Transcript
Carter
0:31
pretty confident hey we're
Carter
0:32
feeling pretty good the
Corey
0:33
last time we did an episode without zane was episode 511 if
Corey
0:38
if i recall correctly we
Carter
0:40
we did that's actually what ruined that's
Corey
0:41
that's what ruined the zune deal
Carter
0:44
no but remember when we did the uh the you the people and it was the last you the people that we yeah we had we
Corey
0:50
had some assistance though
Carter
0:52
did we had a little assistance you
Carter
0:53
you and i were alone without zane and that was the last you the people i
Corey
0:57
i mean if your definition of alone is there were two other hosts with us then yes i agree we were alone we
Carter
1:02
we didn't have him babysitting us is what i'm trying to get across i mean then deirdre and uh jasmine
Carter
1:06
jasmine were great they
Carter
1:08
they were great but they weren't babysitters they
Carter
1:10
they seemed to think that we could take care of ourselves which was just
Carter
1:17
now we can't get jasmine back because
Corey
1:19
because she's a counselor
Carter
1:20
and i didn't even think to call deirdre if i'm actually honest didn't even agree well what
Corey
1:25
what are you doing why
Carter
1:27
do we have the
Corey
1:28
the backup zane list if we're if we're not going to use the backup zane
Carter
1:31
i got this though because i got this is my backup zane oh
Carter
1:35
that's very nice okay
Corey
1:35
okay once again a couple things i'll mention one is if you put a pillow between
Corey
1:42
you and the microphone doesn't
Corey
1:44
doesn't work as well doesn't work as well and
Corey
1:49
second thing I'll mention,
Carter
1:54
Yeah, that's very good too. That's
Corey
1:56
We can kind of close caption this. So you have a pillow, which you purchased from yourself for
Carter
2:04
Heather was not pleased with the financial management of this particular decision.
Corey
2:08
No, that's okay. She's pretty excited by
Corey
2:12
I was reading the newspaper this week and I think you could afford it. That's what I decided.
Carter
2:18
is this is what i'm keeping is my severance memento the
Carter
2:21
the rest went in retirement
Carter
2:24
this is my little moment of you know largesse yeah your small bliss that's very good
Corey
2:31
okay so the show is different without zane this is what i'm learning right now
Carter
2:35
one of us should introduce the topic oh
Corey
2:38
always kind of felt that was your job absent zane to be be honest
Carter
2:41
honest hang on a second so
Carter
2:43
so we were exchanging texts yeah
Corey
2:45
yeah i sent some
Corey
2:46
one of them was about whether um you
Carter
2:49
whether a wins or
Corey
2:49
or not was better than a foreign hand though i don't know if that one's gonna hit the hit
Corey
2:53
hit the register i
Corey
2:54
i don't know if that's
Carter
2:55
that's what we want to do
Carter
2:58
can't find the actual oh hold on daylight
Carter
3:00
daylight daylight savings time cory it's
Corey
3:03
it's just daylight saving it's no s yeah
Corey
3:08
are we going to talk about that i could talk about that for an hour i could legitimately talk about that for an hour well
Carter
3:12
well it's one of the topics you suggested here i think we should do okay
Carter
3:16
so do you want me to ask you questions or do you
Corey
3:23
i mean i do so what's the deal
Carter
3:25
deal with daylight savings okay
Corey
3:27
okay well i didn't mean that in the most jerry seinfeld knockoff that you were able to do do
Carter
3:33
do you want to talk about political implications of it and the uh international uh challenges of it or what did you want to go with I'm
Corey
3:39
I'm not sure I had an element in mind. Do you
Carter
3:41
you want to talk about the, okay,
Carter
3:42
okay, so good segment. Okay,
Corey
3:44
Okay, you know what we could do? We could weave daylight saving into later segments because I don't want
Carter
3:49
want to lose it.
Corey
3:50
it. I think it's valuable content. It's just not content for right now. That would be my observation.
Carter
3:54
Okay, then the next one is a segment on how annoying question period prep is for staff. Oh,
Corey
4:00
Oh, man, that's a thing. Do you want to talk about that?
Carter
4:03
Yeah, because it's really annoying.
