Episode 934: Past and future

Zain 0:03

This is The Strategist, episode 934. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what is going on?

Corey 0:13

Well, you know, a whole bunch of stuff. Probably worth starting talking about the situation in Saskatchewan. 751 graves before we get into the zaniness that is our show. go.

Carter 0:27

Probably a smart move. I mean, this is the, um, I

Carter 0:31

I mean, this is the time to be talking about it. This is the time to be acknowledging it. And I think that the best thing that can happen is that we don't just talk about it in this, in these moments, but that we actually work to, uh, to understand it and use the show in some fashion to, to push out a

Carter 0:49

a broader understanding. I think we made the point in the last, the last time we dealt with this, not that that long ago, sadly, with the Kamloops situation, that this is news to people, but it shouldn't be. This is something that we should know. And I think that the 715 unmarked graves found today just show, you

Carter 1:13

you know, just are beginning to show the depth of this, beginning to show how far it reached. And I think beginning to show how much we've covered it up.

Zain 1:22

Yeah, Corey, you know, I I often start most of these segments with the very basic question, when a news story happens, which is, were you surprised, right? It's usually when I start teeing up a news item. In this case, Carter's just mentioned to us that, you know, even before the Kamloops discovery, that this is something that was well documented in our Canadian history. But I'll ask you the question regardless, like, were you surprised when you heard

Zain 1:45

heard today 751 unmarked graves found near a former residential school in Saskatchewan?

Corey 1:52

mostly know a little bit of yes a number that big has shock value i think that uh you know you can you still feel a gut punch even though you can intellectually know that that there are numbers like this coming uh

Corey 2:05

uh but you know one of the things about this that i've been reflecting upon is here we are talking about it uh we haven't talked about residential schools or for Indigenous Canadians and the relationship with it since the last time we talked about it. And Carter talked about not

Corey 2:23

not just reacting to the moments, but carrying this on further and making it more deeply embedded in the conversations that go on. And I think that's absolutely true. I mean, one of the things that's going to be, I

Corey 2:36

I think, tough for a lot of people to process, and maybe I'm talking about myself as much as anyone here, is that we, like, how many thousands How many thousands of graves are we going to find over the next bit?

Corey 2:46

This is not one of those situations where it's like, okay, we've searched two locations and that's it. That's a full accounting of the situation. We know very well that's not the case. In fact, here in Alberta, the premier just announced $8 million to search in Alberta on these

Corey 3:05

you know, what is the proper response? Is it outrage? Is it sorrow? Is it a combination of those? Certainly, it's got to be more than just for the news cycle and then move on. What are we doing to listen and understand and do better and grow and commit ourselves to reconciliation? affiliation.

Corey 3:23

But I don't know how you make good on such a travesty. Now, 751

Corey 3:27

751 is a huge number.

Corey 3:33

just don't, I don't think this, like,

Corey 3:36

I don't think this is as bad as it gets, unfortunately, either, either in aggregate, or perhaps it's an individual moment. So what are we going to do?

Corey 3:45

What are we going to do as Canadians

Corey 3:49

start turning the page and walking a better path?

Carter 3:52

I just wish there was another group, you know, another place we could look at that if, you know, we aren't

Carter 3:58

aren't alone in the world either. You know, this is a situation that was imposed upon First Nations, First Peoples around the world. This is a worldwide issue. And arguably, it's an issue that continues to this day with what's happening in China with the Uyghurs.

Corey 4:20

you know, I think that... Not just there. I

Corey 4:22

you can look a lot closer to home for pretty dreadful situations there, Stephen, but yeah.

Carter 4:27

Well, I mean, we know, I

Carter 4:28

I mean, one of the third

Carter 4:30

third rails that we had to deal with in politics, I'm sure you had to deal with it, Corey, but, you know, children's services in any province is always one of the more challenging places to work because we still haven't figured it out. We haven't figured out, you know, our First Nations relationships at all. And I think the easiest thing that we've been doing is just passing the buck. You

Carter 4:49

know, we pass it to the next government or we pass it to the next group. And I don't

Carter 4:54

don't know. I mean, in one of them, one of these podcasts at one point, I remember saying that one

Carter 5:00

of the reasons I don't like working in federal politics is that we don't have the answers to first big First Nations questions. questions. I guess we better start figuring it out. Because it's not going to it's not going to pass the muster for the strategists just to sit there and say, time and again, well, this is a tough one. This is certainly a tough one. So I don't know, I don't know how we do it.

Carter 5:25

But we should probably figure something out.

Zain 5:27

Can I pick up what you put down there for a second, Carter? And I'll caveat this with the respect that this is not a strategy question, but it's a question for policy for our leaders, which is kind of borrowing from a question that our mutual friend Rob Brown on CBC asked our panel today, which was, there's no template for this around federal leadership if you're a federal politician. What does it look like for, you know, Corey, if you're right, that unfortunately,

Zain 5:56

unfortunately, this is not the end of these discoveries or the course of whether it be this summer or this year or even beyond. What does legitimate, policy-driven, legislative leadership look like from our elected officials? I know that's not an easy question, but maybe we can kind of

Zain 6:17

start it there with some initial thoughts as we kind of hopefully keep this conversation going beyond this episode as well. Corey, can I go to you first on that and then loop back in with you, you, Carter?

Corey 6:30

politicians are used to making sweeping statements, taking action, moving goalposts, declaring victory. And this issue doesn't lend itself to that. I think both the severity of the matter at hand makes politicians draw short breaths and say, you know, this is not the time for this. I mean, there's an interesting question there about why we play so absurd with so much of politics. But the other thing is the cycles are so long. nothing

Corey 6:58

in our system of government is designed to deal with multi-generational

Corey 7:02

issues multi-generational challenges and you

Corey 7:06

you know as i said last time and i'll say again

Corey 7:10

we need an awareness that this is not something that we are just going to solve like someone's not going to come up with a solution right uh and in fact it's the

Corey 7:20

application of the brilliant solutions of the day that have clearly turned out horrifying In hindsight, and probably should have been observed as horrifying at the time that have led to so many of the challenges that we're now unpacking here.

Corey 7:34

So I think first and foremost, it really does still come back to, you

Corey 7:39

you know, listening, understanding, I would challenge all of our listeners, have you actually read the TRC report?

Corey 7:49

If not, that's probably a good place to start. uh take it upon yourself to learn uh take it upon yourself without being uh

Corey 7:57

uh you know don't impose particularly in moments like this but make sure you're listening to the indigenous voices in your life and trying to understand the issues and um well let's call that taking it one day at a time because there's an awful lot more that perhaps flows out of that but like i said we're not going to solve this one this is something that i think gets resolved by sort of understanding the the fundamental unsolvability of it and walk in a better path going forward.

Zain 8:25

Carter, you know, we're also seeing a simultaneous shift perhaps in the core public attitudes towards the moral imperative to act and to do better. The recent polling has found that, you know, 68% of Canadians feel responsibility to resolve the inequities that Indigenous people face, that that may not be fleeting. To that same question, though, I asked Corey, though, you know, in terms of the template plate for leadership. What does it look like? Any thoughts for leaders that, whether they be in this cycle or to Corey's point, down the road, think about dealing with this issue?

