Episode 922: The Conventional Wisdom on Erin O'Toole

Zain 0:01

This is the Strategist episode 922. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan. And for however long he's here, Stephen Carter. How's it going, guys? It's

Corey 0:10

It's going really good, Zain. I have this nice microphone that is working properly and allowing you to hear my voice across all of these different hertz ranges. So it's really quite a marvelous thing. I noticed you also have the same thing. Stephen, how are you doing on that front? front i'm

SPEAKER_00 0:24

i'm angry cory i'm angry i'm not having the best night um i don't know what is going on with my headphones it's the same fucking

Zain 0:31

thing that's been going on for the past three months yeah it's the same it's the fucking crowdsourcing campaign we ran last are you you

Zain 0:38

you have bad headphones and i think you're you're losing your mind do you

Corey 0:41

you listen to this podcast do you listen to this because we talked about this issue last week i

SPEAKER_00 0:47

i thought we were joking it sounded like a joke

Zain 0:51

well carter uh you sound like you're phoning it in which will of course match your entire mantra of phoning it in on this podcast which is excellent i'm

SPEAKER_00 1:00

i'm so ready for today's podcast too and i had told you guys just to fuck off i don't even want to do the recording i'm that angry but i i prepared and i am ready for tonight's podcast you know is

SPEAKER_00 1:12

is there something that

Zain 1:13

that could cheer you up a bit how about good negative campaigning uh we've seen some excellent negative campaigning in the last week coming to us by the royal family uh i'm just curious to get your take on if you've seen better campaigners uh and if you would want anyone else running a third party campaign outside of the royal family i feel like i feel like they've really created a niche for themselves carter well

SPEAKER_00 1:35

well i just don't understand why i mean sure they go after megan markle the same way they went after uh diana but i mean all

SPEAKER_00 1:42

all they do is elevate these women to higher status us in brand new higher level does anybody remember Fergie just let her go just stop talking about them and they disappear so that's what they should have done with uh Meghan Markle and and Prince Harry Prince who like any of us ever knew that he was even there everybody was all fixated on William anyways I

Zain 2:02

I like I like that I just told you about them and you were ultimately like let me get a job with them and we're just like giving a free advice I like that you're like here's what what they should have done i have

SPEAKER_00 2:12

have thoughts i told you i was prepared for this podcast

Zain 2:17

cory how are you doing uh nba all-star weekend of course i didn't watch any fans did you watch fans attend watch

Zain 2:23

watch steph curry you know hit a bunch of threes it was fine yeah

Corey 2:26

yeah i mean that's the all-star game has kind of lost its luster this year given everything going on it's it's only just supposed to be a spectacle but when you rob it of spectacle it's

Corey 2:36

it's just a bunch of There's not much going on.

Corey 2:41

I purchased new patio furniture. Purchased new patio furniture. Assembled new patio furniture. Okay.

Corey 2:49

Yeah. So I was outdoors. Stephen Carter would have approved if he was in a better mood. That's all I had going

SPEAKER_00 2:54

going on. I went skiing today. That's outdoorsy. But I didn't buy patio furniture because it's March.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

You don't buy patio furniture until April. What kind of a fool are you?

Zain 3:04

Yeah, this is good. This is good. I like this. if we picked up on something, something I have no expertise in, but I really want the two of you to go at it on what the right time to buy patio furniture is. Corey, in bigger news, the Alberta Liberals have a new leader now, a new interim leader.

Corey 3:19

leader. Wait, is that bigger news? Does it affect more people than me

Zain 3:22

purchasing a patio set?

Zain 3:24

Sorry, in lesser news, Corey. Sorry, I misread. Thank you. I misread my, yeah, in lesser news, they've got a new interim leader. Of course, Bruce, as the former executive director of eons ago of the Alberta Liberals, I want to give you first right to comments on this story.

Corey 3:41

I don't think I will, Zane.

Zain 3:43

Carter, I know you always have something to say, some excellent takes on the royal family's negative campaigning skills. The Alberta Liberals have a new interim leader. Stephen Carter, give it to us straight.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Yeah, there's really nothing to add to Corey's comment.

Zain 3:58

let's move it on to our first and only segment o'toole's time out guys yes what was that that

SPEAKER_00 4:06

that was i'm excited i'm excited i'm making o'toole picking on o'toole it's gonna be a big day are we picking on o'toole because it's it's interesting

Zain 4:14

okay excellent well here's what we want to do um i've promised this for a while uh i don't even know if i promised it on the show But I've wanted to talk about O'Toole's leadership. And it's kind of come to a head, to be honest, over the last 10 days, when we're starting to see media columns by opinion columnists, when we're starting to see reporting with, quote unquote, key insiders within the conservative circles, grow frustrated about Aaron O'Toole's leadership. You know, they've, as

Zain 4:42

as a party, not necessarily made the gains that many have expected during this pandemic period, especially when Trudeau was being slogged for a slow vaccine rollout. Aaron O'Toole's leadership numbers still remain, you know, lesser than Trudeau's. His inability to pick a lane, so to speak, has been a part of the discontent. Many conservatives saying he's being too centrist. Others say he's abandoning the right. So a myriad of issues, and we can get into a lot of them. But I think it sets the table for what we're going to see in the next week or so, which is a conservative policy convention. And that policy convention is now seemingly, at least according to some of the media reporting, being dominated at least by the metric of convention attendees and delegate slots by conservatives, social conservatives more specifically, far right, pro-life groups, anti-abortion groups coming together, taking a large swath of these delegate seats. So before we get into the leadership struggle that is Aaron O'Toole's leadership, what it means, should he pick a lane, is this all overblown, and then get into the strategic advice and kind of comparators of what you've seen in the past, Stephen Carter, I want to start with this policy convention, because I think we've mentioned it very briefly on the show. I asked both of you, if you guys recall, policy conventions, overrated and underrated. I think both of you said overrated. At the same time, they could be narrative defining. And with the metric of or kind of with the makeup of this policy convention being virtual, not necessarily having the read on the room as you would as a leader giving a speech. Stephen Carter, we're hearing the reports of the social conservative movement snagging some or grabbing a lot of these delegates slots.

Zain 6:25

Is this is this a big deal? Is this a concern given all the text I've laid out for Aaron O'Toole right now?

