Transcript
Zain
0:01
This is the Strategist episode 1296. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan and Stephen Carter. Guys, it's huge. It is time. I'm back. I'm back, Zain. Well, no one knew your way. I
Corey
0:16
I mean, I feel like the absence of recording tipped a few people off. Our savvier listeners, probably. You
Zain
0:21
You think our absence of recording led them directly down a path of you being away? No, that is absolute horseshit. uh that's that level of self-importance brought to you every seven to ten days on this podcast by cory hogan seven to twelve days uh carter you're not a self-important guy um tell me about yourself well
Carter
0:41
well here's what happened today so
Carter
0:43
so here's what happened i i heather
Carter
0:45
heather went out to walk the dogs and she said to me maybe
Carter
0:48
maybe you can uh take the brownies out of the oven you know there was a tone to the whole maybe thing and i'm not sure that i liked it and
Carter
0:56
and then she said and remind me to clean the toilets when i get home so
Carter
1:01
so i i clean the toilets because you're
Zain
1:04
you're on brown duties all around
Carter
1:07
well i'll tell you something it's um
Carter
1:08
i think there was there was tone there was definitely tone and i've i've been around for a long time i've been married for years and uh i'm
Carter
1:15
i'm starting to recognize tone i'm
Carter
1:17
i'm very pleased with myself cory
Carter
1:19
cory you should learn tone you'd
Corey
1:21
you'd be maybe maybe maybe in the next 10 years i like
Carter
1:24
like i like your chance a little over 10 years i don't like zane's chance is ever understanding tone i don't like that at all for you all
Zain
1:31
all right listen oh cory yeah please go ahead oh
Carter
1:33
oh it's still no settling
Corey
1:34
settling in guys how
Carter
1:35
how old is this stuff that you're drinking
Corey
1:38
only sounds quiet to you because of the noise reduction oh
Corey
1:42
oh i assure you the
Corey
1:44
the listeners are hearing an explosive flavor explosion
Corey
1:51
carter that's this is the content
Corey
1:52
content It's an advanced
Zain
1:53
MBA language that we get. Thank God I'm here to move this fucking thing along. Hey, Carter, it is Monday, April 1st, and you know this has been a longstanding tradition that
Zain
2:03
that if April Fool's falls on a Monday, which
Zain
2:07
it does this year, we do anything and everything to record because it is, of course, our April Fool's Spectacular brought to us by Canada's practical joke, Flair Airlines, the practical joke that keeps getting Steve Carter. carter um and and with that i'm not going to delay it anymore we will we will continue the celebrations we will we will commence uh the the ceremony i should say stephen carter with our first segment our first segment fools gold stephen carter you may remember this yeah
Zain
2:34
yeah we we do this every time uh once again just for the listeners that are new um which there are eight uh we do this every time every
Zain
2:44
time april fools falls on a monday stephen carter we do an april full spectacular yeah and of course this segment ritualistic in some ways i ask you about something that is going on you tell me if it's foolish you tell me if it's golden and like i say with most of the segments it is so easy to learn how to do it by just getting started stephen carter the liberals they announced a policy today but i don't want to talk about that policy because let's not forget about a policy they announced last week yes i want to talk about about the Liberals' new policy that allows, or no, gifts the opportunity. I'm not going to put my thumb on the scale on this one at all. Young Canadians who put a lot of their hard-earned money towards rent. Well, the Liberals now are saying that that should count for something. It should count towards your credit score.
Zain
3:35
is this golden or
Zain
3:36
is this foolish as it relates to political strategy and even public policy by the Liberals?
Carter
3:43
Well, I think it's fool's gold. I think it's foolish, Zane. I'm going to tell you why. Okay,
Zain
3:48
Okay, thank you. I'm
Carter
3:49
I'm going to tell you why. You took a hard
Zain
3:51
hard turn from breaking the rules to just going right back on course. Well,
Carter
3:56
Well, you know, I like to follow your rules. I'm a rule follower. Here's why. Let me tell you why. Because we want affordability, not credit scores. That's what we actually would like. And credit
Carter
4:11
credit scores, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, Zane, but they work both ways right you have trouble paying your your rent now all of a sudden that's going to you know negatively impact you too so this
Carter
4:21
this is i mean that was always going to negatively impact you but nonetheless this is a uh
Carter
4:25
uh this is a benefit looking
Carter
4:27
looking for a place to actually live this means nothing to the average renter you know what would be great if you really wanted to impact rental markets and make uh make things more affordable allow people to deduct their rent payments from their income tax. Make it so that it's actually more affordable instead of having a credit score. That's just one idea that just popped into my little brain. I mean, I'm sure I could come up with more if I actually applied myself, which does make me wonder what's going on with the Liberals where they can't seem to come up with anything
Carter
4:59
anything that actually makes it more affordable for Canadians instead of a credit score. I'll leave it to Corey to explain why this is so bad. Corey?
Zain
5:11
Corey, you know, in a couple of weeks, Doug Wong and the liberals are going to be introducing the federal budget.
Carter
5:20
Yeah, no problem. Did
Carter
5:21
Did he actually ghost
Zain
5:22
ghost you? Or did you just want to apologize to Doug?
Carter
5:26
I'm not apologizing to Doug, but Doug...
Carter
5:31
got in trouble, and I feel bad. Wait, how did Doug get in trouble? I feel bad for Doug. so apparently it's going to get dug in more trouble keep going it's going to get dug in more trouble
Carter
5:45
doug got this so when we raised it on the podcast it got raised all the way up to issues management inside of the finance department and issues management turns out not as big a fan of the podcast as doug so did not get it did not understand our schtick wondered
Carter
6:02
wondered what was going on there and also not the least bit thrilled with him uh potentially meeting with me that turned out to be a bad thing too jesus christ
Zain
6:11
christ carter i didn't
Carter
6:15
know i didn't know he was gonna get
Zain
6:17
get in shit steven carter the the single most prominent source of unemployment in ottawa thank you carter uh well doug you know if you ever need a letter from the strategists we offer that at the strategist.ca actually we offer a a solid chat Chat GPT letter on behalf of the strategist that you can give to your employer. You just have to buy it for 50 bucks a pop, Corey. Why don't we do something with Doug's
Carter
6:46
That would be great.
Zain
6:48
Well, the only reasonable thing I could think about would be increasing it. What is your, where's your hand out of this one, Carter? I
Carter
6:55
don't know. I mean, a
Carter
6:57
a young guy like him wants to dig himself out of a hole, I bet.
Zain
7:02
can help him out. Doug Wong and the federal liberals alongside the Issues Management Department at the ministry. They'll be releasing that budget coming up in a couple of days.
