Episode 937: Wedge salad

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 937. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, it is a Sunday. It is a Sunday afternoon. Afternoon delights. How are you doing?

Carter 0:15

This is interrupting my nap time. And then I have to go outside. So I'm pretty angry. I was doing

Corey 0:20

okay until the afternoon delight comment.

Zain 0:24

that not what the title of this episode is just ultimately going to be? because we've just named it in the first minute. Stephen Carter, I have to talk to you about this. I guess, Corey, now I can talk to you about this too. Roy Kent is starting to become the sleeper best character on a TV series maybe in the last decade. Discuss. As

Carter 0:44

As I have long been the best character on this podcast.

Carter 0:47

Of course, Roy Kent's the best. Of course he is. People like a little bit of sass, a little bit of attitude, a little bit of straight talk. That's what people want, and that's what we give. roy kent and stephen carter oi

Zain 1:00

oi cory what do you think no

Zain 1:02

no he's pretty good okay

Zain 1:05

he's no he's no nathan oh

Corey 1:10

yeah there's trouble brewing for those two a trouble spoiler alert

Zain 1:15

alert people just so you know so

Corey 1:17

so welcome everybody to our ted lasso fan podcast this is

Zain 1:21

is uh this is what we do uh this is all we talk about we're skipping the fast food talk and we're going into our first segment our first segment flavor of the week yes it sounds like a fast food segment it is not we are not ranking fast food although we all know harvey's is right at the top carter i'm going to do this segment every sunday uh i want to talk about what the flavor of the week was what was the week that that passed we're now at sunday sunday to sunday we can kind of compare a week uh we'll also then talk about a bit of polling and then we'll talk about one sort of a strategic item that I want to discuss each week that we do this recap segment. So let's start here. Let's get your guys' takes very cleanly. Carter, define the last week for me. What was the flavor of it for you? And there's many narratives out there. I'll throw a few out if our listeners haven't heard them just yet. You know, one about the conservative surge, the O'Toole platform strategy, Jagmeet Singh's palatability and promise, the liberals really hobbling and maybe questioning why they're doing this election. The fact that no one's paying attention, that's come up multiple times. But for you, Carter, as a strategist, what was the flavor of this week? What would you kind of capstone and define this week as from the terms and the experience that you bring to the table?

Carter 2:36

Well, I think that every

Carter 2:37

every election is about the frontrunner. Every election is about who's in front and who's behind, if you will. And that's the narrative that the media love to take and um that means that this narrative was about the liberals being unable to answer the question uh why did you call the election um not only did they seem to be unable to answer the question why did you call the election they seem to be unaware that elections are a moment when you have to have new ideas and people pay attention to those new ideas you

Carter 3:05

you know the rumors that were popping out of liberal land uh that justin trudeau was asking asking in writings, what's a really good big idea that we can talk about? That says to me, unbelievably, that the party that called the election seems to be the least prepared for the actual election.

Zain 3:21

Yeah, we'll talk about the quote-unquote big new thing that Stephen Carter is referring to. But Corey, flavor of the week, define the week that was for us from your strategist's perspective.

Corey 3:34

Yeah, the Liberals, Carter's right. Right. Like every election really is about who's in the lead and the other

Corey 3:41

other parties pile on and they say this is why they shouldn't be in the lead. The party in the lead tries to maintain that lead. And he is entirely correct that they seem to have been caught flat footed by their own election, which to me is not a sign that should give a lot of liberals great comfort because it says either the liberals said, well, we got to go now because we think it's going to get worse. Or there was just this sense of inertia we've talked about in the past. You

Corey 4:02

You plan for an election and that makes an election more likely, even if it is just contingency planning. But here they are. And they seem to have come into week one, maybe not on autopilot, but they seem to have been surprised by the dynamics of their own election. And that's a bit surprising. But the liberals have done their best to serve us a wedge salad this week, right? We've seen accusations of the conservatives really being dangerous on vaccine mandates, on abortion, on guns. And now today, we're also seeing private health care. And Andrew Coyne on Twitter, I think, kind of nailed it. Like, they've hit a lot of panic buttons for such an early time in the campaign. And maybe their intention was almost the inverse of how we said Aaron O'Toole needs to define himself early. A lot of Canadians don't know him. This is the chance they're going to be looking. And maybe the Liberals said, this

Corey 4:48

this is our chance to really put the nail in the coffin for Aaron O'Toole and define him and put all of these things out there. But it's coming across, at least to me, and I suspect I'm not alone, and certainly we're seeing from the polls, preliminary though they may be, that it's not really working. But it seems to me that it's not landing,

Corey 5:07

landing, right? And people are reacting to it in kind of a cynical sense. Here the liberals go again with all of these things, because it doesn't necessarily come across as something that they're deeply concerned about. It comes across as something they've been waiting to throw out there and torque as much as they possibly can. So the liberals have to be careful about that. I would say this wedge salad has not been particularly appetizing main course, as we're seeing in the tracking polls. Hey,

Zain 5:34

Hey, Carter, let's talk about polling for a second, because as it relates to the polls, what do you feel like your thought is based on all the poll tightening that you've seen? You've seen Graves, you've seen Nanos, I believe also Abacus, all telling a similar story, that O'Toole's done a good job in the first seven days closing the gap or at least making it much tighter. Do you buy what's being sold on the daily tracking, and how much of it do you buy in terms of what's being sold in the daily tracking?

Carter 6:04

I'm super nervous about daily tracking. I'm super nervous about polling in general. And I'm really nervous about polling when there's a low attention span. So there's a non-response bias to polls. And pollsters will tell you that the non-response bias is something that just gets, that statistically doesn't matter because you wind up getting the responses and the responses are just statistically valid. And I think that there's some truth to that. But I also think that when there are periods of, you know, real moments when people aren't paying attention, that non-response bias matters more. That, you know, the fact that certain people aren't responding to polls that normally would have responded to polls. This is a period of time when no one's moving. Nothing is happening. And yet, at the same time, we're seeing significant shifting in the polls. And that makes me very wary of the numbers that are coming out. I think it is more likely that the people responding to the polls are different. The non-response group is larger in some fashion than the response group. And so everything is changing. And that is probably what's causing this more than a fundamental shift in the electorate. um

Carter 7:14

so i i if i were if i were a tool i'd be minimizing this impact i'd be saying this isn't real yet we will wait and see what things look like in the second week of september uh because that's when things will start to get real um because i'm not sure that this this bump isn't a polling and not a polling error more than it is an actual shift in the um in

Carter 7:37

in the polling in in the fundamental who wants to vote for whom uh tracking that we would normally see

Zain 7:43

Corey, daily tracking, I've got a bunch of sort of follow-up questions, but I want your initial insight. What do you make of pole tightening from the multitude of pollsters that we're seeing across the country?

Corey 7:53

Well, we have two tracking poles that have shown a pole tightening, ECOS and NANOS.

Corey 8:01

And I think that when you have two, that should give you a reason to raise your eyebrows a bit. Both, I believe, use the same methodology. It's a telephone methodology, and so if there is a bias inherent in that methodology, that's going to show up. although in the past couple of elections phones haven't done too too badly and it really depends on the online panel and how how well it's being curated but I don't entirely agree with Stephen Carter about the non-response bias comments he said statistically that pollsters will say it doesn't matter that much I don't think they would I'm not entirely sure that's what they would say at least what they do is they try to correct for a non-response bias in general they they weight things right so it's harder to get a hold of 18 to 30 year olds by phone phone so the few that you do get a hold of their opinions matter an awful lot more as it goes forward the other thing with tracking polls is they're often multiple days and if there is one really wild day it's going to take a few days for it to get out of the system and it can create a sense of momentum that's entirely false for those days as uh as it continues to be there so you've got to watch out for that as well good

Corey 9:00

good pollsters will also really try to get a hold of people multiple times to call the same phone number 10 times on their list or or what have you in order order to try to deal with that non-response bias on a more foundational level. But it is too soon to say. Obviously, the polling that we have, limited though it is, is telling a consistent story. You can talk about those tracking polls, which we have, which shows either a tightening race or in the case of ECOS, I believe, the Conservatives getting ahead of the Liberals

Corey 9:25

for the first time.

