Transcript
Zain
0:02
This is The Strategist, episode 989. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, it's
Zain
0:10
it's a Friday afternoon. We should be out on a patio somewhere. We should be trying to spend time with our families or pretending to be doing work. But instead, we're doing this, which I guess falls into the category of pretending to be doing work. So I take it back. That's the show. Thank you.
Carter
0:25
This is our second time
Carter
0:26
time together today, Carter. Carter? Yeah, we did a show. I don't really understand why we're doing another show. Corey said something about the listeners and paying us.
Corey
0:38
other strategists on the
Zain
0:40
Where's your paddle, Carter? You have to put your paddle up, and you can't mention anyone else on the show.
Carter
0:47
Okay, first of all, we did not issue paddles. Well, you
Carter
0:52
We, collectively. I'm a part of we. he said i he said i do it again i would like paddles to be distributed so i can paddle some people's asses that
Corey
1:04
i mean you're talking we know
Carter
1:07
know you're talking about us
Carter
1:09
yeah you know that you know that i know you guys are the worst just moderate your behavior do better yeah
Carter
1:17
know what happens you know there's consequences go you have 15 saw tom clark say that part 15 seconds i'm currently reading a book um i
Carter
1:26
i don't remember the title but it's about you two you fuckers yeah so oh
Carter
1:30
there we go that
Corey
1:32
that was the happy trombone sound i made that happy in case you said something that wasn't uh warren guinness had that's
Corey
1:38
fuck we also uh how
Corey
1:40
how are you i'm really well thank you i i spent
Zain
1:43
spent some time making some trombone sounds so really
Zain
1:45
in my happy place
Zain
1:47
uh carter do you want to talk about our live show in edmonton it's going to be exciting and then we'll talk about the show we did today and then we'll talk about whatever the fuck yeah
Carter
1:54
yeah it's in less than a week in edmonton hey on may the 19th don't get it mixed up with may the 18th may the 18th is the day that we're going to find out the results of
Carter
2:03
jason kenney's little leadership excursion and uh may the 19th we're going to talk about what it means uh for people of alberta and we're only going to charge you like 30 bucks like it's nothing you go to the strategist.ca you buy your tickets it's going to be a maharaja hall uh
Carter
2:17
free parking free parking at the maharaja so uh you're
Carter
2:21
you're more than welcome to join us and we're gonna keep the power on the whole time i
Zain
2:26
i don't i don't know what happened here
Zain
2:30
i am in my own house but you you clearly invoked the curse of the maharaja on me it's exactly the
Zain
2:36
the lights have gone out go up uh
Zain
2:38
uh great well that's fine uh i was
Carter
2:40
was i was in there's nothing there's nothing
Zain
2:42
nothing for me to read here because there's no show prepared so that's fine i'm
Carter
2:46
i was in surrey and i was saying we were going to go to maharaja and do this this show and they kept asking which maharaja and i'm like the maharaja they wanted to know which maharaja we were interviewing because
Carter
2:57
because apparently that's where all the politicians are you know they're all former maharajas so now
Carter
3:02
now we know now i learned this stuff in in surrey i learned a lot i
Zain
3:05
i want to quickly let you know you've learned nothing that made no sense whatsoever It was actually
Zain
3:10
pretty offensive, too. It was a bunch
Carter
3:11
bunch of bullshit. And it was borderline racist.
Carter
3:15
Those fuckers in Surrey. They
Carter
3:17
They tell the stories.
Carter
3:20
By the way, one for one in my AFL prediction so far.
Zain
3:27
That's the happy child. I want to talk about the Riot Jaspers show that we did this morning, I guess.
Corey
3:31
guess. Yeah, we were on the Jasperson show. And we did an okay job. but we were a little bit held back by the fact that you were a panelist on it and you provided opinions.
Carter
3:40
So we want to do it again.
Corey
3:42
We want to do
Carter
3:42
do it again. Remember when he jumped in and took over from Ryan and said, I'm
Carter
3:46
I'm going to let you speak, Ryan, but my boy, Corey has to finish his thoughts. That's what he did. He jumped right in. You
Corey
3:55
comment and he cut
Corey
3:58
you off and said, hold on, hold on. We want to hear from Corey on this, even though it was somebody else's his show so that was very nice
Carter
4:04
nice that's good yeah
Zain
4:05
yeah no i mean listen uh you got to keep ordering if they're not doing it you got to do it i mean no offense ryan but i had to step in i had to step in yeah i
Corey
4:13
had to do understood uh
Zain
4:15
uh let's move it on to our first segment cory what is our first segment it's a grab bag where we don't have segments this is a friday afternoon we're going to treat this like a friday afternoon uh guys what do we want to talk about let me list you the options we got trudeau in ukraine we've got the ongoing crisis there the russian war we've got the conservative leadership debate round number two happened in edmonton if you don't understand the sad trombone that's where it's from uh because it was a uh mainstay of that debate when you mention the proper name of anyone else on the stage and or the prime minister you got one of these that Corey will invoke. Thank you, Corey.
Zain
4:57
And we also have, Corey, our
Zain
4:59
our province of Alberta. A couple of fascinating things happening here in Alberta. Number one, the swagger of one Jason Kenney. He's actually leaving town the day before the leadership review results come in. He's going to the United States, to the Senate. it. We also have really interesting analysis by Jason Markosoff, who's now of CBC, about the breakdown of where the UCP memberships are coming from and some conclusions that can be drawn from that. So Carter,
Zain
5:30
Carter, Corey, where do we want to go? The direction is yours and we'll hit on anything you want to talk about.
