Episode 1893½: Strategists Overtime at Knox United (LIVE)

Carter 0:10

would like to welcome back our first special guest, Corey Hogan.

Corey 0:20

Thanks, Stephen. Like 30

Corey 0:21

30 seconds ago, we agreed that

Corey 0:23

that he'd be the first guest. No,

Carter 0:24

No, you're going to be up here with him. Oh, thank you.

Corey 0:26

you. That's so kind. Ladies

Carter 0:27

Ladies and gentlemen, you've heard us pick on him, you've heard us talk about him, you've seen the chains of office that he is brazenly wearing, brazenly

Carter 0:36

brazenly wearing to flaunt his victory over over me especially. So I had to match him with Calgary Party t-shirts. Ladies and gentlemen, the new leader of the Calgary Party, your mayor, your

SPEAKER_05 1:05

Let's get out of here, people.

Carter 1:06

people. Let's go. Thank you very much.

Zain 1:18

you just adopt them as part of the Calgary? Is that what just happened?

Zain 1:21

You just made them leader of the Calgary party?

Carter 1:23

Well, ain't nobody else a leader.

Corey 1:27

I want one of those. These shirts are like the ones that go to Africa for the Super Bowl losers.

Carter 1:36

I'd love to tell you we ran out, but most of them went to the landfill.

Zain 1:41

Speaking of shirts, Ryan Sauvé, videographer extraordinaire. Mayor. Ryan, can you just jump into center stage right here?

Corey 1:57

The shirt reads, Alberta is recalling. For the listeners.

Zain 2:00

Fucking amazing. DIY project. We're

Zain 2:04

We're going to steal it for the strategist store. Don't worry.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Yeah, you know, a long-time listener, first-time caller.

Zain 2:14

So we wanted to spend a few minutes with Mayor Farkas.

Zain 2:18

Go really anywhere, mainly forward. But I actually want to, you know, let's go backwards to your election.

Zain 2:24

Do you agree with

Zain 2:26

with what you heard from Carter on stage regarding social networks? And then how do you think that kind of fits into your mandate going forward in terms of what

Zain 2:35

what was the resultant sort of strategies and tactics to your success? And then talk to me about mandate. Let's start there. I think

SPEAKER_01 2:42

think that the key thing is just authenticity. You know, it's brand, it's storytelling. And storytelling is, you

SPEAKER_01 2:51

know, there was a lack of an overall narrative in terms of the campaign. Like there's a lot of candidates who are fighting for control over the football, so to speak. But I think it just comes down to those personal connections. And at the municipal level, it is so different, right? Right. The big calculus for a lot of folks is, is this representative going to pick up the phone? Right. And there's a lot of folks who are part of our campaign that wouldn't necessarily see themselves 100 percent aligned with me as a candidate or the policy positions and all the rest. But the the face to face really mattered. And it was that nucleus of support in Ward 11 when I had ran for city council the first time 10 years ago that it was those folks who showed up. But on election night, it was brand new folks I was surrounded with that had never supported me before. So I think it's that storytelling. It's the brand that's more important than any of the policy positions. But, you know, it helped that we had the best policy in the race.

Carter 3:44

name one of those policies.

Carter 3:46

I mean, just one. Anyone will do.

Carter 3:51

No, we're moving forward. Let's instead talk about something that matters.

Carter 3:56

Why did you steal the Discord from me?

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Well, it turns out that a mare cannot jump as high as a bear, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

deep cut for the Discord.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

And I tried. Yeah,

Carter 4:15

Yeah, you did commit

Carter 4:17

commit to the bit, and

Carter 4:19

and I'm proud of you for that. So

Corey 4:20

So the answer is actually in that very cryptic answer, and that's like you were engaged in that community for years. years you know you became a known commodity and there were a lot of people who even if they didn't agree with you were like well but i like him and i trust him and i i trust him to try to do the right thing and that was that was a lot and that actually goes to what you were all talking about earlier about social networks we

Corey 4:49

in this room tend to think politics overrides everything but politics overrides very little in most people's day-to-day life and

Corey 4:56

and those personal connections and that sense of trust means way way more he

SPEAKER_01 5:07

just opens his mouth and

SPEAKER_01 5:13

and he just sounds so smart and he makes the pod listenable so thank you Cory fuck

Zain 5:21

fuck me me jesus christ thank

SPEAKER_01 5:25

very much and i want some of those federal infrastructure dollars by the way tell your boss wow

Zain 5:34

wow this is gonna be a short at least please please get in yeah

Annalise 5:37

yeah i'm about to vomit on that like social network and the conversation and i find it interesting i don't go on the discord very much a lot of people in this room do but you go on the discord and you You have a sitting MP. You have the mayor of Calgary. You have a former NDP environment minister. Are you folks, especially this is for you, like, are you going to keep participating in the Discord on a daily basis now that you're the mayor of Calgary?

SPEAKER_01 6:01

I see the panicked face of my chief of staff. He's probably Googling what is Discord and why is Jeremy on it? How many of you in this audience are on the Discord?

Corey 6:11

It's a lot. But

SPEAKER_01 6:12

But yeah, I think the wrong calculation was made by you, Carter, right? Like you measured social media in terms of like Twitter retreats, LinkedIn, all the rest. Objectively, there was no traction unless it was paid. People moved to different networks, right? Like we got a lot of traction on Blue Sky, like our major policy piece, like our first one is on the arts. And that really helped us build the momentum on some of those other ones as well as Discord. That was

Carter 6:39

was right after our art policy. I'm remembering it now.

Annalise 6:45

how jeremy how much you talked about the storytelling at the beginning how much did the redemption story the the going on a hike coming back change different like how much did that feed into your success well it's

SPEAKER_01 6:58

it's it's not a story it's just it's just my life right i remember being on the stage at the jack singer concert hall and i remember all of the other candidates were dog And they're saying, well, just because Jeremy thinks differently about the arts or about public safety today than he did 10 years ago, it means that he must have been a flip-flopper. It must have been he has no principles. But I remember standing up at the stage and saying, yeah, you know, just because I've changed my mind, it doesn't make me a flip-flopper. It means that I have a working brain. And I thought that that was the moment that, yeah, thank you. Well, and enough Calgarians, I think, saw that where, you know, if you're willing to do the work, if you're willing to knock on doors, if you're willing to engage in the community in a much more genuine way, then it's not a story anymore. It's just real. It's my life. And there's a level of exposure as a candidate running for office in a municipal realm where it's you on trial. It is you as the person. And I'm just grateful that so many Calgarians had an open mind to me and just really thrilled and excited to be able to work with this new council team to be able to get it done.

Annalise 8:04

It's a very mayoral answer.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Well, you've got to be a mayor for every Calgarian, not just the folks who voted for you. But I could tell probably by the end of the election night that there was a lot of people who didn't vote for me who ended up rooting for me by the end.

Annalise 8:16

Okay, poke a hole in a theory Zane and I kind of came up with. We did a municipal episode a few

Annalise 8:22

few days before the election. yeah and

Annalise 8:24

and we kind of like came to this conclusion that the ballot box question for those people who were somewhat engaged was has jeremy farkas changed do

Annalise 8:33

do you agree with that i

SPEAKER_01 8:35

i don't think so i think it was still who had the best plan and who was the most credible and and toward the end if you're watching the debate performances like i always closed on i am the only candidate on the stage who can stop a political party takeover city council and deliver the change the calgarians are looking for and and

SPEAKER_01 8:55

i had to show up to the funeral i guess it was me in the library with a candlestick i killed the calgary party oh

Carter 9:03

oh my friend i think we did a good job ourselves

SPEAKER_01 9:08

always taking the credit steven always taking the credit so

Zain 9:13

like you a lot i

Zain 9:15

i really god thank you thank you zane i really do you're a genuine person i don't know if i can trust you

SPEAKER_05 9:21

No, and I say

Zain 9:22

say that from the perspective of I don't know if it's real. And I don't think I'm alone to ask you such a, like, blunt question. But, like, is the transformation real, man? Like, and is it a reinvention? Is it a transformation?

