Episode 978: Sorry about the first 15 minutes

Zain 0:02

This is Strategists episode 978. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, it is a Thursday. It is the last day of March. And Corey Hogan, you've got some special announcements to march us forward. Do you not? I

Corey 0:17

I sure do, Zane. Tomorrow is the start of the government's new fiscal year, which means that a number of new government initiatives will also be taking place that are tied to the budget. So check. It's very jurisdiction dependent, but happy new fiscal year, everybody. And we look forward to checking in with you in 12 months to see how it went. thank

Carter 0:37

thank you cory that was great

Zain 0:38

great happy new fiscal year to everybody to all those celebrating across the country happy new fiscal year uh

Carter 0:47

think he's over the i think we're doing the countdown today

Zain 0:50

we're doing the countdown today but

Zain 0:52

but we're definitely doing the countdown cory

Zain 0:53

cory and i always get together on uh fiscal new year where we just like yeah

Zain 0:57

and yeah you guys

Carter 0:58

guys are big partiers um but

Carter 1:01

but i think he skipped over the real news uh the

Carter 1:04

the real news is which is that i'm still doing shitty on my afl fell off i fell off on

Carter 1:11

on sunday and then last night swan like the swans just forgot how to score is is the only way to describe it they just literally forgot that you have to kick the ball through the two tall uh yes

Corey 1:23

yes now steven i will take your word for it that that's how afl is played that there's some sort of ball some sort of kicking and some sort of tall things but to be frank no one cares so i'm going to take back the conversation now and say that with the start of new government fiscal year uh it was our hope to launch the strategist patreon account but unfortunately um strategists or

Corey 1:45

or the strategist patreon.com was taken uh it unfortunately it's been squatted on by by a troll i think it's fair to say so at this point we only have strategist patreon.com so we're looking to work that out and we'll get back to everybody here on the strategist patreon but to be clear currently

Corey 2:03

currently housed at strategist patreon not the strategist patreon yeah

Carter 2:07

yeah so strategist patreon allows you to give us or

Carter 2:10

or they can give us their money yeah

Corey 2:15

and get many rewards in return like

Carter 2:18

like what what kind of rewards yeah it's literally like you

Zain 2:21

you know what you know what i have a sense of is that we We have sold out our live show, Steve and Carter. Do you want to talk about selling out? I mean, it's like this

Corey 2:29

this is our shilliest opening ever. I'm calling. I mean, I'm feeling pretty good. Let's just go on to the headlines. Right

Carter 2:33

Right now, we're going to do Pod Save America style. We're going to throw to three and a half minutes of commercials, and then we'll start it up.

Carter 2:45

Love Pod Save America. Carter,

Zain 2:47

Carter, do you ever feel like you're just sitting at home, and you're like, oh, fuck. I got to take care of something. Like, in this case, let's just, like, I'm pulling it out of my ass here. You've got to mail a letter.

Zain 2:57

And you've got to mail this letter, but

Zain 3:00

but you don't want to stand in line at the post office. What do you do?

Carter 3:03

What do I do? I call stamps.com. Zane, thanks very much. Stamps.com, you're all-in-one service provider, provided with a partnership with the U.S. Postal Service. Stamps.com is like having a post office in your house, in your office, and you're able to do everything using your own household printer.

Corey 3:21

how could I possibly do that? Obviously, I'd have to weigh these packages. No, no, no.

Zain 3:25

Here's what you do. You don't have to do anything because what you can ultimately do is find the right help. Find the right person. The way you do that is through ZipRecruiter.com, Corey. We'll find you the right talent. I mean, 8 out of 10 employers trust ZipRecruiter.com to help them find the person to weigh their packages for Stamps.com. And you know what? When that employee ultimately leaves, you need to give them a nice little send-off. you know you you feel like you don't need to move on sherry's berries cory sherry's berries provides a tremendous set of uh frozen and fresh berries delivered to your door i mean it's incredible it really is carter oh

Carter 4:06

oh i just i hope we do the green drink too what's the green drink i can't remember athletic

Zain 4:16

do you feel cory you're good

Corey 4:18

minutes and 15 seconds. I started drifting. I started thinking about other things. I'm currently web browsing on adamandeve.com for all of my adult toy needs.

Corey 4:30

You can get 35% off one item right now if you use the code AESAVE35 at checkout.

Carter 4:36

Oh, that's pretty great.

Zain 4:38

No, that's excellent. Excellent. And of course, if you need anything to complete your look, to complete your home, anything to perhaps use said toys, article.com. I mean, a Canadian furniture manufacturer, visit article.com slash flair for your 10% discount code. That's article.com slash flair, F-L-A-I-R, Flair Airlines, always drifting. Guys, let's move it on to our first segment. We have sold out our show. Our first segment, the headlines, they are back. back yes they have been absent for a long time and you might be asking yourself why are the headlines back cory why are the headlines back steven well mainly sometimes you find the best headline the one and you say i need to build an entire segment around this steven carter this one comes to us from the ap news nebraska lawmaker apologizes for debunked litter box claim that is right a nebraska state lawmaker apologized earlier this week after he publicly cited a A persistent but debunked rumor alleging that schools are placing litter boxes in school bathrooms to accommodate children who self-identify as cats. Stephen Carter.

Carter 5:48

It just tells you what some people want to believe. I'm going to use this. I'm not going to make jokes. I'm going to, in fact, bring this back to our problem with misinformation is not just the misinformation itself. It is the fact that we wish to believe the misinformation. So we believe certain things, the left, the right, it doesn't matter. Everybody chooses to believe certain. I believe I'm handsome. That is a piece of misinformation that I choose to believe because it makes my world a lot better. But this this is what happens. We want to believe something. And this lawmaker wanted to believe that there are, in fact, people in the world who want to identify as a cat. And there are others who are woke enough to place litter boxes in bathrooms. I mean, good

Carter 6:36

good God. I mean, people just want to pee. Isn't that, you know, just go in the toilet. We're fine.

Corey 6:43

Wait a minute. At the end, it became really, really unclear to me what your argument was. People

Carter 6:50

want to pee in the bathroom, Corey. They just want to pee. Just let them pee where they want to pee. That's

Corey 6:55

That's very good. Yeah.

Carter 6:58

some piece standing up some piece sitting down just

Carter 7:02

just let them go i'm

Corey 7:03

i'm more like i lay on the floor and and shoot fountain style that's my go-to it

Carter 7:09

was the best part about having kids it's when they just shoot

Zain 7:12

shoot a bathroom when you go to the bathroom regardless of how you go yeah you want to be safe and secure and the only way to do that is simply safe

Zain 7:20

we'll come to your home and and you know regardless of what you do in that bathroom room you got your cell phone with you expressvpn cory expressvpn it lets you ensure that you're not communicating directly to a website no they do it for you cory yes

Corey 7:34

yes steven carter is using expressvpn right now which is why he always seems so slow and delayed it's not because he's slow with it because

Corey 7:43

protecting himself online did you know that uh all of your browser history is available to your uh internet service provider just just be careful out there folks and

Carter 7:52

remember use squarespace when you're setting up your in your uh your own internet the

Corey 7:57

the bit's over yeah carter

Carter 7:57

carter what the fuck you

Carter 8:00

you know what if i wasn't using a fucking vpn

Zain 8:04

we we we beat up on carter so much it's probably like impact his mental health which is why he probably wants to go with better help better

Zain 8:10

better help is your online therapist this

Carter 8:14

this is this is just telling the people what happens if they don't go to uh what is it strategist patreon.com not the strategist patreon.com strategist patreon.com this is what will happen if you don't go to the patreon we will have to get advertisers

Carter 8:29

it'll be tragic we

Zain 8:30

we don't want to do that we don't want to spend the entire show on advertisers

Carter 8:32

advertisers because we're too lazy we're

Zain 8:35

we're too lazy we got things to do Corey our next headline comes to hold on no you

Zain 8:40

no thoughts what are your thoughts

Carter 8:42

there's a litter box yeah

Corey 8:45

it's a litter box this guy it's

Corey 8:47

it's a story about that stuff stuff the

Zain 8:50

next headline comes to us from the daily australian prime minister scott morrison says renters should just buy a house if they want rent relief that's right the prime minister suggested that instead of looking of buying a home instead of renting uh those that are struggling with rent payments the rising rent should just look at buying a home uh they unveiled their fourth budget on tuesday cory it seems airtight it seems simple if you want rent relief why don't you just buy a home you

Corey 9:19

know the idea that marie antoinette said let them eat cake isn't real you know that that didn't actually happen that's something people threw at her to suggest that she was so out of touch and aloof that she could possibly think such things this is this is as bad if you think that your problem with affordability is renting therefore home ownership's your solution there's about a million things wrong with that a million things wrong with that uh not least of which is down payments are involved. Home ownership is more than just your mortgage payment. It's a rare month. I'm not spending one, two thousand dollars on some random thing in my ancient house. And this

Corey 9:55

this just shows him a little more out of touch than any politician should dare to be, because at the end of the day, this is the kind of thing people throw back at you during an election. It's not forgotten by the people who feel totally scorned by it.

