Episode 1067: Fireworks

Annalise 0:03

Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1067. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.

Carter 0:10

Were you reading from notes that time? Because it looked like you were reading from notes, like you'd written out the script so that you could read it. So

Annalise 0:18

remember your names. Yeah,

Carter 0:19

yeah, I get that. I thought I was making fun of you, but that totally makes sense. no

Annalise 0:26

i don't want to mix up your names they're important you're important people this is an important podcast carter i'm told yeah

Corey 0:33

dozens of people zane velgey been benched been benched for the rest of the election we're not going to see zane until after this is all he

Carter 0:40

was sad though he was sad when we told him i i don't think he

Carter 0:43

he was he was sad kind of a little i

Carter 0:47

mean sure he said i don't care fuck you guys but i think

Carter 0:51

think there was some bitterness there i

Annalise 0:55

he's coming back people don't need to worry it's the final date guys i

Corey 0:59

i wasn't worried maybe

Corey 1:02

is he coming back shit

Corey 1:07

oh man okay guys

Annalise 1:08

guys speaking of coming back um i have heard some feedback people have really enjoyed bob and margaret really and i don't know i i think they were both um patreon episode people and this is not a patreon episode so there have been requested uh that bob bob and margaret come back how it works just i'm just putting

Corey 1:29

putting it out there it's not gonna be organic it's been requested yeah the fact that it's been requested makes it now a zero percent you

Carter 1:36

you are absolutely introducing a brand new character gonna happen yeah

Corey 1:43

It's going to have the same name. It's going to be like hyper-confident Bob and like a Margaret who's quite decisive. Yeah, very decisive.

Carter 1:50

things are coming at you. Just to fuck with our audience.

Annalise 1:51

audience. See, I'm just planting the seeds. Planting the seeds. Give the people what they want. Final few days, guys. There's like three days to go. How are you feeling?

Carter 2:01

Well, I'm taking nervous poos every couple hours.

Corey 2:08

Thank you so much. That explains your underpants metaphor from

Carter 2:12

from a couple of episodes ago. That's how my nervousness kind of manifests itself. It's in my gut. And it's not been great. It's

Carter 2:18

It's not been great.

Corey 2:21

But, you know, there's only a few more days. How

Annalise 2:22

How about you, Corey? Just make Carter stop talking. How are you feeling? Just totally locked

Corey 2:27

locked up. Haven't gone to the bathroom in days.

Annalise 2:30

are you feeling about the election?

Annalise 2:35

I don't need to know about your bowel movements. Either of you ever. Why

Carter 2:39

Why are you asking?

Carter 2:41

You don't need to know. you're

Carter 2:43

asking weird questions well

Corey 2:45

well i mean i'm not i'm not in the election i don't i'm observing the election my biggest anxiety is that i you have made me predict something that will go awry so it's all your fault frankly if we get down to it wow

Annalise 2:58

well let's uh let's get down to it let's give the people what they want let's move into our first segment our first segment is called read the tea leaves um it's thursday albertans who are not advanced voting they head to the polls on monday it's the home stretch the final few days guys what do the actions of the two different campaigns this week in the final week tell us about the actual state of the race way in stephen carter you

Carter 3:28

you go well i think that's our last episode which might have been patreon who who can remember but uh we were talking about uh feints right like we were talking about how daniel smith was up in edmonton and we saw vitor marciano put out his absolutely ludicrous tweet that they were going to win four or five seats up there just you wait just you watch six

Corey 3:46

seats six were in six

Carter 3:46

six seats in play there's not six seats in play in in edmonton even if you include the donut uh

Carter 3:53

uh which lou has texted me by the way cory telling me that he did not christen it uh the donut oh

Carter 3:59

i said who did

Carter 4:00

did where does it come from who did it when

Carter 4:02

when you deny it you prove that you did it right it's the equivalent

Carter 4:07

equivalent of he who smelt it we're back at square one it's the same thing okay

Carter 4:12

so anyways there's no you know so they were fainting with each other last week they were kind of you know trying to get people to put the wrong resources in the wrong places but last night we saw uh danielle smith in calgary glenmore and uh you know rachel notley in calgary acadia and i think that that tells us exactly where the state of the race is those those polls those ridings we were looking at very early on as being decisive whoever wins those two if the ucp holds them i mean they absolutely must hold them if they're going to hold government and cory i can't even remember i mean this might have predated annalise which seems impossible but we talked We talked about how hard it was going to be for the UCP to, if they'd lost those two ridings to actually win government or how, you know, Glenmore for sure was going to be one of those tipping point ridings. I mean, we talked about that months ago. And here we are watching these two leaders fight over the exact ridings that we were talking about. So I think what we're seeing is that it's going to be a close election. And anybody who's got a specific number, like, for example,

Carter 5:20

for, you know, 45 to 42, those people are on crack, like they have no idea really how it's going to end.

Corey 5:31

yeah thank you uh appreciate that nice tm no

Corey 5:34

no i think listen what

Corey 5:36

what what steven has said as always is padded and bullshit but the the core of it was right it it does seem to be if you look at where people are spending their time where they're putting their big rallies a it's all calgary we

Corey 5:51

knew that right and

Corey 5:53

and and so any suggestions that maybe edmonton's in play and the UCPs on the march. I don't think we ever believed them, but we can clearly put that to bed, right? If they actually thought there were six seats potentially in play in Edmonton, do you know where Danielle Smith would be? She'd

Carter 6:06

be in Edmonton. She's not.

Carter 6:09

So clever. Yeah, yeah.

Corey 6:10

The fact that we are now looking at Acadia and Glenmore as areas where both leaders have spent some time, and certainly we know from conversations we've had with people where both Both parties are throwing resources in a pretty heavy way. Tells us generally what Stephen has said is correct. Like this is a very close election. Any seat projection that we've seen, even the ones we dispute, all put Glenmore and Acadia in that tipping point area. Certainly our own views of that are pretty consistent going way back. Glenmore is a bit of a bellwether. Glenmore is the one that it feels like if you've got that, you probably have the election.

Corey 6:49

And so the fact that people are spending time there, the fact that the parties are fighting over it, the fact that the parties are denying they're fighting over it and trying to show strength and momentum in those areas does tell you a lot. And it does tell you that it's going to be a very close election. And it's going to matter a lot how the parties execute this endgame and run their ground games, frankly. Exactly. Carter,

Annalise 7:10

Carter, for those people listening outside of Alberta, do you want to just talk and Corey kind of touched on that, but just talk a little bit more about Glenmore and Acadia, kind of like where they are in relation to the city, who lives there, who's running there, like just give people your little. Sure.

