Episode 910: Keystone Corpse

Zain 0:04

This is The Strategist, episode 910. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what

Zain 0:10

what is going on?

Corey 0:12

It's been not very much time since we most recently recorded a very substantive episode on Thursday night. It

Zain 0:17

It was, let me tell you something. Usually, we don't let the comments from our listeners get to our head. I did this time. I mean, they loved what we put out there. And if you haven't listened to that most recent episode, understand that you're in for a treat. Stephen Carter, many people are praising your performance on that episode as being some of the most insightful commentary they've heard from you in a very, very long time, especially in that middle portion. Any feedback or any sort of –

Zain 0:47

this is just you to the listeners. What do you want to tell them?

Carter 0:50

think that it was our best work.

Carter 0:52

I think it was our best work. and if you haven't listened to 909 then you don't know what you're missing out on I

Zain 0:58

I asked you about yourself and your own performance and you made it about the team Carter, we've been looking for that, you know what,

Corey 1:04

what, you're being so deflecting of the praise, let me just say, you spoke the exact right amount, the amount I wish you spoke every episode

Zain 1:11

he didn't take over

Zain 1:13

and I felt like I did well just really landed

Zain 1:16

felt like I did well to coach the team, you know, I kind of brought my A game, you know, we don't usually do this but uh yeah yeah i i feel like it's it's warranted in this particular friend carter carter you're you're you're gesturing please please

Corey 1:34

know what he's just decided an economy of words is his new thing and i am here for it so zane why don't we move on leave him in the dust let's

Zain 1:40

let's move it on to our first segment redo redo do at redo no guys come on we are gonna do a a quick hello to to the store we have to discuss it do you think we care more now than we did on thursday carter do you care more now than you did on thursday i

Carter 1:57

i think it's if it's possible i may actually care less

Zain 2:02

need to ask you two questions and you could tell me to shut the fuck up if if we will but

Corey 2:06

but we'll also answer them okay

Zain 2:08

okay yeah that's so good we'll just do the episode like we usually do then. Are we good? Fantastic.

Zain 2:14

Corey, I'm going to go to you first. I don't want to talk about Julie Payette. I don't want to talk about her leaving. We can talk about that in the confines of vice regal politics, which is our other podcast, by the way. We do exclusively vice regal politics. But the question I have is, is the hurt on the Trudeau government? And is there any political angle here that you feel like elongates beyond the news cycle of the report that's going to come out this week? And is there any political hay to make? That's my main question on this, because let's talk about that in the confines of electoral politics. What do you think? Well,

Corey 2:49

Well, I think that there are the narrowest of pathways through which this matters, which is to say there's not really at all. One is we actually find ourselves in a full-fledged constitutional crisis in the next couple of days. Although let me just say, I actually think that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is better situated to be able to answer constitutional constitutional questions than a random government appointee anyhow. So we may find out this is a better system. Are

Zain 3:11

Are you telling me someone with legal training who's the Chief Justice of Canada is better than an astronaut in that role? Yes, maybe. Okay, okay. Now, if I was

Corey 3:18

was sending someone to space, probably not our Chief Justice. Right. But

Corey 3:21

the other one is that if you can somehow, I mean, if there is a common thread here, it is kind of the Justin Trudeau style over substance You know, somebody who looked great on paper, but when you get past the veneer, you realize there's absolutely nothing there. And in that sense, it's a bit reinforcing. I'm sure it will be kind of shouted out in shitty ways by all sorts of people. But I can't imagine most Canadians are going to care beyond sports team caring. You know, they don't

Zain 3:49

don't like the Liberals,

Corey 3:49

Liberals, so they'll say shame on him. They do like the Liberals, so they'll say he

Corey 3:53

he was great for giving it a shot. It doesn't matter. The governor general doesn't matter. It's an archaic position that pops up every time we have one of these weird moments where Michelle Jeanne has to decide whether to prorogue parliament or not. And again, in those situations, probably,

Corey 4:09

probably, you know, they're not actually even that qualified for the job. It's a stupid fucking job. It's an artifact of a different era. And if we could get rid of it, we should. But we can't because in the Constitution, it would take 10 out of 10 provinces to agree. So we're stuck with it.

Zain 4:24

Yeah. More on that from Corey in our vice regal podcast. Regal on regal. Carter, anything else to add to Corey's comments? My question is the same. The pathway for this to be politically damaging for Trudeau, and there's a few that I see, but you have to tell me how likely they are to be damaging. The first one is Corey's, the style over substance argument. The second one is around Trudeau not necessarily owning this particular incident with the governor general on workplace harassment. What does that say about a guy who touts his brand as being feminist and progressive? And then the third one is, if the report is scathing and further reaching, is there any sort of upside there? But maybe I'll ask you the same question in a different way. If you're the conservatives right now, are you just letting this one stick and focusing on other things? Or are you trying to look for an angle here on the governor general story? I

Carter 5:13

think if you're a conservative, you're going to just try and throw everything you've got at this because it does seem to be something that people can make

Carter 5:19

make some hay out of. First of all, it's something that is a size that matters. So I think the thing that probably has the most resonance is the $100,000 plus annuity every year that she's going to be paid. You know, that has a lot of weight. But unfortunately, I think if you go back to every conservative governor general who was appointed, they're also collecting the exact same amount of money. So it probably won't stick. It doesn't have much in the way of legs. And in terms of what I'm seeing that's troubling me is this kind of, you know, Justin Trudeau chose this governor

Carter 5:53

governor general to put up in the window, right? That this, you know, we had a STEM educated woman who's been to space, who's highly decorated, highly intelligent, and it failed. So let's go back to appointing white guys because we've never had white guys take us in the wrong spot. I think this was an aspirational choice. I think that choosing Julie Payette was the right thing to do. And I don't recall a huge amount of criticism at the beginning until like, I guess, maybe a week or two in, we found out that she was a Looney Tune. But that's okay. You know, like these things happen. And it's unfortunate because it's one of those appointments that goes for a while. But in general, I don't think that we should move away from putting forward those in our society that we wish to celebrate, right? And I'd love to see a First Nations governor general. I'd love to see someone from B.C. Call me crazy. But, you know, the province out there apparently has people. So let's give it a whirl. Like, let's give it a whirl. And I don't think you should be terrified of this because at the end of the day, to Corey's point, it is a giant nothing burger. Who the fuck cares who the governor general is?

Zain 6:58

Both of you had nothing to say, but now Carter is on a soapbox about, you know, Canadian values.

Carter 7:04

reflecting on your earlier comment that podcasts are better when I speak less, and I came to a different conclusion.

Zain 7:11

That was not my conclusion. That was the overwhelming feedback of the listening public. Corey, you're going to jump in here before I ask you my final question.

Corey 7:19

Well, she did check a lot of boxes, Paya. Did check a lot of boxes. And, you know, that is almost the point of the job because there's no other point to the job. There was this article that Lauren Gunter ran that – well, the son ran it. Lauren Gunter wrote it.

Zain 7:31

it. competency yeah well

Corey 7:33

well it said payette checked off all of trudeau's symbolic boxes almost with kind of this sneering edge to it yeah she fucking did and the job is symbolic so what the hell is the problem well

Zain 7:41

to his defense you know cory you you yourself on on a previous episode made this comment which i've uh repeated without attribution but um yeah no of course i mean that's the nature of this podcast i sit here to write down material and then co-opt it as my own um just so you know I don't know if 910 episodes in, I should probably let you know that

Zain 8:01

that that's been my M.O. the whole time. We would

Corey 8:03

would never know because we would never watch you on anything else.

Zain 8:05

else. Yeah, I mean, are you going to the airport or a dentist's office?

Corey 8:07

office? Because if you're not, you're not going to see me.

Zain 8:12

But you yourself said on this podcast that liberals have had a proclivity in the past to appoint big symbolic centerpieces. Like it's like a centerpiece of the moment or it's a centerpiece of ambition or of Canadian values, whatever it might be. You also kind of mentioned, you know, maybe not directly that conservatives had an opposite approach where they maybe didn't go for the profile, so to speak, but they tried to go for perhaps a different angle. Do you feel like that still applies? And maybe I'll kind of ask my question that I was going to to you in terms of what Trudeau needs to think about going forward as he appoints the next individual in this role. Well,

Corey 8:46

Well, it turns out Justin Trudeau is still a liberal. So he's still going to pick a governor general based on the symbolism of it all rather than a boring old white man administrator. And that's fine. And, you know, it's his nature and it's not even something that I disagree with. Of all of the many things that go on in politics, I find that one one of the least onerous, that we would try to elevate and profile people and show that this country is this big diverse melting pot that we always claim it is.

Corey 9:13

is he going to change that? I think he would be nuts to change that. Like, I'm just trying to imagine, you know, let's just not even use old names, but let's just say that he goes and he finds, like, a David Johnson. Is he really going to do that? He's not going to do that. That

Corey 9:25

would look, especially relative to the moment, just wild. So, I really hope that… And

Zain 9:31

And just to be clear, when you say a David Johnson, you mean just a… Yeah, don't knock

Corey 9:36

knock against the… Guy's brilliant, you know, university administrator, some great university administrators out there. Um, but,

Corey 9:42

but, uh, the, uh, you know, that's not the liberal way of using the role of the governor general. It's just not.

