Transcript
Zain
0:03
This is a strategist episode 932. My name is Zain Velji with me as always Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, it is Sunday evening. We are one day before the federal budget. How are you guys doing?
Carter
0:16
I'm doing great. I've got both cake and pie, which are really loud and going to be quite noisy. And it's going to drive Corey absolutely batty throughout the course of this podcast. So it's like a total win for me. I'm already excited. Yeah,
Corey
0:28
Yeah, you're going to create a real wonderful audioscape for our listeners in this. You
Carter
0:33
You know what? Where's this newfound concern for the listeners? Where does that come from?
Corey
0:39
cared. It started when I started listening to our podcast.
Corey
0:46
you're like, this is not listenable?
Carter
0:48
people listen? Why do people listen to this shit?
Zain
0:50
Listen, we are contractually obligated by the fine folks at West Chat to do this podcast. We have been contractually obligated to do 1,000 episodes. We're well on our way. Everything after that is our choice. We're getting
Zain
1:03
very close. Stephen Carter, have you also chosen a third dessert, perhaps a bastardization of an Nanaimo bar to include alongside your high
Carter
1:15
You can try and pick on me, but people loved my ratio. They got the ratio. They understood the two-to-one.
Carter
1:22
The one-to-one on the custard is wrong. It's just wrong. Two to one on the brownie part, the custard, and then a little bit, a quarter icing, or an eighth even.
Corey
1:31
Like, is this a clip show? Are we just going through our greatest hits here? Nobody cares. Nobody
Carter
1:36
ratio. People, move on. Move on. Bring on something new. Oh, you know what? Let's do something new, like COVID politics. That'll be fucking new. That's a good idea. Great. Let's do that.
Zain
1:44
You are reminding me, Corey Hogan, any quick comments before we get started on the process to appoint our next governor general?
Corey
1:55
no not nothing at all anybody have any comments they want to walk back after public outrage in a day anything like that can we take a doug ford page run with that book carter do you want to do any of that we
Carter
2:05
get ready to walk back the entire podcast tomorrow so that's
Zain
2:09
that's true that is true we're gonna be talking about a budget uh less than uh 24 hours uh uh before it's it's going to drop. Let's move it on to our first segment. Fridays are for taking out the trash and Saturdays are for bringing the trash back into your house.
Zain
2:26
Oh man, I don't even know where to start here. As Ontario Premier Doug Ford sat down on Friday afternoon's news conference to extend the province's COVID-19 measures, social media feeds erupted with posts from around the province, from around the country, uniformly expressing outrage. I'm reading a piece here Here is an intro from the Washington Post, which is arguing that because of this disastrous Friday press conference and Saturday walkback that Doug Ford should resign. But let me add some of the details. Ford opened by blaming the federal government for not providing the province with sufficient vaccine supply, despite the fact that Ontario currently has still a million doses to yet to be administered, abdicating his responsibility for a pandemic that was never going to be solved immediately by vaccines. scenes. He moved on to make the absurd claim that Ontario had the toughest measures in North America, which it did not. He then added a couple of other items. He indicated that outdoor recreation in terms of playgrounds would now be closed. He also announced that the government was empowering the police in Ontario to arbitrarily stop anyone who's outside their residence during the province's lockdown, giving law enforcement extraordinary powers to threaten civil rights. Of course, this was certainly walked back by the government, but certainly was fought by several police forces in Ottawa, Waterloo, Peterborough, ensued, followed by Toronto and Hamilton. And then he also refused to do a few things that many people expected him to, a curfew, delaying and telling the Trudeau government to please fuck off with their offer for the Red Cross support, and also Also, not installing as many advocates that asked for anything related to paid sick days. Have I missed anything? This was a lot that they kind of threw out on a Friday afternoon and then walked back a ton of. Corey, you've got your hand up. You want to jump in with some context before we jump into analysis?
Corey
4:18
Closing the border with Manitoba, Quebec. Did you mention
Zain
4:20
mention that as well? I did not, no. So that was also part of the list of things that they announced.
Zain
4:27
Carter, anything I missed?
Carter
4:30
no i mean you've done a very exhaustive list but what you've already done with the exhaustive list is something that doug ford did to me with the exhaustive list i got confused there's so much to hear so much change so much going on that it became you
Carter
4:43
know we need these short forms of what it is that we're doing that's why the the lockdown terminology has become so powerful right the short form language is what we're all listening to that long litany of of things that are is happening and and not happening, and happening, and not happening, it's very, very confusing. And that's been my foundational takeaway,
Carter
5:03
all of this needs to be wrapped up in better communications. Because, you know, there's no question Ontario's on fire. There's a massive problem. And now, so is Alberta, per capita. But I'm sure we'll get there. All of these actions that he's taken, um you
Carter
5:24
it's a bit like the closing the barn door when the horse is left right like this is it we are already a massive problem and this is what i i see with both uh kenny and ford is both of them are looking at the problem uh hoping that it's going to go away through the vaccination and not realizing that the problem was three four weeks ago um
Carter
5:41
um that's where we really ran into the problem and and not addressing it then is what's put us in the in the bad spot today
Zain
5:48
Corey, why do you think social media erupted on Friday? Why do you think this was met with such, I can't call it universal, but the closest thing I've seen in a long time to universal disdain. We've seen a version of that here in Alberta. But why do you think this was met with such hostility from the residents of Ontario, certainly, but by Canadians writ large?
Corey
6:08
think it was a combination of the elements that you described there. there. Effectively, what Doug Ford did in his announcement was create a
Corey
6:15
a coalition of everybody against the announcement that he made. So you've got this underlying, why didn't you do anything sooner, Doug, cohort, and then you have people who would really not be very enthused with the police getting new arbitrary powers. And then you have outdoor recreation, which is one of the very few release valves you have if you live in a city like Toronto, where everything is is largely closed as it as it is and it just became too much and it didn't seem justifiable relative to um
Corey
6:47
other provinces were doing the moment maybe it is maybe it isn't one of the interesting things for me is if this was the right thing to do what
Corey
6:55
what a coward to
Corey
6:57
to walk it back on saturday right
Corey
7:00
i you know it the fact that he did walk it back so rapidly really does It does suggest it was more of a failed communications exercise than a true public health exercise, because ultimately, when people decided they didn't like it, he decided he didn't like it. And that's not what you would expect to see if it was truly rooted in public health concerns. Saying the other thing I want to say before I throw it back to you is the
Corey
7:22
announcement from the public health officials and the announcement from Doug Ford, they didn't occur at the same time. They don't there, right? And they're
Corey
7:30
they're just so different. They were so different. It was hard to sort of reconcile the two exercises and say, this is in response to what we just heard from the doctors. And so that also was a problem for Doug Ford.
Zain
7:42
you make some good points cory and carter i want to ask you a very simple question that perhaps is a complicated answer maybe it doesn't actually was was that was this a no-win announcement like as soon as doug ford sat in front of that podium on friday was there anything he could have said that would have been politically strategic politically sound uh or was this just a moment where he had too many factions against whatever action he would take that this was an l before before the game was even played on Friday afternoon.
