Transcript
Zain
0:02
This is The Strategist, episode 934. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Gents, what is going on?
Carter
0:10
You know, I didn't go outside today, so I have really nothing to talk about in the preamble, although I did make my Australian rules football predictions today. So I have a good three minutes on that. What are your aims to be here?
Zain
0:25
here? Like, why are you here? here just you know
Zain
0:28
know 30 seconds in carter and you're already alienating
Carter
0:31
alienating the audience i share my love for i
Carter
0:34
share my love for australian rules i get a lot of positive feedback on twitter about the australian football people love the
Zain
0:42
need to find a topic with steven that him and i can jam on because usually you and i oh carter how about this um anthony jeselnik is in a beef with leslie jones oh
Carter
0:51
oh that's perfect i don't know who leslie jones is but i love I love that Anthony Jesladek's involved.
Zain
0:57
Yeah. One of our favorite comedians, Anthony Jesladek, is involved in this protracted, unnecessary beef with Leslie Jones because she bumped him at a comedy club. And he has, quote-unquote, he's ready to go to war against her, Carter, which is a lesson for this podcast. We should be going to war more often. Yeah, we should be going
Carter
1:13
going to war more often.
Carter
1:15
Which brings me to Corey
Zain
1:16
Corey Hogan. Corey, this is our five-star review pledge drive episode, annual tradition. But, you know, every year we rotate reading the copy, talking about the five-star review pledge drive this year. It's, of course, handed over to you. So I'm not even going to ask you how your weekend was, how your week was. You're talking just about the five-star review pledge drive.
Corey
1:38
Yeah, and, you know, last year, Carter did such a good job, he forgot to do the pledge drive. But the year before, when
Corey
1:44
you did it, I mean, that was the recording that got us that Best of Calgary award, I believe. It was really moving. moving uh you know telling the story of uh children of immigrants and and how much the podcast meant to you i i thought it was a bit much myself but uh i'm told that ipods everywhere were covered in tears uh and um just
Corey
2:04
just this is not gonna be tears yeah
Corey
2:09
so listen you think this is a free show this is not a free show it has a cost and yes it costs money but money means nothing I once bought 30,000 Twitter followers for a co-worker just to piss him off and then bought him an expensive apology cake in a flavor I knew he didn't like. I don't care about money.
Corey
2:26
The real cost to the strategists is egos. Inflated egos are required for us to twice a week step on the rake that is this show that Zane puts down for us. And this
Corey
2:37
this show is fueled by five-star reviews. So as Zane said, once a year we ask you, our listeners, to go to Apple Podcasts on your computer, on your phone, on your iPad, on your mom's iPad. We don't want any of that I use Spotify shit. And give us a five-star review.
Corey
2:54
If you've already given us a five-star review, update your five-star review. Make it better. Make it a six-star review with your words.
Corey
3:01
Now you're asking yourself, does this help our rankings? Does this help people find our show?
Corey
3:05
It does not. No
Carter
3:05
No influence at all. It
Corey
3:08
helps Stephen Carter's children look at him without shame in their eyes.
Corey
3:13
Zane Velgey maintain an erection for over four hours, which gives him an excuse to consult his physician.
Corey
3:20
And it gives me the joy of knowing we will continue to be much more highly rated than Canada Land, that piece of shit podcast just floating out there in the ether. So give us five-star reviews. Now
Corey
3:31
Now is an excellent time to pause and do so. Or maybe don't pause. I think maybe we'll give Carter one minute to talk about Australian rules football. So just go. Open the app. Get it done.
Corey
3:42
this only happens once a year.
Zain
3:47
Before we give Carter his moment in the sun to talk about Australian rules, is it rugby or football? I don't know. I don't even know. Football. I cut you off. I cut you off at Australian rules. I don't even know what it is. Just make sure you're going to give Carter his one minute. So the Cisco hold music equivalent will come on with just Stephen Carter. But just remember, it is The Strategists and not Freed Zakaria GPS. I am not Freed Zakaria. As I know it has happened in the past, the podcast is The Strategists. Just type that in. Carter, just to give people their time as they do that, please take it away.
Carter
4:22
Well, I mean, I know that everybody's trying to figure out who to pick between Collingwood. No, no, we can't
Corey
4:26
do this. No, I'm
Carter
4:26
I'm sorry. No, we're not going to. Yeah,
Carter
4:29
Collingwood in North Melbourne.
Zain
4:29
Let's move it on to our headlines. headlines guys it's thursday it's headlines time now have we received from feedback on the headlines there you know cory we received some in-game feedback what we call some in-game adjustments from you last time saying oh and wasn't it better when the headlines were about politics we're talking about things that are not about politics i heard that i picked up on it and you're not the only one uh which brings me to our first headline which comes to us from cbs Yes, McDonald's robber demands chicken nuggets, has
Zain
5:04
has to accept breakfast food because it's still too early.
Zain
5:09
That is correct. McDonald's is really strict about what lunchtime starts. A man has been jailed for robbing a McDonald's in England and making off with not only some cash, but also with some food. Unfortunately for him, Stephen Carter, not only did he get caught, but he wasn't even able to get the chicken nuggets because, of course, it was 10.30 a.m. and they weren't serving said chicken nuggets. He's now in jail for robbing $600 and having some free chicken McNuggets. Stephen Carter, I have to start with you with an obvious question. He did not ask for a Filet-O-Fish.
Carter
5:43
No, it's a rookie move to ask for the Filet-O-Fish before 10.30, obviously. So this is a great opportunity to bring up the
Carter
5:50
the perfect breakfast order. And, of course, it is a sausage and egg McMuffin, no cheese. Cheese. That's the key. The cheese is tragic. So
Carter
5:57
So sausage and egg McMuffin, no cheese, two hash browns, a cup of coffee, and the orange juice. It's the addition of the orange juice that
Carter
6:04
that makes it art.
Zain
6:06
Corey, can we pull it up? We have to do it. I want you to respond, but can we pull it up? The calorie counter? Yeah, the calorie counter. Stephen Carter. No,
Corey
6:14
I think I just kind of like glazed into a diabetic shock just thinking about the meal he described there. I think it's 1,200.
Corey
6:22
I think it's 1
Carter
6:25
There's no way it's over 1,000 calories. It's definitely 1
Zain
6:28
1,200. I do not think Corey
Carter
6:31
pulling anything up. I
Carter
6:31
I took off the cheese. That's true, you did. The cheese is the death part. That's
Carter
6:34
That's a great point.
Carter
6:35
point. Take the cheese off. It goes under 850.
Corey
6:41
Those are 300 apiece at least. That's like taking the cherry off a sundae. You're not impressing us with your lack of cheese.
Corey
6:49
Let's talk about this robber. $600 is pretty good. Who knew that there was $600 cash? in a register in this day and age. I think that's really impressive. That tells me that the good people of the United Kingdom, they need to up their switch usage. They need to use digital currencies a little bit more. But it also tells me that the state of McDonald's is strong. So buy. This is a buy. We're putting this as a buy on the strategist board.
Zain
7:16
Yeah, we're putting it as a buy indeed. I like that. Look at this. We can do political stories here. Our next headline comes to us from CTV. TV, New Jersey breweries will reward vaccinated residents with free beer. That is right. New Jersey residents can now receive a free beer for proof of COVID-19 vaccination as part of the state's new vaccine incentive program. I think we heard about ice cream in Russia not too long ago, Carter. On Monday, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced that participating New Jersey-based breweries would give people age 21 and older a free beer if they had received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in May. Corey, free beer for a vaccine, good idea?
