Episode 816: Just visiting

SPEAKER_00 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 816. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, happy Sunday. Happy Sunday, Zain. It

Corey 0:10

It is so exciting to be here with you and with Stephen to get to talk about political strategy and strategy more generally. I have never been more enthused for an episode of The Strategists.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Well, thank you, Corey. Thank you for promoting our podcast as if it was an ad off the top for our own podcast. Really a fully encompassing definition of what the show is about. And then a monotonous level of enthusiasm, which I think our fans appreciate. So thank you. Carter, how are you doing outside of taking screenshots of maps telling us you were outdoors? How was the rest of your weekend?

Carter 0:45

That's all I did. All I did was outdoors. So that's all. if you guys don't want me talking about how fit I am and how fabulous then that's all I have that's all I have today sorry

Carter 0:55

sorry feel bad I'm

Corey 0:59

I'm hard pass by me yeah yeah

SPEAKER_00 1:00

yeah yeah uh Corey and I were of course watching uh bubble basketball which is the only thing we care about uh the Portland Trailblazers are in Corey uh the Santa I know I missed the playoffs for the first time in like two decades well

Corey 1:13

well that's gotta upset you because that literally there are people in the I'd say the majority of the NBA was not alive last time the Spurs were out of the playoffs. Insanity.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Insanity. I think it was 97? 97.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

That's something else. I

Carter 1:29

I know I was shocked.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Good contribution, Stephen. Thank you, Carter. Carter's cocktail chatter usually is, I know I was shocked. And also, of course, the very classic, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Carter's classic contributions to sports conversations. Corey, you were saying, before we move on.

Corey 1:51

Well, I think that there's the real possibility of an eight-seat upset at this point. I think Dame is balling out of his mind. I wouldn't necessarily put good money on it, but I think there's a better than,

Corey 2:00

you know, I would say it's like the Trump odds. It's 29%, I would say, that the Blazers can pull this all off. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah, I think it's pretty good. I mean, if Dame's going crazy, CJ McCollum ends the games like he does, because Nurkic is just playing a great five game. Positionless basketball, Carter. That's what it's about. By the way, you know what? You're

Carter 2:20

You're both wrong. An eight over

Carter 2:24

over one just doesn't happen. You're betting on the underdog because you believe in the fairy tale story. It's not going to happen. Write it down because my predictions are

Carter 2:33

are gold, as you know.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Yeah, that's right. We're going to definitely replay this as part of our ongoing Twitter series. Two things before we move on.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

ringer podcast network if you are listening that was just a sampling of how cory and i can jam on pretty much any topic uh this one of course being basketball so give us a fucking podcast and of course if you've got some extra advertisers we're happy to take them as well uh as you know we've been pitching zip recruiter for a very long time they did not get back to us uh but cory this is against your wishes but we do have our first ad it is for our own podcast called you the people a lot of american content was recorded on thursday so go check out you the the people that was of course the the very quick teaser for for that podcast are you okay with that you're comfortable that i did that cory so

Corey 3:15

so the strategist brought to you by you the people is that what just happened right there yes

SPEAKER_00 3:20

yes it's very circular you

Carter 3:24

to you by the strategist that's

SPEAKER_00 3:25

that's right okay let's move it on to our first segment it's politics of course let's move it on to our first segment he didn't come back for you guys it is happening it is happening happening or is it happening, I should say. Mark Carney has reached our shores again. The former governor of the Bank of Canada, the former governor of the Bank of England, which, by the way, if I check my facts, that would make him the head of state. I just want to let you know that actually technically makes him the head of state. He is back and he's now acting as an informal advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as part of the COVID-19 response. This is interesting for a few reasons. Number one, prior to him leaving for England, Mark Carney was touted by many political observers as being a potential candidate for the liberal leadership to become the next prime minister. And of course, now that he is back, he comes at a very interesting time when current finance minister Bill Morneau seems to be having some clearly some issues. But now it's been revealed seems to be having some policy disagreements with Prime Minister Trudeau as well. So Corey, I'll go to you first. Do you buy into the hype? Do you buy into the speculation speculation that Carney's here for anything more than informal advisership to the prime minister?

Corey 4:36

Well, I don't think it's impossible. There's certainly been enough rumblings that Carney was at least intrigued by the notion of the liberal leadership back when, by the way, they were the third party that that I think you have to take it seriously that he harbors somewhere deep in his soul political ambitions in some way, shape or form. Now, a lot of people do and never pull the trigger. I mean, see Bernard Lord, right? You know, who was, you know, proposed as a potential McKenna as a potential leadership candidate, you know, forever. And that's because when you get to the realm of finance and the realm of business that those three names I've just mentioned, including Carney, got to, you

Corey 5:11

you make a pile of money. You don't get the abuse that you get as a prime minister. And your family doesn't hate you because you're not on the road all of the time. So I don't know. This might just be part. This might be that archetype. Just likes to be around, likes to have his name in the mix. is not interested in finally taking the plunge. But let's say he is looking to get involved in politics, maybe even position himself to be the successor to Justin Trudeau. It's

SPEAKER_00 5:37

speculation part of it. Yeah, I love the

Corey 5:38

the reckless speculation part. Last time I did it, Trump literally announced the exact same thing the next day. So we'll see where this one goes.

Corey 5:48

The idea that he would have all of that financial background with Bank of Canada and Bank of England, And his role right after that for the UN had to do with the environment. He's now coming around and he's checking a box on COVID. He's really doing

Corey 6:03

doing quite a nice grab bag of things if you are looking to be the next leader of a political party. So maybe he's not going to, but boy, he sure looks like he'd be a pretty compelling candidate if he decided to. Carter,

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Carter, twofold question. What do you make of him coming back to Canadian shores? And secondly, what do you think of what Corey just said in terms of his positioning for political ambitions, whether that be short term, and we'll talk about that in a second, or long term? Yeah,

Carter 6:30

Yeah, I think that, you know, Canada doesn't necessarily build stars out of their financial institutions. And yet Mark Carney became one. One doesn't just get there by accident. That's cleverly crafted. That's him taking choices and, and taking interviews and being seen in a certain way. Right. You know, I mean, yeah, we remember David Dodge and other

Carter 6:51

governors of the Bank of Canada, but Mark Carney stands kind of alone in his positioning in Canada as someone that I think is universally respected. One of the things that I thought was interesting was the conservative response. So when you start seeing the conservatives all over Twitter, they were all, you know, Their conversation appeared to be, it is best when a former Bank of Canada governor stay out of politics. And I thought that was interesting because why would you even have an opinion? Why would you care? But he's literally someone that can appeal across the ideological frame because of his business experience and his abilities. I'd be surprised if he was to do it necessarily. And maybe that's the second part of your question. But the first part, you know, he has built a career that is star-studded. I mean, point

Carter 7:46

point me to someone with a similar resume. I mean, the man has done it all. And now he's coming back to help us through a very difficult period. If he wants it, this

Carter 7:57

this is the way to build it.

Carter 8:00

that then begs the question, why

Carter 8:02

why would any sane person want this? I mean, he's got a lovely family. He's got all the money in the world. He can continue to contribute without having to take the heat and the pain. Why take that extra step to become the poster boy of the right that they all hate? I'm not sure. Why not just be the hero?

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Corey, what do you think? You seem itching to get in there.