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Oh, it's a big deal. And I want to differentiate between the theater of the policy convention and the outward appearance and the actual policies that were being developed. I think that I'll speak for Corey here and he will correct me later. But I think when we were talking about our policy conventions, overrated or underrated, we're talking about the policy convention outcome. come right you guys are absolutely

Zain 6:55

you guys both said that it's the leader who gets to unanimously decide whatever the fuck he or she wants so right

SPEAKER_00 6:59

right in terms of yeah theater theater matters a lot theater matters a tremendous amount um and so the theater of this particular uh event um this is not unusual i mean every policy convention ever has had um pits of groups of people who are pitted against one another uh trying to get different pieces of of policy Normally, what you have, though, is you have everybody in person. And it turns out that we're much nicer to one another in person. And we can talk sense into people and you can reach compromise and you can say to them, listen, you know, this really isn't the time to bring this up, but we'll bring it up at some other time. But every conservative party. You quite literally

Zain 7:39

literally get to work the room is what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah, because and you send out your big hitters and you send out, you know, Stockwell Day would go out and he would talk to the social conservatives because they like stock. They all listen to stock. And so you would have a convention plan that would have people being spoken to by people who they will listen to. And so you could actually work the room and you can you can have those rooms. assumes, you know, the MLAs or the MPs could

SPEAKER_00 8:09

win over essentially the dissenters so

SPEAKER_00 8:11

so that the spectacle is largely avoided. I

SPEAKER_00 8:14

I don't think that that's going to be an option in a virtual type of setting, especially with groups of people who are probably coming from outside of the structure, because most of the time these groups aren't actually part of the internal structures. They come in and they take things over, right? So Jason Kenney shipped in busloads of Catholic school

SPEAKER_00 8:37

school kids to take over the leadership at the PC party convention in Red Deer one year.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Those weren't regular members. Those weren't members that had been involved in

SPEAKER_00 8:48

in shaping the grassroots of the party. There were just members who'd bought the party memberships and came in and took over. And that's what happens most of the time. So these people won't be reachable by the normal people,

SPEAKER_00 9:02

people, and especially during the pandemic

SPEAKER_00 9:05

pandemic structures of trying to get everybody to communicate using Skype and Zoom and Squadcast that just arbitrarily cuts people off in the middle of recording important podcasts.

Corey 9:17

When their microphone stops working, yeah.

Zain 9:19

Yeah, yeah. Solid close. Solid close, Carter. Corey, overblown? Or is this a significant concern? Let's start here with the policy convention. convention?

Corey 9:26

Well, it's impossible to know without knowing what actually happens. The thing about any event can be a bad event when you're the leader of a political party, right? And this one obviously has some of the elements that can be particularly troublesome if you're a party leader, it has a chance to show disunity, it has the chance for a big blow up, it has the chance for some sort of embarrassing output that will make the make the people of Canada think less of you. And it has the chance to really cut you off at your knees with your strategy, which seems to be moved towards the center, right? And so we may be looking at this in two weeks and saying that was no big deal at all. We may be saying everything's different for Aaron O'Toole after the convention. It's possible. I don't know if it's probable that we are going to say everything's different for Aaron O'Toole. I think ultimately the most likely outcome is a moderately embarrassing event that he can move past because that seems to be what conditions are there right now. Stephen's done an okay job of summing them up, and he's right about the fact that a Zoom meeting probably fails to provide a lot of those avenues to whip the party faithful that an in-person meeting has.

Zain 10:38

Carter, what do you see as the opportunity of a virtual convention, right? So you know the table that Aaron O'Toole kind of has, which is, you know, let's just see the media reporting is right, social conservatives perhaps dominating or disproportionately, maybe that's the better term, you know, grabbing some of these delegate spots. You have many people hungry, thirsty for what's our brand positioning? What do we stand for, Mr. O'Toole? Like, who are we? So you have those two things kind of hanging in the balance. Is there anything that a virtual policy convention perhaps gives an added advantage to for O'Toole as he kind of tries to, quote unquote, pick a lane? And we'll get into that conversation in a second.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Well, there's crappy visuals. I mean, the media is run on visuals and the internal

SPEAKER_00 11:23

internal Skype structure or whatever tool they're using to run their policy convention is going to make for crappy visuals. There's not going to be 32 people standing on a stage. There's not going to be people milling about. There's not going to be

SPEAKER_00 11:39

signs and placards and these things that might

SPEAKER_00 11:42

might be really interesting visuals if they were all in person.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

So crappy visuals likely means that the news story shrinks.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

unless all of these, you know, evangelicals

SPEAKER_00 11:54

evangelicals who are on the pro-life side decide to gather in one place and all Skype in together, I think that it's just going to be a relatively crappy visual,

SPEAKER_00 12:05

visual, and that's going to help O'Toole tremendously.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

tremendously. But before I finish

SPEAKER_00 12:10

finish this, let me just say that I

SPEAKER_00 12:12

I am, in fact, basking in the warm glow of steven's done an okay job cory

SPEAKER_00 12:18

cory's just you know i'm wrapped in that praise and i just wanted to say thank you to cory before i let that moment pass that's

Zain 12:25

that's good oh well yeah we are hold on to a podcast yeah

Zain 12:28

yeah we are we are loving and uh yeah

Zain 12:33

yeah whatever uh cory we're not we're not it's hard to it's hard to you know how to phrase it any wins for a tool in a virtual Convention. Carter talks about, I guess, the lack of optics, right, Carter, that a coalition may be able to show as opposed to being on the floor with placards and a singular voice. Any other benefits or upside that O'Toole

Corey 12:53

O'Toole may have in a virtual setting, Corey? Yeah, there's a lack of optics, but there's also this sense that almost any time that there's been a virtual event for the past year, it's had this Barry Bonds-style asterisk on it, right? Which is, well, yeah, but it's not a real one of these. And I think that the ability of Aaron O'Toole to downplay what occurred uh is significantly better in a situation where it's not the norm right you just say well look this is not a normal convention of ours it didn't have the normal ability for us to get together obviously we saw that there were some risks with having whatever he wants to say he's got a lot of things he can say that he wouldn't necessarily be able to say if this was we're going to meet in ottawa and we're going to do all of the shit we always do when these things come up so that's an advantage for him as well carter

Zain 13:33

carter what did cory mean by a Barry Bonds asterisk?