Corey 9:27

Although keep in mind, last election, the Conservatives got more popular vote and still lost the seat count. So that's not everything. We also have the fact that the The NDP has said they won't prop up the Conservatives, so the Conservatives may need a majority to get any government.

Corey 9:40

the other polling, though, is even though it's coming out in dribs and drabs, it's telling a similar story. Ipsos and Global are sort of teasing out their polling that shows Canadians don't trust Justin Trudeau very much. That's pretty consistent with the idea that things aren't landing. We've seen other polling that shows that Justin Trudeau has taken a few dents in his approval rating overall, a few dents in his most popular PM. PM, similarly, we've seen best choice for PM Aaron O'Toole go up on some of these things. It's all telling a story that

Corey 10:09

that you can kind of hand wave away if you're inclined to hand wave it away. But on net, the polling seems to say at the very least, the Liberals are not hurting the Conservatives. The Liberals, at best, are where they were last week, which is not too, too bad for them because they're leading. But it's not a good week of polling for the Liberals. Carter,

Zain 10:29

Carter, jump in, and then I want to ask a few follow-up questions to you guys on this.

Carter 10:33

Well, and I think that, you know, I

Carter 10:35

I don't want to be misinterpreted that I'm saying that this is all well and good for the liberals. I think that there's an excuse. There's an opportunity to downplay these impacts. But very soon, polling trends become voting realities. There is an open question in my mind as to whether or not polls lead or polls reflect. And I oftentimes think that a series of bad polls create a negative situation that just spirals. So the liberals can very easily find

Carter 11:03

in this spot. To Corey's point, you

Carter 11:06

you don't get another week of, you know, what I opened up with, with them not being able to answer the question around the election or present big ideas that people grab onto. to that you got to hit the ground now you got to reset and be ready to go on monday uh because if you don't uh two weeks of this suddenly becomes a trend and uh your your real estate on old old tool island becomes a lot more more profitable which would just anger me personally uh really foundational level not

Zain 11:36

not even because of the outcome you just don't want us to you just you just don't want us to be happy with the plethora of housing that every every are

Carter 11:42

are you new to the podcast of of course, I don't want you to be happy.

Zain 11:45

We're having just a gay old time on O'Toole Island. It's fantastic, Carter. I don't know what's your problem. You're

Carter 11:52

,000 checks from the NDP is my fucking problem because you guys just rented there. Our landlord

Zain 11:56

landlord doesn't know. It can help us with anything, Carter. Okay. Hold on. Corey, I want to jump in here. Let's actually shift this to a bit of strategy. Carter brought up a very interesting conversation on what O'Toole should do. Okay, week one, O'Toole. He narrows the gap and or is ahead. Carter says, if you're in team O'Toole, you don't want to acknowledge that this is real. You're probably happy with the situation. One would assume you would be, that people said you could get nothing done and you had a pretty good week. What are you kind of strategically doing in team O'Toole right now, Corey? Are you acknowledging that this is real? Are you only acknowledging it to a sliver of of your audience, i.e. your donor base, and trying to churn more money out? What are you kind of doing mechanically with polling numbers that say you're either a point or a half a point ahead, or that you've closed the gap and that the viability threshold is starting to at least meet expectations for you as it historically has in previous elections? Well,

Corey 12:51

Well, yeah, two tracking polls is not enough to declare victory, start measuring the drapes. And if you live by the poll, you'll die by the poll. If the next polls show that there's a a decline you're going to have to live with that but there

Corey 13:01

there is an opportunity with the polling that has presented itself and you are already starting to see it in some of the coverage of this first week and

Corey 13:08

and the process stories that have come out that have largely gravitated around rocky

Corey 13:12

rocky start to the liberal campaign not the start that they were necessarily envisioning uh carter already mentioned that cbc article that had a senior liberal source that's how they described it who said that trudeau is talking to candidates looking for big ideas with quote wow factor factor that's that's pretty wild when you are the person who called the election now does does that source know a thing or is this just somebody talking who the hell knows but when you see polling like this when you see a narrative like this start to show up in the various different commentary columns out there you see the you know the the tall foreheads on twitter all start to gravitate towards not a great week for the liberals that's um that's helpful to Aaron O'Toole and I I think that's where he needs to try to keep the focus on. Look at Justin Trudeau. This is not working for him right now. Isn't that interesting? Maybe this election was a mistake. Get the media up

Corey 14:05

up his asshole rather than talking about Aaron O'Toole's comeback kid, because I think that's a narrative for later if this polling proves more durable. Carter,

Zain 14:12

talk to me about this very quickly. You said, you know, Corey, I think agrees with you in the sense of like not, you know, running away with a victory here with these two tracking polls. However, talk to me about it tactically. Corey, talk to me about it from a message perspective. What are you doing tactically with these polling numbers? Are you pushing the narrative somewhere? Are you going on email? Are you talking to supporters about it? Are you using the surrogate class to actually pump you up? If you were running this campaign, give me some tactics. Throw them out to me. What would you do with these tracking numbers and the poll tightening?

Carter 14:43

Money and ground game would be the first two things that I would think about. I'd be using these as donor fodder. So the first donor emails will be going out and asking for more money. Already, because of what you've given in the past, this is now possible. Don't believe the liberal media. They're going to tell you that Justin Trudeau has got this in the bag. We can see right now through the polls, through our internal polls, and through these public polls, we are in the game. So that donor message goes out right away, and we try and make some money off of this. The second thing is that we go to the individual campaigns. So there's high-performing campaigns, there's low-performing campaigns, and then there's campaigns right in the middle. And those campaigns right in the middle, I'm heading to them right away and saying, you guys are in this more than you can possibly know. So the people

Carter 15:33

who've lost by five points, two points, three points in the past, jumping all over them, but also reaching out to people, maybe you've lost by eight points or ten points. This is now all possible because while we get hung up on the national polling numbers, national polling numbers don't matter in Calgary Center, Calgary Confederation, Edmonton Center, Edmonton Millwoods. Those areas are going to turn and flip by local races. places and the harder those individual candidates work the

Carter 16:01

more likely that that the one to two or three points that that might be necessary to turn a two-point loss into a one-point you know victory that's going to come from from driving them and giving them hope and pushing their pushing

Carter 16:17

pushing their buttons to make sure that they're engaged and at this stage they're the only people paying attention so focus on those people that are actually going to pay attention and actually get some shit done. Corey,

Zain 16:26

Corey, same question to you. Tactically, what are you engaging in with Titan Horse Race poll numbers on a national level if you're Aaron O'Toole?

Corey 16:32

Well, if I'm either Aaron O'Toole or Justin Trudeau, I'm using these as donor fodder. I'm going out and saying, we

Corey 16:38

we need money to deal with this race. If you're Aaron O'Toole, you can give people kind of the hope who may have otherwise lost hope. You can have some of those people who were perhaps going to support a PPC candidate come back because they see it as an opportunity to finally stick it to the liberals. liberals whereas before if they thought he was going to lose anyways this was a protest vote that was open to him if you're justin trudeau you can say we always knew this would be a really tight race it's really important he these are the stakes big big talk uh but let's be clear and carter talked about this these numbers you know

Corey 17:07

tactically in regards to allocation of resources as a campaign these numbers don't matter at all these

Corey 17:12

these are top line numbers on rolling polls that are a few hundred every day that tells you nothing about the situation in the 905 it tells you nothing about the situation in swing ridings in the lower mainland and in fact when

Corey 17:24

when you look at some of those rolling polls and dig underneath there's some oddities in it like that anybody under the age of 40

Corey 17:31

40 basically is supporting the conservatives or that and above it they're supporting the liberals seems weird but you you kind of assume as a pollster that all of these errors will balance out on whole but it's it's you know it's you're not going to make decisions based on what these polls told you you're

Corey 17:46

you're going to use it only in terms of narrative whether that be narrative for fundraising or narrative in the general horse race meta-analysis that always consumes. I

Zain 17:54

I know we've talked about this in the past, but it's almost like you're taking these poll numbers and putting them in places that you can kind of will them into existence, that you can kind of showcase that here's the possibility with these numbers. Now we need the action to actually make it real. Now, if you do something, this, what you see on this page, will actually become real. And I think good campaigns use it in that way, but I'll let you both jump in on that notion. You

Corey 18:18

You got to be careful, though, because you can also, and I've made this mistake personally before, you can also trumpet the numbers where you're ahead and scare your opponents into consolidating their vote. You can all of a sudden have a situation where the liberal plea to NDP voters becomes more real. And so if you're Erin O'Toole, maybe

Corey 18:35

maybe what you need to be doing is talking about, well, people are going to the NDP. That's where the changes are right now. Maybe you should be emboldening the NDP supporters to say, no, screw it. This time, you come support us, just as you saw in 2011.

