Episode 986: Alberta A to Z

Zain 0:01

This is a strategist episode 986. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, I

Zain 0:10

I am back. now

Zain 0:11

now for most of you i have i have always i've gone nowhere uh but for some of you you had to endure uh what i can call as an absolute train wreck colliding

Zain 0:24

colliding with the car crash uh colliding with

Zain 0:29

don't know what what carter

Carter 0:31

that's good thank you thank you carter thank you for finishing up it was like creating a storm it it was fantastic and

Zain 0:37

and in and i this is where i was going to uh fantastic show guys way to hold forward for our patreon members uh from start to very quick finish it was a uh it

Zain 0:48

it was a good episode it was you know what it was it was too much content in too little time that's where you got it wrong okay you gave them too much value too

Zain 0:56

too much value in

Zain 0:58

in in in in in in i'm gonna keep delaying it in in in a container that

Zain 1:02

that was too compact for you that's what the people got and that's what they did not deserve we

Carter 1:07

we did miss your verbosity for sure yeah

Zain 1:10

yeah is it verbosity or is it lack of preparation carter yeah okay we

Carter 1:16

we had prepared i think four topics and by prepared we sent each other a note that said hey well cory sent me a note because i never make any choices

Carter 1:24

and uh i just was like yeah let's do it and then we went through them and he didn't want to do half of them he sent them to me and he didn't want to do them so

Corey 1:32

so the mood it didn't strike me when i was actually there you know it's like how you write three speeches you write your first draft you write your second draft and then you throw it all out yeah

Corey 1:41

yeah you give whatever speech you want when you're on the on the stage there there

Corey 1:45

there was a moment at the 22 minute mark where i thought fuck we've been talking about this forever and

Corey 1:51

and then i saw it was the 22 minute mark and i thought that's the value zane belgi brings right there asking

Zain 1:57

asking asking uh short questions

Carter 2:02

we tried tried to do some deep dives did not work yeah

Zain 2:04

yeah didn't work i didn't listen i don't listen to any of the shows uh i i heard it was great though i really did uh thank you for inviting me back and uh what a gift what a gift uh that

Zain 2:15

is now available great

Corey 2:16

great plug you've let us off with for our patreon listen

Zain 2:20

i i think people are intrigued they're like if it's a car crash people want to watch okay i know how the algorithm of the lister's ear works i know i know what i'm

Carter 2:30

There's a 50% better chance that we're going to get cancelled when you're not with us. So people

Carter 2:35

people are definitely tuning in for that.

Zain 2:37

Corey, speaking of plugs, we are sold out on the Edmonton show. Is that correct? That

Corey 2:42

We have sold out on the Edmonton show. We are looking at seeing if we can jam a couple more seats in. No luck yet.

Corey 2:48

But there'll be a few hundred of you up there just sitting in

Corey 2:52

in a hall listening

Corey 2:53

listening to us. Congratulations. You've made a good choice. because the alternative is you're not even able to do that which is what a lot of you are now forced to contend with it's

Zain 3:03

good great nagging of the audience core i appreciate that uh let's move it on to our first segment our first segment alberta potpourri stephen carter we have not hit on the province of alberta in a while or at least i haven't i have no idea what you guys talked about on thursday did you hit on any alberta related topics we

Carter 3:20

we we finished on alberta oh you

Zain 3:22

you did okay Okay, great. So you finished, the project is complete. Can I move on?

Carter 3:27

No, I think we said, let's talk about Jason Kenney and Corey

Carter 3:31

Corey ended the show. Okay, well, fantastic. I'm

Corey 3:34

I'm so glad. It felt like

Corey 3:35

gone a little long.

Zain 3:36

Yeah, at the what, 30 something mark? Guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys. Amateur hour, amateur hour. And you can get that amateur hour for as little as $6 a month, okay? That's what

Zain 3:49

I want to talk about a few things that have happened here in Alberta, but let me start with this particular story, which I know both of you have been, at least in the Twitterverse, giving some red hot takes, or maybe it is in the Twitterverse, maybe it's on our WhatsApp chat. I

Zain 4:02

I want to talk about cabinet confidentiality. Alberta's chief medical officer of health can't claim cabinet confidentiality to prevent the divulging of some of her closed-door recommendations on the COVID-19 restrictions a judge has ruled. The ruling came amid a court proceeding whose plaintiffs are arguing Alberta's pandemic public health orders overseen by Dr. Dina Hinshaw violated constitutional rights. rights. The judge has asked three questions. This is Justice Barbara Romaine proposed asking Hinshaw three questions in a private hearing before deciding whether to make the answer to those questions public. And as part of the hearing evidence, the three questions, just so folks who may not have been tuned into this story, are number one, did the premier and cabinet ever direct you, Dr. Hinshaw, to impose more severe restrictions in your chief medical officer of health orders than you had recommended to them? Question two, did Cabinet ever direct you to impose more severe restrictions on particular groups such as churches, gyms, schools, and small businesses than you had recommended to them? And finally, question number three, did you ever recommend to Cabinet that restrictions should be lifted or loosened at any period of time that the recommendation was refused or ignored by Cabinet?

Zain 5:17

Carter, we have talked about this topic before in relation to a leak that came from a cabinet session and then reported on by a media outlet. I have not seen anything like this before. I might be wrong where a justice is ultimately ordering, in this case, Alberta's chief medical officer of health to potentially not have the protections of cabinet confidentiality. Have you seen something like this before?

Carter 5:47

I'm sure that this has happened before. I am not sure that I have seen it happen before. I do know that cabinet confidentiality has been pierced by the courts, but

Carter 5:59

it's generally not something that gets pierced because it is an essential part of governing. And I know that when we do this on the Twitterverse, we get all the people who say that we should be making every decision fully and completely in the public eye, and that's just lunacy. Um, because not every decision is easy.

Carter 6:19

I used to say that, uh, you know, the stuff that was easy, this, the, the 80, 20 stuff, or even the 60, 40 stuff that was all managed by cabinet ministers. That was easy stuff. The stuff that lands 51 49, and you don't really know which side the 51 49 is on those go to cabinet and those go to the premier's office. Um, those ones you get, you don't just get, here's the recommendation. Here's the black and white recommendation. recommendation. This is what exists. Uh, you will do this or you will do nothing. Um, that doesn't exist. You get an array of options. Did, uh, you know, were there many, you know, the questions that you asked, you know, um, Hinshaw, I'm sure gave,

Carter 7:00

gave, um, recommendations, uh, on both sides of those, of those, uh, those statements, because she doesn't just walk in and say, this is what you have to do. She walks in and says, here are three, four, five different Here are the consequences and opportunities associated with each one. We

Carter 7:18

We know that we're trying to balance off, removing stress from hospitals, but we're also trying to remove stress from people, individuals. There's mental health trade-offs. There's economic trade-offs. The world is filled with trade-offs. So when she walks in the room, I would be very, very, very surprised if she walks in and says, this

Carter 7:37

this is what I'm recommending, and it's simply binary, A or Z.

Carter 7:43

That's it. That's very unlikely. I don't think I've ever seen that on

Carter 7:48

on the hard decisions. I mean, you see it very

Carter 7:50

very infrequently, even on the easy decisions. um so i'll now throw it back to cory who's been made who's made these recommendations to cabinet um

Carter 7:59

um so that he can fill out what i've left out oh

Zain 8:01

oh do you think i'm no longer here is this this is back to thursday oh

Zain 8:05

oh sorry cory i

Carter 8:07

i forgot that zane was here i'm not gonna

Carter 8:09

gonna throw it to

Zain 8:09

to cory who's made some of these decisions and recommendations in cabinet before uh cory uh what do you think and carter it is zed for everyone in the audience who heard a to z oh carter we're

Carter 8:20

opening up the American audience. I'm going to Nashville this week. I have tremendous confidence we're going to really bolster the American audience. Corey,

Zain 8:27

Corey, your take on this from the perspective of precedent, have you seen it before? Yeah, no, no, it's fine. I mean, any Stephen Carter humble brags, we know are going to lead into AFL scores and

Zain 8:37

and how you've done, and I don't care. We're over that, Carter. We're over it.

Zain 8:42

Corey, from the perspective of have you seen this before, but also to the point Carter was making at the heart of it, the importance of cabinet confidentiality. i

Corey 8:50

i i think i agree with him in general on some of the specifics i quibble so for sure nothing gets to cabinet and has a big robust cabinet decision if

Corey 8:58

if it's difficult right um you would either either have it on the consent consent agenda for cabinet so it would be sort of listed there as yes this requires an order in council but no we don't really need to talk about it and it would move on through or

Corey 9:11

or it would be rather perfunctory and and move through but if you're actually having a discussion if there's actually a back and forth it's because it's tough It's because it's tricky. That

Corey 9:20

That doesn't mean that elected officials don't get recommendations from the public service, though. So the general format is you will have a recommended option, and

Corey 9:30

and then you will have alternatives that were also reviewed.

Corey 9:34

be aware, right? It's more like I recommend X, here are the downsides with X. If you decide to do Y instead, you can mitigate against downside Z one and two by taking these particular courses of action here.

Corey 9:48

So it's not, I mean, it would not be accurate to say there's not a recommendation. Most of the time, there is almost always a recommendation. I've seen cabinet documents come forward without recommendations. Those tend to be messy times because there's nothing

Zain 10:03

nothing to kind of anchor

Corey 10:05

But that said, it's

Corey 10:08

it's a recommendation and it's not as though it is immutable fact. It's not scientific theory like gravity. This is what I think based on these things. But the nature of any cabinet decision that comes forward is, this

Corey 10:22

this is why it comes to cabinet, right? Because there needs to be additional lens put on it beyond what the public service could do. The public service may have an expertise in this particular area this is a good example dina hinshaw has got an expertise in medicine and public health uh but is she aware of some of the political consequences and i don't mean like is it bad for the ucp i mean will the province light itself on fucking fire right will we have discord that then bleeds into the justice department or children's

Corey 10:51

children's services or community and social services and it's the job of cabinet to weigh things broader than just what the recommender can bring forward.

Corey 10:58

Otherwise, you wouldn't have that conversation at all. Why in the world would you even bother discussing it? You would just say automatic rubber stamp, boom, go, let's

Zain 11:06

let's move on. So

Corey 11:06

So an important part of our system is

Corey 11:09

is that cabinet discussion and cabinet oversight. And the bottom line, what spills out of all of this is they're the ones who are responsible. If you love the decision, they're responsible. If you hate the decision, they're responsible. Don't credit and don't blame the public service that is supporting them on this. It's a nature of our system because those are the ones that at the end of the day are on the ballot.

