Episode 983: Battle for the soul of the podcast

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 983. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what

Zain 0:08

what is going on? It is not a Sunday, Stephen.

Carter 0:12

Yeah, no, we sometimes record on Sundays, except when, you know, it's Easter Sunday and you're not available.

Zain 0:19

I'm a big Easter guy, so I wouldn't be available. No,

Carter 0:22

No, of course not, for sure. Yeah, very reasonable. Don't talk crazy talk, you

Zain 0:26

know. Speaking of things that are crazy, Stephen Carter, you've got an announcement for us. Do you not? I

Carter 0:30

I do have an announcement.

Carter 0:32

I do have an announcement. After what can only be described as the ridiculously successful Calgary event, our live show on the day that the leadership results were supposed to be ready on April the, I don't know, 12th, something like that. Who can remember? We are now doing another live show on the date when the leadership results are definitely going to be announced on May the 19th. we will be in edmonton alberta in the maharaja hall

Carter 1:02

i do that right did i get it

Carter 1:04

you laughed right at me you

Corey 1:06

very low expectations yeah i guess that's how i would the

Carter 1:08

the address so here's the thing here's the thing here's

Zain 1:12

here's the thing read out the address to the phone number actually

Carter 1:15

actually can i go back

Carter 1:16

can i go back yeah here's what i want to say here's what i want to say we got fucked by the art center so hard we are now trying something different so we We are selling – by

Carter 1:28

by the way, still haven't paid us. Do we have any money? No, we don't have any money. Know why? Because they haven't paid us. Because Arts Commons is fucked up.

Carter 1:36

Jesus Christ, Carter. So we're trying a different plan, and this time we're selling our own tickets, right, Corey? Yeah.

Carter 1:42

you've told me. That's

Corey 1:43

That's great. The strategist

Carter 1:44

strategist.ca. You're really hitting the

Corey 1:46

the important points here, Stephen. You can buy your fucking tickets. I

Carter 1:50

people want to know

Zain 1:51

know about our accounting.

Carter 1:53

selling our tickets by ourselves. We set up

Zain 1:55

up our own infrastructure.

Carter 1:55

infrastructure. at the strategist dot people want to know where they can get the tickets they want to get the tickets the tickets are at the strategist dot may

Carter 2:03

may 19th one day after

Carter 2:06

the leadership results will be known okay well that's good to

Zain 2:09

to know that could have helped

Corey 2:11

after it would have i said

Zain 2:12

said the 19th you said one will definitely be announced you know they'll be announced any day after the 18th we could have done the show june 23rd and your intro would have also applied carter So thank you for letting people know Thursday, the day after My

Carter 2:26

you go to the strategists You go to the strategists .ca, not live Because that goes to Flare Airlines You go to the strategists .ca

Carter 2:37

When we asked you, are you ready to do the promo You said yes

Corey 2:43

Go sit in the

Carter 2:48

Tickets at the strategists .ca The

Corey 2:51

The UCP leadership results are being announced May 18th. We are doing a live show on May 19th in Edmonton

Carter 2:57

Edmonton at the Maharaja Hall. Now that I've got everything out, you just come and clean it all up. You might be curious

Corey 3:01

curious to know the price, which, Stephen, I don't think matters.

Carter 3:03

matters. They don't care. Do you think they care what the price is? They're already buying

Corey 3:07

buying them. Tickets are $30. All

Carter 3:09

All of the proceeds go to us.

Corey 3:11

There is no charitable benefit in any way, shape, or form.

Carter 3:14

Oh, yeah, that's right.

Corey 3:14

right. And it's going to be a hell of a time. 8 o'clock, Thursday, May 19th.

Zain 3:20

martha cohen to the maharaja that's how this group rolls okay that's good i i feel like we've got our episode title have

Carter 3:29

seen the pictures on this place because if the lighting is like

Zain 3:32

like this it's going to be

Zain 3:32

spectacular listen let me tell you something they have got a wide array of love seats the two of you are going to be sitting on okay they've got

Corey 3:39

got a wide array

Zain 3:40

we go on can

Zain 3:42

we go on a beautiful selection of sectionals by which i mean i yearn for the days of the 60 minute episode

Corey 3:51

episode on this shit they're just gonna be

Zain 3:53

be so close together i may even want to let people vote on what are we really gonna be sitting i may want to let people i may want to ask people what loveseat you guys sit on

Carter 4:03

oh my god carter

Zain 4:04

carter have you been to

Zain 4:05

indian banquet hall before

Carter 4:07

i've been in politics for 20 years of course i've been to the indian banquet halls this is true

Zain 4:12

true this this is ground zero for all things political we're looking forward to it may 19th in edmonton alberta tickets at the strategist.ca this is a thursday this is the day after the ucp leadership review results we'll have a lot to talk about carter yes you're putting your hand up now is there something you've written down that you

Carter 4:30

you want to butcher for us patrick

Carter 4:31

patrick brown will be there because there's a crowd of 300 people in an indian uh banquet hall so no

Carter 4:37

no confirmation he might be you there okay

Corey 4:40

okay well that's uh patrick

Carter 4:43

you guys fucking love

Carter 4:46

hang on i'm gonna

Carter 4:47

why do you think

Zain 4:47

there's gonna be brown people at

Carter 4:49

at the banquet hall this is no there's gonna be 300 people at the banquet hall he doesn't care if they're brown he's not racist god you're

Corey 4:56

you're just you're coming with the heat today carter i'm glad you interjected with that it's really i think the technical term is the spice cory it's

Corey 5:05

it's the spice are

Zain 5:07

are we good cory is there anything else else you want to mention strategy also okay

Zain 5:10

okay also has merchandise for some fucking reason i don't know how that happened but anyways i bought a pillow thank

Zain 5:15

thank you thank you let's move it on to our first segment our first segment door number eight tries to get into second place carter patrick brown is what we are talking about oh

Zain 5:26

oh at least that's what we're starting our show the

Carter 5:27

the whole joke about patrick brown there that was his lead-in joke

Carter 5:31

joke is uh definitely

Zain 5:32

definitely not what i call call it a marginally marginally racist comment is what we probably racist i

Zain 5:40

i don't know we'll let people judge

Carter 5:42

you're so culturally sensitive can't

Zain 5:45

can't wait to see you two on a love seat cory are you loving this or what yeah so much thanks

Carter 5:49

thanks for shaving for the live the live show oh good yeah i'm on vacation

Corey 5:53

it's i'm wearing a collared shirt you should be thankful oh

Carter 5:57

you know what can i say something somebody

Corey 5:59

somebody pointed out to me the other day that my whole vibe and pierre polievs whole vibe we're we're kind of close you know between the hairstyle and the glasses and the suits so i might have

Zain 6:10

have to mix things up a little bit talking down to just being like very procedural and annoying yeah yeah yeah very

Carter 6:18

very much the same okay that's great thank

Carter 6:20

thank you i'm channeling uh i'm channeling charay so i guess that means that you

Carter 6:24

you know zane's uh patrick brown well

Zain 6:27

well okay Okay. Well,

Zain 6:27

Carter, let's talk about this.

Zain 6:29

Patrick Brown is in the media with a process piece about his campaign. It's about how he is reaching out to multiple communities, many of them South Asian. The article written by the Canadian press talks about a glimpse into his strategy can be found, I'm quoting here, in the video shared on his Facebook page that those who attend such events, including a meeting that Brown had with the Muslim community, the Tamil community, the Sikh community, the Nepalese community. It really digs deep into his, what I'd say, South Asian and religious community outreach, cultural community outreach. Carter, I want to talk about that, which is a sensitive concept in politics. We even have it being called sensitive for what it's called. Is it multicultural? Is it cultural? Is it South Asian? Is it religious groups? But this outreach that Patrick Brown, I shouldn't say specializes But let's just say in the past has shown a tremendous ability to move certain communities and at least reach certain communities. I want to talk about that. But I also want to talk, Carter, about the concept of a process piece in the media, what that is, how it gets into the media. So before we talk about Patrick Brown in particular, do you mind defining, because I saw you smile there, Carter, what a process piece is? And do you feel like something like this qualifies as one in your estimation?

