Episode 934: Two sword lengths apart

Zain 0:02

This is a strategist episode 1110100110. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what's going on?

Carter 0:13

know, I'm just along for the ride, Zain. I don't get to make any decisions. You know that.

Zain 0:18

You know what, Carter? We have someone to congratulate. Someone who's owning the podium himself, one Corey Hogan, because Corey Hogan has finally, finally watched Ted Lasso. he's finally done it crowd

Corey 0:30

crowd goes wild he's finally done

Zain 0:32

amazing he's finally done it it is deserving of a medal uh cory of course the coach beard of the show uh and very much so yeah it's not even a dispute i am of course uh a a higgins meets nathan for obvious reasons so

Carter 0:48

that makes me ted lasso oh

Zain 0:50

oh absolutely no that makes

Zain 0:51

makes you roy kent uh okay i can wash

Corey 0:56

he's gonna like that for washed

Zain 0:57

washed up but actually surprisingly not bad at punditry i feel like that is steven carter have

Zain 1:04

have i ruined everything for everyone that's fine i

Carter 1:07

i don't think anybody

Zain 1:07

can watch the show

Corey 1:08

fine if they have more a uh jamie tarts dad kind of character

Zain 1:15

that's good i like that that

Carter 1:16

that took a nasty turn i'm going back with roy kent yeah

Zain 1:20

yeah roy kent washed up uh

Carter 1:23

listen up you fucks it's

Zain 1:26

it's pretty good you know what it's

Zain 1:28

it's actually not that bad

Zain 1:33

can you just do this for us do that

Zain 1:36

that the whole show carter i

Zain 1:41

use other words you don't have to say the same words i meant do the voice the whole show okay sure oh

Carter 1:47

oh the whole show yeah

Zain 1:48

yeah the whole show with

Carter 1:48

with an accent haven't we covered this before i can't do accents no that

Zain 1:52

that one's the only one you can do anything in like the caucasian range you're actually not half bad at uh it's when you deviate beyond that it gets bad and racist at the same time it's just the the intersection of those two things they

Carter 2:05

they all go there yeah

Zain 2:06

yeah unfortunately they all go there

Zain 2:08

uh cory do we want to talk about anything before we jump to the headlines no

Zain 2:14

okay let's move it on to our headlines no it's good he's a pensive individual he's thoughtful he thought

Corey 2:18

thought it through it's

Zain 2:19

it's thoughtful yeah our first headline comes to us from insider olympic cameraman stopped filming field hockey to focus on a cockroach in the game's final minutes baffling fans that is correct an olympics cameraman was filming preliminary round women's field hockey at tokyo when in an unusual manner steven carter he started focusing on a cockroach rather than the final minutes of the game between argentina and spain i have many questions including why did the production team just not switch cameras steven

Corey 2:55

steven carter great great question very

Zain 2:57

very practical have the olympics been that boring i know you're the one amongst us that has been watching oh

Carter 3:04

how dare you uh the olympics have been fantastic as expected as predicted on this podcast uh loving them really enjoying them buying into it 100 and uh you know what though

Carter 3:17

women's field hockey that

Carter 3:19

is not the most exciting sport the watching the cockroach for the final couple minutes may have just been an entertainment choice so i understand that field hockey not a great sport okay

Zain 3:30

okay well carter i gave you an out here to just celebrate the olympics but thanks for bringing it back and taking a shit on women's field hockey cockroaches

Carter 3:37

cockroaches are great like they're big too like it would have been something to look at good

Zain 3:41

good always has a take like i said not bad at punditry like roy kent uh cory hogan uh any any cockroach or women's field hockey related commentary uh that might exist in that dome of yours well

Corey 3:52

well stephen carter is loving the olympics because you know there's there's nobody there to compete with him he can be the only uh only spectator the cockroach was interesting because it

Corey 4:04

wasn't interesting please move on on

Zain 4:07

let's move on to our next headline this one comes to us from the hill uh megan mccain uh says that cnn's chris cuomo ignoring brother scandal is quote the worst kind of nepotism unquote

Zain 4:21

unquote yes that's right that reaction that that cory has given that facial reaction is correct megan mccain co-host of the view who by the way has left this week ripped cnn anchor chris cuomo on wednesday saying he should have talked about his brother's sexual harassment allegations. And it is, quote, the worst kind of nepotism that she has seen in modern media. Stephen Carter, this is also the reason why we had to let go of Chester, Chester Crichton, as he's known as, you know, son of former Prime Minister John Crichton. But what do you think of nepotism in media?

Carter 4:56

Well, I mean, would we ever have had you join us if it wasn't for nepotism? You know, if you weren't Corey's little brother, would that have ever happened? You know, Meghan McCain, who got her job because her father was a senator. You know what? I think she's absolutely right. This is the worst kind of nepotism because anything the Democrats do is actually bad. Anything that the the Republicans do isn't bad. And I think that that is at the core of being a Republican right now. Now, hypocrisy and the inability to see your own situation is, in fact, the core of republicanism.

Zain 5:34

Corey, you know, this show has had a policy against nepotism for a very long time. You'll remember the night that we did let go of Chester on air. We, of course, recorded the entire thing when he revealed to us his past and his current, namely his family. But any comments you may have on nepotism, and mainly just the moral high ground we have on this show against nepotism?

Corey 5:57

Nepotism comes from the Italian nepotismo, which comes from nipote, which means nephew. And it has to do with popes making nephews, who were in many cases actually illegitimate sons, bishops

Corey 6:11

cardinals and people who were in powerful places. And the idea here was that it was an abuse and that such an abuse rightly deserves our criticism. Now, the

Corey 6:22

the thing is, within nepotism, there are probably actually flavors of nepotism, flavors of awful here. And I do generally think powerful people protecting their friends and relations from the consequences of their terrible actions is indeed the worst form of nepotism. So I tend to agree with Meghan McCain. I actually don't think it's particularly funny not to be a downer, but I mean, the Cuomos, this is shady as hell. And CNN is skirting a major issue where this man, this governor of New York using a position of power and influence has harassed at least 11 women. So yeah, it is the worst form of nepotism.

Zain 7:02

Carter, tell me about this. Let's take a serious angle to it for a second, to Corey's point. Why is this not ending the Cuomo career as many expected that it would? You saw prominent Democrats talk about this earlier on in the spring, asking him to resign. There was a movement related to that. Now that this report has come out, this independent report, why is this not ending ending Andrew Cuomo's career as governor of New York?

Carter 7:33

Because it turns out that there's no lever to pull to force someone to do the right thing. If a person doesn't wish to step down, if a person doesn't want to resign, New York is not California. Let

Zain 7:45

you, is this just a Trump effect now on the Democratic side? Same thing? I

Carter 7:49

I think so. I mean, if you can survive, how long is our attention span? Right. Let's assume that Andrew Cuomo gets protested for a full solid 10 days. Do we have the attention span to sustain it longer than that? Do we know what what other sins will come forth by some other celebrity or some other politician that will distract us? um you know cuomo is probably not wrong if he if he chooses to uh ignore this he may never win another election uh but resigning on the spot certainly doesn't serve him if he was to hold on i mean if

Carter 8:24

if i was advising him i might even say to him hold on see where you are in in in a year and you may be in a much better position to get employment in a year than you are now because Because the collective memory of the population doesn't seem to extend past 10 days.

Zain 8:41

Corey, a few things on the Chris Cuomo side, his brother at CNN. So CNN, there was analysis done that ultimately concluded that CNN has been tamping down coverage of the investigation to Andrew Cuomo on his brother's show. Of course, as some people might remember, there was these viral clips during the pandemic where the brothers would interview each other and have this back and forth sort of chuckle fest. And we've also learned that Chris Cuomo has been part of his brother's like core strategy cabinet as related to these assault allegations. If you're CNN right now, they've given him like this this voluntary like he can step aside, do his thing. They haven't mandated anything from him. Would you cut him off at this point? How would you kind of think about handling this from a communications perspective when your credibility as an institution, I'm talking about CNN here, I would say there's a brighter spotlight on it than perhaps even during the Trump administration.

Corey 9:44

i think you've only got a few options if you're cnn but all of them involve well all of the good ones in my opinion involve addressing this head-on either at the start of his show saying you know almost a disclaimer like this there is a familial relationship here so for this reason cnn is not covering this issue at this time it will be covered on these things and you can go to cnn.com for coverage um although

Corey 10:06

although that's difficult because when do you start it when do Do you stop it like it's

Corey 10:10

just there all of the time, like the logistics of that boggle? The other one is you bench him for a while, and I think that would have been the appropriate one at this moment. It's, hey, man, one of the biggest stories in the United States right now involves a family relationship, involves your brother, and that's not your fault, and you will still get paid, but journalistic integrity is important to us, and you've just got to go sit over there for a while, and we've got to put another anchor on the spot here. You know, this is an interesting one. How do you get rid of him? I mean, Andrew Cuomo could be impeached. The pressure

Corey 10:43

pressure has been put on him from no less than Joe Biden, the President of the United States, to step down.

Corey 10:50

And the Democrats, I think, are a bit schizophrenic on this. Certainly, there have been bad lessons learned over Trump, which is you can just ignore these things go through and it's such a partisan time, there'll be a number of people who stick with you. There's

Corey 11:03

There's also the scars of Al Franken's resignation that I think many Democrats have, where they think perhaps it was too hasty and perhaps Al Franken shouldn't have stepped down.

Corey 11:14

Maybe he should have. I'm not actually going to try to relitigate that because I can't even frankly remember all of the facts of it. But this

Corey 11:20

this is not that situation. You know, this is a different situation. And I do think that there is something to be said for having the moral high ground at the end of all of this. So the best thing that Cuomo could do for the Democrats is resign and not sort of tear them apart. part. He's much more interested in what's the best for Andrew Cuomo. That's very clear. But it would be better for his brother. It would be better for his party. He should just go away. He should start a very long act of contrition to make up for what he has done.

Zain 11:52

Carter, Carter, talk to me about CNN strategy here, or react to what you heard from Corey regarding what their strategy should be from a communications perspective, as the spotlight is now on them to act. This is the same network that took advantage of the Cuomo banter, right? They encouraged these segments earlier on prior to the allegations and, of course, now the report coming out. What do you do if you're them right now?

Carter 12:17

I think that Corey's presented a very solid argument that he should be benched, put him on the sidelines. Chris Cuomo didn't do anything wrong.

