Transcript
Annalise
0:02
Welcome to The Strategist episode 1259. I'm your host Annalise Klingbeil and with you tonight Stephen Carter and Zain Velji.
Carter
0:12
like years since we had it. It's been
Annalise
0:14
been like 200 episodes as I just learned when I said 1259. You
Annalise
0:20
some. Last time I was on we were in like the we
Annalise
0:23
were in the one zero zero zeros you guys are done done
Annalise
0:28
done like two episodes uh every i don't know 12 hours you
Zain
0:32
you missed the entire episode where cory challenged us not to use any vowels and
Zain
0:37
and that was a good one it was yeah
Carter
0:39
was a good episode tremendous
Zain
0:40
tremendous it was good work probably the the least listened to but honestly it didn't matter okay
Annalise
0:47
well i'm uh i'm happy to be here Garrett, nice to see you. How are both of you guys doing this evening?
Zain
0:52
Oh, I'm doing great. You know, it's so nice to see all of our epidemiologists online now be foreign policy experts. So it's good. It's nice to see. It's nice to see so many of them have done the research and have concluded black and white like Jared Kushner that they've solved. They solved all of the world's issues.
Carter
1:09
Yeah, it's quite amazing. I mean, we
Carter
1:13
we did it on our little episode. I mean, I'm sure Annalise has listened to our Saving the Middle East uh episode so what'd you think annalise did we nail it i've
Annalise
1:23
i've not listened i understand you guys have been hitting some heavy topics and you've been doing it with uh with grace which i think with grace
Annalise
1:33
grace and no vowels ringing endorsement so yeah you guys have recovered since your last episode it
Carter
1:40
it was tricky it was a it was a we've done some dancing episodes lately so it's been great. I've really enjoyed it. Zane has not enjoyed it. He's kind of a black and white type of fella, but
Carter
1:51
Corey and I really enjoyed exploring the nuance.
Annalise
1:54
Thanks for talking on behalf of me
Zain
1:57
and Corey. I got accused of being black and white. And I think there's some interesting commentary as a follow-up to that episode, but I don't know if today's the time for it. Unless you want it to be Annalise, then it could absolutely be the time. Annalise gets to choose.
Annalise
2:09
I'm in charge. I haven't listened to the the last episode is there anything right we're at the beginning like is there anything that you want to say get off your chest zane before we dive into maybe some other lighter topics no
Carter
2:26
we didn't want to do the episode to begin with and so it was cory's idea
Zain
2:30
idea there we go to be absolutely clear
Zain
2:34
project was cory berating us for for the weekend being like we need need to do this episode where we talk about hamas and you know listen i i think the
Zain
2:45
the situation is evolving to the point where i
Zain
2:49
think everyone is on eggshells at least a lot of people i
Zain
2:52
i think in my private conversations i'm seeing a lot of people not knowing what to say thinking a you know a word or a comma could be considered offensive if in the wrong spot or in the wrong place um and i'm also seeing like a lot of reductive theories
Zain
3:08
theories and i and i know the episode if you didn't listen to it concluded a lot like from a pure political strategy basis that
Zain
3:17
politicians are incented to read the room and deal with the event in front of them but at some point when beyond that whether it's 24 hours or two weeks later the continuum does fucking matter like it does like and like and i'm not even talking about the continuum historically backwards i'm now talking about forwards and i think that like this carte blanche that western nations in large part have given to israel is
Zain
3:44
is going to i'm just going to say for now is going to be interesting to observe and that's the lightest touch i will give it because i i think this is going to be a it's already a humanitarian crisis um and and it's bordering on war crimes if if not already is, in terms of what they are doing to innocent Gazans and Palestinians right now.
Annalise
4:03
Zane, you said Corey kind of dragged you into doing the episode. Are you glad it was done? Like, do you feel you've
Annalise
4:10
you've sat with it for a few days? You've heard feedback from people? Are you glad that it was done?
Zain
4:14
So, yes. I was, mainly for one part at the end where I just asked Stephen and Corey what they would advise someone like me do in
Zain
4:25
in this situation. And when I say someone like me to bring folks up to speed, yeah, like, okay, so and this is where I think conversations were getting reductive. This is one example where someone accused me of, you know, being a rational, empathetic person, but like, because I'm Muslim, I had to pick this certain side. I don't agree with that. It's more so that like, being Muslim is one of my several identities. It is one of the several things I am. It informs my perspective. It doesn't decide my perspective. And to boil this down is to simply, simply a
Zain
4:55
religious conflict. And Carter the Atheist is scratching his non-existent beard. I think it's like, because
Zain
5:01
because there's going to be bullshit of wisdom coming right now, is
Zain
5:06
is I think oversimplifying it. So I am glad that we had that conversation. I could speak where I was at. I did text some friends afterwards, send some messages to friends, you know, Jewish friends that didn't know how to deal with the situation in the sense of like what to say to them, how to say that. so yeah i mean i think it was helpful did the public find it helpful i don't give a fuck i never have so um here we are carter
Annalise
5:31
carter any uh any any response to zane any feedback from your end are you feeling good do you like the advice you gave zane in the end with that question he's talking about people can go listen to this episode too we should plug that we should now paywall
Zain
5:45
right away carter paywall it
Annalise
5:46
it right away yeah it
Zain
5:47
it is not but But we should.
Annalise
5:48
should. Paywall that. Yeah. That'll be paywall because Carter knows how to do that. Carter
Annalise
5:52
no idea how to fucking
Zain
5:53
fucking do that. Are you kidding me?
Annalise
5:54
People can go listen. I'll be impressed if this episode makes it up. No, I think I know
Carter
5:59
know how to do it now. I think I figured
Zain
6:01
figured it out. Let's
Zain
6:01
how it goes. It's
Annalise
6:02
It's going to happen. Do you have any response or kind of thoughts over the past couple days since you recorded?
Carter
6:09
I mean, it was interesting because I think that we were coming at it from very different perspectives, all three of us. and uh but at the end of the day because we were all kind of balancing off the political challenges um it gave us a little bit more freedom to uh discuss the issue actually in a more holistic fashion which was i
Carter
6:31
i thought it was great i'm i you know oftentimes we go back and we listen to the episodes i'm not sure i'm going to go back and listen to this episode i think that it will will be it's a hard it's it's a harder listen uh
Carter
6:43
uh than some of our other work well
Annalise
6:44
well now i have to listen because you you listen to all episodes like you
Carter
6:51
okay this one is it's it's a uh it's
Carter
6:55
it's a tough topic right like it's not there's no there's no easy right right answer and it's evolving
Zain
7:00
evolving too but yeah oh
Carter
7:01
oh yeah i mean in in the future i mean
Carter
7:07
politicians that that immediately stumbled out of the gate with simple with simplistic and reductive answers i think found themselves in trouble and or if they haven't found themselves in trouble yet i think they're bound to find themselves in trouble in the future and that was a fascinating
Carter
7:22
fascinating conversation to have okay
Annalise
7:25
okay i'm gonna listen that's that's the endorsement for me to listen to wow
Carter
7:29
wow that episode well the fact that you're
Annalise
7:31
you're not listening is huge because you you re-listen to all episodes you're
Carter
7:35
you're always you're always listening to each other we we also uh cory and i have been known and this is not you know it's not the proudest thing that he and i have done but we've
Carter
7:46
we've been known to uh basically think that our work is pretty amazing and so So not
Carter
7:54
listening is actually really a significant thing, right? I know. How are we going to know how amazing we are if
Carter
8:01
if we haven't listened?
