Episode 1017: Very normal things

Zain 0:01

This is a strategist episode 1017. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter.

Zain 0:07

Guys, what is going on? What's

Zain 0:10

What's with the finger pointing? What's with the finger pointing? What's going on? We're

Zain 0:14

the music. We're grooving.

Zain 0:15

We're doing the music thing.

Zain 0:17

Oh, okay. Well, the music already happened. You can't do the music thing when the music happened,

Carter 0:22

We're communicating with each other in a way so as to keep you in the dark. That's what we're actually doing. Well, thank you, Carter.

Zain 0:26

Carter. Carter, what's with the Canadian pride? Are you joining a convoy? What's going on?

Carter 0:33

Yeah, no, I was cheering for the... Are you celebrating

Zain 0:35

celebrating the Emergencies Act? What's going on?

Carter 0:38

Well, I am celebrating the Emergencies Act, as you know. But more importantly, I was cheering for the Canadian men's national football team. And went so far as to buy... I went and bought TSN so I could watch the whole tournament.

Carter 0:52

Today, I bought it today. You know when I bought it?

Carter 0:56

in the 37th minute of the first half that's when i bought it they scored one minute later and then they kept scoring and uh it was a wasted it was really quite a wasted 17 dollars and i still 17

Corey 1:09

17 dollars 17 when disney plus is available to

Carter 1:14

still a sore point guys you know heather's listening heather

Carter 1:16

heather is listening the

Zain 1:20

oh my goodness carter seriously so

Zain 1:23

so you bought it in 37th minute ah

Carter 1:26

know heather said to me we've got netflix what else do you need so i watched enola holmes part two today and the worst part was i liked it it's targeted clearly for i don't know pre-teen women uh young women i don't know but i

Carter 1:40

i shouldn't have been watching it i'm pretty certain of that but it's all the entertainment we get in my house that's all we have you know

Zain 1:45

know you know cory one thing carter was not watching today was welcome to chippendales which is a new series on disney plus starring camille nangiani uh just sad

Zain 1:54

sad that you and christopher freeland are both missing out on some excellent excellent uh television on disney plus i bet you anything that christia by now has disney plus again she's

Zain 2:04

how do we find that out she's

Carter 2:06

she's got there's got to be a freedom of information thing that we can if

Zain 2:09

if there's any reporters listening yeah in ottawa press gallery reporters you got to burn a question i think we do a bit of a honeypot like

Corey 2:15

like we mentioned should welcome the chippy tails and uh and we see if she bites she'll bite oh that's interesting that's

Zain 2:21

that's good that's good that's good i like it uh cory any uh anything to mention in your world uh

Corey 2:28

we're just gonna like totally breeze past the fact that carter called it the men's national football team that's fine i don't i don't care i don't care it

Corey 2:36

matter women's soccer is what matters

Zain 2:37

matters in this country and

Zain 2:38

it's the only thing that should matter carter jesus christ

Zain 2:41

Wait a decade. Wait a decade to get TSN. That's what I'll tell you. I would have bought TSN if I needed

Carter 2:45

needed to watch women's soccer. I'm telling you. Get

Zain 2:48

Get Disney Plus now. Wait a decade to get TSN. Let's move it on. Carter, I know you've been waiting for this. We haven't done it in a very long time. Stephen Carter, let's move it on to the headlines. That is right. This headline comes to us from CTV, City News, CBC, every major Canadian media outlet. A

Zain 3:06

A Flair Airlines plane has run off the runway in Waterloo. Stephen Carter, I'd say about half of our listeners have sent us this article, and

Zain 3:16

and we now need to discuss it. Stephen Carter, a Flair Airlines plane has run off the runway in Kitchener, Waterloo, southwest of Ontario on Friday morning. According to Flair, the plane which originated in Vancouver exited the runway at the end of its landing around 6.30am. There are no reported injuries and the 134 people on board exited the plane in an orderly fashion.

Zain 3:38

Stephen Carter, your initial thoughts on our sponsor and their... Not our sponsor,

Corey 3:45

sponsor, but keep going. Yeah,

Zain 3:46

Yeah, on our sponsor and a bit of

Zain 3:49

unfortunate circumstances that they've run into.

Carter 3:52

Well, I think I speak for everybody when I say I'm shocked they made it that far.

Zain 4:00

was leaving for Vancouver. This is quite...

Carter 4:02

quite... That was impressive. And I think the 104 or 108 people who were on board should be really thankful that they made it to the end of the runway. So congratulations

Carter 4:12

congratulations to them. They've gone further than lots.

Carter 4:16

Not only, Corey, did

Zain 4:17

did these individuals who were leaving from Vancouver to Waterloo get a plane trip that took them from Vancouver to Waterloo, but they got more. they actually got a few more extra meters on this flight this is quite the value when you think about the low low costs of those extremely uncomfortable seats uh on those flare airlines flights uh our sponsor flare airlines well

Corey 4:41

well i was not

Corey 4:42

not our sponsor but i was going to say um are

Corey 4:45

are we sure this wasn't intentional because after it ran off the runway those

Corey 4:49

those passengers you mentioned they all had to get on a bus and go to the terminal and i think that they probably wanted people to have that bus taste in their mouth rather than

Corey 4:57

than that flare airlines taste in their mouth

Zain 4:59

oh that is so so smart carter the bus taste was a strategic this is why this is

Carter 5:05

is why flare airlines is our sponsor because they they step up every time they get us they step up and they understand that strategy comes first and if you have to put passengers on a bus after running them off the end of the runway then that's what you do to make sure that their airplane experience was what what you wanted it to be yeah

Corey 5:22

yeah a lot of airlines will go the extra mile flare airlines will go the extra few feet

Zain 5:34

is our sponsorship do we have to play music underneath this just to indicate that it is sponsor content I

Zain 5:40

I have nothing to say here

Zain 5:45

what should they have done should they have done anything other than the standard issued response that they gave which is that listen we exited off their money because this actually made international news yeah

Zain 5:55

this is cnn this is across the world this this actually tells you how rarely something like this happens uh a flare airline flight lands no i mean a plane goes off the runway

Zain 6:08

that's the same joke twice why is that funny that's

Carter 6:09

that's good that's good the more times you can do the same joke the better it gets uh

Zain 6:14

i feel like that is a real ethos of this program carter it really is yeah

Zain 6:20

uh cory is there anything they should have done creatively like i i asked this seriously because their brand as as much as we make fun of it they kind of lean into this sort of like what the fuck did you expect sort of vibe like that's

Corey 6:33

that's your general sort

Corey 6:33

sort of like vibe no airline wants to do that with safety right like just like let's just start there uh they had a lot of components if they wanted to do that i mean it was literally their waterloo flight yeah right right?

Corey 6:46

They went over the runway.

Corey 6:48

There was a lot going on there. My favorite comment on my Twitter feed was a listener, Harris Kirshenbaum, who said the pilot told them, this time, please don't clap.

Corey 7:02

But there's nothing you can do, nothing you can say. You

Carter 7:06

You can't lean into it you can't lean into it and say flare airlines we go further you

Zain 7:13

can't no but they

Zain 7:14

to do that i already made that joke so

Zain 7:16

so they pay us

Carter 7:17

us to do it we gotta do the same joke several times we just discussed that have

Carter 7:20

have you not yeah how

Zain 7:22

how have you not understood this yet uh cory uh of course i should remind folks this segment is of course brought to us by our sponsor flare airlines it's flair airlines in the business of over delivering uh

Zain 7:36

it's the same spirit of the same joke over

Zain 7:39

over and over again yeah i love it that's good are

Carter 7:41

are you feeling good about

Carter 7:41

this this is a good episode did you think this is a good episode goodness you know why because cory

Zain 7:46

cory looks as paid as he would be over a seven hour flair airlines flight from vancouver to waterloo you look that distraught

Corey 7:56

you know i've paid for for no upgrades on this podcast and i'm feeling it right now carter

Zain 8:00

carter any any final words to our sponsor words of wisdom i should say uh of course they'll keep sponsoring us um because they're still in business and and we've got that lifelong uh sponsorship with them on the pod but any words of wisdom to our sponsor who we know uh certainly uh tunes in once every half dozen episodes i

Carter 8:17

i just say that when you listen to the car crash of the episode that cory and i recorded together don't turn it into a plane crash that's all i have to say about that hey

Corey 8:28

hey wow that bombed

Corey 8:32

we got a sound for that oh my god are

Carter 8:35

are we gonna be really going to the crickets any final

Zain 8:39

final words of wisdom for our friends that at flair airlines and by the way we're happy that 134 people on board exodus plane and no one was hurt uh but any words of wisdom as they they as they reel with this by which i mean don't reel with it at all at all and just move on with their day-to-day operations of uh not letting people leave the ground i

Corey 8:58

i mean listen they they obviously managed to leave the ground that's why they got to land so they should they should take a bow it's uh you

Corey 9:06

you know it's more than i would have expected that's good

Carter 9:15

you're such a dick well oh my god that's

Zain 9:18

that's that of course we'll run that out that that segment brought to us by flare airlines flare airlines more than what you expected let's move it on to our next segment our next segment overshooting the runway steven carter we're gonna talk politics i want

Zain 9:31

want to do i want to do something i don't think we've ever done on this podcast and cory we're We're going to try it. We're going to try it. I think we're going to try it. We're going to try going through Stephen Carter, Danielle Smith's State of the Province. Oh, great. You may recall that

Zain 9:45

that she made a State of the Province speech to the province of Alberta, this nine-minute video that Canada Land is shocked that she paid for, by the way. Shocking. Shocked. Yeah, I saw that. Shocked that she paid for. These are paid for always. Everyone pays for it. Everyone pays for it. And they still get higher rankings than

Carter 10:01

than us. It's so upsetting.

