Episode 934: The Stephen Carter Birthday Spectacular

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 934. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan and birthday boy, Stephen Carter.

Carter 0:11

Don't sing. Don't, don't. No. Send gifts. Send money. Send gifts. Send money. What

Zain 0:18

What was that song?

Zain 0:20

I've never heard it before. Never sung in my household. I have no idea what it was. You guys do gifts for birthdays? Sorry, what? Oh,

Carter 0:28

Oh, yeah. Big time. very foreign they just get steven carter they just get more disappointing as you get older it's okay yeah the way we work eating

Corey 0:36

your ketchup cake uh listeners please send him gifts steven this year's looking to get his favorite cryptocurrency nano he's into the altcoin

Carter 0:44

altcoin so did you see

Carter 0:45

how much cake i have here like this is this i'm gonna eat a bite of this cake every time i think you're wrong cory so i

Carter 0:51

don't know if i have enough i

Carter 0:53

i don't know if there's enough So Stephen

Corey 0:56

Carter's nano wallet that I've set up for him is nano underscore three Z E U I nine four E N X U Q three one E S Q K Q seven N S S N five one three eight seven G X O D F Q P seven B S nine nine D W D Z A U R C O C S R six five D three U X D. d it's that future currency folks it's gonna make everything seem yeah

Carter 1:25

yeah i mean that really works well is it being quoted in american dollars because that's my favorite i

Corey 1:31

like that d how

Carter 1:32

how much how much is the thing worth oh this in american dollars perfect let's tell me it's working well

Zain 1:38

carter how is your uh your birthday as a as a guy whose life is a metaphor for dogecoin i'm sorry zane

Corey 1:44

zane should i say that again no

Zain 1:45

no no no radio rules require repetition cory please no No, don't

Carter 1:52

don't do it again.

Zain 1:53

Corey? No, no, no. People need to deposit their alt crypto to your wallet. Guys, I don't

Carter 1:58

don't have much time left, okay?

Carter 2:03

I would prefer not to spend any more time than I had to listening to that wallet number.

Zain 2:10

That's what's wrong, right?

Zain 2:11

You're literally at your loss. I mean, literally your loss, buddy.

Carter 2:15

I'm eating more cake.

Zain 2:16

Do we want to do any celebratory intros for Carter? Actually, let's move it on to our first segment. Oh, good. Birthday bumps. Stephen Carter, birthday bumps is, of course, a segment that we do in every Birthday Spectacular on the Strategist podcast. We let the person whose birthday it is bump something in society that they feel like is underrated. So you get to give the Stephen Carter bump to something. It could be an alternative cryptocurrency. It could be a public figure. It could be a private figure that you make public, Stephen Carter. You with the the audience and the listenership could bring something to the fore with a birthday bump. Now, we're very selfless people. We don't talk about ourselves when we do the birthday bump. No, we'd never do that. No, we wouldn't do that. So what is something you want to bump for

Zain 3:04

for the Stephen Carter birthday bump? As

Zain 3:06

As I mentioned, we do this every birthday

Carter 3:09

The Zane Velgey leadership campaign, obviously, is the one I want to go with because it's not quite picked up the way we had hoped. You know, we'd hope to have sold at least 11 or 12 memberships by now. I think we're only at eight, which is a little disappointing. But if we could get it to 15, I think we'll be dominant. So, you know, people are out there listening. The Alberta Party memberships are available.

Carter 3:35

We haven't officially entered. Corey has not given us the $7,500 that we require. It's a little bit of an upset, but but things are going the right direction, for sure.

Zain 3:44

And Corey, on that front, you know, since Carter has chosen the Zane Velji for Alberta Party Leadership Contest as his birthday bump, please read to people the, how do they buy an Alberta membership? Which nano wallet do they have to access? Don't do that. Don't do that again.

Zain 4:10

it's great uh cory uh do you want to add anything to the zane velgey leadership campaign uh zane velgey for alberta party leadership campaign uh carter has clearly uh done none of the upfront work requires a

Corey 4:22

a lot of buzz for the zane velgey fellow yeah very exciting

Corey 4:26

exciting i think people are also now saying why stop at alberta party uh maybe the UCP leadership comes open. Yeah, sure. Rachel Notley got 98.1% approval, but did they know Zane Velji was an option? I mean, maybe there's a way that we can just sort of extend this brand, get to one party rule in Alberta, kind of collect them all Pokemon style. Yeah.

Carter 4:46

Yeah. I mean, we better start up the Zane Velji three-way as

Carter 4:50

as an official policy.

Carter 4:54

Right? We're going to have the UCP, we're going to have the Alberta party, and we're going to merge them together with the Alberta Liberal Party. The Zane Bell G3 way. That's what we're going with.

Corey 5:04

Okay, well, yeah, that's... Zane, you already got that domain or what? Yeah.

Zain 5:12

Been parked and has not been used ever.

Carter 5:15

Well, now's your time, Zane. Now's

Zain 5:17

Now's your time. Parked for a long time. Corey, any final additions to the Stephen Carter birthday bump? As we always allow, when it is Stephen Carter's birthday for the Birthday Spectacular, We let you reverse his birthday bump in case he makes an errant choice, which he has for seven of the last 10 years. Yeah, that's

Corey 5:33

that's true. And, you know, part of the problem is he's just thinking about his own financial well-being. So please send your nano cryptocurrency to nano underscore. Oh,

Zain 5:48

Let's move on to our next segment. Our next segment. Fine, fabulous or fucked. Guys, I gave you a fourth option two weeks ago. Fuck you guys. guys. I'm now removing it. We're gonna go through a bunch of stories. Oh, I hate you. I hate you so much. We're gonna do this right. We're gonna do this the OG way. We've got a bunch of stories we need to cover, and I'm gonna spend a bit of time on all of them, because I think they're quite interesting, most of them. But we're gonna give me the simple scale. Is it fine, fabulous, or fucked? Corey, let's just start here, because you mentioned it. Rachel Notley, 98.2% approval in her leadership review at the Alberta NDP virtual convention this weekend. Fine, fabulous, or fucked? Corey.

Corey 6:30

her? For her. Fabulous. I mean, in addition to obviously getting just an outrageously high level of support from the party faithful, 98.2%, I've never heard of a leadership review with a number that high. It provides such an enormous contrast with the news of the UCP this weekend, which had multiple cabinet ministers actively criticizing the UCP leader and our premier, Jason Kenney. So when you think about a world of contrast, I mean, there could not be one that was more stark. Those two things line up against each other. And, you know, last time, or the last leadership review I remember for Rachel Notley, she got something like 97.5%. Yeah, that's right. So by my math, after the 2031 election, she should be above 100%. And so, bravo. I mean, talk about having her party behind her. Fabulous for her. I can't even, like, in some ways, though, I'm like, who are these 1.8%? Well,

Zain 7:24

Well, they're delegates for the Zane Velgey leadership campaign, the Alberta party.

Carter 7:28

That's the merger. I don't know if you know that. It's the expeditionary force.

Zain 7:32

Carter, fabulous seems like the right answer here. Would you agree? great. No,

Carter 7:38

No, it's it's fine. I mean, what you have to do is you have to dig in and find out who conducted the who conducted the vote. And it's the exact same group that

Carter 7:46

that conducted the Alberta Medical Association and the ATA's votes against the ministers. So they're just producing numbers in the 98, 99th percentile. I'm not even sure that these things are real. So same same pollster, same group, same group doing the data. So I don't have any confidence in it at all. It's fine.

Zain 8:05

good yeah you may not have known this carter but cory played you uh for the last five minutes not played you well he plays you every episode uh but he he mimicked you i

Zain 8:16

i thought it was much funnier than

Corey 8:16

than did you listen to the did you listen to the end of the last episode did you listen to it carter you're this close to being replaced by nothing i just want you to know that i

Carter 8:24

i listened i feel i listened yeah

Zain 8:27

yeah what did you think i

Carter 8:28

i thought fuck if i can outsource this and still They'll get paid the same amount. I'm fine. I'm in.

