Transcript
Zain
0:02
This is Strategists episode 972. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, the verdict is in. The people have spoken. There's two things that the people love. The people love the nonsensical games that we play. How dare you call them nonsensical, Dan Arnold. And secondly, the people, they love the Patrick Brown content. Stephen Carter, this is no surprise to you. No,
Carter
0:24
No, I mean, I've often
Carter
0:26
often learned that Patrick Brown, you know, the whitest, most boring guy in the room is often the most popular. I found that myself. So, you know, people love me. I find
Corey
0:36
find it impossible to think you've ever been in a room with a whiter, more boring guy. No,
Carter
0:39
No, I know. That's why everybody comes up and talks to me. I don't understand it. It's kind of fun. I
Zain
0:43
I pretend you know anything. Corey, any surprises learning the two big lessons from our last episode?
Corey
0:49
Yeah, two big lessons is maybe when you're doing a new segment, start with like four doors instead of eight, just maybe for a time thing. Why?
Zain
0:56
Why? Why? I'm not asking for feedback. I'm asking for reaction. That's very different. If I wanted feedback, you could leave it on the Apple Podcasts app with a five-star review and just a gentle nudge of feedback, Corey. That's not, we don't do feedback here. We do reactions. actions i
Corey
1:11
i i tried to get you and steven to record it again the next night where we gave our opposite answers to each of them and ran that episode the same called a director's cut now
Corey
1:22
just for the record i
Zain
1:23
i was in yeah
Zain
1:24
yeah why would you need me you could have just pieced my track and just follow it along i mean it's you don't need me for that that's why i thought you guys were doing it and then when i seen saw nothing come out i was like a lot of work just absolutely
Zain
1:35
okay yeah carter I know you shy away from work. We've got a lot to talk about. We're going to focus the bulk of our attention to our home province here in Alberta. Let's make it to our first segment. Our first segment, making sense of all the horseshit. Oh, guys, there is so much going on. There is the price of oil. There is the Kenny Leadership Review. There is the early election rumor mill that keeps churning out more. Well, what does a rumor mill churn out generally? Heat? Noise? Electricity? It's turning out noise, heat, and electricity. But where should we start, guys? I want to start with, you know, perhaps going back a little bit to what has made this interesting, which is the budget and the price of oil. And Corey, you know, we are now seeing the price of oil in Alberta near record, if not at record highs. Give me your reflections on that from the political perspective that is Jason Kenney's survivability heading into April 9th.
Corey
2:33
well um the most obvious answer is it's good for it because it provides him both a balanced budget which is good for him and it provides money that you can then splash around not to mention even if you step outside of government land it means profits are up for a lot of oil and gas companies it it means all sorts of money is splashing around alberta in a way that it hasn't been for a few years here so price of oil short term pretty good uh for the province of alberta you You have, I mean, WCS, literally, literally two years ago, people
Corey
3:07
people would have paid you to take it if
Corey
3:08
if you were in Alberta. If you had the ability to take it, you could have actually charged them to do so. It's like garbage, right? Because that's what we do with garbage. We pay people to take away garbage.
Corey
3:19
Now, WCS is over $100 US a barrel. I mean, it's quite a wild turnaround and, you know, all good in the short term if you happen to be the government of Alberta. long
Corey
3:30
term maybe not so good because this will accelerate people looking for alternatives to oil and gas and obviously that was one of the one of the things that caused a lot of anxiety last time we saw wti around these numbers um but
Corey
3:42
but yeah i mean if you're if you're entirely focused on april 9th a
Corey
3:47
a high price of oil in the province of alberta doesn't offer a lot of downside although obviously if you hit the gas pumps and you see it at you know a buck 60 i think it was as i was driving here that's
Corey
3:56
that's um that's a problem garter
Zain
3:58
garter talk to me about the relationship cory's given to it given it to a straight right higher price of oil for kenny surplus
Zain
4:05
surplus budget equals good news heading into april 9th is it is it that do you agree that that's the basic sort of template here because then i want to kind of stress test it a bit well
Carter
4:14
well i'm not sure that i i do necessarily agree that it's the provincial
Carter
4:18
provincial budget moves on oil and gas so if you ever want to balance the provincial budget without incurring pain, then you have to hope and pray for high oil and gas prices. That has been the pattern that has existed since, you know, Peter Lougheed. And the Alberta advantage that Ralph Klein always talked about was a low tax environment offset with a high resource revenue environment. So if you want to be popular like Ralph Klein, who got 55% in his his last leadership review, then yes, you can, in fact, just count on high oil prices. And so maybe high oil prices will give him the requirement he needs on April the 9th. But high oil and gas prices in and of itself are not some sort of magic recipe for happiness within the province of Alberta. We have been unhappy before in booms when we don't think that we're being served properly. Alice in Redford, you know, barely hung on. And in 2012, we barely won that election over Danielle Smith, because people didn't like the way we were managing our oil and gas revenue. There are many, many challenges that come with having a balanced budget. Or so it's balanced now. But if we were to look into Corey's cracked crystal ball about where we're going to be moving in the future, one imagines a significant surplus in in the next budget that comes just before the election. And by significant, just to put just to put a frame around it, we're talking five to ten billion dollars or more or more because no one projected. So, this
Carter
5:56
this budget that we're working on right now is based approximately on $70 WTI, so West Texas Intermediate. And Corey mentioned WCS, which is Western Canada Select. These are the different types of product that you can buy and sell. Western Canada Select is not as good a product. What
Carter
6:13
What are you going to do?
Corey
6:16
close enough. They're reference barrels. Like, oil is different. Oil is going to have different levels of sulfur. So we talk about how sweet or sour it is, and oil is going to have different gravity, API gravity. We talk about it in terms of light or heavy. And so WCS is the price of a barrel that's pretty heavy and pretty sour in Hardesty, Alberta. WTI is a barrel that's pretty light and pretty sweet in Cushing, Oklahoma. So like there's – There's
Carter
6:42
There's big differences between the products, but they're the same product, right?
Zain
6:46
I want to talk to you about if the product has an impact in this leadership review. Here's where I was trying to get to with this question after getting your initial comments, which is we've often talked about how for many heading into April 9th, the date of Jason Kenney's leadership review, viability will be for his ongoing leadership will probably be based on a couple of metrics. And you guys have brought up polls quite often. Has he bottomed out and is he rising in the polls? Does he sense that we're now going up? The question I have is, does this recent budget and the associated price of oil, which are interlinked, right, to be very clear, are interlinked for our listeners across the country in many ways, does that override things like the polls? Does that override things like the membership counts? Like, how good is this news for Jason Kenney is what I'm trying to get to. And maybe I'll kind of throw a double barrel question here, oil pun intended, which is, if you are wanting to replace Jason Kenney, if you are someone who's thinking about it, flirting with it, and you're going to see that this surplus may be bigger, that these macroeconomic conditions may just go on, is it now a great time to get rid of them? You can back yourself into the same, quote unquote, good economy that he might have as a gift on the back end of this review. So I wanted to get that sense. How good of news is this? And then let's talk about the alternatives from the political side. Corey, I'll let you take a stab at that first. Yeah,
Corey
8:02
Yeah, I would say not good enough. One of the challenges Jason Kenney has in terms of the narrative around the balanced budget is that oil has now gone so high, like, you know, just through the stratosphere. I
Corey
8:13
was looking at some of the, you know, outside of market hour pricing that we have right now.
Corey
8:17
It's totally mental. I mean, we may very well be hitting the highest prices of oil before the end of the week that we've seen and in kind of like not, you
Corey
8:27
adjusted terms, but maybe even adjusted terms here.
