Episode 970: Give us five-star reviews

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 970. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, buckle in. Two hours. We're ready to go. Ready to go for another two hours. Let me tell you something, folks. Let me tell you. There was a lot of feedback we got from that last episode. And let me categorize it in the order, not the order it was received, the order of the popularity of the comments. Two basic tranches. Number one, two hours. What the fuck? Number two, what is Stephen Carter still doing here? here. Stephen Carter, many people disappointed that your resignation from the podcast did not last longer than, what, 15 minutes? No

Carter 0:39

No one more disappointed than me, I'll tell you that right now. I was really hoping that this would be my ticket out. Lots of people who were excited about me working with Sheree, though. There was a lot of disappointment that I wasn't going to be ultimately able to stick with the Sheree gang. So, you

Carter 0:55

you know, No, if you're listening, Jean, I'm there for you.

Zain 0:59

Good. I'm there. You should just lean into the fact that it was a trial balloon, Carter, that this was the Jean Trey trial balloon. This is what he wanted. That was your role on the campaign was to be the balloon, how the mighty have risen slash fallen. Yeah, exactly.

Zain 1:12

exactly. That was your role.

Zain 1:13

That was my job.

Carter 1:14

job. And I did it. You fulfilled it.

Carter 1:16

Corey, do you speak?

Corey 1:18

Yeah, yeah. You know, I was just thinking about, sociologists will look back on this in a year and say, say, well, a lot of babies conceived between the five-minute mark and the 10-minute mark.

Corey 1:28

And they'll think, well, a lot of morning-after pills sold after the 10-minute mark. That's pretty wild. I mean, I think it's going to show up in numbers, is my point. Yeah.

Zain 1:36

Yeah. No, I'm glad you made the point, because I was very confused, Corey. Thank you for making that point. I have no

Carter 1:42

no idea what the point was. So hold on a second here. Me leaving incentivizes

Carter 1:46

incentivizes sex. That's okay. That's what I wanted to know.

Zain 1:52

Corey, you have got an announcement. We have announcements all over the place, but it is time for an annual announcement. We do this by the book. I mean, this podcast is nothing but consistent and

Zain 2:03

and nothing but by the calendar. Corey, you've got another announcement to make that we do every year. Go ahead. Well,

Corey 2:10

Well, I know you all have your calendars circled. I know you've realized that this is late February, and we've hit the Strategist's annual five-star pledge drive. If you've listened to even one episode, it's clear that we are brittle

Corey 2:23

brittle people with fragile egos, truly broken in many ways. And the only way we can get ourselves out of bed in the morning is by rolling over and grabbing our phone.

Corey 2:32

Okay, actually, we get our loved ones to bring us our phones. We don't have the energy to grab our phones.

Carter 2:36

phones. Yeah, too weak. And

Corey 2:37

And then we read five-star reviews, right? Now, look, we don't do this show for money. We don't do this show for fame. We obviously don't do it for employment, Stephen. We

Corey 2:47

do it for the small adrenaline rush that Stephen Carter gets when somebody professes to like him. So, we're

Corey 2:55

we're asking you to do your part in this obviously dysfunctional relationship we share and give us five-star reviews. If you've done it before, do

Corey 3:04

do it again. Done it on Apple, do

Corey 3:06

do it on Spotify.

Corey 3:08

Done it on Spotify, fuck

Corey 3:09

fuck you, what are you doing on Spotify? I hope you feel bad.

Corey 3:13

And you can make things right by leaving us a five-star review on Spotify.

Corey 3:19

anything you want to add here? I

Zain 3:20

I would just say other podcasts do different types of drives. You know, they do drives for food, for clothing. For us, this is really what we feel like will change the world. If you give us five stars, the impact we can have, not just on the show, but on the world, just think about it. You are feeding us rather than feeding someone else. You're feeding our egos so that we can feed the world. I mean, just think about it. The logic is there. You don't need to spell it out. It's for sure. It's watertight. Carter, anything you want to add?

Carter 3:55

No, just really excited about the five-star reviews. And to those people who give us a five-star review without mentioning my name, well, fuck you. So if you'd be so kind as to mention my name, I'm grateful for that. Thank you very

Zain 4:10

I appreciate that. Corey, anything else to round out the announcement? We will, of course, do whatever we want with the five-star reviews that we get. We might read a couple. Always points for creativity. Always points for leaving your review in a limerick. And, of course, avoid using Stephen Carter's name. That's the last thing we want to see on any of the reviews.

Carter 4:31

Guys, I just, you know, off the top of my head, I think that everybody who does a five-star review should be able to send us an invoice. And when I say us, I mean Corey. Because Corey's got an infinite amount of money. So just send Corey Hogan an invoice at, you know, Corey at CoreyHogan.org because he's that full of himself. He's his own organization. And he'll send you $100. So just send the proof that you posted these five-star invoices, Corey at CoreyHogan.org, and he'll

Carter 5:04

he'll send you $100. I

Corey 5:06

I mean, I'm certainly not going to do that at all. But what I will do if you email me is I'll give you Stephen Carter's home address, and I'll let you take it from there. What

Zain 5:14

What sort of ego does a person need to have a .org email address after their name?

Zain 5:20

It's like, it is a philanthropic effort. It's Hogan-esque. It is a pledge drive. It's Hogan-esque. Well,

Corey 5:26

It is a pledge drive. That may or may not be my email address.

Zain 5:29

Let's move it on to our first segment. It may

Carter 5:30

may be by the

Zain 5:31

the end of this recording.

Corey 5:35

learn how to set up

Zain 5:35

up your Gmail account. our first

Zain 5:37

first segment acting about the emergency act guys a motion affirming the liberal government's decision to invoke the emergencies act has passed a crucial house of commons vote monday which is today when we record ensuring the expansive powers contained in the act remain in use by authorities thanks to the parliamentary support from the new democrats on the confidence motion

Zain 5:56

not much has changed but a lot has changed and the first thing that has changed guys let's let's talk about it what we saw over the course of friday saturday sunday stephen carter Did the Emergency Act work before even

Zain 6:09

even getting the blessing of Parliament?

Carter 6:13

Yeah, I mean, it put some resolve into the Ottawa police. It gave everybody the tools. You know, a couple episodes ago, we were talking about how the federal government needed to say, you've got our full support. Go do what needs to be done. We will pay for this. We will make sure that everything is, and really the Emergency Act enabled that. um you know a couple hundred people may have had their bank accounts frozen we

Carter 6:38

we talked last week or last last episode about how we thought that that was a a meaningful restriction um you know i don't think brianne and penticton or whatever the heck it was did have chillowack chillowack

Carter 6:48

chillowack i don't think she really had her uh account frozen for for 50 donation and i don't think the person who bought a 20 freedom convoy

Carter 6:57

convoy t-shirt really had their account frozen either but i do I do think that the 200 people who did have their accounts frozen, and more importantly, the threat that more could come, gave the resolve to the police to work through this. I think that most people who were observing it thought it was a strong use of police force that didn't go overboard, but did get the result that we were looking for. So I think the Emergency Act has been a tremendous success in doing what it needed to do to restore law and order. I still think this needs to be picked apart. I think that it needs to be picked apart about why we had to get to the place where it required the Emergency Act. But I think that anybody watching this who's on the side of law and order needs to say that the Emergency Act worked, which then begs the question, why do the Conservative Party no longer feel like they need to be the party of law and order? But I digress.

Zain 7:53

And Corey, did it work before today? Like, and I guess the reason I ask it in that way is that the criticism for Trudeau is twofold. Number one, this never needed to happen in the first place. And I think the most articulate criticism, at least on the floor, was by one Michael Chong about, you know, saying that this was a concept of rule of law and not acting on it rather than adding more laws, which is what this did. And then the second piece of criticism is, well, you don't need it anymore. So what are we doing here? And so from your perspective, when you see today and when you see what happened over the course of the weekend? Did this succeed before even kind of getting off the ground, so to speak, in this parliamentary sense?

Corey 8:30

Yeah, I don't know. I've never been that convinced that we need it, for sure. We touched on this a little bit last week. Here's the thing about the Emergencies Act. There's obviously, as Stephen has said, a correlation between the introduction of the Emergencies Act, not the introduction of the Act, but the use of the clauses

Corey 8:49

clauses under under it, and a resolution to this. But a

Corey 8:54

a couple of people got money frozen. That'll be something that I think we should unpack in a minute here. But in terms of the police services

Corey 9:02

services actually coming in and clearing the streets of Ottawa block by block, it's not real clear to me that the Emergencies Act was required for that. And I don't think the Emergencies Act is meant to be moral inspiration. It's not a shot in the arm like a Churchill speech. It's not, Okay, now that the Emergencies Act has been declared, it's serious. It's a limitation on rights. It's a change to the constitutional order, and it should not be used except in very serious situations and as a matter of last resort, right?

Corey 9:31

Did it need to be used? I don't know. I think that's something we need to unpack. But what I will say is if it needed to be used, I don't think that a light switch has been flicked and that all of a sudden we're out of the situation that requires the Emergencies Act. I just don't think the situation has fundamentally changed simply because downtown Ottawa has cleared out. There's all sorts of reporting about the fact that many of these people have just gone to various camps in the Ottawa area, right? Now, realistically, that's

Corey 10:00

that's just a pragmatic thing. People need to sort of figure their shit out before they go back home, and they're not necessarily going to drive all the way back to Alberta or New Brunswick or wherever the hell it is the day they're kicked out of Ottawa. But it

Corey 10:13

it doesn't mean it's over, right? It doesn't mean it's over. And a lot of the fundamental challenges that we had are still there and still need to be addressed. We still need to pick apart what's happening here. And so I guess I'm of two minds, and maybe not the same two minds as you two, which is not convinced it needed to be used. But if you could pass the threshold that it needed to be used, I don't think things are so fundamentally different today, as opposed to yesterday, that we're now out of the woods, right?