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Barry Bonds is a player that used to take the stair and the roids and he hit lots of dingers, as they say in Major League Baseball.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

One fact, Carter. Why is it not a Sammy Sosa asterisk? Why is it not a Mark McGuire asterisk? These are the bigger questions, but we shall leave it alone.

Zain 13:57

Nicely done, Carter. We don't praise you. That was okay. That was okay. That was okay. Yeah, that was pretty okay. Um, I'm moving on from the policy convention, which we've both talked about in terms of the policy, you know, perhaps not having a major impact. But Corey, let's just say there is a controversial, and we really don't have a good sense of kind of what this this delegate cohort, if we can call that is going to try to do. But you you hit on something last time that I'll spend maybe a few more seconds on, which was when we talked about this, you had mentioned that if there is a controversial policy on on the floor, you try to like put up another policy in parallel so that you split the votes. Any general policy convention advice you would have? Because I would say for our listeners outside of Alberta, this is something Alberta premiers have had to face a lot, right,

Zain 14:47

right, in their policy convention quite. And so what have you seen in the makeup of our Alberta politics or even with your convention style advice that could be helpful for O'Toole as he tries to ensure that his brand and positioning is the dominant narrative and messaging that leaves that policy convention?

Corey 15:04

Well, the ability to set the table is going to be defined by the party rules. I'm not really in depth familiar with the Conservative Party of Canada's policy convention rules, either their foundational constitutional requirements or the ones they would have set ahead of time here. But generally speaking, the leader has at least a few levers through which which they can control the

Corey 15:26

volume of the volume is not quite the right, the balance of the conversation, right? You can put certain things into better time slots. You can, you can have not the, the plenary is the plenary, everybody's there, but you can have the breakout sessions compete with each other, which will force a division of these groups. There are ways that you can manage a conversation and make it either, you know, there's basically two tactics, Both of which can be used interchangeably depending on what the needs of the moment are. One is you have all

Corey 15:56

all eyes on an issue because you know the majority will be supporting it or you try to divide it as much as possible and sneak something through. And like the leader has many ways they can do this. The other thing that this virtual convention will allow in a higher degree is the leader can also set the stage, like what is actually happening on the stage, you know, the keynote speeches that are going on, the major, you know, framings

Corey 16:25

framings forward. You know, when we talk about order effect, when we talk about polls, there's an order effect at a policy convention too. too. So if you have a policy that leads in one way and the conversation's all in one flavor, and then you follow it up with another policy that you are then forcing them to think about it in the frame of that policy that was just before, these are all ways that you can manage a policy convention. And because you are not physically in a room, it will probably be harder for, well, maybe not, maybe opponents will coordinate on their second screen or they'll be texting each other, but you're

Corey 16:57

you're not going to have the spectacle you sometimes have in a convention where in the hall, there's something else going on, right? There's people whipping around and trying to get votes or in the bar the night before, they've all decided they're going to approach things a certain way. Or when they saw a conversation in one fashion, and they realized maybe this is a little shakier than it is, they stay up all night, essentially writing campaign

Corey 17:17

campaign material that they then Xerox first thing in the morning to hand out to everybody at the convention. These are things that happen at conventions. These are things I have done at conventions. And you just can't really do them if everything's online.

Zain 17:31

Carter, you've seen this here in Alberta. And regardless of what you think about most conservative premiers, they've actually, in Alberta, they've actually done a pretty good job trying to avoid, and maybe you might disagree with that sentiment, avoid the social conservative dominance on the back end of these policy conventions. What lessons have you seen and what lessons would you impart upon Timo Thule as they head into theirs?

SPEAKER_00 17:57

I mean, I think the biggest lesson is making sure that you've got strong CAs. I mean, this is the trick. And this is the thing that Lougheed really tried to drill into the Progressive Conservative Party here in Alberta. And I think that other leaders across the country have had success, you

SPEAKER_00 18:18

higher or lower. And it ultimately will impact your ability to run the show properly. governing parties and parties that can govern attract a lot of attention and people join them from all kinds of different places.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

And Lougheed used to talk about the health and the strength of the constituency associations. And he wanted his MLAs to be constantly working to ensure that they reflected, number one, their overall constituency and also that their CA reflected reflected the entire constituency. It becomes very, very easy for a CA to be taken over by a relatively small group of people. This is not unusual in something that's just the politics either. If you ever go to a community association meeting in your local community, those aren't normal people. So

SPEAKER_00 19:04

So they don't necessarily reflect us, right? So we're not normal either. We're political people. And so trying to get people who are involved that reflect the normal population is tough. But people who have an axe to grind, people who have a particular point of view about something they care deeply about, they will join political parties at a higher propensity in order to have something to say about those issues. So it's incumbent upon the MPs to try and manage who's a member of their constituency association, who are buying memberships. I'm not going to sell to this group, but more along the lines of I'm going to sell more more memberships in general in my constituency, and that will water out the impact of a specific group because now you've got more people around.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

I would suggest that

SPEAKER_00 19:53

that O'Toole is in part the author of this particular situation.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

When he ran in the leadership campaign, he ran to the right.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

He ran to something different than what he was. He attracted these groups that are now coming to bite him in the ass. He

Zain 20:08

He was the more conservative of the two primary choices. That is absolutely true. I mean, definitely not Sloan and Lewis, but the two primary choices, he definitely positioned himself as a more conservative of the two. Well,

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Well, and we just have to go one step back to Max Bernier and why am I blanking on his name? The other leader, help me, Corey, the

SPEAKER_00 20:28

the guy who won. Andrew Scheer? Andrew Scheer. Thank you. Wow,

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Wow, how quickly we

SPEAKER_00 20:34

mean, absolutely a forgettable human being, but we shouldn't forget Andrew Scheer. Anyways, Andrew Scheer and Max Bernier are both way

SPEAKER_00 20:43

way to the right of where O'Toole is. And that's why O'Toole came in fourth in that leadership. He did not have a great leadership because

SPEAKER_00 20:51

because he was not seen to be far enough to the right. So

SPEAKER_00 20:53

So now he courts these groups, brings them all in, and then they bite him in the ass because they want to see the things that he was talking about in the leadership, plus more things that have come in with COVID, which I hope we'll get to in a bit, that

SPEAKER_00 21:08

that the people are just, they're hyper anxious about now, and they're far more willing to have their political voice rise to the skies, as it were.

