Episode 967: Theatre of the absurd

Zain 0:02

This is a strategist episode 967. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, we are here and we have a massive, massive announcement. And for that announcement, Carter, I don't even let you speak. I turn it to one Corey Hogan.

Carter 0:17

Hogan. Come on, let me do it. Let me do it. No, I

Zain 0:18

I know. I'm not gonna let you

Carter 0:19

you do it. This

Carter 0:19

This is too big. This is too big. This is too massive. Too big. This is too important. Too important for me. Corey Hogan.

Corey 0:25

couple of weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago, our listeners

Corey 0:29

listeners collectively won the Not Going Places contest that we ran over Christmas. And so we awarded everybody

Corey 0:36

everybody a trip to Abbotsford. And we were really struggling with how we were going to do that. I mean, it wasn't expensive, but it was confusing and it was logistically complex. So, working with Flair Airlines, we're happy to announce that anyone, anywhere in Canada where Flair Airlines flies can fly to Abbotsford for free if they book in the month of February and fly before February 28th. Just a little deal that we've cooked up for you here. You don't need any special codes. Our listenership being as vast as it is, Flair agreed that the introduction of, you

Corey 1:07

you know, like having like airline codes would just – you'd be paying for that down the road anyways in like the bag of Pringles or something that you're going to get. What an

Zain 1:15

an incredible deal. I mean, spurred on by our sponsorship of Flair Airlines, which is actually the right way of saying it, our sponsorship of Flair Airlines.

Zain 1:23

You can fly not just to Abbotsford, Corey. You can fly anywhere.

Corey 1:27

No, it's got to be Abbotsford.

Corey 1:28

systems are a little low-tech, a little bit clunky, so they would probably accept any other city. But it's got to be Abbotsford. On our system here, folks, you've

Corey 1:38

you've got to go to Abbotsford. You've

Zain 1:39

You've got to go to Abbotsford, fine. They'll agree to it. But it's a free base fare. Flair, Stephen Carter, this is an epic deal. I have not seen a deal like this since I don't know when. Since what? Like a buy one, get one at Zellers? Since

Carter 1:53

Since Corey and I did presentations together at H&K. That's how long it's been. I mean, we could sell anything to anybody, but we made all kinds of things happen. And, you

Carter 2:05

you know, now we did it again. We did it again with Flair Airlines, and we're super pleased that they remain not our sponsor and we're able to do this together.

Zain 2:14

We sponsored them. Yeah, that's right, Carter. You know, one thing I will say is last episode we did provide some feedback to Flair Airlines, our sponsor, about how they could do a better job. Bob, we remember the mean tweets, Carter. I do, I do. I suspect our listeners do as well. Well, this promotion that they have struck with us, the free base fare to Abbotsford, is brilliant because, Stephen Carter, can you actually complain to Flair Airlines when you're getting a flight for free? It is genius. It is the most gaslighting, perfect move. I have not seen corporate communications and a promotion this clever or this savvy since, oh, I don't know, Stephen Carter, Zellers, when they had buy one, get one free.

Corey 2:56

This is why Stephen Carter always paid for the date.

Carter 2:59

exactly exactly this you can't complain about something you didn't buy right

Carter 3:04

right like this is brilliant this is brilliant it is so good okay

Zain 3:10

okay good that's good anything else any final pizzazz to add to to this very big deal announcement steven carter no

Carter 3:16

no just really big thank you to flair again uh super easy to work with um you know like this wasn't even a phone call this is out good no

Zain 3:25

it really wasn't it wasn't it was osmosis they read our mind they knew what we wanted uh flare airlines fuck trucks let's move it on to our first segment our first segment can you imagine if they weren't white oh guys we are going to talk about the convoy oh

Zain 3:47

guys okay well let's let's dissect this we haven't talked about this yes we did we did a deep dive last episode.

Zain 3:53

But this came at us quickly, didn't it? And before I dig into the politics of it, because there's a lot to unwrap regarding the politics, Carter, let's talk about the convoy. Let's talk about just your general thoughts and feelings. I want to start here. You see Saturday and Sunday, freezing temperatures in Ottawa, not the promised witnessed hundreds of thousands of people but a decent sized audience um protesting uh carrying flags of all sorts uh desecration of certain monuments um what was your thought and your feeling from either a political or democratic or cultural or even just like moral perspective when you saw what you did over the course this weekend let's start here and then Then we'll jump into the politics thereafter. Well,

Carter 4:41

Well, I think I went through a bunch of different feelings like, you know, because, you know, as they're crossing the country, it's kind of like a gathering storm of hilarity in my mind as they're kind of going across the country because it's throughout the week. Yeah, it's like, oh, my God, this is just embarrassing for them. And and then they get there and you know that it's kind of a hodgepodge collection of humanity. humanity um you know you're seeing the interviews and people are are looking like idiots and and and uh then you throw in a sprinkle of hatred uh and you've got this kind of lunacy plus hatred plus you know free men on the land kind of feel to it and uh but it very quickly turned from from clarity to just downright disgust and then as the disgust faded uh in came anger um and so i've I've kind of gone through a number of emotions this week and, you know, to even see the complimentary protests in Calgary and on Highway 4 and here in Alberta, across the country, you know, and then to watch them also just kind of peter out. I mean, they don't really know what they're doing next. You know, what is the great the next move? I mean, their next moves have always been a little bit suspect, but all of this has just kind of left me. um i

Carter 6:00

think at this point it's just rage i'm just i'm just angry uh because i'm i'm i'm

Carter 6:06

i'm angry and i'm frustrated that this is the spot that we're at at this particular moment i think that that's probably my my journey of emotion insane corey

Zain 6:13

corey you know called operation bear hug you know this this convoy was seeking to abolish all measures placed against covet 19 started with the trucker mandate but it kind of expanded on others kind of loaded their cargo so to speak onto this convoy about their grievances, whether they be cultural or political or otherwise, supported by the likes of a Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, Donald Trump from the stage at one of his rallies. Talk about your emotions over the week. We'll dig into the facts a little bit more, the warnings, the political sort of ups and downs over the course of the week. But tell me about your feelings through the course of the week as you saw this gain steam, gain momentum, and then land in Ottawa this weekend.

Corey 7:00

Yeah, I don't know if I even think it gained momentum. Well, it was maybe U-shaped, right? There was this idea that it was going to be huge, or at least this was the promise at the start. And then as this quote-unquote convoy was making its way across the country, you saw, yeah, we're talking dozens of trucks, maybe a couple of hundred at different peaks, but obviously probably about 1,000, I think, in Ottawa has been the estimate there, But not the big, big numbers that were decreed by protesters, which shouldn't surprise us. It shouldn't surprise us any more than when Donald Trump falls flat on his face when he's promising a big rally or any of these random characters who do this. Because let's face it, organizing is not their strong suit. Rage is their strong suit. But rage can carry the day sometimes, as we saw.

Corey 7:44

But, you know, my overarching feeling was really like, what a goddamn mess. What a goddamn mess for everybody involved. involved. And what a warning it is to us all that it only takes... Look, listen, this is a country of 38 million people. There's bound to be a few assholes.

Corey 7:59

That's probably how I'd summarize. Three

Carter 8:01

Three on this podcast.