Carter 12:25

He shouldn't be, you know, attacked or vilified. And I would suspect that maybe one of the reasons reasons that he hasn't talked about Andrew Cuomo is that um he and his producers decided that wasn't in the the best interest of the show but the best interest of the show the best interest of uh CNN involve and you know Chris Cuomo stepping aside for a little while to let this happen it's probably only going to be a couple weeks it's the middle of summer go have a vacation um and

Carter 12:53

and you know Corey has made a good point also which paint this is painful for me Corey but uh two good points in in a row i mean that's probably your whole quota for the show um but it's

Corey 13:05

it's all great points andrew

Carter 13:05

andrew cuomo is putting himself first instead of the party first and you know what i

Carter 13:11

i can understand that um the party has tools that it can use to to pull him out of the governor's chair i think it's only impeachment though um so you

Carter 13:24

you know maybe they do that maybe they should impeach him maybe that's That's what an impeachment should be, is actually removing someone from the Democratic side so that the next time you have to impeach a Donald J. Trump, maybe it actually happens.

Zain 13:37

Let's move on to our next headline. This one comes to us from Reuters. Lack of strong rival may hurt Canada's Trudeau in election. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces an unusual challenge as he prepares to call an early election without a strong opponent to rail against. The vote may fragment to leave him with another minority government. Corey, do you buy the power of apathy slash no strong opponent argument on Justin Trudeau's path that he will begin, I'm sure, very soon to form his majority government? Well,

Corey 14:10

Well, I don't know. How cursed is this particular argument, Stephen? I remember hearing this about Alison Redford in 2012. She was going to win all of these seats. I remember hearing that Jim Prentice was going to clear the tables in Alberta. This lack of strong rival thing, you know, in many ways, I've become convinced it's a bit of a canary in the coal mine, because it's really nobody's paying attention right now. Like, in some ways, that's actually what is going on. And that makes for a very volatile election. And I just don't buy it. Like, you can say that Aaron O'Toole is not a strong rival

Zain 14:42

rival to Justin Trudeau, personality-wise.

Corey 14:45

-wise. I'll accept the argument. I'm not 100% convinced. It will be interesting to see what the election comes on. But you cannot tell me the Conservative Party of Canada is not a strong rival to the Liberal Party of Canada, especially when you start going constituency by constituency in a lot of areas of this country. So, like,

Corey 15:01

like, this is, I

Corey 15:04

mean, this is Reuters, I'm sure it was a Canadian reporter or someone who's familiar with Canada, but, you know, they've been seduced by a notion that is just wrong. The polls are not that far ahead for Justin Trudeau. I think I saw one today, 12 points. But I've also seen in the past week one that was five points. And the reality here is, this

Corey 15:23

this could be a very close election. This could be an election Justin Trudeau loses. And this narrative of no strong rival is probably as damaging to the liberals as anything else. Because yes, I agree in the sense that he won't be able to fire people up against these big, bad, scary conservatives when you've got the most moderate version. But I don't think that the conclusion there is, well, he'll just be back where he was. I think that there's some huge risk here for the liberals. And I'm sure we're going to talk about this election or potential of an election. But, you

Corey 15:54

you know, I think the liberals missed their best window by about six weeks at this point. Yeah,

Zain 15:58

Yeah, we'll talk about that in a second. But I want, Carter, your reaction to this weak rival

Zain 16:03

rival argument that he doesn't have someone to use as a punching bag, that he may have to shadow box. I'm kind of, you know, but Corey and I, I'll maybe add myself to the mix, I think are quite happy with our real estate on O'Toole Island here, right? You know, the conservatives Q2 fundraising, $5 million compared to the liberals 3.2. you have a leader that people say they don't like but i think you know it's unknown are we wrong carter yes

Carter 16:26

yes you're wrong and this article is the stupidest fucking thing i've ever heard so

Carter 16:30

so let me just say let me start with the the the the article um no one ever loses because their opponents are too fucking weak like

Carter 16:39

like listen to yourself listen to yourself and smart start smashing your fucking head against the fucking wall because that's the dumbest thing i've ever hold on

Zain 16:48

now in a cockney accent please okay go ahead no

Carter 16:51

no one loses because their opposition is too weak you lose because you've misjudged the strength of your opposition right

Carter 16:58

right those are two very different things

Carter 17:00

things you're wait actually

Zain 17:01

actually spend some time on this carter explain the difference for listeners hold on steven

Carter 17:06

steven harper with you but

Zain 17:07

but like let's keep going steven

Carter 17:08

steven harper uh goes up up against stefan dion is

Carter 17:12

is you know he crushes him wins right is it because stephen harper you know stefan dion was so strong that stephen harper had someone that he could actually finally fight against and show how good he was or is it because stefan dion was so fucking weak that stephen harper just got to carry it all the way to the end what about michael ignatieff such a strong leader everybody oh man it's michael ignatieff such a strong leader we love this guy he came came back for us. And then, oh, he's so strong, we elected the other guy. If you are running an incumbent campaign and you are the stronger candidate, you win every time.

Carter 17:52

The problem is if you've misjudged how strong they are. Your argument isn't, well, these guys are so weak that they're going to actually perform stronger. Your argument, both you and Corey Zane, the argument you're actually making is people are misjudging the actual strength of

Carter 18:10

of Aaron O'Toole. They

Carter 18:11

They are misjudging Aaron O'Toole and they are writing him off and they are suggesting that he is weak when really what we're measuring is how little people are paying attention during the COVID summer.

Carter 18:22

Come back to us in September when people turn on after Labor Day and this may be a totally different race. That's what you two are arguing. But this guy is saying he's so weak that the guy i might actually lose dumbest fucking statement i've ever heard in my life

Zain 18:40

that was that was that was good a segment called saying the same things but one of us yelling it uh so no

Carter 18:49

because you guys were were accepting the premise of the article the premise of the article is fundamentally wrong you two were both too weak to see it i was a strong one and i won the fucking election

Zain 19:04

to jump in. Jump in. I

Zain 19:06

think I would just

Corey 19:09

Okay. This is a bit like, you know, there's a baseball scout parallel

Corey 19:13

parallel to make here, at least old school baseball scouts, pre-saber metrics here, which is you see, you know, two kids both batting .275,

Corey 19:20

and one of them has perfect form and one of them has absolutely atrocious form. Nothing's going for them. A good scout's going to go for the one with bad form because he can train that out, and who knows what they'll be swinging, right?

Corey 19:31

I feel a bit like that with Aaron O'Toole here. It's not exactly like the

Corey 19:37

the things that he's accused of not doing particularly well at parties and campaigns haven't managed to create in the moment when they need to create them in the moment. And obviously,

Corey 19:46

obviously, there'll be many more eyes on Aaron O'Toole and on Justin Trudeau, frankly, and Jagmeet Singh as we move into the actual election period, whenever that may be. Let's

Zain 19:57

Let's move on to our next headline. This one comes to us from CBC. Trudeau asks top public servant to look into mandatory vaccination for federal workers. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said today, as in Thursday, he has asked the clerk of the Privy Council to look into making vaccines mandatory for federal employees and is pleading with hesitant Canadians to get their shots. He's like, this is why I've asked the clerk of the Privy Council, who's responsible for the Federal Public Service, to look at mandatory vaccination for federal employees. The prime minister also said the government is looking into making vaccines mandatory in federally regulated industries such as airline, banking and rail sectors. Carter, I'm going to start with you on this one. Talk to me about the Trudeau strategy here. Do you think this is smart? Do you think this is a good idea? And why float it out like this rather than just do it? I feel like we've talked about that before, but why is this one kind of more of a I've asked rather than this is our plan and come out with it after you have it all fully banked and fully formed?

Carter 20:59

I don't know. I mean, I think that I would prefer to something that is done. You know, you can ask the clerk of the Privy Council without having doing so publicly. There is no there is no rule that says, you know what, you got to ask the clerk of the Privy Council to do something publicly. You can't just meet with him in an office and say, you know, or. As I'm sure dozens of

Zain 21:17

of things are done within government.

Carter 21:19

government. Yeah, every day, every day. The

Carter 21:23

question I have is, why would you do it this way? I don't understand it, Zane, because I don't think that it makes your case stronger if you actually go back and do it.

Carter 21:35

And, you know, I'm a big fan of this idea of having an incentive for people to get vaccinated, Whether that incentive is what we're now commonly referring to as a COVID passport or a vaccination passport or the the incentive is mandatory requirements. But I just don't think that we're going to get mandatory requirements in Canada.

Carter 21:59

I think that, you know, floating something that's probably not going to happen. You know, Justin

Carter 22:04

Justin Trudeau controls international airspace. You want to you want to fly internationally. internationally, you're going to have to have a vaccine, you know, a vaccine passport, he can put different rules in place for international border crossings.

Carter 22:21

You know, those are his those are his within his purview to do and it would be the same type of impact, but a much broader scale. And for my for my money, I'd like to see him lead this, you know, he is heading into an election and and apparently woefully weak, according to Reuters. So why not try and at least appear strong?

Zain 22:43

Don't think that's what they were saying. But anyways, Corey. That's

Carter 22:45

That's exactly what they said. Nano's

Zain 22:46

Nano's poll says 53% of Canadians support the premise of mandatory vaccination, in addition to another 21% who somewhat support it. Let's talk about the comms, though, comms and the strategy. First, maybe the strategy of what Trudeau is trying to do here. Do you think that's a political win? And secondly, why this, I shouldn't call it a trial balloon or pre-announcement before the actual package and policy is in place. Your comments on both of those things.

Corey 23:11

Nope. I want to talk about the policy and then I want to talk about the politics. So we're going to do it a bit different. We're going to just, you go sit in the corner for a minute. Wow.

Carter 23:19

figure this one out. That was an abrupt takeover. I'm upset for

Carter 23:22

for you, Zane. Some

Corey 23:24

people will call that rude. The policy is interesting. because

Corey 23:28

policy is interesting so the the comment was that trudeau asked to explore federally regulating the public sector essentially the federal public service which is about what 250 270 000 people somewhere around there right and that's not insignificant that's a huge block of people but obviously it's not it's not changing the world right um and then there was also a suggestion that maybe they would look at federally regulated private sector industries and people

Corey 23:55

people familiar with the the conversations about a federal minimum wage and how it only applies to those industries will be familiar that's not a ton of industries but it is a number of significant industries air transport banks uh the crown corpse obviously um radio

Corey 24:11

radio and television broadcasting a bunch of others uh there's there's a list i'm sure somebody could find somewhere but But the one that is very interesting to me, the one that is very interesting to me, federally regulated industry and workplace would be First Nation band councils. So are we going to bring in something where on First Nations in those spaces, that's also going to be a requirement? And I think the politics of that are actually pretty

Corey 24:34

pretty dicey, right? And so are you going to carve out that from federally regulated workplaces? And if you start there, where else do you go? And so I think the policy is not actually as clean or as smooth as people are almost pretending it would be. And there are elements in it that tie to longstanding conversations and challenges in Canada and in relations between nations here, between First Nations and the government of Canada, because there

Corey 25:01

there could become kind of a view of paternalism here, and that could exacerbate a number of conversations there. So policy, very interesting. The politics, though, and you talked about it, you scooped me on it.

