Episode 930: Two Duelling Conventions

Zain 0:02

This is a strategist episode 930. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, 930.

Zain 0:09

930. That's our episode number. Is that actually our episode number? I have no idea, Corey. I just make sure. I think it is. Yeah, good. We'll just go. We'll just go with it. We'll just go with it. You know, we're very.

Zain 0:19

Yeah, we're going with it. I

Carter 0:20

I thought you were referring to the time I wanted to be done so I could go to bed. So I'm confused. is 9

Carter 0:28

30 is the episode number okay

Corey 0:36

it's fucking great it's great you know what good start let's

Zain 0:40

let's try this again let's

Zain 0:44

this is a strategist episode guys is it 9 30 at 9 30 my name is st belgium with me of course is cory hogan uh steven carter still doesn't know what time it is all

Carter 0:55

all right it's 8 45 according to my computer why are we saying it's 9 30 oh

Zain 0:58

oh my god it's

Zain 0:59

it's the episode number

Zain 1:03

about you just start a rumor that it's 9 30 it's not how about you just start a rumor that it's 9 30 9 30

Zain 1:10

it's 9 30 p.m that's

Carter 1:11

that's what i heard yeah

Zain 1:12

yeah that's what i heard it on a podcast actually myself everyone

Zain 1:15

everyone i know is saying that it's 9 30 we

Carter 1:18

we got to be careful with that

Zain 1:21

you turned out to be

Carter 1:21

be a superpower that we didn't even know we had so

Carter 1:24

so we got to be careful you're

Corey 1:27

you're talking of course about the fact that mark carney is now widely rumored to be running at edmonton center for the liberals widely

Carter 1:33

rumored i got it from like a whole bunch of different sources people are like i heard he's running at edmonton center i'm like i started that rumor but

Carter 1:41

but they don't care they they heard it somewhere else it's okay it's

Corey 1:45

it's out there it's It's in the zeitgeist now. People are talking about it. We've created a buzz.

Corey 1:51

You're welcome, Mark Carney. You're welcome.

Zain 1:55

move it on to our first

Corey 1:57

first segment. No, no, I think we should keep this energy up. I think that this section really should be dragged out a bit longer here. Corey,

Zain 2:03

Corey, people like it when we're finding our feet, okay? When we're reclimatizing to the fact that it's like, who's going to be on the show this week? Oh, it's the three of us again. You know, we're just getting to know each other up front. People like this. People

Corey 2:16

People don't know very much about us. They know that Stephen's outside, and that's

Corey 2:20

that's about it. That's about all we share, generally speaking, about our

Zain 2:25

I think people know the least about you, I'd say, Corey. Yeah,

Corey 2:28

Yeah, I'm a real saint.

Corey 2:30

think people know I'm Muslim,

Corey 2:31

Muslim, pretty much that,

Corey 2:32

that, you know, it's

Corey 2:33

it's my only part of

Zain 2:35

I wear. And that every Christmas I gift the two of you Qurans, and you've never said thank you. No thank you notes from those. So, you know, this

Corey 2:45

this is the energy. This is why I wanted to

Zain 2:47

move on, Corey. You see, this is what happens. This is what happens. I

Corey 2:51

I just feel bad about not sending you thank you notes for the Quran. Yeah,

Carter 2:54

Yeah, I know. Me too. I didn't even know I was supposed to.

Zain 2:57

Yeah, you get a bookshelf worthy of them. Let's move it on to our first segment.

Zain 3:01

Oh, you're still on mute. Part two and three.

Zain 3:05

We have done part one with the conservative convention. We're now looking at Part 2 and Part 3, Stephen Carter, the NDP and the Liberals holding dueling virtual conventions this weekend. Actually, before I get into it, why do they do them on the same weekend? Any insight or knowledge of that before I jump into some breakdown? Carter? I

Carter 3:27

I have no idea. I wasn't aware that this was a thing that happened regularly. I assume that two scheduling things happened and it happened to be this weekend. I have no background. Maybe Corey – I'm stalling long enough for Corey to do a little bit of research so that he can have a more definitive answer. And

Zain 3:45

And sound smarter than us, which is,

Carter 3:46

is, by the way, his only strategy.

Corey 3:49

any ideas? Well, they wanted to do it at

Corey 3:53

the time because I assume it has to do with the House of Commons sitting calendar because they're back tomorrow and they've been off for a couple of weeks. So it kind of makes sense to me that you would do this in a time where you're not also juggling the legislative agenda. That's as good as I've got, but I don't have a clue. I mean, I assume that everybody is thinking an election is potentially imminent. This is the only time you can do it until really kind of like May, I think, is the next break. And then after that, and that's just a week, and then it's June. So doing your convention at the end of two weeks off, that allows everybody

Corey 4:27

wearing two hats, both a party hat and kind of a caucus hat, to be able to turn their attention to the convention before it goes. That's my assumption. I don't have a clue. Like, for all I know, that is not even remotely weighing into the consideration, but that would be my best guess.

Zain 4:43

I ask because it seems so rare. Like, I haven't heard of, you know, if these are not virtual, I haven't heard of dueling convention weekends before. You usually have each party want their own to

Zain 4:53

to kind of get their own headline and their own output by Sunday or Monday. Yeah,

Corey 4:57

Yeah, I don't know about that. It's not unprecedented, that's for sure. I can think of a few times conventions have stacked pretty close to on top of each other.

Corey 5:04

Yeah, interesting. It certainly happens between provincial conventions and federal conventions, all of the bloody time. Like in 06, when the liberals were choosing their leader, the Alberta PC party was choosing Ed Stelmack as leader at the same time.

Corey 5:16

There's only so many weekends, is what it comes down to, that work for everybody involved.

Zain 5:23

No, thank you. 52. Yeah, no, thank you. Episode 930, right, guys? Episode 930,

Zain 5:29

Fantastic. Thank you so much. Both parties wrapped up their virtual conventions this Sunday. The Liberals actually had a convention speech Saturday with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, where he focused most of his attacks on the Conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois. The three-day gathering focused on campaign readiness and didn't, well, Prime Minister Trudeau didn't necessarily talk about election timing. A lot of it was about election readiness, framing the timetable and the rationale for going to the polls. The NDP also had a three-day event, which was plagued with hiccups and frustrations, technical and, I'd say, ideological, perhaps. The NDP sought to unite their grassroots around a message of fair treatment, financial relief, and liberal failures during the pandemic. I'm going to break both of these down, and I'm going to break them down on three things.

Zain 6:21

Let's start with the three Ts, actually, and then we'll kind of go beyond that. Tone, technology,

Zain 6:29

We'll start with Tone based on what was said, the cohesiveness or lack thereof, perhaps the contrast. We'll then go into tech because I really want to get your sense as to how much the NDP's tech failures and hiccups are going to cost them, especially as they try to go after young people as a stated demographic. And then Trudeau. We'll talk about Trudeau's speech on the liberal side, and we'll talk about Jagmeet Singh's attacks against Trudeau and testing some lines. So let's start with tone. Corey,

Zain 7:02

Corey, I'm going to start with you, and let's start with the liberals first. The tone of the liberal convention seemed to be very strongly a love-in, you know, versus perhaps the NDP and the conservatives where there was friction and fractures within the party. Almost everything seemed frictionless. It seemed pre-programmed. It seemed like an AGM where you're reading from the minutes, so to speak. But beyond that, what did you kind of make of the tone that you saw from the liberals this weekend?

Corey 7:31

Well, you raise an interesting point right off the bat, Zane, and it's something that's worth unpacking. And I think it's part of why the liberal convention went smoother than the NDP convention or the conservative convention is that there's nobody who's too liberal, right? Quote unquote, too liberal. The extreme of the liberal party is what? Extremely moderate? I mean, that's almost the definition of the organization. Pragmatism is sort of baked into the DNA of the Liberal Party. It's about calibrating towards where the people are or where you believe they're going to be. And disagreements tend to be along the lines of, do

Corey 8:03

do we think the public wants a center-right government or a center-left government and they swap back and forth? How much are we making sure that we're reconciling the Quebec wing back and forth? when you're the conservative party as we've already seen a couple of weeks ago you can have people that are really

Corey 8:17

really right wing right perhaps have not gotten with the times they're they're dragging behind a bit by a decade or two and as a result they can drag your party back by a decade or two with

Corey 8:29

with the ndp you have almost the opposite problem they're ahead by a couple of decades and you know this is one of these things like today's

Corey 8:35

today's radicals are tomorrow's reactionaries and so So the problem is the same but different, right? Like I suspect that some of the things that the NDP did that we look at right now and say like, holy cow, it's outside of the mainstream for different reasons, I guess is my point in any of these situations. But, you know, the fundamental problem is the same. There is a group of people who, you know, are more pure in their ideology and that's where kind of those policy rubs come from. But with the NDP, there's an extra one here. And I know we're supposed to be talking about the liberals first, but I want to throw it on the table. Let's just do tone

Zain 9:05

tone first and let's talk both. That's fine. let's do it that way yeah

Corey 9:08

yeah and we'll also maybe use this time to let carter mute himself because i can hear i think like shopping carts shuffling around in the background oh that's so much better um the

Corey 9:17

the uh the ndp also has a challenge in that like the culture code of the ndp is one of inclusion it's bringing everybody together and it's making sure that that uh you're not letting any group fall by the wayside and um and so the irony is that quite often manifests in people people viciously attacking people for not being inclusive and sort of forcing them out of that inclusive space and and that's that's

Corey 9:43

that's i think the pith of a lot of the challenges that we had with the um you

Corey 9:49

know what we saw with the ndp convention and where we saw disagreement in the ndp convention what

Corey 9:55

what the hell was your question it was about the liberals i've lost it no

Carter 9:58

no it's about okay we're

Zain 9:59

we're talking tone we're talking tone i

Carter 10:00

i want to start with the liberals April's in the NDP. It's been great. I've been listening. It's been good. Yeah,

Zain 10:04

Yeah, no, that's good.