Zain 9:38

and I'm also one of the people now trying to read T. Lee as being like, who's around him? Who's staffing him? Oh, that's a UCP comms director. That's this person. Like, I don't

Zain 9:48

don't know who you are. I just don't know if I can trust a new version of you. And I say that with the utmost respect as my mayor, because I want you to succeed. I told you that on the next morning of the election. But

Zain 9:57

But I don't think I'm alone in this room and perhaps others that don't know if they bought what

Zain 10:01

what the rest of the city in some ways, or at least a portion of the rest of the city bought.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Well, you don't have to look at the words, right? You look at the actions. Like, when it comes to building a team, like, I would not have survived 172 days in the wilderness with just what I could carry on my back unless I could grow and build a high-performing team. like honestly if i walked into the mexican desert the way that i walked into a city council meeting 10 years ago i wouldn't have made it back home but i did make it back home because i could build those teams and when it comes to the team around me like we were able to do

SPEAKER_01 10:33

what we were saying we're going to do for calgary calgary in the campaign team like bringing together left and right conservatives and progressives to be able to get stuff done for the city right so again the the the proof is going to be in the pudding in the next four years but we've had like amazing uh first couple weeks here with this brand new city council mostly independents pragmatic practical people so you know i appreciate the consideration but you know a lot of the the things like i stood up in the stage and we ran the numbers i was the only one who mentioned visible support for the trans community right so the fact that the

SPEAKER_01 11:09

the fact that i did that because i wanted to earn that mandate so that i could be a mayor for every single calgarian was really important to me and even the issues i spoke about say food insecurity big brothers make sisters uh mentorship the alex community health center you know it wasn't a recent recognition it was because i grew up in east calgary because i grew up in the hood it's because i had to rely on those food banks the passion is in there right so it's not just words it's you take a little bit closer look at my biography and you actually see the actions behind that i

SPEAKER_01 11:40

appreciate that jeremy what's

SPEAKER_08 11:41

what's your most manning center opinion that you still have

Corey 11:48

jeremy say electoral reform it's safe what's

SPEAKER_01 11:51

what's the most manning center opinion you know i was hired as an intern one of my first projects was actually in support of uh bike lanes it was in support of active transportation yeah you're

SPEAKER_08 12:03

the manning center opinion is quite well anyone

SPEAKER_01 12:09

anyone who's actually done the research you can google jeremy farkas manning foundation bike lanes and you'll see 10 years ago what is your most

SPEAKER_01 12:22

being the bike lane guy at the manning center is a cop-out no

SPEAKER_08 12:27

surely we've still got some of this oh i'm socially progressive it's just going to be conservative style

SPEAKER_08 12:34

style where is it where's where's the where's the old jeremy that got those center right people to place that i i i exercise your name where are those where are the where are you going to go in the wall on those uh well it's

SPEAKER_01 12:48

it's actually looking at what is the stuff that actually saves us money right like when we talk about housing homelessness actually dealing with the issue and root causes that is the real goddamn fiscal conservative thing to be doing right actually dealing with these issues proactively rather than responding in crisis mode through emergency room visits through policing costs that is the stuff that saves money and it saves lives and it's just the right thing to do right so part of it is like what is what it means to be be conservative has changed so much over the past 10 years. Not for

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Well, and that's the benefit of being a mayor for every single Calgarian, is you can actually just look at the issue by issue. What is actually going to work for Calgarians, and how do we get that done without being so bogged down by the party bullshit?

Zain 13:34

This is the part of the show where you, Mayor Farkas, ask your chief of staff if this was still a good idea.

Zain 13:41

And he says, absolutely, because you're too deep in it. can i actually can i actually talk to you about coalition building like similarly to like lessons learned because tell

Zain 13:50

tell me did you have to rebuild your entire coalition it's it's dovetailing off of shannon's point which is like did you start with a center right base this election and build up to it or did you like fundamentally remake your coalition like i'm really curious i think i talked to you about this on the day after like did you what was it what did it look like well

SPEAKER_01 14:10

well it was one of the first interviews i did with rick bell and i told him you do not win the

SPEAKER_01 14:15

the race for mayor in this town without planting your flag in the middle and

SPEAKER_01 14:19

and appealing to reasonable people who want to get stuff done and that was really the focus of our policies and that was the focus of our team building was we tried to be pragmatic we tried to be practical and it wasn't just like the calgary party alberta party style stand for everything without specifics like we had 189 specific Policy proposals, like on how we were going to be championing the arts, how we were going to be supporting housing options for Calgarians, how we were going to keep Calgary moving, how we were going to support our newcomers, how we were going to make sure that youth could stay. And it was the specific details that I think brought a lot of that goodwill. And it's more about practical solutions at the municipal landscape, which it really isn't left or right. It's are they going to pick up the phone? Are they going to show up at my community association event? And are they going to be willing to work the long nights on some really boring planning stuff?

SPEAKER_08 15:16

So just to follow up on that, did you think about sequencing at all? did you think about like i'm going to talk about the arts first i'm going to talk about housing first i'm going like how did you think about that that strategy it seems like you were trying to build a coalition on specific policy throws so were you thinking okay this is the one that's going to build the biggest tent fastest or was it just like oh no arts is ready to go kind of nowhere to go on let's go no

SPEAKER_01 15:44

no like it was there wasn't really a strategy behind that that granularly like we knew that say the the mayor's celebration for the arts was coming up we knew that we had a lot of ideas around the arts so we figured this is a great time and if we're talking about the city of two million people we knew it was going to be the creative industries we knew it was going to be all of these things for us to be able to succeed as a city but no you can't game that out too much because if it was super polished if it was sequenced like that people would see through it and uh even the parks policy you know it came from my experience as a a

SPEAKER_01 16:17

not-for-profit CEO at Colombo Ranch. Some of the other safety policy came from my experience with the Alex and others. So no, there wasn't a lot of strategy behind that. And it was mostly because like back in April, when we really started in earnest, like not a lot of people were paying attention, but we knew that we could really pierce through to the folks who were extra interested in a particular topic by having really good policy.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Hogan, did you want to jump in?

Corey 16:44

i'm just looking at steven during all of this and watching him slowly die inside as

Carter 16:59

repeal and replace what

Carter 17:01

what are you replacing it with

SPEAKER_01 17:04

it turns out people don't want an apex in the middle of a block with no parking so

Carter 17:08

so what are you okay that's that's great that's what we're not doing what

Carter 17:11

what are you gonna do

Corey 17:16

Oh. No, no, not that. Six plex.

Corey 17:20

We can keep going lower.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

it's community and local area plans, not to get too much into the weeds, right? But it's support the housing. Oh, so it's nothing

Carter 17:32

No, it's support. Okay, no, I wanted to know. I just needed to hear it. I just needed to hear it. I wanted to hear it. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Once I heard it, I understood.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

money from other levels of government to build housing that's actually affordable for people. Oh, don't you worry. I got that budget over there.

Corey 17:48

Corey, why don't you read us some from the good book? You know, $7 billion additional for Build Canada Homes, man. I'm just telling you, you and me can run around spending that all over this city.

Zain 18:00

to take more than three. There are vomit bags underneath here if you

Zain 18:08

Any final questions for the mayor? I mean, well, genuinely, we appreciate you doing this and showing up here. But

Zain 18:14

But we also got to move on, Carter.

Carter 18:16

No, I think we should live here.

