Episode 1870: Holding hands in the dark

Zain 0:02

This is a strategist episode 1870. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Stephen Carter and Shannon Phillips. How are you guys? Oh, having a

Zain 0:14

Shannon, that's nice. Guys and lady. Whatever you prefer. Whatever she'd prefer. I'm giving her space, Carter.

Shannon 0:20

Honestly, I don't care. I think, yeah, we can wheel over guys. We can just pave that over. I think that's probably pretty gender neutral at this point. Anyway, hi, guys. How are you?

Zain 0:32

Doing great. Former Alberta NDP cabinet minister, longtime MLA, brain trust of the NDP,

Zain 0:39

NDP, I'd say, all over the country, but specifically here in Alberta. And now, what are we up to, Shannon?

Shannon 0:45

I am a consultant. And so that I know that sounds awful, isn't it? She makes

Carter 0:50

makes so much money, though. Are we changing

Carter 0:52

changing the name of the show to The Consultants?

Zain 0:53

Consultants? The Consultants. Do we own

Shannon 0:57

I'm in a small firm with a liberal and a conservative, Tyler Meredith and Kim Bozenkul. And me, I'm the notional New Democrat of the group. You will find that I am a pretty poorly behaved federal New Democrat, as you may have even seen through the Calgary Confederation campaign. But I've been a New Democrat for a really long time, you know, 25 years. And so now here I am. I'm on the other side of public life, which is a happy place to be. and wandering around the country, you know, doing

Shannon 1:28

doing projects, giving advice. It's good.

Zain 1:31

Carter, Hogan is dead to us, and in part it's because of Shannon Phillips. You gave him such good advice during that campaign that he is now, you've actually effectively kicked him off the show. Yeah. I didn't

Shannon 1:43

didn't do anything. I wish I could have done more. I really wanted to go canvassing.

Shannon 1:48

really wanted him off the

Shannon 1:51

really wanted to go canvassing to see what was going on out there because I think it was a really interesting moment in Canadian politics. And I love hearing from like the random voters, right? I want to know what's making them tick. And I know Carter doesn't want to hear from them. He's bopping in his mouth.

Shannon 2:05

Yeah, well, I mean, they're living in an interesting part of town and I have an interesting perspective and they elected an interesting guy. So I

Shannon 2:13

I like that part of the job. I think it's worth

Shannon 2:17

worth doing. It's worth knowing how they tick and

Carter 2:20

how to reach them. Is it even worth having her on the show if she likes talking to the average voter?

Zain 2:24

No, it is not. No, the entire premise of the show is that we sit above and away from.

Zain 2:32

Yeah, it was really lovely having you on the show. We

Shannon 2:33

We also apparently kick the shit out of the audience periodically. Maybe I'll try to do that. You

Zain 2:38

You know what? We'll let you have your first go at that.

Shannon 2:41

We'll make that period right now.

Shannon 2:42

Well, I don't really understand why anybody's listening to this show, so we'll start there. I have questions about people's judgments, especially on the paywall version. Why do

Zain 2:48

do we bring on people that don't listen to the show, Carter? This seems like a pattern. No, she actually does. Yeah, she's

Shannon 2:52

she's a listener. But

Zain 2:53

But she's asking why. She's asking why. Yeah, I mean, she knows why. I've never listened to the show, so I get it. I

Shannon 2:58

I have moments of self-reflection whenever I do listen to this show. Why am I doing this?

Zain 3:03

I want to tap into Shannon's, Shannon, I want to tap into your unique Alberta-based insights. Carter, I want to spend the next 45 talking about separatism in this province, but not in the way that other podcasts are, which is the piecemeal of what's happening, you know, what Danielle Smith has done, et cetera. Can the two of us, can the two of you and the three of us, by extension, can we work together over the next 45 and carve out maybe some of the key elements of what a successful opposition to this needs to look like? We've talked about this in piecemeal. And what's sparking this is that Thomas Lukasik, former deputy premier of Alberta, has now registered his question and has been doing the media waves this past week, suggesting

Zain 3:45

suggesting that his version of the separatist question has been filed first with Elections Alberta. And therefore, perhaps, maybe, it might be the question, should it get approved. And his question is very much about Alberta should and forever remain part of Canada and any separatist notion will be and forever rejected. I'm paraphrasing, but that's the element of it. And so that got me thinking, is

Zain 4:07

is that the right call, like acutely what Lukaszek is doing? And then more specifically, what do we need to be doing? What does an ideal like not even like as activists and people, let's structure what the actual opposition to this thing needs to look like. And I think to me, it begins with a very simple question that I'd like to throw at the two of you, which is, do

Zain 4:27

do we need one unified singular campaign or do we need multiple campaigns across the board saying their own distinct thing about why separatism in this province is not a good idea? Shannon, can I give you the first sort of kick at this in terms of like just the top line? What do you think when I throw that out to you?

Shannon 4:47

I honestly think that there needs to be one campaign needs to be no. No,

Shannon 4:51

that's where my gut is taking me right now. I mean, I'm open to new information and I'm open to other perspectives. But when I see the Lukasik thing, I think, OK, like that is that is driving things into one place, which is no, never. And you're not going to kind of get some of those persuadable people in the middle to go, you know, well, maybe not ever. Right. And that's that is the way people think. So I think we're better off with a no to Danielle Smith, no to separatism and keep the campaign around no, rather

Shannon 5:22

rather than like no to whatever their question is, right? Instead of putting a separate, like a no to separation question on the ballot. I think there's a risk. which is what he's done

Zain 5:33

done with this yeah

Shannon 5:35

yeah exactly and there's just there's a risk of having too much going on and there's a risk of splitting resources right because you got to think that these these republican guys like somebody is funding this shit uh

Shannon 5:45

uh there's you know there's leaflets on the doorsteps in the in the by-elections there's uh there's already a campaign going on out there on the ground uh for them and and so and and it's not clear to me how much money is behind behind the Lukaszek effort. It's not clear to me how much money might be around other efforts. It scares the shit out of me, actually, to have, you know, everybody running off madly in all directions and you're going to kind of accomplish nothing because it's not going to coalesce around one thing. That there's not going to

Zain 6:13

to be one... I'm glad you mentioned this on two points in particular. Number one, like your criticism of what Lukaszek and team as being all noble in their ambition have put out on the table is very similar to mine, which is it's a bit of a risk play. But Carter, can I get you on what Lukaszek is doing first before I ask you to give me a should there be a singular venture that props all of this up? What do you think about what he's trying to do? File first, get it to be a positive question. So unearth the positive sentiments of Alberta and remaining within Canada and using that as a wedge and potentially, we don't know this just yet because it's been untested, potentially roadblocking the separatists in terms of them getting their question on the referendum ballot.