Zain 10:05

glad you've been listening. It's quite the

Zain 10:07

From the mall parking lot.

Carter 10:09

lot. Tell me again how I feel time, Zaid. Tell me again.

Corey 10:14

me again. I was just so distracted by the sound of people moving heavy machinery behind me.

Carter 10:21

What are you doing? I'm not going to lie. It's a little bit chaotic in the house right now. But, you

Carter 10:26

you know, these things happen from time to time. I actually have a family and, you know, dogs.

Carter 10:31

Stuff goes on. Carter, I'm going

Zain 10:32

going back to Corey, because despite the fact—

Carter 10:35

fact— I think so. Dang, I'm going back on you. Thanks.

Zain 10:40

Corey, okay, let me ask you this. The reason I would start with the liberals on tone is I kind of want to talk a bit about policy, too. Were you surprised that so much of the left-wing policy—and we could talk about its meaningfulness as it relates to both budget and finding itself in the campaign platform— but around, let's accept the Green New Deal, let's accept UBI, that these things that are real leftward march were adopted so almost unanimously by the party without much trauma.

Corey 11:10

think it definitely shows that the Liberal Party is at least performatively

Corey 11:15

performatively more left-wing than it was, say, 20 years ago. But you do have to keep in mind that the Liberal Party policy Policy conventions are often where you see those things adopted well in advance of when they become mainstream party policies. Think about decriminalization of marijuana. I think that like the University of Calgary Liberal Club got that thing passed in one of the conventions in the early, early 2000s. And of course, it became policy 15 years plus later. But quite often, the Liberal Party policy convention is a bit of a vanguard. And it's, you know, it's the role it's played there. And it's not as contentious in that sense as it is in the NDP because I think the Liberal Party has a broader cultural – I mean cultural to the Liberal Party, understanding that the leader is going to pick and choose what they think is right for the moment. And again, that goes back to that pragmatism baked into the Liberal brand, which love it or hate it, but it's – We'll let you pick

Zain 12:10

pick what you need in order to win this thing.

Zain 12:13

And if you tell us it's not the right time for Pharmacare and UBI, we'll get that. We'll understand that, so to speak. And,

Corey 12:20

And, you know, like the NDP bang on the liberals all the time for the fact Pharmacare has been a liberal policy plank

Corey 12:26

plank since the 90s, and they're right. But again, I would stress that that proof point that the NDP throw at the liberals are exactly why I wouldn't read too, too much into UBI all of a sudden getting such an easy ride at convention. Not to say it won't be in a platform. It very well could be, but it's by no means a guarantee. It's no means a guarantee this election, next election, two

Corey 12:47

two decades from now. Yeah,

Zain 12:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Carter, tone on the liberal side, a love-in, relatively frictionless, almost scripted. What did you kind of make of that tone as a political strategist? Is that the type of tone you'd want to engineer, like seamless? Or do you feel like a bit of flavor and a bit of, you know, texture adds perhaps to the outcome? I

Carter 13:11

mean, you don't want so much texture that you break your teeth. And I think that that's where both the NDP and

Carter 13:15

and the Conservatives were. They were both committing unforced errors that were dominating the

Carter 13:21

the coverage and the outcome from the conventions. conventions. Instead, what you saw with the liberals is a party that said, you know what, we should remain in government.

Carter 13:29

We should remain in government because being in government's a good thing.

Carter 13:33

And I think that what we saw from the

Carter 13:35

the conservatives and the NDP is both of them said, you know what, we have ideals that we would prefer to hold true than achieve government. And you saw those ideals manifesting themselves in different policy

Carter 13:49

policy initiatives, but also in different ways of kind of functioning. I mean, I can't tell you how struck I was by the NDP's kind of internal fighting and their internal upset with their own party, right? There weren't the right number of sign language interpreters. There weren't the right number of, you know, the way that the conference was organized, the way that the events were put together. All of these things were points of contention that ultimately led to significant infighting with with the with

Carter 14:20

with the delegates and the organizers that

Carter 14:23

that obviously wasn't scripted because that's not a story anybody wants to tell that's not the story you take from one of these um these specific elements and and for me that tone is the tone that comes out of the ndp convention i'll tell you i looked at the liberal policy that

Carter 14:39

were announced and i thought holy Holy smokes.

Carter 14:42

That's an NDP policy group package. And then we,

Carter 14:47

we, you know, I see the, the, the announcements of the NDPs policies and I'm like, holy shit. Right. Like both

Carter 14:53

both of them moved to the left, most of them moved to the left significantly. And, um, I, I just found that very interesting because the, and I'm not sure where that fits in your three T's, but I'm going to put it into tone, uh, because the, the tone of their policy structure was, was essentially saying, you know what, Biden

Carter 15:13

Biden won in the United States. We're going to push further to the left because, you know, if Democrats are winning, then by God, we certainly don't want to win. We want to go further, further away from where the Canadian population is. And I think that the liberals also moved to the left. And I'm not sure if that's to give room to Trudeau or not, but I

Carter 15:33

I thought that that was a tonal change for them as well. Well, although they have been moving left, whether it was the legalization of cannabis or, you

Carter 15:41

you know, Corey mentioned the Pharmacare piece, which has been on their platform for quite some time.

Carter 15:48

So that's how I took away the tone for both of those things.

Zain 15:51

Let me let me jump to the NDP in a second. But Carter, you bring up a point, and I think it's worthy revisiting right now, which is this liberal kleptomania of stealing NDP policies, right? right? Like this, let me just take what they're doing and further march on to the left. Corey, do you A, view it that way? And B, reassessing it three months or four months from when we last talked about it, still a good strategy for them heading into budget and perhaps an election shortly thereafter?

Corey 16:18

I think the framing you used is funny and pretty appropriate. This liberal kleptomania, I think the liberals would probably present it differently as we take what we think are good policies and certainly you'll see depending on the convention depending on the arc in the so historically it's it's broken down in the last decade but generally speaking since the era of of

Corey 16:38

of like turner after trudeau it's it's been swapped left right left right between leaders you had kind

Corey 16:45

kind of the business wing with turner followed by the kind

Corey 16:48

kind of the social wing with cretien followed by the business wing with martin followed by well and that's where it sort of broke But, you know, those remnants sort of exist. But certainly, I

Corey 16:57

I have been in a past life, you know, to liberal conventions where the business wing carried the day and those policies were not the left, you know, you sure as hell wouldn't see UBI on the floor. And

Corey 17:10

I mentioned this only because it does tend to be really quite reflective of where the conversation is at the day. And there's no question that we're in a time

Corey 17:20

time of strong government solutions. And one of the things, maybe if I can bridge to your NDP tone here, that I find so, you

Corey 17:28

you know, must be exceptionally dispiriting for a certain group of New Democrat, which is, this is a time when the left should be running the tables, right? Right. Instead, the NDP is losing their shit over procedure and hitting each other with venomous recriminations about the inappropriateness of of not having enough ASL interpreters, you know, in addition to the captioning, in addition to all of the written materials, all of that. And I sort of like I get it. I think that inclusion is important. And I think particularly in the NDP, inclusion is one of those things you're going to get hit with if you don't do a good job. But I was talking to a friend, lifelong New Democrat this evening, and, you know, he said he didn't go to the convention, he was just watching it from a distance, he said, but it looks like a gathering of nutjobs who couldn't work Zoom. And that's the challenge, right? Like all of a sudden, instead

Corey 18:19

instead of these messages that Jagmeet Singh wanted to talk about, instead of that tone carrying the day, it became about those internal squabbles, it became about the fights. And this is a challenge in conventions more generally, which is, if somebody gives

Corey 18:33

gives no fucks, they're going to find ways to grab the microphone and embarrass you. The conservatives have this problem. The New Democrats have this problem. The liberals have this problem, too. Every party has it, but to lesser extent, right? Right. And ultimately,

Corey 18:47

ultimately, as much as we're talking about the people

Corey 18:51

standing up, getting off mute on convention and saying things like we should just postpone this whole convention. You guys have done such a terrible job. I can't believe the lack of inclusion. The reality is most of the things that went through the NDP convention got passed with like 90 percent, 85 percent, 95 percent. It wasn't actually this big divided thing. It just it wasn't as bad as it felt, but it felt very divided. And

Zain 19:14

And it didn't make the headline, so to speak, right? And that's inherently the problem for the NDPs, that despite probably having similar types of unity on their policy points, barring a few, that they don't get that headline from the weekend. end. Carter, can I maybe ask you for a bit of a, I know I'm putting you on the spot, so I appreciate if this is only half an answer, but a bit of a backgrounder

