Transcript
Zain
0:02
This is a strategist episode 926. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, we are all wearing hats.
Zain
0:12
That's what Sunday's thing is.
Carter
0:14
That's the best you've
Zain
0:16
That's the best you've got to open
Carter
0:17
open this up? No, this
Carter
0:18
was the best because I don't usually wear a hat.
Zain
0:21
me tell you how the show works. I come in with a low bar and I let you guys elevate the game. I make you look good. I make you sound good. I can't make you actually look good. And I take that one back. I try to make you sound smart. Maybe that's the best I do. So I start with, hey, we've all got hats. You could take that in many directions. Color of the hats. Are they similar or different? Head coverings overall. Why are we wearing hats? Those are just a few of the, you know, conversational divergences you can take.
Corey
0:53
letting you know. Or we can get meta about the value of hat conversations overall. And then we can talk about getting meta about the conversations about hats overall. We can go real deep on this if we want to.
Zain
1:02
We can get extremely deep. Top of the dome. That's what we do. We're just at a minute on hats. Guys, this is such a flexible podcast.
Carter
1:11
There's nothing we can't do. And we've
Zain
1:13
we've just proven it by what we just did.
Carter
1:15
Let's do coconut oil
Zain
1:16
oil next. How's that for meta? That's nice. How's that for meta, Corey? Corey, lamella ball. is out for the season did you hear about this oh
Corey
1:23
oh man i did it's too bad he he had a real chance at rookie of the year but um oh
Zain
1:28
oh i think obviously
Zain
1:30
surefire rookie of the year in
Corey
1:31
in my mind yeah yeah
Corey
1:33
yeah yeah i don't know if it is now i mean i feel like there's still actually a fair bit of season left but maybe that's that's
Corey
1:38
that's crazy talk um i was on west of center this week too so between lamello bar ball and me being on west of center i think it's been a pretty big week pretty big big news week. I don't know if there was anything else that went on this weekend, anything that's
Carter
1:51
that's going to carry the show beyond. I was on Alberta at noon. I was on another show. No,
Zain
1:56
No, that's good. I mean, listen, we've hit the triangulation. Two out of the three of us hitting media, LaMelo Ball and hats. That is the holy grail. That is the church that this podcast prays to. Carter, I know you've been a longtime LaMelo Ball fan. What's your take?
Carter
2:11
Listen, the Collingwood Magpies lost the season opener, and it was a big news in the Australian football league uh so that's what i'm following this week don't
Carter
2:21
don't have time for the nba
Zain
2:22
nba are you watching are you watching i'm just gonna power through korea reaching march madness are you watching any of the march
Corey
2:26
march madness footage i've just sort of been watching you know these upsets like second seed being taken out those kinds of things but i haven't watched any games how about you i
Zain
2:34
i haven't watched any games i'm i'm saying the instagram uh the instagram highlights are actually pretty awesome and and that's where i've been getting most of my coverage and i am loving and when
Zain
2:46
when i say coverage i am loving what oral roberts which i by the way of school i've never heard of prior to six
Carter
2:52
six days ago oral roberts that's
Zain
2:58
heard with a real
Zain
3:00
yeah the real name uh carter you of course have the uh wide ranging knowledge on this podcast out of the three of us please give us a a quick take on the history of oral roberts please uh
Carter
3:11
uh no because it's gross
Zain
3:17
was gonna say we're gonna leave that segment there but that wasn't a segment that was what we call exciting three minutes and 22 seconds of banter let's move it on to our first segment our first segment aaron gives his ted talk guys
Zain
3:31
guys so let's talk about aaron o'toole let's talk about aaron o'toole and ted talk format and you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna going to split tonight's episode up in a couple of ways we're going to split this episode up with let's
Zain
3:41
let's talk about the speech let's talk about the speech expectations get those from you again based on some of the previous conversations we've had to recalibrate what the expectations were for Aaron O'Toole heading into Friday night then let's actually break down his speech from content style substance staging as we often do with political speeches and get your sense on what what you found in each of those. And then we'll use another entire segment, if not the bulk of this episode, to talk about what literally happens 12 hours after Harold O'Toole gives that speech. Because I do think divorcing it might not be the right sort of frame, but I think I want to address it almost independently. I
Corey
4:20
I feel like it's totally not the right frame. How do we talk about the speech without talking about the fact that his party rejected his speech effectively within
Corey
4:30
dare you? you how
Zain
4:31
how dare you jump ahead cory some people are listening and don't know that okay
Zain
4:36
okay and steven carter is one of them because he's putting up his hand i'm like i'm stuck i'm
Carter
4:40
i'm googling away right now i'm
Zain
4:43
i'm gonna i'm actually gonna do a pretty quick drive by which is which is why i wanted to do it this way because i don't want these thoughts to be muddied overall um cory let's start here what were the expectations for for otul heading into this speech well
Corey
4:55
well we had different ones carter and i uh carter thought it would be a speech to the base i thought it would be a speech to middle I think that I was largely right, but what I was struck by was how much Aaron O'Toole tried to talk to both audiences at the same time. It was definitely a speech more for Canadians writ large than it was for the party, in my opinion. Certainly when you saw what happened the next day and how the party rejected some of the things that were in his speech, it's hard to come to any other conclusion. But he talked about the need for the Conservative Party to change. And that is really also, as much as that may seem like a message directed towards the base, that's really a message directed towards Canadians saying that the Conservative Party will change. Yeah,
Corey
5:36
I mean, it was an opportunity to kind of take the limelight that he was given and make a big show of it, make a show of change being the mantra. In fact, he was very non-specific about the nature of change that he would have relative to what the Conservative Party had offered in the past. But that change mantra was strong. I mean, the most concrete component in his speech about what he would change was the approach to climate change, right? That climate change is real, and the Conservative Party will act on climate change with a serious and substantive policy to be released at a later date. He did also say it wouldn't include like a carbon tax, but nonetheless, he talked about a serious and substantive policy coming down the line. So imagine his surprise. Well, I guess that's your next segment, so I won't even go there. No, but he was directing towards Canada, and I think that if his party had played ball, it wouldn't have been such a bad way to tee up a reintroduction to the country.
Zain
6:34
Carter, let's get the table stakes set from you. What was he trying to do from what you saw? Why do you think it was divergent from what you expected to happen going into Friday?
Carter
6:46
Well, let's be clear. that Aaron O'Toole listens to the podcast and he thought, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to listen to Corey Hogan because that Corey Hogan, he's a young whippersnapper. He's just an up-and-comer. He's going to have the right ideas, right? And he ignored Stephen Carter. And Stephen Carter was just sitting on the side like, what the hell just happened? Except he listened to Corey when he should have listened to me
Carter
7:08
because when he did, and I was surprised and I did have to say Corey was right. He followed Corey's advice over my advice. So
Zain
7:19
Corey was right, but O'Toole was wrong to follow Corey. Is that what I'm understanding as the basis?
Carter
7:23
basis? All this usually just comes around to me being right all the time. Okay, okay.
