Transcript
Carter
0:29
back no she isn't yes she is no she isn't yes she is yeah
Corey
0:32
yeah well you know and that'll be interesting because i actually don't know that she is walking it back there's the not running in calgary elbow that
Carter
0:38
that was yesterday yeah
Corey
0:40
yeah it was like the last ghosting smith
Carter
0:42
smith is that the weekend or is that today when we found out about it oh
Corey
0:45
oh that just happened today and that's that's an interesting one we should get on that one too fewer cabinet seats for calgary is
Corey
0:52
is that even worth talking about
Corey
0:54
well braid was writing about that he also talked he had a good quote of her saying here her conservatism would be very rural based yeah
Carter
1:02
firing and ahs overhead or
Corey
1:07
so the cabinet seats one you're
Corey
1:09
you're still back on cabinet seats yeah i mean okay well it's but why i think it's an interesting one is that calgary was for sure overrepresented but it's
Corey
1:18
it's the battle for the show like this is the
Carter
1:23
you i don't know do we want to do the legs and gondek photo thing that scares the shit out of me i don't want i
Corey
1:27
i don't want to do the legs and gondek they will drop that you know everybody was posting pictures of their legs by the end of the day it was very distressing i saw a
Carter
1:34
a lot of danielle's legs i'm not gonna lie to you okay
Carter
1:38
okay we'll take that out but discriminating against the unvaccinated because that bullshit we need to call that
Corey
1:43
because i have that second on the rundown maybe
Corey
1:47
maybe first maybe we do ghosting the
Corey
1:49
the swearing in the fact that she was sworn in alone so or
Carter
1:54
yeah Yeah, man, that was like, what
Carter
1:55
what does she do now? Like, how does she actually find the cabinet she's looking for?
Carter
1:59
Like she's taking center stage right up.
Carter
2:03
And welcome to the strategists, the Hogan and Carter special. We don't number these ones because we don't pay attention. I'm Stephen Carter. I'm joined today by Corey Hogan. How are you, Mr. Hogan? You dropped that
Carter
2:16
recording bomb on me out of nowhere. Thank you. Thank you for
Corey
2:21
You know, I like to keep you on your toes. Also, I've gotten this bad habit of, because I've now got it automatically going live the minute I hit record, most
Corey
2:29
most of that was actually recorded already. So we may have already recorded the show in the last two
Carter
2:35
two or three minutes. You did that fucking to me last week.
Corey
2:39
I just keep forgetting. One
Corey
2:40
One day I'm going to say something that gets me into trouble.
Corey
2:44
I used to have to hit go live. I no longer have to hit go live. And that's the big difference here is a challenge.
Carter
2:53
Yeah. Okay. Well, given that now everybody's heard the rundown.
Corey
2:56
Should we do a different show? Welcome
Carter
2:57
Welcome to the all Danielle Smith show.
Carter
3:04
You want to start us off with the cabinet being, you know, with her being sworn in with no cabinet?
Corey
3:09
Sworn in by the
Corey
3:11
the vice son's mother
Corey
3:14
Okay. Well, maybe let's start here before we jump into the show. You
Corey
3:17
got to ease people into this. You got to, you got to talk about things. things gracefully
Corey
3:21
gradually. How are you? How are your AFL picks? I'm
Carter
3:26
I'm in the prison of Surrey.
Corey
3:30
I have eaten more
Carter
3:30
more Indian food in the last five days.
Carter
3:34
It's so good, but I'm going to be so fat when I get home.
Carter
3:39
It's not really good. You
Corey
3:40
You know what? You got to get a little meat on the bones there. I've always said that. Thanks,
Corey
3:44
we did a live show of sorts on thursday yes
Corey
3:50
zane had a cameo appearance at the start and
Corey
3:53
and then we stayed live until we had the results uh it was like two and a half hours
Corey
3:59
where we just filled time which is a specialty of yours in particular so i'm you
Corey
4:04
but you know we we've talked about some of this already some of this was on the horizon at the time but this This is the first time we've gotten together since, you know, in an official context, since everything went down, since Daniel Smith became premier.
Corey
4:16
That's probably a way, a place to start.
Corey
4:19
I think unless you're living under a rock, no matter where you are in this country, you know, Alberta has a new premier, Daniel
Corey
4:25
Daniel Smith. She was elected by the UCP membership on the sixth ballot. So this was not the runaway success that was originally kind of envisioned.
Corey
4:35
it's fair to say. Yeah.
Carter
4:36
Yeah. I mean, I predicted it would go this long, but yeah, it's okay.
Corey
4:39
Okay. That's fine. I
Carter
4:40
I seem to think
Corey
4:41
think that if I ran the tapes, there'd be some good footage of me saying, I think she's got it, but I don't think it's going to be as much of a blowout as people. You're going to be
Carter
4:47
be able to find yourself
Carter
4:50
is about the hedge. It's
Corey
4:52
It's all about the hedge.
Corey
4:56
come true. Wrong statements. And we've always appreciated that. That come true.
Corey
5:01
So Smith, chosen by the membership of the UCP, starts with a speech, not
Corey
5:05
not any sign of the pivot. it. I think that's the thing I want to kind of start with and sort of underline.
Corey
5:10
A lot of pundits in the lead up saying, Daniel Smith, she's going to pivot. It's going to be all about kind of that compassionate conservatism. You know, that George W. Bush feel good 2001 conservatism, we all think so fondly of.
Corey
5:22
And no, that's not what happened. Like immediately started with
Corey
5:27
with talking about the The Alberta Sovereignty Act and Fighting Ottawa and, you
Corey
5:34
the unvaccinated have been really
Corey
5:36
really discriminated against. More on that because we got extra on that today.
Corey
5:41
All of this goes down in the speech. It's really clear that if there's a pivot, it's not coming on day one.
Corey
5:48
Well, it's also not coming on day two because
Corey
5:51
because she goes and makes additional announcements along this line. Everything, let's fast forward a bit. We'll go back to some of the things that happened over a bit.
Corey
6:01
Tuesday, after winning the UCP leadership on Thursday, she is sworn in as premier. Now, what makes this a little different is she was sworn in as premier, but her cabinet was not sworn in at the same time. She
Corey
6:14
She effectively just replaced Jason Kenney, became
Corey
6:17
became premier, still working with Jason Kenney's cabinet. She is going to change this cabinet. She's said as much. There's going to be more rural MLAs. There's going to be more MLAs from what we call the donut outside of Edmonton. you know the communities around edmonton but
Corey
6:31
but she was in such a burn on to get into the seat that
Corey
6:35
that she didn't actually wait to finish all of the cabinet vetting and cabinet construction before she took the job of premier
Corey
6:41
i kind of want to start there i
Corey
6:43
i have never seen this before i've always heard this as a possibility i worked for the public service one of the things we talked about when the government flipped right is well if there was like an emergency and you needed a a premier, you could very quickly swear on the premier.
Corey
6:58
They could work with the existing cabinet. Comes
Corey
7:00
Comes up in kind of like a hypothetical sense every now and then.
Corey
7:04
I've never actually seen this.
Corey
7:06
Never actually seen this.
Corey
7:10
When did this happen last?
Carter
7:12
Well, hold on. She, I believe, was... Alison Redford was sworn in before her cabinet.
Corey
7:18
Oh, really? Well, you would know that. She also rushed through... So there's a precedent here.
Corey
7:23
So this is not actually as dramatic as I was making it out to be. Well,
Carter
7:26
Well, it is dramatic because Alison, I think, did it for a period of a few days. But she did rush through her swearing in. At the time, I thought it was the fastest swearing in of a premier after a leadership election.
Carter
7:39
But I think that Smith has outdone her. This
Corey
7:42
This has got to leave it in the dust.
Carter
7:43
Yeah, because we did, I think, eight days. And I think that Smith has done this in- zero
Corey
7:49
zero i mean one working day right yeah the friday was the only work day between you know
Corey
7:55
know her winning and her being sworn in so
Carter
7:57
so i mean the transition team must have been told that she was going to want a very quick turnaround because i remember having to try and move heaven and earth in
Carter
8:05
in order to get the the public service ready for the allison redford so we
Corey
8:09
we talked about this on thursday as we were filling time one of the rumors like i don't tend
Corey
8:14
tend to just dabble in like this this is super well sourced. Danielle Smith was right pissed that Jason Kenney was governing like he meant it right up until the last minute.