Carter 7:48

Absolutely. This is a process piece. This is the very definition of a process piece. Imagine that the media has a diet of only two things, vegetables and candy, right? So policy is vegetables. The media don't want to cover policy at all. They don't like eating vegetables. They find vegetables are a little, you know, they don't taste as good. If you had the choice between eating vegetables or eating candy, you would always choose candy. Well, candy in this case is process stories. Process stories have very little to do with anything except the behind the scenes glances. And so, you know, in the Nenshi campaign in 2010, we ran a process story, a number of process stories around how we use social media, how we were using an app, how we were the first campaign to really dig in and how important Facebook was. All of these things are process stories, and they generated dozens

Carter 8:42

dozens and dozens of media articles. We did 14 policy releases, 14 policy releases for the NENJI campaign. We got one article, one article on any of our policy pieces. When his signs were vandalized, process

Carter 8:56

process story. When a brick went through the window, process story, right? Those are all process stories. And those process behind the scenes stories generate i

Carter 9:06

would say conservatively at least 20 times more media than um policy

Carter 9:12

policy stories where you know the explaining why a policy exists cory don't you shake your head at me this is why i won campaigns and this is why you were to the liberals great

Zain 9:23

great give me give me your take on carter's vegetables and candy uh

Corey 9:29

think it's it's different uh it may end up in the same place but ultimately it's about newsworthiness right and and what is ultimately going to be getting eyeballs and what's going to be selling newspapers getting people to tune in to the six o'clock and

Corey 9:43

and that has to do with a couple of things and human interest is one of them and people love a bit of behind the scenes in the sense that they're getting some inside information that they wouldn't get if they were just reading the policy briefings and yeah the media loves process stories and you tend to get process stories in the valleys when there's not a lot There's not a lot of actual policy news. There's not a lot of actual substantive news. I would define process story a little bit more narrowly than Stephen. Like I wouldn't call a brick through the window of the Nenshi campaign a process story. I

Corey 10:10

I would say a process story would be more, you know, the reaction, like what happened behind the scenes when all of a sudden, you know, Stephen Carter gets the call at 1am and, you know, he's in a dark alley disposing of brick remnants and his gloves.

Carter 10:24

gloves. I did not throw the brick through the window. Okay.

Corey 10:29

Wow. On the record. On the record. Good. For the first time. But the point would be, this

Corey 10:36

this is the story about how the campaign reacts, how it goes into crisis mode, how it builds itself, how it spins itself out. Similarly, after the Nenshi campaign, there were a lot of stories about how Nahed Nenshi went from nowhere to victory. And those are process stories. And so what Patrick Brown has managed to spin out into the media here is a story about how he's active in a lot of, you know, cultural communities. And I would say generally any strong community is an opportunity for politicking, right? Churches are an opportunity to sell memberships, you know, tight cultural communities, an opportunity to sell memberships, anything like that. So I think it's funny that politicians tie themselves in knots on this. And, and I think it's kind of gross how they always default to ethnic community as the default, because really, they're just talking about a group based outreach thing. But what

Corey 11:21

what this really is, is Patrick Brown, working a story to get out there a theory of victory, because even us, I'm looking at this screen, I'm looking at the three of us here.

Corey 11:30

We we made a lot of jokes about Patrick Brown entering the race, what the fuck is he doing? Right? Door number eight,

Corey 11:35

eight, right? As you as you referenced it there.

Corey 11:39

And he doesn't want to be a joke. He's got to create a compelling way that he can potentially win for

Corey 11:44

for a couple of reasons. One is nobody wants to join a losing campaign.

Corey 11:49

And two is nobody wants to cover a losing campaign.

Carter 11:53

Those are really good reasons. I

Zain 11:54

I agree with your perspective here around what he's trying to do. Carter, let's park the process story, how you get it into the media, et cetera, till the end here. Let's talk about Patrick Brown. Give

Zain 12:04

Give me your assessment of what he's he's trying to do here. So this is an article written by the Canadian press. So it's got distribution in most of the major newspapers, National Newswatch, et cetera, with

Zain 12:13

syndication, talks about the outreach to these communities. You watch these videos, the headline on certain publications, because it is, of course, syndicated, says, if you show up, I win, which is a quote that he's ultimately been making to these groups. What do you think he's trying to do here? And perhaps even broader, do you feel like this is untapped potential that if you are are a pure polyamory. Do you care about what he's trying to do here? Are you just sticking to your lane? And do you think if you're on the other side of this generates a bit of a fear or queasiness if you're in the front runner campaign?

Carter 12:46

I don't think it necessarily generates fear. I mean, I think that the problem with this type of campaign is it can exist underground. It's hard to see these types of campaigns. We broadened it out. I mean, you can call it a community campaign. No one calls it like an ethnic campaign anymore. You know, like it's it's a community campaign or the language that I like to use is social networks. So you're trying to find people with strong social networks. That's what Corey was alluding to. And you can go and find them with hockey teams, children's soccer teams, you know, like there's any, any place that you have a group of friends, a book club, that's a social network, but there happens to be social networks that exist, um, in,

Carter 13:24

in, in what we would identify as visible minority communities, um, that are largely very strong communities where you are able to reach a lot of people at the same time. And, you know, you're nuts not to take advantage of finding those places because they do like having input. Like, I think there's a lot of audiences that have walked away from the political process. There's

Carter 13:49

There's a lot of people that have walked away from being involved in a leadership campaign. And it does avail the opportunity for recent immigrants or women have been extremely powerful in leadership campaigns. And if I were Pierre Pellievre, I would look at Pierre's audience and I'd say that really he's opened up two very distinct audiences that can come after him. Three if you count Quebec, which

Carter 14:14

which I probably should have. But the first one is, is this broader ethnic community, which is huge, uh, where Patrick Brown, um, you know, lives and where he kind of comes from. Um, and it's huge in, in the lower mainland of British Columbia. It's huge in Calgary. It's huge in Edmonton, huge across the country, big, big opportunity. And the second is there's no women. Um,

Carter 14:37

Um, you know, like there are some women at the Pierre Polyev events, but they, they tend to be dominated by relatively old white guys. And then there's a, there's a tremendous number of young, uh, white people as well, but we've all made comments about the relative, uh, similarity and skin tone at the, uh, Pierre Polyev events. Um, this is just the counter of that. And so I think that if Patrick Brown

Carter 15:02

Brown was successful in getting this group involved, and he was successful in bringing in other groups that aren't being attracted to the Pierre Polyev campaign, that I think that he

Carter 15:11

he does have a lane where he can at the least, to Corey's point, appear

Carter 15:15

appear viable. And that's what today's job is. Let

Zain 15:19

Let me talk to you about that, Corey. And I want to pick up on a comment that Carter made, which is this work can be done underground.

Zain 15:26

And Carter, what I assume you mean by that is this work can be done silently, that the ground war and the ground game doesn't need a spotlight on it, that it can just happen, that the competition can be surprised on a week by week or month by month basis as to the new members that are joining and said, holy shit, that's not us. unless someone's doing that. And that's probably Patrick Brown.

Zain 15:50

Corey, why do you think they came to extend Grant Carter's analogy above ground? Why do you think they implemented and strategically decided to insert a process story or kind of went along with it? Give me your take on that. Well,

Corey 16:03

Well, I think the main, there's two reasons. One's offensive and one's defensive, right? Offensively, they wanted to stop this narrative that, you know, Pierre Poliev's already won. it's done it's over you know move on to the next thing because that would be just demoralizing and attack the overall enthusiasm for the conservative contest overall right by making it seem not like a contest which hurts all of the candidates who are not here the

Corey 16:27

the second is defensive though it's because patrick brown has not necessarily proven himself to be a credible candidate now he's working the angles he's talking to a lot of people there's a lot of podcasts going on right now Now, there's a lot of guests on those podcasts, on those talking head shows on CBC and CTV saying, watch this guy. He's a sleeper candidate. He's out there hustling. He's selling memberships. Don't forget how we won the Ontario PC leadership in the first place. This is all now in the zeitgeist, and he's strengthening that. So he wants people to think of himself as a credible candidate as well. So those are the two big reasons to do it. But Carter really said the magic word in the middle of his, or at the end of his thing there when he talked about viability

Corey 17:08

right he wants to seem like a viable candidate and both that offensive and defensive approach speak to viability the viability of both candidacy against pierre polliev generally and that of patrick brown specifically and

Corey 17:20

and it's an important point because people do generally just discount non-viable alternatives whenever i do a poll in an election you guys will know this because you worked with me avi right accessibility Accessibility, viability, intent, intent, right?