Corey
5:36
want to do the reverse of the Jesper syndrome. I want to start with federal politics and go to alberta because there's a ton i want to talk about in alberta the big thing i want to talk about in alberta is what do we think is going to happen with this review because we're getting to your point almost contradictory data about
Corey
5:52
about what's going to occur with this leadership review uh reveal
Corey
5:56
reveal i suppose on the 18th right
Corey
5:59
right but um the federal stuff is just so fun it's just it was like you
Zain
6:05
conservative leadership stuff oh yeah specifically that was
Zain
6:08
the debate i've never given
Corey
6:09
given us your take a little jump from there yeah
Corey
6:11
yeah um i don't know what that was i don't know what i watched it was like if if twitter decided twitter wanted to become a debate somebody mashed the concept of twitter and political debates together and just to the dumbest thing i have ever seen so sound effects we went over that right yeah
Corey
6:28
paddles you referenced the idea that you had paddles and you could only use the paddles so many times so if you used it too much sorry pierre but you're not allowed to jump in on some of those later things limiting
Corey
6:37
limiting them to 15 seconds a policy debate limited
Corey
6:41
limited to 15 seconds i mean that's the 280 characters of talking and
Corey
6:45
and um then there was also just just a total inability to get into anything in any substantive way up to and including the point that the moderator was asking questions like what's your favorite tv show what's the what's the last thing you what's the what's the most recent tv show you binged what kind of music do you like listening to i mean it was it
Corey
7:05
it was was embarrassing it was it was i thought this was supposed to be like a serious political party um uh it's it wasn't at least not on that stage not on that night and there were actually moments i shouldn't be totally unfair where you heard substantive things like
Corey
7:20
like oh i don't know pierre polyev wanting to fire the governor of the bank of canada but then like no follow-up because
Corey
7:26
because he only got 15 seconds so that's as much of a thought as you could ever get out pretty
Corey
7:29
pretty pretty crazy he stop and
Corey
7:31
this is just what we do now is this a thing now is this what debates are this
Carter
7:35
this this is what debates are now cory i mean they want to boil everything down this is one of the reasons that we have this podcast right like because um you know almost all the political commentary that we that we are invited to participate in and and that we've been doing uh and that is done in in canada and the united states is all three second takes six second takes um really quick stuff that uh is designed to hit at the opponent and not ever dig in to what is actually going on in politics. This is just a natural extension where we just simply move past pundits doing punditry and simply ask the candidates themselves to be pundits. Give us your feedback in 15 seconds.
Corey
8:17
Let me ask you this. What did we learn? I'm this serious. It's not rhetorical. What did we learn about
Corey
8:22
about the candidates based on their answer of their favorite type of music? I pity those
Corey
8:28
poor candidates up there trying to think on their feet as to what's an answer i can give that makes me feel relatable and prime ministerial and makes a point i mean it was it was it
Corey
8:36
it was either there's
Zain
8:38
there's a lot to focus on but carter is there is there any value gain from a question like that you know we talk about the having a beer with this person test in in conventional politics i think i understand what they were trying to go for but does that actually translate late like those sort of it's
Carter
8:54
it's relatability right we want to be relatable to the audience we want the audience to say yeah i will sit down and go for a beer with this person or this person seems relatable to me and there's an every man test uh or every woman test if you will that that politics always relies on do i see enough of myself in this person to allow myself to vote for them and that is actually one of the fundamental tests of politics we tend to vote for people who look like us, who sound like us, who behave like us. We want a reflection of us to be our elected representative. Now, we could argue about whether that makes sense or not. I personally think it's ridiculous. You know, you want someone who is capable, not someone who is like us. You know, a lot of people aren't capable to be politicians. That's not an affront. That just is, it is just a different skill set. I'm not capable of being a neurosurgeon. uh cory is of course i mean there's never been anything uh the man has failed at but everything else everybody else has things that they can't do but
Carter
9:59
but this so that you do the everyman stuff and this isn't new i mean i've seen these we've seen these little profile pieces in the newspaper before you know the difference is that we're wasting national television time if you will national television time of course not being a real thing anymore because we just throw everything up on the the internet it's all international available at any time but we wasted the time um where we thought we were going to discuss something substantive and we wound up discussing um you know the
Carter
10:27
the harry potter books or or worse you know worse than harry potter uh jordan
Carter
10:32
jordan peterson's books i mean how do we wind up discussing that like
Carter
10:36
like justice fiction though
Corey
10:37
though justice full of fiction so
Carter
10:39
so i mean both of them completely made up um but
Carter
10:42
but there you go whatever make your
Zain
10:43
your bed carter That's rule number one. Corey, you want to jump in here?
Corey
10:48
Yeah, I want to help Carter make his bed by saying I agree. I think that's entirely true. And part of why I'm frustrated is there was a mismatch between my expectations and what we found. And I don't know if that was always the plan or if this was some sort of wild swing after what was a very aggressive and very, I think, substantive debate that occurred earlier, like an unsanctioned, not party event with the Manning Center. center and
Corey
11:13
and and so maybe i shouldn't complain at all maybe i shouldn't care at all because we got the debate that i wanted in some ways right i didn't want it to be that aggressive but they certainly got into substance on that first unofficial one there uh
Corey
11:25
uh but tuning in expecting to hear about people's policy positions and being able to go a little bit more into detail and have people press
Corey
11:32
press them on their policy positions we found not that we found instead uh well and so And some of the answers were so
Corey
11:40
so cliche, they were amazing. Like Pierre Polyev watched
Corey
11:43
watched something about the dangers of socialism and the type of music he likes is Paul Brandt.
Corey
11:51
Either the most one-dimensional human being I have ever met or not being very sincere. Carter,
Zain
11:58
Carter, were there, and I don't want to go to the cliched winners or losers, but was there an outright loser from this? And think even broader than beyond the stage in some ways. I think losers as in the conservative party, did they need to make a better case for themselves as a collective? The viewing public, I don't mean to get into philosophizing too much about democracy and the politics of grievance that we saw in that stage with at least a few candidates, but who were the ultimate losers of something like what folks watched earlier this week? Well,
Carter
12:30
Well, I think that the ultimate loser of the
Carter
12:33
the one-two punch of the last two of the two debates was the Conservative Party of Canada, because the Conservative Party of Canada watched themselves kind of get ripped open and laid bare as the multiple kind of arms of the conservative movement that they actually are. They aren't a singular party. They represent all these different factions. And that was shown in the first debate. And in the second debate, they tried to mitigate that. A normal thing that you would do is if something was bad, you would try and do something different to avoid that in the future. And they chose things that made it worse. And that's where I think they're going to, you know, that was the suffering. If there's nothing between looking that bad and on both sides of this, right, if there's nothing in between it, then it's really going to be a hard thing to make the Conservative Party the vehicle that needs to achieve the next government, which we've long held. held. We've long held that it's a tough play to make this conservative party the next government because of who they are. And they're
Carter
13:44
they're walking right into it. They're the ones who are losing the most.
