Transcript
Annalise
0:02
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1044. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey
Carter
0:11
That energy. I mean, it's been unmatched. Unmatched energy.
Annalise
0:16
to our show. You know, my microphone and headphones are finally working, and I've got some cushions in the room now.
Annalise
0:23
So, small steps, one thing at a time, right? Yeah,
Corey
0:25
Yeah, you know, you fix one thing a week and, you know, 30, 40 weeks from now, you'll be up to Stephen Carter levels.
Annalise
0:32
I don't know if you remember,
Carter
0:34
there was a time when you really made fun of me for not being
Carter
0:37
being technically proficient enough to hook up to the software. Yeah,
Annalise
0:40
Yeah, but Carter, how long have you been doing this podcast?
Corey
0:43
That's a great point.
Annalise
0:45
How long have you been doing this?
Carter
0:47
I'm just saying that every once in a while we
Annalise
0:48
we have technical problems.
Annalise
0:50
Ten years? Not been what? Ten years? Two months? 1,044 episodes plus all
Annalise
0:57
Corey got me a new microphone, which was very kind. And I just didn't know that I had to plug my headphones into the microphone. Except
Carter
1:04
Except you've recorded with this microphone before. Once.
Annalise
1:07
Once. And I had the same problem last time.
Annalise
1:10
And it's been a long week and it's a Friday night. There's been some big
Carter
1:13
big stuff happen since you were last year. Yeah.
Carter
1:19
AFL season has started. Okay.
Corey
1:21
I'm 50-50. This is the Australian Football League. My beloved
Corey
1:25
last night. Thanks for being the interpreter.
Corey
1:27
This is a thing he does for
Corey
1:29
now the next eight months or
Carter
1:30
or so. Do other people care about this? Geelong shockingly lost on Thursday night. Nobody
Corey
1:35
Nobody cares about it. I'm
Carter
1:37
I'm one for two. What
Annalise
1:38
What else? Starting the season. Carter, what else has happened since we last talked a week ago?
Carter
1:43
Two weeks ago? I don't think anything else. No, nothing.
Carter
1:47
Yeah. I mean, Geelong let
Carter
1:49
me down. You actually chose them. Okay. Yeah, that's
Corey
1:52
that's good. So what you'll see in the next couple of months is him oscillate between bragging that he is like middle of the pack in his fantasy football league and then ultimately complaining that he lost his fantasy football league. This
Annalise
2:07
I've got a lot of
Carter
2:07
of confidence though. I have a lot of confidence. I'm not going to, I
Carter
2:11
I don't think I'm going to straight up lose. I think that I might be okay.
Annalise
2:15
I'm glad you explained it to me this time because I feel like that first episode you just threw me in and then there was all these inside jokes. I didn't know what was serious and not. Well,
Annalise
2:24
Well, nothing's particularly serious.
Corey
2:27
serious. How do you know this is serious? Maybe this is the first time he's ever mentioned the AFL. No,
Annalise
2:31
No, I can tell based on his face. He does this often and
Annalise
2:35
is passionate about it.
Carter
2:38
Being read like a book here, Hogan. Like, what the hell?
Carter
2:43
Brought in a mind reader we did.
Annalise
2:49
it's friday night uh
Annalise
2:51
uh you can you can tell
Annalise
2:52
what a segue the
Carter
2:54
segue is unbelievable well
Annalise
2:55
well i was gonna say you can tell it's friday night and you can tell it i think this is is this a patreon episode this is yeah you can tell because none of my segments have titles this evening uh
Annalise
3:07
uh so guys big day today president
Annalise
3:11
president biden opening of a joke
Corey
3:16
right all right i had
Annalise
3:17
had about 10 minutes to choose topics before we hopped on and that's twice as much
Corey
3:22
much as what zane usually gives himself yeah
Annalise
3:25
and i had to do some rearranging set up my new spot anyways president biden he made his first presidential visit to canada today He spoke in the House of Commons for nearly 40 minutes. He arrived on Thursday and he hung out with the Trudeaus. I'm sure you've seen the photo of them in the house. What stood out to you in that photo? The
Corey
3:47
The fact that the oldest Trudeau son was wearing socks and the socks were very dirty and everybody else was wearing shoes.
Annalise
3:53
Do you think people should wear shoes in houses?
Corey
3:56
I think when the president of the United States comes to your house, clean your socks.
Carter
4:04
That's really good. That's really in-depth, Corey. Thank you. I'm going to build
Corey
4:10
I'm not opposed to shoes in-house. I know it's like a very anti-Canadian thing to say.
Annalise
4:16
You think people should wear shoes in-houses? I
Corey
4:19
I said I'm not opposed. I'm not saying it's going to be mandatory.
Carter
4:23
I'll tell you a story. Let me tell you a story about a guy named Scott Bryson. Ran for
Carter
4:27
the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party before he crossed over to the Liberals. yeah
Carter
4:32
we were invited to a fundraiser and
Carter
4:35
and uh for for scott um who i'd known for a while so we went to the fundraiser and he took his shoes off when we went into the uh went into the people's house that was hosting we're hosting the fundraiser and heather was like i could never support him as prime minister because he took off and
Carter
4:53
and i was like what are other people doing well
Carter
4:56
that's well that's what heather said and i well everybody else took off off their shoes but she said you know this is all her this is nothing to do with me i
Corey
5:03
i i like this very canadian
Carter
5:04
canadian but um she said that she could never support him because he took off his shoes when she when uh it wasn't leader like it wasn't leader like so
Carter
5:15
there you go that's my uh that's my saying
Corey
5:17
saying what the rest of us are thinking yeah
Corey
5:19
yeah you know she
Carter
5:21
she doesn't care if it's popular she doesn't care if it's if it goes against canadian stereotypes she just calls it as it is wearing
Corey
5:28
wearing Wearing shoes indoors, I think, is a very context-dependent thing. It's kind of like the Oxford comma. I'm generally opposed to the Oxford comma. But if it's going to make it more clear, you put in the Oxford comma. Generally, I'm not going to wear shoes in the house. But if literally everybody else is wearing shoes in the house, I'm going to wear shoes in the house. And if I am the President of the United States and I'm roaming through somebody's house, I'm going to feel okay about it, too. So, yeah, I think Scott Bryson taking off shoes, you
Corey
5:56
you know what his mistake was there? was not taking the shoes off it was making it though seem that he would have worn the shoes but for how gracious he was to them he should have said like oh
Corey
6:06
oh i guess you guys do the no shoe thing hey yeah
Corey
6:08
yeah well when in rome and then taking his shoes off and made a big deal out of it i think that's what you
Annalise
6:13
you think he should have made a big deal out of it yeah
Corey
6:15
yeah and maybe thrown a shoe just
Corey
6:17
just to kind of so well
Carter
6:18
well that would be very on very on uh character for scott bryson he is Yeah,
Corey
6:22
Yeah, yeah, he's well-known as a hothead.
Carter
6:24
Oh, yeah, throwing stuff all the time.