Zain 10:42

Carter, you're sighing. Go ahead.

Carter 10:45

I mean, and it's not gone,

Carter 10:48

gone, right? I mean, it was ratified today and accepted use today as per the requirements. It's still there. It still hangs over this. It can still be deployed. And I think that the correlation that you're describing between the act being passed and the and the Ottawa police, OPP and other police forces actually taking the action that needed to happen. I mean, obviously, some of that was because the former police chief was fired because there was a lot of pressure on the police commission or the police board, I guess, the Ottawa Police Board in forcing people to actually act. But that correlation still exists. And it exists because I think that, you know, I

Carter 11:28

I think it was because permission was granted from the federal government, essentially. When they passed or when they invoked the Emergency Act, it said to the Ottawa police, you can go and do this now. And we have your back, essentially. We all know now who the finger is going to be pointed at if things go horribly wrong. wrong they didn't go horribly wrong in fact i think they went very well and they may still go horribly wrong i mean we're in the middle of something again not the end to cory's point cory's not wrong um this is still the middle but getting

Carter 11:58

getting them out of uh coots getting them out of ottawa um you know getting getting

Carter 12:04

getting them off the ambassador bridge getting them uh you know like there's still i mean we passed a protest this weekend there's still protesters out there um 3,000 people marched in Calgary this weekend. There's still people getting, you know, able to express themselves in many regards. I think that this is the best possible case and best possible use for the Emergency Act because it is having the most limited impact on our actual civil liberties. We've just gotten back to where we should be, which is an orderly process of law.

Zain 12:35

I want to view this through the lens of political risk and political warnings as it stands now. So the ground has shifted a bit in that regard. I think some of those risks and warnings we've outlined in previous episodes still exist for certain political parties and ideologies. But let's run through them again and see if the ground has shifted. Corey, talk to me about the liberals. What is their political risk right now? They've gotten this thing approved through Parliament. They had a confidence vote. They got it. So it continues. I think some of the risks, maybe I'll just throw it on the table. You can tell me if you agree or disagree or add more. They extend this emergency act. It keeps dithering and takes longer and longer to actually allow them to, you know, finally terminate it or sunset it. The political risk for many saying and perhaps giving the opposition and oppositions in this case with premiers across the country, you know, something to bludgeon them constantly on the civil liberties question. What do you think the political risk is right now for the governing liberals? And then we'll work through the list.

Corey 13:29

Well, first of all, small clarification, because I don't think it's likely to go down in the Senate tomorrow, but they've got it through the House, not Parliament. Good point.

Zain 13:37

point. Sorry. Thank you for making that clarification.

Corey 13:39

clarification. The Senate still needs to vote on it tomorrow, as required by the Emergencies Act. And so we could still be in a weird situation if weird things happen, and sometimes weird things happen. But

Corey 13:48

But in terms of the risk of the Liberals, I don't think it's foundationally different today than it was yesterday. There's a certain class, you know, a political chattering class, a pundit class that was watching this very carefully and saw the sharpened arguments of all parties. I think it was already mentioned by you, Zane, that Michael Chong made an impassioned speech with some very cogent analysis. There were a couple of liberals who made the statement that they would have voted against the Emergencies Act were it not a matter of confidence, right? Lightbound and Erskine-Smith. So, you

Corey 14:18

you know, you've got these are players that we sort of knew were uncomfortable about this. This isn't new information, but obviously it is kind of a bit of a crack in the dam, and perhaps something will change after that. I

Corey 14:32

I guess one of the things about a major debate like this is it does sort of force an elevation of rhetoric. It was a more serious version of the House than we saw earlier this week, and it forces everybody to be on the record in a very literal sense about this. And so for the NDP to get there, they had to say, we are watching very, very carefully, right? So I don't think it'll take a ton to move the NDP off that if all of a sudden there's stories about rampant abuse of freezing bank accounts or anything like that. And then all of a sudden the liberals are in a real jam there.

Corey 15:02

So what's changed? I guess I would say not a ton, but I think that the liberals have been put on notice that this cannot go on very long. And they maybe don't have as much rope as they could pretend they had previously. obviously now nothing was shocking about the vote today but i still think that remains true carter

Zain 15:23

carter i have a specific question for you following up on what cory said this crack in the damn for the liberals erskine smith um you know it was also commenting the last time we had the quebec mp i'm sorry his name is escaping me for a second uh come in and mention that he was is not on board with the restrictions Trudeau had, you know, was implementing. Is this crack real? Like, is this worrisome from a political operation point? Are you fine if you're the liberals this many years into governance on an issue where the center is constantly moving, that you got some people in your own caucus kind of pissed? Like, if you were an operative for the PMO right now, how concerned are you, Carter, with these two individuals that have come out today saying if this was a confidence, not a confidence vote, I would be with the opposition on it.

Carter 16:13

I'm not too fussed. I think that in general, these types of things always have some outliers. We've seen this. We didn't see it with conversion therapy, but we normally would see it with LGBTQ issues. We see, you know, and gay marriage was one that you'd see some outliers within the the liberal party um you know these types of social issues do have outliers um within the and i characterize it as a social issue because it's it it kind of it

Carter 16:44

it kind of crosses uh with the law and order side um this isn't a traditional liberal issue and uh frankly i think that the fact that they got it through with um uh

Carter 16:54

uh only a couple people being naysayers is probably pretty good And, you know, I think the hope is, gosh, let's hope we don't go back here. I think that, you

Carter 17:02

you know, Corey's not wrong. I think that anybody who's looking at this is going to say, let's make sure that we're monitoring this and make sure that we're not, you know, overreaching on it. There's rope here, but there's not infinite rope. You got to get through this relatively quickly. I'm thinking the lifespan on something like this isn't months. I think it's weeks.

Zain 17:23

Corey, what do you think in terms of warnings? If you were able to whisper a warning to the liberals right now, what would it be? We kind of did a bit of a back of the napkin risk analysis for what's up. But if there's a political warning that you could give them from strategy, from tactics, from rhetoric, any of those, if not other categories, what would you be whispering to the prime minister right now?

Corey 17:43

I would say that your ground is perhaps not as firm as you think think it is, simply because you've won a vote by a comfortable margin, but obviously with the support of only two parties here, the Greens and the NDP.

Corey 17:56

You've got a lot of people who are basically in the media predisposed to carry your water on this particular matter and push back when the New York Times says things like people were not held at gunpoint being arrested. Now you're seeing some breaks in that story today. You're seeing some skepticism about the idea that that some random person in Chilliwack's account would be frozen because they donated to the convoy. But these things are messy. They are messy, and there are going to be situations that come up that kind of call into question the smooth narrative that the liberals are calling. And the minute they start coming up, you're going to start seeing a little

Corey 18:32

little more risk. But that risk goes up the more you are so grand and over the top about how that could never be the case. And I'll use the banking stuff as an example here. I don't know anything about this situation in Chilliwack with this, you know, there's this tweet that the MP said about a constituent, a single mother, I believe, who had their account frozen after spending $50 or something to that effect. and a lot of people saying are you sure it was a frozen account are you sure it wasn't nothing this sounds like bullshit well we don't know it's not bullshit banks can make mistakes one of the things that uh christian freeland said when all of these powers were announced was that banks would be protected from legal liability as long as they were acting in good faith right so it could have been a bank was just acting in quote-unquote good faith identified some information and acted wrong wrong on it right or maybe there's more to the story but i

Corey 19:28

guess i would say whether this story is real or not i would bet my bottom dollar that you are going to get some story like this somebody's going to be frozen who's a sympathetic character who doesn't actually deserve to be frozen something is going to happen in terms of uh you know like uh some some poor bastard who was treated poorly by the police or or you know otherwise held

Corey 19:50

held at gunpoint when a photo will come out and realize they weren't doing anything wrong, or maybe, God forbid, there's a kid in the photo as well, and there's a gun, something is going to happen. So don't sit here in the moment of maximum confusion and think you're out of the woods. Act carefully and narrow your risk. Carter,

Zain 20:05

Carter, I want to talk

Zain 20:07

talk to you about the opposite of this, because there's obviously playing defense, there's obviously the risk mitigation, the warning signs, but these are politicians, they're always looking and hunting for wins. Is there a win here, and what is it, and how do they grasp it while acknowledging Corey's risks and warnings that he's put on the table?

Carter 20:26

Declare victory. Mission accomplished. Get this thing through as fast as possible and get out of it.

Carter 20:32

As long as it exists. I mean, Corey... Explain to me

Zain 20:34

me what declare victory means, because that's a very broad term in this case, especially

Zain 20:40

with such a sensitive file.

