Episode 925: Total recall

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 925. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, 925, big episode, nice prime number.

Zain 0:14

Is it a prime number? It

Corey 0:15

It doesn't seem like a prime number to me. It's divisible

Zain 0:19

No, I'm sorry. I mean, like, prime number as in it's like it's a really desirable number. It's

Corey 0:22

It's a really good number.

Carter 0:23

it's a really good number. Yeah,

Carter 0:24

Yeah, it's a prime number. Does it mean anything else? Invisible by five. Yeah, there's another meaning of it, but don't worry about it. Don't worry your pretty little head.

Zain 0:31

Yeah, okay, perfect. How are you guys doing?

Carter 0:34

Well, I wasn't ready to start this quick. I'm a little disappointed. I was chewing a candy.

Carter 0:40

my day's off to a banner start, Zane. I'm already cranky. This is going to be quite the episode.

Zain 0:44

Well, let me tell you something. The podcast wars have fizzled out, which means we have won.

Carter 0:50

Okay. We always win.

Zain 0:52

Carter, do you want to declare victory in any majestic or public way?

Carter 0:57

Well, no, because we've all been over the Twitterverse explaining how the strategist pod is better than all the other pods, and we're right. So it doesn't even matter to me anymore.

Zain 1:06

Corey, is the NBA season boring the shit out of you as well? Yeah,

Corey 1:09

Yeah, it is. I'm having a real challenge with getting excited about this one, and I think the players are too. The empty— So lackluster.

Corey 1:16

It's so lame. I haven't

Zain 1:17

haven't brought up basketball. The time I bring it up is about if it's boring you.

Corey 1:22

Yeah, it is kind of boring me. There's still the hope that the playoffs will be interesting. That's my big hope here. You

Carter 1:28

You guys got to get into Major League Baseball. There was just the world's longest at-bat, or the longest at-bat in the league, and it was scintillating. It was 22 pitches. Let me tell you something. The previous record was 21. I was on the edge of my seat watching that at-bat. Plus, all the fans in the stands were losing their minds. the 26 of them that were so many foul balls to

Corey 1:50

to catch your idea of excitement is like 25 foul balls in a row this is well

Carter 1:55

well that is as exciting as the nba okay

Zain 1:59

that's just offensive yeah yeah i mean this is a discussion between two friends and you just butt in with your hardly

Carter 2:05

hardly one supposed to be a conversation between three friends and i was feeling a little left out if i'm on oh

Zain 2:09

oh it It hasn't been that for a long time, Carter.

Zain 2:15

me tell you something.

Zain 2:17

This episode now should be a holiday special in my mind. I feel like this episode needs to be a holiday special because this is, of course, the Persian New Year coming up on March 21st. Navroz, which is a big deal to my parents, but my people. I was going to say my parents and my people. So I don't know. No, you guys just rejected my claim for a holiday special, and here we are. But you're not Persian.

Zain 2:45

Nah, but we're Muslim. Listen, okay? This is where the light adoption and the crossover on the Venn diagram of culture and religion comes in. Maybe you'll sit down once, and I'll kind of give you a lecture. Carter will join me.

Carter 2:56

Yeah, this is great. I'm fine doing another holiday spectacular. Let's go. What's it going to be? Can I tell you something

Corey 3:03

something about our holiday spectaculars? As a general rule, they are our lowest rated shows.

Zain 3:09

do you think that

Corey 3:10

that is? I think anytime we put spectacular in the name of the episode, our fans are well aware that we are just going to fuck around for an hour and waste their time.

Corey 3:20

I think what it is,

Zain 3:21

is, is that they know their ears are not ready for that high bar of a listening experience. Also, it's maybe because I introduced the shows with Well, Hi There. And I try that. And I do that every

Carter 3:33

every year. you guys have told me to drop that uh but i like it i like

Carter 3:38

i feel like it's

Zain 3:39

i'm not gonna get you canceled let's move it on to our headlines speaking of people getting canceled our first headline comes to us from the oklahoma tribune announcer who made racist comments during basketball games says he had a spiking blood sugar when he used racial slur yes the racial slur was the n-word uh the broadcasters use of racist language before an oklahoma high school girls basketball game thursday true condemnation from politicians superintendents and as state officials alike the incidents that shock waves through the prep sports landscape in oklahoma cory blood

Corey 4:15

blood sugar and racism is it an excuse yeah zane we all remember that snickers commercial where the guy turned into david duke because he didn't have enough food in his belly

Corey 4:26

no it's not an excuse it's not a fucking excuse like if your excuse is that i wasn't able able to control myself and the venom in my body spilled out because i didn't have enough to eat you're a shitty human being that

Zain 4:38

that is the right answer i like that i lobbed some of these uh these easy balls at you guys and you just knock them out of the park steven don't do me wrong here no

Carter 4:46

no tell me i'm gonna take a little different tact than cory here's the thing it's

Carter 4:52

i have i have been hangry i have found myself angry because i'm so so hungry, and I've yet to resort to racial slurs. So I don't think that the hunger was the problem. I think that just being a racist was, in fact, the problem, exacerbated perhaps by hunger, but I suspect it was just deep-seated racism that has come to the forefront.

Zain 5:14

Excellent diagnosis by Dr. Carter there. We'll appreciate that, Stephen. Our next headline comes to us from CNN. China concerned about human rights abuses in Australia. Australia's detention Detention sentient. Sorry, I can't even say it. Corey, your laughter is getting in the way of me finishing the headline. You're really jumping on it. Okay, here we go. China concerned about human rights. I could have stopped there. Abuses in Australian detention islands insist that they stop.

Zain 5:45

Is this the pot calling the kettle? Is that, by the way, I don't even know if I want to go down that. Yeah,

Carter 5:51

Yeah, don't do that right now. Yeah,

Zain 5:52

Yeah, I've got high blood sugar and I

Carter 5:54

I don't want to use that metaphor. Yeah, metaphors are no longer available to us.

Carter 6:00

We've talked about this before. China does not play by the same rules as everybody else. They're starting the trials for the two Michaels here in a couple of weeks. Canadian officials are not being invited to those trials. The same battle that exists between Canada and China exists but times 10 with Australia. And you're just seeing that ramp up. And the Chinese government has no problem throwing completely hypocritical statements against the wall just to see if they stick. And they stuck enough to wind up in your head. So it's extremely frustrating that China gets to play by

Carter 6:36

by its own set of rules.

Zain 6:38

Corey, what do you think? I

Corey 6:39

think that the Australian detention centers can be awful, and China can be awful at the same time. I definitely don't know that I would be throwing rocks from that glass house if I was the Chinese government.

Corey 6:52

But it's, you know, it's kind of the classic distract tactic, right? Just, I mean, it's, I guess people have learned something from Trump, just accuse people of the same thing you're guilty of. And, and the whataboutism is strong in this one, I guess.

Corey 7:08

the way, after the record, Paul calling the kettle black does not have a racist past, but the very fact that there was some ambiguity about that, just steer clear from it.

Zain 7:18

That's good. I like that you looked up two things. Yeah,

Carter 7:21

this is good. He's

Carter 7:22

He's very quick on the Google machine today.

Zain 7:25

No, it's good. It's good. He's got that fast internet. Our next story comes to us from 660 News. On our domestic shores, Ottawa mom shocked to discover Canada Post delivered shotgun to 11-year-old.

