dice on

Zain 38:30

on that right now without knowing milestone numbers well

Carter 38:33

well i'd want to pull may and june off the table right like forget about milestone numbers instead let's march is going

Zain 38:39

going to be on the table right

Carter 38:40

right march let's say that he's successful four million four million vaccinations it takes 30 30 million vaccinations for us to be kind of at our quote unquote herd herd immunity or maybe maybe 25 depending on how many people we count as having been exposed to the virus uh prior to that um it's a shit ton more right and it has to be done in april and may if you're going to call a june election um so you're you're looking you got to four million in march good job buddy good job buddy now you've got to get the 30 million You've got $26 million more to go, and you're going to call an election in the middle of that? I mean, good job, well planned, because not everybody who wants to vote in this election is going to be immunized. So what are you going to do? How are you going to manage this? And I think that holding an election when people can't go to a restaurant doesn't make sense to me. So I'd be

Carter 39:31

be doubling down on the vaccination program because I want to pull the early date off the table. give myself a little bit more time to get ready for a fall date or better yet 2022 because i think that the common uh

Carter 39:46

uh thinking on this or the the thinking is that the longer it goes the worse it is for for the liberals so delay

Carter 39:53

delay delay delay try and get him to the place where he you know if you're calling an election during a pandemic you're making a foundational mistake if the majority of your population is not vaccinated at the start of the election cory

Zain 40:06

cory uh what is how would you kind of divide your strategic attention if you're O'Toole based on some of the categories I laid out earlier, vaccination program, the milestones of the vaccination program, its rollouts, talking about the upcoming budget. What are you what are you kind of thinking if you're if you're in that camp right now?

Corey 40:25

Well, you don't have any control over whether Moderna or Pfizer brings in vaccines. And I think, you know, I suspect he would want Canadians to be vaccinated as fast as possible, because hopefully he's not a ghoul but um it it isn't a great idea to base your political strategy on something that's out of your control like that right so if you spend way too much time saying you can't get it done you can't get it done and then he gets it done you've

Corey 40:50

you've got yourself a bit of a problem so you're gonna have to find something that's a little more durable and it survives any scenario and is within your control yeah

Corey 40:57

is a narrative that you can manage going forward if you want to think about this in pure strategy terms uh because otherwise you're not you're not strategizing, you're rolling the dice. It's like buying a $1.5 billion pipeline. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. And that's fundamentally, as we've seen, a bit of a mistake. You've got to take things more in your control and look at the things that are within your ability to manage. And what you are seeing O2 will do is start talking about transparencies around vaccines. In fact, that messaging has obviously bled into our friend Stephen Carter, as we saw in the last question.

Corey 41:29

You're not being straight with us. You got to tell us more. We need We need a full accounting of everything that's going on. We want candidates to succeed, but we're not able to succeed when we can't trust the government. And, you know, it's kind of – then you get to create your own little virtuous cycle as the conservatives where you say, oh, people don't trust the Canadian government. People then don't trust the Canadian government. You can say, see, people don't trust the Canadian government and move on and forward and make it about a bigger thing. It's actually a reinforcing narrative of a lot of negatives that people already have about the liberals, right? Right. And so that's what you are doing as O'Toole if you are smart. Now, if

Corey 42:03

if you can get a free lottery ticket and there's a chance that that lottery ticket is going to pay off, take that, too. So make sure that you're at least planting the conversations around, you know, you're

Corey 42:13

you're not doing enough to get the vaccine so that you can point back to them in a few months if this doesn't work out. But you

Corey 42:19

you don't want to be hanging your hat on that one. That's a very dangerous thing to hang your hat on from a pure political strategy point of view. I

Zain 42:27

I want to close off with this aforementioned hypothetical, and it's actually the inverse of what we're talking about here, which is Trudeau's election chances and his ballot box question. So the first part of this is, Carter, and I think this first part will be very simple, I hope, vaccines as they stand right now, winning or losing ballot box question for Trudeau?