Carter 20:43

Declare victory. Coots was a victory, right? We announced the Emergencies Act and it was gone on the next day um the ambassador bridge has not been able to form again due to the the quick actions of the windsor police and and the rcmp or the opp um

Carter 20:56

um you know the the actions of opp and surrounding forces helping ottawa getting everybody out of ottawa you know sure they're camped out in a baseball field right now that's fine that's

Carter 21:08

that's fine you know what protest all you want stay there as long as you need to um stay there right don't come back in and don't make threats about you know coup d'etat so instead you know

Carter 21:21

know declare victory and get out of the emergency act as quickly as possible the the idea that you know the the civil liberties that are being constrained

Carter 21:32

Corey and I have said they're there you know in the last episode we weren't too fussed with them they weren't too big a deal but they are a big deal if they're applied in improperly and they can't be applied improperly if the act is gone so that's why I say a couple you know keep it in in terms of weeks not months uh to have this act in place um so you can declare victory the end of next week you know um everything was done no one's no one's resurfaced get through next weekend no one goes back in you did your job get the emergency act over with and move on

Zain 22:08

cory you've worked in comms for for massive operations you know they're probably already internally planning what communicating victory looks like. Talk to me about some of the principles, just top line, around how you communicate victory on something so sensitive, where there's a coalition that, I don't know if I call it a coalition, maybe that's not fair, but there's at least a cohort that didn't want you to implement it, that said the only reason it's implemented is because you delayed and dithered. Can you declare victory? And then talk to me about the communications of what you think might be planning, what the planning could could be looking like right now in terms of what a declaring victory might look like strategically and tactically? Well,

Corey 22:43

Well, so sure, you can absolutely declare victory, although I want to be clear what I mean by that. I

Corey 22:48

mean George W. Bush on an aircraft carrier stating mission accomplished, right? In fact, I think that will be one of those cautionary tales people will be throwing about in a conversation like this if the Prime Minister were to say, oh, this is all taken care of, because you don't know. The next day, there could be yet another challenge, and it's going to be pushed on. You need to, quote unquote, declare victory in the sense of this moment of maximum crisis has passed for now. It could come back. We will remain vigilant. And if you want to do that, what you need to do is assure people what will occur to make sure that this is less likely to happen again in the future, not an

Corey 23:25

an event. Events will happen in the future, and you should probably prime people to think in those terms. We will have other situations where people will cross the lines, who will jeopardize the liberties of others while protesting when they're trying to make a point. We've had our eyes open to this. We now need to act in a fashion that reflects this reality that perhaps some of us were a bit naive to. And I think you sort of own some of that. Like, certainly, I will confess I was surprised as a prime minister that people would take such an extreme action that they would actually be hurting their fellow citizens, hurting their fellow citizens' livelihoods. But we know that now. We've had our eyes opened. And we're aware that this is part of a bigger global conversation. You know, there's ways in your conversation you can sort of throw to other points. Admit your own limitations, but make those limitations about a

Corey 24:14

situation that everybody thinks is kind of bullshit. You know, foreign intervention, you know, getting in the ways of other people's livelihoods, that kind of stuff. And you talk about what you are going to do to make sure that this won't happen again. You know, the Ottawa police have been given a

Corey 24:27

a real wake-up call, but they've also been given resources. They've been given the resources to make sure that the minute these things start happening on Wellington, that ends then, right? This is not a situation that will be allowed to fester again, and so on and so forth. Because it's got to be something where you sort of keep

Corey 24:44

keep it at a low boil, right? You're not just turning off the burner entirely. And I think that would not serve you anyhow, because it would in some ways reinforce the narrative that this was unnecessary. necessary. You need the sense that it's just barely not necessary anymore. And you're still at a state of heightened alert, at least for the next bit.

Zain 25:01

Corey, I'm going to stick with you for a second. Carter, I'll come back to you in a sec to talk about the conservatives and we'll use the same frame of what victory looks like for them. So I'll tease you about that ahead of time, Carter. Corey, any specific communications tactics that you'd suggest as they prepare for this? And I have one in mind, and maybe I just want to stress it with you and then just see what you think. The prime minister speaking to the nation, kind of like how he did to kick this thing off. You feel like, do you close the loop in that regard? Do you let others speak on this file? Do you kind of do like a national address and kind of now expand this out to hatred? Like, I'm trying to think of like what this kind of, like the closing the loop or opening the next chapter on your terms as the bully pulpit and the leader of this country looks like, because there is a political strategy there that I'm sure one would have to think about.

Corey 25:52

so there's i'm of two minds so there's some appeal to this right because it actually addresses the strategy that i was saying earlier which is this is still very serious you tend to hear from the prime minister in serious moments right you don't hear from the prime minister at the end of a crisis you hear from the prime minister at the start of a crisis and so it's your chance to say we're still in this and we've still got to watch this carefully and and also frame things out i

Corey 26:13

i am a little worried about this current prime minister doing that his his ability to do it just based on some of the baggage he brings in so i do presentation training occasionally and i have kind of this core thing at the start you know i start every session of this little six class seminar on it everything

Corey 26:32

everything in a presentation is about telling a story it's ultimately built about key messages and your style and substance but stepping back before you do anything you need to answer three questions right you

Corey 26:42

you need to know your audience you got to know your goals and you've You've got to know yourself. And on that third point,

Corey 26:49

this is a prime minister who in the past week has shown that he's not necessarily entirely in control of his message and his brand, even if you want to set that aside and say, no, he'd rise to that occasion, carries a certain charge as well. And I think for the 30% of Canadians who feel he's been a deeply polarizing figure, him to stand up and tut-tut polarization might come off very poorly. So what are your goals? Are your goals to talk to the 70%? Well, then if so, this is probably a pretty sensible tactic. Are your goals to start healing things with the 30%?

Corey 27:18

Well, then I'm not sure a prime minister speech at this particular moment is exactly what you want to be doing.

Zain 27:23

Carter, any ideas on tactics for this government as they do exactly what you've suggested from a strategic perspective, declare victory? What would you be advising a PMO to do as they plan for a victory declaration of some kind?

Carter 27:37

I think I'd really be interested in wedging with some right-wing language. um the

Carter 27:43

the the right wing is very much hedged like we do a lot of work on values right what is a value that people have that that force them into certain decision making structures and one of the values that the conservatives have is law and order and if you were to wedge on law and order through what what kind of corey is discussing if you were to throw some wedge language in there that talked about how important law and order is. Like owning it?

Zain 28:09

it? Like owning that? Owning

Carter 28:10

Owning it. Owning it and saying, we're not going to have chaos in our streets. We are going to have law and order. You will upset

Carter 28:17

upset the, you know, the eight or nine percent that think that they were acting lawfully, that they think that they've been in some fashion harmed. But there's a much larger subset of conservatives that will look at what the

Carter 28:31

the conservatives did through this and say, well, I thought we were the party of law and order. I thought we because that is one of the things that attracts conservatives to the conservative party is this idea of ordered society. That is a conservative value that the liberals acted upon. Now, I will be a little bit cautious with it because the other side of it is there are an awful lot of progressives staying away from the language of conservative and liberal that feel that empowering the police in this type of situation, you know, is is just wrong. you know and i think we saw some of them tweeting out today that even though everything worked out okay there were still these egregious uses of force you know some of the folks that were really angry about the use of the horses or you know but for the most part people who watch this i think can watch it closely thought it was an excellent operation that didn't overstep civil the civil liberties of the protesters and um that that's that's

Carter 29:28

that's interesting to me um you're not necessarily necessarily going to get those voters, but you have the opportunity to mess with them. And if

Carter 29:35

if you can make, because if Pierre Polyev wins this leadership and ultimately is leading a much smaller party, that's

Carter 29:44

that's a great outcome for the Liberal Party of Canada. And this can be used as a catalyst for that.

Zain 29:50

Carter, the Liberals at some point, as we've just discussed here, might declare victory. We've talked about the suite of tactics. Corrie's, you know, put some messaging on the table that they could talk about to try to strike the right tone. The

Zain 30:01

The conservatives know this is coming. The conservative sort of coalition knows that this is the plan. So Stephen Carter, I'm going back to you. Give me the strategy for conservative declaration of victory here, right? Let's game this out, whether it's four days or two weeks from now. How do the conservatives, knowing what the liberals are more likely to do, more than likely to do, I should say, what's their version of winning, Carter, From a strategic perspective, and then we'll talk about risks and warnings, as we did for the Liberals. I

Carter 30:31

I would say that the Liberals have gutted the police services across this country so much. The

Carter 30:35

The Liberals and progressives have gotten into these police services, and they've made it so that they can't even act. And because they couldn't act, they wound up having to bring in a draconian law. A draconian law that makes us give up our fundamental civil liberties.

Carter 30:50

And that's why they

Carter 30:52

they had to bring in the Emergency Act. It

Carter 30:54

It had nothing to do with the protesters and everything to do with the fact that the police service has been completely undermined in

Carter 31:01

in the country by liberal thinking brought to us by people like Justin Trudeau, by

Carter 31:05

by David Lametti, the justice minister. These are the people who wanted to erode the power of our police forces. And the second we needed them, the second that we needed them to step back in, they didn't have the power or the authority to do so. And they had to bring in this draconian emergencies act.

Carter 31:21

That's how, if you're the conservatives, you message this thing.

Carter 31:25

The overall weakening of law and order in society is

Carter 31:28

is what facilitated this absolutely draconian play. And

Carter 31:32

And conservatives need to get back into power in

Carter 31:34

in city governments, provincial governments, and the federal government in order to ensure that we have the law and order services that don't require this type of draconian action. This

Carter 31:43

This should never have happened. It was only done because they had a liberal police chief who was unable to make decisions. As soon as we had a real police chief in there, boom, action happened.

Zain 31:53

Corey, is that a compelling message? And do you want to yes and a bit of it on what the conservative pathway to victory and winning looks like here?

Corey 32:04

Yeah, I'm not totally sold on it. I think it's selling to a version of conservatism that's just not, maybe the thing is that's a very good middle of the road message. But I'm not sure that's where the party's heart is right now. And as they're going into a leadership contest, I don't think that's the message they need or want, right? At least the

Corey 32:23

the major players within the conservative party. I think

Carter 32:24

think the liberal stuff would be better. Like what the liberals can do with it, we'd be playing more with it.

Corey 32:30

So I have a different idea for the liberals. Oh, sorry. Please jump in with that. I'm saying it's a good one. But you asked how the liberals declare victory.

Corey 32:38

What if the liberals just declared defeat instead, right?

Corey 32:42

right? What if they were trying to make this situation seem serious by effectively saying, yeah, we got run over here? This is a situation where Ottawa was shut down for three weeks. Canada's brand badly, badly bruised internationally. Utter distraction at the time Russia is invading Ukraine. Premiers surrendering health measures. Popular health measures going down across the country. And angry minorities not camped on Wellington anymore, but they don't need to. They got exactly what they wanted. So what are we going to do about it, Canada?

