Episode 819: Debt and taxes

SPEAKER_01 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 819. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, happy Monday. Yeah, Monday, Zain.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

The day of the week. I'm fine with it.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Why are you so regimented? Why do you care so much about

SPEAKER_01 0:20

which day we record? It's

Carter 0:21

It's not us. It's the listeners. Did you not see the angry tweets? tweets the the text messages that flew in and all the anger that's directed at us because of your birthday i

SPEAKER_01 0:30

i don't i don't check any of my mentions i don't give anyone my number i'd stay off the grid it doesn't matter i don't care about what happened to us not caring what happened to the show and its roots that it had now all of a sudden i'm like recruiting a plug-in zip recruiter even though they don't pay us a dime i'm doing five star reviews at the end of the show what the the fuck has this become yes okay we're gonna record any day we want now no

Carter 0:53

no i can i have to choose to not care about a lot of things like for example i've chosen not to care about cory's mustache oh

Carter 0:59

oh that is a choice that i've made you

Carter 1:01

you know it's it's a tough choice for me but i've chosen not to care about it uh

SPEAKER_01 1:06

uh cory of course with the pedophile special uh that's of course what he uh he he uses with his uh with his trimmers uh cory do you have any justification for why you You look like someone who sells ice cream at the back of a van.

Corey 1:21

Well, first of all, that is the best way to buy ice cream. The ice cream comes to you, so I take that as a compliment. I

SPEAKER_01 1:26

I said van, not truck. Let's be clear. You're not in an ice cream truck. You're in a black van, and you go to the back, and you scoop out ice cream. I just want to paint the picture of who you look like.

Corey 1:39

It's in the eye of a beholder. It's in the eye of the beholder there. this

Corey 1:42

this is i think the culmination of a a summer beard gone right this is this is how you evolve things to the next level um and i make no apologies for it i i apologize to everybody who becomes weak-kneed around me as a result of it perhaps but that's no apologies to you too i

SPEAKER_01 1:59

i just want to let you know that as a brown man i'd never be able to grow that mustache and this is an exercise in education and privilege just so you know i don't want to to make everything about race but i need you to know that i could not pull that mustache off not because i couldn't pull it off but because i would be questioned a lot more than you and i just find that to be unfair at

Carter 2:19

at my age i go straight to jail if i have that mustache

Carter 2:23

that's true that is

SPEAKER_01 2:24

is true i hope you feel bad i hope you recognize the privilege that you have

SPEAKER_01 2:29

and i don't know where i've taken this introduction but it's not in a good space i feel like let's

Corey 2:34

let's move on let's go this is what happens when we record on a monday Exactly. No,

SPEAKER_01 2:38

No, we will record whichever day we want. We're not beholden to anyone.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Anyways, let's move it on to our first segment. Our first segment, Wreck It Like Ralph. Guys, I want to talk about our finances here in Alberta and the choices that Jason Kenney has in front of him. So

SPEAKER_01 2:53

So we had a fiscal update this week talking about our province deficit well above the $20 billion that Corey mentioned, I feel like a few episodes ago when you said something crazy like 20 billion. Well, it was pegged at 24.2. And of course, we're expecting $100 billion debt come first quarter of 2021. So numbers that are significantly higher than we thought, than we expected. What I want to do in this segment is kind of tease out strategies. I want to talk about what the Kenney government should do, what the NDP should do, what third party groups may want to look at as they expect to see this budget. But let's start with the UCP. So they've come out with perhaps the first honest fiscal update we've seen in a long time. Perhaps COVID has provided them that opportunity. But Corey, let's start there, because I see you already waving your hand against my assertion that previous fiscal updates haven't been honest. Let's start with your take on that, and then we'll go from there. Yeah,

Corey 3:53

Yeah, I don't for a minute think that that's accurate. Picking where the finances are going to be quarter to quarter in Alberta is a mugs game. It's difficult. The finance department has to peg a ton of different variables, and not all of them can possibly be known to the government at any given time. So on the whole, I think they do better than people give them credit for. Yes, things can bounce around by a billion dollars, two billion. And yes, that is an incredible amount of money. But when you're talking about a $10 billion deficit, that is 10%, 20% over the course of a year where oil prices may fluctuate by

Corey 4:27

by tens of dollars, as the case may be. And so, you

Corey 4:32

you know, I don't think it's fair to say that fiscal updates are not honest in the past. They are always dealing with a certain amount of information

Corey 4:39

information deficit. And you get this thing that happens between budgets in particular where the price of oil may have gone down a fair bit, but you're not going to revise your estimate for oil for the year in all likelihood because it's just as likely to swing back up in the next bit. So quarter to quarter, the updates do look like they swing pretty widely. But the reality is, for

Corey 5:01

for the last few years, I don't think that they've been significantly off where they've tracked at the start of the year.

Corey 5:08

It's just, you know, they're dealing with such big numbers that a 10% error can be $800 million or more.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

more. Yeah, I'm actually glad we started here. Carter, give me your take on this, because you guys have both been involved in putting together these and communicating these fiscal updates, these budgets. Stephen, from your experience as a former chief of staff, give me your understanding of the mechanics and perhaps what goes into putting together a fiscal update before we get into the strategies in our current state. Well,

Carter 5:34

Well, I mean, the fiscal update is one of those moments when you have to communicate with the population and sometimes you're hoping that they're not paying attention. And other times you really want to showcase how well you're doing. In Alberta, unfortunately, we haven't been doing well for a long time. There was a brief surplus in, I think it was 2014. It was Prentice's last, just before he went into the election. I would call that kind of a

Carter 6:02

a bit of a manufactured surplus. It was a little bit lucky. um we haven't really had a surplus since about 2007 and

Carter 6:11

and so governments in that time and i was part of that government during that time um have had to try and and uh make that shit smell good and there's all kinds of spin that we can do um some of which cory just did uh where you you talk about how it's hard to predict all the various moving variables and things like that i'll tell you something a lot of the other provinces don't have quite as hard time predicting where they're going to be because they haven't put as much emphasis on relying on natural resource revenue. And ultimately, when you're talking about, and Corey's speech notwithstanding about all the variables and all the different pieces, that is absolutely true, except a lot of the variables don't move nearly as much as resource revenue. And resource revenue has been, it was decided in the Klein era to rely on the resource revenue as a replacement for taxation, for a replacement of certain revenue sources. And now we see, and I used to tell people that natural gas revenue was lower than gaming revenue in Alberta. Now it's all resource revenue added together is lower than gaming revenue. Just to kind of put things in perspective of how much money has disappeared. And at one point we were looking at almost 60% of total government revenue was coming from natural resource revenue. And now we're looking at just under 5%. So we've had a tremendous swing. That's not one variable set. That's willful blindness. And everybody's going to focus on the $20 plus billion. Last fiscal year, 2019-2020, our deficit was $12.2 billion. This isn't just a pandemic problem. This is a philosophical problem that goes to the heart of how someone chooses to budget. This is the equivalent of your household. and Corey's going to get mad at me for using household as an example. This

Carter 8:03

This is the equivalent of a household saying they're going to budget based on projected lottery winning.

Carter 8:07

You know, it just doesn't work in the long run.