Zain
8:02
I'm going to listen. The game tape is overrated. You should not listen. By
Zain
8:07
By the way, you can watch the Johnny Manziel documentary on Netflix about a guy who doesn't watch the game tape and then flunks
Zain
8:14
flunks out of the NFL.
Carter
8:16
Wow, what a great story. Yeah, no problem. Okay,
Annalise
8:18
Okay, guys, we're going to move on to our first segment. Our first segment is called Happy Anniversary to You. A couple of things here. Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of when Daniel Smith was sworn in as premier following the UCP leadership race. I don't know if you guys know this. She celebrated her one-year anniversary with a 1,500-word year-in-review statement posted kind of like as a government news release, highlighted all she's accomplished. That's one anniversary. Another one is coming up next week, Carter. You might know about this one. Next week, two-year anniversary of when Calgary's current city council was sworn in. So they're two years in. They have two more years to go before the next election. So I don't want to necessarily talk about the specific city council, Daniel Smith, but kind of the broader topic of anniversaries. And I want to pick your guys' brains about kind of the strategy. strategy from a strategy point of view do
Annalise
9:16
do you celebrate anniversaries um should opposition are there things they should do in anniversaries um i think for most of us i mean zane you seem surprised there that one year of daniel smith like for a lot of us you don't even know these things happen and then you get wrapped up with other things um carter why don't you start off start us off what are kind of your general thoughts on on political anniversaries of of when someone was elected.
Carter
9:43
Well, I mean, I love political anniversaries because most of the time we are in the midst of whatever's happening today, right? Today is the most important day in any politician's career. It is the moment we were, you know, we talked about this last episode with the whole Israel piece. I mean, you have to be responding in the moment to whatever is happening in the moment. That
Carter
10:02
That is part of our jobs as politicians, but no one keeps track and no one keeps score. What are the elements that we actually achieved? what do we actually do no one else is keeping score the media used to do some of that score keeping they used to do report
Carter
10:17
yeah they used to do the report cards they used to do those those kind of here we are a year in review what happened um what's going to happen where you know where are we on the plan they don't have the resources to do that anymore so it's kind of fallen on the individual politician um to you
Carter
10:34
you know push themselves up and kind of prop the prop up the achievements and say that, you know, this has been a year and this is what I've achieved versus what I said I would achieve. And the person who was probably the best at kind of keeping score might've been Jason Kenney because he, he
Carter
10:49
he knew where he was against his list of promises, uh, better than anybody. And, but if, if no one else knows, then it's kind of a hollow victory. So using the anniversary as a, uh,
Carter
11:02
uh, you know, a cheerleading mechanism as, as some sort Sort of, you know, congratulations to the team, congratulations to us, congratulations to Albertans or to, you know, the
Carter
11:14
the citizens of Calgary, however you choose to do it. It gives you the opportunity to remind people of why they elected you and why, you
Carter
11:22
you know, what it is that you said you were going to achieve. So I love them. I think they're great opportunities to really,
Carter
11:29
really, you know, celebrate
Annalise
11:33
Conversely, and Zane, I'll bring you in here, like, what if you haven't achieved a ton? And I think about perhaps, and Carter, maybe you have thoughts on this, but the city council thing, like, you know, next year, let's say the next week, let's say there's counselors saying, yeah, totally two years in, and then you have the public saying, like, well, what has been accomplished in two years? Zane, anniversaries, your take? Oh,
Zain
11:53
Oh, man, that's a good question. Like, what if you haven't achieved much? Because, you know, it goes back, maybe I'll start with that answer. Because I think it goes back to the fundamentals that I think at least you would understand better than that even Carter and I around the media and the accountability. because these anniversaries are made-up milestones that give you an excuse to broadcast political victories, real or not. And what's gone beyond the report cards that the political media used to provide to the public as a public service is that we've also lost a couple of things that have really given politicians very frictionless runway to celebrate anniversaries and to become their own news source, so to speak, right? So any political backlash in terms of misusing government resources to celebrate even
Zain
12:46
even capital P partisan victories, we don't really care. We don't even care if it has an erosion of public trust, or if there's even sort of like selective memory, or if we're kind of molding things, if we're prematurely saying something thing was a success, right? Like, the fact is, outside of a few big files where success is going to be delivered based on a suite or a singular outcome, most things that governments promise to do, they have set internal markers that allow them to declare success. And even if they haven't, who gives a fuck, right? Like, we're in this era where the lack of accountability to doing that, whether that be wasting public resources or that selective memory, allows people to tell the story. So the cynical political operative in me would be to say, if you feel like you haven't achieved anything, who's to say you haven't achieved anything, right?
Zain
13:41
right? Right? We would say, like, no, you actually have. In fact, you want to take the piece of this, piece of that, make this a broader story. You mold it. You mold it, right?
Zain
13:50
Am I a fan of them? As a political operative, perhaps supporting a politician, I think I am. I think Carter makes some really good points around why they're useful, despite some of the things I've said. And maybe I'll kind of add a couple to the list, because Carter's really done, and you've done a good job on scorekeeping, because no one else is doing it. It's legacy building.
Zain
14:15
It's legacy building in the moment. You're telling a broader story about yourself, and you're molding it in a way that allows to strengthen that personal brand, perhaps engage with your supporter base, raise a couple of bucks, highlight your successes, but also legacy build. And I think the politicians—and we've talked about legacy at length on several pods around how do you frame it, how do you do it, do politicians hold off too much to the end to make the last run of their—or the last, you know, chapters of their political career purely on legacy. Legacy is built early and often, and I think using the tools given to you, especially with access to government, allows you to build some of that legacy as well. And I think that's another important one. And perhaps one of the bigger ones, if I am advising a politician on not what just today looks like, but what the capstone of their leadership looks like, as we've discussed, because there's reasons you'll need another job someday, you'll need something to define yourself on, you'll need something to go back to the electorate on to be even more practical about it. That legacy building on the government dollar.
Zain
15:20
It's where we're at. Yeah.
Annalise
15:22
What about, Carter, does it help like internally? And I'm thinking with staff who
Annalise
15:28
every day there's a new crisis, there's a new dumpster fire, it's exhausting. They're all in, they're working all the time. Like, does it, does
Annalise
15:35
does it help and motivate to kind of take that step back even for a day or for a couple hours to be like, Hey, we're a year in, this
Annalise
15:41
this is what we've done three
Annalise
15:43
three more years and then some to go. Like, is that, is there a strategic piece in terms of team building internally.
