Episode 1041: Water's edge

Zain 0:01

This is a strategist episode 1041. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, happy Sunday. Happy big announcement day, Carter. It is here. The big announcement is that we are moving on from the Maharaja to better places to host our live show. That is right, Carter. not possible yeah well it's actually it's not possible the maharaja was not available uh they told us to fuck off and never come never come

Zain 0:27

um but i wish they said they'd be very happy to have us again carter however we're doing a live show and we're doing this one in calgary give people the details because the patrons have already had the details i don't want to waste any time let's do this in the first minute april

Carter 0:38

april 2nd 7 30 p.m uh at the grand theater in calgary tickets are on sale at uh cory what's the website again i can never remember it's the strategist This is where it gets confusing. The

Corey 0:50

strategistlive.ca. It's one of four.

Corey 0:51

four. It's either the

Corey 0:53

the strategistlive.ca, strategistlive.ca, the strategistlive.com, or strategistlive.com. Now, three of those four will

Corey 1:02

will lead to the right place. One

Corey 1:04

One of the four we had to give up because of a legal dispute we had with someone.

Zain 1:10

It doesn't matter who.

Zain 1:11

And I would suggest you do not go to that one, whichever one of the four it is. and it may or may not be thestrategistlive.ca Unless you don't live in Calgary and you're trying to get to Calgary in which

Zain 1:23

you should go to that one as well as the other Well they won't get to Calgary if they go to that one they might as well go to the other three and just buy their tickets and not make any plans to get here because it'll be just as efficient as going to thestrategistlive.ca which is a website they shouldn't go to in order to attend our live show. Carter, there's a few elements that you've missed about our

Zain 1:45

show which is shocker okay

Zain 1:47

okay first of all it is sunday april 2nd does it matter

Carter 1:50

matter if you know it's april 2nd i mean you'll be able to figure it out from the i mean it's our audience i'm sorry you're right our audience will not be able to figure that out that's on me yeah

Zain 2:00

that's good you you're welcome you're welcome carter you and for the audience sunday april 2nd cory this is not a standard show uh this is a special show in preparation of the alberta election do you want want to tell folks what's going on steven

Corey 2:16

myself we're going to square off against each other we're each going to write a strategy for one of the two main parties in alberta here you know the the ucp and the ndp who gets which one is actually a vote that our patrons have right now i'm well you know let's just say currently steven carter 57 of you want him to write the ndp strategy um but given the hard right bend of our fan base i actually assume the 50 of you who want me to write the ucp one is the um you know that's

Corey 2:46

that's kind of like the seal of approval i suppose they

Carter 2:48

they want you to write it so they know how danielle can win that's probably it cory yeah

Zain 2:54

there's also there's also a third we're gonna unset are you gonna be there well i'm not clear on a couple of things here okay a few things okay um there's also a third option which is cory to do both which is the one that a lot want but don't have an option to do no offense carter um uh it isn't i think it's gonna be um this

Zain 3:12

this is gonna be excellent we've not done anything like this before think of it uh like the monk debates without the laurentian elite bullshit uh and the pretension well uh from the host so some of that i mean those are pretty bad so think of it think of it as something better than the monk debates uh think of it as a monk debates meets the strategist uh live show uh meets a dumpster fire yeah uh that i think is a perfect uh yeah perfect sort of uh yeah yeah triangulation of what we're gonna see i will be there Now, I'll be there in special guest format, which means I get to pop in however I want. This will be quartered back by our longtime host. I'm just going to look here, Chester. Chester will take the reins in the form of Annalise in this show, and we'll quarterback it. Is this like a Being John Malkovich thing? Everything's like a Being John Malkovich thing, Corey. Welcome. It's like adaptation. The whole thing is like adaptation and Being John Malkovich together, combined with a dumpster fire. so that's probably the triangulation of the reference you're looking for which by the way being john malkovich um i don't know if you know this was the prequel today yeah no

Zain 4:17

yeah okay you didn't know that okay perfect excellent uh

Zain 4:19

april 2nd live show steven carter cory hogan vote

Zain 4:26

don't care okay they'll pay endless money these fuckers people

Zain 4:28

people these people do that we are actually 50 sold out that is not there's a lot of bullshit on this show there's two things that are not bullshit number one there are four urls and three of them lead to the ticket spot number

Zain 4:42

two we are actually nearly

Zain 4:44

nearly 50 yeah we are 50 sold

Zain 4:47

everything else we're actually talking to you in abstractions we have no idea how the rest of it's gonna work when i say special guests i might just be there the whole time you might see more of me than anyone else who knows it's quite possible quite possible uh but carter uh we are indeed 50 sold sold out right just for verification from you i know you're handling the ticketing on on which is a yeah which

Carter 5:05

which is a big i went i went and checked today i sent out a graphic of where we are to you guys uh i mean we're

Carter 5:12

we're 50 sold out no one more surprised i think than you zane both cory and i predicted that this is where we'd be because we've done live shows before and we've seen a sales model before like there's no question in my mind we're gonna be sold out by thursday so

Carter 5:26

so if people want to come to the show they have to buy their tickets now um let me

Zain 5:29

me tell you something right

Carter 5:30

right but uh or look for them on markup sites like uh the strategist podcast or whatever if

Zain 5:37

if you think there's a secondary

Zain 5:38

market for that we will set up a secondary market it will be at the strategist live.ca after we sell out yeah yeah i am surprised that we're selling out because we're like the fifth season of a uk tv show which is wait what why are they doing a fifth season didn't they peak like three years ago really that's like us right now carter that's hurtful yeah no there is

Zain 5:56

yeah carter there is uh but surprisingly people are still buying tickets and you can too at the strategist live.com strategist live.com the strategist live.ca don't go there and the strategist live.com there's also probably other sites that you can buy tickets on you can probably go to the grand theater on their website and buy the tickets but why would you do that when we've given you four amazing on-ramps to buy tickets cory anything else to say before we move well we've given them four i didn't say tickets to the show to buy tickets because if they do do go to the other side they can buy tickets right yeah

Corey 6:28

i mean these will for this will this will sell out so our last show was about 400 sold out in about a week our show before that was about 400 sold out in about a week you kind of buy

Corey 6:38

buy now or you're going to be sad about it i think

Carter 6:40

think well by now you can sell them you can sell them for a markup you

Carter 6:46

that's some entrepreneurial investment

Zain 6:49

oh that's like a live show that is the strategist live presents our our live strategy on stage for the ucp the ndp stephen carter cory hogan going head to head annalise quarterbacking and me special guesting it 400 seats grand theater april 2nd carter it's a sunday yeah they

Zain 7:07

they needed to know that it is a sunday okay let's move it on to our first segment our first segment report to obtain a minority report carter china's meddling china's meddling yeah uh

Zain 7:18

uh there is His pushback from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he pushed back at questions on Friday for calling, for wanting the large sort of volume of individuals, the large volume that is now seeming to echo around the halls of Ottawa to call a public inquiry into the claims that Beijing interfered in Canada's recent elections. I'll add plural, Stephen Carter, telling reporters that probes are already underway and are sufficient. This, of course, is on the heels of reporting by The Globe and Mail and by Global News, indicating many things that China interfered in our 2019 and 2021 elections, that there was a gift through a Chinese functionary given to the Trudeau Foundation of $200,000, which they have have recently returned, and that there were attempts for misinformation and disinformation campaigns, as well as localized tactics that tried to swing certain writings. Stephen Carter, we talked about this at the tail end of our last episode, the Patreon episode, and I want to kind of bring people into this. I got your guys' top line thoughts, and I want to do that again, because today I want to spend the majority of this episode talking about the soup that Trudeau's in. Is it too hot? lot is it a soup that he can get out of is it a soup that he should try to get out of but stephen carter on the facts that you see right now the question i asked you last time how fucked is the prime minister let me ask you a different question to kind of make it even more zoomed out even more 30 000 feet um how fucked is the situation in

Zain 8:51

in your mind how fucked is the situation as we know it right now because that's the only way i know how to ask it as we know it right now in your mind as a political practitioner as a political watcher um the situation of chinese meddling and interference into our elections how fucked is it from everything that you know at the i

Carter 9:10

i think it's less fucked than we think it is but probably more fucked than it should be um so i don't believe these giant sweeping state like like the idea that china has influenced our elections um you You know, even the word influence seems to imply some sort of outcome, right? Like that they have, in fact, changed the potential outcome of the election or the direction of the election. I don't believe that to be true. I believe that the, you know, the worst thing that we would have seen is that the Chinese attempted to influence our election with

Carter 9:46

minimal results. Maybe they swung an elect, you know, an individual MP. I'd actually be shocked if that were the case. I think that there are that that would be a very tricky thing for an outside for a foreign government to do. But I'm not surprised that we're seeing allegations of foreign government interference in our elections. That's been ongoing. I mean, we've seen Russia play in the United States. We've seen Russia play across the Western world. I would imagine that Russia is playing in Canada in some fashion. We have enemies throughout the world that want to not necessarily influence the course of action within a specific outcome. We need Justin Trudeau or we need Pierre Pelletier. But what they want to do is sow distrust in the system. And they want to undermine democracy so that democracy becomes a less favorable form of government. And I'm sure that they were active. I'm just not sure what the impact of that action is on our actual elections.

Zain 10:50

Save the thought on undermining democracy and their success on that front. Corey, the question is, how fucked is the situation? I asked you last time how fucked Trudeau is. Trust me, I'll get to that. In your mind, give me your top line view. How fucked is the situation from what we know? And then I'll come back to you, Carter, on your notion of the Chinese interference successfully undermining democracy. But Corey, first.