Corey
7:58
It's better than not taking the vaccine at all. But if they really want to create an incentive in that 18 to 21 Joe Rogan has poisoned my brain crowd, they should be offering a free beer to residents 16 and over.
Corey
8:09
That is how you change numbers.
Carter
8:11
That's how you do it.
Carter
8:13
Let me tell you something. This just brings home how archaic the Alberta liquor laws are. because if Jason Kenney wanted to do that, he could not do that in Alberta and give away a free beer. You have to purchase, you have to buy beer in Alberta. You can't give it away for free at licensed establishments. So there you go. The breweries wouldn't be able to, you could do it in a tasting room. That's how archaic our liquor laws are. If you can't get a free beer for a vaccination, I don't even know what the hell is going on. Someone should run on that platform. It's a winner.
Zain
8:46
Carter, as far as vaccine incentives go, go, how does this one stack up for you?
Carter
8:50
I like it. I think that if you gave it to them before they got vaccinated, it'd even be better. So
Carter
8:55
So when you're standing in line for the vaccination, you just have a free beer.
Carter
8:59
That would get a lot of people into line, and
Carter
9:00
and you don't even have to tell them that they're being vaccinated. And the ill effects that happen the next day, you don't know if it's because of a hangover or because of the vaccine.
Carter
9:09
Okay, I like that.
Carter
9:11
Winning strategy. strategy just our
Zain
9:14
our next headline comes to us from cbs news here we go boulders block road in boulder canyon near boulder according to boulder city boulder county sheriff's office let me try that again boulders block road in boulder canyon near boulder according to boulder county sheriff's office yes we have found it cory hogan we have found the bob loblaws loblog of headlines guidelines once again boulders block road in boulder canyon near boulder according to boulder county's sheriff's office nailed
Corey
9:46
so at least two of those boulders are superfluous you could just get away with boulder blocks canyon in
Corey
9:53
in boulder road or whatever it is i don't know
Zain
9:55
know oh are we copy editing right now
Corey
9:56
now yeah i think we have to i think we gotta critique this this is this too long that's you know what that's your seo is gonna get hurt by that you've got to just tighten that up if you want people to share that thing you know carter
Corey
10:07
carter uh it is a story about the outside yeah
Carter
10:09
yeah i was immediately captivated this
Corey
10:13
is some of your best work zane yeah
Carter
10:16
from the beginning should
Zain
10:17
should bob blah blah's law blog just be bob's blog it could be i don't know it could be but
Zain
10:24
uh and our next headline comes to us from the associated Press. South Carolina House adds firing squad to execution methods. We talked about this in the past. We talked about Trump wanting to do this at a federal level when he was president. But yes, the South Carolina House voted Wednesday to add firing squad to the state's execution methods amid a lack of lethal injection drugs, a measure meant to jumpstart execution of states that once had one of the busiest debt chambers in the nation. Carter, it's
Zain
10:53
it's got a little dark on us. Yeah,
Carter
10:55
Yeah, I mean, I'm
Carter
10:57
I'm actually shocked that they didn't have death by Boulder. I'm a little disappointed. I mean, the Americans and their fixation on death and life imprisonment is pretty amazing. The other thing that you're not going to get in the headlines is that the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a 15-year-old that was given a life in prison sentence with no parole. 15 years old, and he's now in prison for the rest of his life. The United States is not a model of anything. They are a backwards nation with a gun problem, a death problem, and an incarceration problem. And thanks for reminding us how sick our southern neighbors are.
Corey
11:38
So they're the fourth state to do this. Utah, Oklahoma, one other I can't remember, in the south, I'm sure. They already do this. And they do this because lethal injection has been deemed, you
Corey
11:49
not humane in many cases. It's harder to get lethal injection drugs. And so rather than looking for other humane methods, they're just eager to find a way to kill people. And that's really unfortunate. Side note, you know the guillotine was created to be like a humane way to execute people because hanging was considered inhumane, firing squads inhumane. We are not so far away from states taking that back. I think the only thing holding them back is the notion that it might not be terrible for folks.
Carter
12:18
No, the only thing holding them back is it's from France.
Carter
12:21
That's the only reason. reason the
Corey
12:22
the freedom blade yeah
Carter
12:24
yeah the freedom blade that sucker's chopping off heads starting next week we
Carter
12:28
we should market that actually we could call it the freedom blade make some money
Zain
12:32
jesus christ carter uh still by the way i just want to remind you if you haven't done so uh after that extremely uh uh dark comment by stephen carter please leave us a five star review it is still the pledge drive the
Zain
12:44
the pledge drive keeps going uh the strategist uh is what what it is this is not the ali velshi podcast okay our next headline comes to us from global news katie telford agrees to appear at defense committee probing military sexual misconduct guys we have not talked about the story and i and i'm sure we should have earlier but let's do it now because this is a headline uh that that has a story uh that's been going on for the last couple of months at least behind it katie telford chief of staff to prime minister justin trudeau will will appear as a witness on Friday before the House of Commons Defense Committee probing military sexual assault. Conservative members of the committee had put forward a motion last Friday to invite Telford to testify, but Liberal MPs on the committee filibustered that motion. The meeting has been set to resume debate on that motion on Monday, but was abruptly canceled just minutes before the start. The committee heard last month from Elder Marquez, a former senior advisor to Trudeau, that he had been asked by either Telford or her assistant to pass an allegation against General Jonathan Vance to bureaucrats in March 2018, one day after the allegation was shared with Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan. Bureaucrats promptly opened and then abandoned that probe, but Telford appears to have never informed Trudeau of the allegation, which has led to intense scrutiny over what she knew and why she did not tell the prime minister, which brings us to what we are expecting to see on Friday, which brings us to a preamble of Harjit Sajjan, who is Minister Harjit Sajjan, who's been grilled by the conservatives on this issue and now calls by Aaron O'Toole in advance of Katie Talford testifying on Friday to resign. Carter, this is a loaded story with a lot of background, a lot of context. Is there anything you want to add contextually before we kind of get into what this might mean politically for the top political Well,
Carter
14:39
I don't. First of all, chiefs
Carter
14:43
chiefs of staff should not be brought in to testify to committees. This is a bad precedent. It implies a certain amount of difference
Carter
14:53
difference between the principal and the staff. And it also serves as a as a frame to defer responsibility from the minister responsible. Also, I think that not everything that goes into a chief of staff's ears has to come out her mouth to the to the minister. If this was dealt with properly from her point of view, it doesn't need to go back to the minister. There was accountability. There was a pathway through the bureaucracy to deal with this. I'm just not really a big fan of chiefs of staff or the leadership teams of a minister being dragged in front of a committee to testify. There's a lot of information that Katie Telford knows that probably shouldn't be brought forward to an open committee. And this just makes me very, very nervous for the state of our democracy and the state of the minister to staff relationships. Now, there'll be those who are hearing what I'm saying, and they're going to say, everything should be public. Everything should be open to being heard by all members of Parliament. And to those people, I say, stop being so fucking naive. Stop pretending like this is the way that the world works, because it doesn't work like that. that. There's lots of information that flows through a prime minister's office that MPs themselves aren't entitled to know, nor should they know. So my view is that this is a mistake to put Katie Telford in front of the committee, even if she stands in front of the committee and simply answers the questions in terms of what I expect to hear from her, which is, yes, I was given this accusation. Yes, I gave it to the bureaucracy as quickly as I could. And yes, yes, I believed it to be handled at that point. Now let me get the fuck off of this stand. I expect that that will be her testimony on Friday.