Corey 8:02

Yeah, right. Exactly. But it was shocking

Corey 8:09

It was shocking to me how

Corey 8:12

how few people could really just sort of seize a nation's attention like this. I mean, in many ways, it is a bit of a masterclass in public relations, because Because the amount of attention it got is really outsized to the number of participants who were involved. That said, they are kind of the angriest, most active, I

Corey 8:31

I don't know what you call them, vanguard of a 10% of Canadians who just refused to be vaccinated. And

Corey 8:37

I also think, what a goddamn mess on that front. Like, what are we going to do here? As I've said on this pod before, and as I've said in other places, you can't just write off 10% of the Canadian population. So what is our long

Corey 8:47

long-term plan as a nation here? Because these individuals

Corey 8:51

individuals are getting louder, not quieter.

Corey 8:56

quieter. And so I think we need to think about that in some – that's what I've been thinking about a lot over the past couple of days. Corey,

Zain 9:03

Corey, can I pick up on your point and let's talk about the public relations aspect of it? Would it be unfair to say from your perspective that this group got disproportionate attention than they may have deserved?

Corey 9:14

think it's – well, it depends on what you think is disproportionate, right? At the end of the day, it's still a fairly big protest. It has shut down, gridlocked our capital city. It's probably of its type one of the largest in the Western world that has gone this route, right? I mean there's been groups who have shown up and had big rallies in cities, but there's not been kind of a truck-based city anywhere to my knowledge. I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong. And so it's making international news for a reason, right? This is kind of an extreme – it

Corey 9:44

it might not be an extreme number of people, but it's a lot of people that have such an extreme manifestation of rage like this, that they would drive these big rigs across the country, even if it's just a couple hundred of them, and just sort of sit there. Like, it's a weird thing to look at. It's a weird thing to watch. It does remind us how sort of the

Corey 10:03

the system works because of, you know, norms and mores as much as anything. And it doesn't take a lot of people who just decide they're going to ignore the rules and sit on Parliament Hill and make life miserable for Ottowans, right? Carter,

Zain 10:15

you know, there's a lot here because I'm kind of curious from your perspective, what do you think kind of crystallized

Zain 10:22

crystallized this and gave it the attention and maybe not the momentum in numbers as a result, as an outcome, but certainly just dominating the entire week? I think that's fair to say, at least on Canadian political media, it dominated the entire week. Was it the $7.4 million plus? Was it the petition signatures? Was it the fact that it got international coverage, which I know the Canadian sort of media and sort of commentator space loves to kind of use as a credibility marker for you? Do you feel like this got disproportionate attention? And what do you kind of make about the momentum and the public relations of this movement? movement but

Carter 11:02

thinking a lot about why they got the coverage that they did right because ultimately you know there's a protest in front of parliament hill every other day right like it is not unusual to to to poke your head outside or see a large group of people oftentimes much larger in real number uh than this than this group themselves but this group had a few things kind of if you will forgive me this language but kind of going for it um to get the attention that it did first of all it was extreme right so it did stand outside of the norm of of canadian protests right canadian protests are usually a few handmade placards these guys brought 200 trucks to the table and shut down traffic and made life hell the second is they were more than just a simple protest they were belligerent and potentially violent um you know like that was that that cranks it up a bit um when you're the news media because you don't know what's going to happen whereas if you get a uh a group of you know people protesting abortion regulations you know what's going to happen because this happened uh you know a thousand times and you know you're

Zain 12:10

you're saying the novelty here was a big fast aspect of it not

Carter 12:13

not just the novelty but the the threat the potential threat of something happening right so whether you're you know when we're reading or doom scrolling on our twitter accounts we see you know the the you know the person working at tim hortons the kid at tim hortons who's scared uh you see the the people who are at the rito center getting shut down that you see all of these things that are happening because you don't know how it's going to actually end um and the truckers themselves and the protesters themselves um took an extreme point of view they were infiltrated or they were they either they They were either infiltrated or they were, in fact, white supremacists. And I think that it's closer to the latter than it is the former. So they allow themselves, because this is who they're attracting now, to become this crazy group. And crazy extreme groups get more coverage. People who say outlandish things get more coverage, right? This is why we're a better podcast than West of Center. We say more outlandish things, right? Why?

Carter 13:18

what was the not true part can

Zain 13:21

can you can you give me an example of some of the outlandish things we would say like fighting with another podcast carter would that be one of the outlandish things

Carter 13:28

i don't know what you're talking about yeah something like that sure something like that but but the the fact is that as they as they became more and the other than the here's the last piece they moved across the country right

Carter 13:41

right this wasn't just people from ottawa showing up to protest in front of this you know they the movement across the country that the the gathering of steam regardless of the fact that it did not really gather much stream steam but at every center local news went out and covered it and i'm going to add one last thing i know the last last thing i said was going to be the last thing but i think it was a pretty slow news week last week

Carter 14:05

there wasn't a lot going on you know the the house wasn't sitting legislatures across the the country aren't sitting. There's not a lot of political news going on. And that's been the case for a couple of weeks. I mean, you've got COVID, but COVID's been, I mean, gosh, we've had two years of COVID. So I think that this

Carter 14:23

this is a new novel story, a time when there's not a lot of novel stories. They hit their timing perfectly.

Zain 14:29

I'm going to ask you to do something that I know you're going to hate in a second. But let me add some facts when you say outlandish. You know, one of the groups affiliated with the convoy, Canada Unity, they produced a memorandum of understanding that it wanted to present to the Governor General Mary Simon and the Senate, which it believes would force the government to rescind these COVID-19 public health measures. The Gigi wouldn't dismiss this as part of cabinet. Of course, many people saying this is outlandish, it's crazy. Also understanding and exploring that many of the folks at the core of this, Corey, as I mentioned earlier, had some white nationalist background to what they're trying of new separatist backgrounds. So that kind of adds to Carter's theory of outlandishness or extreme. I'll ask you the same question that Carter kind of put on the table. Why do you think it got so much coverage, Corey, from your perspective?

Corey 15:19

Because it's a tinderbox. And it's compelling because we don't know what's going to happen next. Stephen's exactly right. I think one of the reasons why it captured our attention all week is by accident or by plan, there were these moments where we're like, well, how many people are going to show up at this overpass? What is going to happen next? What are the leaders going to agree to see it like, it just sort of, it was such a, when

Corey 15:43

when you talk about a lot of those other protests that go on, there's a there's a script for them, we know exactly how they're

Corey 15:48

they're going to, they're going to work out, you know, I worked in Edmonton. And every couple of weeks, at the outside of my window, I would see on the legislature grounds, you know, there would be a protest about climate action. And

Corey 16:00

they would grow really big, or sometimes they would be less big always pretty big and uh but

Corey 16:05

but you knew the script you knew what was going to happen they were they were everybody would march down they would make their speeches and people would disperse you know over time and so it it lacked kind of this keeping you on edge thing that uh that this thing had in you know in aces here and uh and

Corey 16:22

and it just like we still don't know what's going to happen next one of the reasons why in some ways this is almost dangerous to be be talking about is for all we know somebody did something incredibly stupid right now at 9 p.m mountain time as we're recording right and um part of the reason we have no idea what's going to happen next is because the entire thing is nonsensical you know like you're protesting the u.s border decisions by marching on ottawa i can i sort of see that because there's some logic and well go take it up with the united states you're the federal government you're responsible for international relationships but then to say we also want you to do in these provincial health health regulations. Well, what in the world does Ottawa have to do with any of that, right? Like, this is not Justin Trudeau's circus, and it's not his elephants. So that doesn't make any sense at all. And then this absolutely outlandish plan that you would somehow get the governor general in this, and I don't even fucking know the logic train, as broken as it is, that leads to believe that the Senate can somehow override the House of Commons to do fucking anything at all. You know, they're not even allowed to pass money bills, for Christ's sake. It's like an appointed body, appointed by the way by the prime minister like none of this makes any sense i mean it's just it's just the theater of the absurd but because of that because there is no way to meet these demands because there is no way for any of these things to kind of naturally square and move on to the next thing we're all sitting here saying what the fuck is going to happen next right what is going to happen monday in ottawa that's

Zain 17:48

that's fascinating cory so this this theater of the absurd because there's no rational conclusion to it really

Zain 17:54

really there isn't because like who the hell are you and what what are you asking for? None of this is possible. You

Corey 17:59

You know, but there's one more thing, I think, that makes this such compelling television right now. And it's that, I mean, it's so obvious, but it needs to be stated. This is the big issue still. It's still COVID-19. It's somehow, it's done the thing that the Tea Party did. I was mentioning this on West of Center, because I was on West of Center this week.