Carter
15:50
Absolutely. I mean, I think that any good corporation would do this as kind of part of their ongoing work, right? You celebrate the victories, you pick apart a little bit on what went wrong and why it went wrong so
Carter
16:05
so that you can stop doing it in the future. But there has to be some sort of a process whereby you're measuring, did we achieve our strategic strategic objectives, right? Like, did we achieve those things? Now, you
Carter
16:17
you don't need to share those publicly. But even if you look at like an annual report for a corporation, they will dictate and outline exactly what they achieved within their corporate structure and why they're,
Carter
16:28
they're, you know, the current plan as set by the CEO and the board of directors is exactly the right plan to be on. Why wouldn't we expect that from an elected group, right? I would be delighted to see what this city council thinks that they've achieved. And to Zane's point,
Carter
16:50
know, if you haven't achieved anything, you still can say, well, we're in the process of achieving lots of things, right? We said that we would achieve blah, blah, blah, blah, and here are the milestones by which we are doing that. You know, we've achieved, we're in the middle of the housing process. well we said we'd be here that's where we're going right we approved a you know we we solved the 20 million dollar arena problem with 500 million dollars of new cash you know like that's a that's an impressive milestone that's something that's something amazing got an arena like that was
Zain
17:18
was a burn did i miss something
Carter
17:18
something that was quick what did i say i don't
Zain
17:21
don't know what you said i
Carter
17:22
i think i was being supportive okay
Carter
17:25
but i think that that's you
Carter
17:27
you know you got to take you got to take those moments to make sure that you're on track and and i think in politics uh much like it's the same i think in business sometimes you just you find yourself uh just moving forward just to move forward just to accomplish the day and these moments of reflection are uh
Carter
17:45
uh powerful and and strong and i hope that the media covers them more do
Annalise
17:49
do you think that two
Annalise
17:50
two things there one is like does the general public care but on that media angle um
Annalise
17:56
um and i think you guys have both touched on it zane more so like that that fact that it's uh it's changed right we're not we're not doing um media's not doing the profiles that they used to they just don't have time they don't have the resources but i
Annalise
18:10
i guess what like is that does the general public care and is the fact that we're not seeing those annual report cards or those features um is that a is that a problem oh i
Zain
18:22
i think i think it is people know i think it's a huge problem right we've seen this in the last decade that political entities, well, we've seen a couple of things. Let's summarize over the course of the last two decades, right? A, ongoing campaign. We've talked about that constantly. We're always in campaign mode. Most politicians worth their salt, either whether they're part of the party infrastructure or a single shingle counselor, they have a political machine. Small or big, they understand the value that has become normal, right, in our politics these days. Number Number two, we've talked about the erosion of media. And number three, we've talked about the erecting of political parties starting their own media. We've seen that in a couple of ways. We've seen failed slash quasi-successful experiments like Doug Ford's own PCTV, I believe that's what it was called, during an election, and then into the new year. In fact, I think he even tried to use government resources to create his own mini YouTube channel. I don't know how long that lasted, but you'll see. And this would be a perfect conversation for Corey, who could explain to me what a government sort of ongoing communications broadcast looks like, because most public engagement and public affairs bureaus, whatever they're called across the country, provincially, have some version of that. And if you want to make that simplistic, they're trying to run their own TV network, right? They're trying to run their own, and you might, I haven't used the P word yet, but there is propaganda associated with that. Everyone does it across the board, regardless of Jersey color, right? So is there a cost to this? Yes, because we're losing objectivity. We have this one-sided, in the spirit of communicating to the public, including successes, not just what you get, and we're now kind of going into this lane of governments having endless opportunity to communicate unabated, right? Of course, you've got opposition parties, we can talk about them. The second thing here, though, as it relates to what this could mean for the team, I just want to quickly jump in on this, because I think Carter and I perhaps have a very similar philosophy. In fact, I would argue, Carter, I don't think we've ever discussed this on the pod, you and I probably have a very similar style to campaign managing, which is find the A players and let them skate. Is that fair? Like, for the most part? And
Zain
20:29
And I think the reason you
Zain
20:31
you do that beyond the talent is, you know, you mature the pipeline, you have people take over the campaign so that we don't have to fucking do these things until we're Carter's age, right? Right, but as part of that, though, any good leader, whether they're a chief of staff in an office or a manager of a campaign or the principal politician themselves, wants to use these anniversaries as motivation and retention. They want to use them as team building. They want to publicly acknowledge, you'll see the best do this well, publicly acknowledge who on the team helped cross certain things off the list, make huge gains. it doesn't matter jack shit to the public it matters the world to the person right that is huge especially in this line of work where um where many people feel like it's thankless and the day-to-day is a fucking grind and then the last sort of thing i'd kind of add that i find interesting to your question at least is this concept of identity and belonging one
Zain
21:32
one of the things that like i think these successes allow people to do solely but surely kind of like legacy building, is crystallize their identity, that the movement is having success, that our policies are moving forward. I still belong in this camp. It reminds them that they're not just part of a winning team, but a team that they have connection to. And it's those small things, I would argue, done repetitively, done often, that's solid. That's what makes a political base. I mean, I would love to do an entire pod one day about what makes a political base, but it is constant reinforcement of one's identity position to the point of sometimes fault where it could become like a vacuum and it's the only thing you ever hear in a silo but that is huge this sort of stuff is huge um to reinforce people's belonging and sense of belonging because that is what creates your base of support carter
Annalise
22:29
carter is there also a way and on that identity and belonging piece like to bring new people into
Annalise
22:36
into the fold you know to maybe add like some context or bring i don't is there is there an opportunity there is there like a fundraising opportunity um or no well
Carter
22:46
well i mean i think that fundraising always flows from these things i i think um danielle smith will will parcel off pieces of what she's achieved and And send them out to the lists of supporters based on what they want to achieve, right? So if she's achieved something in agriculture, she'll send out a fundraising letter to the agriculture folks. And that
Carter
23:14
is part of the overall scheme of things. You don't get anything in politics without asking for it. So you've got to set up your narratives to show people what they want to see. I think that this is one of the key elements of politics. I was just chatting with someone about it today. You don't get anywhere without telling people exactly what they should be seeing. And it's something that's set up early in a campaign. And that's showing them what they're going to see is way more important sometimes than actually, you know, kind of the
Carter
23:47
the end outcome. It's about building this team, as Zane has talked about, and enabling that team to feel like they were a part of it. They pushed for it. You can actually, you know, you'll see some people achieving these
Carter
24:00
these things saying, oh, because of, you know, the big push from this group of people, we've achieved this wonderful outcome, right? right? Because this group of business owners pushed us to achieve this outcome, we've done that, right? That's all part of the shtick of making sure that people feel like they're part of the overarching teams.
Annalise
24:23
you want to jump in there, Zane?