Zain 10:05

the jersey color yeah

Zain 10:06

uh but this aired this aired on ctv this aired on global this aired for about 10 minutes it's a nine minute clip uh and it also was put up online in it daniel smith talks about her affordability measures she takes some stabs at at ottawa and then she does this thing at the end carter about forgiveness so here's what i want to try to do i'm gonna get corey to pull it up here uh if he can and we're gonna play it and at any point if any of us

Zain 10:32

we're gonna hit pause for a second okay

Zain 10:35

okay so the pausing works inserts

Zain 10:37

right in there i like that yeah i like it wow here's

Zain 10:40

here's what we're gonna try to do carter we're gonna we're gonna have any of us either of us or any of the three of us at any point if we want to stop just say pause to cory he's on the board and we're going to discuss it you're going to tell me what you want to discuss did you see something strategy wise did you like something did you hate something thing and i'll also have a few questions i want to bring in between what do you want to say carter are we just stealing

Carter 11:01

stealing uh crooked media's okay stop thing or is that what we're doing and we're pretending i've never heard of this

Zain 11:06

this i literally have never you do not understand how

Carter 11:10

how few podcasts i listen to we're just stealing someone else's bit and then we're passing it off as our own you know what never has a true has anything been more true let's do it it's called okay stop when you need someone to stop you just say listen okay stop i

Zain 11:25

that's actually not bad you know what we should think of our own canadian version of that yo just be like okay dude you know what hey hold up hey

Zain 11:33

up yeah you'll hold up it's pretty good you know what we should do you know flare airlines never go so we can say okay flare because flare is like a a canadian synonym for stop so we'll just say okay flare at any point and at any point that we want to stop we'll

Zain 11:47

we'll say okay flare i like it's that easy i

Zain 11:49

like it too cory doesn't like it you know why crooked

Carter 11:51

crooked media makes me like it even more you

Zain 11:54

we made it on their own. Yeah, we named it after a low-cost airline and their lack of going anywhere. And that's what we're going to do.

Zain 12:02

Carter, we're going to play through this thing and we're going to comment through it. And I want to tease apart what she says on policy. I want to tease apart how she says it. And then I want to tease apart some of the content that she introduces at the end. Because we spent a whole episode talking about what this address should be. Now that we got to see it, I want to comment on what it could have been and where she went right, where she went from a political strategy, staging, messaging perspective. And I might just start here, Corey, even before you hit go. Because Carter, one of the things you said she should do is be behind the premier's desk, be dressed professionally, be

Zain 12:42

be dressed like the person who's occupying the role.

Zain 12:45

That we do see. Comment on that a bit. In terms of the options that she had and the option she eventually went with, a U.S. style presidential behind the desk vibe. We've seen different premiers use different approaches. She goes with the approach that you suggested. Talk to us about that.

Carter 13:00

Well, I mean, I think that this is, it's almost formulaic. I mean, this is what you're supposed to do when you're making one of these addresses. You go behind the desk, you, you know, the outlier on something like this is the, um, uh,

Carter 13:16

uh, the, the, you know, the fireside chat when they're sitting beside the fireplace and they're talking to you from the fire. I mean, there are so few sets that we have for this type of, uh, address that this just becomes kind of cliche. And the reason we do it is because it works. People want to actually see what their, if you will, chief executive, uh, looks like, um, doing the job of being the chief executive.

Zain 13:42

cory i might be wrong but was apprentice one not like in in a caucus room or in a boardroom somewhere do you recall this or am i thinking you're not wrong

Corey 13:48

wrong yeah he was um he was at government house on the top floor it's a very recognizable room when you know it so yeah like that's the it

Corey 13:58

it is like a basically a backup cabinet room cabinet isn't usually there but uh it it's It's got this whole Star Trek The Next Generation vibe to it. Yeah,

Corey 14:08

And it's hard to miss when you're looking for it.

Zain 14:12

Corey, in your take, the behind-the-desk, presidential-style Canada and Alberta flags behind her, right

Corey 14:23

You know, the first thing I'll say I mentioned was the Canadian flag that was

Corey 14:28

which is always there, but in some ways was not entirely a given. And it

Corey 14:33

it was consistent with some of her messaging later on about, you know, the Sovereignty

Corey 14:38

within a united Canada. Right

Zain 14:39

Right move because any other move, you

Corey 14:43

you know, in some ways, Zane, it's like any

Corey 14:44

any change is noticeable and any change is deconstructed. But,

Corey 14:48

you know, if you stick with the tried, tested and true, you can't go wrong.

Zain 14:53

Okay. Can we hit play on this thing and then we can say

Zain 14:56

say okay, Flair, when we need to, Carter?

Zain 14:58

Corey may not participate because he doesn't like it.

Corey 15:01

so you'll be happy to know that uh the board has stopped working oh

Carter 15:05

oh okay well this is really helpful yeah that was expected you

Zain 15:09

you know what i'm glad i'm glad it's i'm glad it stopped working you know why because that's poetic yeah

Zain 15:12

that is that is extremely poetic based on the first segment that we just had uh this is a luck we deserve carter there's many things i want to talk about we actually don't have no

Zain 15:25

here's here's how i'll pivot it. Don't worry. Okay.

Carter 15:28

Okay. Don't worry. We're trained professionals. I got it. Yeah.

Zain 15:31

Carter, I want to talk about many things, but let's start. We talked about the framing. We talked about the staging. We have her behind the desk. The first thing I want to talk to you about is what Corey just brought up. She slips it in there. It's not the main thing that she wants to say, but it's the renaming of the Sovereignty Act. She

Zain 15:49

She kind of adds more words to it. What was it, Corey? The the Sovereignty Act within a united Canada.

Zain 15:56

to me about that, Carter, from a messaging strategy to have something you've talked about for months on the campaign trail, for a base that you've riled up around, you've used it as a principal sort of galvanizing or magnetizing force within your candidacy to just relabel it like that, just before the throne speech, which is going to happen this week. What do you think of that move for Danielle Smith and even even how she couched it within the confines of that nine-minute address. Because it wasn't a big, hey, by the way, point number two, this is what I'm going to do. No, it was a great

Carter 16:30

Great move. She took the primary complaint about

Carter 16:33

about the Sovereignty Act, which was that it looks like you were trying to remove us from Canada. And she instead said, okay, well, that was never my intention. My intention was to level us up to be the equals to the government of Canada. So we are now I'm just going to take your your language or she's trying to, you know, rip us away from the rest of Canada. And I'm just going to say that's absolutely not the case by putting in United Canada into the title. What did it cost her? Nothing. What does it get her? It gets her away from the critique that this is ultimately going to lead to the separation. So I think it was a brilliant move. I think that it cost nothing and it got her out of that particular critique.

Zain 17:18

are we sure it cost her nothing? Well, I'm going to put a pin in that. Corey, I get your take on this. The rebranded, or even perhaps even fundamentally rechanged, the thing is we really don't see the guts of it just yet. Alberta Sovereignty Act, what do you think?

Corey 17:34

Yeah, I mean, there's kind of a standard operating procedure right now with the UCP. And I think it's somewhat seized from politics in general, which is a certain bluntness to political strategy here. And you've seen this in naming of bills in the United States. You've seen this in naming of bills

Corey 17:53

But there was a criticism that she had, which is you are, I

Corey 17:57

I mean, a legitimate criticism seen as it was called the Alberta Sovereignty Act, right? But, you know, that it was an attempt to pull us out of Canada. So she just bolted on within a united Canada at the end of it. I mean, it's brazen. It's kind of ridiculous ridiculous because it cuts

Corey 18:14

cuts right against the notion of sovereignty but hey I mean there are worse ways to approach these things now yeah I was saying this on West of Center this week I don't necessarily think it'll work because I think it's too late it's like how the Canadian Energy Center was called the war room for

Corey 18:29

for six months before it had a name so

Corey 18:31

so it was destined to always be the war room the energy war room it was never going to be known as anything other than that because the name took hold and realistically

Corey 18:39

realistically both because uh you know sovereignty act is much shorter than uh what she's presented to us here which is a very long title and because we've been talking about it now for like six months it's um it's not likely to me that uh that the title change is going to carry too much currency uh

Corey 18:59

uh and like it's just a it's a bit on the nose

Zain 19:03

hey carter i don't know if you heard that coy was on west of center i don't know if you just I just heard him slip that in, kind of like how Daniel Smith slipped in the new name of her sovereignty act. I don't know if you heard that. You know,

Carter 19:11

weren't able to record on Thursday. I wonder where he was. That's interesting.

Zain 19:17

preparing for Wester Center and for those

Carter 19:19

those gems that he's now rehashing on

Carter 19:21

Okay, can I address his point? What do you think?

Zain 19:24

Yes, you can, Carter. Please, please. I'll bring the energy for you. Yes,

Carter 19:28

I forgot what it was.

