Episode 940: Dinner Party

Corey 0:01

This is Les Stratégies, episode 940. My name is Corey Hogan. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Zain Velji. Gentlemen, what's going on?

Zain 0:28

on the screen. I have no idea what they said. Carter, please, you have never let the facts or reality get in the way of analysis. What did you think of the TVA debate en français?

Carter 0:45

I'm not going to lie to you, Zane. I didn't watch it. I was busy doing other things, and I didn't care.

Carter 0:52

But I will watch

Corey 0:54

This is not our finest moment as a national podcast, I have to tell you.

Corey 1:00

what stuff said that really matters cory

Zain 1:03

cory i don't think did you watch it uh

Corey 1:04

uh yeah so i was putting my kids to bed so i only caught bits of it and i i tried to kind of keep on top of it online yeah as well it

Corey 1:14

probably not earth-shattering there were a couple of yikes moments people talked about like blanche talking about me

Corey 1:19

me too effectively yeah which i which i didn't catch live but i saw some analysis on it sounds like it was a pretty tame affair it doesn't sound like O'Toole stepped on his own dick, which made him better than Andrew Scheer in the French language debates. Back

Zain 1:33

Back in 19. And it seems like from the analysis that there was no moment like 2011, which kind of put Jack Layton, maybe not on the map, but set him on a course or a trajectory to make huge gains as well.

Corey 1:47

Well, you know, it's one of these things, though. I can't tell. I have to tell you, I

Corey 1:51

I often watch a debate thinking it went one way, but the analysis just rolls a a different way. And one of the important things to keep in mind with these debates always is it's not just what happens in the moment, it's how that moment is interpreted afterwards, and how things get packaged, and how well they're packaged, and how those package moments meet the general moment that we're within. So tough to say, no

Corey 2:13

no shortage of lines that you could pull. Another Blanchet moment was apparently where he was lecturing Singh about racism, which sounds awesome, but I missed that one as well. Hey,

Zain 2:22

Hey, Carter, can I talk to you about packaged moments? Corey brings up an interesting point. Has this campaign just been really shitty for packaged moments? Like I think of certain things that should have been moments that just haven't gotten packaged and distributed the way that we've seen in previous campaigns. Am I totally off? Or are you sensing the same?

Zain 2:44

I don't know if it's if just all the campaigns are off in some ways.

Carter 2:48

I'm not sure that it's It's the campaign's fault. I think that the campaigns are trying to package, but no one's buying right now. I think that, you know, we've talked a few times that there's

Carter 2:56

there's a hyper-engaged set of people. I mean, the media leads that level of hyper-engaged, and people like us are part of that hyper-engagement, paying attention and, you

Carter 3:05

you know, retweeting and recirculating the memes and the packaged goods from the campaigns. But I just don't think that people are turned on yet. They're not. And we saw some data from that. I can't remember which of the pollsters was talking about that. But basically,

Carter 3:19

basically, there was a pollster that was asking, like, how much are you paying attention? And the answer is not much. And I expect that it will turn on later. And that's hilarious. Keep in mind that the big group of people that are saying that they're not paying attention are the ones that actually answered the telephone or are on their computer doing the survey. So that's a great

Carter 3:40

How much people are turned on, I think, is probably more of a factor than the packaged moments that are coming out of the debates or they're coming out of. I mean, we've seen some some pretty big mess ups already from various party leaders. They've been packaged. They've been pushed out. But people aren't aren't circulating them the way that we would expect.

Zain 3:59

Well, we'll jump into a few of those in the headlines, but might as well make that segue. way let's move it on to the headlines and our first one comes to us from strategist media the

Zain 4:09

the hill time sucks ass uh this is of course a headline uh that has been written by uh strategist media yours truly uh cory hogan um as the co-author of this piece steven carter i'll come to you as lead researcher uh but cory as as co-author of this piece do you want to tee up why the hill times Hilltimes at $7.43 a week success.

Corey 4:34

Now, I, of course, had never heard of the Hilltimes before this was brought to my attention. I understand that it is some sort of blog that exists in the region of Eastern Canada that talks about some

Corey 4:45

matters that are paywalled. Avid fans of the strategists did let us know that there was a list of political podcasts in Canada. But I didn't see the list because it was paywalled. And apparently we're not on it. You know, it's no big. We are the second most popular political podcast in the country, like always. But no problem. Just skip us. It's fine.

Corey 5:10

But it is certainly enough, I think, to send people in droves to cancel their Hill

Corey 5:16

Hill Time subscriptions. And I know many listeners, ones

Corey 5:21

ones of listeners will undoubtedly be tweeting at The Hill Times saying, I am canceling my subscription because of your coverage of, or lack

Corey 5:30

thereof, of the Strategist podcast. And

Zain 5:31

And what I'd say is don't let the fact that you don't have a subscription stop you from telling them. Oh, they don't have a clue. Yeah,

Zain 5:38

don't know. Keep them up at night. They have an Excel sheet that they have on an old DOS computer somewhere. That's what they're doing at The Hill Times. Stephen Carter, lead researcher of this piece from Strategist Media about the Hilltimes sucking ass. Do you want to explain some of the rationale behind your research and the findings that you made?

Carter 6:02

Well, like you guys, I mean, shocked to find out that there are actually consumers of the Hilltimes, but even more shocking. And the reason I think we were able to reach the conclusion that the Hilltimes does suck ass is they've interviewed me many times. times so obviously

Corey 6:20

don't get it at all

Carter 6:21

all they don't understand what's going on um and i interviewed is now in the past tense because they will not be interviewing me in the future um they will not get a an interview with this podcast co-host and uh i'm

Carter 6:34

i'm a little disappointed and again like you cory i was unable to uh pierce their paywall um so they should be in fact giving lessons to just about everybody else because i can get past everybody else's paywall but i cannot pierce the hilltimes paywall yeah

Corey 6:48

yeah uh just the private browser trick uh or what i call the mclean special it didn't work it didn't work at all mclean

Zain 6:55

mclean special the pocket chrome extension archive.is nothing gets past the hilltimes they are protecting their incredibly shitty list of podcasts very very i guess they don't want listen people to listen to their shitty podcast which i guess makes sense it's like you know it's like behind this paywall is a mountain of shit you

Corey 7:17

you know what steven two important things to note here one is earlier when you said how much people are turned on depends on more than the package i didn't mention anything and i just didn't want that moment to pass the second thing though is i just googled the hill times and cory hogan and apparently i've been interviewed by them as well oh

Zain 7:36

oh me too multiple times can you google hill times than me and see if i've been interviewed by them i feel like i have but they always say they're going to send me the link but then it never opens because i never do yeah

Corey 7:48

mean stories show up how to watch the u.s election results in canada uh

Corey 7:52

uh not a given harris will be biden's natural successor did you actually talk about the u.s election with the hill times i very well may have that

Zain 7:59

that sounds like something i would do uh that sounds

Carter 8:01

sounds like they think that it's about our other podcasts that it's already dead like

Carter 8:05

like that but they probably listed the other you're

Zain 8:08

you're really don't make excuses for them you've literally published a paper carter and now you're just going back on your research and your findings how

Carter 8:15

how shitty they are because they wouldn't have noticed that the u.s election is over and we stopped doing uh you the people oh

Zain 8:22

let's move it on to our next headline our next headline comes to us from inside edition eating a single Single hot dog may take 36 minutes off your life, study says. Carter, we are talking about the big things. We are talking about hot dogs. Bad news for barbecue lovers and eating competitors alike. Eating a single hot dog may take 36 minutes off your life, according to a new study from the University of Michigan. Get this, Stephen Carter. Other snacks that take away moments of your life. Bacon, six and a half minutes. Pizza, just past seven minutes. Double cheeseburger. Do you want to take a guess?

Carter 8:58

Uh, 13 days, eight

Zain 8:59

eight minutes and eight seconds, 13

Zain 9:04

Stephen Carter, uh, hot dogs have become an incredibly popular part of this show. Uh, mainly, uh, as we have tried to talk about the hot dog to hot dog bun ratio, uh, but is it all now moot as we realize that, uh, eating a single hot dog may take 36 minutes off your life. Now, one thing I will say before you jump in, it does not say what eating just a hot dog wiener takes off your life. We don't know what portion of this is bun and what portion of this is wiener that is eroding life by the minute. So I'll let you jump in on this first. Two

Carter 9:37

Two thoughts. First of all, I think that it's a good trade-off if I could give up the 36 minutes that I've had to spend dealing with people talking about putting their bread in the fridge. If I could get that back, I'd be fine with it. The second thing is, they don't say when this comes off your life. Here's the trick. It comes off at the end of your life. So the 36 minutes you're giving are the 36 minutes you're going to be sitting in your own shit so it doesn't even matter right just let it go it doesn't matter like eat some hot dogs you're giving up the time where you're sitting in your own shit and you don't even know this

Zain 10:09

this is this is confounding kind of like your ndp strategy cory can i can i let

Carter 10:13

let you strategy was money baby it

Zain 10:16

it was celebrated celebrated by three to five people you know one one uh person who didn't celebrate it was the author of the hill times piece because they never listened to our podcast uh cory over to you

Corey 10:26

Well, I mean, either way, I eat like eight at a time, and that's five hours. That's really problematic for me. Joey Chestnut, though, he might have died before he was born, based on these

Carter 10:34

these statistics. Maybe that's how he's able to do it, right? He's just eating so many hot dogs. He's a specter. He's actually dead. Yeah,