Zain
7:13
They've already telegraphed a couple of things. I'll talk about the other big policy announcement shortly that they had today. This is one of them. They were really proud of this one. Like, they were happy. They were leaning into it. I know there was critics around it. For you, Corey, foolish
Corey
7:30
I think it's foolish. I think it has the potential to be one of those things people throw back in your face to show how little you get an issue, right? Like, oh, can't afford a house, rent is skyrocketing. Well, thank God now I can worry about my inability to pay skyrocketing rent hurting my credit, right? right? And look, it's true that this could always have dinged your credit in the past, but most landlords do not have their shit together enough to do that outside of like the big ones. And so it was unlikely that you not paying your rent on time was going to negatively affect your credit score. But if they have to report it anyways, because it's got to give you a positive credit score, this is now a real and
Corey
8:07
and present danger for, you know, anybody who's ever going to be late on their rent. Hopefully you're not. But let's be clear, these are very challenging times in terms of affordability, especially for younger Canadians. And this does just feel like, Jesus Christ, I'm drowning and you threw me like a towel. Like, oh, you look a little wet. Here you go. Like, this doesn't actually seem like the kind
Corey
8:30
thing that anybody needs right now. And it does speak to, I can't even call it a lack of imagination, but I think it's a lack of,
Corey
8:40
you can't see the forest for the trees, maybe is how I would describe it. Like, This is not the problem. Congratulations on cleverly solving a problem that people didn't really
Corey
8:50
really have, except for the fact that they have a bigger problem, and this is tangentially related to it, and that's that they can't get a mortgage. But it's not because their credit's bad, by and large. I'll
Corey
8:59
I'll tell you something, getting a mortgage is in some ways one of the easier pieces of credit to get because houses tend to be an appreciating asset. People do tend to pay those things off first and automatically. And ultimately, you can't leave with your house in the dead of the night. The bank knows where it is. So it's not exactly risky credit to begin with. The problem is people can't afford the down payments. People can't afford the payments. We've gotten to a place where, you know, the average house price in Vancouver is astronomical. The average house price in Toronto, the same. Calgary, getting there, you know, giving it an old college try in the last couple of years. And people just are priced out of the market. It's not that their credit's bad. It's that they can't buy a fucking house. The house is just not affordable to them.
Corey
9:46
don't do the deduction thing steven said it's very bad it's regressive and inflationary just a very very bad idea but there are ways you
Corey
9:53
you can say he wasn't applying himself
Zain
9:55
himself he said he wasn't applying himself i was
Carter
9:57
was barely even thinking i mean could you imagine being in that brainstorm meeting where they came up with this like what would the parameters have been it can't cost us anything but it must look like we're doing something so
Zain
10:07
so so to be clear it's not that there isn't a line between credit score and affordability but you feel like this is counterproductive am i putting words in your mouth by saying that cory no well
Corey
10:17
well i don't even i don't know if it will end up being counterproductive because i think ultimately if you are in the market to buy a house you're probably not the person who's really struggling to to make rent in the first place houses are pretty expensive but i
Corey
10:29
do think that it's not it doesn't solve the problem and for a lot of canadians it's just another thing to worry about or have an increased worry about uh because now all of a sudden your your rent is part of this big equation of your your life let's be really honest like when you're beyond a certain income and when you're beyond a certain wealth you don't give a fuck what your credit score is it is just like it is not a thing that concerns you remotely it
Corey
10:54
tends to be a thing that you worry about when you're lower income when you when you have other challenges because in canada we don't tend to dramatically affect the you know the price of credit based on your credit score it's it's more a binary it's like you get it or you don't. Yeah,
Corey
11:10
So this also seems like a thing that's geared to a market that's not ours. It's not the way our market does tend to run generally.
Zain
11:19
Carter, I guess the question I would have naturally extending on this is what could have made this better? You had an idea. But if the credit score was where they wanted to go, was there anything that the messaging could do? Or is this just like foolish at the end of the day and foolish is foolish from a policy the NCOM's perspective?
Carter
11:38
Listen, I mean, you're trying to address the actual cost of housing. And, you
Carter
11:43
know, if you're trying to address the cost of housing, then you have to do something to address the cost of housing. We gave the NDP a hard time when they decided that they were going to, you know, give every renter additional funding, right? We called that inflationary. Corey's called my idea inflationary. I think it's better than the NDP's, but it's still, yeah, yeah, it will be inflationary. What's actually going to push down the cost of housing? Turns out more supply is really the only thing that we're going to do. Now, in fairness to the liberals, and we should be fair to the liberals, as we would be fair to almost any other party except for the conservatives, they are
Carter
12:27
are doing everything they can on the supply side too. So there's a lot lot of supply side that is being worked on um but it's going to take time and this does virtually nothing to make things better while that time is ticking away cory
Zain
12:44
cory any thoughts on here before you move on well
Corey
12:46
well it was part of a broader suite of things in this renter's bill of rights i think carter's point we shouldn't jump by it that meeting where they said we got to do something and we have no money to do it must have been a trip where people start just throwing ideas on the table, right? And one of them is, well, one of the challenges is you don't know what the house cost before that you're renting. So, oh, no problem. We can change that. We can force the disclosure. Well, we'll see. We'll see what the courts say about that. It does feel kind of squarely in provincial jurisdiction, but we'll see. Then there's this idea that, yeah, you'll positively affect your credit if you pay things on time, and maybe that'll make things more affordable. And I do think it's just one of those things where someone's like, that's
Corey
13:25
that's inspired. that's great let's build some comms around that that's really easy but i think
Corey
13:30
think there's a reason why people haven't necessarily gone to this well and look i maybe i shouldn't be too shitty maybe there are like extraordinarily you know marginal cases where this will actually be of assistance to people particularly people who otherwise wouldn't want to have credit cards or wouldn't want to have car loans because they live a lifestyle where those are just not things that interest them and they have no credit and that's maybe gonna otherwise wig out some banks right maybe that's all the case but it is not fundamentally going to result you cannot resolve this problem with zero dollars i think that that meeting steven's talking about probably existed in some way shape or form what are a bunch of no or low cost items to do but the thing that you have to keep in mind about housing supply
Corey
14:14
supply and demand are the only levers you can pull in like ultimately right and um supply is is the only one that is like elastic demand is really not unless you're going to stop bringing more people into the country or whatnot you know people are here so you've
Corey
14:31
you've got to build supply and and the only way you're going to significantly affect the market like that's listen good ideas in terms of let's have standard building codes or like plans that are pre-approved that was something that came a couple of months ago sure sure, why not, right?
