Episode 1079: Everyone's a critic

Zain 0:01

This is The Strategist, episode 1079. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, she has done it. Olivia Chow is mayor of Toronto. Carter, Anna Baio, slash

Zain 0:17

sorry, Anna Bailey, gave

Zain 0:19

gave a run to Olivia Chow for that race.

Carter 0:21

race. I mean, I think that there was an anybody but Chow that just came together a little bit too late. I didn't do an in-depth analysis on the poll-by-poll results. You're going to be shocked to find out I didn't care that much. The election was over. I'm

Carter 0:36

You and in-depth do not go together. But I believe, based on Brad Levine's tweet, so if I'm wrong, it's Levine's fault. But I believe that it was the advance polls that were so significantly in favor of Chow. And those just came in a little bit late. I don't think it was the endorsement from Tory. Corey, I just think that the recognition of who was the person who everybody was going to get behind to stop Chow came in just a little too late. People just didn't quite quite figure out who they were supporting in time.

Zain 1:08

Hey, Corey, armchair it for me. If this would have been an extra, let's say, five days, do you have a different mayor in Toronto?

Corey 1:14

Yeah, well, maybe not five days, because if it was the advance polls, that was, in fact, a little bit longer still than that. But maybe five days, maybe if that had been able to propagate a little bit more through the city of Toronto. But I agree with Stephen. I mean, ultimately,

Corey 1:28

ultimately, we got to a point where people knew who the alternative was. There was a consensus alternative candidate. But as we said on the last pod, it was just a little too late. Politicians assume that there's this perfect transfer of information that simply does not exist.

Corey 1:43

And compounding that is the fact that a bunch of people had already voted. Now, it

Corey 1:48

it wasn't massive turnout, but when

Corey 1:50

when you consider that Olivia Chow was winning three to one at the time that the advance polls

Corey 1:55

were running, that's you're going to run up the score a little bit at that point. So that's that's the challenge they had to overcome. If

Corey 2:01

If the city of Toronto had put their pants on a little bit sooner, they would have been dressed for the bus. But, you

Corey 2:07

you know, they weren't. And let's not take anything away from Olivia Chow. She was a popular councillor. She was a popular MP. And now she is mayor of Toronto. and uh you know i guess we will see what comes now uh

Zain 2:18

uh carter this is speaking of putting on your pants this is the part of the show where you put on your your big boy pants and you congratulate cory for almost nailing word by word the doug ford pivot on olivia that was unbelievable i'll just make some space i'll just make some space for you to do that and tell cory that i

Carter 2:35

i honestly saw it and i actually wondered if if doug ford's people listen to the podcast podcast um because you know remember how uh danielle smith's people quoted your uh lg rule almost word for word it was the exact same it was the exact same except it was doug ford uh pivoting i'm good friends with olivia it was literally word for word for what uh cory hogan said on the strategist podcast yet another reason we should have more more uh patrons really i mean nailed it fucking

Carter 3:06

fucking nailed it the people who are listening today that's why you pay your six dollars a month which by the way i think we should increase i'm just throwing it out there because that was some good shit what do

Corey 3:16

do you want a good shit can i tell you something yeah can i tell you something i've

Zain 3:19

i've spent all day i've actually got a question for you on the back go ahead though i've spent all day doing the

Corey 3:24

the finances of the strategist

Corey 3:25

strategist media corporation guys we

Corey 3:27

we spent a lot of money on web domains you aware of this you know how much money we There are lots

Carter 3:33

lots of patrons whose

Carter 3:36

whose money solely goes to web domains, and I'd

Carter 3:39

I'd like to thank those patrons. I just want

Zain 3:43

you to know, fordformayor.ca is available.

Corey 3:47

Well, it's not going to be there.

Zain 3:49

There you go. Thank you. Do we get a deal?

Carter 3:52

deal? Do we get a discount just on volume?

Zain 3:56

I assume at this point we probably do. We practically

Carter 3:58

practically own Doga at this stage.

Zain 4:03

Um, I want a 30 for 30 documentary on where the name GoDaddy came from.

Carter 4:10

I don't. No, you don't. Probably not a good

Zain 4:13

good thing. I don't know.

Zain 4:14

Hey, Corey, did Doug Ford get away with it? Being so vocal in the race, having his guy Saunders fucking flame out, like not even close, right? Um, and say that Olivia Rothschild is going to be a freaking disaster. Like he called her a disaster, unmitigated disaster. That's a quote.

Zain 4:34

But did he get away with it, to your point, last time as we were discussing? Well,

Corey 4:37

Well, it depends on what it is. Did he get – like in the eyes of the city of Toronto, are they going to say, this is fine, this is not Doug Ford's failing? Let

Corey 4:45

Let me ask you,

Zain 4:45

you, did he burn political

Zain 4:48

political capital for that endorsement, or do you think he actually gets it all back in sum?

Zain 4:54

Well, I don't think

Corey 4:54

think he gets it all back in sum. I think he's fine. I don't think this is going to materially change things because, again, Doug Ford, this

Corey 5:02

this is just who he is and it's sort of costed in and, you know, it's the way he acts and it's the aw shucks demeanor and he can get away with it. Like I said last episode,

Corey 5:11

Jason Kenney wouldn't be able to. Doug Ford can. And politicians have different strengths and they bring different things to the table. And Doug Ford has that magical ability to just smash the reset button, which you just love. But, yeah, he's got it right there. Ralph Klein had it. Doug Ford has it. and they're just going to move on carter we're still in the pre

Zain 5:31

so let's go from doug to dog um uh

Zain 5:34

uh mustard dogs unreal um really you know at this point uh

Zain 5:39

uh cory and i have been working hard to develop it um the the ip is going to be fucking nuts cory i mean the the work that's been done in the background over the last number of days to put mustard dogs together yeah as a netflix exclusive it's really impressive it's very good um carter i'm going to give you another shot at this because i am all about redemption so this is the last thing i asked before we jump into our actual segment um does

Zain 6:01

does ketchup make the top three of condiments it's

Carter 6:04

it's near the bottom zane um

Carter 6:07

and so third no it's third it's like seventh uh in fact we had burgers tonight uh we had turkey burgers and uh ketchup was not required i was it was just it was outside the requirements it

Carter 6:19

it was not good yeah

Corey 6:20

yeah cory's putting sand up go ahead cory okay so i got got thoughts on this i've been i've been dwelling on this a lot you had been dwelling

Corey 6:29

thing about ketchup nobody's

Corey 6:31

nobody's excited when they get to a table and ketchup is there it's not like oh yeah ketchup that's great there are condiments you can get excited about you

Corey 6:38

you can have a nice relish chutney for example that'd be exciting not not yeah fine

Corey 6:43

ketchup is not an exciting thing it's

Zain 6:45

it's just ketchup is

Zain 6:46

ketchup is table steps

Zain 6:49

there is nice i like what you did there but can i tell you okay i'm wearing his joke for for mine which i think is going to be better but go ahead deliver it

Corey 6:56

it i don't have a joke i i'm going to tell you just pure insight i guess ketchup is

Corey 7:02

is is ketchup a top three condiment i don't know is tim hortons a top no it's so like

Zain 7:06

like does its ubiquity make it top it's not does its ubiquity make it here here's the thing is would you classify a

Zain 7:13

a using your political strategy lens is ketchup a front runner or how would you classify ketchup see i i don't know how to classify it because to cory's point you're it's the expectation it's always there do

Zain 7:28

have to not have ketchup in order for people to miss ketchup and then for ketchup to gain uh equity in in that regard how do you think about ketchup is ketchup the

Carter 7:39

the oscar fat politics um it's just it's always there but a little bit racist and

Zain 7:49

well Carter's ketchup never requires but Carter's got a best before date thank you for meeting it Carter let's move it on to our first segment our first segment it takes one to know one that was the banter segment? the Alberta

Zain 8:02

Alberta I just thought I'd start with something more material I don't know I don't like it hey Corey the Alberta NDP they've got 38 people They've got 38 people in their caucus, and they've got 38 people represented in their shadow cabinet. Now,

Corey 8:15

Now, here's what I want to know. No, no, no. I want no emotion.

Zain 8:19

emotion. I'm actually going to put you on teams, okay? I'm going to put you on teams. They

Zain 8:23

They have got so many emotions. Corey, I'll let you express those emotions on the back end of this experiment. Corey, you are in a position to defend this move. Carter, you are in the position to criticize this move.