Zain 11:29

Carter, simply walk me through what the

Zain 11:32

the lifting of cabinet confidentiality on these three questions could mean, both in terms of the specific issue, perhaps, but maybe even if you want to start broadly on what this could mean for precedent, because we know at the same time that there are a number of judicial review applications in relation to COVID-19 public health restrictions across the country. So there are ramifications here. But walk us through and walk those that may not have been inside a cabinet, meaning a cabinet room, have seen those recommendations, maybe beyond this conversation, understand the vital importance of cabinet confidentiality, what the ramifications here could be.

Carter 12:12

Yeah, I think that the big ramifications are, you know,

Carter 12:16

know, this idea that you move to a singular expert, right? Dr. Dina Hinshaw is the expert who is going to determine the outcome and determines whether or not an action should or should not be taken.

Carter 12:27

And the rest of cabinet should relatively be mute on

Carter 12:30

on the issue of whether or not an

Carter 12:32

an action is taken. So when the bureaucracy comes forward and says, you know, this is what you must do, this is what you must do in order to protect, you know, X, Y and Z audiences in the province of Alberta, then,

Carter 12:48

then, you know, we really are kind of making

Carter 12:52

making a huge mistake. stake there is no single solitary one person who has the right answer to these questions um were the in you know were the questions completely simple were they completely easy to understand then maybe yes there is a singular answer to them but the real and there is no singular expert because as soon as dr hinshaw says this is what we should do you know um across the way there's a the deputy minister of education saying we're not prepared to deal with that right

Carter 13:19

or the deputy minister of social

Carter 13:22

social services, you know, we are going to have these problems if you do that, because it turns out that one of the things you really find out when you get into that cabinet room is that there is very little not connected to everything else, right? A connects to Z in a very quick model, right?

Carter 13:38

right? It goes right through all the various ministries. It, you

Carter 13:43

know, you can make a case, you know, infrastructure and transportation are pretty far outside of it, But then you start building hospitals, you start building, you know, traffic systems around, you know, everything ultimately has impact on the other things. So you must not fall into the trap that there is a singular expert. I'd say that that's the biggest one. I do want to go into the chill, but

Carter 14:04

but I don't think that these three questions necessarily place that chill on cabinet briefings. So there is a chill that we need to get to at some point, but I don't think it's part of this answer. Corey,

Zain 14:15

Corey, talk to me about the ramifications you see from something like this, right? From your perspective, should this become public? What do you kind of see in terms of the ramifications for this particular file, which we can discuss, but also more broadly around this concept of cabinet confidentiality?

Corey 14:33

Well, maybe I'll take them in reverse. I think broadly, it's an important precept, the idea of caucus or cabinet confidentiality, the idea that you can have a conversation about the downsides, about the upsides of something, disagree

Corey 14:45

disagree about them strongly, state cases as people do when arguing in more extreme terms than perhaps are warranted. you know this could happen talk about the worst case scenarios and move them through without worrying that you're going to have some cherry picking that occurs down the road of okay these were the worst case scenarios that cabinet would hand wave the way just didn't care about as they

Zain 15:06

they made this decision

Corey 15:07

decision because that's not really what's happening in that situation they're they're

Corey 15:10

they're talking about it they may disagree about what those worst case scenarios are and and ultimately

Corey 15:15

ultimately the sausage is made in an ugly way right you don't necessarily want to see how it's done. My fear is if politicians think that the advice from officials will generally become public and

Corey 15:27

we'll get to the specific case here in a minute, which

Corey 15:29

which probably doesn't go that far.

Corey 15:31

But if they think that, then you're going to have a couple of things going on. First, most obviously, they're not going to ask for the advice. They're just going to make the decision absent the advice. Cabinet will become theatre. We had a great discussion about why this is the the only course of action uh that we could possibly take we all cheered the leader in a five-minute standing ovation so minuted you know as ordered by uh her majesty the queen and right of alberta right like

Zain 15:56

like you mean like a performative exercise absolutely right

Corey 16:00

right so you you will have moved the conversation outside of cabinet and probably moved it outside of the public service it'll be going back and forth on political emails and

Zain 16:10

and like whatsapp or whatever yeah like what's

Corey 16:12

what's the the upside what's the downside in ways that we cannot reach it as the public and by reach it i don't mean see it i mean affect it right through expertise that our public servants move forward

Corey 16:22

i ask a question

Corey 16:23

not gonna jump in so the second thing jesus christ

Corey 16:28

we didn't miss you at all we didn't miss you just slow down

Corey 16:32

man she's slow down yeah yeah

Zain 16:34

jesus christ corey you're trying to pack way too much in the

Zain 16:37

the second thing i would say is

Zain 16:39

if you are a public servant, and

Corey 16:41

and you think that what advice you're going to give could potentially embarrass the gang down the road, the elected officials, that could be very career limiting for you. You might not go out intending to embarrass the government. But let's say you give advice that's the opposite of what the government does. And that advice is then on the front page of the Globe and Mail.

Corey 17:00

Well, you might feel like, oh, my God, I'm pretty exposed here. And now it looks like I'm the guy who didn't want to do what was going to be done. and now i'm in a lot of trouble so

Corey 17:08

you're not going to offer that advice right you're just not going to provide that advice for it and then the third thing would be if

Corey 17:15

if you actually think that the system is going to still move the way it is what's going to end up happening is you're going to create this huge pressure for politicians to jam people who agree with them into the public service so yet you don't have messy discussions and we'll be poorer for it because it'll mean there won't be as many contrary point of views kicking around to strengthen these things as they they go carter

Zain 17:35

carter i have to ask you is there a counter argument here is there a valid counter argument for maybe not dismantling cabinet confidentiality outright but is there a valid argument that you know this should be public domain conversation that there is a there's positive downstream effects and ramifications to this i

Carter 17:54

i think that the the pause the only argument for it is that not everything needs to be protected by the same cabinet confidentiality shield. So the shield does not need to be the same for every cabinet discussion. And we can equate it to city council, right?

Carter 18:11

right? City council goes in camera and then for their most part, they're doing their actual

Carter 18:15

actual meetings out in the public view. So the information is received from administration in public, and then the decision is made in public for large swaths of the decision decision-making. I'd say about 90% of decisions are made that way. But then there are times when they

Carter 18:34

they go in camera and there's a huge population that says, we do too much stuff in camera. I mean, Jeremy Farke has tried to make that case in

Carter 18:43

in the last election. There was not enough openness and transparency. But the problem with openness and transparency, when you're trying to do some things, when you're setting your union negotiating strategy, you can't do it in open public conversation. You cannot have a conversation about which land you need to purchase for your LRT. You can't decide how you're going to model a decision with the flames for a new saddle dome. Those things simply cannot be done in

Carter 19:11

in the glare of the public's eye.

Carter 19:18

council works better when the public watched them. I think it'd be better if council was was doing it in public. They simply cannot do it in public.

Carter 19:26

So I'm actually a much bigger fan of the simple cabinet confidentiality piece that says, we're going to make these decisions in private.

Carter 19:34

And then we bring those decisions forward as united government.

Carter 19:37

Obviously can't work when you've got 15 ununited people running

Carter 19:41

running a city government, but it can work when you've got members

Carter 19:44

members of the same party who are able to keep in mind, it's not just the bureaucrats that are are putting forth their positions. It's also the individual politicians that are putting forward their positions. They are saying in open discussion that they disagree with the premier or they disagree with the minister or it's going to have unintended consequences. And all of them fall behind whatever the decision is ultimately. Even if they voiced strenuous opinions through the conversation, they all fall in line. And I think that's a good way of doing governance. I know that that's the way that most nonprofit organizations work. When the decision is made by the nonprofit board. Everybody is supposed to stand behind the organization, which means standing behind the decision that was made in the best interest of the organization. I think that there's some value to that.

Carter 20:28

Corey, is there a counter-argument here?

Zain 20:32

Is there a credible opposing view to the case that you've put out on the table around the ramifications that could exist if cabinet confidentiality is perhaps pierced or even further broken?

Corey 20:44

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Absolutely. The

Corey 20:47

municipal issue, I think, is a bit of a red herring because it's so fundamentally different, right? At the end of the day, I think the biggest difference is cabinet

Corey 20:55

cabinet is the boss of the public service in a way that council is not the boss of the entire city, like not directly in a managerial line sense. And so the system is just a little bit different. Party politics aren't there and that has consequences.

Corey 21:10

so the arguments let's let me tell you what i think is not the best argument the idea that just everything government does should be public and carter's done a pretty good job of laying out some of them in passing here you

Corey 21:21

you know commercial interests cannot be just you want to know the things that shouldn't be public just pick up the freedom of information and protection of privacy act and look at the exceptions uh things that are really going to get you in hot soup intergovernmentally right like negotiations with commercial contracts where you might even be be exposing the secrets of a commercial partner that the government has, right? Should that be something that they should be subjected to because of this radical view of transparency? Human resource documents, the idea that you could get access to case files of individual people on H, I think we can agree those are not things that should be public. A lot

Zain 21:56

lot of what government does

Corey 21:57

does is fundamentally not the business of public as a whole.

Corey 22:01

The argument you could make is that their decisions are. I don't love it because of all of the reasons I said about chill, but

Corey 22:11

maybe an easier to reach argument, something that's right there is that generally what Stephen and I have said is correct, but

Corey 22:18

but that there are exceptions to every rule.

Corey 22:20

And there are some things that you could point to in this particular situation that make it exceptional. Let's start with the obvious. This is a once in a

Corey 22:29

a hundred year pandemic. Hopefully we're not going to have another one for a hundred years. And the consequences to human life and economy are just so insanely severe that the normal rules don't apply that.

Corey 22:41

That's, that's actually a pretty reasonable thing to say, in my opinion. The second is that it is, um, it's just messy when you're talking about the chief medical officer of health, because the way the acts are written actually suggests she has final say on some of these things, not cabinet. So in some ways is

Corey 22:58

is the recommendation stream actually as it's written going the other way right

Corey 23:02

right are they saying things that they wanted to do but it's ultimately her decision that

Corey 23:06

that is super murky because of the way the public service act works and the way it butts up against some of the other acts that are

Corey 23:13

dina hinshaw's in a bit of a no-win situation there but if you wanted to talk about could it be different in this case that's

Corey 23:19

that's something i think you could point to uh i think the consequences of playing that out are alarming because of uh you know the precedent that we might might have in other situations, where they just shut out health advice for all of the reasons we've talked about earlier. But that would be an argument, I think that I could definitely entertain in terms of, of why this situation is is a little bit different. So

Corey 23:39

So for me, you know, ultimately comes down to, I

Corey 23:43

I think the rules are good.

Corey 23:45

I think that there is an exception to every rule. And you can go through situation x, situation y, situation z. And sometimes you hit it's just not something that you want to deal with, right? You don't want the normal rules to apply, and this might be one of those cases.

Zain 24:01

Carter, let's talk about the politics, and let's talk about this particular situation. Is this an exception in your mind? Should opposing parties or those who want these to effectively be out in the open keep pushing harder and more aggressively that they do? Do you feel like this is, to Corey's definition, perhaps one of those exceptional cases where we do indeed try to unearth and make this public.

