Ministry of Podcasts: Episode 1

Corey 0:05

How do you want to start? I have no start. I don't even know what we wanted to do. Guys, I've been gone for like two months and this has fallen apart. This has fallen apart. It's

Carter 0:13

falling apart. It has fallen apart. We did the Swiss Chalet thing. The

Corey 0:16

The Swiss Chalet thing is excellent.

Corey 0:18

Is it? Is it? Look into your heart. Look into your heart, Zain, and ask yourself if it was an excellent bit. I

Carter 0:23

I mean, sure. Someone said that it was, you know, they couldn't believe that 10 minutes in we were still talking about Swiss Chalet. But, I mean,

Zain 0:30

how many people do you think have passed away right

Zain 0:32

right after enjoying a quarter chicken dinner, Corey? I mean,

Corey 0:36

mean, we all die

Zain 0:36

a little bit. Please

Zain 0:37

Please split between white meat and dark meat.

Zain 0:40

I'm a vegetarian. Your math. I'm not talking.

Corey 0:44

I don't care about your math. Oh,

Corey 0:46

Have you started already?

Corey 0:48

we have. I think we've just eased into the show. How are you, gentlemen? It's been a minute.

Carter 0:52

Carter. Hey, great to see you, Corey. Is it?

Carter 0:55

It really is, yeah. it's

Corey 0:56

it's great to see so

Corey 0:59

so the show started if you have anything else do

Carter 1:01

do you have any words

Corey 1:02

after it's great i don't see he's

Zain 1:05

he's just he's just like he's just running through

Zain 1:06

through the motions at this point he's just phoning

Corey 1:09

phoning it in yeah i don't

Zain 1:11

don't get it so

Corey 1:12

so i don't get a paycheck for this anymore like i used to be paid to deal with youtube i don't get paid for this 50

Carter 1:17

50% raise is the way i put it yeah well congratulations do

Corey 1:21

do we want to explain what this is do

Corey 1:23

do we want to explain anything like here we are like it's been so long there are listeners who have never heard me on the show before i bet that's exciting it's

Carter 1:30

has it been that long there

Carter 1:32

there have been new patrons that have arrived in the post-coryogan era this is true

Carter 1:37

sending a message there

Zain 1:38

there is a message that was sent because of that carter

Zain 1:42

is the ministry of podcasts is that what we're titling the show this

Carter 1:44

this is the ministry of podcasts and

Carter 1:46

and i've been told cory is

Zain 1:46

is not minister you are the minister i

Carter 1:49

i am the minister of podcasts due

Carter 1:50

due to certain uh legal ramifications and the potential of cory losing Carter,

Zain 1:55

Carter, you are the minister of podcast. I just want to make sure everyone is aware that you are the minister of podcast. Yeah, I'm the minister of podcast. You're the minister

Corey 2:06

minister of podcast in question in this, the pod within a pod, ministry of podcast. Ministry of podcast, that's

Zain 2:12

that's correct. Corey, I should also mention, this podcast is sponsored. We actually have found

Corey 2:17

found a sponsor for

Zain 2:17

for our first- It's not. By Flair Airlines. It's so not. The official ministry of transportation. That's their

Corey 2:23

their new song. I am a guest on this shit show, and my slim

Corey 2:31

slim conditions, my slim conditions, two

Corey 2:35

two conditions, had to be public, and there couldn't be advertising on it. Those were my two conditions. I'm taking money out of your pocket for

Corey 2:44

for this podcast. Who

Zain 2:45

Who would you, in your caucus, assign to be the Minister of Transport if it was Flair Airlines?

Corey 2:53

probably our current minister of transport the good answer carter he's

Zain 2:56

he's on he's on his game he's

Corey 2:57

he's so good we thought we could

Zain 2:58

could trick him at 9 p.m he's set up carter who wrote that george shahal letter by the way oh

Corey 3:03

oh yeah um that was you right that was not

Corey 3:07

it was here i

Corey 3:07

i mean come on

Zain 3:09

we're in the circle of trust now yeah

Zain 3:11

yeah this is our chance to catch up with you yeah that's nice you to criticize the show you've come in right you've come in hot I

Carter 3:18

don't feel like we can call, to be honest. It doesn't feel like something we can do. No, it's more heavily

Zain 3:24

these days. That's true.

Zain 3:26

I barely write, so we're not doing that. That's true. Corey, what other criticisms do you have while you've been gone? We have started the last meal at Swiss.ca, which is

Corey 3:36

is getting some incredible anecdotes,

Zain 3:39

anecdotes, some incredible math. We've got spreadsheets being sent to us. Now, for those that are not aware, we're trying to figure out how many last meals have been had at Swiss Chalet. There have been two people who have confused last meal at Swiss as being how many people have gotten food poisoning from Swiss Chalet and have subsequently passed because of Swiss Chalet. Wow. That is not what we

Corey 3:59

I'm glad I'm not an owner of this litigious show that you guys have now.

Corey 4:04

We're trying to do the math.

Zain 4:05

Swiss Chalet is a Canadian institution. You can see it by my hat.

Zain 4:11

It is. Corey, do you want to add in your guess of how many people have had their last Swiss chalet since it's widening in the 1950s? Sure.

Corey 4:18

Sure. You bet, Zane. All of them.

Corey 4:22

Explain that to me. No, I mean, that's how we all go. People don't really realize it. It's not something we talk about. End of life is awkward. What

Corey 4:30

like is that it's a very QP

Zain 4:31

QP answer, right? You don't have to- In 35

Corey 4:34

35 seconds. You don't have to add anything. I can answer everything in 35 seconds. You never could answer anything in 35 seconds. No, we've taken it.

Carter 4:43

Has that been the hardest thing to adjust to? Yeah,

Corey 4:45

Yeah, I don't really answer questions in QP. No,

Carter 4:47

No, but, I mean, if you were to answer a question.

Corey 4:50

Yeah, like, Carter, you're a minister, so you answer questions. I can imagine it would be hard to

Corey 4:52

do that. Yeah, now

Carter 4:53

now that I'm a minister, I'm finding it tricky.

Corey 4:57

But, you know, you do answer questions in the House any time you make a speech. So the difference between the House of Commons and at least the provincial legislatures I've worked with and around is there's

Corey 5:07

there's a lot more interaction. action like it's it's a bigger show there's just more going on like you got to mix it up a little more

Carter 5:14

gotta mix it up one person talking and the other people listening right i don't

Corey 5:18

don't think any of us listen ever uh that's that's my early assessment that's

Carter 5:22

that's a bold thing to admit this early well there's answered we

Corey 5:26

read it afterwards see if we missed

Carter 5:27

missed okay yeah see if you missed anything heckle heckle heckle so so

Zain 5:31

hogan there's so much about your life that now interests us when in the past you were the least interesting person on the show.

Zain 5:39

can we just run through a couple things I'm interested in, maybe a couple things you're interested in? Yeah, yeah, let's do that. So, last time you were on the show, correct me if I'm wrong, we were doing the debrief of how you won, what that looked like, what election night looked like. And

Zain 5:54

walk us through the whirlwind from there. Is there a vetting? Is there orientation? I assume there is. Take us to, like, you went to Rome, you were named a pro-tech,

Corey 6:03

-tech, like, what the fuck is going on cory man give us crazy huh that's

Carter 6:07

that's so weird uh

Corey 6:08

uh look i you know in a funny way i think when you're looking at it from the outside you think man why does it take so long for parliament to get back it was about a month right yeah

Corey 6:18

it was not enough time in many ways like many of us were still working in the hallways as the the session had begun and um we didn't have our constituency offices set up and all of that there's a lot that goes into onboarding a new new MP and setting up a new Parliament. I guess that's the one thing I would really underline here, because you've got to wait until the results are verified. And then they reach out to you to start orientation. And that orientation isn't one meeting, it's a series of meetings over the next couple of weeks, everything from how to set up a constituency office to how committees work and everything in between. There's like, there's lots of orientation.

Corey 6:54

You got to go to Ottawa for it, you got to be sworn in at some point. And while this is all going on, that's that's let's call call it machinery of government stuff there's also things

Corey 7:04

things going on with your party like a cabinet is being created there are activities that go into that um there

Corey 7:11

there is the first caucus meeting there is meeting your colleagues for the first time i had a kind of weird meeting my colleagues because the colleagues i met for the first time that i didn't already know as mps i met in in rome you you know, as part of the delegation to Rome. Like on the plane?