Carter 18:17

Oh, that's maybe why it was so bad this week. I understand.

Corey 18:21

But the Tea Party, right, like the U.S. movement, like this freedom movement, it started, you

Corey 18:28

you know, its history goes back a bit. But like the main, like the origin of the Tea Party was it was protests against obesity taxes in New York State. Nobody thinks about the Tea Party being about that. And it was kind of a dumb thing for it to be about. But sometimes these things become much, much bigger than the specific issue that they're at least on paper about. And so many Canadians have latched on to this as being just in general about frustrations with COVID-19 government actions and maybe even just their frustrations about COVID-19 period, which is kind of dumb because the virus doesn't care whether you're frustrated or not. But it seems to be an outlet for that frustration that a lot of Canadians are feeling right now, maybe even beyond the 10% that are unvaccinated.

Zain 19:12

Carter, you know, let's stick to the how they did this from a public relations strategy perspective, because that's what we're talking about, right? So talk to me about how

Zain 19:21

how you grade this convoy, at least from what we know thus far. I'm going to call this Chapter 1, from start to landing in Ottawa for the first weekend, okay? Because that's all we really know. So from chapter one, talk to me about what Corey just did, which is the attraction or the magnetizing of everyday people, quote unquote, adding their grievances to this convoy, you know, saying if the last two years were shit for you, you're welcome on board. If you hate masks, yeah, now's the time to join in. You don't like Trudeau? Jump on board. Talk to me about their success or their failure about doing that and how important you think that was to this movement's initial

Zain 20:02

initial sort of momentum building in that regard. Well,

Carter 20:06

I think that's a really good point. And I mean, I think that this isn't just about a mask mandate or an anti vaccination mandate or any

Carter 20:13

any any one thing. This is about grievance on top of grievance on top of grievance. And so what happens is it

Carter 20:21

just it moves along as it goes to stop to stop to stop. And everybody that jumps on it is welcome to jump on it. Oh, you hate Trudeau? We got room for you. Oh, you're a white supremacist? We got room for you. Oh, you think vaccine mandates are bad? We got room for you. And so it becomes, it's not like the anti-abortion protests that occurs every couple of weeks, or it's not like the anti-nuclear protests that are kind of omnipresent at Parliament Hill and other legislative bodies. Instead, it becomes this unique thing where we don't really care what what you're angry about. We just care that you're angry. And there's lots and lots of really good reasons to be angry and lots of and even more really bad reasons to be angry. And it doesn't if you're if you're comfortable mixing those two, because other groups would say, you know, the anti-abortion group wouldn't wouldn't allow white supremacists to come and take it over. Right. Like they've got their point of view. They don't want their message to be diluted. They don't want it to be taken away.

Carter 21:28

That's that's part of this movement is it's so quick that it gets it gets everything attached to it. And it's so, you know, it comes out of nowhere and it has no leadership. I mean, this is the other thing that I thought was hilarious. Yeah, there's a couple of people who started it, but they didn't have control by the end. No one has control. role you just have to follow what they're doing at any given moment of time and you're like there's no one in charge of this shit show so with

Carter 21:52

with no one in charge it it just kind of it

Carter 21:56

it morphs and ultimately i think it'll die in

Carter 21:58

in in some quicker because no one's really running it well

Corey 22:02

well maybe maybe not i mean one of the things that i think is a is a cautionary tale is that tea party example right um the point is not is

Corey 22:10

is not the point the point is rage and there's a lot of growing rage in this country. And it's become a bit of a Rorschach test for all of these randoms. The

Zain 22:19

prerequisite was tone. You needed to be angry about something. But

Carter 22:23

But not to draw an equivalence between these two movements, but Black Lives Matter and this have similar, like they both come from a place of rage, right? And they both, the first Black Lives Matter, especially, they came without leadership. They came without coordination. The second Black Lives Matter came with leadership, coordination, focus, intensity, And has been far more successful. Right. The first Black Lives Matter petered out because it again, they tried to put everything on to this Black Lives Matter mechanism. And I think the Black Lives Matter is about 10,000 times better a cause, but infinitely better. But nonetheless, we wind up, without leadership, without a clear message, things tend to fall apart. And Corey, as much as you're pointing to the Tea Party, the Tea Party also had a very clear message. It became about taxes. It became about government largesse on your taxes. And whether or not that morphed into federal taxes, state taxes, local taxes, the Tea Party could always find a tax that they hated. This

Carter 23:30

This is something different. And I think that this will morph and die, and I know you guys will pick on me because I do all these – but

Carter 23:37

but I think it dies. I

Zain 23:39

I want to talk about the morph and dying and the comparable examples. I know Occupy Wall Street has been thrown around for their lack of leadership and eventual lack of direction, but also about its political influence that it had on the issue of income inequality, et cetera, and maybe being a supercharger to the social democrat movement. But before I do that, Corey, I want to talk about this everyday people sort of add on still a bit more, which is there was success there to be had. It attracted people from every grievance. But at the core of it, you know, we do know there were some radical organizers. Why do you think it was still able to do that with an organizing core and an organizing philosophy that was still kind of batshit? Like, when you look at it on the terms of, like, what this group wants, it's crazy. It's not going to happen. And it's dangerous and radical. Yet it still attracted people on my Instagram feed, people on my Facebook page. I'm sure people we mutually know. Some people were even double, triple vax being like, this is the only thing I have. This is the only vehicle that I can attach myself to. Talk to me about that and where you kind of feel either it's the group success or the headspace that folks might be in that kind of made that part of it, if I can say, successful.

Corey 24:54

yeah. I mean, I see the same on my Facebook feed, on my Instagram feed, frankly, in conversations with family members of mine. And so there are people who just think, hey, even if I'm double vaxxed, even if I'm triple vaxxed, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm fed up. Why are we still piling these things on? We should be backing out of this. And I think in some ways, Zane, that's part of it. It's this sense that it's

Corey 25:19

it's two years and the restrictions are tightening. Shouldn't the restrictions be loosening over two years? Now, that's kind of a tantrum. That's pointless. I mean, the virus doesn't care, right? It is what it is at the moment that it is. but um but i think that it's become that outlet for that frustration and there is an awful lot of cynicism about when these movements are painted with one brush or another and it's pretty easy to say in like such a big group of people oh of course you're gonna have a couple of bad eggs you know i mean it's it's it's hand wavy stuff i mean i i can't i can't believe so many people are being hand waving about it given the fact look at look at the fleas that this carcass is attracting here. You've got Donald Trump talking about it. You've got Tucker Carlson talking about it. You've got Nazis showing up with literal swastikas. I mean, fucking look around and look at the company this is attracting. And you know that old saying, you're

Corey 26:10

you're at a meeting with one Nazi and four other people, you're at a meeting with five Nazis, right? I mean, this is not sort of stuff that you count and it's just walking around in the background. But there

Corey 26:22

there is this sense like people are just, you know, this is sort of this Canadian version of popular movement. And so So far, can I just say, like, we've

