Transcript
Zain
0:02
This is The Strategist, episode 915. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, another Thursday, another audio recording for the people. This is what we do. We're on time. We're on budget.
Zain
0:17
what we do. We don't have a budget, but we're on budget, which is important.
Carter
0:23
I'm going to tell you, Zain, it feels like we just did this. It feels like we were just here, just doing this thing. for me it's kind of like a deja vu feeling it's it's totally weird but i'm glad i'm here i'm glad i'm with you too you
Carter
0:37
you know it's it i'm happy i'm happy we
Zain
0:40
we are a slave to the schedule cory sets for us cory how's it going what's going on in your world well
Corey
0:45
well we're going to shake it up tomorrow there carter we're going to do something a little bit different break that groundhog day sense because we're both we're all going to be on jesperson zane's going to be promoted to a panelist this is going to be very exciting many of you will hear zane's opinions for the first time. Spoiler alert, they're very banal.
Zain
1:00
Well, what they are, are what I call a light borrowing of opinions I've heard before. Now, of course, as you know, I will probably be doing one of two things tomorrow. So just if you're listening to this, if you're one of the folks that's come to this podcast because of the Jesperson bump, welcome. You'll soon understand we don't care for you all that much. And this is a very self-involved institution about us. So welcome anyways, I guess. Secondly, I just want to let the people know what's going to happen if they are indeed now going to listen to Jesperson after they've heard this. I'm going back and forth on timing. Corey, I see you're uncomfortable with that. But I think the people can keep up because they're smart. I will be doing one of two things, which is either aggregating what you two say uh and saying it uh simpler uh or i may just take over the hosting job from ryan because um as you know uh it's a natural proclivity for me to just just step on toes can
Carter
2:00
can i just warm us up like this is a big day for us tomorrow can i just warm us up so that we get ready day for one
Zain
2:06
one of us yes it is yeah
Carter
2:07
yeah so if we could if we could just i don't want you to fuck it up zane is so if what i'm gonna do i'm just gonna i'm gonna walk through it as ryan okay and then i'm gonna gonna throw it to you guys and then i want you guys to just do as you normally do okay okay
Zain
2:21
okay but you're you're gonna do this right i
SPEAKER_00
2:22
i i i want to welcome you guys i want to welcome everybody i've got i've got i've got the three strategists here i've got the strategists i've got cory hogan uh stephen carter and uh uh uh zane velgey zane velgey really good to have you here guys really good to have you zane i want to start with you i want to start with you what do you think what do do you think is going on with jason kenny zane starts off yeah
Zain
2:48
yeah rookie mistake there rookie mistake don't ever start yeah don't start zane
Carter
2:53
it's a rookie mistake it's a mistake don't do that it's a trap just throw it back to cory or i and we will open it up for you yes
Zain
3:02
yes i was gonna jump in rookie mistake right i got it from here i don't don't don't start with me uh that's good cory any uh any further tips you did extremely well in that role play cory i want
Zain
3:15
want you to know you waited your turn, but you knew that nothing interesting was going to come from me. Anything else to talk about as to how we should prepare heading into tomorrow morning?
Corey
3:28
I am speechless. It will take me a few minutes to respond to that.
Zain
3:33
While you do, let's move it on to our
Zain
3:36
headlines. Let's do some headlines. Our first headline comes to us from Fox News. news steven
Zain
3:42
steven carter i want you to respond to this first for a reason that will become
Zain
3:46
obvious in a moment because i'm smarter
Carter
3:48
smarter than cory 90
Zain
3:49
90 year old man that's the obvious okay
Zain
3:53
90 year old man spends ten thousand dollars on two ads in the wall street journal to tell the ceo of at&t about his slow internet service first
Zain
4:04
first of all steven carter there's
Zain
4:05
there's a reason i went to you first the 90 year old man part obvious but also you've been a noted i was gonna say critic but you've been pseudo critic of of print media advertising uh what do you think of what do you think of uh this gentleman this 90 year old general uh gentleman who's uh taken out these two ads in the wall street journal to tell the ceo of at&t uh fix your fucking internet man i'm
Carter
4:28
i'm not a fan of print ads as you know but this is the time to do it but here's what i don't understand about the 90 year old man like you guys are young compared to me right you don't understand time just moves so much faster when you're older you got more to compare it to it's It's just like everything is just shooting past you all the time. This guy's life must be going so fast that he thinks his internet is slow. I don't actually think this is an internet problem.
Carter
4:49
I think it's a life-lived problem. I think that that's what it actually is. I
Zain
4:53
I feel like that's an answer of a man with some lived experience. It's exactly what I have. Corey, any part of this you want to pick up on, 10K, 90-year-old man, Wall Street Journal, journal or the content of it which is telling a telecommunications company your internet is shit in a newspaper oh
Corey
5:13
oh sure there's a lot of things to unpack here also if your complaint is things are too slow do you know what the lead time is on booking a newspaper ad like the whole thing is just rich with irony but the
Corey
5:23
the um the what what this is the only appropriate use of newspaper advertising this is effectively a dead medium otherwise but it is great for making a statement like this if he had spent ten thousand dollars on internet ads which he would have purchased through at&t and you know he'd probably still be trying to do it because of that slow internet ten thousand dollars of internet ads would not have the effect of dropping this in two papers of record you know the wall street journal and i think there was one in texas he did too so i mean good on him uh for for actually finding a way to lever this up and actually create much more than ten thousand dollars of value think of all the newspaper articles that have been written about this at this point but um you know i i guess this is uh this is a cautionary tale for for anybody who provides a service that is this slow that an old man can can just rake you over the coals like this i am sure verizon's behind it if we start following the money somebody get bernstein on this uh
Zain
6:21
six months in the making getting this ad exactly created bought distributed Contributed, and for all that time, living with slow internet. His
Corey
6:29
His internet's been upgraded three times since. He's actually
Zain
6:30
actually got no problem anymore.
Zain
6:32
So, yeah, irrelevant. Our
Zain
6:33
Our next headline here comes from...
Corey
6:35
from... Hey, wait, do you think that he's just accidentally connecting to the Taco Bell Wi-Fi next door? Is that a possibility?
Zain
6:41
possibility? Very possible. Very possible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got nothing else to say, Corey? No, that's a good catch.
Carter
6:48
That was a good catch.
Carter
6:50
catch. That was good.
Zain
6:50
good. Get Bernstein on it. I mean, I just leave with the same thing.
Zain
6:55
imagine imagine if that that self-involved fuck bernstein wrote an entire book about it it was just the taco bell internet
Zain
7:03
internet but he took 300 pages for us to to figure that out i just i just want you to know that that's a possibility uh our next headline comes to us from bnn bloomberg russia is luring in vaccine participants with free
Zain
7:19
free ice cream cory a
Zain
7:22
a unique strategy strategy free ice cream for the folks of moscow to take their vaccine shots seems like they have them so that's nice must
Zain
7:35
uh but but thoughts on on any part of this well
Corey
7:38
well i got two thoughts one of them is that it's february in russia who's got the craving for ice cream that seems a little bit you know they couldn't have done free hot chocolate they couldn't have done something a little more on point second one
Zain
7:49
one is russia it is very russia by
Corey
7:51
is it because Because my second point is this is this is a country that, you know, has state sponsored poisonings on a daily basis. Who is going to take ice cream from these people? I
Carter
8:00
I would. I mean, I like a good cup of ice cream. You know, I
Carter
8:04
I get ice cream. I get vaccinated. I mean, I'm a big fan of incenting people to do things, whether it's a negative incentive, incentive, incentive. You've
Zain
8:12
You've had many vaccination ideas, so to speak. right yeah you know some great
Zain
8:17
scarcity uh the vip nightclub effect take a selfie and talk to your friends and family about it where does ice cream fit in that rubric for you carter i'm
Carter
8:26
i'm big fan it's it's a it's a it's a little bit less than just straight up bribery but uh you know i mean justin trudeau is following the scarcity model for us so it seems to be working really well i i think that every vaccination dose that is available has been put in someone's arms so that is telling me that it is successful there
Zain
8:44
you go let's move on to our next headline our next headline comes to us from uh ctv cory uh this one's for you uh concordia university professor uh now alive no i'm totally joking he's uh he's he's still still dead and still delivering university courses uh for those who did not catch last thursday's episode this headline is a throwback to of course a headline line that gave Corey a heart attack live on air, unedited, where a student found out that he had been, long story short, taking an online class from a university professor that had died two years ago after he Googled the professor's name to send him an email. Corey, has this led to any major changes at your workplace in terms of emergency preparedness?
