Episode 980: Budget Day

Zain 0:02

This is the strategist episode 980. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, look

Zain 0:09

Look at this. We are here and we're doing it for money. Never

Carter 0:12

Never seen a more redundant hand signal in my whole life. Corey waving you in when the countdown happened. We got new software,

Corey 0:20

We're upping our game. And hey, if

Corey 0:23

if that doesn't excite you, it's because I haven't used the proper sound cues.

Zain 0:30

How is it that we're now charging for a show And making it worse

Corey 0:55

It's enough really We

Carter 0:57

appreciate it recorded live at the last strategist live perfect

Corey 1:03

fuck was that what well i got a sound board i got a soundboard he doesn't mean you gotta use it you

Corey 1:10

don't gotta use that's pretty funny though that

Zain 1:21

makes you happy i'm glad people are paying for this i mean their money is paying for that soundboard that added feature yeah that is the soundboard you're real you're

Corey 1:30

you're fucking funny ah fuck

Corey 1:43

that just crickets they're just crickets crickets

Carter 1:46

you've heard that sound before i'm

Zain 1:47

i'm sure all of our listeners have it

Corey 1:54

now i need you to know it didn't come pre-loaded with all of these i had to i had to make some decisions load them in to add that last one is that guns and roses

Corey 2:03

now get out of here

Carter 2:04

here just out of curiosity i don't know is there is there the sound of a cash register because as we're doing this i'm getting emails of people joining the patreon so it's

Carter 2:12

you have that listen

Corey 2:13

listen it was fine before but now you're making things obnoxious carter Yeah, Carter, Carter, the bit's over. Fuck,

Carter 2:18

I... Too far, too far. I

Carter 2:20

I always did it. Always

Zain 2:21

take it too far. Of course, that sound of crickets, I'm sure our listeners are familiar with. It's the sound of the Flair Airlines customer service desk. Guys, are you guys ready? Are you guys ready to jump into this? We have so much to talk about. We're going to jump right into our first segment. Our first segment, getting high on your own supply and confidence agreement.

Zain 2:43

That is right, guys. We're going to talk about the budget. The big budget, it is here, Corey Hogan. It is around, it is hairy, and it is branded a plan to grow our economy and make life more affordable. Yeah, can we talk about that off the top?

Zain 3:01

on that. If you are into it, get started with the brand, and then I'll get people the specifics. I'm sure some folks have already heard of the specifics, but Corey, a plan to grow our economy and make life more affordable. That's the brand. Jump into it right away.

Corey 3:16

Well, I think that the biggest inflation problem we have in this country is the title of budget documents. They used to just be called the budget. They used to not have these names, right? And then somewhere around the turn of the century, they

Corey 3:28

they started putting in things like better finances, better lives. Canada's economic action plan was a little later under the Harper years,

Corey 3:36

but then they've gotten crazy. Like 2015 was strong leadership, a balanced budget, low tax plan for jobs, growth, and security. Now we've got a plan to grow our economy and make life more affordable. There's no art in them anymore. They've just become the most blunt, crass positionings that the government wants to put forward. It's crazy

Carter 3:54

crazy to me. Zane, do you have the ability to go back and play some of the type from our budget episode when we were doing the Alberta budget? I don't. And we talked about them as communications vehicles? I don't, but I

Zain 4:05

I have this sound. I have this

Zain 4:06

sound right here. I have this sound right here.

Zain 4:09

Where you're supposed to play any sound. You don't have a soundboard. You're supposed to play a soundboard.

Zain 4:13

You're supposed to play a soundboard. cory maybe it's cash register right now maybe it's a cash register for the budget

Corey 4:22

move on keep moving

Zain 4:23

moving yeah move on carter jesus what are you doing why are you trying to make so i i will go back to i will go back to last week because you guys both had your own proposed branding for this because i forced you into this right knowing that we were gonna be given a brand and i don't know if i can call this a brand uh we'll be given a description i guess today today. Corey, your budget brand that you came up with was back to basics, right? You said lean into that back to basics branding, stuff it with your big programs that you want to do, but the back to basics makes sense. Carter, you had your one time fix sort of a mantra that you were kind of looking at making life more affordable was certainly part of your verbiage. But Corey, you want to jump in before I carry on here? Yeah,

Corey 5:04

Yeah, well, the reason why maybe something like that would

Corey 5:08

would work as opposed to a plan to grow our economy and make life more affordable is the idea with branding a budget like this is is to answer the question when somebody says well what kind of budget is it and

Corey 5:18

and you know previously it would be like well it's an action economic action plan budget right

Corey 5:22

right or yeah better finances better lives even like no one's going to say that but it's like it's a plan for better finances is something you could understandably have somebody say back to basics sort of hits that test too like what's what's in the budget well it's back to basics it's a summary of the the document that gives you a feel and and provides that that sense that you're looking for in a branding sense the name that they've provided here i

Corey 5:46

i i am confused as to who it's for is it for the media like it's because it's on the cover the first thing they're going to say is

Corey 5:52

the plan to grow our economy and make life more affordable i guess that's what's in this document is

Corey 5:56

is it a plan for the one time in their life the average canadian is potentially going to hear this when they see it as like entitled a plan to grow our economy and make life more affordable The government's budget, I mean, I don't actually think this is branding the budget. It's like a

Corey 6:12

a throwaway line. It's like a line in a speech you know they must clip because you've called the budget that. But that's it. That's all it is in this case. And I think it's a real missed opportunity in terms of branding.

Zain 6:22

Well, let me just add some of the details and then Carter, I'll go to you, right? So this budget has a deficit that is at $52.8 billion projected for the 2022-2023 year. It introduces, of course, more spending. It is signaling an eye-popping 12-digit deficit coming to an end, you know, at the end of COVID. We're also looking at big spending on housing to try to help cool the housing market, a greener economy, a multi-billion dollar plan proposed for defense spending. spending. Carter, to go to Corey's point here, though, is

Zain 7:00

is there a cohesive story that you see in this budget? And could they have had a cohesive story? Because I almost want to go back to some of the stuff that you talk about quite often in your campaign consulting life with that 330-330 model that you've introduced to us a while ago. I think that might be helpful to our listeners, where you look at a brand and a title, and some people might say, why are you guys spending such disproportionate amount of time trying to dissect what the title of a budget is, there's some merit behind spending disproportionate time around what the seven to eight or six words that you use at the top of any branding or deep dive policy document is. Is there not, Carter?

Carter 7:40

Yeah. I mean, we haven't done the 330-330 for a while. So maybe I'll explain it first and then jump into what it is that we'd be looking for from this budget. But the idea of 330-330 is that the first three stands for three seconds. So that's the first group of people that are going to be bringing in and understanding his budget. They will spend approximately three seconds looking at it. They'll get a tweet. They'll see something.

Carter 8:03

something. And that's what this title

Carter 8:06

theoretically should be for. Now, the title doesn't actually give us anything. It's just words on a piece of paper. But the next level is 30 seconds. So the next level in, I'm going to read a tweet or I'm going to watch, you know, I'm going to read part of an article. I'll read the the top, you

Carter 8:19

you know, the top piece is the headline that you just gave. Zane is kind of the next 30 seconds of understanding of the budget. Then

Carter 8:25

Then there's three minutes. Can I get people to engage for three minutes on this budget? You're going to get down to very, very small percentages of actual Canadians that are actually going to engage for three minutes. And then you get to the 30 minute idea. The 30 minute idea is, you know, the Trevor Tombs of the world who are, you know, digging in. He's an economist at the University of Calgary. He's digging in, and he's reading the budget. He's read all 280 pages already. He's dissected it. He's written three blog posts. That real intense understanding is going to be done by a very small group of people. So when you're doing a communication strategy, you want to try and get people from the three seconds to as deep in as they will go. So three-second headline, 30-second understanding, three-minute understanding. And those people who get to the 30-minute understanding are kind of a few and far between, but you're always trying to move them along. And I think that the challenge I have, and I think this is what Corey was trying to get to, is that that three-second piece, a plan to grow our economy and make life more affordable, is actually better summarized by simply saying, this is a budget about housing, climate,

Carter 9:32

climate, jobs, and affordability, right? And the highlights

Carter 9:37

highlights are actually better stated in the bullet points, rather than the words that were were put together because in the bullet points, I find something that I might want to move to the 30 seconds on, right?

Carter 9:50

right? I might want to understand if I'm a young person who wants to buy a home, what does that mean for me? Or if I'm somebody who's interested in the climate, what does that mean for me? Right. And that's where the engagement model actually would be working more towards people's ends rather than just trying to, to, you know, Corey's

Carter 10:10

Corey's point, You know, Corey's criticized it so well that I don't really want to dig into the headline much more, but it's pretty boring and it doesn't really want me to dig into anything.

Zain 10:21

Corey, you know, let me hit on what Carter just said. He said it's pretty boring. Last week when we recorded this episode, you said this might be a forgettable budget, perhaps even partially by design. By design, yeah.