Corey 8:26

Well, I mean, name a similarly star-studded resume. How about Michael Ignatyev? And we did see how that one went, right? Hence

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Hence the segment title. Yeah,

Corey 8:35

Yeah, right. Right. And he had been out of the country longer. So let's be fair on that point. But it's not as though this is necessarily a proven recipe for success. In fact, I think sometimes we can act very provincial. And I don't mean that in the context of our provinces. But this notion that somebody went elsewhere, what, they're too good for Canada? It's like that old like Boston Southie thing, like you're too fucking good for me, you know? Well, that's,

SPEAKER_00 9:04

course, a quote from Dave, the

SPEAKER_00 9:08

sequel of Dave featuring Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner, where they robbed the bank. I think that was a tout or Dave. I don't know which one. Anyways, keep going.

Carter 9:17

how do you continue after that? And the other

Corey 9:19

other thing I will say is the Conservatives might not be wrong. It might not be a great idea to have people start wondering if the head of the Bank of Canada, the governor of the Bank of Canada, is interested in politics.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Yeah, like to get it out there. And so so let's let's I want to get to the conservatives in a second what the response is versus what it should be. Stephen Carter, I want to go to you for a second, because let's go down the path that that Corey started of reckless speculation. speculation. Help me write the Carney story. Help me write the Carney, either finance minister story, the Carney running in the by-election in York Center story, the Carney in public office story. What does that look like right now? Because one of the biggest things to contend with is ensuring you don't fall into the Ignatieff trap of coming from away as an elite, educated white dude and then being outright rejected. So help me kind of write that story, given his, you know, impressive resume. What does that look like in your mind? Well,

Carter 10:13

Well, stories are written for the time in which they're created. And the time in which we were created right now is one of economic requirement. We require a strong economic leader. That is different than the Ignatiev. I mean, what was the story that Ignatiev was trying to tell us when he was coming back? There was no story. And it certainly didn't fit within our time. I think it would be very easy to craft a story for Mark Carney that he's coming back because we need to focus on economics. We need to get Canada back started again. We need to move ourselves out of double-digit unemployment across the country. And here's a guy who was successful in navigating one of the most amazing periods of economic growth in Canada's history. And yes, he is coming back because this is where he's from. This is what he believes in. And he's going to help us out. I think you can counter his coming back from a broad type of narrative. Was he not born in the Northwest Territories in a small town? Like this is a small town Canadian who has, you know, is returning to Canada. He's achieved all of these great things. I mean, I think the story, if you write the story for the time, and this is one of the things that I think political strategists really struggle with is we all want to write But we want to write a story and we don't match it to the audience and the audience's expectation of that particular moment. Right. So Trudeau's story of 2015 happened to fit with the moment of 2015. It was economic, you know, economically we were doing great. He was coming in. We wanted to have a younger leader. We wanted to have a generational change. He fit all of the boxes of that moment with his story, even if it was rather, you

Carter 11:56

shallow story. Right. Right. It wasn't a particularly well-constructed,

SPEAKER_00 11:59

-constructed, you know, like

Carter 12:00

didn't have to have. And I think they

SPEAKER_00 12:01

they fell into the whole Canadian mantra as well. Right. Like during that 2015 Trudeau story of the definition of a Canadian post-Syrian refugee crisis, like he just was able to kind of take some of the, if you can call it, coattails of his dad's accomplishments in the history that they had and really kind of put that, stitch that together as a template.

Carter 12:20

Right. As a story for its time. So I think that Mark Carney can write a story for his time. I think that Peter McKay is going to have a harder time. Aaron O'Toole is going to have a harder time writing a story for their time. They don't feel of this particular moment. They don't feel – no, they still might win, right?

Carter 12:37

right? Because the story of the time might just be we have to change from Justin

Carter 12:40

Justin Trudeau to something new because people choose to vote against something more than they often choose to vote for something. But if you were to create a story for Carney, I think you could create the story of its time.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

I like that a lot, Carter. Carter, that's that's an excellent response. Corey, same question to you before I get into the strategy, because after the story, I want to get into the strategy. How do you kind of take a figure regardless of who it is and side door them into politics without looking too crass? But before we get there, Corey, same question to you, the story and perhaps reacting to what you heard from Carter.

Corey 13:12

I don't know. I don't know if I 100 percent buy that. I do think that the fact that he is from a small town, Northwest Territories, does help build this narrative. You know, local boy done good, gone out, come back. But it's not easy. And part of it is because you're walking into a world – we talked about this, I think, last week, this notion that people who are from outside of politics sometimes don't appreciate how you have to act as a politician. And that's a bigger problem the more money you make. When you're governor of the Bank of England, you make the equivalent of $1.5 million a year Canadian. That's a lot of money. We are not talking about a guy who's well off and you can quibble about, like, is that, you know, he's like a one percenter and then some. And the prime minister makes about $360,000 as an aside. So that's part of what makes me wonder, why in the world would he want to do this? um but the

Corey 14:05

the when you have that much money it's hard to be like

Corey 14:09

like like think of george hw bush zane you're too young but think of george hw bush with the um with the scanner at the grocery store you remember

Carter 14:18

remember this carter so

Corey 14:19

so uh george hw bush goes into a grocery store i think in the 92 election and he's marveling about the fact that there's barcodes and you can scan them with a laser Or, you know, something that was not new in 1992, but he had not been in a grocery store in a very long time. And so I don't know, I think that these things always look better on paper than they, you know, but that story that Stephen is talking about can fall apart very quickly, just based on the fact that they are coming down from a very high mountain, very

SPEAKER_00 14:48

So, Carter, before I go back to you, Corey, I want you to start on this one because you're a little bit more skeptical. Carney gives you a shout, right? His people give you a shout saying, okay, Corey, I'm trying to onboard into politics. I'm in this informal advisor capacity. I have a book coming out. You know my creds. What does my onboarding look like? Like, how do I make it look like that I'm not too crass and not too opportunistic to just jump in when I see weakness with our finance minister, when I see that our prime minister might be, you know, at the end of perhaps his leadership run in the next half decade or so? What does it look like to you? How are you advising Mark Carney or Mark Carney's people to onboard into politics? I think it's quite an interesting live wire experiment of perhaps what he might do should he have those ambitions. Yeah.

Corey 15:30

Yeah. And I think the

Corey 15:32

one strongest argument that he has actually got ambitions like this is he is doing exactly what I would recommend you do, which

Corey 15:37

which is taking this service approach, this notion that you're not the anointed one. You're there to help and you want to give back after doing so well internationally. And so, yeah, you're going to use your expertise and your connections to help Canada with COVID. And hey, you know, maybe if politics calls at a certain point, maybe if there's a by-election and he could get into there as a humble MP, he'd be happy to serve. Oh, you want to put him in cabinet? Well, I'm just, I'm tickled pink, but all I really want is to be there to serve the people. And on every step of the way, Jimmer, right? Do a little bit less at a little slower speed than your resume suggests you would be able to do. A guy like Mark Carney doesn't need to do anything. Like even the idea that he would come in and do the COVID stuff, he could literally announce for the liberal leadership the day it comes open, whenever it comes open, whether it's this year or five years from now. But if you can kind of show that humility and earn back some of that, you know, I was always a Southie boy at heart. I never really left. I think that that is the play. And you want to be doing a little bit less than you're qualified to do for the next year or so. So I

SPEAKER_00 16:43

I like that strategy a lot. I want to pick up on it in a second. Carter, I want to give you a chance. Carney gives you the same phone call, right? Says that he may have ambitions. He's looking at that by-election at York Center that may come up. But he's saying, give me the best advice, right? I've agreed with Corey. I've talked to Corey. I don't want to go too quickly. What else would you add to the mix? Or would you be antithetical to what Corey said?

