Episode 928: Locking down/the curriculum

Zain 0:03

This is The Strategist, episode 928. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what's going on?

Corey 0:12

What a month this week has been in Alberta, Zain. Oh,

Zain 0:15

What a year this week has been. Stephen Carter, it's been a year.

Carter 0:20

Listen, we've had a year of March, so it's just been this forever. forever we've

Zain 0:26

we've got it we've got our episode title a year of march that's excellent as we record on april 1st a year of march just to further the fuckery that is this podcast uh

Zain 0:37

uh i appreciate that uh cory you know i had my interview with mark carney this week uh and it was really nice to talk to someone who knew what he was talking about for a change it was uh oh that's good it It was refreshing. You

Zain 0:49

You see how I picked you and not Carter? Scandalous.

Zain 0:56

Why are you offended? I didn't pick on you.

Carter 0:59

No, but it implied. The implication was there, my friend. This is

Zain 1:02

is a conversation between two friends. I don't know why you're jumping in here every

Zain 1:11

Corey, are you getting over the shock? This is a podcast with one person who knows two people.

Corey 1:22

cory's getting over the shock yeah

Corey 1:24

so did you get to the bottom of the billy bookcase thing i didn't watch because i didn't care but i do want to hear the answer to this question well

Zain 1:30

well i had billy book cases and those were noticed it seemed like he did um i

Zain 1:36

i didn't ask though i chickened out on asking

Zain 1:38

i felt like we cried i feel like we crowdsourced the information from folks on twitter and the answer was yeah it's billy

Zain 1:46

i mean to your point cory they They were the fancier version. They had a really nice molding on the top and the bottom. I mean, they were probably the classiest Billy bookshelves I've ever seen. I

Carter 1:55

I don't think they were Billy's. I think you lied. I think you just lied to us. They didn't look like Billy's. I

Corey 1:59

a photo. It didn't look like Billy's to me. Okay,

Carter 2:02

The man's a fraud.

Zain 2:05

Good stuff, Carter. Corey, I'm sticking with you. In the battle of the century between

Zain 2:12

between Kevin Durant and Michael Rappaport, who are you? Oh,

Corey 2:16

Oh, my God. Who are you picking? I don't even know. And you know what? The funny thing is, the first thing I thought when I saw this, and so for people who are not aware of this, Michael

Zain 2:26

Which is like everybody. Everybody.

Corey 2:29

know what you're thinking. The answer is yes, that Michael Rappaport, the guy you haven't thought about since 1999. It's

Corey 2:34

And Kevin Durant are

Corey 2:35

are in a very public beef where Kevin Durant is apparently threatening Rappaport and people around Rappaport. And he's got receipts, and he's showing them to the world, and it's just an awful lot of fun. But, you know, the first thing I thought when I saw all of this, Zane, is where is Simmons on this? Where is Bill Simmons?

Zain 2:53

Simmons? Because Simmons literally has Rappaport on all the time, like one of his best butts. But then he's also done that multi-part deep dive with KD. I know. No.

Zain 3:04

Where's Simmons on this, Carter?

Carter 3:06

Listen, Simmons won't weigh in. He's too smart to. I mean, he's going to sit on the sideline. That's just wrong. He thought you had one

Corey 3:12

one fact. You don't. No.

Carter 3:13

No. You know what? My prediction's never wrong. This is a guy

Corey 3:16

guy who was fired from ESPN for nothing.

Carter 3:19

Yeah. He's not going to take that chance, even though he owns his own company. He's just going to be very desperate. It's pretty good. My car's on company.

Zain 3:25

company. He sold it. Oh,

Zain 3:26

shit. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. Who did he sell it to? Spotify, right? Spotify. Yeah. Oh,

Carter 3:32

Spotify's bought every podcast except this one. What is going on?

Zain 3:35

on? This is good. We've made it about ourselves. I like that. Very quickly. Good. Anything else to get out of the way before we

Carter 3:44

we jump into the episode? Spotify is listening. We are available for sale.

Zain 3:47

Don't think that's how Spotify works. I don't think they listen. Just have this global listening arm to podcasts. Spotify is just a guy who listens to the podcast. It would be just interesting if they have some sort of AI that picks up on every time they're mentioned in a podcast. It's like some thirst trap to get them to pay attention. And if there is, Spotify, Spotify, Spotify, Spotify. I've just said it. Well,

Carter 4:10

Well, I'm just saying that if Spotify is listening, we are ranked 205th in Singapore.

Zain 4:17

Speaking of Singapore, book now anytime in April with West Chat and you will get some incredible perks in Singapore. Just to let you know.

Zain 4:28

let's move it on to the headlines guys are you ready for the headlines we did them on sunday we're doing them again on thursday just because whatever there's no who cares about no rules this year is march as stephen carter says this one comes to us from business today human penises are shrinking due to pollution warns scientist environmental scientist shana swan has warned that due to the rising pollution levels babies are being born with smaller penises in her new new book entitled countdown she stated that humanity is facing an existential crisis infertility rates due to the rising pollution across the world cory not only are you gesticulating you've got your hand up please jump in well

Corey 5:08

well i for one i'm relieved maybe now i can finally you know get pants that fit me i

Carter 5:16

don't even know what to do with that like

Corey 5:23

no we do that

Zain 5:23

that on the show yeah

Carter 5:26

they're gonna make them with smaller branches is that what

Zain 5:28

what it is our insecurities on this show really lead to us explaining jokes i'm not gonna lie to

Carter 5:33

to you i read the headline wrong i had actually read it that my penis was shrinking which

Carter 5:38

which i thought also explained a lot but it i read it wrong so my

Carter 5:43

my penis is not shrinking

Corey 5:45

Your hands are just getting bigger, Carter. Huge.

Carter 5:47

Huge. They are growing daily. Hey, Corey, between

Zain 5:50

between the rapid-bore Durant beef where we lost 90% of the people and now this headline, do you think

Zain 5:56

think anyone's still with us?

Carter 5:59

My mom's still listening.

Carter 6:09

It's going to be an awkward conversation at Easter, I'll tell you that.

Zain 6:14

This one comes to us from the CBC.

Zain 6:19

White teacher interrupts anti-racism talk to argue, swears at black presenter in front of students a black man, says a white teacher with the Montreal area school interrupted his anti-racism presentation about the history of the N-word.

Zain 6:33

Corey, Karen says teachers. What do you think?

Corey 6:38

Yikes, man. I don't know. That sounds really bad.

Zain 6:43

answer. Anything other than that sounds really bad Or in the neighborhood of that sounds really bad Would have really derailed this episode

Carter 6:50

Yeah, I think that we're both going to stick with That sounds really bad And hope that you move on to the next headline I

Zain 6:55

don't know if this is better Actually, this is way better Our next headline comes to us from the Global Times Chinese zoo in doghouse After attempting to pass off Golden Retriever as African Lion No

Carter 7:08

Is that true? Verified

Carter 7:10

Verified Oh my god Google

Carter 7:12

I'm going to Google it

Zain 7:13

it The Chinese zoo is, of course, in the doghouse after attempting to pass off a series of golden retrievers as an African lion exhibit.

Corey 7:24

What did these retrievers look like? They looked

Zain 7:27

golden retrievers. No, no, they looked like golden retrievers. I just think the whole play was that most people have not seen an African lion, so here's a golden retriever. And people would be like, maybe that's what it looks like. But maybe most people have seen a dog,

Carter 7:43

said they were embarrassed, though, so that's got to count for something.

Corey 7:46

They're embarrassed. Oh, that's fair. Yeah.

Carter 7:49

I agree. It's more than most politicians in Canada can muster these days.

Zain 7:57

Excellent. Two headlines have fallen flat, and one was about penises. Our next headline comes to us from Vice. Tucker Carlson called Justin Trudeau Mussolini over quarantine hotels in a 12-minute rant this week. Tucker Carlson went off on Justin Trudeau's dangerous authoritarianism and compared Canada's COVID-19 quarantine hotels to internment camps. Corey Hogan. Tucker Carlson, of course, known for his reasonable takes. This, another one of them in the long line of reasonable takes. This time on this time about canada of course this is also the guy pronounces ottawa as atowa um atawa

Zain 8:36

atawa atawa there we go uh pretending to never have heard heard it before uh corey your take on uh on this vice headline about tucker carlson calling justin trudeau mussolini just casually you

Corey 8:50

know the the kai run underneath him said something along the lines of like neighbor has lost its mind and i I just felt that was just rang so true for us here in Canada as well. You know, Mussolini, well known for a lot of atrocities, but making the trains run on time. And when you got off said train, you got put into a hotel for four days, right? So, I mean, obviously a perfect comp. No, I mean, like this is, you know, Godwin's Law.

Corey 9:15

Of course, you are going to have fascists be brought into the conversation in some way, shape or form, especially if you're watching Tucker Carlson's show. But, I mean, look, this

Corey 9:23

this is – I

Corey 9:24

I would like to say this is just a Tucker Carlson thing. You know, he's a

Corey 9:29

bad example of everything generally. But American media and its view of Canada is crazy. You know, I hear our healthcare system has death panels. I hear our healthcare system has no problems whatsoever. I hear Nanaimo bars have some crazy-ass ratio only Stephen Carter could get behind. I hear, you know, that we called the day cannabis was legalized C-Day.

Corey 9:52

I don't know what to do with American publishing of this fantasy. I've never heard about that

Corey 9:56

No, yeah, like this was in the New York Times. This is part of the amazing streak of headlines that the New York Times has had about this country.

