Episode 973: Brian Jean Charest

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 973. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, we are back. It

Zain 0:10

It is Wednesday. You know, many people don't know this. We actually retired over the weekend. Yeah. And then we decided there's a lot of unfinished business. We spent about a good two days with our families. And we said, you know, we said, we said, fuck this. We said,

Zain 0:23

we have a lot of unfinished business on the pod. So we're

Corey 0:28

we're wearing a suit right now i think he mistook this for his bail hearing yeah

Zain 0:34

why are you wearing a suit carter uh

Carter 0:36

uh i have to get a job so i have

Carter 0:40

have to look good did

Zain 0:44

it's an audio medium that if there's any prospective employer i

Carter 0:47

i was trying to get a job before this and it's cold in the basement so i'll you know because heather won't turn on the heat because i haven't got a job so you know like it's it's a fucking vicious circle comedy

Corey 0:58

comes from truth it's

Zain 0:59

it's you know we we are a charitable bunch carter we will give you a couple of seconds of air time to make the steven carter pitch uh if you'd like to uh at the top we know this moment right now on the pod is when the most amount of people will be listening steven carter the experience is vast the campaigns legendary steven carter the pitch for employment oh

Carter 1:21

oh fuck i don't want anybody to listen to this podcast to hire me like

Carter 1:25

like that would be the worst no don't hire no i don't i'm not desperate yet thank you for listening to the podcast it's

Zain 1:35

it's good thanks carter thanks no worries thanks for being a team player putting it back on us but we are indeed cory back on the field just like tom brady uh just like flare airlines back on the field uh guys let's

Carter 1:47

move it on to our first segment

Zain 1:50

Did I just make... Actually, I just realized what I said there. I'll let

Zain 1:53

you move on to our first...

Carter 1:54

first... It's really good. Our first

Zain 1:56

first segment, the People's Republic of Alberta. Yes, indeed. Let's cover all things Alberta. There's so many things to cover. I want to do this in quasi-rapid-fire format. It's not going to be like the lightning round, but I'll try to get through this quickly. So I'm going to throw a couple things at you. I want to get your hot takes. We'll go back and forth. I'll call time. We'll move on. It'll be like that show, Corey, you always wanted to invent for television. vision part of the interruption for politics we're going to try it here uh first thing steven carter brian jean he's now in 63 of the vote in fort mcmurray uh his first message when getting interviewed effectively and i'm going to paraphrase here fuck you jason kenny steven carter thoughts about brian jean his win now inside the ucp when brian jean is back yeah

Carter 2:40

yeah i mean if he'd been kicked out of the caucus that would have been spectacular um you know but i mean the the premier you know Premier Kenny has had people disrespecting him from inside his caucus almost from day one. I mean, it took two and a half years to get rid of Drew Barnes. So if it takes two and a half years to get rid of Brian Jeaton, well, I'm sure there'll be a new leader. So maybe it'll all work out.

Zain 3:02

Corey, anything surprising in his victory, either the percentage of how big he won by, how quickly he has not even pivoted, but how aggressively he's talking about Jason Kenny. And then, of course, he's on every media outlet today trying to sell UCP memberships. I think anyone who had a radio program or a TV program, he was there trying to slog more UCP memberships. Thoughts on Brian Jean's win last night?

Corey 3:26

Yeah, I don't think anything about it is remotely shocking. And I think the reaction to it as a result is surprising to me. People are really updating their priors an awful lot for the most predictable event in the world. Brian Jean won in Fort McMurray with a big majority. Stop the fucking presses. But, you know, the reality is it is now spitting out this narrative that is unhelpful to Jason Kenney. Hilarious, because again, of course, this was going to happen. Predictable, yes. The predictability of it also brings me back to what in the world was Jason Kenney thinking letting him run in the first place?

Carter 4:03

He couldn't not, Corey. I mean, he had to let him run. We're back. We're back.

Zain 4:08

back. back we're back to six months ago excellent carter

Carter 4:12

carter are you gonna choose the same side

Carter 4:14

yeah i mean he well he had to let him run period no story yes he did grassroots guarantee i sent you the graphics 36 yeah

Corey 4:23

yeah and it was well the grassroots guarantee was about policy created by the grassroots not i'm gonna have somebody openly insubordinate running for me and i'm happily gonna sign his papers so cory

Zain 4:33

cory any reflection from your perspective now seeing seeing that Gene is in, he's sticking with this message that he had throughout his by-election race. Now that he's in the tent, any benefit for Kenny? Like, any upside for Kenny now that Brian Gene is in his party with three weeks to go to April 9th, which will be the second topic I want to hit in a second here?

Corey 4:53

Yeah, I mean, I guess if there's enough knives in your back, your death is short. So that's about it.

Zain 5:00

That's pretty good. Suit-wearing Stephen Carter, any retort?

Carter 5:04

um it's just a jacket it's not a suit i'm wearing jeans with it so um any retort no i mean

Carter 5:11

there this is exactly what was expected to happen and it has happened so no

Carter 5:16

no upside no downside it just is what it is so

Corey 5:18

so let's talk about let's go ahead cory well i was going to say this is a pattern that we've identified of jason kenney where he'll do the thing that wins him the moment yeah it looks great i'm a champion of the grassroots guarantee i'm so happy to let brian and gene a guy who wants to rat fuck me every day of the week except sunday when he's busy double rat fucking me i'm gonna let him run and yeah okay you look like the big man then but now you're the small man today i like there's not a lot of reason to allow this situation to occur the way it did eight

Zain 5:48

eight rat fucks a week guys let's move it on

Zain 6:05

carter are you gonna get any employment with this podcast is it possible no we're

Carter 6:10

we're gonna have to monetize we

Carter 6:12

we have to monetize Guys, there's no question.

Zain 6:18

Let's talk about the membership sales.

Zain 6:19

Rumors, rumors about, right? Several thousand, 8,000, 9,000, 10,000, who knows? And who knows in which direction? But both of you have kind of staked your claim in terms of what the momentum, the conversation, the rumor mill heading into April 9th looks like for Jason Kenney. Stephen Carter, are you changing course from your perspective? And remind me of your perspective. Were you with Team Corey who said, Kenny's going down, or are you on the other side here, and where do you stand now?

Carter 6:49

I was with Corey, and I had a moment of weakness where I thought, you know, maybe these numbers are getting so big that there has to be organization behind them. Behind the

Zain 6:59

the premier, you mean? Right.

Carter 7:00

Right. So the idea is that the numbers are so large, someone must be out there organizing. And then I'm reminded that the numbers are so large, there is no one who can organize this big. If Jason Kenney has organized, I mean, right now, the last number I heard that I think was— Can you hold off on that point? I just want you to

Zain 7:18

to repeat that point. That's a really interesting take. So say it one more time, just so I'm clear. You're saying that the numbers you thought were so large that they're being organized, but now that they're too large to actually be organized? Explain that.

Carter 7:29

There's a limit on our skills as political organizers. And we need things to—essentially, it's the equivalent of going viral, right?

Carter 7:36

right? You need things to go viral in order to pull people into your little adventures. And so when we're looking at something that's relatively small, and it's very easy for us to organize something that's relatively small, as it grows a little bit bigger, it's the equivalent of saying, well, we'll have a little house party. We'll call over a couple of friends. It's just going to be a dinner party. And then, you know what? Let's make it a real party. We'll invite everybody over for the Super Bowl. And then there's the, oh, my God, everybody from my high school crashed my party party. And that is out of your control. It's gone viral. And I think that this is where we are with this leadership where, you know, and the experience I have with this is watching Alison Redford, Ed Stelmack, when they're 78 percent, you know, their approvals. that was organized, that was coordinated. Even Brian Mulroney, when he organized and coordinated against Joe Clark, only got 34% of the vote, right? So organizing and pushing and coordinating these numbers feels to me like it's beyond organizers'

Carter 8:40

organizers' skill. This has now gone to virality, and virality is very difficult to predict. I suspect that most things go viral for negative reasons. I suspect this is the same thing here. It's gone viral for a negative reason.

Zain 8:54

Corey, react to that. And are you doubling down where your head is at in terms of or where your heart might be at? Because we actually don't really know some of these numbers. We just know some of the reporting and some of the speculation. Are you sticking with your position? Are you altering your position with what you might be sensing, you know, might happen three weeks from now? Yeah,

Corey 9:12

Yeah, I think you were almost doing me a favor, making me sound more definitive about it than I was last week. I'm probably as definitive as you've said now,

Corey 9:21

as we've gotten a few more data points. But last week, I was heavy on hedge. I was saying, well, we don't know what kind of data is out there. We're not really sure how much the Premier's office or people around the Premier, probably better put, are organizing these numbers out. Oh, 3,500 was a big number, but now we're hearing numbers, 8

Corey 9:39

8,000, expecting 10,000, you know, big, big numbers. And to Stephen's point, it

Corey 9:45

it somewhat strains credulity that that's been organized out. I mean, even think about just the sheer dollars involved. Assume half of them are youth votes, right? Assume half of them are youth votes. That's still $750,000 of registration fees. if if that is money that they have that's that's probably more money than you would sort of expect for them to have at hand and if that is money they didn't have and they encourage people to part with it then

Corey 10:12

then you would see much better fundraising numbers for the UCP in the past couple of years than you have right like there's just not the sense that there's that kind of money

Corey 10:20

money in a grassroots sense available to Jason Kenney and the number is just so strikingly large the other thing is i just don't understand well

Corey 10:31

well this is a detour but i don't understand what they're going to do with all of these people in red deer at this point my mind breaks on the logistics yeah

Corey 10:38

how are they all going to show up and this

Corey 10:41

this is a recipe for a clusterfuck and if it is nobody's

Corey 10:45

nobody's going to trust the result no matter what it is if it ends up half of these people can't vote because they had to park three counties over and hitchhike into the hotel i mean what is is going to happen here. The throughput in a hall you need for 10,000 people is a little mind-boggling. People tend to discount just how many people that is, but that's a significant number. That's a fire code and ballroom was broken decades ago kind of number. And I'm not sure. I'm not sure what that means. I need

Zain 11:15

guys about this particular point. So logistics Logistics and legitimacy.

Zain 11:21

Carter, get me your reactions on that. Is there, and I hate to look at it because, you know, we talk about this on

Zain 11:27

on the heels and during a broader conversation on democratic fragility, but from a political strategy perspective, there will be people there that will want to poison the well, one way or another. Not going well for you, call the results in question. What's your escape hatch? Look at the logistics. They're a clusterfuck. Talk to me about that in terms of a political party. how they prepare for a legitimate outcome if the logistics are looking freaking damning for them. Like, as Corey mentioned, perhaps near impossible, like 10,000 people fitting into a venue, if

Zain 12:01

if it does indeed look like that. Carter, your thoughts on that? And Corey, I want to come back to you on this as well for further reflections.

