Episode 1077: Hills we die on

Annalise 0:01

Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1077. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.

Annalise 0:10

Good evening, guys. That's pretty good.

Carter 0:11

Good evening. You're pretty excited. You almost sounded like you were

Annalise 0:14

happy to be here. I'm excited. I

Annalise 0:15

I haven't seen you guys in a little while. Long time no chat. Yeah. I

Corey 0:20

I mean, you've been totally out of pocket. You've

Corey 0:24

missed all of the exciting things going on. There's been a lot

Annalise 0:25

lot of exciting things. What exciting things are going on, Corey? uh

Corey 0:27

uh well chay shared it was a tie between chay and west crescent heights for cutest neighborhood in calgary that

Annalise 0:35

that is actually false the truth is that today a local lifestyle magazine named crescent heights the cutest neighborhood in calgary and did not differentiate between the two sides i think

Corey 0:47

it was a tie between chay and west crescent heights yeah do

Annalise 0:50

do you agree do you think crescent heights is calgary's cutest neighborhood uh

Corey 0:53

uh i really like crescent heights It's cute is not the word I would use to describe it, generally speaking. But, you know, he's got the nice canopied streets. It's got, you know, great shops. There's this bench that says, Welcome to Chey, that is outside of

Annalise 1:06

of Saughton Found. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's fantastic.

Annalise 1:07

That's a nice bench. Great

Annalise 1:10

That's nice. Can you show me that again? I hardly read it. Oh, you can just go check

Corey 1:14

it out. It's really good.

Annalise 1:15

good. Whereabouts is that bench located?

Corey 1:17

Well, it's located right outside of Saughton Found. So,

Corey 1:20

know, you can go there. Oh,

Annalise 1:21

Oh, that would be why Carter wanted to meet me at Saughton Found earlier this week. Yeah, but you

Annalise 1:25

didn't come because you were sick.

Annalise 1:30

I thwarted your plans. Yeah. You

Corey 1:32

I'm a little disappointed with the reaction here.

Annalise 1:37

how much money that has cost us. The truth is, guys, the truth is, this is the actual truth. I've known about this for a little while, and I was waiting to see, and I will confirm this. The pain!

Annalise 1:51

I saw it. The pain!

Annalise 1:55

I was waiting to see how you were going to tell me about it. But you can ask a listener of ours, Andrew, who I actually bumped into outside of the bench last week.

Carter 2:06

Oh, my God. He sent Zane a note. He

Annalise 2:08

He can confirm this. He sent Zane a note. He sent

Corey 2:10

sent Zane a note. And we thought it was Samantha.

Corey 2:12

Zane that he saw you. We

Corey 2:13

thought it was Samantha. We thought maybe he was mistaken about who was seeing him. No,

Annalise 2:17

No, no. I saw him. We talked about the bench. And then I thought, huh, I wonder how the guys are going to tell me about this.

Annalise 2:25

so jokes on you tables

Corey 2:27

tables have been turned well

Carter 2:28

i'm gonna tell you right now cory the

Carter 2:31

the investment in the bench feels like it was too much now it

Carter 2:35

was it was a great idea up till this point it

Annalise 2:40

walk me through this you guys got a bench and then nowhere did you know we didn't get

Corey 2:44

get a bench we didn't get a bench this was spontaneously created by the people of chad okay

Corey 2:49

we just noticed it and we wanted to show it to you it

Annalise 2:50

it just got a bench but then you didn't work through the strategy of how you're going to tell me about it no we

Carter 2:57

in detail in detail we had

Carter 2:59

had bets we had bets when you would see it there was charts yeah there's charts about when you would find out there were charts and then you've so

Annalise 3:07

so andrew can confirm this i

Annalise 3:09

i i saw it last week and then i thought this is really funny what would be funnier is if they don't know that i know about this and then i wait to see how they tell me this

Carter 3:18

scenario does she know that she we did we did scenario

Carter 3:22

it was it was an episode of friends but she doesn't know that we know that she knows that she we know oh

Carter 3:28

oh i can show you

Annalise 3:31

i've got them it's i've got pictures on my phone yeah

Annalise 3:34

no but the uh the you when you just showed me you just showed me the welcome to chay part the little bubbles are worth worth a visit so people can see yeah they're worth the trip to two pillars oh my god i'm

Corey 3:45

i'm really upset okay

Corey 3:46

yeah it's right up front of two pillars yeah that's

Annalise 3:48

that's where i signed you know i

Corey 3:52

i probably shouldn't have signed a one-year contract seems like it was

Carter 3:55

was excessive at this point uh

Corey 3:57

uh you know hey these

Carter 3:58

these are patrons i just really wanted that thank you very much for your patreon thank you

Carter 4:08

well invested yeah i'm

Annalise 4:11

i'm entertained you know what this is it lives on it

Corey 4:13

it lives on how

Annalise 4:14

how long is the bench gonna be up there how

Annalise 4:17

how long i was waiting to see i was gonna like drop more hints like remember how i told you oh we did a tour of crescent yeah well that's it we

Corey 4:24

each other saying yeah

Corey 4:25

she did a tour yeah and she

Corey 4:27

see the jay bench there

Annalise 4:28

was actually a plan to have a picture of me like thumbs up talking about how great two pillars is with like a little bit of Of the bench, but no acknowledgement of the bench.

Annalise 4:38

No, no, we would have seen through

Annalise 4:39

You don't give us enough credit.

Annalise 4:41

There was plans, but I was like, what's going to be more entertaining is how they're going to eventually tell me. So that was a bit of a letdown, Corey. The showing of the picture. Well, originally

Carter 4:50

what we were going to do was just wait forever. I just got a note. If she hasn't discovered it by the next recording, reveal live on air.

Carter 4:58

That's literally what he sent to me at 8.31 p.m. tonight. Well,

Corey 5:01

Well, I got impatient. Seven minutes ago. I got impatient. you're

Annalise 5:08

so not only is christen heights cute christen heights has a really nice bench that people should go see yeah

Corey 5:14

yeah we've got there are pictures on

Carter 5:16

on the selfie at

Corey 5:17

at the bench pictures on

Carter 5:18

on the discord you

Annalise 5:20

there's pictures on the discord yeah

Annalise 5:22

okay i haven't been on the discord no kidding we've been watching

Carter 5:28

anybody seen this has

Annalise 5:30

has been good this

Annalise 5:32

this has been good guys god

Corey 5:34

what a way well what

Corey 5:36

what a disappointment for all parties i'm calling far west especially yeah how

Annalise 5:43

long how long will the bench be there a

Annalise 5:50

long will it actually be there it

Corey 5:52

it will actually be there for a year we

Corey 5:54

we spent thousands of

Annalise 5:56

to have it there

Annalise 5:57

for a year and you couldn't what

Annalise 5:59

what it's like we made it like seven days you

Annalise 6:03

we're children this would have been oh you guys this would have been so much better if I kept this up and you kept this up for weeks oh

Annalise 6:11

oh my god you fell you folded

Carter 6:14

so soft oh my god Corey I

Corey 6:16

I know I can't help it it's

Annalise 6:17

it's who I am you're a child I'm

Annalise 6:20

just too excited about your sign okay

Annalise 6:22

okay he has been

Corey 6:23

been by the way like I said spontaneous in

Carter 6:24

in the community unbelievable how much he's been talking about it have

Carter 6:28

have you seen the picture

Annalise 6:29

picture It was actually funny when I

Annalise 6:30

I saw Andrew there, because

Annalise 6:33

because Andrew had seen it, but he hadn't like read the whole thing. Like he's like, oh yeah, there's a Che bench.