Corey 10:04

I am begging Americans to just ignore anything your media says about this country. It is just like – it's the craziest fiction I have ever seen. And what concerns me is that maybe that's

Corey 10:18

that's just true of reporting of all other countries for everyone. one and we're all living in fantasy lands about this maybe i'll hear that octoberfest isn't the biggest deal in the world in germany maybe maybe britain is not this crazy place that just separated from europe maybe it's all wrong maybe

Zain 10:35

maybe it's all fake maybe it's all wrong steven carter i know you are a um a big proponent of grown men wearing bow ties of which tucker carlson occasionally sports he doesn't do that anymore well

Carter 10:46

well i mean i'm

Carter 10:48

it used to be a thing let

Carter 10:50

let me oh he He still does it every

Zain 10:51

every now and then. Let

Carter 10:51

Let me just say, let me just read to you a judge's opinion of a lawsuit. This is basically argued by Fox about Tucker Carlson. So this is the judge, and she wrote, Fox persuasively argues that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer arrives with an appropriate amount of skepticism about the statement he makes. The general tenor of the show should then inform the viewer that Carlson's not stating actual facts about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in exaggeration and non-literal commentary.

Carter 11:28

That's the Fox lawyers. The Fox lawyers are basically saying, ain't

Carter 11:32

ain't no one takes this clown seriously, so why are we taking this clown seriously? He's just an

Carter 11:37

an absolute clown. The thing that bothers me is that Tucker Carlson's viewers do take him seriously.

Carter 11:42

And this is the problem. them uh you know one day we'll go back and look at the you know look at the consequences of reagan eliminating the fair broadcast act and uh fairness and broadcasting was that what it but uh this consequence will haunt us for some time until such until such an act is reinstated no

Corey 12:01

no that's dumb we never had that here and we weren't as crazy as america you're just

Carter 12:06

just falling into lazy platitudes

Carter 12:08

oh my god thanks tucker good comment

Zain 12:15

okay are we good yeah we're good are

Carter 12:17

are we good have we

Zain 12:17

we have we um they're

Zain 12:20

they're not internment camps right these hotels just to be clear well

Carter 12:22

well you guys remember that we had a coach coming back from europe i talked about it because i'm an outdoor guy and i like to talk about sports and um so we had our coach coming back he was in the internment hotel uh for eight hours um the the the part that we found it unjust is that we had to pay for the full three days um you know there was no tears shed it seemed like a very reasonable precaution blood

Zain 12:49

blood moves the wheels of history as it also moves oh

Zain 12:54

my reservations at our quarantine hotel i mean the second part of mussolini's statements were never great so there you go let's move on to our next our next headline for the canadian press Press, director of Bigfoot movie, thanks Alberta Energy Centre for Controversy. That's right. The director of the Bigfoot movie laughed several times as he told the Canadian press that the animated Bigfoot family had dropped from the top 10 list when it was released in February. But after the controversy earlier in March, it went back up to number eight and stayed there until the end of the month. And of course, adding, we're now producing a second movie. be uh stephen carter uh the alberta energy center doing god's work you

Carter 13:33

you know um young

Carter 13:35

young cory hogan uh

Carter 13:36

uh brought up the streisand effect and i

Carter 13:40

mean it's it's probably going to be renamed the kenny effect uh because this is so incredibly perfect uh they said that it had an extra 30 million views as a result of uh of you know kenny in the war room uh making it an actual thing so well done guys basically um the entire population of canada has now seen the oil and gas industries as the villains that the bigfoot movie castus has so well

Corey 14:07

well done you know but it doesn't matter because it's a fucking cartoon and

Carter 14:10

nobody's seriously to begin with exactly i

Corey 14:13

mean that's the it's just like uh they're just not very good at what they're trying to do it's embarrassing the the fact that these articles would come out that even show that we wanted to fight with the bigfoot movie and then the fact that it brought in more eyeballs it's just i'm trying to imagine a universe in which you can spin this as a win i'm sure i'm sure we live in that universe i'm sure that somebody out there somewhere is saying this is a win but i mean this is just dumb all around really

Zain 14:41

really you don't you don't think this is this is some brilliant strategy by our our energy war room to to boost boost a particular film, get its sequel made, and have some grand plan that pays off in 2023. Carter, you don't have this strategy all gamed out for them? I mean, they are looking for a new person to lead their advocacy, but they may have already had this masterstroke to begin with.

Carter 15:04

You know, Zane, I am a strategic genius, and I couldn't do anything with this shit show.

Zain 15:10

You couldn't, you couldn't, you couldn't. No,

Zain 15:14

Let's move it on to our next headlines. I'm doing these two together, guys. First one coming to us from Ontario, where Ontario to enter a four-week province-wide shutdown beginning this Saturday. And then in BC, an interesting headline. Let's talk about both of these together because I want to talk about what's going on in other provinces. We'll, of course, discuss Alberta in a second. But BC Premier backtracks on blaming young people for rise in COVID cases. Backlash was swift last week or earlier this week, I should say, when Premier John Horgan was told at a news conference that those aged 20 to 39 don't pay as much attention to health briefings with Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Hendry, and that puts everyone in a quote-unquote challenging situation. Let's go one at a time, what's happening, what's forward. We can talk about the four-week shutdown that they're having there, but let's start with B.C. Stephen Carter, talk

Zain 16:05

talk to me about John Horgan's initial statements as well as then his backtrack after getting some critical feedback on that statement? What did you make of it?

Carter 16:16

Well, I mean, everybody's looking for someone else to blame. So usually to blame younger people isn't really that big of a threat. I mean, he's not wrong. Younger people don't listen to the news in the same way. They don't consume news the way that older people consume news. That's factually correct. Correct. Now, they do consume news in a different way, which is why John Horgan got his ass bit, because as soon as things started to spread on social media and within the social networks of the younger people, you know, Horgan had a price to pay and he had to apologize for it. But every politician in Canada, every politician in Canada is currently looking for someone to blame other

Carter 16:56

other than themselves for the situation that we're finding ourselves in. It

Carter 16:59

It doesn't matter if you're politician in Alberta, British Columbia, or Ontario, you're

Carter 17:02

you're trying to find someone to blame for

Carter 17:05

for rising numbers that were entirely predictable by actions taken by, say,

Carter 17:11

say, the same politicians. You know, I said earlier... But Carter, do

Zain 17:15

do you think he's actually trying to like explicitly blame someone? Or do you think this was one of those, oh, no, this is too true in the moment statements that just came out in your mind?

Carter 17:25

No, I don't think it's too true at all. I think that he's trying to blame someone the same way way that we've seen people you

Carter 17:29

you know try and blame others all the way through you can find a representative class and then you can pin this on the representative class um and and that is something that uh has been done in politics for a long long time um

Carter 17:41

um and it's done in society a lot because it turns out that in-group and out-group mentality and in-group out-group thinking has is very very powerful so it's very easy usually for a group like let's say baby boomers gen x to look at the younger millennials and gen zeds and say you know they're the problem not us we're not the problem well it turns out that we're we're all the problem in this particular case and that's what ultimately undid horgan um also blaming people for getting sick isn't just a it's just not a very wise strategy um so all the premiers are trying to do it every politician in canada every CMOH is trying to do it. They're all trying to point the fingers at someone else when this is really an absolutely predictable situation, given the new strains and what has happened when we've reduced our lockdowns in the past.

Zain 18:39

So you think it was actually strategy, if I'm understanding clearly. You don't think this was just a slip of the tongue? This

Carter 18:45

This is not off the cuff. Come on now. Come

Carter 18:47

Come on now. Everybody's doing the exact same thing. Just sometimes it's young people. Sometimes it's Trudeau. Sometimes it's other provinces. Sometimes it's the CEO of Pfizer. We're just trying to find someone to blame because these politicians don't want to accept even a modest amount of culpability because, you know, right now, cases are going up. I mean, you look at the charts, they are identical in BC, Ontario, Alberta. I haven't seen Quebec's, but everywhere is exactly the same. Quebec, I'm sure, is the exact same because we're

Carter 19:21

we're behaving the exact same.

Carter 19:23

And without a change in behavior, you're not going to see a change in outcome.

Zain 19:28

Corey, what do you think? Both from what Horgan said and his backtrack back and forth, but also maybe I'll start your questioning with what Carter said. Do you feel like this was deliberate or strategic? Or was this kind of one of those, oh, no, that was too true in front of the podium moments for him?

Corey 19:43

think it was a little of both, Zane. I suspect behind closed doors there was a conversation about, hey, look at that demo. Hey, look how it's rising. Oh, man, it's kind of blowing up for the rest of us. That got planted in his mind, and then he brought it out.

Corey 19:55

Sometimes those kind of comments should be left behind closed doors and certainly should be probed a little bit deeper to see if there's the truth to them that you think there is and if that truth is there for the reasons you think it is. doesn't mean it was true just because it was said behind closed doors and even if it was true doesn't mean he was correct about motives and certainly he got just uh demolished online and i saw venom coming from unusual places and i think that needs to be highlighted generally you think of the the

Corey 20:21

the age cohort he mentioned 20 to 39 as being much more supportive of the ndp yeah as

Corey 20:26

as opposed to the bc liberals i saw people um on my timeline friends of mine friends actually even even outside of that 20 to 39 age cohort, livid at the way Horgan presented young people. And many of the reasons they put, in many ways, there was a lot of similarity to what Jason Kenney said here in Alberta about people

Corey 20:47

people in Northeast Calgary driving a lot of the increase. The reality is young people are more likely to work in those frontline jobs, sales and services, right? Those are jobs that we, you know, you can have at any time in your life, but you're going to disproportionately have them more when you're younger. you are more likely to be isolated meaning that when you are meeting with people in even a cohort that those are people outside of your household your household is more likely to be mixed with roommates who may or may not have different interactions all over the place as opposed to say like a nuclear family setup and also we are now at the point where older people are much more likely to be vaccinated like infinitely more likely to be vaccinated because the vaccines are not being offered to 20 to 39 year olds at this point so all of this combines to what the hell was horgan thinking and why did he think this was the message that needed to be delivered he could have and he tried to walk i mean he walked that back you

Corey 21:39

you know pretty aggressively say hey i'm just trying to point out the people who who

Corey 21:44

who do float these things but then why limit it to the age cohort john why

Corey 21:48

why do that why would you not just say the

Corey 21:51

the vast majority of people in all walks of life are following these rules but some of you are blowing it for the rest of us those of you who are not taking these things seriously the reality is he went to that lectern and he said the things that he said because he believed them he thought young people were driving that now that's

Corey 22:08

doesn't answer your question was that strategy or not but it makes me think that probably

Corey 22:12

probably not strategy but probably very intentional you

Corey 22:16

you know i don't think it was a gaffe in the conventional sense if it It just sort of slipped out. I think he believed it. And he

Corey 22:22

he had some cleaning up to do. That's for damn sure.