Carter 17:04

I'm actually shocked that Corey missed the low-hanging fruit. fruit um he should obviously speak for no fee at all the we charity events um no

Corey 17:16

no he shouldn't don't do that mark

SPEAKER_00 17:18

was that it was that it was that is one big thing that there will be more we charity exactly no

Carter 17:24

no i i agree with cory in in the in kind of the subtlety the the humbleness approach uh i think that first of all i think the canadians do buy into that in general we're not Not big, big fans of the self-promoters. The self-promoters kind of give us the heebie-jeebies because we see so many of them from from the United States come through.

Carter 17:47

might tell him to not take like if there if there was a sudden by-election and a sudden opening, I might tell him, no, you

Carter 17:54

you know, you think you can do a lot as a cabinet minister right now. You're going to, you know, as a member of parliament, I think you can do more as an informal advisor to Justin Trudeau. I mean, we've talked about how Justin Trudeau has to strengthen his bench of advisers. Can you think of a stronger adviser to sit beside the prime minister than Mark Carney? Leave him there. So when York Centre or the next by-election opens, don't run. Don't put yourself in that position. Think long. This is not a short game. Justin Trudeau is not heading out of leadership this year. He is, you know, I would suggest at the very earliest would be heading out of the leadership, you know, a year before, you know, the next scheduled election, I think, 2023.

Carter 18:42

But more likely is heading out of the leadership in 2024, 2025. So with that in mind, if you do, if that's what you want, you got nothing but time. Take your time. See the country. See the country. You know, he doesn't need to raise money. He doesn't need to be in that position of having a leadership group put money in his pockets so he can travel the country and see it. He can do whatever the hell he wants. Take your time. That's what I would totally recommend.

Corey 19:09

Coy? Yeah, maybe go run a charity. Check that final box, right? We talked about the resume that he was assembling through work on COVID, work on the environment, work in finance. But the social sector is a little underrepresented there, and there's maybe an opportunity. opportunity the benefit of being an mp is less these days than it was in the past if you have leadership ambitions because it used to be that the caucus was a very significant um component of of any any leadership drive that's we we've seen time again that's not necessarily the case anymore um but by the way i will say now that carter has said jt's not heading out of the leadership this year it feels like he's doomed uh just as a carter prediction but i do generally really agree i think it's hard to imagine rex murphy columns notwithstanding that justin trudeau is is on the edge of losing his job so so you do need to think about this in terms of the long game and you have to be careful because a finance minister for the next two years is not going to be a particularly popular job you're going to be rolling down winding up a lot of programs that put money in people's pockets you will have to run a bunch of austerity budgets to help us undo the fiscal hit that we've taken in the last year here. And that that does not necessarily set you up for success. If you've got broader leadership ambitions, you

SPEAKER_00 20:28

you know, Carter in the short term, Carney's political ambitions, should they be real, are probably interlinked with Bill Morneau in some way. And, and depending on what his position looks like, what do you kind of make of the story around Morneau and Trudeau that's coming out with sources telling CBC and telling Bloomberg, I believe, as well about the infighting between Trudeau and Morneau camps. Do you feel like that's telegraphing something from a political strategy vantage? I mean, of course, we can't tell what's happened in the newsroom. What are your is your political strategy slash former political practitioner hat telling you is going on here?

Carter 21:01

Well, I mean, I think that it's legitimately a difficult I mean, the finance minister, prime minister roles and can be also the finance minister, premier roles. My experience has has been that those two those two cabinet positions have the most negative interaction between one another. Because finance is where everything hits. Every department, everything goes and needs to be, you know, part of Treasury Board or finance so that it can be funded and things can happen. So it has a lot of power within the government. I have seen the interactions between finance ministers and their first ministers. And it is challenging. Now, having said that, the first minister is the first minister. And usually if there's a, if there's a conflict in, in the, you know, the premier of the prime minister's office with any of their ministers, the person walking out with their tail between their legs or the person walking out saying, uh, yes, madam premier, or yes, Mr. Prime minister is the finance minister. Um, so I suspect that there probably were a lot of disagreements over the last six months. Why wouldn't there be, there was no playbook. There is no expect expected outcomes. I suspect that this is overblown, but it probably has been real. But if Bill Morneau wishes to remain in the government and wishes to remain a minister, this

Carter 22:25

this is a very simple structure.

Carter 22:28

structure. He has to continue to serve the prime minister. That's it. That's his

Carter 22:34

his goal. And even if he doesn't, like, what's the point of going out in a flaring flame out? Like, there is no advantage to him by being like, I was right and you were wrong. As he's leaving, there's no advantage for Bill Morneau at all. So my view would be, if there has been conflict, and there likely has been, it's overblown, and it will be put to bed by the Minister of Finance.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Corey, similar question to you, but perhaps I can add an extra layer, which is you get the ear of the prime minister and you find out that, listen, Carney's ready, Morneau's willing to do whatever you want. What are you advising to the prime minister right now saying, listen, you have to deal with this we thing. You want to get it behind you. People might still expect a head to roll. Knowing all the pieces that you see right now, what is your advice to the prime minister?

Corey 23:29

Well, I think, first of all, you really missed an opportunity. The prime minister could have come and said to me, I need your help. I can't tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later. And we're going to hurt some people.

Corey 23:40

then I could have responded, whose car are we taking?

Corey 23:43

From the movie Dave, of course.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

I'm like, oh my god,

Corey 23:49

that sounds like Dave.

Corey 23:53

no um i i think you know you have to i here's what actually can i just back up a step yeah you can you can sort of recalibrate because i ran right aside of your question there too that's fine uh the the thing about the trudeau morneau clash is i wonder if like some people think that this is a cause i wonder if it's not a symptom i wonder if morneau doesn't know that his neck is on the block because of all of this wee stuff he knows he's going to be the fall guy Maybe he's played this poorly behind the scenes. There's certainly some indication of that, not least of which is he just forgot. He owed tens of thousands of dollars to we, and then he didn't. We talked about this. We don't know whether that was disclosed or not. We don't know what the interactions were, but you can imagine them being pretty ugly in a scenario. And it may be that rather than being that good finance minister that Stephen described, who leaves with the tail between their legs and says, yes, Mr. Prime Minister, he's saying i'm

Corey 24:48

i'm going down and i don't want to look like i was fired because of we so i would rather muddy the waters a bit and i'd rather make it look like a substantive policy difference that made me no longer the finance minister because certainly if i'm more no and i'm trying to think about like what is my next act and my next act is anything besides retirement i do not want to look like i was removed for a scandal right so if you can throw up a bit of dirt on that and confuse that issue i think you're you're better off and so that might be what's happening here and i just throw that out there as a possibility. Now, if Trudeau calls and says, hey, listen, I

Corey 25:20

I think Carney's ready to go here. How do we move Morneau out? That's a continuation of that thought. You just say, yeah,

Corey 25:28

yeah, there were some lapses of judgment on we. You have to be very careful as the prime minister because, of course, your judgment is arguably more in question. But you do almost almost the opposite, right? You say it's not about policy, it's about, you know, it's about

Corey 25:44

characters too strong, but you weave it more about we, for

Corey 25:47

for the very reason that you don't want to create, like this alternate pole of power that is now fighting with Carney and representing perhaps a different worldview in the finance world. So, Carter,

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Carter, same question to you around the future of the Trudeau government, if the PM has all the options on the table right now. Yeah.

Carter 26:07

Well, I mean, I'm not sure that the PM has all the options on the table. This idea that you're going to have Morneau walk the plank for the Wee scandal. First of all, the Wee scandal was two weeks ago, you know, which is forever in politics. It feels like it finally has ended. I don't know if it sparks back up again in September, but I'm not sure that you get the anticipated bounce by forcing the finance minister out. You know, but I do think that Corey's point about Morneau not wanting to leave due to scandal is pretty solid. I mean, you certainly don't want to go down with scandal. You'd much rather have it be with, I have a conflict with this, I think, universally recognized as or universally branded as a not particularly deep thinker in the prime minister. And I don't say that to say that the prime minister is not a deep thinker. I just, that's the brand. And that brand, if you were going out and shopping your resume around to take

Carter 27:11

take over as CEO of a whole bunch of different companies, I mean, that would be expected. A lot of people within the boardrooms would buy into that theory. So I don't think Corey's out to lunch with that, sadly.

