Episode 966: Issues management

Zain 0:02

This is Strategist episode 966. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, this

Zain 0:10

podcast, you know, the way we decide this podcast is actually, we actually get onto this call, then I flip a coin.

Zain 0:18

wins. And then wherever it lands, I don't show it to you. Depending on how I feel, I just say, yeah, fuck it, we're doing it or not doing it. Pretty much like the NFL, right, Carter? That's

Carter 0:26

That's the NFL's way, man. You just flip a coin and whoever wins the coin toss gets to go to the next round of the playoffs. I mean, it doesn't even matter anyways. No one watches these things, so who cares, right?

Carter 0:38

It's the equivalent of the AFL outside of Australia.

Zain 0:42

You know what it is, Carter? It is the equivalent of, and tell me if you agree or disagree, is it the equivalent of first-past-the-post in politics?

Carter 0:48

No, it's not. First-past-the-post is the best system that we have.

Carter 0:52

thank you, Corey. Well, it's the only

Corey 0:53

only system we have, so bold statement. It's

Carter 0:55

It's a good point. It's a good point. Everybody has rejected the PR because anybody who spends any time looking at it in depth comes to the conclusion it's a dumb idea.

Corey 1:04

Oh, you're sitting there like Monsef now holding up a complicated formula of, God forbid, math. Do

Carter 1:09

Do you not remember the episode that we did many years ago where we ripped the shit out of every type of proportional representation? So here's another question.

Zain 1:15

question. You were a part of that.

Zain 1:17

If they replaced Monsef with Mahomes, could he have gotten democratic reform done?

Carter 1:22

Oh, absolutely. The guy's a machine. The guy's a machine.

Zain 1:26

You could have done it in 38 seconds, I would say. Or 13 seconds. I don't know how much left on the clock.

Carter 1:30

Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady lost, and it's been a pretty good day.

Zain 1:34

good. You're one-facting yourself through this. I like it, Carter. This is really good. Yeah. No, they, you

Carter 1:39

you know. Point toss. The old guys lost. The anti-vaxxer lost. This is good times for me.

Corey 1:45

Yeah. No. People loved Aaron Rodgers a year ago. Like, that guy has had a fall from grace. Carter

Zain 1:51

Carter-esque. Stephen Carter celebrity track. You talk about this all the time. Isn't it the same thing? Right?

Carter 1:56

Right? You go up, you go down. That's the celebrity track. That's what you have to watch out for. I

Zain 2:00

I feel like once Brady leaves the league in 2093, that Aaron Rodgers will eventually take over as the guy that people love to hate. But we'll have to wait until 2093 when Tom Brady finally leaves. There's

Carter 2:12

There's no way that Aaron Rodgers lasts as long as Brady. Brady will outlast him, even in the current incarnation.

Zain 2:20

Before we move on, Corey, does Brady come back next season?

Corey 2:24

I mean, I would say no, except that would be the smart bet for like the past four seasons. So I guess I'll say yes. Of

Zain 2:30

course. Carter, you've got limited information, but you've really crystallized the important pieces. Brady, come back.

Carter 2:36

Absolutely. Brady, he has nothing else to do. I mean, how many supermodel wives does one person need? Like this is everything to him and he's going to come back.

Zain 2:45

Good analysis. I would say that Carter's analysis is much sharper than Corey's on that. Corey, hopefully you'll have to make up for it. Many quarterbacks coming in the clutch. Did someone say clutch, by the way? God, we hope not. Flair Airlines. Let's move it on to our first segment. Our first segment, the law of large numbers. Guys, I want to actually focus the attention to our home province here in Alberta. And that law is one Casey Madu. And that large number is $300 because we have

Zain 3:12

have now learned that and we didn't get to cover this earlier this week because, you know, the coin flip just didn't land our way. But we've learned that Alberta's Justice Minister Casey Madu was fined $300 for distracted driving in a school zone last March. To put calendar dates on it, if you don't know what year it is, that was March of 21. We're now learning that Premier Jason Kenney knew about his Justice Minister's distracted driving ticket last year, and is now throwing this to a third party investigation. Why is this a big deal? Well, it's a big deal because Minister Madu at the time got the ticket and then immediately called the police chief of the Edmonton Police Service, not to talk about the ticket, but called him regardless to talk about racial profiling, et cetera, et cetera.

Zain 4:01

Carter, you know, there's a lot to unpack here, and I want to unpack the political consequences. But let's talk about Madu before we talk about Kenney, because I think the focal point is on kenny sure how bad was this bad judgment in the series of badly judged political plays or political ineptitude that you've seen in your years analyzing politics in alberta for the minister of justice to call the police chief about

Zain 4:29

yeah conveniently to talk about racial profiling at a time where he got this ticket well

Corey 4:33

well just so let's get the facts out here i think correct me me if i'm wrong but mcphee the police chief did

Corey 4:39

did say that they talked about the ticket did he not i

Corey 4:42

i don't think so carter

Zain 4:43

carter you might you might know this but from my understanding he never has to get out of the ticket no

Carter 4:49

no he mentioned the ticket so his racial profiling thanks for the fact yeah that's right it

Carter 4:53

it was racial profiling and the fact that badu was saying that he did not have his phone out of his breast pocket the phone remained in his breast pocket and therefore the The ticket was all about racial profiling as opposed to, you know, someone putting their— That is correct. So

Zain 5:09

So thanks, Corey, for getting that on the table. So that is the facts. He didn't ask to get out of the ticket, as Corey mentioned. Carter, same

Zain 5:16

same question remains in terms of bad judgment. How bad was the bad judgment?

Carter 5:20

Ridiculously bad. I mean, I think that, first of all, let's not sweep the idea of systemic racism under the carpet here. There are issues of systemic racism that exist in Canadian policing. That

Carter 5:32

is something that police chiefs across the country are trying to deal with, some successfully, some less successfully. But systemic racism is the time to pick up the telephone and call about systemic racism is not when you've got the $300 ticket. Keeping in mind that you're the minister of the crown here, the amount of power that a justice minister has in the system, you're not supposed to be picking up the telephone and calling the police services at all. The Police Act is really clear about that and the idea that you're going to lobby, keeping in mind that the police chief doesn't report to the Justice Ministry, he reports to the Edmonton Police Commission, and this is totally out of line. So I think that this needed to be done.

Carter 6:17

The conversation can still exist, you know, where Casey Maddow brings his own experience to the table and says, listen, I think I have experienced systemic racism. Here are my examples. I think that conversation can exist. But when you have the ticket, which is only $300, pay

Carter 6:33

pay the damn ticket and then use it as a story. Use it as an example of things that you think might be rotten in the state of Denmark. Don't instead just come to the table and say, I've

Carter 6:44

I've got this ticket and now I'm angry. And that's, I think, it shows two mistakes. Number one, acting when you're emotional. Number two, actually picking up the phone and calling the police chief.

Zain 6:55

Corey, talk to me about the judgment and then we'll get into the strategy of Madhu and then jump into Kenny. Talk to me about the judgment here and add to Carter's comments.

Corey 7:02

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of shocking things about this story. For starters, he puts his phone in his breast pocket. Who does that? That's very strange. I

Carter 7:09

I do. do that

Corey 7:10

more troubling though is the power imbalance that steven was talking about and the idea that you would call the the chief of police well you still have this live ticket it's not like he paid the ticket and said let's i don't even think that would be justifiable but there are things that you could point to at least in a scenario like that and say it wasn't about the ticket he effectively calls and he says i got this ticket i'm not happy about that ticket anyhow see you i mean it's it's

Corey 7:33

it's been observed by many people online that whether that was his intention or not to get the ticket removed that is like that is how people talk in coded language to get the things they want without getting them you know the the classic comparison not fair i believe but you know is the mob boss the mob boss never says you know i'm gonna i'm gonna burn down your house it's it'd be a shame if something happened to your house looks pretty flammable that kind of stuff right and

Corey 7:56

and so uh poor judgment for sure because it could be construed that way by anybody who was either on the receiving end of that call or who became aware of that call and then poor judgment abound when the premier's office staff apparently became aware of it and uh and that it wasn't managed in that moment but rather managed only when it came spilling out in an uncontrolled fashion in a uh cbc uh article cbc has posted articles now that have taken out three ucp cabinet ministers by the way excellent

Zain 8:25

cbc can we get into the staffers in a second like can we just just for a sec can we just like wait for madu i want to get you guys to play minister madu's staff rather than the premier staff just yet like the issues managing team so he calls you says this happened it