Corey 33:10

What if that was the message?

Zain 33:11

message? That seems like an incredibly risky play. Carter, I want your reaction before I give mine.

Carter 33:15

Yeah, I mean, you're right. It's an incredibly risky play. I mean, it's the equivalent of, you

Carter 33:22

you know, what was the movie that the Vietnam War where he called the airstrike down on his own base? You know, like, that's essentially what that is. Come on.

Carter 33:35

You know, the film, William Dafoe. Dave,

Zain 33:39

that's what it was.

Zain 33:41

Dave. Wait, Carter, actually, I'm going to pause you there. Corey, give

Zain 33:45

give us the logic. I should have asked you that first. Okay, it's honest. I heard you say that while Carter was speaking. Walk us through it, though. Like, walk us through it.

Corey 33:55

Because it's the fucking truth. And if you don't want this to happen again, I think you need people to snap to attention and say, what are we going to do about this? And declaring victory suggests that this situation is in hand. And I don't believe this situation's in hand. Not in a real sense, not in kind of a long-term sense. So what are we going to do about it? And if you declare victory, well,

Corey 34:17

well, is there any desire to do anything about it at that point?

Zain 34:21

Carter, will we need a deep dive on the downsides of honesty? What should we do at the record deep dive? In

Zain 34:26

general, we're just opposed to it. So

Zain 34:28

So Carter, this was all building on your strategy. So I want you to challenge this, right? By the way, I was planning planning to do 10 minutes on the subject so here we are that's

Zain 34:37

carter hold on hold on hold on this is fascinating carter okay cory's in the same room with you

Zain 34:43

everyone's on the declare victory boat they're getting the pm or the deputy pm ready for a nationwide address they maybe downgrade that to a facebook live video pre-recorded on their terms so they can hit the tone correctly they're working in that category and then cory hogan fucking cory hogan in the corner says guys let's

Zain 35:01

let's talk about the downstream effects let's talk about the societal effects. Let's talk about the limitations, culturally, societally, even politically, from declaring victory. He throws that idea he just did on the board. How are you reacting to it from your perspective, Carter? What would your response to that be? Is there a middle ground here? Are you rejecting it outright? Are you considering it seriously? Your thoughts. Who

Carter 35:21

Who brought the left-wing freak into a centrist meeting? That's what I would to be saying i

Carter 35:26

mean i think i think from

Zain 35:29

from what you said you just said on the law and order side that the risk there is that the the more progressive coalition that trudeau has seemingly built starts eroding if he goes too heavy-handed on law and order so you know there is a case here to cory's point around acknowledgement and at least giving some some meat if you can call it that to the more left flank that that is you know perhaps has a desire to mobilize or at least defines the problem in the same way cory did yeah

Carter 35:56

yeah but i'm not sure those people vote right

Carter 35:58

right i'm not sure those people are listening to the pod you know what i mean like i don't think that there is political i think that they're politically motivated by their ideals but they don't tend to participate in the process the same fashion so i'm not sure that it's a good play on top of that i'm just not sure that that it's a good play not to declare victory like there's a simple path and there's a complicated path and there's

Carter 36:18

there's something to be said joyously for simplicity there's

Carter 36:22

there's a a simple path.

Carter 36:24

Declare victory, get outside the Emergencies Act as fast as you can. That simple path enables you to be successful and get away from something that could be potentially very challenging, which is an extension of the Emergencies Act beyond a

Carter 36:42

relatively short period of time.

Zain 36:45

Corey, game this out for me. I'm going to stick on this. Game this out. Let's say your your strategy was selected,

Zain 36:51

how would you declare defeat as a political win? Or how would you declare defeat as whether it's a political win or the right thing to do? Let's say that's a strategy chosen. You're persuaded enough people in that room.

Zain 37:04

What's next? How is this story being told? Going back to your principles of presentation training, how is this story being fleshed

Corey 37:15

fleshed out all by saying uh carter's right about the simplicity of it all this is one of those things that it's very hard to imagine somebody would actually be inclined to do act

Zain 37:24

act on this yes because

Corey 37:25

because it would be a worry that you're telegraphing weakness and you were the prime minister when uh you got into this situation right um well okay so your goals in this situation let's use that same frame know your goals know your audience know yourself and from there uh determine the key messages style and substance right know your goals your goal here is to wake up a canadian population that is somewhat complacent on this issue, make them realize that it's a pretty severe slide that we've gone to where 30% of the population is sharing fucking Facebook memes that say if 958,000 people email the governor general,

Corey 38:02

minister has to step down, right? Like, you know, that's

Zain 38:06

that's a real thing you're talking like, that's a real thing that's going around

Corey 38:12

So your goal is to kind of express a serious situation, because a serious situation is what is needed to warrant serious action here we need to talk about social media we need to talk about education we need to talk about civics we need to talk about uh what we're doing about people who have essentially been brainwashed by algorithms in this country and way more than that like i've hit algorithms twice in that but you know there's major things but one of the things we talk about a lot on this show is you can't solve a problem people don't know they have all

Corey 38:42

so this would be uh your goal would be really illustrating we have a problem. And I think the very, and I'm sort of jumping to the style and substance, but the we don't got this message is a way that people will, you know, say, holy shit, like this is unexpected. This is unexpected for a prime minister to say this. And it just raises how serious it is there. So

Corey 39:03

So your goal is to elevate the issue.

Corey 39:05

Your audience is the 70%, right? It's the people who feel like they're in the majority, are in the majority in a literal sense, but have have just lost, right? At least in a lot of meaningful ways. People are now sort of saying, oh, we were always intending to get rid of these things at these moments. And no, I mean, we were never seriously considering, you know, this health care tax in Quebec or whatever it is, right? But we all know, we all know that this protest has fundamentally changed the conversation around COVID-19 in this country. And this is having an honest conversation with them and basically asking them, so that's your audience, right? The 70%.

Corey 39:43

Knowing yourself, You know, your brand as a prime minister is one who is often seen as somewhat insincere in these moments, you know, somewhat overdramatic, you

Corey 39:52

know, breathless in, you know, your support of liberal values, but also that you're somebody who's not inclined to say when they've got something wrong or they've done something

Zain 40:02

something wrong in the past. So you're

Corey 40:04

you're actually using your brand in this case to play against type or hit, you know, the seriousness of it. Your

Corey 40:09

Your key message is we don't have this. and if we want to have this as a country we need to start taking serious steps and having a serious conversation style and substance is somewhat addressed already throughout this like it flows from those three things um and uh you know what you really need if you're going to do something like that is a solution you can't just drop a problem like this on canadians laps it's got to be like here's the five very substantive things we are doing to fix this starting tomorrow because Because the absolute worst-case version of this is to declare defeat and have no solution.

Zain 40:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just focus on problem definition while holding the tiller of government, so to speak. Corey, likelihood this happens, very low in your mind? Yeah, somewhere south of

Zain 40:53

Yeah, okay, good. I

Corey 40:53

I mean, people will take components of this. You'll hear in a victory speech, like, but this is serious, and we need to think about how we're going to address these things going forward. right but

Corey 41:03

but uh they're not they're not going to basically say yeah we're in a bad way like that's not going to happen uh

Zain 41:09

uh let's let's go to the conservatives before you threw this wrench into whole situation cory god damn it carter you would said you'd said the conservative pathway to victory is saying trudeau gutted policing i'm going to summarize for you right gutted policing incorporated a and had to resort to a draconian law the emergencies act to make up for what he undermined and undercut in terms of law and order services and just valuing law and order in this country. Fair to say? That's their message.

Zain 41:40

That roughly is what you declared as their pathway to victory. I want to get Corey's reaction.

Carter 41:43

reaction. Yeah, I think that that's the best way for them to go through this. I think that they

Carter 41:49

they need to make sure that they're appealing to their law and order base and they're not coming back and saying, we

Carter 41:54

we think that these protests are legitimate. And I think that that's the problem right now is that they're teetering on the edge of we like these protests these protests are good yeah

Zain 42:04

yeah cory what do you think of that that pathway or that line of declaring victory that the conservatives might approach

Corey 42:13

yeah again i think um the

Corey 42:15

the the conservatives are right now at the moment of maximum distraction and their conversation is a different conversation i look forward to some adults in the conservative Party joining us back in the real world. Thank you, Michael Chong, for your first steps on this. But right now, I think that the only message they're particularly interested in is that Justin Trudeau allowed this situation to get out of hand. He should have listened and had a conversation with these individuals. And that's what we're intending to do going

Zain 42:43

Talk to me about some of their risks and what warnings you'd whisper in their ear as it relates to, we're seeing that, right? Like they're attaching themselves a lot to that Justin Trudeau made this happen. I'm not going to say fabricating, but there seems to be certain, let's just say, overzealousness with the facts regarding whose bank accounts might be getting frozen, the expansion of the undermining of civil liberties. What risks and warnings would you have for the conservatives, Corey? I'll start with you, and then I'll go to you, Carter.