Carter 24:27

Well, this is an exceptional case.

Carter 24:30

The reason it's an exceptional case is something that Corey alluded to. Two years ago when the pandemic began, two and a half years ago, how many months? I don't know.

Carter 24:41

A gajillion years ago when the pandemic began, there was an open question in terms of what the chief medical officer of health had

Carter 24:47

had in terms of broad guidelines.

Carter 24:50

There was an argument to be made, the chief medical officer of health did not require cabinet approval to take any of the actions that she deemed to be appropriate. So if

Carter 25:01

you were making that argument and you were able to say, this was never a cabinet discussion, we need to understand why it was brought back into cabinet and why cabinet was discussing it in the first place. This responsibility, responsibility, uh, without changes to the act lied only with CMOH. And if, if anything was changed, anything didn't, you know, happen there, uh, it was a matter of public record and therefore every discussion that was made by CMOH should be part of the public record.

Carter 25:30

I think you could make that case. Um, I don't think that it would have been successful because ultimately it did get moved to cabinet because ultimately I think that cabinet has the right to pull any decisions back to itself, because frankly, they're the government and bureaucracy isn't the government in

Carter 25:47

in the same fashion. Yes, they are the government, Corey, you'll correct me later.

Carter 25:54

reason that it's not is that it's just one person, right? If I were the CMOH at the beginning of the pandemic, I wouldn't want to be running around making all the decisions by myself. The truth Truth of the matter is, we didn't know enough. We didn't understand how many impacts it would be. All of these things led to complicated decisions. And I would have been asking for the opinion of my bosses and my colleagues and my staff, which I'm sure Dr. Ian Shaw was doing. That's where, as soon as you go into the cabinet room, the same way that your staff's probably not going to run to the media and give them the background of everything you're discussing, blessing, there

Carter 26:35

there should be a prohibition on cabinet running to the media and telling everybody what they said. So I still think that while there could have been an exception in this case, there shouldn't have been.

Zain 26:47

Corey, I have to ask you from a political standpoint, if we kind of move on to thinking about the politics, if the answer to these three questions, did the premier and cabinet ever direct you to impose more severe restrictions than you recommended? Did cabinet ever direct you to impose more severe restrictions on particular groups? And did you ever recommend to cabinet that restrictions should be lifted or loosened at any period in time that was refused or ignored by cabinet? Could the answer to these three, the scope questions, should they become public?

Zain 27:15

Be the smoking gun in some way, a political smoking gun? Like, how would you think about it if, because I suspect these are not going to be straightforward answers, but I'm kind of curious how, if you are, let's say the Alberta NDP, or if you are one of the groups that has been criticizing the UCP government in their way that they handled the pandemic, how you want to be preparing for some of these answers to perhaps become public?

Corey 27:42

well i i don't know i mean like actually i i think this is one of those things where people desperately want answers to questions like this to become smoking guns or say like okay we see this was not actually all based on medical advice aha gotcha right but

Zain 27:56

be the very simple narrative

Zain 27:57

that i'm sure many are hoping for yeah but

Corey 28:00

but i guess i fundamentally reject

Corey 28:02

i i guess we don't need any more information to come to conclusions around that and this goes goes back to what i was saying at the start which is ultimately these

Corey 28:09

these decisions were cabinets to make and

Corey 28:12

and if cabinet made good ones they should be applauded and if they made bad ones they should be condemned and

Corey 28:16

and it doesn't really change the situation for me an awful lot whether that was against the recommendations of the chief medical officer of health or with the recommendations i don't give them a pass just because it's with and i don't like i don't i don't condemn them just because it's against that i i weigh the facts more simply than that the statistical data that goes into it the decision that came out of it both of which are actually not subject to the same cabinet confidence uh restrictions that are out there carter

Zain 28:46

carter played the proxy of the public for me should cory right like i i get what you're saying there cory i really do but i

Zain 28:54

i i wonder for the public carter should there have been that added ripple that yes the cabinet was fully accountable for whatever direction they went to. They get all the credit, all the blame. But if there were ripples of they ignored advice or they went contrary to directions of the chief medical officer of health, isn't

Zain 29:12

isn't there political wins and hate to be made in that regard? What do you think?

Carter 29:17

Well, I mean, I think there's hate to be made regardless. I mean, there's always hate to be made. But the thing that makes this so interesting to me is it's asking the question that's kind of the opposite of what Twitterverse looked at, right? The Twitterverse was like cabinet is going the wrong way we should be putting in more restrictions where's dr hinshaw she should resign because these restrictions aren't enough and this questions are the questions are did should there have been more restrictions should we have put in you know like or should we have ended the restrictions quickly quicker should we have had fewer restrictions did cabinet go too far in imposing these restrictions that to me is the exact opposite of what the twitterverse thinks that they're seeing, right? The Twitterverse is expecting some sort of bombshell where they could have been protected from this by Dr. Hinshaw. When, if this comes out, I mean, depending on what is said, you know, Cabinet may have protected us from Dr. Hinshaw, which is fascinating because it's not the answer that, you know, the left, especially the left. It's not the

Zain 30:19

the story people have been certainly telling

Carter 30:20

telling themselves. The story is that we were duped by Cabinet, the politicians led by Jason Kenney, fucked us over kinshaw if she'd been left in charge would have had our backs and i think it's the it may not be the truth uh

Zain 30:32

uh this is interesting it's where i wanted to go to cory i want to get your take on this and carter i've gotten here i've gotten to exactly where i wanted to go to 30 minutes and uh cory i

Zain 30:40

tell you do a

Zain 30:41

a show guys let me tell you let me tell you about how you do we

Corey 30:46

is just this is just section one of the first segment right like this This isn't even the whole first segment. This is Alberta potpourri, so that makes me think that there are other parts of this segment that we are now at the 30-minute. This is the pot. This is the pot, Corey.

Zain 31:02

puri is left. The puri. I don't know.

Zain 31:06

High-quality content. Hogan, you're going to jump

Corey 31:08

jump in on this.

Corey 31:10

Well, exactly what Stephen said. But this, again, underlines my point.

Corey 31:16

Say that we get to a situation where Dina Hinshaw was recommending that these things be ended faster and cabinet said, no, no, no, that's that we can't do that yet. We can't do that. That's not our root of the situation for all of these reasons. All of these other things we're bringing in besides just your advice, Dr. Hinshaw.

Corey 31:35

Does that mean we're all of a sudden supposed to feel better about the decisions the government made? I mean, like this is, I

Corey 31:41

I say no. I mean, I mean, I don't think it fundamentally should change anybody's view of the situation that's out there, whether the questions are the ones that are or reverse. Yeah.

Corey 31:50

Yeah. Okay. So I do think it will, but that's the kind of moral hazard that gets created here. This idea that all of a sudden advice from officials is going to be weaponized and politicized. And so if

Corey 32:02

if I were a political party and I had aspirations of returning to government, I would be very careful about cheering on these kinds of activities because it's not so long until, you know, the shoe is on the other foot.

Zain 32:15

Carter, write for me the UCP game plan on this issue. Corey, I'm going to ask you the same question for the NDP. What is the UCP game plan on this issue? You don't have a lot of choice in regards to what ultimately the justice recommends here. But how are you politically dealing with this story? Are you just minimizing it, moving on? What's your message? And Corey, the same question for you in a second in regards to what the Alberta NDP needs to start thinking about as it relates to this story, especially if the hero villain villain uh

Zain 32:42

narrative of where dr hinshaw fits might be more murkier than than perhaps uh people have communicated uh in the past and we don't know this but carter first to you on the ucp what do you think well

Carter 32:52

well i think there's two choices for them i think that number one they can say this is such a uh limited question that you know these three questions are so limited it does not impact confidentiality uh this is a very limited set um of course you know and i i would suggest that that anytime that she answered the question that she was making a recommendation one way or the other, you know, like to go further or faster or whatever, that it also be noted that she also made

Carter 33:20

made a case for not doing so, right?

Carter 33:22

right? Like make sure that if you're going to discuss this, that it never be a binary or singular answer. I would direct, you

Carter 33:30

you know, Dr. Hinshaw, I'd work with her to make sure that she's given enough space to answer the question fully and completely. not in a simple yes, no. You know, were you ever offered, you know, did you ever suggest that we should move through the restrictions faster? Yes. Well, that's not in the UCP's interest.

Carter 33:48

in part because the group that supports them, uh, would be pretty put off by this, you know, the, the, the right wingers, and this certainly wouldn't help Kenny at this time as he's getting closer and closer to his supposed, uh, leadership review.

Carter 34:02

other side of it is that they could still appeal and

Carter 34:07

and fight back through the courts. And maybe that's still available to them. Maybe they'd choose to do that. I believe that cabinet confidentiality is important enough to protect, to fight it to the nth degree and push it as far as you can. There may be an unintended consequence of doing that, though. You may get to the top and get the decision that you don't want, in which case, you know, This small problem is worth bearing rather than getting to the end of a discussion with an outcome you just don't want.

Zain 34:41

Corey, what is the NDP thinking about here? What are their considerations? How are they preparing?

Corey 34:45

Well, I would recommend that they do not lose focus on the actual opponent here,

Corey 34:51

right? And so any conversation

Corey 34:53

conversation about is it Dina Hinshaw's fault or Jason Kenney's fault is not productive unproductive because right now the bulk of blame, you know, for lack of a better word, is on Jason Kenney. So why would you even open up an ambiguous conversation about that? Yes or no? I mean, I wouldn't chase this one too much at all. I would say there's one person responsible for that. Not even one person. There is the UCP and there is the UCP cabinet led

Corey 35:18

led by Jason Kenney, and they are responsible for the decisions that made, including disappearing for a month as

Corey 35:23

as we're going into Delta wave, including

Corey 35:25

including not acting very quickly on Omicron, including Including rushing us out of Omicron and making all sorts of edicts that force societies, force cities out of these decision-making constructs as we now move into what looks like to be sixth wave, seventh wave, eighth wave, move

Corey 35:41

on forever, you know, in

Corey 35:44

I don't think that this is a fruitful conversation to get involved in. I think when you look at the substance of it, as

Corey 35:51

as I said, there's probably reason to believe that you don't actually want to fight too hard for breaking cabinet confidence as a precept. And Stephen's right. Like this could go all the way to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court could define cabinet confidence in a way that

Corey 36:03

every province lighting their hair on fire, has the prime minister of Canada lighting their hair on fire. It

Corey 36:08

It might not be worth it, right?