Carter 42:44

I think losing, but I'm a little older than you two, right? I have older parents. My parents are both late 70s, and I want to make sure that everybody gets vaccinated. No, my parents are probably going to be vaccinated. I'm probably not going to be vaccinated by the time, if this thing is called in mid-May or early May, right after the budget is presented, then I think that I'm going to be pretty cranky. I think people like me are going to be a little bit cranky. So,

Carter 43:17

don't just, you know, I don't think we're going to be released into the wild, as it were, until

Carter 43:25

probably May, June, July. I don't want there to be, the first thing that I have to think about is whether or not, you know, who to vote for. That just pisses me off. I want to think about nothing for a little while. I want to actually go into the woods and not think about anything, especially you two yahoos. Trust

Zain 43:40

Trust me, we'd love nothing more than that. You could do that right now. Yeah,

Zain 43:44

Yeah. Like I said, this was supposed to be Corey and I testing the show out. That just totally spun around on

Carter 43:47

on me. I'm not very happy. By

Zain 43:49

By the way, you said The Wilds. I just want to say The Wilds on Amazon, great show. If you haven't seen it, I'd highly recommend it to anyone. Who

Carter 43:55

Who has time for TV?

Corey 43:55

TV? You should watch. I think you should leave on Netflix first if we're giving recommendations.

Zain 44:00

Okay. So you're saying maybe, Corey, same – I thought it'd be a simple question. Vaccinations as they stand right now, winning or losing ballot box question for Trudeau in your mind?

Corey 44:09

Losing. It's simple. We're not doing well relative to our peer groups. Now, that doesn't necessarily – I.e., other countries. Yeah.

Corey 44:16

That doesn't mean that's going to be the case come June. But if you were to drop people at an election station right now, that would be a serious problem for Justin Trudeau. So

Zain 44:26

So then the next part of this question is, Corey, you're part of the Trudeau election preparedness bunch. You're thinking of the spring. You've been given some direction that, okay, yeah, spring-ish is kind of what we're looking at as one of the options. are you what what are you kind of internally focusing your ballot box question on are you trying to make it a referendum on the first part of covid are you and a lot of control you don't have but if you could try to shape the agenda and the narrative is there a a track that you are particularly attracted to if you are the trudeau government yeah

Corey 44:59

yeah and this stuff is always going to be led to a certain extent by polling as to where canadians opinions are we talked about about this a couple of weeks ago.

Corey 45:08

I think that once the election kicks off, the election is probably not going to be about COVID, at least not in real terms. You know, and I doubt I mean, right now, maybe because of where we are with vaccines, but let's just assume that that gets at least to a more comfortable

Corey 45:21

comfortable median place. We're not 20th in the world, or, you know, because as Canadians, we expect to see ourselves in that top 10 and do it pretty well.

Corey 45:29

You're You're probably wanting to move past it.

Corey 45:33

There is all sorts of readily available data about Canadians' values that show that the Liberal Party perhaps has a little bit more ability to access Canadians on a value-based argument than the Conservatives do. And I saw some of that, I think, from Abacus earlier this week, where it looked at the Conservative values on certain issues and broke down to like kind of their core base versus all the way up through their most accessible. and yeah the conservatives have a problem on that front they've got a bit of a challenge with their base wanting something that is so wildly different from mainstream canadians so if

Corey 46:07

if you were justin trudeau and you're able to say all right this was you know we managed well through covid uh just look at america as the counter example there um but now everything is so different we want another mandate we want to talk about the type of canada that comes out of this i think that's pretty successful i'd be curious to see if it's been pulled on i suspect But ultimately, because

Corey 46:29

because a matter like that is going to get a bit of the conservatives far right, you know, the people, the

Corey 46:35

small group that make up the tinfoil hat brigade who are saying, well, this is all part of like a, you know, a secret conspiracy to bring in like a global socialist revolution.

