Transcript
Annalise
0:01
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1038. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.
Annalise
0:10
Guys, hello. That was
Corey
0:11
was a regression. That wasn't as good. Yeah, can we put cheering
Carter
0:14
cheering in after that
Carter
0:14
that intro, or what? Because something's got to
Annalise
0:17
to lift it up. It was the counting.
Annalise
0:19
It's been a couple weeks, first of all. Has not been a couple weeks. Thanks for having me back. But normally, Carter, it has. Normally, Carter counts me down. And then, Carter, you just, there was nothing there. i didn't
Carter
0:29
i gave up caring this
Annalise
0:33
30 seconds yeah i mean into the episode i didn't care over it what are we doing it's
Carter
0:39
it's a patreon episode no one gives a fuck we do this we phone these ones in all
Corey
0:44
all the time i care i care i care deeply thousand
Corey
0:50
welcome back we missed you zane zane doesn't ask questions i don't know if you've heard this he uh he gives bromides and then we start to react to them and he cuts us off and then he says other things yeah zane
Corey
1:04
i don't know thank
Carter
1:04
thank god we have you
Carter
1:07
oh that's nice of you to say carter well i didn't really mean it it was totally insincere but i i know i know i'll throw it out there and did i
Annalise
1:16
i think you meant it no
Corey
1:17
see if it meant anything
Carter
1:20
you know what annalise and i are doing tomorrow not together but you know what we're doing cory you're
Corey
1:24
you're both individually skiing we're
Carter
1:26
we're both gonna be outside yeah
Corey
1:28
it's minus 30 it's minus 30 right now as we're recording it's not where i
Carter
1:32
i am i'm in revelstoke so my house once again is unattended great
Corey
1:38
great just break in yeah you're
Annalise
1:42
you're just you're just asking people to do it now frankly you'd
Corey
1:44
be doing it if you're
Carter
1:45
you're gonna pick up something take the tv we could use a new one okay i'm trying to get one of those nice new ones please
Corey
1:52
please if you're going to steal from him steal more than his deductible exactly make it worth this while yeah
Corey
1:59
yeah very good okay good opening
Corey
2:01
i look forward to this this intro being part of like a court submission as to why you don't get an insurance payout now wow
Annalise
2:10
uh okay we've got lots to talk about do we really it's been a while we do we're gonna dive in with some federal political news okay uh our first segment no publicity is bad publicity question mark um
Annalise
2:24
you guys you know i care about the audience you
Annalise
2:28
know i care about them you guys don't they flagged this one with me they want to talk about this green leader mike schreiner he's not gonna run for the ontario liberals he's not doing it guys you he posted a five a five minute video this week he says he's sticking with the greens um we've talked about this before you guys have thoughts i have thoughts uh what do we think now what is he really out was he ever in did he get cold feet are we all getting played did he play the liberals did the liberals play themselves was i right cory let's start with you all
Corey
3:05
all right well Well, firstly, most importantly, this is not a federal issue. This is a provincial issue in another province. That
Annalise
3:13
That is the wrong bill. Sorry, but that really is misleading. It's federal in the sense that it's outside of Alberta.
Annalise
3:23
Very Alberta of you, by the way. There's
Corey
3:25
There's Alberta in federal.
Annalise
3:26
You're right. That word should be provincial, not federal. Well done.
Corey
3:30
Second of all, second of all, and more to your question and more to your point, Right. It's maybe a little bit of all of the above. Maybe he was only half in. Maybe he suggested he was more in than he was. Maybe these liberals did play themselves because they should have known the immense risk they were taking by putting their future and to an extent their party's futures in the hand of somebody who was not even a member of their party when they wrote this letter. But it's wild. I mean, there's a couple of ways you can read this and they're not mutually exclusive right one is he um he played him he absolutely played him he dangled them along he's like yeah maybe he got them on the reel he got them to expose themselves as supporters of mike schreiner and then he said fuck you all and suckers and here we are right totally possible carter you love
Carter
4:20
oh i i love that you love that i do love that i love that he was just that
Carter
4:24
that he was playing three-dimensional chess with people who can't play checkers this is my favorite idea it
Corey
4:31
doesn't really like match my view of mike schreiner right just based on my limited exposure to him but it's possible the other possibility is he got cold feet um
Corey
4:42
um he may have thought that this was going to work he'd maybe given positive signals to them like yeah i think this is really something we should explore and when this letter landed uh with a thud maybe Maybe the website, the Draft Mike website, got no
Corey
4:55
no views, no engagement, right? It had the conversation driven by people like us and nothing came of it. And he thought, fuck, this is actually not something people want. I'm going to come in fifth in this leadership contest. And so I'm out. That's a real possibility after his week of a listening tour. You can actually imagine a scenario where Act 1 was supposed to be Draft Mike, Act 2 was mike expressing interest and act one didn't go well enough for him to immediately express interest and so then it became softened to well let's see where this goes over the next week or two and it went nowhere and he fucking bailed on the whole thing yeah that's absolutely possible in my opinion and then door number three is that these liberals actually took this flyer no
Corey
5:40
absolutely insane flyer where they put it out
Carter
5:43
out that's stupid no
Carter
5:45
no one is that stupid i
Corey
5:47
Look, that's the shocking thing about it, Stephen, right? Because if that is what happened, it is perhaps the worst tactical mistake in Canadian political history. It's just unbelievable that you would do that. Because as I said, you're sort of putting the fate of your own credibility into the hands of somebody not in your party. You're kind of burned for a while if you're on that particular list. And there's a sitting MPP on that list. Carter,
Annalise
6:15
Carter, you're itching to get in. Was this the worst tactical mistake? Someone
Carter
6:20
Someone did remind me
Annalise
6:20
me on Twitter that
Carter
6:21
that we do live in a province where Danielle Smith crossed the floor to Jim Prentice just before losing that election. So there are worse decisions being made than
Annalise
6:31
than this one. But now
Carter
6:32
now she's premier. But
Corey
6:34
But she's premier now. Apparently any
Carter
6:36
any idiot can become premier, Annalise. We're working on the Zane Velji leadership next. We've got some posters. If anybody would like to buy the merchandise, www.thestrategist.ca. You can buy your posters along with the Money is the Currency of Politics mugs. We're trying to sell some extras. It's
Corey
6:56
It's a good mug. It's
Carter
6:56
It's a great mug.
Corey
6:56
mug. That's my favorite
Carter
6:57
favorite mug. It's my favorite mug, too. Yeah.
Carter
6:59
Anyways, I just refuse to believe that anybody would be so bad at politics as to try the actual draft the leader of another party um that has not expressed at least uh some some interest in the job i think your second scenario cory where you were describing the uh the draft mike campaign you
Carter
7:21
you know what it's going to go fantastic and then it just didn't go at all i think that that's the actual scenario i think that they tried to draft mike and uh no one really wanted in drafting Mike. No one cared for Mike because it turns out that Mike's a green guy not a liberal guy.
Annalise
7:38
So Carter you think the cold feet scenario is... Yeah,
Carter
7:42
I think the only people in Canada talking about him was the strategists and while we have enormous reach you know, enormous reach and
Carter
7:52
and significant impact in politics in Canada the fact that we were very derisive could not have helped this case
Annalise
7:59
Well, Corey Well, Corey, was mission accomplished because the strategists are talking about this for the second or third time?
Annalise
8:07
We're talking about the Ontario Liberals, talking about federal politics.
Corey
8:11
If it was Mike Schreiner's dream to make the Liberals look foolish, he did a good job. But, you know, I actually think this highlights a risk of a very popular tactic, right? Which is the list curation tactic. The idea that you put something out and you ask people to mobilize and show their support. And you see this all of the time in advocacy campaigns. And Carter will back me up on this. When you're sitting in government and somebody launches one of those, send a message to the premier's office campaigns, right?