Carter 7:24

Fascinating parts of the city. They often shift around. You'll see them move back and forth with different parties and such. Not necessarily provincially, but when you're doing it, you know, like again, federally, they elect conservatives. conservatives across the board. Now, I know people are shocked, but they're just south of where Calgary Centre and Kent Harry used to serve for the Federal Liberal Party. They're south of Glenmore Trail, which is right on our reservoir. And one of the things that's fascinating about that is it's also kind of the demarcation line of where we really start to see different representation of visible minorities in Calgary. Visible minorities tend to live in the north part and the inner city. And then as we move further south, we start to see fewer and fewer visible minorities. There's been some excellent graphics posted on Twitter showing the type of distribution of visible minorities in the city. And keeping in mind, we are, I believe, Corey, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but the third most populous city of visit. Third

Carter 8:24

most diverse. Yeah, third most diverse city. So it's a significant number of visible minorities in the Northwest and the Northeast, not the South. So when you start talking about Acadia and Glenmore, you're talking about a predominantly white population these communities are ancient corey grew up in one of them which gives you a sense of how old it is um so they've been there for a long long time and they've been very well to do i think for a long long time also the silver spoon in corey's mouth shows itself so this

Carter 8:56

this is these places um when

Carter 8:59

when they do switch like calgary glenmore has has produced a cabinet minister like forever right uh but when the ndp won in 2015 keeping in mind that we thought of that as the accidental election cory's used this term that i don't recognize called vote splitting but even in that particular election there was a 10 vote victory for the ndp in calgary glenmore so when you remove like this potential vote split that other people talk about that i don't recognize um you're basically saying you know that get vote number is 50% of the population. It used to be 33% using terminology that I recognize. It used to be 35% and you could win. Now you have to win with 50%. That is showing a significant change in the way the population of that area is thinking about the election. And the way that we might equate this is if suddenly the Toronto area ridings moved from being liberal to being conservative, right? Like it would be a significant shift and you'd be saying, well, that probably denotes something. That means something special in the federal election context.

Corey 10:06

Yeah, you know, here's the thing about Calgary Glenmore, and I did grow up there. It is what I would call the first truly suburban riding going south in Calgary. Like, you can argue about where the suburbs begin, but the way the ridings are split, the ridings north of it have huge inner city components, no matter how you cut it as you move towards downtown. town glenmore acadia those are you know that's glenmore for sure that's the suburbs acadia carries in a bunch of industrial zones that move towards the north actually well north of glenmore trail i should

Corey 10:39

steven but um but glenmore that's that's suburbs but it's old suburbs it's suburbs built still with multi-family housing in certain areas it's it's a fairly compact riding by suburban standards it is next to a giant reservoir so a big body of water it It is surrounded on the west side by the Tsitsina Nation, so there's indigenous influences there, and on the south side by Fish Creek Park. So the other thing about Glenmore, and Glenmore now is also north of the reservoir, actually, in Lakeview. But I guess the thing I would say is that good chunks of Glenmore feel like almost their own sort of separate city enclave. and um and and it is it's got certain pockets of density certain pockets of suburbia it's a bit of a microcosm for what we think of as calgary and there's a lot that makes

Corey 11:31

makes it seem like a microcosm but stephen is also right i want to underline very white like at one point 15 20 years ago before the boundary changes i think it was the whitest riding in the city of calgary which is really you

Corey 11:44

know uh you know saying something because if you go into the southeast there are some some fairly non-diverse places i would say what

Annalise 11:53

what about the candidates um that are running there do you want to speak to to that and um i mean in acadia the fact that you have former cabinet minister there like i it it sounds to me like you're saying these are two kind of must watch places

Annalise 12:10

places in yeah in calgary yeah

Corey 12:15

yeah well there is well

Corey 12:18

well so what you got whitney is it in in calgary glenmore and you've got neg one running against uh her for the ndp yeah nice

Corey 12:26

nice one uh for the ndp and

Corey 12:29

and uh in acadia you have diane

Annalise 12:32

diane batten and chandro right

Corey 12:36

Yes. Well, Sandro, for sure. I would have struggled with the NDP candidates. So thank you for the save there, for sure. And these

Corey 12:44

these writings do have people who would be considered fairly prominent within the conservative circles. But Stephen's point, I think, is, you know, Glenmore was often considered quite a stable place for the conservatives. It was part of Calgary Southwest federally. Yeah,

Carter 13:00

Yeah, I mean, it was never going to move when we were running there. There was no way we could lose that seat, except we lost

Carter 13:07

to the Wildcats. Can

Annalise 13:07

Can you speak to the fact that it sounds like they're in play, people are watching, it's close here, it's competitive. What does that say about the overall state of the campaign? What

Carter 13:21

What it says is there's a breakthrough, right? So we

Carter 13:25

we have to go back in time, and you have to remember the markers that we set out early. And this is one of the things we talked about in the preamble prior to an election. You must set what you're going to measure as success variables before you get to this point. And so Corey and I were talking about this earlier today because believe it or not, I mean, we, we talk frequently. It's really gross. It's disgusting. Yeah.

Carter 13:47

Yeah. Kind of annoying. He won't stop calling. And,

Carter 13:50

And, um, I, you know, when we were chatting today, we were, we were talking about, um, if you had told us that the leaders were both going to be in Acadia and Glenmore on the Wednesday night prior to election day, right in the middle of advanced polling, we

Carter 14:06

we would have said that

Carter 14:08

that looks very strong for the NDP because

Carter 14:10

because these two seats are absolutely going to move after the Northwest. they are absolutely going to move after the northeast like that is the the way that these things would go and this is not dissimilar even from the gondek campaign or the nenshi campaign right the nenshi campaign we moved northwest calgary first the gondek campaign we were moving northwest calgary northeast calgary before we even thought about south calgary south calgary moved at the very very last second and that tends to be the model that we see or that i've seen uh

Carter 14:40

uh in every election that that that i've been part of uh so i suspect it's the same now even when we were the pcs and

Carter 14:48

and we were getting our asses handed to us you know the south was a very different market you know the wild rose could come in and win in the south and we couldn't stop them like it was a it was a far more right wing space and you're

Carter 15:01

you're watching now again if we you know when we were talking about this months ago we were talking about how calgary glenmore if If the NDP were winning in Calgary, Glenmore, Calgary, Acadia, they were going to win this election. And the fact that they're competing over it tells us that they're absolutely in play.

Annalise 15:21

So what should we be watching for in the next, like, Friday, Saturday, Sunday? What should we be watching for in terms of what the campaigns are doing and where the leaders are? Like, let's say leaders come back to Calgary, Glenmore, Calgary, Acadia. What is that saying?

Carter 15:35

Well, it tells me that they're very nervous, right? So if any leader does two trips to the same space, like the same ridings within the last five days, it says they are really trying to win those areas. There's a lot at stake, and those areas are not locked or set by any stretch of the imagination. But you can also tell where they're ignoring, right? So if they're going back to those places, and instead, like, so right now, I don't know where they are tonight, but let's assume they're just in the Northwest. If they went to the Northwest tonight and then came back to Acadia on the weekend, that tells me that they're just, you know, they're more worried about here than they are up there. And, you know, Northwest has more ridings. There are only two ridings that we're talking about in this south area that are even up for grabs. So with only two ridings down there, it seems really weird that you'd spend a lot of time down here when you have the ability to move six ridings in Northwest Calgary. So if you're competing in them, if you're pushing on it, that means that you're more comfortable in these other areas, in my opinion.