Corey 46:44

It's going to be tough for the conservatives to go too far down that road. You might be able to get to a place Canadians like in a way that Aaron O'Toole never will be able to. And he'll be busy managing his flank

Corey 46:54

flank here as he's dealing with all of the people in his party and in his coalition who think that this is part of a secret conspiracy to eat babies or whatever the hell it is they believe. So I

Corey 47:09

am probably looking at that, trying to keep people's eyes towards the horizon, big sky pictures. The other benefit of that is that keeps you out of them looking down at the road in front of you and the road behind and all of the mud and shit you went through on all of these different various ethics scandals, you know, elevate it.

Corey 47:27

And I think that that is

Corey 47:29

is probably at least what I'm exploring. You would all be polling dependent.

Zain 47:33

Carter, finish us off on this. I'm going to ask you a slightly different question than I did, Corey, but in the same spirit, which is, you

Zain 47:39

know, often elections are about what have you done for me lately? What's what the momentum and the halo you have going into the election? If it's fair to say that the Trudeau government, if they have a spring election, vaccines continues on its current trajectory of being a little rocky. How

Zain 47:57

How do they strategically ensure that the election is not about what happened most recently, i.e. vaccines? How do they make it about either a broader picture to what Corey is saying, who feels like it might naturally veer in that direction? But what are some preventative, and I know this is a big question for you, but what are some preventative mechanisms or strategies to ensure that the election isn't just a referendum of what happened literally the day before we called the election, so to speak, and that it is actually an all-encompassing conversation on either track record or perhaps even your case, the focal point you want to focus on? So any suggestions or ideas on that?

Carter 48:33

Well, I think the liberals face essentially two traps when they're doing the election. The first trap is

Carter 48:38

is this COVID vaccination rate problem. The second trap is as

Carter 48:41

as soon as we get all our vaccinations, we're going to start saying, well,

Carter 48:44

well, how quickly can we expect the economy to bounce back? Because you're exactly right. We are a what have you done for me lately kind of crowd. And we are prepared to put up with certain degrees of unemployment and certain degrees of economic underperformance, especially during COVID. That makes sense to us. But the economy needs to ramp back up again. We need to be working again. We need to feel like we are back

Carter 49:09

back to where we were, maybe back to normal relatively

Carter 49:11

relatively quickly. And, you

Carter 49:13

know, let's assume that the

Carter 49:15

the vaccination rates are done by September, which is the promise. You know, are we looking for economic recovery by October? Because that would just be the type of short-sightedness that has defined Canadians. So, you know, that's, you know, that's the type of people we are, you know, we are, you

Carter 49:33

you know, let's, I'd be and I think that that's probably what the Trudeau government is the most afraid of is, you know, this vaccination problem is manageable and communicable. Perhaps the economy one is just going to be a little bit more deep seated and painful.

Zain 49:48

Corey, you wanted to add something here before we finish up? Yeah,

Corey 49:51

Yeah, the opportunity here for the liberals is significant. And there's a reason why we are talking about a spring election, despite all that's going on in the world and all that's going on specifically in Canada with this vaccine context. It's very alluring. And it's this, if they pick their moment just right, the way they frame their ballot box question is essentially the election campaign itself gets to be declaring

Corey 50:11

declaring mission accomplished. Now that we have dealt with COVID, what

Corey 50:15

what do we want Canada to do? So

Zain 50:17

So the election is like victory lap plus vision future, so to speak. That's right. So if you

Corey 50:22

just the right – if you thread that needle – and I'm not saying it's got to be the day. I think it's within a band of a quarter, several months. But it

Corey 50:29

it looks like we've turned the page. We're out of the woods on COVID. Where to now? Before, we've really had a chance to land and think about the economy and all of the things Stephen has said.

Corey 50:38

But after, we are anxious about our ability to manage the issue writ large. And that is a very, very appealing

Corey 50:46

appealing election to run. Wouldn't that

Zain 50:48

that just mean the fall, though? No.

Carter 50:49

No. No. Here's where I think it would be really interesting.

Zain 50:52

Jump in, Carter, yeah. Call

Carter 50:53

Call it on Labor Day. Or

Carter 50:55

Or I'm sorry, not on Labor Day. Call it on Canada Day.

Carter 50:58

Right? Call it on July 1st.

Carter 51:00

1st. Put it in the middle of August.