Carter
8:13
You know, it's interesting. I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Much of the polling has been on this idea, are you happy with your province's restrictions or not happy with them, right? And it's almost 50-50. And I think that each group looks at the not happy group and says, well, really that not happy group is reflecting a group that's not happy because the restrictions go too far, or they're not happy because the restrictions don't go far enough. and really the not happy group is is both right and there's a percentage of inside
Carter
8:44
inside of both of them and much of the polling hasn't really gotten into that reasoning and rationale so
Carter
8:49
so i i think that you're you're we really aren't a damned if you do damned if we don't situation right now that the protests are ramping up the the people's anger about curfews the anger about uh about the the quote-unquote lockdowns that's legit the mask uh fear
Carter
9:07
fear uh you know the the amount of stuff that's going around is is significant at this point and plus the vaccine hesitancy all of this is layering on top of one another and we're seeing just a model where people uh people aren't happy and it doesn't matter what the province is going to do it's going to be received poorly uh which is why one of the reasons that i think you just need to do things in the best you know in the the best interest scientifically, to actually managing this pandemic.
Carter
9:34
Realistically, Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, the only person facing an imminent election, and it's only because of his own choice, is Prime Minister Trudeau. Everybody can go for a couple of years before they need to get back into the election cycle.
Carter
9:47
And so why don't you just do the right thing, allow
Carter
9:49
allow things to get back to where they need to get back to, and then you can claim victory afterwards. But instead, they're trying to win these victories, these week-long victories, or these day-long victories, where where they're putting out a new plan every day or every two days or every three days as though that daily plan is in some fashion going to fix this months-long problem. And it's just not going to. So why not fix it properly from the get-go and then be done with it in two to four weeks? And in the jurisdictions that have done this the best, that's what we're actually seeing. We're not seeing this on-again, off-again Doug Ford style of solving
Carter
10:22
solving a pandemic. Instead, you're seeing, oh, we've got 5, 10, 15 cases. we're locking down the city of melbourne we're locking down the city you know the the province of queens or the state of queensland we're those are the types of activities that have been done in areas and jurisdictions that have been successful big bold actions for a short period of time that actually eradicate it but we're not doing that we're just trying to manage the spread it doesn't matter which province you're in except for atlantic canada um you're We're managing the spread, and we've set an arbitrary line of what acceptable illness is, what acceptable death is. And I'll tell you something. As a politician, setting a line that says this is the level at which death is acceptable feels like a really bad long-term strategy.
Zain
11:08
For those listening at home, this was actually the 97th episode in a row that we've mentioned an Australia reference, thanks to largely Stephen Carter. carter uh thankfully it's not about whatever godforsaken
Carter
11:23
i went seven for nine never mind carter
Zain
11:27
carter can i cory i want to come to you in a second carter i have to follow up on that is
Zain
11:31
is it just that politicians have forgotten this the the narrative cycles that they're judged on like is it because they're just so in the bubble that they feel like we're being judged on a week-to-week basis so i need to win every week like we've had this discussion in the past Or do you feel like someone needs to pull them out of it and be like, you're going to be judged on your overall arc? Like, is that what's going on here? Is that what you fault? You know, this pattern you've talked about in the pandemic of certain politicians, whether it's Ford or others, of trying to win a week or a small little win? Or is it something different?
Carter
12:00
Every politician ever gets dome disease, right?
Carter
12:03
right? Where that which they are doing in that moment is the most important thing in their lives. And therefore, it is the most important thing in everybody else's lives. And so we believe in that moment that we have to win the day. we have to win the news cycle we have to win the week right
Carter
12:18
you know did our polls go up this week or did our polls go down this week and really it takes a very mature politician one that we really haven't seen very much of to stop doing that cycle that cyclical up and down i'm going to respond to this in the moment a mature politician takes a much longer view and
Carter
12:36
and they do things knowing that it's going to be unpopular perhaps
Carter
12:39
perhaps but they're doing it in the right best interest of the population, and
Carter
12:43
and then they time it so it comes out in
Carter
12:47
Jason Kenney may be doing that with all the other initiatives that Jason Kenney's got going on, plus his pandemic response that we've talked to in the past. He may be betting that people are going to forget about that two years from now when he has to actually go to an election. That
Carter
13:00
That would be the sign of kind of a mature election cycle. I'm not sure that that's where we are with any of these COVID responses, in part because I honestly believe that virtually every politician at the The same approach that I had when we kind of got into, you know, past this, the second wave, if you will, got into January, the numbers were coming down February, things are starting to get managed. I'm looking at the spring, I'm looking at the summer, and I'm thinking, I've got hope that this is going to go away.
Carter
13:26
And I think we've all been tremendously let down, because that hope has turned into, you know, like buying a lottery ticket, like Corey said last week.
Zain
13:35
You know, Corey, as someone who has been part of the problem yourself, for wanting episodes every single week a couple of months ago on the vaccine rollout. How's it going? What's it going? You know, you are not helping the overall case. And I just want to make note of that. You know, many people thought it was Stephen and I that wanted to do those episodes. But it was, in fact, Corey. So he could hold it over our head as a moral high ground. I'll ask you the same two questions I asked Carter. Was this a no-win press conference for Ford when he sat down on Friday? Or was there a path here that would have been perhaps been more advantageous for him?
Corey
14:09
it was it was no win because of course this was too late but also it was too far for some people right but that doesn't mean he needed to lose as badly as he did and there are there
Corey
14:20
there are ways that he could have provided uh i think a little bit more comfort um from both the communications and a public health point of view so ultimately i think you have to fault him for his approach and then his retreat on the on the outdoor activities on the playground shutdown on all But, you know, the
Corey
14:40
this is an actual quote from his press release. I have never shied away from telling you the brutal, honest truth, never shied away from tough decisions. And today I am here to do just that. Literally 24 hours he reversed this quote unquote tough decision. So I highlight it because as
Corey
14:58
as a politician, when you think about political strategy, one of the lessons that I would impart to anybody is you want to give yourself range of motion. Avoid absolute statements, right? And here is exactly why. Because you can find yourself in a situation the very next day where you have to eat a giant shit sandwich because you've had to do the exact opposite of what you emphatically said you would not do 24
Corey
15:23
But this is also not new to Doug Ford. Doug Ford has kind of a habit of making these tough guy statements, these bold statements, these absolute statements about this is how it's going to be and I'm going to give it to you straight. And when you do that,
Corey
15:35
you can get your – it makes it a little bit worse, frankly, because then down the road, you've got to kind of reel that thing back and that's not very much fun. Stephen talked about – and you asked Stephen about this idea of needing to win every week. Well, look,
Corey
15:49
all politicians try to
Corey
15:53
to intellectually time their
Corey
15:56
their unpopular moves. And all politicians know that there are going to be unpopular moves. And you say, well, it's two years to an election. Well, it's three years to an election. I think we can get away with that. I think in the context, we'll be able to see the dividends of this.
Corey
16:08
The problem is right now, we're in a moment where there
Corey
16:13
there is no avoiding the issue. There's no changing the channel. And that's normally what saves politicians. You don't want to talk about issue X, talk about issue Y for a while. But here's COVID.