Zain 18:51

Carter, jump in on this, and then I've got one final question for both of you in this segment.

Carter 18:56

Well, I just think that the inverse problem of spurring on your opposition is particularly challenging when you've got voters that will move from the NDP to the Liberals just to stop the Conservatives. That's one of the reasons I said at the beginning of this, I wouldn't be making a big deal out of this if I was Aaron O'Toole. Because the bigger deal you make of it, the more it becomes a problem when voters start to switch, when they start to care a little bit more. And they suddenly start to, you know, in Calgary Skyview or Edmonton Millwoods or Edmonton Center, shift to whoever they think the winner will be to stop the conservative candidate or the other candidate. There is a huge group of anybody but voters that will shift around and try and find their feet, either for the NDP or the conservatives or the liberals. liberals, and those

Carter 19:53

those voters haven't found themselves yet. We'll see where they wind up.

Zain 19:56

I want to do a quick run on this, is that every time we do this weekly flavor of the week check-in, I want to talk about one item that I find interesting. And in this case, I want to talk about a strategic item regarding campaign planning. There's been so much talk about this election regarding two weeks in August, you know, you got Labor Day, you got kids going back to school, early voting mail-in deadline and a september 20th election is there even time for anything so cory maybe i'll start with you give me your general sort of outline in terms of how you're planning this election is this like any other 36 day or for you or are there some weird curveballs that you're accommodating for and maybe we'll kind of use it a few points mainly around opposition research and when you want it to land and announcement of big key policy points and crescendos on this campaign. Where do you see both of those optimized with at least what I think is a weird cadence this cycle? You may disagree, but curious to hear from you based on all the defining and perhaps unpredictable factors of this 36-day race. How are you planning for it if you're team agnostic planning this election?

Corey 21:03

Well, I think you're absolutely right. In fact, one of the challenges is there's so many variables that are not like normal that it it becomes difficult to isolate and say, this is how I'm going to act if all other things were held equal because of this thing, like because it's an August election, because it's a COVID election, because there are no tools, a relatively unknown commodity, you name it. And you've got a bunch of things that would force you to act perhaps in a different fashion. And every campaign is going to have the theory of the campaign, how it's going to play out. It is a reasonable theory of campaign to say, nobody's going to pay attention until Labor Day, so don't waste your time. It is a reasonable theory of campaign to say, actually,

Corey 21:39

actually, that's entirely inaccurate, because this is going to be an early definition for a number of people. And we've got mail-in votes that are going to start flowing very quickly. So you've got to establish early, early reputation. And it seems to me that the conservatives have bought into that second theory of campaign. We've got to go big

Corey 21:56

big at the top. And I would have said, but for all of the wedges flying in, that the liberals have bought into the second, because I don't see a lot of liberal

Corey 22:04

liberal messaging right now it's more liberal anti-O'Toole messaging plus here's what we did in the last budget but they're not really doing kind of a strong definition of themselves and maybe they're waiting until after Labor Day but maybe

Corey 22:16

maybe not maybe they are buying into the same theory as Aaron O'Toole but they think they what they need to do is stop that by putting everything yeah every wedge out there and cause these concerns so tons

Corey 22:27

tons of different variables I I absolutely, you know, I sympathize with every single campaign manager who's got to figure this out, not just because they've got to take a stance, but because every person and their fucking dog is going to have a different stance and they're going to argue with it and second guess what the campaign is doing and why the campaign is doing it, particularly if numbers look stuck in the mud. So it's a tough one, but it's

Corey 22:51

it's so different that you would be foolish to do things the way you always do. Carter,

Zain 22:56

Carter, anything to add to what Corey said here? And give me a more definitive answer from your perspective. You're running one of the campaigns, right?

Zain 23:04

Which lane are you picking? Are you picking the early and often? And I know that's the two simplistic lanes, because there's so many variables, as Corey's just mentioned. But we've got almost two lanes, early and often or wait till Labor Day sort of lane. What are you doing if you are running one of these campaigns and add any more variables or other analysis to Corey's question?

Carter 23:23

think I'm approaching it based on the voters that I'm hoping to pick up. If I'm picking up older voters, I'm going to go really hard on the mail-in ballots and push super hard there. I mean, Elections Canada is thinking that there could be up to 5 million mail-in ballots, which would be some 30 percent, I think, of the vote total that was done in 2019, which

Carter 23:46

which is staggering, really, when you think about it. I mean, just massive numbers of mail-in ballots. If that happens, then the election process is completely changed. So that could be a problem. But I'm also thinking, if

Carter 24:01

if I'm the Liberals, I'm really concerned about the first two weeks of September. So here in Alberta, kids go back to school on September the 1st, which is, I think, a Wednesday. Then we get the Labor Day weekend, and then, you know, parents, commutes, everything changes, right? Right. So this might this might be the first time everybody's going back to work, although with the Delta variant, we may be trapped working from home again for another month. But let's just play it out like everything works out OK.

Carter 24:28

Your kid's going to school, your kid starts going to after school activities, they're going to hockey practice, they're going to ballet, whatever they may be doing, you know, I

Carter 24:38

I don't know, softball trials or whatever the heck, whatever their sport is, whatever their activities are. and all of your world turns upside down until like the 13th or 14th of September when you suddenly start to feel like you're getting routine again. And the election is just one

Carter 24:53

one week away. That may be the most important week period because even if you get five million mail-in ballots, even if you see a whole

Carter 25:02

whole bunch of hyper-engaged early voters going to advance polls, the people who are shifting their minds are going to be shifting and making up their minds. The less engaged voter is still going to be unaware aware that there's an election until the 13th of september and then that last seven days is going to be a huge sprint that i think favors the liberals favors the ndp so

Carter 25:21

so if if i were running the liberal show i'd run the best campaign we possibly can for the first 20 days and then run you know take it up three more notches uh for the last seven days cory

Zain 25:33

cory i'll let you jump in on this do you i see you shaking your head so so i i do want to hear from you on uh either what carter said? Or what constellation of factors are you picking to make a choice to say, this is the lane I'm kind of hunting down for my planning cycle?

Corey 25:49

Well, let me just throw a counter theory out here. And I'll preface this all by saying the parties will ideally have polling on who's paying attention now, who's planning to vote early. And that will drive a lot of their decisions around the messaging they're putting out now, if there's something distinctive

Corey 26:05

distinctive about either of those groups, right? If it's a high information voter, maybe that does speak to an early platform launch. If planning to vote early, just to sort of drift into my theory here, is

Corey 26:15

is because they're worried about COVID-19, well, that tells you something about how you've got to talk to the voters who are going to be the first up, the first voting, right? So if you're voting first because you're most nervous about COVID, that suggests to me that liberal and NDP voters are the most likely to vote early, not conservative voters. That's what I would say right off the bat. And if that's the case, then it could very well be that that sprint at the end favors the conservatives, not the liberals or New Democrats in that case. Because if 27% or so, almost a third of ballots are cast by mail by people who are worried about COVID, COVID is a top issue of theirs, then that end conversation will look very different than if it were a situation where people are feeling like they're voting early because they're older, which is historically how we've tended to think about mail-in ballots. We're

Zain 27:04

We're going to leave that segment there. Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, fine, fabulous, or fucked, election edition, Stephen Carter. It is here. If you're new to this segment, it is very easy. Here's what I do. I give Corey and Stephen an item. It could be a news item, a policy announcement, something that happened this week. And in a case, if it's applicable, I'll give them which party that they should view that story through. And they will tell me whether it's fine, whether it's fabulous, a solid strategic move, or it's fucked. And the one final thing to remember is that we're mostly going to be looking at these through the strategy lens, which is what we do on this show. So let's just get right into it. Stephen Carter, the

