Transcript
Zain
0:02
This is The Strategist, episode 934. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, we
Zain
0:09
we are here. It is our summer schedule.
Zain
0:13
What's going on? Look who is gracing us with his presence.
Carter
0:17
Oh, yeah. Stephen Carter. Zain
Carter
0:19
okay. Zain Velji, the big Zain Velji. Of
Corey
0:22
Of the Evan Solomon show fame. Big
Carter
0:24
Big time. Who hit the big
Zain
0:26
so people don't know uh it's uh it's called the evan solomon show and i host it i've been hosting it the whole time in fact i'm
Zain
0:34
i'm trying to i
Zain
0:35
i uh just it's like that time where where carter used to host the johnny carson show it was it was actually never johnny carson it was steven carter the whole time i'm
Corey
0:44
convinced it's not evan solomon doing the show still the voice is entirely different it's like no
Carter
0:49
no one really knows it's you like we have to get pictures of you in front of the microphone to prove that it's you because the guy i talked to today doesn't sound anything like the guy i'm talking listen
Zain
0:58
listen let me tell you something radio zane may come out if this gets audibly boring okay radio
Zain
1:02
radio zane may make it my
Zain
1:05
he spends a very long
Zain
1:09
long time between words yeah
Zain
1:12
so that time you got two hours
Corey
1:14
hours to fill can
Zain
1:15
can be filled each
Carter
1:17
pause is worth what what three bucks and
Zain
1:20
and he knows that yeah just so you know that sentence was still going
Zain
1:24
whole show if scripted out is just a bunch of commas um what's going on cory uh the the milwaukee bucks have won the nba finals i know carter wants to talk about this desperately uh he has predicted this
Carter
1:36
this i predicted this three rounds ago carter's
Carter
1:40
carter's been on the ground floor
Zain
1:40
floor of the greek freak for a long time but cory i want i want to give you the first take on this i
Corey
1:45
i will pay all of the money in in my pockets right now to hear Stephen Carter pronounce the name, the actual name of the Greek freak.
Zain
1:54
no. We're talking about the last name. He couldn't get the first name.
Carter
1:58
Did I get close?
Zain
1:59
Janus? You think he
Carter
2:01
he said Janus? I don't know. Janus. How many Greek men do you know named Janus? It has all the vowels.
Zain
2:07
How many Greek men do you know named Janus? J-A-N-I-C-E. I'm
Carter
2:10
I'm not going to lie to you. I don't know any Greek men,
Zain
2:15
Expand your horizons, Carter. Listen,
Carter
2:17
Listen, Corey, good try,
Carter
2:18
The Olympics starts. I don't give a shit about the NBA anymore. It's all over for me in the NBA. Well, maybe
Zain
2:22
maybe the Olympics start.
Zain
2:24
Maybe the Olympics start. In fact, let's use that as our— They've started. Let's use that as— Wait, you're not going to ask
Corey
2:29
ask us what we did? No,
Zain
2:30
No, I don't. We haven't
Zain
2:32
seen you. Listen, listen, I'm— Zane, I went hang gliding.
Corey
2:38
it turns out the hang gliders were bank robbers, and I fell in love with one of them, which complicated my sense of duty
Corey
2:46
because I don't think I mentioned but I'm a federal agent and I was infiltrating them to take them down and
Corey
2:52
and now that I think about it it wasn't hang gliding it was surfing
Carter
2:55
surfing you can't just keep repeating the plot to Dave how many times do we gotta do this
Zain
3:00
oh my god you have to stop
Zain
3:04
leaving your bread out people you gotta stop leaving your bread out
Carter
3:08
get more on it penicillin's impacting our brains
Zain
3:12
That's good. No, thank you for the plot summary today. I appreciate it. Carter, did you watch Dave this weekend as well?
Carter
3:17
I did watch Dave again this weekend. It's classic. Always holds up.
Zain
3:21
Yeah, I watched Dave. You know, I watched Dave. It was amazing. I love the scene where he clearly has stolen the idea for the Facebook from the Winklevoss twins. Oh, yeah. And they're just like, it's ours. And he's like, Dave's like, no, it's mine. And then there's like
Carter
3:37
like the courtroom. freaking
Carter
3:38
you could have invented the facebook you would have invented the facebook you know it's good it's
Carter
3:44
dave had some attitude in that one i
Zain
3:46
i i love i yeah dave was excellent in that one let's move it on are you done carter i don't know i think
Carter
3:51
think it's episodes episodes one and two of season two of dave the television series starts tomorrow so i'm pretty excited about that too so throwing
Zain
3:59
throwing these one facts that we don't care about but thank you carter let's move it on to to our headlines guys let's go to the washington post in fact this this leads into what carter was talking about the
Zain
4:09
the new olympic motto should this even be happening with just days to go until the tokyo olympics officially kick off almost seven and ten respondents to a new poll believe the game should cannot be held safely um the same poll which is a national telephone poll based in japan conducted only uh quizzed respondents on whether they support holding the olympics and found that 33% are supportive, 55% are opposed, and as mentioned, 68% doubt that they can be held safely. This, of course, is on top of several other issues the Olympics have been having, including all the classic cost overruns issue. Will they make money issue? They just recently fired the creative director for the opening ceremonies, which are going to be held in a couple of hours the day before. Corey, what do you make of this as it relates to the Olympics, what, a day, two days before these things get going?
Corey
5:02
Well, it is as old as the Olympics itself to predict that the Olympics are going to be a disaster just before the Olympics began and to point out the challenges. Now, obviously, this is unique, even within that construct. We're in the middle of a global pandemic. They've just had to fire the person who's running their open ceremony because of Holocaust jokes. Yeah,
Zain
5:23
Yeah, he made a Holocaust joke with puppets back in 98, and they let him go, and I guess that has no purpose. Yeah.
Corey
5:30
So there's some weird ones this time. It is interesting to see Japan so against the Olympics right now. This is not a country,
Corey
5:39
country, like 60% of Japanese support whaling still, right? Right. Like it's not a country you think of when you think when you think of nations
Corey
5:48
nations being opposed to the Olympic movement. You tend to think of the ones with these, you know, strong left wing agitating groups, not traditional conservative societies like we generally think of Japan. So I guess what I'm most interested in is if
Corey
6:04
not Japan, if not Canada, because we will never vote, it seems to have another Olympics. Where do the Olympics go from here? Or is it just going to shuffle back and forth between China and Russia or what? So that to me is the fascinating one. I think the Olympics themselves will go off. I won't say without a hitch because there's always hitches. But as soon as our countries, wherever you are, as soon as your country is on the podium, all of a sudden you get a little bit of excitement. In fact, when they're in competition, you're excited. And you kind of forget about all of the bullshit that surrounds the IOC.