Corey 7:29

Yeah, well, like in the terminal before getting on the plane in some cases, you know? And that's where I met Jamie Maloney, who became our caucus chair, for example. It's where I met Jaime Batiste, who is, you know, one of my parliament besties now. You know, he's a guy I got to become friends with pretty quickly. And I feel bad that I mispronounced his name now when we go back to those leadership ones. Do

Carter 7:51

Do you really feel bad? Nah, it's okay.

Carter 7:53

you're through it already.

Corey 7:55

yeah it's not like we're gonna find a clip of you pronouncing it wrong we

Carter 7:59

we would never go back

Corey 8:01

won't you know there are people who've done this before jamie did this back in 2025

Corey 8:06

we would never do that i mean

Corey 8:09

spot is a lot of work

Zain 8:10

work the one thing is it is a lot

Corey 8:12

lot of work it is a lot of work now yeah

Corey 8:15

yeah we do you get to meet you

Zain 8:17

get to me i got to meet many

Corey 8:18

many great people and and it was kind of an interesting time to do it and uh they were they're kind of laughing because they're like this is not what the job normally is enjoy it this is you know never happened to any of us before and

Corey 8:30

and um you know that just adds to the volume of stuff that is weighing on you as you're also trying to wind up your past life like i

Corey 8:39

as a vice president at the university of calgary i had to adjust

Corey 8:41

adjust i don't know everything laurie my wife uh left her job because all of a sudden our schedules are just is totally crazy like it's a lot it's a lot going on and then boom

Corey 8:52

you're in session and that is just madness from start to finish like just madness from start to finish it i would describe it as very full days like 7 30 8 a.m in the morning until midnight every night between the various things you have to do including sometimes being in the house to midnight and um it's

Corey 9:11

it's just it's it's kind of it's a lot right it's it's not even like i'm saying it's like super complicated and I'm not saying it requires all of your brain power all of the time. It's just, it's a lot. It's always on. And when you're a new MP, you're also trying to figure out the unwritten rules of the place at the same time.

Zain 9:30

Garner, what are you interested in? And while you think there's one question that everyone cares about, which I'm going to ask Corey right now. Corey, how

Zain 9:37

many of your colleagues are fans of the pod? And have you kept a running one?

Zain 9:40

You know, a few.

Corey 9:41

Let's take a few. I would say more than a dozen even. it and have like, I've, I've had colleagues come up and be like, Hey, can I be on the pod? Hey, I love the pod. Hey, I, I, you know, I used to listen, but that, that, that Zane guy's intolerable, you know, whatever. The regular

Corey 9:57

stuff, regular, regular stuff. You hear all of the regular feedback.

Zain 10:00

I, I, I don't know who they are, but they're definitely going to have their last meal at Swiss.

Zain 10:05

That's all I know

Corey 10:07

Um, yeah, no, like, you know, it's funny. And a lot of the staff, a lot of the staff listened to the podcast to quite a few people People came up to me and said, hey, man, never miss the pod. Never miss it. Gone downhill since you left. I think they were lying about the second part. I think that

Carter 10:21

that was more to

Corey 10:21

to make me feel better. That's

Carter 10:23

That's hurtful. Shannon's going to be really upset. Yeah, no, she should be.

Zain 10:25

be. No, no, for sure. That is a personal and direct insult to her. Yeah, absolutely. Carter and I are very thick skinned.

Corey 10:31

are you wondering about? We don't feel anything anymore.

Zain 10:33

Carter, there's so much other shit on the board. I forgot that the king was here. The king was here.

Corey 10:38

We haven't gone to any

Corey 10:38

of that. The throne speech. There's

Zain 10:40

There's also a bunch of fucking issues.

Corey 10:41

Do you want to talk

Corey 10:41

talk about that? Yeah, the throne speech. So King

Corey 10:43

King comes, there's a throne speech. Yeah. It's in all the newspapers, right? We saw that. One of the interesting things about the throne speech is he gives it in the Senate, and then in the House of Commons, we have to take it up, and there's a motion moved to discuss the throne speech. Somebody has to move that motion. And I was the guy who got to move that motion. So it's kind of one of these things that's like, you know, it's a nice little thing to do inside Parliament. I don't think anybody in the rest of Canada knows or cares that I'm the guy who moved the throne speech motion. But the

Corey 11:15

the long and the short of it is it means I've got to give a 20 minute speech, which is basically rehashing the throne speech with a couple of comments at the top about, you know, my family and, you know, you know, the writing and all of that. Carter and I and yeah. Yeah, of course. A lot of content on you guys. A lot of content. Thanks for the shout

Carter 11:31

shout outs. We really

Carter 11:31

appreciated them. And then

Corey 11:33

then I have to take 10 minutes of questions from the house on the throne speech, which basically means on anything. thing because the throne speech is obviously well or what's not in the throne speech and why isn't it in the throne speech right and so yeah it's it's like the first thing that happens in the house i like i have to stand up and i've you know i've never been there for a sitting in the house it's a full house and you got to do it it's kind of a fun thing it's did

Carter 11:56

did you wear adult diapers or were you able to you know not shit yourself no

Corey 12:00

no you know me i'm like if i have a superpower it's that i am unbothered like things don't really bother me it gets me in trouble as much as it It helps me, but, uh, it, it, it wasn't like this bad in that sense.

Zain 12:12

sense. It was a lot of fun. This is a good question. Carter asked about the adult diapers. Corey, are you still wearing sneakers? Are you still keeping that top button undone? Oh, great question. This is,

Zain 12:21

is, this is, I feel like the sartorial aspect

Zain 12:22

aspect of being a

Zain 12:23

member from a member of parliament, parliamentary secretary, Corey Hogan is

Corey 12:27

is very important for

Zain 12:27

for us to understand. Um, are you keeping it real or have you sold out? Yeah.

Zain 12:32

Yeah. So let's talk. So

Corey 12:33

So first off the top button undone. Yeah. A hundred percent. No, I still keep it undone. No. For sure. Of course I do. Like, what kind of animal am I? There is a dress code in the house. The dress code is in order to kind of be there, you need to wear a jacket. And in order to speak or vote, you need to wear a tie. Or I think maybe you can vote if you just have a jacket on. Anyways, you can't speak without a tie. That's for sure. So men have to wear a jacket and a tie in the House of Commons. It's kind of old school like that. But to get to the second part of your question, Zane, there's no dress code for below your jacket and tie. Yeah, there isn't. So, yeah, I mean, most of the time I'm wearing sneakers in the house. I will say, because I went to the Pope's inaugural mass, and I thought, I can't go to St. Peter's Square wearing sneakers to, like, the inaugural mass. I did buy my first pair of dress shoes in, like, decades. And so I do own a pair, and I do sometimes wear them as well, just to try to get a little value out of them but yeah

Carter 13:35

they live in ottawa right you don't even bring them back yeah

Corey 13:37

yeah i mean why would i it would be yeah

Corey 13:40

a calgary cory thing

Carter 13:41

thing will you be wearing cowboy boots when we get to the stampede i know

Corey 13:45

know i'll never i mean what's listen if you

Corey 13:48

cowboy boots good for you yeah

Corey 13:52

yeah but why why would you do that to yourself because

Carter 13:56

because we like the pain that's why we're in calgary calgary

Carter 13:59

calgary is about pain and

Carter 14:01

and this is one one of the things that comes along with that pain. You have to wear cowboy boots. We have to wear really warm shirts in the summer. You got to wear the warm shirts. And the super heavy jeans. Yeah,

Zain 14:10

Yeah, I agree. We're about separatism. And then a hat that makes your head sweat. The blood flow from your body to your feet, Corey. That's what we're...