Carter 9:00

You know, we're so selfish, right? We talk about the selfish voter quite a bit and why people make the decisions that they make. And it's rooted in selfishness. And whether the selfishness is the politician trying to get re-elected or the voter trying to get what he or she wishes out of the election cycle, that selfishness manifests itself in a number of really negative ways. And probably the most negative way that

Carter 9:27

that it manifests itself is in allowing

Carter 9:29

allowing issues that we don't care about, that

Carter 9:32

that don't impact us, that aren't impacting our lives directly, just to kick down the road a little bit. And, you know, when you're talking about systemic multi-generational problems, that selfishness is, it really

Carter 9:50

really is the reason why we can't and why we don't deal with things. So the politicians of the day have never been forced to deal with the issue. And let's be clear. Politicians either come into something trying to fix it because they believe it, or they come in or they're forced into fixing something because of the general population. No one is, you know, I would argue that the solutions that have been implemented, like residential schools, were the solutions of politicians and leaders who felt that they had the answers. and those were horrible

Carter 10:25

horrible so at this point i think that the only solution is

Carter 10:29

is that the general population stay outraged uh stay aware of it and are demanding actual action from our politicians if we do have a federal election this summer wouldn't it be interesting if first nations issue was actually the issue at the top of the agenda um it's never happened it's never happened um it would be a fairly amazing step forward uh for canada uh if that was to happen

Zain 10:55

yeah no that's that some great comments carter around advocacy as we as we kind of move it on okay we'll we'll leave that there certainly revisit it um you know to to both of your points not just when another tragedy uh hits the the the headlines but when we you know uh do it so as as as part of our overall conversation

Corey 11:14

conversation and reconciliation process. We'll

Zain 11:16

We'll kind of move it from that somber tone to our first segment. What we're going to do is we'll park the headlines till the end, but there's a few items that I feel like are very relevant and critical to the discussion we've just had. So let's move it on to our first segment. Our first segment, Oh No Canada. Guys, Aaron O'Toole has accused activists of quote-unquote tearing down Canada after towns across the country have cancelled Canada Day events. Now, these calls are getting louder and broader across the country after the events of today, unsurprisingly, with the discovery of these unmarked graves. But let me give you some context, and let's talk about the politics here. Conservative leader Aaron O'Toole today said he's troubled by the cancellation of Canada Day celebrations in some municipalities and accused a, quote, small group of activist voices of continually talking down the country rather than acknowledging its many successes. In a speech at the final Conservative caucus meeting before the House of Commons, he said that while Canada's history is littered with injustice and wrongdoing, that doesn't justify cancelling the nation's birthday, a time to give thanks for living in the greatest country in the world. Stephen Carter,

Zain 12:24

Aaron O'Toole did not say this statement today. I want to be very clear.

Zain 12:27

Had Aaron O'Toole had the hindsight of today, do

Zain 12:30

do you think he would have done something differently? And would you have advised him to do something differently if he was going down this track?

Carter 12:36

I probably would. I probably would have advised him to suggest that every candidate today needs to have a First Nations focus this year. You know, this is, you know, there may have been great achievements in our past, but there have also been great tragedies in our past. And if we solely focus on the successes, as he said in that earlier statement, then we are never going to address those things that we have failed at. And this is an opportunity, I think, to address the failures. I'm not a big fan of just walking away from Canada today. I think that, you know, there is an opportunity to grow and to use this as a moment

Carter 13:20

moment where we are learning and coming together as a country to address this issue, to

Carter 13:26

to move that 68% number that you talked about in the previous discussion to 78% or 88%. uh, Canada Day could, could help us get there. Um, so I don't know that we just necessarily want to walk away from it, um, because walking away from it, it doesn't get us to the place where we're actually addressing things. So I would suggest that, you know, if I was writing it for O'Toole right now, I'd say, uh, we cannot alone look at our successes without, uh, being aware of our failures as a country. While Canada may be the greatest nation on earth, uh, for us Now, it was certainly not the greatest nation on earth for many, many people in our past. Let's use this moment of Canada Day to reflect both upon those great successes as well as our great failure.

Zain 14:15

Corey, Aaron O'Toole probably thought defending Canada Day was a political slam dunk in some ways. What would you have advised him, or what do you think he would have done, and what would you have advised him with the hindsight of today

Zain 14:26

today in some ways?

Corey 14:30

Canada Day is a funny one, if

Corey 14:32

if only because it's only been Canada Day since 1982. And ironically, when we made the switch from Dominion Day to Canada Day, there

Corey 14:40

there were a lot of people who were very angry about it being a renunciation of our past, of Canada's history. And it was trying to just ignore all of all of the historicalness that Canada had gone through. And arguably, some did. Some wanted that break with the past. Certainly, Canada Day was seen as more bilingual. It was seen as more inclusive. Dominion was seen as too British. And

Corey 15:00

say this for two reasons. One is that it's kind of fascinating to see that Canada Day is now seen as the one that is, you

Corey 15:07

you know, not quite there. But the other is things

Corey 15:10

things evolve, things change. And maybe there's an opportunity here to rethink exactly what Canada Day is. Like the Holidays Act doesn't say much. It says, hey, we've got a holiday. It's called Canada Day.

Corey 15:21

And there's a question here. It's like, what are we celebrating when we say we're celebrating Canada Day? Are we celebrating our past? Is it enthusiasm for the future? Is it just pride in Canada? is it is it all of the above and then some other things is it just a reason to drink on a dock and watch fireworks i

Corey 15:36

i don't know and i i think that it is kind of in the eye of the beholder and it's part of why people have reacted to the idea of canada day at this moment differently right because depending on what you think you're celebrating you may or may not think that it is worthy of celebration for example you think it's just a party celebrating canada's history uh yeah maybe maybe it doesn't seem very cool to do it in the context of exactly what we've discussed here But we have walked an interesting journey on it. And I think it would be interesting to see some politicians see if maybe there's not an

Corey 16:07

an evolution of Canada Day that could occur. Because certainly that's happened in my lifetime, happened in Carter's lifetime, hasn't happened in Zane's lifetime. But, you know, Canada Day is not so old in story in itself that we couldn't talk about what does it really mean to celebrate this nation on this day. And this

Carter 16:26

this doesn't ring true to me.

Carter 16:28

Sorry, Zane. This doesn't ring true. Like the MPs from the Conservative caucus in the last couple of years have been, you know, we have to go back to our history. We have to go back to Dominion Day. It shouldn't even be called, you know, Canada Day. And, you know, they were perfectly willing to fight for our past before. And now that it's politically inconvenient because of the deaths of thousands of children, they're now all of a sudden standing up for Canada Day. I mean, it's hypocritical at the minimum, and it's somewhat offensive when you kind of piece it all together like Corey has started to there.

Zain 17:07

So, Tug, walk me through this. Walk me through this from the frame of our prime minister, actually, right? So he's sitting in government. There's a call to cancel Canada. Let's move the spotlight off O'Toole for a second. I really like this frame that Corey's talking about. Let's add some definition. Let's add some real, maybe heft or focal point to Canada Day. How do you go about doing that, Carter? And how do you go about doing it in a way that doesn't make you seem politically opportunistic? Like, oh, there's a call by activists that's spotlighting one of the darkest chapters of our collective history. Let me do what I do well, which is symbols, and try to add some definition to Canada Day. How does one actually achieve this transformation or what could it look like from the confines of government? And I know that's a very tough question and a very broad question, but I'm curious to go down the path that Corey's introduced to us.