Carter 6:57

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting gambit. I'm not sure that, I mean, I think that both Premier Smith and Thomas Lukasik are playing a little bit with fire just by

Carter 7:06

by recognizing the legitimacy of this. my view would be uh take a longer view try not to uh try not to take the legitimacy and add to it um if you put forth a positive framed question uh you're now the yes side um i'm not sure that that's necessarily where you want to be to echo shannon's point but i think more to the point like he's trying to make it so that his question is the only question that can be asked for five years correct that's actually exactly what

Zain 7:37

what he suggested he's trying to do that's

Carter 7:39

that's his and i i'm not sure i'm not sure that his question is the only question i want asked on this in the next five years i kind of prefer the alberta separatist question and i kind of prefer making them be the ones to put it on the ballot i got you know thomas thinks i mean i don't know maybe thomas thinks his his his his question will fail but the the problem with that is all of the people like

Carter 8:07

everybody can vote for this question to be on the ballot yeah and then vote against it right like he's playing with a sense of fire like this question could be on the ballot because now people who don't want to separate may sign this petition and people who do want to separate may sign this petition and suddenly the path to 180 000 signatures or whatever the number is is that much easier because both sides are signing the petition i don't want both sides citing the petition i

Carter 8:32

i want to make it so that only one side signs the petition and that side is the is the is the separate side this

Carter 8:40

this puts a path in front of us that could see us actually having the referendum as opposed to the easiest path the easiest path is that this thing never gets to the referendum it fails getting 180 000

Carter 8:53

because that is still even though Danielle Smith has reduced the threshold dramatically from what it was, like I think it was closer to 600,000 signatures, and now it's 180,000 signatures. I'm using round numbers.

Carter 9:10

This is infinitely easier, but it's still not easy. It's

Carter 9:13

It's still not easy to get 180,000 people all to sign something and say, yes, I agree with that. It is easier to get 180,000 people to sign something saying, I want this question on the ballot. And that's what Thomas is playing with. Thomas is playing with fire in suggesting that this question, his positively phrased question, is

Carter 9:33

is now going to get on the ballot and win. I

Carter 9:35

I think keeping them off the ballot is far easier than winning the actual referendum.

Zain 9:41

It also potentially even gives Smith an out in some ways as being the engineer of this conversation, the singular engineer of this conversation. It phrased that a bit and says, at some point, we're going to take the mantle, put a separatist question, even if it's in the positive frame, and say citizens have now. It kind of lets her off the hook from a pure Smith driving the agenda. Shannon, jump in here. React to what Carter's saying, because I think you laid it down, and I think you guys might be quite aligned on this from what I hear.

Shannon 10:08

I think we are aligned, and the reason is where you are driving public attention, because this is all about the attention economy, right? Right. Daniel Smith is grabbing the nation's attention in the wake of Carney winning and

Shannon 10:23

and driving it to where she wants it to go, which is Alberta's getting a raw deal. Politics of endless grievance. You know, I reelect me because I'm the only one who can stand up to to Carney. Yada, yada, yada. Right. That's what she's driving towards. But she's also driving towards keeping her own people

Shannon 10:37

people together. We make that a lot easier if we're running madly off in all directions with, you know, a couple of different separation questions, some of which become sort of unclear. What am I voting for? Am I voting yes on this one? No on that one? You know, there's a reason why this became quite an issue 30 odd years ago. you know we even had a federal clarity act and a fucking supreme court decision over the over the issue because this stuff gets really complicated fast yeah and people you know dick around with the question uh framing uh in order to kind of yank voters chain uh they do this right and so i don't know i don't know the value in sort of adding to that participating in it i would rather just make this daniel smith's fault uh

Shannon 11:21

uh in the first place that we're having this silly distracting conversation uh and uh and pin it all on her the the um the

Shannon 11:29

the instability the uncertainty the or will they or won't they you know she's the like and and basically for a broad swath of albertans then you know beyond just the sort of progressive left or whatever to be able to say no like this is a bad idea for the future of the province it allows uh other forces to be able to build a much larger coalition than otherwise might be possible. And driving ourselves into littler corners is the last thing that anybody who is like basically not UCP, which is what I would call everyone

Shannon 12:01

everyone else, right, who doesn't share Daniel Smith's views. That's the last thing we need. We do not need to be siloing ourselves off. And this runs the risk of doing that. Like I said, like i could be convinced but i'm at first blush like i'm not loving it so

Zain 12:16

so i i can't welcome to the show uh i'll get back to the first question in 25 minutes um because i haven't gone back there just yet carter um this is more this is actually interesting to me because both of you have teased at this but it goes back to what hogan would talk to us about on the show often about this era of negative partisanship and if the luke has a question let's just pretend there's a world in which the separatist question, Elections Alberta denies because Lukaszek got his paperwork in first. Let's just say the story he's telling right now is the right one, that there's only one question on this. If

Zain 12:48

If that ends up happening, you're actually trying to mobilize a bunch of people to say yes to the status quo,

Zain 12:56

which versus trying to get a bunch of people to say no to an imminent threat.

Zain 13:03

It sounds like semantics. It's not, is it?

Carter 13:06

No, it's totally different. it's totally different motivations i mean people find uh they're you know like you you will you will find yourself in a place where you can't motivate uh yourself to get out of bed to go and vote for uh uh yes uh on the status quo but you absolutely can get out of bed and go and vote no on a threat and

Carter 13:28

and on a threat on

Zain 13:31

down on you sort of thing yeah those

Carter 13:33

those two actions are totally different. One of the reasons, I mean, we use hope and we use fear in elections, right? We use hope and we use fear. But status quo is neither.