Zain 18:19

You like this? This

Carter 18:20

This is actually adding a lot to

Carter 18:21

to your business. I think this has been

Zain 18:21

super fun for both of us. You know, I do. Can I? Annalise, do you have anything? Shannon, do you have anything? Yeah.

Annalise 18:27

I mean, this is like a room full of political nerds. And budget is coming up. Can you, in like non-key message-esque answers, can you talk to us? oh

Carter 18:39

oh like he can do that can

Annalise 18:40

can can can you talk so it's like get in the weeds this is the audience to get in the weeds the budget is coming up that's the first big thing people are like how is he going to govern is he going to be right is he going to be left is he going to be center give us like that inside look at budget look

Carter 19:00

look at look at john they're shaking

SPEAKER_01 19:03

shaking his head john he's

SPEAKER_01 19:04

he's looking John hasn't had a breath in six minutes.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

But he's going to last more than six minutes.

Zain 19:15

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Explain that.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Oh, God, I didn't realize I could have gone different. I mean six minutes in his job at City Hall. Yeah, we got that. No, we understood. Oh,

Zain 19:33

Oh, actually, I did not. I 100% did not.

Zain 19:38

I thought our mayor stepped into a sex joke and was.

Zain 19:42

Not while I'm wearing the change thing. And I'm no longer going to be our mayor.

Zain 19:48

Also on stage for the podcast was Calgary Confederation MP Corey Ogun.

Carter 19:55

Wait, we're in a church.

Carter 19:57

We're in a church, Lynn.

Carter 20:00

isn't going to be public, is it?

Zain 20:02

I'll let you answer about you. and then maybe what we'll let you do is answer the budget and then any other final closing thoughts because we do genuinely appreciate you being here.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

know, we got a great team of councillors we're working with, right? We're hearing a lot about public safety. We're hearing about the need to...

SPEAKER_01 20:19

had a safety policy too. It wasn't... No,

Carter 20:22

No, no, no, no, no, no. Let's go back to the great team of councillors.

Carter 20:30

Should we name names?

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Well, what did you guys spend a million dollars to elect EJ he's a million dollar man we

Carter 20:36

we didn't spend a million dollars you're thinking of Edmonton no

Carter 20:42

no I'm confused about I'm

Carter 20:44

I'm confused about this because the people on council you know Annalise has asked about the budget half

Carter 20:51

half of the council a little bit more than half about nine people actually think that this is going to be a fiscally responsible budget we're going to cut cut cut and then there's another group of people on council who who think that we should spend spend spend and you're kind of well you're everywhere jeremy you're all over the place and the question that we this is going to be the first opportunity for us to see you know what

Carter 21:14

what does serious leadership look like and how are you going to be able to be a serious leader when you're surrounded by some of the clowns that are on council

Corey 21:25

said federal grants but that was no you know go federal

SPEAKER_01 21:33

well we have to invest right like we've heard from daboos in the crowd about the importance of public safety investments we need to continue to to invest there and and policing and that's one element of it but to actually get ahead of this root causes we're talking about mental health addictions treatments all of the things to actually be fiscally responsible that's a big piece we've heard a lot about transit which is important i believe we have upwards of $20 million in net new funding for core transit infrastructure elements. We have tens of million dollars of capital for a new affordable housing project in Southview. So there's a lot of ways that we can still drive down the increase that the previous council approved while still responding to what Calgarians have told us is important.

Carter 22:21

No I'm just looking forward to the circus.

Carter 22:25

It's gonna gonna be fun good

Zain 22:29

ladies and gentlemen the mayor of calgary jeremy farkas

Zain 22:40

farkas you want to stay on stage just hang out we're gonna we're gonna move it over to uh to hogan so um yeah stay over there all right yeah stay over there so there's another podcast ish i don't know what you'd call it like like mini podcast we do once a month yeah we check in with hogan to see how things are are going it's called ministry of podcasts um we're gonna do a a truncated version of that right now

Zain 23:25

what's up hogan well

Corey 23:27

well i accepted an invite to this really weird event tonight

Corey 23:31

yeah where was it you

Corey 23:34

know spiritually i'm not even sure mentally i'm clear

Zain 23:39

carter what do you want to talk to hogan about well i mean we know what he wants to talk about which is fucking

Carter 23:46

no but i'm really interested in actually talking about the budget it. Here's my question for you, Mr. Hogan. You have sat in the strategists for a number of years and talked about how the budget is a communications document. The 400-page tome that you've brought, is

Carter 24:04

is that the communications document that you not

Carter 24:08

not necessarily would have written, but the one that you can get 100% behind? And don't just give us the political answer well

Corey 24:14

yeah look key messages cory no can we start with what we think this budget needed to be like if you want to talk about from a communication sex i can tell you what i think about it from like a policy exercise and i think from a policy exercise it needed to address some economic fundamentals i think it needed to preserve spending in some essential areas and i think it needed to say okay we've got big challenges and so that's going to take big spending and And on that sense, I think it did, and we can get into it here. But let's talk about it from a communications exercise. From a communications exercise, what Canadians are looking for is a substantive plan. So you can talk about 400 pages, but

Corey 24:53

but the very fact that it's 400 pages and it has that kind of depth and gets into it was kind of an essential part of the communications exercise. But there's other parts of it, too. You have the visuals of it, which, let's totally unpack them, because God knows, you know, we should talk about the icebreaker on the cover a lot. But there's also then 20 pages of story, and the story is actually not a great, fun story. It's a, the world is tough story. And so, in many ways, what it did is it repositioned the stakes, and it talked about how we're going to respond to it. So the way I think about it is, you're

Corey 25:30

you're sitting there, you're an economist, you're trying to resolve certain problems. The first thing you got to do is you've got to sit and say, what

Corey 25:37

what are we trying to do?

Corey 25:39

What do we have at hand to do it? And how do we get there? And I think the budget does do that. And I think it's a bit of a shame that after the budget was released, we immediately got distracted by a bit of a sideshow across the way with floor crossings and Pierre Polyev's leadership because, you know, it's a good budget. And I'd like to talk more about the budget.

Zain 25:57

budget. So when you're sitting in the house and you realize that Matt Gennaro is leaving, tell me about. Guys, that was crazy. Tell me about the story. I'm

Corey 26:06

I'm legit. Like, weren't you actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, can we start the day? These

Corey 26:10

These sideshows are taking

Zain 26:11

taking over the budget. Okay, here we go.

Corey 26:15

lasted five seconds before i myself was taken over by the side shows okay

Corey 26:20

okay on budget day on on on the day of francois philippe's speech right we

Corey 26:28

are sitting there and all of a sudden there's politico reporting that chris d'entremont is thinking about leaving the conservative party and that's weird right like it's weird to see that and think about because it kind of feels like it's done when you see that in many ways. And Chris himself has said, like, geez, wish it didn't come out like that, right? But we're sitting there, and this is during a speech that FPC makes. It's pretty long. We call him FPC, by the way. And we leave the speech, and myself and a friend and a colleague of mine, Eric St. Pierre, who's an MP from Montreal, we're

Corey 27:03

we're going to an event.

Corey 27:05

And while we're in the car on the way to the event, we get he's been kicked out of the conservative caucus whoa wow that's wild too right and then the very before we have had our first course at the event he's a member of the liberal caucus and that was crazy that was really fast and certainly we've been hearing rumors for a while of people that were kind of not thrilled and all of that and can

Corey 27:25

can you blame them and um and

Corey 27:29

and so then it's

Corey 27:30

it's just pandemonium in ottawa like ottawa is a funny city can i say so the week before i you couldn't walk down a hall in parliament without somebody throwing a microphone in your face and saying are we going to a christmas election you know this is unstable you guys don't have the votes uh you know those parties aren't with you and then all of a sudden you couldn't walk down the hall without them saying do you have a majority government is this coming like what's that you know it's a very frenetic city it's it's it's a city that needs to find its inner calm it does not have it and

Corey 27:57

and um and so that's going on and then we are sitting in the literal first vote of the the budget, which is a vote on the conservative sub-amendment to the block amendment, because Pierre Paulier forgot to move an amendment. Also weird, but maybe a bit of a sideshow to the sideshow.