Carter
16:42
Nonetheless, I'm sure that the opposition will play gotcha politics with that. And as they have with the minister himself, Mr. Defense, but I really don't like this precedent. I don't like this precedent at all.
Zain
16:57
Carter, Corey, I'm coming to you in a second. Two quick, very quick questions. Carter, good strategy for the conservatives to ask her to appear and good strategy for the liberals to make her available?
Carter
17:08
Great strategy for the conservatives to ask. I mean, I'm not sure that they would be super keen on the prime minister's chief of staff being asked to testify against to a commons committee if the roles were reversed. But a good strategy for them to ask. Absolutely terrible strategy for the prime minister's office to acquiesce.
Zain
17:27
To make her available. Well, Corey Carter said a lot, three basic things that I took out of it. Number one, does not think it's great precedent overall or strategy to have political staffers or the prime minister's chief of staff to testify. And then he thinks good strategy for the conservatives, horrible strategy for the liberals acquiesce. Pick up on that from where you stand.
Corey
17:49
I don't agree with Stephen that this chief of staff role somehow puts you outside of the oversight of parliament,
Corey
17:56
parliament, right? I just don't agree with that. And I think that there has to be some sort of accountability. And I also believe parliament's powers should be pretty broad and pretty deep. And if they want to call the chief of staff, I think that's within their right. Right. And let's not forget, this is a minority parliament. If this was a majority parliament, the Liberals would have had the votes just to say no dice. But the reality is, the Liberals don't control the confidence of the House. The House is ultimately the body that you are responsible to, and the House has decided they want to talk to the Chief of Staff. So have at her. Now, I feel a lot of things about this issue. I mean, fundamentally, I think people should have acted and people should have taken allegations more seriously. And it pisses me off that we continue to be having this Groundhog Day approach to accusations of misconduct in the military. But I want to approach this with a little bit more nuance and talk about why decisions could or could not have been made by the chief of staff to the prime minister and what might have been going on in people's heads, right? The first is this theory of what the chief of staff role is, the original chief of staff. Eisenhower created the role because it was supposed to be a filter to deal with the things that don't need the boss's attention and bring to the boss with the supporting materials required the things that did need the boss's attention he took this from the military so this was like the first political chief of staff right and the whole basis of it is it's supposed to be complicated issues that you filter up judgment calls that need to be made by the the big boss this is not a complicated issue there is no judgment that needed to be issued here so if katie telford wants to deal with it and say if i can look into this bureaucracy i you know that to me is not unreasonable reasonable.
Corey
19:35
there is still like, there's a certain, it's
Corey
19:38
it's hard for me to imagine
Corey
19:41
that, that she wouldn't have said like, Oh, my goodness, this could be explosive. Right? Yeah. And quite often what political staff do in this situation now, to be clear, it requires it to be very clear what needs to be done still, because you don't want to be circumventing your elected leaders there. But there is a strategy of what we call plausible possible deniability, where
Corey
20:02
where you want to be making sure that you are not putting anything in front of your boss that's going to box them down the road, depending on the decision. And there are limits to that strategy, because ultimately, people will say, well,
Corey
20:13
well, you should have heard that your staff should have kept you up to speed on this, this did seem significant.
Corey
20:19
That to me is where I'm less sympathetic to the Prime Minister's office right now. But it's a pretty common strategy. Like, let's just let's just be honest about that the idea that you would say, Oh, oh, shit, I'm not bringing that to the premier, right? Like, I know what to do with that one, and it's better they don't know, or the prime minister. That happens in governments everywhere. You can say it shouldn't, that's fine.
Corey
20:41
But, you know, the
Corey
20:42
the premier, the prime minister, they can't deal with everything. And sometimes these decisions get made for all sorts of reasons.
Zain
20:51
Carter, the conservatives are saying something about this whole story that's being told just doesn't ring true. If she covered it up, she deserves to be fired, But if she didn't cover it up and she's not telling the truth, he needs to stand up, tell the truth, own up to what happened. Do you like where the conservatives are headed with this?
Carter
21:06
Well, no, I don't like it at all. I mean, I think that it misunderstands the direction and the intent. I mean, you
Carter
21:13
you don't. So what they're trying to imply, in my mind, is that in some fashion, the prime minister had accountability for the actions of General Vance. And I see their point. I mean, you know, the buck stops here kind of a thinking. But I don't want the prime minister to be the judge and jury on sexual harassment allegations. I want there to be a proper process in the bureaucracy for every employee, whether they're the junior clerk all the way up to deputy ministers or the chief of staff of the defense service. All of that should be subject to the same rules and process. process and one of the things that we try to skip over on these sexual harassment allegations is a due process due process has been seen as a negative element of this and i think it's just totally wrong due process that is well designed to protect the people who are making the allegations as well as well designed to to manage the people who are being alleged to have committed these these uh offenses is part of the system and and having the prime minister step in and weigh in in and say this is a major problem it subverts the system and puts undue pressure on the prime minister from what i can tell katie telford did the right thing if if she's correct if what is if the way you described it at the beginning of this segment is correct and
Carter
22:35
and katie telford was was given this information and she took it to the bureaucracy for it to be acted upon the failure is not hers the failure is that of the bureaucrats and there should be consequences there
Carter
22:46
there should be consequences for that failure because that failure is a story that has been told time and again on allegations of sexual misconduct but that that that misconduct or that the consequence does not need to be borne by katie telford nor the prime minister's office
Corey
23:03
so yeah if it is correct if if if and uh due process all things that i can agree with all sentiments that i think need to be unpacked but this is exactly why i don't think it's improper that it's going to committee that there is a lot of murkiness over all of this there's There's the general murkiness that often comes with situations like this because everybody, you know, sort of walks around it, doesn't want to address it head on. But then there's the specific murkiness of accusations of activities that happened and activities that didn't happen and stories that don't entirely add up. So let's have at it. Let's see what the committee figures out.
Corey
23:36
Let's see where this leads. Parliament is part of the due process that Stephen just put up on a pedestal. Let's go.
Carter
23:43
But should Parliament be part of the process? This is my problem with this. I don't like the politicization of the of the allegations of sexual harassment. It brings in an undue amount of pressure on the people who are bringing the allegations, because if it goes through a bureaucracy, if it goes through a process that it can be deemed to be fair and
Carter
24:03
and without politics, I think it is a much better process. It gives more anonymity to the people bringing the allegations. It keeps people safer in my mind. And I think that that should be the central element of of these allegations, making them more political. Corey, I just don't see how that works. I don't see how this becomes better.
Corey
24:25
For fuck's sake. I mean, that could have been an argument in the Nixon White House to say why you couldn't bring people forward. Let's just let this one play out. Let's figure out what happened and let the chips fall where they
Carter
24:35
they the Nixon White House. Two seconds on this one question.
Zain
24:40
She's going to testify on Friday. What advice would you give her? Very quickly, Carter and then Corey.
Carter
24:47
First of all, tell the truth. Secondly, tell the shortest story as humanly possible. And make sure that it's been well run through. This is not a time for ad-libbing. Make sure that you're well prepared.
Corey
24:59
All of the above and bring counsel.