Corey
8:42
Click here and we'll auto generate an email. You just have to put in your email address and you can send it. And you get 12 of those. They have exposed their bare ass. They have exposed that nobody is with them. And it actually weakens their hand pretty dramatically. dramatically um and look i like i i ran uh the communications and public engagement office and that included premier's correspondence and we got reports on numbers and if the numbers weren't very big that told us something too well
Corey
9:10
it's quite possible this draft mike website got
Corey
9:14
got no numbers and and perhaps if you were those liberals and if this was your strategy to get mike schreiner in perhaps was this was the absolute worst tactic to pick because it became hard and quantifiable and maybe they should have chosen a way to get grassroots support that was different from list building because they really exposed they didn't have any anybody yeah i
Carter
9:35
and you would think that you know a big campaign would draw thousands of names uh realistically a big campaign draws hundreds of names because people are really reticent to put their names down on list now um they know i mean first of all we're already getting spammed from a million in different places you don't want to add your name to a list that you really don't understand who controls that list and this draft mike campaign um i think would fall fairly
Carter
10:01
fairly certainly into that into that category i'm not really sure that i want to add my name to this list and potentially expose myself to uh to
Carter
10:11
to information coming my way that i don't want to come my way
Corey
10:15
and and who are you giving it to right like are you giving it to the greens are you giving it to the liberals are you giving it to like like that that's a really good point was
Annalise
10:22
was there a time when that list tactic because i mean we still see campaigns um like we see people do it all the time was there a time i guess before people
Annalise
10:33
i don't know when the days when people like loved getting emails or whatever like was there a time when that list tactic works and when did that time pass well
Corey
10:42
well it can still work to this day right um but it is a it is a high you
Corey
10:47
you are really exposing the actual strength of your movement when you're in the premier's office you know that a big campaign is hundreds not thousands and so that does allow you to react to hundreds and say hey we might have a problem here there's hundreds and when you actually get thousands you think sweet fuck like this is a real thing this is something that's actually got grassroots frustration and fury and um and it happens to this day you you will sometimes get issues that come up where all of a sudden it's just ping ping ping it's lighting up your inbox and you think oh do we have a problem here and i don't know if i want to expose a couple of like ones
Corey
11:23
ones from my most immediate employment but i can tell you uh they did cause reactions you know because you can all of a sudden compare it to letter writing campaign with 10 people one that is pretty well known and that uh that i had a bit of a hand in um although it's kind of being lost to alberta history because of everything that's happened since was there was um you remember when jim prentice backed down on on his stance on gay straight alliances
Corey
11:50
he was yeah there
Corey
11:52
was a there was an email campaign there we set up a portal myself and uh richard einerson uh a friend of ours and um really it was like send it to your your mla send it to the premier's office go and we were getting like hundreds a minute thousands an hour
Corey
12:11
hour uh you know in the course of like a morning It was just this overwhelming volume that was being sent because there was a legitimate grassroots fury on that particular issue in Alberta at that moment. And so, you
Corey
12:24
you know, it can work, but it's not
Corey
12:28
not something you can manufacture. People think you can manufacture email blasts. It has to be a legitimate fury. And at that point, all you do is we make it easier for people to get it out there. But you can't create that kind of fury. That fury exists or it doesn't. Or at least you can't through a website, I guess I should say.
Carter
12:47
But I do think, though, that those are fewer and further between now than they were back even five or six years ago.
Carter
12:53
You know, tactics have evolved. I mean, we used to, when Corey and I were working at Hill & Knowlton, we used to be able to use IVR telephone surveys. And I used to use IVR telephone surveys from about 2007 through 2013 or 14. And then people just stopped answering the telephone, right? There comes a point when the tactic just turns off everybody that's involved, and
Carter
13:18
and IVR is one of those tactics.
Carter
13:21
The list building is one of those tactics. They still will do it if it's important enough to them, but I'll tell you something, getting a playground for your kid's school, not important enough for them. It really has to be something where they feel like they are fighting for the underdog, that they are on the positive, good side. and i'm not sure that mike schreiner um is is that high enough bar uh to actually get actually get people to sign up for it you
Corey
13:48
you know the common element of every successful one i can think of like that is righteous indignation and
Corey
13:54
and where you'll see a lot of volume is from like like the rebel will get a lot of people emailing you on particular matters and you can sort of say like oh that's a really angry group and you're going to get more but righteous indignation seems to to be an important element here. And I just don't think that Mike Schreiner's campaign had any of those components, neither righteous nor indignant. So it's just, it
Corey
14:14
it wasn't going to happen for him.
Annalise
14:15
So what are, yeah,
Annalise
14:17
so he's, he put out his video, he's sticking with the Greens, the Ontario Liberals need a new leader. What can we learn from all of this? Like what are the takeaways?
Carter
14:29
Oh, well, I mean, takeaway number one, if you're going to even float the idea that you're going to run for leader, you better be prepared to run for leader. You better have the money, you better have the resources, you better have the people. I mean, how many people signed that letter? 30 people signed that letter? I mean, that should be a significant chunk of money going into his leadership campaign. It should be enough grassroots support that he can actually start doing something. I mean, he had, as Corey has eloquently pointed out, he had fucking MLAs signing that letter. They had no business signing that letter. They sit in someone else's caucus. the fact that they signed that letter should have indicated that he had fairly decent grassroots support um so the fact that he didn't the fact that this stalled out is really just kind of almost unbelievable uh and a tremendous malpractice but i'll
Carter
15:21
i'll let cory jump in and figure that you know figure out all the other things that it should mean sure
Corey
15:26
sure i mean lesson number two right now is if you are those liberal organizers and let's just assume for a minute that the cold feet scenario is is the correct one before you go out on a limb like that before you take a step that has other steps that need to unfold for you not to look like a fool you better be 100 sure you can deliver on them so like you you talk about a list of 30 people steven you talk about mike schreiner maybe not seeing what he wants in terms of like signups to that particular site you should be like okay okay, Mike, how many do you need to see? And if he says 10,000, amongst you and your 29 compatriots, you've got to say, are we 100% sure we can get Mike Schreiner 10,000 signups on this particular website? How are we going to do it? What are you going to be on the hook for? How are we going to confirm that you've actually done those things? Because what they did is they absolutely removed any of their own agency after step one, and they gave it all to Mike Schreiner. Or at least it seems that way from the outside. So
Annalise
16:25
So there there was 30, 39 or 40 signatures on on that list and like some heavyweights. And as you say, some some sitting MLAs. What what what about those folks now? Like their names are out there on this open letter.
Annalise
16:42
What does what does the political future and maybe not even the political future, but just like what what happens with those folks?