Corey
14:45
Good idea, not going to resolve the problem. Investing in, you know, 80 new affordable homes in a random city, good idea, not going to solve the problem. Like the scale of this problem is such that if it's not a number that actually kind of melts your brain when you hear the size of the investment, it's not going to do a fucking thing. Like this, housing is one of the biggest industries in this country. It is
Corey
15:06
billions upon billions upon billions of dollars a year. And if the federal government's not going going to throw significant weight into it. It's not going to be able to materially change those things unless it's doing some of the stuff that just sets those macro conditions. And I don't think this sets the macro conditions for supply. There are things you could do. These are not them.
Zain
15:24
Carter, is there a possibility that in the political world we live in, that these zero dollar items, which might look like a throw in, which might look like a nice to have on the the fringes, it can't hurt, actually can hurt. To me, the question is, does this undercut some of the rhetoric and perhaps even the action that Minister Fraser, for example, when he talks about his wartime measures of building homes, does something like this just undercut the real work, to your point, that they're doing on supply? And what's the political lesson here? Because to me, this was a tweet and an announcement and a throw in for something that's a $0 announcement. Does Does it undercut a lot of the capital, good work, and perhaps even trajectory you might be on with the actual solutions on the file? Carter, I'll let you go first on this, and then Corey, jump in.
Carter
16:10
Yeah, I think that it undermines your good work, you know, not completely, but it does make it harder to get the attention. You know, like, I was just thinking, the only way, you know, Corey kind of hit upon one way to reduce the actual demand,
Carter
16:26
demand, man, and that would be to curtail immigration or to curtail international students or to curtail the number of people coming into our country.
Carter
16:36
Double-edged sword there too, right? These types of announcements that don't do anything, they're distracting away from the real problem and they're distracting from real solutions that we could actually see some sort of movement on. We're not going to curtail immigration. In fact, we're increasing immigration. We're not going to sickertail international students. Well, provincially, I think we're doing that. But, you know, these things are the things that are actually driving the shortage in homes.
Carter
17:08
You know, this isn't a solution at all. And when you don't present a solution, it comes across like you don't understand the problem.
Zain
17:17
Tori, what can the small free supplementals actually do to undercut a message or undermine a strategy that's at the heart of your policy here?
Corey
17:27
Well, there's kind of two schools of thought, right? One is that people actually make their decisions on these long tail issues. Like you find these things that only matter to a small group of people, but you do a ton of them and you target them very well. And that small group feels very grateful and they vote for you. That's one theory of the politics of it. the
Corey
17:46
other theory which is probably one and i don't think that's a wrong theory i think it really depends on the times you're in like the more ambivalent the time i think that strategy looks a lot nicer as a politician right like you you know you're not having the big fights so why not kind of win things on the margins here but the other theory is too
Corey
18:05
too much is too much and and the real solutions get lost and all of a sudden you find yourself with like one brilliant brilliant idea, 10 okay ideas, and just one absolute clunker that just makes you look like fools and gets thrown back in your face all of the time. And at best, it's a distraction. And at worst, it's actively cutting against your brand on these particular issues. And you're much better off just hammering and repeating on the real solution, right? The one that you don't want to get lost. That's the other school of thought. And generally speaking, more
Corey
18:36
more times than not, that's the one i subscribe to i think less is more i understand the desire for more right oh we're it's we've already said it the media is not going to do it unless we put something new out there and i can appreciate that these things do ladder up to an overall sentiment of taking action in this space but you got to be really careful because people can latch on to the strangest things if you allow them to and there is this growing
Corey
19:03
growing body of research that this kitchen sink approach to policy, approach to communications, just provides as much more targets in these really hyper-partisan times where you've got just kind of negative partisanship driving the ship, right? If you are just sort of more motivated by the hatred of the other team, and
Corey
19:24
and it becomes more who sucks more, well, then if you're providing all of these targets, there's a better chance they're going to find something they dislike, and that you're on the wrong side of that negative of partisanship.
Zain
19:35
Carter, I'm coming to you for our next one. You know, I'm going to stick with the liberals. And I'm going to talk about, but not specifically just yet, their new federal government commitment to the creation of a national school food program. This is a billion dollar commitment over five years that they just announced today, April 1st. But I don't want to talk about the program just yet. What I want to talk about, Carter, is on the heels of the conversation we just had about the rental credit score, is the liberals are starting to take out things that one would expect to see in their april 16th budget and start introducing them earlier they had a standalone video today about the national school fraud program they had a press conference last week about this uh this this rental um and and housing policy
Zain
20:19
foolish or golden pre
Zain
20:21
pre-empting your announcement having individual little communications
Zain
20:25
vehicles for these little products that you have these little announcements that you have have not leaking them to the media, owning them ahead of time, and then having them reappear in the budget. I'm saying that because that's more than likely what's going to happen here, at least with a few of these announcements. Carter, from a communication strategy perspective, foolish or golden?
Carter
20:44
Well, I think they're golden. And the reason is you want to control communications, right? And this gives you the opportunity to control communications. After the budget, it's tradition for the finance minister and basically every minister of the government to do a tour of the country selling the budget this is a uh i mean cory will speak to this more eloquently than i he's written these strategies i just kind of you know have have tagged along with the uh you know the creation of them but they go across the province or they go across the country and they sell the budget and they try and dominate the communications for weeks at a time this way what they're doing is they're extending that by three weeks to the forefront now this
Carter
21:28
this is a very interesting interpretation of parliamentary privilege where you're supposed to be uh you know showing the the people in parliament are supposed to be the ones the the mps are the ones who are supposed to see these things first um that has been the traditional uh the traditional methodology the traditional understanding of how budgets and other legislation works But it seems like that's morphing away. And now we don't have that same commitment to the parliamentary privilege. And instead, you get to promote your budget
Carter
22:01
budget three weeks in advance and three weeks after, which gives you six weeks of message control, which, as a political practitioner, if you can get six weeks of message control, you're cooking with fire.
Zain
22:14
Corey, foolish or golden in your mind? Preempting your budget, taking these announcements, packaging them as their own little thing,
Zain
22:21
choosing the comms how you wish. What do you think?