Zain
25:02
We'll leave that segment there. Of course, our pledge drive continues. this is this is our strategist annual five-star review pledge drive it does continue uh once again if you just go to apple podcasts on your computer your smartphone or as cory would say your mom's ipad and you search the strategist not the medias on show uh you will of course find uh this program and be able to give us a five star review carter you're enjoying
Zain
25:29
think i've exhausted all of of us you get
Carter
25:33
get us into trouble friend you get us into trouble let's
Zain
25:36
let's move it on to our next segment our next segment thursdays are for doing nothing tuesdays are for doing what you should have done on thursday okay guys here we go we've got new restrictions in alberta i want to talk about this very quickly well relatively quickly we don't have to rush by it but there's a story here the latest public health restrictions in alberta to curb covet 19 were announced tuesday by premier and a live televised address. I walk through that a little bit slowly because I want to talk about the way it was done. The Emergency Management Cabinet Committee met earlier that day to approve new measures to help protect the health care system in the province. Each of the measures announced applied to businesses and municipalities where there were more than 50 cases per 100,000. That lowers the floor from the initial, correct me if I'm wrong, was it 250? That was applied, 250. And with more than 30 or more more active cases in a region. This now includes K-12 being online. If there's a workplace outbreak, you have to close for 10 days. Retail at 10% capacity. Patio closed. Tattoo parlors, hair salons, as of this Sunday, are closed. Restaurants will be limited to takeout. And social gatherings, currently, outdoor social gatherings, currently at 10, are now limited to five, amongst a few other items as well. But I think I hit the major ones. Corey, talk to me about the Kenny strategy here. And let's talk strategy overall, all, and then we'll talk about how he did it with the televised address, no direct questions. What do you think of what he did? And what do you think he was trying to do?
Corey
27:05
Well, that's interesting to me. And just yesterday, I listened to the episode that we did on, I guess, Sunday on this very matter. And we talked about Jason Kenney, and we talked about what he was doing.
Corey
27:15
I think we were roughly critical, but not brutal about some of the tactics he was taking. But one of the things that Stephen and I both said is that this idea of of closing the legislature for two weeks it's just hope unless he knows something we don't know because in two weeks the situation may not be different well with hindsight and in a very limited sense let me be clear i don't think we're being fair to jason kenney because he obviously did know something we didn't know which is that he was going to bring in a very let's face it very robust suite of of uh measures in the next week and i think that what he was trying to do again again, with the benefit of hindsight, with
Corey
27:54
with saying that the legislature would not be coming back together, and also on Monday saying big restrictions are coming tomorrow, was to telegraph this thing in such a way that everybody would sort of understand that this was going to happen around that date. I didn't necessarily catch it. I think the problem is, that
Corey
28:12
that only works if Albertans feel fundamentally you want to do these things. And I think a lot of the
Corey
28:16
the things Jason Kenney said as recently as, I don't know, Wednesday last week, suggested he wasn't that big on additional measures. So I don't think that his strategy landed the way he wanted. But then I started thinking, well, why? What was the logic there? And there's a really simple answer here. Orthodox Easter was on May 2nd. And just as we had a situation where Easter drove
Corey
28:38
drove restrictions coming after a weekend, last
Corey
28:42
last time we moved up, this was a way to sort of manage
Corey
28:46
manage a pressure that came from religious constituency of Jason Kenney's. And the other thing is, there's a very practical matter here, which is you bring the legislature back, and the very next day you send them around, people are going to get a little salty, and you might be making your situation a little bit worse, if that was your intention. So, you know, now that we have a
Corey
29:04
a better understanding of how that next couple of days we're going to go through, it all makes a little bit more sense. I still fault them pretty severely on communications. A lot of that was the way they set the table. uh i still for life of me will never understand why last week jason kenney was still saying lockdowns don't work if he was bringing in severe restrictions we're
Corey
29:23
we're not even a week later um but uh but it all you can kind of get what they were driving at now i think with all of the pieces on the table carter
Zain
29:32
carter do you agree with cory's analysis here in terms of you know the the the setting the stage, the, you know, helping yourself with a religious constituency, so to speak, and then leading into this more severe set of restrictions?
Carter
29:49
Yeah, I think that Corey's exactly right. I think that our
Carter
29:53
problem has been that Jason Kenney just fundamentally didn't want to do the right thing. He
Carter
29:58
He knew that the right thing was to do a more significant constraint on Albertans. It worked in British Columbia. British Columbia, at one point, we were talking about BC being on fire, just like Calgary, just like Alberta, just like Ontario. BC's case numbers are one third what the numbers are in Alberta. They are one quarter the number of people that are actually suffering from COVID-19. They took different actions than we did. And we're paying paying the price. In early April, we started to be worried about these variants. In mid-April, it was very keenly, we were very aware that we were around 15,000 total number of patients with COVID. We chose not to act because of religious holidays and the premier's religious beliefs. That is not, in my mind, a good enough reason. We don't respond to prayer when these things happened when obviously we didn't respond to religious holidays. So I'm extremely frustrated with this premier. All he has done is
Carter
31:01
is delayed our economic recovery by a month and a half. That's all he's done. Because if he'd taken the action that he was supposed to take in early April, we don't find ourselves in this situation here in mid-May or early May.
Zain
31:15
Corey, you wanted to jump in on this? Yeah,
Corey
31:16
Yeah, there's a broader lesson here. And Alberta provides no shortage of broader lessons that's part of the joy
Corey
31:22
joy of it all yeah yeah uh and another thing we said a couple days ago in a different context is that this is not a game that rewards subtlety talking about politics yeah yeah
Corey
31:32
and ambiguous signals are worse still and if you are intending to forecast that you're doing something like this you can't be sending counter signals within the same amount of distance there um the the appropriate approach for jason kenney if he was trying to do something Something like Doug Ford did in Ontario, which now it seems to me he was, which is saying, hey, new restrictions are coming in a couple of days, was actually to say that a little bit more clearly before Monday and allow people to know that this was happening. And then they could have beaten up on him and said, well, if they're coming in a couple of days, why the F aren't you doing them now? But that would have been better than the chaos that he created over the couple of days and making it look like he just decided now it's too bad and I've got to move into it come Monday, come Tuesday. interesting this you know this is it's so interesting how you can sort of look at some of the broader lessons of diplomacy when you're talking about politicians because you don't normally think of politicians as needing to do strong diplomatic signals to the public that they are elected by but jason kenney with all of the weird constituencies he has and all of the weird things going on absolutely needed uh needed the smoke signals to be clearer cory
Zain
32:41
cory you know you You mentioned lessons, so let's look forward rather than look backward, which, by the way, we will do in a second. Looking forward, now that he's announced these, Tuesday, he got it out there, it's there, vaccinations, you know, those measures have been, and I want to talk to you guys about if those are tied together, if that's a strategic tie-in as well. It's
Corey
33:01
It's obviously a strategic tie-in. You drop the bad news on Tuesday and the good news on Wednesday, and now all of a sudden millennials are being as annoying as Gen Xers were a couple of weeks earlier when everything opened. We're
Zain
33:12
We're all the same. And of course, the story there is that is it 13 and above now open and 12 and above as of Monday will be will be open in Alberta for vaccinations. Before we jump back to how we did this and the vaccination story a little bit more. Carter, talk to me about this lessons for Kenny going forward, rather than in the short term, but going forward. Corey mentions about broader lessons that you learn about diplomacy. What are lessons Kenny needs to be sure to follow going forward, knowing that he's instilled these tougher restrictions and knowing that he's got the multiplicity of various interests in his caucus? What would you advise him today
Zain
33:53
today going forward? uh
Carter
33:55
uh commitment to action for an extra week or two will save him from a month in a month's time so don't walk away from this early if you look at we have charts being produced by cbc calgary here uh and and every time i look at the chart i'm always looking at when we actually chose to ease restrictions and every time you ease the restriction if you don't have things under control things go right back up so you have to be in a position where the the the action that you've taken is actually going to have impact and the good news is with all these vaccinations and all this work that's being done if he holds on for the three weeks that he's talking about i'm hoping that he's giving himself enough time if he comes back two days earlier a week earlier i fear that he's going to undermine all the activities that he's done up to this point as he has in the past So you can't blink. Ralph Klein was very fond of this saying when he was tackling the deficit, that he wasn't going to blink. Well, now's the time that Jason Kenney needs to follow that lesson and not blink as he's coming out of the pandemic.