Carter
16:50
Let's start with the top people. right
Carter
16:51
right the mla should resign um from the caucus of the ontario liberal party and
Carter
16:56
and move to the greens i
Corey
16:57
i mean mpp i'm
Carter
17:00
i was a bad person i'm a bad person federal politics
Carter
17:03
federal yeah um i'm a bad but this is just a gong show annalise i don't even let's stop and start over again oh yeah we don't do that um anyways this is a this
Carter
17:13
this to me is a um like
Annalise
17:17
you you you think think they should resign i think they need to step down well
Carter
17:20
well and i think
Carter
17:22
the other like the lower level organizers um you know they'll
Carter
17:27
they'll just disappear for a cycle right
Carter
17:29
right they don't need to participate in this cycle and then it'll come back in the next cycle and people will righteously make fun of them but that'll be about it uh because ultimately volunteers are a needed commodity commodity in these exercises. So volunteers will be allowed to, you know, regain their status within the party, at least a little bit. But the MPP, I mean, how
Carter
17:54
how do you stand out against your party like that? How do you basically say, well, not basically, how do you actually state there is no one in this party that is good enough to lead it? We must go to this, you know, this other guy who represents exactly one person one one seat uh i just don't know how that person you know slinks back into caucus um ever ever well
Corey
18:20
well look enough time has passed that the slinking has likely occurred and and i i think what you have to say is just you know i got i got a little plate here i i i wanted to support schreiner to be a liberal leader schreiner's clearly not the person i thought he was based on where it was i'm here i'm a liberal if you want to stay with the liberals the alternative is you can actually join schreiner's caucus right and you can say look i'm gonna i'm gonna put myself on the timeout bench here but i'll find a way to make it clear that i like where i feel and like that i will support whoever comes out of this process for the party i think that's the best you can do right now is basically blame schreiner and say i'm sorry if if you want to stay in that liberal caucus and i think that's fine i think you'd probably get away with it but it's mortifying and and it really should call into question your judgment in a very big sense but
Annalise
19:09
to that point and we we kind of mentioned it at the beginning like daniel smith crossed the floor with several mlas and look at her now but
Carter
19:19
but she went on a significant time
Corey
19:22
yeah she was in the wilderness for a bit there it
Carter
19:24
it was not clear for at least three or four years after she left that
Carter
19:28
that she would even have a political career to return to.
Carter
19:31
She was way out in the wilderness.
Annalise
19:35
Okay, so just a just a many year time out and then and then. Yeah.
Corey
19:39
And then you can be pregnant. Yeah, then
Carter
19:43
Well, and to be honest, it was not certain when she came into this leadership that it was going to be forgotten. You
Carter
19:49
You know, I mean, I didn't necessarily think that they were going to forgive and forget. And I'm not sure that they did forgive and forget. I think this is a new group of people that came in and lifted danielle smith because of a whole bunch of uh cultural touch points not necessarily because this is the old um the old pc ucp or pc wild rose party coming together again to back danielle smith it's a it's a culturally very different party yeah
Corey
20:18
yeah i'll tell you one of the things that the danielle smith leadership obviously highlights is the source of power and political parties these days does not come from MLAs, right? It comes from being able to get numbers in some ways. I, you know, I just want to say, we talked about it, like being the wilderness. And I don't, I don't believe that it was her strategy to build up a reputation and a brand outside of elected politics, and then come storming back in through a leadership contest that happened. But I don't think that was like a master plan of hers as she was moving forward. but um but you know it actually does suggest that maybe a better model is just to be a personality known by tens of thousands of people uh able to be brought forward so hey look maybe there's hope for us on the strategy no
Carter
21:03
no i think this is the zane velgey strategy right
Carter
21:06
right the zane velgey zane velgey for leader i mean we're
Carter
21:10
we're all behind it annalise personally really wants it because she wants the gig full time yeah
Corey
21:15
yeah she wants the job yeah i
Corey
21:16
i mean she loves hanging out
Annalise
21:18
out with us that's
Carter
21:19
that's what she said just love
Annalise
21:19
love it just love it we're all uh yeah we're all playing into it okay well on that note and speaking of wilderness we're gonna move into our next segment um our next segment is called making life better for albertans who drive quads and snowmobiles and dirt bikes you're
Carter
21:37
gonna make us do this i feel
Corey
21:38
feel like i know where this is going yeah
Annalise
21:39
yeah we're doing it i'm gonna do a little intro i'm gonna do a little intro because it's a little i know we have listeners outside of alberta and this is a little alberta specific um
Annalise
21:50
um so last week on friday the ucp announced eight million dollars in funding over four years to two different trail groups to build and maintain off-highway vehicle trails seems like a simple straightforward announcement um the minister of forestry parks and tourism he showed up to it on a on a quad well like one of those was fancy off-highway vehicle quads
Annalise
22:12
um stood he stood at the signature making life better for alberta's albertans podium um simple kind of rural announcement but i there's different layers here and i want to kind of pull at those threads this like rural versus urban divide as we go into the election kind of who the ucpr environment etc um and i think broadly this is like yet another chapter in this ongoing saga of alberta's parks and recreation areas which have changed a lot in four years under the ucp um so just tiny bit of background ucp introduced a 90 canadas pass in 2021 um that means like people hikers bikers skiers those sorts of people they have to pay to access nature that's been free for decades well off highway vehicle users are exempt they don't pay um so some have pointed out that this k country pass which has brought in millions from low impact users like myself and me
Annalise
23:07
me is essentially now and carter uh
Annalise
23:10
uh is essentially now funding these off-highway vehicle organizations which are like fairly niche in comparison to other users um and who have powerful vehicles that do immense amounts of harm to the natural area anyways carter i know you have thoughts on this cory it has to do with the outdoors so i don't know where you're at yeah so
Corey
23:31
so but i'm a little disengaged but i have thoughts there's
Annalise
23:35
there's a there's strategy here there's threads carter let's start with you what's that talk
Annalise
23:40
talk to us about like the bigger picture here what does this like small niche announcement say about who the ucpr well
Carter
23:48
well what it says is who they're targeting right like forget about who they are for a moment and say who do they actually want to win the votes from um you know they want to win votes and you and And you characterize it as a rural-urban divide. But there's also kind of a, I don't know if it's a class type of designation or not. But, I mean, here I am out in Revelstoke right now. And out in the parking lot, it's filled with Alberta license plates. And every Alberta license plate is a pickup truck towing $4,000 to $6,000, $14,000 snowmobiles. and each one of those snowmobiles will be going out into boulder creek or boulder mountain and they'll be ripping up the the mountain trying not to cause avalanches albertans there's a group of albertans who love their toys and the ucp has said essentially the albertans who love their toys are more likely to love us so we will give those albertans a break on the kananaskis pass and And let's be clear, McLean Creek, one of the areas that is being targeted here, it is in Kananaskis. And Kananaskis was set
Carter
24:57
by Peter Lougheed to be free to all Albertans, free to all Albertans as a cultural resource for forever. This was designed because it comes out of our oil and gas opportunities, right? Right. We need to set aside lots of land to kind of compensate for some of the decisions that we're making in other areas. And this is what the Kananaskis was supposed to be. This to me is it's just simple choices. I am choosing we're choosing them over us. Right. And this is the UCP to me. The UCP is constantly choosing them over us. Yes. Us being, you know, the people who are listening to this podcast, the people who don't have $14,000 recreation vehicles, the people who don't go out in their pickup trucks and see how deep they can get their truck stuck and then have their buddies pull it out over a couple of beers. To me, that's not recreation. To most Albertans, that's not recreation. But to
Carter
25:57
to the UCP voter, and keep in mind that Shannon Phillips, when she was environment minister, got
Carter
26:05
got into a ton of trouble. I think it was Bighorn Provincial Park, Corey, you'll correct me. it was
Carter
26:12
castle that they prohibited this off-highway vehicle type of of traffic and she was like to the point of being threatened um because um the these these people felt so entitled and i think that this is the the the real them of this the real them is these people who feel like they have been threatened by climate change they've been threatened by changing in in the environment they've been threatened by changes in their industry and the ucp have made it their business to give back as much as they can to those people instead of us
Annalise
26:50
in uh cory i want you to jump in here but carter just to your point like weren't
Annalise
26:55
weren't those people going to vote for the ucp anyways uh probably probably
Carter
27:04
probably i mean yeah you know we buy votes that we already have all the time yeah
Corey
27:09
it's interesting because that was immediately my thought too like how many votes do you think move on an announcement like this to them i actually think that the ucp uh took an incredible risk by taking an action like that one of the things that we always uh in issues management during the budget and we're in budget season here in alberta the budget's being released least last or next week so i did four budgets for the government of alberta and one of the things in issues management we would do is we would have a table of literally every announcement with an issues management lens on it it would be like dollars impacted people a bunch of details don't need to tell you every column here but one of the things we looked for was are there really unfortunate pairings here like we are cutting 30 million from here and we're spending 30 million in there and if there were such bearings we we flagged them and we said be very careful right and you might want to consider different ways to present these numbers maybe over four years don't present that like apples to apples like this and unfortunately for the ucp that's exactly what they've done by essentially giving about as much money as is coming from these bloody passes and so people can very easily say hold on a second you are charging me to go to the park And you were taking those charges and you were giving it to people to tear up the same fucking park over
Corey
28:28
Right? That's a very, very dangerous thing that the UCP has created for themselves. It's the kind of thing people tend to latch on to. And it's the kind of thing people tend to get very angry about. And so my feeling is if any votes move on this, it's probably away from the UCP. because there is kind of like a like listen there are a lot more albertans than i think
Corey
28:49
i often think living in the inner city of calgary you know yeah where i do who who this is their lifestyle right
Corey
28:55
right like on the weekend they go out with their uhvs and they go nuts they go full fucking ham wherever they can private courses public courses wherever and um they you know know they can afford like if they're buying a fourteen thousand dollar ski mobile they
Corey
29:12
they can afford to pay no mobile ski mobile
Corey
29:14
yeah that was just well it's not from the outdoors i'm from the indoors that
Corey
29:20
you were making fun of it just saying it's got skis on it it feels like it feels like it should be called a ski mobile i think i'm gonna stick with that you stick with it
Corey
29:31
the other thing here is um carter is right it's starting to create a pattern there's a couple of other issues maybe we'll even talk about some of them with our star money being taken uh and then given somewhere else 20 billion dollars potentially on the table and in some versions of this it's
Corey
29:51
it's going to be very like if you would ask me and in fact i think you did three weeks ago what is going to be the ndp's best line of attack what's going to be the ucp's best i would have said the ndp health care education those bread and butter issues but But here
Corey
30:07
here we are back to righteous indignation. There are certain things, and think about in the 2012 election, Stephen, the no-meet committee,
Corey
30:14
which we don't need to get into, but where people were being paid for being on a committee that didn't meet.
