Episode 927: All the SCCs

Zain 0:02

This is a strategist episode 927. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, two

Zain 0:09

two out of the three of us are wearing hats.

Corey 0:12

Carter, you finally get through that Supreme Court decision.

Corey 0:14

Welcome back. Oh, yeah.

Zain 0:17

it was hard. Have you finally figured out

Carter 0:17

out what SEC stands

Zain 0:20

That's all you got? I gotta

Carter 0:21

gotta go back. I

Carter 0:22

I gotta go back. I gotta go back. Oh, dear God.

Carter 0:26

Terribly sorry about that. I have to go back and reread some more stuff.

Carter 0:31

talking about the south yeah south conference of the uh football league what's it south um i

Carter 0:38

i know yeah keep going i know it yeah i

Carter 0:40

i know yeah just yeah we'll

Zain 0:41

we'll give you time we'll give you time uh

Carter 0:45

don't know i don't have oh you're

Zain 0:45

you're so close you're so close okay

Zain 0:49

cory don't say anything we need to give yes the south conference conference yeah you

Zain 0:54

got it yeah nicely done carter it

Carter 0:57

it does stand for the standards council of canada so maybe that's maybe that's what it is i don't know well

Zain 1:02

well well listen cory um our fans expect us to be on schedule and we have not been this week we didn't record if and i should actually be careful they're not our fans i know 80 i should say listeners because i know 80 of the people who who listen to this podcast hate listen jokes on them because 100 of the time we're hate recording so yeah but we did not record on thursday uh a a rare miss for us oh

Corey 1:26

oh yeah well it was a return Turn to form. You know, when I think about the original run of The Strategists, we didn't have a scheduled day of the week. We sometimes recorded, sometimes didn't.

Corey 1:37

You know, we also had twice as many listeners. So maybe we got to get back to what was working for us.

Carter 1:41

Exactly. But do you remember the guy who said there was too much content last week?

Carter 1:45

fuck you, buddy. There you go. There was less. It's on you. That's not on us.

Zain 1:51

Oh, that's good. I like that. Carter, how was your weekend? And please refrain from mentioning

Carter 1:58

That I was outside?

Zain 1:59

Please refrain from mentioning that, yes.

Carter 2:02

Yeah, it was great. It was a great weekend.

Carter 2:05

You know, I got to see a little bit of the city. Didn't get to do some stuff. It was pretty great. And it wasn't snowing.

Carter 2:10

So I was pretty happy.

Corey 2:11

You get a chance to reminisce about your days at Theatre Calgary or meeting with Mothers Against Drunk Driving?

Carter 2:21

I think we know this, right? Like, we

Carter 2:24

we know this. We work with him. I love how accessible

Corey 2:26

accessible this content is. Yeah.

Carter 2:30

Listen, anybody can see this on Twitter. This is a public website. If you guys aren't on Twitter, you should get on it. You can learn a lot of good things. One of the good things is not that I have certain programmable instincts that people can just respond to

Carter 2:44

to any question with these answers. That's just not

Carter 2:47

not true. It's just not true.

Zain 2:49

not how it works. We know that. We know that. I mean, sometimes you pull out the miracles like Southern Conference Conference. Corey, how was your weekend?

Corey 2:58

weekend? It was fine. It was okay. There wasn't too much to say. It's the start of a holiday for me. I'm off next week. So I'm just

Corey 3:07

just living the dream, Zane.

Zain 3:09

Oh, very nice. I will plug one thing that I was doing. Thank you for asking. I was preparing for my interview with Mark Carney. As you guys know, I am interviewing

Corey 3:17

on Tuesday. Oh, I thought he was interviewing you. Oh, he should be.

Zain 3:20

be. He should be. He's written 600 pages in a new book called Values with the S in... Yeah,

Zain 3:27

Yeah, but like 100 of

Corey 3:27

of that is footnotes, so... 180

Zain 3:29

180 is footnotes, this is correct. Now, he does mention at some point that he owns Billy Bookshelves from Ikea. So I think, you know, this will very slowly turn into a conversation about his book to actually figuring out if he owns bookshelves from Ikea.

Corey 3:43

Ikea. But I guarantee you he owns the nice Billy Bookshelves. What sort of is missed in that kind of layperson folksy sort of Billy Bookshelves vibe... So true. is that there are there are levels of billy bookshelf you can get the doors with the glass right oh i didn't know you can get the corner billy bookshelves come on i mean i guarantee you that mark carney is rocking some top of the line billy bookshelves here don't

Corey 4:04

don't don't just don't just buy into the headlines zane you're gonna be the interviewer here we need you to dig deep oh this will

Zain 4:10

will be this will be a fucking expose i will do 30 minutes on bookshelves if i need to I'll ask him the price of frozen yogurt at Ikea. I'll make this shit happen, okay?

Carter 4:22

want to know if he does the grape jelly on the meatballs or not. That's important to know. So if I don't get that answer... First

Corey 4:28

First of all, it's lingonberry.

Carter 4:32

Grape jelly, lingonberry. It's all the same. You're

Corey 4:34

You're failing the test that you're putting for Mark Carney right now. I just want you to know that.

Carter 4:38

I'm not pretending to be Mark Carney. There is no way I'm meeting that standard. None.

Zain 4:44

want to watch my my expose on the billy bookshelves tuesday 7 p.m wordfest.ca there's my there's my plug let's move it on to our headlines guys we missed these on thursday so we're going to do them today our first headline comes to us from the edmonton journal let's keep it local let's start here anti-racist motion stalled by rodeo discussion in alberta legislature legislature this

Zain 5:09

is a province with its priority straight steven carter emotion condemning hateful and racist symbols and alberta was heard at the legislature last week but we have to wait for another day before it can be voted on well at least when it was put together ndpm la thomas dang put forward the motion but of course the legislature was too busy discussing our provincial provincial sport of rodeo. Stephen Carter, what do you think?

Carter 5:33

I mean, I don't get this on two fronts. I mean, first of all, I'm not going to be the go-to person to explain how the legislature works and what the rules are of that. It always flummoxed me. It didn't seem to be something that I cared that much about.

Carter 5:47

So let's not get into the details of the rules and those types of things. Instead, I'm stuck with why is the UCP pushing for the rodeo thing why aren't they uh you

Carter 6:00

you know i get the not not wanting to deal with the racism stuff because there's kind of like a i know when that thing thing where you if you decry it then all of a sudden you've got all these racist statements that your members have said before i seem to recall a website created by one cory hogan where he did a series of quotes of racist or not or i think it was racism no no it was

Corey 6:21

was tory or wild rose it was yeah we had two versions but it was It's interchangeable.

Carter 6:27

And what he does, he put up a series of Ted Morton quotes and then all the wild roads. That's

Corey 6:31

That's a hell of a poll, by the way. That's like a 10-year-old website.

Carter 6:35

You're right. I remember it because it had impact, Corey. That one had impact. It's good work by me. But as soon as you decry racism, you're going to have 13 quotes from your current MLAs that they have said something that is completely racist. Then you're going to spend the

Carter 6:49

the next two weeks responding to it. So I can understand why they avoided it. I

Carter 6:52

I just don't understand why we're talking about rodeo. Like,

Carter 6:55

Like, that's the part that I don't get.

Zain 6:57

Corey, why are we talking about rodeo? Well,

Corey 6:59

Well, look, the headline tells a story, but sorry

Corey 7:01

sorry to burst everybody's bubble. That story is largely fiction. Carter, who was such a great chief of staff, never actually managed to understand the rules of the legislature, may not know this. But private member bill time and private member motions are totally independent time allocations. So getting through rodeo faster wouldn't have changed a thing. It would have just led to another PMB being discussed, I believe. Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong. But, like, fundamentally, I think that this is one of those things that sounds really good, but, you know, it's a little more complicated in real life.

Zain 7:33

is why I never choose headlines from places we know too intimately. Yeah, let's go back to something from Georgia. Can't have a good headline. Our next headline comes to us from Fortune. Krispy Kreme will offer free donuts all year long to people with COVID-19 vaccination cards. That's right. All right. Krispy Kreme will be offering not just a single free donut, but free donuts all year long to anyone who can prove they have got the COVID-19 vaccination. Corey, what are your thoughts? America not, of course, facing an obesity epidemic alongside a pandemic.

Corey 8:05

You know what? I think you got my thoughts pretty encapsulated there, Zane.

Carter 8:12

I'm shocked that Krispy Kreme's still around. Didn't they go bankrupt? I thought they were done. So I was all confused. We lost all of the ones here.