Corey 22:27

We're in a very strange stage right now.

Corey 22:31

I don't let you guys talk about vaccines all that much because I hate talking about vaccines. But we're now at a moment where the vaccine politics have become quite personal. Some people can get them. Some people cannot. not and the dynamic of of comments like he made is very different now than it was in november when everybody was in the same boat carter

Zain 22:53

carter let's let's pick up on ontario for a second they're entering a four-week province-wide shutdown beginning this weekend are

Zain 23:01

are a couple of things to pick up on here a

Zain 23:04

a how ford did this he kind of came out and teased something's coming something's come and then announced it b when ford did it this will not go into effect on the start of the long weekend ie as we record here thursday evening tomorrow morning on good friday uh and see the fact that he did it and i think those are like the three pieces i'd like to pick up on and and and see if you've got any thoughts with with and i'll repeat them again right the um the fact of how we announced it the the teaser and then the announcement many people are like why don't you just fucking do it man be the the announcement itself and when it takes effect and see the fact that they're they're doing this four-week province-wide circuit breaker um thoughts

Zain 23:43

thoughts on on any three of those tranches that i've laid out there well

Carter 23:46

well i think that the uh everybody seems to have this idea that before you can announce that you're actually going to do the shutdown you have to give everybody some sort of fair warning um you know you've got to let everybody know that a week

Carter 23:58

now, four or five days from now, whatever it's going to be. No one's really equated that to lives, and I really wish that we had. I mean, how many lives would have been lost as a direct result of those four-day, five-day wording periods, three-day? What happens if we actually just do what Australia, New Zealand, a number of other countries have done, where it's just, bang, we're just doing it, right? We've got cases, we've got a problem, we're going to shut it down. we got cases we got a problem we're going to shut it down i mean is there any doubt that kenny's heading towards the exact same outcome but he's just not going to do it over the easter weekend i mean the numbers are almost identical ironically on a per 100 000 basis ontario's is the lowest of the uh ontario bc alberta uh trio at 18 cases per 100k bc is marginally higher than alberta at 20.7 and Alberta's 20, the only one who hasn't announced some sort of a kind of action of some sort is Alberta. You

Carter 25:01

You know, so actions

Carter 25:03

actions being taken, Doug, you know, everybody's going to be going this way. The notice period that Doug Ford gave continues

Carter 25:10

continues to be a pattern. Moving too late continues to be a pattern. And then doing too little. I think that the overwhelming sentiment from Ontario right now is, well, what the hell does this lockdown mean? Does the word lockdown have any meaning anymore? Does shutdown have any meaning? Do we even know what that means? Does it just simply mean that we lost the right to go and dine in an in-person restaurant with our cohort? What does it even mean anymore? because you know we've been at this for a year now and

Carter 25:45

and with each time we continue to use the same words and all the rules keep changing and so we all go back and we look at what do the rules mean this time and realistically we all follow the rules that we want to follow and

Carter 25:58

therein lies the problem because it turns out that this personal responsibility fad that we've been on for the last year has, it just hasn't worked. And, you

Carter 26:09

you know, thousands of Canadians have died as a result. And more, especially, and especially younger people now, more younger people have been exposed and are in critical care because we haven't taken the action that other countries have been, you know, more bold and more committed to.

Zain 26:29

Corey, what do you make of how ontario did this the fact they're doing it and um and and when it's starting from from that perspective in your mind i

Corey 26:40

think carter has raised a lot of very good points uh especially about we keep using the same words but the words keep changing i think that may be more true maybe

Corey 26:49

maybe not i think it feels more true here because here is home but uh the reality is the different guidelines this is what it means to be yellow this is what it means to be red all of this stuff is so movable and it's tough to keep track of and i i don't know about you too but i personally find i

Corey 27:06

don't know what the rules are anymore even though i know in theory we're in stage two but what that stage two in this version versus the other like you got to look them up almost activity by activity and to

Corey 27:17

to to points like how many people are actually doing that like i'm i'm not sure that many are and so um

Corey 27:23

um we're in a very confused place and i think that's driving some of this third wave right now, I think that's the charitable thing to say. I also think Carter is right that we're at a point where people are just doing what they want to do, especially if you have not gotten COVID over the past year. I'm sure that provides a certain sense of confidence that you're not going to, you

Corey 27:45

know, you've managed to go through it and nothing bad has happened to you this date. So why worry, especially with the vaccine seeming so close, but we can see these numbers climbing here. We can see these variants out there causing all sorts of calls for alarm.

Corey 27:59

I don't 100% agree with Carter's idea that you just flick the switch. I do think that there's something valuable about telling people this is coming down the line for two reasons. One is let's

Corey 28:11

let's assume maybe there's still some faint hope it'll turn around and, hey, look, the way we're trending, it looks like we're going to do this. And if you telegraph it when it starts to look like a real possibility rather than this is the moment I absolutely need to do this, how

Corey 28:22

how can you possibly complain about that? But the other reality is there is the economic part of it that needs to be balanced out.

Corey 28:30

We balance economic and lives all of the time, like it or not. I've said this before on this show, but if we cared about lives amongst everything else, speed limits would be 30. We would have traffic lights at every intersection. protection we would walk around in bubble wrap but we we make a decision that some of that's just too much of a pain too expensive any of those things and the government is reflecting that the other thing is if

Corey 28:52

if we go a little bit further i think then the majority of the population is willing to if they just feel like okay i'm sick of this i'm ruined the economy has just been destroyed here then

Corey 29:02

then all of this goes away all of the protections go away the backlash is just too severe so politicians are trying to walk a line and i have sympathy for them in that whether you You'd be Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, or John Horgan. So I

Corey 29:14

I think it's fine to tell people something is coming and then tell people on a day like this that this is the time to do it. The challenges we have right now are it's just so bloody close, and every premier has said something to that effect, but we ain't there yet.

Carter 29:31

We're months away from being there.

Carter 29:34

Whatever there looks like, it's now months away. Are

Zain 29:38

Are either of you surprised, and Corey, I'll stick with you, that Ford

Corey 29:44

No, I don't think so. The pressures in the provinces are different. The populations are different, and they come into these things with varying senses of what is acceptable or not. And maybe Alberta – Alberta gives low marks to Jason Kenney for the COVID response when you look at the polling on this. There is generally a sense in Alberta that the premier should do more. in

Corey 30:07

some cases a bit ironically

Corey 30:09

ironically because it's not very different from bc's response where people say well bc's doing it right why don't we do that and it's you know a lot of its branding a lot of its packaging but um i

Corey 30:19

don't think he had a choice i think that generally speaking politicians try to do what's popular and there was an expectation in ontario that you got to do something yeah at that point carter

Zain 30:29

carter let me let me close off on this before we move on to to our main sort of segment segment on on the podcast tonight um jason

Zain 30:37

jason kenny are we still on headlines it's

Corey 30:39

it's like 30 minutes in yeah this is we this is

Zain 30:42

is why this is why no one tells you this is why no one tells us what to do you know what i could just end it right now i couldn't even i couldn't even maybe not even ask you the next question no

Carter 30:53

enter good yeah everyone

Carter 30:54

everyone will wonder people want to know the answers in

Zain 30:57

that case i'll go to cory for now good carter uh uh

Zain 31:02

carter are you surprised that But I asked Corey if he's surprised that Ford did this. Are you surprised Jason Kenney actually didn't do anything? And we speak here on Thursday when our numbers here in Alberta, to your point, are worse than in Ontario on the case counts. We're not trending in the right direction either. You see BC and Ontario make big moves. But Alberta, the message here is make sure you follow the guidelines this weekend. It's really important that you do. And please, please, please do it. and repeating please 10 times as part of his presser. Are you surprised that there was nothing more?

Carter 31:38

Oh, I'm not surprised. I mean, Jason Kenney is a lot of things, but he's also a very devout Catholic for whom this is a very holy weekend. And the idea, I'm sure, of shutting

Carter 31:51

shutting down this weekend and preventing people from taking part in what I'm sure he deems to be an exceptionally important religious ceremony. one. You think

Zain 32:01

think religiosity drove this

Carter 32:03

decision? I guarantee it. I

Carter 32:04

I think we're heading towards a totally different world Monday, Tuesday.