Zain 10:10

Carter, isn't it just as simple as just purchasing a home if you want rent relief? Sounds airtight to me.

Carter 10:16

It's just as simple as the NDP saying, you know what we need to do? Just throw a bunch of money into

Carter 10:21

into the rental system and expect that rents will stay low instead of landlords jacking up their rents to match the new money coming into the system. Rents go up. Supply and demand is really what drives our economic system. And it's surprising to me that some of these right-wing politicians who are so devoted to capitalism seem to miss the very first step of it. And that is that supply and demand will equalize at a set price depending on where the demand and supply slopes meet. So this isn't a simple problem with a simple solution. But I tell you, it's not as simple as Scott Morrison makes it. And isn't it just like the 10,000th time that guy's put his foot in his mouth? Like he is just tragic. Let's go to Australia and run an election. Who's with me?

Carter 11:15

Just me. Okay. Good to know. It's you

Zain 11:16

you on your own. It's

Carter 11:17

It's just you on

Zain 11:18

on your own. No, it's fine. No problem.

Zain 11:19

I mean, listen, Carter, costs are rising, housing, you

Zain 11:23

you know, gasoline, meat.

Zain 11:25

But there's a simple solution. It's HelloFresh. It's

Zain 11:42

those are all the ones i know i

Carter 11:44

i think that's it yeah okay okay next headline zane next

Zain 11:47

next one comes to us from ctv stephen carter city of vancouver unimpressed with park bench plaque prank that's right stickers mimicking memorial plaques were stuck onto benches in and around Vancouver Stanley Park earlier this month. And the park board is not amused by the anonymous social media campaign to bring laughter to passerbys. They're all dedicated in the memory of Jack Shit. There's no date of birth or death date he's described in profane and affectionate terms. Stephen Carter, the park bench saga. We've seen this many times in many municipalities. Your thoughts on people trying to bring humor through

Zain 12:24

through a park bench.

Carter 12:27

think it's funny but

Carter 12:29

i have a sense of humor i have a sense of humor have you ever met anybody from vancouver with a sense of humor i haven't you know like they're terrible people out there it rains all the time and that makes it hard for them to laugh right it just it's hard for them so victoria those people are hilarious but they're stoned all the time so they have no reason not to laugh that's

Zain 12:49

that's why this podcast is always brought to you by abbotsford cory uh you know what

Zain 12:53

do you you think what

Zain 12:55

what do you think uh

Zain 12:56

do you want to defend the people of vancouver which carter has pretty much to be clear

Carter 13:00

clear though not the entire lower mainland just vancouver that's yeah

Zain 13:04

yeah yeah i don't know thank you thank you for the clarity cory it's

Corey 13:07

it's like our third largest market our

Zain 13:10

our third like the podcast third largest market podcast

Corey 13:13

podcast third largest market when

Corey 13:14

when do you why do you

Zain 13:15

you know this and why do you care markets

Carter 13:18

markets plural like this seems weird okay

Zain 13:22

yeah okay great cory

Carter 13:24

basing it all on just our friend katie who i've never known to laugh so

Zain 13:33

that's good are we doing individual shout outs now i believe

Carter 13:35

believe that that's what brings us to the third largest market is katie listen so that's are

Zain 13:41

are we just gonna do a listing of all our listeners just thank them we should actually be

Carter 13:45

be shorter than some of your podcasts you know like Like some of your quiet, you know, they go for a while.

Zain 13:51

Good. We'll thank all of our listeners in Burlington next week with our Burlington special. Just read all of the listener names.

Zain 13:58

Corey, this is something that you'll probably like. Juicy fastball right down the middle. This one comes to us from Meat and Poultry Magazine. Dairy Queen announces new signature stack burgers. That is right, Corey. Corey. The fast food provider of choice to the Strategist podcast is introducing new quarter and new third pounder and half pounder triple burgers, Corey. I mean, this isn't an official press release that was picked up by one magazine, Meat and Poultry. This is big, big news for the fans of the grill and the fans of the chill.

Corey 14:31

So in the 1980s, one of the fast food restaurants tried to bring out a third pounder. I think it it was burger king but i could be mistaken about that yeah

Zain 14:38

yeah it was yeah to

Corey 14:39

to uh to uh you know say our our quarter pounder yeah it's bigger than the quarter pounder it's a third pounder but what they found is that americans by and large thought it was smaller because three is less than four so i can only imagine that uh does

Corey 14:53

does anybody think in the intervening 40 years america's gotten smarter like does anybody think that this is more likely to succeed at this point well

Zain 15:01

well you think this you think this burger is going to be a failure out of the gate you're going

Zain 15:04

back to history. You

Corey 15:05

You can have some people saying, I'm real hungry, too hungry for a third pounder. Got to get me that quarter pounder.

Zain 15:10

Carter, you know, the fundamental zoom out conversation here is really about the DQ strategy. Is DQ leading too much into the grill and not enough into the chill?

Carter 15:21

I actually saw the ad and the ad was all burgers. And I was like, no. Too much grill. Too much. It's called Dairy Queen. You got to balance it. It's called Dairy Queen, but you don't go with with the burgers like

Carter 15:33

like the burgers don't make me happy like did you kill it the dairy cow to get to the dairy burger i'm not very happy so i want the cow i i need it all to mix up like it needs to be the full meal deal kind of thing right not no i mean no i've just stolen would you mcdonald's slogan fuck

Zain 15:49

would you want would you want to know that the same cow is in your grill as it is in your chill i

Carter 15:54

i think that that would make it you know hey it's It's Daisy's Package, you know.

Carter 16:00

I like that. That works for me.

Carter 16:04

Daisy produced less milk this week.

Zain 16:08

I think we've created 16 minutes of tremendous value to sign up

Zain 16:13

up for our podcast.

Zain 16:16

Wait, to sign up for our what? Our Patreon. Okay. Yeah, Patreon.

Zain 16:21

This is good. Any final thoughts, Corey? Because I know you tried to turn this into a sanctimonious lecture of marketing knowledge. and uh we all knew it uh and and we kind of railroaded that anything else on the grill and chill uh

Zain 16:33

uh are they choosing the right focal point here he

Carter 16:35

he doesn't even have his glasses on anymore he's not even losing it yeah he's

Corey 16:39

he's losing it he's losing it what makes you think i'm gonna post this to our feed what

Zain 16:43

what it's actually pretty good trust

Zain 16:47

me you'll listen back to him you'll be like because you're the only one who does listen back to it but

Carter 16:50

but that was pretty good do you remember that one that we did that was an hour long where we looped three 20 minute sections together this

Carter 16:55

this is better remember that remember

Zain 16:57

remember it all i know all i know sold

Zain 17:00

sold out of fucking theater 400 shows let's move it on to our first let's

Zain 17:05

move it on 20 of

Carter 17:06

of our audience went all the way through these people listen to anything yeah

Zain 17:13

if you are part of the 20 we want to actually invite you to special focus group uh and by focus group i mean iq test

Carter 17:27

there's gonna be whole sections of this bleeped out do

Carter 17:29

do you know what maybe

Corey 17:31

maybe this is our first patreon exclusive maybe this one right here i

Carter 17:35

i think it might be next headline zane that's

Carter 17:38

that's it that's it carter we're moving on to our first segment our first segment but dude

Zain 17:41

dude where's my car guys

Zain 17:44

guys the liberals have introduced their ambitious climate plan which includes a ambitious future focus towards electric vehicles a ambitious goal on the oil sand sector by 2030 cutting emissions by 42 percent from 2019 numbers which is the last time we had an official inventory um also as part of the mix talking about a permanent carbon tax regardless of who takes government. That was announced, and that's being floated out. This, of course, coming just before the federal budget, which I also want to talk about shortly. But Carter, when you saw it, let's start with you here. When you saw the announcement here, where did you kind of lean? Were you thinking this was right on schedule, the lane that the liberals would occupy? Did you feel like this was a bit ambitious? Or did you feel like this was kind of a, I was looking for a bit more, having seen this government, and perhaps even seeing this government attach itself to the the ndp over the past week and in terms of um the