Zain 9:48

Carter, uh, you're, you've kind of answered this with your previous answer, but anything you want to add on before we move on from this segment on what Trudeau should be, uh, looking for when, when he appoints his next, uh, governor general, I, I saw you agreeing with some of Corey's answers. So maybe if you want to start there and then, I want to start

Carter 10:02

start with Corey's little humble brag there that there's some great university administrators because he's a university administrator. demonstrator he's literally using the podcast to try and shill to get himself fucking appointment to the governor general this is you know what this

Carter 10:16

this is unheard of until the tories are in

Carter 10:18

oh my god we're

Zain 10:19

we're all we're all revealing our agendas today carter what's your agenda for the podcast no

Carter 10:24

no but you know what i mean cory's exactly right you're not gonna you know this

Carter 10:28

this is a it's a nothing burger position right all they have to do is basically follow the rules that are written for them by the hundred people that serve in the staff of the governor governor general. So don't piss off those hundred people. Sign the documents you're supposed to sign. Take the meetings you're supposed to take and welcome in the governor general award winners every year. And away you go. You're like nine tenths of the way through the business. So appoint someone symbolically because it's a symbolic position. Like literally that's all it is. So you don't need to hit some sort of higher level with it. Choosing David Johnson type because because you're afraid to go forward and choose someone else who's going to let you down, is just as likely to let you down. There is no correlation between Julie Payette and her symbolism and her underperformance. That just happens to be the weaknesses of human beings. When you work with human beings, some of them are going to let you down.

Corey 11:20

Corey, finish us off.

Corey 11:21

I'll just go back to where I started here. If we actually care about the non-symbolic parts of this job, never appoint another governor general. Leave the Administrator of Canada and leave Richard Wagner, our Supreme Court Chief Justice, responsible for dealing with those matters.

Zain 11:35

Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, Keystone, Sloan, a vaccine milestone, and mining zones. We've got so many things to cover. And I've just laid them out here. We're going to start with Keystone XL. We're going to talk about Jason Kenney and Justin Trudeau. We're also going to talk about, I guess we have to, America as related to that. But we'll mainly dig into the Jason Kenney strategy on Keystone XL. Then we'll talk about Derek Sloan now being kicked out of the Conservative Party caucus by Aaron O'Toole. We're going to talk about Justin Trudeau and the vaccine milestones that he has promised, especially from, I guess, as an extension to our last episode when we talked about political danger of milestones being missed by a bit and Canada not, you know, taking on the extra Moderna vaccines thinking we already had what we need. Well, now we know that there's going to be delays and no vaccine deliveries in the next week. So what the political impact of that is. And then the last thing I want to talk about is back to Alberta. We're going to talk about coal mining here in Alberta. Since we last recorded an episode on that topic, there's been some changes. So I want to discuss that. So we start at home. We end at home for us Albertans. But we'll start here with Keystone XL. And Corey, I'm going to start with you on this. Very simply, we've covered this in previous episodes. Give us an understanding as to why you think Jason Kenney invested, if it is indeed invested, $1.5 billion in Keystone XL when it had been so clearly telegraphed that the Biden administration was going to cancel the permit for the project. What do you think both the political and even policy calculus was for the Kenney government? Let's start here. Yeah,

Corey 13:09

Yeah, well, for the past several years, Alberta has had a bit of a fever

Corey 13:14

fever that hasn't fully broken here, where we've absolutely confused our economy with the notion of market access and pipelines. Now, pipelines are very important to our economy, and I'm not saying otherwise. We could spend an awful lot of time on this podcast explaining the notion of the marginal barrel of oil setting the price for all barrels of oil. I will shorthand it like this. If there aren't enough pipes going out of this province, everybody pays the price that you are able to get for a barrel that's going on rail, which is much more expensive. Essentially, it just plummets the price of all of the oil in the province, which is why Albertans seem to be in histrionics. I'm talking to the rest of Canada right now when this matter comes up because there are literally billions of dollars that are being left on the table, billions of dollars that are not there for Alberta communities, for the road schools and hospitals that we rely on in this province. I am not discounting any of this. That said, we seem to have confused the notion of pipelines and economy to such a point that the matter has no nuance anymore. more and the suggestion that you would do anything but give full-throated even stubborn even idiotic support of a pipeline project would be political suicide so all any pipeline company has had to do for the last bit is essentially threatened well maybe i'm not going to proceed with this and maybe it's going to be the government's fault or maybe i'm just not going to proceed with this and your government it doesn't even need to be a threat uh and the governments of alberta say okay well what are we going to do we got to keep this pipeline project on course and um hey look kxl has been a pipeline that's been somewhat on life support for a while even going back before that fever moment

Corey 14:44

really hit its peak that i'm talking about when energy east was pulled off the table by trans canada then now tc energy and um you know the province of alberta had a commitment for barrels of oil because we take you know bitumen in kind for payment for some royalties we had a commitment to move barrels east we agreed to move it south um in no small part part because KXL needed that in order to – this pipeline project to be viable potentially needed these barrels as well and that was a way to sort of secure that. So this is not a pipeline that's been sort of looking awesome and part of the reason it hasn't been looking awesome is because it's become the world's greatest political football in the United States. It's become a symbol of climate change and you had Barack Obama refuse its permits. You had Donald Trump when he became president. I almost said prime minister, came in and wrote a presidential permit allowing KXL to be constructed. And, hey, lo and behold, here we are. Joe Biden's come in and he has said, no, no permit. This thing's going out. And that's the problem with presidential permits. They can be revoked by presidents.

Corey 15:49

presidents. So your question, though, Zane, was why did Alberta put

Zain 15:54

put in this one-point liability? Yeah,

Corey 15:55

this context of life

Corey 15:56

life support and all those sort of items

Corey 15:58

items that you mentioned. Because that context is the American context. Our local political context is if you do not support a pipeline, you're

Corey 16:06

you're going to look like a real asshole. And Jason Kenney stood in front of a lectern at basically every campaign event in the 2019 election and said jobs, economy, pipelines, plural. And, you know, Jason Kenney was really big and he would say, yeah, yeah, OK, Trans Mountain, but we need multiple pipelines. And he would specifically call out KXL. And if KXL was going to die on his watch, that was going to be a political problem for him. So I suspect there was a certain amount of denial, but ultimately what happened was a $1.5 billion investment by the government of Alberta went in so that TransCanada

Corey 16:39

TransCanada or TC Energy, I should say, did not kill the pipeline because that pipeline would have been dead a year ago had Jason Kenney not stepped in. Now, the thing is, it was dead. It's still dead. It was like it was, you

Corey 16:52

you know, it was just sort of waiting for the doctor to come in and announce that time of death. And so it was still, in my estimation, a massive waste of money and a massive blunder. But it's

Corey 17:02

it's kind of like, you

Corey 17:03

you know, kicking the can. It's like cutting a check. You know, it's, you know, the money's not there. You know, it's not actually going to happen, but you don't have to deal with it today. And hopefully something will happen between now and tomorrow that will solve all of my problems. I'm sure that's what the government was thinking in short. Corey,

Zain 17:17

Corey, that's really helpful. I love the context. I love your justification. Carter, I'm going to ask you a slightly different question so as to not make your answer redundant, so to speak. But did Chase and Kenny have another option?

Zain 17:29

If you have to tattoo onto your chest and your face in Alberta, if you're running for office that you support pipelines, which I know we know is a reality, right? It's very hard to get elected here, especially at the provincial level, with that being your, especially for leadership at a provincial level, let me put it that way. um without having that stance did jason kenney have another choice rather than to invest 1.5 billion while still demonstrating his uh unbridled uh enthusiastic support for for kxl and pipelines and if so what could that have been well

Carter 18:03

well if one assumes that jason kenney is smart which of course is a fool's assumption but if we begin with the assumption that he's smart then he would have learned something at Harper's knee when Harper helped bail out the automakers,

Carter 18:15

automakers, right? So the automakers were in real trouble during the financial crisis. And the government helped out and asked for some shares, because it turns out shares are valuable at the end of the project. So TC Energy shares actually went up the other day when KXL was cancelled. You'll be happy to know. If we had just for shits and giggles, instead of taking equity in the KXL pipeline, pipeline taken equity in tc energy we could have sold those shares on that day and possibly made some money had something of value that we could have actually exchanged for other value but instead what we did is we took shares in the fucking pipeline because we're fucking morons and we don't seem to have anything because it's a then it's a straight up bet then it's red or black there is no nuance you're either putting the money on red we're putting the money on black this ball ball spins, you're winning or you're losing. With

Zain 19:06

With like a 99.95% chance that it's black. Yeah, I mean, so

Carter 19:11

you're putting it on 18, right? Like, I mean, you're still playing roulette and now you're basically hoping for 18 to come up. And when it doesn't come up, you're fucked. And Jason Kenney didn't do any hedging. He didn't do anything to protect our $1.5 billion. But instead he just kind of fucked it off. And in the meantime, what he's doing is He's slowing down payments to people on AISH. He's cutting funding for people with developmental disabilities. Camps. He saved $678,000 on a camp, but

Carter 19:45

but he invested $1.5 billion on a bet. That's 2,600 years of funding for that camp. It's beyond insanity what this man is doing with our money. With our money.

Zain 20:00

Carter, you had a very interesting idea. Corey, I want to get your reaction to that. Rather than buying shares in the pipeline, buying shares in the company, what do you kind of think of that strategy if you were in Jason Kenney's shoes when he made this investment? And I'll ask you the same question. Would there have been an alternative way in this province to demonstrate your unbridled enthusiastic support for this pipeline without, as I think the three of us agree, burning $1.5 billion?

Corey 20:25

so what carter the the contrast is so lethal what he talked about the cuts are going on in the province as this investment is being made and this investment is being lost and that is uh just to sort of foreshadow what i suspect is coming in this conversation that is part of why jason kenney is in such like a panic blitz right now to try to change the conversation around this it's it's coming at the end of a bad january and this is bad you know this is 1.5 billion That looks like it was lit on fire here in the good province of Alberta. And that's at a time when, you know, the government is fighting with doctors, with nurses, with teachers, with, you know, recipients of supports for, you know, disabilities, you name it. And it just seems like one of those really crystallizing, these are your priorities. Oh, and you blew it like that. That's a very challenging moment here. What Stephen has suggested that the government just invest in TC Energy is – No.