Corey 43:13

Maybe not as extreme as you might be almost leading me to sort of say. The one thing about about being the opposition is you do get uh the ability to throw a million things at the wall and and people forget about all the ones that

Corey 43:25

right uh pierre pauliev can put a

Corey 43:29

ton of crappy videos together and the one we all remember is when he's talking about inflation and here's the matter that we're now discussing in terms of inflation so it's part of being a an opposition is to sort of raise these things up and like again things get fuzzy with hindsight and i suspect there there will be one or two situations that come up where somebody was just sort of screwed by the system, right? Intentionally, unintentionally, however it may come up. And people will forget the five bullshit ones that just came up on Twitter if there's one real one, right? They'll say, yeah, but that did actually happen in one situation. So I don't know that their risk on that front is as dramatic, perhaps as, you know, maybe I was feeling you were leading me to suggest. Now, where I do think their risk is significant is the flip side of what I was saying about taking those steps. You know, everybody's eyes are right now on the leadership contest and they're

Corey 44:21

which is at the end of the day, they are going to have to fight a general election. And the more they indulge that, I think the worst situation they'll be in coming into the general because they might be too

Corey 44:31

too lost. And it might not even be a situation where the public is following it close enough, like the ball is bouncing and they can't see it. But if you spend the next six months deep in that rhetoric and then you've got to kind of surface for air in in the real in the real environments here you

Corey 44:45

you might you might forget how to have a normal conversation you see it all the time with politicians so they just need to be very very careful that they're not they're not entirely buying all of their own bullshit and that they keep their eye on the actual center for public opinion we're

Zain 45:00

we're going to leave that segment there move it on to our next segment our next segment welcome back to alberta stephen carter after a long time away we're taking a flare airlines flight back to back to home back to alberta Let's talk about all the ups and downs, the lefts and the rights. A lot going on in Alberta. As we have the speech from the throne coming up, we record Monday, coming up tomorrow. Of course, I, in my official capacity, as vice-son to the vice-regal. Big day. We'll be watching that. Yes, earnestly. Big day.

Zain 45:32

Thursday, we expect the budget from Jason Kenney and his government. Stephen Carter, much speculation that with the price of oil going up, up and up, that this could lead to a, quote unquote, balanced budget by the Kenney government. You laugh. Give me your reaction there. What are you looking for in this week as Jason Kenney rolls out and doles out on Alberta's finances? He

Carter 45:55

He hit the lottery.

Carter 45:56

Congratulations, you hit the lottery. That's not a balanced budget. That's having everything turn out perfectly

Carter 46:04

perfectly in this particular moment. Natural gas is high. Oil prices are high. And Corey and I know how the budget is put together in Alberta. And the way that it has been put together is two years from now, whatever now is. So historically, two years from now, the budget

Carter 46:22

budget bureaucrats, the people who write the budget, say, well, we're going to reach payout. We're going to reach payout. Payout is this mythical creature that moves oil royalties from something like 2% on average, 2%. two um

Corey 46:37

um yeah it's one one to nine percent

Carter 46:39

percent depending on you know so on average it's around two it's actually zero some pay zero but

Carter 46:43

but the point is from virtually nothing to like 45 percent right so the the the increase is unbelievable so there's a massive incentive for every oil and gas company to continue to invest well it's heavy oil so it's just oil companies to

Carter 46:59

to continue to invest in their oil plants um except

Carter 47:03

except that was all taken taken out of play in 2015 right for into the last recession has has stopped all investment um

Carter 47:12

um in the oil sands and now we happen to hit payout because no one's no we don't have these massive investments happening anymore so people aren't working you're

Carter 47:20

you're right we still have nine percent unemployment in alberta um people aren't working in oil and gas in the same way that they once worked in oil and gas but we're riding oil and gas all the way to victory.

Carter 47:31

And I think that there's actually a really big opportunity for Jason Kenney to stand up and forgive me for saying this, but he picks up on Justin Trudeau's messaging and says, mission accomplished. I balanced the budget, which is what Ralph

Carter 47:45

Ralph Klein did when he held up the paid in full banner. We remember that iconic image from decades ago. Well, he paid it in full with natural gas royalties. Jason Kenney's paying it in full with oil royalties. And those royalties don't last forever. Where's natural gas in this recovery? Certainly nowhere where it was during Ralph Klein and Ed Stelmack's days. So this is a fake budget that will be based on this promise that oil and gas revenues will never decline, except we've seen that they do decline and we see that the results are devastating. dating. This will be, by the way, only the second surplus in Alberta since 2007.

Carter 48:33

So just to kind of give you a sense of how long it's been since Alberta actually had a surplus.

Zain 48:38

Corey, you know, one of the many lines I've stolen from the two of you without attribution, it's about budgets. You're welcome. And the thing you guys would often say is budgets are communications documents, that they are a communications exercise or communications documents. What do you think, Jason Kenney and his government are going to be communicating this week, Corey.

Corey 48:59

Yeah, so I'm sometimes tempted to kind of go deep into the weeds with some of the stuff Stephen said. It is real money, I guess, is the one thing I do want to take exception with, where he says it's a fake surplus. It's real money, and that real money does allow Jason Kenney to invest in priorities that Albertans care about, right? And so that's kind of the communications win that is now available to him that wasn't in a way that was there previously. But he's able, I think, to spin quite a positive tail because in Alberta, our decline, our fiscal slide, like we started running deficits around the same time our economy started getting into a rough patch. And it's always true everywhere to some degree, but it's very true in Alberta that the fiscal situation and the economy get conflated big time. I mean, it was conflated in the government's own budget survey, right? What do you think of the economy? economy, I think the fiscal situation's bad, or something like that was one of the questions, right? But they're not the same thing. If they were the same thing, we would be talking about Russia being a superpower. We would have talked about Libya being a superpower. Those countries always ran balanced budgets. Russia has a population of 144 million and an economy smaller than Canada's at 38 million people, right? They're not the same thing. And Stephen did a pretty good job of running down the challenges that have actually resulted in this surplus. People used to put off payout in oil sands properties by continually investing in them those investments created jobs and building these things those investments aren't happening anymore the economy is not rebounding in the same way a lot of people getting pretty rich but we're not necessarily seeing it hit um hit you know the rank and file albertan the way things previously were going here

Corey 50:39

nonetheless because of that conflation i think the government does have an opportunity to say our budget's great ergo our economy must be great right that's that's the opportunity that presents the government they also because

Corey 50:50

because they've been making reductions so aggressively in some areas over the past couple of years although in some areas not reducing at all right it

Corey 50:58

won't take much it's like water to somebody in the desert all of a sudden you splash a little bit of money into education you splash a little bit of money into age and people will be thinking that the good times are here again, right? They become the benefactors of their own lowered expectations on this front here. So they've got a couple of weeks of good news here. They have an opportunity perhaps to seize the economic narrative in a way that has eluded governments since at least 2014 in this province, arguably longer. And if they do, they have a pathway to re-election, admittedly through some really rocky terrain. But this communications document, this budget that you're talking about has so many more bells and whistles than the budgets have of the past few years. Carter,

Zain 51:45

Carter, you know, we call it a comms document. We talk about the good

Zain 51:49

good news that could come for the government. One of the things we're seeing and hearing and rumored about is we saw on Twitter, Charles Rustnell, former investigative journalist with CBC, hearing rumors that there is a large advertising buy related to the budget. Talk to me about that in extending the news cycle here talk to me about this concept of taking something that is literally numbers but adding a story and a casing around it and extending it to audiences you we've all been contributors to this this is less about this budget but more so kind of like a t like a lesson for what folks might expect and what they might see how certain parts of it get targeted i want to get into that discussion a bit and then let's zoom out once again and talk about kenny's multi front wars while he's fighting while he's doing all this let's

Carter 52:34

let's start with charles uh rusnell or chas as i like to call him um i'd

Carter 52:39

i'd be shocked if there wasn't a huge advertising bill or event around the the budget it is a massive communications response responsibility uh to tell the people of alberta what's happening with their financial resources um so yeah i'd be shocked if there wasn't a communications plan and a significant advertising buy um there should be um that's not a bad that's not a bug that's a feature um so you know they have a responsibility to communicate around it so

Carter 53:11

what i do fear though is that they're going to be communicating about how they've achieved all these financial successes and everybody who hasn't had a nickel put into their bank accounts for

Carter 53:21

for the last five years every non-profit association that wants to do something Every municipality that wants to build something, every

Carter 53:28

every special interest group that wants to see a new hospital somewhere or something along those lines is going to line up with their hands out. We've already started to see the government do, you know, signal that they're going to be doing deals with unions that, you know, originally were going to be 2% and 3% cuts are now looking like they're going to be 2% and 3% increases. increases um that's quite a swing that's quite a swing but that's that's the price you pay for having a surplus so everybody's going to come out with their hands up and every hands out and every organization in alberta be it a municipality or or the local sports teams are also going to have their hands out saying it's been a hard five years hard six seven years especially the last two we need money for x or we're in real trouble and the downside for the county government those real troubles i think mean more and cory and i've done a ton of real all three of us have done a ton of research on how do people really feel about a surplus or a deficit for the provincial government compared

Carter 54:29

compared to how they really feel about a surplus or

Carter 54:31

or a deficit for them and their own family that's

Carter 54:35

that's a much more meaningful number um those are the types of conversations that are going to get this group into hot water i

Zain 54:43

i want to pick up on that that that part there, Carter, that you mentioned on the affordability part and one's family, as we maybe talk about the NDP response. Corey, talk to me about the communications for a budget. We've talked about this in the past, but give folks the breakdown a bit in terms of what one on the receiving end might be expecting over the course of the next couple of weeks with this budget and others in terms of how they're communicated, how they're broken down. Sure.