Corey
9:34
Well, I sent around a few emails um i i looked for any this uh this individual is deceased bounce backs didn't find any so i think that my university is in the clear uh as far as i know but it is a good reminder of that old adage old professors never die they just stop responding to emails this
Carter
9:51
this is so true this is so crap first of all did you notice how many times he qualified that answer he has totally found as far as i know yeah i don't know for sure i sent a lot of emails but nothing was you know he's got got dead people we've done yeah that's
Zain
10:08
that's true it's still on the still on the payroll uh okay let's move it on to our next headline this one comes to us from the daily beast twitter says it locked out devin yunez after he failed to solve a basic anti-spam puzzle carter
Zain
10:23
carter devin yunez has no twitter account because he does not know which of the nine pictures contain street lights listen
Carter
10:31
listen it is tricky to pick which ones don't have streetlights sometimes they they kind of cross now don't you get like three chances though like isn't this something you don't just fail once you get multiple chances i i love this because it says it says what i want the primary message to be to the right you guys are dumb as fuck so that is the new uh that is the new message to the right and uh devin nunes fits it quite well cory
Zain
10:56
cory this is presidential medal of freedom award winner devin nunez uh also famous for the devin nunez's cow twitter account which which is not locked out which is still an ongoing concern cows massively underrated massively underrated uh and they also know streetlights pretty well they're well so
Corey
11:15
so i don't think it was streetlights i suspect it was probably more along the variety of please select all the pictures of the man who won the u.s presidential election oh
Zain
11:25
okay well that that makes it funny but then also a
Carter
11:28
a little sad kind
Zain
11:29
kind of sad yeah it's kind of sad yeah but i see that cory we'll give you points for that all right let's go to our final headline this one from vanity fair one of trump's impeachment lawyers is a personal injury attorney who
Zain
11:44
who sued trump last year oh
Carter
11:48
come on that's not no
Corey
11:50
no that's no that's perfect Perfect. That is so Donald Trump.
Zain
11:54
It's perfect. It's emblematic. It's an extension of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen. It's perfect in many ways. First, I'll see if you have any hot takes on that headline before I actually spend a bit of time talking about your guys' thoughts on what you make thus far of Trump's second impeachment.
Corey
12:14
Well, a couple of things. First of all, of course, Donald Trump would hire Salino and Barnes to defend him.
Corey
12:21
In an impeachment trial. Second of all, of course, he would hire somebody who actually sued him because that's his perverse mentality. Like, oh, that guy, he stuck it to me. That's a great guy. I should get him on payroll here. But, you know, third point, and probably the more serious of them all, is it really shows you how he's scraping the bottom of the barrel here. The guy is not somebody anybody wants to work with. He's still going to manage to get off on this charge here. But that's only because of the timidness of the Republican Party at this particular moment. But holy cow, I mean, talk about a dreadful performance, even the setup of his legal team. And then his legal team itself has just been just dog shit for the past couple of days. Those opening comments were – you
Corey
13:04
you know you're in a rough terrain when Ted Cruz is dunking on you as a lawyer. Let's put it that way.
Zain
13:09
Yes. Not good. From the cheap seats. Yeah. Carter, any thoughts on the article or the headline, I should say, before we jump on to what do you make thus far of the impeachment?
Carter
13:24
No. I mean he ran out of lawyers. I mean that was the challenge. In America, he ran out of
Carter
13:32
lawyers. There were no lawyers left. And this is the last person standing. And, you
Carter
13:37
you know, I mean, it's really disappointing because everybody else is being, you know, didn't one of his lawyers get disbarred or not allowed to practice law anymore in Delaware? In Delaware. I mean, like, that's a real setback. That's not going to be, that's not going to be something. It was, what was his name? Anyways, it doesn't matter. They're all stupid.
Zain
13:57
This is that gripping analysis that Stephen Carter continues with. But listen,
Carter
14:01
listen, I remember that one of them was forced to not practice law anymore. Give me a break on the names, the names as though that matters.
Zain
14:11
you mentioned that he's going to he's going to probably get off on this. He's not going to be, you know, impeached, so to speak, by the Senate here. Do you feel like there is a political cost here for the Republicans that they're trying to factor in? Or do you feel like they, A, don't care, or B, it's not large enough for them to actually contend with in any meaningful way?
Corey
14:35
Well, my suspicion is if you could either hook these people up to a lie detector or have a secret ballot where they didn't worry about the consequences the day after, but honestly gave their opinions, I think that the Republican senators would convict Donald Trump. I think they felt under attack. I think that they're furious about it. But I also think that they are ultimately political
Corey
14:54
political pragmatists to the point of political opportunists, and they
Corey
14:57
not particularly inclined to pick a fight with Donald Trump and potentially tear their party asunder, create the Donald Trump party versus the Republican Party, or get primaried maybe instead. So, they're going to do what's best for them. And they very quickly, and I got to say, as much as I dislike it, probably very cleverly landed on, hey, it's not even a question of, is this an impeachable crime? It's a question of, can he be impeached? He's no longer in office. We can't impeach somebody who's no longer in office. office. By moving out the conversation and almost lawyering it on that point, they avoid
Corey
15:31
having the tough conversation. So when they vote to convict, when they're back home in their district, if it turns out that history is really quite cruel to Donald Trump, as I hope it will be, and they say, hey, how in the world did you not vote to convict this guy? They can say, hey, listen, look at my comments. I was clearly very mad about the storming of the Capitol, but I don't think you can impeach and convict a private citizen you know they found that rope to walk right
Corey
15:57
honestly when you think about just from a pure crass political opportunity point of view it's
Corey
16:02
it's probably the right play you know it's like the godfather you know tessio was always smarter and this is the smart play carter
Zain
16:09
carter do you feel like the democrats have done a good job in your um estimation both on on how they've played the politics of it, but also how they've kind of tried the case as they rest their case and still warn that Trump remains a threat. Do you feel both on message as well as politics, overall sort of like Senate and media relations politics, they've done a good job and played the right sort of swim lane that you would have chosen?
Carter
16:35
I think so. I think that they looked really, really good. They looked professionally, it looked like they had an argument. I mean, I mean, obviously, it's really easy when you're being compared to the Trump shit show. But this was not – I don't think anybody expected to get a conviction in the Senate. This was a trial and an argument that was made to the American people. It was made really well. It was compelling television. The inclusion of kind of the AV support, if you will, of the television and the never-before-seen footage. I mean, this is just taking right out of hard copy or whatever the inside edition, right? Like the old school news shows, right? You know, never before, TMZ, I guess. This is the structure of news now, and they nailed it. They absolutely nailed it.
Corey
17:26
Total aside, everybody remember Rescue 911? You remember that show? No. Is that the Rob Lowe show? With the 911 calls?