Zain 19:32

No, Corey brings up a really interesting point. I

Zain 19:35

want to actually, can I expand this conversation for a second? The crass or blunt naming of these bills, we've seen it everywhere now. It's become so much so that the name of the bill, this kind of goes back, Carter, back into our H&K days where you talked about 330-330, right? That the headline of the bill is now the message in itself. There's no mystery. There's no ambiguity. Talk to me about that change in politics that we've seen. Do you like it from from a political messaging and strategy perspective, that we've got so, can I say ham-fisted or heavy-handed with how blunt we are with how we name these pieces of legislation so that you don't really care what the guts of it are. You just kind of hear the banner headline and you're like, yay or nay, based on kind of your tribe. Let's talk about that to me for a second. Carter, I'll get your take first and then Corey, maybe I'll throw it to you afterwards.

Carter 20:25

afterwards. I mean, the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States was actually a climate change change in infrastructure investment more than anything. It had a couple of inflationary reduction elements to it, but it really was designed to get the United States, you know, moving towards its targets on the environmental front. That's what it will be known for when it becomes, you know, in three generations, people are going to be looking back at it and saying, why

Carter 20:52

why the hell did they call it the Inflation Reduction Act? And someone's going to have to explain to them well that's what people cared about in politics at the time and so they they just named it that because um it was the only way really that they could pull the wool over people's eyes um so they just you know they knew that people wouldn't

Zain 21:11

wouldn't dive into it or is it actually is

Zain 21:13

is that what it is or is it actually telling an effective story to help make something palatable to people like i want to give it like you know if you were in this position to have to sell the the the climate change and infrastructure legislation for Joe Biden, wouldn't you want to put a casing on it that you knew could be palatable or salient to the masses? We

Carter 21:34

We talked last time about how all three of us were, I'm not sure if you were, must have been involved, Zane, because you did all the work and Corey and I just took all the credit. But when we were working at H&K in the bitumen bubble, we didn't necessarily coin the term, but we were certainly in the room. The bitumen bubble was simply a branding exercise to ensure that we could get our message out to talk about the disadvantages of Alberta oil and gas at that particular moment in time. And it was the, what was it? It was the bubble, the difference between what the prices of West Texas and West Canada Select were. And, you know, those types of differences, like you're never going to explain to people a complex idea. idea,

Carter 22:20

99.9% of the population will never dig into it. This is why the word equalization is so challenging right now. We've made equalization equal something that it's not. We mean something different than what it actually is. But that was Ralph Klein's genius. When you do that, you reduce the complicated to the simple, and then it just becomes so much easier to get people to buy into it.

Zain 22:48

Carter, I'm going to come to you in this in a second, but Carter, one final follow-up.

Zain 22:51

You're the guy who, you reference H&K, our consulting days. You're the guy who always talked about this concept of 330-330. Talk to the listeners about that. And why are you so against these bills being so crassly named when you also, as a strategist, understand attention spans in the first three seconds are what matter? So first tell people what 330-330 is, and then talk to me about

Zain 23:14

you reconcile the two. I'm

Carter 23:15

I'm not against it. I'm just simply pointing it out. The 3.30, 3.30 is that people will give something like

Carter 23:20

like less than like three tenths of a second, like three seconds, right? Like you're glancing at something, you're barely seeing it. You might just see the headline and then they might get 30 seconds into something and they learn

Carter 23:33

like the 20 word synopsis. Those are the two primary ways that people communicate with something. Then if they start to get into it, then they'll spend three minutes on it. And if we can get them to 30 minutes, then we're really cooking. And we used to equate different points of engagement. So we'd write the headline for the three seconds. We'd write the body for the 30 seconds. We'd then get them to click a link for the next three minutes, you know, for the three minute engagement. That's what we would count that with. And if someone gave us their email address, then we counted it as a 30 minute engagement. And again, keep in mind, it wasn't actually three seconds, 30 seconds, three minutes, 30 minutes. We actually use 330, 330 as a branding mechanism to describe something along the lines of our engagement ladder, right?

Carter 24:17

Some other folks in the company were using the term engagement ladder. We created the words 330, 330, and that created, I mean, it was the same shit, right? It's the same shit, just applied a little bit differently. like we

Corey 24:30

we we didn't create it it's a sales term 3 30 3 30 uh you know the we create everything moving up from three seconds elevator we did

Carter 24:37

did it all we're amazing presentation

Carter 24:39

why won't you give us a credit yeah

Zain 24:41

yeah why why are you like this cory like why are you like this i just gave carter a bunch of credit you could have just you know been quiet people would have been fine just like car would have been like we're stolen

Corey 24:49

stolen a segment and

Zain 24:50

and then and then that jinx the whole segment and then the fucking board stopped

Corey 24:54

stopped working you know any any segment that relies on the sound board, which has a batting average of zero.

Zain 25:01

was going to say, anything above 400 is all-star level. So you better choose your Willie Mays-style batting average for the soundboard is what I expect. Corey, talk to me about the heavy-handed nature and the branding of these bills. You brought this concept up. Are you into it as a marketer, as a strategist, as a comms person? Do you get it?

Corey 25:20

I mean, I'm into it, but people do tend to go a bit nuts with it. And this is not necessarily the idea of let's brand the bill in a thoughtful way that's going to be that three-second branding. This is a bolt-on to repair damage, right? So I feel like it's a little bit different. I mean, it's taking some of the same tactics, but it's a little bit different. The

Corey 25:43

The Americans go crazy overboard with this. So you've talked about a couple of American bills here. Do you remember the Infrastructure Act?

Corey 25:51

Do you remember the original name of the Infrastructure Act? oh

Corey 25:55

invest in america act but

Corey 25:57

invest was an acronym it stood for investing

Corey 26:00

investing in a new vision for the environment and surface transportation in america that's

Zain 26:05

sorry the i in invest stood for invest investing yeah okay

Corey 26:10

okay but this is true of like we talk about the patriot act it

Corey 26:13

it was it's a it's an acronym it was the usa patriot act uniting

Corey 26:17

uniting and strengthening america by providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism.

Zain 26:23

That's actually pretty fucking good. That's

Zain 26:25

That's actually, that was actually pretty good. I mean, the terrorist act is really,

Zain 26:28

really, really shitty for people that look like me, but the acronym, I mean, one of the best. No, that's actually, give that

Zain 26:35

that person a raise, but then also fire them because of the negative ramifications.

Corey 26:39

The funny thing is what the Americans often did when the titles got long, you know, they almost made the three seconds the acronym. Yeah.

Corey 26:47

30 seconds was the long form of the title. you

Corey 26:49

you know and then they went further and further into the bill but the reality is when it gets too long when it gets too cumbersome people give it a shorthand

Corey 26:57

right it's uh it's like if you have a long name you're gonna have a nickname your whole life that's just the reality of things here and um in the case of danielle smith she's not

Corey 27:07

i you know she'll continue to say within a united canada i think it will actually even work for some people like no no it's within a united canada it's within the name of the bill but devil

Corey 27:15

devil will will be in the details. And, you know, it would be fine if the bill was only the title long, but we are going to see what's in this bill next week. And that's going to determine a lot about how we feel about it being in a United Kingdom.

Zain 27:27

Kingdom. Well, I think that you said it's without risk. Tell Timmy about that, because I see some risk with her base. Conservatives have, you know, not had a very cordial time with one another over the course of the last half decade to decade in Alberta. It's been a lifelong story. Could you not see a risk with her base being like, Like, fuck, you sold us one thing and now you're trying to moderate to be something else.

Carter 27:48

No, I don't think so. I mean, I think that that is a risk that exists on some of the other things that we've been talking about, but I don't think that this- But

Zain 27:55

But not on this one,

Carter 27:56

No, I don't think so. I don't think the Sovereignty Act was designed to actually separate Alberta

Carter 28:01

Alberta from Canada. I think that what it's designed to do is to assert our dominance because we give so much money to Confederation,

Carter 28:11

right? Right. Um, so I think that you can actually make this the way that she phrased it, the way that she was putting it, that, that it was about, um, making, uh,

Carter 28:21

uh, you know, almost like a first among equals kind of a thing. Um, that was, that was really what was interesting to me. I think that she'll be able to carry that through, uh, with a lot of her, um, primary audience.

Zain 28:37

boy any risk here that you see or should i move on yeah

Corey 28:40

yeah there is some depending on again what's in the bill right so if this is just a rebranding that audience will be able to say no no this is this is still what we want this is what we were doing all along this is what we believed we were getting um

Corey 28:53

um but she may have set herself up a future challenge interesting

Zain 28:57

interesting carter let's talk about the guts of what she announced it was 600 payments over the next six months for each child child under 18, and families with lower incomes. This, of course, is on top of the payments that will be made to seniors and people who receive benefits from AISH. Those, of course, also being re-indexed. Carter, as it relates to the bulk of what you wanted to talk about, affordability,

Zain 29:25

did you like what she had to say on it? Because there was a few chapters to this. There was an intro that included some side elbowing to the federal government and the Trudeau-Nutley-Singh alliance. Then there was,

Zain 29:38

here's what I'm going to do on affordability. Then there was the extra as it related to her personal character and what she said. And I'll get to that in a second. But talk to me about the heart of what you wanted to do here on the policy. Did

Zain 29:49

Did you like it? Did Did you not like it? Tell me why.

Carter 29:55

I didn't really like it.