Carter
8:25
Yeah, like he was actually the premier.
Corey
8:28
he of course was. Right,
Carter
8:29
Right, because that is our system of government. And he
Carter
8:32
he very easily could have thought of himself, I think, as a caretaker and he chose not to. So her getting sworn in to... And I do believe this. I do believe that she got herself sworn in to
Carter
8:43
to remove the levers of power from Jason Kenney.
Corey
8:46
I'm 100% convinced of that.
Carter
8:50
I don't believe he did anything after Thursday, but he did rush through a lot of stuff on Wednesday. So this is her saying, I'm not going to allow, and this is purportedly, this is the same party, right? This is the part that kills me is that Jason Kenney and Danielle Smith are from the same party.
Carter
9:07
I could almost see this being more relevant after a general election when Rachel notley comes in to rescue the province from from daniel smith but this is actually the
Carter
9:18
the the quickest turnaround possible for a party that is is the same party
Carter
9:23
party that's what kills me about this let
Corey
9:24
let me do my best zane velgey here okay
Corey
9:27
okay so carter that's where i want to take this this is the thing i want to talk about right now because i find this really interesting uh obviously there is no love lost between daniel smith and jason kenney um there's reason to believe daniel smith rushed into the job to stop jason kenney from doing
Corey
9:45
doing the job and there's been reporting that jason kenney and this is daniel smith said as much we haven't heard jason kenney's side of the story but daniel
Corey
9:53
daniel smith has said to reporters she
Corey
9:56
she reached out to have a phone call or a meeting with jason kenney and jason kenney left like ghosted her like i it it didn't
Corey
10:03
didn't sound like he said fuck off it sounded like He didn't even respond to the call. There was no transition meeting between the outgoing premier and the incoming premier.
Corey
10:13
Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney sat down. You brought up the point that Donald Trump and Barack Obama sat down. I have actually never heard of this, let alone in the same party.
Carter
10:24
No, I mean, this is ridiculous. I mean, Redford met with Stelmach. I remember that. I mean, he focused on one file, not other files. Was it
Corey
10:34
it Mothers Against Drunk Driving? Is that how you- No,
Carter
10:37
No, it was the Northwest Upgrader.
Corey
10:39
Oh, really? Oh, good. Well, that cost us billions of dollars.
Carter
10:42
And then I think that he also tied in, there was another upgrader
Carter
10:49
upgrader that was planned that I think was called the Indian Upgrader. And everybody thought that it had to do with Alberta's First Nations, the
Carter
10:57
the First Nations of Alberta. And instead, it was from
Carter
11:00
from literally Indians. It was from India.
Carter
11:03
So they used the name and tried to kind of pass it off as a First Nations project.
Carter
11:08
Didn't work. I don't
Corey
11:08
don't like that. I don't like that very much. No,
Carter
11:10
No, never happened. We were smarter than that. Anyways, those were like, we didn't have a fulsome discussion. The same with, I would say, Gondek and Venchi. It wasn't really fulsome, but it did have elements. It had periods.
Corey
11:29
It's not as though government requires like a handoff of a nuclear football at the provincial level or anything like that. There is a
Corey
11:36
a lot of machinery that ensures continuity in these cases, but I
Corey
11:42
I am still kind of struck by the fact that members purportedly of the same party had such little enthusiasm for each other that they would treat each other in this way. Danielle
Corey
11:50
Danielle Smith rushing into the job, rushing
Corey
11:54
And then Jason Kenney deciding
Corey
11:56
deciding he didn't even want to talk to her. And I think if you were, I'm going to guess, I'm just putting on kind of my like spin hat. Like if I were Jason Kenney, I think I would probably say, I
Corey
12:06
I didn't have time. You know, she wanted to do this in such a rush. I simply didn't have time. I already had plans for
Corey
12:16
Messy transition though. So, messy transition that speaks to kind of an underlying messiness in the UCP. And while it was all smiles on their caucus photo on that Friday, I told
Corey
12:24
told you I'd get back to some of the stuff that happened in between. Oh,
Carter
12:27
Oh, you're so good at this. I
Corey
12:28
I know, right? What's Zane do even do around here? I
Corey
12:31
really. It allowed, you
Corey
12:33
you know, I think it papered over a couple of some
Corey
12:36
some deep, deep challenges that they have.
Carter
12:42
party is not one party. I mean, you and I have had this conversation. And Zane's taken us down this track a few times. The CPC isn't one party. The UCP
Carter
12:51
UCP is not one party.
Carter
12:54
The difference here is that the cultural
Carter
12:57
cultural differences between these two types of conservatives are very real. It's fascinating. I had lunch with Ken Bozenkul the other day. When Ken Bozenkul is on the opposite side of Danielle Smith, you got to ask yourself, just how far right is this group? I mean, Ken Bozenkul, not just a man, the only other man with the full package in Alberta, but- That's
Corey
13:21
That's just so upsetting. Yeah,
Corey
13:23
but I just like to do it. But
Carter
13:27
deeply conservative. He runs
Carter
13:31
blue conservative all the way through. And he is looking at this group and saying, where's the pragmatism?
Carter
13:37
Where's the decision-making that's actually going to make things happen. And his article that he wrote on Friday for Jen Gerson's The Line, I thought really summed it up quite well. Like who is going to, is everybody just going to hop into these seats and watch Danielle Smith fly the plane right into the side of the building? Or is someone actually going to get up and try and make changes? What I'm seeing right now, I
Carter
14:00
mean, outside of Gottfried running for the back door and jumping out with his parachute on, There are very few people actually making a decision, and absolutely no one who's bold enough and strong enough to stop Danielle from taking these incredibly undemocratic actions.
Corey
14:17
You know, so Ken Bozenkul wrote this article for Jen Gerson's The Line. It's worth checking out. He talks about this
Corey
14:25
this fundamentally not being conservative, being a radical movement, because it's not rooted in rule of law. It is moving aggressively instead of slowly, which is supposed to be the whole kind of like tentative conservatism. And this really sort of setting him off and saying like, what are you going to do about it, basically, everybody? And obviously, this was Ken
Corey
14:45
trying to do something about
Corey
14:47
I know. I mean, after
Corey
14:49
after the election, you could argue that maybe Ken should have done it beforehand. He was a campaign manager for a candidate. I understand that wouldn't be entirely his choice in that particular moment.
Corey
14:59
give him a bit of pass on that.
Corey
15:02
it's not as though there was this massive piling on of conservatives agreeing with Ken Bozenkul. You
Corey
15:07
You know, that article was shared a lot by pundits and progressives and everyday
Corey
15:12
everyday Albertans who were concerned, but it
Corey
15:15
it doesn't actually look like there's a lot of cracks right now in the facade.
Corey
15:20
And I think that's really interesting.
Carter
15:23
It's not a question of whether or not there's cracks in the facade. It's a question of whether there's bravery in the hearts. There
Carter
15:28
There is no bravery in the hearts of conservatives. That's
Corey
15:31
That's really nice. Yeah,
Carter
15:33
Yeah, I came up with that for you. there's no bravery in the hearts of the conservatives there's no one who's willing to stand apart and say this isn't good enough and
Carter
15:43
needs to happen if you're going to actually see change in conservative
Carter
15:47
conservative land because conservative land right now isn't
Carter
15:51
Stephen Harper wanted to take it I mean everybody will jump on
Carter
15:55
on Stephen Harper as some sort of
Carter
15:58
hugely right wing person who ruined the country
Carter
16:02
really Stephen Harper was a moderate Jason Kenney is a moderate compared to the crowd that's that's leading the conservative movement now. And the fact that that I'll call out some of them, you know, that Tyler Shandro, Doug Switzer, Richard Godfrey, Cyril
Carter
16:18
Cyril Turton, Lila here, Raj and Sonny. The fact that they're not going to stand apart from
Carter
16:25
from this type of conservatism. When Raj and Sonny and Leela here especially were given a very strong signal by the membership of the party that they don't belong in this party. They
Carter
16:35
They don't want them in this party.