Carter 8:20

there was a Krispy Kreme here. There was one. Is

Zain 8:21

Is it gone? Yeah,

Carter 8:23

Yeah, it was near Sunridge Mall.

Carter 8:25

Well, this was the thing we were talking about for years. For months, Krispy Kreme is here. We're all going to get hot donuts. And it turned out they were pretty crappy. We

Corey 8:33

We did get hot donuts. They were pretty good.

Zain 8:35

They were good donuts. We just also, as a society, realized we

Zain 8:39

we were all getting fat eating those hot donuts.

Corey 8:42

uh sticking with the loose

Zain 8:44

loose food theme our next headline comes to us from the av club meatloaf is making a dating competition show called i do anything for love but i won't do that

Zain 8:57

steven carter this is real it's happening there is going to be a meatloaf hosted dating show on the airwaves uh were you a meatloaf fan back

Carter 9:08

back oh what do you mean was i like Like, I still am. I still am. I am a big fan. And I'm actually looking right now to see on which streaming service that's actually going to show up because I'm in. I will watch that.

Carter 9:23

I will watch that. If

Zain 9:25

If it was on its own streaming service here, this is a game I like to play. If it was on its own streaming service and it was available tonight,

Zain 9:31

tonight, how much would you be willing to pay for it? Like, right now?

Zain 9:36

$3.99 an episode. But to get it right now, first episode, two hours long, how much

Carter 9:40

much would you pay? It's called Apple iTunes. You're describing Apple iTunes. It's available right now. No, I'm giving you

Zain 9:44

you access right now. You'd be still paying $3.99. This does not sound like— I'm not going to spend

Carter 9:48

spend more than $4 for an hour of entertainment.

Zain 9:51

You really can't. It's so hot. Have

Carter 9:53

to the movies? I cannot believe—two hours. Movies are two hours.

Carter 9:58

That's why I'm happy that we've moved away from the 90-minute standard to the two-hour standard. standard

Corey 10:03

movies even movies that include meatloaf are sometimes three hours and generally two out of three ain't bad but

Corey 10:11

but this show sounds like paradise by the dashboard lights i would watch this show this

Corey 10:16

this sounds fantastic so

Zain 10:18

so i'm gonna try this with you if you could get it access to it in 15 minutes how would you how much would you pay for the first episode i

Corey 10:24

i would pay ten dollars i

Corey 10:26

i would pay what is essentially a ticket to ride because that sounds like one hell of an adventure

Zain 10:32

We try things on the show. I don't know why we fucking bother to try things on this show. Just leave it as it is. Let's move it on to our next headline. It comes to us from Forbes. After complaints of 100-hour work weeks, Goldman Sachs is allowing bankers to take Saturday off. Stephen Carter.

Zain 10:48

Stephen Carter, this, of course, comes to us. I don't know if you guys caught this. This was like a survey. I did.

Corey 10:52

did. There was the survey results. But the

Zain 10:54

survey was with 13 people from the San Francisco

Corey 10:57

Francisco office. I'm not saying that the end value was particularly compelling there. But, you know, sometimes you actually look past that to the human stories and you say, oh, that's that's a little grim. That's a little bit. Fair

Zain 11:07

And any further thoughts, Carter?

Carter 11:10

Yeah, I'm just a little bit pissed off that you're trying out your Mark Carney questions on Corey and I. I

Carter 11:15

mean, the guy spent 13 years at Goldman Sachs that you ask him what he thinks about it. Did he get Saturdays off? Did he get Sundays off? You know, did he take a religious holiday? What about Fridays? I'm confused. I'm interested. People want to know, Zane. Don't try your Mark Carney questions out on us. I

Zain 11:30

I like this. A man needs his time to enjoy his Billy bookshelves. I'll ask him about this.

Zain 11:37

headline comes to us from the Montreal Gazette. Quebec man steals police car as he's arrested for stealing another police car. Stephen Carter, Grand Theft Auto is alive and well in Quebec. Your thoughts?

Carter 11:52

You know what? I mean, if

Carter 11:54

if you can do it twice, you should do it twice. This has been my experience, right? Right? Like, just if you can do something twice, do it twice. You mean like mentioning conference?

Carter 12:02

Yeah, like, for example, ACC, or the SEC, Southern Conference Conference. That's a better name than any of the other names.

Zain 12:11

At least you're a man of principle, Stephen Carter. Corey, Quebec man steals police car as he's arrested for stealing another police car. Gumption, A+, skill, probably also A+, borrowing from video games, also an A+. Yeah,

Corey 12:25

Yeah, that's full-on Grand Theft Auto 3 is what I was thinking. That was pretty fun.

Corey 12:31

It's a very Quebec story. Like that's a kind of a whimsical yet still very dangerous and worrisome crime, right? Yeah. You know, it's kind of one of those things that sounds fun. And when you think about it, you're like, oh, shit, that's kind of dark. Just like, you know, all of the crumbling infrastructure and things like that. Love Montreal, by the way. Fantastic city.

Corey 12:52

I'm still stuck on the last one because you never really truly came to me. I want to tell you two of the Goldman Sachs quotes. We're going to reverse here a bit.

Corey 12:58

One of the quotes from that survey was, I've been through foster care and this is arguably worse.

Corey 13:05

Another quote was, my body physically hurts all the time and mentally I'm in a really dark place. Now, this is two of the 13 people who have had a

Corey 13:15

They called conditions inhumane. They were just ruthless about their employer. And rate

Corey 13:25

your mental health before and after you start this job on a scale of 1 to 10. A Zane Velgey scale where there's no zero. There shouldn't

Zain 13:32

shouldn't be. I mean, just let you know that the fine folks at Goldman Sachs, they're doing fine. I have a 1 to 10 scale.

Corey 13:37

their mental health before the job as an 8.8.

Corey 13:40

Do you want to know what they rated it after?

Corey 13:42

Carter, take a guess.

Carter 13:43

I'm going to go with 3.8.

Corey 13:50

rate your physical health before and after starting this job before goldman sachs 9.0 you want to know what they rated it after carter i'm

Carter 13:57

i'm gonna go with four 2

Corey 14:02

my predictions continue to

Carter 14:03

to be great yeah

Corey 14:04

yeah that's true uh the moral of the story is don't work for goldman sachs yeah

Zain 14:08

yeah the moral of the story there's there's worse jobs than working in politics and it seems like it's like goldman sachs maybe

Carter 14:13

maybe this is why the rumor about mark carney getting into to politics persists because it'd be a lot less painful than 13 years at Goldman Sachs.

Zain 14:20

Listen, I appreciate you chiming in on this. It feels like what I'm hearing is that these folks, these 13 at least, need to have some thrills in their life. Maybe they should start thinking about what that looks like. Of course, a template is being offered to them by stealing police cars by this other gentleman in Quebec. That could really, really

Zain 14:40

really add some kick. Thanks for pulling that one

Corey 14:43

one out of the ditch, Zane. Yeah,

Zain 14:44

Yeah, thank you. nice nice one with the ditch okay let's move it on to our final headline let's spend some time on this not so much fun actually in fact i'd say the opposite of fun kind of gloomy uh this one comes from national news watch budget 2021 economic anxiety haunts two and five canadians as political divides over government priorities a new angus reed poll has come out and it's indicating that the challenges for canada are immense three and five sixty three percent of canadians say they're They're worried about having enough money to support themselves in retirement. Half of Canadians are concerned that someone in their household will lose their job in the near future.

Zain 15:21

Carter, let me start here. And I want to spend a bit of time on this as related to the April 19th budget that the Trudeau government will introduce. We now have a date. It is April 19th. It's going to be the first budget in over two years. Let's start with the question around how high are the stakes here for the Trudeau government on this particular budget?

Carter 15:40

Well, I mean, it's everything. everything the budget is going to be the defining document I

Carter 15:44

mean personally I would I would be if I was in Trudeau's PMO I'd be taking the idea of a 2021 election off the table I said from the beginning that they can govern as though they have a majority so why not pretend as though they have a majority what is at stake the entire government if people feel like they are not being taken care of if they feel that their work their their future is getting worse their economic future Their opportunities are disappearing. Then they will vote out this government for another government that's offering them something that looks a little bit more rosy. And there is a natural inclination, and I think it's wrongheaded, but nonetheless, there's a natural inclination that if you're looking for an economic savior, you move towards the conservatives. The people anticipate that the Conservatives are better at managing the economy. This is the future that Justin Trudeau is afraid of. And I think that that's what the budget needs to address. I mean, those numbers aren't necessarily new, Zane. I mean, Canadians have been afraid for their economic future for a very long time. And what's

Carter 16:54

what's new is, of course, that there's new groups of people who are finding themselves in there. You know, the fairly well-off in Alberta are finding themselves quite scared of what the changes are that are happening. Lots of shifting around in British Columbia, housing crisis in both the lower mainland and in the Toronto region. People are scared for how their kids are going to stay where they are, how life will continue moving forward. Those fears are the fears that take down governments. And, you

Carter 17:30

you know, the pandemic certainly has done nothing to stifle them.