Corey 14:18

save there? That's nice. I see what you did there. What you did there was nice. Okay. Yeah,

Carter 14:24

I'm just, I'm intrigued by what has happened. So what happened in the house that you were the most surprised by as as a new newly elected member of parliament um

Corey 14:35

um you know it's people ask that a lot like there's versions of that question i get asked by people on the daily so

Carter 14:42

so i'm a simpleton you're you're simple

Corey 14:43

simple man with a simple question okay that's good to

Corey 14:45

basic elevator talk i was hoping you'd elevate it on this podcast but like i have i

Zain 14:50

have elevated it don't you know that yeah

Corey 14:51

yeah your brain has atrophied without my presence i do understand i understand

Zain 14:56

okay no that's can i just can i just mark this time stamp at the the 15 minute mark cory's told a constituent that his brain is atrophied just

Corey 15:04

just make sure that's on the record

Carter 15:06

but i didn't vote for him i mean yeah okay

Corey 15:09

okay well that's that tracks that tracks uh

Corey 15:11

uh what's the prize me the most i you know like obviously this is a world that's not foreign to me like i was aware of it although i have said to many people i think including you guys like geez i probably I probably should have paid more attention when my friends were doing these things. I just, I never cared about the house procedural stuff. Like it was never my thing. It was never something that interested. I'll be honest. It still doesn't particularly interest me. It's just part of the job. But, um, but

Corey 15:38

but the thing that surprised me most is that it is, uh, it is such a weird combination. The moments that you think are the big moments are not the big moments. And the big moments are ones that I think would otherwise like kind of pass and not think about it. like you know you would think like the first time you vote that's like a big moment right like oh it's the first time i vote in the house you

Corey 15:59

you know i didn't really know what the hell was going on i couldn't really hear what the clerks were saying i was watching people are standing up i'm trying to figure out is it time for me to stand up oh no that guy's not standing up yet why isn't he standing up is he supposed to stand up and just sort of watching it and being like low

Corey 16:13

low-key bewildered and then just being there and like oh they're nodding am i supposed to not are you required wired to nod that person did not before they sat down how does this work you know because nobody fucking tells you those things so they don't tell you that in orientation no no no

Corey 16:25

no and so then uh so then i vote and i sit down and i move on with my life and just go well that was a thing that happened you know recorded i think i voted

Corey 16:34

yeah they're an interesting thing um meanwhile like you'll be sitting there kind of candidly bored out of your mind six hours into a debate oh and by the way we got to talk about debates in a minute here but like you'll be like six hours into a debate and

Corey 16:50

and you're like staring at the ceiling counting the panes of glass and and then it just sort of like washes over you're like holy shit i'm one of the 343 people who makes laws for this country and like that that's the moment that hits you right like it's like i

Zain 17:03

should pay attention well

Corey 17:04

well sort of but as much as anything it's like you have a moment to like soak it in because like you're you're you've moved past the moments where you're busy and so uh yeah i i think that also it is like any other job and that there's like this unwritten code of how everything works i don't mean that in like it's like this weird like clubby thing it's more like it's not written down any like i remember you

Corey 17:26

you know early on they're talking about oh and you only have to be here if you're on house duty you know only a quarter of the mps

Carter 17:32

mps are in the

Corey 17:32

the house or even you you know, next to the chamber, really, all of the time. And you're sitting there and you'll talk about it for a bit and you'll be like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. How do I find out if I'm on house duty? You know, like nobody tells you those things. There's no Google Doc that

Zain 17:45

that thinks that you're right.

Corey 17:46

right. Well, and then they're like, oh, no, no, we'll send an email, right? And then the email has like one, two, three, four as the groups, but they're not even, anyways, it's all very,

Corey 17:55

it's very sensible once you know what it is, but it's all very bewildering if you've never done it before. So you're

Corey 18:00

you're doing a lot of that the first little bit. it

Zain 18:02

it is part of you happy that that your first sort of sitting in the house so soon after getting elected like you just were thrown into it right away and like that this is now it's of course you're back in calgary it's summer you're gonna be doing a bunch of events you're gonna be traveling the country i assume but

Zain 18:18

but are you happy that they like you got that out of the way but

Zain 18:22

but it happened so quickly then rather than having to wait till the fall for example to to go to ottawa and do um i

Corey 18:28

i don't think i'd want to wait till the fall i do think we could have used a little bit more time for like look i get why we're we're a country that's got a lot of things to do we're in a hurry we've got to do things fast that's what the prime minister said but you

Corey 18:40

you know it's it's it's kind of an interesting stress where you're sitting there in ottawa and you're doing what you're supposed to do in ottawa and you're you don't have your calgary constituency set up yet and you're just like jesus

Corey 18:51

jesus i really wish i had time to hire staff and set up the office and open the office and again there's nuts and bolts there's you've got to get the internet provider in and then you've got to get the house of commons i.t people to come in and talk about this how

Zain 19:05

how does this actually work do you have to do that do you get staff on day one do you have one person right away no

Corey 19:10

no you have to hire

Zain 19:11

hire these people every single one yeah

Corey 19:14

and i didn't have the ability to hire people until i don't know like four weeks in which is basically just as soon as i'm supposed to go to ottawa so and you know that you don't just hire people they've got to be they've got to go through security clearances and so i have i have a fellow who works for me who worked for george shahal so he was fairly fast to onboard not the case with others right and and you know and you just don't have all of the levers available to you yet i mean a very funny thing it's june 30th today right yeah if you're a new mp our first paycheck was today we didn't get paid until today and so like everything you know you just wish there was a little bit more time to get your feet under you and get some of those nuts and bolts because you're worried about letting down constituents as much as anything like emails are just going to an inbox that you don't have access to for a few weeks that your staff doesn't have access to for a few weeks after that and you're just like jesus christ i just

Corey 20:09

you know i'm trying not to fuck it up on my first month on the job but uh look we got stuff to do we had to run we had to hurry and uh you know there are consequences to that what

Carter 20:19

what did it feel what was it like to actually do some of that stuff like when When you're passing those bills, C5 comes to mind. What does that feel like when,

Carter 20:29

when, you know, the conservatives come and join you in passing the bill and immediately think, did I just do something horribly wrong? Shannon Stubbs agrees with me.

Carter 20:39

That's a terrible situation.

Carter 20:42

I mean, that's got to be going through your head. And give a very

Zain 20:45

quotable pity answer that can be also circulated amongst media. Put

Corey 20:49

Put it into a clip. No, no, no, no, no. know i you know i think that the reality of the house is so

Corey 20:55

so a colleague of mine who i won't name because i'm not sure if he'd want to be attributed to it i just just let's say it wasn't mine you know we we finished like a late night of voting it was like midnight we get to leave yeah

Corey 21:05

you know he says as we're walking out because because you know we we're

Corey 21:09

we're then all leaving at the same time because you're all there to vote if you're like there to vote right there is remote voting but most of the people were in the house and so we pour out of the chamber into our lobbies that that are on each side of the chamber. And then we pour out of the lobbies instantly, like to the stairs and we all go down and we sort of all go down together, right? And as we're walking over, he says, he says, Jesus, it's like that old Warner Brothers cartoon where it's like, we're beating the shit out of each other in the house all day. And then we're out, do-do-do-do-do, see you tomorrow, Sam. You know, and we just sort of walk out.

Corey 21:42

And there's a bit of that, like what you don't catch on the cameras and, or in the audio is like, we were chatting with each other. we certainly talk to each other in the halls you know my conservative colleagues are very nice to me on the airplane right like there is a certain theater element to it you know and there's there's jokes and some of the jokes are pretty funny like um you know so on c5 uh one of the people who didn't vote for at least one of the motions i can't remember if you voted in the final thing was nate erskine smith you know yeah liberal mp and

Corey 22:11

and uh you know uh chris the whip for the conservatives is like you know chirping across the way he's like jesus you know we're more reliable votes for your guys bill than your party are what's going on over there you know it's like that's pretty funny i can i can deal with that that's kind of fun and so yeah you know i i mean it is one of the things i hate most about it if i'm being candid but it is also you know it makes me think maybe there's a foundation for more constructive working relationships that like it's not as shitty as it sometimes appears and so like if you can find common ground and you can work with people and i you know i just don't think the conservatives are that interested in voting against stuff like that the

Carter 22:49

the naivete is just on

Zain 22:55

rookie mp so good they're all friends there's a jokes card it's like summer camp there's

Carter 22:59

there's in time it's

Corey 23:00

summer camp for for grown-ups summer camp well yeah summer camp that you're not who's

Carter 23:06

who's your camp counselor is

Corey 23:09

don't i don't know i don't get the reference like who's my like is a camp counselor somebody who's

Corey 23:13

colleague of mine is this

Carter 23:14

this day someone who's taking care of you while you're there like does someone take care of you while you're in ottawa no we've seen you try and live how do you how do you eat when you're in ottawa well i don't have a really good question because we know how you have eaten

Corey 23:28

yeah i almost never do you know it's just it is well look i mean the reality is those are things you kind of have to watch when you're an mp because it's

Corey 23:36

it's a weird combination of there's food everywhere at events but unless you actually are consciously sitting down to eat you might also just forget to eat for a day too so so people in ottawa tend to go one of two ways they'll like gain 15 pounds or lose 15 pounds like in their first kind of session so so which was it i'm more the lose actually like the thing is like for me food is so disassociated from hunger i don't know why or how it's not a good thing but like when i'm at my house and there's all the candy my kids have around and there's all of the food in the world like i'll just kind of randomly eat but when i'm in ottawa and it actually takes like conscious effort to go get a meal i'll just just as much as not just be like i'll get later and then later this isn't

Carter 24:19

isn't describing a healthy relationship with food it's

Corey 24:21

it's not i know something to work on

Zain 24:24

things to work on because how many wendy's burgers sub the patty with fries in the middle we had so far over under that's really nice

Corey 24:33

don't know where the wendy's is so that's someone saved It's a fucking lie. It's an overcard. We know it's an overcard. Yeah, we know it. That's a simple skip order. Corey, you can figure that out. Hey, you know, I mentioned I want to talk a bit about debates, right? Yeah.

