Episode 934: There are no foolish questions

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 934. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, it is a Sunday. We are recording. Stephen Carter is wearing a Steve Jobsian turtleneck, it seems like. No,

Carter 0:15

No, no, it's an open collar. It's an open collar. I've dressed up for you two today. Long sleeves, the whole nine yards. Corey,

Corey 0:22

Corey, how's it going? It's going well. How was the Zain Velji show? Do people know, have we mentioned on

Carter 0:27

on this show that you

Corey 0:28

you have a national radio show? that runs

Carter 0:30

runs on Sunday nights? Well, hold on. It's national, not including Alberta. Yeah,

Carter 0:34

true. So it's not really national. A

Zain 0:35

A lot of places not included on the map. Let me be clear. Yeah. The creatively named Zane Velgey show is a thing. We'll see if it continues to be a thing. I'll leave that there.

Zain 0:47

miss us, don't you? It went that well, did it? It

Zain 0:50

It went that well tonight?

Zain 0:51

have to carry you every show. I think there was a good conversation. It was a good conversation. Both sides played really well. A for efforts. Everyone enjoyed the Capri Sun and the orange slices at the halftime. That's my interview answer for how the show went. That's

Carter 1:11

That's good. I'm looking forward to listening. I won't, but I'm looking forward to it anyways.

Zain 1:15

Well, thank you, Carter. I really appreciate that. I do. Corey, anything else to mention on your side of things? And mainly, let me just actually be explicit with you. Anything to mention regarding your Washington Wizards? um before we jump into our our first segment here the

Corey 1:32

the washington wizards have clenched the play-in they will be in the nba playoff sort of you heard correct the

Zain 1:39

the play-in cory please tell the fine folks who haven't tuned in for this content at all uh what the play-in is because i think they might be familiar with the playoffs but that's right so it's

Carter 1:50

it's a bastardization this is what it is we brought this

Corey 1:55

was used for the first time last year um as a result of covid breaking the season but now it is part of the regular season the regular scheduled programming uh the teams in seventh eighth ninth and tenth play for those final two uh playoff playoff uh posts so this is great that this is not a given that the wizards would be in the top 10 earlier in this season they've turned it around a bit uh no doubt in in part because of the transcendent yet selfish talent of Westbrook and the, you know, the very excellent play by Beal as well, who is much more likable than Westbrook.

Zain 2:33

I'm looking forward to seeing how far they go. I love Beal, as I've mentioned on a previous episode not too long ago. My Spurs are not making any play-in, play-off, play-whatever. They are not. They are not. So I'll be cheering. Maybe I'll join you. Oh,

Corey 2:48

Oh, this is so good. Maybe

Corey 2:49

Maybe I'll join you.

Zain 2:50

you. So I have got something, because it also gets really boring. Carter, do you want to offer a one fact on the NBA play-in before we jump in?

Carter 3:00

I got eight out of nine predictions right on my AFL. Let's move it on to

Zain 3:03

to our first segment here. Guys, you're ready for it. I know you're ready for it.

Zain 3:09

Fine, fabulous, or fucked. Oh, good. It is back. Oh, I love this one. It is a classic, and like always, I add a fourth. So we've got fine. Fine, that's a static term. We've got fabulous, that's a static term. We've also got fucked, a static term. Now, I need to add one to perhaps help us with making the distinction between fine and fabulous, and that is where I'm adding foolish, Stephen Carter. We've got fine,

Zain 3:42

Those are the four. Now, if you're new to the show, welcome. Welcome. Please leave a six-star review as part of our ongoing yearly six-star review pledge drive. Tune back to a few episodes ago, episode 934, to understand what I'm talking about. But listen, welcome to the show. This is an ongoing segment that we do. And what we do with this segment is I run through a list of stories that are currently in our political zeitgeist. It's kind of a grab bag of things that are big and small, things that are meaningful and perhaps not. And I asked Stephen and Corey whether the participants at play, and often the singular participant who's faced with the decision or has to hold the proverbial bag, is it fine for them? Is it foolish for them? Is it fabulous or is it fucked? The best way to jump into this, Stephen Carter, is by jumping into this. And I'm going to start with you. Yeah. Justin Trudeau, with his standing on the podium mentioning this term one-dose summer without necessarily any rudder. I mean, we got a bit of a rudder later in the week on Friday when we learned that 75% of first dose and 20% of second dose is perhaps what he was saying. But this whole concept, this verbiage, this marketing speak that is one-dose summer, fine, foolish, fabulous, or fucked for Justin Trudeau? I

Carter 5:01

think it's foolish. I think that the problem is you have a situation where you've now created a branding that can be used against you. And also it is it doesn't reflect the reality. We're in the middle of May right now. And we're seeing a significant step up in the number of vaccinations that are being delivered across the country. And frankly, I think more of us are going to have our second dose by the end of June than anybody would have reasonably predicted just a few months ago. So it just feels foolish to be putting the cart before the horse and also defining a failure. And One Dose Summer feels like a failure more than the success that I think we're actually heading towards.

Zain 5:38

Corey, One Dose Summer, not the title of our cover band, although I think we would kill if we had a band named One Dose Summer. We would, of course, be performing exclusively on Zoom if it were One Dose Summer. But does this marketing speak? He's mentioned one-dose summer, and then he's also gone into mentioning two-dose fall.

Corey 6:00

Foolish? Fabulous? Fucked? I

Corey 6:01

I think it's foolish, too, for all of the reasons Stephen said. He's managed to create a brand that nobody was calling for. This is an example of good advice taken to an absurd extreme. You do want to manage expectations.

Corey 6:14

That's part of any good political communication strategy. You don't overcommit to things. But Stephen's exactly right. Right. By the end of June, we're going to be in a situation based on some of the projections where they

Corey 6:25

they have, you know, 75-25 end of June. And when you start thinking about the fact that, you

Corey 6:33

you know, by the end of July, we might be, you know, 75-50, that is by anybody's standard, a quote-unquote two-dose summer. So I don't really get it. It's sort of like if you're Pepsi and you've got all of this data that shows you win the taste test, but your slogan becomes, people say it's good, but we feel it's not as good as Coke, right? Like, what the hell's the point of this? And I just think it was very unnecessary and foolish as a result. Do you, Carter,

Zain 6:59

Carter, agree with Corey's thesis that this is like good advice taken to an absurd, like good advice politically and then like wrapped up in marketing speak? Is that like, is that, first of all, is that what you think happened? And secondly, maybe I'll expand upon the point. Is this a common mistake that you guys have seen as strategists with like with politicians and political candidates and such that they try to be, to use a Corey term, like too cute by half to try to take something that's a good piece of advice and then turning it into like candidate or politician speak? speak?

Carter 7:29

I think setting expectations is a good idea. So setting expectations that maybe we're not going to be getting the dose. I think we saw expectations set all through the vaccination structure, you know, and maybe it's going to take a little longer, blah, blah, blah, but we're going to catch up. Expectations were set all the way through and then we started to exceed those expectations. And once the expectations were exceeded, everybody started to feel happier. So setting the expectation would have been fine, but providing a slogan for your failure isn't fine. That's foolish. And that's where the problem is, is in this particular in this situation. He provided the slogan for his own failure. Fortunately, he's up against Aaron O'Toole and the conservatives managed to, you know, well,

Carter 8:11

well, behave foolishly. So, you know, good

Carter 8:15

good for lucky, lucky move for the Trudeau liberals there.

Zain 8:18

That Carter referring, of course, to the the meme fail of the O'Toole conservatives, where they took a Trudeau summer and compared it to a Trudeau summer, which, as Carter mentioned, was last time a very white group of people enjoying summer as two-dose summer. And the meme underneath of a Trudeau summer was a man not on a ventilator, but an oxygen mask, boat stock images. Carter, before Corey jumps in. They

Carter 8:41

They can listen to that on episode 934. That

Zain 8:43

That was also episode 934. That's right. Corey, to the broader question here, is this like a common mistake that we see amongst political candidates and politicians? Do you feel like this is something that you've seen more than once, or is this just one of the rare examples in your mind?

