Transcript
Zain
0:05
I've now declared definitively that Ottawa is the worst city in the entire country.
Zain
0:09
You've been to Regina. And would you want to say that as well, Corey? Do you want to just, you know, it's an easy one. You can just plus one that comment.
Annalise
0:18
I'll tell you this. It is not my favorite city. We've talked about this. It's okay. You know, very nice people. There's a lot of good things in Ottawa, for sure. Not going to take away from Ottawa's whole vibe in that sense. Not for me. That's what I'll say about Ottawa. Really, really pretty all in on this federal government thing. And as an Albertan, that makes me feel weird.
Zain
0:40
It should make you feel at home, a place that doesn't diversify. How is that a place that doesn't make you feel at home? Come on. At least
Carter
0:49
least it's all about Canada. You're siding with the separatists now, Corey? Well,
Annalise
0:53
Well, certainly not. Certainly not. That would be... let's start again how
Annalise
0:58
how about we start again on that one you
Zain
0:59
you want to start no no where do you want speaking of starting we should get started steven carter i'll let you wait this wasn't we haven't started no
Zain
1:06
let's start steven carter is the minister we have to pay all due respects to the ministry point
Zain
1:10
uh steven carter as the minister on record do you want to start with um an op-ed that the one of the three of us has written in i politics or do you want to start with alberta separatism an ongoing drumbeat on our on our other show where are we starting i
Carter
1:25
think we should probably start with the uh the the eye politics uh op-ed that i didn't write
Carter
1:32
so okay neither did
Carter
1:34
i didn't write it you didn't write it so it must have been cory hogan who wrote it was
SPEAKER_01
1:39
was me can we
Carter
1:40
we just recap saying how long has cory hogan been in the house of commons
Zain
1:44
this has got the this guy's fucking showed up 10 minutes ago and now he's got a whole whole iPolitics article on how something should change. This is the most white man energy I have ever seen in a piece without someone realizing it. Being like, listen, I've been here for fucking five seconds. Am I going to ask any questions? No, I'm going to propose all the solutions. I'm going to tell you which solutions are harder than others. I'm going to tell you how we fix something. This is insane. This
Zain
2:12
This is an insane thing to do. And
Zain
2:14
And you have done it, Corey. yes
Annalise
2:16
i am i'm definitely columbusing the idea that question period is broken i'm not i'm not disputing that others have gotten there first it's
SPEAKER_01
2:25
it's no question but
Zain
2:26
but no one in their wisdom could spend 10 minutes in in parliament and come up with the solutions you have
Zain
2:32
that's why they're publication worthy oh
Zain
2:34
oh my goodness you've done it and
SPEAKER_02
2:37
and by the way for
Zain
2:37
folks listening this is not a fucking joke cory has an article cory i'll let you take it away Yeah.
Annalise
2:41
Yeah. Look, I, in
Annalise
2:44
in my defense, in my defense, fair point.
Annalise
2:48
even been a year of the job. Fair
Annalise
2:51
In my defense, I put a couple of tweets out about how I thought question period should change. And then iPolitics said, hey, do you want to write about that? And I was on house duty. And you got a little bit of extra time when you're on house duty. You're in the house, you're talking, you're listening, but you got time. So I took an hour and I wrote it into a thing. And then they posted it basically instantly, which was pretty, pretty impressive of them, frankly. And yeah, and so it starts this conversation. But the basic gist is this.
Annalise
3:21
QP supposed to be about accountability.
Annalise
3:26
maybe not doing the greatest job of that as it's currently constructed you
Annalise
3:31
know or in canada in alberta and ontario and quebec basically everywhere the format is 35
Annalise
3:36
35 second question 35 second answer
SPEAKER_01
3:40
and that's it but
Annalise
3:41
but i want to stress a
Annalise
3:43
a it's not how we used to do it b
Annalise
3:45
b it's not how anybody else does it c there's no reason we can't change that and and i'll i gotta tell you like when you're sitting And you're sitting there and you're kind of subjected to it every day. And you've got the dozens of questions that are coming through. And they're all in this format, this broken format.
Annalise
4:00
You really, really start questioning why that is the case. And I'm
Annalise
4:04
I'm sure you can get used to it. I'm sure it'll stop bothering you after a while. But part of why I think being a new MP, I wanted to say something about it is, God
Annalise
4:12
God help me, I will get used to it at some point. So let me at least get on the record how it actually feels before I've lost all sense of that. that so
Carter
4:19
it's been published for about 18 hours now am
Carter
4:21
am i correct give or give or take um yeah how
Carter
4:25
how has the response been from
Carter
4:27
from your colleagues to
Carter
4:29
to your op-ed your solution from the 10 minutes in the house of commons uh member parliament from calgary alberta canada yeah
Zain
4:37
yeah no this is good and i'll just add we'll tag on one more question what if they've run out of their three free articles that they get on ipolitics in addition exactly it's
SPEAKER_01
4:45
it's a great point yeah
Annalise
4:47
Well, on the first, like, how has it reacted? A lot of people saying, yeah, absolutely. You know, somebody knocked on a booth I was in today, gave me thumbs up, said, read your article. You know, that was all fun. I've even had a couple of conservative MPs tell me that they like it. And they don't agree with the idea of limiting like the repetitiveness, but they're generally on board with the other two proposals that I made, which we didn't really get into. to and um and
Annalise
5:10
and then there have been people who clearly think maybe maybe sit down and wait a minute right like just from the tone you i'd be like hey did you read my article they're like yeah i read your article yeah that's it there's there's not really much coming after that
SPEAKER_01
5:25
but being the savvy
SPEAKER_02
5:27
majority of your colleagues they're not telling you that no no no no oh i know oh i know yeah
Annalise
5:33
yeah it's not the majority but it's uh yeah you can tell some Some people are like, no,
Annalise
5:38
no, I don't think we need to do that. Maybe even I accept your critique, but no, I don't think we need to do that. I don't think we need to focus on it for
SPEAKER_01
5:47
little bit of that.