Corey 25:12

The majority of Canadians want vaccine to

Corey 25:15

to be mandatory. The majority of Canadians, like not a small majority either. You talked about 53%. Yeah, unreservedly, let's do it. That's a majority, especially when you're talking about a number of different political parties. That's interesting. But then you bolt on another 20 some percent. The number that is opposed is pretty minor. And in many ways, I'm surprised that parties federally

Corey 25:35

federally and provincially, although Quebec moved today in a big way on this, I'm surprised there hasn't been more action on mandatory vaccines, because it is incredibly popular in this country. coast to coast, across all sorts of various activities and all sorts of various industries. And so far, parties

Corey 25:54

parties are pretty squeamish about it, despite that immense popularity, despite the fact that we're in election season.

Zain 25:59

Well, let's talk about this for a few minutes then, Carter. If you're advising one of the major political parties,

Zain 26:05

I don't know if I have to give a label to them, let's just do this party agnostic. Would you be looking at these poll numbers? Would you be looking at this appetite that you see and and start beating that drum you

Carter 26:18

the uh it's steven deluca from the i get that right the ontario liberal leader yeah

Carter 26:24

um he came out with it yesterday and yep was just given

Carter 26:30

given this unbelievable hero's welcome and andrea horvath and he squeezed

Carter 26:34

the opposite and just got shit kicked um

Carter 26:37

um so it's the point she had to

Carter 26:41

within Within 24 hours. Also

Carter 26:43

Also not a great plan. Have you not listened to the Double Down episodes, the famous Double Down episodes?

Carter 26:50

I think that if I was advising someone, I would advise it because it's a simple win. It's a big, you know, it's a big push and it's a simple win. I'm not sure I'd be advising a conservative party to do so, but anybody on the left or liberal or center, it's probably a pretty solid winner.

Zain 27:10

Corey, finish us off here. What is your thinking on, you mentioned you don't know why political parties are not doing it. What's your thinking on the advice you'd give to some political parties should they want to pursue it?

Corey 27:21

Well, it's in a category of policies that are so insanely popular, but for whatever reason, people think of as radioactive. And some of it is just sort of

Corey 27:30

folk wisdom, you know, like, oh, if you do that, you're going to get hurt. And some of it is actually well-intended concerned about the policy ramifications and what it could mean to say social fabric and while not but raising

Corey 27:40

raising taxes on the wealthy insanely popular insanely popular right wealth taxes in general insanely popular uh daylight

Corey 27:49

daylight saving getting rid of it insanely popular and now we've got vaccines and mandatory vaccination insanely popular policies but parties seem to look at these three things and say well i could get really hurt if i do them i don't get it is

Zain 28:03

is it really don't

Corey 28:03

get is it like a too good to

Zain 28:04

to be true thing where like there's no no 70 percent number anymore like how could this happen like right here you add the i'm taking this nanos poll right you add the 53 plus the 21 in the support bucket or somewhat support bucket that's close to three quarters of the population give or take three out of four canadians is it part of it that that they just got this like there's no way there's something in this country that three quarters people believe in sort of mantra when they go into political strategy and political sort of decision making i

Carter 28:32

think it's about fleeting the fleeting nature of stuff right

Carter 28:34

right like So you may be able to bring this in right now when it's top of mind, but then when it comes time for you to be vaccinated or your family to be vaccinated, maybe in three months, it's not as popular. So it's the fleeting nature of it that you could get stuck with something that, you know, what is it, Corey, you call it, to be wary of pole? Novel concepts. you know so in the moment you have an immediate reaction to it one

Carter 29:03

one direction but as things develop you may shift to your actual position later down later down the road so

Corey 29:10

so i think there is a lot of fear of that but i gotta say on that list of three i just gave you and the list is longer in the states

Corey 29:16

the list in the united states includes things like universal health care gun control yeah things

Corey 29:20

things of this nature but i

Corey 29:22

i would say only daylight saving is is a novel concept like people haven't thought about oh what does that mean for tv schedules oh what that would that mean for kind of coordination logistics when is the sun going to get up that's true of daylight saving that's not true of taxes on the wealthy that is not true of vaccination mandates people have been thinking about almost nothing but vaccinations for the past six months and so i think that that number is probably pretty damn durable and and that to me is is part of the surprise of it all here are they really worried that canadians are going to flip on this if If anything, it feels like this train is leaving the station the other way.

Corey 29:56

Nations are becoming emboldened, and they're saying, this is how we're going to get it done.

Carter 30:00

I think you're probably right. I think that is what's likely to happen, but I can understand their reticence.

Zain 30:05

We're going to leave that there. We'll move it on to our first segment. That's right, Stephen, our first segment.

Zain 30:11

See you Sunday, kicking and screaming. Guys, the election speculation is on. Some of the speculation says we could be going as soon as Sunday. Other speculation says not Sunday. uh stephen carter back in one of our episodes said like

Corey 30:25

like a n not n problem hey that's really good that's

Zain 30:28

that's how that's no absolutely yeah it's good thank you thank you cory thanks for not yeah

Zain 30:33

disturbing the momentum i had there i want to talk about strategy heading into this election momentum

Corey 30:40

momentum carter you got to cut them off next yeah

Zain 30:42

yeah i will i'm

Zain 30:43

i'm running downhill here this is going to be really you know what actually

Corey 30:45

actually i wouldn't mind cutting you off one more yeah sure go ahead what do you want to cut me off for um can we talk a little bit more about that cockroach at the olympics i've been thinking about it for the last half hour okay

Zain 30:54

okay go ahead do you feel like just a single camera on a cockroach could be more it doesn't matter

Zain 31:06

no no see here's the thing here's what you didn't factor in for uh my passion i'm very passionate about which sport in the olympics sucks more than single camera on cockroach tweet me your responses it was

Zain 31:21

oh fuck no skateboarding

Carter 31:26

tragic i was oh it was the worst sport to watch on tv maybe if it was cut down to the top three minutes cory

Zain 31:33

cory rank all sports so

Corey 31:35

so the hoarding around the dairy queen near my house has changed recently changed again yeah

Corey 31:40

yeah i think there's a good opportunity that construction is going to begin soon by

Zain 31:44

by the way if anyone is a residential potential contractor i am looking to change my door handles into spoons so if you know anyone that's able to do that uh please please let us know are we good are we gonna get it out of our system i like

Carter 31:55

like that you're not that handy you

Carter 31:57

you couldn't do that yourself you know that makes me happy you

Zain 32:00

you know one thing i can do is i could

Carter 32:02

could do it one

Zain 32:03

one thing i'm actually excellent at is removing the bread from the refrigerator see i remove it straight from the refrigerator

Zain 32:10

just like they did in the movie dave did we get it all out there i

Carter 32:13

i think it's all done now No, let's ask a question. Yeah. He

Zain 32:20

Okay, we might be up for an election starting as soon as Sunday. Guys, I want to talk to you about strategy of not just Trudeau, but let's start with the strategy of Jagmeet Singh and Aaron O'Toole. And let's start with Aaron O'Toole. Today, he puts out this video on Twitter that says, now's not the time for the election. We can't do this. This isn't the time to come together. We're in a fourth wave. Kind of funny, given the fact that, you know, his provincial partner in crime, Jason Kenney, has effectively declared victory on COVID in some way, shape or form. But, you know, to what it is, Aaron O'Toole says we shouldn't be going to the polls. We don't need an election now. Jagmeet Singh has been saying that for a long time. I think his strategy crescendoed earlier last week when he said that the governor general should not agree to Justin Trudeau's calls for an election. Carter, I'm going to start with you on this. What do you think of both of these gents, leaders of the Conservative and NDP respectively, and their strategies, almost kicking and screaming, heading towards an election that almost seems inevitable in the next couple of weeks here? Do you like this if you are in either of their camps right now? And is this good strategy for either of their camps right now? Let's start there. This

Carter 33:28

This is a terrible strategy. They look weak, as evidenced by the Reuters article today that you brought up in the headline section. That

Zain 33:35

That excellent Reuters article, yeah. Yeah, I

Carter 33:36

I mean, for me, I'd be saying, bring it on. Bring it on. We are ready. We can fight this. I got more money than you. I'm ready to go. Bastard, let's go. Bring it on. I will fight you in the schoolyard. I will fight you at the bike racks. I will fight you at the leisure center. I will fight you at the roller rink. I am ready to go.

Carter 33:58

That's what I would go. Very

Zain 34:00

Very Roy Kent of you. Carter, hold on one second before you jump in, Corey. Why, though? Is it because it's an inevitability and you need to lean into it rather than try to fight it? Or is that why? What's your why in terms of the fight mentality versus the let's try to maybe give Canadians the perspective that we shouldn't be doing what we're going to be eventually doing?

Carter 34:18

Well, it's going to happen. We

Carter 34:19

We all know that it's happening in the next 10 days, right? This is going to happen. There is going to be an election. Why make yourself look impotent, right?

Carter 34:27

right? This is the equivalent of Corey's love life. Why make yourself look like you can't actually do something, right? Dig in. Show that you want this. You're heading towards this fight. Show that you want it. And you know what? Canadians don't give a shit if there's an election. This is not a winning issue for you. In September, they're all going to be like, oh, yeah, I was happy to go to the polls. So just start strong, own the day, and make it look like you're the one who actually wanted this to happen, because you

Carter 34:57

you may as well. It's going to happen. Don't look weak. Look strong. This is going to be the theory for the whole podcast today. Don't look weak. Look strong. And now Corey's going to come in, and he's going to be a pussy, and he's going to say the exact opposite.

Corey 35:13

lot to unpack there. I really did appreciate the bike racks, leisure center, roller rink thing, though. I mean, that was a very Calgary response. Calgary

Carter 35:21

Northeast. Did you say

Zain 35:23

Calgary Northeast greased the musical. Yeah, go ahead, Corey.

Corey 35:29

I mean, Carter is just wrong.