Zain 8:42

it seems like we don't know but he may have freelanced on this uh he's like i'm gonna do this i'm gonna make this call cory what is your advice to him uh beyond a don't do it if he's stuck at i'm gonna do it right because i think don't do it is the right answer that most of us would say but if he's sick i'm gonna do it what

Zain 8:58

what tactical steps would you have told him to do uh before he made that phone call and carter i think has teased out a few but i want to go back to you on this and then we'll jump into premier staff so

Corey 9:07

so this is an issue where you don't settle for the boss just overriding you for starters and there is another thing you need to keep in mind here which is that um you don't actually work for minister madu your if you're the staff in his minister's office you report to the premier's office this is we've talked about this in other context the reporting

Corey 9:26

yeah the reporting is not directly to the minister so it is incumbent upon you to pull the fire alarm if you think that this is actually going to happen if you have foreknowledge of it now it's also possible it's like i'm

Corey 9:36

i'm telling you immediately after the fact and then you've got another serious problem and that's probably how you know premier's offices become aware but um yeah you say you cannot do this you absolutely cannot do this uh let me talk to you about the stakes this is what would happen if you did this this is how it could be construed you are not making this phone call and steven opened this box a bit if he wants to make the broader point and have the bigger discussion about societal issues and profiling there are ways to do that where

Corey 10:04

where you can still lean

Corey 10:05

lean on that personal experience without making it entirely about you and without making it look like you're trying to get out of a ticket so um there this is one of those line in the sand things where you just say no you can't you absolutely cannot and if the like Like, I don't want to say this all hinges on structure. Like, this is one of those things where if

Corey 10:24

if you did report directly to the minister, if they were the person who signed your paycheck,

Corey 10:30

political staff, I know it's hard to do. But sometimes, like, that's, you know, everyone's going to have to have a line in the sand, right? Where it's like, I will not work under these circumstances. And that's not an unreasonable one, that you're putting yourself in violation of the Police Act and giving at least, at the very least, an appearance of kind of this, you

Corey 10:46

you know, abuse of power. Carter,

Zain 10:48

Carter, I know there's one of many directions you might go here, including the fact that when you were chief of staff to an Alberta premier, the mapping of what chief of staff meant and the expertise and the wisdom and the knowledge that comes with that role fundamentally change. And, you know, we can talk about that in terms of a precursor of folks that might not have a political spidey sense to to push back. I'm not saying that happened in this case, but that's a stream that we can go in. But I want to ask you from your perspective, do you want to add to anything? Should your boss say, fuck you, Carter, you work for me, this is what I'm doing?

Carter 11:24

Political staff need to be in a position where they can say, I'm not going to work with you anymore. If you do this one thing, if you do this thing, I cannot work here. Where

Zain 11:32

get the leverage to say that, though, Carter?

Carter 11:34

Where do they get the leverage? They walk out the door.

Carter 11:37

And they walk straight to the premier's office if you're working in the provincial government. If you're

Carter 11:41

you're working in, you know, you have the ability to say, I'll go to the press. This is wrong. And I need to, I cannot be a part of this. I cannot be party to this. And to

Carter 11:53

to be truthful, I mean, every political

Carter 11:57

political staffer who's worth their salt is able to speak truth to power. and the hardest thing you'll ever do is say no premier no mayor no prime minister that's not something that we're able to do but

Carter 12:11

but that is the most important thing that you can do because a mayor a premier or a prime minister is very able to

Carter 12:18

to surround themselves with sycophants who will tell them everything that they wish to hear but

Carter 12:23

but that the problem with that is that nothing ever gets nothing ever changes nothing ever happens that's good you need to surround yourself with people who say no. And the best premiers, the best prime ministers and the best mayors all have those people around them. And I think that one of the challenges of being a cabinet minister is you tend towards either people who are just blindly loyal to the premier or

Carter 12:45

or blindly loyal to you. And you're not necessarily getting the best advice because you're X number of steps down the ladder, right? You're not at the top of the ladder. You're not the number one person. So you're not necessarily getting the number one staffs um but if this was something that was a conversation prior to then the staff member needed to say if you do this i'm calling the premier at the same time that you're on the telephone with the with the uh with the chief of police i'm telling him everything that i know and then if you want to fire me afterwards that's fine because i can't work for you when you're bringing this type of decision making to the table just

Zain 13:22

just so we're clear we're here we we don't know that this happened that a staff right

Zain 13:28

no no and this is this is our you know games that we kind of like game out and and play cory you want to add to this before i move on well

Corey 13:35

just to say it's way easier said than done right you're you're talking not just about leaving a job but potentially burning yourself a career because if uh if you're seen as somebody who's just like a not a team player or anything like that there's an anxiety you have that um that you're just never going to get another job job similar ever. And that's something I think that weighs on a lot of staffers' minds. So there's two things on that, that I think that, you know, staffers have to wrestle with in their mind in advance and understand where their lines are in advance, right? One is, what

Corey 14:07

what is your line? What are you willing to say? I'm not willing to do that. You know, everybody gets into politics for one reason, and then they become a staffer and that becomes about the team and the people, you know, and the camaraderie and all of that. And it's just these pressures on your moral compass that you just need to be aware of when you have a job like that and you need to manage them and you need to regulate them the other is so there's that component like what is your line in the sand think about it in advance don't find yourself in a situation where you're just moving it and retroactively making an excuse for where it is after the fact as time goes on and then the other one is and this is advice for anybody in any job make

Corey 14:41

sure that you're not living that close to the line like have your screw you money have the ability to walk away if you feel the need to walk walk away right so if you're a political staffer rather than going out and blowing it all on a bunch of two thousand dollar suits the first time you get that first real paycheck put

Corey 14:57

put some away think about what

Corey 14:59

what you would do if you lost this job it's not just because you need the ability to walk away but they may walk away from you in a heartbeat it's not a role that you want to be living that close in line you need to be thinking about the next role is when you're in it smart

Zain 15:11

smart advice the dispensable nature of the of the job kind of needs that's where you kind of get your leverage from right you kind of build it when you know you have enough to walk away carter you're about to say something jump on that i'm

Carter 15:21

i'm going to say something it might be controversial but i think this is why you also first time but i think this is why you also need those severances right

Carter 15:28

right if you don't have the severance package if when you're fired you don't get to walk out with a with a bit of dough in your pocket then you are less likely to do the right thing for the population of the of the province you got to stand up and say something that's negative it makes it a lot lot easier if you know you're not going to hit the ground with a thud right

Carter 15:45

right so you're not going to hit the ground with a thud you have the ability to to say what needs to be said you know in my case you know um that came out afterwards uh but we knew during my tenure allison had booked two flights that were at the same time as other flights and she didn't want to be on that plane and we put an end to it we said no premier this has to end and

Carter 16:06

and we were gone the people who said no to you you

Zain 16:08

you mean you were shown the door like i was i was

Carter 16:11

was shown the door and the person who who brought it forward, who was shown the door about four months later after me.

Carter 16:16

So those people, there's a consequence to standing up and saying the right thing. And I'm not saying that was the only thing, but it certainly was something. The person who says no to the Premier, the Prime Minister, or the Mayor could be really in trouble. And I think that that's why there's a severance package. Part of it is designed to protect you so that you're able to do the right thing and you're not beholden to people who are doing unethical practices. And

Carter 16:49

Casey Maddow, this was unethical.

Carter 16:51

This was also potentially illegal with the way that the Police Act is written. And I know that people will be listening and saying, you know what,

Carter 17:02

politics is filled with unethical people who do unethical things and all those types of things. I

Carter 17:08

like to think that most of us try and do the right thing as often as possible, and sometimes the right thing becomes clouded with all the variables and all the details. But in

Carter 17:19

this particular case, it's straightforward black and white law, and that makes it a lot easier. So, you know, when it's, you know,

Carter 17:30

know, there are things that might be a little bit gray. This is not one of those things.