Corey 17:35

Accessibility, who would you consider voting for viability? Who do you think has a chance? Because that tells you where they're going to vote when push comes to shove, right? Because they they ultimately don't want to waste their vote. They don't want to waste their efforts, if they're a volunteer, and then intent, who are you planning to vote for? And intent is last, because in some ways, it's the least important. If you have accessibility and viability, you've got a campaign, right?

Corey 17:57

Intent, if you were right up against the ceiling of accessibility, you might find yourself in an awful lot of trouble.

Carter 18:04

I build on that? Jump in here. Jump in here. Yeah, yeah. Do it. Do it. Because what I'd love to see with Pierre Polyev's numbers, right? I would love to see those who are aware of his name, but have no intention of voting for him. The ones that are kind of unavailable to him. Because I suspect there are large pockets of people who are available to him, and we are seeing them come out. But we have not seen any numbers that say who's not available to And I suspect that he's got near 100 percent name recognition within the party itself. And, you know, some big chunk of that will never vote for him. And that's the group that you're really interested in seeing. Can they can they vote? Because it's that plus new that equals victory. Right. And so it's I often say to people, all campaigns are about math and no one wants to do the math on these things. But what Corey is describing can actually be written. Why do you say no one

Zain 18:56

one wants to do the math? Can I stop you there?

Carter 18:59

Yeah, no one never does math.

Carter 19:01

I write a tremendous number of political strategies, right? And in every one of my political strategies, I write out the mathematical formulas that are going to dictate victory depending on the structure of the event or the structure of the leadership or the structure of the electoral game. So if you've got 87 ridings in a province, that dictates a type of structural math. math. If you do a popular vote mayoral, that dictates a strategic math. If you do a popular vote councillor with four strong candidates, that dictates a type of math. This math is all different. And the math that exists right now in the Conservative Party of Canada is complex math. There

Carter 19:42

There are a lot of variables. How many points? How many ridings? What happens in Quebec? What what happens in Atlantic Canada, what we're seeing from Pierre looks unassailable, but

Carter 19:53

but it's not unassailable if you're looking at the math, you

Carter 19:56

you know, and I've looked at the math on these types of races. I mean, Justin Trudeau, you know, obviously cruise to victory when he ran in the leadership with what, 2015, 2016, but

Carter 20:05

but that easily could have been undone.

Carter 20:08

2014. Yeah. That could have been undone, um, with

Carter 20:13

with the right candidate because he had, he had a lot of reluctant reluctant supporters, people who were waiting to see if someone better came along. And then when there was no one better, they flipped to Justin Trudeau.

Carter 20:24

The math is unbelievable and it's so important. And what Corey's described as kind of words, I would often describe as mathematic if far more.

Zain 20:34

Corey, jump on what you just heard.

Corey 20:39

Yes. No, I think that's right. Right. It's generally true. I'm not Carter giving the Carter secret sauce and how he runs through things. Maybe I believe it, maybe I don't. I've worked with you for a while. I think generally it's true. But I would say this, it's not so much that people are afraid of the math and the way people don't like to do their taxes or open up Excel ever, right? It's that the math sometimes doesn't tell them the story they want to tell.

Corey 21:05

And so I think in general, politicians can move from mediocre to very good simply by following some very basic principles and one of them is

Corey 21:15

where are your votes coming from who is your accessible universe focus on that ignore everything else and uh what steven's talking about is trying to define that throughout campaign strategies because it's been quite common uh to run into campaign strategies where somebody says well we're just going to do this on the youth vote and you run the numbers and you go to statistics Canada. You get the riding profiles. You build it up from FSAs, maybe. That's the postal areas. And then you say, okay, but the demographic you think you're going to win with, I've just crunched the numbers, and they represent 11% of the population of this area. So what's

Corey 21:51

And a lot of people don't want to hear that because that's not the story they told themselves even when they got into politics, right? I'm going to win based on these people or those those people or this coalition. And, you

Corey 22:03

know, when you go in there and say that coalition's garbage, that's not enough. You've got to do more. That can be a bit damaging to the psyche of the candidates. So I'd say most candidates are afraid of that math. They're afraid of that storytelling because

Corey 22:16

because it sometimes means they have to change their behavior and candidates don't like to change their behavior.

Zain 22:22

Carter, I need to ask you, would you have gone, if you were on this patrick brown campaign would you have got i apologize above

Zain 22:29

above ground and would you have put this story out there was now in your mind from what you observed the right time for a process story for him absolutely

Carter 22:37

absolutely i think that the

Carter 22:38

the right time for a process story is every time um

Carter 22:41

um you know if i can't get regular coverage is that is that actually true i

Corey 22:46

i don't think it's true it's

Zain 22:47

let carter make his point and then and then i want i want cory to for for you to refute it why is every time the right time for a process story because

Carter 22:55

because i can't get them to eat their vegetables if

Carter 22:58

if i can't get them to eat their vegetables then i have to give them candy and

Carter 23:01

and so if i want my my candidate's name in the media i

Carter 23:04

i have to generate process story because

Carter 23:06

because they're not ever going to eat their vegetables so

Zain 23:08

so so give me an example what's the this is punch one what's the uppercut what's the second punch for patrick brown if you were advising him saying you got a great process story on a monday right after easter on the you know after a long weekend end. Podcasts like this one are talking about you.

Zain 23:24

You can't get them to eat the Patrick Brown policy framework on opposing Bill 21. What's punch number two, Carter? What's the uppercut?

Carter 23:30

Oh, I'd probably try something like we're going to do 27, over

Carter 23:37

over a three-day weekend, we're going to do 27 one-hour Zoom meetings with big groups. It's going to be 2

Carter 23:47

2,700 people people over the course of the three-day weekend.

Carter 23:52

And we're going to have 2,700 people across the country on these things. We're not going to have to incur a nickel of expense. We're not going to have to fly around. We're not going to have to pay for halls. We're not going to have to do any of the things that Pierre is doing.

Carter 24:04

And these are leaders. These aren't just the people who go to an event and hopefully buy membership. These are leaders who are able to buy multiple membership, move memberships, sell memberships, get people to participate. That's the next story is how am I by changing campaigning for leadership. You can see Pierre doing what he is doing, flying across the country, dropping in, seeing 6,000 people, 4,000 people, 2,000 people. How many of them are members? How many of them are really doing stuff? How many of them are selling memberships? Because that's what this is all about. And Patrick Brown's going to see 2,700 people in 27 meetings across the three-day thing. He's not even going to be able to speak by the end of it.

Carter 24:42

And if you want to sit through all 27 meetings, you're welcome. So

Carter 24:45

So it's his own lane.

Zain 24:47

lane. It's a different type of virality that you're saying. Rather than the one jump in, 6,000, boom, let's move on. This is a different type of intimacy, a different type of virality, and a different type of community connection that you would try to frame Patrick Brown's, I'll go back to the term both of you are using, viable candidacy in.

Carter 25:07

Right. I mean, look at how many of these things exist, right? All these different communities across the country. This is just one weekend. You should see us next weekend. We're doing 30 of these things next week,

Carter 25:18

right? This is what we're doing. This is how we're doing it. It's working for us in a totally different way. So now that you've done this, we're doing it differently. Now you got to prove it again, prove it again, prove it again.

Zain 25:30

Corey, I'm going to ask you this. I react to this, and then I'll go to your theory on process stories when it's a good the time but react to what you heard from carter first that's fine but that wasn't

Corey 25:39

wasn't the answer to your question your question was should you always do process stories and the answer

Zain 25:42

answer is fuck no no my question was what would you do next my question was what would you do next after this you're

Carter 25:48

going to get a vegetable story you're always going to have to do candy but

Zain 25:51

but respond to the fundamental question here which is answer it when's the right time to do a process story when there's nothing else going on as long as it reinforces

Corey 26:00

reinforces your ballot box question so like this process stories can be massive distractions. First of all, they tend to elevate the people behind the scenes on the campaign and that's fine, but then you've got to deal with those egos and make sure that they're all understanding what the name of the game carries.

Corey 26:16

You're like a walking why process stories are dangerous, Stephen. This is actually true.