Zain 18:42

the supply and confidence agreement what did you make top line thoughts when you heard about the agreement come out from the from the liberals in their climate plan i

Carter 18:49

i thought it was good i thought that the numbers were good like a 40 cut by you know by 2030 that's a big number it feels big um but then when you read through the details of what's going to happen uh and how it's going to unfold i was actually pretty pretty impressed i thought you know nothing felt like it was totally unattainable um i think that you know there's a school of thought and and maybe it's shared by the the hosts of this podcast because two of the three of us have ordered uh electric cars and one of us drives a 2005 electric car toyota corolla so you know that

Zain 19:22

has common electric issues that is correct yeah

Carter 19:25

know barely runs uh so obviously very carbon neutral yeah it's got a plug very carbon neutral So, you know, I think that the world is

Carter 19:34

is moving quickly. And I think that this 40% cut

Carter 19:38

feels like it's actually right on schedule. It feels like this is something we can achieve. And, you

Carter 19:45

you know, there, of course, was the requisite whining from the conservatives, but they never present anything that they'll do. do.

Carter 19:52

this is becoming really important to Canadians, if for no other reason than we're seeing the impacts of climate change every single year. You know, the flooding that we've seen in British Columbia, the wildfires we've seen in BC and Alberta and across the country. These things are real. I mean, just even the hailstorm that happened here in Calgary, up in northeast Calgary a couple years ago, you can still see the damage that that hailstorm caused and the impact that it had on real people's lives so when when everybody is out screaming about how this uh this change will have impact on real people's lives i always try and figure out what the balance is because the balance should be the impact from the actual climate change that is occurring and the impact um that

Carter 20:39

that these people are going to have to pay for through higher carbon tax I mean, the vast majority of

Carter 20:45

the cost of gas today across Canada isn't carbon tax. The vast majority of the cost is just the cost. This is what it costs. So, you know, so it's still not much more expensive than a liter of water, a liter of gas.

Zain 21:00

You know, Corey, one of the things that struck me in its simplicity was 2030, which we keep repeating around climate over and over. 2030 is like eight years away, less than in many ways. And so when you look at some of these goals, right, like I mentioned, the one off the top regarding the 42% reduction from the 2019 last inventory on emissions, the Liberal government also saying that by 2026, they want 20% of all new passenger vehicles sold to be electric. By 2030, 60% that, you know, by 2030, they're kind of aiming for these goals that the carbon tax would be at 38 additional cents a liter.

Zain 21:43

2030 is not that far away. way

Corey 21:46

yeah and one of the interesting things about this for me is through most of my lifetime we would set ambitious climate goals and then we would kick them further or they would get less ambitious as we started to get into nearer term horizons eight years to your point is that's just two governments that's you know something that we're going to see very quickly time sure does fly but we're actually seeing government get more ambitious as 2030

Corey 22:11

is approaching as 2035 is approaching people moving up their targets getting getting grander in the you know the electric vehicle targets for example i think that's a pretty good one 60 by 2030 is is a lot right that's a it's a huge chunk of the uh of uh of any uh you know country's fleet but when you look at the numbers some of it seems to be not the most dramatic

Corey 22:34

dramatic bet by government because the market is taking us there anyhow if you look at this podcast which is clearly representative of the nation as a whole, 66% have electric vehicle purchases in progress as we speak. So it's

Corey 22:48

it's happening. It's going to be occurring sooner than later. And I think one of the things that you have to sort of grapple with when you are in particular in a jurisdiction like Alberta, but I think really anywhere where you're more carbon dependent is, what the hell does this look like for you in 10 years? What are we going to be doing in 10 years? And how are we getting on this bus? Because otherwise, it's going to run us right the hell over.

Carter 23:11

Well, there's big things like the zero emissions vehicles was obviously a big thing. But I think that we don't understand, like the transportation industry, when we start to see those zero emission vehicles come across in the, you know, the large trucks, the transport trucks, that coupled with vehicle autonomy, the ability for them to drive themselves is going to be a significant change. And when that happens, the cost advantages are going to be so dramatic that we will see really big shifts to that type of technology in a very short period of time. You know, that auto driving technology, when it happens, suddenly those trucks can run 24-7 and they just get to where they're going. and

Carter 23:55

and if it's zero emissions i mean how long the battery is how much they can pull all those things will be figured out by a lot people a lot smarter than me but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that those truckers that were protesting on capital or at the hill

Carter 24:15

they're facing a much bigger threat than vaccines because the much bigger threat is just an autonomous vehicle vehicle picking up their load and taking it where it needs to go.

Zain 24:25

Carter, I'm curious to get your take, starting with you and then jumping off to Corey, around the conservative response here, specifically to how they've been positioning this. So in the past, the conservative response, you know, might be to scoff at, might be to reject the premise of a climate plan. They haven't done that this time. They say they support emissions reductions, but not Trudeau's goal, Harper's 2030 goal, which is a much lower percentage. It's that 30% below 2005 levels versus that 40% to 45% that the Trudeau goal is going for. What do you make of the conservative strategy here and the conservative message? Are you in on what they're trying to do here by going back to Harper, not rejecting it entirely, maybe trying to come across as a little bit reasonable as they try to paint the liberals as a more radical left agenda, so to speak? Does this kind of give them room to appear reasonable with their previous goal that Harper kind of put on the table?

Carter 25:20

Well, I think that – I want to take this a couple of different ways because I want to give them credit for at least being mature and not just doing the – this is a horrible thing. Think of the cost to the economy

Carter 25:30

economy piece because we've

Carter 25:31

we've critiqued them for just kind of tearing everything apart. So this isn't just them tearing something apart. part, this is actually now something where they are presenting something of an alternative plan. The problem, of course, is that Harper's

Carter 25:45

Harper's plan was just to put numbers on the screen and really not say how the achievement was going to happen. It almost feels like it's going to be some sort of fair market kind

Carter 25:54

of capacity to change the system.

Carter 25:56

system. And you know what? The system itself might change fast enough without many market interventions to get to the conservative's point of view but there's also one more problem so and the other problem is what's the difference between 30 and 40 percent right

Carter 26:14

right what's the difference between 30 and 40 percent now we might know the difference between 30 and 40 percent we might be able to put our hands on it and say holy shit that is a ton difference in carbon emission reductions but to to the average person does 30 to 40 percent make much difference is all the same even the conservatives are saying that it could be 30%. So what's 40%, right? And so I think that it weakens their argument. If I was running their

Carter 26:38

their opposition structure, what I would say is, let's lay it into what is the actual cost and how quickly is this going? That to me is the way to dive into it and present your own ideas and say, this is how we can achieve these things with less impact on the average Canadian family. But overall, I just think that their response is fairly tepid.

Zain 27:02

Corey, what do you think of the conservative play here that they that they went for, accepting the premise, changing the number?

Corey 27:10

Well, in some ways, yeah, it does show a certain amount of growth, doesn't it? Although I got to tell you, back to Harper, this is this is not in my estimation going to be a winning line. It's starting to feel really old even now in 2022, and it will feel very old by 2025, to be talking about the guy who was there 10 years earlier, like literally 10 years earlier by the time we hit the next election. It'd be like if in 2003, the Conservatives were running on back to Mulroney, just to give you some context here. From

Zain 27:41

From the time perspective, yeah. Yeah,

Corey 27:42

Yeah, I mean, the world has changed so bloody much since Stephen Harper was prime minister. And I think that Canadian attitudes on climate change have changed as well. And in some ways, saying this is back to Harper will, it

Corey 27:55

it will cut the other way, too. It will make people think it's an insufficient plan because there is an understanding that we were not doing enough 10 years ago. You hit a certain point and it just feels like the past and it feels like cavemen and cavewomen. It doesn't feel like it's a relevant argument today. Even if the 30% is somewhere within the ballpark of 40%, is it enough? No. 40% is probably not enough. But you can understand the

Corey 28:23

the appeal if you're a true believer, but step outside of your bubble and ask yourself, if you're just a middle-of-the-road Canadian, who

Corey 28:30

who gives a shit if it's back to Harper, the guy who was prime minister 10 years earlier by the time we had the next election?