Zain 7:38

stephen carter an ottawa mom says she was surprised to discover a 12-gauge shotgun delivered into the hands of her 11 year old during a postal mix-up stephen

Zain 7:47

stephen carter you're you're wanting you're wanting to get in and guess what i'm gonna let you in i'm

Carter 7:50

i'm a big fan of canada post and canada post delivers just remember that canada post delivers uh what they deliver is usually not up to them so i'm not really sure why that's true why this is landing on canada post's shoulders but you know you know she can be angry with whomever she wishes to be but her 11 year old is now armed so be careful don't be angry at the 11 year old that's what i would well

Zain 8:13

well this was a genuine mix-up on on canada post yeah

Corey 8:16

yeah it was supposed

Corey 8:16

to go it was supposed to go to the six-year-old in the household yeah that's

Zain 8:22

yeah no this is good cory uh anything else to to add from your perspective i

Corey 8:27

i just uh i'm not sure that um people should be mailing guns

Corey 8:32

that's my hot take

Zain 8:33

many soapboxes to stand here on let me give you a few options Canada

Zain 8:40

shotguns and other stuff

Corey 8:45

do you want to jump on any one of those soapboxes here we go do you think it went to the community mailbox was it in the community

Carter 8:52

totally went to the community mailbox

Zain 8:54

that is a great point I never thought of that I don't think I don't think it did, though. I don't think it did. I feel like this was not one of those community mailbox situations. Our next headline comes to us from Reuters. Officer who cited spa shooting suspects bad day has history of anti-Asian posts. A Georgia police officer is facing fierce backlash for his comments about a spa shooting that killed eight people, including six Asian women, after he said the murder suspect was having, quote unquote, a bad day. I'm sure you guys saw this one. This one kind of went a little bit viral yesterday. Corey, do you want to jump in on this one first?

Corey 10:00

you know, the course of this case. I don't know what to say. There's nothing funny about this. Guy's a shitheel. And just Atlanta, I

Corey 10:11

I don't know. I don't know what to say.

Zain 10:14

Carter, he hasn't used the high blood sugar excuse yet. I just want to also mention that. At least I don't see it. Any thoughts from your perspective?

Carter 10:22

Well, I have two thoughts. First of all, I think that in this particular situation, um you

Carter 10:26

you know the the amount of racism that exists in the united states is is we notice it and uh sometimes it clouds the amount of racism that exists in canada and i think that you know when we when we see these things it's important for us to um not get on our high horse and say look at all these terrible things that exist just in the states but i want to divorce this topic with and just kind of say in general i would like it to be that we can express sympathy for the people who've for the families that are impacted, both in the family of the accused and the family of the person, you know, the people who've been killed.

Carter 10:58

I do think that empathy is something that we can have more of, not less of.

Carter 11:03

It's always troubling to me that you can't say, you know, in the case of the Saskatchewan bus crash, you know, how Humboldt bus crash, that you just feel bad for the driver, right? You feel bad for the driver as much as you feel bad for the other families. families all of those lives were ruined that particular day um but

Carter 11:23

but you're not allowed to right you're you're gonna have to back off of that because um you're immediately hit with a backlash of of how can you how dare you feel empathy for this person who's who's caused all this pain um and i do have empathy for the families that are involved i have empathy for the people who are involved it's

Carter 11:39

it's just a shame that you know it gets clouded with with this view of racism in this particular case and and well frankly racism in just about every case let's

Zain 11:49

let's move it on to our next headline our next headline comes to us from the guardian takes one to no one putin biden spat escalates after killer accusation russian relations with the u.s have entered a new post-trump period of smoldering hostility of course after vladimir putin shrugged off accusations from joe biden that that he was a quote-unquote killer, saying, quote, it takes one to know one.

Zain 12:14

Excellent drama. High drama, Corey Hogan. You're shrugging. You're giving me a hand gesture. That means you're going first.

Corey 12:20

first. Does that saying mean something else in Russia? Like, doesn't that just saying, yeah, I'm a killer, but you only know that because you're a killer too? Is this how world leaders are talking to each other now? That's fucking crazy. I mean, and let's be clear, Vladimir Putin is a killer. He's a bad dude. Dude, he's a bad hombre, as his old buddy Donald Trump might say.

Zain 12:41

You know, what he could have also used instead was the pot in the kettle, a black one, because it's not racist. He could have used that. He could have used that if he did it to Carter and jump it.

Carter 12:50

Well, I was just going to say, you know, I think that both it's probably true that both of them are killers, but one of them is literally a killer. One of them is actually choked the life out of people. And the other one is Joe Biden, who sends, you know, sends

Carter 13:03

sends troops to battle.

Zain 13:05

battle. the other way you

Carter 13:06

you know like he sends troops to battle they go kill people they've got drones he's literally killing people but it's my switch in technology and it's a different type of killing people uh vladimir putin has has i'm sure choked the life out of someone uh that's coming to his office with bad news so i

Carter 13:22

think it's different type of killer i think they both are killers but i think they're different types if

Zain 13:27

if you uh if you heard me laughing there that was me laughing at a punch line that that didn't exist see what i thought carter was gonna do was say yeah you know know one of them literally choked the life out of someone and the other one is vladimir putin that's

Zain 13:39

that's how you make a joke carter it

Zain 13:41

wasn't a joke though

Carter 13:42

though it was funny

Zain 13:42

funny though people laugh people yeah the joke construction but you don't know how to deliver a punchline this is this is very sad this is very sad this is why it's a conversation amongst two friends listen

Corey 13:57

i don't know it's how you deliver a punchline it's

Carter 14:01

yeah it's very well done

Zain 14:02

done let's Speaking of punchlines, let's move on to the Toronto Star. I can't dictate their private time, Doug Ford says, shaking off criticism after Tory MPP speaks to group that compared abortion to the Holocaust. Doug Ford says that he told Sam Oosterhoff, and I think I'm pronouncing his name correctly, to be very mindful

Zain 14:21

mindful of groups he's talking to before the MPP headline an event organized by a group that compares abortion to the Holocaust.

Zain 14:29

I mean, we can discuss two things here. There's clearly what this MPP did, but also Ford's quote here. I'm not fucking loving. Carter, you're gesticulating, so please jump in.

Carter 14:40

In fact, Doug, you can control who he meets with in his private time because you can say to him, that's interesting, Sam, get out of my caucus. You can now go do whatever the fuck you want in your private time. But he didn't do that. He said, you know what? I'm going to let my MPP stay in my caucus and do whatever the hell they want to do, which is the exact same language, really, that O'Toole used with Gallant, right? Oh, it was terrible, but what am I going to do? You do what you did with Derek Sloan. You kick their ass out of your caucus because you don't want them to define what your party stands for. So, you know what? You say to Sam, if you're going to take those type of ideas, you take them out to Alberta and you can sit in Jason Kenney's caucus because that's where those ideas belong.

Zain 15:27

This is the miracle of remote work. Yeah, you could have representation from there. Yeah, that's a smart, interesting, interesting concept. Corey, jump in.

Corey 15:35

I think that this is a dangerous precedent if Doug Ford is going to start claiming that he can't control his MPPs outside of the time. What does he mean on their private time, too? Like, they're an MPP.

Corey 15:47

Like, are we talking about when they're not sitting in the legislature, when they turn off the light in their constituency office? I don't even understand what is private time when you're an elected official like that. that.