Corey
16:24
Issue C trumps everything, always drags you back to it. And their usual tools for dealing with bad problems like this are not available to them. Which
Corey
16:32
Which is not to say politicians don't sometimes lose control of the agenda and have to kind of have the agenda thrown at them. but when you're in government that is not necessarily like you have so many tools to control the agenda covid's not playing ball and these guys frankly it's clear they have no idea how to deal with that i mean it it is the height of insanity now and it will universally seem like the height of insanity later that we are managing covid to the limit of our icu capacity yeah
Zain
16:58
yeah as well as like a metric yeah
Corey
17:00
yeah like we'll let people die but not so many that even more people Like we're in a whole new paradigm of deaths, as opposed to when we look at all of those other jurisdictions, Carter's named a few, there's some even here in Canada, that have said, Nope, the
Corey
17:14
plan is COVID zero, we're going to shut this thing down. And I get we are integrated with the United States, I get that's not as easy to do in an awful lot of the Canadian economy, but we're
Corey
17:23
we're not even trying. You know, we've decided instead of attempting to stomp these things out that we're just going to keep an amount there. It's like you put out a fire, but you're like, well, we'll leave the fire in this room of the house because that's not really bothering us right now. That fire is manageable. That fire is, you know, sure, it's not in a fireplace. Sure, it's not under control, but it's going to take a while before it gets back to the living room. Seems to be our general metaphorical approach here.
Zain
17:51
I want to move on to Saturday, where, as Corey says, Ford had to eat his brunch of a shit sandwich. But before we before we get into that, Corey, you've introduced on this show many times this concept, this communication crime, I should say, of the kitchen sink approach. Would what you saw on Friday with Ford be put in that category? Was this a different sin or of a different kind?
Corey
18:14
No, I think this was a different sin. Because ultimately, these were all remedies for a problem. And it was one problem. And if
Corey
18:22
they all needed to be done, and seems to be at least the one about outdoor activities didn't in the eyes of Doug Ford, because he reversed it very quickly. But it
Corey
18:32
it does make sense, you have to sort of address all of these. Now, I did talk about a couple of months back, Jason Kenney kind of taking a similar approach where he was sort of putting on nickel and dime things like casinos are allowed to have capacity to X, right?
Corey
18:45
That would have been a mistake, but that's not really what we're talking about Doug Ford doing. We're talking about Doug Ford doing a bunch of big activities in five different areas. And the reason
Zain
18:54
reason I ask that in the thrust of my question was because there was so much as Carter alluded to in the first part of his response, what pundits and social media and others picked up on were a couple of the outliers or the couple of the most egregious claims, right? Right. The the carding. Right. It became it became carding right away. Right. Like it wasn't, hey, expanded powers for the police to arbitrarily stop. He was like, nope, this is carding. And it became look at this guy. He wants to shut down our playgrounds. And so the reason I ask you if this was that same crime, it almost led to a similar conclusion where people just picked certain things out and said, look at that fucking insane shit this guy wants to do on a Friday afternoon. Jump in, Corey.
Corey
19:35
Yeah, well, Zane, one of my favorite axioms in any place I've worked is to remind people that all problems manifest as communications problems. And this is not necessarily the kitchen sink approach to communications. This is the kitchen sink approach to policy. And
Corey
19:50
And that is now showing up in the communications efforts of the Doug Ford government. If this didn't need to be done, if they didn't believe this would actually make a material difference, then they shouldn't have done it. But that is not actually a communications problem. It's not actually the communicator's job to step in and veto the policies that have come out of the legal experts and the public health experts. It's their jobs to package them in a way that people can understand what we mean when we talk about those things. And this arbitrary police stopping was a really interesting one for me because of the way the police bit back, which I generally didn't love.
Corey
20:23
You did or didn't, sorry.
Corey
20:24
Did not. But, you know, listen, I didn't like the policy. I just don't like the idea that police are going to decide what laws they're going to enforce and not enforce. So in my opinion, there were two appropriate ways for that to have been dealt with. One is the police literally said, this is an unlawful request. We cannot follow this request. Not the, we've decided not to because we care about our community too much. That's bullshit. You don't actually get to make that decision. The other way it could have been done is if the councils, if the civil representatives who oversee them said, you're not going to do this. But the idea that a police force would just decide on its own what
Corey
20:57
what they're going to do and not do without kind of leaning on one of those more important, more significant backstops, like we don't break the law and upholding the law, that
Corey
21:07
that to me was kind of bullshit. it.
Zain
21:10
Carter, I have to ask you the same question now that we've opened up the bracket on policing. Let's get to that in a second. But before that, I want to give you the same opportunity to add to or add to any sort of communication sins you've seen Doug Ford make with what Friday was. What lessons should politicians learn from those communication sins? That same question version of that I posed to Corey. And then let's talk about the bracket that Corey opened on policing in their response thereafter?
Carter
21:38
think that any time politicians take a big swing at something, and it's got a long list of things, people are going to grab onto the weakest link within that list. So the weak link, the policing, I'll just pick up on policing because it's so easy to pick up on. And I want to go a little bit further than what Corey was talking about, too, because he's entirely right. The way that the police did this is particularly bad. But those weak links become really problematic. So the weak link of, you know, not being able to go to a playground with your kids, that is a weak link in the communication structure. It is hard to justify. It was easier to justify the first time we did it when we thought that this was passed by touching things. It is much harder to justify now that we kind of know that COVID's more aerosol.
Carter
22:26
So how we push this communication out with all of these weak links in it is the problem. So if you if you're going to put forward a list, you got to really make sure that each one of those things is bulletproof, because it's the bulletproof nature of it that enables you to to carry the day. Each piece should be justifiable. And the problem with Ford's communication on Friday and why he was back in front of the cameras on Saturday is that there were so many weak links and they were so easy to pick up on things like like the carding, which, of course, especially
Carter
23:00
especially in Ontario, where they've got such a, you know, I mean, across the country and throughout North America, carding is a significant issue, but it really has taken on a life of its own in the Toronto region.
Carter
23:11
This is a giant red flag that needed to be addressed. But what Corey is saying, too, like talk about highlighting the opaque nature of the relationship between police forces and their governments when police can just decide which laws they are enforcing, which laws they aren't. Let me take that a little bit further. let's move away from this carding piece and let's talk a little bit about all the anti-mask protests right the the challenge that we are seeing uh you know when when i'm still able to get my my ticket for not having a registration still a little bitter i'll be okay but the you know i still get that ticket but at the exact same time there's or the next day there is a uh a massive rally downtown breaking the law and i see no tickets being handed out i don't see any um enforcement of the rules it it makes me angry it begs the question what what's special about that group do the police agree with that group and they just don't agree with me did they did they ticket me because i drive a certain type of car you
Carter
24:12
you know this policing
Carter
24:13
policing needs to be uniform it needs to be standard and that's
Carter
24:17
that's and and so do these covet rules right like all of the rules all of the structures and all the points need to be seen to be equal uh and and uh
Carter
24:26
uh also very much effective and ford's ford's friday communications just proved to not be and uh and
Carter
24:34
and really i think arguably most of the rules at this point like the the sheer number of places where we're seeing fractures in our rule set in our adherence to the covid regulations the sheer number of places we're seeing that fracturing is just creating massive problems for virtually every government.
Zain
24:52
Corey, you wanted to jump in before we move on to Saturday, the reversal.