Zain 8:34

You're going to use your political strategy brains. You're going to defend why this is, Corey, in your case, a really good thing. So that all, and just to fill folks in that may not have gotten context, Alberta NDP, largest opposition in this province's history. 38 folks that they have now officially after the final two judicial recounts. Every single person on that team has a role, has a role that has been outlined to them. Some of them have critic roles that have been divided in multiple files, multiple finance roles, multiple energy roles, I believe multiple health roles, if I'm not mistaken. And then you've got house leaders and deputy assistant house leaders. We can get into the details, and we will in a second. But I'm talking strategy here. I'm talking strategy first. So Corey, you're in the position of defending it. Carter, you're in the position of criticizing it. Corey, we're going to go back and forth. you're going to lay out your argument first. Give me the 30-second elevator pitch. Why is the NDP putting together all 38 people, interesting candidates, qualified

Zain 9:32

qualified candidates, diverse candidates from across the province, a lot more in Calgary than we've seen before, but every single one of them now has a role and responsibility in this moment, in this time. Why is this politically sound? Corey, the floor is yours.

Carter 9:47

Yeah, I'm really glad he got this one. Shane, you could

Zain 9:50

have assigned me the

Zain 9:51

the other role that was within your power. I could have done anything, really. I could have done anything. But something tells me that you need to stretch your horizons a bit, Corey. Yeah. Well,

Corey 9:59

Well, look, honestly, I can defend it because it is fairly defensible. The reality is it allows everybody to have somewhat equal opportunity to take the government to account. And when you're talking about a new caucus that includes so many new people, likely

Corey 10:14

likely just ahead of a leadership race, we don't know what Rachel Notley is going to do. But, you know, I think the smart money is that at some point in the next two years, she's going to say, OK, this is time for somebody else to go do this. We don't know, but that's certainly a strong possibility. You don't necessarily want to look like you're putting your thumb on the scale and only giving some people that limelight and some people not. So this egalitarian approach in this very limited particular context, I think you can defend it. The other thing is a

Corey 10:42

a busy caucus is a good caucus. And if you have a couple of people on the outside saying, well, I don't have enough to do, those people can become a little meddlesome. And again, larger

Corey 10:51

larger caucuses do tend towards meddlesome because it's impossible for the leader to have deep personal relationships with everybody in a 38 person caucus. And by giving them something to do, something substantive, allowing the rotation through because that way everybody can prove themselves and get ready for whatever's to come.

Corey 11:09

Yeah, okay. I mean, I guess I could wrap my head around it. It's certainly not the craziest notion in the world.

Corey 11:16

It hurts the very core of my soul. But yeah, I mean, I can see the strategic reasons to

Zain 11:21

to do the things that are being done. Park your soul for a second. Do what Carter does every show, and we'll get back to your soul in a second. Stephen Carter, Corey says here, listen, a

Zain 11:29

busy caucus is a good one. You're not tipping, you're not putting your thumb on the scale. and and once again you're giving people an opportunity to to prove themselves to to perhaps have a chance at in certain case inquiry i'm now using my words not yours maybe flex their domain expertise that they might have in certain areas now

Carter 11:45

now you've all taken a couple domain expertise extra steps over what i have taken so it's almost like i have an opinion um carter

Zain 11:51

carter over to you what what uh what what would you say to retort one uh young yet bright but perhaps misguided

Carter 12:00

misguided on this so far as what the defense of this is he he nailed it he was so good i was so proud of him i mean he dug deep he found he found the reasons he he really did but the truth of the matter is uh rachel notley just ran out of decisions she doesn't have any decisions left in her she couldn't make any and so she just kept everything basically status quo so i mean even even sarah hoffman remains deputy leader and i mean if anybody could explain to me what the reason or rationale chanel for sarah hoffman to be deputy leader um like is it the shore up edmonton i mean oh i'm not sure maybe maybe edmonton's up in the air now we gotta we really gotta dig deep and make sarah make sarah deputy leader because holy shit there's probably going to be a lot of decisions to be made uh you know what with us being in opposition for the fifth year out of fifth year five years in a row like i just don't understand it like she she didn't even call cory or i cory and i didn't get a shadow position and i'm like that's fucked man how are we not getting everybody else got one alan hallman was called and given a shadow cabinet position this is this is how deep she went on the shadow cabinet positions it was like so so i think what happened was she and ole sits down right and they sit down and they say i'm

Carter 13:19

i'm not asking what happened i'm telling you why it's wrong i'm i'm telling you why it's wrong they sit down and get to the and rachel's like jeremy i i can't make another decision you know what jeremy says i

Carter 13:32

i can't either i can't either we're at the roulette wheel and you know what we're gonna do we're gonna put ten dollars on each fucking color and we're guaranteed to hit guaranteed to hit and that's what that's what they've done they put ten dollars and put ten dollars in each color or on each each number and i think they probably put 20 on on black and 20 on red and that's sarah hoffman and and um no just sarah hoffman they put 20 bucks on sarah hoffman unbelievable guaranteed to pay off guaranteed

Carter 14:02

guaranteed this is the worst type of decision making i don't want to offend anybody so everybody gets opposed this is the equivalent of you know playing t-ball and everybody gets a fucking trophy right saying you got a kid that's going to go through this soon cory's kids are in the middle of it right now cory's kids have got 14 trophies each in their fucking bedrooms right now because they participated. They didn't even actually play soccer. They went and watched the soccer game and they got a fucking trophy.

Zain 14:29

Well, I mean, a busy household is a good household, as Corey would say. So, you know, he doesn't want to put his thumb on the scale with his kids. You know, there could be leadership positions arising in the house.

Carter 14:42

Also, opportunities to prove themselves. They're already occupied by Lori. Boom. Problem solved.

Zain 14:48

solved carter let's dig a little bit deeper on on why it's a bad move because i don't even know if i i grabbed your point i don't have one i don't you just feel like well

Zain 14:55

well yeah what was it you were like just you should okay stop betting so much just stupid be more why why cory probably wants to just jump in cory's got 90 reasons you're not gonna get to yet cory why because

Carter 15:09

because how is it how are you supposed to get focus out of your people how are you supposed to get focus How are you supposed to focus within the media? How are you supposed to get focus from, you know, the discussions that come afterwards? How are you, how are some people supposed to know who to contact if they want to talk to the opposition about certain issues? Like, you know, who am I supposed to call if I'm an energy company? Which one of the three energy critics am I going to get a hold of? I mean, this is, it's a joke. You know, like, how are they supposed to come together and have their, their, their information shared? Like, what are they going to do? Have a fucking caucus meeting before they, before they run out onto the field? Like, it's just fucking lunacy.

Zain 15:45

cory is is the focus argument useful to you like or do you feel like listen as someone who's defending this in fact it's very focused it's it's it's micro-targeted who's going to be dealing with what there's sub-specialties that folks have so in fact you actually don't have to wonder in some ways if your insurance or pension which critic you're going to yeah

Corey 16:10

would use the line that you just

Zain 16:11

just threw it oh thank you so so much oh that's fantastic you

Zain 16:14

you want to get to you want to get to the second part of this conversation don't you you're just itching you're itching a little bit fine fuck it let's go what do you think of this what do you think of this lay it on me well

Corey 16:24

well look i i think a lot of things about this i i ultimately feel my concern with this is the same concern that i have with the premier of alberta putting half of her caucus into cabinet right this idea of of let's just kind of get everybody involved and then we don't have any problems seems to be propagating here and in my opinion it's this continuation of leader-centric politics no

Corey 16:47

tall poppies but the leader everybody is equal but the leader you can't build a brand everybody's got an equal brand right there's everyone else and there's me i'm the leader and i get to decide and there's no differentiation and there's no opportunities for kind of incremental leadership opportunities within a caucus where everybody is at the same fucking level all of the time how do you elevate yourself how do you prove yourself as a future leader if you're just one of 38 right there should actually be a bit of a hierarchy in a political party and you should have rewards and punishments when you succeed or fail you succeed you get more prominent roles you fail you get less prominent roles everybody has the same role and every role is treated equally well that's a little problematic for me here and i agree with steven about the focus right what if two critics disagree what What if the three energy critics don't see eye to eye on it? What if that happens in three independent meetings they're not aware of where they're playing with live ammo and they're reacting to issues they don't even know the others are reacting to and they're saying different things?