Zain 28:36

Yeah, that's a good point.

Zain 28:37

Corey, I want to talk to you about the domestic Alberta-based response by Rachel Notley, because she also came out swinging against Justin Trudeau on this. She mentioned that this

Zain 28:47

this 42% was a non-solution, a fantasy. You know, she pointed out that there's an inherent unfairness in the scheme, that the oil and gas sector produces 26% of emissions, transportation produces 25%. Oil and gas has to hit this 42% cut while it's just 11% for transportation. How is that fair? I'm curious to get your strategic and message mind to her opposition to Trudeau's climate plan, of course, with the obvious caveat and then the point to be made clearly that, you know, she's on the progressive side of the political spectrum here. So interesting to see her remarks on something like this.

Corey 29:25

I'm very much of two minds on it, I have to say, because my first reaction was, oh, for fuck's sake, are you kidding me? because we all know fundamentally that even 42% is not enough. Like the world is on fucking fire and it's time to do something about it. And the foot dragging that we've been doing is too much. I'm so sick of every summer there just being another forest fire somewhere that I love just burning down and polluting my cities, just choking them. If you live in the West, you know exactly what I'm talking about. We can't hand wave it away anymore. You know, it's gone from, well, this is a one in a hundred year event to our next one in a hundred year event to our third, to our fourth. Guess what? Just events now. The world is in trouble and we need to do something about it.

Corey 30:07

It's hard, however, to dispute the specifics of what she said in terms of like the equity of dealing with it between the various industries. And of course, there is also the practicalities of how in the world are we going to do this because a climate plan that ignores working people or a climate plan that is not attainable is one that's going to have a backlash to it. And so I do take her point on that. But I think a more constructive approach would have been not rebutting the reductions to oil and gas, but instead saying, well, it's also important that transportation does its part. And that's what I would have been looking more for than the suggestion that we just can't do it and throwing up our hands. Because, you know, we

Corey 30:45

we have to do it. It's not, you know, it seems impossible. Living on this planet on our current trajectory seems more impossible.

Zain 30:52

Carter, navigate the politics for me. What are you thinking? I

Carter 30:55

think that she's still suffering the pain from 2019 when she was the ruiner of all oil and gas. And she took that beating that Jason Kenney put on her in

Carter 31:05

in that election. And

Carter 31:07

And so as a result, she wants to be seen as the protector of oil and gas. Well, she's not ever going to be seen as a protector of oil and gas. I actually would have much preferred it if she said, you know what, we stood up on a stage here in Alberta with industry leaders. and we instituted a real carbon tax because the industry knew that it was the right thing to do. And I have a lot of confidence in the technical capacity of our industry. They are looking for the incentives that are coming from the federal government. They are looking for the opportunities that are coming from the federal government and they will rise to the task of achieving this goal and in fact, exceeding this goal as they have every other step of the way when we've asked them to achieve something environmentally. The Canadian oil and gas industry is amongst the best in the world. and we need to they know the challenge they've all written the challenge into their strategic plans into their 10-year plans into their 20-year plans they know where they're going and i want them to lead so and they

Carter 32:02

they want to lead this

Carter 32:04

this this protectionism of the of the industry it felt weak to me and it and it's it's running to be second place in an argument that you know you're never ever going to win.

Carter 32:15

Be on your own platform. Take your own message. Don't just try and be second place to the UCP in protecting the oil and gas industry. They just don't need your protection.

Zain 32:26

Corey, you wanted to jump in on your...

Corey 32:26

your... Well, Carter said so much of what I want to say, and I agree with it emphatically. One of the things that I think the NDP really erred on in 2019 was how all in they went in the preceding year on oil and gas. And it's not because they they were wrong about the importance to the economy for some of this market access. And the oil industry was really, really challenged by our lack of what we call takeaway capacity and our ability to get product to market because it's a commodity and the marginal barrel sets the price. And when you've got oil that people literally cannot get rid of, the price of oil will plummet and the effect will be severe. Because here in Alberta, we use that to pay for road schools and hospitals, all of the good things that, you know, the public services we rely on. But by raising the issue of oil and gas so much, by continually talking about it, by fighting about it, by making it the big scene, and by, you know, having the big conversation about this with the UCP, you played right into them, right? This is kind of ballot box 101. You don't set your ballot question on the other guy's strong turf. And if your big issue is supporting oil and gas, you're not going to vote vote NDP.

Corey 33:33

You're not going to vote NDP. So you've got to change the big issue. You've got to change the conversation. And in 2023, election looming here in Alberta, the big issue can't be support for oil and gas, or the NDP are not going to win. It's as simple as that, right?

Corey 33:52

the other thing is, it's very easy, because of the amount of money oil and gas has, and the amount of influence oil and gas has in a province like Alberta, to believe that there is a a certain omnipotence to the industry, it's not really there. The Alberta economy is not as undiversified as people think or as people act. And when you look at the number of people who work directly in oil and gas, it's a smaller percent of the workforce than work directly in the finance sector in Ontario. It's not discounting its economic impact.

Corey 34:21

But there's fewer all the time. Fewer and fewer Albertans think of themselves as oil and gas dependent, even those that frankly probably are because they work adjacent to the industry. So you can't the other reason not hit your start of this wagon is that's not what people think is next. It's not even what people think is now for most of this province. So give them a now give them a next and acknowledge that if you're now and next is oil and gas, you're not an NDP voter and you're not accessible to the NDP.

Zain 34:49

Carter, I want to talk to you about something that you actually brought up, which was the carbon tax tax elements here. You brought it up in the confines of the NDP, their climate leadership plan. Talk to me about the federal carbon tax. I think the most intriguing element to me about this announcement on the federal side, we're going to kind of zoom back out to the federal, was their desire

Zain 35:10

desire to enshrine it regardless of who's in government, a price on carbon, that they wanted to kind of keep this guarantee to see the carbon tax climb to the levels the the government has forecast, regardless of who's in government with this approach, that it would be a fixed price over a time period known as carbon contracts for differences. The federal emission plan would enshrine future price levels and contracts between the government and low carbon project investors, thereby de-risking, you know, the low carbon investments. What do you kind of think about this in terms of trying to future, quite literally future-proof, a very controversial piece of policy, as we've talked about in previous episodes, So it's in a time where, yes, you may have an agreement with the NDP about your future governance, but people will shift, governments will shift, and there's a popularity on the other side of the house, on the conservative side, that will more than likely want to reject this. I'm curious to get your take on this political maneuvering and thereby the policy maneuvering that will be certainly required thereafter. Your thoughts on this?

Carter 36:10

Businesses like certainty, right?

Carter 36:12

right? And so even when governments – so in my lifetime, we've had two controversial taxes introduced, the GST brought in by the conservatives and the carbon tax brought in by the liberals. And we can just use Alberta as a microcosm because, of course, Rachel Notley's NDP government brought in a carbon tax prior to the federal carbon tax taking effect. And so we had our own carbon tax. So the federal one didn't apply. Jason Kenney came in and promptly repealed the

Carter 36:40

the Alberta carbon tax. didn't stop us from paying carbon tax we still have been paying carbon tax the entire time because the federal carbon tax just came in uh so i

Carter 36:50

i think that governments political parties come in and they they rally against the tax they will vote you know jean cretien was going to repeal the gst when he was you know in his first term uh when he was running in 1993 um or no 19

Carter 37:06

was 93. Yeah, OK. I'll be OK.