Carter 18:03

Well, I mean, I'm just trying, I was just kind of looking to see what New Zealand has done. You know, New Zealand, I think, has arguably one of the better relationships with its First Nations or its First Peoples. And part of that is a recognition that some of the days needed to be changed, right? Right. Some of the days needed to shift to reflect the traditions of the country before it was a country in the in the in the European sense of the of that word. So I think that that's where we could go. I mean, I think that Corey's point about what is the day is really interesting to me. You know, I

Carter 18:43

I don't have a big connection to Canada Day. you know his point about sitting on the dock at the lake you know

Carter 18:51

know watching some fireworks that rings the most true for Canada Day I'm you know I I think it's different maybe perhaps if you live in Ottawa and you go and see the big Canada Day celebration on Parliament Hill um I suspect it's not that different in downtown Calgary or downtown Edmonton where you're just watching the fireworks works. Canada Day, it doesn't need to be a big day celebrating our history. But if it is going to be a historic day where we are celebrating our history, then we better find a way to bring in all the elements of our history.

Zain 19:24

Corey, same question for you. Any thoughts on how a focal point is defined and sought after and kind of achieved for something like this to your point that you you introduced i

Corey 19:35

mean there are lots of national holidays and there are lots of ways that nations reflect upon their past i mean americans celebrate a day that's just totally arbitrary chosen as the signing of a document that wasn't actually considered that important at the time but very quickly they decided to put some historical stamp to i don't even think like i think july 3rd is when they actually wrote the thing but you know they had to pick a time and france celebrates the storming of an empty jail before a bloody revolution that got out of control and was totally undone within a decade. So, you know, these days are, they take on different

Corey 20:10

different flavor, they take on different color. I mean, the British, they celebrate, you

Corey 20:14

you know, the birth of the Queen. I mean, like, there's lots of national days, a lot of them are really just about an opportunity to get together and show civic pride. But you know, there is a Canadian version of that that could be contemplative and still positive and looking to the future and talk about the better Canada that we're going to make. I think that there's something there. And I don't have it here. I don't have a private members bill for anybody to sort of just determine it and redefine it. But I think there is an opportunity for politicians to say something

Corey 20:44

something that's in some ways an extension of what Aaron O'Toole said, which is there are some dark spots in this.

Corey 20:49

And we can't ignore those. And we need to move. We need to do better. I'm not saying we need to move past them. We need to do better. We need to keep them in mind and never forget in many ways. But what's

Corey 21:01

what's always been the strength of this nation is our desire to be better, our desire to be a beacon of light. We have not lived up to that beacon. But Canada Day for me is about the Canada that can be and will be, that we create by reminding ourselves of the dark times, but also the good times and saying, what can this nation be moving forward?

Corey 21:24

And I don't have

Corey 21:26

anything more than that at this moment. But I do think that that there is something there. And I don't think that we should, we should move past having a Canada Day because this is still a nation and we still need to be even

Corey 21:38

even casually contemplative about what it means to be a nation and what it could mean in the future. And also, let's be blunt, it's a holiday in July. It's an opportunity for people to have a long weekend and relax. And that's not going away. So let's think about what that might actually look like.

Zain 21:56

Tune in Sunday where Corey will bring his draft private members bill. Either that or he'll crowdsource it through a Google Doc on Twitter, which

Zain 22:04

which we may or may not have done in the past. While

Carter 22:07

While we're talking about this, are we going to record on Canada Day or are we taking that as a holiday? day because i get

Zain 22:12

get time and a half oh it's a thursday yeah

Corey 22:15

yeah we're recording for sure move on okay yeah

Zain 22:17

yeah we'll discuss with the union afterwards um final

Zain 22:20

final question on this uh carter uh after today these calls for canceling canada day this the the you know some towns have adopted it post cam loops does the political calculus change if you're a federal leader today on the cancel canada day uh activism and movement and and how are you dealing with it so i i'm I'm almost trying to make this party agnostic, but has today changed the calculation in any meaningful way for federal elected officials?

Carter 22:52

I'd like to say yes. I'd like to say yes, it's fundamentally changed things. I want to say that there's no way they can proceed with Canada Today as it was originally scripted and not have some enormous backlash from the Canadian public.

Carter 23:09

But I don't believe that to be true.

Carter 23:11

I think that can I can I can I interrupt you there for a sec? Yeah.

Zain 23:15

You said your suggestion was that this was not something and I think both of you said could not be solved. You know, a generation's issues cannot be just solved with a stroke of a pen, that that advocacy and activism was required. If you were advising people to get loud, as you have said in the previous segment, Carter, in our introduction, would you advise them to rally around Canada Day as like that wedge to make that point, to make this serious, to make politicians act or no? Would that not be good strategic advice for the movement in your mind?

Carter 23:47

Great strategic advice, if you can pull it off.

Carter 23:50

There is nothing, I think I've said this before on the podcast, to all the activists out there. Do not tell politicians you're going to organize a great big thing and then whiff, because

Carter 24:00

because then the politicians get away with everything. So if you're going to say that you're going to do a big thing, then do a big thing. And my fear is there's not enough days to do a good thing prior to Canada Day.

Zain 24:15

Corey, I'm going to ask you the same questions. Has the political calculus changed, A, for federal leaders, and B, some organizing thoughts regarding activism for Canada Day? If you want to keep this issue alive of the unmarked graves, would you lean in and triangulate towards Canada Day?

Corey 24:32

uh that's uh i'm not sure there's enough time if something's not already underway maybe there is it's certainly going to be a day where everybody's going to you

Corey 24:42

you could draw a lot of attention let's put it that way there's always big celebrations in ottawa there's big celebrations everywhere certainly those celebrations could be disrupted people could be forced to confront the dark past of the country there

Corey 24:53

there is of course a reality which is that could actually turn people against it too And, you know, it's dumb that people would care more about a party than dead children. But there will be people who will care more about the party and not want to confront things on Canada Day. Maybe this is not something that would be productive if we are trying to find a different path forward. forward

Zain 25:18

i'm going to leave that segment there let's move it on to our next segment single shingle i want to talk about the lone uh independent mp out in vancouver the former justice minister jody wilson raybould i want to talk about her a little bit more broadly but i'm going to use the incidents of today if i can call it that in the exchange for today that she had with uh crown and indigenous relations minister carolyn bennett uh so So there's a bit of context here. Jody Wilson-Raybould put out a tweet saying that, you know, Justin Trudeau, and I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have the tweet in front of me, but saying Justin Trudeau, rather than trying to jockey for an election, should implement the, you know, massive legislation regarding Indigenous rights that he has promised. She then got a text message from the minister, Carolyn Bennett, aforementioned, with a question that attached that tweet and a question that said pension, question mark. She screencapped that tweet. She put it on Twitter. The context around pension, question mark, just so everyone is aware, as we've discussed on this show, there is a calculus perhaps around going to an election before October because those who serve six years as members of parliament as of October are qualified for their federal pension. And that number out of a House of 300 plus is somewhere in the 150. So there's a long list of individuals, independents, liberals, conservatives across the board that are impacted by going to the polls before October. If they go and win and come back, it's not an issue. But for those that lose, they don't get access to that pension. So that's the that's the preamble. That's the context here. This, of course, blew up. Jody Wilson-Raybould taking this screenshot, posting it online, criticizing the minister who was her former colleague of racism, saying that, you know, this leans into a trope where all Indigenous people, all they care about is money, et cetera, et cetera. The minister then responds. Let's talk about this issue first, and then let's talk about Jody Wilson-Raybould, because that's what I want to spend this segment on. On the issue, Corey, I'll go to you first on this. um clearly

Zain 27:36

clearly seems like a mistake by by carolyn bennett but do you feel like it comes out of more so than just an offhand mistake but a larger insecurity that the liberals might have on this particular issue on on indigenous relations where they've taken a few victory laps and haven't delivered maybe the hard goods as as many of their critics would argue

Corey 27:54

well i can't read their fucking minds i don't know zane uh it was obviously a mistake it was was, at the very least, a shitty comment. And it absolutely had no upside. I have no idea why a minister of the Crown would think that it was.