Carter 12:08

I mean, Corey's right. This has the recipe for disaster. faster. If it is somehow miraculously pulled out of the fire and people are able to park, like the way you would have to do this, if you were organizing 10,000 people, you would essentially need to be doing the parking. So

Carter 12:26

So you've got to manage the parking in and out. You've got to manage everybody going into the space. You've got to then manage getting everybody back out of the space and moving their cars so the next people can come in. This is going to be a logistics nightmare. And if it takes people two and three and four hours to vote, and if you start seeing reports on Twitter and

Carter 12:46

and Facebook that people couldn't vote because they couldn't get there, then

Carter 12:50

then regardless of the outcome, it's going to be suspect.

Carter 12:53

And that's not an issue if it's kind of like 35% for

Carter 12:57

for the rebels or 35% for Kenny. That's not a problem. If it's 55-45, that is a problem. And that's where people will start to spin it. And I know even with Alison Redford, when she got 78 percent, people were saying that it was fixed by the party because it was the same numbers as Ed Stelmack, like they wouldn't fix it, like 82. Like, are you crazy? Like, yeah, we're going to fix it to the exact same fucking numbers, Ed Stelmack. Don't think stupid thoughts. Try and think smart thoughts. And, you know, so it's hard for people, Zane, you have to help them. So I think that this, if it's close, yeah, there could be some people who were on the other side of the voting that aren't going to be able to vote because of logistics. And it's going to cast a cloud over this whole process.

Zain 13:46

Corey, with a potential cloud being cast, how are you looking at this if you're, for example, one of the sides? I know that the rebel side is splintered in many subgroups, but are you calling this, are you mentioning it early? Are you talking about how are you kind of pre-programming, telegraphing that this is indeed going to be a clusterfuck, but also is simultaneously legitimate? Like, how do you do both of those things?

Corey 14:12

Well, you say there's been overwhelming demand and we need people to be patient and you're going to have to park in a big field at Westerner Park and you're going to have to take a shuttle in or you're going to have to walk or whatever

Corey 14:23

whatever it is. But

Corey 14:25

you've got to manage expectations in advance that this thing is going to be bloody messy. But 10

Corey 14:30

10,000 people is a lot. It's a lot, a lot. Just imagine any polling station in this country.

Corey 14:37

You don't have 10,000 people there on election day. And just imagine every polling station you've ever been to.

Corey 14:43

If it's during a busy time, you're going to wait. And this is compressing it into a smaller period of time than a polling station has available to them. So I am really curious to see how they deal with this. If it feels like it's going to go truly, truly off the rails, in

Corey 15:00

in a rational universe, I think you would start planning additional

Corey 15:03

additional polling stations, polling places. You would start maybe even thinking about, do

Corey 15:08

do you have online options? I don't think there's interest or appetite for that.

Corey 15:13

The other thing that I would be wondering if I were Jason Kenney, and this is a legitimate thing

Corey 15:19

thing I would be thinking, I feel, is once

Corey 15:22

once I get a handle on this, And if I get the sense I'm going to lose because these numbers are really big and once the list is secure, I'm sure they'll be calling around and figuring out exactly where they are once the cutoff is, I should say.

Corey 15:34

Well, then why would I let this go forward at all? Like I would just resign ahead of time because I don't want the last thing people to remember is me going down in absolute chaos and fistfights in parking lots in Red Deer.

Zain 15:46

Let's dig into that. I know I wanted to go quasi rapid fire, but I need to dig into the Kenny War Room strategy. But before I do that, I need to ask both of you this question. You know, when we had this conversation, I forget when Kenny and his team and the party set these rules, but we ultimately said, you know, these are designed for his success. Carter, let's

Zain 16:05

let's accept the virality argument that you put on the table, right? Could this

Zain 16:10

this virality of people's determination, of people's overwhelming desire perhaps to be there, to mark an X against him, in terms of what we might be sensing, could this be as a direct result of that bar that Kenny set in his favor, neatly kind of contoured for his circumstances and his desired result? Do you feel like this could be a bit of backlash against that? Talk to me about that from your perspective.

Carter 16:40

You know, I'm not sure that that's what it is.

Carter 16:45

It may be a back. I know that the Kenny team's doing phoning today. There's a number of reports of it on Twitter. It may be just kind of the whole picture, right? Maybe it's the whole picture of saying, yeah, I don't like this guy. I'm not a big fan of this guy. I'm not going to be, you know, you know,

Carter 17:04

know, but I don't think it's the specifics of 50% plus one. I think it's more just the whole picture of it creating a negative taste in people's mouths. And

Zain 17:13

And when I say the rules, I mean show up to Red Deer in person, pay your fee, there's no online component, right? Like all the things that we thought would be logistical challenges seems to have now produced a number that if correct, or even in the ballpark of being correct, could be the largest political gathering in this province's history. Yeah,

Carter 17:34

I think that, you

Carter 17:37

know, I don't know what to think, Zane. I mean, you're asking me something

Carter 17:42

if you were asking me how many people will show up at this thing,

Carter 17:48

We're well past twice that, aiming towards three times that. So we're outside of my expertise. We're outside of my experience. I've never organized. I mean, sure, the virality of the election day, I've seen that, right? Right. Like I've seen, you know, election days that flip for us and flip against me, you know, my candidates. Right. I've seen that type of virality on a regular basis every time there's an election. But to

Carter 18:14

to see something like this outside of the normal scope of an election, this is a big thing. I mean, when you say outside of the normal

Zain 18:20

normal scope, you mean like because people were putting quite literally like a commitment of travel, membership, et cetera. Is that what you mean? Is that why it's weird to you? Yeah,

Carter 18:28

Yeah, it's not an election. I mean, when was the last time we saw a 10,000 person protest?

Carter 18:34

Like, we went to the NDP swearing in in 2015. You remember that? And there was like 4,000 people in front of the legislation or legislature. That was huge. And I would say, I don't think I'm being overly generous or overly pessimistic. That was about 4,000 people. That was one of the largest political gatherings I think I've ever been a part of.

Carter 18:54

Corey, have you thought of anything that's bigger than that?

Corey 18:58

There were a couple of extinction rebellion protests in Edmonton in 2018, 2019 that were big, but I don't think they were 10,000 big.

Carter 19:07

This could be the biggest political event, period, in

Zain 19:13

Of the century, as Brian Jean would say. Corey, your reflections on Kenny's rule setting, the high bar he set for people to come, is there a backlash there potentially that could be one of the resultant factors of some of the numbers we might be seeing?

Zain 19:27

I know I'm adding speculation on speculation, but here we are.

Corey 19:30

Yeah, it's a turducken of speculation for sure. There is something to the fact that when you make it seem egregiously counterbalanced or balanced towards your side, that that actually becomes a proof point for why you got to get rid of the guy. And it becomes another thing that people say, well, we're not going to let him get away with that.

Corey 19:48

I'm not sure that's the prime driver here, but it is an interesting point because the logistical challenges were assumed by many, including us, to be his opponent's problem. at the start here yes

Corey 19:59

now it appears it might be his right in a couple of different contexts first is that you've now got to out organize like

Corey 20:07

like a huge number of people and you've got to get them over that hurdle of wanting to show up and you've got some angry intense opponents who are going to come hell or high water show up in red deer maybe you would have better luck with a broader vote where you would be able to to go and find kind of the moderate conservative who says don't love the guy But hey, we're at a deficit. Hey, everything's looking a little bit better now. Why don't we go? And then the other thing is, if anything goes wrong,

Corey 20:32

he is the premier, he is the party leader, and he's going to be blamed for it. So it's quite an interesting turnabout here. And it's one of these things that seems almost karmic in a certain context. But it's not really that. I mean, it's just an underestimation of how many people would show up. I have to believe it's an underestimation.

Corey 20:53

It's a lot of rumors out there right now. It's a lot of gossip. I'm not really in the business of reporting it, but I will say there is a bit of a consensus that there is a lot of people who are showing up who were not party members before, right?

Corey 21:06

right? Like big, we're talking into the four figures, a couple thousand is what it's approaching here of people who just had no previous membership in this organization. and as you know i would assume also some of the successor or predecessor organizations

Corey 21:23

they don't know what to do with that everything i'm hearing is they think wow that's a little alarming not really sure what to do with that so uh when you're just talking about a chunk like that that you cannot account for what

Corey 21:34

what do you do like what do you say and uh and i imagine it's uh some dark times right now uh even if let's just assume maybe he's in a better position than and perhaps we're all giving credit for,

Corey 21:48

definitely getting the sense they don't know that. Like, they're in the full fog of war. There is not a lot of confidence going into

Zain 21:54

Carter, it's 9 p.m. We're recording right now on this Wednesday. Let's enter the Jason Kenney War Room. So they have better clarity than we do.

Zain 22:02

Corey has proposed a solution that said, listen, if this is leading to inevitable defeat,

Zain 22:10

do you just pull the plug? What considerations are you throwing in on a Wednesday night night war room with team kenny right now let's say these numbers are somewhere in the neighborhood of what we've heard speculated um what

Zain 22:23

what do you suspect and

Zain 22:25

and what would you advocate for some of the key considerations of conversation if you are a part of that war room conversation tonight carter what are you throwing on the table and why well

Carter 22:35

well i mean i'm going to

Zain 22:36

to come to you for this as well there's

Carter 22:37

there's only been a couple of examples of people really getting routed um

Carter 22:40

um in the leadership I think Thomas Mulcair was the worst. The NDP have done it a couple of times, I think, where they've routed the previous leader in the leadership review. We

Carter 22:51

We haven't seen it really in the conservative world. I mean, the worst performer has been Ralph Klein when he got 55 percent and stepped down immediately thereafter. So

Carter 23:05

history seems to be on his side. So that argument that I made about virality, if

Carter 23:09

if you're in the Kenny War Room, you might be spinning yourself that the virality is positive for you, that

Carter 23:15

that you could be reaching a different conclusion than the virality, you know, than what, you

Carter 23:19

you know, Corey and I have reached, right? So there's

Carter 23:24

outcomes. You win or you lose, right? Forget

Carter 23:28

Forget about the tie or the perceived tie outcome just for now.

Carter 23:33

You may as well play the game and

Carter 23:36

see how it ends up. I mean, still, we're three weeks away.

Carter 23:41

Maybe this thing turns around.

Carter 23:43

You know, three and a half weeks, maybe the virality is on your side. I mean, maybe the telephone calls are being made right now. You're being able to get huge voter identification. But if you're not, if the way if you're calling every delegate and you're finding out that you're getting 25, 35, 45 percent IDs, then you've got to put resignation on the table. And

Carter 24:06

And resignation is just an immediate negotiation with Cynthia Moore, the party president, and major

Carter 24:12

major factions. But the party controls this. So it would be very interesting because he could go to Cynthia Moore and say, I have decided I'm going to step down on January the 1st, 2023.

Carter 24:26

Ergo, we do not need to proceed with the leadership review on the 9th because you've already received my resignation. And that might be perfectly allowed under the Constitution.

Carter 24:36

So, that would be where I would, I'd probably be pushing for something like that rather than an immediate resignation.

Zain 24:42

You hear Carter make those remarks in the Kenny nine o'clock war room, Microsoft Teams call. Are you yes anding or are you counterpointing what you've heard Stephen just say?