Corey 11:11

go back and forth on this, Zane, because there's a couple of things that I think we just need to put in perspective. One is that countries influence other countries' elections. They have since the beginning of elections, right? And it happens in ways big and small, in ways that we find offensive and innocuous all of the time. I mean, we have foreign ownership of most of our major press in

Corey 11:31

in this country when we start thinking about post media or at least the print media there, right? Right.

Corey 11:35

You can't tell me that when the owners or when the publishers put out like an editorial on the front page, putting it yellow, saying you've got to do this during the election. And that's that's ultimately traced, you know, not the words, but the ownership goes back to New York City and private equity. Well, is that maybe that should be a problem. Right.

Corey 11:55

Certainly, we've heard all sorts of stories about Russian meddling and Russian interference. interference um you

Corey 12:01

you but you don't have to go back very far in history to find other times where

Corey 12:05

words said money spent has affected elections in the western world and beyond it it happens right and i think we need to start with kind of a baseline this happens and it's probably not a realistic thing to say we are going to absolutely eliminate this we need to talk about what we need to do to manage this in my opinion that includes having an informed electorate that includes having an electorate who is willing to hold people to account for this. But I want to argue the other side that we are in a unique and bigger problem right now, too, and maybe build on some of the points Stephen's made. So one of them is that we're

Corey 12:41

we're now in a much more interconnected world, and there's more tools available to people. And we have a situation now where you can sit in downtown Moscow, and you can have advertisements that are potentially going to affect an election in canada or downtown beijing or whatever you want and that interconnectedness of the world presents i think uh more kind of opportunities for threat that we need to be aware of there too the other is that that influence is now occurring at a like state to person level so you have propaganda coming in disguised

Corey 13:14

disguised as the commentary of other people in your country and it's going to individuals And it's not necessarily being routed entirely through organizations. So we just have more people that we need to have ready and aware of these things and alert to these things. And I do think that our big falling down right now is that people are so fucking

Corey 13:34

fucking gullible and so willing to eat the bullshit that's fed to them if they think it feeds their side or supports their side or is something that reflects the worldview that they want to have. that they're

Corey 13:45

they're digesting a lot of tripe from China, from Russia, from the United States, and frankly, from us as Canadians, too, probably in much larger volumes than most of those other places. So there's a lot going on here. And there's a lot to unpack. But ultimately, this is all creating a bit of a cloud that is causing people to have questions about elections. And while I think that Stephen's probably right, that it's unlikely that we've actually seen any

Corey 14:09

any number of elections flip, I think even one would be surprising to me too, maybe one, maybe two, certainly not enough to change the government at this point.

Corey 14:17

It certainly seems to be the consensus of reporting. We now have a huge percent of Canadians who support the conservatives who believe this election is illegitimate, this most recent election, based on polling that we've seen as of last week. And that's a huge problem. Carter,

Zain 14:31

Carter, I'm going to pick up on exactly that point. You said this concept of the Chinese successfully undermining our democracy. When you can get nearly half of conservative voters to think that the election was stolen, to get a a majority of Canadians, to suggest that there was something going on here in the broadest of terms. Have they already not succeeded, they being China in this particular case? Has this week not been part of the success? They may not have flipped an election, but is this kernel of doubt, this kernel of legitimacy that they have planted in the overall Canadian psyche, not exactly, or at least in part the goal that that many uh foreign actors would want uh playing out in in canadian life sure

Carter 15:13

sure but let's not give them credit for actually creating that i mean what's what's creating the the the negative feeling towards election outcomes that

Zain 15:21

that that's interesting to you what you don't you don't you what do you give me your your your analysis of what what is amplifying this this um this doubt or their skepticism or this no i think you

Zain 15:32

you don't think that's a i

Carter 15:32

i think occam's razor Fraser would indicate that the probably the most likely source of this this lack of trust of the elections comes from the significant lack of trust in the American election down south. I mean, Corey mentioned the the ownership of media being largely American. Well, I mean, sure, he's talking about the newspapers, but where do we get our news from? You know, too many Canadians are consuming Fox News as though it's real news. I mean, we're seeing, you know, the complete, you know, we're seeing really behind the scenes right now with the Dominion voting scandal and how Fox News knew that it was lying to its viewers, but they were doing so for business reasons about the big fraud, about the big steal. deal. When you've got an entire news network that's owned by a different country that is spewing filth within its country, but is consumed within our country, it's no question that it's going to actually have some impact. So I don't believe that just a few headlines saying that China's interfering in our election has done this. What we've done is we've preset the soil. We've tilled the soil with fox news for for two and a half years or two years that that this election has been stolen down in the states and

Carter 16:49

and you can't trust elections unless the republicans win and then it's been jumped on when we've seen the first pieces of evidence in canada that this is going on as well i i think that this is a much bigger point it's much bigger than just one, one, one set of circumstances.

Zain 17:09

Court, can I get your perspective on this too? You know, whether the Chinese have been successful in their, I know it's such a big question to ask, and there's a lot to unpack, but as we're in analysis mode, before we get into strategy mode, Carter makes a point that was definitely unearthed in the United States with Russian interference, which was the big sort of thrust of the Russian interference in the bot farms and the troll farms was to create the conditions that they knew the American public would respond to, that this was already a fractured, divided, polarized, use your word, electorate, and that if they prodded and poked them in certain ways, they would do the work for the Russians, that the Americans themselves with their current state of being would advance Russia's goals without even knowing it because their hatred of each other overarched or was greater than their hatred or their dislike like of any foreign actor or anything beyond the blue and the red. Your thoughts on, you know, the fact that we're having this conversation, perhaps a meta-narrative, but the fact that we're having this conversation this week at this particular volume and pace across the country, isn't that a metric of success to what Chinese interference could look like?

Corey 18:19

Yeah, it's kind of what I meant by this environment being different and our willingness to swallow putting us at risk and that we need as citizens to have better antibodies for this stuff and inoculate against it. Our inability to set aside this partisanship is putting our country at risk. It's put the United States at risk. It's putting democracy at risk. Because, you know, authoritarian countries have come to the very logical conclusion that they can really fuck with us just by making making us fuck with each other. And there's this weird asymmetry to the warfare now in terms of this psychological warfare and this ability to persuade us to, you

Corey 18:59

you know, support something simply because we think it will help the liberals or help the conservatives or help the Republicans or help the Democrats if that's our side, right? And ultimately, yeah, I think that is the bigger risk, although we shouldn't set aside the lower risk with higher consequence, which is swinging in an election. I mean, one of the things I worry about a lot here is, what

Corey 19:20

what does it cost to swing an election? I mean, what does it cost to swing an election? 10 million? 100 million? A billion dollars? I

Corey 19:28

any of those numbers is cheaper than war, cheaper than diplomatic pressure, cheaper than basically anything China could do to try to change the opinions of the Canadian government. And we need to be alert to that and alive to that. And we certainly can't set aside and say, well, it's not a big deal now, as we're considering these things. But I do think that the remedies we need in the long term, I

Corey 19:50

I think we need an inquiry, don't get me wrong. But I think the remedies in the long term are

Corey 19:55

are bigger than inquiries. And they have to do with us turning the page on some very bad habits that we've developed in the past 20 years as democracies. Yeah,

Zain 20:05

I'm gonna take Corey's point that we need long term remedies, but respond to inquiry and then answer the question that he just did. From your

Zain 20:13

your analysis, political observer perspective, do we need a public inquiry, Carter?

Carter 20:19

we don't need a public inquiry. What we need is effective rules and regulations that get to the heart of this. I don't think we're going to learn anything in public. I think that the better place to do this is behind closed doors with bureaucrats and experts that actually understand the nature of the internet, the nature of misinformation, the nature of promoted misinformation by state actors. These are all very complex issues that I think that, you know, you want, you know, the public always pretends that they have the ability to understand these things. They don't. They don't pay attention enough. And especially in today's partisan world, it's going to be grabbed onto by actors like Pierre Polyev, who aren't going to be acting in good faith, who only consider the outcome of the the next election, who don't think about the long term consequence. And they're going to grab this and turn it into a shit show that will benefit them at the cost of the country. And I say that wishing that it weren't true, but knowing in my heart that it is, because every time they have the opportunity to, to rise up and be nonpartisan, even for a moment, they haven't been able to find it within themselves to fight for that which is great for the country. Instead, they only fight for that which is great for themselves. And let's be very clear.

Carter 21:46

There are complicated issues at play here. I mean, we've got right now the United States is looking at this Dominion voting issue, but they're also looking at how whether or not publishers or whether or not internet providers Like TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter are actually publishers, like a newspaper, or if they're like, just like a bookstore, right? They're not responsible for what is published on what is being available and being sold. And what is happening is that because Facebook has an algorithm that changes the way that we see things, that Facebook algorithm is ultimately responsible for a significant amount of the misinformation that is promoted and provided to people. And it's not just Facebook, it's Google, it's YouTube, especially, you know, your what's next recommendations are oftentimes very much leading you down a rabbit hole, because that's where they found they can get the most viewers and keep them for the longest period of time. the american capitalist dream is draining us of the ability to communicate effectively and cory and i've had this argument before right he's always pointed back to uh and i'll let you clear it up afterwards cory i'm not going to make you live in my words but the media has was very clean for like 15 minutes of our history right it was very clean from like the 19 late 1940s to the early 1990s, maybe, depending on how you view the 1980s. That's nothing. That's a blip. When you looked at before, newspapers were torqued, absolutely torqued. And now what we're seeing is that Twitter, Facebook, other big mediums that reach at a level that we never thought possible out of the newspaper business, those things are are now changing our minds at a rate that is incalculably

Carter 23:41

incalculably dangerous for the modern democracy. And China and Russia and others are, you know, rubbing their hands with glee. Because I'll tell you something, there's nothing like a little bit of misinformation to force us into a position where we act like lunatics, as opposed to having, you know, like North Korea's model of being a lunatic outside the frame is not the one that people are looking at now. Now they're looking at how can we be more like Russia, how can we be more like China, and stoke the existing fire rather

Carter 24:14

rather than starting our own.