Corey 15:58

What a kind of foolish thing to say. You may not like it for the moment. I don't like it for the moment. But I also just think you've painted yourself into a corner with a statement like that. And the next time a far

Corey 16:09

far-right member of your caucus does something even more outrageous on their quote-unquote private time, now you got yourself another kind of problem.

Zain 16:19

Let's move it on to our next headline. Our next headline comes to us from CBC. People are celebrating their COVID-19 vaccine shots with selfies, but some think it's time to give it a rest. Stephen Carter, in this article, it features some comments that say some doctors are saying that they worry about some of the downstream effects of people taking COVID selfies, including self-promotion and the equity feeling and people kind of being perhaps envious or anxious that they don't have the vaccine.

Zain 16:46

in your in your estimation good points or do you feel like the the good as we've talked about in this show about social proof movement building still outweighs some of the the the the

Zain 16:56

the bad so to speak well

Carter 16:58

well this is why you don't ask doctors to do your communication strategies right you don't ask doctors to do communication strategies because they don't know fuck all about communications my advice to doctors is shut the fuck up and put the put the vaccine into the people The rest of you can just shut up. Ryan Lilly? Jesus Christ.

Carter 17:14

Seriously. What do they know from communications? What do I know from being a doctor? I don't know anything. Communication, we talked about this. Now, hold on. The selfie promotion is exactly good.

Corey 17:27

Just because you don't know how to be a doctor doesn't inherently mean they don't know how to do anything that you know how to do. That's not how logic works.

Carter 17:35

Show me the evidence that they know what they're talking about. Because by their own words, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

Carter 17:41

right they don't know what they're talking about stay out of stay out of the kitchen here let the communicators communicate little boys and girls off you go stay

Zain 17:50

out of the kitchen it's good it's like a it's like a burger king tweet uh

Zain 17:56

well it's the opposite of a burger king tweet in fact this is more about inducing more people to come into the kitchen cory let me read a quote here dr ben wang who chronicled other concerns about the vaccine selfies said that that he refrained from posting his own vaccination, said that it was somewhat self-conscious about provoking gelity or anxiety amongst people. I want to get your perspective on this. I mean, from a communication standpoint, do you feel like the good— I'm using good and bad, and I don't know if those are the right terms. They aren't. But the good of these vaccine selfies, the fact that people are taking them, and the movement building that can happen around them outweigh the downsides or the negatives? I

Corey 18:30

I don't know. I think that's something that I would like a doctor to do a study on, Zane. I think that there's

Carter 18:36

studies all over the place on this type of communication now

Corey 18:39

now there are two issues at hand here one of them is whether this is actually effective or if people just say gross I don't like the selfie and they're not particularly interested but there are people who actually have aversions to needles and generally speaking how you deal with an aversion is you kind of introduce it to them slowly so in a way I sort of think that these selfies would make people feel a little bit better about that, but I'm not sure if that is just wishful thinking by me or whether that particular therapy would be useful in this case. But I guess the point I want to underline here is that this is actually going to take a marriage of communications expertise and medical expertise. This is what we would call kind of like an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary problem that needs to be resolved. So Carter should get off his high horse too. Everybody should stand on common ground and we should try to figure this fucking thing out using the best evidence available.

Carter 19:28

Yeah, the best evidence says that having people communicate to their social networks and their peers actually will bring more people into the vaccination. It also says that vaccine scarcity and vaccine jealousy will reduce the vaccine hesitancy that is a big problem in our society. Doctors should do their own, should listen to their own advice and look at the actual research that exists from communicators. It doesn't have to, we don't have to ask doctors to do a study. We've already got psychological researchers and communications researchers doing this work. And if you do this, if you read the information, you find out about it. You

Corey 20:06

pick up a study from 1918 with the last time we had a pandemic? I mean, there wasn't even vaccines then. You're going to wait for three

Carter 20:12

three years for a study to be done before we get everybody vaccinated? Get out of here. Do you know how many studies

Corey 20:17

have been released in the past 12 months on COVID-19?

Carter 20:22

Not one into vaccination. i'll tell you that that's

Carter 20:25

that's because i just not i

Corey 20:26

i just looked it up i

Carter 20:28

i just looked it up there's like one on uh needle hesitancy and it basically says shut the fuck up you pussies that's not what it says but it's uh it

Carter 20:36

it could have i don't know i didn't have a chance to read it i'm

Carter 20:39

i'm in the mood tonight i think

Zain 20:40

think i should move it on i think i should move on carter's taking off his his blazer thankfully still has a shirt on let's move it on to our next segment our next segment big foot in mouth's disease oh my god

Zain 20:52

should we talk about it we have to talk about it you know in fact both of our stories i want to cover um on

Zain 20:56

on tonight's episode is

Zain 20:58

is alberta related i'm going to use the first one to be alberta related i'll use the second one to jump off into a broader conversation but let's talk about alberta let's talk about jason kenney now um defending the government funded campaign against the netflix film but before i do that cory can i ask you to bring up The listener is up to speed. Those who may not have necessarily had the play-by-play, the TikTok of what's going on. And maybe let's assume everyone knows the gift that is the War Room. Let's start there. Let's start with a specific Netflix episode, and then we'll get into Jason Kenney and his energy minister, well, defending it. Yeah,

Corey 21:30

Yeah, so the good people at Netflix, in part of their Netflixing, purchased distribution rights to a French cartoon, I believe, that has Bigfoot. And Bigfoot, a cartoon character, goes to Alaska and gets into a fight with some oil men who are like these cartoon villains who want to use bombs to blow up land to get just the oil to pool, I guess, or something like that. Anyhow, this flop of a movie that was never seen by that many people all of a sudden raised the ire of the Canadian Energy Center, the war room that Alberta set up. And they decided to go to the ramparts and take on a mythical character for failing to be an accurate portrayal of things. As if that's not absurd enough, then

Corey 22:13

then the government later, you

Corey 22:16

you know, like this happened on a Friday or so, I think, Zane.

Corey 22:20

Monday was defending it and has been defending it all week. And a couple of the very reliable, sycophantic voices in the media for Jason Kenney have also now been defending the idea that we have picked a fight with a children's cartoon. And there is now national, international media about us picking a fight with a children's cartoon. And so people are reasonably asking, why

Corey 22:43

why in the world is this happening? What is the logic of this here? And I think that's probably the launching off point you want to drag us to. No, I

Zain 22:50

I do. And I just want to just add a few more details. You know, you're right. It's a French-Belgian company that has produced this film, sold its rights to Netflix. Jason Kenney still calls it a Hollywood production that depicts oil companies as, quote unquote, wanting to murder children to oppose environmental progress. progress. Stephen Carter, let's start with that very simple question. I mean, I usually don't write much down, and I haven't in this case either. I have why, what, why.

Zain 23:16

It's literally the questions I have.

Zain 23:19

Let's start with some version of the, why is he defending this? Is this, like, give us the play, right? Because this is, there's a play here. Your war room put something out. Even up until last week, I was talking to you guys about, okay, what is Tom Olson, the head of this war room, doing to justify the existence of this petition to the premier? And how hard is this risk getting slapped? Well, it turns out not very hard because the premier is doubling down on it. So tell us why, Carter. What's going on from a strategy perspective for this premier?