Corey
24:57
Yeah, I do see some differences between this and the mask protests, which I'll unpack here. But
Corey
25:03
when you think about the power that the police decided not to use here, that these police forces say, you know, Hamilton police, I think, and then the Toronto police after, you might have liked that the police decided not to use this power. But imagine if the police had thrown out a tweet that said, community is important, so we aren't going to shut down restaurants that stay open. Would you still be cheering them on? I mean, these decisions have to be made by civilian oversight, and the application of police authority should not be arbitrary, certainly not at the policy level. And so that's the difference, I think, between the mask protest and this particular thing is a statement was made by the police force that we are not going to, the police are always going to need to use discretion in their jobs to an extent. If I get involved here, I might make make the situation worse. I've got to consider the bigger thing at the moment. But the idea that you would put out as a matter of policy in an online setting, we are just not going to do this. That is what I find particularly problematic.
Zain
25:55
Carter, let's move it on to Saturday.
Zain
25:57
And we already know what happened. And if you don't, Saturday, Doug Ford walked back, softened, lightened, whatever term you want to use, both the arbitrary policing as well as a playground measure. And then he had a busy weekend. We'll talk about the busy weekend of other things things he tried to do to, you know, to channel change or to, you know, I don't know, make amends, repents, whatever you want to call it. But Carter, let's talk about Saturday in particular. And let's talk about from a strategy angle. Let's say you were in that Ford Premier's office, and you got a call from the boss saying, holy shit, we did not expect this to, at least I didn't, Stephen, expect this to land like it has tonight. Do I have to walk this back? Would your answer have have been yes? Or would your answer have been, sir, one of the axioms, to use Corey's term, of political strategy is doubling down and not giving any room for folks to extend the news cycle and pick on us? What would you have suggested to Doug Ford had he had called you on Friday night or Saturday morning?
Carter
26:56
We are going to issue a significant clarification because the willful misinterpretation of the rules that we put forward yesterday are creating confusion within the the Ontario public, within the Ontario police forces. And I'm going to step back in on the microphone and I'm going to clarify so that the malicious misinterpretation of the rules that we set forward on Friday are not weakened in any way, shape or form, but rather we are moving forward because we are trying to reduce the number of COVID cases in Ontario.
Carter
27:28
I would have doubled down and said that everything that I said on Friday was exactly right. And the reason that that it's not being right is because of malicious misinterpretation by the media and special interests.
Carter
27:38
This was never about carding. It was never about stopping and detaining people. It was about being able to stop large gatherings from happening before they happened. It's about prevention, not actually managing things afterwards. That's always been my intention. My intention, you know, as Doug Ford, is to make sure that people are safe. You know, I've also He also tried to balance off the best interests of business in the province of Ontario. And I'll tell you that right now, if we're going to have a return to business, you got to follow the rules I set out on Friday. And
Carter
28:09
And here are the clarifications so that they're not maliciously
Carter
28:11
maliciously misinterpreted. And I think that that doubling down was missed. Because if he doubled down, he
Carter
28:20
he has a very different weekend, rather than having to jump into what you've pointed out is that the channel changing narratives.
Zain
28:28
Corey, would you have issued the same advice? Clarify? Would you have gone with a strategy of perhaps saying willful misinterpretation, to quote you, Carter? Would that have been your approach if you were on the phone with Premier Ford on Friday night or Saturday morning? morning i
Corey
28:45
think so i think doubling and i say i think so because i really need to understand the medical advice that drove this decision if that was the medical advice from your medical officers of health if this was the recommendation that was rooted in i
Corey
28:59
i don't know what right but assuming it wasn't politics and assuming this was actually what people told you needed to happen in the province of ontario in order to save the province from itself then i think you double down on tough Tough guy, Doug, that
Corey
29:11
that that's when you actually get a point back to your message yesterday and say, you know, I know people are mad. I knew yesterday when I said it, I told you this was going to be a brutal truth and I told you it was going to be a tough decision. But we need to do this to save lives here in Ontario. And that's where I think I would have stuck to my guns in terms of the of the cops. I would have said, well, that's not their decision to make. I know that individual officers will will know that they've got a role in upholding the law. I'm very disappointed that some social media manager at Hamilton police would take it upon themselves, or I would try to minimize what was put out there. And I would say like, what a crock of shit. And then I would say, because responsible law enforcement officers know that just having this power in our tool belt will make people think twice and will keep the people of Ontario safe. It's not our intention that everybody gets stopped on the street. But if we see 10 cars on one block that are all going to one, you know, party, then obviously, that's
Corey
30:04
that's something that the police are going to have to take care of. And I know that they will uphold the law just as I've asked them to do because they have as much regard for the people of Ontario as I do. Here's
Zain
30:12
Here's what Ford ended up saying in a tweet. Ontario's enhanced restrictions were always intended to stop large gatherings where spread can happen. Our regulations will be amended to allow playgrounds, but gathering outside will still be enforced. Play outside safely. Parents, keep your distance and wear masks if you can't.
Zain
30:28
What do you think of the medium and the message that I just read to you? Twitter, that message. Carter?
Carter
30:34
I don't think it clarified anything. I don't think it took a very strong position. I think it was, you know, again, it implies that there was something wrong. You know, he didn't really just say what he needed to say, which is that he's sticking to his guns. He's going to make sure that we are eradicating.
Carter
30:54
You know, I'd like a politician to say, I'm going to stand up. I'm going to eradicate the COVID pandemic as quickly as humanly possible. And I don't care if I get reelected afterwards. I'm doing it because it's right. And I will always be taking the right action. And I just feel like Ford's
Carter
31:10
Ford's was a little mamby-pamby still. I mean, even though he was trying to be strong, I'm just not sure that he was as strong as he could have been.
Zain
31:17
Corey, I have the same question for you. Medium and message your thoughts, but maybe I'll add a supporting question. What do you think of politicians when they have to make these tough statements and these decisions to revert to Twitter always? It just seems like this very convenient, like, let's just put out this 140 characters. Like, people will see it. They'll get it. but when your whole mantra is like tough guy communicating of the people like salt of the earth sort of person it just seems like a weird escape hatch many times like i i cared less about what he said but the way that like dude you introduced this like as tough guy to your point cory with like absolute statements at the beginning of your press conference on friday and then a whimpering fucking tweet on saturday like i don't know if i love it so a question to you on both medium and message um for your thoughts yeah
Corey
32:04
yeah i mean obviously and there's not a graceful way to climb down in a situation like that where as we've both said literally making absolute statements one day walking them back the next day that's that's never going to look graceful and the reason why this is an approach that's taken is that it's a statement but it's even shorter because if you send out a written statement and it's 280 characters or less it It looks like a very unsubstantive statement.
Corey
32:31
It is the content of a tweet, right? In both cases, what you're doing is you're making it so that he is not in front of the media. He doesn't have to answer difficult questions on this matter. He is able to sort of just fire and then forget and let the people around him clean up the mess, so to speak.
Corey
32:47
Not great, but what do you have that's better at that point if you're going to walk things back? You would still suggest
Zain
32:53
suggest to him, like, if the option was, hey, Corey, should I get in front of a mic or should I issue a tweet? you'd say tweet is fine doug you
Corey
33:00
you know i what i would have probably encouraged him to do is um if
Corey
33:05
if you wanted to back down so let's talk about the back down version yeah
Corey
33:10
think you match it with kind of equal bravery you go out there and you hold a press conference and you say okay there's been a lot of discussion here i'm hearing from health officials who disagree with the uh
Corey
33:20
with the playground conversation i have taken that on i have gone back to my health officials And I've said, explain to me, talk to me, tell me why these officials are wrong. I've decided ultimately that they didn't have particularly satisfying answers for me. So I am willing to limit it. This is part of us listening to the best advice and science out there. I wish I hadn't been so absolute. I wish I had canvassed more. But you know, we are in a moment where we're dealing with live ammo. And I'm trying to keep this on the rails. And Ontario, this is not on the rails. There are people who are going to die if we don't start moving more aggressively towards locking this thing down. Now, I will answer any question on this matter, and I would get used to saying, yeah, I was wrong. I was wrong, and I'm glad Ontario brought me back and asked me to look at the other health advice that was out there.