Carter 29:56

Tell me why. Because I don't, first of all, I don't like it doing away with the gas tax at all. I think that the gas tax is essential, especially at this moment in

Zain 30:07

in time. The next six months

Zain 30:07

months will not increase. That's right.

Carter 30:08

right. So I'm not a big fan of that. The second piece that I'm not a big fan of is the $600 over the next six months. As you know, or likely are aware, Zane, because you are sentient, there is an election coming in Alberta. It's going to take place in the next six months. I do not like vote buying, and I don't see how anybody can tell you this is anything but the most direct of vote buying. I will give you money right now for the next six months until after the election. And I don't know, maybe I'll give you more after the election. But if I'm not elected, maybe you won't get anything. So for me, it was kind of, I mean, it was so simple and so crass that just kind of, it aggravated me. I did not like the

Carter 31:01

the way that the money was just kind of offered out and thrown around.

Zain 31:08

Corey, talk to me about that. So from your perspective, overall thoughts, and I want you then to react to Carter's concept of what he calls vote buying here. And I want to talk about that in terms of we were talking about how crass you can name a bill. Well, I want to talk about how crassly you can create a policy that is designed to incent people because that's what people do. That's what political parties do, Carter, as I know you're well aware. But how artfully did

Zain 31:31

did she do this, right? How craftily did she do this? What are your initial thoughts on the package that she introduced? news. Carter also mentioned that Alberta will not charge the gasoline tax for the next six months and will increase the rebate amount Alberta households and small businesses already receive on electricity in addition to that $600 that I was mentioning. Your overall thoughts on the package that she announced?

Corey 31:53

Well, I'm sure a lot of people will appreciate the package. We can learn a lot about what her strategy is based on who's being targeted with it. The fact that you're getting families and you're getting seniors, but anybody sort of in between, good luck to you, right?

Corey 32:06

right? Single person making $30

Corey 32:08

$30,000 a year at the age of 25 doesn't sound like they're getting any kind of assistance in terms of direct financial, you

Corey 32:18

I'm going to say compensation, but that's the wrong word. You know, support, I guess is a better word.

Corey 32:23

It is always a little suspicious when governments start making cash payments to people just before elections. I will will say daniel smith's not alone here the

Corey 32:33

the liberals did this with seniors you won't recall

Corey 32:37

liberals you're talking about that's right well if the provincial liberals in alberta been anywhere near uh uh

Corey 32:43

uh the ability to do that not

Carter 32:44

not since you left not since you left brother not

Corey 32:46

not since i left they had

Zain 32:48

had they had a chance cory yeah and then they didn't after you left the

Corey 32:53

the it's not just before an election but we also have the gst rebates going up similarly that's just putting money in people's pockets, again, targeted in different ways. But you know, the GST rebate is for lower income

Corey 33:07

income Canadians. But there are people who get caught up in that who probably don't need the GST

Corey 33:13

GST rebate. So yeah, I mean, this is a long tradition of Canadians being given money

Corey 33:19

money that just effectively funneled through the government. And what in the hell is the point of that, right? That's just sort of adding overhead along the way. And yes, there's something redistributive about it, but it doesn't seem like the role of government is just to write checks to people.

Corey 33:34

And one of the big critiques of democracy

Corey 33:37

democracy over the years has been that at a certain point, if you're going to be a crass politician, you can just buy

Corey 33:45

buy people off with the public purse, which is at the end of the day, it's kind of like our own money. And this has often been a right wing critique,

Corey 33:54

Well, you have this majority that is going to take the money of a minority and redistribute it. And so it's really interesting to see a UCP government take this approach, but we live in

Corey 34:04

in kind of deeply cynical times. But there's this famous quote by a not famous person named Alexander Frazier-Teitler. And he said, a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form in government because it can only exist until voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury from that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always

Corey 34:32

always followed by dictatorship according

Zain 34:35

let's see why this guy didn't become famous he he liked yeah i mean he's down there hasn't been this was no no

Zain 34:41

no listen this quote goes on this quote goes on this

Zain 34:45

this quote goes on oh

Corey 34:47

goodness And of course,

Zain 34:50

the democracy of the...

Zain 34:51

That's good. We get the spirit of it, Corey.

Carter 34:55

Yeah, we did. No, we really did. Thank you. That was great. Hey, Carter.

Zain 34:59

Actually, this is actually very fascinating to me because there's two elements to this. Let's start at the most basic element of this concept of vote buying. Oh,

Zain 35:08

Oh, I thought we were talking about Titler's life.

Zain 35:10

to talk about Titler's life. No, we're going to skip over that.

Zain 35:13

That sounds like a movie. Yeah,

Carter 35:15

Yeah, it was. Titler's life. Who

Zain 35:16

Who would play Titler? I

Zain 35:17

correct answer is Steve Carell.

Zain 35:19

Steve Carell would play Tyler. Steve Carell can play anyone

Corey 35:22

anyone that has the Tyler sort of essence. Carter. Yeah.

Zain 35:25

Yeah. Do we have evidence that this concept of throwing, I'm not going to call it vote buying just yet, this concept of throwing around money prior to an election works? Can you talk to me about this? You may not have it in front of you, but is this actually so mythologized that it is now the snake that eats itself that it's actual total bullshit? We actually just think you need to do it because

Zain 35:44

because you can if you're in power. talk to me about the veracity here. You've been in government prior to an election. You guys have done similar shit. Talk to me about this. Is there proof that this works? Is

Carter 35:56

Is there proof? I don't have any proof off the top of my head. I don't have an example that's jumping into mind or some sort of proof point off of

Carter 36:05

research that's been done. But from my own experience, yeah, this works. People want something for nothing, right? The entire, in fact, the entire Alberta advantage is us just basically taking money, um, one-time money and turning it into operating spending and never fixing, uh, the base, which is trying to figure out how we're going to spend and control our spending to, to match our, our income as long, you know, what Ralph Klein didn't say when he said we created an Alberta, um, what

Carter 36:38

what he didn't say when he said we created the Alberta advantage advantage is that we were just paying for it using one-time revenue. And if

Carter 36:46

if you can get something for nothing, why wouldn't you? I mean, you'd be nuts not to. And that's been the entire Alberta way for as long as we've basically

Carter 36:55

basically been pumping oil.

Zain 36:58

Great. Okay. I've opened this bracket, so might as well keep it open. The Danielle speech kind of is our through line, but we're examining a few things as we talk about it. So talk to me about this.

Zain 37:08

From your perspective, the strategy of throwing around money. At what point is it cynical and at what point is it actually strategic? And is

Zain 37:20

Because at some point, or is the concept of vote buying always going to be applied by the other side? Because in certain cases, you can get away with it. It could be under the radar. It could be perhaps more strategic or timely or targeted, one might say. But talk to me about some of these principles. Are there any principles on how you do this so you're not accused with that big red stamp of vote buying as carter just you know so loudly said only a couple minutes ago as he introduced you know the content or the main content of danielle's speech look

Corey 37:52

look vote buying is in the eye of the beholder and it tends to be an accusation when it's somebody that you don't like doing something that you don't like perhaps but

Corey 38:01

but the difference between vote buying and just government governing is is pretty pretty

Corey 38:06

pretty narrow you know Things cost money in

Corey 38:10

in government. And when you do things, they cost money. And before elections, you do things. And by the way, you do this in your real life too. You get busy before you have a performance review. You make sure that you can check some boxes. You can say that you've accomplished certain things. And if you happen to be managing the public purse,

Corey 38:27

that's going to take money that belongs to us in commonwealth, collectively there. So let's just sort of start with, it is very much in the eye of the beholder. Okay.

Corey 38:37

In fact, maybe I'll just say one more thing about that. If you were to say Rachel

Corey 38:43

Rachel Notley was going to give a speech on, you know, helping deal with inflation, what

Corey 38:49

what do you think it would have looked like? It would have looked, I mean, we know it would have had the gas tax thing because, you know, the Alberta NDP is for some reason really riding that horse. course.

Corey 38:59

But it would probably also have had targeted money for people at this particular moment. Now, would it have been the same groups?

Corey 39:07

Maybe, maybe not. Would it have been paid in the same way? Maybe, maybe not. But those are policy decisions that you can actually kind of justify. And in a funny way, I think it would have been more politically, strategically advantageous if Daniel Smith had dropped all of that as a lump sum, as $600. But it probably Probably makes more

Corey 39:24

more sense to give that money on a monthly basis there. So maybe it was a policy decision. I don't even know.

Corey 39:31

But I guess my point here on

Corey 39:34

on the idea of vote buying, on

Corey 39:36

on the notion of vote buying is if

Corey 39:38

you don't want to be accused of vote buying, make sure that it's grounded in policy. That

Corey 39:43

there's like a rational reason to do things.

Zain 39:47

Carter, jump in here. And I'm going to ask you the same question, Carter. Modern rules for what this looks like. Like, how do you do it most effectively if you're going to do it? What are some things to know? What are some things to avoid? Jump in, Carter. Well,

Carter 39:57

Well, let me get back to that. Keep that question in the back of your mind. Corey said something earlier, and I wanted to just dig into it. What's this about preparing to do things before your evaluation? I could probably, can I get some, could

Corey 40:14

Okay, well, Carter, an evaluation is something you get when you've had a job for about a year. For

Carter 40:18

For more than six

Carter 40:18

months. Don't worry about it. Okay, okay.