Corey 16:44

Yeah, I mean, realistically, it's

Corey 16:46

it's a city. It's pretty easy to move from one corner of it to the other without, I don't know, more than half an hour, 45 minutes difference there. And you do try to spread the love as a political party around. So if you start seeing the party leaders hyper-focus on these two geographies and running multiple rallies, get-out-the-vote activities in Glenmore and Acadia, that does tell you a lot about the current state of the race.

Corey 17:11

In general, I think whenever

Corey 17:15

whenever you see a leader actually making decisions that seem to be this geography-based, it's telling you they are fighting for inches, if you think about it in kind of a football game metaphor, and that tells you it's close. which

Carter 17:28

which is how we think of everything that we've seen in

Carter 17:30

in a football game metaphor yeah

Corey 17:31

yeah yeah we're always talking about football sometimes australian football sometimes

Corey 17:36

we've got all of

Carter 17:36

of the all the skills all the tools hey

Corey 17:39

hey i gotta say we don't need three sports called football like what's

Corey 17:42

what's going on with the afl that's too much yeah

Carter 17:46

keep in mind it did start in the 1800s so it's been around for a while no

Corey 17:50

no i refuse to keep that in mind not gonna do it yeah

Corey 17:53

yeah uh it's really but you you know, I guess, and not to sound like a broken record, but this is a race. If there's anything that the last couple of days have dissuaded me of, it's either of the campaigns kind of bullshits of like, we got this, right? Like, no, this is tight. This is close. And nobody can be sleeping that comfortably if they're hanging out in the Glenmores and Acadias of the world. Because if you're the NDP, you're pushing past that to other geographies. And if you're the UCP, you're pushing past that to different other geographies but they're hanging out here in in the writings that frankly are on that spreadsheet stephen carter was revealing us with during the if

Carter 18:34

if you didn't hear that episode of

Carter 18:36

can you imagine not spending six dollars a month to get that like

Annalise 18:40

details detailed spreadsheets on detail

Annalise 18:45

yeah it was that it was really really

Annalise 18:52

Really, really good. Um, okay. So what, so let's say, let's fast forward. Let's say it's election night and you hear that, um, that not numbers in, in, um, Acadia and Glenmore are positive for the NDP. Does that like, what, what does that tell you? It's

Carter 19:11

If you get both of those, I mean, again, going back to our, our, our earlier kind of metrics that we would be be anticipating if you know when you're drawing up your plan if you win those two seats you're going to win this election um now okay again everything can go wrong right all of a sudden you know you you lose a whole swath of votes in northeast calgary that you didn't anticipate but again one of the challenges i've had with all the polls in this campaign is

Carter 19:36

is this enormous volatility back and forth up and down up and down when we haven't seen that much volatility in the actual election itself right we have not seen like daniel smith make a run and and just all of a sudden perform really well uh or daniel smith really shit the bed right both leaders have been very good on the campaign you know we we called uh the the debate for for uh smith but i don't think anybody paid attention because they immediately went on uh you know when did their outdoor things annalise that you and i would do um yeah

Annalise 20:09

yeah they went camping they took out their boulder

Corey 20:11

boulder i mean i did Look, I didn't even call it for Smith. It's, you know, it was ultimately a bit of a draw. No, now you're just being a

Carter 20:16

a little bit revisionist, which I understand, which is fine.

Annalise 20:20

No, but the debate one's actually a good one. It didn't move any minds.

Annalise 20:25

point. It's a good one to circle back on because we had kind of left it of like, well, kind of draw, maybe this, maybe that, but it depends what happens in the coming days. And then I

Annalise 20:34

went camping and forgot about it. Do you see, like, who came out on top a week later? It was a week ago. go yeah

Carter 20:41

it's it's totally forgotten shrug

Carter 20:43

shrug it's totally forgotten yeah

Corey 20:44

yeah it like the

Corey 20:46

the the final summation is it didn't matter a ton daniel smith for a day or two had to deal with questions about some of the comments she made that were pretty indefensible like she was cleared by the ethics commissioner right but in a way she got off super easy by the long weekend because there sure wasn't the discourse i would expect when somebody is is damned that that strongly by an ethics commissioner or in the middle of an election. And so, yeah, I mean, I agree. If you told me on election night, hey, I'm telling you nothing about the results except Acadia and Glenmore went for the NDP, what do you think happened? I'd say, well, sounds like the NDP won.

Corey 21:24

Now, I'm going to give a bit of a counter case that I don't really believe, but we've already put some of these pieces on the table. They're not actually that that much like the rest of Calgary, right? They are a little less diverse, or at least they've historically been. I really wish I had some of the stats in front, but I guarantee you they are less diverse than North Calgary.

Corey 21:44

so maybe something weird or different happened there. But it's that difference from North Calgary that actually makes them super interesting, because we do know that the NDP from polling have a massive lead with racialized Canadians over

Corey 22:00

UCP, right? And so when you think of the more diverse parts arts of calgary it kind of makes sense that they would move to the ndp sooner when you start seeing the glenmores and the acadias of the world changing you

Corey 22:15

are relying and you're benefiting from the ndp's advantage with women and uh you know not so much younger voters not so much racialized canadians and and that tells you a whole different group of

Carter 22:28

of people are in play

Carter 22:29

Good point, Corey. Good, good

Annalise 22:33

That's nice of you to say. Bang

Annalise 22:35

Let's leave it there and move on to our next segment, which is about negative campaigning. Guys, I was on a CBC panel last night. You did the CBC

Annalise 22:49

I did the CBC without you. Alberta Noon panel with Monty Solberg and friend of the podcast, Jeremy Farkas. um anyways one one of the people in the audience asked well they they wanted to ask a question but they weren't able to and um they

Annalise 23:04

they put it in in the patreon and i care about our audience unlike you guys and unlike apparently the cbc last night so i'm gonna ask his question but it kind of relates to this broader shots fired

Corey 23:16

cbc though are we gonna talk about that

Annalise 23:18

that to you as well it's i'm gonna ask his question but then let me ask another question because it's kind of like like this broader topic so this is his question he

Annalise 23:27

he tells a little bit of a story first he says the students i work with are 14 to 15 years old yesterday a few of the more sapient ones realize that they feel disenfranchised with what they describe as the tribalism the name calling and the immaturity of the discourse their

Annalise 23:41

their observations seem to be echoed in the general discourse at least in the room in scarborough last night that's where we were what would you say to these upcoming voters to engage them and excite them for their future so that's his question 14 15 year olds what what would you say to engage and excite but i want to talk about this this broader thing and it came up last night about negative campaigning there was there was remarks um