Carter 32:10

Totally different world. What

Zain 32:12

do you mean by that? Sorry, what do you mean? We're

Carter 32:14

We're moving out of stage two for damn sure, and we'll be probably going back before we were in our stage one recovery. We'll be doing something very similar to what Ontario's doing. Our numbers

Carter 32:25

keep in mind they're not going to report numbers over the weekend. Do you think they're not reporting numbers over the weekend because it's just a religious holiday,

Carter 32:32

I think that they're going to not report numbers over the weekend because the exponential growth is

Carter 32:39

So by the time we get to Monday, those numbers are going to be unbelievable, and he's going to have no choice but to act. But he's hoping that no one noticed. This is an important weekend for him, and I do believe sincerely in

Carter 32:53

in his religious faith, his commitment to his religious faith, and this would be a very difficult thing for him to do. my belief i think that that's who he is um and so he he's just hoping to kick the can down we saw when he wrote his budget he kicked the can this is not a guy who's afraid to kick the can if he has to and this is one of the times and when he not only has to uh but he's quite happy to because he wants this

Carter 33:18

this not to happen so

Zain 33:20

so carter points the finger at jason kenney's religiosity and then of course prophet carter makes an unsolicited prediction by saying that monday tuesday day we're going to be having some sort of ontario slash covid has risen

Zain 33:34

you carter for another excellent it's great excellent yeah yeah cory do you i don't even want to ask you do you agree with carter's analysis but what do you make of kenny not reacting maybe i'll go that way that you could you can envelope in whether you agree with carter's analysis on the religiosity side of it as well well

Corey 33:52

well it was a very interesting notion and i'll be frank i hadn't really thought about whether that would have been a major driver but it's obviously it's the it's the biggest holiday in the christian calendar you know it's not even close and um i

Corey 34:06

i think that that there's some logic to that i you know i'm worried about that because i do think that if if in

Corey 34:14

in inverse of what i said about doug ford kind of telegraphing hey this is going to happen this is going to happen we're not quite sure it sure looks right now that alberta has passed that tipping point and everybody knows what's going on the

Corey 34:25

idea that personal responsibility would make a return here this is like a

Corey 34:30

a bad sequel you

Corey 34:32

you know and when we watched the movie the first time and we saw personal responsibility be called out as the solution to our ills it like it didn't feel like it was going to work then it didn't work we were in a worse lockdown as a result we're going to find ourselves in a similar situation here and that's really depressing for me i mean it's only been a few few months how can our memories be so short this is obviously not working right now we've got to do something and um in a sense i guess i'd be relieved if on tuesday we had a lockdown because at least then you know common sense prevails i'm a little concerned that this is just holding the breath or you know maybe an analogy is more like you owe money to your landlord and you're just hoping you can avoid them in the common areas of the building until your check comes in and you're And the check in this case is the vaccines. Like let's just – hopefully we'll get enough vaccines. Hopefully we'll just sort of get past that point and everything will be okay. These numbers will drop. And I worry deeply about that as a strategy. So we'll

Corey 35:32

we'll see. I mean if we're going to say here's some silver lining, I think our hospitalizations are actually below 300 today, right?

Corey 35:39

actually going down. But

Carter 35:39

But they're a lagging indicator. There's still another couple

Corey 35:44

weeks. Agree with all of that. But as we vaccinate the older population, we will see, even with these variants, which are more likely to throw you in the hospital, I think we saw today it was 6% as opposed to 4.5%, right?

Corey 35:58

Hopefully, we will see deaths come down and all of that. Anyhow, I

Corey 36:02

I don't even know why I'm trying to, like, it almost sounds like I'm trying to give him a pass. I'm not. But I think he's just holding his breath and hoping that all of these confluence of factors work in his favor and he doesn't have to do anything. Because I will tell you, and maybe I'm bleeding into a later segment here, but I was on – he did a Facebook Live on Alberta's new curriculum the other day, and I was on it. And holy fuck, talk about front line of the culture wars, like just the comments back and forth. And I mean back and forth. People who were just screaming mad about the curriculum and people who were just screaming mad about the fact that their kids have to wear masks in it. And if your bubble, if the environment you are as premier is that, yeah, I can understand why you might be a little more hesitant to go into a lockdown. So I

Corey 36:46

I don't know. I don't know what to say about it. We're

Zain 36:48

We're going to leave that there. See how much fun we have, Corey, when we talk about vaccines. So good. We talk about COVID. So good.

Zain 36:56

We do do it weekly, Carter. We just don't have the permission to talk about the exciting issues. Let's move it on to our next segment. segment, Governor General of Kenya. No, don't stop the update on the GG, Corey, because I know you would have loved that. You would have loved doing an entire segment on the governor. Let's move on to our next segment, Kmart in the curriculum. Yes, indeed, the Alberta curriculum. We're going to talk about it. Kmart, for those who don't know, is my new nickname for Mark Kenny. And we'll talk about Mark Kenny in a second. Yes, indeed, there is a relation. After inheriting the curriculum redevelopment process from the NDP, the UCP government brought in handpicked advisors to rework some of the existing materials, and they've now introduced their draft curriculum. And let's just say things are not going so well. The document is being criticized for its Eurocentric perspective, its dismissive of indigenous perspectives, and not based on research on how to best teach young children. In fact, in recent days, or in recent hours, I should say, since the curriculum has kind kind of come out into the public zeitgeist. It has been criticized for being A, lifted from Wikipedia, B, copied from a Common Core curriculum in Virginia, and C, now being endorsed by Jordan Peterson. Yes, indeed, that Jordan Peterson. Corey, I don't even know where to start here. You mentioned the term culture war. So let's start there. Because I think that's probably the best part to start in. The curriculum is something Jason Kenney has talked about when he was running for leader, when he was running in the election. This seems to be a cornerstone of ideological Kenny, that side of him that wanted to remake this province in a meaningful way. Education seemed to be one of the big things, and it seems like the healthcare was the other one. We'll talk about doctors in a second. But is this a fight Jason Kenny actually wants to have in public as it's happening right now? Or was this a slip up in your mind of a a of a curriculum that was half-baked and perhaps misaligned with where albertans kind of were with with what they expected in their education system well

Corey 39:03

well i don't think it's an or i don't think those two are mutually exclusive i can believe he wants to do it and i can still believe it's bad politics and

Corey 39:10

and i do do you believe both of those yes yeah

Corey 39:14

the um you are absolutely right that the curriculum has been an issue in alberta for a while there became this big sense and it was was interesting i was in government at the time um that the curriculum review panel which was working through updates to the alberta curriculum and it was you know it was run by teachers right there became this sense that it was ideological in some way shape or form um because it talked about things like community and indigenous reconciliation and there were just certain trigger words that people saw and they read them and if you are a certain type of person on the the right you just freaked out when you read them it just sounded like social engineering yeah

Corey 39:53

uh and then you threw in a couple of concepts uh for math that people didn't understand they didn't know how to help their kids with math and uh it all became like what is going on with curriculum we had a couple of bad years of scores declining although alberta scores are some of the best in the world we

Carter 40:07

we have a fantastic

Corey 40:07

fantastic education system and

Corey 40:11

all of a sudden it became one of these things that was set on the campaign trail by by conservative candidates including jason kenney Like, I'm going to tear up this ideological curriculum, which was built, again, by teachers, right? But there's this pervasive sense that teachers are inherently ideological. And he brought in this panel. He did exactly what he said he would do. I think in general there's this continued shock by Albertans that Jason Kenney is actually implementing his platform. And so let that be a lesson to us in future elections. but um uh brought

Corey 40:43

brought in what i would call relatively fringe views as to how you teach children and brought back to kind of some of this i

Corey 40:50

i don't know i mean i'm i went through the alberta school system uh i don't recall again i wasn't here when i was in grade two i came in grade three but you know this

Corey 41:00

this curriculum has us learning about athenian democracy in grade two yeah

Corey 41:04

marco polo and the Silk Road in grade two. Why? I have no idea. Getting instead away from kind of the fuzzier concepts about strategic

Corey 41:11

strategic thinking and critical thinking and how to be a good member of a community and how to work together. Things that I think if you've had a kid in grade one or grade two, you sort of understand.

Corey 41:22

These are more foundational to them being able to develop and move on. Yeah,

Zain 41:25

Yeah, and build their own lives. Yeah, but

Corey 41:28

but like when you go through it now and the point I need to close on here is now we have a curriculum that's been dropped that is not

Corey 41:36

not it's not built by experts at least not in the way that the original curriculum that every you know everybody in jason kenney's camp had a problem with but it is now full of trigger words that are throwing off other people you know that all of a sudden you see them and you're like what the fuck are you like so we have this very extreme case of culture war and and it seems almost like a a

Corey 41:56

a fuck you reaction in some ways some components of this curriculum and i don't Sorry, by

Zain 42:01

by who? You mean by Kenny towards his allies? Or

Corey 42:04

Or do you mean the reaction?

Corey 42:07

Yeah, I mean, I don't necessarily mean by Kenny. I mean, by the people who wrote the curriculum, it was almost like, we saw this thing in the curriculum we didn't like. And now we're going to do almost the, you know, the culture war, you

Corey 42:19

antipole of this. And, and, and so now people are losing their minds the other way. And I listen, full disclosure, I tend to find myself more in the camp of what the fuck is this curriculum? And I will get into that in a minute. Like, I think it's a terrible – I'm

Corey 42:33

I'm not an expert in education or pedagogy or anything like that. But, like, when I look at it, there's just things that – I have a kid that age, and I think this is crazy. You know, like, she's supposed to be learning about Christianity.

Corey 42:48

Until last year, when she was saying, oh, my God, she said, oh, my guy. You know, like, there's no notion of God. And anyways, I'm beside

Corey 42:58

beside myself that this would all be in the curriculum in the way it is, not necessarily even because of the content, but because it seems so offside with how kids' minds appear to work. Yeah,

Zain 43:08

Yeah, and where the evidence, and this has been one of the chief

Zain 43:11

chief criticisms from educators and professionals in this line of work in academic study, that this is not how kids learn, and this is not where the evidence lies with where modern teaching should be. Carter, I'll ask you the same question I did Corey. Does Jason Kenney want to air out this laundry in public and relish this fight? Is this a fight he wants? Let's get into how shitty it is in a second, but we have to talk about his strategy here because I

Zain 43:41

I don't see him backing down, and maybe we'll talk about that in a second, but is this a fight he wants? Let's start there.