Corey
30:21
People went nuts. People got mad. It wasn't healthcare. It wasn't education. It wasn't the economy, but it fueled this righteous indignation that there was just something wrong, money being taken from you and me and given to people who did not deserve it. And the UCP is
Corey
30:36
is piling up the bodies on this front, like they're creating an awful lot of ammunition for the NDP to come in and say exactly what Stephen said. It's actually a framing that the NDP might be wise to consider and test, which is they're
Corey
30:50
they're taking from us and they're giving to them. You know, they are essentially pilfering the treasury for their friends, right?
Corey
30:57
And that's a very dangerous place if Albertans start to believe that. does
Annalise
31:02
does some lots to kind of pull apart there but that righteous indignation do you think it crosses i guess crosses political parties and also hits like who you know there's people in the middle that could go either way and i'm just thinking um of a certain columnist in this city like conservative columnist who back in my herald days i spent a lot of time with um we
Carter
31:25
named names here Annalise we name name yeah
Annalise
31:27
yeah yeah Rick Bell like Rick Bell yeah
Annalise
31:31
hates this stuff right like hates that they are taking from me and giving to their friends and that like that you you saw it today too with the story about the sole source um contracting to someone who was on Danielle Smith's campaign team like those sorts of stories where it's $70,000 it's a small amount of money it's pennies in like the scheme of things but it's an amount people can understand and oh they're giving to their friends like i guess do you want to speak to if you think this is kind of framing that works and gets the voters that the ndp needs to get of
Corey
32:04
of course and and in some cases the smaller the amount the the quote-unquote better for a tax you think of bev oda or her expensive but affordable orange juice right you could go out and what was 18 or something like that you know it's an amount you can wrap your head around and say why am i paying for that right what in the the world is the justification for that and so you know you you are going to end up in a situation if you're danielle smith with examples big and small and if your thing is um i don't know education you're going to be able to say that is x number of schools if your thing is health care that is y number of doctors if your thing is um going outdoors and and hanging out like you two to do for some reason well then you've got that ready-made example we've already talked about you know here's here's the new fee you have to pay here's the new money that people tearing up the land get to get to benefit from so yeah i i think that that's a real a real challenge for the smith government going forward yeah
Carter
33:07
yeah i think that this is a real problem uh i mean the smith government
Carter
33:13
making mistakes that they shouldn't be making the other thing is that this goes against their central brand their
Carter
33:18
their central brand is supposed to be fiscal conservative and they're not being fiscally conservative at all instead
Carter
33:24
instead what they're doing is they're giving money out to their friends right to them to them and the r-star thing is a great example you know just giving more money to murray edwards at the same time they're telling murray edwards hey don't worry we're here to help build your arena that was something that you know everybody talks about how you know redford spent spent too much money or these these you know redford was a bad premier tell you what redford didn't do she didn't help build the uh the
Carter
33:52
the stadium you know the arena in edmonton because she didn't want our dollars going to that and all of a sudden now danielle smith this physical conservative is giving more and more and more to you know to people who aren't us and i think that that's where the ndp really has an opportunity to dig into this it's just it's people who aren't us and you know you mentioned that seventy two thousand dollar contract and and honestly i i i heard the story and i went well it's
Carter
34:25
it's only seventy two thousand dollars and then you remember oh yeah you know it's the stuff like the thousand dollar a month no meat committee oh my god we just got crushed because you know what would you do annalise with an extra thousand dollars a month I guess, you know, because you're hosting the podcast, but you know, this is go
Carter
34:46
buy that merch. Yeah. Go. Yeah. Uh, www.thestrategist.ca. Um, get a mug, maybe a t-shirt. I, did we have the onesie, the baby onesie up there?
Corey
34:58
we do. We put it up in commemoration of Zane's baby. We have a baby onesie up there. Yeah. So
Carter
35:02
So far we've sold one.
Corey
35:04
To Zane. Yeah. To me that I bought. Corey
Carter
35:08
In fact, I think, Corey, that you and I are the largest purchasers combined of the, oh no, RA2
Carter
35:13
RA2 is the largest purchaser. The
Carter
35:16
The company that I work with. There you go. Never mind.
Annalise
35:22
What, so, I was going to say something, but I've totally lost my train of thought, Carter, with your
Carter
35:30
your promo there. It happens, yeah. yeah what
Annalise
35:34
should the ndp like you kind of mapping out and
Annalise
35:39
we've chatted about before maybe this um tendency to like latch on to things and obviously a couple months before an election they need to focus are
Annalise
35:49
are you saying that there needs to be this like push for the narrative and the framing of pay
Annalise
35:56
pay country these guys take your money and they give it to other people Well, Carter, you've got thoughts. I
Carter
36:01
I mean, Corey, when did we start talking about the NDP need a narrative?
Carter
36:07
was in November, October. I mean, like the NDP need a narrative. Of
Corey
36:11
Of what year? Like 2020?