Zain 8:34

As he eats his cake. I was just going to say your last answer about fine was the most predictable Stephen Carter AI answer that one could produce. That's

Carter 8:44

I'm going for. Which is why I asked you the

Carter 8:47

question the way I did. I'm not even sure that you're... That's not a made up story. Could have been. I don't know. Goodness. I was outside.

Zain 8:55

Corey, best way to leverage this for the NDP throughout the weekend. Do you hang 98.2 above people's heads? Do you move on from it? I'm kind of curious what you do with a number like this, especially when we've considered and talked about leadership reviews in the last couple of months as perhaps being, and I think we were split on this decision, but correct me, maybe an overrated metric. Yeah,

Corey 9:14

Yeah, this is one of these cool guys don't look at explosions, and you don't want to be doing your own press on this. But certainly, I would be not too shy if I was in, you know, kind of the staff level and the people around saying to different media, like, hey, look at the contrast here. Jason Kenney, his cabinet's not even necessarily behind him. Somebody was joking online. People named Jason within the cabinet might not even have a majority of support for him. And, and the idea that Rachel Notley would have, you know, so clearly be speaking, you know, for her party and leading her party, I think is that's a contrast that's worth noting. And it's, it's one that on its own, getting

Corey 9:56

getting 98.2%, that's an enormous number, but it doesn't mean very much. You're right, leadership review numbers can be overrated a lot of the time. But again, I go back to what was going on for the UCP, what was going on on the rest of the field at the same time. And that's what makes it noteworthy. And that's the angle that you want out there. But you don't want to be I

Corey 10:15

mean, Rachel Notley shouldn't be pushing that angle. That's that's something that should be talked about in the background. Carter,

Carter 10:21

Carter, what do you think? Do you have any confidence that this wasn't actually just a temperature that was taken, like literally a temperature? And she's just coming back as normal. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't trumpet it. There's no real advantage. It'll be spoken of enough without you having to push it.

Zain 10:38

Let me ask you, like I said, I'm going to spend a few seconds on each of these stories, but Carter, I'll start with you. How worried are you if you're the UCP? I know it's hard to ask in isolation, especially with other events going on this weekend, and we'll get to those. But if you see this number for Rachel Notley, you're probably expecting it, I imagine. So are you concerned, or is this kind of making a shake in your metaphorical boots? Well,

Carter 11:00

Well, I think that there was a hope at one point that the UCP would be, you know, if I was a UCP strategist, I'd be saying, you know, running against Rachel Notley is great because people already know that they don't, you know, they don't trust her government to be able to be effective. Whereas maybe someone else's government or someone else's leader gets a fresh start or a fresh slate and maybe has a little bit more upward momentum. I would say, though, that based on where things are right now, that that's just a lost opportunity that doesn't exist for the UCP because they're performing so poorly and Rachel Notley is performing so well. So the fact that she's got her base, you know, the people willing to participate in a convention, you know, on her side is good because everybody's just going to be working really hard, pulling on the yoke, making sure that everything goes the way it should go. So, Corey,

Zain 11:50

Corey, I'm going to ask you the question that Carter started to answer, which is, what would you say if you're a UCP strategist when you heard that when you hear 98.2 today, if you were forced to comment on it?

Corey 12:01

I would say it means nothing, means nothing at all. And if I wanted to be if if I was snarkier, depending on the setting, I might say, well, look at that. The group think of the NDP. That's not what's going to get this province moving forward. But the reality is, this is one of those examples where not communicating is the right approach. which I certainly wouldn't be proactively talking about this. The contrast is brutal for you. So, you know, if I were asked what it means, I would probably just answer with a very limited, not much.

Zain 12:30

Yeah, interesting. Let's move on to our next story here. Stephen Carter, I'm going to start with you. Fine, fabulous, or fucked, the federal government has approved a travel exemption for the final two rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs that would allow NHL teams to cross the Canada-US border with a modified quarantine for the federal government. Is this fine? Is this fabulous or is this fucked?

Carter 12:51

This is fabulous. I think that the federal government, you can point to the protocols that are in place and how

Carter 12:59

the league is operating and you can say that this is going to work out. And more importantly, you get to kind of confound some of the messaging that's coming out of the provincial governments that may or may not still have hockey teams that are involved. How many hockey teams are left? Everybody's been eliminated except Montreal. all is that right no the jets oh they're going to be eliminated doesn't matter they'll be eliminated let them keep going

Zain 13:21

going let them keep going yeah

Carter 13:24

doesn't matter there'll be there'll be some there'll be the the i think it's fabulous for the federal government because they get to confound some of the it's not you know they're not moving fast enough messaging it does beg the question when will travelers be able to be treated the same way as nhl players um but i suspect that More news will be coming on that relatively soon so we can start to see a normalization of some travel opportunities.

Carter 13:49

I think that's what every provincial government wants to see. I think that's what Canadians want to see. But hopefully we move a little bit slower than 20 people in our backyards to 100,000 people on our fairgrounds.

Zain 14:01

Corey, I'm coming to you in a sec, but Carter, despite the potential friction between one set of rules for NHL teams and another set of rules for everyday Canadians on travel. Still fabulous in your mind?

Carter 14:11

I think so. I think that people want us, I mean, we love hockey. Well, not me, but other people, not you. I mean, maybe Corey likes hockey. I don't know. Some people like hockey. And, you know, the normalization of hockey and giving fans

Carter 14:24

fans what they want is usually good politics in Canada.

Zain 14:29

Corey, the federal government, fine, fabulous, or fucked with their travel exemption for the final two rounds of the NHL playoffs?

Corey 14:36

We talked about this last week on one of our shows here. This is part of the path back to normal. This is just like our leaders going overseas and meeting other leaders. This is a way that we are signaling that we are coming out of COVID-19 and that things will be changing for the better, albeit gradually. It's not fabulous, though, because

Corey 14:55

because it does demand the question, when us? And Carter, begging the question does not mean what you think it means. Oh,

Corey 15:01

God's sake. It does also highlight the different place we are in relative to the United States of America. So we are ultimately still a little bit behind them in all of their opening up, in their regulations around mask usage and sporting events. And I don't know if we should be patting ourselves on the back for coming in second.

Corey 15:22

know, I just don't think that that's something that you take a victory lap on, almost by definition. So it's just fine. line.

Zain 15:28

Corey, for those listening who are also now Googling the difference between beg the question and demand the question, is that what you said? Please explain to Stephen Carter and maybe Stephen Carter alone the difference between those two things. 99

Carter 15:44

99.3% of the listeners understood exactly what I meant. So Corey, Corey

Carter 15:49

Corey explaining, well, it's, you know, language, man, language just does It does what it wants to do.

Corey 15:55

Well, begging the question is a logical fallacy. It's when a premise assumes the truth of a conclusion instead of supporting it. It's not actually saying this demands the question, which is how people often use it. Or how it's most often used. Now you know Stephen Carter and Zane. You already knew that, obviously. I

Zain 16:12

I did. I did. Yeah. I tell you. Myself or I along the listers, me and all the listers, I and every listener, whichever permutation of that is correct, Corey, already knew. I'd

Carter 16:22

I'd be pretty pissed off if I wasn't an AI bot right now.

Zain 16:27

Carter, I'm going to start with you again on this. This one I find interesting. So liberals have triggered the electoral urgency clause to speed up nominations for their candidates. For the liberals, is this fine, fabulous, or fucked, especially as the dangling of a potential federal election hangs in the, I don't know what I can say, electoral window, so to speak? What do you think of this? My

Carter 16:49

My God, Zane, there's going to be an election. I am

Carter 16:51

am shocked. I am taken aback. I did not expect it.

Carter 16:57

is this unsurprising in any way, shape, or form?

Carter 16:59

You know, they triggered their process to ensure that they could get the candidates that they need in the, you know, the 338 ridings across Canada. Here we go. You know, we're getting ready. And anybody who thinks that we're not getting ready is a little bit crazy because all the signs are there. And, you know, I'm not in the business of making predictions. because, you know, people have been caught gambling on those predictions and making a lot of money. So I'm just going to suggest that this is just the next step in a process that we've been seeing since the year-end interviews when the prime minister himself said that there would be an election. This is just the next step enabling the party to be ready ahead of schedule.