Corey 17:48

That's also very problematic. And then finally, it's a dilution thing. When you even think about it from like a what's net benefit to the party as a whole, one

Corey 17:57

one of the things that's of net benefit to the party as a whole is having voices that the public knows that you can go to, you can trot out and you can have these conversations. if

Corey 18:06

you have 37 critics plus the leader nobody's

Corey 18:09

nobody's going to get to know any of them right it's going to be rachel notley plus a bunch of people that i occasionally see every now and then and

Corey 18:16

and yeah we'll know them sure

Corey 18:17

sure we already know them right we we know their names we know their biographies but the average voter the average person who's just trying to get through their life and is not living and breathing politics these

Corey 18:27

these are just going to be a faceless mass to them and that's by the way the problem with the premier putting everybody in cabinet as well like There's no stratification anymore, and as a result, there's not actually any source of power besides the leader, and that's a little concerning to me.

Zain 18:43

Carter, your honest thoughts on this. I'm going to pick up on some points Corey put down, but give me your take. I honestly think

Carter 18:49

think that there is a case to be made that giving everybody something to do is pretty wise for the

Carter 18:55

the party in general. But I also feel like— Can

Carter 19:00

Can you talk to—actually, can you expand on

Zain 19:01

on that? Why is it wise? Is it the same argument as Corey's, busy is good? And talk to me, if it is, why busy

Carter 19:07

busy is good? Busy is good. You also get to test everybody's skills, and there is a workload to a caucus. There are things that need to be done, and you want to try and spread that workload as easily as possible, or evenly as possible. You don't want 10 people on your caucus working everything, and then 28 additional people not working on everything. everything those people are what you want to do is you want to try and create uh something for everyone right everybody gets to participate in some ways but the problem with all everybody being a critic is that it forgets a whole bunch of different rules or roles right there are committees that will be formed people will be on committees you don't need to put your you know you can put your critic into the committee role but then you can also put just a general member into a critic role you don't have to have titles associated with everything it's that i think it's one of of the challenges is the title i'm

Carter 20:01

i'm trying to come up with a word but the title centric nature of this also means that there are only certain people who can discuss certain things whereas if you had a less title specific set setup where you know everybody is part of the team and you know there's three people on this committee and there's three people on that committee and those three people all get together with the official critic and have conversations from time to time i think you might might have better government, a better ability to hold people to account. But now everybody just has to kind of fall down the line of, well, that's my responsibility. That's not my responsibility. Everybody's being given official roles, which means that everything that's not in their official role arguably isn't part of their purview. And I just think that that's rather short-sighted and doesn't really build much strength for the team.

Zain 20:53

is is it fair to say cory too many specialists not enough generalists and is there a cost to that in some way stephen

Corey 20:59

stephen carter is describing like the triangle caucus they're going to run a triangle offense right like they just they're going to go where they need to be strong side weak side you know kick it out to

Carter 21:09

to whoever's open i like

Zain 21:11

that a lot usually

Zain 21:11

usually it's robert horry that was open carter just so you and i would know that what

Zain 21:16

was his nickname before Before I get to Corey, his nickname, Robert Horry. The

Corey 21:24

That's perfect. I can't improve on that. Look,

Corey 21:27

Look, I think this particular instance, I really want to say, actually doesn't concern me that that much because there is likely a leadership race that's coming. And because there's likely a leadership race coming, my comments about not wanting to put your thumb on the scale, not trying to move things around. So many new people, let's just see what they can all do. that sort of makes sense but this

Corey 21:49

this is a trend right the these large everybody gets a title caucuses i mean yeah it's you know it's one way to kind of keep the peace but at sort of the cost of the overall functioning of the system here it used to be when a shadow cabinet we used to call them shadow cabinets right like when these critics

Corey 22:07

critics were announced it's

Corey 22:09

it's be this is what you get if you elect us this is what your cabinet would look like the alternative yeah is the cabinet literally going to be everybody's in cabinet i don't think so and so i you know i just wish we had a little bit more sense of what an ndp government would be but again in this specific instance i can understand you

Carter 22:28

don't really get to see the stars be shot you know stars shine right you you just you you've got so many people in so many different spots that no one can actually shine there's no there's no no stars here the only person that's set up to to be a star is the premier herself and perhaps her deputy leader which i think is a fatal flaw of rachel notley's she's she's long listened too long and too hard to the person who is literally closest to her um and that doesn't necessarily reflect uh the truth of the province

Zain 23:03

cory you know in your mind when you look at this list you look at those folks how strong you guys guys have both made this argument, but maybe I want to get the degree. How strong is the argument that this is perhaps useful to not weed out, but figure out with a new caucus, with a lot of old returning folks and some new folks that have potential, who the real stars are? Could this be a meritocratic sorting order of some kind? You haven't used those words, but I'm kind of curious. Is that a strong enough argument?

Corey 23:34

if it's a starting point, maybe, maybe zane but like you would actually then have to say like they're doing really well we're going to give them more questions in qp they're doing really well we're going to put them out in front of the media and if it's literally hey it's monday so these four people are going to go up hey it's tuesday so these four people are going to go up and so on and so forth rotate through the session well then no i mean it doesn't actually provide us anything like that right and and so i

Corey 23:57

i guess that's one of the challenges here 30 i mean 38 like

Corey 24:02

like that's a lot of people in order even just to think like okay you're going to give everybody their spot in the sun once every two weeks yeah at this point right like i mean they're going to how

Corey 24:13

how often you're going to get not

Corey 24:14

not lead off question that'll go to the leader i'm sure but like the second question you know that's it's going to take a while for you to rotate back to second question yeah you

Carter 24:22

that's the idea that you're going to have some sort of meritocracy requires that there's going to be some sort of consequence. And there just simply isn't going to be a consequence, right? No one is going to be... You

Zain 24:33

You mean people no longer

Carter 24:33

longer being on this list, so to speak. You know what, Najwan, we tried to give you questions. Unfortunately, you weren't able to formulate the question. So you're now out of this. Well, that's never going to happen in this situation, right? It's not like anybody's going to get demoted. No one's going to be put into a different position. They're going to be stuck in these positions until after a leadership. leadership and then the next leader comes in and is going to have the unenviable task of resorting all of these people into the positions that they should have been put into from the beginning. You know, the new leader comes in and says, actually, you know what, guys, I have watched this in question period. And we do have some people who have higher skill levels than others. And so I'm going to resort this so that those people get the opportunities to actually shine, and now you've got a caucus uprising. But I always got to ask questions under Notley. Yeah, but you were an idiot, and you actually didn't ask questions very well. Well, Corey doesn't say I'm an idiot. Well, Corey's also an idiot. You should listen to Carter. Carter is the one who understands these things.

Corey 25:40

Stephen's point here, I do think needs to be underlined. This does potentially create a future problem, because it's a lot harder to take something away than not give it to somebody in the first place and

Corey 25:51

the idea that you would have

Corey 25:53

have been a critic and then not be a critic is going to you know that's more demoralizing than just not being a critic so i in some ways i think the nd this is it like this is the ndp model now like everyone's a critic um because the alternative is i imagine being a new leader and coming in and saying okay

Corey 26:10

okay my first instance is going to demote half of you Like, that's not going to happen. And maybe if you could do it without human emotion and feelings getting in the way, it should maybe, but it's not going to happen. There's just not enough upside for a new leader to do that. And they're just going to say, we'll figure it out after the next election. You know, hopefully we're in government, we can get out of this model, we can go to cabinet. But otherwise, this is just how

Carter 26:36

how the NDP does things.