Zain 19:39

backgrounder as to how the NDP are perhaps different as a party than the conservatives. Because Corey's talked about like these multiple strands of interest kind of plugging themselves and saying, this is what we care about. We're We're each bringing our own thing to the NDP from a bird's

Zain 19:58

bird's eye strategy and perhaps even historic level. How is that different from the conservative side, which has also had its own fracturing? It seems obvious that that fracturing falls around a few distinct items versus the NDP maybe just having multiple people with slivers of their interest bringing it to the fold and wanting it to be met without any sort of negotiation

Zain 20:17

negotiation or compromise. That's how I see it. But is that maybe how you see it from a broader perspective? But

Carter 20:23

But what if we what if we approach it and say that it's not actually different? What if we what if we approach it and say, how are they similar? And that they just happen to present different

Carter 20:33

different sides of the coin, right? So the

Carter 20:37

the different side, these

Carter 20:39

these are people who believe very strongly. So start with that, right? The people who are in the NDP and the people who are in the Conservative Party, both believe very strongly in their positions. They have almost a religious fervor attached to the positions that they hold. And

Carter 20:55

Yeah, and it is caught up in their value system. Their value system is to stand for that thing that they believe in, even in the face of enormous opposition. So other people might find standing up and speaking at a convention where 95% of the people are going to yell at you because

Carter 21:13

because they don't want their convention off rail, you know, taken off the rails as a really negative thing. But people attracted to the NDP, people who are attracted to the conservatives, both have such a strong sense of conviction about what their beliefs are and that which they are pushing forward, that they are prepared to stand up in the face of that opposition. And in fact, that opposition is

Carter 21:35

is part of what they believe tells them that they're right, right?

Carter 21:38

right? They believe that they're wearing

Carter 21:41

wearing their hair shirt and carrying this load, this burden that is part of their being, right? Right. So they believe these things very strongly. Whereas I think that the liberals, people who are attracted to the middle, if you will, don't they they're far more attracted to the compromise. They're far more attracted to getting along. They're far more comfortable giving a little bit, which does not mean to imply that

Carter 22:05

that the NDP doesn't give and the conservatives don't give. There's lots of people in the NDP and the conservatives who

Carter 22:10

who are prepared for compromise and to give a little bit. The difference between the parties is that 5% on both sides, right? The one person out of 20 who is absolutely prepared to stand up on mic when

Carter 22:23

they know that they're being recorded and take the whole fucking thing off track, right?

Carter 22:27

right? Right. And I think that both those groups for and for different reasons, how it kind of share a fervent religiosity around their ideology and their ideas. And sometimes that manifests itself in some some lesser moments. But I do I totally agree with Corey. I think that we can't lose sight of the fact that when the ideas were debated and

Carter 22:50

and they were passed massively. So there was a common basically a common understanding of what the party stood for. Um, but you'd

Carter 22:59

you'd never know it because the one in 20 that wants to stand up and scream was standing up and screaming several times. And there was multiple ones of 20.

Zain 23:09

Corey, without, you know, we'll talk about the technology in a second for both, but was there a way for the NDP to avoid this mass dissent? Or is that just the DNA of their party to have, you know, this sort of friction and And this sort of on

Zain 23:24

on notice type commentary constantly as part of the underbelly and in some cases underbelly and like culture of the party, so to speak. You

Corey 23:34

You know, in some ways, I want to scold you both for falling into, you know, stereotypes of this party. But in other ways, it's hard to argue that that's not part of what you're going to see at any kind of gathering. What would you scold us for, though? That's

Zain 23:46

That's interesting to me.

Corey 23:48

Well, for starters, there's some false equivalency here. The NDP were passing their policy planks by 90-plus percent. They were embarrassed by a couple of voices who went up. The Conservatives were embarrassed by the majority of their party voting against climate change, okay? I mean, that's a very different situation. So I don't think that we can just sort of lump it all together and say that's a challenge. The other thing is the

Corey 24:10

the NDP have factions, for sure. Every party has factions. I already just talked about the Martinites versus the Gretchenites and how that was all going through. They just manifest about different things. And frankly, sometimes stupider things in the Liberal Party, because the policy differences are more narrow. It's like a university election. It's the politics of small differences. They can become so petty and so small. On the New Democrat side, and to

Corey 24:34

an extent on the conservative side, at least you could say they're true believers and they're standing and dying on substantive

Corey 24:39

substantive matters, things that they truly care about, right? Whether you think that they are doing damage to their party or not, whether you think they're right or not, almost is a separate thing. But that's politics, and that's the part I do agree with Stephen on a fair bit here.

Corey 24:56

But when you talk about conventions,

Corey 25:01

every party has that person who always goes up to the microphone on every item. The big difference here, and one that I think we glossed past too quickly, is that these are virtual conventions. And if you are in the media box in an in-person convention and Jesse McClain goes up and says, shame on you, shut this whole convention down, and you just hear the majority groan from the room that's like, oh my god, okay, just stop it, right? And it becomes clear what the sense of the room is. And when you have 95% support on certain things, that groan becomes like there's no disputing that this is just a lone person standing up voicing an opinion that is in no way, shape, or form either the majority or even a strong minority opinion.

Corey 25:41

We lack that in a virtual convention sense. And so your question was, could the party have done things differently to manage that differently? And the answer is probably yes. Yes. But it would have to be trying to replicate more of that sense of, you know,

Corey 25:55

know, the problem with the online convention is that every voice feels equivalent and every voice feels equally supported, which is there's no support behind it. It's not like a normal convention, which almost has this gladiator-like effect where you have people cheering and jeering as things go on, right? Right. So when somebody stands up and says something that's totally offside, I

Corey 26:16

I maybe I'll think of something in the next couple of minutes here. But you need to think of ways that you can make clear the sense of the room and not allow them to speak, like to seize the room and claim they speak for it. And so maybe there's straw polls. Maybe they should have made more use of like very rapidly, maybe thumbs up, thumbs down, almost dial group style. I don't know. But if we're going to be in this virtual convention thing for another session, we're going to need to find a way to bring in some of that policing

Corey 26:42

policing that the room provides, because both the conservatives and the NDP have now been burned by it in different ways, mind you, but they've been burned by it.

Zain 26:50

That's a great point, Corey. And you've already bled into a bit of the technology. So, Carter, I'll start with you on that. The tech differences between the two, right? Almost one seemed to be fine, you know, because, you know, it was fine. The other, you know, seemed to have that commentary where the equivalency of every voice seemed to reign supreme. Captioning, ASL stuff that Corey's mentioned. People jumping on the mic saying, we don't have enough time for debate. bait, people then taking to social media, saying, you know, this doesn't work, like people don't kind of get off fucking mute, like just being pissed off at their own party. The lingering effects on the technology side is what I wanted to start with for the NDP. Do you feel like they're significant? Do you feel like they say anything beyond this weekend? Or is this just blow past it? This isn't this isn't indicative of anything.

Carter 27:37

You know, I would normally say this isn't indicative. Because I want to say that the next time there's a policy convention, the next time there's a big get-together, it will be in person. I want to believe that. I want to believe that this technological solution is only a one-time thing. My fear is that the technological solution is probably a lot cheaper.

Carter 27:58

And so some parties may cling to it and produce these things online, because let's be honest, it does reduce the amount of money that each individual has to spend. you don't have to travel you don't have to um you know take time off work you uh you get to just submit yourself via an online platform but the getting together in person has a value too and i think that if this stays as a platform

Carter 28:24

platform where uh it it's just online then these parties need to look for different technology uh there are technologies that enable you to host a convention intervention online. These kind of technologies that are, you know, we'll just use Zoom or we'll just use, you know, a broadcasting platform. That's not going to cut it. You need to have, as Corey was saying, the ability to do an instant poll in the room. You need to have the ability to do all kinds of different speaking arrangements and broadcasts and things like that. You know, if you're just broadcasting using rather simple tools,

Carter 29:03

tools, then you're getting a rather simple outcome. And I think that if you're going to keep this up, and I guess there is a very good reason for cost and kind of making it more egalitarian, then

Carter 29:16

then you need a tool that's more effective. And I think that the NDP weren't using the tools properly and maybe could use an overview of a a number of tools that have been constructed that might be more appropriate for them.

Zain 29:30

Corey, you know, the NDP leading into their convention weekend talked a lot about their target voters and

Zain 29:35

expanding a massive movement or growing a movement of young people. Jagmeet Singh, of course, saying that there's going to be historic movement of young people from social movements now migrating to the NDP, making that explicit that that's part of their strategy, having several pieces leading in and during the weekend talking about some of the things they're doing on social, their ad budget, some of the creative things they're doing there. And then they have a convention where the technology fails them and it looks like they don't necessarily have the tethering towards perhaps a millennial or certainly Gen Z audience. The lingering effects of the technology from this weekend for them, do you feel like they're significant or they speak to anything or it's a dumb question, Zane, move on?

Corey 30:20

I don't think it's a dumb question.