Carter 51:02

And run this fucking thing. You remember we had the summer election during the last Strategist podcast. Massive run. Huge, huge ratings. ratings and uh i

Zain 51:11

i mean chest are lying thanks a lot

Carter 51:14

lot of those ratings just to

Zain 51:15

to let you know um

Carter 51:16

um but the uh the point

Carter 51:19

point is that we well

Carter 51:20

well yeah walk us through walk us

Zain 51:21

us through july 1st just so like i'm

Carter 51:23

i'm happy in the summer i'm excited in the summer the summer is is uh i think that regardless of whether or not we've hit every canadian being vaccinated we are close enough now that i can i'll be removed from my house i'll be you know footloose and fancy free it's warm i don't have have to worry about my heating bill. You know, life is pretty darn good in Canada during the summer. And I haven't had two and three and four months to start worrying about my own economic performance. And it's that much closer to when I last got my last CERB check. It's that much closer to, you know, remembering that it was the Liberals who guided us through all of this. It's that two month window between July and August to September, October that makes me the most nervous.

Zain 52:07

You'd be bucking the trend on summer elections, but you don't seem concerned about that. Corey, you're smiling and wanted to jump in. I'll let you jump in because I think it's quite fascinating on my end.

Corey 52:17

Yeah, I immediately liked Canada Day for all of the reasons that Carter said. But also, it's Canada Day. If you want to make the election as the liberals about where do we go next, I mean, the symbolism, again, it's almost over the top, but I kind of enjoy it. It's pretty

Carter 52:32

pretty fun. Trudeau can pull off that kind of over the top too, right?

Carter 52:35

right? Right. Like going to see Governor

Carter 52:38

Governor General Ken Dryden playing

Carter 52:40

playing a little hockey

Carter 52:43

hockey out front, a little ball hockey, you know, and then walking back down and announcing that we called the Ritz been dropped. I mean,

Carter 52:53

that's right. That up. That's good stuff. That's good stuff. This is almost

Zain 52:56

almost as good as your last suggestion where you suggested that the liberals call the election in concert with the American election, which I recall Corey and I both immediately liked. And then after we went off air, immediately hated.

Carter 53:11

Yeah, you got your pickle.

Corey 53:13

We'll leave that there. Moving on to our next segment.

Zain 53:16

Our next segment, filibuster adjuster. Guys, I want to talk about the United States and the filibuster. And I want to talk. There's so many things we could talk about the United States. But I think the filibuster is the most interesting thing to me right now, because it's about spending political capital. And it ties into what we talked about at the top when Corey was talking about dropping the, in many ways, to me, it talks about the capital and the time spent in Biden's first 100 days. And so you're seeing right now that progressives within the Democratic Party and movements and caucuses within the Democratic establishment establishment party are warning that Joe Biden's agenda could collapse if the Democrats don't change the Senate and how it works. It could have an immediate ramification on this nearly $2 trillion bill that Biden wants to push through. And they're already putting pressure on whoever stands in their way. They're framing the Senate filibuster as like this tool of racism and oppression, trying to, you know, this procedural mechanism makes it impossible to move legislation without 60 votes. votes. Corey, on a previous episode, I don't recall of this podcast, I don't recall if it was last week or the week before, you were talking about Biden's skittishness to kind of go down this path. Having observed the last couple of weeks, do you feel like this is worthy of the political capital necessary in the early days of the Biden administration?

Zain 54:36

To take out the filibuster, you mean? That's right. That's right. To take out the filibuster and spend the time and the political capital, a

Zain 54:42

a little bit of a dice roll to be able to do that.

