Transcript
Zain
0:02
This is The Strategist, episode 964. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, we are back.
Carter
0:12
been three days. It has only been three days. Time of my life. You're doing okay, Carter?
Carter
0:18
I'm loving life right now. Really am.
Zain
0:20
Tell me, were you invited to the 10 Downing Street Garden Party, yes or no? know?
Carter
0:25
You know what? Until the report comes back, I'm not sure if I was there or if I was not there. You
Zain
0:31
You don't remember Garden Party?
Carter
0:32
There's a report that's being generated. Until such time as the report is authored, I'm not able to remember whether I was there or whether I wasn't there. There's an opportunity, I think, for the report to get written. And once that report is written, I am prepared to, of course, read to you elements or sections of the report that apply to my behavior uh
Zain
0:53
uh cory what are the chances that stephen carter slashes uh alter ego dominic cummings are behind the leaks of the garden party between 99 and 100 oh
Corey
1:02
this has got to be a bigger number than that uh
Zain
1:07
you're doing good cory things are good in your world yeah
Corey
1:10
yeah i'm doing just fine i you know stephen carter um is
Corey
1:14
is a little sick he's a little under the weather you want to talk talk about that uh
Carter
1:18
uh sure yeah i'm uh i'm i'm i'm covid positive i'm
Carter
1:23
i'm positive i've always been a positive
Carter
1:25
you know what i'm a positive guy and i and the negativity that i brought to this show in the past i'd like to apologize for um the positivity is where i'm going to be from now on i'm going to be a far more positive pundit and a positive strategist as we move forward as a result of the covid positive uh uh rapid test which by the way was like oh yeah you got this for sure for me very lucky uh man cold level i was very lucky because i have both of my vaccinations did not get the booster shot because i wasn't eligible in alberta the day we called but the day after we called i was eligible in alberta um jason kenney's alberta changing things as we need to hey
Corey
2:05
hey uh zane what do you think it was like for coronavirus to get infected with steven carter oh
Zain
2:09
oh my goodness i bet it was uh one of the worst experiences over the last two years for coronavirus which is largely just done its own thing and you know and then it faces steven carter and it says you know maybe i need to i need to mutate again i can't do humans anymore what is this what is going on here so uh that's probably part of the internal monologue of the coronavirus which i'm sure this podcast will develop into a one-man show uh starring steven Stephen Carter, where he will play both himself and COVID.
Carter
2:41
If the next variant of COVID isn't called Carter of COVID, I don't even know what's wrong with us.
Zain
2:48
That's good. We've lost gas here. Let's go move it on to the headlines, Stephen Carter.
Carter
2:53
That's fine. Is it Thursday? Is it headline day? This is exciting.
Zain
2:55
exciting. It is headline day, and our first headline comes to us from the state broadcaster, the CBC. Manitoba cabinet minister mocked for tweet of wife shoveling snow after 12-hour hospital shift. You've probably seen it. I'm sure you have. A Manitoba cabinet minister is making international headlines over a tweet that features his wife shoveling snow and extremely cold temperatures after a 12-hour overnight shift. He said, even after a 12-hour night shift at the hospital last night, my wife still has the energy to shovel the driveway. God bless her and all frontline workers. Time to make her some breakfast, unquote Stephen Carter. Carter.
Zain
3:33
You know, you probably know what it's like, you know, catching a third or fourth wind after you take care of unvaccinated patients in the hospital. So can you relate?
Carter
3:42
I can relate. Here's how I can relate. My wife loves to shovel the walk. It is something that she enjoys doing, and it brings her a certain amount of pleasure. She is the one in our household that shovels the walk and it it is it is unbelievable like but given that i would never thank god
Zain
4:01
god i thought you were just you gave her the shovel uh you gave her the uh the the the the shovel i think you had your own digging yourself a hole no she
Carter
4:11
she has this it's a choice that she makes but i you know could you imagine tying it to being like forget about being a cabinet minister can you imagine being that husband and being that dumb as a husband like that to me is the part that just kills me like tweeting
Carter
4:28
tweeting that out like it was just a huge huge error as a husband uh you know what now i'm seeing it also a huge error by me as a husband to bring up heather yeah really big
Zain
4:38
big huge error yeah you
Carter
4:39
you know i was i was wondering as you were saying i'd like to go back can we you said yeah that's uh heather if you're listening to this i love you and
Corey
4:49
So does she really like it? Is this a choice that she makes or is this a choice that she made because you did that thing where you do it a couple of times but really badly and pretend
Corey
4:57
be incompetent? No, that was
Carter
4:58
was my youngest brother because I'm the oldest child, right? So the oldest sibling clears it well, right? The middle sibling kind of clears it like they're drunk and the youngest sibling just, you know, sits there and waits for dad to come home and then tattle on us. It's terrible. Yeah, it's terrible.
Zain
5:17
Corey, you have no commentary? Is that what I'm hearing from you? You got nothing to say
Corey
5:20
say about this? No, I think
Corey
5:21
it was absolutely, incredibly insensitive of her to shovel while he was trying to sleep. And I don't know why the internet has decided that
Corey
5:29
he's the villain here.
Zain
5:31
Yeah, I agree. I completely agree.
Carter
5:34
Thank you for getting me out of my hole, Corey. That was very nice of you. This
Zain
5:37
This is really good. We're really making strides here. We're growing the fan base one headline at a time. Let's move on to our next headline. line this one comes to us from the drive new french law requires car commercials to tell people to walk or bike instead that's right new federal law is now very similar to quote unquote please enjoy responsibly because the disclaimer on these advertisements in france now must mandatorily include either the following for short trips choose to walk or cycle think about carpooling or take public transit daily. Stephen Carter, are cars the new cigarettes?
Carter
6:17
You know what? I mean, I think that they are. I mean, I think that this is, I mean, this is actually really interesting to me. We've had advertising that has to run disclaimers in the past. And, you know, I think that we've accepted it. I mean, it's always fun to watch an old Formula One race and see all the tobacco advertising on all the cars and think about how we've moved from that to not having anything i mean now we're not going to have the cars i mean it's a fascinating switch but i'm i i think that you know what national government someone had to be the first mover you know between that and new zealand like starting to outlaw smoking completely um i think that we have a new view towards things that we feel are damaging to our society unfortunately the things that are damaging to our society are often the things that we want to buy the most cory
Zain
7:08
cory car car commercials required to encourage walking, cycling, carpooling, public transit. What do you think?
Corey
7:16
Well, it's, it's, it's weird, right? I mean, let's just talk about it in kind of the most simple terms. You want to advertise your thing and the government insists you advertise substitute goods at the same time. And that's, that's strange for me as a marketer, right? Like I, you know, it's funny because the comp will be smoking for a lot of people and, but really there it's like smoking kills, don't do it, right? Here it's, do you really need a car? Why don't you get get a bus pass and that actually is a you know maybe good advice but it's it's a little bit different here no but it's the
Carter
7:44
the same as drinking isn't it like drink responsibly drink less drink you know consume
Corey
7:50
consume it's not like drink pepsi it doesn't say well you're purchasing alcohol maybe consider just a soft drink let's
Zain
7:55
let's move it on to our next headline our next headline you know before i jump into this guys i have to say sometimes you
Zain
8:01
you the news doesn't come to you you have to go to to the news because stories that are this special stories
Zain
8:06
stories that celebrate the right thing in canada when so often we are presented with the wrong thing or the divisive thing uh are a rarity so i'm very excited to present from the salmon arm observer our next headline sycamuse council approves development permit for dairy queen that is right cory a development permit for a dairy queen parallel to Highway 1 in Sycamuse has been approved. District Sycamuse Council approved the permit as well as any accompanying development variance permit. Wow, very generous, but why not? It's a Dairy Queen as it's December 8th meeting. Corey Hogan, this is big news for the people of Sycamuse Council, for the people of Salmon Arm, for the people of British Columbia and Canada. A new Dairy Queen will be taken over the land.