Corey 36:10

But on the other hand, it's not, if you take the bait and if you jump into the politics of it and you invite that conversation and you invite ambiguity as to who's responsible, I do not see how that helps you as the NDP. I you know this is one of the you don't need to swing at every pitch this is not one of those pitches I would be swinging at nicely

Zain 36:29

done we're going to leave that first part of Alberta Pro there Stephen Carter look at this excellent performance I need to say by the way Stephen Carter I was up in Edmonton doing some speaking gigs a lot of fans of the pod surprisingly a lot of fans of Stephen Carter I have to say that if there is a in-person poll of fans of Stephen carter versus the fans of cory and i stephen carter is definitely in second or third place it is you are definitely in

Zain 36:55

in second or third place carter i am one of the top three strategists

Zain 36:59

strategists you are one of the top three certainly top of all time yeah and on totally unrelated note i just want to i just want to know so let folks know we are opening up a new patreon category uh it is of course the 104 000 category so if there's anyone in alberta that is open to contributing 104 000 dollars to uh the strategist patreon um we will more than happily take your money there is a payment plan uh that we are happy to facilitate for you but of course there's a new category on our patreon for 104 000 if someone's got some loose change uh sticking around uh anywhere across this fine province just wanted to put

Carter 37:34

put that negative outcome is that i would leave so

Carter 37:36

so i don't think we're gonna see i don't think we're gonna see 104 000 with a good

Corey 37:41

good time steven don't

Carter 37:42

don't i'm saying i'm I'm out of here, 104, that's my price.

Zain 37:47

It's good. It's so clear. It's so accurate with what it takes to

Carter 37:53

to have Stephen Curry. I will also leave for 130.

Carter 37:56

I'm up to either one.

Zain 38:01

Carter, I want to talk about something else. Is there a strategy of perhaps scarcity happening in our province of Alberta? And I know many people who thought when I said Alberta-appropriate, I would be getting right into the UCP leadership review. I'll get into a bit of that. It's been pretty quiet on that front. I'll touch on that. But while that happens, there's

Zain 38:19

there's a lot of stuff that's happening as it relates to policy, as it relates to ramifications on workers' rights. One of the things that we've been talking about is, is there a deliberate or perhaps not so deliberate strategy here, Carter, on shortages, CB teachers facing teacher shortages as substitutes can't cover absences? We've seen that story. We've seen more family doctors, a dramatic drop in family physicians accepting new patients has left many Albertans without a family doctor to call their own. We're also seeing discussions between crown prosecutors in the province are ongoing with hopes of preventing a mass strike action that paralyzed the justice system.

Zain 38:59

The leadership review, I think, is very attractive, very sexy, a lot of political theater, palace intrigue. But there's stuff happening in Alberta, Carter. And this is one of the through lines that I think is worthy for us to discuss. So maybe I'll get your take. Do you feel like there's a deliberate strategy of scarcity or shortage that is being implemented by this UCP government?

Carter 39:23

No, I think that the world changed, right? The world changed over the last two years. We've seen nurses leave the nursing profession. We're seeing teachers leave the teaching profession. How this particular government tends to respond to these things isn't particularly positive. We can see better responses around the world, but these are worldwide phenomena of changes that are happening because people have taken a look at their lives and said, is this what I really want?

Carter 39:54

And they've gone off and done other things. There are better careers, more interesting careers, no careers that they want to jump into. So I don't necessarily think that we are any different than any other jurisdiction, especially

Carter 40:08

especially on things like teachers and nurses and those types of things. I just think that we respond differently. And by differently, I mean worse, because we don't have a government that values education, for example, the way that I value education. I think that the healthcare situation is going to be tragic in the coming months and years as we deal with the fallout of family physicians saying, is this really what I want to do? the lack of appreciation from the government, finding greener pastures, which we've all gone through before. I mean, we went through the brain drain, right? I don't remember which decade that was in. Ironically, probably around the time that Corey was born. That's the brain that came in when all the other brains left.

Carter 40:56

this is just part of it. Just part of what people are deciding to do is they're looking at their overall lives and saying, I'm not prepared to put up with this this particular type of shit.

Carter 41:06

I will not be a crown prosecutor and not make real money. I can go to the other side and make a hell of a lot more. But I want to be a crown prosecutor. I believe in the system. Give me my money. So this is all part of the ongoing

Carter 41:18

ongoing shift that we're seeing as a result of the pandemic.

Zain 41:21

Corey, do you agree with Carter's thesis here that that's what we're seeing here? Or do you feel like there's something more deliberate perhaps happening in Alberta when when we're seeing these shortages and the scarcity across the board?

Corey 41:37

Well, I think there are global

Corey 41:39

global trends, and Stephen's put his finger on a couple of them there. People have talked a lot about the great resignation. The data is pretty mixed on that, whether that's actually a thing or just people frustrated and venting, and there's a lot of boomerang employees who are then returning to the professions they swore they would

Corey 41:56

So there are bigger things that

Zain 41:58

that need to be considered. And

Corey 42:00

And obviously that's going to have some effect here in Alberta, but you've got to compare Alberta to other jurisdictions. You've got to compare it to British Columbia, to Saskatchewan, to Ontario. And when you start lining them up, some

Corey 42:12

some of it doesn't look any different and some of it actually looks a little bit worse. And part of

Corey 42:17

of it is because

Corey 42:19

because there's been a narrative for

Zain 42:21

for the past couple of years that

Corey 42:23

things are not great in certain sectors

Zain 42:27

great place to be a teacher, not a great place to be a doctor, not a great place to be a healthcare worker, more

Corey 42:32

Is that true? Isn't that true? That's in the eye of the beholder. But when that narrative takes over, and

Corey 42:36

and you've got people who are outside of this province, considering roles in this province in those professions, and

Corey 42:42

and everyone in those professions

Corey 42:44

professions in the province seems miserable, yeah, you're going to have staff shortages, people are going to say, doesn't

Corey 42:50

And you know, we could go down a lot of different rabbit holes here about what,

Corey 42:55

what people want to work somewhere, because in Alberta, it's always been, yeah, we pay a little bit more. Well, not only

Zain 43:01

only are we eroding that through

Corey 43:02

through contracts that are a little bit leaner along the way, but

Corey 43:08

in a world where you can do a lot of jobs from almost anywhere, it can't just be about the money that you get because you can work remotely in a different jurisdiction. So how do we make this the most livable, most exciting, most interesting place is a question we should all be seized with. But to

Corey 43:25

to your question about is this intentional, I think it is not so much intentional as it is a very obvious consequence of opening an 800 front war, right?

Corey 43:34

right? When you are battling with

Corey 43:37

with doctors on compensation, when you are battling with teachers on basically everything, when you are battling with crown prosecutors on workload and really driving them hard on things like the Jordan Principle, but not actually providing resources behind it because we're in more resource-constrained times, which is a choice Alberta made,

Corey 43:58

then yeah you're going to have an awful lot of things that could light up on fire in terms of staffing challenges and we seem to be hitting a lot of them now and i guess that really

Corey 44:08

really what i would say is this you know it's that old business attitude there's no such thing as a free lunch there was nothing free here there was not just a bunch of money that was being poured into these areas that you could take out without consequence and we are dealing with consequence now and

Corey 44:22

and sometimes these consequences take years to years to show and of course if you've lived in alberta long enough you'll be familiar with in

Corey 44:28

in the 90s when there were big cuts to health care the

Corey 44:31

the massive overspending that had to occur in the 2000s to

Corey 44:36

to to compensate you know big bonuses paid to nurses to bring them into the province massive contract increases crazy management rights given away to doctors in you know the late 2000s early 2010s and that was because that was the price of doing business after the price of doing business the other way so um we

Corey 44:56

we should all keep an eye on it and we should keep in mind that it's

Corey 44:59

it's very easy in politics to just get into lazy platitudes and say well the only reason this

Corey 45:05

this is not perfect is because the other guys didn't manage it well or they gave away a bunch of stuff for free rarely is it so simple and this sort of ties back to the idea of the public service it's the same public service who is helping make these decisions all all of the time so uh

Corey 45:19

uh you know it

Corey 45:21

it ain't easy and it has

Zain 45:23

has consequences carter you're smiling here i want to get your reaction before i ask you a more pointed question i

Carter 45:28

i think that cory's exactly right i mean there's an ebb and you know the the pendulum swings back and forth and every decision that we make has a consequence that we see uh later in the game you know um you

Carter 45:40

you know it wasn't like the ndp ran up expenditures uh in

Carter 45:44

in their time that you know everybody has this kind of thought

Carter 45:47

thought that that's what happened but actually there was an awful lot of zeros in a lot of contracts at the ndp i can't

Corey 45:53

can't think of a contract without zeros there

Carter 45:56

zero zero zeros and those zeros all have a consequence and

Carter 46:00

and when the ucp comes in the

Carter 46:03

the consequence is especially when you hit the bump again and all of a sudden you go from no money to all the money um

Carter 46:10

okay well you've got your money now i want my money i think we talked about on the podcast this big windfall of cash is going going to be, you know, people are going to expect to see their fair share and when they don't, yeah, when they don't get it, when their taxes are going up, when there's, uh, costs that are going up, uh, people are going to be pissed. Um,

Carter 46:31

but you know, until the, well,

Carter 46:35

someone has to take advantage of that as well. So someone somewhere is going to take advantage of, of the personal costs of the UCP government. Uh, that'll be interesting to see. Wait,

Zain 46:44

Wait, what do you mean by that, Carter? Just clarify that last point for me.

Carter 46:48

I don't think, I still, you know, I continue to follow Rachel Notley's tweets. I read Rachel Notley's tweets more religiously than I read the Bible, because I don't read the Bible. I was going to, lowest of nots. Yeah, yeah, come on. Very, very low bar. Speaking

Zain 47:01

all those celebrating a happily continued Ramadan, and Eid is, of course, tomorrow. So really looking forward to

Carter 47:06

to that. I was going to say, you know, you've taken away that from me. No, no, you weren't

Zain 47:08

weren't going to say. You literally went with the Bible reference.

Zain 47:11

You could have gone with the Quran reference. You know you

Zain 47:13

you could have done

Zain 47:14

that. Carter, please continue on the Rachel Notley tweets. they're

Carter 47:16

they're all disconnected they remain disconnected and they don't i mean even when they try and tie it together to

Carter 47:22

to people's cost of living they continue to miss the cost to humans the cost of people they either don't know how to speak to people which is legitimate or

Carter 47:32

or they are unable to take an issue and turn it into people so

Carter 47:37

so this is frustrates me to no end i continue to watch the opposition given all these advantages and continue

Carter 47:48

continue to try and win the day through the gotcha politics.

Zain 47:53

Corey, let's talk about this from your perspective. You kind of put your hand up in the sense of wanting to respond to what Carter was saying here. Jump in on that, and then I've got some strategy-related questions for both of you in terms of how this should be handled, because there is a case to be made that this

Zain 48:09

this will probably be sanded down in terms of political communications, in terms of the some of the old narratives that we have seen in the past. But Corey, your take first, and then we'll talk about the political communications here.