Corey
6:27
No, I think it's context-dependent. And I do think that if you wander down- Corey's not committing
Annalise
6:31
committing to either way because he knows that his takes a little- Let
Corey
6:35
Let me ask you a question. I want some honesty here. You're
Annalise
6:38
You're at the back door of
Corey
6:39
of your house. From both of you. You're at the back door of your house. Your keys are at the front door of the house.
Corey
6:43
already put your shoes on.
Annalise
6:44
Yeah. Are you taking
Corey
6:44
taking your shoes off? No.
Annalise
6:46
It depends when the last time my floors were washed was.
Annalise
6:50
Especially right now with the weather. I'm
Annalise
6:51
I'm hearing a two
Annalise
6:52
no the weather the weather right now like my dog's paws are always so muddy and then you gotta wipe them and your shoes are muddy so
Corey
7:00
so you have a dog
Annalise
7:01
dog it's the seasonal thing yeah do you
Corey
7:03
you make the dog wear shoes when it goes outside exactly no
Annalise
7:07
don't but when he comes inside and it's muddy about
Corey
7:11
about the permeability like
Annalise
7:12
like do you wash his
Annalise
7:13
yeah when he comes inside and it's muddy like it is right now it's all melty and muddy i have to take a towel and like scrub his little paws because Because otherwise there's just footprints everywhere.
Corey
7:22
That's not a scrub. That's a dry. I'm saying you
Corey
7:24
got dry shoes, you're good to go.
Annalise
7:26
But it's melting. It's spring. I think some of this conversation is like seasonal dependent. It's different in summer.
Annalise
7:33
So for more excellent insight
Carter
7:34
insight like this, you can buy your tickets to The Strategist Live on April 2nd at the Grand Theater in downtown Calgary. Tickets on sale now at thestrategistlive.com
Corey
7:47
Can I ask, why are tickets still on sale? I'm pretty sure we were supposed to be sold out two weeks ago I
Carter
7:52
think I might have screwed up
Carter
7:55
may have screwed up I think
Carter
7:57
that the tickets came off sale for a few days because I forgot to do a few things
Carter
8:10
turns out you have to essentially correspond with the theater that you want to rent or they don't rent it to you and i just didn't because i was like we've
Carter
8:20
we've already sold tickets they've got all our money so no problem and uh anyways that was wrong so uh now people can buy tickets again www the strategist dot com if you want to buy tickets cory
Carter
8:34
cory right now the url
Carter
8:36
cory is is so confused what's
Corey
8:38
i honestly don't know if this is a real thing or not the
Carter
8:41
the strategist live dot c dot com dot com very important a
Annalise
8:46
a few tickets left a handful of tickets left dozens
Annalise
8:57
annalise you're back on track with the theater is what you're we
Annalise
9:00
look at cory's face cory trusted you with something very important which was i mean
Corey
9:06
mean i I didn't, to be
Annalise
9:09
trust them. And there's still tickets for sale. Here's
Carter
9:11
Here's the thing. We sold out all the time when Zane was going to host. Is all I'm saying.
Annalise
9:18
I also didn't know I was hosting until a few days ago.
Annalise
9:21
So it's going to be a good show, guys. Because
Annalise
9:24
Because when you said I was hosting, I thought you were joking. You were like, Zane will be there. You'll be there. Yes, that
Annalise
9:30
And then I didn't know what was the truth. And you're like, didn't you read the event description? I'm like, yeah, it's a big joke. We
Carter
9:36
had a merch store for months and no one went because they didn't trust us. No one believed it was real. Yeah. All
Annalise
9:42
Trudeau. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So
Annalise
9:44
So back to what we were talking about. Great show. Great show. That's a wrap. My question was actually not about the socks. You guys have strong opinions about the socks. That was just a side thing. My question about the visit was, what
Annalise
10:01
stands out to you about the past couple of days other than the Sox? Other
Corey
10:06
Other than the Sox.
Annalise
10:07
Sox. Yeah. You go first, Corey.
Corey
10:10
You know, I think the event
Corey
10:12
event itself is pretty pat. It's the kind of thing you always get when a president comes to town or a foreign dignitary. You've got dinners, apparently, that the leader of the opposition isn't invited to, but is invited to, but isn't invited to. you've got uh the the pageantry of all of these state events you've got the the perfunctory meetings of the families all of that stuff and it is um in some ways it's like putting the entire city in a penalty box or a cooling off period and for me the the most notable thing about joe biden's visit was nothing that he said which is like every u.s president says a version of this except for maybe the shot at the leafs which was entirely deserved because it's the it's the leafs it's that it came in the middle of a very tense moment in Ottawa with everything going on with you know foreign interference accusations resignations from caucuses suggestions that you know national security sources perhaps have torqued things all sorts of rumors going around and it's it's a bit like saying okay everybody go to your corner for a bit and I do wonder what what it's going to do to change the tone and change the course of this story come Monday. Because there's not that many things in Ottawa. I mean, Ottawa is a small town in many ways, and you do run into the same people all the time. But there
Corey
11:31
there was a time 20 years ago, you'd all be at the same bars. That's not 100% true anymore now. But the fact that everybody's at the same events around the president's visit, I do wonder what that's going to do in terms of change the story privately that we are going to then see publicly come monday it's
Corey
11:48
it's going to be interesting i
Carter
11:50
i hope you jump in i hope that that's right i hope that that's right because cory's right like when
Carter
11:54
when you run into people and you're chatting with people that's a great opportunity to connect on a human level but i'm reminded by the that the android that goes by the name of pierre paliev doesn't seem to follow the same rules that everybody else follows i mean um you You know, even the interaction between him and Biden on, you know, the leader of his or his majesty's loyal opposition. You know, there was kind of a petulance and childishness that I always seem to equate to to Pierre Pelletier. Now, that might just be my bias. I might just be biased against Pierre because I've known him, you know, since he was a petulant child and he still is a petulant child in my mind. But I honestly think that Pierre doesn't play by those same rules that would see the softening that Corey describes, especially given that I still think that the liberals or the conservatives are trying to make points on foreign affairs. And I am, maybe I'm just too old, old fashioned, but I just don't think that you don't, I just don't think you make points on foreign affairs. I think that foreign affairs and things like that are supposed to be off limits for making points because it's about the country as a whole. But, but that just might be me being old, old school. I
Annalise
13:08
I think that was a full school eye roll and heads roll from Corey. So that, is that a disagree? agree well
Corey
13:15
well because we've i mean we've talked about this in the past that's just like people say that it's not true people have been making points on foreign affairs since the dawn of politics it's just the dumbest thing to suggest otherwise and
Carter
13:27
and we thought less of them yes
Corey
13:28
yes we did you thought you thought less of for example fdr when he made points on foreign affairs during world war ii you
Corey
13:35
you thought less of george washington when he made foreign affairs points you thought It's like Washington was at war
Carter
13:40
war with the others. Come on now.
Corey
13:42
Well, no, not the entire time. There was, listen, I know you've listened to the musical Hamilton about three times today.
Corey
13:53
might recall that there were a couple of times Foreign Affairs entered that story, even outside of war.
Carter
13:58
okay, never mind. It happens. Moving on. Annalise, I'm right. He's wrong. We'll just move on to the next story.