Zain 26:22

Although rarely, I have to say, they've rarely been about you, Carter.

Zain 26:25

Carter. They're never about

Carter 26:26

about me. Well, they're about me afterwards.

Carter 26:29

I get fired or

Carter 26:30

or something like that. But that's a different thing. That's a different thing.

Carter 26:34

Most of the time we focus the process story on something that, you know, to Corey's point that we feel gives us viability. So with Nenshi, we talked all the way through about how we were campaigning differently.

Carter 26:45

And, you know, we were speaking to people where they lived and bullshit like that.

Carter 26:50

Frankly, totally hyped it up. Not really a true story, but you have to tell the story that people want to hear. And that was a story that people wanted to hear. Here, I'm not saying we didn't do communication stories. We did a ton of policy stuff, but no one covered it.

Corey 27:06

So every week- No, no, no, no, no, no. But

Corey 27:07

But your overall narrative is not necessarily process stories. Again, this maybe goes back to us having a slightly different definition of process stories. Maybe mine's too narrow for you, but yours

Zain 27:19

very much just to remind the audience really about a

Corey 27:21

of the strategy back room and

Zain 27:23

how momentum is being built, exactly, that sort of stuff.

Corey 27:26

Yeah. Yeah. And with Nenshi, it was really about doing politics differently. That was the reinforcing of the key message of the campaign. So in a funny way, on that very specific campaign, yeah, of course, process stories have a supersized place because you are talking about doing politics differently. That is your

Carter 27:46

Gondek was all process stories. Redford, we did all process stories. I think

Corey 27:51

think I'm just realizing that you do process stories. This is the

Carter 27:55

the thing. this is what i do i mean because i can't get them to eat their vegetables but

Carter 27:59

ballot box what you've

Corey 28:00

you've talked about is three campaigns where you tied the ballot box question to process right well when have you ever tied the

Carter 28:08

the ballot box question to a policy

Carter 28:11

like 1987 like you were terrible making up your 88

Carter 28:19

88 like what the fuck you know like i'm

Carter 28:23

i'm having trouble with it at years today because i'm old you know you guys have to understand that but when is it not a process question

Corey 28:32

thank you by the way this is the first time on the main feed uh we we got a soundboard now people we got yeah this is the first time on the main feed yeah this is good um people

Corey 28:43

on i finish your thought here yeah

Zain 28:45

yeah so the egos in the back room that you have to deal with the reigning in of that. But give me your sort of crystallization of when's the right time for a process. Or what I heard so far is when there's nothing really going on and it's still tied to the ballot box question. Do you want to add more

Corey 29:02

more to that? Sure. You know what? In a funny way, I'll hearken you back to a campaign that we both were

Corey 29:07

were involved in on different sides in 2012 here. Think

Corey 29:10

Think about the 28-day campaign. Don't think about the specifics. Think about every day how the newspaper had that section, the edmonton journal where it was um

Corey 29:19

um okay we're going to cover allison redford here we're going to cover daniel smith here raj sherman here and brian mason right

Corey 29:27

they're not doing process stories during a campaign like that they they are doing the policy announcements as they're being spun out throughout the campaign and

Corey 29:34

and everybody is trying to make those individual announcements ladder up into a story into a narrative now

Corey 29:40

now you have taken some process stories on campaigns campaigns you've worked on to build your narrative, to talk about politics being different as the cause. But most elections are not actually like that. Most elections are about taking a bunch of discrete policy announcements and saying something bigger with it. And that's true of process stories too, to get us back on track here. So when is the right time to do a process story? When that process story reinforces the narrative of your campaign.

Corey 30:06

There are elements of viability that are somewhat separate sometimes, but in a leadership campaign, it gets a little bit muddy. There's no question about that.

Carter 30:14

But isn't this, I mean, you're making this, like if you're crafting a campaign story, you're always, you should always be crafting it to your solid

Carter 30:23

solid box question, right?

Carter 30:25

Everything you're doing should be driving your narrative of that particular story, Alan, that particular story arc. And

Carter 30:32

And there are millions of process stories that can fit into your

Carter 30:35

your various arcs. It looks like what Patrick Brown is saying is

Carter 30:40

is that this conservative party needs to be bigger than

Carter 30:45

you know, I mean, if you're reading the article, it's not just I'm talking to visible minorities. It's, you

Carter 30:51

know, at stake is the brand of conservatism that we're after here. Right, of course. And the diversity brings us a brand of conservatism that is different. I mean, you can still push that primary message through all of the different process

Carter 31:02

process stories that are available to you. I

Carter 31:05

I mean, you're pretending like I'm going after a process story that doesn't have relevance

Carter 31:09

relevance to the narrative, but I

Carter 31:12

I think you can craft most process stories to have relevance to the narrative.

Corey 31:19

Most people do not, is my point. Most process stories go off the rails and they become about creating heroes within the campaign. And

Corey 31:26

And that's not useful for ballot questions. Nine

Carter 31:28

Nine times out of ten. Yeah. Heroes within the campaign only work at the end, afterwards, when you've won. Well, they help you get work afterwards,

Carter 31:34

Yeah. When you are, in fact, when you are, in fact, a hero.

Zain 31:38

Carter, hold on. I've got I've got a question for you. Talk to me about process stories when you're down, when it's clear like this one. I think this is fascinating for to me because the narrative is that pure polyamory is a runaway train.

Zain 31:50

Talk to me about how you implant these from a position of strength versus weakness. How do you paper over weakness? You also are to a previous conversation we had a couple of weeks ago are leaving it. you don't get to write this story right

Zain 32:04

right there's a there's a sense of like intermediate like someone's writing this story they will cover what they want this one's pretty positive for Patrick Brown right especially with some of the headlines that we're seeing emerge out of it but talk to me about the risk of process stories have you gotten burnt by them in the past I suspect you have you've invited someone in and they've said this campaign is actually not humming there's nothing here I'm making shit up but like tell me about the risk and then how you calculate that from position of weakness no

Carter 32:31

no we've had we've had many process stories kind of go off the rails you know i mean again not to to beat the dead horse of the ninji campaign but every time we did our process story about how important social media was duane bratt would get quoted in the same story saying

Carter 32:44

saying that social media wasn't that important and

Carter 32:47

we'd be like fuck

Carter 32:48

fuck you know like we just we just spent all that time getting a process story in and it's kind of undone by one quote from a political scientist um but what we came to realize is that our message still got out And people, you know, tend to write off whatever political scientists say.

Carter 33:03

The holy trinity of political incompetence, you

Carter 33:07

political scientists, pollsters and pundits.

Carter 33:11

mean, we are one

Zain 33:11

one of those three. We are one of those three. No, we are strategists,

Zain 33:15

strategists, Carter. Okay. Well, thank you, Carter. Thank you for creating a new category. We

Carter 33:18

We try and stay away from punditry.

Zain 33:21

about risks. Talk to me about risks because you've talked about it a bit in your answer. or talk to me about the risk assessments for process

Corey 33:30

Well, I mean, those are basically them, that they don't tell the story that you want to tell. They become a distraction. They just, maybe, if you're off message in a process story, at best, you are cluttering up the landscape. And if you're asking somebody to remember one thing about you, now the odds are less that it's the one thing you want them to remember. But

Corey 33:47

But at worst, they can actually cut against you. They can be a situation where all of a sudden, you

Corey 33:51

you are telling a story that undercuts your viability. undercuts your brain imagine a parallel universe where patrick brown did a process story where he said yeah yeah you should come see how i'm running my campaign follow me around for a day and nobody's fucking there everybody that the reporter talks to afterwards says i mean i wanted to come see him and you know hear him out because i have some friends who think highly of him but i know i'm obviously going to vote for pierre poliev right like yeah

Corey 34:18

like that that's not what happened and obviously they've done a pretty good job of managing their process stories as this campaign's gone on. Really quite impressive, I think the three of us would have to say. But there is always the risk that when you make it about the nuts and bolts, somebody makes it about the nuts and bolts. And at the end of the day, you

Corey 34:35

you are trying to tell a story and the reporter is trying to tell a story. You might not be telling the same story.

Zain 34:42

Corey, talk to me about what story you would tell if you are Patrick Brown going forward. You have this, how do you, to Carter's 2,700 people in 27 days, what is your strategy for building continued momentum here?