Annalise 6:38

I'm like, yeah, have you

Annalise 6:40

it? And then he like came and read it with me and we had a good laugh.

Carter 6:45

All of our functions were wrong, Corey. All of them.

Annalise 6:51

Okay. Are we recording an episode? No,

Carter 6:53

No, I think that's

Annalise 6:53

that's it. Yeah. I

Corey 6:55

This is the end of the episode. Everything's downhill. what's gonna what's gonna happen

Carter 6:59

now that's gonna be

Corey 7:02

so listen can we have a conversation about the che bench for just one second here yeah

Corey 7:07

we've we've put a bench up now in che that says welcome to che yeah normal

Corey 7:11

normal people are gonna start calling it che i'm just warning you here like this is gonna happen we are gonna name che che for

Annalise 7:19

had had the the uh avenue article today mentioned crescent heights east i would have you would be winning this you would have surrendered yeah there's a whole there's a whole little feature on how cute crescent heights is and it does not mention east or west in fairness that was written way

Carter 7:33

way before the bunch bench was installed the

Annalise 7:36

photo's right near where the bench is which it's like right there

Corey 7:40

and it is a picture of chay just for the record so

Corey 7:43

they're talking about how great the neighborhood is you're talking about chay

Annalise 7:46

no the whole neighborhood's good so

Corey 7:48

so anyways this is just step one that's that's all i'm going to tell you it's just step one okay

Annalise 7:52

okay the other carter

Corey 7:53

carter does know know what steps two and three are pretty amazing carter does i know

Carter 7:56

know some of them cory's

Annalise 7:57

cory's gonna be so excited about them that he can't keep them a secret you know so listen

Carter 8:01

i'm not letting any secrets out but you know how you haven't been paid for the last couple months i

Annalise 8:07

paid ever it's all going

Carter 8:08

going into chain it's all going into chain so you're an investor all

Annalise 8:12

all for that one year

Carter 8:12

year it's an investment investor it's an investor in chain guys it's

Corey 8:16

it's an investment yeah okay

Annalise 8:17

okay uh how's the rail car buying going we've

Corey 8:21

i i mean we we spent the down payment on a bus bench yeah we

Carter 8:25

we uh we made some errors not

Corey 8:27

not the same bus bench i'm actually talking about a bus bench we got in uh

Corey 8:30

uh high river saying oh you know okay

Corey 8:33

selling rail car for cheaper than the premier give us a call is what it said on the bus bench advertising works perfect

Annalise 8:41

head out to high I remember

Annalise 8:42

Guys, let's move into our first segment. Unless there's any final words you have on the bus bench. No, just stay

Annalise 8:49

Is this the first bus bench the strategists have done?

Corey 8:53

It's our 12th. Yeah, we've been doing it for some time. It's been our first in the post-chester era, yeah. Okay,

Annalise 8:58

Our first segment is called Pushing a Leader Out. Guys, Premier Blaine Higgs, New Brunswick, he's been in the news lately.

Annalise 9:06

Now there's more. There's a movement to push him out as leader of

Annalise 9:10

of the New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Party. A

Annalise 9:13

A majority of presidents of writing associations have signed letters calling for a leadership review. I want to pick your brain about this like larger strategy of dumping a leader from different perspectives, both from the leader's perspective and the people doing the getting rid of the leader. So we saw Higgs today respond, said he stands by his decisions. Carter, let's say he wants to stay. Let's say you're advising him. What should Higgs be doing or not doing and saying or not saying right now? Well,

Carter 9:41

Well, it's interesting because one of the things that, you know, by saying that he's going to stay, he's already kind of articulating the terms of the battle, if you will. So the battle could easily go any one of, you know, any number of ways. But the most likely battle would be to say, you know what, I acted harshly or acted hastily. Let's reconsider this. I'm prepared to to relook at this issue. And, you

Carter 10:08

you know, we should we should consider whether or not this this is what the Progressive Conservative Conservative Party stands for. We'll do a policy conference, something along those lines. But instead, what he's doing is he's essentially doubling down and saying, no, I'm right. The party's incorrect. And that, I think, is a bold strategy, given that, you know, already was a twenty twenty six writing presidents have signed letters, is calling for a leadership review, having

Carter 10:36

having been subjected to different leadership review processes, it's quite a pain in the ass for the leader to fight because most parties have given the grassroots of the party a tremendous amount of power through these leadership reviews. And right up till the leadership review happens, the premier has near dictatorial control. control but as soon as the leadership review is called that dictatorial control um erodes very very quickly so higgs higgs deciding that he's going to fight this i think is very interesting i wouldn't have recommended that i would have probably recommended a climb down strategy instead of a double down i

Annalise 11:17

thought you liked the double down card i

Carter 11:18

i love the double down you know when i love the double down when something's going to pass this

Carter 11:23

this isn't going to pass uh once a leadership review is in place it doesn't it goes right through to the end of the leadership review and you know unless he changes the channel in some fashion these this is the channel in which he's going to be fighting a leadership review um and i i don't like it i don't like his chances if he has to fight it on this on this turf cory

Annalise 11:43

cory do you agree well

Corey 11:46

the whole situation is a little little bit weird to watch from a distance to see him you know lose support from all sorts of party members from cabinet ministers all the way down party presidents and and him to continue to dig his feet in and say no this is absolutely the right thing to do and this is what we've got to do here i gotta tell you i've seen premiers i've seen leaders dig in on issues i actually don't know if i've seen them dig in on an issue quite like this like it really says something about the the man's judgment or character or both that he has decided this is his hill to die on, right? And I think that his challenge going into a leadership review is he will find a number of New Brunswickers even who agree with him on the general parents should be informed when big things are happening in their children's life kind of point of view, right? Who are going to say,

Corey 12:36

what are you fucking doing? Like,

Corey 12:37

why are you riding this horse so hard? What are you doing to our province? What are you doing to our government? What are you doing to our children? uh because you have politicized this thing in a way that is is kind of gross and and that i think is the shocking thing like if this was just like he believed this and he got a strong pushback from his caucus any kind of like normal sane situation he would do exactly what steven said which is climb down but this seems to be a conscious tactical decision which again either says something about his character or or or his judgment or both but like it's just it's it's like truly baffling to me that a situation about uh keep in mind like mandatory reporting to parents mandatory

Corey 13:21

so like no discretion in

Corey 13:23

of like the i mean technically it's like if you say no then you go to the school psychologist but like holy fuck put a kid through that kind of thing right like why why

Corey 13:33

why this is what he's doing is like that's

Corey 13:37

that's wild to me that's just really wild to me And I think that's the thing that a lot of people inside New Brunswick and outside of New Brunswick are trying to process, because it seems a little gross.