Zain 10:32

Talk to me about that. Do you feel like some of this was deliberately leaning into, you know, big numbers, maybe Maybe not as big as Telegraphed and maybe not as big as I was trying to push you guys towards last week if we were kind of whiteboarding a strategy session on. But this was still a big spend budget, less than people had expected. But was it designed, do you think, to be forgettable by this brand and perhaps a lack of cohesive story you saw coming out of it?

Corey 10:57

Maybe. I think you're giving them too much credit. It's one of those things where if your strategy is to be dull, that doesn't mean you suck, right? right? There are ways that you can be dull in ways that actually broadcast that dullness and make it

Corey 11:11

it more likely. So is it fair to say you

Zain 11:11

you think sucks, this title sucks? Yeah, this title sucks. It's

Corey 11:14

It's fine. It's not lethal

Corey 11:15

lethal to the budget. It's not as though all of a sudden people are going to say, I liked that budget, but that title, woof. I mean, I might, but very few people beyond that would kind of take that approach. It's just, it's a missed opportunity. I think if you're going to go to the trouble of naming a budget, you have to ask yourself why you do it. And it's to shorthand your budget in a way that that people will repeat and just you'll drill into them in kind of very small ways and i think communications and politics in general has become blunter and and less elegant and you see this all of the time you

Corey 11:46

this on the lectern signs that people stand behind now that will just very very plainly state what is what they're there to do right uh you see that on the backdrops the words they're behind it it's becoming quite verbose

Corey 11:58

verbose there's no doubt about that but

Corey 12:00

but um Um, you

Corey 12:02

you know, it's just, it's not, it's not, you're

Corey 12:05

you're giving them too much credit to say like this was intentionally long and confusing because then you just don't bother with it at all. You want to make the, the most forgettable budget, don't name it at all. Called

Corey 12:16

Because that's not unusual or unheard of. That was the norm for, you know, most of, most

Corey 12:22

most of my life, the

Corey 12:23

the vast majority of Stephen Carter's life. I mean, a good chunk of your life too, Zay.

Zain 12:28

Carter, let's use that frame of missed opportunities that Corey's put out there. Last week, you were talking about the

Zain 12:36

that this could have been a big spend budget. You were saying this could have happened. This could have been a very big spend budget. A, to you, was it? And B, to you, if it was not, was there a missed opportunity here around any programs or anything related to affordability, which both of you hit on, that you expected the government to do a lot about in this budget?

Carter 12:55

Um, there was a checkoffs gun scenario, right? Where the idea is brought up that you're going to be working on, um, dental care and pharma care. And both of those were brought up very strongly in the NDP deal.

Carter 13:11

And, you know, there's hints, there's hints in the budget, but there's not a program. And of course it would have been, I think far too quick, um, to bring up the program You know, the program is going to start on, you know, within two or three weeks of the four weeks of the deal being signed. But it kind of overshadows his budget. Right. Because now everybody's talking about that thing that isn't there because the foreshadowing told us that it would be. So

Carter 13:37

So you've brought the gun into the book and then you haven't actually explained why the gun is there. So

Carter 13:42

So this is a bit of a challenge for me because it takes away from an otherwise fairly stable budget that is addressing really big concerns, especially in the lower mainland and southern Ontario, about housing affordability and overall cost of living. living. Um, this is a, this is a good news budget for a lot of people. Um, but you wouldn't necessarily know that because some of the things that were left out, uh,

Carter 14:12

uh, are now drawing big attention, including defense spending. Um, so you, you've got some of these, you know, and they weren't left out. Defense spending did increase, but I don't think it increased by the, the, the, the Delta that people expected. And those types of things are, you know, they beg questions, right? They beg questions.

Zain 14:30

Hold that thought Carter regarding things that we don't see. I want to spend a good chunk of the latter half of this conversation we have today on that. What organizations, advocacy groups, special interests do on the day of a budget and in the weeks leading after when they don't see their big ticket item or even their small ticket item in a budget. I want to go deep dive on that with you guys in a sec. So keep that thought. Corey, let me just tease out a few more details here, right? So better news on the deficit front, like I mentioned, it's going to be half of what it was last year. They have their tax-free first home savings account. They're boosting the housing supply. They're setting aside billions to curb greenhouse gas emissions. They're looking at, of course, that defense spending that Carter talked about.

Zain 15:17

Missed opportunities from your perspective when you see it from not just a storytelling perspective, as we talked about on the front part of it, but also a strict policy and priorities perspective.

Corey 15:27

Look, I don't think that they missed an awful lot. One of the things that struck me about this budget is it really does try to hit all four squares, right?

Corey 15:34

There's money for productivity and innovation. There is money for affordability. By the way, nothing cools a market like throwing money at it, right? So some of the things they did will no doubt reduce housing demand.

Corey 15:48

Many of the things they've done will increase housing demand. And if you want to reduce prices, you want to reduce demand or you want to increase supply. apply

Corey 15:56

and and then you know they they also managed to talk about some major social programs including obviously dental care and pharma care get down payments which was which was interesting to me but in terms of missed opportunity i don't know if i would put it quite there um the

Corey 16:11

the liberals are obviously they've they've held on like grim death to this idea of the big metric for them is debt to gdp right debt to gdp that's the that's the metric they're really worried about And

Corey 16:22

fair enough, because that's pretty reasonable, to be frank. The actual absolute dollar of debt is irrelevant. The debt that Canada has would

Corey 16:31

a penny in the United States economy, and it would absolutely drown Moldova. It really

Corey 16:38

context dependent. But with

Corey 16:40

with that said, it

Corey 16:41

it is still a $53 billion deficit and I get where we're coming from. I do. But that is almost as big as our debt was at the depths of the global financial crisis. You may remember charts from this time of do, do, do, do, do, here we go, surplus, surplus, boom,

Corey 17:00

off the fucking cliff. And we all talked about how much Harper had to spend the money in order to pull things. Now, time

Corey 17:07

time value of money, different

Corey 17:08

not as significant when you kind of rate it against inflation, but

Corey 17:13

but it's there. It's like it's in that ballpark and we're

Corey 17:17

we're coming back that way and it looks okay to us, but this is a big fucking deficit. Like, do you remember when Trudeau was saying he would never take the deficit above 10 billion in 2015? Like, our fiscal plan won't take it above 10 billion. Now we're like, oh, $53

Corey 17:31

$53 billion looks great. Way

Zain 17:33

Way to go, man.

Zain 17:33

Half of last year. Yeah. That's how I introduced it to you. Yeah.

Corey 17:37

Yeah. And fair enough because of where we've been. But I do think that maybe we are a bit frog in water with our fiscal situation here. And we might be giving credit a little too easily right now because we raised, what, I think $30 billion in revenue and we're spending $60 billion relative to last budget. That's still actually, and again, debt to GDP is the thing they're hanging their head on. But, you

Corey 18:00

you know, we're not we're not getting closer here. And maybe it's OK as long as our economy opaces that. But it

Corey 18:05

makes me a little nervous. I have to be honest.

Zain 18:08

Carter, does it make you nervous? And from we can talk about it from a policy perspective. Maybe I'll frame it from a political risk perspective. If you're in the liberal camp right now, does that make you just nervous that you're hanging on so aggressively to this one one metric?

Carter 18:23

I don't think it makes me very nervous. I mean, how many times, Corey, have we polled on debt and deficits in terms of overall importance to Canadians or Albertans or Calgarians or whomever? And debt and deficit just does not reach up to most of the groups. Most groups, it doesn't matter. They're worried about other things. For some people, debt and deficit is the only metric of government.

Carter 18:48

Debt and deficit is something that they

Carter 18:50

they measure and they will cast their vote for the party that is most

Carter 18:53

most committed to reducing the deficit, or at least says

Carter 18:56

says that. Because I'll tell you, most

Carter 18:58

most of the parties that say that they're interested in eliminating the deficit often find themselves increasing the deficit. it um but the the

Carter 19:09

overall reality is that most deficits don't don't reach the level of greece right you know as long as you don't reach the point where the international community comes and gives you a spanking um for the most part they're not going to cause you much problems so i don't worry about it from a policy standpoint and i do not worry about it at all uh from a uh From a popularity or getting elected standpoint, there was only one election in my lifetime where it mattered, and that was 1993, 1994, when

Carter 19:39

when all of a sudden, you know, Ralph Klein, Kretchen,

Carter 19:43

what was his name in Ontario, everybody kind of jumped on to this anti-deficit stuff that Preston Manning started. That was one election in my lifetime. Every other election has been, what do I get next? So I'm not too fussed by it.

Corey 20:00

Well, look, my critique was more on policy, but it does have the potential to be a political problem down the road. Greece is obviously a very extreme

Zain 20:08

extreme example. And that's the country, not the musical, just so everyone is clear.