Carter
36:12
2020? The NDP need a narrative because the NDP have just been simply providing opposition services. So opposition services is essentially whatever press release comes out of the government today. We are going to oppose it. It is bad. And that's been the NDP. they are all over everything all at once and even with their health care announcement which i personally loved last you know was it last week that health care announcement yeah was stepped on immediately by their mlas they all started talking about other things that mattered to them i'll tell you what matters to you guys fucking health care your party put out its first big fucking platform you don't speak of anything else for at least 14 fucking days shut up do what you're told talk about this issue every time you think you've got a better issue you're wrong and that's been that's been the pattern that they've been doing they need to find this narrative whether it's this us versus them you know us versus them narrative whether it's a narrative of you know families first what do we do like we did 13 different slogans before we've done all kinds of different narratives for them we have given six different narratives on this podcast alone pick one go with it and once you've chosen the narrative don't give up on it because you don't have any more time anymore you've got to stay with the narrative because while we're paying attention every single day the
Carter
37:31
the average person does not pay attention they don't know what's going on until we repeat it a thousand fucking times cory
Annalise
37:40
cory on that i remember my question now that i forgot on the righteous indignation stuff how different is it the fact that you have Rachel Notley, who was in power for four years, like has that happened before elsewhere, where you have someone
Annalise
37:55
someone who was premier for four years, and now she's been in opposition for four years. And now she's going up against Daniel Smith. And she can point to her track record from being like, you know, that us versus them. She has that four year track record.
Corey
38:10
Yeah. And you know, CBC had some polling last year that showed that Albertans increasingly increasingly think more fondly of the Rachel Notley years, right? This is something that just got people thought more fondly of the George W. Bush years afterwards, like time does tend to put that shine on people. So yeah, it's uncommon. You don't often see this. You don't often see the rematch, although we might see one between Trump and Biden, if we're lucky, coming forward here too.
Corey
38:38
And because of that, I think some of the dynamics maybe don't hold in the same way. Usually the opposition leader is less known than the premier. This
Corey
38:49
This is probably the first time in a while that the opposite is true. Now I say usually because sometimes you get a new premier, they're unknown, the opposition leader's been there for a while, flips, but to have two people who are both so well-known by Albertans with such well-defined brands in the province of Alberta, it's going to be interesting because it does mean that there's a certain less
Corey
39:11
less variability than you would otherwise. wise expect to see in an election you know there's fewer people up for grabs people have opinions those opinions are going to be held pretty firmly they're going to be harder to change
Corey
39:22
carter his point though about narrative i think i think needs to be underlined but also a little bit of an asterisk put on it here like so i i hundred percent agree now's the time you just gotta you gotta run your strategy out yes you want to take opportunities as they arise but those opportunities need to be in service of the strategy right it can no longer be a thing where you're just pinging off random fucking media hooks. That's not a very good strategy at this point. That's, the
Corey
39:49
metaphor here is music, right? You've got the volume. You've got to create the melody. Right now it feels like a cacophony to too many people. That
Corey
39:57
That said, we are judging it, I think, in part through our, you know, hyper-engaged lens of what's going on on Twitter, what's going on in the news releases, the emails going out, all of that.
Corey
40:08
Hope to God, hope to God that most of the activity and paid and most of the activity that's happening out of like the leader of the official opposition is all on health care and insofar as we're talking about corruption and graft and and you know entitlement and the idea that people might be using money to to better the people they like and leaving the rest of us in the dark the
Corey
40:29
the examples go back to health care and education and that core strategy like that this is the time now right this is the opportunity the stakes are are still around the the framing that you need it to be um but yeah like i do want to put that asterisk i
Corey
40:44
think sometimes people overreact to tweets i
Corey
40:48
i guess right like that that doesn't mean that's what the ndp is talking about today it's
Carter
40:53
it's not about what they're talking about it's about you know i mean sure yes they can have a paid advertising campaign but everybody has to be speaking singing from the same songbook if we're going to go back to your like the the thing is a A good narrative takes
Carter
41:06
takes any issue that you present to it and can be grabbed within it. So, you know, we told
Carter
41:12
told the story that Alison Redford was the mother of a young daughter, daughter of aging parents, right? There is not a single issue that presented itself in that campaign that could not be framed within that framework, right? If we were talking about roaming charges, we were talking about how parents went to Mexico with their kids and their kids had an iPad, just like Corey, and they racked up the roaming freeze now this was back when roaming fees were a thing but you know this is yeah you know the whatever the story is if it's high if it's higher education i can wrap a story and around you know us and them or i can wrap a story around you know mother of a young daughter daughter of aging parents i can do all you know we need more caregivers for our seniors and we also need more opportunity for our children you know there's virtually every story can be done in that that way and most importantly analyze we can see ourselves in that story so with this uh you know with the with the the the earth being torn up by these pickup trucks and you know eight million dollars being spent on on uh on trails for off off highway vehicles the
Corey
42:21
the ski mobiles these
Carter
42:23
these things you know we can easily fit that into a narrative right and we can make it into you know that that's not the future that we want for our children, right? Or we, or it is our, you know, and whatever it may be, we can fit into our narrative. Um, the us versus them works really well. Them, they got their fucking off highway vehicle use, but what do we get? Those of us that, that aren't up there, you know, revving up our engines that aren't ignoring climate change, aren't making, you know, that are making better decisions. What are we getting for our future? future and
Carter
42:56
and you know i think that there's tremendous
Carter
42:58
tremendous opportunity to develop this narrative to develop the uh
Carter
43:06
uh for people to see themselves in the ndp story and i think that this has been the challenge cory i i'm not just complaining about this this the you
Carter
43:16
know the social media what i'm complaining about is i you know every you know when you talk to people in calgary they just don't see themselves in the ndp story or
Carter
43:23
or at least they pretend not to see see themselves in the ndp story and that might be the more truthful
Carter
43:28
truthful reality is they don't see you know they pretend not to see themselves but we best find a way to actually ensure that they have to see themselves or the ndp doesn't win the next election so
Annalise
43:39
so you're saying that story needs to be stronger so that the story
Carter
43:42
story the storytelling also like it's it's a it's not a strong enough story and the storytelling is not committed they're not committed to the story yet yeah
Corey
43:52
yeah it's It's a great point. You know, Stephen, so when I give presentation training seminars, like in kind of the more advanced ones, I talk about these things you can layer on that really make people remember and latch onto your story. So this is like the aspirational, like the we choose to go to the moon stuff, right?
Corey
44:10
But one of the ones that shouldn't be underestimated or underappreciated is kind of like the
Corey
44:17
the place for anecdote, right?
Corey
44:19
And personal narratives and stories and how you can get people to put their guard down and interpret things in a way that doesn't seem threatening. Because you're not telling a story about them, you're telling a story about you. And so what you did with Alison Redford and that mother of a young daughter of aging parents was she could tell stories about herself that
Corey
44:41
that didn't immediately get people's backs. I'm saying that's not my existence. That's not my life. That's not going to happen to me. And she was able to tell these narratives and these stories that that did connect
Corey
44:51
connect her to people who had similar problems, because once their walls were down, once fight or flight wasn't activating, they weren't feeling threatened. They were hearing the story because it was someone else's emotional journey. You know, and I've always thought like personal narratives are a bit of a hack that way, right? They allow you to get past people's guarded, that's not me defense, because you're not saying it's them. And I do think the NDP struggle a little
Corey
45:15
with that, right? Right. They struggle a bit with making it not about the policy, but making it about that human. Because
Carter
45:20
Because they always open with Albertans want.
Carter
45:23
Who the fuck are Albertans? Right. Tell me who I am. Tell me a story that I can relate to.
Corey
45:29
Do you think, you know, and the NDP have perpetual debates about, are we saying everyday Albertans, ordinary Albertans, working Albertans? But all of them miss the point because you're talking about Albertans, this broad, vague group. Tell me. You're not talking about. Tell me a story
Annalise
45:43
story about storytelling. Do
Annalise
45:45
Do you think the storytelling changes a little this election round with the like the candidates that they have? They have a lot stronger candidates than four years ago and ones that should have good,
Annalise
45:59
good, strong storytelling abilities?