Zain 24:17

It's a very good point both of you have made here, which is their analysis of the Canadian electorate or the broader electorate. And in some ways, their desire to want, Corey, as you've mentioned on the last show, you know, you kind of made an argument that this is above partisan politics, that we should have this moment here, that the prime minister should take this moment. I'll get to his response and what he should do shortly to kind of try to park the partisanship. In some ways, the best thing China can ask for is that this kind of takes on the partisan divides and the fractures that they have, once again, perhaps want us to pound on. They want us to, in certain cases, pound on. But respond to Carter in his no for a public inquiry. And then, Corey, I know you're going to hate it, but I'm going to get into the parties and the players. Because to Carter's point, Pierre has said Justin Trudeau is bought and paid for by China for the last 10 years. Jagmeet Singh is saying is that his minority government support for Trudeau perhaps might hinge on whether Trudeau calls a public inquiry. So there are politics here. But Corey, before that, respond to Carter on his no for a public inquiry in the face of your yes.

Corey 25:21

Yeah, well, first off, I think Russia wanted chaos. I'm not entirely convinced China wants chaos like that, you know, China, China wants to a certain a certain authority and to get its way. But chaos is not really China's game by and large, right? So I think we have to draw a distinction between the various actors that are out there and what their motivations might be. And that's important, because those motivations matter, as we start thinking about where where the next attack vector may be and what we might need to shore up against, right? And so that needs to be put out there here. Stephen said he doesn't think an inquiry makes sense because, you know, you'll get better analysis internally. And I would say, yes, you will get more sophisticated analysis internally. But I don't think it's better when I think about what my worries about this are. Because again, I don't think an election has actually flipped because of this. I am worried about the poison in the overall body politic. I'm worried about, yes, just one poll that shows A pile of conservatives now thinking the last election was stolen on basically one data point. And Stephen's right. The pump's been primed forever based on the U.S. conversation. But I'm worried about that. And let's be clear about Stephen's let's be clear. He said let's be clear. You know, Pierre Poliev's been acting in a very partisan fashion. The liberals look pretty fucking partisan here. The liberals were given advice at different points over the past five years that China might be involved and influence elections to their benefit.

Corey 26:47

And they seem to have ignored it. And I do wonder if the if the advice had come down that China was trying to influence elections to the conservatives benefit, whether they would have taken the same approach. And I think that's a fair question, and I think it's the kind of question that you do not get to the bottom of by asking the bureaucrats to look at it. That's the kind of thing that requires an inquiry. You need to look at whether the government acted in an appropriate fashion when it was faced with the facts of the day. Now, maybe they've got good reasons for taking the actions they did or the actions they didn't take, but I don't trust the liberals to tell me they did. I don't. I don't, and nobody should. Liberals shouldn't. That way leads to ruin. And that is a madman strategy to say, I'm going to let these foxes tell me the hen house is fine.

Corey 27:30

So, like, that's just my baseline going into it here, Zane. But, you know, ultimately, there's a lot of problems that need to be unpacked. And what I worry about for all of us as Canadians is we're now going to start pinging around like crazy on

Corey 27:42

on like 40 different issues.

Corey 27:45

And, you know, and it's going to get worse, not better. Because what we do need more than anything is to take a breath and say, what are people trying to do? What are we trying to do? How can we act to meet those kinds of goals that we've set for ourselves?

Zain 27:58

ourselves? Carter? Foreign affairs. You're not working for the prime minister just yet. But I'm going to ask you about the prime minister. You're keenly observing Justin Trudeau this past week.

Zain 28:08

Why do you think he's saying no to a public inquiry? Is it, and I'm going to throw out a few options, and it could be none of these, it could be all of these, it could be a convergence of these, is it that they might have something to hide? Is it that he thinks it's going to be wholly unsatisfactory, like that there's not going going to produce the sort of closure that the public wants? Is it because he still wants range of motion to call an election, and he's probably happy to take the licks right now, if that means he can have that range of motion and not have a public inquiry hang over his head? Is it something from your keen political observation, from you knowing Justin Trudeau, from you knowing the liberals? Give me your best take, Carter, because I haven't heard a clarifying take in this past week that I've actually bought into just yet. Maybe you're going to give me one. Why is Justin Trudeau not calling a public inquiry? I

Carter 28:54

I think it's because he knows the complexity of what's behind it. I think that, you

Carter 28:58

you know, this public inquiry, you know, how far is it going to be able to delve into, like, there's certain practicalities that will need to be addressed. How far will the public inquiry be allowed to delve into matters of national security? How would you differentiate between items of political importance and items of national security. Because ultimately, when we're talking about working with foreign governments, we're no longer talking about just simple politics as usual. We're now talking about issues that will have national security ramifications. And doing that type of conversation in public is generally contraindicated because we don't want the public to know. No, we don't want the other side to know what we know about them. We may not even want to know. We may not want China to know that they know what they're doing. We know what they're doing. Now that's public. Is that what we actually wanted? Does that make sense? The leak that came out was a leak for a reason. It's because it's not like we've gone out and released this information for public consumption because we think that that's in the best interest of everybody in Canada. It's not. Um, it's probably in our best interest that bureaucrats and, uh, uh, diplomats try and figure out how we're going to deal with China, um, spying on our country, uh, trying to influence our elections and trying to create outcomes that they find desirable, um, using, uh, very, uh,

Carter 30:34

detrimental tools, uh, for the country of Canada. The fact that Justin Trudeau

Carter 30:40

Trudeau has avoided talking about a public inquiry makes sense to me because a public inquiry is going to make a complex situation more complicated. Period. End of sentence. Well,

Zain 30:52

Well, Carter, hold that thought. Hold that thought for a second, because I want to go to Corey on this. Corey, your take. Why has Justin Trudeau refused time and time again, perhaps even to his own sort of detriment in getting sharp elbowed, being called smug, being called like he's trying to hide something? He's spent political capital, whether he knows it or not, whether he likes it or not. He spent political capital this week by refusing a public inquiry. Why do you think he's refused that public inquiry?

Corey 31:20

Yes. So if we want to be charitable, Stevens outlined a list of reasons why, the complexity of the issue, the diplomacy that might be affected by it, the national security considerations here. But the problem with all of that is it still ultimately appears to be to the benefit of the party in power, even if that's kind of like a side effect and not the main effect that they were going after here. So

Corey 31:41

So if what Carter has said is true, if that is the concern that Justin Trudeau had, then

Corey 31:46

then the minute this happened, the minute he got that memo from his security advisor saying China is trying to influence elections,

Corey 31:55

should have talked to those security advisors, said, you don't think it's Aaron O'Toole, you don't think it's Andrew Scheer, whatever the timing was, right? You mean years ago, just to be clear. You don't mean this past week. That's right. I'm talking years ago. But

Corey 32:07

But I'm talking not just years ago, but every time this issue has come up.

Corey 32:11

He should have convened the other leaders, and he should have said, this is what the intelligence says.

Corey 32:16

This is what the possible consequences are. I understand the awkward situation this puts you in. Here is why, as prime minister, I believe I need to not act on this information in this way. and because what's most important to me as the prime minister in a democracy is that we can all agree that this is being done in a fair and open way my commitment to you is this is a matter of statecraft it is way beyond politics and i am involving you in these conversations as we go forward but because to our knowledge nothing like that has occurred right

Corey 32:45

right because the liberals decided to self-manage something that was to the benefit of the liberal party of canada yeah right

Corey 32:52

right There are a lot of questions that need to be asked at this particular moment. So let me give you a bit of an uncharitable read as to why Justin Trudeau didn't do anything about it.

Corey 33:02

Maybe Justin Trudeau didn't do anything about it because he didn't think it was a big deal as long as it was his party benefiting because it seemed like a pretty modest tweaking or thumb on the scale. And ultimately, oh, my God, if I bring this up, I'm going to have candidates who are called into question here, and that's going to hurt. right

Corey 33:21

that's a possibility and that's a reason why i think we need people to get to the bottom of this here carter

Zain 33:26

carter i'm gonna now ask you to work for justin trudeau

Zain 33:29

so you gave me your observations you are team no public inquiry you take on a gig with justin trudeau tonight sunday march 5th and you have seen how friday went you've seen how tense that press conference was or those those questions were with the press you've seen the growing calls of the opposition parties to call a public inquiry. The first question you have to ask for Justin Trudeau when he calls you tonight is, Carter, can I get away? Is there any room for me to not have a public inquiry? What is your answer to him? Or are you saying, sir, it's inevitable at this point? Corey, I'm coming to you with the same question in a moment. It's

Carter 34:03

It's not inevitable at all. But the first, absolute first step to avoiding a public inquiry is what Corey talked about with bringing the other leaders together it it is the

Carter 34:14

the only way that a democracy can function under this type of threat is if everybody is on the same team and bringing everybody onto the same team requires leadership i'll tell you something if this prime minister did brief pierre pauliev and jogmeet singh and now they are taking these public positions they should be roasted they should be absolutely roasted uh by the prime minister and his and his staff you mean

Zain 34:36

mean you mean the public positions i I just talked about what Jagmeet was saying, he's not ruling out

Carter 34:40

out public inquiry for the government.