Carter
16:37
And yet there they are sitting in their seats watching Danielle Smith, you know, make statements about discriminating against the unvaccinated, about AHS overhauls, firing Hinshaw. These aren't things that people voted for. No
Carter
16:52
has voted for these. These have not been on a ballot. save
Corey
16:54
save that thought because i want to have the will anybody leave conversation kind of near the end of this um this episode here you see i'm still doing my zane velgey like save oh it's
Carter
17:03
it's really good i i did it last time so i think this is good that you're doing okay
Corey
17:07
but um that is definitely i think one of those things to watch here kenny
Corey
17:12
kenny ghosting uh danielle smith and that becoming public knowledge i mean that didn't even really crack the news today that was almost a throwaway tweet you know there wasn't a lot of conversation about that because there were two other things things let's call it three other things that
Corey
17:25
that happened today that garner a lot of conversation and i think rightly so because each of them was big news in its own right and
Corey
17:36
well i want to get into the strategy of one of them in particular so maybe i'm going to take things in a little different order than i thought daniel smith today really underlined her promised overhaul ahs 90 days she's gonna call this thing said she wants in more local control part of that That was also bringing into the Alberta Human Rights Act protections
Corey
17:54
protections for the unvaccinated. We will for sure get into that.
Corey
17:59
And then another piece of this maybe
Corey
18:01
maybe didn't even kind of register as a big thing at this moment was the firing of Dina Hinshaw, made in public, where she effectively said no
Corey
18:11
And that she was going to rely on a group
Corey
18:13
group of advisors rather than Dina Hinshaw and rather than Chief Medical Officer of Health. have no idea how that's going to work in practice can i say because
Corey
18:20
because we already have medical officers of health and then there was a need for a chief medical officer of health and
Corey
18:25
and that's the job that
Corey
18:27
that she seems to want to replace here with a committee you
Carter
18:29
you know it's fascinating these fiscal i'm going to start at the beginning of that rather long list um she's
Carter
18:37
she's promising a 90-day overhaul in health care yeah
Carter
18:41
shock to everybody there's no such thing as 90 you did a health care you
Corey
18:45
you and You and I have both worked in government. I mean, you're not even going to get the meetings you need in 90 days. Now she's going to use that power to do
Carter
18:54
let's say that she does, okay?
Carter
18:56
is the largest expenditure on the Alberta government books. It is huge. Depending on how you look at it, I think it's 46% to 48% of
Carter
19:05
of the overall spending of the Alberta government.
Corey
19:07
government. It depends on what you want to bring into the equation, right? Because it's more than just Alberta health, for
Carter
19:12
huge. And so you have this huge spend going out the door. Now, one of the reasons that it was brought together was to force efficiencies, right?
Carter
19:22
right? You don't want seven local areas, each having a cardiac center
Carter
19:27
center or a stroke center or a cancer center or whatever. You need to consolidate some of those experts. It's not even about the facility. It's about the experts, the people themselves cells that are treating these ailments. The best in the world, the best in the province need to be in one center, or you're not able to actually perform things at the highest possible level. So when you have seven different
Carter
19:51
different health regions, which I think was the number, seven or eight, when Leiper actually- Well, it
Corey
19:54
it changed. It kept shrinking. Yeah.
Carter
19:57
and then it would shrink. And ultimately, Leiper closes them all in and makes AHS. A decision that I still to this day hold was actually done for only one reason, and that was to create NetCare, the online system for sharing information, which still doesn't work properly. And we spend billions of dollars on.
Carter
20:18
But it is near to impossible to imagine a scenario where these systems will be up and running and efficient and not cost more money. So if you are a fiscal conservative, and I believe that Danielle Neil Smith purports to be one. This could be the most devastating decision that is being made in Alberta at this time, because there is no way to ensure that there's more than one health system
Carter
20:43
and more efficiencies in the system at the same time.
Corey
20:46
Yeah. I mean, I do get the sense personally that this might end up looking a little bit more like the illusion of regions, because anything beyond that, to your point, would actually undo a lot lot of work that conservatives tend to value. And I think, in general, there was a lot of rhetoric about getting rid of the Superboard and the One Health region in Alberta for the first few years of its life.
Corey
21:09
And after it got through its growing pains, and it actually started doing the job it was created to do, including net care, but also finding some of those efficiencies you were talking about, then
Corey
21:18
then people chilled out because it became kind of a wild notion to go the other way. I mean, having AHS as it currently stands allows bulk purchasing of all sorts of things, a lot of money there.
Corey
21:31
The pooling of expertise, as you've already talked about, something people outside of Alberta might not be aware of. Everybody in Alberta who's done any kind of like highway driving will know is basically
Corey
21:41
basically every small fucking town has a hospital in
Corey
21:45
in Alberta. And they're like cookie cutter, they're identical. Lahi put these everywhere. where yeah and
Corey
21:50
and you have situations where for example because nobody wants to close them you have right now because they're all in one super region it's like yeah we'll have three hospitals but that one doctor will just rotate between them they're 30 minutes away if he needs to or she needs to get to another hospital yeah
Carter
22:06
go to the canmore hospital and try and get emergent care it's all in banff you go to canmore you can get stitches right
Corey
22:13
it's a different world
Corey
22:16
it's i I mean, and so there's some craziness there, but even within our crazy system, they found efficiencies.
Corey
22:21
And I guess what I would say is arguably it has really done its job. And one of the uber
Corey
22:26
uber ironies here is one of the things it was designed to do is not have a bunch of beds
Corey
22:30
beds that were empty all over the province. And of course, COVID-19 occurred and there was great concern about ICU beds.
Corey
22:38
The irony, of course, being having
Corey
22:40
having empty beds is absurdly expensive. One of the things that we managed to do rather well in Alberta was get to a point of efficiency where we didn't have a bunch of empty beds. We didn't have a bunch of slack capacity as a result when a pandemic came along. Daniel Smith seems to want that.
Corey
22:55
But I guess what I'm saying here is there's
Corey
22:58
there's a long way to make the point. if you bring back the regions as they were, are
Corey
23:03
are you going to give them back bargaining? Are
Corey
23:05
Are you going to give them back the ability to purchase supplies? Are you going to give them back their own individual siloed healthcare record systems? No, no, no, you're not going to do it. So what are these regional boards actually going to do? What does the regional authority look like?
Carter
23:21
Are you going to go all the way and have elected regional boards as we once did for like 15 or 20 minutes before
Carter
23:26
dismissed all of those elected boards these are supposed to look more like a school board than it does anything else well
Corey
23:32
well and maybe that's the comp because um while there are trustees who advocate very strongly for people the reality is school boards don't have any of those tools anymore either no
Corey
23:41
no the school board has very limited authority uh
Corey
23:45
uh on like the big levers these days they have like
Carter
23:47
like control over like less than 20 percent of their budgets right
Carter
23:51
they They get to goof around on where the library funds go. This is the same thing that healthcare is going to be because it's not like the
Carter
23:58
the nurses and the health unions are going to say, yeah, let's split up into seven different bargaining units.
Carter
24:04
And the province doesn't want that anyways because then if they break up into seven, then suddenly Medicine Hat is getting
Corey
24:09
getting a big raise. They start bidding against each other. Yeah,
Carter
24:10
Yeah, and everything turns into a gong show. Yeah,
Corey
24:13
you've got lead tables all of a sudden in random parts of the province that are driving up prices everywhere. On
Carter
24:18
On virtually every level, whether it's cost or patient care, or even local control, this is a bad idea. The idea of local control, what is it that you think you're controlling?
Carter
24:32
Do we really want the layperson in Balfe,
Carter
24:36
Balfe, Alberta, to be in charge of making the decisions for the health region in Balfe, Alberta?
Corey
24:42
For our listeners not in Alberta, BALF is a real place. B
Corey
24:45
B-A-W-L-F, it's spelled exactly like it sounds.