Zain
6:39
Carter, I know you're an Olympics nut. What do you make of this? Nearly 70% of those surveyed doubt the Tokyo Olympics can be held safely. And then to Corey's point, like the general sort of narrative about what does this mean for Olympics going forward? I'd love for you to comment on both of those things. things
Carter
6:55
are incredibly uh cynical prior to the event happening and then afterwards they're incredibly boosterist you know they believe that it's a great thing immediately following the like the olympics there's a legacy that follows they see that they see how it worked it's a big complex thing that they can't see how everything is going to fit together and work together and then when it does they're always thrilled that it happened and i
Carter
7:18
i mean i imagine that there are are olympic cities that have uh olympic hangovers uh rio pops into my mind athens pops into my mind uh of two cities that that that made i think some incredibly bad choices but i think that from those two failures have come uh more stringent guidelines um and we're we're moving towards a more sustainable i see i see yesterday from those
Corey
7:42
those two failures the
Carter
7:45
two okay The most recent failures. But, I mean, you know, not every Olympics is going to be so cheap, right? Which,
Corey
7:52
way, cost the most of any Olympics. This
Carter
7:55
This is my point. They were overbuilt. They were overproduced. They were done for national pride. But, you know, the Olympics, if
Carter
8:03
if it's done properly, it can be done very well. And I remember, you know, all the way back to yesterday when Brisbane 2032 was announced, the city's extremely excited. it and i'll tell you what i'll look at the polls in in four to six weeks and feel how see how the people of japan uh feel about the olympics uh because i suspect that there's going to be successful
Carter
8:22
successful will they be the most successful olympic games in the history uh
Carter
8:27
but i'm thrilled that they're they're occurring um
Carter
8:30
i'm saddened that there's not going to be the huge crowds i'm saddened but you know a couple billion people are going to watch them on television and it's going to make the world a better place we'll have some new heroes in 10 days. Oh
Zain
8:41
Oh my goodness, we're doing it. We're getting a Stephen Carter prediction. I wish we had a sound. In fact, we do. It's hit that music button, baby. Hit that music button,
Zain
8:49
Corey, I usually save the predictions until the end and the prescient Carter analysis, but are you expecting, and do you agree with Carter, that four to six weeks down the road, that the Olympics in Japan will be felt in a much different manner than they are today?
Corey
9:09
No, I don't think that I think they'll feel better about them for sure. But I think fundamentally, we are having the 2020 Olympics in 2021 without crowds. And it's the middle of a pandemic. And there are just too many things lining up against it. It's hard to look at the builds, the new stadiums, things like that and say, this was worth it. I don't think they're going to feel like this was worth it because they didn't even get the Olympic experience of their dreams. And, I
Corey
9:34
mean, we are sitting here in an Olympic city, Calgary, enormous
Corey
9:38
enormous Olympic legacy. It's something that we talk about a lot as a community. Vancouver, I was there for the closing weekend of Vancouver. It was incredible. But what made it incredible was the crowds, the energy, and you're not going to have the crowds and the energy. So I'll
Corey
9:56
I'll get roped in. I always do. I do like the Olympics. I was on the board of Calgary's most recent Olympic bid. But let's be honest, this is piling some bad news on a movement that has had more than its share of bad news lately. I mean, between doping and the cost overruns and bribery and you name it. I mean, there are a lot of challenges with the Olympics right now. And when you have an Olympics like this, where you don't get that juice from the crowd, my question is not what happens in the next couple of weeks, but what happens in the next couple of years.
Zain
10:30
Right, right. I think that makes sense. We're going to talk about the Olympics more as the weeks go on, as the games go on over the course of the next couple of weeks. Let's move it on to our next headline. This one comes to us from the Ottawa Citizen. Speaking of bad news on top of bad news, it's not what it looks like. Ottawa man caught with pants down in pony stall.
Zain
11:00
Let's move on to our next headline. This one comes to us from McLean's poll. Stephen Harper would change this election.
Zain
11:06
In a piece written by Paul Wells, if Harper returned to once again lead the conservatives, it would cut the liberal advantage by two thirds and a route starts to look more like a race. Wow. Stephen Carter, we are now playing hypothetical. If former leader who hasn't been in the game were to come back, this race would still be the same, but be marginally different. You
Carter
11:29
You know, I have told you guys I don't like polls where they just report one number. The next question was, how would liberal voters feel if John Turner came back and John Turner versus Stephen Harper would have been very, very good for the conservatives. I mean, hypothetical on top of hypothetical on top of hypothetical, there's no cost for saying, you know what, I would vote for Stephen Harper. I really like Stephen Harper. Stephen Harper lost to Justin Trudeau. You know, he's he's not going to come back. I mean, what are you going to do? Bring back. Who else are you going to bring back? Bring back candidates from the dead. Diefenbaker. How does Diefenbaker perform in this situation? Where's Mulrooney in this? Can we get Mulrooney into this? This is a joke. It's a stupid article written in a stupid way. I didn't like it.
Zain
12:15
Corey, Stephen Harper, if we bring them back, we get them to run, the
Zain
12:19
the liberals still win. What do you think?
Corey
12:22
Yeah, that's the punchline, right? Liberals still are up by five. But it's interesting to me because this is something you're starting to hear chatter about, whispers about. I think it is entirely wishful thinking, this idea that you could will this into existence just by talking it enough, but hey, what if Stephen Harper was leading, having his second round against Justin Trudeau? Maybe we'd be in an entirely different situation. Maybe he just needs to come back, the old leader, the old flag, right?
Corey
12:53
But again, it's like a total hypothetical, and it's also based entirely – you know what it's really saying? it's saying i don't
Corey
13:01
don't like aaron o'toole yeah
Corey
13:03
right and it's maybe even some liberal voters throwing shade saying yeah maybe i would have considered that harper guy but o'toole forget him it
Corey
13:11
doesn't mean very much because it's not serious it's not real if people were legitimately talking about this the pros and cons of that if stephen harper was legitimately putting out policy positions that people could react to all
Corey
13:23
all right maybe i'd entertain it but uh ultimately this
Corey
13:27
this This is as good as it gets because it's entirely in the hypothetical Stephen Harper can be your hero, baby, exactly what you want him to be. And he's still losing by five points. And by the way, the conservatives need to win by more than nothing, as we saw as Andrew Scheer won the popular vote but still lost. So, you know what? I
Corey
13:47
I don't count Aaron O'Toole out. You both know that.
Corey
13:51
I don't believe for a minute that this is how the conservatives win an election. It would be such a backwards looking move, too. It
Zain
13:59
It certainly does seem to be, you know, previous candidate, probably even previous game plan. But Carter, talk to me about this. Like, you're obviously not saying anything if you're Team O'Toole. Are you feeling anything when you see something like this through the airwaves or through the press?
Carter
14:13
would say that it's just not helpful, right? I mean, how is this supposed to help you? How is this supposed to make things better? I mean, O'Toole is
Carter
14:21
is now being essentially compared to a former prime minister that's never coming back. And he doesn't look great. He didn't look, you know, what's the next poll? Andrew Scheer would lift the party by three? Like, it's just stupid. And he's trying to dig out of a hole and he's trying to start a new narrative. And as long as he's trapped in this place, the new narrative is impossible. So he's got to stop this. He's got to try and figure out how to get to a new narrative. and how to get to something that he can actually win on. Because, you
Carter
14:52
you know, obviously he's not winning when he's pretending to be Stephen Harper.
Zain
14:56
Corey, is there some rule in politics that if you're the leader and the media start polling on if the previous leader who lost to the person you're up against might be better than you, is there a panic button inside a campaign that you're pushing? Is there some WhatsApp chat that you're activating? What are you feeling right now if you're Timo Thule?
Corey
15:16
I don't know. No. I mean, the funny thing is, in this country, it's not unprecedented. I already threw out the old leader of the old flag. That's a John A. MacDonald reference, right? That goes back to the 19th century. Trudeau the elder was brought
Corey
15:29
brought back after he had resigned as leader to run in the 1980 election. Obviously, Joe Clark, everybody's friend, he was the prime minister, and then he came back to be leader of the PC party again much
Corey
15:43
Right. So we have a parliamentary system. It's not like the United States. And even there, you've got at least one president who's done non-consecutive terms. Well, not at least one, exactly one. It's possible, but it's not going to happen like this if it's going to happen. It's not going to be a drop in at the last minute while there is a leader. Like, you would have to have Aaron O'Toole being a willing participant in that for that to occur without absolutely blowing your party to pieces. Or
Carter
16:09
tragic accident or something. I mean, there's almost no precedent for this. To have a sitting leader taken out by a former leader, like, that's the stuff of Green Party imaginations. Yeah.