Zain 17:42

Corey, their spokesperson says that the party has used this long-standing administrative administrative measure in our party's process that gives us the ability to shift timelines and procedures in the national nomination rules. We're not, of course, pushing for an election, that last part paraphrased.

Zain 17:58

What do you think, Corey? Is this fine, fabulous, or fucked for the Liberals?

Corey 18:02

It's fine. It's funny. At this point, nobody is denying there will be an election this year, including the Liberal Party of Canada. That's in itself noteworthy. I think that it's just been a given for so long, and the conversation has been, will it be spring or fall for so long? We're sort of forgetting that that in itself is a somewhat noteworthy kind

Corey 18:20

kind of concession to the public truth, I guess. When

Corey 18:24

we talk about these timelines in question, none of them, you don't need to shorten any of them for a fall election, but there's practical reality why you want to get candidates in sooner rather than later. You get them out there on the barbecue circuit over the summer. They get to be known. It makes sense for a party to want to try to get their candidates in place now, even if it is for a fall election. The other thing is that shortening the timelines allows you to game the

Corey 18:51

the contests a little bit more. And don't kid yourselves. Parties do this all of the time.

Corey 18:56

This person's got the lead in membership sales. We just cut it off right now. Boom.

Corey 19:00

Boom. And guess what? They're the candidate. If we have a formal, you know, election nomination process, with

Corey 19:06

with all of the timelines that are set out there, they may not win. But being able to more easily manipulate the time allows you to determine the outcome of those nomination contests. And I guarantee you that's going to be used in some cases, because it always is, right? As much as parties protested is not, and point to all sorts of other reasons for why they time things the way they time things. things. So I guess what I'm saying is, I'm not reading into it, there's a summer election, if that's your thought. It's

Corey 19:32

not impossible. It's one of those things that falls in the bucket of things they would need to do before a summer election, but does not guarantee a summer election. I think it's just, it's a practicality when you are planning for a fall election.

Zain 19:47

You know, when we were chatting about a potential election that may have happened in the spring of of this year, one of the considerations that was given, and I forget where we landed as a group on it, but I'll bring it up, is liberals not necessarily wanting to take the blame of triggering the election. Do you feel like that's still in their sort of calculus, Carter? Or do you feel like they don't give a fuck anymore? Like post-pandemic, right, post-second dose or post-July, they're like, fuck it, we'll just call the election, we'll take a couple of days of blame for going to the LG or asking for the mandate, or the GG, sorry, and asking for the mandate that we don't require. Do you feel like that's part of their calculus or has it been lessened in your mind?

Carter 20:26

Well, I think the history of minority governments triggering their own elections and then getting punished is kind of faint, right? Like in recent years, minority governments that trigger their own elections tend to return majority government because they're triggering them on their own terms. And if you look at the liberal government and where it is right now they are triggering it on their own terms they have um the vaccinations are progressing as as evidenced by our hockey chat just moments ago our in-depth understanding of hockey ice hockey um then there's the the the uh the budget which we've acknowledged many times is a an election style of budget um so the the government also has an awful lot of flexibility within that budget to spend, I think, $100 billion or something ridiculous, which is just going to give them additional monies to win over the voters. The only thing that was really standing in their way is

Carter 21:26

is the Quebec constitution issue, which I'm just not sure is resonating as an issue across the country. It still may be resonating in Quebec, but it's certainly not across the country.

Zain 21:38

Corey, same question to you. Calculus around triggering the election, Do you feel like it's been lessened for them?

Corey 21:45

Well, sure. I mean, absolutely, for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is COVID-19 is looking like, at least in the fall, it will be more

Corey 21:53

more of a low burn issue than a high burn issue here. But in addition to that, pundits have been conditioned. There's been election talk since last fall, for sure. The public is somewhat conditioned by the exact same talk. Even this news about electoral urgency is part of that conditioning. And it's all part and parcel of getting people used to the idea there's going to be an election in the fall. And even though that will just be at the two-year mark, I think that people are getting pretty used to that idea. And who knows, maybe there will still be a spring-summer election. That's still a possibility. I don't think that the news we got says that's going to happen, but it

Corey 22:30

might not be such a terrible idea for the liberals, at least from a political tactics point of view, as things start to reopen. Because again, we always talked about you kind of want to time these things, and I

Corey 22:39

I don't know that they'd be killed to hold an election at this point. 30 days from now, this country is going to look very different. Oh, Alberta is going to be totally back to normal by then.

Zain 22:48

Yeah. Corey, I don't think I've asked you guys this question point blank, but might as well. Well, in your estimation, which party least wants an election right now, given all the conditions and where we are? There's a case to be made for almost all of the opposition parties. But in your mind, is there one that sticks out that least wants it right now, either from a where they stand right now or, you know, lack of funds, lack of leader, whatever that might look like for you that least wants to go to the polls? I mean, the way

Corey 23:18

way they're acting, I would

Corey 23:20

would say maybe the NDP. I suspect the bloc isn't that that enthused.

Corey 23:25

I actually don't think the conservatives are that fearful of an election.

Corey 23:30

I suspect in both camps, both the pro-Otul and the not so enthused about Otul camp, there's a let's rip this bandaid off vibe.

Corey 23:40

And I don't think the liberals fear one at all.

Zain 23:43

Carter, same question to you. Who do you think it is? I

Carter 23:45

I think it's the Green Party.

Carter 23:47

I think the Green Party has the chance potentially of being wiped off the map.

Corey 23:51

I want to change my answer. Carter's right. The fact that they didn't even register to me, that is a big problem for them.

Carter 23:57

them. Yeah. The Green Party's in real trouble and it's too bad because they were kind of on an upward swing. And I really like their new leader whose name's escaped me because I'm old and it's my birthday. Enemy Paul.

Carter 24:09

I think she's really really interesting as a candidate, as a human being, but they haven't been able to figure out how as a party they're going to run and being ready for the fall election seems to be a little bit outside of their scope. If you forced me then to choose, if you said, don't choose the fifth place party, of course, they're scared of every election. I would probably choose the NDP NDP just because I think that money remains a problem for the NDP. And even though there are strong associations across the country, I'm not sure that the NDP itself is strong in Canada the way that it should be given their relative strengths across the country.

Zain 24:54

Corey, we talked about this next item at the tail end of last episode, but Jason Kenney defending contentious Canadian history, lamenting cancel culture after Calgary school renamed as a political strategy, fine, fabulous, or fucked?

Corey 25:12

just don't want to use the word fabulous, but it's a very, very good strategy.

Zain 25:16

Let's talk about it more. You gave me that answer last time on the heels of the,

Zain 25:22

actually at the end of the lightning round. Let's talk about it. Why is it a good strategy? Yeah,

Corey 25:26

Yeah, let me just say the timing is dumb. I'm not sure why, as so many people across the country are coming to grips with 215, you know, dead indigenous children who are probably a marker that there are many, many more buried outside of residential schools across the nation, why this would be the time he would take that on. But newsflash for you, people don't want to be wiped from history. And when they see historical figures get wiped from history, quote-unquote canceled, that makes them really nervous. And now if you're doing things that you're pretty sure in 100 years will be looked upon poorly,

Corey 26:04

maybe time for self-reflection, right?