Corey 35:31

People are looking at this and people are giving – But

Corey 35:34

so people are giving this – of course,

Carter 35:36

yes. I mean, the

Corey 35:37

the idea that you want to look strong, yeah, look at me, we're going for an election, that's dumb. That's the kind of conversation that really appeals to the political class, that appeals to the pundit class. It's a meta-conversation. It's about is this the right time for an election or not even is this the right time for an election. Is this a time to look weak or strong when you take a stance like this? But the reality is for both Singh and O'Toole, and in particular together, they

Corey 36:00

they are making a low cost investment that could pay big dividends. Because yeah, you can have a bit of commentary from the Stephen Carters of the world saying, oh, it looks weak. But that commentary is lost. People aren't paying attention. I mean, this is one of these key hypotheses that we have right now is that until this election is called, Canadians aren't actually giving too many dams. And the people who do pay attention at this moment have already made up their minds. But if we do find ourselves in a very bad fourth wave in

Corey 36:26

in six weeks and seeds have been planted that nobody wanted this election except for Justin Trudeau, that's the big dividends, right? That's the, you

Corey 36:35

you have lost the plot, sir. Justin Trudeau, you have brought us to an election that none of us wanted. We told you it was a dangerous time. It is now a dangerous time. We've got this election. Time to throw this guy out. and you know nothing succeeds like success and nothing loses like losing if

Corey 36:51

if Justin Trudeau is in on the skids a bit if he's maybe had a couple of gaffes on the campaign trail if the liberals have taken a few dents if Aaron O'Toole has been moving up in the polls because right now he seems artificially low because nobody knows who he is and nobody's paying attention that's the kind of thing that could be a nail in a coffin right it's the kind of thing nobody's going to care about if everything's going smoothly for Justin Trudeau writ large but if if it just gets kind of wrapped into a big narrative of why did Trudeau do this, and this isn't going that well for him, and by the way, we're in a fourth wave, and what an asshole, then it could be a real problem for him. So yeah, if I'm O'Toole, if I'm Singh, I think absolutely make this investment, because the only people paying attention are not in play. When we talked the other day about your election is about the people who are in play, this is what I mean. It would be a mistake to play for the people who are at the gladiator fight three hours before it starts.

Zain 37:40

Corey, so to your point, I like that last Last analogy, by the way, to your point, this is this is going on the record, so to speak, right, for the media class, for whatever, so that there's a callback, there's a statement, there's a narrative that you were on the right side of history should history go in the wrong way in six weeks, five weeks. Is that correct?

Corey 37:59

correct? Most certainly. And there will be a few people who remember, too. Yeah, sure. Even if they're not paying a ton of attention, they'll say, yeah, like, why are we having this election? I remember them saying that we shouldn't have it. You're

Carter 38:10

You're up against the conservative parties in Ontario, you're up against the conservative parties in Alberta and Saskatchewan, all basically declaring that this thing's over, even though, you know, a fourth wave of some status is occurring, especially

Carter 38:25

especially here in Alberta.

Corey 38:26

The seat's in play. The seat's in play. Maybe there's five in Alberta that are in play. Right? The election is not going to hinge on this province. So who cares if you're offside with Jason Kidd? you

Carter 38:36

you know what and if you're buying the polling everything's in play it's

Carter 38:39

it's a gong show who knew

Zain 38:42

carter to your point give me give me a real retort though like what's the retort there cory's thing is this is like 2011 bitcoin you throw a flyer on it and if it works it works if it doesn't it's like a thousand bucks gone right so what's your what's your retort to that it's a low cost investment this is what i find interesting about cory's statement is that this This is not a high-threshold investment. It's a low-cost investment. Your strategy, Ben, this actually makes you weak off the starting gates, and you feel like there's a higher price to be paid there.

Carter 39:12

Make yourself look like a wuss and a wimp heading

Carter 39:15

heading into an election, being forced to do something you don't want to do by the much stronger prime minister who gets to dictate everything to you. And in the vague hopes that the fourth wave is in full flight five or six weeks from now. it's weak it's soft it's gross and it's cory's yeah

Corey 39:33

yeah it's weak it's weak the prime minister has more power than the leader of the opposition let's

Corey 39:38

let's just put no shit on a banner and just

Carter 39:40

just fly it around

Carter 39:41

call for the election bring it on i'm ready i've got more money than you i've got more people than you i've got more candidates than you i have been ready for this since the day i was elected leader my friend the

Carter 39:52

the day i was elected leader jesus

Zain 39:54

jesus christ spicy I see Carter has entered the group chat, so to speak.

Zain 40:00

Corey, tell me this. You're O'Toole or Singh. You're saying, no, no, no, this shouldn't happen. This shouldn't happen. It happens, OK? It happens on Sunday. Sunday morning, the prime minister does this. Let's just use Sunday as a day, right? It's one that's been swirling around in the political bubbles. It happens. What is your message on day one? We shouldn't be here? Or are you shifting immediately to key message, define the battle box question? How are you making your pivot from getting on the record with your low-cost investment to actually running your race so that maybe to Carter's point, you don't look weak on day one?

Corey 40:33

Well, I think you say

Corey 40:35

say we shouldn't be here, but here we are, and we are prepared for this, and we'll fight for the future of Canada. We'll secure Canada's future, whatever your slogans are, right? I

Corey 40:45

think it could be the first words out of your mouth, but it shouldn't be the second. I definitely don't think you want to be talking about the fact that we're in an election campaign during COVID over the next week or two weeks, unless something happens that warrants that conversation at that time, where all of a sudden, for example,

Corey 41:01

you know, the chief electoral officer says, I don't think I could run this campaign safely. A very extreme example. But the point is, in

Corey 41:08

in politics, always, you have to be somewhat opportunistic to the environment. And yeah,

Corey 41:12

go back to that well, if it makes sense. But definitely, definitely not something that you want to spend all the time in the world on. The other thing you have to keep in mind, if you're O'Toole or Singh at that point, is this is a common position of O'Toole and Singh.

Corey 41:26

And there are going to be times where you need to actually kind of carve out your own ballot question, not share one with the NDP, if you happen to be the Conservative Party.

Zain 41:35

Carter, I suspect you don't think should we be here as a strong ballot box question that those two gentlemen that we've been talking about want. What is what is their day one strategy need to look like? And let's maybe like expand the scope to what good launches look like for a campaign. Maybe Corey, start with you first, and then you putting your hand up. So then we'll go to Carter. Yeah.

Corey 41:57

find the thing that's common to an early election, an opportunistic election, and your ballot box question. And I think you just say this is just a pattern of liberal opportunism and cynicism and unethical behavior, and it's deeply unethical to go to the polls. Give me an example. I don't know

Zain 42:10

know if I understand. extend well

Corey 42:12

it's unethical to send canadians to the polls at a time when there's increases in delta variant just as it's unethical that the prime minister would hire his friends at the liberal right that's interesting you know the uh the liberal research bureau just as it's unethical he would take a gift from the agra con just as it's unethical that his finance minister would be cozying up to the we charity just at the same time that the we charity is asking for a fair bit of money like i mean there's no shortage so so

Zain 42:36

so calling the elections a proof point to an existing narrative that's carter

Zain 42:40

carter do you agree you're shaking your head

Corey 42:41

head bridge yourself back to your ballot box yeah right i guess would be my point carter well

Carter 42:46

well i mean starting with weakness and ending even weaker uh that is the cory hogan way i mean

Carter 42:52

if that's the election wait wait why is

Zain 42:54

is that weak why is that weak explain why

Carter 42:55

why is that because he's been losing on that argument for the last eight months he's losing on that argument for as long as we've been recording the tool you

Carter 43:03

you know Oh, the liberals are unethical. Oh, the liberals are doing these things with We Charity. Oh, they hired their friends. Oh, look, the ethics commissioner had to rule again. Oh, they ruled against me again. Oh, I'm just the weakest fucking leader in the whole wide world. Fucking be strong, Hogan. Be strong. Come in and say, you know what? I'm glad he called the election today because it is time for us to move from this pandemic to the recovery. The economic recovery needs to be managed by conservatives. it cannot be managed by these liberals these liberals that that are that are taking advantage of the situation the economic recovery is your ballot box question and if it's not the economic recovery i don't even know who you are this is where we need to go why are we not seeing the bigger picture okay

Carter 43:51

i'm totally recanting this whole episode yeah i know that's all that was Is this a thing?

Corey 43:55

thing? Has this been a bit the whole time?

Carter 43:57

time? The whole time. That was a mistake. I'm

Zain 43:59

I'm doing such a good job. That was a mistake. That was a mistake to give him that. You shouldn't encourage

Zain 44:04

him. Yeah, no, really, I shouldn't. But, you know, at the heart of my question, though, I still don't understand why it's weak, Carter. No, of course you wouldn't.

Zain 44:17

Now it's the two of you. You guys are like O'Toole and Singh together. other. I still don't understand why it's weak, especially when O'Toole actually hasn't had a chance to stress test that question with the public. Like, I mean, that's what this is for. He's been

Carter 44:30

been running the wrong question since the day he was elected leader. And where it has taken him is to be the third most popular potential prime minister in Alberta, where he has like all but one seat.

Zain 44:44

Corey, I'll let you respond to that. And then I want to actually talk about ballot box questions and when you start implementing them, especially in the first week or so in a campaign, but maybe respond to Carter around his weakness and economic recovery argument.

Corey 45:00

You know, Carter's not entirely wrong that the economic recovery is probably a more fruitful area for the conservatives than the ethics considerations. But one of the things that the conservatives clearly have determined, and whether they're right or not, I guess in election campaign will show is that Justin Trudeau is vulnerable on the ethics question. I think going back to January in particular, I think of the statements that Aaron O'Toole put out. Obviously, this was stuff he had in his leadership campaign and after that too, but they are so focused on the ethics question. I'm sure they have some polling somewhere somehow that says people are kind of a little done with Justin Trudeau and his ethical failings. Now, does that mean that this is what he wants to talk about the entire time? No, but they've obviously got a sense that they've got an audience for this message and so if you're going to bridge into an election and that election is called over your protests why would you not wrap it into this particular key message of yours now you do have your secure the future plan and a lot of that is about the economy and i suspect that is what they're going to be talking about over the next bit here presuming an election gets called in the next couple of weeks that's

Corey 46:07

that's fine but the the there There is in every election campaign a combination of thrust and parry, right? And you want to be building up your own reason to be elected, but you also want to be sticking it to the other guy. And part of them saying all of these ethical things is they want to stick it to Justin Trudeau and they want to make people lose the shine and stop feeling he's this golden boy and start saying, OK, well, if I don't love that guy, what do we need next? I mean, it's all part of breaking down this kind of crusader defender vision that Justin Trudeau is trying to build. So

Zain 46:41

So this is my fundamental question, guys, right? Day one, if you're seeing an O'Toole, is it tear down mode or is it build up mode? Are you tearing him down or are you building yourself up? And what does that kind of mean to your framing of the ballot box question? Carter, you seem frustrated by my question. I could be misreading your facial expression, but tell me what's on your mind.