Zain 10:42

it's the space-time continuum just goes through itself as he Benjamin Buttons his way through hot dogs. Very nice. Let's move it on to our next headline. Yes, we'll make it political, although a little bit interesting. thing carter it's a package moment this one comes to us from cbc vancouver green party leader enemy paul carter green party leader enemy paul you may remember her uh green party leader enemy paul yeah accidentally endorses the liberal environment plan it was an endorsement justin trudeau and the liberals were probably not expecting at a press conference this afternoon in toronto she didn't actually leave by the way she didn't take your advice carter she didn't travel the country as you'd suggest she would uh green party leader enemy paul appeared to give a thumbs up to the the Liberal climate plan. I'll tell people of Canada that if you want a real plan, one that is going to grow our economy, that is going to put us at the front of the competitive green economy of the future, the only option in this election for you is the Liberals, she said. Now, of course, she was misspeaking, and it was an unfortunate gaffe. But Stephen Carter, package moment. What do you think? What do you make of this? Is this just another unfortunate issue and item for the the green party of canada and perhaps their destiny in the next 17 days being wiped off the face of the electoral map i

Carter 11:58

i mean this is one of those package moments if you asked if they existed and i i watched this package moment and i'll tell you something i'm

Carter 12:04

i'm not convinced it was a gaffe i

Carter 12:06

i was halfway on no seriously come on you're

Corey 12:11

you're insane god okay

Carter 12:13

okay okay let's be clear it was a mistake but i'm not sure that she didn't intend to say liberals it was it was like

Carter 12:21

she she set it all up and then she didn't even fuck

Zain 12:23

fuck you to her party what do you think like tell me tell me why i

Carter 12:27

i don't know i mean she's clearly not good at politics but this was this i you watched her set it up and the way that she said it it wasn't like um you know when i say i I like Corrie and Zane when I meant to say something else. You know, like it appeared to be actually authentic that she thinks that the the liberal because she

Carter 12:47

she set up green, green, green, like the sentence was all structured, green, green, green, green, liberal. Like there's no possible way she forgot the name of the of her party. There's no possible way that she didn't know that she was setting this up. It was all a single sentence structure. And I'm I'm not necessarily convinced it was a gaffe. I mean, it was a mistake, but I don't think she did it by accident.

Zain 13:12

Corey, what do you think?

Corey 13:14

think that would be really wild.

Corey 13:17

I was about to say this is a classic gaffe in classic fashion. We often argue, is something a gaffe or is something not a gaffe? And I was going to say this is so clearly a gaffe. Stephen Carter has thrown a pretty wild conspiracy theory on the table here. I assume that she just wants to blow up her party in these closing minutes. It would be funny if she followed it up with, you know, I slept on it and I think it was a Freudian slip. I think I actually like their plan better. I'm out. Right. The best, the best, the, what

Corey 13:47

what is the worst gaffe you have ever seen? The one that springs to mind for me, this is going to be up there now, but was in 08, on the campaign trail, Joe Biden was trying to like praise a, like a local politician. politician and he says you know this guy here like stand up and take some applause but he's in a wheelchair and he couldn't stand up and he you know oh my

Corey 14:16

like let the people see you come on and

Corey 14:23

uh that was the one

Zain 14:24

i'd never seen it so you having you explain it to me was the first time i got to see it in my mind i think it's probably worse than it okay

Corey 14:35

that's pretty good i mean that was a bad i mean it's pretty bad but

Corey 14:38

but it was ultimately not one about substance this one uh you know implies uh that the very reason your party exists is second to the liberals so hey

Zain 14:48

hey carter what is this is a good question cory brings up what is like the the historic sort of like political what didn't do caucus do something that totally tanked his campaign well he was literally he was

Carter 14:59

was in a tank he

Zain 15:00

in a tank okay that's what i thought you have

Carter 15:02

have um what was his name the guy who did the yeehaws on the stage in the american oh howard

Carter 15:10

mean that was a pretty tragic moment because he was actually getting a little bit of of lift i think that in canadian politics it's probably uh robert stanfield dropping the the football football um

Carter 15:21

um that that was one of those many

Corey 15:24

passes connected but the

Corey 15:26

reporter of course caught the or the photographer got the one that didn't so yeah

Carter 15:30

yeah i mean a symbol

Corey 15:31

symbol for the whole campaign yeah

Carter 15:32

yeah and i think that uh i mean the best the worst debate moment was dan quayles um you know uh dan

Corey 15:39

dan will not knowing how to spell potato that might have been that's what i'm thinking i

Zain 15:43

i was thinking it's quail not ducacus yes it was like a whiteboard or something right is that right blackboard i think blackboard yeah

Corey 15:50

yeah back in the day

Corey 15:50

day zane that's what we used before you kids came in with all of your not wanting to breathe chalk dust didn't didn't change me in car but didn't

Carter 15:58

didn't he get taken to town by what was the the vice presidential campaign that said uh i knew jfk i knew john kennedy said

Corey 16:06

said i was the same age jack kennedy was when he and then he got the you are not jack i mean quail had a couple of those moments he he took more metaphorical footballs to the groin than stanfield dick we'll

Zain 16:20

we'll go from that political story to a palate cleanser from ctv news mounties in bc release image of man wanted for peeing on dairy cream counter after mask dispute guys it is the perfect story for this podcast yeah throughout the rundown everything first of all uh we talked about the hills times this is the contrast this is the from hills to mountains this includes bc see. This includes masking and anti-masking. This includes the spoons at Dairy Queen's and the spoon door handles. Mounties have released a new image of a man who allegedly urinated on the counter for Dairy Queen in Port Alberni, BC, and are asking the public to help identify him. Don't know if he was masked, how they're asking to help identify him. If you get my, catch my drift. The incident was caught on video Saturday by another customer and was shared with CTV News. In the video, the The man has been seen arguing at Dairy Queen staff after they told him that he would have to wear a mask to conform with provincial COVID-19 protocols. The man then unzips his pants to the horror of employees and begins to urinate on the counter and the floor. Crazy story. Terrible story.

Corey 17:29

Corey, jump in first. Oh, I mean, this person is an asshole of the highest caliber. Do they really think that the people who are working at the Port Alberni Dairy Queen, Do they really think that they made this policy and that they are just trying to make their lives miserable? Come on. For all you know, these people disagree with the policy as well. You're such a prick. Who in their right mind would do that? The answer, of course, is nobody in their right mind. This person is not in their right mind. But people have lost the plot. I don't know. I mean, there's always been jackasses and there's always been people who've got to screw loose. But they seem somewhat empowered by the era we find ourselves in. you know what it's really annoying so go ahead and tweet at the hill times and blame them for this too because this is fucking ridiculous yeah

Zain 18:14

yeah carter uh this has all of the elements that we've talked about laid on us what's your take you

Carter 18:22

know what i mean masking to me isn't the reason to do this obviously this is an overreaction uh the only reason you pee at a dairy queen counter is when they are charging you uh four dollars and 39 cents for a peanut at buster parfait jesus

Zain 18:37

jesus christ carter as opposed to what at like what threshold would you not pee on the counter oh

Corey 18:50

it is not cool don't pee anywhere oh

Carter 18:52

oh sorry did i give the wrong message great don't pee and don't pee in restaurants people pee in coffee cups and And then get captured.

Zain 19:02

Jesus Christ, Carter. Running

Zain 19:05

We'll go to our next headline. This one comes to us from the CBC. First Nations leader endorses liberal candidate while at NDP event. Guys, we're talking about Gap. I want to talk about Tour. I'm going to spend a bit of time on this. I wasn't intending to. But now that I, this story seems like it was 50 days old. This happened two days ago. Let me explain it to you. Two First Nations leaders from Manitoba endorsed a liberal candidate during running in the provinces north while standing next to NDP leader Jagmeet Singh at a campaign event. Singh and two NDP candidates seeking re-election met with the Manitoba First Nations leaders in Winnipeg last week to discuss some of the pressing issues facing Indigenous communities like housing and mental health. While the chief said they were thankful for Singh and his team organizing the event during a busy election campaign, they said they were backing the Liberal candidate Shirley Robinson over NDP incumbent this is a name Nikki Ashton uh because they want more indigenous voices in Canada's parliament I want to get your guys's thoughts on this first as a story overall and then let's talk about you know I don't know if we want to talk about like your guys's tour stories or worst tour gaffes or tour issues that you've seen or what the fuck you think happened as soon as Jagmeet Singh got back into the bus and uh and all that sort of jazz but Carter give me your first take and then let's get into the extrapolation of it thereafter oh

Carter 20:21

oh man what my first take is that I remember a tour gaffe that you were a part of.

Carter 20:26

During the 2012 campaign, we had a candidate that you were running. I won't name her, but she was a PC candidate in the PC League at the time. Is

Zain 20:37

Is this a blog post? No,

Carter 20:39

No, this is the sit

Carter 20:41

sit-down at the doctor's event that was put together by the pen. I was not at

Zain 20:45

at this event. I don't think I

Carter 20:48

don't think you were there, but you were running her campaign at

Carter 20:50

at the time, I think. And she this

Carter 20:52

this candidate laid into the premier and absolutely set the tone that the doctors were right. The premier was wrong and everything that the premier was doing. And this was a tour event that

Carter 21:04

was designed to bring over the doctors to like to rectify the doctor's dispute. So I

Carter 21:10

I remember that one fairly well. Yeah, that was a good candidate. She's, in fact, done podcasts with us and absolutely blown herself up on the podcast. Got herself fired from her volunteer gig. i've given enough hints as to who she is now uh i did enough thank

Zain 21:25

you for following instructions my first instruction was give me your thoughts on this story and then let's

Carter 21:29

let's get it this story uh yeah this was fucked this should never have happened advanced into your job

Carter 21:35

oh man this is the worst thing ever excuse me are you supporting our candidate or not not okay thank you goodbye thank you goodbye go somewhere else we'll do this on our own

Zain 21:46

what you know what was made awkward by corey i'll let you jump in but what What was made awkward by it is the fact that, of course, Jagmeet Singh speaks. He puts his mask back. I'm painting the picture for those who haven't seen the clip. And let me tell you something. Seeing the clip, there is no better version of this than seeing the clip. I'll try to explain it to you. But he puts his mask back on. And then one of the First Nations leaders stands up and says, I'm endorsing, of course, Shirley Robinson. And then the other one comes up and says, I concur, and here's why. So it keeps digging the knife in deeper. And then as soon as he says concur, the first guy comes back up and he's like, you know what that guy just said? I concur with that. Almost to like make a point. It was incredibly awkward. Jagmeet Singh is the luckiest man in the world that he had a mask on because I don't want to see his face. Corey, jump in.