Corey 26:29

we've been kind of lucky. I was really bracing for much, much worse in

Corey 26:33

Ottawa, right? You run down the list, and this is not complete, but you've got basically

Corey 26:39

basically stealing food from a homeless shelter, putting a flag on a Terry Fox statue, parking

Corey 26:46

parking on the stairs at the Cenotaph, peeing on the Cenotaph maybe, throwing a beer can near a reporter and Nazi flags. And that doesn't sound like a fun fucking weekend to me, but we're not talking about January 6th and the storming of the Capitol, right? So I think in some ways, there

Corey 27:03

there was this sense, and I suspect it will grow in the coming days, like, well, people

Corey 27:09

people said the sky would fall, the sky didn't fall, these people maybe weren't as bad as he said, maybe it was just a few bad actors. I

Zain 27:14

I want to talk about that over-promise, under-deliver aspect of it, Carter. Will we rationalize this away because of that? Because it could have been worse? Because we saw January 6th? Because we were expecting 50,000 trucks or somewhere? Because we were expecting the largest protest ever? Do you feel like that still rationalized away some very dark stuff that we witnessed this weekend? it. And I hope we don't witness more, but we very well might in the coming days. Give me your take on that before we jump into the politics here. Well,

Carter 27:44

Well, I don't think we'll rationalize this away. I think that in fact, I think most of us will think the way Corey just presented it, right? We were lucky to avoid this being anything worse. It could have gone really horrible. And I think, but at the same time, I'm not sure that people were necessarily expecting it to be horrible. And the reason I say that is just by looking at the people who decided to throw themselves at these people and try and win their support, right? So when Aaron O'Toole and his caucus are throwing themselves at this group to try and win their support, that leads me to believe that they didn't think really bad things were going to happen. But then again, maybe they're not thinking rationally or thinking at all, frankly. But regardless, you know, if this was was always going to be a peaceful protest. I think that peaceful

Carter 28:37

great. This wasn't one of them. You know, the way that Corey described it is the best possible tilt to put on it. The other way of looking at it is people were scared shitless. And fear and intimidation is

Carter 28:50

is its own form of violence.

Zain 28:53

I want to talk about the politics for a second. And let's let's move into this. Carter, you mentioned O'Toole. Corey, I'm going to ask you very simply. O'Toole mealy mouthed about this trying to be like i'm gonna meet with them but not on parliament hill but not the organizers just some of them releases this very strange video about cost of living trudeau truckers everything jambled together what

Zain 29:14

what the hell is aaron o'toole thinking let's start here um from your perspective what

Zain 29:19

what do you think he's thinking this is not a dumb man this guy almost became our prime minister a couple months back what do you think aaron o'toole's thinking I

Corey 29:28

don't think he is, at least not rationally. But if he's trying to do something, it's probably latching on to this, what he views as a growing sense amongst Canadians that maybe we've got to find a way to back out of this. There is a chunk of Canadians who are

Corey 29:41

are increasingly frustrated or would like to see a reduction of COVID restrictions. And you know that that wave is going to hit the

Corey 29:49

the Conservative Party of Canada before it hits kind of anywhere else, right? Right. You know, when you talk about their volunteer class and all of that, I'm quite sure it greatly overrepresents that. And Aaron O'Toole is trying to hold on to his leadership, trying to have his cake and eat it, too, through all of these dumb statements. He's trying to, you know, as I've said about other politicians in other contexts, write two horses with one ass. And he is not it's not going to work. Right. And why I say I don't think he's thinking at all is because I've

Corey 30:18

I've come to the conclusion that politicians

Corey 30:20

politicians are just brutal at downside risk. risk, right? Because if the worst had happened this weekend, if these yahoos stormed some sort of federal building, right, if some shit went really awry, and Aaron O'Toole met with them, that's his party is dead to this nation for a generation. Well, maybe that's wishing too much, given what we've seen in the United States with the Republicans, frankly, but it would be devastating for the conservative party if you just want to even take it to like kind of the the political calculus of all of this here, right?

Corey 30:50

And maybe that wasn't the most likely thing. Maybe as Stephen said, smart money was on it

Corey 30:57

being a peaceful, if still not, you know, gruesome protest here. But let's say it's 99%. Nothing

Corey 31:03

Nothing goes wrong. You're going to take that bet, like that 1% is such a downside. Like, why would you entertain this at all?

Corey 31:09

And the only answer is really, he thinks it's necessary to sort of hold on to a coalition of his party. And I think that one of of the challenges Aaron O'Toole would have had is he could have said I'm opposed to these people and he still would have had all the same caucus members who are out there supporting them out there supporting them and so if he wanted to sort of claim

Corey 31:26

claim moral leadership of his party it's a funny word to use in this context he needed to show that he was at least open to these protesters as well Carter

Zain 31:34

Carter Lewis Polyavra Bergen I believe all supporting this this trucker convoy much Much commentary this week, much ink spilt on who is the leader of the Conservative Party, because Aaron O'Toole doesn't even come out in front of some of this stuff, has to react to some of his members, kind of boxed into a corner, not necessarily thinking. Rather than asking you what the hell's going on with Aaron O'Toole, what is he thinking question, Carter? What does Aaron O'Toole need to do here? What should he have done heading into this weekend? As you saw these truckers approaching Ottawa, what would you have told them to do? And let's talk then about what should he do going forward?

Carter 32:12

what should he have done? I mean, I think that the problem is that once you've accepted the premise, everything kind of falls apart after that. The premise of this was that, you know, the grocery store shelves were empty. he was out there with Jason Kenny at the beginning of the week saying where are our food, we love our truckers this is the other thing that built it all up Canadians are suffering, we can't buy we went grocery shopping a number of times we found everything we were looking for I didn't have to substitute anything it was fantastic

Carter 32:48

fantastic I couldn't believe it, but nonetheless here we are where everybody's all upset they manufactured outrage outrage. And then O'Toole decides to get in front of this by literally meeting with these people the day before they arrived in Ottawa, but

Carter 33:03

but the day before. So he sent a clear signal to his caucus, meet with these people, right?

Carter 33:09

right? He didn't lose control.

Carter 33:12

He sent the signal.

Zain 33:13

Do you think that was a signal to the caucus? Or do you think he was being forced by the caucus to say, meet with these people, because that's what we need to keep our coalition together. That is is what you will do, Aaron O'Toole, if you want moral authority to govern us? Do you feel like it was the other way around?

Carter 33:29

I've spent three days trying to figure out what the hell was going through Aaron O'Toole's mind, what was going through Michael Cooper's little tiny, you know, acorn-sized brain, what was going through Pierre Polyev's brain. I don't understand what they were thinking in terms of embracing this movement. Corey has made a case that this is larger than just the 10% of the people that are anti-vaxxers. That's true when it was going well, but

Carter 33:53

but now it's not going well. And I think we said on a previous version of this podcast that when things jump from Twitter to Facebook, we really start to see how people really feel. And on my, you know, on Facebook, you're seeing a whole bunch of negativity towards the... Tides turning. Right. And so the anger at this, and Michael Cooper, I think is probably the MP from St. Albert, is probably the The real lightning rod for this, just for being taken off, first of all, for his horrendous beard, but also for being in a photograph and in video with a Canadian

Carter 34:28

Canadian flag with a swastika on it behind him. Corey's point, you know, if you're at an event with one Nazi at it, you're a Nazi. You know, it wasn't hard to figure out that these people had these insignia because they had them all week long. And Aaron O'Toole, Michael Cooper, Pierre Pauliev, Candace Bergen ran to embrace them.