Carter 23:50

The central premise of this government, forget about the war room, but of this entire government is that Albertans in some fashion are getting screwed over. The

Carter 23:58

The authors of us being screwed over vary from moment to moment. It might be the

Carter 24:02

the Americans, It might be Trudeau. Trudeau is a very famous one. Notley is screwing us over. The environmentalists are screwing us over. The international environmental community. There's a thread that then ties through to the Steve Allen inquiry into foreign funds that were sent in to oppose our oil sands and oppose pipelines. Never mind that we're building the pipeline in Canada. Canada. So the money that was spent in, you know, in the United States seems to have been better spent. But whatever, these things are, they don't rely on truth. What they do is they rely on the audience desire to actually have the thing be true. So we are far more likely to believe a lie that we want to believe than a truth that we don't want to believe. So

Carter 24:51

So this is just fitting into the a lie that Albertans want to believe. We have in some fashion been hard done by. We are in some fashion being attacked by an outside force. And in this particular case, it's a child's cartoon named The Bigfoot Family.

Zain 25:08

Corey, I want to come to you in a second. Carter, do you feel like this is then trying

Zain 25:12

trying to fight an enemy?

Carter 25:14

No, I think that it doesn't matter who the enemy is. Any enemy me will do in a pinch cory

Corey 25:22

why is he talking about bigfoot because

Corey 25:25

because we're now talking about bigfoot because here we are zane because you asked us about bigfoot culture war bullshit and not about calgary bay shaw being purchased by rogers and not over a thousand layoffs at synovus and not a poll that was captured in the wild with either the government of alberta or td asking what would make people willing to accept the sale of alberta treasury branches which is is a bank that is owned by the government of Alberta. This is why. This is the only rational reason for it that I can come up with. And so I think it behooves everybody who gets involved and dragged into these conversations to surface for air and

Corey 25:57

and make sure when you're talking about Bigfoot, you're talking about Bigfoot in the context of the other things that are going on. And the fact that we are talking about Bigfoot is

Corey 26:06

for Jason Kenney and the UCP right now. And that's fine. Maybe you're a UCP partisan. Maybe you want him to have a win. But if there is a thesis of this show, it's that we can peel back and explain what some of the strategies that drive these conversations are. And I hope people realize that the conversation about Bigfoot is absolutely tied to the fact that it is easier to talk about culture war bullshit than it is about real problems and real challenging facing the good people of Alberta. In 2015, we talked a lot about a fellow named Linton Crosby.

Corey 26:37

Everybody remember that name out

Corey 26:39

out there in podcast land? Linton Crosby is the Australian political strategist. He worked for David Cameron. He worked for Stephen Carter. And he was famous for the dead cat strategy.

Corey 26:52

Carter couldn't afford him.

Corey 26:57

The dead cat strategy is when you have an awkward conversation going on. You throw a dead fucking cat on the table. And then do you know what people are going to talk about? The dead cat.

Corey 27:07

And that's what's going on right now. Now, but what I would caution Jason Kenney, a sincere caution here, is Stephen Harper lost the 2015 election after a run of the dead cat strategy. It is not predestined to succeed.

Corey 27:20

That is for sure.

Zain 27:22

Well, let's talk about this, because this is an interesting—I want to talk about Shaw, too, more specifically, and why the premier supported it. So keep that in the back of your mind, because that is an interesting development in the whole scheme of things, including Synovus and the other items you mentioned around ATB. But let's talk about the dead cat strategy. Let's go back to the 2015 election for a second. There's nowhere intended to go, but let's do it. In that election, that strategy by Crosby and Harper and Jenny Byrne was played in the 11th hour, right? This was very much like the, and if you guys recall, this was the barbaric cultural practices hotline. This was the niqab stuff. This was let's wedge here, wedge there. Let's try to see what we can do. Do you feel like, Carter, to you, that this could work for Kenny? Because Corey here is calling it a win if we're talking about it.

Zain 28:09

Do you see it as such? Or do you feel like the downside of a potentially culture war memorable piece like this could actually have an even worse residue for Jason Kenny when he heads to the polls?

Carter 28:23

i mean it's hard to know um because everything like we've talked about a number of times becomes cumulative uh so you know one of the challenges with uh multiple enemies is is that you

Carter 28:35

you know people do start to notice exactly what you're doing right and so it becomes less and less effective uh if you have the same enemy all the way through if it was always trudeau for example who um or always the the government of the united states you might have a more effective uh attack attack by diversifying or by putting, you know, to steal from Corey's language and your language, to put multiple dead cats on the table, I think starts to diminish the impact of the dead cat. Yeah, then it's just like, there's

Corey 29:03

there's a dead cat. There's always a

Carter 29:04

a dead cat, mate. There's always another dead cat. And so

Zain 29:07

so this is just how we dine here.

Carter 29:10

You know, and we've seen Jason Kenney do this a few times. And it's a Trumpian style of tactic. tactic uh when you are about to get burned by an enormous forest fire start a smaller forest fire and

Carter 29:21

and and that's essentially what he's done in this particular case he's he's he's made a bigger issue out

Carter 29:26

out of the war room but

Carter 29:27

but it does beg the question too i mean how responsive is a war room that's supposed to exist as a separate um non-government entity uh how is it you know taking uh advice from in the Premier's office? Or how is it working with the Premier's office to develop this coordinated campaign? It just seems like that's

Carter 29:49

that's what Corey's former agency was for.

Corey 29:53

Corey, over to you.

Corey 29:55

Now, I don't believe that this was a coordinated effort with the war room. I believe the war room did war room shit. And there was this absurd thing that all of a sudden was being talked about, and an opportunity was seized. I think it was a very useful thing to talk about the next I also think it's useful when you're under attack like that for you to turn it against your attackers and basically say, hey, yeah, I mean, they would love if we had Bigfoot movies out there. To the ramparts we go. And it was pretty clear to me that the UCP MLAs were sort of enjoying the culture war fight this week. I suspect it's something that's uniting them during very disharmonious times to be able to stick it in the eye of their opponents and their perceived opponents who might like this. The thing that I want to stress to you is this doesn't even need to be a winning issue for it to be a winning issue. If you accept the kind of the poll of polls, the consensus, because we had yet another one this week that shows the NDP

Corey 30:46

NDP up on the UCP 40-30, let's just say, a 10-point lead. That's about the average right now.

Corey 30:54

30%. I'll bet you 30% to 40% of Albertans believe this Bigfoot movie is bad news, right? I mean, it just needs to be more popular than the UCP. it just needs to be more popular than a thousand layoffs at synovus in order for it to make sense for them to be talking about it that's not a very high bar and so you've just got to sort of watch watch the ball here because even if it's bad news but it's less bad news than the other thing it kind of makes sense from a pure tactics point of view to turn attention to that

Zain 31:23

cory doesn't that like a strange race to the bottom if you're just trying to find things that are marginally more popular than your current standing in the polls

Corey 31:31

polls well yeah and you You know, that's why the NACAB issue in Quebec and the barbaric cultural practices hotline didn't actually do its job at the end of the day.

Corey 31:38

If you think of its job, if it was a dead cat strategy and if it was trying to distract people, it doesn't always work. And in fact, it can turn people against you and it can solidify antagonism that exists. So this is part of my caution here to the UCP and Jason Kenney is that this might be too clever by half. And if I have a general, let's

Corey 31:57

let's call it advice for Jason Kenney.

Corey 32:01

I still believe is very good at politics. But politics isn't the point once you're in government, right? Politics is a means to an end. And I worry that it's become an end in its own right for the UCP government has been for a very long time. It's about winning. Winning is not the point. Governing is the point. Getting things done is the point. And right now we're in a situation where it seems like everything is trying to win the round. It's trying to win the card with the judges. But that's not how you win the fight. And you're going to find yourself face fucking down on the mat if you keep this nonsense up.