Corey
14:05
Yeah, look, I think that you've got to read a Pierre Polyev. that is in part colored by your views of him i actually think if you ran the tape on this week he's clearly trying to make himself seem more serious and somber about this issue and less like an attack dog like when you look at the qp footage he's like hey this is serious we got to get to the bottom of it right and i think it's a tone that you would somewhat expect from somebody in that role the
Corey
14:28
the social media doesn't follow like it's a lot hotter you know it's a lot angrier and And I think it's still unclear to me – you
Corey
14:37
you know, there's this line we used to say a decade ago about, oh, it's social media, it's not the real world. I'm not really sure that that line holds anymore. I think too many people are on social media for that to be the case. But it's
Corey
14:47
it's not clear to me which is the real – which is leading which, right? Like, is he trying to modulate himself in question period, or is he just trying to amp himself up into a very animated, marketable guy on social media? I'm not really clear on that. But I think that one of the things that could happen here is that this story could take three more turns this weekend that we won't see in public because we don't have those normal public beats, thanks to Joe Biden being here. So it's not like it's going to fundamentally change, but it'll be like we picked up a book and we missed two chapters, I feel, on Monday. You
Annalise
15:21
You think on Monday, that's what it'll be like? Yeah,
Corey
15:23
Yeah, I mean, either we are going to be so much further down the road towards an inquiry, or even an election, God forbid, or everything will have cooled down a bit and we'll be so much closer to finding peace in our time again.
Annalise
15:34
Let's dig into that, though, Carter. Do you agree?
Annalise
15:36
agree? Do you think we're in inquiry,
Annalise
15:39
inquiry, if not election territory yet?
Carter
15:42
yet? i think the global story uh about hand uh hand what was his name hand on um you
Carter
15:50
you know that that story changed things for me um because that was an allegation carter
Annalise
15:56
carter do you want to just pause there for one second just so i can fill in the that'd be great but only because i don't do it
Annalise
16:03
i don't have segment titles and this was one of my segments oh
Carter
16:06
oh okay well sorry for stepping on your segment no it's
Annalise
16:08
it's good they merged together they were it was maybe one after another now Now there's like a puddle. It's good. So MP Handong stepped away from the Liberal caucus earlier this week over allegations he was involved in political interference.
Annalise
16:22
This is a global news story. Global news is the only one that
Annalise
16:26
that has had it. They cited anonymous national security sources that said he lobbied a Chinese diplomat to keep the two Michaels imprisoned in China. He stepped down, but he says that these allegations are false. so it's a sticky situation as cory has said it's been changing a lot pick it back up carter yeah
Carter
16:46
yeah i mean i think that that's a that's a that's a absolutely unbelievable story i mean the the idea that um an uh an elected member of parliament would be um i don't know lobbying is the right word but but asking for foreign help uh on a on a file so that a government can stay elected that that's staggering um now i know that that's being contested uh and i and i but i i'm also you know you were a reporter annalise i mean how hard would this be to get this through the news room without two impeccable sources without like really solid stuff uh but at the same time if this was a one-on-one meeting how do you get that solid stuff right like i heard that becomes part of the the disclosure. And so I'm super intrigued to see how that unfolds, because I feel like that took us a much closer step to the inquiry. And I was very much against the idea that there was going to be an inquiry. I thought that if things remained relatively status quo, we were on a path where this special, what's the title?
Carter
17:54
Rapporteur. Rapporteur was going to be in a position to kind of, you know, manage this and get it off of Trudeau's plate.
Carter
18:02
That's just been blown up by this global story. Absolutely blown up. So I just think that there's
Carter
18:09
there's many more shoes to drop, many more continue to drop. And I think Corey is much closer to being right than I'm ever comfortable with. So there you go.
Annalise
18:21
go. Corey is much closer to being right. Okay. Corey, jump in.
Corey
18:26
Yeah, here's the thing about this story. And it is it is explosive, for sure. The idea that a government MP would for political gain, you know, throw their countrymen under the bus like that is, is a wild accusation. It's as serious as accusations get. It is basically treason. Right. And it is pretty nuts to me that, like, I agree, like the bar to publish that better have been very high, right, given the nature of the accusations. and and yeah to carter to your point like the it was supposed to be a one-on-one conversation there's basically two ways that this this
Corey
19:01
this must have come to ceases attention if we assume it ceases and we don't know it is right yeah
Corey
19:05
one is they got their hands in some way shape or form on perhaps a communique that was done by uh the consul general back to beijing very possible i think given what we know about the uh you know information gathering capabilities of the the the Five Eyes Nations, right? Totally possible. And the other is that
Corey
19:27
that just people were talking about it, right? Like there was just some sort of like rumor and gossip. And if it's the latter and not the former, that doesn't feel super substantive. And I think you can understand why people might be more willing to set that aside. But here's the thing. And here's why I think you almost, why this story drives us closer to an inquiry regardless. And it's a point many many have made online. I'm not going to pretend it's unique to me.
Corey
19:52
One of two things has likely happened here. Either Dong
Corey
19:56
Dong has sold out his country, and that demands an inquiry. Who knew what, when, how, given the seriousness of what was going on.
Corey
20:04
Or our national security apparatus is so out of control that
Corey
20:08
that they are leaking these things that are inaccurate, or knowing that there are multiple interpretations, leaving it to one interpretation. And look, I think there's a case to be made they're out of control the minute there's one leak but
Corey
20:20
but the minute that there's a leak that they are now putting a spin on like that as well like that's a next level that we have not yet seen in this story so one of those two things is the case unless we have the third and in my opinion very unlikely case that global has entirely lost their minds right so you know this is a very serious situation either way you cut it and i do think we need people to look into it and because Because we are now looking at two potential outcomes here, obviously one, major national security implications vis-a-vis the Chinese, but the other is an apparatus that works in secret trying to take down an elected government.
Corey
20:55
That's not going to be resolved with a private inquiry done by the security services. That is the kind of thing you need to yank into the light of day. So I think we're there. I mean, to me, the big question is, when are the liberals going to realize it? Because if the liberals are being entirely forthright with us, and that they did not do these things, they should be the first pounding on the table for a public inquiry. Because the other solution, the other answer to that question is your national security apparatus is in the cloak of darkness trying to take you down. And that's the kind of thing I think that demands a public inquiry. Carter,
Annalise
21:31
Carter, if you're advising the liberals right now, like today, what
Annalise
21:35
what do you tell them to do this weekend and into Monday?
Carter
21:40
I'm assuming the time machine go back and listen to the strategist episode like six episodes ago where Corey says to call the inquiry. That's off the table.
Carter
21:49
You should have done that.