Corey
8:30
That doesn't help him so much. In some ways, he almost needs oil to be a little lower, like $80, $90 a barrel where people are like, yeah, no, maybe it's good leadership. Maybe it's good stewardship they got here. But it's so high
Corey
8:41
high into the stratosphere. Everybody understands that the price of oil is what's driving these good times. Right.
Zain
8:46
Right. So he doesn't want to get the credit for it in that
Corey
8:48
that sense. Yeah. It takes some of the credit away because we're all talking about the price of oil. Like if we weren't talking about the price of oil, he could have maybe seized a little bit more of that. The other problem is, and I mentioned this or hinted at this, was the gas pumps. It's much more expensive. Our bills, when we get our heating bills here in Alberta, most heating is done by natural gas. Well, that's also going to be something that people's eyes pop out of their head and say, what the fuck? How is this so expensive? And then cost of living becomes a consideration as well. And there is an NDP opposition that will very ably beat them to death on the cost of living arguments, right? Which is, I think, why Jason Kenney has made some comments about looking for ways to reduce the price of gasoline for Albertans over the next bit here. Carter,
Zain
9:32
Carter, talk to me about Corey's statement here, which is he says it's not good enough. If it was kind of lower, he might be getting credit for it entirely rather than us just, you know, all rushing towards the macro trends and the global issue that is oil supply and pricing. pricing how good is the news for jason kenney on the record high prices of oil well
Carter
9:52
well i mean it's it's great if if employment was going up i mean i think that there's there's all of these different metrics that have to move up at the same time uh people aren't really that interested in the price of royal i mean if the prices of oil is directly related to how much money i make then i love and i will follow the price of oil and that has been the past in canada in alberta if you were a person working at tim hortons in fort mcmurray and the price of oil went up you were going to do better your job security was better you were you know you could have a job on the side you know like the people driving buses and and making you know six figures or driving big
Carter
10:28
big trucks those are still gone though right this is not something that is happening we're not seeing that massive uh rebound and investment in people so there's still nine percent unemployment in calgary i
Carter
10:40
i think it's eight and a half or something like that in edmonton these are big numbers of unemployment and i imagine that if
Carter
10:47
if you link the
Carter
10:48
the downturn in oil to the ndp and the upturn in oil to the ucp then that may offer opportunities for you um you know but i'm not sure that every alberta voter is there right now because the alberta voters are looking at this and saying what how does this you know we're
Carter
11:05
we're now now seeing a pattern and that is that the world the world is dictating to us what's going to happen in our oil and gas industry we're not dictating to the world at least i'm hoping that they're there you
Corey
11:16
you want to jump in cory yeah i mean i'm always sort of the case here's i agree with what steven said i just think that there's going to be a leg and that leg works to the benefit of of jason kenney and the ucp government you know in good times the price of oil was high oil is high therefore good times is what a lot of people will assume until proven otherwise and the proving Otherwise, we'll take some time, right? Because you do expect a bit of a lag between price of oil and these things coming back. Are they going to come back in the same way?
Corey
11:43
Most evidence suggests probably not.
Corey
11:46
for about a year, you might kid yourself, it's just around the corner. So, you know, that that does actually, I think, work to Jason Kenney's benefit.
Zain
11:54
want to talk about a couple of numbers here. So now that we've talked about oil, I want to talk about a few other numbers and see how they have a factor in what is going to be a date that many politicos and even observers of politics are going to circle on the calendar, which is April 9th, the date of Jason Kenney's leadership. And Carter, the first number I want to start with, and
Zain
12:10
and this is where you can take your victory lap, is 50% plus one. Earlier this week, when asked by a reporter what the threshold for victory was, Jason Kenney said, and I'm paraphrasing here, in a democracy, it's 50% plus one. I think we, you both, I shouldn't say we three, but you both had stated that that is more than likely the bar he was going to go with. Still the right move, flashing forward a month from when we'd recorded that last podcast. Do you agree with what Jason Kenney did, setting the bar, well, so low for himself?
Carter
12:38
Absolutely. He needed to set the bar so low. What he did not do, which we recommended, was to tie it to the new constitution, you know, to the constitution that was just recently agreed to by the members of the party. This is the members' party, and I will always respect the members' wishes. The members chose 50% plus one to be their threshold. I'm going to abide by that because I think that that's in the best interest of the party, and that's what the members wanted. They easily could have set it at 65, 68, 78. It could have been any of those numbers. They chose 50% plus one because in our party, we respect democracy. democracy. He skipped that part, and he just did the 50% plus one is the rules, and I'm going to follow the rules. Kind of a weak moment for him, because I think that he could have done it a lot better. But I'm still going to take the victory
Carter
13:27
victory lap and say that it was us who put him there.
Zain
13:30
Corey, one more second before I come to you. Carter, what else would have made it better? You said attaching it to the Constitution. If this is the number you're going to go, he did it in a presser, if I'm not mistaken, where he was asked a question by someone. one would you tell me about the tactical execution of something like this of setting the frame from strength despite it maybe not being a strong point what else would you have done the
Carter
13:49
the very next day i think and cory will correct me if i'm wrong but i think the very next day it was announced that there was 2900 people already signed up for the uh the april 9th uh leadership um vote and i i would have said if i were jason kenney i would have said uh it's 50 plus one and i'm really excited about the 3000 plus people that have already been signed up. Um, because what happened is he said 50% plus one, which made him look weak. And then the next day out came 2,900 people, which made him look weak and,
Carter
14:19
and, and, you know, uh, bright, you know, bright scholars think that maybe he may not get over 35%, uh, in the, in the leadership. And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not in the predictions game. I'm in the advice game.
Carter
14:33
So, but I'm not going to predict how this is going to end. But I'll tell you something.
Carter
14:40
There's going to be a shit ton of people in Red Deer. It's going to be an exciting day.
Zain
14:44
This is a good time to mention we're not going to predict how this is going to end. Brought to you by Flair Airlines. Corey, next question for you. Not brought by Flair Airlines. Corey, 50% plus one. Is that right? Is that still right, I guess, right? And then let's get into the nitty gritty of how he did it. And the second number I was going to throw on the table for you guys was 2,900, which was the membership or the amount of people registered. But, Corey, go back to 50% plus one. Let's talk about that. What could have made it better? Was it still the right number? Then let's talk about all the ramifications of what 2,900 could mean as we jump into perhaps the speculation game a bit. I
Corey
15:17
mean, it's fine. What other number could he possibly give? Would he possibly give? it's not it's not something where you're going to set a bar higher for yourself that you need to jump over because you're going to want to be able to adjust like let's just say he said it was 65 and then he gets 64 well of course he's going to stick around at 64 except he just killed himself by by saying that it had to be 65 previously so i think even leaders who understand that they need more than a bare majority of their party in order to ably govern would just give the number 50 plus plus one so as much as i love taking superfluous victory lapses i mean this is not credit to us this is the obvious public
Corey
15:54
answer to get cory
Carter
15:56
did you forget the first rule of our podcast that's
Corey
15:58
that's right so i'm glad that we were able to provide sage advice once again heated by you know some powerful people uh this is exactly why our sponsors get such good return on their investments thank you uh yeah
Zain
16:11
thank you cory uh that was that was a better as scripted as scripted i appreciate cory second hold on not done go ahead oh jesus christ wow
Zain
16:20
the uh wow way to try to take control of the podcast as if it's like okay
Zain
16:24
okay go ahead whatever i'm
Corey
16:25
i'm this close to muting
Corey
16:25
muting you i just want
Zain
16:26
want you to know this close trust me and the listeners probably feel the same go ahead uh
Corey
16:30
uh the uh so that is the public number right the question i have is what is his private number like is he privately saying 50 plus one is what he needs because the globe and mail reported in january that kenny's government senior officials said that internally they believed anything below 65 was a failure right now if that's their internal target and
Corey
16:51
and it hasn't changed that's one thing but if their internal target has similarly changed to 50 plus one that tells you a lot about what's going on as we start marching towards april april 9th you
Zain
17:01
you know i'll actually skip the 2900 stuff for now because i want to talk about uh april 9th and beyond what what that kind of could look like, right? Before we talk about what 2,900 members might lead to in terms of an outcome, Carter, let's say he does get 50% plus one. Let's just throw out a number. Let's say he gets 55. Yeah.