Corey
8:53
Absolutely. When you're Sycamuse, try soft-serve ice cream instead.
Carter
9:00
That is amazing. That was well done. I was just in Sycamuse. And I'll be honest with you, this is going to change my travel patterns. This is going to change my travel patterns. I see a fill up happening, you
Carter
9:15
know, probably within my electric car. It's going to happen there. I'm going to get the charger going. Because now that I've been told that I should consider walking or riding my bike by the French government, I'm going to probably buy an electric car.
Zain
9:28
uh carter would the dairy queen have canned her son prince andrew
Corey
9:34
his royal title that's nice i see what you did that oh
Carter
9:39
my god what have they done to the peanut buster parfait like can
Zain
9:43
can i just ask this is going off the rails anyways that's fine yeah uh is the queen one of the best political strategists over the last half
Carter
9:52
she's either one of the best or one of the worst and i'm really not sure how to to grade her on that curve cory
Zain
9:58
cory the cold-blooded nature of just stripping your son of all his titles and tell him to go fuck off what do you think i
Corey
10:04
i don't like first of all like we've all known that andrew's a shit heel for decades so it's
Corey
10:11
giving her credit for like acting 30 years too late like jesus this is actually what i think her superpower is for whatever reason people people start to actually buy this bullshit of oh it's the queen It's separate from everything else, and they ignore, like, the absolutely horrid way the royal family runs its operations, you know, through a combination of outright state propaganda and just this, like, weird love of the British Empire that enslaved a huge portion of the globe. Like, I don't know. Like, why does the queen get any credit here? You know, no kings, no gods, republicanism forever. Oh, my God. Let's just be done with it. Let's just stop pretending that this woman is a saint, because she's the furthest thing from it.
Zain
10:54
Wow, okay. You're saying that to someone who has got a title himself, so I just need you to know. Yeah,
Carter
10:58
son of the vice regent here is probably pretty
Carter
11:02
pretty pissed. I've got like one of those medallions, you know, that the queen gave away for her 75th anniversary or something. I've got one of those. Oh,
Corey
11:11
Oh, yeah, the queen saw your name on a list and said, oh, Stephen Carter. I mean, I have to be respectful. That's a lovely check. If you had one of those things. He was the minister of communications here in the United Kingdom. If you had one
Corey
11:20
of those. Didn't that make him a lord? If you had
Carter
11:21
had one of those. Sounds white.
Zain
11:33
I'll just say, if you Google Stephen Carter, the first Stephen Carter that comes up is
Carter
11:41
50-50, Queen. I think I've told the story on this podcast before that black Stephen Carter, who's really freaking smart, like really smart. By the way, there's Stephen Carter. He doesn't go black. Black Stephen Carter. No, you're
Carter
11:54
you're white Stephen Carter. I'm white Stephen Carter. He's Stephen Carter. Just move on. He's Stephen Carter. Okay,
Zain
11:58
Okay, no, no. There's Stephen Carter. There's white Stephen Carter. Then there's a Lord Stephen Carter, which is another guy.
Carter
12:03
White Stephen Carter. Which
Carter
12:05
Which is you. Picture used to show up with his quotes. quotes
Carter
12:11
was the worst thing you know google will put up a quote or whatever my picture with this guy's full quotes he's way smarter than me it was tragic absolutely tragic
Carter
12:24
okay that's good this is anyways i reported it and it's all been fixed now our
Zain
12:28
our next headline comes to us from the toronto star emails reveal why maxine bernie's people party of canada can't use its name in the Ontario election. That's right. The People's Party of Canada has been blocked from registering its own name for the provincial party in Ontario by Toronto man who's used the People's Political Party for the last decade plus. It's a big blow to Maxine Burney who's wanting to gain seats in Ontario, take away vote share from Doug Ford. I want to talk about this and another headline coming up for a second here. And that's the universality of political brand. Corey, is this overblown that a brand just really doesn't mean much in that sense? If it's got a federal sort
Zain
13:09
sort of base and it's made some inroads, does it actually matter that Maxime Bernier doesn't get the PPC in Ontario? I think there's a political branding conversation here that I'd love to just mildly tap into for a second. I
Corey
13:21
I mean, I don't know. It's interesting. The rules around when a political party's name is too close are pretty ill
Corey
13:29
ill-defined. And you see all sorts of strange situations. Of course, generally speaking, if there was a party by that name, you're not allowed to re-register it for an election. Depends on the jurisdiction and all of that. But, you know, I guess what I mentioned is like even saying People's Political Party might have been enough in some provinces, including Alberta, just to say like, no, the People's Party of Alberta is a different thing and you're allowed. So I
Corey
13:51
I don't know that this is over. It's quite possible that there'll be some sort of like judicial challenge to this. You should allow this name. It's not the same name. I don't know. know um but
Corey
14:02
but i also think that if you're maxine bernier this conversation is not necessarily a bad thing for you you're all of a sudden having people having a conversation about it and you'll find a different name i mean people's party is not exactly like they they broke the originality bank when they're like what are we going to call our populist political movement you know it's
Corey
14:22
it's fucking idiots so i'm not i'm not uh i'm not feeling a lot of tears for maxine bernier right now wow
Zain
14:27
wow Now, Corey sounds pretty jealous he didn't get the marketing and branding gig for the People's Party of Canada. That's what I'm hearing, Carter. Listen,
Carter
14:33
Listen, after that Sycamore's DQ thing, I've never had more respect for
Carter
14:37
for Corey than I have right now. Corey's right. We're talking about Maxime Bernier again. Victory for Max. Shame on us. Yeah, victory for Max. So, you
Carter
14:49
you know, I don't care. It won't matter what he calls his party. I mean, he helps, you know, there's votes there for him to win. He will win them. And ultimately, he'll choose the same color palette. He'll be able to promote the party itself. And ultimately, for me, this is just a long con. You know, he's raising enough money to keep himself employed. And, you know, I'm not sure, you know, like the Green Party, like
Carter
15:17
like all these kind of sub parties that they're trying to get themselves known, it's always been a massive struggle They struggle to keep a leader employed because it's hard to raise enough money. I think the PPC actually has the fundraising capacity and a business plan that makes sense because of who they're targeting. They can be, they can kind of tie into the rebel news model and monetize right wing lunacy.
Zain
15:40
So, you know, to that point, Carter, you know, we often talk about political brand here, and sometimes we define it as in the broader sort of suite of considerations between color scheme, the name, just the general feeling that it evokes.
Zain
15:55
From your perspective, like, where's your head on like contemporary political brands? Like if you're a startup party, does owning your name really matter? Or is it because you're a startup? It doesn't. It's more so a feeling and a sort of opportunity to kind of pick on a certain audience like would you be concerned if you were in the people's party right now and your brand was you know not being able to be registered in ontario
Carter
16:18
don't think i'd be concerned i mean it's it's it's it's not that big of a deal i mean uh we see small brands or new brands changing themselves quite frequently you see big brands changing themselves quite frequently sometimes those brands are uh universally uh you know
Carter
16:39
cheered and there people think you know that's a really good brand change i think of telus i thought telus's brand change was was absolutely perfect um
Carter
16:45
um but then i think what do they what do they change their brand what do you mean well they used to be agt ah
Carter
16:50
and then they became telus um and i thought it was a great brand stretch uh but then you know facebook becomes meta and you And you lose confidence in the world. So what
Carter
17:01
what do you do?