Carter 26:36

things. imagine even the cabinet discussion like why would you suggest why are you drawing a wall around this like this wouldn't be the norman cabinet like

Corey 26:47

because because that would be even crazier

Carter 26:50

crazier but i take your point

Zain 26:54

carter talk to me about this um i

Zain 26:57

was going to go to a question of how you guys would have formulated this now having the playing a bit of you know thursday night quarterback which i'll let you do in a second actually but i've got a more maybe this is more of an interesting question if you were faced with this this roster um 38 this strategy it was explained to you it could have been one of the things you guys put out there today in terms of why they did it you really don't know um what would your advice be on next steps on this to prevent some of the things that you've talked about uprisings um you know to prevent from some of the the pitfalls you see of this right what remedial or and it can be through a series of time it doesn't have to be like shut it down tomorrow like let's you know bury this to do that. I'm not thinking about that sort of strategy. I'm talking about like, how do you kind of, what's your graduated next step? Maybe that's what I'm trying to say. That is strategically aligned with what you have to work with, which is right here. What would you do next in order to avoid some of the pitfalls both of you have outlined over the course of your criticism of the critics? Carter first. I

Carter 27:51

I would do, the very first thing I would do is set up clear expectations of what the critic role looks like and how it's going to function when the legislature comes back in the fall so you know the critic role um is kind of twofold one one piece of it is to meet with stakeholders and understand those stakeholders uh you know develop alternate opinions to the government hear uh where the government is failing directly from the stakeholders themselves i'd probably you know i'd make sure that every state that there was a clearinghouse for stakeholder kind of relationships and meetings um in in calgary that might be the southern alberta uh, uh, you know, like the, the caucus staff is going to be at the clearinghouse of these things. And then the next thing that I would be doing is saying to people, you have to perform in question period here, here's the theatrical requirement. And I would say it that bluntly, it is a theatrical requirement. Each of you is going to get the opportunity to be, uh, in the theater and, uh, and ask the question, you know, ask the questions, but if you're not good at it, um, this is a temporary position you will keep your critic role but you will lose your house um spotlight if you are unable to perform if you're unable to ask the questions if you're reading questions when you're in the in the ledge if you're not able to stand and and address your question in such a fashion that it's actually seen by the cameras and seen outside of the the legislature then we're going to have to address that this is your opportunity to learn if you are uncomfortable with that here are some resources that can help you but this is part of the gig and maybe we didn't explain that to you when we signed you up but now you're here and now you understand uh what the role looks like cory

Zain 29:42

cory stephen carter talking about the up or out strategy which of course is the um slogan for our sponsor um but cory from your perspective what would you do as next steps steps here to perhaps prevent some of the pitfalls you've outlined?

Corey 29:58

Well, the challenge I have with Stephen's strategy, which is, I think, generally pretty good. You talk about having a clearinghouse, coordinating. Well, that's all going to happen through the leader's office. That's all going to happen through staff. This goes back to my point of this strengthening of leader-centric politics. By dividing these jobs so much, you're basically demanding a coordinating body that is going to be, by default, the leader and the staff. And again, I think that that's unfortunate for the role of MLA, which I

Corey 30:26

I don't think this improves the role of MLA. I think it further diminishes the role of MLA. And so that's what's in my mind as I think about what those next steps need to be. I'm thinking, how do you empower MLAs? How do you make sure that they actually have range of motion, authority to make decisions, authority to speak for their party? And for me, that is about having conversations, conversations, not so much about clearing housing, but like, okay, if

Corey 30:51

if it's of this topic,

Corey 30:53

Najwan's our person, right? If it's here, well,

Corey 30:56

well, I don't even know who the other critics are in the energy space right now. But the idea would be, you are super specific about who's got the right to kind of talk for the party in those particular moments, and give them the authority to actually move the ball on their own court, rather than having to go back to the league and saying, saying, hey, hey, is this OK? Are we allowed to do this? Right. Or do I need to pass this over to Big Shot Sarah? Like, what's the plan here? And so, you know, that that's the thing that I would want to fight. And I would I think that defining really clear areas

Corey 31:27

areas of responsibility has

Carter 31:28

has got to be.

Carter 31:28

would be really interesting, actually, Corey, is if you took that one half step further and said, we're going to give our critics a mandate letter and

Carter 31:39

and you write a mandate mandate letter and they each live within that mandate you're

Corey 31:43

like that a lot i like that a lot and say this is this is the areas that i'm expecting you to work in but within this

Carter 31:49

this area consult points here are your staff resources you know boom critic

Zain 31:55

critic mandate letter zane velge idea from yesteryear we'll we'll just credit him for that zane velge

Carter 32:00

velge guy so good going forward hey i have

Zain 32:01

have a question for you guys on this having

Zain 32:03

having so many people take specific domain uh sort of like like specific roles, even if like narrow cap, is that more pressure or less pressure on political staff? You guys have both worked in this role. I'm kind of curious, like how you would think about this. Like in some ways, you can make the argument that you've got a bunch of people elected MLAs who are going to catch up to speed on their files, so easier on the staff. In the other case, as you were just talking about coordination right now, which is where the question came in, that's a lot to coordinate. So I'm kind of curious your take on what pressure, more or less than a, let's say, a standard 12 or 15 person shadow cabinet? Does this kind of mean on the political staff and the resource? And Corey, you first. Yeah, well,

Corey 32:44

again, it depends on the model you're going to operate under. It's less pressure on you if you let them do their job and you say, oh, they're the experts and they can figure out the things they need to figure out, they can do the things they need to do.

Corey 32:55

It's a lot more pressure on you if you don't. If all of a sudden you're wrangling 38 people to make sure they're using the research bureau's questions and they're doing the things the stakeholder director is telling them to do and that they're coordinating towards the objectives that the leader has set,

Corey 33:09

boy, that's fucking tough. And in a funny way, the NDP, I think, not

Corey 33:15

just the NDP, I think modern political parties have moved to these more command-and-control models, but there

Corey 33:22

there is a breaking point, and they are really going to be testing whether they've hit that breaking point, having an opposition caucus staff and 38 MLAs who have areas of responsibility like that might be impossible it might be like when chile tried to you know have kind of a centralized command economy and they they had all of these computers that were going to navigate every single piece of it and that just didn't fucking work like it's too complex it's too big and you can't centrally control something that big

Carter 33:48

big that was the example i was and so um

Zain 33:52

look it up it's an interesting one i'm pretty sure i was like oh man he's talking about chilies i actually like chilies uh

Zain 33:58

uh and then he's talking about chile which is very different Yeah, Carter, you and I were on a very different. Go ahead, Corey, keep going.

Corey 34:04

just that so like, I

Corey 34:06

I could easily see the first few months being fucking rough if they're trying to be more controlling and just have no ability to do so many people running around on their own mandate.

Corey 34:16

And maybe this will be an opportunity for them to loosen up the reins a bit.

Corey 34:19

We'll see. So maybe I'll take a glass half full view of it all. But yeah, I think that the the the model that political parties generally I think this NDP, I know more specifically use, which is like quite a strong leader model. And this might

Corey 34:35

might be destined for heartache.

Zain 34:36

heartache. Carter, more or less pressure on political staff, this model in your mind from your chief of staff experience in government. I think

Carter 34:42

think it really depends on how you approach or how you view electeds. And, you

Carter 34:47

you know, electeds, especially when you've got so many new electeds, these people aren't going to know what they're doing. So, you

Carter 34:54

you know, you can't just let them go and just say, good luck let us know how it works out i mean you're going to have to teach them how to do some of these roles and then some of them aren't going to be good at it and you

Carter 35:05

you know like the we we talked about the you know what people might be expecting as a new

Carter 35:12

new politic you know a new mla and coming in and what their job looks like and how that expectation

Carter 35:16

expectation may not mesh with reality well

Carter 35:20

well now you've given them a critic role you've basically told them that now you hold the the reins for our policy in this area um and yet they may just be running off and trying to you know create a policy that doesn't even make sense that is unelectable right all of a sudden the revenue minister the revenue critic is out running around talking about how we have to do a a sales tax right like politically unsaleable and you know they've brought it up and spoken about it, and now you're like, oh my god, now we have to go cover that off. I think it could be an absolute nightmare for staff because your best and brightest aren't in the highest roles. Your most experienced aren't in the highest roles. Everybody got the same role, with the notable exception of Sarah Hoffman, who is of course the only person who could ever be deputy premier to Rachel, or deputy leader to Rachel Notley.

Zain 36:17

Corey, how would you have done this? You had a carte blanche, or as The Weeknd says in The Idol, carte blanche, which, by the way, is for the Gen Z TikTok crowd, so you got it, Carter. Corey, what would you have done? If you were putting this critic list together, you don't have to give me the names, but you could tell me things like how many, what portfolios, would you have collapsed certain things, are some of the things you see here quite wise or smart? You like the splits and the divisions, or you like some... Talk to me. You can use this to mold up, and we can go work from here, but what would you have done?