Carter 34:42

You're playing politics with national security. And you can play politics with a lot of things, but you cannot play politics with national security. And so if they were briefed, then the prime minister's office has the opportunity to roast them, to absolutely just burn them, to point to all the meetings where they were briefed on this scenario. Clearly, because that hasn't happened, one has to assume that the opposition wasn't briefed. The only way you're going to get to avoid a public inquiry is to share all the information that you have with the party leaders and their designated critics to ensure that the information and it needs to be shared in a confidential fashion. That's the only way that this actually proceeds. If it is held internally, if it is continued to be held by the liberals, then they are heading towards a public inquiry. There is no question. They will ultimately have to fail and they may lose their government if they don't, in fact, go that direction. So,

Carter 35:43

you know, they'll wind up caving eventually. So you may as well give the information that you have to the opposition leaders and hope that it's enough and not partisan enough that, you know, the opposition leaders are. And I guess the opposition leaders are mature enough that the opposition leaders don't demand, you know, that public inquiry continue anyways.

Zain 36:10

Corey, you know, when we chatted last on Friday, both of you mentioned Trudeau's kind of fucked on the fine, fabulous or fuck scale, right? You guys qualified that with your own rationale and your own reasoning, Corey. But I'll ask you this.

Zain 36:22

Is a public inquiry inevitable for Justin Trudeau? I don't want to relitigate the past. I just want to flash forward. Same thing to you. You've been hired on tonight to join Carter. Is a public inquiry inevitable? Is all this song and dance that Carter's talking about of briefing folks, is it too late? Are we headed down to public inquiry tracks? Should we just get the shortest distance there and call that shit Monday morning? What do you think, Corey?

Corey 36:46

Yeah, I do think that the challenge with the tactic of bringing in the party leaders at this point is it does seem like it's damage control and not the liberals themselves themselves taking a position on this. Now, depending on the facts at play, it might still be an option, right? You could sit down with Pierre Polyev and Jagmeet Singh and the National Security Advisors team and say, listen, there

Corey 37:09

there are things that have not been in the media, and we need to now talk about them as party leaders. And maybe it was not, you're going to have to eat a little bit of shit and say, I should have brought you in on this sooner. But here is why i had to act the way i did and here you are right would you tell the

Zain 37:24

the how do you tell the public that that's happening or you don't you

Corey 37:27

you don't you don't you don't and you say and so we're all gonna have to cool it right or whatever it is like we just don't know the facts and our imaginations can go further here sure of course they can but

Corey 37:36

ultimately i do think that steven is right like it's all it's got to have external eyes on it and maybe it doesn't need to be an inquiry but it needs to be something that allows us all to have some confidence that there's been some sort of view on all of this here. That's just the challenge that

Zain 37:53

Carter, then, okay, if my question was directly about the public inquiry, and perhaps preventing it if you're Trudeau, what's

Zain 38:00

what's your optimal strategy right now? Like, what is, like, so work together here. Define an optimal pathway going forward for Trudeau on Sunday night, right? I asked you about the public inquiry. Think of all the other instruments that he has, judicial inquiry, Elections Canada, all the others, the bureaucratic version of all this, a parliamentary committee that has been suggested, many different permutations, combinations, instruments. There's other options, dragging your heels, losing more and spending more political capital, because you think that there's a potential road down there. I'm giving you now every option on the table. Start devising the optimal pathway.

Zain 38:33

What's the first building block? Go ahead, go ahead, Corey and then Carter. Corey's clearly very keen to jump in on this. Well,

Corey 38:37

Well, every day that passes and every day that you drag your feet on this, the fewer options you have, right? And the fewer flavors of the options you have. It's like hanging in a report late at school. It

Corey 38:48

It better be great if you're going to hand it in late, right? And the problem is now the expectations are going to continue moving past him until he has no choice but an inquiry. And, you know, we've talked about this before, and it's worth saying again, because it's good advice just in general for life, but certainly in politics, which is don't spend two weeks defending the indefensible, right? Issues management 101, crisis management 101. The first thing I always I always say to my clients, you know, my bosses, anything like that when we're working on a crisis is, OK, but are we wrong? Right. Think about it in terms of, you know, policy and process and content and all of those things. And you say, all right, but but are we actually wrong? Because everybody has an instinct when they're under attack to to defend. Right. It's this fight or flight that's there. And if you're not fighting, you're fighting. And if you're saying all of a sudden they're wrong, fuck them. We're right. You start digging in your heels only to find two weeks later you have no choice. You've just bloodied yourself for two weeks for nothing. And so you've got to put your ego aside. You've got to say, what's the best way out of this? Where do we ultimately think this is going to land? Do we reasonably think we can head off the things that the other people are calling for? And if not, fail fast. Don't spend two weeks defending the indefensible. Move forward.

Corey 40:00

That's advice that you can take not just at the moment, but every moment after. right so on monday call the inquiry would have been better you did it last week still better than calling it next week right you want to have as little time as possible where you're defending the indefensible so

Zain 40:14

so cory is it fair to say that your a version of your optimal strategy would be tomorrow morning call the inquiry i

Corey 40:21

i just i you know what i think that there's got to be two things that happen first i think you have to have a version of that meeting with the party leaders yeah that carter mentioned and we talked about this on the patreon right where you say My advice would be to call the party leaders.

Corey 40:36

I think I was just saying Polyev at the time, but obviously Singh has jumped into this over the weekend in a big way, suggesting that the government itself might fall on this, might be a condition of his support. You call the party leaders and you say, I'm

Corey 40:47

I'm going to call this inquiry because I think we're at the point where we need to for the sake of this democracy. democracy.

Corey 40:54

But listen up. This is way bigger than politics. This is way bigger than one election, way bigger than one party, or even the three parties that are here right now. This is about our country and our system of government. And everyone is going to have to take

Corey 41:07

take this pretty fucking seriously, right? So I'm going to build this. I'm going to build this to the specs that the three of us can all agree with here. I'm going to share with you the

Corey 41:16

the national security considerations that led to some of these activities so we can shape it all right now in a way that's It's going to be as least damaging to our country as possible and most supportive of our democracy as possible.

Corey 41:28

But the flip side of this deal is we

Corey 41:30

we all have to put Canada first here. And I know we're all going to have different views as to what that means, but this can't be about political games. This absolutely cannot be about political games. And when you've had that conversation and when you've shared the intel you think you can share, you call that inquiry and you have the three of you call that inquiry together. You stand up together and say, we take this very seriously. And so we are collectively doing an inquiry with these parameters, this way, and

Corey 41:54

and we are going to, you know, we're

Corey 41:56

we're going to abide by it. We're going to treat it seriously. And this is not about politics. It's not about games. This is your three leaders of the three major parties collectively saying, this

Corey 42:06

this can't be done. Not in Canada. Carter,

Zain 42:08

Carter, I'm going to let you respond to that. I'm going to ask you about your optimal strategy, perhaps even building on what Corey said here as well. But respond to Corey's sort of ideal

Zain 42:22

ideal optimal strategy in two ways. Number one, is this a bunch of fairytale bullshit? Can it actually happen? Three political leaders who go at each other on a daily basis. Do you think this is viable and possible? That's part one of my question. And part two, Carter, if

Zain 42:38

if you were advising Jagmeet Singh and Pira Palliev as their campaign strategists, as their political strategists, I'll underline that. And I won't ask you to, you know, just take the partisan route, but you are hired, you are paid to score political points, whether on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly basis. What is your response to that request by Justin Trudeau? So number one, is this fairy tale and bullshit that Corey's proposing? And number two, if you're working for Polyev or Singh and Trudeau calls you into that, you're the campaign slash political strategist paid to score the political points. How are you responding to that? But two part question.

Carter 43:11

question. Yeah. So first of all, I think it's a little bit like I don't think that it's fanciful or bullshit what Corey's describing. I think that what Corey's describing is, in fact, what my preferred mechanism would be to go through. But is it possible? possible is it possible from everything we've seen hang on there mr happy i'm gonna tell you how fucking possible it is what makes it possible is you're not going to get to the public inquiry

Carter 43:38

what you're going to do is you're going to bring them together and you're going to say this is all the information and your goal is to make this whole problem go away it's not to try and get to a public inquiry in some other fashion or to you know show some sort of you know group effort oh

Zain 43:55

oh that's interesting if

Carter 43:56

can get so unlike

Carter 43:57

corey's if you can get them all in the same room zane if you can get them all in the same room then i your ideal path isn't to ultimately get them all to agree to an inquiry your ideal path is to get them to say holy shit now i understand you're right let's form a special um committee that's uh that's a secret committee that's going to be looking at this, that's going to address the issues as we see them. But we agree, Pierre and Jagmeet and the prime minister all agree that this is best handled outside of the public eye for a number of reasons, not the least of which is we know that China is spying on us and we don't want them to take another step forward. Um, and,

Carter 44:46

and, and so that's where I think that, that, that Corey's plan kind of failed is that if he can get them all in the room, um, and if this is actually, you

Carter 44:57

know, the way I've described it as, as kind of a, a significant issue that needs to be addressed collectively, then the best possible outcome isn't

Carter 45:07

isn't an inquiry. The best possible outcome is that this gets off the front page and gets dealt with where it should be dealt with behind the scenes by experts who know what they're doing and that means that the step that cory described right off the bat that the prime minister skipped that he should never have skipped which was to bring in the other party leaders so uh so that this didn't even look partisan he

Carter 45:31

he needs to undo that mistake by inviting all of those part all of those leaders in right now and if he can do that great if not then he may as well lose the government because Because it's going to happen. Carter, I'm

Zain 45:43

I'm going to let you off the hook for a second on the question of what you would do as a Polyev and Jagmeet political strategist when that question would be answered. Corey, respond to that. And I've got a very simple question for you. Is this fairy tales and bullshit, what Stephen Carter is now presenting? Because I thought your version of this was fanciful and out of reach. What do you think of Carter's version of this? Getting them in the room and you almost avoid an inquiry.