Corey 54:45

Well, if you're going to do it, you might as well either do it now or set up the conditions that your caucus

Corey 54:51

caucus will allow you to do it down the road. It's not necessarily a given that they'll be able to do that. You've got Senator Manchin in West Virginia who has basically said he wouldn't bring forward – his language has been very carefully chosen, I think. Like he wouldn't vote to kill the filibuster. But, you

Corey 55:08

you know, I guess if

Corey 55:11

if there is already a creeping realization of obstructionism, and that's part of, I think, why McConnell backed down earlier this week on some of his harder keeping the line. You know, there were some silly things here. Despite Schumer being the Senate leader, the Republicans still carried control of all of the Senate committees, right? And I think that was pissing Democrats off. And that was leading to more likely that the filibuster would be killed. there's a game that uh mcconnell is playing right now which is it's his job he's trying to keep as much powerful as possible for his conference and that is that is a game where you've essentially got to be as obstructionist as possible without forcing the counter reaction from the democrats bringing in this this you know a bomb of a solution so uh if i'm joe biden and i think that i can get it done at this point i

Corey 56:01

i probably do it but again i just don't think that's joe biden or or at least I don't think he's going to be the heavy that he needs to be to get that through right now. He just loves the Senate too much. He was in the Senate for so long. 36

Zain 56:11

36 for a veteran of the Senate, right? Respects, has long said he's believed in the principle of unlimited debate. The reason this comes up is that, you know, not just progressive groups, but most recently at the funeral for former Congressman John Lewis, Barack Obama, talking about the filibuster as being a sign of systemic inequality. Carter, do you feel like this is something worth the political capital if you are Joe Biden? Or are you spending that capital elsewhere and rolling the dice that you're going to try to get your past agenda passed with the filibuster in place? You

Carter 56:48

You know, if the rules were remotely similar for each of the parties, then I think that you could, you know, that maybe Joe Biden should, you know, test the waters, see what he can get, you know, see what he can get away with, allow the filibuster to exist and count on the Republicans to behave as Republican senators should. The collegial house, the second thought and the ability to get along and think of the bigger picture and not just local politics that are demanding a two-year election cycle like we see in the House of Representatives. But McConnell wouldn't even bring Merrick

Carter 57:27

Merrick Garland to a vote, wouldn't even allow a vote. And anything that mattered, they didn't need a fucking filibuster. McConnell just stuffed it and wouldn't allow it through the committees, wouldn't allow it through the process. So the

Carter 57:43

rules aren't even, you

Carter 57:44

you know, Schumer is is has got the power. This is the time Biden, Schumer and Pelosi need to achieve an agenda because shit's getting real, too. too. Like, I'm very pleased with the executive orders that were passed. But that's just the beginning of what we're going to need to see from the United States to bring them into the 21st century.

Zain 58:07

Rapid fire executive orders being signed by Biden relatively swiftly in the first days here. Corey, I guess my question to you is if you're if you're advising some of these progressive groups who for their political agenda and policy agenda, so to speak, feel like the filibuster needs to go. They've obviously got a procedural issue with it, but they've also got one regarding convincing Biden. Is there some strategies or tactics more broadly that you feel like they should employ in trying to convince their democratic establishment leaders that this is something that needs to happen? And kind of what tactics would you broadly be thinking about right now? Because I don't know if this is what leads to fracturing, but many on the progressive progressive side are

Zain 58:52

are telegraphing that it could.

Corey 58:54

Yeah, I think that would be such a weird fracturing on their part. It just doesn't make any sense to me that they would, you know, break a party on that. But look, the filibuster needs to go.

Corey 59:05

But you can be creative about it. This is not a binary. The rule is not there is a filibuster exactly as there is or there is not. We've already seen the filibuster be weakened pretty significantly in the past decade. It can be weakened further. You can extend the times when you can use reconciliation. So this process where the house votes for something the senate votes for something different the reconciliation process you you come up with something else and then it goes back to both houses and maybe that can't be filibustered in any way shape or form and you extend the terms under which you can avoid the filibuster it already can avoid the filibuster right now maybe you look at ways that the filibuster allows you to hold

Corey 59:42

hold that 60 votes for a month and then after a month you're able to force it back to a majority vote and then if you're senator mansion you can say yeah see i voted to keep the filibuster but you know it allows people to save face and back down from extreme positions and guys like mansion to go back to west virginia and say oh no i didn't vote to get rid of the filibuster that's just republicans telling you those

Corey 1:00:02

those things the reality is very different the reality is i supported it but the filibuster has never been absolute it's only ever been used in certain circumstances you know so i guess my point would be be creative don't don't fall into this This false dichotomy of it's an absolute abolishment of the phrase and the words and the uses in every sense. Because there are ways that you can get

Corey 1:00:23

get that majority you need to change the rules. You can make it more complicated for Republicans to complain about it because Americans will say, well, but there's still a way to filibuster. You can even make a show of it if you're the Democrats in the first couple of months.