Zain
17:02
We couldn't help rectify anything in the real world, so we're going to the meta. Corey, what is your take on this? I don't even know if I've got like a fine-pointed question, but there is something to be said about startup parties and political brands, especially with how fickle we've seen voters be in recent years in some cases. Just your thoughts on this.
Corey
17:20
Yeah, well, look, I'd say your brand is more than just your legal name here. And it's not as though they don't have options there. They're associated with the color purple. They're associated with Maxime Bernier. They're associated with crazy policies on the bat shit, right? They've got a brand beyond just being able to call themselves the People's Party. And in fact, they're known as the PPC pretty broadly here. So look, we're going to talk about it for a day. They're going to argue they should be allowed the name, maybe. And then they'll just register PPC Ontario, and nobody's even going to know the difference. And this will just be a thing that happened at some point.
Zain
17:55
Let's move on to our next headline. Our next headline also comes to us from the Toronto Star. Help Peter McKay pay off debt from leadership race. Stephen Harper urges conservatives. Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper is once again going to bat for Peter McKay in a bid to help him pay off his 2020 conservative leadership debt. 16 months after the contest, McKay still owns roughly half a million dollars in a letter to party members and supporters this week. Harper said people need to pay, help him pay that down. I want to talk about this in the specificity of Peter McKay and what this means. And then I want to once again zoom out about this, because we talk about campaign debt as like a fleeting conversation. I don't think we really appreciate the toll that it takes to run for office, to lose. If you win and you have got debt, much cleaner, smoother pathway. way. But Stephen Carter, your initial thoughts when you see that Harper jumping in in one of the first sort of appeals of 2022 to help not
Zain
18:57
you know, bolstering O'Toole's leadership, not with harping on Trudeau for a slow third doses and procurement, but no, to clear debt for Peter McKay. What are your thoughts when you see that?
Carter
19:12
I think of all of the leaders and all the leadership candidates that have come before, they have been destroyed by the process. I think of Hugh Siegel, who lost his house when he was running for leader of the Progressive Conservative Party back in the day. I think of Ken Dryden, who still owes money on his leadership race. I think of Mr. Wonderful or Mr. Moron, whatever we're calling him, Kevin O'Leary, who
Carter
19:39
still owes money on his leadership campaign. I think of all the people who ran for Calgary City Council in the last election who will owe money on their campaigns that are trapped into a cycle that constrains
Carter
19:53
constrains how much money they can raise at the beginning from individual donors. And then once you've lost the ability – if you lose, the ability to raise money is so dramatically reduced that it can cripple you. And oftentimes, like in the Kevin O'Leary case, he has the capacity – Kevin O'Leary or Ken Dryden both have the capacity to essentially hold that debt forever. It's just a debt that they owe to themselves. selves um but uh but someone like peter mckay who's who's been in public life his whole life and and is now you know uh just a just a little lawyer trying to make it make it work and in nova scotia um you know he's
Corey
20:31
he's in toronto oh
Carter
20:33
oh no so my story is wrong it's a better story my way if you're going to raise money you're just you know you're out in anti-anticonish and you're
Carter
20:41
you're sitting down on a on a on a fishing boat trying to just to just to make an just to make take a living um you know sitting in dad's house making some cash anyways um that that's
Carter
20:53
you know i i have i i but then then i have the campaign strategist point of view and i just ran a significant mayoralty campaign where we didn't go into significant debt because we couldn't go into significant debt because we ran the campaign saying um if we go into debt we know the problem here and the problem is you cannot raise the money if especially if we'd lost um
Carter
21:16
um you know you know with winning you're always a few dollars short or a few dollars over and you clean things up and there's additional costs that weren't anticipated blah blah blah but not a half million dollars not
Carter
21:28
not a half million dollars um worst case scenario you should be looking at you know four or five percent of your total spend uh in overages or and and that's manageable this This is something that was committed to that probably had him, you know, in the hole from day one. And that's just a position that he's put himself in. And now Stephen Harper is helping to bail him out. But that is a strategic mistake made by a campaign that doesn't think about tomorrow. And so, so many campaigns do that. That's not the way you should campaign. You should campaign with the cash you have because the cash you have is the barometer of
Carter
22:05
of how well you're doing. because, Corey, cash is the currency of campaigns. Oh,
Zain
22:11
Oh, beautifully, wonderfully said. What a, just tying the bow, Stephen Carter. You know, Corey, it's often, I think we often forget that like a debt to a campaign, yes, it's, you know, Peter McKay's name on it, but it has downstream ramifications sometimes, right? Vendors not being paid, volunteers not being reimbursed for pocket expenses that they may have made. Oh, just go buy the software, whatever, we'll pay you back. And, you know, people may not necessarily have the means to do that. So there's just significant downstream effects for those that might
Zain
22:40
might be part of the orbit or that might have been part of the universe of that campaign as well. But your thoughts when you see this?
Corey
22:46
Yeah, I mean, it's one
Corey
22:49
one of those gray areas that political campaigns have, you know, if you want to be not charitable, you'd say taken advantage of. If you want to be charitable, you'd say just have sort of fallen into. But it's, you know, there are rules around what's considered a loan and who can give you a loan to a political campaign. There are not really rules around when you pay your bills, right? When you work with a vendor in it, so I'll get back to you there. So as a result, this is often how this debt takes form in this day and age, right? And I think that if we continue to see this, if we continue to see Kevin O'Leary $500,000, Peter McKay $500,000, somebody is going to quite sensibly say, maybe there ought to be rules on pay as
Corey
23:31
as you go for a campaign. But, you know, you think corporations would just take care of that themselves at a certain point and say, why in the world am I giving politicians a line of credit? Right? Yeah, like, it's just, it's just a crazy thing.
Corey
23:44
This is a tough one, right? Because, you know, Carter says it's about not thinking about tomorrow, just trying to get through the moment. I think in some ways, that's, that's often, if not usually true for these campaigns. It's like, oh, you want to leave it all in the field, we're just going to do it, I'll figure out tomorrow, tomorrow. I
Corey
24:00
I think in the case of Peter McKay, it might have been a case of thinking too much about tomorrow, right? Like, well, when I'm leader, I'll be able to slam down sort of thing. Yeah, right. You got to keep in mind, in his case, in particular, this was supposed this was a quote, unquote, empty net.
Zain
24:13
true. That is what he said.
Corey
24:15
And here we are. And so when you find yourself in a situation like that, it's
Corey
24:20
it's a very different time, because the leader's ability to fundraise is significantly greater than it is for a failed candidate. Either way, he played it wrong. I mean, it wasn't just a strategic error. It was kind
Corey
24:34
kind of evidence of why he probably wasn't the right guy for the gig.
Zain
24:39
By the way, I think he said that about Andrew Scheer. yeah he did right uh trying to uh not not winning against justin trudeau carter can we talk about for a few minutes like about the realities here like let's
Zain
24:51
let's talk about what can be done but like we've experienced this either first hand or second hand been part of campaigns that have had massive debts been owed money on our credit cards right for months right uh it depends on who we are we've all heard stories we all know those people yeah the rumors are are loud and and and plentiful. Talk to me about the reality here from your perspective of what you see when a campaign has debts, like the strategists, the managers, the volunteers, like you reference some campaigns, let's not get into specifics, but you reference some campaigns with some lived experience recently. Like what happens to campaigns and candidates once they have and are saddled with this debt?