Carter
5:48
pretty fun. Did you want to go through your three proposals now that we've kind of alluded to them? No,
Zain
5:53
No, we'll let them get to it in a second. Hold on. Hold on. hold up is
Zain
5:57
is it is it that we don't need to do what's in the article or who
Carter
6:04
to suggest these at
Zain
6:06
at such an early junction can
Annalise
6:08
you guys hear that like that like jackhammering that's happening around me no
SPEAKER_01
6:12
no i think that's just your
Zain
6:13
oh it's just your heart people knocking already we
Zain
6:16
we will bail we will bail before you get the knock on the door i promise just like out of this thing yeah
Zain
6:21
yeah so uh carter that's his way of avoiding questions the false jackhammer yeah
Annalise
6:29
mean i honestly i didn't even hear your question but i've got my volume up now talk to me talk to me zane tell
Carter
6:35
tell us your three tell us your three suggestions so the people who uh don't have a free article on i politics can uh can
Zain
6:43
can you gift this article unlimited times to people is that that something that you can do cory is that just because i know i don't
Annalise
6:49
don't think so but i think that with ipolitics when you get like the subscribe thing if you just hit back you get to the article anyways don't tell the ipolitics people i crack their code good hack i think
SPEAKER_01
6:57
think that works okay
Annalise
7:00
three basic ideas they're pretty simple the first one is just make the answers longer just instead of having like this like long long soundbite thing just have
Annalise
7:09
have a two-minute answer and and there's some benefits to that not least of which is you could actually get information in minute but if
Annalise
7:15
if you're the opposition you'll also look there's a benefit to you as opposition too you'll be able to expose weak performers like anybody can hide in a 35 second response we've talked about it on this pod i
Annalise
7:27
don't even need to hear the question to give you a 35 second response that sounds somewhat on topic so you just longer answers mean you're going to get more robust answers and you're not going to be able to hide in the shallows you're going to have to have that so So that would be kind of the easiest thing to do. Why not? We used to do that anyways. That's what it was before the 90s came and we made changes to it.
Annalise
7:50
The second thing that we propose, or I propose, is that instead of having this total free-for-all where anybody can ask any minister a question, we have it by days. We say, okay, we're going to have some questions to social ministries on this day and to economic ministries on a different day and to the prime minister maybe on a third day and this is a format that basically everybody else uses and
Annalise
8:16
and at first it makes it sound like you're less accountable right you know okay well you
Annalise
8:21
you you uh you're not necessarily going to be up every day but the reality the lived reality is when you've got dozens of ministers there if one of the ministers is not answering particularly uh you know if
Annalise
8:32
if they're not on their game that day right you
Annalise
8:36
just go to the the next minister. You've got so many choices, so, so many choices. And again, if you're the opposition, the benefit here is you can actually get into it with a minister. You can go multiple layers deep. You can understand things. People are prepped for it. The
Annalise
8:49
The expectation is higher because you're not up every day. So that's number two. And then the third one is don't
Annalise
8:57
don't let people ask the same question five times in a row. That one's way harder because there's subjectivity to it but even if you got rid of the most egregious repeating of the questions where like nothing has changed and we're just all stuck in this horrible
Annalise
9:09
horrible groundhog day style loop where you know you're like what's going on if i hear this song one more time i'm going to smash the alarm clock right
Annalise
9:17
just stop it just don't do it anymore but there was a fourth suggestion and the fourth suggestion is kind of the meta suggestion which is like just try some of these things like just experiment we don't need to go all in we don't need to change every question period forever more what if we just agreed we're going to give it a shot for six months or we're going to try it on these two days but the other three days are normal qp so these are my modest suggestions to fix question period based on my lived experience still
Annalise
9:43
still informed by my novice status how's that i mean this this
Carter
9:48
just stinks of modesty the
Carter
9:50
the whole premise of it is is just modest from the core you your humility is showing across the nation uh through your eye politics article so uh because they and i saw it right away it's
Carter
10:03
it's fantastic i mean and you will be the only mp with a podcast now that nader skin smith is stepping down is that correct as well true
Zain
10:11
true who else shows up
Zain
10:12
on a podcast i
Annalise
10:14
mean i don't know i don't know i should maybe check on that you see if i've got the market equipment is available
Zain
10:20
available for a discount facebook marketplace price you can do an
Zain
10:24
an explainer show okay like him that'd be that'd be good yeah
SPEAKER_02
10:27
to say anything you
Annalise
10:28
well produced show i gotta say you know i'm
Zain
10:29
i'm saying pick up that equipment hey listen i have a question for you in all seriousness who is this intended for like
Zain
10:35
like what's what what's what was the goal of doing this putting it into a piece was it just like get your name out there where you actually
Zain
10:42
shouldn't say were are what are you thinking of doing with this or like what is the intended outcome strategically for you so
Annalise
10:49