Carter 34:51

The political advantage is lost to me, especially when the population starts to turn, and I'm dying to see the next tracking poll.

Zain 34:59

Yeah, Corey, this is what I think, too. You know, you make a good, compelling point about downside risk. I wonder if this was less about downside risk and more – less of a sword, so to speak, for O'Toole to try to gain some points, but more of like a shield to keep his job. Do you think there's any merit in that angle?

Corey 35:20

I mean, it's the only hypothesis that makes even remote sense to me, right? right? It's that he, look, if you want to, this might hurt him becoming prime minister, but you don't get to be prime minister if you're not party leader. We've said a version of that in different contexts. Now, you know, good moral character sometimes says it's a bridge too far, but obviously he's not decided that it is a bridge too far for him. And maybe he sincerely supports this group too, who the hell knows, right? I'm not in the guy's head. But the idea idea has to be at least floating around there. I'm sure many people suspect that this is in part because he wants to keep his caucus from drifting further away from him. You know, it's not as though he's got an iron grip on it at this point.

Zain 36:03

Corey, let's talk about, we'll loop back to O'Toole in a second. Let's talk about Trudeau

Zain 36:08

Trudeau for a sec. I want to talk about, I want to put both of them on the table, then we'll talk about like alternative realities for them. The Trudeau message here is very

Zain 36:16

very simple. It's the one that he's been going with throughout the the summer.

Zain 36:19

Fringe group, minority, find the fracture, pound on it in the sense that, yup, like he's not backing down. And the political advice probably to him is, why the hell back down? 90% of this country is vaccinated. Do you feel like the political calculation is just that simple for Trudeau, despite the fact that this convoy and the people that are angry, it's more textured than just a simple 90-10 wedge issue? Do you feel like the political math still works in Trudeau's favor. And then let's talk about what we've just you've put on the table. Downside risk has related to Trudeau, because there is some for him, I would suggest.

Corey 36:55

So there's no question to me that the majority of Canadians are not with this group at this moment, right? We have talked about polling, softening for strong COVID measures in the past month. And I think that's something Trudeau needs to think about. Our advice to people in terms of dealing with COVID is make sure you know where the center is and stick with that center. And it may be moving rapidly at this point. So I think there's a reality there. But in some ways, I sort of dispute your kind of your frame, Zane, because one of the things that I wanted to say that was really interesting to me about this weekend is how little we've seen Trudeau. He's obviously the main character for the convoy, but we're

Corey 37:36

we're not getting wall to wall of the prime minister blasting these people or anything like that he is he's kind of kept his head down on this one i think sensibly not to spark

Corey 37:46

spark a flame here and yeah and you know set that tinder off but um he as much as this is about trudeau trudeau is not really like trudeau the man is not really at the center of this thing right now which i find fascinating i certainly think the commentary class has spent a lot more time talking about aaron o'toole than justin Trudeau right now, despite the fact it's Justin Trudeau's capital city right now, that is currently under siege by a bunch of big

Zain 38:12

Point taken, Corey. But Carter, the same question to you about Trudeau. Yes, he may have been largely invisible this weekend, of course, you know, also isolating for COVID related reasons. But Carter, the rhetoric from Trudeau, should

Zain 38:26

should he stick to that lane if he is brought if he has to talk about this again, when he talks about this again? He inevitably and invariably will have to. When he does, is it still that same lane of fringe group, minority group, get vaccinated? Or is there more downside risk than what meets the eye, so to speak?

Carter 38:46

I don't think he faces much in the way of downside risk, because in part, the central premise of the argument is wrong, right? If the central premise of the argument was correct right that we couldn't get food that we weren't getting you know our stock goods i mean there's a supply chain you know problem to be sure uh but we're not you know lining up at the grocery store hoping to get what little products they have left i mean this is this is uh lunacy maybe that's occurring in a few small towns somewhere but it's certainly not in any major center in canada and so you

Carter 39:22

you know he gets he's got truth on your side it's not like some sort of obscure thing that you don't see every day every every canadian is going grocery shopping everybody everybody goes to the grocery store and sees the same things and because of that it makes the central claim so weak for these folks um so we don't really need to worry about the truckers the unvaccinated truckers who can't um you

Carter 39:47

you know there's there's just no truth to their their claims. And this is another thing that Corey brought up earlier, right? There's no truth

Carter 39:54

to their solution. There's no truth to their claims. I mean, even like the vaccine mandate just isn't Trudeau's. It goes both ways. You can't get across to go into the States unless you're double vaccinated too. So it goes both ways. It's ridiculous.

Zain 40:10

Corey, you want to jump in on this?

Corey 40:11

Yeah. Well, I would say that there is downside risk for Justin Trudeau and it grows as time time marches on here i said it before i'll say it again i'll say it a million times you can't write off 10 of the canadian population and if people feel increasingly isolated if they feel they can't get employment if they feel they can't fly if they feel they can't go to restaurants they can't go to to theaters and that this is going to be an ongoing like hiving off from canadian society whether or not let's be blunt they deserve it like get your fucking needle you lunatics right Right. But that's

Corey 40:46

that's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. And if you have 3.8 million Canadians who are feeling like they are not part of Canada because of this, we've got a serious problem here. Revolutions have been built on less. I'm not trying to get over the top on this here. But as the prime minister, he needs to think about how do you keep that

Corey 41:04

that 10% from absolutely losing the plot? And as onerous as their behavior seems, how do you try to make sure that the country can pull itself together after what's been a really intense

Corey 41:15

intense period here? And it's not his fault that it's an intense period. We're in a pandemic. But it's his job as prime minister to try to resolve that.

Zain 41:24

Yeah, I was saying something similar on CBC this weekend. Carter, were you on any CBC shows this weekend? Did you get any airtime on any CPC program? No, you didn't. Okay, that's really interesting. No, they hold grudges. They hold grudges.

Zain 41:36

Carter, talk to me about this. You mean from what,

Corey 41:38

like 20 minutes ago? 20

Zain 41:39

20 minutes ago when I said, you

Zain 41:42

Hey, Carter, you know, Corey was referring to our COVID rules episode that we did, right? The new political handbook or the new political rule book for politicians during COVID. You know, find the center. You know, let's not discard 10% of the population. Talk to me about Trudeau's downside risk, though. I know you're saying that politically, still the right move, but

Zain 42:02

but something irks me from, like, the leadership, moral, cultural, downstream effect angle. Do you want to be known as the prime minister that, like, I don't know, started this brush fire? Am I being dramatic, Carter? disorder and like that that let this happen that that like i

Zain 42:20

just feel like the current stance is so aggressive against the unvaccinated that that even

Zain 42:27

even getting some of them back to the fold is

Zain 42:30

is now going to be impossible because they're going to double down triple down saying fuck this shit like what are you you're shaking your head so you clearly disagree but lay it on me i

Carter 42:37

i don't know i'm kind of i kind of think back to trudeau the papa right

Carter 42:41

right flipping the bird to Western Canada and saying, just watch me. Those are two different

Corey 42:46

different moments, but yeah.

Carter 42:47

Well, I know there were two different moments, but my point is this. Carter's the king of

Zain 42:51

of conflating. Don't worry about it.

Carter 42:52

it. I'm not conflating.