Annalise 24:04

that this campaign has been very negative and i guess there's a question of if you agree with that but does negative campaigning work let's uh let's start with there carter yes

Carter 24:15

negative Negative campaigning works. It always works. It has worked every single time it's ever been used. It is the, we have a negativity bias and we also are tribal. We like to belong to groups. And that means if we belong to one group, we don't like the other group. And therefore we shit on the other group. And this is not just something that happens in politics. I mean, there are study after study after study that if you do something just as simple as like assigning one group, an odd number and another group, an even number, or give one group of students one color hat another group of students another color hat they will actively with with within seconds almost of being assigned these different groups actively work to discriminate against the other group negative ads work because it reinforces our sense of who we are and who they are us versus them and we need that that is part of our instincts as human beings now i will concede those instincts have sometimes got us into trouble but this is you

Carter 25:13

don't say but we're

Carter 25:15

we're not here to remake the world i mean you're a teacher good

Carter 25:19

good for you remake the world if you must but i'm in the way in the business of getting people elected and if i want to get people elected you know what i have to do i have to do negative ads negative ads work every single yeah i used to go to this conference in washington dc campaign campaigns and elections it was uh produced by the campaigns and elections um magazine and

Carter 25:40

and i'd go down every year and every year the last session of the of the of the of the the entire conference best attended session of the of the conference and it was do negative advertisements work and the answer every year resounding yes and then they would go through each and every negative ad that they saw and i remind you one of the best series of ads in the the history of the series of ads is the i'm a mac series and they shit on pcs and you know why it worked because it created an us and a them they're the the nerdy pc users and i'm the cool guy who

Carter 26:18

uses the uh the mac and that's why i have a mac to this day so i can be as cool as cory

Annalise 26:26

cory is carter right and

Annalise 26:28

and and not not just no he is not as cool as ads but like can't the overall campaign vibe in general like there was janet brown was in the audience um

Annalise 26:38

adding on the panel last night and she she said like i'm i run these um 20 person citizen panels we track people and i consistently hear they're so frustrated about the negativity give

Carter 26:49

give me a fucking break janet stay out of my lane i'll stay out of your lane jesus

Annalise 26:57

Corey, what are your thoughts on negative campaigns?

Corey 27:01

What are my thoughts on negative campaigns? Well, in

Corey 27:05

in 1999, there was a strange and idiosyncratic pop hit by Baz Luhrmann called Everybody's Free Parentheses to Wear Sunscreen. You may recall this musical,

Corey 27:18

where it is reading kind of remarks as a speaker to a graduating class. The class of 1999. And there's a line in there about needing to accept certain inalienable truths. Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You too will get old. And when you do, you will fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Right? Right. Here's the reality.

Corey 27:47

This is as old as time. People have bemoaned negative advertising for as long as there's been negative advertising. I'm sure when the Daisy ad was

Corey 27:55

put up, those of you familiar with that particular negative political ad, often seen as the first negative political ad, people thought that was over the line. People thought that was terrible. People said, that's just going to turn me off voting for Johnson. And you know what they did? They

Corey 28:08

They then went and they voted for Johnson because it scared the crap out of them about Goldwater. because

Corey 28:12

those were the stakes they heard it in an ad and the reality is much different than what people say because people know what they're supposed to say about these ads but people can't help how they feel and it reinforces their anxieties and it builds doubts in them that they carry to the ballot box and so why do negative ads continue to be used despite people complaining about them because

Corey 28:34

because they fucking work bingo so always have so

Annalise 28:37

so what what do you say let's say you're a campaign manager and you

Annalise 28:42

get those uh you know some key people in the campaign who've been out on the doors who come back and say like we're just being hammered at the doors we're not we're not selling a good story we're we're being so negative what do you say steven carter shut the fuck

Carter 28:56

fuck up bob shut

Carter 28:57

shut the fuck up bob i

Carter 28:59

i know what i'm doing just

Carter 29:01

just get the fuck out of my face okay go Go back and knock the doors. And when they say they don't like negative ads, you say, I don't like them either. I'm going to go back and tell these guys exactly how I feel. And when you don't see negative ads after the election, it's because of me. I mean, it's fucking stupid. Do you want to win or do you want to lose? And I've had that conversation with a whole bunch of candidates who are like, I don't know if I like negative ads. You don't have to like them. You have to decide whether you want to win or whether you want to lose. And fuck off, Bob. Stay out of my face.

Corey 29:34

Yeah, I'm more passive

Corey 29:37

passive aggressive in my campaign managing. I would say something more along the lines of, hey, listen, Bob, appreciate that. But did you talk to the person at the door about the stakes? Did you talk to them about the need to present this contrast? It's really important people understand exactly what's going on in this election. Do we feel good about the fact that we need to call out these things our opponent is doing? No, it's terrible. It's terrible our opponents would run an opponent like that. It makes us feel bad that we have to say the things that we have to say that are so negative about them, but it's kind of on them. If they don't want the negative ads, that's fine. Tell them all about our positive message. Hand them this fucking brochure that is all about the things we'll do. The arenas we'll build. Move on with your life. but you don't uh you know you don't stand by your ad important rule right like you don't disavow these things and and you can there's ways to pivot like yeah listen i i appreciate that the ad makes you feel uncomfortable yeah the

Corey 30:35

the content makes me feel a little uncomfortable too but frankly i'm at this door because that content is real and it's discomfort that it creates in you is because it's not a good thing our opponent is doing like this is how you pivot it's not yeah

Carter 30:46

yeah Yeah, that was all

Annalise 30:52

In the scheme of campaigns, so there was this chatter in the room that this has been a negative campaign, just in general, right? Like it's been negative. In the scheme of campaigns, would

Annalise 31:08

would you agree with that or disagree with that? No, this is not

Carter 31:11

not anywhere near the most negative campaign I've been involved in. Most negative campaign I've ever been involved in is Nenshi 2010.