Zain 21:19

No, good points, Carter. We will get to COVID and O'Toole. In fact, there's only one item on the COVID list that I want to discuss with O'Toole, which is, let me just look it up here, vaccines. Vaccinations. Yeah, that's good. We're going to look up vaccines. Corey, you know, let's shift away from the policy convention. You guys gave some good strategic insights and advice regarding how to think about that if you're Team O'Toole. But let's talk about his leadership overall. And I want to start here, which is, I mentioned very briefly off the top of this segment that This was something I've wanted to talk about for a while, but it seemed like almost in domino effect, columns, articles, think pieces about O'Toole's leadership popped up over the course of the last, I'd say, seven to eight days. Andrew Coyne, Chantal Hébert, like, you know, prominent national columnists, a post-media piece that we can discuss that went deep to talk to insiders. What does the fact that you saw in the matter of six days, so many pieces, multiple, I think it's fair to say multiple pieces written about this subject mean? Do you feel like this is a sign that people are leaking, that there's outright discontent? You know, I don't want you to speculate as much as like read the tea leaves in terms of what could be happening from a political standpoint with your experience.

Corey 22:31

Yeah, Ibbotson wrote something too, but it was paywalled, so I never read it.

Corey 22:37

there is a bit of uh there's two things i think that need to be acknowledged before we start looking for kind of my god is there a conspiracy in the conservative party or are things really falling apart one we have a policy convention coming right so there is a natural media hook through which you can build these stories and two um other people have started writing about these stories and it creates a bit of a snowball effect like hey there's a lot of of chatter

Corey 23:02

chatter out there. Maybe work your context, maybe see what's going on right now with Aaron O'Toole. All that said, it is also possible that there is another group of people out there, people in the conservative caucus in particular, who are not so enthused or maybe using those opportunities that are presented by number one and number two, the fact there's a policy convention and the fact that people are writing about it, to go make sure their opinions are heard too. So they're also working their context the other way. They're saying, hey, you see this story about O'Toole by Hebert. Well, let me tell you another angle about this. And so you do see that this can create a bit of a vicious cycle for a leader. But one thing I really want to stress is that while it's never a good thing when these things are going on, basically every successful leader that we have seen in Canadian politics has gone through a wave of these kinds of stories. Chrétien, you bet.

Corey 23:52

You certainly had a couple of stories asking whether Stephen Harper could be the guy who could do it right whether he was just not what was needed in canada uh justin trudeau i mean we all remember that there was a year of my god the liberals really blew it by picking this guy he was in third place distant third for so long he looked like a dead man walking and then all of a sudden he's the prime minister so um i i also think that as we read and we process these stories we need to take them all with a bit of a grain of salt because this is the narrative that occurs when you try to change your party, right? There is growing frustration in the Conservative Party because he is trying to change the Conservative Party. We've talked about the fact they were too conservative. We talked about the fact this held their party back. Well, guess what? There are a lot of Conservative MPs in the Conservative Party and his party desperately needs to move to the centre.

Corey 24:41

They don't like that he is moving to the centre. There is going to be some grumbling about that. That is also a foundational reality, which is not to say that we want to then just immediately swing the other way and discount everything that we're hearing or put our fingers in our ears. And I think ultimately, and I hope we can unpack this, Aaron O'Toole has – there's

Corey 24:57

there's two things going on here. There's the concept and there's the execution. I would argue the concept of moving to the center for the conservatives is a good one electorally. The execution, how Aaron O'Toole has attempted to move the conservatives to the center, that's

Corey 25:11

that's leaving something to be desired. Going all the way back to his leadership contest where he said, well, I'm just going to pretend to be the thing that they want us to be. Uh, and then he and his team become that they get elected and he's not that thing. And there's a bit of a, you know, I, I bought this, I bought this product and this product is nothing like it looks like on the box that's happening right now too. And that is a problem of his own creation. Was it necessary? Maybe, but you're going to have to deal with that for a long time. When you kind of do the bait and switch like that, if you are, for example, somebody who says they will never merge the PCs with, you know, with the Reform Party, and then you do, right? Or Canadian Alliance, I guess it was at the time.

Corey 25:54

But the, the other thing is, his execution has been a really, really kind of scattershot. And I suspect we'll talk a bit about that. Sometimes he's this crusading centrist. Sometimes he's not.

Zain 26:07

Yeah. And Corey, you make a good point. I not only want to talk about the unevenness in his approach, but also the evolution versus revolution trigger happiness that's been deployed by Aaron O'Toole in certain cases, just trying to say this is what it is now, not having any sort of bridge or come on board period. I want to discuss that. But Carter, I want to actually get your take on this media side of things. Do you agree with Corey's analysis, the two prongs that he put out there that, you know, that, of course, this is a lead up to a policy convention. So there is a natural sort of home, that part. And then in addition to the fact that, you know, there is perhaps an opportunity to talk about these issues more broadly, when you see one columnist or outlet talk about it kind of snowballs in that sense. Do you largely agree with that? And I'll add a second part to it for you, which is how concerned are you, Timo Thule, if you're Timo Thule, that this stuff is playing out in the media right now?

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Well, I'll answer the second part first, and then I'll move into the first part. You are concerned because you know that an election is coming,

SPEAKER_00 27:11

right? This is supposed to springboard you into an election, and

SPEAKER_00 27:15

and this policy convention is supposed to bring together the party so

SPEAKER_00 27:19

so that you're on a more stable ground to

SPEAKER_00 27:21

to fight the terms of the election. um

SPEAKER_00 27:25

so yeah i mean you're you're extremely concerned um

SPEAKER_00 27:28

um is it unusual of course not cory is absolutely right i mean um the media is primed for it uh everybody's leaking stories around these types of things this is this is exactly what what does it but the the thing that causes it is

SPEAKER_00 27:43

is that he's not doing well in the polls right like if he was up by six points of points yeah cory brought up trudeau right trudeau was in third place all the media outlets were saying how dead he was um you know one of the strategy the great strategies episodes of of previous iterations was us picking apart how the liberals should change their strategy i think they listened you know

SPEAKER_00 28:07

know um obviously um so

SPEAKER_00 28:10

so you know this this is

SPEAKER_00 28:14

this is a normal situation for you to find yourself in if you're Aaron O'Toole, if you're the opposition party, and you're struggling.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

And of course, the people who are causing you to struggle, and I hope you dig us into this a little bit more, the people who are causing you to struggle are the people that you courted in the first place and also the people who are dividing the conservative movement at this moment. Corey says you have to move to the middle to win. Why? That's where the voters are. Um,

SPEAKER_00 28:43

O'Toole's trying to make that play at

SPEAKER_00 28:45

at a time when a

SPEAKER_00 28:48

a third of the conservative movement is moving to the right on anti-masks, anti-lockdown, anti, um, you know, I can't even remember the words that they're using, but like tyrannical, uh, government oppression, um, tied to the lockdowns. You know, you see them marching in the streets in major cities across Canada. Canada. That's part

SPEAKER_00 29:10

part of the conservative base. That's a group of people that O'Toole needs to have inside the tent if he expects to elect more conservative MPs in the

SPEAKER_00 29:20

the election that is imminent.