Carter 27:26

sadly. sadly. But the overall

Carter 27:30

overall feeling of this for me is that you've got two really strong players in Morneau and Carney. I don't think you want to trade them one for the other. I think that you've got other pieces on your chessboard that aren't as valuable. There's lots of departments where Mark Carney could be. Finance seems to make the most sense, but why wouldn't you create a special Department of COVID recovery. It's been done before. I mean, given a minister without portfolio acting almost as a second deputy prime minister, why wouldn't you do that? Why would you think inside of the box at this particular moment when you're facing the largest economic recovery and all of your economic ministers reporting to him, right? Like you create a little economic task force led by mark carney that can be really interesting so i just don't think you take one of your stronger pieces in morneau and trade it straight across for one of your you know the next strongest piece there's there's lots of weaker pieces and there's lots of other places you can put either of them frankly carter

SPEAKER_00 28:34

carter looking at the whole chessboard cory finished us off on this

Corey 28:38

if you're the prime minister well we didn't we kind of jumped over the the nature of the disagreement between morneau and the prime minister but we

SPEAKER_00 28:45

we did do you want to do and explain it Well,

Corey 28:47

Well, okay, well, this is all based on reporting and secondhand, thirdhand, fourthhand things. But it's this notion that Morneau is concerned about the size of the deficit and thinks that spending on every green project in sight is fundamentally kind of a dumb idea. And also,

SPEAKER_00 29:02

also, there was some past disagreements on what the wage subsidy was supposed to be related to the pandemic. I think it was the debate between 10%, which is what Morneau wanted, and ultimately landed at that 75% for the SEWS program. Anyways, go ahead, Corey. Yeah,

Corey 29:16

Yeah, no, absolutely. And this is more the forward looking ones that I was weighing on. But the reason why I emphasize the ones I did is that both

Corey 29:22

both the notion of deficit and the notion of environment are things that Mark Carney is an incredibly credible voice on. So as much as I said, you could kind of throw it on we, because that allows you if you think that there's otherwise going, if you think somebody needs to be sacrificed for we just do it now, right? But if you don't want to do that, and you worry that weakens you as well, you can as the Prime Minister also hang it on policy differences and say, look, we, we need a finance minister who understands that the economy and the environment are two sides of one coin. And so we're making a change. It's nothing against Mr. Morneau. You know, he's a very capable, you know, member, and he will be in other important portfolio over here. But this is where I want to take the country. And, you

Corey 30:04

you know, I mean, that's a possibility for the PM, too.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Carter, you mentioned the conservatives off the top. Let's talk about them very quickly. What should they be doing right now? You know, they're less than 10 days, I believe, next week, next Sunday, is their reveal of their leadership. So they're a week away from leadership. They're seeing that there are some moves happening here. Is there anything that the current party itself or some of the leadership candidates should be piping up about when they see Mark Carney hitting the fold and Bill Morneau and the PM having some friction that's now being exposed to the media? What should they be saying, if anything?

Carter 30:36

Well, I think the number one thing at this point is don't make the change your idea. Don't give Trudeau the out. Like making a change can be seen as strength. I would be trying to stay away from, you know, we need a stronger minister of finance or something along those lines. I would probably just start demanding that the economy get better. I'd start making the, you know, pushing on the fact that right now I think people are feeling two distinct pressures. And one of them is the fear of going back to school across the country, which I think the federal government probably is going to be relatively mute on. And then the other is the economic reality. And I'm just not seeing enough out of the conservatives, frankly, on the

Carter 31:27

the economic reality and concrete ideas of what can be done in the short term to resurrect our economy. Just stop screaming about committees and stop calling witnesses and start actually making a case

Carter 31:42

case for being a government in waiting. Because as soon as Peter McKay or Aaron O'Toole become the leader,

Carter 31:50

know, they're going to be in a position where they have to be the government in waiting, not just the opposition. And it's one of my constant critiques of opposition parties is when you fall into the strictly opposition structure, I'm not sure you're selling the electorate on what your vision needs to look like. So I think that the conservatives need to jump into a strong government waiting structure under their new leader. And that should start right on September 1st, because, you know, the ending of CERB, I can't remember when it ends, but it's imminent, if not now. and the continued

Carter 32:24

continued sluggish economy and the prospect of a second wave, all of which are just right there, our economic confidence is really low. So help

Carter 32:38

help us and speak to us about things that we care about. I think that that's been the problem with the Conservatives. They've been too long speaking to the things that their members care about. And it is now time to start speaking to Canadians about what we care about.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

Corey, finish us off on this segment with what the Conservatives should do.

Corey 32:56

Well, this could all happen very quickly. I think the Prime Minister is meeting with Morneau tomorrow. That's right. And so there is – you want to make sure that whatever happens, you get credit for drying blood. And on that front, I would be continuing to scream pretty loudly about we. I would maybe even be throwing out there he's going to maybe look for a reason why it's not we, but it's we, and this guy's got to go, and even the Prime Minister knows it. And if he had any integrity, he would resign himself because his, you know, his punishment or his crime is worse.

Corey 33:27

But really, it's just about continually making sure that Trudeau does not, or Morneau for that matter, does not manage to take the narrative and move it in a different place. You can't make it, you've

Corey 33:37

you've got to take away Trudeau's agency here. You have to make it look as though whatever happens next occurred because of pressure from the conservatives. And on Stephen's point about getting ready as a government and waiting, could not agree more. This is a minority government. The Conservatives need to have a they have a window for starters, right, as Canadians start to get a bit exhausted with the, you know, we scandal and maybe the shine comes off the COVID bump, as we've seen in some of the polls. So you've got to be ready. You've got to be dressed for when the bus comes. And you can't just be sitting there yelling about everything along the way. You got to get ready.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

We'll leave that segment there and move it on to our next segment, getting schooled. Guys, I want to talk about back to school, but I want to look at it from the landscape of what's happening here in our home province of Alberta, because we're seeing a couple of things happening on the schooling front. First of all, the school openings, which we know that there are parents as well as the Alberta Teachers Union, as well as teachers themselves kicking and screaming. Layer on top of that, doctors who are also talking about the safety precautions that are not in place regarding back to school. Oh, by the way, they're having their own fight with the government. So there's also that layer. And then layering on top of the school situation here, this government at the UCP government that is here in Alberta has indicated that they're going to have a curriculum review and have just appointed their new committee of all dudes to do that committee review. So, Corey, maybe I'll throw it to you to get started. I know you finished this off last segment, but lay out the context here. What do you think is happening in Alberta as related to education and school? And is COVID being used as cloud cover? Or is this just hammering through the agenda at what many people expected the UCP would do? Yeah,

Corey 35:21

Yeah, I don't know if it's cloud cover because it was everything that they said they were going to do prior to COVID, right? The curriculum review was in the UCP's platform going into the last election. But I guess hearing

Corey 35:35

hearing you say all of that, and there's many other things as well, the UCP really is fighting a multi-front war on the education side. you know, side, you've got wages, you know, you've got this whole collective bargaining fight that's going on with the ATA, you've got COVID, which is a fight about safety, and it's a fight about health, but it's also a fight with the ATA and with parents in many cases. And then you have curriculum, which

Corey 36:01

which is yet the third leg of that stool. And if they fail to land any one of them, they risk weakening themselves in the other areas as well, because they risk losing credibility writ large on education and this sense that they have an understanding of education certainly even in you know my immediate orbit uh i heard people pass judgment on the curriculum review and say see these guys don't know what they're doing on i can't believe they've got this panel of all men how

Corey 36:30

how in the hell are we supposed to trust them to run education system how are we hell are we supposed to trust them that it's safe to go back in september right and so you can see there's a a bit of a lean-on effect here. Yeah, the deflation, yeah.