Corey
22:24
think it's golden. This is an extension of a trend we've seen for a while. We talked about it in the context of our home province of Alberta just last month, where there was a tee-up televised
Corey
22:35
televised address from the Premier of Alberta, which framed it out. And at the time, you know, we talked a bit about the deficiencies of budget, which is that it is a technical process. There's a lot of numbers. It's the finance minister who speaks, you know, even though you've got the throne speech around there, that's the lieutenant governor or governor general who speaks. It's not really, it's
Corey
22:54
it's not really a thing where the principal can come in and own it in either case. And so it makes an awful lot of sense that you look for ways that you can maximize the communications and also see previous point about things can get lost if you have too many. If you just release 10 really meaningful things on budget day, it's tough to know where the story is going to go at that particular moment. So rather than just hoping you get the headline you want on budget day, breaking it out so you get the headline you want because there's literally nothing else to talk about is not such a bad idea. And why do you care if it's on April 1st or April 16th in the final summation? And especially nowadays where you don't have kind of the big media moment around budget because media is just so diffused. And so this makes perfect sense. Yes,
Corey
23:36
it is a bit of a, it's
Corey
23:39
it's not a great precedent that governments are announcing things they don't have the permission to do. That's ultimately where the parliamentary privilege comes in. So you hear a lot of awkward language like, if passed, if the budget, if funded, you know, or this is our intention, and we've got to look at ways to do it. But yeah, I mean, that's also a tale as old as time and something that you hear an awful lot about. I'm sure there'll be complaints about it, especially if the government continues to use it so aggressively. But, you know, frankly, I just don't know enough about the precedents at the federal level, the language that they can use to kind of create that legal
Corey
24:15
legal hedge that lets them do it. But yeah, it's a great idea. It allows you to have the communications exactly as you want, to Stephen's point.
Corey
24:23
It's a great idea comms-wise. Corey,
Zain
24:25
Corey, let's talk about the specifics of this announcement. Foolish or golden, the National School Food Program, billion bucks, five years, 2021 campaign promise, a lot of, quote unquote, pressure by the NDP. What do you think? Foolish or golden? Yeah,
Corey
24:39
you know, it's really hard for me to look at this one individually, like independent of all of the other things that the federal government's been doing. And just a few weeks ago, we were saying, man, just land a few of these planes that are circling, right? And it's hard on a public service to develop constructive and thoughtful plans when you've got to do 8 million of them. And God, just last week, we had a renter's bill of rights, which really felt like it was in the provincial government's backyard. I still firmly believe that. I think there are federal levers. This didn't seem like one of them. And now this, this does not seem like a thing that in Canada is a federal program. I understand that in the States, they have SNAP, right? I understand that a lot of other jurisdictions that have much closer to unicameral legislatures, they have these programs. But in Canada, pretty firmly, these are matters of a local or education, and that is a provincial jurisdiction here. And unlike a lot of other federal programs that come around, like, say, pensions or healthcare, right, where they use kind of the federal convening power or they use, you know, federal rules that then are given, you know, money is attached to them and it goes out to – there's kind of a portability argument there. Like, I want my healthcare to work. I just came back from vacation in BC. I want my Alberta healthcare to work in BC, right?
Corey
25:59
So, thank goodness for the Canada Health Act and that kind of that we're going to accept that all. I just don't know if those same arguments apply with school nutrition. So that's kind of the, I have trouble getting over that. And I have trouble getting past the constitutional challenges I have with it. Because it really does seem like it's provincial jurisdiction. And a lot of people would rightly scream blue murder if the provinces were trying to get into federal jurisdiction.
Corey
26:24
But then I just, I really love school nutrition programs. I wrote a platform in 2012 for the Alberta Liberals. I was the chair of the platform committee and we had it in there. And I've kind of been convinced of their value for a very, very long time, right? In terms of like bang for buck, in terms of education investment. So I
Corey
26:45
I would say it is not a policy I'm super comfortable with, but I love the politics of it. I love it for two reasons. One is, you're going to sit there talking to a guy like me who's like, yeah, but the jurisdiction, and you'll say, fuck you, don't you want kids to eat? And it's really, really hard to have that conversation and not sound like an asshole, right? When you're like, well, you know, you got to consider X, Y, and Z. And then the other thing is, what a channel changer. We were supposed to be talking about the carbon tax going up today. And certainly online, all anybody is talking about is this program.
Zain
27:18
That's interesting, Corey, for two reasons. One, the acute specific today, and the other, the kind of like the jurisdictional sort
Zain
27:25
of who gives a shit element to it. Carter, what
Zain
27:28
what do you think of the program? Foolish or golden?
Carter
27:31
I think it's foolish, but I think it's foolish in the same way that Corey thinks it's foolish. This is a jurisdictional problem. Dental care is also a jurisdictional problem. Pharmacare, jurisdictional
Carter
27:45
Renting? They're already in trouble around some of their environmental regulations. This is not a government that seems to give any fucks about jurisdiction. They just are jumping into problems that they see and trying to solve them, which
Carter
28:03
which I suppose on some level is very good. I mean, I don't disagree with Corey. I think that nutritional
Carter
28:08
nutritional programs in school are great, but I also think that zero to six programs are great. i also think that you
Carter
28:16
you know there's there's like 100 150 programs we could do here um yeah
Carter
28:22
we have jurisdictions for a reason we have these rules for a reason about who's supposed to be doing what the problem is the tax structures are all fucked up right the government of canada gets too much taxation revenue and has too much room to play with when it comes to their debt allowances and their capacity to run deficits. The
Carter
28:43
The provinces have less room, less taxation ability, and municipalities are
Carter
28:49
are really fucked. So, you
Carter
28:51
you know, when you're thinking of the great problems of our day, I'm sure that children not getting fed enough is one of those great problems of our day. But I really wish that Danielle Smith would solve it. I wish that Danielle Smith would solve mental health and addictions issues too. I mean, I've got a long list of things that Danielle should solve
Carter
29:11
know i'm just not sure that i want justin trudeau doing her homework
Zain
29:15
cory round us out on this yeah
Corey
29:18
yeah that actually is one of the things that i think whenever you've got this federal conversation we have is it the fed's responsibility is it the province responsibility you do have to worry a bit about accountability like it's just whose job is it now to feed kids i actually am more comfortable with it's the province's job i do hear what steven says about tax structures that is want to listen our constitution needs some work and if you want to make an argument to me that for example education should be a federal responsibility fuck i'll entertain it you'll never get it done but i'd entertain it personally right but that's not really the system that we have right now and i
Corey
29:55
i do appreciate that they would potentially be creating like a new deal with the provinces and trying to get this done but it does just feel like man
Corey
30:03
man a lot and and so much of this seems to be driven especially in a province like ours of where there's a lot of enthusiasm for it it's well my premier won't do it my province won't do it so i'm glad the feds are stepping into provincial jurisdiction as though like we
Corey
30:19
had an election we had an election on matters of provincial jurisdiction and somebody
Corey
30:25
somebody else won and you might not like that but But we had a fucking election, like elections have consequences. This is how this goes. And the consequences are supposed to be in matters of provincial jurisdictions, they are going to govern this way. And I just, I really think it's going to be just a hot mess if all of a sudden you've got provinces say, no, no, no, we're going to ignore these federal things, see Saskatchewan and anything with the carbon taxes, right? And you're going to see the federal government say, no, no, no, no, no, we're just going to spend the money and get it done and fly in right over the provinces and do all of these provincial jurisdiction things. And it just doesn't seem like a great or orderly way to run a country or hold people to account, including ourselves. Like, yeah, you fucking elected a government that makes certain decisions. Elect a different government if you don't like it next time. But we have elections, and we don't override them by going to our friends in Ottawa and saying, well, they're not doing the thing I like here, so I want you to come into area of provincial jurisdiction and do it the way I would like it. Like, I just, I'm not comfortable with that.