Zain 40:21

you. That was the same joke at the same time, so it worked, because that's what we call parallel thinking. We both came

Zain 40:26

with the exact same joke, which

Carter 40:27

which is- Ask me your stupid question again. Takes a year. Because that was real

Carter 40:31

I'm very curious about this. Corey's right. It's

Zain 40:34

It's in the eye of the beholder. There's a partisan angle to it. I'm not naive about this. But

Zain 40:38

But there has to be a few rules of how you do it in

Zain 40:41

in a way that's more strategic than cynical. Well, I think that- How have the success- Let me put it in the most- How have the most successful vote buyers bought votes? Okay.

Corey 40:50

Okay. Your whole question is melting my brain. It isn't.

Corey 40:54

saying strategic and cynical are mutually exclusive. You're asking, basically, how do we buy votes in a way that hasn't been done in a long time?

Carter 41:03

There's an answer to this question. There is an answer to this question. It is to act outside of type. So the NDP's attempt at vote buying is going to be less successful than the UCP's attempt at vote buying. because this is not fiscally conservative by any stretch of the imagination she's able to do this because we've got a 12 billion dollar surplus um because we've got you know oil and and oil is going crazy right now and it's a jobless recovery or much less jobs uh than we would have expected to see from this type of economic activity so she's she's she's in a spot where she's flush and while at the same time she's flush she's also got people who are really struggling. So she's able to throw money into this situation. It becomes less cynical, if you will, because it actually is a difficult period of time. There is high inflation. There is lower employment than Alberta is used to in these types of economic boom periods. And it plays against her type. It plays against her own brand. Therefore, it becomes easier to say, well, this is absolutely necessary if even Danielle Smith and the fiscally conservative UCP are going to do this. When you're handing out large S on behalf of the progressive conservatives at the end, it was less impressive because we were handing out large S every opportunity we got. And people had started to write it off and say, well, of course they're handing out this, that, and the other thing. That's how they get elected. And I suspect that if the NDP was to come forward and say, we're going to do this times two, the NDP would have their own credibility affordability problems. So that's how you answer a question, Corey Hogan, just

Carter 42:50

just like that. You thought it was a dumb

Zain 42:52

What a great answer. Amazing.

Zain 42:54

What a fucking smart answer. Damn

Carter 42:55

Damn right it was. Just be Carter and I.

Zain 42:56

I. Just be Carter and I. Hey, Corey, I've got a question for you. It's actually leading to what Carter said. Let's go back to her speech for a second.

Zain 43:02

She used the word crisis a lot. She said, we've got an affordability crisis. This is a crisis, crisis, crisis over and over again.

Zain 43:09

She might be right.

Zain 43:11

And others might say that some of that crisis crisis is targeted. Others might say that some of that crisis has passed us in terms of inflation rates. Talk to me about the deliberate nature of her using crisis over and over again with what we know about political leaders in terms of if they can act in crisis mode or be a leader in crisis mode, it actually provides them some runway of opportunity. Do you feel like that's what she was trying to do here? Not necessarily will or extend a crisis, but really frame that? Because That's what I kind of heard. But I'm curious if you heard the same thing to try to then be like, I'm a responder to this crisis. I'm the savior to this crisis sort of thing, which kind of gives her some of those added boosters that we've seen when political leaders deal with natural disasters, when political leaders deal with pandemics,

Zain 43:56

pandemics, et cetera, in the past. Talk to me about that. Did you sense any of that? Or is that just just me from my perspective?

Corey 44:03

I didn't. It's an interesting thought when you throw it out there. I got the sense that she was using the word crisis as part of a dialing up of rhetoric to create stakes that justified the money that she was now spending. So

Corey 44:16

So that was my sense here. It wasn't so much to create a crisis so that she could be a hero in a crisis. It was you

Corey 44:22

can't spend unplanned billions of dollars unless there's a good reason for it. And so a lot of what she said throughout the course of that speech really seemed to be attempting to justify the spending of money at that particular moment, which to me suggested like I think it was telling and I think it told us something very interesting about the debate that must have gone on in government around there. And that was, is this justified or not? Certainly, because we know this is not even the idea that they originally floated of money going to everybody, which,

Corey 44:52

which, again, suggests late, late breaking. And the fact that they didn't know whether this money was taxable or not suggests details didn't come together right away.

Corey 45:01

feel that she defined it as a crisis to justify to a conservative, a fiscally conservative audience, why she was doing it.

Zain 45:10

Carter, give me your read on this, because my read was maybe the most cynical of the bunch, perhaps, which was, I think she's trying to keep the crisis branding alive and top of mind so that she can kind of be said solution or hero, as Corey said, the crisis. What did you kind of make of that as she repeated those words over and over again on the affordability crisis?

Carter 45:33

Well, I think that what was really interesting to me was who she blamed for the affordability crisis and what she blamed for the affordability crisis. He

Carter 45:39

said the affordability crisis was, you know, the inflation was because of rampant spending from the federal government. That's true. We are spending more than ever before, but it's down since the pandemic height. Record debt, by what measure? I would love to say, I'd love to know where the record debt comes from. anti-energy policies again fascinating we have produced more oil and more greenhouse gases under justin trudeau than any other prime minister in canadian history and he's not the longest serving by any stretch of the imagination so what exactly are the anti-energy policies that she's talking about because we went past the you know i think it was the red who i can't remember who put a cap in the cap of greenhouse gases was not like we're well past those caps now they've been repealed, obviously, under Jason Kenney. But we are producing more GHGs than we

Carter 46:34

we ever have. And so I want to know, just out of curiosity, Danny, Danielle, what is our anti-energy policies that we're going against? This is all part of the narrative. It's a crisis that doesn't exist, except in the heads of Albertans. And the reason that it exists there is because we keep being told that bad things are being done to us by this evil, evil federal government. So that's where the crisis lies. The crisis lies there.

Zain 47:06

Corey, talk to me about crisis. You wanted to add a piece here as well.

Corey 47:10

Yeah, you have to be very careful when you continually say something as a crisis as a politician, right? If you say it's a crisis, and if you can't solve it, or more accurately, if you're perceived not to be able to solve it, you are signing your own political death warrant and

Corey 47:24

and uh you know there's there's a place for kind of creating language about clash and contrast and controversy but if you define something as a crisis if you point the crisis to a couple of you know very specific things as daniel smith did and then you are unable to do anything about them watch

Corey 47:42

watch out right i i mean you're maybe it won't be your threat comes increased from the left but maybe you are asking for somebody within your own party to come And say, you said it was a crisis. You haven't actually declared

Corey 47:56

declared sovereignty. We must go further. Something like that is very possible. So you've got to be careful that you don't let the language get away from underneath you. And I think in many ways, this is one of the lessons of Jason Kenney's tenure,

Corey 48:09

right? Right. Think about everything that he said around COVID-19 and and how we didn't want to be stifling freedoms just when we had the best summer ever for 30 seconds before we went right back into a world of, you know, vaccine mandates and all of that. So.

Zain 48:27

Carter, would you advise her to Corey's point here as an extension of this to embrace this broader hero in a crisis frame? You always love to talk in the terms of political brand. She's got control of our provincial checkbook. There's a big surplus. Would you tell her to embrace this role of this political brand of hero in a crisis? Or do you feel like, to Corey's point, that's a bit of a risk because of how multimodal in its core essence affordability and inflation actually are in terms of any one one person's ability to solve it. How would you advise her on this ability, perhaps, that she could carve out if she wanted to on embracing this hero in a crisis branding and frame that is accessible to her, perhaps?

Carter 49:13

Well, I don't think we're looking for a hero. I think what we're looking for is normalcy. I think that what we're looking for are the regular opportunities that we we as Albertans have been granted by the, the, the,

Carter 49:25

the, the luck of where we reside. Um, you know, she's going to have a big surplus. That means spending time in Alberta, right? We don't save it. We spend it. That's our nature. So, you know, it doesn't all need to be, um, you know, it doesn't all need to be directed at crisis. It can be directed at transit. It can be directed at schools. It can be, you know, this off brand stuff that she could do. You know, I was a school trustee. I know that what we need is more schools where people live. Talk to me about this,

Zain 49:58

important will off-brand or what you said earlier against type B for her going forward? Do you feel like that would be one of the through lines of your advice to her? Be unpredictable almost, like a little herky-jerky in terms of what people would expect? Or is that massive risk to the base that she needs to even shore up from the get-go? She's

Carter 50:15

She's already invoking the, the, the sainted Klein. Um,

Carter 50:18

Um, she's already invoking the, the, you know, the name of Ralph Klein as, as our sainted leader, Ralph Klein once said, fuck you, Ottawa. Um, you know, like that, I

Carter 50:32

I always wonder, you know, I think I've said it before on the podcast a thousand times, which Ralph Klein do you like? Which Ralph Klein do you worship? The guy who cuts spending or the guy who increased spending to the highest per capita rates in Canada. Or also,

Zain 50:44

for many people, who the fuck is Ralph Klein? Which I think is another question

Carter 50:48

Well, anyways, I'll let Corey jump in and clean up my mess here.

Zain 50:54

Corey, the question to Carter was about the hero frame. The one that you brought up. Should she embrace that? Would you advise her to embrace that? Since she has control of

Zain 51:02

of the checkbook on this, would you tell her that, yeah, you know what? This is how you get

Zain 51:07

get the coalition. This is is how you emerge a leader. This is the brand we can play on for the next six months. If that was a question to you as advisor to Danielle Smith, Premier of Alberta, what would you say to her?