Carter 13:42

Status quo is neither hope nor fear. Status quo is existence, right? So Thomas is picking a question that is neither status quo, or because it's status quo, it is neither hope nor fear. Now

Zain 13:56

Now he would, can

Zain 13:57

I interrupt you there? He would argue that what they're trying to do, and now he's not made this argument, but I'm going to try to make it on his behalf, Yeah.

Zain 14:03

Is that with the brand of their organization and they're trying to say we're always going to be Canadian, forever Canadian. The hope of Canada is encapsulated in their affirming question.

Carter 14:17

I mean, I think that there's other ways of tackling it, and maybe we'll get to them in a little bit. But I think that we shouldn't

Carter 14:27

shouldn't be playing on the same field as the separatists. We

Carter 14:30

should be organizing on a different field. And that doesn't mean, you know, I'm not suggesting that Thomas's instinct to organize is wrong. Is

Carter 14:38

Thomas's instinct to organize is correct how he's choosing to organize is incorrect in my mind because he's he's he's accepting the premise of the problem let's not accept the premise of the problem let's choose a different problem there are many many problems that we can choose to to tackle in this province Danielle has given us oh so many why

Carter 14:59

why would we choose to be on the same path in the same plane as the separatists that's what that's what bothers me about Thomas's move of okay well

Shannon 15:07

well another way to put this

Shannon 15:07

this is people don't vote to say thank you they vote to say fuck you uh and so the job of of a political campaign is to point them in which direction they're trying to say that you want them to say fuck you too uh and uh and and that that's going to be the the job of the no campaign right um it rather than you know saying oh thank you you know the red and white flag yay you know uh that is i still want to

Zain 15:33

to keep it yeah i'm re-upping it's It's like it's like it's like rather than having auto renewal, I'm going out to like explicitly check the box to auto renew on what's been going on. How many people do that? Like we could see that from a basic psychology point of view that like from even just as a digital marketer and a marketer like that is really tough for people to do. Right. There's another example here. Pre-checked for people. Exactly. I mean,

Shannon 15:54

mean, look at the CPP conversation, right, which is part and parcel of the separatism nonsense. And it's funny that they won't put the CPP conversation on the ballot explicitly. they'll put this amorphous blob of separatism on the ballot, right? But they already took this for a test drive with the CPP conversation. And what did they find? They threw $9 or $10 million at a campaign, and they found that people did not want something taken away from them. People were saying no, right?

Shannon 16:21

right? But try to pry those people out of their houses with a crowbar to get them to go would mark a ballot for yes to the cpp i like uh my payroll deductions that's not going to happen uh but they they will you know uh write to their mlas write to their whatever and and uh participate in some way to say no you're not going to take something away from me right

Shannon 16:43

right and that's that's another sort of riff on the negative partisanship thing yeah

Shannon 16:47

yeah but it's it is again tapping into uh how people feel about they want to they want to reject a change that they don't like they don't want to underline uh something that they already have carter

Zain 16:59

carter um i'm so glad that shannon pushed cory off the pot this is uh so insightful

Zain 17:04

so many fewer words oh

Carter 17:06

imagine the amount of

Zain 17:07

he'd be do you think he's going to say the most words in parliament this year i

Carter 17:11

i think he could i

Carter 17:12

think i think he's on the you

Carter 17:13

you know he's on the government side don't think that's gonna don't

Zain 17:15

don't think that's gonna stop him you don't think that's gonna slow him down i don't think that's gonna slow him down at all uh

Zain 17:19

i need to get clarification from you carter because i got got shannon's answer on this singular no campaign and an extension question to you carter is that no campaign also the same campaign that organizes on a separate question so

Zain 17:33

so just to be clear your argument is that we need another question that can then mobilize people to get out and then defeat the referendum but also has its own question is your version of a no campaign a singular

Zain 17:45

is it the same organizing nucleus as the other uh question in your mind i

Carter 17:50

i think so i think it's a it's a negative for sure i

Zain 17:54

i thought you were going to go now with no no

Carter 17:55

no because it needs to be one shannon's point about it being only one group of people who who ultimately carry the no thing forward like for example there is an almost a zero percent chance that two referendum questions are going to get approved in the same cycle let the separatists try and do theirs and then the the the no side tries and does tries to do you

Carter 18:17

you know our question let's call it our question for now our question is going to be something unrelated to the the uh separatism

Carter 18:25

but it's maybe about

Zain 18:26

about the air that we're breathing like quite like pull it like metaphorically pollution

Zain 18:31

but like about but like about what's happening currently in alberta something related to that right right whatever

Carter 18:36

whatever we choose to do and and then but the odds of both of them succeeding and both of them winding up on the ballot are infinitesimal i mean the you know how i keep coming back to how hard this is um i suspect that there would be we would fail in getting enough question enough signatures to actually get our question on the ballot but we would succeed in generating thousands of names tens of thousands of names hundreds over a hundred thousand names i bet plus

Carter 19:05

plus we would have thousands

Carter 19:07

thousands of organizers and

Carter 19:08

then you're saying they

Zain 19:09

they become the default no uh campaign exactly

Carter 19:12

exactly Because then they become the no campaign and now you're 3,000 organizers to the good and you've identified 100,000 signatures. And if you're not even worried that much about getting the signatures, you do some of the things that were done tactically in the Jyoti Gandek campaign. Because as you know, the signatures all have to be wet ink, they have to be written. But

Carter 19:33

But it doesn't stop us from gathering online signatures because we don't actually care for successful. What we care about is having the question. What we care about is finding the names of the people who are opposed to Daniel Smith and Daniel Smith's government. That's way more interesting to us. Shannon,

Zain 19:50

Shannon, I'm impressed by Carter's three-step process. my skepticism is the following and I'll get you to comment on what he's thrown on the table too but my skepticism is the following is

Zain 20:03

is that too many dominoes to fall rather than just mounting a very solid no campaign