Zain
31:24
moving on to our next one. We've got a couple more in this segment.
Zain
31:29
Four major Ontario school boards are taking on some of the largest social media companies to court. They want a $4.5 billion settlement for total damages for alleging the way that social media companies have designed have negatively rewired the brains of children in their jurisdictions and how they learn and disrupted the way that schools operate. Carter, is
Zain
31:53
is this golden or is this foolish by the school boards of Toronto Peel and Ottawa Carlton, along with Toronto's Catholic counterpart? What do you think? I
Carter
32:02
I think it's foolish. I think that there's certainly a harm that has been caused by social media. I'm not sure that the ambulance chasing school boards are the ones to actually chase this. I think maybe families, maybe individuals themselves, but a school board, it just feels to me like they're chasing a settlement. And I guarantee that they're not going to get a settlement because as soon as, you know, if Meta or any of the other social media companies were to settle this thing, they'd be settling across, well,
Carter
32:37
well, around the world, frankly. And there's just no way that this becomes the, you know, the social media companies are the big tobacco. And I would remind you that big tobacco, the governments were the ones who sought remedy, not school boards, not individual hospitals. Governments were the ones who sought remedy. And I think that this one would be best for parents and children themselves to seek remedy. A class action lawsuit makes a lot more sense than school boards, in my opinion.
Carter
33:12
you know, I'll pass it off to our resident legal expert who
Carter
33:17
could have taken the LSAT or did take the LSAT or something. I don't know what he did. Corey, did you take the LSAT?
Corey
33:22
I took a practice LSAT once. How'd you do? How'd you do?
Corey
33:25
I did okay. I wasn't like studying hard.
Corey
33:28
hard. Revealed score. I got a 172. That's pretty slow. Fuck off. That's pretty slow. Okay, fuck
Zain
33:31
fuck off. For all those who've written the LSAT, 172 is a pretty good score. But, of course, Corey, of course, wants to make it about himself. Why would you divulge this score? Well,
Corey
33:41
you? It's okay. It's no 770 on the GMAT is all I'm going to say. Yeah,
Carter
33:46
what that means. Continue, please. No one knows. No one knows what that means. I knew what it meant. I'm very upset. Carter
Zain
33:50
Carter echoing his internal Doug Ford, who also called it nonsense and that he disagreed with it. In your mind, foolish or golden, what these school boards are up to?
Corey
34:02
I think it is. is so i did not even know this existed until you mentioned it but i now obviously have very strong opinions about yeah
Zain
34:09
yeah okay that's excellent do you need more context are you good no
Corey
34:12
no i think it's foolish because essentially it's a school board saying there are things in society that make it harder to be a school board and we're going to sue you for it and like why start there why end there like there's a lot of things that you could say uh you know disrupt operations of of a school way beyond social media it just seems a bit silly like if all of a sudden you
Corey
34:33
making it harder for the school board to operate is something that is like that is like legal you know like it's a tort you all of a sudden you can be sued by the school board well fuck sue bad parents sue bad transit that makes it hard for people to get to school on time sue everything why don't you it just it seems a bit ridiculous and it seems like the kind of thing that we shouldn't be encouraging in here. So I find myself with absolutely no knowledge on the side of Doug Ford, like I imagine many Ontarians will be.
Zain
35:02
We discussed this in past episodes, and I don't know if either of you were on this one or which one of you were on this one, to be clear. But this is not dissimilar to what's happening in the United States right now, where certain bodies
Zain
35:16
bodies are trying to sue big Big tech, not in order to necessarily win the courts, but to move the public opinion war, to solidify and crystallize the fact that these are harms, that these are negative, that these are, you know, something that are addictive and not necessarily helpful to your kids.
Corey
35:39
frame in mind, Carter— Spend your own money on it. Don't spend public dollars on it.
Carter
35:44
School boards have limited resources. Yeah, school boards have limited resources, Zane. To
Carter
35:51
$5 million, $10 million, $3 million, $8 million into a lawsuit like this to move public perception is not in their mandate. It's just absolutely not in their mandate. date
Zain
36:06
i'm gonna go from ontario back to well
Zain
36:10
well the trans canada highway cory it's
Zain
36:12
it's across the country we might be seeing it i hate to call it this but convoy 2.0 might have found uh a a a start date of april 1st because horns blared along the trans canada highway west of calgary they were also also seen in Newfoundland and Labrador across the country. In fact, Premier Fury tried to call the prime minister for an emergency meeting about the fact that these protesters, convoy-like protesters, were blocking the highway and the highway traffic.
Zain
36:48
Corey, as a question here, I'm going to kind of focus it from pure political strategy. strategy if you're an anti-carbon tax proponent or supporter of of pushing this thing outside milking for it for political gain as much as you can these
Zain
37:04
these blockades these you know 2.0 of the convoys whatever you may want to call it it's too early to tell foolish
Zain
37:11
foolish or golden to your political cause oh
Corey
37:17
too too early to tell for sure but has the potential to be really foolish and i'll I'll just pick on the one here in Alberta, just west of Calgary, right? You have a sympathetic premier, right?
Corey
37:27
right? You have kind of a sympathetic populace when you look at polling around the carbon tax here. And what's the potential upside and what's the potential downside? Well, the potential upside is nothing. Like it's non-existent. It does not exist. I think you would struggle to find a credible potential upside. But the potential downside is you've
Corey
37:49
you've pissed everybody off. You've turned people against your cause. You have Danielle Smith having to come in and say, because she can't blame other people, you know, she
Corey
37:57
she will blame them.
Corey
37:58
them. And yeah, she'll say it's a shame Trudeau put us in this position, but she will have to come in. There'll be calls to use Alberta's really mediocre critical infrastructure defense act, right, which is supposed to be designed to stop these kinds of things from happening. and there will be calls to use those alberta sheriffs to do it and and what do you get like all you're getting is you're weakening uh an ally you're you're not in any way moving your cause forward in the province of alberta and you're probably creating a nice little symbol for the rest of the country to say holy fuck there but for the grace of god go us and i don't know why you would do that this seems right now like the only thing that stops this from being an utter Pierre Polyev slam dunk, is shit like this could really just sour Canadians in a hurry, either coming from Pierre Polyev or coming from supporters like his. So, you
Corey
38:46
you know, just why? What's the point? What's the point of any of this?