so with every parliament there is a debate on the standing orders happens just like once and that debate happens to be coming up on friday and
Annalise
10:57
and so i i knew that i knew it was coming and so the reason i threw it out there it was actually kind of meant for internal audience mps
Annalise
11:05
mps and whatnot right was like let's start the conversation about it we're having this debate about standing orders seems like a pretty good opportunity to debate the standing orders and
Annalise
11:14
hey i could have gone a lot of ways i could have said hey let's talk about why we need to wear ties didn't go that way hey let's talk about this broad uh definition we have of privilege that allows you to repost things you've said in the house and and maintain kind of shields against any legal action i didn't go that way either i thought i'd go this way yeah
Carter
11:33
yeah and you did it with that notoriously internal communications tactic that's known as twitter um
Carter
11:40
well done for really picking your target audience and uh i've been talking to a couple of my clients about the medium is the message and yeah
Carter
11:48
i think that that really i'm going to use it as an example uh
Carter
11:52
uh so well done well done sir well
Annalise
11:55
there are a lot of mps and there are a lot of mp offices and there are a lot of reporters who follow it who might have opinions about this and so in some ways it felt like the most obvious way to put this message in front of anybody who'd care to see it i
Carter
12:09
mean the email system hardly ever works right like no one ever reads the emails i
Annalise
12:15
i that might be half true though steven you know like a lot of emails bomb around and everyone's like oh great okay here's another one i
Carter
12:22
i thought the email system was just trying to get your house duty covered i
Carter
12:25
i thought that that was the entire point of the
Annalise
12:27
the email so that joke said on this podcast listened to by tens of thousands of people who are not mps i gotta tell you that That joke landed with MPs right now. I just, I guarantee it.
Carter
12:39
Yeah, because it's true. It was a true joke.
Zain
12:43
Where do you want to go, Carter? I want to talk, Hogan, can we talk about you at the Conservative Convention?
Annalise
12:49
Sure. Yeah, I was the observer in the Conservative Convention.
Zain
12:52
Your back home observer status. I want to dovetail that conversation into separatism. Two different things interconnected.
Zain
13:01
What was the experience like? Like, you've been conventions many times before. You and I have been to a convention before together. Of course, this case, very different role, observer status. What is the mandate they give you as an observer? I'm like, are you like one of the reporters trying to file? Are you there just like shitposting? Like, what was the mandate they gave you when they said, get on this plane back home and go observe this convention?
Annalise
13:24
Well, okay, first I got to tell you, I
Annalise
13:28
wasn't, they didn't say go on, get on a plane back home. I was heading home. It was the Thursday before the
Annalise
13:34
convention is not normally the day we would fly home, but we were treating Thursday like Friday because the conservatives have this convention. So it's just kind of a norm where we stop the house business a day early to allow them all to travel. And if you're not, if
Annalise
13:48
if you're not on house duty on a Friday, you just go home early. And I was not on house duty on a Thursday. That was a Friday. So I went home early.
Annalise
13:56
I had been actually texting people for a few days being like, hey, what's who's coming? What's the plan? man and uh there were a couple of options and i think some of them fell through and uh i landed in calgary to uh hey you're in calgary anyways we'd love it if you go to the conservative convention as an observer so my
Annalise
14:12
my first reaction was kind of like ah f
Annalise
14:15
f right like i don't this is not how i wanted to spend my weekend uh but okay makes sense i'm here why not and so yeah
Annalise
14:23
I wasn't the only one. My colleague, Talib, was there as well.
Annalise
14:29
And we also had support from the party. But what it looks like, in a real sense is
Zain
14:34
just to be clear, this is Talib Nurmama, the guy you beat in the Hilltimes. Actually,
Zain
14:38
Actually, that's true. Great point, Zayn. Yeah, for sure. I know he wants to forget it, but I just never want to let him forget it. That's going to be totally
Annalise
14:46
totally clear. That's really good. So
Zain
14:47
So they pitted you one against each other. I get it. I like that. Doesn't
SPEAKER_01
14:51
Doesn't seem fair, but yes,
Annalise
14:52
yes, that's what they did. um and so there is a statement that goes out uh you have to sign off on it of course but it's like it's it's the statement that the party says like hey okay this is what we want you all to look like or look at when the uh when
Annalise
15:06
when the convention starts and that basically signals to the media as well you're available for commentary so media commentary that you provide throughout the convention now interesting thing about the start of the convention is we didn't have observer passes at the start and historically party and just to be clear the conservatives did give us observer passes eventually um but we didn't have them at the start it didn't sound like the emails got a lot of like response
Annalise
15:31
response asking for the observer passes so our first couple of media interviews are outside the convention hall they're
Zain
15:37
they're probably sure britain and i politics probably this isn't
Annalise
15:39
isn't that my point they were probably like oh they're just asking for house duty cover i'm not i'm not helping them out um so
Annalise
15:46