Zain
13:48
Corey, can we talk about Pierre Polyarieva as it relates to crypto and the comment you talked about earlier, the firing of the governor of the Bank of Canada, how he would do that? In fact, he's doubled down on the latter today in a video talking about how if there was someone that was was underperforming at your work wouldn't you fire them justin trudeau refuses to i don't talk
Zain
14:08
talk to me about what that what that and you talked about it on the jess person show that planned moment for pierre means and and and the extension of it like how do you go about trying to beat this guy when when he's kind
Zain
14:22
kind of insane with what he's talking about in some ways maybe he isn't well
Corey
14:26
well i have so many thoughts uh one of them is it's more evidence he's never actually worked in a real workplace if he thinks someone underperforming just gets walked out the door. Just gets fired. Yeah.
Corey
14:39
You know, I mean, there's like a million meetings with HR. You try to help them course correct. You
Carter
14:42
You know what? That has not been my experience.
Corey
14:47
Or you have to pay them a big severance. Oh,
Carter
14:49
Oh, yeah. That has worked in my... Okay. There
Corey
14:51
There you go. We're more back in your
Corey
14:54
The suggestion that the current Bank of Canada governor has, quote,
Corey
14:58
quote, made, became the ATM machine of this government. Can we stop on that? First of all, ATM, the M stands for machine. You don't need to say ATM machine. Most
Corey
15:07
Most important point, if you hear nothing else, hear that. But
Corey
15:09
But second point is that the current
Zain
15:12
Canada- Take note, NDP party. Go ahead, Corey. The
Corey
15:15
current Bank of Canada governor has actually reduced the amount of assets on the Bank of Canada's sheets. And if you adjust for inflation, it's gone down by kind of a material amount. So So the complaint seems more leveled at the last guy, not the current guy. And so there doesn't seem to be a ton of actual substance there, which leads us again back to politics, of course. And politics are fine for politicians to get involved in. But imagine
Corey
15:44
imagine he became prime minister of Canada. Let's just say that, right?
Corey
15:49
Day one, you fire the governor of the Bank of Canada. Well, you have materially changed your relationship with the bank because in this scenario, for three years plus, you've been talking about the Bank of Canada being a shitty thing in a shitty place in some way, shape, or form, or at the very least, the governor.
Corey
16:04
is that going to change the concept of the independence of the central bank?
Corey
16:10
I would argue very dramatically. And then you've got to deal with that. It also means, by the way, you own everything that the bank does from that point forward. You don't get to say, well, that's just a central bank doing independent central bank things. And the crazy pressure you're going to have on you anytime the bank raises interest rates,
Corey
16:27
inflation targets, takes a step like quantitative easing to do something. Do you really want to deal with that? Do you want to open this Pandora's box? Would you want to deal with that as prime minister? It's very short sighted.
Corey
16:40
Very short sighted. Carter,
Zain
16:41
Carter, talk to me about that and talk to me about it in the confines,
Zain
16:45
confines, we're in the run-up to this crypto crash we're also experiencing where Pierre-Paul, you ever said, listen, crypto is the way to go, sidestep inflation, putting your eggs in that basket.
Carter
16:55
I mean, this is really important. He told us what his solution was. He told us that his solution existed in these non-expert forms, right? We can move away from the banks of Canada because the Bank of Canada and these elites that are running it, these Ottawa elites, they don't understand the new world that they're moving to. And since he's made that statement, I mean, crypto has plummeted. I read a stream yesterday about all the number of people that are taking their own lives because of the plummet of crypto that have lost millions of dollars, at least on paper. Who knows how much they actually invested at the beginning? inning.
Carter
17:31
But the point is that this
Carter
17:33
this is not stable. And there's a reason why we govern financial markets. We govern financial markets so that government can, you know, we can step in and stop
Carter
17:44
people from theoretically losing their entire life savings. It doesn't happen in the crypto world. I mean, I know a guy who invested like $60 in crypto yesterday, and it turned into less than a single penny, less than a single penny. And that $60 may not mean anything to that guy that we're not allowed to refer to on this podcast, lest you get a sad trombone. But that guy who lost $60 was just playing a game. The people who were losing a million dollars, the people who were losing the down payments on their houses, the people who were losing real money, they weren't playing a game and they didn't understand that the game that they were playing didn't have rules to protect them.
Carter
18:22
he's leapt into that space because he wants to be the bro. He wants to be the guy with all the solutions. Well, I'll tell you something, man, these are hard decisions and hard solutions. And if we put Pierre Palliev in the prime minister's seat, we're going to very quickly find out that these really hard problems don't have easy solutions. And he will have fed us the lies that we're willing to believe yet again. Yeah.
Zain
18:47
Corey, is it, go ahead, jump in and then I've got a follow-up for you. Yeah,
Carter
18:50
Yeah, look. Are you going to admit you're the guy, Corey?
Corey
18:53
I'm the guy. I bought
Corey
18:55
$60 of this thing. I'll talk about it in a minute. But your point is right, Stephen.
Corey
18:59
People, it's so easy to say freedom, freedom, freedom, but we paint crosswalks because we don't want people to get hit by cars. We have financial regulations because we don't want people to throw themselves into them. And I'm deadly serious on this point. There
Corey
19:13
There is consequences to going into financial activity that you don't fully understand. That's why if you've ever had a mutual fund and you're talking to an advisor about what your risk profile is, they're required to do that. They're required to ask things about your financial sophistication. Make sure you're making these decisions in an informed fashion before you go into riskier asset classes. And there are none of those guardrails with
Corey
19:40
I think I often shit on crypto and people think that I am I'm, you know, I'm denying the future or I'm somehow negative on the entire concept.