Corey
7:28
It's quite the narrative you weave for yourself in these
Carter
7:31
situations. Yeah, no, I was really at the core of it right. When you get down
Corey
7:37
to it, this was really a speech about you, I think. It
Carter
7:39
It was a speech about me. It was about reaching out to conservatives like me who have been lost in the process.
Carter
7:47
anyways, I mean, his actions
Carter
7:50
actions were, to Corey's point from Thursday, what his speech was, was designed to speak to middle Canadians and say, we're going to be able to be a government you can trust. And then that
Carter
8:02
that was the core of the message. I think that Corey brings up an interesting point about how he was trying to balance that. Don't worry, we're going to change for you, but don't worry, we're not going to change that much message. Right. Like he had the we're not going to change that much for his core members. And then he had, but we'll change enough for the general population. That is the tight rope
Carter
8:22
rope upon every conservative leader must walk.
Carter
8:26
We've been talking about it for quite some time, how in
Carter
8:29
in order to win the leadership, you must be on the right hand side of that particular party. And then you must immediately move to the left if you're going to try and win or form government. And this is what O'Toole was trying to balance in the speech. And ultimately, Corey was more correct in predicting what he was actually going to say. But I do think that, you
Carter
8:51
you know, this is the pitfall. This is the problem. This is the challenge that they face time and time again as a party in
Carter
8:58
in establishing what their brand is supposed to be. Because if you please the members, you don't please the public.
Zain
9:04
Corey, you were the one who thought this was going to be a Canada
Zain
9:07
Canada general audience speech. Some of the content. Let's talk about content for a second. You mentioned a few of the things. Mental health was one of the key priorities. Climate, not just climate change, but leadership on climate. Why aren't we leading on this file? This is what we do as conservatives. Asking the wealthy to pay their fair share. An appeal directly to workers and union members.
Corey
9:29
members. An appeal directly to New Democrat supporters. Correct. And
Zain
9:32
And a lot of French is what I noticed. Now, those are just a few of the things I'm putting on the table. French is probably more in the style category. What did you kind of make of the content? Anything out of that list or anything other than what I presented that you found interesting or particularly strategic from your perspective on the content side of things?
Corey
9:53
Yeah, there was all of that list, but there was also how he talked about Justin Trudeau and the liberals. And we had this conversation back in the fall when the economic
Corey
10:03
economic update was coming in and – or throne speech, I guess it was, right? I can't even remember now. September. The September
Corey
10:11
September speech from the throne, where there was some suspicion ahead of time that there'd be this big dramatic reimagining of the Canadian economy. Well, he talked about the threat of that in his speech a fair bit as well. The idea that the liberals want to reimagine Canada, and they're going to tinker with it and change it all. And that's scary. And that should concern us all. And I said back in September, and I still think now that's a pretty good message, because I think ultimately after a year of total upheaval, as much as we might want to kind of intellectually build back better, quote unquote, whatever the Trudeau government manages
Corey
10:46
to pull it into, there is a fatigue with change. There is exhaustion with change after a year of being locked in our homes, after a year of not being able to go to restaurants and all of the other things that have changed in our lives as a result of COVID-19. So I thought that was – if that is foreshadowing and it certainly seemed like it to be a major narrative carrying through over the next bit,
Corey
11:07
that's got – that could be a potential winner. I sort of felt the same way about that that I felt in 16 when Trump started talking about law and order a lot more like, OK, I can definitely see that there's – the other side is not going to have great responses to that, right? And so keep your eye on that one as well. As much as everybody is talking about climate today and how much the Conservative Party shot off Erin O'Toole's legs, the
Corey
11:34
the fact of the matter is it also foreshadowed a lot of what I presume will be campaign positions
Corey
11:40
positions as well. And that's an important one. Like this idea that Trudeau is living in, you know, this, these are not words in the speech, but almost like this, you know, this unethical fantasy land where they're just going to tinker with this country and try to create something forward.
Corey
11:56
It's interesting. And it tells us a lot about what we can expect over the next couple of months.
Zain
12:01
Carter, what elements of the speech content did you find the most strategic or perhaps the most politically interesting with your strategist head on? I listed a few of them. Corey mentioned about the descriptor on the contrast with Trudeau.
Zain
12:16
Was there anything that caught your attention? tension well
Carter
12:18
i mean i think that you mentioned earlier the the amount of french and i also twigged to the amount of french i thought there was quite a bit of french in it but it was interesting because some of the pundits afterwards have been criticizing that there was a lack of french and i thought that was really interesting because i immediately twigged to it and thought wow that's quite a bit of french um i think he's making a play to quebec but what what i think uh actually you know i'm not sure that that played the way that i heard it maybe you heard it as albertans maybe in quebec wasn't enough yet um to cory's point about the the the kind of shift towards new democrats like the the ability one of the things that we've tried to parse a few times on the podcast is the orange blue shift right the ability for voters to shift from a new democrat to a conservative because kind of on the on if you go with the whole you know the the electoral map a map, right? You can't move from the far left to the far right. That's impossible. But that requires a logic that doesn't exist in terms of the average voter. The average voter is governed by emotion and feel, and they move
Carter
13:25
move where they want to move to. There's no passing go. There's no saying, well, you have to stamp my passport at the liberal stop before I can move on to the conservative stop. So that was a really interesting play because it exists in real life. And I think that it's also something that could be existing right now. I'm not sure, though, that it's a play that will actually work because there's so much coming, so much largesse coming from the liberal government that it's very difficult, I think, for the NDP supporters that may be shaken a little bit by Singh's weakness to just jump over the liberal party that seems to be so focused on delivering a more progressive view.
Zain
14:10
I'm going to leave this bracket open for a second. Can I actually double-click or double-tap on the orange-blue shift a bit more to learn a bit more from you folks? Because there's something interesting about it. Because is it simply based on class and class issues and workers' rights issues? Or is it more than that and more sophisticated than that, in your opinion?
Carter
14:30
It's far more sophisticated than class issues. It's in
Carter
14:35
in the sense of values, if you will. So imagine that you're a value voter and you have a set of values that you believe in, and those values are represented by the conservatives or they're represented by the New Democrats. A values voter does not wish compromise. And so a values voter can shift from orange to blue because the values, because they don't have a set of values that is uniform. They have a set of values that is all over the place. So what they're doing is simply prioritizing one value that may have them on the NDP structure, and then the next election they emphasize a different value that
Carter
15:12
that is more on the conservative structure. So moving back and forth is
Carter
15:18
is totally expected because they're moving from value to value, and they see the liberals as without values. The compromise of the center, the compromise of pragmatism is,
Carter
15:34
is, in fact, the ultimate portrayal of
Carter
15:36
of the values. So that gets you some of the orange, the orange blue shift in a nutshell. shell.
Corey
15:44
Yeah, I think that this is oversimplified.