Corey 36:49

You know, years ago, we talked about, I think it was Aaron O'Toole's shadow cabinet. And we talked about, does the shadow cabinet need to match the cabinet? You know, does it need to be a one to one relationship? And we said, no, it doesn't need to be. And I still believe that's the case. I do think, however, naturally

Corey 37:06

naturally activity is going to focus around ministers and ministries. And so you got to at least keep it a little bit in mind as you're doing it. And I, you know, I'll just say this, I would not have had 38 people. I would have probably thought about it more like a cabinet. I might have even said something along the lines of, I might have even considered combinations, right? And having fewer critics than there were ministers. Because I think that ultimately, Daniel Smith's government is pretty wasteful in the number of ministers that it has. And while I think that that's not something that you're going to get a lot of credit for arguing against, I

Corey 37:41

I would have at least maybe said, you know, we're going to practice what we preach. We're going to dog food here. We say that a smaller cabinet makes sense. We're going to act like a smaller cabinet. But it also could have been an opportunity to address things head on and say, but listen, just because you're not a critic doesn't mean you're not important. And maybe I would think about it more in terms of almost like a matrix. Like these are the people that are mapped up against the ministries. And we're going to ask them to be the points on these. And the person that the stakeholder reaches out to and knows, you

Corey 38:10

you know, Samir is my guy when I want to talk about this particular matter, right? That to me makes a ton of sense. but there are other ways you can organize around things too and you could say okay your

Corey 38:22

your job is geography like I don't you know I don't care if you say a word in the house right I Kathleen I want you to make sure Calgary is a moral lock for us next time around like you are in charge of Calgary and organizing in Calgary and just being that Calgary point person and and you know made that more of a prominent factor right so it's about these relationships it's about those those relationships. It doesn't need to be cut just by geography, and it doesn't need to be around a critic title. But you could give people substantive work to do that

Corey 38:55

that is not about being a critic. And I would have just said, yeah, there's critics and there's not critics. And we want to showcase the critics, and we use the critics because they have that theatric talent that Stephen's talking about, but not everyone needs to be one. Would

Zain 39:08

Would you have done that and perhaps modeled that behavior by leaving one of your quote-unquote stars off the critic list so you you can show others that gets I kind of look at go back to basketball right remember when an all-star comes off the bench and they're like everyone else on the bench is like fuck it I guess being on the bench like if if Ginobili who should be starting about being on the bench he

Corey 39:26

he should be if

Zain 39:27

if this hall of famer is on the bench his entire career that fuck me if I'm complaining would you have tried to do something like that I

Zain 39:34

love that idea it's

Corey 39:34

it's not something that immediately came to me but it came to me so I yeah okay yeah I mean it's a it's a good idea Zane uh because then Then you're sort of showcasing in

Corey 39:43

in a really real way that this is not just words. This is not just patting you on the head because you're not a critic. It's saying, we

Corey 39:49

we got a lot of work to do to get from here to there. There being right across the aisle. And not all of that work happens in the context of being a critic. So let's get out there. Let's pick up our socks. And yeah, I mean, I would say these are not permanent roles. You know, if somebody proves themselves more adapted to another one, then they're going to end up in one of those roles, not the role that they're currently in. so go out there work hard uh you know there's that old adage we uh uh

Corey 40:14

uh we we campaign to work and we work to campaign or that's a great adage there

Zain 40:19

there and just just yeah

Carter 40:21

work hard nailed it

Zain 40:23

what would you um

Carter 40:24

um i would have had far fewer critics i would have created uh political ministers so the there are political uh leaders of some sort whatever title we choose to to give of them. And those political leaders would be responsible for geographic regions. So we would have had a Calgary political leader, we would have a Edmonton political leader, we'd have rural north, rural south. In fact, I might divide Calgary up into six or seven different groups and six or seven different areas, because it's so important. Each one of those people is going to be responsible for the political elements. They're each going to be responsible for managing tour pieces working with the staff on tours uh those types of things that are actually going to ensure that we win the next government i'll let you in on a little secret critics don't win fuck all there's

Carter 41:15

there's no votes in a critic but

Zain 41:17

but is there this is a question to both of you is there a cost for getting too overtly this is i'm

Carter 41:23

i'm going to fucking hurt you right now stop the question yeah yeah is there too

Carter 41:27

you know the question like

Carter 41:29

should politicians really be overtly involved in politics uh carter why don't you answer it first uh yes zane actually politicians should be involved in politics that's why we call them politicians this is a political podcast where we don't deal with the bullshit beliefs of uh you know the people who aren't involved in politics we actually look at how politics is and how politics is is that we have people who work on the ground trying to make it easier for us to win in the future and if people thought that way then it'd be a hell of a lot easier to win elections yet

Zain 42:03

yet they don't they don't yet yet too often they don't to both of your points you would have had regional chairs right you would have had people saying your fucking job is to get uh this place one locked get the vote percentage up by 10 points i don't give a shit that's your goal over the next four years you may or may not have given them that specific title depending on how cute you want it to be about it but cory you're you're busily typing away i feel like you got something to say to the question i didn't ask or even to the the point carter was was making ahead of time no

Corey 42:28

no look i i think this is one of those instances where what makes good government and what makes good politics is the same i'll

Corey 42:34

i'll tell you something being out there connected to your community being somebody who's known in your community building those community mutually

Zain 42:40

mutually beneficial yeah it's

Corey 42:42

it's it's good for everybody right that's a government that's connected and thoughtful and responsive as well and i i love the idea of basically say now look i think in terms of there's

Corey 42:52

there's some practical realities that some of these small bundles might not they might be too small like four ridings in a provincial context is not a ton of space but if it was four i can easily imagine rachel notley saying hey listen there's

Corey 43:05

there's four ridings here one was a lock that

Corey 43:07

that was yours two we won but barely and one we lost i expect next time to be three locks and one that we win so go out there and get it done and fucking figure it out and in terms of like uh you know mandate to move within that space pretty freely that i would offer to them but i would also say we're going to be watching and we're going to be following up and hell we might even poll on your name recognition in these four writings and we're going to be watching whether it goes up or down we're going to be seeing what the ndp's viewed as in these four writings and we're going to hold you accountable for that view and

Corey 43:39

and yeah you're going to say it's because you didn't get enough sunlight and

Corey 43:42

and that person did well we're going to be comparing and we're going to look at relative movements here too now go figure

Corey 43:47

figure it out this is your job for the next four years and

Corey 43:50

and hey if you do a good job there you might get a better job in four years you

Zain 43:53

you know cory this reminds me back in on our consulting days you remember the the slide deck we used to present or i think you presented it initially around the difference between show horses and workhorses and that sounds like me yeah this comes to mind right the the particular politicians who

Carter 44:07

who want slides and just photographs of work of horses right like that was the whole presentation there's

Carter 44:14

there's no information just it

Zain 44:16

it was uh the client was heron heron main yeah was the client and we got the business but cory You remember talking about this, and you may not, but you ultimately said it's super helpful to know in your caucus or in your cabinet or your government, doesn't really matter, who just is here to work and who here has different types of ambitions. And in certain cases, by not having people not have critic roles, you don't give them an opportunity to simply just be a workhorse to get shit done. You almost position them to have to do questions or other sort of things. and it kind of reminds me of that. What you're trying to say is an extension of that point in some way. Carter, finish us off here. I've got some follow-up questions on this, but I'll ask them in the over-under lightning round. Your overall thoughts on what Corey said and how you'd round this out if you were to building it. To

Carter 45:02

To be honest, I kind of lost my train of thought when you guys went down the show horses and work horses thing. And I was trying to figure out which one I was in your context. And I think I'm a show horse.

Zain 45:11

horse. You were a slow horse slash glue horse. That is correct. That is correct. Let's move it on to our next segment. in our next segment, 2020 Division. Corey, Pierre-Paul Lievre, he's ditching the glasses, Corey. Yeah, I hate that. He's ditching the glasses. Okay, here's the thing. This segment could either be 45 minutes or 45 seconds, and it is upon you guys to decide. Because is there any political strategy to the fact that, yes, and maybe for the first time, but it's noticeable that Pierre-Paul Lievre, at least in his most recent press conference, ditching the glasses. He's done it a few times lately. Okay, perfect. So they might be trying something, okay? They are trying something for sure. Okay, well, talk to me about it. Do you think they're actually trying something? Do you feel like this is similar to Trudeau's, you know, when the election's coming, I'm getting rid of the beard, I'm getting rid of the certain haircut sort of thing? Is this just conventional political sort of image consultant stuff? Or is there something broader here? Give me your initial take. We'll see where this goes.