Zain
38:49
Carter, is this one of those, he can't help himself? If he sees this thing expanding organically, reaching the highways across the country, he may just lean into it. But to your point, if you're a supporter of the Pierre Polyev anti-carbon tax movement, is this foolish? Or is Do you see some sliver of gold in Carter?
Carter
39:06
No, I think it's absolutely foolish. I mean, people will support you right up until the point when their lives are impacted. And, you
Carter
39:13
you know, you get stuck on the highway, you get slowed down when you're trying to make your trip to, you know, British Columbia for your mountain biking. You're going to be pissed off.
Carter
39:26
on top of that, the messaging's all messed up. You know, like, is this an axe to the tax or is this a Justin Trudeau is a traitor protest? Because both signs were there, right? Like, what's your message? And these guys, they don't have the discipline to have a singular message. Pierre,
Carter
39:47
you know, danced around it last time, but I'm not sure that his footwork is that good that he can dance twice.
Zain
39:54
Well, I want to focus less on the dancing, but Corey, you wanted to jump in here in a second. And I want to focus on like, how do you take this energy that is organically hitting the streets and utilize it and weaponize it to your advantage? But Corey, you jump in here. And I want to talk about that in a sec. Yeah,
Corey
40:07
Yeah, I guess I do want to show a little. So I believe everything I just said, but I want to show a little humility here. Like I probably would have said the same thing about the Ottawa convoy. I'm sure you can roll the tapes and that would be the case. And it's hard to argue now a couple of years out that that was a net negative for Pierre Polyev. And these things tend to move into mythology in ways that we can't fully appreciate or understand. So, I mean, I think it's nothing but downside because they basically have what they want. They're about to have Pierre Polyev as prime minister, right? And they could screw that all up and they could force the Alberta government to go against them and they could force all sorts of weird stuff. But I do want to acknowledge that this has worked for them, which is part of why they're going back to this will. This is the kind of behavior that we for fucking sure should not have encouraged. But here we are. yeah
Zain
40:59
carter how do you how do you take this energy and bottle it up for your own good how do you put a stop to this if you're pure poly f right like how do you how do you not offend who are your people like talk to me about what he has to do here you know but this is day one hour five right like i'm not exact but like let's just say this thing grows this thing finds a life of its own sometimes these things do what does a leader like him need to do in order to control his troops or or even troops tangential to him.
Carter
41:27
Yeah, I mean, don't run to the front of this particular parade. That was what his mistake, I still think it was a mistake for him to run to the front of the, you know, the convoy parade in Ottawa. And, you know, Corey says that it didn't have lasting impact. I'll tell you something, people in Ottawa are still talking about it. And they don't forget, you know, that might be the only region in Canada that Pierre Polyev isn't able to pick up additional support. That's where his seat
Corey
41:55
seat is, so hopefully he's not...
Carter
41:57
I think that his seat's rural enough that he's going to be just fine. But the
Carter
42:01
the point of this, if
Carter
42:04
if you want to stop this, if you want to get ahead of it a bit, just plan
Carter
42:09
plan your own events. I mean, that was the genius of his axe attacks kind of rallies. rallies um those axe attacks rallies served as a functioning focal
Carter
42:20
focal point for the for the people who are so angry with you by doing that you really put yourself in a much stronger position overall so focus the attention focus the negativity and give people an outlet don't jump don't jump in front of this particular train that would be my advice to be a probably of coy
Zain
42:42
coy how would you give give these people a different outlet. Like, it's interesting, but it's different than the convoy. In the convoy era, he almost probably, and I'm not making excuses for him, but I'm maybe trying to explain the history a bit from my perspective. He may have needed those people. He was in a data mining operation. You know, being the leader of that parade probably wasn't outright negative for him. Those folks were probably not already within the current conservative movement. They became his supporters. Now one can argue, and I'm generalizing here and being reductive on purpose purpose to make a point, that these are his supporters in some way, or at least very close to him in terms of that perspective. So there's a bit of difference here. He may have needed them in the tent, and now they may be in the tent. How do you control these folks? How do you put a message out to them? How do you show leadership here that doesn't damage, to
Zain
43:30
to your point, the slam dunk, well, the slam dunks that you're doing on a weekly basis against this government? it yeah
Corey
43:36
yeah well let's be clear they might not be controllable and that is probably
Corey
43:42
probably something that should keep us all up at night in some way shape or form and i don't mean as individuals i mean as like an organic mob of people who have all sorts of views right and i i do think if i'm pierre pauliev i'm probably i'm probably signaling strongly my displeasure with it in hopes that i can make it disperse before it becomes a thing that is just too strong for me to take apart heart right so this is probably the moment or tomorrow if these things are in any way escalating and not looking like petering out you say man we all feel that i of course was fighting against the increase of the carbon tax that's exactly why we had that vote in the house of commons that's why uh this ndp liberal alliance is going to lose next year and this is absolutely all on justin trudeau but we are conservatives we are a people of rule of law and we're not going to stoop to their level so we're going to take these energies and we're going to take them to the doorsteps off the street and onto the doorsteps and we are going to fight for the canada that we need in 2025 i i think that's probably what i would say and so then you're sending a strong signal i don't want you out there and
Corey
44:48
and hopefully that just knocks enough people off that it starts to feel like it's a thing that is you know diminishing in strength and hopefully then it just goes away because if it becomes like the convoy where it's too big and there's leaders and they're doing things like trying to petition the queen and all of that dumb shit that they did last time and he has no ability to control it, that's where I think his real risk is.
Zain
45:10
Corey, I'm going to go to Manitoba, then I'll come back to Alberta for our final question on Fool's Gold. Foolish or golden? Manitoba Premier Wab Kanu, he said he's taking up the prime minister's challenge to provinces to oppose the federal carbon tax and come up with his own alternative. He mentioned on Sunday morning on one of the Sunday shows that, yep, that's what we're going to try to do in our next budget. We're going to say no to the consumer carbon tax and we'll try to come up with our own alternative. He didn't exactly tease apart what that was going to look like. He said it's going to come up in the budget.
Zain
45:38
Foolish or golden from your perspective?