Corey 26:07

Maybe it's a good opportunity to say, well, why am I on the right side of history, so to speak, and are there things I can be doing? but let me just toss some numbers at you here and they're they're American numbers but I think that they're actually pretty reflective of the Canadian feeling too and if anybody knows of any Canadian specific numbers on this particular topic send them my way I would love to see them but there's a poll in March of this year where 64% of Americans said they viewed cancel culture as a a threat to freedom 34 said it was a big problem 54 said they were personally concerned if they expressed opinions online they would be banned or fired and i just feel that a lot of people think the ground underneath them is very unfirm and that uh that they risk being excluded from all of the goods of of life like you wouldn't be able to run for office because you thought x in the past uh because you hold these views right now if you voice them you are just going to get absolutely creamed. And again, I go back to, maybe

Corey 27:07

maybe it's time for self-reflection. Maybe that's the right one here. But when

Corey 27:12

when you start thinking about the practical realities of it, and where people are, and just by nature, this is an issue they're not very excited to speak up on, there might be a bit of a silent majority. I mean, we've seen in this polling in the United States, there's a majority. But that silent majority might, you know, might exist here in Canada. And if that's the case, it might be one of those issues where it's a bit of a bear trap for opposition parties on the left, and might be a silent winner for the right. And there's a good case to be made that that's part of what Donald Trump's appeal was, right? Like there are people just being left behind and being told, your

Corey 27:50

your views are shit, and your economy is bad. You know, you were involved in coal mining or oil or heavy manufacturing or any of that. And

Corey 27:58

And it's time to do something else. And it's

Corey 28:00

it's time to do something else. But by not pulling those people along and not including those people, it may be the kind of the source problem of so many of the problems that we have right now. And for

Corey 28:12

for me, it comes down to a fundamental failing of the modern left. And that's that the left in its best forms, in my opinion, is all about inclusion. inclusion

Corey 28:22

all right it's i want you to benefit from the economic upside that's here i want you and your race to have all of the privileges that my race has and that inclusion is kind of a hallmark of the left but there's this very dangerous thing that's happening where there's there's kind of an exclusion that's occurring it's because you have done these things you are out and i just think it is so incongruous with what has been a strength of the left the left needs needs to be very very careful and you know this is a tough one because there needs to be a vanguard there needs to be people pushing along making society better uh and and actually brokering no compromise saying that that's bullshit you're gonna sit there and you're gonna negotiate these things but i'm gonna be the pure one fighting out here but i worry that

Corey 29:11

the compromise group has just been totally lost or at least totally vilified and i think that's very dangerous for the left in both the short and long term. So I'll take a breath there. I got a lot more to say about this issue. But if

Corey 29:25

I'm Jason Kenney, I'm maybe not losing on this issue.

Zain 29:29

Yeah, it's interesting, Corey, I think you and I share some of those concerns, perhaps with with the left and its overall viability with, you know, the lack of intellectual diversity, if we can call it that, that it that it ushers in, or perhaps even welcomes as part of that that inclusive banner. But before we dig in deeper, because there's a few elements you mentioned that I think are quite critical, including timing, Corey, and how much timing contributes to good strategy, one might say a lot. Carter, I want to get your take on this top line, Jason Kenney cancel culture strategy that he's implemented. Fine, fabulous, or fucked?

Carter 30:05

Well, I don't want to say fabulous. I kind of joined Corey there. I think it's absolutely fine.

Carter 30:11

there's these right now people identify themselves with icons i guess this is something that happens all the time you identify yourself uh like for example your sport team right so you you may identify yourself with a sports team that sports team is super important to you or you may identify yourself um with you know a political party or you may identify yourself with um a

Carter 30:36

a comedian right You're a Louis C.K. fan. Isn't that great? You like Louis C.K. And by your identification, you actually see yourself in part with that person. And then people start getting canceled around you.

Carter 30:50

And people get canceled around you at the celebrity level, which is okay. Celebrity has always been an area where people can be canceled. But then it's also happening at kind of the anonymous level. So there's a book, So You've Been Shamed, by John Ronson. um, that I really enjoyed. But at the same time, it makes me feel kind of physically ill because there's a number of people who've tweeted things or who posted things on social media or who've done things that were bad, bad

Carter 31:19

bad being like small, lowercase bad, you know, made bad moral choice or made a bad choice

Carter 31:27

And they've been canceled, um,

Carter 31:28

um, a joke that didn't land or a comment that, that was out of time, out of time and out of place. And

Carter 31:34

And they've been canceled and and they no longer have their economic opportunity. And let's go back to what Corey was saying about the coal miner who doesn't have their economic opportunity any longer. Now all of a sudden there's an affinity between those two groups of people. The person who's lost their economic opportunity

Carter 31:50

opportunity because of something they've said or something they've done is now like there's

Carter 31:55

there's a sympathy or an empathy that's created and a worry that you're going to lose yours as well. So fear

Carter 32:03

fear of cancel culture is real. fear of being canceled, even if you're a relative nobody, if you will, forgive the phrase. A lot of people that are relative nobodies have found themselves with more than 15 minutes of fame, either from something that they did that was deserved or something that was done that

Carter 32:21

that was not deserved. I mean, I look at the woman who tweeted about, I'm going, you know, flying to Africa. I won't get AIDS because I'm white. She meant it, I think, as a social commentary, and it was taken as a really, really inappropriate comment. The woman who's now suing her employer because she was choking her dog and yelling at a black man that she was being assaulted and calling the police. All of these people create,

Carter 32:50

create, despite their behaviors, the behaviors were wrong,

Carter 32:55

people are still afraid of them because all of us commit sin, right?

Carter 32:58

right? All of us make mistakes. All of us do things that are not right. And if the punishment for that is deemed to being disproportionate to the action then people start getting very nervous and that in its in its nutshell is cancel culture because cancel culture isn't just about um you know we don't like what you're saying we're not going to listen to you anymore it's

Carter 33:18

it's we don't like what you're saying we're calling your boss right and and that's happened to me it's happened i don't know if it's happened to you too but it's happened to me many times where my boss or my clients uh We'll get a telephone call. Do you know what he's done?

Carter 33:34

Yeah, they know what I've done. Fuck off. Go to hell. Yeah,

Carter 33:36

Yeah, and you know who you are, the people that have been complaining. Go fuck yourselves.

Carter 33:40

But this is, you know, I'm too big to fail. That's what I'm going to say. But this is a real fear.

Carter 33:49

So Kenny's right to use that fear and to be on the side that he is.

Corey 33:58

there's another angle here. And then I sort of want to take back to historical figures, because we've been talking about cancel culture at large. And these two issues, I think, are pretty smashed together, at least in the public mindset, which is part of why a conversation about a historical figure becomes a proxy conversation about cancel culture, right? And it's not even subtle, like they'll literally use the words cancel culture over the time. But, you know, there is another angle I want to just observe, and that is the kind of the technological milieu we find ourselves in here, right? Our worst moments used to pass. Now

Corey 34:30

Now they live forever. They live forever, ever. And in a world that can't forget, I do think we are going to have to learn to forgive. uh because this this notion that there's no statute of limitations on on being a cad uh you know saying something fucking dumb and

Corey 34:46

and i i don't want to be misunderstood there are things that are legitimately okay that's it for you right you are no longer going to get celebrated in the public eye here but the problem is pushing

Corey 34:58

pushing the vanguard on some of those things has meant that some things that a lot of people have said, well, that could have been me 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Yeah, sure. If something were to surface in the same sort of view, how screwed would I be, right? Like, this is a feeling that people have walking about their lives, I think has created an anxiety that it goes without name. So John

Corey 35:20

John A. MacDonald, he's

Corey 35:22

he's kind of associated with the notion of Canada. That's one of the other things here. So it becomes, what do you say about the nation? And it brings into this, you know, some ideas of tribalism. And it's, you know, John A. MacDonald was a corrupt drunk. I mean, literally took bribes to build a railway and didn't ever stop drinking. And he was not a great dude. And his veneration has more to do with the Canadian desire to have an equivalent to the founding fathers than anything else, right? right? He was the first prime minister, ergo, he's our George Washington, but he's no George Washington, right? We didn't have a break with our past like a revolutionary war. We had incrementalism. But he

Corey 36:02

he becomes almost this thing that's fought over, right? And I

Corey 36:07

I guess where I'm sort of groping towards here is history,

Corey 36:11

history, culture, like they're not museums made of marble. They're They're organic things. Like, I went to a school named Louis Riel Elementary and Junior High, and I remember almost doing a spit take, you know, when I sort of put some of these things together when I was much younger. I'm like, wait a minute, this guy was executed for treason? Why is there a school named after him,

Corey 36:32

right? There's lots written about him. I don't need to go through his whole life, both good and bad. And the first view of him was really, you know, treason. The second was fighting for linguistic rights, fighting for minority rights. I mean, that in itself sort of brushes over the Northwest Rebellion, where there's kind of these messianic delusions, right? But

Corey 36:51

But now he has a school named after him. And my point is this. We are constantly reassessing history through contemporary lenses. Parts of the story drift into focus. Parts drift out of focus. And so when we sort of look at this thing more objectively, who

Corey 37:06

cares that we're reassessing whether we should honor John A. McDonald, Whether we should be honoring Louis Riel or anybody in Canadian context. But in

Corey 37:16

in the case of John A., he is so associated with the nation that it also becomes like a tribal anxiety here. And so I just, I don't think Jason Kenney is losing on this issue, even if he is maybe losing the public discourse amongst pundits. Carter,

Zain 37:32

Carter, you know, a series of the retorts is that, you know, Jason Kenney's comments are actually about stolen victimhood. They're trying to, you know, make John A. and Egerton Ryerson and, you know, Langevin, the victims, when the victims, to Corey's point around timing, are actually the 215 indigenous kids whose graves were found, right? So when you look at that retort, when you look at the retort that this is not about removing them from history, but about not celebrating them anymore, what do you say to the overall strategy as related to Corey's point around timing? Do you also agree that the timing here is horrendous, or are you okay with the timing from your perspective?