Corey 46:05

think the answer is yes in both cases. So this is totally

Corey 46:09

totally conventional. And anybody older than a certain age, certainly, you know, probably from their mid-30s or older will remember Preston Manning had glasses and he had his voice, you know, that was, you know, cracked and at a high register. Before a party,

Zain 46:23

party, everybody had their own Manning impersonation. Yeah, that was really good.

Corey 46:27

That was so good.

Zain 46:29

Went to... Carter, you do yours now. You do yours next. Corey, save that. yeah we're

Carter 46:34

we're gonna have to it was

Carter 46:36

was it was okay that was

Corey 46:39

good yeah uh okay well and

Corey 46:41

and then famously got an image consultant haircut changed glasses

Corey 46:48

voice became you know a more tolerable register and this was all part of the okay this is the guy he was the policy wonk he went around he really persuaded a lot of western canadians to get behind this movement but if he's going to get any further he needs to be more presentable and packageable to main street canada and so yeah i mean in a way this just seems like that right it seems like pierre pauliev having

Corey 47:11

having somebody say to him hey

Corey 47:14

hey glasses make you look closed off people can't see your eyes you know it it makes you look studious but maybe cold and this is just kind of conventional wisdom about glasses right i

Corey 47:25

i don't even know if it's true but this is certainly Certainly what political consultants have said for a long time. I actually did not

Zain 47:28

not know that. Is that like a going phrase about glasses? Like they add a barrier to your eyes and trust? Oh, that's so interesting. I mean, it makes total sense. It makes total sense what he said. I just have never heard it before.

Corey 47:40

Yeah. Well, but, you know, there's plus sides too. Like if you've got a job interview, wear your glasses if you flip back and forth between them because you look more serious and more studious and they age you up. And so there are benefits to glasses as well. But when you think about what politicians want to be known for, approachability, trustworthiness, warmth, well, then, you know, there are certain things that push you in a different way. And I'll confess, a lot of this political image making has often struck me as just a bit

Corey 48:06

bit better than astrology, you

Corey 48:08

you know, in terms of its like actual connected,

Corey 48:11

what's the actual science that roots here, but this is what political image consultants say. And they often purport to have data that reinforces these particular views. use so it yeah it looks like pierre poliev's trying something i've noticed the glasses thing for a couple of months now seemed intermittent seems a lot more consistent now i fucking hate it and you guys know why i hate it which is a year ago you described everyone's like hey man you look an awful lot like pierre poliev your steez is the same as his and i basically went out of my way to not have his steez you know i'm

Carter 48:46

now with the glasses and the t-shirts you look like a fucking loser so totally totally successful hey

Corey 48:55

cory's got a cory's got a personal stake i'll let him i got a personal stake and i'm mad about it hey carter this guy's just chasing me around my corner at this point carter fuck that serious question political

Zain 49:06

image consultants are real thing like just like have you worked with one like i don't i in the campaigns i've been on like there's been hair and makeup there's been people who kind of like in the campaign talk to me like who who are these folks and what what do they do uh beyond like i'm now i'm just so fascinated like is this their full-time job like are they consultants they consult many no no exactly so tell tell me tell me who you've worked with like i mean we're just now just very curious around we worked interactions yeah no you don't don't name names you don't have to name names i'm just kind of curious about their expertise in the skills we

Carter 49:39

we worked we did about about three

Carter 49:41

three makeovers four makeovers on allison um those are those were not very successful in the end in part because um she didn't like them right she she rebelled against them a little bit and and they were difficult to take to to get the take um it was super important that we do those though we did a really significant makeover on haddenchi right the the authentic candidate the The one who didn't have to change anything, except we changed a ton of stuff for Nahid because he was coming off of being a, you know, a university professor. I mean, the guy was walking around wearing basically, you know, top siders and rolled up ill-fitting pants for most of his career and changing him into, you know, the guy who wore purple suits took quite a while. I mean, he went and got his hair cut every week for probably eight weeks, and we took less than a quarter inch off each time so that no one would notice that he got his hair cut. And he now has a totally different hairstyle at the end of the summer that he did at the beginning of the summer. So we did, you know, I believe very strongly in image consultants. I think that the image. Have you employed

Zain 50:55

employed them, like on campaigns?

Carter 50:56

campaigns? I mean, even look at Jyoti Gondek, right? Jyoti Gondek had a dresser. Jyoti Gondek had hair and makeup. Jyoti, you know, the style, the photographer that worked with Jyoti did a lot of her posing for her. Like those people are professionals, right? The power pose that we use for Jyoti Gondek, we talked about it so much on the podcast. That was a recommendation by the photographer, right? The photographer says, try this, do this. And all of a sudden you get a different outcome. There's a different style. There's a different look. Style consultants are super important. work but but

Zain 51:31

but i'm just trying to think like where was their political analysis applied in right like this like these are people that obviously have a domain expertise in hair makeup photo creative were you this is what i'm trying to understand like political image consultants talk to me about where their political comes from is that something you'd added

Carter 51:47

added or like i

Carter 51:48

write a brand about that

Carter 51:49

right and the brand describes the person that we're going to have so for example allison you know allison was always hit because she looked kind of like a mom well that's damn near perfect right allison looks like a mom because we wanted her to look like a mom right part of allison's thing was that she didn't actually look like a mom when we started she looked more like a lawyer uh not a particularly well-dressed lawyer but a lawyer um kind of a dowdy lawyer but when she looked like a mom a professional mother that was great i mean the stuff that mma is doing with her product line sophie grace is fantastic because you know many Many politicians have worn it. Many people have picked it up, whether you're in politics or not, because it has certain wearable fabrics, certain, you know, like things, the fabric tells a story to people. And the person that it tells the biggest story to is often your peer group, right? So if I wore like Corey's t-shirts, right? He's always wearing a t-shirt, you know, here he is wearing a Bredmonton t-shirt available at the strategist. It's

Corey 52:48

It's not, it was a limited

Carter 52:50

it might be available on west of center by the time we get this uh podcast

Carter 52:54

podcast turned around because that's the kind of stuff that we do here but the chase that he wears you don't understand what

Zain 53:00

what limited so you know i was on west of center today and i did uh i did undermine my my point that i made at the five minute mark with the point i made at the 30 minute mark so there you go just a just a quick little plug for west yeah does anybody

Carter 53:12

anybody make it to the 30 minute mark west of center it

Zain 53:16

took me about three hours after reflecting i'd be like oh did i fuck myself No one would have known, Zane. You just admitted this. Talk to me about Corey. You were going to give Corey some props, though, about his history, or you were going to give an example.

Carter 53:27

I think that when he— Where are you going with this? So Corey has a distinct look. I mean, my daughter goes to the University of Calgary, right? Runs into—sees Corey quite frequently in the hallway. And she knows the shoes, the skinny tie, the unbuttoned top button, the loosened tie. She knows that look. and it always looks just a little harried just a little bit busy and that's cory's presentation of the world i am doing it all i'm doing it all exceptionally well and you just wish you could be as good as me that's that's how he approaches this podcast that's the brand that he brings to it and that you

Carter 54:05

know what it works because his look matches his attitude it matches who he is pierre polliev's previous look matches who we know him as and that's why the disconnect is so strong for us holy shit that doesn't look where's it you know he's wearing a t-shirt was that a t-shirt or some sort of mock turtleneck under a jacket you know that's not pierre polliev trying some

Carter 54:28

stuff but i thought he looked great i thought he looked way better than he looked in the past i thought that you know um you know someone said he was wearing makeup i don't know if he was if he was great keep that i think that if you were working on the political side of it he looks infinitely more approachable infinitely

Carter 54:46

infinitely more like how do you carter

Zain 54:49

carter this has been fascinating and kind of a master class in its own right corey i know you've got things to say but before and jump in with those but i have a question for you which is really about like how you measure this you talked about this as being like quasi astrology right like so other than making choices which carter had to do with joe t which carter had to do with the candidates here how do you met like Like how, let's go back to Pierre. How is his team over the summer going to measure success here? Is it just vibe checks? Is it social media commentary?