Carter 31:18

Nahid Nenshi ripped the, like he treated Barb Higgins and Rick McIver like they were flies and he pulled their wings off and he slowly stepped on them until they were almost dead and then he would revive them back to life and do it again and that he did it every single day and if you doubt me, ask Barb Higgins who I still think hasn't forgiven me for that election because it was the most negative thing I've ever seen. Now, we wrapped it up in 14 big ideas and those 14 big ideas made it look like it was a positive campaign but campaigns that are negative work that's how they that's how I mean look at gone next campaign who did we pick on Jason Kenney did anybody object no because they didn't like Jason Kenney they loved that we were picking on Jason Kenney they loved that we attacked Jason Kenney I mean it's

Carter 32:08

it's all in the eye of the beholder but the the audience of these things they don't they don't get to be be the experts in this and they don't get to be the ones who decide how we're doing campaigns it's just ridiculous carter

Annalise 32:21

carter what's the least negative campaign that you've that surprised me about the nenshi thing but what what's like in in your scale of most negative least negative what's the least negative campaign drew

Corey 32:38

well maybe i wasn't for

Corey 32:40

for me a very the local variant of it um and i was involved earlier before the campaign started helping him get the nomination but matt grant's campaign for the

Corey 32:49

liberals in calgary confederation in 2015 drove me by far

Carter 32:53

far the least negative

Carter 32:54

he'd done just a contrast just a single he lost yeah and if he so

Corey 32:58

so close he yeah he lost but he got more votes and a higher percent of the vote than like any other liberal in the province but it just was a two-way race but the point is it was a two-way race because he was so unfailingly nice that he consolidated the green vote he consolidated the ndp vote and it was just um you know it was it was nicely aligned to that sunny ways brand that justin trudeau was doing yeah

Annalise 33:22

cory do you have a most negative well

Corey 33:25

i don't know if i have a most negative but there have been campaigns where there's literally been brawls in the street if you want to go back far enough here you

Carter 33:32

you don't remember riots well occurred outside of the fucking website that that slagged the pcs that was great you don't remember in 20 2014 you did the gordon dirks website where you couldn't pin the uh oh

Corey 33:47

oh that was a fun tell

Annalise 33:48

tell us about your websites cory i think one of them i know yeah so

Corey 33:52

the muckraking website so yeah in in 2012 there was a we've talked about on the pod before this this uh website that was um uh tory or wildrose wildrose.ca. And you had to guess whether it was a statement by a member of the PC caucus or the Wild Rose Caucus. It was basically impossible to tell the difference. That was the point. We also did a couple of other ones that were less well-known, like mortonopposition.com, which was a whole fake website for Ted Morton, leader of the opposition, right? Like after he lost to Daniel, after the PCs lost to Daniel Smith, you had to think about who you wanted to be the opposition was part of the subtext of that particular one 2014 a famous moment uh there was a pc cabinet minister appointed by prentice before he had a seat then he ran for a seat gordon dirks is his name and uh at one of the events he refused to put on a pride sticker

Corey 34:47

and of course these were uh you know these were issues very much first of all put on the pride sticker be an ally but like

Corey 34:54

like there were um you

Corey 34:55

you know there were also rumblings and conversations about GSAs that were coming like it was you know it was very much a tense kind of moment so uh I was working on that local campaign created a site uh pin the pride sticker on the candidate and so the website no matter how hard you tried when you tried to click the picture the picture would move and

Corey 35:15

and avoid you letting you put the sticker and it would leave the sticker on the wall behind where you were trying to put it brilliant stuff very good very good website Corey

Annalise 35:22

Corey has a long history of making websites that uh that make people laugh well here's the the interesting

Carter 35:27

interesting thing tell you something because he did it as humor it was so effective still scathing absolutely scathing but the humor that was involved takes the edge off it's the same with that mac at those mac ads the humor when it takes the edge off and that's something that i don't think has been very prevalent in this campaign there's not a lot of humor in the attacks they're just attacks i

Corey 35:51

would argue though 2019

Corey 35:52

2019 was more negative than this particular election i i find this election actually shockingly positive given some of the things that are on the table uh with the various comments that have been made about nazis and uh you know conversations with arthur palowski and you know frankly it's not just even um oh yeah i mean it's just not as negative even as 19 where we're

Corey 36:14

we're talking about jason kenney denying care and comfort to aids patients like that i mean holy shit like how quickly we forget how

Corey 36:22

how quickly we forget how vicious the 2019 campaign was well

Annalise 36:26

well that it was interesting when it came up last night because my one campaign experience is the 2019 campaign and this is not negative at all compared to to that

Annalise 36:38

um what is imho

Annalise 36:39

imho what is that some

Carter 36:41

some sort of to

Annalise 36:42

to wrap that up kids

Carter 36:44

kids are saying these days

Annalise 36:45

days to wrap that up what what would you say to um this uh this strategist listener who who works with these 14 and 15 year old kids and he wants to like engage and excite them about their future. What is the, what's your message? Be inspiring.

Corey 37:09

need people. We need to fight more for a better world. And yeah, we're all humans and we all have base instincts and political organizers pull on those base instincts and they try to get the worst out of you. If it gets the best result for them. that's the crass and gross reality that we have to deal with in a democracy all of the time and there's this kind of you put down your gun i'll put down mine mentality that underlays this all yeah i'll stop doing negative ads the minute you stop doing negative ads you want to live in this world of fantasies and fairy tales sure but you go first right well none of this changes none of this changes unless people start demanding change so you know you were 14 you were 15 you see the problem the problem's there for the rest of us too we've just become so fatigued and so so blasé about it don't become fatigued don't become blasé don't become steven carter don't become me continue to demand more for your politicians and from your politicians and hopefully you'll do it but i'll tell you something like these things don't just happen they happen when people fight for them progress is not time zero i've said it before i'll say it again if you care you fight Fight for something. And if this bothers you, fight for it.

Annalise 38:18

I'm all choked up.

Annalise 38:21

See, that was inspiring. I really was. It really was good. I mean, it's so good. Be inspiring. And you, look at that, Corey.

Annalise 38:31

I'm going to try mine.

Annalise 38:32

I'm going to try mine. I'm going to try mine. I'm going to try mine. Hang on. Carter has his lion voice coming through. Hang on. Just give me a second.

Annalise 38:39

Carter, speak directly to these 14 and 15-year-olds. Understand

Carter 38:43

Understand that each and every one of you in your class has value. Each and every one of you brings something to the table.

Carter 38:52

some of you are better than the other. Don't be a piece of shit. Right? And what

Carter 38:56

what I'm hearing is don't,

Carter 38:58

don't, you know, treat those people like shit. Treat them like shit. Treat them this, you know, everybody should be treated the exact same way regardless of their capabilities. That's what you must do. And that's what's called communism, kids. Communism. you don't get to fucking vote in a communist system you dildos jesus christ pay attention focus

Carter 39:21

are you doing steven

Annalise 39:23

carter if he was gonna play this for his class that's not happening now can i

Corey 39:29

i can i be real and can i tell you why it matters so much that people who are 14 and 15 get involved people in their 20s get involved because when you're that age everything's

Corey 39:40

everything's in in front of you and you have nothing to lose you have the most confidence and the most courage and the most moral clarity you will ever have in your life and here's the reality at 14 and 15 you think about changing the world by the time you're in your 40s you just want your home renovation to go well okay you have the energy that changes the world the rest of us kind of follow you around so fucking go and change the world and i'll be right there oh my god applause

Annalise 40:05

applause you need an applause that was good i'm barking at applause

Corey 40:10

applause at the 39

Annalise 40:14

big applause yeah that was really good oh god okay uh

Annalise 40:18

uh moving on to our

Annalise 40:23

our next segment we're doing three segments guys we're doing it like old times vote early as

Annalise 40:29

as of 8 p.m today i don't know if it's been updated since since I checked at 8 p.m. Thursday, the advance vote number is 461,214. Tell us, what

Annalise 40:40

what does this mean?