Corey
15:47
People aren't actually on a left-right line. No, but people aren't on a left-right line. There
Corey
15:53
is economic left versus right. There's social left versus right. There's populism versus elitism. There's future focus versus right now, which will have a lot to do with how you're feeling secure or not. And to Carter's point, there's principled versus unprincipled. And some people would rather take somebody principled they disagree with than somebody they perceive as unprincipled. It's the old Alexander Hamilton, you know, not endorsing Aaron Burr, if you're a fan of musical theater and or history. So the reality is the orange-blue shift, that's not such an uncommon thing. Like, they don't have to jump over, quote-unquote, jump over the liberals. It depends on what spectrum they're on. And
Corey
16:29
And it depends on what issue matters for them at the moment. To the point about French, it was a lot of French if you don't speak French. I didn't feel it was overly bilingual for a major leader's speech. But maybe that's just a feeling. Maybe that's not fair. I haven't actually seen any kind of analysis as to the breakdown.
Corey
16:47
You know, when you see Justin Trudeau speak, it's going to be about 50-50 if
Zain
16:51
if it's a true
Corey
16:52
true national audience, right? Maybe a little more English than French. I don't know. But this was not that. This was much more 75-25, even 80-20 in its breakdown, or at least that's what it felt like to me.
Zain
17:04
Yeah, and that's a good point. I mean, it's someone who, like myself, who doesn't speak French from Alberta, you know, and who watched this thing every time he was speaking in French, and perhaps even the low bar that maybe many had, myself included, for O'Toole in terms of both delivery in French, which of course, as I just mentioned, I have no way of parsing out and telling you if it was good or not, but also volume. It sounded like a lot, and perhaps that's where we come from. Corey, I'm going to stick with you for a second. And let's move to the second bucket here before we move on to what happened on the day after. The style and the staging.
Zain
17:37
He kind of gave this speech with the roving microphone, not necessarily behind that podium, TED Talk style.
Corey
17:42
style. I mean, you said it. It was very TED Talk, right? Walking back and forth, the camera following him. Right, right. A friend of mine was texting that it had a serious infomercial or vibe, you know? Right, right. I totally agree. And,
Zain
17:57
maybe even Sunday morning pasture, you know? Like, feel free to roam the stage with your— It
Corey
18:02
It was a little bit like Oral Roberts was up there talking to
Zain
18:07
Roberts Oral. That's what he does on Sunday morning. Oral Roberts, Roberts Oral on Sunday morning. Corey, what did you make of both the style and the staging, given, of course, the COVID constraints
Zain
18:19
constraints that the Conservatives were working with here?
Corey
18:21
here? I think they did okay, given the constraints. constraints and i you know it did not have the glitz and the glam of an equivalent remote conference or convention that you'd have in the united states that that's very clear right it was it was well done but it wasn't it wasn't a spectacle by any means it was also very clear that um some combination of erin o'toole needs a bit more experience doing that like he needs to put in a few more reps he was clearly a little bit shaky a little bit wooden at certain points. Or he just really felt the moment, like he knew it was an important speech, and he got inside his own head, and maybe he had a bit of nerves there. I thought, generally speaking, it was pretty good. And the whole,
Corey
19:03
whole, like, I'm going to wander around, and I'm going to show a certain comfort thing, I
Corey
19:08
I don't know that he totally nailed it, but he came off, I think he came off not badly in it. He seemed not
Corey
19:14
not incompetent, and he certainly seemed pretty genuine genuine at moments. So I give him, I
Corey
19:20
I don't know, a C plus, a B minus, but I'm a hard marker for those kinds of things. I think he did what he needed to do, but
Corey
19:27
but for, of course, what happened the next day.
Zain
19:30
Carter O'Toole, both from the style and staging perspective of his 30-minute speech.
Carter
19:37
I mean, the first time I worked with a conservative leader that did the walk around on the stage thing was 2004 with Jim Prentice and it was brand new then uh so it's it's neither new nor interesting at this stage um the Ted Talk feel I mean I think he he looked exactly like you would cast him you know if it's central casting the blue tie the blue blazer the you know the white clean white blue on blue
Zain
20:01
blue on everything right yeah
Carter
20:03
yeah I mean it's
Carter
20:03
black blue backdrop and I guess that you know if you were a director you wouldn't necessarily want to see uh like you'd want to see some contrast you'd want to see something that looks a little bit different but you're not a director in this thing you're you're you're
Carter
20:16
you're trying to emphasize one single brand position and i think he did his job of emphasizing that single brand position i'm not overly stoked with the the walk around the stage thing i mean it's really hard to do um i'm not sure what he's trying to to show people like is he trying to um
Carter
20:35
um emphasize that you know he may in fact be younger he is younger than drudeau we've established that right he
Zain
20:41
he is by like
Carter
20:41
like a year or something yeah
Zain
20:43
they're close but he is younger yeah
Carter
20:45
yeah i mean who's going to believe that um
Carter
20:47
um and it's not like walking around the stage gives you any sense of um you know youth or vitality so why are we why are we imposing that upon them unless there was supposed to be some sort of message to that and my problem is i don't think there was a message to that there was when jim prentice did it in 2004 it was new it was was different it was it was unique it was the era of of kind of stepping out from behind the podium and stepping into uh stepping into a
Carter
21:14
a visual but now
Carter
21:16
now it's 2021 and frankly
Carter
21:18
frankly i think that you
Carter
21:20
you know his party and his people his voters are happy to
Carter
21:23
to see him strong
Carter
21:26
strong and the podium the podium actually kind
Carter
21:29
kind of adds strength if you will like it's it's a it's a physical thing on stage that you can speak And I would have just preferred that if they were going to mess around, you know, put them on a different part of the stage. We're always center stage when we do these speeches. Why? Why aren't you standing, you know, stage left front, right? Like, why are we always standing center stage? That's no one in theater would ever, ever direct that way. So, you know, we could do a little bit of learning.
Corey
22:03
Well, I do think if you're going to do the TED Talk thing, you should commit to it more fully. And one of the things that I was waiting for and never really happened was them to use the screen behind him to convey information related to what he was talking about. It only occurred once, only
Corey
22:20
once, like the five bullets, but that was it. That was the only time they made use of the technology behind him. And I think there could have been so many opportunities to to almost be like the word on the Colbert Report, right? Like you could have some stats show a quote of Justin Trudeau being—
Corey
22:40
being— Contextual information. Absolutely.