Corey 28:16

And we have what's called standing votes. That's where you see them stand up and they'll say like, oh, Mr. Gay, Mr. Hogan, you know, Mr. Ramsey, as they go down the line and they kind of clock us all. And the standing vote is literally going on when the news that Matt That Gennaro is not there. Breaks. We're sitting in the House of Commons. You've got to keep in mind this is a conservative motion we're voting on. We're looking across to the other aisle and we're thinking, what the fuck's going on? Where are these guys? It's like one third full. The mover, you know, or at least that Pierre Polyev was supposed to move it. You know, he's not there in the House of Commons. And then as the conservatives are voting yay on their motion, this news breaks. And all of a sudden, MPs are exchanging phones. Is this real? Hey, did you see this article? Including on the other side? Well, I think on our side. On our side, okay. I think they knew. Because half of them didn't show up, right?

Corey 29:08

And we're, like, in real time trying to process what this information means. And so Matt Jenner has put out a thing that, please

Corey 29:16

please don't contact my family. I'm not running. I hope to talk to the house again at least once before I leave.

Corey 29:22

And we're like, wow, what is going on? And, of course, there's lots of rumors, and you can get them elsewhere. but you know we actually if

Corey 29:30

if it had been a tactic it would have been brilliant because like we were having to yank each other up to vote people were distracted it was crazy but he himself did not vote he

Corey 29:40

he abstained on that which is a little unusual and and it just kicked that rumor mill that was already at 11 to 15 and and again you just you couldn't go anywhere without that being the talk of town so

SPEAKER_08 29:52

so i'm to business with federal politics now so i'm paying a lot more attention to it yeah and

Shannon 30:01

and but i also in the morning of the the d'entremont i

Shannon 30:07

also heard three or four more so

Shannon 30:09

so was mr d'entremont essentially did he just blab and actually foreclose a whole bunch of others that could have gone i

Corey 30:19

haven't been involved in the conversation but i'll tell you this because this is like barely

Corey 30:24

barely qualifies as gossip in ottawa at this point for weeks people had been talking about a few conservatives who were on weeks you know it was always sort of sitting out there ah there's some people who are unhappy oh you never know what's going to happen with pierre's leadership really started with the rcmp thing so when pierre polliev described the actions of the rcmp is despicable like all of a sudden there

Corey 30:45

there there was drama there was strife live and um and then very specific rumors reporters would reach out and say i've heard seven names can you confirm the seven names i'm like i can confirm i've heard the same seven names you have that's not really confirming anything right these are the rumors and there's a lot of wish casting in ottawa if you really want something to happen you

Corey 31:04

you turn it into a rumor and then you see where it goes uh but yeah no i had certainly heard a longer list of names and um and

Corey 31:13

and certainly Unfortunately, well,

Corey 31:15

well, we just saw what happened. But, you know, it's hard to say what's real and what's fake sometimes in Ottawa.

Carter 31:21

Jeremy Farkas is leader of the Calgary Party. Did you hear about that?

Corey 31:27

Nobody's talking about the Calgary Party, Stephen.

Zain 31:38

in a city obsessed with gossip like Ottawa, no

Zain 31:40

no one's talking about the Calgary Party. Shannon. Corey,

Shannon 31:43

Corey, can you tell us about what post-budget rollout week is like? Because I don't think people fully understand how busy constituency weeks are, and especially the week after budget, and how everybody has to fan out and do stuff.

Corey 31:56

Yeah, so, well, as Shannon well knows, I was the DM of communications in Alberta. And for me, it was like, oh, just put these things on a chart. The little MLAs will go around. The ministers will do this stuff. It looks like a nice full chart. Isn't that nice, right?

Corey 32:09

It is crazy. Like, you just go from event to event, stakeholder to stakeholder, meeting to announcement, and it never ends. It starts at 7 a.m. and it ends at 10 p.m. every day. Clearly, I'm playing hooky because here we are right now. But, yeah, it's pretty relentless. And when it's a federal budget, there's a lot of affinity for what's called echo announcements, too. So a nice way to describe that would be not news.

Corey 32:34

You know, we invite people to not news, and we hope they show up. but it's just doing the not news in a different region and hoping the regional media kind of attend and so yeah you know you immediately get home if you're uh if you're a minister or a parliamentary secretary like me or an mp representing a region that has its own media markets and you just do announcements you um and so i'll just use myself example saturday we we re-announced budget writ large on sunday we talked about climate competitiveness specifically specifically monday the finance minister is in town and we're doing a series of activities around that today i did a housing announcement also tied to budget guess what not my only announcements this week and they just continue and in addition to all of those you're doing interviews you are meeting with stakeholders who are affected by the budget and you are also trying to put out your own communications on all of these things so

Shannon 33:27

so how much does it annoy you that people say that you're on a break week from parliament and you're not really working it's

Corey 33:33

it's torture like uh i it's a constituency week and and frankly even that it's is a stretch because it's like it's the big macro narratives that you are pushing in your constituency it's really just going on tour with with the budget and hearing what people think about the budget so

Zain 33:50

so we promised folks in this audience that this show would go 7 30 to 9 30 it's now 9 30 some of you may have babysitters at home, and my advice to you is take it from the Northeast. Kids can raise themselves.

Zain 34:03

So stick around. We want to go. Can we go another half hour or so? You guys can honestly leave whenever you need to. I totally understand the realities of life. But I have another question for Kogan, and I want to open up the floor. So can we do another 30? Are we cool doing that? Yeah, I'm good.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

I think it's Carter's bedtime. Way past my bedtime. It is way past

Zain 34:24

past your bedtime, but but the euphoria of other people succeeding probably should keep you up for a while.

Carter 34:35

I worked on his

Zain 34:35

his campaign too. I know, and now he's doing so well sitting by himself, not even close to you.

Zain 34:44

Hogan, my sort of concluding question, not to say this last question for you, is are

Zain 34:50

you still loving it?

Zain 34:52

And has there been a new part of it that you like liked or disliked qp for example you break up as something you fucking hate is

Zain 34:59

there anything that's been put on the radar in terms of i did not know i like this or i like this or this is not or meeting my expectations like bring

Corey 35:07

bring us into the job yeah i mean look there are more good days than bad i i think i'm where i want to be and need to be and i'm happy to be doing it am i loving i'm not sure i ever loved it i'm not sure this is a lovable job and just look look at Shannon. Yeah, she's with me. It's pretty

Corey 35:24

pretty relentless. And it's relentless in ways that hurt the people around you, your family most directly, right? I really hate the travel. I really hate being away from my wife and kids for so long. The fall is the worst in Ottawa, like almost half of the sitting weeks are in the fall, if you're a federal politician. So I don't see my family a ton these days and as already established i'm home and i'm not home like i'm not seeing my family right now and that's tough and that is just the reality of this job and

Corey 35:56

and you do it for your kids you do it for your family for your community for the people you love and you try to do the right thing but

Corey 36:04

but it's tough it's really really tough but

Corey 36:07

but i'm also a political animal and there's a lot that i like you know day to day when you're in the moment it doesn't bother you it's when you think about it but i

Corey 36:16

like doing a media scrum i like making a random speech i like just sounding off of my opinions and there's 30 microphones and i think oh i shouldn't have fucking said that so that's

Corey 36:27

that's so it's the podcast with better pay it's the podcast with better audio equipment

Corey 36:36

i i really like it and i and i and candidly i think i'm pretty good at it and so So that's nice because it's nice to succeed at things. But, um, my

Corey 36:44

my take on, thank you, but I'm just, Oh, he's got a butt. Let him, let him finish. But I don't, I don't know. I mean, like, do I aspire to do this my whole life? Holy cow. No, not at all. No. I

Zain 36:56

I feel like a modern politician is like an influencer who goes to the polls every four years. It really seems like that, doesn't it?