Zain 27:47

the next, the big new thing, quote unquote, as you've mentioned earlier, as we've teed up a few times, we're now hearing from a senior liberal source, of course, not knowing knowing who that source is, telling Radio Canada that Justin Trudeau is out talking to candidates to search for a, quote, big new thing that has, as Corey has mentioned, a wow factor. We're assuming it's a policy announcement. We're not guaranteed it's as such. As you know, we've talked about the dead cat on the table many times. So it could very much be in that particular strategy realm. But Stephen Carter, for the liberals to be searching for a big new thing, is it fine? It's totally acceptable. Is it fabulous that they're telegraphing that they want this thing and it's being linked to the media? Or is this fucked? Where do you put this in your categorization or fine, fabulous and fucked on, quote unquote, big new thing for the liberals? I

Carter 28:43

I think this is fine. I have a sense that this is like a candidate who

Carter 28:47

who was asked a question by the prime minister

Carter 28:50

minister who then went running off to the media to

Carter 28:53

try and make themselves look more important than they actually are or some campaign manager somewhere or

Carter 28:59

or a provincial organizer that heard a question being asked and has misinterpreted it. But I was involved in a similar problem in 2012 with the Progressive Conservative Party here in Alberta, where we didn't have the big idea. And people, you know, we were lurching around trying to find it for the first couple of weeks of our campaign. And it is super duper hard if you don't have that. And I do think that this verges, this is fine for now, but it very well could lurch towards fucked, depending on how the liberals respond to it and what their next week looks like. Because if they're still, you know, reaching around in the dark, trying to find a reason for calling this election or, you know, making the election question something that favors them, then they very easily could lurch towards fucked.

Zain 29:53

Corey, fine, fabulous, or fucked, Trudeau and his campaign team on the hunt for the quote-unquote big new thing.

Corey 30:00

Well, Carter makes a convincing case for fine. Also, I would add, it's a process story. And so the people who read process stories tend to be people who already have an opinion on the election. They're high information voters, and it's not necessarily going to change a lot of minds. The other thing is, the source might not know anything. They're a quote unquote, senior liberal source. What is a senior liberal source? A lot of newsrooms have rules for how they determine those things. But there is also the adage that those

Carter 30:27

know don't talk and those who don't know talk. And

Corey 30:30

And it comes across as somebody who is a bit clueless about things or

Corey 30:36

or is just trying to stick a knife in Justin Trudeau because you'd have to know that such a comment offered offhand would be damaging to the leader. The idea that the person who called the election is drifting around for ideas is not helpful to your party. Corey,

Zain 30:48

is there any chance that this could legitimately be a senior liberal source trying to do something? And if so, walk me through what a strategy would be to leak big new thing to the media. What could the reason be to tell folks that your leader is on the hunt for a big new flashy idea?

Corey 31:08

So you are assuming there's strategy in it? Okay,

Zain 31:10

Okay, okay. So there isn't. I was just trying to see if there was.

Corey 31:14

them right away comes across in the story as we saw yeah could

Corey 31:43

could be a situation where they are trying to um manage expectations although that would be pretty wild to me given again they were the ones who called the election so carter

Corey 31:51

carter made the compelling case for fine let me make a case for fucked right

Corey 31:55

right it is a process story and you're right uh or i said you're right i made the comment so i guess i'm right i'm right uh i'm

Zain 32:04

i'm right with cory hogan is our is our uh cousin podcast that we uh that we that we used to run and uh you know it was process

Corey 32:13

process stories appeal to high information voters process stories appeal to the pundits uh we are seeing it being shared all over social media by the people who are quote-unquote decision makers yeah

Corey 32:23

that can have an effect on campaigns and that can have an effect on campaign narratives as the people who are the intermediaries between the campaigns and the public start to get this view of a campaign that's a little bit off the rails that's very problematic the other thing is um sometimes

Corey 32:38

sometimes Sometimes process stories are an indication of real problems in the campaign. Maybe it's not a source who knows nothing. Maybe it's a source who knows a lot. And if

Corey 32:46

if you start seeing those problems, if that's real, if they have not figured out what the campaign is going to be seven days into the campaign, you've

Corey 32:53

you've got a campaign that's in a fair bit of trouble. Because even if you resolve that problem, the fact that you launched a campaign not knowing what you were going to talk about is almost unconscionable.

Corey 33:04

unconscionable. It's fatal to a campaign. And if you drift through it, it will be entirely by luck. So if that if a lot of ifs here, right, if that story is true, the liberals have a problem organizationally. If that process story seeps into the opinion class, the liberals have a problem there. And again, this was all an own goal. If that senior liberal source had just kept their mouth shut, what does that story look like? It's just one person's opinions about what the election is. So in that case, I think you'd have to say it's pretty fucked.

Zain 33:39

Carter, any response to that before I move on?

Carter 33:41

Yeah, I mean, Corey's just wrong. It's fine.

Zain 33:44

Let's move on to our next one. Corey, I'm going to start with you. O'Toole is acknowledging that some conservatives are frustrated with his carbon plan. He met with folks in Alberta, tried to explain to them his carbon plan that he'd introduced last April. I should say, not his carbon plan, his carbon pricing plan. plan uh many people are are in within the party i have acknowledged their frustration over it for a tool cory using the him as a frame here fine fabulous or fucked um

Corey 34:13

um i think it would just be too too hot take to say fabulous but i i think it's somewhere between fine and fabulous because ultimately i don't

Corey 34:22

don't believe that message was for hardcore conservatives in alberta i believe that message was for people throughout the country who are now hearing that the hardcore people in Alberta have a problem with the climate plan. That makes it seem stronger, more durable. It's just a line of defense there. So I think it's absolutely fine. The reason why I wouldn't say it is fabulous, fabulous, is because you're not in your box, right? You were talking about a liberal issue. And while it might be a good shield, and it might be a good way to remind people that there is a conservative climate plan, and it's strong enough that at least some people within his party object to it, it's not an issue that's going to win you the election at the end of the day. If if your issue is climate change, you're

Corey 35:02

you're going to vote for one of the other parties. If you found climate change to be a disqualifier from voting conservative, that

Corey 35:07

that is helpful to the conservatives to have that message out. But you've got to acknowledge that's a different audience and there are different ways to deliver that.

Zain 35:14

Carter, same question to you. O'Toole acknowledging that yes, some conservatives are frustrated with his carbon pricing plan. Fine, fabulous, or fucked for you?

Carter 35:23

I think it's fine. I think the bigger issue is that he's got a convoluted plan that It doesn't really solve anything or say anything. You know, there is a couple of points that I look at Aaron O'Toole and think he's really in trouble on. One of them is climate. The other one is China. You know, they've taken positions that are difficult to understand, difficult to explain, and ultimately could paint them into a really negative position should they form the government because their climate plan just simply isn't enough to deal with the climate emergency that we're looking at right now.

Zain 35:57

let's move it on to our next one carter i'm starting with you enemy paul leader of the green party who um enemy paul leader of the green party i'm not gonna miss a beat enemy paul leader of the green party um it's what i'm saying that i'm sure she says it that way too just to ensure that people understand she's the leader of the group because they just

Carter 36:14

just released another video from elizabeth may today so it's hard to keep track of who's the actual leader of the green party that's why it's

Zain 36:21

it's enemy paul she's leader of the green party are you sure are

Carter 36:24

are you sure i feel

Zain 36:25

she's getting a lot of free PR from me. So Carter, enemy Paul, leader of the Green Party, says she is going to stay in Toronto to campaign for her seat and some neighboring seats. She's, of course, also the leader of the National Party, and they have zero seats in Toronto. Of course, they're vying for her seat and a few others there.

Zain 36:45

Fine, fabulous, or fucked? What do you think? Is this good strategy for her? Is this bad strategy for her? Fine, fabulous, or fucked for enemy Paul saying, at least in the early days, she's going to stick it around in Toronto. I don't need to go anywhere. Yeah,

Carter 36:56

Yeah, I mean, this would be fabulous if she had a chance in Toronto. This would be fine if she didn't need to campaign across the rest of the country. But it is fucked because they have two seats in British Columbia they have to hold on to. She needs to be where the seats are, where the possible victories lie. And I just don't think that, you know, the three or four neighboring seats around Toronto Centre are going to get it done for her. So she's fucked

Carter 37:22

fucked if she thinks that this is an actual strategy. This may be, however, the only strategy that's available to the party because they've pissed away a couple hundred grand on lawsuits trying to, you know, get her removed as the leader of the party. So I don't know. I mean, how fucked can one party be, Zane? How fucked? Like, can we hit another level? Can it be ultra fucked?