Corey 28:08

What was the win? What was the gain? What did she think would occur from that? Besides that, you know, she just gets to high five herself and say, yeah, I really dunked on Wilson-Raybould. Like, there was no upside. And the lack of judgment alone on that, I think, should call into question exactly the role that the Liberal Party gives her.

Zain 28:26

Carter, here's what I think happened. I think she meant to send the text about Jody Wilson-Raybould to

Zain 28:33

to Jody Wilson-Raybould. It's kind of like when Corey and I sometimes include you in our group chat, what it's about you, and then we just like brush right by it. I feel like that's what happened here. It's

Carter 28:40

It's totally what happened.

Zain 28:42

Same question, though. What the heck was going on? Let me actually go down to Corey's answer that he gave me, which was like, what do you think was going on? Any upside, like any strategy behind this, or just an outright boneheaded error, Carter? her well

Carter 28:55

i mean i think that carolyn bannett misunderstood her relationship with jody wilson raybould um first of all we like oh interesting

Carter 29:04

we send texts back and forth i mean i'm releasing all of the texts that cory has sent to me in the last six months it's going to be quite the extravaganza um you know you say things in texts that

Zain 29:14

that they're all gifs of dominic cummings but that's fine yeah is

Carter 29:17

that who that is i have no idea who dominic cummings anyways um i thought that was me uh i was wondering why i was getting all these pictures i

Carter 29:28

i i think that she misunderstood the relationship for sure the second thing is she totally misunderstood and misread the day um you know this was a dumb move on this day uh so you know misunderstanding

Carter 29:43

misunderstanding your relationship relationship misunderstanding the day. This is politically dumb.

Carter 29:52

Certainly could be seen as racist. I don't think it was meant to be racist. I don't think it had a racial overtone. I think it had an economic overtone that there are 150 people who are scared they're going to lose their pensions. One of them happens to be an independent MP from Vancouver who happens to be be indigenous i don't believe that to

Carter 30:11

to be the reason or the rationale for why carolyn ben sent that i think that she sent it because jody was being you know um was

Carter 30:23

was being jody you know jody wilson raybould and you know has has a long history of um taking advantage of opportunities which is her job that's what she's supposed to do she took advantage of the opportunity that was given to her politically. And then Carolyn Bennett took a liter or two of gasoline and poured it onto the already, you know, cooking fire.

Zain 30:47

Let's talk about that as political opportunity, because this is what I want to focus the segment on, in a sense, is that, Corey, let's get into strategy mode a bit as it relates to JWR, right? Like you've got a former Liberal Cabinet Minister running in Vancouver, Granville, clearly a name that many people in the political class know. She's done well for herself in the last, you know, six months, you know, coming out with the book announcements, getting into the media a few times with, you know, today's story, aligning herself to Annamie Paul, as we discussed last week on her criticisms of Justin Trudeau. But I want to talk about the strategy here for an independent MP and maybe one that has almost her unique profile, which is, how does she kind of come out ahead? And what does it look like for her if she's running her style of race? I know we are going to discuss political strategy of every political party, but I find it fascinating to discuss the strategy of a single MP here, especially one that's got this national profile. And I'm curious if you've had any upfront or top line thoughts if you were advising her on her race. race?

Corey 31:55

Independent MPs that get reelected tend to get reelected if they continue to be prominent voices and prominent national figures, you know, individuals that that carry agendas and carry conversations. And, and in

Corey 32:09

in that sense, you absolutely want to be in the conversation as much as possible. And I think Jody Wilson-Raybould has done a pretty good job of that over the past And I think this book will be very interesting. I fully expect there will be excerpts of the book in the not too distant future. Now, I

Corey 32:29

think where the liberals, just switching a little bit here, make a mistake is engaging with her in any way, shape or form beyond the kind of basic respect you should afford every MP, because that is what feeds the cycle. Like, you can imagine Jody Wilson-Raybould is more likely to be reelected today after Carolyn Bennett sent a one-word text than she was yesterday. And so there

Corey 32:55

there is no reason to

Corey 32:57

do anything that might potentially give oxygen to an independent MP, if you want to look at it from the point of view of an organization that doesn't necessarily want a bunch of independent MPs. conversely if you are an independent mp you take every opportunity to light a bit of a fire that you can uh it's it shouldn't be like just arson right it should be reinforcing key messages that you have and that you've carried uh throughout your career and and things that you are passionate about but you take those opportunities when they present themselves and you make your bigger points when these smaller moments come forward and that's what you do if you're an independent mp who wants us to be reelected.

Zain 33:37

Carter, talk to me about her strategy here. Is this working for you? What's right? What's wrong? What needs to change?

Carter 33:43

She did a great job. She took an issue that is meaningful. She spoke, you know, she gathered attention on it. And then she took the own goal and really maximized it from the liberals. This is the dominant story of the day. You know, know outside of the the specifics of the 715 kids so you know this is the this this story couldn't have gone better for jody wilson raybould um she she has no choice by the way but to maximize the opportunities because she's not going to get any attention like when vancouver when the election starts she doesn't get to run her own media shop because the media shops are run nationally and And Jody's going to be really struggling to get any oxygen at all. So getting oxygen today is a tremendous opportunity for her.

Zain 34:35

So you would tell her, you know, if this was a conventional, you

Zain 34:39

you know, candidate, two candidates in a riding, and she did not have the independent voice that she did, you would have probably said, rather than trying to pick fights or try to get into the air war game at all, you just go hit the doors, organize, you do the ground game. That's what you do. But you're saying, and I just want to understand correctly, that both of you are saying that as an independent, the rule changes a bit, that the air war just becomes all that more important because you have to play at a different level. Is the threshold higher? Is the bar higher? Is that what I'm understanding?

Carter 35:05

understanding? An independent is the sixth party in the House. An independent has to function as a party almost and give themselves the opportunity to have national attention because independent MPs never, well, I shouldn't say never, rarely get reelected. The idea that, you know, it is

Carter 35:27

is so hard to thread the needle to get reelected. And Jody has a better chance today than she did, you

Zain 35:39

Corey, did you want to jump in on that?