Carter
25:32
Well, there's reality in there and there's also the legality of it now. Now, so most of the legislation surrounding campaigns has been updated that forces campaigns, if you're going to take a loan, to take the loan only from a chartered bank. So you can only take a loan from an existing chartered bank. Well, it turns out to get that loan, it's a little bit of a tushy pain in the butt, right? Like it's hard to get that loan. So most campaigns are actually run off the cash flow of candidates, cash flows of spouses, cash flows of senior volunteers or cash flows of the senior staff. And you'll wind up taking, you
Carter
26:13
you know, so the first thing that you do is you say, OK, well, I know we're a little short of cash this month, so I'm not going to take my fee
Carter
26:22
fee that I'm due. So I'm going to push off my fee for a month. You'll pay me next month because we're going to do this thing. This thing's going to happen. This thing's going to happen. And then cash will start to flow because we're really on the uptick. So I'm going to push off my money for a month. And then the next month happens and something has happened and it didn't work the way you wanted it. So you push your second month's fee and now you're going to carry a little bit of expenses because if someone doesn't carry these expenses, then you're not actually going to get to the thing. So now let's say you're at $30,000 all in after only two months. Well, now you've got this sunk cost problem, right? You're $30,000 in and the only way you're going to ever get out is if you continue to put money in because you don't win a campaign by stopping in the middle, right? So I'm $30,000 in. I'm just one person. There's six other people who are each $30,000 in, one guy who's stupid enough to go $40,000 in. And all of a sudden, you know, there's there's two hundred plus thousand dollars outstanding. And you think, you know what?
Carter
27:21
We got to go balls to the wall. This is the only way we're going to get there. The only way we're going to get there is if we take this last two months and we hail Marriott. Are we committed? Are we committed? Yes, we are committed. Is our guy the best guy? Yes, our guy is the best guy. Our candidate is going to win. And you go all in for the last two months and you get obliterated. Right. You are no longer even, you
Carter
27:42
you know, like sometimes the victory is small. You know, like the Peter McKay loss to O'Toole
Carter
27:50
O'Toole wasn't huge, but it doesn't matter. When you're second, you don't exist anymore. And
Carter
27:54
And now you're in for 500K, right? And,
Carter
27:59
you know, most of the people can afford that. Most of the people, you know, one of the sad truths of these things is that ultimately the money just gets managed around. And the person who can't handle it gets paid out, right? Right. Like there's some young kid that was working on the campaign that was carrying the credit card that put the candidate into the hotels for the last two weeks. That kid gets paid. Right. But it's it's a it's
Carter
28:21
it's a bit of a nightmare because, you know, I've been hung out. Others have been hung out. Sometimes the costs aren't big. Sometimes, you know, it's just a few thousand dollars. But now being hung out is technically illegal because
Carter
28:34
because the other side of these acts are you can't finish with a deficit. You have to fundraise everything out. And so that you must fundraise everything out.
Carter
28:45
Technically, anybody who doesn't pay the people who are supplying them is technically breaking the act. But Elections Canada, Elections Alberta, Elections British Columbia are all very reticent to enforce that part of the act. Well,
Corey
28:59
it's tough. It's very difficult to prove intent in that sense, right? Like, did you mean to run a massive deficit? Well, who can say? Did you just have bad internal controls? Did people spend money and start sending you receipts after that you couldn't do anything about? You know, the other thing that I think is worth noting, especially in the context of Peter McKay, although my sense is Peter McKay done, like he's not going to run for the conservative leadership after. But if you're not done, and if you've run one of these campaigns, let's just imagine you ran for leader, but you lost, but you're still an MP or an MLA or
Corey
29:29
or an MPP for our Ontario listeners.
Corey
29:33
It's like a car boot on you. You can't move anywhere until you settle this debt. You're not going to get to run for the next leadership. You're not going to get to just sort of move forward and do the things you want to do until you conclude this debt. So parties have generally, I think, looked
Corey
29:52
So my sense, I'm curious to hear Stephen's here, is generally speaking, like if it's one of those truly like this happened accidentally and they're a good person,
Corey
29:59
you know, the party brass will often come together and, you know, pass the hat almost and be like, yeah, we got to help out Peter, right? Right. If they get the sense that they actually just sort of recklessly run up, they'll let them twist in the wind for a year, but then they'll say something like, well, now we got to help here, which I think is the situation we're in right now. Nobody was that impressed that he ran a half million dollar debt. But at the end of the day, they're still all conservatives. They want to do right by each other. And that's sort of the band of brothers that exists in any political party. Right. Right.
Corey
30:26
Like the third version is the Kevin O'Leary, where it's you were an outsider. You ran up a crazy debt. You can go fuck yourself. You can deal with the courts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so there's versions here. And generally speaking, parties self-police and how the party brass comes together and assists you after after that. Different in a local campaign like what Stephen was talking about without parties, because who
Corey
30:50
who helps you then?
Zain
30:51
Carter, any final thoughts before we move on?
Zain
30:57
poor financial management trying to get out of your debt worry not we're still here flair airlines guys let's move it on to our next segment our next segment they're still there what do you mean nope our next segment the dead cat unvaxed tax cory hogan the dead cat of francois legault might have been thrown on the table quebec premier francois legault said tuesday earlier this week that his province would be imposing a health tax on Quebeckers who refuse to get their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in the coming weeks. Quote, we're looking for a health contribution for adults who refuse to be vaccinated for non-medical reasons, unquote, Legault said at a news conference in which he also announced an interim public health director to replace his public health doctor. Since then, more than 7,000 people have registered for their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. That was just that first day, which was one of the highest in several days. We've also seen Quebec now put a curfew on their curfew, which is coming to an end as well. I want to talk about the policy of this. I want to talk about the politics of this. Many folks, premiers, Jason Kenney, Doug Ford, federal leaders, Aaron O'Toole, saying they will not be replicating what Legault said. But let's get into the policy here. And Corey, I want to start with you. You know, know, when you saw Legault do this, there's the politics here, and we'll talk about that. So I mentioned that dead cat thing, which we'll explain. And I even want to get your assessment, if you agree that it is the dead cat strategy here. But when you saw this from a policy perspective, what
Zain
32:24
what did you think of Francois Legault's maneuver?
Corey
32:28
Well, so from a policy, it's tough for me to disentangle it. But I'll say from a policy perspective, I thought, well, this is interesting. There's a reason it's international news. whose jurisdictions haven't really done this, right? This idea that you are now going to, you know, there's some that have even said, like, you're required, you must. And if you don't, there's a fine. But somehow it's a little bit different to be like,
Corey
32:49
to do what Quebec has done here. And I thought, well, that's fascinating, because it
Corey
32:55
it definitely seems like there is a, okay,
Corey
32:59
okay, well, you can talk about the liberties of it, and I want to maybe handle them separately and whether this is something that's appropriate in a liberal democracy. But from
Corey
33:06
from a policy point of view, if you have these massive societal costs that are being borne because of the actions of a relatively small group of people,
Corey
33:16
why not throw it on that small group of people? You know, this is a choice that they're making. It's an active choice. There's a vaccine that's available. If you have a legitimate exemption, this does not apply to you. uh so that you're like there's kind of this surface logic of it that you say like okay yeah i mean if if this is something that's happening because of these other people well then let's let's either compel them to change their actions or let's uh or let's get them to pay right and this is where leggo talked about a substantive substantive you know financial penalty here um but you know as soon as you start thinking about how it gets applied you you very quickly get into well there's some there's some pretty
Corey
33:55
there's hairs on this there's all sorts of things that you have to consider from privacy points of view uh from the fact that not everybody who's unvaccinated is you know it's he's an anti-vaxxer who's taking to the streets there's there's
Corey
34:06
there's people who maybe just haven't had the means to go or worried about missing work because they'll get sick or like there's a there's a there's
Corey
34:12
there's a thousand stories in the naked city right and uh and this does seem to be a different flavor of something like you can't point to it and say oh yeah this This is a policy just like, you
Corey
34:23
know, last time Canada created a tax for when you didn't do something. And I think where, from a policy point of view, people are really kind of hung up is on that.