Zain 37:44

fucked? No, there's fine, fabulous. We don't do degrees of fucked. We don't do that. that uh you know uh cory cory hogan enemy paul leader of the green party uh as she's officially known is saying she's staying in toronto to campaign fine fabulous or fucked uh for you oh

Corey 37:59

oh well it's fucked they ended up here but i think the strategy itself is fine touched on it as he was going through it's the only strategy she has available right now you got to think where is the green party and what is the general order of things when you're a party trying to get seats in the house of commons right step one get your leader elected step two get a couple of more seats we all thought we were on step two or even 2a for

Corey 38:23

green party previous to the the madness that has been the green party's last few months but um it's clear to me we're not we are back in okay how does the green party survive this election they are back to step one and so they need to get their leader elected or

Corey 38:39

or or hold seats i suppose at the very least have their individual seats and i think given the past couple of months if you're enemy paul why in the world do you go down in flames to protect the green party that didn't protect you and your mps so it's it's really unfortunate it's really shitty but it's the only strategy available to us she's got to win that seat in toronto to stand a snowball's chance in hell and if she does manage to do it she has a new lease on life with the party so fuck

Corey 39:05

fuck they end up here but what

Corey 39:07

what else would you ask her to do i mean she's not going to be a martyr for this organization but

Carter 39:11

but she's going to be even if she wins toronto center there is no way that this executive is going to let this go the

Carter 39:17

the executive should have resigned several months ago they didn't they're going to continue to push this what happens i mean play that play your assumption all the way to the end corey you're assuming that if she wins toronto center the leader has a seat what i think is she wins toronto center which is let's put it

Carter 39:32

not going to happen but let's just pretend that she can win toronto center she wins toronto center and then she becomes an independent mp uh with a group you know because the party's going to fuck her over anyways because that's where the party is i'm

Zain 39:46

i'm gonna leave that one there let's move it on to our next one cory i want to start with you you talked about the panic buttons let's distill a few of those for trudeau for trudeau the strategy of wedging on abortion it's a classic liberal move that we have seen i don't know how many elections in a row i i think i can safely say at least two maybe maybe three but cory uh trudeau on abortion as a strategy i'll be very clear as a strategy on wedge fine fabulous or fucked it's

Corey 40:15

it's fine but you need to know if you're the liberal party each time you go to this well it becomes less effective and certainly as we talked about at the start if people start to get the sense that this is all just political calculation and not something that you're worried about something that you strongly believe it can actually dilute the effectiveness of your actual wedges you know you almost it's too much right it's it's kind of a standard message discipline thing what are the things people actually matter matter about or

Corey 40:40

or care about talk about them don't uh don't talk about everything because you're diluting your own message so in that list that we had which included guns abortion vaccines and now health care which ones are actually going to be moving votes federally at a certain point i get the strategy of let's just tar this fellow with as much as possible but i don't i don't know it's going to work that way i think they would have been better off focusing on one or two the other thing is, you

Corey 41:06

know, we are in an actual pandemic right now. And I think Canadians might react poorly if they start feeling that the

Corey 41:14

the Liberals are acting in a truly cynical nature on the question of vaccines in particular, especially if it looks like it might backfire and make the situation worse, like if it charges the matter in a way

Corey 41:25

deeply unfortunate. And I guess I'll just sort of editorialize a bit and say my own personal opinion is these are complicated Complicated matters. I tend to, my personal opinion is I err on the side of vaccine mandates, because I think that it's not such an egregious violation of your liberties. But let's not pretend that it's so simple. Let's not pretend it's so simple. Let's not pretend that there aren't, you know, rural ridings, rural areas of this country, indigenous areas of this country that are fly in, fly out, that will now have, you will have to be vaccinated in order to get on a plane to

Corey 41:56

to go to them or leave them. Right?

Corey 41:58

That's complicated. Do we really not think that there's complications involved in that? Do we really not think that we need to think through how we might have exemptions? Similarly, there are religious peoples out there who do not want to get vaccinated. Are we really going to say, no, you got to do it anyways? I mean, that's a pretty extreme step. You know, even during World War II, conscription, all of those things, very existential fights. We didn't say, no, you must. There were always exemptions for these kinds of things. So I

Corey 42:25

I guess I just don't like the righteous absolutism of the liberal approaches here. And I wonder if that won't be true of other Canadians as well, as they continue to think it's also black and white, also cut and dry, particularly on issues like vaccines. Carter,

Zain 42:39

Carter, I'm going to ask you very simply, Trudeau on abortions, Corey has given you an analysis on the strategy as it relates to your opinion, fine, fabulous or fucked, this wedge on abortion that they are trying to place at the feet of the conservatives.

Carter 42:52

think it's fucked. I think that, you know, today leveling up to include private health care was a much stronger positioning. You know, the I

Carter 43:03

don't know, I like to think that the abortion issue has been settled in Canada. We had a conservative government for how long under Stephen Harper that didn't touch the issue. I'm not sure that a conservative government under Aaron O'Toole would touch the issue. I think he's far more susceptible on privatized health care. I think he's far more endangered by climate change. Those types of issues, you know, Corey's point, choose one or two. You can get abortion under health care if you need to. You can get abortion, you know, but you can focus on a couple or three issues. You know, I've expanded it from Corey's one or two. I think you expand it to two or three and just go after them. um your

Carter 43:45

your guns in urban areas are something you can you can absolutely win on that costs you very little in the because you you lose a tremendous amount in the rural but that doesn't really matter to you um so guns climate change health care i probably would focus on and then do subs on those save

Zain 44:01

save your thoughts on health care i'm going to ask you about it in a second in my upcoming question but let's let's spend a few seconds on this you know often as part of this strategist podcast bible that we have written one of the headlines you guys often talk about is you never fight the last race, right? I think we mentioned as late as last episode, I believe, Corey, you'd mentioned some derivative of that regarding O'Toole, that he's not doing that based on what you're seeing, that he's not just going back to the well of old-time conservative strategies. How do you decipher, based on what we're seeing with Trudeau here, between tried to true tested wedges and what you guys have mentioned as a cautionary tale of fighting the last battle? And maybe I'm taking us down a little bit of an abstract path for a second, but I would love to kind of discuss that, because this abortion conversation can be viewed as either of the two, that it's been, it's three elections old, and what the fuck are we doing still here? Or it's tried, tested, and true, and these guys haven't adopted their stance, i.e. the conservatives, and it's still a solid wedge to go on. Carter, maybe I'll start with you. How do you view it between the distinction of, are we running the old race, or is this just what you got to do and you do it often and early as much as you can because these guys fucking fall for it every time yeah

Carter 45:15

yeah i mean let's not let's not you

Carter 45:17

you know mis equate running the old race with with painting your you know with the tactic of painting your um your opposition with a particular color or a particular negative right uh if you can still hold a negative that's not necessarily running the last race right like it's not necessarily running the last election the the negatives that existed last time are probably the place that you want to start this time um but

Carter 45:41

you want to make sure that you're not trying to run the exact same playbook um so if if abortion works privatized to health care if you know tools giving you something different than than sheer gave you each of those things doesn't necessarily put you into the category of running the same race uh it depends on how you use them after you've brought them forward um you

Carter 46:03

you know this is actually one of the interesting things that the polling has given you an opportunity to do and that is to go negative earlier uh traditionally like if they still got their 10 point lead they wouldn't be going negative and i think that that's where they're actually showing uh adaptability not necessarily kind of a interesting a prescriptive element towards um just running the same race the the polling has given them the opportunity to go negative now go negative now i'm

Carter 46:28

i'm not sure that's the same race i think that that's actually responding to the race that they're seeing in front of them that's

Zain 46:33

that's a helpful nuance and distinction cory i want to give you the same opportunity if you want to add to carter's thoughts here well

Corey 46:37

well i just go back to the more you use these things the less effective they ultimately will be because people become numb to them it's like um when

Corey 46:45

when when we were kids terry's chocolate oranges they were only available at christmas yes

Corey 46:49

i would always look forward to them i'd be like that's great i love that thing and then they were available year round i don't think i've had one in the past decade as a result like it's not a special thing i don't care uh It's just become part of the background. You know, I could get one at any time, but who cares to? And this is just human nature. The more we're exposed to something, the less unique it is, the less of a charge it carries, the less I care about it. And the liberals have to be careful that they're not going to this well so often that it stops scaring people. They don't get that visceral reaction. Oh, my God, they might do what? Oh, my God, they might do what? Yeah, I've heard that before. Yeah, I've heard that before. Yeah, I've heard that before. Whatever. ever. It's something that you can, it's like everything we've gone through in the past 18 months with COVID, right? What seemed just absolutely shocking to us when we first had to walk around with masks and who cares? Yeah,

Corey 47:35

it's still shocking. It's still horrifying that we're in a pandemic and it's requiring us to take these extreme measures.