Annalise
21:50
No, you can't. If you had said it, then that was not you who said it. You thought it was a bad idea, I think. So
Carter
21:58
Corey has made the point a number of times. And and you know how it pains me to quote Corey when Corey's sitting there. But Corey has explained a number of times that one of the biggest challenges with with the liberals is that they will get where they need to go sometimes after many weeks of being dragged there. And if they just simply said, you know, at the beginning of the problem, where are we going to wind up in five weeks anyways? Oh, we're going to wind up calling a public inquiry, then call it earlier. They're going to call a public inquiry now. um you
Carter
22:29
you know cory's outlined a i
Carter
22:32
don't know i i want to say far-fetched because i want it to be far-fetched this idea that that we in canada could have a a security agency trying to bring down an elected government should be the stuff of science you know science fiction or you know a tom clancy style novel in the united
Corey
22:49
united states just dystopian stuff yeah
Carter
22:50
yeah like it's just not canadian it's just not who we are what we think of our security services what we think of of of our uh society but here we are kids i mean this has been uh quite a week where these leaks are coming now fast and furious um there is no remorse on behalf of the first original leaker we we've covered that before i mean he he or she um doubled down and said that you
Carter
23:18
they would essentially do it it again even though all of these negative things have happened uh so from my point of view the inquiry is going to be required um they should have listened to cory earlier uh i'm sorry cory you were right i was wrong okay
Annalise
23:35
okay but if if if that scenario that you've called science fiction from cory is science fiction what what's what's your advice to them how do they they
Annalise
23:44
gotta call the inquiry but
Annalise
23:45
but other than that what else do they do well
Carter
23:49
here's the problem with cleaning up your own mess at this stage right so the the problem so annalise what you've got now is a problem right a mess has been made and usually we try to clean our own messes um when we make a mess we try and clean them all up or change the channel or those types of things um this isn't going to be available to them anymore because now they're part of the story they are uh they've been injured by it and And if they try and clean it up themselves, it will look like they're trying to, you know, essentially hand themselves the outcome. So they have to hand it to an independent third party if they're going to get any benefit from this at all. Corey is describing a national security apparatus that may be taking down an elected liberal government.
Carter
24:32
That's unbelievable, right? The fact, you know, this is a liberal MP that was elected under suspicious circumstances. This is partisan politics. They need to get this off their deck. There is no mechanism available to them to
Carter
24:47
to just simply say, well, here's how we're going to handle this internally. Here's how we're going to do it ourselves. You have to get this type of stuff off to an independent third party. Now, you can devise guardrails that are so strong that the inquiry doesn't get to look at certain things that you may find challenging as a government. I think that we did that with the health care inquiry in 2011, 2012. We put guardrails around it. It didn't look at certain things in the past. It only looked kind of what's happening now. Those guardrails were put up, you
Carter
25:25
you know, for a reason. You don't want certain things looked at. So, you know, that could be the only thing that this government can do. Because right now this thing is off the rails and it needs to be managed by a third party.
Corey
25:41
Yeah. And let me tell you, because I don't think we've talked about this on the pod. There is something unique about the liberals, of course, that makes them more reticent to call a public inquiry.
Corey
25:52
The last time they did it, right? The Gomer inquiry is identified particularly by a lot of people who have ended up in what is the current Trudeau camp as one of the things that brought down the liberals in the early 2000s, right? There's this sense amongst many liberals, and you've got to keep in mind, for a long time, the liberals were this two-solitude party. You were either a Critchinite or a Martinite, and before that, you were a Critchinite or a Turnerite, and before that, you were a Turnerite. It goes back forever. And there's a sense that Martin, by running against his own party, by calling an inquiry that became the Gomery inquiry, he damaged the liberal brand so badly that that's what sank the liberals. And I think that there's some truth to that. I really do. I think his approach to the inquiry, once he called it, really is reflective of that critique. that critique there's
Corey
26:43
there's two things one is this is not the same issue and you you can't fight the last war right you've got to think about this the facts as they are now and what they lead you to do and steven to your point foreign affairs is supposed to be more serious than this politics and it's the kind of thing you need to elevate above and you need to think about the issue in those in context the other is the
Corey
27:03
fundamental thing that martin did there was he called an inquiry into the last guy right and he saw it as the last guy the rest of the country saw it as the current governing party there's
Corey
27:12
there's not that weird distinction right now everybody's got to sort of realize that the there's different players on the field and is different things going on but you can understand i guess on like a fundamental level why the liberals are hesitant about inquiries but
Corey
27:26
but that doesn't mean it's wrong to call an inquiry at this particular moment well
Carter
27:30
well and not every inquiry has been fatal um
Carter
27:32
um most inquiries are benign uh so
Corey
27:35
so arguably that inquiry wasn't fatal right well
Carter
27:38
well i mean arguably i mean i'm kind of echoing your point that i think that it could be seen as being fatal um but not most of the time an inquiry is a get out of jail free card and i think the liberals need to cash their get out of jail free card because if they continue to do what they're doing i mean they continue to show how many years now have we talked about how bad the liberals are at crisis management and
Corey
28:03
and yet they're still and yet
Carter
28:04
yet they're still terrible at crisis management they they they wind up in the same hole all the time is
Annalise
28:10
is there a time limit on that get out of jail free card like how i i know um cory's been talking for a while about doing an inquiry but how how
Annalise
28:21
how soon do they have to use that get out of jail free card it
Corey
28:23
it might already be
Carter
28:24
late i think it's i mean if you get dragged anytime
Carter
28:26
anytime you get dragged anywhere you you lose some of that uh you
Carter
28:32
know the goodwill i mean we we got dragged i mean most governments are dragged to inquiry no one runs to an inquiry uh because they're usually
Corey
28:41
usually well i mean that's the big difference yeah
Carter
28:43
yeah with uh yeah so you're gonna be dragged to it i
Carter
28:47
i think that you don't have much longer if you're the liberals i think that we're looking at a week you're
Annalise
28:52
you're talking days a
Corey
28:54
certainly don't have until May, or at least my view is, if
Corey
28:57
if this story continues to unfold the way it is, they don't have until May and they don't have until, you know, the report back from their rapporteur that an inquiry might be necessary. That feels so far away. tragic if
Carter
29:09
if you waited until you got the report back from the rapporteur i mean unless the rapporteur came this week and said with the new stuff that's going on with the yeah
Corey
29:17
yeah i don't need two months i
Carter
29:19
i i only need a week and here's what i can tell you it
Corey
29:22
it needs to be escalated
Carter
29:23
off of my desk university
Corey
29:24
university administrator extraordinaire that
Carter
29:26
that would actually be pretty smart yeah
Carter
29:28
make some calls make that happen they
Annalise
29:31
they don't listen to him where does um the president biden visit fit into this and i guess also to that the fact that the michaels um were in the audience like what what did you make of that cory i
Corey
29:43
i honestly didn't know what to make of that it seemed like such a ham-fisted way of putting in the issue that we're all talking about domestically into this this other frame i i really i don't
Corey
29:54
don't know like i need to do a little bit more searching on that to figure out how in the world that happened because it at least my first reaction to it is that
Corey
30:03
that seems That seems unnecessary. That seems like, unless they were on the guest list for the past three months, this seems like a wild thing to do. But
Corey
30:10
But maybe they were. And
Carter
30:11
And that leads me to believe that there is some sort of relationship with the Americans that enabled this outcome.
Annalise
30:18
Explain that a little more, Carter. Well,
Carter
30:21
Well, the back and forth of the foreign policy, you know, there was a there was a feeling like one of the reasons that the Michaels were were held was because we were doing the bidding for the American government and holding the. Yeah.
Corey
30:34
Yeah. And then when those charges had yet dropped. Yeah.