Zain
17:21
What happens when he gets 55? What can he do that he can't today? Will it be declared a victory? Give me the mechanics of what happens. Like, does this team try to spin it as a victory? Does the other side feel discontent? Is there just like pandemonium? Let's say it hits 55. I'm just throwing it out there. I want to play that scenario out. The leader wins by his stated threshold by a couple of points. What the heck happens from there? He's
Carter
17:43
He's already told us. He's already told us. And what he's told us is that if he loses the confidence of the House, then he is prepared to go into an election. As the premier, he is the one who walks into the vice regal's office. The family
Carter
18:00
family office, yeah. As the vice son, you should be rather familiar with this. but the the vice regal's office and says you know i'm i'm prepared to um i i need you know i've lost the confidence of the house and i need a government uh i need an election and then you know the the lieutenant governor has some choices to make not many um because you know there's there's historical precedent for most of these situations but this would be a relatively unprecedented situation where um you know the caucus doesn't sort it out itself and the and the and the party doesn't sort it out itself. And I'll put it in historical context. When Alison Redford lost basically the confidence of her caucus in 2014, she very easily could have, you
Carter
18:46
stayed on as premier. She is the premier. There is no process, you know, she has to step down from that or face a vote of non-confidence. If she'd faced a vote of non-confidence and then called an election, you know, she could have done that. And that's what is being threatened by Jason Kenney. So
Carter
19:04
I find that fascinating. I think that that's an amazing action for him to even speak aloud. But that's what he's saying. If he loses confidence of the House after April the 9th, then he's going to go to an election. I'm not sure that's true. I think that that's a threat. But 55, if I were advising him, I would say, you know, 55, you know, it's not enough. enough. Ralph Klein couldn't stick with 55. You've got to go. And you ain't no Ralph Klein, sir. So that would be my advice. But I'm not sure where the number is, Zane. You picked 55. I'm not sure if you'd pick 58 if I would have said the same thing. It's really one of those challenging numbers.
Zain
19:46
Yeah, Corey, it's like an art, not science. But explain to me what you think happens when Leadership Review, April, all these members come in. We'll talk about the volume of members in a second that show up he gets 55 you know
Zain
19:58
know what ends up happening like just walk me through the next steps here he still premier right yeah
Zain
20:04
yeah at that point yeah
Corey
20:05
yeah he's 55 he passed the review he's not just premier he's party leader okay and he will say well that's great it's done uh despite some very difficult years of governing having to make some tough decisions that i know we're not always popular but i know we're the right ones uh i'm glad we have this matter resolved and now we We go forward united as one party towards the next election. And I think Stephen's right when he talks about this
Corey
20:30
comment that the premier made that, well,
Corey
20:35
well, if he doesn't have confidence in the House, that could precipitate an early election. Because ultimately, look,
Corey
20:40
look, a lot of people are acting as though this is a threat for what he might do in advance of a leadership review. And I don't actually buy that. I mean, if that's true, it's next level wild. You're
Zain
20:50
You're talking about an early election call, just to be clear.
Corey
20:51
clear. I believe the early election call is exactly what Stephen said. I think he's foreshadowing what the expectation is of his caucus after this leadership review, should he come out of it on the other side. It's
Corey
21:01
I'm not putting up with this shit anymore. If you guys want to start bouncing to different caucuses and whatnot, we'll go to an early election and that will be the end of your political career. Might be mine too, but we're done with this. And that's my sense of where that's coming from. I feel that those comments were somewhat over-interpreted. Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, like, what, it's Sunday, March 6th at 9 p.m. Mountain Time. Maybe within a day, I'll be like, well, that was dumb of me to say, right? You know, maybe your mother-in-law is getting a call tomorrow. Zane, who the hell knows? But my sense is what he's saying is I'm not going to put up with any more of this internal stuff. And the final chain that I've got to yank is yours. And we will go to an election if this continues. news carter
Zain
21:42
carter i want to talk about the possibility of an election prior to leadership review but i'll park that for a second because i want to do a bit more scenario planning guys
Zain
21:49
guys what happens if he loses in
Zain
21:51
in red deer let's say it's below 50 plus one a the question is doesn't matter what number it is or is a loss a loss a loss a loss is a loss okay so let's just start with the loss let's just pick a random number 48 yeah
Zain
22:03
stephen carter he gets 48 he loses the leadership review walk me through the next steps here like just like layman like walk me through what happens here and where Where there are points of divergence or uncertainty in terms of the next steps here? Because I think this is a fascinating exercise to learn from and to see what may or may not happen on the heels of a premier losing a leadership review.
Carter
22:24
Yeah, well, it's important to keep in mind this is not the premier's process.
Carter
22:27
process. This is the party's process, right?
Corey
22:29
right? Party leader. Right.
Carter
22:31
Right. So the party would then make a decision. The
Carter
22:35
The party would then have to begin a leadership process. This is what it actually launches. It does not necessarily mean that Jason Kenney needs to step down as leader in
Carter
22:46
in the interim. There's been times when the lame duck leader sticks, and there's been times when the lame duck leader leaves. We only need to look at what happened with Aaron O'Toole and Andrew Scheer at a federal level to see when the leader walks away. way um there are generally speaking if you're ousted in a leadership review or you're ousted by your caucus you walk that day you're walking the plank so it again i'm advising him i'm telling him if he loses that
Carter
23:15
that he walks up onto the stage and gives a concession speech about how great he how pleased he was to form um this this party how important it is to him and
Carter
23:25
and how the next party party leader will have is you know 100 support um in in beating the the cursed ndp right and um that will that would i would do it that day and then we'd look toward to an interim leader but that's the biggest undecided right
Carter
23:43
right the party process will commence that day they will have in their constitution a timeline for how quickly they can do and you know the the leadership how how long it must last, all of that's written into the Constitution. They don't really have much of an experience with it, ironically, because they are two parties that have come together. Each party has run their own leadership processes. I guess that this, you know, Jason did win the last one, which was their leadership process against Doug Schweitzer. And who am I missing? There was someone else. Anyways, Lukaszek. Was Lukaszek in that one? one.
Carter
24:19
Anyways, this would be the opportunity for them
Carter
24:24
them to jump into that leadership process right away. Again, that's not an unknown. It's just a matter of how long will it last? How much money will people have to raise? Those types of questions would be immediately asked and probably not immediately the answer is known.
Zain
24:41
Corey, he loses the leadership review. Walk me through what's next in your mind. Carter laid out a few points here around interim leader, the party already processed. He doesn't necessarily need to leave as leader right away. They could all kind of dictate it. But give me the action. What happens? We announce it on television, he has lost. What underneath the iceberg, so to speak, is going on at that moment when Jason Kenney loses a leadership review on April 9th?
Corey
25:03
This is one of those things where I guarantee you somebody's going to say, boy, I wish we were a little more clear when we wrote those bylaws, but who knew this was the situation we're going to do right away. And that's not a judgment on the bylaws. That's true. Every organization only looks at these things when these things occur. But one of the big ambiguities for me is, does
Corey
25:19
does he remain leader? Because what it says in their bylaws is it triggers a leadership election. It doesn't actually say necessarily
Corey
25:27
necessarily that he has to step down as leader, but there's a bunch of clauses that follow that imply that, yes, it's an automatic kind of stepping down as leader. So, you
Corey
25:34
you know, he may even be party leader for the next bit. He may be, for all intents and purposes, the interim leader as they select a new leader of their political party. What remains
Corey
25:47
remains the case, though, is that the actual architecture of government remains separate from this. So, you
Corey
25:54
know, in the simplest grade eight social studies terms, he is premier because he maintains the confidence of the House. He has the confidence of the House because there's the most members that support him in the House. And that can change, right? I mean, you could have a weird situation where the caucus says, actually, we don't have confidence in you. But you do that through voting non-confidence. And that's where we get into some weird situations, right? Right. Like, is the UCP going to vote? Is the UCP caucus going to vote non-confidence in their own premier, which would, you know, conventionally then trigger either an election or going to the leader of the opposition?