Carter
24:49
Yeah, BALF, Alberta. We've got it all here in Alberta. Everybody should come out to visit.
Corey
24:53
Alberta is calling. If
Carter
24:54
If you're wondering, BALF has a lovely school, Cookie Cutter. It's now been shut down, I believe.
Corey
25:01
great. Well, they also have a green elevator that says BALF, I believe, if I'm not mistaken.
Corey
25:06
Yeah, and a great main street.
Carter
25:09
but i mean so this also ties into the hinshaw fire yeah
Corey
25:15
the same thing like just like ahs alberta health services like the the region like the one super region in alberta yeah
Corey
25:24
is not the same as alberta health which is the department's chief medical officer of health right
Carter
25:29
right and so but it does what it does say to me though cory what does bring this to be closer to the same is political control of the healthcare system versus
Carter
25:38
versus medical control of the healthcare system.
Carter
25:42
The medical control of the healthcare system is Dr. Dina Hinshaw. It is allowing Verna Yu, who used to be the head of AHS, to be the person who's in charge. Ironically, haven't filled the position for who's in charge of AHS because who the fuck would want that job?
Carter
25:56
And especially when it's going to break up. Well, by the way, you think we have too many vice presidents? Wait till you find out what it's like to have have seven presidents in IHS.
Carter
26:08
this is a, Hinshaw signals to me, we
Carter
26:13
we are going to make political decisions about your healthcare rather than healthcare decisions about your healthcare. And that scares the shit out of me.
Corey
26:22
Yeah. Listen, I do want to take the moment to say,
Corey
26:25
Dina Hinshaw got a rough ride from both sides. There were people who thought she didn't use her authority far enough to kind of pull in the cabinet you and i have talked about this we think that would be basically impossible in that job there
Corey
26:36
there are people who think that she went way too far and she should be locked up you know like this is this people with the more extreme fringes of the province here um she was always between a rock and a hard place i worked with dina for
Corey
26:50
for years i always found her professional thoughtful um
Corey
26:55
she was she was willing to hear multiple sides of an argument, she knew and she would regularly say, listen, I'm not an arbiter of truth here. I'm trying to use the information to make what's in the best interest for the health of the province. I mean, I don't know if it was actually a catchphrase of hers, but I heard her say that three or four times in three or four different crises, where
Corey
27:14
where she would entertain voices from other physicians and other people who would have something valuable to say about public health and public safety and um you
Corey
27:23
you know it was just the worst job in the world for two years and now she's being fired from it and i i do hope whatever comes next for her is is good because wow
Corey
27:34
wow i mean what a draining job you
Corey
27:37
you know lover or hater she stood there and she took the slings and arrows and tried to walk the impossible tightrope and
Corey
27:44
and i mean if that isn't kind of public service i don't know what is.
Carter
27:48
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I mean, she has taken the slings and arrows from both sides. And I think that the
Carter
27:53
the challenge here was walking a middle line, right?
Carter
27:56
right? Walking a middle line, whichever side you felt that the middle line was on.
Carter
28:01
There is no middle line when you're firmly in one camp.
Carter
28:06
And Hinshaw was trying to make the best decisions she could. I think that if you look across the country, it
Carter
28:12
it wasn't a banner three years for Chief Medical Officers of Health. I know
Carter
28:16
know that we all started banging our pots and pans for them at the beginning. But then, you know, and we all had our, you know, celebratory T-shirts made. But by year two, we were burning those T-shirts because we didn't have confidence in the decisions that were being made.
Carter
28:34
And I think that that's unfortunate for the people making the decisions. I think that people like to think that
Carter
28:39
that in government there's a right decision and a wrong decision. decision. But
Carter
28:42
But I used to say in the premier's office, most of the decisions that land on the premier's desk are 51-49 decisions. They're 51, you know, you've got to flip a coin and hope that you're right, because you don't know, you do not have enough information at the time the decision is required to make the right decision every single time.
Carter
29:00
So Dina Hinshaw didn't have all the information that was required. She also was existing within the political environment that is Alberta. And
Carter
29:08
And keep in mind that she's not being fired today because she didn't, you know, because
Carter
29:14
she didn't protect people well enough. She's being fired today because she protected them too much. And
Carter
29:20
think that that's a ridiculous point of view from Danielle Smith. And
Carter
29:25
makes my heart ache for her.
Corey
29:27
I hope it underlines for people kind of the impossible situation that Dina was in, right? Which is like, there are so many people, I think probably even most of the people who listen to this podcast in Alberta, right?
Corey
29:40
Dina Hinshaw should should have gone further. She should have stood up to the premier.
Corey
29:44
mean, this is the impossible situation. This is, this is the political masters that she was dealing with at the time. And when you consider that, and when you kind of curve against that, what
Corey
29:53
what you're really asking is for her to stand up and be a martyr and say this far and no further, but I'll tell you something,
Corey
29:59
what would that have gotten you, but, but a more pliant chief medical officer of health
Corey
30:03
and in the middle of a pandemic, having to do that shift. And look, I mean, like, again, no
Corey
30:09
no one's thrown a parade for you on this day 800 of the pandemic or whatever we're at because let's not forget how many people are still dying uh
Corey
30:17
you know across canada we're just 33
Carter
30:18
33 in alberta last week or something like that it
Corey
30:21
it was a real
Corey
30:23
a real number and
Corey
30:24
and um and this is how it ends i mean it's like uh it's in the movie dave right you you
Corey
30:30
you die a hero or you live long enough to be the villain yeah
Corey
30:33
yeah it's it's just what happens i mean that's what that
Carter
30:35
that was the great lesson i think of dave um
Carter
30:38
and that's why i return to it every year yeah i
Corey
30:41
think that's what president mitchell was trying to tell us i
Carter
30:43
i think that president mitchell he's
Carter
30:45
he's misunderstood died a hero
Carter
30:48
die a hero that's
Carter
30:53
did we wind up here
Carter
30:54
well we always do discrimination
Carter
30:55
discrimination stuff or do you want to finish off on hinshaw i'm done with it no i
Corey
30:59
i i so so So apparently it's Danielle Smith. Oh,
Corey
31:04
Look, good lead-in to what I think is the comment that's probably generated the most online activity. The one that, you know, I just, I don't, like I hear we are at minute 31. I can, I'm going to hand you the floor. I'm still doing my Zane Velgey here. No, no, you've got to read it.
Corey
31:23
I'm going to give you three minutes
Corey
31:26
to do, you know, whatever you want to do with it. Before we're going to actually talk about potential strategy, lack thereof if you think so, but let's talk through the strategic considerations that may or may not exist around this
Corey
31:45
This is not a gross cherry picking here. Danielle Smith described the unvaccinated thusly.
Corey
31:55
they're the most discriminated against group that i've ever witnessed in my lifetime i find that unacceptable steven
Corey
32:02
steven carter the floor is yours here's
Carter
32:04
here's the thing danielle danny can i call you danny is it okay if i call you danny here's the thing danny um the most discriminated group against that you've ever experienced is probably not going to be a group of people choosing not to get vaccinated uh first of all choosing not to get vaccinated is not a protected class. Now, you may want to change the legislation to do that, but we have had mandatory vaccinations in the province of Alberta. Ironically, the person who took them out, Jason Kenney. We used to require mandatory vaccinations at AHS for the flu. You know why? Because we didn't want people in the hospitals giving the flu to people in, like the staff shouldn't give the flu to people in the hospital. That was a pretty common thing. Hepatitis B, very easily vaccinated against, super easy to do every health care professional every first responder gets vaccinated against vaccine hepatitis b and you talk about travel danny danny do you want to travel somewhere in africa because you're going to need a shit ton of vaccinations to make sure you can do so safely now you can go if you want without getting those vaccinations but don't come back with malaria and expect that the canadian health care system is going to take care of your sorry ass and you don't falsely equivocate the number of people who've been ill
Carter
33:20
ill or died through vaccinations, which we can count basically on one hand, versus the millions of people who've passed away from COVID-19 around the world. Every civilized society, meaning the people who aren't taking their cues from the United States, thinks that vaccination is a good thing. And the fact that vaccination has gone from being a good thing to a bad thing is the reasons why we have measles outbreaks in southern alberta this is a bad thing danny we don't want this shit to happen i don't understand how you can say that and to suggest that they're the most discriminated people in in canada the people who you haven't i mean fuck you daniel danielle black people lgbtq people first nations people um i'm out here working in surrey with with you know the south asian population. You want to talk to me about discrimination? Tell me about the people who are rolling down their fucking window yelling at them. I can't even tell who's unvaccinated in this community.