Corey 8:59

Oh, I've seen this all the time. I'm sure Stephen has, too. You give them a chestnut, it becomes reasonable advice, and then all of a sudden they take it to the point where they just fall apart. Here in Alberta, we had a very notable example when our Minister of Health, in the pursuit of message discipline, somebody obviously told him, you can answer whatever you want, and they're going to have to use the clip that you've got. took

Corey 9:19

took it to this example where he just continued to say the word in due course as though he were a robot. And then it became such a thing that the media actually ran this long chain of him not answering the question and just saying in due course. So good advice taken to its extreme becomes notably bad. And this is definitely true in media relations in particular. This is definitely true in communications. Anything that you can kind of latch onto, you

Corey 9:45

risk latching onto to it in the wrong moments and so it does take a bit of nuance here and that's why you have professional communicators but like one dose summer was not something trudeau said by accident there were mps saying this all over the place and

Corey 9:58

and and as steven said he is very lucky that the uh that the conservatives in their first sort of foray out on this one at least on social media also like the the very white group of people with an awful lot of glitter they're blowing in your face that actually looks like it sucks i don't want that too don't

Carter 10:14

don't say um but

Corey 10:15

but yeah i mean it was uh they they went too far and that may have saved trudeau from himself a bit but that doesn't mean it wasn't foolish it's

Carter 10:24

it's like a foam party no one likes a foam party no

Corey 10:26

no it's no one there's so many parties that are good in theory but then you're there an hour insane fuck

Corey 10:32

fuck what am i gonna clean this up yeah

Zain 10:33

yeah can you guys not talk about my

Zain 10:34

my wedding that way um i want

Zain 10:37

want to spend one more one one more question on this, because we've gotten down this track. Advice to Trudeau and the ministers right now? Is it just like, kill it, kill the phrase, stop using it, stop being, stop doing it? Or is there actual, like, other than just abort, is there actual, you know, advice to replace it with something, Carter? What would you suggest right now? Is it just a straight abandon it and move on? Or is there something else?

Carter 11:01

I'd just abandon it and move on. I think we see in Alberta what happens when Jason Kenney, It was the greatest summer ever, the best summer, maybe something close to a good summer. It's not going to be a good summer. It's going to suck as a summer. I mean, so why are we branding this summer? Why don't we just let it unfold? I mean, no one really knows what this summer is going to look like. We are moving in the right direction, move to the right direction, and then brand it afterwards. When you're done, then remind everybody this is a way better summer than we were expecting.

Carter 11:29

That's actually what we should be doing.

Corey 11:32

And that's the problem. By creating such a durable brand for this, this quote-unquote one-dose summer, even if the summer is great, even if, you know, PHAC has said effectively we can start reducing some of these restrictions when we hit a level we expect to hit in June, people may a year from now – let's just say this election doesn't happen for a year. You might actually start to think the summer was shittier than it was because it has this government-sanctioned branding of the one-dose summer. Well, you know, the United States went on with their lives. Yeah,

Zain 11:57

Yeah, you know, I'm just looking it up. And I was doing this during, of course, the Zane Velji show. But I believe OneDoseSummer.ca is taken. So I will not be surprised if, Corey, our competition band appears or this becomes a political attack site of some kind. Like, I would not be surprised at all if this is actually parked by the conservatives as we speak to hammer on Trudeau because of what you just said. The brand, in such a short duration of time, six days, five days, has become pretty durable, unfortunately, for the Trudeau government, as it says, as it stands right now, I should say. OK, let me move it on to our next one. Corey, I'm going to start with you on this one. It's a broad one, so let's spend a bit of time on it because we did a drive-by last week as well as the week before. For Bill C-10, as it stands for Minister Gilboa, I mean, he was on the hot seat Friday where he was speaking to, I believe, the Heritage Committee. They were asking him whether the bill would be able to regulate the algorithms on social media. So he's already tried to put a stop on, OK, it will not regulate your content as a user. We're going after the platforms, not the people. He's tried to make that distinction pretty clear. But now he's been thrown another wrench, another curveball regarding the algorithms. and wasn't able to say as it stands right now with a bit more time under our belt uh cory on c10 for minister gilbo find foolish fabulous or fucked right now it's

Corey 13:22

it's foolish this is a great example of a government that came in you know uh

Corey 13:27

uh with great enthusiasm but absolutely half-cocked the idea that social media algorithms is now mixed into it can't answer that the idea that we couldn't talk about what would happen with large accounts don't know what's happening there All of these other various pieces that are just going to be cleaned up in regs down the road. This is just clumsy government. This is a very foolish approach to governing. And I cannot for the life of me fathom how after getting out of last week and kicking it away from committee, he somehow managed to step in another cow patty so very quickly. It's unfathomable to me how poorly they are managing this particular file. mile. And,

Zain 14:08

And, you know, amongst that, Carter, I'm going to come to you in a second. Corey said foolish. I want to see if you agree. There's an article that came out just on Friday prior to him taking the hot seat at the Heritage Committee that said he ignored his own officials on the new controversial bill, where he kind of ignored some of the documents and almost kind of speaking to what we talked about last time, perhaps an overconfidence in saying that I can communicate this and maybe not doing his parliamentary duties there. Carter, do you also agree? Is this foolish or are you going with one of the other three Fs I'm giving you on the scale? Would

Carter 14:42

Would that I could. It is foolish. It is foolish because you have a ready-made villain, right? It's not like people are like, oh man, I'm so in love with Facebook. I really think that Twitter's all that in a bag of chips even services that we currently like uh like youtube um google um you know there's a ready-made villain and to ignore that villain and and somehow magically turn yourself into the villain i

Carter 15:11

i mean it's it

Carter 15:12

it can only be accomplished by someone who's behaving foolishly um so the this is a bad implementation for by someone who's now making himself look like a fool.

Zain 15:25

That's, I like that, Carter. I'm just absorbing that in terms of you had a ready-made enemy and somehow you turned it on, you know, you made yourself the enemy in that regard. Corey, I asked you guys last week, what would the natural sort of end to this? And you said languishing would be the worst thing that could happen to this particular bill.

Corey 15:42

This is a great exhibit. Yeah,

Zain 15:44

Yeah, yeah. I want to kind of go down another path, which is let's zoom out for for Gilbo, but let's offer more general advice. What's the lesson here? Is it that as a parliamentarian, you need to know your shit, as simple as that? Is it that you need to have studied on this so that your job is not to just sit there and sit pretty, that you're actually advocating for a bill when you introduce it? What's the political lesson? I'm just offering a few suggestions, but from your perspective, what's the political or even parliamentarian lesson that you would offer in broad terms based on this Gilbo example around C-10? Yeah,

Corey 16:17

Yeah, Know Your Shit is a great start because so many of these things came out of almost, I think, what they perceived as a simple quick win. But really, I think that's the lesson. Beware of quick wins. Beware of easy wins. You've got to understand the nuance of these particular issues. They are complicated. You are up against multi-billion dollar opponents here in these social media companies. They've already lost a few rounds. They are getting more sophisticated. they are starting to use more pointed arguments that are likely to be more effective as they go down the road yeah australia may have surprised them they're not surprised by canada anymore so there's also kind of a lobbying notion in here and you can't walk like i said can't walk into this half-cocked this is this the idea that the like so i i'm of two minds when i hear about ignoring the advice of his own officials right a briefing note went up and said this clause is here because of this reason and some official used language way beyond what they should have put put in a memo saying this is necessary for safeguarding. Like that's just bad briefing, no drafting for an official. They stated something in absolute terms and nothing in the world is that absolute. Right. And now they're, you know, elected officials embarrassed as a result. Their minister's embarrassed. They shouldn't have done that. So I don't I don't necessarily fault Gilbo as much on that as I think perhaps other people do. But there is kind of a fundamental reality here, which is there were flags on the field. There were people telling you there are complications here. you've got to be aware of. And you can't just sort of, you or your chief of staff or your director of policy can't hand wave these away and say, oh, we fucking got this. This is popular. We're going to do this. Look what's happening in all these other jurisdictions.

Corey 17:53

That was a mistake. You've got to understand your files, sure, but you've also got to not lull yourself into this sense of complacency. I feel that the government thought because this wasn't a big issue, it wouldn't be a big issue. And that's a mistake.