Zain
24:24
Your question kind of reminds me of something I pitched to a politician once, and I'm kind of curious to get you, can I, I'm going to do it here and see you get your guys' take. Oh, love it. Which was, I don't remember what the issue was, but I think it was municipal and I think it was Calgary. So maybe I'm pitching Nahid about this, which rings a bell. But there was something that happened in the city, like a monumental policy success. And it was monumental because there was a lot of authors to it. It was monumental because it took a long time coming. and and my suggestion was we need to have like a big fucking party like a big blowout because i think we there's something really interesting about politics it's like we celebrate on election night the base celebrates at an agm once every couple years but we actually don't really get together and celebrate like we don't actually see one another as a as a group uh even whether we consider ourselves part of a base or a membership all that often and
Zain
25:21
and and i think that when we look at even more local level, and I know one of your topics, Annalise, is maybe to drill down on city council, but at a local level, the ability to celebrate successes is so easy because you're in the same geographical space. And it's not all that challenging on a provincial, if not national level. But the idea was very simple. You know, it's about everything. Express that gratitude, have that promotion and positivity, that positive culture. But like, get together, together have people celebrate the success getting something across the finish line and use it as like an a a ability to like carry on for the next chapter and i don't think we fill people's gas tanks enough from like a pure organizing perspective and i don't mean to make this organizing school but like there there could be there is a world where i could see politicians not taking victory laps being like this is a big fucking deal housing for example like at city city council. We're going to bring every stakeholder who made this happen. We're going to figure out how to pay for it. We'll figure that shit out, like that stuff can be taken care of. But we want all these people together to get that media coverage, to get that ability to get to know one another and to showcase what the lift is. We just don't do that enough. And I don't understand why. Because we know from all of our corporate culture, sort of research, academic and otherwise, wise that celebrations actually add so much disproportionate fuel then they actually take away from resourcing that i don't know why politics has not embraced this this this mantra uh so to speak do
Annalise
26:51
do you remember what the issue was saying oh man what's the one that was it secondary suites what's the
Zain
26:56
the one that um jeremy and peter worked on they may have worked on it may have been secondary suites um it was it was wasn't it cycle cycle tracks was the first one but they also were pushing on a second one. And I was like, this requires like one of those national election night style parties because something big just happened. And I'm happy to give up whatever political costs that symbolism would have celebrating like a mission accomplished, but fuck it, get all of us in a room, make sure we're all like happy about something and then say there's another chapter. It also reinforces leadership in an amazing way because you're also like convening, right? Like, and maybe this is just my leadership style that I'm like trying to impress, but like the power to convene is fucking unparalleled and and so anyways i can go on for a while and this is not supposed to be that but yeah carter
Annalise
27:42
carter do you do you agree like what yeah good good idea there from zane let's get together get people in person celebrate it may have been it
Zain
27:49
it may have been that issue i may have been talking to ivis i don't know what it was but yeah it's like something in this realm was a municipal something big that had been
Annalise
27:56
know for a while
Carter
27:56
it doesn't matter what it is i mean your
Carter
28:00
your team is going to be your so the team that got you there it's the team that's going to get you there again and again and again and you
Carter
28:07
know scorecarding at this particular moment is a great opportunity to bring that team back together i mean look at danielle smith what if she's thinking a long-term game right i've got a potential leadership review that could be coming up at any moment she's going to probably lose control of the board uh for the for the uh ucp when she does that it's it's in the hands of the membership whether or not she survives as a as a leader celebrating with her team could be one of the most powerful things that that she gets an opportunity to do this year and it could be vital when it comes to time to for her to be evaluated on her upcoming leadership so not only do you kind of get that you know
Carter
28:55
know piece of celebration you get this organizational structure Because organizing should never stop. It's one of the challenges that faces the civic politicians as well. I mean, they're going to have to regroup and reassemble their entire teams in two years. And I
Carter
29:12
I don't know how many of those teams have even heard from their politicians in the last 24 months. Carter makes
Zain
29:20
makes such a good point, right? Like, there's some, like, one-on-one lessons here that, like, as a political leader, you want to make everyone around you, as many as you can, stakeholders in your success. And the way you do that is you also hand them the W. One of the things we kind of think of is, like, not to use psychology terms, we kind of think of things in a scarcity model, that prescribing many authors to a victory dilutes the victory. It actually compounds the victory, because all those folks become
Zain
29:47
become a stakeholder in your Pure success, right? Because at the end of the day, there's only a half a dozen of us that are on a ballot somewhere. Yes, and if I can own a victory as much as you can, elected official, it helps. And I'm talking here as a third party civilian, not even as a staffer or someone who's paid to kind of push a particular thing up a hill and get it across the finish line. So, I mean, the main lesson for me here is that I think, you know, I haven't read what Danielle Smith has written, and I don't even think that's part of the point, at least, right? It's this concept of, like, if this is a tool that she's using to prescribe credit, to bring people in, to give people credit for what crossed the finish line and to recharge their batteries, power to her. Like, easy, simple political tool rooted in culture and HR, like, we don't use it enough.
Annalise
30:37
Well, and I think that to that broader point, right, it's like this, this strategy of this in a shrinking media market. When I was the city hall reporter, I remember doing a couple anniversary pieces, one on the Peace Bridge. I think it was like the five year, maybe 10 year. I don't know.
Annalise
30:52
it's a while ago like but an anniversary on the peace bridge happy birthday peace bridge that talks to people who had opposed it that talks to politicians who were involved and i think really gave a lot of context to the fact that like when this opened the city councilor for the area needed a bodyguard and now it's the most photographed uh bridge in calgary like just that that
Annalise
31:12
additional context that you gain over five years i did one on um the
Annalise
31:15
the big blue ring kind of same sort of idea and i think uh i mean those are i guess physical things not people but carter do you want to on that media front do you want to speak to that fact like there was a time and i'm taking this son in particular that tabloid style they would do report cards and i don't know if it was like on anniversaries or if it was like a yearly thing but it would be like this report this uh counselor gets an a this counselor gets a b this counselor gets an f like is that did that add value did it help hold politicians accountable it
Carter
31:49
provides context right because the truth of the matter is that no one pays attention enough to reach their own conclusions right so it's not like everybody's kind of walking around with their own scorecards in their own heads about how great this politician is or how bad this politician is they get a sense of it they get a sense of it because just of the the
Carter
32:09
the overall machinations of the media and those types of of things but this
Carter
32:13
this is actually much bigger than that this is about redefining
Carter
32:16
redefining the you know how people perceive you
Carter
32:20
you as a politician and those report cards they
Carter
32:23
they were meaningful like people did not like it when they got a bad grade on it because it would carry over it would be something that would define you into the future and that definition could be good or it could be very very bad um not every politician needs to to win the sun in order to win elections
Carter
32:42
elections but that's really not the point the point is we
Carter
32:47
we saw a reflection of of the performance of the job and those you
Carter
32:52
you know uh accumulated hits like people just are not putting into perspective even the iranian deal which I kind of offhandedly kind of slapped on the council. How dare you, Carter? Well, where's
Carter
33:04
where's the person? Where's the article about what it was going to cost before and what it's going to cost now?