Zain 17:34

Yeah, you know, these numbers often in the stimulus-injected pandemic world we've been in, some of these numbers get clouded or perhaps put on the back burner. But these are pretty grim. One in three Canadians say they're worse off now than they were 12 months ago, which is half as many as say that they're better off. And only 38% of Canadians are confident that they'll live as well as their parents' generation. This is the backdrop, so to speak, that the Trudeau government has to deal with heading into this budget. Corey, same broad question for you. What are the stakes here? And maybe I'll kind of expand it a bit. How does the Trudeau government perhaps reconcile a budget that meets Canadians where they are with some of the concerns that they've expressed here?

Corey 18:12

Well, let's be really clear on one thing. You're not fixing the list that Carter rattled off in a year. There are significant economic problems. They are systemic. They are long-term. They are generational. The idea that the next generation may be worse off than their

Corey 18:25

their parents is a relatively new concept here.

Corey 18:28

Home ownership is becoming quite an unattainable thing for many, many people. You have this baby boomer surge

Corey 18:35

surge that is crashing towards retirement, and there is not necessarily enough money there in private savings to live like they have been living in the past. There is a lot to be worried about if you are Canadian, frankly, if you are the Trudeau government for sure. And for that reason, I think Carter is dead wrong, because

Corey 18:54

because you are not fixing this in a year. Election Now is their best strategy because it allows them to drop a budget, talk about some solutions to this that are still conceptual. They won't be able to resolve these things immediately, but at least they'll be able to give some hope for the future. They can start to sell some of that hope. And they can play a bit on the pandemic response moving through, particularly if we all get needles in our arms come June. June. This is probably the best of a couple of bad situations right now. But yeah, I mean, let's be really direct

Corey 19:24

The fundamentals are not good for the Trudeau liberals going into an election. Because when you think about the economy as one of those fundamental metrics, there are many, many worrying signs out there. And in some ways, this is part of why I've been so bullish on O'Toole's chances here. I

Corey 19:39

I do believe Canadians are largely distracted. I don't know that you can say he's been leader for six months. And so So this is him baked because there's been so much going on in those six months and so little going on in other senses in those six months, right? Very few chances to mix it up politically, quite a bit of discussion and discourse and big splashy light shows in the United States with all of the – I mean they literally had an insurrection at their capital. Let's just call it like that. But when we get to an actual election and when these issues are actually being discussed,

Corey 20:11

could be anyone's game. This

Corey 20:12

is a very, very interesting situation to be going into as a prime minister, because there

Corey 20:19

there aren't a lot of comps, and that's always a bit dangerous.

Zain 20:23

Carter, we've talked about this before. I'll give you a chance to respond to Corey here. But there's this mold that O'Toole seems to be playing of, you know, Trudeau was your pandemic prime minister, you need a recovery prime minister, so to speak, and positioning himself a bit as the latter. matter. You know, you don't need the same guy that, quote,

Zain 20:40

quote, unquote, got you into the situation to help you get out of it.

Zain 20:43

Your response to Corey regarding election timing?

Carter 20:46

Well, I mean, I think that he's

Carter 20:47

he's not wrong. I mean, it's not going to be fixed in a year. It's not going to be fixed necessarily in five years or 10 years. It hasn't been fixed in five years or 10 years. These aren't these are kind of more perennial issues. And oftentimes what the game is, is to take the the voters' eyes off of that particular uncertainty and go to a different question. But in this particular case, keep in mind that he's 30 months away from needing to call an election. He's not even at his halfway point yet in this particular government. What he's doing is buying himself another four years or trying to buy himself another four years and escalate to a majority, a more stable majority government. But one would argue this is a stable minority government. If he wants to go for two more years, I think he's got the two more years. It doesn't need to be, he's got to call it in the spring. He's got to call it in the fall. He's got to call it in 2022. He doesn't have to call it until October. Well, I guess it gets called in September of 2023. Like that is, and even then, you know, he can rewrite the act that forces him to call it then and call it in October of 2024. This is, he's got time. And I would just simply, and I'm not saying this is the right choice, but what I don't think he should be doing is locking himself into, I have only two windows to call this election, spring 2021 or fall 2021. He has multiple options, multiple different choices.

Zain 22:16

Corey, do you agree with that? And what do you make of Carter's assessment of the strong minority model that he's presenting as well? I

Corey 22:22

I agree that he has choices beyond spring and fall. all it is funny how we kind of get locked into these paradigms when the political conversation crystallizes in this sense and it is certainly a possibility that he could try to run out this minority government let's be clear though nobody's going to let him rewrite the election act that election is going to happen at the latest october 2023 god

Corey 22:41

god the ndp would just that would be the complete defeat of the ndp if they allowed that to happen that'd

Carter 22:46

that'd be great to watch though because they still won't have any money to watch but

Corey 22:51

just as theater but i'm not sure it'd be good for this country.

Corey 22:58

I don't know that it gets better in the next bit. I think some of these chickens are coming home to roost. And they're not necessarily chickens

Corey 23:04

chickens that the liberals sent out as well, right? Like this, some of this is decisions made by conservative governments, but they're going to be dealing with the consequences, they're going to be holding the bag here. And everything

Corey 23:15

everything you just described, that is the the iceberg underneath the water here, in my opinion and when you think about what you just talked about with those economic stats 65% worried about retirement economic anxiety 40% of Canadians and even let's just throw in the anxiety about COVID think

Corey 23:31

think about O'Toole's five-point plan he talked about secure jobs secure accountability secure mental health secure the country which is really about securing vaccines and secure our economy everything but accountability on that list speaks to those anxieties that you know that creeping feeling of unease that canadians have right now so um

Corey 23:51

it's going to be an interesting year but if

Corey 23:54

we all become sort of more mindful of our anxieties there beyond our covet anxiety i don't think that helps the liberals and for that reason i i would be probably thinking about a faster election if i was justin trudeau we'll

Zain 24:06

we'll discuss this a few more times i'm sure between now and april 19th alongside of course cory uh fine talk on the the governor general, and vaccines. So we'll make sure we include it into the mix. Let's move it on to our first segment, our first segment. So the FCC won't let me be, won't let me be me. Guys, we're talking Eminem. We're talking FCC. That's a great line. It was FCC, but I replaced it with FCC. You see, Carter, because I am a rare talent on this podcast. In a decision that is marked as an important victory for Justin Trudeau, the climate change agenda, Supreme Court ruled that that the federal government's imposition of carbon taxes in provinces that oppose them was indeed constitutional. Citing Parliament's power to legislate on matters related to peace, order, and good government, the court said that fighting climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions was a matter of national concern. Quote, this matter is critical to our response to an existential threat to human life in Canada and around the world, the court wrote in a 6-3 decision, also adding that climate change is real. It is caused by greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities, and it poses a grave threat to humanity's future, close quote. Corey, I'm going to start with you. Top line thoughts when we saw this earlier, I guess, this past week, when the Supreme Court decision came out. What was your first thought when you saw this and heard it, whether that be legally, politically, even socially and culturally as a citizen and as a strategist. I'm kind of curious to start there, and then we'll expand out. I

Corey 25:37

I had two thoughts. One is I was very heartened by the language the court used. It was unequivocal. And I also really liked how it came out. It was a great reminder to me that our courts have not been deeply politicized the way that American courts have, right? The dissenting judges,

Corey 25:53

Rowan Brown, one was a Trudeau appointee, one was a Harper appointee. The judge

Corey 25:58

who wrote the the opinion was

Corey 26:00

was appointed originally by Harper and elevated by Trudeau. It was kind of great in that sense. And I really liked that we're in a country where that can just be stated so plainly, that climate change is, let's

Corey 26:10

let's call it a legal fact, right? Like it's a thing. Everybody understands it's a thing and we're going to move on. My main thought in terms of the comings and goings of politics was, well, good. Okay, that's settled. Now everybody can sort of move out of

Corey 26:23

this holding pattern that they're in. And maybe we can get on with it and make a couple of more rational decisions related to how we manage pricing on carbon here. And I mean that both in the federal government sense, minimally, but largely, I mean that for all of these provinces that have been holdouts and stomping their feet about it. And I'm sure we're going to get into it. But some of the some of the premiers took different paths, some had contingency plans, some did not. But the fundamental point here is, all right, we now know the framework under which we're working.