Corey 51:20

Well, look, let's talk about what she's trying to do here. She wants to win the next election. To win the next election, she's identified different groups that she believes will be, maybe, like, let's just say, I don't have any kind of special insight here, but she's identified identified certain groups that she feels she'll require in order to get to that election and to victory. And that is families and that's seniors.

Corey 51:42

Let's just say that's the case. So you want to spend the money on families and seniors. You need a pretext for doing so. That pretext requires you to actually raise some pretty significant stakes because otherwise it becomes, why are you spending billions of dollars for these groups, including for seniors who have just this You know, generationally

Corey 52:02

generationally absurd wealth when you compare it to the other demographics that you're skipping over here. Right.

Corey 52:08

So in a certain sense, I think what you've landed on is correct. It's that she needs to keep stakes at a certain place to justify the action that she's taking here. here. But Carter

Corey 52:20

Carter said the magic word, which was normalcy here.

Corey 52:24

This was not a speech. In my opinion, Zane, others can disagree. This was not a speech about inflation. This was not a speech about Ottawa. This was a speech about Danielle Smith seeming

Corey 52:37

seeming normal. This was her ability- What were her two words

Zain 52:39

words last time? Was it moderate? Was it mainstream?

Corey 52:42

mainstream? Moderate and normal.

Corey 52:43

Mainstream, moderate, normal, whatever it is. But I think that's That's what she was going for here. She talked about some of her more extreme actions she justified by creating extreme stakes, right? So, yeah, the Alberta Sovereignty Act seems extreme, but wow, has anything ever been this bad with Ottawa, right? Becomes the stakes.

Corey 53:03

And I'm being very moderate about it. I'm a proud Canadian, and that's why it's sovereignty within a united Canada. Inflation, wow, it's once in a generation out of control because of that damn federal government again, right? right? Because you can't blame the provincial government for this. You can't call it a global thing because you need to have some sort of opponent and

Corey 53:20

you're not going to be able to resolve a global problem.

Corey 53:22

So I'm going to take these actions. And this is a very practical, pragmatic thing to do. You don't normally think a conservative is spending money in this way, but I'm a very moderate, normal individual. And

Corey 53:31

And then she even ends by saying, effectively, I've taken extreme positions in the past, way

Corey 53:37

way back in ancient history as of like six months ago. And,

Corey 53:41

And, you know, I've evolved. I've learned from all of you. I am a normal, moderate, mainstream politician. And that was the purpose of the speech.

Corey 53:51

That and finding a reason to spend the money. But that was the purpose of the speech. Carter,

Zain 53:54

Carter, let's get into that. You talked about the invocation of Ralph Klein. Corey talked about the end of the speech. She spends the last, I'm spitballing you, I don't have it in front of me. I don't know if you know, but the board broke. The last 60 seconds or so, talking about how

Zain 54:10

how she's made mistakes in the past. Her views have evolved. She's not a radio show host anymore. That she said contrarian things. I don't know if she used the word contrarian, but I'm paraphrasing. right

Zain 54:18

right um and that you know i hope you give me the same um latitude or charity uh that you gave ralph klein uh a guy that we love and would say inane shit all the time and be forgiven for it right still paraphrasing yeah what did you think of her inserting that at the tail end did you feel like it was desperate did you feel like it was strategic would you have advised her to do it carter i

Carter 54:42

think we did advise her to do that when i did as a matter of fact and you guys laughed at me do you remember making fun of me and saying that i was stupid um because that's what you guys said and i said all

Corey 54:52

all blurs together if we're going to be honest yeah

Carter 54:54

yeah i mean what's one difference between calling me stupid for this thing or for that thing but you guys used to call you guys called me stupid because i said she should stand up and say these are the things and you said and you said all you're going to do then is get people to look for them go look for them well i'll tell you something no one's looking for them instead everybody's saying yeah well that was actually pretty good now she's got herself out of trouble and has she you think so listen i said it weeks ago i was right then i'm right now there is no way she we are forgiving people we are very free and i think that most people are forgiving um we forgave ralph klein who was heinous in so many ways and um you know this is this

Carter 55:38

this you know danielle smith young woman asking for our forgiveness damn right most can most Albertans are going to forgive her. She took a big step towards normalcy.

Carter 55:49

As Corey said, I was pissed off because I thought she lied. I was pissed off because in her healthcare section, she seemed to blame management for long emergency room waits. Do you have too much management or do you not have enough frontline staff? Like, I don't understand what the hell she's talking about here. She's making up stories to justify her behavior. You know, I was, I was furious as I was listening to the whole thing uh where the hell are these hospitals and ors that are sitting there empty with nurses at the standby ready to go do you think you think a doctor just fucking walks into an er and just cuts open a patient and hopes for the best there's some tools required and to tool up these operating rooms and to get you know like go to canmore and have your operation do you have any idea what that would be like do you have any idea how many changes that would require to enable able that actually to happen sure there might have been an or that was sitting empty because we don't fund the ors in in rural alberta anymore but the reason we did that is because we didn't have the doctors we didn't have the nurses we couldn't afford to have operating rooms in 3700 hospitals across the fucking province but she doesn't need to say any of that because she's she's now normal normal normal i

Zain 57:02

want to jump on that yeah before you yeah go before you go i just need to just quickly uh i just feel like it's the right time you know we've recorded 1017

Zain 57:10

1017 episodes and there are things i've said i'm

Zain 57:14

i'm taking contrarian stances on this so i just hope the listeners that you

Zain 57:18

you know they give me the

Zain 57:19

the same courtesy they'd give a ralph klein you

Zain 57:22

you know or daniel smith would

Corey 57:23

just allow me okay yeah just just inserting that in there cory

Zain 57:27

react to carter right here and also also react to should she have done that apology

Zain 57:32

apology ask that ask for an apology or i hope you see me through the glasses you saw ralph klein through uh back in the 90s and the 2000s talk to me about if you would have advised her to do that and then react to carter's health care tirade as well yeah

Corey 57:48

yeah i don't think i necessarily would have i think i would have left that you didn't yeah

Corey 57:54

spoken or um Um,

Corey 57:56

I, well, specifically the Ralph Klein thing. Why, why,

Zain 57:58

why, why would you have not asked, why would you have told her to say this? Like, if you were to talk into her the day before that afternoon and be like, here's why I wouldn't tell you to insert this. Like, what would your rationale be?

Corey 58:08

I don't know. I don't actually think that Ralph Klein has aged perfectly with like the general population. I have no polling on this. I'd actually be very curious to see how

Corey 58:17

Albertans think about Ralph Klein over time.

Corey 58:20

But, uh, when I think about the groups that she needs to win, I just, I, you know, a

Corey 58:24

a lot lot of them simply did not live in alberta um in

Corey 58:28

in you know in ralph klein's day i was trying to figure out exactly how many just by running a couple of like loose napkin calculations here but let's

Corey 58:36

let's just keep it simple you know there's more than a million more albertans than when ralph klein was premier people have been coming and going by the hundred of thousand uh you know immigration emigration people have died people have been born i seriously doubt you know more than half the population was old enough and here uh when ralph klein was premier so they oh they will only know the legend of ralph klein for

Corey 59:00

for good and for ill and um and what she was talking about was not so much the legendary ralph klein she was talking about some very specific moments that she was asking people okay stay

Corey 59:13

stay with me here this is a group of so half the half the population of this province still a province not a country yet we'll wait and see what the Very close. Half the population of this province, let's just say for fun, wasn't here when Ralph Klein was here. And they know just the legend of Ralph Klein. And that legend is probably mixed, but I doubt it goes into a lot of details about all of Ralph Klein's personal public failings. And so does she really want to remind people and sort of evoke him to talk about things that a lot of these people will never have heard of? And if they were to look up, they're

Corey 59:47

they're going to say, what the fuck? Why did you give him a pass for throwing money at homeless people? Why did you allow him to continually apologize for these things? They didn't live it. They didn't feel it. And so she can't pull on those feelings. I guess that's the simplest way I'll put it here. And so it just simply shouldn't have been said. It should have been left unsaid. She should have just left it as it's a basic human decent thing to do to just sort of give people latitude.

Corey 1:00:13

Now, on the healthcare stuff, by

Corey 1:00:14

by far the thinnest part of the speech, her plan to fix healthcare was basically bullet one, fix healthcare. Bullet two, don't break healthcare. Bullet three, repair the things that are broken in healthcare. It said absolutely nothing.

Corey 1:00:28

The one piece of substance that she gave was the manager's piece.

Corey 1:00:33

which just gave me flashbacks. It was like the 2012 election. And it actually made me worry, has her view of healthcare not updated in 10 years? Because the idea of too many managers was huge in Alberta in 2012.

Corey 1:00:46

But the reality was never quite that. And the reality is certainly not that now. When you look at CHI-HI data and data that allows you to compare healthcare system to healthcare system, Alberta is very lean on

Corey 1:00:58

on the manager side. So what are we talking about? Almost

Carter 1:01:01

Almost too lean, unbelievably,

Zain 1:01:04

Carter, let's put the package back together. Let's put the bow back on the nine minutes of Danielle Smith. What

Zain 1:01:11

did you make of it overall?