Zain
35:05
Goy, broad lesson, short term, going forward for Kenney. What
Corey
35:08
What would it be? Well, I completely agree with Stephen. One of the things that you want to do in politics is learn from other people's mistakes first. But if you can't do that, at least learn from your own. And when we came out of wave two, we
Corey
35:20
we opened things up way too early. That's so clear now. You look at the statistics, you look at the charts, you look at the lines on those charts of, okay, this is when we opened up that Stephen was referencing there. And it tells a story of mismanagement, frankly. frankly. And the pressure will undoubtedly, because people have such recency biases become immense, like, okay, well, look, those numbers are coming down. Why can't we open up? Why can't we open up? You've got to hold steady. It's like in the movie, Dave, when they're in the X-Wing fighters, and they're going down
Corey
35:51
into the Death Star. And
Corey
35:53
it's like, hold on, hold on, hold on to the last minute. And at the very last minute, Dave shoots that torpedo, and it goes into that vent, And it blows up the Death Star. You've got to keep in mind that sometimes the right move is the very last exit. And I think that if there's one thing we've learned from COVID, it's that, that you take the last exit, you hold on longer. It's like when Dave was fighting zombies, it's the double tap. You've got to make sure they're dead. You can't just walk away and assume that it's done. done
Zain
36:26
george lucas executive producer of dave uh carter a quick question for you uh regarding you know what let's let's talk about this because the i want to package them is what i think if you look back talk
Zain
36:40
talk to me about the televised the choice of the televised address and what happened on wednesday with tuesday televised address wednesday new vaccination eligibility talk to tell me about the strategic choices of both.
Carter
36:54
Well, I mean, one was the address says, I'm taking this seriously. The address says, this is not normal. This is not us just walking up to the microphone, scheduled for 3.30, rescheduled for 4.30, actually getting to the microphone at 4.45. This is him saying, this is the most important part of this. This is my final discussion on it. We've used that tactic before. Redford used it with the bitumen bubble. and and the cost of you know the need for pipelines uh the prime ministers have used this tactic people the the address to the people the direct i'm not going through the media is super important to really put an emphatic uh exclamation point on what it is that you're saying and then you come in the next day and you hit with it with the channel changer right it is a massive a master class in we have a significant problem but we have the solution that was the the the one-two punch of it, and it worked, I think, perfectly because everybody's attention was gathered by the Tuesday night address, and then the Wednesday, our concerns were alleviated. We were given the opportunity to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and some 100,000-plus millennials today booked their vaccinations. So it was a pretty good day, a pretty good couple of days for Kenny after his Tuesday announcement.
Zain
38:16
Corey, I'm packaging them together. The Tuesday TV address, the Wednesday vaccination eligibility expansion. Give me your strategic take on both. Carter likes it.
Corey
38:27
So do I. I think there's one other thing he did that was pretty interesting and pretty smart, which is that they didn't do the media conference on Tuesday. They did it on Wednesday morning. That's correct. So the only narrative that was there that you could fill were the words that Jason Kenney used. Now, it didn't look that good, in my opinion. I thought that his announcement on Tuesday was really shaky. a friend of mine texted me did stefan dion produce this video if you if you
Corey
38:52
you catch that cut then yeah i mean it was a funny line explain explain that to people what does that mean no google
Corey
39:00
it um but then
Corey
39:02
then on wednesday the the extra part is you can't get away with that most of the time because
Corey
39:06
because the media will quite often especially so they ran that at 602 with the intention that it gets picked up by newscasts that's the only reason you run something at 602 um and
Corey
39:16
and i can tell you as somebody who ran many states of the province addresses for the province of alberta and negotiated those things with the news regularly their
Corey
39:26
their line has generally always been we are only going to carry your
Corey
39:31
your thing if we get our questions after or you can pay those are your choices right and so the fact that they he got him to carry the thing and he didn't have questions after, I think really showed you that the moment was so significant. It afforded like a level of control over the narrative that you don't normally get. So this is maybe like a lesson that you can never apply again.
Corey
39:54
But it was very interesting. And it certainly took advantage of the unique elements of the moment. So I tip my hat to them on that. And then by moving the news conference to Wednesday morning, which I suspect was in some ways, maybe even part of the conversation, like well we will have a media conference but wednesday morning and then stomping it out wednesday afternoon you
Corey
40:13
you got like i couldn't even really tell you it was at the news conference i remember it was brutal i remember they came for blood but then everybody was talking about the fact that alberta went so far on opening to vaccinations all the way down to 12 right
Corey
40:27
right right away monday yeah
Corey
40:28
yeah really really clever and again and this does sort of reinforce my view of jason kenney that he is a very good tactician that's a very smart thing to do what they did over those past couple of days the one mistake they made this week in my opinion was monday jason kenney going up there with the chief medical officer of health when he had nothing really new to say that
Corey
40:46
that that was a pummeling and that was a pummeling that hung in the air for a bit and there was no need for that uh but tuesday and wednesday were were very well done cory
Zain
40:54
cory i mean these are there are few moments on this podcast so i'm glad to have you and you specifically and particularly this is one of them because i want to talk to you about the new branding that the government introduced here with the stop the spike i don't know uh i can't i can't visually describe this to folks so just you'll and if you're in alberta you've probably seen it over the course of the last you know 72 hours three four days uh but talk to me about this new stop the spike uh yellow on purple branding that i've i've seen now on uh electronic billboards it's now at the it's the it's part of the podium lectern sort of uh placard uh what do you kind of make of the the language when you make of the branding is it a visual cue to to kind of indicate that we're taking this seriously we're like accelerating the the case kind of give me your your insider's take as to as to what you think the conversations may have been around this new new brand that we're seeing yeah
Corey
41:46
yeah it it has almost like this caution feel like you would see it at a nuclear launch site or something great way to explain it that's exactly right like a sign bordered around it uh i think yellow and this the purple is consistent with the color that they've have been using for a while um the
Corey
42:01
the yellow i don't think like i know i don't love the yellow and purple it feels very royal family to me i i think that visually it's a bit uh bit garish it's not it's not my favorite but there's a good logic to what they did here uh if you've used the same creative for over a year people are inevitably going to stop noticing it this is something that anybody who's worked in politics is familiar with it's kind of the sign blindness that happens happens around day 28 of a campaign, you don't even sort of realize that there's red signs, blue signs, orange signs all over the place. And so one of the things that campaign organizers will often do as like a election day tactic is go and move all of their signs around, even if it's on somebody's lawn, just the other part of the lawn, to kind of break that sign blindness. In that case, they're just moving it to a different place and hoping people catch attention. But what the government is doing here is changing up the creative.