Corey 8:13

there's so many things that he said wrong there, but I'll start with what he said right, which

Corey 8:18

which is that we are more reliant on volatile resource or volatile revenue sources than other provinces. Now, there's

Corey 8:25

there's two things there. One is the question of volatility and the other is the question of how much profit you can get out of it there. Because when you think about it, imagine if budgeting was done quarterly

Corey 8:34

quarterly instead of yearly, which is basically what the fiscal update is. You're going to see a ton of volatility there. You don't really get to smooth that over. On the flip side, imagine if we did budgets for five years, like it's just this is a five-year period budget instead of one. You would see a lot less of that volatility. So historically, Alberta has seen this kind of spike and trough, and our spending has has reacted to it. And I think that's been a lot of the problem that we've seen in Alberta in the past, where we cut in reaction to revenue that may come back, and we're always sort of chasing the last trend. That's not been the case so much in the last 10 years, because there just hasn't been resource revenue, at least in the last five of those 10 years. And it's been a very painful adjustment to the province. And how we've largely done it is instead of raising taxes, we've just run big deficits. So to

Corey 9:19

to sort of steer us back onto the road here, and talk about this fiscal update,

Corey 9:25

there are a few things that Albertans used to say, and they were true for a very long time, even as we're running deficits, you know, still the best debt to GDP ratio in the country. That's not really true anymore. Used to be, you know, when you compared it to our population, the deficits were not that big. That has not been true for quite some time. I think what's shocking about this budget is that even in the age of COVID, it is the worst budget from a fiscal position when you look at it on a per capita basis, on a GDP basis, of any of the provinces. And that, I think, is what's so shocking about this particular fiscal update. It's not just that we've been hit by COVID. It's that a

Corey 10:06

a truck drove over us, and then COVID came and drove over us. The budget was already in very dire states before COVID came along.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

This compounding effect is interesting. Carter, jump in. I've got a question for you, but jump in first, and I'll go back to you again. I

Carter 10:19

I just wanted to

Carter 10:20

You know, governments have been ignoring this since 2007, and that has been the problem. We've had deficits, and when I was the chief of staff, we had a booming economy, and we still had a $3 billion deficit. So this is not an economic problem. This is a structural problem, and that's the frustration

Carter 10:38

frustration that we have, is that coming into to this. Some people will say, well, we have to fix the structure this way by cutting expenses. Others will say we have to fix the structure this way by changing the revenue structure. But what no one can say is we can fix this structure by just leaving it the way it is, because that's just not going to work.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Carter, you know, we've often talked about budgets themselves as being less about the numbers, but more about the communications around a budget, right? That's communications documents. I remember you saying that quite often when budgets would come out every single year. What is a fiscal update? Is it also a communications document? Are you trying to telegraph something? And if so, what do you feel like the Kenney government is trying to telegraph with this massive hole that they've presented to Alberts?

Carter 11:22

Well, I mean, first of all, the budget is a totally different. I mean, yes, they're the same type of document. You add up how much money came in and how much money went out. But it's a different communication structure entirely. You're not speaking to the general population, right? You're speaking to smaller subsets of the population, the business community, leaders in the community. More

SPEAKER_01 11:40

subsets, one might say?

Carter 11:42

Yeah, it's a day in the life. It's not like a month-long process where you send the finance minister out to go talk to the Rotary Clubs, right? That's a different structure, and that's what the budget does. The budget is a month-long communication about where you're taking the province, where you see the vision going. This is a reflection of how are we doing against that vision achievement. And what we're seeing here is that COVID, coupled with our resource problem, has laid havoc to Jason Kenney's plans. You know, he had a plan of returning to a balanced budget, I think, was it seven years or five years, Corey? It was a relatively quick period of time.

Corey 12:18

The original version was before the next election. Yeah,

Carter 12:21

Yeah, I mean, it's just gone because nothing about

Carter 12:26

about where we are was

Carter 12:28

was outlined in the budget that we passed literally as COVID was arriving on our shore or in our province. You know, the country was just starting to realize that we had a problem when Jason Kenney rammed the budget through as one of the fastest budgeting processes in Alberta history.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Corey, I'm going to you and perhaps putting your strategist hat on for the UCP right now. Now, you know, you see what happened, right? You're tapped on the shoulder to say, hey, listen, okay, we've presented with Albertans with this whole, we haven't sugarcoated it. What do we do next, both from a comms and or policy perspective? What do you kind of see as the optimal strategy if there is one for the UCP going forward in broad strokes?

Corey 13:11

Well, the first thing I would do is I would say, is there anything that we were planning to spend in the next couple of years we want to just spend right now? Because the budget is so large, it is so big, and as long as you actually have the ability to cash flow it so you don't have the difficulty on the bond market, spend it now. Because it allows you to build that downward trajectory on the deficit that you're going to want to be able to show in future years. So in particular, I'd be less interested on things I can move up from next year, because in

Corey 13:39

in theory, this will be just a blip. It'll go from $24.2 billion to, say, $10 billion. But you want to make sure that the year after that, the year going into an election, looks like it's some serious momentum relative to the budget prior to that. So I would be asking about whether we have thought about this from an accounting standpoint. Is there anything that we can just book now? And there are ways that governments can do that, and governments do that all the time, moving things between fiscal years. So that would be sort of step one because, listen, if

Corey 14:10

if you're going to take a bath, take a big bath. That's

Corey 14:12

like just a business adage,

Carter 14:14

adage, not a government adage.

Corey 14:15

adage. And you might as well just incur all of your expenses now. Now, that also means if there's any costly – and I hate to say this because I would never want to see my former friends and colleagues in the public service laid off unnecessarily

Corey 14:27

unnecessarily or cruelly. But if you're going to incur costs for any kind of restructuring, now is the time to take those costs as well. Just suck them all up. You have until next March 31 to grab any of those one-time costs that will allow you to have a steadier path down the road. That's the first thing I would say if I was talking to the conservatives from a conservative point of view. And then the next thing I would say is, okay, well, this all happened. How in the world are we going to get out of it? Because hope is not a plan. And

Corey 14:59

you're Jason Kenney, you are going to be coming out of COVID. You are at a moment where people are going to have trouble disaggregating COVID from our actual fiscal woes. But a year from now, if every other province is doing a lot better and you're not, that's

Corey 15:11

that's a problem. So you need to figure out whether there's any serious structural changes that you need to start implementing. now.

Corey 15:18

So whether that's cuts, and I just don't think there's a ton of reductions you're going to find, sincerely, just in Alberta, or whether that is raising revenue, you

Corey 15:29

you got to figure that out now. And you can use COVID as the excuse, but you got to figure that out now, because it's going to look pretty bad next to BC next year.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Carter, same question to you. You put on your UCP strategist hat. They, of course, call you first. They call Corey second. As we know, that would be the case um you want the you

Corey 15:48

up to the good

SPEAKER_01 15:49

yeah yeah right this is the cory hogan strategy uh you know uh let steven fail uh fall flat on his face so to speak that's worked for me in my career actually back

SPEAKER_01 16:00

back back filling steven carter the cory hogan going on carter carter same question to you based on what you heard from cory do you agree with that strategic approach is there anything you'd add and then i'm gonna ask a triple barreled question because why the fuck not? Do you agree with Corey's assessment that they have to get out of it in the sense of comparatives with other provinces? Or can they strategize, communicate themselves out of not getting out of the hole, so to speak, and try to find other levers to make excuses on?

Carter 16:29

Well, maybe if Jason Kenney wasn't Jason Kenney, I'll start with the third part and kind of work my way backwards. But maybe if Jason Kenney wasn't Jason Kenney, then you could do But Jason Kenney had a central premise to his election campaign, and that was that the province was in financial problems and only he could solve it. And when he came in, that was the plan. That's what he said. and and i think that the province of alberta is prepared to uh cut him some slack as each province is prepared to cut slack uh for their premier uh but you know there's jason kenney's the second lowest premier um right now in terms of approval rating uh he's not doing well people in alberta are like i'm not sure about this guy because he promised me one thing and and really i don't think they care about the deficit i don't think they care about the debt the deficit any of of those things. I think what they care about is their own financial prosperity. And if you're going to dig your way out of this, then you have to focus on getting us back to where we were. Now, the challenge is, how do you do that in an environment where the resource market hasn't been playing ball for 13 years? If the resource market had been playing ball as recently as 18 months ago, then we could do what we always did, which is just hope for a rebound. But it hasn't been been playing ball. It hasn't given us that economic opportunity that we have come to expect in the province of Alberta.

Carter 17:55

So Justin Trudeau gets, for example, a little bit more of a pass. He gets to ride this a little bit differently. Jason Kenney, I think, is in a position where he, number one, needs to solve the financial problem for individuals. And I think he needs to solve the financial problem for the province. Now, the good news for Jason is that those two things will go hand in hand.