Corey 55:07

Sure. Look, there's a lot of ways you can kind of look at a budget. I can tell you that the The fundamentals are you have a budget speech, which is tied to a budget lockup, which is the government's first attempt at controlling the narrative around the budget. There is, you know, the speech itself is a communications document. The first part of the budget is a communications document. Then there are a lot of charts and there are a lot of tables. And those tables don't necessarily tell the whole story because there's kind of the under the line numbers that say, for example, this program is getting $5 million and this program is getting $11 million and this program is actually being cut entirely. And that stuff does not actually show up in the budget documents. That stuff bleeds through the stakeholder conversations to come. And if it's good news, it's probably stuff that the government's going to announce individually in the days and weeks to come. So you've got the big narrative, the macro narrative. This is what we want you to think when you think of the budget at the end of the day. That is all about day one. And so you have the government, you have the opposition wrestling over that narrative. There are other players on the field, of course. The government is trying to pull in as many validators as possible. The opposition is trying to have as many detractors as possible. But that's the basic day one of the budget, right? And that happens on a Thursday. And then what you have over the next couple of days is a bleeding out of some news good, some news bad. But what you want to do if you're the government is make sure that the bad news never gets a chance to stand. And you just stomp on it with good news. You keep them spinning. You keep the thing moving along. And so all of a sudden, you're at, you know, you're a committee, and you're talking about something that's maybe not great on AISH, right? Well, then there's a $20 million announcement that afternoon, or $50 million, or you drop another program, or some of that stuff, like I said, that was below the line that you wouldn't mind getting out there in the conversation.

Corey 56:53

That's the PR front that the government does. And we can go way into the weeds on that. But I think we did last year. We

Corey 56:58

We did. Oh, yeah. Not super inclined to repeat myself. But you're ultimately always trying to just, you know, just just kind of knock out the issues, control the narrative, you know, have these big thrusts, you've got your constituency week where people get to give out their checks. That's all managed through kind of what we would call kind of public relations style public affairs where there is then the advertising. Advertising. And the purpose of advertising is as soon as something's not newsworthy, but you still want people to hear it, you got to pay for it. That's just a reality in any sort of industry, right?

Corey 57:30

And yeah, you try to push it back into the newsworthiness by when you make that $20 million announcement, you try to ladder it up to your overall budget narrative that you set on budget day one. But that's maybe a week old, two weeks old, three weeks old. Media is not super interested in doing that. If the story gets kind of cut for length, I'm sure it's in the last paragraphs if it makes it in at all. So if you really want that message out there in a big way, you pay for it, right?

Corey 57:54

right? If you've got those big narratives and it's been too much time and it no longer is that interesting for other people to carry that message out, then

Corey 58:02

then that's where ads come in. And in the government of Alberta, because, of course, you're talking about an entire province, you know, you're going to have radio ads. You're going to have online, I'm sure. You're going to have digital advertising. advertising television ads would be surprising for a budget but not unprecedented i wouldn't be remotely surprised if the government invested in a almost state of the province address from the premier in

Corey 58:24

the coming days that would allow him to set that table and perhaps also discuss other issues that are on his mind that's been um i don't think we've seen that in the last couple of sessions but that was becoming almost a hat a pattern yeah for for the government of alberta for a couple of years there uh which is where you just basically take over the airwaves and try to to command it. It's a type of paid advertising, right?

Zain 58:46

And you just sort of sustain

Corey 58:47

sustain that message through. Now, I do want to say, though, because all of this can sound pretty deeply cynical, whether it's appropriate or not, really depends in a large part on how much money a government spends on it. Because

Corey 59:01

Because there is a fundamental principle people forget, and especially people in the know, because they're in the know. By definition, they're aware of all of these things that the government is advertising on.

Corey 59:11

Most people aren't. You know, most people aren't tracking these things closely, but it's important they know about them. You know, the people have a right to know and the government has a duty to inform. That was kind of my informal slogan when I ran communications for the government.

Corey 59:26

But when you move beyond kind of making sure people know about things, major thrusts, major programs, opportunities for feedback, all of that stuff to kind of just like, you know, know, outright spin. The line's not always clear, but you can definitely see it, especially when it's in the rearview mirror. And I think that's something that people should keep their eye on.

Zain 59:48

Yeah, I appreciate that breakdown, Corey. And you are right, we did cover this last year in an extensive episode, which I encourage people to go back to, because Corey, in that episode, if you recall, Corey, explained to folks how government decides on a button color for a landing page, which, by the way, is one of my favorite two-minute Corey Hogan monologues uh of of yesteryear uh but let's talk about i started with the budget on purpose carter you wanted to jump in with i just want

Carter 1:00:11

want to say the idea

Carter 1:00:12

idea that we're not going to repeat ourselves is hilarious have you listened to the podcast that's

Corey 1:00:18

just sort of loop through the same chest every 18

Zain 1:00:25

wanted to start with the budget because kenny's not unfamiliar to multi-front wars right many of them in his early pre-covid years he started, like he said, let me go fight these people, fight these people, do this, like he was starting a bunch of multi-front wars. COVID hit, right? And then he's, of course, been dealing with COVID. But Kennedy also finds himself in a similar situation, where he's got this budget that could be a quote-unquote success. He's got, and I'll loop back at the end about the NDP response on that, so don't fret on that front. But he's also got Fort McMurray by-election, where his candidate is someone who's trying to knife him at an upcoming leadership review in April. He's got He's got that leadership review in April. He's got the war with the feds, which has found another chapter, Chapter 93, I believe, which he's now writing regarding the Emergencies Act. Carter, talk to me about the Jason Kenney multi-front war. Talk to me about how it all works for him right now. Like, what is the general sort of dimensions? Is he leveraging budget as his path to victory for, you know, undercutting Brian Jean and winning April 9th? Is he focused on a different strategy? Talk to me about where Mr. Kenny, Premier Kenny's head is at right now with some good news that might be coming his way, to your point, about winning the lottery with this upcoming budget. And how, if at all, is he leveraging it in all the other fronts that he's fighting right now?

Carter 1:01:46

I think that the leadership ties directly to the budget, for sure. You know, Jason Kenny gets to stand up and say, we

Carter 1:01:54

we did it. We balanced the budget and now we can do what we came here to do, which was reduce people's taxes. And don't expect any big programming spending announcements. This is going to be, we're looking at taxes and reducing taxes. That's how we're going to help people in this province. That's the Alberta advantage. And I bet you he starts using phrases like that when he gets the opportunity to. That ties directly into his leadership. And I think we've said before, at the risk of repeating ourselves, no Alberta premier has ever lost a battle with Ottawa. Ottawa, you know, every Alberta premier has picked that battle and fought with the higher level of government. And even if they're speaking from

Zain 1:02:36

from both sides of their mouth, if you're Kenny,

Carter 1:02:38

Kenny, it doesn't well, I mean, yeah,

Carter 1:02:40

yeah, Kenny, please help me. Please help us. We can't stop this Coots thing. And when I say that, I mean, don't bring in the Emergencies Act. So, you know, I mean, but it doesn't matter. The only one that's getting reported, the only one that's being really pushed out there in terms of his narrative is that he's fighting with Trudeau. No, he's trying to stop government overreach and that's going to play to his base. I mean, this is it's actually turning out, I think, to be a fairly strong month for Jason Kenney. And I think that it will lend itself well to the timing of his of his leadership.

Zain 1:03:14

Corey, triangulate the budget with the Emergencies Act, with the Fort McMurray by-election, with his survival, his political survival in April. What do you what are you thinking? And what are you perhaps advising when Jason Kenney, if you were if you were in that position?

Corey 1:03:28

You know, I guess I just don't have enough information as to how this is all landing with the base of the conservative party. I'm somewhat skeptical that people are going to just turn and be like, OK, now we like Jason Kenney. I just don't think that's that's likely with a class of supporter that has already written him off. I'm having a hard time sort of assessing it, to be honest. but he has uh he's done everything that i think that base could ask for in the last bit with the removal of the restrictions the fighting with trudeau on the emergencies act don't be surprised if you see three more fights picked between now and that that april vote on all sorts of issues um i'm sure that policing uh is an obvious one uh given that that's already been foreshadowed it'll be something about oil and gas it'll be something about the economy it's coming like i don't i don't

Carter 1:04:15

what it is supposed to be bringing a change to the police act this turn this session oh

Corey 1:04:19

oh well there you go so

Carter 1:04:20

so something's gonna happen there i mean all

Carter 1:04:22

all of these signals are coming and

Carter 1:04:24

and he's already signaled that he that he's looking at eliminating all restrictions everything

Corey 1:04:31

yeah so you know this is this is all stuff that seems fairly um i

Corey 1:04:37

i don't know like not even reasonable what's the word like it's just what they want and he's trying to give the people in his party what they want it's i'm not saying it's not stuff he doesn't want too but But, you know, it seems pretty neat in that context.

Corey 1:04:50

But we got a by-election. We got almost certainly Brian Jean will enter the House. I mean, if the NDP pull off a miracle on the prairies, it'll be cool. It'll be pretty wild. It'll be exciting to watch. It'll be great for the podcast, right? Yeah. But it's not necessarily

Corey 1:05:06

necessarily something that I think is particularly likely. politically, but then all of a sudden you're going to find, you

Corey 1:05:14

know, that being a bad news story before he comes into this thing. So I don't know. I mean, part of me does wonder if he's not going to try to find some grounds to shake things up even more dramatically here. I don't know. You know, I was in a conversation with a friend of mine a couple days ago, and the conversation went to, what

Corey 1:05:33

what if he calls the election early? You know, we talked about this a year ago as a a possibility why

Corey 1:05:37

do we not think it's a possibility now carter

Carter 1:05:45

don't have a good reason maybe

Carter 1:05:47

maybe it's more possible than i think i mean i

Carter 1:05:52

my need my initial reaction is well he'd lose the party but he can't lose the party when he calls the election um

Corey 1:05:57

um well and if he's assessed that he's lost the party and if you're jason kenney i

Carter 1:06:02

i mean he's not as weak with the ndp as he once was he's starting to rebound um you

Carter 1:06:10

you know there's a case to be made that the economic opportunity is stronger under kenny and if he can run the election on economic opportunity

Carter 1:06:20

yeah i mean he wins right what's

Zain 1:06:22

what's the risks here for him though like let's

Corey 1:06:24

like it just absolutely fucking implodes in the craziest fashion totally totally on that on the on the

Carter 1:06:29

the But that could be the same as his leadership, right?