Corey 17:36

Well, I do think intent matters matters here, right? And it will be interesting to see what comes out of the report. In some ways, you can, well, listen, I

Corey 17:45

I don't want to, I do not give this a pass. I think this was deeply egregious behavior by a justice minister to pick up the phone, but he may have well been trying to do the bigger right thing, right? To take on these big societal ills here. Was this the way to do it? Absolutely not, for all of the reasons that we've already unpacked here. Was it an incredibly big lapse of judgment? Absolutely. But intent does matter here, and it will be interesting to see what the report comes out in some ways the actions after once people became aware of it to me are the ones that twist out there i think with less less justification if that makes sense because you know that's not in defense of like you know the bigger societal challenges that you know the you know the reality that visible minorities are treated differently in this country than white people so um but you know when then there's all of a sudden there's nine months of cleanup and people being aware of it that raises further questions for me yeah

Zain 18:37

yeah you You know, let's talk about the Premier's office here, and I wasn't originally planning to take this track to it, but you kind of opened up the staffer conversation. So maybe let's try to hit it in the broader sense and then the specific sense. And the broader sense I want to talk about is

Zain 18:53

is the role of issues managers and the roles of issues management. And Carter, we often talk about issues management as a vital role, as something we've, you know, on this podcast have said in the past, the liberals, especially around the WE scandal, etc., haven't done super well, that this government here in Alberta has made certain lapses on. Before we jump into what should a premier's office do if and when they find out, talk to me about what issues management actually is, Carter. Like, talk to me about it as a function, because many people would be like, issues managers, A, they've either seen people yell loudly on Twitter and have said, is that what an issues manager does? And B, people might have a very simplistic understanding of, Isn't it just spin? Isn't it whatever just comes in, they're just constantly spinning? So can you give us a sense from like almost a nonpartisan level, or like, you know, probably even removed from this premier's office, what the role of issues management is, because every government has them, regardless of what jersey color they wear or have worn coming into leadership of a province. Explain to me what that is. And then let's jump into issues management related to this specific issue with Minister Madhu. do?

Carter 20:05

Issues management is primarily about taking the complexity of a particular situation and breaking it down into its various risks and opportunities. So the risks and opportunities aren't necessarily the same, nor are they necessarily different. So you can take any issue and whatever that issue might be brings with it certain complexities. So if we stick with the Madhu incident, you know, Corey mentioned that maybe he was trying to do the bigger discussion, right? And it comes to him and everything. When broken down on its simple face, it's obviously a mistake. But when it comes to you as an issues manager, it comes to you with all the degrees of complexity. And the issues manager job is to try and figure out how to present something so that all those layers of complexity

Carter 20:55

ekes out a win for you.

Carter 20:58

right or a loss for someone else so the issue manager is is trying to figure out how to

Carter 21:04

manage this situation to come out with a win or or a minimal loss um and that that to me is is what the issues manager does finds out all the details does all the research compares all the situations understands all the various stories and it's almost like a detective trying to piece things together but instead of trying to get to a prosecution what you're trying to do is get to to a defense or

Carter 21:27

or some sort of opportunity right so

Carter 21:30

for me the issues manager is super important we could we could pick on the we uh scandal how how i how we talked about how that wasn't managed from an issues perspective um and it just felt like it was just coasting we

Carter 21:44

we can talk about madhu or we can talk about covid but each one of these things is truly complex and is understood by the public on very simple frames, and those simple frames are often very negative for government. So it's the issues manager's job to change the simple frame.

Zain 22:01

Corey, I want to get to you in one second. I've got one clarifying question for you, Carter. You talked about their role in terms of win or losses. To extend our football analogies, does an issues manager primarily play on the offensive line or the defensive line? Are they an offensive player or a defensive player in that sense? How How would you characterize their positionality? Or would you say that they're like special teams, they're on both?

Carter 22:28

I think that the truth of the matter is when things are going well, you don't need an issues manager quite as much. I mean, certainly you do sometimes just to make sure the ball gets across the line if you'll allow the football analogy to be carried. Because, you know, you want to get that actual win, right? So you'll be working on something that's got a positive piece and you want to push it across the line. But the truth is, even something you think is incredibly positive, the

Carter 22:51

the general population can turn it into something very negative with just a couple of different tweaks, right? Because you're playing an adversarial game, right?

Carter 22:58

right? So you might be bringing across something you think is really popular. And all of a sudden, the whole population turns on you or a subset of the population that you really care about turns on you. So I think that 80% of the time, you're in the defensive zone and you're trying to do a couple of different things. you know and we'll stretch the we'll stretch the uh the the football analogy as far as we can you're trying to get a turnover so

Carter 23:22

so that you can actually have control of the ball

Carter 23:24

or you're trying to stop them before they get to the red zone make them punt right

Carter 23:28

right get away from the issue or

Carter 23:30

or you're trying to hold them to three um

Carter 23:33

or if they get the touchdown you at least want to make sure that it's not a spectacular touchdown that people are going to remember for the rest of their lives it's a quarterback sneak uh over the one yard line uh from the one yard line and no one remembers that shit right so that's what you're that's what you're trying to avoid i

Zain 23:49

i thought you were the jimmy garoppolo of this podcast turns out you might be the josh allen nicely done

Carter 23:53

done tony romo is what i like to think of myself uh

Zain 23:57

uh cory add to what carter said because this is at the at a fundamental political strategy question that's this kind of lands in the issues management management domain. Explain further or add to what Carter said in terms of the role of issues managers. And if you want to kind of build on the offense defensive thing we've just been talking about.

Corey 24:17

Yeah, well, so issues management as a function has has been around forever. There's no question about that. We used to call them political fixers, you know, it

Corey 24:24

it was a little bit less of a formalized function back then. The issues manager, though, when you say every government has them, I want to be clear, partisan issues managers is a relatively new function. You know, in the past couple of decades here, they've been in political in departments for ages, there's been political staff who have had the role of trying to tamp down issues, since there's been politics, I'm not suggesting otherwise. But this operationalization of a group of people called issues managers who work within premier's offices and prime minister's offices and whatnot. That's that's relatively new. Now, like I said, has it been around before? Yeah. Has it been around in this format? I would say not really.

Corey 25:03

And in some ways, issues managers, there's two different ways you can think about them. There's two different versions of issues manager. And depending on where you are as a government, you may lean more on one than the other.

Corey 25:15

The simple one is to see it as reactive comms. It's to deal with the incoming, right? And you separate your stream so you have your comms people dealing with proactive stories. Obviously, they're still leaning in on messaging heavily, but the heavy lift is done by the issues managers managers to get ready to have all of the right messages. But that's much narrower than an issues manager generally is, right? I think another way to think about it is that whenever there's something that comes up in terms of an issue, the frame I like to think of it is, you've got a couple of roads in front of you. And maybe roads isn't even the right metaphor, because you can walk both at the same time. You've got a couple of levers you can pull. I always say that. There's mitigation, which

Corey 25:51

which is you go and you change something, you know, from a policy or implementation point of view, maybe stakeholder relation point of view, where you've gone in and you've actually addressed the root issue there. And then there's messaging. And that's how you're going to talk about the issue when it eventually comes out. And issues managers deal with both. But mitigation is often better, because then it's not an issue you've got to talk about in the public at all. And so... Sorry,

Corey 26:17

Sorry, and are you saying, just

Zain 26:17

just so I'm clear, is it a balance of mitigation and messaging generally?

Corey 26:20

generally? No, it's not. No, it's not. It's a choice. It's knowing that both levers are they're available to you. So what I, for me, what makes issues management distinct from just communications and it being reactive communications is that they actually work with the department. They try to find solutions to things. They work with the stakeholders. They try to make it so it's not an issue at all. And you know, the issues management teams in every premier's office that I've worked with are so, I mean, they get there so bloody early in the morning and they've done half their day, it feels like before the morning meeting. And most of the stuff when they've really done their job just never comes up at all you know it's like random thing like we got this letter this person who's accusing this other person of this horrible thing i've looked into it there's no evidence of it here's what we've identified right or there's this you know early warning system radar that we might have a problem over there i've talked to the department we've managed to correct the thing the department was going to do that was fucking everybody out right they're

Zain 27:10

knocking stuff off even before most

Zain 27:12

most people in the team haven't even touched it they're like okay we trust you you've knocked it off you're done well

Corey 27:16

well yeah i mean so in certain cases Obviously, always trying to be – take

Corey 27:20

take the early warnings, deal with them as they come, have messaging, narrow the issue in general. But the narrowing of the issue I think for me is what makes it distinct, right? That's the mitigation part. If it's just comms – like I've been a professional communicator my whole life. I can tell you one of my great frustrations in communications is when people are like, oh, we're going to need some great messaging for this, right? We're going to have to comms the shit out of this. Okay, that's one option. The other option is you fix the fucking problem that's leading to

Corey 27:49

challenge. Right, as you

Zain 27:50

you were saying. So what

Corey 27:51

what I think is very valuable about issues management is that they're a little bit more empowered to work with the people who are actually executing throughout the government to resolve before it becomes a messaging challenge. So

Zain 28:03

So let's talk about the Madu ticket then, right? Let's bring it back to the issue at hand. It's March or April of 2021. This kind of makes it to one of the issues managers. Actually, let me stop myself there. Sure. Corey, would this be, from your experience, Carter, from your experience, would this be something that hits the issues managers play? It would, right? So here's the thing, right? Our listeners may not know, both of you have worked in government. I have not worked extensively on the campaigns that have helped some of these governments. So I just want to be clear, right? So it would land on issues managers play.