Corey 24:53

a little of both. First off, one of the things that Stephen brought up, maybe indirectly, maybe accidentally, but he said Mulcair got routed. Mulcair did not get routed. Mulcair got 48% of the vote, which is 2% lower than the bar that Jason Kenney has set for himself, right? right?

Corey 25:11

What Mulcair did, though, is also he said 70% was what he thought he needed to stay on. So, you know, a part of this is the expectation games.

Corey 25:20

A true routing may occur here. Like, I'm not going to say that with any confidence, but it's quite possible that if the numbers are really out of hand, that's the situation you find yourself in. And so, you

Corey 25:31

you know, I think you've got to kind of keep it on the table. But one of the interesting things about that conversation, and And I've been on big campaigns that have had to have that conversation. Maybe this is the time to pull the plug, you know, especially when you think about it in municipal context. Often the consideration is vote

Corey 25:48

vote splitting and who could potentially benefit or who could potentially be the mayor if you don't make that choice or things like that. It is fucking tough, but it's tough in content. And it's also tough to know the moment because there's always signs on a campaign. pain. It's sort of like living in prehistorical times where you see tea leaves that tell you what the gods are thinking everywhere, right? Sparks from the fire say, oh, you know what? Maybe there'll be backlash to Brian Jean. He's taken some extreme positions, and now he's more in the spotlight. Maybe people will now rush to stop that. You all of a sudden hear a crack of thunder, and you think, do you know what? Actually, we've had a pretty good turn here, and we've seen some polling that that shows that a majority, well, not like on the intensity side, but an overall majority of conservatives support Jason Kenney. So why are we afraid of big numbers? And you tell yourself these moments or these stories in these moments. And because there is that hope that's floating out there, and there are those signs from the gods that other people are pointing to, it

Corey 26:48

it takes a certain amount of courage to stand up and say, that's

Corey 26:53

that's actually kind of bullshit. Like, here's why there's not these things here. But if you do it at a moment before other people are willing to hear that conversation, people

Corey 27:02

people can close ranks, people can go the other way. Or they become so bloody demoralized, and you've done it before the game is actually called. So you've got to know the right moment to have that conversation. conversation and um if

Corey 27:14

if i were on jason kenney's team right now now would not be the moment we're not at the cutoff yet uh i don't have a clear understanding of where those numbers land and i wouldn't even allow people to be speaking those words outside of like my smallest group of confidence um because if people get the sense that that's under contemplation it's it's done it becomes self-fulfilling it's over right uh people take their foot off the gas uh they say say, well, he's just going to resign anyways. You have nothing. You do end up having to resign. It's done. So you got to be careful when you have that conversation.

Zain 27:49

We've talked, Brian Jean, we've talked the April 9th Leadership Review. Guys, I want to go for another quick one. That was not quick. I want to go for a quick one. Stephen Carter, did you tune in to the first episode of Our Leader, Our Premier? Did you tune in to that great hour of talk radio with uh dear leader premier jason kenney on the course airwaves i

Carter 28:12

i i followed on twitter i uh i found myself not in a position to find calgary redneck radio on my radio dial it was pretty upsetting um but

Carter 28:22

but i did follow along on twitter saw the questions saw the answers and mostly was distracted by the lack of clarification when one of the questioners would ask something was based in a falsehood, the Premier never corrected. Always kind of moved past the falsehood and just kind of tried to, you

Carter 28:42

you know, keep all the negativity flowing all the time. Everything's someone else's fault, not his.

Zain 28:48

Corey, zooming out here for a second, the controversy or the conversation was certainly that Premier Jason Kenney, given an hour of talk radio on the chorus airwaves across Edmonton and Calgary, maybe all of Alberta, if it could be quite possible. Your thoughts on the conversation and the controversy? Overblown in your mind? Was it appropriate? I'm curious to get both of your takes on this. Carl, I'll come to you for your actual take on the situation. But your thoughts, Corey?

Corey 29:12

think a little overblown.

Corey 29:15

I don't think it's a bad thing when politicians make themselves available to the public, as long as it's being run pretty correctly by chorus, and they're not sort of vetting out the people who have critical questions. it's not a ton different from a facebook live or any number of other channels you know it's become quite common even in government and political circles to do a call out by a phone for everyone like this telephone town hall notion i suppose it's

Corey 29:45

it's it's in some ways old-fashioned it's something that politicians have done for a while everybody knows fdr did this it

Corey 29:53

it wasn't bad then and it's not not bad now, where it kind of blurs is when you're all of a sudden talking about potentially money changing hands for what could be partisan political purposes. So you wouldn't want the government to be paying for that. And there was some suggestion that there was some sort of quid pro quo where the government bought ads. That's not great, but I just don't know enough about the details there. On its surface, it doesn't seem crazy to me that a premier would would be given a radio call-in show.

Zain 30:21

Carter, you know, the counter-argument or one of the arguments against by many was that this is not like having a mayor like Doug Ford or Nahid Nenshi or others who've had call-in shows in the past, you know, do a call-in show, that this is a premier who's got an opposition, you know, that there's, this is perhaps a disproportionate sort of favor by chorus. Your thoughts on the concept of this radio show by Jason Kenney, on the overblown in your mind is it is the controversy worth it or do you feel like this will kind of live up to anything i

Carter 30:53

i kind of am on the same side as cory i mean this

Carter 30:56

this isn't a big deal i mean back in the day ralph klein talked directly to the people and we thought that was a great thing um i don't fault him for using the tactic i do i

Carter 31:06

i would prefer that he just simply bought it as

Carter 31:09

as a infomercial i mean i said to someone i don't know maybe i said on the podcast I'm not even sure. But Drew Farrell, when she ran in 2001 to be a counselor, bought a half an hour of Ask the Experts on QR-770 or whatever the hell it was called back then.

Carter 31:27

Daha Denshi bought an hour of television on what was then the A Channel in 2010. City TV. City TV. So, you

Carter 31:35

you know, this is not an unusual situation. situation um you

Carter 31:39

you know the mayor goes on all

Carter 31:42

all you know every week on some channels um on some stations this is not a it's not a big deal i i think that when they when they bought the advertising around it and that just clouded it if if the if they

Carter 31:56

they hadn't bought any advertising if john voss at qr 770 and just decided that oh

Carter 32:01

oh we're just gonna put him on the radio um because because it's going to be good for our advertising and good for our ratings and it's good for the people who are listening, then none of us would have anything to say. But they clouded it by buying the advertising, which makes it look like it's a paid program, which then begs the question, where does the editorial control lie?

Carter 32:22

I think Wayne Nelson's an honorable person who will do the honorable thing.

Corey 32:27

I got to say, I also just sort of don't place a super high value on an hour of radio time at 10 a.m on a saturday i i just don't maybe i'm wrong

Carter 32:37

wrong it was the highest rate are

Carter 32:39

i would bet it was the highest rated hour uh you know in months on that well this

Corey 32:45

this is almost my point right like there there is obvious benefit to chorus here like i

Corey 32:50

understand why they would be interested in doing that and in that case like it doesn't seem like a favor to the premier so much as chorus is trying to drive listeners

Corey 32:58

listeners because there's no way that that's a a particularly compelling hour in

Corey 33:03

terms of listenership i would bet all the money in my pockets the podcast you're all listening to right now has far and away more listeners uh than the 10 a.m to 11 a.m slot province oh in alberta shots

Zain 33:16

shots fired to the 10 to 11 a.m hour we're going after it we go after the curse of politics canada land fuck you too and now we're going after our leader our premier we're going after him we go after all the competitors we've elevated them in the the competition, unfortunately, by

Zain 33:32

by this fight that I've now realized. But Corey, don't slag Weekend Radio. As the former host of The Zane Velji Show, which had a great five-episode run on Weekend Radio, don't slag it. That's a Carter-esque tenure. That was a Carter-esque tenure. I wore blazers for months after that. Let me tell you something. I wore blazers for months. Let's move on to the final element or the final topic I want to talk about. Carter, I'm going to start with you on this. This could take us an hour, and I really don't want it to, but there's a reason I want to start with you, because I want you to set the frame here. So the segment here is the People's Republic of Alberta, Brian Jean, the

Zain 34:08

the April 9th Leadership Review, Jason Kenney's talk show. We have to talk about a much more local issue, the

Zain 34:14

the Calgary police here in our city, and the relationship with police protests and counter-protesters. Carter, do you want to set the table on this, and we can have a brief conversation on this, and then we'll move it on to what I promise will

Zain 34:30

will be a deep dive of sorts on something that isn't this. The

Carter 34:35

city of Calgary has been faced with anti-vax protesters, and it's kind of picked up other

Carter 34:41

other disaffected audiences that have just joined in, and anti-vax, anti-mask, return to freedom, the free dumb fighters, if you will. And they've been going going on uh for months every every saturday um they've been gathering sometimes at city hall and then they march and they march um they were marching down memorial drive sometimes and other times they've been marching down uh 17th avenue which is kind of a heavily populated heavily you know drag if you will um lots of residences lots of businesses and and of late that's been been their primary focus is to march down 17th Avenue. The police have allowed them to do this, regardless of the fact that this is not a permitted parade.

Carter 35:30

parade. They haven't got any of the permits where they're requisite for

Carter 35:33

for closing a road. So it's been a stunt that's been arguably very dangerous, because anytime you set out to stop traffic flow in Calgary, it's very dangerous. There was a counter protest last week from Beltline residents primarily, but others who who are opposed to

Carter 35:50

to the freedom side.

Carter 35:53

And the police, in

Carter 35:55

in dealing with this, chose to move the counter-protesters, chose to engage with them. And there's video of those police officers engaging in a

Carter 36:04

a fairly aggressive fashion to move people out

Carter 36:08

out of the way. And a large part of the problem, I would say, is even just the way that the officers looked.

Carter 36:13

They looked angry. They looked like they were trying to move people instead of looking professional. professional um so it was a it was a counter

Carter 36:21

counter pro you know a protest and then a counter protest and it seems like when the police were finally asked to act they chose the counter protesters to act on and they have yet to act in any meaningful way for the protesters and that's raised a number of questions that set it up there zane yeah

Zain 36:38

yeah i did cory you know one of the criticisms that this calgary police service is facing is just two sides in the communication i I want to get your thoughts on how they've communicated this. Their chief spoke for, I think, close to 40 minutes the day after, made a statement, took questions. This police on that evening put out a statement, which also got slammed quite aggressively. Talk to me about what you saw in terms of the communications. And Carter, I'm going to come back to you with perhaps a sensitive question thereafter. But Corey, talk to me about the communications first and what you saw from your perspective.