Carter 38:17

It's unfortunate timing, obviously, but this is the time of timing when this stuff gets talked about.

Zain 38:22

Maybe I should ask the question slightly differently before you kind of go. Is it unfortunate timing, or was it strategic timing by Jason Kenney?

Carter 38:31

No, because it's not strategic timing, because his view on this has been absolutely constant. He has not taken a, this is not a new position, this is not something that he hasn't said before. He believes this, he believes that there has been a kind of a cancelled culture. He's defended John A. MacDonald before, specifically. specifically uh so when people come you know he wasn't trying to defend um the

Carter 38:55

the catholic church although i'm surprised that he didn't uh you know because you know he he defended john a mcdonald specifically that was the specific case and and that is a consistent positioning for him i think that that meant that he was just he just thought this was a continuation and didn't necessarily look at the new

Carter 39:15

new input because let's be honest it may not be new input for for jason kenney i think he has a very solid understanding of canadian history and uh i would i would imagine that he's he was not shocked uh sadly by the the the finding of this new grave with you know already thousands of children that were that were killed as a part of this uh process so um i think that But he just, you know, he viewed this as a continuation of an existing discussion, not a new chapter.

Zain 39:48

You know, Corey, the way I think about it is, even if it's a fine strategy, multiplied by bad timing, I think equals a bad strategy. But give me your comments on timing here for Kenny around, you know, you indicated that it was horrible timing, but maybe I'll ask you to answer the question I asked Carter, was it strategic timing on his part?

Corey 40:08

well carter's right that this is a time people are talking about it so if you want to get the front page of the national post this is how you which you did by

Zain 40:14

by the way yes yeah

Corey 40:15

yeah this is how you get the front page of the national post it doesn't just come out of like a day where nobody's talking about any issue tangential to this so i i do think it was um it

Corey 40:26

it was definitely ah shit what can i say i don't think he was sitting there being like this is going to be uh a great page turner i'm I'm, you know, like, I'm going to flip the conversation around here. I'm going to strategically sort it. I think that he legitimately was like, I got a real thing about this. I want to talk about this, and this is an opportunity to talk about it.

Corey 40:45

It was still not the right time. They will be pulling down John A. McDonald statues and voting them out. For a while, Jason, you didn't need to do it when everything was so raw here. But he did, right? I guess the thing that I want to make sure I get the point across here is, i don't so i've already made my opinion about johnny mcdonald clear um but

Corey 41:08

but i do want to caution people there

Corey 41:10

there is a thing that can happen where you try to put all of the bad of a moment or of a decision and you put it in a historical figure and you cancel quote unquote that historical figure and by doing so you take out the trash but it doesn't work like that i mean newsflash to you John A. may have started it, but

Corey 41:29

but everybody continued it. Everybody continued it. And so I do hope as we're talking about the issue of residential schools in particular, that we have a bit more of a serious reckoning than just talking about John A. MacDonald. My personal feeling is fucking, you know, there's a difference between condemning and not celebrating. And at the very least, we should not be celebrating John A. MacDonald. I always think of him the way I think of, for the Simpsons fans out there, like Shelbyville, the guy who founded Shelbyville, and how he was just kind of like this drunk who married his cousins, but he's just, you know, he's their titular thing. We just have the misfortune in Canada of having a

Corey 42:04

a real jag as our first prime minister, right? Right. But let's not let our self-reflection end with John A. McDonald's place in all of this, because as we've talked about, residential schools were continued for

Corey 42:17

for a very long time after John A. McDonald was prime minister. Our, you know, so many of the challenges we've had as a nation, so many of the bad steps we've taken in our relationship with indigenous peoples, they

Corey 42:31

they are not one man's decision. right they're the decisions of many many thousands of canadians over over a century and more well i think that this

Carter 42:42

this finishes this is one of the challenges that you know people people will bring up around cancel culture okay we will we'll rename we'll rename john a mcdonald junior high okay

Carter 42:51

okay what's next right do we go to dieffenbaker because dieffenbaker's government was encouraging urging and bringing along residential schools? What about Trudeau, right? In the 1970s, there were residential schools. Do we celebrate him? What about Lester Pearson? Do we rename the Toronto airport? How far are we going to go with it? And this is the slippery slope argument. And I'm not arguing that we should rename or not rename the schools.

Carter 43:19

What I'm saying is, I agree with Corey, there is no one single bad actor. And, you

Carter 43:26

you know, the reconciliation process, and I think the most successful one is probably coming out of South Africa, where they removed the idea of blame and retribution and instead focused on reconciliation. Because if you went down the road of blame and retribution and attribution of sin, then it is a never-ending, never-ending list of people because we've all committed these atrocities. At the end of the day, Canada committed these atrocities, and we need to move forward rather than simply moving backwards. So I think that South Africa managed their reconciliation process well. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it does serve as an example.

Zain 44:12

You know, we'll leave that one there. I should let folks know that should there be any interest in replacing any of the existing Sir John A. or Langevin or Ryerson statues with one of Stephen Carter, we are happy to provide the dimensions and pay for one-fourth of the bronze. uh so that

Corey 44:29

is an offer that we're making bronze though please uh send your nano cryptocurrency to nano underscore three zed e u i nine four e

Corey 44:39

e n x u q three one e s q k is when are you gonna cut me off

Carter 44:44

off no we're gonna let you go go all fucking night brother it's gonna

Corey 44:47

gonna happen do it keep going no we're done okay no i want to hear it all just rewind listen to the start of the episode your

Zain 44:52

your loss uh stephen carter i'm gonna start with you fine fabulous Fabulous or Fucked, yes, we are still on that. Are we still on that? Yes, we are. It's 45 minutes in.

Zain 45:01

This is the only segment on the show. Yeah,

Zain 45:02

Yeah, this is great. Fine, Fabulous or Fucked, Aaron O'Toole pushing for the relocation of the Beijing Olympics. So not the upcoming summer Tokyo Olympics, but pushing for the relocation of the Beijing Olympics. You talked about this as related to the human rights issues in one of our lightning rounds, Carter. But fine, fabulous or fucked, he's pushing for Trudeau to relocate the Beijing Olympics. alongside, of course, several comments on how to deal with the Michaels. In your mind, fine, fabulous, or fucked for Aaron O'Toole?

Carter 45:32

It's fucked. I mean, Justin Trudeau doesn't have any power in this particular situation. The IOC is not responsible to any government. It is its own organization. It has its own structure. You can place pressure onto it, and there could be a long discussion about

Carter 45:48

about whether or not the Olympics should be in Beijing. I don't think they should be in Beijing. I don't think the Winter Olympics belong

Carter 45:53

belong in Beijing at all.

Carter 45:57

lord knows they're not coming back to calgary um we could have them here we could have them in vancouver but i think that if we had them there'd be so much outrage uh you know people would be so upset about you know all the politics or all the issues um what i want to make sure is that the olympics continue to happen um if we have to go to beijing if we have to go to russia if we have to go uh to places like that because

Carter 46:20

because western democracies have decided that sport is bad then whatever um vancouver

Carter 46:26

vancouver or calgary could host those olympics in 15 minutes uh but of course we're not going to because people are uh you

Carter 46:33

you know people don't want people actually don't want it to go to utah they don't want it to go to they don't want it to go to canada they want it to be outside of of our norms or outside of western democracy so this is what you get if you don't want it to be in western democracy then they're going to go to china and

Carter 46:48

and i just want there to be Olympics.