i show up i show up we're doing interviews outside uh the media then says to the conservatives hey how come you didn't give them passes and i think their reaction was like oh we'll give them passes and and so i like never attribute to conspiracy what you can attribute to just like people dropping a ball yeah
Annalise
16:00
yeah it's the version i'm gonna say
Annalise
16:02
say here to be more polite and uh so they gave us passes ultimately got to go in so i was there i was it's
Annalise
16:08
it's a conservative convention in calgary there's a lot of calgarians they're well known to all of us to me so you know it's not a hostile crowd it's not as though people
Annalise
16:17
people are coming up to me and yelling at me i've only gotten one kind of raised voice argument with a separatist so that felt like a bit of a win there
Annalise
16:26
yeah and uh actually people go nice
Zain
16:29
nice to you so that they're not contentious with you but are people generally like kind to you i'm always curious about that like they know who you you are yeah
Annalise
16:36
yeah and actually it's funny because of course we've talked about the level of fame that a local mp has is mostly the squinting and being like i know him from somewhere right yeah
SPEAKER_02
16:44
crowd is different yeah
Annalise
16:45
yeah in a room of political animals they all know me so i'm actually walking you can hear them whispering like oh that's cory ogan right so you know in a way you feel like almost like a big deal even at their from
Annalise
16:56
from their convention strategists no
Annalise
16:58
no everyone was super nice i i won't out anyone because i don't want them to get in trouble for for being nice to a liberal but like i had many many pleasant chats with people you would not expect to have me to have pleasant chats with over the course of it and
Annalise
17:11
and um you know i sat in the back and i watched pierre polly f speech it was a
Annalise
17:17
a bit much it didn't uh it didn't exactly convince me i should cross the floor let's put it that way but uh uh no and then uh and then i did go skiing with my daughter and then i looped back to the convention after danielle smith's speech and And it was it was fine. It was a fine weekend, not how I would have normally spent it. But I think one of the consequences is I'd say even this week back, there's
Annalise
17:41
there's just been a little more collegiality, maybe from conservatives who saw me at their convention. And we're like, hey, how are you doing? Do you have a fun time at the convention? That kind of stuff. So my
Zain
17:51
my question is, what was your like, what was your explicit mandate there to try to get as much media as possible? Like, did you try to earn that and try to get in front of the cameras? was it just so hey we're available for comment was it trying to like figure out what the goss is and report back to the mothership on yours i'm always curious like observer status has like it's such a mysterious word and it's very commonly used in political conventions but i'm curious like being a member of parliament for for the other political party what like you're trying to get out of that and are you are you trying to report back and i'm just talk to me about that yeah
Annalise
18:25
yeah i would say look i would say two things i'm going to say one and maybe we circle back to it if you're interested in it maybe not these
Annalise
18:31
these things are far less directive in my short time in the house than people assume like the pmo does not direct us the way even the conservatives seem to assume they get directed right but i would say in practical terms my main function was media it was okay this is the conservative worldview we do not want it to go unchallenged so let's challenge that worldview and so all of us that were there and we're working with of course the the team back in Ottawa, we are presenting
Annalise
18:58
presenting our worldview, which is materially different from Pierre Polyev's worldview, the Conservative Party's worldview. So that's the main purpose. Like, just to simply not allow, like, it's not our weekend. We know that. It's not our stories. But you don't want to be, when you get to like that fifth paragraph in the news story, in that, you know, second minute of that TV hit, that there's not a counterpoint. And we provided the counterpoint.
Carter
19:22
Do you measure success on something like that, Corey? like how successful was it was it just the mere presence that makes it successful or are there actual metrics that you're trying to um
Carter
19:32
um that are articulated and you're trying to measure to you
Annalise
19:36
know there was not any articulation like that there were of course as there always are for these things key messages that were like hey this is kind of the target doesn't
Annalise
19:45
doesn't always work that way because a key message implies that you are running the story instead of like please react and give us that. And so that's the art of communications is to try to put the key message within the frame of that somebody else has provided you, of course, but it doesn't always work the
Annalise
20:00
the way you want.
Annalise
20:02
I don't, I don't know. I mean, if there were metrics and if there was deep monitoring, it was of course not happening out of my office. It was happening out of the party office. And I'll tell you, I largely measured it as was
Annalise
20:13
was I responsive to every media inquiry I got? Was I available when people wanted me to be available? And did I at least make a good faith effort to work the room talk to reporters talk to conservatives and try to observe like try to understand things which is what i was sent to do well
Zain
20:30
well can i can i pick up on that what
Zain
20:32
what did you observe about the separatist strain within that room and then i want to broaden the conversation about separatism in our own province but let's start with that room and work ourselves out to premier's comments and other things and petition signature gathering so start with the room what What did you observe?