Corey
26:30
But, you know, there's there's gray. Like, you can go and say, like, OK, well, it looks like this person has the confidence of the House, so they will get the opportunity to. But if the caucus can't kind of come to a consensus, if Jason Kenney decides he wants to hold on and they don't want him to, things get really weird in a hurry.
Zain
26:46
Yeah, I want to talk about – go ahead. I
Corey
26:47
I think realistically what happens is leadership
Corey
26:52
leadership review gets called. I suspect Jason Kenney just decides to leave at this point, probably talks to the board and says, do you want me to stay on as interim leader? Because why the hell not? I mean, I don't know. Maybe he'll be mad and want to go. But whoever is the interim leader under the UCP bylaws can't
Corey
27:11
can't run for the full-time job. So one of the tricky things here is it's got to be somebody who's perceived as enough of an elder statesman, but
Corey
27:20
but it's somebody who doesn't have interest in that job in the first place.
Corey
27:24
It's tough with a new party.
Zain
27:25
Carter could – I'm going to ask all the elementary questions here. Could Jason Kenney, should he lose, run for leader again in a leadership contest? contest he
Carter
27:33
and it's one of the things that i am always shocked that these leaders don't do when they when they win 55 you know like you know or they win 70 of the vote okay call the leadership reveal let's go or
Carter
27:45
or let's you know if because i need to put behind me the idea that these guys are going to come after me but now the experience with this is joe clark calling the leadership and then running against brian maroney after he got his uh 66 percent in in 1983
Carter
27:59
1983 i think And so everybody after that's been like, well, no. But you also had to realize that Brian
Carter
28:05
Brian Mulrooney was organizing against Joe Clark for a long time to get to that place.
Carter
28:11
Anyways, I think you should probably, you know, he should run. He should consider running. You know, he's the person who put this party together. There's a lot of upside for him, but he may not be willing to do that.
Zain
28:27
Corey, you want to jump in on that? If he loses, could he run again? Yeah,
Corey
28:30
Yeah, yeah, for sure he can. And we've talked about this in different contexts. But one of the interesting things about our system of government, which is kind of this hybrid of the traditional British system and the American system with primaries and all of that, and even, you know, it's just constantly evolving, I guess is what I would say. The way we elect leaders and way we depose of them is very different. And that asymmetry allows each side a lot of very interesting strategic options. So if you are Jason Kenney and you believe in a one member, one vote, anybody can show up context, you've got a better chance. Well,
Corey
29:02
Well, then there you go. You just go and say, yes, I actually don't believe that this is a very representative delegation and I'm going to run again. I only got, I got 49.8% of the vote or whatever it ends up being. I know I started by saying a loss is a loss, but if it's really close, this is a choice that you've got. But big
Corey
29:19
big caveat here, Jason Kenney also controlled the board, which chose the leadership review rule. So if he believed that was the most advantageous system for him, I suspect we'd already be using that system for the leadership review. Good point. Because that's certainly possible. And, you know, on the other hand, when you have a new leader, and that's a popularly elected leader, but it's delegates who then get to review it, you
Corey
29:42
can have interesting strategic choices the other way. In Jason Kenney's case here, though, I think knowing that he got to pick the most advantageous means for him and that he would still lose, I don't know why he would then go to a leadership contest because, you know, unless the ground has changed so fundamentally since he made that initial calculation or if he decides that calculation was wrong, it just seems like a way to lose bigger. I'm
Zain
30:06
I'm going to, guys, put you on strategy teams, one person per team. It's only a three-person podcast. Corey, you're Team Kenny. You're helping Jason Kenney in this situation. Carter, you're Team Rebels slash Team Anti-Kenny. Good. 2,900 members that we know from recent reporting in the Calgary Herald and Don Braid saying that is the amount of people that have signed up.
Zain
30:24
Who does this benefit? Team Carter, who's helping the Rebels, or Team Corey, who's helping Jason Kenney? What do you think, Carter? Is this good for your side? Can we just use, like, Kenny's name instead of Team Corey? No,
Carter
30:34
No, I think Team Corey.
Zain
30:37
Sorry, Team Corey Kenny. We'll go with Team Corey Kenny and
Zain
30:41
Team Carter Rebels. Yeah, sorry. We'll just do that.
Carter
30:42
Carter the Rebels. I think it helps. I think that
Carter
30:45
that that type of ground swell is more on the Rebel side. 2,900 people going to – I mean, that's a big number, and it's just going to get bigger. Can you contextualize
Zain
30:56
big that number is? I think it's important for people to understand how many folks show up to some of these. 2,900 registering.
Carter
31:02
Yeah, I'm trying to remember how many people were registered for like the Redford one. Like, I think it was, you know, in the 2000s, but that was at the end. And to get people to that number was really hard. I mean, to put things in perspective, there's not been an NDP event that big. There's not been like, this is big. I'm not sure it's as big as the biggest stuff that, you know, Ralph Klein was overseeing in the heyday, or Peter Lougheed. You know what? It would be bigger than Peter Lougheed because Peter Lougheed, everything was delegated.
Carter
31:35
So in the one-member, one-vote era, this might be one of the biggest events we've seen. I stand to be corrected, but I'm also projecting it forward because people tend to sign up for these things much
Carter
31:51
much closer to the deadline. I mean, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Why is that, Carter? Why is that, Carter? I don't know. I mean, why do people buy tickets for live shows at the last minute? Why do people, you know? I was just, I
Zain
32:02
I guess the question in there was, do they sense that it's going one way? And if they sense that larger numbers mean more to defeat Kenny, that they're like, oh shit, this is possible. Let me jump on board situation. No,
Carter
32:13
No, I think this is just human nature to the extreme. I mean, some of that might come when you're
Carter
32:19
you're in the room, because
Carter
32:21
because people will change what their intended outcome was. If they sense that it's moving the other way, they will change their vote just to be on the winning side. There is a massive voter
Carter
32:31
voter intention thing that happens where people will vote for the perceived winner a lot. So if things are looking bad, Kenny could fall off a cliff. But if things look close, he could win by more than he thinks, right? So
Zain
32:48
around. That's interesting. Team Jason, Corey, Kenny. What is 2
Zain
32:54
2,900? Yeah, what does 2,900 mean to you and your crew? Is this bad news?
Corey
32:59
I can tell you what it means to me looking outside. Sure,
Corey
33:03
Just kind of breaking
Corey
33:04
breaking the kayfabe here for a minute.
Corey
33:07
2,900 was surprisingly big from the outside, especially with a couple of weeks to go here. And especially when you start seeing some projects forward of 6,000 plus showing up to vote in this thing.
Corey
33:20
For all of the reasons Stephen said, people do tend to show up to these things. You know, they make the decisions to spend that $100 and go to that event late. It's kind of like how we have this live show on April 10th we haven't announced yet. And we know that those tickets are all going to be sold on that weekend before they show up.