Zain 18:07

Corey and Carter, I want to come to you. Same same question, lessons learned. So think about that before, as I wrap up with Corey.

Zain 18:15

Does this show the limits of communication? I know it's a very, like, simple thesis, but does this show that, like, there are things that you just can't massage through words, that you just can't massage through, like, well-spoken rhetoric? And I say this with this minister in particular, because not many of us know about him, but, you know, his history has been as an activist, where it's been really using the bully pulpit, you know, taking things that are very complex and making them very simple to understand from like that rhetoric and almost candidate perspective. Does this almost signal and perhaps unearth a lesson that communications has its limits in some degree as well?

Corey 18:52

I think so, but I wouldn't put it like that, right? How would you put it? I would say communications can't do the entire lift. And it's silly to think that communications can do the entire lift. There's nothing that kind of, you

Corey 19:03

you know, I'm a professional communicator. I make my living in communications. I've been an executive in a the communications context for a long time now right and inevitably whenever there's a major initiative coming out that people are feeling a little iffy about somebody says some version of oh

Corey 19:17

oh we're gonna have to calm the shit out of this right right right like nobody says that when the product is great and everybody thinks everyone's going to accept the product perfectly uh without any challenges here i in many ways i'm flattered that you know my colleagues will often think okay well communications can fix this thing it can move forward but the reality is as i was saying last last time all problems manifest as communications problems right and sometimes if you're worried about the communications the

Corey 19:44

place to look is a little further down the line earlier on the line right okay well if i'm worried the communications might get dicey why is that what can i do to shore up the policy what can i do to shore up the implementation of said policy what can i do to shore up my stakeholder relationships on this all of that sort of hits before you get to the communications products you could argue stakeholder relationships is within communications but But I would argue it's deeper than that. And ultimately, you can't just sit there and say, hey, I got a poll. Hey, it says Canadians think that we should do something about this. Ergo, I'm going to do something. I'm going to be popular. Because this is also something we've talked about in the past, this theory of novel concepts. And I used to always say this in polling context, right? Beware of polling on novel concepts. People have thought about it for 30 seconds. They can have their mind changed with 30 seconds of good arguments the other way, right? right? It's much different to poll on something that people have debated back and forth and sort of determined their whole political identity about. That's pretty durable. You're not going to change that with a billboard. You might change it with a billboard if nobody has thought about how you're going to regulate these companies before. So is it the limitations of communications?

Corey 20:50

maybe. But it's really to me about the fact that communicators can't do the entire lift.

Zain 20:56

Carter, I'm going to the original question to you first, which is what's the broad lesson in here for you. And it might tie into the second question that I asked Corey on the follow-up around, I like your phrasing, Corey, around the limits of communications or communications during the whole lift. So the overall lesson and then any reactions you may have to Corey's response on the ceiling or the limits of comms. I

Carter 21:17

I think that the problem with this at the beginning was a misunderstanding of who the adversaries were. I

Carter 21:21

I think that the, you know, Corey made a really good example or

Carter 21:24

or good point about bringing back the Australia example where Facebook just got got taken to

Carter 21:28

to the cleaner but one of the other things that happened in that in that situation was the media kind of got a little bit of a hit right the media because the money was going to flow back to the media and the media were going to get this kind of unintended subsidy let's call it so the media here i suspect are playing it even more fair right they're going to make sure that they are not seen to be tilting the scales in in one direction or the other and so they are they they are absolutely covering this thing. And maybe they're covering it a little bit too hard on the minister, because it turns out that it's not just Facebook. It's not just the social media platforms that now have become part of your adversary. It's part, it's the media that have become part of your adversary. We do this type of analysis all the time. You know, the media will always strive for fairness, but sometimes fairness doesn't look like equality, right? So we've seen We saw it when they were trying to be fair to Donald Trump in 2016.

Carter 22:22

It appeared that they were giving him way more coverage because of how

Carter 22:26

how the fairness was being played. They played

Carter 22:28

played the both sides argument all the time, even

Carter 22:31

even though one side was fucking

Carter 22:33

fucking lunacy and the

Carter 22:34

the other side was less lunacy. So

Carter 22:38

think that the media was part of the adversary. And I'm hoping that you bring me back to

Carter 22:42

to the second half of Corey's question because

Carter 22:44

because Corey missed the fundamental piece. Well, jump in, jump in, do it. do it do it you can't polish a turd

Zain 22:52

think he did mention that though right where he said well

Carter 22:53

well no he didn't say it because if he was a

Carter 22:56

better communicator he would have got that out sometimes you can't polish your turn he's so cliche i'll give you an example i was i was i started off in theater and whenever a theatrical production did really well is because the production was amazing and whenever the production did poorly is because the communicators didn't understand how to sell it right

Zain 23:15

right you're gonna say it's because you were in it anyways keep going

Carter 23:19

that's really upsetting that's really yeah that's you know i mean he's gathering

Corey 23:21

gathering his thoughts saying do you want to talk about how our jobs used to be polishing the turds that uh carter came up with i wouldn't

Zain 23:29

wouldn't call it that it's pretty cliche that's really that's not the phrase that's

Corey 23:32

that's not the phrase i would use credit

Zain 23:34

credit i'm sorry i interrupted you with uh with an undercut that frankly wasn't necessary nor uh was very windy but you know what i don't have regrets about it just to let you know You

Carter 23:44

You hurt my feelings a little bit, but, you know, I remember that I have an enormous ego, so I'll be fine.

Zain 23:51

Can I move on to the next one? Yeah,

Carter 23:53

Yeah, let's do the next question. Because I think you'll enjoy the next one.

Carter 23:54

sticking with Gilbo. Are we still in fine, foolish, fucked, fabulous? Oh,

Zain 23:57

Oh, we've got many more to go. We're still on the scale. Fine, foolish, fabulous, or fucked card. I'm sticking with Gilbo. This is not an issue for him yet, but very well could be. Sending our athletes to the Tokyo Olympics. The country seems to be split on this. Very interesting polling coming out. So this could be part of Corey's novel concepts as well. Right. So let's be very clear on this. Polling coming out by Leger saying 42% of those surveyed in Canada don't think Canadian athletes should compete in the Tokyo Olympics. 39% saying they should. And you also have polling out in Japan, which is, you know, while has limited their COVID spread quite significantly in terms of deaths as compared to our country and their population size per capita. They're doing amazing. Their vaccination rates are very poor right now. They're still in that 65 plus category. And so, you know, this particular question for Gilbo on Inheritage, and I know this is a decision by, you know, COC, but Inheritage has a play in it as well, is, you know, is his non-comment on this at this moment, not available for comment. That was his response. But for him, as an issue, is he fine? Is this foolish for him to not comment? Is this fabulous or is it fucked for him? It's

Carter 25:10

It's foolish. It's time to show leadership. It's foolish also because the athletes themselves need to start speaking up on this. You know, these quadrennials that come along for the Olympics, people train their whole frickin' lives for this. And when we pulled the 1980 Olympics and then subsequently the Iron

Carter 25:31

Iron Curtain countries pulled their participation in the 1984 Olympics, there was no major shakedown in the world's politics. Now, this particular situation is supposed to be health related, but these athletes, they can get vaccinated in time to go to the games. They're going to be inside of a significant bubble. And frankly, these games need to go forward. word um the minister

Carter 25:54

minister needs to step up and take a position and support canada's athletes the reason it's 42 39 isn't because i think this is a novel concept no one's heard anything except we should have vaccinated these people before the 65 year olds which dick pound decided to float in his own foolish fashion in in january when they uh when the vaccinations were just coming out now we've We've got a surplus of vaccines. People can get vaccinated relatively easily. Let's get our athletes vaccinated. Let's get them to Tokyo. And let's wrap ourselves in the flag in a time when we really need it in July and make that part of our best summer ever, as trademarked by Jason Kenney.

Zain 26:36

Corey, probably many considerations for the minister for being charitable. Right. One fact that C10 is pretty much probably burning all staff capacity in that in that space. faith. But, you know, no comment issued. Carter said that's no real leadership on this. It also could be a case to say, you know, to your point, this is a novel concept and or let's wait it out based on a couple of weeks. We can maybe, you know, get a better sense and a better beat of the populace. But from your perspective, the minister is no comments. Fine, foolish, fabulous or fucked?