Carter
30:37
Yeah. And so by holding the, by doing the Americans bidding, we put our citizens at risk. And I wonder if there's not some truth to that. And as a result, the
Carter
30:50
the Americans may have played a role in brokering the release of the two Michaels. I'm speculating. I'm speculating entirely. But that's why I'm speculating that way is because I'm trying, as Corey is, to figure out how they fit into this particular puzzle. Because otherwise, without that kind of a reason,
Carter
31:12
reason, it's kind of like a misplaced puzzle piece, even though their names happen to get mentioned by the by, you know, global news story. Like that's that was weird. um so i think i think that there has i think that there's a bigger story there and i don't think it's the the surface the surface play of you know we're going to invite the two michaels because their names are mentioned in the in the global
Corey
31:37
global no i think that there's um there's a lot of uh
Corey
31:40
uh that makes a ton of sense right uh certainly i think everyone's expectation is this was a coordinated effort between multiple nations in order to get the michaels home so um
Corey
31:51
why not and And the other thing we can't forget, although it's easy to forget, is that this is a very delayed meeting of Joe Biden in Ottawa, right? So as much as it might be like the Michaels, yes, they're in the news right now, but why are they otherwise coming? It's now 2023. You got to keep in mind this dinner was probably originally going to happen in 2020 before COVID and everything that kicked on. And that was very shortly after the Michaels were released. So it's quite possible. It's like when Joe Biden comes for a state dinner, we want to invite you as well. That invitation remained current, even though two and a half years have passed. That's very, very possible.
Carter
32:28
That is a way more likely scenario
Carter
32:31
scenario than the Michaels were added to the agenda because of this story, right? In fact, it does nothing to help the liberals by having the Michaels there. No,
Corey
32:41
No, it just makes them available to the media. Yeah, now all of a sudden there's this underlying... What would you think if it turned out Dong said this? Yeah.
Carter
32:47
How do you feel about this guy telling you, you know, I
Carter
32:50
mean, it would be actually quite tragic. Well,
Corey
32:53
Well, as we talk this out, I'm sure that's what happened.
Carter
32:55
Yeah, it's got to be that way. So now
Carter
32:58
now we've unraveled that mystery for our listeners. Congratulations.
Annalise
33:02
Congratulations. What happens when we put heads together? You're
Carter
33:05
this money for a good reason.
Corey
33:07
It's probably just written as fact in two words in a news story somewhere. can
Annalise
33:12
we just talk a little bit to just lastly on this one that media angle and i think you both have kind of touched on it of like third option is whoa global um but the story's coming out at a time when you know perhaps there's not huge trust in media when uh newsrooms are smaller than ever as we've talked about before even the language right like in this story and i don't know if other people picked up on this but um
Annalise
33:38
um like anonymous sources versus there's a a move in some newsrooms to call them confidential sources because the
Annalise
33:44
the general public doesn't really understand anonymous um i guess do either of you have any thoughts on how that that media aspect fits into this whole story yeah
Corey
33:54
yeah i mean confidential sources anonymous sources they're troubling right uh in many ways but they i understand entirely why newsrooms use them and i think that there's still for me it's always even when there's a leaker and i'm a former government government bureaucrat. And I loathe leakers, just loathe them, especially as the guy who ran communications. It was difficult. It was difficult to have to deal with that when somebody would put that out and it would break trust in the public service. And it was just a deeply unpleasant time. I never held it against the media for taking what was newsworthy content and publishing that.
Corey
34:29
I don't really have a problem with what Global did based on what I currently understand. For For the same reason I don't have a problem with what CBC did
Corey
34:36
did by posting about Danielle Smith potentially reaching out to Crown prosecutors here in Alberta, also using confidential source for that particular, I think that was a singular source, maybe it was two. Do
Annalise
34:49
Do you think the public, I mean, you're like a comms guy and you're in this and you understand how the media works, but the general public, and I think it was in the Discord chat,
Annalise
34:57
chat, actually, that someone was asking, like, hey, has there been any update on the Danielle Smith email thing? Because CBC has a story. And then Daniel Smith is like, this is wrong, defamation or whatever.
Annalise
35:07
And then like, no one else can match it. And then it's just been sitting there. Like, is there, I
Annalise
35:13
I don't know, the general public when they hear this stuff, and they're like, well, that, like, are they more likely to think, well, Global's wrong? Well, CBC's wrong? You
Corey
35:25
You know, it's an interesting point because I think when we hear about an anonymous source or a confidential source or whatever you want to call it, we get this assumption that we're going to know, right? Like that there will be some sort of conclusion. Like we're going to get to the end of the book and on the last page it will tell us, yes, there was a source or no, there wasn't a source or yes, the source was right and no, the source was wrong. Real life is not that clean, right? And I think that we don't always get the conclusions we hope for. on the cbc story they did do a follow-up saying here are the 10 questions we asked the premier's office about their quote-unquote search for uh this email we never got a response back here's what security experts say here's ways they could have searched for it that doesn't sound like they did but no we didn't get anything there and frankly we may never get anything there doesn't mean the story wasn't newsworthy doesn't mean cbc was wrong doesn't mean danielle smith was wrong either if we're going to be fair and charitable about it it means we have a certain amount of context that we're going to have to weigh as discerning readers of news, and we're going to have to determine what we want with it.
Corey
36:24
But to your point, how many people are actually discerning readers of news? How many people are actually going to live in that gray and say, I'm okay with it? Like, I don't know. It's not 100% clear either way.