Corey 24:46

yeah. Why is he trying

Carter 24:47

trying to redirect? We're asking the

Corey 24:48

the hard-hitting questions about- We didn't even bring up

Carter 24:50

up Flair Airlines. No,

Corey 24:51

No, we were weird. We were one step away from Swiss Chalet and I veered. I fucking zagged, man. Okay, okay. I didn't want to go there.

Zain 24:58

have against Swiss Chalet?

Corey 25:00

Nothing. Oh, now here we go. It's fine.

Corey 25:03

Swiss Chalet is fine. It's fine. if it's your thing i think that's good for you but i did

Carter 25:08

did a whole campaign on swiss okay yeah

Carter 25:11

uh did not die yes

Carter 25:16

oh wow from both

Carter 25:17

both of you talk about

Zain 25:19

debates and then there's two things i actually want to get into process was that i find interesting your trip to rome and then your process for the parlsec how did that come about and how did you hear it so talk to us about debates sure

Corey 25:29

sure well like so um debates kind of also leads into me wanted to chat about qp for a heartbeat here yeah

Corey 25:35

so one of the things about so there's time for debates i don't like i said like the whole parliamentary procedure is not my jam but long story short is there's like you get 20 minute blocks right where it's a 20 minute speech and then 10 minutes of questions from the rest of the house rotating

Corey 25:50

rotating through all of the parties uh but the 20 minute block can be split become two 10 minute blocks or whatnot but one of the things that happens in a debate uh pretty quickly is well let me put it this way if you have something to say on a bill you're not gonna have any trouble saying it like you just go to like the person who's managing your lobby and you're like hey can i get on the speaker's list either for today or tomorrow or whatever it is i'll go i want to go i have a few things to say they'll be like yeah fucking great because most of the time they're trying to fill that time and sustain the house and what's happening is uh they're rotating through like liberal conservative block liberal conservative liberal conservative liberal conservative block or some pattern like like that right yeah

Corey 26:29

and even though there's not necessarily something new to add to the conversation nobody wants to give up their part of the conversation because if a liberal's not there to do it it's just going to go on to the conservative right and then it's going to be a couple of those speakers save some

Zain 26:42

some of their talking points well

Corey 26:43

well and thing i but no zane because we don't save it we just repeat them we repeat them in kind of different frames and so a lot of the house does start to feel pretty repetitive and you really take note of when when it's somebody who stands up and gives a speech, that's like, oh, this is coming from somewhere, right? Like, oh, they're speaking from personal experience. And yeah, some of them, it's like really great. You get this big extemporaneous speech or something like that, right? Because most of it is like the house leader has sent a speech, and I'm reading the speech, and I'm going to sit down and then there's questions. And you know, it's just it's like, it's very patent performa.

Corey 27:17

Unfortunately, so, because I do think that like, when people actually are leaning into it it's really great and i think truly if you could manage to compress the debate just into those moments where people are saying the things that matter to them and that they want to say i think the house of commons would be fucking awesome like it would be like people would watch it right like they would see interesting things but there's just too much too

Corey 27:40

too much doldrums too much repetition by and large and to be fair a

Corey 27:44

a lot of the time you don't even even know it's repetition because you're not in the chamber you know you weren't there for the first four hours you weren't on house duty now you are now you're going to make a speech blah blah blah um

Corey 27:54

um so that's that's number one but that gets us to qp so 2 p.m eastern every day you've got 15 minutes of statements by members it's like one minute like blast like oh you know there's a chili cook-off in ramuski and it's great you know best chili cook-off in in the eastern part of come back you know and i just i hope you'll all come out yeah clap clap clap right um and then you get to qp and what can i say about qp that hasn't really already been said uh

Corey 28:26

qp is the worst guys like it's it's just like okay i i want to be fair to all sides here so the opposition stands up and they ask the same question 15 different ways 15 different flavors of angry and shitty and you know and they're staring at the camera and they're like this and it's just like so like 35 second sound bites that they're gonna use for social media and you could think i'll shame on them but then the government responses come and we give 35 second responses that have maybe passing like reflection to the question that was asked and it's just like why won't they stand with us and canadians you know it's like you know it's just like the lowest nutrition value you could possibly get and we do it 15 times we'll give the same you know non-answer answer 15 times and and they will give the same question they know the answer to 15 times and none of us are like particularly

Corey 29:19

uh i i don't know what can you say like why do we do this like you sit there oh and then like the rest of us are sitting there like clapping madly like trained seals like oh it was great the 15th time i heard that it was fucking awesome you know wait did you

Zain 29:33

you did you stop yourself from clapping or cheering or did you feel like you had to no you

Corey 29:37

you kind of listen uh a

Corey 29:39

a couple things on that one you sort of do it because like sometimes your colleagues do and i spin on it but the other one is uh you

Corey 29:47

you want to make sure you have your teams back like one of the things i think even on heckling i would say is like i was like i will never heckle i will never fucking heckle yeah

Zain 29:55

yeah this has been i

Corey 29:56

was heckling within two weeks right not all the time like i I wasn't being shitty, but,

Corey 30:03

uh, a little bit. Right. But you know, the reason you do it is to have your guys back. Like, because what happens is they're heckling your guy or gal, right. Who's speaking. Yeah. And you're like those fucking assholes. That's a friend of mine. That's a colleague of mine. And so you give it back to them. Right. And so it ends up being very much a sports team thing and less about them and more about your team and letting your team know you have their back. Right. It's different than you expect. Who's

Zain 30:30

Who's the best heckler on your team?

Corey 30:33

Who's the best heckler on my team? Oh, I don't know. I don't know if they'd want that praise, to be honest. Come on, Hogan. You know who's a pretty good heckler is Yasser.

Corey 30:44

Yeah, he is. Yeah. Okay.

Corey 30:47

Yeah, you didn't expect that. I

Corey 30:48

I did not expect Yasser next as

Zain 30:49

as the choice for best.

Zain 30:51

Yeah, I was thinking he was a quality

Zain 30:53

quality heckler. He was very polite.

Zain 30:55

You know who's a Pakistani blood? It's just that Pakistani blood we have, man. man. We fucking go hard in the paint, actually. Now I get it. Stephen McKinnon,

Corey 31:02

McKinnon, also a pretty aggressive heckler sometimes. Yeah, house leader, government house

Zain 31:08

house leader. Our colleague.

Zain 31:10

ministerial colleague, and then, of course, our former colleague, and your colleague.

Zain 31:17

So, I want to stay on the QP thing for a second, because I don't want to just move to Roman and the Prowl suck stuff, even though that interests me.

Zain 31:23

Do you have an idea to make it better? Because it seems like you're like, I

Zain 31:28

know you do. Well, I do. Well, look, I kind of posted about this. Pitch us, because you've done this for three weeks now. So I clearly know

Corey 31:34

know how to fix

Zain 31:35

You've got the solutions. I can solve it now.