Corey 46:10

No, I don't think you avoid an inquiry. Again, that's a more sophisticated option. It might actually lead to better outcomes

Corey 46:16

outcomes of statecraft if it had been done five years ago or better two years ago even, but it's not better today because now it's blown into the open. And now half of conservative voters, I'm rounding up aggressively, but think this election was potentially stolen. And now, unfortunately, we I think we do need to deal with this through some sort of public mechanism, because unfortunately, otherwise, like, where does it go away? If there's one thing we've learned about, I don't know, like the last 30 years is you we are no longer in a place where you can negotiate away a movement. And I actually think the perfect example of this was the 2011 when Danielle Smith tried to cross from the Wild Rose with the Wild Rose Caucus to the PC party of Jim Prentiss. And ultimately, it didn't work. And the Wild Rose continued to exist because it's not about leaders. It's not about individual people. It's about the mob. It's about this crowd of people online who have already staked out ground. And it's a living, organic thing. And you don't change its mind with like this one flick of a switch where you convince one guy, Pierre Polyev, you've got to over time gradually reduce the mob's fever and temperature on these particular matters. So it's going to have to be dealt with in the public now. And that's, again, probably unfortunate, because if this had been done differently, five years, two years, one year ago, maybe different outcomes, but because it

Corey 47:38

it was spilled onto the front pages, and because it now looks like the liberals were trying to hide something, I

Corey 47:44

I just don't see another option that's going to have the same. i

Corey 47:48

don't i think that this is important i i think that democracy is important and worth fighting for and i just don't give a shit whether the liberals think that it's convenient or not to have a public inquiry we need all of our leaders to get together and deal with

Carter 48:02

with this so wrong on so many different fronts um yeah i mean carter

Zain 48:09

these are these are i understood i'm gonna ask you i'm moving

Carter 48:12

moving on because you asked me the question letting you ask me the question of what i would advise pierre pauliev and jugmeet singh about this i

Zain 48:20

asked i asked you the question was no i haven't gotten the answer yet let me summarize because i people can't follow follow you carter people can't this is by the way april 2nd this

Zain 48:30

this amazing banter okay can be yours april 2nd 30 dollars we're gonna have power yeah we're gonna do some brilliant it's

Zain 48:38

it's at the flanagan theater which is not named we thought it was named after tom flanagan it is not named after grabbed a

Carter 48:43

a giant fur coat gigantic buffalo coat yeah that's

Zain 48:47

that's right like that we both referenced that april 2nd it's a sunday right so parking will be free oh yeah

Zain 48:53

uh you show up yeah it's an excellent point right so you're you're showing up okay you're getting stephen carter you're getting cory hogan you're getting the pathway for the next alberta provincial election it's half sold out to my surprise not to theirs april 2nd the strategist live.ca great place to buy a a ticket to Abbotsford. Okay, I'll just leave that there. Carter, Carter, I'm coming back to you on this. So both of you have this, both of you, both of you, hold on, let me just make it clear. Both of you, in your optimal strategy for Trudeau, have a conversation with the other party leaders. Where you guys diverge, Corey thinks the inevitability is you come out, you call it together, that's your optimal scenario. Yours is you deal with it in the room, you blow them away with the holy shit of what they should have known three, four, five years ago, and you try to keep it contained you get the public inquiry off the page they agree to that okay yeah

Zain 49:47

is to score political points for pure polyam and jagmeet singh if that ask is made regardless of show up with me hand to hand trifecta handshake and call a public inquiry or let's leave this in the room to our experts what are you telling them to do as a political strategist even some

Carter 50:02

some issues are more important than winning a political uh getting a political win um some issues like like dealing with foreign affairs, require statespeople. They require diplomatic solutions. The idea that you're just going to be able to, you know, win a political point and then put the genie back in the bottle. Like this is where Corey's idea is off. Oh, we'll just, we'll call a public inquiry and then the genie will go in the bottle and all of a sudden, all of these people who believe that the election was unfair will see that it was fair or see that we fixed the problem. And when their team doesn't win next time, they'll be all fine. That's bullshit. They will not be all fine. We need. And the reason that they will not be all fine is because we've we and especially the Americans have gone to politics at all costs. protests always trying to win the next political outcome creates nothing but havoc you there are certain things that are above the politics and foreign affairs is the epitome of that thing this is it kids you would truly say that absolutely in

Carter 51:13

in the heat of the moment knowing

Zain 51:14

knowing the size of the prize that a government that a government could fall you would actually tell the price

Carter 51:19

price of government falling uh and then winning after this the price is too high the price is too high to simply win an election you cannot win your election this way and expect that there'll be an election afterwards and an election after that because ultimately you will face the electorate again as well and it might be your ass on the fucking line next time democracy is fragile that's

Zain 51:43

that's democracy is i mean people people

Zain 51:47

people who know the carter uh the character of stephen and carter would not expect that answer people who know you personally certainly would expect that answer knowing how passionate you are about this and democracy is everything

Carter 51:56

and we we are so close you know

Carter 51:59

i know we are so close to losing it at all times and and you know cory and i

Carter 52:05

we talked about this the walk we had in washington where we talked about the future of politics oh

Zain 52:11

oh i wasn't there yeah i wasn't there we didn't

Carter 52:14

about that all the the time and one of the reasons we talk about it all the time is because so much of what we discussed about how fragile democracy was and the argument of how fragile it might be has come to pass we have seen our democracy begin to crumble at the seams and pierre

Carter 52:33

pierre paulie unfortunately for me pierre pauliev is part of the problem i don't believe i think we will wind up in a public inquiry because i don't believe that pierre pauliev is mature enough to put the needs of the country before the needs of his own self.

Zain 52:48

No, it's a good point. It's something that we're all passionate about in ways, I mean, despite the... I shouldn't say the personas we have on this show, but

Carter 52:56

but despite the fact

Carter 52:58

about political... We're all emphatic about democracy. We're all emphatic about democracy. By

Zain 53:02

By the way, I'll plug an organization I sit on the board of called the Samara Center for Democracy, which does amazing work in that regard. Are you trying to big-time us right now? Oh, dude, I... No, I care more than you. Am I doing a talk on Tuesday with the Walrus, with Catherine McKenna and James Moore. I am. Yeah, I am doing that on Tuesday where people can sign up online. Hold on, you're

Zain 53:19

actually be at that live

Carter 53:19

live show and not just be a fucking special guest?

Zain 53:23

Oh, I don't know what I'm doing. I might just show up and send a Zane impersonator. Corey, can I ask you a slightly different question, Corey? No, I want to talk about this one first. No, I can ask you a slightly different question because it is baked in Carter's question. He's going to answer something different.

Zain 53:36

Can I try it? I think this is a fascinating thing Carter's brought up. And maybe you guys don't agree. Are we undervaluing the political points that you may be able to get as taking the root of statesperson?

Corey 53:52

You know what? Interesting question. Maybe I'll answer it in a minute. Here's what we need to talk about first. Fuck off. Stephen Carter's entire rant there, righteous rant, was

Corey 54:02

was predicated on the idea that the liberals did nothing wrong. No,

Corey 54:06

it's not. If something went wrong, it

Corey 54:09

Wait, break that down

Corey 54:10

down for us. I

Zain 54:10

I don't think I see it either, Corey. Why is it all predicated on that? Because

Corey 54:13

Because the right thing to do to defend the democracy of this country is actually to hold Justin Trudeau to account if something has gone awry or even if there's some ambiguity about that. So what you're saying

Zain 54:23

saying is that – I don't – yeah, right. Him bringing in the leaders. I think it's

Corey 54:26

it's kind of a bullshit argument to suggest and it's the same like kind of partisan disease to suggest that Pierre Poliev is somehow acting against the interests of this country if he has reason, truly reason to believe that the liberals are happily complicit even if it is just, you know, inactively in China trying to influence elections towards their favor. Well, I think you're

Carter 54:46

over a couple of steps in my argument. I mean, I do want the conservatives and the NDP to be brought in. I do want there to be a special House of Commons committee to address this. I do wish that they'd gone back in time and done this properly from the beginning, but they didn't. And I just don't think that the solution is to take this into the public realm. I don't have confidence in the public in this fashion. I know we talk a lot about great democracy, but democracy has secrets too. Can I be clear?