Corey
17:33
Anyways, there was an episode in Calgary. Somebody got stuck in an escalator, I think at South Center Mall. all
Corey
17:39
facts it's like a reality show
Zain
17:40
show what is this well
Corey
17:41
well it was like calls to 9-1-1 that were then reenacted and oh it's
Corey
17:47
yeah a little before your time perhaps zane but i think
Zain
17:50
i'm just trying to participate in the convo here and i get rejected at every turn the reason why
Corey
17:54
why i mention it the reason why i mention it is it's more relevant to my life than this impeachment trial at this point oh
Corey
18:00
my because it is such a pre-ordained thing that is happening right now and it's you didn't
Carter
18:04
didn't watch the the new footage coming in you You didn't watch the – No. I
Corey
18:08
I read the tweets
Corey
18:10
tweets about the long-form pieces about the footage. I was about four steps removed from it. Ultimately, it just pisses me off that they – like this is all – to your point, it is all theater. And it is gripping theater, I'm sure. But ultimately, it's not a theater I want to spend any time in because I know at the end of the day, the bad guy wins.
Zain
18:28
Look at this. Rescue 911 reference. I like this, Corey. Just really, you know, really, really – Yeah, I mean it really brings it home. It's a topical show. No,
Zain
18:35
bringing it home, making it topical. By the way, $20 to whichever one of you mentions Rescue 911 first tomorrow on Ryan Jesperson's panel. Oh,
Carter
18:43
Oh, now we're playing for
Carter
18:44
keeps. This is going to be a good show.
Zain
18:46
Yeah, I'm changing my name to Rescue 911. Just letting you know. Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment with a shadow of some doubts. I want to talk about Aaron O'Toole's shadow cabinet. I'll do this relatively quickly because I want to talk about not just who was shuffled or the primary person that I think is going to be most noticeably shuffled, Carter, your friend, but also talk about what goes into a shadow cabinet and its usefulness. So the main thing here is that Pierre-Paul Rievre is out as the critic for finance as O'Toole shuffles his cabinet. Ed Fast is now the new Tory point person on finances, now having to respond and challenge, more specifically, Christa Freeland on that particular file. So, Carter, let's talk about this particular political strategy by O'Toole first, and then we'll expand the conversation slightly to talk about the meaning and the import, and perhaps if we can get into it, the strategy of setting up a shadow cabinet. So, firstly, almost
Zain
19:48
almost a binary question. Good job, bad job from what you see O'Toole doing with his shadow cabinet by taking one of the most polarizing figures, Pierre-Paul Rievre, and frankly giving him a demotion, still in his shadow cabinet, but giving him a demotion.
Carter
20:03
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good job. I mean, we've been talking quite frequently about how I thought that the Conservative Party couldn't be defined as a new
Carter
20:11
new party for O'Toole until such time as he took some of the window ornaments out, right? The Michelle Rempel-Garner or the Pierre Pellievre, whoever
Carter
20:21
whoever we're talking about that is Derek Sloan before he was kicked out of the caucus and joined the crazy person caucus with Maxime Bernier. You know, those people
Carter
20:32
people define your party for you. And O'Toole has very deftly maneuvered through the leadership and now into his opposition leader's role. He has maybe not moved as fast as I would have liked him to, maybe not moved as quickly as we would have expected. But before the election has occurred, he is now putting forward a different face for the Conservative Party. And I think that that is exactly what he needed to do if he's going to be successful in the coming election.
Zain
21:03
Cori, good job, bad job by O'Toole from your perspective.
Corey
21:33
because this has been now a couple of steps and it's hard to see them as anything but part of a plan he has demoted some of the voices that have been a little more polarizing shall we say charitably uh pierre polliev and uh and he has also made statements about wanting to bring the conservatives towards the middle and being more of a moderate party and ultimately it's too late all of the people in the conservative party like the the uh roller coasters be gone the the safety guard is down they cannot get off right they get off they plummet to their death to continue this metaphor so maybe
Corey
22:08
maybe this was always the plan maybe this is not a him trying to pivot after a fall of too much extremism but it's exactly as was intended uh what you know what i said before it's starting to become more likely to me to actually be reality which is all right consolidate power in the fall don't pick any fights wait for the moment when your authority is maximum At that point, drive the changes you want in the party. It doesn't really matter. Canadians aren't paying attention. We've got a U.S. election. We've got a pandemic. Now is my time to define myself.
Corey
22:37
Whether it will work remains to be seen. But if it is a strategy, I think it's a clever one.
Corey
22:42
And it's certainly different than what Andrew Scheer did, which was just attempt things, get pulled back and become this puppet of a really weird version of conservatism. Corey,
Zain
22:54
Corey, what's the importance of a shadow cabinet in your mind? Do you feel like they serve a purpose beyond mapping of roles and key sort of accountabilities? Do they serve a political or messaging purpose that you feel like is important from your experience and knowledge? Yeah,
Corey
23:11
Yeah, there's multiple purposes to a shadow cabinet. One of them is, well,
Corey
23:17
well, let's just start with the most obvious and the simplest. It has to do with your party, right? You are giving your people something to do. You are distributing the workload in a way that makes sense because it's the way that the work will be presented to you from the government.
Corey
23:33
right. acts if the government changes. It's going to be a whole different cast of characters. There will be a lot of considerations. All of a sudden, things like the regionality of it, the ethnic diversity, all of that will come into play much more strongly. But you are ultimately identifying the leaders within your own organization. Part of the reason you both mentioned Pierre Polyev was quote-unquote demoted,
Corey
24:21
like demoted from what? From critic for one thing, for critic to another?
Corey
24:25
yeah. But you are signaling that he has got a voice that is now less important within the conservative party. And that will also tell you a bit about the cabinet making that Aaron O'Toole ultimately gets involved in if he becomes the prime minister. The other thing, though, is that you are signaling something to Canadians, you are allowing one of the benefits of government always has is that they're the government, you know, talk about the power of incumbency, the fact that you can see them doing these things, because they are doing these things. It's easy to imagine Justin Trudeau as prime minister, he's the fucking prime minister. It's not as easy to imagine Aaron O'Toole being the prime minister he has not had that job but by taking on the trappings of the government by acting as though you were the government and aaron o'toole did this as well by releasing a readout of a conversation with a u.s envoy it is easier for canadians to imagine you to be the government and when they look at your shadow cabinet and they think of it like a cabinet and they say what does this tell me about aaron o'toole it becomes a communications marketing piece as well carter
Zain
25:22
carter to To that point, I think Corey's covered a lot of the why do it and the import of it. Talk to us about some of the strategies around setting up a shadow cabinet, around either messaging or marketing or considerations. Is it as similar as setting up a cabinet if you're a government? Is there other things you can get away with, for example, that you couldn't if you were government, where you're having to actually now give people personal responsibilities? Do you have more leeway in a shadow cabinet? You can do more creative, interesting things because there's no real accountabilities. I'm kind of curious what some of the strategery can look like and how creative one can get and how far they can perhaps push the bounds of thinking when they put together their shadow cabinet.