Carter 40:41

It means that 460,000 people got up off their asses and went voting.

Annalise 40:48

that good? Is that bad?

Carter 40:49

bad? Well, let's think of it in a couple different ways. On one level, it's really good, right? It is beating all of the records from 2019. We have all of these people voting. On the other hand, Elections Alberta indicated that they expected up to 50% of the vote would be accumulating during the first five days of the advance vote. We're averaging 150,000 votes per day, give or take. And if that continues, we're going to be at 750,000 votes by the end of advance. if that's 50 percent then that's 300 000 votes less than we got in 2019 so

Carter 41:32

total and that's what i'm so what i'm thinking of is yes these are records this is great but over the last decade we've seen a real shift and we talked about it a little bit in the last episode we've seen a real shift of how people um can now vote in advance polls i mean when i was young you needed to have a reason not to vote on election day you need to actually kind of you know sign an affidavit that

Corey 41:56

that wasn't that long ago I

Carter 41:58

I know I'm not that old so

Carter 42:01

so so you have this you know now

Carter 42:05

now everybody can do it and if it is 50% and maybe elections Alberta was a little optimistic but I think that 50% is reasonable I actually think this represents a downturn in the number of voters I think that that's a a good indication for the ndp because i think that the reluctant walk us through that the reluctant ucp voter right so let's imagine there's three types of voters david coletto articulated this you know in in december of of last year three types of voters the first type of voter is a ucp voter they're going to vote ucp even with daniel smith as the leader they believe in it number

Carter 42:43

ndp voter they are committed to the ndp they're

Carter 42:46

they're going to vote for the ndp no no matter what. Number three is the reluctant UCP voter. That reluctant UCP voter doesn't want to vote for Danielle Smith, does not like Danielle Smith, but by God, they are not someone who can vote for the NDP. So they have to stay home or they have to make an unpleasant choice. And if this represents a decrease in voter turnout, then my belief is they're staying home.

Carter 43:12

Corey, do you agree?

Corey 43:15

No, I mean, I think Elections Alberta was probably a bit overzealous in how much advance voting there would be. We don't really know what the final total is yet, because we haven't gotten to Saturday. That's a day of advance voting. And I suspect that'll be a pretty significant day of advance voting. But let's just say for fun and for math being simple, it's $750,000. So we get $1.5 million under that projection. That's one way to look at at it. Another is we've never had so many people vote in the advanced polls. And when you look at the Ontario election last year in 2022, they had 10 days, I think, of advanced voting, a little bit of a different system, you know, it's always hard to do apples to oranges. But I don't think 25% of the vote came from advanced polls in Ontario. So my suspicion is Elections Alberta just overestimated the interest in advanced voting. And perhaps we're led a bit astray by some of of the trends they saw that were more COVID-based around the world. I'm imagining that they based this on some numbers they had 2019, looking at overall trends, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, this is a lot of people. This is a lot of people voting in advanced polls. It is changing the way people approach campaigning. It's changing how Get Out the Vote works. It's changing how you layer in campaign announcements. Today, Rachel Notley, not new announcement, but a bundling of of previous announcements said this will be bill one this will be bill two this will be bill three and i thought and this will be irrelevant to you know 400 000 people who have already voted and maybe that's okay this is not an earth-shattering announcement but you have to think at this point let's

Corey 44:50

let's say it does get to 1.6 million because last election was really big a quarter of people have already voted that would mean so

Corey 44:58

so everything you do no matter how great it it is, at the very least, it's

Corey 45:03

it's only going to be 75% as effective today as it would have been three days earlier at the absolute best case scenario. And by the time we get to the end of Saturday, if

Corey 45:13

if 50% of people have voted, well, that means there's basically nothing you can do that's going to have more than 50% value. Do

Annalise 45:20

Do you think that sunk in for campaigns, like how advanced voting is kind of shortening the official period? And I guess it doesn't matter given how, at

Annalise 45:29

at least in Alberta this time around, we saw like a lot of campaigning happening before RIT had officially been dropped.

Corey 45:36

I think they get it. I don't know that any of us have calibrated to what's best practice because it's a shifting, you know, it's just shifting. But I've really firmly come of the conclusion that it's pretty baked by the last week. And yeah, you can fuck it up. We've talked about that the last couple of episodes. episodes, right? You can do suboptimal things, but I'm starting to feel like voters,

Corey 46:00

voters, maybe they're making up their mind in the 72 hours before, but they're looking at the pieces that have been on the table for weeks at this point. Well,

Carter 46:08

Well, the information travels differently, right? It takes a long time for things to actually connect. So you could do something tomorrow and it may not connect with anybody for a full week. And that's, you know, I've been talking a lot about kind of how people absorb information, we don't collect information, like we, we read articles, we read stories, we're, we're, you know, we've got discord channels to read, we've got, you know, all kinds of different things happening everywhere. That's not everyone, that's a very, very small percent of the population. And what we do is we then carry that to others, right? You know, I'm sure the people who are listening to this podcast are very comfortable getting telephone calls from their friends saying uh man i don't i don't know what to do like should i vote for this person or that person well

Corey 46:58

well i'll tell you the people listening to this podcast are probably also very familiar with the feeling where somebody you know knows you're interested in politics and sends you information being like hey i thought you'd be interested in this thing this poll that came out and the poll is three days old and you're like yeah i fucking saw that within an hour of when when it came out because of the social media networks

Carter 47:18

networks that i live in

Corey 47:20

that gives you a sense of the delayed reaction a lot of the public is actually carrying for these things and and it should give you a sense of like most most of the conversations about politics are not as immediate as urgent as a kind of events driven as conversations on a podcast like this are okay

Annalise 47:40

um let's leave that there and move to our lightning round um lightning round guys palowski he spouted some nonsense for an hour cory

Carter 47:53

cory and i did our special episode last night and uh then we decided not to release it did we because the episode was uh me saying cory did you see that and cory said uh yeah and we said do you think we should talk about it and we said no and that was the whole fucking podcast right there was and then we didn't release it because it was pretty short well

Corey 48:15

well because of growth because i want to tell you six months ago we probably would have released it you know with

Corey 48:22

with 50 minutes of silence after it remember

Carter 48:25

remember that time that we released in our little hiatus we released an episode that was just static

Carter 48:31

you remember that oh

Carter 48:36

yeah oh there was

Annalise 48:37

was how how long of static it's like an hour oh

Corey 48:40

oh 60 minutes like you gotta know you gotta see it in your feed and think oh wow they've released an episode see

Carter 48:46

super thrilled with us

Carter 48:47

us that day as

Carter 48:49

as i recall were

Annalise 48:50

were they spouting off in the discord we didn't have a discord no discord back

Annalise 48:54

so it's okay Okay.

Corey 48:55

Okay. It's just fine. Okay.