Corey 47:42

But we don't notice it anymore. And that's the thing the liberals have to be careful with. Carter,

Zain 47:46

Carter, I'm going to go to you on healthcare, private healthcare using Krista Freeland's Twitter account posting a clip from July of 2020, Aaron O'Toole doing a webinar conversation where he's asked around his commitment to private health care and a question regarding letting the provinces experiment with private delivery and privatized health care. The Liberals putting that out today as a short clip, which they got criticized for, for taking out of context, but also in the same thread, the larger clip and interview as a strategy, maybe less as a tactic, but as a strategy hitting the the private healthcare lane, so to speak, Carter.

Zain 48:22

Fine, fabulous, or fucked? I

Carter 48:23

I think it's fabulous. I think that it is a differentiation between the two parties. I always marvel at how private our system already is. Virtually every doctor's office across the country is a private enterprise, and no one's talking about changing that. It is, you know, there's a tremendous amount of privatization within the existing system, but we don't talk about it. But I think that O'Toole

Carter 48:48

O'Toole saying what he said is an opportunity for the Liberals to go after him. And, you know, even the prime minister himself today has taken him to task, I think, while he was in New Brunswick. So this to me feels like a fabulous tactic. I think that if they're still talking about private health care next Sunday, you

Carter 49:06

you know, Corey's point about beating a dead horse, you can bring this back and it will be fucked. But for right now, it feels it feels pretty fabulous. Corey,

Zain 49:14

Corey, same question to you. Fine, fabulous or fucked? Team Trudeau on private health care against O'Toole.

Corey 49:19

Yeah, I think when you look at polling, not even in this moment, but in general over several decades, Canadians will often say health care is their top issue. Lots of discussion as to whether they actually believe that or it's just something that they know they're supposed to say. But regardless, health care is something that keeps us up at night, quite literally. We worry about our loved ones. We worry about ourselves if we're in those situations. situations and so this is a an area that probably is going to bear more fruit than than some of the more esoteric things that the liberals could have potentially gone out on here it is of course a

Corey 49:51

provincial jurisdiction the federal government has the canada health act and the federal government writes big checks to the provinces on this matter and so i wonder how i do wonder if it would have the same effect as if it were a premier or a candidate for premier who said it i'm not entirely sure about that i haven't really kind of processed it enough as you said it's sort of new I will say on a policy point of view, Stephen's right. There's a lot of private delivery of health care right now. And in general, Canadians, we

Corey 50:18

we tend to think of universally paid, universally accessible, publicly paid. But a lot of what happens underneath does involve some sort of private delivery. So I don't know. It is something that will hurt Erin O'Toole, I believe, because people worry about this. How much is TBD?

Zain 50:39

let's move on to our next one cory i'm going to start with you let's talk about jagmeet singh he was in kawasas first nations visiting the unmarked graves they're the first leader to visit an indigenous um area in this in this election thus far we know that that conversation on reconciliation and pairing closely with it racial equity in this country is not the top of the list but it's near there for Canadians in terms of polling. From a strategy perspective, Jagmeet Singh, making this move, fine, fabulous, or fucked in your mind?

Corey 51:12

It's fabulous, and it's kind of fucked at the other parties. It's been a week in and haven't managed to get out to a First Nation community to take a similar approach here. It is an issue I think that the Trudeau Liberals are particularly vulnerable on. Their record on Indigenous reconciliation is not what it was billed to be in 2015. right

Corey 51:32

right when we talk about clean drinking water in general when we talk about support for first nation communities the liberals have have failed to live up to the hype so to speak and it's something that as you've noted is an issue that is

Corey 51:45

is in the limelight right now canadians are thinking about it rightly so as we grapple with uh our history so i think it's from a politics point of view a really smart move because it is a clear i mean i would it's not a wedge in the a sense that I think Justin Trudeau wouldn't take an opposite approach, but it is a point of contrast with

Corey 52:05

with the Justin Trudeau liberals and their record over the past few years that will serve Jagmeet Singh well as he goes after center-left voters. Carter,

Zain 52:14

Carter, same question to you. Jagmeet Singh visiting the graves of the residential schools in Saskatchewan. Political strategy, that's what we talk about. From that perspective, fine, fabulous, or fucked in your mind?

Carter 52:24

Fabulous. I think that that there's a real possibility that the NDP really solidify the young progressive vote. They can steal from the Green Party significantly with the mess that we just discussed. They can pull from the left wing of the Liberal Party by doing this type of tactic. And I think that Singh has really dug into being the party of youth, being the party that cares about the progressive issue and that group of people that is is kind of, you know, a little bit too woke for my liking, but they're becoming more significant in their numbers. And he has been able to strike the right tone where this

Carter 53:05

this kind of a, forgive me for this, but this kind of a crass political action could very much backfired on someone else. Oh,

Zain 53:12

interesting. You think it's because of who he is that he's able to do this?

Carter 53:16

I think it's because he's been very authentic on this issue, and he's been very authentic on, I mean, I mean, he's obviously very authentic on visible minority issues and he's he's also authentic on young people issues. This he is potentially the most authentic leader of any of the political parties. And that's

Carter 53:33

that's interesting because he wasn't earlier. And to to change that and to become more more

Carter 53:40

more connected through the medium that you're using and the media that you're getting is

Carter 53:45

is really hard. And so I'm I'm

Carter 53:48

I'm pretty impressed. I think this is a pretty fabulous tactic.

Zain 53:51

You know, there's something to be said about Jagmeet Singh, where in 19, he was trying to keep the seats that Mulcair had, you know, ultimately garnered for them. Now he kind of is running free, right? He can kind of be more of himself. There's like really nothing to lose. Go where you want, message what you want. You don't have to do, you know, the hardcore pandering to save the Quebec seats. He still might. I don't know exactly where he's going to land on things like 21 and other things in Quebec. Carter, you got your hand up before I move on. I'll let you jump in. If the

Carter 54:16

the NDP removes itself from the stupid cycle that the conservatives are in, where they're always looking for the next best person, if they dig in and they say that Singh is going to be their leader for a decade or plus, like Ed Broadbent, like Jack Layton, this guy could define the new democratic movement for a generation. And if he

Carter 54:39

he does that, then it's going to be very, very difficult to form a majority government in Canada, which may or may not be great for politics, but it's great for the NDP. It's Ed Broadbent-like

Zain 54:53

-like to me. It's an interesting point around cult of personality and maybe even as an extension of cult of authenticity. He can kind of stitch together a long-term coalition in some ways. Corey, do you want to jump in on this before I move on to our next question? Still on Jagmeet Singh, but do you want to talk about this before I jump on? I

Corey 55:08

think Carter had a good point, which is that if Justin Trudeau had shown up on day one to a First Nation community or Aaron O'Toole, the media would have been much more cynical. And this is something that Jagmeet Singh earned. And it's a good example of what we talk about when we talk about establishing yourself outside of a campaign and creating that equity you can use inside of a campaign. pain.

Zain 55:29

Corey, let's move it on to our next one. This one also on Jagmeet Singh. He says that his NDP will crack down on rent evictions, effectively financializations against big landlords from jacking up rents, in addition to providing 5k in rent help, which can go towards rent for those who have less who spend more than 30% of their income on rent. That money can go towards rent or other related costs for individuals in precarious situations. Corey, for you, as a suite of policies on housing for Jagmeet Singh, according to the rental vote, fine, fabulous, or fucked from what you see?