Carter 21:20

It wasn't an investment in TC Energy. No, equity. You wanted equity. Sorry, equity.

Corey 21:23

Yeah, I'm sorry. Equity. Yeah.

Corey 21:27

I can't even – there's not enough time to get into why that wouldn't work. But let's just say it

Corey 21:32

it wouldn't work. But you know what? I get your point about essentially saying I want something of value for this. But you've got to keep in mind TC Energy – this

Corey 21:41

this project may not have been bankable anymore. They may not have been able to find financing for that. Maybe why the government of Alberta had to come in. But

Corey 21:48

they also – like they didn't want to invest their own funds. They didn't want to bring their own money and turn it around into it

Corey 21:55

a matter of – because other projects are bankable and you can sort of shuffle things around if you're a company as big as TC Energy. So I really doubt that they were going to say here's an equity stake for this project we actually don't think is good enough for our company, Steve. This

Carter 22:08

This is the point.

Carter 22:09

This is the point. We became the funder of last resort.

Carter 22:12

We became the funder of Last Resort. We became the

Corey 22:14

the funder of No Resort. And

Carter 22:16

And then they had all the cards, and we still bought it. Now, the difference between that and TMX, which Trudeau bought, is that TMX could actually get built. You know, Trudeau held all the cards for getting TMX built. We had none of the cards. Because it turns out, Zane, you're going to find this shocking. Does America not care

Carter 22:35

If you want to build a pipeline over someone else's territory, they get say as to whether or not you can do it. The government of Canada gets say as to whether or not we build it across Canada. We get no say when it comes to building it across the United States of America. So

Zain 22:51

So this discussion on what Kenny could have done is interesting to me, but I want to talk about what he is doing, too. But before I go there, Corey, very quickly to you. Before, without the investment, any other way you would have advised him if you were in that room saying, saying, Mr. Premier, here's how you can show your support for this pipeline without burning this money?

Corey 23:08

Well, there's no pipeline to support at that point. You know, KXL goes down. I think he should have gone back to his class. He would have taken a hit for a while, but he should have gone back to that classic Jason Kenney playbook. He should have blamed Justin Trudeau for not fighting hard enough for it, allowing Joe Biden to move against it. That would have been a billion and a half dollars cheaper, and it ended up with the exact same place. And that's the point. Like, this was always predestined. And

Carter 23:29

And it would have ended up there nine, ten months ago. This is my point. Right? Yeah. Right. When it would hurt a lot less.

Zain 23:36

Carter, let's talk about where Kenny's at right now. He's doing what I'd call the basket of the three S's. He's talking about sanctions. He's talking about suing. And then he's talking about screaming a lot on MSNBC, on Fox News, blaming the U.S. president. I want to talk to you about the suite of strategies. Give me your take on what Kenny's strategy is right now. First, let's go analyst mode. then we'll go strategist mode in terms of trying to figure out what he should have done or what he should be doing in this moment in time. But analyze the basket of strategies he's using right now, what I've called the three S's, right? You're doing your PR push on American media networks. You're talking about sanctions, encouraging our government to place sanctions on our largest trading partner. And then you're talking about suing within the confines of the USMCA to try to get some recourse. What do you think of Kenny's strategy right now? Yeah.

Carter 24:28

reminds me of a troll on Twitter that's really angry at you because you said something that was factually accurate and then they were unable to do anything to respond. So they threatened to sue you or they threatened, you know, to out you or to attack you. All this is, is a temper tantrum.

Carter 24:44

And temper tantrums aren't strategy. Temper tantrums are just a moment in time where you're just trying to not look like an asshole. But he looks like an asshole. I mean, he's going going around, he's telling some sort of a story that he maybe he believes himself. But I think any of us who've been in government or anybody who's looked at this, looks at what he's doing and just saying, this is a temper tantrum designed to protect him from the wrath of his own voters. It has nothing to do with reality. So, you

Carter 25:13

you know, in terms of analysis and strategy, it's wafer thin, and it only lasts for a few minutes, because it's the same thing as suing on the carbon tax. You can sue on the carbon tax all day long. You can go to court. You can piss away all our money, but you're going to lose. So go for it. Lose. Go and sue. Take another half million dollars of our money and lose it following this bad bet that you made that was absolutely stupid on its face.

Zain 25:42

Corey, is it a temper tantrum? Would you agree with that general classification if you want to use those specific words as to what Jason Kenney's doing right now? I

Corey 25:50

I don't, because I think a temper tantrum to me, at least generally, is kind of a rage without a plan or strategy behind it.

Corey 25:58

For him, there is strategy. It needs to be somebody else's fault. He needs to be loud about this. So, you know, Trudeau isn't fighting hard enough. Biden's the villain here. He's not respecting Canada. And then he's also got an element in there where he's saying like, no, it wasn't crazy for me to think this thing would get built. Well, let's take these one by one, right? Right. Trudeau not fighting hard enough, fell apart a bit for him when it was clear that Trudeau brought this up in conversations with Biden. It was on the agenda, you know, in both of their conversations that they've had to date, that there's been conversations behind the scenes as well. Although that will still not be enough. And you see a lot of apologists and, you know, essentially the Sun media chain simping for him saying, yeah, look at Justin Trudeau letting down poor Jason Kenney. So he's moved on to Biden's the villain, you know, this idea that this is not a way that you would treat your friends and allies. And that language is getting dialed up as this

Corey 26:49

week has gone on. And I think today on

Corey 26:51

on the West Block, it got about as wild as I've seen it, basically saying that Canada wasn't being treated fairly is what our premier said of the U.S. president. So that

Corey 26:59

that is pretty tough to reconcile with the notion that Biden was the vice president under Obama when this decision was originally made. Biden had said during the campaign, this will not be built, right?

Corey 27:13

And it was assumed that that would be his position even before he said this. So that's a weird one to me. But that ties into the third one, which is that Jason Kenney is trying to spin this yarn. He wasn't crazy to think this thing would get built even in that environment, right? And the line I saw him using is like, well, look, when Trump came in on a campaign promise to get rid of NAFTA, we didn't take that as a given. and we fought for our interests, right? Well, okay, sure, right?

Corey 27:41

right? Setting aside the fact that USMCA actually did get created because guess what? America's pretty fucking good at getting what they want at the end of the day, right?

Corey 27:49

Set that aside. We also didn't place a $1.5 billion bet NAFTA wouldn't change after a major presidential candidate said they would change NAFTA. And that's the major difference here. So, you

Corey 28:00

you know, trying to make Biden the villain, also, I think it's just so

Corey 28:06

so crazy dangerous. And I was maybe going to say this a bit later, but every politician has that thing when they get into office where all of a sudden they've got this day one headache and they remember it. And they're like, that fucking – that's so annoying. Why do I have to deal with this? And Jason Kenney is doing his damnedest to be that headache. And if he is successful, that is worse than if he fails because there are a million small ways the world's most powerful man can fuck you over. So I do not understand this one bit when you get down to the real crass strategy results of it all. I

Zain 28:32

I like that you brought this up, Carter. Carter, you want to jump in here, but maybe when you respond, if you can also talk to me about the political cost of Jason Kenney's current strategy. Corey highlighted one. Maybe if you've got some national or even domestic regional political costs, let's jump there before we then go to, you know, the talk about what he should be doing in this moment. But if you can hit on some of those, Carter, I'd be really curious to get your thoughts.

Carter 28:57

Well, I'm going to use an example from

Carter 29:00

from From Alberta, pissing off the United States from 2005. Now, it wasn't the president of the United States that we angered in 2005, but 2005 was Alberta's centennial. And the Smithsonian honored us with an exhibit about Alberta. And Albertans, in our infinite wisdom, thought, you know what we should do? We should take down one of these fucking dump trucks. These dump trucks are amazing. So we're going to drive this dump truck down. Well, you can't drive it. You have to take it down in pieces. I know this story. I don't

Zain 29:27

don't know this story at all. And it makes me crazy. This is brand new to me. I do

Zain 29:30

do not know the story.

Carter 29:31

Well, so we shipped down this truck. We shipped down this massive, one of the world's largest dump trucks. And we park it on- You mean

Zain 29:39

mean like what sort

Zain 29:39

sort of- You mean like

Carter 29:40

like an oil- It's an oil sands. Okay, okay. Just to be clear. Mine.

Carter 29:45

right, right. So it's enormous. I mean, one of these tires is the size of a house. Yeah, it's like six or seven. Yeah,

Carter 29:50

They're huge. They're stories tall. hall and and they and of course every environmental organization in the world is headquartered or has an office in the united states in washington dc so they're walking past this enormous truck and they're like well

Carter 30:06

well how big is the fucking hole how big is the hole right so they go and find out you know who you know who was not on environmentalists radar until that moment alberta the oil sands we We were the good guys right up until that point. And as soon as we did that, we became the bad guys. This is the unintended consequence of getting into a wrestling match with your four-ton neighbor. They will squish you like a small bug. And they squished us. We became the bad guys in oil production that year. And from that point on, we've been fighting a battle of our own making. so anytime that people you know like kenny

Carter 30:49

kenny going down and picking this fight with biden biden is at his most popular right now picking

Carter 30:54

picking on him literally days after his inauguration is just dumb we're not gonna win this is this is a fight that was lost in march it was lost in february let it go you're certainly not gonna win it this march this february a year later later, Biden's just going to roll over you like that truck would have run over one of us if we were standing in front of it.