Carter
26:08
Well, at the federal level, it still is a trick because the federal level, you have more members of parliament than you have shadow cabinet positions, right? Right. So at the provincial levels, oftentimes a opposition party won't will almost not have as many voices as they need to have roles. So you'll be the shadow minister of X, Y and Z. And so you'll you'll be a little bit harder to manage a full, you know, to really dig into one portfolio. You may have to lean on one and and ignore the others a little bit. But at the federal level, your caucus is sufficient that you can actually have a shadow minister for every minister of the government, which kind of prohibits some of the game playing. Because what you really are trying to do, to Corey's point, is to signal what your government would look like. You know, when the shadow minister stands up and says, I disagree with the government's decision in this area and we think we should do the X, what they're really doing is putting forward the alternative government strategy. strategy uh so this is what our government would do but it also does something that cory you know because cory's points were all bang on i don't want to reiterate them all i just want
SPEAKER_00
27:17
want to add one
Carter
27:17
one more thing to it and that one more thing is it keeps all
Carter
27:21
all the hands busy um
Carter
27:23
um you do not want idle hands in opposition idle hands in opposition uh start plotting the removal of the current leader immediately upon the election of the current leader um so when you keep them busy when you keep those people happy, if you will, because they're getting the air time, they're getting the media time, they're getting the interviews, they're doing the work that they actually want to do. That's actually the strategy that I think is the most important with the shadow cabinet. Yes, you get to have all this great media, but you could
Carter
27:53
could divvy it up. You could say, we've got a research staff. The research staff is going to feed us these points and we'll have on Mondays, Michelle Rempel-Garner is going to do it. On Tuesdays, it's going to be Pierre Palliev on third way. But by giving everybody their own portfolio, you're keeping their hands as busy as the research staff that's feeding them all of the information.
Zain
28:17
Corey, we've talked many times on this podcast about the strategy of setting up a cabinet. We've talked about regionality, skill set, you know, all those, plenty of other criteria. Anything, I'll ask the same question I did to Carter. Anything interesting you can do around shadow cabinets that you either can't do with cabinets if you're in government or creative things you'd think of that could be applied here to formulating your shadow cabinet? Yeah,
Corey
28:43
Yeah, you can take a flyer. The stakes are much lower. You're not going to put somebody in a cabinet position that you have anything other than confidence
Corey
28:50
confidence in that they're going to be able to perform the role. As well, you have to realize that when you become a cabinet minister, the vetting process is more significant. You are going to be reviewed by the RCMP. There are considerations of your past that you just do not have access to when you're in the opposition like that. And so I
Corey
29:12
I – like that's a funny one because it's not like – you can go with someone with a shady past and that's not what I'm really saying.
Zain
29:17
But the pool you are drawing from is
Corey
29:20
You don't necessarily have the limitations that are placed on you by government and that does allow you to do some interesting things sometimes. The other thing is as much as the government has set up their
Corey
29:30
their frame, you can feel free to step outside of it. And by creating a critic for an area the government does not have, it allows you to say the government is deficient because they have not created this as a portfolio.
Zain
29:40
I'm so glad you mentioned that. I was going to ask you about do you have to map or can you just – you don't have to do anything. You can do whatever the
Corey
29:46
you want. Like it's
Corey
29:47
Here in Alberta, for example, there is a critic for women and LGBTQ matters. So that's not a portfolio of the U
Zain
29:56
U.S. government. On the government, right.
Corey
29:58
Spoiler alert. But it allows you to say, no, this is a priority. this should be a matter of concern for the government. And this is us planting our flag and saying that this is important. So yeah, you can play with a little bit more. The other thing is, you don't have a department when you're a critic, right? That's an awful lot of work behind the scenes. But it also means you've got to take a certain managerial skill set to it. The role of a critic is entirely to attack. So there are different people who will be better suited for those roles. Again, you can consider them for that you might not be comfortable considering considering them for a cabinet position.
Zain
30:32
Carter, would you go as far as if you're the leader of the opposition, let's just use Aaron O'Toole, we're talking about him as the, you know, the live wire example. We've expanded beyond that. But if you're Aaron O'Toole, would you do something like create mandate letters for your shadow critics? Would you do stuff like that, that could kind of mimic what you would lead like? What can he do to showcase to Canadians? Because this is an inside baseball thing, for the most part, most probably us couldn't name all the shadow critics, right? Ourselves? No, there's no. Right.
Zain
31:02
So what is it that O'Toole can do if you were like advising O'Toole, sir, this is your brand. This is your ability to showcase your leadership style. Is there anything he could do to kind of seem prime ministerial with how or or who or even strategically like some elements surrounding how he places and puts together a shadow cabinet? I actually
Carter
31:24
actually really like your mandate letter idea. I mean, I don't know that that's ever been done in opposition. That's a great idea. It would be a really interesting contrast and a spectacular opportunity for a opposition leader to essentially set out a completely alternative agenda. I can't believe that hasn't been done, Zane. And I'm really quite disappointed in myself that I can't come up with something better than something you came up with.
Zain
31:49
Yeah. I mean, this is there. And once once every 915 episodes, I should go first. There you go. There
Carter
31:58
There you go. That to me is probably the best example of an out of the box thinking that I could come up with. That was really good. I'm going to steal it as my own. Thank you.
Zain
32:08
You will only end up in opposition. So, yes, of course.
Zain
32:13
Abe, hi, my friend. Corey, anything else to round us out on this discussion before we move it on?
Corey
32:19
No, that is, I think I've said as much as could possibly be said about this matter. It is a funny thing, though, because you do generally accept the government frame. I was just looking up who the critic for middle class prosperity was. I wanted to see if there was one. There is, because of course, that was one of those kind of silly sounding ministries that the
Corey
32:37
Trudeau government made. John Nader is the critic for middle class prosperity. Congratulations, John, for having the less relevant version of the irrelevant John. Congratulations.
Zain
32:48
let's move it on to our next segment with the shadow of some more doubts so we go from with a shadow of some doubts to with a shadow of some more doubts and we're going to
Zain
32:59
here in alberta we're talking about jason kenney and two big things i want to talk about very quickly um
Zain
33:04
um first let's talk about the reversal of the coal policy cory i'm gonna uh we our listeners should have most of the context but if you can give them some a quick context text for those who might be tuning in for the first time. That would be great. And then just your political sort of strategy calculation. Did he have to backtrack? And was this a good move, albeit late, for the Kenyan government to do so?
Corey
33:28
Yeah, the basic challenge here in Alberta was that the UCP government repealed the 1976 coal policy, which created a bunch of categories, category one and category two, you could not create coal strip mines in. And this was quietly repealed without any public consultation and then all of a sudden there were a bunch of leases that were out to australian companies albertans woke up and said hold a tick it looks like they're going to start blowing off the tops of mountains uh in order to mine for coal what the fuck are we doing here and as i've said and i will repeat to anybody and i hope canadians here albertans care deeply about the land and the environment yeah you can find a lot of people who are saying i don't know about that co2 crap because uh you know you can convince yourself of anything if you are um you know if your livelihood is is tied to it but um a coal is too far for albert and what you found is that ranchers country music singers people who are traditionally stalwart conservatives were getting as up in arms as everybody else about this idea that we would start mining coal and repealing a policy done by the sainted pc leader peter lawheed you know 1976 and so the um the
Corey
34:37
the backlash was swift the backlash was severe um this played out over a couple of months there the government backed down a little bit at first by saying we're going to cancel some of these leases everyone said nice try there's still all of that land out there the government then most recently said okay well we just we're sorry we blew it we're not going to do this policy at all we all still need to kind of watch them because they are allowing certain certain things to proceed and that's something i think they're going to continue like if you're going to retreat fully retreat at this point like there's no sense to continue bleeding on this and they've decided to continue bleeding on this but the point here zane is it
Corey
35:12
it was a full capitulation um where they they literally went on the air and asked for mercy from albertans for the decision that they made it was um it was quite an unusual backing down and that often when governments back down they try to pretend they didn't really back down yeah yeah
Corey
35:30
or hey yeah no we're doing this based on some other exigency.