Zain
16:20
Yeah. Oh, we're getting to it. Our next headline comes to us from CBC. Former Dartmouth South candidate. Candidate, of course, just like, you know, there's an election happening in Nova Scotia. Former Dartmouth South candidate says liberals dropped her over boudoir photos. Let me give you a bit of context. So the former Dartmouth South candidate for Nova Scotia says the party dropped her from the ticket over boudoir photos she had already disclosed to the Greenlight Committee on numerous occasions and asked her to lie by citing mental health concerns as the reason for her resignation. She kind of goes on in this Instagram post saying that the party knew about these photos when they surfaced on the first day of the campaign. The comms director for the campaign pretty much gave her two statements and said, you're posting one of these. And she decided to post one of them, but then subsequently kind of came clean, so to speak, on social media and told her side of the story. story. Carter, you know, from a political standpoint, this is fascinating on a couple of levels in terms of number one, the nomination process and the green light process. Number two, you know, the one of the reasons I thought she was entirely credible with her statement, or I find her to be credible, let me put it that way, was this whole sort of communications director giving you two statements, like we've heard of that so many times, and you're choosing one. And then so there's that to unpack. And then also, you know, there's a gender element here. You know, her photos, completely legal, a way she was trying to earn money versus the leader of the party, Rankin, who's, you know, disclosed that he had some DUIs in the past and that he'd made some actual legal errors in the past, so to speak, and how this is a gendered process. So I'm kind of opening it up in terms of where and what part of this story interests you. But start where you where you will and want to get your feedback on this interesting story out of Nova Scotia. She's
Carter
18:06
She's also a fairly young candidate, right? right? Like she, she is.
Carter
18:10
Yeah. I think that this, you know what, I've talked about this in the past where we've said, you know, at some point, um, when you're recruiting a candidate, there's no one under 35 that doesn't have some sort of a digital history of, of naked photos. The difference between male naked photos and female naked photos is more often than not, our naked photos don't include our faces, uh, cause we're assholes. Um, women, uh, women have had, you know, there's there's blackmail porn, there's all kinds of different things that happen. And this
Carter
18:39
this is a ridiculous thing. Because ultimately, there's
Carter
18:44
there's nothing wrong with it, right? You're bringing a shame to this that doesn't need to exist. And frankly, you
Carter
18:51
know, the Nova Scotia Liberal Party should be ashamed of itself. Because they're holding this young woman to a level that shouldn't exist, number one, and then to blame it on mental illness or worry about her mental health. I mean, talk about adding insult to injury. And now her remedy is to go forward and say, these were my choices. These were my options. And I think less of the party. I think less of the party today than I did yesterday. And I, you
Carter
19:24
you know, I feel bad for her. But I also think that we as a uh we
Carter
19:30
as a as a group of political operatives need to stop excusing men's infidelity we need to stop excusing men's over drinking we need to stop excusing um duis uh by by male leaders and start uh being a lot more tolerant of women who make mistakes uh or not even mistakes but But women are making choices because, frankly, they're not our choices to make. And this patriarchal view is just holding back politics and stands as yet another reason why women would never get into this game. And it just angers me.
Zain
20:07
Corey, many, many angles to kind of go on. Pick your favorites or pick the most interesting to you from from the perspective of this story out of Nova Scotia.
Corey
20:16
There's it's interesting to me. This is one of these that you I don't. know very much about the candidate besides what's been reported but what i find interesting is that dartmouth south is a writing that the liberals have only lost by less than three points the last two elections this is not you often hear stories where um
Corey
20:35
um there is a disclosure in the vetting process and someone gets cold feet about it at the 11th hour with writings that are difficult to film where
Corey
20:44
it's you were just looking for any human being to take the writing and then um and then And when they do, you say, OK, well, maybe I didn't do my total due diligence on that. Maybe I was I wasn't thinking too sharply. So I guess the thing that most surprises me about this is a writing like this in particular, you would think that
Corey
21:01
that they would they would be clear enough in their own thinking ahead of time, because I agree with much of what Carter said. Not all, but much of what Carter said there. Um, but what I find in some ways, a
Corey
21:14
a kind of like professionally unconscionable is that the liberals took one stance and then took a different stance. So it's not surprising to me that a green light committee would say, hey, we're not that interested in potentially provoking this kind of controversy. Maybe the demographics of Dartmouth South skew old. I mean, it's the Maritimes, a lot of Maritimes skew pretty old. uh this
Corey
21:35
this this could be just a distraction right like if if you want to be charitable and maybe that's being too charitable you just say that's a distraction we're not interested but the fact they were willing to have this candidate and then decided at the last minute not to have this candidate speaks to me as kind of a fundamental system breakdown in the background where perhaps nominations were getting ahead of true vetting if that makes any sense because what happened what What kind of escalation happened that shouldn't have happened previously? And so if I was a supporter of the Nova Scotia Liberals, I would be asking some
Corey
22:07
some tough questions about what else might be out there or how this situation got put in. Because in many ways, in addition to a lot of what Carter said, it's very amateur hour. It's very amateur
Corey
22:18
hour. Because even if you did not want to provide a nomination for these reasons, there are much, much cleaner ways to navigate it behind the scenes.
Zain
22:28
Stephen Carter, what's your new rule in politics regarding social media? We've kind of tracked this bouncing ball over the years we've done this show and over the years we've been tracking, you know, where it was what we called back in, you know, the 2010s bozo eruptions and you kind of go after social media with the advent of terms like cancel culture in recent years and everyone having a digital footprint, people making certain choices online for income and otherwise. wise what do you have like a new rule for candidates and how we kind of set the bar and i know i i could take this for for an hour and i'm not i don't want to but i'm curious because you teased it i'm curious what your what your thoughts and process would be around
Zain
23:10
um you know social media and history as it relates to candidates going forward i
Carter
23:14
think that anything that hurts someone else or that's against a disadvantaged group still needs to be policed really strongly right so you know um yeah
Carter
23:27
the the creative director for the tokyo uh olympics opening ceremonies who who did a joke about the uh the holocaust i don't i'm not familiar with what the joke was but it just feels like that's probably not a bad thing to cancel someone over uh not a bad thing to say you know what you're
Carter
23:42
you're not really showing really good sensible moves there now time would mitigate that because you know it's it's
Carter
23:48
30 years ago. Um, so maybe, maybe we have a little bit more understanding today. Um, but these things that are about
Carter
23:58
about ourselves, about who we are and about, um, you
Carter
24:01
you know, how we are seen in the world, um, they can be embarrassing, but they shouldn't be disqualifying. And
Carter
24:08
And I think think that that's where you know surfacing nudes or or surfacing um you
Carter
24:17
you know information about a candidate that is that is seen to be about themselves like it
Carter
24:23
just doesn't matter to me i think that things that are about you matter less um and we've always taken that position i think with men and
Carter
24:32
and it's just that we have not given
Carter
24:33
given that same understanding to women um
Carter
24:36
um because Because, you know, men aren't posing for Playboy, right? So, you know, this is, not that there's a magazine. Is there even a Playboy anymore? How old was I in that moment? But I think that this is our
Carter
24:55
our reality now. I honestly don't think that anybody, in 10 more years, there's not going to be a single young candidate that doesn't have some sort of nude floating around about them. Real or created. because we've got deep fakes too, right? So I think we
Carter
25:10
we need to show a lot more understanding.