Corey 48:19

Yeah, well, a lot of this is messaging and people's perceptions of value to Stephen's point about zeros, contracts with zeros, contracts with doctors that reduced payments on a lot of different areas were not necessarily as successful as people had hoped in the terms of the millions of dollars of savings that could be found. But there was there was this approach in this direction. and and this was not the

Corey 48:40

the ucp's perception of things coming in you know the

Corey 48:43

the ucp coming in thought well we're gonna get real zeros the zeros the ndp got were fake zeros because of you

Corey 48:50

you know they must have sprinkled in a bunch of other things to get this a bunch of other benefits or management rights or whatever whatever

Corey 48:56

whatever it is um

Corey 48:57

um when they'd sort of confirmed for themselves that actually those zeros were real zeros then they said well if the ndp got zeros we're getting negative two negative three uh

Corey 49:06

uh but that's not where anything's landed everything's landed actually in positives because people will only take zeros for so long and the consequence of the system will eventually pile up and if

Corey 49:17

if the situation had been different

Corey 49:19

different like imagine if they'd come in and said well actually after all of these zeros we think teachers

Corey 49:25

teachers are owed two percent we think nurses

Corey 49:27

nurses are owed two percent we think the public service is owed two percent whatever it is, right?

Corey 49:34

just wonder. In some ways, it would have been so wildly off-brand for them. I don't think it would have happened. But I

Corey 49:41

wonder if we wouldn't be dealing with some of this griping and negativity and shortages that we are now simply because of the approach that was taken was one that seemed so deeply disrespectful and set everybody off on this wild fight.

Zain 49:55

Carter, before I ask you about the political parties here, I should talk about what which is what Corey mentioned here, which is like this 800 front war, which I was, you know, repeating what Corey said here, but this multi-front war, right? That the UCP have started with many groups. A to Z.

Corey 50:10

Yeah, A to Z.

Zain 50:11

But I get it. I get it. I get it. I'm happy to have an American give us $104,000. So that's fine. I'm happy to take that in USD. But Carter,

Zain 50:21

if you are one of these groups, right? Whether you're highlighted here as teachers or family doctors or other public servants, Are you fighting that war against

Zain 50:32

against the government singularly? Or is there a case to be made that as they fight multi-front wars, it's better to come and consolidate and be part of a coalition that fights back so that your issue is one of several that are part of a fight back strategy? And I think of unions, of course, here. I think of professional organizations and associations. Are you in it for yourself? And is accepting the premise of a multi-front war actually victory for the government because it just kind of tires out at least some of the groups? Or is there a strategy here that is better done together? Is it better to come together? I'm kind of curious that these seem like disparate issues and disparate professional groups and disparate professions, but what's the value in terms of not accepting the government's premise that they want to fight you on your terms and you kind of come together with other groups and build a coalition? Or is that simply built for political parties, for example, the NDP to step into? Your thoughts on strategy here?

Carter 51:29

Coalitions can be stronger. They can be stronger than the individual organizations, but they most often aren't. And it comes to, I mean, the AFL, I think is a really, you know, Alberta Federation of Labor. It's a really good example, right? They, you know, purport to be representing the unions of Alberta. But when, you know, push comes to shove, most

Carter 51:52

most of the unions in that organization feel like they're not really being supported properly, right?

Carter 51:56

right? There's always a favoritism.

Carter 51:58

And this is the problem with coalition, right? You're coming together and you think you're the most important player on the team. And if you're not the most important player on the team, then why would you join the team? You can go and be the most important player in your own front. And I think that this is where things break down. And in fact, if getting together was a stronger strategy, then we would see it working better. It

Carter 52:19

It isn't actually a stronger strategy. It works out better if you have the resources, big asterisk there, if you have the resources to have everybody fighting their own war on their own front, because those wars on their own fronts are super distracting to government. And one or two of them can catch off that you don't expect. For example, the coal mining in the Eastern Rockies. I think that, yeah, everybody would say, yeah, that's an important thing. But

Carter 52:50

I've never seen a response to an environmental issue that big, that fast, that quickly. And it could have folded together with other environmental issues. But by keeping it separate, it actually had far more impact than if it had been folded in with the greenhouse gas coalitions.

Zain 53:08

See, that's an interesting point, Carter, around how you feel, so I can clarify, that government

Zain 53:15

government having to fight a multi-front war is actually disadvantageous to them. I, for some reason, have been leaning more towards the fact that I think that if they're fighting multiple wars, they're the only ones in the game that might have the resources to do so. But Corey, I want to get your take on this. Do you agree with Carter that the multi-front war here that they've started is actually a strategic disadvantage for them, and that the individual sort of fights uh perhaps should be carried on as as such in a sense yeah

Corey 53:43

yeah i do i'm i mean you could roll the tape on some episodes we did two years ago uh that were ish about this topic right yeah

Zain 53:51

yeah and the idea

Corey 53:52

they run around and they they start something but they're not necessarily finishing something with all of these various groups and uh

Corey 53:58

uh the metaphor i used at the time is it's like running around a playground punching

Corey 54:02

punching somebody knocking them to the ground and running and hitting the next person well they're eventually going to get up off that ground and they're going to start chasing you again. And the more people you have chasing you, I

Corey 54:11

I mean, you're going to deal with the consequences of that, right? You know, at the end of the alphabet, you get to the letter Z and then, you know, the tune is up. Fuck

Zain 54:21

of you, honestly. Honestly, I will cancel

Zain 54:25

contract. I will cancel my contract. Speaking of coalitions, this one is really not working for me. Okay.

Zain 54:32

I realized the immense joy I got by now showing up on a Thursday.

Zain 54:37

I mean, just what

Zain 54:39

what it meant to my life to not have to endure this. I

Zain 54:44

I just have to expect Corey to keep going. Yeah, well,

Corey 54:45

well, look, in government, it's easy to announce things. It's hard to conclude things. That's just one of those simple truths of government.

Corey 54:52

And the UCP government, with a very ambitious platform,

Corey 54:57

hundreds of policy items, as Jason Kenney himself will remind us of, that's

Corey 55:01

that's a lot of things you get to announce. But it's not even so much that you can tick a box and say, yeah, we've created the order and counsel to make that real. We've passed the legislation to do that.

Corey 55:09

These things require time to take to ground, to actually firm up, to make that the law of the land, not just in the letter, but in the spirit and have everybody understand what they're supposed to be doing going forward. And it's tough to land 200 planes at once. And that's essentially what the government is trying to do. I just I think that their ambition in many ways has been, you know, we're seeing the consequences of that. And we will continue to in terms of the number of different groups that they have shaken

Corey 55:39

shaken up their world. And in many cases, those groups don't feel positive about it. So you're going to have an awful lot of people that are running against the UCP in some way, shape or form in the next year.

Zain 55:50

Okay, so Carter, to you then, what's the government strategy here? Is it to shadowbox? Is it to declare early victory? Is it to ignore? Is it to choose only the fights that they can win? Do they sometimes just ignore certain groups and say, fuck it, I don't care if you're just loud and bickering about your issue. You don't have the political power behind you. You don't have the people power behind you. I really don't care. care. How are you advising the UCP right now with this brand narrative and with these multi-front wars that as they get closer and closer to an election, they have to land at least some of the planes that Corey was mentioning, don't they, Carter?

Carter 56:27

Well, I mean, I would think so, but they've put them all in a holding pattern. All

Carter 56:31

All of those planes have been put into a holding pattern while they fight on the runway. And until such time as that fight on the runway is

Zain 56:39

finished- You mean the pilots and the co-pilots and the stewardesses and all the people fighting on the runway? They're

Carter 56:44

They're all fighting on the runway. I mean, the UCP is on the runway. They're having massive fights about who should be up in the control tower making these types of decisions. And all these issues are just spinning around. They're just doing the circle. You know, some of them are bound to run out of gas. I'm sure that the UCP, you know, they've tried to back down on their eastern coal fronts. Come on, this is a good analogy. This

Corey 57:06

This metaphor is falling apart in front of my eyes. keep going this

Carter 57:10

is the best one he's not done yet cory he's not done he's not gonna tie it all together yeah but you know with with everybody in their holding patterns he's gonna land he's

Corey 57:19

he's gonna land this

Corey 57:19

some of them falling out of the sky yeah keep going

Carter 57:22

going yeah some of them are falling out of the sky like the eastern slopes uh coal mining piece which they've tried to put the rest by saying we're not doing it and then we're doing it um

Carter 57:30

um you know these things need to if

Carter 57:34

i were advising the ucp it would be stop your goddamn fighting um

Carter 57:39

um and get yourself into uh into a place where you can decide which battles are the most important battles i would argue with this stage you can't pick on anybody in health care it's gonna be super duper hard to fight with teachers um i would i would try and focus in maybe on aupe or something along those lines the government employees um and have some sort of a win because

Carter 58:01

because you're not going to get anything else in the the

Carter 58:04

more public facing organizations flare

Zain 58:07

flare airlines dropping from the sky cory uh over to you uh on this no no what

Zain 58:14

that's not a good one not a good one that's good why is it not a

Corey 58:18

a good one did

Zain 58:18

did i say they're landing on the ground did i say they're crashing anywhere no

Zain 58:21

crashing i just think flare airlines crashing on the ground i

Zain 58:24

i didn't say that cory why and they're They're not our sponsor. I just want people to know that. That's good. Corey, over to you on this. What's the government strategy here? What does it need to be if you're advising them?

Zain 58:37

They've opened up the multi-front war. We just started discussing this a couple of years ago. We made the observation. Carter says that there's a holding pattern right now. What

Zain 58:46

What does the government need to do? And can they do anything without necessarily being clear on their leadership situation?

Corey 58:55

Well, I do disagree a little with Stephen. I think they are landing planes. The problem is they're not landing them fast enough. They're not going to clear the airspace before 2023. And even if that plane gets landed, we've seen some of them getting off the plane and they're pretty pissed with how long they were up in the air. I think AUP is a perfect example because

Corey 59:12

because they have largely concluded that with the government. Well, I mean, it is concluded.

Corey 59:17

And so then the question

Corey 59:19

question is not so much, did the deal happen? It's how did the deal happen? And that they're mad about it um

Corey 59:26

now if you got 10 billion dollars you can you can build a new airport you can land a few more planes just to let's just really run this metaphor into the ground right

Carter 59:34

right really push it you're doing good and

Corey 59:36

and you'll see more of that they'll be able to solve some of their problems just by not just surrendering but going the opposite direction and putting money in things that previously they were trying to take money out of like look stay tuned for that that's obviously going to be happening as we come towards an election here and

Corey 59:52

and can they solve some some of these problems with the leader they have? Yeah, absolutely.

Corey 59:55

With leadership questions out there, why not?