Zain 46:51

Corey, quote, as a prime minister, I implore you to use your voice on the world stage to call for the relocation of the 2022 Winter Olympics out of Beijing, unquote. Corey, the strategy by O'Toole to push the prime minister to relocate the Olympics out of Beijing, fine, fabulous, or fucked?

Corey 47:10

just depends on how much he means it. I will put fine as a bit of a placeholder here. This is not a new position for O'Toole. I remember him talking about it months ago i think in february and um you know again like it's it's with the everything else that uh that he's doing on the china file if he means it and he's willing to deal with the consequences as prime minister that's one thing if he doesn't and this is just pageantry i mean what you are playing with with some fire here aaron o'toole so just just be aware of that uh Uh, and part of me really applauds him for standing up for his values. I do agree though, with Steven, it's not as though the boy, this was a point you made last episode, Steven, or the one before the boycotts of the Olympics didn't really do much in the eighties, the tit for tat, you know, uh, Los Angeles Olympics, Moscow, was that the, uh, the one after? I believe so.

Carter 48:04

Moscow and, and, uh, Los Angeles, Moscow was first at Los Angeles was second.

Corey 48:09

I was, uh, I was three. And

Carter 48:13

And there were athletes that just missed out, right, that didn't get the chance to go. And that's the pinnacle of their career. We just had a friend of ours get nominated or win her space to go to the Olympics in Tokyo. And it's it's a lifetime of achievement to get to that to get to that step. step and

Carter 48:35

were to pull the rug out from under her uh

Carter 48:38

i i'd be very i'd

Carter 48:40

i'd be very angry because the amount of work that goes into these there's olympics and 10 you know those olympic uh opportunities um they come around once in a lifetime for most most athletes

Corey 48:53

cory did you want to add anything to that no i got not i mean i got i think it's fine but it's it's pretty high-stakes stuff. And in general, there better be a coherent China policy, actually not just by O'Toole, but by Trudeau as well, instead of just stumbling

Corey 49:06

stumbling from minor crisis to minor crisis.

Zain 49:10

Let's take it on the federal stage. Let's go to Trudeau. Trudeau called on the Catholic Church to take responsibility on residential schools and apologize. In a tweet on Sunday morning, Pope Francis expressed sorrow over the discovery in Canada and of the remains of 215 Indigenous students of the church-run boarding schools, but didn't offer the apology sought by the Canadian Prime Minister for Trudeau. Corey, is this fine, fabulous, or fucked?

Corey 49:37

It's fine. It actually is somewhere between fine and fabulous from a political strategy point of view, because you are moving the villain from the Canadian government to the Catholic Church, or at least sharing that blame somewhat. And so, in that that sense um it's it's not such a bad tactic and it also probably has the benefit of being yeah i mean the catholic church has some some atonement to do on this front that's uh that's indisputable

Zain 50:04

cory carter same question to you for trudeau uh the pope tweeting out this morning not necessarily issuing the apology sought by the prime minister but fine fabulous or fucked in terms of what this means for trudeau well

Carter 50:16

well nothing associated with this is ever going to be fabulous but i would would say that it's fine for Trudeau, because now he has a second enemy. You know, the ability for the Catholic Church to step into this and make themselves the villain just helps, just helps Trudeau. He's not, he's not the one with all the guns pointing at him. The Canadian government has struggled with how to deal with this file, and they're going to continue to struggle.

Carter 50:40

It's going to be quite a while before we have normalcy around it, but it doesn't, we don't get any step closer with statements like the Pope made today.

Zain 50:48

Carter, I'm going to start the last one in this segment with you. Let's spend a bit of time on it. Minister Lila here and Rajen Soni have joined other caucus members to ask Jason Kenney to apologize for the Sky Palace dinner. I feel like this is one of those process of elimination ones, but give it to me. Fine,

Carter 51:07

Fine, fabulous, or fucked? It's fabulous for me. It's fucked for Jason. I mean— Yes, I should ask for Jason

Zain 51:14

Let me be clear. Yeah, Jason's fucked. I mean, he's—

Zain 51:17

he's— Is he legitimately, like, substantiate this? Let's go into some depth, because this is—and for those that are outside of Alberta, right, these are two women within his caucus, not just two women, two cabinet

Zain 51:28

one—both racialized women, one from East Calgary, one east of Calgary, very close by in Chestermere, to give you the sense of geography that they represent. Sorry, I just wanted to add that context in. Carter, the floor is yours. Give me some substantiation as to why this is fucked in this particular case with these two women, cabinet ministers, I should say, speaking out. Well,

Carter 51:50

Well, I think the minister here was particularly aggrieved by it because she was identified as being in the photograph. You know, both her and Angela Pitt, people thought it was them that was in the photograph and they weren't. So I'm sure that their offices were getting inundated with telephone calls. How dare you? How dare you? How dare you? And I don't think it's a surprise that both of them were the first, you know, amongst the first to disavow this and to throw the premier under the bus. The premier put himself in that position, first

Carter 52:23

first by hosting the event and second by doubling down. You know, this is a consequence of that doubling down. I still think he was right to double down. I think that, you know, there was nothing to be gained by the apology. But it looks like he hasn't done the caucus work. So, he's going to suffer for a bit. And he's a bit fucked because... Did you

Zain 52:45

you just say there's nothing to be gained by the apology? I just want to make sure that we

Carter 52:48

we underline... He just doubled down

Zain 52:49

down on the double down.

Carter 52:50

down. You're damn right I did. I'm not going to fucking back away from my double down comment last... It was three days ago. It was three days ago. What am I going to do? What part of it was wrong then? I have to double down on... Have you not been paying attention to the show?

Carter 53:01

I have to double down. I have no opportunity to walk that back.

Zain 53:05

But you do. This is what... It's not

Carter 53:10

you do realize programming

Zain 53:11

you do realize that the two episodes a week was simply to provide you an opportunity an escape hatch an atonement that's literally all these episodes were were to bring up the same baby uh

Zain 53:22

uh cory fine fabulous

Corey 53:24

it's so fucked um this is a pretty significant escalation of jason kenney's uh internal troubles here did this surprise

Zain 53:32

surprise you by the way to you like that that this happened yeah

Corey 53:35

yeah i think it did i think it's fair to say that I was not expecting cabinet to crack. The idea of cabinet solidarity is so significant. Now, in its narrowest sense, it's once cabinet makes a decision, we stand together on the decision, you know, no daylight shown between us on this. But I think it's pretty well accepted that the conventional use of it is, you

Corey 53:55

you know, we ride or die here, right? We don't, we don't throw anybody under the bus. We don't criticize each other, regardless of whether it's a cabinet thing. and the idea that you would have two ministers two ministers do this uh to to you know not just jason kenney don't forget but there were other cabinet colleagues of theirs there too i think we saw taves we saw nixon we saw um chandro for sure i'm not sure if i'm missing anybody on the cabinet side i don't think i am but that's you know you are you're basically calling them out too and so it's fucked and it's not just fucked for jason kenney i actually think that this is an example of just the you know

Corey 54:35

know a directionless implosion that's happening right now within the UCP even and I don't like I don't want to overstate it either like I don't think this means Monday Jason Kenney has to resign I would say through a combination of you

Corey 54:50

you know caucus members talking out and the consequences of those maybe being less for a long time in the case of Barnes and then Barnes getting thrown out obviously a lot of tensions there obviously Obviously, you've got a premier who is not not really clicking with good chunks of his his caucus that the idea that anybody would think this was OK, like Leah

Corey 55:12

Leah here talking to Don Braid, a columnist here in Calgary, was

Corey 55:17

was saying, like, I can't imagine why I would get in trouble for saying this in a normal cabinet. You'd be fucking out on your ass. like if if jason kenney was a strong enough to do it and b this was a more you know normally managed cabinet you're fucking gone like you don't

Zain 55:35

don't get to say that i just want to i want to get carter's take on that very quickly i'll come back to you this is