Zain
35:33
exigency. Or we were misinterpreted or, you know, we're going to clarify, you know. But what happened
Corey
35:38
they said all of the facts of the matter remain the same. Albertans were correct. We were incorrect. And that is a rare type of backing down.
Zain
35:45
Carter, I'm going to ask you a slightly different question. Was this a result of a government in crisis that didn't need another front to fight a war on? Or was this a result of advocacy? And And the answer might be in between, but I'm curious to see where the focal point is for you.
Carter
36:04
I think that this was one of those things that you get in the middle of it and you just realize that it is too big. We've talked before about the number of correspondence pieces that show up at the premier's office. And you use that as a metric of, you know, have I really stepped in the hornet's nest? And I think he did. But I think that this also is showing a pattern, right? So the pattern is do something. things so in alberta parks they were you know offloading and selling a number of different parks um and then they kind of got caught doing it and their first reaction was to say we're
Carter
36:35
we're not doing that that's not we're not doing that you misunderstand that's not so we and
Carter
36:39
so we find the websites the government of alberta websites and we say well what does this say what does this mean what are you saying here and ultimately they back down and i'm putting back down in quotation marks because they're still going forward with a whole bunch of those parks changes they've just told us that they're not so he's done the exact same thing with the coal situation right so the first thing that they do is they is they they cancel the policy and then jason kenney gets up and they get caught and jason kenney goes onto his facebook live and he says we
Carter
37:10
we never revoked it right instead it's rescinded right so he uses a synonym of the word and because
Carter
37:17
know he's trying to make a distinction without a difference and he's saying no we didn't do it look we didn't do it but he's actually using words that mean the same thing to government. Revoke and rescind are the exact same thing. It's not like plebiscite and referendum, which have two different meanings in kind of the legal representation within the government. Revoking and rescinding are the same thing within
Carter
37:36
within this government. And he says to them, you know, this is what we've done. We haven't done anything. We're good. We're golden. And then the next week, out trots Sonia Savage saying, we are going to reinstate the 1976 coal policy that Jason Kenney seven days ago said we didn't even rescind. But now we're going to reinstate it. And here's my problem. They're leaving loopholes all over the place. And the loopholes are, we're going to rescind, we're going to reinstate this policy. But if we made any changes during that time, when it was revoked, rescinded, not rescinded, not revoked, then we're going to allow those changes to go forward. And that's the duplicity of the Kennedy government.
Zain
38:15
I'm glad you mentioned this, because Corey, I know you want to respond on to it, but can I ask you a more pointed strategy question to what Carter said? Does that shit work?
Zain
38:24
Is that actually good strategy, or do you feel like the people are smarter than that? Or do you feel like the people are like, oh, okay, they did it, and they'll move on? Because that seems to be the hope, right? They reinstated it, they backed down on parks, we can turn the volume from 11 back to a three, and then they still get what they needed in that interim period. Is this good? And I hate to ask it this way, but despite it being perhaps Machiavellian, And is this a good strategy in your mind?
Corey
38:49
It is sometimes good strategy. And it's not so much a question of people's intelligence. I think most of these things, if people have the time to sit down and look at them, can get through them, right? Yeah, yeah.
Corey
38:58
But it is a matter of what is my capacity to manage these issues? How much do I care? How many facts are going to get in my way? Because every time you get to a door and you think, okay, this is not a problem, it makes you less likely to go through that door and see, oh, my goodness, this is a problem. I wanted to mention that the revoke, rescind thing is hilarious to me. I am, as you know, a recovering bureaucrat. And there is something in government, Alberta has something called the Interpretation Act. And it describes, hey, when you say one thing, it sometimes means other things. And interpretation in this act, repeal includes strike out, revoke, cancel, or rescind. They all mean the exact same things in the world of government. Like that's not even colloquially
Corey
39:38
colloquially what Carter is saying in the Interpretation Act. The rules are, you know, when we talk about repealing a regulation, all of those words mean the same thing.
Corey
39:48
Is it a good strategy, though, to
Corey
39:50
to play with those words, to kind of weasel around these things, to try to just sort of dodge the matter entirely?
Corey
39:57
Well, it can be because we all have limited capacity, as I mentioned. And what you find, though, is that if you fail at this, you have actually made your situation much, much worse. So whenever you try to play these games, you are gambling.
Corey
40:11
And governments need to appreciate that. And it's not as though there's not sometimes smart bets government needs to make where you almost sit there and you decision tree this out. You say upside is this, downside is that, downside is not so bad, upside is great. Let's try to play this one out a bit. Let's see where it goes. I
Corey
40:26
I don't know if they've done the work at
Corey
40:28
least properly on these particular calculations because the risk of them just getting a further ass kicking on this and having any sense of trust eroded on this is so high. Like to hear the premier of Alberta say, I don't know what they're saying. How could they say we've rescinded this or revoked it or whatever the word was? I can't even tell. These words just bounce around. around. And then I think, what, within a day, two days, somebody released the actual memo
Corey
40:54
memo that did this? Yeah, yeah.
Corey
40:56
Like that, that is, that
Corey
40:59
that damages trust, not to state the obvious, but that damages trust. And trust is a finite resource in government. And it is a lot harder to gain than it is to lose.
Zain
41:09
Here's a here's a broader question that I didn't really have an intention of asking until you brought it up here, Corey. But does
Zain
41:15
does trust is trust such a big deal that it can actually penetrate a base can it actually start eroding a base in that sense in
Corey
41:22
in alberta we had the creation of the wild rose party and all of its variant alberta alliances and all of that in advance of it fundamentally
Carter
41:30
fundamentally because trust was broken right
Corey
41:32
right yes it was a question of ideology but it was also a question of we can't trust this this party to act in a way that adheres to our conservative values even when they say these things we can't really trust them to do these things and if you don't believe that's the case just look at what happened when jim prentice tried to merge it all back together. The leaders of the party, of the Wild Rose Party, Danielle Smith and the Wild Rose Caucus, mostly unmasked, walked over to the PCs. And the base, you know, the movement behind it said, we don't trust them. We don't trust you. We're not going anywhere. And so trust can be lethal to a government. Trust can bring down a dynasty, as we have seen here in the home province. That has also been true of the conservative movement federally. That has been true of of political parties from coast to coast to coast. And I think that one
Corey
42:20
one of the things that was quite remarkable about this coal policy is so much of the critique came from behind
Corey
42:26
his own lines. You know, you had conservative voices saying, what in the hell are you doing right now? Carter,
Zain
42:33
Carter, how corrosive, as you know, we ask you to predict a lot in this show, how corrosive will this loss or this, I don't even know, call it a loss of trust or a downgrade of trust in some ways be for jason kenney with his base in particular let's forget albertans writ large but with his base in particular and i mean this will kind of lead into the next story about a few members of his caucus saying some things um but what does this kind of mean for you as you kind of read the tea leaves yourself i
Carter
43:03
i was talking to a colleague today who said he was meeting with a bunch of you know high-powered or
Carter
43:08
or you know folks in calgary and uh money guys really you know and and uh they're all singing the praises of the ucp oh the ucp this the ucp that so there is a group of people for whom it does not matter the breach of trust will will will not penetrate but i think that that's a small group i think that the bigger group right now uh is is a large number of albertans who had doubts about voting for jason kenney in the first place they were promised uh revitalization in the jobs uh pipelines the economy was going to spring back I think those were the actual three words, right? Job economy pipelines. And now
Carter
43:46
we've got real problems because everything's falling apart. Not only are we losing money, we're losing extra money here. We're losing – they want to bring back coal and he's
Carter
43:58
he's lying about it. So I do think that there's an underlying distrust
Carter
44:03
distrust of this government. And I think that running against Jason Kenney is just getting easier and easier the more that Jason Kenney is the premier. He's just he's giving away everything and really has has really created a very negative spot for the UCP in Alberta.