Corey
46:04
well it can and should help in a local writing but let's be super clear that
Corey
46:09
that they are not going to be carrying the narratives in in the province-wide fight that's going to be the battleships fighting each other that's going to be danielle smith versus rachel notley that's who the media is going to follow around uh insofar as local candidates are part of that story it will be standing next to the leader it will not be uh them themselves with big splashy profiles profiles, God, the newspaper barely exists anymore. But even when it did, it would be like one day during the campaign, there would be, you know, you'd be one of three riding profiles
Corey
46:37
day. Right. And so it's like, it's, it's not something where you can say, okay,
Corey
46:43
okay, yeah, sure. This is a challenge, but Luann Metz, you know, great candidate in Calgary Varsity for the NDP. She's going to be able to tell the story. No, I mean, to the people of Varsity, sure.
Corey
46:53
In a very limited sense outside of that, but
Corey
46:56
but very, very limited. it okay
Annalise
46:58
let's leave that one there and do okay cool we're
Annalise
47:02
we're leaving that one we're doing a quick third segment uh carter we've talked about this i'm the host i'm choosing what we're doing a quick third segment um
Annalise
47:10
um cory what do you think guys
Carter
47:13
what do you think guys
Corey
47:15
i don't think i can i don't i don't think we're allowed 15
Annalise
47:17
15 minute cities uh you guys live in one i do a 15 minute neighborhood we can walk bike to amenities schools coffee shops grocery stores daycare it's a dream um this term 15 minute city has weirdly been in the news a lot lately uh i don't know if you guys have been paying attention but because
Annalise
47:38
because people in edmonton are being locked in their little districts and banned from going anywhere more than 15 minutes away right that's what's happening it's why we don't go to edmonton um
Carter
47:50
um so all that leads to the strategy
Annalise
47:52
strategy strategy question here uh carter let's let's start with you on this because i you you've got things to say how how do you communicate how do you do strategy how do you talk about policy today in 2023 in a world where like literally anything can be spun into literally any type of conspiracy theory well
Carter
48:13
well it's not just i mean it's just an outward out no lie right and so cory and i like You can't equate spin to lying. It really bothers me when we do that because spin isn't lying. Spin is putting a version of the truth forward that favors me, right? To say that people are going to be locked in their communities is an out-and-out lie. It's bullshit. It's just absolutely a lie. And everybody who lives in a 15-minute community, like Brett Wilson, for example, when
Carter
48:43
when you live close to all of these amenities, you take it for granted. it you you come to understand how great that is but if you live up in you
Carter
48:51
you know coventry hills i mean i don't even know where these communities are they're so far out they're so far away from things that your your life becomes fundamentally different because now you are doing 30 minute drives to get to places 30 minute uh commutes to get to get to places and then another hour hour commute just to get to your workplace this to me is the antithesis of a good life uh it is the the price that people have been paying for living in cheap housing cheaper housing not cheap because um you know they all need their 2400 square feet and a bonus room over the garage but this is you
Carter
49:31
you know how do you combat lying it is actually one of the great challenges challenges of politics right now, Annalise. And I think that we've been trying to deal with it through the Trump years and through, you know, watching people try and correct lies. We've been watching the backfire effect. When you point out what the truth is, you actually reinforce the lie. How
Carter
49:56
How do you combat lies when people choose to believe the unbelievable? How do you combat that? And I don't have an answer, but I think that the genius that we love to call Corey Hogan probably does. Corey, what's your answer? Carter,
Annalise
50:11
Carter, I thought you'd— Oh,
Carter
50:12
Oh, I'm not the host.
Annalise
50:12
Oh, now you're the host? Not
Carter
50:14
Not the host. I did that wrong. Sorry,
Annalise
50:17
you'd have an answer there. There's
Carter
50:19
There's no answer for
Annalise
50:20
for lies. You really answered my good question by just saying no answer. There's no answer for
Annalise
50:26
Corey, let's turn it to you. like how what
Annalise
50:29
what is the answer and I guess what do you think of like and what Edmonton you know there's been some city councillors weighing in there's been like this senior city planner who faced protesters like what
Annalise
50:41
do you think of what they are you know they're not ignoring it and hoping that it like fades away there some of them are trying to kind of confront
Annalise
50:48
confront it head on on with like crazy people like what uh what
Annalise
50:55
what what what is the answer yeah
Corey
50:58
yeah so i i do agree first of all with carter about spin versus lies people don't think about the word spin very much because it has been abused people talk about spinning when they're just outright line but it like think about the word it means take an issue and turn it think about it from a different lens that's spin that's saying okay you're thinking of it this way i'm asking you to think about this thing this It does not mean lying. It does not mean making things up. This is lying and making things up. The 15-minute city stuff is really, I think, baffling and probably, unfortunately, emblematic of just discourse right now. But the idea that groups can come out and say things that I think would be fairly non-controversial, you know, a decade ago, like, hey, we should make sure that neighborhoods have amenities and that they're kind of self-sufficient and sustaining. And people would look at that and say, you're trying to separate us into zones. This is all part of a global world order. And soon we won't be able to travel between zones without passports in our own city. And this is tyranny. It's bonkers. bonkers um and then to have people stand up and have to say no we're not planning to have you have to have a passport between zones to steven's point actually does introduce a backfire effect it's so bonkers that we would have to say like there's going to be people who even hear this right now and are going to be sitting there thinking like a day later like yeah
Corey
52:18
yeah i'm sure that's not what's happening but this would enable it or that's crazy right now like it's just it is kind of like this you
Corey
52:24
you know this thought contagion you put it in there and you can't stop but think about the potential negative effect and some people really latch on to it there and so we do run into a challenge where any refuting almost becomes evidence of it why are they even talking about it why would they even mention passports if they're not thinking about passports and so
Corey
52:42
yeah i mean the best thing would be for all of us just to ignore it but that's impossible right
Carter
52:49
it's not impossible to ignore it it
Carter
52:50
it can be ignored if we choose to as a society ignore a certain subset of the population and say we are going to put up with 20 of the population having absolute looney tunes ideas and we're fine with that i
Carter
53:04
think we can ignore it
Corey
53:05
just you can't i don't think you can be fine with that though i guess as much what do
Annalise
53:09
do you think like edmonton planners
Annalise
53:11
planners like administration and council should be doing right now they
Carter
53:16
they should We talked about an inoculation campaign a couple
Carter
53:23
couple weeks ago with you, Annalise, where we were talking about you have to be able to inoculate the people who are susceptible to this type of information. So what you need to do is you need to communicate with people who are kind
Carter
53:34
kind of closely associated with this, who could be trapped into this type of communication, not by refuting, but instead by telling what it is. right? Would you like, and it always has to be benefit-focused communication, right? Would you like more amenities in your community?
Carter
53:52
You know, so right now we've identified that the three amenities that are missing from your community, this is how I would do it, community
Carter
53:58
community by community, the
Carter
53:59
the three amenities that are missing from your community that would make it more walk, you know, more affordable, I wouldn't even put it into the 15-minute community language because that's not language we use, make it more convenient, make it more affordable, make it better for your family, say, we think that if there was a grocery store close by, if we think that there was a town center with small shops, you could buy your baked goods or your shoes,
Carter
54:30
shoes, community retail. We think that like a high street, we wouldn't call it a high street because of course, we don't know what a high street is in Canada. But we could talk about the ideas of the benefits that we're going to get. all too often what we choose to do is communicate how someone else is wrong don't do that ignore that person who's just who's spouting the misinformation and instead say would you like more grocery stores would you like there to be more more more fields more soccer fields so you don't have to travel as far would you like there to be a high street where you can go and buy the things that you need when
Carter
55:04
when you need them if
Carter
55:06
if that's important to you then we'd like to help you in your community then ask us to do this type of work in your community because that's what you deserve
Corey
55:14
yeah you you know carter i would go even further and i think you're on the right track um if the threat is you're going to be locked down i would actually make the language about options like we want you to have more options in your community more options for shopping more options for eating more options for recreation in communities around here too and maybe even say like and in adjoining communities right like really sort of refute the idea you're going to be locked into one area but But you want to be like, instead of driving across the city and going past two leisure centers, we want you to be able to go by 12
Corey
55:46
whatever and make it about choice, not the limiting of choice. Because frankly, that's what it is. I think about my neighborhood. I think about where I live. And listen, there's a lot of good reasons to live out in the suburbs if that's the lifestyle you're looking for. You're looking for more space. More space for your
Corey
56:04
For your ski mobiles in the garage, in your four-car garage. Yeah.