Corey 27:05

I can understand him wanting to play for time because of the wave three moment we are are in um but you know and i i think ultimately you have a situation where people will react

Corey 27:17

react to the moment and say oh my goodness covid numbers are up look at alberta look at ontario coming down in both cases obviously but you know there's there's been just so much conversation about what we don't have and the lockdown uh and we just talked about the fact that the government itself is branding this as the quote-unquote one dose summer but this is ultimately why i think him not not mixing it up. And this is foolish, because he is letting this get defined, defined in some ways by his own government, you know, why in a one dose summer where we are giving ourselves restraint, and we can't do all the things we're going to do, a certain percentage of the Canadian population will say, well, why are we doing sport then?

Corey 27:50

I think, personally, that we would really regret not being there. I will remind you, the opening ceremony is July 23. We've just talked about hitting 7525 in June, potentially, that's what we're on course for here. It seems to me that the athletes could likely have their two doses without jumping any cues so i i don't even understand well i do understand but i think that it's all tied up in the moment but this is why he needs to start getting some of those conversations out there before this thing runs away before it becomes a culture war moment do you support going to the olympics or not it has to be much

Corey 28:25

much more reason than that you can also point to a lot of the things that the ioc is doing There's not a lot of love and a lot of circles for the IOC. I understand that. But this

Corey 28:35

this is not going to be the Olympic village where everybody's

Corey 28:38

everybody's screwing and life is just totally a party, right? This is a very different moment we find ourselves in. And sport will be the focus.

Corey 28:48

He's got to just sort of say, no, we're going to be there, I feel. And not doing that and letting that language risks it becoming defined in different ways. So I think it's foolish.

Zain 28:57

Carter, I'm going to ask you on this. Be a little prescient for me if you can. I know I'm asking the wrong of the two to do that. No, I'm good at this. Don't be foolish.

Zain 29:07

Corey's question of a culture, or Corey's statement of a culture war, could this be one? Like, if I'm the PMO, could this—this seems so relatable in some ways, right? Like, this seems like a real flash in the pan could divide the country. Am I overstating that? Could this be a real question that almost unexpectedly hits the country, being like, oh, we're divided on this all of a sudden, and who knew there was these camps? To me, there's something about it. I can't explain it. Clearly, I'm not the communicator that Corey is. But something about it feels like it could be one of those questions. It seems like these cultural questions are lightning rods. And so from a more prescient perspective, do you sense that this will become a big issue quickly, either for the PMO or the minister himself? I think

Carter 29:51

think that this is going to be the first thing that we get to do that's normal, right? It is normal to sit around the televisions and watch, you know, as Canadians compete in all these events that we didn't know that we even cared about. It is normal. As we do every

Carter 30:06

years. as we do every four years and all of a sudden we find a new hero and we find some new people that we adore and they all get their endorsement deals and they show up in our advertisements for six months and then they fade away again and that's part of this normal cycle but you want to build a rallying cry bring us rosie mcclellan on the trampoline right bring us someone who bring us someone who we've never met before who wins a gold medal that we didn't even in a sport that was we We didn't even know we might like, but all of a sudden it's really exciting and it's super engaging. And when Kyle Shufeld won his medal and, you know, when Erica Weave has won her medals, you know, all of these people inspire us and lift us up. And that is the joy of the sport. So this is an opportunity. And it's never failed. It's never failed. It has happened every time. So if you can get these athletes safely to Tokyo, this is an investment for this government that will pay a dividend. And it will be paying a dividend for the months that we are looking forward to an election. This is something that is very easy for them to double down on and to get involved in. And the fact that the minister can't see that just makes me absolutely

Carter 31:16

absolutely question whether or not he's got a capable communication staff.

Zain 31:21

Corey, could this be a lightning rod moment? Is there something from your perspective that that you feel like the ingredients to this culture war question? Could it be real very quickly?

Corey 31:33

do think we're in a moment and you're seeing this in our home city and home province as well with conversations about the stampede, which is earlier. It's July. It's earlier in July, right? And people saying, should it go forward? Should it not go forward? And I

Corey 31:48

will let public health experts sort of weigh in on the logic of that one way or the other. But I will say, you're

Corey 31:54

you're starting to see the conversation ossify along lines here. You have the same people always saying everything should go forward, the same people saying things should not go forward. And we've lost a bit of nuance as to, okay, but what are we going to look like at that moment, by and large, right? And I said this on Twitter, and maybe I'll take the opportunity now to say it. When you look at Alberta, I've really only looked at the numbers for Alberta specifically. Alberta is almost, when you look at number of people with one dose, number of people two doses, almost exactly two months behind the UK. So where's the UK right now? Well, they're opening up and they're expanding the ability to go to these events, to get out there, to go to pubs, to go to sporting venues. And that looks like that might be our future around July 10th, right? When

Corey 32:36

When you look a couple of months beyond that, it looks even more positive because the UK looks like they're about two months behind Israel and Israel is, by and large, even as they've opened up, seeing their numbers sort of plummet. So I guess the point I want to make is, we

Corey 32:49

we are in a third wave, we can definitely throw stones at our political leaders for leading us into this third wave and not taking it seriously, and not putting restrictions in place to keep us safe, for sure.

Corey 33:01

But we've got a modern miracle of vaccination that's going on right now. And it is happening faster, I think, than most of us appreciate. And

Corey 33:08

And the precipitous drop we can expect that what's called exponential decay in in kind of public health circles is real. We have seen it in some of these jurisdictions that are out front of us. And so as

Corey 33:20

as much as I think that discretion is the better part of valor, prudence should call the game, when

Corey 33:27

when we're talking about events that are three months out, we're

Corey 33:30

we're going to be in an entirely different paradigm, an entirely different paradigm. time. Now, the reason why this is a problem, and I want to jump back to what you said about this division of like 40-40 issue, I didn't look at the breakdowns. I suspect that 40-40 issue would break somewhat along conservative, quote-unquote, liberal NDP block lines, say, you know, and there'd be more caution on the quote-unquote left than there would be on the right for this particular matter, because that's what we've seen on basically everything else about opening up, right?

Corey 33:56

The challenge here is, in silence, the conservatives will start saying, for shame. game and justin trudeau's one dose summer provides just another cudgel to hit you at it justin trudeau's one dose summer is a no friend summer is a no cultural event summer is a no gold summer and unless the minister can start knocking some of those off before they become part of this narrative even if you're intending to go even if you're planning to go even if you're thinking in three weeks i'm just going to quietly say we're all going to go it's going to be great the reality is the conservatives have an opportunity right now to make it look like they pushed you into to that decision which

Corey 34:27

becomes a political loss for you and becomes politically difficult if the conservatives turn it into a culture war issue and then you are going against a bit of your own base making this decision going forward so move now move

Corey 34:38

move now is my advice define that some of these things are going to happen and again like it's so annoying to me because this really

Corey 34:46

for me underlines how dumb the one dose summer branding was it just breaks so much of this right Right. Anyways, that's it for me. OK,

Zain 34:53

OK, I'm moving on to the last two. I'm going to go with Ford here. Fine, foolish, fabulous or fucked. Corey Hogan, I'm starting with you. Doug Ford's most recent political attack, because it clearly is as such, asserting that tighter federal borders will help drive Ontario's case counts down much faster. So he's extending lockdowns, giving a bit of a hat tip to community spread, but then is hitting hard on this federal jurisdiction of closing the borders. In fact, going so hard to now develop 30-second spots that they're running as the PC party of Ontario against the federal government, fundraising emails, all the like. It's a continued part of his rhetoric. It started probably about 10 days ago, extended to Friday when he said, oh, by the way, I think Friday or Thursday, just so I'm clear, when he said, we're continuing the lockdown. But, you know, this is all about the variants and the borders and what the federal government could be doing here. From a political perspective, is this fine, foolish, fabulous, or fucked from your vantage

Corey 35:50

vantage point? It's foolish for the same reasons I just gave on the last one. This situation is rapidly evolving, and what you're going to find is that these numbers are going to decline. The federal government is not going to do what Doug Ford wants to do, and he's just sitting out there flapping in the breeze, genitals exposed to the winds, because ultimately he's going to spend a lot of money. He's going to try to rile up people on an issue. And if he is lucky, they will forget he tried to do it. If he's not, they will remember he did and that he was wrong. There's just absolutely no benefit. Listen, I understand the desire of provincial politicians to blame it on the federal government when things go wrong. That's not a COVID thing. That's as old as Confederation.