Zain 1:01:13

Now that we've kind of jumped in and out of certain segments, had some open bracket conversations on other items, what did you make of it overall? What would you, one thing you would have advised her to change if you were advising her to do differently?

Zain 1:01:27

What would it have been for you? the top thing from your political strategy hat that you would have said, I wish you would have done this differently. So overall thoughts on the nine minute package, and then your one thing that you wish she would have done, the

Zain 1:01:40

the premier would have done differently.

Carter 1:01:42

I was really angry when she made the speech. And I think that one of the reasons I was really angry is I do think it will be effective. We haven't seen any polling as yet. But I suspect that, you know, for, we'll go back to, and use Ralph Klein's language, the Martha and Henry's of, of Alberta. Um, there was, there was some, certainly some hits in that, in that piece.

Carter 1:02:04

piece. They, they like, they

Carter 1:02:06

they like who she is. And I think they'll, they'll, they'll move up. I think she, she hit as more normal. Um, we also talked about making sure that she had one through line and she failed on that massively. Uh, she can have all the different topics that she wants, but she just, she was all over the place. Um, um these four ideas these four things that she kind of walked through um too much too too much i mean um if i was giving her advice i would have asked her to uh think about going slower um to

Carter 1:02:40

focus on being normal and to give us some things that aren't personal but are societal um she's already mused about the calgary to calgary to uh to

Carter 1:02:50

to banff train um she's She's mused about a

Carter 1:02:54

couple of other, uh, big infrastructure projects, you

Carter 1:02:59

lean into some of that. Give us a school. We like schools. Schools are good. You know, take some of that largesse that we're going to have and, and spend it for us as a community and not us as individuals. And that I think would have played a smidge better for her in the, in the long run.

Zain 1:03:18

Boy, give me your thoughts on the overall nine minute package that we saw. it could be from content to presentation to what carter just mentioned on through line to um to the overall sort of end-to-end uh topics that we discussed give me your overall thoughts on this and then one thing you if you were strategizing with or for danielle smith uh the premier of alberta you would have told her that i wish you would have done this differently

Corey 1:03:44

yeah so clearly not a through line a real grab bag a real potpourri of a speech um which i i I think I said it was likely to happen, but I think both Carter and I said she should have a through line. It

Corey 1:03:56

It would be a better speech if there was a through line.

Corey 1:03:58

Insofar as there was a theme, it was kind of moderate

Corey 1:04:05

middle of the road. And I

Corey 1:04:07

I do think that sort of came through relative to the caricature of her that

Corey 1:04:11

that she has helped develop in her first month on the job.

Corey 1:04:15

And she can only get away with this so many times. There's only so many times you can say, whoops, sorry, on such a big public stage.

Corey 1:04:22

And God help her when she has to start reversing things that she said as premier, right?

Corey 1:04:28

right? She's only been in the job a month and she's reversing things that she said five months before she had the job.

Corey 1:04:34

There will be things that come up that

Corey 1:04:36

that really make us all go, wait, what? What are we talking about here?

Corey 1:04:40

What is happening? Because of

Corey 1:04:41

of who she is and because she listens to people and then she repeats what she's heard and she takes their advice. and that's a wonderful thing uh you know in a counselor it is probably not a great thing in a premier you know discernment is such a massive part of the job um

Corey 1:04:57

um my advice to her on the overall speech in addition to i think it could have um i

Corey 1:05:03

i think it could have been a little bit better uh i

Corey 1:05:07

i mean like stylistically or yeah like it had a very rushed feel in my opinion uh it feels

Corey 1:05:13

feels like like it was maybe one two takes of a lot of these sections and put together i

Corey 1:05:20

get over as somebody who who does this for a living how often she seemed to be tripping on her teleprompter yeah

Corey 1:05:28

you can see it when you know it and when you feel it and you can i can't imagine why they didn't just say okay that was fine but let's go and do another one and let's go do another one and normally when you do this you run through it a couple of times you hide the cuts um Um,

Corey 1:05:44

you don't even hide the cuts in, you

Corey 1:05:47

you know, cutaways to charts. That's, that's easy. But actually, if you go to any one of these kind of produced teleprompter speeches, what happens is you'll see, it goes wide, narrow,

Corey 1:05:57

narrow, wide, narrow, and it just sort of cuts in and out. No, not even like just same camera, wide, narrow, wide, narrow. And you do it almost to look like it's, it's a point of emphasis or impact, but it allows you to cut on the paragraphs and it just looks like it's part of the production. and

Corey 1:06:12

and if that was the best of those takes i'm confused i'm confused why they didn't just do more takes until she had a certain comfort with the teleprompter on

Corey 1:06:22

on that note though she

Corey 1:06:24

she was clearly uh you know really quite intentional about her words and i

Corey 1:06:29

just don't know if that format works for her that would be my other piece of advice she

Corey 1:06:33

felt a little wooden for me and And she's playing high stakes, but

Corey 1:06:38

don't know. There was something about it that just really seemed off, really

Corey 1:06:43

really seemed off. It didn't use like kind of her best attributes. She is so warm and effervescent on a stage in front of people. I know you can't do that with the premier address, but it just, if

Corey 1:06:55

if I were them, I would be playing with more formats. I would not be going back to this format more regularly. But it's something

Carter 1:07:00

something that I don't like. Carter, comment on that. That's an interesting point,

Zain 1:07:01

point, stylistically, that Corey mentions. Well,

Carter 1:07:03

Well, and one of the interesting things that I noted was the stage

Carter 1:07:08

stage right camera shot. So there was a straight on camera shot, then there was a stage right camera shot. And I was confused by that because the stage right camera shot offered us nothing new and didn't give us anything. Like it looked like, it

Carter 1:07:24

it didn't look like a good shot. It made her look- Well, it's so

Corey 1:07:27

so clearly a cutaway when you go to that shot.

Carter 1:07:29

shot. Yeah. And it was not, it

Carter 1:07:31

it didn't add anything to her power. I mean, we can, we, I don't know if we've talked much about where, you know, where on the stage you, you can draw power from and how that power is, you know, dependent on, on the staging and the stage design. And this is probably not the time to go into that, but the stage itself offers you power and where those positioning of the cameras are that camera took away from her power um which was weird to watch uh i think that that's one of the reasons that you were kind of left wanting on it is the camera work was very

Carter 1:08:06

uh i thought haphazard we're

Zain 1:08:10

we're gonna leave that segment there that segment of course brought to us by our sponsor flair airlines flair airlines we hope you forgive us like you did ralph klein fine let's move on to our final segment we're

Zain 1:08:19

we're over under another lightning round so many albertans should start forgiving flare airlines like they did oh absolutely

Carter 1:08:24

absolutely they're premier i

Zain 1:08:25

i don't know why they wouldn't they should carter come on

Zain 1:08:27

carter overall grade danielle smith her state of the province address or televised address to the province the nine minute package we were just chatting about what are you giving this as an overall letter grade steven carter

Carter 1:08:39

c minus um Um, you know, I think that she, she

Carter 1:08:43

she was there, she read the prompter, uh, it was better than I thought it was going to be, which just annoyed me.

Zain 1:08:50

Corey, what letter are you giving to this, uh, televised address by Premier Daniel Smith?

Corey 1:08:55

It was a B. When you look at the content in there, it seemed to do the job of trying to make her seem moderate.

Corey 1:09:02

Um, her delivery left a little to be desired for me, but I think most people won't be bothered by it. I think this is one of the curses of working in communications. You see those things a

Corey 1:09:12

and and most people will not they will not catch the cues as to why they're tripping up how they're tripping up things like that and

Corey 1:09:20

you know honestly i think it it did the job it was supposed to do and here we are talking about it and generally speaking the

Corey 1:09:29

package will land with the people it was supposed to land with cory

Zain 1:09:33

cory i'm going to stick with you on this you You teased out very effectively last episode the difference between why you do this state of the province address on TV or on social media versus a speech from the throne. But we're now at the speech from the throne this week. We're going to head into it. What advice would you have for the government as they try to maybe work off or take the momentum of this address by Danielle Smith into the speech from the throne? Is it the same message? Are you going? Is it OK to say the same thing over and over again? Would you advise an expansion package? How would you just on broad framework related things, take the energy of the nine minutes into what I suspect is going to be a longer speech from the throne, of course, not delivered by the premier herself?

Corey 1:10:14

Well, this is when you can start filling in some of the details, which this is the appropriate moment to do it. Anyhow, you don't want to be stepping all over the privilege of the legislature. You know, you're supposed to introduce bills to them before you introduce them to other people and

Corey 1:10:28

The real opportunity, though, is to continue that theme of normalcy. the

Corey 1:10:32

the the pageantry around the speech to the throne is so scripted uh we're so kind of used to it and you just have danielle smith acting like a very normal premier she will start to seem like a normal premier and that's the real opportunity i

Corey 1:10:45

i doubt there's going to be too much in the speech from the throne proper that we don't already know uh

Corey 1:10:50

uh it will be a different bundling of it it will be more in the language of acts as we were talking about and

Corey 1:10:55

and we're all going to forget it immediately when the Alberta Sovereignty Act comes out moments later. So the

Corey 1:11:01

benefit really is just to get the B-roll of people looking normal.

Zain 1:11:07

Carter, any advice as they go from this televised package into the speech from the throne?