Carter
34:18
They don't deal with discrimination. They just want to be put into a separate class that says, I don't have to protect anybody else.
Corey
34:30
Does that feel good? Get that off your chest?
Carter
34:32
better. I've been a while since a rant.
Corey
34:35
Let's talk the strategy here. here
Corey
34:37
yeah i mean like actually maybe there's a bit of a bridge in there uh
Corey
34:44
okay well obviously not true let's start there right i mean let's call it rhetoric because there is no way she actually believes that the most i mean this is a woman who
Corey
34:52
who is you know your age same you know just a little bit older than me i
Corey
34:58
i can think of i don't know apartheid i can think think of massacres in Rwanda. I can think of a lot of terrible situations in the world that far eclipse what we're talking about, about the inconvenience of having to have a rapid test before you go to Boston pizza. Okay. Well,
Carter
35:14
Well, and Danielle and I grew up in the 1980s when being gay in Alberta was a real problem for people. People
Carter
35:20
People couldn't get married. People couldn't have a job. The Vryn decision, we were going to take the notwithstanding clause and prohibit people from working if they were identified as their employer as gay. That's Alberta. This is the province that we've been in. Danielle and I are the same age, and that is the same exact outcome. She should know what real discrimination looks like because we grew up in an environment where there was real discrimination.
Corey
35:45
All right. So you and I have both kind of pointed out that this is not a
Corey
35:49
a defensible position, right? Not a defensible position. There are just so many things you can look at. And I think maybe it fails any kind of reasonable person test that you might put out there. It takes no imagination to think of groups that have been discriminated against much worse, much worse than the unvaccinated. Again, like this is Alberta, our quote unquote vaccine passport system really at its quote unquote most onerous here required you to do a rapid test if if you didn't want to get vaccinated to do basically anything.
Corey
36:22
So, you know, it's, it's not exactly as though there was like some very, very difficult, impossible thing for you to engage with if you were unvaccinated. Now, okay.
Corey
36:37
Is there a strategy here?
Corey
36:39
And I'm going to throw one on the table for you. I'm going to, I'm going to make two Two arguments. I'm going to ask you which one seems more accurate to you. This is what we're going to do.
Corey
36:49
Argument number one, there's
Corey
36:50
there's no strategy. This was an absolute fuck up. This was her first day as premier. She cluttered everything up by talking about creating
Corey
36:59
creating this comparison that was so outrageous that even people who are somewhat sympathetic to the unvaccinated argument,
Corey
37:06
argument, we're going to think that's just way too far.
Corey
37:09
And it's just, there's nothing nothing to it i mean it's just it's
Corey
37:12
it's just a own goal and maybe it's a precursor thing to come
Corey
37:16
that's argument one right
Corey
37:20
is actually brilliant because
Corey
37:22
because well she has had to walk back things like the alberta sovereignty act uh
Corey
37:27
uh she decided to spend today doing
Corey
37:29
doing the things that will make her an absolute hero to the 20 of albertans who believe this and they will be with her forever forever now.
Corey
37:37
And she can make her pivot later, but
Corey
37:39
but they are never going to feel betrayed. And they are going to be with her and they are going to be the foot soldiers of this movement of hers
Corey
37:45
through the next election. And she has them and she cannot lose them now. And now she can do whatever she needs to do to
Corey
37:53
to win that next election.
Carter
37:55
Here's the thing about the loyalty of the 20%. So I do not believe that the loyalty of this 20% is something that you can count on. Jason
Carter
38:03
had the loyalty of the 20% for a little while.
Carter
38:06
And then he was deemed to not be doing enough. And they turned on him.
Carter
38:10
They will turn on you in no time at all if they feel like you're not doing the things for them that they expect.
Carter
38:16
Because this isn't a group of people who are making their decisions rationally.
Carter
38:19
This is a group of people who believe what
Carter
38:21
what they believe, and they follow the non
Carter
38:24
non-mean stream media. And they attack when they attack without
Carter
38:28
without reason, and without cause, without course. And
Carter
38:33
controlling them is more like riding a lion than
Carter
38:37
than it is about doing actual politics. And I think that that's where Danielle has made her mistake, is that she thinks that in some fashion, she's
Carter
38:45
she's going to be able to control this group or push this group into recognizing that she's making the right decisions for them, when ultimately this group has always
Carter
38:54
always turned on the people that try to work for them, whether that was Jason Kenney or any of the other politicians.
Carter
39:02
You know, right now, the only place that this has worked for a sustained period of time is in the States. And you're even watching now Governor DeSantis having a difficult time in Florida hanging onto this crew because this crew is not stable.
Corey
39:17
So not a winning strategy.
Corey
39:20
Do you think it was attempted strategy? Do you think it was either an attempt to lock them up, or
Corey
39:24
or maybe even like a dead cat thing where she's just trying to turn the page from her Alberta Sovereignty Act? We'll get to that, but the idea that she's walked back from that. Or
Corey
39:34
Or do you think this was just a total cock-up? Do you
Corey
39:36
just a total error?
Carter
39:38
It's not a cock-up. It's actually what she believes. She
Carter
39:41
She spent so much time on QR77, Calgary's redneck radio, that she actually believes that all the callers represent the majority.
Carter
39:50
And when you start to believe that the callers to a call-in radio show are the normatives, like the normals, you're in real trouble. These guys aren't the normals. These guys are the anomalies. Because normal people, generally speaking, don't pick up the telephone and call in. to a radio show. I saw Dave Rutherford go through this. Ryan Jesperson successfully avoided it because he lived in a different city than
Carter
40:15
than Calgary. Calgary is a terrible place for call-in radio.
Carter
40:18
And I think that our friend Danielle has discovered what happens when you start listening to the people who are calling into the show. Nothing good. Nothing good happens.
Corey
40:30
You say nothing good, but she's now premier of Alberta, right?
Carter
40:33
right? She's premier for Alberta for now, right?
Carter
40:37
right? I mean, Danielle or Alison Redford showed us that
Carter
40:40
that Alison Redford, Ed Stalmack, Jim Prentice, Rachel Notley have all showed us it's relatively easy in Alberta to become premier for a little while.
Carter
40:50
It's much harder to be premier for more than one term.
Corey
40:55
It's an interesting point. Fun fact, by the way, I was Danielle Smith's first guest on that radio show, and I was like her last guest on that radio show. I was on both her first and last day.
Corey
41:07
impressive? Did you know that?
Carter
41:08
Well, I think you told us because you have no ability not to brag. That's
Corey
41:13
That's true. Is that bragging?
Corey
41:15
Yeah, I'm not really sure that's bragging. Listen.
Corey
41:17
I was on right after Jason Kenney on the last day. It
Carter
41:20
It doesn't have to be good to be bragging. You can be an idiot and still be bragging about it. We've seen that many times from you.
Corey
41:26
Yeah, it is kind of my MO. Mo. Listen, so this is one that we could unpack a lot. People are talking about it. Do you think that it's going to do lasting damage? One of the things I'm interested to get your thoughts on are about Danielle Smith as a known or unknown commodity, because there's one school of thought that says she ran for premier in 2012 and was supposed to win. Alberta really got a good look at her. There was the lake of fire comments one of her candidates made. There was when Danielle Smith said the science wasn't settled on climate change in a late debate that was in the last week at CBC. And her support just evaporated. And you and I have talked about this. I was running the liberal campaign at the time. You were the head strategist for the PCs at the time. And we both saw the same thing, which is overnight, Danielle Smith's support collapsed, right?