Carter 37:11

He didn't. I mean, the only tax change that we saw was Stephen Harper giving up 2 percent, which was, you know, in most jurisdictions occupied by the provincial government. So, I mean, it's tricky. It's a tricky thing to enshrine a tax, but it's also a tricky thing to walk away from a tax because ultimately the urge to spend is significant and the ability to increase revenue or create revenue is hard. So when these taxes are essentially, if you will, bought and paid for by the previous governments, we tend not to undo that. So enshrining it through contracts and enshrining it through some sort of business predictability, it's actually – sure,

Carter 37:47

sure, it's a smart move for the government, but it's also a smart move for businesses because it does give that certainty and it does enable the cost structure to be there so that when they're making their investments in their wind farms that take 15 or 20 years to pay off, there's not going to be a foundational shift that undermines the the profitability of those investments um so i'm sure that industry wants to see it i'm sure that um the governments of future days will rail about how they're not able to take it apart um but they'll they'll be pleased that they're not able to because they want the revenue structures even though 90 of this revenue structure is going back to canadians carter

Zain 38:26

carter cory i should say carter says smart for business smart for politics uh cory hogan mba uh

Zain 38:31

uh with a very fine gmat score do you agree certainly

Corey 38:35

certainly from a business perspective there's nothing not to like about what's been proposed right so for clarity as to what is being suggested here it's that uh it's de-risked from a business point of view if the carbon price goes down and it doesn't go up to 170 and you've made business decisions to reduce your carbon because it will save you money well then i

Corey 38:54

think it's the canadian infrastructure structure bank will just cut you a check for the difference being like well this is what you would have been paying in carbon so like effectively you

Corey 39:01

don't have to worry about it if you're a business now uh does that make it good policy well probably it does mean with more certainty there will be more investment in that space and that's good for the planet and so i'll say yes if everybody was a rational actor my concern is that governments

Corey 39:21

governments these days are proving themselves too thoughtless and willing to take those multi-billion dollar hits in order to prove a point. We see it time and time again. We saw it in Ontario with the cancellation of the wind contracts. Frankly, we saw it to a lesser extent here in Alberta with the cancellation of the rail contracts for tying into that previous issue of takeaway capacity, right? Because they would rather make the point than make the profit or sort of make policy sense if you want to broaden it. And so, I don't know. No, I mean, I'm nervous. I'm nervous because if Pierre Polyev becomes the prime minister of Canada,

Corey 39:59

do we actually think he's not going to just cancel the carbon tax anyways? Because, A, not every business is going to take

Corey 40:04

take the government up on this and get involved in this. And so there will still be many, especially smaller businesses who will say, yeah, you know, fuck that carbon tax. And two, because

Corey 40:15

because it's been de-risked from a business point of view, are they going to yell about it if the carbon tax goes away? No, probably not, because they still end up getting money in their jeans. And if you happen to be the concrete industry, that means in the short term, you'll pay less or middle term. And when the world turns back around and continues to reduce carbon, you will have had much of that paid for as you started making transitions during the liberal times. So I'm a little leery, and I'm very suspicious as a fundamental point of any government trying to tie the hands of a future government.

Zain 40:47

Corey, you know, I have to ask you, as we kind of think, and you make a good point about Pauly Everett, because you even talk about the infrastructure bank. That's one thing he's recently said in the last couple of days that he would scrap. I'll get into that, you know, not today, but perhaps in a future episode, etc., to talk about all his announcement strategy, which is almost seeming like one every two days, quasi-blockbuster announcements, provocative announcements. But Corey, to this point that you mentioned earlier, when you were talking about the Alberta problem of ambition and that fires choking cities in the West here,

Zain 41:19

the crisis elements of this, I think, is the most interesting. Does this do enough for the crisis that we are in versus the politics that we can digest? And I'm curious to view that through the lens of the NDP in your mind, which is they've come to the table with this deal. Their criticism is already there. You know, some of that narrative that we've heard is that anything good that happens, the government takes credit for. This is one of the lines, right? Anything bad that happens or that doesn't seem in the plan, the NDP couldn't get it in there. And they're already starting to face some of that criticism. Well, why isn't this more ambitious? Why are some of your policy points, NDP, not found in here? This is a liberal copy and paste of their platform. Where are you to the table? I'm curious to view it through, of course, the political strategy lens, which is what we do, but also talk about it from the crisis perspective. If you're the NDP right now, how are you positioning yourself and talking about this with the moral compass that you kind of have now occupied in a more formal and official sense?

Corey 42:14

Well, keep in mind that the liberal climate plan was called by many a better climate plan than the NDP's during the election. So

Corey 42:22

So it's not inherently obvious to me that the liberal climate plan is in some ways insufficient relative to what the NDP would have done.

Zain 42:30

Agreed, but there's things that the NDP plan certainly had around 2050, you know, emissions, etc., that we don't see necessarily in this scope.

Corey 42:39

Well, and I myself have made comments in the last 20 minutes that I think maybe this is even insufficient, and maybe we need to go further. But we

Corey 42:47

we also do need to kind of pair that against this is the most ambitious climate plan that the country has had. I think we continue getting more ambitious in this space. Just because this is our plan today doesn't mean we'll not have even more to do and more to say tomorrow. So, you

Corey 43:04

you know, I don't know. I'll say if

Corey 43:06

if you're the NDP, it would be very tough to go too, too far and say that this is insufficient because there's

Corey 43:14

there's the politics of it. For many Canadians, I think the question is, is this too much? But beyond that, it's

Corey 43:21

it's not clear that what you're offering is better. or

Corey 43:23

or was better. And yeah, there might be individual components of it, but you don't have the strongest ground to stand on here.

Corey 43:28

So, so many people think the Liberal plan is stronger than the NDP one to begin with.

Zain 43:34

Carter, how are you, let's talk about crassly in political sense, how are you taking credit right now for the NDP?

Carter 43:39

Well, we just signed a deal. We demanded that there be certain actions, and this is one of the actions that we demanded. This is our new policy. Congratulations to everybody. This is a big step forward and the Liberals would not have been able to do it without our kick in the ass. So,

Carter 43:57

you know, the Minister may stand up and take credit, the Prime Minister may stand up and take credit, but the only way that they would have really been able to get this done is if they'd done it.

Carter 44:04

And they didn't until they had our help. So,

Carter 44:07

this is now the NDP plan. It's not the Green plan. It's not the Liberal plan. It's our plan.

Carter 44:12

think it's going to be good for industry and I think it's going to be good for the environment and

Carter 44:16

and I think it's going to be good for Canadians.

Zain 44:19

Is there a way that the NDP, because we're expecting, I'm going to lead into the budget in a second, and we're going to see a lot of items come out of that budget, one expects. But is there a way that the NDP on a pure strategy level, Corey, can overplay their hand by running that line over and over and over again, which is like, you're welcome. You like that? You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. Like just that victory lap, you're welcome over and over as the numbers get bigger and they start with B rather than M in terms of billions rather than millions. Is there a way that – how do you preserve that one line and that one strategy from not getting old and how do you pick your spots here? Well,

Corey 45:00

Well, it's going to get old. That's the reality of it. But it's not old yet. This is still a relatively new deal. And I don't think the two events are so far removed that the NDP can't say and come off as fairly credible with people. you

Corey 45:13

you know the liberals would not have been able to do this or even

Corey 45:17

even the things that are liberal things that are ambitious they would have not been able to do without ndp support they knew that we knew that this announcement is a direct result of them having a majority government which we got out of them by demanding certain things you know you don't even need to say this was one of the things specifically you demanded you just need to talk about the fact that government is operating as it is and taking the big swings it is, because the NDP have found a way to make government work for Canadians.

Zain 45:45

We're going to leave that segment there. Moving on to our next segment. Our next segment, help me brand a budget. Guys, I want to talk about the budget coming up next Thursday. Krista Freeland, our Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister, will get up and introduce the budget. To get us started on this, Corey, I want to actually get both your perspectives and just your honest, hot takes on this. We've heard two versions of what this budget could look like. Prior to this NDP liberal agreement, we heard some ground softening during the height of the initial first days of the Russian invasion into Ukraine that we might be looking at, I shouldn't say this word because it wasn't necessarily repeated, but a version of liberal austerity here, right? Back to basics is what we heard. We heard the back to basics budget. Now with the agreement, people are expecting, at least in the other school of thought, jaw jaw-dropping numbers, that this gives them runway, license, opportunity to spend, spend, spend, ambitious, ambitious, ambitious. Corey, boring your phrase from last time, perhaps help Justin Trudeau pave the way for the most consequential prime ministership in a generation. Corey, from your hot take perspective, just a sentence or two, do you expect column A, back to basics, or column B, ambitious budget now that the liberal NDP partnership is solidified? I

Corey 47:01

expect language along the lines of A, actions along the lines of B.

Corey 47:05

They are redefining what is the basics in this country. We have universal childcare as a basic. We have action on climate as a basic. And they'll talk in moderate language and they'll say, yeah, we're going to stick to the things that are important. We're going to look at the books. We're going to take care of these 8 trillion different programs and just really get down to our knitting. We're done

Corey 47:29

done being – I'm not going to say they're done being overly ambitious, but they're going to act

Corey 47:35

as though this is all kind of the new norm, and maybe it is the new norm here.