Zain 29:24

Guys, I want to unpack this a bit more. I keep teasing you with additional questions prior to getting to it. But there's one more, which is almost every single piece we're seeing right now about O'Toole references polling. And one of them I thought was quite interesting, which said that every national poll published since February 1st has conservative support hovering around 30%, four points down from when they finished last time. Also, in addition to that, Aaron O'Toole is the least favorable of the federal leaders. If you're Team O'Toole, Carter, I'm going to start with you again, if that's okay. If you're Team O'Toole, I asked you about, you know, should you be concerned that there's gossip in the media about your leadership?

Zain 30:01

Let's talk about the quantifiable numbers. Should you be concerned at these numbers? Because it's not just qualitative, it's quantitative. We can put in Barry Bonds asterisks on that, too. Should you be concerned about the fact that there's numbers out there which are being constantly referenced and reinforced in this media product? Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Yeah, I mean, polls, I think polls lead. I don't think necessarily polls follow sometimes. And so if O'Toole is going to lose the next election, O'Toole will lose the next election. So the polls that tell us that are, in fact, the outcome that is generated, especially when you start getting into these, you know, the 338s and everybody who's predicting which seats are going to swing which way. I mean, that becomes kind of like, oh, well, why am I even bothering? You know, 338 says it's all over, you know, so you get into this really negative cycle. And so if O'Toole is seen to be losing, if O'Toole is seen to be weaker than Shear, then

SPEAKER_00 30:58

then it is just a very bad situation for O'Toole. So, yes, the polls absolutely are part of the narrative. The polls are the cue to the media that they should start picking on him and ganging up on him. And the polls are the cue to the social conservatives as well, because he needs us now. He needs us. He has to listen to us. If he doesn't listen to us, then we can really bring him down. And there's a reason for this, I think.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

I think that the Conservative Party that people want to vote for is not the Conservative Party that was defined in the leadership by McCain, O'Toole

SPEAKER_00 31:35

O'Toole and get. And it just baffles me why McCain O'Toole didn't take it towards the center and just beat the shit out of Sloan and Lewis and say, see, we're not that party is beyond me. But that's why I'm not a Conservative Party strategist anymore. The Conservative Party that I knew does not fit into this mold that they have developed for themselves. And they're handing back the keys to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Zain 32:07

One of my favorite all time television moments is when Stephen Carter was on Power and Politics, sitting next to Stockwell Day in a cowboy hat, and it said conservative strategist and former conservative cabinet minister on each of your titles, respectively. I have that frame somewhere. I will be selling it on our strategist merch store. All proceeds go to Edwin. Corey, same question.

Zain 32:30

question. Polls at this juncture, worrisome, overblown? Oh,

Corey 32:35

Oh, way overblown. There's a couple of things I want to say about polls that I think people need to keep in mind as foundations for the conversation to come. One is the Conservatives for the past couple of years have tended to outperform their average of polls. If you look at the polling leading up to the last election, yeah, it went back and forth. You had some late polls saying the Conservatives were going to lead in the national vote. You had some saying the Liberals. More said the Liberals than Conservatives. And none of them for like going back at least a week showed the Conservatives winning by as much as they did of the popular vote. So let's just sort of bake in that there may be an underappreciation there. And the second thing is, top-line polls are useless in this country. They are very misleading. And if you are the Conservatives and you are bleeding support in Alberta, and you are picking up support in the 905 because you are becoming more moderate, to give you an example here, you

Corey 33:29

you are not going to move in the polls, but you are bettering your position. And a lot of what I have seen is that in that, you know, contestable area of the 905 in particular, Aaron O'Toole is not doing so badly. So people

Corey 33:43

people can't be seduced by those top line numbers. They need to look a little bit beyond that. It wasn't one of the points I was going to make, but the other is we're outside of an election. We are consumed with COVID. We have been consumed with the United States election. I know there are a lot of people saying, look, Aaron O'Toole hasn't defined himself or he's defined himself negatively. I just fundamentally don't think people give a shit right now about most of this stuff. like when you look at the canadian population as a whole and he still has a strong opportunity to find himself out of the gate when an election actually happens so i

Corey 34:13

don't know i mean i do think it's overblown and i do think people point to these polls and say see look see look but again look at 2015 look at where trudeau was going into that election look at how he was defined look at how canadians had baked opinions about him and look how much changed elections

Corey 34:31

and this This election is going to matter a lot because it's going to be the first time we're going to be thinking about a post-COVID frame in a very long time.

Zain 34:39

Yeah, and this is where it kind of gets to the heart of the matter for me, which is how does O'Toole ensure that this doesn't, you know, get worse, right? Like you've said, every leader this happens to, most of them get past it. No, I

Corey 34:51

say most of them

Corey 34:51

them get past it. I

Corey 34:52

I did not. No, that

Zain 34:53

that we've seen, that we've seen, that we've seen Harper and Trudeau that get past it. Sure. We

Corey 34:57

We also had those stories about Dion, about Scheer, about Ignatieff. I mean, the bad leaders get these stories too. What I'm saying is A is a precondition to B, like you're going to get these stories before you get turfed and fail as a leader, but A is not necessarily a guarantee of B, right? Every leader gets these stories. I

Zain 35:17

I love your framing. So how does O'Toole avoid the Dion Ignatieff category, perhaps even the Scheer category, versus landing in the Trudeau, Chrétien category?