Corey
4:05
Okay, so let me tell you what question period is like if you're in the opposition. and uh shouldn't
Carter
4:11
shouldn't one of us set up what question period is isn't that what zane does take the unbelievably obvious set it up and then ask us questions about it well
Corey
4:19
well and then when we say that's painfully obvious he says yes i know and i know you know and i know but let's maybe just for the audience talk about it
Carter
4:26
it question period for those who are unfamiliar is uh when people on the other side the the opposition gets a chance to ask questions it's not just the opposition there are a number of questions allocated and they get to ask the other sides right so sometimes it It is the governing party asking their own questions. Corey, Corey, Corey, tell me, what is the point of asking questions in question period?
Corey
4:48
Well, a very interesting question. So we call it question period a shorthand, but it's actually known as oral question period in a federal context. Well,
Carter
4:54
we dropped the oral because
Carter
4:56
because it sounds dirty. Yeah, that's a fair point.
Corey
4:58
I just want you to know, Zane would never have interrupted me like that.
Carter
5:03
Like in the last episode, he interrupted you 36 times.
Corey
5:07
That might be true. True. It's irrelevant. The important thing to keep in mind here is that federally, at least, it's known as oral questions because you do have the ability to send written questions to government as well. But over time, particularly when they put cameras into these chambers, whether it's federal or provincial, people decided that it was much more dramatic, especially because the press was right there to be able to discuss these things and get on the six o'clock news. right and so over time what question period devolved into is sound bites of people saying when will the minister x x being an accusation and then a clip of the minister responding with when will the leader of the opposition stop being so outrageous about this the government is doing all of these fine things so it's become bullshit theater it's no longer about questions or answers it's theatrics it's like it's twitter before twitter was twitter right and so um
Corey
5:57
unfortunately Fortunately, one of the big parts of a parliamentarian's job these days is to get to work earlier than they need to otherwise, and then argue about what's the question that they're going to put on the board. They call it putting it on the
Corey
6:10
order to stick it to the other side.
Corey
6:13
And if you're government, it becomes the question that you're going to softball out that
Corey
6:17
that allows them to tick, knock it out of the park.
Carter
6:20
Yeah. So so examples of the softball, some of my favorites. Will the minister please explain why he or she is amazing on this particular file? Could you explain how you've achieved greatness in such a short period of time?
Carter
6:34
What really bugs me about question period, though, and Corey, you kind of started to allude to it, and I'm just going to grab it, is the theater of it is completely out of step. And the importance that we played on it as political parties, as politicians, as leaders, as staff is totally outweighed by how the population actually interacts with it because the population doesn't actually care about what happens in question period. period. There are so many politicians I worked with that just want to win that particular day. They want to win that
Carter
7:06
that question period. And they feel if they've won the question period, then they have some sort of a political score that they're able to check off. And it's going to carry forward in the future. And I just don't, I think it's happened a couple of times, but I don't think that it happens every single day.
Corey
7:22
Well, so one of the interesting things is, yeah, they all tell themselves the story that QP is there for the people watching QP and the the news by extension there are in the province of alberta probably 200 televisions watching qp 87 of them are the minister's offices staff that are watching them and the other 120 or 13 i guess or so that are left are just broken televisions in hospitals where the patient has died and they are no longer able to ask to change the channel that's the only people who are watching qp
Carter
7:53
but i feel like zane but oh okay there was a but i didn't expect that okay that's
Corey
8:01
but there is a value to qp as dumb as it is as perverse as it is and i'll tell you this speaking more from like context of government at this point when
Corey
8:10
when the government's winning in qp you know and when the government's losing in qp you know like it either makes or fucks up their entire day and they put so much on this and as a public servant one of the things that i would always make sure i did before i was meeting with a minister in the afternoon is
Corey
8:26
is check to see how qp went because
Corey
8:28
because there is such a crazy a recency bias because if they got their ass handed to them on something they would be like what the hell's the plan on x right and
Corey
8:37
and uh if they had like this big victory it'd be like i think we need to do more of y because y is such a winner for us right and And so like it really does, like people are people and it does tend to drive agendas more than you think it should. So as much as it's kind of, it's
Corey
8:53
it's funny because we think of QP as something that doesn't matter because the media doesn't watch it. But in a funny way, it matters because then government reacts to it, if
Corey
9:01
if that makes any sense.