Annalise
20:47
My observation, both in the speeches, in the halls, in the conversations, is the conservatives are scared to death of the conversation. They know it splits their base. They do not want to touch it with a 39 and a half foot pole. And that's the reality that they're living right now. It's an interesting thing. We often talk about, in politics in general, I'm not talking about my party here, but we talk about what trips people up, like what Fs up their day, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think if your assumption was it was Trump, I would say, yeah, there's a little bit of that. Like, clearly, try to avoid saying the word. You don't want anybody to applaud Trump for all of that. So that would be one. But a much bigger one seemed to be the separatist stuff. Like, even in Pierre Polyev's comments, A,
Annalise
21:35
kind of screw you a little bit to say, like, national unity is the liberals' fault. Like, I'm old enough to remember Beach Lake and Charlottetown. This is a complicated country. country we've had these challenges for a long time sometimes they have sometimes they flow sometimes we talk about them sometimes we just pretend they don't exist but that was one of the things he said because that's easy it's picking on the liberals everybody in the conservative convention is going to like that but within his construct he also he he kind of legitimized it he coddled it he's like ah you've got legitimate grievances here he didn't like it was in many ways in my opinion a pretty cowardly approach to it like he did not say this is just silly this is wrong you're not doing your friends a favor by pretending they're absolutely out of their mind idea has validity and i and i worry that he did a little bit of that does
Carter
22:23
does he is he worried about uh you know the brian mulroney style split with bruchard you know that creates the uh the the bloc quebecois and suddenly there's that couldn't
Annalise
22:35
couldn't have happened because the liberals weren't government then and i thought national unity crises only happened on the liberals my apologies
Carter
22:41
apologies i had forgotten that key talking point no
Carter
22:44
no but is he worried about holding his party together i mean does he have to um you know as mulrooney potentially was depending on your interpretation of history uh do you have to kind of embrace the sovereignty movement enough to keep them close enough to you to uh to hold government um
Carter
23:01
um and then risk or or do you do you risk a break off and do you think that that's what he was trying to address well
Annalise
23:09
well look i actually think the eight of the 80s were very instructive in that sense uh
Annalise
23:14
uh you had a situation in the 1980s where um the conservatives tried to address it head-on said like hey there were legitimate grievances and uh the
Annalise
23:25
lights have gone off you know what i give up
Zain
23:30
that's right don't worry someone's gonna come knocking and then we'll we'll
Annalise
23:34
and and there was all sorts of attempting to address this issue in a way of
Annalise
23:38
of that frame and look these things are super complicated i'm not the guy who should be talking about quebec separatism that's not my area of expertise i'm happy to talk about western separatism but you even saw the creation of the reform party with this the west wants in attitude like the conservatives trying to manage this question in the past has created some pretty explosive problems for canadian politics more broadly right let's not forget like in the early 90s late 80s like everything blew out all of a a sudden we had a western uh party we had a quebec party everything just splintered and it's it's not you know if they're informed by their own history they should be nervous with this problem because they know where this problem could potentially list lead to but
Annalise
24:19
but my personal belief is allowing
Annalise
24:22
allowing it to go unchecked or allowing it a certain level of legitimacy like
Annalise
24:27
like let's play this forward more than 30 seconds let's play this forward more than one news cycle you have just said to people okay your problems are legitimate. I agree with you. This is not a ridiculous idea to create a landlocked country of 5 million people. And now
Annalise
24:43
you're prime minister, Pierre Polyev. Now you're doing something. And it's not to the liking of Alberta, because you've got to balance interests, you know, and Alberta can't get Alberta's way all of the time, as much as we as Albertans would like that, right?
Annalise
24:57
Oh, my God. Well, now it's a problem with both parties. And you just told me it was was legitimate and maybe now i've got to get outside of this system like let's play this forward more than one move oh no you know now you gotta you
Annalise
25:09
you know blurb that uh let's just play it forward and and that's my big big concern with this like it feels very short-sighted it feels designed to win a moment but
Annalise
25:18
but the moment is not more important than the nation well
Zain
25:22
well how do cory how are you thinking about the conservatives federal conservatives not wanting to touch it But their provincial cousins facilitating it and perhaps even promoting it. And and and there's a lot of crossover in those people, both operationally
Zain
25:38
operationally and in a voter base. So, like, I'm really curious how you see that either squaring out on that floor or expanding beyond that into the confines of our of our province.
Annalise
25:49
Well, I think that to be fair to the conservatives, none of us know how to manage this in a funny way. Like, let's just be charitable in this sense. Everybody is looking at a bunch of forces we've never seen before and saying, well,
Annalise
26:01
well, what do we do? And that's true, whether you're a federalist or a soft separatist or an outright separatist. Like there are opportunities and threats everywhere for all of these movements that did not exist before. And they are constantly being created in
Annalise
26:20
So you have, for example, Danielle Smith gives a speech and Danielle Smith's speech basically blamed Justin Trudeau, who's not here anymore, guys, but blamed Justin Trudeau for all of the ills of the world. and
Annalise
26:31
and then after speech she has an interview with ashy capellas and she basically says they're like i
Annalise
26:36
don't care if my members it's not of my concern if my mlas are signing this separatist petition
Annalise
26:43
well now you've just created yet another flashpoint and now all of a sudden pierre poliev needs to answer for what he thinks about this and and so like everybody everybody is unsure about how this needs to move and i just think that in those moments what you need to do is sort of anchor on what's right and what first principles are. And we've got, we can't be in a situation, I say this to my conservative friends, we can't be in a situation where we're trying to get this for short-term gain. The country is way more important than that. You got to knock this shit off, like right away. And you got to be much more firm on this. And Melissa Lansman, you cannot be suggesting that this movement only existed since Mark Carney was prime minister. That's crazy. That is absolutely crazy. I
Zain
27:26
I mean, I find that crazy. You see, I find even the Smith and Polyev's lines that this is a Justin Trudeau reactionary force, especially now with separatism, is not just a they didn't build a pipeline in a decade, so we're going to separate. It's now become a catch-all for any fucking grievance anyone would have, especially with how they're trying to pile up these signatures. Carter, jump
Zain
27:46
jump in on you. I'm curious if you've got any follow-ups.