Corey 56:05

I think it's fucked, but it's not uniquely fucked. It's something that all of the parties are falling into in different ways. I will say, when I first saw this policy yesterday, bereft of the details, like if you have to be paying more than 30% of your salary towards renting, I was horrified.

Corey 56:21

horrified. I basically hit the roof. I was ranting on Twitter. I thought it was just a horrible policy that was going to do nothing but make landlords' lives better because then they would have an excuse to raise rents on people. Knowing it's means-tested helps because there are ways you can provide rental supports. I still think it's a fairly crass policy. I still think it's not a good policy because ultimately what it is, is it's paying people more money to deal with. Okay. Let's put it this way. If the NDP's hypothesis is landlords are acting in a way that's not market force driven, but it's just kind of shady,

Corey 56:56

then why are we giving people money to deal with that problem? Because that money then goes to the landlords. That's, that's fucking crazy. That's just rewarding the people who are acting badly. And if it is not about that, And if you don't believe that, if you believe that actually this is just market forces at play and they're driving people out of the market, then

Corey 57:12

then you've got to tackle the problem from a supply point of view. And you don't do that by creating all of these penalties on people who are building buildings, because as much as you can say they're building these elite, fancy rental units. Well, you know who fills those people who are in lower quality rental units before, which creates spaces around there. And I just, you know, in general, I think that all of the political parties have just absolutely brutal

Corey 57:36

brutal approaches to housing and housing affordability in this country. It's funny, it actually

Corey 57:43

last episode, I was saying, hey, when we talk about affordability, this is an example of how you can create inflation in a housing market. And I talked about how they made it easier to buy houses, which will drive prices up. This is not dissimilar on the rental side. And all of these parties need to stop.

Corey 57:57

stop. stop. And as I know that the NDP would say, this is a bridge towards more supply, and this is our approach to more supply, but that is government created supply of a finite amount. And if you are going to break the market's ability to provide supply, you are going to regret that. It's already pretty difficult to build rental units in areas like Vancouver with all sorts of nimbyism in these lower density communities becoming higher. You

Corey 58:18

You are going to exacerbate that problem.

Zain 58:21

Carter, same question. So you find Fabulous Reflects a sink suite of policies on rent evictions, 5k in rent help and of course to cory's point you know having government uh provided supply 500k is what they've promised in affordable housing it's

Carter 58:35

it's fucked squared um

Carter 58:36

um it's fucked squared because there are two there are two problems that there are two problems that deserve to be addressed in this uh the first is poverty right so there's they're equating poverty to paying 30 of your rental first of all not everybody who's impoverished is a renter um it so it does you know it's a it's It's a fake kind of attempt to deal with poverty. If you want to deal with poverty, then you should develop a poverty strategy, not a housing strategy. And the second is affordable housing, which, again, Corey and I are both on the same side of this issue. We both think that there should be more affordable housing. This does not create more affordable housing. And the fact that you've got another policy on another page of your policy book that says, don't worry, we're going to create affordable housing, just create the affordable housing. Don't fuck up everything else. And this makes things worse, not better, times two, or, you know, squared. I think that if you want to deal with poverty, you should deal with poverty. If you want to deal with affordable housing, you should deal with affordable housing. This messes with both sides of it, and it doesn't make things better, except for potentially the people who get $5,000 checks, which, to

Carter 59:42

to be honest, this strikes me as, vote for us, we're going to send you five grand. And that just pisses me off as an election professional. This is Ralph Bucks, but times 10 for a very small group of people.

Zain 59:58

Carter, last question. I'm going to start with you. O'Toole saying that he is doing a 100-day contract with Quebec. In the first 100 days, they get their own immigration controls. He'll help with Bill 101. Federalism will be a partnership. I'm just off the top of the dome listing some of these things. But he's got a deal with Quebec. First 100 days of a conservative slash O'Toole government. Here's what you're going to get from me. He seems to be in the soup with Justin Trudeau trying to compete in the same lane. What do you think? Fine, fabulous or fucked with this strategy with O'Toole on Quebec? I

Carter 1:00:34

think it's fabulous, actually. I think that you've got to have a strategy to get into Quebec, and it has to be unique

Carter 1:00:42

unique and it has to be bold. This is unique. It is bold. I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not in Quebec. I'm not going to tell you how the average Quebecer is responding to it, but it does fit the criteria of being unique and strong and different, and that's probably a pretty fabulous strategy. strategy.

Zain 1:01:01

Corey, same question to you. The 100-day contract slash promise that O'Toole is making to Quebec, fine, fabulous, or fucked?

Corey 1:01:11

I don't know. I'm going to say it's fine. We'll see how it is. Like Stephen, I don't have a great sense of how these things will land in Quebec. Obviously, the election is very much between the liberals and the bloc in most ridings. But

Corey 1:01:21

But he is swinging for the fences in Quebec. He's throwing everything he can. And in many ways, of

Corey 1:01:29

of course, he is. This is how you get a majority government. And the Conservatives historically have only had those available to them when there's a solid Quebec strategy and a solid Quebec contingent. This is going to be interesting to see, however, what kind of consequences this might have in other avenues and whether he'll be dealing with increased noise from his base as a result of some of this. Let's

Zain 1:01:51

Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, the elevator ride campaign strategy, Steven Carter, Corey Hogan, you drive into the parkade in your 2005 Toyota Camry Sport Edition with its anti-lock brakes. You park on the on P5 because you're late for your meeting with the meetings with Carter's lawyers. Yeah, he said something again. Yeah, you're traveling to the 55th floor. And just before you get into the elevator, Aaron O'Toole steps in with you. He says, oh, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, my mirror image, Stephen Carter, idiot savant Corey Hogan. Thank you so much for being here. I have a quick question. I'm about to go see my advisors on the 54th floor. We have very easy access to lawyers as well up at the 55th. But listen, I need to tell you, I need some advice. What should I be doing? You're seeing what my first week looked like. We're now at Sunday evening. You're seeing your lawyers. I'm going to go meet my campaign team for my evening meeting. Put a bug in my ear. What should I be thinking about in the week ahead? What is my elevator ride, 30-second campaign strategy? Corey, I want to start with you. What do you tell Aaron O'Toole if you have an elevator ride with him tonight, heading into his campaign, meeting with his crew, and heading to Carter's legal appointments, which you accompany him at every legal appointment, just so we're all clear that everyone knows that?

Corey 1:03:13

I think it was a pretty good week for Aaron O'Toole, and I would say as much to him. There was a good launch with the platform. Obviously, he continues to be dogged by liberal wedge issues, as we saw today. They don't seem to be having the desired effect. There's an opportunity to just maybe

Corey 1:03:31

maybe paint it as part of a broader liberal cynicism. It's the same cynicism that brought us this election, the same cynicism that's brought you every kind of out-of-context quote you could possibly imagine, the same cynicism that has them pretending there's policy differences between my reasoned vaccine approach and their vaccine approach. This is what you get with the Liberals. It's not driven by a desire to make Canada better. It's a desire to make their caucus bigger. And we can't have that. We need politics to be driven by more than that. It needs to be driven by principles. principles and in in some ways my big advice to him would be don't don't overdo it in this first bit you don't want to seem scary to people the liberals benefit when it's uh when it's a big clash of civilizations election so keep the lens as much as possible on justin trudeau throw things back to justin trudeau talk about how he's doing these things because he's worried about the support he's bleeding to the ndp liberal seats are going to flip to ndp this is what's causing justin trudeau to stay up at night and see if you can't get that gap between the liberals and the the NDP a little bit closer, make it a little bit harder for the liberals to make their traditional call for NDP voters that's going to come later in the election here. It looks like the conservative vote is pretty solid in both a good sense and a bad sense.

Corey 1:04:44

Trudeau has gone down. You haven't really gone up that much, and you've got a long way to go to a majority. So in some ways, this is a triangulation, and you need to make sure that the liberals have just as much of a problem with the left as they do with the right. Right.

Zain 1:04:57

Carter, he turns to you. This is a very slow elevator. It's the slowest elevator. Yeah.