Corey
56:08
right? That's all cool with me. If that's what you're willing to do and that's what you're willing to pay for, God love you. But when I think about my neighborhood, I
Corey
56:17
I am staggering distance. I'm less than 10 minutes away, probably less than five minutes away from two supermarkets, three other convenience stores. I got choices, man. I don't feel locked into a zone. I feel like I've got more choices than anybody who's living down in Shaughnessy, for example, right? Right. And they're all right there for me. Like, you know, my big choice is like, do I want to walk or drive? Because if I walk, I've got within 15 minutes, 10 options. And if I drive within 15 minutes, I've got 20
Carter
56:49
But I think that what's important with this, what's important with this, Annalise, is to understand that this is about inoculating people who are susceptible to the message.
Carter
56:58
Right. It's not necessarily that you're going to get everybody to understand, you know, buy into your, You're not going to convince those who are already convinced that you're evil, that
Carter
57:06
that you're not evil. Don't try that.
Annalise
57:08
So ignore them. You're saying ignore those folks. Once
Carter
57:10
Once we've made a decision, it is so costly. And I mean literally costly to try and change someone's mind. It is inordinately
Carter
57:19
inordinately expensive and requires too much time and too much effort. And you're most likely to fail. to fail but if you can inoculate others who are susceptible to the same message from receiving and understand if if instead when somebody comes to you and says 15 community minute community they're trying to keep you in your community if you're already received a positive message that says actually what that is is that's about a grow a grocery store then you're going to be like you are inoculated against the negative and that's where everything kind of has
Carter
57:51
has to begin is an an inoculation campaign and and uh too few communications professionals actually understand how to defeat misinformation um because you have to you can't defeat it with the people who understand it and believe it you must stop others from catching the virus
Corey
58:13
it's it's not you know the the quote-unquote inoculated here in your metaphor are also the best chance you have of changing the mind of the people who are truly lost in this stuff right because they're the
Corey
58:23
who are going to be deeply engaged in the conversation have that peer-to-peer conversation saying like you know bill i actually think you're a little nuts on this right like oh you know um uh
Corey
58:33
uh yeah i'm not going to tell that story but let's just say i've seen this in action i've seen i've seen people who have held some pretty out there views and uh you know when confronted by talking to a relative of theirs in another province who said what the fuck are you on about like those views melted away right because you know all of a sudden their peer thinks they're looking looney tunes right like they they popped the bubble because they were they were somewhat inoculated by it and so i think um i think though that i also want to say this
Corey
59:04
this is also politics 101 right
Corey
59:07
people spend so much effort trying to change the minds of the diehard partisans on
Corey
59:12
no you know you we talk about all the time that movable middle what are you doing to enforce your messages with them and you can take similar inoculation manipulation strategies. If you are Rachel Notley, and you are looking at people on sort of the rightward flank of your coalition, and you know, there are certain things that that flank is going to be exposed to that they're going to find appealing from the Danielle Smith campaign, you inoculate them, you provide that counter messaging, the positive counter messaging that gets them ready that when their friend comes and says, Rachel Notley wants to destroy the oil and gas industry, right? Now, again, very targeted, you don't make this your global message, right? Right. Say, look, no, actually, Rachel Notley did these three things and in fact, created more money that allowed us to support education and health care. Right. Get back to that key message all of the time. But but this is a general approach to communication in in
Corey
1:00:01
in controversial communications, contentious communication. You
Annalise
1:00:03
You guys have both been in politics for a while, Carter, especially you.
Annalise
1:00:10
Really nice. is miss is
Annalise
1:00:18
are are we at a you know post-trump and post-covid and where we're at right now like i'm just something like this i feel like 10 years ago it
Annalise
1:00:28
it wouldn't have even been a story because it would have been like no one would give media coverage to like weird conspiracy theorists like is is is misinformation has it is it worse has it it changed a lot in your time in politics carter yeah
Carter
1:00:42
yeah i mean there's a whole new type of both sides ism uh that didn't used to exist i mean i think that media always believed that there were multiple sides to a story but they never believed that falsehoods and fake you know and and lies were part of were a part of that um they believed that there were there were multiple truths to be sure But never were they going to fall into the trap of reporting a fake,
Carter
1:01:09
fake, you know, a false story as potentially true. And really, I mean, you kind of go back to Reagan. And when Reagan, oh,
Carter
1:01:18
oh, it was the Fair Communications Act, I think, Corey, in 1982 or
Carter
1:01:22
or something like that, that he repealed. Yeah,
Corey
1:01:25
Yeah, I don't know the year, but yeah, I know
Carter
1:01:27
talking about it. And he repealed that act, and what happened was you went from having to provide fair, honest, truthful communications about things to being able to present your side of the story without having to present the other side. And that fundamentally changed the playing field. It was immediately taken by—and Christians may forgive me or may not— But it was taken by the fundamentalist Christian community and they created their own pathway
Carter
1:01:58
pathway of new information and new thoughts about information.
Carter
1:02:05
that's what ultimately created the Rush
Carter
1:02:07
Rush Limbaugh's of the world. And then Canada being the follower that we are, you know, we followed the same path. We, we, we jumped on board, um, this fake news environment and, uh,
Carter
1:02:25
uh, the media fundamentally changed. And then you couple that with the downturn, you know, with the increase of the internet and the downturn in, in traditional media. And it's just a, it's
Carter
1:02:36
it's just on, it's,
Carter
1:02:38
it's, there's no way to undo it because no one wants to invest in it. I mean, we're watching Fox News get absolutely destroyed because they—well,
Carter
1:02:48
they—well, not destroyed, but they should be getting destroyed—because Fox News reported things that they knew weren't true. They knew they weren't true, but they reported them anyways because they wanted to try and steal viewers back from Newsmax.
Corey
1:03:03
Yeah, you see, you know what? That is a narrative, right? I actually disagree with almost all of what Stephen said.