Corey 30:22

It will have effects. Whether those effects are public or private remains

Corey 30:26

remains to be seen. I'm sure at the very least they're going back and saying, what the hell went wrong? We've got to up our game here. One

Corey 30:31

One of the things about building a movement of young people is there are very high expectations for technology set by the best of best of Silicon Valley, right? You're using

Corey 30:40

using these apps every day built by these billion-dollar companies, and here you are, the third party in Canada, trying to create an experience that rivals the best experiences in the world. You know, the

Corey 30:51

convention that people who went to the NDP convention would have been most familiar with, in all likelihood, would have been the Democratic convention with

Corey 31:00

Biden. And, you know, that rather, as much as we kind of picked apart things that they did well, things they did poorly, that was a high-gloss event where they had an awful lot of money and the resources of a party that, well, obviously, it contested for power, it got power, it had the most fundraising of that particular cycle. and all of the support of hollywood and silicon valley and on all of that to pull off right so you're destined to disappoint i don't think you should build expectations about how good

Corey 31:32

good your online convention will be in that situation so there's also a bit of an expectation game going on raising those expectations by talking about your digital chops just before a convention just doomed to failure because conventions always have glitches they always do yeah the conventions The conventions in person have glitches, the conventions online. And by the way, I was thinking about this. The Liberals' very first virtual convention, do you know when it was? A little trivia for you two here.

Corey 31:57

Yeah, it was in 2011. It was when Michael Ignatieff stepped down. So there

Corey 32:03

there was a convention that was held on the internet, I think it was described, where people came on to vote for extending the leadership race out and changing all of the rules to allow for a later leadership race. because otherwise the rules would have required pretty much a snap leadership contest. And you wouldn't have had that interregnum period of Bob Ray if those rules hadn't been brought together here. So the

Corey 32:26

other thing is you've got to do these things a few times to get any good at them, I guess is my – Yeah.

Corey 32:30

And maybe lessons have been learned. Maybe they are one-time lessons. I suspect not entirely. entirely, but certainly it

Corey 32:43

will cause them at the very least to be looking around the party office and saying, do we have the right combination of people? Like if there is an election here and that election campaign is largely leaning on these virtual platforms,

Corey 32:56

you're obviously going to be very concerned if you're the NDP. And not even so much because you

Corey 33:01

you can't do them, but you also need to figure out a story because now people are primed to think the NDP can't handle the technology, which I don't even necessarily think is fair to them. But that's

Corey 33:09

that's the way these things work.

Zain 33:11

Carter, I want to jump into Trudeau. But before I do that, maybe I'll give you a chance to round

Zain 33:16

round out if you've got any final comments on the NDP, because you gave me a bit on tech. I don't think I gave you a fair shake on tone overall and the infighting. Any comments for what they could have done to prevent this? I think I asked Corey about what that would look like. Was there any strategist-level thoughts that you would have have said guys we've got a textured group of people we've got factions like every party to cory's point here's what we can do to avoid it or here's what we need to do next time i

Carter 33:44

want to just culture change the the ndp i i want to turn them into into the liberals i mean the culture make their

Zain 33:50

their glue different make

Carter 33:51

make it power and pragmatism tell them to sit down shut up and get in line um but that's not the way it works with the ndp they're always going to Like, I think that one of the things that makes the NDP the NDP and not kind of just a left-wing liberal group is that this

Carter 34:09

this is who they are. This is how they behave. And before it was kind of these left-wing kind of groups that are talking about equality and, you know, I don't mean to make equality just a left-wing issue. But there's kind of this group

Carter 34:29

group that's out there making, you know, the constantly upset crew that belongs to the NDP. Before there were them, there was the unions. And, you know, you had to worry about buzz and was buzz happy or not. And you know what? That's the NDP DNA. So it is different.

Carter 34:50

They did what they did. And I don't think that they could have done much differently.

Zain 34:54

Corey, you jump in before I move on to Trudeau. Yeah,

Corey 34:56

Yeah, I said at the top that inclusion is kind of the culture code of the NDP, and I believe that. I also pointed out the irony that it often manifests in yelling at people for not being inclusive enough. And I said, you've always got to have that vanguard. You've got to push these things on. But when you're the NDP, one of your challenges is this can be really off-putting from the outside, this sense of attack, this sense that you cannot do good enough, that you're not

Corey 35:22

enough. And it's not just a convention problem for the NDP. There is a whole swath of New Democrat supporters, just as there are conservative. And, you know, there are partisans and the liberals who are deeply off-putting, too. I wouldn't

Corey 35:34

suggest otherwise. was but in

Corey 35:36

in in service of inclusion and so that's why i mentioned it and and call out the ndp and say maybe think a bit about this more um you're

Corey 35:45

you're driving a lot of people away you know you're you're not thinking enough about this you don't give enough of a shit about this there was some commentary online when john horgan was speaking that because horgan didn't didn't um um didn't accept kind of a certain level of indigenous rights and representation i'm not a british colombian so i'm not even sure i don't have an opinion about this but i'll say like all of a sudden people are talking about boycotting horgan's speech in a virtual convention and and stuff like that um can start when you're sitting just as a you know an average canadian reading their newspaper online because nobody reads print anymore it can start to really feel like that's

Corey 36:25

that's not a party that has room for people with anything but the purest of views whether that's the case or or not but if that's what gets reported on it really gives

Corey 36:32

gives a sense that maybe maybe it won't be welcome there and how do you grow a party when to get in the tent you

Corey 36:39

need to essentially kind of like flagellate yourself for any past views that were anything less yeah totally on the van and do do

Corey 36:45

do yeah and i think

Zain 36:46

think we've called it you know purity tests or blood oats or whatever in the past that that have been applied to to the ndp in particular carter you you have your you have have your hand up uh is

Zain 36:57

is the mall parking lot okay behind you are you are you doing fine there bastard

Carter 37:06

here's the thing that's why i brought up that the i equated that some of the liberals or some of the conservatives in the ndp because if you have a party that feels like it you have to take a purity test to get into it it is very hard to support it um and i think that that's where the ndp are right now i don't think you can change that but you can kind of minimize it and

Carter 37:25

and that'll be on sing to see whether or not he's able to do that uh you

Carter 37:29

you know when they in the in the next five or six months when the selection campaign unrolls cory

Zain 37:34

cory you're both of you're preventing me from moving on cory this is the first time yeah

Corey 37:39

just want to say and this is a nickel's worth of free advice to all of the political parties just imagine being somebody and i'll just flip the examples here who

Corey 37:47

who joins the conservative party and

Corey 37:50

and they come in and they're like, yeah, I used to vote liberal, but I think, you know, I kind of like O'Toole. And if the first reaction they get is, you voted liberal, you fucking dummy. Don't you know they're a bunch of pieces of shit? I can't believe that your judgment was so bad.

Corey 38:02

Do you think they're coming back for meeting two?

Corey 38:04

And New Democrats, same question when it's like, yeah, you know, I think I'll give the NDP a chance. Well, you weren't there with us before. What kind of allies have you been in the past? My God, you're just the shallowest individuals ever. Do you think they're coming back for meeting two? Ultimately, political parties do need to have a bit more of an eye on in the sense that they're trying to build a coalition to get into government. Otherwise, they're just an interest group, right? And there's lots of interest groups out there. Go fill your boots with them. But if your goal is to actually take your interests and turn it into change, the whole purpose of that is that you then need to take your interests and sell them to people. And you don't sell them the things by telling them they're a bunch of shitheads as they're walking in the door to check out your product.

Zain 38:42

Yeah, no, fair point. point, the narcissism of small differences, especially plaguing certain parties, I think is a great point. Let's move on to Trudeau, guys.

Zain 38:52

Let's talk about his speech. 20 minutes, liberal backdrop, red tie, sleeves rolled up, classic Trudeau, you know, doing no sort of Q&A contrasted with Jagmeet Singh. His speech, you know, 20-some minutes, a Q&A, sit down thereafter, after. Backdrop, pictures of Jagmeet Singh, tiled with Jagmeet Singh for NDP, sort of leadership signs, all on a digital backdrop. I want to start with the Trudeau speech first, both from what you saw from the staging and the stagecraft, which we always talk about and we love talking about, and then the content. You know, for bringing some listeners in on this, the content was largely about Aaron O'Toole, the future of this country, what the liberals have done during the pandemic, how they've helped Canadians, talking about O'Toole being disconnected, not necessarily having real-world solutions for real-world problems. Corey, maybe I'll start with you on this. Trudeau, let's start here first. Overall thoughts on what he said and how the stagecraft was while he said it.

Corey 40:00

So I disagree with you that it was largely focused on O'Toole. I think it was focused almost equally on the Bloc Quebecois, maybe slightly less weight, but there was basically two messages that were used depending on who was

Corey 40:14

was the target of that particular section of the speech, right? With O'Toole, it was this idea that they aren't actually behind the supports that kept you safe, right? They would have been much happier not giving those supports, look at all of these various comments. and um and then they also talked about the denial of climate change right or or the suggestion that there was a denial of climate change um for the sections that were more well that were in french and more towards the you know quebec audience they talked about the bloc quebecois not really ever having the ability to make changes and that the liberals were the ones that actually delivered for quebec and by the way did you know eight out of ten dollar i think it was eight out of ten dollars spent during the pandemic were spent by the federal government not by the provinces so So they took a couple of different message tracks. They overlapped on a couple of components around the pandemic, because, of course, that makes sense. It's not, you know, the conservatives, they don't want to do this for you. The Bloc Quebecois, they throw out ideas they can never do, but we're the ones who actually deliver. And also the Quebec audience and the English audience both got versions of the, I should say the French audience and the English audience, both got versions of the conservatives

Corey 41:24

conservatives or climate deniers. But ultimately, when I think about the speech as a whole, when I step back and when I look at it there, it's pretty forgettable, is sort of my general

Corey 41:35

general sense. I read it this

Corey 41:36

this afternoon. I didn't watch it, so I can't tell you much about the stagecraft. And I am already sort of struggling to remember the content beyond that. I know there was a general appeal to how good the liberals were, but I can't really tell beyond that. It was a very generic

Corey 41:53

generic liberal speech, sort of the attacks. The other thing that other people are noting is it didn't mention the Greens. It did not mention the NDP.