Zain 31:17

Corey, what's the political cost at home here for Jason Kenney's current actions? Is he paying a price here? Because he's in a tighter and tighter race in Alberta, as we see by both fundraising and polls for whatever you want to make of that. But what's some of the domestic political costs that Kenney might face with this rhetoric and with this strategy that's clearly, with the volume that he's at right now, representing Alberta on a national and perhaps North American stage, if not further. So

Corey 31:45

So can I be frank and perhaps a bit contrarian? I'm not

Corey 31:47

convinced there's political cost at all. This might actually work to his advantage. You've got to keep in mind how terrible of a month he's had. You've got to keep in mind where his approval rating was. This could be

Corey 31:57

a good distraction, is what you're saying? Well, straight up. I mean, I think this will ultimately be very bad for the province of of alberta um if somehow he managed to pull this off which he will not like i i would be so floored the only reason i say somehow is

Corey 32:11

is because steven carter said it will not happen so now but yeah

Corey 32:16

yeah this off getting kxl brought back from the dead insanity like lazarus right yeah um

Corey 32:20

um if he somehow does that you you now have pissed off like that will be a huge very early failure uh for joe biden his environmental wing will be furious at him the chaos it will cause say you know by american will be by american it will end at the 49th parallel there will be so many repercussions not just for alberta but for canada if if we actually manage to be quote unquote successful in that matter uh let's just be clear this was a day one action by joe biden he's not going to reverse it on day five he's not going to reverse it ever that's that's not how these these things work um you don't put things forward for day one unless you're willing to take a stand on them um but

Corey 33:02

you know so jason kenney what's

Corey 33:07

what's your struggle what are you struggling with yeah

Corey 33:10

well look here's what i'd say he's

Corey 33:12

he's not wrong that albertans can immediately like get fired up on this issue and so yeah so when you point to somebody else and you say woe is me and and And there's a certain like, you know, there's a certain, you

Corey 33:26

know, I don't want to say that there's a certain victimhood because I don't think that's an appropriate way to put it. But there are certain people in Alberta who are more than willing to

Corey 33:34

to immediately say this is happening to me entirely because of external forces. Right. And he's going to tap into that. And all it needs to be is about better than 28% for it actually to raise his approval. So I am not convinced this is a bad thing for him from an approval point of view. Now, it is probably pretty bad for the province, and maybe in the long run, that's a much more

Corey 33:56

more durable way to erode your approval because eight months down the road when it becomes clear this was a failure, maybe he's got bigger problems. But in this

Corey 34:05

in this moment, that fight might actually be helpful to him.

Corey 34:09

should Kenny be doing?

Zain 34:11

You know, the three of us were on our here CBC Calgary panel earlier this week talking about this exact topic, of course, talk of the town in Alberta. And I think one of us said his strategy should be to walk away, to just leave. Like, that's the best calculus here. With Corey's insight that this may not cost Kenny regionally here in Alberta, do you still think the right strategy is walking away? What do you think he should be doing at this moment?

Carter 34:40

I still think the right strategy is to be walking away. I mean, I look at it the way I look at the investment. The investment was bad, but you lost, right? Right. So you don't you know, you're sitting at the gambling table. You don't throw more money on the table and hope that you're going to be able to win it all back. You've got to you've got to move away. You've got to stop chasing lost money. And, you know, he should he should just move away from this. And he should start focusing on something that he can win our approval on or can cast Trudeau in a negative light. And you brought it up a little bit earlier when you talked about the pandemic and and vaccination rates. I mean, if

Carter 35:16

if you were the world's best performer in the vaccination rates, maybe I'm going to like you again, but I'm not going to like you over the $1.5 billion that you lost when there's no way you're going to get it back. And there's no way that KXL is coming back online. This is it. It's over. It's dead.

Carter 35:31

Everybody knows this. It's done. Move on. You're not going to wait four years and hope that Donald Trump Jr. wins this thing and you get to build the pipeline one more time.

Zain 35:42

Corey, did you convince yourself with your analysis there that Kenny's not losing and thereby this strategy is maybe not all that harmful and perhaps beneficial regionally? Or do you also agree that walking away is the right thing to do? So

Corey 35:55

So I want to stress, I'm not convinced that he's

Corey 35:58

he's losing on this. I'm not convinced he's winning on this. My instant reaction is what a train wreck. Certainly when you look online, that's the reaction too. But let's just remember that Twitter is not the conversation at every dining room table. And I'll be curious to see some polling on this. And again, I'm not even saying that this is going to be popular. I'm not even saying that the majority of Albertans are with him. him. A

Corey 36:18

A larger minority may be with him on this than they were on other issues that he's just been bludgeoned on this month.

Zain 36:25

Yeah, I hear you. Last question on this particular topic of Keystone to both of you very quickly. Carter, I'll start with you. Did Trudeau play this pitch perfect? Say that he's going to fight for it, make it part of the agenda for the call earlier this week with President Biden, but outright just kind of sail above it. Do you feel like that was the right tone strategy for Trudeau's or something else he should or should not be doing from your perspective?

Carter 36:50

I think Albertans have been fed an absolute load of horseshit about Trudeau and pipelines. Every time Trudeau's had to make the call to the United States, he's made the call, even when he was calling Donald Trump and asking him to make sure that this thing was a priority, because you may remember Donald Trump was an infant who never did anything to help anybody else. Anyways, we still got that that that piece signed and it was under Trudeau's watch that that was that that happened. He also bought TMX and is making sure that actually gets built. And that's going to cost him electorally that costs him real votes. That's not something that's super popular in the mainland of British Columbia. So Trudeau has invested in in Alberta oil and gas far more than Jason Kenney would have us believe, because Jason Kenney is a big baby. And everything every Every time he fights with Trudeau, part of me just wants Trudeau just to say, you know what?

Carter 37:42

You're right. I'm done. I'm going to be the anti-pipeline guy. I'm going to stop TMX now. Go fuck yourself, you little fucker. It's only $4.5 billion to me. I can let it go, right? If you can let go $1.5 billion, I can let go $4.5 billion because I actually have financial resources and I'm not sitting $20 billion in the hole on a $45 billion budget. So whatever. This is more than $45 billion. But anyways, this is where we are.

Carter 38:09

I think Trudeau being petulant would be fun.

Zain 38:13

Trudeau's strategy. Did he do okay? What else? I

Corey 38:15

he's – I think that you know he's done okay because even though there's still some half-hearted, he's not doing this hard enough. And now you've got the premiers, the right-wing premiers at least saying we want to quote-unquote go to war over this, which I know they don't mean literally but even figuratively. Come on. Are you guys out of your minds? Could you pick a

Carter 38:32

a worse time to say those words than right now? Yeah, well, honestly,

Corey 38:35

honestly, truly that as well. But I

Corey 38:38

think that he's managed to thread this needle pretty well. And as I was starting there, and evidence of that is that Joe Biden has become the new villain to Jason Kenney, right? That he's kind of stepped forward because it would be a lot easier and a lot more, you

Corey 38:55

you know, or a lot less dangerous, I think, to make Justin Trudeau the villain. But, you know, Kenney is not spending a ton of time blaming Justin Trudeau at this moment. Let's

Zain 39:03

Let's go from Keystone to Derek Sloan. Stephen Carter, I'm going to start right at the heart of the story. Earlier this week, Corey sent us a message saying, I don't know what I make about Aaron O'Toole, but could he be a genius for putting this? I'm paraphrasing here, Corey, and you could correct me if I'm wrong for some of his political moves around Derek Sloan. So let's start here. Carter, should we be congratulating Aaron O'Toole for this wise political strategy for booting Derek Sloan out of caucus, or is he just doing his job? And we're applying the political lens here, of course, right, in terms of should we be congratulating him for savvy political strategy leading up to a potential election, spring or fall, who knows? Or is this just something he had to do to just make himself barely palatable in the grand scheme of things? Where do you kind of stand with that? But

Carter 39:48

Sloan has to be step one. If Sloan is step, you know, the final step in the moving to the center, I don't think that he moves to the center enough. And I've spoken a lot about Lesley Lewis, who continues to stand way outside and to the right. Now, she's not in caucus, but she's still a dominant force. And then you've got Michelle Rempel-Garner and Pierre Polyev, who continue to be primary mouthpieces, who are defining the government as they defined Harper's opposition or as they defined Scheer's party as well. I mean, these people, if they continue to define the conservative party, then it will be the far right conservative party. And O'Toole will have only done part of the work that he needs to do. And he needs to move fast because it sounds like the election, well, I mean, Trudeau's told us it's coming this year. So he

Carter 40:41

he has to move quickly.

Zain 40:43

Corey, should we be congratulating O'Toole for what he's done here? Or is this simply just part of his job? And, you know, do you want a cookie for doing your job, Chris Rock style? You know, sort of vibe. Where do you kind of stand?

Corey 40:56

So he's did his job, but it's the timing of it that made me trigger the question to you two. So when I said, is it possible he's a genius? Maybe, maybe his strategy all along has been to give in to the right while nobody in Canada is paying attention and just sort of keep the peace within his party, consolidate his power. And then just before the election, when it's too late for his party to organize against him, and when that rally to the leader sentiment is the strongest, then he tacks hard to the center. And

Corey 41:24

perhaps this slow move is part of a package of those things. Perhaps all of a sudden you're going to hear a lot less from Pierre Polyev and Michelle Rempel. And maybe, just maybe, and I'm not saying this is a for sure thing, but maybe this is all part of the strategy. uh certainly when you see things like his his messaging about how uh you know he is much more of a centrist which we were talking about last week right uh you know how he he supports abortion rights and and and uh you know name eight other kind of you know right-wing flash issues that he basically took the opposite side on and then later that week he kicks derek sloan out of his caucus And maybe this is all just being done at the last moment because he knows if he does this and he has to wait six months while his party grumbles about it, he's a dead man walking. But

Corey 42:11

during an election, they have no choice but to stay with him. And maybe this is how he remakes the party.