Corey 31:37

solution. So there's this thing that happens at the end of the sitting day, you know, colloquially called the late show, right? If somebody feels that they're not satisfied with their question that they asked and the response they got in QP, they

Corey 31:50

they can then go and basically ask a long-form version of that question and they get a long-form response. So they get a four-minute block for the question and you get a four minute block to respond and then they get a one minute supplemental and you get one minute to respond that

Corey 32:05

that nobody's around for it like because like it's right at the end like so right so there's very few people in the house the

Corey 32:12

the quality of that even though that still has its problems is so much better than the average quality of a qp exchange right i think you could do a version of qp at least once a week where somebody says okay i'm just in advance it It doesn't need to be a lot in advance, like an hour in advance. Just let them know the category so the minister knows who's up, can give some thought to what they're going to say. You get a much better response as a result. And you could have a more thoughtful exchange on an issue. And you could actually test somebody's knowledge of it. Because I'll tell you something, 35 seconds, you could say anything in 35 seconds. You know, as a joke, so as a Parle Sec, one of the things you have to do is answer if, like, your minister's not in the house. And sometimes there's moments where you're looking around and you're like, is that minister there? Am I going to be up? I don't have a binder today. you know like i don't know what to do uh and some of my colleagues will be like oh no what if i have to go up and i always say to them i'm like well just it's 35 seconds you just say mr speaker i can't believe i let's start the clock right mr

Corey 33:08

mr speaker i cannot even believe the member opposite would ask a question like that this government is incredibly committed to canadians is incredibly committed to this country and incredibly committed to equity and justice for all i hope the members opposite will join us as we are trying to make canada stronger including a tax cut for 22 million canadians mr speaker why don't they get on board with that mr speaker we've got canadians backs will they have canadians backs and like it's fucking over you know like

Carter 33:36

like hey can i ask you a question if you were so good at 35 second answers what the fuck happened on this podcast

Corey 33:43

let's go ahead well

Corey 33:44

well i think what i'm saying is sometimes they're not really answers steve oh

Carter 33:47

oh i I see what you're saying. But

Carter 33:50

four minutes. That's enough for a

Corey 33:51

a Zane question and a Corey response, you know? I

Carter 33:55

I don't think it's enough time for a Zane question. No, it's definitely not enough for a

Carter 33:58

I mean, let's not go crazy. Yeah. Let's not go crazy. So, Corey, three weeks

Zain 34:02

weeks in, you've got a fix for QP. Yeah. What other things in Ottawa do you want to fix? What other potholes have you found that you want to fix? The weather.

Corey 34:11

humid. It's terrible. I just hate the weather in Ottawa. I cannot wait to get back to Calgary every week. I

Zain 34:17

save that thought. I'm going to talk about it in Alberta in a second. Can we talk Rome? How did you get, did you get a phone call and be like, come to Rome? What's the plane like? What's this? What? Just what?

Corey 34:30

Um, yeah. So, yes,

Zain 34:33

I got a, I got a phone call. Who

Zain 34:36

Who makes that call? Yeah, this is what I want to know. Uh,

Corey 34:38

Uh, so the, the, the formal, like you're invited phone call came from the, uh, the prime minister's Western desk or prayers in North desk, right? and she says hey

Corey 34:48

hey uh the prime minister would like to extend an invite to you as part of like the delegation to rome and you go oh okay that's fantastic yeah thank you and land protocol it's gonna get a hold of you tomorrow and you say oh very cool right don't

Corey 35:00

don't know at the time how many people are going don't know the itinerary don't know any of that stuff just know i've got to be at uh the right part of the ottawa airport at i don't know i think it was three o'clock on friday before so so that's

Corey 35:14

that's that's sort of it and then you get like an email that says hey you've got to show up here and it's from the protocol office and it says these are the things we're going to do still don't know who's going with you

Corey 35:23

right like i didn't know i didn't know who was going with and keep in mind i'm new right yeah i didn't even know who was going with me when i was there in the terminal and all of the people were there i'm like i don't know who these people i don't know who you are yeah

Corey 35:36

so you know there's i i and i didn't get a copy of the news release that listed all of the people i i basically read it on global news like i don't know somebody had a version of it and so yeah but nobody gave me a list of like who was with me or anything like that i just had to figure it out as i was going so uh

Zain 35:54

uh so you go

Corey 35:55

and it's an interesting thing because there are of course official duties you've got to do as part of that delegation obligation you're

Corey 36:02

you're not there very long uh you travel with the

Zain 36:04

the pm cory yeah

Corey 36:05

yeah yeah you fly on the on the you know i i called it the pm's plane to the pm and he's like no it's the people's plane so i'll do the kindness oh my i know right that guy always on always on that guy the worst don't like that you'll be okay uh oh so like and we'll be fine what's it what's

Corey 36:24

what's it like what's it like well it's like an airplane it's just a regular airplane there's a section at the front which has like the business class seats like the pods and then there's a section which i would call like premium economy and then there's a section i would call economy and they're not all full right in fact there's lots of seats you know tons of space between people you know you get you get multiple seats all the time but like it's just a normal plane you're just on a normal plane and then you get to roam and uh you know but

Corey 36:54

but you haven't talked

Zain 36:54

talked to us about the inflight entertainment options cory these are the well

Corey 36:57

well so they had so they're it's like the last airplane in north america that still has the screen on the back and you can watch like movies like there's there's movies and radio and all of that uh it seems to be like the canadian air force has their own version of this and their own licenses and so yeah i don't know i don't know the logistics of that one but uh yeah it's a thing it's a thing that exists and um uh

Corey 37:22

uh yeah you land and you know the pm and the pm chief of staff and they're staying downtown near all of the other people and the rest of us are staying near the airport and you know we go and we

Corey 37:33

we you know we go into rome for like the various activities like you know go to the ambassador's house all of that stuff but uh it's

Corey 37:40

it's it's other it's like you know there's things to do but then there's like eight hour blocks where it's like how do you fill your time and rome's a great place to fill your time it was great to get to meet some of my colleagues in that context right yeah yeah

Corey 37:53

yeah that'd be fun throw stuff into the trevi fountain that kind of thing but But, but

Corey 37:57

but yeah, it was, it was interesting. And, you

Corey 38:01

know, I'll, I'll break some news here on the strategists here. Whoa. You mean the Ministry of Podcasts? Oh, right. Sorry. Yeah, that's right. The

Zain 38:09

The Ministry of Podcasts with their minister, Stephen Carter. Yeah.

Corey 38:11

Yeah. So we get to, we get to, we get to the mass, right?

Corey 38:18

All of the, all of the delegations kind of come in one at a time through, through Rome. You know, there's lights flashing. we get police escorts all of that stuff and

Corey 38:27

we get there and um there are we have pretty good seats where the canadian we just happen i guess in canada there's the americans have like their delegation ahead of us and we're just like right behind them the italians are to our left you know there's there's all sorts of you know people going on we

Corey 38:43

we get there and we can't find our seats we're we're looking around and all of like the um embassy staff and the protocol staff are confused they're like where are our seats can't find our seats and so um the ambassador to italy she says to us well she says to myself and jaime batiste like will you guys just go sit over there like with the italians basically right so we go and we sit in the middle of the italian like parliament seats and there's another fellow who's there and they kind of kick him out pretty quick but they don't kick us out yet and so jaime's like if they if they ask if you're like like a parliamentarian just say just say c c that means yes here it's fine and so uh you know we uh we don't get kicked out so we end up staying there but what's happening where we were is they find out that the reason we can't find our seats is the americans have taken off the reserve for canada signs and put reserve for the usa on it because they're trying to get more space anyways no yes Yes!

Corey 39:43

I mean, very much symbolic of the times, right? Anyways, our ambassador, tough

Corey 39:49

tough as hell, she says, I don't think so, gang. And they're like, no, no, no, we need the seats. She's like, these are our seats. These are not your seats. Sit down, she says to our delegation. And everyone sits down in it. But yeah, she was a little elbows up. And you know, all's well that ends well. And the Americans kind of said something. Apparently, I wasn't there. This is our ambassador

Zain 40:08

ambassador to the Vatican.

Corey 40:10

Our ambassador to italy to italy okay so we have an ambassador to the vatican and an ambassador to italy of course and so

Corey 40:16

so uh yeah uh the americans begrudgingly like oh i guess you guys can have them and i guess we were like no there are seats we have them because there are seats so but uh yeah we

Zain 40:29

we have our water metaphor fucking

Zain 40:30

fucking shit i've never heard yeah

Corey 40:32

yeah that's what i'm saying it was it was quite an interesting metaphor but uh yeah anyways jaime and i never made it back back there we were sitting amongst the italians the whole time and then we that would be great we did a full latin mass sitting in the seventh row which

Corey 40:44

which is like a lot closer than i ever sit at mass at home right i was like i was observing that at one point to myself i'm like like i don't sit this close in church at home like this is i'm a back row guy right and uh i'm sitting here in the vatican it was very wild it was quite interesting quite humbling so yeah

Zain 40:59

yeah that was room carter

Zain 41:00

carter follow us for our dear friend mr cory hogan i want to talk about the proselytic thing We've got to maybe let him go.

Carter 41:07

Well, let's do, well, I want, do the Parlesek thing, and then I want to talk about something coming up, because the stuff coming up is the most interesting. I

Zain 41:15

I agree with that, too. Parlesek. Carter and I make cakes. We make multiple cakes for you. The Parlesek one paid off. That's

Corey 41:27

How did you get

Zain 41:28

get that job? Talk to me about process. Talk to me about timing. I think, was this after

Zain 41:32

after the King's speech? Was this before?