Corey 37:12

Yeah. Well, I didn't think they were good. Let's just sort of start there. Because then I then I can kind of unpack from from there. When

Corey 37:20

When the chief of police, Neufeld came out and started talking about the situation and how geez, it seems like people are blaming the police here. It's like, well, yeah, people are blaming the police here, because it seemed like one side was being treated more aggressively. And that was the side that was fed up with people who had been holding these protests for a year. And these people who had been protesting for a year were doing it with total disregard to the community. And why is it that the counter protesters are the ones that the police decided to move back rather than the protesters? protesters and um and as steven said it seemed fairly aggressive it seemed aggressive not just in action but in in kind of the way the police carried themselves and so if

Corey 38:03

if you are um if

Corey 38:05

if you're sort of observing all of this and and you see the the police chief kind of just be like well it's all equivalent it's hard not to draw those parallels to charlottesville in in the united states with the you know these uh you know literal nazis protesting on one side against counter-protesters and and uh trump saying we'll just find people on both sides it's not a it's not the same thing uh let's be really clear on that by and large uh there are for sure far right uh you know white supremacist elements who have gotten in with that uh free dumb uh group there um there's uh but you know there there's not a moral equivalency between these two sides there's simply not and for for the police not just to to sort of lean

Corey 38:52

lean into this and and spout off kind of these just weird conspiracy theories about professional protesters on the anti-protest side was was not just tone deaf but also hit like a million right

Corey 39:08

trigger conspiracies here that That people know at this point, like the both sides and the idea of professional protesters, this close to basically saying George Soros paid for them for Christ's sake. It's just like, it's language that is well understood. They were swimming

Zain 39:19

swimming in that lane, so to speak. They were swimming

Corey 39:21

swimming in that lane.

Corey 39:22

And I've said this before in different contexts, but there are times when language takes on a meaning beyond literal. And you say something and it feels like a wink to everybody observing, right? A wink to one side. We call these words shibboleths, right? Like one tribe immediately understands them. them they either used to note you with one tribe or the other and it was pretty clear that the chief of police in calgary was using a number of right-wing shibboleths identifying himself with the protesters that are making the good people of the belt line want to pull their damn hair out here and so then uh you kind of pile on this almost like cluelessness attitude like why would anybody be blaming us and i

Corey 40:03

i mean the whole

Carter 40:03

whole thing is just people speak yeah

Corey 40:05

yeah i mean it was just like like a bit of a failure there. And I was, I will admit, totally shocked that the police then decided to tweet it out, like, hey, check out this press conference that our police chief had that was widely panned by the community he was trying to address, right? Like that in some ways seemed inflammatory. Was the purpose of the news conference not to talk to the community that was feeling angry? Why would you then put out a news conference that exacerbated that anger? I did not understand it.

Corey 40:34

Or maybe a better way to say is, I do understand it, but if I'm understanding it, it says bad things about the way we're running policing in the city of Calgary.

Zain 40:43

Carter, let's talk about the politics here. Where does political leadership intersect with policing? I.e., what would a council, what would a city, what would a mayor need to do after what you observe? What would you be doing if you were elected in that position? What would you be advocating and arguing for?

Carter 40:59

Well, let's begin by reminding our listeners is that we have a governance problem when it comes to police forces. We saw it in Ottawa with the Ottawa Police Board. We're seeing it now here in Calgary with the Calgary Police Commission. The commission is the group that is in charge. They are the only ones who can hire or fire a police chief. They can't dictate anything. So when the letter that was sent from city council was written to the police commission, they don't have the authority to dictate anything um they they simply send a request that basically says please ask your officers if they'd be so kind as to enforce the law equitably um you know because when when police services choose which laws they're going to enforce and which laws they're not going to enforce they remove themselves as law enforcement and they become essentially the entire legal system right the legal system is set up so that you have law enforcement and then you have the judicial system and then if required you have the punishment system which is our jail system and things like that but these are supposed to be separate so far you know like but the the police when they are judge and jury and

Carter 42:12

and that's what they're being when you choose to enforce laws and you choose you know you are choosing to allow some people to get away with certain things and that if it happens that the people that you are allowing to get away with certain things happen to be white, happen to agree with your point of view. That's a real problem, right? Because if this was happening with a different group of protesters, and this is the point of the Black Lives Matter group, we just saw Black Lives Matter protests. The police chose to act differently. The police are choosing to act differently now. And they say it's because they don't, you know, they don't feel empowered to enforce and whatever. I think that that has been eroded by their actual behavior. Their

Carter 42:56

Their actual behavior has been different than that. So if I was an elected person, I'd be writing to the police commission saying please hold your chief accountable or submit your resignations to the city council because we were the ones who appointed you to this position and we expect you to hold this police chief accountable. Submit your resignation so we can appoint people who will hold this police chief accountable.

Zain 43:20

Corey, you wanted to jump in here?

Corey 43:23

Yeah, I do want to say Stephen is talking in kind of definitive terms, but these aren't clear lines and there is a place for discretion in policing. I don't want the police to ticket everybody who jaywalks, everybody who, you know, is a drug user, send them to jail. I think that would be wrong and it would also be an abuse. And I also think the police need to know when not to exacerbate a situation. But that's not really what we're talking about. Corey,

Carter 43:48

Corey, when they're choosing not to give the jaywalking tickets to one group of people, but

Carter 43:52

but they give the jaywalking tickets to the other group of people, that, you know, so if they're showing discretion equally, if they truly are an unbiased force, then I'm fine with some discretion. But when you can't be, when you can't be equal, then you must be, you must enforce everything equally. And they are proving that they do not have the capacity to behave in an equal fashion.

Corey 44:18

Yeah, so as I was saying, that's where I was going. Now that's where you're going.

Corey 44:24

No, I mean, I was fucking hell. I was literally in the middle of talking when you cut me off. We're talking about one side being treated than a different side for exactly the same kind of activities. And that's where people are, I think, rightfully riled up here. You know, the other thing I want to say is I don't like that I picked up on Carter's free dumb language. I was kind of mad at myself for using it the second after I used it. there's an interesting mix of deeply misguided people deeply selfish people people with no purpose and then absolute fucking assholes absolute fucking assholes and i don't know what the ratios are on all of this here too but i do think uh you know we've talked about this we can't we can't vilify the people in some of those earlier categories the same way we're treating the absolute fucking assholes um it's it's a mess but it's not a mess that's going to be cleaned up if If the police continue to act in this fashion and we do need to have a conversation about policing in this country, we've seen manifestations of this across the board. We've seen Ottawa obviously, and what the police were able to do and not able to do a combination of all sorts of factors there. We

Corey 45:28

We have seen Calgary as we've just been talking about. We have all sorts of situations in other cities where there are the number of like, you know, people

Corey 45:38

people who've died of police hands have gone up. And we also have ones like Vancouver recently, those of you who have been following that, where the city of Vancouver tried to cut the budget of the Vancouver police and were overridden by, like a director in the provincial government said, no, you can't cut the police, which is a bit shocking to people who think that municipalities actually should be responsible for things. So there

Corey 46:01

there there has been for a very long time an acceptance of a police force outside

Corey 46:07

outside of what we consider normal political processes. Right. And it has been a power unto itself. And we have had police commissions, and I'm not trying to paint too broad of a brush, but that meet infrequently, talk about things superficially, and don't actually hold these these groups to account. and carter's

Corey 46:26

carter's point about talking to the commissions is a good one but it's more than that it's changing the way the commissions work it's getting commissioners on who are willing to have those hard conversations and uh it's taking it seriously and not just as another one of those appointments that the city has to do carter

Zain 46:43

carter i won't jump in

Zain 46:43

here but finish this off here ultimately

Carter 46:45

ultimately we need to change the police act um the police act is written in such a fashion that there is very very little accountability. A large number of our acts were written years ago when we were smaller centers where people, you know, you could ask for volunteers to oversee the police service. Well, the police service is now a $400 million organization in Calgary, about the same in Edmonton. These two police services have, you know, have been trapped in their own performance as well. And you actually need to get better as a police service. We are looking at a time when citizens are demanding more and better out of our police service. And our police officers, frankly, are confused about what they're supposed to be doing and some strong leadership from police commissions or from elected officials. I'd be fine seeing a police commission model in Alberta murder that was 50% elected and 50% paid community members who are overseeing these important functions that, frankly, when they go wrong, have the chance of people being killed. We had another person killed in Edmonton just this week. This is life and death. And the acts that govern these police services are simply inadequate.

Zain 48:04

Corey, you wanted to jump in before we

Corey 48:06

police don't feel understood. And they feel more and more insular all the time. Community feels increasingly like the police are unaccountable. And let's not create like this sense that this is a new problem. In fact, I think police forces by and large are much more ethically run organizations than they were a generation or two ago. But let's not let this get out of hand. Let's address this now. Let's bridge that gap back. Let's bring more of a focus on community policing. Let's stop buying fucking tanks for people and start talking again.

Carter 48:35

I think the police would be appreciative of that, too. Tell them what their job is and ask them to do their job. Tell them what I think most people appreciate that.

Zain 48:43

We're going to leave that segment there. Move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, bringing a marketing textbook to a knife fight. That is right, guys. We are the marketing textbook of the strategists, and we are bringing it to the knife fight that is the conservative leadership race. Here's what I want to do. I want to spend some time. I want to spend some time using our strategy and marketing lens to analyze the launches and the initial collateral and tactics of the three main competitors, I would say, in the conservative leadership race, one Pierre Pallieva, one Jean Charest, one Patrick Brown. I want to talk about their slogans. I want to talk a bit about their websites, their conversion. We'll talk about what that means, tactics, their branding. and I want you to start by giving me a grade for each of the folks as we go through them. So Carter, as I always say, the only way to start is to start. Stephen Carter, Patrick Brown. Let me lay out some of the Patrick Brown materials here. It's not Patrick Brown on the website. It's Mayor Brown. It's not PatrickBrown.ca. If you were to go onto your website right now or onto your web browser right now and try to find PatrickBrown.ca, I don't know where it would lead. It might forward you to this but this is the main url fighter leader winner.ca i want to talk about that choice and then i want to talk about the strategic choice on after a day of launching to a room that was quite sizable arguably the largest launch size of any of the three competitors uh picking a fight directly with pierre pollier on the nikab band steven carter those are the early days of the patrick brown campaign what grade are you giving it and then let's dive into a few of these elemental items that put on the table um

Carter 50:24

um i'm gonna it's a mixed grade because he's done some really good stuff and he's done some really weird stuff uh just for the record though if you do go to patrickbrown.ca you get a website called think nice thoughts uh the last post is from uh uh july 19th 2019 uh go transit model railroad um so very interesting stuff anyways uh the url is blog with

Zain 50:48

with two posts that's great okay

Carter 50:49

okay yeah so um mayor brown uh fighter leader winner is um ridiculous first of all um i don't understand hold up

Zain 50:59

up wait i mean hold on let's tease this out ridiculous as a slogan or ridiculous as a website url for a campaign i just want to this is what i want to get into this is the stuff we nerd out on carter cory

Carter 51:10

cory and i have done this before i mean you know i think joe clark's was like honesty integrity trust it's like three synonyms you guys we couldn't even fucking pick words that didn't you know meant other things and meaningless absolutely meaningless the breakthrough we had with joe clark is when we moved away from honesty integrity trust like the campaign wanted us to go with a slogan that said joe clark for calgary for canada what the fuck does that even mean i don't know what these things mean i don't know what fighter leader winner i don't know what that means but when we did joe clark not just another pretty face boom

Carter 51:44

boom things took off because people understood who we were talking about and what the critique was and that was that stockwell day is a vapid empty-headed conservative leader which i think turned out to be fairly accurate in the overall scheme of things um mayor brown i get the mayor brown thing there's a mayor pete thing to it i can see that but the fighter leader winner and having that being the url that's really bad but when you go to the url it actually functions pretty well um they get the pop-up for pledge of support right away and spread the word which is interesting once you move past the pop-up there's there's um there's some information there why patrick what what matters um you know it's it's not bad that photo gallery um which is pretty good it's

Zain 52:31

it's a very early

Zain 52:32

early 2000s element for

Carter 52:34

website you know i mean eventually you're gonna have this compared to pierre prolievre who

Carter 52:38

who was the first one in that yeah

Carter 52:40

yeah the first one in and is still using a link tree so you know mayor brown while

Carter 52:46

while it it i mean i think it's actually a nation builder template isn't it i

Zain 52:53

i move it to cory Corey, to get his reaction. I want to talk about his first strategy on messaging and the knife fight that he's entered with Pierre Palliever. But Carter, before I go to Corey, talk to me about Mayor Brown. Why? If a candidate came to you and said, listen, I want to run for the leadership of whatever. I was a former mayor. Can I just be Minister Doe? Can I be Mayor Joe Blow? Why Mayor Brown when it's an easy name to pronounce? What do you think he's going for here? Talk me through

Carter 53:26

Because disgraced former leader Brown doesn't really quite have the same ring to it.