Corey 20:11

No, it was the musical.

Zain 20:13

Okay, perfect. I mean, it was a problematic musical. I mean, first

Corey 20:17

first of all, let's start with- The smoking was

Carter 20:18

was just out of control.

Zain 20:19

Let's start with the music.

Corey 20:22

Back to you, of course. Whoa, it was a hot take here. Yeah, yeah, of course.

Corey 20:25

So, but it can be a political problem because Stephen sort of hand-waved, oh, and then in the early 90s, people cared again. But Jesus, man, like it was a wholesale change. Like it destroyed, you

Corey 20:37

you know, liberal democracy as we know it for 10 years. All of a sudden, everybody was a conservative, right? Like who could cut more became the order of the day. And it- Destroyed is a pretty

Carter 20:48

pretty strong word, Corey. destroyed is a pretty strong well i don't know because

Corey 20:51

because i when i think about new labor when i think about the you know uh bill clinton being like a new democrat yeah i think about some of the policies that they pulled in the attacks on the welfare system done by the so-called left-wing parties correct i'll say it was dramatic like you can you can argue about whether it was a good thing or a bad thing maybe government had gone too far uh maybe people had become too reliant on it maybe Maybe that backlash was inevitable, but there was a backlash and those backlashes can occur. And when that happens, sometimes the consequences are more than one election. Because yeah, I think you're misremembering too. I think the debt and the deficit still mattered in 97. I think there was credit taking in 2000. And it

Corey 21:33

it was a decade of people caring an awful lot about the balance sheet. And in that time, there were consequences to that. And it's

Corey 21:41

it's not impossible to me that we'd find ourselves in another era like that. And maybe that's a natural backlash and maybe that's a natural correction. Depends on how you want to look at it.

Carter 21:50

But- I'd almost take it over the wacky era that we're in right

Corey 21:52

right now. Well, fuck, I would take most any era over the era we're in right now.

Corey 21:57

the point stands, it does have the potential of being a political problem. These things can sneak up on you. And yeah, Brees is an extreme example. But when these things get out of hand, they can get really out out of hand carter

Zain 22:12

carter talk to me about what this budget perhaps tells you i'm gonna going back to brand and storytelling for a second okay so we're getting out of policy and maybe even political risk for a second what does this budget tell you about the brand of the liberal party because

Zain 22:26

because there's been many different paths that they had to follow over the last couple of months right as we mentioned they could have gone the back to basics route and quite literally cory not just called it that but gone back to version of basics they could have said Fuck it. We're now oscillating back to the center as the Liberal Party, and we're going back to basics. Doesn't seem more likely with this prime minister and everything that he's telegraphed over the last half dozen years. years. Carter, we also had the opportunity then to have this be defined by the NDP. This is going to be massive, big spending.

Zain 23:03

This budget, it's only one data point, but it's an important data point. And it's an important data point in the time where this party is looking to ensure clearly that it defines itself. What did this budget tell you about the brand of the liberal party or the brand of the Justin Trudeau liberal party today? Did it give you any insight or any intel about what they're trying to do and how they're trying to position themselves?

Carter 23:24

I think it tells me that they're really happy with where they are. I

Carter 23:27

I don't think I'm seeing a lot of new themes through this. The clean air and strong economy kind of piece, the creating good middle-class jobs. Frankly, that can be said by Stephen Harper, it can be said by Justin Trudeau. It's kind of those words that everybody grabs onto. to.

Carter 23:47

The new thing is Canada's leadership in the world, which

Carter 23:50

which I think is the new piece of the reflection, right? We're going to stand up and Ukraine kind of put a real focal point on Canada as a leader in the world, because we haven't really been

Carter 24:01

been that leader in the world under the Justin Trudeau government. So maybe that's the one new point, but everything else feels like they've been here before. I feel like I've read this budget, you know, moving forward on reconciliation. conciliation. I mean, okay,

Carter 24:15

okay, for the first time or the 12th time? These aren't

Carter 24:21

aren't things that I look at in the budget and go, wow,

Carter 24:23

wow, I'm seeing the real shaping of a new liberal party under Justin Trudeau's leadership.

Carter 24:28

What I'm seeing is the continued expression of the liberal party as Justin Trudeau imagines it and as Justin Trudeau has lived it really for the last six years.

Zain 24:40

Corey, anything this budget tells you about the brand they're trying to put out there in the world?

Corey 24:46

Well, it tells me the liberal brand lives. This is the most liberal of budgets. That kind of four-square game they're playing that I was talking about, paying, hitting the kid in one corner, the next corner, the other corner,

Corey 24:57

making sure that it hits some conservative points, it hits some social democratic points, it hit points all over the place. I mean, that's my big takeaway from the budget. It does many,

Corey 25:07

many, many things. things uh

Corey 25:08

uh they are not mutually exclusive but they play to different audiences and it does seem to be designed to cover bases in many ways it's quite a safe budget right

Corey 25:18

because it tackles deficit but not too much and it casts like forward to i think like a less than a nine billion dollar deficit in 26 27 so far away it might as well be when we have moon colonies in terms of

Zain 25:31

of government sometimes, right?

Corey 25:33

But it also then commits

Corey 25:35

commits to investments in defense. And Stephen said that investments were small. I disagree. I think that given... You can't spend billions of dollars in defense overnight, right? It involves...

Carter 25:46

Well, how many years did it take to buy the fighter jets, Corey? I mean, it's taken...

Corey 25:49

taken... So almost my point...

Carter 25:50

point... Nine years or something? TBD on

Corey 25:52

on our commitment to increasing our defense spending to 2% because yes, they've committed $6 billion now, but they're also doing a review. That review seems to now have some urgency to it. And we'll be looking at ways that perhaps we can expand our military spending going forward. But yeah, so you got the military there. You've got down payments, but not the full Monty on pharma care and dental care.

Corey 26:15

Like you can see, there's just chips, but not massive bets placed all over the board right now. And

Corey 26:22

And that's a very liberal approach to things. I

Zain 26:25

I want to pick up on that because Carter, Carter, when we were recording our election episodes, we talked about how the platforms for not just the liberals, but every political party were almost micro targeted, that there was no real through line, like they were trying to tell a story, but it was cosmetic. It was like, we'll give you 5 million here, we'll give you 8 bucks here, we'll give you 6 billion here, but will everyone get something? Everyone has something. And this budget to me kind of speaks that way. So the question I have for you, Carter, is as much as Corey was talking about on the front end of this segment where we've climatized ourselves to having brands for our budgets that speak to the values. Have we climatized ourselves maybe back again or maybe in a new era in some ways to not having through lines, that it's fine, that it's fine to have bits and pieces and micro-targeted activities for every constituency group as part of a budget? You might say that that's how it's always been. I'm just curious to get your reaction to that, because this one, more so than the last one and the one before, and certainly the one uh in the heart of covid um to me seems like exactly what cory's identifying which is a light touch on the through line and small micro targeted pieces for different groups you

Carter 27:34

you know i'm old enough to remember when budgets used to be spreadsheets um

Carter 27:38

um you know and so these documents these documents that we see now these all of these documents that that are put together this is a storytelling exercise and the 280 pages somewhere in here, there's a chart that

Carter 27:50

tells me all the revenues, all the expenses by department, uh, over the course of years, you know, compared to last year, that's a budget to me. Uh, most of this stuff is the storytelling and the storytelling is targeted. The actual budget, the thing that we will be spending money to didn't change that much from last year.

Carter 28:08

Right. And it didn't change that much from the year before, you know, there's, there's 50

Carter 28:13

50 billion or whatever it was that Corey said that have of increased spending. Sure. Absolutely. That's a lot of money. It's a lot of new spending, but

Carter 28:23

in the overall scheme of things, not that significant. I mean, yeah, it is significant, but it's not like they're reinventing government every time.

Carter 28:31

So if you simply tried to focus on everything as it currently is, you know, how many ministers are there versus how many titles are there in this, in this document? I

Carter 28:39

I mean, this, this document makes it sound like you should be able to get by on eight ministers in the federal government.

Carter 28:44

There are 40 or so ministers in the federal government. Each one of those departments has their own staff, their own agendas, their own things that they wish to achieve. And so when you're writing this document, you're not writing a series of 40, what do we use to call them? The mandate letters where each one of these ministers is going to do something. Instead, what you're writing is a targeted communications communications document designed to communicate to the people that you care about what how you're addressing their priorities because this document isn't actually a budget in the in the true sense i mean yes it is a budget it has as a budget it has all the tables it has all the charts but it is in it is a storytelling document which is what we've been talking about for for for

Carter 29:30

for years really about how important budgets are for that storytelling game and storytelling means you You know your audience. You don't tell a kid's story to an adult unless it's Harry Potter, which is all fine. Everybody loves that.

Carter 29:43

There's no issues with Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling. Thank you,

Zain 29:47

you, Carter. Thanks for making that absolutely clear. Carter joins us.