Corey 42:01

And all guns were focused on the Bloc and the Conservatives.

Zain 42:04

Quite deliberately forgettable, in your mind?

Corey 42:09

Well, I found something interesting about the three speeches. Also, you're right. I mean, Trudeau did his most cliched version of himself, just as O'Toole had a couple of weeks earlier with, you know, red tie sleeves rolled versus blue tie sleeves not rolled, you know. but um the uh o'toole did his speech friday trudeau

Corey 42:29

trudeau did his speech saturday and sing did his speech sunday so they both they all pick different moments in their convention to speak and um it's

Corey 42:37

it's just like when you're writing an essay and you kind of you know think about like i want to say three things you put your

Corey 42:44

your least interesting argument in the middle as a general rule right because you want to end big and you want to start big and the liberals started with karni i'm gonna say start i know the convention started before that but that was their big splash right um

Corey 42:58

the ndp decided they wanted to end with sing but trudeau seemed to actually take the position that's less

Corey 43:05

less glamorous you know saturday night is not no

Corey 43:07

no glamour uh but you know sunday is pretty boring at a liberal convention it tends to be a lot of cleanup but still i thought it was um i

Corey 43:14

thought it was an interesting time i

Corey 43:15

i don't even know if they had anything on sunday now that i don't think now that

Zain 43:18

that i think no i think you're right i think you're right i said it did continue I think it went Thursday to Saturday. So I think he did close it out on Sunday, Saturday. But ultimately,

Corey 43:27

not a stellar news day, especially if you know Singh's going the next day. I don't think he cared that much. I think Carney was the big deal for the liberals.

Zain 43:33

Carter, what do you think? Trudeau's speech, 20 minutes, liberal backdrop, cliched version of Trudeau, as Corey mentioned, much more pithy than I did,

Zain 43:40

both from what you saw and what you heard. Thoughts?

Carter 43:44

I'm so biased about the way that Trudeau presents that it sometimes- good or

Zain 43:49

or bad do you like it or do you hate it it really

Carter 43:51

really drives me crazy um

Carter 43:52

um i i you know i always hear the voice um and the voice sounds uh

Carter 43:58

to me like high school drama teacher um it

Carter 44:02

it makes me crazy because it does not sound authentic it does not sound like the way that you would speak to anyone ever uh it is is frustrating because it he

Carter 44:14

he's not a bad speaker right like he's got Would you get him

Zain 44:18

him in Q&A style? Like if you actually were advising him, would you be like, dude, just do some Q&A with me rather than do this keynote? I'd

Carter 44:27

I'd say to him, stop making speeches.

Carter 44:29

I'd say, we're going to get up there and we're going to talk to people, but we're going to stop making speeches. Because in his head, because when he's on fire, when he decides to respond to something, when he decides to speak to something, he's

Carter 44:41

he's great. When he decides to make a speech, he's wrong. It's almost always wrong. and that makes me crazy so it gives me a tremendous bias as we're going through this but for me this is a simple credit and blame speech right we get the credit they get the blame we

Carter 44:56

we get the credit they get the blame this is if you want a group that will take care of you if we want a group that's going to be there for you uh we're the group that were there you

Carter 45:05

you we have proof right now in the last year of how we would take care of you and he you know he ignored the the ndp while the ndp were out there screaming that uh about him yeah you know like the wage subsidy was all their idea um serb was all you know you would have gotten half as much money if if it wasn't for the ndp ubi wouldn't even be on the table you know universal basic income if it wasn't for the ndp the

Carter 45:29

the ndp is clamoring

Carter 45:30

clamoring trying to get credit and

Carter 45:32

and meanwhile trudeau is just ignoring them and

Carter 45:35

and claiming the credit for himself and

Carter 45:38

and pointing the blame at

Carter 45:39

at uh at the bloc quebecois or the conservatives mostly

Carter 45:42

mostly the conservatives so the

Carter 45:44

the tone for me was uh you

Carter 45:47

know it was pretty good uh in terms of you know it's

Carter 45:50

it's a it's a good election did you did

Zain 45:52

did you did you find it forgettable yeah

Carter 45:54

yeah well it's it's not something that's going to linger in the annals of time by design i

Carter 46:00

don't think you ever designed something to be like that i mean i think that you only get x number of opportunities to put yourself out there now right like um so

Carter 46:10

this to me would have been an opportunity to define the party a little bit more and as always Trudeau is just a little bit

Carter 46:19

weak on these opportunities and

Carter 46:21

and and frankly all Canadian leaders have been weak on these opportunities we we haven't had the the great orators that are able to stand in front of a crowd and

Carter 46:28

and make a speech that we just all stand up and pay attention to uh

Carter 46:32

uh that's just not been in our history.

Carter 46:34

Maybe Mulroney, but since Mulroney, it's been rather lackluster. And it remains that way. So it is what it is. What are you going to do?

Zain 46:44

Carter, I'm going to stick with you for a sec before I go to Corey. The targets of his speech, obviously Aaron O'Toole, Bloc Quebecois, and the messaging, the disconnected on the conservative side, credit blame framework, right strategy on both the targets and the general message structure?

Carter 47:03

I'll tell you something. I'd like to see, I mean, maybe the timing's not right. Maybe they've got a bigger, broader plan. So I don't want this to come across as judgmental because I'm not sure where it fits and maybe they're getting to it. But by God, do I want to see something that says what the next step looks like. What I want to see is, don't worry, we've got you. You know, we're not going, the Canadian economy- You're

Zain 47:26

You're talking about like policy-wide pandemic recovery stuff.

Carter 47:30

Not just like the idea of, here's how we're going to restart the Canadian economy. I think that that might be a little bit too much. But just make me feel a little bit better instead of talk about, like imagine claiming credit for

Carter 47:44

for the last year as the central element of your speech. I mean, credit

Carter 47:48

credit for not letting us all starve, credit for letting us, you know, because we all survived. Like, is that where we are is just taking credit? I would like to see something more optimistic and more inspirational. motivational um optimism

Carter 48:00

optimism and inspiration feel a little lacking in this cycle and i think that trudeau has the opportunity to maybe take a whack at that i

Carter 48:09

i did this so we can have that i did this so we can achieve these things we you know we have a bigger broader vision um and that was kind of encapsulated for me with the build back better campaign we

Carter 48:20

we know we're in a tough spot but we're going to build back better that was you know biden gave

Carter 48:24

gave us something to look forward to that was was optimistic and saw us in a new frame and i think that that

Carter 48:30

if i was to criticize this it was you know the even even the the policy initiatives passed out like i

Carter 48:40

don't know i see things but i don't see a better society cory

Zain 48:44

cory message structure and the targets of said message structure uh and

Zain 48:50

and what carter said maybe i'm gonna have triple barrel questions to you because because why not What

Zain 48:55

What do you think?

Corey 48:56

Yeah, I agree with Carter. They literally did use the words building back better in the speech. I pulled it up while Carter was talking because I wanted something interesting to look at. It failed. It wasn't interesting on second scan either. But there's this phrase in it, which is this team is focused on building back better. But in classic sort of Trudeau

Corey 49:16

Trudeau liberal fashion, they then jammed it with a trillion words after that. So this team is focused on building back better for the middle class and people working hard to join it while taking climate action to create good jobs and keep our economy growing for years to come. Holy fuck, what a run on.

Corey 49:31

And it just feels like qualifier upon qualifier and it's just word salad. But ultimately, the

Corey 49:43

lacked any kind of direction forward. So I have to assume that's coming next. But it really was kind of an attack the other guy's speech. It really didn't have a ton about the liberals. It told stories about people being helped by the supports. But Carter is exactly right. It's like, what do you want, a cookie? You kept people from going out. Like every other government in the world, you did a thing where you provided them income supports. And it does seem to be something that they're trying to pat themselves on the backs for.

Corey 50:09

It was interesting to see the

Corey 50:12

framing, and it actually did not feel like it was a big intentional moment reading the speech. I hope it's not their ballot question for their sakes, because I don't think it's strong ground for them. But, you know, they said, you know, Trudeau's speech was, it all comes down to this, which party has a real plan for the real problems in the real world?