Corey
34:34
I will say even I personally don't love the idea of government taxing you for something you didn't do. And then there's also this slippery slope argument that is, okay, well, if there's this cost that's as a result of a few people and they have to pay for it,
Corey
34:50
can't you make that argument about smoking can't you make that argument can't
Corey
34:53
can't you make that argument about um uh
Corey
34:56
uh you know obesity or or other lifestyle choices that have led you into kind of more more costly uh areas of health so um
Corey
35:07
counter arguments to all of that i'm not saying i agree with those but like you know it's an interesting policy question and um it
Corey
35:14
it didn't seem like it was fully thought out when it was announced and i think legos musings on the spot will probably cause them legal trouble when this inevitably gets challenged.
Zain
35:22
I think that's where the politics come in. Carter, I'll ask you the same question, different way. Let's say you're chief of staff to a premier in a different part of the country. You saw what Legault did on Tuesday. Are you saying, fuck yeah, let's jump on board with this? Or are you saying, I'm not sure I love this from the policy perspective? It doesn't have to be either of those camps. I suspect there's a blurred line between, but which way would you be leading if you were chief of staff to a premier in this country, not Francois Legault?
Carter
35:49
Well, this is all very interesting to me because, you know, Corey's comment about surface logic kind of, you know, was, I think, made to diminish some of that surface logic. And I quite like the surface logic because it strikes – Well, he cherry-picked some data points, and I'm going to cherry-pick my own data points to make my point. But we do place an inordinate tax on tobacco products. We do place an inordinate tax on drinking. We take the proceeds of gambling in Canada because we feel that these sins should come with a cost. We're also at a place where many jobs have mandatory vaccination requirements. One of the great things that annoys me the most about the RCMP or the police services across the country saying that they don't want to stand up for mandatory vaccinations is it is mandatory to be vaccinated for most things in the police service because you're exposed to things like hepatitis through the course of your workplace and they do not want to be putting their employees at risk when there's an easily usable, safe vaccination, which it turns out is the case with COVID. Easily available, safe vaccine. So the surface logic of this makes sense to me. We should be placing a cost on that which we feel is a sin that we have additional costs for.
Carter
37:17
For example, if you choose to drive your... Now, this may not be entirely the same because it's a little bit more market-driven, but British Columbia has a government-led insurance program, and if you choose to drive your car like a maniac, as Corey does, he pays a higher rate. If someone chooses to drive like a grandma, like Zane does, he pays a higher rate because that's neither safe nor fun to watch either, but perfect drivers like myself...
Zain
37:40
myself... Corolla, baby. It only goes 30 kilometers an hour. Everywhere is a school zone if you want it to be. I
Carter
37:45
I will just tell you this. It is the most frustrating thing in the world to drive with Zane. But it is safe. It is safe because the airbags have gone off so many times. Anyways, I digress. My point is that surface logic works for me. I am struggling with these new levels of logic that say we can't force people to take vaccination when we can, and we have, and we do and we can't have an additional cost for sins when we can and we have and we do the difference of this is that the cost is going to be applied in a different fashion because we're not selling anti-vaxxers their medicine right so they've just come they're coming up with a different means to deliver the syntax and i like it cory
Corey
38:28
cory jump this is i mean so what i find so fascinating about this from policy point of view is that this is basically like an economist's version of the the trolley problem right yeah
Corey
38:38
because the difference between everything that steven just said and this is that somebody has decided to purchase cigarettes somebody has decided to purchase alcohol they've decided to purchase a car drive a car you could sit in a room and do nothing and nothing in this case being not get vaccinated and you are going to have to end up paying this tax here and so that's what makes it a little bit different from a policy point of view does
Zain
38:58
does everyone know what the trolley problem is are you going to explain it i
Zain
39:02
i i guess i have to now now yeah
Zain
39:04
you think that our listeners are google people
Carter
39:06
people can't google the trial i don't think they haven't watched the good place i don't think they've
Zain
39:11
they've seen that episode of michael sandel's
Corey
39:13
sandel's justice course at harvard cory do you think that i should have go back and explain what mla stands for as well or like
Carter
39:20
like i mean how dumb do we get your audience oh now that i put it that way okay hold on you know what is it for carter carter
Zain
39:27
chief of staff but do you Do you know what an MLA was? It's a member of the Legislative
Carter
39:32
Oh, that's good. I'd like to point out that I'm very pleased that you didn't ask me what an MMP is, because I would have been like, I don't know. I don't know.
Zain
39:41
let's just keep... What's MNP?
Carter
39:43
It's a consulting firm in Calgary that does a lot of consulting.
Carter
39:50
They're also in Saskatchewan. You're
Corey
39:50
You're both terrible. Corey, the trolley problem. The trolley problem. The trolley problem is this. If there is a trolley moving down the tracks and you are sitting at a switch and if the trolley just moves the way that it is going to go it's going to run over five people kill five people if you pull the switch it kills one person your action will kill one person your inaction will kill five people what's the appropriate response uh with the trolley problem and so people argue about this they argue whether like taking the activity is what makes it evil or if it's the standing by that makes it evil and i've greatly simplified the problem and there's all sorts of variants on it but what it really comes down to is uh do you penalize inaction or action like depending on which evil occurs right and so we have a situation here uh where we're saying basically i've been thinking about this and maybe i mean there's examples of government taxing
Corey
40:47
taxing you if you do nothing but most of them involve you like owning property already right like if you've got a house every year you're going to have to pay taxes on it right uh generally speaking most of the other financial
Corey
40:59
financial incentives and disincentives we throw out into the world are based on your actions not your inaction and while that that might be a distinction without a difference i think that's the crux of the argument right but
Carter
41:10
if you go if you go into the behavioral economics argument of this right like if you go to the behavioral like someone was asking me once why would we pay why would we charge people for rapid tests. And I said, because it would serve as an economic incentive for people to get vaccinated, right?
Carter
41:27
right? So if people get an unlimited number of free rapid tests and they are expected to rapid test twice a week to ensure that they can maintain their work status, then those rapid tests are incentivizing them to stay unvaccinated. Whereas if you charge them for those tests, then you are now putting them in a position where they've got an economic incentive. And the same goes for this tax. This tax should not be paid for anybody. This government should not want to collect the tax. The government should be putting the tax in place as a simple economic or behavioral economics suggestion that a more rational human being, which of course we know doesn't exist, but a more rational human being should be pushing themselves towards getting getting vaccinated, because they don't want to pay the cost, which is why we put the tax on cigarettes, why we put the tax on alcohol, and
Carter
42:19
and why we put the profits going to the state on
Carter
42:21
on gambling. We think that people shouldn't do these things, but they're going to anyways. So let them at least pay a cost that is then given to the state that we can turn into some good action.
Zain
42:32
We'll park the economics there, and let's talk about the strategy. Corey, the political strategy here so i i teed this up by saying this was a dead cat problem uh or the dead cat political strategy i should say do you want to reference what that is for our listeners and do you agree that what lago has done here this channel change on the heels of you know letting go his his public health doctor of being criticized that
Zain
42:59
that he was meddling too much in
Zain
43:01
in uh the fight against COVID politically, that this was a channel changer, got the entire country talking.