Zain 29:53

You know, that actually might get us cancelled. One Patreon episode and we're done. Thank you, Carter. I appreciate it. Corey, anything to comment on on this? I mean, it is just building on your point. the

Zain 30:06

comfort with the micro-targeting and the lack of through line on a story basis before I jump into winners and losers of the budget sure so

Corey 30:13

most importantly JK Rowling's an asshole but if the second

Corey 30:16

important thing here is Carter is right about the document not about JK Rowling but about the document that it is interesting that it is built around audiences and not departments right which should tell you all you need to know about it being a communications document document.

Corey 30:32

It's about narratives. It's about putting stories out there. And it's clearly trying to hit a bunch of discrete audiences with these storytelling components as you're going through.

Corey 30:42

The productivity investment I thought was also interesting because I mean, I think that's pretty traditional liberal stuff. You'd see that in liberal budgets and you'd see comments and concern from liberal prime ministers going back for

Corey 30:53

for a long time on that. But it

Corey 30:55

it was again in here, they found the money for it at a time when in general, I think that you had to think about but where dollars are coming from. So fascinating

Corey 31:03

fascinating to see how it's landed by and large, and really interesting to see some of the politics around it, because even for example,

Corey 31:13

you know, the natural opponents, the concert has obviously said, no way we can support this, but even components of it, like the military spending,

Corey 31:19

they didn't take the Stephen Carter. It's an insufficient amount line. They took the,

Corey 31:23

we'll believe it when we see it, they've made commitments in the past. It looks like a good investment, but you

Corey 31:29

or like, like let's see what the follow through is i suppose i mean so um yeah tbd on a lot of these things it's always interesting to do these things on the night of the budget because the other thing is we won't know how it lands we won't have days yeah

Zain 31:42

yeah well i'm gonna i'm gonna keep that thread going carter budget winners and losers who cares we're doing it on the night of carter

Zain 31:50

carter christopher freeland winner or loser fuck

Carter 31:53

think a winner i mean i think that she you know she's a great speaker. She's able to tell the story. The shoe shopping thing is so fucking tired, but she

Carter 32:03

she makes it work and everything seems to go together for her. And it might be that I'm just wearing a particular type of glass with her. I think she's a very talented politician and it's hard for me right now to see the weaknesses. So I'm going to say that she's a winner on this. And I think also I was surprised by the tone, which might be part of why I'm seeing her as a Tell me, what do you mean? Good surprised?

Zain 32:25

I assume you mean good surprised.

Carter 32:27

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that it would have been very easy to be apologetic for the $52 billion deficit. Instead, it was triumphant. Look at us. We're only running a $52 billion deficit. I mean, it's fascinating to watch her claim victory out of what others would see. What do you make of her line around the headline

Zain 32:43

headline she was giving, this is a fiscally prudent budget? I believe those are actually her words, fiscally prudent. Even before walking in and delivering it to the cameras, that is what she said, fiscally prudent. She didn't say, this is the housing budget, or this is the climate budget. She said, this is a fiscally prudent budget. Comment on that before I jump to Corey on the same question. Well,

Carter 33:04

Well, I just think it was really interesting branding. And I think that it would have been difficult for other finance

Carter 33:08

finance ministers to pull off because it's inherently deceptive, I think. You're increasing

Carter 33:16

increasing spending. I mean, if it was a financially prudent budget at a time when you need some sort of dropping us back into the $20 billion deficit range, $20 to $30 billion deficit range might have been financially prudent, might

Carter 33:29

might have shown some restraint and some challenges.

Carter 33:32

challenges. But just simply not keeping us at a hundred plus billion dollar deficit doesn't seem to strike to me this tone that she triumphantly achieved

Carter 33:42

achieved and carried in the House of Commons today. And maybe she won't. I mean, I think that that's the warning that Corey is giving us is that, you

Carter 33:52

you know, today she carried it off, but tomorrow she may not. And through the estimates and all the other pieces of the budget that they need to go through. But today

Carter 34:00

today it was very solid. I thought it was, she

Carter 34:04

her narrative in a way that, I mean,

Carter 34:08

mean, all politicians should try and handle.

Zain 34:12

Freeland, winner or loser?

Corey 34:13

Yeah, winner for sure. I mean, she's

Corey 34:15

she's very strong. She comes off as quite competent, has an ability to, even when delivering a big deficit, seem credible on the kind of fiscal hawkishness. And Carter's point, I think, is really well taken. There was no belt tightening here. There were increased revenues.

Corey 34:31

revenues. And even beyond increased revenues, there were increased spending. So it's hard to say that this was the fiscally prudent budget by any conventional definition. Did

Corey 34:40

Did it increase spending? Yes. is the deficit enormous? Yes. But we're somehow calling it fiscally responsible budget.

Corey 34:46

Okay. And she seems to get away with it. I was also struck by the budget speech as I thought it was, I'd be curious to hear your two thoughts on it. I thought it was an unusual budget speech. There were a lot of non-budget components in it. It almost felt

Corey 34:58

like a throne speech read by the finance minister. It

Zain 35:01

It did. I agree completely. I

Corey 35:05

I'm not sure what to make of that and i you know both from like an internal what does the prime minister even do at this point point of view to also like is this going to be the new convention for budget speeches they have been drifting into communications documents for so long the the fatal flaw of the of the uh throne speech with apologies to your mother-in-law zane is it's read by somebody else not not by a politician so i don't know maybe this is the new normal maybe this is how we're going to be be approaching them but it seemed like quite a broadening of both the finance minister's mandate and the budget's mandate i

Zain 35:40

i you know i almost kind of felt like and and this isn't a perfect sort of fitting it in in the box sort of thing but i felt like it was like the deputy prime minister speaking at

Zain 35:49

at that point and then it was the finance minister afterwards explaining to the media the dollars in the sense yeah i felt like it was more like oh let's just take this opportunity as co-leaders of this government yo to just to give like a speech about our shit and our story Corey, and whatever. Carter, I'm curious, you're nodding your head. I'm curious to get your reaction to what Corey said here.

Carter 36:08

I think those are really good points. I mean, I think that, when

Carter 36:12

does it go too far, right?

Carter 36:14

right? Like we've kind of critiqued the budget. Convention in

Zain 36:17

in a sense, right? So it's like, it is an interesting point.

Carter 36:20

We would be the first to jump up and say that a budget that didn't start, that didn't stand as a communications document would be a complete failure. Agreed. You know, Corey, you know, we've made the point that this is what it is. And not only that, it's what it should be, because ultimately your job when in government is to communicate to the electorate. So we

Carter 36:40

we stand and we say that this is good. And then we get what we asked for, which is a really solid communications document. And then we pick it apart because it's too much of a communications document. And I can't really decide which side of the line I'm on because I can see Corey's point about how weird it is that this sounds more like a throne speech than it does a budget.

Carter 37:04

budget. budget but on the other hand a

Carter 37:06

a budget is really the plan for the fiscal i mean if you go into a business case presentation you're going to get this type you know if this was a business case being stated to the board of directors um you would get this type of a narrative through and then we would pick into the numbers and be more specific you know what we would do at a

Zain 37:24

a board meeting we would actually say you've been sent the numbers in advance to read they're on the the website as a PDF. I trust you've read them. Let me tell you the story behind the numbers. I kind of saw it exactly like that, right? Which is like, you'll get the PDF and you don't give a shit about that. Why do I need to read a PDF to you? Let me actually tell you a story instead.

Carter 37:44

Because the numbers are going to be dug into in depth over the course of the next month, right? It's not, oh, we heard the speech, it's over. That's not the way the budget works. Now they go through all the different estimates. They go through each- Are you talking yourself into it, Carter?

Carter 38:00

No, I'm not really talking myself into it. I think that where we're differing is the co-leader of the government structure, the absence of the prime minister in the leadership role. And it's always the finance minister that leads the budgeting process. But there is a degree of removal

Carter 38:20

removal of this prime minister that has been problematic and noted by this podcast a number of times over the last few months. Well, Corey,

Zain 38:28

let me just jump into

Corey 38:28

into that. that justin trudeau winner or loser he's

Corey 38:31

he's a winner it's his government it's his budget the budget is generally doing what it needs to do so how i couldn't possibly call him a loser in this budget that would be absurd you

Zain 38:39

you couldn't contort yourself to that carter can you because you seem like a man that likes to bend oh

Carter 38:44

the prime minister is a fucking loser on this budget for sure you know um

Carter 38:48

here and here's why right

Carter 38:49

right you're actually i like that oh

Carter 38:53

yeah no and here's why here's why the The prime minister, what are the big issues? What are the issues? What are the big issues in the last three or four months, right? It's the quote unquote end of COVID slash restart of COVID in the sixth wave. Haven't seen or heard of the prime minister on much of that. The Ukrainian story. I mean, again, Chrystia Freeland, Melanie Jolie, Anand, these are the people that we've been hearing about, about Ukraine. They've been doing a great job. I think they've been doing a fantastic job. I think also that Chrystia Freeland did a great job on the budget today. the

Carter 39:23

the people who the person who i'm not talking about very much over the last three months is the prime minister of the of the country um and maybe that's good maybe that's good but right now if you're to pick winners and losers the prime minister is not a winner because he's not the one who's seen to be leading he is the one who has let everybody lead which is i guess okay but he's not actually put his hand

Zain 39:44

hand up he may want to talk about servant leadership which which might be a class in his MBA course that he heard. Go ahead, Corey. No, I don't.