Corey
42:51
Communicators do that all the time. Campaigns refresh creative all of the time with the The intention of it's gotten boring for people. It's bled into the background. Let's change this. And, you know, they wanted to say, okay, we're serious. Okay, this is different. Okay, this is big. And I think that that's largely been accomplished by this. Again, I'm not like a huge fan of the creative itself, but that's a personal taste. And obviously that garishness is helpful to make somebody look. One of the reasons when you're going through a facility that has big warning signs everywhere, that has them in yellow and black, is it's really hard to miss. So they're playing on some of the fundamentals of marketing, playing on some of the fundamentals of psychology of communications.
Corey
43:33
I guess so. Why not? Makes sense to me. I just wish they weren't so fucking ugly.
Zain
43:39
Carter, anything you want to say on the new branding that's been introduced before we move it on?
Carter
43:44
Yeah, I mean, I think that the choice to stick with the purple was a mistake. I think that they should have gone with black on yellow. I mean, if you think of yellow caution tape, it's black printing on yellow. If you think of yield signs, if you think, you know, anywhere you're going to go into where there's caution, where there's, you know, you should be careful. The yellow and black is a fairly standard look. I think that they tried to maintain their purple feel. And that was a mistake. I mean, Corey went through why they chose purple before. I'm not going to dig into it. But just because you have committed to purple in the past does not mean you have to stick with purple in the future. And this is a new campaign now. So just let it become the new campaign. Dig in on the,
Carter
44:27
the, I get the black and the yellow. Why not just dig in on it? The black print on the yellow is caution. And that's what they're trying to communicate. Kate.
Zain
44:37
We're going to leave that segment there. Moving on to our next segment, Nacy Naysay. Carter, I want to talk about the National Advisory Committee on Immunization. They've had a week. And so let me try to fill people in as much as I can, and as articulately as I can. So if this is a struggle for me, I really don't care. We don't do this for money. Like Corey said, we don't care. Although it is the five-star review pledge which is still ongoing, which people can jump in on. Corey, people may have paid attention to only the second half of this podcast, and I want them to know that The Pledge Drive continues. Here we go. Let's talk about this particular story, Carter. And I'm looking at you specifically, because there's a lot of communications lessons to be learned here. So the National Advisory Committee on Immunization, they had their chair, Dr. Caroline Quash, on television earlier this This week, giving a series of interviews, but one very notable interview on CTV's Power Play with Evan Solomon. She described that getting the vaccine is dependent as a risk on where you live. She said if you live in a place with high COVID risk, she didn't specify exactly what she meant by that. Absolutely get the first vaccine available to you. But if you live in an area with low risk, once again, not explaining what that what that is or where you work from home, given the flood of mRNA vaccines, i.e. Moderna and Pfizer that are coming to Canada, Maybe you should consider waiting a few weeks. And then she then mentioned, I think, the line that has become the viral sensation, which is, quote, This needs to be an informed consent. If, for instance, my sister was to get the AstraZeneca vaccine and die of a thrombosis when I know that it could have been prevented and she's not in a high risk area, I'm not sure I could live with it. And at this point, you know, you saw Evan Solomon's, you know, eyebrows jump and his jaw kind of drop, and he immediately talked about, you know, well, you know, that's super rare, right? Like, you should be qualifying that that's super rare, trying to help her in the interview. And she agreed that it was super rare, but kind of made mention that, you know, hey, maybe you should wait. Right. Stephen Carter, this is the first time we've heard this message from someone with this authority, chair of one of Canada's two sort of boards or bodies that talks about immunization in this country at a national level. Was this a communications failure? This might be an elementary question. Or do you feel like she was actually trying to get this message out there and knew what she was doing? Because there is a school of thought for some that, you know what, we may have actually overestimated the AstraZeneca efficacy, we should probably backtrack on it. Or do you think this was a communications failure, you know, deviating from the lesson and the line we've heard from every politician, get the first vaccine you are offered. Let's start there with the baseline. And then let's jump into, you know, wherever you kind of lead us with with your path. This
Carter
47:29
This is a massive mistake. This is a massive mistake with unbelievable far reaching implications. When you, you know, if we're going to construct a bridge, you know, you don't necessarily ask the engineer who designed the bridge, who understands the specifications of the bridge to actually do the welding. you get people who have or who are experts in their field to do the work and here's the problem when we get an expert in the field of science and research to do communications we're fucking up because communications is a different expertise than the actual art of of determining these these pieces did anything she say was wrong no of course not it would be you know and we've lost our first person to uh to a blood clot in alberta that's tragic it's i'm i'm terribly terribly saddened for that family but here's the here's the thing there's a trade-off and the trade-off is that we can get all of these vaccinations into our arms as quickly as possible there's always risk and and we and we're terrible at managing risk we've said this before on this podcast we don't understand risk inherently so when we play up one risk or we misidentify a risk and we say that a risk that is one in two million is in some fashion the same as a risk that is one in a thousand we are making making a colossal fuck up. And this woman made a colossal fuck up. And she's undermined now all of the messaging, all the work that has gone into making sure that these vaccinations are effective for all Canadians. And this angers me. It angers me beyond all reason, because I think to myself, it could be managed so much easier if you did two things, either train this person to be a better fucking communicator or put a real communicator in Evan Solomon's seat. Because this idea that that a subject matter expert is going to be able to answer evan solomon's questions here's the truth and i like evan solomon evan solomon's not asking that insightful a question he does not asking how these vaccinations work a communicator can answer the fucking questions that evan solomon's asking the cost of this interview the cost of evan solomon's interview and the cost of of the promotions and the the the the speed with with with which this information traveled the the internet is that people will lose their lives and that just makes me sick to my stomach
Corey
49:46
cory jump in here i
Corey
49:48
i don't i don't agree okay so i agree it was a fuck up let's let's be clear there and as somebody who got the astrazeneca you too uh yeah fucking thanks nancy like love it this concept
Zain
50:00
concept of vaccine remorse has now been introduced too especially as related to people's second shot so i'll just throw that in there but cory i'll let you continue yeah
Corey
50:06
yeah like it's uh it's It's very irritating to me, and I have to continually remind myself of the messaging that is kind of the more universal messaging. If any vaccine is a good vaccine, you look at some of the statistics out in the United Kingdom, AstraZeneca kicks ass at avoiding some of these more extreme outcomes here as good or maybe even better than some of the other options.
Corey
50:28
options. Let's remind ourselves. I believe
Zain
50:29
the entire United Kingdom is shot up with AstraZeneca, right? Absolutely.
Corey
50:33
Absolutely. Like an entire country.
Zain
50:34
country. So anyways, I'll let you go. Yeah,
Corey
50:35
Yeah, so let's just park that for a minute here. There's some fundamentals of communications that we need to throw on the table here. And I don't agree with Stephen. Because communications is always, whenever you talk about a communication, you're not just talking about the message that's being delivered. You're talking about the speaker, you're talking about the message, and you're talking about the audience. and when you're talking about trying to deliver a message you are trying to build at all times credibility relevance
Corey
51:01
relevance like this matters to me uh comprehension i get what you're saying and a sense of urgency like i can act with this information i know i need to act now that's
Corey
51:10
that's some 101 shit for communications okay but
Corey
51:13
but in order to have some of those boxes checked you
Corey
51:17
you need to understand the relationship between the speaker and the audience here and the reality is doctors and scientists Scientists are considered trustworthy actors. People believe the things that they say, which is part of why it's so dangerous when a doctor or a scientist says something like this. But Ipsos every year does kind of a global credibility index. And the ones for Canada in the last year that I had on my desktop here, I
Corey
51:41
I already mentioned Dr. 63, Scientist 58, politicians 10%. And ad exec, there's no communicators, but ad executives 10%. Like, people will just see it as spin if you send out the communications person for department X, right? Which is why communicators need to work with doctors and scientists and arm them with best communications practice to avoid the kind of traps they walk into. Prep them with what we call murder questions. Okay, if you get this question, how are you going to answer this question? If you try to get boxed into this corner, how are you going to answer this question? She wasn't even boxed in. The person who
Corey
52:13
who needs to carry the water is the doctor or the scientist because that's who's going to have credibility in this case.