Annalise 13:47

What about the people like around him and those people advising him? And you spoke there, Corey, about like his judgment, his character. Do you think there are people around him saying like, dude, just retire? Like, let's not go through this. Like, you're

Annalise 13:58

you're wrong. How does that kind of talk about that tension between when you have a leader, a premier, and then the people advising around?

Corey 14:10

Well, I mean, I suspect at this point the people around him are telling him exactly what he wants to hear. And we got a little bit of reporting in the last week about resignation from caucus, which basically said you're a tyrant and you run roughshod over things and you turn successes into failures. Paraphrasing pretty heavily at this particular moment, but that's the saying. And my suspicion is that a year later, it's not better. And so if there are people who used to stand up to Higgs, they haven't been in government for some time, I suspect. And instead, what you have is, I would wager a bunch of people who are saying in isolation, this polls pretty well. Right?

Corey 14:48

Right? And again, like parents want to know what's going on in their kids' lives, and I'm sure it polls okay. okay, but, and we've said this before, we've talked about this particular issue in terms of this,

Corey 14:58

the challenge Higgs has long-term is there's a lot of hairs on this. And the minute the conversation gets unspooled a bit, and you start talking about the reasons why you might want to have exemptions from this policy, the reasons you might not want to make it mandatory, you're going to have a lot of people going, oh yeah, well, not in that case,

Corey 15:16

right? But this very firm position that Higgs has drawn, I think is superficially popular. But as if he wants to run a leadership review or an election on it, it will not be popular. That would be my guess.

Carter 15:29

Carter, jump in. Well, I

Carter 15:31

was just going to say, like, as a staffer, I mean, this is one of those situations where you could say to the principal, listen, you know, this is wrong, we need to get out of this. But the principal may say, this is something I truly believe. And it's something that we have to do, for any number of reasons why they may take that position. Now, if we remove this particular issue and say it's just something that the leader feels very strongly about, then you as a staffer have to, at some point, recognize that's what they're calling for. They're calling for this particular issue. They wish to spend their political capital on this. And it's not my job to talk them out of that. It is my job to make sure that they survive it. And this particular situation,

Carter 16:17

situation, you know, if that's the situation where the staffers have decided or basically just, you know, found themselves in a position where they are now going to have to support a bad decision or help the premier get out of a bad decision or get out of this situation, then, you know, that's their lot. lot and uh you know i've been in situations where premiers

Carter 16:42

premiers and mayors and elected officials want something and you just have to try and find about the best way to do it and not just premiers and mayors and electeds sometimes your your clients want something and they they force you into a bad strategy um and you're coming you know trying to make something really difficult happen and then then invariably they say, well, why weren't you able to make this thing actually go away? Why weren't you able to fix it? And you have to say to them, listen, this

Carter 17:13

this was a hand we could not win with. And you said, go win with this hand. And I

Carter 17:19

I tried my best, but this is the natural outcome of that type of situation. And I think that that's probably

Carter 17:25

probably where the staffers find themselves at this point.

Corey 17:29

Well, I think that's a good point. As strategists, and this is in some ways a build on from something we were saying earlier this week but i think one of the fun things about being a strategist is getting the constraints and saying like well you can do this but you can't do that and you've got to try to figure it out and so there's that puzzle element to it all here and it feels a bit weird using this as explanation for this particular issue because one of the things steven didn't talk about is if you find it truly objectionable your job is just to leave yeah

Corey 17:56

right but if you uh if you're sticking around and you're doing the particular thing your job is just to play the hand as best as you can and sometimes you're going to lose sometimes you're going to lose because they played their hand better and sometimes you're going to lose because their hand is better and even if they played it worse they just had a better hand and so the situation you often find yourself in these situations is a losing one but that doesn't mean as a strategist you have failed right and i can think of a number of situations both in you know in my job and then when i've observed other people in their roles and whatnot where it's like Like, well, I beat them, but man, they played their hand really well. And I think we can all sort of think of that, right? Where you say like, well, I won at the end of that, but you made me sweat a little bit. And you certainly were pretty clever in how you approach this particular issue. And as a strategist, you kind of live for those moments. And sometimes, even in defeat, you've kind of shown cleverness. And that's okay.

Annalise 18:51

I guess what next in terms of he's already doubling down, as you've said, Carter? Does he continue

Annalise 18:58

continue doing that? And where do you go when, you know, the majority of writing

Annalise 19:03

writing association presidents are calling for a leadership review? Well,

Carter 19:06

Well, it sounds to me like the party president has to accept the call for a leadership review. And, you know, at one point over the last seven days, we were talking about the potential of seeing an election as early as as Monday of this week. Right. Three days ago, we were supposed to see potentially an election. election.

Carter 19:23

Obviously, that was the premier trying to regain control of his own caucus. That's one of the things you can threaten to your own caucus. We will go to an election then. If you do not wish to see this, and we saw some of that rumbling out of Jason Kenney's caucus. You know, if you don't want this, we can go to an election. We'll have the electorate decide for us. Believing that you're on the side of the electorate.

Carter 19:44

Well, that threat didn't follow through. And instead, we've got another threat. And the new threat is we're going to do a leadership review. And the party president at that point really has their hands tied because

Carter 19:54

because there are constitutions there are rules and those rules will dictate when you need to follow through and actually make sure that your leadership is conducted by so now that the president has this request they will have in their constitution not familiar with the new brunswick progressive conservative constitution cory will be shocked i'm sure he's memorized it but at some point in the future there will be a leadership and at that that particular moment the premier will cease

Carter 20:20

cease to be the leader or continue to be a leader and when a leader goes through this basically it's

Carter 20:26

it's not that everything stops but everything in terms of political importance stops you

Carter 20:32

you are now trying to do one thing and one thing only and that's to win the leadership and that is about logistics and phone calls and who's buying memberships who's who's going to be at the convention? Is it delegated? Is it going to be anybody can go essentially a turn on one member, one vote? Just, you know, so when Alison faced it, it was essentially pre