Zain 28:34

Take it from there. What would, if you were kind of mocking up that role, if you were, Carter, simulating that position, let's say the two of you are a team of two issues, senior issues managers. It's a morning meeting. You've heard about this through the grapevine, which is partially your job, right? Is to have tabs on stuff. What are you talking about? And which pathway are you choosing of mitigation, messaging, et cetera? And then what's the downstream advice that kind of then follows for the principal? Corey, you got your hand up. I'm going to go back to you first. Is that okay, Carter? And then I'll jump to you. Oh,

Carter 29:05

Oh, yeah. No, please. I'll lean on Corey.

Carter 29:08

Mine is, you know, I can see exactly what they were thinking.

Corey 29:12

Yeah, well, step one is figure out exactly what the hell happened, right? So fact gathering is job number one, okay? And so especially if you're like the director of issues management, you are probably calling the minister and saying, you are telling me everything that occurred in that phone call, what the hell happened, trying to understand that as much as possible. We'll also try and understand as much as you can without blowing up the issue further, because, of course, your job is issues management, not issues explosion, right? You want to see if you have any other sources of information as to, for example, how Chief McPhee feels about the phone call. That would be very useful to understand, right? So people in his orbit. And I say it all the time, words to live by, folks, good strategy comes from good analysis. So if you want to manage an issue, you first need to understand the issue. where everything is who's doing what and so this is i think where um things get a little bit gray and why issues managers sometimes get like this view as like a dark arts uh proficient uh folks is that you're not going to sit there and have the highly moral conversations about was this right or was this wrong that's somebody else's job in the department your job as an issues manager is to understand the facts bring the options have the mitigations have the messaging ready carter

Corey 30:23

carter You want to add to this?

Carter 30:25

Well, you're going to go, I mean, your first thing is you're going to go to the boss and you're going to say, we've got this issue.

Carter 30:30

How do you want to, how do you want to dealt with?

Carter 30:33

Right. And so. Are you, are

Zain 30:34

are you going straight

Carter 30:34

straight to the boss

Zain 30:35

boss and implicating the boss just from like a strategy question? You are.

Carter 30:38

are. You can't. Oh, I

Carter 30:40

I would for sure. The last thing I want to do, it may be an informal conversation. There would absolutely be no record of it, but you do not, you, you, you said you're not doing

Carter 30:52

Here's the thing. If this minister is burnable, then

Carter 30:56

then burn the minister.

Carter 30:57

It's over. Problem solved itself. Because all of a sudden now I've got a black and white issue where my guy, because I don't give a shit about the minister. I'm working for the premier, right? I need to make sure that my guy comes out looking and smelling sweet.

Carter 31:11

That's all I care about. So if the premier says, oh, fuck it, burn him, you know, then we burn him and the problem goes away. way. Because if we burn him, we're able to make him look good.

Zain 31:24

I felt like this was going to be a bit of yes and, but Corey, Carter brought a couple of things to here. Number one, the question of if you burn him, but let's go to the more fundamental question. Are you implicating the principal, i.e. the premier in this case for, you know, folks at home? Are you bringing this to the premier so that he or she knows? In this case, he, but like, are you bringing it to Kenny? Let's

Corey 31:44

Let's be super clear. The number of bullshit rumors that float around in any given day about elected officials and what they may or may not have done or be doing is significant. And so there is a filtering that has to go on. And it is important that the issues manager doesn't bring everything to the premier that they've heard out there for all sorts of reasons. But let's start with a couple of the obvious ones here. One might be bullshit and you wouldn't want the boss to go off on a hair trigger and do something crazy, right? On information that has not yet been vetted. So this is, again, good strategy comes from good analysis. You don't come until you have a better understanding of the issue. you. But number two, there is a plausible deniability question here. Again, let's keep in mind, we're working in a world where nobody knows things a hundred percent. There's no perfect knowledge out there, right? So as an issues manager, you are trying to gather facts. You are going to put things together. Your best is your understanding of the matter for an issue like the Madhu case. You know, other issues manage differently, different considerations. And if you go and you tell the boss, okay, you hear about a phone call on Tuesday, You tell the boss on a Wednesday, two weeks pass as you're gathering information, and ultimately you decide, yes, I need to do something.

Corey 32:51

Then the media says to you, Stephen, when did the premier know about this? When

Corey 32:56

did the premier know about this? Which is a live

Zain 32:58

live wire question right now. The

Corey 32:59

The premier in the scenario I've just created for you didn't act poorly by waiting for all of the facts to come in in two weeks. But they get absolutely crushed because there was a gap between when they knew and when they didn't. You've

Carter 33:10

You've made an excellent point. i will revise but a second i know that this is real i want to find out whether or not we can burn them right

Carter 33:17

right because yeah because i i totally agree you agree with that

Corey 33:21

just the way we yeah no i think like for sure once once the fact base is settled yeah

Corey 33:25

once you know what the hell is happening you do need to you don't get to make that choice let's put it that way you don't get to jeopardize the government or not that is your boss's job the

Carter 33:33

the number of rumors that do fly around about these you know the cabinet ministers everybody you're working with it's crazy 90 95% of them are wrong, right? 95% of them are false. But if you get it verified, if you get an, oh, fuck, he actually did this, as soon as you hit your, oh, fuck, level, you've got to go and you've got to ask the principal. And you can do it without relaying the specifics. You can do it and say, listen,

Carter 34:02

may have found something with Madhu. We're working on figuring out if it's real.

Carter 34:07

What are your thoughts right now? can

Zain 34:09

i i wasn't like i said i wasn't planning to go deep on process but fuck it let's do it are you you're

Carter 34:13

you're 34 minutes in baby let's go this

Zain 34:16

this might be the only thing we cover but i'm now really intrigued by this carter are you so let's talk to me about like the granular specifics i'm assuming nothing on paper uh

Zain 34:27

uh in person don't assume that okay well so then tell me on paper or not in person or other medium doesn't matter is it in the calendar is it not talk to me about how you have these sort of conversations with the principal how are senior issues managers talking about substantiated so these are not rumors substantiated things that they need action on how's it how's it working give me so

Corey 34:49

so you're the director of issues management you meet with the premier every morning for starters you don't it's good to know if there is like a separate need for another meeting you can do that as well but you are just in the calendar perpetually so okay

Corey 35:00

like you don't need not a red flag on

Zain 35:02

on the issue if you

Corey 35:03

you know i mean like honestly like the premier meets with issues managers i mean that's the reality of it um but also yeah like if you're going to do serious things you want to put together your facts you're going to have information on paper because you need to like lay out things that have occurred in a lot of these cases do these things often happen outside of paper yeah

Corey 35:24

yeah but not as much as i think people think right like somebody is usually writing something down people's brains have

Corey 35:31

have limitations right you don't have the ability to have all of these facts right at your fingertip. You do need to actually communicate

Corey 35:37

communicate these things out. It doesn't work exactly like you see in an episode of like the West Wing or a political drama. Carter,

Zain 35:42

Carter, where does the chief of staff or and or the principal secretary, deputy chief of staff that position play a role in this? Are they abreast to this? Are they out on the outside looking on the inside? How does it generally work with those senior positions, those closest to the premier that drive his or her political agenda?

Carter 35:59

Generally speaking, nothing's going to go to to the premier or the principal without going through the chief of staff first. So the chief of staff might know two, three days in advance of the premier. The questions would be asked, what are we asking? What are we telling? Why are we asking? Why are we telling? What is the expected outcome that you're hoping for? Are you hoping for guidance or are you bringing a suggestion? What information do you have? Where are the holes in your information? Who needs to fill in that information? So you are doing a pre-vet. you're

Zain 36:30

you're doing the pre-vet like if you were in that position you're effectively saying okay got it like here's the questions we're gonna you know let's bundle this up and get like preciseness for what we want from the premier is that correct because

Carter 36:41

because we don't know anything yet i

Carter 36:43

mean this is the i i cannot tell you the number of times i've actually uttered the phrase we don't actually know anything yet we

Carter 36:49

we don't know anything what we have is we have this

Carter 36:52

this we have that we have this other thing we have this other thing over here those things added together add up to a a thing that could have happened but we don't know anything yet so let us find out what we actually know and these are the things that you must find out mr issue manager before you come back and as soon as she comes back with that information she you know then all of a sudden now we're in a different spot because now i've got the information and now i've got a problem right and and so the problem could be there's

Carter 37:21

there's people sniffing right

Carter 37:22

right because we know when people sniff too, right? So if the media is sniffing around, the opposition is sniffing around, that's a different type of problem than this thing occurred. We think we got it under control. Chief's not going to talk. We're not going to talk. It's buried, right?