Carter
9:03
Yeah, I mean, it does make sense. And when you're in the soup on something, you do try and get out of it. I mean, Rachel Notley and Brian Mason were excellent at it. There was a two-person caucus prior to the election. So for 2011, 2012, when I was there and they hit us every single day on children's services every single day and there was absolutely nothing that the government could do. First of all, children's services is nearly impossible to fix. It goes into all kinds of issues that are much, much larger than just the specifics of each individual child that is really, really difficult. I'll tell you, I don't think it's been fixed under the UCP, the NDP, or the PCs. But they just beat the crap out of us. So every day we knew that the official opposition, which I think was the Wild Rose at the time, was going to whiff. But Brian and Rachel would just kick the shit out of us on every single day. day. And they were the ones I actually worried about because they had a consistent question period thread that went through a whole session. And every single day, we were absolutely unable to address the question or shift off of it. And the Wild Rose just let them own the whole thing. It was just brutal.
Corey
10:13
Yeah. And the Wild Rose wasn't official opposition at the time, but it sure felt like it. The official opposition was actually the Alberta Liberal Party.
Carter
10:20
Party. It was your party. It was your party. I remember that.
Corey
10:26
Well, I got a lot of feelings about how QP prep went in that context. And QP prep in a party that is not necessarily firing on all cylinders is more painful than QP prep generally, because what happens is people tend to hoard questions. They don't want to give them to the leaders. It's all about their agenda. They're not trying to tell a story. because what political parties generally try to do, and this is one of those things that almost, again, doesn't make sense again, but it's like, what's our narrative? How are we going to hit them regularly? We're going to do our first three questions on this. We're going to drive this agenda.
Corey
10:59
And you think it doesn't matter, again, because the media is not paying that much attention, but then when you're not doing it and the party just starts to go
Corey
11:06
go away in different directions, even though the media is not caring about it, It has this ability to impose discipline on a party, right? Because it is a time to say, here we are all sitting in a room before QP, and we're all agreeing this is the thing that matters today. And so when we go and do our other bullshit that's outside of the QP bullshit, we're
Corey
11:26
we're all going to say, this is the line for today, right? Right? And if a party doesn't have that, as much as it doesn't actually matter that much to the media, you see it in a lot of different ways.
Carter
11:37
I think that this is where Zane would tell us, you know, like, how about if we just can we walk through what happens on an average day? So I was in the government side and I would sit in on QP prep with with cabinet and we would guess what the questions were going to be based on the headlines of the day and
Carter
11:52
and who was going to ask us what. And then we would go around and we would give answers that we thought that each minister
Carter
12:00
minister was going to get. And then we would ask them that question and we would see how their answer was, because we wouldn't necessarily give them the answer until they fucked up their first answer. And then we would write the answer for them.
Carter
12:14
you know, I can talk a little bit more about that. Do you want to talk a little bit more about how ineffective the liberals were in preparing their question period?
Corey
12:22
again i mean i think i sort of said it and it's it's not as though they were always bad right no
Carter
12:28
want your leader was rod sherman but
Carter
12:30
but you know what
Corey
12:34
thank you thank you for that yeah it
Carter
12:37
makes me so happy but
Corey
12:39
what happened was you'd get together and you would have these kind of like every day it's a chance to set the agenda right
Corey
12:45
right and if you're if you're not on the same page you're not on the same page but to your point about how it actually works in an operational point of view, as you get together at the QP meeting,
Corey
12:55
your research team has gone through the newspapers and made some recommendations to you in terms of these are the things that we think are big today. These are the things we think you can latch on to.
Corey
13:04
And then people would sit and they would almost pitch questions to each other and say, I want to take that. And I think I could do it in this way. And if it's really good, the idea is then you throw it to the leader. And then it becomes one of the first questions of the official opposition.