Corey 36:34

this is not one of those things that's going to be particularly effective for you. It's not. And all you are doing is you're trying to broaden the fight with the feds that you are losing. You're already losing, you know? So just step away, man. Take the L on this particular one. The idea that you are going to somehow be Captain No Border Open is just nuts. nuts carter

Zain 36:58

carter same question to you uh ford continuing to insert that assert that tighter federal borders will help drive case counts down making this the core sort of argument of of what's up right now fine foolish fabulous or fucked in your mind it's

Carter 37:11

it's foolish i mean he's everything is foolish he's betting it's almost like

Corey 37:16

like it's a really bad option yeah like you could put everything put everything

Zain 37:20

i should have left it as i should have left it this is a lesson in retrospect retrospect by the way giving you more options i don't know

Carter 37:25

know can i answer

Zain 37:28

934 episodes in i don't know why this is this is now about me self-reflecting carter please go ahead it's foolish please tell us why it's foolish

Carter 37:35

foolish i'll tell you why because he's betting against his own actions he's betting against the things that he has actually put in place that is actually going to bring down the numbers and now he's betting against them like

Carter 37:47

like foolish ford baby baby, that's when we should start calling them because that's ridiculous. I'm done. Thank

Zain 37:53

Thank you. Okay, Carter, I'm going on to the next one. Let's actually, I said the final one, but let me go with final two. Keep

Carter 37:59

Keep it going, baby. I

Zain 38:00

I want to focus us back on what we did last week. I'm not going to do a whole thing about Alberta, but we did touch on Alberta quite significantly last week, and there's been some developments. Drew Barnes, this is the leader of the now ousted two-person... Leader of the pack. Of the pack. Here's what he said from last week. He said that the decision makes it clear that Kenney does not accept dissenting voices despite repeatedly saying the opposite and goes against the grassroots of the UCP. He's quoted as saying, hundreds of our members have already quit the party. Hundreds of our members are not donating anymore. He said many of his constituents and people across the province have told him they envision a free, more prosperous Alberta that gets a better deal from Ottawa. And then he started talking about comparators of Jason Kenney's polling numbers versus Justin and Trudeau in the province of Alberta, just to rub that into the wound. Carter, as a message for Barnes, from the advice that we gave him last week, even reconciling with perhaps new advice you have for him, what do you make of this messaging? Fine, foolish, fabulous, or fucked, based on the two goals he might have, right? Let's be clear, once again, to remind listeners from episode 934, the two goals that he had was either, you know, being part of a takeover of the UCP and or forming a new political movement. Based on what you heard, fine, foolish, fabulous, or fucked. And please Please don't say foolish, or I'll just come across the screen and kill both of you. It's

Carter 39:16

It's foolish, and I'll tell you why, because he's taking one of

Carter 39:22

his options off the table. He's

Carter 39:25

He's no longer able— I want to take one option off the table. It is foolish.

Zain 39:28

foolish. That is one.

Carter 39:31

foolish because he's taking one of the options off the table. He's basically signaling he has no intention of reconciliation with the UCP, which is good news because drew barnes of the two of them was never the person that was going to come back and reconcile so i think it's foolish that was

Carter 39:48

was a totally that one was totally going to be foolish from the beginning it has nothing to do with fucking with you uh

Zain 39:54

cory are you choosing the same one on the scale i

Corey 39:59

that steven's answer was a bit foolish i don't see anything in what barnes said there that makes me think that um that

Corey 40:05

that uh he is closing the door on the ucp in In fact, he's talking about very party-specific metrics. Hundreds have quit. Hundreds are not donating. Jason Kenney is the unpopular one, right? Which is not saying, like, the UCP sucks. He's saying Jason Kenney's the problem. So I think my answer is that Stephen Carter's answer was foolish. Oh,

Zain 40:25

Oh, wonderful. Thank you, Corey. Let's go to Jason Kenney. You know, we had some advice for him. I think to summarize it, it was organize, listen first, don't speak a lot, hear from your team, and build some camaraderie, you know, build a relationship, figure out how things went for them, right? Something in that order was the advice for the weekend. We talked about the Thursday to Sunday advice. We don't know if he did any of that, but he did do an interview the next morning, right after that. Yeah, Zane, I'm going to save you some time. It was foolish.

Zain 40:53

Well, let me tell the people what he said, and then I will just end the show, because what the fuck is the purpose anymore? He said, I didn't reveal which way I was voting. I didn't want to, you know, put my finger on the scale, but I did express my disappointment of the conduct uh ultimately what this says is we have to be a team let's be professional uh he ultimately went on to say that he didn't you know he wasn't trying to influence how this vote went he wasn't trying to influence what happened cory actually foolish do you do you want to stick with that answer in terms of what jason kenney said in that morning interview like quite literally the morning after i

Corey 41:27

i do zane it was foolish uh it actually it literally made made me laugh out loud when i read the comment you know people throw the letters lol around a lot but i actually broke into a guffaw the notion that he'd be like oh i i don't know i didn't want to get involved right i don't know what happened that's just that's just that's just dumb uh it was foolish because nobody's gonna believe it it strains credulity to the point of of absurd and uh it just you know it's like i can't also

Corey 41:56

not show strength like would you not

Zain 41:57

not also want want to be like i saw these two i initiate i kick these people out like would it not want to be that sort of clean cut like you know i'm the i run the show

Corey 42:06

show well this is the thing it's like uh he's trying to straddle this this ever-widening chasm right he's on two skis and the the space in front of him is getting bigger and the the stuff on the side is getting smaller i i think it was really really foolish i think it was silly i i would have given this answer even if i wasn't trying trying to fuck with you on the foolish thing now god

Zain 42:25

god damn it carter do you agree also foolish same reasons different reasons just give me the short or long answer i don't care anymore it's

Carter 42:31

it's foolish i mean how the hell is he supposed to not put his hand on the scale when he's got his hand up everybody's ass working them like a ventriloquist dummy i mean he's in total control of this situation he's the one who called the cardicus meeting i mean this is nuts he was controlling the situation from the beginning and for him to pretend like he you know didn't want to put his finger on the scale. My God, that's just foolish to the extreme.

Zain 42:55

We'll leave that segment there. Moving on to our next segment, doing what Jared Kushner couldn't. Guys, we've got a couple minutes to do peace in the Middle East, which is probably

Zain 43:05

probably the amount of time that Jared Kushner had when he had the portfolio under Donald Trump. Let's talk about this. I mean, this is going to be either the episode that makes us heroes or gets us canceled. In fact, I do see both of those being possibility.

Zain 43:18

We have to talk about the Free Palestine movement. And of course, there's obviously ongoing tensions in the Middle East. The unraveling of that issue is not something I necessarily want to do on this show. But I do want to talk about the domestic side of it. And I want to talk about maybe the

Zain 43:33

the language and the volume. And I use volume in two ways, the volume of people that we are now seeing in the pro-Palestinian sort of protests and movements, movements uh and also the volume of this conversation it's it's becoming louder and louder like you know i'd say i haven't seen before it certainly feels different to me and i want to talk about the domestic sort of activism that we're saying and and and how far you know perhaps are the activists from creating real change is one question but carter what do you make of let's start here top line and perhaps are you surprised with what you're seeing on the streets of let's just say our country let's limit it to the scope of our country whether that be be car parades or parades and protests in Nathan Phillips Square, etc. Are you surprised by, let's just go with the volume with both sides of that definition, and then let's expand it there to a strategy conversation of what perhaps is next and what should be next and some of the insights we may have around that?