Carter 46:59

I'm frustrated by both of you. I've been frustrated the whole episode. Is that a legitimate question, though? Yeah, tear him down. Of course, he's in front of you. Tear him down. So then why

Zain 47:09

why is Corey's ethics thing not working? I don't understand. I'm not even

Carter 47:12

even able to reconcile this. You don't tear him down on something that hasn't worked for a year and a half. You

Carter 47:16

You don't tear him down on a thing that you've been trying and throwing against the wall and hoping that it sticks. What you do is you tear him down and you say, Justin Trudeau only has one recipe for our recovery, and that's to spend more of your money. He's spending it, and he's spending it, and he's spending it, and he's calling that a of recovery, but it's time to move past that and try to move to businesses to recover. It's time for your enterprise to recover. It's time for your small business to recover. It's time to get people back to work. That's how recovery starts, not by mailing more checks to employers, not by mailing more checks to corporations, not by writing down rents, not by doing all the things that Justin Trudeau has done to get us through this pandemic. That's the only trick he has. He can't keep doing doing that in the future we're seeing him try and buy your votes right now with child care he's spending more of your money on something you don't need what we need is a good business

Carter 48:11

business recovery not a good government recovery not

Carter 48:16

not a bad government recovery i phrased that incorrectly but you know what i'm saying tear

Zain 48:19

tear down build up give me the ratio in your mind uh the political calculus for the launch for both these gents sing and o'toole i

Corey 48:27

just think this is a like kind of like a false false dichotomy here okay so easy to say he's spending he's spending he's spending on his friends no less and he's calling it a recovery but it's an iou and it's going to come due just when we can least afford it and he's not going to care because the liberals will have lined their pockets again like you can have both of those messages together pretty effortlessly and so i you know i i think uh our friend the roy kent over here uh perhaps is just looking for a fight where there isn't your

Carter 48:53

your commitment to that messaging is is so can i can i just ted lasso so committing to not playing Jamie Tartt, you know, like it's a commitment that's just not going to pay off in the long run. Let

Zain 49:04

Let me throw you guys a curveball. One of the things that O'Toole did that was noteworthy in an overall, you know, not very noteworthy leadership race with Peter McKay was he outflanked Peter McKay on the environmental question, right? People saw O'Toole as being the more conservative choice, McKay being the more classic PC choice. And he He was the first to aggressively take on environment. We're seeing that issue salience right now in this election in terms of which issues being prioritized in the minds of Canadians is constantly shifting. It's volatile, right? Pandemic was first. It's now ninth or fifth, depending on which pollster you read and consume. Is there something to be said of O'Toole trying to fight on day one or week one on traditional Trudeau turf, maybe with something like environment or something like that? Is that bad strategy? And tell me why. I'm just going to throw it out there. I want to get your reactions to that, and then we'll turn to the prime minister himself, what a good launch for him looks like. Corey, jump in.

Corey 49:59

You don't play in their box, right? Like, that's an issue that's not going to help the conservatives. I think their strategy was the right one, which was to release their environmental strategy, their

Corey 50:08

their environmental plan way back, be

Corey 50:10

be able to say we got one, and move on with their damn lives, so that it's not something that the liberals can just hammer them with over and over and over again over the next 35 days, 40 days, whatever the length of the election ends up being. And

Corey 50:23

And yeah, I mean, sure, the liberals will try. But for a lot of that, again, moderate voter you're looking for, it becomes very easy to say, actually, we've got a plan to it also has a price on carbon, but it gives you the money back. Let's talk about instead the recovery and how this is going to work. So yeah, maybe give a day to your environmental plan, maybe a morning, maybe not even a day. Right. But, but don't try to, you're not going to win the election. If that's your issue. If that's how you're thinking about things going to the ballot box, you're not voting for Aaron O'Toole. Carter,

Zain 50:51

Carter, any merit from the type of race you see? I'll ask the same question to try to encroach on their turf, play a little bit of, as you've called in the past, jiu-jitsu, political jiu-jitsu. Any merit you see in that strategy for O'Toole?

Carter 51:07

i don't know i i think that there's

Carter 51:09

there's an there's a brand alignment with o'toole and the opportunity of revitalizing the economy uh cory's already alluded to the idea that this election may be six weeks too late let's assume that cory's not wrong right

Carter 51:21

right what's the reason that we're afraid uh i mean this is a big assumption first of all that cory's not wrong it's it's been hard to justify after this entire episode but let's assume that he's not wrong it

Carter 51:32

it it basically is the the The idea, the framework is that we're moving past the COVID recovery and we're now moving into the economic recovery. And that's what the that's what the delay has been.

Carter 51:44

This is to me, this

Carter 51:46

this should be O'Toole's election for the entire messaging. This should be all O'Toole all the time. And people should be jumping into his messaging box on almost every frame. And that's why Corey's saying maybe this election six weeks too late, because the opportunity of O'Toole's message box is much stronger than that of, you know, we got you through this, which is Justin Trudeau's message box. Corey,

Zain 52:11

Corey, let's talk about Trudeau here, right? And let's go to the point Carter just made, which you brought up earlier on the podcast, which is the timing. Talk to me about the risk profile as you see it right now. His best window gone is what you've said, or perhaps potentially gone. Talk us through about that a little bit more, and then let's talk about where we're at thereafter. after yeah

Corey 52:30

yeah there's obviously a risk of a fourth wave right

Corey 52:34

right i don't know that that helps them especially with the conversation that we already had but the risk i was talking about the reason why i think it might be six weeks too late is that everyone's vaccinated or at least the people who are going to get vaccinated are now vaccinated and there's only so many things that we're going to be grateful to the federal government about over covet over the next bit in fact i think we're more likely to be frustrated with the federal government because the thing we got we

Corey 52:58

we got the needle if we really wanted the needle, right?

Corey 53:00

right? Now we get the bill.

Corey 53:02

Now we get the conversation about how we're going to pay for this very significant intervention into the economy that we just had here. And as you mentioned, COVID has really dropped down the list of issues. We're sitting here in Alberta, and COVID is still pretty all-consuming as a conversation because our province decided end

Corey 53:21

end of testing, end of quarantine requirements, and that's really got a lot of of people talking about a lot of things.

Corey 53:28

It's not as though the Delta variant isn't a conversation in other jurisdictions. Some have taken actions as recently as today. But it

Corey 53:36

it is of less prevalence in people's minds right now. And as that happens, and as politics defaults to usual, so to speak, and people's normal issues bubble up to where they normally register, that's not necessarily going to help the liberals. Because when you look at some of those macro conditions, conditions, they

Corey 53:54

they don't really favor either A, a liberal government, or B, an incumbent government. We've got economic malaise. We've got concern about inflation and debt growing amongst Canadians. And for

Corey 54:07

for those reasons, I think it's very risky that Justin Trudeau is jumping into this. I also continue to believe that his current standing in the polls, as we've talked about already, is a little ephemeral.

Corey 54:18

We'll see. Like, if I had to put money down right now, and it was just even money, I would still take the Liberals to win this election. I don't want to be misunderstood here. But I think that the Conservatives, there's

Corey 54:30

there's a lot to believe that this has not been a normal six months, a normal 12 months. You

Corey 54:36

can't really say that Aaron O'Toole got to establish himself. He didn't get to be in the House of Commons, you know, thrusting a couple of sword lengths apart from the prime minister on these things. And it's not as though Canadians were in a mood to hear anything except conversation about COVID for most of that time. So, you

Corey 54:54

you know, I think that the liberals may have missed the best time. It could still work out for them. But the

Corey 55:00

the gratitude is not going to be there the way it would have been if they called an election six weeks ago. The goodwill is not going to be there. And now they also have this uncertainty of a potential fourth wave if this thing pushes into the fall too far. Stephen,

Zain 55:11

Stephen, you know, you are a very high-priced consultant. You're extremely expensive. Yeah.

Zain 55:17

So the liberals ask you, they say, Stephen, we can't hire you. We can't afford to. We don't want to, but we can't afford to. So, you know, here's this napkin. And on this napkin, write down three bullet points for us for our first week. Give us our launch in our first week. What are three things we should consider? What are the three bullet points, or give me a couple bullet points at least, that you'd write down on that napkin for a successful launch for the prime minister on week one? It can be everything from what he needs to talk about to his cadence to where he goes, anything in that mix. But give me the Stephen Carter framework for what a successful day one and let's extend it to week one looks like for Justin Trudeau, who controls the throttle on

Zain 56:04

on this election. Give me a few bullet points in your mind.

Carter 56:07

think bullet point number one is I want an error free week. I'd like, you know, like the first week of a campaign is actually pretty hard to stand up, getting everybody where they need to go and doing the media announcements. announcements um the second is i would want to to uh continue the the the promise tour that has been undertaken i mean we saw six billion dollars going to quebec today for uh child care um

Carter 56:35

you know i would continue the promise tour uh you know what am i going to get if i elect uh the liberal government that might be my second point and the third point is i probably would want to to emphasize that which you got. The COVID response has been great. The vaccination response has been great. We have to keep pushing. And I would suggest that people be reminded that we are here because Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government brought us here.

Zain 57:08

Carter, I ask you a retort question if I'm part of Team Trudeau here. I say, give me the mix. I I know you may not want to give me a specific number, but quantify this. What percentage of the first week is a victory lap on the last leg of COVID? And what percentage of it is new promises that you're issuing out to Canadians? How do you straddle those two things if you are Justin Trudeau in week one?

Carter 57:33

40% victory lap, 60% new promises. People care less about what you gave to me yesterday, and they ask for more tomorrow. world.

Zain 57:42

Corey, $100 billion of promised spending is part of that big child care plan. So, you know, a lot already committed. Same question for you. The three bullet points that you're handing off to Team Trudeau in week one, day one extending to week one, maybe I'll use the same frame that I did for Carter. What are some of the structural and strategic things they need to think about as they control when they go and how they go in that first week?