Corey
43:09
Yeah, the dead cat strategy was made famous by Australian political strategist, Linton Crosby, who basically, you know, argued that in an election, if the conversation is going on, and you don't like the conversation, or it's damaging to you, you
Corey
43:23
you know, at the dinner table, throw a dead cat on the table, because that's what people are going to talk about. They're going to say there's a dead cat on the table. What's going on with that dead cat? That's crazy. there's a dead cat and it's it's distraction politics essentially is is the way to think about it and so of course legault goes to a press conference after his chief medical officer of health not called that in quebec but uh uh you know steps down and he's about to announce a replacement and i mean he just he big foots it like all of all of uh you know the press corps came to have one line of conversation and he came with this crazy fucking swing that has dominated canadian conversation ever since and
Zain
44:03
and then hit international like airwaves as well oh
Corey
44:06
oh yeah absolutely and so look maybe he was planning to do this i think him he may have even moved it up based on the half-baked nature of it all but yeah i mean it was it was a bit it was a bit wild uh and so the suggestion of course is that he did this as a matter of strategy to get people not Not talking about his challenges with staffing, but rather now talking about this very bold strategy. And of course, what he knows is that almost
Corey
44:31
almost everybody is vaccinated, especially in Quebec of the eligible population. They have very high vaccination rates. So if 90% are
Corey
44:38
are vaccinated and 10% aren't, it's,
Corey
44:41
it's, I mean, it's the simplest, crassest populist politics. it's the fuck the 10 argument which again like you know i i am so strangely
Corey
44:51
strangely torn about this because i think generally speaking we live in a liberal democracy and a democracy is not mob rule right like there has to be a certain respect for minority rights obviously that has to be balanced out against public health needs and so i like it's a fascinating one for me and it's one that i can sit and think about all day if i want to but the politics of it are clear it's
Corey
45:12
it's going to to be popular. It's probably going to be popular basically anywhere that you would poll on it, including here in Alberta. So
Zain
45:18
So I want to actually park that last thought you had, Corey, for a second, which is the popularity of it. Because Quebec, yes, might have a higher second dose vaccination rate than other parts of the country, but not significantly higher, not by 20 points, not by 30 points, maybe by five, maybe by four. So why have so many others come out and said no against it? I want to talk about that in a second. But Carter, I want to give you your take on the raw politics that you saw Legault shape this channel change. And do you agree? Was this a channel change slash dead cat on the table?
Carter
45:48
I really liked it. I mean, he was in a spot, he jumped on it, he created a national issue. He was on the right side of the national issue. He put behind him some Bill 21 controversy, which was dogging him a smidge.
Carter
46:05
Not as much as I would personally like for it to be dogging him but you know this this and he's on the right side like that's the piece that cory mentioned or alluded to and and i'm
Carter
46:16
i'm sure this polls super well i i haven't seen any polling for it but i'm sure that that if you're in the 80 percent and you're thinking to yourself i've done what i need to do screw those other guys um man
Carter
46:28
man this this could be very powerful it may not be quite as high in alberta where we have such a low pickup of uh our younger age range. But everywhere else across the country, we're seeing massive pickups on vaccination. And, oh, man, like, screw
Carter
46:44
screw those other guys is not necessarily a bad play.
Zain
46:48
Carter, I want to talk to you about this. I'll leave it with you for a second. I'll come to you, Corey. Do you need this to actually become law, like from a strategy perspective? Or are you fine this just being a incentive
Zain
47:02
incentive or a stick to threaten that people get this done? Like, from a political strategy perspective, if you were advising Legault, would you just say, just fucking do it? Who cares if it's half-baked, man? Just do it. The threat of it is the win that we need. It's the channel changer. Or is there actually downside risk that if he doesn't implement this, that it's actually troublesome for him? Let's
Carter
47:26
Let's say they move two more percent in getting people vaccinated over the next month and a half. Job done. Don't
Carter
47:32
Don't need to do it. Look, we got more people vaccinated. And at the end of the day, that's what this was all about. The remaining people we have, we can manage this. You know, there's a lot of exposure already that's going through this group. At this stage, they've made their choices. They probably had, you know, they've probably had this by this point. we're going to abandon our taxation idea but we were very pleased to float it especially given the fact that we saw
Carter
47:59
saw such an amazing immediate pickup on people getting vaccinated that's what we want we
Carter
48:04
we didn't want anybody's i don't want their thousand dollars i don't care about their thousand dollars i want them to be healthy i
Carter
48:09
i want them to be to be protected that's what quebec is all about so
Zain
48:13
so carter's helping me plan the two days later five days later maybe two week week later message. Corey, I want to go back a bit. If Legault, you're the last person to talk to Legault on his team, and he's like, fuck this shit. I'm going to, as you say, bigfoot this meeting, you know, give them their money's worth, the press corps, try to make a big swing. If you were giving him some advice about the phrasing and what he had to do, was there anything you would have changed with how he presented this? Any things you would have covered off or perhaps perhaps left less exposed than he did on Tuesday? Yeah,
Corey
48:45
Yeah, I mean, for sure. You know, he mused about how he could do this and whether it would be legal to do it unless he did it certain ways. And when, you know, if this gets challenged and it goes to court, I think his musings about what his actual intent is could very much undermine him, depending on what this program actually ends up looking like, because he was quite open about his actions and his desires. And they may not be constitutional when all comes and goes. And if he had just maybe gone in with a little bit more of a thoughtful, we're looking at managing it in this way. We're based on these precedents. And so this is what it is. Because, you know, generally speaking, the courts will say if like it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
Corey
49:22
And so if he, you know, if he's now put out there into the universe exactly what it is, and it turns out that that particular framing is going to lead him into trouble and implementation, that was probably unnecessary. And, you know, I gotta say, I
Corey
49:36
I just disagree with with this idea of like, oh, he doesn't actually need to do it, you know, he just needs to threaten to do it. You think so, hey? Well, look, on a principled basis, if nothing else, I absolutely loathe it when governments signal intent to do things they know are likely illegal. I think it is so poisonous to kind of body politic and, you know, like kind of forward signaling of government, which is important. I mean, the Alberta governments, both NDP and UCP did this with the turn off the taps legislation, like, oh, we'll just turn off oil to BC. Absolutely clear by the the Constitution, you can't do that. You can't turn off the taps of refined products. The Constitution literally says you cannot do that. So many things in the Constitution are open to interpretation. They're not in black and white like this particular clause. And it rightly pisses me off when people start acting so casual with the rule of law. And I think it should piss other people off as well. So I want to say this.
Corey
50:30
We have often said on this show, beware of novel concepts, right? People react well and they're like, yeah, it makes sense. And then a couple couple weeks later they think about it and they're maybe not as keen this has that risk this does have the risk people will say well hold on a tick maybe
Corey
50:44
maybe this isn't the greatest fucking idea ever so what would i have done if
Corey
50:48
if i was serious about doing this if i actually wanted to do this as a as a policy that i thought was good for my province i wouldn't have just sat there and mused about it in a dead cat fashion i would have gotten my you know shit in a scoop here and i would have figured out what i was doing before i announced it carter
Zain
51:05
carter let's say you and cory are are now in that room with leggo right before he's about to go on you're saying just do it half i'm not i'm putting words in your mouth but you're saying just fucking announce it whatever right this gets you through the day of the resignation of your chief doctor right uh this gives some people something to talk about 90 on your side cory makes the argument he just did your retort sir
Carter
51:27
uh politics is about winning which is a concept that cory's unfamiliar with but it is uh it's It's ridiculously important, and I think Legault has played politics better than most because he knows what his province wants. He plays to the populism of it. And you know what? I'm not a big fan of populist politics. I think that populist politics is a lesser form sometimes than the principled politics that we'd all like to play. But you know what? Every once in a while, you're going to have to throw some red meat to the masses. and this was throwing some red meat to the masses and it's easy to sit up on the crowning level
Carter
52:08
level of principle but sometimes
Carter
52:10
sometimes it's just about crass politics and love them or loathe them, let go is good politics. He's better than Ford. He seems to be better than Kenny. He seems to be better than Horgan. He is
Carter
52:24
is someone who seems to know what to say to his people to keep them happy with him he
Corey
52:31
finds issues that he can get majority support on and uh
Corey
52:37
virtue be damned principles be damned i don't know like look i like i continue to think mandatory vaccinations an issue that i you know i could be convinced either way by a good argument by somebody going out there i
Corey
52:49
i i do think that
Corey
52:52
that legault has an illiberal streak that is alarming uh you saw it with bill 21 i think even just the cavalier nature in which he addressed this particular issue you're seeing it with with his his vaccination his unvaxxed tax as people are calling it um and at the end of the day i
Corey
53:10
i am a you know steven is
Corey
53:14
is is right that the politics are there but i i you know i'm at the end of the day a guy who cares about systems and i i care about like uh you know know convention and process and all of that and this is damaging to it this this is problematic for me carter and it's problematic how he did it well
Zain
53:30
well let's finish yeah carter okay let's talk about like o'toole ford canning i don't want to clump them in because they're different individuals they're different political realities different constituencies but we just talked about the fact that you know the country's got 80 plus percent double vaccination alberta's close i believe has passed that threshold you guys can correct me if i if i'm depends
Zain
53:50
depends on how you count
Zain
53:53
But, you know, significant double doses.