Corey 42:15

So I'm throwing the question out there. Is it possible O'Toole is a genius? Because that's not such a bad strategy. When I think about that, that's a pretty clever way to remake the party in your own image if you think it's too right wing. Carter,

Zain 42:27

Carter, I'm going to just repurpose and take that question and just repurpose it to you. What do you think? Do you think O'Toole, given Corey's – I

Zain 42:34

I wouldn't say – and Corey, do you have a – have you landed like on – Oh,

Zain 42:40

It's an open question to you too. This

Corey 42:41

– I mean these are the kinds of things that with hindsight, maybe if we're sitting back and it's moderate conservative prime minister O'Toole who has run like the most red Tory platform in a generation, this will all make sense, right? And we'll say, holy shit, that was brilliant, right?

Corey 42:58

Maybe. Or maybe it's just a bunch of crazy shit that happened. And when there's only two things so far, it's – Occam's razor suggests it's just a bunch of crazy shit that's happening. Carter,

Zain 43:07

Carter, where do you kind of stand right now as we speak with all we know? This we're sitting here in late January on the O'Toole political genius question in terms of the struggle that he will have in terms of his focal point of his party.

Carter 43:20

I think that, you

Carter 43:23

know, he's not who he appeared to be in the leadership race, right? So he went right.

Zain 43:28

right. Is that a good thing or a bad thing in your mind? Well,

Carter 43:29

Well, he won. So it must have been a good thing, right? He won the leadership because he portrayed himself as more right wing than we'd seen him in the previous leadership race. race um so he won that leadership race and now he's um tacking back towards something vaguely resembling the center um or you know center right of the party and it could be brilliant because i think that that's where people want government from and and uh we could have a whole conversation about where stephen harper was on that uh at some later date but for me this is

Carter 44:04

don't want to reach the conclusion because i've only seen a couple of the steps And he's moving slowly. This does not appear to be a guy who wants to move really fast in defining the Aaron O'Toole phase of the UCP. He's moving slower than I would like, given that I think that we're heading into an election relatively soon. Now, he may be deciding, like, four

Carter 44:26

four days before the election, you're going to see the hammer come down on a whole bunch of people. But that doesn't give him much time to redefine himself, except in the actual election campaign.

Corey 44:35

But is it redefine or define? fine like i'm not sure canadians actually know who aaron o'toole and i think this is the point

Zain 44:40

point that you're trying to make right this is his intro he's doing the underneath the iceberg sort of work before the introduction when when when the spotlights are on him and people get a formal introduction to to who he is perhaps making up the mistakes of andrew sheer who didn't do that house cleaning and uh you know the sort of uh tasks politically uh prior to the election that many thought he should have won given the oppo information that came out during during that race right yeah

Corey 45:08

yeah well and look yeah he has managed to avoid if nothing else in the past six months even though there's been no shortage of stupid comments from conservatives aaron o'toole himself has largely avoided uh planting his flag on anything that is too controversial for canadians i mean you could argue maybe his canada first stuff has aged like sour milk but um but beyond that like Like when you actually talk about policy planks, he's kept himself a bit of a blank slate, ready to be defined during this election. And

Zain 45:35

And showing, you know, not saying guaranteeing by any stretch, Corey, but showing some of those, at least a shimmer of red Tory-ness with, you know, not outright denying climate change and elements, you know, like... The bar is so low. It

Carter 45:49

is super low. But as Trudeau

Zain 45:52

Trudeau continues to move further to the left, you know, which we saw with his most recent speech from the throne, there is that opportunity. OK, I'm moving it from Sloan to the vaccine milestone. It's a four part segment. So we've hit the first two. We're on vaccines. And guys, we're on the federal level where we're talking about the Trudeau government. Canada won't receive any Pfizer shots this coming week. And our order will be dropped by 50 percent of the next four weeks. This coming on the heels of, as I mentioned when I introduced the segment, Anita Anand saying that Canada declined to purchase additional doses of the Moderna vaccine because we were more than well equipped. And also the additional sort of complicating context here is that while this, yes, is a reduction in supply for Canada, as well as the EU and the UK, not all countries will be equally affected. Canada will be one of the few countries, if only, that will receive zero doses this coming week. So, Carter, I'm going to start with you on this. You know, last week we said this could become a problem if Trudeau can't meet some of the milestone goals. The goals that the government has kind of communicated is that you'll ensure that we hit our thresholds for March and the September threshold still remains the same. But knowing we're getting a 50% reduction and we're not getting anything this coming week, starting tomorrow, how worried should the Trudeau government be? Let's start here. hear

Carter 47:17

think that they should be very worried um not necessarily because this is the day this is the the thing that we need to you know like everybody's going to start getting really worried or very angry this week i think that we'll manage this week we'll manage next week but there's a gap that's being developed between us and the united states there's a gap that's obviously been developed between us and israel and there's a gap um you know us in the uk and at some point we're going to be looking and saying you know how i'm willing to tolerate the gap for a a little while. But if the United States can do over a million vaccinations a day, shouldn't we be doing over 100,000 vaccinations a day? Shouldn't we be doing, you know, better than the United States because we should have a more coordinated health care system? Shouldn't we be driving these things much faster? And we're not there. And, you know, the federal government pointing the finger at the provincial governments and the provincial government pointing it at the federal government. I think the federal government will lose that battle.

Carter 48:15

I think that the provincial governments, even if they're not particularly well-liked, as in Doug Ford and Jason Kenney, have a much stronger case when they just simply throw their hands up and say, we're

Carter 48:24

we're out of vaccine this week.

Carter 48:26

So I think that it doesn't necessarily play badly today. But, you

Carter 48:32

know, the talk of a spring election, I've been steadfast. If we are if people aren't if the vast majority of Canadians aren't vaccinated by the time they call a spring election, I would expect to see punishment for the Trudeau government, because that's a very simple issue to wrap your head around. Was it good enough? Now, it could be done during the election and maybe it'll be good. But if it's not done, there's going to be a question to be answered by Trudeau and his government.

Zain 49:01

Corey, I'm going to ask you the same question I did Carter. How worried should the Trudeau government be with no vaccines next week, 50% reduction over the next four?

Corey 49:09

Yeah, I don't have much to add. I agree. I think we are now getting into the territory where I would be pretty alarmed if I was them.

Corey 49:17

That gap that Carter has talked about, 5.6% of the U.S. population has now had a dose of this vaccine. And also so many of them have had it, right, as well, more than in our country. In Canada, that number is 2.1%. That's a gap that is growing and is going to grow if we don't get any of this vaccine over the next four weeks or reduce numbers, I guess I should say. So that's deeply problematic. And when you start hitting some milestone numbers, say the United States is at 50% and say we're at 20%, I don't know, like pick them, whatever. But that that is not going to be something that Canadians are going to digest well, because the other thing is, as Canadians, we have this very, very high minded view of our health care system. We believe it is a better health care system than the United States, I would agree with that assertion. But the United States looks like they're going to have far more vaccines out the door in the short term. And there are other countries in Western Europe that we would consider comps, you know, in Asia, that are equally affluent to us, and they're doing a better job.

Corey 50:21

And at a certain point, you have to ask, why in the hell is that? And this does then go back to some of the comments that were made in the fall about what is the nature of our vaccine deals? Did we make the right decisions on Moderna? Now, this

Corey 50:34

this may all seem like panicking and kind of losing your head if in a month everything is kind of plugging along as it should. But

Corey 50:45

you're running out of that slack in the line that I think we had through our strategy that considered the fact we may run into bumps like this. if we find ourselves at the end of the day just in a fundamentally worse off place than our peer nations um yeah

Corey 51:01

yeah that's going to be a real problem for justin trudeau

Corey 51:04

because you know on carter's point the provinces will win if only because there's more of them you're going to have 10 people yelling at the prime minister you

Zain 51:13

talked about both of you talked about the provinces now having a so if you're having a shit time in your province not a bad idea if you're the the Premier, to start taking a kick at the Trudeau government to try to either change the channel or to try to blame them and shift blame on any particular item, as we've talked about. Carter's idea of the downstream effects for the election race, Corey, I want to talk, or so the election call, and

Zain 51:34

and triggering an election in the minority parliament. Do you feel like that calculation is something that they need to start making right now? Or do you feel like that's, is it too early to kind of say, we're not looking at spring anymore, so to speak?

Corey 51:47

No, it's too early to make an assertion about spring being off the table. Well, the other thing I would say is if you have reason to believe it's going to get worse, you're

Corey 51:54

you're going to go in spring, right?

Corey 51:55

right? I mean, it's not just a matter of like the vaccine may be getting worse. You'll also be dealing with the bills for COVID. There's a lot of reasons that might drive you to an election as soon as you think you can get away with it. But this is obviously not what the Trudeau government was hoping would be the story going into February.

Zain 52:12

Carter, you're Aaron O'Toole. You're his team right now. You're silently watching this happen. What are you thinking about? What's your angle? What of the boxes that Corey's, I'm going to call these little boxes, right? Our procurement strategy. That's a box that was open, people talked about, there's criticism, but the Trudeau government quickly closed it, said, you know, we're fine. And then as our first doses arrived, people said, look, it was overblown. We got our vaccines pretty early. So that box now is fodder. It could be reopened by O'Toole saying the actual, look at this, we need to go back to procurement. We could also talk about distribution, right? We could talk about our distribution strategy. Why are we lagging behind? But then we could also talk about, you know, the Trudeau government's most recent element of denying additional vaccines, this overconfidence that we were going to be fine. fine. If you're, if you're O'Toole, which

Zain 53:02

which of these, if any, or it might be something else that you think of, I'm just, you know, top of mind trying to put some stuff out there for you to consider. Which of these, if any, or another angle or another box, are you saying this is my swim lane on attacking Trudeau on vaccines? Which one is it for you if you're on team O'Toole right now?