Carter 18:14

As we do better as individuals, the province can do better through And I'll kind of wrap this up because Travis Taves, Minister of Finance in the province of Alberta, has hinted oh so quietly at looking at a revenue solution to our financial imbalance, which goes back to our special episode of the 5x5x5 program and the poll that young Corey was subjected to. um so the you know i still think that someone was polling that question and today you know jason kenney being three months ahead three months ahead of the rest of us not unusual he knows what the plays are going to be he knows where the ball needs to go and i i think he's done what cory suggested piled on the deficit as big as he can and

Carter 19:05

and now he's going to try and figure out how to dig his way out and

Carter 19:08

and i i think that uh we

Carter 19:10

we may be seeing a temporary temporary

Carter 19:12

temporary in quotation marks remarks, you know, a look at some sort of revenue solution in the next couple of months.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Corey, just to remind our listeners, episode 809 was that episode, if they want to go listen to it. I believe the poll you got was a 5% testing, stress testing, 5% PST, 5% public sector wage rollback. And was it a five-year plan for

SPEAKER_01 19:36

for the deficit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, A, what do you kind of think of what Carter's reaction is? Do you feel like we might be seeing that telegraphing by the finance minister as potentially being a revenue solution? And to that end, would you be recommending a revenue solution to supplement the first part of your strategy?

Corey 19:55

Yeah, I mean, Zane, I've been recommending a revenue solution since well before I was in government. I think it's just an inevitable for Alberta. And you do it early in your mandate so that you're able to get everybody over it and fix the finances and feel somewhat comfortable with it by the end. It seems to me that based on the language that Minister Taves and the Premier have used that along the lines of this is not the time for new taxes because we are just coming out of this terrible fiscal beating that we took through COVID, economic beating, I suppose.

Corey 20:29

It does seem that they are aligning it, in my mind, towards a referendum next year to go with the municipal elections. I can see them putting on the ballot across the province. How do you feel about this plan? It is a grand bargain style plan. Yes, you get a 5% PST, but we're also going to take 5% out of the public sector wages and it will allow us to get back to balance. To me, that seems like the

Corey 20:53

the Jason Kenney way of doing it if this is going to get done. And expect that foreshadowing to grow throughout the coming months. Certainly the language they've used lately does not shut the door on this being a plan

Corey 21:05

six months from now, nine months from now, 12 months from now. And I think that's quite intentional. I would be surprised if it's not.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Carter, we've talked about revenue resources as being something, as you've mentioned, 2007, haven't really rebounded.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Can they use COVID as a cloud cover for a revenue solution and COVID exclusively? Like, is this a blessing in disguise? Because a version of this problem would have existed regardless without COVID, as we've talked about. But is now COVID the communication solution to a revenue problem exclusively?

Carter 21:37

This is how new taxes get introduced. national or international crisis and you have to raise revenue as a as a government and you go to your people and you say but

Carter 21:47

but for this war or but for this pandemic

Carter 21:50

pandemic but for this situation there is no way we'd increase these taxes we'd never levy these taxes upon you but as you can see we have no other choice and really we have no other choice let's be frank there is no way to save Again, I'm not going to use the $24 billion because that's so big, but just go back to last fiscal, $12 billion. There's no savings of $12 billion in the Alberta provincial government budget. That just doesn't exist. I know my friend Ken Bozenkul will argue with me and

Carter 22:22

and tell me that if we just paid everybody the same as we paid everybody in B.C., problem

Carter 22:30

if we wanted to be paid B

Carter 22:31

B.C. wages, we'd live in B.C. Anyways, I digress. The point is, if you want to see major societal change where something is significantly different in terms of revenue and taxation on the population, it always comes with a crisis. This is the crisis and governments will be implementing some new taxes. I mean, so if I was advising Justin Trudeau, I

Carter 22:56

I would be looking at a wealth tax, right? Right. Some sort of special taxation that will pay for the pandemic pandemic problem.

Carter 23:04

He's not going to pull the same lever. He's already got the GST. He's not going to pump

Carter 23:08

pump that back up to seven percent, although that could be another solution.

Carter 23:13

I would probably leave the two percent in and put a wealth tax on because it pulls at 80 percent. So who am I not to take the tax that pulls better? Jason Kenney doesn't have that same type of opportunity. He's going to have to pick a less popular tax. The same way municipalities have no levers. The only lever that a municipality has is to increase their property taxes. So municipalities are the ones that are really screwed. Somewhat screwed is the province, and wide open screwed is the government of Canada. I like wide open. We can get our way out of this potential screwing with a little bit more options in our quiver.

Carter 23:51

phrasing, Stephen. even yeah

Carter 23:53

yeah that doesn't get cut and put into uh like a special promo i don't even know who we are right

SPEAKER_01 23:59

right all that all that mention all that mentioning of screwing and then i have to look at cory's mustache uh cory cory

SPEAKER_01 24:06

cory question for you political risk let's talk about that because does does what exists what political risk exists for kenny i mean it seems like covet is extremely But he's, you know, ran on, you know, no new taxes. He's ran on all these fiscal conservative principles and policies, not just in Alberta, but over the decades as a outspoken political figure. Let's talk about the political risk for Kenny with the revenue solution.

Corey 24:36

Well, they're pretty significant.

Corey 24:38

This is something that even if he is not using the words, this is not going to happen. I believe if you went around Alberta and asked Albertans, they would say Jason Kenney doesn't want that. So clearly it misaligns the public's expectations with the potential action. And that's always challenging because it's not just that you surprise them. It's not just, oh, wow, that's interesting. It's a sense of betrayal. trail. And if people feel betrayed, especially in Alberta, we've seen this before, you can end up with another political party on the right just like that. And

Corey 25:07

then all of a sudden, he's got some serious challenges holding together not just his coalition, but his shots at government going forward. So, you know, a big risk. And I think that's why you're going to see this thing not just come out, but be rolled out very slowly, gradually, and with the backing of basically every economist in the world. It's also why I think it needs to be bundled with something that that the same constituency will see as their

Corey 25:31

their preferred solution. Now, you can reduce salaries by 5%. You can throw

Corey 25:36

throw in a bunch of other things like a total ban on travel. Travel's largely been banned in the public service for a while if it's not essential. But you can mention all of these things. They all poll very well. They're not actually going to solve the fiscal problem. The 5% PST will go a long way towards doing that. But by putting this bundle together, you kind of get them to look at it and say, well, I don't like this part, but I like these 12 other parts. Never mind the one part they don't like is 90% of the plan. Yeah,

Corey 26:00

right. That's got to be your play here. He is on very dangerous territory. This is something that conservative

Corey 26:07

conservative caucuses have thrown

Corey 26:10

thrown leaders overboard over time and time again.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Yeah, Carter, same question to you. Let's talk about the political risk of introducing a revenue solution as a conservative. And then secondly, let's talk about what the strategies to perhaps weather that looks like. Corey, you gave an example of a few of them that could be used to perhaps weather or soften the blow. Carter, what do you think?

Carter 26:32

Well, I mean, the first, I mean, we use the saying only Nixon could go to China very frequently. And perhaps the only people who could bring in a real true PST are the conservatives because, you know, everybody else is tax loving. loving maybe the conservatives can say this is only temporary until we balance our budget and have some sort of believability to it you know I'm not sure that if the NDP brought in the PST and said it's only temporary people were going to buy that so maybe that is one way that that Kenny can sell this but let's be clear he doesn't want to sell this this is not something that he He came to office thinking, you know what I really need to do is put in a PST. I think that he wanted to do what he said he wanted to do, which is to bring back the good old days under Klein and Stelmach when we had the royalty revenues that give us the Alberta advantage, which was our low-tax environment. He

Carter 27:31

He believed that. That's why one of his first things to do was to cut the corporate tax rates so the corporations would pay less tax because he does believe that lower taxes stimulate business. That's honest. That's not him picking and choosing populist messaging. That's him saying, this is what I actually care about.