Corey 39:52

I don't. It's a great point. You've really struck a chord with me here because at a certain point, the question becomes, when is it not his budget, but it's Freeland's budget? And we saw this in the 90s, Martin's budget versus Chrétien's budget, right? He was seen as the finance minister who actually was calling those shots. Is

Zain 40:07

Is this Freeland's budget? Like to take that rhetorical question, put it out. Is

Zain 40:12

Is this Freeland's budget?

Corey 40:14

I honestly don't know. No. If there was another budget like this, I think I would have to say yes. The prime minister is not fully absent from it. It is the finance minister's day, but

Corey 40:26

he's not carrying the water on it like you would often see. I did four budgets in my time in government, and the general cadence was basically the same.

Corey 40:37

Finance minister has that day, but everything around it is the

Zain 40:42

the premier's principle yeah

Corey 40:44

in my case the premier but it would be the prime minister in other contexts right which is you

Corey 40:48

you know the the t up like the the softening the ground ahead of time oh we're gonna have this story maybe even taking on to the airwaves and talking about what's to come and then the follow-up when you're going to the yes the finance minister might go to the chambers of commerce or or whatnot but you're you've generally got a big push and that big push is led by the principal so it'll be interesting to to see what part of the mantle Justin Trudeau reclaims in the next couple of days here. But pretty

Corey 41:14

pretty noteworthy that the lead up was all Freeland as well, I

Corey 41:18

at least that's my feeling. Maybe that's not fair. It's

Corey 41:21

And those feelings have a way of becoming narratives over time.

Zain 41:26

I'm going to leave the governing liberals for our next winner or losers question, Carter. But before I do that, I want to ask you about something that's been intriguing me, which which is, you know, I asked you guys last time, and I even mentioned it this episode, the multiple narratives of the type of budget we could have expected today, right? Not the austerity, but the liberal version of austerity. Then the big spend budget. I think the big spend kind of took over the runway prior to today. And they, of course, landed in a spot that wasn't big spend or wasn't like blow the doors out historical big spend with the, you know, wasn't the orange budget that people expected. And certainly, you know, despite what Candice Bergen and others called it today. Um, what part do you think that was strategy, Carter, to set the expectations so high that they could land the plane, so to speak, at a different altitude and still be fine because expectations were much higher and perhaps even purposefully elevated?

Carter 42:24

Well, I mean, I think that that's a really interesting question, Zane, because the run-up didn't lead us to a $52 billion deficit, right? The run-up may have led us to something larger. Yeah, that's what I was expecting. we had very mixed we had

Carter 42:36

had very mixed opinions last week it wasn't like we were definitively reading these both of you did i was the one pushing

Zain 42:42

pushing like i think this could be 200 billion like i'm 200 billion is probably the ballpark i would have bet if i were but you know getting into this week we

Carter 42:50

we just didn't know and we just weren't comfortable saying this is what's going to happen um because the tea leaves weren't put out in such a way that we could each all just just read them super easily so it wasn't like necessarily we knew exactly what to expect so So the expectations game was set really with a range and this landed in the range. So I think that that's probably why it landed because it really didn't defy any expectations. I mean, no one was expecting a $20 billion deficit. No one was expecting a $100 billion deficit, but somewhere in between those two numbers, I think most

Carter 43:23

most of us were expecting and

Carter 43:26

they landed that particular plane. And then to my

Carter 43:31

Christopher Eland stood up and claimed victory, which which was pretty

Zain 43:36

Corey, checkmate Singh, winner or loser?

Corey 43:39

You know, one of the things that really struck me about this budget, and it goes back to this liberal NDP deal, I think this is going to be a fascinating few years. Everybody is saying, oh, look, they're secure for the next three years. They're going to get to the election. But there was a moment where Singh said, yeah, this is good enough. This meets the deal, right? And it made me realize that at the very least, every fucking budget we're going to have a moment like that this is the first one they just decided a couple of weeks ago this one's easy they knew what the budget was going to have but there is going to be a moment with microphones in his face for each budget and each throne speech saying is this enough are the liberals holding on to their deal and so i want to cast back to the very long and very complex deal that was signed just weeks ago here and we

Corey 44:24

we said at the time well

Corey 44:26

well that's interesting because it does seem like there's a lot of fail points i

Corey 44:29

i feel that triply so today. If so soon, people could even think that was even remotely in doubt. And if it would even seem remotely credible, Singh might withhold his support in any way, shape, or form. We're just weeks out. And when things get a little longer and a little more ambiguous, and those plans are not necessarily as clearly defined, and those goals are not necessarily as clearly met, I

Corey 44:50

I don't know. I mean, I feel like it's still a minority government is what I'll get down to. And they can still withhold their support whenever the fuck they want to for basically any reason. And so I think Singh is a winner. I think Singh is a winner because he's kind of proven the formula, get things out of the liberals, get credit for the things liberals were going to do. And you can still bring down this government if you want to.

Zain 45:09

carter singh is already taking victory laps on housing pharma care dental care he clearly uh voiced his discontent regarding the beta north like approval yesterday in newfoundland labrador the big uh energy project out there saying we're not on board with that shit but we're sent here to get things done and here's what i got done for you so jagmeet you're welcome singh right as we talked about uh he he stepped up that was his message today i'm curious about what cory said said here but maybe i'll park there for a second i'll get your initial take on winner or loser for jagmeet singh uh

Carter 45:43

uh loser as well um because cory

Carter 45:47

cory cory said you know cory made this big deal about how the cameras were put in his face and said you know do you support is this going far enough every every budget every confidence vote in the house of commons um singh should be getting that camera put in front of him saying do you support this is this going on do you support that deal or no deal. And the fact that he's made a deal actually lessens his leverage, right? Does this meet your satisfaction? I'm going to push for more. He can't push for more on this. He's already done the deal. But this is what Corey said. He's already done the deal. But Corey's

Zain 46:19

Corey's argument is actually doesn't lessen his leverage. It gets him close, intimate,

Zain 46:23

lets him grab, and then still allow a fill

Carter 46:25

fill book. Where's his leverage here?

Carter 46:27

What's different here than any other liberal world government in the last five years. Can I tell you,

Corey 46:32

you, well, let's just I guess apparently blow past the things like dental care, but can I tell you what Singh

Carter 46:40

Singh has now that he didn't have? 11 dollars over the course of five years? Can I tell you

Corey 46:43

you what Singh has now that Singh did not have previously?

Corey 46:49

other than the NDP, feels like they can comfortably say no. Like, budget sucks, budget sucks. Like, the Bloc is free to instantly oppose it. The Conservatives are free to instantly oppose it. The Greens can instantly oppose it.

Corey 47:00

And you know what?

Corey 47:01

At the end of the day, then it's going to turn to Singh. And Singh can do the Roman emperor thumb up, thumb down thing. And the whole government lives or dies. He's actually got everybody where he wants them to get maximum leverage. Because if Singh were to say- You're describing

Carter 47:14

before the deal. If

Corey 47:14

If Singh were to say- You're describing before the deal. No, I'm not. Because before the deal-

Corey 47:18

- You're describing the

Zain 47:19

I'm curious here. Let him explain before the deal. Let him explain it. Before

Corey 47:23

Before the deal, Carter,

Corey 47:24

the conservatives wouldn't necessarily have come out so fucking hard so instantly because they couldn't risk necessarily coming to an election they didn't need to have. But now Singh

Carter 47:31

Singh- Yeah, the Conservatives are the party of moderation, always. They always have been. They've always been considered response. Yeah,

Corey 47:38

Yeah, that's what they're known for, right? No.

Carter 47:40

Yeah, that's what they're known

Corey 47:41

known for. The bloc, same deal. The Conservatives could

Corey 47:44

could have felt free to go wild, buck wild, because they know that the government can't fall. But if it gets to a point where Singh says, imagine a scenario where everybody

Corey 47:53

everybody came out and said, no way.

Corey 47:55

And then they come Come with those microphones and cameras to Singh and says, you know what? I don't think it's enough.