Zain 1:06:34

right? Let's peel that back, right? Like, let's do like the, I hate to kind of repeat the format we did with the first segment, but like, give me the risk analysis here and the warnings you'd want to whisper to this guy, right? Like, can he float between now and leadership review on just the budget alone? Like, I assume not. So there must be some risks and warnings that he would have to heed here, you know, with with his current state of affairs, despite what Carter might say, this being potentially a good month for

Zain 1:07:02

for the Premier. Corey,

Corey 1:07:02

Corey, what do you think? Well, we just talked about advertising, right? So he gets to sustain through the advertising going on that this is happening across the province. And we do have the restrictions coming to a wind down, March 1st being a significant date. Other dates to follow before the leadership review that allow a bit of a good news story there. if that's if that's your kind of cup of tea and how many fights can be picked with Ottawa between now and then how many good news uh economic announcements might there be between now and then I think it's it's probably his best opportunity he's had in two years to control the narrative um and I suspect that

Corey 1:07:44

that um they've thought a lot certainly since November or so what these lead-in months to the uh to the review would look like so yeah I mean I don't see it as as really

Corey 1:07:56

really hard to kind of control, except for the McMurray by-election. I think

Corey 1:08:01

actually one of the ones that's trickier for him to control. Carter,

Zain 1:08:03

Carter, any risks or warnings you want to issue to the Premier as he kind of finds himself in this state right now with multi-fronts that he's working on, but more good news than he's had in a long time, perhaps?

Carter 1:08:16

I would probably just say don't try and hit the home run. You know, like, try and get through. Like, I think that things are improving with the party. He's setting things up. He's put his chief of staff onto the task of actually winning. Surely they'll have some sort of numbers relatively quickly about what they think they can do and what the pass is going to look like. I imagine that their leadership threshold is 50% plus one. I mean, Joe Clark's enduring legacy of 77% not being, or whatever it was, 66% not being good enough um you

Carter 1:08:56

you know that that that's

Carter 1:08:59

that's a real problem for kenny but maybe he needs to start signaling that 50 plus one is the threshold and that's why is that a real

Zain 1:09:06

real problem like and and how does he start signaling that and who does that because i think at some point that's going to need to happen we say you're late february at some point someone's going to need to say here's the goal posts yeah

Carter 1:09:16

yeah i think it's going to be two to three weeks after the budget right and and you you know, the

Carter 1:09:20

the uptick that's going to come from that, right? There should be some sort of a quick uptick. So that should be, you

Zain 1:09:30

know... How would you structure it, Carter? You know this budget's coming around for your... Kenny, if you were advising him, how would you structure the goalposts of saying, this is what we're looking for, 50% plus one, I'll take it. How would you say it?

Carter 1:09:43

I'd say it like this. The party matters to me. I formed this... Jason Kenney formed this party, he constructed it, he helped write the constitution, and the constitution is very clear of what a leader needs to stay. And that number was chosen, not randomly, that number was chosen because that was the right number to pick.

Carter 1:10:03

And we very easily could have chosen 80%, we very easily could have chosen 66%, but we're a party that believes in democracy and majority rule. And therefore we chose 50% plus one. That was not an accident, it was not about me, that's about any leader. And that's the threshold that this party needs to respect.

Corey 1:10:23

Yeah, I think that's great. I think it's a great key message to remind people that these party bylaws were just created, and they were created for the situation in mind. You could have picked a higher threshold. You didn't, because ultimately, you believe that the majority should have their say on this matter, not a vocal minority.

Zain 1:10:41

Corey, tell me what the Alberta NDP need to do here. as they as they see what's what's happening perhaps this week we talked about the extension that kenny might get on the public relations the advertising they know as everyone does the fights he has to pick with fort mcmurray and his leadership how are they gaming out the terrain in your mind right now with everything there you're seeing yeah

Corey 1:11:03

yeah well they've they've got to take away the win on the budget first and foremost like the surplus is i i think a challenge for the ndp because of that conflation between budget and economy we've talked about before. It's probably a multi-front war. I suspect that they're testing various messages to see which ones would work best. I would imagine some version of message one, this surplus, every time you're paying $1.50 at the gas station, that's where this surplus came from, reminding them not just about the cost of living challenges there, but the fact that this is about a global price of oil. That would be sort of number one. Number two, I mean, is really about talking about they've done this by cutting out everything that makes Alberta work. This is penny wise, pound foolish. They've come to a place of surplus on the backs of children, on the backs of, you know, the sick, on the backs of the disabled and whatever it is.

Corey 1:11:57

You know, it's such a tough line to walk, though, because at a certain point, it just sounds like sour grapes. So you have to pick your messages, you have to be tight to them, and you've got to avoid this kitchen sink approach on the budget. Find your two best criticisms, three best criticisms, use them perpetually. Don't use every bloody criticism, because I think the combination of literally everything will

Corey 1:12:16

will sink you. It will make it just seem like you're disorganized, you don't care, you know, it's all about sticking it to the government. So, you know, pick your arguments there. But I suspect they are testing on these things. And if they're not, well,

Corey 1:12:31

well, it's Monday at 9.50 p.m. I would get on it, folks. I would try to figure that out and not just sit around with a group of people who think exactly like you and say, what do we think would work for us? Because that's dumb. So don't do that. And beyond that, don't

Corey 1:12:48

don't stick on it for a ton of time. It's, on the whole, better news for the government than not. And you are fighting a losing battle the more you're talking about why their surplus isn't really that much of a surplus.

Corey 1:13:01

Move on to the next thing. Next thing. Don't let them do the thing where they're controlling the narrative for the next month on the surplus. You've got to get back to the things where you can control the narrative. Carter,

Zain 1:13:10

Carter, a lot of nodding hands from you. Continue with yes and what Corey's just said here.

Carter 1:13:14

Well, I think that it's great that the provincial government has balanced the budget. That's really good news. It's a lottery win and the people who didn't win a lottery this year are the people of Alberta. Alberta they're paying more for insurance I mean significantly more almost double in lots of cases they're paying more right now for their electricity and natural gas than they have paid we would have frozen that in fact you've seen through our behavior that we froze that but in fact Jason Kennedy's allowed that all to just ramp up and so the average the average household is spending more money so that the government of Alberta can can balance their budget and and that's fine I mean I guess that's it. But this was supposed to be the anti-tax, the lower cost government. And when it costs you more just to survive, it's

Carter 1:14:05

it's a false victory to say that the provincial government has balanced their budget. Sure, they balanced the budget on your backs. Congratulations, Jason. It's not good enough. It's not good enough for the NDP.

Zain 1:14:15

Corey, you wanted to jump in?

Corey 1:14:17

Yeah. Where did that surplus come from? Look

Corey 1:14:20

Look at your electric bill. That's where the surplus came from. Look at the price of the gas pump. That's where the surplus came from. Look at your insurance rates. That's where this surplus came from. This is not something to be proud of. The government should be ashamed to be taking so much money out of your pockets and making life so difficult for you, just so they can put up a phony number and declare victory. Carter,

Zain 1:14:39

Carter, Corey talked about stick on this for a couple of days, change the channel. Channel changer in your mind? Is it leaning into Kenny's weaknesses on Fort McMurray, infighting? Is it leaning into another issue that they control the lane on. I'm curious, you're the king of channel changers. I'm curious if you have one that would be useful to the NDP to get off the budget. Or

Zain 1:14:59

Or do you actually, or do you, maybe I'll throw this as well. Do you actually see promise in the affordability lane, as both of you were just mentioning, and just say that's an easier channel changer that we can veer into? I think that

Carter 1:15:10

that the affordability is where I'd start with. And then I would go into healthcare, education, post-secondary education. I would go one right after the other and

Carter 1:15:19

and carry this out and attack Jason Kenney on your field,

Carter 1:15:23

field, if you will, the

Carter 1:15:25

the places that you can succeed. And I would just continue to keep attacking him. I wouldn't bring in Ford McMurray. I wouldn't bring in the leadership problems. Truth of the matter is, I think that the NDP would be nuts to want anybody but Jason Kenney to be running the UCP

Carter 1:15:40

into the next election. election.

Carter 1:15:42

you know, attack the UCP as you're supposed to, but don't, this isn't the time for the knockout punch. This is the time to set the stage for the knockout punch. You know, this is the time to make sure that you're, you're testing your arguments.

Zain 1:15:54

Corey, I want to, I want to talk to you about one final group. It's not necessarily a group. Well, it could be, but it's a guy who may have a group. Let's talk about Brian Jean. We always revert back to him every now and then. So he's got a by-election up in Fort McMurray. It seems like all indicators are that he's going to win that.

Zain 1:16:14

But he's been fighting a organization war with Jason Kenney for April 9th. As we stick with our theme of providing unsolicited advice to folks, let's do that for Brian Jean. What are you telling him to watch out for between now and then? Is he leaning into the budget? Is he buried with the ndp on the budget rhetoric is he saying we could have gotten you know how is he talking about budget which is kenny's victory or kenny's going to own it how is he divorcing that success from kenny's failures i'm kind of curious to hear communications and even tactical strategies for for one brian jean with with his ambitions which are uh nakedly obvious right now which is i want the top job yeah

Corey 1:16:58

yeah i mean obviously he doesn't want to give the victory to jason kenny he wants to to give it to the caucus. He wants to say this is because the grassroots held him to account. This is a situation where if

Corey 1:17:08

if we let Jason Kenney do his things, we wouldn't be anywhere near where we've got to be here. And by the way, a lot of this is based on oil and gas, and we need a stronger champion of oil and gas. And look at me, I'm from Fort McMurray.