Corey 50:29

i don't know if that's ground you want to be on if you're justin trudeau especially if people's heads are in the economy because as much as you want to talk about climate change

Corey 50:39

and as much as canadians continue to rank that a very high issue if they start thinking about prosaic matters that might not be your friend so it will be interesting to see how they build on it from here what they're going to do and i suppose that's what we're going to see in the the budget if the conversation around um at least at one point it being an option that the budget would be the starting pistol to an election if that's true you have to imagine it's going to have some sweeteners in it and some thoughts about the future uh presented in fiscal table form so

Corey 51:10

more to come i suspect in many ways may have been a prelude uh rather than a closing speech closing argument.

Zain 51:18

Let's talk about Jagmeet Singh's speech. He goes with a longer version with the Q&A, as I mentioned, speaking, of course, from a prompter background, photos of him and signs for the NDP and his leadership. Let's talk before we get into the materials and his his attacks against Trudeau and really trying to make clear to Canadians that we are not the same. They may try to think that they're us, but they are not us. What did you like about what you saw, Carter? What did you not like about what you saw from the visuals that Jagmeet Singh had set up for his keynote?

Carter 51:59

I mean, I think that he looks, you know, he's a fascinating guy because he looks great. Every time I see him, I think that he looks, he's

Carter 52:09

he's engaging. He looks energetic. He looks like he can achieve something.

Carter 52:16

the NDP's Trudeau. I mean, he does bring a certain charisma with him. But I think that he is struggling, and the party itself is struggling, by losing significant

Carter 52:29

significant parts of their platform to the Liberals, as their, you know, pharmacare, UBI, long-term care, Canadian basic income, whatever the hell that means, racism, the Green New Deal, all of these things are going into the liberal platform. Where's the ground left? And it just doesn't feel like a $20 minimum wage is the place where people want to look for it. So I think

Carter 52:52

think that Singh is trapped in this place where I

Carter 52:56

don't know if you guys have been involved ever in like kind of small campaigns, right? Like a school trustee campaign or something like that. If you ever run a school trustee campaign, you'll

Carter 53:04

you'll go to a forum and the one week you'll say your candidate will say something and then the next week the

Carter 53:09

the the candidate you're opposing takes all of that language and incorporates it into their own speech so you know your idea is no longer your own and you're and you're left kind of sitting there going but but they just said the thing that i said last week but the audience doesn't know that the audience just responds to that moment and this feels to me kind of like that small school trustee race where you know one trustee candidate is stealing the ideas of the other trustee candidate and and the the ndp are just left and jagmeet singh is just just left trying to get whatever attention he can um when you

Carter 53:47

you know his policy ideas his his brand if you will has has literally been sucked up by the by the liberals especially the good parts of it you know the parts that are are actually saleable. You'll note that the Liberals did not grab onto any Israeli policies that created any pain or havoc. Well, that's one of the central elements of the NDP, if everything else is taken.

Zain 54:13

Corey, what did you like about what you saw? What did you not like about what you saw from Jagmeet Singh?

Corey 54:19

Carter hit the nail on the head. The problem with the speech is it seemed to really come down to, yeah yeah they're doing that but it was my idea and i just don't know that canadians care i mean the long history of canadians not caring about the liberals stealing ndp platforms i mean it goes back to the creation of the ndp right and what it

Zain 54:38

kind of reminds me

Zain 54:38

and can if i can just add this analogy

Zain 54:41

and it's like instagram stealing snapchat stories there was like a bit of panic inside the diehard snapchat community being like how dare they steal their this feature and then instagram just took it and now amongst all the tech companies stealing features is just what we do right everyone's making their own version of clubhouse because it's a good thing we're just fucking doing it now rather than buying this party or trying harder we're just gonna do that i think uh sorry carter i

Carter 55:06

i think it's more like you when you take our lines and then go on to the cbc and say our lines to the cbc yeah yeah yeah that's probably what it's more like

Zain 55:15

don't need you for this podcast did i notice i've heard enough of the game tape that i could and do this entire thing by myself. Corey, it was your turn. Jump in there. But you were ultimately making an analogy about what this kind of looked like.

Corey 55:28

No, I think I was done with the analogy. The thing I want to stress is that when the governing party is talking about a universal basic income

Corey 55:36

as one of their big policies coming out and your big policy is a $20 federal minimum wage, which, by the way, affects only federally regulated industries, telecom, banking, places where you don't actually see a ton of people making less than $20 an hour. um well then what

Corey 55:52

what do you got like what are you offering besides the fact that you were and really what are you saying it's like you come up with good ideas but this party that is more

Corey 56:01

more palatable canadians is the one that's going to implement like how is that even a knock against them so i think there needs to be kind of a foundational resetting here as to what it is they're trying to do and we've talked about this for many months now but the ndp right now seems to be a solution without a problem they are feeling a bit adrift and again this is such a moment for the left i think there is an opportunity i think the ground is big enough that they could stake something out but it

Corey 56:27

it sure can't be saying

Corey 56:29

saying in this storm liberals continue to side with those in luxury yachts that

Corey 56:34

is just not going to work that

Corey 56:36

that first of all i just think that line's a clunker but it's not going to work in an election where let's just say for fun the liberals suggest a ubi how do do you call them the luxury yacht party in a context like that so i just there

Corey 56:50

there needs to be a better understanding of the landscape by the ndp it's you know their problems in my opinion technology the ability to come on mute off mute that's the least of their problems in many ways they're talking about these things because they

Corey 57:04

they don't have big

Corey 57:06

big bold policy things to talk about and um i

Corey 57:10

i don't know i i think you've got to sit and you've got to say this is the liberals this This is where we think they're going. This is the land that we think is available for us. This is, like, you got to do a bit of a foundational analysis here, because I don't think it's going to cut it. What I saw in Singh's speech, I don't think is going to cut it. And this should be his moment. Yeah.

Corey 57:27

This should be his moment. No,

Zain 57:28

No, you make an excellent point there around the fact that a lot of his speech, outside of rich and ultra rich, was this class struggle alongside the lines that you mentioned, right? The full line that you mentioned there, quote, we're not actually in the same boat. We're certainly in the same storm, but some of us are in leaky lifeboats while others are in luxury yachts, indicating that the liberals are the party of the luxury yachts. Carter, you're shaking your head there, so jump in. From the messaging standpoint of what you saw, he

Zain 58:02

he was punching the liberals almost exclusively, and his messages, those don't encapsulate all of them, so to be fair to him and the party. but they certainly had that same thematic element like if you liked this we did it and the class sort of struggle element to it on point not on point what do you think well

Carter 58:21

well i'm going to actually completely answer a different question as is my want to do um i

Carter 58:26

i don't think they're i think that one of the things that is happening is we are seeing the erosion of the positioning of the ndp to the position where it is no longer going to become it is no longer really a federal entity and it should maybe consider um existing in their provincial forms and

Carter 58:44

and uh enabling the green party or the

Carter 58:49

the liberal party to become more successful in their other in their other positions they're not going to fold obviously there's always going to be i mean shit there's still alberta liberals for god's sake um even after cory drove that ship straight into the ground but you know here here we we are the ndp right now just seems to be you know going down down down and um the

Carter 59:11

the the challenge that they have is that the rebirth that they're looking for is on land that is currently occupied by the greens and the and the uh and

Carter 59:20

and the and the liberals so you

Carter 59:23

you know what are you going to do when when the the ideas that you wish to have and the wish ideas that you wish to express are being expressed by someone more powerful than you and no the green party is not more powerful than the ndp but it's more focused um so the ndp loses some of that ground because it isn't as focused as the has the green so that's my big bold take for the for today is uh and because i also think that the federal ndp hampers uh and does not aid um the provincial ndps so my

Carter 59:54

my advice to the provincial potential horgan don't

Carter 59:56

don't speak at the federal party anymore make make focus

Carter 1:00:00

focus on your own turf buddy

Zain 1:00:04

cory any solutions you have in your mind you said that you said this the ground on the left this should be their moment is is large enough for them to play any suggestions as they as they come out of this weekend as to what that even notionally that ground or what they play with looks like yeah

Corey 1:00:20

yeah um singh took credit for pushing the liberal government to make pandemic support more generous talked about all of these benefits that got richer because of of uh advocacy sort

Corey 1:00:33

yeah yeah and then said effectively imagine what we could do if we form government look how effective we've been outside of government i

Corey 1:00:39

i don't want to imagine explain it talk to me more clearly about this and i do think where the opportunity on the left arises is perhaps an extremity here so So instead of passing a 1% wealth tax on incomes over $20 million, get serious here. How about 5% on over $5 million? How about something that would be radically different or at least – I don't know if those are the numbers, guys. I'm not suggesting. But what I'm

Zain 1:01:01

I'm saying is – Your scope is what you're talking

Corey 1:01:03

talking about. You're tiptoeing

Corey 1:01:04

tiptoeing into territory and

Corey 1:01:06

the liberals are meanwhile diving in with both feet into your world. So you've got to look at where this exists. And things like wealth tax, very popular with the public, but no party seems to have the guts to go a little more aggressively on them. It's not just wealth tax, though. There's a number of things you could look at on the environmental front. There's a number of things you could look at in terms of, you know, labor supports, child care, all of those things that the liberals are dipping their toe into. And you can say, hey, I'm on the other end of the pool already here, guys. But that's not really what came out of this convention. And instead, it tended to be a lot of like the culture war stuff. We talked a lot about, you know, the various concepts that were floating around the convention. But you could put together an economic policy that Canadians, at least at first blush, would look at, and we know from polling, would have majority support. So that would be my recommendation. The other thing I would say is the Alberta Liberals, you know, that ship was full of holes and I got it to port. I got all those incumbents reelected. They just took it out in a storm four years later, Carter. That's not my fault.