Corey
13:15
And if it's less good, one
Corey
13:17
one of the things about QP is you actually you don't know how long it's going to take right you have a general idea you know how many questions they normally get through but
Corey
13:24
but if there's a bunch of points of order or any bullshit like that then you don't get as far down the list so you're you're putting your good stuff at the top especially if you're the official opposition and
Corey
13:34
and so you're always trying to think about when is the best most opportunistic time to drop these things out and qp prep when you're in the opposition is always a combination of i'm
Corey
13:43
i'm sure it's it's true to in government too i was never involved in qp prep on a government side is
Corey
13:50
this is what everyone's talking about and this is what we want them to be talking about so you're trying to hit like a balance between the two and of course the sweet spot is when both combine and it's something that is very much in your message box and also it's something that's going to rat fuck the other side yeah
Carter
14:04
yeah i mean there's no it's called question i mean the the old adage is it's called question period not answer period and so there's a lot of of also jiggling around right like so if you're going to ask me a question about taxation i'm going to to shift over to how important spending is in healthcare, or I'm going to shift over to how this, the least tax jurisdiction in Canada, whatever you might ask, we can actually shift towards. And that, I think the most frustrating part was the absolute lack of preparation that the ministers came in with. They were for the most part, completely ill prepared by their own staffs. And then the second piece was how challenged it was to actually give them, you know, a response that, that I can't remember how long it was supposed to be 30 seconds or something like like that or or a minute and give them a response that actually answered something vaguely resembling the question without looking like a total dick and
Carter
14:52
and uh we we didn't do well we did not do great
Corey
14:56
well so when you have qp prep when you're a minister you have a qp binder right and it has all of the things that you might be asked for and you can kind of figure these things out on the go and you're supposed to memorize most of the main things and there would be ministers who are real cowboys who would just be like i fucking got it i'm just gonna say whatever the hell i want And then there were more studious ministers who would look through it and make sure that they could respond to these things in a cogent fashion. Right.
Carter
15:21
Well, we had Thomas Lukasik and he was he was our go to guy when the premier wasn't there because we knew we could count on him to just knock the ball out of the park, regardless
Carter
15:30
regardless of what the question was, because he could stand up and do the theater really well and never really give much of a substantive answer. answer um you know he would just kind of get through the period and and we'd feel like we won something um with the exception of whatever rachel and brian but the good news is rachel and brian would come in a little bit later a little bit down the pecking order uh
Carter
15:51
uh after your guys
Corey
15:54
yeah thank you for that that's very that's i'm very appreciative of that
Corey
15:58
but it is interesting because you the
Corey
16:01
ministers would prepare for the answers but i always felt that But the consequences of not having the answer were crazy low. Like you just you just throw a bunch of platitudes back at somebody and you say, and we're doing things the right way, unlike the people on the other side. And then your your side pounds the table, right? Rah, rah. And it moves on. And I always thought in some ways that the cowboys had it right. Like, who gives a shit what the answer is? Because you
Corey
16:26
can always clean it up outside of the house and you can move forward. But, you know, there's a whole theater to it. it and i think that if you want to broaden the point there's
Corey
16:33
there's so much that's in an mla's job that feels really weighty because you're in that room and it you're under the you know you're under the dome and you're you're talking to people about um you
Corey
16:44
you know issues that are supposed to matter them but you know people aren't actually there nobody's actually paying attention to this and you
Corey
16:49
you know there was a there was a comment that came through on our youtube stream here about like does the fact that what's said on qpb recording the public record make any difference at all i
Corey
16:59
don't know when's the last time you read hansard no
Carter
17:01
no i mean sure for
Carter
17:02
for oppo prep um
Carter
17:03
um you know if you're getting ready for the next election and some poor uh intern is to read every word of hansard um
Corey
17:12
but the reality is in modern politics you have to assume you're being recorded all of the time anyhow so there's not there's nothing that special about hansard relative to another microphone right
Carter
17:22
no and in fact what happens in the in the room so we need in the legislature is almost inconsequential. What happens is the media watch the question period, and then you walk out. And
Carter
17:32
And whatever kind of won the question period might be your first question. And you know the opposition's had a good day when it is the first question. Because I don't think the media really like taking their cues from any of the political parties. They want to take their cues from what they want to set the agenda on. And so oftentimes, you're walking out of question period into a scrum on something completely different than what the opposition parties were trying to get you to focus on and certainly different than what it was that you've given your softball to