Carter 27:51

So I don't believe he wants to do it. But I do think that if he feels he has to do it, some of the risks that, say, an Alison Redford would have faced or an Ed Stelmack would have faced or even a Jim Prentiss would have faced with an outright rebellion from the majority of his MLAs, I think will be minimal. he'll lose drew barnes and he'll shed a tear but

Carter 28:08

but you know that will be it um everybody

Carter 28:13

everybody else will fall in line because i think everybody now understands that we are actually in a crisis and those who don't understand probably aren't even strong enough to stand on their own anyways cory

SPEAKER_01 28:23

cory i want to move on to the ndp but give us some closing thoughts well

Corey 28:27

well if you want to sell it and you don't know how to sell it do what you do in any other job if you don't know what you do you kick it upstairs to your boss and in the case of being the premier that means the people of Alberta so we talked about the idea of having a referendum at the same time as the municipal elections this is your play your boss makes the decision they have to live with it you it's not exactly even a you

Corey 28:48

you can't really lose you can lose but you can't really lose if you're Jason Kenney in this scenario because either you've put together a bundle that

Corey 28:55

that has this tax and this tax gets rejected and you say okay well I guess we're living with deficits then that was the voice of Albertans, or Albertans put upon themselves this tax, in which case it's not really your fault. Now, obviously, it's never so clean and people will hold you responsible

Corey 29:10

responsible on both sides if either thing goes down. But it is a good way to get out of a jam. If you're a politician who is caught between multiple different now mutually exclusive promises, and that seems to be the case that Kenny's in right now, he can't do all of the things that he's promised. He can't balance the budget and not have these taxes, and, and, and. So something's got to give, you go to your bosses.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Carter, are we going to see a referendum question should we go down that path of a package or a single item about PST and revenue solutions?

Carter 29:45

Well, I'm just thinking now, I mean, he's promised the transfer payments referendum, like some sort of a fair, getting a better deal for Alberta. I

Carter 29:54

wonder if he doesn't take equalization and put it together with a PST you know he wants it to succeed I mean he doesn't want to go to the people and fail I mean I agree with Corey it is a better win win if

Carter 30:08

if he goes to the people and they say no well then he says well I have to do these massive cuts or he learns to live with deficits most likely he learns to live with deficits but if if

Carter 30:19

if he really wants it to pass and I do think that Jason Kenney is the type of premier that actually doesn't want to screw the province in the long term. He does believe his ideology. And I think that hampers him. But his heart is in the right place in terms of, and that's going to sound weird to a bunch of people, but his heart is in the right place for what he believes is in the best interests of the province of Alberta. So I think that, you

Carter 30:44

you know, it would be a really interesting referendum question to

Carter 30:48

to package equalization with the inclusion of a PST. If we get a fair deal from the government of canada we

Carter 30:55

we will implement a pst until such time as the government until alberta is back on its financial feet because we have a better deal with alberta or with government of canada i don't know someone would write better but that would give them uh

Carter 31:08

uh that would give them a really interesting uh outcome because people

Carter 31:13

people would be caught between two places i want a better deal i don't want a pst i

Carter 31:18

think it's gonna fuck with our municipal elections like absolutely absolutely gong show us. But Jason doesn't care about that as long as he doesn't gong show with his election. So that works. I actually think, yeah,

Carter 31:30

yeah, I don't like that,

Carter 31:31

but I suspect that Corey's right.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

I feel like the person that, of course, will backfill and write that better will be Corey Hogan. Corey, let's talk about very quickly the NDP play. So you're seeing all of of this happen with our fiscal hole. Where is your focus on as the NDP strategically, right? So let's just go straight to the strategy. You're putting on your NDP hat right now. Where is the vulnerability? You perhaps are sensing the same thing that a revenue play is in the works, that there might be a package. You know all these things. What are you going after? Because today Today, we saw them go after Kenny with, you know, on budget and I'm sorry, on debt and deficits. You know, the biggest debt, biggest deficits. Is that the angle? What is their angle that they're trying to start seeding the problem in so they've got the most amount of leverage going forward?

Corey 32:26

this to me is the most interesting thing that's going on right now in this entire situation. We've just spent, I don't know, what, 20 some minutes talking about the deficit.

Corey 32:36

dive, very important issues, serious policy ramifications of all of that. And I'm looking at it, I can't help but think the NDP has absolutely fallen into that. And it is just a fool's, it's just, it's a foolish thing to do. The Alberta NDP attacking the deficit, I can understand why on its surface that makes sense to them. It's, hey, the UCP thought they were going to be so great at it. And look, they're not. You know, they said they were going to be fiscally responsible. And look, they're not. But there's two things about that. One is that I agree with what Stephen said earlier, they didn't actually run on fiscal responsibility, they ran on jobs economy pipelines, it was more about your personal financial situation would get better. And the province was almost illustrative of the personal woes that people had out there. And then the other thing is, it absolutely does not follow that if you sit there and say the UCP is precluding, I can't vote for them because they're not fiscally responsible. Oh, the NDP are going to be the fiscally responsible ones. And it is so confusing to throw this message in right now. This is literally the day before my daughter goes back to school at a time when the NDP is calling for more money for education, which, by the way, is a way better ballot question for the NDP. And I got to say, it's

Corey 33:47

it's not called message discipline because it's easy. There are so many tempting things to talk about. The government's exposed a number of flanks, but this is

Corey 33:53

is not savvy. This is not savvy.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

Carter, what do you think? What do you make of Corey's assessment? And what would you be suggesting for them as using Corey's term, you know, a ballot question or a framing question around the current situation that the UCP are presented with? Well,

Carter 34:08

Well, I mean, there's no credibility on the NDP having some sort of financial wherewithal, you

Carter 34:16

you know, that they manage the deficit and the debt better. I mean, I've mentioned that basically we've had deficits going back to 2007. This is not something that the NDP has credibility on, nor is it something that the NDP voter gives a shit about.

Carter 34:31

They do not care what the debt and deficit are. And especially when you've got, you know, one fifth of the population unemployed or underemployed. That is a far bigger deal. And Corey brought up kids going back to school tomorrow. I mean, people are scared shitless. And you're talking about debt and deficit. I mean, how tone deaf are you? I mean, I get that it's the NDP. This is their standard operating procedure is to be completely tone deaf. But this doesn't even fit within their ideological box. They don't care. They don't care about whether or not there's a deficit

Carter 35:09

deficit or debt. They care about people. That's their brand. What the fuck are they doing? Who's running this shit show? We've been watching MLAs stepping all over the the the official messages. We've talked about that before in the podcast. Now we're watching the official party step all over their message structure. Has someone is someone got a structure in the in in the office that says shit we should talk about shit we shouldn't talk about because that should be like what two big flip charts guys shit we should talk about shit we shouldn't talk about debt and deficit shit we shouldn't talk about. That's free. that's that's a gimme cory

SPEAKER_01 35:47

cory what do you make of that what do you make of the strategy if you can call it that or or perhaps the assertion that the ndp cannot win in alberta if they don't address the economy right we've heard this over and over again right like don't don't seed economic ground this is a province that cares about jobs and pipelines and economy what do you kind of make of that and do you feel like some of that is what perhaps is being whispered into their ear that's been a product of what we're seeing.

Corey 36:14

I will say I think there's an NDP way to talk about the economy that is more people focused, but you

Corey 36:20

you are making the mistake that I believe they are making, which is conflating the economy and the fiscal situation of the province. They are not the same issue. And I have to say, who is this mythical voter who would vote NDP except for the fact they feel the UCP is doing too good a job on debt and deficit? Like,

Corey 36:35

Like, I don't understand how this is going to move any votes. And the other thing I would say is there

Corey 36:40

there is a long game here. The election is not until 2023. I understand that you see that first fiscal update and you say the

Corey 36:46

the deficit was really bad before COVID hit. Sure. Okay. But it will be as effective as the NDP saying the downturn happened in 2015 before they took office. These events are just too close and people are going to say, well, I mean, it was all COVID adjacent, just as they said, oh yeah, yeah, the downturn was NDP adjacent. This is not a

Corey 37:04

a savvy strategy. And I just really want to emphasize, this is the day before kids in Calgary are going back to school. This is the last normal day. Parents everywhere are having conversations with parents everywhere about how unnerved they are, how concerned they are, how worried they are that health orders got changed on the weekend.