Zain 32:33

Carter, do you agree with Corey's assessment here?

Carter 32:36

Totally. And I think that I'm just going to take it one step a little bit further and project forward, right? Because if you are constantly fighting today's battle, you

Carter 32:45

you are never thinking about the general war, right? Right. This is why you have different levels of commanders in the battlefield. Right. You have a commander that is, you know, in the skirmish right now, but you have generals back trying to figure out where you need to deploy your forces in order to win the war. Now, we've talked about kind of the failing of war metaphor before in politics, but I think this actually works because you still need the strategic general back saying, OK, how are we going to win this war in two years? Because it's the election date and we're two years away from being in the middle of an election. in Alberta. It's the election that matters, not Bigfoot

Carter 33:22

Bigfoot family. Bigfoot family is not going to factor into the election. It'll be part of what brands the UCP to

Carter 33:29

to a lesser extent or to a greater extent. But my

Carter 33:36

fear, and I think that this is the same thing that Corey was saying, is that if you become so embroiled in the battle, you lose sight of the actual victory. What does the the victory look like and i'll tell you something the victory is not going to be run by attacking netflix it's not going to be won by attacking trudeau you mean maybe you could win by attacking trudeau again maybe but it strikes me that six years of attacking trudeau for the downturn in the oil economy isn't going to fly um especially when you're seeing jobs that could be potentially leaving uh due to a merger that you promoted um or you know another thousand jobs at synovus as as Corey has pointed out, or just the slow leakage of jobs and pay cuts that's coming from your provincial budget. All of those things are hurting real Albertans right now, and I'm not sure they're going to be prepared to blame someone else other than the government that's making them happen today.

Zain 34:32

Carter, Corey gave us some advice for the UCP. I think you agree with it. What's some advice for the NDP? They're not taking the bait for the most part. They're going after the edges on this particular story. They're trying to go after the job story in Synovus. What would you give them as guardrails or advice as they try to maneuver and go after the soft tissue that the UCP clearly has on, maybe not on this issue, as I hear you guys say, but on other issues, which I'm going to talk about in a second?

Carter 34:58

Well, I think the NDP actually responded very well to this issue. I think that they were focused on the bigger picture. They were focused on the the jobs and um the economic indicators that that kenny was trying to avoid by by igniting this little uh this little blaze on his own property but for me this is a uh the ndp's problem is the same as the problem that i'm talking about with uh with kenny you still have a two-year problem how when are you going to start articulating what your government's going to look like instead of attacking the government that already exists. And I'm not sure that it's time today, but it's going to be coming sooner than later.

Zain 35:42

Corey, you seem to disagree with that, at least the last part of that statement, at least visually from what I can see. Do you want to jump in before I ask you about Shaw? I just don't think, Stephen,

Corey 35:50

Stephen, the conversation is not about what the NDP will do next because it's two years from an election, but they're putting out reams of content about their strategy. And that is kind of sufficing with the policy wonks out there. They've got this whole Alberta's Future website, they're releasing major policy documents all of the time. I'm not even sure it matters. Like, I'm not even sure I care about the policy they're releasing, because I think that my overarching, my more fundamental point is, nobody talks about the policy of opposition parties two years out from an election, as evidenced by the fact that you, a professional pundit, did not even realize how much policy they are putting out here. It's

Carter 36:24

It's not about policy. It's about brand. It's about vision. It's about being able to articulate what's going to be different on your government, not just in the negative, but in the positive.

Corey 36:33

I just fundamentally disagree

Carter 36:34

disagree with this point for

Carter 36:36

Brand is something that takes a long time to create, and brand is how politics and campaigns are won.

Zain 36:44

So Carter, can I, Corey, let's park this for a second. I want to talk to Carter for one second. Carter, what is brand then? Because we have it, we've talked about these terms at like very broad strokes, but what would a brand exercise that's not policy or direct like, you know, issues management style response to look like to you? Like

Carter 37:00

Like what exercise would

Carter 37:01

that be? Brand is the cumulative impact

Carter 37:03

impact of everything about an organization. So if you go into WestJet and you have a different feeling than when you, yeah, they'll pay us for that one, than when you go into Air Canada, right?

Carter 37:17

So both of those organizations

Carter 37:22

organizations are ostensibly the same thing, but both of them have different brand structures. And the brand isn't about the promise of getting you from Calgary to Ottawa on a plane that arrives on time and takes off on time. it's about the overall feeling that you get when you get onto that plane how they treat you what their what their planes feel like what they what what they feel like and in some cases with really high-end airlines what they smell like and you know all these different things that cumulatively add up you have not been on a Dubai airline oh my friend they smell different fantastic like you've died and gone to heaven um but the the the point is these the brand is not about the idea the brand is the experience that you get from it and so when you're trying to develop i like to do brand politics not idea politics i think that it's much stronger um but that is that is where i like to to take my

Carter 38:22

political strategies rather than going backwards

Carter 38:25

backwards towards something like just,

Carter 38:28

just, oh, we're going to win on this policy or that policy. I don't think voters give a shit about policy. They care about brands.

Zain 38:35

Interesting. I want to talk about that a lot more. By the way, this segment was brought to you by Air Emirates. Air Emirates, you

Zain 38:42

feel like you've died and gone to heaven. Corey, let's talk about Shaw.

Zain 38:46

Why is the premier so supportive of this merger? It doesn't look good on paper for Alberta. The fact that we're losing Shaw, that more than likely we lose a headquarters, that more than likely the jobs that are built here are not going to be the high-touch downtown jobs, but perhaps customer service jobs. If I read this on paper, and I've done it very quickly, I can't say I've done it in depth, it doesn't seem like something as the premier of a province you'd be all giddy and excited about. out not and to give jason kenney some charity it's not he was giddy and excited but he wasn't necessarily the the fighter for i don't know we got to keep this here here's the my conditions on this deal what do you what do you kind of make of his reaction

Corey 39:23

because who's the enemy zane like if you're going to oppose it are you going to get mad at the shahs a very influential calgary family who are connected to the conservatives are you going to tell justin trudeau he's got to stop this c.1 are you going to suggest that the free market should not be allowed to do this that That seems a little off-brand. It's just a very difficult one for him, and he has to spin it as a win.

Corey 39:43

And let's just actually say, like, there are claims there are going to be more jobs here, right? There won't be head office jobs per se. You know, like a job is not a job is not a job, and people should ask hard questions about the nature of those roles.

Corey 39:58

if you have banked so much in, I've got this job creation tax cut. I'm reducing taxes

Corey 40:07

significantly in the province of Alberta from 12% corporate tax rate to 8%, right? Lowest in Canada by a mile. I think it's one of the lowest, if not the lowest in North America. Like it's a really low rate. And one of the pitches was supposed to be this is going to drive companies here. This is where companies are going to headquarter. There are some obvious questions that flow from this, especially if you are framing this as a merger like Jason Kenney is attempting to do here. Well, if it's a merger, why wouldn't you move your headquarters to this wonderful low-tax jurisdiction you've been talking about? Why is it staying in Toronto? Well,

Corey 40:40

Well, that's a good question. So I think that this is one of those things where there's not a good win for him one way or the other. Getting into a fight of why Toronto stomping his feet will just draw attention to the fact that the tax rate has not had the draw on this particular matter. Like you can't judge a tax cut based on one decision, but it didn't work in this particular matter. And it might be considered emblematic of a bigger challenge. And then ultimately, like, who's the bad guy?