Annalise 48:56

Okay. So, so Polosky spouted nonsense for an hour on the steps of the legislature. You know, he said he was offered a cabinet position by the UCP, a lucrative government paid job to keep his moat shut. He talked about a $2 million bribe.

Annalise 49:11

If, I guess, two questions here. If

Annalise 49:15

you're Daniel Smith, how, how, if you, how do you respond to something like this? And what do you think of how she did respond?

Corey 49:24

okay well i i hate that like

Corey 49:27

like i feel like this is obvious but i'm gonna say it anyways these things didn't happen like they clearly did not happen um palowski did not get offered two million show me the mechanism through which that's gonna work art like that's just not gonna happen he was offered either two million dollars or get to run as a fucking candidate like these are not even this this is crazy talk like none of this works they're gonna let him run as a candidate they've dropped candidates for way less way less about you know than things that arthur palowski says every fucking week there was no way he was ever considered by anybody ever in any official quasi-official non-official nearby sense to be a candidate for the ucp none of this happened this is all nonsense has he said it to his friends before i bet he has because he seems like the kind of guy who would just make stuff up about yeah i was talking to them and They offered me $2 million. Can you believe how corrupt they are, these guys? And they say, hey, Art, you got to call them out for that. You got to go on the steps of the legislature and put them on blast. And so he did it because that's what really unhinged people do. None of this happened. It didn't happen. happen the call even the tape that we do have where danielle smith is is talking you know a lot has been made of the introduction being like oh yeah no i've followed your your work for a long time does that sound like the introduction of like hey arthur yeah you're the guy we were going to give two million dollars to like does any of that seem congruous does any of this work none of this happened right so

Corey 50:58

so what was with danielle smith's response like what was it being like uh to my best of my recollection this didn't happen and to my knowledge you know these conversations weird

Corey 51:08

were they going for kind of like i don't know if they were going for like almost like

Corey 51:13

ironic understatement almost thinking it would be really funny because it was so outrageous but like

Corey 51:19

know politics elections not the time for that kind of clever you just have to shut it down and be like the

Corey 51:25

the guy's crazy none of this happened y'all you know moving on and i think everybody but he would have said, yeah, well, based on what he said, fair ball.

Carter 51:35

Yeah, that's what you should have done.

Annalise 51:40

Wise words from Carter.

Annalise 51:42

Just agreeing with Corey. What do you want me to do? You

Carter 51:44

You want me to do the same thing? Yeah, and then...

Corey 51:47

then... Actually, can you argue... I

Carter 51:48

I want you to argue the other side.

Corey 51:51

argue the other side.

Corey 51:54

don't have no idea how

Carter 51:56

argue the other side. Like, Daniel Smith, I mean...

Carter 52:00

the guy's a nutcase like what do you want the guy's a nutcase but here's the thing you don't talk to nutcases you

Carter 52:06

you know you don't talk to nutcases but oscar

Corey 52:09

oscar feck so there's a fundamental

Carter 52:10

fundamental funny guy you know you

Carter 52:12

know hated everything hated the you know i won't get into it because cory always makes that funny face when he says he's the jews yeah doesn't let me do that so don't don't do

Carter 52:21

oscar is a racist our oscar is a bigot oscar ran for office and he had all all these delusions of what was actually happening. You know what you don't do? You didn't see Dave Brancogne picking up the telephone and going, Oscar, I know you're running against me in the next election, but you know what we need? We need to get together. I got $2 million for you if you don't run against me. Like, it's just, it's bullshit. Good Dave voice.

Carter 52:46

Very accurate. That was my Dave Brancogne voice.

Corey 52:52

you ever met Dave Brancogne? like seeing him on tv even or oscar

Annalise 52:59

it's dave brunconye okay

Annalise 53:01

okay so you you okay okay next next lightning round question speaking

Annalise 53:08

speaking of dave brunconye speaking of calgary city council my favorite topic guys some drama on uh on on calgary city council so i'm just gonna debrief this a little i actually haven't paid attention to this and then today several people were texting me about it so i read some stories basically there is a wonderful firework display that happens in calgary on canada day um

Annalise 53:34

cory would know because there's very good visuals you can watch it in crescent heights tons of traffic comes into the neighborhood if

Corey 53:41

if you're in che from the from the The Edge of Che, beautiful.

Annalise 53:45

No one calls it that, but everyone comes. There's a

Corey 53:48

a shirt. If you go to thestrategist.ca, you can show your Che pride, purchase a shirt.

Annalise 53:53

Yeah, no one has purchased it because no one calls it that. I was on the community association. I know the neighborhood. I do know that a

Annalise 54:01

a lot of people come and watch the fireworks in Crescent Heights, both sides, the west side and the east side, that it's not called Che. It

Corey 54:07

It brings us together. It brings us across Center Street. yeah the people in che and the people in chu okay anyways

Annalise 54:15

anyways canada day fireworks um so a week ago the city said we're not going to do our normal fireworks and they said there was a few reasons they said cultural sensitivities it was related to truth and reconciliation and the 100th anniversary of the chinese immigration act they said the fireworks they're not good for birds um they They disrupted traffic. They're noisy. They bring crowds, et cetera, et cetera. They said. They bring crowds?

Annalise 54:43

We don't like that. The crowds are

Carter 54:45

are coming, eh? Like

Annalise 54:46

Like noise, crowds, traffic. I mean, it's really disruptive in Crescent Heights, right? So they said, we're going to do more of like a light and sound show from a stage at Fort Calgary. Obviously, it was going to be a pilot project. They were going to try it out. It's a pilot project. People were upset. that um so i guess there was an online petition from common sense calgary uh

Annalise 55:10

uh people were raging about this and then today i think today 10 city councillors they drafted this motion that

Annalise 55:16

that says like hey city admin move ahead with a firework show and then also today city administration said hey guess what normal fireworks are back on the table so that's kind of the lowdown of the situation as best i understand it my lightning round question for you there's

Carter 55:32

there's one more piece needs to come in and

Carter 55:34

that is that city administration said it was going to be impossible to reinstate the fireworks for this year now

Carter 55:41

now you can make continue oh

Annalise 55:42

oh i missed that okay i wanted

Carter 55:44

wanted to make sure that

Annalise 55:44

that this shows because i'm several days late to the story okay so my lightning round question you guys are strategists what

Annalise 55:52

do you think of the strategy here and what what should have been done carter

Corey 55:59

carter here's the thing hand up city

Carter 56:00

city of calgary communications is the worst communication structure in the whole world like it is terrible um i don't disagree with them necessarily on the fireworks problem i think that fireworks do create are a problem but if you're going to cancel the candidate today hold

Annalise 56:15

hold up pause pause what what is it i

Carter 56:17

think they're really bad for dogs i think they're really bad um for the environment i think that uh you know that there There is a sense of, you know, a lot of animals have a really negative reaction to them. Wild animals don't do well with them. I just don't think that they're necessary. But having

Carter 56:34

having said that, we

Carter 56:35

we do an 11-day festival with a fireworks show every day. We also have another festival called Global Fest, which is essentially a, Corey?