Zain
25:14
Well, you know, it's going to be a live wire of some sort. We don't know exactly how in this upcoming federal. To Corey, your point, some party will try to, whether it's a viable seat or not, will fill a candidate somewhere that they made a choice on or they may have used a different prism on vetting. And stories like this will come up. So for you, what is your sort of bar? Is it through that lens that you mentioned earlier of distraction? And is something binary a distraction or not to the party? Or are you kind of like thinking like Carter that you own up to these and you kind of maybe proactively think about some of these processes and these rules? Your thoughts?
Corey
25:52
Well, there's a couple of lenses you can look at it through. One of them is just crassly a cost-benefit. What do I get from this candidate? What might it cost with this candidate? Is the distraction just not worth it, right? Or is this just such a rock star we're willing to take a bit of a knock because in the end we think it's what we need to win the riding or perhaps give a lift in a region or whatever it is there. um
Corey
26:15
other thing i would say though is that traditionally like if you think about the system as it's in a model form now this is supposed to work is somebody wants to become a candidate so they put forward nomination parties to or nomination papers to the party the party then has people go through it with either a legal lens or a social lens or both in most cases and says like okay let's validate that yes they actually did get this degree from this institution let's confirm that there's no criminal record here those are kind of the legal checks let's look through the listing of of papers that they have said that they've written or or comment that they've offered at various times let's also do a scan to see if they were complete in their list or if there were things that they missed now reality is if you are particularly loquacious you're probably going to miss some things just by accident but the party will go through and see if there was an attempt to conceal like that's what's supposed to happen right and
Corey
27:07
there There is that kind of section at the bottom, you
Corey
27:10
you know, that says, is there anything else you know that might be a problem for the party, right? And this is where you – this is like your spill it here, right? Because if it's in the open, it's a yesterday problem. If it's a secret, it's a tomorrow problem.
Corey
27:26
And that's where a smart candidate will have this candid conversation with the party about where it is. And one of the first mitigations that will be recommended is to say, okay, well, it's got to be out there because we don't want it to spill out during a campaign. That, of course, requires a certain amount of time.
Corey
27:44
And now we're still in this model system. If you've done that, if you're in advance of a campaign, if it's an actual contest, then you let the members of the riding figure it out. Do they care enough? Do they not care enough? Is it going to be a big distraction or not? If you think it's kind of on the bubble and it's not necessarily something to reject a candidate over. So
Corey
28:01
So that's how it's supposed to work.
Zain
28:04
the kind of the compact
Corey
28:05
compact in there is that I say everything. If you say yes, you can't hold anything I put on this document against me, right? You are with me at that point. And so this is where I think the Nova Scotia liberals by the sounds of things really fell down because it sounds at least like the disclosure was full.
Corey
28:24
and i i just don't think it's particularly good form for a political party to sort of revoke that support for no particular reason you know somebody finally googles only fans and sees what it is that's not a good reason yeah
Corey
28:37
so i mean i mean that's that's my answer zane i think that ultimately that's how these things are supposed to play out now when an election is coming in a rush you sometimes skip a bunch of those steps but the but the basic contract between you and the party and i mean social contract not legal contract here remains the same i tell you everything if it's okay to you you've got my back we'll
Zain
28:58
we'll leave the headlines there great analysis both of you and we'll jump into our first segment yes our first segment this is what happens when we talk about ponies for too long yeah
Zain
29:07
our first segment it's a classic you're gonna love it fine
Zain
29:10
fine fabulous or fucked here we are again oh and we're going to start steven carter you used to We
Zain
29:19
No, this is a good one.
Zain
29:21
one. No, this is a classic. This is a classic. Yeah, this is good.
Zain
29:22
You'll see why, because this is, as they'd say on Jeopardy, a potpourri of items that I can shove in to one hot dog casing. Which, by the way, just—the
Zain
29:33
just—the first one, I really want to get your thoughts on it for a second. This one is Mary Simon, our new governor general, is going to be sworn in on Monday. Sunday, her lack of French has prompted an investigation after, wait for it, drumroll, 400 complaints. That's right, 400 letters have been sent, a grand total of 400 letters, Carter. And Mary Simon is now under investigation by the official languages watchdog, which is now opening up this investigation because she does not speak French. She's indicated that she does not speak French because she didn't get the opportunity to in the federal school that she She was in Stephen Carter. I'll start with you. Is this fine? Is this fabulous or is this fucked? It's
Carter
30:14
It's fucked. It's absolutely fucked. She's bilingual in two languages that are distinctly Canadian. You know, the fact that she was unable to get French while being schooled in the federal residential, you know, federal school system. Give me a break. She's an excellent, excellent candidate. And frankly, what
Carter
30:37
what is it? Ray Notician, who was not bilingual at all. Um, so give me a break. This is another example of trying to tear someone down who's achieving greatness and just leave her be and let her be the governor general that we need to heal and make the, make the role great again. Right, Corey?
Zain
30:58
Oh, there's so many things about this, Corey, but I'm going to get your first thoughts, fine, fabulous, or fucked, and then I'll jump into what, what, what piqued my attention. So
Corey
31:05
So there are 400 complaints. It fundamentally comes down to a question as to what
Corey
31:14
what is the role of a governor general and is a governor general supposed to speak the official languages of Canada? And it inevitably brings in a conversation about official languages. And I have to imagine, like, one of the things I find fascinating, let me just say, is like the politics of English versus French, I shouldn't say English versus French, let's say English and French, but at certain times versus over the past hundreds of years, much longer than we've been a country going back to the 18th century, that
Corey
31:42
that's been kind of a defining characteristic of this country. And it's been a defining characteristic of the Liberal Party for most of the 20th century and beyond that French is given a place of equal prominence to English within Canada. And when you look back at the official languages, you
Corey
31:56
you see that kind of being entrenched, right? And that, of course, is a big liberal milestone.
Corey
32:02
I think, though, that if we were having that same conversation today, like if we'd never had the conversation about official languages, I
Corey
32:09
I don't know how we would exclude indigenous languages. languages right
Corey
32:12
you know i think if we were to ever sort of open that pandora's box we would basically have two solutions one is to say we don't have official languages which you can't really do because the constitution right but the other would be to say okay and here's the the 12 indigenous languages we're going to add as well right and so in that context i feel how
Corey
32:32
how in the world do you exclude um okay
Corey
32:36
okay if you have a candidate who is is from quebec northern Northern Quebec, speaks English, which is one of our official languages, speaks an indigenous
Corey
32:45
indigenous language. I can never remember the name of the language. Inuktitut? Inuktitut? Yeah, that's right. I'll pronounce it wrong. So that's my big problem there.
Corey
32:55
That seems like we're not asking people to speak three languages, four languages, five languages. Like at a certain point, like it's just you're going to have, no one's going to be able to speak all of the Canadian languages, right? So it seems to me it should be fine. And of course, sitting here in the West in particular,
Corey
33:10
trying to imagine the opposite. Like if we had a governor general who spoke Cree and French, would
Corey
33:17
would I care? Now, I don't think I would care. I think you'd probably get 400 letters from Albertans about it complaining. But does it mean that we should listen to those letters? I don't think so. Who
Corey
33:27
Who cares? Also, it's the governor general. It's a fake job. job.