Corey 34:54

Whether whether it is for outright

Zain 34:56

viability for the membership or for the confidence boost that your supporters, volunteers, donors need to keep the machine going?

Corey 35:05

Well, it depends on where he actually is, right?

Corey 35:08

So we're looking from

Corey 35:09

from the outside and we're trying to assess and read the tea leaves. There's a couple of things that make me think Patrick Brown is more real

Corey 35:17

One of them is the fact that the Polyev campaign went

Corey 35:21

went after them on the prepaid debit cards. It seemed

Zain 35:24

seemed like that. Did they actually explicitly say it was a Brown campaign that they were after on that regard? I suspect it was too, but those are normal. Yeah, that's

Corey 35:31

that's a good question. I just made the assumption just based on some

Corey 35:34

some of the adjacent

Corey 35:40

point. Maybe undercuts one of the points I was going to make. The other thing, though, is that it's really, you

Corey 35:48

you know, you are getting this volume of process stories. You are getting the tall foreheads in the Conservative Party saying, watch Patrick Brown. And that's tough to create out of literally nothing.

Corey 35:57

It's not that hard to make out of something. It's tough to make out of nothing. And so I suspect that there is something to his campaign. Whether it's enough, that's

Corey 36:06

that's really quite hard to say from the outside. But assume that it is. Assume that he's actually selling a significant number of memberships, his deeper connections, those community connections are working, he'll talk to, you know, leaders in various communities who will then in turn go out, hustle and sell 10,

Zain 36:21

100 memberships a piece for him. well

Corey 36:25

well then i think what you want to do next is you've got to take it from the back rooms to the front rooms and you've got to make that pivot at a certain point just as nancy did not to keep going back to him just as so many other candidates do and

Corey 36:37

and say now look at all of these people behind me now let's have a battle for the soul of this party and let's have it out in the open let's have it during these debates and uh let's have it in a way where it's clearly you know,

Corey 36:49

know, Patrick and Pierre fighting, Mayor Brown, I guess, right? Rather than, and who's he? Charest off to the sides. I mean, that's what you want to construct at a certain point. But if you're not there, then you've got to run this story a little bit longer. You've got to move this narrative a little bit further.

Zain 37:06

Carter, Pierre Polyarva has chosen virality and aggressive organizing. Seems like Patrick Brown has chosen the network effect, building on community groups decentralized campaigning

Zain 37:19

what the hell is Jean Charest's strategy we said that each of them should pick their own lane that they shouldn't compete in each other's that if you see Pierre Pallier organizing the way he has you're best not try to compete with massive rallies that's going to be a losing proposition for you where the hell is Jean Charest in terms of decipher it for me what is his strategy here that you see and is it time that he needs a process story about what's going on underneath the hood of that arguably geriatric campaign?

Carter 37:47

Well, I think that his strategy needs to be to be second,

Carter 37:50

right? And so the math on it basically works that if Pierre's at more than 43% of the points prior to on the first ballot, then the chances of as things kind of develop, because it's a

Carter 38:08

preferential ballot, right? So you choose your different people.

Carter 38:11

And the way that preferential ballots tend to work is that people who haven't chosen the obvious front runner are never going to choose the obvious front runner. That's

Carter 38:22

That's the psychology of it. And that's what we've been basing a lot of. Now, obviously that doesn't hold a hundred percent because first of all, a lot of people don't choose a second person. So those numbers, they creep up. So 43% is the math that I tend to use.

Carter 38:35

So there is a point where Sharae or Brown need

Carter 38:39

need to be second.

Carter 38:41

And that point is probably 30%.

Carter 38:44

So someone needs to come in with 30% of the vote. And what

Carter 38:47

what we've seen from Sharae is he's saying, okay, 30% of the vote is

Carter 38:51

is essentially Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

Carter 38:54

I'm going to go out and I'm going to dominate in those areas. I will pick up the votes that I can pick up across the rest of the country. And

Carter 39:01

And then Patrick Brown should also have his own 30% strategy.

Carter 39:05

Lower mainland of British Columbia, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, major centers with with large visible minority populations where there's multiple ridings and he's able to push a number of votes out. That coupled with the 905 and the Toronto region where Pierre's not going to do well gives a pretty, I mean, maybe that's another place where Charest can pick up is in the actual Toronto area. But bottom line, those are all votes available that could get them to the the 30 mark and

Carter 39:36

and as long as pierre is under under 43 or under 40 something then

Carter 39:42

um it's entirely possible that those

Carter 39:45

those two together and

Carter 39:46

and it has to be those two because it's not going to be less less than lewis right

Carter 39:50

right um those two together might be able to stop you know to stop here

Zain 39:56

cory you wanted to jump in here your

Corey 39:57

your last point is what i wanted to go to and then jump off of so So interestingly, I think that both Sheree and Brown are moving towards this battle for the soul of the party language, which

Corey 40:07

which seems stolen from Joe Biden, by the way, in the 2020 election.

Corey 40:12

A great debt owed to it, I think, in that context. But he won, so why the hell not?

Corey 40:18

But if it is truly a battle for the soul of the party, be aware that those battle lines don't necessarily put the frontrunner alone. loan and

Corey 40:26

and that's that's i think a bit of a danger but that's a reality that they have to contend with so i'm not sure 43 is the number that you shoot for if you know lewis might get 15 for example so if less than lewis is at 15 here poyev is at 38 that's

Corey 40:41

that's probably the game game over there will be

Carter 40:43

be people lewis is at 15 it's going to be the crazy right wingers for sure well

Corey 40:48

well you know where'd she come in before higher

Corey 40:51

higher than that she got like the most votes i think uh just

Corey 40:54

just the way way that they distributed with points it didn't work out that well or

Corey 40:59

at least on one of the rounds but look i think um i think this is the risk right um and it's it's one of those strange campaigns where it's not head to head and there are a lot of players around and it's you know it's not two teams it's four teams it's five teams and so they've got to be mindful about the divides that they are trying to create and

Corey 41:18

and um there's risk there's risk with that campaign That campaign only works if you think Brown plus Charest equals greater than 50%. If you don't, you

Corey 41:28

might need to go a different route to just keep everybody on one side and Polyev on the first side.

Zain 41:35

Carter, we've already done, what,

Zain 41:37

some 40 minutes on Patrick Brown. I mean, less than that, because we actually, of course, had you have an elongated version of our promo. Yes, so we'll probably sell those tickets. Thank you so much. Yeah, very tight,

Zain 41:48

thestrategist.ca for those tickets. Carter, Carter, listen. People have already bought

Zain 41:53

How do you know that? Are you not paying attention? Well, I was the

Carter 41:55

the person who bought them.

Zain 41:56

Okay. Well, thank you, Carter. That's very good.

Zain 41:58

Hey, Carter, talk to me about something that I find fascinating, which is the limits of the network effect.

Zain 42:03

I'm going to zoom out here because there are some limits here around suggesting that it's just as simple as getting 200 people in a room, asking each of those 200 people to sell 50 memberships, and you rinse and repeat 27 times to use the number you put out there, and that's the ballgame. You can win.

Zain 42:23

Talk to me about what's required to ensure that that does happen. And the reason I put it out there, there are some, I'd say, stereotypical assumptions, especially related to cultural communities around, if you just hit that one person, trust me, they'll bring everyone else on board. How many times have you heard that shit? So when I say limits of the network effect, talk to me about limits of the network effect effect from an organizing perspective, but also from your experience as a, as a campaigner and what you need to do to ensure that if that is indeed your strategy, decentralized, have people fan out and organize that you're not caught up in, uh, in, in some mirage of, uh, of, of support that you, that you may not ultimately have.

Carter 43:01

Yeah. There is no set it and forget it in a leadership, right? The same way that there's no set it and forget it in a, uh, in a, in a nomination battle um you have to set metrics every day and you have to make sure that you are working your networks every day and so it's essentially a pyramid scheme right

Carter 43:19

right every person in the pyramid scheme needs to be working their way down the pyramid to make sure that everybody multi-layer marketing guys like this is how it all works and so the cory

Zain 43:28

cory was part of avon so he knows what's going on he

Zain 43:30

he knows what's going on sure

Carter 43:31

sure i've still got his avon products and i I've got a garage full of them.