Corey 37:24

And there's posts about debt and deficit. Deficit.

Corey 37:27

Every parent I know right now wouldn't mind a little bit more debt and deficit.

Corey 37:31

Would be pretty happy to see some if it meant that schools were a little bit safer. And frankly, that's been the NDP's line earlier in this. They just saw this fiscal update and they got distracted by it. But if you want to disqualify the UCP, they

Corey 37:43

they talked about jobs, economy, and pipelines. Find a way to talk about jobs, economy, and pipelines in your box. Disqualify them on those. But never forget that's not your turf. You are still falling into the ballot

Corey 37:54

ballot question of the other side, and you are going to be fighting an uphill battle every time that's the case. So rant

SPEAKER_01 38:00

Yeah. Rant over. Carter, wrap this in a bow for us. So you talk about schools now. It seems like you're in your agreement in that. Game it out for us, because Corey talked about this being a longer horizon. So in broader strokes, you don't have to give specifics because we don't know what the dynamics, but what are you focusing on? How are you touching on this debt deficit issue, if at all, going forward? Am I hearing you say you don't touch on it? I just want to clarify for myself what your advice to the NDP would be if you were in that position.

Carter 38:29

I don't even think you need to. Sometimes you need to put out a statement of some sort just to make sure you've staked the ground. I don't even think you need to do that. There's no one saying that this was a good idea. Right. Like it's not like there's some sort of alternative point of view that says we should be running 24 billion dollar deficits. This is not that problem. What you should be saying is, you know, what

Carter 38:50

what we're seeing on the ground, like put yourself like you have to put yourself into the exact mindset of the voter. and sure they're not voting right now but the voter needs to start breaking away from the ucp at some point like that's the purpose of this of these first two years the first two years aren't about winning people over it's about breaking people off and you're not breaking people off by debt and deficit you're breaking off the soft ucp voter based on the services that they expect for themselves they're you know the voter is inherently selfish and i don't mean that as a a bad thing that's the system that's what makes it work if the voter is thinking of themselves selfishly then we have a chance to to appeal to them and get them to act collectively for the good

Carter 39:34

but you know the ndp doesn't know why they're communicating to the to the voters they should be breaking them off on education and health care those are the two most important issues right now in

Carter 39:44

in canada and the ndp i mean i won't they're not silent on it they're there talking about it but but they keep undermining themselves with messages that don't matter.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

Corey, let's go to one final part of this, which is, let's say you're advising a client, you're doing some GR work, you're doing some advocacy work for a client who's trying to get something out of the government, let's say some financial resources or otherwise. What would your strategy be? You see the fiscal update, you see that there's potentially revenue solution. Is it to say, hey, listen, they actually might be in spending mode right now so as to inflate this number and then show a success on it? Are you staying away? What are you advising? I'm kind of curious. And I know it's going to be very much subject area specific, but what's the general sort of counsel that if you're a third party looking to access government right now, what would that be?

Corey 40:31

Well, the first thing is, I'd ask them if they have a time machine, because the best time to do those asks was before the fiscal update, because from this point on, the government's going to want to show positive trajectory. Now, if the government was wise, or at least clever, And I think that they are clever, even if I don't, you know, I think that they probably put a bit of padding in there and said, okay, we do not want to revise this up later. So let's make this bigger. And as it comes down, you may find that some fiscal cushion reopens and you want to keep your eye on that. And you want to make sure you're still putting your asks in and talking about how they would help this current moment. Certainly anything you can do that talks about economic upswing is going to be considered a good idea. I do believe anything around diversification will probably be seen as a good idea. And so if you've got an infrastructure project, if you've got a jobs plan, if

Corey 41:21

if you have a notion

Corey 41:23

notion as to how you can bring other businesses to Alberta that have not historically been here, strike. This is your time. Like I said, it would have been better to do it a month ago, but do it now. Make sure that you're on everybody's radar. are you're seen as a solution and you're seeing if dollars come available because the fiscal situation you know

Corey 41:39

know gets better that that money looks like because they've said 24.2 now they might as well spend 24.2 but if it looks like they're going to end up with 21 if

Corey 41:48

if i'm the government i'm looking for three billion dollars to spend somewhere carter

SPEAKER_01 41:51

carter same question to you

Carter 41:54

well i mean i just think that cory's right this is the end of the process like they're but uh it all depends on how quickly we recover if we get a second bounce no one's spending anything on anything um you know and we still haven't seen anything that digs us out of this problem so the the nd i think the ucp government will be looking for a dig my way out of the problem spending program but no one knows what that is because it's not you know it's not infrastructure necessarily it's not this is it's been talked about a few times uh that this is a more female focused downturn and uh going to build another bridge um isn't necessarily going to dig us out of this problem okay

SPEAKER_01 42:31

let's move it to our next segment gaming the speech from the throne guys i want to talk about almost a little bit deja vu a similar situation uh but now at the federal level which is our federal government proroguing parliament uh you know installing a new finance minister having a speech from the throne and uh throwing out several releasing one should say several trial balloons of what we might see coming into this speech from the throne, from this government, specifically around Justin Trudeau's desire to remake and, you know, to use a Joe Biden term, build back better in terms of what we see from Canada. So I want to talk about what the Fed strategy should be. And let's start with the Liberals. And Corey, maybe I'll start with you, which is, you know, you're on the heels, not even on the heels of this pandemic, you're still in the middle of this pandemic. You're on the heels of perhaps the CERB and the wage subsidy, now making those full-time programs. What is your general sense, based on the political dynamics that you see, as the liberals to go in with these big changes? Do you feel like you've got the runway and the ability to do that, especially in a minority parliament?

SPEAKER_01 43:38

I think you absolutely

Corey 43:38

absolutely have the runway. And if

Corey 43:42

the polls continue to hold, and if you're worried about Aaron O'Toole finding his footing and moving forward, and again, Again, I don't necessarily even think this is necessarily the

Corey 43:51

the – it's not a safe approach, but you might start – your eyes might start getting pretty big and you start thinking, yeah, go big and do everything that you think you want to do to remake Canadian economy. Basically, dare the NDP to bring you down. And if they do, you

Corey 44:06

you get to blame the others and you get to run on this grand remaking of the Canadian economy, which is better than running on blackface.

Corey 44:26

you can really... is maybe a compelling ballot question if you're the Liberals. And so you're maybe not necessarily going in saying, I'm definitely going to have an election, but you're probably thinking,

Corey 44:52

it's as good a ground of running an election on as any. So you're probably being pretty ambitious with this throne speech. You know, maybe not brazenly so,

SPEAKER_01 45:00

so, but pretty ambitious. Carter, same question. Is the runway there, and is it a good strategy?

Carter 45:06

Well, I think that the runway is there. I think that you may as well go in with something big. big.

Carter 45:13

this is a time for big ideas. We talked about this in terms of the implementation of the PST. If you're going to implement the PST in Alberta, you have room to do some big ideas,

Carter 45:24

you know, federally. And now some of the big ideas aren't that big. They're kind of extensions from where we started. Any sort of green New Deal type of an initiative where we're going to rebuild the the economy in a more uh environmentally sustainable model well you

Carter 45:39

you know that's happening i mean that's what mark carney was hired to do for brookfield resident you know brookfield properties hired to re-envision their entire portfolio as a green initiative so you know why wouldn't you be talking about that as a um as as a federal government but you know i also see some some stuff that's a little bit more out there uh the universal basic income for example i

Carter 46:05

would rather you know we're talking about universal basic income one of the things that comes along with that is a massive restructuring of our taxation system uh because there'd be a whole bunch of people that are getting the ubi that would be given it right back uh because you know you're not going to need it um i would much rather see us talking about a guaranteed basic income income um a guaranteed basic income for those people who are in need of it uh so for example we have h recipients in alberta you know the severely handicapped uh program assured income for the severely handicapped uh we have employment unemployment insurance or employment insurance i guess it is now we have uh social you know our pension plans if you reduced all of those programs to their base idea and said we're going to give everybody twenty four thousand dollars a year as our basic guaranteed income, I think that's a much more reasonable program than we're going to give everybody an extra $24,000 regardless of their income. We're just going to, I think we need to see some sort of guaranteed national income, but I don't know that UBI is necessarily the best way to get there. But Justin Trudeau gets to have those conversations now. He gets to have those conversations when maybe three