Carter
17:59
to your backbench mla that just really wanted the chance to be heard and
Carter
18:03
and have their name recorded in the hansard you
Carter
18:07
that's the difference so the media don't like being led i
Corey
18:10
i agree and like this goes back to kind of the broader point we're making on the government side the softballs also serve the purpose of being able to get enhancer to put it in the community newsletters to say i ask these tough questions of the government and look at these brilliant answers because this is a great government right i remain of the opinion that qp's main value is as a caucus management tool it helps you get on the same page and
Corey
18:32
and it helps you be able to distribute kind of glory in a way that otherwise you wouldn't necessarily have those opportunities all of the time because
Corey
18:41
because look if you're the leader of the opposition you don't need to wait until 1 30 in alberta to go into question period and throw something at the the government i
Corey
18:49
have seen governments stumble like fucking crazy and not have answers to real gotcha questions but those usually happen in the first week or two of the session and
Corey
18:58
then everybody gets into a rhythm right you
Corey
19:00
you can go out and you can find a microphone whenever the hell you want whenever
Corey
19:03
whenever the hell you want well
Carter
19:04
well i think that that's the real thing with the federal level the federal level for me is the is the um is the real level that that makes me
Carter
19:13
think that you know when you've got 300 and you know 17 or how many again three it's three 300 338 338 it used to be 318 i'm okay no it's never
Corey
19:23
was it a long
Carter
19:26
who the fuck remembers 338 seats and you've got to spread the ball around question period it's time to do it and the number of times that the the leader of the opposition party is standing up and trying to make their point um like get
Carter
19:39
get out of the of the house no one cares you know get into the places where people are and that's how you win things and that's why you see you know all the updates from david aiken you know prime minister won't be in the in the house you know today or jagmeet singh won't be in the house today or you know you
Carter
19:57
know uh whoever the candace bergen because I guess they're out doing their real job, not focused too much on the actual pretend job of being the lead inquisitor on some sort of, you know, fake
Carter
20:14
that's being conducted in the House.
Corey
20:16
Yeah. Well, and, you know, when he was leader of the opposition, Tom Mulcair was always said to be brilliant at question period. You know, he took this lawyerly thing. He really put the screws to them.
Corey
20:26
And what did that mean at
Corey
20:27
at the end of the day? Like in the final summation, was that.
Carter
20:31
Didn't what, wasn't there a guy on the strategist podcast who said that he could, you could see a decade of Thomas Mulcair governments in one of our live shows?
Corey
20:38
Yeah. I got a clip of it right here. Listen.
Carter
20:45
Well, obviously we're, it's just the two of us.
Corey
20:48
actually don't know how to play this clip.
Corey
20:50
Why is this not working?
Corey
20:51
working? Okay. Well, I was going to do the Jeb Bush thing and say, fuck you. Yeah,
Carter
20:54
Yeah, I knew you were going to, but it
Carter
20:55
it was you who said that Thomas Mulcair could be in government for 10 years, and it looked like a Thomas Mulcair government, and it ended up poorly for you, is what I'm trying to get across. And you always like to hold the Jeb Bush thing. By the way, reelect Jeb Bush hats available on thestrategists.ca. You can get one along with this fantastic pillow. If you're watching live, the patrons on our...
Corey
21:21
It's a very nice pillow.
Corey
21:26
think it loves you too.
Carter
21:28
Yeah, well, it might be my new love pillow.
Corey
21:32
So I didn't need to hear that, but also I can't help but note, we're
Carter
21:36
we're only at the 22-minute mark.
Carter
21:38
kind of feel like Zane
Corey
21:39
Zane fills a lot of time. That's what I'm beginning to realize here. This would be padded
Carter
21:43
padded to a 40-minute episode.
Corey
21:45
content, 40-minute episode. Hang
Carter
21:46
Hang on, I've got to find where you were saying. Oh, hold on, I'm in the wrong spot.
Corey
21:50
Do you want to talk about daylight saving time?
Corey
21:53
Okay. But here's the thing.
Corey
21:56
that I want to talk about daylight saving time, it's time zones. Canadians invented time zones and they're a bad idea. I don't like them. I don't think we should have time zones. I think we should just pick one and that's what the whole world does.
Carter
22:08
So basically you're kind of a Maoist communist because that's what Beijing does in China.
Corey
22:13
China. Well, in the sense that China has one time zone, I think that's a bit of a stretch, but I say we pick like Central Africa because that's where we're all from.
Corey
22:21
And we say, So that's just time. That's time now.
Corey
22:23
And if people in Calgary need to get up in the middle of the night, in
Corey
22:27
in terms of what our normal convention is right now, like the day starts at one in the morning, who cares?
Corey
22:32
We'll all get used to it.
Corey
22:33
Get rid of time
Corey
22:34
Just let's do our thing. Let's just all have one universal time. Who's with me? One
Carter
22:38
One universal time. And
Carter
22:39
And just some of us are getting up at dawn at
Carter
22:42
one o'clock in the morning.
Carter
22:44
So dawn would be at like one in the morning.