Carter 44:30

I'm not surprised. And the reason I'm not surprised is that global issues are becoming local issues. First of all, we have worldwide immigration, we have worldwide, you know, populations that exist in virtually every country that are from other countries and every region is going to be represented and every region is going to have allegiance to other region other areas and the other thing is that we literally have all the information at our fingertips there is no confirmation there's no uh there's not necessarily all the information that we're getting is entirely factual and people feel empowered to have a position right there is no uh you know leaving it to the experts there's no sense of well i'm not not really sure what's going on, but I have confidence in my government. We don't have confidence in the governments. We don't have confidence in the actions or even the media that we're seeing.

Carter 45:20

So because of that lack of confidence, because of the shifting nature of the way that information flows and the kind of shrinking size of the world and the information that's presented to us, I'm not at all surprised to see protests in the streets. I am not surprised at all to see the polarization of these issues. And I guess I'm not surprised also, it's just a final thing to see, you know, the eternal conflict that is the Middle East flare up again, because

Carter 45:51

because it is something that has been a constant in my life. And I would imagine it will, you know, I don't see it not being a constant in the future, which is saddening to say, but you know, that's where I I certainly see where we are.

Zain 46:05

Corey, let's just get your top-line crude analysis around the surprise of these movements, both from the size that they're carrying and perhaps the volume that they are at domestically here in Canada.

Corey 46:18

This is a fascinating issue for a couple of reasons I hope we can unpack. One of the ones that I think that I'm keeping a bit of an eye on is that there is a bit of a – And

Corey 46:27

And there's a division growing between the position of the Canadian government and Canadians, and in particular, quote unquote, progressive Canadians here on this matter. And this is happening in the United States as well. It's much more documented in the United States, the fact that the Democrats have had a bit of a, you know, there used to be kind of this like hegemonic support for the state of Israel and the positions of the state of Israel, right, among

Corey 46:51

among Democrats. Which actually doesn't give it enough texture or nuance because for a very long time, Jewish Americans have supported a two-state solution.

Corey 46:59

It's a complicated issue. Obviously, I mean, that's obviously the biggest dodge in the world. There are fundamental problems that go back a long time. But the fundamental problem is this. The status quo in Israel is untenable. I think everybody can accept that. And Gaza and the West Bank have been occupied for over 50 years. There's been generations, plural, born under occupation. and ultimately it results in flare-ups and then it results in people saying uh you know was was the catalyst of this the the rating of this mosque was that the shooting of these rockets whatever it is um when when the dust settles on each one what you're finding is by and large as these events are occurring right

Corey 47:37

right now and maybe this one's different maybe it's not but i will tell you that going back and i did kind of a deep dive on this over the past bit for the past 20 years you're finding I mean, Canadians more and more are moving away from this default position of supporting Israel to this default position of Israel

Corey 47:53

is not in the right here, right? Not even necessarily Israel is in the wrong, but we're starting to see a division of Canadians. And maybe social media is part of that. We talk about the downside of social media a lot. One of the things social media has a lot of power in is it provides us pictures and human stories about what's occurring in other parts of the world. Maybe changing demographics. In 1991, more Jewish Canadians than Muslim Canadians. In 2011, there were three times as many Muslim Canadians as Jewish Canadians. That's going to change the tenor of the conversation and the tenor of the political conversation. conversation. But, or maybe it's just as this fundamental

Corey 48:30

fundamental problem, this untenable situation propagates further and further, people are saying, okay, this is not, this is enough, right? We've got to try something different. This is not working for us. And whatever it is, though, Zane, my main point is that the Canadian government feels like it is not necessarily on message with its base, for sure, and Canadians in general, with what is still largely

Corey 48:55

largely strong support for the state of Israel.

Corey 49:01

before anybody jumps down my throat, this is a difficult one, right? Yeah, sure. If you're sitting there in Tel Aviv and you have literally thousands of rockets being shot at you, air raid sirens going off, Iron Dome blowing up things above your head, things raining down, that must be scary as shit, right? Right. On the same side, I'm not sure that the solution to that is dozens

Corey 49:24

dozens of children being killed in Gaza as a result of countermeasures against this. This whole situation is capital F fucked. And I do think, you know, my personal views is because Israel carries a lot of the power in this situation. They've got to do more to do better. But that's my personal view of the world.

Corey 49:42

But what I think is interesting about that is I think that view is starting to align. line like

Corey 49:46

like canadians are carrying that view more and that's creating difficulties for the canadian government and in some ways it's not like they're totally mute on this issue but they're kind of like their silence on this issue and their lack of desire to say

Corey 50:01

tangible on this issue i think a lot of us have started to feel it at this point and

Zain 50:05

and carter you know what cory mentions at the tail end of his point there this this mealy-mouthed uh sort of uh you know saying words but not saying anything, right? Like constructing, almost going back to a previous point, almost letting the communications do the heavy lifting here, right? And ultimately, you can only do so much when you put pretty words together side by side, or $20 words side by side, when you don't really have much to say. And I think there's an increased demand from both, I'd say, citizens in the United States and Canada to have their governments do more on it. Do you sense that as well? And if you're the government, let's get into strategy mode a bit. Are you not touching this with a 10-foot pole, or do you feel like this could flare up here to your earlier point of global movements becoming local movements very, very quickly and perhaps even more readily than we have seen in the past in our country?

Carter 50:55

Governments have the ability to move quickly, but more often than not, they move slowly, and

Carter 51:00

and they have history. They understand the history of the creation of Israel and the history of governments surrounding Israel openly

Carter 51:11

advocating for the eradication of the state. And

Carter 51:14

And that colors American policy. It colors Canadian policy. It is a historical fact. It is not – I don't think that we're getting into a difficult spot there because it is just something that has

Carter 51:28

has been true. And the Israeli lobby, the group of people working

Carter 51:33

ensure that that will never be forgotten, is very, very strong.

Carter 51:40

That doesn't change anything around the treatment of the Palestinians, right? It doesn't change anything in terms of the fundamental injustice that occurs. But when you're surrounded by states that have threatened to eradicate another state that you are allies with, And then in the United States, who is our strongest ally, one would argue, you have huge populations, especially on the right wing, that very solidly, that signal their right-wingedness by their support of Israel. They're evangelical about their support of Israel because, in fact, they are evangelicals, right? The evangelical Christian support of Israel is almost foundational to it. it now that comes that signals a

Carter 52:25

reaction from the left because if the if the right is saying one thing the left is going to say something different and the left now looks at this situation and says how can you behave this way when there's this fundamental injustice towards the palestinian people absolutely

Carter 52:40

absolutely right there's a fundamental injustice to the palestinian people there is also a state that has been threatened with eradication right so these

Carter 52:50

these two things like This problem that has existed for generations, as Corey has indicated, isn't going to go away from a statement. It may go away through some sort of peace deal that is brokered through a mature American government that doesn't send Jared Kushner over just to figure it all out in a weekend with the dudes.

Carter 53:13

you know, it's not going to be... I'm fascinated by watching what's happening in Canada. because if western governments have additional pressure put on it to to move away and move towards like the the two-state solution or to to move towards a solution that has been untenable to israel and its far-right government um keep in mind i mean man we want to go into this this is now we can get into the proportional representation issues in israel we can get into the the the The inability to form a government in over two years, four elections, Bibi Netanyahu's corruption cases, the number of things that are going on in the state of Israel right now, and the potential that this is, in fact, a single ploy to enable Netanyahu to form a government. Like,

Carter 54:03

man, there's so much shit here. But yeah, protesting on behalf of people who are being killed unjustly is probably not a bad thing. So you should do that.

Zain 54:12

Corey, you wanted to jump in, and I've got some advocacy-related questions for you guys. But jump in on this before I jump into that

Corey 54:18

that part of the conversation. Well, I want to pull it back to the political strategy in Canada here.

Corey 54:23

And, you know, I mean, the Israeli government also is not making things easy for other governments out there, particularly. The basic law of Israel was recently changed to define Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, right? Right. That's that that kind of subordinates the Arab citizens of Israel, which I believe are about 20 percent of the of the population. That's that's that's unfortunate. And I think some of these things are just continue. I guess here's my point. That fundamental problem I was talking about some ways seems to be getting worse, not better. Yeah,

Corey 54:57

we're not we're not moving towards solutions. So that's making it very difficult. And I would say our governments, Canada and the United States, are paralyzed by this fundamental fact. They've got growing dissatisfaction with the actions of the state of Israel.