Zain 1:02:12

Yeah, Carter, it's not his fault. You know, unlike the other people who are driving luxury yachts in that election. And, you know, just Carter,

Zain 1:02:21

Carter, you wanted to jump in before I before I do think a few other few other elements of these two conventions that I wanted to cover off before we we close. Yeah,

Carter 1:02:28

Yeah, I think, you know, Corey's point's good. I mean, the the idea of the Overton window of shifting things further out, you know, go for it. I mean, come up with the wealth tax wasn't enough. I mean, I didn't like the the minimum wage. I don't think that that's where the issues are. But you know what? We don't have a national housing strategy to make sense. We don't have a national poverty strategy. We don't have a wealth tax. We don't have a lot of things that you could put forward. word, if you were wanting

Carter 1:02:59

wanting to get some ideas out there, then in five or six years, the liberals are going to steal.

Corey 1:03:05

Overton window is further left than you think. When you poll on some of these matters that nobody's even discussing, you'll find that there's a lot of space that political parties are not standing

Corey 1:03:14

standing in right now. So stop protesting

Corey 1:03:16

protesting the fact that Trudeau has moved over and built a tent on your land and start looking at all of that land in the next county over that is very fertile and provides a lot of opportunity for the NDP.

Zain 1:03:28

Let's move on to, back to the Liberals for a second. Carter Carney, thoughts

Zain 1:03:32

his performance this weekend?

Carter 1:03:35

Yeah, I mean, I think it's fine. I think that, you know, his speech was good. I think that the response was really positive. You know, I mean, he's

Carter 1:03:42

he's running for the Liberals. The only question— So

Zain 1:03:46

So that's a serious question I had, you know, despite saying Carter Carney thoughts. But, you know, when we chatted about this on Thursday, we said, should he come out as a as a liberal, so to speak? He did that. You know, that was the headline. Does that suggest to you he is running like that is the man who is running for for the liberals in this election? Is that the shorthand for what you gathered? I

Carter 1:04:04

I believe so. I believe that that's exactly what he's declared. And that this means that there's going to I mean, geez, the response from the conservatives was fantastic. Wouldn't you want that response? Wouldn't you want that kind of attention focused on Mark Carney instead of your leader?

Carter 1:04:22

Fantastic. Let's go. It,

Carter 1:04:24

It, to me, was an absolutely perfect launch of a star candidate.

Corey 1:04:32

Carney? Thoughts? Not a guarantee that he'll run, but he's checking every box necessary to run, as we were saying last week. And, and certainly, when you start seeing how Pierre Polyev reacted to him, when you start seeing how O'Toole has reacted, I mean, it's really interesting. And you can see a bit of sweat on, on, you know, on their brows over this one, because of course, he does shore up a significant weakness for the liberals, which is this economic argument. And that is really, really quite valuable to the Libs. In some ways, I wonder if he wouldn't be more valuable not as a candidate still. But if it's his intention, then why the hell not? I have to

Zain 1:05:18

ask you to unpack that. What do you see a Mark Carney asset not

Zain 1:05:23

not as a candidate looking

Corey 1:05:24

looking like for the liberals within the upcoming

Corey 1:05:28

He is going to be the prime minister's special advisor on the economy. It's the start of this panel. It's the Build Back Better panel or whatever you're going to talk about it. It's bringing in people with deep economic comprehension to just make whatever group O'Toole puts together look like kind of the junior varsity team. And really, it just shows that this is the serious group of economic thinkers

Corey 1:05:51

thinkers in this country.

Zain 1:05:52

Would you legitimately take that over Carney on a ballot?

Carter 1:05:55

Oh, yeah. Yeah, because

Corey 1:05:55

because Carney on a ballot is him in one riding. That might be great for his ambitions to be the

Corey 1:06:01

the leader someday. day. But if you are Trudeau and you're looking to get re-election here, I think there are ways you can use him on the campaign trail.

Corey 1:06:10

And that's hard to do when you are running in one of 338 ridings.

Carter 1:06:15

Oh, yeah. I mean, he could be the guy who's talking about the economic recovery across the country. You know, is there anybody more credible than he is on economics and understanding the growth patterns of what Canada will need to be competitive in this new world. I mean, he could be an excellent surrogate running across the country doing media, and every media outlet wants to talk to him.

Zain 1:06:41

Guys, I'm moving back to the NDP to kind of close this out. Jagmeet Singh got a leadership review this weekend as well, 87% in that leadership review.

Zain 1:06:50

Carter, significant or he needed that sort of number in order to, you know, still maintain maintain uh

Zain 1:06:57

uh control of this party uh this is a guy who has been plagued with leadership challenges in the past let's not forget there was many in his party that said if he does not win that fucking by election he's out um this was prior to the 2019 election so 87 for jagmeet singh are you objectively looking that as a good number or or are you worried if you're if you're on team jagmeet um

Carter 1:07:18

um i mean the ndp are a lot of things but they're not suicidal um to to go below 87 37%, below 85% would have put the leader at risk. And you can't put the leader at risk when you're about to go into an election that could happen in May or, you know, in September, October. I think everybody

Carter 1:07:37

everybody expects an election this year. So even the NDP with their idealists and kind of lack of electoral concern still doesn't want to be blown out of the water. So if they're going to keep their leader, then if they're going to put them in a box, they'll do so after the next election.

Zain 1:07:57

Corey, 87% for Jagmeet Singh. What do you think?

Corey 1:08:01

I think it's just another proof point that the convention was actually much more united than the stories coming out of it suggest. just and it's um it's one of those things that tells me that um that maybe he needs to swap some of that 87 uh for a stronger hand on his party and knock down some of these voices that are really disrupting his narrative right now like maybe he would have been better honestly guys maybe he would have been better off getting 80 and saying fu the convention was fine we're not gonna you know throw ourselves on the coals on this one uh and been a little bit firmer with with voices who were suggesting that it was a disaster. But he took a different tack. Instead, he said, yeah, I agree. We've got a lot of learning to do. We've got to get better about this. Both of the presidential candidates felt that they could take a knockout of the convention. And the convention wasn't great. But the idea is really about controlling the story coming out of it. And unfortunately, the contrast between the Liberal convention and the NDP convention. If you're the NDP, it's brutal. It is a brutal contrast. The Liberals had Mark Carney and a relatively seamless display of progressive chops, bringing out some policies that actually, in many ways, look far more ambitious than what the NDP put forward. And if you're the NDP, or if you're looking at the NDP, it looks like it's chaos. They can't organize a virtual convention. Why would you trust them with a country? Look at all of the infighting. They don't even know what the hell they want to be. Look at all of the drama. And so, not great. Not great, guys.

Zain 1:09:32

I you know I wanted to park this next thing for for a future episode but fuck it I'm gonna do it let's just try to do like a few minutes on it because I don't know when else I'm gonna bring it up we did it the 70 minute mark so why yeah that's

Carter 1:09:42

that's fine 20 more 20 more Carter

Zain 1:09:46

Carter let's talk about Jagmeet Singh's claim that uh he believes young people are going to make history in this election because they're at the forefront of so many social justice movements his we talk I did a quick drive-by on this Jagmeet Singh in the young people demo right he's really trying to to find a lane as much as it's on the policy and the white space on policy that he's trying to find that doesn't get stolen or taken immediately by the liberals. He's also trying to find a demo group. So he's highlighted young people. I've got a double barrel question I'll ask both of you. Right strategy to kind of broadcast that and put that out there? And is it the right group? Or should he be looking for someone else as the group that he telegraphs to the media and the world that this is who I'm after? What do you think? You're

Carter 1:10:25

You're going to get me in trouble again, Zane. Young people don't vote. I don't give a shit. You can target them all you want to target them. Go for it. Go for it. I mean, maybe you'll be able to get them in a way that no one else has. But overall, if you're targeting young people to the exclusion of middle-aged families, 35 to 55, or seniors 55 older, you are putting yourself into simply a lower-performing demographic that continues to disproportionately underperform. And even when we've seen them really

Carter 1:11:01

really massively increase their voter participation, they still lag behind every other demographic. uh so congratulations you're up 75 you did a great job you're still 35 below the next worst demographic so he's chosen a group of people that that choose not to get involved now don't get me wrong there's hyper engaged people who are young i love those hyper engaged young people but they do not represent the majority of their peers the majority of their peers are less engaged uh and intend not to participate and i've never ever seen anybody be successful at changing that

Zain 1:11:37

cory i'm coming to you in a second carter jameet gives you a call and says okay if not young people what's my golden demo carter tell me who should i and he's like i'm fine i don't even mind competing for it but who should i be going after because because young people seems like you know the the bet that could pay off really well but

Zain 1:11:54

but has a low chance of paying off um but But who should I be going after? You tell me. I

Carter 1:11:59

I mean, I'm a one-trick pony on this. I always think that 35 to 55-year-old women with children are an unbelievably powerful demographic. They influence up, they influence down, they influence across. So

Carter 1:12:13

So I'd go there. Now, they might be shored up by the liberals, but I think that you could make a case for a national child care program that is actually going to get implemented. You could make the case for a poverty initiative that is actually going to get implemented. There are many things, jobs, minimum wage. There's lots of economic issues that you can go after this, that demographic with. But you're competing head on with the liberals there, because I think that that's the stated demographic that the liberals are after.