Corey
19:49
And it's fascinating and it's something to watch. And its overall rise can't be can't
Corey
19:55
But it is not something for amateurs. I saw some statistics the other day that 16 percent of Americans have some sort of cryptocurrency now. That's fucking scary. That's really scary. Gary, let's talk about that collapse in the last couple of days. There's a coin called Terra. And
Corey
20:11
And it's actually two coins. There's a what's called a stable coin that's supposed to be pegged to the US dollar called like
Corey
20:17
like UST, which is the US dollar Terra. And then there was a corresponding coin trades
Corey
20:24
trades under Luna. And the idea is whenever that one that's supposed to be pegged to the dollar gets up or below it, there's financial transactions that essentially swap with the coin and the value is it's complicated, we don't need to get into it. But what you do need to know is it went from a hundred and fifty two dollars canadian at the start of april to literally zero cents like less this wasn't a fringe this
Zain
20:45
was like a popular thousand
Corey
20:46
thousand of a cent and this was the fourth most popular cryptocurrency there people
Corey
20:51
people lost millions millions and millions life savings lost what steven's talking about about people taking their own lives absolutely true absolutely tragic because they just felt they had no other options they got in way over their heads and
Corey
21:05
and uh the idea that we have a candidate for uh you know the leadership the conservative party of canada who is suggesting that this very volatile asset class is a way to
Corey
21:17
protect yourself against volatility to avoid inflation i don't fucking care what your actual words were when you're parsing it here
Corey
21:25
what you left people with was the impression that they can avoid rising costs by putting their money into crypto since he made that comment and bought the the shawarma, waved the shawarma around, 36
Corey
21:36
36% reduction in Bitcoin. Don't even know what it is today. Haven't looked at it today.
Corey
21:41
That's a lot less shawarma, right? And if you bought that thinking you were going to be protected against 6.5% inflation, well, fuck
Corey
21:50
fuck you, I guess, right? And somebody who's the finance critic for the conservatives and is supposed to know about these things told
Corey
21:57
told you to do this, told you this was a good idea, led you with that impression
Zain
22:01
This is why I've always said that when there's someone who's underperforming as their job, like Pierre
Corey
22:06
Pierre Polyev just has as related to advising us on crypto, you
Zain
22:10
you got to fire him, Carter. You got to fire Pierre Polyev. I've always said this, Carter. That's how it works. Let's just issue him a severance and get rid of him. However, Carter, I want to follow up on this with you, which is, has Pierre's strategy of complex problems we as a country and as a population face. Here are my three-step, five-step simple solutions. Does the failure of the crypto
Zain
22:37
create an opening for his competitors, or is that a red herring that they shouldn't follow? What do you think? What is the impact of this crypto crash, and how should his competitors, Sharae, Brown, others, take advantage of this guy who proposes simple solutions to complex problems? He himself might be in over his head in that regard.
Carter
22:59
I think they should bang him right up on the head with it. I would try and find a Canadian that bought crypto when they heard Pierre Polyev talking about it. I would put out the feelers and follow the Twitterverse and find someone in the Twitterverse who said, I bought crypto and Pierre told me to buy crypto. And now I can't even sell this stuff. It's down to zero. All of my money is gone. on. And because he was essentially, you know, he, he wasn't, he didn't, he didn't go so far as to give investing advice. Like, I don't think, you know, he's, I don't think he's run afoul of any of the, the rules rules, but he led a lot of people towards a solution that didn't exist. And it could really hurt, um, you
Carter
23:43
you know, just the people in the, in the, in
Carter
23:45
in the regular world. And, and I'd find it and bang on them because it's not, you're not necessarily going to be able to find, um,
Carter
23:52
um, all the situations for all the things that he's, he's claimed, like the stuff that he's done on housing. I think we all agree while completely simplified and really not a solution at all was extremely easy to listen to and understand and, you know, be on his side for, so getting in on something like this, uh, where you can really take him apart and say, no, this is, this is something that's bad. And you recommended this don't walk away from this. It's, it's something that also happened recently, compared to Jean Charest voting to keep abortion
Carter
24:24
abortion restrictions in the 1990s, or the 1980s, I guess. It's a totally different thing
Carter
24:31
thing to bang on someone who said something a month ago than it is to bang on someone who said something 40 years ago.
Zain
24:37
Corey, how would you, if you're one of Pierre's competitors, be attacking him on this? And even Even more generally, has he shown a weakness in his candidacy that the last couple of days have opened up?
Corey
24:51
Well, I would probably be using it as a proof point to a broader point. And what that broader point is depends on whether you're Lesley Lewis or Jean Charest. If you're Lesley Lewis, it probably takes on a flavor not of, look, he's beholden to the populace. It's, look, he got outside of something he understood, and he's not as good as he thinks he is. And he's not as much of a supporter of the convoy as he pretends to be. And he's a pretender. He's a phony. Like, that's what I would do if I was Leslyn Lewis, right?
Corey
25:20
If I were Jean Charest, I would be saying, look how extreme he is. Look how much he gets captured into the cause celebre that's pulled up from the United States, these right-wing extreme views, whether it be on cryptocurrency, whether it be on the convoy and lockdowns and all of these things. He's just far too extreme. But in either case, it's not the point. It's the point that reinforces the point. Because you're not going to win on whether Pierre Polyev made
Corey
25:48
made smart advice on crypto or not. That's got to be part of a bigger package that tells you the story of the man. And
Corey
25:53
And that's going to be different depending on which of the opponents you are.
Zain
25:57
Carter, let's talk about Shoray as we close up the federal conservative stuff.
Zain
26:02
He didn't win that debate.
Zain
26:04
They said the debates were for him. He's a knife fighter in debates. Just wait till the debates. He needed to win Manning Center. Okay, you agree that that's not a home field advantage for him. He goes into the official federal conservative leadership debate, doesn't outright win it. Is he kind of fucked here, Carter, from like a momentum building and generation perspective, which seems like he definitely needs in order to get more people into
Zain
26:28
into the mix and sell memberships?
Carter
26:31
I don't know, because I'm not sure that he didn't win. You have to segment the audience in order to figure out if he won or not. You can't just take a cumulative total. This is like saying, you know, who won the debate in the federal election in the States, right? It's binary. One of the two candidates needs to win the debate. Well, not really. One of the candidates needs to win the debate with the independents
Carter
26:57
independents and their core supporters. And the
Carter
27:01
the independents are far more important.