Corey
34:03
I will never stop trying to do what's right for this province, even if it means it's embarrassing for me.
Zain
34:08
carter you know we have saturday we have the communication strategy this however as a as a moment for doug ford seems like a lot more like it seems like one of those straw that broke the camel's back situations because we've got op-eds in the washington post asking him to resign we've got talks of a caucus revolt needing to happen we've got twitter like trending about this guy needs to leave um you know and and ford seems to be in full out like damage control mode right he's He's shuffled his premier's office. There's rumors of a cabinet shuffle imminently happening tomorrow. He's lowered the age for AstraZeneca vaccines, perhaps trying to change the channel. He's been on a very cordial phone call with the prime minister, now accepting health care workers and rapid tests from the federal government. What do you kind of sense in these political moments that something like this could just be a trigger for all your past political sins to kind of come to bear? And it seems like that's what it is, like the pent up frustration of people just really snapped with this particular moment. Is that how you see it? Or did you kind of see this as as perhaps being a something different?
Carter
35:16
No, I think that there's moments in your political career where the sum total of the sins come to be added up and considered. And I think that Doug Ford's at that. I think that Jason Kenney's been at that now for probably
Carter
35:29
probably a little bit longer than Doug Ford, Because I think that Doug Ford managed the pandemic, at least from a communications point of view, much better.
Carter
35:38
This time, it's not. And the
Carter
35:40
the sum total of the sins, and I think this is something you see regularly. When someone commits a sin, people try to do the sum total of the sins before in some sort of an effort to get them all to stick finally this time. The
Zain
35:53
The kitchen sink approach, one might say.
Carter
35:56
And finally, they do stick. And finally, they do stick. And this time, they are sticking. And it's a bad day when everything sticks, when everything becomes the sum total or greater than the sum total of all the offenses. You're really in trouble. And Doug Ford is really in trouble on this moment at this time. He's trying to get out of trouble now. If I was sitting in his office, my advice to him would be let the trouble unfold, let
Carter
36:22
let the trouble unfold. And then as the trouble unfolds, then you can start to actually put your your recovery plan back into place. if that's a cabinet shuffle don't shuffle now shuffle in 10 days shuffle once the bottom has been reached and you start to see more vaccines going out the door when you start to catch up on the number of vaccinations delivered to the vaccinations that you have in stock then you can start to actually
Carter
36:46
actually recover because you can point to the work that you're doing so that
Carter
36:50
that that's really what he needs to to do in my mind cory
Zain
36:54
cory i saw you nodding your head particularly around Carter's explanation of the Carter equation of sum total multiplied by crisis equals greater than sum total, some version of that. Do you agree with Carter's general analysis here that this can kind of be a moment where it kind of aggregates your previous political sins and tries to create a moment or leverage and exploit the moment where those things might stick back into the public consciousness or public zeitgeist, whereas another moment may not offer that same same opportunity. Do you agree with that? And perhaps, as an extension, do you agree that that's what's happening right now?
Corey
37:31
Yeah, I think we
Corey
37:34
we talk about it in political strategy in a lot of different ways. We talk about it as a tipping point. We talk about it as a point of no return. But ultimately, you get to a point where it's not even about what you've done. It's about what you did, I guess. You know, it's not the moment. It's all of the moments that led up to that. And people People just write you off. They just think, well, because Doug Ford did it, it sucks. And then where do you go from there? Don't forget, he wasn't very popular pre-COVID. COVID provided a bit of a renaissance for him because he's tough, because he's compassionate. And it was an opportunity for him to show a
Corey
38:08
a guy who is willing to roll up his sleeves. I mean, this is the thing the Fords always did very well, both him and his brother, Rob.
Corey
38:16
would answer phone calls from people. somebody would reach out and say hey i've got these masks i'd like to donate it before you know it he's doing a photo op picking up the masks and remember that pickup truck yeah right it really um you know this this kind of shoot from the hip thing though at
Corey
38:31
at a moment like this well you can really see the downside can't you i mean we're talking about the downside right now and um ultimately i think that is that is what's going to damn him here and this requires a different more steady leadership than he's providing so in terms of what comes next relaxed yeah i think a cabinet shuffle tomorrow that's just more shooting from the hip he's got to take a breath he's got to figure his shit out here because this is um this is not going to resolve his problems in fact it's going to create additional senses of chaos and panic if he plays this as poorly as he's played everything else in the past couple of weeks here so it
Corey
39:06
sounds like it's done sounds like it's going to happen but should
Corey
39:08
should it be happening i don't think so i
Corey
39:12
guess I guess we'll see what tomorrow brings. One of the benefits is it's going to be stomped out pretty quickly by a federal budget, in all likelihood, at least for a day. It'll give him a little bit of reprieve to figure his shit out.
Zain
39:24
Yeah, Carter, Corey's already answered my next question, so I'll ask you it, which is his mitigation strategies, if I can call them that, right? And they're making a lot of announcements today, accepting healthcare workers from the feds and the rapid tests offered, you know, shuffling his premier's office. There's also rumors late this evening around perhaps his chief of staff falling on his sword. Certainly someone in his office already has in terms of a demotion to work on, quote, special projects, unquote, a term I'm sure we're all familiar with in the political circles. I had the cabinet shuffle. What else am I missing? There's
Corey
40:01
There's no less real job than special projects in the premier's office, unless they are actually working on a special project, in which case there's no more important job than special
Carter
40:10
special projects. Generally, generally, those ones aren't announced. Those ones are true. Yeah, very
Zain
40:15
Carter Corey says take a breath. Don't shoot from the hip. It adds to the chaos. It doubles down on perhaps what people are picking at the scab of what they don't like about you right now. Do you agree? And do you like any of what the the smorgasbord of mitigation strategies for it is put on the table, at least publicly thus far? No,
Carter
40:33
No, he's trying to dig his way out of the hole, but he's still digging, right? So anytime you're in the hole and you're still digging, you're making it worse. Stop digging. See where you are. Find a good, smart way out. Truth of the matter is, the budget's going to change your channel. So what's one more day? What's 36 more hours of pain?
Carter
40:52
Just stop, drop, and roll, right? Like that is really what Doug Ford needed to do. He didn't do that, and he made himself look like more of an ass.
Carter
41:02
So some of the stuff that he did was great. But I'm calling around to U.S. consulates to try and get more vaccines. I
Zain
41:08
I didn't even mention that one as well.