Zain
33:31
Okay, so Corey, two things that piqued my interest that you've both mentioned. Number one, the governor general, like, I mean, okay, we've talked about it. I know you love talking about it, which is why the only reason I put it on the agenda today, to be honest, you forced my hand. Number two, 400 letters. Like seriously, 400 letters, like is a largely insignificant total in a country of, oh, I don't know, 38 some million. It's like a small theater. So I agree with both of you on that take. Our next one here. We
Corey
33:59
We have more ratings on Apple Podcasts than there are letters about this. Oh, this is true? Yeah. Carter, that's excellent. That's all my
Zain
34:07
Let's move on to our next one. Fine, fabulous, or fucked? Corey, I'm sticking with you on this. Mark Carney is not running for the liberals. Is that for the liberals? For the liberals. Is that fine? Is that fabulous? Or is that fucked?
Corey
34:21
I think it's fine. I don't think it hits fucked. That's for sure. It is interesting that there were so many people who seemed so sure he was going to run in one of these ridings, people tied to the leader's office in this commentary that's been going on for the last bit here.
Zain
34:35
Yeah, he's like addressing Kanata, a lot of what, Tenor, Edmondson, Tenor, right? Yeah. And
Corey
34:39
And it just didn't happen. So it makes me wonder when the PMO learned he wasn't going to run, right?
Corey
34:44
right? And that's a little fucked. Like if you're surprised by something like that, that's a little fucked. But I think on the whole, this election is not going to hinge on whether Mark Carney is a candidate for the Liberals. And in fact, he could have been a distraction because as we've talked about before, he's
Corey
34:59
he's not a politician. He's come from a very different world. He's come from quite rarefied places. I could see him having
Corey
35:05
having gaffes. I could see him looking out of touch on particular matters. And so it's
Corey
35:10
it's fine. fine it's a bit of a loss to the liberal party when you talk about their bench strength and we've talked about their bench strength but um as far as the election goes no big as far as the next cabinet goes more of a dent for sure carter
Zain
35:23
carter for the liberals mark carney not running for them is that fine is that fabulous is that fucked i
Carter
35:29
i think it's fabulous i
Carter
35:31
mean how long has he been rumored to be running for them three months or something like that to take a tremendous amount of attention off of everybody else there's no scrutiny being applied to anybody but mark carney you know there's no criticism there's no looking at anybody it's it's a total distraction technique just before the election and suddenly you know we're three weeks out or so from the election call by my math uh and suddenly he's out i mean now everybody's going to be looking around and trying to find the next star candidate for the liberal party and i'm sure they're going to trot out a few this is fine they're fine fine verging on fabulous you
Corey
36:05
you might have convinced me it's It's interesting how much fire he's taken from people like Pierre Poliev. And for what? He's not even running now. He's
Carter
36:11
He's not even running, Pierre. Well done, Skippy. Well done.
Zain
36:16
He did it. He did it. Okay, our next one, our next issue. Oh, we should spend some time on this. I don't want to, but we should. With friends like these, who needs enemies? That's, of course, a line I had stolen from Twitter from David Cochran. I love it. But the Green Party leader says she won't be distracted with the party brass as the party brass now takes her to court. Stephen Carter, let's start with you on this. For the Greens, I know the answer.
Zain
36:46
And why is it fucked?
Carter
36:48
Because they're idiots. She was elected as the leader. They can, you know, they have every opportunity to walk away from this nightmare. they finally get to the place where apparently
Carter
36:58
apparently it's it's some sort of arbitrated solution that they're forced into and now they decide to go back and and go to court to try and stop this like at what point is enough enough how many times you have to take down the black jewish woman who is leading your party by popular vote by popular vote by the members own choice who are are these people? How arrogant are they? They must step down. They must leave. This is fucked. The party is done. And for Annamie Paul to be sitting up there and saying, well, I'm not going to be distracted. What a fucking lie. You don't even have anybody to put a press release out for you. You have no organizer in Edmonton or Toronto center, although Edmonton center would be a good place for her to run too. But these are the things that, these are the things that make me crazy. like this party is fucked all
Carter
37:51
all capital letters uh
Zain
37:53
uh for those listening at home the reason we do this every week is just to really build our ai system so that it gets the same take over and over again from steven every week to really just add the nice contours that that are necessary there are a couple of developments on the story that i want to talk about but cory i'll throw it over to you it's fucked why and let me add a couple of the developments that you may want to pick on as I go back and forth to both of you. Number one, it's the fact that she literally did a press conference a day before it was revealed that the party's now taking her to open court. Number two, the second development, that Elizabeth May issued a statement, non-statement, I support the Green Party. Anna Mae Paul's the leader of the Green Party. That's a paraphrase. Corey, pick this up from your perspective. Fine, fabulous, or fucked?
Corey
38:40
I think it's fine.
Corey
38:41
I'll tell you why. I really liked where Annamie Paul landed on this particular matter. At her
Zain
38:49
her press conference, you mean? Yeah.
Corey
38:51
Yeah. I thought that her messaging was very strong. And at this point, we've already hit rock bottom. Like, I couldn't possibly think less of the Green Party executive who had been involved in this to date. And what Annamie Paul has managed to do is project something approximating, like, no sweat, don't worry about it. and done it in a not entirely unconvincing way when she said like, hey, listen, this is just churn. These people are all off the council in the next month. We've just got to wait it out. No big deal. They're acting like idiots, but I'm not going to let them distract me. I think that's a pretty cool approach. I don't have a problem with that approach at all. Now, the Green Party, all I can say is they haven't dug themselves any deeper, thankfully, because the leader that you are castigating right now has come up with a pretty good message track. But, yeah, I mean, the entire situation is an odd one. But this particular moment of the situation, I think she handled it fine.
Zain
39:51
And, Carter, speak to me from your perspective of what you made of her press conference. Like, as you mentioned earlier, she's got no staff to do this. She was in Toronto Centre. Like, clearly, you know, a relatively quickly organized press conference had some of her candidates behind her. Her core message was, I'm not going to leak any information. This has been tough for me. I'm looking forward to winning in Toronto Centre, to taking the Green Party forward. She talks about diversity and how she's increased the diversity of the candidates. She made it about the candidates around her and said, you know, this is not just about me, but I hope this Phil gets elected and John and Joan. And like she did that thing. What did you make of her message and her standing? And then literally the next day that gets hit with this story that, you know, they're taking her to open court. She's
Carter
40:33
She's behaving like a leader. They're behaving like petulant children. children they
Carter
40:37
should you know she is the leader and you know that she's made some let's say bad decisions um let's say that i think that her running in toronto center is dumb okay she doesn't have a chance but who cares she's the leader she gets to make some bad decisions she gets to push forward and the membership gets to decide whether or not she stays this is not something the executive should be doing and if you know um you
Carter
41:03
know i'm in calgary confederation with my calgary confederation green party candidate comes along i'm gonna ask her i'm gonna say which part which which group do you support because
Carter
41:12
because it will dictate whether or not they get my vote they
Carter
41:15
they won't get my vote but they might get my vote you
Zain
41:19
you think the green party candidate calgary confederation is going to knock on your door i'm
Carter
41:23
i'm hoping her name's natalie and i knew her in high school i had a little crush it's it's something i shouldn't talk about well
Zain
41:30
well you clearly did um cory a final Final thoughts here. Is there anything that the Green Party can do to make their situation better? Because here's one undercurrent that's bubbling. It's finally airing out the sins of their leader. And those start to be, you know, they haven't necessarily come out, so to speak. But is that helpful if you're the Green Party right now saying, you know what, this is, she's been horrible at her job. She's actually been so demanding. Let's lay it out to you. You know, we've taken your open court. Would any of that be helpful to a political party that doesn't seem to be taking anyone's advice thus far well
Corey
42:05
well of course not it's it's not helpful in any organization when you know the dirty laundry is aired out there like that in such a fashion in particular when like there are times where you've almost got to you know pull
Corey
42:17
pull the and on court or you've got to be the whistleblower or whatever metaphor you want but they're the ones
Corey
42:24
they're the bullies in this situation this executive council is is or you know federal federal councillor, whatever type of council it's called, has
Corey
42:32
has entirely lost the plot here for all of the reasons we've said. But just to reinforce, she was elected by the membership not so long ago. She is the leader. And the rest of this is just kind of backroom fuckery. So no, there's no good that can come of this. What's the best case scenario? Everybody loses. Why is that good? That's not good for your party. You know, you're not, this is not like the righteous fire that's going to purify the greens and then the greens are going to be right
Corey
42:59
right at the top of their game this is going to destroy the greens at a time when the green message should have the most possible resonance so no no good can come of this if if they had any
Corey
43:09
any sense they would absolutely just pull out of this this track of madness they're on right now and um and just resign and and let anime paul organize for an election that is coming imminently carter
Zain
43:22
carter i'm going to start our next one with you moving us to alberta our justice minister here as calling for the criminal code to change to allow pepper spray for self-defense he sent a letter to the federal government saying that there's been a lot of drug-fueled uh crime so to speak and they want to alter the criminal code to allow for the ability to carry pepper spray for self-defense fine fabulous or fucked what's your take fucked
Carter
43:50
fucked why did they stop at pepper spray i mean why not just arm everybody like the united states has done to make the most dangerous country uh you know in the world up here in canada i mean talk about following stupid precedent we need to arm the victims to protect them from the predators like that is just it's asinine thinking that the republican party is bought into that has led the united states into being the most dangerous country in the world this is where we're this is who we're following this is fucked casey madu is an embarrassment of a minister and it turns out that it looks like the alberta police chiefs association wasn't even consulted you didn't even get the police chiefs uh with their noted you know like this is
Carter
44:33
is a stupid ass policy that makes no one safer um bear spray is for bears period period.