Corey 1:17:19

If he's smart, though, what he'll remember is that this is for him a two-stage plan,

Corey 1:17:25

right? So winning the by-election is just one of of the things he needs to do in the next bit if he wants to beat jason kenny he's got to beat jason kenny in red deer and so he's got to take the opportunities he can to make that case i i think in general anytime he can create a moment of conflict with the premier probably helps him in that sense so certainly as much as i think normally my advice in these matters would be you've got to be a good party player i don't i don't know if that advice applies here uh we're we're already in such weird territory where somebody who is actively campaigning against the leader of the party is being allowed by the leader of the party to run. I mean, we're through the looking glass. So you might as well just continue to just hit the guy wherever you can, however you can talk about, you

Corey 1:18:14

you know, the opportunity that presents itself to the party. If you could now just get rid of this albatross that is Jason Kenney, that's probably some fruitful area. Like we are getting the pieces in place. No thanks to Jason Kenney. Now, Now, if we could just get rid of Jason Kenney, we'd be off to the races. I suspect that would be language that would be of work. But, you know, to jump back to the last bit here, maybe, one of the ways the NDP might win the next couple of months is by losing

Corey 1:18:40

losing the next couple of months, right? Or at least letting the premier win the next couple of months. Because there's such interesting dynamics across the board at play here. But it might actually be true that the UCP, well, actually, I don't even know if it is. But if the UCP replaces Jason Kenney, and they get to take out, you know, the garbage with Jason Kenney, with

Corey 1:19:02

with an economy that seems to have at least a couple of things you can point to, and with a fiscal situation that's turned around, you

Corey 1:19:11

you know, I don't know. I mean, I'd much rather, if I were the NDP, be facing Jason Kenney in that than some generic conservative.

Zain 1:19:19

Carter, Corey's married to the only way you win is by losing strategy this episode. I like it, Corey. It's the through line for the entire thing. In this case, I see what you're saying. The other one was a really interesting academic thought exercise that Justin Trudeau will never do. Carter, comment on what you heard from Corey on the NDP side, and then also give me your advice on Brian Jean as we ran out the episode.

Carter 1:19:42

Well, I think number one, yeah, I mean, the most important thing for the NDP is to make sure they're facing off against Jason Kenney.

Carter 1:19:52

I i can with 100 bucks to go in and uh and vote in red deer um this

Carter 1:19:59

this is it's important to the ndp that the that jason kenney remain as the leader because they can define him but i think that the definition of it can start now right

Carter 1:20:11

right this is jason kenney's surplus and the surplus comes from your pockets you may as well define that and then carry it through but because even when if if jason kenney loses the leadership, you still have Jason Kenney's surplus came from your pockets as one of your primary setup messages. So when Doug Schweitzer is out running around saying, look, I'm the leader. Yay, I'm the premier now. Let's call an election. You can still say, well, when are you going to put the money back in people's pockets? When are you going to put the money back in schools? When are you going to put the money back in universities? When are you going to to rebuild our our health care system that that's still available to you so that to me is the uh

Carter 1:20:54

the play so i don't think you're winning by losing i think you're winning um regardless of whether or not you win or lose and then the the second point is what do we do with with brian gene brian who i

Carter 1:21:06

mean ignore him he's irrelevant to your to your point right now uh no

Zain 1:21:10

no no but if you are brian gene what are you doing if you are if you are brian gene what are you winning

Carter 1:21:14

winning winning the by-election um

Carter 1:21:16

um i don't have to do anything more than that win the by-election and that signals everything it signals everything to the party um jason kenney's not strong enough to stop you well you know if the ndp is strong enough to stop you i mean ironically if brian gene lost

Carter 1:21:33

that's the end of jason kenney um so you know i think i think that that's an interesting opportunity for everybody i don't know what to do other than just run and win if i'm brian gene

Zain 1:21:45

And we're going to leave that segment there, move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we start with you. The whole show is for you. We were thankful that you were gone for the 10 minutes. We had a flood of applications. But now that you're still here, we start, as always, the over, under, and the lightning round with

Carter 1:21:59

with you. Stephen Carter.

Zain 1:22:00

Overrated, underrated, declaring political victory.

Carter 1:22:04

It's underrated. Winning matters. So I think that that's a good plan.

Zain 1:22:12

boiling it down to its basics cory declaring victory overrated or underrated if you say underrated i'm gonna fucking yell at you based on all your commentary this episode

Corey 1:22:20

think it is underrated um because some somebody needs to actually say it's a victory at a certain point do

Zain 1:22:27

do you feel like we don't do that enough in politics like oh

Corey 1:22:29

i for sure i do i think that people take these things for granted and they think people can read between the lines and people can't read between the lines you got to spell it out for them so when the economy is turning around you just don't point to a bunch of things that that are the proof points but you actually need to make the statement above them as well that says we have turned the economy around right and uh and that is something people work into speeches they're less likely to work it into key messages and in other contexts and it's important like you've got to you've got to declare victory at a certain point and i actually think one

Corey 1:23:00

one of the challenges with the old george w bush mission accomplice thing is people learn the wrong lesson from that right it's you know It became, it's a bad thing to declare a victory. Well, no, that's not the problem. It's a bad thing to declare a victory you don't actually have. That is a problem because then people can throw it back in your face. But you've got to make your own weather at a certain moment in time. And especially when you've got an election coming up. Let's put it this way. If George W. Bush had been on an aircraft carrier with the Mission Accomplished banner and the election was in three weeks, weeks, I would think that we'd be thinking that was a smart strategy, even if everything fell apart in Iraq after that. So timelines matter too. Goy,

Zain 1:23:40

Goy, I'm going to stick with you. We didn't get to talk to him about him, I should say, not talk to him, talk about him during the episode. But Jagmeet Singh, give me your one line of advice if you're whispering into the ear of Jagmeet Singh with all the hullabaloo on the Emergencies Act, the vote of confidence, him siding with the the Liberals. What would you be telling the leader of the NDP as the Liberals try to define victory, the Conservatives try to do the same, try to tear them down? He's caught in the middle, or is he on the sidelines to be determined? What are you telling him? What are you telling Jagmeet Singh?

Corey 1:24:14

Well, yeah, we didn't talk about him all episode and Canadians haven't talked to him or about him, you know, for the past month here, with some limited exceptions here. I think I think what I would say to him is, okay, you got through this moment, you got through this vote, you did what you needed to do there. Don't feel overly beholden to it. Now is the time when you can stake your own path forward. That's, you know, not super compelling advice, but ultimately, he can't continue to be the person who says, yes, I'll do what Justin Trudeau wants, but tut tut, I'm concerned about this. I mean, that way ultimately leads to ruin. You do have to pick a moment where you kind of carve out your own future here. here.

Zain 1:24:53

Carter, same question to you. What is the one line you're giving to Jagmeet Singh?

Carter 1:24:59

I'm just going to steal Corey's because Corey's smart.

Zain 1:25:02

Thank you, Carter. Thank you for that incredible contribution. Carter, I'm going to go back to you. Overrated, underrated, surpluses, budget surpluses here in Alberta, overrated, underrated in your mind?

Carter 1:25:10

Overrated. It's a moment in someone's, you know, people just don't care. We've been testing on this for years and years. People don't really care about the government's surplus or deficit.

Zain 1:25:20

Corey, same question to you. The The surplus, budget surplus, I should say, in Alberta, overrated or underrated? Carter's gone with overrated.

Corey 1:25:28

Underrated. He's not wrong. When you poll on this, there's a certain percent of the population that says, I don't care if you ever balance the budget. And then there's a certain part, some of the population that says, well, I expect you to balance the budget this year. And then there's a group in between. But if you look at the people who say balance the budget this year, and you add in the people who say balance the budget in any of these next kind of reasonable horizons here, you do see a pretty solid group of the population. And like I said, there's kind of this conflating between economy and fiscal situation. If that remains, if that conflation, you know, continues to be the order of the day, people will be thinking this means good times are back for Alberta, and the economy will lead to electoral success. says.

Zain 1:26:12

Corey, I'm going to stick with you. We're going to do some predicting. Corey, we're going to do some predicting. Carter, I know you're, oh yeah, this is exciting. Corey Hogan, will Jean Charest run for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, yes or no?

Zain 1:26:26

Ooh, Stephen Carter. Stephen Carter, you know, you said you were back. You said you were fired from the campaign. We don't even know if the campaign took off. So you might have some insider but I'm willing to give you that insider advantage. Will Jean Charest run for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada?

Carter 1:26:45

Yes, he will. I know a lot about this campaign after the last episode,

Carter 1:26:52

episode, and I got to tell you,

Carter 1:26:55

they were quite a ways along, quite a ways along. I'm impressed.

Carter 1:26:59

I mean, I'd be more impressed if I was there, but whatever, whatever. Can't have it all. We're

Zain 1:27:04

We're going to leave this episode there. That's a wrap on episode 970 of The Strategist. Leave your five-star reviews for the five-star pledge drive. My name is Zane Velji with me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we will see you next time.

Carter 1:27:24

Sometimes when The Strategist podcast asks you to do things, we're joking. We're

Carter 1:27:28

We're messing around with you. With the five-star review, we actually need you to bring the five stars to the table. we bring our hot takes every every week sometimes weekly sometimes bi-weekly um bi-weekly in both senses of the word sometimes twice a week sometimes once every two weeks we do it all for you because this is the type of work that we do and we ask of only one thing one thing a five star review yes mention cory yes mention zane and of course mention me this is the only satisfaction satisfaction we get from doing this podcast. Give us a five-star review. It's super easy. Go to Spotify, go to Google, go to Apple, go to wherever you get your podcasts. Five-star reviews, really the only ones we look at are Apple's, but do it anyways. Okay. Thanks very much. And thanks for listening to The Strategist Podcast.

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