Carter 43:35

I've got a garage full

Zain 43:36

full of them. There

Carter 43:37

There you go. So here's the thing. We're going to, you know, every

Carter 43:41

every single day, your top people need to be calling your next level and your next level has to call the next level. And

Corey 43:46

And everybody gets so tired. They don't want to

Carter 43:49

to make the calls anymore. It's just, you know, but you have to make the calls every single day in a leadership. You have to make the calls. You have to collect the data. You have to make sure that everything is flowing back, that all the data portals are working. Right. Right. So that, you know, because it's one thing to sell a membership, but if you sell a membership and the main campaign doesn't get the data, then that member doesn't really exist to you. Right. You don't have the information to get that member out to vote because

Carter 44:12

because it's a two-step process. Sell the membership, get them out to vote. So

Carter 44:16

So you have to have all the information flowing. So, you know, you set up all of these different pyramids that are going to be working in different communities. And I don't care if you're working the Calgary hockey community or you're working the, you know, the, the, the Muslim community in Southern Ontario,

Carter 44:33

whatever community you're working requires the same emphasis and, and, and attention.

Carter 44:40

You know, they need speeches. They need to have, you know, we, we have to have these 15 people at a meet and greet. They have to meet the candidate. If they don't meet the candidate, they are not going to sell memberships and they will sell memberships. Okay. How many of those is 15 people.

Carter 44:57

And this basically falls into what I call the one-third, one-third, one-third rule. So one-third of the people that you sign up to sell memberships will do everything you ask them to do and more. They are fantastic. Then

Carter 45:07

Then one-third, something will have happened to them, but they're not able to quite get it done now, but they're going to try and get it done soon.

Carter 45:13

And then one-third, you just never hear from.

Carter 45:15

So you're really relying on that top third to do so much work and you're trying to convert the other two-thirds into the top third. So

Carter 45:22

So you're making making phone calls constantly. I mean, even in the mayoralty race. I mean, I think I talked about how I had all the lists of names on the wall of all the different people. I was working in my pyramid. I was working K people. I was pushing them to make their calls to their K people. And they've got at least a phone call from me every week. Boom, what's going on? You know, leadership, it even needs to be more regular.

Zain 45:45

Corey, any comments on limitations or any points of strategy related to relational or decentralized organizing like we've been talking about here?

Corey 45:56

It's so funny. I mean, we rebrand these things every decade, but this is how politics has been done forever. The nature of community is changing. And

Corey 46:02

And there are different tools that allow us to access online communities that you have a different level of intensity with or not, right? And different levels of participation. patient. And so you just got to be live to them. You've got to know what you can actually get out of them. Carter's rule, one third, one third, one third. And it's an interesting rule. It won't hold for every community. And so you've just got to know your community. And part of being

Corey 46:26

being a good politician with a broad base of support is having support from multiple communities and knowing how each of those communities will react to what you're doing and holding together that winning coalition that's been true since athenian

Corey 46:38

athenian democracy right this this has been true as long as people have been going out and begging votes so uh it's

Corey 46:45

it's just modern times different tools but the rules are the same the

Corey 46:50

the constituency is too big for you to know everybody you've got to have lieutenants some lieutenants are more useful than other lieutenants what i think is interesting about the brown campaign versus the poliev campaign as we talk this out is

Corey 47:03

one is all all about uh

Corey 47:05

kind of social networks in the broadly understood sense like the web sense going out there

Corey 47:11

getting content that goes viral having a million people and knowing playing paying a big numbers game right down the funnel he sure as fuck not getting a third of the people watching his instagram videos through but he's getting a smaller percent of

Corey 47:24

of a bigger group and brown is saying i want a bigger percent of a smaller group and how How these two strategies collide will tell us a lot about the state of politics.

Zain 47:34

Well, it'll be fascinating. You know, it's very rare. So what I'm hearing, you guys, is keep the organizing going. It's very rare that you can just, you know, from your bully pulpit, just repeat something over and over and have that brand penetrate. It's very rare that that's able to happen. Only we've been maybe able to make that happen with our Flare Airlines content. Just really ensuring that every time we mention it, it comes back to us. It really ensures it's in the psyche. Well, in

Carter 47:59

not going anywhere else. Thank you,

Zain 48:00

you, Carter. Thank you for stepping on the eventual joke that I was about to make. Thank you, Carter. I appreciate that. Let's move on to

Carter 48:06

to our next segment. You were being very slow on your joke, so I don't think it took the punchline. No,

Zain 48:10

I was – it's

Zain 48:10

called a buildup. Have you heard of a buildup before, Carter? You may have heard of it from the first two minutes of the show.

Zain 48:18

It's the Maharaja Banquet Hall. People need to know it's a banquet facility. They'll be made nice for them, okay? But they're not

Carter 48:25

food, right? Like we need to

Zain 48:26

to clarify? Snow food.

Zain 48:27

bring your own food okay i don't know if

Corey 48:29

if you can bring your own food who the fuck knows

Zain 48:31

let's move on to our next segment our next segment the sixth wave six cents guys we are in the sixth wave of covid and it's almost like it doesn't matter at

Zain 48:43

at least in certain places that i want to revisit yeah

Zain 48:46

our our little one sheet you guys remember this episode we did in mid-january our one pager for how to adapt and adopt to a changing covid reality we had six points we kind of put on there. The first one was for politicians to follow. If you haven't listened to that episode, I believe mid-January, we put out a guide for here's what politicians need to look at as key principles as related to how to manage COVID going forward. Number one, don't go too far off the center path. Always acknowledge where that center is. It's always going to be shifting. It's clear right now that that center path of where people's appetite and comfort is has clearly shifted. Number two, don't turn off your brain.

Zain 49:27

that these are not just autopilot decisions you make. Number three, stop focusing on case counts. That's

Zain 49:34

That's not the metric you need to focus on. I think as a society and culturally, we've maybe moved on beyond that, although there is a few groups and a few organizations, political and otherwise, that are still using that as a key metric.

Zain 49:46

Number four, focus on downside risk. Understand that there's downside risk to everything that you do.

Zain 49:53

Number five, it's not all about COVID it, address your coalition. So things like the economy, things like other issues. When we record in January, it was a slow bird to try to get to some other topics. But those are all part of what people are considering. And number five, this almost seems a little... Number six, I should say, don't indulge the unvaccinated. Understand that we live together now, that they are our neighbors, our friends, our family, but don't indulge them so aggressively as to let them dictate where you go.

Zain 50:26

wanted to throw that out there. And you might tell me that this segment only needs two minutes because it might just be, Zane, these are still the same six rules for the sixth wave, that everything is the same.

Zain 50:38

Let's move on. But I also want to hear from you to say, are there any tweaks you'd make based on the reality you see today, based on the fact that certain cities, the one perhaps that we live in, it seems like life has moved on. Other cities in our country, and if not the world, now a conversation of reintroducing masking. And shutdowns and lockdowns are happening in other parts of the world right now. So I want to kind of reintroduce this one pager and see, hey, what are you keeping? What are you tweaking? Corey, let me start with you. Let me end with that simple frame. What are you keeping? What are you tweaking?

Corey 51:09

As you're reading through the list, there's not a lot I disagree with at this point, but they all hit a little bit different now that we're going into the sixth wave. Yeah, like don't turn off your brain remains good advice. But at the time it was meant to be don't autopilot on what was working before. Correct. That remains true, but now almost in the opposite direction. So yeah, we had a lighter go with Omicron than some feared. It wasn't as bad as the Delta wave.

Corey 51:36

But that doesn't mean that every future wave is destined to be less and less, right? And so don't

Corey 51:42

don't turn off your brain. Continue to watch the numbers. Continue to look at the wastewater. Use the data points available and make public health decisions based on them. So that, like

Corey 51:51

like I said, hits different, but I think it's still good advice, not just for COVID, let's face it, across the board.

Corey 51:57

Stop focusing on case counts.