Corey 37:03

it? Kind of. But I think that's really dependent on where you are. Like, if you are a conservative in suburban Calgary or, frankly, a liberal in suburban Toronto, no, that's probably not your existence, right? But

Corey 37:14

But I think if you are somebody who is a lone voice for a region or you're from a region that has, like, a lot of personality and character, I'm thinking, like, Labrador, for example. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then I sort of agree with you. Yeah.

Shannon 37:27

Or if you really have to scrap it out for your seat, then

Shannon 37:30

then you have to

Corey 37:30

to do that. Then you have to. Then you have to. That's right. Right. And I think that the nice thing about being a liberal from Calgary is we

Corey 37:38

we know how to be scrappy. We know how to fight for attention. And we

Corey 37:43

definitionally going to have to be pretty attenuated to conservative environments, conservative arguments. And that provides a lot of value in a city that sometimes can only hear itself and hear the people most directly around it. Can we

Carter 37:54

we just unpack for a second the idea that he said that he's pretty good at this? Just out of curiosity, over

Carter 38:01

over the past, how

Carter 38:03

how long have I known you? 15 years? Is there anything you haven't been particularly good at?

Corey 38:07

Well, to be fair, though, you

Corey 38:13

just pretty good at stuff, you know?

Corey 38:16

How about you when you were running the Liberal Party of Alberta?

Corey 38:21

Kept them alive longer than anyone else could, my friend.

Zain 38:49

let's let's move it to the audience we've got 25

Zain 38:52

25 minutes on the clock block i

Zain 38:56

expected 15 of you to stay now that there's like a shit ton of you i don't know how we want to do this carter do you want to take like five six seven questions at a time four let's do four questions at a time take them in and then why don't we do three i'll never keep like seven

Corey 39:09

in my head yeah okay

Zain 39:10

okay let's do three yeah it's

Zain 39:11

it's fine let's reduce our ambition

Zain 39:13

ambition never remember them

Zain 39:14

let's do 28 questions at a time we all deserve our full attention

Corey 39:24

see steven that was a callback to something dumb you said

SPEAKER_01 39:27

said earlier so no

Carter 39:28

no that's good i

SPEAKER_01 39:30

just want to say that the burn unit is municipal jurisdiction

SPEAKER_01 39:37

that i shan't expect

Zain 39:40

what do we do let's just do hands well i'll try to pick some hands okay we'll do I see Lindsay right here. We'll do Lindsay and then gentlemen behind you and then I'll get those two We'll do we'll do those four. So very quick questions. I'll try to ingest them and then we'll go from there

Zain 39:57

pink signs question one sir

Zain 40:14

Vancouver comparison number two I've got with the glasses right there

Zain 40:31

women on council I'll get that one and I'll get one last one right

Zain 40:35

right right yeah right here and I'll get you next time sorry with it great

Zain 40:41

questions where do want to start carter i think a couple of them are at you so vancouver strategy pink science our name for calgary party and then we've got the women on council in calgary so you want to start with the first three i

Carter 40:51

i love the pink science i

Carter 40:54

i thought they were great they

Carter 40:55

they stood out they were visible yes

Corey 40:58

yes they they really divided you from jody gondek's pink science yeah

Carter 41:03

now in fairness she had to change to green because we had the pink we were pushing pink first no

Carter 41:08

no i I like the pink signs. They were, you know, you can call them an eyesore, but I mean, the real eyesore is the Zane Velzi for leader sign.

Zain 41:16

Galen Weston approved, I will say. Indeed. Carter, Vancouver's been able to do this. They run it like provincial. You've actually played in Vancouver. Vancouver,

Carter 41:24

Vancouver, Surrey, a number of different places with parties. Yeah. And they do treat it like, the differences they have at large.

Carter 41:32

As soon as you add at large, you're foundationally changing everything because now

Carter 41:36

now you're trying Explain that to

Zain 41:36

to people who may not understand.

Carter 41:38

Basically, we have wards here in Calgary. We have 14 wards to try and appeal. There's 12 wards in Edmonton. Those wards are individual little fiefdoms, but when you're doing an at-large, it's the whole city. So an at-large election is foundationally different, and it does change the connection because now you

Carter 42:01

you really can't reach every person. When I ran the by-election for ABC in Vancouver, hoover uh door

Carter 42:09

door knocking wasn't even something i thought about because what are we going to do door knock 900 you know 680 000 people it's just not going to happen so i didn't you

Carter 42:18

you know it was it's a different it's a different animal what

Zain 42:22

what would you rename the calgary party i

Carter 42:25

can't remember there was something really good that i really wanted to call it was

Zain 42:29

was it on the short list

Carter 42:29

list you mean oh yeah yeah

Carter 42:31

yeah it was kind of like anybody who we wound up going around and around and you You wind up losing anything that actually has meaning because

Carter 42:39

because everybody goes, no, that's too controversial. And I can't remember what it was, but it was controversial and it would have been great.

Annalise 42:47

Would you put housing in the name, given

Annalise 42:50

given what you're saying about going all in on housing? No,

Carter 42:52

No, because I would like it to last longer.

Zain 42:57

Shannon, Annalise, do you want to talk about the lack of women in council?

Shannon 43:02

Well, a really wise man once said that money is the currency of politics, and I

Shannon 43:12

I think that's true and that usually is some of your explanatory material for who gets elected and where. Carter's point was that they could do some of that centralized recruiting onto the ballot for a more diverse ballot using the party mechanism but when you are have people self-selecting onto the ballot I don't know if you've ever done candidate recruitment for a party I have and believe me it's always the dudes who are like oh yeah I'm totally qualified for this job right who will always self select themselves onto the ballot whereas women take more convincing always you always have to tell them that they don't need to know the full 400 hundred page budget or or be able to you know think about the macroeconomy like a central banker does in order to qualify for being a part of elected office you have to convince them of that it does take that extra uh a bit it also the fact is is that it is harder to raise money period for municipal candidates um that is especially so uh oftentimes for women that's what the political science tells us right and in this particular cycle you had some retirements and changeovers and so on and and some people who kind of just didn't well I'm thinking like Courtney Penner she just didn't get reelected for a whole bunch of reasons so you know the women that you did have as incumbents because that incumbency factor is huge there were two of them Gondek and Penner that did not get reelected and so they needed to probably be replaced in safe place in safer seats by women candidates who and

Shannon 44:53

probably the community needed to you know rally around them there may not have been the

Shannon 44:58

the right people in the right places if

Shannon 45:01

if that makes any sense right for a long time Drew Farrell was on that council now she's not there and I think the progressive replacement for her is is in fact a dude right so that incumbency factor was lost um and but if i don't know if there was any more than that to say then like money and recruitment it's always what it is and after

Zain 45:25

after annalise mayor fargus i want to maybe get you one in this too two women on council yeah i

Annalise 45:29

i mean i i think it to your point it's concerning it's it's the city council is very white and very male and And the limited reporters who are covering are also the same. And I would

Annalise 45:41

probably bounce that to the

Annalise 45:44

the gentleman sitting beside me in terms of like that governing for everyone, right? And our city is not super white and super male, right? We have a very diverse city. We have a very young city. And I'm curious for your take on it.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