Corey 59:58

Because in some ways, it's not so much that in

Corey 1:00:00

in what we're describing right now, you're not looking for the good win, you're

Corey 1:00:04

you're looking for the issue managed. And even though the public may be distracted by the UCP leadership review, that's

Corey 1:00:10

that's actually in many ways a great time to manage issues where you can eat a little bit of shit, reverse on a few things. Nobody notices because they're not paying attention.

Zain 1:00:19

Because this is not the theater. This is not the drama. mama. Carter, if you are one of these groups, these professions, one of these folks that have been waged a multi-front war against the UCP, what is your strategy? I asked you a bit around the coalition approach, but I want to ask you more specifically, you've been put into a holding pattern. You've also, and this government is clearly distracted, at least some key personnel. What are you doing right now? Are you building on the issue? Are you building public support? Or what would you be recommending on broad terms, knowing that there's different elements here to each of these movements? What are you doing in broad terms right now?

Carter 1:00:55

Making sure that I've got a third party advertising group that can go forward and carry this right through the election.

Carter 1:01:01

This is the time to push it. The election is supposed to be in a year. I think that the TPAs jump into effect. Is it six months in advance? I don't remember if it's six months or three

Carter 1:01:12

three months or whatever it is. But you've got to push, push, push to make sure that you have your issue being dealt with and or being dropped before

Carter 1:01:22

before this next election. I mean, you're in a great position to win.

Carter 1:01:26

You're not in a great position to win your issue. If the UCP get reelected, if they get reelected, people

Carter 1:01:33

people are going to start thinking dynasty. I mean,

Carter 1:01:35

mean, this is the challenge

Carter 1:01:43

to imagine that they wouldn't be a dynasty coming out of Jason Kenney's giant shit show. If the UCP actually did get reelected, there is very little to think that the

Carter 1:01:53

the progressive side, the union side, the issue side isn't

Carter 1:01:58

isn't going to be facing massive hurdles in the next four years and the four years after that and possibly the four years after that. So this is the chance. If you want to get into this, get into it. And don't wait

Carter 1:02:09

wait for others to carry your water. Get in there and carry yourself.

Zain 1:02:14

Corey, this brand story about Alberta that this topic was introducing

Zain 1:02:19

has been alive for a while. What advice would you have for the Alberta NDP? Would it be to simplify your messaging on this? And how do you do that, perhaps, if that is the advice without necessarily kind of retreading some of the more simplistic narratives that we've been hearing for decades in that sense? Or is that okay? Your thoughts on the Alberta NDP?

Corey 1:02:40

I guess I could have a couple of, Well, if I wanted to, I could argue why it's a problem for the NDP to have so many different arguments out there, which is just the message confusion. But I don't think it's actually a problem.

Corey 1:02:50

What we have right now is a great opportunity for the NDP. All of the things that we were talking about in terms of maybe Eastern Slopes becomes an issue. Maybe with the Crown prosecutors, it becomes an issue.

Corey 1:03:00

This is all just going to happen. And if you're the NDP, you can look at them. You can choose the ones that reinforce your brand story, and you can amplify them during the election when everybody is looking at you and in the lead up to the election. right? You

Corey 1:03:11

You don't need to amplify every one of these problems that's out there. I think probably part of your problem if you're the NDP is you might have a bit of a kid in the candy store feeling where there's a lot of stories that you want to hit the government with, but you've got to have the discipline to say, these are really the only ones that tell the story that we want to tell, right? That reinforce the campaign messages, the ballot question that we're building towards. So no problem if you're the NDP. Obviously, in

Corey 1:03:37

in some ways, you almost want want to be encouraging these things to to be out there organically and seeing which ones actually take you know take up uh you know a life of their own like the eastern slopes did

Corey 1:03:49

in some ways over managing it would probably be the mistake and you don't need to do any you don't have the problem the government does which is what do we focus on today you can just sit back eat your popcorn and watch what the hell happens as the government has to bat down all of these things and is taken badly off their message by all of the incoming assaults that they're getting

Zain 1:04:09

We're going to move it on to our final topic in the Alberta Potpourri. Yes, that's right, Carter. We do this whole podcast for you. Thank you. Beginning to end, A to Z. We do it for you, Carter. We do it for you. I want to talk about the story about a veteran conservative activist, Al Brown, who's now fed up with the UCP. He's saying that he is tired of making excuses for the people who ask why the government is doing stuff. He feels like people are worn out. He's been a longstanding PC UCP volunteer. I want to focus less on Mr. Al Brown here, the veteran activist of the conservative movement here in Alberta. Carter, what I want to focus on is what we expect now in terms of the drumbeats, in terms of the storylines, as we look into the next 17-ish days heading into Wednesday. We have seen some stories that we've predicted and we knew were going to happen, and we're going to see more of those. Those fall into the category of, oh my God, the world is on fire. Someone received two memberships. Someone received two voting cards, someone who did not sign up received a membership, and the media is covering those individuals. And I'm not trying to minimize those, but those happen every single time. And whether those are a big deal or not, we can discuss. We see stories like this, where someone who conveniently comes out 16, 17 days before the vote says, I'm done with this, cover me in an opinion column, cover my story to create a movement of momentum, proxy perhaps for the other side. But

Zain 1:05:35

looking at both sides, Stephen Carter, what have you seen in terms of tea leaves or breadcrumbs, so to speak, in terms of what you might see coming across over the next 16, 17 days? What are some of the drumbeats that you expect to happen as this marches on to the 18th and then eventually to the 19th, which is our live show?

Carter 1:05:56

Yeah, I mean, I think there's about 10 days left for people to mark their ballots and return them to the party. So I suspect in the next 10 days, we're going to see a constant stream of high-ranking, well-respected UCP and conservative organizers who step forward and say they either support Jason Kenney or they don't support Jason Kenney. That will be the warfare that is going on. Do you

Zain 1:06:22

you feel like they're going to be pressured into doing that, Carter? Or do you feel like that's just the natural flow that both sides are working on right now to release these endorsements and where people stand? I

Carter 1:06:31

I think that, you know, I think Al Brown is a great example. I mean, I'm not sure anybody pushed him into doing it. I think he chose to do it on his own because he believes in his core that he is the person behind the PC party and the conservative party or the UCP party. You know, these people have their own egos. They have their own expectations. You know, they've risen to lofty heights of constituency president and they expect to be heard. They're on the 87 person board, you know, talking to the executive, discussing what should happen and what shouldn't happen. But, you

Carter 1:07:08

you know, they have a sense of themselves that demands to be heard and

Carter 1:07:13

and they're going to speak. Now, some of it might be encouraged. Right. You know, should I speak? I really want to support you. Is this is this good if I come out and say something? Yes. Go do that. But some of it's just going to happen because the.

Carter 1:07:29

You know, the people who have the egos, the people who want to be heard are going to speak it. I mean, the same 17 people that were pissed a year ago are still pissed now. They're just not signing their name to a letter, but some of them may in the next 10 days.

Zain 1:07:46

talk to me about some of the drumbeats we could expect, and then I want to get into versus what we might see versus what we should see if you're organizing the final 10, 15 days.

Corey 1:07:58

All right. Well, I'll preface this by saying I'm not that familiar with either the PC party or the UCP, you know, the activists within the organization. Every party has people who, you

Corey 1:08:08

you know, they'll rotate between central positions, like volunteer positions, like being chairs of various committees, being vice president of policy, being the riding president, being the past president, cycle and repeat all the way through. And it's quite possible this Al Brown fellow is one of those individuals, right? Don't necessarily dispute that. And I will say, this

Corey 1:08:27

this is not really what I think of when I think of that drip campaign that you're describing, because you have had MLAs,

Corey 1:08:34

MLAs, like you've had MLAs, you've had party luminaries of very significant stature, known names across Alberta who have stood up. You've had other riding presidents stand up and call

Corey 1:08:46

call the situation dire or say that this is not the right leader or take extreme or more extreme positions than Al Brown has taken to attack the leader. So this is not – it's not conventionally

Corey 1:08:57

conventionally additive, right? Like when you throw another riding president

Corey 1:09:01

in, all due respect to the riding presidents out there doing great work managing their organizations locally, it doesn't have the same punch as some of the other names that have come before, right?

Corey 1:09:11

right? Sure, sure. What I think Don Braid was doing with his column is he was almost making it an illustrative story. Like this is, this is not an every man, you know, this is a deep party volunteer, but this is somebody who's

Corey 1:09:23

who's hit their breaking point and here's why. And it's a way that you

Corey 1:09:26

tell that story and you can hook it on something.

Corey 1:09:28

But I don't think this is going to result in like another Al Brown story tomorrow, like not with Al Brown, but with somebody different and so

Zain 1:09:34

so forth. There's no like, right, right, right. I

Corey 1:09:37

I think that in terms of those kinds of things, the shoes that are going to drop have dropped. And if they haven't, you're

Corey 1:09:44

you're out of your mind because as

Corey 1:09:46

as it were 10 days, you've got 10 days of voting left. Most people have voted at this point. This is one of these situations where the ballot came and a huge chunk of those people immediately filled it in and sent it out.

Corey 1:09:57

people who didn't are the less engaged, but they're way out. And

Corey 1:10:01

And your ability to affect this, we said this the day basically of the

Corey 1:10:05

the ballots going out, it's kind of already pretty big. People have made up their minds, they've purchased their memberships.

Corey 1:10:12

plus two weeks at this point, plus three weeks, it's sort of done. So

Corey 1:10:17

So I can't imagine we're going to see more of a drip campaign coming out here. I

Corey 1:10:21

I do think the battlefront will probably go now towards the procedural, people who are mad about ballots showing up and not showing up, and less about the arguments for or against a leader.

Corey 1:10:31

In some ways, it seems like the party

Corey 1:10:34

party boards and the courts might be the next steps if there's going to be anything along these lines in terms of additional ballots or whatnot. Now, you kind of threw out, by the way, some

Corey 1:10:43

some people have been getting multiple ballots, some people no ballots. it's every

Corey 1:10:47

every mail-in vote every party

Corey 1:10:49

party not even mail

Corey 1:10:51

mail-in vote but like when you have memberships and that membership has to show up somewhere since

Corey 1:10:55

since the dawn of time right

Corey 1:10:57

right you have a hundred thousand members this shit's gonna happen it's like it's just it's a reality it's an inevitability uh list management is difficult sometimes you've got just imagine you are steven carter on one list and steve stevie carts on another as somebody wrote it down really kind of shitty you know and when they auto sorted it from a to z uh they deleted a couple of lines by mistake and then so somebody didn't get something these things happen it's it's kind of simple stuff um

Corey 1:11:25

um and you can't read too too much into it at least when you're talking about even a couple of dozen cases K

Zain 1:11:30

K-A-R-T-Z, Stevie Karts. Zed.