Zain 20:08

it's a bit of 3D chess

Carter 20:12

it's 2D chess at the most at

Shannon 20:14

at the most considering the source

Shannon 20:20

it could go into that where I can see where he's going with it right because anytime you are going out there in a moment of heightened political activity uh of any kind and going out there and then driving towards ground uh ground war like i am here for that right and i and i think that is not wasted effort uh at all and so i i my my only concern is we haven't really talked about what that no campaign looks like so i just want to pivot to that for a moment yeah yeah

Shannon 20:48

because that's the piece that's like oh i don't know a little bit bit existential for the country uh and uh you know is the kind of stuff that that makes me nervous right about you know how close danielle is really flying to the sun here uh and uh that that particular effort needs

Shannon 21:07

needs to be we need to think about who were who who is sort of leading that how it is raising money how broad it is uh and that's going to be the much more difficult piece piece of work because uh near as i can tell right now you know you've got shannon phillips and jason kenney in the same tent uh that's a fairly broad coalition i don't know how you go around trying to um you know to fund that to to organize it to uh

Shannon 21:39

uh to make it do you make it across the country right do you uh like do you involve uh outside voices from from other provinces do you keep it straight to alberta right are are you wheeling out i don't know like the cowboys and the ranchers and uh you know the the oil man plus that plus the enviros like how broad are you making this thing um and more to the point most importantly how are you funding it to make sure it's effective right uh that to me i hear you is

Shannon 22:07

is the one that is the the piece that that makes me more nervous i feel like it's almost like yeah there's

Shannon 22:13

there's that piece that feels more more complicated uh there's the thing that that carter's talking about take another question another public interest uh a topic of which there are many uh and use it to organize that's fantastic because we're probably going into an early election like i'm here for it uh it leaves aside the more thorny and like ball of hair question on the no so

Shannon 22:36

then you have to can i just jump in the

Carter 22:38

let me just do this let me just lay it on

Zain 22:40

on me yeah yeah you

Carter 22:42

you have to to open the doors to all of those other people who weren't a part of your system in generating the, like the first 2000 organizers are going to be the organizers that came in to help you sign up for your question. The next 2000 organizers are going to be some people who might be mortally opposed to your question that you originally asked, but you got to open the doors. You got to throw open the doors and make it a singular no effort because the singular no effort is far more important than any of the questions that you're going to get on them. If they're successful in getting this question on the ballot, which I maintain they are more likely to be successful with Thomas's question than they are to be successful with their own question.

Zain 23:20

So interesting, but I will say, Carter, Shannon's list of questions is pretty much exactly the same nervousness I have. Use the word nervousness, that's exactly it. Like between the three of us,

Zain 23:33

we have, I'd say, pretty legitimate Alberta organizing experience. And I don't even know where to start, Carter, because I'm stuck at the who. Like, who organizes? And this is kind of why I want to discuss this episode. Like, what does this need to look like? Who organizes it? Spokesperson? Money? How do you make room for the Alberta NDP who will probably want to take the mantle on their own and become the default no on this question? Perils of that opportunity of that. How do you create the tent, as Shannon has talked about, as wide as the person who's created the circumstances to allow us to get here, Jason Kenney, and someone like Shannon Phillips? Like, this is, I'm

Zain 24:11

I'm really struggling with some of the basics here. So, like, do you have a sense, Carter, of your who and what? Like, or are you as, are

Zain 24:20

like, stuck in the mug? I don't want to speak for Shannon, at least as I am in terms of what the first move here and how we do something like this. And Shannon's question of, I think, a really good one. Do we involve voices outside of this province? Is that a detriment or not, so to speak? And

Carter 24:34

And then let's, let me just layer on one more piece.

Zain 24:36

corporate interests that are interested in investor certainty to keep Alberta within Canada, not because they fucking love Alberta, but because they want their dollar to go further and want to have a frothy base to invest in as well, and just this one element of it. So where's

Zain 24:52

where's your head at? Because these are the list of questions I wanted to go through with, let's just say, 25 minutes left, Carter. I'm

Carter 24:57

I'm exceptionally worried about creating a Jim Denning leadership style. What does that mean?

Carter 25:02

The Jim Denning leadership style is he had every strategist, every big hitter in the party all lined up to work with him. They all worked with him, but none of the decisions got made. No actual action took place because everybody just kind of sat around and said, well, we're the leaders, we're going to be in charge, right? We have, and I think that that's where the risk lies when you've got Monty Solberg, Jason and kenny shannon phillips stephen carter uh you know thomas lukasik uh zane velji even um you know some people you know thank you you're welcome all

Carter 25:34

all of the you could pull together and that's even michelle rumple garden do you know what this is reminding

Zain 25:38

reminding me of can i can i just interrupt you for a second this is giving me ptsd of a meeting that you and i hosted but you mainly do you remember this meeting carter where we were self-congratulating about how many people we got from both sides of the spectrum to sit together to advocate for the olympics it

Carter 25:57

was the exact same scenario oh my god it's giving me ptsd because

Carter 26:02

we can get all the leaders in the room

Carter 26:05

but we're not going to get them at it's not actually about getting the leaders in the room it's about getting the 2 000 people in the room and that's where i think you have to give you have to create something to do right

Carter 26:17

right that's what we did with the gone or with the with the cory hogan campaign we created something for them to do they were able to achieve something and they could achieve it in relative short order if we start organizing organizers um

Carter 26:31

around a you know a second question that was is an opposition of the smith government i think that the opposition to the smith government gives us the the coverage now i don't think it should be an ndp initiative initiative i don't think it should be a uh cory hogan-led liberal initiative yeah you should just take the confederation

Zain 26:51

confederation slogan and start a new campaign

Carter 26:53

exactly alberta is worth fighting for yeah well away we go canada no yeah i mean come on it's just not it's not what we're looking for

Zain 27:02

need who's the who who's the who like this is what i'm stuck who is the who whoever wants to be the who there's

Zain 27:07

the people listening to

Zain 27:08

to this podcast i'm

Zain 27:09

struggling with that carter shen you're killing me well

Shannon 27:11

well i i think there's two things here there's the air we're in the no campaign and how do you just have some degree of coordination right between uh wheeling out uh you know high-profile old ass tories right and uh more progressive voices and other people who are maybe from more like the cultural or sports world or these kinds of people right

Shannon 27:30

right yeah so that's a that's an air piece that doesn't require a lot of resources

Shannon 27:36

resources i mean you money behind it but i think you probably have to um um but it it's just simply you know uh uh an air cover for you know a broad range of voices who are saying no this is fucking stupid right uh separatism is a bad idea and the business community can do what they want in there but like there's kind of two problems number

Shannon 27:56

uh what uh carter identifies which is the curse of the tall foreheads right they're all sitting around uh just you know oh i'm smart oh i'm smart uh You know, I ran a campaign 20 years ago. Welcome to this podcast.