Carter 47:18

three or four months ago he didn't get to have those.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Corey, you gave a very cringeworthy look when Carter mentioned Mark Carney. Please explain. It's because it's Brookfield Asset Management.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

Yeah. A little different,

Corey 47:35

slightly. Just a little. But, you know, the other thing, probably the more substantive reason I was sort of cringing is that you have to be very careful about some of these broader swings. And the idea of remaking

Corey 47:49

remaking provincial programs while bringing in a federal program is probably a non-starter because it's out of your control and Quebec is going to light their hair on fire. So a lot of the social supports are delivered by the provinces. The federal government provides the Canada social transfer to pay for them. But to remake all of that will be a negotiation. So I think you need to moderate your ambitions ever so slightly on that front. And there are interesting things you can do with the tax code. I mean, I'm not going to sit here and create a system out of nowhere. But for example, what if corporate

Corey 48:20

corporate income taxes were directly tied to a UBI for Canadians? So the income tax is just averaged over five years.

Corey 48:28

That just goes to Canadians on a per capita basis, and that's your UBI. Now, that probably wouldn't be anywhere near $24,000. But the idea being you could look

Corey 48:36

look at the entire thing creatively and say, if we want to do these programs, let's tax the people you don't mind us taxing anyways. ways combination of a wealth tax pays for this corporate taxes pay for that canada

Corey 48:46

canada will be built back better yada yada yada but you are probably better off making this thing um more different than more similar to existing programs if you truly want to sell uh this notion of a total remake of canadian society carter maybe

SPEAKER_01 49:03

don't carter they give you a call this week saying okay okay, listen, we feel like we agree. We've got the runway to do this. We perhaps have the political appetite and the political will to do it. And we also feel like it's a good strategy. They call you to stress test it. Are you saying, nope, you got it right? That's the right strategy? Or are you adding some nuance? How are you changing this if you're in the driver's seat with what you know right now and if you're in government for the liberals, both from a political lens? Let's just actually not even say both, from a political lens, because we've talked quite a bit of policy and what those ingredients are, but saying from that political lens, what would you be altering or changing?

Carter 49:41

Well, I'd be trying to focus them on one solution, not the whole solutions, not all the different solutions. I mean, I like the idea of doing some sort of a, you know, the branding of a Green New Deal is kind of interesting, because it does include a whole bunch of social supports and job transitions and stuff in terms of the AOC kind of initial commercial vision for it. If we had Canada's Green New Deal, I'd be focusing on making sure that this worked in Quebec, British Columbia, and Atlantic Canada, and figuring out how I'm going to reconstruct my base voter model. I would suggest that the thing that would probably do the best is that type of a Green New Deal, Canada's Green New Deal. That strikes me that it undermines the NDP dramatically, and it doesn't lose you very much with the Conservatives. So I would force them to pick one of their major big ideas and just ride it all the way to the end.

Carter 50:40

This is not something you're going to get a chance to do twice. So you can't start two programs. You can't start two ways of reimagining Canada. I would reimagine Canada only the one time, and then save the next time for the next crisis.

SPEAKER_01 50:56

Corey, what do you think? What do you think of Carter's strategy of saying choose a focal point, less so a package?

Corey 51:05

Well, if it's going to be a package, the package needs a focal point. I do think that if you go too big, you're going to give too many people too many things to dislike about it. You probably need to keep it on something that is even not universally popular, because that's never going to happen, but majority popular, without without having a number of other things that alarm people because it changes part of Canadian society that they like and they're comfortable with. So, yeah, focal point, ton of sense. Got to be careful that you don't get too excited and too crazy if you start reimagining everything from blank paper.

Corey 51:40

And you're going to have to pick your battle on this one.

SPEAKER_01 51:43

Corey, staying with you, NDP, federal NDP. We're playing the same game. I like it from both segments. Federal NDP, what leverage do you have right now? This is a minority parliament. You have talked as a federal ND's child care. You've talked about wealth taxation. You've talked about housing. What are you kind of trying to pin the government against as the proverbial sort of balance of power? And how are you trying to structure it from that political standpoint?

Corey 52:13

Well, you have some power. But as I said, I think if I'm the government coming in, and the polls remain where the polls, there's been one poll, I think that showed a significant tightening, but most of the others have not. If the liberals look like they're well into the lead, the NDP doesn't actually have that much latitude. Because, you know, if they withhold their votes, they just go to the polls. polls so on that note you've got to pick something that would actually be very politically awkward for the liberals not to support uh so

Corey 52:44

you'd say yeah i'm happy to support your let's

Corey 52:46

let's just say for the sake of it's a ubi but universal child care needs to be a part of it and if the liberals say nope pound sam we're going to the polls over that that's tough for them and they're going to lose an awful lot of votes uh from different canadians who are probably more concerned about child care than ubi and

Corey 53:01

and that's got to be your play you've got to pick something that is

Corey 53:04

is almost too good to pass up if you're the liberals, but the liberals will have a hard time paying for, right? Because they've got to worry a little bit more about how all these finances hang together. And I

Corey 53:15

I mean, I think that's your play. Other than that, you don't have an awful lot you can do. So just try to make it awkward for them to say no.

SPEAKER_01 53:21

Carter, what are you doing? Are you looking for a proverbial dance partner with the NDP for the liberals? Or are you playing hardball? And what is your NDP roadmap if you're advising them?

Carter 53:31

Listen, Stephen Harper showed Justin Trudeau how to govern with a And that is to govern like you've got a majority and make them wear it if things aren't going to work. And in terms of the NDP, I mean, I haven't seen any indication that there is a federal NDP other than Jagmeet Singh in a TikTok dancing over the last couple of weeks. I mean, if you were to pull him up in your Google search, he hasn't done anything. There's nothing that has happened. I don't believe that the NDP has any leverage at all when it comes to this new session and the new throne speech. I think that they're passengers. Everybody knows they can't afford an election. So they're going to have to vote to support this government, government, whether it includes universal child care, universal basic income, or a Green New Deal. Whatever's in there, the NDP is going to say, that was our idea. We like it too. That's the strategy.

SPEAKER_01 54:30

Carter, isn't that a bit unfair, though, against Jagmeet? Like, wouldn't it have made a difference if they had a different leader? The political math is the political math. What would a different leader or more charismatic out there, more active leader, what difference would that have made? I want to push you on that a bit.

Carter 54:45

It would make a difference in terms of just having the communication skills like having the the team on board going somewhere with a vision getting out ahead of the liberals in terms of what the throne speech should take one of these ideas and say this is the only idea that matters and if it's not in there we're not going to do it he knows he doesn't have the strength to do that and the reason he doesn't have the strength to do that is he hasn't built the strength to do that over the last year it's not a it's not a surprise that the conservatives have a new new leader who's going to call for a confidence vote and he's He's going to vote against the government of Canada in the confidence vote. That's not a surprise. No one's taken aback by that. Peter McKay said that. You know, the fact that it's O'Toole, this is not something that the NDP was prepared for because the NDP leader chose not to prepare for it. So that's the problem, we're saying. This is the problem with why the NDP aren't a player. They have chosen not to be a player or they're unable to be a player.

SPEAKER_01 55:44

Corey, you wanted to jump in.