Zain
44:20
Carter, I'm going to stick with you to the other Alberta story I want to talk about, which is two members of Kenny's caucus, Drew Barnes and Deputy Speaker of the House and Chair of Committees, Angela Pitt, say that the Alberta government has not given adequate evidence to justify the rules and real hardship and the harm that is being resulted of the lockdown, so to speak. They're anti-lockdown people within the Kenney caucus.
Zain
44:46
Let's talk about the veracity first. Is this a big problem for Kenney? And is this an extension of some of the other non-issue-specific related but other sort of jabs he's seen or subtle shade, so to say, that he's seen in different ways about his leadership and his lack thereof in some ways, according to some of these folks? There
Carter
45:07
are some issues where you can allow and encourage caucus dissension. There are other issues where you need the caucus to stand 100 percent behind you because and this is one of those things. Right. The vaccine, the response to the to the to this pandemic is a significant problem, a significant reason for the erosion of support for Jason Kenney. And now he's got his own people behind his own lines, undermining and pulling back and creating. Because keep in mind, conservatives tend not to lose to the progressive side. What happens is the conservatives split into two and then the progressives have finally enough people to enable their government, their side to win. Because
Carter
45:48
Because if it's all one, then everything's fine. And you're seeing a significant shift. I mean, there's a reason that these two people haven't been kicked out of caucus, like
Carter
45:57
like the fellow from Lackalabish. I think it was Lackalabish, Slave Lake area. The reason that he got kicked out, you know, these two are still in caucus because he needs these seats. He can't start kicking everybody out of caucus that's going off half-cocked and creating havoc within his own government. this government needs this like they need a hole in the head uh but they they can't kick drew barns out and drew barns knows it and one of the things i'm enjoying the most is watching drew barns just absolutely rat fuck jason kenney and it is so much fun to watch because drew barns knows he can literally get away with saying anything he wants and he will not be kicked out of caucus it's It's amazing because if he leaves, I'm sure there's three or four or five other people who
Carter
46:47
who will go with him and form an alternative caucus. And that is something that Jason Kenney cannot allow. Otherwise, Premier Rachel Notley is an all but certainty.
Zain
46:58
Yeah, it sounds like a real rescue 9-1-1 situation to me.
Zain
47:03
did it early, so I'm going to pay myself. Yeah,
Zain
47:06
you're going to pay yourself. I didn't even wait until tomorrow. That's good.
Zain
47:08
Corey, you know, these are the two MLAs, to add a little bit more context, who signed on to the National End the Lockdowns National Caucus. So they call themselves a nonpartisan group seeking to provide formal challenges to current COVID-19 policies.
Zain
47:23
How big of a deal is this? How big of a problem is this for Premier Kenney?
Corey
47:27
Well, it's a big problem because the plurality, if not the majority of Albertans, want stronger measures, not weaker measures. I think the most recent polling I saw, or I think it was in the article that was in McLean's by Markasoff, which was a stellar article as a side, people should really read it.
Corey
47:44
40% of Albertans want stronger measures. Only a small percent actually want weaker measures. So that's the reality in the political context. And if it looks like Jason Kenney is, you
Corey
47:56
you know, playing footsie with these, you know, these end lockdown types, then that's going to hurt him with the general public. That's going to hurt him with swing populations, particularly in a place like Calgary, where the election could really hinge next time. Of course. For those who aren't aware of the idiosyncrasies of Alberta politics, we basically tend to think of it as three regions of roughly equal seat distribution, Calgary, Edmonton, and everywhere else. Edmonton's a mortal lock for the NDP. They have almost, they have all but one of the seats right now. The rural areas, maybe not as much of a hegemony for the UCP in a future election, but certainly it looks very, very strong. Calgary is going to be a bit of the battleground here. and you can really damage yourself if it looks like you're you're kind of giving into views that are seen by most calgarians is pretty kooky now if you want to however look at it the other way from like a party management point of view the the simple reality is there are a disproportionate number of no lockdowners within the ucp and
Corey
48:57
and that is going to cause real challenges for jason kenney Because as much as you might lose a lot of votes to the
Corey
49:02
the NDP looking as though you are a little too much of a fringe organization or you have too fringe of views with your anti-lockdown caucus, you
Corey
49:15
you are basically guaranteed defeat at this point if you manage to split your party in two. So if Drew Barnes and Angela
Corey
49:21
Angela Pitt, if they all leave and they start their own organization
Corey
49:24
organization and that manages to pull off 10%, 15%, 20% of the vote,
Corey
49:29
well, then, I mean, congratulations on your one term as premier. And Premier Notley will be back in the driver's seat here. So I think Jason Kenney is facing a slow
Corey
49:40
slow-burning but very real crisis. And when you are in a crisis as a political party, the first thing you need to do –
Corey
49:48
we love metaphors in politics right we
Corey
49:51
we talk war metaphors are the most common you know we'll talk about campaigns and we talk about yeah war
Corey
49:56
war rooms and all of that crap but i think second to to military is flight a lot of flight metaphors too and i would say there's a bit of a tailspin situation here he is not in control of his plane and when you are faced with a crisis like this you need to do what a pilot does there's a rule in flight it is aviate navigate communicate first
Corey
50:17
first you got to get your hand on the rudder you've got to level things out you've got to figure out the situation that's most immediately at hand so you don't fly into the fucking ocean the next thing you need to do is figure out where the hell you are going and only when you have figured out where you are going do you communicate do you pick up the radio and say i am going here and politicians would be well to heed that advice too. Jason Kenney needs to think about these things in terms of what he is trying to do. And that means probably coming down to first principles again and saying, all right, a lot of shit is happening. We have caused a lot of this shit to happen. We need to fly the plane first and foremost. We can't fly into anything. Then we need to figure out how we are going to get to 2023. What is the course we are charting between here and the next election? And once they have that figured out, they need to communicate on that path relentlessly. Right now, the government is not communicating well. They are trying to talk to both the far right and moderates at the same time. And this is the effect we are seeing. They are not flying in one particular direction. They are whipping from one side to the other. And arguably, they've got problems with the actual running of the plane that we have seen through all of these things. So it's time to think about these things as a pilot would think about these things.
Zain
51:30
Carter, I want to go to you quickly. Opposition, notly. Premier in waiting is a term we've kind of used a few times, especially if the splintering happens.
Zain
51:41
She would love splintering to happen. The NDP would love that.
Zain
51:45
Anything you can do behind the scenes without looking too earnest? Or is this another one of those situations? Your opponent is a slow motion car crash and you just let it happen? Or is there a catalyzing powder or a catalyzing force you can apply to the situation if you are her?
Carter
52:06
You know, I think that the problem is that sometimes we always think air war, right? And we always think, how can we gain the attention of the media, the attention of the general public? This feels to me like ground game time. Like,
Carter
52:19
Like, this is a time when— Interesting. Tell us in what sense. Activists are angry.