Corey 36:40

Well, it's just when you are fighting so many different fights, your overall credibility comes into question. And so the UCP has to be very, very careful here because they could quickly find that they are turning supporters in one area into opponents simply based on their actions in the other, because they are not dealing with these sequentially, which would be a criticism I have of the UCP more generally. they want to do everything now and and i think i described it once as they'll they'll knock someone in the face then they'll run around and hit the next person and then the next person but

Corey 37:13

but ultimately those people are going to stand up and you're going to have a crowd of people chasing you right there's a lot of fights going on here and um and the ucp has been extraordinarily good at announcing things carter

Corey 37:24

carter they have not concluded a lot of those files

SPEAKER_00 37:27

is what i would say

SPEAKER_00 37:28

are ongoing files carter i want to talk about this because this is core brings up an excellent point, which is around the strategy of now, right? We often criticize political parties because they sometimes don't realize the opportunity of what a four-year government looks like, right? I think you've described it best, which is you're one, you're finding your feet. You're four, you're trying to hand out gifts. You really don't have a lot of time to get your shit done. So, you know, we're now, Corey at least, is perhaps criticizing them for their strategy of now. Do you feel as perhaps bothered by them trying to ram everything through in this short window where they can actually perhaps still try to get that upswing before the next election? No,

Carter 38:05

No, I'm actually a little envious. I'm a little envious because I wish that, you

Carter 38:10

you know, the government that I was a part of, and I wish that, you know, the previous government of the NDP

Carter 38:16

perhaps had done more in certain areas, because there was a, there's a sense that, you know, you can

Carter 38:24

can only spend X amount of political capital, you can only spend X amount of political capital, But political capital is an investment, not an expenditure. And so when you invest your political capital, you can sometimes lose your shirt. I will concede that point. You can lose, but you can also win. So when you make a significant change and when you do something that you believe is in the interest of the people who vote for you or more generally the people of the province, you can win significantly. And that's what Jason Kenney has come with. He has said, this is the list of things that I am going to do. Some of which were previously published and discussed in detail during the election. Others are more of a surprise to us. But

Carter 39:03

I'm going to do them.

Carter 39:05

I am taking this political capital because I believe that that which I am doing is number one right and number two popular. Now, I can argue whether or not I think it's right. And I can argue whether or not I think it's popular. But because he is actually doing it, he has a government that becomes, that

Carter 39:25

that is activist and is actually doing what it's supposed to do, which is to govern. So many, so many parties, I think, so many governments just stand still and don't bring with them their agenda. Canada is a good country. Canada is not a perfect country. There are many places and many things that we could be changing. So I'm envious

Carter 39:49

envious of how Jason Kenney has approached government. Now, having said that, I think he's walking a really fine line with education. Because I think the problem is the parents want to send their children back to school. They absolutely want to send their children back to school. It has been hard. This idea that you are supposed to work and you're supposed to take care of your kids and you're supposed to teach your kids and you're supposed to balance all of these different input, it's hard. It's not necessarily working.

Carter 40:17

But they don't want to send their kids back to school if it's not safe.

Carter 40:22

if I have to wear a mask in a shopping mall, why am I not wearing a mask in the school? Now, the school boards are stepping forward, but this could have been a much stronger victory for Jason Kenney if he had partnered a return to school with the safety. What he seems What he seems to have done is said, we're going back to school. I trust the school boards for safety. And I just, I think that that has weakened his entire argument.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Corey, I want to let you react to that before I get to the strategy questions, but you were chomping at the bit, it feels like. Yeah,

Corey 40:51

Yeah, there's a lot I want to react to, but I want to react to the first thing. I think that this is where theory crashes into the wall of practice, and this is where political strategists have to be very careful because it

Corey 41:01

it is every political strategist's dream to govern like hell once you're in power, right? Just to do it all, do it quickly, leave

Corey 41:08

leave shock and awe, blitzkrieg, whatever you want to say, and then just have three years to react and do the nice things and maintain government and bring it all in. Very

SPEAKER_00 41:18

Very simple narrative, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Corey 41:20

it's just like when when you look at all of these things going on, I can't help but think it's like in World War One, the Germans measured the width of the roads to understand how many troops they could send. But they failed to account for the fact that people need to sleep. And I'll tell you, as as somebody who worked in the public service at senior levels, there is there is bandwidth problem when you are running so many battles at once. It is very difficult to get policy coordinated. It is very difficult to get your best people. It's ledge counsel. It's difficult to draft regulations in a way that is comprehensible because your best drafter is busy on four other things. They need to slow down a bit or else they're going to be creating so many future problems for themselves. Like their big problem right now is not all

Corey 42:04

all of these fights, although that is certainly something they should keep their eye on. It is that they

Corey 42:09

they have to contend with whatever they do now in the future. And these things are never clean and they always require maintenance. And if you're maintaining and fixing at the same time you're trying to govern and react on 100 other fronts, you are going to be paralyzed in your last couple of years. Your dream of being able to move forward and just set your stage for the next election will be dead because you will be trying to pick up the pieces from 10 failed major policy initiatives that are just blowing up in your face. And I'll give an example here, and I'm not trying to pick on the former NDP government, but let's look at the election legislation, all of the changes to the election laws the NDP made. They had to make new changes every term,

Corey 42:50

term, every term, every sitting of the legislature. They had to come in and fix the next thing, whack-a-mole style, as these problems became clear because everything is running at red line and mistakes happen when you're running at red line.

Carter 43:07

I just wanted to talk to the bandwidth issue because I think Corey's absolutely right on the bandwidth issue. But the UCP seems to have solved that with a near infinite number of issues managers. So that problem has solved itself. You think issues

Corey 43:23

managers do a lot of implementation in the public service. I've got a bridge to

Carter 43:29

I cannot see any evidence of any other thing that they do. Carter

SPEAKER_00 43:33

Carter just wants to take credit for the fact that when he was chief of staff, there was no such thing as issues managers. Let's get to the strategy element of this, though, for a second, which is suppose I am the ATA. Suppose I'm a parent group. Suppose I'm a concerned parent. You know, Carter, you said parents definitely want to go back to have their kids back to school. I don't think that's unanimously true. I think it's a it's a split.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

Sorry, you react to that before I move on. Well,

Carter 43:55

Well, no, I'm saying they want it. They're torn because they want to send their children back, but they don't want to send them back in an unsafe manner. manner there's no one is sitting here i mean there's i'm sure there's some parents sitting there going i am now homeschooling forever this is the best thing that's ever happened to me right right but those four people can get together for a coffee party everybody else is like yeah i'm ready to send these children back to school you

SPEAKER_00 44:16

you just want the right conditions to be able to do it the conditions have to be

SPEAKER_00 44:20

yeah so so cory i guess my question to you is how are you fighting this war suppose you had a magic wand to get all these people corralled into one direction Which vulnerability, now knowing the concept of redlining within the government, now knowing that they're stretching themselves way too thin, where are you trying to target if you actually don't want some of these changes in your education system being made? Are you going after curriculum? Are you going after overall credibility? Help us kind of devise a sort of strategy. If you're a parent, teacher, doctors, what are you kind of going to attack right now to attack this sort of credibility of the UCP on education? So

Corey 44:58

So that's an interesting question because inherent in it is you just want to attack the UCP. But if you're a parent driven by one of these things, you're probably driven by a specific concern, one or more of the three we've mentioned or beyond, right? Right. If you are mad about all of them and you are looking for the area, the UCP is most vulnerable. I think you have to play with the concept of immediacy. Now, so you have these two forces that if you are sitting there saying, what do I want to attack the government on today?