Zain
53:56
All of them have said no, that we're not doing this. Jason Kenney says, for example, that the implication of such attacks would result in those who are lower income and unvaccinated being denied care. He called this inhumane. He said, yes, it's true that the unvaccinated impose a greater burden. But ultimately, we as a society through universal public health care agreed to accept the consequences of people's choices. I mean, his argument seems pretty persuasive, too. If you were advising Jason Kenney, though, would you say, boss, this is the line you have to take, the one that I'm quoting you, this is the only lane you have to swim, or would you have tried to persuade him to say, well, go maybe on to something here, man? What do you think?
Carter
54:34
I don't necessarily buy his stats. I'm not buying that the lowest income Albertans are the least likely to be vaccinated. Keep in mind that this is also a premier that said that this, you know, that the Northeast was causing all the problems during the best summer ever because they weren't getting vaccinated. Ninety nine percent pick up on vaccinations in the northeast of Calgary right
Carter
54:58
right now. Ninety nine percent. Calgary, Edmonton are absolutely leading the province in our vaccination rates. And I'm not sure what the poverty rates or the average incomes are in the cities versus rural Alberta. But I'm not sure that rural Alberta, where the vaccination rates are lagging, and therefore we would see a bigger impact of this tax. I'm not sure it's because of income rates. I think it's because of ideology. And I think that Jason Kinney still wants to win that ideological divide that exists on primarily the right. right um but the anti-vax if
Carter
55:36
if you know if if i was advising him and taking taking an opposite stand on this i would not i would just simply say to him just say no just
Carter
55:46
just say no this isn't the right thing this isn't the right motivation this isn't the thing that we need to do but then stop talking because what he continued to talk about was the you know the the low income piece of the You know, the kind of blaming some subsets of the population for not getting vaccinated. And then he went to, but I could see, charging someone with lung cancer more because they were a smoker. And
Carter
56:12
And I think, ah, now you've really done it. Now you put yourself into an interesting box. He pulled the lever of the trolley car before he even saw the trolley coming, right? And it was weird. weird. So just say you're against it and stop talking. And I think that that's been one of his bigger challenges is he likes to explain himself. And oftentimes in the explanation, he gets himself into trouble.
Zain
56:39
You would have told him like, boss, you got to stop right there. Like make your point. Keep it crisp. You're opposed. This is why I move on, right? Give them the headline that they need, which is Jason Kenney's opposed to it.
Carter
56:49
My government's never stood for new taxes. We're never going to stand for new taxes. We're absolutely not going to do anything anything like this. Thank you very much for the question. Next question.
Zain
56:56
Corey, next question. Aaron O'Toole, he's
Zain
56:59
he's also opposing it. He's calling this the tax and target. He's saying he respects, of course, this is the preamble, the provincial jurisdiction, but he opposes the plan to tax and target unvaccinated against COVID-19. Ideology? Is he just not reading the numbers? What do you think? And how would you suggest
Zain
57:19
suggest Aaron O'Toole deal with this as a federal leader whose own leadership is is on the line in the coming months
Corey
57:26
think my advice darren o'toole in some ways would be similar to jason kenney's i i suspect that they both had almost like a like
Corey
57:33
like a reflexive reaction to this yeah what the
Corey
57:36
fuck like yeah so let's count the ways that it would kind of offend somebody who has a conservative ideology that they they really truly believe in right uh one it's a tax two it's government coercing you into taking an action like we don't even need to talk about the the other components of it there but i think that what they need to do is like right now they're they're kind of almost kitchen sinking it and like they're throwing all of these arguments out there and they're seeing which ones stick and it's in many ways based on them being so opposed to it instinctually but they They need to, you
Corey
58:11
pick their best arguments and land on those. Like, it's not because some of your bad arguments are actually just going to sort of undermine it because people just knock them off one by one. Like, I don't believe it's true. You wouldn't get access to health care if
Corey
58:23
if you didn't pay this tax. I mean, last I checked, 14% of the Canadian population doesn't file their taxes within a year. I mean, we don't have tax prisons in Canada. We don't deny you health care if you don't file your taxes. We continue to provide these services to you. And the bill just accrues with Revenue Canada, right? Eventually, they will garnish your wages. That is how we deal with it in this country. So I, you know, like some of these arguments, just they're not real, like, they're just not real. And so they
Corey
58:50
they need to narrow it down, focus up, there is a principled, ideology
Corey
58:54
ideology based argument against this. I don't begrudge them for holding it. I do think it's a bit of a mess. Because of course, we are in the middle of a public health crisis. But ultimately, like, I don't think that you start looking for market
Corey
59:10
market mechanisms and tax penalties. Just if you want to make it mandatory, make it mandatory. You're the fucking government. To basically say, if you want to go into any public space, you have to be vaccinated. Done. Full stop. Carter,
Zain
59:21
Carter, I want to ask you a last question about Trudeau. Here's what he had to say. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, he said Ottawa is reviewing Quebec's plan to penalize those without a medical exemption with a financial levy with interest and with interest as in the levy doesn't have interest. Ottawa is reviewing it with specific interest. He said, quote, as we've set incentives and strong measures, whether it's vaccine passports, requirements for travelers, requirement for public servants to be fully vaccinated. We've taken very strong measures in the past in terms of keeping Canadians safe. We will continue to look to provinces and look at measures put forward.
Zain
59:56
Mealy mouth, not saying necessarily no, kind of showing tacit support for, quote unquote, strong incentives and measures. right message for Trudeau? How should he have improved it from what you saw dealing with, obviously, the Quebec side of it, but also dealing with the policy and the politics of it?
Carter
1:00:13
I actually quite, I want to take a swing here, but I can't. I actually quite like the Mealy Mouth response. I think that he has made a very good point that he has been asking for incentives, like they've been, this isn't a new thing from their government, they have been putting incentives in place, or disincentives to not be vaccinated, like curtailing travel and other other pieces like that the federal uh really the federal vaccine passport became the dominant vaccine passport over the over the last few months because of the the restrictions that were various that were put in place and in even restrict even governments that were reluctant like the jason kenney government uh you know found themselves where they had to so you know i i think that that was fine i i always would like to see trudeau take a stronger line against quebec um you know this is one of the things that frustrates me about o'toole he takes a stronger line on this tax piece but he won't take a stronger line on on the uh bill 21 issue so you know polling matters people keep polling people are walking their lines and uh prime minister walked his i thought he walked it well cory
Zain
1:01:20
cory was it a swing that carter just said that that that this middle ground non-committal slightly supportive lane that trudeau's picked on this right strategic approach in your mind from
Corey
1:01:32
from a politics point of view i i think so uh if only because this is a novel concept it's a new issue and so why not get yourself a bit of time uh sort of straddle the fence for at least a week see where everything lands and then uh and then if you need to make a more definitive statement one way or the other you've you've kind of laid yourself a bit of a trail for either course right so you know obviously
Corey
1:01:54
obviously we know most canadians are vaccinated, and that most
Corey
1:01:59
most Canadians who are vaccinated sort of begrudge the unvaccinated. And so he's, he's put most of his chips over there, but he hasn't gone totally all in. And I think that's that's probably prudent.