Corey 48:00

Well, what are the liberals going to do? They're going to have to shovel more money and do it. It's fucking on. Singh has them by the short and curlies. And this is Jagmeet Singh's time. This was a smart deal by him. I wasn't so sure how it was going to play out. But if this first week is any indication. Your

Carter 48:13

Your conviction is making me more certain that I'm right and

Zain 48:16

you're wrong. I kind of refute that on its merits, though, because he's kind of he's kind of he's

Carter 48:21

he's describing describing he's describing the lynchpin in the minority government and saying see isn't it great that they gave it away he's describing the power that they had before and saying i'm so happy they gave it away because now you know they've got some additional power this isn't a thing where you give up one power and you get two this isn't heroes cory it was a shitty show i never watched it it didn't work out terrible

Zain 48:43

terrible reference god really topical

Carter 48:45

too way to go steven it

Carter 48:48

it isn't This isn't the Marvel Universe.

Carter 48:50

Damn it, that doesn't work. There

Corey 48:51

There used to be three linchpins.

Corey 48:53

Justin Trudeau could have found... No,

Carter 48:54

No, there wasn't. There never was three. Justin Trudeau could

Corey 48:56

could have gone with a couple of different

Carter 48:58

different dance partners. He may have had two.

Carter 49:00

He may have had two. And now he

Corey 49:01

he has one. Maybe.

Corey 49:02

Maybe. And now he has one. Which is a mistake. And that one linchpin's power has increased as a result.

Zain 49:11

are. I was going to wait a beat to see what Carter would do. Carter.

Zain 49:17

Winner or loser. who bergen bergen

Carter 49:21

mean losers all they're going to do is they're going to stand up and scream the whole time what did you what did you make of their

Zain 49:27

their this is an ndp budget line do

Zain 49:30

do you think that's uh we've thought

Zain 49:31

is and then we've

Carter 49:32

this before but i'm curious

Carter 49:35

mean of course they get to say that because of the deal right the deal that was struck makes them gives them the line but the line isn't actually true it's just the line this

Carter 49:44

this is the liberal budget this is a liberal budget that actually takes a whole bunch of conservative talking points, which is a strong middle class, and directs things

Carter 49:54

things right at them. So Candace Bergen can stand up all she wants and scream all she wants, but this isn't going to be heard because

Carter 50:00

because there's a lot of things in here, especially around the housing stuff, that conservatives are going to like.

Carter 50:06

With the notable exception, I think, of the anti-flipping thing,

Carter 50:10

thing, because I think conservatives just like

Carter 50:12

like making money any way they can.

Zain 50:16

Bergen and the Conservatives,

Corey 50:16

Conservatives, winners or losers?

Corey 50:18

I think the minute is a budget coming out and you having to concede that certain things are good, you're obviously a bit surprised by it. So I would say losers, but I also don't think it matters very much for them right now. Like one of the fun things about being in a leadership contest is in some ways, Bergen's

Corey 50:34

Bergen's comment's not the most interesting. It's the leadership contestants. You know, what does Pierre Polyev say? What does Jean Charest say? What does door number eight say? say. And so low

Corey 50:45

low stakes, I guess, right now.

Corey 50:48

Well, let me ask you about Pierre Pagliareva, Corey, winner or loser today?

Corey 50:51

today? I actually didn't see what he said. What did he say about the budget?

Zain 50:54

He called it the Liberal NDP Socialist Coalition Budget Turbocharges Just Inflation with $50 billion in new spending. Help me stop inflationary deficits. Join me at pierre4pm.ca, Corey. This sounds like a tweet. Is this a tweet? tweet yeah that is what he said that was actually the bulk of what he said that was this was this message i mean i don't know if you know this repair probably ever repeats the same thing four times in six ways and that's usually most of his remarks these days i'm not criticizing it but that's pretty much what he said and it's a tweet that says socialist coalition on the credit card oh

Corey 51:27

oh that's great wonderful can i ask you i don't want to detour but like what is this just inflation bullshit because it sounds like it's just inflation like Like, you're minimizing how important it is. It's just inflation. It's just inflation. Who gives a shit? It's

Corey 51:39

inflation. It's just inflation. Like, is this catching on? Is this a thing? This

Carter 51:43

This guy is not good. Have we not covered off how bad he is? I mean, sure, he's drawing all the audiences. Everybody goes to see him. But it's like going to watch Trump. I mean, you go and watch Trump. Like, is this

Carter 51:59

I'm telling you, I thought that Bush guy had a chance.

Zain 52:04

is... I got to

Corey 52:05

to load up that clip. I got to load up that clip to the media thing. Yeah, we got to load up

Corey 52:08

that clip. Okay, I'm

Zain 52:08

I'm going to leave that. I'm going to leave this segment there and move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, you can't always get what you want. Guys, I want to keep the budget theme, but I want to spend the next- Just hang on

Carter 52:19

on a second before you go there. Are we going to leave out the green party? Because I may have left out the green party on a poll, and

Carter 52:25

and everybody was really mad at me.

Carter 52:27

So are you leaving out the green party? We

Zain 52:28

We are leaving out the green party. Yes, Carter. Okay,

Carter 52:30

Okay, just wanted to be clear.

Zain 52:31

clear. Thank you. Like I said, Carter, you can't always get what you want. If you want the Green Party, it's not happening.

Zain 52:35

Carter, I want to talk about, to your point you brought up earlier, organizations, groups, special interests that may have wanted something in this budget. We don't have to name them. We don't have to be specific about them. I want to get deep into the practitionership of what organizations that look for stuff in a budget, how are they processing it, and what should they be doing thereafter? Both of you have been in roles that involve people saying, oh, shit, my thing wasn't there. My program wasn't there. I've been spending eight months, six months, for example, if you're Carter, you know, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, they're like, where is this? We've been looking for it for so long. They show up and they say, this wasn't there. What are they doing on

Zain 53:16

on the eve of a budget? And let's take it out from just the day, but the weeks and perhaps even just a few months thereafter, to position themselves to get back into the mix. How do special interests and advocacy groups Groups that have desires for programs and opportunities in a budget bounce back. Carter, I'm going to go to you first with your chief of staff experience. What would you suggest to the groups in that category? What does today look like? And then let's go from there.

Carter 53:44

Yeah, the budget is just the first of the spending bills, right? I mean, there's more spending that happens through the course of a year. It's not like the budget comes out and the government just throws up its hands and says, well, that's it. We're not going to spend any more money. And

Carter 53:56

it's also not that every nickel that's in the budget is already allocated. There's money in there. There are programs in there. I mean, I know that when the city of Calgary was looking at trying to find money from the federal government, it was relatively straightforward to go in and find all the different programs that are publicly available. You can just find all the publicly available information. You find out where you think you can fit into, and then you try and apply for that money. And it's actually remarkable how sometimes that money isn't applied for. So you can go and find dollars within these buckets if you just change your talking points a little bit, right? You change what you're talking about. You're changing how you're approaching things. Well, this doesn't entirely describe what we're doing perfectly. Well, change

Carter 54:41

change what you're doing. Change it so that it does describe what you're doing perfectly. So that's kind of my first step. The second, of course, is that more money gets allocated throughout the course of the year. If you need additional funds, if there's something that's really important to you, then go get it. Go and find those additional funds and those additional funds can still be put forward. I mean, you know, more money is being spent in a bunch of different areas, but it doesn't mean that more money won't be spent later in the year. Corey,

Zain 55:14

Corey, you know, I'm going to ask you a more specific question because Carter's given us a good overview. Let me make up a scenario. Let's say you're a small climate charity or a climate organization. You've been spending the last year advocating for a specific measure in this budget. You don't find it. It doesn't show up. I'm curious from a tactical perspective, like tonight, are

Zain 55:32

are you as an organization talking about how you're disappointed to not see certain things in a budget as it kind of goes down to the fundamentals of like, when do you take an adversarial approach? When do you take a proactive approach? I'm curious what your your insight would be for organizations that are looking to respond to getting into what many may have thought would have been a frothy budget. budget.

Corey 55:57

Yeah. So there's a lot of moments

Corey 55:59

moments that seem bigger than they are or more definitive than they are or more final than they are. And I guess the first thing I would say to any of those groups is there's always more decisions to be made. There's always more money and there's always another budget. So you've

Corey 56:12

you've got to keep that in mind and you've got to be a little bit careful. And if you're going to go on the attack, you've got to know what you're doing and why you're doing it. You've got to see the upside and you've got to have a win for the government possible at some some point uh

Corey 56:24

uh or at least you know the wind can even be sometimes stopping the pain but that means you've got to be able to bring a level of pain that's not just going to annoy and antagonize but be real pain so in the scenario you've described like a small environmental group there

Corey 56:37

there are so many people in that space if you piss off the government you

Corey 56:43

it just doesn't seem like a great way to go about your business obviously these things should be merit-based but there's there's always an x factor in there and you've just got to be mindful of that and certainly if If you're looking for like funding for a bucket of projects, you don't want to poison that. So what

Corey 56:58

what I would do, microphone put in my face is probably

Corey 57:02

probably try to, well, it really depends, but I would probably say, you know, I noticed there's some good money in X and we're looking forward to hearing more about that because we know projects such as the one that my group is promoting are very, very important. So we look forward to hearing more details from the ministry in days to come. By the way, we look forward to hearing more ministries or details from the ministry in the days to come is like the line of, I

Corey 57:26

I don't know, about a thousand groups on budget day. Because the other thing is you only get those top line items. You don't necessarily know where that spending is. So unless you're like a validator of the budget and has to stand up with the government and say they did a great job, you're probably sitting there wondering, does this include you or not on budget day still too?