Corey 58:06

Well, as an even more expensive comprehensive consultant they can only afford two bullet points from me and the first one has to be the rationale for the election and this is where you really get to drive the stakes up and talk about this is an election like no other we

Corey 58:21

we have just gone through this society changing event for good or bad you can say it's a great thing it happened you can say it's a bad thing or you know it might be good that there's change it might be bad that there's change but the reality is there there is no going back here. And the stakes are high. You have a choice between child care or fend for yourself. You have a choice between dealing with the environmental debt or getting

Corey 58:46

continued wildfires, continued extreme weather events. You can see the coast slowly disappear over the rest of your lifetime here. And for these reasons, it's really important that Canadians, you know, that we got a new mandate from Canadians on what's going to happen here. The other part is, I think, in some ways, to make it almost as though Aaron O'Toole is the incumbent, right? Like, you've got to really drive them down. These guys have been so wrong. Run a clip of them talking about how we wouldn't get vaccinated until 2024 or whatnot, right? Right. These guys have have predicted, you know, doom and gloom when we've managed to pull things through. And that's all credit to you Canadians here. And and they continually miss the boat. Just just go through a litany of things that the conservatives have been really late on and say, as we are trying to rethink everything post-COVID. And you've got to be careful. You don't make it sound too extreme or too engineering. neary but as we're doing all of this do you really want the people who took

Corey 59:44

took until 2020 to 2021 to have an environmental plan for their political party 2021 like

Corey 59:52

like this is not a new fucking issue right do you really want to have the political party that couldn't even fathom how we were going to get people vaccinated and just complained about our inability to do it three

Corey 1:00:04

three months later almost every canadian who wanted a vaccine able was able to get that vaccine and and you have an an opportunity to just try to make him into the villain that you need him to be which keeps the radar off of you right like they're not seeing you they're looking at all of these clouds over here that's

Corey 1:00:19

important because you're the governing party and naturally

Corey 1:00:23

naturally the attacks are going to come to you give

Zain 1:00:25

give me the victory lap uh and and new stuff uh mix what is it in your mind uh

Corey 1:00:34

uh there's There's almost no new stuff. I mean, well, maybe I'm wrong. We'll have to see what this campaign brings, but I suspect it will be smaller items here. This is part of why we thought, boy,

Corey 1:00:44

boy, maybe they should have gone when the budget came because, you know, that was their big stuff. So I think in many ways, it's

Corey 1:00:51

it's saying we've shown you what we want to do. They've shown you what they want to do. This

Zain 1:00:58

Is that a risk, Carter, that they may not have new goodies? I know that sounds crazy to say after introducing $100 billion of new goodies, but they're not new. And the fact that they're, you know, maybe for the folks that haven't clued in, they could be new, but he's on his childcare sort of tour across the country trying to sign and ink as many deals as he can. And is there a risk that you may not, if it leans more into Corey's frame of a campaign, that we've shown you what we want to do, there may not be necessarily big new ticket things, that they run the risk of not having, well,

Zain 1:01:30

well, new stuff that could effectively magnetize new voters?

Carter 1:01:34

Yeah, I mean, I think if people remember all the way back to the

Carter 1:01:39

the beginning of this episode, they will remember, you know, we talked about a collective memory of about 10 days. this election is 36 days minimum so it will go through various phases and yeah it's a very real risk I mean

Carter 1:01:56

mean even in a 28-day election which is what we have provincially you run the risk that the thing that you had launched with is completely forgotten by the time you're running your last week so you

Carter 1:02:10

you you can you have to keep bringing things up you have to keep things front front of mind. And the problem is that some things like, for example, Aaron O'Toole going after the Liberal government for ethics, just don't seem to matter. So this way, we have a better chance. I think that Corey's

Carter 1:02:29

Corey's point about this being six weeks too late may in fact be correct.

Zain 1:02:34

Corey, jump on either what you heard from Carter or the question on no new goodies, so to speak yeah

Corey 1:02:39

yeah you know can i be honestly it's an interesting exercise you put us through because it really clarifies for me i

Corey 1:02:46

i can't picture this liberal campaign i don't know what this campaign will be for the liberals yeah

Corey 1:02:50

and when i try to talk about what i think the campaign could be i frankly don't find it very compelling no

Corey 1:02:56

and so so this is the challenge i think maybe

Corey 1:02:59

maybe it's a limit of my imagination but it's part of why i think the liberals might be in for a rougher ride than they expect you

Carter 1:03:04

you know i felt

Carter 1:03:05

felt that exact same thing today cory it was harder to come up for the first three points of what uh the liberals needed to do in the first week than it was to come up with a coherent message for the conservatives that they could actually carry all the way through you

Zain 1:03:18

you know what's interesting is that there's no dearth of issues right like there's just so many issues that this could be based on you know this could be the child care election this could be the remake canada election if you want to bundle it all together this could have been we can't unsee after what COVID, you know, shone a light to election, all of that seemed possible and palatable after that throne speech and that big budget. But to your point, I'm not sure I see it either. And maybe this will kind of lead me to my next question, which is, I don't know if you guys agree, but I feel like as it relates to what I'd call the volatile issue salience in this campaign, we're not actually, we don't have a key issue that we're running this thing on. There might be a suite, but there doesn't seem to be a key thing. It might be economic recovery if O'Toole is successful and, you know, the debt deficit as an issue starts climbing up the ranks in the polling, what advice would you have to groups right now that are going to try to make this election, I'm talking now third party and advocacy groups, that are going to try to get their issue into the mix, saying that there maybe is a little bit of malleability in terms of what this election could be about, like whether that's affordability or poverty or, you know, child care or your income, whatever that might look like. Like, advice to groups that are trying to get their thing to be considered as part of the ballot box question. Maybe, Carter, I'll start with you on this.

Carter 1:04:31

Nature abhors a vacuum. So if there's a weakness to

Carter 1:04:37

to the liberal campaign and they're not able to talk about all the issues that are there, then you have an opportunity to make your issue more prevalent. So I think that this is a great opportunity for people to bring the idea forward and bring their ideas into this election campaign.

Zain 1:04:57

same question to you. In terms of third

Zain 1:05:00

third party groups or advocacy groups trying to get their issue onto the agenda in this summer, early fall campaign, what advice would you have for them as Canadians still try to figure out what they care about in some way?

Corey 1:05:13

you know, that's a really tough one, because I'm just not sure how much oxygen there is in an August election. In many ways, isn't this the strategy, right? The liberals don't want a campaign that's got a lot of dramatic moments, a lot of big conversations. Yeah,

Corey 1:05:27

they want to coast on what is already a pretty significant lead in the polls all the way to election day and get a majority government. So the entire campaign has been somewhat crafted to not be a high stakes affair. It's kind of like these Olympics, too. It's not just that it's summer, but it's also we're so bloody fatigued with everything right now. We just want to go outdoors. The Tokyo Olympics have something like a 35% drop in viewership, right?

Carter 1:05:51

You know, it's not

Corey 1:05:52

not just because nobody's in the crowds. I think it's because we're

Corey 1:05:56

we're done. We want to plug off. And so the liberals see that, and they see an opportunity in that. If I'm a third-party advertiser, though, that's got to be considered a huge impediment. already people's attention is pretty low and it's difficult to drive these things forward now if i want to put on the most optimistic view of this i would say well

Corey 1:06:17

carter's right nature abhors a vacuum and if nobody is talking about anything there's a real opportunity to seize the agenda but in practical terms that's tough to do without one of the political actors during a political campaign news coverage switches yeah

Corey 1:06:31

it becomes it becomes organized around political campaigns They put people on planes. They, you know, they have people follow leaders. And unless you can get, for example, Aaron O'Toole to champion your issue one day, that's a little tough.

Corey 1:06:45

And so how do you break into that conversation?

Corey 1:06:48

already said the best way, which is probably get one of the leaders to pick it up. Although you've got to be aware it can become a partisan football at that point. And if the other people win, you might be in trouble.

Corey 1:06:57

The other way is to do something that's almost spectacle-like, draw attention at a time when when a campaign is not particularly interesting or compelling and, and, you know, beyond that, it's, it's the unglamorous, but workmanlike work it's getting, it's

Corey 1:07:12

it's getting op-eds out there. It's putting ads in newspapers. It's doing the things you do all of the time, but just putting it in the context of an election, when you go and vote, you should think about issue X and, and getting your advocates running on full tilt. But it's, I mean, it's going to be tough. It's going to be, it's going to be a tough one. Carter.

Carter 1:07:32

I just think that, you know, the art of storytelling, right? The idea of, you know, Aristotle's poetics, you know, spectacle is one way of doing it. The other way of doing it is making the story so relatable and so small that people can actually understand it. And I, you know, we see that with the Olympics, right? The Olympics are a great example of small scale storytelling where all of a sudden we all fall in love with these characters. Like the cockroach. like a cockroach that we all fell in love with at the beginning of this episode.

Zain 1:08:02

Let's wrap it up here with this final question, which Corey's already kind of answered, which is, Carter, the liberal strategy and ballot box question, is it just wrapped in meet the minimum bar, smooth sailing, no big sort of crescendos? We're not going to try to go for anything too splashy that brings attention to us. Sail through five or six weeks with just this steady small ball? Is that it? And tell me the risk profile on that, if that's it. I

Carter 1:08:29

I mean, that's it. I mean, it sounds to me like their election question is going to be, could you imagine having gone through this with these clowns? You know, not necessarily a bad election question, an EDA question, risky, risky, because people will say, you know, the odds of us having to go through this again, slim, but these, these clouds, these clowns are are exactly who we need for the next circus. So who knows? I think, you

Carter 1:08:58

you know, the more I think about it, the weaker that argument feels

Zain 1:09:03

Corey finishes off on, I know you gave some initial thoughts on this, but liberal strategy and ballot box question, heads down, steady six weeks and no big waves. Is that pretty much what it looks like? Or do they go in the opposite direction and really use this as a contrast of what sort of country do you want? on some of the grand visioning questions we heard back in, let's say, you know, February and March, when we were hearing some of the remake sort of style conversations and reset style conversations. Where do you think the appetite and the strategy lies right now, if you're team Trudeau and the liberals?

Corey 1:09:34

I tell you a funny thing that happens on campaigns, and I think both of you would probably back this up to an extent. Even when you're boring, you think you're being exciting, right? Because you're surrounded with a bunch of people who see the world the way you do, and they feel the way about your opponents, you feel. So it kind of creates this epic stakes to everything that's going on.

Corey 1:09:55

I don't know what the liberals are going to come out of the gate with. My feeling is they are going to think that their campaign is more ambitious than it is. And that's based on, I guess, just like decades of experience, but also cynicism about how campaigns unfold.

Corey 1:10:12

I could be wrong. Maybe Justin Trudeau will truly surprise us and have something interesting interesting that's going on here.

Corey 1:10:19

But I feel like there is probably thousands

Corey 1:10:22

thousands or tens of thousands of liberals listening to this right now being like, you're wrong. This is such a huge high stakes election. And these are the important things that were going on right now.

Corey 1:10:31

I just don't know if that movable group I've been talking about, you know, the group that is not necessarily always plugged in on the issue feels the same way.

Corey 1:10:39

And is this election going to speak to them? And you've You've got such a lead if you're the liberals. You could probably just win

Corey 1:10:45

win anyways, right? But it's like the movie Escape from Victory, right? Sometimes being up for nothing is not enough. And then you get to escape from the Nazis, I guess. The metaphor falls apart.