Carter 37:39

right? And that's the next stage, right? Is it buried or not buried?

Zain 37:45

Let's move it out of the process track. Thank you for indulging me. Let's go into the specifics. So on this particular issue, true. Corey, you know, you're analyzing, figuring out what's true, getting a sense of the terrain. You're then taking, you know, probably a bunch of suggestions to the premier. We know the choice that, whether it was the premier, the chief of staff, but that this collective unit in the premier's office made, which was not to make this a public thing, right? They chose not to make this in March, April, whenever they found out, not to make this an announcement, an FYI, a footnote somewhere, not to take out the trash. Why do you think that was was perhaps the choice made? And I'll kind of go on a second question thereafter, which is, if that was the choice, okay, we will take out the trash, how would you have done it? So give me your analysis. And then let's talk about strategy of if you wanted to take out the trash on this, how would you have done it knowing that that was a decision made by the team?

Corey 38:38

So let's just stress how deeply speculative this all is at this point. So much, yeah.

Corey 38:43

Right? Like, we don't know, right? The system that Stephen described is actually quite congruous with jason kenney saying i don't i this was the first i heard about these specifics of the matter right because it's not inconceivable to me in the least that there was this hey we're hearing this thing mad who called the police chief after that ticket we all knew about the like the fact the premier knew about the ticket you get a ticket you got to tell the premier that's the reality in fact if you work in the public service at the senior levels you you get a fine any of those things you got to tell your boss about them because there are considerations that come with all of that stuff uh so yes he would have heard about the ticket that's protocol you got to hear about the ticket now somebody says hey i

Corey 39:23

i hear he called mcphee about this and then there's a bit of a conversation investigation whatever happens and perhaps the chief of staff is talking to that issues director and saying to that issues director at the end of the day we don't know anything and the way that madu describes it describes it as not even talking about the ticket right because Because again, like, we're assuming a certain amount of information is perfect out there, and that everybody knows exactly what's going on. And if there's even a little bit of doubt, I mean, you better be right about something like this, right? So I can understand why the Premier's office staff would be a little reticent to say, you

Corey 39:57

you know, we're going to take this to the boss. Because let's just, you know, Madhu calls very mad about issues of racial justice. Some suggestion, maybe the ticket's involved, maybe not, perhaps in this scenario.

Corey 40:08

You're going to bring it to Jason Kenney bundled like that? That's a mess. Like, you don't know what to do with that particular situation. And then as time passes, it's not an issue, and it just falls off everybody's radar. And nobody thinks about it for six months until a disgruntled staffer decides to tell a CBC journalist. And then, voila, all of a sudden, there we are. And it's a big news story. So I can understand, based on the rhythm of offices, how that happened. I guess I just wanted to jam that in there.

Corey 40:34

But what is still unclear to me at this point is what people knew and when. You know, Don Brady's reporting notwithstanding, you know, it's just, it's not clear to me. Carter?

Zain 40:44

Carter? Add to the speculation a bit, right? Why do you think they chose this lane that they did of not taking out the trash on this issue back in March or April of last year?

Carter 40:55

Because if he made the call about his ticket, then the consequences are very black and white.

Carter 41:02

And, you know, you don't know

Carter 41:04

know if he made the call about his ticket. You

Carter 41:06

You kind of know. I mean, everybody likes to speculate on Twitter. or twitter's great they all figured it out in 15 seconds they all know exactly what happened and they see the holes in madhu's statement that he posted on twitter there's holes in that statement to be sure um that

Carter 41:20

that a conversation occurred between two people that conversation was not tape recorded it does not have it does not exist in any but so do you bring madhu in

Zain 41:29

in and get him to lay it out what did you do what did you do

Carter 41:32

do right oh he was in he was in months ago he was was in weeks after the days after the telephone call he was in talking to an issues manager

Carter 41:40

right and he and he or the chief of

Carter 41:43

but he was he was in the room and and believe me i mean as chief of staff you make a lot of phone calls that are and i'm going to need to see you in your office in my office in five minutes and that would be one of those calls and then it

Carter 41:55

it would be he would make his case that he was not trying to influence the ticket it was a a mistake. He simply was angry at the situation. He felt like he was being targeted because of his race. And surely, surely the premier's office would understand how triggering that can be and how upsetting that is. And especially, you know, when this is an issue that is being dealt with around the world, especially North America, right? But, you know, around the world, we're trying to to deal with these these inequities this is not a false story um it

Carter 42:30

it is you know

Carter 42:32

know it is it is tied up in partisanship it is tied up in um you know which side of this divide you're on most likely depends on whether or not you're actually supporting the ucp government um but

Carter 42:46

but you know from from my point of view just as a political professional i just thought oh damn

Carter 42:52

right like Like, because it wasn't one of those mistakes you look at and go, well, that was just fucking stupid. You know, yes, it was stupid, but I can see the bigger, I can see the bigger issue here. And the bigger issue is that of racial profiling. And when you're, what

Carter 43:08

what is he, the only black minister in Alberta, one of very few black ministers, you know, certainly our first black minister of justice, I think. Maybe there's someone in the 70s that I don't remember. But this is a big thing.

Carter 43:24

thing. And him using his influence to address this issue, if it wasn't tied to a $300 ticket, I think most of us would welcome that.

Zain 43:36

So, Corey, talk to me about, you know, you have this situation. Talk to me about the alternative. If you were going to take out the trash last year, what would you have done on this issue? And do you agree with Carter that there really is no messaging that you could have done, that the mitigation would

Zain 43:51

would have been, Minister Madhu, you're no longer a minister? Would that have been the outcome here, and you would have leaned into it? No,

Corey 44:00

No, I think that we're actually seeing in slow motion the mitigation that was available, which is suspending the minister, saying there's going to be an investigation. And then after the investigation, what I suspect they will find is that it's unclear. He was obviously, you

Corey 44:16

know, in the wrong to call the police chief, but he may not have had the intent of being in the wrong. And in that ambiguous situation, you know, the penalty could range from time

Corey 44:26

time served, essentially, the suspension is over, and he's now got to watch himself more closely, and there's like a censure effectively on him. Or he gets shuffled to a different ministry under the same sort of thing, like he acted in an improper fashion, but it wasn't with intent, because of the importance of the justice system and the requirement that we always treat these things in this nature, blah, blah, blah. block uh i jason kenney have made the decision well there's nothing wrong i'm going to be moving him to this different portfolio that would be an option that's

Corey 44:55

available and he could have done that back

Corey 44:56

back at the start of all of this too and that would probably be the quote-unquote mitigation that's available you could also just put your foot down and say um you

Corey 45:06

you know we're we're willing to just fight this one out on the on the messaging and say that's not how it was he was calling about a legitimate policing issue um yes

Corey 45:16

yes he was he was wrong to uh you know to even mention the ticket uh

Carter 45:21

uh he's been reprimanded on that but like we're just moving on you

Corey 45:24

you know there is that version of it too which i think for about six hours we all expected the

Carter 45:30

government to take and

Corey 45:31

and then that didn't happen and they went with a different door carter

Zain 45:34

carter add to this you you had your hand up here well

Carter 45:36

i think the number one thing is once it's framed for you it's really hard to react um when When it was framed in the media by the CBC that this was a call about a $300 ticket to the

Carter 45:50

the police chief, you're done, right?

Carter 45:52

right? So you've missed the opportunity to frame it. So one of the reasons that we're always talking about getting out first and framing the issue is that if you don't frame the issue, then the issue is framed for you. Which

Zain 46:03

Which is what's happening right now. Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you were an issues manager back then in March or April in that premier's office talking to the chief of staff, would this have been one of the bullet points under risk on your document?

Corey 46:15

Yeah. And so, you know, one of the things that I will say is it's not entirely clear to me if you put aside the morality of is it right or not to do this. But if you're just entirely concerned with whether this is a big issue or not, it's

Corey 46:28

it's not entirely clear to me they made the wrong bet, so to speak. Like this did like nobody talked about this for eight months. You mean the wrong bet

Zain 46:34

bet that this would not come out.

Corey 46:36

That's right. Yeah. I mean, obviously, they were wrong in the end. But if you were sitting there looking at the probabilities, likelihood it comes out, consequences if it does, all of those things, right? I mean, you don't know that Elise von Scheele is going to write yet another article that takes down another account. I mean, like her sources on this, I can only

Corey 46:53

only imagine. But yeah,

Corey 46:56

they may have been sitting there and saying, well,

Corey 46:59

well, it wasn't great. We've talked to him internally. No, we not being the premier necessarily, but the issues manager, chief of staff really read him the riot act about how bad that was. Nobody is talking about this. McPhee's not upset about this.