Yeah, and obviously we all have our lived experience in blind spots. And when I was on the debate stage, I really emphasized that a majority of Calgary is now BIPOC. right more than a third of calgary today were not even born in north america and i really wanted to lean in that message and that there's traditional decisions

SPEAKER_01 46:15

decisions that have been made from city hall that have not reflected all of us or they've not really emphasized the need for especially equity seeking populations i'm a member of the lgbt community i bring a certain level of lived experience a newcomer family grew up in east calgary but that doesn't make up for the other blind spots so i I think it comes down to elevating the voices, making sure that we're sharing that leadership. And there's a hell of a lot that we can do to be able to cover for those blind spots on agencies, city boards, commissions, in terms of the nominations that we make to those boards, as well as the standard that we set for city administration itself. I

SPEAKER_01 46:52

I was quite surprised when I rejoined city council as mayor that it was largely the same leadership table, all around the same table. and that's a voice that I'm going to have to continue to to address obviously I have my own blind spots my own lived experience and it's about sharing that leadership growing the circle rather than assuming that we have all of the answers and and again this is an area that I'm looking to listen to Calgarians to to really see and hear how I can continue to be an advocate given my own limitations I

Zain 47:21

I want to go okay I'll go up this way and come down that way so the gentleman that didn't get in last time I'll go here and then I want to go up to the balcony to see if there's any hands so i'll get you first uh

Corey 47:38

the former leader of the calgary party okay

Zain 47:41

okay anyone on the balcony oh

Zain 47:43

oh they're shy okay i've got a hand here and i've got a hand here so i'll go here i'll go here and then i'll go here so

SPEAKER_05 47:50

uh forever Forever Canada, a show on stage that was never going to happen, never going to work. Oh,

SPEAKER_05 47:57

Why did it work? Why is it going to work?

Zain 48:00

Lessons from Forever Canada. Okay. Forever Canada, lessons learned. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 48:05

Better Edmonton is the worst name for a political party to discuss. Better

Zain 48:09

Better Edmonton is a terrible name for a political party to discuss. Third one right here.

Zain 48:22

Thoughts on Forever Canada, the Hogan, and then we'll head in. Can

Corey 48:26

Can I just say, like, I didn't think they had a snowball's chance in hell. What they did was extraordinarily

Corey 48:32

extraordinarily impressive, like extraordinarily impressive.

Corey 48:39

And it gives me a ton of heart that so many people love this country enough to say, yeah, absolutely okay i'm gonna go i'm gonna sign up uh to go to the farmer's market and get signatures and it just it really speaks to kind of the power of

Corey 48:54

of uh of of that network effect that we were talking about and how networks can kind of self-organize in this day and age too but in carter's defense it seemed really improbable and it's really cool they got it done and i'm you know i'm just so thrilled that they did carter

Corey 49:09

carter what lessons would

Zain 49:09

would you take from that and do you think it siphoned off attention, time, resources from the project you were up

Carter 49:16

Yeah, it absolutely siphoned off resources. It happened right over top of the municipal election, and a large number of people who have normally been involved with campaigns were involved with that campaign, and believed that to be far more important than the municipal elections that we were running.

Corey 49:32

Yeah, it turns out the Canada party trumps the Calgary party. Who knew?

Shannon 49:48

Okay, that's all I had to say.

Shannon 49:51

Well, two things on the Forever Canadian petition, though. To the point about the death of social media, that petition was organized almost exclusively on Facebook.

Shannon 50:00

So not entirely, not dead yet, you know, in the Monty Python reference. So that's the first thing. But the second thing is when I talked to Lukaszek in the summer, He said, well, we're hoping that municipal candidates take this with them and use it as something of a door opener and a conversation opener with people. Was that not a good idea?

Annalise 50:25

Gundick did at the very, very end.

SPEAKER_01 50:27

Well, back to April or something, like the very first communications piece or campaign published in the Calgary Herald was why Calgary needs to lead from

SPEAKER_01 50:36

from the heart of a strong and united Team Canada. and

SPEAKER_01 50:40

it was probably the communications piece that had the most traction during the course of the campaign and it surprised me just on a personal level why all of these other candidates the even Mayor Gondek didn't touch this as an issue until September of the election and they allowed us to essentially occupy that lane about how we can advocate for a better deal within Canada but we're Canadians first. Did

Annalise 51:02

Did you do a photo op signing it?

SPEAKER_01 51:04

I didn't I just signed it I think it was that I can't remember or sign it was probably end of the Rainbow Foundation where that's where I signed it to actually yeah I think

SPEAKER_01 51:15

think we both signed it on Tuesdays

Carter 51:20

Tuesdays and it was a good day we

Corey 51:25

we I remember we had a conversation what Stephen Carter doing seems so bad yeah fuck

Corey 51:34

fuck these guys okay Was

Carter 51:35

Was there another question that I'm supposed to answer? I think we got those

Zain 51:39

ones. Better Edmonton is the one that's on the table.

Zain 51:43

Terrible party name or worst party name was the...

Corey 51:47

the... Actually, as a lead into this, can we just talk about how funny it was that there was a Calgary party and a better Calgary party? Like...

Corey 52:09

then you made better edmonton and i just feel like best edmonton was ready to eat your lunch

Carter 52:20

mean abc is you know a better city uh in vancouver and abc Calgary became a better Calgary and then suddenly we had better Edmonton and I'm not going to defend it in

SPEAKER_01 52:36

fairness to you though like it weren't any of the names or any of the words in a federal provincial party prohibited like you couldn't use like liberal or conservative or progressive or any of these objects no but in hindsight I really wish I'd used marijuana I'll

Corey 52:54

I'll get get the next tranche but i've got to follow up i'll come to you in one second that's nice that's that was a nice one right there carter

Zain 52:58

carter can you strategize for me what should lukaszek do uh right now what

Zain 53:04

what should he do what advice would you give him he's got all

Zain 53:07

all these physical petition signatures the float of a new political party has not been denied i don't i can't say it's been green lit but like what what would you kind of think if you were him right now what advice would you give him open

Zain 53:21

open to anyone else but i'll start with carter i

Carter 53:27

don't i i don't know that i should be giving that advice

Carter 53:34

well because i think that my bias is towards something that is new and something that is

Carter 53:47

occupies the center that is completely unoccupied in Alberta I

Carter 53:52

would love to see something come back and I think that Thomas has reinvented himself again as a as a populist leader and could on some level help with the development of such a such a project anyone

Zain 54:04

anyone haven't want to have a shot or shake at that before I it sounds

Corey 54:07

sounds like Carter wants to run 87 provincial campaigns yeah

Carter 54:13

yeah i would 67 would be fine yeah i would

SPEAKER_01 54:16

would just jump in and say keep the politicians away right like national unity is so important that it can't be one thing that either the ndp or ucp or liberal or conservatives or any individual can own and that would be my advice is keep the politicians away from this keep it grassroots keep it about canada and not about the partisan flavors of the day okay

Corey 54:35

okay yeah i mean i completely agree i think one of the real magic parts of what thomas did was he was you

Corey 54:43

you know a former deputy premier of a party that was dead and he just didn't neatly fit into any of the parties and that's why it was easy for everybody who loves canada to support it but i

Corey 54:53

i also think that's exactly why he

Corey 54:56

he and all of us need to get ready like there is still the possibility we have a referendum on this particular matter here, and

Corey 55:04

and the country is not a bargaining chip. It is never the

Corey 55:08

the hedge you put a gun to.

Corey 55:10

We love this country, and

Corey 55:11

and I think that means exactly what Mayor Farkas was saying here.

Corey 55:22

If you think for a minute your participation is a benefit to you but deleterious to the country, you stay away.