Corey 57:46

right about projects. He's right about the idea of trying to build your project into the government's priorities and initiatives. Let's just say, for example, you were in Alberta and you had an Indigenous health initiative, right? Let's say it was an Indigenous health initiative partnering with a university. Well, obviously, health you could go to. You could go to Indigenous relations. You could go to advanced education. You could maybe go to jobs, economy, and innovation to talk about the economic benefits of it. Maybe this health initiative has children. You could go to children's services. You know, we talk about these government departments like they're silos, and they are most assuredly not. And they are in each other's business all the bloody time. And

Corey 58:25

And when you think, for example, about, I'll

Corey 58:27

I'll talk about something I know more about, like universities. Yes, of course, they're funded primarily by advanced education.

Corey 58:33

there's probably four other ministries that are giving significant portions of funding, certainly health, certainly JEI. And

Corey 58:40

And so you've just got to expand the board. Don't feel limited by the words that are in front of you and the words on the, you know, the masthead of the department that you most regularly interact with.

Zain 58:51

You know, and the reason I bring this up is exactly your point, Corey. I follow on Twitter a lot of social sector organizations. I'd say eight out of ten of them had like, oh,

Zain 58:59

oh, great to see this. We'll wait for more. Looking forward to the details or hopefully we're included. Can't wait for the Budget Act consultations or all this sort of stuff. And it kind of got me thinking to like, you know, there's so many organizations, whether you'd be in food security or whatever, which is an example, a real example, I saw say almost exactly that, saying, you know, where's our slice of the pie? Carter, is there any other advice that you that you kind of think of or strategic sort of principles, I should say, perhaps around engaging with government post budget when you're left out or you look like you're left out in the cold? I talked to Corey about the, at what point do you get antagonistic, to be quite clear. Any other principles that have worked that you've seen work from like a strategy or messaging perspective to push forward what you're looking for as a cause?

Carter 59:45

Two principles, flexibility and patience. Flexibility enables you to shift your programming. And, you

Carter 59:52

you know, there is a lot of organizations and I'll give an example. I worked with the Alex Community Health Center and we were, so I was the board chair and And we were about a $2.5 million a year

Carter 1:00:02

year health care provider. And we provided health care primarily to very disadvantaged populations. Then the government needed a bunch of partners to do health care and housing together. And basically, it was a Housing First project where nurses and support staff that we worked with, we had a tremendous number of social workers and things like that, were working with us. Those types of providers were included in the housing program. and we went from uh 2.5 million dollars in one you know year one of my presidency to i think 15 million dollars when i left and

Carter 1:00:38

and it was all because of the executive director nothing to do with me i can assure you it's

Carter 1:00:42

say this is talking about how

Carter 1:00:45

no no it was me being lucky and in the right hold on hold on um just

Corey 1:00:50

just a second here something strange is happening here just okay just thought oh there was the transition sound

Carter 1:00:55

sound jeb bush needs to survive this primary and compete in a general jeb

Carter 1:01:00

this primary he's totally surviving this primary mark it down on your calendar okay steven carter jeb bush is the guy oh

Corey 1:01:09

oh and then we transition

Carter 1:01:10

transition back yeah thank

Carter 1:01:12

thank you very much uh cory very helpful um flexibility allows you to shift your programming to meet the government priorities priorities and there's okay focus on me focus back on me patience

Carter 1:01:25

patience is the other piece um patience is that you may not be the government priority right now um they may not have a program for you but you need to keep pushing right two or three years from now you may have uh that government priority and i think it real shows real professionalism but i sucked it up and continued right through uh that program and how do we get our own uh soundboards uh these are the questions that i want to

Zain 1:01:50

to have i've got something that says mark clip but i don't think that's what it is uh i don't think that i will mark this clip because that was very excellent cory nicely played i mean it made up for the the bullshit up front for any principles beyond what we've talked about around uh at a successful advocacy successful lobbying of of initiatives around around the budget cycle?

Corey 1:02:10

Yeah, you want to get in there early. You want to have conversations as soon as you can with the department, understand exactly what they can share, how that money's flowing. Information is key at this moment, and there is a first mover advantage. So get in there and be the conversation.

Corey 1:02:25

It's very rare government will put together pots of money without at least reaching out to a few people to understand if it's possible, like if this is going to work. I mean, I think it would be almost malpractice to do otherwise. wise, but quite

Corey 1:02:37

quite often they will talk to one, they will justify that there's a room for a bucket, but they haven't necessarily, even in their mind, divided up the entire bucket. So get in there quick.

Corey 1:02:47

Speed is important for these things. Carter,

Zain 1:02:50

Carter, I want to talk about the other side of the coin here very quickly, which is suppose today you were an organization that totally scored big. You were an institution, a sector, a special interest. interest, what does celebration look like? Talk to me about that in terms of when you're chief of staff, you guys talk to special interest groups all the time, pulse of the community stuff, right? You'd have to do it. You do something in the budget. Talk to me about the best home run experience they've had from an organization, an institution, a sector delivering for you when you delivered for them. Talk to me about that a bit.

Carter 1:03:24

Well, I think that the most important important thing is to make sure that government shares in your success unless you want to be one and done right so look at us we get all our funding and we're going to go running out and tell everybody how great we are isn't a long-term strategy uh for how you can continue

Carter 1:03:39

continue to just kind of you know succeed

Carter 1:03:41

succeed with the government you need to to bring along the ministers you

Carter 1:03:45

you need to bring the you know you need to create media events you need to you

Carter 1:03:49

how many times do we announce a program now in a government three

Carter 1:03:51

three to eight times right

Carter 1:03:53

right you got to make sure that you've got those announcements planned that you're prepared to be there with those government ministers that you're you

Carter 1:03:59

you know each time you you do something with their money you're inviting them and you're telling them what's going to happen and you're getting them the media and

Carter 1:04:05

and every time you get the media for part of their program you remind the media that this is part of the government's program um that that you've gotten that that is the way to endear yourself uh to to the government as it's as it's moving along um that's

Carter 1:04:21

that's probably why mothers against drink driving did such a great job they always i just

Carter 1:04:28

just i had to i had cory

Zain 1:04:30

cory any any principles or rules for like what good support of the government that supported you looks like carter

Corey 1:04:38

carter really put it out there well one of the things people need to realize is that these decisions don't happen at light switch switch moments and so it isn't very much about the relationship when

Corey 1:04:49

when i was talking about you want to get in there fast it's not because otherwise the money won't be there because that's not how government money is distributed right government money is distributed through

Corey 1:04:58

tenders essentially that go out you put your hand up and you say i'd be the best for that but the

Corey 1:05:02

the government needs to construct the program government needs to put out the rfp government needs to think about things and if you have a regular ongoing positive relationship with them you can nudge them towards looking at the world the way your organization looks at it so So you don't just stand up there with validators once and shout and trumpet, but you want to be, without being obnoxious about it, working with the department, regularly maintaining those connections, making clear that there's validator opportunities, making clear that there's announcement opportunities, you know, there's great visuals, there's great compassionate stories, and all of this really speaks to just, it's not a transaction, it is a relationship.

Zain 1:05:38

Carter, another Mothers Against Drunk Driving anecdote, please, floor is yours.

Carter 1:05:42

No, I just wanted to say, make sure you're endearing yourself to, uh, to administration.

Carter 1:05:46

Um, the bureaucrats need to like you, you need to be easy to work with when they ask you for the report back, the report back must be on their desk. It needs to address the things that they have, you know, the evaluation points that they put forward. Don't change the rules on the bureaucrats. Bureaucrats don't change roles. All right. Um, so you have to make sure that you're fighting and you're giving them what they need, because if you don't give them what they need, you're

Carter 1:06:09

you're not going to be there next year. and they will, the bureaucrats can take you out, even though your program may be doing a great job because you don't do the basics like report back, um, give them the information that they need to take the meetings that you require, show them around the facility, whatever you, whatever you need to do, you need to make sure that you're a part of the bureaucracy as much as the political.