Zain
33:35
Yeah, and we'll announce it in due time, but yeah. Yeah,
Corey
33:37
Yeah, and so when we see the numbers that we see with weeks to go before the deadline to go to Red Deer, I mean, people get busy. They're not necessarily 100% sure they're going to go to Red Deer unless they are, right? right? Unless they're like, oh, I'm for sure getting my ass there. And, you know, I had a bit of a little tweet thread about this the other day, but there's a couple of other numbers, I think, that need some context. So Carter's given you some on the top end, like, is this a big event? Yeah, for sure this is a big event. I can't talk
Corey
34:04
talk about what was going on in the 80s with Lougheed, but, you know, 3,000 people projecting forward to maybe 6,000 or more. Massive, massive political event in the province of Alberta, right? Especially knowing that you have to spend $100 dollars to do this it's not exactly like it's just anybody shows up and gets to vote here right
Corey
34:23
context for you at the annual general meeting of the ucp in november where
Corey
34:28
where jason kenney did whip a bit of vote to try to get out to get an outcome he wanted an outcome which by the way would have avoided this
Corey
34:34
this this very thing that we're talking about this this special general meeting of the party to do a leadership review um 600
Corey
34:41
600 people showed up party-wide and jason kenney had about about 350 of the votes there a couple
Corey
34:47
couple things right just to sort of minimize i'm not saying there's only 350 jason kenney votes in the province one is going to a party convention that's a time commitment right that's even more than just driving to red deer and voting for most people that's that's a that's your weekend and and that takes a certain level of information as well you might not feel very comfortable being in a room voting for everything if you're just like like, you know, driven by rage and know one thing about one issue. And it was more expensive. I think it was $350, $400, something like that.
Corey
35:19
that vote, the big vote, was pretty early in the agenda, and
Corey
35:23
and Kenny was paying for it, or supporters of Kenny, organizers were paying for it. So it doesn't make me think that there's thousands of people that can be whipped to get to that vote necessarily, right?
Corey
35:36
Could for sure be wrong. There's
Carter
35:37
There's one thing that we don't know that they do know, and
Carter
35:40
and that is they know what they've got. They
Carter
35:43
They know who they've put in the room. They know who they've signed up. Jason Kenney and his organizing team have a list of X number of people, and they know of those 2,900 where they're sitting. and maybe they're sitting at 2,000 and they're laughing their asses off at us. But if
Carter
36:01
if they're sitting at 1,200,
Carter
36:04
there's a lot of nervous people trying to figure out how to get it to the numbers they need it to get to.
Corey
36:09
Yeah. The other thing I would say is we've talked about this in terms of registrations, but if these registrations are being covered by somebody else, that is in no means a guarantee of a vote. Yeah,
Zain
36:19
Yeah, that they're showing up.
Corey
36:21
Yeah, because that's still a drive to Red Deer for many people. well, that's an hour and a half from Calgary, an hour and a half from Edmonton. And then, you know, the same to go back home.
Corey
36:29
And it's very easy to put somebody's name on a list and say, hey, hey, you're going to go do this? Yeah, sure, I'll go do this, right? So that's also unclear to me. And for those reasons, Zane, I would say that in general, when you talk about the ability to out-organize somebody at a convention, my
Corey
36:45
my strong belief is the bigger the number, the less likely you can actually call it to organization, right? Now, some people might say, maybe he's just awesome. Maybe he's getting thousands of people there.
Corey
36:55
Yeah. But Occam's razor, maybe people just want to show up. And if it's people showing up, um,
Corey
37:00
um, that suggests that that's probably not like a pro status quo group because people tend to be driven by frustration, rage for these things. Uh, and that would not bode well, uh, for the, the Kenny camp. So, you
Corey
37:12
you know, from the outside, I would say 2,900 at this point looks, looks pretty surprising. Doesn't seem to bode well for jason kenney but carter's right maybe they got a list of 2700 and they're they think this is all hilarious who knows back
Zain
37:26
back to forum guys we were back to back to playing each other's roles carter you are on the rebel team we use the miser technique on the show uh carter you're you're on the rebel team um how are you using 2900 how are you and what sort of public communications are you doing right now to spin to your advantage are you downplaying the number are you are you you talking the media through what this could mean? Are you leaning into potential leadership replacements? Like, what are you trying to do right now with about a month to go with some of the dribs and drabs that you have? Let's say this number is good for you. Let's just go with that assumption. What are you trying to do by showcasing the numbers, showcasing the size? What is your communications and outward strategy right now, Carter?
Carter
38:09
I think what we would say, what I would would say is we don't know who all these people are so we we think we're doing really well we think we're winning but i need we need we need 500 more people this week i need i need a thousand more people by the end of the weekend publicly you're gonna start saying this stuff not publicly i'm calling people i'm calling people and i'm saying you got have you registered i don't see your name on the list yet but i need you to i need you to register we need to um like right now i've I've seen Jason Kenney organize, right? I've seen all the kids come off the buses from the Catholic private schools in rural Alberta. I've seen, you know, I've seen them attack, you know, Sandra Jansen. If, you know, Jason Kenney can organize big numbers. So if I'm on Team Rebel, I'm making telephone calls saying we are behind. We are, but we're in it. We are 100 votes back. We can totally get ahead of this thing. We need the numbers to be 6,000 if we're going to be able to compete because that guy can pull 3,000 votes minimum. So we need to get at least our 3,000 people there as well.
Zain
39:14
Corey, what are you doing if you're on Team Kenny?
Corey
39:19
Well, I'm doing what I think Stephen should have been doing, which is saying it's close, right? It's close. We know that we've got basically every extreme interest in this province trying to drum everybody up with whatever lies and whatever fictions they can come up with that suggest that this province would be better if we took a hard right tack away from where the you know where albertans are and where the middle is um but listen we know that that that way leads to ruin so you you've got a choice give up three hours on a weekend or lose your party lose your province lose this economic recovery that we've built uh
Corey
39:51
uh and that should be an easy one and by the way the one thing you're not going to be asked to give up is a hundred dollars because we'll cover that this is important we can get you there we'll drive there if you need cory
Zain
40:01
cory are you are you doing new members stuff is this persuasion generally what are you thinking of as as as a kenny crew right here knowing that should this 2900 number be leaning more towards your your opponents plural i
Corey
40:15
i i'm going first and foremost to list the people who supported me in the past this is not that far removed since i know the pc leadership since
Corey
40:23
since the vote on the merger but
Corey
40:25
but you you know, the useful list as well since the vote for the UCP leadership since the election.
Corey
40:30
You want to be not spending a lot of time getting somebody who was not on your radar on your radar and then getting them to Red Deer. You want to find the people who supported you and you want to be working out through your list of supporters from the, let's call them ones to fives, one very soft supporter, five diehard. They would, you know, walk over coals for Jason Kenney. Start with the fives, get every bloody five there, then start getting the fours and start start getting the threes, you know, work your data sciences hard to make sure you're not accidentally dragging people who have no interest, because the last thing you want to do is pay for the registration of someone who's going to come vote against you. But, you know, you've got ways to do that. But the idea here is not to bring in a whole new universe, it is to get the band back
Zain
41:11
back together. Carter, talk to me about messaging from your perspective. There's two things that I think Jason Kenney has in the messaging quiver that he's been putting out. And let's be clear, he's publicly campaigning for this, right? Things have been lining up, both on timing and on message. But two things I want you to address as leader of the official rebel opposition, which is number one, he's characterizing this as a moderate conservative himself versus a far right. Curious to get your take on that messaging. And number two, he's talking about the economic growth under his watch. How are you undermining both of those points?
Carter
41:46
I would say that this isn't about economic performance. It's not about any, you know, any minor uptick that's been caused by external factors. I mean, sure, COVID was an external factor. Yes, this is an external factor with the oil price. That doesn't matter how big the external factors are. What matters is how will we respond to them. And Jason Kenney cannot respond to them. I mean, there's been 18 months of polls, 18 months of polls back to back to back to back to back with the UCP in second.