Corey 45:29

going to look for immediacy and you're going to look for scope, like the biggest F up. Right. So but,

Corey 45:34

but, you know, the and you have to kind of look at them both and make a calculation here. But in my opinion, the idea that everybody has to make

Corey 45:43

make decisions about whether they're sending their kids back to school or not, these

Corey 45:46

these decisions have to be made in the next week or so, right?

Corey 45:50

That's immediate. That's something that you need to be attacking on right now. My lord, the government still has not provided the clarity. The school boards are out there. They don't have their – look. Look at BC. They've pushed back the start of school. Look at Ontario. They've provided more resources for school. Look at all of these jurisdictions across the world where things have worked or not. I mean, on Twitter today, a lot of people were sharing, I think, Denmark's experience, you know, limiting to 15 people in a class, saying if you can stay home with your kids, stay home with your kids, providing plastic between, you know, the different desks and whatnot, limiting even the entrances people can go through. through all of these steps, and even they had a surge, I think was the point, but it was more of a manageable, it kept it below an R-naught of one, which is just a health sciences, public health way of saying the disease will die out at that rate. It's not enough to kind of replicate, but

Corey 46:44

that's what you want to look at. You want to look at immediacy, and you want to be pulling from all of these case studies around you and saying, time

Corey 46:51

time is ticking. We need you to fix this now, And if you don't, God help us all.

Corey 46:58

The other argument would be the curriculum review because it is such a glaring error to have all men on a curriculum review. But I just think immediacy trumps it in this case.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

Carter, where do you think the soft tissue here is on education?

Carter 47:12

Well, I think that, you know, the curriculum

Carter 47:15

curriculum review isn't going to go anywhere. The only people who are going to really even know that there is a curriculum review are going to be political activists and people who are highly involved in education. This is all going to be about safety and education, you know, making sure that your kid is safe. Because that, you know, to Corey's immediacy point, that's the thing that's going to happen in two weeks. Two weeks, you know, people are going to send their kids back to school without

Carter 47:41

without any real sense that things are going to be okay. And, you know, we're seeing modest surges in COVID right now in Alberta and really across Canada. Nothing that makes you go, oh, my God, the second wave is imminent. But, you know, this is at a time when people are supposed to be wearing, you know, we're still not managing this particularly well. And this is why the second waves always come is because we're human beings and human beings don't manage things particularly well. well um so you

Carter 48:14

you know children there there's nothing that people care more about than their children and uh they're going to give the ucp the benefit of the doubt until there is no longer any time any any ability to give the the uh benefit of that particular doubt cory

SPEAKER_00 48:28

cory finish this off any final thoughts this

Corey 48:32

this is this is um going to be a scary september in a lot of ways parents are I'm scared. I'm a parent. I worry about my kid going to school and I worry about what she may be, you know, contracting. I worry about what she may take home, what she may give to her grandparents, what may happen to the people in her life, like her friends. It's scary. And when you pile on top of that, this change in curriculum, and when you look at teachers

Corey 48:59

teachers threatening job action, like this, this whole thing.

Corey 49:03

Here's the thing about being a parent of school aged children. I

Corey 49:06

I am worried about September, but I'm worried about the September after that, and the September after that, and the September after that as well. And, and

Corey 49:13

and the UCP has to be very careful that this narrative does not just entirely run away from them. And and have in turn parents running away from Alberta, because parents

Corey 49:23

parents will put their kids first. And if they think that the right thing to do for their children is to move, even if they don't want to, you will see parents make that decision.

SPEAKER_00 49:31

Let's move it on to our next segment, the strategy session. It is back, guys. I am going to make you do some tough work. For those of you that are new to the show, here's what we do in the strategy session. I give you the role and a current situation that is going on, and you guys give me a quick, pithy, two-sentence response to how you would message it, how you would communicate it, or what the strategy is. And there's no better way to do it than just to get into it. And there's no person to start with that's better than Stephen Carter. So Stephen, I'm going to give you the toughest one to start with. I'm going to give Corey a little bit more time to think, even though I know he doesn't need it. Carter, you are acting for the GOP Republicans. You are now the press spokesperson for the GOP. And you've been just presented a story that said North Carolina voters received absentee ballots with Donald Trump's face on them. How are you taking this story and perhaps defending it as a GOP spokesperson?

Carter 50:33

What what I'm saying is that, first of all, let us not forget that we are a republic of states and each state has the opportunity and requirement to ensure that they are administering their their elections as they see fit. it. The great state of North Carolina is making some decisions. And frankly, I'm not sure how this is going to, you know, like, this isn't necessarily going to improve things. Maybe it's not a very flattering picture of Donald Trump. So, you know, we don't know. We don't know if it's going to be good for the GOP or not. All we can tell for sure is that, obviously, this is another example of how mail-in ballots are just terrible. So we shouldn't allow them at all. I'm I'm going to shut down the Postal Service.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

Carter goes in with the Trump may not look hot in the picture strategy. Tried and true classic. Corey, same question to you. You're working for the GOP. You have this North Carolina ballot with Donald Trump's face on them. How are you defending this?

Corey 51:30

Okay, these are not absentee ballots. These are absentee ballot applications. And the media continues to pretend to not know the difference between absentee voting and universal mail-in voting, which would be a disaster for the American Republic. public.

Corey 51:43

Here's the thing, people.

Corey 51:45

The application has a number of checks in it. You put it in. It's been tried and true. It's tested. It makes an awful lot of sense. And then you get your ballot back. What the Democrats who want to steal this election are trying to do is send everybody a ballot, which

Corey 51:58

which you can then vote and turn in without that safeguard of the application. Donald Trump supports absentee applications. Donald Trump supports the electoral system, as we've known for many years. He wants to fix some of the ID requirements that have allowed the Democrats to steal elections in California, certainly. But this is just the fake news media going out and trying to spin a story that does not exist.

SPEAKER_00 52:22

I want that clip of Corey to exist context free on the internet.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

Corey, I'm going back to you. So so catch your breath. I'm going back to you on this. You are spokesperson for Yves-François Blanchet. You are leading the Bloc Quebecois. And of course, he's come out in the media to say he's going to try everything in his power to trigger an election if Trudeau, Morneau and Katie Telfer do not resign. How are you defending this decision once the media or anyone kind of comes up to you and saying, what the hell is your leader doing here? He knows he doesn't have leverage, does he, Corey? What's going on?

Corey 52:55

You know, everybody is so keen to play games with politics and say, is it to my advantage or is it not? But I care about Quebec and I know what's right for Quebec, and that is a government with integrity. So yeah, I am going to call people to the polls within my power if they do not step down. These are actors who have proven themselves to be corrupt, incompetent. Whatever their excuse is, it's no excuse. And it's time for a change. And if we can't change the people at the top, it's time to throw them all out.

SPEAKER_00 53:26

what are you doing?

Carter 53:27

Yeah, I mean, this is about principle, not about opportunity. It always has been principle for me. And this is the structure of elections gives the people the chance to evaluate their leaders. It's not, you know, if the election was held today, you know, people would have to evaluate the we scandal. And I think as they know more, they're going to know that these aren't the people that we want leading our country. This isn't about opportunism. This is about principle and about ensuring that we can hold people to account for the sins that they make.