Carter 53:20

It's going to be availability, I think. And you can do some of that through distribution and some of that through acquisition. And you can also hit him on it for production. You know, one of the very first things that Biden did, and I'm not gonna remember the exact act that he invoked. But essentially, he was able to invoke the military, I think it's Military Production Act, something like that. Corey will look it up and confirm whether I'm correct or wrong, to produce more vaccine to enable the entire federal government to focus on a singular issue. Every resource of the American federal government is focused now on COVID vaccination and COVID relief. Justin Trudeau hasn't done that. He hasn't done that. And it could be evidenced in anything from the vaccine production, availability, distribution, or it could also be, you know, you could also look at it through federal responsibility for seniors. Nothing been done. Long-term care, massive holes. I mean, there's all kinds of different places that you can point to and say, Justin Trudeau failed Canadians. And the best part for O'Toole is he never has to explain what he would have done differently. He can just simply point to these failures. Biden's invoke, you know, invoking of that particular act shows what a leader who cares would have done. And I just think that Trudeau has been very I think he's been good. I think Trudeau has been good on this, but he's never for the last few months. It doesn't feel like he's been as engaged as he was in the first few months.

Zain 54:54

Corey, one thing O'Toole has done, at least we know because they put out a comms piece about it, which I think you sent to Stephen and I, if I'm not mistaken, was a comms piece on his Twitter account where he's sitting at his work from home desk and picks up his cell phone saying, you know, recently I just talked to the CEO of Pfizer. And, you know, I laid down the law, you know, as to why it matters, you know. But for now, let's just go back to working. But like, you know, had, you know, the classic political, I've got a phone, hence I made a phone call move.

Zain 55:24

You know, taking out that symbolism for a second, what do you think of that particular strategy? And what else do you think, out of the, you know, the abstract, perhaps boxes I put out around acquisition and distribution and availability, do you feel like the O'Toole team now needs to look at as their focal point of political attack?

Corey 55:44

Yeah, so talking about O'Toole calling the CEO of Pfizer, I mean, it's smart, but it's limited appeal. You could see it spun further. Imagine if we lived in a parallel universe where we didn't hear the next four weeks, we have reduced numbers of vaccines, but instead, we're getting our full shipment. then

Corey 55:58

then then o'toole can uh you know arm his supporters so that when people say oh it looks like trudeau's done a fine job on this pfizer vaccine after all they'll say well you know o'toole called the ceo of pfizer yeah

Corey 56:09

it allows just a narrative to be spun as ridiculous as it is to suggest that ceo of pfizer heard from aaron o'toole and changed his or her i don't actually know who the ceo of pfizer is um i'll

Corey 56:19

i'll look it up later but

Zain 56:20

but i will google it as you keep speaking the

Corey 56:22

the uh but the idea that o'toole would change change fundamentally the nature of that conversation and that relationship is a bit ridiculous but makes sense right it's your way to start start trying to grab credit for popular things that happen in the orbit and take it uh advantage of luck um it's a standard political trope it's done all of the time right it's not just that uh you know the premier calls the person but then all of a sudden the leader of the opposition does too and so on and so forth right

Corey 56:48

as far as his strategy going forward here i think in many ways he is fairly well positioned uh to say we've raised the alarm bells on on production we've raised the alarm bells on procurement and

Corey 56:58

and we've raised the alarm bells on in general how the government has managed this thing so that's another part of what would make me a little bit nervous if i was justin trudeau they especially my my proxies and some of my you know supporting voices have been a little much in saying see there is absolutely nothing to worry about here there is

Corey 57:17

no risk this was obviously well-handed all of these concerns have been an overblown political political just poppycock or or whatever word they decide to use but

Corey 57:29

you know you're gonna you're gonna have a bit of a trail that you can point to and say o'toole was not somebody who came late to this issue even if the things he was talking about actually turned out to be not things there's enough smoke that you'll be like was that from this fire might have been this guy might have been on top of this and so another reason why i think justin trudeau should be a little nervous and if i'm o'toole i'm just making sure that i don't overplay my hand at this point right because the last thing you want to do is lower expectations dramatically let's be real we're still getting vaccines for most of those weeks right we're not getting as many but we're getting some and it's not the only vaccine that's been approved so you can't go too far if you're the leader of the conservatives at this moment either you've just got to continue to raise the alarm stephen

Zain 58:13

stephen carter you we have talked about the liberals having several strengths, one of them not being issues management, however, historically seeing it in the past federally. So let's do some proactive advice to the Trudeau government, rather than reacting to things like we and blackface, brownface. Let's give them some proactive advice. What would you suggest if there is, we know now, right, the reduction of four weeks, let's say there's gonna be further reductions, let's say that this is going to to be a trajectory C change. What are some of the things they need to be doing right now? Because Corey made a really good point that they may have been coming in a little too hot and increasing expectations for their future selves, and may have to pay the political price for it. So any general principles or even specific ideas as to how they deal with the comms and on vaccines here on in?

Carter 59:07

Well, I would double check the plan that I've got that sees us all being vaccinated by sometime in september and make sure that's still available to us and then ideally i'd be trying to come up with something that changes the channel within within the network if you will i i don't know exactly how to describe that but i want to be talking more about covid and managing um

Carter 59:28

things beyond the vaccination rates uh right now i mean not only are we not vaccinated but mostly across canada we continue to be uh locked down so you know maybe are we getting somewhere where we can see some reductions in that, because this is all very challenging

Carter 59:48

challenging right now. And I would maybe be picking up the phone and calling Moderna again and seeing if maybe

Carter 59:54

maybe that deal that they offered us before is still back on the table, because buying a few extra million doses may be a small price to pay at this stage.

Zain 1:00:03

Corey, issues management proactively for the situation at hand, but if it gets worse, any principles or even specific recommendations recommendations you might have for how the Trudeau government may want to handle this?

Corey 1:00:14

Well, you're going to have to give them, them being the media and the public, as much information as you have on these things. Keep the doors open. Don't create a sense of panic or that there's worse information out there or shoot a drop. You also want to do your best to manage expectations going forward. And you've got to hone in on a message. It would be very helpful, and I'm not sure if this is the case, the government should probably find a way to key message this more aggressively. But the reason why we're getting a dose reduction is they're shutting down a production line. And the reason why they're shutting down a production line is to increase the overall ability to produce. So if the government has the ability to say, yes, we are seeing fewer in the short term, but we're seeing that ramp up benefit us more, you know, in a month, two months time, whatever the case may be, that becomes a bit more of a compelling storyline there. But, you know, Pfizer has been really clear, our government's been really clear Pfizer will make up the doses. So again, when we talk about a spring election, if we're talking about May, June, this may all be resolved and in the rearview mirror. And in fact, having a big bulge of doses in three months and making it look like there's rapid progress might actually even be politically advantageous right before an election. But to your point about what should the liberals be doing, they've got to get their story straight. They've got to create confidence in Canadians that this is just a blip, and they've got to talk about why this is not a bad thing for Canada, that we got cut more than others. You're going to have to find the story in there that it's actually fine that we were cut the most.

Zain 1:01:45

I want to move on from vaccine milestones to mining zones, our last elements in this segment, and we're moving back here to Alberta. So to add a little bit of context, the UCP governing party here in Alberta, Jason Kenney and the UCP, had a plan that would allow more coal mining on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains. This was done as a result of a policy that had been standing since 1976 by the Lougheed government, premier back in Alberta, Peter Lougheed. And they canceled this policy in May that had largely restricted coal development in western Alberta. After some backlash, we discussed this a bit, I believe, near the end of our last segment. But after some backlash, the UCP canceled some of these leases. But the government still is now trying to argue that coal mining is safe and can create jobs, etc. etc. Corey, I'm going to start with you on this one, because you had mentioned in our last episode that coal kind of made oil and gas kind of look like the most environmentally friendly thing to come out of our province. There's clearly some risk around coal itself. But what do you kind of make of where the government landed between when we recorded last time and their move to cancel some of those developments, but certainly not all, and now has moved into a calm strategy to defend, which I want to get to as well. But first, your kind of top line is political assessment on where this is landing and its political damage for this government. Well,

Corey 1:03:14

Well, we drew parallels when we talked about this last to the Defend Alberta Parks campaign here in Alberta, where there was a lot of uproar in our province about the government potentially delisting and then selling parkland. A lot of parks sell some of them to private interests, sell some of them to even privater interests, frankly. Exactly.

Corey 1:03:33

And that the government largely had to back down from that. It appears they've effectively fully backed down. We'll see whether there's, you know, there's any kind of movement on that in the spring. Now, this coal issue seems to be following a similar trajectory in that the first back down is saying, is there a way we can back down? Well, that will just turn off the volume and then we can move on with our lives. And so the government tried that this week when they essentially canceled the leases on a few. Like if you look at a map, it's a small percent of them, right, in the area.