Zain 1:11:37

is Corey right that procedural is going to dominate, that there's no further, at least perhaps not planned or planted? Am

Zain 1:11:47

Am I simplifying your point? Yeah, jump in, Corey. I mean,

Corey 1:11:50

barely. I would say if I'm wrong, these people are nuts. Like they're doing it wrong because

Corey 1:11:56

people have voted already. So like I don't – because I'll generally apply the principle of charity and assume people are not terrible at their jobs, I don't think there's another shoe to drop because if the shoe's coming now, they're using the shoe wrong.

Zain 1:12:11

It's not bad. I guess if

Zain 1:12:12

the shoe's coming now, they're using the shoe wrong. Okay.

Zain 1:12:14

Okay. That's fine. We'll go with it. Stevie Karts, you're

Carter 1:12:18

mute. You're still wrong.

Carter 1:12:20

How could Corey be so wrong? Because these

Carter 1:12:22

these electors, the ones that are left, this is it. This could be the difference, right? You're hyper-engaged voters. That's what I'm thinking.

Zain 1:12:30

of with Carter on this one, Corey.

Corey 1:12:32

Yeah, you're so wrong. Why wouldn't you go earlier? I'm not saying they shouldn't go. Who cares? People make up their minds late. People leave

Carter 1:12:40

leave their mail in a pile. They get to it after the long weekend. People are nuts. Accept that. We understand that. People are nuts. you know there will be people who listen to this very podcast on like thursday of this week and those people are crazy why would you listen to a topical podcast five days after it's recorded i don't know but they will and they'll write us on the twitter accounts or whatever they have but

Carter 1:13:06

but people don't do things when we steam

Zain 1:13:08

steam there but that's my listen i'm

Carter 1:13:10

i'm making a point here's the point the point is that everybody else to this point has cast their ballots, they're fucking gone. They don't exist. The people who haven't cast their ballots, what's going to motivate them? Well, maybe a steady string of people saying, I used to be a Kenny supporter, but now I can't, is something that they need to hear. Maybe a steady stream of, if we change the leader, we're not going to be able to beat Rachel Notley in the next election. Maybe a steady stream of something. But if you give up now and don't communicate, communicate you're giving up the election giving

Carter 1:13:44

giving it up what

Corey 1:13:46

cory is there any appeal to

Zain 1:13:48

to that argument or

Zain 1:13:48

or is carter is slightly bastardizing your point

Corey 1:13:50

point which we can accept and

Zain 1:13:51

and find tremendous joy

Corey 1:13:53

joy in uh but

Zain 1:13:54

but but but the broader point the broader point like would you if you were in charge of um the strategy here uh for either side put out drip related material for that that final perhaps slightly less engaged part of the membership to to move one way or or another what would your thinking be around that maybe let me phrase it that way yeah

Corey 1:14:14

yeah keep running your fucking campaign my point is if you are thinking that you're going to hold off some additional mla uh for this 11th hour like we are on may 1st these ballots have to be received by may 11th you should have done that last week even in that crazy scheme that carter's talking about yeah call them yeah tell them you can get the ballot out there but it's going to take that that deeper connection. You're not going to run this through.

Corey 1:14:38

If you have those people, if you have those people, you should have deployed them earlier because they could have been more useful in all of the ballots that came before.

Carter 1:14:47

Strategist listeners, just understand that Corey does his taxes on the first day that you can do your taxes. Everybody else does their taxes on the last day you can do your taxes. Okay. So you're wrong. You're different. Everybody else else procrastinates period you're

Corey 1:15:04

well i'm sure we'll get some data this week as to how many votes are already in and i would bet a lot of money it's not going to change that

Corey 1:15:12

you know i i would say probably you've got 75 or more of the votes in would

Carter 1:15:15

would you bet me 104 000 would you well

Carter 1:15:18

i know you have

Zain 1:15:19

have 104 000 no no no 104 000 fans 29 99 because that beautiful pillow steven carter that you have purchased from the strategist.ca that

Zain 1:15:29

that was my with half

Zain 1:15:30

half of each of your faces and a full face of mine, I think we'll make a great, great addition to any living room.

Zain 1:15:40

We don't do this for you, Corey. I said we do this for Carter. We do this for Carter. Carter, I have to ask you. You

Zain 1:15:47

You are organizing these final 10 days or so of voting. What are you doing if you're on either side? Are you, anything special? Anything interesting? Are you saving any of your firepower? Like, seriously, right? Like, I get that you're contradicting and and and contrasting is not wrong you're not saving anybody but what are you actually doing here you're

Carter 1:16:06

you're not saving anybody you're

Carter 1:16:07

you're you're pushing everything out at the i mean what you're doing is telephone calls texts personal visits i mean everything you can think of if you've got the full list of what is it 60 000 ucp members you know who's cast ballots everybody who hasn't cast a ballot you are banging on their doors i mean you might be driving around uh in in Calgary Hayes, if you're Al Brown, picking up ballots because you now can drop off the ballots in these ridings. This is the tomfoolery that needs to happen at this particular stage. Now, this what I'm describing isn't necessarily illegal, but it's this requirement now. Find every single ballot that you can.

Carter 1:16:51

And I'd be willing to bet that 25% of the ballots haven't been cast yet. that will be cast in this election.

Zain 1:17:01

final question for you on this. And Carl, I'll get your take on it too. Do we see one final emotional

Zain 1:17:07

emotional appeal, one final keynote-style speech, one final big oomph from Jason Kenney? He started off the leadership review process with that speech with select members, that being telecast. Does he on his own dime, does he somehow try to do this same sort of statement piece for this final mushy middle membership and would you advise it uh is perhaps the the heart of my question your thoughts on that no

Carter 1:17:35

no i wouldn't advise it i think that we advise your corey

Carter 1:17:38

corey now okay that's great uh that's that's excellent that's that's good what are they we

Carter 1:17:45

no the speech this we talked about this before i don't want to see him anytime he pops up he's going to give fuel to the other side i want to make a telephone calls i mean the guy can make 20 12 hours of a telephone call as a day, you

Carter 1:17:58

you know, set him up on his own little dialer, boom, but call everybody who hasn't voted.

Zain 1:18:02

Carter, you are consistent with your strategy. I will say that, that you said absolutely that that was the last time you wanted to see Jason Kenney. We have seen him, by the way, through some media interviews and through some like stories saying, you know, I will leave kind of adding some initial drip messages. Corey, same question to you.

Zain 1:18:19

Does he do a closing keynote? Does he do a final appeal? What do you think?

Zain 1:18:23

No, I think that could come off as desperate. And

Corey 1:18:25

And there's a lesson I would say to anybody in communications. It's really simple, but it's really important. You

Corey 1:18:32

You don't broadcast to narrowcast. So you're talking about a relatively small group of people at this point who are A, available to you and

Corey 1:18:40

and or, right? And what you want to do is you want to use the leader through those channels. Obviously, you're going to have tons of IVR voice blasts. Hi, this is Jason Kenney. I need you to vote if you think that they're on your list. uh you're going to be calling through to the people who you think are more prominent the you know the owls of the world who are out there who are riding presidents who you think are undecided not him specifically but right

Corey 1:19:02

right in presence who you think that you could then encourage to reach out to their own personal networks and you're going to work through the highest value contacts as the leader i would be really surprised if he doesn't have a phone list every night that he's just plowing

Corey 1:19:14

plowing through and nobody answers their phone anymore so he's leaving the message on

Corey 1:19:19

on the phone saying hey this is jason kenny using their name so they know it was actually him saying i called you at 9 42 sorry

Corey 1:19:26

i missed you uh listen i just wanted to connect with you about this feel free to text me anytime i'm gonna you know i'm i

Corey 1:19:33

i gotta jump into this other thing now because you don't want to have like a flurry of other communications back but if you want to connect just drop me a line and i'll give you a ring and

Corey 1:19:43

that's what you do at this point If you go out and you do this massive appeal to the public, people

Corey 1:19:49

people are going to write an article about Jason Kenney desperately

Corey 1:19:52

desperately making an appeal for the public. Does he think he doesn't have this at this moment?

Corey 1:19:57

There's just no point. That could actually feed a negative narrative you don't need.

Zain 1:20:02

there any show of strength strategy or tactic that could work for him, or is it just go underground, what both of you are saying, and work the phones?

Carter 1:20:11

Play out the show of strength, right? So we do a show of strength. What we're really doing is demanding that the other side counter our show of strength.

Carter 1:20:19

So they're going to do something of their own. And

Carter 1:20:21

And the worst thing that could happen is that we do a show of strength, a 4,000-person rally, a la Pierre Palliet, right?

Carter 1:20:29

And it's in Edmonton, and look at our great show of strength. And then we open the door, and they do 12,000 in Calgary. and let's be clear 12 000 in calgary is infinitely easier than 4 000 in edmonton and you can make that case you can say you know what we had 4 000 in edmonton won't matter one member one vote they're showing that they can crush you so don't do anything that that goads the opposition into taking a stress you know taking a smack at you focus on that which matters which is getting those votes uh getting those votes out quite

Corey 1:21:02

yeah you don't broadcast a narrowcast think about a show think about a 4 000 person rally how many hundreds of person hours is that that you could be working the phones you and your cabinet calling and saying hey

Corey 1:21:13

hey uh listen we really need you to vote right this is the personal connection the deep connection that

Corey 1:21:18

that gets beyond like

Corey 1:21:20

like look you've had your ballot there's 10 days left you've you've

Corey 1:21:24

you've got so little opportunity to vote uh

Corey 1:21:27

uh and you haven't yet so obviously it's going to take a little bit more than just seeing a rally on television because because they tried that, right?

Corey 1:21:34

They had their AGM, that opening thing, and that wasn't enough to get them to vote. So you're

Corey 1:21:38

you're going to have to do that deeper connection to get them moving forward.

Zain 1:21:41

We're going to leave that segment there. Moving on to our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, are you ready? You seem geared up. You seem like you're ready. Overrated or underrated Stephen Carter MLA endorsements as it relates to this specific leadership review. We've talked about this in the past for nomination races. We've talked about this in the past for leadership races, for a leadership review, existing and sitting MLA endorsements overrated or underrated for this particular UCP leadership review for Jason Kenney?

Carter 1:22:10

Overrated unless it's a surprise, right? All of a sudden you get Richard Gottfried's changing sides, then it's a big deal. But if it's just the 20 people who want him out continuing to be the 20 people who want him out, the

Carter 1:22:25

the 20 people who want him to stay continuing to don't want to stay and the other 25 keeping their goddamn mouth shut because they don't want to be involved in this discussion um you know that's been basically what we've been seeing talk

Zain 1:22:37

talk to me about the ones that have kept their mouth shut if they start opening it in support is that

Carter 1:22:45

be but they're not going to right

Carter 1:22:48

you think you think if you stay silent this long you know like you're not going to change that positioning now so

Zain 1:22:53

so in that sense Do you see any prominent folks within the current benches opening up their mouths and endorsing them in these final 10 days?