Carter
42:19
Right. I mean, she went
Carter
42:21
went too far. She allowed the people who surround, and I've always given her the benefit of the doubt. I've always said the people who surround Danielle Smith give her, you know, she listens to them too much and she doesn't find the everyman, right? She does not find what the average Albertan feels. Instead, she feels that the average Albertans are the ones who are surrounding her.
Carter
42:42
I think that that's mistaken at this point. I think that now she's looking for the extra idea
Carter
42:46
idea that's really outside of the mainstream, because those are the ones she feels the most comfortable with. She
Carter
42:52
She didn't want to get rid of a
Carter
42:54
a racist candidate. She didn't want to get rid of a bigoted candidate. She is still in that same space. And I think that she will make, this is something that will hurt for a long time, because she will never, ever
Carter
43:08
ever back away from it.
Corey
43:12
and Corey, I'll get to you in a minute, but Carter, you've interestingly brought up a point here. Oh, really? You're
Carter
43:16
You're doing a very good job, Zane.
Corey
43:20
Is she a known commodity? So we've just talked about 2012. We've talked about a story basically everyone in Alberta who follows politics knows, but that's everyone in Alberta who follows politics. And here we are now in 2022.
Corey
43:32
She's now premier. I think a lot of people will have absolute whiplash on that fact, in fact.
Corey
43:38
Is she a known commodity? does she need to worry about how she defines herself or not in these early days? Or is it just like, people think about Danielle Smith, what they're going to think about her?
Carter
43:48
Keep in mind though, that when she crossed the floor,
Carter
43:55
she crossed the floor in 2015,
Corey
43:57
For those who don't know,
Corey
43:59
for those who don't know who
Corey
44:00
who have not followed the Danielle Smith saga,
Corey
44:03
she was the leader of the official opposition in Alberta, The leader of the official opposition, and she crossed from being leader of the official opposition along with half of her Wild Rose caucus to Jim Prentice's PC party in an attempt to unite the right, I guess, by force. And what happened was the other half of the Wild Rose said, screw you, and Brian Jean became leader, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Carter
44:29
Smith was promised a cabinet position. She
Carter
44:32
She did not get that cabinet position because the backlash was so huge. The backlash for the decision that she made was
Carter
44:37
was enormous. So when we say that, you know, how is Danielle Smith remembered? I
Carter
44:41
I think that she was forgiven by the far right, because they got to spend a lot of time with her on QR 770, Calgary Redneck Radio.
Carter
44:48
I don't think that many people got to spend time with her outside of that environment.
Carter
44:53
So the people who are waking, you know, waking up to Premier Smith today or tomorrow will be waking up to the person who crossed the floor. and they're still trying to figure out, how did this woman who lost in 2012, crossed
Carter
45:04
crossed the floor in 2015, lost again in 2015, disappeared to talk radio for three or four or five years, how did she wind up coming back to become our premier? And I'm not sure that she's, I don't think she's Christy Clark material. I don't think, because Christy Clark went away and did her own stint in talk radio and then wound up doing, I think it was three terms as premier. I don't think that Danielle Smith winds up being responsive to the electorate in the way that Christy Clark was. Because let's be honest, if
Carter
45:34
if you want a sustainable political future, you respond to the electorate, you don't try and get the electorate to respond to you.
Corey
45:41
So let's pull back to what I'm asking you here, which is today, first
Corey
45:45
first day as premier, introduces herself,
Corey
45:48
blows it up at least on social media with her comments about the unvaccinated being the most discriminated against groups she's ever seen.
Corey
45:56
What does this mean? Is this defining her? Normally our
Corey
45:59
our advice would be you win a leadership and that's when you got to go out hard and you've got to define yourself or your opponent's going to define yourself.
Corey
46:07
Is this a huge thing? Is this going to define her going forward? Or is this just another part of that long saga of Danielle Smith
Corey
46:15
that people have on their bookshelf, even if they haven't read it recently?
Carter
46:19
I think that this is defining. I think this is not only defining because we think it's defining, i
Carter
46:24
i think it's defining because this is what what danielle wants people define her as this
Carter
46:28
this is this is not i come back to you asked the question right at the beginning was this a mistake was this calculated this is what she wanted to say she
Carter
46:37
she said it and now people are going to believe it now cory
Carter
46:41
cory hogan what steven just a second here i'm going to go to cory cory what do you think about what steven said here you
Corey
46:49
you know the thing i've been thinking about since the comment has has largely been about pity for the NDP oppo researchers who have spent months going through these old QR-77 tapes that they probably got from some crazy fellow on the edges of town who keeps his own urine in mason jars and all of this, but also records QR-77. He's gone through and has found comments that have been about Danielle Smith saying things like, the unvaccinated are being treated worse than any LGBT group group or anything like that and they're thinking we got her we got her we fucking got her we've got this just absolute killer material and we're going to drop it on her and then on day one she basically packages it and you know it's like the old like trump like he just tweeted it out himself like all of that work for nothing because this is this is what she wants to put out there so it's going to be interesting to see how the ndp take both what daniel smith is presenting and what is in daniel smith's past and
Corey
47:49
and build the story that they want to build
Carter
47:51
So is this Trumpian?
Carter
47:53
Is what Danielle Smith did today, is it kind of like Trump where you've said something, people are prepared to make an issue out of it, but you just say, yeah, I fucking said it and moved on.
Carter
48:04
Is that kind of what Danielle's doing?
Corey
48:07
Well, arguably it's what she did with the Alberta Sovereignty Act. And maybe we'll use this as the pivot into that particular topic here. Yeah.
Corey
48:13
Because originally, people were saying, release your act, release your sovereignty act. We've talked about this a few times on the show.
Corey
48:21
And then she did, and it was as bad as we imagined.
Corey
48:25
And then everyone stopped talking about it because she's like, yeah, this is exactly what the act says. We're going to ignore federal law. I mean, it's not written yet, but that's our basic thinking here. Well,
Corey
48:34
now we have over the weekend comments by Rob Anderson, who was kind of the, A, her policy guru, and B, the author of the Free Alberta Strategy, which really was an extreme manifestation of a lot of these views. And C is now executive director of the premier's office. I don't know. They got a lot of new titles over there. A pretty wild org chart as far as I can tell.
Corey
48:58
He said, no, it's going to respect Supreme Court decisions. And it sounds like they were trying to repackage this in rule of law. And a lot of people have jumped on this online and said, is
Corey
49:09
is an example of Danielle Smith retreating from her position on the sovereignty.
Corey
49:13
What are your thoughts?
Carter
49:15
I don't think she's retreating. I still think that there's mixed signals coming out of her, you know,
Carter
49:21
her little premier's office that hasn't really taken up anything. It's a transition office right now. Now, I
Carter
49:26
I think there's mixed signals because I'm hearing, yes,
Carter
49:29
yes, it will follow
Carter
49:30
follow Supreme Court precedent. And then I'm also hearing, no, it won't. But I also remind people that the Supreme Court is only the interpreter of the law. The law itself matters from the day that it's passed by the parliament. So
Carter
49:43
So if you're not willing to accept parliament, the parliament of Canada and the government of Canada's rule of law, then why all of a sudden are you willing to accept the Supreme Court's rule of law? The
Carter
49:53
The rule of law is the rule of law. And if it is passed by the federal government, then it applies across this nation.
Carter
50:00
And the only way out of that is to invoke the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution in the limited means that you can.
Corey
50:09
In the limited means needs to be underlined. The notwithstanding clause is not a get out of Constitution free pass. It's these particular sections about your rights and freedoms the
Corey
50:19
the government can limit, which doesn't seem like it's the kind of thing a libertarian would be that keen on. Daniel Smith, self-declared libertarian.
Corey
50:26
Here's my feeling about this.
Corey
50:29
Will it respect the Supreme Court? I think
Corey
50:33
they have such a narrow view of what the Supreme Court says. We know this from how they've even talked about Alberta
Corey
50:40
Alberta lost its appeal on the carbon tax, wanting not to be subject to a federal carbon tax. Jason Kenney put that forward.