Carter 43:45

Absolutely, because he believes this reflects who Alberta is. He believes that Albertans see themselves in this curriculum. Do you think he,

Zain 43:53

and I hate to interrupt you so quickly, but do you think he actually believes that? Because all the evidence stacks, this is like, we keep saying this, that Jason Kenney has a miscalculation of Albertans, like he doesn't understand us. like and i think the evidence is so clear about that do you feel like he still doesn't understand who albertans are or do you feel like he's just like fuck it i'm gonna take you here and you can come kicking or screaming but this is where we're going and it's that sort of perhaps even political arrogance that's that's pegging him to to do something like this i

Carter 44:24

i think he believes this is who we are and if you surround yourself with people who are just like this who believe these these things and they always say these things then these are the types of mistakes you make right this is the type of mistake that jim prentice made when he misread the entire uh population of alberta and brought in was it bill 10 i can never remember which numbers uh it was bill 10 bill 10 uh which was seen largely to attack the lgbtq community and did and created massive rifts for him because he misread who we actually are, because we don't know who we are. And this is not an unusual situation. We say we are conservative, but when we dig in and we actually answer the questions about what our values are, our values are far more liberal. And then when you add on top of that, this ideological divide that has developed where ideology now means that that tradition is pitted against science or that the future is pitted against the past or that like anti-mask is pitted against masks this is now ideological instead of kind of societal if you will so my ideology says that if that group likes you know the new math then i can't i have to hold on to the old the old math and the old way that math was done and let me tell tell you something as someone who was around when democracy was formed in ancient greece it wasn't that great of a thing so

Corey 45:55

was like by lot and sortation and stuff it was lame it's like

Carter 45:58

like lame we shouldn't shouldn't go back there oh

Zain 46:02

oh is that okay you wanted to end there i ended on a joke that's what made it funny yeah

Carter 46:07

it was a funny joke it was something self-deprecating it was self-deprecating joke no i i

Zain 46:12

i got it i got i got it i you should have left on the joke rather than the tag. The tag didn't work. Joke analysis provided by Corey.

Zain 46:22

Let's talk about the... Yeah,

Zain 46:24

Yeah, let's talk about the... There's so much. This is where I feel like we can go into a rabbit hole that's never-ending on the curriculum and its content. What do you feel like, and perhaps I'll phrase it this way, is most offensive and perhaps you you think will be the focal point of criticism and advocacy from the quickly mobilizing groups? And that's happening, right? Carter made the Bill 10 comparison. One thing about Bill 10 here in Alberta was that groups on a grassroots level mobilized quick, without some sort of central institution. We're starting to see that now. In your mind, what's the most offensive part of this curriculum? And where do you think the focal point will be of criticism on the curriculum in your remind no

Corey 47:08

i don't care about that let's talk about

Zain 47:09

about the politics of this more generally um

Zain 47:13

it took me like 75 seconds to get that question that question out there but that's fine that's fine 75 seconds our listeners will never get back including the 20 seconds yeah i'm spending right now

Zain 47:23

justifying it 95 seconds of your time people cory over to you whatever you want to talk about i guess fuck you there's

Corey 47:29

there's a broader point here and there's something interesting um and it has to do with uh when things move from a conversation amongst the political class to hit hit us normal folk i'm not a normal folk i but like when it hits the normal folks and all of a sudden you know we we start to worry as parents like what in the fuck is going on this is a cousin

Zain 47:48

of my question this is good you haven't thrown the whole entire thing away that's good so

Corey 47:52

so the like the individual components there are things people will point to they'll say like jason kenney's grandfather mark kenney is in the curriculum we can talk about that there are of pros and cons to that i think the reality is he

Corey 48:05

was actually fairly famous he had an alberta connection you're talking about jazz why wouldn't you talk about the guy it's weird that he's in there it feels a little

Corey 48:12

korea-ish but whatever um people have really latched on to and god knows i have like the silk road and marco polo being things that kids in grade two learn about uh the way christianity is framed the lack of any lgbtq representation the fact that uh uh reconciliation and the idea of um uh you know basically anything that would cast western colonizers into a negative light uh doesn't come up in in this curriculum so you're at orange shirt day and you don't even know what residential schools are like why are you wearing an orange shirt you don't even know what a residential school is for the next four years yeah

Corey 48:49

yeah so uh there are many things that you can point to there but the bigger point is this there is so so much blood in the water there's so much chum out there that as a parent even paying half attention you're thinking like what

Corey 49:02

what the fuck is going on what

Corey 49:04

what is happening to the curriculum and uh the curriculum has become this politicized thing and it that creates anxiety as a parent because you do not want your

Corey 49:13

your child to be an experiment in a weird culture war and you do not want alberta to be a weird outlier on these things and as parents we will do most anything anything for our kids and i think that this is a very dangerous place for jason kenny to be because this is one of these times when you can take an issue that is up here i

Corey 49:30

got my hand above my head right now and it's it's cerebral and it's academic and it's the federalist society debating about how you know indoctrination or not of children and you've just made it very real to me all of a sudden you are throwing at me and i've got a kid going into grade two next year so this is about as personal as it gets for me right like you talk about grade two curriculum athenian

Corey 49:48

athenian democracy is you know kids are amazing they can dive deep on on any given topic you know ask my daughter to talk about volcanoes she'll talk your ear off for six hours about things you had no idea i would do a disservice if i even attempted to follow her depth of knowledge on these things right they will grab onto something they like and follow it but the notion that they are going to take kind of just this this broad-based trivia approach to learning at this age is madness to me and i i think I think that mostly it's the fact that it feels like it's not being driven in the interest of my kids but it's being driven about an agenda that

Corey 50:24

that is going to cause a political firestorm on this particular matter. And by the way, I don't know how we get out of this now because if next election Rachel Notley is premier and flips it all back and it's the other curriculum, you're going to have the other population worried

Corey 50:39

worried about it being political on the other side. Now, I have been sitting racking my brain for the last week. How do you depoliticize curriculum? But the reality is what the NDP government did is the depoliticized curriculum. And if that's off the table, if that's now considered the politicized curriculum, listening to the experts, I

Corey 50:54

I don't know what the fuck to do. And so I'm deeply alarmed about how parents will be reacting to the education system, basically

Corey 51:00

basically forever at this point, like somebody's got to put this gun away. But, you know, that

Corey 51:06

that is, that is a conscious choice this government made to make this a political issue, and then bring it into our lives in this way. And I just – you're seeing what you rarely see, which

Corey 51:17

which is a legitimate groundswell of people who are concerned about these things. Big Facebook groups of 20,000, 30,000 parents all of a sudden jumping on board, right? So I wonder about Jason Kenney's blind spot on this one because Jason Kenney has many things and he has had many experiences, but one of them is not being a parent.

Zain 51:36

Carter, good take there, Corey, and I appreciate you course

Zain 51:41

course-correcting us in this direction. Carter, what do you think of this groundswell to this point, right, that Corey's mentioning? You brought up Bill 10. I kind of reintroduced it about, like, that also saw a tremendous groundswell. Your perspectives on what that could mean for Jason Kenney, and from a strategy perspective, do you feel like this will open up people's eyes more to what this government is doing overall, Or do you feel like this is parents for their kids and that's the issue here? And how does, for example, let me insert the opposition NDP here, play their cards with this situation? They know this is extremely polarizing. They know there's a groundswell forming. They probably also know that, hey, we probably want some of these parents in our fold. Is that way too opportunistic? Or is there something that they can do as a political party? So I'm asking you a triple-barrel question, as I commonly do on this podcast, but any thoughts on anything I've kind of put out there?

Carter 52:35

I think Corey's passion about this was exactly right. I mean, Corey's passion about this as a parent of young children is exactly how every other parent in this province is going to be feeling. Of course, this is an opportunity for the NDP. All they have to do is go around and say, you know, this new curriculum prepares your child to be an expert in trivial pursuit, but not to take place in the technology economy. economy and and realistically we don't even fucking play trivial pursuit anymore it's a dead game i gotta tell you like

Corey 53:05

i i couldn't agree more like this is a curriculum that emphasizes memorization of trivia which will be great if they're ever on who wants to be a millionaire or if their phone needs to be charged and they can't access wikipedia but

Corey 53:16

it probably isn't building them into productive citizens for the 21st century we

Carter 53:20

we are inundated with information that is incorrect or out of context or difficult to understand and we are instead going to give them the reign of Charlemagne as their center point for grade two. And so we keep picking on grade two because grade two, when you look at the grade two social studies curriculum, it leaps out at you. I mean, there's other things, you know, all of a sudden the word abstinence starts to reintroduce itself as the best way to avoid pregnancy, arguably true. But, you know, it's all about emphasis. If the emphasis is on the word abstinence instead of on the words, you know birth control choice even when we're looking at the word consent consent has been shifted from being consent where both parties are responsible to a kind of a women are responsible for providing or or not providing consent it is now a one-party type of transaction and that those are the types of things that that will play to people that people can understand that the NDP can make massive hay about this this is the wrong curriculum for the wrong time and it's coupled Coupled with the,

Carter 54:24

the, you know, the UCP cutting post-secondary funding, the UCP not understanding and not managing the COVID problem properly. All of these different things are adding on top of one another and the fire is just getting hotter and hotter and hotter. So Jason Kenney, to

Carter 54:43

to his credit, let's be clear, he promised all of this. he

Carter 54:48

he promised all of this but what he also promised and the price we were pulling willing to pay was all of these social changes if we got back our jobs and our economic security and

Carter 55:00

and he's only provided one half of his promises and that's the socially conservative side so

Carter 55:06

so this thing is going to go down like a lead balloon it's going down unbelievably badly and i don't know but if if i If I was sitting in the premier's office and we just lost the doctor's deal and the budget was going over like a lead balloon and

Carter 55:23

we've got a curriculum that landed with a thud, I might be thinking that it might be the only solution to this might be wholesale cabinet change.

Carter 55:33

So I wouldn't be surprised to see a shuffle.

Carter 55:37

It might be the only way through this particular nightmare at this stage.

Zain 55:41

Profit Carter with another uncalled for prediction.

Zain 55:51

Corey, let's talk about politics. Let's keep it on the political strategy side. NDP, what do they do here?