Corey
22:47
Yeah, that's, but you know, like
Carter
22:48
like- This is your idea.
Corey
22:49
What does it matter? matter
Corey
22:51
what is what does it matter i'm trying to play cheering for myself our soundbox isn't working it's very upsetting so
Carter
22:56
so it's perfect for me um yeah
Carter
22:59
you know how kenny's idea
Carter
23:01
failed at the uh at
Carter
23:03
at the plebiscite yours
Carter
23:04
yours would fail worse yours
Carter
23:08
yours is not something that people are going to buy into that's
Corey
23:10
that's why you don't ask you
Carter
23:13
you know i'm liking this whole dictatorship thing
Carter
23:16
thing that you've got going today that's nice it's
Corey
23:18
it's basically the the only thing i'm willing to um to really throw out any democratic principles for getting rid
Carter
23:23
rid of you want
Carter
23:24
want to talk about uh about the strategy of knots or do you want to go back to uh when candidates want logos for other campaigns for their local campaign why
Corey
23:32
why do you do a windsor knot why do you do a windsor like so steven
Corey
23:36
steven carter always does a full windsor yeah yeah
Carter
23:40
i think it strikes balance strikes
Carter
23:42
strikes balance in the universe individual
Carter
23:45
yeah and it gives it gives it a nice nice look and it when it slides into the top button it slides in equally and then it it sits under both you
Carter
23:55
you know leaves of the collar if you will very
Carter
23:57
very very like yours what
Carter
23:59
do you call that a four in one hand or something like that yeah
Corey
24:02
yeah well you know what again this is not a this is not a visual medium for most people people
Carter
24:07
people are watching on well you're people see you on the live show there
Carter
24:10
there were hundreds of people at the live show people are going to come to the edmonton live show i'm told didn't we sell out we didn't
Corey
24:17
didn't we didn't tell anyone we sold out the edmonton live show yeah
Carter
24:20
yay can you play that
Corey
24:22
soundboard no i can't remember i want to but like nothing is working the show basically
Carter
24:25
basically fall apart when we don't have zane is this what i'm sensing
Corey
24:30
you know it doesn't not i guess is what i would say i feel
Carter
24:35
not gonna be able to do the outro
Corey
24:36
outro music either so well
Carter
24:38
well we didn't do the intro music did
Carter
24:40
did you remember that
Corey
24:43
Yeah, I'm just sort of thinking ahead here. Did
Carter
24:44
Did we not do
Carter
24:46
No, we were both waiting and then we both talked and then it didn't work.
Corey
24:50
Doesn't matter. You know what we should talk about?
Corey
24:53
We have more stuff on the list here,
Corey
24:55
So I wanted to do 20 minutes on daylight saving time. We're a little ahead of schedule on that one.
Corey
25:02
QP prep for staff. QP,
Corey
25:04
When local candidates want logos for their local campaign discuss this with me
Carter
25:09
okay let's begin with um you know so we're not talking about local counselors here what we're talking about is someone who's running under a specific party brand who
Carter
25:19
who wishes to have their own logo on their signage on their brochures whatever
Carter
25:24
whatever it may be instead of the the brand of the um of the overall party and and i'm going to break this into two categories if i can or can i break this into two categories the
Carter
25:35
the the people who actually want their their own logo and
Carter
25:37
and the people who don't want the leader's photo, right?
Carter
25:41
Because both of those are great for me. So why don't you start us off with people who want their own logo
Carter
25:50
logo and you can explain kind of why that is and what they think that they're doing and how that of course harms them. And then I'll pick up with the leader's photograph.
Corey
25:59
Yeah. So on the logo side,
Corey
26:01
you can think of any organization, doesn't need to be politics, probably your own companies that you work and there's there's going to be people who think it's
Corey
26:08
it's not real unless we have a logo and maybe a website right like that's what makes a project real we've got to have a logo and
Corey
26:15
and most of the time um it will have no currency outside of the immediate group that is using it there and one of the things that candidates often mistakenly believe is that they are more important than they are like okay
Corey
26:28
okay i understand that i'm a liberal candidate but i'm steven carter and i I think I myself am an important brand and I'm easily worth 20% of the votes here. And so it's important that I myself brand myself in a way that is telling my brand story. So I've got this logo. It's an S and a C and it's interlocked and it shows cooperation between myself and you, the constituents, because it's Stephen and constituents as well as Stephen and Carter.