Corey 1:00:37

Don't fall into this fake fight with yourselves. themselves, right? Don't, you know, splinter your party on this. Be creative.

Zain 1:00:46

Carter, I'm going to close this segment off with your take. If you're one of the progressive groups, one of the progressive caucuses within the Democratic Party, what are you trying to do to convince your leadership, your establishment leadership, that this is something that they need to do?

Carter 1:01:02

Well, that's really interesting, because I'm not sure that this is what they'll want to do. But I would say, we're only going to ask for X number of things, right? We're recognizing that That if you if you push these things through, we're only going to be able to achieve to a certain point. So let's let's just get to let's get to the opening stakes and then we'll come back after 20, 2022.

Zain 1:01:24

Do you feel like, Carter, as a follow up to that, that one of the ways to

Zain 1:01:29

to showcase the limitation is to have something that Biden wants fail at the Senate to ultimately create a proof point? Like, is that too risky of a strategy to show that? Or do you feel like that's perhaps the only way?

Carter 1:01:40

I mean, it's not like, I mean, I

Carter 1:01:43

don't know. Right now, it feels like we're at a historic level of ignorance and a historic level of, you know, unengagement, right, where people don't give a fuck. And even though, you know, most voters in the world, you know, that have ever voted, voted in the last election, they were voting on a high level of ignorance and misinformation. information so i'm

Carter 1:02:05

i'm not sure that you're

Carter 1:02:08

you're gonna get to where you need to go through

Carter 1:02:10

through asking the american public to take you there right

Zain 1:02:14

we're gonna leave that segment there move it on to our final segment our over under in our lightning round carter are you ready i'm dancing well because of that and i don't like your moves i'm starting with cory cory alberta

Zain 1:02:26

alberta for the first time in a long time, maybe even the first time, has received an A. This is where we insert the drum roll, the fireworks, the carnival and parade music. Yes, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, they upgraded Alberta to an A from last year's B-minus on what, you may ask? Well, on red tape reduction. Corey, on a letter grade of A to F, or A plus to F, I guess, what are you giving alberta's newly minted a uh

Corey 1:02:58

uh yeah go ahead and enjoy your a but when you when you kind of translate it into a gpa to go to a better school it's not going to be very much

Corey 1:03:07

here's the thing about the cfib's red tape measurements

Corey 1:03:11

measurements right uh they've they've changed it this year i was looking at the methodology yesterday um because i'm always so amused by other methodology i'll set aside this year's methodology for a bit in years past one of the major determinants of what letter grade they gave you was political leadership so whether the cfib felt that your political leaders cared about cutting red tape so surprise when the ndp were in power guess what they got for that very low grades f you might even say another one is that there's legislation that says it is a government priority to eliminate red tape that's it so So

Corey 1:03:45

the CFIB rewards the creation of superfluous legislation in service of getting rid of superfluous rules. Yes, you heard that right. This is true. And that was another way that you could gin up your score and get a higher score out there. So Alberta, under previous jurisdictions, did not have one of these rules and was determined not to have the political leadership of the leaning that the CFIB liked. So got a bunch of Fs under the NDP.