Corey
45:42
think golden because that's where it's going to go anyways. And so why not look at like you're the person who made it happen and like you're a pragmatic, sensible, middle of the road, new Democrat, prairie new Democrat, who's just going to keep focused on the issue, which is the environment and keep focused on the consequences, which are affordability and build something that addresses both of those. I think that makes a ton of sense. There's a reason why, you know, after Racky Pancholi put out her, like, we should get away from a consumer carbon tax, literally, like, every domino fell across the bloody country. You had Ontario, you had progressive leaders everywhere say, actually, that sounds fine. Let's do that. that people were just waiting for this particular moment and frankly it was invited when justin trudeau started undermining it with the various carve-outs you know even today there was a reminder that quebec functionally plays a or pays a much lower carbon tax through cap and trade and the feds sort of turn a blind eye to that you've got all of the various heating oil exemptions and so yeah
Corey
46:40
people were going to turn on it it's dead it's dead even if the liberals somehow hold on here like i just can't see them driving this thing forward they're gonna have to find a different plan. And you might as well look like the person who came up with a sensible solution.
Zain
46:54
Carter, Foolish or Golden, Wab Kanu, Manitoba, saying, I'm going down another path, saying we're still going to, you know, hit the climate targets that we have committed to. It's also an interesting sort of couple of weeks, because while delayed, the experts are coming out right now with how the carbon tax is the most efficient, most productive way of kind of, you know, solving the environmental challenges we face, etc, etc. But on, you know, the narrative may have already been baked. Carter, in your mind, foolish or golden by Wap Canoe?
Carter
47:21
Absolutely golden. I mean, you've got a policy that is universally reviled. It doesn't matter that it's the most economically efficient. You don't get votes from economically efficient. You get votes from what people like. People do not like this tax. And, you know, it has escalated to the point where, you
Carter
47:41
you know, there is no upside. You know, there's a group of people who say this is very effective. and this is the way that we should solve climate change. There's many
Carter
47:53
many other different ways you can solve the climate change issue. You can't solve the climate change issue if you're not in government. So get
Carter
48:01
get on your horse, figure this out, and Wab Canoe's leading, and that's where you should be in this particular case. Get out front and try and come up. I mean, where we're going to end up, I suspect, is that we place a tremendous taxation burden, a tremendous carbon tax, if you will, on suppliers and those suppliers are going to have to pay the bills. And you know what? If I was in corporations today, I'd be investing in advertising campaigns, trying to keep the tax, because it's the only way that you're not going to be absolutely hamstrung and the focal point of regulation moving forward. well
Corey
48:46
well and the great great irony is that if
Corey
48:49
if it ends up being all on the suppliers yeah
Corey
48:52
it's quite possible alberta comes out worse way in that situation way now it depends on how to break it out by province and all of that but the reality is um huge emissions in the province of alberta so the the irony being of course that the province probably most set against the carbon tax tax. Sorry, Saskatchewan. But you got to dial it up one more notch to get to our level of intransigence here.
Corey
49:20
this might really be one of these things where asking for something that could result in something worse for the province.
Zain
49:27
I haven't had a chance to ask you guys this in a while. And I don't even know if we've discussed it, but I think this is an appropriate time. Corey, I'm going to start with you on this. Do you feel like the outright, so Canoe has been been apprehensive about the carbon tax, and he's been very measured.
Zain
49:40
He's governing, right? So he's not an opposition politician in some ways. So he has to be balanced and still wants to maintain his progressive stripes in some ways to those who elected him.
Zain
49:51
Do you feel like this outright hatred for the carbon tax right now is just about the carbon tax itself as a policy? Or do you feel like we're going to be living in a world where Pierre Pauliev, in the next election, doesn't
Zain
50:06
doesn't even need to put an environmental policy on the table because of how aggressive and how hated the carbon tax is right now i
Corey
50:14
mean i think he needs to say something probably all he needs to say is climate change is real and we're going to work on a plan that doesn't include a carbon tax right and i think that'll be enough for canadians unfortunately and i say unfortunately because it really is like a defining issue yeah
Corey
50:30
well it's really problematic man you start looking at all of the consequences of climate change ending up at our doorstep here and it it sucks we've talked a lot about this i keep dragging my kids out to bc just to have to drag them back under rains of forest fire and it's just no fun it's no fun at all all of the things we've been warned would happen are now happening it's not even like a future thing and we still can't seem to get serious about it and that really sucks but i think realistically when you talk about the politics of at all all he needs to do is vaguely say yeah yeah no we want a climate plan and we're going to work on one and that's probably enough to get him through the next election carter
Zain
51:08
carter is that enough in your mind that that's how that the crushing ongoing
Zain
51:12
ongoing defeat of the carbon tanks has lowered the bar on any environmental policy to what cory has just stated which is a couple of sentences and and we're and we're gonna move on i
Carter
51:21
mean they lost the election in 2021 in no small part due to their lack of a climate policy i think that things can swing back very very quickly um you know the carbon tax uh is the issue of the day uh you know if there's a multitude of solutions to that particular problem um if
Carter
51:41
if the if the liberals find
Carter
51:43
find one uh you
Carter
51:45
you know this the climate problem problem is
Carter
51:49
is it looks always looks different when you're uh when you can't breathe the air uh because there's so much ash in it um when you're walking around with a mask on your face and you're not able to do anything outside uh the world looks a lot different and i suspect that our summer is going to look more like that uh then it's you know going to look perfect and pristine especially here in alberta uh we're already under drought warning
Carter
52:14
i'm not sure if you guys are aware but water keeps the stuff from burning so oh
Carter
52:19
less water problematic yeah
Zain
52:20
yeah yeah oh well thank you thank you carter science
Carter
52:22
science was steven uh
Zain
52:25
uh cory and i are very indoor uh indoor animals as you may know yeah like i turn on my taps there's still water
Corey
52:30
water there right now so yeah yeah good yeah
Zain
52:32
yeah it's the same here so i don't know how it works for you carter you know when you're out and about meeting with doug doing all those things that you do um carter cory mentioned racky panchel let's go here here for our last one. She has dropped out of the Alberta NDP leadership race. She's endorsing Nahid Nenshi. Full disclosure, I'm helping Nahid Nenshi on his campaign. The question I have is less so about the specifics of the Alberta NDP leadership race and her endorsement, but early endorsements. I'm curious if you folks, or the two of you, you folks, as if I'm dressing a crowd, if the two of you have a rule about early endorsements, any thoughts about early endorsements, dropping out relatively early or being the first to drop out foolish or golden in your mind carter i'm curious to get your take and the corey i'll come to you with the same question to round us out on fool's gold i
Carter
53:19
i think individually it's golden for rocky i mean for her as an individual i think that it made a lot of sense and
Carter
53:26
and she did what she felt she needed to do i think for the party for the race it
Carter
53:30
it is foolish and if i were not had nunchi shoes i would have said no i appreciate I appreciate you wanting to drop out, but I'm not going to even accept your endorsement right now because it's not in my best interest. In the best interest of the party, it is to keep the race going.