Carter 42:52

conflating. I'm using two examples to show that he stood up to people and said, I'm going to lead through this. And it is the leadership that matters, not necessarily the opposition to a small group. So being opposed to a group can

Carter 43:07

can give you tremendous opportunity. Corey's not wrong. Well, he's not totally wrong. wrong he's

Carter 43:12

he's mostly wrong you can stand against a group of 10 the problem is when that 10 don't find a way back into society it's a real big issue so you've got to you've got to reach your hand out at the same time that you're you know making examples i think of the leadership

Zain 43:29

cory i want to you're you're you're putting your hands up you're putting your hands up he's so right

Corey 43:35

using trudeau the elder as an example there you've picked two moments that were faster to this fucking day you know years later carter yeah it's for christ's sake this is this is my point entirely right like what are you gonna do to

Zain 43:50

steven let's win the day carter uh hold on one second one second uh you know what i want to actually i'll finish this part off and then i want to introduce something which a little bit of a curveball but um cory

Zain 44:02

cory when you look at this weekend and where we sit right now sunday night both

Zain 44:07

both leaders may have let's say late night conference calls right with trudeau saying okay how did it go he'll probably talk to his transport minister safety wise etc are we revamping policy probably not so let's take that off the table for trudeau are we revamping rhetoric i'm hearing you guys say no let's

Zain 44:24

let's do that same conversation for aaron o'toole it's the aaron o'toole island boys the beach boys uh they're they're meeting um the uh the folks are saying Like, okay, sir, this wasn't January 6th, but this was not great. And you are now attached to this. You met with this group. You're getting hit every which way. Your leadership is being contested publicly, some might say.

Zain 44:50

Let's go into that conference call. Let's go into that Microsoft Teams meeting for tonight for Aaron O'Toole. What's the advice to him if you're still Team O'Toole, Corey, after this weekend? What does he need to do? Does he need to do Trudeau and just hide? Is there revamping in messaging? How do you salvage what seems to have been a really shitty week for one Aaron O'Toole?

Corey 45:11

Yeah, well, you make a bed and you got to lie in it, right? Aaron O'Toole started doing exactly this yesterday, right? In his statements where he started using more forceful language about it and it became more, I don't have his statement in front of me here, but it became less about everybody's good and more about everybody deserves to be heard. And so I think you can continue to see that pivot. And I think that pivot's a sensible one, which is to say, he can effectively take the approach that I'm almost cautioning Trudeau about here, which is like, you're going to have to deal with this at some point. He can say, we're going to have to deal with this at some point. Do I find this onerous? You bet your ass I do. But we're going to have to resolve this. This is what politicians have to do. Politicians have to find a path forward through some pretty brutal situations. And our prime minister, I understand he has COVID. I wish him a speedy recovery, but he still has a voice and his voice needed to be heard in Ottawa this weekend. And he was derelict in that. And he would be happy to run this 90-10 wedge and say it's a successful wedge for me and the Liberal Party can be reelected forever on this.

Corey 46:15

But that's not how you run a country. That's not how you run a country the way Canada is supposed to be run, where we care about people.

Corey 46:20

Democracy does not mean my mob's bigger than your mob. Democracy means we find a place for everybody in the solutions that we have. And don't like it.

Corey 46:29

Don't like that there's a group that continues to try to stymie our progress on this virus. Doesn't change the facts of the door. And I'm going to deal with those bare facts as they come to me. And that's why you should support me as we move forward. Carter

Zain 46:41

Carter stressed that you're on the call. Corey pitches that idea to Mr. O'Toole. He says, listen, this is what you need to say tomorrow. What's some holes in that argument? How are you making it better?

Carter 46:51

I like that argument. I think the problem is that you're

Carter 46:56

you're doing more than just listening. You're winding up in a spot where you seem to be endorsing some of these central ideas that are false and aren't true. I think that if you were just simply going out to listen and you said to the country, there is no way for us to resolve this divide without putting our listening ears on first and engaging with those that we may have some disagreement with. And that's what I did. I stood out and I listened. I listened like a leader should. I

Carter 47:29

I think that that could work. I think the challenge for him is he is opening himself up to you started not listen. You, sir, were the one who were part of the reason why this even started. You exacerbated that. Is

Zain 47:39

Is that too far to blame Trudeau for like pounding on that fracture against the unvaccinated saying this happened because of you? Do you feel like that's a step

Carter 47:47

step too far? Yeah, I do. Well, I'm saying that I think that that O'Toole is opening himself up to getting hit with. He made things worse. Right. Like, so I think you have to be pretty careful because this is more than just listening. Right. The Corey's narrative is skipping over a few of the realities that this was a group that was egged

Carter 48:07

egged on by the caucus that Aaron O'Toole serves to, you know, chooses to lead. I don't

Carter 48:15

don't think I'd be picking a lot more blame Trudeau moments. I'd like to get past this and start working on something else.

Zain 48:23

Corey, you want to finish this off and then I've got two other politicians to talk about. So

Corey 48:27

So what I've thrown out there, do I think that's what Aaron O'Toole was doing? No. But I think he's now got to retroactively say he was doing something different in his conversations with everybody there. And there is kind of a forward look to that that would appeal to me where it says, yeah, to the specific thing that Carter said, it would be pretty easy to say I met with them because I know a lot of good Canadians were wrapped up in this. And there were a lot of bad Canadians there, too. And I want the good ones to know that I'm still here to listen. I'm not going to entertain what neo-Nazis have to say. I'm not going to entertain white supremacists. But if you are legitimately frustrated and you just don't know the way out, and

Corey 49:07

you're fighting for the government because you feel the government's not fighting for you or even listening to you,

Corey 49:11

yeah, I'll be your guy. It doesn't mean I'm going to do the thing you want to do, but it means I'll take your view into consideration, which is far more than Justin Trudeau is willing to do, as he's made clear with all of his rhetoric in the past couple of months.

Zain 49:23

Carter, I will talk about Maxime Bernier in a second, even though I don't want to. However, before I get to Bernier, I

Zain 49:29

I want to talk about Jagmeet Singh.

Zain 49:31

And there's a reason I want to talk about Jagmeet Singh. Number one,

Zain 49:35

kind of invisible over the course of this past week. week. The only story he really popped up for, unfortunately for him, was about his brother-in-law donating $13,000 to the convoy and trying to get that returned. But I feel like Jagmeet Singh plays an interesting role here. At least the traditional politics of the NDP play an interesting role here, which is, you know, a trucking, blue-collar, sort of worker-class labor movement, sort of sort of perspective, alongside the progressive political perspective on vaccination, science, mandates, government supports, etc.

Carter 50:14

Would you have felt this would

Zain 50:14

would have been a perfect weekend to hear something from one Jagmeet Singh? Or was he smart to rather stay out of it? And I know there's two sides to this. So I'm curious to hear yours from a political strategy level. If you were advising Jagmeet Singh, in terms of the buildup of this week, would you you have said stay out of the fray sir or is this this is your time to shine no one can lead in a moment like this like you what would your suggestion have been to one jagmeet singh i'm

Carter 50:38

i'm stress testing an idea in my little head right now that says that maybe he couldn't speak because uh once his brother-in-law made the donation like the sizable thirteen thousand dollar donation to the uh to the trucker convoy um he was already caught out and and because he was caught out by that he wasn't able to kind of come back and uh

Carter 50:59

criticize the convoy in a way that he should be um or maybe he thought he was stuck between a rock and a hard place because like you're saying like this you know these are his people and maybe he's he's a little bit confused because i'm sure you know as much as we like to portray this as a as a far right movement um the far right and the far left often meet in the top right like they they come around in the in the two ends of the horseshoe you so my view right now um probably

Carter 51:28

should have been there frankly i think he should have been there i think he should be there in the counter protests um you know you mean physically

Carter 51:35

i think so i think he should i think that he i think that you

Carter 51:39

you know he he should have been in the media he should have been uh you

Carter 51:43

you know i mean this is one of those things where you're not going to make a a tick tock and get yourself out of it. This is about leadership. And every

Carter 51:51

every time we're looking for leadership, Singh seems to fail. And

Carter 51:54

And I don't understand why that is this feel again, this is the same as Bill 21. This feels like something that his people want him to stand up and talk about. And he wasn't there.