Corey 26:52

Let's figure out what works best for us. The whole idea of the federal system was that That it's

Corey 26:59

it's a backstop if the provinces won't act. But the provinces, if they have their own plans, you have to imagine it will better reflect the needs of the province. So here in Alberta, for example, the old plan that was done by the Alberta NDP government gave money back to Canadians, much like the federal one does, but really much more focused on your income level. So it was lower income, middle income Albertans who got money back. and the money that would have otherwise gone to wealthier albertans went into a number of green funds that were helped to try to green the economy i think something like that makes sense in the alberta context because we've got quite

Corey 27:33

quite a carbon intensive electricity industry quite a carbon intensive oil and gas industry and so why not try to adjust that

Corey 27:40

that with the money that you have at hand the federal program really just gave money back to everybody like i get i get money back from the federal government on this and uh and every time i think like well it's probably not Not a great use of federal money.

Corey 27:53

So maybe now is an opportunity for Alberta to say what's right for Alberta in this case.

Zain 27:58

Carter, same question I asked Corey. Your initial thought when you heard this decision, politically, legally, culturally, what was your sort of overarching thought or feeling?

Carter 28:09

I was really pleased. I was really pleased. I was really pleased because I think that it is important that we don't become a collection of united provinces under a federalist system. We have granted to the federal government the opportunity or

Carter 28:26

or the responsibility of running

Carter 28:27

running a nation, right?

Carter 28:29

right? That is our model, and this is in the national interest. So in the same way that we get excited when a pipeline goes through from Alberta to British Columbia, say, for example, and the federal government has jurisdiction, that has implications for two provinces. And we have granted that right to the federal government. Climate change has implications for all of the provinces and all of the territories and all Canadians and ultimately every person on the on the earth.

Carter 28:56

We give the responsibility to deal with that than to the higher order of government. And that, to me, is how I read and heard the Supreme Court decision. Because when you kind of break through it, there are many parallels to it. And watching Jason Kenney's reaction and Premier Moe's reaction, you

Carter 29:16

you kind of wind up with this idea that in some way the natural resource production is being impacted. impacted well they're only looking at the one side of national of natural resource production the stuff that happens within our we're still able to produce as much uh oil or hydrocarbon as we want in the province of alberta we just have to pay a little bit of a tax on it and the government the federal government is doing that because that's what's in the best interests of all canadians and that to me is is super important and and where we need to go uh with this so i was was really delighted

Carter 29:50

delighted because I think it was the exact right way to go. I was fearful of the alternative.

Zain 29:57

Corey, let's talk about the politics from the standpoint of Trudeau first. You know, this has been advertised, everything from a sigh of relief for Trudeau to a political windfall and massive victory. Quantify the degree of victory for me, for Trudeau on this. Is this like one of those defensive victories being like, oh, we're proven right. Thank God we can move on. Or is Is this a type of victory that you can press on and leverage and kind of make a hallmark of your party, your government, and your leadership? Where do you kind of quantify it? And I know that's a weird spectrum I've given you, but where do you kind of quantify it on the type of victory this is? I

Corey 30:31

think I would say it certainly was a situation that had an awful lot more downside than upside. I don't know that it fundamentally changes what the Trudeau government is going to do. I mean, you've got to keep in mind these carbon prices projected out now to 2030, that's already been announced. That's fairly significant. That's there. Maybe it makes you have a little bit more swagger when you start thinking about other versions of federal

Corey 30:53

federal programs that could do this. But I think the court was pretty clear that the national concern doctrine lives. You're going to have to prove that this is a thing. And part of the Supreme Court saying how profound the issue of climate change is was not just the statement of a bunch of justices. It was them saying, okay,

Corey 31:10

okay, federal government, you can do it here because this is an existential threat. But

Corey 31:15

But it's an – like the bar of national concern remains very high, right? Yeah, yeah. Existential threat, sure, go ahead. You can do something in peace, order, and good government. Something less than that, well, we're going to have a different conversation with the court. So, you know, they didn't get like carte blanche to do whatever they want with the federal government. However, I will say if this had gone against them, oh my God, this would have been a disaster for them. I don't even know what they would have done because it would have taken one of these marquee programs right out. It would have totally thrown up the entire conversation as to what the federal government was able to do in climate change. And even where the conservatives right now are looking a little bit wrong-footed with Aaron O'Toole on the defensive about his party and its statement on climate change in action,

Corey 31:59

they're all back to square one. They've all got to figure out climate change plans. And so there would be a bit of a leveling effect there as well.

Zain 32:07

Carter, do you agree with Corey's analysis that the downside was greater than the upside? And maybe we'll start there. And I want to talk about the upside. Well,

Carter 32:14

I mean, the downside, it's fascinating because conservatives have long railed that what they really want when they want a carbon tax is essentially a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Well, guess what? This is a 90th percentile revenue-neutral carbon tax. They still don't want it. 90 cents on the dollar comes back to people like Corey who get his check and he gets to go spend it on a new iPhone or whatever he's going to go buy.

Carter 32:41

that's a really interesting model this could have been set up much more like the old alberta model were much more than you know uh than 90 percent of it uh much less of the 90 percent of it was returned to the taxpayer it was used as a de facto i want to say pst but that's probably not entirely fair it

Carter 33:02

it was but it was so all-encompassing it you know carbon tax is a all

Corey 33:08

tax on everything, I heard. I

Carter 33:09

I heard it's a tax on everything. And when it doesn't all come back to you, it is quite debilitating in

Carter 33:15

in some fashions. But this one's a good tax. And now, not only that, it does open up the opportunity for provincial governments to take control of that tax, to take control of it. As we had under the new Democratic government, the conservative government, the United Conservative Government, can choose to make this a made-in-Alberta solution. Because that might make more sense for a province, say, for example, that is very opposed to a provincial sales tax.

Carter 33:46

Carbon tax is a tax on everything. If we accept that, then it could very easily replace a PST if you

Carter 33:54

you don't redistribute the money back to the citizens. As a province that's facing a multi-billion, multi-tens of billions of dollar deficit, they should be more open to this. But of course, can he slam the door tight?

Zain 34:08

Carter, let's talk about, I'm going to stick with you. Let's talk about Trudeau upside. How does he maximize on it? And is there a risk to trying to say more, do more? Do you kind of just take this one quietly, let the courts speak for themselves, let the premiers, you know, respond to questions about what they're going to do? Or is there a strategic, either messaging or tactical upside that you can see daylight light to try to attack and perhaps leverage?

Carter 34:37

I think that the opportunity for this is that the checks that are coming back, the $0.90 on the dollar that is coming back, are

Carter 34:43

are coming back from the federal government. And they're coming back from the federal government, I believe, in Quebec.

Carter 34:49

I'm sorry, not in Quebec, in Ontario, in Alberta, in Saskatchewan, I

Carter 34:54

think Manitoba, not in BC and not in Quebec. But

Carter 34:57

But I would be running through those, especially those provinces, and making sure that everybody knows that the checks are coming from the federal government it will be especially valuable um in

Carter 35:07

in ontario we've been talking about the rebates being in far and away in excess of what you'd actually spend as an individual on the on the carbon tax the rebates are the message and that rebate should be celebrated and it hasn't been celebrated i think pending the outcome of this of the supreme court uh decision so i think that that's what you should should be out there doing, reminding people that this is good and it's coming from the federal government. It does not appear that any of those three governments in Saskatchewan, Alberta or Ontario have any intention in the short term of

Carter 35:42

of taking them over.

Carter 35:44

They should be moving as quickly as seemingly possible in my mind to do so. But for now, they're going to let the federal government own it. So the federal government should own it.

Zain 35:55

Corey, would you agree with that? And would you you supplement it with anything in terms of how trudeau maximizes on this victory i

Corey 36:05

it's a tough one i go back and forth a lot on this i'm not necessarily sure that there's any more maximization to do or or maybe let me put that a different way i

Corey 36:15

i don't know what o'toole's next move is but i think it might be a mistake for trudeau to make his next move before o'toole makes his move right it's almost like hockey who gets to change their line last that's a bit of an advantage. And if I were Trudeau, I would keep my power a bit dry and see exactly what this grand

Corey 36:30

Conservative Party of Canada climate plan would be before I made any additional moves or tried to push any advantage in that space.