Carter 20:56

pre-registration. You had to register in advance. You couldn't just show up on the day. So we made sure that she was getting the registrations in advance. Well, do we need to fundraise for someone? Does money need to make, do we need to make sure that people aren't paying for it out of pocket do we need to you know how are we going to make sure that all of our people are there and we'd hire you know we'd get um we assigned to the mla's responsibilities you've got to make sure that you've got 300 people there you got to make sure you got 200 people there you know and they'd be reporting back how many people they have and then you'd

Carter 21:29

you'd be able to tell whether or not you're going to live or die uh allison lived through her leadership and leadership review and died in the premiership that too can still happen this could just be the beginning of the end of of premier higgs that could still be uh the end game uh much in this you know you can survive these things but still leave uh you know kenny's an example stelmac um redford

Carter 21:58

it i i don't like leadership reviews but it is really the only path that uh

Carter 22:04

that the membership has to take to retain control of the party

Annalise 22:09

how um you kind of mentioned that that's your your sole focus like how long is so if if he's like okay well majority and we're gonna have this leadership review does that turn your

Annalise 22:18

your attention right away turns to everything's

Annalise 22:22

everything's about leadership review well

Carter 22:24

well yeah i think he's taking the piece of legislation off the off the docket i think that they've gone back for more consultations i have you know i'm not sure what's remaining in this session but it's the end of it's the end of june so generally speaking legislatures like to let out at the end of june i think today was the last day of the house um this is a pretty normal time for things to be ending so without having to prorogue this would be an opportunity you know i think this session could very well just end and uh no more legislation gets passed. And now you get to focus. It's very interesting timing. Generally speaking, this isn't the time when you would see a leadership review. You don't see a leadership review heading into the summer. This could be a very difficult time for them to be facing a leadership review.

Carter 23:08

You know, maybe this is when the premier wants it, maybe put it at the end of August. And that just gives him as the most organized political operative in the province, components as evidenced by the fact that he's the premier, it

Carter 23:19

it may give him the opportunity to organize and coordinate his

Carter 23:25

If I were him, I'd be looking at super quick or super slow. Both of those options, middles almost never work for existing leaders.

Corey 23:36

Yeah, well, I don't, you know, there are some things we know and some things we don't know. Some we don't know simply because we're not New Brunswickers and we're not necessarily deeply immersed in their party constitution. But let's talk about what we do know. The majority of riding presidents have now said that they are calling for a review. I'm sure it's not to vote, yes, we support the fellow, it's because they oppose him. And so there

Corey 23:58

there is already organization that's occurring against the sitting premier. And so that's interesting to me, particularly because that does suggest to me that if there is a membership cell component, if there is the the whipping of the votes component, then people are going to be able to marshal against the premier in ways that he might find more challenging than he believes going into it. And I have no doubt he believes he has the rank and file. But the thing he's got to keep in mind is,

Corey 24:25

okay, well, let's put it this way. You can be really misled by certain pieces of data, right? You can be misled by a poll that says the majority of people support this issue. You can be misled by a poll that says, and in fact, the vast majority of conservative supporters are with me on this particular issue here's

Corey 24:42

here's the thing nobody

Corey 24:44

nobody is obliged to see the issue in terms of the issue right and we i talked at the start about this could call into question judgment this could call into question character i'm quite sure i'm quite sure that those writing presidents know exactly how they're going to talk to conservatives about this in a way that actually skirts around that issue right if that issue is in fact not particularly popular with the rank and file It'll be things like he's distracted people. He's made the province look bad. You know, he's proven he can't work with people. This is nuts. There were compromises available. There were sensible alternatives. I'm not saying parents shouldn't know, but the way that Higgs has worked with the caucus and the cabinet and the party has made it clear that he is lighting more fires than he's putting out. And we just can't have this right now. and the issue that he runs his leadership on may end up being very different than the one

Corey 25:34

thinks he's running it on and

Corey 25:36

and and that's that's going to be a challenge for him especially if he's going into a summer where he doesn't necessarily have a lot of i get to be premier hooks that he gets to carry forward like the organizing that happens in the summer is pretty modest but it tends to be a little more local yeah

Corey 25:53

and so it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out but But like, let's put it this way. Higgs is going to be driving for a referendum on, well, am I wrong about this issue, right? Don't you think parents should be informed? And I strongly suspect everybody else is going to say, you're an asshole, right?

Corey 26:11

Like, it's not even about the issue. It's that you're an asshole and you're causing discord and chaos one year before a general election. Yeah.

Carter 26:18

Three cabinet ministers have resigned. You know, how many people, you know, how many cabinet ministers resigned under the previous leaders or across the country? How many cabinet ministers resigned? on. I mean, this isn't exactly the time when cabinet ministers stand up on principle. We've seen cabinet ministers go along with their premiers on just about everything, even things that they campaigned against before, right? Look at the sheep that are in Danielle Smith's cabinet right now in the Sovereignty Act. They just fall in line and they try and figure out where they can get to the trough and get fed. That's all they care about. They're just sheep. Well, you

Carter 26:50

you know, In New Brunswick, we've actually seen three sheep step down from a higher-paying job and prestige and all of that and saying, this guy's an asshole. I guarantee you this leadership review is not going to be conducted on the issue. It's going to be conducted on his leadership, and the language that Corey's using, I think, is even a little bit soft. It could be something along the lines of, I think that he was right, but

Carter 27:16

but I don't care. He's the problem,

Carter 27:17

problem, not the issues. in fact if we had a right leader in there right now this would have sailed through

Corey 27:24

through you could have passed that we

Carter 27:24

we could have sailed through that would have sailed through because we we could have we could have sold it to the people the good people of new brunswick right

Carter 27:33

right but instead it's it's all hung up in this one man's personality one man's ego one you know i mean that's how these things happen they

Carter 27:43

they don't happen like it wasn't the 36 000 plane ticket that that allison redford took that killed her leadership but

Carter 27:51

but it was oh my god here we are again here we are again alison putting alison first right the two planes the the the you know like there's just so many the two

Carter 28:03

thing was one thing yeah i remember it website uh as i recall well

Corey 28:07

well so if for those not familiar the government of alberta used to own 2-8 planes uh and mlas would often take them back Back to Calgary, right? Ministers back to Calgary. And there was a weird phenomenon where the two planes would leave from the same airport, going to the same airport in Calgary, and it would be Alison Redford on one plane and a bunch of people, but certainly enough space for Alison Redford on the other plane, leaving at the same time.

Annalise 28:35

Yeah, that caused some drama. That was a great time.