Carter 56:47

Where people come from around the world with their cleverly created fireworks. It's music. music yeah and this is a it's a beautiful festival it's fantastic so almost all of these arguments that were used by the city administration could be applying to those other two things but they're not going to they just made it about canada today and you know what i get i get the reconciliation questions i get the chinese uh immigration act i mean these things were not great uh they're not great now but i'm not sure i understand how the fireworks is going to solve anything right giving Giving up on the fireworks. And the fact that this was a decision made by administration and then administration told city council, I'm sorry, but fuck you anyways. We're not going to listen to you. You don't have a role in determining what the outcome of this decision is. The fact that they said that tells me that these people need to be fucking taken out back and fucking fired because it's all over. Like, this is not the way city administration and cities are supposed to run. This is not the way.

Annalise 57:49

Tell us what you really think,

Carter 57:51

Oh my God, they're so bad.

Carter 57:53

There's only 400 of them, so it

Annalise 57:55

it would have been tough to write this thing. Many of them listen.

Annalise 57:57

Many of them listen to this podcast. Not anymore. Not anymore.

Corey 58:02

Jesus. Well, I'm just sitting here a little stunned by some of the...

Corey 58:10

They should have had the fireworks display. Let's just start there. I don't like fireworks. It's not even... I don't... Stephen's probably said some legitimate things. I haven't looked up the effects on dogs. I don't have a dog. But, uh, you've

Annalise 58:23

though. Do your kids like fireworks?

Corey 58:27

Kids are simple. Here's the point. It's like, I feel that we invented television and I don't know why fireworks still exist. But the

Corey 58:35

the fact is they're, they're a kind of a celebratory thing. They're something people really enjoy. People go to them, people watch them. They bring people together. I think crowds is almost the point. Seems like a funny thing to be complaining about. and you know they're they're a chance to celebrate this country and i you know what i'm just gonna say i less get not having fireworks um because of canada's troubled past canada's troubled past is something that we need to talk about and we need to embrace and yeah things like the use of chinese labor on the railroad was was really quite terrible internment was quite terrible terrible uh the treatment of indigenous peoples has been quite terrible and the list does not end there but canada as a concept is not the sum of all of our actions for the last 130 some years canada is is

Corey 59:26

is supposed to be something more than that we're supposed to strive to be better you know and and and the celebration of that striving of trying to be a beacon in the world is the point point that is the point and to cancel the fireworks and to rain on canada day is to me

Corey 59:43

i like i don't i do not understand it i do not understand it because fundamentally i do not want to live my life feeling terrible about everything i want to be optimistic about how i can make things better i want to take some of that 14 and 15 year old energy we're just talking about And I want it for our country. You're jealous of those kids. I

Carter 1:00:00

I am jealous of those kids. I'm the saddest guy who's made me cry.

Annalise 1:00:05

There's that voice that came

Corey 1:00:06

came through. No, but I'm serious. Like, we cannot let our national holiday be something that we cancel because in the past, many times we have sucked. We

Carter 1:00:16

We got to look forward.

Corey 1:00:16

We need to be better and we need to celebrate the better and the potential of the future. And that has to be what Canada Day is about. Do

Annalise 1:00:23

Do you think the city should have, um, I

Annalise 1:00:26

I guess, do you think they should have seen this coming slash do you think they should have doubled down? They're not

Annalise 1:00:31

not good at this, but they don't see anything. Should they, should they have doubled down? Like when they're like, Hey, we're going to cancel this. And then huge outrate. Like now they've just had a week of like a headline showing how dumb they are to Carver's point.

Corey 1:00:46

So the first thing they should have done is not do it. The second thing they should have done is immediately surrendered on it. They should have been able to assess that this was a losing issue for them instantly for many of the reasons that Stephen Carter talked about. Hey, we do fireworks all summer. We're just going to cancel our national holiday. What the fuck are you talking about? Right? Right. It's unreal to me that they couldn't have assessed this quicker. And we've talked about this on the pod many, many times. The first thing, the first thing I say to any crisis client of mine, whether it's like somebody I work for or it's somebody who's paying me money to do it, like as a consultant, is, is

Corey 1:01:22

is there a chance you are wrong?

Corey 1:01:24

You know, do not sit there and defend the indefensible for two weeks to be dragged bloody to the inevitable conclusion. conclusion sit turn off your defensive mechanisms ask yourself if you're right or wrong really assess whether you stand a chance in hell here or if you are just in an absolute lose situation and they should have been able to determine they were in an absolute lose situation instantly and they should have lost fast instead of to your point being bloodied for a week on this particular matter making things exponentially worse by saying stuff like it's impossible

Corey 1:01:55

of Of course it's not impossible

Carter 1:01:57

in 35 days to get fireworks. Give the company a call and say, hey, listen, do you got anything that goes boom? If you do, can we buy some of those things that go boom?

Carter 1:02:06

Like, give me a break.

Corey 1:02:08

No, come on. Listen, the stampede, to your point, is a week later. Is it impossible in 35 days? How about 45 days? Because you can just grab from the end of stampede and those fireworks

Corey 1:02:19

There are fucking options here is the point. And you sat there and you lied. lied you lied to do the thing you wanted to do instead of failing fast and council was about to kick your fucking ass over it and that's when you surrendered and that was

Carter 1:02:32

was this is why i think that someone in the administration has to be let go they

Carter 1:02:38

they lied that far you cory cory let me ask you a question you worked in government right you were pretty good at it pretty good at it i

Carter 1:02:44

how many times did you lie to your government to to your elected officials

Corey 1:02:49

i mean no i didn't lie

Carter 1:02:51

didn't you lie to elected officials because obviously you think it's okay for them to lie to elected officials why didn't you do you have just a personal integrity that's higher than everybody else does your personal integrity no because because

Corey 1:03:03

because the system only works on hold on

Carter 1:03:05

on a second here so when city administration lies to city council that system is broken because trust is somehow broken someone should get fired boom winner

Corey 1:03:22

so people have broken trust with politicians they do it all the time you

Corey 1:03:27

know there are ways we deal with that short of termination

Carter 1:03:31

no we terminate right now i'm fucking firing people i'm making some calls

Carter 1:03:35

this is gonna we should

Annalise 1:03:35

should have done this is lightning round we should have done an entire episode on it it's too bad it's an election right now because we just don't have time for it final lightning round question those 14 and 15 year olds who are still listening what are your final words for them i'm

Corey 1:03:51

go to bed i don't care what time you're listening to this go to bed i'm

Corey 1:03:56

i'm done being nice to you okay

Annalise 1:03:58

we're gonna leave it there

Annalise 1:04:00

that's a wrap on episode 1067 of the strategist my name is annalise blingfield with you as always stephen carter and cory hogan ©

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