Corey 22:37

I was thinking the same thing. His eyes told enough of a story. It was

Corey 22:42

quite emotive in that sense. Listen, there's two things that need to be discussed in the context of this story. And it's not entirely clear where the balance is. Carter's right. Wow, that's bad advance work. And my suspicion is that somebody called up somebody and said, hey, would you be willing to stand up with the leader and have this conversation and didn't explicitly ask, do you support Jagmeet Singh? Do you support Nikki Ashton? And sometimes you – well, I'm going to say sometimes this happens. This has never happened. I've never seen this happen. I was going to ask you guys. Yeah. You've

Corey 23:16

never seen something like this, hey? Oh, nothing like

Corey 23:18

No, I mean, Zane, I can think of times where validators have been standing on stage with a candidate I've had and supported the policy, and then a day later said, I actually like this new policy that just came out just as much or better. I've never seen in the moment automatically going back on the leader. But where I

Corey 23:35

I was going with this is bad advance work, not very specific, and or some combination of, what

Corey 23:43

what a dick move. Like, you have to know that's a dick move when you're doing it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. And so I thought that was pretty wild. It was very funny. I mean, just remove all of the politics from it. And that's like something that would happen in an episode of Veep, right? Yeah, totally. Totally.

Corey 24:01

But I don't know. I mean, everybody involved there had to know, like, this is a wild situation, right? Right. There's

Zain 24:08

There's like no there's it's it's not ambiguous in the sense that this is an NDP event. Like the whole purpose here is that standing side by side, you are implicitly and explicitly endorsing the candidate. Carter, do you agree with Corey? Like this was like they

Zain 24:26

they knew what they were doing. Like this was definitely like, you know, it's not like they lacked the political savvy and were just standing up there, especially with the I concur knife digs that happened. happened right like that was that was deliberate in my mind like when someone says i like you're making a point about the fact that you're pretty much saying fuck you to the to the incumbent uh in this case uh what do you kind of make of that in terms of the the deliberate nature of using and leveraging a platform like this well

Carter 24:56

well we had a uh we had a an event that we did in the early 2000s for joe clark in calgary center we did this liberals for joe uh so we were moving moving all these liberals from the Liberal Party to the Progressive

Carter 25:08

Progressive Conservative Party, which was feasible at the time. And so we did this big event. We had everybody all organized, and we had this big speech that was going on, and one of the people was on the bus with Joe and Maureen, and we were driving to the event. And as

Carter 25:24

as we were getting there— This does not have a good ending,

Zain 25:26

ending, does it? This

Carter 25:27

This guy's like, no,

Carter 25:29

no, I'm not going to do it. And so we kept him on the bus. had you

Zain 25:32

you had you told the media that he was going to validate or endorse

Carter 25:35

or something we had

Carter 25:36

had we had him all lined up all the media knew it was supposed to be happening so we we just didn't let him off the bus he's

Carter 25:42

he had to stay

Zain 25:43

stay on the bus i i need more of a story here tell me what did this person a have cold feet misunderstand uh like just didn't feel like tell me why what was the why of like i'm not doing it he

Carter 25:54

he tapped me on the head and said now's not the time wait wait Wait, wait, not on the shoulder, on the head. Oh, fuck, man. It was the most condescending prick move. And I've held a grudge for some 20 years. And, you know, it's one of those moments where you're like, the advance work was done. We had the agreement to do this, and then he just got cold feet. But unlike this event, where they were able to get in front of the microphone, we

Carter 26:21

we held him captive on the bus. He was not allowed to get off the bus. So I have

Corey 26:25

have a question for you here.

Corey 26:27

Also, I know this story and I know the characters involved and I

Corey 26:31

I want to share, but I won't.

Corey 26:34

Because there's just so many layers once you know who's involved, too. But the thing here is, do you think there was a warning? Do you think there was a sign when they were in person? Do you think there were clues? And do you think that the NDP could have reasonably pulled the chute? And how do you do that? Yeah, exactly. Okay, that's good. How

Zain 26:51

How would be the question?

Carter 26:53

I think that I would kill the event.

Carter 26:55

Oh, you'd have to. to killing the event is going to be a moment story um

Carter 26:59

um having them endorse another candidate is is way more than and and there has to be because

Carter 27:05

because at some point you have to be talking about the local candidates at some point you have to be talking about you know what do you think the low you know nikki's chances are up in your region what's your relationship like with nikki you know like that that type of conversation is going to happen in

Carter 27:18

in the preamble to the event because it's not like you show up at the event and everything is so well choreographed that you You don't have an advanced person or you don't have the party president or who, you know, there's 13 people that are there before the leader even arrives. Somebody knew this was going to happen and somebody didn't say, guys, we have a choice now. We can kill the event or do the event without these two, which

Carter 27:41

which may undermine our event, but we can still get the event off or we can give these to the microphone. And this is probably going to happen.

Corey 27:51

Go ahead, go ahead. ...should have pretended his phone rang, picked it up, put it to his head, and shouted, the hospital! Run away. As fast as possible.

Corey 28:02

You think that would have been better?

Corey 28:04

That works for me.

Zain 28:05

I'm going to loop back to this story in a second from a strategy perspective. But Corey, I want to hear if there is any memorable tour advance gaffe that you've been a part of, or anything... Maybe something worthy of sharing that might have taught you a lesson um would be interesting but but i don't want to make it too high of a bar because this this story has provided us an opening to discuss something i've wanted to talk about for a while uh

Corey 28:30

uh you know i mean inside yeah i have so many stories of tour i some i have to question which ones are advanced most of the advanced problems are they're standing in front of a wall that makes them look like they're at a prison and what the hell were you doing with the Or there's a sign that says, you know, no exit as you're releasing the platform or whatever it is. They tend to be more of that nature. I can think of a time when Advance went with the leader that I was working with to a campaign event. And Advance gave me a call while they were being set up and they were running through and they said, like, you cannot put the leader up on this event. Like this is – I'm hearing them run through their script and I'm being deliberately vague here. This is not going to go well. And I said, they're just getting it out of their system or whatever. And so I didn't listen to advance. And then the event occurred and it was such a disaster that the reporter on the online version of the story just said, I don't even know how to explain this. I'm just going to print verbatim everything this individual said.

Corey 29:36

The online story was 3,000 words. It was just this crazy stream of consciousness of the leader. And mercifully, the only thing I

Corey 29:47

I can give hope for is I was working for a party that wasn't that much in the spotlight. And it just, there were other things going on.

Corey 29:54

And by the time it gets to print, because this was still when print was primary, online was secondary. This was going back a ways, right? They can't print 3,000 words, right? So

Corey 30:03

they have to pare it down. And when it got pared down, it looked dumb, but it didn't look unhinged.

Zain 30:15

a part of me, in fact, a large part of me, feels

Zain 30:17

feels quite sympathetic for Jagmeet Singh in this situation.

Carter 30:21

No, that's wrong. God. No, me too. Me

Carter 30:25

No. Why is that wrong? Why is that wrong, Carter? Because we are the authors of these situations. We are in control of our campaigns. and when a campaign event goes wrong it is because you and your party have fucked up and this is a fuck up at the extreme levels of fuck up this is controllable this is foreseeable this is stoppable and you did none of those things instead you allowed it to happen and you allowed your leader to look like an absolute boob that's a mistake and that i don't feel i mean i feel bad for the man to suffer through that but as the leader this

Carter 30:59

this is what you you deserve, man. Do a better job.

Zain 31:01

Yeah, it's interesting. I would have gone with that assessment for most people, but there's something about Jagmeet Singh in this situation that makes me feel bad for him, especially considering, you know, at least the brand he's built has been pretty authentic on this file. I don't know, Corey, why you have said, you know, agreed with me. My rational is pretty much what I said. I'm curious to hear yours.

Corey 31:24

Well, I guess it's really, it comes down to expanding on what I said earlier. earlier everybody knew the part they were playing in this and it does feel like because

Corey 31:34

because it's not as though jagmeet singh has been a real asshole on on first nations issues or anything like that it does feel like maybe

Corey 31:42

maybe it didn't need to stick that knife in the second time even even if you're

Corey 31:46

to quote unquote let slip it could have been made to look more casual it could have been almost dragged out not announced so prominently it was just it was designed oh look all's fair in love And it was bad advance that the NDP did not catch that this is going to happen, even if you want to say they were lied to. And there's no reason to believe that. I strongly believe they just didn't ask the questions. They weren't direct on it. But even if that was the case,

Corey 32:14

you've got to assume that somebody's spidey sense had to be up on this if they were really in touch with the community and how this was going. There's no way you didn't realize any

Corey 32:23

any connections to the liberal campaign here. But

Corey 32:27

that said, this is only considered fair in love war and politics. This would be considered very uncool behavior in basically any other walk of our lives, right? It's like you invite somebody over to dinner, and it's like, well, thank you for inviting me to dinner. I came because I want to have sex with your wife, right?

Corey 32:49

pee on your counter. You never asked me why I was coming to dinner, right? Like there's an understanding.

Zain 32:53

understanding. Can I pee on this counter? Too late. I already did. It's an

Corey 32:57

an understanding of what the event is supposed to be about, right? There was an understanding of what the event was supposed to be about. But, you know, it's politics, and so people act in this fashion. And so that's why I feel bad for the guy, right? Because as much as he failed the game of politics, you know, this is not normally how you would hope people treat each other.