Carter
27:03
Well, where was the rest of Canada? Because I think that Pierre
Carter
27:06
Pierre didn't come off well, especially after
Carter
27:08
after the Manning Center debate or the strong and free, Canada's strong and free foundation
Carter
27:13
foundation or whatever the fuck it is. It's a stupid ass thing. um
Carter
27:17
um that thing i i thought that pierre lost that i thought that charre actually did a good job so i'm not prepared to concede your point that
Carter
27:25
that that charre didn't win i think that charre won with people he needed to appeal to um
Carter
27:30
um and skippy came across looking pretty weak so
Carter
27:34
i don't know time time tells on these things it's really hard too because we don't you know there's no poll out there the next day you know like all the polls that we've seen on on these you know who's going going to win it's a gen pop poll and people are self-identifying as um self-identifying as conservatives and i'm not sure that that is is the way to get this this polling information especially if the prediction of 300 to 500 000 members holds true that's a big chunk of people who brought in those those voters because if it's if it's brown to your earlier uh position that you thought that brown was in a position to do well uh you said that on the jesperson show um
Carter
28:14
um if it's Brown, then
Carter
28:16
then everything's up in the air.
Carter
28:18
If Brown brings in 100,000 and Charest brings in 75,000 and Pierre brought in 25,000, it's going to be an interesting race.
Zain
28:27
Corey, what are you doing if you're the liberals right now? Are you just sitting on your hands and getting your war room ready and clipping everything you see? Or is there anything fundamental you need to be doing right now?
Corey
28:38
No, you don't need to get involved in the other person's race especially when commentary is being somewhat critical of it at
Zain
28:45
at different points what's
Corey
28:46
what's the point it's the it's the classic if your opponent's lighting themselves on fire you
Corey
28:50
you know you don't want to throwing gasoline is a way you can burn yourself so just don't uh
Corey
28:55
uh but you are definitely taking the opportunity to capture all of the footage you need and uh attend the events of the different candidates getting the shots that might make up the campaign ads down the road and preparing getting
Corey
29:07
getting ready looking at the lines of attack they're using and thinking about what What your counterpoints would be probably testing them on smaller scales to make sure that you're durable for whatever comes out of this debate. And of course, it's always moving to the
Corey
29:22
That's true when you think about how Canadians felt about the convoy. That's true when you think about how Canadians felt about crypto. I bet you it's way worse today than it was when Pierre Polyev was making his comments. So you got to stay live to your environment as well. But people
Corey
29:38
are so impatient and they're so ready to throw that punch and there's a good part to defining it for the general Canadian public. But to
Corey
29:45
to Stephen's point, this
Corey
29:47
this is a contest that is 1-2% of Canadians are going to be voting in. 1-2%. So
Corey
29:55
you can't assume, you can't do all of the stuff now because then you're just giving them an opportunity to have their candidates stress tested with general population messaging too. And that's not to your advantage.
Zain
30:08
Carter, let's move to the provincial scene.
Zain
30:11
Is Jason Kenney going to win this thing next Wednesday? you
Carter
30:14
know i i wasn't asked that question on jasper said ryan doesn't uh ryan you know bounces around like some sort of you know crazy ass host it doesn't give a shit about me really um and and so he asked cory and cory said yes and uh cory's wrong um
Corey
30:31
because it might be yeah
Carter
30:33
yeah jason kenney i mean i i really i i shouldn't say that we none of us know right because it is is fixed it doesn't have uh we don't have any polling information um the
Carter
30:45
processes that they're using um could
Carter
30:48
could lead to any any type of outcome excuse me but
Carter
30:53
think overall um the party's screwed right
Carter
30:56
right regardless because you know i think
Carter
31:00
think it was you zane who brought in these kind of astronomical projections kenny's gonna win big and
Carter
31:05
and my need you know let's assume that he does kenny wins big how does everybody respond well
Carter
31:10
well that doesn't seem right yeah
Carter
31:14
kenny wins by eight
Carter
31:17
well how many votes were cast i mean those four thousand memberships were all purchased on the 10 credit cards how do we feel about that now right
Carter
31:25
don't know how do we feel about that obviously would have made a difference but i don't think that necessarily you
Carter
31:30
you know we're not you know it's
Carter
31:32
it's going to be bad the only outcome that
Carter
31:36
gives us a real clean
Carter
31:38
clean victory or defeat if you will is kenny losing and
Carter
31:41
and kenny losing um throws
Carter
31:44
throws the party into complete disarray uh
Carter
31:46
uh because the next leader if it's brian jean or if it's danielle smith is going to be leading a fraction of this party or
Carter
31:53
or even if it's doug schweitzer or travis taves are they going to be able to hold the whole party together and
Carter
32:00
and i just don't think that it's going to be possible so i think that you know the the 20th of may when or the 19th of may when people come and see our live show in edmonton at the maharaja hall for only 30 tickets still available at the strategist.ca uh get yours today cory
Carter
32:17
cory is cory and i are planning to sit on a love seat together
Carter
32:24
they make a great okay there's a they
Carter
32:27
make a great gift you should give in
Carter
32:28
in fact i had someone reached out to me yesterday texted me and said that she'd bought tickets for her sister and i thought how nice then i found out she didn't much care for her sister so that was uh that was a setback but nonetheless you can buy tickets for people you like or don't like i'm fine either way
Carter
32:47
um i don't know where i was zane but thank you uh for that opportunity no
Zain
32:50
no i'm done neither do i thank you carter for uh the commentary that ended up in the abyss cory why did you say he's gonna going to win?
Corey
32:59
So I think there are reasons to believe he's going to win and reasons to be doubtful he's going to win. But for me, the balance is that he's
Corey
33:07
he's more likely to win than not. And I gave three reasons on the Jesperson show, which I can summarize very quickly here.