Corey
36:34
You know, I mean, people can be very frustrated. And there's also this assumption that you don't publish it unless you're 100% sure. But I don't think 100% is the bar. You know, I don't think that's the bar for the media. It's like, do we we have reason to believe this is true. Is there newsworthiness to it? Are we acting in good faith? And, but that's not everybody's perception of it. A lot of people think that it should be absolutely ironclad, like court of law, you know, not a single juror is going to say they've got a question with it kind of proof. And maybe that is what's partially driving the view of media more negatively is the sense that the media can act with impunity on these things. And, and and we're just supposed to trust them but the reality is it's their job so i don't i don't have a big problem with it and
Annalise
37:17
and a lot and carl i'll get you to jump in in a sec here but a lot of media i think is a lot of outlets are bad at kind of explaining how the sausage is made because they're in
Annalise
37:26
in in in it and they don't and i think there's some outlets that have public editors and we saw that right even with the um the
Annalise
37:33
the daniel smith email thing where there was the the big big
Annalise
37:37
big top boss kind of explained here's what went into this um but i think there's a lot of outlets that just kind of assume their readers are those discerning readers who understand it and they're not like even this the language confidential my understanding is because um readers were reading anonymous and thinking like oh the outlet doesn't know who the source is and they're saying like no no we know who they are they're confident but they're they're confidential we're not telling you who they are they're not anonymous they're confidential so does that language changing i I don't know, Carter, do
Carter
38:09
Well, I mean, everything is mixed together, right? So there are websites that, you know, don't know who they're getting their information from. You know, even here, you'll see pretend journalists putting up their, from the DMs, you know, breathless reporting that is purporting to tell truth, truth purporting to tell honesty of what's going on because you know it's someone's honest opinion or it's some you know they got they came across it and they now have this piece of information and they breathlessly run uh to report it so how is that you know from the dms how is that different than what
Carter
38:53
what the cbc is doing now you and i the you know we know that it's different because we know how this works but i'm not sure that the general population knows how different it is and seeing you know being in that world where people don't understand um how
Carter
39:10
how this sausage is made to kind of pick it up from from your terminology is really tricky and the undermining of the of of the trust i mean when you're looking at media reporting now if it you know if i agree with the the ceases stuff that of course the the trudeau uh liberals are are are corrupt man man,
Carter
39:32
thank God that those leakers are there, right? And that seems to be how it's been, how it's been, how it's working now. Back when, you
Carter
39:40
you know, and it is, if someone's hurting the person I want hurt, then I believe it. And I'm not sure how we get to a single set of facts ever again when we have this confused marketplace of information. And that's not something that just relates to this story. That's something that we've been talking about out on this podcast for for a
Carter
40:02
a long long time because that's it is super duper hard to imagine a scenario where we all return to trusting the media or trusting the sources of information ever again
Carter
40:18
um okay okay what i don't think no
Annalise
40:22
no that that it was just a bull's ending there ever again um
Carter
40:28
it's true, though, because we're not going to go backwards, right? Like, we don't
Carter
40:33
information is coming from, period. No,
Annalise
40:34
No, it's a complicated, it's, yeah, as you point out, and I would maybe use language different than you, but as you point out, people, when I was a reporter, all the time, people would say, why aren't you reporting
Annalise
40:47
reporting on this thing that's all over Twitter? And it's like, well, because it's a rumor, and I've been trying, but I need my three sources. sources and uh anyways yeah i i think i think it's a wild environment but i do think um trust
Annalise
41:02
trust is is quite low and i think perhaps in this story that plays a role from
Carter
41:07
from the dms stephen
Carter
41:09
stephen carter uses language that annalise wouldn't use i mean
Corey
41:14
mean i feel like that one is pretty well sourced yeah
Corey
41:17
yeah i think we could
Carter
41:18
could probably go with it you
Annalise
41:19
can pull up some old episodes yeah
Annalise
41:21
uh okay let's move on on to our next topic that does not have a title um we're moving into alberta uh a bit of a friday news stuff dumb i'm curious i know uh
Annalise
41:32
uh i'm sure you you both saw this today um but we haven't actually talked about it we haven't texted about it so this morning um finance minister travis taves says that he's not running again in kind of an interestingly worded um letter which we can dive into a little bit and then it's funny because um people were like hi i wonder who's gonna be be next and then this afternoon um
Annalise
41:54
um same thing from sonja savage that she's not running again so what uh what do you make of these friday
Annalise
42:01
friday announcements and are should we be making something of it or is this just like par for the course is what happens before an election
Corey
42:09
mean a little of both right so it is a par for the course before election thing it's also a friday which is when you dump bad news and it's also the president of the united states is in town right it's you know there's a lot of things that will bury the news on this particular day and certainly when you get two two ministers that that becomes our yeah like that was the plan this is what they're going to do this is what they decided to to do to manage the story uh
Corey
42:34
uh i don't know like i don't think either of these is really news news certainly there's been chatter and conversation about it for a while carter and i were talking about this before you hopped on the line i'm pretty sure we've even talked about the fact taves was going to retire on this pod odd because it was kind of like a big open secret for months and months um and guys
Annalise
42:51
guys always know things before i know
Corey
42:53
know but you know we don't just report from the dms as a general right yeah
Carter
42:57
we know things because we're smart but
Corey
43:01
but so it wasn't wasn't shocking and i think it certainly is not shocking to a lot of a lot of insiders in the conservative party or anything like that there it's not like they're going to say oh my god another another nail in the daniel smith coffin And because this has costed into a lot of people's views of things, but it's certainly not helpful to Danielle Smith. And I did, I did note what you were alluding to there in the, in the Taves resignation letter, supports the UCP, doesn't say anything about Danielle Smith, right? And Sonia Savage went a different way. Sonja Savic had a much longer note that thanked Jason Kenney, thanked Daniel Smith, said she was going to support Daniel Smith. Can't remember the exact words, but it was rooting for her in the next election, basically. Words noticeably absent from Travis Taves' email.
Annalise
43:49
Taves was short and sweet. He did his prayerful consideration, and he's not
Corey
43:54
anymore. Prayerful consideration, that's true. I think
Annalise
43:56
think that was the lingo. That
Corey
43:57
That was the lingo. Yeah, I noted that.
Carter
43:59
Corey and I have also done that with the podcast.
Annalise
44:05
have you landed well
Corey
44:06
well that's how we learned about uh having to turn back on the sales for the tickets yeah
Annalise
44:13
buy those dozens of tickets carter what what are what
Annalise
44:17
what are your thoughts on this and i think timing too like i obviously people you guys called this a while ago but like waiting tapes has to wait till after the budget but we're what a month from him rich off yeah
Carter
44:31
i mean this is not a new thing i mean uh especially after the budget when p when he was i think straight up asked if he was going to run again and he and he uh kind of hedged on it people were like what does it mean well it means he's not running and he's not right
Corey
44:46
right you know he has what the hedge always means
Carter
44:48
um so we were all shocked and um
Carter
44:53
tave's doing it differently than Sonia Savage also just kind of shows a different, different stage of life. Sonia Savage might need to get a job again. You know, she's, uh, I think she's my age, you know, like she's not going to disappear into the sunset, you know, with millions of dollars. Travis Taves is a wealthy man, but
Carter
45:11
but he's wealthy man. He does not give a fuck if he ever works with the government. Sonia was a government relations professional before she became part of the government. she may need to go back to being a government relations professional either at some you know maybe at a different level she'll be a board member or she'll be a senior executive but she's going to have to do something in the future travis taves gets to walk out with his fingers out of his holsters going fuck you fuck you fuck you and the fact that he did essentially do fuck you fuck you fuck you um
Carter
45:42
um that's political speak for fuck you when he doesn't mention the premier by name and And, you know, I'm loving it. I'm here for Travis. Way to go, Trav.
Carter
45:52
I'm a big fan.
Carter
45:54
Is that? Tell me I'm wrong, Corey. I
Corey
45:58
you know, I think part of it is also the difference in their styles, right? Like, he's not the guy who's going to effusively praise a bunch of random people. That's not him.
Carter
46:10
not a random person.
Carter
46:12
You just hear yourself.
Corey
46:15
It's a fair ball. That's a fair point. And, you know, I do think that, like, interestingly, as much as you say that he can just ride off into the sunset, part of me didn't. My read was a little different. My read was, he
Corey
46:27
he wrote it in a way that if this all becomes a flaming ash heap, you know, that he can walk back in and be a little bit more clean and be like, yeah, I ran against her. I lost. I did my duty. She asked me to continue to be finance minister. I did. I wasn't very enthused about the non-conservative budget, but I did the best I could in the parameters I was. I didn't run again. And yeah, I didn't, you know, I didn't go out of my way to support her during the election, right? Like, he has this optionality now. He looks much less like he's licking her boots than Sonya Savage does, frankly. And maybe that sets it up better down the road.
Annalise
47:02
Is there a lot of strategy that goes into your public?