Zain 33:17

Let's move on to our next headline. Speaking of playing the part, this one comes to us from Global News. Trudeau condemns anti-vax protesters, accuses them of endangering others. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau said anti-vaccine protesters that have disrupted some of his Ontario campaign events ought to be condemned and that his chief opponent, Conservative leader Aaron O'Toole, has not done enough to correct those protesters. It was Trudeau's strongest language yet since one group of protesters forced the party to cancel an event one week from tomorrow, I guess, in Bolton, Ontario. The Bolton protest was followed by a similar one on Sunday in Cambridge, Ontario, as well. Corey, I know you've got strong thoughts about this because we talked about prepackaged moments. We talked about roles to play. This is kind of following a theme because this was one of those moments, it's 90 seconds or so, where you have these protesters, by the way, audibly,

Zain 34:14

audibly, you know, yelling. They seem closer than they ever have been. And Justin Trudeau on the podium kind of condemning them. Once again, there is no substitute for seeing this clip, so I encourage those that haven't to see it so you understand the context. context but cory what was your first thought when you saw that that moment and then that moment packaged uh online um you know being distributed by by the liberal party and boosters uh like myself yeah

Corey 34:42

yeah well see that's the thing i didn't have strong thoughts about this moment i had strong thoughts about your strong thoughts zane belger said best

Corey 34:49

best moment trudeau has had on the campaign thus far and my reaction is no come on come the fuck on right here's my feeling about it at this particular point and ongoing it's it's a little hard to avoid that these uh these conflicts maybe not being confronted but not being actively managed you mentioned perhaps closer than ever there is a

Zain 35:11

like it i wasn't

Zain 35:12

wasn't sure if it seemed like it and

Corey 35:14

and i don't even know if that's true but i don't i don't know i i definitely got the sense people didn't mind if it seemed like it and you can actively manage these things you can create bigger corridors you're the prime minister

Corey 35:24

right you know these perimeters can be built you can find different venues it's obvious at this this point that they're not they're not gonna avoid it that's for sure and they don't mind the the the conflict and i felt that his remarks while they didn't come with that um that kind of

Corey 35:40

the i guess i would describe i described it to you i think as justin trudeau has this fake jeb bartlett mode yeah he's

Corey 35:48

and and faux statesman like and the pauses are long and the looks are dramatic it wasn't this but there was another Another version of Justin Trudeau that I find not particularly sincere, and I call it sincere, and I call it like the cornered Justin Trudeau.

Corey 36:02

It's the – you see it in debates. I saw it tonight in the French language debate that I watched. And you see it in general when he's getting a tough line of questioning, and it's – he almost – he's almost talking too fast, confidence man style. Like, well, and that's this thing, and it's fine. And like, I don't know what you're all so mad about, right? Or in this context, saying, well, we're not going to stop, and we're just going to do this. And there's something a little caffeinated about it that just I don't I don't quite buy as being his sincere feelings. But I will also say his eyes give him away every time. What

Zain 36:34

What do you mean? You said that to me when we were having this discussion on our on our like WhatsApp group. And I tried to like literally download the video, zoom into his eyes. I couldn't actually tell what you mean. So like explain it. Yeah. So

Corey 36:46

So he has a normal look most of the time. But when he hits certain moments, they almost bulge for a second, like they're going to pop out of his head. like he's just like almost holding on too tight to the particular moment and i've seen it in a few different contexts and some people can rightly say i'm nuts on this one but long story short even before i turned the audio on on twitter i thought oh this is the justin trudeau we're gonna get with this particular clip and

Corey 37:08

and did it oh

Zain 37:08

oh go ahead go ahead no i'm done i i guess what i just

Corey 37:11

just i think at this point they've

Corey 37:15

they've ridden this pony too long they've ridden this pony too long And it's just not going to have the same effect because it's pretty clear that they're fine with it at this point in terms of the narrative it provides. It's

Zain 37:24

It's interesting you say that, that they've written it too long. For me, it was the first time that they've written it because I think he's been like trying this and hasn't been able to land it for the first 14 days. And I felt like this was the first time he actually landed that sort of – yes, you may call it like the caffeinated version or the Bartlett Trudeau version of himself. himself. Sure, you may disagree on the strategy. I was actually praising the execution because it was the first time for me that it landed. Carter, I'm curious to hear your thoughts, though. Like, is both from the top line of Trudeau condemning protesters and then this particular moment, and then maybe I'll spend some time on this with you guys, talking about the politicization of vaccines and vaccine passports, because that's the true story here that's kind of come out of this and the wedges that we're creating out of vaccines. But Carter, first, your thoughts on the moment. Or you could talk about the candidate I managed back in 2012. Either your choice. It's totally your call. You don't have to follow any instructions. So

Carter 38:22

So anyways, that candidate just is the... Shut the fuck up. Keep going. No. So I think the big thing is I

Carter 38:30

don't believe for a second that it wasn't scripted. Now, it may not have been put together, but it was scripted. It He loses authenticity. Right. And Corey and I have talked about that a million times. I don't want to go too deep down it. But this is at least a position that about 75 or 80 percent of the population understands and is connecting with. There is a group of people that, you know, that are really angry about vaccines and masks. That is not a group of people that is part of his voter voter group. It is not a group of people that he cares about offending. And the other side of it is larger than his current voting group. So it actually is a way for him to win votes and look strong and look like the prime minister that we're expecting to see. So he did that. And I think that from that point of view, that was a success.

Corey 39:23

So I agree with all of that. And I think that it's undeniable that over the weekend, when this first started occurring to well, not first, but was became a big campaign narrative. It really paused O'Toole's momentum. And you saw that reflected in some of the tracking polls. And you've seen pollsters even who weren't doing tracking saying, yeah, they could see a receding of the numbers over the weekend. And there was this durability that came and, you know, I've heard whispers of the same from some of the campaign pollsters that I've been, you know, or campaign pollster adjacent people that I've been talking to. But I will tell you this though, by

Corey 40:00

by the time he did it here, even if it was the first time it would have landed with the public, what became really clear to me is that this is not a narrative that can be sustained over the next three,

Corey 40:10

three, four weeks, right? It doesn't have the legs, and maybe everybody watching really closely, maybe the pundit class will tire of it sooner than the public as a whole, but I don't think this is even going to take him through to the end of this weekend, let alone E-Day on September 20th. So I

Corey 40:30

guess that was what became really clear to me at that particular moment, and I just think they've ridden it too long. In some ways, they should have treated it almost like an ad campaign where they're in market on this particular message. They let it go down a bit. They come back strong, use it at these points where it's more important to them. It would have been maybe a

Corey 40:50

a very strong tactic, and maybe I'm being too cynical here, but let's just say O'Toole has a great debate, has a great English language debate. The next day, you do something like this to change the channel.

Corey 41:01

That's smart strategy. But to do it right now, after it had already paused the momentum, and you're trying to wring too much out of that particular stone, and you're just diminishing its power for when you could potentially use it later in the campaign, and you're cluing too many people in too quickly about exactly—I've

Corey 41:20

exactly—I've overused the word cynicism this campaign, but the cynicism of it all.

Corey 41:25

Carter, you want to jump in before we move on?

Carter 41:28

Well, I just think that they were trying to arrest, you know, a negative campaign polling cycle. And this was a story that got them off of that and into another cycle. So if this is their only trick, they've got a problem. This is just one trick.

Zain 41:46

I've got this weird feeling about vaccines, so I liked this moment for its execution, but I was kind of troubled by how deep the wedge on vaccines is going, especially considering on the back end of this thing, we're going to have to deal with it like societally. The fact that, you know, we're really driving this wedge extremely hard. Carter, am I too sentimental about that? Or you use whatever tools in front of you to wedge and gain the seats and the momentum? I just have a worry about this one, especially when we're driving this really, really aggressively versus like the vaccines versus the not vaccines, the passports versus the nots, like very, very aggressively and politicizing it in this pressure cooker known

Zain 42:24

known as a federal campaign. See,

Carter 42:25

See, I can agree with your point. You know, like if we're talking about racism and some of the stuff that Trump did, they kind of defined wedges that pushed, you know, what was socially unacceptable thought away. Like

Zain 42:36

Like it made it a fracture rather than, you know, turn the wedge into a fracture, so to speak. Yeah. Yeah.

Carter 42:40

Yeah. And I can see that. I mean, but the challenge here is that or the opportunity of this particular moment is that I still believe that you get elected. And I believe that you use the tools that are presented in front of you to get elected regardless of what they are. And I believe also that because this is such a small group and not going to be a growing group, you may as well just play it. There's not going to be more than 20 percent of the population that's not vaccinated because 80 percent of the adult population is vaccinated. So

Carter 43:08

you're already in an 80-20 situation. And if you have to push these people away, it's not the world's worst situation.

Zain 43:15

Corey, am I too sentimental by thinking the wedge on vaccines is perhaps more personal or more intimate or perhaps even more long lasting and could turn into a broader fracture? You know, give it to me straight. I've been struggling with this one, to be totally honest, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Corey 43:33

maybe not. not. The thing that you have to keep in mind whenever a party takes an issue like this is it's not just that they're trying to define themselves with this issue. They're defining the issue with themselves as well. So they're taking an 80% issue and they're trying to tie the liberals to it. That should lift him for sure. But

Corey 43:50

also taking a 30% party and tying strong vaccine policy to it, right? And

Corey 43:55

And there's a risk that that makes it a more partisan issue, that that it lowers the popularity of these strong vaccine positions that Justin Trudeau has put forward, and maybe an 80% issue becomes a 60% issue, and maybe then we've got a problem because 40% opposed would be a significant drag on our ability to move these forward. It's kind of this wagging the dog risk thing.

Corey 44:19

He wedged a lot softer on the weekend, too. That's the other point I want to make about how this unrolled over the weekend.