Corey 55:45

Well, the math is a little difficult for the NDP, and it's different for the NDP. You've got to keep in mind that, and we talked about this

Corey 55:51

this last week in a sense, where the vote universes of the NDP and the Liberals overlap more. So if the NDP look obstructionist or say, no, I'm just out no matter what, their supporters, who are often contemporary

Corey 56:06

contemporary with supporters of the liberals, will just say, I don't like that very much, and that can hurt the NDP. So it's always a little bit more difficult on the left and center-left with that calculation. So I'm a little bit more sympathetic to Jagmeet Singh and just having to establish your

Corey 56:24

your voice in this very complicated communications environment. I guess what I'm saying is that ultimately, your

Corey 56:30

your differences need to look principled in a way that they don't if you're the conservatives. The conservatives, you can just say, fuck

Corey 56:36

fuck this guy, I'm opposed, and we're moving on. Now, we've

Corey 56:39

we've been talking a lot about this notion of an election. I do want to throw on the table, I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago, who

Corey 56:45

who reminded me that the MP pensions of the class of 2015 don't vest until October 2021. 2021. So if there is something that's going to stop a fall election, if the liberals are riding high, it's that self interest. It's the idea that you

Corey 56:59

hold on for another year, and you're set for life. So you know, caucus might be less enthused about going to the polls and risking it all on a personal side.

SPEAKER_01 57:09

We loop back to the central theme of self enrichment and self preservation through both segments. Carter, let's talk about the conservatives. Corey just talked about them. If you're O'Toole, you're new, you're still trying to establish who you are to the Canadian public. Is Corey's strategy simply being like, fuck this shit, pretty much it? Or is there a middle ground? What sort of tone do you have to strike for the Canadian public? And this is making a lot of assumptions. This is making the assumption that Trudeau comes in with his build back better ambitious plan. But knowing that, what sort of tone as Aaron O'Toole, as the new leader, do you need to strike to be principled but also palatable to Canadians should there be an election coming up? Well,

Carter 57:46

Well, I think that O'Toole needs to not just be the opposition leader, but needs to try and figure out how he's going to be the government in waiting, especially if he's voting against the confidence motion. You can't just be against the confidence motion. You need to jump in and say, you know, this

Carter 58:03

this plan is wrong. Here's the better plan. And this is what the, you know, Skippy and Pierre, you know, Pierre Polyev has been lacking with all of his screaming about all the different problems that the Trudeau liberals have. The Trudeau liberals have many problems, but the conservatives need to start to identify what they're going to do differently, because just simply saying, oh, there's all kinds of problems doesn't get you there. Not if you're going to ask for the downfall of the government. But to build on Corey's point,

Carter 58:34

they're also very different than the NDP.

Carter 58:37

They get to say, no, this is just wrong.

Carter 58:40

The NDP has to work with a degree of subtlety. The

Carter 58:42

The conservatives can use the hammer.

Carter 58:46

that's good because that's the only tool they know how to use. So the hammer's there.

SPEAKER_01 58:50

Corey, finish us off on the conservatives. What do you think?

Corey 58:54

The temptation will be there to come out strong.

Corey 58:59

You do actually get to sort of pass this on to the NDP. The risk is you end up in an election if you do that, so you can't just sort of sit there and dismiss all math and say I've got a free pass to just say this is not going to happen. If I'm Aaron O'Toole, I'm giving myself maximum range of motion, and I'm waiting to see where things settle out. So yes, I'm inclined to pull the rug on this government. However, wouldn't that be a convenient way for them to be able to avoid all scrutiny from parliamentary committees? committees i would be saying things like that and i would be creating little avenues little outs all along the way so that if you get to throne speech day and it doesn't look like the polls are your friends then you say you know what screw

Corey 59:36

screw this guy he's just trying to avoid accountability from parliamentary committees so we're going to hold him here at least through the fall to get to the bottom of this canadians are owed that before we get to the polls you

Corey 59:46

you may or may not want to pull that lever when the time comes but i would be making sure i'm not i'm not removing that lever from the wall i'm not just replacing right panel right

SPEAKER_01 59:54

right i love it okay let's move it to our final segment are over under and our lightning round guys are you ready for once are you ready yeah

Corey 1:00:01

yeah i am so ready zane i'm really gonna listen to the questions i have a question for you lay it on me what birth what birthday was it because i know you're not as old as carter and i know you're older than post malone but i don't have an idea of what your age is in between there i

SPEAKER_01 1:00:15

i was a palindrome birthday so i'll leave it there it was oh excellent very good as a front front and back is the same so people can guess i'm either 22 33 44 or 55 if i'm aging tremendously well uh

SPEAKER_01 1:00:28

okay first question i'll go to you carter the impact on aaron o'toole uh about his mp carolyn finley uh linking uh christia freeland to george soros over the weekend so this was a i don't even know how to call this a mini controversy but it was something that erupted on twitter uh where she put out a tweet linking soros to freeland did this half apology uh and And a lot of conservatives got mad or some conservatives, I should say, got mad about O'Toole not asking for more or not asking her to entirely retract. What's what's that kind of say for a new leader going forward? What do you what are you thinking about that on a scale of one to 10? This

Carter 1:01:02

This is a leader that's got a party that doesn't know what it is yet. Right. So we don't know who Aaron O'Toole is. I mean, some people have even gone so far as to call him Eric. So we we don't know what

Carter 1:01:15

what or who he is and where he's taking the country. And this was the problem. I mean, we can speak about this particular issue. Obviously, this particular issue is pretty egregious. And under a normal caucus situation would demand more than the tepid apology that we got on Twitter. But we still got Derek Sloan in the caucus as well. well. And that's Aaron O'Toole trying to figure out what he needs to do to placate the right without losing the center.

Carter 1:01:44

And I don't think he's got that quite figured out yet. I know that to win the leadership, he knew he needed to move to the right. He did that. He won the leadership instead of coming in third. So that's good. That makes him happy. But now how does he figure out how to win the election? Because I don't believe he can win the election if his party is seen to be uh you know racist and um going down the the path that Derek Sloan seems to want to take them

SPEAKER_01 1:02:12

Corey same question for you the impact on a scale of one to ten for Aaron O'Toole what how how damaging I

Corey 1:02:19

don't think very this is every

Corey 1:02:22

every every time there's a new leader what you have is a situation where people are going to say this is the first test of leadership what are you going to do in this situation how are you going to act and they want you to act in a more extreme passion um you

Corey 1:02:34

you um you if you're erin o'toole you don't take the bait you you try to act as though you would outside of the moment so how would you deal with this as a caucus discipline question

Corey 1:02:44

question if it wasn't your first day on the job your first week on the job and you would probably wrap their knuckles and say that was very poor judgment and you've got to move on because you're not just establishing yourself with the outside world you're establishing yourself with your caucus And you have to say, is this a Derek Sloan style, crazy, you know, really extreme views? Or was this a, you

Corey 1:03:05

know, obviously, it shows some very poor judgment, but I don't think you know, the intentionality was perhaps not there, like it would have been with a Derek Sloan. So, so he can't overreact to this, because everybody's going to be judging him on all sides. We talked about the fact that he's got the right wing, he's got the center right, they're all under the tint, and he's got to look like King Solomon in the middle. So, Corey,

SPEAKER_01 1:03:23

Corey, I'm going back to you from a strict political strategy level, strict political strategy level. Are you in or out on Jason Kenney wading into the John A. McDonald statue debate in Montreal?

Corey 1:03:37

I think I am. I think I'm in. I think it's going to speak to his base. I also think it's just kind of dumb. So I'm going to move past strict political strategy because I want to. Yeah, I mean, it's difficult because like, just imagine, okay, if

Corey 1:03:55

if you're having trouble putting yourselves in this, like, let me just actually, let me just say, I don't think you should take down statues like this. We live in a democracy. It's not up to you alone to decide to pull down a statue. We have laws, we have parliaments, you can go through the process and you can have a statue removed if it's egregious. And you don't get to appoint yourself judge, jury and executioner of anything in a democracy, including statues. But there's politics, there's courts, you can put things in context, you can add other monuments instead of taking monuments down. And toppling statues sort of carries this charge of you're

Corey 1:04:26

you're putting them in the same vein as Stalin and Saddam Hussein and stuff. Those are the people whose statues we take down and people are going to react negatively to that. And if you are the

Corey 1:04:36

the people taking that statue down, you are probably not broadening support for your cause. But that's exactly why it's smart strategy for Jason Kenney.