Carter 55:39

is the the ultimate sin you cannot do that period

Corey 55:43

and zane maybe it wouldn't be the next day because then you have to deal with the fact that calling for an apology lost the job next shuffle see you later you're you're out of here and maybe that will still happen so that's that's part of where i'm like what is going going on in everybody's head right now but this is this is obviously a very troubling situation order has broken down in the ucp in at least small ways but perhaps big ways as well and i i said this on twitter and i'll say it like i don't understand everybody's end game here maybe they are just sort of expressing how they feel they should know better they're professional politicians their feelings about politics are not just personal preference their feelings about politics are other fucking jobs so they've got to figure that out and they've got to be a little bit more smart about that if they are just saying what they feel but if they are actually driving towards an outcome that they're moving here this

Corey 56:31

this is wild i'm trying to figure out you

Corey 56:34

you know are sonny and here and barnes are they would they all be on the same side i find that quote unquote side i find that hard to believe i can't help but note that a lot of the people in the past few days who have been posting and facebook disappointment with the premier almost

Corey 56:48

almost all of them except for gottfried which was a new one today uh

Corey 56:51

uh they're all people who endorse brian jean for leader right

Corey 56:55

right so uh you know sonny's the only one not because she she wasn't in government at the time she beat her friend sabir who was the end or she didn't beat him from sabir what am i talking about no i don't know um

Zain 57:08

she beat an ndp yeah

Corey 57:12

anyhow point being i

Corey 57:14

i can't tell if this is just an extension of the gene kenny stuff by proxy going on further if this is something different that is based on a serious displeasure with jason kenny or if this is people just talking their feelings which is also troubling in different ways capital f fucked all around i don't know what's going on in the ucp caucus they're all acting like just like a a bunch of messy lunatics right now. And it's not good for the province. It's not good for their party. I don't know what they're doing. Carter,

Zain 57:40

Carter, help me pick up some of those pieces, right? So we've had this ongoing, I don't even call it an ongoing segment, because we've jumped in and out of it through multiple episodes of the last several months, which is taking down a premier, the series, right? And let's jump into that series for half a second. From your experience, do any of the pieces that have been put down indicate that there's a strategic endgame of taking down the premier you're here or are you also as confused as as

Zain 58:07

as cory here well

Carter 58:08

well this i mean people have told me this this is obviously orchestrated right

Carter 58:12

right obviously orchestrated and i'm like i don't think this is orchestrated i

Zain 58:17

i i don't see how this i mean i think what what are the hallmarks that it's not orchestrated give us that if

Carter 58:21

if you're orchestrated i got one for you have an end game you have an you have a position that you get to at some point right you you're you're not just doing these things without some sort of movement towards the the outcome um you

Carter 58:34

you know is is this going to end itself in a in a member revolt that requires an agm that that sees a leadership review we're not seeing any of the end we're just seeing um people jumping in and and you know leaping and into these into the abyss here um also they're doing it at

Carter 58:53

at a time when there's not as much coverage you know know just a simple tactical thing of doing it on the weekend um if this was being done to generate the most possible pain uh you'd wait until monday you

Carter 59:04

you know we gave him the weekend to apologize he didn't do that i wrote a personal note to him saying that he needed to apologize over the weekend he didn't listen to me didn't heed my advice i had no choice on monday morning but to fuck him instead

Carter 59:16

instead they do it on the weekend i don't understand explain this to me it doesn't make make sense well

Corey 59:22

the other thing is there are there are multiple additional ministers that are there and if you are trying to build a coalition against jason kenney it's at the very least it's very clumsy to then try

Corey 59:31

try to get uh you know powerful ministers on jason kenney's side because it's also going to have the effect of drawing chandro

Corey 59:38

chandro taves and nixon onto another side of of the issue here and and maybe it was just clumsy maybe they didn't think about that but there were other things you could have used to criticize the premier this week here did also talk about the john a mcdonald thing but but led instead with the one that dragged in her her cabinet colleagues as well and so if it was orchestrated i

Corey 1:00:01

would have expected uh more effort would be done to isolate the premier from the rest of them and i i didn't see that at least in the comments that i read certainly she was calling for the premier to apologize but you

Corey 1:00:13

you know i i don't know i just It's tough to try to discern what the heck is going on there right now. Yeah,

Zain 1:00:19

Yeah, Carter, maybe let's start here. And maybe it's end here, I should say.

Zain 1:00:25

You're Kenny, you see this happen over the weekend. What's the, I'm not even thinking of public statements. I'm thinking of like, what was your weekend like? Give me a sense of if this was, you know, a

Zain 1:00:36

premier, and let's just paint the picture a bit, right? A premier who's had two members of caucus to varying degrees say that he and others that were at that Sky Palace dinner should apologize. He's had to recently kick a few people out of his caucus. He's perhaps at his weakest point in leadership over the last two years. Knowing all those factors and additional more that I'm sure I've missed, how are you advising the Premier? Not even on a public statement or, you know, this is what you say side, but what does your weekend kind of look like to solidify your situation? Is there a caucus Should there be one? I'm just kind of throwing some stuff out there in terms of what would go on. Take us into that room, if you can, from your strategic vantage point. All

Carter 1:01:21

All I'm going to remain consistent from the last time I gave him advice that he didn't listen to, and I suspect, work

Carter 1:01:26

work the phones, you

Carter 1:01:28

you know? Oh, yeah,

Carter 1:01:29

right. Make one-on-one contact is the currency that you need to spend right now. You have to have an individual relationship with these MLAs.

Carter 1:01:41

You know, at the very least, you know, like it's not something you can staff out to the whip, right? Oh, get them all back in the line. That's not going to work. you've got to have a one-on-one relationship and you've got to build some loyalty with people

Carter 1:01:54

and right now there

Carter 1:01:55

there is no one-on-one relationship there's no positives and

Carter 1:01:59

so you can't use the negatives because normally you'd come in and you'd you know say you know you two ministers you're you're out of here um or you'll never be a minister in our government when when donna kennedy glenn spoke about uh spoke against uh against

Carter 1:02:15

against allison redford in the 2012 election, it was very clear, you know, because Allison, it

Carter 1:02:21

it wasn't even this public, but it was pretty public. And Allison made a decision in that moment that Donna Kennedy Glantz would never see the inside of a cabinet room.

Carter 1:02:31

You know, I don't think that that's something that Kenny can do right now. I think instead, Kenny needs to build individual relationships. And

Carter 1:02:40

man, if he had been building individual relationships and this happened, And he's really in big trouble. I suspect he hasn't been doing the work.

Zain 1:02:49

Corey, any advice that you'd have at this junction?

Corey 1:02:54

Well, you can't lose staff because you've already lost staff with your chief of staff in January. And I think that's still too soon. But you're going to need to figure

Corey 1:03:03

figure out a way that you can signal things are changing, even if you don't admit that you need to change. I do fundamentally think he should have apologized days ago. Well,

Zain 1:03:13

kind of brings up that question. Do you think he will?

Corey 1:03:16

I think he should. And I think he should say, I should have apologized days ago. And I got into fight mode because I could see where the NDP was going with this ball and I didn't want to do it, but that was dumb. And I apologize because I put pressure on all of you when I did that.

Corey 1:03:29

And I know that I have talked in extreme tones about what the consequences would be for, you know, violation of these rules. And that was dumb. That was me trying to manage a different problem. We've managed that problem through removing of Lohan and Barnes, and I'm sorry that's still hanging over everybody here. It's clear to me that I have a blind spot in terms of, I

Corey 1:03:51

I don't know how you want to define it, but you say like in terms of, you know, being a little too pugilistic, not thinking about how Albertans are going to, how these things are going to land with Albertans. So I am making a targeted strategic hire, name everybody loves from the Harper government, whatever you got, find somebody who's going to come in as my new, has he officially made his chief of staff his chief of staff?

Carter 1:04:12

staff? No, there's a chief of staff opening.

Corey 1:04:17

that's then that's what you do then you find yourself a chief of staff who's known as the adult in the room the calm influence who's proven through battle uh and can get this done and is not known as a fighter is known as a conciliator is somebody who can get caucus together and um and you make that the start of your rebuilding you also get that chief of staff hopefully they're starting right away to immediately start meeting with all of the caucus members and setting up meetings between the caucus members and the boss making that a more regular thing and just showing there's going to be an entirely different tone going forward i would also as jason kenney just reinforce we are so close to being out of this thing we are so close to being out of this thing we're currently projecting covid restrictions a lift by the end of the month we look to be on course for that we can rebuild here governments often go through this dip we've had the worst crisis you could possibly imagine and we can come out of this stronger And we can win in 2023. But it requires more than anything else, that we hang together as a team.