Carter 1:10:57

Yeah, I mean, that was the subplot of Dave.

Zain 1:11:00

That was the subplot of Dave. Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, let's do this one quickly. You've got mail. Guys, let's move it on to our home province of Alberta. Alberta's top doctor is defending the province's plan to lift all COVID-19 health restrictions despite mounting concerns from physicians and political leaders across the country, which now includes Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu. In a letter to Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro, she agrees with the Canadian Pediatric Society's description of the province's move as a, quote, unnecessary and risky gamble, unquote. She said, this is Minister Hajdu, that recent modeling for Alberta's forecasts are a more serious resurgence in cases fueled by the Delta variant, and that all governments need to take reasonable steps to protect Canadians. Carter, give it to me, your 30-second elevator pitch of where the state of affairs in Alberta lie in your mind. I'll do the same with Corey, and then let's dig into some of the politics of letter, op-ed, all the sort of moving pieces we saw over this past week. But high level, 30 seconds, go.

Carter 1:12:04

I'm a real opponent of strategies that begin and end with hope. I don't want to hope for good things. I don't want to hope for bad things. This strategy is designed around hope. It is not reflective of where we are right now. They hope that we will be clear. They hope that we can start to live with COVID in a natural environment. They are therefore removing, it's not just the removal of, you know, ideas or, you know, the restrictions. It's actually the removal of testing, the removal of the reporting, the removal of the requirements to quarantine. So if you get sick with COVID-19, you can still go to work. I mean, you may not be very

Carter 1:12:44

very sick. Lots of people weren't tremendously sick, but they still quarantined. So the equivalent is if you get chickenpox, should you be going to your workplace? If you get the flu, should you be going to your workplace? No, you shouldn't. You should be quarantining, but they're removing that requirement because they're stupid fuckers. Okay, that's it. They're stupid fuckers being the punchline there.

Zain 1:13:09

Corey, we did Alberta last week. State of affairs, 30 seconds. What's your take? And then let's jump into each of the pieces that we've seen this week.

Corey 1:13:17

Well, the thing you asked about was a letter from the health minister federally to the health minister provincially. And yeah,

Corey 1:13:24

this is politics. It is very clear. I mean, you know what? Can I just say as an aside, what I find very interesting is that we are hearing political ads in Calgary on the radio. I'm not sure if you two listen to much radio, but that's unusual. Usually, Calgary is so not in play, nobody bothers to run advertisements in it. But we're starting to hear ads, and they are kind of Aaron O'Toole, Jason Kenney, two peas in a pod, right? It's very clear that people have made the calculation that Jason Kenney is a liability to Aaron O'Toole. And by conflating

Corey 1:13:57

conflating the two, by reminding people that Jason Kenney endorsed Aaron O'Toole, by making

Corey 1:14:03

making this argument that Jason Kenney is acting in a risky fashion, you can't trust conservative – could you imagine if there wasn't a liberal government here to write stern letters to Jason Kenney's government, but instead it was Aaron O'Toole?

Corey 1:14:15

You're painting a picture, and I don't actually think it's a picture for us. I think it's a picture for people in other provinces. I don't think that's a shocking or controversial statement here.

Corey 1:14:25

It remains to be seen whether this is particularly good politics, because it is still many, many weeks away. And, but again, like the liberals are doing the same thing, but on a different scale that the, that the conservatives and the NDP are doing, which is they're making small

Corey 1:14:40

small investments, they're getting themselves on the record, and then they can really yell at Alberta later. It also is a bit of a protection against any accusations of irresponsible fourth wave. It's, you know, it's blame Alberta. Alberta.

Corey 1:14:51

I did want to comment, though, Stephen, that you're not required to quarantine. It's like chicken pox. I find that comforting. I mean, nobody gets chicken pox these days because there's a vaccine for chicken pox. But when we were kids, you could get chicken pox. I don't know if you could, Zane. No, I didn't. Yeah.

Corey 1:15:10

didn't go to places when they had chicken pox. They stayed home when they had chicken pox. They quarantined, effectively. They didn't, actually,

Carter 1:15:15

actually, because I got chicken pox. If they'd stayed home, I wouldn't have gotten the fucking chicken pox, Corey.

Corey 1:15:23

guess what? We still get diseases. It's just a reality here. This

Carter 1:15:27

This is my point. This isn't the disease we want to be playing this game with. You had the requirement

Carter 1:15:32

requirement to quarantine for the past

Corey 1:15:34

and people still got COVID. I just think it's a false equivalency you're

Corey 1:15:37

throwing out here. The

Carter 1:15:38

The next variant that's vaccine-resistant, if it starts and is created in Alberta, I'm going to have the biggest I-told-you-so-ever. Well,

Corey 1:15:45

Well, I hope to God that that doesn't happen.

Carter 1:15:47

The stampede variant is what they're going to call it. Let's

Zain 1:15:49

Let's walk through the political items. Carter, the Haidoo letter to Chandra, good politics for the Liberal health minister. What do you make of it? And what is her objective? What is she trying to do?

Carter 1:15:59

I think she's trying to win seats in Alberta. It's shocking to me that the Liberal Party of Canada thinks that the

Carter 1:16:05

the best way for them to potentially win a seat is to scold the conservative health minister. Minister. Normally, you'd want to stay as far away from that as you possibly could.

Zain 1:16:17

Corey, is that the strategy here, you think, for Patty Hajdu and the liberals? Or is it to showcase, you know, Alberta as maybe hitting Alberta on the head so you can win seats elsewhere politically, or maybe even an entirely separate or different political strategy?

Corey 1:16:32

Well, they can be both, Zane. I think probably

Corey 1:16:35

probably the primary focus is elsewhere. I suspect it is part of the overall liberal branding of Aaron O'Toole. They're starting to move chess pieces around that assist them with that branding.

Corey 1:16:46

if they think it can help them win a seat in Northeast Calgary or Central Edmonton, yeah,

Corey 1:16:52

absolutely. Why not? What's the harm? And it is an interesting state of affairs, as

Corey 1:16:56

as Stephen said, that a

Corey 1:16:58

a liberal minister could

Corey 1:17:00

could be taking a conservative minister to task in Alberta, and the

Corey 1:17:04

population, it does seem, is very much on the the liberal minister side. Like that's, it's an interesting, COVID has forced such a fascinating shaking up of politics in the province of Alberta. And I, you know, at some point, we'll have to talk about do we think this is long term? Do we think it's going to bounce back? But there's also been long term trends in Alberta, that

Corey 1:17:24

that maybe this exacerbated. And as I talk this out, I think about so many things in our life that COVID just sort of accelerated. And maybe the political change of Alberta is one of them.

Corey 1:17:33

So yeah, I mean, I think they probably think it's great in Alberta, But I don't think it's about Alberta.

Zain 1:17:38

I want to talk about the second piece here that we saw this week, which was Dr. Dina Hinshaw, our chief medical officer of health, issuing a clarification statement through – was it an op-ed, guys? Just to make

Zain 1:17:50

It was an op-ed where she wrote that she was – and I don't have it in front of me, so you guys may want to clarify some of my paraphrasing – where she wrote that she's sorry that she miscommunicated. that she kind of then laid out a track in terms of why she made the decision she did, including a few rationales which related to cost and the cost of, you know, the testing and tracing. And then secondly, the comparison to other, you know, things that we've been neglecting and not dealing with in the healthcare side of things, using examples of opioids and syphilis. What did you overall make of that letter? And Corey, I'll start with you first. And I did paraphrase a few of the bullet points. You might have others to jump in on with her letter. But what did you kind of make of, from a communications lens, her clarifying statement that she issued to the province?

Corey 1:18:48

yeah well it it's probably a little bit late i think that she apologized for the thing that the government did probably the

Corey 1:18:59

quote-unquote wrong here which is the communications was really rough on it we talked about that we talked about how there was no preconditioning we talked about the situation uh just coming out of the blue and the fact that dina hinshaw announced the end of testing and the end of quarantine on a day when people actually thought she was probably going going to be threatening more restrictions so it was just it was really dissonant to people the

Corey 1:19:21

the letter i think lays out a cogent case for why now individual components of it have become lightning rods online i mean the syphilis comment has just gone nuts like

Corey 1:19:30

you think syphilis is so bad and i think it's unfortunate that was added in there but i feel like it was almost like things like it was supposed to be representative of a case of challenge or you know a suite of challenges, not the individual ones.

Corey 1:19:44

I, you know, you didn't mention, but one of the other things it does is it talks about COVID-19 risk for kids compared to other risks. And I

Corey 1:19:56

Yeah. I mean, I've got three kids in that category. I'm not saying that

Corey 1:19:59

that I don't have my anxieties, but to be frank, I have my anxieties when they play

Corey 1:20:03

play sports. I have anxieties when they go up on their playhouse on the roof and they're acting a little bit too nuts. Anxieties as part of the nature of parents. And it

Corey 1:20:11

it is undoubtedly true that COVID-19 has consumed resources in the healthcare system in a way that is absolutely without precedent.

Corey 1:20:19

So do I think that we should have ended the testing? Am I convinced of that after reading the letter?

Corey 1:20:27

it's not an irrational argument. And what I do find interesting is that so much of the internet is treating it like an irrational argument. And maybe that's too much of a topic for today. Carter,

Zain 1:20:37

Carter, jump in on that.

Carter 1:20:38

It's an irrational argument. And

Carter 1:20:40

And the reason why it's an irrational argument is just simple. We test for all kinds of things every single day. Go to your doctor. Take a look at all the tests that are offered to you because when you show up at your doctor, they run a spate of tests just to even sure that you're healthy. They'll do a bunch of different tests just to make sure that you are, in fact, healthy without symptoms. Asymptomatic is the word that we've now learned that goes with this. And they run those tests because they want to make sure that you're healthy and they We want to make sure that you're able to live to the best of your ability. We have the lowest vaccination rates in Canada. If we were vaccinated at 75% or 80%, I could maybe see myself getting around this. But all we're asking is, number one, test. Number two, report. Number three, if you get the fucking disease, quarantine. these aren't extraordinary measures that we are asking for these are the minimum requirements that any every other jurisdiction by the way every other jurisdiction is doing these things so when we say well this makes sense to me it doesn't make sense to any other medical officer of health it doesn't make sense in any other context so why does it make sense here it doesn't it's a it is ridiculous to me and uh they're paying a price because these are the prices that they're comfortable paying. Corey?