Corey 52:01

It's a little different now that we've stopped focusing on case counts, but I think it's still right. We've got to be looking a little bit broader on that because A, the case count numbers are garbage because they mean nothing when nobody's able to report them. yeah and b um really

Corey 52:16

really because we are now so largely vaccinated even a province like alberta where we we lag the rest of the country where we're better than a ton of jurisdictions uh if you if you cast more globally um and so it's different right the the severe outcomes are more what we've got to worry about focusing

Corey 52:33

focusing on downside risk remains the advice but it's the

Corey 52:37

the downside risk has changed as His public appetite has changed. His public attitude has changed. Your

Corey 52:42

Your downside risk of just saying YOLO

Corey 52:44

YOLO or fuck it and running forward into the sixth wave as a government is much lower than it was with a more keyed up general

Corey 52:52

general public. And finally, don't

Corey 52:54

don't indulge the coalition, but remember you got to live in the same house with them or some version of that, that last rule, for

Corey 53:02

But just be aware that that's

Corey 53:03

that's maybe not the defining relationship anymore. You still need to think about the fact that you can't antagonize or alienate huge swaths of the population, but

Corey 53:13

but I'm not really sure that it breaks so cleanly on pro-action and con-action anymore.

Corey 53:19

What do you mean by that? Well, because again, it's tied to all of the decline and concern that's existing more broadly. I see what you're saying. So, um, the, the things that you,

Corey 53:31

you, you had like such a clear divide before, right? Like you were on this side or you were on this side. And I think there's an awful lot of people saying, I

Corey 53:38

I don't know, isn't it kind of over? I mean, I had COVID, it wasn't so bad. My neighbors had it again. I mean, would I even know it's,

Corey 53:47

coalition conversation is just different. And, and I think that point remains

Corey 53:52

remains in some ways the most important, but it's the one that most needs to be looked at and redone in the context of this current wave of COVID.

Zain 53:59

Carter, from what you heard in terms of Corey's explanation, from what you heard in terms of what I put on the board, the six rules you guys gave to me in mid-January, what are you keeping? What are you tweaking, Carter?

Carter 54:11

Well, I think that the center path is still wise. I feel like we've left the center path a little bit and we've moved a little bit towards no path. Have

Zain 54:19

Have we left the center path or do you think the center path is just kind of changed uh to now being living with it yeah

Corey 54:25

yeah and to be clear when we say center we mean where the bulk of canadians yeah yeah yeah

Carter 54:30

yeah but i think that the challenge is that um

Carter 54:32

um canadians may have moved but the the the virus hasn't moved all that far you

Carter 54:38

you know like the the challenge is that you're not managing your downside risk anymore you

Carter 54:42

you know when you add those two pieces back together you

Carter 54:45

know the downside risk uh

Carter 54:47

you know know, it wasn't that long ago that one or two deaths a day, we're really getting a lot of attention.

Carter 54:52

We're getting five, six deaths a day in Alberta and there is no attention paid. Yeah.

Carter 54:59

I guess it's okay. I guess, you know, like we didn't, we don't pay attention to cancer deaths. We don't track cancer deaths. We don't track flu deaths every day. You know, like we don't put it in the newspaper. You know, we just, we have an obituary section and you go through the obituaries and you see, you know, how many people were, you know, well, we don't even have newspapers anymore but how many people were taken out by through a fight of cancer right like all these things are real but i'm afraid that we

Carter 55:25

we aren't the least bit prepared for

Carter 55:29

a you know a variant that is worse right we are only prepared for a variant that is um you know like omicron right or omicron this one's omicron b and it's supposed to be less challenging

Carter 55:42

challenging well Well, that's great. If this continues to move like the flu, then

Carter 55:47

then everything is fine. But it doesn't necessarily always just move in a straight line. That is where I'm afraid that we're making assumptions right now.

Zain 55:57

Well, this is where we have the opportunity to say, is there another rule? Is there another philosophy or principle you want to throw on the list? Carter, you want

Carter 56:05

want to jump in on that? I just want to reemphasize them. I want to focus on the downside risk more, But

Carter 56:10

I'm also keenly aware that it's not about the case counts all the time. And it's not about, you know, it's not all about COVID. I want to resume my work. I'd like to see. We had a great live event. We wouldn't have been able to have that live event last year. That

Carter 56:25

That was fun. It was fun for us. It was fun for the audience. We were all in the room together. And we, you know, you

Carter 56:31

you know, we all

Carter 56:32

all could get COVID.

Carter 56:34

But we chose to do it because it was something that we valued. And I know that a few people bought tickets and didn't come. I

Carter 56:40

I know that a few people got nervous with the case counts rising. And I don't want to scare anybody. I don't want anybody to be scared. But I also don't want people to just be, you

Carter 56:52

you know, just so accepting of this that we just ignore the fact that at some point it could get really bad again.

Zain 56:57

Corey, is there any rule that you're adding to the mix right now? Carter's underlined a few, but is there any new rule

Zain 57:05

rule or statement that you would, in an April environment versus a January environment, want to make sure sticks out to a politician who's making decisions on this file? while yeah

Corey 57:15

yeah i'm getting a big ass yellow highlighter and i'm streaking it over and over again don't turn off your brain steven's point is is the point here and i think that advice becomes more important the more we become just used to it and we can reflexively ignore things that shouldn't be ignored i mean when you were talking about yeah we don't report flu deaths we don't report cancer deaths i

Corey 57:37

i i don't know i mean on the flu one maybe we should you know yeah if flus are contagious we should probably have a sense of how dangerous things are out there.

Corey 57:45

But you're really, really right about the fact that we are just not psychologically prepared for a worse variant, either the leadership or the general public.

Corey 57:55

I don't know what would happen if we had a worse variant all of a sudden hit our shores with a fatality rate that was closer to Delta's that none

Corey 58:02

none of us were particularly well protected against from vaccination. I truly think that that we would wait until

Corey 58:08

until the hospitals were in absolute crisis before we do anything at this point. I think people have just sort of, they've turned off their ears. They don't want to hear it. It's

Corey 58:16

It's not happening right now, but

Corey 58:18

but we've got to be vigilant for it. We've got to be mindful of it. And I think the

Corey 58:23

lesson of, I think, the Spanish flu is that that last wave is the worst one because everyone's ready to move on. The virus doesn't give a shit if we're bored with it.

Zain 58:34

And so, Carter, is there any specific advice you want to close us out with with that particular frame in mind around a variant that could be worse

Carter 58:43

Don't overreact to the variants that aren't bad

Carter 58:47

because it will undermine the reaction that's required to

Carter 58:50

to the variant that may be bad.

Zain 58:56

We'll leave that segment there. Move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen

Zain 59:02

That's it. This is great. We should do shorter segments,

Carter 59:04

segments, Corey. We did a good job on that one.

Zain 59:07

You guys literally had to revise and you spent like 15 minutes telling me nothing changed. That's what I got out of it. And I'm sure that's what the listeners got out of it. This is that valuable, free Sunday slash Monday slash whenever you want to record content.

Carter 59:18

We've given a lot of information today. They've learned a lot. I feel like they've

Zain 59:21

they've learned a lot. Carter, we do this for you. Overrated or underrated, the Kennedy government released new insurance data this past Friday

Zain 59:31

that indicated more than a billion dollars in profit for the insurance industry. There's a lot of hoopla

Zain 59:36

hoopla about this. I want to discuss it a bit more, but let's just get your initial take. Overrated or underrated, the insurance industry making more than a billion dollars in profit?

Carter 59:46

It's overrated. The insurance industry making a billion dollars in profit means nothing. In 2020, I should say. Sorry. Yeah.

Carter 59:53

means nothing to me. What

Carter 59:55

What does mean something to me is the way that my individual insurance rates went up when the UCP conservatives took off the cap, right? I mean, every conservative bitched and moaned about how expensive the carbon tax was. And then their insurance rates went up more than they paid in carbon tax. You

Carter 1:00:16

You know, their cost of living under the UCP government has skyrocketed in part because of inflation, in part because of the end of COVID, but in part because they let it skyrocket Because things that we didn't notice, like our electricity rates, like our natural gas rates, like our insurance rates, those things that we didn't notice, that we didn't blame the government for, all went up and we gave the government a free pass. So the billion dollars is overrated. No one understands what that means. Underrated, the amount of extra money that we're paying as individuals, as families, that adds up and that is noticeable.

Zain 1:00:58

Corey, overrated, underrated, the billion dollars in profit for the insurance industry in 2020 in the report that was released by the UCP on

Corey 1:01:08

I think this is underrated. It's validating of what many of us have seen with our insurance rates over the past bit. I'll tell you, in-laws of mine that are not particularly

Corey 1:01:16

particularly political, and if they do have political views, they tend to be more center right or further right.