Corey 1:04:04

But the very fact they had to do this tells you an awful lot about what they're hearing out there and the volume of conversation that must be growing. And then the fact that the government has now sort of on

Corey 1:04:12

on multiple issues in this general area about parkland and wilderness and whatnot, like

Corey 1:04:19

like they've been bloodied pretty badly on these matters. And

Corey 1:04:23

And that's a place where a government doesn't like to be because it shows that you can be defeated and having a majority is not a guarantee that your will will go forward. And if you can make a loud enough noise, you can stop things. And that teaches a lesson to civil society that the government doesn't love them to know, frankly, that if you fight for things, if you write letters, if you get together, you put up signs, if we were in non-COVID times, march and rally, I mean, you can change things. government majorities be damned and we've seen this in alberta where you know large privatization efforts in the 90s have been pushed off the

Corey 1:04:57

the fact that they had to do this again i guess zane i just want to underline means they must have really been feeling it because no government wants to back down in a similar vein you

Corey 1:05:07

you know coal pun not intended but welcome um no government wants to do that in the same area like you know the

Corey 1:05:15

the the minister of environment nixon must be beside side himself if he has to back down again on all of these matters and then you've seen some uh caucus materials come out get the facts on coal in alberta yeah

Corey 1:05:26

dreadful i hope we'll talk about them in a minute but um but yeah the government's obviously feeling the pinch that they're creating communications products they're changing their approach um even if it is just slightly at this point it's not a good place for a government to be carter

Zain 1:05:40

carter uh political damage here last time we talked we made some uh some good points about albertans even cory i think your point around Even conservatives here in Alberta have this relationship with the environment, right? We are very much outdoors people outside of myself here in Alberta. Yeah, except for you

Corey 1:05:55

you and me. Yeah, right, right. We are a province that loves the outdoors. Right,

Zain 1:06:00

Right, and I think that was made mention of, especially on the environments file relating to parks and now mining. Carter, they had to back down. The opposition NDP feel like there is, you know, blood in the water, that they can go even further on this issue, use it as a wedge. What do you think of the political damage and the potential for political damage here for the Kenney government on this particular file?

Carter 1:06:22

This is massive. I mean, we already talked about parks in general. People were losing their minds. The signs are going up throughout neighborhoods where these people need to win re-election. People love our mountains. And these are mountains that are close to us that we can see that are going to be devastated by mining. mining on top of that this is not an economic revitalization plan let us let us move past that the number of people employed by coal in Alberta is inconsequential frankly compared to the overall employment numbers and overall challenges that we're facing we'd be far better to take the 1.5 billion dollars that Jason Kenney bet on KXL and build the green line here in Calgary because we'd to actually get some fucking jobs and in terms of royalties which is the other thing that the province relies on when we access our oil or our gas or our coal we get royalties and that's the price that albertans get back for the devastation that we reap upon our own lands coal generates less than 15 million dollars a year in royalties it is inconsequential to our overall budget it um and we are we are going to open up our lands and and rick have a devastation upon them for 15 million dollars a year i'm pretty sure we've got a couple of billionaires in calgary that could choose just to fund the government for 15 billion a year at or 15 million a year 15 million not billion 15 million a year uh ad infinitum i mean it's just utterly ridiculous

Zain 1:08:03

carter let's actually cory i'm going to go to you first let's talk about some of the comms you talk about communications products this is a domain at least in part that you had some some oversight over in in the alberta government um until recently uh but there is an interesting site put out and i will clarify by the ucp government caucus um called uh coal hard facts pun uh intended but not welcome to paraphrase

Zain 1:08:32

cory's uh cory's verbiage uh it's it's ultimately if you're not on it right now and you're we're in your ears and you don't have access to to a phone or something it's a myth fact website 10 myths and facts about cole kind of like the michael scott three americans die from rabies every year fact four americans die from rabies every year uh sort of verbiage right so it's stuff like that they talk about cole cory what do you make of this communication uh product and then i want to get into a listener question about why Why the authorship of this is from the UCP caucus versus perhaps your old halted ground, which was, you know, P&E in the government. CPE, sorry, in the government. So let's start with what do you make of it? Why do you like it or don't like it? And then let's talk about its authorship and sponsorship from the question that we got from one of our listeners as well. Yeah.

Corey 1:09:24

Yeah. So let me talk about it as a communications product and not necessarily about – well, maybe I'll back into the strategy and then I'll back into why in your next round of questions here, why it would be done by a caucus and not by the government proper.

Corey 1:09:39

What can I say? So this is not a particularly compelling communications product in my point of view. And the main reason is, as you mentioned, is this myth fact setup. And I have a lot of critiques of the individual myths facts. The very first one is myth. The world is moving away from coal. Fact, the world uses coal. Well, those two are not even mutually exclusive. And I think that the author would know that, right? And I think that even a casual reader would kind of catch that. And that's true of a lot of the myths, facts. Like the fact does not rebut the quote-unquote myth and the quote-unquote myth is often very true. The world is moving away from coal. That's undeniable, for example. example uh so i don't i don't like the uh you know kind of the the way that it is so not necessarily you know aligned like you have not actually done a good myth fact job here the second thing i will say is that it tends to use a bunch of language that is not even remotely approachable to the average albertan like it's talking about alberta's government has paused future coal lease sales on former category two lands what the fuck does that mean what is a category two land you know what's what's a category three land? What's a category one land? None of this is defined anywhere in this document. And the fact that you qualify your lands by saying you can't sell coal leases on category two lands actually just makes it sound like you're hiding something. It makes it sound like you, okay, but you are on other categories of land. What does that mean? It does not actually reduce my concern on that particular matter. You know, I could go on and on. I could literally go through each of these and I almost want to because some of them make me so very mad. Carter pointed it out one i do want to mention which is myth the 1976 coal policy protects water from selenium fact selenium is not mentioned in the 1976 coal policy well great that's a great critique of that coal policy that's not a great defense of what you're doing right

Carter 1:11:25

it's okay because we're just going to pollute now because it didn't we could have done it earlier yeah but

Corey 1:11:30

but but this is a the reason i mentioned this one is it's a great example of the hazard of the kitchen sink approach to communications which is what ultimately every single myth fact website is and it's why they are generally not a very good idea and i hope our listeners who are involved in communications can take this to heart a lot of academic research has happened surrounding communication psychology and the battle of facts and successes and failures of both sides and debunking the other side in battles of facts in particular think about the climate change debate and so a pair of australian researchers uh lewandowski and cook i think carter we used to quote them all the time when we worked at hill and norton um anyhow they they looked at the back and forth on here and you know of climate change and how somebody would bring up a defense and someone would bring up an attack and so on and so forth and what they found is very simple and it makes sense when you think about it if

Corey 1:12:18

if you bring up a defense for a concern people do not have you are introducing that concern to people if you had no idea selenium was a concern with open pit coal mining if you just didn't like what it looked like and then you're like what what selenium and water what is this a thing that could happen with coal mine you've just created a communications challenge you have just moved people away from your concern uh this kind of untargeted kitchen sink approach is often very destructive and on controversial issues it can be downright lethal so as a communications product i give it an f it is not a well-constructed communications piece uh it fails an awful lot of these fundamentals fundamentals and you know it's got all of these social share components i would love to see how many people are sharing them not just to take a piss out of it yeah

Zain 1:13:04

yeah and and that's a fantastic explanation cory uh and and the share doesn't work properly on on some of them i was just testing them out while you would know yeah who would know i i i almost did um cory before i move on from you alternative approach in your mind suppose they suppose a caucus and i'm glad you parked the authorship stuff i did want to mention that question from you but we'll we'll go to the authorship next but alternative

Zain 1:13:28

alternative approach here let's say the caucus said we wanted to do something

Zain 1:13:31

what would your what would your overarching recommendation have been because i don't think it's fair to you to say develop an entire website or comm strategy for them on the fly but your overarching recommendation would have been don't do this but it would have been like do what do something in the vein of what all

Corey 1:13:46

all right you are concerned that people out there have these myths in mind quote unquote let's just put aside whether i actually think these are legitimate myths How do people find information, Zane?

Corey 1:13:58

just go on Twitter until they see the UCP tweet, know the facts about coal and follow that?

Corey 1:14:04

No, they Google it. Google it. And so if they're Googling coal selenium, then yeah, drop them on a single specific page to that issue that explains why this is not a concern. Do not give them a page of 10 concerns they may or may not have. Similarly, if they have coal affects the landscape, then

Corey 1:14:19

then drop them on a specific page that addresses that issue and purchase the keywords around that in the province of Alberta that allow you to own the conversation and the questions that people have on

Corey 1:14:29

on that specific issue. you don't give them the entire kitchen sink right i mean this this would be a very obvious way to do it if they want more information offer them a way to back into a place that provides more information about the government policy being careful not to expose your bare ass on things like selenium poisoning the water perhaps but uh you do not provide them all of the facts at once that would be my first recommendation you've got to be much more targeted about this a piece like this i'm pointing at my other screen here that none of our listeners can see a piece like this is created for For one reason, MLA is saying, we got to say something about this. I need to see some communications about it. But it's bad communications because it's not actually going to address the audience's concerns in a way that doesn't concern the audience.

Zain 1:15:13

Carter, I got Corey's take on why it's not a great piece of comms. I got his take on the alternative. Do you want to add anything to either of those before we move on?

Carter 1:15:25

No, I'm really pissed about this.

Zain 1:15:27

Yeah. Let's talk about authorship. And Carter, maybe I'll get your take first. Authored by the UCP government caucus, not by the party, right, for one, not by the government of Alberta. What do you suspect the authorship has to do with this content, as asked by our listener, Carlin? And why do you think this resides with the caucus and not some of the other options that are available to the UCP? Well,

Carter 1:15:56

Well, I think the caucus because they have a budget to do this type of communications. And it is, to Corey's point, MLAs who are pissed off, who want to have a communication piece. So they go to their caucus comms and they say, you guys got to put something out. And frankly, if you went to the government of Alberta and said, let's put out something pro-coal. I just, you know, been looking at all the pro-coal websites in the government of Alberta. You know, they actually just put forward facts. They don't have, you know, they're not in the business of selling government policy like this. Yes, they're in the business of selling government policy, but they're not in the business of basically

Carter 1:16:33

basically putting up spin.