Carter
27:52
interested in the balance of today versus tomorrow. You've talked about it yourself in terms of what's the next move. Do you find the tension between the
Carter
28:05
instinct to just do one move at a time and the strategist
Carter
28:10
strategist brain that you bring to the table of thinking multiple moves ahead, do you feel like there's a tension between those? uh i see the tension that exists within the conservatives but i'm i'm thinking about the tension that may exist uh kind of in a broader political sense yeah
Annalise
28:28
yeah maybe i'll not answer that question directly but answer it hopefully fully uh throughout like this indirect answer here one of the things that i think is like the way the conservatives approach politics which
Annalise
28:42
i don't know maybe this is an insight to people maybe not but they're um they're good at saying this is our narrative. Now, what are the facts that back up our narrative? Never mind the facts that don't. Never mind the facts that actually indicate a different narrative. What are the facts that back up our narrative? So I'll
Annalise
28:57
I'll use a self-serving example here on inflation. Inflation's been within bands in Canada for like 18 months now. It was super high during COVID. And obviously, we've still got a gap to close because it was super high in COVID.
Annalise
29:11
Wages are growing faster than inflation every month but
Annalise
29:14
but food inflation is up and so that's of course if you talk to the conservatives you would think all inflation was up everything's getting more expensive that's not really the case right but they're good at finding that one fact when the report comes out and driving it to ever-loving death not really caring about the big picture and i'm look i'm not trying to hate on the game here right this is this is something they do but i think where everybody everybody in life runs into challenges is when your normal method
Annalise
29:41
method of operating is not appropriate or insufficient and your instincts are going to serve you wrong and i think this is an issue where their instincts are going to serve them wrong so they can sit there and they can cherry pick oh there's a poll that shows separatism in alberta 20 now we're going to say this is a problem the liberals created never mind that i mean you're all albertans here right like we've
Annalise
30:02
we've been dealing with this on a low burn since the 80s there was the western canada concept we already talked about the reform party that's being created here i polled for the government of alberta for a long time separatism always polled around this particular level and you started to see those numbers basically as soon as people stopped having to talk to humans to give poll responses right and we're all aware that there's kind of a social unacceptability to saying you're a separatist that otherwise might not present itself as robustly so lots of reasons to believe this is kind of just the baseline we live in as albertans and and yeah it doesn't really feel any different in some ways but
Annalise
30:38
but they will take the one fact that is this is the current level they'll ignore the longitudinal data and they'll create a story because the story serves them but
Annalise
30:48
we can't always be putting party ahead of things we've got to think about nation we got to think about the long-term consequences of this even to ourselves i go back to that pierre pauliev as a future prime minister potentially right is
Annalise
30:59
this really what you want is this what you want to be uh fueling right now and so i
Annalise
31:04
i i think about those steps forward and i think they're
Annalise
31:09
they're not necessarily trained wrong to think like okay if we can do this we can control a narrative we can build a narrative we can do this but
Annalise
31:17
but it's not so much strategist brain versus tactician brain it's like what we
Annalise
31:22
should be using our whole brain at this particular moment and thinking about the good of the country you're
Carter
31:27
you're about not using a brain um danielle smith and her her kind of uh tacit approval of the of the separatism referendum we've been talking a lot on the podcast you probably haven't been listening you've
Carter
31:40
you've been so busy writing uh
Carter
31:42
uh writing special qp
Carter
31:44
yeah elements uh but we've been talking about um
Carter
31:49
you know how in in quebec people declare themselves sells the separatists in alberta they just allow the separatists um like what do
Carter
31:57
do you think is going on there and how does that frame itself within nation building is it incumbent upon a a premier to commit to nation building in the same fashion um that a you're
Carter
32:09
you're a federal party or a federal government uh
Carter
32:12
uh needs to be committed to the nation building look
Annalise
32:15
look i think alberta's ucp is like like Canada's Conservative Party, only more so, right? They are split on this issue. There is a group of people who feel one way about it, and they are terrified to deal with it in any kind of meaningful way. We've all seen the polls in Alberta where the UCP base is effectively split between separatists and federalists. They don't, they're looking for a way they can have their cake and eat it too. They're trying to avoid those difficult conversations. In the process, they
Annalise
32:42
they they are coddling separatists to a way that have never been coddled before, right? Like, this has not been a problem in the past in terms of how conservative premiers or conservative leaders have addressed this problem. So they're out there. And unfortunately, again, you can't just say, well, they're doing tactics. This is, again, a thing where they need to think about the long-term health of this province, of this country. We are all Canadians. And the vast majority of albertans are very very proud canadians and what i find so fascinating about this is that this
Annalise
33:15
this is an issue that well let's put it this way steven zane if i said hey i've got an issue and it absolutely splits a party in half yeah
Annalise
33:26
yeah like if you're the opponents to that particular party how is that not the thing you're talking about all day every day any day and
Annalise
33:33
so it gets into like the
Annalise
33:35
the alberta ndp too and some of the strategic conversations that they might be having but
Annalise
33:39
but i find it super fascinating it's a very interesting situation i've
Zain
33:44
i've got two follow-ups one direct about separatism and one as as as an aside more so but take us in the room question so let me start with the separatism for one first how seriously is your government taking this because the
Zain
33:57
the 20 slow burn baseline that's always been there seems to be where we're at right now But of course, I would argue with you, Corey, that people are
Zain
34:06