Carter
26:55
Yeah. And it's green because we really want to emphasize the environment.
Corey
27:00
Yeah. Like I am a liberal, but I believe strongly in the environment.
Carter
27:03
environment which yeah it's got an orange this
Corey
27:06
it's got an orange border around it too because i want to show that like it's bound by my belief in social democracy although i am a liberal and
Corey
27:14
and i did mention the environmental concerns there as well so it's an s and a c and they're interlocked and they're they've got outlines of orange and the interlock itself is
Carter
27:23
the two blue vertical lines to stimulate you to show that i still support capitalism well
Corey
27:28
well because you don't want people to think just because you believe in social democratic values you is that you don't believe in capitalism social democracy
Carter
27:34
democracy is not the antithesis of capitalism it is the partner of capitalism it's capitalism
Corey
27:38
capitalism with a soul and i want people to understand that i
Corey
27:41
that so exactly i myself am i'm going to do this i'm going to pull this together and so you have these conversations and then you put this shit on a sign and people say i don't know i guess they're running for the social credit party it says sc i don't give a it's got a dollar sign who the fuck knows right um
Corey
27:56
um but you know ultimately i would say candidate individual candidate logos are pointless like you are not being elected because of your personal brand if you're running for a party by and large with very very few exceptions to begin with and
Carter
28:09
and if you're listening to this you're not one of those exceptions i'm i'm sorry to tell you right yeah
Corey
28:15
if you are one of them you know who you are and you're one of those exceptions um
Corey
28:20
but party logos in general are deeply overrated like you could talk to a hundred people on the street and say draw the the logo of the liberal party of canada and none of them like zero out of 100 would be able to do it for you right
Carter
28:33
the london pound sound isn't it but
Corey
28:35
but if you said to them what
Corey
28:37
color is a liberal party sign probably
Corey
28:40
probably 85 to 90 of 100 would
Carter
28:43
would be able to tell you that and
Corey
28:44
and yeah i know that disappoints you you think 10 to 15 people out of 100 don't know liberal is red that's outrageous well two points here you greatly overestimate people and second is it's sort of validating my point that the color is actually the brand in many ways and when we think of logo and we think of brand you can't conflate the two and so many candidates do and they think we need a logo it's not real without
Corey
29:04
without a logo yeah
Carter
29:07
yeah and i think that the logo is just but one well i mean it's the extreme but what i tend to see is local candidates who say the uh the party leader and the party brand is a drag on the ticket right
Carter
29:19
right the ticket you know we
Carter
29:20
we would be you know we can only get 18 or 20 20%. If we go with the liberal logo and Justin Trudeau's name, we're only going to get 18% or 20%. If we take off the name Justin Trudeau and take his photographs off of all of our literature, we're going to be in a much stronger position. And if they understood the
Carter
29:39
the local writing in
Carter
29:41
in Calgary, they would understand that we don't put liberal red, the liberal logo, if
Carter
29:48
they understood the a local rioting.
Carter
29:51
And the truth is, it's we're probably not wrong. Justin Trudeau's name on the brochure is not helping you win the election, but a touch from God wouldn't help you win the election. Like there is there is no way that if you've got that kind of negativity coming down from the from the people that you're going to be able to win the election. So this idea that the local I've seen a lot of elections and I would challenge you, Corey, to to to see see if there's anything, any other election that you can think of where
Carter
30:22
where the individual candidate has outperformed the camp, the party. The only one that I really stick to is Chris Turner's by-election almost victory in, I can't even remember what year, but it was Calgary Centre and it was the federal election. And Chris Turner ran for the Green Party and almost won. He
Carter
30:43
He was was four or five points back and in the 30s in Calgary Centre, which was quite
Carter
30:49
quite a statement. If he'd won, that could have been quite a difference for the Green Party of Canada.
Corey
30:54
Yeah, maybe. But I also think that part of the thing that worked for him there was the Green Party. And people in Calgary didn't have deep, informed opinions of the Green Party, even less than now. I mean, at the time, I think the Green Party had zero
Corey
31:05
zero to one MPs. I actually don't remember where they were because we don't remember when the hell it was. I think
Carter
31:09
think it was Elizabeth. Was Elizabeth still the...