Corey 1:22:09

Yeah, this is the kind of vitriol and the extreme reaction that we're getting. But there is a reality that a lot of people don't want to confront right now, which is that at a certain point, we are going to have to end testing everywhere. We are going to have to end quarantine. This is not something we're going to have for the rest of our lives here. Carter, don't even start. And I've got to tell you,

Corey 1:22:28

one of the things that I find particularly rough

Corey 1:22:31

rough about this is that I get why we're here I get why there's so little trust in it. Governments have been so slow and so wrong for the entire duration of COVID-19, and there is no goodwill. There is no goodwill when a government wants to do something like this. And

Carter 1:22:47

And I don't have goodwill.

Corey 1:22:48

I don't have goodwill for this move either. I would like to see testing. I would like the assurance of being able to get the data to allow me to make the choices that I want to make. But you can get a COVID test at your doctor. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about when you make that argument. We have the lowest rate in Canada, but it's so high globally compared to other places. And, you know, this is an emotional issue, and I would never discount emotions in this conversation, but we are going to have to deal with COVID at some point. Is this too soon? Sure. I think so.

Corey 1:23:17

But we can't discount all of the arguments and all of the conversation that have been made here. And I hope that as a country, I hope as a province, that we'll talk about some of these things, because one of the things COVID has also done is open our eyes to some of this stuff that we maybe took for granted or put up with and we shouldn't have number of traffic fatalities that are out there the number of times people end up in emergency departments for eating fucking tide pods for christ's sake i i mean we walk around our lives and we accept a level of risk and covet has really made us confront risk and so let's have a conversation about that risk but let's not pretend that covet is somehow distinct forever these

Carter 1:23:51

these were some of the false arguments were put into the letter you know we couldn't treat opioid uh overdoses because we we were so busy with COVID. I mean, there were reasonable solutions that are available. Do you think that's

Corey 1:24:01

that's wrong? Do you actually think that

Carter 1:24:03

that the government was not distracted by this? Yes, because you didn't have to close down the safe consumption sites. You didn't have to close down the safe consumption sites because of COVID. You did that as a government because you were ideologically motivated. And that's why those consumption sites are gone. And that's

Corey 1:24:17

that's why more people are dying. Carter, but like, what about BC opioid deaths? What about Ontario opioid deaths? Like there is is truth to what is in that statement. Now, Alberta provides a lot of examples that you can give and say, yes, but this is the problem here.

Carter 1:24:32

problem is, this is not a government. This is not a government that values

Corey 1:24:36

problem. You understand the concept of bandwidth. You understand that provincial governments can only manage so many things at a time. You understand ministries of health can only manage so many things at a time. Do you truly discount the idea that COVID was all-consuming and very difficult for the government to manage anything else while it was going on not

Carter 1:24:54

not this government didn't manage anything i

Zain 1:24:56

want to i want to actually move it on to this government so let's there's two there's two more questions i would end on carter uh quickly this could take an entire special we're not going to do that i

Carter 1:25:05

i mean it's an hour and a half episode already

Zain 1:25:07

already you know we should

Carter 1:25:08

should do we should do we should do two episodes a week

Zain 1:25:13

is what happens when we have to run through the greatest hits for you to try to remodulate

Carter 1:25:17

remodulate ask the questions kenny

Zain 1:25:20

kenny and chandro advice for them is this straight double down territory or is there any nuance to that conventional political wisdom that they should be thinking about as in my second question i'll get to in a second as protests as noise as you know uh opposition uh to this uh starts to grow absolutely

Carter 1:25:41

absolutely no upside to backing down now the double down exists and they should just stay where they are, as wrong as they may be.

Zain 1:25:49

Corey, is that correct from your perspective, that they need to just continue down the track that they've laid for themselves?

Corey 1:25:54

I just think it's in their nature to do so. My sense is they will offer something to try to change the channel, perhaps some additional COVID supports in some way, shape, or form. But if it fails, I think they might actually be under some pressure to bring back testing. If we get to August 16th and those numbers continue to go up, and actually i don't just mean cases but i mean hospitalizations last

Carter 1:26:14

last time yeah yeah then

Corey 1:26:16

then i think they're they're gonna have to swallow hard and do something even if it's like we're delaying this for three weeks or four weeks or six months of course still doing this but i

Zain 1:26:26

i i'm gonna i'm gonna start with you for this final question which is about uh

Zain 1:26:30

uh protests protests and doctors and kind of spokespeople and advocacy uh kind of like how we asked in the last segment you know what is The advocacy strategy here or some advocacy advice you would give to whether it's health professionals or the opposition or special interest groups that are trying to fight against these new measures. Any words of wisdom or, you know, words to highlight some unseen risks that you might see from the advocacy movements?

Carter 1:27:02

Keep the pressure on. Go right to the 16th. Highlight the numbers you want highlighted. it push push push just

Zain 1:27:10

just that simple cory is there anything to add to that i

Corey 1:27:14

i you know it everybody is so wrong and so exhausted about this one of the things that um uh

Corey 1:27:21

uh well i guess we'll see in the next couple of weeks is is just how do sentiments change i mean we we got hit in the face with this thing we didn't expect to happen a

Corey 1:27:32

a week later feelings maybe

Corey 1:27:35

maybe different maybe not My sense is that people have cooled

Corey 1:27:38

cooled down a little, but now it's kind of like a cool anger. It's not a hot anger, but it's still there. The question becomes, does it move from a cool anger to something entirely different over the next bit? Do protests get bigger or do protests get smaller?

Corey 1:27:52

think that the wave

Corey 1:27:54

wave of public opinion is going to be an interesting thing to ride. But you've got to pick your moment because you can also go too far too fast and then maybe there's nothing left. And

Zain 1:28:04

And Flame Out. Corey, one quick follow up for you. I know when we did our episode on advocacy and correspondence as related to the government, how you kind of walked us through how governments take tally of your advocacy muscularity for how letters were sent, how many. How do governments generally view protests and public action like this? I'm curious if you guys could both speak to that from your government experience. Do they just view it from the optics of it and like where the crescendo is? Could I be extending us for an hour? I very well could. Oh, my

Corey 1:28:34

my God, Zane. Zane, it's a big topic, and there's not a simple answer to

Carter 1:28:39

to that. There's like multiple levels. Can we put

Zain 1:28:44

pin in that one? No,

Zain 1:28:45

we're doing it right now. Why not? Just give me the high level, because I think it's relevant to— High level?

Carter 1:28:52

Yeah, the high level. The high level is that some protests fizzle and fail and are ignored by government, and other protests change the way the government thinks about an issue. The issue, you know, when you get 3000 postcards that are coming from the exact same source with the exact same letter, you don't care. But when you have a bad media story every single day, for weeks on end, you start to shift your thinking, you start to, you get battered, you get bruised, you shift around.

Zain 1:29:21

Corey, give me the high level from your perspective, and then we'll dig into it deeper.

Corey 1:29:26

You want to know if protests change minds? Well, it depends on a number of variables. Carter started to unpack them. How big's the protest? How organic is the protest? Are those protests getting bigger? Are those protests getting smaller?

Corey 1:29:37

And those, I think, are kind of the fundamental attributes through which you gauge whether a protest is something to be concerned about or not. But I'll tell you something. I've seen protests outside the legislature of thousands of people, and I've worked for governments of multiple stripes. I'm not going to tell you which

Corey 1:29:54

ones were here, and people have been like, ah, who cares? And I've seen protests of 300 people, and governments have said, that's a little alarming. That's a little concerning. It's so contextual, Zane. It's so contextual. I

Zain 1:30:08

think I think there's a lot of wisdom in that answer. OK, let's move it on to our final segment are over under our lightning round. By the way, tweet me if you want three hour plus Joe Rogan style episodes of The Strategist, because that is what we're now going to start doing. I'm going to start bringing up YouTube clips that just making you react to them for the for the latter hour and a half. Stephen Carter, let's start here. Overrated or underrated? Dr. Tam giving the blessing that in-person voting can be done safely this federal election. Overrated or underrated in your mind? Go.

Carter 1:30:38

Overrated. Her opinion doesn't matter. It's the voters' opinion.

Zain 1:30:42

Corey, overrated, underrated. Dr. Tam giving your blessings that voters can vote in a federal election in person safely. safely.

Corey 1:30:50

Overrated. I think that all of the brands of these public health officials have been a little bit dented and seen as politicized over time. Corey,

Zain 1:30:58

Corey, give me an A to F score right now on Trudeau's strategy thus far to explore mandatory vaccines. What do you think of it thus far with his I'm going to talk to clerk of the Privy Council sort of considerate, so to speak?

Corey 1:31:10

So I think it's a B because it is, as we've discussed, somewhat popular. The reason why why it's not an A is that it doesn't affect a lot of people necessarily. And there are some policy risks there.

Zain 1:31:22

Carter, same question for you. The A to F score on the Trudeau strategy to explore mandatory vaccinations?

Zain 1:31:31

Well, thank you so much, Carter. I really appreciate it. Stephen Carter, I'm going to stick with you. Stephen, money is a currency of politics, Carter. The conservatives have raised 5 million bucks in Q2. The liberals have raised just above above $3.2 million. I know we always say money is always good and always underrated. But given the context of where everything stands right now, overrated or underrated, the Conservatives, five versus 3.2 for the Liberals. You

Carter 1:31:56

You know, it's a quick election. You haven't had time to build your war chest. It probably matters more now than it may if it was a four-year cycle.

Zain 1:32:04

So you're saying underrated. Corey, same question to you.

Corey 1:32:06

I feel the exact same way Stephen does.

Corey 1:32:09

I don't think either party's in a position to run right up to the limit at this moment they'll you know they'll fundraise during the campaign and we'll see and so that

Corey 1:32:16

that money matters uh

Zain 1:32:17

uh for the alberta party okay on a score a scale of one to ten yeah for the alberta party how uh one is horrible ten is this is actually a genius political move um that brian jean seems to be perhaps partially possibly exploring running for for them as leader for

Zain 1:32:36

party for the party carter brian

Carter 1:32:38

brian gene's not this is a minus 17 this the launching a leadership with this is the worst decision in the history of political decisions um with perhaps the notable exception of the green party uh fighting with their own leader cory

Zain 1:32:55

cory stephen gives that a minus 17 are you gonna top

Corey 1:32:59

i think it tells you everything you need to know about the alberta party that it is such an ideologically flexible place that brian g could contemplate the leadership the

Zain 1:33:09

the consistent canister known as the alberta party final question cory i'm going to start with you yes or no do we have an election starting this sunday

Zain 1:33:21

carter do we have an election starting this sunday no

Corey 1:33:25

i want to say yes yeah

Zain 1:33:25

yeah i think that's right thank you cory thanks for doing that no

Carter 1:33:28

no it's going to be the

Carter 1:33:28

15th i'm holding to that I'm holding to the 15th.

Zain 1:33:31

I really appreciate it. We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 934 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji with me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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