Annalise 28:39

then they got rid of the planes and then when i worked with uh minister ganley it was red arrow and a car like no planes

Carter 28:47

no you know what getting rid of the planes was the dumbest thing that that could have been done because it wasn't it wasn't like the planes were booking themselves right like there was a reason for the planes and getting rid of the planes was just stupid but you know populist politics but we gotta do stupid stuff yeah yeah

Annalise 29:05

um okay let's let's leave that one there and um let's

Annalise 29:11

let's move on guys um

Annalise 29:12

um what should we talk about next let's talk about wildfires floods and politics um we've had some we've had some bigger kind of like policy discussions uh the three of us in recent months like health care crime and i want to talk about an issue that's been in the news a lot lately which is climate change um i I think it's especially relevant right now. This week, Calgary media has been super focused on 10-year anniversary of the floods because media

Annalise 29:40

media here love a good anniversary story. And then in addition, across Canada, there's, as you guys know, a lot of forest fires right now. Canada is burning. We're experiencing our worst wildfire season in recent years. And people outside of Canada have taken note when the smoke recently drifted there. so

Annalise 29:59

let's uh let's kind of chat about these like natural disaster-esque climate change things in this broader um this broader policy lens um i know we've talked on a previous episode about how smith fared um relatively well i would say during the wildfires that hit during the election cory you had kind of talked about how that was like a key piece of the election during the flood we We obviously saw the big bump for Nenshi. From like a strategy point of view, what should leaders do when natural disaster strikes?

Carter 30:37

And I guess what should they not do? I'll start off. I think that the most important thing for a leader to do in a natural disaster is to be only the spokesperson, right? Like there is a trained public service that is their job to manage emergencies. And they will come to the premier or the mayor for decisions and input when required. But they do not need another manager. They need a leader, right? They need a spokesperson. They need a decision maker. They

Carter 31:08

They need someone who is keeping the rest of the council informed or the rest of the cabinet informed.

Carter 31:13

They don't need someone who's actually

Carter 31:17

managing or trying to manage the actual disaster. um and

Carter 31:22

and the other thing that they don't need is leadership that puts the same disaster back up on the table again and i think that that's where the problem is with climate change we are seeing significant disasters that are repeating in nature and some some politicians some some people are working really hard to make sure that those don't happen again and other leaders are ignoring it and saying this is just business as usual. And I think that those are two very different responses. And right after the floods, right after the floods in Calgary, and I think in the floods in Winnipeg and the floods that we've seen across the country, whether it's the lower mainland, the natural reaction of most politicians has been this is a result of change. We must make sure that we are prepared for that scenario. scenario and in this fire situation in alberta the

Carter 32:17

the reaction is different than that the reaction is this is just business as normal we don't have to worry about the fact that we cut our rapid attack teams which rapid attack is rapid attack of the helicopters coming in and putting out the fire we don't have to worry about cutting those teams because you know what this is just an abnormal year it's not just an abnormal year this is the new normal and

Carter 32:37

and so making sure that we have plans Plans in place for the future. That's the politician's job. It's not just to, you know, get in there and roll their sleeves up and pretend like they're, in fact, in charge. They need to respect the public service and then do their jobs, which is prepare us for real change in the future.

Annalise 32:56

Is there an ideal time? And I mean, you referenced in Alberta that we're not using those words climate change. In fact, the Premier is talking about arson, not climate change. But when you're dealing with natural disaster, is there an ideal time when you, and I'm talking about this in the 2023 context, not the flood 10 years ago, but when you do talk about climate change, like when you use those words, when you're speaking to media, when you're speaking to the public?

Corey 33:22

you know, it's really interesting. It's not actually that dissimilar from the conversations and the discourse you see with shootings in the United States, right? During the actual disaster, during the actual emergency, people

Corey 33:34

people don't seem to have a lot of interest in people bringing up the why and how it can be stopped. It's like, that's insensitive. We have to talk about the moment. We have to talk about the people who are hurting. We got to keep politics out of it, right? Right. And it's a really interesting thing we do. To Stephen's point, we actually don't need our politicians to be politicians in many contexts during an emergency. And in fact, we don't really want them to be. We want them to make some of the decisions that trickle their way up to cabinet or to the mayor and council, as it may be. And we want them to be a communicator. Right. We want them to take the messages that are given and clearly communicate them to the public in a way that, frankly, the public service is not super at. And I will talk about 2013 for a minute. Nahid Nenshi famously goes on a bit of a rant about people who are rafting down a flooding river. And he's like, I got a lot of nouns I want to describe these people as. I'm not allowed to call them that, right? Nenshi,

Corey 34:27

Nenshi, no. Well, the incident commander is not going to say that, right? And so it was punchy, it was memorable, it was captured, and you bet your ass people stayed off the river a little bit more after that. So politicians do have kind of that value as a communicator. And I think that's one of the weird tensions, because there is sort of an understanding in the moment, we don't need the politics, but

Corey 34:48

but the policy is actually kind of important if you don't want to get there again. And so what's the right moment to then have the policy discussion to say, here's how we we don't get it into this situation again. And I don't know, I'm not sure I've ever figured that out. I'm not sure there is kind of a right moment because sensibly you would think, well, this is the moment, you know, we are dealing with the consequences. Well, they're fresh in our mind. Let's, let's manage it. But that's often seen as insensitive. And so politicians sort of struggle with when the right moment to kind of feather in behind and have this conversation is. But as you're seeing with the shootings in the United States, people are losing patience with the the thoughts and prayers approaches and let's just wait and let's talk about this later. And increasingly people are saying, no, let's talk about it now. We don't have time for this nonsense. Let's talk about it now. And so I think the conversation is also shifting on this one. And there is more of an expectation that in the moment or immediately after

Corey 35:41

you're having a serious conversation.

Annalise 35:47

What, what about, um,

Annalise 35:49

like is it location dependent at all when you're talking about when to have have that conversation. I'm just thinking like super hypothetically, let's say massive

Annalise 35:57

massive wildfires and some of Edmonton burned versus like some of like super rural, like conservative heartlands. Like, is there an audience kind of question there? Or we're kind of past that point because it's 2023.

Corey 36:12

Well, look, I would say if that's happening, I mean, if Edmonton, Edmonton's a big city, and that would be a tragedy, probably a pretty epic proportions and the scale of the the tragedy does tend to push off those conversations. And so I'm not really sure that you could make a hard and fast rule on that particular one. I definitely think that if you are challenging people's existing beliefs, it's harder to have that conversation, which is why it's harder in the United States to have the conversation about guns. There are other jurisdictions such as Australia, where there's a shooting, you know, decades ago, and that's enough for the entire population to say, well, I think we're done with these guns, then like

Corey 36:49

these automatic weapons have got to go because the population was a little closer to that position to begin with. America has a lot of weird things going on, including like a bunch of lobbying in the NRA, but that made it seem a little bit more charged, a little bit more political, a little more avoidable. Here in Alberta, the fire conversation, when you start saying, well, this kind of feels like it's the inevitable consequence of climate change. I'm kind of, you can look at charts and see how many months or not months, but hours, the city of Calgary has choked in forest fire smoke smoke over the past 30, 40 years, it's a shocking change. It's

Corey 37:24

It's shocking and it grows and it tells a very clear story.