Corey 1:05:21

am going to recommit to that team, see higher see all of these other things you might be willing to do. But I need you all to recommit to that team too. Or else you're going to see a return of NDP government. And that's got to be your conversation with them. That's got to be your conversation. Because otherwise, you I

Corey 1:05:38

I don't know, I don't think you can get the reset you need to get with all of the the people you need to have that reset with, by continuing to deny you did anything wrong.

Corey 1:05:47

That's my personal feeling.

Zain 1:05:48

Carter, has Corey convinced you that the Premier needs to apologize?

Carter 1:05:51

No, I was right before, and I remain correct.

Zain 1:05:57

Very impassioned, Corey, but you failed to convince Stephen Carter. By the way, if you are listening and you appreciate Stephen Carter's consistency, Corey, how do they make a financial contribution to him?

Corey 1:06:09

That's a good question, Zane. uh you're gonna need to get some nano not the easiest thing to buy but you buy some nano and then you send it to nano underscore three z e u i nine four e n x u q three one e s q k q seven n s s n five one three eight seven g x o d f q p seven b s nine nine d w d z a u r c o c s r six five d three u x d let's

Zain 1:06:35

let's move it on to our final segment our over under and our lightning round, Stephen Carter. We do it for you. I'm starting with you. Overrated. Oh, yes. Actually, you know what? I'm not going with overrated. I'm asking you, did Jason Kenney cancel culture strategy? Was that a political win for him? Yes or no? We talked about how the strategy was fine if both of you agreed. But was it a political win for him? Yes or no? Yes, it

Carter 1:06:58

it was a win. It reinforced why his base likes him.

Zain 1:07:03

Corey, would you agree that it was a political win for Jason Kenney?

Corey 1:07:07

No, because he was tackled by one of his own teammates when the minister said that it was not a win.

Zain 1:07:14

Corey, I'm going to stick with you for our next one. Overrated or underrated, the liberals accelerating their nomination process?

Corey 1:07:21

It's a way, by declaring an emergency, it's as old as Roman times, you give yourself a bunch of extraordinary powers that you can use in a bunch of extraordinary ways. And that is likely all it is. It is a necessary prerequisite to a spring election, but it is by no means a guarantee of a spring election. Carter,

Zain 1:07:41

Carter, same question to you. The acceleration of the nominations, as we highlighted by the liberals, overrated or underrated?

Carter 1:07:47

I think that it is underrated. I think that the election's coming and people aren't even paying attention to these signals that are being sent.

Zain 1:07:59

Carter, I'm going to start with you on this next one. in many articles over the past 10 days or so, highlighting that Doug Ford had the weakest and worst pandemic response, that he's lost his political mojo, that he's now become uber cautious with school reopenings. What do you kind of make of this series of coverage and criticism, not even by his opposition, but about Doug Ford losing his political mojo? Overrated or underrated in your mind?

Carter 1:08:27

I think it's overrated. I think that what Doug Ford has done is said, I'm not making any more mistakes uh so he's made mistake after mistake after mistake i think people have seen that and what he's trying to do now is be more cautious uh move more slowly and and have a a better reopening plan that he can justify that doesn't see any more um people of ontario getting sick or and and dying the the solutions at hand the solution is close and uh i think doug ford has has seen that it is better to uh move slowly rather than moving very very quickly

Zain 1:08:59

Corey, would you agree the coverage on Doug Ford kind of losing his political mojo overrated or underrated in your mind?

Corey 1:09:06

think it's underrated because time is not his friend right now. They are closer to an election in Ontario than we are. And I think that he's in a situation where it's going to be tough to pull the plane back up with the amount of time he's got left. So I think it is underrated, actually. Corey,

Zain 1:09:23

Corey, I'm going to ask you a campaign tactic one for our next one. the Liberal Party of Canada is adopting a new digital tool to more directly reach supporters and potential voters. The same one increasingly used by celebrities to interact more intimately with their fans through text messages. It's this platform called Community, where you give out a phone number as the prime minister or leader and be like, text me at 416, whatever, whatever. And then you have these threaded text messages that volunteers on your campaign kind of resource out for you. As a campaign tactic, and I want to do a show on campaign tactics alone at at some point uh overrated or underrated in your mind you

Corey 1:09:57

you know there's this new beer that's got all of like the beer fans

Corey 1:10:00

fans a buzz called superflux makes great ipas it's very exciting great beer uh and is living up to the hype this is not going to be that this will not live up to the hype unfortunately i i think the idea that you're going to to be able to jump on the celebrity bandwagon Reagan, if you're Justin Trudeau in 2021 is wrong. He was a celebrity in 2015. And if this tactic hadn't been applied for a campaign like that, maybe it would work. But ultimately, Canadians are in a different relationship with the prime minister at this point. And I don't think we're looking to have the celebrity prime minister right now. And if he tries to run as one, I think it will be to his detriment. Carter,

Zain 1:10:37

Carter, this platform, as I mentioned, is like a texting platform, right? So you put it in your your IG bio and your Twitter, and you get everyone who wants to reach out to you or your campaign to text you rather than DM you or reach out or, you know, tag you in a tweet. What do you think? Is a campaign tactic overrated or underrated?

Carter 1:10:52

Overrated. I just, I mean, texting. Wow. New. Exciting. I mean, text to us instead of us texting you. I just don't, I don't know. I mean, I just don't know how it's going to, how it's going to take off. I mean, we were having a discussion about it the other day and it was like, I just don't see the breakout nature of it it's texting it's mass texting i'm shocked and it's and on top of that it has um it has a very significant data uh collection structure so not only text us and then provide us with all your pertinent details so that we know way more about you i think that um i mean maybe in the world of celebrity people aren't that uh that

Carter 1:11:32

that astute when it comes to providing personal detail. But I think in the world of politics, people have caught on to it.

Zain 1:11:39

Carter, starting with you for our last one, the liberals are mum on support for the NDP motion to accelerate work tracking unmarked graves in the rest of the country. What do you think, overrated or underrated?

Carter 1:11:51

I think it's underrated. I don't even know how to respond to that. I mean, mean i think i think it's bad i think that the liberals should be using this opportunity to

Carter 1:12:04

carve out their space that this is they are the party that has done the most on these types of issues and uh they're going to keep pushing it um instead

Carter 1:12:15

instead they seem to be afraid of it and i i'm kind of baffled by that so is that underrated or overrated i don't even know it's

Zain 1:12:22

it's it's underrated the story then if they're if they're their lack of response to it cory same question to you they're they're quiet on it the ndp has put out the motion uh for the type of detection that was used to identify the the unmarked uh graves in kamloops the liberals are quiet on it what do you think

Corey 1:12:41

i'll tell you as somebody who's worked in government there is a bucket of problems that i will call it's

Corey 1:12:46

it's the right thing but it it's difficult to do and you will always have in in the public service uh well-intentioned people saying yes but you've got to be aware of the legal ramifications of do this and yes you must be aware that uh there's all of this case law over here or it could cause problems with this stakeholder group here or have you considered the international ramifications and we've signed you know we've got undrip and you know there's there's no shortage of yes buts in there but the proper response in moments like these is fuck it it's the right right thing to do. And this is also not a problem that's going to be going away. And people will drag their heels, perhaps as long as they can. But that day of reckoning is near. And best that you get ahead of this, you're not ahead of this thing already, best you not get further behind. And it's time.

Corey 1:13:36

It's time. It's well overdue. It's time to do a full inventory of the horrors of the the residential school system, return remains wherever possible, and at least start getting past this ugly moment. And it's not going to happen overnight or over one generation. This is going to take time,

Corey 1:13:57

but the clock doesn't start until we do this very foundational step.

Zain 1:14:01

We're going to leave that there. That's a wrap on episode 934 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Veljoo. With me, as always, birthday boy Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we'll see you next time.

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