are no longer afraid to be separatist curious, especially when they're showing up at convention centers in downtown Calgary. They're joining things with pride and joy and jumping onto this movement. How concerned are you guys? Let's start there. well
Annalise
34:23
think that you're right one of the challenges that i have so there's two things one is this is a pretty big issue i don't think people are going to be flipped with their point of view but i do think it runs into the novel question problem like albertans haven't really
Annalise
34:37
had to confront this issue and thought through all of like the consequences of separatism right and what
Annalise
34:42
what we now have is a group of people who have gotten very loud have been legitimized by certain political leaders and they are saying here's all of the benefits of separation you know and they're not robust broad arguments about even the economic consequences to say nothing of the emotional ties that is a country or all of the things that really matter to us as canadians right
Annalise
35:05
there's a feeling i think in alberta that
Annalise
35:07
that it's going a little bit unchecked in some ways like that this is rising and where is where's our premier on this uh for example who the person who's supposed to speak for the province where's our premier how
Annalise
35:18
how serious are we taking it there's
Annalise
35:20
there's a couple of different answers to that one is like you know mark carney's in albert like he this this is definitely something that he thinks about this is something we've chatted about me and me and mark right but uh
Annalise
35:30
uh i think a federal government is always trying to make the country work just full stop for as many people or should be so it's kind of tough to disaggregate what is the activity of just trying to make the country work from what is the activity to reduce separatist sentiments
Annalise
35:43
because they're kind of the same thing right or at least you think
Zain
35:46
think that is the like from a strategic perspective you think that is the immunity against this it's like it's a showing
Zain
35:52
showing celebrating rhetorically and otherwise how canada works well
Annalise
35:57
well look i could say this if there was no separatist movement in quebec no separatist movement in alberta we would still want a government that made economic prosperity broad across the country we would still want a government that made us proud to be canadians we would still want a government that defends our sense of canadianness so uh if you're if you're kind of motivated by that it's not going to look fundamentally different you might you might talk about where is focus or not i suppose right but you you want to make the country work just more generally we
Annalise
36:24
we talk about it of course we talk about it how could you not talk about it we talk about the risks of there being these conversations in multiple places we talk about the risks to canada at this particular moment as we are confronting a changing world it is not helpful when you talk about a changing world and you you talk about a changing dynamic with the United States, to have Canadians even perceived or be perceived to be divided by having a very vocal minority in Alberta. It's just not. And when it goes unchecked, it creates this feeling of like, where
Annalise
36:54
where is this all going, right? Because I think in more normal times, when somebody claims themselves to speak for Albertans and goes down to talk to the US State Department, in
Annalise
37:04
in more normal times, a premier would say, what
Annalise
37:07
are you doing you do not speak for albertans i speak for albertans and to be fair to daniel smith she has done a version of this right just like not very forceful and that this is just this is a foolish foolish motion and a foolish foolish movement that um that has all of these problems for these reasons and then speaks about the value of the country arthur
Zain
37:29
arthur do you mind if i if i talk to our friend about um davos i've been curious about this was he was he in davos
Zain
37:37
cory was not in davos however no
Zain
37:39
however i'm very fascinated the new main street polling suggests that the liberals are are just surging polyev's really struggling however there was one tidbit in there which said 70 of canadians had heard of a mention of the davos speech and i'm just which obviously went viral in its own right probably had a greater punch than anyone realized i'm very curious how a caucus and i mean tactically and like reacts to that you guys see that happening was it apparent immediately that this was a home run were you guys given like like you know directives around propagating it pushing it out there how do you guys talk to one another about something i'm just i know it's not as important as separatism but i'm always curious about things like this and the the micro actions that go around around making a moment and how you you guys even just react to something like that as members of parliament and obviously members of the liberal party and the government yeah
Annalise
38:32
yeah so it was uh it was a constituency week i was in my constituency office and i watched it like the feed of it and i i was like fist
Annalise
38:42
fist pumping at my desk this is exactly what i wanted to see a prime minister say this is exactly the guy i ran for i was thrilled like i was thrilled from the jump and it was then the next day that i was in prince George for a natural resources conference and everybody
Annalise
38:57
everybody there was talking about it they played like half of it during the lunch because as the organizers said and this is like a natural resources conference this isn't like natural like strong natural territory right yeah but they're like it's so consequential it's so important I had one-on-one meetings just stacked up for two days I think everybody but one brought it up themselves it's like I was so proud of the prime minister to the speech it was clear it was so meaningful right from the jump and
Annalise
39:23
and you saw the reaction online you saw all of this activity but you've given me an in to talk about the thing i threw out there that you didn't jump up on before which is directives that's
Annalise
39:32
that's not actually how we operate like i i did not get any directives nobody got any directives in terms of like how we were supposed to approach this communication i everybody was doing their own thing some of my colleagues were like clipping the video and putting it online some like me just tweeted about it slash blue loose guide about it slash threaded about it whatever we say for those is saying you got to check out this speech it's incredible it's exactly what we need to hear and some people uh simply worked through their networks and talked about it it was uh it was one of those things where we all picked it up and we all ran with it of our own accord and we did our own thing and i got to tell you one of the things that surprised me most about this job to date and