Corey 54:00

Carter loses points for saying our country when he's talking about Canada instead

Carter 54:05

instead of describing it

Corey 54:06

it as a separate political language.

Carter 54:07

language. I blew it. I lose minus two.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

Carter does not have a job for the Bloc Quebecois. We knew that going into the show. Carter, I'm going back to you. You're the Conservative Party. You see Andrew Scheer has seen his final day in the House as leader of the Conservatives. Of course, this is a man that was forced out of his leadership post-election. There was, of course, stories that came out about him that signaled his not reckless spending, but perhaps his inappropriate spending as party leader. How are you spinning a solid goodbye that the Andrew Scheer era was not a wasted space for the conservatives, but that it was a helpful, constructive time for the party? What are you saying? How are you spinning this to the media and giving them the send off that he needs in order for your party to get that bump when the new leader steps in? too

Carter 54:53

too often politics is viewed as a zero-sum game where you must win or you or you have you're just completely lost andrew sheer has been able to show us that you know you can take chunks out of the government governing party he's taken enormous uh strides and and chunks out of justin trudeau he's responsible for the you know for people for canadians understanding the we charity disaster he's responsible for taking the true the trudeau government from a majority an enormous majority, down to a minority that now has to be more responsive to the Canadian people. Andrew Scheer has taken two or three or four or five enormous steps towards the next Conservative government, and we should be thankful that he served.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

Corey, same question to you. How are you reconciling the Scheer years?

Corey 55:41

What's to reconcile? The guy got more votes than Trudeau did last election. The Conservatives won the popular vote. He has set them up for success. He increased the seat count. But for a couple of rotten liberal boroughs, he would already be prime minister. And the fact that he was able to say, this is as far as I can take you, I can see the promised land, but I can't get there, really speaks to his character. I mean, Scheer is the kind of leader we

Corey 56:08

we would be lucky to have in Justin Trudeau, because he would know his day in the sun is now over, and he should be following Scheer's example and stepping down. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 56:16

I like it. Corey, back to you on this. Catch your breath again. You are now playing for Team Biden. You're a strategist on Team Biden talking to the media. You're halfway through talking about your political strategy of Harris, how that bump is all going so well. And you love it. You're obviously crediting the You the People podcast for providing you great insight about, you know, her digital army that she's now being able to put into action. Halfway through the conversation, however, they ask you, they say, listen, there's a a really deeply reported piece by Politico today saying that Barack Obama wasn't too hot on Joe Biden being the nominee and wasn't exactly too hot on him while he was in office. How are you reconciling, like using that term again, but how are you kind of pivoting from hearing that the guy your boss reported to as president didn't necessarily want him to capture the nomination, so to speak?

Corey 57:07

Well, that's one report, and I think it's pretty suspect. When you look at that the former president and the vice president and their interactions, you can see that they have a rapport that is not erased because of one poorly sourced political article here. Joe Biden was deeply involved in a number of Obama initiatives. He was always right there. The president gave him the Medal of Freedom. He obviously has very high regard for him. There's no requirement to give the vice president an honor of that nature.

Corey 57:39

two guys love each other. And

Corey 57:40

And if the former president, if Mr. Obama decided that he couldn't endorse early on, it's because he takes very seriously his responsibility to be an independent arbiter within the Democratic Party. And he wanted to make sure that he wasn't just being heavy handed and giving the nomination to somebody else. And it just makes it more special, the fact that he now gets to support his former vice president in going forward. The president is very excited. The vice president is very excited. Politico doesn't know what they're talking about. I

SPEAKER_00 58:12

I like it. I like that. I just threw an article that you did not know about or probably didn't even hear about.

SPEAKER_00 58:17

Excellent. That is that is how we simulate the actual moment. Stephen Carter, same question to you.

Carter 58:23

Listen, I'm not even going to respond to it. I mean, obviously, actions over gossip every time. I mean, you've seen the honest emotion between these two men. You've seen the way that they've responded, even in this campaign, their election video that they produced. I mean, did those look like two men under any state of duress? Those were two men who cared about each other, cared about the United States of America. I'm not I'm not even going to take a moment to respond to this ridiculous gossip from this gossip rag politico.

Carter 58:54

I go to Axios or I don't go at all. That's it. There

SPEAKER_00 58:56

There you go. Well, Carter, I'm going to put you in a different position for this final one. going back to you uh you are donald trump defending a news article that comes out today you're donald trump spokespeople i should say uh slash strategist defending a news article today that donald trump says oh you know what i might just pardon edward stowden is

Carter 59:14

is the president's prerogative to pardon whoever he wishes that is a that is a responsibility and an opportunity that has been granted to him in the constitution of the united states of america and no one caused any problems when we when we pardoned all those other guys so what the fuck let's just do it again

SPEAKER_00 59:31

little flippant, but I'll take it. Corey, over to you. Same one. You're defending the pardon of Edward Snowden or the speculation of the pardon.

Corey 59:40

Well, I mean, Stephen's exactly right. Pardoning is a tradition in American politics, and it shows the mercy of our president in these matters. And the pardon of Edward Snowden is the pardon of a man who brought to light some terrible crimes by the do-nothing Democrats. Democrats. And I think that if we want people to have the confidence to come forward with the other crimes that the Democrats have done, that we know they are too scared to come forward because of the threat that they might be put in jail by Democratic AGs or Hillary Clinton's goons out there, then we need to show them that we've got their back. And we want to hear more about the Democrats and their nefarious deeds. So by all means, the president is happy to support anything And

SPEAKER_00 1:00:25

we'll leave that segment there. Nicely done, guys. The only thing left, of course, is Corey to start chanting Lock Her Up, which I feel like I've really wanted to have on audio, just in case. He

Carter 1:00:37

gets bonus points for bringing Crooked Hillary in.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:40

I'm very proud of him. Nicely done. I don't know if our listenership continues to believe that I do not send you guys these questions ahead of time. So well done thinking on your feet there, especially about a political article that why would you have heard of? I

Corey 1:00:55

had not read it. Why

SPEAKER_00 1:00:56

Why would you have heard of it? Which is why you so aggressively called it a rag, Carter. Nicely done.

Corey 1:01:03

That's why I said the sourcing was suspect. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 1:01:06

Yeah, way to bird Eddie Bridge to have a sit down with Politico. Pretty decent publication. Okay, let's move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and all lightning round. Guys, are you ready? Totally. Carter, I'm going to put you in your sweet spot. Yes or no speculation questions. Yes or no, does Mark Carney run for the nomination in York Center with the vacated seat for the liberals?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:29

Corey, yes or no, does he run?

Corey 1:01:31

Well, now that Carter said no, definitely. Yeah,

Carter 1:01:33

Yeah, I'm so good at predictions. Can we just mark this down and play it when he doesn't run, please? Would you guys be so kind?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

I mean, I don't have access. We'll see. It seems unlikely we're going to do that. That's right. We should just admit it. We should just be like Trump and be like, no, we're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. Fuck

SPEAKER_00 1:01:52

Corey, another yes or no question to you. Is Bill Morneau our finance minister by the time we record this podcast next week? Yes or no?