Carter
42:17
This is the end. It's over. We have no choice but to
Carter
42:23
to prepare for an election. It has to happen within the next year. And we need to make sure that we're ready for it. We need a new leader who can take us to that place. Because Jason Kenney, it doesn't matter what the circumstances are, he can't take us to the victory.
Zain
42:37
Corey, are you funding a poll if your team Jason Kenney to indicate that you have indeed bottomed out weeks ago, and it's now an upward trajectory?
Corey
42:45
You bet. I'm running probably 20 polls so I can get that one out of 20. That shows that?
Zain
42:50
Yeah, yeah. But talk to
Zain
42:51
about that. That's a strategy that's used quite often by political factions and political leadership.
Corey
42:56
Yeah. And what I suspect they have is no shortage of numbers, and they're just deciding whether it's advantageous to release them or not. Because the numbers need to support a story. It's got to support a narrative. And you've got to be careful because a poll that says we're not losing by as much is maybe not very helpful for you in the narrative.
Corey
43:14
Probably some of this is polling that's in a defensive nature, because if a poll came out that showed you perhaps doing even worse for some reason or whatnot, you want to be able to stomp on top of it and say, nope, that's not the case, right? In a perfect world, if you had a poll that showed the UCP back in the lead, then for sure you're going to find a way to get that out in some way, shape or form and say, yeah, see, happy times are here again. But there's
Corey
43:36
there's no shortage of tactics there. I just do wonder what
Corey
43:40
what the limit of tactics is, is an environment like this. Tell me about that. That's an interesting concept.
Corey
43:45
Well, because we've been talking a lot about this air war, right? And Jason Kenney's now got this budget. And Jason Kenney, maybe he's going to have some polling he can drop. Got some positioning statements. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.
Corey
43:57
Is that really what's going to play this out? I mean, the thing that I always, you know, there's a chart that we used to have back in our old consulting days when the three of us worked together. Actually, just you and me, Zane, because Carter had been fired by then. So we were able to. Doesn't
Zain
44:13
don't recall. But yeah, yeah.
Corey
44:15
But the idea is the more you've thought about something, the harder it is to move an opinion,
Corey
44:21
right? And the diehards who show up here and have these really kind of intense antipathies towards Jason Kenney or this intense love for Jason Kenney, do
Corey
44:32
do we really think that a well-crafted message is going to just make them say, well, my worldview was wrong. Well, fuck that, I guess. I mean, that's just not how human beings work. human beings double down they they find the reason why it's actually bullshit or just messaging and all of that what has been determined by the kenny camp is they wanted to go into that kind of higher intensity environment with a higher threshold but the downside of that higher threshold is speeches on the convention floor aren't gonna do shit yeah
Corey
44:59
these are people showing up in red deer to do one thing they're waiting for the vote and
Corey
45:03
they're not gonna show up in red deer and then say oh you you know what?
Corey
45:08
I guess I just totally am the opposite of who I was 30 minutes ago because I saw some nice words on a screen that said, Alberta forward adventure or whatever the fuck they are, right? Like that just doesn't happen. Carter,
Zain
45:20
Carter, actually, that's a really interesting point. Take me to the day of April 9th. Is that strictly a mobilization and make sure like GeoTV effort? Or is there any sort of persuasion? I mean, the weekend will be focused on persuasion, ironically right speeches commentary like i'm assuming video highlight reels like the leader will speak we'll have the general metrics of the leader speaking how many people sit on their hands but what do you what are you looking for in terms of april 9th for you from a raw political organizing sense is it strict activation mobilization ensure people got out yeah
Carter
45:52
yeah i think that that's all it is i mean i i think i disagree a little bit with cory's um you know there won't be a lot of mind changing, but I don't think it'll be changing by message. I think it'll be changing on peer to peer relationships. So you're going to show up and you're going to walk in the door and you're going to see Fred. And you haven't seen Fred for four years. And you move your cane a little bit and he moves his cane a little bit. You start walking over to one another and you try and hug and then Fred falls over. But Fred picks himself up because he's agile at 90.
Carter
46:25
And he says, you know i'm you know i cannot believe we are here to do this and i'm like yeah i agree i can't believe we're here to do this either and he and fred says i'm i i am putting my knife in the back of this jason kenney fellow and and maybe i go oh shit fred i didn't know you were like that you
Carter
46:40
you know i was gonna vote for jason that
Carter
46:44
but it's peer-to-peer relationships that change people's minds you know cory's quick overview you guys lost some leadership when i left h and k and uh weren't
Carter
46:55
weren't able to pull it all together the
Carter
46:56
same way. I didn't want to call
Zain
46:57
call him out. Yeah, no, thanks. Yeah,
Carter
46:59
you know, the way that this does change is peer-to-peer relationships. And there will be, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people running into each other and saying, yeah,
Carter
47:08
yeah, yeah, I'm doing this. And there may be some unexpected moves and that might move a few people. I don't think it'll be massive. I don't think it'll be the primary thing, but it will move. If everybody that you're talking to is against Kenny, it will be a pile on. Like I said earlier, or if everybody they talk to is for Kenny, it will lift him a little bit. But we're talking margins. I
Corey
47:31
I think that that is true.
Corey
47:32
Yes, because I'm right. The people element will have an effect. But I think it's far, far less true in a special general meeting with one thing on the agenda context than it would be at an AGM. You know, you're not going to have the hospitality suites and the, you know, heart-to-heart talks in the evening about like, hey, you know, Fred, do you remember 50 years ago when you and me were on the LawHeat campaign and how great that was? Well, those were our principles then and these are our principles now. And let's stay to those principles and both vote the same way. Like that, there's no opportunity for that in this particular setting.
Zain
48:05
Talk to me about the early election. Carter, I'll go to you on this. Do you agree with Corey's analysis that the early election is a post-leadership review mechanism for Kenney and not a pre? Or do you think there is merit to the pre-leadership review, call the trigger, finest justification election call? I'm curious to get your thoughts on this.
Carter
48:24
There are only two times for an early election. So there's three election times in my mind. The first is immediately after when he loses. Like if he wins the leadership, you hear 55% examples and it's probably the best one. 55% Jason Kenney wins he still loses some people who essentially walk to the other side of the house, they lose a confidence vote, they immediately go into an election. That is one I could see I don't think it's high probability the higher probability early election is that a new leader is selected in June, the new leader or July or whenever the hell they pick it and then the new leader says I was not elected, I need need a mandate and they ride that that significant piece and sometime in september october we have another election and then of course the third most and and the most likely in my mind election time is the uh is the the set date in in april of 2020 2020 whatever it is three four to three
Carter
49:24
i don't know what year is it now like we've been doing time is standing still
Zain
49:28
It's standing still and moving away. Carter, Flair Airlines. Corey, for you.
Zain
49:34
good. I just like. That's
Carter
49:35
That's very nicely done. That's good. Yeah. You're amazing. I know. Thank
Carter
49:38
you. You're amazing. Yeah.
Zain
49:39
Corey, what door are you stuck? Corey, with the early
Zain
49:44
early election call, I want to actually tease this out. If I were to force you in a position to write Jason Kenney's justification to go in two weeks, what
Zain
49:52
what would it be? If the rumor mill around the – I'm going to lose in April 9th. Shit's about to happen. I need to protect myself. It's kind of a kamikaze election. Maybe you might disagree. But let's just say you could not convince him otherwise. He's like, fuck it.
Zain
50:08
Corey, we're going to the polls. I need you to write my justification in terms of why we're going to the polls. What are you putting together for Jason Kenney in terms of why he's trying to go to the polls prior to his leadership review?