Corey 37:30

But I think that the conversation that follows from that is different in a jurisdiction like Alberta than it is in a jurisdiction like, well, I don't know, say Massachusetts or New York State when the forest fire smoke comes in. And so that's one of the considerations as well and and there

Corey 37:49

is a funny thing that happens in politics when like the point is so obvious almost it seems unsporting i suppose right like why are you doing this you're kicking us when we're down like this is a bad thing that's happening can't we set aside the politics for a minute that's

Corey 38:04

that's a little crazy to me but it is certainly a phenomenon well

Carter 38:07

well don't underestimate our ability to you know when when it's about our livelihood when people have equated you know if If you fight climate change, you're impacting my livelihood. You know, that just means that you're going to put blinders on. It's the same thing with the values and the guns in the United States. This is our birthright. This is who we are. They've cultivated that belief, that value system. And here in Alberta, you know, especially within the UCP, there is a value set that says if we tackle climate change, we are only cutting our own throats. I'll tell you something, if this was radiation coming in from Russia after a nuclear incident or radiation coming in from Japan, we'd be telling them to get their shit together because, you know, this is all really bad. But it's our smoke and it's coming from our province. And it's, you know, it's so much harder to point the finger at ourselves. And because of that, we're not actually doing it. But we're also ignoring a whole bunch of things that we also say that we value, right? We value private enterprise. We value what private

Carter 39:15

private enterprise is telling us. Well, private enterprise is telling us that we have to do this. We have to immediately start working on this. The Insurance Bureau of Canada is losing their minds because they are not going to be able to insure in Alberta for tornado. They're not going to be able to insure for flooding. They're not going to be able to insure for fire. They're not going to be able to insure for hailstorms. right i'll

Carter 39:39

i'll tell you when people are going to start noticing is when they can't get their houses fixed when there's the next hailstorm that comes through they're going to notice when we start when we lose um part of another major city like we lost slave lake we almost lost ford mcmurray we almost lost part of lethbridge once i mean yeah

Carter 39:58

yeah this is real shit guys and maybe at some point people will start to notice but one of the things that i remember is when we when we were giving advice to rachel notley about how to handle the the the actual uh

Carter 40:10

how to handle the fires during the election we said don't talk about it now we

Carter 40:15

we said don't talk about it now

Carter 40:17

well when's the time to talk about it probably

Carter 40:20

probably pretty soon probably this summer what

Annalise 40:24

why did you say don't talk about it now because

Carter 40:26

because people don't want to hear it you're trying to get elected you don't want to lecture people when you're trying to get elected you know like it's not not the right time it's you know there's there's a time and a place for everything and the time and a place to tell someone that you know they're that we're burning down uh the province because of our choices around uh carbon use um probably just not right this minute it's it's you know heather tells me i'm not supposed to say certain things at certain times you know i'm still learning but uh i trust her when she tells me that and i think that that's the the same situation here heather

Carter 40:58

heather loves it when i mentioned her on the pod by the way hey honey yeah so

Annalise 41:03

so when when it is the right time to talk about it how should how should rachel notley talk about it especially given that we know daniel smith is not talking about it full stop period i

Carter 41:14

i think you got to phrase it in the positive alberta

Carter 41:16

alberta is the most prepared to deal with climate change we are the ones who are talking we

Carter 41:20

we were the first ones to put out a carbon tax on our major emitters we were the the first ones to talk about uh carbon capture and sequestration we've got industry in alberta that doesn't exist anywhere else that exists here because we have the expertise if we do not leverage this expertise we will have let an enthusiast we would have let um an opportunity go by and it is about the opportunity right now not just the cost because with every cost there is in fact an opportunity so let us look for that opportunity and let us be successful in it because i have have confidence in Albertans that we'll be able to weather this storm, but

Carter 41:57

but not if we're not looking for it, not if we're not looking at it, not if we're not, if we're burying our heads in the sands like a bunch of ostriches.

Annalise 42:05

Good ending there. Corey, how would you talk about it?

Corey 42:09

Well, I like what Stephen has said and the path he's driving towards and that there's something very Albertan about that. Again, I go back to, I think Albertans are generally optimistic people. Yes, it is very hard to get people to move against their livelihood. I want to stress, Like, most

Corey 42:24

most Albertans know climate change is a real thing. Like, polling shows that. This is not, I wouldn't want to be misunderstood by our audience outside this province, but certainly it's an issue where you're going to get a lot of bite back compared to some other jurisdictions, even in Canada. But yeah, I like the idea of saying, look, Albertans have never been afraid of a challenge. We've never shied away from dealing with tough things. We were dealing with these problems before a lot of other people. and we've got to get back to that forward-looking view that actually Albertans really carried forward in years past. Like, we're not afraid of this. We're not afraid of this because we are people who deal with the things that need to be dealt with. And look, you can sit there in another jurisdiction or you can sit there across the aisle if you're Danielle Smith and you can say, climate change is hard. I want to pretend it doesn't exist. Well, it does exist. It's incontrovertible. Nobody's disputing this. The world is changing. Let's be on top of that change. Let's save this world. let's be fucking legends because we're albertans and that's what we do and i think that there is an attitude that you can pull into this that almost kind of like dismisses as like make make them seem like they're the ones who are small or scared or whatnot right and and you are the ones who are like no sweat on my back like i know we can deal with this thing this is not a hard thing to deal with if we just do it we just need a government that's willing to do it and

Corey 43:46

and and And I think that there is actually a line there for the NDP. Well,

Carter 43:49

Well, and if you're working in a major oil and gas company, you're already dealing with it,

Carter 43:54

The big companies are already working on this. The big organizations, you know, large-scale companies in the oil sands and in, well, any extraction business, any part of the entire industry,

Carter 44:14

they're dealing with it. They're diversifying. They're finding ways. And some may say, well, it's greenwashing or whatever. You know, we've

Carter 44:22

we've got to do what we've got to do. We're going to find a way to do this the best possible way we can, because that's what Alberta is about. And that if

Carter 44:29

if we're not doing that, like I thought we were well on our way. Even Jason Kenney seemed to be more

Carter 44:35

more open to dealing with the effects of climate change than Danielle Smith. Danielle's got her head so far up her ass on this issue. It's it's really embarrassing. thing