Corey 47:12

It's done, right? We talk about it. We bring it actively. We're creating a bigger shit storm for ourselves. And you've also got to keep in mind the context of that. We're talking about March of last year. yeah few things going on in march of last year folks he had uh you know jason kenney had just lost tracy allard she has just lost his chief of staff um it was a really rocky time we were in the at that time third wave i believe we're just coming out of it there it was before the best summer ever even and it would have it would have been a lot of abuse yeah

Corey 47:42

yeah but a lot of abuse on a lot of issues here that the government was taking uh k to 12 curriculum uh eastern slopes you name it and if all of a sudden you're throwing in that into the mix they may have said even if we do take this hit it's better to take this hit in six months than it is today just

Zain 47:56

just carter you you're nodding aggressively and you have your hand up there's only three of us on this fucking show uh i am coming to you next naturally yes please go ahead the

Carter 48:06

the floor is yours carter i forgot my point no

Carter 48:11

here's the thing though and this is where the cbc's reporting is really good because at some point you should have gotten a sniff that the story was going to come

Carter 48:18

And that's where I think the failure is. So then what would you have done at that point? Go. Go what?

Carter 48:23

what? Go. Put the story out yourself. You

Zain 48:26

You would have had it in the can as a narrative. You would have defined the... There's only

Carter 48:30

only two narratives. The two narratives are this, right? Narrative number one, Casey Maddow made a phone call about a $300 ticket where he talked about race and racism.

Carter 48:42

Narrative number two, yeah, he made a phone call. He made a phone call because all Albertans are saying that we have to make sure we're stomping out systemic racism. And Casey Maddow had an opportunity to see it firsthand. Carter, it's a clear strategy. Why don't you think they went then?

Carter 48:59

I think that they didn't know that Lise had it. I

Carter 49:01

I think the CBC fucking nailed him. And, you know, there's some real – I'd

Carter 49:06

I'd love to know more about that. Because we only see – you know, we're doing this podcast from our side, right? Yeah. There's another side to this, and that's the media side. and the media is fascinating because they have stuff that they can't run with and then they get stuff and and when they get to flip over the switch that they can run um you know like man the fact that they were able to hold that and make sure that it was so dark and then bam hit it with the light because i think that every every issues manager would have said oh we got a sniff this is going to go let's do it on our terms let's go okay

Zain 49:39

okay so cory uh we're skipping everything else we'll just focus on this this is fine uh

Zain 49:43

uh we'll alienate we'll alienate listeners we've alienated we have listeners

Corey 49:47

with the football stuff up front it's fine it's fine i mean we only remember to post it every second time it feels like so it's

Zain 49:56

okay so you're in the premier's office present day as in last week right i think this came out last week uh uh time yeah yeah last week you

Zain 50:05

you know time man it comes out exactly it comes out did

Zain 50:09

did they issue manage this correctly and

Zain 50:11

let me lay out some of the pieces and maybe you guys can add to it right so number one uh kenny acts relatively quickly strips madu of his

Zain 50:22

his ministerial responsibilities throws it to an independent third-party investigation so it doesn't boot him out of cabinet let's discuss that so there's that like lane that he chose with with the choices in front of him um

Zain 50:35

um he then Then acknowledges casually that he had heard something about this back in March. Was that the right thing and the right sort of decision to take? And then now he's kind of in the situation when we record on this Sunday night where the key questions are the ones that, Corey, you brought up earlier. What did the premier know? When did he know them, et cetera? Like, what are the timeline of events here? Right. So this is the situation. These are the choices you have made leading to this particular outcome on Sunday, January 23rd, a week after the stories come out.

Zain 51:09

Carter, from your perspective, do you feel like Jason Kenney's made the right couple of moves here from an issues management and political strategy perspective on dealing with this file? And the ones that I think are important to consider, ministerial responsibility shedded versus booting out a cabinet, third-party investigation, and then the sort of final question, now that those critics of those two things have gone away or maybe have kind of parked at bay, now they're chomping at what did you know and when.

Zain 51:42

Do you feel like based on where this has landed, he's played this right?

Carter 51:45

I think he's done better than some governments have done. I mean, I think that it showed clear decisiveness. I think it showed action. I think that, you know, he booted it. He lived the day. And keep in mind, this is a premier that was, what, two months ago facing a leadership crisis. This should have been or could have been the final nail in a coffin. And instead, he's been able to, I

Carter 52:08

I mean, he looks pretty strong right now. I mean, he essentially moved the minister out. He skipped over a bunch of lawyers. They're still sitting in the back bench and gave it to an existing minister. You know, I think that, you know, not Tyler Shandro and not Doug Schweitzer, who are both, you know, lawyers as well. I mean, this was kind of an interesting solution that he's created for himself. And I think that as problems go, if he couldn't drop it on a Friday before Christmas or between Christmas and New Year's, which might have been, you know, if you were to go back in time and make this happen, that might have been a better solution. If this is the way that this was going to go, he acted decisively. He so far ignored and managed to cross off the what did you know and when did you know it questions. And it feels like, you know, he's going to skate, keeping in mind that our collective attention span is not much more than a week. And we're on the tail end of it, which will drive our huge listener numbers even better because we're talking about an issue that's over a week old. But this is this is great. I think.

Carter 53:17

Yeah, I think I think he actually managed it fairly well. And, you know, I'm not I'm

Carter 53:22

I'm not predisposed to give this premier a lot of praise. um but i do think he came through okay cory

Corey 53:31

yeah so uh from the assuming we're just saying how do we grade him from the moment it broke yes

Zain 53:35

yes that's right like playing real real time sort of analysis i think

Corey 53:39

think there is like a kind of like t minus 12 question where you know the cbc is asking for comment is asking other people if they knew where that should have been a bit of an alarm for

Corey 53:48

for you to say okay this is coming and we're gonna we're gonna maybe

Corey 53:52

maybe not go as far as what steven said but at least sort of steer the ship a little bit we know this cbc article is going to to come this way we're going to do these things to get a bit ahead of it but from the moment it happens i do think he did a pretty good job the

Corey 54:03

the suspension was smart because

Corey 54:05

because you're not losing your only black minister and your edmonton only edmonton minister right only edmonton mla yeah right uh in in that situation you're essentially just putting them on ice but you've reserved the option and i can see such a clear path where this is going to bring them back into cabinet as justice minister probably but even if not in some sort of function in the cabinet like very clear path there right same with the messaging that went on about uh you know justice and inequity there uh existing minister smart jason kenney has actually shown more of like a proclivity for expanding lately with all of these associate ministers but i think the idea that this doesn't create another feeding frenzy and more to the point doesn't bring somebody into the cabinet who will then be sad when they're not in the cabinet if you want to keep madu in in some form without expanding smart makes sense uh as steven sort of alluded to the other two lawyers and cabinet challenges with both of those choices so where

Corey 55:00

where he went wrong where there's two things in my opinion and the first one's relatively minor the second one remains to be seen i actually don't think it's that minor it's a big outstanding gap here the first one is uh madu's letter or facebook post on the evening just a couple of hours before yeah uh kenny announced his suspension essentially it was incongruous with kenny's actions that followed it made it seem that madu didn't know what was coming and i think those two messages could have been better coordinated where essentially madu made more more clear like you know the basic skeleton is there of this is what happened but it could have been nonetheless i can understand the perception and you know i you know i i've

Corey 55:40

i've talked to the premier about this and he's going to be making a decision or something i just feel that that that didn't feel like a threat and it was a messy couple of hours but it wasn't a big deal Because at the end of the day, when the premier makes the decision, the premier makes, that's the news, not Mattu's letter from a little bit ahead of time. The second one, though, and the bigger problem is

Corey 55:57

is him not knowing about the phone call. Because that is still, I think, for starters, for the public, it's a little hard to swallow. There's this view of Jason Kenney that he knows everything all of the time, right?

Corey 56:09

right? Whether or not, I've already given you my opinion. I could see how it could happen. been.