Carter
33:11
It's just the context is lost because
Zain
33:14
everything's happening in that moment. I'm still waiting for the how did they, how,
Zain
33:18
how, the how article. Like, you know, like maybe that's going to take some actual sourcing or investigative journalism, journalism but wouldn't that be a piece of you know journalism we're
Carter
33:30
we're not going to get it though why don't you think there's no why not because there's three reporters in
Carter
33:35
city hall there's three reporters less than that it's a four-month investigative reporter fuck man
Annalise
33:40
it's less than that right now yeah yeah yeah yeah
Zain
33:42
yeah yeah like like yeah anyways but
Annalise
33:45
but but then there's a question for you is like if uh pulling
Annalise
33:48
pulling off of carter's point that report cards are good in this media market like who who does
Annalise
33:54
does that who could do that who is a trusted source that could do a city council report card oh
Zain
34:01
oh that's like um and remind me i don't i don't know if i was like fully
Zain
34:06
fully clued in into what they look like so were they on individual counselors like with voting records um
Annalise
34:13
yeah like but i don't i carter you could you would know this better than i because it was before my time as a journalist just got
Carter
34:20
got called old that hurt yeah
Annalise
34:21
yeah it was a long time ago but i think like who did it was it columnist or was it like the city hall reporter was like here's a track record this person gets an a here's a track record this person gets an f do
Carter
34:32
do you recall yeah
Carter
34:33
yeah i mean most of the time it was the columnist because it was an opinion not a not a uh not a factual piece but that they would work together because they would assemble essentially what happened what that's
Zain
34:43
that's a problem there right away like that that's
Carter
34:45
that's well no like the data would be gathered and then handed hand it over to the opinion are you are you bothering me no i'm
Carter
34:50
not bothering me i'm just saying do
Zain
34:51
do you think that could actually happen with the i'm going to put it in your quotes even though it may not deserve it the integrity that it did back in the day there
Carter
34:58
there well i mean there is no integrity now that's the point i'm trying to i mean they're assigning they're assigning um
Carter
35:06
they're assigning columnists to cover the news i mean they're just out of people um so you
Carter
35:12
you know with we're never going to get the full pictures again we don't get the full pictures we don't get full context uh and it doesn't matter what the issue is that full context is gone is
Annalise
35:23
is there a group though like could someone i mean zane you mentioned jeremy and peter could a project calgary and for those listeners outside of calgary like a i don't know how to describe it like a local advocacy group that keeps tabs on city hall yeah with work with a clear progressive agenda
Annalise
35:37
agenda would that be meaningful yeah i mean no you i
Zain
35:40
i i i don't think so because because they've got a clear progressive agenda which by the way i'm bought into
Zain
35:45
right like just like i'm bought lot into labor's progressive agenda like labor comes out with report cards during election times if not they may they may even come out with report cards ahead of election time giving counselors but like it's it you know like if the question you are asking is on objectivity
Zain
36:01
objectivity or the closest thing available to objectivity in the modern media market yeah they could do it but it would be like steven you and me doing it right now we could just like you know lick our finger be like i don't fucking like this person they get to see like in some ways that's what it is right like it's a combination of voting record uh but
Zain
36:19
there is a broader point here that i'll quickly make which is i don't think you know these
Zain
36:23
these report cards we should we should look back and with a bit of nostalgia and be like okay here's what they were here's the value they added but at the end of the day if we're looking at municipal politics we know that name recognition worked above all else It's not like everyone would go and buy their Calgary Sun and look this up and put it up and be like, you know, OK, I'm going to use this as my voting compass. Right. The name recognition and the ability to mold and tell your own story while greater and less friction today do that than ever before was always a key foundation to securing election or reelection. So, I mean, I don't want to like I want to look back at them with a bit of nostalgia, but maybe not overcorrect in that in that regard.
Carter
37:08
doesn't matter what they say about you as long as they spell your name right.
Annalise
37:14
Just last one on there and more the provincial side. What's the opposition to do? Like if, you know, in this case, Smith is going out saying here are, you know, dozens of wonderful things I've done over the last year. What is the opposition strategy? What is the opposition move during anniversaries?
Carter
37:33
There's two strategies they can use. um they can do their own report card on what the government has done or they can do their own report card on what they would have done so like what what the opposition would do right i always i'm relatively critical of the ndp because they always have felt like um they're
Carter
37:53
they're just a crit they're all they do is criticize right they never feel like they're government and waiting and this is a great opportunity to be a government waiting what they did and what they should have have done what they did and what they should have done what they did and what we would have done right like that that's a a narrative structure that they could employ that would be probably more powerful uh than just the simple structure of um you know why aren't you doing what what we told you that was the best plan um like it's it's it it i think you've got a tremendous amount of opportunity for the opposition party to say this is where things went off the rails this is where we would have done better zane
Annalise
38:34
zane what's your take i
Zain
38:35
i mean if i if we're talking alberta politics here i don't think there's any issue for the ndp at this moment in time to act like an opposition so oppose right i think alternatives are great but
Zain
38:45
but i don't think they're a general audience uh tool right now and i think the trap here is everything all at once it's the same trap we've talked about for months with the ndps picking up on everything and and not honing in so so for the purposes of the tall heads within your party and your voter base, right? Give them the counterproposal. That's fine. But from the public perspective, the advice I would give is pick the soft tissue. What here is actually a liability that they're calling a win and what here is missing? And what then converges with what the public demands of this government? Because you can be a government, write 1,500 words, call everything a success, and people can still call you a failure right that is your fucking job what is the soft tissue here right it might be it may not be any one of these policies it might be one of these policies it is to find out what the soft tissue is and attack that at scale and so i think the whole list is a trap it's kind of equivalent to you know the opposing counsel sending you multiple boxes of discovery right it's your job here is to find the one thing the two things that matter that tell a broader story don't get caught caught up in all of it okay
Annalise
39:58
let's leave that segment there and move on to our next segment our next segment is about the notwithstanding clause um great
Annalise
40:07
today the Saskatchewan government tabled legislation and the notwithstanding clause to prevent children under 16 from changing their names or pronouns at school without parental consent um i i mean i think you you guys have done recent episodes on kind of this this issue and i more want to talk about the strategy of using the notwithstanding clause um saskatchewan used it i think about five years ago um when then premier brad wall used it to overturn a court ruling on the funding of catholic schools uh more recently ontario's conservative government has used it a couple times in recent years carter what's your take here like is is the notwithstanding clause a legitimate tool tool um the government should use you know whenever and wherever they see fit or is it there to not be used like talk to me about the strategy of using the notwithstanding clause i
Carter
41:01
mean i guess if it's very simplest there is no tool that's available like if it's an available tool you should be using it um the
Carter
41:10
the problem with using this particular tool is how you choose to use it and if you're using it in a means to attack specific groups um then that that's where you know it really could backfire on on politicians so i think that it's a very dangerous tool to be used but you