Corey 55:58

Yeah, I think this is pretty – if it's not exactly, it's pretty close to one of those examples where your opponent is lighting themselves on fire. So, you know, don't fall into the trap where all of a sudden it looks like you're trying to politicize the curriculum the other way. Really reinforce like, hey, this should be built by experts. This is the overriding point here. We don't want your children to be experiments in culture wars. We want to trust the people who go to school for these things, the people who get PhDs in the development of curriculum. We want to look at what other provinces are doing. You know, I also worry about the kind of the comps and what's going to happen if all of a sudden Alberta is this weird outlier where your education here was so different from an education elsewhere. And just imagine your son or daughter wants to go to McGill or University of Toronto. Doesn't even matter. But like a grade 12 education here is not seen as the same as a grade 12 education elsewhere. And Carter, I remember when you and I were in Washington, D.C., talking to a friend of ours who worked at Hill & Knowlton with us, and he was there with his, I believe, girlfriend at the time. And she grew up in the South, and she was talking about how when she went to university, like, she was surprised even by the talk of the Civil War, which was known as the War of Northern Aggression, where she went to school. Do you remember that conversation? I don't

Corey 57:16

remember that specifically. just like hearing about and

Corey 57:18

and hearing about like this totally different universe and i just i deeply worry about my kids being from a totally different universe my

Carter 57:26

my daughter and i were talking about this the other day because my daughter's university age and so she applied to a number of different universities and you get right now a three to five point bump in

Carter 57:36

in your universe in in your high school average when you're from alberta so universities across the country look at graduates from high school in alberta and say oh they're three to five percent better than their grades because of what they've been taught and how well they are learning and they give us a bump to apply to universities across the country and that bump ended because of this curriculum so this curriculum we've lost the relationship with the northwest territories we've lost i think it was nunavut also that was taking our curriculum that's gone because we have decided to make this It's all about politics and about the past instead of around technology and the opportunities that our curriculum was giving our children, and that's gone.

Zain 58:20

Let's keep talking politics, Carter. What does the Kennedy government do here?

Corey 58:26

so they bring you

Zain 58:28

you into the fold. No, but if they bring me in,

Carter 58:31

they're walking away from their ideology. If they bring me in, they're saying, hey, pragmatic Carter, the guy who's in the center who wants to understand what the people want, why don't you tell us how to solve this? My solution is shuffle the cabinet, walk away from some of these bad decisions, try and get back on some solid ground because right now everything that you're on is ice that's breaking up under your feet. That's my solution. But I don't come from the ideological right. right i've never been part of the ideological right and i don't understand the ideological right so their solution may be completely different than anything i can imagine so

Zain 59:10

so so so give me a sense then do you predict for me what what what he's going to do because he must be seeing the reaction he must be or do you or do you just go to your earlier point say he's relishing the fight he doesn't care this is what he expected i

Carter 59:22

i don't know i mean i maybe i mean casey mad who's already responding to the evil ndp and what they're already doing maybe that's maybe that's all All they've got is the ideological play and the hope that the NDP will overplay their hand. And, you know, Corey was starting to talk about that when I derailed him. But, you know, maybe that's what they're hoping for. The NDP overplays their hand. And

Zain 59:43

And I wasn't fair with you. I asked you what, you know, what they should do versus what they will do. And I think those are two very different things, especially how we see the ideological side being framed here. spending political capital that may not even be there on a premise that's perhaps miscalculated as to who Albertans are, which we've repeated over and over. Corey, I'll ask it to you a little bit more cleaner. What do you think they do do, seeing how this curriculum is landing with Albertans?

Corey 1:00:09

Well, for the second time tonight, I'm going to ignore that question. And I'm going to answer a different question.

Carter 1:00:14

You're good at this, man. You're good at podcasting. I'm doing really

Corey 1:00:16

really good. I still want to answer.

Corey 1:00:18

I still want to answer what does the NDP do? Because I was I was I was talking about the fact that there are certain people lighting their hair on fire. Those people are already with you, and you don't need to politicize this. You don't need to risk an own goal at a time like this. Just let this thing sort of play out with that group. Let other people carry your water on things like Mark Kennedy and any of the other things, the myriad of things that we've already talked about. But consider how you can start to erode the confidence of that next group out in this curriculum sense. Now, Carter mentioned jobs. jobs don't mind me just searching ads right now job ads for like words like decision making and critical thinking which are in the existing curriculum and then comparing that to accounts of job ads with words like roman empire silk road right like

Corey 1:01:03

like i think that wait wait have you found any jobs with marco polo with them not

Corey 1:01:09

yet but my point here is i think they're also very vulnerable on their own stated objectives for this curriculum right which is we've gotten too far away we want to make sure that alberta doesn't fall behind we saw some scores going but you know education scores are a means to an end and especially if you're more on on the right of the spectrum here and you're thinking about being a productive member of society and what that requires it probably doesn't require a roman empire silk road and marco polo and one of the great ironies i think here is that the same people who are telling us you must learn marco polo in grade two would probably be the first to deride getting a degree in the classics right oh so when you

Corey 1:01:47

you think about the conservative base and you think about their openness to some of these concepts or not i

Corey 1:01:53

i think this is i think jason kenney has opened a real opportunity to be attacked on ground that should be solid for him as well i don't

Corey 1:02:00

don't think you're going to get necessarily the social conservatives on board with you you know this is going back to a very traditional view of education but when you think more about the libertarian conservatives the economic conservatives conservatives, this

Corey 1:02:11

this curriculum is really quite open to criticism as well. And maybe if I were the NDP, I would be thinking about that. Because again, I wouldn't worry too much about the group behind me. They're already there. Parents are so mad about this thing if they're mad about this thing. But there's that next group out who, just as Carter said, they

Corey 1:02:31

they want jobs, they want economy, and maybe this curriculum can't deliver it for them. Maybe there's enough in it that you can can point to it and say what

Corey 1:02:38

is this going to do for your kids honestly

Zain 1:02:40

honestly a notable uh moment that illustrated that for me was during the facebook live when kenny and the education minister were asked about coding and technology infrastructure required for coding and her response was you know a lot of that stuff we can we can just do with pen and paper it's fine like don't need to worry about it sort of stuff it was just i mean said

Corey 1:02:59

like it's the most trial and error thing

Corey 1:03:02

like i heard a web developer like it is a trial and error thing you can't like it's basically getting it wrong seeing an error message googling it going to stack overflow trying to figure out how you incorporate that answer you

Corey 1:03:12

you can't do this on pen and paper i

Corey 1:03:14

i mean it just sounds like a totally out of touch curriculum yeah

Zain 1:03:16

yeah and even for a non-developer like me it was just like that just didn't make sense and i think we'll like land very poorly as an illustration of this i'll stick with you for a second though because answer my question now now that you've got that that ndp thing out of of your system. What will the Kennedy government do in your mind here? Because they're seeing how this is landing. They must, they must see

Zain 1:03:38

see how this is landing. Any course correction? They seem to be making some edits on the fly. Many people joking that this is an open Google Doc on Twitter that we can all just chime in on at this point. But what do you think they're going to do in the grand scheme of things? And how do you think this will impact the high school curriculum that's also also going to be coming out as well so

Corey 1:03:57

so i think that's smart what they're doing it is it is draft say we're hearing it's a draft we're incorporating changes some of it was just positioned in a way like these are summaries obviously we didn't do one paragraph of work so we're finding better ways to frame it this is the intention of it thank you we're helping clarify the intention of this and try to minimize those things as much as you can uh in so far as you have a shot here it's to show to parents that yes you are hearing them some of these things are just triggers absolutely they are going to point out when comparable versions of this are in the existing curriculum again

Corey 1:04:28

again switching back to ndp advice here the existing curriculum was very old right you know our understanding of these things advances and we don't want to be teaching people a 20 year old curriculum from a 20 year old curriculum but if i'm the ucp i'm pointing to this is not different than what we had before uh look at this here look at this other province finding all of those comps but also showing a certain reasonableness and willingness to move move on all of that there.

Corey 1:04:53

You own the curriculum, you're the government. And what you've got to do here is you've got to sort of package it in a context that is, you know, going to be digestible to Albertans. But a lot of that things behind the scenes, you don't actually need to change that much if you want to keep it. Again, flipping back to the NDP, you've got to make sure people are aware of that. You've got to say, hey, listen, look at the full source documents here. Don't let them get away with the headlines. But yeah, I mean, I am just trying to make this seem like Like, not a very big deal, business as usual, same as other provinces, same as we've done in the past. People would like you to think this is outrageous, but this is how things are done. That's my advice. In terms of, like, Carter's advice of, like, doing cabinet shuffles, maybe pulling LaGrange off this, I don't think that makes sense. I think that would just torpedo the curriculum. It would make it clear you had no confidence

Carter 1:05:41

confidence in it. I think they need to torpedo the curriculum.

Corey 1:05:47

I don't think they want to. And so if your goal is to get this curriculum through, you're not going to shuffle your minister.

Zain 1:05:53

Let's move from the curriculum as a hard pivot to doctors, because this was a busy week in Alberta, and the Alberta Medical Association and the government have been working on a deal, and there was a close vote this week that went 53 to 47 to reject the government's most recent offer to doctors. Carter, I'll ask you a broader question before we get into the specifics of this. Is this an extension, another proof point, another chapter of Corey's culture war conversation? As Jason Kenney said, I said I'm going to do this. I'm doing it. I said I'm going to do this. I'm doing it. Does this fall into that same category? Or is this a deal that they wanted to quietly go away, you think?

Carter 1:06:35

I think every government has had, every government in Alberta for certainly for a number of years has had a contentious relationship with our doctors. I know that when First Ministers conferences have occurred in the past, the First Ministers will kind of come up to the other premier, you know, the premier of Alberta and say, you guys got to get your doctors under control because we can't afford what you're doing. So right now, but one in every $10 of spending goes to physician fees. fees. Those fees, let's not call them salaries, okay, because that's clearly not what they are, but it's a tremendous amount of money that go to 11,000 Albertans. And every government has tried to curtail

Carter 1:07:18

curtail that in some fashion. The NDP actually was fairly successful. They had a deal with the doctors that kept the growth to a minimum, probably the lowest growth that we've seen. We saw less of that under the former Progressive Conservatives. And right now what we saw was Minister Shandro trying to curtail it even further.

Carter 1:07:40

And it didn't work.

Carter 1:07:41

But what's interesting is it didn't work 53 to 47.

Carter 1:07:45

It barely didn't work. One of the challenges that the government has is that the AMA is incredibly strong.