Zain 55:15

commentary? Is that like, what's the success look like? Lay it on me.

Corey 55:17

So the, I mean, the lower resource version is kind of the vibe check and the social media and talking to people who can intuit these things. And everybody knows the tastemakers and the people who can, you know, more quickly understand how these things are going to land.

Corey 55:33

But in all likelihood, they're going to focus group it. They're going to get people together and they're going to say, how do you how do you feel about this? Like, which look do you like better? He'll directly ask at a certain point in it. Like, here he is with glasses. Here he is without. I'd like you to comment on what comes to mind with each picture. And somebody is going to say, you know, Margaret's going to say, I really like the one without glasses. He just looks so much more

Corey 55:58

Yeah, he's a handsome boy. He shouldn't hide his face behind those glasses. Those glasses make him look so much

Carter 56:02

much older and he's got so much youth and vitality.

Corey 56:06

Perfect. Perfect. Exactly right. And then they'll unpack that a little and they'll ask questions and they'll go down rabbit holes and they'll try to understand how durable those feelings are, whether people feel those disconnects that Stephen was talking about. And from

Corey 56:19

from there, they will refine and they'll go further with it and

Corey 56:23

iterate likely and they'll land

Corey 56:25

land on something that works. And the reality is, when

Corey 56:28

when you have a job like that, part

Corey 56:30

part of your I mean, it must be exhausting being a politician. Yeah,

Corey 56:33

you know, when I get up in the morning, and I take my kids to the bus stop, do you know what I do? If I don't have work, I'm on vacation this week. If I don't have work, what I do is I put on a ball cap, I put on whatever shirt I was wearing the night before for the purposes of getting to the bus stop. And I show up looking

Corey 56:48

looking like 200 pounds of shit and 100 pound bag, and I get my kids on the bus and I move on. But when you're a politician, every time you leave the house, you're thinking about what you look like, what you might be, you know, walked into and how you present yourself 24

Corey 57:02

24-7 as part of the job. And so, you know, that's got to be a little exhausting and feel for these people. But it's

Carter 57:09

it's part of it. Yeah, you're down market celebrities. That's all you are.

Zain 57:12

Could someone get away with the Corey Hogan look, Carter, in politics? Like the I don't give a fuck sort of look. And I'm not saying I'm just opposing a point on you now, right? right? But like, you know, like, and maybe it might be certain aspects of it could be deliberate, but like, you know, shirt from the night before, like whatever, in fact, own that as your political brand. Like, could you see yourself, Stephen Carter, political operative writing a brand for someone to say, you know what, that's actually advantageous to you, if you do something like that? Because there's a relatability aspect. And I've taken this topic way to a different spot. But I'm just kind of curious now that you've told me you've used image consultants, would you ever recommend a haggard sort of like everyman sort of costco shirt brand to someone in that sense and i don't mean man i mean this could be anyone i

Carter 57:56

i mean um what was her name who ran who dated peter mckay for a while and ran for the various leaderships belinda stronic right so belinda stronic has all the money and all the power and

Carter 58:07

and so she was dressing uh in kind of label-y type of of pieces i would have moved her into more uh i'm going to use eaton's because it's i'm old and that's a reference i understand eaton's

Carter 58:21

eaton's uh cut type of clothing you

Carter 58:24

you wow or blues right maybe blues um that's

Carter 58:29

that's yeah calgary one

Corey 58:30

one that nobody outside

Corey 58:32

of cambridge is going to get anyways

Carter 58:33

anyways the the point of the exercise would be to find something you know like if mark carney were were to to do the unthinkable and decide to run for the leadership of the liberals you may want to down market him a smidge but again not too much because you don't want him to actually look like god forbid cory hogan you want him to look like every

Carter 58:55

every man the every man that's the whole point of this the every man wins elections the people who are who stand out as an in a kind of of a negative fashion they don't win elections whether they look too good or they don't look good enough like the best politicians are good looking in the boy or girl next door category not in the model category that's why maybe cory would be a very good politician throwing that out there cory

Zain 59:23

cory finish this off here i said

Carter 59:24

said he's handsome is what i said yeah

Zain 59:27

you i like that

Zain 59:28

that now he's distracted doesn't have a point we're not in the same

Corey 59:31

Well, look, you asked where these people

Zain 59:34

people come from, who these people are.

Corey 59:35

not often a full-time job

Zain 59:37

job to be an image consultant.

Corey 59:39

It is often both on work for somebody who works in a style-adjacent industry. I've seen photographers be image consultants. Carter actually mentioned that in terms of a photographer determining. term hair stylists people who've worked in the fashion industry who are going to say this is how it's going to look on film you know and there's also a different presentation in terms of

Corey 59:57

on you know in a photograph or in person that needs to be considered advertising pr people have eyes for these things i think he's ain't even in the kind of work you do when you're building advertisements you're thinking i want somebody who looks like this portrays this kind of feel presents themselves in this way and that kind of work that you're doing in the ad space is giving you the same muscles that allow you to do good image consulting and

Corey 1:00:21

then uh you know wardrobe consultant tailors clothiers people who uh dress people for a living and understand the way things lie and the way things look and the way you present yourself all of these activities are image adjacent and any of these activities can kind of prep you for that kind of work now the truly great image consultants you don't see a lot of in canada because you know that would would be somebody who works on a full time yeah but you go to new york there are people who do this for absolutely hedge fund managers absolutely and and that's uh that's somebody who can then do it for a politician and can be hired for a politician and you'll often when you're in the true professional space when you're looking at like the joe biden's of the world right like a presidential candidate they're going to pick the image consultant based on what their expertise is in in the images that they can build and say like they are great at building a brand of oh

Zain 1:01:12

oh yeah Yeah, there's a great pod,

Zain 1:01:15

and the reason I ask is not because I didn't necessarily know.

Carter 1:01:21

that on the Discord, by the way? Who put the different pods there? Was

Corey 1:01:26

You noticed it finally. No,

Corey 1:01:28

Fuck that. All right, the Discord is unmanageable.

Zain 1:01:30

unmanageable. I don't even try. They were talking about this kingmaker of Iowa politics, and 80% of what he did was find a select candidate that he wanted to win and said, I'm going to make you Iowa. And a lot of that was around haircut, look, cadence of speech, here's what you think. It was, you know, of course, like, you know, this was the in the Democratic side, the first sort of foray into the into the primary. And so this person would have a lot of that based on based on image, so to speak. And the reason I asked, though, was really about the political in image consulting, right? Where's the political intel come from? And what I what I gather is that the politics of it can still funnel up to the larger team, right? Being like, you know, Give us a sense of how this is. Exactly. And this is to your point. It's in the brief, what we're looking for. We've laid out the politics for you. Let's move it on to our over, under, and our lightning round, Carter. But I'm going to keep it on this theme. Carter, let's

Zain 1:02:20

let's start with you. We'll do it for you.

Zain 1:02:22

Will Pierre Polyev keep this new look? Will they? So you like it. You've said that you like it. Will he keep this look heading into whenever the next election is? Ditching the glasses, this sort of new aesthetic that we're seeing. And then there still might be experimenting with it. but I think the glasses are the most notable one. Will he ditch the glasses?

Carter 1:02:40

glasses? We're going to see different iterations throughout the summer. We will see different pieces of Pierre Polyev, and starting when the house comes back in the fall, he will be the most successful of those iterations. So, you know, we're going to see a different Pierre Polyev at this year's Stampede than we saw in the last year's Stampede. Watch his clothes. I'd be willing to bet that his clothes are going to be one step up market than they have been in the past Stampedes.

Zain 1:03:09

Oh, that's interesting. You think they're going to do a summer of experimentation when the House sits again as part of election readiness, you're going to see a new version?

Carter 1:03:15

version? Well, keep in mind, he's getting used to this too. This isn't how he feels the most comfortable.

Carter 1:03:19

He's got to get used to it, and they're going to give him all kinds of different iterations so that he feels the most comfortable in these clothes that don't represent his own skin.

Zain 1:03:30

Hogan, same question to you. The Pierre Polyev journey that he's on, I guess, Is he going to keep this no-glasses routine going forward? What do you think? Or this no-glasses look, I should say.