Carter
41:34
know just because it's dangerous doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be used i'm just not not a fan of how it's being used now uh i think that there were there may be areas i i'm not going to be able to come up with anything off the top of my head but there may be areas where the notwithstanding clause makes some sort of sense but i just don't think it makes any sense in the in the context that scott moe is is deploying it or any of these other kind of right-wing uh fanatics that are talking about the rights of one individual superseding the rights of another individual. I was baffled
Carter
42:12
baffled when Klein thought about using it in the Vrind case here in Alberta to impose fewer
Carter
42:22
fewer rights on gay people, and I'm very
Carter
42:29
very concerned about it being used in the case of children. children
Annalise
42:33
children well speak to that like the fact that in this case being used against people that can't even vote and we can get into if there will be consequences if there should be consequences but like kids under 16 in this case right yeah
Carter
42:46
yeah i mean kids under 16 uh they don't vote they don't have the capacity to vote they don't have the ability to stand up and protect themselves they are uh
Carter
42:57
literally one of the weakest groups that you can you could possibly imagine and to be using this big of a tool and let's be clear this is a fucking hammer uh to use a hammer like this to come down on that weak group just shows the weakness of of uh scott moe i mean he's he he looks pathetic to me he looks tiny he looks inconsequential um picking on these children just shows how weak he is but he's able to do it i mean it's it's written into the constitution it's a capacity that he has um will
Carter
43:31
will we choose as a society to hold him to account is really the the only question that that
Carter
43:38
that exists anymore is
Annalise
43:39
is they jump in there i
Zain
43:41
think there's two questions here and i agree with what a lot what carter's saying around mo's strategy here uh strongman this
Zain
43:49
this is this is like this is a shortcut to strongman blaine higgs has is trying to do this in fact one might say that he initiated this cultural conversation by borrowing it from the united states bringing it into our politics uh in new brunswick um and the framing here is what's going to be really interesting it is up to progressives in the general public if they don't like this to frame this against someone picking on kids and abusing power versus someone standing up for parents and families and
Zain
44:22
and right now the latter is winning the argument so
Zain
44:26
so scott moe you know we could talk about the legality of Section 33, you know, how you have this shield against laws being struck down. And despite a judge in this case saying this will cause irreparable harm, Scott Moe is riding the coattails of the current framing of this argument, which, by the way, on the surface sounds very reasonable to many people. We've discussed this on the pod. But the fact that like, oh, yeah, as parents should, I mean, people give half a second enough thought to this and the fact is the framing is in his favor and this is a shortcut to a strong man strategy you need a shot in the arm we talked about motivating your team holy fuck something like this motivates your team um but if the framing catches them on the wrong side which is my hope and hoping to work on that in some way shape or form around this is an abuse of power and picking on trans kids, while knowing it causes them irreparable harm, it's
Zain
45:27
it's risky. But right now the frame's in his favor.
Annalise
45:30
So Zane, talk to me about how you frame it from the other side. Like, what's the strategy there? What's the narrative? What's the storytelling? So that it looks like he's on the wrong side of this. I
Zain
45:42
I think you have to talk about irreparable harm. it being literally written by a judge that the passing of this law would cause irreparable harm to kids. You have to talk about, and then I think this is where the convergence comes in. You've got choices to make. Do you want to make this about the constitutionality and legality of the Notwithstanding Clause, for which I should mention, to add to Carter's historical description, I think we can say, and perhaps even an oversimplistic term, has largely almost, and if not exclusively, been used to undermine minority rights in this country. I can't think of one option, one scenario where it has not, right? So if we're looking at it this way, we can talk about who's next. It's trans kids today, who's tomorrow? Is it going to be workers? Is it going to be you? Is it going to be a specific group of folks? That's a pathway to talk about it. Or if you want to talk about the issue at hand, the big mistake that I think the group's trying to, maybe not mistake, but perhaps strategic oversight or maybe not aligned on messaging, is that this is not about you and I as parents. It's not about the three of us here as parents. This is about the kid that
Zain
47:00
that does not have that supportive household, that does not have that supportive environment. environment and scott moe if you want to talk about the issue knowing that it causes them irreparable harm to not have that supportive environment once people wants these kids to come out to their parents on his agenda on and on his timetable not theirs i think to me that is that is a heart of i mean that's something there perhaps on messaging to pick up on but you've got a choice here you can make this about abuse of power and who's next expand the coalition abolition or if you want to make it about the issue at hand the big mistake is not to make it about parents that everyday
Zain
47:37
everyday sort of parents are like of course i'd want to know this is not about you this is about the kid that does not have the supportive environment and what we are seeing is that those kids if they don't have that supportive environment and that are being forced to come out have higher suicide rates have higher homelessness um have precarious if not not absolutely horrible outcomes happen to them, and we have to stand in the way of that.
Annalise
48:03
Carter, anything to add to that? Let's say you're doing the opposition strategy on this issue.
Carter
48:09
I think that it's important. Sometimes we feel like if we go too hyperbolic, we're going to get some pushback, right? Sometimes we feel like, oh, we've got to try and find the right tone on this, make sure that we're not going too far. um i think
Carter
48:24
think that the right tone on this is to go too far i think that to push this this is something where children will die if he does this and he knows that he knows that because he's not a stupid man he's a bigoted fuckhead but he's not a stupid man um and scott you can sue me personally not the not the uh strategist podcast thank you very much um don't
Zain
48:49
think i'm not a lawyer i I don't think that's how it works, Carter. I think
Carter
48:52
think he can name
Zain
48:52
name who he wants.
Carter
48:54
Okay, well, he can do both then.
Zain
48:56
Don't do it, Scott. Don't do that. Don't do both.
Zain
49:00
case the law does work that way, don't do both.
Carter
49:03
Yeah, it's an embarrassment to think that someone needs to prop up their political scorecard by targeting youth that are so, A, few in number. I mean, like this grand epidemic that the right wing has envisioned of people, you know, billions of people coming out and saying, oh, all of a sudden my gender is incorrect. I mean, this is still a very small number. While rising, still a very small number of children that are impacted by this particular situation. And to
Carter
49:36
to pick on them, to decide that they're the ones that he has to raise his profile on. on i
Carter
49:44
go hard let's let's let let's let's
Carter
49:47
let's make this guy look like the minor figure that he is and uh really show people that um not
Carter
49:55
not the left not the right but the people of our country will not allow uh tiny bigoted men who you
Carter
50:05
you know don't know how to raise children uh to be in charge so
Annalise
50:10
let's say on the opposite end of that though let's say you're scott moe you're advising scott moe you you're in scott moe's head like is he making from a peer strategy point of view is he making the calculation that that's not going to happen that those those groups are not going to come out like what what is his strategy to to move ahead with us uh
Carter
50:29
uh well you want to go you go ahead i'll
Zain
50:33
i'll throw something on the table i think it's similar to um the last segment he He feels like there's so much there that different groups will go for different angles, and they'll all be small pricks, and no one will be successful at shifting the frame. He believes the frame on this is set. It's a parental rights question, and most reasonable people are on his side.