Zain 36:37

Corey, let's stick with O'Toole then, because you've brought him up. You know, his response was, we will protect the environment and fight the reality of climate change, but we won't do it by making the poorest pay more through Justin Trudeau's carbon tax. Right response for O'Toole? it's

Corey 36:53

it's not a bad one one

Corey 36:54

one of the things that i think has

Corey 36:56

has been very fascinating to me and i've mentioned it on this show before is that the

Corey 37:00

the left and the right in this country at least have just swapped positions on what's the best way to to tackle the climate challenge i mean a market mechanism

Corey 37:09

why would anybody think that's the left-wing solution to climate change and uh because you know you're basically relying on all of these moving parts and you're not protecting the people you think might need some protection there. The Conservatives have gone to what would be the traditional left-wing solution, which is regulations and making sure that you are doing whatever you can to just make the pain be felt by specific people and not by everybody, you know, not share that burden, not create that market mechanism to do it. Basically choosing how you are going to reduce your carbon rather than letting the market dictate how carbon is going to be reduced. I find that fascinating. And it's not like Canada's in a vacuum there. That's something that's sort of have happened in

Corey 37:47

in the Western world a bit more generally here. But what Aaron O'Toole has touched on is something that is kind of real or is an anxiety, particularly, I think, with lower income Canadians, and this is borne out somewhat in polling. And it's this sense that you're not getting back as much in those rebates as you are getting hit for your carbon activities.

Corey 38:07

And there's a couple of reasons that may be the case. One is psychological, the feeling at the the pump when you're paying more and the anxiety of do you have enough money to make it to payday then you get a then you get your money you get your check from the government and that's that's good for the moment but that's a moment and the anxiety at the pump is many many moments and if you've ever lived paycheck to paycheck you know that feeling when you're trying to stretch that money as far as possible so that's a bit of a psychological barrier that the uh you know the carbon tax has for people and as it starts to climb i think that anxiety is going to get worse and worse. And that's

Corey 38:40

that's got to be acknowledged. I think people hand wave that away way too easily. The other is that in

Corey 38:46

in this country, at least the last statistics I have seen, 14% of Canadians are very late in filing taxes, defined in CRA terms as have not filed in at least a year. Now, you don't get your rebate if you don't file your taxes. And the lower income you are, the more likely it is that

Corey 39:05

you have not filed your taxes. So as much as we talk about this being revenue neutral and it will not hurt you,

Corey 39:11

for many reasons, people sometimes do not file their taxes. Some of them are – the reasons range from not great to outright terrible, like they don't want to pay child support, right? But the reality is some people are being hit with this tax and not getting that rebate. Now, the federal government is moving towards kind of an automatic filing system. Thank God, way overdue. But we

Corey 39:35

we also tend to pretend like this doesn't hurt lower income Canadians. But the reality is a little bit different. The reality is, and as much as you want to say, well, file your taxes, then the

Corey 39:44

reality is there are good blocks of people who

Corey 39:47

who just are not getting these rebates, at least in a timely fashion. And when you put that in with the psychological challenges, this is not necessarily so clear to me that that people are feeling this this net evenness of the tax.

Zain 40:01

Carter, O'Toole is saying he's going to repeal the carbon tax, saying that the poor should not be paying more. Good message from your perspective?

Carter 40:11

Well, I mean, it is if you ignore the rebates. I mean, Corey's point about, you know, the rebates not going to, you know, people who aren't fining their income tax is exactly right. I mean, he's not wrong at all on the specifics of it. But what are you going to do? you know what which tools are you going to use to put in place to reduce carbon output at the same time as keep everybody whole i don't know of any he doesn't know of any if he was putting forward an example that said we're going to move away from a a carbon tax into a cap and trade system oh okay i can get my head around that let's let's talk about that is that better for producers or is that worse for producers um i i know that some of the people look in alberta would have thought that the cap and trade system was exactly where they wanted to go. Because again, the free market system is what they would prefer. You know, these are these are open discussions, but he's not having the open discussion. Instead, he's having this bullshit, I'm going to take care of, of the low income earner. If you file your taxes, if you pay tax, if you may not even pay taxes, as long as you file them, you are going to get a rebate back. And that rebate is going to far and far in a way exceed the amount of money that you're paying on it so you're taking away a benefit and this is what bothers me about the argument the

Carter 41:27

the conservatives when they when there is a plus and a minus they will only talk about the minus and they do they do so consistently uh to the point where where really important programs are completely misunderstood and this is one of those really important programs this is a crisis to quote the supreme court of canada we have to act to address it. And any

Carter 41:49

any party that wishes to be elected government in Canada must have an actual carbon plan. And I'll tell you, right now, the Conservatives just don't.

Zain 42:01

Corey, I'm going to come to you. Can I actually jump in?

Corey 42:03

in? And then I've got a question for both of you. Go ahead. Well, it is possible to have a carbon plan without a carbon tax. It's not hard to imagine. There are many, many versions of it. And what

Corey 42:12

what strikes me about all of them, um and

Corey 42:14

and what makes this an interesting conversation in terms of what O'Toole will be is I actually don't know I

Corey 42:19

don't believe O'Toole is going to come out with nothing I think he's actually going to come out with a carbon plan I do um but

Corey 42:25

but it's going to hit producers if it doesn't hit consumers I mean that's that's that's your choice it's it's as simple as that at the end of the day if you want to protect the consumer more you're going to hit the producer more and we can have the conversation about trickle down and all of that other crap but that's

Corey 42:40

that's the basic fork in the the road he's got to and the reason why that's fascinating is that the jurisdictions that are going to get most ravaged by a change towards producers being the ones that pay more are alberta are saskatchewan are those conservative jurisdictions where o'toole has really run up the board already with the number of mps he's got um so i kind of i

Corey 43:03

i kind of don't hate the political strategy of it right you've got such a lock on these two provinces why not trade a bit to try to get a little bit more of the 905 but you

Corey 43:14

know it's again this this is this is the strategy writ large it's very clever but you are really burning the people who got you into the job and it might be a very short-lived strategy if this is your ongoing plan well

Zain 43:28

well and so i mean i i could i could go into this rabbit hole pretty deep but i'm gonna go in a bit because i think it's worthwhile now that we're on the o2 side of things because we still have a open bracket from from his policy convention and how he's dealt with it in terms of his boldness the week after or lack thereof. Some of the analysis that's come out of this, Carter, I'll go to you first on this, is that this is actually good news for O'Toole, the Supreme Court decision, that it now kind of legally mandates something like this be resolved so he doesn't actually necessarily have to have that fight with this party, so to speak. A, do you buy into that analysis? And B, kind of Where do you feel O'Toole's

Zain 44:06

O'Toole's response puts him in terms of how high he's putting the expectations for his plan to the general public? Because by being so assertive, he's putting up pretty high expectations for himself. So comments on both of those. Well,

Carter 44:20

Well, first of all, nothing is mandated, right? The Supreme Court did not mandate that we have to have a carbon tax, right? So I'm not buying that analysis. analysis. The problem with telling everybody that a carbon tax is horrible and only a villain would bring it in is that now you're stuck having to come up with something else. Corey's alluded to, I've talked about a couple of different things that could happen, but he needs to tell us at some point what that could happen is actually going to be. Because the problem is he could could win Saskatchewan he could win Alberta he can win certain you know the places that he's currently winning but he can't form government he

Carter 45:01

can't form government without a climate plan because even if he was the one with the most seats in the minority he's not going to get the other parties to come along with him without some sort of a climate plan if he thinks he's going to come in and eliminate the carbon tax as one of his core planks and that's what he's going to stand on We'll be heading right back into an election before their butts hit the chairs in the House of Commons, because there is no way that he's going to be able to form a government without some sort of a climate initiative, because the other parties all value the climate, period. period.

Zain 45:38

Corey, what do you think on both of those questions? The first one, the analysis that like, this is actually pretty good news for O'Toole, because it kind of now makes, you know, dealing with climate change table stakes, and you got the Supreme Court decision, and then the expectations regarding his climate plan as an extension of that.