Carter
52:23
There is a shit—you know, like, if you walk down— I mean, I'm sure any one of our neighborhoods, right? We're going to walk down the street. We're going to see Defend Our Parks signs on every street, right? That wasn't done by the NDP. That was an organization that has been done by, I think it's CPOS and a couple of other environmental
Carter
52:41
groups. Fantastic organizational structure. But where's the organization from the NDP? You know, they
Carter
52:48
they want to recruit candidates, but do they have the organizers? Do they have the structures in place? And as Corey has mentioned, it's all about Calgary. You can do the organization in Lethbridge. Shannon Phillips is an extremely capable MLA. I'm sure she's going to organize and win all two of those seats. But it's the 26 or so seats in Calgary that are going to matter. And they're the ones where the battle is being waged. And it's not anymore about how low can I push Jason Kenney. Jason Kenney is pushing himself under. Just let him drown in the deep end. You go and figure out how you're going to actually get your organizers in place and put people on the ground to start doing the work of actually winning in the next election. Because it's not going to be the same as the 2015 snap election that Jim Prentice called. It is going to happen on the fixed election cycle. It is going to be well thought through and everything is going to happen on a much longer timeline. The unintended
Carter
53:46
unintended consequence of the fixed election is
Carter
53:48
is that the election period itself is no longer or 28 days. The election period is four months, five months of build up to the actual election day. And that takes a lot of organizers and a lot of work to make sure that you're able to take advantage of that entire scenario.
Zain
54:07
Corey, last word on NDP strategy, if you have anything.
Corey
54:13
I think a lot of what Stephen said makes a lot of sense. And that's a great way to put it. Now Now is the time for ground game. I would maybe use a different analogy here, and that is – Make it a plain one, please.
Corey
54:24
Now is the time to get the passengers on board.
Zain
54:28
Oh, good. Thank you so much.
Corey
54:29
Yeah. You have created a very appealing destination, but you've got to fill these seats. And it's time to make real what is out there in the zeitgeist and in the conversation in Calgary. So go. Sign people up. Start thinking about how you're going to use them, because you don't want to engage people and then have them doing nothing for the next two years. Give them tasks to do. Start building a sense of momentum. Start building the team and the volume of people so that when these Election Day efforts happen,
Corey
54:58
you're there for them. Like a really good e-day, e-day being like the election day effort to get out the vote, that is hundreds of people, hundreds of people running
Corey
55:07
running all sorts of different shifts. You don't have enough people right now, enough volunteers, enough diehards to staff that across all of the ridings you need to be competitive in if you're in a real battle of inches here. Yes, in a wave election, absolutely. And in fact, that's what happened in 2015. But this could be something very different. And this could come down to a handful of seats. And so start thinking about, start
Corey
55:29
start thinking about cashing in. And I don't mean, you
Corey
55:32
you know, you sell your supporters, obviously. I mean, start making real, make people who are supportive, supporters.
Zain
55:40
I like that. We're going to leave that segment there. We go from with a shadow of some more doubts to our next segment without a shadow of a doubt. And we are now going to our friend Justin Trudeau. You're such a pro,
Zain
55:53
I know. You're so good at this, man. I'm nailing it. I'm nailing it. What a thematic.
Zain
55:56
It's about shadows and doubts. And this guy
Zain
56:00
no shadow of a doubt because here's a tweet from Justin Trudeau two days ago that I'll read to you. Starting next week, this is in his voice, we're expecting hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses each week. And that's just from Pfizer. With these shipments, we remain on track to receive 20 million doses from Pfizer and Moderna this spring. Stephen Carter, we've talked about expectation setting. We've talked about about the liberals, issues, management, woes, not just on this vaccine file, but historically. What do you make of that communication? You've got your strategist hat on already. I'm not going to ask you to put it on later in the segment. You have it on now. What do you make of that communication from a strategic perspective?
Carter
56:42
If he's got the assurance, if he knows that they're coming, then that's bang on. Because you've got to set, you know, you got to tell people what you're going to do, you got to tell them what you're doing, and then you got to tell them what you did and so this is this is exactly what that is um this is this is going to happen it better fucking happen right this is where we talked about they missed december they missed january they better not miss february so this this can't just be a foreshadowing of a hoped event this must be a foreshadowed foreshadowing of a known event and in a perfect world they'll exceed seed everything for the last two weeks of February.
Zain
57:19
Corey, it's pretty definitive, the phrasing here. And that's just from Pfizer is the line that I find interesting. Almost like, I got this. Almost like, holy crap. Must be deliberate. I'm sure they poured over it, knowing how these tweets are often written by committee or by consultation of many voices. Anything that you saw with the phrasing of that particular communication. communication. And of course, you know, the one caveat is we don't have the assurances and the full information ourselves, but I just wanted your comms analysis on what you saw there, Corey.
Corey
57:53
Well, before I get to the comms analysis, let me give some policy analysis. So hundreds of thousands, and that's just from Pfizer. Let's say we're getting a quarter of a million doses of vaccine a
Corey
58:04
right? Well, let's do some math here. There are 37,500,000 Canadians. It would would take 150 weeks to get everybody vaccinated at that rate. That's three years. So let's not be wowed by big numbers. Let's think about it in the context of our nation and the task that's in front of us here. And let's not pat ourselves on the backs too soon. But, you know, I think fundamentally, Zane, this is really wrestling over the frame. Not
Corey
58:29
Not a lot has happened in terms of the quarterly numbers. And in fact, we now understand better, or at least I do.
Corey
58:36
maybe you all did a little before me here but because of our quarterly contracts and other nations had weekly or every couple of weeks it's not at all surprising that they said we're going to push you off to a bit later because we've got to hit our other obligations with people who have set their contracts differently but if
Corey
58:51
if we had quarterly contracts and they're still hitting their quarterly numbers despite all of this conversation all of this back and forth all of this anxiety come march 31 we are not going to be in a foundationally different position than we were planned to be ever, right? But what Justin Trudeau is trying to do here is get people focused on that end of March figure, like the end of that quarterly number and the assurances that he has there, because those weekly numbers continue to underwhelm, as I sort of highlighted with my math. And as long as you can get people thinking about the long-term on this, Canada doesn't look too poorly positioned, and come September, we'll probably be just
Corey
59:30
just fine. and hopefully sooner but um but
Corey
59:33
but uh that is what this is about it's wrestling over the frame should we care about weekly numbers or should we care about quarterly numbers well
Zain
59:41
well put cory i've got another element uh to to the covet story that i just wanted to get your quick take on because this is supposed to be our segment where we do our weekly check-in and then cory says nothing has happened and then offers analysis uh but cory i'm going to stick with you first uh this coming Coming to us from a recent meeting with Prime Minister Modi and Justin Trudeau, where he says India will do its best to send vaccines to Canada, India potentially producing some vaccines. The headline here reads interesting. We know about the tensions that have surrounded Trudeau and Modi in the past, and Trudeau and the Indian government more largely, I should say, to be clear. It's interesting that a Western country would be looking to India. There's that sort of brand play here. I'm just kind of curious, what's a conversation or a headline like this means for the Trudeau government, perhaps even as an extension to the COVAX conversation, where you're thinking about the Trudeau government taking from, you know, developing countries for our own domestic supply. Now you see India, which, you know, is an economic, you know, upswing in many ways historically. But it seems like a weird headline to read if you're reading it here domestically, which is why I kind of wanted to bring it to your attention and just get your gut feel on what you guys thought of it. Yeah.
Corey
1:00:54
Yeah. And, you know, this is one of these things that perhaps we all need to update our priors a bit on. People tend to, people my age, so if you're around 40 years old, you think of India as what India was like in the 1990s, right? right? And India was a developing nation, quite a few steps behind many of the other nations in the region. You know, China and India were in a totally different kind of economic paradigm in those moments. Both have become much more economically significant players. India is a fascinating country because, you know, there is extreme wealth and extreme poverty. But when you go to urban centers in India, they're crowded
Corey
1:01:32
crowded and there's a lot that's culturally a bit different, But they are like any other major developed center. And so you could look at it and be like, from India, we're Canada. But I think that's a little bit of
Corey
1:01:46
a kind of gross opinion to have in 2021, frankly. However,
Corey
1:01:52
that said, many people will have that opinion. And I think that –
Zain
1:01:55
– That's why I asked you. Yeah.