Corey
33:13
One is he controls the process, right? So
Corey
33:17
So if you assume that he controls the process, he can control the outcome, which is something we've said a lot of times about elections and contests, then you have have to give him a bit of an edge there two is he seems supremely confident he's going to win
Corey
33:30
and three is his opponents have never shown the ability to organize when you think back to that agm they had in the fall where they were supposed to show up in numbers to to vote
Corey
33:41
against him and have a show of force and when you look at even the leaderships that he was running and when you look at some of the rumblings that occurred last summer about who might be willing to leave caucus and then ultimately very few did and they didn't do it on
Corey
33:56
on their own right they got kicked out then
Corey
33:59
then there's just not a lot of reason to believe they're going to overperform now the one thing i didn't say on jesper sim but i think i said it on west of center last week was um
Corey
34:10
the one place where you could argue they didn't underperform was red deer the
Corey
34:15
the to get people to a red deer to vote in person because 15 000 fucking people were going to show up and red deer and vote and that's hard to call an underperformance i don't know how much of it was them how much was uh you know grassroots but
Corey
34:27
but does it matter if it's grassroots that could be very problematic for jason kenney if it's them
Corey
34:32
them that could be very problematic for jason kenney but those are my three reasons um
Corey
34:37
um the reasons why we might think hmm maybe jason kenney is in more more trouble than he thinks is people
Corey
34:43
people lie to leaders right
Corey
34:44
right including when leaders call and poll and say hey do you support me uh
Corey
34:49
uh there is the most recent example in red deer where a lot of people were going to show up and that intensity suggests that he was in trouble there and
Corey
34:56
and then the final one is some reporting by markasoff about where the memberships are coming from where
Corey
35:01
where they break down within the province of alberta and most of them are rural and
Corey
35:05
and on its surface that doesn't seem to be a great thing for the conservative premier.
Zain
35:11
Carter, let's talk about that last point that Corey brought up and that I mentioned off the top, right? Which is the analysis by Markosov on the memberships and where they're coming from. Problematic for Kenny on the surface. Do you agree with Corey?
Carter
35:23
Yeah, I think so. But I think the reason I feel that way, and maybe this is a different reason than how Corey feels that way, is because it's harder to manipulate the vote in that area, right like you want to have big chunks of vote that you can kind of manipulate and push into and push out and and that exists in in cities more than it exists in the rural what do you mean what
Zain
35:45
what do you mean by manipulate just so i we understand like what do you mean by manipulate and push out large
Carter
35:51
large communities right so you're talking about brown strategy harvesting
Corey
35:53
harvesting if you've got to drive farm to farm it's going to take you a hell of a lot longer so you
Carter
35:57
you go to um a church that's you know you go to a church and uh it's evangelical catholic church uh or you know whatever and there's yeah that's
Carter
36:09
i put the two together they can they could happen he's fucking evangelical catholic
Zain
36:13
catholic mosque or i don't know why you don't understand that there's
Carter
36:16
there's these places i know more yeah i know more about religion than you cory i think that that's the point oh
Carter
36:24
yeah the point is that you
Carter
36:26
you go to a you know the catholic kids that came in on buses uh when when jason was was was whipping his his vote um for the cat for the progressive conservative vote he he flooded every single room with these catholic kids uh that had all been that all bought memberships two weeks prior and they they all showed up on buses they were all given pizza um
Carter
36:51
um that's a much easier vote to to to put together in
Carter
36:56
in cities now there are rural communities where he can still put that together um there's a lot of rural communities where he's able to you know the maybe where he's able to find the the
Carter
37:07
the the religious groups that he's able to grab onto but
Carter
37:10
but he's foregoing some of that if he doesn't have it in the cities as well and
Carter
37:14
and i expected um um, Edmonton
Carter
37:18
Edmonton to look a little bit different. I expected there to be some, some opportunity for him to, to pull together some votes in Edmonton. And I expected there to be a bit higher membership total in Calgary.
Carter
37:27
Um, both of those would have given him more levers to pull on.
Corey
37:32
Yeah. So more members in rural Alberta,
Corey
37:35
relatively few in Calgary, not very many members at all in Edmonton.
Corey
37:40
And because the votes can come from anywhere and are equally weighted, it's not weighted by riding or anything like that. That causes some reason
Corey
37:47
reason to sort of pause and say, hmm, because the conventional wisdom is Jason Kenney is more popular with urban conservatives than he is with rural conservatives. There's some evidence of that too, right? A lot of the discontent tends to be coming from rural areas associated with his caucus.
Corey
38:04
thing, though, that I think we do need to sort of lay out there and just make, maybe
Corey
38:08
maybe it's self-evident, but I'm going to say it anyways. ways the
Corey
38:13
just in general you're going to see more conservative member at any time you're going to see more members rural the next highest probably in calgary and fewer in edmonton so i don't think this is a unique composition uh
Corey
38:25
uh in terms of how the conservative party is and lest we forget jason kenney won that conservative party so it doesn't it's not a hundred percent slam dunk thing while they're rural votes ergo they're opposed to jason kenney votes that's That's not the case. But certainly when you see numbers like 3,000 votes coming from Fort McMurray, where Brian Jean is the MLA, that's a reason to think that's 3,000 votes you probably don't have if you're Jason Kenney.
Carter
38:53
I was just going to say, you know, the other thing we don't know about is how
Carter
38:56
how much discontent there is inside the party in general. Because, you know, MLAs that express discontent do not universally represent their riding. There's not 100% of those 3,000 members in Brian Jean's riding that are saying, you
Carter
39:10
you know, we hate Jason Kenney and we love Brian Jean. It might be closer to 100% than in perhaps Miranda Rosen's riding in Canmore, Banff and Cochrane.
Carter
39:22
But I guess she doesn't have Cochrane anymore, but Canmore and Banff, you
Carter
39:26
you know, so she, you know, just because someone has been outspoken against the leader doesn't necessarily mean that those votes are against them. There are lots more vocal minority groups that get angry than there are vocal groups, majority groups that are happy. So these MLAs may have heard from their vocal minorities and thought it's their vocal majorities. We're only going to find that out for sure on the 19th. And you'll hear us analyze it. I'm sorry. You'll find out for sure on the 18th. And you'll hear us analyze it on the 19th at the Maharaja Hall. Tickets are still available at the strategist.ca. Oh my God, Carter.
Zain
40:02
Carter. Jesus Christ. You can
Carter
40:04
can pick up a pillow, a strategist's pillow at the same time, featuring Zane Velji in the center and Corey and I each representing half of a face, which I don't take any symbolism. I don't think that it's because we're two-faced, Corey.
Zain
40:22
Carter, talk to me about your concept
Zain
40:25
concept of virality of organizing and how it applies here. Remember back when it was supposed to be in Red Deer? You're like, I couldn't whip these numbers together. And you consider yourself to be a half-decent organizer. Talk to me about the virality here. And does it not apply anymore? Has it been curbed in your perspective? And I'm just curious to get... I don't have much of a question other than to say, how, if at all, do you think it impacts the current state of the race?