Shannon 28:11

to this podcast. And

Shannon 28:12

And that's going to lead you nowhere fast. So it's nice that they can have meetings in living rooms, but they need to go out and do something, to Carter's point.

Shannon 28:19

But there does need to be a level of coordination on people busting out with their various no arguments and products, you know, like pushing into the public consciousness.

Shannon 28:32

That's the first thing. uh but uh the other piece that is important here is that those uh people are not everything right uh and uh you can't paint yourself into that corner uh you can't uh and you have to have some organizing on the ground what that looks like and how that is funded even on the no campaign you You have to, you

Shannon 28:58

you have to. That's the piece that I'm not sure how to find. It's easy to coordinate error between,

Shannon 29:04

between, you know, disparate voices. But if you're waiting, how do you coordinate ground? And that'll be the piece that like is tougher ideologically, like across this sort of, you know, as yet notional, broad coalition of people. As for the NDP, I mean, they should definitely go out there and gin up their members and figure out how to re-up their sign locations and all of those kinds of things and, you know, get people interested and excited. But, you know, should they be leading it? No, because then automatically you end up in the Hogan-esque construct of negative partisanship. 50-50 partisan jump

Zain 29:47

So my concern about this from a money perspective, and I'm going to stick with Shannon for a second, Carter, is that amongst the like if status quo remains the same with all conditions organizers the challenges that you guys have both very astutely laid on the table the ndp is the group with the names the numbers the money and they kind of end up doing it if if if everyone else is looking at someone else to lead it and we're creating this massive big tent where we're looking for the first 2000 and it's and we're almost running a no campaign primary like we're very good at this right bunch of no campaigns or versions of a no campaign will sprout up and then they're going to compete with one another which is something i want to talk about carter how do you win the no campaign primary um then the ndp just becomes the party and the institution i shouldn't say the party the institution that exists that has time money resource capacity to fight this thing maybe not in the most strategic way because they're a political party on the other side of of a question but just by default how much of a concern is that to to you shannon

Shannon 30:48

it's kind of a concern because it uh what it does is it kind of closes off some of the persuadable voters in the you know kind of in the middle who are like i don't know i need more information right uh you know about like uh what kind what what would this uh allow us to do a yes vote in terms of leverage what we might get out of the federal government all these questions you hear from the public when you when you look at polling on the separatism question right a lot of albertans are like oh well we could threaten and then maybe we would not have to pay equalization anymore which of course none of that is real but um but that is the risk there and it also it does take the new democrat like certainly they have the infrastructure but it does also take them off of like separatism still isn't a lived experience this is another one of the things that i bang on all the time it's

Shannon 31:36

not as good as a healthcare question

Zain 31:37

question for them i would argue that healthcare

Shannon 31:38

healthcare scandal is not a lived experience sitting

Shannon 31:41

sitting in a fucking waiting room is a lived experience the economy is a lived experience paying your bills is a lived experience uh being on a wait list for a knee surgery is a lived experience um not being able to get your kid in for their asthma meds re-up lived experience right closed ers across the uh rural alberta like those are the kinds of of of real things that then the new democrats are not talking about because it's you're not allowed to talk about everything when you're a a political party especially not now right uh if that was uh if that was ever the case it ain't the case in 2025 um so there is a bit of a zero-sum thing happening here and people are going to talk about the separatism thing anyway right

Shannon 32:21

right uh there might be ways for them to hold hands in the dark reach their members i get them you know signing various uh ballot initiatives that kind of stuff um um you know talking to their individual uh identified supporters you know members sign locations um but i i just think there's dragons there for them to be i

Shannon 32:42

i mean obviously they need to be opposed uh but for them to be leading an initiative right because like there's going to be so many people out there who wouldn't necessarily hitch their wagon to it especially the rural voices that you kind of need for this thing um if it's you know got an orange patina on on it carter

Zain 33:02

carter is is the role for the ndp just to drift like just to honestly see

Zain 33:10

see where this is going be right on message and frequency but not lead the message because i i share shannon's concerns that like and i've articulated this in the past that if the ndp take up the mantle here by default this becomes like any other 50 50 partisan issue 60 40 part is an issue and people People just view it through that frame being like, oh, the messenger here is the NDP. Obviously, I'm not going to trust it, like sort of thing. How do you kind of give them a sense of their role and purpose in all of this?

Carter 33:39

I love Shannon's phrasing of holding hands in the dark.

Carter 33:42

I thought that that was exactly right. I mean, they can be aligned on this. Their volunteers can be involved in this. They should be involved in this. their infrastructure and leadership should be focused on their their primary objective which is to to build the party and get ready for uh the next election i've never understood why they don't hold hands with the municipal campaigns uh that are running because you know you and make it so that they can't be seen um but they they get a lot of benefit from it uh they didn't do that in 2021 with the gondek campaign and i think it cost them uh later to your you know during the provincial election um i think that this is a an

Carter 34:26

an ideal opportunity to kind of hold hands in the dark to steal uh shannon's phrasing and to make sure that they're still around however they can't be leading it and

Carter 34:35

and and and if you're inviting all the people to the table then all the people get get invited to the table. I just think that the easiest way to do this, and I come back to my earlier point, getting all the tall foreheads into a single room and starting to build this thing isn't going to work. You have to build this thing and then invite the tall foreheads to the organizational structure. I

Carter 34:57

I think that's the whole component.