Zain 41:36

was. It was after. Okay. Yes, it was. Walk us through this.

Corey 41:39

All right. Well, like, obviously, I don't know how conversations were unfolding behind the scenes. Sure. But I will say, I think it's pretty safe to say at this particular moment, if I'm saying something I shouldn't, oops, my bad, PCO. Sorry about that. But I

Corey 41:54

I got a call not too soon after the election, just essentially to get my permission to be vetted, right?

Corey 42:00

Yeah. you know, where I have to, you know, you fill out a form and then they can go through your financials and all of that stuff. And then you have an interview with somebody. And in the interview, they sort of say like this, you know, they don't tell you why at the start, but you'd have to be an idiot not to kind of know that it's like for an additional position.

Corey 42:17

But, you know, they do say they're like, well, you know, it's, this is for like, you know, consideration for ministers or parliamentary secretaries. Like, it's always like, that was like part of the framing off the top. Like, so I don't know what their thinking was like from day one and that that they the vetting is not about like your qualities it's not about what you're good at it's like tell us let's go through your life about everything that could be bad right like let's let's just figure it out you know they're like how's your marriage you know uh drug use you use drugs you know like stuff like that like

Zain 42:46

like is that different than the candidate vetting you had like in terms of intensity and timing or well

Corey 42:52

well so they're sitting there and they actually have my candidate vetting as well like as sort of a foundation for questions they're going to ask you interview and the notes that are in there and all of that but uh yeah i would say it was certainly much more about kind of like my personal life and you know and then they throw a questions where like

Corey 43:10

why are they asking that what do they know like you know they'll be like somebody who'll be like listed as like a i won't say which because but you have to list a bunch of relatives and they're like how's that relative doing and it's like of a list of like 20 they pick one and you're like why

Corey 43:24

fuck they ask about

Corey 43:25

you know and like you start getting in almost your own head about that but uh um yeah so it's like it's a little more intrusive like that they say things like what's the one thing you'd be like mortified if the prime minister found out about right or like you had to go tell them and so was

Carter 43:40

was it the podcast it

Corey 43:41

it was definitely the podcast yeah

Corey 43:43

really embarrassed about the podcast yeah

Carter 43:45

yeah that's what i would have so

Corey 43:46

you do that and then you go and then the cabinet comes out and you're not in it and you're like oh okay well everyone wants to be a cabinet right so that's

Carter 43:53

a bit of a downer but it's not the biggest deal i

Corey 43:55

i will say like Like, it's not a better job in the world than being an MP. But because you're your own boss and you get to do whatever you want, right? As long as you keep voting with the way.

Carter 44:04

way. As long as you vote with the way you're supposed to vote. And you clap at the right time. Keep it in

Corey 44:07

in 35 seconds. You got to clap at the right time. Well, and, you know, like, but, you know, and of course, you got to keep, you got to work for your people. But, but, so anyways, that goes on. And then there's

Corey 44:19

there's just at an early regional caucus meeting, we just get word like, oh, because i

Corey 44:24

i don't think anyone knew a hundred percent that we're going to be parl sex although i think there was like an assumption there'd be parliamentary secretaries you just get a note like oh and parliamentary secretaries that's going to be like within a week was not within a week took like two weeks i think probably from when we heard it was a week but um so

Corey 44:38

so that's going on uh and then you just sort of go about your life you don't hear anything about it except for kind of occasionally updates like oh it's going to be in the next couple of days or whatnot and

Corey 44:47

and then i get a phone call i get a phone call from uh brayden cayley who

Corey 44:51

who you know many of us i think all of us snow right yeah

Carter 44:56

says basically like you

Corey 44:57

you know on behalf of you know the prime minister is this something you'd be willing to do be parlsec for you know energy and natural resources and i

Corey 45:05

mean i don't think there's an answer except yes right like i feel like you should have signaled much sooner if you weren't interested in a role like that right by the time they get to so

Corey 45:14

so you say yes and then you do it and uh and

Corey 45:17

and like a lot of it like you

Corey 45:20

you don't know what the hell it is you know like nobody tells you okay well what do i gotta do job description on the phone

Corey 45:26

yeah yeah you don't get anything like that and of course like i know what a parlsec is and i know what the rough job is but like did you know there's gonna be two of you in this uh i did so they told me there'd be two so like i i think it's fair to say that with the benefit of hindsight i don't know if this was always the plan but it was clearly the plan for a while to say okay energy natural resources important file kind of a national unity file at this point uh so we've got tim hodgson who's you know super smart deal maker you know you know well known and well connected to mark carney and uh then you get uh an albertan and you get a quebecer and you say okay between the three of you figure it out you know because this is like kind of important stuff and so hey you know and tim's a great guy to work with uh and so is cloud we we have a lot of fun because cloud by the way is like former like ibm canada president like super smart guy too uh he's the he's the other process and so

Carter 46:20

you're kind of the slow one kind

Corey 46:21

kind of the slow one i think everyone else

Zain 46:24

else was a president everyone

Corey 46:25

everyone was a president i

Corey 46:27

was just a vice

Corey 46:29

got to be a shift for you it's got to hurt the

Corey 46:31

problem i hadn't thought about that thank you for making me feel bad

Zain 46:34

this is why he's got to climb the ranks with the novel ideas

Carter 46:41

i ask my so now i want to know what what so

Carter 46:43

so you're back Back in Calgary, everybody

Carter 46:46

everybody always assumes that you're not doing anything because

Carter 46:50

you're just back in Calgary. What is the average day looking like for a member of parliament, Corey Hogan, just getting his feet underneath him in Calgary? I would imagine that a lot of it's just planning your stampede breakfast.

Corey 47:02

Well, I've done almost none of that, as you know. I think that was a leading question.

Corey 47:08

Look, so all of that office setup that we didn't get to do earlier, we're doing now. and

Corey 47:13

and there are things like getting the first householder out so that's the mailing that we do there are creating the processes it's creating like the metrics through which we measure ourselves there's just scores of meetings of people that have backed up along the way that we've got to have there are announcements you know you're at the green line announcement you're at the Leptanza Technic announcement you're do

Carter 47:33

do you want to talk about the way you were wearing your hard hat in the yeah there's

Carter 47:36

the green line shovel thing it

Corey 47:39

was fine it was a fine it

Carter 47:40

it was not fine It was fine wearing

Carter 47:41

wearing the hard hat. Your hard hat looked really bad. Do you want to

Zain 47:44

to talk about your expression in that ribbon cutting that we also saw? It was a little bit too... Do you want to

Corey 47:49

to know where my expression came from on that one?

Zain 47:51

Yeah, what were you saying? The scissors were

Corey 47:53

were way sharper than I expected. It was like, holy shit. I feel like you could cut off a baby's arm with those scissors. You've got to be careful with those scissors. Yeah.

Corey 48:02

I expected them to be more dull. They were not. It felt more like a guillotine, right? So I think that was...

Carter 48:08

was... Well, that's good. I'm glad. And you're still getting all your digits? You're

Corey 48:13

But it was my first ribbon cutting, so I

Corey 48:17

don't know. We could tell.

Corey 48:20

You looked a little bit. It was a 12.

Corey 48:22

Yeah. Well, because it was the first ribbon cutting. It was just really exciting. How would you change

Zain 48:28

change ribbon cuttings, Corey? Now that you've done one. Now that I've

Corey 48:31

I've done one. Now

Zain 48:32

you've done one. What

Zain 48:33

do differently about ribbon cutting? I

Corey 48:34

I think the ribbons need a big bow. They need a focal point, like an accoutrement. That's what I said. I kind of agree with him on that.

Zain 48:41

Keep going though. I'm not disagreeing. To that point though, on the office, can I ask, did you take, is it common practice to just take the spot that your predecessor, regardless of what party they are, had from like a opposite office perspective? And are you doing that?

Corey 48:55

So you, when you get the office, you get it for three months beyond the election, beyond when they vacated. So I think for us, that time is up in August. We're going to have to make the decision pretty quick, whether we stay there or we look for a different office. But I think right now I'm leaning towards different office, something

Corey 49:13

something that's a little more central in the constituency. This one is sort of right on the edge of the constituency in the Northwest, which worked for Len because Len lived up there, right? And so it was like kind of a, you know, it was a sensible way for him to kind of organize his life. I

Corey 49:29

I would rather be sort of in

Corey 49:32

in the heart of the constituency. It doesn't even need to be where I live, but like just a little bit more central. Yeah.