Carter
52:19
There's too much at stake to allow someone to go in and communicate if they don't know how to communicate. This is a person who should have had all of that training. This is a person that should know exactly what she's talking about. She didn't fall into a trap from a question. She jumped into a hole of her own volition. Agree with all of that, Stephen. Undermine the whole fucking thing. we
Carter
52:41
we don't let this
Corey
52:42
this happen well calm down a little didn't undermine the whole fucking
Carter
52:45
agree astrazeneca baby for the win i agree
Corey
52:50
agree with your observations that this was poorly done i do not believe for a second the solution is to put a spin doctor up there with evan solomon
Zain
52:58
yeah i and this is to
Zain
53:00
to pick up on both of your points partly why i introduced it the way i did the topic around, did she deliberately mean to do this? Is that this is someone who's been doing this for the last year. Like, this was not her first interview. This was not her first interview with Evan. This was not her first interview on the internet. And nationally, she's done dozens of these. She's a media spokesperson slash doctor over the last year in many ways. So, you know, we can all have off days, but part of me was wondering, is this an off day? Or is this someone someone who was trying to actually communicate this and, I don't know, trial balloon it or whatever. I felt like there could have been an element of that, especially with what we're hearing in places like Nova Scotia right now, right? Where they're saying, you know, in that Atlantic bubble, they talk about, you know, the risk of working from home versus getting AstraZeneca. Like, they talk about these things more actively in those places. So part of me was wondering, you know, to that point, was this perhaps deliberate on our part? But we're both, Both of you seem like going down the path of that this was a giant fuck-up in one way, shape, or form. The question I have is, what's the solution here? Is it, you know, Corey, you're saying work with doctors. Is this a failure in media training? Is this a failure in key messaging, do you think? Or is this a failure in something broader in your mind?
Corey
54:24
it can be a failure and all of those things and none of those things as you mentioned sometimes people just have off days and um in so far as maybe there was a message in there to your point that that she was trying to get out maybe it really was you
Corey
54:38
you know there is a risk to astrazeneca that is infinitesimally small and in almost every case it makes sense that you take astrazeneca but the emphasis was on the exact opposite the emphasis became if you are in a situation where your risk is actually even smaller than astrazeneca makes no sense to take astrazeneca that actually is is fairly logical but the problem is as you said off the top any kind of parameters around what is an acceptable risk in what community were it was bereft of that it didn't have any of those things and so i mean ultimately i think well let me say this because you asked the question about what should have happened and what could have been done one
Corey
55:15
of the things that frequent spokespeople people often find themselves getting into trouble with is they become too comfortable at a certain point and
Corey
55:22
then they then they need to fuck up like this to remind themselves you got to practice you got to read your stuff ahead of time you got to think about the messages that you're going to do because otherwise you can get burned you do let your guard down over time you start thinking i've got this and
Corey
55:36
and sometimes you don't got this you you've got to do the prep work when you're doing an interview like this you've got to think about the messages you're going to say and you've got got to think about the dark alleys you don't want to be dragged into. Certainly, you don't want to walk down one by yourself and actually even have the host be like, yeah, you sure you want to be down there? I mean, it looks a little dodgy. Yeah. Okay, I guess you're down there. Let's go talk about it. You know, I mean, it was unfortunate.
Zain
56:01
Carter, 1.7 million people have gotten the AstraZeneca. Dr. Quash has come back just yesterday saying, listen, my recommendation was not a retrospective one. That means that that everyone who has received AstraZeneca has been protected against COVID-19, encouraging people to, you know, try to abate the remorse and try to encourage people to get their second shots. But you were nodding your head quite aggressively on Corey's point there. So I want you to jump in on either what I said or what Corey was mentioning here. Well,
Carter
56:27
Well, I want to take it a little bit further than this, because it's not just about the one moment when this spokesperson made a mistake, right, where this doctor made an error. It's also just the way that these vaccines have been treated in general. The AstraZeneca and the Johnson and Johnson vaccinations have been given this kind of we approve you, but we don't approve you. We approve you, but we don't approve you. We approve you, but we've got a problem. We've approved you, but you're not going to work. That problem has been this on again, off again, switching. Oh, AstraZeneca is OK for people 55 to 65. OK, AstraZeneca is not OK. Johnson and Johnson, we're not going to be able to distribute that because it's it's not going to work. here's the problem it's
Carter
57:04
it's got you know when you're dealing with medical uh issues it's not certain any doctor worth their weight will tell you that there's always a risk and there's always um a plus and a minus there's always a waiting to whether or not you take an action there's could be a situation where open heart surgery has a one in a thousand chance of failure but if you don't do it it's a one in one failure rate so you do the one in one thousand failure rate right and and those those types of trade-offs are made every single day in the medical field. But we don't talk about them like that. Because as soon as you start talking about them in general, about all the various challenges within them, the public loses confidence. And this is a public that for whatever reason has decided that it wants to be vaccine hesitant, for whatever reason it wants to be conspiracy driven, for whatever reason it wants to believe the worst in our society right now. And all of those reasons mean that you've got to go out with certainty. You've got to go out it with certainty and backing and forthing and backing and forthing just undermines your position and and i would prefer that governments learn um based on the the inputs that we see from society today and don't bring medical issues into communications opportunities great
Zain
58:16
great i'm gonna finish on this which is um how do you think we're doing overall we haven't done a check-in or a pulse check on our over overall communications on ensuring canadians are are adopting the the vaccine seems like we're getting good numbers across the country you've always you know said on this show that you know the more it's available the more canadians seem to get it seems like you're you're right on that front how do you think we're doing overall on the communications of vaccine adoption in this country i
Corey
58:44
i think notwithstanding the odd fuck up like the one we just talked about generally very well and um that's actually pretty easy to say at this moment, because we're still at this, the
Corey
58:55
the people who want the vaccines are getting the vaccines, and we're still kind of limited by the amount that's in the system here.
Corey
59:02
The real question will be when we get to a point that the United States has gotten at where all of a sudden you're butting up against vaccine hesitancy. Where is that for Canada, is the question. And what are we going to do when we hit that ceiling? How are we going to push past it into the next floor? That
Corey
59:17
That is TBD. And it's hard to measure whether our communications is geared towards those edge cases at this particular moment. But so
Corey
59:28
so far, so good. So far, pickup has been pretty good across the country. And I am heartened by seeing how quickly we are gaining on the number of doses vaccinated for Canada versus other countries. countries. Carter,
Zain
59:41
Carter, I know this has been a topic that you love talking about in terms of communications and vaccination, adoption and hesitancy. How do you give us how do you kind of rank us thus far? How have we been doing? What's your pulse check right now?
Carter
59:53
Well, when we started this, we said that everybody who goes to get a vaccine should be putting up a selfie, right?