Corey
22:42
Absolutely. It's not like you're using
Zain
22:43
using it as a crutch to read off of, but it adds or scaffolds what you're saying. It
Corey
22:47
It could have added some interest because he was walking around a stage and it was a TED Talk minus the thing that makes a TED Talk a TED Talk, right? Which is you've got your presentation behind you. And so I thought that was a bit of a miss on that front. But it's interesting, because Carter and I have given sort of two different versions of this speech. One is you anchor it and you make it more conventional speech. And mine was like, if you're going to do that, go all in. But I think that the failure to commit to either one of those approaches was not his friend. But again, I don't know if that matters that that much. It's just the two of us kind of digging deep on some of those details. I
Zain
23:24
have one final question, which I should have asked you earlier, both of you, around framing. This was kind of subtle in some ways in what he was saying, but certainly not subtle in what was behind him, which was this larger mantra of recovery, you know, securing Canada's recovery. And I'm paraphrasing that because I don't remember the exact phrasing that was behind him when he was speaking. But this whole concept of recovery and securing the future as part of Canada's recovery plan, it almost seemed to me that he was saying Justin Trudeau was Canada's pandemic prime minister, but I'm your recovery prime minister in some ways. I'm kind of curious if you saw that or if I'm just injecting and perhaps making that connective tissue. And if so, do you feel like that could be an effective overall framing for him as much as Corey's version of how to frame Trudeau in terms of his great rebuild as well? Maybe Carter, I'll start with you on that particular point.
Carter
24:19
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's exactly right, Zane. I think that he is talking about, you know, his graphic from this morning of we need to restore, we need to restore, we need to restore. I mean, it's not even subtle. You know, they want to take us back to some sort of imagined prosperity that they think that Canadians are desiring.
Carter
24:42
desiring. And that, I think, could work really well. I mean, we've talked on the podcast that at some point, the optimism getting this of us getting out of the pandemic is going to quickly change to the reality of our economic situation. And what O'Toole is trying to foreshadow is that change. And if the election happens, and I think this is the challenge that the liberals are facing. The liberals have said, basically, we're going to have an election in 2021 because they are afraid that,
Carter
25:11
you know, the economic recovery is going to be harder to get than the pandemic vaccinations,
Carter
25:16
vaccinations, right? Like the vaccinations are going to happen and
Carter
25:19
and we're going to feel optimism and we're going to be excited. And then there's going to be the reality of
Carter
25:23
of the economic situation.
Carter
25:26
This is O'Toole foreshadowing that and trying to make that the central question of the election. Who do you trust with your economic recovery?
Carter
25:34
And if that's the question of the election, I'm fascinated to see how Canadians will respond. Will they respond with, as they have in the past, many, many times, the Conservatives? Or will they respond with, I'm going to stay with the people who brung us. We're going to dance with the people who brung us. We're going to stay with the Liberals. Right now, that's the situation. But
Carter
25:54
But the Liberals seem to be desperate to get this election to happen before that economic light switch turns on. And I think you're seeing O'Toole jump on that by focusing on recovery, focusing on restoration, you know, get us back, bring Canada back, versus, you know, some of the other messaging that Trudeau might steal from Biden.
Zain
26:15
Coy, any comments on the recovery framing before we move on to what happened the next morning?
Corey
26:21
Yeah, O'Toole really leaned into recovery. You talked about, you know, it was Canada's recovery plan. And then every single one of the bullets underneath started with secure. You know, recovery inherently means going back secure, safe, steady. These are words, these are concepts that came through the speech. He used the phrase, I want to, I think it was like, I want to create a path of security and certainty, something about security and certainty. That was his chosen framing there. Meanwhile, he talked about Trudeau as risky, talking about untested changes. He talked about Trudeau wanting to reimagine the economy a couple of times with scare quotes, you know, like reimagining this economy, this idea of Ottawa knows best, this unethical government that is going to make the connected few really, really advantageous during this reimagined economic time, but was ultimately an unreliable leader who tried risky things that hurt the Canadian economy. So you can really see the contrast, right? Like, risk and unethical versus secure, certainty, steady, honest. Like, it's quite clear what they're trying to build out of this. The speech has words that are chosen, obviously, with care, because they're repeated regularly and at intervals, both throughout this speech and then in all of the corresponding materials around it. So, I mean,
Corey
27:39
mean, I guess we'll see. I guess we'll see, because obviously, Saturday
Corey
27:42
Saturday didn't help very much. Let's
Zain
27:44
Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, this TED Talk has an open bar for day drinking. Yes, indeed, guys, conservative delegates, as Corey has mentioned a few times, the very next morning after this well-planned, well-staged and, you know, largely well-delivered speech by Aaron O'Toole rejected adding green-friendly statements to the policy book, including a line that it would have stated the party believes in, quote, climate change is real, unquote, and is willing to act on it.
Zain
28:14
Delegates on the issue rebuked a climate change policy by a margin of 54 to 46. The breakdown, which I find interesting, I'm just going to kind of go into the breakdown just to kind of add some further context by province. The Atlantic provinces and delegates from New Brunswick were 70% on side. The BC no side had just a two-point edge, while the vote was much more lopsided in Saskatchewan, 73 points against. The territories, 69 points against. Alberta, 62 points against. And Ontario, 58 points against. I wanted to throw some of those geographic elements onto there for obvious reasons as we'll get into it. And a double majority of delegates, a majority of delegates must agree to the official policy change. So we've talked about how these policy conventions at the end of the day, as it relates to the policy that is presented by the party at the end, really don't matter. But
Zain
29:09
But it's headlines like this, that really, especially with the change mandate, a let me talk to Canadians writ large mandate that Aaron O'Toole is trying to both force and secure simultaneously. It's shit like this that makes the headlines. Stephen Carter, let's start with you. How bad is this for Aaron O'Toole?
Carter
29:27
Well, it was pretty bad. I mean, he set us up for one thing and then something else happened. When we've talked about these
Carter
29:34
these policy conventions in the past, what we've always imagined is a a time difference right so the policy convention happens in in
Carter
29:41
in let's say may and then the election happens in october and the policy is different in october than it was in may well who cares there's a whole bunch of time difference this is the next day the next day the leader is undermined by the membership now there's some i don't really understand there was some back and forth on on the twitterverse about when did the vote occur maybe it happened before the the leadership uh you know before o'toole did his big speech i don't think it matters do you think it matters do you think it would have mattered that O'Toole was saying that, you know, we are now climate change believers.
Carter
30:13
This is the problem, again, with the party. The party is different than the voter. And the party, especially the party faithful that go to a policy initiative, may not even represent who the party is. You know, this is a small subset, if you will. And they are definitely more right-leaning than, than, well,
Carter
30:36
certainly O'Toole wanted them to be. So this was a big deal. This was bigger than what Corey and I have often talked about on the podcast,
Carter
30:44
primarily just because of timing. All of the headlines, all the positive headlines that could have occurred or would have occurred out of O'Toole's speech were all undermined by 9 o'clock the next morning. And that's really what does a party in. And when you miss, not only just the negative headlines, but the potential positive headlines being undermined by your own actions, that's death in politics.
Corey
31:16
Well, it's bad because, as Carter mentioned, it's also a missed opportunity. Listen, let's just separate for a second the moment and what this means longer term. So it's not great. Great.