Corey 35:42

Fundamentally, you got to ask why people elect independent MPs. They're never going to be in government, right? Even if you're a third party, you can kind of aspire either to be in government or significantly influence things. We have had situations in recent history where independent MPs have changed the balance of power in Parliament. So I'm not going to say that never happens, but it's not very likely that your independent MP is going to kind of wield any sort of power. So in many ways, they are quite often a protest vote, a protest vote against the party in power, a protest vote against the system, saying this is somebody who I think represents me better than any of the options that actually have a chance of governing here. And it's a big middle finger to the entire apparatus that is government. So, if that is the case, like, let's just say, accept that as a hypothesis for a moment, then that's the job of an independent MP. It's to stand up and call the system bullshit and to call out moments like this when a liberal cabinet minister with a great deal of power fires a text of pension, question mark, suggesting that would be the rationale at a moment when there's so much rationale for holding off on an election. And call out the cynicism

Corey 36:56

cynicism of politics and the way people act within it. So I think it's not so much, Zane, that – well,

Corey 37:03

well, I don't necessarily agree with Carter they need to be a whole political party. I hear his point, though. You've got to be able to do all of the things a political party would normally do for you to carry the apparatus. But if

Corey 37:14

if an independent MP exists to make a statement, then you've got to make statements as an independent MP.

Zain 37:22

And Carter, reconcile that for me then in a writ period where you're going to struggle for oxygen and airtime. How do you kind of then take your national profile in this case that you're trying to build and trying to get in, but reconcile that with there's only voters from a certain part of this country and even more specifically, a certain riding that are actually determine your fate, right? Right. It's this very weird like running for leader, but you don't get the halo effect of a party and everything to push you forward. You only have a small subset that are ultimately choosing your fate there on. And like, what is the strategy there look like?

Carter 37:54

This is one of the challenges is the independent MP has a limited amount of money to spend, a limited amount of time to give, but they are going to have higher waste. So, you know, Jody Wilson-Raybould has a news story that appears on The National. there's a tremendous amount of waste because only 90 000 voters really matter to her but

Carter 38:16

she's got all that waste you know we run into it when we buy digital ads we can't just target the digital ad 100 it's gonna it's gonna leak a little bit you get some you get some wastage even some brochures get dropped in the wrong writings or you know mistakes get made where you you have you know a waste and and the

Carter 38:36

the problem and i think my point about the sixth party was you have to prepare to have lots of waste you have to prepare to be on the national you know the national news program from time to time as often as you can you have to prepare to be on the provincial um bc politics show you've got to prepare to be on the the the vancouver media because you can't just say well well, I'm going to just go and do the world's best ground game in my riding. You have to have that air war structure, and air war is all about waste.

Zain 39:12

Yeah, so that bar is just even higher. So I guess finally, I'm curious on this. If you were advising her heading into the writ period, what would your strategy be? Would it be still try to chip in for air war game, or are you at that point strictly on the ground connecting with Carter, to your point, the 90,000 or however it might be? to win this thing. I'm

Carter 39:31

I'm not going to claim her strategy because her strategy is written and you can now see it. Her strategy is I am going to release elements of this book in

Carter 39:40

in the in the run up to this election. They'll be, you know, at this point, her coverage today will give her more coverage, you know, not tomorrow, but when those book excerpts come out, she'll now be able to contextualize them differently. She'll now get interviews differently. How does it feel? You You know, how is it now afterwards? And you're able to, you're able to now craft a national narrative. This is her strategy. I'm not telling,

Carter 40:09

telling, you know, I'm not writing her strategy. I'm looking at what she's doing. And I'm saying, holy shit, that's her strategy.

Carter 40:15

I don't want to be like pretending to author that when it's so clearly is her authoring it. Corey,

Zain 40:20

Corey, flip the script then. If you're the liberals or, you know, you've said they engage her too much. Suppose you're her local competition there. What are you doing? If you know, like you, to Carter's point, you know, this is coming. There's excerpts might be coming any week now, as both of you have said. How do you prepare for this? How do you engage? How do you more importantly, perhaps not engage with something like this?

Corey 40:43

depends on if you are the government or another opposition party but you know fundamentally what you want to be able to say is i can

Corey 40:50

can do things that she cannot do for for you as constituents i can i have an opportunity to be part of government i have an opportunity to influence government in big ways if you are opposition to the liberals you can say i can take the message that she is taking and deliver it with more effect because i will be part of a caucus that that has the ability to do that, and ultimately, as a constituency, you will be better represented than you would be outside of the party system, effectively. And

Corey 41:17

that's it, right? I mean, if what they exist to do, again, go back to my thesis, is to be a statement, you have to say, either reject the statement, or I can make the statement more strongly, depending on where you are in the conversation, the political spectrum, all of that.

Corey 41:37

it's a tough road right it's

Corey 41:38

it's difficult especially if somebody has star power um because you've got to be very careful that you're not kind of signing your own death warrant by by you know pushing them up too far and saying yeah what they're doing is awesome but you

Corey 41:53

you also if they if there's a clear statement voter out there you sort of want to co-opt it and

Corey 41:57

and that's that's the trickiness of being a local candidate during an election like that i

Zain 42:02

i find that fascinating i'm I'm going to leave that segment there, leave our segment single shingle, move on to our next segment, double dipping. That is right. We're going to a story coming out of, well, no other place, Corey. It's Ottawa, the center of the world. The Liberal Caucus Office has hired a firm that helps run the party's digital campaign. I want to talk about this. So the Liberal Research Bureau, a taxpayer-funded office that supports the Trudeau government MPs, used parliamentary money to hire a company that plays a key role in re-electing Liberal candidates. This same company, Data Sciences Incorporated, runs the digital operation, the ads, the website, the whole overarching support for the federal campaigns and has been doing so for the last few of them at least. East. It's run by a close friend of the prime minister's. And simultaneously, the same firm is providing support to not just the Liberal Party, but this public taxpayer-funded Liberal Research Bureau to the tune of $75,000 to provide IT support and back-end office support. I don't want to talk about an HR and procurement contract here, but what I do want to talk about is this sort of relationship. And I think that's probably the right word, Corey, relationship between party and taxpayer funded extension of the party, what maybe even some MPs feel it's that, versus relationship between this firm and the prime minister, very close with the individual that runs this firm. And maybe get a sense of, A, A, how common is this? Is this actually scandal worthy? And B, is there any sort of political meat on the bone here? Or is this something that, you know, every political party kind of engages in if they've got the opportunity and, you know, stones

Zain 43:53

stones and glass houses situation? But Corey, maybe I'll go to you first for some top line thoughts on what you think when you hear this story, first of all.

Corey 44:00

Well, it's not uncommon. And I think part of the reason is caucuses live in this hazy ground between you know government public and the political party like the caucus exists to grind an axe and it carries more more

Corey 44:16

more political messaging or more partisan messaging than say you know the government of canada ever could and as a result they want people who reflect their views and reinforce their views like you're not gonna you're not just you're not just buying off the shelf here you need somebody who actually supports the liberal vision and that's true whether you're at the caucus office or at the party office, and that starts to narrow the number of suppliers you have available to you. And so I think that there's actually pretty natural reasons why caucuses and parties often end up using the same suppliers, because they both need to be champions of the cause, or practically speaking. I mean, I know some people could say, well, for shame, the caucus shouldn't do that. But I mean, welcome to the real world population, a little over 7 billion, right? But there is a bit of an interesting thought experiment here for you, which is if the liberal party buys office 365 from microsoft can the caucus well sure i don't think anybody would object to that right well how about bell mobility okay

Corey 45:13

okay probably catering service yeah i guess that's getting a little bit different how about a lawyer how about pr that starts to get a bit murky and the reason it gets murky and the reason political parties and caucuses can get themselves into trouble on this very point we're discussing is they're

Corey 45:29

they're not prefix a right like Like, they charge different amounts based on the amount of work they do. And it's not hard to imagine that a

Corey 45:43

could say, okay, we're going to pay you out of the caucus budget the equivalent of $200 an hour, and we're going to pay you out of the party office about $100 an hour, but it all nets out to about $150. Because that is basically stealing $50 an hour from the government of Canada, even though it is money that they're allowed to use for more political

Corey 46:02

purposes, I guess I would say, than the other money. So that's the complication. That's the difficulty. But the reality is the general public doesn't have a great understanding of the delineation between party, caucus, government, individual to begin with. So it's hard for me to imagine this is going to be like a fatal, fatal issue, especially because I think if you start working through some of those contracts, not that you could, because parties don't have to release those lists, you'd see a lot of crossover between caucus use and party use for the reasons I said.