Corey 45:54

I, you know, it's funny, Carter says nothing is mandated. And that's true. But that language in the court ruling is so strong. It does make me think at some point, somebody is going to argue in a court some way shape or fashion the government is required to act in this sense and they didn't and the court has already declared this is an existential emergency so ergo government you are you are not filling your required role by being silent on this matter i feel like that's that's a path we're now walking down and so i don't a hundred percent buy that nothing is mandated but i don't at all buy that this makes it easier for erin o'toole i

Corey 46:28

i do believe I believe that nobody

Corey 46:32

in his party – I mean you've seen such at the commentary this week. All of a sudden, everybody is a legal expert saying, hey, well, look. I mean the fact that three justices believed that this was the case. I think those other justices were wrong, ignoring the fact that six justices said this is the case and three said no. But the talking points in the right-wing sphere have become pretty settled, right? This was a bad decision. So I don't see how it releases Aaron O'Toole from the group that believe this is a bad decision. I just I don't see that whatsoever. And I think that's almost wishful thinking for conservatives who just want him to get out of this box. It was interesting to see him make the new president of his party carry his water and say it's up to the leader, all of those

Corey 47:12

things. but listen the thing that i want to get on the table here is there are lots of things he can do lots of things he can do we have become so boring and unclever on the issue of climate in this country carbon tax or not this totally phony binary i i have no trouble at all imagining aaron no tool for example creating a major tax on imports of foreign oil maybe even a major tax on imports that are carbon intensive from china using that to pay for a green fund for our industry to to create Canadian jobs, and then cap and trade and driving down carbon over time. Like, this is the limit now. It's going to go down, down, down. Paid for, courtesy of Saudi Arabian oil imports. You

Corey 47:49

You know, suck on it, Irving family, right? Whatever it is. But I guess my overall point is there are so many ways you can tackle this problem. It doesn't need to be a carbon tax. I think it's a phony discussion to say it's carbon tax or no action on climate whatsoever.

Zain 48:05

So as we climb out of the rabbit hole then, Corey, let me ask you this question. Are you bullish on what you think the O'Toole plan might be? I have no clue what it is. I

Corey 48:13

will likely be somewhat substantive. I couldn't even tell you. I feel like it'll be a combination of regulation and money to help bridge this over for major industries. But that's just a total guess.

Zain 48:26

Carter, I saw a lot of head nodding in certain sections, a lot of fist shaking in others. I'll let you just close us out on the Aaron O'Toole side. And then we'll jump to the premiers and their flat footedness or lack thereof, depending on who you are and their response. So finish us off on O'Toole. So

Carter 48:40

So the question I was interested in is, are you bullish about Aaron O'Toole's carbon plan? And I'm just not because there may be many different options available, but no one's done any work to educate us about what the opportunities are of these different options. So, for example, if you're going to go into a cap-and-trade system, you know, it already exists in Quebec. Quebec's part of the California system, I understand. These are good, well-established markets. Someone could be making the rounds right now. And keeping in mind, we don't have a lot of time if Corey's prediction about we should be doing an election as soon as possible is correct. I mean, everybody thinks this election's happening very quickly. They've got to change

Corey 49:23

the Election Act probably before that. So we'll see it coming if there's going to be a spring election. I

Carter 49:27

read Smartass. I like it. But here's the thing. You can't

Carter 49:34

can't win on something that's new that's not understandable. And these things are inherently complicated. Anything that he comes up with is going to look like a tax or sound like a tax or smell like a tax. And if it looks like a tax, smells like a tax and sounds like a tax, it's probably a tax. So O'Toole's in a tough spot. But so what's

Zain 49:54

what's what's your what's your advice then, Carter, if you've got O'Toole's ear and he's promised to do something bold on climate change, what are you telling him? Tell

Carter 50:01

Tell him to do a cap and trade system and you make it fucking simple and you make it so that corporations

Carter 50:05

corporations will pay, but you're not going to forgetting about the fact that if corporations are paying, they're passing it on to you. Just ignore that fact. Focus on the cap and trade. Say it's working in California, working in Quebec, and you might even pick up some votes in Quebec. back. It could be a very strong signal. And it may cost you votes in Alberta and Saskatchewan. But I think that, you know, Corey articulated that maybe that's a trade that could be made or should be made.

Zain 50:34

Let's let's take it out from the toolbox and talk about some of our premier friends, the resistance, the McLean's cover fame. Let's start with our friend Jason Kenney. So he He says he has not prepped any carbon tax fallback plan. He was hoping to win in court. Corey, was that the right message for Kenny to broadly give? And it was interesting. He did, you know, issue some sharp elbows against Justin Trudeau, but said, you know, we're open to many options as we kind of go forward. What do you kind of, what do you, A, make of the message? I'll double barrel the question. Why not? And B, what do you expect to come from Jason Kenney in the mid-future regarding this particular file?

Corey 51:13

You're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't, in the case of answering the question of were you prepared to lose this fight, right? Yeah,

Corey 51:21

yeah. So he chose one path. Scott Moe, I believe, chose another. So that's the reality of it. I don't believe for a minute they have not thought about what would happen if this court case got lost. That, to me, is unfathomable. But I'm sure they were hoping they would win. And I'm sure that they told the public service don't start prepping a lot of contingency plans because we don't want to get foips that we have a contingency plan. So, you know, the actual reality behind the scenes is likely a little bit different than we've never thought about it. It's probably been more along the lines of we don't want to get the political hit of looking like we thought we have already lost this. That would also not be ideal. So we'll just cross that bridge when we get to it. The reality is all of these things are going to take several months after a court decision. anyhow it's not as though it would even be particularly wise to just own the carbon tax the very next day it might even make sense to say well we'll see what happens in the next federal election if nothing happens then alberta is going to have to make a change maybe

Corey 52:26

right maybe you put it on the ballot in october uh with um with everything else that the alberta government is doing right now on

Zain 52:33

on the municipal side ultimately

Corey 52:35

moment was inelegant the moment moment was awkward. But as I said, at the start, I think actually, in some ways, this is a bit of a not a real, I doubt it's a relief. I'm sure everybody wanted to win. If you were in the Alberta government, but it's

Corey 52:49

know, it opens up some options that were not available the day before. Because now you can actually have a conversation about what that looks like you can create this made in Alberta solution. I laugh because made in Alberta is exactly what the NDP plan was also branded as right there were ads they ran in late 2016 that had on the screen made in alberta not ottawa right and here we are everything

Corey 53:11

everything old is new again but um

Corey 53:15

but it frees up a lot of money to

Corey 53:16

to do some of the things you want to do anyways you want to talk about economic diversification you want to talk about greening the oil industry just like that maiden alberta line was kind of cribbed and reused intentionally or accidentally because god it's not I'm not that creative, so I'm not going to pretend that

Corey 53:32

that it couldn't have just come across accidentally. But they

Corey 53:36

they could just do the same thing that the NDP climate plan

Corey 53:39

plan was, but rebrand it and call it their own.

Corey 53:43

That's not bad for them.

Zain 53:45

Before I move to Carter, what do you expect? Give me a little bit of prognostication. Do you expect – maybe I'll ask you a more specific question. Do you expect a made-in-Alberta plan prior to the next election, provincial

Corey 53:54

provincial election? I think it's – yeah, I think so. 2023 is so far away. I don't know how you would cross that bridge otherwise. Unless Aaron O'Toole wins and it just changes everything and that fundamental math gets shifted around, I would imagine, however, it's probably more along the lines of what New Brunswick is doing with the gas tax and maybe making it revenue or neutral. neutral. I suspect there will be some sort of angle on it where you can say, see, well, we did whatever we could to try to make it not the carbon tax. But ultimately, as that thing scales up to 2030, there's no avoiding the fact that it will be an Alberta carbon tax.

Zain 54:32

Carter, let's stick with Kenny, and then I'll ask you the broader question on the premiers thereafter to both of you as we close it out. Kenny questions the same one. What did you make of his response on we didn't prep a fallback we were hoping to win in court? And secondly, what do you expect from the Kenny government now going forward?

Carter 54:48

Well, I think that we is an interesting word. We, which we?

Carter 54:52

We, the executive council. I think our executive council has had a conversation about what the fallout is going to be from losing the case. We, as in the environment minister. We, as in the revenue minister. We, as in the president of the Treasury Board. Yeah, they've all had a conversation. but we as in the caucus no we haven't begun to even think about it we as in the party members no we haven't begun to talk about it we as in albertans we certainly have not begun to talk about it so whichever we he was referring to yeah then we have not started to talk about it but there have been lots of conversations about what the next step looks like um and the next step you know i mean it's going to it's

Carter 55:35

it's interesting watching him signal that maybe this is maybe this is better than the the ndp's plan it's really interesting to me i mean you'd rather give the victory to justin trudeau you'd rather give the signatures on the checks to justin trudeau then uh acknowledge that the ndp he is

Zain 55:54

is he's polling better than you in the province yeah

Carter 55:56

yeah but But you don't get to turn any of those into votes for yourself, right? Like, to me, it's a fascinating choice that he's making. If it were me, I'd advise him that he's got to do something. He's got to make it his own. And I don't know exactly what option is the least painful for him. It's not like where you can say, O'Toole, you know, we're going to do a cap and trade system. I think that this one, it's got to be a carbon tax. It's got to be – it's just got to be looking like you were dragged kicking and screaming to it. There was no other choice.