Carter 1:23:01

Not the electeds, just the standards.

Zain 1:23:05

More overrated, underrated MLA endorsements for this specific leadership review?

Corey 1:23:12

I am going to go out on a limb and say underrated. it um because with the benefit of hindsight if jason kenny loses this we are going to note the lack of endorsements of jason kenny as one of those things that was a bit of a canary in the coal mine here i

Corey 1:23:25

i agree with steven on his point about it matters who the person is and whether you know if they flip or if they were expected or unexpected in some ways doesn't

Corey 1:23:35

doesn't that just sort of speak to the wildness that we're in that there are actually mlas that we know are openly against the leader uh you know and and they could potentially

Corey 1:23:43

move to another side or not is an interesting thought exercise but we're

Corey 1:23:46

we're just sort of numb to this level of open opposition adjacent kenny that

Zain 1:23:50

that exists out there but

Corey 1:23:51

but it's true it's like the you know the old joke um uh

Corey 1:23:54

uh you're out with your drinking buddy and he says there's no god well he's drunk yeah you're out with the pope and he says there's no god you think holy shit it's the pope and he's saying there's no god right so um It matters who it is. And if it goes against their interests, that speaks more strongly than if it doesn't. But the

Corey 1:24:14

the other thing I will say, and I'm throwing this as a question back to you two.

Corey 1:24:20

Cabinet, is anybody tracking active endorsements? I think it has been really eerily quiet. I have not seen cabinet ministers standing up and defending Jason Kenney

Zain 1:24:31

Kenney in any real way. hand i

Corey 1:24:32

i think and i haven't kept

Zain 1:24:33

but i think it's like one hand

Corey 1:24:35

number this is my point and and if they are endorsing they're doing it pretty damn quietly right now and um probably so the question is

Zain 1:24:43

is do you think they're

Corey 1:24:43

they're saving their horsepower

Zain 1:24:44

horsepower like firepower on that core or do you think that

Zain 1:24:48

think the first thing if you're jason kenney is turning to all these people and saying you are endorsing me publicly and loudly yeah

Corey 1:24:55

do so this is my point like what the hell going on and so um am i just not seeing it is it all going to the party is anybody out there tracking that like i i'm really curious at this point who

Corey 1:25:07

who do we actually know is on record for or against jason

Zain 1:25:10

and i say one handful and i actually have not been tracking it like i have no idea like i i can you think of one like as a thought exercise just one

Corey 1:25:20

no not i would be floored if there weren't a few uh but i can't think of anybody who stood stood up there and really strongly supported him on

Zain 1:25:30

I agree. I think that's a great question, Corey. And it's interesting. And it's kind of what I was leading through in terms of what's going to happen in the next 10 days, because there's some pieces that haven't happened, including cabinet endorsements. Corey, I'm going to stick with you on this. On a scale of 1 to 10, the political risk for the federal liberals on

Zain 1:25:48

on the probe of the Emergencies Act. So that's happening right now, 1 being not much risk, 10 being maximum risk. The risks to the federal liberals, right? There's the mandatory review slash probe after the act was used. The risk to them, in your mind, Corey, scale of one to 10.

Corey 1:26:04

Yeah, there's real risk there because we obviously don't know what happened, but we know they backed out of it before there were certain

Corey 1:26:12

certain moments that would have triggered additional conversation. And that to me makes it seem like it wasn't necessarily the most required thing in the world. And if that's the the case then that could come up in a review and that review could be pretty negative at a certain point

Corey 1:26:26

we're also in this powder keg moment still and we've got pierre poliev on the other side and he might just point to a few more things and draw a few more people into his crowd um

Corey 1:26:36

those kinds of reviews can be kind of can

Corey 1:26:39

can be dodgy for the government at the best of times and at the worst of times you

Corey 1:26:43

you you get involved in something like that you're gonna find something right if it's a a broad enough review. And if there is truly some reason to believe the government didn't act perhaps as they needed to, well,

Corey 1:26:55

well, then you're definitely going to find something. So the risk exists, that's for sure.

Zain 1:26:59

Carter, same question to you. One to ten, the political risk for the federal liberals on the probe of their usage of the Emergencies Act.

Carter 1:27:06

I'd say there's very little risk.

Carter 1:27:08

It just feels to me like it was in place for such a short period of time. It was used very very judiciously, I suspect that it was a relatively small

Carter 1:27:24

small push, right? And I don't think we're going to see much unless the act is completely wrong.

Zain 1:27:32

Carter, I'm going to stick with you for our next one. Doug Ford is going to the polls. The Ontario election starts this week. Advice for Doug Ford in his first week. He's got a polling advantage. The progressive parties seem to be split in terms of where their support might be going between the NDP and the Liberals in Ontario.

Zain 1:27:52

Your crystallized advice for week one for Doug Ford as he begins the election campaign in Ontario?

Carter 1:28:01

Don't take anything for granted. The polls at this particular moment don't mean anything. If

Carter 1:28:06

If they stay the same, it's because you did your job, who did their campaign. If they move, that's

Carter 1:28:10

that's to be expected. We

Carter 1:28:12

We have seen time and time again in

Carter 1:28:14

in Canadian politics that these campaign periods matter, that

Carter 1:28:18

that the election period is when the election is won or lost. So don't fuck it up and don't fuck up the election. So, you

Carter 1:28:26

you know, that's the slogan. That's the piece that he needs to focus on right now is minimizing his own fuck up because the second he fucks up, you

Carter 1:28:35

you know, the Ontario liberals are right there. They're They're sniffing away at this. And I think you could also see a move away from the Ontario NDP because if one

Carter 1:28:45

one party coalesces, if he looks beatable, you'll see people moving away from their preferred choice to the party that will beat him, to the winner. And if that happens, Doug Ford's not 42 looking down.

Carter 1:28:59

Doug Ford's 32 looking up.

Zain 1:29:02

Corey, same questions for you, Doug Ford. Ford advice for the first week as the Ontario election campaign begins?

Corey 1:29:09

Yeah, it's not his fuck-ups he needs to worry about. He's Doug Ford. He's a Ford. I mean, fuck-ups are baked into the equation here. His support has been pretty durable across the board here. Super basic analysis here. The

Corey 1:29:22

The risk is one of the two opposition campaigns takes off, right? If all of a sudden Horvath just fades and

Corey 1:29:28

goes way back and all of that support goes to the liberals or vice versa right and

Corey 1:29:32

and um and that is i think what he's got to watch out for so he's got to make sure that in he's in you know in his own remarks back he's not accidentally propping up one at the expense of the other he's got to be quite intentional about making sure that this doesn't seem to be something that feeds well

Corey 1:29:49

well look we've seen this a thousand times i'll use two elections in 2015 as examples right there

Corey 1:29:54

there was the federal election where all of a sudden uh you know the The three parties were all polling pretty closely going into the French language debate.

Corey 1:30:02

And then all of a sudden, coming out of that, the NDP dropped in

Corey 1:30:07

The Liberals managed to climb. There was a little bit of daylight there, and it just fed a virtuous cycle for the Liberals, a vicious cycle for the NDP. Liberals continued to climb. NDP continued to drop. Everybody said the NDP are the option, or sorry, the Liberals are the option here. The NDP are out.

Corey 1:30:22

And all of a sudden, we've got a Liberal majority government, the only majority government that

Corey 1:30:26

Trudeau has managed to get so far.

Corey 1:30:28

The other version would be in 2015 here in Alberta.

Corey 1:30:32

The PCs went into that election in the lead.

Corey 1:30:37

But ultimately, there was so much anti-PC antipathy after a

Corey 1:30:41

a couple of very strong moments, including then-Premier Jim Prentice giving his look-in-the-mirror speech, what

Corey 1:30:48

what was perceived as arrogance of the merging together with the floor crossing led by Danielle Smith into the PC cabinet, uh

Corey 1:30:55

uh and um people looked around and they said who if if not them who and

Corey 1:31:00

and uh and i think the fate was sealed on debate night when apprentice

Corey 1:31:04

apprentice pointed to notley

Corey 1:31:06

notley and in all of his actions and all his words made clear he saw her as the opponent i think he was trying to be tactical i think he thought there's no way alberta would elect an ndp government but what albertan saw was oh they're the opposition and all of a sudden boom

Corey 1:31:21

boom there you go and a virtuous cycle kicks off again and we got to a point where after

Corey 1:31:26

after that debate basically there were no polls that showed the ndp not beating the pcs and before that debate there

Corey 1:31:32

there were almost no polls that didn't show the wild rose beating the pcs so the

Corey 1:31:37

actions of the premier can dictate how the conversation goes going forward not to take anything away from rachel notley in her debate performance but a lot of that was also an own own goal by Jim Prentice, right?

Corey 1:31:48

He made a pretty serious fuck up in that debate.

Zain 1:31:52

I'm going to actually dovetail off that and ask you a final question, Corey. I'll begin with you because there was a third participant at that debate, one Brian Jean, and he is now actively involved and will be for the next 17-ish days or so, at the very least, as it relates to the fate of Jason Kenney. We haven't seen a lot of Brian Jean, Corey. So the question to you, I ask, is if you were giving advice to Brian Jean for the course of the next two weeks, what would it be?

Corey 1:32:21

My advice was the same as it's been for a long time, which is it's not about you. The more you make it about you, the worse you make your chances here. Because Jason

Corey 1:32:28

Jason Kenney's whole line of don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative, got

Corey 1:32:34

got a big assist when Danielle Smith and Brian Jean decided they wanted to participate in the conversation there. Because it's no longer maybe

Corey 1:32:42

maybe Jason Kenney is the guy we don't want and we can find the perfect conservative leader. There were a couple of imperfect conservative contenders to compare

Corey 1:32:50

If you're Brian Jean, work

Corey 1:32:52

work the phones, do the stuff on background, the same advice we had for Jason Kenney.

Corey 1:32:56

You should not be going out there in a big way.

Zain 1:32:59

Don't see a lot of Brian Jean, Carter. Seems like he may have taken some of that advice. Question for you is, does your advice change to him as we ran out the episode, your advice to Brian Jean for the next two weeks? No,

Carter 1:33:09

No, he's better off to stay away. And Jason Kenney's, you know, better to talk to, you know, when he's making those telephone calls. Mentioned how Brian Jean couldn't win in 2015 and how Daniel Smith screwed up 2015. The United Conservative Party is not based on politicians' actions. It's based on the people's actions. And that's where Jason Kenney's always represented. it um danielle and uh and brian have severely fucked this up by getting involved as quickly as they did if they just did what i suspect uh travis taves is doing and shut the hell up until such time as there's actually a leadership uh travis is going to have a much stronger position

Zain 1:33:49

we are going to leave it there that's a wrap on episode 986 of the strategist my name is zane velgey with me as always horry hogan stephen carter and we'll see you next time

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