Corey 1:02:00

I am going to say yes,

Corey 1:02:04

yes, but maybe not the week after that. You know, it would be, to me, pretty surprising if on Monday the decision gets made and a cabinet shuffle, unless one's already planned for next week, that seems unlikely.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:16

Carter, same question to you. By the time we record next Sunday, is Bill Morneau, I should say, still our finance minister?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:24

Okay, let's move it on back. What do you want to do, Corey? I mean, you edit the show anyways. And by edit, I mean slap on our bumpers. So, I mean, you could just doctor this thing if you'd like. That's true. You could just totally do that. Carter, you have no control. You do not have any of the passwords. I don't have any

Carter 1:02:38

any of the passwords, like none.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:41

Carter, give me the 1 to 10 score on the strategy here. Trump buying a boatload of Facebook ads during the Democratic National Convention, which happens next week. What do you think of that strategy? I

Carter 1:02:52

I think it's probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a 10 because this guy this the rule usually is don't you know don't fuck around

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

fuck with anybody else's

Carter 1:03:01

else's stuff but you know he doesn't follow rules and if you can disrupt and I mean it's all digital too right so who the hell even knows what those digital ads are going to look like I mean they're not going to be looking like just

Carter 1:03:15

straight up negatives they're going to be fucking

Carter 1:03:17

fucking batshit crazy. Like, I am, I'm

Carter 1:03:20

I'm convinced that they're going to, it's

Carter 1:03:24

it's not going to look like a normal negative.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:27

Corey, same question to you. What do you think of the strategy one to 10 of Trump buying that boatload of, of digital to try to counter the, the bump, quote, unquote, that the Democrats will get next week with their convention?

Corey 1:03:38

I think it's brilliant. And it continues to be part of Trump's very norm breaking, but also digitally aggressive strategy. It like it's, you know, I heard some of the quotes in response by the Democrats. And they basically said, Yeah, well, we're gonna we're gonna run ads after because we get the earned and we followed up with the paid. That's very conventional thinking on this. That's actually probably thinking that I would apply in my own life. And it's making me think about it more deeply now. But, but that just the sheer volume of the spend and because it is so online

Corey 1:04:10

online centric he's just gonna own the effing internet like i pity americans for the next four days because that's that's all they're gonna bloody see and the pre-roll ads he's buying you can't even skip he is he's paying for a ton of eyeballs and um and carter is right they are going to be targeted they are going to be very specific to very different concerns and we don't know what like there could be a q anon version of this ad out there for christ's sake like this is this is going to be next level and by the way if it works i suspect he'll do something similar in the lead-up to the election carter well

Carter 1:04:40

well and i just want to add to because i think that um you're you're this could

Carter 1:04:46

could be uh this is what if the democrats they're taking they're they're as we said you the people they're taking all these small segments and they want them to be viral right this counters the virality this counters the ability for them to to actually do what they've stated is their objective, which is to get snippets of things shared amongst their digital audience. And now Trump's

Carter 1:05:07

Trump's like, yeah, go ahead. I just don't. I own the internet this week. Oops. You know, like it's unbelievably ballsy.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:15

Corey, over under on seven, the conservatives heading into their leadership race coming out next Sunday with the with the grand reveal online have said that they've signed up 100,000 new members. What do you think of that message over under on seven from the message that they've kind of put out heading into the final stretch of their leadership?

Corey 1:05:33

So I'm of the opinion that the only people who care about political party membership numbers are political parties. I just I don't think that the general public looks at it and says, oof, that's embarrassing, or ooh, that's impressive. Either way, it's just, it's a number devoid of context. Everybody runs their private club a bit differently from the liberals where you just register to you know the uh you know new democrats where you have to not necessarily purchase it but you know it's a little bit harder than than the liberals and then the conservatives who have uh their 10 20 membership fee whatever the hell it is i don't know but

Carter 1:06:07

but uh i i do still think that um it's

Corey 1:06:12

it's it's pretty impressive all things considered and it certainly makes me think that we're going to be in for a fun on sunday um

Corey 1:06:19

um anybody have any predictions on that i'm going to take over the chair for a minute what's going to happen next uh next sunday guys i

SPEAKER_00 1:06:25

i think it's o tools i

Corey 1:06:30

okay well now i think it's o tools yeah okay there

SPEAKER_00 1:06:32

there we go carter you got set up no another classic moment these

Carter 1:06:37

these ones down dear people of the internet i expect you to tweet tweet all of all the times i was right in this podcast carter

SPEAKER_00 1:06:44

carter yeah do you want to do you want want to talk about the 100k memberships very quickly what do you think on on over on round seven well on that message solid message to go into the final week on no

Carter 1:06:53

no it's a it's a zero uh no one cares you know oh look we sold 100,000 memberships you know big big deal doesn't mean anything no one cares tell me how it impacts my life uh voters are uh selfish and i don't mean i don't say that negatively it just is we are focused on our own lives and this impacts me not at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:15

Final question, a listener question. Thank you to YYCDDI for sending us this question, I should say. The question's about basic income, and Corey, I'll go to you first. Would love to hear your thoughts on how politicians across party lines could go towards seeing basic income as becoming a more viable option. So almost a policy question, but a bit of political strategy associated within it. Would love to kind of get your thoughts. So thanks, YYCDDI, for that question. Corey, what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:41

How they could do it? Yeah. Yeah. How did you see it as a more viable option across party lines?

Corey 1:07:48

you're looking to sell the concept and you're looking to pilot these things more broadly, I think CERB has offered you a great window, a great opportunity. Carter said earlier CERB is winding up imminently. It's October 3rd, I believe. It's still a couple of months away. But that does provide a bit of opportunity to say, OK, well, in a post-CERB world, what kind of supports are we going to have for people? And I think that COVID has exposed that there is a bit of a bit of a need here and a bit of a gap. And, you know, there are people on the conservative side of the spectrum who are big fans of a minimum income as well, because it could be an opportunity to wind up a lot of boutique social programs and just say, OK, well, we're not we're not providing this, that or the other thing. You're just going to get a check. And it's a little bit easier, you know, from a government management point of view. So there is the possibility maybe even to strike in this minority parliament, a version of the pilot that says, OK, you do this, but you don't get that. And pilot in this context could be like a whole bloody province or something. It could be expanded pretty dramatically. If you want to take the opportunity that CERB presents, if you are either the liberals exploring it, well, really just the liberals, but I guess if the conservatives were interested in some

Corey 1:08:56

some sort of parallel universe, they could too. This is the time. This is the time to talk about it because everybody is now realizing just how close to the edges huge portions of the Canadian population could be. Um, so

Corey 1:09:10

so yeah, I use COVID,

Carter 1:09:13

I guess is my short answer. Carter,

Corey 1:09:14

Carter, I got a ton of thoughts on this issue. And it's not even necessarily something that I'm that keen about, to be frank, but it'd be interested to talk about long form another day. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 1:09:22

Yeah, we'll do that. Carter, very quickly on the sales job. How do you make it more viable across party lines?

Carter 1:09:28

Drop the word universal and and jump right into what Corey was talking about of replacing a number of different programs. The bureaucratic loss that occurs during all the programs is something that supporters of UBI talk about all the time. All of these programs that are in government that are really inefficient.

Carter 1:09:49

inefficient. Well, that's true. Let's eliminate all those different programs. You don't need an AISH, Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped. You don't need an EI. you don't need a you know you can just merge all those programs into one but it shouldn't be universal and no one no one's going to buy that it's going to be universal because the what you have to do in taxes to tax it all back so that you can actually pay for it is just unpalatable to the canadian population so draw a line in the sand and say at this line below it you get whatever you want to call it a variant of serb i think serb is the jumping off point not everybody was eligible for CERB and you can just jump off of it and say we're going to find people we're not going to let people fall between the cracks we're going to give people $2,000 a month if they're severely handicapped if they're unemployed whatever the situation is and it's a simple number that is indexed to go up with inflation and maybe indexed by the cost of living in the local jurisdiction but the idea of it being universal is its primary stumbling block I'd drop it and I'd move to just basic income come we'll

SPEAKER_00 1:11:02

we'll leave it there that's a wrap on episode 816 of the strategist my name is zane velgey with me as always cory hogan stephen carter and we'll see you next time

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