Zain 46:33

Carter, is this crossover a concern? Is it common? Both of those questions for you.

Carter 46:38

I think it is a concern. I'm not sure how common it is anymore. It used to be very common. It used to be that you worked on a leadership campaign or you worked on an election campaign, and the contracts would then flow. I mean, in Alberta, we have a long history of that under Klein as premier, and things started to get kind of cleaned up in the 2000s. Corey has made the point at my expense before that corruption's not that long ago in Canadian politics. I was trying to argue that we're not seeing much in the way of corruption. I'm not going to argue that this is corrupt necessarily, but it certainly isn't great. I mean, you know, Thomas Pitfield, the person who is leading this organization, ran Justin Trudeau's digital campaign in his leadership. He's been with him through the 2015 election. The 2019 election, I argue, you know, will likely be with him in the 2021 election. You

Carter 47:33

know, I've worked on some of these elections. I've seen the packages that are sold. They're expensive packages. There's a lot of money being made by this organization. And a lot more money than it would appear is made by the $75,000 that they're getting to service the caucus. So forgetting, forgetting about the forgetting

Carter 47:54

forgetting about whether or not it is corrupt, it looks bad. And that has been what has been driven out largely out of Canadian politics. I know that as an election practitioner, as someone who does elections, I know I'm highly unlikely to be hired by a government by

Carter 48:12

by the if I win an election for my candidate, because the perception problem is far too difficult for them to get past. why they chose to do this for such a minuscule amount

Carter 48:23

amount of money also

Carter 48:24

also makes me crazy you know cory brings up the idea of office 365 i mean that's

Carter 48:30

that's an inconsequential expenditure in the overall scheme of things and everybody's buying everybody buys the same things but uh this this just feels like um it's too little money for a company that's been getting too much money from from from their relationship with Justin Trudeau. And that's not even starting to cover off the relationship with the president of the party. Right. Like this is this is a relationship that goes layers deep.

Zain 48:59

That's right. Yeah. The partner of the individual who runs the firm was the former president of the Liberal Party. So Carter's mentioning there, Corey, you know, I guess the question I have is, where's the political opportunity here? If you're a tool like what What he's trying to go after is trying to make this about, you know, the key word here, relationships. He's trying to say, Tom Pitfield, lifelong friend of Justin Trudeau, another unethical relationship dealing like this, you know, trying to create a pattern here. Is that where the political opportunity lies? If there does, and would you, if you were advising the NDs or the conservatives, look at that as fertile ground to make some hay from?

Corey 49:41

It's more brushstrokes on the painting in Justin Trudeau's attic, right? It's the unethical, bloated, awful look that Aaron O'Toole is trying to paint for this prime minister of ours. And in that sense, I think it's more kind of the, I can see some smoke, there's a bit of noise, pick your metaphor here. But ultimately, it's less about the specifics of this and more about the general overall vibe you get, or at least that Aaron O'Toole wants you to get when you think about the Liberal Party of Canada, right? right? A little too cozy with their friends, a little too free with money that they shouldn't be so free with. They can't really see the difference between party and government. And, you know, who loses at the end? All of us, right? All of us lose for any number of reasons. There's the ethics of it. There's the actual cash involved. All of us. So I don't think that we are going to be talking per se about the specifics. But absolutely, I think if the The conservatives could turn, you know, turn it into a buzzword, you know, just almost like a just say it, you know, say the name. And then all of a sudden everybody gets gets upset at a rally. I'm sure they would be happy to do so. But ultimately, it's just it's it's it's just layering paint on paint. It's the fine strokes. It doesn't fundamentally change the story that Aaron O'Toole is trying to tell. It's just more texture.

Zain 51:05

Carter, would you tell him to keep telling that story? And maybe I'll be more specific. Is the ballot box question for O'Toole starting to seem like around Trudeau's, like, you

Zain 51:15

you know, we and island and stuff

Corey 51:18

stuff like this? I spend that forever. It's forever, Zane. I

Zain 51:21

I agree. But do you feel like it's just now doubling down on that? Or is anything fundamentally changed in your mind over the course of the last, you know, three, four months since we've examined O'Toole's overarching strategy? It just

Carter 51:31

just strikes me that there was an opportunity, but no one's actually grabbed it. It's not a real thing. O'Toole remains very unpopular. He's not been able to make any of these things stick. And Justin Trudeau has slid through them all. And I suspect that this stupid, unforced error is going to just be another thing that Justin Trudeau slides through. He does. That's what he does.

Zain 52:00

Corey, anything to add before we wrap it up here?

Corey 52:03

Since he's been elected leader, he's been portraying himself as the ethical alternative to Justin Trudeau's leadership. And so I give him major points for message discipline. The question has to become, though, do

Corey 52:15

do people care? Is this, you know, is this something that Canadians care about? Because at this point, we're not seeing a ton of evidence that in the polls or in the reaction to the various mini scandals that the Liberals have faced.

Zain 52:27

We'll leave that there and let's move it to our headlines. Guys, I'm going to start with in reverse order because the headlines are now at the end of the show for today. I'm going to start with our more serious headline and then we'll jump it into the ones that I know Stephen Carter and I want to talk about. Corey, you will manage as Stephen Carter and I talk about some of our favorite topics, including, yes, guys, I'll tease it now. There is a fast food story. Listen,

Carter 52:48

Listen, my Brisbane Lions also kicked some ass, so I'm pretty happy right now.

Zain 52:52

Don't really care. Don't care about outside. Don't care about the Lions. um cory we're good on the basketball front uh post media this one comes to us from post media liberals polled canadians before choosing their covet 19 economic recovery slogan that's right the liberals polled a series of um slogans for their economic recovery before landing on build back better uh which was already in vogue in the united states in the united kingdom they also polled other alternatives including the green recovery a result resilient recovery etc et cetera, et cetera. What I wanted to talk to you guys about here is how common is this? I know we talk about polling from the purposes of the horse race, but Corey, maybe I'm going to start with you. Governments polling on a singular phrase and a brand, common or is this overwrought and out of the ordinary from your tremendous wisdom and experience?

Corey 53:45

It's not uncommon. It's not uncommon. Governments have an awful lot of mechanisms available to them to poll. I think there's a couple of things I would observe. One is the bigger the project, the more likely this kind of polling is going to be. And there is no bigger project than how are we going to spend all of these billions of dollars and get Canada out of COVID-19 doldrums. The second thing I would say is governments have an awful lot of mechanisms that just pass through them regularly, monthly surveys, bi-monthly surveys, quarterly surveys, particularly at at the federal level where there's a little bit more money to put towards those projects. And it's not a particularly difficult task to just say, we're going to do a bit of, we're going to add to that. We're going to augment, we're going to plus on to the previous focus groups or polls we were doing. And I haven't seen enough to know for certain whether the details were a totally distinct project. I think it probably was based on the fact it came through, but not uncommon. common. Polling is just very normal in politics these days, doubly so at the federal level, because again, the scale is just so big. But even in Alberta, I can tell you, we had daily tracking on government approvals at various points. We had flash polling we would do when there were major issues available. We had polling that was on a monthly basis that provided some some sort of consistent baseline. And we had regular quarterly and annual polls that dealt with matters like this. And we would just bolt on questions in addition to various project work that would occur. So not shocking to me at all.