Carter 53:32

Let's go check if the

Zain 53:33

the URL is available. Mayor

Carter 53:35

Brown is the cleaning of the reputation. He was thrown out of political life. He cleaned his reputation and he became the mayor of whatever the hell it is, Brampton. and when he became the mayor he was uh you know boom

Carter 53:54

boom he he's in right like that's his cleansing so now he's mayor brown instead of disgraced former leader brown um so that's why he did it and that's a pretty smart play the

Carter 54:07

the fighter leader winner thing is something and he's fighting you know the choice to fight with pierre polliev i mean arguably this is the kamikaze candidate today, all

Carter 54:17

all over again, right?

Carter 54:18

right? Like, he's, if

Carter 54:21

if not actively in cahoots with Jean Charest, he's certainly playing the role to

Carter 54:28

to a tee if he's not actively been asked to play it.

Zain 54:31

Interesting. Corey, I need your analysis. Give it to me on Mayor Brown. Give it to me on the URL slash slogan. Give it to me on what you see on the website. And if you want to comment on what what you saw with the launch, with that initial speech in that packed room in Brampton. Lay it on me.

Corey 54:49

I think Stephen's right about the Mayor Brown thing, and I think it's smart. I can imagine that when they started testing... You think it's smart? Okay. I do. I think when they were starting to test the waters on whether

Corey 54:59

whether Patrick Brown should run, they probably had a trillion conversations along the lines of, Patrick Brown, isn't he the guy who had to step down in disgrace from the PC leadership? ship and this is a pretty good way to essentially take

Corey 55:14

take that question and preempt it right mayor patrick brown oh he's mayor now that's right we all sort of remember he ran for mayor but this is reminding us that that's a credible marker

Zain 55:24

marker of like credibility yeah yeah

Corey 55:26

yeah and it does play into the mayor pete thing but i i think um in some ways what's

Corey 55:31

what's interesting to me there is the things that he didn't do like he's not mayor patrick he's not mayor pat he's mayor brown right so there's He's trying to be kind of this serious authoritarian, and that plays into his, you know, fighter-leader-winner as well. Like, Mayor Pete, ironically,

Corey 55:47

ironically, was a fighter, but Mayor Pete sounds friendly. You know, it doesn't sound like somebody who's a fighter, necessarily. Again, ironic, because he was literally in the Army, or in the Armed Forces. So,

Corey 56:00

the fighter-leader-winner thing as well. Well, this one I'm a little more mixed on, mostly because I'm thinking winner.

Corey 56:10

I don't feel that, my dude. But it's in a way to, again, do what Stephen said and try to scrub it. But I think it's trying a little bit too hard because I don't think we think of Patrick Brown and we think of victory. I think we think of one of the all-time epic flame-outs, a crazy fucking time. So it doth protest too much, I feel, in this particular context. Yes, he's mayor. Okay. Is he a popular mayor? I guess so. His website said so. I didn't look at any polling in Brampton. But winner?

Corey 56:42

winner? I don't know. So the idea that that's his URL, that's

Corey 56:46

that's something that I've done on campaigns before, because

Corey 56:50

because it's a good way to get your slogan in and to get your URL in, in an economy of space, right? Because you don't want to have a big, messy sign that says like, Zane Velji, neutral party, Zane Velji for neutral.ca, right? That's just too wordy, and then you don't have any room for a slogan. But if you can turn that last one into going to bring neutrality back.ca, you almost get to use your slogan without cluttering up your sign further. A little different in a leadership campaign, though, right? Because you don't think of leadership campaigns as things where you have lawn signs or where you have to worry about that economy of space so much. and in fact most of your advertising that would lead to the website i suspect is already on web and it's just one click away but

Corey 57:34

but they seem to be wanting to lean into it and uh i'm guessing mayor brown was taken i haven't gone there so interesting

Corey 57:40

interesting uh choices all around some of them i think were accidental some of them i think we're trying too hard some of them i think we're

Zain 57:47

we're pretty smart carter

Zain 57:49

carter let's let's nerd out a bit more on the tech or at least on the setup of the the website. Pledge Your Support is the headline, it's like the first, it's a pop-up. It's the first conversion ask. And then when you go to buy a membership, what I find interesting about his website is rather than, unlike the Sharae website, which we'll get to in a second, it doesn't port you out to the conservative portal. It actually has its own little form that you fill out internally on fighterleaderwitter.ca before it takes you to buy a membership. Talk to me about the strategy of pledging support as like a top line conversion prior to even membership, which we know this thing is about selling a shit ton of memberships in a narrow window, is pledge your support the right headline, the right initial ask for someone that lands on your webpage? Give me your sense of that in like the modern campaigning. Is this what you would suggest to a candidate if they were one of yours in this conservative leadership race? Let's start out on this.

Carter 58:46

Yeah, I mean, the pledge your support isn't bad. bad um people

Carter 58:49

people are used to the idea of pledging something a commitment if you will um it's a bit of a weird thing because uh it it is you

Carter 58:59

know it's really in your face like the pop-ups like i just had another pop-up land on me um pledge your support pledge your support i mean basically what you're trying to do is get data um so in a perfect world he'd be doing more than just pledge your support he'd have sign up for updates uh there'd be um you know keep track of of the uh of the of the race you know join

Carter 59:24

join here for full updates or something there'd be something along the you know something

Carter 59:29

something that brings you through it rather than simply just pledge your support by a membership pledge

Carter 59:34

pledge a donation i mean it is it's

Carter 59:36

it's it's fairly focused on getting immediate immediate positive action, instead of just saying, Okay, well, let's try and get some data set. Because the data set can then be converted into a membership later, using telephones or email. So emails, text telephones. So it's a bit, you

Carter 59:57

simple right now. But, you know, I

Carter 1:00:01

I would probably have multiple ways of doing this instead of doing capture. But I would also probably use multiple landing pages we'll

Zain 1:00:08

we'll talk about the multiple ways especially when we get to one of the other competitors cory your thoughts on this right like as background this is what the three of us did in many ways right talk about digital tech how people land on things how people convert funnels all that sort of stuff your thoughts when you see this page in terms of what it's trying to get you to do uh what do you think um

Corey 1:00:28

um well i you're right we do and we did this was kind of our past life I talk a lot about this. I will concede that it is a rapidly evolving space, and the tactics that worked in one year do not necessarily work in another. So it's important to be led by the testing. If they are smart, they've been A, B testing a bunch of different varieties. But I feel very differently about it. I don't like it. I think it's a bad start for the funnel. I think pledger support feels as strong as by a membership but for the dollar. In terms of the

Zain 1:00:56

the high bar? Yeah.

Corey 1:00:57

Yeah. So I would have – and again, maybe they've got testing that shows otherwise. was but i feel that patrick brown is one of these people who for a big bulk of us we're going to joke about him being behind door number eight and not take his candidacies that seriously but we might be willing to hear a little bit more as it goes on and i feel that sign up for updates stay connected with the campaign things of this nature might be more likely to hook me into that orbit because i'll tell you but for the fact that you forced me to come to this website i'm never fucking coming back to this website i'm never coming back to this website and so um if you would if you though it said like sign up for updates maybe i would you know get a little bit more information uh in terms of the way they do the membership and the way it kicks you to a form before it kicks you to the form the

Zain 1:01:42

the party website yeah yeah

Corey 1:01:43

yeah that's that's really just a way to capture data i signed up zane velji with his email address so i expect you'll be getting updates for a while you're purchasing eight memberships by the way patrick brown is really excited about your support yeah

Corey 1:01:54

brown oh mayor brown oh yeah okay yeah mayor brown i'm sorry he's known as mayor brown he's known as he's

Corey 1:02:00

he's a fighter leader winner uh you

Corey 1:02:03

you might want to consider pledging your support i

Corey 1:02:06

i just i don't know i think i think their funnel is a little broken because normally when you think about a funnel you think about escalating activities right one which is broad and easy to do uh but gets you into a universe where you are going to naturally take those steps down if you're predisposed right so get them on a list it's kind of the rule number one from that list get them engaged in some way shape or form is membership the next step maybe probably not necessarily depends on what else you've got offering then you're talking about volunteering then you're talking about donations you want to have a bunch of different activities available maybe some merchandise you build these things out through testing you have lists you send half your email list take this next step you see what the response is you send the other half your email is, take this next step, see what the response is. And you're really data driven on these particular exercises.

Corey 1:02:57

I'm not sure I see a lot of data thinking on this page. I'm not as enamored with it as Carter, who apparently misses Flickr embeds a lot more than I do.

Corey 1:03:08

again, like it really depends on what their data is saying. Comparing

Carter 1:03:10

Comparing it to the existing sites in this leadership, and it's better. It's the best of the three.

Zain 1:03:17

Okay, well, let's move on to the other ones. I I want to talk about the slogan, the branding, the marketing of the others. I'll talk about the strategy in a second that they've chosen. Carter, Jean Charest, jeancharest.ca. Jump on the website. I've got so many questions, but let's start with this. Let's start with the brand, the built to win. Give me your thoughts about this. The built to win slogan. We'll talk about that swooping paintbrush, Microsoft Windows 95 clip art paintbrush C. But tell me about the built to win. And then we'll talk about the website and the lack of social, et cetera, and how we actually think whether it will or will not impact their organizing ability. Your thoughts, though, Carter, on what you see from the marketing of Jean Charest?