Corey
50:19
need two things to do this, right? Right. You need to create as high of stakes as possible, which justifies needing to know where people stand, whether they're with you or against. You need to create a situation where there's enough noise that where people stand is in question in a way that is material. Right. So I guess I would be looking in in a couple of different ponds here. One would be perhaps on anything
Corey
50:47
anything with the federal government, because you can say, we are about to go into some big, heavy conversations with the federal government. I can only have success with that in a negotiation context if I have evidence that this house is behind me. So I need a vote of this house that says that I have the support of the house, right? And I expect it to be unanimous from my side of the caucus, or else there's just no point in doing this, right? Right. Really try to raise the stakes even beyond kind of a literal confidence vote, I think, but make it exclusively about confidence in Jason Kenney's leadership. Right. All of these clouds over this, how ambiguous this is, you know, this leadership review, which, you know, is in the future. Like all of this impedes me from being able to do the things I need to do for Alberta. And the higher you can make the stakes on those things for Alberta, the better. I think some stuff around pipelines would be him going back to a well he's gone to many, many times. if you want to talk about negotiating the end of RCMP providing provincial policing perhaps that becomes one if you want to talk about an Alberta pension plan perhaps that becomes one I think those two are perhaps too unpopular to go into a general election on though so my suspicion is it would have to be something that was more universally
Corey
52:00
universally loved but would somehow still trigger people the wrong way. Carter
Zain
52:04
Carter you're signed for a one-day contract to help Corey out what are you adding Adding to the justification for an early election call prior to April 9th. Let's say Kenny says, listen, I need the best rationale I can have. You guys are going to give it to me. Build on what Corey said right here, Carter. What are you adding to the mix? Or what are you wiping and ripping that page and saying, I'm writing my own page? What are you doing for your justification for an early election call if you're Jason Kenny? Kenny?
Carter
52:28
I'm probably just going to, we could not have had a more dynamic
Carter
52:35
dynamic shift in ever. And I think, you know, that's probably how I'd put it. This has been the most dynamic shift in Alberta history. We have gone from a $20 billion deficit to what could be a $10 billion surplus. We must have an election. We must discuss what we, I need the electorate to tell me where to go. and that's you know
Carter
52:59
know this this budget is so different than anybody expected i'm pleased for it but we need the we need the world to feed we need albertans to to give
Carter
53:07
give us an answer that's that's how i'd phrase it yeah
Corey
53:10
yeah but you need an excuse for now and not one month from now and i think that's the thing that makes
Carter
53:15
makes it hard like i don't know that's
Corey
53:17
that's what that's why i actually don't think it's very likely that we're going to see something like this happen because
Corey
53:21
because if it looks too crass and too calculating i mean you're toast and you might be toast in a way where literally everybody goes somewhere else and just says screw you jason and then you
Corey
53:31
you know as crazy as it sounds a new party shows up within four days and even though it's in the red it's all of a sudden there's a new potential premiere in the mix here so cory
Zain
53:39
cory talk to me about the post april 9th version you guys have teased teased it a little bit but talk to me about how that mechanically works with the steps in there and like where it's a little murky in some ways in terms of how that that could essentially go so let's say he gets that 55 there's discontent within caucus people are like Like, come on, like, what the hell? What do we do from here? He's trying to, like, assert power, say I won. Walk me through the steps of how an election could be triggered there on after.
Corey
54:05
Well, I think that one's a lot easier. Because, again, I don't even know in that context whether you need a formal vote of the House. You just need enough noise in your caucus that Jason Kenney can go to the LG and say, I
Corey
54:19
I need the confidence of the House. I'm not 100% confident I have it. in in public you can say i have the confidence of my party which has just been proven here uh so we're going to get a new a
Zain
54:30
new legislature here yeah
Corey
54:31
yeah for me it's pretty simple it's it's basically he talks to caucus and says i'm not putting up with any of this anymore you know we've we've gone through two
Corey
54:40
two years of backroom dealings cloak and dagger people trying to run leadership contests they lost by proxy through individuals in this room and i'm willing to let let bygones be bygones. I'm willing to forgive.
Corey
54:52
But I am not willing to put up with this for another minute.
Corey
54:56
And if this starts again, I'm telling you right now, we
Corey
54:59
we will be going to the polls, I will not be signing your papers. And
Corey
55:03
And we will be getting a new caucus here, one that can stand by the membership of this party that just supported me for leader on April 9. Is
Zain
55:11
Is there a pathway where the
Zain
55:13
the caucus votes on confidence in its own government, but that we don't go to an election that they that they still have the upper hand of keeping government cory yeah
Zain
55:22
yeah i mean i this is now
Carter
55:24
now you're getting this is wild there are there are
Corey
55:26
are people i mean i'm asking advice advice for
Zain
55:28
for the family office yeah uh i mean yeah
Corey
55:30
first yeah well trust me get real advice uh there is uh there is definitely a possibility of that because ultimately
Corey
55:39
would be really interesting isn't
Carter
55:41
isn't it isn't the lg supposed to go to the leader of the the opposition the king
Corey
55:45
king bing affair yeah like it's like it's there's a really interesting thing that would happen here and i'm not actually sure what would occur but the
Corey
55:51
the idea would be if you
Corey
55:53
you know in this scenario there's a vote of non-confidence right and then you go to the leader of the opposition and you say do you think you can create a government and if the leader of the opposition says no well the
Corey
56:03
the cleanest thing is just sort of to go to an election but if you've got another group of people saying hold on we got we
Corey
56:08
we got 50 seats right here we think we can be government Within the UCP more than likely. Yeah, within the UCP caucus. But
Carter
56:13
how do they have that conversation? The conversation is supposed to be had from the leaders of the parties.
Carter
56:19
You know, and there is no, hi, we're UCP number two.
Carter
56:23
They're not actually, they don't have the standing to sit in front of the LG. Well,
Corey
56:28
Well, look, I'm just going to say right now, this is kind of, I guarantee you there are precedents of this somewhere within the Westminster system. I don't necessarily know what it is, but it's not unheard of that you would all of a sudden have a compromised government come out of nowhere. Or, you know, when you think about the Queen and you think about UK politics saying, I think this person, like maybe Churchill, for example, can put together a government, right? Like there are mechanisms to go outside of the party leader.
Carter
56:51
leader. I think that without a leader for the UCP, right, because there won't be a new leader.
Carter
56:57
I think that, you
Carter
56:59
you know, if if that is not if there's not a new leader, then the next thing is the, you
Carter
57:07
know, the got to go to an election. I think that you have to, if you were the LG, you
Carter
57:12
know, and Zane's closer to the LG than most, but if you were the LG, then the answer needs to be, I
Carter
57:20
I talked to the premier, to the leader of the government, and I talked to the leader of the opposition. If neither of them feel that they can have the confidence of the House, I go to an election.
Zain
57:29
Corey, round us out here.
Corey
57:30
Yeah, I'm less sure of that, but that's also why the government pays for all those fancy lawyers. So we're
Zain
57:35
we're going to leave that segment there, move it on to our final segment, our over, under and our lightning round. And with a new mini segment called Sweet Nothing, Stephen Carter, we're going to start with you. We're going to we're going to ask you to do a sweet, sweet nothing. You know what that is, Carter? It's where you whisper a piece of strategic advice into the ear of one of the following leaders as they head into their week. It just gives them a little bit of a boost, a little bit of a moral compass. Did we
Carter
57:59
we try this at Valentine's Day and didn't we have to cut the segment? This feels similar. It got sexual very quickly. Okay, let's try again. We
Zain
58:07
We lost a sponsor for a reason, Carter, but we're going to keep with it. You're whispering in one Justin Trudeau's ear. What's his strategy for the week? He's contending a lot. Give him some strategic advice. It's sweet. It is nothing in the sense that he's paying nothing for it. Stephen Carter, what are you telling Justin Trudeau?
Carter
58:26
don't worry about people who tell you you're not good enough. You are. Focus on the Ukraine. Focus on the big picture. You can do this.