Corey
31:27
Not to state the obvious here, but to have the leader undercut
Corey
31:32
undercut like that by his party, regardless of when the timing was, it shows just a total disconnect between the leadership and the grassroots. And he needs to be able to explain this. Already, you're starting to see comments like, well, some of the votes were in before, you know, before Aaron O'Toole made the statement that
Corey
31:48
that we believe in climate change. that's actually not very comforting uh let me just say um but then there is also going to be comments like well the problem was that it talked about co2 at the exclusion of other things within the environment and we didn't want to elevate one we wanted to talk about all of them also not great because most canadians see this as an existential crisis and something that that warrants special attention shall we say um but i also don't think that
Corey
32:14
we can just say this is the end of everything Now it's the end of the world. There is a bit of like, you know, nothing in life is as good or as bad as you think it is. Maybe there's even an opportunity here because now Canadians are very much aware of the difference between Aaron O'Toole and his party, perhaps in a fashion they were not the week before. And there could be some power in that because right now Aaron O'Toole is dragging a lot of his party's attributes around with him. So if there's the chance to sort of swing into it and say, effectively, I'm
Corey
32:43
I'm going to war with my party on this and I'm going to change their minds and I'm going to drag them kicking and screaming into it, I
Corey
32:48
I could even see that – like this is not a good thing. I'm not trying to sell this as a good thing. I wouldn't want anyone to say – but I could see an opportunity there for the Erin O'Toole team to effectively say, well, the grassroots was wrong.
Corey
33:02
if you had any confidence your party membership would do it you could potentially consider going directly to them if you thought it was a big enough deal that would be a big mistake though because this could end up the exact same way and it could become a big problem but ultimately it does allow you to prove well not prove but you have a proof point that you are not as right wing as your party and that might be appealing to canadians if it is properly managed and curated over the next bit here.
Zain
33:28
I want to talk, hold your thoughts on what O'Toole needs to do next. Corey, you've given me some of them. I appreciate that. I want to talk about that in detail. Carter, let's address an element that Corey also brought up in terms of how impactful this could be, right? So how bad was it in the moment in terms of the weekend, right, that was for Aaron O'Toole? Because this was a lot of effort, time, resources into getting to this weekend. end. So it doesn't help that this is, you know, perhaps the major headline. O'Toole gives a TED Talk speech to mix reviews, and then that gets usurped with, and his party tells him to go fuck himself, right? But let's address the second part of Corey's sort of analysis there. How impactful do you think this will be in the long term? And do you feel like there is perhaps silver lining to perhaps even alluding to what Corey mentioned as how O'Toole could jujitsu
Zain
34:21
jujitsu some of this. I
Carter
34:22
I don't know that there's a silver lining per se. I think that the – you
Carter
34:30
the fact that they were trying to use this as a jumping off point is kind of weird, right? We just talked about it for the last two weeks about – I'm
Zain
34:37
I'm sorry. You mean this as in Team O'Toole, as in the policy
Carter
34:40
policy convention? Yeah, as in the policy convention. We talked about how it was being kind of overrun by social conservatives, We were seeing delegates get elected to this convention that represented, I think, even further right than O'Toole had expected. And so it was kind of a weird cognitive
Carter
34:58
cognitive dissonance or a weird opportunity to try and push out a launch to the campaign. Because I honestly do feel like they launched their central questions on the weekend. These were the central questions for
Carter
35:11
for their campaign. And the great problem
Carter
35:13
problem of this is the lack, you know, the lost opportunity to really focus on those great big questions or what they hope to be the election questions. So how big was this? Yeah, I think that it's big because of that. But in terms of the actual brouhaha, it's probably going to disappear relatively quickly because brouhahas don't survive very long. So the brouhaha is a problem, but
Carter
35:35
but it's going to disappear. disappear the
Carter
35:37
the law the lost opportunity to launch your campaign now you got to wait for three to five weeks to figure out another opportunity to do the same type of thing and and that to me is probably where the bigger problem lies for O'Toole is is now trying to find another big moment where all of the cameras are going to be pointed at you and you get to say what needs to be done right like Corey's moment of we're going to take this and I'm going to convince I'm going to bring my party along kicking and screaming or whatever the hell they do that's
Carter
36:07
that's interesting but how
Carter
36:09
how do you get all the cameras pointing at you how
Carter
36:11
how do you get all the cameras pointing at you again because even when you're standing in the house of commons and questioning the prime minister you got some cameras but you don't have as many cameras as you had this weekend as many voices as they had this weekend this was a big event and now it's gone i
Zain
36:26
think you make an interesting point both of you i think there's something interesting about fighting with your own party perhaps to to induce those cameras to turn on you, right? I mean, that is a headline-grabbing moment to say that there's a guy here that's trying to quite literally drag his party to a path that he feels like is most viable to forming government. I have a question for you, hypothetical. Suppose that this had gone 51-49 in a victory for O'Toole, that they said, yeah, let's acknowledge it. Would we be having this similar conversation and kind of what would have changed these four percentage points? I know there's no real value, you but i'm curious what it would have meant from your your perspective if if it went the other way by a point or two well
Corey
37:06
well i think we would be having a very similar conversation zane which is part of the you know it is if there is a failing that i'm going to put on o'toole here besides kind of the criticism we gave about a week ago which is okay you got elected with one type of party member and now you're trying to do something different of course you're going to have problems with that but it's how did you get so surprised by this because this is not this is not enough like you You can't win a vote like this 51-49 because you're still going to have people saying half your party are fucking climate deniers, right? In some ways, again,
Corey
37:38
again, maybe I'm trying to be too bright side on here. Maybe the fact that it got lost and you can set up this fight and you can – I don't even know what it is, but I don't know. Go to war with somebody somewhere in your own party and say this is just the way it is. If you don't like it, get the fuck out. Maybe that's what O'Toole needs to do here. But there is a problem with the party. This is a problem with the party, not the leader right now. Now, the polling on this is crystal clear. Canadians believe in climate change. Canadians want action on climate change. We're talking like four to one. Like this is not something that's deeply ambiguous here. And I guess this is fundamentally also
Corey
38:13
also a problem with how grassroots now run political parties. And I don't have a problem with it as long as the grassroots are going to take that responsibility seriously and think in a general sense about things. But let me put it this way. Parties need to do more to invest in their grassroots and not just siphon them for cash because this is the inevitable conclusion of that. The same people who are animated to respond to these breathless fundraising emails are the ones who are electing delegates and going to convention these days. And so they get riled up to open up their checkbooks. They get told these extreme fairy tales about what things
Corey
38:47
things are with these very, like, poorly
Corey
38:49
poorly drawn black and white lines between heroes and villains. And they start to believe it. I mean, you started this mob and now you can't control it.