Corey 44:25

He talked about these folks have had a hard year, too. that was one of the quotable yeah

Corey 44:30

particular moment right there was a little more empathy there and by the time we got to this the the

Corey 44:35

the clip you're talking about it

Corey 44:38

it was that we're not going to back down we're going to fight and there was a little bit more uh

Corey 44:42

uh elbow in it and

Corey 44:44

maybe there wasn't maybe it was just it didn't have the clippables in the same way maybe i'm just falling prey to those narratives but i do think that when you see the evolution and them just dipping their toe a little bit further in, A, tying Aaron O'Toole to it or attacking him

Corey 45:00

him to, and B, being a little bit rougher with these protesters.

Corey 45:05

It's tough to see how this goes to a place that's going to work for anybody.

Zain 45:09

Yeah, yeah, right. And to your point of, like, even the longevity of the strategy to begin with and how long it can last without it having an oscillation in and out of the cycle rather than being straight, like, foot on the gas, let's just, like, milk it for all it's worth. Carter, you wanted to jump in here. Yeah, it's

Carter 45:26

it's not a strategy. It's a tactic.

Carter 45:28

Ah, good point. And I think we have to be really clear on understanding these differences from time to time. You know, the first one was we're not, you know, we're

Carter 45:38

we're going to be empathetic. We're going to understand them. And then that tactic was shit. So they tried the different tactic. And if we're doing anything, we should probably pick apart the fact that on one day he said X and the next day he said Y. Why did he do that? Because the tactic didn't work the first day. so he tried the second tactic and this just boils down you know cory's using the word cynicism and i would just say uh for me it's just a lack of commitment to the tactics um you should probably know what the tactics is are and then just stick to them and

Corey 46:08

and see i think that the tactics worked better at the start when they were a little bit softer because there was this kind of oh boy and and it was more about justin trudeau is strong for standing up to these people

Corey 46:18

and and being strong in a way that is not you

Corey 46:21

you know mean or rough and over time that that drifted away but you know the thing i really need to also point out is that in

Corey 46:28

in ontario here in alberta there are well basically everywhere now there are conservative governments and those conservative governments are being protested by these very people the same people

Corey 46:38

people and i just don't know how much luck justin trudeau was going to have long-term convincing people that the like these these totally mad individuals who are out there with their crazy ass noose signs that they are somehow not just as mad about everybody who is supportive of vaccines and lockdowns when they're necessary and mask mandates and all of the things that everybody has to do including

Corey 47:06

our no tool we're

Zain 47:07

we're doing 47 seven minutes of headlines, so might as well ask you this final question, Carter, Corey, both of you. Are you disappointed that your strategy from last episode, that O'Toole give the prime minister a call, buzz him, say we're doing a joint event, Corey called it the rally against hate, has not happened? Because it clearly seems like Trudeau's plan is to milk this, to Corey's point, for all it's worth this weekend. Even today's TVI debate, you know, had him pivoting to vaccines, mandatory sanitary vaccines, vaccine passports, as much as he could. Carter, are you disappointed in Aaron O'Toole, i.e. your doppelganger?

Carter 47:44

No, I mean, we can't be disappointed when the toddler pees on the floor.

Corey 47:52

Corey, are you disappointed?

Corey 47:53

But we can be mad. Take care of your advice. But we can be mad.

Carter 47:55

We can be angry, but we can't be disappointed.

Corey 47:57

No, Zane. So two things. One is, for all we know, he did. You'll recall some of that advice was offering it, but knowing that it was likely to be a were buffed off or and maybe you just wait that come out at a different time i don't think it happened though and we did talk about it too that the odds of it happening were probably low because these these are easy things for carter and i to come up with and they could be clever or even good but when you're in an actual campaign and you start thinking about the downside risk and the affordable loss here and you think wow if this blows up we're we're fucked it's over it's done right and so you don't even if it's a smart risk and i'm not saying it is you're disinclined to take that risk so i'm not shocked that the offer wasn't made it just seems like the kind of thing that uh you would see in a tv show about politics but actual politics people are a little more risk averse we're

Zain 48:49

we're gonna leave our headlines there we'll move it on to our first segment yes carter our first segment deep platform yes 50 minutes

Zain 48:59

minutes in carter no wonder

Carter 49:00

wonder the fucking hill times doesn't like us i

Zain 49:03

i was this is what happens i was having a good time hearing about how i fucked up a campaign a decade ago um involved in

Carter 49:09

in a fucked up campaign with a fucked up candidate that happens to all of us that

Zain 49:13

that it was it was actually a pretty fine campaign deputy campaign manager so you know liberals unveiled the 2021 election platform promising a total of nearly 80 billion dollars of post-pandemic rebuild spending. This is actually on top, if I'm not mistaken, of the $100 billion that they promised prior to the election. An 82-page document, no Trudeau in a T-shirt. Key highlights include finishing the fight against COVID, a home for everyone, healthcare, healthcare, healthcare, resilient economy, climate change, accelerating the climate goals, and a focus on reconciliation. What we also saw, Corey, maybe we start here, with some thoughts is a bunch of what you'd expect in a conservative platform, micro-targeted little things for a bunch of different people that I suspect they're going to be targeting and trying to use as mobilization tactics for various demos and groups as well. But curious, both from its branding, Forward for Everyone, its length, 82 pages, its rollout, which by the way i should mention included a four-page pdf of the costing um top line thoughts cory what did you make of the document that that the liberals introduced uh in some cases finally as their storytelling and policy uh book for the rest of the campaign um

Corey 50:39

um i if that's their story book they're going to put a lot of people to sleep it's not it's not a significantly impressive impressive platform. I think it's the kind of platform that you build after you've been involved in government too long. I feel like it is a platform written by bureaucrats, notwithstanding the fact that it was full of all of those targeted elements that you discussed. And actually, that's not even fair, because bureaucrats wouldn't have created some of these policies, but it's a very dry policy book. It was a rough read in that sense. And in

Corey 51:11

in terms of this forward, not backward messaging that they have there i mean that's like a campaign cliche yeah

Corey 51:18

yeah that's as bad as elections matter or uh you

Corey 51:21

you know the only poll that counts is the one on voting day and i just don't i

Corey 51:27

i don't think it's very good now that's not to say i think it's bad or damaging and i i am just struck by the fact that the liberals have said this

Corey 51:37

this platform or you there's chatter from quote-unquote senior liberal sources like this this platform would be one of the big things they do and that would allow them to change the channel and yeah

Corey 51:45

when you think back on that first week narrative that didn't really go that well for the liberals then they said things like well next week we're going to go define aaron o'toole and that didn't really go that well for the liberals right we forget how quickly those health care attacks obviously they get resurfaced all of the time o'toole had a great rejoinder where uh tonight where trudeau said you um you know you you want private healthcare? And he's like, yeah, according to your manipulated ad, I want the healthcare. And it was just a, it was a good line. Uh, but it's, it's not durable, but the next thing was supposed to be the platform. Like, okay, but then the platform will come. And at a certain point it's, you've told us all of these dominoes that are supposed to fall. The first one didn't fall. The second one didn't fall. And I don't think this third one's falling either. So what are we doing?

Corey 52:31

Where do we go from here? Do

Corey 52:32

Do you have anything else? Or are you just going to try to run out the clock and hope the polls are a little wrong or that you have regional strength that covers off the polls and it's just it's not interesting

Corey 52:42

interesting or inspiring and in a funny way it's very interesting and inspiring but we heard about it on budget day yeah

Corey 52:50

yeah not a lot of new stuff in here despite finding an additional 80 billion dollars of spending there's not a lot that canadians could point to and say oh yeah that's

Corey 52:58

that's new that's exciting and

Corey 53:00

and um you know paul Paul Wells wrote a wrote a article today,

Corey 53:05

scathing articles, really scathing. But I agreed with so much of it. And one of the things he said was, you know, it's it's also just bad policy, many in many contexts. And it's really a shame because it seems just to be designed for targeted marketing, which I praise the conservatives for. So I'd be a hypocrite not to praise the liberals for it, too. but we'll see i mean there better be some pretty awesome facebook game following this up because as like one body of text it's not that impressive and you don't have the benefit o'toole did of just saying i've got a big not scary platform yeah

Zain 53:37

yeah carter do progressives in this case and i'm putting the liberals in this 2021 era as being progressed they're marching to the left that's on you know it's it's nuts not a going out on a limb saying that do they need a bigger story here like the one thing that i didn't see here was like why i saw a why back in march which the that that speech from the throne which is like pandemic taught us something like you know we were even throwing around terms like build back better you know big reset etc that shit's gone right like and of course some of those words have been poisoned by by now but the rationale the story what are we buying like the bleeding heart stuff i'm not seeing any of that i'm seeing a bit bit of it, but not enough to actually carry a full sort of emotive exercise of why we're here. Maybe respond to that and then also what you saw from the platform or what you found interesting from it.

Carter 54:30

Well, I thought it was fascinating that they chose to release the, you know, they had the abortion piece in there. And by releasing the platform on that day of the Texas decision to basically allow your neighbors to report on you if you're an abortion provider or someone seeking an abortion, which is an abomination, by doing that, they managed to overshadow their entire platform with one plank. So instead of just putting out the abortion piece on that day, they put out their entire platform and managed to make it less than the abortion plank. And while I think the abortion plank is important, and I think that there are a lot of people to Corey's micro-targeting comment, who will find the abortion plank to be very reassuring in a world where we're seeing the rise of right-wing fundamentalism. While that's happening, they've totally overshadowed themselves. They've hurt themselves by putting out their entire platform on a day when no one cared. And it's going to haunt them because the narrative that's going to come out of this is, I don't remember anything from it. I don't remember anything that's It's actually going to impact me, even though apparently Annamie Paul even thinks that this is the best green policy that exists. So I think that I think that they screwed themselves again by being bad tacticians. And I'm watching, you know, I'm watching a campaign being run by the liberals that is only being outdone by the badness of the campaign being run by the NDP.