Corey 1:04:46

There's no laws for him here. He's going to have people start yelling at him about how John A. McDonald's statue should be taken down. That is not going to be a winner with the general public, certainly not in Alberta. I suspect nowhere in the country. And he just gets to look like

Corey 1:05:01

like a hero on one of those 80-20 issues that come along so rarely and

Corey 1:05:06

and distract from the fact that schools are opening and parents are freaked out. The

Corey 1:05:11

The deficit is $24.2 billion.

Corey 1:05:14

would rather talk about this than almost anything else that he's got a chance of talking about. So smart political strategy here.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:21

Carter, same question to you, in or out on the political strategy for Kenny? Well,

Carter 1:05:25

first, I'm just typing up my resume, my my podcast resume now that Corey's got us canceled instead of, you know, who would have picked Corey getting us canceled instead of me? I mean, Corey's reasoning is pretty good. It is a good distraction for for Kenny, and it does fit with his conservative kind of point of view. um mostly it was a distraction a channel changer off of the the the the absolutely horrible uh financial report from uh from from alberta so you know this

Carter 1:05:59

this is it was actually a no-lose situation for kenny so jump in why not go for it cory

Corey 1:06:06

finish yeah and i stand by i stand by everything i said risk of cancellation and

Corey 1:06:12

but if you are a conservative or actually just in that that 80 i described and you're you're not sure why people are mad about john a mcdonald um and maybe you just discount some of the things that he did just put in another yeah yeah sure but put in a prime minister that you don't like and and i'm not trying to create an equivalency here but imagine there was a statue of pierre trudeau in downtown calgary and that statue came down a lot of you would be applauding that coming

Corey 1:06:37

coming down right uh so just just be mindful that where you sit is where you stand. And there are lots of ways you can view this issue. And fundamentally, in both of those cases, I would say, let

Corey 1:06:48

let the process unfold. That's the joy of a democracy. And a democracy doesn't just mean a majority rule. There's courts, there's all sorts of other ways that you can get your way.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:57

Carter, simple yes or no question. I know it's the type of one that you love. Are we going to be seeing a revenue referendum in our 2021 municipal elections in Alberta?

Carter 1:07:07

Absolutely not. There's no way that.

Corey 1:07:13

You're just trying to use your power now. You're trying to change reality.

Carter 1:07:19

actually don't think that he can wait until October.

Carter 1:07:22

So my rationale is that it needs to be in the budget in March 2021.

Carter 1:07:29

So we can't wait until October 2021 to ask the question. There it is, ladies and gentlemen. there you go that's um bold

Carter 1:07:38

bold as so unusual for me bold prediction this

SPEAKER_01 1:07:44

is what we do cory we lull him in to a minute and a minute oh seven and then just get him to to make his uh bold baseless predictions as always cory same question to you though bold

Corey 1:07:55

bold and wrong the um the logic is as was unpacked earlier you actually next year's budget will be better let's say it comes to 12 billion instead of 24 billion. It's the budget after that you want to show market improvement. So you don't want to bring in these tax changes for next fiscal year. You want them for the following fiscal year, the year going into an election where you can show, yes, there's this improvement. Because honestly, even though I think you want to do these things early in your mandate and get to solution before you get back to the polls, right now you are talking about the difference between March and October. And that's not a big enough difference to not get that net head upside from the path, like the trajectory that you'd get on.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:35

Corey, okay, we're going to go to our listener question. I'm going to stick with you. This is a listener question from Jared. Five-star review, obligatory bribe for Zane. Thank you so much. Here is the question. What does the path for electoral victory look like for the federal and provincial NDP, respectively? They also said, I'm glad you're back. It was exhausting deciding my own political opinion. So thank you, Jared, for the question. We make excellent cocktail chatter that you can plagiarize. Corey, I'm sticking with you. Let's break it down in two forms. The pathway for the provincial and then let's go with the federal.

Corey 1:09:11

Yeah, provincially, I don't think it's very complicated. And this is where I would sort of remind the provincial NDP, you won once, you won in 2015. There was a choice between different options and people went with the NDP. And that's because a number of the NDP's policies are pretty popular, right? A royalty review was very popular. They didn't fundamentally increase royalties. The notion that you would raise taxes on high income earners is pretty popular when you don't kind of pad it in a bunch of stuff like raising taxes on job creators or stuff. So be the NDP, follow your best instincts, look at the polling, see which of your planks are popular talk about those understand how a vote decision is made in alberta get those hope you get a lucky break on the right being split so by all means poke them a bit but don't don't get yourself thrown into the bear pit and um uh

Corey 1:10:03

uh you do you you didn't lose by that much last time and you've got everything going your way right now it is absolutely possible for the provincial ndp to win the next election but they they're not going to win it by being ucp light or some sort of weird weird flavor of liberal or something like that. Just you were elected once. Look at why you were elected that first time. Stop trying to be that moderate government that you were and find your fire again and find it on those social issues that Albertans actually care a great deal about.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:36

Carter, I'm going provincial and then I'll go back to you, Corey, on federal.

Carter 1:10:39

Well, I mean, I think that Corey's right. I mean, they did win before. I mean, the problem was that that the vote where they won before wasn't necessarily a vote for the NDP so much as a vote against the progressive conservatives. But the good news is that there's a vote against Jason Kenney that's developing. But you have to be, I believe, you need to be the party of the Alberta family. And that's going to rest on, that is a three-legged stool.

Carter 1:11:04

The first leg of the stool is going to be health care for your family. The second is going to be education for your family. And then the third is going to be employment for your family. And that's probably the leg of the stool that's weakest for the NDP. And if I were advising the NDP, I'd tell them to stick to those three particular legs and nothing comes out of their mouths for the next three years that isn't framed in those three-legged stools. The Alberta family has to be their core.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:32

Corey, to you on maybe you want to rebuttal that and then go on to federal.

Corey 1:11:36

actually this is a great bridge and it's advice to both of them uh it's actually probably more advice for the alberta ndp but it applies to both you've you've got to kind of cast forward a little better than you've been doing right now you've got to give them a bit of albertans also want a bit of hope for a different future a better future a child born today retires in 2085

Corey 1:11:57

there are very few albertans you're going to find regardless of where they are on the spectrum who believes we're going to be doing the same thing in 2085 and we need a province that works for them as kids as they're going to school as young adults getting an education and as retirees at 65 and the job they work in between and you are not going to have your children there for

Corey 1:12:17

for that entire journey the way things are going right now so paint a picture of alberta in 2085 tell me what this place is going to look like post oil don't be afraid of it stop stop i mean like kowtowing is wrong i mean you've got to be respectful and mindful of your largest industry of course

Corey 1:12:36

if you live and die based on support for oil and gas, you're not voting NDP.

Corey 1:12:41

So tell me a better story, because not that many Albertans actually work for oil and gas.

Corey 1:12:47

Now, when you talk about the federal NDP, it's the same sort of thing. You're kind of stuck in the Trudeau trap right now. You're futzing around the edges. You're trying to make the present a bit different. And you've got to find

Corey 1:12:56

find your fire. You've got to find your reason to exist. You've got to start pushing those boundaries a bit more. Right now, Justin Trudeau looks like the bolder leader than Jagmeet Singh on half of the issues out there.

Corey 1:13:07

You've got to start pushing. You've got to start pushing.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:10

Carter, let's end it with you on the federal NDP. Stop

Carter 1:13:12

Stop being the federal Green Party.

Carter 1:13:14

You know, the problem that the NDP have federally is that they want to be the Green Party, so they're being the Green Party. Well, the Green Party doesn't elect that many MPs. If you want to get elected, be the NDP. Be the voice for the working person in Canada. No one else is. You know, Justin Trudeau has tried, but he's now moving to the Greens, right? Everybody's fighting over the Greens platform. Take the platform that's available to you for the working person in Canada, and that platform is still there, and they're under unbelievable threat. That's the way that the NDP redefines themselves and digs out of their hole.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:54

Jared, for your question. Of course, if you want to submit a question, it's very easy. You leave us a five-star review, you submit a question. If we get enough of them, Corey will finally shave his hideous mustache. And we'll leave it there. That's a wrap on Episode 819 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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