Corey 1:03:41

Yeah, I agree with Stephen. It's going to be iterative, right? And it's going to get to a place that's different from where it is right now. The glasses one is interesting because it's a binary. It's glasses on and glasses off. How does it work for you?

Corey 1:03:55

I think he'll probably lose the glasses. My sense of the last couple of months has been that he's been dipping his toe in this And he didn't want to do kind of a light switch where it was all of a sudden he's not wearing the glasses, but he's increasingly not used the glasses in the last bit. And so it does feel to me a very conscious choice, one that is being strategically implemented in a way that avoids conversations like the conversation we're having,

Corey 1:04:18

is, hey, he's changing

Zain 1:04:19

changing his whole thing. Corey, sticking

Zain 1:04:21

sticking with you on this one, which politician in Canada, municipal, federal, provincial, doesn't really matter, needs an image makeover?

Zain 1:04:31

shit. Most needs an

Corey 1:04:32

an image to take over.

Corey 1:04:32

That's a rough question

Zain 1:04:34

question to ask. But I'm asking it for you from purely political reasons, like for purely political reasons, that their image is—I'm not asking you to criticize someone's look. That's not what I'm after. I'm after the politics that they're chasing or they're trying to represent. There's a misalignment or there's a tweak that could get them to the next level.

Corey 1:04:54

That is a tough question. I think that I'm going to say—geez,

Corey 1:04:59

say—geez, I almost said Higgs. right because he just needs to redo his whole thing and he has to hit reset on his whole being and so maybe that would be a good opportunity to do it uh

Corey 1:05:08

uh no i yeah i

Corey 1:05:10

i don't know the answer to that uh i suspect it would be an opposition leader i'd have to scan go to steven and maybe i'll have one before the carter

Zain 1:05:20

carter do you do you have an obvious answer top of mind in terms of which political leader of any order of government in this country for the politics of it right not to just criticize how that's not what we're into um needs

Zain 1:05:32

needs it needs an image makeover to the conversation we've been having around the poll kevin

Carter 1:05:38

kevin falcon is very just this

Zain 1:05:40

this is the leader of bc

Zain 1:05:41

united and who got crushed in a couple of they

Carter 1:05:44

they were likely seats anyways but bc united came in one of

Carter 1:05:48

of them i mean behind

Carter 1:05:50

behind the conservative so they've created this new brand and this guy name Kevin Falcon doesn't embody that new brand. And I'd be very interested in seeing someone like an MMA who doesn't actually make men's clothing to our chagrin, but go in and make him over and turn him into something more acceptable in the lower mainland would be really

Carter 1:06:16

really an interesting challenge. I would be very interested in seeing that.

Zain 1:06:20

Corey, you have anything while Carter gives gives that answer of a BC United leader?

Corey 1:06:25

I got nothing. I was drifting towards Falcon. He was sort of my placeholder as I went through the leaders of the opposition. That's actually not a bad choice. I don't think his brand is so,

Corey 1:06:35

so, so wrong right now, but I think in addition to having this new political party

Carter 1:06:39

party brand, it's just like

Corey 1:06:42

like you can set it all right now, right? Like you can define yourself, you can define the party.

Corey 1:06:48

It's probably most important that he lands his brand in a lock-tight way. The more direct question I have for you, because I thought one of you might come up with this answer,

Zain 1:06:58

Yeah, this is Carter's response. The guy who wears the expensive suits and the Rolexes while leading the federal NDP. He's done this for a while. He's defended it for a while. I'm curious if either of you think it's time that he potentially get a makeover or a image sort of recalibration in terms of the politics that he wants to espouse and the image.

Carter 1:07:18

image. Yeah, I mean, I was kind of a little glib there in saying who. I mean, that wasn't very fair of me. I should have said... Of

Zain 1:07:24

Of course, you do

Carter 1:07:24

do that every time. I should have said the former leader of the NDP. Yeah, that would be a great makeover. Thank you,

Zain 1:07:30

Carter. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Carter, over to you. Best, in your mind, has or had, so past or present, best political sort of image that you've seen in terms of like their politics align with what they're up to, what they're trying to communicate. They've just nailed it and could be what you may... And we may not know if it's organic or not, if there's been people involved in it. But in terms of political history in this country, I'll give you a wide berth. I'm

Carter 1:07:54

I'm really respectful of what Nenshi did. I think that Nenshi's commitment to his change, because keep in mind, like, Nahid

Carter 1:08:03

Nahid wasn't really malleable as a candidate. I mean, authenticity was one of his watchwords, and he really wanted to be authentic. But he took the time to change his brand, to make himself look a certain way. And then when the rest of the country kind of saw that, you know, we elected this, you know,

Carter 1:08:19

know, this candidate that defied all expectations at the same time that they elected Rob Ford in Toronto, you

Carter 1:08:27

you know, Nenshi really leaned into the purple. He really leaned into his visible brand. And I think that it really paid dividends, not just for, you know, Nahed Nenshi, the man,

Carter 1:08:40

man, but it also played dividends for the city of Calgary.

Zain 1:08:46

Corey, political brand, past or present, especially from like an image perspective, as we've been discussing, that aligns with their politics. Who would that be for you?

Corey 1:08:58

uh you know they're not very fancy answers but i think that you've got to give it to trudeau and the way the 2015 liberals pulled themselves together i also think looking

Corey 1:09:08

looking a little bit further back and on the other side of the spectrum brian mulrooney really nailed his brand as well like his everybody knew

Corey 1:09:16

knew everything about how brown mulrooney was going to react and act in every moment, you know, from his business background to singing Irish Eyes Are Smiling with Regan. I mean, it was really well established, and I don't know how much of it was crafted and how much was natural, but he had

Carter 1:09:32

had a strong brand. That's a great point. That was a great choice. Corey,

Zain 1:09:35

Corey, sticking with you for this next one, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez says he's surprised by Google's announcement that he's ceasing to host Lynx. We

Zain 1:09:43

We talked about this last time. I asked you fine, fabulous, or fucked on the Online News Act. You guys were both like, listen, they'll get through this, whatever, whatever. are

Zain 1:09:51

are you do you want to change your answer i'm going to let you change your answer if you want to in terms of the government's predicament now google catching them by surprise joining meta in there you know what if you make us pay we're getting we're not fucking hosting these these news links on social what do you think fine fabulous or fucked the way the online news act is shaping up for the for the for the federal liberals so

Corey 1:10:11

so i i think i said it was fine maybe bordering on fucked because okay i thought that there was a chance that uh they would try to make an example of the Canadian government. That does seem to be the situation we're in right now. I do want to say this, though.

Corey 1:10:26

mean, you could have assumed this was going to happen, even in a scenario where this is all going to work out. This is kind of classic brinksmanship that you would expect in a high stakes negotiation like this, to get the federal government back to the table with more money, more collaborative atmosphere, better attitude. There is still a chance to salvage all of this. And you got to also keep in mind, it's not as though the people People at Meta and Google aren't really

Corey 1:10:51

really sophisticated negotiators. They negotiate multi-billion dollar deals all the time. And they know how to apply pressure to local governments because they do that all of the time, too.

Corey 1:11:01

It's a little bit like the NHL with arenas, you know, like they have a bag of tricks. They're using that bag of tricks. Doesn't mean they're not serious. We've got to keep in mind Canada is just a small part of the overall world. You know, it's a world of 8 billion people and there's 40 million Canadians. But but I

Corey 1:11:19

I think that there is a good chance that we will see this situation still resolve in some way. Don't think it's going to be to the federal government's liking, but I think that the situation could still resolve.

Corey 1:11:30

Carter, you were definitely

Zain 1:11:31

definitely not a border of fine bordering on Fox. You were fine all the way through. You were emphatic. You were allowed. And now I'm going to give you an opportunity to change your answer. Why

Carter 1:11:40

Why would I change my answer, Zane, when my answer was 100 percent correct? this is still fine uh in fact i'd double down if i were if i were the government right now i'd be saying okay what other rules has europe put in place to put these fuckers where they belong and how quickly can we get them through uh through the house of commons because we're going to play hardball with these fuckers and one of the things we're going to do is if something is if something is published on their websites they're going to be accountable for it the same way a newspaper is accountable for letters that they publish to the editor let's go and fuck these guys because i think that these these tech giants have got too much power and the too

Carter 1:12:18

too much power like they practically control this podcast

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