Zain 56:33

Corey, respond to that and then I'll hit up the other premiers.

Corey 56:36

I think that Carter did a great job of describing the various we's. And in some ways, if caucus has not had that conversation for him to say, yeah, we've thought about it, would have been just really

Corey 56:46

really a bad idea internally as well. So there may be internal politics that were driving his answer. And those need to be noted. voted.

Corey 56:53

What was interesting to me about him saying that the Trudeau tax, and this is not the first time he said it, he said this many, many times, many times, going back to when the original repeal occurred in 2019, is that he, you know, he knows who his enemy on the ballot is. I mean, you got to give him that in 2023. He's not running against Justin Trudeau as much as day to day he runs against Justin Trudeau. So why not say that that tax was so bad, it was worse than the one Trudeau did but the interesting component is if

Corey 57:24

if you are basically going to go out there and say the federal tax is better because it gave more of the money back you're

Corey 57:30

you're kind of narrowing your options to use that pot of money to do the things that would perhaps benefit you in other ways so i

Corey 57:38

don't know if i would have painted myself into a corner the way he did there right um i would have probably emphasized more well now's an opportunity for us to do what's right for us and given that we know that the federal action is to rapidly escalate this we need to think about about how we can support the oil and gas industry we're going to be looking at you know maybe that's still to come but to me it seems that if you truly wanted to inoculate or protect alberta's oil and gas industry from this scaling carbon tax you

Corey 58:06

can't just give it all back to individuals oh

Carter 58:08

oh my god that would be so interesting like i think that would

Carter 58:11

actual political suicide if you were to you know there there was the um ed

Carter 58:16

ed stellmax most communicate most effective communication i've maintained was the our fair share communication that he put out about royalties and it directly attacked the large oil and gas companies and that was really the beginning of the end of of uh of stomach because what he didn't realize is that of course large oil and gas companies traded in stock in the alberta pc party so this this this was the beginning of the end but i think that if if if kenny were to wait

Carter 58:42

wait towards the large companies now especially given that they are not growing even though you're starting to see an increase in the stabilization in the oil price. I just think that he would get fucking hammered. That would be so fun to watch. Make it happen, Corey. Make it so. But

Corey 58:59

But it's interesting you say that because in many ways, the Alberta climate plan, it splashed a lot of money around in a lot of different ways. But there was ER emissions reduction in Alberta. There were all of these incentives that were provided to these oil and gas companies to green and to build new technologies and investments in these technologies.

Corey 59:18

and that was a big part of the of the previous government's plan like was to help the oil industry bridge forward that

Corey 59:25

that was now though yeah

Corey 59:26

yeah i know well this is that's why i say it's interesting that you say that now it might not even be that might not be digestible anymore

Zain 59:34

i'm going to move it on to the to the other premiers the rest of the resistance now known as the acceptance um as they as they as they swallow uh this court ruling i want to to ask you guys a question through the frame of strategic advice you'd have for them. Advice that might apply across the board as if you're a Ford or a Pallister or a Moe or a Kenny, what advice would you have for them as they kind of make their moves to either A, adopt this federal plan, which seems like most of them will not be doing, or B, as they decide on their tool and their system going forward with the politics or the even policy around it, would love to get your top line advice to them. And if you have specific advice for any specific one, feel free great to tease that out, but I almost wanted to kind of get your strategist's advice for now kind of reconciling a court ruling, so to speak. And Carter, can I start with you to kind of lay out a few points?

Carter 1:00:27

Yeah, I think that the first point that needs to be recognized is that

Carter 1:00:31

you can have an Ottawa solution or you can have a local solution. And so for me, that makes the choice really clear. I don't think any of these premiers, any of the resistance, and frankly, even the people who are really bought into the to uh to climate change issues like quebec and british columbia they did not you know they did not buy into this program because they had their own programs that they were able to point to and say we are already doing this and we can be on track with what you're doing uh with our local uh programs which are designed for our local population that's how you win government that's how you stay in government you design things for the local politicians.

Carter 1:01:08

politicians. We can get to the old saying, all politics is local. And here we are.

Carter 1:01:13

All politics is local. Make it as local as possible. Be the champion for the province that you represent. There is no victory for

Carter 1:01:22

in Justin Trudeau's victory on this particular case. So you've got to bring it in house. This is why I'm fascinated by Kenny signaling that he likes what Trudeau's done. It is fascinating to me that he could have even the 10% of the the revenue that it's collected. Keep in mind, you got to be collecting a shit ton of carbon revenues out of the oil sands and out of carbon intensive industry in Alberta, and you're giving back 90% of that to the population of Alberta. That would fundamentally change, and I don't have the numbers in front of me, obviously, but I believe that that would fundamentally change the math for the rest of Canada. Every Albertan could be getting a larger carbon tax rebate than the rest of the country because we emit so much carbon tax. It would be fascinating to see if we could create a similar system here that would actually result in more significant rebate to the Alberta population.

Zain 1:02:16

Corey, general advice for the resistance as they accept their fate.

Corey 1:02:24

It's going to be so different province to province. You've got to do what's right for your local situation here. um and that's wildly different even next door in saskatchewan as it is here in alberta the history with the carbon tax obviously is quite different here than it is in saskatchewan where they've never had a carbon tax that was introduced on the provincial level how

Corey 1:02:47

you know how you want to get along or not with the federal government is going to play into this as well what's fascinating to me about jason kenney's position is fighting with the federal government's been a big part of of his story fighting the ndp is obviously a big part of his day job here yeah

Corey 1:03:03

he's in an interesting place like it's hard to imagine what he's going to create that

Corey 1:03:08

that doesn't live in one of those orbits and doesn't have somebody saying well hey wait a minute look at that where's this all going here if i'm in saskatchewan actually i think it's relatively straightforward and direct just to say okay we've introduced we're

Corey 1:03:21

we're just taking the carbon tax here we're doing the saskatchewan carbon tax and it's maybe even looks a lot like what the alberta ndp had introduced uh in in 2016

Corey 1:03:31

so again it's so different depending on your local situation but i think that is fundamentally my advice it's like it's

Corey 1:03:40

it's a federal issue we

Corey 1:03:42

we they've they've now got the permission to do it localize it again make it right for you you've still got them to blame for the fact there's the carbon tax to begin with but now take the opportunity to spread the goodies around that do good in your jurisdiction.

Zain 1:03:54

Well, let's talk about one specific jurisdiction, because you make a good point, right? I'm asking for general advice with very different textures in each province. Let's talk about Ontario for a second. If you're Ford, frankly, if you're O'Toole and Ford, what sort of pressure are you putting on Ford as it relates to, you know, the carbon or the climate sort of plan in Ontario? Is there a strategy that Ford should be following or any guidance you'd have have for him cory well

Corey 1:04:18

well and he's kind of between the two he is because he's even put these stickers on gas pumps there's been challenges about this he's been much well very strongly you know like it would be quite a come down for him it is quite a come down for him but i think this is a good opportunity for him as well just to say well what's done is done now we're going to do what's right for ontario uh we've already made such strides in this uh province because of our our clean electricity grid, et cetera, et cetera. You know, I guess saying as I talk this out, all of the things I said, plus why

Corey 1:04:51

why talk about it too much? Like it's a done issue. Like you kind of want to minimize it. It's a fight that you lost on. So try to get as much good as you can out of it. But I don't

Corey 1:05:01

don't know. It's hard to imagine. At this point, if

Corey 1:05:06

if we start thinking this out, gaming this out, So

Corey 1:05:08

guess the risk is that the Liberals, the NDP in Ontario come up with different plans that would be compliant with the federal plan.