Carter
44:41
I know because I've got some in the garage.
Zain
44:43
Yeah, I do too. I do not. Unsurprising to everyone.
Carter
44:46
everyone. Yeah, because you don't go outside. Yeah. Corey,
Zain
44:49
Corey, fine, fabulous, or fucked. Our minister here in Alberta, our justice minister, calling for the criminal code to be changed to allow pepper spray for self-defense.
Corey
44:58
Well, it's not good. I don't know if I entirely agree with what Stephen said about police chiefs, because the police chiefs, by and large, supported the long gun registry for a long time too they're not generally opposed to arms control i would not take it as a given that police would want to have something that can hurt people in the hands of people i'm i'm i think that they
Corey
45:18
they they have to spend their days dealing with these messes and they don't want a bunch of people on the streets with pepper spray pepper spraying each other maybe pepper spraying officers all of that that doesn't make any sense but this i mean this cannot be the solution this cannot be the solution that that you arm people with pepper spray i
Corey
45:38
only have bear spray i'm not sure if like a broader expansion of pepper spray would be like these quick draw mechanisms that allow me to shoot at a moment's notice but have have you like if you have bear spray you know it's not like it
Corey
45:52
it like it takes a minute you know one of the things is you've got to sort of think about what you're doing you've got to pull this trigger off you've got to do this other stuff and you should do it when the bear is 30 feet away in an urban environment do we actually think this is a realistic approach to things no
Carter
46:06
no and on top of that it's like any other weapon right you think you know you you show up to a bar with a knife who's that knife most likely to hurt you the same with the with pepper spray if you're deploying pepper spray to an assailant that say is three feet away or even closer you're getting the pepper spray you are going to be pepper sprayed and this is a dumb dumb ass idea it does not help the victim and it certainly isn't going to impede uh the predator it
Carter
46:32
it doesn't seem like a good defensive weapon
Corey
46:35
though either like i mean even if like i don't think we should be arming people but i just think even in practical terms when we talk about the attacks and the nature of them and how they've been does anybody could you roll back the tape and say oh if they had pepper spray in their bag that this would this would have gone different not unless they were 30 feet away and shouted like a bear and said like hey i'm gonna charge you right i mean these things they
Corey
46:59
they don't sort of line up and it just makes me wonder what kind of agenda this is following who is the group or who are the people who are arguing we need to have pepper spray on the streets i have to assume this is somebody's pet cause and somebody said see now this wouldn't have happened if we just were allowed to have pepper spray but it's not a good idea cory
Zain
47:18
cory talk to me about this from the the political strategy here? What do you think it is? Am I being too simplistic by saying base politics, period? Or do you feel like there's more nuance to add to what the minister and the UCP might be proposing from a political strategy perspective?
Corey
47:34
Well, look, there are people who would very strongly say, I want the right to defend myself. You know, and it's not even just about a gun. There's stand your ground in other contexts. If a robber comes into my house, I should be able to beat them senseless, somebody would say. Or Or if I'm attacked on the street, I should be able to fill their eyes with pepper spray. Why in the world can't I protect myself? Don't I have that right? And so there is this school of thought out there. And I'm sure that I'm
Corey
47:58
I'm sure that somebody somewhere in the orbit of Casey Maddow said, well, wouldn't
Corey
48:05
wouldn't it be great? This wouldn't happen if these people were able to protect themselves. Well, it probably would happen for starters. But this is a really old chestnut, this notion of self-reliance and this idea that I don't want to rely on the police to come and be driving by when somebody happens to be assaulting me. I want to be able to defend myself from my assailant. And why won't the state allow me to do that? But the logic is so flawed for reasons we've already gone through. It's flawed with handguns. It's flawed with knives. It's flawed with pepper spray. The
Corey
48:35
The solution cannot be that we all start arming ourselves with various mechanisms because once they're out there carter is right you're you
Corey
48:44
do this i would guess you are going to stop somewhere between the area of zero to 0.5 assaults of this nature with pepper spray and you are going to have a myriad of bar fights where somebody releases
Corey
48:57
pepper spray and the whole place has to be cleared pepper spray being dropped in a bus shelter and all of a sudden that bus shelter can't be used for 24 hours as somebody gets twitchy because they see somebody who is, you know, without a house currently going by, and that makes them scared. Like, it's just a bad fucking idea.