Zain 56:04

So what I'm hearing you say, Carter, is there is no big new thing. Also, big new thing. dot ca uh cory uh was there a big new thing from your perspective uh in this platform

Corey 56:15

not not really at least not big enough what steven said i think we need to languish on for a minute here the platform is supposed to be a free media hit and there wasn't a ton of i mean it got coverage my god they would have been screwed if it didn't get coverage but it didn't lead a lot of coverage on on the day it was dropped i think on the globe and mail it was just sort of there on the side and you know a lot of the post media papers it was maybe even less there it was it was buried into like the a234 section but you

Corey 56:45

you know if this was only meant to be facebook fodder if you want to say like doesn't matter it's all about facebook then you should have released it two weeks ago like oh tool so you could have used it as facebook fodder for the last use

Corey 56:55

it for longer target those yeah

Corey 56:57

your fold build a retargeting

Corey 56:58

retargeting base etc absolutely and some of those tactics take time and some of it's a bit more drip like that you want it to be and And we're now just to a couple of weeks left. And if it wasn't, then you have to say, well, it didn't really get that kind of juice. I am confused why they decided to release it before the long weekend, just as everybody's going back to school. I think that if the intention was you're going to sprint to the finish with this thing and you're going to try to define the issue, maybe you do a couple of days later. And if it is all just to feed the big machine that is just spitting out wedges that you can then spit out and turn to Canadians via social media that's targeted, then it should have probably come a little bit earlier. So I guess in that sense, I don't get the timing. I'm sure that if I were sitting having a beer with liberal strategists, they could make a compelling case as to why this was the timing, right? This is why it needed to be.

Corey 57:48

But from the outside, I'm not seeing it.

Carter 57:50

No, they couldn't. It was dumb. Um, it

Carter 57:52

it was fucking stupid.

Zain 57:55

Tell me about the story piece, Corey. Am I, am I too caught up in the fact that there's no story here? That, that we are perhaps in an age now, regardless of partisan stripe, and I feel like I can say that after seeing this one today, that micro-targeting technology has created, or vice versa, influenced micro-targeted policies. So the big stories, yeah, you're going to expect a few big things and big, you know, But the big narratives, the for everyone sort of stuff, it's kind of gone for exchange for these tiny little, you know, what I'm going to call puppy mill strategies, because I think that's the most salient example in my mind of a micro-targeting policy, in a sense, of course, that being a conservative one.

Corey 58:36

get to this point where it's whose puppy mill policy is fucking better, right? Like we've got

Corey 58:41

and the liberals fighting

Corey 58:42

about this. You know, I guess I want to be somewhat charitable to the liberals on this platform. When you read through it, despite the hackneyed language in certain cases, forward, not backwards, all of the bromides that they often throw out, it's not as though there's not a version of Canada that's there that is in stark contrast to the version Aaron O'Toole offers. But it's not news. It's really not news in a lot of cases. It's here's the cool things that we're doing. And we

Corey 59:09

we already told you about them months and months and months ago. And we've had months and months and months of us trying to do reannouncements on them already and

Corey 59:17

and try to reannounce it for the umpteenth time during an election. It's just not, it's not a particularly great strategy. And it goes back to, and it's not like they have a time machine, but this,

Corey 59:26

this, this would have been a, I think a pretty killer platform if it was dropped right after they dropped the budget, you know, as we immediately go into an election. like if they had either orchestrated their defeat or just said fuck it let's go right but they didn't and so did they not update the platform it feels in some ways like they were updating it until the very last minute you know the ink feels not dry on some of the sections but in other ways it feels like it was designed to

Corey 59:54

to come out proximal to the federal budget so i don't i'm curious to hear carter's thoughts on this but it it seems mismatched from the times and the environment in which it lands carter

Zain 1:00:04

carter your response or your your thoughts to what cory's saying here

Carter 1:00:08

Yeah, I think that's right. But I also think that it's mismatched to the times when people are paying attention. Like, there was an O'Toole moment, and then there's the long weekend. And I don't understand why anything's being released before this long weekend. Anything released before this long weekend goes to die.

Zain 1:00:26

let me ask you the obvious, then.

Zain 1:00:29

Did they know that they didn't have a story or a big new thing? and they said, fuck it, let's just let it die and we'll sprint to the finish without the policy book being our booster. We'll just say we have it. We'll use different pieces of it, micro-targeted, and then hope that the strength of the leader and course correction are what win the day here.

Carter 1:00:52

I think there's altogether too much hope in the illiberal strategy.

Carter 1:00:55

And I don't know why you would produce a policy document that's 80 pages long, as you pointed out out in the preamble, that can't survive a long weekend.

Carter 1:01:05

Why put the effort in? Why not produce a nice postcard with abortion on the front? Like, it just doesn't feel like it's

Carter 1:01:11

it's well-considered and well-thought-through. But you're describing the Liberal campaign.

Carter 1:01:18

Well, no, I was. Never

Carter 1:01:18

Never mind. I described the Liberal campaign.

Zain 1:01:21

Well, thank you. Thank you, Carter. You're

Zain 1:01:23

I'm there for you, brother.

Zain 1:01:25

Final question for both of you. Are

Carter 1:01:26

Are we still on this? Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah,

Zain 1:01:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What would you do going forward? Would you now seeing what it is as an entire document, I mean, would you deprioritize it? Or would you use this as a policy book going forward in a meaningful,

Zain 1:01:47

meaningful, often voluminous way over the next two weeks? I

Carter 1:01:51

would ignore it. I'd pretend like it doesn't even exist. I'd leave that thing so far behind.

Carter 1:01:56

And I would hope that in the next, I

Carter 1:01:58

I mean, the reason they released it before the long weekend is they must have something better in the queue. And let's have some confidence in them.

Zain 1:02:07

Corey, how would you use this book going forward? Does it make a reappearance or only sections, pages, paragraphs, lines of it make an appearance on their own standalone? standalone?

Corey 1:02:17

would pretend it was a big, bold vision. I would talk about it all the time. I would say we released an amazing platform full of a big, bold vision for Canada. It's incredible what we can do if we work together. Look at all of the things that we want to bring to this country. I mean, I would be as vague in real life as I'm being right now.

Corey 1:02:35

And I would say, and I welcome you to contrast it with that plan to go backwards that has come out of Aaron O'Toole's campaign, Because people don't read the platform. And it reminds me of a story from the 93 campaign. I feel like I've told on this podcast before. And of course, the more you tell a story like this, the more the details change. So indulge me here. But during that campaign, there was a conversation between liberal pundits and conservative pundits, you know, is the Red Book a good plan? Is the Red Book a bad plan? The conservative pundits said, well, there's not even a plan for X. And the liberal strategist said, yes, there is. There's a plan for X on page 212, or

Corey 1:03:14

or a number beyond the number of pages that were in the Red Book. But because it was a big, long plan, people didn't check. People didn't care. And really what came through was the liberals just had a plan for everything. So maybe this is an opportunity for the liberals just to say, we've got a big, bad plan. That's everything you want it to be. And maybe that's the way to play it from this point.

Corey 1:03:35

If your plan was a turd, maybe just talk about the fact that you have a plan being a

Zain 1:03:41

can i can i ask you guys one more question on this the one of the things that is kind of making i this is it's cosmetic but it's not it's strategic um it's the page count it's

Zain 1:03:51

it's half the page count of the conservative one and it's being mentioned all the time i'm kind of curious how like in terms of page count as a proxy for seriousness which is what it was on like was it day two or day one that otil released his platform this one's half the page it's well designed on the web it's it's It's a well-designed document. I can't, you know, slam it for that. But I'm kind of curious if that says anything or if there's anything there or your brand or comms or strategist mind picked up on anything. I still don't know what I'm trying to pick up on it, but it is interesting to me that it's half the size. And I don't know exactly what it's conveying, if anything, or what others might try to make it convey, if anything, as compared to the O'Toole, you know, twice the size banger that he's put out.

Corey 1:04:35

Well, here's my question. Yeah.

Corey 1:04:37

Do you think it was always twice the size or half the size? Or do you think that they made a longer platform in response to this 160-page beast? I

Zain 1:04:46

I feel like you've got an opinion on that.

Corey 1:04:47

Well, in some ways, I feel like it could have been a 40-page platform or less. You know, it doesn't necessarily—it feels like there's a little bit of padding in some cases. And then in other cases, it's totally bereft of detail, like the economic plan. Yeah, the job site. It's just nothing. Yeah,

Corey 1:05:04

that's interesting. Carter, it means nothing.

Zain 1:05:07

Great. We'll use that as our segue. Let's move it on to our next segment, our next segment, guest lecturer. Oh, guys, you are going to be given a task. Let me explain to you what you're doing. So at least when I was on campaigns, Friday mornings were the time that you would meet with all of the campaign managers across the country. It was either Monday or Friday. And in certain cases, Carter, when you ran the provincial, I remember that it was Friday mornings. You guys used to have campaign manager meetings every Friday, huddle up all, in our provincial case, 87 of us, put us on a conference call, and give us some marching orders. The week that was, the week that's going to happen, because we work on the weekends. There's no rest, and there's a bit of a reset. So in

Zain 1:05:50

in those campaign meetings, sometimes you have someone to come in and rally the troops to course correct, because often we know that the message is very much aligned with who's delivering that message. So here's what I want you guys to do. I want you to each be on a particular team. Corey, you're on Team Red. You're on the Liberal team. Carter, you are on Team Blue. And your task is very simple. You are speaking to all 338, and I guess in the Conservative case, 337 campaigns. campaigns, you're speaking to the campaign managers. This is a call in the morning. And you are speaking to them in a Pachaca Chow style format almost, Carter. You're doing, except rather than 20 slides and 20 seconds each, you're doing three slides and 30 seconds. And on each of these slides, this is an audible medium, this is an audio medium, so people can't see the slides. But what What you're preparing is three slides to kind of tell either Team Blue or Team Red about what they should be thinking about as local campaign managers. One heading on each slide, and then you're speaking for like 15 to 30 seconds on each. And

Zain 1:07:07

And you're going to give this as a set

Zain 1:07:11

set of strategies, a set of tactics, a set of course correction for each team. Corey's Team Red, Carter is Team Blue. and i'm going to give you guys a bit of time to to come up with your three slides uh

Zain 1:07:24

uh i was going to read a a ad by our our uh you're good you're

Zain 1:07:30

you're good carter you're good yeah

Zain 1:07:32

yeah cory are you cory's gonna you want to go first carter okay

Zain 1:07:35

okay so you don't want me to read our ad by flare airlines uh our new our new presenting sponsor no i mean no i've already worked as airlines into

Corey 1:07:45

my remarks here they've

Zain 1:07:46

they've sent me this following copy ever wanted to sit on the tarmac while accessing the terminal internet? Well, you can with Flair Airlines because our flights never leave.