Carter
41:10
Yeah. I mean, the
Carter
41:12
U.S. is not exporting vaccines. Why are they doing so well? Why is the U.S. doing so well? Because they're keeping everything in their country, and they're giving it to their citizens first. Great. Good for them. But calling the U.S. consulate, it's
Carter
41:27
it's going to have exactly zero impact. and he makes you look like a moron um so don't do that and and this is the he's lurching around trying to find a a solution to a problem that isn't solvable um but time will solve it stop let it go especially when you've got the you know the largest channel changer of the year coming on monday um
Carter
41:52
calm down man like it's it's going to be it might may not be okay but it's not going going to be this bad on tuesday let's
Zain
42:00
let's leave that there and move it on to our next segment our next segment freeland takes center stage carter you've mentioned it cory you've mentioned it too the biggest channel changer of the year and perhaps the biggest uh day thus far for the for the trudeau liberals of of the year the budget is tomorrow if you're listening to this well tomorrow and then it's probably today for you on monday or yesterday
Carter
42:20
yesterday could be yesterday i need to clarify tomorrow's Two Tomorrows From Now could be yesterday. Do you want to do Two Tomorrows From Now? Two Tomorrows. You're
Corey
42:27
listening on Friday. Five days ago, there was the budget. That's
Zain
42:30
That's a great episode title, Two Tomorrows From Now. Also sounds like a great album that Taylor Swift put out. It was a James Bond movie. It's a great Taylor Swift-y. Is
Carter
42:40
From Now, James Bond. Oh, that's fucking well. Then maybe Taylor
Zain
42:43
Taylor Swift should just steal that, too. Guys, the stage is set, arguably, for the most important federal budget in recent memory. the Liberal government prepares to unveil its plan for Canada's post-pandemic recovery amidst this escalating third wave. We can talk expectations, and we will. We can talk what we might want to see in it, and we will. We can talk about communication strategy, and we will. But I have got two questions up front. Carter, let's start with you. Regardless of what this budget says tomorrow, do you think it will get defeated? Yes or no?
Zain
43:17
Corey, yes or no? Regardless of what's in this budget and we'll talk about that do you think it gets defeated and
Zain
43:22
and we trigger an election maybe
Carter
43:29
and then maybe that leads to my second question that leads
Zain
43:32
leads to my second question cory um we've heard of these things called poison pills and budgets do you expect to see a version of that tomorrow and is that perhaps why you're saying maybe yeah
Corey
43:44
i certainly expect when we talk about poison pills in a general sense it's something something that would be absolutely unappealing to one side. And that's the sense. Like, I don't think it's something that will be political poison for the liberals. They'll put something in that the other parties can't support, perhaps.
Corey
43:59
Well, I suspect, Zane, it'll be a combination of poison pills. It'll be something that the NDP will have a very difficult time supporting, but the conservatives could get on board with, coupled with something that the conservatives will find impossible to support, that the NDP might be able to get on board with, plus the Greens, plus the bloc. Let's not forget there's a bunch of other parties at play here and just really make them twist in the wind, make them very awkward. Now, that said, it
Corey
44:23
it does seem right now like every party is just going to not
Corey
44:27
not force the issue. Conservatives will probably vote. Everyone will vote against except the NDP who will vote for seems to be what's happening at this moment. Yeah, sure. Right.
Corey
44:38
who knows? Who knows? Maybe it just becomes one of those things that's just too hard to agree to. Or maybe they orchestrate it in such a way that the NDP start to feel a bit salty, give an ultimatum, and the liberals get to bring down their own government by saying, well, we can't do that ultimatum, so I've gone to the GG, and maybe it won't even be a vote at all. So if I'm Singh, I am being very careful about the words I'm using right now. Yeah.
Zain
45:04
Carter, do you agree with Corey's analysis? I haven't even gotten to ask you the poison pill question, but you said this regardless of what you think, that there's probably, and I made you answer in absolute terms like Doug Ford, but you said no, that this budget probably doesn't get defeated. Do you sense there could be a poison pill or to Corey's point, poison pills in this budget tomorrow?
Carter
45:26
Well, what's the poison pill going to be that the NDP can't get their heads around? Is it going to be too much money on CEWS or SEWS or whatever the heck we're calling it? Is it going to be too much pandemic support? Is it going to be not deep enough on child care? Is the lack of pharma care going to be a deal breaker for the NDP? The problem is the NDP, as I mentioned before on this podcast, is in a situation where the liberals are basically on their turf so it is very difficult to find a poison pill that the ndp absolutely
Carter
45:58
absolutely must oppose and at the same time the ndp i don't know they're in a great spot to fight an election i still think that they're in a tough in a tough spot um but i guess they're always in a tough spot but they don't have that principled leadership right now that says i don't care if we're in a tough spot electorally we are standing up for the uh canadian people i just don't feel like they can do that that especially when they're you
Carter
46:26
on lines like uh they asked you know the vaccines cost too much because we paid eight dollars and eighteen cents i don't know how you guys responded to that headline by the way but i went holy shit they were only eight dollars and eighteen cents that's amazing that's
Carter
46:40
that's amazing i don't care if i paid if we paid i
Carter
46:43
i felt the same three times as much i thought that seemed like
Carter
46:45
a great unbelievable eight eight and and anybody bringing it up i'm just like i have no respect for you anymore eight dollars and 18 cents 170 million dollars to get us out of this at a time when we're burning billions of dollars give me an absolute break but so i don't see cory's point about the poison pills i just don't see them being in this in this budget and therefore carter i don't see it actually falling jumping
Corey
47:10
one word for you often mistaken for two uh supported by most canadians supported by liberals loathed by federal ndp pipelines
Carter
47:18
it's already done like
Carter
47:20
like what are they going to do build another
Carter
47:22
their why the hell not sell the pipeline
Carter
47:24
why not and reduce our deficit by 12 billion dollars maybe
Corey
47:27
maybe give some support to the the oil and gas sector right is the ndp going to feel particularly warm and fuzzy about that there's
Carter
47:35
no you're wrong yeah
Zain
47:37
yeah that's an interesting one cory i like it i
Carter
47:39
i it's got me thinking of
Zain
47:40
of an academic and intellectual thought thought exercise that if the Trudeau government promised a pipeline, but they named it after Trudeau, would the conservatives vote against it? And I really don't know what to say, because I just...
Corey
47:53
very deep. It's very deep. Well, 420 is coming up. We'll all spark one and we'll talk about that for that episode. That'll be great.
Zain
48:02
give me the color code this budget for me.
Zain
48:05
Many people are expecting it to be the most orange budget we've ever seen. Do you expect it to have shades of orange, tinges of orange, or is this going to be a red budget? And you know what I mean by that, right? Like we've talked about the kleptomania that we've seen telegraphed thus far by the liberals, especially from that speech from the throne where a lot of landmark NDP policies that they've been fighting for for generations were mentioned in that budget. Is this going to be the most orange budget this country's seen?
Corey
48:34
It can be both, Zane. That's the joy of the Liberal Party. It can be the most red and the most orange. It can be one that is purely triangulation designed to meet Canadians where they are, but also because of this big government moment we're in, be the most orange budget we've had since Christ, the 30s, the 40s, right? right? Well, maybe the 60s is a better example in this country. It's very possible. It's very possible. Based on
Corey
49:02
on the quote-unquote leaks, and I don't know how much is real, how much is just positioning, it
Corey
49:08
it does seem like it's going to be a pretty big government budget. Looks like child care is going to have a place of prominence. Looks like the environment is going to have a place of prominence, which speaks against the idea that you would have pipelines in it, by the the way if i'm being charitable to carter because
Corey
49:23
they're you know this is well we'll see but this will be one of those issues where um um where the liberals can probably
Corey
49:34
go wrong by going into the ndp's traditional turf carter
Zain
49:38
carter color code the budget for me cory says it could have a couple of shades of colors perhaps even divorced in certain areas you have the most orange in some areas you know pretty red budget in other areas what do you kind of think the general...