Corey 56:14

I also am not saying that I think it's exceptionally likely that he didn't have some sort of inkling that there was some sort of challenge. Like you could easily see his chief of staff saying like, oh, there's this thing, best you don't know a ton about it, we're managing it, don't worry. But like some inklings could be out there. I also think the nature of it, and I mentioned that there's often quite a bit of paper for these things. Now issues managers are pretty good at deleting their transitory records, which is like their notes that are not permanent notes, Right. But that said, this government has been bitten the ass a few times in the past with things like cell phone records and all of that. Right. So there

Corey 56:47

there is a good chance that there is some sort of documentation out there of some sort of review. And I think that that makes the premier in a bit of an exposed place. And he just needed to be a little bit firmer about the parameters of him not knowing. I think even if he had said, this is something I know my staff was looking into, you know, I

Corey 57:06

I didn't know about it until this all came down, but apparently my staff looked into this, they reviewed these things. I'm quite disappointed this wasn't brought to my attention, but issues, I don't know. I don't know what it was, but I'm worried that that's not enough in a box right now. And that's the thing that he's got to, he's got to consider. Carter,

Zain 57:20

talk to me about the third party investigation as a political tool. This independent investigation, does it come before or at this independent investigation? Does it come before or after his leadership?

Carter 57:35

Oh, the after. I mean, you don't have a lot of control, but it takes a lot longer to do than one would think. You don't have a network of third party investigators just standing off to the side of your cabinet, just lined up to take on assignments. You have to find someone that's appropriate, someone that will... And

Zain 57:55

guess the question is, do you think Jason Kenney knows that and by kind of like he's able to punt this away, it's an investigation while not having to deal with it prior to his leadership race? I guess that's what I'm trying to ask here.

Carter 58:05

Totally. I mean, there's almost no world

Carter 58:08

world in which this comes back prior to March, April, May. I would see this as potentially a summer return. I mean, and if you're going to have an issue like this come back, having it come back the fourth week of July isn't a bad place, right? There are certain places in the schedule where all

Carter 58:25

all of a sudden this thing happens in the summer, the citizens give a fuck factor is really low. And when you see that, that makes

Carter 58:35

makes things a lot easier for you. So I think this, I just, again, I think it was a good play.

Zain 58:44

Corey, what do you think of the independent investigation as a political tool?

Corey 58:49

it's had mixed results obviously both in canada and abroad i can you know gomery comes to mind i guess

Zain 58:56

i'm thinking of is a delay tactic here right it's just punting the result to later kind of hearkening back to something you said earlier we'd rather take the hit six months later when another big milestone is maybe perhaps passes i guess that's the root of what i'm trying to ask well

Corey 59:08

well and in fact if you look across the atlantic ocean right now and you You look at what's going on with Boris Johnson and the independent investigation into number 10 and the parties they were having there.

Corey 59:18

You can see that it doesn't always work to take the heat off. Sometimes it can sort of increase expectations. All of a sudden, the investigation and the framing becomes a point of public conversation, a point of public contention as things are moving on. The other thing is they don't need to take as long as Stephen said. I agree with everything he said in terms of, yeah, kick it until after the leadership review, maybe in the summer is a good time for it.

Corey 59:41

it's also possible this investigation could be done very quickly and if there's one data point that makes me think it could be quick it's that you've got the minister of energy also being the minister of justice those are two big jobs massive

Corey 59:55

two big jobs and the idea of doing that until june is is really tough to imagine frankly um so i don't know we'll see i wouldn't be surprised if this thing wraps up faster than people expect carter

Zain 1:00:08

carter let's talk about two more things on this before we we move on so we'll just make this another hour um the first

Zain 1:00:13

first one here carter we're

Zain 1:00:15

we're still on the first topic this

Carter 1:00:16

this is the only time i don't know what's going on i yeah this is yeah we don't choose the questions if i find something intriguing i'll

Zain 1:00:26

you know part of me is like really intrigued by how much this might be tied to kenny's leadership and leadership review right like a story from march or april comes out now um if you're preparing Jason Kenney as a Kenney loyalist for maybe additional skeletons in the closet that might come up, whether it's CBC reporting or otherwise, but someone's talking, right? Or a group of people are talking, and it seems strategically timed that they're talking, you know, causation correlation. But Carter, how are you preparing for other sort of bombshells leading up to your leadership review, right? Knowing that people are going to go for strategically timed missiles against you, knowing that you've made a bit of a rebound and you've created the conditions to secure your leadership quite nicely heading into April. So talk to me about that broader notion. And I'm not, and once again, this is speculation. We don't know if this story is related to that, but the timing is quite interesting when you look at it. So talk to me about that, Carter.

Carter 1:01:23

Yeah, I think that you need to take a few different pieces apart here, right? Like the truth of the matter is at any given moment, the issue managers aren't working on one issue, right?

Carter 1:01:34

right? I don't care which government you're in, you're

Carter 1:01:36

you're working on multiple issues at the same time. And some of

Carter 1:01:39

of them connect and some of them are disconnected and some of them are potentially

Carter 1:01:43

potentially fatal and some of them are annoying

Carter 1:01:45

annoying as hell. And others are just really interesting opportunities, but you can't seem to get to that opportunity because you're stuck mired in these problems. So if I was the issue manager looking at this, I'd be saying, okay, someone screwed us here, right? Because this didn't come from the

Carter 1:02:02

the chief. I'm guessing this didn't come from Madhu. This came from someone. So who was it? What else do they know?

Carter 1:02:10

Who are they associated with? What else is going to come out? And then you can start to do some triangulation on other things that they may or may not know, and make sure that you're prepared for those things.

Zain 1:02:20

Carter, to come full circle, is that a job for an issues manager, perhaps?

Carter 1:02:25

It's a job for an issues manager.

Zain 1:02:28

Corey, tell me about your thoughts on timing here and how you prepare for, you know, issues that might be, you know, coming with greater veracity or that you might be targeting on time or being targeted on timeline and your thoughts on that with the timeline of Kenny's leadership review as well. Well,

Corey 1:02:44

Well, Carter, spot on. The question that everybody needs to be thinking about in terms of the tactics of this particular matter and issues to come is who's

Corey 1:02:53

who's talking about this? How did it get out? Again, like this is not the moral lens of, you know, public have a right to know and all of this, right? Which I think is a shame. I think that, you know, there are people in politics who worry about that a lot, but that's not the issues manager's job, right?

Corey 1:03:07

right um and they're going to be saying or is another issue likely to come uh how did this sort of bleed out is there do we have a problem here and what do we know about that and what else could potentially uh be there and in those cases yeah you've got to get ahead of it you've got to be uh prepared to be proactive where it makes sense and have like a killer reactive plan where it doesn't make sense to be proactive here you know i guess the one thing that i think i want want to underline here as i assume we're coming to an end here i've got

Corey 1:03:38

got some follow-up questions it is it is insane that madu did this absolutely insane yeah as as a minister of the crown to call a police chief with an active ticket like this like just everything about it we said at the start i stand by uh but from a general public point of view there's enough points on this that make it seem a little fuzzy and not super clear like there's the racial justice angle there's the the fact McPhee himself is not fussed, is the fact he paid the ticket and nothing really has occurred in the intervening eight months that would make you think that he was penalizing the Edmonton Police Service or anything like that as a result of this, that I think it's likely from a public point of view, it's

Corey 1:04:18

it's going to land in a place where they see this issue as not of a big a deal as it is. We talked about, you know, the

Corey 1:04:25

the bigger right thing, right? And so was Madhu trying to do the bigger right thing by dealing with these social justice issues? Well, there's kind of a, you know, another bigger right thing here, which is how the system is supposed to work and the rule of law and all of those things that he somewhat broke by calling a chief of police in a situation like this. But that's one of those bigger right things that people

Corey 1:04:45

people like me get worked up about, you know, constitutional scholars get worked up about. I'm just not sure the public is going to be as worked up about it as perhaps they should.

Corey 1:04:54

But that might be to the benefit of the premier's office as they manage this issue going forward carter

Zain 1:04:59

carter you're going to jump in but then you also looked at the clock well guess what i've got one question for you that i actually want to follow up on this thread best

Zain 1:05:06

best strategies to spot someone who's leaking this

Zain 1:05:09

this is a whole episode its own right oh

Zain 1:05:11

if this is a leak though and i don't want to get into hyper speculation territory but there has to be some tried and true strategies to figure out who's talking right like Like, can we talk about that? Like, and I don't know if someone is leaking here, but I'm just so intrigued by this that that same issues management chief of staff cohort probably have some tools to figure out what that looks like. Do they not? Yeah, they do. They're not the Stassi for starters. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I understand. But there is stuff that you can do.

Carter 1:05:41

Yeah. I mean, who knew what?

Carter 1:05:44

When did it get out? And what was actually said? Because there's a couple of different –

Carter 1:05:52

again, not everybody is going to know all the same truths, right? So if a story is missing a particular detail, that tells you something.