Zain 47:39

Okay. You've answered my second question here, which is going to be the heart of the segment, so thank you for spoiling this entire thing.

Zain 47:47

column A, column B, or do you agree with Corey?

Carter 47:50

I think that – I actually don't know. No. You know, the announcement that they're going to move forward with the purchase

Carter 47:57

purchase of the F-35s, you know,

Carter 48:01

know, the war itself, the requirement, I think, to see some military spending change. I was actually thinking it was going to be a relatively – well,

Carter 48:12

I don't want to – I

Carter 48:13

I think that there was a limit in terms of how much money – how big the deficit could be. And I also think that there was going to be a fairly significant upside in terms of a revenue uptick from taxation and those types of things as the economy rebounded. So I think it's

Carter 48:29

it's going to be fascinating

Carter 48:31

fascinating to see how they actually put it out there and how much room they give the NDP to take credit for a budget that was

Carter 48:42

was probably pretty baked before this deal even came to be. so it's

Carter 48:46

it's it's going to be pretty it's

Carter 48:48

it's going to be fascinating for me i i think it could be a big big big spend uh but then that big spend levels off for four years and uh so one year is done and then the

Carter 48:59

the the revenues catch up with the spend uh

Carter 49:01

uh by by year four is

Carter 49:03

is kind of my thinking right now but i'm

Carter 49:06

i'm dying to see it well

Zain 49:08

well here's the thing and this is where i want i i kind of titled the segment, branding a budget, and Corey's already gotten into this a bit, which is, if this is expected to be a budget that is in that liberal NDP, you know, alliance, sort of spend big ambition game, I want to ask you guys about two things, ambition and brand, what would you do? Now that this agreement is under your belt? What would you think about? How would you brand this thing? Corey's already kind of given me the redefinition of basics. But we've talked often on this podcast, in both general strategic terms, but also with specific budgets, provincially, federally, that it's a branding exercise. I find this moment to be very interesting for the liberal government, because the cloud cover of COVID is potentially over. They might be trying to extend it, trying to ensure that we've forever changed because of COVID. We're now redefining what this country looks like. But you also need to sell that. And so, Carter, I want to get your thoughts on this first before I go to Corey and maybe have him expand on his that he laid out earlier. If you had carte blanche and strategic advisory right now to the Prime Minister and perhaps even Jagmeet Singh, give

Zain 50:16

give me the sense of the brand and the ambition that you would look at right now. And let's be like a strategy whiteboard here. What would you talk to them about? And what would you think about in terms of how they would present this thing to the Canadian public coming up next Thursday, a week from today?

Carter 50:29

Yeah, I think that it's going to be like the one-time fix, right? Like, we are going in and we are fixing that which is wrong. And we are going going to tackle it head on right now. And we're not waiting for different economic opportunities. We're not waiting for different times. This is it. This is the time when we need to actually see significant change for our country. And that's why this budget is as far reaching as it is. It is designed to create opportunity.

Carter 50:59

opportunity. And it's designed to fundamentally change the way that uh our country operates and that's why we're doing it all in one fell swoop we're not waiting to drag this out over the course of four years we're going boom this is what's going to happen and uh canadians are going to be thrilled with the outcome so

Zain 51:19

so one-time fix versus a cory's and i'm cory i'm like i'm i'm projecting a bit but something to your point about you know redefining the basics carter i'm curious why a one-time fix and not like a like a straight up revolution style like this is what the new category of basics will mean in this country this is what is required not just once but ongoing this is the redefinition of what government is here to do why not that ambitious message now that they've got the runway to do it curious to hear your strategic thoughts on that i

Carter 51:51

just feel like it's it's um it's too much for people to understand i feel like you want to just come out and say you

Carter 51:58

you know this is this is what you you asked for this is what you've got one time it's all fixed way we go people think we play politics and we do play politics right you make x number of changes in the first year when they're going to be unpopular and then you undo them all in the fourth year when everybody you know all of a sudden these things become popular uh and you become a more popular government because um the electorate is is all over the place we can't predict where they're necessarily going to be so this

Carter 52:25

this is kind of us saying you've got everything now you're going to get it all at at once. And it really ties in nicely to the NDP deal and the shift in focus. So I think you can't, I mean, there's nothing wrong with what Corey's saying. Corey's not saying something that is inherently out

Carter 52:43

out of step with what I'm saying. We're just putting a different spin on the same type of idea, which is this is what you asked for, this is what you got. And I

Carter 52:53

I think I'm putting putting them into the same category, Corey, and maybe I'm stepping too far. Yeah,

Zain 52:58

Yeah, jump in here, Corey, from what you've heard from Carter and expand on the same questions. What would your advice be to them about their ambition? And what would your advice be to them in terms of how they sell it and the brand of this budget?

Corey 53:11

Yeah, you said that you thought this was going to be a very consequential budget. I think it's going to be quite a forgettable budget. There's been so

Corey 53:17

so many different moves that we've seen in the last bit, including the NDP liberal deal, the environmental play that we were just talking about here.

Corey 53:26

In many ways, this will codify a lot of things we already knew were happening, including, well, we'll see. I mean, it remains to be seen. But the deficit's been projecting down.

Corey 53:37

Don't forget, there was like a crazy deficit in like the high 200 billions, I think, the previous year. It looks like it's going to come in at about 144. So it's going to be about half the size for this year. And when they project forward, what's

Corey 53:52

what's nuts is even running running a $100 billion deficit, it's going to be like, okay, yeah, it seems that's, if we get less than 100 billion, all of a sudden, you know, hey, down to those double billion digits, that looks pretty good to me, right? Do you mean

Zain 54:04

mean forgettable, just so I'm clear on this, do you mean forgettable by design? Or do you mean forgettable because it won't be material enough and as ambitious as some of the speculation around it suggests?

Corey 54:17

guess I mean forgettable in the sense that it's not going going to, maybe I'll regret this in a week, but I don't think it's going to surprise us. I think it's going to have an awful lot of things that we already knew were in it. And even what would be sticker shock if we were comparing it to 2015 is

Corey 54:32

not going to feel like sticker shock just based on where we've been with COVID-19 and everything that's going on.

Corey 54:38

And so when the liberals talk about getting back to basics and reducing the deficit, I think they will. Sure. I mean, why why not? They're raising some revenue. We know that's coming because of various taxes on wealth that are being projected, but also just resource

Corey 54:54

resource revenue in the trajectory that we're already on here. And so they're not going to need to change a lot of what they need to do. And what I imagine they're going to want to do is paper their current suite of policies as basics, right? Like I agree with Carter. I don't actually think we're saying very different things here. So

Zain 55:13

So the question is, that's what you think they'll do. What would you advise them to do? Is that indeed what you'd advise them to do? Because your point about sticker shock could open up a theory that says, we've climatized to some insane numbers. Now's the time to throw out an even more insane number because we've got the appetite for it. Do it all at once. Be majorly ambitious. I'm not pushing this. I'm just trying to

Corey 55:32

to ask you. I mean,

Corey 55:33

mean, but like, ultimately,

Corey 55:35

it's real money. And if you want all of Treasury Board to quit in frustration, at a certain point, the government does need to think about how they're going to at least, I don't know if balance is something that matters as much all the time. You know, it's, it's obviously, it's the difference between red and black. And it's something that people fixate on. But I'd

Corey 55:53

I'd be, of course, more concerned about deficit as percent of GDP, overall debt levels, debt as percent of GDP, whether we have the ability to burden it. But because any company is going to have a certain amount of debt because debt allows you to grow, make investments in the thing you want to make. Alexander Hamilton thought deficits should be eternal, right, because you're always just investing in the next things to come. But you can't just ignore the number, I guess, is the point. You can't let it run up forever. forever. If you're basically my age or older, you'll remember the backlash austerity of the 90s when it looked like our debt to GDP ratio was way out of control. It was out of control relative to other countries. And it was really affecting our economy more broadly. It was affecting people's confidence in the Canadian government. It was affecting our ability to do the things we wanted to do and have the ambitions we wanted to have. And the 90s were ultimately a a pretty unambitious time and you got to kind of find yourself a moderator like you got to hit the gas at the right level there if you want to be able to proceed with this if you truly believe in this agenda that's here now if it's just all cynical politics is just looking to get through the next couple of years and have people like you yeah run whatever number you want but you know there's a country underneath that okay