Corey 1:01:22

They talked about their bills going up. They were mad about insurance rates increasing. This is is something people notice because you're

Corey 1:01:28

you're the funny thing is so many things in our life when we get inflationary moments it's just it it passes so slowly or it passes in a way without ceremony you

Corey 1:01:37

you go to the grocery store you're like oh that's funny rice krispies are more expensive than they were last time well that's annoying the price of milk has gone up um

Corey 1:01:44

insurance they are legally required to send you a big bolded notice a month before it comes

Zain 1:01:48

comes up saying by

Corey 1:01:49

by the way next year it's going up a lot. I

Corey 1:01:52

I have fun. And

Corey 1:01:54

big price. B, big ceremony around delivering you that price, at least relative to most other purchases that we do in our life. So it's

Corey 1:02:01

it's something that people notice and this validates that. I mean, at a certain point in riffing on what Stephen said here, the ad almost writes itself for the NDP. I'm imagining a social board, affordability under the UCP for the average Alberta family, 2019 to present, just stacking all of these costs, right? Right. So home and auto insurance rates increase, ping, whatever that is. Elimination of electricity rate cap, ping, whatever that is.

Corey 1:02:24

They'll throw in de-indexing of personal income tax rates because they love that for some fucking reason. But

Corey 1:02:29

you know, there's more money and then reduction of tax rate on large businesses, zero, did nothing for you. So this is their priorities. They made life more expensive for you and less expensive for their crony buddies. And you know, this ad ad does write itself and there's a reason why the government dropped it on a thursday before a four day long weekend they know it's bad for them they know it's really bad for carter jumping

Carter 1:02:52

they're not gonna write that fucking ad i'll bet you a hundred dollars right now it

Carter 1:02:56

writes itself there's no way they write that ad cory

Zain 1:02:58

cory i'm gonna stick with you for our next one are you in or out on the kenny strategy to

Zain 1:03:06

to invite and to have senator joe mansion visit alberta as as, of course, it's part of the U.S.'s scramble to find ways to ease oil supply. What do you think of that? Are you in or out of the strategy from what you saw of Manchin coming to Alberta? I'm so fucking out. I can't... I

Corey 1:03:24

don't know. Who is this for, right? Who is this for?

Carter 1:03:29

We... I mean, talk about Joe who? Like,

Carter 1:03:32

Like, Joe Manchin comes to Canada and we're all supposed to be like, ooh,

Carter 1:03:35

ooh, Joe wants our oil. Who the fuck is he? Why does he matter? Do we care? i'm further out than cory okay

Zain 1:03:44

well thank you carter carter i want to ask you another one in or out i'm going to stick with you on this one elon musk's bid to take over twitter at the live show we were talking about him wanting to take a piece he'd blown through sec guidelines the board seat board seat was gone now we're in in the in the depths of him trying to acquire it take it private the poison pill strategy from the twitter uh group right now in or out on the elon musk acquisition carter i'm

Carter 1:04:16

i'm out for two reasons reason number one is i don't think it's serious right i think that the acquisition strategy is based on i fucked up with the sec so if i move to a full-scale acquisition i can maybe get away with some of the stuff that i was doing that i shouldn't have been doing i should have been reporting earlier so number one one, I'm out for that reason. Number two, I'm out because this idea that free speech, unregulated free speech is a good idea with amplification is just nuts. If you want to stand in front of your, in your living room of your house and speak to your friends about your crazy ideas, go for it.

Carter 1:04:55

No one, nowhere should be interacting with that. But if you want to stand, if you want to put your ideas in the newspaper, if you want to put your ideas on Facebook, book, if you want to put your in anything that amplifies your story, then

Carter 1:05:08

then you need to be then you have to have some sort of regulation. It's not about the speech. It's not about the speech. Everybody will allow your speech. It's about the amplification of your speech. When we amplify your speech, that's when things get bad. And that's when we have to put, you know, some sort of curtailment on unmitigated free speech. And Elon Musk understands a lot of things. He does does not understand that.

Zain 1:05:34

Corey, are you in or out on the attempted acquisition by Elon Musk of the entire operation that is Twitter?

Corey 1:05:42

I mean, I'm out and it's pretty clear the market is out too. The price went down the day after Elon Musk announced what he was willing to buy it for, which is not a strong indicator that

Corey 1:05:54

that they think that this deal is going to come to fruition, because if they did, that's just leaving money on the table. He's offered to purchase every share for more

Corey 1:06:01

more than what you can purchase shares for on the open market. So if you think it's going to happen, the price of the shares generally

Corey 1:06:06

generally goes up and it goes up relative to the probability of the deal happening, right? So it's not going to happen. It's crazy rodeo

Corey 1:06:15

rodeo clown theatrics, whatever. It's absolutely a

Corey 1:06:19

a bit of a distraction. It is tied

Corey 1:06:22

tied to a issue that's worth unpacking longer form, which is social media more generally. and where to from here uh there was a couple of interesting articles over the weekend uh

Corey 1:06:33

but uh no time no time zane because we're already we should we should

Zain 1:06:36

should do a special actually the height article which i know carter you're a big jonathan height article was great the height article takes about an hour to read i think it takes about two hours to read um there's big words

Zain 1:06:49

yeah but jonathan height article we should talk about it maybe we even do a patreon special for Or who the hell knows? We can do anything. We can do anything. The world is our oyster. The world is our oyster. Corey, I'm going to stick with you. Overrated or underrated as we finish off the show?

Zain 1:07:05

Overrated or underrated in your mind? We spent a lot of time talking about them in relationship to Patrick Brown and his campaign.

Carter 1:07:23

come we don't have our own soundboard we only

Corey 1:07:26

only paid for one soundboard we

Zain 1:07:28

we only paid for one yeah we're not gonna pay for more carter overrated underrated process stories well

Carter 1:07:32

well i'm a little disappointed he didn't take his glasses off and do the whole uh my yeah that would work really well audio

Corey 1:07:39

medium though steven yeah

Carter 1:07:40

yeah well except we're doing a video aren't we right now yeah

Carter 1:07:45

so you know thanks for forgetting um underrated

Carter 1:07:48

underrated process stories are ones you can get coverage on and and a story that actually happens is better than a uh a story that doesn't happen hey let's put that on a mug huh who's with me thank

Zain 1:08:02

you uh carter carter as we wrap up carter as we wrap up i'm gonna i'm gonna let you i'm gonna let i'm gonna give you one more chance let's just pretend it's the top of the show again we

Zain 1:08:12

we have a special

Carter 1:08:14

to make i'm going to throw it over to steven carter carter what is that special announcement 8 p.m may 19th the uh strategist live in edmonton at the maharaja hall tickets available at the strategist.ca only 30 each no service fees nothing goes to arts commons buy your tickets today we will sell out guaranteed that

Zain 1:08:39

was uh that was better that was better to take carter we're

Zain 1:08:43

we're gonna leave it there

Zain 1:08:46

yes yes yes okay jesus just

Carter 1:08:49

gotta wait you gotta wait for the applause take

Carter 1:08:51

take your moment steven thank you thank you very much thank you live

Carter 1:08:56

live recording of our live show that's the apply oh

Zain 1:08:59

oh my god we're gonna leave it there that's a wrap on episode 983 of the Strategist. Corey, do we have some music? Is this going to be a professional operation? He's tea.

Corey 1:09:10

It doesn't start this soon, my man.

Zain 1:09:13

It's just a lot of

Zain 1:09:14

lag between the round of

Zain 1:09:16

of applause and this.

Zain 1:09:20

thing. You do your thing.

Corey 1:09:21

That's a wrap thing,

Zain 1:09:22

thing, and I'll come in at the right moment. Oh, look, he's going to try to come in. That's a wrap on episode 983 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velgey. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

Carter 1:09:39

everyone thanks for listening to the strategist podcast as you're more than likely already aware we have our own patreon account now if you'd like to be an advisor to zane for only six dollars per month you can get thursday episodes for free it's the only way you'll get them and if you become a strategist intern for only ten dollars a month you also get live streams If you want to be an advisor to me and Corey, that's going to cost you $20 a month for us to ignore you. Thanks very much for listening to the podcast. See you at the live show, Edmonton, May the 19th.

Transcript