Corey 1:07:54

They're not a real sponsor. But

Zain 1:07:56

But they've sent this to me. They said, you can't miss a flight. You can't miss a flight that never leaves Flair Airlines.

Zain 1:08:03

with Flair Airlines industry standard 99.9% boarding rate, it's definitely the stat worthy of your attention. This is what they've sent me. Carter, I've read it very quickly. They're going to be disappointed and will probably leave as a sponsor. But Stephen Carter, the conference call is on. The campaign manager introduces you. They say, you know, O'Toole had his French debate yesterday. We just heard from Aaron on the call. He's now going to go knock on doors or, more specifically, stay at the Westin in Ottawa and deliver several speeches on a blue background. But we've got a special guest, and that special guest is Stephen Carter. And he's going to talk to all 337 campaigns about your local races from the top down. Take it away. Stephen Carter, you got you got 30 seconds, three slides laid on us.

Carter 1:08:54

Campaigns are about ideas and about images, and the Conservative Party has launched off with the ability to own all of them. The Conservative Party, for the first time in recent memory, is owning the ideas. We are owning the images. We are painting a picture in conservatives and non-conservatives heads. heads. This is how we are going to win this campaign, by setting the right ideas in the right images into people's heads. That is what we are doing. And we are also winning the air war. It is the air war that has been ceded to the liberals in past elections. But that air war has now been won by the Conservative Party. You can see that already. The media are jumping onto our side, even though they don't like what we normally say. They are jumping over because the The Liberals overreached. So we are winning the air war every day, both in the media and in the advertising markets. That is our strength, this campaign. And the best part is we haven't even started on the ground game. The ground game is the traditional strength of the Conservative Party. That is why you're here. 337 campaigns that can hit the ground running with a strength and ferocity that can't even be matched by the Liberals. And we are winning already before we put a single boot on the ground. When we start our GOTV, when we start our ability to move our voters, we're going to have the best campaign that's ever been seen in the history of conservative campaigns.

Zain 1:10:21

Look at that. Stephen Carter, motivational speaker, guest lecturer at the morning campaign managers meeting, motivating the base, saying that we're winning the air. The ground hasn't even started yet.

Carter 1:10:33

at that. One minute and 28 seconds, baby. That's not bad. no

Zain 1:10:36

differentiation between the slides but you know what i did making you go back

Carter 1:10:41

you know what we have a title on each slide cory

Zain 1:10:42

cory and i will attest making the slides was never your mo

Corey 1:10:47

yeah i can i can definitely attest to

Zain 1:10:50

uh cory uh you're on deck you're speaking to team red right now all 338 campaign managers i'm sure you've had to do something like this the message they need to hear is very different than the message your candidate needs to hear it's very Very different than the message your comms team needs to hear. What are you telling the 338 local campaign managers? They're the top dog in their area. They feel like they run the ship where they're at. What are you telling them? Your three slides, 30 seconds each. Floor is yours, Corey Hogan. Good morning.

Corey 1:11:22

Boy, there's a lot of glum faces here for people who are about to win an election.

Corey 1:11:27

Listen, let me tell you a story. I'm a marathon runner, as you can see from my obviously very slim physique here. And there are people who come out of the gate whenever you're running a marathon and they put everything into it. And do you know what? You find them collapsed near dead at the 10 kilometer mark here. And Aaron O'Toole is a marathon runner who doesn't know how to pace himself. The O'Toole Conservatives threw everything they possibly could at us in the first two weeks of this campaign. They dropped their platform. They dropped their oppo. They did everything they possibly could besides, oh, no, I'm sorry, they actually did follow around the prime minister with angry protesters as well. They've done it all, and none of it is going to work from this point forward because they've got nothing left. So let's

Corey 1:12:12

let's talk about this race. They

Corey 1:12:14

They did this, and they got into it. And we need to acknowledge this. And we need the communities around here to acknowledge this, too. I want you to talk to every Liberal supporter you know, every Green supporter you know, and tell them this is a race. And Erin O'Toole will be their prime minister if they continue to drift through this election here. The Conservatives have this vision of the country. They have this black and white view. Actually, who are we kidding? It's a white and white view. It's this leave it to beaver view of a Canada that never really existed. It ignores all of the pluralism that made us great. It ignores all of our pursuit of progress that made us great here.

Corey 1:12:45

Go tell that story. And when our leader is on his jet, which is not a Flair Airlines jet, unfortunately, he will have a spring in his step knowing you're behind him. Because as the debates are coming up, folks, 2015, it was the debates that turned the tide, made him the prime minister. 2019, it was the debates that turned the tide, kept him prime minister.

Corey 1:13:05

We're going to war. And

Corey 1:13:06

And we've got the best army there is.

Zain 1:13:09

Very nice. Corey Hogan, round of applause. Stephen Carter, round of applause to you, too. Two very different strategies for Stephen. The strategy that says we're winning and we're going to keep on winning because our secret weapon, our added advantage hasn't even been activated yet. Our ground game and our GOTV. Corey, of course, with the strategy that says Justin Trudeau is the Kenyan in the marathon and will come out on top at the end. Worry not. This is what he does. Nicely done, guys. Of course, that segment brought to us by Flair Airlines. Take off back to the gate, Flair Airlines.

Zain 1:13:44

Actually, you know what? This is interesting to me. I made you do the exercise, but I'm really curious. What do, when you guys have done these speeches, whether it be to 87 or 50 or 100 people who are like top dog in their local area, what have they needed to hear? I know you've kind of done it in a more specific particular sense, which I loved in this sort of gamey way. But what have they generally needed to hear? Is it generally motivation? Has it been course correction? Has it been that they want to feel like on the inside track? I'm kind of wondering what some of those conference calls on a Friday or a Monday morning kind of sound like these days. And for those that, you know, listening may not have had the pleasure or kind of know what's happening on those conversations. Corey, I'll go to you first and then Carter thereafter.

Corey 1:14:27

I will say that they don't actually often

Corey 1:14:29

often need the Patton-style speech. that's a that's a very specific moment where you've got to talk to the troops and and change their volume either you know calm them down if they're too wild or or heat them up if they're too cold what they usually need is a sense that there's a plan right that somebody's got the things that are not in their control because they're going to worry about the things not in their control and that competent people are behind that plan so you try to showcase the experts and the plan and the strategy and you also try to give them a bit of a sense that they're in the know right and that they are doing their part in a broader machine and that it's all going to work out just fine because you actually don't need them sitting there thinking about how they're going to calms it up special on the door in a local campaign there's a place for that yeah it's good to know your local market but what's most important is that you do your job at

Corey 1:15:17

at the local level that you identify those tasks that can only happen at the local level and make sure that they get finished so they're not going to do that if they think they need to do your job as well if If they start doing their own communications, their own messaging, they make their signs a different color all of a sudden, their brochure doesn't have the leader all of a sudden, those things come out of an anxiety that it is not in hand. So you need to give a sense that it's in hand.

Zain 1:15:39

Carter, what would you add to what Corey said around what's the general message and the tone of the conversations you're having with your local campaign leaders and campaign managers across the country or province?

Carter 1:15:52

You've got to give them data. data

Carter 1:15:53

every local campaign is starved of data so giving them a couple of data points that aren't in the public domain uh certainly helps uh to tie that in you need to give them a couple of facts that they already believe right so like when i said about the conservatives having the best gotv that is a believable fact to the conservative faithful um and then uh give them them a lot of praise right the the the ground game the the the people working on these grassroots campaigns are the reason the party exists and they are so disconnected from the main the

Carter 1:16:28

the the main campaign that sometimes the main campaign starts to forget that it's actually the 338 campaigns that matter that's

Corey 1:16:36

that's a great great point about praise you know you you need to make people feel like they are valued and that they've got the connection and that's part of what what i meant by in the know it's not praise praise is an important part of that too but it's it's giving a sense of value you

Corey 1:16:50

you know when you got us to do those things in i timed very poorly the whole marathon thing was not i i gave myself zero seconds to do it but

Corey 1:16:58

but really i think that they need to go and talk about being a campaign of substance darkest before dawn maybe but talk about what matters to canadians yeah giving them a sense of righteousness i guess is the point i'm trying to make also really helps. You want crusaders on your campaign.

Zain 1:17:12

You know, speaking of that, Corey, you made mention of something around like, it was tactical, but it's interesting to me, which was a campaigner or a campaign wanting to change the color of their signs. What were your guys' principles on allowing, you know, as much as it was praise and support, latitude for campaigns to kind of do their own thing? You know, being like, you know, having the PM's picture in my brochures it won't work here i've been doing this for too long like i know what works in my situation you know the you know the template you sent me where we have to do the realtor style shot on our big lawn signs well fuck you we're doing our own like i'm kind of curious what that experience has been like for those campaigns that might have experienced might have seasoned people that have been there time and time again or just have a freelance streak to them how do you generally control them because i suspect that's one of the biggest challenges that either the The campaign manager centrally or the deputy campaign manager is putting out those fires and liaising on that constantly. Carter, can I go to you first on this?