Carter 1:07:53

But this vote tells me that the AMA isn't that strong. And

Carter 1:07:56

And maybe there's maybe there's opportunities.

Carter 1:08:02

Yeah, maybe there's opportunities to to

Carter 1:08:05

take this very large, very powerful worker organization and try to try to

Carter 1:08:14

to legislate what's going to happen with it, because Lord knows the

Carter 1:08:17

the negotiations aren't necessarily going to work. There may be ways to split groups off, weaken the association, and maybe that's the next play for Kenny. I think that this is not something that's going to go away because at the end of the day, you can't just let it go away. You're the government that's trying to—every government's trying to constrain how much money they're spending on this.

Zain 1:08:39

That's an interesting takeaway, Carter, as your headline, and you talk about the splintering. We've already seen, you know, all doctors aren't created equal as it relates to their negotiation, right? Right. You see the radiology

Zain 1:08:49

and the yeah, no, they're right. Absolutely. Especially with their specializations and some very archaic billing codes that that still remain. And they lobby to keep in certain specialties, as we've talked about previously on this program as well. Corey, what was your takeaway when you saw this vote? Carter, your instinct was very interesting, not where my head would be at. But so maybe, Corey, I'll start with a different question was when you saw this 53 to 47 vote, they called it a you know, part of that was an erosion of trust. Others have called it in the medical community as they saw a pathway to privatization of health care, which is why they said no. What was your takeaway and headline when you saw this headline quite literally come out earlier this week?

Corey 1:09:30

Yeah, the debate in the medical community was very robust. Physicians were sending emails through their local chapters back and forth. Here's why I'm voting for. Here's why I'm voting against. Here's my 12 points. points uh and these are these are how these 12 points should be addressed by the government before i'd be willing to consider voting this way you mentioned the the opens the door to private health i'm not you know i don't know i i read some but not all of some of that correspondence that was floating around i don't know if that was really the thing there was also like there was not like a resolution clause uh it all ultimately came to the minister there were just there were many concerns and i mentioned all of this because it

Corey 1:10:06

it was a very close vote and you could see that That as well floating out there was just a general sense that doctors had been deeply disrespected over this past couple of years, especially during the pandemic. And Minister Shandro, Minister Tyler Shandro sent out an email or a letter to doctors saying basically like, I'm sorry. Like, I'm sorry

Corey 1:10:26

sorry I said that it wasn't contentious. It has been contentious. The fact that he said it wasn't contentious became a point of contention amongst physicians. Yeah, right. Sorry I said that. I want to turn the page. I want to work together. You know, it was an email that was really more about tone and the desire to start a new chapter.

Corey 1:10:45

will say this, if I am, let me just start this way.

Corey 1:10:50

Tyler Shandro did exactly what Jason Kenney wanted him to do. He was doing his job, and it wouldn't necessarily be, quote unquote, fair to punish him for doing his job. But I think now is the time to shuffle Tyler Chandru out of health and say, we do need a fresh start on this. And then give the smallest give that you think could possibly be given in order to make this look like even a modestly new deal. I'm not even sure I would do the resolution clause. I would maybe look at one of the other ones there. You're talking about 3% flipping at this point. And it just allows you to reset, get another vote and try to drive this thing through. I don't know that I would start looking to split the AMA because then, based on a 53-47 vote, you might have trouble with big pockets of the healthcare system all over the place, right? You might be able to sort of pick off group by group, but right now your challenge would be what if you have total chaos with the family docs, that very front line, and the specialists you sort of make peace with one at a time. I just think that that way is actually too uncertain, and you're better off negotiating with the AMA, especially given how close it was. We're

Corey 1:11:55

We're talking about 3%. Find a way to go back. I would give up Tyler Shandro in a heartbeat, not in the sense that I would be punishing him. I want to be really clear because he was doing exactly what the premier wanted. Move him to a different portfolio. Bring in somebody who has the right tone and tenor, probably somebody like a Jason Copping, right, who's the minister of labor right now, and just

Corey 1:12:16

just get it done. like you're so close and there's no sense in blowing it up and starting over you're

Corey 1:12:22

you're inches away and

Carter 1:12:24

and keep in mind like there's there's no more thankless job than being the minister of health uh like you this is not a this is not the fault of j of chandro he did everything that he was asked to do and uh as every minister has done in the past because it's just a really hard gig So

Zain 1:12:43

So tell me about the shuffle. I want to push back a bit. The file already seems to be so contentious.

Zain 1:12:49

contentious. Do you want to burn more political capital with another minister in the field rather than just be like, Shandro, get this thing done. You know how much I love you for it. And then I'll kind of put you somewhere else and give you like a calmer, you know, couple more years until a secure reelection versus putting someone in. And I'm pushing back from like a sense of

Corey 1:13:12

of – No, I get it. You're right. There's a big amount of risk doing it this way, right? Because if then copying can't get it done, just to use him as an example,

Corey 1:13:20

what do you do then? You shuffle people again? But I do think that – like these things are expensive. You talk about these clauses. You talk about some of the things that physicians want. There are price tags attached to that. Millions, tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions if you're talking about dispute resolutions if they go the wrong way, right? over the course of an agreement like this.

Corey 1:13:41

You don't want to give those things up. Shuffling out a minister is cheap. And if that's what it requires to get it over the line, that plus one other sweetener, then that

Corey 1:13:51

that is your reset. That is how you say, okay, we're going to begin all of these things again. Now there is risk there, but you're in a world of bad risks as it stands. Because if you go with Chandra again and you fail again, or opposition solidifies,

Corey 1:14:06

is also deeply problematic and i think at this point you might need a new broker to get the deal through i i just i think perhaps that water is too poisoned this is a man who and we just said that he did exactly what jason kenney wanted him to do true but there are things that he has done from a style perspective that have absolutely pissed off the doctors including showing up on the driveway of a physician and yelling at them right carter oh

Zain 1:14:32

oh go ahead cory Sorry, sorry, sir. No, I'm

Zain 1:14:35

Carter, could Jason Kenney himself be the white knight? Or would he install a new minister to do this?

Carter 1:14:40

You'd never put yourself at risk like that if you're the premier. You can't touch it. It's toxic. It's the hardest deal you've got. It's the deal that kind of predicates

Carter 1:14:51

predicates everything else that's going to happen. You have to get this done, and you can't touch it yourself. But you can get

Zain 1:14:58

get credit for it in that sense. As

Carter 1:15:00

As soon as it's over.

Carter 1:15:02

Yeah. I mean, obviously, I mean, it's your government, but you can't touch it yourself. You have to stay away from it because as soon as you get dragged into it, the political stakes are too high. And, um,

Carter 1:15:11

um, this is a, this is something you could lose. Um, many governments have tried to take on their doctors. Many governments have failed. Um, and it's not like there's one uniform doctor set. I mean, this idea that doctors are voting against it because it's, you know, know risks privatization yeah sure some doctors are afraid of privatization um not the orthopedic surgeons though give them a call ask them how they feel about privatization uh they'll take you around the block a couple times there's different factions within the ama of course different challenges and and so there's not a universal um opportunity well there is kind of a universal threat so um if i was a premier if i was advising a premier i'd say don't touch this This is what you have ministers for. And to Corey's point, it's not that ministers are disposable, but they're relatively interchangeable.

Zain 1:16:07

Let's leave this segment with this final question, which is strategic advice for the AMA. So their members have rejected this by a couple of points. If you were giving them strategic advice for the next round of negotiations, for how to push this through, would you tell them that they have all the leverage, that they should stick to their guns, whether it be on the negotiation or the communication side of it? What

Zain 1:16:34

What are you telling them, Corey? Well,

Corey 1:16:35

the leadership of the AMA drove this. They tried to get this through and were even thanked by Minister

Corey 1:16:43

Minister Shandro. I'm not sure he did them any favors on that front. This is awkward for them. To be the leadership of an association and not be able to pull your association along on this deal, that's tough. And I think that there's going to be some hard conversations about what they do. At the very least, I think they're going to need to in that next – in whatever negotiation is bring in some of the more prominent critical voices and say, okay, well, let's try to figure this out. We're not saying you're going to get everything you want, but you're going to need to bring a couple people in the tent because if the sides are the same the next time this goes, why would you expect a different result? So you're going to have to work with some members and show that you tried to incorporate some of their concerns in whatever the next deal is with the government. Again, I think you're probably – if you're in the leadership position, if you're in the bargaining team, you're probably pretty – and like the AMA, when they bargain, is wild. They're not as professionalized in that sense as the unions are, right? They

Corey 1:17:37

They have these elected representatives who come with all varying degrees of background. But you're going to need to sort

Corey 1:17:43

sort of keep it together and keep the new people knowing like what is the world of possible here. year like yeah okay you voted no that doesn't mean everything is different it means you're now you're now going to have to kind of incrementally try to move forward a little bit but don't expect the whole table to be blown up and i think if

Corey 1:18:02

if you can do that and turn it around to a yes vote relatively quickly you're fine but you may be seen as just not having any kind of jam or authority if you're not careful so um really downplay

Corey 1:18:16

downplay talk about how close it was say we had some pretty pretty obvious concerns, lots of good discussion amongst the members. We're bringing some of those members in, we're going to go to the government, we're going to try to settle this out. And we're going to get this through.

Corey 1:18:27

It's close. And again, I think the mistake both sides would make at this point is rapidly or aggressively blowing this situation up and trying to change the pieces in too dramatic of a sense. Because you could move yourself much further back when, you know, peace is relatively near and in sight.

Zain 1:18:46

Carter, what do you think strategic advice for the AMA?