Corey
38:56
And I actually don't think this is a problem just for the CPC. They're just further along this path. They were better at this first. They got the grassroots fundraising thing down sooner. This
Zain
39:05
This is a very good
Corey
39:06
good point. But, you know, this is an unintended consequence of these things. There was a lot, a lot to dislike about being able to take huge checks from Bay Street. I wouldn't recommend going back to those days. But it had a moderated influence. And if you had extreme positions, you were not going to get money from them here. And now we have sort of the opposite. So I think we need to look at our system and say, how
Corey
39:29
how do we keep the big money out? Sure. But how do we make sure people are more responsible in, in, in the management of their, I
Corey
39:36
I don't even know, maybe it's not even a thing that you can do. But I'm very worried about it. I'm very worried that all of a sudden, the impetus is to be wild and extreme. And and that is causing these kinds of consequences down the road, because what party in their right mind does this to their leader? Right,
Zain
39:53
Right, right. And unless they reject the fact that he's representing what they care about. And to your point, Corey, you know, this was a party, the conservatives, that got in front of micro-targeting first, that used that technology first. If you recall, I mean, I'm sure you guys do is what, six, seven, eight years ago, we were talking about Sims, the conservative database and its sophistication, and how it was so much better than the liberals. And then, you know, this is getting into nerd talk of political data and how the liberals had to go to the Democrats in the US and borrow their political tool and create liberalists to try to compete in that 15 cycle. I mean, this is the stuff that is underneath the iceberg on a digital marketing, organizing, political strategy level that gets, at the end of the day, people riled up and engaged in these systems. I'm glad you made that point.
Corey
40:43
Yeah. Political parties have gotten so good at identifying what your button is and smashing it. Over and over and over.
Corey
40:51
over again. And that has some bad, bad consequences. consequences. And
Zain
40:55
able to, Carter, I'm coming to you in a second, also being able to not just do that, but I think the added layer of sophistication in the last half decade has been to find more people like you, to say, how do I, you know, I've got one of these, how do I find 10 more and bring them into the fold and have an added suite of tools to be able to do that? Carter, sorry, we've been talking a lot. I'm giving you the floor on both questions, either if you want to hit on the political tech side, which now I want to cover at some point, But also the 5149 question, which kind of led me to start this, was would we be having a similar conversation had O'Toole won this by one, two, even five points on the other side of the equation?
Carter
41:31
You guys have gone in so many different areas. I'm no longer interested in your question, which is not necessarily a new thing.
Carter
41:39
Like I said, this is a conversation between
Carter
41:42
You guys have talked about this thing as though it is a, you know, the micro-targeting, the message pushing is one of, you know, it's the only problem. There's another problem, too, and that is that a small interest group, a small group of people will come and take over a party. And what we're seeing, like, so two, there were two big initiatives that were voted down by the conservative memberships this weekend. The first, of course, everybody's talking about the climate change thing. The other was medically assisted suicide. suicide both climate change and medically assisted suicide in the right terminology in the right language have 80th percentile support of canadians the 20th percentile you know the two the two and ten that don't support it are all conservative members now right they have taken over that party in order to have that political opinion and that's the other thing that i think is is kind of interesting about this grassroots initiative that cory was speaking to right like the the shift that it happens by putting all of your effort into a grassroots party and allowing the grassroots to speak means that you attract some pretty unique grassroots. And the grassroots that is now attracted to the conservatives tend to be more religious than the average population. They tend to have different social conservatives and socially conservative views. And they make
Carter
43:03
make it so So that the actual party, because they believe these things so strongly, is hampered. And you can see some of that when we were talking in the last episode about Sam Osterhoff. He comes from a particular part of the party for the Doug Ford conservatives that they've tried to push away, but it keeps coming back in because this is the place that they find their voice and they feel like they have power because they do have power. They don't have two in 10 wins you nothing in a federal election.
Carter
43:34
two and three wins you everything and that's what we saw in this part in the policy convention uh this weekend carter
Zain
43:42
carter i'm going to stick with you for a second let's talk a bit about strategy for a tool before we talk about what he does next let's talk about what he did in during the weekend and i want to get your analysis on his strategy more specifically on the saturday strategy as soon as this vote happens or the results and i can't say the vote happened the results of the vote become public let me put it that way he's not available for comment was that the right thing to to do this was supposed to be her weekend where your free media was supposed to uh either you know help support what you said on friday help redirect position in the window for everyday canadians but he wasn't available for comment right move given the circumstance wrong move given the circumstance there
Carter
44:20
there were two reasons that would make this the right move right so the first reason is you let your speech talk right you said you the thing you were going to say on friday so that was probably the strategy when they were entering the weekend we are going to not we're we're going to ignore the media. We're only going to put out our speech on Friday. We're going to make them cover it for three full days. We'll put out our little infographics. We'll do our little thing. We'll put, you know, those types of little, we will force the media to cover the words that we want them to cover. That's, that's the first point. So that's the first reason why
Carter
44:51
why that would have been the right strategy. The second reason is you're not going to say the right thing, right?
Carter
44:56
right? You don't have lines. You're not prepared. You don't have. So I
Carter
45:00
think that if If you don't have something right to say, if you don't have something that's going to be good, then not saying anything is often a
Carter
45:07
a very good strategy. Corey has spoken about this before, you
Carter
45:11
you know, the value of the say nothing strategy.
Carter
45:14
Unfortunately, I feel like this was neither
Carter
45:18
neither of those times anymore, right? Like it was the right thing to do if the speech didn't get completely undermined by the vote. You know, how
Carter
45:26
how do you not know? How do you not know what your party is going to do? How are you so out of touch that you can't have a prepared statement to do what Corey suggested, right? Corey, obviously one of the great young political minds of our time, not as young as he used to be.
Carter
45:40
and coming. He might get there at some point.
Carter
45:44
But, you know, getting out in front and saying, listen, I'm going to take this party. This is, you know what, we may have lost by four points. It doesn't matter. But I'm going to take this party. We're going to show them why
Carter
45:52
why climate change is real and why having a solid climate initiative that doesn't involve carbon taxes is the best way to go.
Carter
46:02
Right. He could have done that. He didn't do that because he wasn't prepared. So the two reasons that would have been a good reason not to speak kind of got in the way of the the reality
Carter
46:12
reality that it was the time to speak. And he blew that opportunity.
Zain
46:19
like that. Corey, same question to you. Right strategy to not comment Saturday and thereafter after your party kind of undermines your speech?
Corey
46:32
They must have gone to the mattresses. They must have been trying to figure out what to do. I don't think it's the right strategy if you don't know what you're going to say, to paraphrase what Stephen said. But it was not right that they didn't know what to say. They should have been able to envision a world in which this occurred, and they should have had some sort of lines ready to deal with it. Maybe he goes up and he says the party was wrong, and every leader gets a chip they can use once, and I'm throwing it down now. I don't care how they voted on this. Climate change is real, and you can expect a robust plan from the Conservative Party on this. Maybe, if that's what you want to do. Maybe it's a matter of going up and saying, well, the party has said they want climate change plus a bunch of things in there. Well, I didn't hear that they rejected climate change. I heard it was too narrow and that our environmental plan needs to be bigger. So that's exactly what you're going to see. I think he should have said something. I think he should have done some effort to frame this thing out and allow the conversation not to get away from him right now in the way that it is. I mean, right now, people are talking about it as though, and I don't know that people are wrong, that they have effectively written the next liberal campaign ad here.