Carter 1:04:01

Well, built to win, I mean, is the primary. I mean, I hate slogans, but it is the, you

Carter 1:04:07

you know, it's the primary reason

Carter 1:04:09

reason to elect him, right, is to win the election. We can only win the election if we can win in Quebec. Beck. We can only win the election if we can win in Ontario. I am built to win in those areas. That is, you

Carter 1:04:23

that's the central premise. I like, you know, going back and communicating that isn't a bad thing. But man,

Carter 1:04:30

man, I mean, this website's kind of tragic. He had weeks to get here. It's still better than the guy, you know, than Pierre's. This is, you

Carter 1:04:40

you know, we don't even even have the flicker site cory i mean all we have is the you

Carter 1:04:45

you know the blue picture i mean

Carter 1:04:47

guys don't color your pictures put a picture up of you in color and don't do the what is this i want to say it's sepia tone i don't even know what the fuck this is it's horrible just don't do that um it's a bad website cory

Zain 1:05:02

cory built to win your thoughts on it well

Zain 1:05:04

well the website isn't to to steven's point it's

Zain 1:05:07

it's by the way if you pledge a donation i don't know if you've tried this. There is a button on the website that says pledge a donation. I'll get to it. But I found this to be the most fascinating. It is a fourth button on the main page. First one's buy a membership, join a team, pledge your support, pledge a donation. You can click on pledge a donation, not donate. This is not donate. This is pledging a donation. And when you go to pledge amount, you can actually, in fact, go up and down and enter a minus number to pledge a donation to jean chere uh that is this website you can negative pledge money to jean chere i suggest if you are not a jean chere fan that you go to jean chere.ca you pledge a donation and you pledge a negative donation to jean chere you know why because he wants you to and he allows you to cory i'll let you i'll let you take it from what you're about to say but i just noticed that right now as you were speaking well

Corey 1:05:57

well it's super basic and i suspect it will be replaced this this really does feel like it's like a it's a version one of a page it's a holding page and it's going to be coming down and returned with something a little bit more robust this is hey we've got a campaign coming next week so let's put something together it's it's evident in the way that a couple of the links immediately take you off the page there's all these various platforms there's not good integration carter is absolutely right about the blue graphic it just makes him and his smile is a a little bit creepy in the particular picture that's on this note also my

Corey 1:06:31

my condolences to all our listeners who are going to have us reviewing websites that will be fucking different by the time you listen to it because they constantly evolve these days i

Zain 1:06:38

i don't know i mean well i don't know if they will be cory i don't know if they will be i thought you're going to apologize that we're actually reviewing websites over a audio medium yeah that's i

Corey 1:06:47

i mean we should have done this on twitch we really should have no no we

Zain 1:06:50

we should have this

Corey 1:06:51

this is great this live

Zain 1:06:52

reaction of you being constantly disappointed is what i'm here for but there's a reason i'm doing this there's a reason i'm talking about the websites and the brand but cory you want to keep going yeah

Corey 1:07:04

one of the interesting things about the charrette campaign is its aesthetic to me which seems like it was set by somebody who was really enamored with uh the vibe they got in a radisson in 1997 and

Corey 1:07:20

i don't know if

Corey 1:07:21

if that is where they want to be you know you talk about built to win but maybe it is maybe they want to sort of harken back to a conservative party that was a little bit

Zain 1:07:31

little bit less scary i'll just carter i'll just tell you

Carter 1:07:33

you guys we launched the joe t gondek campaign with the full website uh nine days after she decided that she was going going to run um and the day that we launched and all the updates that came afterwards fit into the exact same frame it doesn't have to be like this it doesn't have to be these static or or weak pages and i know we haven't even gotten to the weakest one yet um but i just wanted to say it doesn't have to be like this the other thing yeah

Corey 1:07:59

yeah the other thing i want to mention is there's a pledge your support button which we also saw on the brown campaign and i already made comments on

Corey 1:08:06

makes me think people are chasing each other right they're saying oh they've got a button So we've got to have a button like this. And there's a certain reactivity to it. And they

Corey 1:08:15

should really be thinking about their marketing in their own context, because you're not going to come to the same answers for different candidates, right? The funnel might look very different for a Jean Charest than a Mayor Brown. um

Corey 1:08:27

um pleasure support might be perfect for jean charre because it's uh it's about an established candidate and you and you're gonna have kind of that higher higher next step whereas like i said patrick brown might might seem like yeah we'll see if this is fucking serious and and so you need a different first step okay

Zain 1:08:45

okay let's i'm gonna come back to all three of these because i think brand certainly speaks to style certainly speaks to the type of race that each one of them is trying to fight. Stephen Carter, Peer Poly Evra. You can go for, I think you can. I'm going to check it while we record. This is the type of rough shot operation we have here, folks. Peer 4PM with the number 4.ca is a website. However, you don't see it anywhere. You know what you do see on his social media everywhere? It's a Linktree account to Peer Poly Evra. So So it's link.linktr.ee slash pier4pm. And on there, what's fascinating is it's a bunch of Google Doc forms. Sign up in English, right? A petition to end mandates, a petition to scrap the carbon tax, a petition to do all of that in French. Very little about buying a membership. Very little direct conversion about, you know, donating. fascinating this all seems to be aggressive unabashed naked data mining and i'm super super fascinated and curious to get your take on this because out of the three you've got patrick brown who's probably the most conventional right he sets up a nice looking site his launch videos there he's got his text he's got his pledge buttons that's serviceable jean charre you're like this is a little bit stuck in the past dude your main conversion is to the conservative party website And then Pierre taking this tactic to not necessarily have a website, and if he does, not necessarily promoting it, but promoting micro issues, small petitions, signups, momentary issues, not really pushing the membership. Curious, Carter, your take on this from a practitioner's perspective. Give me your lens on what you see from Pierre-Paul Rievre in his digital knife fight. I

Carter 1:10:27

I think it's an unbelievably

Carter 1:10:31

weak way. I mean, I've seen counselor, school board trustee websites that are better than this. I mean, he doesn't even have his primary website in his link tree. And yeah, I mean, that is a website that's available. But

Zain 1:10:50

question is, is this a weakness or is this strategy? I just want to be clear. You're saying this is weakness if it is strategy. If

Carter 1:10:57

this is a strategy, I mean, I understand the petition

Carter 1:11:00

petition sites. I understand the simple sign-up structures. I think that those things are choices

Carter 1:11:05

choices that could be made. In fact, if you look at his primary site, the sign-up is pretty straightforward. It's like right there. It is the reason that the site exists. resists but you

Carter 1:11:16

know like normally when you do a petition you're you're doing more than a word like a google doc um

Carter 1:11:23

um to gather all this information i i'm just like i'm

Carter 1:11:27

i'm shocked at how um absolutely

Carter 1:11:30

absolutely naked it is and how little there is supporting

Carter 1:11:35

supporting it um why is he running i mean if you you go to the pierre 4 p.m site um yeah

Carter 1:11:45

yeah i mean it's crazy it's it's it doesn't have any depth it doesn't you know it

Carter 1:11:50

it says take back control of your life join me in making canada the freest nation on earth prospective

Carter 1:11:55

prospective donors due to party adopted online rules we have to suspend

Carter 1:12:00

suspend online donations like it doesn't even make like it's not i

Carter 1:12:05

don't understand what it is he was the first guy out of the gate he's had weeks and this is what we're sitting on i'm

Zain 1:12:11

i'm i'm intrigued by your take here i think this is strategy uh cory i'm gonna get your take on this before i personally react so pierre not with a traditional website a link tree with micro donation my micro petitions micro signups on a google docs sort of page simple forms easy to absorb not much content not much policy your take on this especially with perhaps the style of campaign he's trying to run Yeah,

Corey 1:12:34

Yeah, look, this is the perfect time to have kind of a bigger conversation. We're talking about fucking websites. It's 2022. The guy's social media accounts are enormous. He's got 500,000 followers on Facebook. God only knows how many on Instagram. He's got followers all over the Western world who think he's the next coming of I don't know what, Alex P. Keaton, I guess. And he doesn't care about his website. His website serves a purely functional purpose, which is kick him to a petition from my social media. Kick him to the donation page from my social media. That's how he's going to win this thing. That's how he's going to build the connections he's going to make. That might also be true of the other candidates. but like who gives a fuck about a website in 2022 it is kind of an anchor for content end of story uh we put time into it we want to put a veneer on it but how many people do you think are actually going there as their first engagement with him when we talk about funnels the website itself is further down the funnel which actually now as we've talked this out makes me think maybe their data does show that pledging your supports there because who actually seeks out a website besides somebody who's already a little bit committed That's not where you go looking for information these days. That's where you go looking for action. It still

Carter 1:13:49

shows a brand. That's the discussion I wanted, Carter. It still shows a brand, and the brand is weak.

Carter 1:13:53

There is no brand to this. I mean, the page is black

Zain 1:13:56

black and white. This

Zain 1:13:56

is the practitioner's question. Is the brand in a modern 2022 campaign shown on a website, or is it shown with a launch video? Is it shown on social? A

Carter 1:14:06

A brand is everything. Everything. Every potential interaction starts to formulate the brand. If you do not have everything functioning together with a single brand image, then you are undermining your own brand. What is his brand? You know, is it the blue? Is it the black? Is it, you

Carter 1:14:26

what is he saying? Take back control of your life? Is that his slogan? What is this? It's for sure

Corey 1:14:31

sure a slogan, yeah. Oh,

Carter 1:14:32

Oh, my God. It's pathetic.

Zain 1:14:37

That's interesting. I'm intrigued from a practitioner's perspective you're reacting this way. I get it from it. ideological one i think you and

Carter 1:14:44

and i are there

Carter 1:14:45

tragic from a practitioner's point of view this is the weakest especially for the first candidate in this is just weak brand structure and i believe in brand politics i think the brands are what win and lose in politics and i think this is weak okay

Zain 1:14:59

okay let's let's let's elevate this for a second right cory you want to jump in okay go ahead yeah there

Corey 1:15:03

there was a time in politics you weren't a serious candidate unless you had a website website unless you had a facebook page you know like there were these kind of like mandatories but does anybody think to your point steven that he couldn't put up a website if

Carter 1:15:18

if he wanted to like

Corey 1:15:19

like this is a conscious decision like this is it's like it just it doesn't need to be is it a conscious

Corey 1:15:26

it is for sure i think it is i

Corey 1:15:28

know by tomorrow morning we could put a page that's 10 times better together and why didn't various templates from nation-builders because— He thinks

Zain 1:15:35

thinks it matters. I think that's

Corey 1:15:36

that's the conversation I want to have. It doesn't matter. It's a time suck. It does matter. It's not where it's going.

Carter 1:15:42

It does matter. Having just run a campaign, it does matter. Do you know what you sound like,

Corey 1:15:45

like, though? You sound like the person saying,

Corey 1:15:48

how could he be a serious candidate if he doesn't have a brochure and a banner to unfurl behind him when he's standing on his soapbox? That's how you win campaigns. You have a good soapbox banner, by gum. I mean, you just sounded...