Zain 55:15

Do you not have confidence in the public realm, or do you feel like it will be wholly unsatisfying with how much has to be redacted and is confidential and that cannot be disclosed in the public realm? I want to make sure we're talking about

Carter 55:27

about the right thing here. You're looking for a solution in the public that's not going to be actually created. You're looking for a magic unicorn rather than something that actually can be created. This isn't something that's going to change people's minds and come up with an outcome that says, oh, now I get it. Now I can believe in democracy again. in what you want is for this to go off the front pages so that people forget it and they move into a brand new space yeah

Corey 55:51

so this is it this is the fucking fairy tales we tell each other this is the this is goes right back to my very first comment about the fact that we need to be smarter citizens of

Corey 56:01

not and we need to know that people are perpetually trying to influence elections perpetually trying to influence elections doesn't mean we let them doesn't I mean, we just act like absolute rubes and buy into all of the bullshit that they feed us here. But I'm

Corey 56:14

I'm sorry, if you're looking for this inquiry to come out with a silver bullet that says this is how we're going to stop China from influencing elections, that's not going to happen. But what could potentially come out of this is we could have our party leaders act in a very adult fashion. I want to get to your point, Zane, about are we undervaluing the political value of being a statesperson? Because I think Pierre Polyev in particular would benefit from that. And maybe we can have a conversation about what we can collectively do to defend this democracy. And maybe we can start to say there are some things at the water's edge now, you know, this idea that politics stops at the water's edge. Maybe we can bring a little bit of that back if we have an inquiry that's handled appropriately by all of the party leaders involved. You

Zain 56:53

You know, neither of your responses, I will say on the Trudeau side of things, were about how sorry you keep government. You guys are both okay with either of the two options, public inquiry or Carter. Even you're like, let's bring it in the dome for whatever conclusion it

Zain 57:10

it ultimately produces. Is it fair to say that? Like, both of you are, as political strategists brought in to help the prime minister, you think the right thing to do is to leave the future not necessarily in your control. Am I putting words in your mouth by saying that? Because that's what I'm hearing. Well,

Carter 57:26

Well, no, I'm fine with that.

Carter 57:27

Yeah, again, I mean, I'm

Carter 57:29

I'm fine with losing the government on the right path on principle.

Carter 57:32

I always have been.

Corey 57:36

i don't think we know exactly what the facts are which is again part of the reason why we need to look into this particular matter i think it's one of the arguments for you're

Carter 57:44

you're wrong and i've made that it is

Corey 57:46

is very possible it

Corey 57:48

it is very possible that the liberals have acted in a way that they

Corey 57:52

you know again maybe they weren't even actively benefiting like they're not negotiating with the chinese government or anything like that but they're willing to say we don't think it's that that big of a deal and boy we don't want to deal with it so we're just going to kind of ignore it right to

Corey 58:05

to me that that's one of those things that we need to explore and look into here and that's not great and that would be pretty bad for the liberals if that's what it ended up being i

Corey 58:14

i can understand the hesitation that such facts may come out during an inquiry trudeau has made some pretty strong statements that this is only part of the story well you know what we didn't want to be here here maybe but we are and so now we need to hear the whole story as canadians right it's time we've got to figure this out and it's got to be brought into the public in some way shape or form i think where there's an opportunity for

Corey 58:36

for trudeau for poliev for singh is

Corey 58:40

is that they can set this all aside be states people talk about what's in the best interest of democracy carter is right it's like prisoner's dilemma on steroids because you might think that like there's this benefit here but there is kind of this overall damage to the system right that

Corey 58:54

you've got to consider you

Zain 58:58

thing okay i'm gonna i'm gonna move this on here this

Zain 59:01

is a very smart cogent appropriate like anchored with the right principles approach that both of you put together regardless of the slight convergence in your in your philosophy

Zain 59:13

why the fuck is no one in ottawa taking your advice the reason i'm skeptical of what you guys have said. Pierre's not taking your advice. He's literally said Trudeau's bought and paid for. Jagmeet Singh is saying, you know, my support for the election could hinge on the public inquiry. You know, Justin Trudeau hasn't

Zain 59:29

hasn't taken the—doesn't seem to have taken any of this advice, either as a precursor or telegraphing it as his next step. So I'm skeptical of what both of you are saying as valuable, tethered,

Zain 59:42

tethered, anchored political strategy advice, because I see evidence of almost none of it so you know help me resolve my skepticism carter like i like what you guys are saying but like what the fuck is going on and what the fuck should maybe as a segue to that jugmeet and pierre do because i want to get to that because they have taken a very different road than what both of you suggested that trudeau do or what you've suggested that jugmeet saying and pierre polyev should accept should there if the prime minister put it on

Carter 1:00:08

on i'm going to ask you a few a series of questions okay we're

Carter 1:00:11

we're going to go real quick on

Carter 1:00:13

on a scale of one to ten what is What is your opinion of Pierre Polyev as a political operative?

Carter 1:00:19

scale of one to ten, what's your opinion of Justin Trudeau as a political

Corey 1:00:25

On a scale of

Carter 1:00:25

of one to ten, what is your position on Jagmeet Singh as a political operative? Zane, it's going to come to you as no surprise that Corey and I aren't super, super bought into the political acumen of our federal party leaders.

Carter 1:00:37

And we didn't even include Elizabeth May that actually, and she actually brings down the average. like this this is this

Carter 1:00:44

is not an average that we're looking at and going oh wow they're probably in the eights and nines no we're looking at this average and thinking threes and four better

Carter 1:00:53

this is a group of political leaders we have been critical of significantly critical of for the last three years shitting on these three and and being unimpressed especially with pierre's ability to throw big issues away and just win the populist opportunity this is a man that does not understand his strength and doesn't understand what politics really is about in the broader scheme of things.

Zain 1:01:21

Corey, the same question to you, but also the heart of the question is the peer and Jagmeet Singh, what path should they take? You've given me a good path, perhaps a slightly noble path, perhaps, I'm not going to call it naive, because I see no one following.

Zain 1:01:35

I mean, I feel like you just did. I'm not going to call it that, I don't know.

Zain 1:01:38

Some might say. You can see some of that naive thinking on stage April 2nd. I mean, it is going to be quite the show. Vote for the

Carter 1:01:45

Corey. Vote for the winner.

Zain 1:01:47

Let's start with Pierre Polyev. What advice would you give him right now? Because he's going to keep peering, and he's going to say, listen, that's been working. I fucking crushed the leadership. I crushed fundraising. My party's united for the first time in a long time, and you're not going to tell me to act like a statement? How about you go fuck yourself, Corey Hogan? Tell me what I should do.

Corey 1:02:05

So I'll tell you what I do if I'm advising Pierre Polyev. Everything I said Justin Trudeau should do, Pierre Polyev should do. First. What he should do is he should call the prime minister's office. He should ask for a meeting with the prime minister and say, I

Corey 1:02:19

I want you to know I take this pretty fucking seriously. And I've been dwelling on this for the last bit. I regret the line that you're bought and paid for by China. That was flip. That was in the moment.

Corey 1:02:29

I need to cool this one down. So let's talk.

Corey 1:02:32

You tell me everything that's going on right now. You

Corey 1:02:35

You tell Jagmeet Singh everything that's going on right now. Now, you call for both of them to be informed, and then let's figure out a path forward together.

Corey 1:02:43

And you know what?

Corey 1:02:45

If the prime minister does as you expect and does none of that, at least down the road you can say that's what you offered him. You offered him the ability to take it seriously, and he rejected it. And that, I mean, ultimately, what path did he leave you at that point? So all there is left is an inquiry. And doing that, by the way, also boxes in Jagmeet Singh horribly, because that would mean the prime minister also rejected giving Jagmeet Singh all of that intelligence, basically forces him to demand that inquiry in order for things to go forward. You could bring this government down by next Wednesday if you follow this approach and the prime minister plays his cards badly.

Zain 1:03:17

But does that allow you to still continue to be a day-to-day, hour

Corey 1:03:22

absolutely. No. Yeah. The

Corey 1:03:23

The minute the prime minister, it makes you stop for whatever the amount of time is between you requesting the meeting and you having the meeting. But that's it. You can be a shitheel the minute that meeting ends if Trudeau leaves you with nothing. Yeah,

Carter 1:03:35

Yeah, well, while you're at it, that's an interesting take once you ask pierre paul you have to turn into a fucking unicorn like they have the same amount of opportunity of actually happening jesus

Zain 1:03:46

carter what do you think what's the what's the peer approach the

Carter 1:03:49

the peer approach uh what i want him to do or what he will do what

Zain 1:03:54

what you don't know what if you were advising we always use that frame if you were persuading him like i shouldn't say just a you need to persuade this guy he's got a lane that he's picked and he's saying fuck this man like you're not going to get me off what is your how are you persuading to take the other lane what is the argument you are making to say take the statesman lane my friend this is why it's worth it this is what it can you want

Carter 1:04:14

want to be this is you want to be the prime minister this is your opportunity show the show the country that you can be prime minister right now because no one believes that you can work on the on the on the big stage everybody sees you do my micro politics no one sees you do macro politics so if you want want to do something spectacular do exactly what cory said do exactly what cory said but if i have that kind of persuasion skills i am going to be one rich motherfucker because i'll just be able to walk up to millionaires and say a millionaire give me your money and they would give me all of their money because

Carter 1:04:46

because that's the level of persuasion it would take you're not going to convince pierre polyev to stop being a dick it's the only thing he knows how to do can

Zain 1:04:56

can he win this sort of i

Zain 1:04:59

shouldn't call it win yeah

Zain 1:05:01

can he be victorious cory and on this file by being a dick because he probably thinks he can yeah

Zain 1:05:06

yeah i think he can i

Corey 1:05:08

i mean i i see nothing that suggests otherwise right now but i think that there are there are bigger risks to the democracy that if he wants to be prime minister he should consider and uh i think that there are opportunities by taking that statesman approach that

Corey 1:05:24

perhaps he would be wise to avail himself of because it would shore up some other other brand attributes he has challenges

Zain 1:05:29

challenges with. Corey, to that extension then of Jagmeet Singh, Jagmeet Singh, I shouldn't say he's more

Zain 1:05:35

more malleable, but he necessarily hasn't necessarily picked a lane, so to speak, right? We can almost write Pierre Poliev, Chad GPT style fucking statements if we wanted to on any file, because we know exactly what he's going to say. Jagmeet Singh is slightly different. He does a little bit of left, a little bit of right, and I don't mean that like in a political spectrum thing, but he just produces pablum at the end of the day. his current statement is the public inquiry, right? I'm not ruling it out, right? So half in, half out. I'm not ruling it out in terms of it, you know, being conditional to the support that I give to the liberals and their government. What would your advice to him be right

Zain 1:06:17

right now, on this moment? You know, the political advice you would provide him. And then Carter, I'm going to come to you next on this.