Carter 1:16:36

spin. And that's what this is, is spin. It is not, you know, it's not real. It's bullshit. bullshit and uh so my view is yeah i mean some could point to government communications being a little bit you know maybe offside but generally speaking government communications even when cory was running it i was pretty good um so thank

Carter 1:16:59

um this is this is not good uh this was done because no one else would do it and uh it was done by the caucus because it was the caucus members members themselves who had the communication problem.

Zain 1:17:13

Corey, your take on this, the authorship here, what do you make of it?

Corey 1:17:19

Well, why caucus? There's a few reasons you might go through that. And just so our listeners who might not be aware, when you consider communications from the quote-unquote government, often there are three different sources, more than that really, but I'll talk about three big ones. One is literally the government, right? The Alberta Public Service run communications apparatus of the government. That's what I ran for the province of Alberta for many years. Another is the government caucus, which is what created this, which is the MLAs of the government getting together and pooling their resources to create communications, just as there's an NDP caucus right now as well. And

Corey 1:17:54

And in past years when there's been other political parties represented in the legislature, they get together. They get a little extra money to do things as a group. right and uh and then there is the uh you know the ministers and and like the premier's office which is a more political communication than is possible with you know government resources but you're you're still you're talking about the ministers and the and the premier or the prime minister as the case may be if you're talking about the federal scene of

Corey 1:18:18

of course there's the party too but i think people know the party is not government

Corey 1:18:21

government communications so uh why caucus why would you pick caucus over the government well let's start with the principle of charity It's always good to say maybe there's reasons that are not particularly nefarious. One is that caucus moves a lot faster than government. Government has a lot of checks in it, and those checks serve a very valuable purpose. But it means you don't get to come up with an idea on Monday at 9 a.m. and put something up by Monday at 5 p.m. That just doesn't happen that way. You've got to have the idea. You've got to go to the department. You've got to get all of the experts in the department to weigh in. You've got to run it by legal. You have a lot of gates that you've got to get through. And those there for many reasons, to protect the people of Alberta, to protect the crown from lawsuits, just you name it. There's no end of reasons, right?

Corey 1:19:04

But then we can go on there and we can say there's a few other less reasonable reasons, right? One of them is that the lines between government and party are clear, but caucus and party are murky. It's easier to share information and to – even if you're sending something that's more of a political view to your – from your caucus, that has a way of bleeding back to the party even if it's just in like how they act and the nature of being able to cut data different ways and whatnot, even if we're not talking like a pure data transfer, which

Corey 1:19:38

would likely violate a lot of rules. rules. You can't FOIP a caucus. A caucus is not a public body under the FOIP Act. So you don't actually get any of the statistical data, right? That's protected by the caucus. You also can't see how it was made, you know, who was consulted on it, any of those things that would be available if you FOIPed the government. And government will not let you do a lot of these things without a lot of pushback. Like this here, you would have people threatening to quit an environment if you put some some of these things out the way it's torquing fact so if you want to get it out at all if it's something more of this nature you're going to have to move it through the caucus or the party

Corey 1:20:15

and um you know then finally i'll just say caucus has got to do something i guess you know when you are in government you have a number of ministers and they get to be the political communicators and they get to do these things but you've got dozens of other mlas who are part of a government government caucus, they

Corey 1:20:33

they got to do something. Sometimes it's also just an outlet for their energy. So when they're coming to the premier's office and saying, I'm getting so many goddamn questions about coal, Jason, what the hell are we going to do about this? He says, well, you know what? That's a great thing for the caucus communications team to take up and deal with this. They'll solve your problem for you, which is like premier for fuck off, I'm dealing with something else. But these are all reasons why you might go through caucus instead of through the government nicely

Zain 1:20:57

nicely done cory that's a master class on on why uh the particular authorship may have been used let's move it on to our final segment our over under in our lightning round steven carter are you ready to go i'm

Carter 1:21:07

i'm no i'm never ready nope yeah

Zain 1:21:10

yeah no and because that i am starting with you carter your one to ten score on jason kenney's handling of coal mining in alberta what do you give it right now uh

Carter 1:21:19

uh an f fantastic

Zain 1:21:20

fantastic thank you carter any any qualifications that you know

Carter 1:21:23

know this This is the worst fucking thing I've ever seen.

Zain 1:21:26

seem... Can I just get your... Why are you so worked up on it? Because you didn't say a lot in the last segment. Because

Carter 1:21:33

Because he's selling... You

Zain 1:21:34

You feel like it's one of the worst things. Can I just get that take from you? He's

Carter 1:21:37

He's selling something that we all collectively own for virtually nothing for

Carter 1:21:43

for no benefit, right? So if we were going to get a big benefit... When we decided to do the oil sands, we chose to do that because there was a significant benefit available to us there is virtually no benefit available to us through these coal mines they're useless i mean the people who are employed from them um will be i guess somewhat benefit but the primary mine the big mine that's coming in this is owned by an australian firm we're making australians richer i

Carter 1:22:10

mean that's just it's it's lunacy to me that we would open up a restricted area and enable uh people to come in and coal mine this i i am beyond furious um maybe it's because i'm an outdoor person and this is also neighbors on um you know the the lands that that i do my outdoor activities at and it does impact me but it impacts every albertan insofar as we're giving up something and we're getting virtually nothing in return cory

Zain 1:22:38

cory one to ten the kenny handling kenny government handling on this core mining file?

Corey 1:22:44

Look, I'll give it a three because I think they're at least trying to manage the issue as we saw earlier this week with at least an attempted backing down, which tells me it's being actively managed in some way, shape or form. But it's bad. And I share a lot of Stephen's fury. It's something that I think is really quite abhorrent. And for me, it's less about the actual physical space. Great example of how different people are going to be driven by different things here. It's less about the physical spaces, although that's very important to many people in my life, not me personally. as you know, Zane, not a big outdoorsman, but it's coal. It's fucking coal, and it's 2021, and we've got a real problem with the fact that we're choking this planet to death. And even if you want to set aside the CO2, emissions from coal are very damaging. They reduce life expectancy. They make us a worse place to live. Like if you burn it here, it's bad. If we're selling it elsewhere, that's bad. I just can't broker any kind of support for this. and and so you know i wouldn't want anyone to think me giving them a three was in any way giving them a pass and you know when whenever we go through a segment like that i have a moment like five seconds after it's over where i go i don't want to help them sell this so people opposed to this nonsense civic groups environmental groups ndp remember how i talked about that keyword approach go buy all those keywords right now would you please they will not be able to move fast enough would everybody just get mad about this write their mlas make some noise because because this is nonsense.

Zain 1:24:08

Good. I'm glad we got that time to let you guys contextualize your answer. Corey, I'm going to stick with you. Over under on five, the political danger to Justin Trudeau with Joe Biden's buy America promise. So this was a vague, sort of vague, but not so vague nationalist, economic nationalist sort of policy by Biden to support local but support America that he wants to kind of continue on in the heritage of the Trump administration. What's What's the danger to Trudeau on over under on five in your mind?

Corey 1:24:39

It's pretty close. I would have said earlier, maybe I would have said a week and a half ago over. I'm

Corey 1:24:44

I'm going to say under now, because now if you're Trudeau, you can blame Jason Kenney.

Zain 1:24:49

Interesting. He's perking his up. Yeah, as being the reason why we're being threatened with these Carter over under on five, the danger of the by America imposition by the American government by President Biden to Trudeau politically. politically uh

Carter 1:25:05

uh i'm gonna say over i mean i think that our economy is going to be very soon the measure uh that we'll be using for our overall success because the the pandemic of course is our current measure but uh unemployment's high and when unemployment's high governments die

Zain 1:25:22

oh look at this is that is that a phrase that that you it is now baby

Zain 1:25:28

look at you nicely done carter i'm gonna stick with you on this one on a scale of one to ten the political political wisdom by the federal government, and more specifically by the Foreign Affairs Minister Mark Garneau, to invoke the Emergencies Act to limit pandemic travel. The political wisdom on a scale of 1 to 10 to invoke the Emergencies Act to limit pandemic travel. We've talked about the vaccine supply being reduced, so the government does seem to be trying to create more sort of policies in place that reduce the flow of people. What do you kind of think of the political wisdom of that in your mind i

Carter 1:26:02

don't know it feels like too little too late to me i mean i don't know maybe half what's half c

Carter 1:26:08

c it would be it would be a five okay

Zain 1:26:10

okay great scale of one to ten the political wisdom of invoking the emergencies act to

Zain 1:26:16

to limit pandemic travel yeah

Corey 1:26:18

yeah i don't know

Corey 1:26:21

whatever steven said yeah good good

Zain 1:26:23

good answer good answer c yeah c steven gave a c5 just a c5 is I give it a C. In this fucking game of Battleships. Isn't that explosive?

Zain 1:26:32

Corey, I'm going to stick with you. The final question here. In one month, when we are talking about any of the issues on the horizon, federally, provincially, will Jason Kenney have outright, he's never going to say it, but kind of given up, so to speak, on the Keystone XL rhetoric and fight one month from today?

Corey 1:26:56

he'll never say it but will he have given up will will he be talking about something different yes correct carter

Zain 1:27:02

carter one month from today will jason kenney be talking about something different as his you

Zain 1:27:07

you know outside of being forced to talk about other things like vaccines and covet etc will he be having a different hobby horse so to speak other than keystone xl

Carter 1:27:14

xl guaranteed there's no way it can last that long we're

Zain 1:27:18

we're gonna leave it there that's episode 9 10 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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