Zain 52:03

Yeah, Corey, you know, I'll just rephrase if I wasn't clear. I think the reason I put Jagmeet Singh on the table for discussion is obviously the labor movement, right that the ndp uh historically speaks to as well as you know their stance on vaccinations very similar to the trudeau stance on this that and government support so thoughts your thoughts on jagmeet singh and and where the ndp leader or should he have played a role this weekend with the the intersection of these two things coming to a head um

Corey 52:31

no he shouldn't have played a role look morally do i want him to be there yeah i like it when leaders lead i think that's great strategically i said it at the top i believe it i think it's the fundamental thing about this weekend about this movement that this convoy thing this is a mess it's a fucking mess nobody knows what they want it's got a million bad actors in it it's it's not clear how you extract yourself from this so where is the win you're not erin o'toole is lighting himself on fire his party is blowing up over this thing why in the world would you decide to entertain participation

Corey 53:01

participation in this in any way shape or form you don't walk into a mess there's no benefit to it nobody is demanding it or very few people are demanding it why make this your mess so of course he should stay out of it um that's

Corey 53:14

that's the strategic advice again morally if he had shown up i wouldn't have hated it but uh yeah i can understand a hundred percent why he didn't especially with his brother-in-law making like a thirteen thousand dollar donation which

Corey 53:26

which i actually don't think is disqualifying we all have We all have family. We don't control our family. And it sounds like his brother-in-law didn't – almost to the point of this became a

Corey 53:37

a vessel for all sorts of frustrations.

Corey 53:40

Brother-in-law didn't really seem to know what he was donating it for either. $13

Carter 53:43

$13,000 to something I don't understand? Like where's

Carter 53:46

where's the $13,000 sponsorship of the strategists? I mean

Corey 53:49

mean I call that a Tuesday. Yeah,

Zain 53:52

Carter, someone who did make this their mess was Maxime Bernier. Not only leaned into it, owned it. Outright said, I'm speaking at the rally. I'm speaking at the protest. We fully back it. I mean, even if I'm wrong in terms of my paraphrase, I think he wouldn't disagree. They owned this. They wanted to wrap themselves in Operation Bear Hug, so to speak. Strategically, I know this pains you to do, but strategically, was this the right move for Bernier?

Carter 54:22

Yeah, these are his people. This

Carter 54:24

This is his party. This is exactly where he wants to be. And I can think it's gross and I can think it's terrible. And I can wonder how someone who was two points off of becoming the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada could fall this low. But, you know, we've talked about this before. This is the same as Ezra Levant. You know, the rebel was right out there. And so was Keane Baxt and everything else, you know, all chasing the dollars. $9 million got donated to this thing over the course of the week. You know, Maxime Bernier wants his bit too. And so he's out there chasing it. And so, you know, Ezra and Keene all looking for crumbs, right? How much can they get from their support on this? That's all this is. That's all this is, is looking at it and saying, I want some of this. I want the publicity. I want the attention. I want the fundraising clout.

Carter 55:15

I'm going to be there, period.

Zain 55:19

Corey, on Bernier, anything else to add in terms of strategy of it? Was this bear-hugging this protest, this convoy, the right thing to do for him?

Corey 55:28

I mean, it was the tactical thing to do. I don't think right thing to do when Maxime Bernier should ever be used in a sentence together. Touche.

Zain 55:36

Strategically right thing to do. I want to take you to one more late-night conference call, and this one's going to be the most awkward one of them all. Because on this show we do strategy regardless of the perspective so steven carter it's the organizers of the convoy they're having their sunday night meeting and

Zain 55:51

and you you are there as

Zain 55:54

as different people it's not steven and cory because i'd hate to put you in that position but what

Zain 55:59

what is their next steps here like if they're batting things around from a strategic perspective you i think we said on the we spent a good 30 to 40 minutes on the first half of this show saying they had a lot of things line up for for them in chapter one. They had a lot of things lined up for them. They got media attention. They had money. They were able to expand it beyond truckers in some ways. Sure, did they over-promise and under-deliver? Yes. Did they have crazy demands? Yes. But it still got them the attention, the momentum, one might say. I know Corey would say that that momentum didn't lead to the numbers, but there was a swarm of momentum.

Zain 56:33

Where do they go from here? If you're providing them strategic advice in that sense, and I hate to say that it's you, but if two people

Zain 56:39

named Sori and Kaven

Zain 56:42

Kaven are providing strategic advice to these people. That was tragic. Yeah, it was pretty bad. That was really horrible. But you know what? Those are going to be popular white people names very soon. I know it. I just know it. If you're providing advice, what are you saying to them right now? What are their considerations as this movement goes on?

Carter 57:02

I probably would be giving them advice of getting it under control, Which I think is probably actually the wrong advice for getting the attention that they want to get. I mean, I'm seeing tweets tonight of people standing atop buildings with, you know, those roofing torches and things like that. And that's getting far more attention. but i think at some point you don't want to be associated with it and that's

Carter 57:26

that's where they are why why are they why

Carter 57:29

why are they why are they in this position i i don't understand um

Carter 57:35

i don't have much to offer for them because the stuff that i would say you

Carter 57:39

you know get it under control return to your message make this about a simple concept that the you know about the people that you're You're trying to reach, make it about, you know, Martha and Henry, you know, to bring it back to the old Ralph Klein crew,

Carter 57:53

crew, make it about other people. These people don't give a shit about other people. They don't want to make it about other people. So how am I supposed to give them advice that, you

Carter 58:05

get it under control would be my advice. I don't understand anything more than that.

Zain 58:09

Corey, anything to say to that? And I've got one follow up for both of you. Yeah.

Corey 58:13

Yeah. The messiness has been captivating television. But at this point, you need to think about how, Christ,

Corey 58:21

Christ, it's like a hostage situation. How do you just get out of the building, right?

Corey 58:25

Think about how you declare a victory. And to me, it seems that you're not going to get any of your policy goals. So you've got to restate your goals that you were heard. You know, this message rattled Ottawa to its core. look at the media coverage national international we are driving the agenda trudeau knows canadians will not put up with this shit anymore and uh and so i think because of us we have staved off a thousand terrible things that otherwise would have happened under justin trudeau okay

Zain 58:52

okay this is good i'm glad you led your run how they declare victory carter you've got your hand up i've got a suggestion i want to stress test with you carter you go first though i

Carter 58:59

i just i think that you can't You can't let it peter out. You

Carter 59:01

You got to leave.

Carter 59:03

Get out of there. Because if you stay for

Carter 59:06

for 10 days, you know, every day is going to get worse. And

Zain 59:09

And it becomes a shell of itself, you mean? Yeah,

Carter 59:10

Yeah, every day gets worse. And it becomes smaller and smaller?

Zain 59:13

What do you think of an off-ramp related to One

Zain 59:16

One People's Party of Canada? What do you think of an off-ramp related to electoral reasons? Or do you think this, or an electoral sort of like joining of forces? Or do you think this stays better

Zain 59:27

better as a movement? If something is proposed that, hey, Max reached out to us, he's willing to offer X, Y, Z seats here, he's willing to say A, B, and C, we team up, is there something there? Or do you feel like something like this stays better as a movement, Carter?