Corey
50:47
The Smith campaign and the Smith Kampf now that she's premier have said, well, we're going to go at it again. We're going to run back into the court and we're going to try some new arguments. Now, kind
Corey
50:57
kind of asked and answered, there's a Latin phrase for it, but the point being they
Corey
51:04
stand by the decisions they make, courts, and they're not going to just flip something for no good reason. And she
Corey
51:10
she seems to believe that she can go back to the court. I
Corey
51:13
I think a lot of the lawyers that I've discussed this with are pretty skeptical and you've got to see what the argument is, but it doesn't seem likely.
Corey
51:20
But I guess this underlines, she seems to have a very narrow view of what a Supreme Court decision is. Very, very narrow view. So yes, the Supreme Court made a decision, but they made it in this insanely specific case, rather than I think what most lawyers and judges would understand, which is that when you make a decision, it's
Corey
51:36
it's applicable in kind of a reasonable set.
Corey
51:40
So does it really mean too much when she says she'll respect the Supreme Court? It's not too hard It's hard for me to imagine the Supreme Court comes in and says, absolutely fucking not, Alberta. Absolutely fucking not. You've got to enforce. You can't tell the RCMP under contract not to enforce federal laws. And they're like, okay, well, then we're going to have our own police force. And then they come back and say, absolutely fucking not, Alberta. We already told you, you can't do that. And you can't do it with your provincial police force either. And they say, okay, well, then we're going to contract it out to the municipalities. And then we go like 20 rounds on this. And hopefully the courts wise up if that is actually the course. But I guess my point would be, is
Corey
52:18
is anything that we've seen about the interpretation of court decisions actually make a respective Supreme Court decision more
Corey
52:25
more comforting? I don't actually see that in there.
Carter
52:29
yeah i mean i don't i
Carter
52:31
mean we're starting to get into the world of this crazy hypothetical like how is she actually
Corey
52:34
actually going to do this
Carter
52:35
and and i think that the the the carbon tax is actually a really good example of how she sees it she
Carter
52:41
she doesn't you know i i tweeted at the time um you
Carter
52:45
you know is is i don't want a a reasonable uh a reasonable legal grounds not to pay the carbon tax um it doesn't strike me as a reasonable grounds now i've seen subsequent to that her
Carter
52:55
her coming up with a plan that might be very similar, ironically, to the carbon tax that Rachel Notley put in place.
Carter
53:02
our own carbon tax and keeping the revenues in Alberta, it gave us- That's not even on the list,
Corey
53:08
list, but yeah, that's another thing that was talked about today, this notion that there might be a new made in Alberta carbon tax.
Carter
53:13
Well, so if you do a made in Alberta carbon tax, if you follow the Notley example, and if you don't think I'm going to use that every opportunity I get, you
Carter
53:20
you don't know who I am. If you follow the Notley example and create a carbon tax that applies to all carbon
Carter
53:26
carbon output, CO2 output, in
Carter
53:29
in the province of Alberta and keep those revenues in Alberta, and
Carter
53:32
and don't distribute it to the
Carter
53:33
the citizens of Alberta, which arguably is a good idea, arguably
Carter
53:37
arguably not a good idea,
Carter
53:38
you could really use
Carter
53:40
use it as a de facto PST.
Carter
53:43
I think that that's where, you
Carter
53:46
know, I would argue that
Carter
53:48
that that's what Danielle's thinking about.
Carter
53:50
And that'd be very interesting to see how her base response to a made in Alberta carbon tax that applies to all
Carter
53:56
all CO2 emissions throughout the province of Alberta, because I believe, Corey, that that's what would be required to
Carter
54:02
to get out from the federal carbon tax scenario.
Corey
54:08
all, I can't remember now, but it's like 70 or 80% have to be captured. And by
Corey
54:13
by the way, Maiden, Alberta, there was a campaign when I ran communications for the government of Alberta called Maiden, Alberta, that was all about Maiden, Alberta upgrading. And it was the closest I will ever get to directing a truck commercial.
Corey
54:26
It was, you know, had
Corey
54:27
had like the guitar and the guy with the gravelly voice saying like, we'll do it ourselves. It
Corey
54:32
was really good. Maybe I'll drop it on the Patreon that people see.
Corey
54:38
Oh, that sounds absolutely horrible.
Corey
54:40
Yeah. And actually it was pretty good. I watched it again today and I thought, there's some good work by me. Good work by me. Oh my God.
Carter
54:48
you ever dislocate your shoulder, patting yourself on the back like that? Or have you just got such flexibility now that you can do it all the time? I'm
Corey
54:55
I'm just the greatest at patting myself on the back too. So I think we agree, this is not necessarily walking back on the Sovereignty Act. I think in a way, will you respect the Supreme Court? I
Corey
55:06
I mean, could you ask in any other way besides directly asking, will you do something that is illegal, right? You know you can't undo the Supreme Court. So if
Corey
55:18
if you said, yes, we're going to ignore Supreme Court decisions, would you like to sign this, Lieutenant Governor? Well, then you know you've got a problem. So they're going to have to walk at least some path of rule of law if they have any expectation this thing is not going to...
Corey
55:32
You want it to fail in the courts. You don't want that constitutional crisis ahead of time if you're daniel smith so
Corey
55:38
his courts take a while yeah
Corey
55:39
yeah right and you got an election to think about okay
Corey
55:43
two other things i want to talk about here and then i think
Corey
55:45
think we'll call it okay
Corey
55:47
oh dude this is like this list could be twice as long okay this is an all daniel smith episode and it's not enough we
Corey
55:53
we could do more you
Corey
55:54
you know truly because like we're kind of going through and critiquing but you know there's a macro conversation that is overdue and maybe we'll make zane have it with us
Corey
56:03
she's really good at certain things and i actually like whenever we go through something like this i feel like it
Corey
56:10
it feels like we're going into this like negative space about it but like there's things she does so well like it from a political strategy and a political tactics point of view like let me just rattle off one that we didn't talk about along the way that i think is worth noting she
Corey
56:24
she met with that caucus that caucus was all smiles because she's good in meetings like
Corey
56:29
She's good at talking to people at situations like that. And those grumbling parts of the caucus, she's going to give them care and attention. She's going to call them. She's going to talk to them. She's going to bring them in in a way that Jason Kenney never could or never wanted to.
Corey
56:42
So we got to talk about Danielle Smith, the talented operator at some point, you can argue and your own political mileage will determine whether you think that's for good or for evil, but she is talented in
Corey
56:53
in some very specific and some very significant ways. But
Corey
56:57
But I want to to talk about this okay
Carter
57:00
we're not gonna do that this okay
Carter
57:01
okay we're gonna talk about this no
Corey
57:03
no we're gonna make zane talk
Corey
57:04
talk to us okay good
Carter
57:09
zane we're we're being pretty good fake zane okay
Corey
57:12
i know i think so too like we're even teasing things for future episodes we'll probably never do classic
Corey
57:19
classic velgey move don
Carter
57:22
wrote an article today, and
Corey
57:24
and in it, he mentioned that Calgary will have less representation in this next cabinet. The cabinet's going to be more rural, and the cabinet is going to have more representation from the Edmonton area.
Corey
57:38
Casey Maddu was name-checked by Smith as somebody who will have a more prominent role in cabinet going forward. Seoul, UCP, MLA in Edmonton.
Corey
57:49
Is that smart? Smart. I'm just going to ask that plainly because I'm still being Zane Velgey. And so I'm doing the Zane Velgey versions of things. Oh, it's really good.
Corey
57:57
This is an election that everyone agrees is going to come down to Calgary and she is pulling representation out of Calgary. Is that smart?
Carter
58:04
No, it's not smart because ultimately Calgary wants to feel special. I mean, Edmonton wants to feel special. Everybody wants to feel like they have a role to play in these governments. And maybe not everybody understands who's in cabinet and who's not in cabinet, but
Carter
58:19
but the media understand and that falls through to the reporting, the way that things are covered, the number of announcements that get to be made, all kinds of different ways you're going to be able to see how one person's in cabinet and another group of people isn't in cabinet.