Zain
49:15
Carter, you know, talk to me about this for a second. From your perspective, right? You know, I was reading the National, you know, Islamophobia Summit that's happening right now, the National Anti-Semitism Summit that's happening right now. None of the recommendations that groups that are being targeted of hate you know um at least that i've read black indigenous asian are asking for pepper spray from your perspective uh what do you think in in terms of the political strategy here for madhu and the ucp is it is it base politics to to those that that want self-reliance self-defense or what do you what do you think there is you think there's something more nuanced or grander at play i
Carter
49:58
i have not seen much
Carter
49:59
much coming from the pepper pepper spray lobby right
Carter
50:02
right like there's a group of people who in alberta that think guns are a good thing right they think guns are fun and people should have more guns um it's not a huge everywhere who
Carter
50:11
think that yeah it's not a huge group um but it's there and i could see him trying to appeal to that group i don't see a lot of people walking around saying you know what if
Carter
50:19
if i just had pepper spray if i just had the pepper spray handy because first of all i mean yeah you'd probably be carrying around one of those little purse numbers or whatever but this is not a thing this isn't something that that people want this isn't something that people have been calling for and it just feels like a bit of a yeah let's throw this up and see if it actually works and it didn't because nothing that jason kenney's trying right now is working carter
Zain
50:43
carter i'm gonna i'm gonna stick it locally here with alberta focusing actually even more locally at the calgary stampede so this was the first big event that we saw in the country of of such size scale and scope even even on timeline, from the perspective of the Calgary Stampede, from what you saw, and one of the data points I will point out to our listeners, is they had just above 500,000 visitors this year, roughly 40%. A lot of people chirping from the sidelines saying it wasn't safe, I'm not going to go. The Stampede tried many tactics to get people in the doors, or in the gates, I should say, including a free Sunday. If you're a frontline worker, it's free. If you you graduated this year you come in free uh despite that 40 attendance the question i have for you steven the brand of the calgary stampede after this year the brand is it fine is it fabulous or is it fucked uh going forward i
Carter
51:39
i think it may be fucked i mean it's been under assault for quite some time um you know the the animal rights groups have been have been angry about the rodeo uh for some time uh they've been angry about the chuck wagon races for some time uh there's an you know there's a tremendous amount of pressure on the the calgary stampede to change um that's their that's their normal brand position how do we get back to the baseline and then it kind of gets even this this takes it further because now they were used as a political tool um not because you know they only got 40 percent attendance i think that 40 percent attendance is fine i think that all of the the freebies the getting people down there that's fine that's what they felt they needed to do in order to be successful and i don't fault anybody uh anybody that trying to be successful um my problem is that they were used as a political tool they were used by the kenny government uh to signal something coming out of the pandemic and i'm not sure if they wanted to be there or not but they put themselves into that position they allow themselves to be used as a political uh organization and part of me wonders if if if part of the reason that you You didn't have bigger attendance is the number of people weren't just saying, I'm not comfortable with the pandemic. But a number of people were saying, I'm not comfortable going to something that is being used as a political pawn.
Carter
52:59
And they stayed away.
Zain
53:01
was a significant enough number that we're like reading the tea leaves to that degree, being like this is a this is becoming like a Trojan horse for a government? You feel like legitimately enough people were seeing it that way, Carter? Sixty percent
Carter
53:12
of the people didn't go.
Carter
53:14
Right. Right. Calgary has one point three million people, one point four million people in Calgary in the greater Calgary area. We're nearing two million people. When I was a kid, it was four hundred and seventy five thousand people. And that was the you know, in 1977 was the first year that the Calgary Stampede went over a million people. We were a third of the size and we had the exact same attendance. So I think that the Calgary Stampede has been on a decline in terms of importance in the city of Calgary for decades. decades uh and this may just hasten that decline it's not something that i would have allowed myself to be used as as a political pawn um and that's unfortunate for the stampede now will they bounce back maybe
Carter
53:56
but i think they would have had a much much stronger 2022 if they hadn't had such a weak 2021 cory
Zain
54:03
cory fine fabulous or fuck the the long term i know i'm asking you to project into the future but after this year long-term brand of the calgary stampede what do you think
Corey
54:12
think what listeners outside of the city need to appreciate is just how much of Calgary civil society has revolved around the Stampede over the past several decades. I mean, Stephen was talking about some of those numbers. The 2011 parade had 425,000 people go to – 425,000 people go into a parade in a city that at the time, city proper, was about 1.1 million.
Corey
54:36
That's a lot, just
Corey
54:38
just to state the obvious, right? Right. It is a it's basic. I've said it on the show before. It's basically a holiday parade day in the city. You get the morning off for that, the very least here. And I guess I say all of this to say, well, I do worry for the stampede that this has eroded their brand and made it a political punching bag. You know, it's all of a sudden it
Corey
54:57
it almost becomes a left wing, right wing thing. It becomes just another political Rorschach test in an era full of political Rorschach tests. it's
Corey
55:04
it's got a long way to go before it hits anything close
Corey
55:08
close to irrelevance and i don't think steven was saying it's going to be irrelevant no i
Carter
55:12
i don't think it's irrelevant i just think it's another brand hit i mean at a time when you're already under assault uh for your primary product which is the the rodeo and the chuck wagons yeah
Corey
55:21
yeah well this is still the stampede city and it's still a very central to the calgary experience that's not changing anytime soon interesting
Zain
55:30
interesting let's move moving on to the next one. Corey, I'm going to start with you on this. Jagmeet Singh is seeming to have a loving this week. Polls coming out saying he's doing better, you know, articles about his social media performance and how authentic he is, his likability factor, opinion pieces about, you know, if Trudeau doesn't win, look at this guy for why he might not get his majority. There seems to be a bit of a loving for Jagmeet Singh. And I just wanted to make sure that the conversation on him is also considered fine, fabulous, or fucked, the love-in that Jagmeet Singh is having this week in the press. If you're the NDP, how are you viewing this? Oh,
Corey
56:05
Oh, it's fabulous, of course, if you're the NDP. You're finally hitting perhaps that moment-plus-person thing that you've always hoped would happen with Jagmeet Singh. He's a young, dynamic guy. He
Corey
56:19
He has a social media presence that most other leaders would kill for. like literally good
Corey
56:25
good TikToks. The guy is not bad. His TikTok game is pretty solid. And I think that with a little bit of luck, you can really kind of push yourself a little bit further and higher as the NDP. You could come out of this election looking like one of the real winners. And if the liberals are denied their majority, and if there's a strong NDP contingent, it might be the most powerful the NDP has been in a generation as well.
Zain
56:50
Carter, the love in that Jagmeet Singh thing is getting fine fabulous or fucked in your mind um
Carter
56:55
um i think that uh it's
Carter
56:59
probably fabulous i mean you're heading into an election and you're getting your name right you know spoken this frequently that's not a bad thing and especially in the positive context um but will he win seats um because ultimately the problem with high expectations is that if you don't meet them uh you're in real trouble um you
Carter
57:19
you know going back and re-listening to their 2015 liberal strategy special, the NDP were doing great until they had to campaign.
Carter
57:26
So we'll see. How does the NDP campaign is going to be the ultimate question.
Zain
57:33
Carter, I'm going to start with you for our final one in this segment for Fine, Fabulous or Fucked. One of the biggest O'Toole swords that he's been using against Justin Trudeau has been on ethics, has been on the whole classic sort of liberal liberal insider handing out contracts to their friends, keeping their friends close. Well, a story from Global News just reveals that Aaron O'Toole's office gave away nearly $240,000 worth of taxpayer-funded contracts to conservative insiders in his first six months on the job, even while O'Toole and many of his MPs were hammering the Trudeau liberals for the same. How bad is this for O'Toole? Is this fine? Is this fabulous? Or is this fucked? I don't think it's the middle one, but between fine and fucked, what do you think it is? I
Carter
58:14
think it's probably more fine because the good news for O'Toole is he wasn't able to get any traction on his on his previous screaming at the top of his lungs about all the corruption. So there's no boomerang that's going to come and smack him in the head. You know, he's a hypocrite.
Carter
58:30
I'm shocked. I mean, politicians being hypocrites isn't isn't a headline. I mean, this didn't come up in the headline section, so it must not be a headline. So I think it's just absolutely fine.
Zain
58:41
I like I like that you play by the rules. That's what we appreciate about you most, Stephen Carter. Corey, O'Toole's office giving away nearly $240K of taxpayer-funded contracts to, quote-unquote, conservative insiders. Fine, fabulous, or fucked?