Zain 34:58

component. Let's talk about

Zain 34:59

about this. Let's talk about that. How do we build that thing and how do you make sure your version of it is

Zain 35:05

is the thing right like because i i think this this concept of whether it's the opposition like a new question carter puts up or an actual no campaign tbd right like you're starting to sell me at least personally a bit more on your idea carter that being said let's just call it the no right let's just call it the no sign for

Zain 35:24

the simplicity let's just say right like let's just say they all things equal the separatists get their question on the table well, they're the affirmative, this is the no. How

Zain 35:32

How do you win the no campaign primary? Which means that we're good at some things as progressives, which is starting 50 versions of the same thing, 10 people thinking that they should be the leader of that thing,

Zain 35:44

the other five people thinking they can't work with the other five people who are doing the other thing. How

Zain 35:48

How do you ensure you're, if we're looking for one fucking campaign, how do you ensure you win the no primary, Carter? How would you suggest this? You became the

Zain 35:55

the de facto yes campaign for the Olympics. So maybe you want to talk about that experience. maybe you want to talk about other things how do you become the de facto campaign here that

Carter 36:03

that was brutal experience to become the de facto yes campaign for there for you know in part because we were we were trying to bring in all the tall foreheads and all the tall foreheads told me especially to go get stuffed um you know like that was a that was a brutal campaign to try and bring everybody in and part of the reason was we weren't we didn't organize enough at the grassroots level so that all the tall foreheads had no choice but to join us and i think that that you're were all reliant

Zain 36:29

on their money and their connections and their all that sort

Zain 36:31

sort of stuff we

Carter 36:32

we were we were overly reliant on on their money and they were and they could hold it above us and say dance monkey dance and and we would try and dance for the money when we should have been trying to organize at the grassroots level and then have that grassroots level um motivate

Carter 36:47

motivate the money and it did at the end right

Carter 36:50

right at the end things started to flow and people started to put money in and the yes it became inevitable

Zain 36:54

inevitable that you were going to be that campaign right But

Carter 36:56

But you were fighting that

Zain 36:57

that primary halfway through as the general election, let me just use these terms, was going on. You were still

Zain 37:02

still trying to compete for the airspace, weren't you? Absolutely. This

Zain 37:06

also my fucking concern here. But

Zain 37:07

But we're going to have a bunch of us organizations competing to take the mantle when we all realize it needs to be a singular no, and the other side is just going to be talking about one simple thing over and over again.

Carter 37:19

But this is why I'm organized. this is why i want to organize a different question because i think that the the objective you can you can create the team the no team so much easier without having to go back and fight for it and these because the tall foreheads you know what they're not all going to get in a room they're not all going to agree they're what you need to do is you need to build the structure build the system and then invite them in because you can't have them sitting on the sidelines you you know, just outside your tent, pissing in the tent, you have to be able to bring them in and make them feel like they're a part of it. And at the time when you actually need them, when the no campaign is starting up, because the timeline on this that I see is three months to organize organizers, three months to collect signatures, 2026 is the actual campaign. So when you get to the actual campaign, you're going to have all the tall foreheads being invited in in January in February. And that's when you're going to need to do your primary fundraising. And by primary fundraising, I'm talking about a three to $5 million campaign on the no side.

Carter 38:29

Well, and so you need those people in January. So how do you get them in January? We can try and organize them now, but I don't think it, I think it fails. I think that the only thing that makes you ready for that is that I've got an army of 3,000 people who are willing to go to war where's your army you

Carter 38:45

don't have an army okay get behind my fucking army that's

Zain 38:50

that's how i become inevitable

Zain 38:52

just by growth shannon any reflections on what carter's throwing up on the table i

Shannon 38:55

i i don't mind that strategy at all uh and in the absence of a of a different one i'm willing to follow it uh but um this

Zain 39:04

this is called the carter submission tactic which he uses on most campaigns that he's on he's like come up with a better one but isn't that your way carter like not to interrupt you shannon i think there's something interesting about what carter said here which is like you are also like shannon mentioned earlier on this episode you're also open to having your mind changed if someone comes up with a better idea than what you've put out there aren't you carter oh

Shannon 39:24

yeah and that's how i feel about it too right like i gotta start something and then obviously you're going to iterate as you go along uh on but you have to start with some kind of architecture right and like you need your three periods of action right And Carter's identified them. He's beginning, his middle, and his end. Every campaign has that. And as long as you've got some view of that, like having one strategy is better than having 10. And so, good. I do think there's a missing piece here, though, and that's the air cover. And there does need to be some coordination of air cover through the organizing period. Otherwise, it gets left to the lunatics, right? So it needs to be filled in. Explain that a

Zain 40:03

a bit more. What do

Shannon 40:03

do you mean? Okay. Well,

Shannon 40:04

Well, I mean, like, the voices need to be moving out, right? And I always, you know, I'm a bad politician, and then I like to go back and fight the last war. But when you look at what happened with the CPP, right, you had this endless stream of, like, sometimes it was the fucking Economist Party, right? And it was like, oh, but the liability or whatever, right? And that appealed to a certain audience. champions um sometimes it was the new democrats uh sometimes it was uh you know retirees and town halls and some of that bubbling up from the grassroots and you know people coming to town halls to come you know share their aches and pains but also their you know their quite highly sophisticated views as voters on on their retirement security because people care about that as it turns out um

Shannon 40:48

um but there was a there was a drumbeat of

Shannon 40:51

of air cover right

Shannon 40:52

right around that topic And that also helped make the government back down, right?