Corey 55:12

Stephen is absolutely right. Like, we forget some of that history at our peril, right? This notion that Israel would be pushed into the sea, that's not me being colorful with language. This was stated policy of some of the neighbors of Israel. Let's not forget the partition of Israel itself in 1948, pretty

Corey 55:29

pretty intrinsically tied to the greatest kind of

Corey 55:33

of single individual tragedy in human history of the Holocaust.

Corey 55:37

just like this whole thing is just – it feels like you're surrounded by electricity whenever you want to talk about any of these matters, right? For sure. And the governments are really manifesting that lively, right? They are not quite sure what to do in these situations. So you have Joe Biden being entirely silent until he's called out by the Democrats rather aggressively. And then he calls Israel and he says, well, Israel has the right to defend themselves. Again, see comments earlier about, yeah, thousands of rockets raining down. Must be scary as hell. And people are being killed by these rockets, right?

Corey 56:11

But that, you know, he's not really saying anything earth shattering or groundbreaking. breaking, my advice to governments would be, you're not getting out of this box. Until that fundamental problem is resolved, until that fundamental tension within the state of Israel is resolved, these things will keep happening.

Corey 56:28

People's tolerance for them will continue to diminish. And this

Corey 56:33

this is not going to get better.

Zain 56:36

Carter, let's move it on to some advocacy related strategy. You're seeing these protests. We don't know how much, let's be crude about it a We don't know how much more time in the zeitgeist, you know, these protests will remain. But if you are an activist right now, if you are advocating for this, if you feel like also in a crude way that there could be parallels, remnants of parallels to what happened last June with the murder of George Floyd and the ongoing sort of social justice related to Black Lives Matter, etc. et cetera, you maybe model that as, could we get there? Could that be what our movement becomes? What advice would you have to advocacy organizations, to individuals advocating getting out there on foot, online, et cetera, regarding their movement? What would that look like from a crude strategy perspective, if I can say it as such?

Carter 57:25

Sustain. You've got to keep your people moving every day for months at a time. the the greatest thing the governments have going for it is the three-day media cycle if something happens on one on day one it gets reported in the news the day two it you know it it's written in the opinion columns day three it's in the letters to the editor and day four it's forgotten so if if that is the cycle that this goes on then we had a really interesting one day protest um you know or a couple of days of protest uh for something to actually take hold for something to actually continue it takes weeks of pressure on a government um governments are patient they can wait this out um they don't have to move um and the government that you're trying to ultimately influence isn't necessarily just the canadian government you

Carter 58:16

you want the you know the canadian government can pick up the phone they can take you know they can make a call to israel in the strongest possible of terms. Please stop doing this. But until such time as there's worldwide pressure on Israel to change and a worldwide style of pushing to come to a solution, this is going to be, sadly, the state of being that was my youth, that is now my children's youth, I fear may be my grandchildren's youth. because that is the nature of this type of problem that has existed for coming on 80 years.

Zain 59:00

Corey, if you are advocating, if you're an activist, if you're an organizer for this movement, you've either joined or you've been part of the focal point for a long time at part of its core, you feel like your message is perhaps getting more resonance than it ever has in terms of the audience that's capturing it, right? I don't think I've seen a 10,000 person sort of

Zain 59:21

protest about this issue in a long time, if ever.

Zain 59:25

Advice to, Carter says, sustain and use that as a basic process. What other advice to organizing would you have to movements like this?

Corey 59:34

You know, I was going to tell you I didn't like the George Floyd parallel, because Because the thing

Corey 59:40

thing about the issue with Israel and with Palestine is that there are protests on both sides, people coming out arguing. Like, there's a different charge to it. Good point. And there's all of that history and context. But then I started thinking in a perfect sense, or in one sense, it's perfect. And it's kind of the tenseness of the issue. It's the paralysis of people around who just do not want to say anything. Decades

Zain 1:00:03

the shadows in some ways

Corey 1:00:05

what I would say, though, is the thing about George Floyd and Black Lives Matter is that we will remember it as being the moment when the dam broke. And

Corey 1:00:16

of a sudden, everyone was expected to take a stance. And they were supposed to say, OK,

Corey 1:00:21

we can't stay silent anymore. We've got to talk about these matters in some way, shape or form.

Corey 1:00:26

And organizations everywhere, like all of a sudden, like shampoo companies were being dragged if they didn't say something about Black Lives Matter. Right. Right. Black tiles everywhere on

Zain 1:00:35

on Instagram. Right. Corporate

Corey 1:00:36

Corporate or whatever. Right. Absolutely changed the paradigm. And it dragged a bunch of people who are decidedly neutral on these matters, forced them to take a position. So if there is a parallel to be drawn, if there's lessons to be drawn, it's that that organizations were forced to take decisions, take stances on these things. And you're starting to see this in micro right now online. People, in particular, progressives with voices and audiences are being, you know, hey, you've been silent on this. what the hell why won't you say something take a stand right this is starting to come up yeah canadian context i think the next obvious step is starting to push towards some of those companies who will be terrified of this issue absolutely terrified of this issue uh like i said it's just so charged with electricity and it's it's never been easy for somebody to be you know the reality is there is the political the polity that is israel and its current actions there is the history And how it was created and all of those, you know, all of those, you

Corey 1:01:32

know, adversarial situations it had to put up with. And then there is the history of the Jewish people, which has had a lot of tragedy. And all of these stories sort of get mixed in and companies will be really

Corey 1:01:44

really scared to talk about this. But what you need to do is you need to start getting people to take some stances that they can take and say, like, well, start

Corey 1:01:52

start crafting a message that a Coca-Cola could take.

Corey 1:01:57

So it can't be a total outright condemnation of the state of Israel. It's going to have to be something along the lines of no matter what happens here, this

Corey 1:02:04

this needs to stop. Palestine needs to be whatever, like whatever you want, whatever your objective is. Some sort of off-ramp, you would say? Would that be an appropriate sort of term? Well, off-ramp is an interesting way to put it. But what I would say is you've got to provide them the way out of – don't put them in a box because then they'll just continue to stay silent, right? Offer them a way out of that box where it almost becomes impossible not to take it because you're not being overly critical of one side or the other, but you're making clear that you insist upon a certain stance. And that is kind of the thin edge of the wedge. And where I think you have to be careful if you are really pushing for wholesale change of government positions here is that you don't overpush on this matter, right? Right. Because it will take it will take a little bit of time for government to change its position. And it's going to take a bit of feeling about onto messaging and nuance and understanding how to talk about these issues in particularly charged times in a way that doesn't get people, you know, crushed

Corey 1:02:55

crushed either coming or going. Because as long as you're in kind of a no win situation, I say this all the time, sometimes not communicating is the right communications play. They may they will avail themselves of that. So you have to find a way that they can say this, take the stance that you want them to take, without it just incurring kind of too strong of a cost, I suppose.

Zain 1:03:15

Yeah, and it's one of those political rules that you hear often, Carter, right? This rule of a minister or premier saying, bring me something I can say yes to. Yeah.

Zain 1:03:24

Right? Bring me something that I actually, knowing you know my limitations, if you don't learn them, right? But bring me something I can say yes to. Now, not to say that these advocates and activists are looking for the corporate bump or like this, but knowing that that's been an important marker. If there's a template, and I don't want to be too crude about it, Corey, with the BLM template and the George Floyd murder and the activism thereafter, but this has been part of the template. Now, it doesn't need to be this time. You wanted to jump in before I go to Carter. Sorry. Well,

Corey 1:03:52

the other thing I wanted to throw out there is that there is an absolute dearth of public polling on this particular matter in Canada, how people feel. There's basically one organization that polls regularly on it. It's Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, and they work with ECOS, and they release polls fairly regularly on this matter. They've got some interesting data that you can go into if you want to look at some of the Canadian attitudes on this. But there's not a lot of foundational research on how do Canadians feel about, you know, conflict in the Middle East, you know, the divide between almost

Corey 1:04:24

almost the whose side are you on questions. Like, you're not going to find those. And until you get some of that foundational data that you can point to the political class and say, to

Corey 1:04:34

to your parade question, Zane, or point, your parade is there. Your

Corey 1:04:38

Your parade is there. You think your parade is somewhere else, but your parade is there. I mean, some of that, I think, would probably be time well spent as well.