Corey
58:55
I think I'm like Carter. I think it's probably fine because I thought that the liberals weren't in any real mortal jeopardy here either. Now,
Corey
59:03
Now, there is a certain hypocrisy about it that will give the liberals a bit of a shield. I mean, this basically kills the issue. It's
Zain
59:09
It's a neutralizer. But
Corey
59:10
But it was never that great of an issue for the conservatives anyhow. I mean, they really needed another piece to kind of fall in their laps that made the thing seem a little bit more unseemly. And that could have been an ethics report, as we talked about, but that was probably not coming before the election anyhow, if this election happens on the timelines we're thinking. So, so it's probably fine. Liberal supporters will be able to throw it back in the face of conservative critics, but I don't think this is the kind of thing that's going to change the course of history. Now, interestingly, when you look at the details underneath it, and how money was flowing in the context of Aaron O'Toole versus versus these other organization versus the liberals, it's
Corey
59:51
it's they're not the same details either. You know, there is a legitimate case that these are different things, and they should be looked at through different lenses. In Aaron O'Toole's case, the big one was really he's hired somebody who's making about $150,000 a year. And that person is also doing work benefiting with various candidates, right? I mean, that's the one that is kind of the most salacious in terms of like
Corey
1:00:15
like the politics of it. But it's also pretty
Corey
1:00:19
to me, it seems probably less egregious from a public finance point of view. So I don't know. They're just not the same details, but it won't matter. Like people will say, you basically did the same thing. All I know is I've heard the word government money in the context of both of your parties. So neutralize
Corey
1:00:36
neutralize is an issue that wasn't a big issue to begin with. One
Zain
1:00:38
One of the things I like to do with you guys is ask you to write rapid fire statements or just bullet points of them. Carter, you know, Corey thinks this is not going to be a big deal. But regardless, if you have 15 minutes, and in this case you'll have 15 seconds, to hand together bullet points for the leader so that he's internalized them in terms of what his spin or defense of this looks like, what are you giving them in terms of some of those key bullet points, especially around this being a spear of attack that they've used? Maybe not even a spear, but a proof point, I should say, more accurately, that they've used against the liberals around their ethics and their insider politics. What are some bullet points you're handing over to your leader, Aaron O'Toole, in defense of this story breaking?
Carter
1:01:24
I mean, these were highly, highly
Carter
1:01:28
highly specific contracts. These contracts required a high degree of understanding of our internal processes. They could only go to people who understood what we needed as a party. This was really less about handing over contracts to conservative insiders and more about handing over contracts to the most qualified candidates. We ran robust competitions to hand out these contracts that followed all of the best practices that we expect from the federal government. Sadly, the Liberals have not been doing that. And and had they been doing what we'd been doing, we certainly would have been much more muted about our critique of the liberal government. But they've been wrong. And we're we are we are not. This is a false point of comparison.
Zain
1:02:16
Corey, write me your bullet points you're handing over to O'Toole. He's like, I'm running out the door. There's press outside. I need something. What do you hand in them?
Corey
1:02:26
this isn't about our contractors it's about your data the liberals would like you to believe this is the same issue what the liberals are being credibly accused of is creating systems that allow them to unethically share data between government systems and party systems what they've thrown back in in response is the shocking elevation that we hire conservatives for conservative jobs that's not a scandal the scandal here is that they are continuing to feed this garbage to canadians when when we have so many real problems brought on by their lackluster response to covet 19 nicely
Zain
1:03:00
nicely done carter what do you think i i feel like i feel like cory's response was was
Zain
1:03:05
was better than yours i mean i
Carter
1:03:06
i don't like a minute and a half while i was i i
Zain
1:03:11
always i always make you
Carter
1:03:13
you go creating these things we're not asking you know send in your comments is it a four out of five send in your
Zain
1:03:18
your comments yeah i'll send in your comments
Zain
1:03:20
now that's what's gonna end up happening let's move it on to our over under and our lightning guys are you ready stephen carter are you ready no
Carter
1:03:26
personally attacked i'm not ready at all well
Zain
1:03:30
well let me volley one at you stephen carter overrated or underrated the
Zain
1:03:34
the brand erosion for the calgary stampede overrated underrated in your mind uh
Carter
1:03:38
uh underrated i think that the stampede uh the biggest challenge that they have is they don't recognize that the brand erosion is real you can't address something that you don't see as a problem cory
Zain
1:03:49
cory stampede having 40 of its attendance this year, many suggesting that this is the beginning of the end or a downhill slope, overrated or underrated in your mind, the brand erosion for the Calgary Stampede?
Zain
1:04:01
Corey, I'm going to stick with you on our next one. 26% of those responding in a nano survey saying that they want an election, that they're open to it, a vast majority saying no, definitely not. Is that overrated or underrated in your mind?
Corey
1:04:16
It's overrated. Nobody ever wants an election before the final hour, but they never care once they're called. How many parties actually get penalized for calling early elections besides Jim Prentice in 2015?
Zain
1:04:29
Carter, overrated, underrated, the 26%, the one quarter of Canadians that want to head to the polls this summer. If you're the Liberals and you're decision-making, are you paying any stock to that? Is that overrated or underrated in your mind? It's overrated.
Carter
1:04:42
overrated. You run a campaign, you change people's minds. That's what campaigns are for.
Carter
1:04:46
So you take the five weeks that you're given and you try and get the best possible outcome. I suspect they'll be fine as long as there's not a fourth wave.
Zain
1:04:55
Stephen Carter, I have a deal for you. I've got this special tranche of stock that you can sell on August 16th. It's a stock in Jagmeet Singh. Are you buying or are you passing on this opportunity?
Carter
1:05:07
I'm probably going to sell because
Carter
1:05:10
because I think he will be at the height of his popularity on the 16th of August.
Zain
1:05:14
So you're buying to sell on the 16th.
Corey
1:05:17
This is the worst.
Corey
1:05:20
He's selling you an option on Jagmeet Singh at a great price now. Oh,
Carter
1:05:24
Oh, fuck that. No.
Carter
1:05:26
I don't know. Corey. What do I know from options? Is it a put? I don't understand. I'm
Corey
1:05:30
using the terms. Corey, what are you doing?
Corey
1:05:32
I'm buying. I think that, I think in particular at the start of the election, people will be looking for a narrative that says, look at him, he could go into second place.
Zain
1:05:43
Corey, I'm sticking with you on the stock analogy. on the tokyo olympics you get to sell at the close of the closing ceremonies as as we sign off on that sunday what is it 10 15 days from now i don't know exactly two weeks um like 16 18 days from now that's sunday when everything closes are you buying olympic stock that that you then have to cash out on at that point yes or no i
Corey
1:06:07
think the answer is yes but you know what i was thinking a lot about zane is is bubble ball for the nba and also i guess this last season at the start of it when there weren't really interesting
Corey
1:06:20
didn't exist i you know what the bubble was actually okay because they had all of those screens but you know playing in empty arenas that felt like the
Zain
1:06:27
the first half of the season was
Corey
1:06:28
by yes absolutely and i wonder how much of that is going to reflect like you're not going to hear the bells ringing as as people are going around and I
Corey
1:06:37
don't know, maybe it could maybe damage the viewing experience as well. I think that there's a chance that that human soundscape is more important to the Olympics than we appreciate. And so maybe I shouldn't be so cavalier, but I will say that the general arc of the Olympics is to buy at the open if you get to sell at the close because people almost always feel better about them at the end. Carter,
Zain
1:07:00
Carter, for that reason, stock that you have to dump on the closing ceremonies. Are you buying today?
Carter
1:07:09
It's going to be way up on closing ceremonies. We're going to be thrilled. We're going to have a whole series of new heroes. We have favorites going in. We'll have heroes coming out. It's going to be fantastic. We'll
Zain
1:07:20
We'll leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 934 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we'll see you next time.