Carter
53:48
But, you know, politics is politics and it's about self-interest as much as it is about communal interest. So that created kind of a prisoner's dilemma. The first one to move to Nenshi was going to get benefits and the benefits of not moving were only going to be shared if both parties, you know, both Kathleen and Racky didn't move at all. They're the two that I think were even considering moving. I don't think Sarah Hoffman would have moved, and I'm not
Carter
54:14
not sure that there's any benefit to Jody or Gil.
Carter
54:20
I'm not a big fan of endorsements. I don't think they do shit.
Carter
54:25
Nancy's running a really endorsement-heavy campaign, and it seems to be doing just fine.
Zain
54:30
Corey, your take on this. Foolish or golden? Early endorsements, the first to endorse. I want a more general answer than if you want to comment on the specifics, you can as well.
Corey
54:40
well it is very context specific here and i in general i think
Corey
54:45
think people do tend to stay in races longer than they should as a general rule like really run it into the ground and can do some damage to themselves along the way i think steven's provided some cogent analysis on a bit of like a prisoner's dilemma almost you know whether it is one or not in the eye of the the beholder but i certainly think one of the realities that landed on everybody's doorstep about two weeks ago was just the size of nahed nenshi's membership sales right and so then there becomes a question right there well there's a series of questions that people need to unpack almost one after the other one is is this over and you know i think that most sensible people would say in some way shape or form it is and i know it might not be in your interest that i'm i'm saying that zane but
Corey
55:32
it is not over
Corey
55:33
done it's not over it's not only
Corey
55:35
the numbers it's not over why'd you win it's
Corey
55:39
why'd you win zane
Zain
55:41
it's an uncomfortable question yeah let me sit down okay let me talk about it right now so it no but
Corey
55:45
but listen uh so
Corey
55:46
know it is not over it
Corey
55:47
not over it's over if you come to the assessment that there's no other path to victory for anybody well then ultimately it becomes what do you do when a and the race is over. Well, you support the leader, and maybe you just get there faster than other people do. And so that is sort of my dime store analysis on this particular one. There are ways though, as Stephen was alluding to, where you can support the leader, not by literally supporting the leader, but by doing things that support the party that the leader is going to then be taking over, right? And so that I think is really the only question. I think pretending otherwise is just silly uh there is one source of memberships that it is not head nancy this race is fucking over uh they now have to sit in the bed that they made which was having a very long contest in terms of between various deadlines like if you had taken sort of the advice that steven was drumming very hard on which is a membership cut off on april 22nd and then a pretty instantaneous vote right yeah hey well then i don't think you really have a problem the problem you now have of zane is that you've got to drum up interest and make sure people don't three months from now say oh yeah i didn't vote because i thought the thing was fucking over right because it's over but it's not it's totally
Zain
57:02
my new podcast uh it's not over with zane belgium where every day i i talk to you the listener who some of you may have bought memberships and letting you know it's not over uh i have the numbers and it is very much not over it's it's It's an interesting analysis. You can say that. We don't believe you. No, no. I mean, remotely.
Zain
57:19
I have got the highest level of trust based on the polling that we have done amongst the listeners, okay? Between the three of us, okay? They don't trust Corey because they don't know what he's up to. They don't trust Carter because he doesn't apply himself. That's a quote by Stephen Carter from earlier on this episode. I could have
Carter
57:34
have applied myself earlier. You
Zain
57:36
You should have applied yourself. You wouldn't be stuck on this fucking podcast. Carter,
Zain
57:39
Carter, we go from It's Not Over and Fool's Gold to our Over, Under, and Our Lightning Round. And of course, Carter, when we record on April 1st, we don't actually do the Over, Under, and Our Lightning Round the traditional way. I actually go to you first because this segment is for you, like this whole podcast is. And I ask you, Carter, in
Zain
57:58
in celebrating April Fools, who is going to be April's fool?
Zain
58:05
You can choose any political figure
Zain
58:08
figure in the country. You could choose a political strategist if you want to be mean and go to the staffing level. How dare you? You can choose a premier. You can choose an opposition leader. You can choose a prime minister. You can choose anyone in the country. But who is going to have the worst month in April, Stephen Carter? Who is going to be April's
Zain
58:28
fool as we round out this episode?
Carter
58:30
Anybody not named Ahed Nenshi in
Carter
58:33
in the NDP leadership race. I
Corey
58:36
I like how you're continuing on
Corey
58:37
on this. There's a bit of a recency bias. Why would you do that to me? me why would you do
Carter
58:40
do that well i actually did run through like i think that there could be a challenge for pierre poliev but there won't be i think that the the prime minister is probably going to do just well on his budget launch uh they're really running the communications i think quite well we may have complaints
Carter
58:55
complaints about the individual policies but the communication structure looks really solid um so
Carter
59:00
so i don't want to choose the prime minister jagmeet singh i mean i I choose him every other time. I did run through a list of people who could be really
Carter
59:10
really suffering this April, and I really do think it's anybody not named, not had Nenshi in the NDP Theatership Race. Corey
Zain
59:17
Corey Hogan, who is going to be April's fool? It's a busy month, some budgets coming out in provinces. Of course, a federal budget, April 16th. We've had a few questions related to that. You can go federal, you can go local if you want to. you can go provincial, regional, wherever you want to go. Who's going to be April's fool, Corey?
Corey
59:38
April's fool will be Jared Kushner.
Corey
59:43
As Donald Trump abandoned support for Israel and his son-in-law, who has been talking about, you know, full-throated support for Israel, is just left twisting in the wind. Jared Kushner is my answer. I'm locking it in. Wow.
Zain
59:57
That was unexpected. Wow. Corey Hogan also had the option of Donald Trump, but he went with Donald Trump's son-in-law as April's fool. I did. We're going to leave it there. That's
Zain
1:00:06
wrap on episode. That's an app on episode 1296 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you and Doug Wong next time.
Corey
1:00:20
And remember, folks, there's no need to vote in the NDP leadership race. Why would you bother?
Zain
1:00:25
Oh, my God. Fuck off. Make sure you vote once, I can't say vote often, because some people might think of that as a statement on behalf of the campaign. Vote once. It is very close. I will start my
Zain
1:00:37
podcast about this very soon. It's not.
Corey
1:00:39
not. It's not over.
Corey
1:00:40
don't know shit. You
Corey
1:00:40
You don't know shit. You don't have the numbers.
Zain
1:00:41
numbers. What do you have? What do you have? You
Corey
1:00:43
You don't have access to what I have. You don't have access. It's all the
Corey
1:00:45
I'm never going to bring up this topic
Zain
1:00:46
topic again. I'm never bringing up this topic again.