Carter 1:16:03

sounded... There are some things... No, this is bullshit. There are some things that are important and basic. And you said, you know, a candidate couldn't be a serious candidate without a Facebook page. Moments after you said, he's got 500,000 followers on Facebook. These things matter because you need to be communicating to the audience. And you need the audience to be able to get the depth that they require. But that's not where the audience is going

Zain 1:16:26

going to find him. But is his

Zain 1:16:28

depth audience? That's the thing. Maybe

Carter 1:16:31

Maybe it's like... They are because they have to buy a membership and you have to have their contact information, right?

Carter 1:16:37

right? That's what you need to have.

Corey 1:16:40

All a website is these days is a data warehouse for stuff that Facebook won't let you put on Facebook.

Zain 1:16:48

Yeah, this is intriguing. I thought this would be like a point of like convergence rather than this divergence. And I feel like Corey and I are at a different – I guess the question I wanted to have

Corey 1:16:56

have – We're younger and much more with it than Steven. I'm a practitioner

Carter 1:16:59

practitioner and you guys are theorists.

Zain 1:17:01

In Stephen's defense, he's the one who's run the most number of successful and the most recent successful campaigns. So this is interesting to me how much importance you put on this,

Carter 1:17:10

this, Carter. I will concede. Let me concede. Let me concede a point. Can

Carter 1:17:14

Can I ask a – Because I'm a nicer person.

Carter 1:17:16

We had far fewer website visits in the Gondek campaign in the beginning stages than we thought we were going to have. And they ramped up. I got the statistics recently and just looked because I hadn't looked at the last weekend because who cares? We won. But I went back and I looked at the number of engagements on the website. It was all like 98% of engagements that we had on our website were in the last 24 hours.

Carter 1:17:45

So it did serve a different purpose. And we didn't do a tremendous amount of data gathering on the website itself. But it wasn't a leadership. It wasn't a leadership. And the leadership requires you to get the data sold. you are selling memberships and there there's

Carter 1:18:01

there's a couple of different things you need to do on the member on the website getting people to sell memberships for you and making it easy for them to buy the membership is foundational so i don't know i'm not a fan of this because i don't think i don't think it's supposed it achieves what it's supposed to achieve in a leadership campaign

Zain 1:18:21

i want to elevate this because carter you said this about brand let's talk about out the brands of these guys beyond the websites because this is where i wanted to use as a jumping off point pierre polly ever attack ads off the bat as soon as charrette enters boom as soon as mayor brown sorry patrick brown mayor brown enters boom attack ad what do you think carter scorch earth politics is that one one that's almost like if

Zain 1:18:44

if he wins not even creating any room to welcome that them back in uh not going after trudeau right away going after each other What do you think of Pierre's strategy or the Polyev campaign strategy of just going bare knuckle against his opponents right out the gate?

Carter 1:19:00

When you're winning, you've got to put your foot on the neck of the opponent. We did that with Jeff Davison in Calgary when he launched in May, and we banged

Carter 1:19:09

banged on him right from the beginning. We did not allow him to get oxygen to enable him to grow.

Carter 1:19:14

And Pierre Polyev is in front. front he

Carter 1:19:17

is the person who is uh most

Carter 1:19:19

most likely to win this if he's able to stifle the growth of the others so hit him with a negative boom

Carter 1:19:24

boom there used to be a school of thought that you don't hit with it from a negative when you're in front that's bullshit you hit from the negative whenever you can hit from the negative and

Carter 1:19:31

and i i love the tactic i think that that's the best play he's made

Carter 1:19:36

brand the other guys and put them in the hole cory

Zain 1:19:40

master stroke of a tactic brand them early as soon as they launch on the day of pick a fight with them what do you think yeah

Corey 1:19:47

yeah i i have a hard time faulting the tactic i i could stretch and make an argument for why it might backfire but i'm not sure i would believe it but the the argument would be pierre

Corey 1:19:57

pierre pauliev is seen as

Corey 1:20:00

overly pugilistic and this is going to reinforce that view of him you know he's kind of a shitheel and this this is shitheel behavior to do this so aggressively right off the top and he's put put together you know

Corey 1:20:12

know an aggressive campaign to date and that might be exactly what the party wants certainly there is a bit of a vibe out there and that's certainly what his core supporters are looking for but

Corey 1:20:22

but it might be a little too much for some people so hard to say but as we always say like as much as it can come back and blow back on you if you do a negative campaign against your opponents the negatives do tend to stick and people do tend to remember the negative messages And so, yeah,

Corey 1:20:38

I have a hard time faulting the tactic as much as I think it's kind of aggressive

Corey 1:20:45

aggressive and kind of crappy. be.

Zain 1:20:47

Carter, I want to talk about Jean Charest. You know, his campaign, slow out of the gates, in a sense, website, digital, etc. People are like, oh, is this campaign from bygone era? And then lo and behold, kind of seems a bit to be a campaign from a bygone era. In that sense, though, agree or disagree with the following statement I'll put in front of you, that his social media silence shouldn't be mistaken as him not being able to organize, that those are two different things, that there might actually be an upside that he's not entering the fray, keeping above it, maybe not spending too much time or resources on digital brand when he knows that the only fucking thing that might matter is selling a shit ton of memberships every day? Is there a case to be made there? Or are these two things so tied to the hip these days, that you succeeding on the air war is tied to how good you do on the ground game of selling memberships and their leadership? I guess the question is fundamentally, is Sharae just saying, I'm going to put my fucking resources in what's important. I'm known as an organizer. I'm just is going to go fucking do that is there a case we made with that or is the early air war lack of charrette in the media perhaps a little bit of a lumpy start to begin with giving you pause in terms of what the firepower of this campaign could be he

Carter 1:21:58

he launches his campaign um

Carter 1:22:00

um it was okay it was a good launch and then he his next event that he goes to the pictures that come out are pretty weak it's not a full room it doesn't look like it's packed it doesn't look like it's got any energy Then he gets diagnosed with COVID, and then his website looks like he's auditioning for the Blue Man Group. I mean, I think that overall, this isn't something that is in fact a strong

Carter 1:22:27

strong launch. He has to have social media. You know, Corey's kind of rather dismissive. It wasn't that long ago you felt like everybody had to have a Facebook page, a Twitter page, an Instagram page. You need a Facebook page, a Twitter page, an Instagram page. page um there's enough we're up in the air on tiktok but that's about it you need to have a social media presence you need to have oh you gotta have the tiktok do

Carter 1:22:51

do you the fundamental

Zain 1:22:52

fundamental question no you know what's interesting to me and this is why i find this interesting is that you know we are we entering a phase of like campaign minimalism that by being so old school if you're charrette you might be entering into new forte being like fuck this shit that has No ROI. Twitter, Facebook, whatever, fuck it, website, I don't care. I'm just going to do the work. Carter, you disagree. Corey, I want you to get your take on this, what you see from the light touch that Sheree is giving, let's put it that way, to digital and the air war. Should we discount the campaign for that reason? reason you

Corey 1:23:29

know sometimes my three-year-old will just run around the room and just run around and run around and you start thinking what is he doing and you try to imagine the game that he's playing in his own head and then you just remember that he's just just you know three and and there's no magic to it he's just there's not a thought going on about it and so i do think we're somewhat doing the same here and trying to see strategy where perhaps there is none um your point about roi is is a good one the roi conversation doesn't exist in a vacuum it's not so much is social media worth it is a website worth it it's is it worth it right now with what i've got available right now relative

Corey 1:24:09

to my other priorities right and i think that's the thing we're this is very early days we're

Corey 1:24:16

we're still not even at a point where you can accept donations as a leadership candidate for the conservatives so why yeah

Corey 1:24:23

yeah like so why would your website be the priority at this particular moment And it wouldn't be. You'd be looking at other ways that you can build these things out. So we

Corey 1:24:32

should sort of say that maybe there's more to that than some kind of like new wave movement towards campaign minimalism. The website just can't do the thing you need a website to do at this particular moment. Can

Zain 1:24:44

Can I ask you a question? Oh, go ahead, Corey. You wanted to finish a point there. And then I want to ask you guys a question about Sheree.

Corey 1:24:50

Your point about ROI, though, is a very good one. Because my point about used to be you needed to have a Facebook page, you need to have a Twitter page. There was kind of this sense that you were not a valid candidate unless you maintained all of these channels, no matter how little ROI they were providing. I didn't mean Facebook's bad. Any of these tactics can be fine if they meet your strategy. But the point is, there is a little bit more sophistication, both on behalf of campaigns and on the voters to say, like,

Corey 1:25:17

like, it doesn't tell me anything about this candidate, whether they have one of these channels or not, right? It doesn't say, for example, that Pierre Polyev is not serious because he doesn't have a polished website at this moment. moment and so knowing that you're not going to be disqualified for the lack of it and knowing that the roi might not be there especially relative to other things you're going to make different decisions and there's a different sophistication that's saying all right we could blow our brains out right now before anything is settled before we're even that clear on our brand because we're still feeling about in a lower cost space right we

Corey 1:25:54

we could build towards a brand that we're not sure about or we could wait until those things clarify wait until we actually have content We need to put on a website. Do our web work then. That, to me, makes an awful lot of sense.

Zain 1:26:06

Carter, I want to ask you a strategy question, strategy brand question. You seem to disagree with everything Corey and I say today, which is great. Carter, Jean

Zain 1:26:14

Jean Charest, does he stick in this statesman lane or does he say, fuck it, I'm in a knife fight and I'm just going to bring my own knife? Does he start picking fights? Does he start trying to get himself into media? Does he start trying to attack and go after Pierre and Patrick Brown? What would you be telling that group? And I mean, you had 15 minutes with that campaign. So what would you be telling that campaign today if you had the opportunity around, look at the terrain? The type of campaign we have may not be the one. Is that what you'd be saying? And what would you be encouraging they do in these early days of launch and post-launch?