Corey 1:06:24

Well, let's start with, I don't think he could do what I told you I think Pierre Poliev should be. I just don't think he has the swing as the third party member. I don't think it's his brand. I don't think he can walk in and say You

Zain 1:06:34

You mean the phone call to The phone

Corey 1:06:35

phone call, we're going to talk this is what I need from you now, right? Like that, I don't see that working. I think the Prime Minister has more avenues there and says

Corey 1:06:45

what the fuck are you doing, man? Is it also because it's not,

Zain 1:06:49

it's almost to type rather than against type, which is what it would be for Pierre. Is that fair to say?

Corey 1:06:54

Yeah, well, it's not just it's too tight, but also it has a different feeling, almost one of like a low-key blackmail, because Pierre was never with you, right?

Corey 1:07:04

Whereas Singh is in theory with you right now, so it would come off entirely differently. It would come off as like, here's what I want for you to continue getting from me what I already give you. Totally different energy, you know, and I think the prime minister could rightly respond with, we're

Corey 1:07:19

we're in the same canoe, pal.

Corey 1:07:21

Like, you know, this whole idea of, like, this inquiry, like, you think this goes down, I go down on this because you're playing games with Pierre Polyev, it works out for you, you're a fool, right? You're an absolute fool if that's what you think, right? Like, I think it would just be an entirely different conversation. I think that for Jagmeet Singh, he needs to take a bit more of a different approach where he goes in, well, if he was going to go in, right? Maybe we'll just continue with that frame and say, like, so

Corey 1:07:45

so what's going on? You know, like you're saying that there's things in the public that you can't share. I acknowledge that we're not like a coalition partner with you here. But I need to understand this because there's a lot of things right now. And I would kind of try to play it straight saying, frankly,

Corey 1:08:03

frankly, I'm a little concerned, and I don't have enough information not to be concerned. This is not politics. This is you and me talking, Justin. And I

Corey 1:08:10

I think you need to pull yourself outside of your bubble and realize that you are seriously eroding your party's opportunities here. And you may bring down this government because there may be no other choice for any other actor here and

Corey 1:08:22

and maybe use it as a bit more of an information gathering opportunity. And again, I go back to like, I don't know what the fuck's happening here, which is part of why I think there needs to be an inquiry. But

Corey 1:08:32

if you're Singh, you can play that one a little bit more straight. And it's a little less about being a statesman and more about, like, talk

Corey 1:08:38

talk to me here. What the hell's happening?

Corey 1:08:40

Right? And I think you are kind of at the last opportunity to do that because if your rhetoric goes up even another half notch from where it is right now, you can't have that conversation and have it feel the same way. So

Zain 1:08:49

So you would, to be clear, Corey, on what he's doing right now, you would not have advised that. This statement saying, I'm not precluding in any way, ruling out that it could come to a point that we've got to exercise that ability to take down this government. No, I actually think that's fine.

Corey 1:09:03

You think that's fine? now okay um

Corey 1:09:05

um because he's he's maintaining his range of motion and it's not as though like that's the most obvious thing that somebody's going to ask you about it's not as though you can just avoid cameras and microphones for the last bit if if somebody said to the ndp right now what do you want to do and he's like i'm not ruling it out i want to hear the facts that's a super sensible approach but i'm saying the minute he starts going to the facts are really bad and i need i need action now like that next dial up on the thing you have less range of motion so like Like, use this opportunity to figure out what the hell's going on.

Corey 1:09:37

You've made a comment. That comment may on its surface actually be the truth, that you're not ruling it out and you're not sure what's happening.

Corey 1:09:45

Use this opportunity to figure out what's happening, right? You know, good strategy comes from good analysis, and there's just not enough facts on the table right now if you're the NDP to determine the appropriate course of action. Because that comment I made about Trudeau saying, hey, man, you're going down with me, that might be 100% true. But if the facts are different, maybe

Corey 1:10:03

maybe that's not 100% true. And you just need to know a little bit more. And your relationship with the liberals allows you access to information in a way that Pierre Polyev just can't have. Carter, potentially.

Zain 1:10:15

Great points by Corey. Carter, your take on the Jagmeet Singh strategy. Should he pursue an entirely different strategy? And give me your take on his current sort of public comment that he's not ruling out taking down this government if it comes to that. I'm

Carter 1:10:29

I'm not as big a fan of it as Corey is. I mean, I get Corey's point, you know, he was going to need to say something. I kind of get that point. But I think that he

Carter 1:10:38

he could have just simply said, listen, there is so much that we don't know. And I'm not going to make a rash statement. Obviously, we're not going to be in a position, you know, we're not going to prop up this government, if we feel that an inquiry is ultimately needed. um but uh right now what we need more than than anything is more information um

Carter 1:11:00

um i think that

Corey 1:11:02

and mr singh you don't think that would come from an inkwell

Carter 1:11:04

inkwell i think that that that's an open question right now i don't even have enough info i need i need more information period the

Carter 1:11:11

the information that's coming up from the media is wholly inadequate i'm giving a call to the prime minister right now and the question i'm going to ask him the

Carter 1:11:18

the question i'm going to ask the prime minister is simply this give

Carter 1:11:21

give me tell me why we shouldn't have a public inquiry make it very clear to me and tell me the steps you're going to take to ensure that foreign interference is mitigated in our foreign in our in our elections i

Carter 1:11:33

mean that's the call and

Corey 1:11:34

and you're just going to take his word for it well

Carter 1:11:36

well i'm gonna ultimately

Carter 1:11:39

ultimately yeah you're gonna take his fucking word for it because ultimately the information needs to the information needs to be but this is the point though by

Corey 1:11:48

by the the way that was the laugh of the entire

Carter 1:11:50

when you said uh i

Carter 1:11:51

i just think that

Carter 1:11:53

jagmeet singh needs to go to the prime minister and say um

Carter 1:11:55

um tell me why i shouldn't push for this inquiry um because there could be a very very solid reason for it um you just said it like we don't know what what information we have what information we don't have i'm more comfortable than you cory living in the dark on this um i don't think it's necessarily my right to know uh this type of information uh others may take me to task for that but i just think that this is foreign intelligence and i don't have the right to understand this um so

Carter 1:12:27

so i think that

Corey 1:12:29

it's foreign intelligence to the benefit of the governing party how is it any different than trump potentially getting support this

Carter 1:12:34

this is where singh needs to make some important inquiries but

Carter 1:12:37

but singh you've made a very good point that singh is in a very in a unique position where he gets to ask Ask these questions of the Prime Minister with the fate of the Prime Minister's government hanging in the balance. If he can't get an adequate answer, then I don't think that necessarily the answer is a public inquiry. Maybe the answer is let's have a fucking election to discuss whether or not the Liberals did this appropriately or not.

Carter 1:13:01

I'm thinking this is a big fucking deal. I think it's a big fucking deal. Let me

Zain 1:13:07

me end on this last point before I go to the over under the lightning round where I've got a few follow-ups on this to kind of crystallize a few points

Carter 1:13:12

points for you. Are we still on the first topic again? An election.

Zain 1:13:16

First and only, Carter. You

Carter 1:13:17

You know, Annalise asks us questions about multiple topics. Yeah, there's segments. There's like three segments, four sometimes.

Zain 1:13:24

I'm like the host that now gets to do passion projects. I'm like the main anchor on the desk that gets thrown to the digital exclusives on the podcast is a different way of getting fired. Yeah, I'm that person now. that gets to do their passion projects every little while i'm like mansbridge after he got not fired but you know you know he came back he's like i'm gonna do a seven-part documentary series that's gonna air on fucking cbc gem well that is me and you're welcome cory shot's fired at cbc gem oh i mean it's it's it's not worth the eight dollars a month um for

Carter 1:13:58

how about disney we're

Carter 1:13:59

we're back on disney plus we're back on disney plus yeah

Zain 1:14:02

yeah Of course you are, because you're

Carter 1:14:06

who knows what the

Zain 1:14:07

the value of Disney Plus is. Netflix is

Carter 1:14:08

It doesn't exist for us anymore. Someone,

Zain 1:14:10

Someone, by the way, if any of the media are listening, someone follow up on Krista Freeland on where she is on our subscriptions. I think that's what Canada needs. That's a good question. Canada needs a subscription check-in with Krista Freeland. Corey, let's end on this point. An

Zain 1:14:26

We talked about this very briefly in the Patreon episode. episode, but

Zain 1:14:30

but is any call of an election, while this is unresolved, and I don't even know what the fuck resolved means, to be totally clear, is

Zain 1:14:38

is any election, like, tainted? Like, a minority government, Trudeau could see opportunity, he could pull the trigger. Can he actually pull the trigger? Like, just, I don't really have a question as much as I've got a notion to kind of put it out there being, like, is the well poisoned until we've got clarity on an election call here? You use the word range of motion often. I steal it quite often. But range of motion for Trudeau and possibility on election calls, are they just eliminated right now?

Corey 1:15:06

Well, this is the thing that actually ties me in knots, and it's why I think that any solution needs to be like an all-party solution to this, right? Whether it be an inquiry or working behind the scenes through a judicial review or anything like that. Because if you go into an election and this still has the level of politics it does currently, I'm

Corey 1:15:25

I'm really quite concerned about that. I'm very worried about that. I'm worried about that for Chinese-Canadian candidates and the potential racism that may exist there.