Zain 55:18

Carter, any cautions for polling as related to headline messages or as related to campaign slogans that might be different than kind of polling and catching the state of the race?

Carter 55:31

Well, I think that most of the time, these these things are so buried. People don't even realize what they've been pulled on. Um, you know, the polls, it's not unusual to pull this type of stuff. It's not unusual to pull issues. It's not unusual to pull message testing. Um, you know, I think all three of us have been involved in message testing and testing out which words work better or how, how certain phrasing may work better than, than another phrasing. This is the norm. This is what we do on a regular basis. And, And I'm shocked

Carter 56:03

shocked that people are shocked. And this is one of the things, actually, that I've been railing about with polls. So often the media simply covers the top two questions, you know, like decided and leaning.

Carter 56:17

You know, dig in. Tell me what the next question is. Tell me what the questions were that were at the bottom of the poll. Because you pay basically the same amount of money to poll on one question as you do to poll on 36 questions. So you

Carter 56:31

you may as well pull on 36 questions, and most governments are. So what are

Carter 56:35

are the questions at the bottom of the poll?

Corey 56:39

In a funny way, I think message testing gets a rap as the most nefarious government testing because it feels like it's manipulative, right? It's people trying to make you feel a different way about something based on the words you choose. I look at it a little bit differently. In some ways, I feel message testing is the most innocuous testing because you're not even talking about the policy, you're talking about how you frame a certain policy, but you're going to do the policy anyways. And so you're not just being a weathervane where you're just picking your policy based on what the majority opinion is, but you're thinking about these things consistently. Message testing, though, is funny because many people will say that's more appropriately done by political parties. But I can tell you, as somebody who's been a professional communicator in many contexts, in many organizations, message testing is done to to make sure that the thing you are trying to say is heard by the audience that you need to hear it. And there's not anything inherently wrong with that, right? It's about clarity. It's about making sure that the thing you say conveys the thing you want it to say to the people that you're talking to.

Zain 57:43

I was not intending to go down a deep dive, and I'll promise I won't. But, Corey, this is interesting to me. So suppose someone came to you with these three options, right? Build back better, first place, you know, Green New Deal was also polled. We need a more resilient country. tree we need to build back better uh those were like the the the suite that were tested what were some of the the questions you would ask to that group that would kind of bring that to you let's say they gave you that one sheet and said cory we've got a winner this one's it uh what would you kind of ask them what would you kind of follow up with what would some of the contours that you and nuance you would add with your communications head on if this was you know your department uh that you were given this uh this responsibility charged to

Corey 58:23

to make a decision so

Corey 58:25

so i understand you're You're saying like somebody said, we've got these three options. We want to know which one's best. Yeah.

Zain 58:29

Yeah. So they're saying,

Zain 58:30

Corey, the poll's in. The poll is in. This one's

Corey 58:32

one's in first place.

Zain 58:33

The poll's in. First place. Are we just to go? Do we just make a decision by the numbers, Corey? Or what, I guess what I'm trying to say is like, is it just an in and out, like input output? Yeah, great. I want to know like, what would you say to kind of nuance it or make them stress test or say this is only going to inform but not dictate those sort of things that I'd be curious to hear from you.

Corey 58:51

So that's an excellent question. And I think the first thing I would say is rarely do you get a clear winner on these things, right? You will define – you'll probably have multiple focus groups. You'll have focus groups that represent, say, women in downtown Toronto. And you'll have another focus group that is rural men. And you look at how they react to it. And there's a – this is where it becomes as much art as science, even putting aside whether it's statistically representative to get a focus group together, right? And you say, well, they liked that one. The other group liked that one. uh but

Corey 59:20

but i you know and and they each dislike the other one but that one just seemed to dislike it more and i think that there's more ability to move it or that was less offensive to them and i think we saw some of that in the idea of the green new deal reporting since people saw it as an assault on alberta yeah that's

Corey 59:35

that's right so for all we know it was absurdly maybe it was the most popular with certain demographics right but it was just decided it was too negative with other demographics and it moves forward so the questions you're asking is first

Corey 59:46

first of all how who liked it right you also would do a bit of a stress test on how did you determine whether they liked it or not did you just give them three slogans and say hey how do you feel about these why don't you just on the chart put the words that come to your mind for each of these slogans did you have a conversation ahead of time that primed the pump pump

Corey 1:00:05

pump what did that conversation look like did you do any kind of quantitative polling to back up what the focus groups opinions sort of moved into because it's It's very common to have the conversation in a focus group and then validate it with a broader population by doing a quick poll on it, right, either on one or multiple options just to see that you've got something that's a little more statistically significant. And then ultimately, it does come down to kind of personal preference of politicians, what we'd call in a corporate setting, managerial preference. Managerial preference matters. At the end of the day, is Justin Trudeau comfortable saying, green new deal, or is he comfortable saying, build back better?

Corey 1:00:39

And, and there is, there is that element of it that comes into it as well, as well as kind of forecasting how you might need to use these slogans in the future. So, I mean, I guess what I would say about any kind of testing of this nature is, you

Corey 1:00:53

you should look, you should follow your data. And I think most political

Corey 1:00:57

political people don't do as good of a job as I would want them to, to follow data, right? To say, okay, they said that, so I heard them. Because they'll quite often try to contort

Corey 1:01:06

contort themselves into why the thing they always wanted was the thing that the focus group said. Or, yeah, but did you see that? And, you know, there's this little glimmer of hope there or whatnot. But as much as you should follow your data, you should be aware that it is just one input. And while a very important input, it needs to be weighed against a variety of other inputs that are available to you as well, particularly in message testing, because there's a poetry to language. And there's the fact that very few people are going to see the slogans on their own. They're going to see them in the context of other things. And I guess

Corey 1:01:37

guess I jumped the path of saying, but I also want to say, the messenger matters, too. So you might come with a message that works, and people might be like, love that message. But when they hear it's from the conservatives, they'll react differently than if they hear it's from the liberals, the exact same message.

Zain 1:01:52

carter final word on this same same sort of outline right if this was being presented to you uh in your professional capacity we've got a we think we've got a winner what additional questions or what questions would you highlight that cory's already put on the table that you would that would be important to you to kind of make a strategic strategic sort of decision and an outcome uh for for the party or for the leader for the institution whatever it may be well

Carter 1:02:16

well first First, we need to do a deep dive episode on this. So write that down because this isn't going to be nearly enough. But the first question I would ask is why? Why did we have a winner? So I tend to test against like a moral foundations type of theory or different value set structures. And there's a bunch of different ones that are available that you can test towards. And I'd want to try and see. I'm such a nerd.