Corey
47:38
You can just intersperse O'Toole's
Corey
47:41
O'Toole's comments and the Conservative Party's rejection the next day and say, okay, who are you voting for? And the way these guys throw people out, what kind of Conservative Party are you even going to get? I mean, there's so many ways the liberals can run with this thing right now. So I think that O'Toole needed to, you
Corey
47:57
you know what, they pay you for the bad days, not the good days, Aaron. And this was a time where you should have gone and just taken your ass kicking, but at least attempted to start moving the ship towards the shores you were trying to get to.
Zain
48:08
to save your thought on what the liberals should do because i'm talking about that coming up next uh let's talk about this carter cory's given me some of his ideas what otul perhaps should consider and cory i'll come to you to finish this off so you can kind of add to your thoughts but what does he do from here carter
Zain
48:22
carter does he does he fight with his party does he pick a lane and sharp elbows and fuck everyone else does he go to war publicly with the base and say this is the andrew sheer base not the aaron otul base and i'm going to change it for what i can what what does he do And broad strokes, from your perspective, is this a moment of put your head down and work with the party? Are you airing out dirty laundry? I'm just throwing out things there, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts. What does Aaron O'Toole do next?
Carter
48:51
You know, it's interesting because the more we're talking, the more I'm attracted to the bright young strategist's point of view here. And, you
Carter
49:03
Is that me? No, it's
Zain
49:04
it's not you. Because
Zain
49:05
Corey's the up-and-comer, and I'm the bright young. Okay, just to make
Carter
49:07
make sure. Yeah, no, it's both of you.
Carter
49:10
Had he done it right away, I like what Corey's saying. I think that waiting two, three, four, five days is not great. It doesn't show leadership. So I think that he
Carter
49:20
he needs to find time.
Carter
49:23
time. He needs to wait for a couple of weeks, three weeks, and try and relaunch again and focus in on what he cares about, which is the economic recovery. And the economic recovery does not necessarily need to have a Joe Biden-esque Green style or Green New Deal or a Green shift, right? We can leave that alone and push it off to the side. Most Canadians, I
Carter
49:45
I think, agree that climate change is a problem and want to see climate action as a significant part of the recovery plan, but
Carter
49:52
but not necessarily the conservative voters. So start with the conservative voters and then move along and stick with the economic recovery plan and kind of relaunch it in two to three weeks.
Carter
50:03
But in the meantime, just try and hold the Trudeau government to account and focus on their weaknesses, because that's the other play that you always have in your toolbox.
Zain
50:14
Corey, what do you think? Anything to add from your previous thoughts around going to war with your party?
Zain
50:20
Or any other strategies that you may have? I suppose
Corey
50:21
suppose so. I would be curious to flesh that one out. I'm still not sure it's a great idea, but it's something to at least explore whether there is a villain within your own party that you can go to war with. And it doesn't need to be a person. It can be an institution. It can be the way things are set up. We didn't even talk about how the party also discussed and adopted changes to how leaders are elected in kind of a tacit rebuke of O'Toole as well, because if that system had been in place, perhaps he would not be leader. So this was not a very friendly policy convention crowd to him there. And we did talk a couple of weeks ago now about being able to sort of say this was a very unusual policy convention. It is not reflective of the membership. If you want to do that, then you better explain how you're going to find a way to get more reflective of the membership down the road. Maybe you call a council of all of the constituency presidents and you say, what are we going to do about this? I don't know. I am spitballing here and it would take an understanding of the Conservative Party that I just do not carry. But I don't actually know that you can just go quiet for three weeks and then come back. And I don't think, Stephen, you're saying act as though nothing's happened, but I don't think you can do that. I think it actually is going to require something more forceful right now saying, well, that was wrong. I didn't agree with that. Or, well, the party told me all of the things I said, that's got to be broader. So we're going to do that now. But make no mistake, this is going to be a strong policy. I'm not going to be cowed on this one. We're going to move forward. and
Corey
51:50
and hey by the way rest of canada don't put this on alberta i've seen enough of that bullshit on twitter already and zane's already rattled off the fact that many of the other provinces conservative bases also voted against this particular policy but i want to read you something here the world is grappling with the tension between our need for carbon-based energy industry and the consensus that emissions are directly contributing to climate change we are committed to responsible energy development that includes action to mitigate greenhouse house emissions and reduce their contribution to climate change that's from the ucp platform that the government of alberta the ucp all of the conservatives at least in a kind of institutional sense in this province believe in climate change and believe in acting on climate change and their language is stronger than like the ipcc's language which has the very bold human influence on climate systems is clear right i mean like we get it we understand it in this province don't make this a fucking alberta thing that's annoying to me uh make it a conservative thing if you want it's not an alberta thing i'm
Zain
52:48
i'm gonna leave that segment there moving on to our next segment 30 seconds in heaven guys
Zain
52:55
here's what we're gonna do we
Zain
52:56
we do this every now and then in fact you know part of our former we do oh we do we do uh i mean
Zain
53:02
mean we're discussing oral roberts here might as well get into our segment 30 seconds in heaven uh you know in our previous gig when we all used to work together one of the things we used to do was come up with ideas for marketing marketing campaigns, when we used to come up with ideas for commercials, TV spots, what the ideal sort of 30-second clip could look like. And this is what I'm going to task each of you to do, is to put together a 30-second pitch for a bit, maybe a pitch for what a 30-second spot could look like. Let me be more articulate. And Carter and Corey, I'm going to give you each separate Carter, you are on the pack that is anti-Aaron O'Toole. So you've witnessed a bunch of stuff this weekend to use as fodder. This ad needs to go out tomorrow morning and we are here on Sunday night. You're pitching this group of funders as to what this spot needs to look like. So I'm going to give you that task. You're doing the anti-O'Toole 30-second spot. What does it include? Is it a VO? Is it not? not, Corey, you're doing the opposite. You're taking what you saw this weekend, and you're saying, oh, shit, this was a bit of a shitstorm. And your PAC has told you, Corey, we need a 30 second spot. We're giving you $2 million for distribution to air it across the country. We just need you to tell us what it says. What is it going to say about Aaron O'Toole and his leadership? What is it going to say? What is it going to highlight? So while I give you a couple of seconds to think, I'm going to try to do some delay tactics of my own. Of course, I planned on none of this. So Carter, I'll come to you in about 15 seconds. In the meantime, I do want to talk about tonight's episode sponsor, Air Canada. Now, Air Canada has been a long time sponsor of this podcast. Now, the thing is, we haven't mentioned Air Canada in a very long time. And it's because they told us not to. And I'm so glad that they finally have come out of the closet and have told us that yes indeed we can mention them on air um in fact we're really looking forward to getting their uh their their sponsorship package uh which along which will include of course their um their letter of telling me to shut the fuck up which will go directly to cory so if you want to send that to him please send it to to cory uh directly thank you fine folks at air canada uh looking forward to your bailout uh stephen carter time
Zain
55:21
time is up you are pitching imagine this This podcast has now been joined with the wealthy benefactors of the anti-Aaron O'Toole PAC, Canadians for a Progressive Future PAC. They're saying, Stephen, it's now 9.30 Mountain at night. We're all hopping onto the Zoom call. We need an idea for this 30-second spot. We've got our $2 million check ready to run it on full blast tomorrow. We know this was not a great weekend for our friend Aaron O'Toole. Give
Zain
55:50
Give us a sense of what this spot will include.