Corey 1:04:13

as soon as there was an election and there was a new government 2019 all of a sudden the tories are in power the ucp i should say they haven't even been in power for a couple of months and all of a sudden the

Corey 1:04:26

the uh you know the cfib gives i think what like an a minus or a b plus or something because the political leadership changed nothing changed in alberta besides the fact that the cfib now thought that there was a government that took it seriously so that you know that should give you some pause as to the value of this score and then to move it to a i i mean okay

Corey 1:04:43

okay i guess right alberta's got this kind of one in one out rule but like these things don't mean anything rule counts don't mean anything you can have exceedingly high rule counts just by for example having a piece of legislation that says you

Corey 1:04:58

you must clean the bed of somebody who lives in a nursing home and you must clean the bed of somebody who lives in a nursing home if that nursing home is private and you must clean the bed of somebody in a nursing home if that nursing home is public

Corey 1:05:12

that's not actually creating a ton of burden on people but you can increase your score and look like you're reducing red tape by just changing it to one word that's that's kind of silly it doesn't actually make government any less burdensome in people's lives it's

Corey 1:05:25

it's a silly game and while i am actually a big believer that government should make rules simpler they should clarify things they should take things off the books that are no longer relevant and lord Lord knows there's enough absolutely absurd forms out there. My favorite is when my

Corey 1:05:39

my kids were born. Anybody who's had a kid in Alberta might remember this. You have to put in the mother's date of birth, and then you have to put in the mother's age in the next, like, box, right? Why do you need both of those boxes? You can fix those things. You should fix those things. But let's not hang our hat on this. And I don't think right now what people are clamoring for is less government action.

Zain 1:06:01

Carter, your letter grade of

Zain 1:06:03

of Alberta's letter grade of

Carter 1:06:07

It is a degree from Trump University.

Carter 1:06:11

It's the exact equivalent. You know, I mean, it's

Carter 1:06:13

it's absolutely meaningless. The CFIB is a quasi-political organization run by like seven guys around some rich guy's kitchen table. It doesn't matter. It's not a real organization. People should stop reporting it. It's fucking bullshit.

Zain 1:06:26

Carter, I'm going to stick with you. That was a lot pithier. I'm going to stick with you for our next question, Carter. The federal conservatives here in Canada, I should specify, because we're talking about both America and Canada, say that they've raised more than $7.6 million in the final three months of 2020. The figures come as political parties or federal parties are counting their year-end donations. They say $7.6 million for the final three months, their highest on record. So the question to you, Stephen Carter, first, off-season fundraising, overrated or underrated?

Carter 1:06:57

Money's money, man. The more money that you get, the more relationships you have, the better it is. It's underrated.

Carter 1:07:05

Corey loves it when I do this. Money is the currency of elections.

Zain 1:07:10

Thank you, Stephen. He loves

Carter 1:07:12

loves that. He loves that. I did that before and he made fun of me for like three weeks.

Zain 1:07:16

Corey, we've talked about in our previous podcast, You the People, about whether late money was overrated or underrated in the confines of a campaign. But off-season fundraising, in your mind? overrated underrated in

Corey 1:07:28

in this country it is um underrated because of course during an election period you have caps on how much money you can spend and yes there is the ability to you know have all of these other you know riding

Corey 1:07:39

riding associations spend cash and and people have gotten quite creative with that but if you have more money than you need to run a full election you can spend that money outside of a campaign if

Corey 1:07:50

if you start getting in a ton of late money in a canadian election and you're already at the campaign limit that doesn't really do anything So early money is pretty powerful, especially in a land of fixed election dates, where this

Corey 1:08:01

this is a bit of the exception. We've got a minority parliament. But in general, if

Corey 1:08:05

if you know that it's going to be an election year, you can start pushing out your spend accordingly. Corey,

Zain 1:08:10

Corey, you know, the Trump relationship with the Republican Party is ongoing. I mentioned earlier on the podcast that Kevin McCarthy patching things up with Trump, Trump telegraphing and saying that he's going to be out on the stump to, you know, campaign in the midterms. But one person has been making the headlines this week, and that is the newly minted Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. We've talked about her before, the QAnon conspiracy theorist who's got some of the wildest claims, which I won't repeat here. But the question for you, Corey, on a scale of 1 to 10, the damage she's doing to the Republican Party in your mind?

Corey 1:08:43

Seven. Although, you know, I think it's hard to imagine that an armed insurrection that is supported by Republican congresspeople would not have been the breaking point for a lot of Americans already. So maybe we're just totally numb to these things. But this is not the brand you want as a mainstream political party. That is for effing sure.