Corey 41:08

Because they don't have an obvious bad guy. And so what choice do you have if you're Jason Kenney, except to try to smile and pretend this is a positive? This is not new to Alberta governments. We've had a lot of consolidations in the past couple of years, and many of them have been driven by foreign companies leaving the oil sands, just saying, well, this is not for us anymore. And in those cases, Synovus, an Alberta-based company, has purchased them by and large. And the spin then for multiple governments has been, well, this is an Alberta company. This is great. This is now in our hands again, right? This is almost the opposite. But what you're finding is they're

Corey 41:43

they're willing to see the bright side if they're in government, and they're willing to see the dark side if they're not.

Zain 41:50

Carter, what do you make of Jason Kenney's response? And what do you think his response should have been?

Carter 41:54

Well, I think that Corey's all aligned. He was trapped. You can't say this is a bad thing. You just can't. You know, you're in government. You don't have any control. You're not going to change it. What's he going to do? point out that it wasn't that long ago the competition bureau with canada would have lost their mind seeing

Carter 42:09

seeing the two largest cable companies in in canada merge

Carter 42:13

merge their services i mean they're

Carter 42:14

they're barely cable companies anymore they're internet providers they're um you know they're they're cell phone providers um the the world has changed and uh you

Carter 42:25

you know that if you're going to be pro merger on some things uh you well they're not even pro merger they're just we don't want bad Bad shit to happen on our watch. We have no control. Ergo, this must be good shit.

Corey 42:37

I mean, the great irony is that you could actually petition the Trudeau government to try to stop this thing. Like of all of the things that Jason Kenney petitions the Trudeau government to do that the Trudeau government can't do, it's a bit ironic that this is something the Trudeau government could stop. But you're not going to hear a peep about it.

Zain 42:53

It's almost like they're biases towards transactions. Like a deal is a good thing. Like deals are like the metric of success.

Carter 43:00

I wouldn't go that deep. I wouldn't go that deep. I would suggest to you that they can't stop this deal or they don't want to be perceived as stopping this deal. And they're just going to say that it's a good thing. And they're going to find whatever slivers of sunshine they can find.

Zain 43:14

Yep. Let's talk about the Sanofis job losses. Another item that, Corey, you brought up on your list of things that perhaps could – that the Bigfoot movie could be serving as cloud cover to not talk about. Big deal?

Corey 43:27

I think it's part of a big story. And it's a major event in a big story. because it's just the sheer number of jobs. As soon as you're into four digits like that, that's something people can think about and remember. In a way, we've sort of started this conversation already. There's been a lot of consolidation in the oil industry, and Synovus has been one of the people who's been hoovering up the other companies around here. When companies do that, they tend to find efficiencies. They say, okay, well, I don't probably need two investor

Corey 43:55

investor relationship groups. I don't need two communications teams. I don't need two HR teams. teams. I don't need two IT teams. Those are obvious areas of consolidation. But then beyond that, you start to look at perhaps whether you've got some duplication in all of your core functions as well, and whether you can get away with fewer and fewer people. And that's kind of capitalism. Like

Corey 44:18

big companies don't tend to create jobs. They tend to be net destroyers of jobs because they're looking for efficiencies once they hit a certain point. And this is a perfect example of that i

Corey 44:28

i don't even know that you can like if you're an investor this is not even necessarily a bad thing you're you're seeing increases

Corey 44:33

increases in profitability as a result of all of this i

Corey 44:38

it is a bit of a canary in the coal mine though oil and gas is not going to be the big driver of jobs that it has been in the past even with rebounding oil prices because we're just in a totally different paradigm now and that that has got to that might not be what people are talking about right now zane but that's got to unnerve the government carter

Zain 44:56

carter anything to add

Carter 44:58

Yeah, I mean, I think this goes to the point that we were making in the last episode that, you know, things aren't

Carter 45:03

aren't going to bounce back the same here.

Carter 45:05

It doesn't matter what the oil and gas price is. And a different government would take the opportunity to explain to people what things are changing and why they're changing, what they can expect. This government is continuing to peddle that the problem is actually the Bigfoot family. So, you know, the Bigfoot family is not the problem. The problem is a fundamental

Carter 45:26

fundamental shift in oil and gas and production and demand and supply. And you can tell that story until you're blue in the face, but the good people of Alberta actually don't want to listen to it.

Zain 45:38

Corey, I'm going to lean on you a bit to give us some context on the ATB story and this poll that seems to be floating around a bit. uh we don't have many hard details just yet but i think the speculative nature if i can call it that of this story is quite interesting uh to begin with do you want to kind of give us a bit of a sense of as to what you know on it yeah

Corey 45:55

yeah i don't know if there is a story yet um there was a screen grab from an online poll that effectively it was running a battery of questions of hey if td was going to buy atb would you be more likely to support it if there were more there were commitments for more jobs in alberta as an example right and this is kind of a standard polling frame that you do in these situations where you're trying to see how can you turn this into something that is majority supported how many sweeteners do you need to put in in order to make this deal palatable people i um i

Corey 46:26

i don't know i don't know if this is a real thing or not i don't know if this is td thinking hey maybe we go to the government of alberta and try this out i don't know if it's It's actually ATB, which is a crown corporation here in Alberta, saying, hey,

Corey 46:38

I'd love not to be a crown corp. I'd love to be a private corporation. Maybe we can pull something together. I don't know if it's the government of Alberta exploring options because it's not as though a lot of other provinces own their own fucking bank, like if we're going to be totally fair about this matter, right? Not clear. Now, I do know that in the legislature, Minister Taves, our finance minister, said there are no plans to sell ATB. I always worry about words like that. Like, does that mean there are no – that you are not currently inked a deal to sell ATB? Are you exploring it? Like, let's get really specific about what is and what is not on the table and has and has not been discussed. But if we sort of take it at its face value there, well,

Corey 47:20

well, then there's nothing to see here because if the government of Alberta doesn't want to sell ATB, the government of Alberta is not going to sell ATB no matter how much TD bats their eyelashes.

Corey 47:30

However, I will say if they are planning to sell it, like the ad rights itself of having TAFE say no plans to sell, boom, two months later, TAFE sells it, like that wouldn't look very good and it would sort of read into a narrative here. It's a very interesting issue. you i think it's fair to say and i think most people know this like atb would love to be a private company right i don't i like i i think that they would love to play in that world but um

Corey 47:55

selling to td i don't know like alberta wants to be a player in finance and

Corey 48:00

and the best way to have the things you want is to have them already and we've got a big bank here so why in the world would we sell it to a toronto enterprise carter

Corey 48:09

carter any thoughts from your perspective no

Carter 48:11

no i agree I agree with Corey. I mean, I'll just say this. The

Carter 48:14

The rumors of selling ATB have been around for almost as long as we've had ATB. So at some point it will be sold. Will it be sold under Jason Kenney's government? I don't know. Well, it could be another decade, could be 20, could be 30, could be next week. I really, and I don't really know what the best answer is, but I know I sure as hell wouldn't want to sell it the week after Shaw got bought by Rogers. Yeah.

Corey 48:42

You know, because that will change the balance on things, to Carter's point. The other thing is, if there was a poll on this, we don't know the results. And it is possible that it polled terribly. And the government just said, no dice, we're not going to do this.