Carter
58:35
And my view is
Carter
58:36
is you want to focus as much attention as humanly possible on the city of Calgary, because while she can win an election in Medicine Hat, the next government does not come from Medicine Hat.
Carter
58:47
She can win as many seats in rural Alberta as she wants. She can't form government until such time as she actually is able to win seats across the province or in the big cities. She may never win a seat in Edmonton.
Carter
59:05
That might be just too hard for her to reach, but she should be able to win seats in Calgary. She is a native Calgarian. She went to Bishop Carol High School. She worked
Carter
59:16
at QR 770, Calgary Redneck Radio, in several blocks away from Calgary Elbow.
Corey
59:25
It's true. It's like right on 17th Avenue and 33rd Street West. But
Carter
59:31
Bishop Carol is only a few blocks away from the boundary of Calgary Elbow. So she can can play this game like she doesn't have connections to Calgary, but you can only play that game of I don't have connections in Calgary for so long before you need to have connections in Calgary. Because you need to win. If you're Danielle Smith, you need to win eight seats minimum
Carter
59:54
in order to put yourself into a place where you can cover.
Carter
59:57
And I'm just not sure she can get there.
Corey
1:00:00
Well, it's interesting because a month ago, you would have almost made the opposite argument that there's no way the UCP doesn't get eight seats.
Corey
1:00:08
Has your opinion changed changed that much just because of Danielle Smith in these early days? Not just because of
Carter
1:00:12
of Danielle Smith, but because she's chosen to go to the 20%.
Carter
1:00:16
There was an option available to us in government when Alison won.
Carter
1:00:23
right-wing fanatics in Southern Alberta, at the time, it was property rights, ironically. Yeah,
Corey
1:00:26
Yeah, it was all about power lines at the time.
Carter
1:00:29
Right. And that fight was being led, ironically, by Danielle Smith, who
Carter
1:00:33
who was fighting against the you know, the power lines, he was fighting for the rights of property owners. We could have very easily gone that direction. We could have very easily shifted ourselves from what we knew to be right to what we knew to be popular. And
Carter
1:00:49
at the end of the day, just simply doing that which is popular does create electoral problems down the road, because what is popular is not necessarily going to be sustainable for a good government. And I think that that's where Danielle has made decision to go with what is popular in small areas versus what is popular across the province. She's forgotten that she needs to win all these seats. And because of that, not because the NDP has any inherent strength necessarily in Calgary, but
Carter
1:01:19
but because she's decided to walk away from Calgary, she's
Carter
1:01:22
she's giving the election to
Carter
1:01:24
to the NDP, which
Carter
1:01:25
which I would also argue is what happened to in
Carter
1:01:28
in 2015 when Jim
Carter
1:01:32
Prentice gave the election to Rachel
Carter
1:01:34
Rachel Notley in the first
Corey
1:01:38
Well, you've unpacked a bit of this Calgary strategy. It's worth, I think, a deeper dive because it is all going to come down to Calgary. The conventional wisdom, and there's no reason to believe it'll break, is that the UCP's got a bit of a stranglehold on rural Alberta. The NDP have a stranglehold on edmonton calgary
Corey
1:01:57
calgary seems to be what's in flux holsters are seeing a real fight and it's going to come down to who can win the majority of the city it looks like and you win calgary you win it all which
Corey
1:02:06
which does really make this you know reducing calgary's mlas not calling a calgary by-election distancing
Corey
1:02:13
distancing yourself from the city you grew up in kind of a
Corey
1:02:16
curious strategy and and it's going to be it's
Corey
1:02:19
it's going to be interesting to see if it actually works going going forward for daniel smith
Carter
1:02:23
best part for me is is that she's calling herself a rural girl i
Carter
1:02:27
if you went to bishop carroll you're not you're not a rural girl i mean that is come on now that is ridiculous bishop carroll with the most persnickety nose pointed in the air group of people i went to francis all
Corey
1:02:39
right so i you
Carter
1:02:40
you know i i'm i have every right to to critique them um
Corey
1:02:45
i am i went to i went to wisewood home of scholars and champions go
Carter
1:02:50
champions of what no
Corey
1:02:52
we won everything we were great the
Corey
1:02:53
the golden age for the yeah
Corey
1:02:55
you were probably all about sports
Carter
1:02:56
sports when you went to high school clearly
Carter
1:02:59
you seen all right
Corey
1:03:04
well we can relive my uh high school glory days later i've got one more question for you here and then i just finish off by
Carter
1:03:11
by saying that yes you're absolutely right calgary fewer Fewer cabinet seats is a bad idea.
Corey
1:03:16
Well, it's an interesting play, that's for sure. And I will admit a certain amount of, like if I step back, Calgary was way overrepresented in cabinet. At one point, it was 17 of 26 seats.
Corey
1:03:27
That's pretty wild. But it's
Corey
1:03:29
it's like anything else in life. You don't judge absolute position, you judge relative position. And if last week you had twice as many cabinet ministers, you're going to feel that.
Corey
1:03:40
let's move it on to our next segment. our
Corey
1:03:42
our next segment how can i miss you if i won't leave is
Corey
1:03:47
is anybody going to leave the ucp caucus you
Carter
1:03:51
you know what i'm going to make a bold prediction there
Carter
1:03:54
there is only one
Carter
1:03:56
who will be leaving the ucp caucus in
Carter
1:03:58
in the coming weeks that
Carter
1:04:01
is jason kennedy oh
Corey
1:04:04
wait he will leave
Carter
1:04:05
ucp caucus and resign his seat within the next three weeks
Corey
1:04:11
okay well i tried to i tried to play the laughing sound but our soundboard is broken so how does
Carter
1:04:15
does the soundboard he's
Corey
1:04:16
he's not gonna leave we've
Carter
1:04:18
we've got to call it
Corey
1:04:19
it's not a it's not a good soundboard it's a bad soundboard um
Corey
1:04:23
um but that's okay uh listen i don't know i think that who leaves in your mind because
Carter
1:04:30
everybody can stay nobody
Carter
1:04:33
your cabinet the minister right now you're sonja sharp okay
Carter
1:04:38
sonja sharp is not going to be in cabinet in a week she
Carter
1:04:42
she knows it i know it you know it does
Corey
1:04:44
does she stick around very
Corey
1:04:45
very big right now steven she's
Corey
1:04:46
she's just gonna sit there
Carter
1:04:47
there and collect her back she won't
Corey
1:04:51
won't even show up you have to show up she'll show up for the bare minimum required in order to get paid oh
Carter
1:04:57
oh my god i
Carter
1:04:58
i think so she's i think she's out of there i think kenny's out of there i think uh i think there'll be more well
Corey
1:05:05
and i hope that some
Carter
1:05:06
some of them find the balls to actually stand against her i
Corey
1:05:08
i would say if it there are so much that makes me think it should happen and i'm not making a value judgment here i'm just saying based on their previous comments and lines they've drawn in the sand but
Corey
1:05:19
but i have never actually seen a ucp mla like have that kind of follow-through on these threats even when somebody crashes out out of caucus, it tends to happen in like the most clown car fashion possible, rather than a concerted, here is eight of us, we're unhappy, we're taking a stand. That does not seem to happen.
Carter
1:05:41
No, they are too weak.
Corey
1:05:44
think that some of them
Carter
1:05:44
them will slowly slink away from caucus and find real jobs in the coming weeks. And I think that one of those guys is going to be Jason Kennedy.
Corey
1:05:55
Did you hear the laughing sound or did that just go in my headphones? just
Carter
1:05:58
in your headphones you suck at the board you suck at the board
Corey
1:06:03
oh my god hey
Carter
1:06:04
hey do you have the uh extra music can we get out of here what do you think you
Corey
1:06:07
you know i actually think i know how to fix the board now because i can hear laughing in my head as i try to do the preview dude
Carter
1:06:13
dude that's your mental health issues all
Corey
1:06:17
all right all right let's try this let's try this didn't
Corey
1:06:22
didn't work okay hey this is the end of the show now see
Corey
1:06:25
see you later everybody bye