Corey 55:30

You make this about something bigger than you bigger than parties and I couldn't agree with

SPEAKER_01 55:34

with would you say that

SPEAKER_01 55:36

Confederation is worth fighting for you

SPEAKER_01 55:41

know Jeremy I would I

Zain 55:41

I would Jeremy thank you Shannon

Zain 55:44

Shannon Annalise you want to get in on this question are you good okay

Zain 55:48

okay happier glasses I'll go here and then I'll put your hands up you've got questions okay I see no others I'll come down this way yeah and I'll go this way

Zain 56:03

the the recall petition against gandhi i suspect that's to

Zain 56:10

okay we got that uh front row right here and then i'll go back this way yes how

SPEAKER_05 56:15

how much do you think the calgary party was negatively affected by people who rejected the concept of parties as like a principle parties

Zain 56:24

parties as a principal rejection

SPEAKER_08 56:28

Why did you go hard on Smith, last part?

Zain 56:36

Why not sooner? Okay. And then, yeah, one right there.

Zain 56:46

Okay. So we got, we got recall petition, recall success going forward, right? Right. Assuming your question is Chosy Gondek recall petition. Right. We got a question here about the recall against UCP MLAs and

Zain 57:02

and what the success factors are required.

Zain 57:06

We got a question on why not Danielle Smith sooner and then an outright question on party rejection.

Zain 57:13

I'm happy to start anywhere. Carter, do you have a

Zain 57:17

I'm going to bundle the recall questions together.

Carter 57:19

Well, I'll start with the recall question. I think that sometimes

Carter 57:23

sometimes politics really works from a positive place, and we achieve things positively. I think that we can talk about the Forever Canada petition as one of those positive places. I think that Cory's election was one of those positive places where, yay, yay, where, you know, we were able to capture things. It doesn't mean it was not without negativity. It doesn't mean it was not without an enemy or an antagonist

Carter 57:46

antagonist by any stretch of the imagination. nation but

Carter 57:50

it was positive it was designed to be positive and then there's landon johnson and

Carter 57:54

and what he tried to do and landon

Carter 57:56

landon johnson uh his entire campaign his entire positioning

Carter 58:00

positioning of the recall campaign is just negative i didn't want joe t gondek to be our mayor after about 100 days

Corey 58:09

you're rounding up a bit there

Carter 58:10

there rounding out no it's the hundredth day it was yeah Yeah, making it right on the money.

Zain 58:16

heard you lasted longer than six minutes.

Zain 58:23

I'm not going to let you forget about that, Marcus. It's really

SPEAKER_01 58:27

really stepped in it,

Zain 58:27

didn't I? Yeah, no, you did. Thank

Carter 58:28

Thank you. No, I think that there's

Carter 58:33

there's some things that are just wrong. And that recall petition, I think, was wrong. And I think that it's an interesting juxtaposition

Carter 58:46

juxtaposition with the Recall Alberta petitions. You know, where's Ryan? Ryan's right here. Alberta is recalling.

Carter 58:55

I mean, part of me loves the reversal,

Carter 58:58

reversal, right? Oh, we're going to get them.

Carter 59:02

We're using their tools against them. I don't like the tool.

Carter 59:05

I don't like the tool. I think that recall is not a tool that should be in our toolbox. I think it's mostly negative. And I think that the fact that it can be used does

Carter 59:15

does not necessarily mean that it should be. Shannon,

Zain 59:17

Shannon, what do you think? Do you want to get in on this? Sure.

Shannon 59:20

Sure. As someone who 18 months ago could have been recalled, I think I love it and I hate it. I love it because I know that it is making the UCP MLIs who have no reason to be jittery, like in places where they won by 30 points or whatever they are nervous i find that delicious

Shannon 59:40

um because they are so brittle and they're so insecure and it's just really a lot of fun to watch um but i hate it because it's dumb to carter's point uh in our westminster parliament you elect people for their term and then they enjoy the confidence of parliament or the legislature or they do not and that is how we end

Shannon 1:00:05

end our terms is we visit the

Shannon 1:00:08

the lieutenant governor of the governor general and or

Shannon 1:00:11

or we fall on a motion of confidence or supply that is the system so I

Shannon 1:00:17

I hate it from that perspective I also hate it from the perspective of diverting organizing resources because I obviously I'm a new Democrat and I would like my friends to be in government after the next election um

Shannon 1:00:29

um and i know how hard it is to get elected in the seats that we um it's going to be really hard for a lot of people to get re-elected especially in this town where they won by two four six hundred votes i also know how hard it's going to be to win the more marginal seats where we are competitive but not quite and didn't make it over the line in 23 and what it's actually going to take and

Shannon 1:00:56

and believe me it's going to take those organizing resources that people are putting into recall to

Shannon 1:01:01

to get that like my friends in let's bridge east were like hey we should recall nathan i'm like or you

Shannon 1:01:07

you could elect a new democrat because it also takes the same amount of organizing resources so

Zain 1:01:16

so i love it and i hate it is it an either or though or is there is there a A sort of version of it, this is where I was hoping the dotted line of Forever Canada would kind of potentially

Zain 1:01:25

potentially lead to recall, but NDP, Forever Canada, recall, is there not like a growing

Zain 1:01:31

growing up to an electoral outcome at some point versus the diversion of resources? Any thoughts on this? Yeah,

Corey 1:01:37

Yeah, look, I think it's an ecosystem of action, but I don't think that all of that, never mistake action for direction, right? And it is actually not going to be very easy to channel all of those forces all

Corey 1:01:48

all of the same way all of the time. And that was one of my concerns with some of Stephen's commentary about, yeah, I use this as an opportunity to create X or Y or Z. Well, it's not X or Y or Z, it's A.

Corey 1:01:58

And so you've got to be very careful about drawing those straight parallels along the way.

Corey 1:02:03

I it's got people who have not been passionate about politics passionate about politics and that's great but I think Shannon's dead right those political organizer classes they

Corey 1:02:13

they should think about what's

Corey 1:02:15

what's the level of effort required for this which by the way is then just a vote to see whether you remove somebody to see whether or not there's an election where maybe there's somebody who's a more palatable conservative or

Corey 1:02:26

or just go out and win a fucking election in like two years like it's coming right at you I

Zain 1:02:31

guess the question I have is what does it tell you about the pent-up enthusiasm or

Zain 1:02:36

or the pent-up sort of desire to do something that I think is partially present in this room as well today

Zain 1:02:42

today in terms of saying it's a thing I can do right away it's in Ryan's

Corey 1:02:44

Ryan's shirt yeah it's marketing right there right

Zain 1:02:47

right like what does it tell you about that sort of we talked about communities network effects anything it tells anyone on this stage it's

Carter 1:02:55

it's fun to punch sometimes that's

Carter 1:02:57

that's just it's some it is fun to punch and land below and and if it makes your enemy feel skittish and uncomfortable and upset then that makes you feel good it's

Carter 1:03:11

is this the best tactic for the long term it's

Carter 1:03:15

i'm not going to do this just for now

Zain 1:03:19

had some party questions carter why didn't you hit daniel smith sooner i think

Zain 1:03:24

think you partially answered that but if you want to add a finer point to that which is one of the questions and then the second question just coupling it in overall lack of enthusiasm for parties how did that impact your party yeah

Carter 1:03:35

yeah so the the why didn't we hit daniel smith sooner the the simplicity of it is that uh we felt like she was teflon she

Carter 1:03:43

she just kept all summer long everything Everything that was thrown at her just seemed to bounce right off of her.

Carter 1:03:48

And we thought, well, we're

Carter 1:03:50

we're not going to even try and throw punches.

Carter 1:03:52

And that was just erroneous thinking.