Zain 48:55

Can I ask you a quick polling question? If one of these two institutions were your client, would you actually use their real name? Or would you try to, I mean, it's hard on the ATB side, but like, would you not mask it? Like, this seems so obvious. I wouldn't ask

Corey 49:07

ask the TD thing. I don't think that Albertans are going to differentiate between TD, BMO, Royal Bank. That was a bit confusing to me. And that, more than anything in the polls, Zane, makes me think maybe it was a TD poll because I think only TD would possibly think Albertans would care about TD versus another big five bank.

Corey 49:26

Right. I mean, I just, I don't know why you would otherwise throw that detail in.

Carter 49:31

don't think that the good people at TD care what the good people of Alberta think. If it's a good deal, they'll buy it.

Carter 49:37

I mean, they're not in the business. They're in the business of shareholder return, not return for the people of Alberta.

Carter 49:43

I think that this, I

Carter 49:46

don't know enough about the poll to speculate who did it. But I just

Carter 49:50

just kind of think that there is only one side that would care what the Alberta. So

Corey 49:54

So I disagree on that, because I think that knowing what it's going to cost you is important in that calculation. And if you think that, okay, I'm going to need to invest in these jobs, I'm going to need to keep a headquarters in Alberta, whatever the additional questions were, that is going to change your balance. It's going to change your calculations. It's going to change all of your scenario planning. Your spreadsheets are going to move based on those decisions.

Zain 50:19

we'll see if there's a story there and of course follow up on it but let's move it on to our next segment our next segment total recall stephen carter recall legislation is here it has been tabled uh it's a bill that's based largely here in alberta on the legislation in british columbia which is the only other province of course with any provincial recall rules quite a few details on it no recall permitted within 18 months after an election no recall permitted in the six months before an election 40 of eligible voters must sign a petition for recall correct me if i'm wrong carter within 60 days uh

Zain 50:51

to be able to make that happen and the petitions must be physically collected so this is standing out in front of grocery stores knocking on doors doing that sort of grassroots work this is not submitting an online survey monkey that people can just add their name to um carter let's let's i want to talk about alberta sure we've already talked alberta quite a bit well i want to talk about recall legislation to begin with so maybe i'll start you there good

Zain 51:13

good idea bad idea well

Carter 51:14

well it's a popular idea i mean the idea that you know

Carter 51:19

cory hogan got elected no i don't get to you know get any control over him and he he did something i don't like and i want him to not serve me anymore because my tax dollars pay his salary god damn it people get excited about that and they wish they could uh you

Carter 51:35

you know recall that politician when they're doing something that they don't want it's popular it's just not a good good idea. So what we have is we have a representative democracy. There's all kinds of reasons for doing representative democracy, but recall is essentially a form of direct democracy where the people themselves have a say in the issues of the day. And both of them are important parts of democracy. They just don't go well together. The idea of recalling someone because because they don't vote the way you want them to vote, well, that's

Carter 52:11

that's representative democracy. You get the chance every four years in Canada. Four years is not a long period of time. And we certainly don't want to shrink the amount of time that politicians think in advance. There's already a tyranny of short-sightedness in politics. If you were to start making it even shorter through recall, I think you'd get worse government overall. So it's popular. It's not. But I just don't think it's it's necessarily a great tool to achieve better government, which I think is ultimately the objective that people think that they want.

Zain 52:50

Corey, what do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? Overall top line from your from your perspective?

Corey 52:55

This will be boring if Carter and I just agree. So let's go.

Corey 52:58

Why shouldn't there be an escape hatch if you have a truly terrible politician? Why should there be no way to pull somebody back in very extreme situations? And if we want it to be used just for those extreme situations, don't the thresholds we've discussed make sense? Like, you wouldn't want somebody to be recalled perpetually for all of the reasons you've articulated so nicely. But there are extreme situations where extreme measures need to be taken, and this provides a measure of protection against truly terrible MLAs, truly terrible counselors. So why not? Like, who's in charge here? We are in charge here. So why the hell shouldn't we have an ability to pull back that chain when we need to? Well,

Carter 53:36

Well, you're not really in charge. The government is controlled by the party that wins the most seats. And the first thing that we can see is the removal from caucus, which we talked about in the headline section today. If someone is like Sam Osterhoff is an idiot, remove him from caucus. If Derek Sloan is an idiot, remove him from caucus. That immediately mitigates the impact that that person's going to have in general in the parliamentary system, because now they're just a single vote. And

Carter 54:06

And if they do something criminal or they've done something illegal, there are other ways to get them to step out of being an MLA or an elected representative. So those horrible ideas, those are already taken care of. We can already remove their influence very, very easily just by the leader taking an action. We don't need to involve evolve.

Carter 54:26

And keep in mind, it's not just going out and getting 40 percent of the voters. It's getting 40 percent of the voters, then doing a recall election where the motion to recall has to get over

Carter 54:37

over 50 percent. And

Carter 54:39

And then it's a by-election afterwards in

Carter 54:42

which I believe the

Carter 54:43

the recalled politician gets to run again.

Carter 54:46

And in our three party system or two party system plus a little little bits um they can win with 42 of the vote so they barely need to survive to survive in this and it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars at each step of the way to actually get this to happen and

Carter 55:01

and and zane's already pointed out the blackout periods this is something that can happen for only half of the term let

Carter 55:08

let it go it's two years let it go get them in the next election it's

Carter 55:13

it's quite a few

Zain 55:14

few problems this episode this episode of the monk debates is brought to you by several Toronto-based family foundations, of course.

Corey 55:20

There's quite a few problems with what you've just articulated there. What if the leader is the problem? What if the caucus is cohesive? You seem to be forgetting that the role of an MLA is twofold. They're your elected representative who casts votes, but they are also your ombudsman to access government services. And what if they suck?

Corey 55:36

There needs to be a way to pull them back in on this matter here. And the other thing about recall, you've talked about this very long, very difficult process. I'm going to put aside the fact that you want a difficult process this because you think it's i don't

Carter 55:47

don't want any process because

Corey 55:48

because you think it's important that people get their full run so we don't have short-sighted uh seeking uh like looking forward here the bc model is instructive it gets them to resign if they know they can't just hold on forever they'll fucking resign one

Carter 56:03

one guy one time one guy one time has resigned let's not make this it gets them to resign it made one guy one time resigned this

Corey 56:11

this provides this provides an outlet And to your point, Carter, just the very fact that this exists, probably moderates behavior for the better. You are less likely to see those things if people know that they can be pulled out at a moment's notice by the good people of their constituency association. So isn't it just like any other like caution here? Isn't this like a fire alarm? Isn't this something that we don't want to use, but the very fact it's there keeps us safe from fires? Like, I don't understand why you're so opposed to this. because

Carter 56:41

because we shouldn't be having direct democracy play with representative democracy it also reduces the ability of the representative to take a more controversial stand that may be in the long-term best interest of his or her constituents and they get to take that stand knowing that they get two more years to explain it and show the actual benefit but that's because they can take the action and then show the benefit and get the re and get re-elected two years from now that is It's elitist bullshit.

Carter 57:06

It's elitist bullshit. You're basically saying – Our population barely knows anything.

Corey 57:13

saying I know better than you. Yes. You guys are also – so in this scenario, Carter, people are so mad. Forty percent of the voters signed something to get rid of this fucking person, and you think that the problem is they just don't know that it's good for them in two years? That is your argument right now?