Corey 35:29

category? Or Obama, famously as well, was told his strategy was dog shit coming out of Iowa or going into Iowa, right? Right. So, yeah,

Zain 35:37

Carter, what does O'Toole need to do here? Because there is one big factor that maybe we start with, which both of you brought up that the people who handed him the keys to victory are now the ones that feel the strongest against perhaps his leadership because they were sold false bill of goods in many ways. So that is an added dynamic, perhaps, to O'Toole's leadership. How does he, I love your framing, Corey, land in the second category and not the first with those clump of leaders that didn't become prime minister? Well,

SPEAKER_00 36:06

I think he needs to move past the situation that he's in and imagine a future where, to Corey's point, people start caring again. And what are they going to start caring about? And I think two episodes ago, I talked a little bit about, you know, the Conservatives shifting their thinking to the end of the vaccination phase and into the recovery phase. If people are reminded that we trust conservatives more than we trust the liberals about economic strength, which

SPEAKER_00 36:34

which we could discuss later about that stupid framing, but we go to the conservatives because we want a stronger economy, then

SPEAKER_00 36:41

then really O'Toole's sitting pretty if he's able to capture that. But he has to, in some way, I'm not even going to say placate, I'm going to say leave behind these anti-maskers, the people who are talking about abortion and marching in the streets of our Canadian cities, and leave them behind and focus instead on what Corey has defined as the key battleground areas, the centre in Ontario. scenario um there's seats to be picked up in atlantic canada there's seats to be picked up in british columbia find those seats talk to them about the economic recovery talk about how every word out of out of justin trudeau's mouth is about government but not about business it's about government not about them you

SPEAKER_00 37:26

you know that that could be something that he starts to frame around that could build a tremendous amount of strength the problem is he has to survive little mini many insurrections all the way to

SPEAKER_00 37:37

to get to that point i don't think he's going to be taking down his leader so if it were me i'd say to him the

SPEAKER_00 37:43

the strap the the only way you secure your leadership is to say fuck it and win so just go say fuck it and win carter

Zain 37:51

carter i'm gonna ask you a follow-up before i go to cory uh carter do are you concerned that some of the centrist moves that o'toole's been making have been too fast and too trigger happy are you fine with that approach when when trying Trying to cut off, and I'm going to use this in the nicest way possible, cut off the right-wing cancer that's in your party that you don't want appended to your leadership.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

I was saying that we had to get, you know, that Sloan had to move away, or Sloan, that O'Toole had to move away from Sloan, Polyev, Rempel, Garner, as fast as humanly possible. Instead, he brought Lesley and Lewis in. He kept them in. And so the moves that he's made to me, if he'd done them the second that he'd become leader, then he has the strength of just winning. He

SPEAKER_00 38:38

He waited for weeks and months and then did them one at a time and piecemeal so they could add up like a thousand little cuts rather than just one fell

SPEAKER_00 38:48

fell swoop. So he's hurt himself by not acting quickly

SPEAKER_00 38:54

quickly and decisively. And now he needs to act quickly and decisively. That's it.

Zain 39:03

concept versus execution. Once again, you're framing. You said the concept makes good sense. It's what he needs to do electorally. It's what he needs to do strategically. What does he need to do execution wise? And perhaps where have you seen some of the faltering steps from the execution side of things that he should not be repeating or continuing down?

Corey 39:21

Yeah, I'd like to start with the fundamental problem with his execution, which we've talked a little bit about, right? And that's that he got elected by one group of people, and now he is trying to lead

Corey 39:31

lead a different group of people. Erin O'Toole's actions crash against some pretty fundamental advice I would give to any political leader, which is you dance with the one that brought you. You don't trade a coalition you have for a coalition you want. So many of the tragedies of leadership are built around this very simple axiom. I think about here in our home province, Alison Redford was elected by moderates and then sold them all out and did whatever she could to try to get the love of a right wing of her party that would never love her. and it ultimately destroyed her premiership i mean she had she gave it a bit of an assist i would suggest but a lot of the stories a lot of the things that came along with that really it was rooted in that right you pushed away all of your moderate friends in the hopes of getting right-wing friends and then you had no friends right you had no friends and so aaron o'toole's doing something pretty interesting here which is he came in with a very clear strategy obviously it's pretty apparent at this point this was his strategy right run right in the leadership move move towards the center, treating it almost like a US primary election rather than a Canadian parliamentary election. And you wonder if that was too clever by half. Maybe it was. But you are now attempting to get the

Corey 40:46

the Peter McKay wing of the party, and you're burning your own. And that's really quite a delicate balancing act. So I've mentioned in episodes past, I think it seems like he wanted to just hit that gas at the last moment and just start going towards this when he thought it was too late for his party to break with him. Well, maybe that was mistimed. Maybe that was never a great strategy. Maybe it was something that just seemed like a good idea. But when I talk about the execution and when I talk about that gas, he's had to feather the brakes a few times. So, yeah, he's kicked out Derek Sloan. Yeah, he's made statements about I'm a moderate on these 12 different elements. But then he will stand by candidates at other moments, MPs at other moments when they make statements. We talked about Gallant the other day, right? Right. Yeah. This is this is just kind of the reality he finds himself in. And now, of course, he's got this policy convention where his party could, again, look a little bit more right wing than he's comfortable with looking. By the way, there is a universe where they come out of this way more moderate as a result of the policy convention. And it's actually a step along this whole journey that he's taking here. But, you know, he's just diving right in. Carter, you're you know, the say fuck it and win approach. Not only, I think, is that a strong candidate for episode title?

Zain 41:57

reminds me. I thought we were going to call it phoning it in. I thought that's what it was. Anyway, so not bad, not bad.

Corey 42:02

It's also, it's the Christy Clark approach to leadership. You remember the 801 Club? Christy Clark, when she was elected leader of the BC Libs, became premier, there was just a huge swath of her party that would never get behind her, were convinced she was going to lose to Dix. She did not lose to Dix. But there was a lot of chatter, and there was this 801 Club, people who were going to be turning against her and getting that leadership review one minute after the polls closed in British Columbia. Oh,

Corey 42:28

funny. And then, oh, oops, surprise, Christy Clark is still premier, and that all went away. And you see that a lot of the time. You see that with Boris Johnson in the UK right now. Think about all of those Tories who were lining up against his Brexit plans, and he said, fuck it, I'm going to win, and he drove through an election, and he recreated his party. It is possible. I think Johnson is likely an inspiration to what's going on here. I suspect strongly that Christie Clark is an inspiration. I suspect that the American political system is an inspiration. The question is, is the context he's in, is

Corey 43:03

is it going to digest that? Is it going to work in this? So when I talk about the execution, that is the fundamental problem. There are a lot of small things along the way. Reporting is rife with him right now where he's giving a hard line to his MPs, and then when he does something bad, he says, well, it's just a teachable moment. Who cares? Right, right, right, right. But the

Corey 43:20

the foundational problem is that he rode in, and he's treating it like

Corey 43:26

like it's like a moonshot, like they propelled him, and he's just hoping it's going to keep him on trajectory to get there. But it's risky, man. It's risky. Especially if this election doesn't happen until the fall.