Zain 1:04:45

Carter, the final question I have for you here is, you know, you look at this concept of sustaining this momentum, you look at the concept of sustaining this movement. What final words would you have, you know, if the answer is, okay, we can't sustain the media cycle, we can't keep this alive therein, you know, where does a movement like this go? No, if you were advising a client in some way, and once again, I hate to make this so crude, considering all the complexities of an issue, but frankly, there is strategy applied to this. If you can't own and win the media cycle, let's just say you just don't have control or something else takes over. I mean, we're in the middle of a pandemic, so clearly that could take over any time. What other follow-up advice would you have thereafter, if I can ask you?

Carter 1:05:27

My follow-up advice would be that this isn't going to go away. So let's say that you aren't This is the most important issue for you. It's not going to go away when the pandemic is over. It's not going to go away when Israel finally is able to form an effective government that is able to sustain itself and maybe enter into some sort of peace negotiations. negotiations, the reality is the Palestine issue is complicated. And one of the ways that we're going to get to a solution is getting people on the ground and getting people to help the people of Palestine. Raise

Carter 1:06:07

go to Palestine, go and help as much as you can, in the same way that we would put the same boots on the ground if, you know, if there was an earthquake in Haiti. You and

Carter 1:06:21

organize things that will have impact on the people that you care about. And sometimes I feel like these protests are, you

Carter 1:06:29

you know, they're way for thin because at the end of the day, it's easy to protest. It's hard to take action. And if this is the most important issue for you, then because people are suffering, because there is pain, and because there are ways that we can help, help, this is the time to step up and act. If this is your issue, don't just drive around a major metropolitan city in Canada, blaring your horns.

Carter 1:07:01

Work and make minor improvements, because minor improvements ultimately are the only way that we're going to see significant change.

Zain 1:07:10

Carter, I need to follow up with you on one more question that I got Corey to answer. actually he kind of put it out there which was what would your and i'm going to use this term again like off-ramp or sort of say you know give me something i can say yes to be for a movement like this you know and i'm asking you to dance on your feet so to speak but cory said you know regardless of what happens you know this violence needs to stop like something like that what would your version of that be if you were to play around with that message or something different what What would your offering

Carter 1:07:39

Stop asking for a fucking state. Start asking for actual action from our Canadian government. We need to treat this like any other refugee situation where the refugees are being taken advantage of, where the refugees are being hurt, where the refugees are children and they don't have enough food.

Carter 1:07:59

Act. I would ask the Canadian government to ensure that the relief agencies that are on the ground are supported by Canadian dollars. You

Carter 1:08:08

You know, maybe we can't put Canadian

Carter 1:08:11

Canadian agencies directly into the West Bank, but we can put Canadian

Carter 1:08:15

Canadian dollars into the hand of the agencies that are there.

Carter 1:08:19

And that is a solution that doesn't require a change in government position. Helping people is a Canadian value that

Carter 1:08:29

that we've seen operate time and time again. And this is a time when the children of Palestine need Canadian intervention. intervention that's would be that would be my reframing of this particular issue you're not going to solve the two-state problem you

Carter 1:08:42

you can take care of some children leave

Zain 1:08:45

leave that segment there moving on to our final segment are over under in our lightning round breathe a sigh of relief i think

Carter 1:08:51

think we did okay

Zain 1:08:53

okay cory again i'm going to start with you because i know steven carter is very excited and i'll let him go second on this one cory are you buying stock on drew barnes this week after what you heard in terms of his follow-up comments uh on friday foolish

Zain 1:09:06

foolish zane oh my god i fucking hate you guys carter are you buying stock in drew barnes yes or no no

Carter 1:09:12

no it's a foolish decision to do scale

Zain 1:09:16

scale of one to ten she says pays me pays me this is drag i try to leave with a sense of hope and a sense of optimism how much of a pain in the ass is this for for uh Justin Trudeau, you're going to say foolish, aren't you? No. I

Carter 1:09:31

I just said it. I just said it.

Zain 1:09:33

No, we're not going to do it.

Carter 1:09:34

question out. We'll evaluate the question. Okay, okay, okay.

Zain 1:09:36

okay. Major General Danny Fortin, Canada's vaccine logistics head, is stepping down under the cloud of a military investigation. Carter, how much of a pain is this for Justin Trudeau on a scale of 1 to 10?

Carter 1:09:51

oh, fuck, I can't do it. The question

Zain 1:09:54

question was so good, wasn't it?

Carter 1:09:57

question. It's a C plus problem. I'll take a C

Carter 1:09:59

C plus. Because again, the issues are stacked one on top of the other. And so this is now becoming, you know, a really big issue for the government. But it's not really a top of mind issue for people in the government, right? Or for voters. It's not something that I'm going to vote on.

Carter 1:10:19

Right? Most voters aren't saying, you know what, it

Carter 1:10:21

it looks like the military's got some sort of a problem. I mean, we don't even know what this investigation is about. But he's he's decided to step aside. And, you know, I hope for the best for everybody that's involved. C plus.

Zain 1:10:37

Corey, one to 10 political headache for Trudeau, Major General Danny Fortin leaving under the cloud of a military investigation.

Corey 1:10:47

Yeah, I'm going to say it's it's starting to become one of those things where there's so much smoke, you can't ignore the fact that there's obviously a big fire there.

Corey 1:10:55

And so I will say it's a six or a seven. But one of the things that I think that we'll have to unpack a bit is it doesn't necessarily suggest to me that the solution is Aaron

Corey 1:11:06

Aaron O'Toole, military man himself. Right. So it's one of those issues that cuts in a lot of different ways that some of which may be helpful to the conservatives, many of which may not, frankly. So while it's a problem for Trudeau, it

Corey 1:11:22

it might be more proximal than it is about an election. action.

Zain 1:11:26

Carter, overrated or underrated?

Zain 1:11:29

In person protests, getting together actually physically protesting in person as an advocacy and political tactic in your mind, overrated or underrated?

Carter 1:11:41

I think they're overrated. I think that the protest class gets together and they protest and it's the same. It's the same guys with the same megaphone saying just and they change the word of the chance. And so I think that they're overrated. So I don't think that's necessarily where real change happens.

Zain 1:11:59

Corey, same question to you, overrated, underrated, the in-person protest, of course, tying this to the question of the Free Palestine movement, but in general, I should ask you, the in-person protest, overrated, underrated?

Corey 1:12:14

there is a professional protest class people who on uh you know they'll have as

Corey 1:12:19

as uh as phil oaks would say every conceivable pin right uh they're they're going to go for every particular matter and they're going to and

Corey 1:12:27

and and they're going to chant they're going to have signs and they're going to shout and they own a megaphone how many people actually own a megaphone that

Corey 1:12:33

that said uh and so those protests are overrated i'd say anything over like Like, you

Corey 1:12:38

you know, 100 to 500 people, a protest of that size is overrated. However,

Corey 1:12:42

However, when a protest really kind of

Corey 1:12:45

of jumps the next step and becomes tens

Corey 1:12:48

tens of thousands of people, mothers

Corey 1:12:49

mothers from the suburbs, people who come from different walks of life, older Canadians who wouldn't normally come to something like that, who are just so driven by the outrage, I think they're actually fundamentally underrated because that's where change comes from.

Zain 1:13:05

Carter, final question. I'm starting with you for an obvious reason. Actually, no, I'm not going to. Corey, I'm starting with you for an obvious reason.

Zain 1:13:12

Tell me, yes or no, will Canada be sending their athletes to the Tokyo Olympics? Yes, for sure. Carter, will Canada be sending their athletes to the Tokyo Olympics?

Carter 1:13:22

Yes, but Beijing's a more interesting question.

Carter 1:13:27

Well, the communist government and the stuff that's going on with the Uyghurs. Because they've

Corey 1:13:30

they've got a couple of our people. Oh,

Carter 1:13:33

Oh, yeah, and the two Michaels that are held.

Carter 1:13:37

Oh, there you go, and

Zain 1:13:37

and adding the PS to that. Wonderful.

Zain 1:13:40

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

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