Zain 57:06

okay so let me let me phrase the question differently can i phrase the question slightly different actually carter i feel like you got something well

Zain 57:12

well i just something substantive to say which is new well

Carter 57:15

just wanted to say that this is the point like this is going to be substantive insofar as it i think that there's going to be more in it rather than just kind of moving it to you know the this

Carter 57:27

this climate plan may

Carter 57:29

may not come with a significant price tag it may come with a price tag i don't know we haven't seen all the details but all of this is a um substantial move away from like the

Carter 57:42

the the details are going to be really interesting as they're unfolded i don't expect to see pharma care for example i don't expect to see um dental care but the stuff that has been promised all does come with big price tags and yeah i think the economy improving is going to eliminate pieces of the deficit but the

Carter 58:02

the deficit is a it's

Carter 58:04

it's a a fascinating thing you know do we really when

Carter 58:08

when this is a whole episode in and of itself do we need to worry about deficits at a federal government level and the

Carter 58:14

answer is depends on how you develop the deficit um

Carter 58:17

um you know we hide now our deficits through p3s uh we can have a whole debate about that too uh where the where the the you

Carter 58:26

the cost of the project is borne by the private sector and paid out over a period of time that's actually almost all of us run run deficits through most of our lives and then we stop running deficit as we get closer to death right we take out mortgages we take out loans we we grow we build our businesses we build our our structures and then we get to a point where ah we're too old for that shit anymore now and we got to start paying everything off and we pay it off just before we die um the government doesn't die right

Carter 58:56

right the government doesn't die so and if the government does die then who the fuck cares if you've got a deficit right so i don't know that's a bigger conversation for a different day but um it's a it's

Carter 59:08

it's something that we should be thinking like if you're the liberals i'm not saying go out and spend like it's crazy but i'm not sure that the 1990s austerity was necessarily the best play in the canadian playbook either corey

Zain 59:21

corey you wanted to jump in on this yeah one

Corey 59:23

one of the things that i think we need to talk a little bit more about is why they've chosen to talk about going back to basics it's it's because canadians are worried about affordability right now canadians are worried about inflation and when

Corey 59:37

when you talk about the basics and when you talk about affordability well let's put it this way spending leads to higher taxes taxes leads to lower affordability is the simple thought that's in many people's heads around spending and i'm not trying to be shitty to people but and it's a pretty logical like train for people to follow there so they want to know that the canadian government is not going to make their life more expensive they're They're looking at basics in terms of how are we going to make housing more affordable? How are we going to make groceries more affordable, gasoline more affordable? I suspect this back-to-basics budget will have a number of measures targeted towards things like that, more

Corey 1:00:12

more so than is the government narrowing its scope and doing fewer things. I think they're really talking about basics in terms of Canadians

Corey 1:00:19

Canadians and how they're supporting Canadians with the basics.

Carter 1:00:23

I have a poll in the field right now, and affordability is everything. thing so

Zain 1:00:27

so so here's the thing and maybe this was my poor hosting of the show which is a through line of course um but but here's okay let me ask you the question this way because this is what i want to get to the

Zain 1:00:38

prime minister comes up to you cory and he says fuck it i have just signed the agreement with the ndp that lets me live out this legacy we've got a four budget agreement

Zain 1:00:50

right or three budget agreement in place i want to do big shit and i want to do the biggest shit now. This is the first budget of the agreement. You know, political principles say, do the biggest stuff now. Corey, how are you going to help me sell the biggest stuff? So rather than do we think or what would you advise? You've been instructed. This is what the principle wants. This is for legacy. This is for a further shift to the left. This is for big social programs. How are you,

Zain 1:01:18

in this time, helping sell this big suite of projects? You can't fight him on it. You've You've lost that war one too many times. He's saying, I want it all. Help me sell the most that you can right now.

Zain 1:01:29

Triangulating the moment, the strategy, the deficit, the revenue side of things, what's your general sort of strategy and approach for selling an ambitious, game-changing, perhaps even jaw-dropping budget next week? And I'm not saying this is what's going to happen. I'm now playing a game in terms of if this is what your principal tells you, how are you doing it in this moment? Yeah,

Corey 1:01:50

Yeah, big shit takes big thinking and big programs take big money. And if you want these things to be durable, they can't be put on the credit card. So you want to be big, you want to change Canadian society fundamentally, raise

Corey 1:02:02

raise taxes, much more aggressive progressive taxation rate. You know, the highest income tax rate in the United States in the 50s was like 92%, right? We're nowhere near where we could be in terms of our quote unquote ambition in that space. we've got to talk about corporate taxes we've got to talk about how money moves around we've got to talk about how we are ultimately going to capture more of the economy for the public sector if you want to grow the public sector and

Corey 1:02:26

and so your ambition will be hollow if it's not matched with a way to pay for this thing over the long term so if you want to go big in this budget you

Corey 1:02:36

go big on both sides you go big on spending and you go big on revenue and you fundamentally remake remake canadian society none of these like bullshit boutique programs that we got in the 90s that were like three million dollars for random program x five million dollars for random program y fundamentally changed the tax code fundamentally changed canadian's relationship with government go big if you want to go big uh but you've got to balance the scales here carter

Zain 1:03:01

carter same assignment given to you cory's in the room there you hear his pitch what's your what's your response to To your prime minister, to your principal, when they say, I want to go big, I want it all, your job is to help me sell the most I can get without tanking my political upside, my political opportunity. What are you telling them?

Carter 1:03:20

I'm telling them that we've got to make things like housing, food, transportation, and childcare more affordable for every person in Canada. And to do that, what we're going to do is increase the amount that the uber-wealthy pay. The uber-wealthy in Canada have been amongst the least taxed. Corey mentioned statistics about what the taxation rates were like in the 1950s, a period, I might add, where we did not suffer from growth challenges. And it wasn't just the United States. We had really much higher tax rates in Canada at that period as well because we are, of course, tied at the hip. the the the

Carter 1:04:00

the other guy paying corporations paying rich people paying is incredibly popular in canada so you can have that but you can't lose sight of that which is driving people right now and that is overall affordability that child care piece i mean i don't have kids in this this age range anymore but cory does how much how much like in terms of of overall expenses i would put child Childcare in your top five categories. Top four categories?

Corey 1:04:28

categories? It's number one. Housing's

Corey 1:04:30

got to be number one. Housing is not number one. Seriously. I have three kids, man.

Carter 1:04:37

Introduce you to a condom once in a while. Anyways. Jesus Christ.

Zain 1:04:41

Also, are you, do you have, are you, are like, are they completely insured? Because if not, policy genius is something

Zain 1:04:47

something that you may want to consider. Yeah, policy genius is a simple way to, in minutes, insure that your entire family is insured.

Carter 1:04:55

That's great. Thank you, Zane. Very, very well produced in that moment. But I think that, you know, the affordability discussion, like if you're going to make these types of major changes, you have to put it and it's not really about affordability. It's about affordability at this time, because that's the concern that the general population has in this moment. if you do the kind of sweeping change that that you've asked us to do zane um then you have to recognize the pressures that the population feels themselves under and those pressures and you sell it you

Zain 1:05:29

you sell it with that

Carter 1:05:32

on that focus right you one of the big mistakes in politics is when you go out and you try and sell something for why you want it instead of selling it for why the the general population wants i.e

Zain 1:05:43

.e we need we need a revolution i've got the runway to do it it now exactly

Carter 1:05:46

exactly so you sell it on what they want not what you want it is a fundamental difference and when a political party or a political leader does it sometimes we draw you know we deride it and say well that's just populism run amok yeah populism is a shorthand for popular um and at the end of the day most of us want to be popular that's how we get elected it is not that much different than the high school popularity contest uh that cory couldn't win in in this in the uh eighth grade.

Zain 1:06:18

Corey, how are you? Let's end on here. Going back to your initial back to basics, redefining the basics, give me the crisp one or two lines for how you would brand this budget if you could yourself. And what would your brand overall be like? What would the book look like in the sense? What would your slogan, your tagline? What would it be from your perspective heading into this Thursday if you were advising for this budget?