Corey
1:01:56
Yeah. And so the Trudeau government needs to be mindful of what it looks like that Canada now needs to go to India for the support. Generally, countries don't like to think they're reliant on any country. They certainly don't want to think they're reliant on countries they think less of, and there are Canadians who think less of India, at least in terms of the capacity and the economy, right? So, yeah,
Corey
1:02:15
yeah, I mean, it
Corey
1:02:17
will hurt him more with voters who don't like him to begin with, but
Corey
1:02:20
but it's an open question to me what it does with moderate voters. Now, one of the more interesting things it does do, I think, is really highlight that Canada and India do have a special relationship. There is a large Indian population here in Canada, and I
Corey
1:02:35
I don't think it's bad that there's a – I mean, the Modi government, I don't know if we've got time to get into all of that. I'll do
Zain
1:02:41
do farmer's protests. Do you want to do a quick hour on that? Farmer's protests. Yeah, let's
Corey
1:02:44
let's do farmer's protests. No, but I think it's nice that – well, I think it's nice. What am I trying to say here?
Corey
1:02:51
India and Canada are over the long term going to be closer and closer friends. You know, culture, demography, those are going to bring us closer together. And I
Corey
1:03:01
I guess, in a sense, get used to it. Like, you're going to see more of this going forward.
Zain
1:03:05
Carter, any gut feeling? Corey, you did a great job contextualizing some of it. Any gut feelings you have, mainly from the lens of political brand and political history with India? I think, Corey, you did a good job covering kind of some of the assumptions people might make. But the impact on political brand and the political history Trudeau has had with India, Carter, anything you feel like could be interesting or perhaps red flags from what you see, or even yellow flags, so to speak?
Carter
1:03:30
Well, I mean, I think that the challenge is that this is not going to be seen to be positive by certain subsets of the population. And Corey's done a good job of outlining how people would perceive India in the past. I mean, I think that even when you look at some of the run-ins we've had with India, you know, like not run-ins like officially, but, you know, Justin Trudeau's costume dancing. Diplomatic challenges.
Carter
1:03:56
Yeah, you know, these types of things. And again, our kind of culturally racist or culturally backwards views towards India, all of that will lead very large subgroups of the population to think this is bad. And I
Carter
1:04:14
that we should recognize
Carter
1:04:15
recognize that this isn't bad. This is just part of the new world.
Carter
1:04:20
world. The world is changing before us.
Carter
1:04:24
That's mostly good. good uh there there's there's lots of poverty issues income disparity issues all kinds of problems that we we shouldn't just walk away from there's a the the nationalism of india is a problem but uh what is not a problem is manufacturing capacity of india taking off and um their ability as a as a country um to be amongst the technological leaders in the world that is a a good success story that we should celebrate around the world and uh unfortunately
Carter
1:04:57
unfortunately too much of it is going to be caught up in the politics of the motion or the politics of the of the minute and the uh you
Carter
1:05:06
you know the pursuit the desire to take a political win at india's uh cost
Zain
1:05:14
we'll leave that segment there let's move it on to our final segment over under in our lightning lightning round. Stephen Carter, are you ready? No,
Carter
1:05:19
No, I'm dozed off already. I'm ready to go to bed. It's late. Here we
Zain
1:05:22
we go. I'm going to go. I'm firing these quick for you, Stephen Carter. First of all, we talked about Jason Kenney backtracking. We'll put that in air quotes on the coal policy, on the on the parks policy. Backtracking in politics, though, without the quotes, overrated or underrated?
Carter
1:05:39
totally overrated. Backtracking is bad. You have lost. In a perfect world you are not backtracking because you haven't fucked up so don't fuck up don't backtrack it's overrated look
Zain
1:05:53
look at this i told you i'd fire them off you'd knock them out of the park cory backtracking overrated underrated underrated
Corey
1:05:58
underrated i think politicians think about these things far too much they really worry about losing face they assume people are tracking these things more closely than they are and they also assume people are going to credit them for quote-unquote winning more but in reality if people acted like political parties do normally we would think of them as sociopaths it's okay to say i got something wrong right it's okay to go back this was one of the geniuses of ralph klein a man with which i have no limit of policy disputes with but uh he knew when to say sorry and and when to just walk out of a situation oh
Zain
1:06:32
don't know i usually don't declare winners on that but that was that was good you guys both brought it i don't even know fucking kidding
Carter
1:06:37
me i crushed that i crushed it
Zain
1:06:40
cory i'm gonna stick with you on this i'm
Zain
1:06:43
i'm gonna cabinets overrated or underrated as a political tool you call them a marketing and messaging tool or partially that but um overrated underrated overall in your mind overrated
Corey
1:06:54
overrated i think if we stopped 100 canadians on the street 99 canadians couldn't name one shadow cabinet minister carter
Zain
1:07:02
carter overrated underrated shadow cabinets underrated
Carter
1:07:05
underrated especially with your mandate letter idea that was fucking genius thank you i'm
Carter
1:07:09
i'm still marveling at how good that is as an idea oh
Zain
1:07:13
oh i Why, thank you, Carter. Carter, I'm going to stick with you. We're talking about Angela Pitt, Drew Barnes here in Alberta. So overrated or underrated, caucus unity?
Carter
1:07:22
Underrated, and both Angela Pitt and Drew Barnes are overrated. They should both be out of caucus this instant.
Zain
1:07:32
I think both of you made a clear point strategically why they aren't. But Corey, caucus unity, overrated, underrated in your mind?
Corey
1:07:38
Party unity is underrated. Caucus unity is overrated caucus unity uh is something that political parties talk a lot more about than the people on the street there
Corey
1:07:47
always floor crossers just looking
Corey
1:07:49
at the difference between revoke
Corey
1:07:55
you have to keep
Carter
1:07:56
no no i'm totally yeah yeah when
Corey
1:07:58
when you cease to spare you do not need to keep your caucus together cory
Zain
1:08:02
cory sticking with you overrated or underrated political brand we talked about kovacs we talked about the the india headline which could rub some people the wrong way or quizzically. The Trudeau political brand we've talked about as being, you know, a globally savvy Canada place in the world, a country that helps. But the question I have is fundamentally political brand, as it were overrated, underrated, underrated,
Corey
1:08:27
underrated, political brand is everything. When you are going to vote, you you see a name on a ballot, and you see a party on a ballot, and you have shorthanded all of the attributes and values and feelings that go go with that when you see that political name that is your brand almost we talked about this last week policy is in many ways a trailing thing you like the policies of your party but you don't choose your party because you like the policies once you've sort of established your political preferences as a younger person so brand
Corey
1:08:58
brand is everything and you have to watch your brand very very carefully carter
Zain
1:09:02
carter i feel like this will be a moment of agreement but i'm going to ask it anyways, political brand overrated or underrated?
Carter
1:09:08
Underrated. Everything is about brand. Everything Corey said in that last segment and that last segment alone was correct. Everything else he said before that was incorrect. No, political brand is everything. And I don't know that parties spend enough time thinking about brand. They tend to think more about the transaction and it tends to hurt them.
Zain
1:09:31
Corey, final question for you. Over, under on five, the chance that Stephen Carter appears on an episode of Rescue 911.
Corey
1:09:40
Over, and William Shatner's voiceover on it is going to be amazing.
Zain
1:09:44
I'm looking forward to it. Carter, you don't get a say in that one. I'm stuck in the snow! Help!
Zain
1:09:50
That's Save Your Jesper's Impersonation for the show.
Zain
1:09:54
We'll leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 915 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we'll see you next time.