Corey
49:50
general... No, I said they're the same.
Zain
49:52
Oh, interesting. A red budget can be an orange budget. A red budget can be a blue budget. A red budget can be a mix of it all.
Zain
49:59
Carter, do you agree with that statement right there? Maybe that's the easiest positioning of the question.
Carter
50:03
Yeah, I think that that's entirely right. I mean, all we know for sure is it's not going to be a blue budget.
Carter
50:07
There's not going to be a whiff of financial or, you know, security, you know, reducing the deficits or anything like that. This thing is about spending and it's about achieving the goals that the government wants to achieve at a time when people are willing to have deficits. And I think that it's also the coloring of it couldn't be any better. I think that if you'd seen a 400 billion, assuming it's a $400 billion deficit, if you'd seen a $400 billion deficit and we'd been coming out of the pandemic, I think that people might've responded differently. But we are in the midst of the third wave that looks as big as the second, if not bigger, again. And I'll tell you something, I think that people are going to be just fine. They're going to be just fine with where they are, unless you're already wearing the blue T-shirt. So the orange, green, and red teams are all going to be pretty comfortable with what comes
Carter
51:04
comes out of the budget tomorrow, I suspect.
Zain
51:07
Corey, what's a big mistake that the Trudeau liberals could make heading into this budget tomorrow? And maybe let me not be implicit with my question. Carter mentioned debt and deficit, like not mentioning of those two, there's going to be a spend budget. Is that a mistake to not address any of those items in this budget, for example? Or is there another mistake that could be an own goal heading into tomorrow from your perspective that the Liberals should look out for?
Corey
51:36
Well, there's no way they're not going to address the debt and the deficit in this budget. They'll have a declining deficit in out years. They'll talk about a path back to balance without being specific about when that will occur. I guarantee you it will not occur in the timeframe of the fiscal documents.
Corey
51:50
And they will say, you know, we've got to get spending under control, but now is not the time to start being parsimonious about these things. We've got to do what's needed for the Canadian economy right now. Now, it
Corey
52:01
it would be a mistake, in my opinion, not to address the fiscal situation in any way, shape, or form. That would walk right into the box that Aaron O'Toole is trying to create, right, where we're talking about the economy. And ultimately, if you see Aaron O'Toole's five points about secure X, secure Y, secure Z, you've
Corey
52:22
you've got to be mindful of those things. And you've got to be careful you don't walk along a path and then look down and see your leg in a bear trap on these matters. But the big one for me is the economy. This cannot be too far. This cannot be a pie in the sky.
Corey
52:37
Okay, we have absolutely no sense how we're going to do any of this. Imagine, for example, a budget that had a UBI and pharmacare and universal childcare and all of those things. And I think after a year of COVID fatigue, Canadians would say enough, just stop. This is too much? No. And I think that would be the opening that Aaron O'Toole needs in order to drive something forward.
Corey
53:00
that would be the biggest thing I would recommend avoiding.
Zain
53:03
Carter, I feel like I may have unfairly categorized your point regarding no mention of debt and deficit, so feel free to clarify that, but I'll
Corey
53:10
I'll ask you the same question I did to Corey. Yeah, I didn't think Carter said that.
Corey
53:13
that. Yeah, no, no, and I... I like taking the broad version of Carter that you provide me and hitting it.
Zain
53:19
my job is to make characters out of each of you, because I'm on Twitter the whole time not paying attention to this podcast. Carter, so clarify your point on that, and then what would What would, in your mind, an own goal look like for the Liberals tomorrow? What's a mistake they should avoid?
Carter
53:33
First of all, you guys are characterizing me perfectly. Simple thoughts painted broadly. That's why I'm here, right?
Zain
53:41
Corey's actually— You're a shadow box with you. That's the whole purpose. Yeah. I
Carter
53:43
I think that Corey's described a pretty significant own goal problem of doing everything, right? Doing it all would be a problem. them building
Carter
53:53
building this around building back the economy centered around ending the she session would be spectacular having freeland you know uh deliver this budget and and give us sorry
Zain
54:06
sorry sorry just so i'm clear you're saying that going down that path is a is an own goal or is that an asset this is where they're going okay
Carter
54:13
where i'm seeing them go is is this we are going to recover from the recession by giving women the opportunity to come back and contribute fully to our economy that's how we get ourselves out of this i think that that story would be great i do think if they did too much like the pharmacare thing is too much the ubi i mean it's a non-starter it's absolutely non-starter it's never going to get past a government white paper um so but
Carter
54:38
but again if it was in this yeah cory's absolutely right like these these ideas that have been taken from the far left and in the furthest reaches of the ndp platform before that is now part of the uh liberal party's platform will not be part of the government agenda. That's what I like about what
Carter
54:55
what they're foreshadowing. And it'll be surprising if there's anything significant that they haven't foreshadowed. I don't think there will be. I think that this is a government that knows how to govern at this moment, and they're doing a pretty good job of it. Their foreshadowing or their leaks appear to be well-coordinated, well-managed, and painting a picture of a budget that looks like it's going to fit the parameters that both Corey and I are describing.
Zain
55:19
Not to try to be too cute and tie the two segments together in some ways. But, you know, Carter, you talked about this concept of often the weakest thing sticks out. And when you have a laundry list of things that you've mentioned relating to Ford, and we talked about carding and playgrounds in that regard. Corey, we've also talked about that all budgets are political documents, they're communications documents. And by their nature, they're going going to have a lot of things to communicate to people. So we don't necessarily know what exact policies we're going to see tomorrow. We've seen some leaks and telegraphing as to what could be in there. But let's go down the track of communications advice you'd give to 11th hour communication advice you'd give to the liberals heading into tomorrow. I'd say expectations are high. They haven't delivered a budget in over two years. They've had a throne speech that kind of plays on that we can do everything mantra. What's some comms advice you'd have for Freeland and the surrogates that are going to be framing this budget tomorrow.
Corey
56:18
Well, it's an interesting one, isn't it? Because there was an awful lot of conversation that this budget at least had the potential to be the starting pistol for a federal campaign. A lot of conversation that people have lost their nerve about that as Ontario continues to be a COVID basket case. Quebec not looking a ton better. Alberta is Alberta.