Annalise
40:10
and i don't know that this was always the case but certainly the case now is like
Annalise
40:14
like we're not really told or even encouraged what to to do most of the time is that just you
Zain
40:19
you though like because of your
Annalise
40:20
your natural skills and
Annalise
40:21
no it's not okay it's it's all of us and because like there's not emails like that like yes we get the things like oh it's like national police appreciation day these are the social media things that you can put on there right or here's the bill kit that explains some of these things but it's not like i was sitting there in question period today and this was a brutal question period it was just like just extra levels of pain for whatever reason but i was sitting there and one of the conservatives was saying like shouting across to somebody on our side being like oh you're just going to read the answers the prime minister's office gives you like
Annalise
40:55
like i do question period for you the prime minister's office doesn't give us shit they don't give us answers to give to people you know what we do we work with our departments we figure out the answers to the questions we think are coming and then we give answers like we don't have this like crazy central control that the conservatives seem to think we do i assume they think we do because they do but uh you know it just doesn't work like that and even we were talking about this in the context of some of the conversation in the fall just before we broke in december where
Annalise
41:26
where uh there was the the
Annalise
41:28
the motion that the conservatives brought forward you guys asked like hey how does that work how does the prime minister's office provide you this they don't they just say go and talk about that you seem to have a reasonable head on your shoulders and you want to talk about that you go fill your boot right but i think um i
Annalise
41:44
i think that that is one of the things that surprised me the most about this job shouldn't
Carter
41:48
shouldn't there be more of a directed approach so that we could be more effective your
Zain
41:53
colleagues that i would think would need a little bit more direction well
Annalise
41:57
well you know what i only know what i know and i'll be honest i
Annalise
42:01
would have assumed more before and i sure i did from the outside and i sure i even kind of felt like from being more peripheral to the mps that that existed in a past time but that's just not how it works it's it's much more organic than people appreciate at least on the government side i
Zain
42:19
i guess someone's gonna knock on his door soon i'm gonna let you i'm gonna let you take this take this home uh
Carter
42:25
well i'm just i i think there has to be some sort of a worthwhile balance between direction and and allowing the mps to go on their own i i've met i
Carter
42:33
i don't know probably 100 members of parliament and i have confidence in three of them and uh so i i'm not sure that i'm necessarily going to i didn't say you were one of them i
Annalise
42:43
i didn't feel like you were yeah i don't think you were saying definitely definitely not yeah i
Carter
42:48
i mean scott bryson might be one of my favorites but uh i wouldn't have a lot of confidence you know even though he's a minister scott
Annalise
42:55
bryson hasn't been an mp for a while what fucking
SPEAKER_02
42:59
for a second uh
Zain
43:00
uh okay i'm gonna i'm gonna take back your terrible
Zain
43:03
terrible job being the minister today day carter terrible oh
Carter
43:06
oh sorry was that supposed to be the minister of podcasts yes
Zain
43:09
were cory last thing for you what's on your what's on your mind what are you looking forward to uh tell us something interesting look
Annalise
43:16
look i'm like the rest of us i'm trying to figure out what the hell this parliament's going to look like this spring the conservatives have said they're going to work with us the reality is it's been really hard to get anything through committees or parliament more generally like we haven't had the ability to vote on a lot of bills uh in this particular particular parliament but
Annalise
43:34
but um you know there is now this olive branch of moving forward we are moving faster on this uh groceries and essentials benefit that's coming forward with the support of the conservatives so that's cool but i just want to know is this going to be obstruction is this going to work is this going to happen and look because it's obvious i'll just say like a lot of people say well is there going to be election coming i don't think we're gunning for an election I don't think that this is going to be like an election that happens, per se. But I do think people
Annalise
44:03
people underestimate the likelihood of this government falling just based on the baseline level of obstruction I think we've had the last six months.
Carter
44:12
Are you getting any floor crossers? You talk to anybody?
Carter
44:17
I mean, ask the Minister of Podcasts. I'd like to know. know
Annalise
44:21
that's happening i don't know but i do know that with all of these by-elections it wouldn't even necessarily fundamentally change the math at least in the short term i'll
Zain
44:30
i'll pitch you an idea stephen carter for edmonton riverbend oh
Annalise
44:33
oh is he uh he's gonna run for the conservatives there yeah
Zain
44:36
yeah what do you think what
Annalise
44:38
what do you think i think that he is uh he's perfect he's perfect Perfect for the conservative demographic in Edmonton Riverbend.
Carter
44:50
I don't protect its class. You know, old white guy.
SPEAKER_00
44:54
We should be protected.
Annalise
44:56
Yeah, well, don't worry. Society's done a good job of that for us. You know, Carter,
Zain
44:59
the best thing you could do is you could run, you could lose, and then you could write about how question period sucks, because that's how many... That's the exact same amount of time. You know, I won, though. I won, Zane. Zane, I won.
Zain
45:12
Yeah. He said it the exact same amount of times as Corey Hogan. Okay,
Carter
45:15
Okay, Carter, we're going to leave it there. We should stop now, Zane. As the Minister of Podcasts, I'm putting my foot down.
Zain
45:21
Well, thank you. I was just about to exit, but thank you for telling me we should stop as I was exiting. Thank you once again, Corey Hogan, the only member of Parliament that joins us. We should probably change that, Carter. This was supposed to be a platform that had... The whole plan was to try to go through all of them. If you're not
SPEAKER_01
45:36
not inviting chat next
Annalise
45:37
next episode, I don't know what you're doing. I
Carter
45:40
Prime Minister did Nate Erskine-Smith's uh podcast he
Annalise
45:44
he did before he was prime minister but yes he did