Carter 49:38

mean, probably in Che, right? You'd want it in Che. There is

Corey 49:42

is at least one location in Che that I was kind of looking at. It needs to

Zain 49:47

to have a Che flag. It needs to look at the bus bench. It needs to be invisible sight lines. Yeah.

Corey 49:53

Yeah. Always see it. Yeah. Yeah,

Carter 49:55

that should be it. Actually,

Corey 49:58

Actually, it is on 9th Avenue and Center. It's like that building, that one that's like four or five stories just north of where our bus

Carter 50:05

bus bench is. Yeah.

Carter 50:06

That's good. that's close to my house that's good

Carter 50:08

good i like that it's exciting you want to talk about i can visit the

Zain 50:10

the issues like we could talk more about like you

Zain 50:14

know we could talk more about like you know what your first stampede is going to look like i'm curious like i'm

Carter 50:19

i'm really curious to hear about what his first stampede

Zain 50:20

stampede okay let's talk about events yeah do you you're hosting one and you attend a shit is that pretty much yeah yeah

Corey 50:26

yeah look i my

Corey 50:28

my last job required me to go to a lot of stampede events too i think last year i was 27 or 28 and i thought that was going to be like a pretty durable horrible high score i was at a lot of events i think

Corey 50:37

i'm at 40 and counting right now in my calendar it

Corey 50:40

it is really one of those go to this event for an hour leave go to the other event for an hour leave go to another event for an hour at least through till like the wednesday

Corey 50:48

calgarian knows like political stampede starts to quiet down like uh midway through the you know the the week and then um and

Corey 50:56

and then i've got just a few events scattered uh throughout moving on to the weekend and

Carter 51:01

and how are you going to treat zane and i when you see us at these events like

Corey 51:04

like total Total strangers. Yeah. Like

Corey 51:05

total strangers. Total strangers. Like, I've maybe seen your picture before on a, like, you know, like one of those. Wanted poster. No, I was thinking more like the bad check signs that you used to see at like bodegas. Oh yeah, that's nice. Right? Yeah. Like one of those, like, oh.

Carter 51:18

That's great. That guy.

Corey 51:20

I know one thing about him and it's not good. Yeah. That's

Corey 51:23

nice. He's the CEO of the Corey Holman Lobby Shop, which is the business side. Great. No, it's not. Yeah. Okay. No, that is not going to be a business that exists. You can't tell me that. Well,

Carter 51:33

Well, I mean, we can't talk about it, right? We can't talk about it. Yeah, I mean, it was competitive advantages and things like that. Yeah, for sure.

Zain 51:38

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's probably best that you don't speak. Okay. The issues. Can I talk about what's happened in the last, is it 12 hours, 24 hours? If you want to. Yeah. Why not? Do you want to give us a sense? We've had this, what is it even called? It's digital. The

Zain 51:58

Yeah, so we've. Services

Carter 51:59

Services tax or something like that? Yeah, the digital services

Corey 52:03

is this the part of the show where like i uh you know defend the defend the government got it or

Zain 52:10

or you make some explaining why this is a good thing we find out together

Zain 52:16

kind of talk about this tax as

Zain 52:18

you do about qp

Corey 52:20

well look i mean i think that everybody knows qp is a challenge right i don't i don't think Thank you for your courageous stance. Yeah, thank you.

Zain 52:28

Yeah, exactly, right. Can you extend it to this? Are you

Zain 52:31

willing to extend it to this? Well,

Corey 52:32

Well, look, I mean, what can you say? It's an interesting, look, on

Corey 52:36

on Friday, Donald Trump decides that he's going to potentially blow up all negotiations and not negotiate with Canadians as long as the digital services tax exists. And the reason why it's, I guess, au courant is today was the day where all of these American companies were going to have to give, Well, not just American, but like the American companies, you know, money retroactive

Corey 52:59

retroactive for a few different years, right? And he's like, if this happens, like all negotiations

Corey 53:05

I think it's fair to say, as Canadians, we've known for a long time, the digital service tax is not something that the Americans are particularly thrilled about. Like Joe Biden wasn't particularly thrilled about it.

Corey 53:16

I think it's also fair to say we always sort of knew this was likely to be something that got mixed up in any kind of trade negotiation that occurred.

Corey 53:24

that was going to be true of any government yeah any trade negotiation going on so

Corey 53:28

so i think in some ways it was not like the hardest give for us right to say okay well let's just keep things moving it was going to be you know something there as long as it sort of gets costed into the final deal

Corey 53:40

but i mean i certainly understand why people look at it and say like oh man we gave the americans another one and you know the the u.s president just demanded and we we did this thing for him and i think yeah

Corey 53:51

i mean like a

Corey 53:52

huge part of me hates

Corey 53:54

hates that right like doesn't want to do that but like that's the kind of ego you sort of have to check when you're the government and you don't have the luxury of having like as a podcaster i probably would have been railing against it but realistically we

Corey 54:08

we we need a deal like i i've been writing about this forever like in january i was saying look no matter what you think of this current moment and i think a lot of things about it if

Corey 54:18

you want to have a different economic future for canada one that is not as tied to the united states one that perhaps is more integrated with europe and asia and africa right that's

Corey 54:30

that's going to require time and that's going to require money so step one for any reorientation of our economy is minimizing the damage and eliminating the damage from this current moment we're in with the united states and that's that was never going to be fun right and that was never going to be anything but uh but pain i think for all parties involved so that's

Carter 54:51

that's where does it turn into an alberta type situation where you know the the government of alberta is unwilling to to switch from the easy opportunity that is oil and gas and uh you know as a result you know they're stuck there and and we never move away from it do you see that you know the government of canada the the Canadian excitement about doing deals with Europe and Africa and Asia, do you think that that starts to subside when we get another deal with the Americans? Will we still be this enthusiastic? The diversification,

Corey 55:27

will it happen if

Corey 55:28

stay on the same track?

Carter 55:28

track? Because we don't do it in Alberta.

Corey 55:30

Yeah, well, I'll be honest. I think that the overall public desire to do it will likely abate a bit, but I don't think this government's desire to reorient is going to abate. I think that the Prime Minister is pretty fixed on making sure that we have new trade deals and new trade relationships. He was in Europe this week, you know, for new military partnerships. And I think that you're going to see a lot more of that, but it's kind of like step one, step two stuff, right? And so what I would say to anybody is, as much as it might be galling to find ourselves at this particular moment, we can't lose sight of the main objective here, and this is very much a game in progress. Like, there are steps going on behind the scenes, there are steps going on that, you know, that even I am not privy to, right, as a caucus member, right, where all of this is going on. And you're just going to have to sort of, well, my ask is, I guess, assess it on the full body of work, not like the individual moment within it. Like, you know, a month from now, two months from now, where are we in terms of a trade deal? Like assess that overall bundle rather than assessing like the individual thrusts and parries of a very erratic US president who often throws bombs into the discussion that

Corey 56:41

that frankly he knows he didn't need to throw in. Like, you know, it would it would have been a moment of conversation about this. Anyhow, it would likely have been part of any deal anyhow. But he likes the theatrics of it. He likes to change the channel. And, you know, it's not really any way that, in my opinion, you should run a country just like random tweets on a Friday. But hey,

Corey 57:03

hey, Americans picked him and he's running that country. So we sort of have to, we

Corey 57:07

we have to kind of deal with it. And at the end of the day, you're going to have to measure it by like the full body of work, not the individual plays.

Corey 57:16

Carter, you seem skeptical.

Zain 57:17

I'll let you follow up as the minister. Yeah,

Zain 57:19

you do look skeptical. I

Carter 57:21

I am skeptical. I think that it's easy to talk about these things. Hey, you're the minister, man.

Carter 57:26

Yeah, I know. And this is why I'm concerned. I've been talking to the deputy minister, and I feel like we don't have the house behind us. um my my question

Carter 57:38

about alberta i think is is is about the weakness of government right uh government

Carter 57:44

government because we tend to follow where the people wanted to go um in three years or two years or a year we may have completely different directionality from the government from the from the people and the government may not have the opportunity to continue to

Carter 58:00

to continue with the these these big I mean, a big, bold dream was announced when we went to a commitment of 5% of GDP towards military spending, which strikes me as a near impossibility for a country that was struggling to get to 2%. We're here now. Pardon me? We're

Corey 58:20

We're at 2% now. We will be this

Carter 58:21

this year. We're kind of at 2% now.

Carter 58:23

We're kind of there. Listen,

Corey 58:24

Listen, can I ask you guys a question? You

Carter 58:28

most certainly can. man.

Corey 58:29

Setting aside my family, you know anybody who's gone to Tokyo recently? Lots of people.