Zain 43:37

Good advice on the coalition. Dance with the one that brought you. Also reminds me of another example we've seen on the national stage, Tom Mulcair. If you recall his leadership, very much about trying to pivot away from the folks that got him into that chair in 2015. Carter, you know, when we talk about what Corey has here, which is, you know, some of the fundamental challenges on his execution. execution um what do you kind of feel like Aaron O'Toole needs to do around his brand promise because many people are advocating that the dude pick a lane like who are you are you going to be a bit of true blue here and then like the moderate version here uh you've advocated that he can go straight down become the moderate version of O'Toole that he is what's the risk if he does that and what's the risk in your mind like I know you've got this very bullish attitude of saying just fuck it leave these people aside but there's political risk here we don't really know how big this coalition to the right is. Talk to me about, in a reasonable sense or practical sense, how you would do this by minimizing the risk and perhaps by minimizing the growth of this right-wing faction of his party more and more so that he's not chopping off a significant portion of his party when he just says, fuck it, I'm going to do it.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Well, let's contextualize the risk. The risk, there's only one risk, and he's not the leader tomorrow, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:54

right? At some point in the the future. He will stop being the leader. And that will be because someone has taken him out or he has to resign or whatever. And here's the challenge of today's political sphere or zeitgeist, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 45:12

You get one election. If you do not succeed in that one election, you're gone.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

So in our system right now, there is no risk. The only risk to him is that he he loses so if he picks one course and says fuck it and wins then he's fine if

SPEAKER_00 45:31

if he tries to pick both sides and and walk down this kind of um you

SPEAKER_00 45:38

frankly unwinnable untenable situation where you're trying to to please both masters it won't work so you have to uh that that is your You're guaranteed

SPEAKER_00 45:49

guaranteed you're done. And, you know, Corey

SPEAKER_00 45:53

Corey brought up Redford. I know a guy who was fairly close to that situation. And he tells me that it was very clear.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

clear. The moderates gave her the victory. The moderates gave her the victory two times, and she walked away from it.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

The moderates are the ones that give victories. And we can also rephrase the characterization of moderate and just throw in the word woman, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:18

give victories in Canadian politics.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Trudeau wins because of women. Harper was winning because of women. Women elect Jason

SPEAKER_00 46:29

Jason Kenney. Women elect Alison Redford. Women elect Christy Clark. Mark, when you get a

SPEAKER_00 46:36

significant moderate vote from women, you win. And O'Toole is not going to win that group with

SPEAKER_00 46:42

with the policies that are being dictated to him by his far right part of his party. He needs to walk away from them. He needs to sprint away from them and trust that they will be there for him anyways.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

Because they will be because they're not going to vote for the liberals. Worst case scenario, they stay home. I'm going to get over it. i'll go find two three three voters on there on in the middle for every one i'm going to lose on the right cory

Corey 47:08

cory you want to respond to that when i just want to say you you talk about picking a lane he has picked a lane he's

Corey 47:14

he's running as a center right candidate that's as clear as day his problem is he's got a passenger trying to yank the steering wheel to the fucking right every minute and

SPEAKER_00 47:24

he has not he's he's done it so tepidly like what did he do with cheryl gallant nothing this is right sloan that's the passenger i'm talking

Corey 47:32

talking about there like ultimately he's worried about this car just just stopping function but he's clearly picked a lane you look at his statements you look at the the chatter that's coming out even even this gnashing of teeth that's occurring is not because they think i don't know if he's right wing or centrist it's the guy's a centrist or he's center right he's

Zain 47:50

he's abandoning our our fundamental true blue principles that he sold us on so yeah Yeah, exactly. And

Corey 47:56

And now, I guess the question is, maybe he needs to do more of exactly what Stephen's saying. Maybe he needs to not pick two strategies and run them both. Maybe he just needs to steal himself or himself to the strategy that he had, which is to run as a center-right candidate. And maybe that would be a better thing for him to do at this point and just take a harder line with basically everybody in his party who would steer him off of that.

Zain 48:23

I really like that. I usually like to leave you guys when we close the segment off with a more specific question, but I'm going to perhaps ask the most general question I have thus far, the most high-level question. And Carter, I'll start with you. What does leadership look like for Aaron O'Toole after this? And I don't mean his leadership, but what does he do to demonstrate leadership? Because there's a few lanes he can pick in the sense of, OK, moderate or not. Let's say he's picked moderate. Aggressive or not. Both of you are saying aggressive. aggressive there's also a third choice that he has to make which is statesman like or you know like pugilist fighter uh and and we're not really clear on either of those two so in your mind what is the the the triangulation of the Aaron O'Toole leadership look like to you we've already kind of selected a few things off of the choose your own menu of what it looks like what are a few other factors you'd like to see now knowing the first couple of things run an aggressive moderate moderate strategy. Carter, what else do you want to see from this guy? Or what else do you think he needs to do, maybe more particularly, to be able to have a path to victory in that column of a Khrushchev or an Obama or a Trudeau and not that former column of some of the failed liberal leaders that Corey mentioned earlier?

SPEAKER_00 49:32

You know, if I was doing an exercise with him, I would suggest that he sit down and visualize what it's like the day after the election. and

SPEAKER_00 49:40

what did he win on? What would he be proud to have won on? What would he be comfortable winning on? What would he be dissatisfied if he'd won or lost? Because one of the things that I think we don't do enough of in Canadian politics or in politics in general is figure out what we would be proud to lose on, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:59

right? Is there an issue that I would be so proud to stand up for? And if the voters rejected my idea, I'd be okay with it because I believe it so fundamentally to myself.

SPEAKER_00 50:11

Because I think that that issue would probably be the economy for O'Neill. I think that that issue that he would stand up and say, we have to do the thing that is going to be hard work. We're going to lift the economy. We're going to focus on the economy. And that's why Canadians elect Conservatives, is when they feel like they need to focus on the economic output of our country, they elect Conservatives. I want to run on that and I want to win on that. And it bridges across social conservatism and centrism. So he could do that. But then he has to say, well, what do I have to do to get myself to focus on that?