Carter 1:06:01

Right. If a story is inclusive of a particular point of view, that tells you something. It doesn't tell you everything because a really clever leaker will leak with someone else's point of view, right?

Carter 1:06:12

right? Like they will point the finger at someone else. But most people aren't clever leakers. Most people simply leak to get something out because they feel like they need to – they

Carter 1:06:24

they want people to know what's going on.

Carter 1:06:28

then everybody gets caught in the verification traps. I mean Braid is brilliant at his verification traps. I've already got this. I've already talked to two other people. They've already given it to me. But I just wanted to double-check with you and make sure you knew that it was actually happening. By the way, did you know this was happening? Carter, you're giving

Zain 1:06:44

giving up. You're giving up some of the proprietary interview from Stephen Carter's leaking master class, which is only $99. But even

Carter 1:06:51

even as much as you know, so as much as you know, as much as you may know about a leaker, if you've narrowed it down and you put a target on their back,

Carter 1:07:01

there's still not very much you can do, right?

Carter 1:07:03

right? Yeah. So the leaker probably is just going to be put outside of the trust circle or given something that is a red

Carter 1:07:12

red herring that you can just double check and confirm afterwards if they put something out.

Carter 1:07:19

But it's hard to find the conclusion.

Zain 1:07:22

Corey, what do you think? Carter had some good points here around like different points of view, missing puzzle pieces, etc. et cetera.

Corey 1:07:29

Yeah. And I mean, like, this is one of those things where everybody all of a sudden becomes Sherlock Holmes and tries to put these pieces together in their own respective mind palaces and come to conclusions here. My experience on this matter is people will jump quickly to conclusions. They will have trouble sort of expanding beyond the suspects they immediately predict. And they're rarely able to actually prove it, right? There's just, there's not a lot of tools that allow a government to understand that, particularly if the call is coming from outside the house right like it's not from a government email account access to documents in a situation like this it's not like you're going to see somebody downloaded that document eight months ago yeah just like it's not going to be in a system like that so yeah people will look for what's the slant on the story who's the hero who's the villain do the facts show that the story like are they frozen at a certain point in time when x number of people knew but not y number and you know you look for all of that was there a recent termination a recent aggravation from the the list of people who knew and you make strong educated guesses but it's again it's very difficult it's very difficult to concretely definitively say in most cases right in most cases very difficult carter

Zain 1:08:38

carter final line of questioning here which is cory said that this might land in a fuzzy manner for the general public with that broader sort of right thing uh defense that madu has going for him if you're the ndp you have to skate cautiously on this but what if anything do you do to make this land more clearly with the public to remove some of that that that fuzziness or that pixelation from this story and have a clear line of attack? Is it tying it into an existing narrative? Is it putting it on the feet of Jason Kenney? What would you be doing if you're the NDP looking at what's come out thus far on this particular story and trying to drive a clear pattern that's resonant home?

Carter 1:09:21

Well, I mean, first of all, you ask yourself, is that what you want to do?

Carter 1:09:26

This takes away from the possibility that Jason Kenney will be premier in a year.

Carter 1:09:30

You want Jason Kenney to be premier in a year. I think that if you're Rachel Notley, you want to be facing off against Jason Kenney. He has to wear the sins of this particular government. And if you change leaders, even at the 11th hour, which is arguably would be, you

Carter 1:09:46

you know, the next person in gets to walk away from a lot of those sins that Jason Kenney has has committed. minute and um at

Carter 1:09:54

a time when the economy is you know economy is recovering the provincial books are at least recovering i don't know that the economy is recovering in the same fashion but i'll leave that for a different episode but right now if i was the ndp i'd be saying this is this is dirty to the core all the way to the top but i wouldn't be saying it too loudly right now i'd wait they they they they got rid of the minister there's their trophy they have that that done. Now move on to the next thing, which is making sure that people remember that the healthcare system is suffering, the education system is suffering. You can get distracted by these things in the moment and run around like you've scored the winning touchdown to further the overtime touchdown when you had the ball, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to win the next round of the playoffs.

Zain 1:10:46

Corey, do you want to agree with Carter's strategy and approach here i

Corey 1:10:50

think that's sound advice you don't need to swing at every pitch this might be one that you at least want to um i don't know limber up for there might be a chance that you need to take a crack at this one here but if you're going to do that you've got to build the simple case because as the facts come out the case will inevitably get more complicated and so

Corey 1:11:09

for me the simple case also needs to have the right target and the right target has to be the premier, not Casey Maddow, who is almost certainly going to lose his seat if polls are going to be believed. He's the only Edmonton UCP MLA. He's in a sea of orange. It seems unlikely to me he maintains that position. So like, what are you going to do? You don't need to giant slay Casey Maddow here. That's not necessary.

Corey 1:11:34

So think about that. Think about how in one sentence, you can effectively lay this at the feet of the premier and call into question the premier's judgment, not Casey Maddow's judgment. Uh, Casey Maddow's judgment is only relevant insofar as it reflects on the premier. So maybe something along the lines of no matter what his reasons, the base facts are a minister of the crown called a police chief to complain about a ticket and the premier's office decided to cover it up.

Corey 1:11:58

That is your point. It is not Casey Maddow has bad judgment. It's nothing like that. It's the premier's office decided to cover it up. What else are they covering up and calling the question, the premier's office, not, not the the minister, who is not your target at this particular moment.

Zain 1:12:14

I'm going to leave that there, Stephen Carter. I see you're yawning three hours past your bedtime already. I'm going to put you out of your misery. Let's move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, this is some bedtime lullabies for you. We do this only for you. It's a no-nap

Carter 1:12:26

-nap day, Zane. It's a no-nap day.

Zain 1:12:30

Stephen Carter, give a report card to Jason Kenney thus far on this issues management from the public lens that you see. Give

Zain 1:12:35

Give him a letter grade. What does he get thus far on this particular file?

Carter 1:12:39

You know, I don't want to give it too high, but I'd say it's a C plus or a B minus. He did. He passed, but he's not leading the class.

Zain 1:12:50

Corey, someone who has led the class, what's your GMAT score again? Do you want to just let us know? Oh, it was a 770. Okay, 770. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Corey, with your 770, what grade would you be giving Jason Kenney as a TA of this class on issues management?

Corey 1:13:03

Well, I would probably give him a B because they're going to make it curve everybody to an A average anyhow. So that's below average in this particular context.

Corey 1:13:12

And, you know, I think, again, I think he's done a pretty good job from the moment on. But for the fact that the, you know, the premier's office knew and some of the fuzziness around that, and whether you bring him into it or not, it's still a point of exposure that they haven't dealt with, in my opinion, very cleanly, that hurts him.

Zain 1:13:33

Carter, just to see if you're paying attention, what was Corey's GMAT score Corey, again?

Carter 1:13:38

wonderful. The same as QR-770, Calgary Redneck Radio. That's how I remember.

Corey 1:13:45

Corey. That's good. You gave a mnemonic to all of our Calgary listeners. That's wonderful. Corey,

Zain 1:13:49

Corey, third-party investigations, as a political tool, overrated or underrated in your mind?

Corey 1:13:55

Overrated. They allow you to push an issue a bit, and they allow you to distance from it, but you also lose control at that point because third-party investigators can surprise you.

Corey 1:14:06

And they offer yet another thing for people to argue about if people don't like how you set it up. Carter,

Zain 1:14:11

Carter, third-party investigations, overrated or underrated in your mind as a political tool?

Carter 1:14:15

Overrated. I mean, you're literally giving control to someone else of your fate, and it's not a great choice.

Zain 1:14:22

Final question, Carter. It's a Stephen Carter prediction. We're starting with Stephen Carter. Yep.

Zain 1:14:27

Does Casey Maddow ever hold the position of Minister of Justice in Alberta again? again?

Carter 1:14:32

I don't think so. I think that there'll be another lawyer that winds up with it, but I don't think that, I do think that Casey Maddow will be a cabinet minister again.

Zain 1:14:42

Corey, the question is specific to him becoming minister of justice again. Stephen Carter said, no, are you going to go with the default option available to you?

Corey 1:14:51

Am I going to go with the default option? Which

Zain 1:14:53

which is betting against Stephen Carter, which one should

Corey 1:14:57

Will you be doing it? Trick Quick question, Zane. He's still Minister of Justice. He was not removed from that post. Well, he's suspended, so...

Corey 1:15:07

But you know what? You go to the website right now, still going to show him as Minister of Justice. I fucking

Zain 1:15:10

fucking hate anyone who's written the G-Bad. We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on Episode 966 of The Strategist. Well done, guys. That was a weird one. My name is Zane Velgey. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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