Corey
31:11
Well, that's where I'm thinking. But I guess my point would be it almost felt like an independent candidate. If Chris Turner had run for
Corey
31:19
for the NDP, if Chris Turner had run for
Corey
31:22
for the liberals on the same platform with the same things, it wouldn't have hit the same way because the
Corey
31:27
brand is the brand and it is your anchor in good times and bad. And it will, it will largely determine how people are going to vote for you. And it's, I mean, it's dumb. It's not the greatest thing about our system, but, um,
Corey
31:38
um, you know, there used to be a school of thought. There's so many versions of it, but we used to always talk about the
Corey
31:44
the brand is worth what? 70% of your votes, the candidate 20, if you're lucky. Yeah, I think
Carter
31:50
think it was 95 and five, actually. But that research primarily comes out of the US where the Democratic ticket is, you know, the two party system is
Carter
31:59
is a little bit stronger. I think that in Canada, it's a little bit different. We still have a little bit more local flair. I do know that local candidates can lift their their their chances, but they tend to do better when they when they hang with the leader, where they hang with the overall party in general. Well,
Corey
32:20
Well, one of the reasons is just smaller ridings. So you can actually affect things in a way that you just can't if you're in the United States and it's a congressional award of or, you know, a million people.
Corey
32:32
And this was something George Washington warned
Corey
32:35
warned against. I think it was Washington. It might have been Hamilton. It was one of those, one of those yahoos who we have opinions
Carter
32:40
opinions of because of musicals.
Corey
32:45
But the idea that if you did, if you had big ridings,
Corey
32:49
right, big congressional districts in the American sense, then it would just all go to celebrity. It would all go to brand. And you needed small ones so that people could know their local representative. And that was a big part of early thinking about democracy in the United States, which
Corey
33:02
which we've, we've obviously drifted from significantly. But I think there's a point to it, right? At a certain point, it's not about you,
Corey
33:08
you, the human who gets to meet other humans and talk about your values. It's you, the brand.
Corey
33:13
And because so much of politics has pre-baked brand, whether it be Democrat or liberal or conservative or you name it, you're
Corey
33:20
you're just along for the ride in many cases.
Carter
33:23
Yeah. I mean, it's the biggest brand that actually carries the day. I mean, and that's the same when you're dealing with a provincial party, a local elector organization in British Columbia or another provincial municipality
Carter
33:37
municipality type of party. even when we were working with uh joe t and the uh and
Carter
33:42
and the candidates that she worked with i mean joe t's name was the big name and that was the name that lifted some and didn't lift others but it was the you know the the big name carries and floats the boat and the small names tend not to uh no matter how big you think your name is in uh calgary center or some other ward or riding
Carter
34:01
was good that was a good segment that
Corey
34:02
that was nice do
Corey
34:04
do we have another say
Corey
34:08
you know what zane
Corey
34:09
do at this point he would say that's interesting i want to i wasn't intending to go here but i want to unpack this a little bit uh you you talked about and i can't remember what you said i you know the other thing i have to say is i miss zane because he listened to you and he would carry this
Carter
34:21
this i didn't listen to myself actually i find it exhausting
Corey
34:24
exhausting to actually try
Corey
34:25
try to follow the conversation as we go along i think
Carter
34:28
think we've done a good job for a special episode on a thursday how long has it been two hours that
Corey
34:32
that i think the clock says 35 but minutes minutes to be clear but uh oh
Corey
34:42
i'm just saying yeah because i want to fill the dead air that would otherwise exist at this point so yeah
Carter
34:46
yeah i'm just trying to think if there's anything that i've wanted to talk about that zane hasn't let us talk about and
Carter
34:51
and it feels like i get really angry with him because he constrains the topics and
Carter
34:55
now that we are together you and i
Carter
35:01
know talk about jason kenney oh
Corey
35:02
oh sure okay what do you want to talk about
Corey
35:08
that's a wrap on this special episode of the strategists my name is cory hogan this is
Carter
35:14
is steven carter zane
Corey
35:15
zane velgey is not with us uh and you probably
Carter
35:18
probably didn't even notice you
Carter
35:20
you probably didn't He actually was
Corey
35:21
was in the chat. He literally could have been on this episode because he was in the chat.
Carter
35:25
chat. What a dick.
Corey
35:27
We'll see you next time. Did we say that at the end of the Patreon?
Corey
35:33
We don't give a
Carter
35:33
a shit. We've got their money.