Carter 59:43

think it stays better as a movement. I don't think it has the structure. I mean, it feels like it's, you

Carter 59:49

you know, it's some sort of organism that doesn't have a spine, doesn't have anything central to it. It grows and expands and contracts without real purpose. And so it doesn't fit within the political. I mean, maybe I am describing, in fact, the People's Party of Canada. So maybe it does fit. I don't know.

Corey 1:00:08

Yeah, I mean, what's more popular, the PPC or this movement? I actually don't know. I guess it's pretty comparable. But we do know where the PPC is, right, which is about 10%, let's just say, for easy math. I could see this movement pulling as high as 20%, 25%. Again, I don't know. And so if the movement is more popular than latching to the PPC, maybe that helps individual organizers who get to be big wheels at the Cracker Jack factory. but uh it otherwise um you know otherwise it's not to your benefit you might as well keep the movement going i think the grift is strong we haven't talked much about the money just how much money they've fundraised and all of the the bullshit that surrounds this here right but if you've just raised eight million dollars doing this why are you gonna route yourself into the ppc no i mean you've got no fundraising rules you can continue this you can have your leaders doing doing other dumbass things all over this fucking country. I mean, it's like you got a lot of options. I'm

Zain 1:01:06

I'm going to leave that segment there. Moving on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. And Stephen Carter, I want to start with exactly what Corey just finished off with, which is overrated or underrated,

Zain 1:01:18

the dollar amount that this Freedom Convoy has been able to raise. Was it just naturally going to happen with the pent-up rage so overrated or raising this amount of money as we've been through the trenches of having to do that for various political initiatives, underrated. Talk to me about the money, overrated or underrated, Carter.

Carter 1:01:35

Underrated and massively underrated. I don't think there was a political party in Canada that raised $9 million in a quarter.

Carter 1:01:45

This was raised in about 10 days. It begs a million questions. Where is it coming from? Is it legit? How has it been pulled together? I think that this is something that GoFundMe needs to do an audit on and make sure that there's

Carter 1:02:01

there's nothing illegal going on. Because to Corey's point, this isn't a political party. It's not constrained by any fundraising rules. And if this $9 million gets passed on to these organizers of the convoy,

Carter 1:02:18

that's a lot of political money because it will be political money. This is a political statement. Really, they should be a registered third party. Do you think this is political money? money like i i think you're saying

Zain 1:02:29

saying it from a technical perspective but it's not from the same pool of money that's political in that sense that was going to be donated to politics i think that's what's fascinating here or that's i'm sure that's what's intriguing to o'toole and bernie and others to be like holy shit there's like a a pile of cash here yeah

Carter 1:02:45

yeah i mean there's a huge pile of cash and it's it's ridiculous how much was raised and how quickly it was raised and we don't know what it was raised for um you know like this is the other thing most of the time like those of us that have done political fundraising know that you have to tell people, you know, we're going to buy some radio ads. We need $10,000 for radio. Oh, we need $30,000 for our first brochure drop. And you tell people what you need the money for.

Carter 1:03:10

You know, this certainly wasn't used on porta-potties. So what are they raising

Carter 1:03:14

raising the money for?

Zain 1:03:20

Corey, overrated or underrated, the money raised by the so-called Freedom Convoy?

Corey 1:03:26

I mean, overrated. That's half a billion rubles in 10 days. Oh, bogey, that's a lot. So I think you've got to sort of say that

Corey 1:03:34

that kind of money is going to drive conversation as you're moving along here. Now, to Carter's point, where the hell did that come from? I don't know. I don't even have theories, right? You mean underrated,

Zain 1:03:43

underrated, don't you? You said overrated.

Carter 1:03:46

I always do that. I

Carter 1:03:47

I don't know. It doesn't matter. Both of the words mean the same thing.

Carter 1:03:52

Facts matter. Jesus Christ. No, I don't.

Carter 1:03:55

I've learned from the truckers. You can just make up your own rules.

Zain 1:04:01

Hey, Carter, I'll go back to you for this one. Many saying this was a terrible week for the Conservative Party of Canada in terms of finding its focal point, finding its voice for electoral viability, whatever next election is overrated or underrated. How shit this week was for the Conservative Party of Canada from a more macro perspective? I

Carter 1:04:21

really want it to be underrated, but I suspect it's overrated. I mean, I said I'm really looking forward to a tracking poll.

Carter 1:04:27

I really hope they suffer. I really hope that there's a consequence to this. My fear is that we're so entrenched in our colors that we're wearing right now that they're not going to drop as much as I would like.

Zain 1:04:42

Corey, same question to you. The damage to the Conservative Party this week, overrated or underrated in your mind?

Corey 1:04:47

Yeah, unfortunately, I think it's overrated. These things just, you know, they pay hard to where they are. Clear it was a terrible week for Aaron O'Toole.

Corey 1:04:55

I don't think it was a good week for the Conservative Party. It's

Corey 1:04:57

It's not even clear to me it was a terrible or a bad week for conservatism. I

Corey 1:05:01

mean, in a funny way, we are still all living in this world. We are reacting to the conservative movement constantly, right, in the Western world at this moment. They really have the initiative. Corey,

Zain 1:05:11

Corey, for you, how did Trudeau play this week on a scale of 1 to 10? 1 being not so well, 10 being this was a masterstroke in how he personally played. A freedom convoy coming to town where, you know, with a lack of a unifying message, one of them was, fuck Trudeau. He was out of the picture. You talked about it. Was this a masterstroke at a 10? Was this one a total shit job from Trudeau? How did he do it?

Corey 1:05:35

I think it was pretty good. I'd probably give it something around a 9. There's no sense in exacerbating the situation, throwing comments out that will inevitably drive people into various rages. He just wants them out of Ottawa, and he just wants to go on with life, right? But I do hope that we have some more

Corey 1:05:53

more tactical thinking on how we deal with this matter long term, which, to be clear, I do not mean surrendering

Corey 1:06:00

surrendering to these views, right? Not even a bit, but we've got to think about how this is managed. it can't just be a political pinata for the next year can't carter

Zain 1:06:10

carter trudeau one to ten this week how did he do he

Carter 1:06:13

he was a b plus i mean i hate to give such a high grade uh

Carter 1:06:17

uh for not doing anything but this is really a testament to one of cory's roles which is that doing nothing is often overlooked but it often is a great strategy uh

Zain 1:06:26

uh stephen carter did tom brady resign this weekend did he retire did he leave is he gone what's what's the

Carter 1:06:31

the deal then you guys were all over me tom brady is still an active player he has not stepped down he is never retiring he's got four more years write it down this is what's happening god

Zain 1:06:43

god uh that would make him 49 years old carter just so you know that's

Carter 1:06:48

that's nothing as a as a 50 year old 52 year old i could play professional football if i had any skill at all carter

Zain 1:06:57

carter this time next week by this sunday has the trucker convoy changed the nature of their demands? As in, have they changed the goalposts? Have they altered their demands to declare success? By this time next week, will they have made that change? Yes or no? Stephen Carter, the prediction, please.

Carter 1:07:19

Well, it's Corey's idea. I thought it was a smart idea. So obviously, it will never be implemented. So this is not going to happen.

Zain 1:07:28

Corey, how will they declare victory? Will they change their demands between now and this time next weekend in order to declare victory?

Corey 1:07:39

Well, given their policy coherence and their understanding of geography, this is a group that wanted to circle the parliament buildings. If you've been to Ottawa, you know that's not a thing. My theory is they'll be driving to London, England to take it up with the Queen. So yes, they will change their goals.

Zain 1:07:53

we'll leave it there that's a wrap on episode 967 of the strategist my name is zane

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