Carter 1:18:12

Yeah, I mean, I think you have to make a decision about what matters and what doesn't matter. You know, like they decide that they're going to put instead of the headshot on the signs, they're going to put a family shot. Well, I

Carter 1:18:23

think it's stupid, but whatever, you know, whatever you're going to choose, you're going to leave the liberal logo off and you're going to go with purple. um you know that's not going to work because um we have 338 campaigns and they all have to be tied together um you know some options were given for example to leave team trudeau off of certain things at certain points right so you you've got a you've got to give

Carter 1:18:48

give them some flexibility without letting them go crazy um and it's hard because at different moments in the campaign they want different things so keeping everybody on track can be really tough especially when the money lives in the constituencies because at the end of the day if the money is if the activity is being paid for by the constituencies our ability to control it as a provincial campaign is really low and even some of our most pitched

Carter 1:19:17

pitched battles actually with constituencies have been not about about what they're going to spend the money on, you know, like putting signs out or logos and things like that, but whether they'll actually release the money from the constituency funds. Those have been my biggest fights. And I'm proud to say I've lost almost all of them.

Zain 1:19:39

Corey, any thoughts on latitude for local campaigns or any principles you've had in the mix?

Corey 1:19:45

So the principle I try to follow in these cases, well, there's two things. Carter is absolutely Absolutely right. You've got to choose your battles. You've got to set your non-negotiables, and then you've got to know when to turn a blind eye because probably most of your non-negotiables are negotiable in different contexts, right? Sure. But I try to establish a principle that we're creating these standards, and there are certain things that you must do, like put data into the central database. You can't use other databases. basis but beyond those standards if you can show me that you can do something like think of the standards of setting the floor you use these templates because we don't want everything to look like hot garbage but if

Corey 1:20:24

you can create a version that is not that template but does the same basic job and looks just as polished then i'm good right if if you're willing to negotiate on that particular thing again it depends on your non-negotiables and um and by setting that sort of framework in advance or defining it in advance you sometimes have a little bit more latitude attitude the thing is campaigns are going to fight with you and we are in an environment now where campaigns have an awful lot more or central campaigns have an awful lot more authority they've figured out ways to hold on to the money in ways that wasn't possible 20

Corey 1:20:56

20 years ago right um i think about provincially here in alberta like the provincial the donations go through the party right that are going to the constituency association so there's a tax that's on them In many cases, there's ways that there can be holdbacks. So you can be a little bit more authoritative in those matters. But in parties where you can't, either because of history or because of current systems, just think about the fact that you are going to lose some fights. Consider establishing some off ramps, flexibility to advance so it doesn't look like a retreat.

Corey 1:21:28

Some principles you can point to in other campaigns say, hey, that candidate's sign doesn't look quite right. And you say, well, yeah, we gave them this latitude because they've been elected three fucking times. Go knock doors, right? but determine whatever your rules are and how you'll be able to discuss those deviations so that it doesn't become a total mess. There are things in general, like campaigns are interesting because in many ways they're like kind of a house of brands effect. Like you think about

Zain 1:21:53

about like a Unilever

Corey 1:21:53

Unilever or, uh, or something, maybe even a better example would be like an Apple or whatnot.

Corey 1:22:00

The sub brands sometimes feel like they're drifting from the core brand and

Corey 1:22:04

they do it because it makes sense for their individual product. But that's when corporate needs to to come in and say, no, you

Corey 1:22:10

you may benefit from changing your brand a little bit, but on net, if everybody did that, we all lose big because our brand falls apart, right? So you've just got to determine these matters of perennity that you need to establish in all cases, and you need to drive them where possible.

Zain 1:22:26

We'll leave that segment there. That segment, of course, brought to us by Flair Airlines. Flair Airlines, it's time we take your time. We'll move it on to our Our next segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, are you ready?

Carter 1:22:39

We didn't cover Rick Chiarelli. We didn't cover the Alberta situation. We're just going to the over, under? Do you

Zain 1:22:46

you want to make this four hours? No,

Carter 1:22:48

No, let's do the over, under. Do

Carter 1:22:49

Do you want to do this

Zain 1:22:49

this every morning at 5 a.m.? Let's

Carter 1:22:51

Let's do the over, under. Let's do it. We can do

Zain 1:22:53

do this every morning at 5

Carter 1:22:53

5 a.m. I've said my piece. We'd

Zain 1:22:56

We'd be swimming in our own lane. Stephen Carter, liberal candidate, has been allowed to run by Justin Trudeau. Raj Saini denies making unwanted sexual advances or inappropriate comments to young liberal staffers over the course of the last six years. The NDP are calling for him to resign. The pressure seems to be mounting. Trudeau, however, is sticking with his candidate. How bad is this for Trudeau on a scale of 1 to 10, Carter?

Carter 1:23:18

Probably a 3 or 4. Obviously, he's going to have a couple of bad headlines, and it does kind of go against the brand of the political feminist. But he's gone gone through this before with multiple candidates so it is uh sadly it is a part of uh the game i guess of politics now we saw a candidate drop out as you mentioned kind of or you alluded to in the 337 versus 338 um some allegations are stronger than others some situations are worse than others and uh prime minister's chosen to sit stand by this one it will i'm sure fade faster than it probably should have.

Zain 1:23:58

Corey, what do you think? Scale of one to ten, how bad is this for Trudeau?

Corey 1:24:03

It's not too bad right now. Well, these things start at, let's call it a seven on your garbage scale. It can fade very quickly to three, but it can also be a catalyst. And really, this will be a big, big deal if it becomes a bigger pattern of behavior that can be pointed to. And so what's What's happening in some ways is that you're running out of runway or the noose is tightening or whatever metaphor you want on this. You only get to play these chips and stand this ground so many times before you've just got a shitstorm on your hands.

Zain 1:24:38

Corey, I'm going to stick with you for our next one. Doug Ford and his government in Ontario are adopting a vaccine passport that's going to be rolling out near the end of the month. month overrated or underrated for trudeau overrated or underrated for trudeau in your mind

Corey 1:24:53

oh i think it's overrated it doesn't matter too much in the in the final summation whether

Corey 1:25:01

trudeau can take a bit of a victory lap on this or not a i don't believe he can i think that this is one of these things that's somewhat separate and it may

Corey 1:25:09

even diffuse the situation a little little bit for O'Toole, right?

Corey 1:25:12

right? Because before, Trudeau was the guy saying, I'm going to do this. And you've got a premier who's not willing to take these steps. And he was going to pull some levers, and he was going to put some pressure on the guy. Now, that's

Corey 1:25:24

that's not necessary. Ford has decided to do this. And he didn't do it because he thought Justin Trudeau was going to win the election. He did this because the pressure was becoming unbearable from his constituency. you would see.

Zain 1:25:36

Carter, overrated or underrated for Justin Trudeau, Doug Ford and his government in Ontario adopting a vaccine passport system?

Carter 1:25:44

Probably overrated for Justin Trudeau. He loses some wedge issues and those are the issues that he needs to have. So I think that this is going to create a little bit of havoc for Justin Trudeau, but he'll be able to get past it because he still has the primary issue. Frankly, the primary issue doesn't play very well for him. which is COVID is still running rampant.

Zain 1:26:08

Andrew Weaver, Tom Mulcair, those are just two of the individuals that have endorsed either implicitly or explicitly the liberal climate platform. You had Weaver come out with a video, you know, talking about how he's endorsing the liberal plan, how he feels like it's the only plan that is bold and thoughtful and that he's impressed with. You had similar comments from Tom Mulcair, which I don't think he did a video, but I think commentary said something to the extent of it's like a marvelous plan. So there's some pretty high praise for it. Question for you there, Carter, starting with you, overrated or underrated endorsements? I don't want to say in general, because we'll get to that later on in future episodes. Endorsements for the Liberal climate plan, overrated or underrated by these two individuals?

Carter 1:26:53

Probably overrated. I mean, they're getting a lot of coverage now, but they're not going to be changing anybody's votes. It's the endorsement by Annamie Paul that really is the one that is going to matter in the long term.

Zain 1:27:05

Oh, yeah, this is true. She also threw in her endorsement today. Corey, overrated or underrated the endorsements of Weaver and Mulcair for the Trudeau climate plan?

Corey 1:27:17

I think underrated because they will allow the liberals to put in writings where that vote could make a difference. Splashy quotes on literature that they're dropping specifically to Green supporters, NDP supporters. I mean, Mulcair can be hit and miss depending on the supporter. But, you know, I can think in particular in some writings in Quebec, perhaps. And it's something that allows them to execute a strategy you know they want to execute anyways, which is this hurting of the vote in order to, quote unquote, stop the Conservatives or secure a majority. already.

Zain 1:27:52

Corey, we're going to start our final question with you. Who would you want to be at the end of this week? We record Thursday evening. Let's just assume it's Friday morning. Which major party leader would you want to be right now as we just wrap up the Thursday night? What was it? Day 18, day 19 of this campaign? Who would you want to be?

Corey 1:28:16

think Annamie Paul because she She doesn't have a jet, so she gets to fly Flair Airlines shortly, and God,

Corey 1:28:23

God, who couldn't envy that?

Zain 1:28:25

Flair Airlines, a proud sponsor of this program. Anime Paul, of course, is going to be a patron of Flair Airlines. Carter, which major party leader would you want to be this week? Lay it on us. Don't be wrong.

Carter 1:28:43

Jay Hill from the Maverick Party.

Zain 1:28:46

Give me a real answer. At least one of you. Why is this a joke at the end? Why?

Carter 1:28:51

Because we're tired. We've been going for four hours on this thing or whatever it's been.

Zain 1:28:55

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 940 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velgey. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

Corey 1:29:12

Now, folks, we've had a lot of fun today. But there's a serious message we need to share with you here. Pay for your McLean subscription. Don't just do the private window to get to the article. It's so easy. I know you want to. But think about the good work of Jason Markasoff, of Paul Wells, of other people, of

Corey 1:29:36

And Flair Airlines is not the sponsor. If you have a problem with that, please tweet at The Hill Times.

Transcript