Shannon 40:57

right? The government did a big splashy thing on, you know, we're going to spend all this money advertising a, you know, possible Alberta pension plan that, you

Shannon 41:05

you know, became the lightning rod and then there was a constant stream of voices. That's the piece that does need to be somewhat coordinated, given the stakes of this thing. It also will mean that if people try to do something stupid by people, I mean Ottawa, that, you know, or other voices, you know, like Big Ontario comes wandering in, right, to the chat, probably not helpful in talking to Albertans, right? Right. Like that is a risk, you know, that you end up with it becoming, you know, and that, you know, gins up Albertans like, fuck off. I don't want to hear from you, Central Canada. Right. Even if I'm persuadable one way or the other, I'm not interested in being hectored by someone outside of this province. So you do need those the identification of those of those trusted Alberta voices across and not just political. that's the other risk with us strategy types is

Shannon 42:00

is we we we think of uh because it's a political question has to be delivered by political people it does not and ideally it isn't uh it's the message is delivered by a broad range of voices that are then more trusted and that's really really important uh and so i i would say yes to what carter has laid out and there needs to be some and and who is doing that to your original hesitation saying i don't know um

Shannon 42:26

um who is coordinating that but there does need to be at

Shannon 42:30

at least some locus

Shannon 42:32

locus of activity going phoning people up and saying i need you to do x or y and i need you to step out on this carter

Zain 42:40

carter this is such a good point around what the message in the air cover it is and i maybe want to end here but i still want want to push you a bit more who carter

Zain 42:50

who is this who like is it like is it ultimately you like is it someone like you is it is it a politician type like do we need and the reason i ask is like i'm trying to i'm trying to imagine this campaign does it need a figurehead maybe that's another way of answering this does it need a candidate of some kind uh does it need a person does it need a group of at least two to three people yeah not the whole tall four heads in a room. But like, I want to drill down a bit on the who, because Shannon's thing about the message is also really important. But we've talked about the messenger and the messengers plural, even if it's one to three of them also being as important. What do you think?

Carter 43:28

Well, I think that the messengers are super important. I mean, we chose on the Yes campaign for the Olympics, we chose messengers that were kind of outside of me, right? We chose messengers that were uh you know kind of every man if you will or every woman uh and i think we still need the every man or every woman's type of messengers but i think that one of the things we were missing was that tall forehead that everybody could go you know and rally behind and they could see that there was a strategy and see that there was a plan um i'm not sure who it's going to be saying i mean i think that you do need one tall forehead and you need some and you need some grassroots

Carter 44:04

and i think I think that to Shannon's point, then you also need the, uh, the Ken Bosenkuhls and the Monty Solbergs and the, um, you know, the, the Jason Kennys and the conservatives of

Carter 44:16

plus, plus everybody else on the left, um, to stand up and, and take on spokesperson roles and take your calls. You know, I can see this being one of those things where you're having a daily huddle with true organization people, people who are organizing, and a weekly messaging meeting with

Carter 44:33

with people who are going to go out and do media or

Carter 44:35

or who will write op-eds or who will write, you know, the

Carter 44:40

the various pieces of this. So, you know, I can see that's

Carter 44:47

that's how you start to bring in the tall foreheads is you get them into the messaging structure relatively early.

Shannon 44:53

Or communicate on TikTok and Reels because, you know, it's

Carter 44:59

hurt my feelings a little bit right there. Hey,

Zain 45:01

Hey, Carter, I have a question. I'm going to jump into our over-under, which is just one question that's been nagging at me in a moment here. But I do want to get your take on messaging.

Zain 45:10

messaging. And both of you on this, actually, if we can go a few more minutes.

Zain 45:15

What's really been bothering me is going back to the Brexit example. example, and

Zain 45:21

and Lukasik said this today too, the reasons when he was doing his media rounds, and not to go after him, I think it's noble what he's trying to do, but I think it points to the potential pitfalls, which is he was listing 20 cogent reasons why we shouldn't separate, and then

Zain 45:38

said the list goes on and on.

Zain 45:41

And the no side, the leave side of Brexit had a fucking bus that said you get half a billion dollars back for healthcare. care that was

Zain 45:50

there was other xenophobic shit underneath there but that was it my concern is our proclivities are to give everyone a laundry list of the list goes on and on literally

Zain 46:01

literally we run the list goes on and on campaign and

Zain 46:05

and we have different factions and i think inevitably what ends up happening we've got different factions talking about different things and everyone and we all think it's working together right we all think they're actually connective and compounding when But in fact, they're dividing. They're actually, they divide attention. They don't compound attention. They don't actually add, so to speak, into the tally count of the no campaign. How big of a concern is that for you? And how do we fight back against it? When if the separatists are smart, they will go with the singular, even non-separatist benefit that one gets and use that as the basis of their campaign.

Carter 46:42

Well, I mean, Shannon's already basically alluded to what it's going to be. it's going to be we get to keep our money yeah

Carter 46:47

money the equalization whatever

Zain 46:49

that is right yeah

Carter 46:50

yeah which is fucking hilarious um but also

Shannon 46:54

also persuasive because it's a lie but it's persuasive yeah we've been fed the same lies as fucking

Carter 47:02

it's well embedded and it's one that even the

Zain 47:04

the modern conservative voter believes that Alberta's getting fucked like you're getting fucked but you get to keep more of it is is persuasive so So I agree. Shannon's put it out there. They're going to do a version of that.

Zain 47:14

We can't do a, the list goes on campaign.

Carter 47:17

No, we have to make sure that we figure out, I mean, but, but I also want to do polling and actually know what the fucking answer is. I don't want to just wing it off on the, on the, on a, uh, on a podcast and say, but this is where. That's what this podcast is for,

Zain 47:29

for, Carter. That's what, there's just instinct.

Carter 47:31

But I think that we, I think we get, I think we get some time. Yeah.

Carter 47:34

I don't think it needs to be done tomorrow. I think that by January, you need to have a, uh, a super strong sense of what that one One thing is it keeps us in Canada. And that one thing may be that, you know, I don't

Carter 47:46

I don't want to get ahead of it.

Zain 47:47

No, no, you don't. But I also think we should be humbled with what the answer could be.