Carter
1:03:09
said. Oh, my God. You're so wrong. wrong tell
Annalise
1:03:11
tell us why cory oh my god well
Corey
1:03:13
well let's start with the fairness doctrine it only applied to broadcast you know a lot of what you're talking about would have been allowed on cable anyhow second of all broadcast
Carter
1:03:22
broadcast was a lot of countries
Corey
1:03:23
countries didn't have a lot of countries didn't have the fairness doctrine and including canada and we ended up going down the same sort of dark alleyways that the united states did i
Corey
1:03:33
i think the thing is there's two things at play one is it's for it's for sure worse it's for sure worse than it's been in years past but it's not i'm not even convinced it's worse than it was in the 50s and 60s you know like we had a we had quite an interesting bubble uh of of broadcast news where we all sort of got two sides of an issue and people decided you know like this media establishment what those two sides were but that was a bubble bubble
Corey
1:04:02
gang like that was not normal in the course of human history that wasn't it
Corey
1:04:07
you know that was because television it
Carter
1:04:09
it was created for a moment it was created because we introduced two new mediums radio and television and before that we had print which was the wild wild west if you ever want to have fun take a look at the uh you
Carter
1:04:23
you know the way the media was owned by you know you could own your own printer and i think alexander hamilton owned one thomas jefferson and owned another and they just fucking ripped each other to shreds i know because i saw the musical hamilton um
Corey
1:04:36
yeah now it's now we now we do that now
Carter
1:04:38
now we do it with podcasts and the hurley burley sucks anyways my point is this you
Carter
1:04:43
you you you when we introduced two new mediums that were going to be stronger and have more power necessarily than the then the the the single then the the newspapers and that required special access we
Carter
1:04:57
we controlled when when the government started handing out licenses and started handing out frequencies they had a responsibility to ensure that the information that was going on to those light onto those frequencies was in some fashion controlled uh
Corey
1:05:12
uh for fuck's sake there were three channels and a segregationist got like 30 of the vote in the united states like that's just wrong i
Carter
1:05:19
i disagree with you like
Carter
1:05:21
we're being wrong in this shiny
Carter
1:05:23
view you being wrong is the new part of the the podcast that i like the best um there's
Carter
1:05:29
i like you people create everybody
Carter
1:05:31
everybody else likes you being wrong too you were wrong with the canadian anthem and you're wrong now sit there in your wrongness and feel you know i'm
Corey
1:05:38
i'm right about the canadian that carter
Annalise
1:05:39
carter what was your what was your point you were like my point is but then and you never said what your point was.
Annalise
1:05:51
Okay, next round, lightning round. We'll keep this nice and quick. It's budget day next week. In preparation, the finance minister in Alberta did his, like, boot thing today. He
Annalise
1:06:07
He polished up an old pair of boots. um lightning round love it or leave it the budget day photo op tradition cory why do we still do this uh
Corey
1:06:19
uh i don't know so it's a canadian thing i don't know how many people realize other countries don't do it's not a westminster parliament thing like australians don't do this british people don't do this canadians do this our finance ministers shine up their shoes buy new shoes do crazy virtual reality shoes like joe cc did in one tragic tragic budget photo of that
Corey
1:06:42
fuck i have so many thoughts about we
Annalise
1:06:44
we should do a whole episode on that i was thinking about that today that was so oh anyways love it or leave it it was yeah
Annalise
1:06:51
the the photo tradition budget shoes i
Corey
1:06:54
i have a real love hate relationship with it i in government i ranted against it i was was like i can't believe how much time we spent talking about this this is actually a fairly low value communications activity um i tried to convince uh the minister of finance travis taves actually in 2019 that
Corey
1:07:11
that the budget photo op should be him sending a cancellation of the budget photo op as a limited like one-time reduction in budget photo ops you know in keeping with the spirit of the budget actually that was kind of fun he
Annalise
1:07:24
he could have ended it he's a little
Annalise
1:07:26
once them for all he's
Corey
1:07:27
he's a little more staid than that though and he's like no i'm just gonna like put on my old boots or something like that that's fine but um yeah
Corey
1:07:35
yeah i don't know i mean i don't want to take all of the joy out of politics i like we have our own little traditions but holy fuck do we spend a lot of time obsessing about these things when we're in government and uh most of the ideas that people come up with are just not very good right like i i challenge you both right now think of a great budget shoe photo op no
Carter
1:07:57
there's no such thing like
Corey
1:07:57
like not like that's fine they've
Annalise
1:08:00
been done it's like people people try and be all quirky and different and like you pull out the ski mobile put on the virtual reality you're on your
Corey
1:08:09
your ski mobile with your snow ski yeah yeah
Annalise
1:08:13
carter love it or leave it the budget day photo op tradition i
Carter
1:08:17
if you could come up with something better do it but you know if you can't come up with something better then you may as well i mean the problem that i have is that they've all been answered
Annalise
1:08:26
answered that at all you
Carter
1:08:28
know what is this
Carter
1:08:29
first fucking time listening to the podcast love it or is this your first time is this your first time we
Carter
1:08:35
we never answer the question it's a foundation of the podcast okay moving
Annalise
1:08:39
moving on lightning round raj sherman
Annalise
1:08:45
i don't i don't know his uh this is his thing is ucp nomination was uh tonight i don't know if either of you can quickly google it well i'm googling who he is yeah
Annalise
1:08:56
uh he's an emergency room doctor he's been a pc mla he's been leader of the alberta liberal party he wanted to run for ucp leadership but wasn't allowed tonight he's running for ucp nomination uh
Annalise
1:09:09
uh votes have have been cast do we know did he win we
Carter
1:09:12
we don't have it yet okay we
Annalise
1:09:13
we don't have it yet so the lightning round question let's
Annalise
1:09:16
let's say you're advising raj raj let's say he fails tonight in becoming a ucp candidate but he really still wants to be in politics let's say you're advising him lightning round what's the strategy to get raj elected like does he go municipal does he go federal how do we get him to be a politician well
Annalise
1:09:41
i can tell you love well
Corey
1:09:43
like i had the job of advising raj sherman let's
Annalise
1:09:47
you have it again all these years there's
Corey
1:09:50
there's a non-zero chance if he loses he calls me he's gonna call you later tonight like what you're describing you're nicer than i i don't think so yeah
Corey
1:09:59
yeah yeah well that's a low bar but look i think i
Corey
1:10:03
i a i i've said this before on this show, like, I think he just needs better hobbies. Like, I don't think he should be in politics anymore. He's obviously been bitten by the bug. He wants to be involved. He gets some juice out of it. He wants to help. He's an emergency room doc. He should find different ways to help. That's my fundamental belief about Raj Sherman. If he was so inclined to get involved in politics again, he
Corey
1:10:25
he needs to put himself on the bench. Like, let's think about all of the things he's done like he was a PC MLA he was a junior like a parliamentary secretary or something he crossed to be an independent he played footsie with the NDP with the Greens with the Alberta Party with the Liberals joined the Liberals joined the Liberal leadership won the Liberal leadership ran in that election under like a very left-wing platform which I know because I wrote it he then veered hard to the right again after he was elected so he went kind of like right left right right all the way through there he resigned just before the next election which made david swan the leader um he told anybody he could talk to that like he was very happy that rachel notley won as a result of that so again we're talking now veering back more towards the left disappeared for a while came back out of nowhere to run for the conservative leadership uh under you know which daniel smith won that's a weird thing to do at that particular moment um and then And then after Danielle Smith wins, the most right-wing candidate in the race, arguably, decides he's going to run for a PC or a UCP nomination. No, like none of this makes any sense. Like, what are you doing? And also, by the way, in Edmonton, Whitewood, writing that, I would bet a lot of money the NDP win by like 40 points.
Annalise
1:11:43
points. That's a kicker in this. Love it.
Corey
1:11:46
Like this is, you mentioned like, how do you get them elected? This is not how you get elected, right? You do not run as the UCP candidate in Edmonton. you
Annalise
1:11:55
carter what's what's your strategy let's say you're advising him and how do we get him elected i'm
Carter
1:12:00
i'm a big fan of reruns and rerunning strategies i think what you do is you you make him the morning show host on uh qr and 630 chad and
Carter
1:12:10
and uh you have him listen to crazy people every day for i think
Carter
1:12:16
think it was six years and uh at the end of that he should be able to become the next premier perfect
Annalise
1:12:23
perfect good strategy no problem we're
Annalise
1:12:25
we're gonna leave it there uh
Annalise
1:12:27
uh that's a wrap yeah
Annalise
1:12:29
yeah we're leaving it there two two question lining around short and sweet it's how i roll uh
Annalise
1:12:33
uh that's a wrap on episode 1038 of the strategist my name is annalise clingbeil and with you as always stephen carter and cory hogan © transcript