Corey
56:39
so um you know i i say all of this zane because i have also said in the past budgets are something you just got to do normally
Corey
56:48
normally every year this government has somehow gotten away with not doing it for two years fine but you just have to have a budget at a certain point and budgets are full of different items some good some bad it's a lot of ledgers and if you are trying to constrain spending in any way shape or form you are going to piss somebody off and even if you're or not, somebody's gonna say, how come they got so much and I didn't get very much, right? So budgets have good and they have bad. They are not entirely political wins. And what you want to do is you want to make sure that you control the story around the budget and keep the conversation on the good, on the political wins. Now, this was a budget that was possibly
Corey
57:25
possibly crafted as an election lead-in. I guarantee you if that's the case, it's got a lot more sweeteners than it has as sour. And
Corey
57:32
And that should afford them a lot of opportunity to create more win and talk about the things that they want to do in the Canada that they want to build. So this might not be the most difficult budget in the world to communicate. This might, however, be one of those things that they live to regret. Because even if it's the great budget with all of the good stuff, and this election doesn't happen for, let's say, six months, let's say 12 months. And all of a sudden, you've got a fiscal update in there. What do you say next? If this is your your thing and you're saying it you don't get to say it again at least not in the same way with the same vigor and that could be a bit of a challenge for them so my advice is
Corey
58:10
don't overswing like if this was your budget that was also going to prepare you for an election maybe don't use all of it right now maybe just tell a bit of the story and save some of the story for later or else you're going to have nothing new to say when this election does come around and
Zain
58:24
and cory when you say later just so we can be specific do you do you are you alluding to the platform
Corey
58:31
i'm not alluding to the platform what are you alluding to when you say later
Corey
58:34
like a physical update to whenever
Corey
58:36
whenever one month before this election is right doesn't need to be in their platform it could be a government fiscal update it could be a speech by the prime minister it could be a speech by freeland construct
Zain
58:47
moment if you need to if you're well sure
Corey
58:49
sure it's a lot easier to construct a moment when you've got a bunch of new things sitting next And one
Corey
58:53
one of the things about budgets is, while
Corey
58:56
while they drive a lot of decisions below the line, it tends to be, from the public's point of view, big line items at the top. You don't need to spool everything out on budget day. Carter,
Zain
59:07
Carter, I'm going to ask you that same question as we close on this segment. Political documents, communication documents, two years in the waiting, high expectations, middle of a third wave, communications advice to Freeland and company as they head into tomorrow. tomorrow?
Carter
59:23
Tell simple stories, not complex stories. So the line that I used about using the child care
Carter
59:30
care benefits as a way to recover from the session, which is harder to say than it is to write, then that's a great storyline. Have that storyline as your primary. Can you tell that storyline with virtually every element of your budget? Probably. I mean, maybe you have to do a couple of them like we're going to work on the c session piece we're going to work on our green economy piece we're investing in transit but those types of lines need to be very very simple and then you can get much deep more detailed you can follow each of those strings down and allow them to be told over time in much much more detail and
Carter
1:00:08
and that's what cory's alluding to and i will add one more piece to cory's point they
Carter
1:00:11
they are alluding to the fact that some hundred hundred billion dollars isn't going to be allocated uh
Carter
1:00:17
uh in tomorrow's budget it's going to to be left
Carter
1:00:19
left aside for to be named uh pandemic recovery mechanisms so they have they are signaling that uh the the chapter
Carter
1:00:29
chapter that cory is talking about writing uh just before the election
Carter
1:00:34
the framework is there for that chapter i'm
Zain
1:00:38
i'm going to leave that segment there and move it on to our final segment our over under in our lightning round stephen carter i always ask you if you're ready are you ready i'm
Carter
1:00:45
i'm not gonna lie to you i ate a piece of pie and a piece of cake and It
Carter
1:00:48
was too much, so I'm not really feeling it.
Zain
1:00:52
That's good. It's fun. You mail it in generally the whole show, but particularly in this final segment. Overrated, underrated, Stephen Carter, the federal budget 2021. Specifically, I'm not asking about federal budgets generally. I'm asking about this one. Is it overrated or is it underrated? I
Carter
1:01:07
I think it's underrated. I think, first of all, we haven't seen a budget for a year or two. We're a year late, if you will. So the last budget was two years ago. go. I think it's underrated in so far as we have a massive problem that we're trying to solve with the pandemic and the economic recovery. So I think it I think it's underrated. And I'm actually looking forward to seeing Minister Freeland stand up and deliver this budget. I expect that she will do. I think she's underrated as well. And I think she'll do a great job.
Zain
1:01:37
Corey, budget 2021, federal budget 2021, overrated, underrated in your mind?
Corey
1:01:44
dumb jackass just called it the biggest political day of the year it is it is the biggest it's going to be something in the year that is potentially
Carter
1:01:50
potentially going to be a political day very next day this
Carter
1:01:53
this might be the biggest political day of the millennium right
Zain
1:01:58
corey i think he's mocking you just to
Corey
1:02:00
to let you know i'm
Corey
1:02:01
i'm reading his existence mocks me his existence mocks me score yes
Zain
1:02:05
yes or no does this budget get defeated
Corey
1:02:09
uh maybe what the hell you told you that no
Zain
1:02:11
no i'm asking i'm asking i'm giving him a chance
Corey
1:02:16
steven carter you want me to rephrase it do you want me to give a different answer no i'm just giving c minus
Corey
1:02:20
minus needs improvement carter
Zain
1:02:22
carter does this budget go down i need to know because you know you have consistent opinions throughout the show and i don't know if you remember what you said before no
Carter
1:02:29
no it's absolutely going to fail it's probably going to fail as as early as Wednesday.
Zain
1:02:35
Well, I mean, it is the biggest political story of the year. You know what?
Carter
1:02:38
what? This is a meaningless day. It's not only a meaningless day. It's also like, imagine how meaningful it would be if the budget actually failed. And then Corey would be eating crow, wouldn't he? Oh, yes, he would, Mr. Crow Eater.
Zain
1:02:53
excellent. Thank you, Carter. Well, you got me there. Glad you got that out of your system. Carter, are you buying stock or are you selling stock this week? uh if the person in question is minister christopher freeland you've mentioned her as being underrated you've mentioned her uh as someone who you think is going to an excellent job um tomorrow are you buying stock in advance of this budget if you have to hold it for at least a week oh
Carter
1:03:16
oh yeah i think so if i can buy it before the budget's delivered then yeah i'm in i'll buy markets are always open i'm
Carter
1:03:23
i'm buying i'm buying right now buying
Corey
1:03:30
on i know i'm not buying i'm not he's
Corey
1:03:34
he's day trading i think she's great i'm not doing it
Corey
1:03:38
so this is going really well
Zain
1:03:38
well just so everybody cory let's let's stick on this uh doug ford had a had a hell of a weekend uh not in the good way as we've spent 40 minutes discussing on this podcast are you buying any stock in ontario liberal leader stephen del duca
Corey
1:03:58
interesting carter are you maybe wait i've changed my answer okay because carter looked like he agreed with that so yes carter
Zain
1:04:04
carter are you bike are you carter story went from a no to a maybe to a yes carter are you also going to travel uh the entire spectrum no
Carter
1:04:13
no i was always yes um i'm shocked to see
Carter
1:04:16
see cory agree with me it was shocking you
Zain
1:04:20
you kind of make you kind of make me feel like like this last segment has no value to either us or the listeners i don't know
Carter
1:04:26
know i'm just feeling like that has no value come
Zain
1:04:33
steven carter yes or no final question are we going to see some version of
Zain
1:04:38
a guaranteed federal income in tomorrow's budget yes or no
Zain
1:04:45
cory are we going to see some version of a guaranteed federal income in tomorrow's budget yes or no i
Zain
1:04:50
think you'll see a mention of pilot in it oh
Zain
1:04:53
oh interesting nuanced answer even that even that i think is is the quite a bit of the reach we'll look forward to it we'll leave that there that's a wrap on episode 932 of the strategist my name is zane belgi with me as always stephen carter cory hogan and we'll see you next time ©