Zain
50:53
And he can be a staunch defender of parents, of families. This is not about harming kids. This is about giving families power. And he can be that defender, and he feels like he's going to succeed based on that. And he's using a political tool to be the strongest defender of parents and families in the entire fucking country. So I think he feels like the opposition is going to be split. They're not going to know where to go with this. Some are going to try to fight it on the parental rights frame. That seems to be a loser. some of them are going to go on a notwithstanding clause and its broader scope and abuse of power there may not be enough there and others will try to reframe the debate but he's suggesting it's already baked that's that's my my take i'm curious if carter agrees yeah
Annalise
51:37
yeah what's your take carter i
Carter
51:38
i think that the problem is that the polling on this when you pull a specific like so cory warns us all the time to be aware of novel concepts and polling and the same thing is is set that up like if if we were to ask this question do you feel that parents have the right to know about the pronouns that their children are being called in school i mean i think that reasonable parents might say yeah i do care about that um but if you were to rephrase the question and say do you think that it's right that children are put at risk because they choose a pronoun that may be unacceptable to their parents and as a result find themselves at a high likelihood of being homeless, we may get a very,
Carter
52:19
very different result because it turns out that when you add the consequences back in, so if you poll people, like we do a lot of polling where we ask people, you know, would you like to see the government cut taxes? Yes. Yes, I would. Would you like to see government increase taxes? No, no, I wouldn't. That'd be bad. Would you like to see services cut? Yes, I would. now would you like to cut these specific services and people say oh fuck no no i don't want to do that and
Carter
52:51
and so when you give them another level of detail they immediately become hypocrites because they can become connected to a large issue and say that in this you know in this in this frame i feel one way but as soon as we change the frame on them as soon as we ask them a different question it immediately exposes their intrinsic hypocrisy and so in this particular case the hypocrisy is saying, yes, I support parental rights, while
Carter
53:17
while at the same time, I don't want children to be harmed.
Carter
53:21
So as a communications person, you
Carter
53:24
you just need to simply expose where the children are going to be harmed. And the good news is that it's very, very simple to expose the children's harm. And
Carter
53:35
I think that when people start wrapping their heads around this, their
Carter
53:39
support of parental rights will be outweighed
Carter
53:41
outweighed completely by their sense of parental responsibility so
Annalise
53:45
so do you do you take it shift because there there is a poll um i don't have huge details on it i'm just looking at a headline here more canadian support using notwithstanding clause and parental rights debate poll dated
Annalise
53:56
today nearly half of canadians say they support their province using the notwithstanding clause um do you do i guess both of you do you think if and a big if here there's that strong united
Annalise
54:08
united kind of opposition side to this that public opinion shifts and pulling shifts oh
Carter
54:15
oh my god i mean give me three children's photographs and i can change this whole fucking thing there
Carter
54:22
there are three children out there who died in the last three weeks because they were out on the street they were put out on the street by parents who didn't give a single fuck about
Carter
54:31
about them because they were gay and
Carter
54:33
and because they were gay they were put on the street and they were you You know, they turned into addicts and they turned into sex workers and they turned into, you know, homeless people who were taken advantage of. And that is because or they killed themselves because your parental reaction is not the same as their parental reaction. So
Annalise
54:54
So you think that's what it would take? Kind of three photos, personal stories, and this thing that is like we've seen this play out in the States. We've seen the reaction to the word parental rights.
Annalise
55:05
We see this play out
Annalise
55:06
here. Yeah, here as well.
Carter
55:07
well. We see this play out here. I
Carter
55:09
I was just at the Alex today, the Alex Community Health Center. You have a youth center. You know who takes advantage of that youth center? You know who's in that youth center? Trans youth who've been kicked out by their families. Now, you wouldn't kick them out, right? You wouldn't kick them out, but their parents did. Their parents did, and they would do it again. They would do it again because they feel that that was the right decision.
Carter
55:34
And that's who Scott Moe is empowering.
Annalise
55:37
Zane, do you agree with what Carter's saying? Like, is it that simple to change minds?
Zain
55:43
No, I don't know if it's that simple to change minds. But I mean, I've been talking perhaps redundantly about the frame, but what Carter talks about from a polling perspective, the beware of novel concepts, which we trademarked to our dear friend, Corey Hogan, is
Zain
55:59
is is interestingly also a phrase we can use about the issue it's not just like it's like because people the
Zain
56:07
the gen pop need a crutch here they actually don't know what to think it's not even like how it's framed as a novel concept this concept of trans rights overall the reason that you're able to shift the frame so easily and why carter is so confident right
Zain
56:24
right that he can shift minds is that people don't know what to think or how to think. And what Blaine Higgs started and Scott Moe is leaning on is an easily digestible framework that allows people to think about the issue. What they may not realize is that it's a deeply social conservative way about how to think about the issue. And it is quite divergent from how other social conservative issues have been internalized within the Canadian political zeitgeist, right? Like, it's very clear what what people thought around family values or sex education or pro or anti-abortion. This is an interesting issue because you have some like hardcore transphobes in the core of it that make the base and then a lot of what I'd call reasonable people.
Zain
57:12
And the reason I think, Carter, you feel so confident is you're never going to shift that core. But there's a lot of people in that reasonable base that said that frame kind of makes sense. Like, I'm a, you know, let me give you a confidential conversation. I talked to someone high-ranking in one of the federal political parties the other day on the progressive side of things, right?
Zain
57:31
And they said that it only, only until their partner, who's
Zain
57:35
who's a teacher, convinced them that it matters, that there's a safe space for these kids, that they actually saw the more progressive argument. argument
Zain
57:47
they were on the default were sold on the frame because like so many folks and this is someone ingrained in our political system is writing and constructing and erecting the messaging this
Zain
58:01
this is someone who needed a crutch to understand how to digest this issue how to process this issue the question of like where are we on this issue and so what gives me hope is kind of maybe what what gives Carter hope, but it's an organizing principle, which is we often think that we
Zain
58:18
are actually all, like, much more conflicted about our positions than we give other people credit for, right? So, like, on an issue, we're usually 60-40, 70-30 on an issue. That's enough comfort for us to be like, yeah, yeah, like, you know, insert any issue. I'm probably 70-30 on it, right? There's some issues that I'm like 100%, but, you know, 30% of me, like, kind of like, Like, you know, I make peace with it. We're all like that. But what we often criticize the other side of doing is just being 100% doubling down committed to it. And what I think the mistake for, if I can call us progressives, or folks who are against this particular policy, is to not make the mistake that there are multiple concentric circles. There is a base of homophobes, of transphobes. Fuck them. But there's a second circle that may even present like the first circle. They may even use the same lingo because they may feel like this is how they need to present to be part of this group. We talked about identity and belonging earlier. We can't write those folks off, right? So this is an organizing principle of like, that is where the opportunity is. And this is why I think, Stephen, if I'm not mistaken, you think it's so malleable, right? There's this ability. The second and third concentric circles who have bought the frame, have mindlessly ingested it, not even thought about it, can be flipped if the frame shifts. The question I then have goes back to the point I made earlier, has the frame been locked in, especially given the timeline for Moe, in Moe's case, from a longitudinal perspective in this country? No, I'm very optimistic. But from Moe enacting this, notwithstanding, and getting the political success between now and whenever he has an election, 12, 11 months from now, I don't know.