Zain 1:03:56

Can we do one final round? End it there? There

Zain 1:04:01

Parties overall. Yeah. Sorry,

Carter 1:04:01

Sorry, sorry, sorry. There was a myth that was created. It was very well done by a guy named Farkas. Anyways, the parties were in some fashion bad. bad. And

Carter 1:04:11

And the progressives took that positioning, the glorious mayor beside me took that positioning as though there would be something that would be wrong if

Carter 1:04:21

if they were to win. And we were unable to battle that, and I didn't foresee it coming, but

Carter 1:04:30

but it's just wrongheaded.

Carter 1:04:33

It's just wrongheaded. We use parties at every level of government, and not only that, informal formal parties appear uh virtually with every municipal uh election uh so i just think that it's it's wrong-headed parkis

Zain 1:04:49

are you forever anti-party we

SPEAKER_01 1:04:51

we we do it at these other levels but should we yes

Corey 1:04:54

absolutely obvious follow-on question and i think i've really been fascinated by this conversation about municipal parties over the past like year and change people can so easily see the problem with parties in situations where they don't already exist but to your point those

Corey 1:05:11

those problems do manifest provincially and federally there's no there's no denying it right like parties are great

Corey 1:05:16

great for organizing they are not great for a lot of other things right they're

Carter 1:05:21

they're great for governing they're

Carter 1:05:22

they're great raising money

Carter 1:05:23

money money organization structure getting women involved in politics bringing minorities involved in politics we can set so many many goals

Corey 1:05:32

achieved them. But, can I just say on the women and minorities point, there were more before there were parties.

Carter 1:05:41

you make of that? Well, I mean, it took a wrong turn for a while there when we let the men be in charge.

Carter 1:05:46

But we're back on track.

Zain 1:05:50

Attempts by the MP from Calgary Confederation to move his chair. I'll do one final round and we'll wrap it up. Okay, I've got...

Zain 1:05:58

Okay, okay, I'm going to get balcony because the enthusiasm enthusiasm is off the charts, and I'm going to go there, and then I'm going to go, where's someone pointing? Oh,

Zain 1:06:05

Oh, yeah, okay. One, two, and then I'll go three. Okay, go ahead.

Zain 1:06:23

Okay, so the question, just to repeat it, advice from Carter and Shannon to both Farkas and Hogan regarding what to do about the notwithstanding clause yay thumb up okay I got the question sir how

Zain 1:06:37

how was it the same question it's such a fucking specific question. I'll take it as the same question. You know, free

SPEAKER_05 1:06:44

politicians may seem undemocratic, and I agree.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:49

Notwithstanding flaws also comes across as undemocratic.

Zain 1:06:54

It's a version of the same question. Okay, I'll get the final question with this lovely woman right here. The

SPEAKER_05 1:07:00

is the rejection of municipal parties, actually the rejection of the government that brought that in.

Zain 1:07:09

let's start with that one the rejection of municipal parties being uh correlated with the rejection of danielle smith and the i think

Carter 1:07:15

think this is where we if we named it a little bit differently if we if we you know the anti-smith party the you know something along those lines we would have done much better uh people thought that the only group that would be using the legislation were the sycophants that surrounded danielle smith and it was a mistake on our part not to well mistaken a failure not to uh not to drive that home let's

Zain 1:07:40

let's let's talk notwithstanding clause um what advice would you have for these two fine elected gents on stage shannon can i start with you first and then carter and at least let you jump in as well of course well

Shannon 1:07:52

well the whole point when it was brought in was that the check on it would be both uh in a parliament or a legislature but also in broader civil society and through public debate when

Shannon 1:08:04

when you go back and look at the the justification for bringing it in that was the idea that people would speak up and there would be you know uh both a political price to be paid and some form of social opprobrium

Shannon 1:08:18

so far neither thing has happened uh

Shannon 1:08:21

uh there has been i think there's there's going you're going going to see an uptick in public opinion that is anti-Smith or pro-NDP, and I think you will see a further softening of her leadership

Shannon 1:08:34

leadership approval numbers in

Shannon 1:08:37

in subsequent polling that I'm sure Leger will be out in the field, for example. I'd be shocked if even Abacus doesn't go out and do a set.

Shannon 1:08:46

But the point is that there has to be political

Shannon 1:08:50

political pushback outside of the courts there is no courts check if

Shannon 1:08:55

if you want to act unconstitutionally so the constitution therefore has to be us um

Shannon 1:09:02

um and so i think each level of government needs to think very carefully about how they insert themselves into that that debate wouldn't advise it for the federal government um just because albertans are not interested uh in i think that conversation It'll be really interesting to hear what the Supreme Court has to say about the parameters of judicial review around it, but other forms of government and forms of civil society can and should be

Shannon 1:09:34

be saying something, because I'll remind people that one of the reasons why Alan Blakeney agreed

Shannon 1:09:40

agreed to have the notwithstanding clause in there is because he thought that That maybe Section 7 would be used by corporations when NDP governments wanted to nationalize things.

Shannon 1:09:54

So, you know, that is a left-wing use case for the notwithstanding clause. It could go a number of different ways. The pushback has to come from society. society. And there's a reason why Blakeney

Shannon 1:10:09

Blakeney never had to use it in the potash decisions that he made in the 70s and 80s. Hogan,

Zain 1:10:16

Hogan, I'll let you go in a second, but Carter, you've got a municipal politician, a municipal leader, and a federal MP on stage. What advice would you give them about

Zain 1:10:24

about the notwithstanding clause and whether it's an issue they need to swing on and how hard?

Carter 1:10:29

Well, it'd be really easy to say, you know, you don't need to swing because it's not a municipal issue it's not a federal issue it's an everyone issue and and I think that you do need to swing by a swing and you need to make sure that people understand that this is wrong it was wrong with the teachers it'll be wrong with the trans kids it'll be wrong with whoever else they choose to bring it forward with it is it's

Carter 1:10:54

it's incumbent upon all of us and new incumbent upon our leaders the most so my recommendation to both Jeremy and to Corey would be to to remember that you're a leader first and a political operative second. Lead, take us against this undemocratic use of the notwithstanding clause.

Corey 1:11:22

Either of you gents want to get in? Hogan?

Corey 1:11:24

Look, I don't like the notwithstanding clause. I've got a lot of problems with it because its use in the real world has been not

Corey 1:11:32

not as advertised so exactly what shannon said the intention originally was that it was to be a final fail

Corey 1:11:39

fail safe against courts run amok the intention was you use it for

Corey 1:11:44

for 90 10 issues 80 20 issues maybe 70 30 issues you never were supposed to use it for 50 50 issues and we're now using it on 40 60 issues depending on the jurisdiction and that's that's really horrifying and that's problematic and I think some of it starts with making sure that we we

Corey 1:12:04

we the collective we as citizens are willing to take our part in this because the Constitution gave

Corey 1:12:10

gave us the most important part and that's throwing the bums out when they break the rules and when they use these things illegitimately because let's be clear the

Corey 1:12:20

the Constitution by default allows

Corey 1:12:22

allows reasonable limits it is baked right in to the first first

Corey 1:12:27

first words of the the constitution the notwithstanding clause by definition is when a government wants to impose an

Corey 1:12:34

an unreasonable limit a limit that goes beyond what would be normally justifiable in a free and democratic society so it better be pretty pretty

Corey 1:12:45

pretty damn universally accepted it better be the kind of thing that very few people are going to object to a super majority support for

Corey 1:12:54

for sure and what we have right now is not that and that's

Corey 1:12:57

that's a problem and that's a problem we're all going to have to grapple with

Corey 1:13:02

but if you think someone's going to come along and change the constitution to save you, you are dreaming in technicolor get

Corey 1:13:07

out there and throw the bums out

Zain 1:13:14

have been a fantastic audience one more time, Shannon Phillips Annalise Plingbeil, Stephen Carter special guest Jeremy Farkas Corey Hogan, to our producer producer Haxum and Ryan. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great evening, everyone.

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