Corey 1:06:45

I like back to basics. I like it because you can spin it in terms of those programs that I was talking about and Carter was going on about, about affordability, right? Making, you

Corey 1:06:54

you know, the basics of government are to make sure that citizens have a good life and that they can afford it and they can do the things they need to do, want to do, have to do for their children, all of that, right? Which is why we've made childcare so much more affordable. That's why we're now tackling the cost of housing through these various programs. This is why we are, we're making gasoline more affordable. I don't know if they'll go that far. That seems to cut against their climate plans, but you get my point. It allows you to speak to the audience in that way. It allows you to speak to a more opinion class audience in terms of the deficits going down. We're just taking care of the fundamentals of government. We know that we need to balance these books. books and so it works uh works for a couple of distinct audiences that have anxieties that are not the same but have enough overlap and that overlap is fundamentally about a government that is that

Corey 1:07:42

i guess all of them want to be a little bit less adventurous right i

Zain 1:07:45

guess could i ask you cory like is is back to basics right in the sense of like because what you're arguing for is like the new basics the new baseline the new this is what this is what government needs to do uh In that sense, do you feel like back to basics kind of could open up the criticism of like, opportunistic overreach or anything like that? Or are you kind of you're comfortable with it as as as back to in that regard?

Corey 1:08:10

I'm comfortable with it. One of the things that leads me to say this is gonna be quite a forgettable budget is that if your entire budget message is we're not going to do anything crazy, we're just going to do the normal things. Yeah,

Corey 1:08:22

well, then it's not going to be that memorable, right? Right. Right. From

Zain 1:08:25

From a brand perspective.

Zain 1:08:27

if under the hood, there could be some pretty substantive big picture like stuff.

Corey 1:08:33

Yeah. And I'm sure they'll target it towards the people who want these programs like these programs. But their entire communication strategy, I think, is a bit of a calming of various horses out there. Right. People who are saying, oh, my God, this government did everything for the economy over the past few years. Is that sustainable? Oh, my God. The price of housing is going through the roof. The price

Corey 1:08:53

price of everything is going through the roof. What are we going to do? We need a government that stops spending and just calms down. And yeah, you just talk to them through your messaging.

Zain 1:09:01

Carter, Corey's advocating for the back to basics budget, roof over your head, something to eat, something to lay your head down on, a nice pillow, of course, on your Helix mattress, another sponsor. Carter, what is your branding for this budget? What would you brand the book as? What would your one or two lines be to

Zain 1:09:25

to kind of really brand the budget for next Thursday?

Carter 1:09:29

Man, I want to do that Staples ad that just says, make it easy. Boom, right? We're making it easier for Canadians. This is a budget that is 100% focused on making it easier for Canadians. We want to remove the threat of climate change actions around your house, right? We want to make it so that you don't have to worry about whether the forest that you you go to to camp during the summer, it's going to burn to the ground. We want to make it so that floods don't take out all of the means into one of our great metropolitan areas in the lower mainland, British Columbia. We want to make it so food is cheaper and is not going to be impacted by massive floods. We want to make it so that child care, I mean, right now we have a $10 a day child care deal across the country. across the country for people with children that is their number one expenditure says cory hogan so

Carter 1:10:19

so you know this is about bringing it back to you making it easy for you um

Carter 1:10:25

um sometimes governments get lost and on all these other priorities but at the end of the day our focus is on you the canadians that have elected us the canadians that that frankly haven't elected us but there are people who want to see real change and that's what we brought to you today carter

Zain 1:10:40

carter going with with making it easy. Corey going with back to basics. Nicely done, gents. Let's move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we're here for you. We do it for you. Stephen Carter, in or out on the liberal climate plan announced earlier this week.

Carter 1:10:53

Couldn't be more, Ian. Over the last 10 years, I have become more and more committed to climate change as an issue. And, you know, watching conservatives like Ken Bozenkul jump onto it as well, I think that there's tremendous opportunity to make real change in the climate climate and emissions part of the Canadian identity.

Zain 1:11:14

Corey, are you in or out on the Liberal climate plan that was announced this week?

Corey 1:11:17

Well, I'm in. I am solidly in the camp that we

Corey 1:11:21

we need to do as much as we can. And yes, we need to do it in a way that protects Canadians from the significant burden that would otherwise fall on them. And so let's have the burden of action on climate change fall on the people who are benefiting most from the current action on climate change. And I think that we've got to have a combination of wealth taxes and progressive income taxes, and we need the people who are able to pay more to pay more, and we've got to switch hard. We've got to pivot hard because we're in trouble here.

Zain 1:11:51

Corey, I'm going to stick with you for our next one. Are you in or out on the strategy? That's what we do for Pierre Polyavra asking his supporters for defunding of the CBC. Are you in or out on the strategy here where he's going after the CBC? It's been tried and true for conservatives. He's back at that well right now, raising a shitstorm on it. In or out on the strategy?

Corey 1:12:12

I don't think it's a very interesting strategy. It is, as you've said, pretty meat and potatoes for a certain type of conservative.

Corey 1:12:21

I guess I'm out because I don't see anything interesting about it.

Zain 1:12:26

Carter, anything interesting about it? Or is it just old, treaded ground that one would hit on if you're a conservative in a conservative leadership race?

Carter 1:12:35

I've done surveys for about 10 years that look at where people

Carter 1:12:39

people would actually like to cut and where they'd like to increase spending when it comes to the actual specifics of a government. And everybody says they want to see – well, not everybody. People say they want to see cuts to the government spending, but then when pressed, they actually increase

Carter 1:12:53

increase spending almost across the board. The only exception is the CBC for conservatives. Conservatives, honest to God, want it cut. So Pierre is giving them what they want. And in general, that's a good strategy, as I've articulated quite a few times through this podcast today.

Zain 1:13:10

Carter, overrated or underrated overall grand scheme of things. We look back this time next year, this upcoming budget. Will it be overrated or underrated in its impact a year from now?

Carter 1:13:21

Chances are it will be overrated. I would like it to be underrated, but I'm often wrong, apparently. So says the Twitterverse.

Zain 1:13:30

Corey, overrated or underrated a year from now for this

Corey 1:13:32

this budget? What will it be?

Corey 1:13:34

I think it's going to be underrated. People will have forgotten it, but the impact will be there in the decisions that are made and the spending that is planned. And, you know, this is right on the heel of some big climate announcements and a big deal with the NDP. So there's going to be some things in it that are going to fundamentally change the way we operate.

Zain 1:13:52

Corey, are you in or out on the Dairy Queen signature stack burgers that have been announced in Meat and Poultry magazine?

Corey 1:13:59

I'm out, Zane. I'm out on it. Carter,

Carter 1:14:03

out? Dairy Queen's a banana split place for me. Peanut Buster parfait.

Zain 1:14:08

Carter, we'll start our last question with you. This is obviously going to be a full circle. Overrated or underrated Vancouverites?

Carter 1:14:16

They are overrated always.

Carter 1:14:22

I would like to hear Corey's response, though.

Corey 1:14:24

Corey, we'd like to hear your response, too.

Corey 1:14:27

Vancouver is an underrated place.

Carter 1:14:30

Guys, I just want to interrupt before you end the show. Yeah, yeah,

Carter 1:14:33

I'd like to thank Angie for joining our Patreon page and uh you

Carter 1:14:39

you know becoming a patreon it's

Corey 1:14:41

it's not even launched yet no

Carter 1:14:42

no but angie angie i don't think i don't think she becomes a

Zain 1:14:45

a patreon i don't think she becomes a

Carter 1:14:49

she's our fucking sponsor zane show some fucking respect um angie's in not only that angie didn't come in at the base level angie

Carter 1:14:57

angie came in at like the 10 bucks so uh we

Carter 1:15:00

we better figure out what that level gets because right now we've got a patron.

Carter 1:15:06

things are really looking up. Really looking up for us.

Zain 1:15:10

Oh, it's looking like a great day for us. I mean, it is.

Zain 1:15:15

I don't know. I really don't know what to tell Angie. I feel like she could have spent her money elsewhere, like on Brooklyn and sheets and pillowcases. I mean, that could have been another place you spent your money on.

Carter 1:15:29

think she does have a squarespace uh web page though so it's worked out

Zain 1:15:34

cory anything else for you to plug because uh we were clearly uh shilling on the front end might as well do it on the back well i just want to thank angie i

Corey 1:15:42

i you know i'm

Corey 1:15:43

i'm looking forward to this being an entire segment at the live show yeah

Zain 1:15:47

yeah the thanking of angie yes we appreciate it

Zain 1:15:52

we're gonna leave it there that's a wrap on episode 978 of the strategist my name is Zade Velji with me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

Transcript