Carter
55:53
So we start off with Aaron O'Toole in front of the blue background, right? And then the blue background slowly starts to animate, and
Carter
56:00
and it turns into waves. And you can see that it's clearly the ocean. And
Carter
56:04
And the voiceover says, as
Carter
56:06
as you're watching Aaron O'Toole's head bob up and down in the ocean,
Carter
56:18
quotes about the climate change and climate being a significant part of the conservative agenda, followed by the
Carter
56:27
the conservatives voting against him.
Carter
56:29
Doesn't know where his party stands. Doesn't know where he stands. Doesn't know the way forward. Aaron O'Toole.
Zain
56:38
Aaron O'Toole lost at sea the Stephen Carter pitch. Very nice, Carter. I like that quite a bit. The funders, of course, are deliberating. They'll get back to you shortly.
Carter
56:48
They never buy it. Yeah, it's fine.
Zain
56:51
Corey, I'm coming to you. You're in a separate Zoom call with the funders of this pro-Otul PAC saying, Corey, we know this wasn't the greatest weekend, but we need something. We need a narrative. We need a story. Canadians are going to be told a story with the headlines, a free Preston, go how we wanted it to go. We've heard this guy, Stephen Carter, is working with the Canadians for a forward future group. What is your pitch for the 30 seconds? In fact, we've got another $2 million. We want to spend $4 million on this TV spot. Corey, what does it say?
Corey
57:21
This is introducing Aaron O'Toole to the country. He's a leader with courage to take on extreme views from the liberals and from his own party. A man who has the fortitude and experience to keep us safe and secure. He'll stand up to voices who would weaken our country no matter where they come from. He's an adult leader for serious times. Security and certainty. Aaron O'Toole. And you have clips backing this. Newspaper headlines of him kicking out extremists. Footage of him holding Trudeau to account, yelling at him in the House of Commons. Him in military garb, perhaps saluting, and just generally trying to make him look like a badass who gives no fucks about the extremists in his own party as well. I also created a very bad campaign for fun called Bad Parties Always Blame Their O'Tools, which I think would just
Corey
58:08
just basically be complaining about the CPC not wanting to get anywhere near government. government um but i don't know if that would actually do anything so don't spend any of that four million dollars on that look
Zain
58:19
look at that nicely done carter i'm gonna ask you what do you think of cory's campaign i'm gonna do the vice versa in a second i
Carter
58:24
i really like the well i like it actually but uh i really like bad parties blame their old tools that that's my new favorite thing
Zain
58:33
cory what do you think of carter's campaign uh
Corey
58:36
uh you know what it was pretty good i could actually even imagine the soundtrack to it yeah to the bobby like a lost lost in
Zain
58:42
in the sea castaway style No,
Corey
58:44
No, I was thinking like, like almost clownish music. Like, you know, it's, yeah, I
Corey
58:51
certainly if somebody was running ads of that, that would be very annoying to Aaron O'Toole and it would probably do its job.
Zain
58:58
Nicely done, Chance. I do always have to remind new listeners that we, we actually, I don't show you any of these questions. In fact, I barely don't put the show together. I put it together on the fly. So you guys did not know that that was happening. Nicely done on the fly, spontaneously. let's move it on to our final segment over under in our lightning round Stephen Carter are you ready I
Carter
59:16
I am I am the AFL I've just put in my tipping predictions for the AFL next weekend so I'm ready to go
Zain
59:24
Carter on a scale of 1 to 10 how much damage did Aaron O'Toole do this weekend to his leadership chances
Carter
59:32
did no damage to his leadership so it's a 0 because the real damage comes the day after he loses the next election
Zain
59:40
we'll give it a one because the scale starts at one core scale
Zain
59:43
of one to ten
Zain
59:44
how much damage did erin o'toole do this weekend to his leadership chance and when i say leadership chance let me be clear to become the next prime minister of this country i
Corey
59:52
i think it's i think it's four maybe even a five the problem he has is it's not just that the party did this to him because you can look at it and say like oh my god this party is just so self-destructive but reasonable people around him will say, how did you not know this was going to happen, or this was a potential consequence? And so his judgment will be called into question as well.
Zain
1:00:13
Corey, I'm going to stick with you on this one. We talked about this very quickly, but the Conservatives introduced a new sub-brand for their policy, Secure the Future, Canada's recovery plan. What did you make of both the brand name as well as kind of the brand design of Secure the Future on a scale of, let's say, A to F?
Corey
1:00:35
it doesn't do anything for me, but I don't know that I was the target audience for it. We'll give it a B for message discipline, right? Like secure sure came through there. And the words they're using are obviously very, very
Corey
1:00:48
very on a brand that he is trying to establish. You can't look at it and say it's a confused message. It's a very direct message.
Zain
1:00:56
secure the future, A to F, what do you think?
Carter
1:00:59
It's an F. In 2000 or 1999, I worked for Theatre Calgary, and we ran the Securing Our Future Together campaign. If they just added the word together, it would have really, really popped. But I've already run that campaign, and it succeeded because, you know, I ran it. That's the way it goes.
Zain
1:01:18
You know, Carter, also at this conservative policy convention, the conservatives elected their new party president, Robert Bathurston, who won the first ballot on Sunday afternoon. One of the last things that kind of wrapped up the convention traditionally and regardless of which party, this is one of the items and actions that happens at your at your conventions. Carter, overrated, underrated federal
Carter
1:01:40
Underrated, especially if they're out of step with the leader. We I've been in a party system where the leader was significantly out of step with the party president. And it's excruciating. It is a fight every single day because the party apparatus must work together with the leader's office and the caucus. And if any of those three are out of step, it is a nightmare to try and run a political organization.
Zain
1:02:09
Corey, federal party presidents overrated or underrated?
Corey
1:02:13
Overrated. Overrated. I have seen a lot of party presidents for a lot of parties come and go. And to be honest, it's really hard to delineate when one's tenure begins and the other ends because they're just not that consequential to the day-to-day operations of the party. And the size of these councils these days is large enough that they're one vote. It's not a big deal.
Carter
1:02:35
This is because of out of the many parties that Corey has served, it's never been a conservative party.
Zain
1:02:44
Corey, I'm going to start with you for our last question. Yes or no, does Oral Roberts win the NCAA Final Four?
Corey
1:02:52
No, definitely not. That's a crazy notion. But if Stephen says no, then I will switch to yes.
Corey
1:03:00
Stephen, Oral Roberts, they going all the way?
Corey
1:03:05
Corey, are you... You're here to hear, folks. Bet against Syracuse. Put it all on there.
Zain
1:03:10
That's right. Right. We'll leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 926 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Veldry. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we'll see you next time.