Corey 58:34

Lots of people. Just your family. Lots of people. And you know why? Because of the direct flight, I assume. Because of the direct flight.

Corey 58:39

I believe in a few things. And one of the things I believe in is markets. And government has the ability to set conditions that will then allow people to be rational actors and choose things that they wouldn't have chosen before those frameworks were in place. And so when you talk about oil and gas in Alberta, I hear you, Stephen. But I think one of the reasons why the, you know, Alberta, you

Corey 59:01

you know, you call it like easy money. I don't agree with that assessment. But like I would say, one of the reasons is that there's just no government will there and the government hasn't incentivized some of these things that you're talking about. But you have federally a government that will incentivize these things, that will make those trade deals. And ultimately, the market will then shift. Once those conditions are there and people can make a pile of money in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa, things

Corey 59:27

things will shift. That's just economics. And I think that

Corey 59:31

that you shouldn't underestimate the power of a government that's hellbent on doing something.

Carter 59:38

I certainly underestimate the government of Alberta and its willingness to drive us straight into a ditch. So there you go.

Carter 59:47

mean, I know. Corey, this is where you get to fill in

Zain 59:49

in the space there. Do you

Carter 59:51

you want to add anything about Danielle Smith and her government? Yeah, do you

Zain 59:54

you want to talk about that? All

Corey 59:55

Let's move on. Let's move on. Didn't love the surveys. I'll say that. Didn't love those surveys. No,

Carter 1:00:02

your favorite thing? Oh, my

Corey 1:00:03

my God. Terrible survey design. Breaks all of

Carter 1:00:06

of the rules. Do we want to ask Dr. Trevor Toome what the hell he's up to and Adam Legge? I mean, some real questions there. Real questions. Maybe

Zain 1:00:15

save that for a show

Corey 1:00:18

Corey's on. That sounds like

Corey 1:00:18

a mainline strategist episode. That does, Carter. Carter,

Zain 1:00:21

Carter, as the minister, you, of course, get to ask the final question, but I've got the penultimate

Zain 1:00:27

penultimate question. Yeah, you

Carter 1:00:29

you ask the penultimate question. Corey, how

Zain 1:00:31

how long have you been doing this? How long have you been in the Ottawa bubble now? know uh you just come back from it but yeah i was i

Corey 1:00:39

mean i don't know it

Corey 1:00:40

it feels like a question that there's not a good answer to because if i give a number no no no meeting i'm in the auto yeah

Zain 1:00:45

yeah no no that's not even the question the question is this

Zain 1:00:48

this what's the most ottawa thing you have done so far kind of like a pinch me moment when you're like i'm one of these 300 plus legislators that get to create what's the most ottawa thing that you've done so far that you'll be like oh man i never thought i'd be doing this or i never thought this would be me in some some ways laid on me well

Corey 1:01:05

well i honestly think the answer might be the heckling right like where i just like the first time i'm like ah what am i doing you know and i know why i did it for all of the reasons i said but that was probably the moment where i'm like i

Corey 1:01:17

i hope i don't become somebody i don't want to become but you know did

Corey 1:01:20

did you have any risk of that

Corey 1:01:22

no i mean look i think

Corey 1:01:25

think there's always a risk of that if you're being honest with yourself but i do think that there's certain personality traits i have that maybe make it less likely uh you know i'm i'm not like really a guy who's like oh i'm gonna be a part of this club and not tell you what i think right so uh

Corey 1:01:39

uh i think um i

Corey 1:01:41

i i think that that that was that would be kind of a specific i would say in general it's not oh

Corey 1:01:47

oh i got a good i mean like scrums can we talk about scrums like oh here we go yeah

Corey 1:01:52

yeah have you had to do anything oh

Corey 1:01:54

oh yeah yeah okay we'll let's talk about them yeah

Carter 1:01:57

yeah with like like two journalists i mean does it count as

Corey 1:01:59

as a scrum no no no no no no no so i have no idea before qp

Corey 1:02:05

qp like people are outside west block like there's i don't know there'd be a few like let's call it half a dozen to a little more less than a dozen might be there's a couple in the door they might try to grab you for a question on the way in maybe you blow past them uh caucus is where there's just a ton like they just they line up and there's like 20 plus people they're They're all just kind of like shouting questions at you as you walk down a hall from just to get to the caucus meeting. And, you know, mostly

Corey 1:02:31

mostly you just walk by. But every now and then I'll like stop and I'll talk about it. Have you

Zain 1:02:36

you been given any guidance when you can stop, how you can stop? Nope.

Corey 1:02:39

This is, again, this is part of like the whole like just

Corey 1:02:42

just kind of figure it out as you go. And, you know, despite what you might have heard, the Liberal Party at least doesn't really police those things very strongly. Interesting.

Corey 1:02:48

If at all. I figured they would. No, no, no. No, but what

Corey 1:02:53

what a way to do it. I actually kind of usually want to stop every time, but almost definitionally, I'm on my way somewhere. I'm probably going at that time because that's exactly the amount of time I need in order to get the things done when I get to the other side. And so I always feel like,

Corey 1:03:12

you guys are so eager for these questions. Why don't you just email my office? I don't think I've turned down a media request. like why are we doing it this way like why do we do it in this just like totally wild fashion that is just sort of designed to make it look like we're all pricks having to walk by you all because we got places to go we got stuff to do you know like just are you eating a cookie i was not eating a cookie okay

Corey 1:03:36

but you know there was like so there was like a the other the other day like the last caucus meeting i i was walking by and i answered some question about bill c5 you you know, some question about like the authorities and all that. It was in the Toronto Star, they mentioned it. But like, then I'm walking by and there's another question shouted at me about like, what do you think about Danielle Smith's government bringing in charges for COVID vaccines? And I was thinking, I really want to answer that question. I have some thoughts on that question. I don't have time. I'm already late because I stopped to talk to those people. And so it just, it kind of sucks. It's like, just call my office. Like that was a question just for me from one journalist. Just call my office. happy to answer at a later point well

Carter 1:04:19

well well that's that seems like an invitation now to the media to call you and you're gonna have to keep your 100 answer right well

Corey 1:04:26

well i know right i'm

Corey 1:04:28

i'm not even sure it's

Zain 1:04:29

it's 100 i try to

Zain 1:04:30

answer but yeah carter that was my final question as a minister like i said you get the final well

Carter 1:04:37

my question to you is uh why

Carter 1:04:40

why did you feel like we had to put ice cream on pancakes for the pancake breakfast why why was that such a a uh a make or break thing we'll tell people when

Corey 1:04:50

thing is too just yeah

Carter 1:04:51

yeah we probably should tell you know

Corey 1:04:52

know it is a really good question it is one of those things that you have to kind of make peace with that you're trading external voice for internal voice and so you know there's a party line uh and you and the deal is now you get to raise in caucus and you get to talk to the prime minister and the ministers and you directly but get to influence policy but you're part of a team and so at the end of the day you hang with that team and so it does change the dynamic a bit as you go along that

Carter 1:05:19

was fascinating answer to some question can you

Zain 1:05:23

bet i bet he was 35 he's i

Zain 1:05:30

confused gaslit and then angry yeah

Carter 1:05:33

yeah uh so here's here's here's the thing your snappy breakfast is on sunday it is at the uh finding

Zain 1:05:41

finding out for the first time are you telling him this

Carter 1:05:43

the commons what was it called calgary commons at the university district park some

Carter 1:05:49

some something like that and it's it's going to be a humdinger people should come and they can ask you questions that you'll answer with 35 second answers that'd

Carter 1:05:59

that'd be pretty fun hey so

Corey 1:06:01

so yeah the first The first caucus meeting is interesting because you vote on all of the reform.

Carter 1:06:05

So anyways, this is

Zain 1:06:06

is a good show.

Zain 1:06:06

show. That's a wrap

Zain 1:06:07

episode one of the Ministry of

Zain 1:06:09

of Podcasts. My name is Zane Velgey. With me, as always, a member of Parliament from the Calgary Confederation, Corey Hogan, the Minister Stephen Carter, and of course, our sponsor, Flair Airlines, the official Ministry of Transport. It's not our sponsor. We shall see you next time.

Corey 1:06:22

Your sponsor. I don't even have this. This is not my show anymore. You got paid. You got paid. I feel no guilt.

Zain 1:06:26

guilt. You just got what I assume is a very large paycheck just

Zain 1:06:30

just today. I did. because it was like two months of pay you should be paying

Zain 1:06:35

that's okay yeah that's true good

Transcript