Corey 44:44

know it's funny this is a conversation i often have with people in ontario and it's obviously it morphs as the leadership of the conservative party and the conservative movement changes and daniel smith is for sure much more of like a skeptic on climate action than jason kenney was jason kenney really like if you actually listen to jason kenney speak to investors or out east talking about some of these things and you you shut off your alberta stereotype thing Like what he's saying was very sensible. You know, we've got to act. I think we've got to have, you know, the highest environmental standards, the highest social standards, the highest governance standards. And yeah, this is a reality. Alberta's on top of this reality. We were the first to have a price on large emitters, as Stephen mentioned. uh the first oil producing jurisdiction to to tax those emitters period i believe i at least that's something i know we used to say an awful lot and um and there were all sorts of things that alberta was doing relatively early to address these things in terms of investments in uh you know reducing carbon emissions on an intensity basis which a lot of people will light their hair on fire but it's ultimately saying like a barrel of oil is creating fewer You know, fewer emissions than a barrel of oil 20 years ago. Now, when you're doing four times as many barrels of oil, that's going to kind of more than offset it. But there

Corey 46:06

there was no denial of the fundamental science or math here. And Jason Kenney's argument largely came down to, you displace an oil barrel here, it's just going to go somewhere else. Let's get the oil produced here in Alberta, where we have control over those standards. That was sort of the conservative argument of two

Corey 46:26

conservative argument of right now, I mean, I still need to see where it's pinned down. But yeah, I mean, like, it

Corey 46:32

it seems to be a retreat from that global reality that, you

Corey 46:37

know, that I don't actually think is in denial for a lot of people who work in the oil industry. No,

Carter 46:40

No, it's, and Danielle Smith is just simply a skeptic in general. I mean, she just, you know, she's a, she

Carter 46:47

doesn't believe in the COVID science. She doesn't believe, like, she's just a skeptic. Back when I knew her, she didn't even really believe in evolution. I mean, she struggles with science. It was not her best subject in school.

Annalise 47:03

let's leave let's leave that one there i'm sure we'll talk more about this in the future as more i'm trying to figure out

Carter 47:09

out what natural disasters happen yeah uh

Annalise 47:12

uh guys we're gonna do one more quick segment our next segment is called bad blood um taylor swift is snubbing canada she's

Annalise 47:21

she's 40 new tour dates were announced tuesday bad news she's not coming here people People are upset, and you might wonder why are we talking about this on a political podcast, but she's also stopping Chile, and the Chilean president, who is a big Swifty, has written to her saying, please come to my country, which has inspired people saying, like, Justin Trudeau, step in, bring Taylor Swift here. And then today, we actually saw the Alberta MP for Edmonton Riverbend. He filed, apparently, an official grievance to the speaker on behalf of all Swifties. A Liberal MP seconded the effort. question for you guys do politicians need to calm down yeah

Carter 48:02

do you see what i don't know carter got it yeah yeah that's good that was good i

Corey 48:07

i don't i don't know that i can't imagine they better not have been that serious about it there better been a bit of tongue-in-cheek oh no they're serious i'll tell you this

Corey 48:16

if we can get two

Corey 48:18

two battery plants here i think we could put some money on the table and get a taylor swift concert do

Annalise 48:23

do you think carter like should should i mean whether they're having a joke with it or whether they're being serious should

Annalise 48:30

should politicians be stepping in or should we leave it up to the swifties like they're they're creative they they do cool things they can think of how to get her here well

Carter 48:39

well i mean first of all you seem to be excluding it this is not a venn diagram with two set you know two separate circles there's overlap lap there

Carter 48:47

are politicians who are swifties too and

Carter 48:50

and uh yeah you know so allow our politicians to take their stand and speak up uh for taylor swift but i think that people

Carter 48:58

people are forgetting there's there's uh there's a really good reason why taylor swift is not coming to canada and that is simply put we don't you know the large i don't know if you guys are aware of this it

Carter 49:08

it snows here a lot and it's cold here quite frequently um taylor

Carter 49:13

taylor swift has done concerts in the rain in outdoor stadiums uh but i can't imagine her doing a you know a sold-out concert you

Carter 49:21

you know in canada in the in the

Carter 49:25

the snow so i i don't now you're just you're

Annalise 49:28

stereotypes it's called summer here it doesn't snow all summer

Carter 49:32

at least where did it snow in alberta this week it

Annalise 49:38

snowed in jasper that's not

Carter 49:40

not that's not in kananaskis yeah there's

Annalise 49:44

we ride our bicycle

Annalise 49:50

there's no stadium in canada i'm just saying toronto montreal

Carter 49:54

montreal vancouver i don't blame calgary

Annalise 49:55

calgary i'm on we got a new saddle dome i'm

Carter 49:57

i'm on taylor's side okay

Annalise 50:01

cory who's side uh you

Corey 50:03

you know what this is this is pretty uh non-nutritional content i think it's kind of funny that you had a conservative and a liberal work across the aisle to to air their grievances about this particular matter here i'll tell you this i think it was in sweden a beyonce concert was blamed for keeping inflation high because it was such a big deal you know it caused this you know there is an economic argument to be made perhaps i don't know but uh canada canadian

Carter 50:32

canadian credit card debt in the world we do not need taylor swift coming and driving that credit card debt even higher but

Annalise 50:40

right now they're all just going to travel to see her and driving that it's even more it's more expensive that way i

Corey 50:45

i you know yeah this is how you could fight that just inflation but

Annalise 50:49

but but in like in all seriousness is this an issue that you think justin trudeau should weigh in on or does he just look like an idiot it looks

Carter 50:55

looks like an idiot i mean let the guys do the working across the aisle thing that was great do that more often that's hilarious i loved it uh

Corey 51:02

uh it's just you know what i i think that in general the idea that politicians would need to get involved in something like that is a bit bit much but i'm i'm just going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they at least know it's a bit much and they're being a little extra because that's what's expected of swifties okay

Annalise 51:20

let's move on to our lightning round um first question alberta's new finance minister says the province may be open to a road tax or levy for drivers of electric vehicles as a way

Annalise 51:34

recoup lost fuel tax revenue.

Annalise 51:37

Good idea or bad idea? Tell us what you really think, Brian Hogan.

Corey 51:43

Okay, well, here's where I... Yes, so there is some logic to the fact that if we're not paying the gas tax and if the gas tax is supposed to pay for roads because we have electric vehicles, so then that money has to come from somewhere and maybe there should be money on registration. All right, I'll concede that but then i want to come i see it paid for registration for every vehicle right like i don't want it to be something that's specific to electric vehicles and penalizing somebody purchasing an electric vehicle that seems to be very clearly you know for a government that's supposed to be free market putting your thumbs on things in ways that are not particularly helpful the

Carter 52:20

other thing i'll say is it does seem

Corey 52:21

seem to be based in a lot of pretty

Corey 52:24

pretty easily debunkable misinformation like i made i made the tragic mistake of

Corey 52:30

of looking at the reply comments to the western standard story about

Carter 52:34

about this and the

Corey 52:35

the number of people who are so so worried about that extra weight of the batteries in my car really tearing up the roads in this

Corey 52:43

province and if anything i should spend i should pay more money was um was

Corey 52:47

was a little wild especially when you consider that the average ev for sure weighs less than the average car in alberta given like Like 50% of the cars on the road are trucks in Alberta, and that's not really an exaggeration. And so, you know, a little hard to stomach that too. Also, a lot of people concerned that EVs are going to collapse parkades everywhere because they're so heavy. Again, see trucks, but you know, whatever, you know, never let the facts get in the way of this thing.