SPEAKER_00 50:46

And the things that he needs to do in order to focus on that is he needs to say to Derek Sloan, you either get

SPEAKER_00 50:52

get in line or get out, right?

SPEAKER_00 50:55

right? right? Michelle Rempel-Garner, this is our plan. Get in line or get out. Cheryl Gallant, get in line, get or get out.

SPEAKER_00 51:03

And if they don't, don't

SPEAKER_00 51:06

don't let anything stand between you and that vision of winning on

SPEAKER_00 51:09

on your core issues, on the things that you care the most about.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

think that that's the way for O'Toole

SPEAKER_00 51:18

O'Toole to play this. He's being dragged

SPEAKER_00 51:21

dragged around by people who are rejecting masking or fighting

SPEAKER_00 51:28

battles that he doesn't want to fight. He

SPEAKER_00 51:31

He needs to bring them all together on the single issues that they all believe in anyways. They all believe in a strong economy. So focus on that. Don't worry about things like oppression and lockdowns and crap like that. Instead, just focus on what the rebirth is going to look like. And this spring could be be the time to be talking about it so make it bend it to your will um

SPEAKER_00 51:54

um be strong and be a leader

Zain 51:57

cory any additional comments on on what the template for o2 leadership looks like

Corey 52:04

bringing us back to the policy convention that was the the anchor of this all more so than in any other convention all communications in a virtual convention filters through the party from delegate to party and back out and as a party you want to remediate everything so that's an advantage and use that advantage press it as far as you want to don't worry about people getting upset that you are pressing that advantage too far also be aware though you have no ability to work the room or wow them with star power and that's a disadvantage so again

Corey 52:31

again leverage every advantage you have because you do not have some of those other tools ultimately his ability to play off this convention as a covet aberration is still the trump card though and zane i will tell you after a career in politics and government and communications some events you try to thrive some events you try to survive and this is solidly in the latter get through convention minimize its effect use that trump card of this is covid it's different move on and then recommit to your strategy successful leaders have dealt with way worse backbiting than you've got right now and as long as you don't give a fuck they really don't have any way to get rid of you because parties are ultimately like suicide pacts they will go down if you go down this close to an an election maybe not all of them but a lot of them and that will create a bit of a whip in its own right so you've decided this is your strategy maybe we'll all say in a year wow that was a dumb fucking way to play it like to try to get elected by one group of people and then try to try to you know commit yourself to another but

Corey 53:32

but hey that's your strategy now man and uh unless you've got a incredibly artful way to pivot i i just don't think you do don't don't hedge on your strategy Commit to your strategy.

Zain 53:44

We'll leave that deep dive segment there. Moving on to our final segment. Stephen Carter, the over, under, and our lightning round. Are you ready, sir?

SPEAKER_00 53:52

Yeah, I'm still upset about my whole microphone situation, but yeah, I'm ready.

Zain 53:56

Yeah, we've climatized and moved on. Stephen Carter, better,

Zain 54:00

better, worse, or same? Aaron O'Toole coming out of his policy convention. Better, worse, or same?

SPEAKER_00 54:05

I think it'll be the same.

Zain 54:07

Corey, better, worse, or same? Aaron O'Toole coming out of his policy convention.

Zain 54:13

Oh, interesting. I like that. Corey, give me one sentence for the Trudeau strategy as he starts seeing Aaron O'Toole moving more and more and perhaps to our conversation more aggressively to the center as a center-right candidate.

Corey 54:26

Point to his history.

Corey 54:28

Because he ran this campaign so recently about being a true blue conservative, he's given you an awful lot to put in front of Canadians that will make them doubt whether he truly is a centrist or

Corey 54:37

or a center-right candidate. I keep saying centrist. I mean center-right.

Zain 54:42

I fall into the same category of making that same error. Carter, the one-sentence Trudeau strategy for knowing that Aaron O'Toole is now more and more aggressively moving to the middle as a center-right candidate.

SPEAKER_00 54:56

Take a page out of the Royal Handbook and go negative early and go a negative often.

Corey 55:01

Did that work for the Royal family?

SPEAKER_00 55:04

No, but what's the point of

Zain 55:07

That's good. Carter's so efficient for his gig. I like that. that Federal Transport Minister Omar Al-Ghabra this week said that he has no plans to change the name of Montreal's airport despite an online petition calling for the removal of Pierre Trudeau's name. Stephen Carter, airport names overrated or underrated?

SPEAKER_00 55:25

I would say overrated, but there has been the threat of turning Calgary International Airport into Stephen Harper Airport, and that would make me sad. So I would say that they are overrated.

Zain 55:39

Corey, airport names, overrated, underrated?

Corey 55:43

I think they are overrated. There are a lot of airports named after people, regardless of who you are. Like if you are on the left in the United States, how much do you love flying into Reagan? You know, a guy who actually fired all of the air traffic controllers at one point who were striking. If you are on the right, how much do you love flying into JFK? Ultimately, it's just something that we all have to deal with. Political leaders from various stripes get these airports named after them and move on. Who cares? Who cares that it's called Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport? The reality is air travel has this really kind of grating War Measures Act feel to it at the best of times. So it feels

Corey 56:26

feels appropriate, doesn't it? Even if you don't like the guy.

Zain 56:30

Well, I'm glad you mentioned, Corey, in not so many words to move on from this subject, but I'm not going to because our final question, Corey, is name one person in this country who deserves an airport named after them, please. Who's your person?

Corey 56:44

Maybe we should have a Terry Fox International Airport. Maybe there is one. I should check.

Zain 56:49

That's good. I'll go to Stephen, who'll give me a very hot take. So type quick, Corey. Stephen Carter, name one person in this country that needs an airport.

SPEAKER_00 56:57

Zane Belge. Oh, thank you so much. You're welcome, buddy. I'm here

Zain 57:02

What's your real answer? Do you have one?

SPEAKER_00 57:04

No, I don't have one.

SPEAKER_00 57:05

Terry Fox is a really good answer, though. Corey,

Zain 57:07

Corey, does Terry Fox have an airport?

Corey 57:08

Not that I can see.

Zain 57:10

Look at that. Nicely done. We'll leave it there. That is a wrap on episode 922 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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