Corey 1:06:31

That's a great point. Um, and it's human nature. It's not specific to the bureaucracy, but you've got to keep in mind that the power of the bureaucracy welds is really the the technical power and

Corey 1:06:40

and they can get a proposal and that same proposal if they're working with you and you're collaborative and they know you're going to be good can just go through and they can say yes we understand this generally this is a good place we have some questions but no no big or

Corey 1:06:54

or they can murder you with counterfactuals this is not sufficient that is not sufficient it would be totally egregious to give money to this group and a lot of it has to do with they

Zain 1:07:03

they can they can kill it they can bury it can kill it they can kill it political leadership and

Corey 1:07:06

it's not even even a malicious thing. I've found it difficult to work with these people. I don't trust these things. There's no charity all of a sudden in the analysis that bureaucrats have to do in order for something to get money.

Zain 1:07:18

We're going to leave that segment there, move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we do it for you. We do everything for you. First

Corey 1:07:26

First question for you, Stephen

Zain 1:07:29

2016 US presidential election, are you in or out on Jeb Bush? bush

Carter 1:07:35

jeb bush is going to win the nomination if he just makes it through this primary process

Carter 1:07:45

you cory yeah you're welcome uh

Zain 1:07:47

uh carter serious question overrated or underrated an open letter to ucp members we're back to alberta we haven't talked about alberta at all but this episode an open letter to ucp members from 19 former mlas endorsing jason kenney says plunging the party into a leadership race over a year before a provincial election will kneecap their chances of winning. Overrated or underrated, this letter with 19 former MLAs endorsing Jason Kenney.

Carter 1:08:15

Is there something worse than overrated? Can we go beyond overrated? I mean, it's the worst. I mean, one of them lives in Victoria or Vancouver Island. Another one has been a proponent of the Alberta party and moved over to the Alberta party for the better part of the last last three years um and i can't remember the stats something like 160 or so former

Carter 1:08:34

former mlas are still kicking around from the progressive conservative days and

Carter 1:08:38

and you got 17 and

Carter 1:08:40

19 like you didn't even get yeah

Carter 1:08:42

yeah you didn't even get dave rodney um

Carter 1:08:44

um although the joke on twitter was that he was climbing everest for the third time did

Zain 1:08:48

did you know he was uh that's

Carter 1:08:51

a deep cut for non

Zain 1:08:53

or yeah but it's

Carter 1:08:54

it's a good one yeah

Zain 1:08:56

uh cory so you

Carter 1:08:57

you know yeah i'm done cory

Zain 1:08:59

cory over Overrated, underrated, 19 former UCPA, 19 former MLAs are endorsing Jason Kenney saying that plunging into a leadership race is not what we need right now.

Corey 1:09:10

It's so deeply overrated. The whole thing just reeks of desperation from the number 19. Why 19? Clearly, that was the number that could be gotten. It was like a conspicuous spot in the bottom right corner.

Corey 1:09:23

And like I already mentioned, the language was dreadful. There were typos throughout it. And let's just get down to the arguments within it. It's like if your boss wanted to fire you and you went to your boss and you said, hey, I know you want to fire me, but hear me out. These

Corey 1:09:37

These people who used to work here think it would be really inconvenient for the company if you fired me.

Zain 1:09:50

not only yeah the majority of them got fired while working here yeah exactly

Carter 1:10:06

we on the rails or off

Carter 1:10:07

off the rails it's hard for me to tell sometimes so

Zain 1:10:09

underrated uh cory I'm going to stick with you. More serious topic. The UN votes Russia out of the Human Rights Council. Overrated or underrated? We didn't talk a lot about Russia. We're going to do that on Sunday's episode in the Ukraine. Overrated or underrated, this new move to vote Russia out of the Human Rights Council at the UN? I

Corey 1:10:27

I think it's overrated.

Corey 1:10:28

overrated. It's not really surprising. It was interesting to see the breakdown

SPEAKER_02 1:10:32

breakdown of votes. Obviously,

Corey 1:10:33

there were many more people voting with Russia than in those original condemnations that occurred at the start of it, which made me a a little nervous to be honest that you

Corey 1:10:42

you know some sort of global hegemony is breaking here

Corey 1:10:45

really really fascinated to see the countries that stood up with russia i mean a total fucking murderer's row though like just really not great countries who probably would be worried about being kicked off such councils themselves it's like well i've got north korea and i've got cuba and i've got syria and i've got you name it like there are some countries on there where immediately because of the company they were now keeping i thought wow what the fuck are they up to There must be something really bad if they're standing with Russia on this.

Corey 1:11:13

you know, I just at the end of it all, they're suspended. It's not, you know, and also it's not as many people condemning, I think, as it should have been. Ton of abstentions to just a crazy number of abstentions.

Zain 1:11:26

Yeah. So the count was 93 in favor, 24 against 58 abstentions. As Corey mentioned, Carter overrated, underrated. The U.N. votes Russia out of the Human Rights Council.

Carter 1:11:36

Yeah. I mean, they're still in the Security Council, right? Yeah.

Carter 1:11:40

so it's therefore overrated it's

Carter 1:11:42

it's just not i mean they have a veto on everything so um

Carter 1:11:46

um they're in a really they're still sitting pretty and the

Carter 1:11:51

economic sanctions are doing part of the job but uh you

Carter 1:11:55

you know i i don't think that putin's thinking oh we really needed to be on that commission uh we're we're really upset right now carter

Zain 1:12:02

carter i'm gonna stick with you for our next one But a majority of UCP supporters and Albertans want a new party leader. A new survey says, is that overrated or underrated in your mind for Jason Kenney as he kicks off his leadership review process this weekend heading into May?

Carter 1:12:18

Well, we're polling the wrong people. I mean, you're not getting a big enough sample of the party members to matter. Yeah,

Carter 1:12:23

Yeah, and the general public's not participating. So it's more a reflection of where he is in terms of overall popularity. And it's not in a good spot. This isn't news. This isn't something that we are shocked to find out. There has been some larger polls with larger sample sizes of people in the membership

Carter 1:12:43

membership that show him with

Carter 1:12:45

with a leader, not quite a majority, but plurality of people who want him to stay. So I'm fascinated to see how it ends. Corey,

Zain 1:12:51

Corey, overrated, underrated, majority of UCP supporters in Albertans, what a new party leader.

Corey 1:12:56

Yeah, overrated for all the reasons that Stephen said. Interesting. Christine, maybe

Corey 1:13:01

maybe we have a kind of a second order effect on the voters that are actually going to be getting their ballots saying, wow, even people who vote conservative don't want to vote for this guy.

Corey 1:13:11

But you have to imagine the effect will be somewhat limited by, you've probably bought your membership and you're getting ready to vote because you already have an opinion. Like there's not like this great group of undecideds out there. So it's a little harder to knock people off.

Carter 1:13:24

well plus kenya lescue said that she wanted us to keep uh yeah right kenny so there you go you

Carter 1:13:31

you know that's going to be weighing into their their overall cory

Zain 1:13:34

cory i'm going to stick with you for our final question here you know you mentioned last week when we were talking about the budget that you think it could have been a forgettable budget maybe a forgettable budget i'll ask you that question again after everything you've seen today how they positioned it how they framed it what's in it? I know we're on budget night, but the federal budget 2022, forgettable budget? Yes or no?

Corey 1:13:54

I think it will be... I

Corey 1:13:57

think it is still forgettable. One of the things is these last couple of weeks are not, right? With the NDP liberal deal and the two are so close to each other that they might be tough to disaggregate with distance. We might just sort of think of it as at the budget, the last budget, there was this deal that was struck and we're now living with the consequences of that deal. The actual budget, I think, is fairly forgettable.

Zain 1:14:18

Carter, forgettable budget, yes or no?

Carter 1:14:23

I think that the liberals would like it to be a forgettable budget. I think that the conservatives will jump on the $50 billion deficit. And if they can escape Pierre Polyev's ridiculous messaging, it could be an effective attack on the liberals in the long term that they weren't able to step outside of the deficits. We're

Zain 1:14:42

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 980 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji with me. as always cory hogan stephen carter and we'll see those of you who'll be at the live show at the live show oh

Carter 1:14:58

can we give away some tickets i got like four

Zain 1:15:00

yeah we can't advertise we're sold out and then you're going to give away tickets this is what's what's what's happening how are we giving away tickets now are we just going to make this up just

Carter 1:15:08

just have someone like email message us on uh patreon if

Carter 1:15:12

if you message on patreon and tell us which one of the three you like best it should be me then i'll give you a ticket or

Corey 1:15:19

or two yeah you should know that right now zane doesn't have access to patreon so you're not going to want to say you like zane best let's just that's a losing proposition say you like the chance that

Carter 1:15:28

that carter's going to read it

Corey 1:15:30

it there's a chance i'm going to read it there's no chance zane's going to read it are

Carter 1:15:33

are we going to give him access to no i

Corey 1:15:35

don't need another i don't think so it's fine certainly

Carter 1:15:37

certainly not the money side that's talking about

Carter 1:15:39

we'll leave it there that's a wrap i'm gonna have to

Zain 1:15:41

to do it again now that's That's a wrap on episode 980 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belger. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

Transcript