Corey 1:15:34

I'm worried about that in terms of people accepting the results in certain contexts. And you're going to hear all sorts of rumors and bullshit. And by the way, we

Corey 1:15:42

we talk about China and Russia as though they are almost like the same actor sometimes. They are not. And it is not impossible to me that Russia might poke at the idea that China is influencing our elections through their own influence because Russia's interests really do seem to be just so chaos like that. Fair point. Yep.

Corey 1:15:59

So, like, you know, I just – I really worry about that. And ultimately, before we go into an election, what I would like to see is all of the party leaders in some way, shape, or form come to a consensus about the integrity of the system. That might not be possible if the Liberals have acted in a very untoward fashion. And, you know, that is the nightmare. This

Carter 1:16:19

This is where you and I agree.

Corey 1:16:21

But I would like to get to a point. It's

Carter 1:16:22

It's the multiple parties where the real working together is the real strength here. And they have to do that for the strength of Canadian democracy.

Zain 1:16:32

We're going to leave that segment there. Moving on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we do this for you. It is all for you. Do we really?

Carter 1:16:38

really? Because you didn't say that last time, and it hurt my feelings.

Zain 1:16:43

I noticed that. I also noticed that. We did it for myself last time. Overrated or underrated, Stephen Carter. The fact that the Chinese, at least in the reporting that we've seen from the Globe and Mail and Global News, wanted a Trudeau minority, and they have a Trudeau minority on the heels of the 2021 election. Actually, no, we're saying correlation causation. No one is saying, even in the testimony, that they caused that. But the fact that that exists, is that an overrated or underrated problem for

Zain 1:17:08

for the Trudeau liberals, given the state of things right now, in the sense that they could be looking to hide something? The Chinese got what they wanted, even if they didn't necessarily construct it or make it

Carter 1:17:17

it happen. I think that that's the actual problem with all of this. I mean, Corey keeps saying that this is something that's happening to the benefit of the liberals. roles i'm not sure that that's the case but in the in the absence of other information it certainly looks like the case and if you know that that that doubt that is being sown um

Carter 1:17:40

we don't have any evidence to the contrary right now and and unfortunately without evidence to the evidence to the contrary uh we're very likely to to buy this uh this scenario that's being peddled um that this information you know that this is the this

Carter 1:17:55

this is what the chinese wanted

Zain 1:17:59

koi overrated or underrated the the whole concept of yeah thank

Zain 1:18:03

thank you carter uh that the chinese yeah wasn't ever looking for you to answer the question carter probably was looking for you to answer it after the show i'm being like oh over cory overrated underrated they wanted a minority liberal government per the reporting per the

Zain 1:18:18

they have a minority liberal government correlation causation as i say but in your mind overrated underrated as it relates to of this particular story for the Trudeau government?

Corey 1:18:29

I think underrated, but maybe rated just where it is, because certainly it's not missed on the reporting that perhaps one of the consequences of this is that the thing that China wants least is a conservative majority. But if this election, like it's not too hard to imagine a scenario where either

Corey 1:18:44

either through the findings of an inquiry or the refusal of a government to hold an inquiry, we're in an election, and that could potentially be the thing. Like, you don't want to vote NDP or liberal, That's what China wants. China wants a minority liberal government. If you want to stick it to China, you vote for the conservatives. That's a pretty natural concept or conclusion that you can come to.

Corey 1:19:09

Okay, I didn't like that. It felt inappropriate. But, yeah,

Corey 1:19:12

I understand that it was a bare-naked ladies song.

Corey 1:19:16

But, you know, in the context. No.

Carter 1:19:18

Stick it to China.

Corey 1:19:23

So, Zane, the only person on this podcast I'll talk to for the next few minutes. We

Zain 1:19:27

We only listen to Bollywood music at my home, so I'm going to leave Carter out on an island to dry with that statement.

Zain 1:19:33

Let's see if that's the one. Actually, you know what? Yeah, let's see if that's the one. We can put a best of reel, but that one might be the one that gets you kicked.

Corey 1:19:44

Could be a really easy ballot question for the conservatives to say, do you want China to get what they want?

Corey 1:19:49

And if the answer is no, you vote conservative. Fuck,

Zain 1:19:52

that's a hard argument to prevent against Carter. If indeed the political leaders take the political partisan route, as you've suggested, they shouldn't necessarily do it, but they're a pedal to the metal so hard on. Carter, your response to that, and then I've got a question for you about Justin Trudeau. So respond to Corey, and then it's back to you. Yeah,

Carter 1:20:10

Yeah, I mean, I think that this

Carter 1:20:12

this is going to be actually one of the big challenges for Justin Trudeau to lead his party into the next election. I mean, you know, this is just baggage on top of baggage. I mean, there has not been a more friendly government towards China than Stephen Harper's. You know, the amount of foreign investment that we saw from China that Stephen Harper's, you know, stick handled into the country was significant. And at the time, heralded. And now they're the ones that are going to stand strong against China. I mean, that's almost ludicrous on its face. But that's what happens when you're in government for a while. Everything becomes possible and you start to wear all these scenarios. scenarios and that to me is is the challenge that the trudeau is facing i don't necessarily think that trudeau has been weak on china um so much as i think that it is plausible that people think that trudeau has been weak on china and therefore it creates havoc in the future so i i'm i think that that's trudeau's great weakness in the future is is that all of this could be plausible and that creates havoc.

Zain 1:21:22

Carter, very quickly, we're going to do very quick strategy rounds on this. Justin Trudeau gives you the directive. No, no, no. Oh, yeah. Justin Trudeau has given you the directive that I like all the bullshit you're telling me. I want to drag my heels on this. How do I successfully do that? How do I successfully drag my heels to the least detriment?

Carter 1:21:39

detriment? No, there's no dragging the heels. I feel bad if that's what people have heard.

Carter 1:21:44

What he should be doing is...

Zain 1:21:46

is... Oh, no. No, he might say, Carter, I hear you, but I'm dragging my heels. There's no public inquiry. How do I best drag my heels?

Zain 1:21:54

question to you. How do I best drag my heels?

Corey 1:21:59

Pauks on all their houses, right? Try to find evidence that some other foreign power was trying to influence things for the Russians, and maybe that's the part of the story that wasn't out there before, and maybe there's another strategic leak there. I think the challenge is that just actually increases the demand for an inquiry, but it would probably reduce pressure on you specifically. Corey,

Zain 1:22:16

Corey, I'm sticking with you. Pierre Poliev said, very nice, Corey, statesman. Yeah, I want to continue being a big fucking prick. And that is working for me. So, Corey, tell

Zain 1:22:25

tell me the best strategy for me to be a big fucking prick that could get me the maximum political...

Carter 1:22:29

political... Well, you went to the right person for that question. Stay the

Zain 1:22:31

the course, big man.

Corey 1:22:35

No, look, I mean, I think if what I talked about earlier about this potential strategy of going to the prime minister and saying, I'm offering you the ability to elevate this to a state's person level only works if you're willing to accept it as Pierre Polyev. If you're not, you continue to stick that knife and you continue to identify all of the potential challenges there. You talk about it being to the benefit of the, you know, Liberal Party. But now you've got to change your focus a little bit and make it about Singh. You've got to make it impossible for Jagmeet Singh to support Justin Trudeau. That's the next part of the equation for you if you actually want to ride this horse. Corey,

Zain 1:23:10

Corey, second to last question. I'm going to start with you on this one.

Zain 1:23:13

does or do the events of the last couple weeks change in your mind or fundamentally whether justin trudeau is the leader of the liberal party heading to the next election uh

Corey 1:23:24

uh it doesn't change my mind fundamentally um but i was already a little skeptical he was going to get all the way to the next election i i i don't know it it certainly is just more baggage but now you know it gets a point almost where it's too much baggage and no one wants to be the leader and you're You're better off being the leader that goes down with it to clear the decks. Carter,

Zain 1:23:42

Carter, does this change your perspective the last couple of weeks, this particular story, as to whether Justin Trudeau is the leader of the Liberal Party heading into the next

Carter 1:23:51

next federal election? I don't think it changes my position. I think that he would be leading from a tremendous weak position anyways, and this just, I guess, solidifies, if anything.

Zain 1:24:02

Carter, Sunday, next Sunday, by this time, is

Zain 1:24:06

is a public inquiry announced?

Zain 1:24:11

Corey, is a public inquiry announced? You heard it here first. Yeah, you heard it here first. Stephen Carter says there's going to be an inquiry. There's going to be an inquiry. Corey Hogan, do you want to double down and say there's going to be an inquiry as to what Stephen Carter's just said on the show by next Sunday? We're recording on Sunday the 5th. Sunday the 12th, are we – have a public inquiry announced? Yes or no, Corey?

Corey 1:24:30

That's tough because I can actually see the liberals trying to do this stepwise by being like, oh, we're going to do this thing instead. We're going to have some committee meetings. We're going to have some judicial review and

Corey 1:24:40

and not necessarily be dragged all the way to inquiry by Sunday. So I'll

Zain 1:24:46

yes, because Stephen said no. Well, it's a trick question. They're going to call it live on April 2nd at the Grand Theater. That is when we are going to have the Strategist Live. We're going to have the live debate show and also the calling of the public inquiry by Justin Trudeau. Get your tickets. They're only $30. The strategistlive.ca, if you're out of town and need a ticket to the show, travel and accommodations. They probably won't get you there. TheStrategistLive.com, StrategistLive.com, TheStrategistLive.com. That is where you can get tickets to the show. We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1041 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

Transcript