Carter 57:30

The only citizen initiative in British Columbia history was HST, which would have been a far better deal for the people of British Columbia. They still had to pay the PST. They still had to have, you know, they didn't undo a PST. They just lost the billions of dollars that would have flown from the federal government into the provincial government coffers in order to subsidize and make the HST possible. Well,

Corey 57:52

Well, that's your opinion,

Corey 57:53

the good people of British Columbia decided otherwise.

Carter 57:55

otherwise. hoodwinked god hoodwinked direct democracy is a is for the most part a sham give it to the people who are paid to understand paid to dig in and paid to make the tough decisions don't give it to the general population who just tell you what if we had bigger listener numbers to the strategists

Carter 58:14

i'm all in i'm all in but we just right now we're stuck at number nine in politics in canada and that just tells me that we're that we're not getting the numbers that we need that tells me that people aren't as engaged as they need to be.

Zain 58:28

Let's recall us. Let's do that.

Carter 58:30

Yeah, we could recall Zane. We could recall Zane. The absurdity of all

Corey 58:33

all of this. Your basic argument is that the representatives serve us so fucking well. Like, it's just, it's insane to me that you wouldn't want some sort of release valve. Give

Carter 58:41

Give the representative a chance to serve us so well or to serve us so badly. Every four years is the recall period. I'm also opposed to mandatory term limits. I'm opposed to term limits as well. The voter has the say every four years as to whether or not that person survives because of the behavior that they put forward in the four years previous. It should not be

Corey 59:08

be every six months. Six months

Carter 59:10

months I'm going to be tested by the population. For

Corey 59:13

For clarity, you think that

Corey 59:15

that the people should be trusted to vote for somebody if they want to, because they know who can represent them best, and you're therefore opposed to term limits. But you do not believe the people should be trusted to remove somebody from office during deeply egregious situations because the representative knows best. Is that your argument right now? All

Carter 59:33

I'm saying is that it gives the representative a chance to take more risks that may have a longer term vision. They can have a longer term vision of what will happen and they can show that by, you know, approving something in the beginning of their term, showing the benefit by the end that may not be visible to the average voter, but becomes visible as they move forward. Or a big idea, something that people think is a horrible thing that

Carter 59:59

that proves to not be a horrible thing by the end of the term. So

Corey 1:00:03

opened up a whole other front that you think that people who are facing term limits have more short-term thinking, which flies in the face of everything we know about it. But putting that aside, you

Corey 1:00:14

you still are fundamentally arguing that if this incredibly high bar actually gets passed because people are so upset with their representative that

Corey 1:00:24

the person should be allowed to continue because in two years we might all feel different and the representative knows best. My

Carter 1:00:31

My problem with Rob Anders wasn't that the good people of Calgary West didn't get to recall him. He was an asshole for the entire time he was elected. The

Carter 1:00:39

The people of Calgary West didn't want to pull him back. This idea, you

Carter 1:00:45

even when they face an election, they don't necessarily behave better. They just need to be put that this would become a partisan tool to try and control the opposition or the government of the day. And it would be ridiculous. I want leadership from my elected representatives. I'm comfortable that those who win get to

Corey 1:01:03

Hey, Carter, do you think we should let Zane say something now?

Carter 1:01:05

I don't know. Yes.

Zain 1:01:09

Hey, guys, I'm back. What did I miss?

Carter 1:01:10

Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.

Carter 1:01:12

I think it's time to wrap, though. You

Corey 1:01:13

You can do a – Corey,

Corey 1:01:14

what do you really feel? Oh, I think that this is dumb, this legislation. I don't think it serves either the people who want recall well or the people who are opposed to recall well.

Corey 1:01:23

But it was fun, fun to talk about it. It was a good argument.

Carter 1:01:25

argument. I like this. You did a good job. You

Zain 1:01:26

You know, Carter, another way to get higher

Zain 1:01:30

higher on the charts is we could just literally take the whole format of the monk debates and just do a whole faux debate between the two of you.

Carter 1:01:37

Yeah, we could just switch sides.

Zain 1:01:40

yeah, just really have no moral compass on this show.

Carter 1:01:43

Well, we don't, so it would fit.

Zain 1:01:47

I want to talk about a one actual specific element before we leave this segment. statement.

Zain 1:01:51

Both of you think it's dumb. Carter, especially dumb or actually not a bad idea is the difference between provincial and municipal on this, because there is a different set of rules they built in. Can you speak to us about that? I don't want to miss out on the opportunity to talk about it before we move on. Well,

Carter 1:02:07

Well, they've put a set of rules in, like I described the vote process for provincial MLA. For a municipal politician, as soon as they they hit the 40% cutoff, that municipal politician's out. There is no vote. They're just gone. And for a school trustee, they've actually doubled the length of time. So it's not 60 days to get the signatures. It

Carter 1:02:30

It is 120 days to get the signatures. And for school trustees in rural areas, that is not a lot of signatures. So the people that they're really going after appear to be school trustees. Keep in mind, we have the Catholic and public school systems here. and so you can divide that number of say a 10,000 person rural area you can divide that almost by half and now all you need to do is find 40 of that smaller number and those school trustees are going to be running scared uh for their entire term so there are different rules for different sets which is stupid to me if you want recall legislation the recall legislation should be consistent uh between all three levels of government um we should not have a parent and child relationship uh on recall let's

Zain 1:03:14

let's move it on to our final segment are over under in our lightning round stephen carter are you ready i'm

Carter 1:03:19

i'm always ready i was i'm angry when we started i'm angry when we're finishing this is great carter

Zain 1:03:24

carter overrated or underrated the dead cat strategy uh

Carter 1:03:27

uh overrated you can only kill so many cats for

Zain 1:03:31

for a overrated underrated the dead cat strategy overrated

Corey 1:03:33

overrated for um the same reasons carter says at a certain point it just becomes your tablecloth

Zain 1:03:39

Corey, I'm sticking with you. Overrated, underrated COVID selfies?

Zain 1:03:45

Carter, overrated, underrated COVID selfies?

Carter 1:03:48

Underrated. Jab as many needles as you can into me. I'm taking as many pictures as possible.

Zain 1:03:53

Carter, recall legislation overrated or underrated?

Carter 1:03:56

It's underrated. I think the more people...

Zain 1:04:02

is good. We're already starting our bunk debate format. I like that.

Corey 1:04:07

I don't think that they're rated particularly wrong. It's an important issue, but it's only a certain subset that's going to care about it. There's like a governance class of voter, but they're very, very small.

Zain 1:04:19

Corey, yes or no, will Aaron O'Toole give a serviceable performance in his speech at the Conservative Convention this weekend?

Corey 1:04:27

Absolutely. It will be tailored towards middle Canada. It'll be very good, and there'll be a lot of angry right-wing conservatives. conservatives.

Zain 1:04:35

Well, he's going above serviceable to very good. Stephen Carter will Aaron O'Toole give a serviceable performance at his speech this

Zain 1:04:41

this weekend for the conservative convention. I

Carter 1:04:42

I will. I will concur with Corey, except I will suggest that it will be serviceable because it will be targeted towards those who will be watching online. The membership at large. This will not be a campaign speech. It will be a party speech.

Zain 1:04:56

We'll leave it there. That's a wrap on Episode 925 of The Strategist. That's a prime number. My name is Zane Velji with me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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