Zain 1:12:45

Corey, same question. The young people, should he have telegraphed that? And if not young people, and your answer might be, yep, young people's a demo. That's his golden demo. If not young people, who?

Corey 1:12:56

Well, the NDP do well with the youth demo, and they may have made the decision that persuading them to vote is easier than persuading older people to change their party affiliation. And that's fine. Maybe they have some data to support that strategy, and maybe

Corey 1:13:09

maybe they don't. Maybe it's just hope. But I will say that this idea that, you

Corey 1:13:16

you know, you hear this all of the time, like a big change is not going to come from likely voters. It's going to come from unlikely voters.

Corey 1:13:23

I've never actually seen that from the – arguably that happened with Trump maybe,

Corey 1:13:27

maybe, but the polling there even showed he had a good chance. And insofar

Corey 1:13:31

insofar as I've been surprised in the context of look at these voters, they voted in a way I didn't expect, it's usually from the right, not the left. And so I will say it's a story parties without a clear path to power tell themselves. They say look

Corey 1:13:44

at the undecided votes. Look at the support with these demos that don't show up. We can do it. They create what I say would be a path to power that strains credulity because it's never happened in the past.

Corey 1:13:58

sure, I mean, it could happen. Absolutely. Is it likely to happen? No. No, it's not. Right? And it would be a sea change the likes of which we haven't seen.

Corey 1:14:10

Well, maybe somebody will tweet at me if there's one I'm forgetting, but the likes that we have not seen in this country. So I think – I'm

Corey 1:14:18

I'm doubtful that this is going to be the election. Now, if we want to talk about some of the positive signs for the NDP, how about – they're

Corey 1:14:26

they're not actually polling that badly right now. And when you look at how the conservatives are polling fairly badly in some of the polls out there, it's not impossible to imagine the NDP leapfrogging into second place. I think it's very unlikely. But if you did, you could conceivably get some of the anybody but Trudeau votes because people will start voting strategically in your favor, just as sort of occurred in the election where the NDP became the opposition to Harper.

Corey 1:14:55

A lot could happen.

Corey 1:14:57

don't know if we can trust too many of the inputs that are out there because of this very unusual time we're in with COVID right now. Now, that is a blessing and a curse. From the blessing point of view, you had a bad convention NDP. But again, it's

Corey 1:15:10

it's not something that people are paying a lot of attention about. Not too many people were that fussed with the NDP convention this weekend. It only resulted in a handful of stories. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try to rebuild the narrative with the opinion leaders who are now looking at you thinking you're a bit more embarrassing than you were on Thursday. day but

Corey 1:15:30

you know on the pro side you've got a chance to invent yourself to be whatever you want right now because we're not out of covid

Corey 1:15:37

and there's going to be this big political reset that comes with leaving covid uh whether that happens in the spring whether that happens in the fall

Corey 1:15:45

so lots of opportunity for all of the players on the field we're

Zain 1:15:49

we're going to leave that there moving on to our next segment are over under in our lightning round steven carter are you ready I'm

Carter 1:15:53

I'm totally ready. I love the lightning round. It's my favorite.

Zain 1:15:57

Stephen Carter, yes or no? Was this episode 930?

Carter 1:15:59

I think it's 930. No, it's after 930. It's after 930 now.

Zain 1:16:04

Jesus Christ. Corey, I'm starting with you on this one. Leadership reviews, overrated or underrated?

Corey 1:16:12

Overrated. I think you've literally asked this question before. I think we're at repeats here. No,

Zain 1:16:17

No, no, no. I'm going to get you to answer this one, and then I'm going to get you to answer a more specific one. So, overrated on leadership reviews?

Corey 1:16:25

Yeah, I think they're overrated because ultimately we've seen people just crush it on a leadership review and be ousted by their caucus six months later, regularly.

Zain 1:16:33

So, overrated underrated on Jagmeet Singh's leadership review, considering his past troubles?

Corey 1:16:38

I think it's overrated. I don't

Corey 1:16:40

don't think it means anything.

Zain 1:16:42

Carter, same questions. Leadership reviews overall, and then Jagmeet Singh's leadership review this weekend. Totally

Carter 1:16:47

Totally overrated. I mean, but I'm of a view that giving the membership control over this thing is crazy. It should go to the caucus.

Zain 1:16:59

Interesting, interesting. I think you've mentioned that before. Corey, overrated, underrated, convention technology. We saw it this weekend in perhaps good display, and we saw it this weekend in some troubling display. Was it overrated, underrated in your mind?

Corey 1:17:13

i underrated i'm going to expand that to talk about not just convention technology but convention management if

Corey 1:17:19

you can if you can run a pretty seamless show it affords you more options because one of the things you will note in any convention that has a vocal group is you have given them a club to hit you with on on process if you don't do your process anything other than flawlessly right so even if uh you if say you are a person who's just opposed to jagmeet sing right yeah let's just use this example here and uh you can't manage to get your fellow conventioneers to care about the thing that you oppose him for say it's a policy on israel say whatever yeah yeah

Corey 1:17:55

well now you can just say but this whole thing is flawed this process is flawed the outcomes from this are flawed this thing is bad and uh you've created a bunch of bad news stories as has truly happened in this case and um ultimately

Corey 1:18:09

ultimately don't you think the ndp wish that they had none of these technology flaws. Like if none of them existed, it would be an entirely different narrative coming out of this weekend, entirely different, because you wouldn't have had the people standing up making the complaints about the policy, or sorry, the process, which leaves you with what? Which leaves you with almost unanimity on all of the policy things that have gone on. That would have been a much better result for the NDP.

Zain 1:18:34

Carter, I'm going to steal Corey's question. Convention tech and convention management, overrated or underrated in your mind? Underrated.

Carter 1:18:39

Underrated. The seamless execution of these things is often missed by the media and missed by the people who are attending them. But it's the equivalent of going to Disneyland and having everything work perfectly or going to Callaway Park and standing endless lines. You just you don't want to, you know, when it works perfectly, you're much, much, much happier. here and

Corey 1:19:03

and you don't even see it when it's working perfectly which is part of why people underrate it but it is the difference between a good convention and a shit show carter

Zain 1:19:11

carter after last question i'm starting with you after

Zain 1:19:15

after everything you've seen this weekend are

Zain 1:19:17

are you buying or selling stock if you had to keep it for a month i know you've dumped recently but if you had to keep it for a month Are you buying or are you selling stock in Aaron O'Toole?

Carter 1:19:29

I'm probably selling. I don't think he's hit his bottom.

Zain 1:19:35

Anything about this weekend that helps inform that in any way whatsoever?

Carter 1:19:39

I think the liberals came out looking as good as they could, and he's done nothing to kind of capture anybody's attention. I mean, sending out Skippy to attack Mark Carney was just pathetic.

Zain 1:19:53

Corey you have to hold it for a month at least perhaps this weekend helps inform it perhaps it doesn't the question remains the same are you buying or are you selling stock in Aaron O'Toole

Corey 1:20:03

I'm buying I think he's severely undervalued I think the number of people who have written off Aaron O'Toole is crazy so sell me his stock that you own at a discount please let's

Corey 1:20:14

let's not forget Can we not forget that the conservatives under Andrew Scheer, who

Corey 1:20:21

didn't run a stellar campaign, admittedly, it was against a guy in blackface, but he did not run a very good campaign, got more votes than the liberals, like the conservatives got more votes than the liberals last election. Andrew Scheer barely lost that election. It doesn't take a

Corey 1:20:37

a much better leader than Andrew Scheer for the conservatives to win the whole kit, the whole caboodle. So I don't know why people are so quick to write the guy off. I actually think when people get to know him, when they start hearing the story, when they're kind of forced to deal with his moderation and he's not the caricature that the liberals are drawing of him, it's going to be a totally different ballgame. I mean, I think Aaron O'Toole, if you asked me to put money on it right now, you'd have to give me odds, but they wouldn't have to be big odds that Aaron O'Toole is the next prime minister

Carter 1:21:07

or his prime minister

Corey 1:21:08

minister even in six months here. Michael

Carter 1:21:09

Michael Ignatieff, once he got out from underneath those caricatures that were being drawn of him, did excellent. So did Stéphane Dion, once he got underneath those caricatures that were being drawn of him. The caricatures are the point, Corey. If you can't get out from underneath the caricatures, then you are the caricature.

Zain 1:21:27

i'm loving the heat we're in an hour 20 it's ridiculous

Corey 1:21:29

ridiculous though because it's like we're in the middle of a pandemic you're just entirely ignoring the fact that this has not been normal political times this has not been times where definitions can be made the reality is aaron o'toole is is not done he is not done this is a guy who could very well be the next prime minister of canada and i think the fact that some people have just basically written him off as yet more more fodder to be driven over by Justin Trudeau's bus is hilarious. I am buying for sure.

Zain 1:21:58

We'll leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 930 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji with me as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we'll see you next time.

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