Zain 47:53

Because I think between us, we might actually be like it's some high-minded, politically entrenched narrative. And it might be a selfish motivation that we need to be campaigning on, just like the other side will. Shannon, I'll let you jump in. Sorry. well

Shannon 48:07

the things that you want to go out and poll on and carter's absolutely correct that you shouldn't be doing this uh you know with like gut and feel you should actually have some data behind it uh is go out and try to poke around in both qualitative and quantitative on what is going to be taken away from you if you vote yes yeah

Shannon 48:26

right that's the that's the formulation right if if if the other guys are out there saying you're gonna get this fantasy fucking ride a unicorn to work thing um then we need to have the uh here is what is going to come out of your pocketbook or what it's going to cost you or what is going to be taken away from you uh

Shannon 48:44

uh and that you know again to the negative partisanship thing that is what will work if you're saying no because something's going to get taken away from me that's you know two negative statements and that's how it needs to be framed um but uh yeah you have a bit of time not a whole lot of time uh but it needs to to be very clear you know like i'm not going to use the word kitchen table because that's really fucking annoying framing uh but uh it does need to be something that people can live that they

Shannon 49:15

they can feel that they can like the reason they caught uh chose nhs in the uk is because you know after like whatever it was a decade or more of tory rule the whole system was in a fucking shambles totally

Shannon 49:27

uh and so you know there there might be uh something there uh or it might be uh an economic argument my gut is it's an economic argument especially if wti continues to soften through the fall um

Shannon 49:41

um and the global economy uh softens not to get too you know like policy heavy here this is really

Shannon 49:48

that you know we're going to need to see around that corner and that is both going to upset people uh and make them more uh worried about the federal government and make them feel more uh insecure but there might be uh some way for opportunity there for the no campaign no

Zain 50:04

no i i think this is i love that answer because i think to my point of like being humbled we we the

Zain 50:10

the no side doesn't have with 50 reasons why not to separate we have zero right now which is why neither of you rightfully so are willing to be like here's our issue or Or we've got or saying we've got 50 of them. Like, in fact, if you've got 50, you got zero. And that's where we kind of find ourselves right now, which is like they may have their issue. They already seem to be able to. And I don't know if they're doing a great job of crystallizing and messaging it, but they didn't already have the seeds of it. I'm not sure we have the seeds of the defense as much as as much as optionality is there. That's actually a crippling problem in some way.

Shannon 50:44

I don't know, Zane. I mean, if you look at the Liberal vote in the last federal campaign, you do see it increased even in rural areas, across Canada, but even in Alberta. I mean, some of that was just mowing the NDP's lawn, right? But there, and that was a wrap yourself in the flag vote

Shannon 51:02

vote transfer. And, you know, if you're voting Liberal in, like, Lethbridge County, like, you are making a choice. That's

Shannon 51:10

a real choice you just made. And people did, right? Right. So there's there's something there in the wrapping yourself in the flag. But it's not clear to me if that moment is going to move on. It might come back up a little bit if Trump comes here in Kananaskis and, you know, lights himself on fire and everybody, you know, like freaks out again. That's a moment. We'll see how that persists. But there was a kernel of that, even in rural Alberta, rural Saskatchewan, rural Ontario. It happened.

Zain 51:43

love this we're going to leave that segment there moving on to our over under in our lightning round this is of course shannon uh welcome this is where carter refuses to answer the questions and is either tired or lazy so gives uh his worst answer so it's really a moment for you to shine

Zain 51:56

um is that fair carter is that a fair assessment it's

Carter 51:58

it's it's it's not unfair okay

Zain 52:01

okay here here i'm not going to give you a list of questions because i actually want to throw something at you guys that's been gnawing at me, which is,

Zain 52:09

should we be mocking the separatists?

Zain 52:11

And here they are so, and I think this is, there is like a seriousness to this question because they're so memeable. They look like characters, like at least from the presentation of what we've seen thus far. And there is a sense of like, we should be ensuring that these folks get no air whatsoever. There's a ridiculousness to this. There's a mocking, there's just almost a desire to mock. That all being said, we have seen that when you mock groups like this they actually come out even stronger you're actually building them giving more airtime so it's in the heart of it it's actually it's an acute sort of like what should we be doing with our hands anchorman question but there's also a strategy element to it like how would you take this group that is so memeable that is so able to go viral to show their ridiculousness carter

Zain 52:56

carter would you lean into that or are you saying stay away from that you're actually playing to use a term we've used a few times on today's pod are we playing with fire i'll let you go for i think

Carter 53:04

think we're i think we're playing with fire i think that you don't mock the uh the mockable sometimes when we're when things get serious i think uh that's one of the inclinations of the brexit uh idea right it was it was to mock it and this is deathly serious so i think you'd be deathly serious this is also part of the reason why i want to fight on a different question to start with um it keeps us out of their field and keeps us out of making fun of them or minimizing them. We

Carter 53:32

want to amplify them by accident. What

Carter 53:35

What we want to do is we want to generate a team of people as fast as possible. And those two things are kind of, you know, they come around your mocking question. Do you really want to mock these people when you could accidentally supply them with a lot more juice? I mean, we mock the anti-vaxxers. We did. Or some of

Zain 53:57

of us did. like culturally

Zain 53:58

did i'll just say

Carter 53:58

say that 500 of them have measles right now um you know but it's it's not it's not a strong play to mark uh the strong play is to get ready shannon

Zain 54:08

shannon what do you think well

Shannon 54:10

well it depends on who we is because there's a whole bunch of different folks out there on the landscape uh

Shannon 54:15

uh uh you know communicating various messages right and and uh some of these you know people who are online influencers have a far uh larger uh breadth and depth of of uh audience than you know we will ever have right yes and so so i think you know leave them to it but serious people should say serious things condescension and sarcasm never translates uh when you and and you know a lot of the rules of political communication have changed over the last 25 years that i've been in this business but that one hasn't serious people should remain serious uh and uh the last thing you need is for serious people uh to become the mean themselves.

Shannon 54:55

So, you know, let people who are already in that world, let them do it. They're going to do it, right? There's going to be enough, you know, folks out there who are going to be like, look at this guy, right? Let them go, right? You don't need to participate in that. You are not that, right? Political communicators are something different. And if we want our institutions to work and not to get too high-minded about it, but if we want all of this rules-based order of political institutions and democracy to work, then we have to take ourselves seriously. And so I would say that keep it serious because it is. Stay out of the memoirs. Don't become that Brantford boomer or whatever that thing was that the conservatives were riding the horse of in the federal campaign. And other people will do the work for you on that.

Zain 55:49

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1870 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velge, who with me as always, Shannon Phillips, Stephen Carter, and we shall see you next time.

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