Carter 1:18:49

Well, it's funny. We're talking about the removal of a minister. Does someone have to fall on their sword from the AMA's side? I'm not sure that it's necessarily true, but imagine that you're the government. Let's say that you've shuffled out your minister, and now you've sent a new minister in, and the new minister pulls up to the AMA offices and says, what's it going to take to get this thing done? done do you necessarily trust the people sitting across the table from you who said don't worry we're going to try and get this last one done the

Carter 1:19:18

the last one didn't work so

Carter 1:19:20

so when they come to you and say well i i think that this next thing is what we need to get it done um

Carter 1:19:25

you're going to say okay

Carter 1:19:27

what are the consequences what are we going to do if this doesn't happen because what what needs to happen next is is some sort of a sense of um momentum for the doctors you you know movement if the government's going to move a minister and

Carter 1:19:42

and then throw a few uh scraps of of meat onto the table uh then something's got to change from the ama as well because right now they failed they are uh as big of a failure on this as um as the government is we're

Zain 1:19:59

we're going to leave that segment there move it on to our final segment our over under and our lightning round Stephen Carter, you look ready, but are you ready?

Carter 1:20:06

I'm not today, Zane. Thanks

Carter 1:20:07

Thanks for asking. I'm not feeling it. We're going to really have to dig deep.

Zain 1:20:12

Corey, overrated or underrated? I'm starting with you. School curriculums.

Corey 1:20:18

There's a reason why this has become this front line in the culture wars and the reason why there's so many philosophical debates about what's occurring with children is that, really,

Corey 1:20:30

this is going to affect how people live their lives going forward. And it's unfortunate that it's making our kids into pawns in a broader ideological debate instead of trying to look at what's best for them to drive them forward. But yeah, absolutely underrated.

Zain 1:20:44

Carter, you may not have to dig deep on this one. I'm asking the same question. Overrated, underrated school curriculums?

Carter 1:20:49

Underrated. There's 25,000 homeschool students right now in the province of Alberta, and I worry about them every day because they're not necessarily, they're supposed to be taught the same curriculum. But I worry that if you're not taught the curriculum, if you're not given the opportunity to learn, you fall backwards. And that's why we're so worried about this new presentation that's come from the from the Kenney government.

Zain 1:21:11

Carter, I'm sticking with you. Doctors' contracts, overrated or underrated?

Carter 1:21:16

Underrated. I mean, this is one in ten dollars of spending. If you can't figure out how to control it, if it's uncontrollable, then your government spending is uncontrollable. Healthcare eats up, what, 45% of most operating budgets for provinces. It is massively important. And it's just been growing and growing. Keep in mind, it was 0% in 1969 when Peter Lougheed took over the PC party. Zero. And now it's 45%. I mean, it just, it keeps growing because, you know, it's uncontrollable. It turns out that everybody fails at keeping people alive forever.

Zain 1:22:00

Corey, doctor's contracts, overrated, underrated?

Corey 1:22:04

Carter said it all. He's 100% correct. The fact that we spend so many billions of dollars on these contracts, like this is by far the most consequential contract within any of this public sector bargaining that's going on. It is the difference between balanced budgets and not. It's the difference between contained costs and not. And it also, as Carter alluded to, is one of these things that is deeply personal for people. They like their physicians, generally speaking, even if they worry about the health care system at large. They don't want to think that because of a decision the government makes that their care could be at risk or a loved one's care could be at risk. This is a big, big discussion. And in many ways, I think it's, candidly,

Corey 1:22:47

candidly, I think it's nothing short of a miracle that the government is

Corey 1:22:51

doing as well as it is in this quote-unquote fight with the doctors right now. The fact that they are this close to a deal is quite remarkable, especially one that is looking as consequential as this.

Zain 1:23:02

Corey, I'm going to stick with you on this next one. We're moving to the federal side of things, to the federal NDP. There's tensions within the NDP on Israel-Palestine issues. The party has their upcoming convention, which runs April 9th to 11th. And there's a list of resolutions, I should say, with half a dozen that articulate solidarity with Palestine and causes for greater sanctions and condemnation for Israel. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being this is not a problem at all. There's no zero on the scale, Corey, as you know, because the scale starts at one. The 10 being this is a huge, disastrous issue for the NDP. Where do you kind of peg this particular one?

Corey 1:23:41

I don't, you know what? This is not a new fight within the NDP. I'm going to put it at a three. It's always possible it will flare up and somebody will say something that makes the party look just totally bigoted and awful. But this is not a new tension to manage.

Zain 1:23:58

Carter, Corey gives it a three. Ray, do you give it somewhere in that neighborhood or are you going higher or lower?

Carter 1:24:04

It's a dangerous problem, but it's not new to Corey's point. I mean, it exists, has existed for some time.

Carter 1:24:13

it's hard to navigate, but it tends to get navigated. And this may sound not necessarily 100% politically correct, but it

Carter 1:24:20

it gets navigated because most Canadians don't care. It's not top of mind. It's not our number one issue. It's a much harder issue in the United States. where it tends to have more impact in Canada. Obviously, there are people who care deeply about it. It is a deeply divisive issue and a very difficult issue. But overall, most Canadians aren't voting on it. So if they're relatively

Carter 1:24:45

relatively smart, they can get their way around it. I give it a five.

Zain 1:24:48

Carter, Alberta Energy Minister Sonia Savage earlier this week named a five-member committee to consult the public about the future of coal mining in the province. Are you in or out on the strategy for this committee?

Carter 1:24:59

I'm out. I don't trust a fucking word out of Sonia Savage's mouth when it comes to coal mining. I don't know what the rules are today. I mean, yes, we're repealing this rule, but all the changes that happened there, all I can see is that one Australian company has pulled themselves

Carter 1:25:14

themselves from consideration, it looks like. So hopefully the companies do the right thing and get the hell out of Alberta and leave us alone for this.

Zain 1:25:23

Corey, are you in or out on the strategy for the new coal mining committee?

Corey 1:25:30

I'm out, and I would say if you are similarly out in Alberta, you should keep your eyes very closely on this one. I mean, Monday was a wild news day. I think the government had five news releases of substance.

Corey 1:25:41

Governments always have tons of news releases in a day, but there were just so many things going on.

Corey 1:25:46

One of the things that came out of this coal panel was also a survey that was provided to people, a public engagement of the government. That was just about as bad of a survey as I have ever seen come from the government. I am going to very shorthand it because I know we're getting, I don't know, late into the episode, shall we say. But there

Corey 1:26:03

there were questions that effectively said, how

Corey 1:26:08

how much do you know about the 1976 coal policy? And if you said not very much, it's like, well, what do you think you should learn about it before you comment on it? Like the number

Corey 1:26:16

questions that led to other questions, if you picked certain answers, is terrible survey design. Like you're creating essentially more friction to choose an answer that the government doesn't want to hear. and and basically that means you've got your thumb on the scale in a big way and the way the entire thing was written was basically you don't understand the coal policy the coal policy doesn't affect you anyways get the fuck out of here with your opinions and oh if you actually feel like you still want to provide your opinion let me put all of these hurdles in front of you and that to me yeah well that to me talks about what the intent is and what the long-term goal is with this with this con you know quote unquote consultation and so i don't think this is a dead issue at all. I think if we take our eyes off this ball for a moment, Alberta, you're going to find the tops of mountains stripped off and coal mining going on around waterways, all sorts of things that you will not like. So Alberta, keep your eye on this ball.

Zain 1:27:08

Cory, I'm going to stick with you on this one. The Parliamentary Budget Office predicts a $363 billion deficit, issuing a warning about stimulus spending. Also, you know, the Budget Office indicating that the economy is faring far better than they had anticipated if you were in the trudeau government right now cory and you saw this headline on a scale of one to ten one being i'm not concerned at all ten being i am concerned and shitting my pants where would you uh peg yourself if you're in the trudeau pmo right now i

Corey 1:27:37

would put it at a four but i do want to make a broader point about the pbo and then the creeping role of auditor general across this country which is it used to be their job was just to check our accounting and make sure that we were doing things as we were supposed to be doing them. But they've gotten deep into policy and giving opinions about whether something is a good idea or a bad idea, which is really the role of elected officials. And I think it's problematic. You know, many Canadians would disagree it's problematic. Let me tell you why it's problematic. Because it is seen as a neutral gospel. And there are people who will disagree with the opinions of general and parliamentary budget officers in this context.

Corey 1:28:12

I think we need to put these people in closer boxes. I want you to run the calculations. Tell me the numbers. Give your assessment of it. I don't actually want to hear if you think it's a good idea or not. We have think tanks for that. We have opponent politicians for that. There are no shortage of voices as to whether a policy is a good idea or not. But the minute you put a kind of that mark on it, that impremature, that the PBO says maybe this is a dodgy idea or the general thinks maybe this was not constructed in the way that they would have liked, the

Corey 1:28:38

the suggestion is there's something deeply wrong with it. And really, when it gets down to it, it's one person's opinion. opinion

Carter 1:28:45

means auditor general right you mean auditor general no

Corey 1:28:49

no i mean both i mean like the parliamentary budget officer and the auditor general but you kept saying you see the attorney's general oh you

Corey 1:28:57

i'm just gonna change that in post just

Corey 1:29:00

just one second just one second everybody gets some clear audio so i can just say attorney

Corey 1:29:05

go use that you

Carter 1:29:06

you did it again you did it again though you did it again

Zain 1:29:09

hold on hold on let's give it wait let's try it again okay before you do before you do carter um just say southern conference conference for us just so we have that cory

Carter 1:29:29

cory's right except cory's right except that he said uh attorneys

Carter 1:29:33

attorneys in general instead of auditors general carter

Zain 1:29:36

carter but he's absolutely right how much are you shitting your pants if you're in the Trudeau PMO, by the way. Not

Carter 1:29:41

you're fine. I'm not campaigning against him. He can say whatever he wants to say. But the reality is that the $380 billion kept Canada afloat. And I'm going to go back to the people of Canada and say, you know what? We had to do what we had to do. Are you happy now? Are you relatively whole? Because that's what we had to do to keep this economy moving forward.

Zain 1:30:01

Carter, we're recording this episode on April 1st. By May 1st, does Tal Shandros still have a job as Health Minister of Alberta?

Zain 1:30:12

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on Episode 928 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Attorney General Corey Hogan. We'll see you next time.

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