Zain
58:36
That's very nice, Carter. A little too sweet, I suspect. Corey Hogan, I'm going to go with you for our next one. Pierre Polyevra, what are you whispering into the ear of the conservative frontrunner in a one-person race, the knife fighter known as Pierre Polyevra? What sweet, sweet nothing are you whispering in his ear? as his moral strategic compass for the week.
Corey
58:55
You say your campaign is about wanting to be prime minister, kind
Corey
58:59
kind of jumping the party leader. That's fine. I can get behind that. I understand that.
Corey
59:03
But remember, your campaign is not to be a
Corey
59:07
And the idea that you would bring forward some of these things to win the leadership that might damage you severely in a general, I mean, these are unnecessary. Ask yourself what it takes to win both races, not just the one that's most immediately in front of you oh
Zain
59:23
oh nicely done cory i'm gonna stick with you for our next one jugmeet singh what are you whispering to jugmeet singh what sweet sweet nothing piece of advice nothing being how much he paid for it is he getting from one cory hogan
Corey
59:37
hey jugmeet i kind of forgot you existed for about a month here
Corey
59:44
you doing man it's
Zain
59:46
it's good that's good these are nice little voice notes that we're leaving. Stephen Carter, end us off with a voice note from your previous boss, your former boss, Jean Charest. What sweet, sweet nothing, what WhatsApp voice note are you leaving for Jean Charest today? Please don't make it personal, but if you need to, please make it personal.
Carter
1:00:07
Jean, remember me? I'm here for you. Call me and I will tell you how to beat Pierre. are the you meeting skippy is in everyone's best interest do not fuck this up well
Zain
1:00:22
well we'll move it to the next question here cory overrated underrated 2900 members signing up thus far for the ucp um for the ucp leadership review in april overrated or underrated if you're on jason kenny's team
Corey
1:00:41
the bigger the pool, the less you're able to organize around it. And it's just going to be the will of the party. And the limited inputs we have as to what the will of the party is are not good for Jason Kenney. Carter,
Zain
1:00:52
Carter, overrated, underrated, 2,900 members thus far for the leadership review for Jason Kenney.
Carter
1:00:58
For Jason Kenney, I think it's underrated.
Carter
1:01:01
underrated. I think that this is a big challenge for him. I think it's – that was the thing that I paid the most attention to. It wasn't the 50% plus one statement that he made that was expected. It was the 2,900 people already that caused my ears to perk up.
Zain
1:01:17
Carter, so on scale of 1 to 10, the scale does start at 1, what do you give Jason Kenney for his strategy and message on saying that ending global dependence on conflict oil is essential for international peace. Alberta can be part of that solution as he subtweets and talks about the crisis in Ukraine, many calling it opportunistic, others saying this is exactly what we need. What would you give Jason Kenney on a one to 10 scale for the strategy to come out ham fistedly about conflict oil and lean into his long term narrative that he's been talking about reethical oil?
Carter
1:01:47
Yeah, I mean, it's a total fail. I mean, it's tone deaf, total F, you know, A total F for tone deaf. It didn't make sense. He's such an asshole. Things are going great for you. Things are just going great. Why are you putting the knife in everybody else's back? This is going to turn too. Corey mentioned it at the beginning. What's good for Alberta today leads towards things being worse for Alberta in a shorter term. Germany is talking about a 15-year ramp up on its removal of fossil fuels. fuels. We're going to see car companies moving. You know, they were 2030, they were trying to sell more electric vehicles than fossil fuels. Watch that shift. Watch that shift to 2028, 2027. We're going to see massive shifting. And I'm not just saying that with confirmation bias, because Corey and I both want to have an electric vehicle.
Zain
1:02:46
Corey, lay it on me. On a scale of 1 to 10, can you strategy of calling out conflict oil oil in the midst of the the war in Ukraine?
Corey
1:02:56
Well, it's all about the most domestic of domestic politics. It's about leadership politics. It's about party politics. It's not even about the province. And when you consider it through the lens of that audience, it makes sense. If you want to consider it through the lens of kind of common sense, the general Canadian public, something like that. Yeah, I mean, it's really it's not helpful for a couple of different reasons here. It's never been that clear to me that it's a particularly realistic idea that we were going to ship oil across the continent to the east, incurring those shipping costs, then upgrade it at a refinery in
Corey
1:03:33
in New Brunswick, and then put it on a boat and then take it across the ocean. I mean, that's a pretty complicated flow. It seems more likely that it would stay on the continent, it would offset oil elsewhere.
Corey
1:03:45
And all of this would take years and years and years. I guess That's the thing I want to underline here. So when we talk about the immediate crisis, none of this is going to help. None of this is going to help in any way, shape, or form. And so I think that's why people say it's opportunistic. Now, if
Corey
1:03:59
you had a time machine and we had built a bunch of redundant infrastructure all across this continent to move oil, would that help right now?
Corey
1:04:07
Probably still not. Like, you know, I don't think Europe was ever a big market under consideration for us. So it doesn't even feel like Monday morning quarterbacking. It just feels like trying to shoehorn your issue into somebody else's issue. And the common thread is oil, sure. But when you look at the complexities of all of this, you could build
Corey
1:04:25
build a world that would allow us to backstop Europe's fossil fuel needs. But why ever would you in a free market, I guess? And so, like, I don't know. Now I'm just sort of sputtering here. But that's my other thing. Like, you can do these kinds of plans, or you can have a free market. But you can't have both. Like,
Corey
1:04:44
Like, choose. Choose, right? Right. Corey,
Zain
1:04:46
Corey, I'm going to go to you for our final question, then, of course, to Stephen. Corey, real estate in this country is expensive. We know that. But nothing, nothing sometimes is better than a good deal. And I think I've got a good deal for you. It is an island property, two-floor, on a location called Kenny Island. And Corey, this particular cabana, I mean, beautiful views. You purchase now, Sunday, March 6th. I can give you possession Possession, maybe on March, no, April 10th is when I can give you possession. April 10th. Now, I don't know if anything's happening on the 9th, but April 10th, I can give you possession. Corey, are you putting the money down today on this extreme value that you can buy on Kenny Island with possession date being April 10th? Are you buying yes or no?
Corey
1:05:35
I think it would really depend on the price, but probably not. i it's tough to see from the outside what the hell's going on in a party contest always but there's a few things we know and i'll recap them because we talked about most of them on this show here one 2,900 people have signed up two last time the ucp got together 600 showed up and jason kenney got 350 of them three
Corey
1:05:59
three uh polls are showing that jason kenney is not popular including amongst his own membership. So knowing only those things, I have no reason to believe that the odds are in Jason Kenney's favor. Now, absolutely
Corey
1:06:13
absolutely possible that I've called this entirely wrong.
Corey
1:06:16
But I'm not going to be putting down that investment. I'm still trying to pay off my O2 old real estate. So Carter,
Zain
1:06:22
Carter, they say the best real estate investments are made from the gut.
Zain
1:06:26
They're made from the gut. They're made from the heart. Stephen Carter, this is a beautiful property. property. Two floors, rarely do you get two floors, generally bungalow style properties. Kenny Island, you buy today, I give it to you on April 10th. Are you in?
Carter
1:06:38
me tell you something. I didn't buy O'Toole Island. And then the moment I started saying that O'Toole Island might have value, it was wiped out by a hurricane.
Carter
1:06:51
So no, no, I will not be buying real estate on on kenny island i'm finding all real estate on islands to be very very tricky right now i will be staying uh maybe maybe a short-term rental on kenny island i might be interested um but more like a vrbo for a week which tells you also how old i am because i'm not ever going to call it verbo okay and i'm not going to airbnb there you go thank
Zain
1:07:17
thank you carter we'll leave it there that's a wrap on episode 972 of the strategist my name is zane velgey with me As always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we will see you next time.