Zain
1:02:11
We're gonna leave that segment there. Moving on to our final segment are over under our lightning round, Stephen Carter, we've always done this show for you. This entire operation is because of you. Stephen Carter, are you in or are you out on Justin Trudeau escalating the rhetoric against the unvaccinated, saying that we're angry and frustrated at the unvaccinated. There's been some, you know, previous videos from his campaign comments circulating, but his rhetoric, even in live time, is getting louder. It's getting more aggressive against the unvaccinated. Are you in or out on that strategy from the prime minister? I'm
Carter
1:02:41
I'm in. I think the unvaccinated are unhinged right now. They keep portraying this as some sort of a their words holocaust against them and and get god man like the the people who are who are unvaccinated who are um who have exemptions you know what i get it you know some people can't have certain procedures i get that but the people who are choosing not to be vaccinated because of some sort of you know something they heard on joe rogan's podcast you know i don't have time for it and uh the prime minister calling them out um you
Carter
1:03:14
you know don't fall into the trap that that group of people represents 50% of the population. It just does not. It is far closer to, you know, eight or 10% of the population than it is to 50. And if you allow the People Party of Canada to have control, and that's who these people tend to be, then, you know, you've made a really bad strategic political choice.
Zain
1:03:37
Corey, same question to you. Are you in or out on Trudeau with his escalating rhetoric against the unvaccinated?
Corey
1:03:43
would prefer escalating measures to escalating rhetoric i don't i you know the rhetoric is is like what is it going to accomplish it's not going to get more people vaccinated uh you know this saber rattling is just going to escalate this sense of clash and tension uh you know my personal feeling is we just we increasingly tighten the number of places where you need to be vaccinated and just you know i it's easier said than done but almost stop engaging with this unvaccinated nonsense and just if you want to participate here's the lane otherwise like like we can't spend any more time on this i'm
Zain
1:04:16
i'm on that front then cory you know johnny to close earlier this week telegraphing trial ballooning whatever you call it that you know provinces should consider mandatory vaccines that that blanket sort of phrase now being more broadly applied certain provinces alberta saying no heck no no way we're going to do this what do you think are you in or out on that strategy by the liberals saying this measure should be strongly considered by the new health minister johnny duclos
Corey
1:04:40
I'm in now like there's a lot of shades of grey there and you know I wouldn't for example say you must be vaccinated to go to public school because I think kids need to go to public school right I think it's an important thing but I think there's a lot of levers that governments have where it's if you're going to go out as an adult and you're going to you
Corey
1:04:59
pass a public toll bridge or you're going to go into a municipal building or anything like that it's just you are required to be vaccinated unless you have an exemption There's no, there's no, I just had my, you know, PCR test. There's nothing like that. It's just, if you're going to do anything, you've just got to do it. And I'm just, you know, I think that that's just the reality we now find ourselves in.
Zain
1:05:21
Carter, in or out on the liberals telegraphing the mandatory vaccines? vaccines.
Carter
1:05:27
it needs to be a high level of government. It doesn't work when it's small levels of government or even individual employers. We're not the United States of America with the Supreme Court that's going to knock it down. So let's go.
Zain
1:05:38
Carter, I'm going to ask you once again, overrated or underrated the strategic line that the Conservatives are now hitting on, which is wanting an inquiry on health officials using cell phone locations at Canadians as part part of this broader vaccine rollout, the broader public health measures in the country. They want to understand what this data was doing. They've been attacking it hard, overrated or underrated, this strategy by the conservatives to focus on consumer cell phone data or citizen cell phone data.
Carter
1:06:09
Yeah, I mean, data is data. I mean, I'm imagining that it's not tremendously individualized. Anonymized.
Carter
1:06:16
Yeah, I mean, if it was tracking Corey and Corey was going, you know, between the as he does the porn shop and the smoke shop, then, you know, that would be that would be one problem. But it's anonymous data. It's anonymous data and data tells stories and stories should be used by officials to make better decisions. We can, you know, Google uses data every day to update your traffic, your drive into the downtown core. That's Google's way of making sure that they have the right travel times for you. You think that's just plucked out of the air? It's all data that they're aggregating anonymously. So it makes the conservatives look like they don't know what's going on, which I think all too often is, in fact, the case.
Zain
1:06:59
Corey, overrated or underrated, this strategic idea of the conservatives going after consumer data and wanting an inquiry on it? You
Corey
1:07:06
You know, I'm of two minds, because I do think it's a serious problem that governments continue to just hoover up data on private citizens and use it so casually. The New York Times did some great reporting on this a couple of years back. Anonymized or not, this cell phone data can tell stories. You can see where people sleep at night, you go forward. Like, what are the controls in place? How are we making sure it was used appropriately? These are legitimate oversight questions that I think our politicians should be asking.
Corey
1:07:31
But I don't think their intentions are particularly pure. And I worry that this is just going to fire up the tinfoil hat brigade. And we're just in such a weird moment. Everybody's got to sort of put it through their own kind of discretionary filter. Because again, like as much as we forget, because it's been going on for two years, we're in a public health emergency. And the normal rules need to be relaxed sometimes, right? Now, that's not a blank check to governments to always act in this fashion. And I, in a sense, almost credit the conservatives for reminding people of that more regularly than I think people want to be reminded of that. But it's something that it's just got to be kept in mind.
Zain
1:08:10
Final question, Corey, I'm going to start with you. You know, he had his top doctor resigning. So he started
Zain
1:08:16
started with saying, if you want booze and cannabis, you need to be vaccinated. Then he said, you know, if you want to not pay this unvaxed tax, get vaccinated. Then he, you know, said the curfew now has a curfew. We're stopping the curfew. Give me the political report card for Francois Legault this week.
Zain
1:08:40
What letter grade are you giving him?
Corey
1:08:41
him? I'm giving it a, I guess it's a C. I have trouble giving him too high of a grade. Obviously, he's just knocking it out of the park in a politics sense, but he's
Corey
1:08:51
he's just, he's pinging from thing to thing right now. And that is not the sign of an organization that is kind of in good stead. So we'll see if we see kind of a more uncontrolled Legault cause himself problems in the weeks to come. Carter,
Zain
1:09:06
Carter, Corey gives him a C. What letter grade are you giving Francois Legault for his political report card for this week?
Carter
1:09:14
I mean, I think that it's an excellent. It's certainly not satisfactory. I think he exceeded that. So he's exceeding our expectations. And what more do you want from a political operative? He is, I would argue right now, one of the most talented premiers in Canada.
Corey
1:09:30
Just to be clear, when I said a C, I meant a Carter, which is a fail. Okay,
Zain
1:09:34
Okay, that's great. And Carter, what did you mean by your letter grade? because you didn't give one um
Carter
1:09:38
um no i i was and we've
Zain
1:09:40
out of time that's
Zain
1:09:40
that's a wrap on episode 964 of the strategist my name is zane velgey with me as always cory hogan stephen carter and we'll see you next time