Annalise
59:57
what speak to that broader canadian picture and you just touched on it zane but what um this move from mo this move in saskatchewan means for kind of this discussion across the country carter
Annalise
1:00:10
carter you can jump in well
Carter
1:00:12
well i think that the the problem is that these
Carter
1:00:15
these types of ideas are contagious right if one if one organization feel or one government feels like they're able to to succeed with it then we can we can anticipate seeing other governments grab it and and um try and uh take advantage of it you know in in in their own unique or or copycat fashion um so if mo successfully deploys the notwithstanding clause on this and doesn't suffer a political consequence uh then this is going to be coming to a uh to a government near you
Annalise
1:00:50
Carter can you just to add some context to this discussion and you mentioned a little bit the gay marriage Ralph Klein sort of thing can do you see parallels between these two and I'm asking that like I that was I think I was in junior high high school um when those conversations were going on are there and
Annalise
1:01:06
and and the the entire gay marriage issue if you even want to call it that has changed dramatically in 20 years right but do you see do you see parallels between that conversation in in alberta in the early 2000s and and the conversation that's happening across the country right now with uh with trans youth yeah
Carter
1:01:23
yeah because the vrind case wasn't about gay marriage or anything like that it was about um a teacher teaching our children and the you know the he was
Carter
1:01:34
was fired because he was gay right
Carter
1:01:36
right like that was the reason we had to protect our children from this gay man and the court said well that's not gonna that's not what we should be doing and we said as as good uh rifle toten albertans well we're going to make up our own rules except it didn't work you know it was a it was the beginning of uh you know klein walked away from it because it was pushed back on that this group of people the small group of people were going to be subjected to a set of laws um that that were different just because they were were different so i suspect you know like we have a historical uh a
Carter
1:02:17
a historical victory for the group of people who stand on the side of um the righteous if you will on the on the side of the the the small uh the small group that that it is this is an opportunity i think for us to really push through something that is, you know, to oppose something that's quite morally horrific.
Annalise
1:02:46
Zane, do you have any predictions for what this looks like in Alberta? I mean, we're talking about Saskatchewan, we've talked about out east, do you have any predictions for? And I say that
Annalise
1:02:57
thinking that a lot, I know Albertans who live here know what Alberta is like, but a lot of of people have that image right of of who albertans are and what alberta is like um outside of alberta do you have any predictions i
Carter
1:03:09
i have a prediction carter
Carter
1:03:11
danielle smith is going to bring in her own piece of this because not because she wants to but because um she's
Carter
1:03:18
she's going to lose her board of directors shortly and when she does david parker who's already doing the parental rights tour her uh
Carter
1:03:24
is going to say to her you want to be the premier uh you do what i say and she he's going to be calling the tune and she's going to be dancing the dance zane
Annalise
1:03:35
zane anything to add to carter's prediction and we will
Zain
1:03:39
will if she does we will work as hard as we can to defeat her i mean this is this is existential shit right here right like i know we talk about the politics but fuck man like with Given the global context right now of what's happening to minority voices across the world on several issues, I mean, this is a fight, even if you don't think you're represented in it, even tangentially, you are.
Carter
1:04:02
are. Everybody's in this one.
Zain
1:04:04
And so, you know, listen,
Zain
1:04:07
listen, I would say to any government that wears the conservative banner and looks at this as an opportunity, heed Carter's advice. Maybe even heed my advice. People have been—this is a novel concept on its own right. People have needed a frame. You have a winning frame currently. It's not going to last forever if the other side of this equation starts figuring out a consolidated strategy to shift that. Because, you know, this is social conservative policy that is being propped up by people that are not social conservatives. That is fundamentally different than everything else that you've tried to force down the throats of Canadians that are social conservative policy. policy and so the the folks that you think are your base on this are not your base on this that would be my warning and frankly partially my hope um
Zain
1:04:55
um if i'm being totally honest and and something that i think many of us want to try to make a reality let's
Annalise
1:05:02
let's let's leave that there well said zane uh guys let's move into the lightning round we're over an hour zane's uh zane's long episodes are rubbing off on me yeah
Annalise
1:05:11
like keep it at exactly i'm still keeping 60 of
Zain
1:05:13
of the talk volume it's good uh lightning
Annalise
1:05:17
lightning round i've just got one question for you guys well it's probably a couple questions twitter x i don't know what we're calling it are you are you back on carter i thought you were off i
Carter
1:05:27
i i went back on and i did i did two tweets i think and uh i am back off because it is a fucking hellscape okay
Annalise
1:05:36
okay what's happening i i wasn't on twitter for a little bit and then i went on oh good stuff the the links like if you if there's news articles i don't know if this is your twitter just mine is that like and you you can't click a link it's the same well you just click a
Annalise
1:05:51
click a photo yeah
Annalise
1:05:53
yeah why what why why because they got rid of
Zain
1:05:56
of all their fucking engineers they have no idea what they're doing they've no made it into a cesspool uh what do you think you think is deliberate okay give give you one some credit yeah
Carter
1:06:04
yeah elon said that it looks better this way okay whoa
Zain
1:06:09
he's a fucking idiot so
Annalise
1:06:09
so are you are you staying off for good this time carter for
Carter
1:06:13
for good's an interesting phrase i you know i i am the
Annalise
1:06:16
the next issue you get mad at i
Carter
1:06:19
mean i i've been mad at a lot of issues annalise and i have only gone on for one so um what
Annalise
1:06:25
what was it that brought you back on i
Carter
1:06:27
don't even remember i think it was something to do with uh i don't remember okay
Annalise
1:06:31
okay Okay. Zane, are you on Twitter? Are you off Twitter? Here's my
Zain
1:06:34
my call for help, okay? If there's anyone that can tell me how I get all of my direct message access without having to look at Twitter, you are my hero.
Annalise
1:06:45
Zane, you've got to move it off your direct messages. Stop having to have a conversation. But the problem is,
Annalise
1:06:49
some of these people do not
Annalise
1:06:51
not want to give
Zain
1:06:51
give me their phone number, okay? Get those phone numbers. These people do not want to give me their phone number. Now, they've got trust issues, and that's on them. But how am I going to keep communicating with Rafi? OK, how am I going to keep sending him videos of my father-in-law playing Rafi songs for my son and him saying, and I quote, cool, bro. How else am I going to do that? No, I don't. Rafi's not going to give me his phone number. Get
Annalise
1:07:14
Get Rafi's number, man. Rafi barely responds
Zain
1:07:17
responds with more than cool, bro. In fact, he responds with exactly cool, bro. I'm not going to get his phone number, Annalise. Someone figure out a solution for me. I am off of it. Yeah.
Zain
1:07:26
I'm reading the tweets of some people that I find insightful, but not many.
Annalise
1:07:34
guys, let's leave it there. That is a wrap on episode 1259 of The Strategist. My name is Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Zane Belchie.