Annalise
47:06
I don't know if resignation is not the right word, but like that your public, I'm not going to run again. oh
Corey
47:09
oh yeah there's there are very few pieces of communication you are going to think about more than that letter yeah
Carter
47:16
yeah but most of the time it's pretty it's pretty standard right like you're just gonna write the standard letter
Annalise
47:23
leaving because i want to spend more time with my family friends yeah
Annalise
47:27
yeah it's i think
Corey
47:28
think that's a premier
Carter
47:29
premier for bringing me on the journey you
Carter
47:31
you know it's time for me to leave but the premier and i couldn't be closer raj and sonny did it do
Carter
47:38
you have a favorite do you
Annalise
47:39
you have a favorite one carter like a one that stands out or you're saying tapes is oh my
Carter
47:43
my favorite one was lloyd snellgrove when he told allison redford to go basically go fuck herself when she won that
Carter
47:52
one was classic do you remember that what did you say
Carter
47:55
say i do only
Corey
47:55
only after you mentioned it it was pretty graceless but yeah so yeah
Carter
47:59
yeah he basically said i can't believe you've elected this bitch i'm out of here um
Carter
48:04
um and i won't you know i won't serve in her caucus i I won't serve with her. I'm, I'm gone. And that's basically what he said in his, in his resignation letter. And it was so toxic. Like the only thing I could come up with to countermeasure it was, um, Lloyd Snellgrove resigned, discuss. That was our, that was our entire response because he fucking owned the day, owned the day when he, when he walked out. If you've got a moment on your hands, just, you know, just Google Lloyd
Carter
48:37
Lloyd Snellgrove walking away from alison redford and it is possibly the best worst exit in political history yeah
Corey
48:46
yeah they they are pretty much all of a format as steven said it's you know it usually starts with here's all of these things that i've done that i'm very proud of um
Corey
48:56
um i i i think it's now time for me to move on to the next thing uh i really wish my caucus the best and all of that and And I look forward to, and then I list a number of activities you're going to do. Usually that do involve spending time with your family, but rarely phrased that way these days. Now it's like, it would be more like if it was me, I'd be like, Lori and I are looking forward to traveling more and getting to spend some time working on the causes that we care about. So, you know, making the same point, but in different words to avoid the cliche. But yeah, I mean, but despite them all being very
Corey
49:29
very pat, because it is sort of your last public act you think a lot about what goes in it and it's that one communication you've probably written yourself not with the assistance of comms people maybe they've given you some kind of pointers after the polish it but yeah you're gonna you're gonna think about how you want to be remembered as you write that and
Corey
49:47
and um and that can drive you to make it a quite a personal communication now it
Corey
49:53
doesn't mean they're good communications but it they usually mean something to the person who wrote them it's
Carter
50:01
lloyd's meant a lot to the person
Carter
50:05
it's pretty spectacular okay
Annalise
50:09
let's move on oh
Carter
50:11
topic what do you oh no lightning round lightning
Annalise
50:13
lightning round yeah we'll do we'll do a lightning round but you can i'll i'll allow your answers to be a little bit longer well
Carter
50:19
well i don't know if
Carter
50:20
the podcast cast of late but uh i
Carter
50:23
cory and i have not given a shit about rules for about ever i think ever is the right answer that
Corey
50:28
that might be we'll see okay
Annalise
50:29
okay this one goes our one hour long lightning round okay
Carter
50:32
okay let's do it
Annalise
50:35
it's the story that just keeps on giving us headlines children's tylenol um
Annalise
50:40
um i'm glad we got back to
Carter
50:43
to one that i was right that felt unreal the
Annalise
50:46
premier did thank you
Annalise
50:48
the premier did a press conference um in a pharmacy this week saying that the medicine is finally here the turkish medicine is on store shelves um and there were some good headlines this week one said um other
Annalise
51:01
other provinces not jumping at alberta's plan to sell children's pain medication like to them another
Annalise
51:07
another one said quote why would parents purchase this alberta imported children's pain
Annalise
51:12
pain medication at different concentration requires education so as i've said we've said before we've talked about this many times it just keeps giving us headlines um let's
Annalise
51:22
let's start with you uh carter what do you think is the next headline that we're we're gonna see on this turkish children's tylenol story that just keeps giving like what what's our next headline the
Carter
51:35
the next headline is when it goes bad i mean at this point um the ucp is just going to try and bury it there is no uh there is no way to polish this particular turd it is a bad story it will remain a bad story there's there's nothing they can do with it um so they
Carter
51:53
they they can't make it a good story so i just don't think they've
Carter
51:58
all they can it's over it's over they're never going to turn it into a a good story so my view on this at this stage is that the the last headlines have been written all it is now is just will the ndp bring it up on the campaign trail answer yes as often as humanly possible as another indication of why the ucp can't be trusted with with the dollars i mean came out today that um you
Carter
52:23
you know 130 million dollars is going to be given back to the federal government because we're not using it for uh abandoned oil and oil and gas well cleanup like what the fuck are we doing here danielle
Carter
52:36
danielle wants to commit a billion to 10 billion dollars to this stuff but we can't even use the 130 million that we were given by the provincial government we're just pissing away money in this government and this 80 million is a it's just the it's a beautiful ad for the ndp that's the only time we're going to see this in the future because Because the UCP have got to stop talking about it.
Annalise
52:57
How does the NDP package it? They just say that they can't be trusted? Look at what they
Annalise
53:02
they did on this file?
Annalise
53:04
Like, how do they package it
Carter
53:06
I'd go and order some.
Carter
53:08
I'd go into the pharmacy, go looking for it, and then I'd find a way to order it. And I'd do it all on camera. And then I'd do the actual sit-down with a pharmacist. And then I would compare it with going in and buying some children's Tylenol. Oh, boy.
Corey
53:20
boy. That's not bad. It might be illegal. legal but yeah pretty
Annalise
53:29
now if they do it it'll be your you know
Corey
53:31
know we take credit anyways
Corey
53:33
well we know zane doesn't listen so it's not gonna happen um
Annalise
53:37
um cory what what's it what's the next headline here uh
Corey
53:43
uh you know if the ucp is lucky there isn't the next headline but if the ucp continues its certain current course of luck i mean the funny thing is they have created a situation where now they are suggesting this is going to come in in batches over the next several years creating an annual headline for them about this that's
Annalise
54:04
that's like how many times have we been like hey the story's over and then it just keeps yeah they find a way better yeah right
Carter
54:10
like this is annual this is the best thing ever well
Annalise
54:14
well they're gonna keep getting it and then keep trying to sell it elsewhere and it's gonna keep being on shelves and well
Corey
54:21
well the next headline is probably when it starts hitting expiration date which is like two years i understand right yeah and there's just like tons
Corey
54:29
tons of this stuff like in a dumpster somewhere and there's b-roll of it that'll be i mean if that's the next obvious one but i don't know what else there might be
Annalise
54:38
wonder too like someone should do a taste test between uh between
Annalise
54:43
between the two people could There could be more headlines, Carter. They could get creative here. Oh,
Carter
54:47
Oh, I'm telling you. Like, go in, get the stuff. You
Annalise
54:50
You should do a taste test here. Do like on the podcast, taste test of the two different.