Carter 1:11:13

I think that Corey's mentioned something with the acts, and the acts are good. You've got to make sure you've got that through line all the way through. But keep in mind that there's going to be a sequel, and the sequel is going to come In the spring. So just before your election. So I would think of this as a two-part, you know, you're Peter Jackson and you're trying to put together the Lord of the Rings trilogy. How are you going to sculpt? Because we got into this trouble in 2012. We sculpted- Did

Corey 1:11:40

Did you just give Peter Jackson credit for the Lord of the Rings? Isn't that who it was?

Corey 1:11:43

Is that what just- Yeah,

Corey 1:11:45

Yeah, isn't that who it was? Yeah. I mean, that's who made the movies on the books. Yeah,

Corey 1:11:49

he's the guy- He's talking about directing. think this is what

Carter 1:11:52

what the fuck cory

Corey 1:11:53

i mean he's introducing new plot you think he's introducing new plot points i don't give a shit what peter jackson do whatever the

Carter 1:11:59

the fuck he wants it's peter jackson what's great

Zain 1:12:02

hey carter have you seen that peter jackson uh have you seen the peter jackson beatles documentary uh on disney plus i it

Zain 1:12:10

the i know you haven't that was the last thing i tried to watch before we canceled disney plus enjoy enjoy four hours

Zain 1:12:16

enjoy four hours of sports center tonight oh

Carter 1:12:21

it's really upsetting enjoy four

Zain 1:12:22

four straight hours of the same well

Carter 1:12:24

well heather asked me what we got and i'm like we've got five

Carter 1:12:27

five tsn's i did not even know there was such a thing as five tsn's but here

Carter 1:12:32

here we go carter

Zain 1:12:33

carter finish your thought on this uh on on on

Carter 1:12:38

three acts three big pieces we were in 2012 we forgot that we had to do a budget we had to do a speech from the throne, we had to do a campaign. And each of those things needs to be distinct, but build on one another. You can't repeat the same plot points. And the person who really did that the best was Peter fucking Jackson.

Zain 1:12:59

The legend, man himself. Carter,

Zain 1:13:01

Carter, I'm going to stick with you for a second. Thank you. On the political strategy, I'm going to be very clear on this. On the political strategy by the Daniel Smith government, give me a letter grade on

Zain 1:13:13

their new provincial government regulation that says no Alberta schools or pre-kindergarten classes can require students to wear masks to attend school and no online schooling anymore. So this just came out on the Friday. The rules take effect immediately. And they also, like I mentioned, prevent almost every Alberta school from shifting grade one to 12 classes to a solely online format. On a pure political strategy perspective, perspective, what letter grade do you give the Smith government for this new regulation?

Carter 1:13:44

Oh, it's an abomination. In terms of letter grade, I would give it a 75%.

Carter 1:13:50

75%. She's playing to her base. She knows who she's playing to. In terms of what I actually think of the policy, I think it's disgusting to determine that you cannot require people to wear masks before you actually know know what's going on especially when you actually have uh huge lineups um you know adding uh a trailer to the alberta children's hospital waiting area is not a solution um so to say you know you can't wear masks at a time when you know shit's

Carter 1:14:23

shit's getting real uh for for alberta families and this is just going to show that she's completely out of touch i remind people danielle smith was fired as a school trustee. And now she's prohibiting other school trustees from doing their jobs. So I'm not impressed by that action. And I think that that really undermines who she's supposed to be. And again, I look at the sycophants lining up to serve with her in her government, and I'm unbelievably unimpressed by people who know better, but are standing beside her as she makes these ridiculous proclamations from her throne.

Zain 1:15:03

Corey, this regulation says that no Alberta schools or pre-kindergarten classes can require students to wear masks to attend school. What do you make of this from a pure political strategy perspective? If you were to give it a letter grade on that, what would you give it?

Corey 1:15:17

I honestly don't know. Obviously, it is not a very good public health strategy. strategy uh it's this blanket um prohibition

Corey 1:15:27

prohibition that arguably that prohibition should be or you know masking and and the ability to go online classes should be something that's allowed now

Corey 1:15:36

now let alone in a hypothetical future but there is still a hypothetical future too yeah

Corey 1:15:40

where things get even worse and you know this this needs to then be revisited

Corey 1:15:45

revisited and one of the things that i pray that we will not find out is what

Corey 1:15:51

what it looks like for daniel smith to have to back down on these things if things get truly terrible with our hospitals i just i hope we never get to that point the consequences if we do is just way too high but

Corey 1:16:02

but you asked me about political strategy and i think the reality is the

Corey 1:16:07

the online teaching is very hard on parents um masks

Corey 1:16:13

not so hard on on parents. But, you know, it's all a bit of a bundle where everybody wants, you know, there's this denial, I think, of respiratory diseases, of COVID-19, of all of it, and this desire to not lose this, you know, normalcy is the name of the game today, but not lose this normalcy we've gotten back in the past few months. And so I think that a lot of parents will tut-tut it, but

Corey 1:16:38

but quietly be a bit relieved that they don't need to worry about online schooling being a possibility.

Corey 1:16:43

I do. And will

Corey 1:16:47

it change your view? If this is your issue, you already are not with Daniel Smith, or you are, depending on which side you're on.

Corey 1:16:54

And if you're not, I

Corey 1:16:56

think you're just going to keep on walking.

Zain 1:17:00

Corey, final question. I'll start with you. Are you in or out on what you saw this past Friday on our man JT, Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, on his testimony for the Emergencies Act. What did you make of it? Are you in or are you out from what you saw from the prime minister?

Corey 1:17:15

Well, you know, Zane, I watched every minute of the five and a half hours that he was there. And did

Corey 1:17:22

did you actually? Because I sure didn't.

Corey 1:17:24

No, I did not. No,

Carter 1:17:25

Looks like it was just me then.

Corey 1:17:29

Well, you got your Emergencies Act fan gear on. Yeah,

Carter 1:17:32

Yeah, I do. I do. No,

Corey 1:17:33

I mean, it sounds like it went well. I didn't watch it. I saw the soundbites. Some people online were upset. He used French, which is crazy because it's one of our official languages. And most of the pundits who reviewed the performance seemed to think it was pretty solid. Some people saying maybe still not a legal justification, but certainly strong political, strong economic justification. And he doesn't come out of it looking all that bad or that unreasonable and apparently

Corey 1:18:02

apparently had quite a command of his portfolio. And

Corey 1:18:07

That's exactly what you need if you're the prime minister. And by the way, for

Corey 1:18:11

for the prime minister to go for five and a half hours and subject themselves to this, that

Corey 1:18:16

that in itself is saying something, especially when one of the narratives on the other side is that he's hiding.

Corey 1:18:22

Nobody hides by being in like a public inquiry for five and a half hours.

Zain 1:18:26

Carter, are you in or out on what you saw from the Prime Minister as you

Zain 1:18:29

you witnessed all five and a half hours? I'm

Carter 1:18:31

I'm very in. I mean, again, it sounds like you listened to a strategist's episode and took our best advice, which obviously is my advice, and kind of, you know, accepted the, you know, reminded people that this wasn't being fixed until it was fixed by using the Emergencies Act. And, and that, that was the ultimate power of this, uh, of his presentation, that, and the fact that he ditched the, um, the drama teacher, uh, elements of, of his, yeah, of his, his life that, you know, how many, how many times have I kicked the crap out of him for doing that? Um, he seemed real. He seemed, you know, I, I like this guy. I think this guy could, could really have a future in politics if he decided to be this guy. um we'll

Carter 1:19:16

we'll see if he chooses that hey we'll see if he chooses it we're

Zain 1:19:21

we're gonna leave it there that's a wrap on episode 1017 of the strategist my name is zane velgey with me as always cory hogan steven carter and we will see you next why

Carter 1:19:40

are we back a

Corey 1:19:41

a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form

Corey 1:19:46

can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury seriously

Corey 1:19:51

that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with result that a democrat a

Corey 1:20:02

always collapses over loose fiscal policy god

Corey 1:20:05

this is why people want

Corey 1:20:07

followed by a dictatorship the

Corey 1:20:10

the average age of the nation's greatest civilizations has been been 200 years these nations have progressed through this sequence from bondage to spiritual faith from spiritual faith to great courage from courage to liberty from liberty to abundance from abundance to selfishness from selfishness to apathy from

Carter 1:20:29

i'm at apathy right now actually dependence yeah actually

Zain 1:20:33

stuck on bondage okay

Carter 1:20:34

okay well that happens back into into bondage wait

Zain 1:20:40

back into bondage yeah

Carter 1:20:42

yeah you go back into bondage yeah

Zain 1:20:44

a good episode title back into bondage

Carter 1:20:46

bondage once you're in bondage you never get away from it that seems to be the uh

Carter 1:20:51

the message here it's

Carter 1:20:52

know what that's a great quote cory and thank you for living you're telling me

Zain 1:20:55

me he isn't famous you're telling me he didn't make it

Corey 1:21:00

you're telling me people aren't reciting this no the

Carter 1:21:04

The guy is not

Carter 1:21:05

famous. Not really that famous.

Corey 1:21:07

I've never heard of this quote.

Corey 1:21:09

You know what? I think the problem was maybe I just didn't read it very well. Could you read

Carter 1:21:12

read it again? A

Corey 1:21:13

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse

Zain 1:21:20

from the public treasury.

Transcript