Carter
59:57
right? And there were 353,000 vaccinations in Canada yesterday. I think I saw 353,000 selfies. That communication has has happened people are taking selfies they're going to the they've now got designated photo locations in the in the vaccine distribution areas where people are taking those pictures what i hope so here's the next stage and cory's alluded to it what you can't do is wait for everybody to get their first shot and then wait for the vaccine hesitant group to really force down our numbers keep the numbers high and get to the second shots as quickly as you can that will induce that scarcity that we talked about earlier in you know many many podcasts ago where scarcity was going to be the driver of actual vaccine adoption so keep the scarcity model keep people having to to book get 100,000 people every day to book and make it the thing that people are doing the sharing on on social media is essential get the second shots in as quickly as possible don't Don't allow a lull, don't allow a downturn in the overall number of shots being given.
Zain
1:01:07
Corey, please finish us off on this segment.
Corey
1:01:09
Well, two things I would say. One is we are approaching the point where in the United States, they started to see a leveling off of demand in terms of percent of population who were interested. We're not quite there, but we're probably 5%, 10% away from where we started to see their curve bend the wrong way and start to move more slowly towards full vaccination. This is also maybe an opportunity to pick up some of these threads. let's not react to this if we see a decline in demand a crash in demand maybe we do need now to talk about things like vaccine passports not for everything but enough things that people say oh shit i'd kind of like to do that like maybe you can only go to a bar if you've got your two doses if
Corey
1:01:45
your neighborhood is over a certain amount of covid like maybe maybe it's now time to talk about that maybe flying requires covid i'm not sure anybody has the right to get on an airplane during a pandemic but but if you can start saying society is more open to you you You get to do more things. You've got to pick them selectively so you don't create a big blowback.
Corey
1:02:05
And you make it clear that that's only after everybody who's had the option to get a vaccine gets it.
Corey
1:02:11
might want to get ahead of what's obviously coming, which is some people are just going to say, yeah, fuck it.
Carter
1:02:15
Yeah, herd immunity. I'm good.
Zain
1:02:19
We're going to leave that segment there. Moving on to our final segment, our over-under and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we do this for you. We do this for you exclusively. Are you ready?
Carter
1:02:27
I am. I'm very excited. as i always am zane well
Zain
1:02:31
well carter here we're going to start with this the federal government is edging closer to waiving intellectual property rights on the covet 19 vaccine following in the footsteps of the united states to help distribution of the vaccine internationally politically for the trudeau government is this overrated or underrated i
Carter
1:02:46
i think it's overrated i i'm very nervous about the intellectual property uh you know being undermined in this i think that there There can be other arrangements where government compensates for intellectual property, but we don't want to undermine intellectual property regulations for the most important scientific discoveries in our lifetime. We want to incent this, and so my recommendation to government would be incent the discovery, don't disincent it. Germany took that action today, and I think that that was the right call.
Zain
1:03:17
Corey, overrated or underrated the political upside for the Trudeau government to, they're edging closer and they haven't done it just yet, just so I'm totally clear with everyone, to waiving the intellectual property rights on the COVID-19 vaccines.
Corey
1:03:30
I feel pretty mixed about it for the reasons that Stephen said. I do believe there's some value in rewarding innovation and patents is a way we've done that for a very long time. time.
Corey
1:03:42
That's not to say that we have our patent system totally figured out in a very reasonable fashion. And obviously, with pharmaceuticals, you have this very, this
Corey
1:03:49
this very odd system where you effectively have big bets being placed, maybe they happen, maybe not, like, let's set aside COVID. But the number of the
Corey
1:03:58
the number of, you know, pharmaceuticals that have to get through a filter and get through all of the various stages and finally get approved, you know, sometimes they don't, they don't make it. In fact, most times they don't. So the ones that do need to carry the load for everybody else we
Corey
1:04:12
might need to look at this problem more generally and say maybe we need to create a system where the incentives are provided more generally in other ways maybe we need to look at patents for life-saving innovations a little more differently than we do patents for your iphone i i can get behind that but i think it's a bigger conversation it's not a shoot from the hip and right now as long as you don't have pfizer and moderna and uh you know astrazeneca holding you over a barrel it's probably better to pay what is a reasonable market price for these things and have have the uh you know the western nations with deep pockets just compensate and keep the patent system around because that's not the kind of thing you want to break
Corey
1:04:54
break on a whim
Zain
1:04:56
cory give me a letter grade for jason kenney this week between a to f from what you've seen thus far
Corey
1:05:02
well it uh just like uh just like the third wave it's something that had exponential growth as you You got through the week. Tuesday and Wednesday were really well done. Tuesday was shaky in delivery. Wednesday wasn't even that. Wednesday was just a really well done day. Carter,
Zain
1:05:15
Carter, give me the letter grade for Jason Kenney this week.
Carter
1:05:20
I think that Jason Kenney got probably 75%. He was shaky. He was a little bit weak, as Corey alluded to, but he made the right choices on Wednesday and Thursday.
Zain
1:05:31
Stephen Carter, we've talked about this last episode. Elon Musk will be hosting Saturday Night Live this Saturday. Off
Zain
1:05:39
the top of your dome, give
Zain
1:05:42
give me a skit idea for Elon Musk. Go.
Carter
1:05:44
Elon, okay, here's our idea. We're going to send someone to Mars with absolutely no way of returning. It's going to be you. And what we're going to do is we're just going to put you in a capsule and pretend you don't exist, and that's going to be our entire show. How's that sound, Elon? You just get in the capsule, and we'll cut to you every once in a while. and you'll just be sitting there uh smoking marijuana with joe rogan i
Zain
1:06:10
don't mind it cory give me a skit idea for elon musk you're pitching you're pitching right now carter's whole show ideas get rid of the host send him to mars what is your what is your idea for a uh for a sketch i shouldn't call it a skit uh for for snl on for elon musk hosting on saturday elon
Corey
1:06:27
elon is called into lauren michael's office and there's an hr rep there and he's given a strict talking to about about not being allowed to start a cult or work the SNL members to death.
Zain
1:06:36
Pretty good. I like that. It's a little meta, which I appreciate. Final question, Corey, I'm going to start with you. What is the singular item that you will be ordering from the soon-to-be-rebuilt Dairy Queen on Center Street?
Corey
1:06:53
I am going to get a banana split, and I am going to sit in the landscaping that is on the east side and not the west side, And I am going to read again the decision that was made by the Subdivision and Development Appeals Board that said, and I quote, the development authority, that is the city of Calgary, failed to exercise its discretion appropriately and in accordance with sound planning principles, thereby failing to follow the direction of council when they did not approve the rebuilding of the Dairy Queen with a series of improvements that the city should have been happy about. Now, we could go into all of the reasons why we could talk about the fact that, you know, the city should have relied more on the DC bylaw, which allows this use and not the ARP, which is aspirational and discretionary and existed when the DC bylaw was last up. We could talk about all those things. But that would make the conversation more substantive than it's been for the last bit where people just decided to pick sides based on tribe and decide that the city was obviously right because they love the city.
Zain
1:07:53
Carter, what is the singular item you will be ordering from the new Rebuild Center Street Dairy Queen?
Carter
1:07:59
Corey and I always share our banana splits. He gets the chocolate side. I get the strawberry side. And then we fight for the pineapple. So that's what we'll be doing. The
Zain
1:08:09
The correct answer was to drive past the Dairy Queen to the McDonald's. Oh, get a McDonald's.
Zain
1:08:15
Jesus Christ. We start with fast food, end with fast food. dude. Once again, a reminder, this was our annual five-star review pledge drive. If you haven't done it already, I don't know what's wrong with you. Jesus Christ, stop the car wherever you are, go on Apple Podcasts, look up The Strategist, give a five-star review. As Corey would say, use your words to make it six stars. And we'll leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 934 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velgey. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.