Carter 1:26:50

much sure he's got to be the strongest campaign period um

Carter 1:26:53

um and this would be my case about the social media stuff and all of the you know on the website everything he does has to be the best in the game everything

Carter 1:27:02

everything he does needs to be better than everybody else's because and then and then when he's attacked by pierre he gets to say of course i'm being attacked by pierre i'm built to win everybody

Carter 1:27:11

everybody knows that i'm the one who's going to win this thing pierre has to bring me down uh of course patrick brown and pierre are fighting the two little people are going to do that but I'm above that. I'm going to be the best. I'm going to have the best policy ideas like he did a piece today on time to increase defense spending that was running, you know, the line and Jen Gerson's thing. For me, I wouldn't have put it there if it couldn't run in the National Post, if it couldn't run in the Globe and Mail, like that's where he should be putting his stuff. He needs to be above everything else. He needs to be better than everybody else. He's the former Premier, for God's sake. Who the fuck is Pierre Polyev? What did he do? Nothing. Nothing. Patrick Brown, the failed former leader of the Ontario party, this is easy for him to get past and

Carter 1:27:57

and be the number one candidate. And that's the brand that he should be stoking and

Carter 1:28:00

and employing. And he should be doing everything. And he should be doing everything better than everybody else, because he needs to put himself in the frontrunner category very, very quickly. thing can

Zain 1:28:11

ask a question can i test something sure yeah

Corey 1:28:13

yeah do we think built to win is actually the best brand for for jean charé i don't

Zain 1:28:18

don't know if it is i don't i'm here i don't know if you're actually asking me for my thoughts but carter maybe you give your first because you do yours and

Carter 1:28:25

then i'll correct you

Zain 1:28:31

this group want to win or does they do they want purity

Zain 1:28:35

becomes a question right

Zain 1:28:37

and i think perhaps

Zain 1:28:39

perhaps if you're pierre you're selling both that's

Corey 1:28:41

that's not even my

Zain 1:28:42

yeah right that's fuck it okay if you're if you're pierre you're probably selling ideological consistency from the get and a strategy that will beat uh justin trudeau especially after the proof points of you can win elections with 33 if that's not your question maybe you could rephrase it and carter can can

Zain 1:28:58

can answer no i mean i you're answering the question i asked i just disagreed with your answer i

Corey 1:29:06

reason he's pauliev for pm is that he is he is saying that he can win i mean there's a conversation about if he's just strong enough he can do this like

Zain 1:29:15

mainlining it to pm yeah built

Corey 1:29:17

built to win i get it it's talking about his value as a uh you know like a proven winner and if the conservatives want to win they need to move towards the middle i

Corey 1:29:28

don't know i want to hear carter's thoughts i'll share my thoughts i'm i'm i'm i'm curious what carter's gonna say here the

Carter 1:29:35

the last two guys who did this who won the won the leadership lost

Carter 1:29:42

conservatives are tired of losing they don't want to have to bring back stephen harper they want to win so

Carter 1:29:47

so the person who's most likely to win is the person who can win in quebec that's sean charrette that's

Carter 1:29:53

that's what i said earlier he is built He is built to win. He is constructed to win this race in this fashion at this time. I think it's an ideal. I don't like slogans. I'd brand him this position instead of sloganing him. But I would absolutely everything that I would do would

Carter 1:30:10

would be showcasing the fact that I have the most money, the most experience, the most thought, the most capacity, the best chance to win the election, because ultimately winning the leadership is useless. list no one gives a shit if you win the leadership you have to win the election period that's the only goal that matters what

Zain 1:30:29

what do you what are you thinking cory i'm

Corey 1:30:31

i'm thinking that a lot of the people who are drawn to jean charre are drawn to him not because he's a winner but because he's a sane person and his pool might be bigger if he's let's put it this way i don't think any three of us think he's going to win the conservative party as it exists today his chance is making a conservative party that's bigger and and a broader tent and i don't know if his best value prop isn't more like i'm

Corey 1:30:56

i'm the sane one or let's have two say like he can't say let's have two sane leaders or anything but but you know what i'm saying like there's there's probably something to be said for bringing us back to better days and the subtext there about how we

Corey 1:31:10

used to have two serious national parties and now we have two

Corey 1:31:14

two unserious national parties in many ways and it would be good to have a a strong credible conservative party that didn't hang out with uh you know convoy protesters and suggest overthrowing the government as legitimate political discourse but

Carter 1:31:28

but i think that that can be part of built to win i

Carter 1:31:30

i think that that sanity element can be put into this is the only way we're going to win this is the winning formula formula.

Zain 1:31:38

Carter, Patrick Brown, what are you thinking? Are you thinking the knife fight he's entered initially with Pierre Pogliareva is exactly what he needs to do?

Carter 1:31:48

Yeah, I mean, he needs to be seen. He needs to generate a shit ton of media. And if Pierre's prepared to share that with him, and frankly, I think that while

Carter 1:31:56

while he may not be the kamikaze candidate that's It's investigated by the RCMP for four years, as Jason Kenney's Jeff Calloway has been.

Carter 1:32:06

I think that he is, in fact, a kamikaze candidate that is designed to take down Pierre. So he's got to fight Pierre every day and allow Charest to be above the fray, be the leader.

Zain 1:32:19

What do you think Brown needs to do, Corey?

Corey 1:32:25

He's got to fight. He's just got to get into the news. He's got to talk about these things. He's got to move past the messiness that was there that we all remember when he left the leadership of the PCs and handed it to now Premier Doug Ford. So it's all about making as much noise as possible if you're him. You've got to get into the conversation. conversation and and in a way he's done an okay job of that it was not so long ago we were

Corey 1:32:53

openly joking about patrick brown's candidacy right just

Corey 1:32:57

just going back to that well perpetually because it's fucking funny when you think about it yeah it's

Corey 1:33:01

it's really fucking funny it

Zain 1:33:03

it was prophetic that i spent so much time on door eight and i'm glad you guys chose to rate this you know uh if you haven't heard that episode folks uh an excellent one uh not rivaled uh of course by this this one, which is going really well for everybody. Stephen Carter is yawning in his blazer. Yeah,

Zain 1:33:20

Yeah, we always hit our

Corey 1:33:21

our stride at the 90-minute mark. Yeah,

Zain 1:33:22

Yeah, this is good. I'm going to leave that segment. I've got so much to ask. I'm going to leave that segment there, move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, overrated, underrated campaign chairs. They were announced recently for Jean Charest, Mike Coates, Tasha Carradine. They've been announced for the other campaigns. Campaign chairs is a position. I'm very curious about this. We'll do a deeper conversation. But But for now, overrated or underrated in your mind?

Carter 1:33:46

Overrated. They get in the way of the campaign management. They think they're smart. And most of the time, we just need to move them out of the way. Tell

Carter 1:33:53

Tell them to go raise money. If they don't raise money, then just tell them to stand back and introduce us nicely at the big event when we win.

Zain 1:34:04

Corey, campaign chairs overrated or underrated in your mind? um

Corey 1:34:08

um overrated generally i think slightly more important in leadership campaigns because well the these might not necessarily be household names to everybody in canada you know

Corey 1:34:19

mike coats we all know mike mike was our boss when we worked at hill and nolton mike is a well-known name in conservative circles um tash is a well-known name and uh what you're trying to do is signal that a a certain group of people are coalescing around the particular candidate still think they're overrated. I think it would be super easy to run a campaign with no campaign chairs. It's been done many times.

Corey 1:34:43

I sometimes think it's a lot easier for the purposes that Stephen's talked about.

Corey 1:34:47

Campaigns can really run off the rails when there's too many cooks in the kitchen. And sometimes that clarity of vision is more important than the signals you think you're sending based on who your campaign chairs are.

Zain 1:34:58

Quy, the conservatives to enter the race for leader are having a $300,000 entry fee. In your your mind overrated or underrated the barrier to entry to to to run for a conservative leader their argument that they've been given is we don't want a massive parade of folks running we don't want to make it too easy but 300k overrated underrated in your mind uh

Corey 1:35:21

uh i mean 300k that's what is that like three weeks of groceries i've i've lost touch with the common person seems okay

Zain 1:35:29

seems fine yeah three weeks of groceries with your household uh seems about about right carter overrated underrated 300k for entry fee for the conservative leadership race well

Carter 1:35:37

well i mean these things are ridiculous now um the the the donation limit is low uh the entry fees are high um you know the

Carter 1:35:48

the take take a higher percentage off the donations um let

Carter 1:35:52

let more people run like you're still not going to have a huge number of people running if you make it 150,000 You know, like, I

Carter 1:35:59

I know it costs a lot of money to run these campaigns or to run the leaderships. But the parties have just started to use them as their de facto fundraising. And I think that's a mistake.

Zain 1:36:11

Carter, are you in or are you out on the conservative strategy? The party, right after President Zelensky's speech in Canada, ultimately said that they want to secure Ukrainian airspace, knowing it's something that the government could definitely not do. Are you in or out on the conservative party's what seemed like knee-jerk strategy to call for the securing of Ukrainian airspace? What do you think? The

Carter 1:36:36

conservatives knee jerk strategy should be their fucking slogan. They bounce around and try and this is what happens when you don't stick to principles and instead try and just play gotcha with the government. They're playing gotcha with the government. They know and the government knows that if you impose a no fly zone over the Ukraine, you could be shooting down Russian jets and Russian fighter planes. And that just opens up an escalation that no one can handle. On top of that, are you going to be shooting down missiles like the missiles that are coming from from Russia? We may not have a defense for in in in that

Carter 1:37:17

that type of flight, no fly zone. So what the hell are you doing? What are you even talking about? Stop showing your ignorance and stand simply stand with the people who are trying to help Zelensky and trying to help the Ukrainian people. Don't make this partisan. Don't make it worse.

Zain 1:37:34

Corey, are you in or out on the conservative strategy to call to secure Ukrainian airspace?

Corey 1:37:39

You know, spiritually, I'm with them. I want to do more to help Ukraine. I think it's one of those situations that I look back on. And on a certain level, it's their

Corey 1:37:50

their country, right? Is it really outrageous that we would be able to fly over their country with their permission and secure that that airspace. Countries have the right to secure their airspace. But on another much more practical level, obviously,

Corey 1:38:05

obviously, it's a no-go. Obviously, it would create a very, very dangerous situation for the entire world. And we're going to have to find other ways that we can put the pressure on Russia and other ways that we can support Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. The parallel here, you know, no-fly zone sounds so non-confrontational, like, well, just not

Carter 1:38:25

not to fly, But

Corey 1:38:26

But this is talking about sending our forces into Ukraine to stop other countries' forces. The equivalent truly is, truly is, if we said, let's send our army to Ukraine, because then the Russians can't take their army into Ukraine. When

Corey 1:38:43

you think about it in those terms, without the no-fly phraseology, I think people would say that's

Corey 1:38:48

that's entering an active war zone. Well, that's true with planes too, my friends. And so let's just sort of calm ourselves down and try to find other ways that we can help. I really want to help the Ukrainian people. I think I'm going to take a bold stance here. Vladimir Putin's a bad guy. Yeah, I know. But this is not the way to do it. This, this is a nuclear power. And we would be setting up a really dangerous Guns of August situation or worse. I mean, Guns of August didn't even involve armies, you know, in active combat with each other and another army butting in.

Zain 1:39:24

Corey, I'm going to go to the final question, starting with you. One sentence for Jason Kenney as he rests his head tonight, as he thinks about the future prospects of his leadership, his job, his party that he helped create. What one word of strategic advice would you whisper to one Jason Kenney on this fine Wednesday evening?

Corey 1:39:47

What's done is done. You know, the die is cast and assess what the situation is. But

Corey 1:39:54

that's it. Like, assess and then decide accordingly. You're not going to be able to change the fundamental variables at play here.

Zain 1:40:01

Carter, one sentence, one phrase of advice for Jason Kenney on this fine Wednesday evening.

Zain 1:40:11

Really? Now? You tell him that now. You're on his side, Carter.

Carter 1:40:19

I think that that might be the best thing. They have more data than we do. And if I had all the data, I would know more. But I think that that's the best play for him.

Zain 1:40:28

Out of retirement, we are back. That's a wrap on episode 973 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Beljoo. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we will see you next time.

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