Corey 53:15

Let's be clear about what this is about. This is about taking the Texas route of just penalizing EVs because EVs do not use gasoline. gasoline and this is not actually based on any legitimate policy concerns it's not and you know that's what's hard to stomach about it like if somebody wanted to say yeah you know we're actually going to go by weight and by axle and by number of kilometers driven and we're going to deal with it at registration fuck

Corey 53:39

fuck who am i to argue with that that's pretty sensible but that's not what's happening here this is people are buying evs evs scare us ergo we're going to start taxing evs and rail against an inevitable future that's what's happening here okay

Annalise 53:53

okay carter tell us what you really think this

Carter 53:56

this is the stupidest idea ever i mean every other jurisdiction is trying to incentivize uh the the purchase and use of electric vehicles in some sort of you know last ditch effort to stem off climate change like we were just fucking talking about um we're paying more in insurance than we ever paid before but what the hell let's just fucking burn everything to the fucking ground we can barely see on our windows some days because of all the fucking smoke but it's because of the evs because that's what we're upset about fuck

Carter 54:29

fuck you fuck you don't come after my ev god

Carter 54:33

god go after the jesus christ i pay money to go to go to a park you know who doesn't pay money to go to the park the guys with the two-stroke engines on their fucking motorcycles they can go into a provincial park no cost at all this is bullshit they target the wrong people for the wrong ideas because they don't have a fucking sense of what science

Corey 54:53

because they're too fucking stupid

Carter 54:56

i don't have any really strong opinion i mean i'm back and forth the trick

Annalise 55:01

trick with you is to say tell us what you really think oh

Annalise 55:05

uh next lightning ground topic the titanic sub oh

Annalise 55:09

oh my god everyone's mind the

Annalise 55:11

the sub that's down there um you guys are strategists you do crisis comms what is your advice right now it's what wednesday night uh what's your advice for ocean gate expeditions right now from a communications point of view

Corey 55:24

view holy fuck it's

Annalise 55:25

it's lightning round so keep it short okay well

Corey 55:28

well i mean the reality is i think that they're slated to run out of air in the net by the time people have listened to this so they'll either be saved or not and so we're in this kind Kind of, you know, it's Schrodinger's sub. We're going to have to open it and see if the cat's alive, right? And that's, I mean, it's unfortunate. It's tragic. And it's also, you know, a cautionary tale in a hundred different ways, because it sounds like this company cut a bunch of corners, you know, in terms of safety testing that you would normally expect for submarines. The whole situation seems bonkers to me. A bunch of very rich people put themselves in a Pringles can, sunk into the ocean and disappeared and now the entire world is looking for them right like this is like this is problematic i'm not saying we shouldn't look for them but boy i i almost hope they're handed the bill when they get out and i hope they're found safely and i hope they're handed the bill but if

Corey 56:22

if i'm hired for the company that

Annalise 56:24

that was a question

Corey 56:26

then it's listen you

Corey 56:27

you know it's thoughts and prayers these people are pioneers they were pushing the frontiers they knew the risks um but uh you know uh i i think I think it's really unfortunate this is being politicized when, when in reality, they were trying to push the boundaries of discovery. And those boundaries of discovery have had, you know, many tragic moments from Apollo one through. But, you

Corey 56:50

know, well, you know, we're never going to stop pushing those boundaries, because that's what we do as human beings. And we have, you know, we've set up a scholarship in the 19 year old's name, and it's the discovery scholarship. I don't fucking know. This company is going out of business. working for them they're not gonna be able to pay me that

Annalise 57:08

that was actually decent until that was decent until the scholarship thing uh carter what's what's

Corey 57:13

what's your because i realized i'm not getting any money for this carter what i realized that's what gets me animated even worries about the planet the

Annalise 57:21

what's your advice for ocean gate expeditions right now it

Carter 57:24

it says right there three times on the first page of the waiver that this could result in death we told you this is is what happened we're shutting things down now i mean here's i mean let

Carter 57:36

let me just be very clear i think the worst messaging possible was that of jeremy appell who said that uh billionaires should be dead that shouldn't be the message the message should be the message should be and i'm you know it should be this is a tragedy um but they knew what the risks were they knew what the risks were they were all adults they all got involved they all signed the waiver they

Carter 57:58

they understood exactly what what they were. In fact, we made it very clear that this wasn't tested enough. We made it very clear that this was experimental. We made it very clear that this was the potential outcome that could happen. We also made it very clear that rescue was very, very unlikely, right?

Carter 58:13

Unfortunately, this happens. This is what the consequence is. I'll tell you something. If someone goes up in SpaceX and they're paying $5 million for a ride in a rocket, they're

Carter 58:26

they're taking the same chance. and

Carter 58:28

and everybody who does these extreme things should know that they're taking a significant chance and maybe i mean this is a tragedy but we have to learn from this tragedy hey

Corey 58:39

hey can i tell you something that actually happened to me as a consultant yeah

Corey 58:43

i was in a meeting with somebody uh talking about work i was doing for them and they said well let me just pull up a file and on the like the big screen they pulled up their email and there was an email from the bank and And the subject line was emergency bridge financing denied. So sometimes

Corey 59:01

you don't get paid. And so you just got to be careful taking clients like this. That's what I want to make

Corey 59:07

if they're thinking about taking a client like that.

Annalise 59:11

Okay. Guys, our last lightning round question, the big one. We'll

Annalise 59:17

We'll start with you, Corey Hogan. What makes a neighborhood cute?

Corey 59:25

Well, I think it's canopied streets and shops with delightful signs, you know, that exist going back to, you know, centuries, decades earlier at the very least. And let's not forget kind of like charming things that just happen, which I'm not going to describe.

Corey 59:42

And yeah, I mean, ultimately, I understand why you would think that Che is cute.

Corey 59:48

I don't know how Crescent Heights West got lumped in with that, but I guess splitting the prize is better than not getting the prize at all. Carter,

Annalise 59:54

Carter, what makes a neighborhood cute?

Carter 59:59

have nothing. I was going to say the quality of the bus benches, but then fucking Corey kind of cut me off at the knees there. So thanks,

Corey 1:00:07

The bus benches help you.

Carter 1:00:09

you. Quality of the bunch bench, but no, he kind of killed me there.

Annalise 1:00:14

We're going to leave it there, guys. That's a wrap on episode 1077 of The Strategist. My name is Annalise Klingbeil. With you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.

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