Carter 1:05:02

Yeah. Is this being powered by my pulling on a rope? Is this how we're getting to the 50th

Zain 1:05:06

50th floor? He says my doppelganger laid on me. What else do I need to know? What else should I be thinking about? Give me a campaign strategy going forward. Tell me what I need to hear.

Carter 1:05:17

If you want to be successful, this should be an election about simple and safe change.

Carter 1:05:21

Simple and safe change is what Canadians want. They want to shift back and forth. I mean, I think that you want to mirror what happened in Nova Scotia, where you switch between two parties that were relatively similar to one another. And there's no consequence, right? There's no scary elements to it. So you want simple and safe change. And that should be the metric of your entire campaign structure. We have a strong strategy on health care. We have a strong strategy on climate change. We have a strong strategy on getting this economy moving again. And that's what we really need. So simple,

Carter 1:05:55

simple, safe, change, push

Carter 1:05:58

push back as you're doing, because I think there's a tremendous opportunity to be successful if you stay. I mean, I would even probably change my slogan to simple, safe change. Well, maybe not the simple part. because uh okay that's good you're yeah i'm done now okay

Zain 1:06:15

let's uh let's move on to our next segment our next segment our over under and our lightning round steven carter we do it for you and we're going to start quick daily tracking polls overrated or underrated steven carter what do you think national

Carter 1:06:26

national david daily tracking polls overrated

Zain 1:06:29

overrated daily tracking over overrated

Carter 1:06:30

overrated you need you need to have tracking polls in the regions that matter cory

Zain 1:06:34

cory national daily tracking polls Carter's modified my question for me, overrated or underrated?

Corey 1:06:40

As overrated as daily podcasts about the election.

Carter 1:06:43

Exactly. Corey's exactly, Corey is more right than I am.

Zain 1:06:50

Corey, I'm going to stick with you. Opposition research, not on the leader, but on individual candidates, overrated or underrated. What I'm not seeing this time that we've seen in previous cycles is both parties competing to just pick off candidates and ensure that they have, Carter, what do we call them in Alberta bozo eruptions that power off and kind of pick off certain candidates so that by the actual filing deadline, you have some candidates down. Corey, in your mind, opple on candidates in particular, overrated or underrated?

Corey 1:07:21

think they're underrated because we do anticipate this could be an election that comes down to a couple of seats. And we have lots

Corey 1:07:27

lots of examples of a candidate having to be pulled that just forsakes that running as a result for the party that was contesting it um ultimately national narratives are about driving local success and this is just a way to immediately affect local success carter

Zain 1:07:42

carter same question to you oppo on candidates overrated or underrated underrated

Carter 1:07:45

underrated with one proviso you must be able to connect that that that failing

Carter 1:07:52

failing with the party right so the pea in the cup type of candidate oppo doesn't really matter that much much it's the it's except we

Zain 1:08:00

we remember it for like years yeah

Corey 1:08:03

yeah but we don't think that but that's

Corey 1:08:04

conservatives are the pee in the cup part yeah

Carter 1:08:06

yeah oh yeah i mean that's exactly why i would never vote for them because they're all peeing cups right like the the the sexist the racist the the idea that that that brands

Zain 1:08:17

brands the party yeah

Carter 1:08:18

yeah that if you can brand the party with the negative then that is completely underrated trudeau

Zain 1:08:23

trudeau with his kids and family walking to rito hall Paul O'Toole with his kids on the tarmac looking at fighter Jack Jagmeet Singh and his pregnant wife getting baby books on the campaign trail. Stephen Carter, family on the campaign trail, overrated or underrated?

Carter 1:08:41

Underrated. I mean, people we talked about this last time. People like to see themselves represented and they want to have an empathetic connection with people. I really think that Singh's pregnant wife, you know, tremendous opportunity, which makes me sound so crass, but I don't give a fuck. Fuck, I am crass. It is a tremendous opportunity.

Zain 1:08:59

Corey, overrated, underrated. Can underrated seems like the conventional answer? I'm trying to push you to give me the unconventional answer. It's

Corey 1:09:06

It's dumb. It's pointless. The benefit insofar as I see a benefit is actually more of an internal one. It's that you are involving your family in a thing that's important to you. And family dynamics on a campaign are difficult. These are long, grueling times. Who gives a flying fuck whether

Corey 1:09:22

whether they're standing next to them in a news conference? That's

Zain 1:09:25

That's what O'Toole told his kid about the fighter jet, by the way, just so you know. You want to see that fighter jet? It gives a flying fuck. And it was a clippable moment. Corey, I'm going to stick with you, Corey. Ford and Trudeau seem to have at least, I believe it's political reporting. I do want to give credit. I might credit the wrong news outlet, but who cares? Ford and Trudeau have a moratorium of sorts. We're not a journalistic podcast, Corey. They have a moratorium, apparently, that they're going to have a non-aggression pact against each other, which is different than the story of 2019 when of course Trudeau was also creating a wedge salad and using Ford as one of those wedges against Scheer what do you think of this a moratorium where they won't attack each other during the next what 30 some odd days overrated underrated in your mind Corey for

Zain 1:10:09

I actually don't yeah interesting go

Corey 1:10:12

I don't know that it helps the liberals it usually they do well with having a conservative opponent in Ontario that they can can fight with. As Stephen Carter talked about this in terms of, I win either way, I get the fight. You either give me the deal or you give me the fight. Well, guess what Justin Trudeau's going to get? Neither the deal nor the fight. So I actually don't think it's a particularly savvy move by the liberals per se. Maybe they're just trying to keep the number of fronts down, but why? Carter?

Zain 1:10:38

Overrated, underrated. Give me your take.

Carter 1:10:41

I'm going back to the other one. It's It's fucked.

Carter 1:10:44

You know, you want to fight with Ford. You want Ford to be equal to O'Toole. You want to equate Jason Kenney to O'Toole. You want to take unpopular politicians and connect them with your opposition. That is the game. You don't sign non-aggression pacts with the other guy. That's just fucking

Carter 1:11:03

fucking dumb. So, you know, yeah,

Zain 1:11:10

carter final question for you as we wrap up end of the week week one done which federal party leader do you want to be at the end of week one enemy

Carter 1:11:21

enemy paul uh you know she's really got a great chance there you

Zain 1:11:25

enemy paul leader of the green party leader of the green party i i

Carter 1:11:28

i think that uh i

Carter 1:11:31

don't know like you know i mean obviously not her uh i mean what the the fuck i mean like trudeau uh maybe because i'd like to you know have hair like that mostly you

Zain 1:11:43

i got cory carter has uh he's

Zain 1:11:46

he's he's he's left his best on the floor we could tell this is uh this is like uh my better answer was

Carter 1:11:51

was the one before this

Zain 1:11:52

this is a so winded tyson chandler in the fourth quarter deep type there uh

Zain 1:11:58

are you laughing at you don't even know what that means Oh,

Carter 1:12:00

I thought winded meant farty. Sorry, that was my own. I just assumed it was a fart joke. Yeah. Jesus

Zain 1:12:07

Christ. Corey, end of the week, which federal party leader do you want to be?

Corey 1:12:12

I like being Jagmeet Singh still, same as Thursday. I really did not like the rental thing kind of on a personal policy level. I don't think, actually, you know what, I will say this. I think it was his first real misstep. I think it will scare moderate voters who might be shopping around for a Justin Trudeau alternative because he might have to be explaining ah, it's at the 30%. And then people say, well, why not us? And why not us? And the more details you have, the more questions you'll have. But if you don't provide the details, it just seems like a total ignorance of economics. They could have done without this $5,000 renter thing. That said, when you look at the polls, he seems to be, you know, in a couple of the tracking, he's dipped a bit. But if you step back, he's doing okay. And my understanding of some of the regionals is he's kicking ass and taking names in some of the urban markets, particularly with with the demographics Stephen Carter has talked about being potential

Corey 1:12:59

potential targets for the NDP, that's got to scare the bejesus out of the liberals. And the person I do not want to be right now is Justin Trudeau, because imagine

Corey 1:13:08

imagine a scenario where on September 21st you are, well,

Corey 1:13:12

well, you'll still technically be prime minister, but you're no longer going to be the prime minister because of an election that you called that nobody was asking for and you had total free reign as a minority parliament prime minister.

Zain 1:13:25

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on Episode 937 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we'll see you next time.

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