Carter
40:50
Well, there's going to be a state of the race, a portion of the race that is viral. viral um and we can we could just pick a percentage just for the the point of this argument let's say that 40 we already knew that 15 15 000 people were going to go to red deer and that number they still could have crept up to 20 000 with the existing members and things like that so 15 000 people were going to go so we can accept that maybe 40 of the vote is going to happen regardless of whether or not anybody whips it or anybody that plays the gotv model so
Carter
41:21
40 of the the vote is the viral vote.
Carter
41:24
It doesn't work the same way because we're not necessarily all gathering. As soon as you hit that top level, that 40%, that's it. It's over. The viral push, and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago when we talked about the people who would fill out their ballots on the first day.
Carter
41:38
And Corey was like, yeah, that's a big group. No question. That's a big group. But if it's 40%, then there's still 60% more to go and get additional votes And it might only be another 5% that ultimately put their ballots in, but that extra 5% could matter a tremendous amount. So that viral push that pushes out right away, if it's 40%, then there's still a lot of chance. If it's 70%, if
Carter
42:04
if it's 70%, then it doesn't have a lot of chance, right? And because now all you're doing is you're picking the last 30% and you're trying to find out of that last 30% your voters, number one, and number two, people
Carter
42:21
people who want to vote but forgot for whatever reasons. reasons and there's
Carter
42:28
there's there's a deeper dive to do at some later date uh zane about how that applies to name recognition and things like that because those are the things that we look at in polls which pollsters don't look at and media don't look at but that's a deep dive later uh looking at numbers but this 70 percent like us not knowing the outcome is us not knowing if that number was 40 percent that's super hyper engaged and going to be virally engaged or if it's 70 percent and And that's why Corey and I will, you know, we'll take the, you know, positions, but we're always going to hedge because we don't actually know what the voter turnout is going to look like. Yeah, we just don't have a clue, Corey.
Corey
43:03
Yeah, totally right. And I've said, and I stick to sort of this, nothing between 35% and 65% would surprise me because there's just huge error bars on this sucker as we think about what may or may not happen. A lot of it for reasons Stephen said.
Corey
43:19
of the things that
Corey
43:20
that is interesting about campaigns always is the more people care about them, the harder it is to organize around them. It's the low intensity campaigns that an organizer's edge really shows. And so when you've got turnouts of 45%, yeah, the organizer is going to win because the organizer is going to find their voters, even if they're in the minority of the whole population, and they're going to yank them out. when
Corey
43:42
everybody cares you might as well not have a campaign because they're all going to vote anyways right at least in the term of get out the vote right obviously you
Zain
43:50
you still want to change
Zain
43:51
people's minds and all of those things along the way but
Corey
43:53
but when we're talking about a leadership review where opinions are going to be fairly firm but not 100 firm and
Corey
44:00
and many of them will have voted right away and thus be totally precluded from the conversation because as we said you know Well,
Corey
44:07
look, once you voted, you voted, right?
Corey
44:10
Totally different ball of wax here. So it matters. It matters how intensely people cared. It matters how many ballots came back quickly. If 80% of the membership immediately turned around their ballots, I think Jason Kenney's screwed because that's people who care a lot. And that's just the way it is. But
Corey
44:26
But if it's the case that only 30% immediately did and they really had to wring out the next, say, 20%, well,
Corey
44:33
well, then he's going to win because he's a better organizer than the other campaigns. He's proven that in the past. He proved that by even if you set aside his federal leader or his federal tenure, he
Corey
44:42
he won the leadership of the PCs. He won the leadership of the UCP. You can quibble about how he did in both cases, but you're going to be able to quibble about how he does it in this case if he wins on the 18th too.
Zain
44:53
Carter, final two questions for you guys on this.
Zain
44:57
If you're Team Kenny and you know you're losing, how
Zain
45:00
how would you be acting right now?
Zain
45:02
Would you be acting the same way he is? Because one of the proof points Corey put out there is the way he, you know, they're pretending to seem like, or they're acting like they're winning Corey to prayer for us, right? Like in some ways, like going away,
Zain
45:13
would you be doing, Carter? And is it what he's doing now? now?
Carter
45:18
I don't think I'd be going to Washington and doing a speech on the 17th of May. I mean, that's going to be the
Carter
45:24
the last thing you did as premier. If you're losing, um, I
Carter
45:27
I don't think I'd be out parading that we're going to win. I, you know, like he, he's been talking about it. We, we have, we have advised him from the, the, the, the wisdom of this podcast to keep a low profile. He has ignored that advice. Um, and he's been out and he's been doing media. He's been been telling rick bell that he's got it um you know there's there's tons of rumors floating around almost all those rumors are are pushing towards the idea that he he thinks he's going to win um it's really hard in fact to be a pundit saying you know he's going to lose because all the evidence appears to be that he's going to win uh not evidence but the rumors the speculation all the whispers right all of that tells us he's going to
Zain
46:07
to win is that strategy carter right like pumping Jumping up the pundit channels and the gossip channels and the political chattering class so that it just looks like it's inevitable. And then for that small group that hasn't voted, you're like, well, I guess this is what it is. Either I won't vote or I'll join the winning team.
Carter
46:24
It's a great strategy for the beginning of a campaign and even the middle of the campaign.
Carter
46:28
And as you jump into the end of the campaign, you always are in a better position to go into, we campaign as though we're a thousand votes behind or a hundred votes behind or one vote behind whatever number you want to use we campaign from behind we campaign like we are losing because that's how we get the most in energy and the most energized performance out of our supporters um and that has been tried and true you know the the people who who stand up and say we've got this uh tend to watch uh watch the vote go out from underneath their feet you know like it's just it's just it's it's it's
Carter
47:03
it's far better to be cautiously optimistic than um than this this false bravado of likely winning.
Zain
47:12
Corey, same question for you. What would you be suggesting to Kenny if he was on the path of losing right now? Is it what he's doing?
Corey
47:22
I mean, I haven't really done this in years, I should confess, but I used to do E-Day a lot. I was E-Day chair for campaigns a lot. That was my thing in politics when I was working on local campaigns, helping out on all of them. and
Corey
47:34
and that you saw the same pattern with candidates who won, which
Corey
47:38
which is they would be ridiculously
Corey
47:40
ridiculously confident before the vote, right? We're going to win. We're going to get this thing. And then the minute the polls close, if somebody puts a microphone in front of their head face, they hedge like crazy because there's no risk in expressing doubt at that point, right? Like, what are you going to do? The ballots are cast.