Corey 1:05:16

sort of even risk that? Why even open that front, especially knowing where attitudes are on climate change? Don't try to be too cute about it. Just introduce something. Take the money that allows you to do the things you want to do. But don't try to game the next thing and result in the next court challenge by being too cute by half. have

Zain 1:05:33

carter any any thoughts for ford before we move it on to uh to our over under in our lightning round i

Carter 1:05:39

think that there'd be an option just to be supportive of whatever um

Carter 1:05:48

plan o'toole brings to the table just jump on it that's

Carter 1:05:51

that's a great plan that's the best plan best plan ever and just jump in with

Carter 1:05:55

with both feet well

Corey 1:05:57

well line the two parties maybe the provinces is in the resistance will just create their own little cap and trade group. Who knows? Yeah,

Zain 1:06:05

Let's move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, are you ready? I'm

Carter 1:06:10

I'm very ready, yes. I'm very, very ready. As

Zain 1:06:12

As you know, the federal budget will be issued on April 19th. Simple question here. Federal budgets, overrated or underrated?

Carter 1:06:20

Well, I like to work with the candidate that always has to come from behind because of my age.

Zain 1:06:26

That's what you did for a long time at the end of Calgary. yeah

Carter 1:06:29

yeah the secret is to focus on the the women voters uh

Zain 1:06:33

yeah they make up the base yeah

Carter 1:06:34

yeah i love skiing and zane you need to get outside more yeah

Zain 1:06:38

yeah and uh you know one person who loved the outside allison redford oh

Zain 1:06:44

did we hit that did we hit every button no we're

Carter 1:06:46

we're not quite done yet i'd like to thank our sponsor west jet um uh

Carter 1:06:52

you need to keep your base happy and then figure out who your voters are that you can win um and uh cory we need to talk about some vaccines this

Zain 1:07:06

carter overrated underrated federal budgets go uh

Carter 1:07:09

uh underrated the federal budget is uh is the biggest communications we talked about the budget as a communications vehicle it is a massive communications vehicle cory

Zain 1:07:18

cory april 19th federal budget overrated underrated

Corey 1:07:22

They are – we've

Corey 1:07:24

we've talked about this in the context of the provinces more recently, but budgets are things you need to do, and they inherently involve choices, and choices are not always popular. And as a result, governments will often downplay them as much as they are playing them up, unless it happens to be like an election budget that's about to kick you into high gear.

Corey 1:07:41

And I think we all live and die too much by them. And if you didn't believe they were overrated, how about the fact it's been years since our last federal budget? Somehow the world keeps turning. me. I've

Zain 1:07:51

Corey, I'm going to stick with you on this on a scale of 1 to 10. The expectations for the Trudeau government on this budget, 1 being very, very low, 10 being very, very high. Expectations for Trudeau government on this budget. By whom?

Corey 1:08:04

Oh, well, do they even know that the budget is on April 19th, by and large? I think expectations. I'm going to set them at a solid 4.

Corey 1:08:13

Solid 4 for Corey Carter. What are you sticking at?

Carter 1:08:16

I mean, I mean, he started off the episode saying how everything hinged upon this budget. So I'm going to go eight because Corey convinced me that the budget was really important.

Zain 1:08:25

thank you. Thank you for doing so. Stephen Carter, the liberals in Newfoundland and Labrador have claimed the majority government in one of the weirdest elections of all time. The bump that this means for the federal liberals, overrated, underrated?

Carter 1:08:41

Underrated. Newfoundland behaves differently in provincial elections. I mean, my favorite was Danny Williams' ABC campaign. You know, it was conservative on conservative violence. And they're just a different, they're not related in the same fashions. And they're very, they'll vote for whoever the hell they feel like voting for. That's the beauty of the Newfoundlander folks. I love them. Let's go. Let's do a live show out there. We should do a live show.

Zain 1:09:10

I would love that. But, Corey, the bump that this victory by the Liberals in Newfoundland and Labrador means to the federal Liberals, overrated or underrated? I

Corey 1:09:19

I think it's overrated. It was such an oddball election.

Corey 1:09:23

And it's easy to kind of say, yeah, well, they're the same party in a lot of Atlantic Canada. It's not like in the West where all of these parties have disaffiliated. But I don't know. I wouldn't read too, too much into it. It will be tough for the liberals to do better than how they've done in Newfoundland over the past couple of elections, I believe. Actually, now I don't even know how they did in 2019, it occurs to me. But I can't imagine that it's going to be what they live or die on.

Zain 1:09:51

Corey, I'm going to stick with you on this scale of 1 to 10, 1 being horrible, 10 being great. I don't even know if that should be the scale, but whatever. I'm not rethinking the 1, I'm thinking the horrible and great. How bad was the 1 will always stay? How bad was the Supreme Court ruling for O'Toole?

Corey 1:10:10

Three? I don't think it was bad for him. There's nothing – I think actually it would be much worse for him if they had said, no, this is gone because now it's an entirely different game and you've been playing towards an entirely different –

Corey 1:10:24

it would have been such a wild moment because you have made such a statement that there needs to be a climate plan and now you

Corey 1:10:33

you might not even be able to do your climate plan. I think it would have been crazy if it had gone the other way.

Corey 1:10:38

Carter, it's a three for Corey. What is it for you?

Carter 1:10:40

Well, I think it was actually pretty good for O'Toole. It changed the channel from his people saying that climate change wasn't real. Now he gets appointed to the Supreme Court and say, hey, you know what? It is. And this is the environment that we're doing politics now. So here are my solutions. So I'd give it a B+. It doesn't matter, Carter.

Zain 1:11:01

Carter. I lost the thread on that scale. A B+. Usually, that's your job. Thank you. Thank you, Carter. Thank you, Carter. Stephen Carter, I'm sticking with you. The Canadian Energy Center, also known as the Alberta War Room, also known as Alberta's gift to Canada, is hiring. Yes, indeed, they're hiring a campaign and advocacy lead. They are looking for someone who is able to develop a three-year strategy to build a supporter network, someone who can work in a high-stress environment and has a post-secondary education. Stephen Carter, the advice that you would give to the Canadian Energy Centre as they look for their advocacy and campaigns lead?

Carter 1:11:37

Well, I mean, it makes a lot of sense that they didn't have one. Now a lot of things are kind of coming clear to us.

Carter 1:11:43

You know, to the

Carter 1:11:45

the Energy Centre or to the person applying to the Energy Centre? Oh, you know what? I like both. Okay, so to the Energy Centre, hire someone that is not from your industry. Hire someone from British Columbia. Hire someone from Quebec. Hire someone from Ottawa. Someone, these people who aren't steeped in the insane logic of the towers in downtown Calgary, hire from outside, please God. And to the people applying for this job from outside, from Quebec, from Ottawa, from British Columbia, what the fuck is wrong with you? Don't do that. There are better jobs.

Zain 1:12:22

As you guys know, and some of our longtime listeners know, the strategists were once um part-time recruitment and search firm and i don't know this seems like the type of job that would be perfect for our search business um so please feel free to apply to us directly we do take the first three months salary um careers at strategy i don't even know what the fuck our website is uh

Zain 1:12:46

strategist uh whatever whatever we try we try like i said 100 of the show is hate recorded cory any uh any advice that you would have either to the applicants Advocates, plural, or the Canadian Energy Center on their vacancy on the campaign and advocacy lead?

Corey 1:13:02

Campaigns and advocacy can work in a high-stress environment, has post-secondary education. Carter, dust off that resume, my friend. You

Carter 1:13:11

You know what? This is your turn.

Carter 1:13:12

turn. I could do well. You

Carter 1:13:13

could do well. I'm loved by the Canadian oil and gas industry. Well,

Corey 1:13:17

I guess it's good they're seeking professional help. Oh, yeah.

Corey 1:13:25

i don't know uh if you are thinking of applying for this just my sincere advice is make sure that you have some pretty solid terms that you actually get to call some shots around here and that you're not going to be whipsawed around by the madness that clearly consumes that office uh they need you more than you need them i don't know who you are you could be a um a recent graduate with uh with an iq above 80 and they need you more than you need them so just just make sure that that gets reflected in your employment contract i don't mean the terms of pay i mean the terms of authority uh the thing that would be a total nightmare is to take a job like this and have no ability to do what you want because you will own this my friend the next crazy fuck up that comes out of this organization people will say hey wasn't there a campaigns and advocacy lead had hired and the internet will dunk on you for the next 48 hours whether it was your fault or not so ask for the keys to the fucking car yeah

Carter 1:14:24

yeah and if i can just add get a great severance

Zain 1:14:31

oh the carter clause

Zain 1:14:34

infamous we'll leave it there that's a wrap on episode 927 of the strategist my name is with me as always cory hogan stephen carter and we'll see you next time

Corey 1:14:49

Okay, so now we're going to record 928, right?

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