Carter 1:02:39

I'm such a nerd. I'm such a nerd. And I want to understand why the words mattered and what emotions may have been triggered within certain value sets. And then I would probably look at the people who are voting for us and say, OK,

Carter 1:02:57

this something that will trigger beyond just they like the

Carter 1:03:02

right? So it could be that they just like the alliteration, or

Carter 1:03:05

or it could be that there was a foundational moral values

Carter 1:03:10

values shift that we can see, and the

Carter 1:03:14

the alliteration is meaningless. But

Carter 1:03:17

But the value shift, if we can hold that through the entire election campaign, then chances are we'll win the election.

Zain 1:03:25

I'm going to leave that headline there. I will make that note. Let's move it on to our next headline. line. Carter, I know we have been tracking this, the ongoing carrots and sticks of vaccine incentives and punishments. Well, this one comes to us. Corey hates this, which makes us love it, Carter. Yeah,

Carter 1:03:40

exactly. This one comes to us from WGN.

Zain 1:03:42

WGN. Quote, I'll inject the vaccine in your butt, unquote. Philippines president threatens to arrest those who refuse vaccination. That's right. The dictator, Rodrigo Duterte, has suggested that he's going to arrest people People who don't get the vaccine and, quote unquote, inject the vaccine in their butt. Stephen Carter, we have addressed lotteries, we've addressed guns, weed, burgers, de Blasio doing whatever he does. Thoughts on this newest approach?

Carter 1:04:12

You know what? I mean, mandatory vaccinations probably are going to work. You know, I mean, this this is not a society for whom they have a lot of say left. They don't feel like this is they're not going to be parades in the streets about their rights being infringed. I would imagine that most people, you know, there may be a small group of people who who choose not to get vaccinated. But I suspect most people will get vaccinated because it's that's that's the way it works there. Right. Like it's not like if we had mandatory vaccinations being proposed in British Columbia, I think that you'd see a totally different situation. But when it's proposed in the Philippines, it's probably going to work. Well,

Zain 1:04:50

Well, here's the thing, Corey. I am not a big fan of dictators, anti-democratic dictators. But I am, if I had to choose dictators, I would like them to be pro-vax, like Duterte. So any thoughts here on this approach and whether it's got any portability, you feel?

Corey 1:05:06

i know it has no portability let's just start there there's

Corey 1:05:10

there's also great irony that a man who was who has been credibly accused of killing drug addicts is now saying you must get your needles right and you know it's um it's just kind of the the irony that is the the life of uh somebody who lives in 2021 i

Corey 1:05:26

don't even think i think it's a voluntary vaccine in the philippines still so So under what grounds is he going to arrest them? The whole thing is totally baffling, but people should get their needles.

Zain 1:05:36

Added to the list of options. Let's move it on to our next headline. This one comes to us from the New York Times. Lab analysis of Subway tuna sandwiches fails to identify tuna DNA. That is right. A reporter has acquired more than 60 inches worth of Subway tuna sandwiches from three L.A. storefronts. How many inches? 60 inches, Carter. 60

Zain 1:05:58

60 inches. Yeah, just so you know. that engaged a specialized fish testing lab. Don't ask. Researchers were unable to pinpoint a species. There's two conclusions a lab spokesperson told the Times. One, it's so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn't make an identification. Number two, we don't identify any fish. Corey, Subway, Riddled, is there bread, real bread? Is there tuna, real tuna? The question I have for you, though, Corey, do you care? Would you even care? Does it even bother you that it may not even be real bread and real tuna? I don't know your tuna eating habits. I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat tuna.

Zain 1:06:39

Okay, well, whatever. Comments overall, then, on the story, as we do as experts in the fast food domain.

Corey 1:06:47

I love their bread. Not going to stop just because it's made of plastic. I think it's interesting that the New York Times talked about it being 60 inches. I mean, that's a weird measurement for tuna, for starters. But also, it's five subs, right? It's five 12-inch subs. Is that not what we're sort of identifying? Maybe

Carter 1:07:03

Maybe they got 10 of the six inches.

Corey 1:07:06

I don't think that Subway is putting fake tuna in their subs. I think it's, you know, Occam's razor here. It's much more likely that aliens did it.

Corey 1:07:19

what's the go-to subway order

Carter 1:07:21

uh i don't cory

Zain 1:07:24

what's the go-to subway order

Carter 1:07:25

don't go to subway like

Corey 1:07:27

like veggie sub with spinach pickles

Carter 1:07:31

you're just wrong carter

Zain 1:07:33

carter as the as the resident fast food expert who's got hot takes uh on on sandwich art uh Laid on us.

Carter 1:07:43

literally don't buy us. Okay, get them three meat one. What's the three meat one? Who goes

Carter 1:07:48

goes to Subway? Go

Carter 1:07:50

Go to Mr. Submarine. Go to Mr. Submarine. This is the good Canadian option. I was

Zain 1:07:55

was looking forward to this story. What a trade wreck. I'm glad the headlines are at the end of the show. Yeah, I know. No one

Carter 1:08:00

one will listen to

Zain 1:08:00

to you. If anybody's still listening, limp out of this episode. Yeah, literally you had the highest level of enthusiasm talking about the fucking fish filet. but now you got nothing on tuna carter anyways fish fillet

Carter 1:08:12

fillet was an important topic i was an important segment this this is not let's

Zain 1:08:16

let's move it on to our next headline from the montreal gazette celine dion a traitor poses in vegas golden knights attire that is right the photo that had habs fans asking where celine dion's heart beats now did not have the singer's stamp of approval although it was fascinating had celine dion in vegas golden knights geared all over the jumbotron i'm sure that is grade a trolling of course montreal gets the last laugh as they as they win the series cory thoughts i

Corey 1:08:47

don't have anything i think this episode's over fantastic

Zain 1:08:52

i'll tell you this okay

Zain 1:08:56

okay here let me just let me just tell you this here's what i had next just so just so i can burn these things okay i had i had the uh city that's sinking aka miami welcoming bitcoin miners i also had i also had this which i think you may want to discuss uh protesters block a section of nova scotia highway over new covid restrictions on border closures i

Corey 1:09:20

i want to talk about the bitcoin one because uh stephen carter is a big nano cryptocurrency fan and i've got a a wallet address i'd like to share with our listeners here absolutely

Zain 1:09:31

absolutely is there an occasion it was a belated birthday cory please go ahead head i

Corey 1:09:38

uh you know what don't do it i'll get it out i'll get it out i think it's really important that we do this here uh yeah no

Zain 1:09:44

not that's fine i mean

Carter 1:09:47

what was the second one that i'm supposed to have a thought on uh

Zain 1:09:49

uh carter the irony of people closing down the borders as a protest to border closures yeah

Carter 1:09:55

yeah that was ridiculously stupid great

Zain 1:09:58

great take thank you Corey, have we given you, have we bought you enough time?

Corey 1:10:03

So, no, I can't really see it here. But the important thing is that, do you know two people actually sent cryptocurrency to Stephen Carter?

Carter 1:10:11

I'm rich now, is what I'm doing. Yeah, you're

Corey 1:10:12

you're doing really well. You have $3.10 worth of nano. Congratulations, my friend. Oh,

Carter 1:10:18

Oh, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to buy a half tuna sub at Subway.

Zain 1:10:21

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to end this fucking disaster. These last 10 minutes have been the worst of

Zain 1:10:26

of my life. This is how we

Carter 1:10:26

we start the show sometimes? times? Does anybody make it past this section? I can see why people drop off.

Zain 1:10:32

We'll leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 934 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Veldry. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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