Corey
47:55
And so I guess that what I'm saying is I don't think it's necessarily bad
Corey
47:59
bad strategy. If let's just say Jason Kenney thinks he's going to lose or Or might lose. It's not necessarily
Corey
48:04
necessarily a bad strategy to display confidence in this situation and demoralize the other side, but it's pointless and maybe even counterproductive to your future endeavors if you continue to do so after the polls close. So as of yesterday, if I had any doubt in my mind, if I were him, I would not be expressing confidence that I got this thing.
Corey
48:25
he's just going to condemn the
Corey
48:27
the future to death so it matches the past. And he's just going to continue to show confidence because he showed it the day before.
Corey
48:32
but something to watch is his language over the next couple of days here to see if there's a market shift in it over time in terms of would i be going to the united states and talking to the united states senate if i thought this was my last day as premier you're
Corey
48:46
fucking right i would absolutely i would for a hundred different reasons one that's a big stage right you can make some contacts
Corey
48:53
contacts you can sell yourself as a conservative to the fox news punditry class and all of that maybe even find your second career there two is that's a glorious moment and you only get so many of those in politics um premier of alberta is big deal uh
Corey
49:07
uh the united states senate is a bigger deal and to go down there and to make a case and you
Corey
49:11
you know imagine even change things that's how you help salvage your legacy if something were to occur afterwards as well so i don't know that you can read too too much into that i actually have a
Zain
49:21
a hard time imagining him not
Corey
49:22
not going it to To me, it seems insane the other way. Like if he got the invitation for the 17th and he said, no,
Corey
49:28
no, sorry, I don't think I can go. I'm
Corey
49:30
I'm worried I might not be premier the next day. Well, A, you can't do anything about it. The ballots were all cast by the 11th.
Corey
49:38
you kidding me? Like you're going to pass on that opportunity because you want to sit there and be anxious for a day? Fucking forget it.
Zain
49:46
do you think? Does that retort make sense to you? Because you
Zain
49:50
makes sense. Where's your butt? My
Carter
49:52
but is that it's not actually the trip to Washington. I mean, the trip to Washington is just sketch, right? Your
Carter
49:59
political future hangs by a thread and off you go. But I think that it's
Carter
50:05
it's everything else combined. I'm more looking at the whole path that he's taken. This whole I'm going to win structure just doesn't make much sense to me. but the the trip to washington cory's
Carter
50:17
cory's right he's not going to change any outcomes um i think that you know it's a little bit worrisome i
Carter
50:23
think if i knew what the vote was going to be i'd step down early right i wouldn't go to washington and say i'm going to you know i'm here he's here as the premier for two more days uh i'd be out um i'd be out today today would be the day i would announce it right around now. So maybe we should be checking the Twitterverse. I don't know.
Zain
50:43
Corey, final question for you guys. Weekend advice for Jason Kenney. It has been pretty consistent from you guys through and through. Work, the phones, individual members, high touch. Nothing to do now. Anything changed? Yeah. Anything that's changed right here? It's all done. That's what I'm saying. Is
Zain
50:57
there anything different now? Because the votes are cast. What is it now?
Corey
51:02
Well, if you actually think you're going to win, you've got to think about the day after. You've You've got to be worried about your caucus coming apart. And so I would be calling around and saying, hey, listen, I
Corey
51:11
I know you and I have had our differences, but we've got to stick together for the good of the party. I'm committing to you. That's what I will do if I lose this thing. I need to know that you're in and part of this team as well. Now, you
Corey
51:23
you may feel this vindictiveness and you may want to actually lose
Corey
51:26
lose their nomination, just totally fuck them. And I get that. And even if that's your plan, you still have that conversation this weekend because you've got to keep the initiative and what you don't want to have is the week after you win a leadership have them calling into question the results maybe creating a rump caucus any of those fun things right so you keep the temperatures down it's the old godfather advice godfather being of course the subtitle of dave four uh and it is you keep your friends close and you keep your enemies closer and you should be thinking about how you bring this team together if you think you've got this day
Zain
52:01
day for godfather one carter uh
Zain
52:04
uh final weekend advice for jason kenney all the votes are cast
Zain
52:09
what's he need to do now he's
Carter
52:10
he's putting the final touches on his snap election call it comes some time in about uh 15 days and he puts a snap election call together because he needs to know from the people of alberta the way he found out from the people of uh
Carter
52:22
uh the problem from the conservative the united conservative party that he still is the premier that they want and
Carter
52:28
and the economic rebound is going to be his primary thing. He's going to make sure that he catches the NDP flat-footed and he's going to make it about economic
Carter
52:36
economic revival, economic opportunity, the lowest unemployment rate since 2015. That headline was paraded around last week. He needs a new mandate because this is the end of the COVID times and he now needs us to get a mandate for the prosperity times. He came in at a time when when he didn't have two nickels to touch together and now he's got he's going to have a billion two billion ten billion dollar surplus and he needs to understand from the people of alberta what his next steps need to be um so i figure that he's pulling together his campaign leadership structure um he's he's probably actually confident
Carter
53:14
confident that he's going to win and uh he
Carter
53:16
he wants to know he wants to know who his candidates are in 87 ridings because he's going to drop at least 15 of them and that's not
Carter
53:24
not a lot of time to get things done so he's He's got to be waking on that election
Zain
53:28
Carter, you're saying the next 15 days, not the fall.
Carter
53:32
Oh, fuck it. I wouldn't wait to the fall.
Carter
53:35
What's the advantage of waiting to the fall?
Carter
53:38
If you're going to go early, you go early.
Corey
53:40
Yeah, he's not wrong, right? But I feel that he just can't get those trains in place in that sense. If there was a reaction where a couple of people refused to accept the outcome,
Corey
53:51
yeah, I would think it's a real possibility to go early. uh i've i've long believed that we're going to see an election this calendar year
Zain
53:59
we're going to leave it there that's a wrap on episode 989 of the strategist my name is with me as always on this friday afternoon cory hogan stephen carter and we will see you next time