Zain 1:09:04

Carter, Corey gives it a 7, 1 to 10. Marjorie Taylor Greene, what do you think?

Carter 1:09:07

Marjorie Taylor Greene is the result, not the cause. So she, you know, this is the natural end point. Well, I shouldn't say end point. This is the point that we are at right now. Who knows how it continues? But she's more a symptom than the cause of this particular disease.

Zain 1:09:25

Carter, I'm sticking with you. Joe Biden, eight days in office so far. The letter grade you're given to joe biden thus far in office executive orders we've talked about swiftly one after the other the letter grade to joe biden thus far uh

Carter 1:09:38

uh c's got degrees baby he's absolutely average and oh my god has a c ever felt like an a a i had a finance exam when i was in university and i walked out of there i didn't answer half the freaking questions i was certain i was i was getting kicked out it was a b minus i've never been happier to get a b minus in my entire fucking life. B minus Biden.

Zain 1:10:02

You just gave him a C. You upgraded him

Carter 1:10:03

him to a B. I was so

Carter 1:10:06

so happy. I just gave him an extra grade.

Zain 1:10:09

That's excellent. You're very generous. Corey, the letter grade for Joe Biden one week, eight days into his tenure as president of the United States.

Corey 1:10:18

I'm giving it a B plus. I might even have given it an A minus. He has had a number of aggressive executive orders. He's moved fairly quickly. He's not fucking about. I was reading an article that made me laugh where there was this oil. I think it was an oil executive. And it was talking about, well, yeah, Biden canceled all of these or put a moratorium on all of these leases for oil and gas development on federal land. I know he said it during the election, but we thought that was just politics. And, you know, that he would actually do this when governing was a big shock to them. And he's

Corey 1:10:51

he's moving. He's making use of executive orders. I'm never that huge of a fan of that. But he's getting things done. And it looks like he's allowing Schumer to figure out the Senate. And he's

Corey 1:11:02

the House, the Senate, and the presidency. He is moving with speed through walls. I actually am beginning to wonder if this is not going to be quite a transformational presidency.

Zain 1:11:14

Interesting. Final question, Corey, I'm going to stick with you. We talked about GameStop, of course, the stock that the company that's been around for 37 years since the late 80s, long tenure, but now having, you know, obviously poor market fundamentals in many ways on the decline, but having a momentary shine of light on it, a momentary peak, so to speak. So the question for you, Corey, the political equivalent of GameStop, past or present, either a politician or political party, that is the equivalence of the GameStop story. Who is it in your mind?

Corey 1:11:50

Oh, good question. I would say that for Calgarians,

Corey 1:11:54

Calgarians, it's Barb Higgins. Okay,

Zain 1:11:56

Okay, that's a good answer.

Corey 1:11:57

answer. That's good. Yeah. If you want to look more broadly, I think Jesse Ventura. Jesse the Body Ventura is a good choice. That

Zain 1:12:04

That is not an answer I expected to hear. Okay. And potentially

Corey 1:12:06

potentially also Ross Perot, 1992, before he dropped out. Look

Zain 1:12:11

this on the fly. Stephen Carter, you've had 20 more seconds to think about it. The GameStop equivalents in our politics, past, present, either an individual politician or a political party. What say you?

Carter 1:12:26

Ed Broadbent. Was that 88?

Zain 1:12:29

I don't know if I agree, but it's an interesting answer. Corey clearly doesn't agree. Well,

Carter 1:12:32

Well, I wanted to

Carter 1:12:33

Jack Layton, but I thought people would get really mad at me because he died.

Carter 1:12:36

That's not – Edit

Zain 1:12:39

Yeah. Also, I just want to let you know that is our episode, and I have not talked about Julie Payette. So I feel like I deserve an award. We didn't hold a fucking episode. You did until that minute. I mean, yeah.

Zain 1:12:52

Trust me. The report about our toxic workplace is going to come out. You'll just know. You'll just know. We'll leave it there. That's episode 9-11 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velgey. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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