Carter
54:56
time I've been somewhat medicated on the podcast, it hasn't gone on. So I don't, I'm
Carter
55:02
I'm not sure that that's the best strategy. Shots
Annalise
55:05
Shots of. I've been advised
Carter
55:08
advised that I should no longer be taking any medicines and recording podcast episodes. uh there was the infamous uh episode from what from where was i whistler um
Corey
55:19
um you were somewhere yeah yeah
Carter
55:21
yeah that didn't go well so
Carter
55:22
so no i will
Corey
55:23
will not be doing taste
Carter
55:24
taste but yeah okay
Annalise
55:26
okay yeah someone should um next uh oh this actually is a this kind of fits with what you're saying i i want to at some point we should get more into this r star stuff i don't think we really have but it's lightning round um the ndp released an ad this week in which ganley kathleen ganley she sits at a table there's a dad and kids um
Annalise
55:47
um she kind of uses like this taco night grumpy
Annalise
55:51
grumpy teenager analogy to explain the r star issue um
Annalise
55:55
um talks about like when you make a mess you clean it up say no to 20 billion dollars in handouts i'm
Annalise
56:01
i'm very curious as strategists what
Annalise
56:04
what you thought of this if it was a hit or a miss if you loved it or hated it uh
Corey
56:10
uh you know what i thought it was pretty good if you watched the whole thing but you know when we talk about ads for social media um generally
Corey
56:18
generally speaking there's a couple of things you got to keep in mind one of them is um you're
Corey
56:22
you're going to get their attention for like six seconds on average right and if you're not really getting your point until
Corey
56:29
you know second 20 second 30 you're probably losing a fair bit along the way and so i think that they needed to get to the gimmick a little bit faster because i'll confess i saw it on my feed i don't know a dozen times before i actually stopped and looked at it when somebody's like oh this is pretty good so to be fair like that was enough to get me to watch the whole thing but if you think about it in terms of like a mass consumption item if you think about it in terms of pre-roll on youtube or something like that it probably needed something a little bit earlier on to be a bit of a hook but the message was strong the execution was strong i just think for the medium you've got to hit them a little harder at the start in terms of like get to your key message faster yeah it takes a lot of the art out of it fully appreciate that that's that's a limitation of the medium that's marshall mcluhan yelling at you about that not me but uh if you can actually get their attention for that one minute either in a one minute tv ad uh wow that's really probably the only format that i thought it was excellent right but they should have probably considered how they get to their point a little bit faster there still you know the message was solid and i think that uh the message is the kind of thing that uh you can expect to see more of in the campaign yeah
Carter
57:42
yeah i'll build off of what cory said so let's just accept what i say what cory said is is true which is often challenging but this this time it was correct um this time
Carter
57:53
this time just this one time but the the other pieces of it the good pieces of it we saw character development we saw a storyline we saw um easy to understand uh allegory where people were able to understand what was actually happening with this story now cory's made a good point that it should have come up you know it would be better if there was some hook at the beginning or uh something along those lines but because even with there not being a particularly strong hook at the beginning this was something that had legs this was something that was shared um it is the the number one video video on my social media feeds, it's doing very, very well for them in getting the story told. And I think that it's a big step forward for the NDP to be using some of these kind of storytelling mechanisms that we've been begging them to use. So I'm not going to rag on them about the specifics of it. I think that in general, it was a much better use of the mediums than they have been doing. Are there areas to improve? Yes, of course. No one's done the perfect ad. It always is something that needs to be worked on. But this was a great step towards character development, especially using someone other than Rachel Notley. That was probably, in my opinion, the best part about the spot. They used Kathleen Ganley, who was heretofore been basically a non-entity in the Calgary caucus, and they have made her a character that could help carry some of this Calgary election, a Calgary voice that we want to listen to.
Annalise
59:34
Do you think our star will be talking about it a lot this election? Like, does it fit into that narrative? And does this help simplify it in a way that makes it easier for people to understand and talk about?
Corey
59:46
You know, the most cliched, but probably also the most successful frame there has ever been for social democratic governments is this notion of forward, not backward. And I'm not suggesting that's actually what the NDP is after at this particular moment. But if it is in any way, shape or form, the UCP is just walking into it like Sideshow Bob walks into a rake, right? right uh for you simpsons heads out there you you have things like r star where they're they're shoveling money towards an oil and gas industry to do something that they already should be doing right you have comments that the premier makes about solar deeply skeptical comments about solar power she made this week saying like well why you know i see snow on those panels sometimes or why isn't that good agricultural land being used i mean let's just set aside the fact it's the the winter right now you know and uh probably not a lot you could do there and
Corey
1:00:42
and we still draw 10
Carter
1:00:43
10 of our load part of this week from from
Corey
1:00:48
yeah yeah and and this comment that we are a natural gas province like that that doesn't sound like forward that sounds like backward right and so there is kind of almost this caricature of conservatives that could be painted based on on the actions of this government. Like, one of the things that I think political
Corey
1:01:07
political partisans often fall into is this idea of painting their opponents in a caricature that's totally unbelievable.
Corey
1:01:14
The UCP is given enough ammunition to create a caricature that's totally believable, like the premier's own words, you know, the government's own actions. And I'm curious to see where this all goes. It's funny, because it must be very tempting for the NDP just to run that campaign given a it's kind of historical currency and b how much the ucp gives them but i guess we'll see next weekend when steven carter unveils what he thinks the ndp strategy should be at the strategist live live show uh april 2nd apparently tickets still available because um because steven has
Annalise
1:01:52
been determined carter's doing the ndp strategy yeah
Corey
1:01:55
yeah oh yeah we did that thanks for listening to
Carter
1:01:57
to the pod once in a while fuck
Corey
1:01:59
yeah so carter's doing the ndp one these
Carter
1:02:01
these hosts that never listen like i don't know what have we done wrong i don't understand i don't understand it's
Annalise
1:02:07
it's such a busy week okay carter's doing ndp cory's
Annalise
1:02:10
cory's doing ucp yeah i'm hosting zayn is special guesting where can people get tickets strategistlive
Carter
1:02:19
it's gonna be a great show be there um because i'm going to i'm going to introduce how they can do all of their messaging this way so there there's actually a format
Corey
1:02:28
format there's actually a they can buy tickets don't formula
Carter
1:02:30
formula hang on i'm good in there there's a formula that if you come to the show you will see the formula and then you will be able to see uh whether or not they are using the formula that i'm going to suggest and um it could be very interesting well it will be very interesting plus there's a trap door i'm not saying any more than that i'm not saying anymore okay
Annalise
1:02:53
okay we're gonna Is this a metaphor?
Carter
1:02:55
No, there's a trapdoor on the stage. We talked about it.
Annalise
1:03:00
We're going to leave it there.
Carter
1:03:02
We're going to do Annalise come up
Annalise
1:03:03
up with a trap.
Annalise
1:03:09
That's a wrap on episode. We're doing Zane
Annalise
1:03:11
up with it. This is
Corey
1:03:12
is our strongest ending yet, guys.
Annalise
1:03:15
That's a wrap on episode 1044 of The Strategist. My name is Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey.