Episode 934: West Denial Virus

Zain 0:03

This is The Strategist, episode 934. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what is going on? Happy Thursday. All of it. All of it. Well,

Corey 0:12

Well, look who came crawling back.

Carter 0:15

Look who decided that radio wasn't good enough. He had to come back to the pod.

Zain 0:21

What are you talking about? Radio is

Carter 0:28

can't believe that they didn't take it like a word count from you from the podcast and then compare and pay you 50 less because you use 50 fewer words on the radio than you do in the podcast what's the what's the deal with slowing down your your the cadence of your speech fill in time carter it's

Zain 0:45

it's an expertise you bring in a very i

Carter 0:47

i feel time i feel time i speak fast i have lots to say you

Zain 0:52

you just run downhill i just wanted to make sure that when i try to fill time that that the average listener knows what

Zain 0:59

what I'm trying to say and can keep up. I know you don't care for our listeners, the disdain you show. I

Carter 1:06

don't ever believe we have listeners. I

Carter 1:08

I just think the three of us get together and chat, and if there's listeners, whatever. I don't care.

Zain 1:13

This is true. This is true. Corey, I

Zain 1:15

I have come back. I have crawled back.

Carter 1:20

He's only back because it's the Olympic edition, right?

Carter 1:22

right? The Special Olympics version, right? You've got the Special Olympics show all teed up, Zane.

Carter 1:28

We're starting talking about the women's eight, women's

Carter 1:32

women's swimmers, women's gymnasts. I'm just looking at

Corey 1:35

Corey not saying anything. I was so confused. When you were talking about the Special Olympics episode, I thought you were talking about the Special Olympics.

Zain 1:43

Yeah, we just talked about

Corey 1:44

about the Paralympics. What are you talking

Carter 1:45

talking about? Hey, I see what you did there. Yeah, it's good. Okay, never mind then.

Carter 1:50

Yeah, I'm guessing we're not going to go back and re-tape that. Solid

Zain 1:54

That's good to see it. That's good. That's good to see it. Way to

Zain 1:57

to leave it all out on the radio floor today, by the way. Way to bring nothing to the podcast.

Carter 2:05

My best takes were already used. I've already done. We did 30 minutes on radio, which is like a good four minutes when you take out the commercials.

Zain 2:14

Listen, if it didn't convince you to buy a...

Carter 2:18

Oh, my God. And those commercials were tragic. Who pays for those? Oh, my God. There was one commercial with

Corey 2:24

with a fake call waiting. And when you are a guest on the show, you're

Corey 2:29

you're on a phone. Did

Carter 2:30

actually think it was the producer? Like every time, every time. Both of us looked at our phones.

Corey 2:36

thought it was, that's

Zain 2:36

that's good, it works.

Carter 2:38

No, it does not work.

Carter 2:40

What was the product for, Corey? Do you remember?

Corey 2:42

It was some sort of debt consolidation.

Corey 2:47

Well, that's right, it was. Yeah, because there kept being calls from different creditors. That was the whole shtick. day well i

Zain 2:52

i have come back from the radio waves and i'm i'm back here on the podcast yeah no it's it's really uh what would happen without me uh you know uh cory before we jump into it because we're going to jump into it uh do you want to comment on uh one russell

Corey 3:06

russell westbrook no i don't want to talk about this this is too upset i know

Zain 3:09

know carter you want to talk about it

Carter 3:20

what russell westbrook i

Carter 3:23

honestly don't know if he's an nfl player or an nba player well

Zain 3:26

well take a guess and then go with it that's never stopped you listen

Carter 3:29

listen i think that it's a really good thing that the washington football team renamed itself and russell's gonna fit right in there hey

Zain 3:35

hey what What do you think of the Cleveland Guardians?

Zain 3:39

That's their new name. Better

Carter 3:41

than the Cleveland Indians.

Zain 3:45

But is it a Elks? Is it equivalent of the Elks, plural, rename?

Carter 3:52

I like the Elks.

Corey 3:53

I like the new logo. Oh, it's not the same? Like

Corey 3:55

Like you wouldn't say there's a bunch of Guardian over there. You'd say there's a bunch of Guardians over there. What are you talking about?

Corey 4:02

How is this a conversation we're having?

Zain 4:05

Speaking of conversations we're having, let's move it on to our headlines. Our first headline comes to us from Insider. Corey, we're going to stick with the NBA theme for a second. An NBA head coach punished his whole team because one player had an Android phone and messed up the group chat.

Zain 4:23

Now, we're going to run through the list, and you guys are going to guess which coach. And we're going to start with Carter. Lay your best coach out there. Who did it, Carter?

Zain 4:32

Phil. Okay, not bad.

Zain 4:36

a bad guess cory

Corey 4:38

cory i want to i want you to expand on this yeah yeah

Zain 4:49

cory cory carter's carter's not on entirely off it is a first name of a white dude um he is a former player actually

Zain 5:00

actually i don't know if he's a white dude now

Zain 5:02

now that i think about it you're talking about jason kidd and i

Zain 5:07

i don't know if jason kidd is white

Zain 5:11

he's got our best episode

Corey 5:11

episode ever oh we've

Zain 5:14

we've got a lot to talk about but is jason kidd white the first thing we need to talk about who knows listeners you could you could tell us after you don't research it cory it's it's gonna ruin it it's gonna ruin it no don't don't i'm

Zain 5:25

i'm going with maybe uh okay so jason kidd back when he was the coach of the milwaukee bucks

Zain 5:32

scolded his entire team because one player who by the way seemed to have been a walk-on who was a new addition to the team had an android phone he now has a no android rule cory he's going to turn around the dallas mavericks that's what i have to say he's going to turn around with with rigor like this it's

Zain 5:48

it's going to happen it

Corey 5:50

can be really annoying when there's that one person in your group chat who decides to switch phones right and all of a sudden you're on whatsapp and what the hell is whatsapp and why are we doing this why

Zain 5:59

why are we using whatsapp when all three of us have an iphone i mean that could be a discussion we need to air out uh over the course of this episode for those

Corey 6:06

those rare times that chester is interacting with us which is frequently infrequent

Carter 6:11

still working off his damn blackberry carter

Zain 6:14

carter do you have any iphone android thoughts or can i just move on because you you've made your contribution with with, and I quote, Phil.

Corey 6:23

Let's move on to our next headline. Our next headline from the Calgary Herald.

Zain 6:25

Herald. Kenny outraged over Trudeau's Senate appointment as Bath Mayor Karen Sorensen appointed as an independent senator. That is right. Jason Kenny said the prime minister showed contempt for democracy in Alberta, Stephen, by appointing a handpicked representative of Alberta to the Senate in advance of the provincial elections.

Zain 6:47

Stephen Carter, get your thoughts in.

Carter 6:50

You mean the perfectly legal process that actually follows all the legal requirements that's been dictated by the Supreme Court of Canada, that appointment? Yeah. It turns out that this is probably what's going to happen, guys. Don't expect, you know, if you're running for the Senate, you're probably not going to be appointed a senator. But go for it anyways, because I think it's really a distraction. It's fabulous. Corey,

Zain 7:10

Corey, is it kind of weird to appoint someone who is elected sitting in a particular elected chair or not so much overthinking it? Well,

Corey 7:19

don't know if it's that weird. It was interesting because the whole idea of this independent Senate was that you were going to go outside of partisan politics. But in

Corey 7:28

in the province of Alberta, certainly in small towns, mayoralties, councillors, these are not partisan roles. You know, you don't run for a political party. But it is, and I'm not sure, I haven't been following all of Trudeau's Senate appointments enough to know, but I don't know if this is the first, like, active politician that's been appointed. It does seem to somewhat stretch the mold that Justin Trudeau created when he came up with this weird

Corey 7:54

weird independent Senate group, which I've never fully wrapped my head around. For

Zain 7:58

For Kenny, was this just another moment to find another thing to bash the prime minister on? You know, or do you feel like this was deeper? I mean, obviously, he's got his own Senate elections that he's been pushing that the conservatives for a long time have been pushing. Do you feel like this was just a convenient, opportunistic hit? Or do you think there was more texture to this than that, Corey?

Corey 8:21

He couldn't possibly have truly been surprised by this. Nobody expected that Trudeau was going to appoint somebody who won the Alberta Senate election. Now, conservative prime ministers have appointed the

Corey 8:32

the senators that Alberta has decided to elect in the past. But there's no chance that Trudeau was going to either, A, appoint the victor or, B, not appoint anyone until after the federal election.

Corey 8:46

It's just not how our system works, right? And so, in fact, there is still one vacancy in the Alberta Senate. it so uh you know who

Corey 8:54

who the hell knows what will happen here but uh maybe aaron o'toole will decide to appoint uh you

Corey 9:01

i don't know me whoever wins you yeah aaron o'toole if you win in this senate election you can do it but but the idea like trudeau's just not playing this game and the suggestion that somehow he's broken the rules of a game he's not playing is absurd yeah

Zain 9:14

yeah good point carter anything else to add to that no

Carter 9:17

no karen sorensen's a great pick she's a fantastic mayor She's a great person. And she's going to I think she's going to be very much like Paula Simons and really turn out to be an excellent, an excellent senator for the province of Alberta.

Corey 9:30

Corey, I'd like to take this opportunity to say I really dislike the Senate and we should not have a Senate. We

Carter 9:35

We need the Senate. Corey's wrong. We

Corey 9:37

We do. OK, we're going to unpack this a little bit. Zane, go sit in the corner for a minute. Why in the world do

Corey 9:42

do we need the Senate? Give me one good argument for the Senate that is not either A, deeply undemocratic, or

Corey 9:49

or B, could be replaced by just hiring a bunch of lawyers, maybe 10.

Carter 9:54

It's an opportunity to look at the legislation and make it better from a different point of view. It reduces some of the partisan infighting.

Corey 10:01

Sounds like 10 lawyers could do that. Keep going. Yeah,

Carter 10:03

Yeah, 10. They got hundreds of fucking lawyers. Sorry, Corey, is your

Zain 10:06

your perspective 10 lawyers?

Carter 10:08

He wants 10 lawyers. He wants to be one of them appointed. He doesn't even have a law degree. My perspective is that the idea of sober second

Corey 10:15

second thought is either deeply undemocratic or just like this is not the easiest way to review things, to have 100 people who may or may not have the

Carter 10:23

the expertise you need

Carter 10:24

need for review. It allows, you know, some of the Senate procedures have been absolutely fantastic. Setting up

Corey 10:28

up like a survey money and flipping it to every fucker out there. It doesn't mean that it's a—

Carter 10:33

a— That's not quality engagement, Corey. Oh,

Carter 10:35

sorry, but— Use it as a communications professional. The opinions

Carter 10:38

opinions of the Canadians

Corey 10:40

Canadians that they decide to talk to filter through 100 people. Those are the ones I care about. That is quality engagement. That's what I

Corey 10:45

Okay. Now, for the record, there are many senators that I have great respect for, but your institution as a whole is archaic and just an embarrassment in a modern country.

Corey 10:54

Thank you. Over to you, Zane.

Zain 10:55

Carter, Russell Westbrook plays basketball. The sport is basketball. Is it for the

Carter 10:59

the Washington basketball team? Not

Zain 11:02

Not anymore. That's not horrible. Let's move it on to our next headline. our next headline comes to us from the cbc zane yes yeah yeah

Zain 11:12

he is no kcp you're getting kcp in return he's improved

Zain 11:15

his three-point shot you look at lethal shooter on instagram the guy's helping him with this you know long-range game it's a win we've always

Corey 11:22

always been at war with eurasia it's fine it's

Zain 11:23

it's fine carter it's fine we've solved it before you even understood it we solved it i'm

Carter 11:28

i'm just glad you two are happy let's move on to our next

Zain 11:30

next headline from the cbc steven harper Harper says Canada's pandemic spending has been, quote, overkill in podcast appearance. I will mention, number one, it was not this podcast that he appeared in, unfortunately, despite the multiple requests that Chester has sent out to Stephen.Harper at gmail.com, as well as Harper.Steven at gmail.com. He says he does it every day in

Zain 11:56

morning. Nothing yet. that. The Canadian government has spent irresponsibly in its attempt to fend off economic disruption caused by COVID-19, according to Stephen Harper. Quote, it's not a good reaction. It's been overkill, Harper said on the podcast American Optimist, which was released earlier this week. Quote, this is bad macroeconomic policy on an enormous scale. The podcast launched about a month ago and bills itself as an alternative to fear, cynicism and zero thumb thinking in mainstream media, according to the CBC. You see, Carter,

Zain 12:27

Carter, liberals are using this clip of Harper to showcase exactly what conservative leadership would have looked like during the pandemic. It would have kind of been in this vein of we were we would have spent less. We would have not spent on you. We would have spent on macroeconomic policy, all things that Stephen Harper indicated. How bad was this appearance for Harper and maybe not even for Harper himself because he's done with it, but for the conservatives? Well,

Carter 12:53

I think that every conservative leader since Harper has lived in the shadow of Harper, right? And, you know, we discussed, I think, our last podcast, the fictitious poll that said, well, how many people would actually vote for Stephen Harper if he was back? So he, you know, he doesn't make it easier on O'Toole by standing up and saying something like this, because there are a lot of Canadians that agree with this. And O'Toole has basically said we wouldn't have done it this badly, but I don't think that he has said that they wouldn't have done it quite so much. This is Stephen Harper continuing to exert a shadow over O'Toole that makes it hard for O'Toole to be the leader that's going to be elected the next prime minister. But I don't think it's bad. I don't think it's like, you

Carter 13:34

you know, I mean, people

Carter 13:35

people remember 2008 to 2015 when Stephen Harper didn't exactly run an austerity government. You know, he ran a spending government because that's what Canadians needed at the time. And

Carter 13:47

And most governments, I think, tend to be the governments that that people need in the time because that's how government tends to function. And we can have a long conversation about the

Carter 13:58

the public service and how the public service is constituted to do the to do the work. And politicians are along for the ride for a lot of it. But I don't think that Stephen Harper would have been much different than Justin Trudeau, but we'll never know. And him wanting to portray himself as different than Justin is all part of his desire to rebuild himself as an image. He's writing his legacy. But keep in mind, this is the guy who spent us out of the 2008 fiscal downturn.

Corey 14:30

Corey, over to you on this. I

Corey 14:32

I didn't catch the interview itself, just the analysis of it. The analysis certainly made it sound a bit rich, him talking about, hey, we didn't have trouble getting vaccines. Well, really, was it a comfortable situation? Maybe we wouldn't have spent money that way. And certainly, I don't think it's helpful for the conservatives. It's like in that episode of Dave with the quote, if your neighbor's house is on fire, you don't haggle over the garden hose, right? But

Corey 14:58

argument isn't crazy. When you look at what other countries spent, other Western democracies, countries in Europe in particular, they seem to have had better kind of sustainment of employment at a lower price point. But it's a complicated issue. It's very complicated. One of the reasons may very well be they

Corey 15:15

they have stronger social safety nets in Europe, right? And so it doesn't become a question of we need extraordinary social safety nets. They already exist. And you can't really disaggregate it the way Stephen Harper was attempting to disaggregate it. I think ultimately for O'Toole, it's just a distraction and nobody wants to hear what the old guy, the old boss thinks about these things at a time when you're trying to become your own person. And

Zain 15:37

And especially if people are fond of the old boss in your corner of the political universe, so to speak. What did you guys think of how the liberals leveraged it? They took the clip, they made it into a video, they did the standard captioning, and their main sort of key message that they hammered home was, oh, look, you should be glad we were around for the pandemic because it would have looked like this under this guy. and it will look like this under O'Toole. And I'm paraphrasing. It was much more prettier language and artfully crafted than what I just said. But that general construct, Corey, jump in. What do you think of that attack line?

Corey 16:15

Well, I actually am not sure it was a great attack line. You are ultimately repeating a charge against you that you spent way too much money and you didn't get the outcomes desired. Now, you are, of course, making the point that the money wouldn't have been spent on you, the individual Canadians. And

Corey 16:30

maybe they're very well targeted with who they were targeting that or putting that towards, you know, a big social media push that would have gotten the base riled up, so to speak. But it's not immediately clear to me that giving

Corey 16:41

giving broader audience to Stephen Harper's critique is a winner for the liberals. Carter,

Zain 16:47

Carter, what did you think of how the liberals strategized this podcast clip of Harper and the messaging that they used in return? turn well

Carter 16:55

i thought it was a pretty decent message of the day right like you there's certain things that you can do for a day that carry you for the day and um during the summer when no one's paying attention and everybody's on vacation sometimes you know i've been talking a lot about generating

Carter 17:11

your own oxygen right and i think that the liberals were able to generate a little bit of oxygen on a story that no one's going to remember 10 days from now it's not a thing that is going to define their campaign, if it is defining their campaign, then I think they're running the wrong campaign. But generating a day's worth of oxygen, that's probably not a bad thing. And I think that there's a, you know, that tactic of generating some oxygen on a day when you're not getting media coverage anyways, that's actually a really valuable tactic for election campaigns. Generate oxygen, survive to the next day. I

Corey 17:45

I just think it's built on a mistaken take an assumption that people loathe Stephen Harper as much as the liberals loathe Stephen Harper. And ultimately, the guy did get us through the global financial crisis. Ultimately, we did have, you know, lesser, lesser health scares that vaccines had to be distributed on. I just I don't know if the general public is going to hear Stephen Harper say, hey, the liberals fucked this up and think, oh,

Corey 18:06

oh, man, Stephen Harper is such a fuck up. But they're

Carter 18:07

they're appealing to their base. They're

Carter 18:09

They're appealing to their base. They don't have this isn't the election. You think the audience is the question for the election? We're screwed, right the liberals should never take this the election question but but if this is just a day i guess

Zain 18:19

guess that's what's cory saying though right is like by stepping into it they perhaps elongate it and repeat the charge which could at least provide the raw ingredients to make this a defining question or at least one of the the suites of defining questions yeah

Corey 18:33

yeah that is ultimately my concern but i did i did say and i'll just repeat it's quite possible the liberals use this as a riling up of the base didn't intend for it to go any further and certainly twitterated up Right.

Zain 18:44

Let me move on to our next headline. Our next headline comes to us from the National Post. Without fiscal course correction, Ottawa could be posting deficits until 2070, says the PBO. And a new permanent federal if new permanent federal spending programs are drastically weakened, fiscal positions in the province has substantially extended the timeline for return to balance, says the report from the parliamentary budget officer. Corey, we've talked about this before in two prongs. Number one, where debt and deficit rank in the mind of Canadians. They've been at historic lows, is the summary. We've also seen the volatility in issue-based polling heading into this election, where pandemic was first, it is now ninth or fifth, depending on which pollster you're reading and following. But secondly, we've also talked about the parliamentary budget officer just jumping in, throwing these hot grenades into the mix and being like, hey, and they indicate in this in this report, this

Zain 19:38

this is not likely that, you know, governments can raise revenue, they can decrease spending. So this is not like a likely track that we're on. But just so you know, for consideration, they throw out these for consideration reports. Comment on a couple of these things from your perspective, including the specifics of this one, which says 50 years of deficits if nothing happens.

Corey 19:58

Sure. Okay, great. If nothing happens, how often does nothing happen in politics? But this is a general problem with the office of the PBO. Ultimately, a well-intentioned invention – actually, it was a Stephen Harper position. Do you think they're in cahoots? But, you know, this position was created under the Harper government to try to bring some sort of independent authority to the budgeting process. But what's happened is it's just stepped entirely out of analysis and into politics. And I don't know, I just think it's ridiculous. I do, however, think that with

Corey 20:30

with the issue shifting around where they are, it might be damaging to the Liberals. The PBO still has this aura to I think most Canadians of being an arbiter of these things, whether that's fair, I've already given you my opinion, you can insert your own. but um we

Corey 20:46

have we have always said on this pod all three of us going back for many many months now the problem the liberals are going to have is at a certain point people are going to say what have you done for me lately yeah we're through the pandemic through the pandemic yeah but who cares about that anymore now we want uh now we want to talk about how do we pay the bill how do we deal with the economy how do we make sure that canada's military is strong how do we make sure that our social programs are strong whatever your issue may be wherever

Corey 21:13

wherever it was before it's going to be back there again because the pandemic is going to recede here now debt zane

Corey 21:19

zane is tends to be low on people's register until some guys are coming to break your knees so if we start seeing interest rates climb for example expect

Corey 21:28

expect debt to to rise up there and you'll see the pierre paulievs of the world have have even more weird lumber videos oh

Zain 21:36

oh i want to talk about that in a second in fact we We might just do it here after Carter's take on this. Carter, both from the PBO and its role, and then as well as the debt deficit, I couple them together, issue tracking perspective. Do you feel like, do you agree with Corey that this could, you know, hurt the Liberals a bit, considering a lot of their budget and perhaps even a lot of their election plans are staked on Canadians leaving debt and deficit lower on the priority list?

Carter 22:03

Is there a more meaningless organization than the PBO in Canada? And no, Corey, the answer is not the Senate.

Carter 22:11

know, it doesn't matter. It's a made-up organization doing made-up work that people don't care about. And if you want to campaign against me and you're going to say that we're running too big a deficit and we're growing the debt too much, run against me doing that every time. Because I'm going to give things to the people that the people want, and what the people don't care about is debt and deficit. Where is debt and deficit on these things? If people care about the debt and deficit, they're voting conservative anyways. I don't need to worry about them. Thomas Mulcair ran on debt and deficit. set you remember that tommy mull how'd that work for him no one cares doesn't matter wait wait wait where did i try it out tommy

Carter 22:43

tommy mull yeah i call him that in 2015 uh

Zain 22:46

uh by the way i

Carter 22:47

i have to remember

Zain 22:49

i will as okay that's fine keep going keep going now you're on a roll now i'm

Carter 22:53

i'm done that was it that was the fucking take it ended with tommy mull

Zain 22:58

no we stopped you at tommy mull if that was going to be the ending we saved you

Zain 23:03

let's talk about that pure polyamory video for a second um what what is he doing and i'm sorry folks haven't seen it it's it's a it's a let me explain it's a walk and talk it's a west wingish walk and talk where he throws a piggy bank up in the air and says we're too much in debt and then he's at some lumber yard and he steps on a bunch of lumber and then there's like graphics or what we call in the biz supers uh which are just numbers that are just yeah i know i know radio

Zain 23:29

let me tell you something. I learned a lot of the radio biz, including Google Docs. The fact that we could share one during the show. Maybe we should do that once.

Zain 23:36

Maybe we should write a show. What the hell was he doing with that video? Because many are like, is this a leadership campaign that's already begun? Is this kosher within what's going on in this particular election? They're just using different messengers. Are we overthinking it? Stephen, Corey, what do you think?

Corey 23:56

Well, I wondered it myself. It certainly doesn't seem like a local candidate's ad. It does

Corey 24:03

does definitely seem like somebody who's positioning themselves for future leadership aspirations, but maybe, I don't know, maybe this is all part of the master plan and we'll see it all unfold. It, to me, was

Zain 24:15

Carter, is this like another video that Pierre-Paul Riev is making to run for and then drop out of another leadership race? Yeah,

Carter 24:22

Yeah, I mean, what's he going to finish? Like 14th

Carter 24:24

14th in a 13-person field? Like the guy's unelectable outside of his riding. I don't think it

Carter 24:32

it was a great video. I mean, it was a great video in terms of it was produced and people watched it. But, yeah, maybe it is positioning him for the leadership run that everybody expects when O'Toole crashes and burns. But this is one of the reasons that the conservatives don't do very well. They just have no patience. They have no ability to invest and create a brand for a leader. Instead, they just hope that the old brand carries over to the new guy. It's kind of an embarrassment. And if Pierre Polyev becomes the leader of the conservative party, I

Carter 25:03

think Justin Trudeau is running a dynasty. honesty like he's going to rival his father let's

Zain 25:08

let's move it on to our next headline this one comes to us from the canadian press green party bleeding cash amid legal battles with anime paul guys i'll give it to you straight they spent 100k on legal fees in july have earmarked another 100 for august this is while they fired the two staff yeah and they're still trying to secure money for their race heading into i don't know two weeks now just react to the insanity that that continues to be be the greed party could well i will

Carter 25:33

it's the worst headline ever it should be green party bleeds red like this is this

Carter 25:42

do we have to keep talking about them they're dead aren't they they're gone didn't we discuss this in the last podcast and it's over it's over and we don't have to talk about them anymore i'm

Corey 25:50

i'm moving on unless cory wants to say something well this is just the definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face isn't that this money was more than enough to pay for these positions this makes it even more evidently a fight about out nothing by an incompetent board against a democratically elected leader let's

Zain 26:06

let's move on to right hex headline this one comes to us from the toronto star peter mckay hired bodyguards for his family during conservative leadership race sources say and record show i should say not sources say peter mckay hired emergency close protection after threats were made against his wife during the failed bid for leadership of the federal conservatives last year we forget so quickly that he could have been the leader right now challenging trudeau heading into his election Financial returns released earlier this week show McKay spent nearly $5 million in connection to his leadership bid, including $124,000 for security guards. I wanted to ask you guys a very simple question. Is

Zain 26:41

Is this common? And maybe this kind of continues our long, informal series on running for office trials and tribulations. But have you heard of this before, Stephen or Corian? Maybe, Carter, I'll start with you. As someone who's, you know, obviously run a successful leadership race for a premier, have you heard of something like this, seeing behind the scenes?

Carter 27:01

yeah, we had threats made against various candidates I'm involved in. It hasn't been something that has had to be borne by the individual campaign. The stuff that has happened when I've been directly involved has been stuff that is covered off by the police service in various levels of police servicing. So I think

Carter 27:22

think that we are living in a time when threats against politicians are sadly all too common. common and uh on

Carter 27:31

on top of that i think that politicians do the wrong thing too frequently in terms of not accepting

Carter 27:35

accepting police protection or not thinking it's a major deal it is a major deal every time and uh frankly i think that the only mistake that peter mckay made here is that he had to pay for it himself it should have been provided by the canadian taxpayer gory

Zain 27:49

gory any any uh insight to elucidate around uh security for for leaders is something we probably don't hear often especially especially when someone's kind of running for a leader of a party. In this case, as I'll repeat, this was emergency protection after threats were made against his wife during his leadership race. Just thoughts and reactions to this.

Corey 28:09

Yeah, like Stephen, I'm not familiar with instances of private security being hired on an ongoing basis. Certainly, for individual events, you hire security occasionally to make sure that a moment is managed. But the idea that you need to have a person covered off, it

Corey 28:25

it happens. But it's usually covered by the police service. And certainly my experience is more in the government context. Obviously, the premier always has, of a province, always has a security detail. And when

Corey 28:36

when there were credible threats or ongoing threats or reasons to be concerned, often that would go to ministers or I shouldn't say often, but that's when a minister or an MLA would get support needed. And generally speaking, in those moments, in my experience, leaders in the House from various parties will sort of say, OK, we get it and we will try to help each other out there. And we are not going to make hay of the fact that there's security services being spent because this is all too serious. And that's when it gets real for a lot of politicians, right, that the words have actually resulted in something a little bit crazier than that. And there's been a ton of reporting on the kind of shit that premiers like Alison Redford and Rachel Notley have had to put up with.

Corey 29:17

Go and look at some of it. It's just totally crazy. And it's deeply alarming. And it's very specific. And it's very personal. And it's sick.

Corey 29:30

don't know if it's worse or we're just more aware of it in this social media era where it's that much easier to reach out to your premier with a threatening note or a politician with a threatening note. But I

Corey 29:40

I don't think that Peter McKay should ever have had to go through that, obviously. And it's

Corey 29:45

it's a terrible testament of the times. Carter, finish us off on this.

Carter 29:49

It's no surprise to me that the threat was made against his wife. The misogyny that exists, the attacks, the threats against women. It's a plague in our political lives. And frankly, I think it's a plague in our regular lives as well. And it needs to be dealt with. And I don't know that we're doing nearly as good a job as we need to.

Zain 30:12

Let's move it on to our first segment. Yes, 30 minutes in. Our first segment, West Denial Virus. Oh, God. Here we go. We're talking about it. We're talking about Alberta. Let's do it. The province of Alberta announced Wednesday, we're recording on Thursday, so yesterday, that Alberta will soon have no mandatory COVID-19 protocols, no more mandatory masking, contact tracing, or isolating as part of a move to treat the coronavirus like other respiratory respiratory viruses, or as our health minister said, in the endemic phase. Starting Thursday, as in today, anyone with COVID-19 symptoms, I should say, or a positive test result must isolate but quarantine for their close contacts will be recommended as not mandatory. I'm sorry, I'm just reading this from a news release. I'll just add one more piece of reaction, which was we got a piece of reaction from Calgary Mayor Nye Nenshi said that lifting the remaining health orders in Alberta was, quote, the height of insanity. Stephen, give me your take. What's going on here? Alberta, Tyler Shandro saying leading the way with this particular move, saying that every other province is going to follow. What is your reaction from when you see what the province announced on Wednesday?

Carter 31:25

We've been leading the way in COVID from the very beginning. We've been leading the way in infections. We've been leading the way in deaths. We've been leading the way in reducing the mask mandate. We've been leading the way from the day one. And you've got to be impressed with our consistency. I mean, we're leading the way. I'm impressed

Corey 31:41

impressed with your consistency. Yeah, me too. I'm getting a bit of deja vu here.

Carter 31:45

Yeah, I mean, this is the same piece. In fact, I'm just reading my script from the radio show. Yeah,

Carter 31:51

good. We are second worst in the country on immunization. We are only behind Nunavut, which has a modest logistics challenge, given that everybody's all the way the fuck north we are getting killed on this this is terrible um and i i mean the case that they're making is you're gonna have to start living with covet at some point at some point you have to start living with covet i'm just not sure this is the right point this feels to me to be a dumbass point when our cases are starting to go back up they're declaring victory yeah i mean it's just it's an absolute joke cory

Carter 32:27

cory but i'm okay

Zain 32:27

it you seem fine with it you seem fine with it and frankly the second round was better for you i have to

Carter 32:33

to say i had it more tight it was tighter it was tight it was more tight it was mainly

Zain 32:37

mainly it was mainly more loud uh cory

Zain 32:46

yeah uh lay it on me cory what's your take

Corey 32:49

it's it's not dissimilar the the fact is i

Corey 32:54

i part of me thinks yeah well that's true we are ultimately going to have to make peace with this at some point. What are the triggers that would otherwise bring us back to normal society? Are we going to continue these tests forever? Are we going to continue it? You know, all of the arguments because the government made them, but there's a gaping hole in them. And the gaping hole is there actually is a pretty important trigger to come at this point. And that's the fact that anybody under 12 cannot get vaccinated still. We're in a situation now where we don't even know what the COVID levels are going to be in our community as we're sending our kids back to school. And hey, that

Corey 33:27

that might seem fine to you. A lot of people will tell you the risk to kids is much lower for hospitalization, for more severe certainly for death, but even things like long COVID that are getting a lot of press, that there's an awful lot lower risk for children. The argument is effectively my children's risk unvaccinated is not really materially different from mine vaccinated because of the age difference and the effects here but like

Corey 33:54

like how does that hit if you have a kid who's high risk because we're talking about groups as a whole here right how does that news hit you no longer even have information about the prevalence of covet in your neighborhood to make decisions about your safety and one i guess this is my point the thing that i find most shocking about this is we're

Corey 34:11

we're being robbed of information going forward the government

Corey 34:14

government of alberta talks a lot about personal responsibility you got to take personal responsibility for your actions right we're not going to mandate these these things. We want you to take personal responsibility. Well, how the fuck am I supposed to do that in the dark? How

Corey 34:26

How am I supposed to do that with my ears jammed shut and absolutely no inputs coming in here?

Corey 34:32

In the province of Alberta, in

Corey 34:34

in mere weeks, you will be able to get COVID and then just go on with your life anyways. Just say, I got COVID, but I don't want to miss this shift, right? There's no laws being broken. Nothing's wrong with that come the middle of of August. And there is fundamentally, I think, something wrong with that. But you'll never even know if you're the person next to it, because there's no documentation, there's no reporting. And that is my major foundational problem with this. The kids can't get vaccinated, and we're in a total information vacuum.

Zain 35:06

Carter, you know, between the mixture of politics and ideology and good strategy, strategy uh and of good public health advice i mean and we'll talk about all the the um the commentary that's been going on against you know our our chief medical officer of health where do you kind of see this live for the kenny government is this is this just literally like branding to say we're gonna do it first we're gonna move here first we want it to be first with opening so far so good we're gonna move first here and we're just gonna try to wash away what the last 16 months have been for us and kind of turn a page into this sort of bold reopening plan, like triple down on it? Is that what you're sensing here that they're trying to do? They

Carter 35:48

They have written a script and the script says we are running the best summer ever. And the script began with the stampede and

Carter 35:53

it is finishing with we have no more COVID restrictions. That is the script that they have written. That is the script that they are following and they anticipate following it all the way through. They are committed to this because we have the worst approval ratings ever on on the actual um on on our covid management right like people think in alberta we've done a very poor job and and people outside of alberta may be saying well that's because you've done such a bad job but what you don't understand is that that's two halves that's one half saying you haven't done enough another half saying you've done too much your mask mandates are killing us. Vaccinations are bad. There is a group of people in Alberta for whom that is the story that they're hearing. You know, mask mandates destroyed business. No, not having COVID destroyed business, not feeling safe, destroyed business. And we'll see how things unfold when we don't feel safe putting our kids in school and we don't feel safe going into businesses. But I think that we we are writing a recipe for disaster as we're moving through.

Corey 36:59

Corey, jump in. I'm not actually sure it's a recipe for disaster. I will say this. The psychological effect is enormous, and I think that the confidence in going into businesses, as Stephen said, will be a problem. You look elsewhere, and you can, again, see places

Corey 37:15

places like the UK, their fourth wave deaths and hospitalizations didn't follow at the same level, and certainly it seemed to be much more with unvaccinated groups, Which is not to say their lives don't matter. I'm just saying there's fewer of those as time goes on, right? But here's what I guess what I would say.

Corey 37:33

fact that cases are climbing, that's true. And I didn't see the numbers today. So maybe this is no longer true as of this moment. But until yesterday, we were still seeing hospitalizations and ICU decline. And I do think that there's an intent by the government here and by the chief medical officer of health to get us to stop thinking about these things in terms of case counts and start thinking about these things in terms of severe outcomes. Because there are people like all three of us who are dual vaccinated, double vaccinated. We may still end up with COVID, but if we get it, odds are good it will be either asymptomatic or with fairly mild symptoms. And to be fair, that's probably not something that we need to be deeply concerned about. Right now, obviously, if we then spread it to a bunch of people, different ball of wax. But one of us getting a cold for a few days or something equivalent to cold symptoms, I should say, is not something that people should be particularly worried about. And cases is maybe not a great approximator for COVID anymore, as vaccines have absolutely changed the game.

Corey 38:31

But that still doesn't excuse us not having the information and understanding where these things are going. And

Corey 38:36

I think that, again, that's fundamentally my problem with this. While they are doing things that in isolation make sense, picking to do them at this moment seems

Corey 38:46

seems rushed, seems like it doesn't make a ton of sense. Steven,

Zain 38:50

Steven, at this moment, you know, where certain cases, to Corey's point, I don't have today's numbers as well, matching the peak of that third wave, so to speak. Carter, explain to me, though, on Corey's point, because I feel like even if, you know, ideology or raw politics is driving this decision, there is a chance that, you know, they could be right. that that there is very little sort of backlash or ramifications on the public health side or even from the public like we're seeing a very loud uh group including calgary's mayor saying it's the height of insanity many docs coming out there saying this is crazy i can't believe this is happening um but at some point could that just quell if things continue on as normal like almost like the opening where they made that gamble to use cory's highway analogy or to use cory's winding road analogy, I should say, right? Driving fast on a windy road. It seemed to have kind of paid off for them. Where they did it, they were generally going to be fine for the most part on the balance of probabilities. Is this similar in that regard, where even on the opposition, they might be perhaps risking the politics of overreaction by, for example, what Rachel Notley said today, I'm calling on the reversal of this decision to end mandatory isolation, et cetera. Or do you feel like her politics are still pretty sound from the lane she's trying to hunt and pick?

Carter 40:12

Each one of them is trying to appeal to their own base audience, right? And I think that the

Carter 40:17

difference is that Jason Kenney's base audience, he's going to the smaller audience, he's going to the group that he needs to win back because he's lost them. I think Rachel Notley's appealing to a larger base audience. She's reaching out and grabbing a larger group of people that are believing what she's saying um and the evidence that i would throw out about that is just the fundraising numbers that were released today you

Carter 40:41

know the the fundraising numbers in alberta uh the ndp continued to outrace the the ucp and i think that that's a really useful barometer for how people are feeling in alberta there's a larger group of people who are angry enough to give money to a political party and so i i think that that's uh

Carter 40:59

uh that's the that's the the measure that she's using and it's been working for her so why would she change cory

Zain 41:06

cory jump in and then i've got a question maybe i'm going to tag on right after your comments here it's

Corey 41:10

it's interesting that we have seen now really jason kenney likes these big swing politics yeah right

Corey 41:17

right yeah in the sense of like no we're not going to close down we're not going to close down we're not going to close down we think it'll work out doesn't work out or

Corey 41:24

or yeah we're going to open up sooner than everybody that seems to have been okay so far and i think it's probably just fine now because it doesn't look like alberta the

Corey 41:32

the reopening will not be blamed for some of this stuff but this is another big swing if you look at the rest of the world you're seeing new mask mandates yes we're seeing um you know people coming in with restrictions as to what's happening in schools and and new color coding systems and and all of these things that were at one point suggested to be going away way, have come back in some of these jurisdictions. And this, I think, is what I find really fascinating about it. Because most governments

Corey 42:00

governments would make the calculation, hey, if this is what everybody is doing, there's safety with that herd. And as recently as yesterday, before Dina Hinshaw, our Chief Medical Officer of Health, took the lectern, I

Corey 42:11

I thought that she was going there to announce either, hey, like, if you don't take it seriously, we're going to end up in more restrictions or maybe even new restrictions in that moment yes and

Corey 42:21

and it's the dissonance which i think the province is digesting today right

Corey 42:26

the specifics are are something that you can look at and say well i got a problem with that but but to have those specifics at this moment when i think we're expecting if anything the opposite i think that's what's really stunning today well

Zain 42:39

well let's then let's do this let's retroactively go work for jason kenney for a bit right let's let's do the job.

Corey 42:44

job. Yeah, let's retroactively do that. Yeah,

Zain 42:46

Yeah, right. Like, let's go back to Monday, right? And say that, you know, he comes to you and he says, I want to take this big swing. That's the only way that we get out of this. That's the only way we turn the page fast enough. I'm going to take this big swing. I'm going to be the first in this country. Frankly, I maybe want to be the first in this continent to start the endemic language, say that we need need to drop all the the contact tracing etc etc what factors carter i'll start with you first are you saying you you can't do this don't go down this pathway you know and he says i i'm gonna stop isolation i'm gonna do this uh either from a communications or even from a policy perspective what would have still allowed him to go for the big swing that cory talks about that he feels like is politically necessary but would have de-risked it or would have kind of maybe made it more strategically optimized or sharper than the rollout that we saw earlier this week?

Carter 43:43

I think that the number one thing would be to set the table, right?

Carter 43:46

right? There was absolutely no table setting. If he had, like, let's say that instead

Carter 43:52

of Dr. Hinshaw coming out and saying this, we had Minister Shandro coming out and saying, in one week, we

Carter 44:01

we are going to renounce the the restructured reopening plans um we are open alberta's open for business but now we are moving into the next and the final phase of this of this pandemic the endemic we're going to end you know this is the beginning of the end this is we need to get back we need to get albertans back for elective surgeries we need to get uh our health care system working again we need to get this under control and we're so close now and uh you know get ready for dr hinshaw to tell us exactly how this is going to unfold in a week or two days or whatever but because literally everybody was expecting a return to restrictions or big numbers being announced so numbers are going up and instead of talking about how numbers are going up and that concerns us we're saying fuck the numbers we're not even going to change you know we're not even going to track so the the the first thing that i would have done is to set the table differently yeah

Corey 44:56

yeah let me jump in right there yeah table setting go

Zain 44:58

go ahead you're at yours i

Corey 44:59

i i completely agree and i think one of of the most foundational pieces of table setting that they needed to do was address what Stephen said about eight times, numbers going up, numbers going up, numbers going up. They should have been spending the last three weeks saying it's only about hospitalizations and ICUs. Who cares? What do you mean cases? Cases don't matter at this point. You mean priming us for

Zain 45:16

for a different metric than we're used

Corey 45:18

used to tracking? They needed to, because what happened was we were all tracking cases, cases, cases, cases, cases, cases. Cases are going up. And while we've got our eye on that, That's when they tell us that they're going to go down in their level of restriction. I mean, that was a fundamental problem that they had yesterday. And so the prep work wasn't done. And maybe they were trying to do it. Maybe it wasn't registering. But if it wasn't registering, it didn't get done. There needed to be an awful lot more done on that front.

Zain 45:45

Well, Corey, then let's go even further back. Let's go three weeks back. Might as well do this time machine thing. What tactics would you have used to try to change the narrative to hospitalization? Would it have been press conferences by the premier and the chief medical officer of health? Would it have been digital advertising? Would it have been surrogates? Give me a mixture of what it would have taken to shift the metric that we viewed COVID through. I

Corey 46:11

would have taken the opportunity of reopening to say, as we are reopening because we have vaccinations, this miracle of science,

Corey 46:18

yes, that has allowed us to really change the game with COVID. And now even when we get COVID, it doesn't mean the same thing. So from this point forward, the government of Alberta will be focusing primarily on hospitalization and ICU rates. rates here's our new like i some of it is similar to changing the dashboards like on they should be like this is the icu number this is the hospitalization number click these four different links to get yourself to the case numbers because they don't matter anymore and i would have actually continued those daily briefings that they postponed and use that as an opportunity to constantly reinforce it's not about cases anymore because the time to do that is when cases are going down not when cases are going up as soon as cases are going up it looks like you're You're just shifting the goalposts on people. But as they're going down, you say, you know, you don't even say they're going down. You say ICUs are going down. Hospitalizations are going down. Somebody asked about the cases. Cases don't matter at all, Jim. But if you care, you can click the four links and you can figure them out. As the premier has

Corey 47:16

has said, and as I want to reinforce, cases are not a good metric now that we have vaccines in the system. Like that is what should have been going on since July if this was the intention. Carter,

Zain 47:25

Carter, former chief of staff, July 1st, you're doing the opening plan. What would you have done? you're pointing to yourself there's only three of us here i just need you to know you're he's literally teaming you up i i'm literally i'm literally giving you the opportunity to look good but you know what go and cold whatever fuck up the podcast garter go and cold do it

Corey 47:44

the other thing you know what i actually think i've got more to say on this

Zain 47:48

i'm like steven carter former chief of staff many accolades all these sort of things i'm giving you the opportunity but listen carter uh what would you have added to the mix cory would have said let's change the dashboards premier let's make sure that cases are four layers deep let's continue the daily pressers to to keep hammering home hospitalizations let's start that as soon as we announce the the opening what

Zain 48:10

what else would you have added to the mix i

Carter 48:12

i forgot my point that's

Carter 48:14

that's what i was pointing i knew that it was going to be fleeting and you guys just fucked it up you just kept going and it disappeared i didn't write it down okay

Carter 48:21

okay i remember it's about vaccinations i think that they let their foot off the gas on vaccinations And if they tied the vaccinations with the declining cases, so do what Corey was talking about, but also double down on getting that first vaccination for everybody, because the vaccinations are what's going to stop the Delta variant, not the first one, but the second one. But that messaging hasn't been coming out with the consistency that we need from Alberta Health.

Zain 48:50

Corey, you're going to jump in on the table setting side before we move on to some other strategy optimization. Absolutely.

Corey 48:55

Absolutely. To this day, you go to the COVID information for Albertans. The section right after, hey, we've entered stage three is cases in Alberta, and then a bunch of information about cases. This should be hospitalizations and ICUs in Alberta. Government of Alberta should change it tomorrow. When you click view all outbreak data, if right now it says cases and outbreak data, it should take you to a page that says hospitalizations and ICUs in Alberta from COVID-19, where it says cases by zone. The case column is number one right now. It's the prominent one. You've got to change that. You should have changed this four weeks ago if this was your plan. The problem is you have never stopped talking about cases being the core metric until the minute where it served you at this particular moment. And

Zain 49:36

And so, okay, so that table setting, which both of you have mentioned and added details on was one point. Okay, let's say that the Premier agrees, says, okay, three weeks ago, he said, yep, we're going to do the table setting. What else, even in the short term, would you have added to the mix to make this strategy and this rollout optimized better? Corey, jump in, and then Carter, I'll go back to you on this. Well,

Corey 49:58

Well, the other big thing that needs to be done is a strategy about children, about the fact that people under 12 cannot get vaccinated right now.

Corey 50:05

And this is where, again, you need to flood the zone with COVID doesn't have the same consequences to children. And here's what we're doing to protect children who are at risk. And so you can't just look at it as a whole, although you need to provide that contextualizing information to people. But you also need to say, here's how we're accommodating children who are at risk. Here's how we're doing it in the fall. Here's how we're doing it through the winter. Do you know what? It's not even a COVID thing anymore. This has made us so much more aware of chronic diseases and in general, the risks that people have in these situations. So I'd like to talk to you about what we are doing to have clean

Corey 50:40

clean schools in the major centers where you can send children who are at risk. I'm talking about ongoing ability to have these online courses for when there's flare-ups for these individual children. Because, again, we're going into a chronic – we're going into an endemic state, right? Yes.

Corey 50:54

But the opportunity here is to broaden it as they've kind of half-heartedly done in other contexts with the flu and just say, this is about all diseases now. But instead of saying this is all about all diseases, we're doing nothing, you should be saying this is about all diseases. So we're doing something that will carry through even

Corey 51:11

even after hopefully we're never talking about COVID again.

Zain 51:14

Carter, anything to add to that, even from the perspective of what Corey said, but also from even the policies that Kenny announced? Like, would you have still changed some of the suggestions around isolating or quarantining or contact tracing? Would you have thrown a bone to any of them? If Kenny Stoll, let's go back to our fundamental North Star here. I want to go for a big swing, right? I want to be the first, get out the gates early. What else would you have kind of manicured on the edges to help him do that from strategy?

Carter 51:44

There are some things that he's added that just make it harder. And the one that just jumped leapt out at people that they grabbed onto is, if you get COVID, you're no longer required to isolate. Yeah,

Carter 51:54

If you just left that out, and so if you'd taken all the advice that Corey and I have have given in the last 15 minutes and left out that one this isn't such a big deal why

Zain 52:05

why do you what i'm taking the strategist off i have for a second going to analyst mode why would do you think that one was there do you feel like it's just that was part of the full suite and like we're going you

Zain 52:16

you know to the end there's no like there's no middle ground like we need to go straight to the end is that why that was there i

Zain 52:23

it was to solve

Corey 52:23

solve it was to solve a problem that they otherwise had which is if you're not testing for covet how in the world are you supposed to know you have COVID. So how do you stay home if you have COVID? It's

Zain 52:33

And this kind of brings me to some of the other pieces that we're hearing across the province as a reaction that many people are equating this to Kenny not wanting to, you know, have the revelation of what Stampede's disaster or blast zone actually was, or that this is very similar to the ethics commissioner just like firing them as soon as you know, they were about to right on his heels do you guys buy that from like your your perspective of of what's going on uh in terms of jason kenny i'm asking you once again to take the strategy hat off i'll make you put it back on in a second but from those criticisms and those uh you know angles what do you what do you think i

Corey 53:11

mean a little zane but i i do think in some situations

Corey 53:15

situations this is a little bit simpler than this it is very expensive to be running this covet mechanism right now there is no clear exit plan And at least in the eyes of the government, I, again, think that you could have probably used vaccines for children as an obvious point where you start saying, okay, well, now it's truly all about personal responsibility. Because right now

Corey 53:33

right? I can't actually take certain steps to protect my children. And

Corey 53:37

And given all of that, it was, well, are we going to keep doing this forever? Are we going to continue to use all of the healthcare resources towards COVID-19? There is a legitimate argument there that at a certain point as people have vaccinations and as we see ICU use drop and hospitalization drop, that you have to start thinking about a certain reallocation. And as soon as you do that, I'm sure people start getting

Corey 54:01

getting greedy almost and say, well, could we just go whole hog? Could we just sort of stop this? Aren't we going to have to stop this anyhow? Anyhow, and really, if you're philosophically believe that once you have vaccines, COVID-19 is no worse than a number of other respiratory diseases, as many people seem to in the government. I know there's many conversations back and forth about long COVID consequences of all of that.

Corey 54:25

I mean, this isn't particularly inconsistent with that worldview, is it? So I

Corey 54:31

don't know. I mean, people are very quick to see malice and there is sometimes malice in politics. I wouldn't want to suggest otherwise or just outright fuckery. But you

Corey 54:41

you also have to appreciate that there

Corey 54:44

there are armies of bureaucrats right now thinking about how we position

Corey 54:48

position the health care system longer term, you know, and and perhaps some of those things look pretty appealing to the government or maybe maybe truly just the chief medical officer of health to kind of do now instead of waiting six months.

Zain 55:02

react to some of the criticisms you've heard regarding this plan, and then I'll jump back into the strategy.

Carter 55:10

I mean, I think that the two big ones that I've heard are around the isolation.

Carter 55:13

So the lack of testing and isolation, I'm going to group into one concern,

Carter 55:18

concern, because I think that Corey linked them well when he said that you can't have a lack of testing and then also stay home if you're testing positive. So this eliminates some problems. That concern, I think, is legitimate. And the other one I think is legitimate, but probably overhyped, is the what's going to happen to my kids. My kids can't be vaccinated. I totally understand that. But that

Carter 55:47

that will come. And more importantly, kids do get sick, but they're not getting nearly as sick as older people were. were. So let's get adults all vaccinated. I would really like to see some emphasis on the solution, which is let's get people vaccinated as quickly as possible.

Zain 56:10

Round out the strategy for me, guys. So far, I'm hearing table setting, right? They should have done that earlier, which includes also figuring out the metrics, changing the metrics to hospitalizations, changing the charts so that those were focused on hospitalizations, having adding some sort of plan or some sort of at least messaging for children and schools, dropping the isolation requirement. What else? Anything else you guys want to round out on the retroactive, how this could have gone better strategy for the UCP?

Zain 56:42

Carter, I'll go to you first and then Corey.

Carter 56:44

Yeah, I think that it's just setting the table. I mean, all of it hinged on having us be in expecting what was delivered and not having what delivered, you know, is the opposite of expectations. Corey. You know, everything else was there.

Corey 57:01

I think that's absolutely the case. But we also can't pretend that Alberta is an island. And as much as even if the government had done all of the strategies that we laid out there over the past few weeks, you would have these countervailing messages

Corey 57:14

messages coming from other jurisdictions that people would point to and say, well, why are we acting in this way? And yeah, I mean, that's also true in California, but California has got a mask mandate back and, and a number of other things like that. So it's not, you know, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that the government could have could have necessarily sold this to Albertans. The other thing I want to stress, just

Corey 57:34

just for my own soul at this point is to just emphasize, you asked us what a good strategy would be 100%.

Corey 57:39

I don't know that's good public health. And it's not something that I would want to be gaming and fucking about with if I was working as a political advisor to the premier, I really do think this needs to be following the data.

Zain 57:49

Well, this is good, because this is my last question was one that we that I wanted to kind of capstone this with, which is if if Jason Kenney had come to you, whether it was earlier this week, or four weeks ago, in anticipation of the July 1 opening, and he said, I want to take this big swing, would you have agreed that a big swing was what he needs, Corey? Because we you talked about this is something he likes to do. If you were advising him as a political staffer, would you have told him, Premier, I agree, you need a big swing? Or would you have fought him on the premise to begin with? And Carter, I'm going to come to you with the same question after Corey. I

Corey 58:22

I would say you just got out of hell. Why are you so desperate to go back?

Corey 58:25

You got lucky. You drove too fast on a winding road and you got there in one piece. That's not an excuse to find an even twistier road and go even faster. And that's what this feels like. Because at least when we were reopening coming into July, you could point to other examples like Israel and the United Kingdom and some of the data that was there.

Corey 58:43

Nobody has done what we're doing, at least as far as I can tell, in terms of just kind of, you

Corey 58:49

you know, turning off our eyes and hoping it all works okay. And, and

Corey 58:53

and it just doesn't seem necessary. Stephen

Corey 58:56

talked about how there are groups in Alberta that are always arguing against the restrictions. They've been pretty quiet lately, because there's not a lot of restrictions in Alberta, right? Right. Yeah.

Corey 59:06

And so, well, one of my theories here is that that

Corey 59:09

that Premier Kenny is trying to get ahead of this challenge and not wanting to deal with a fourth wave and people griping about increased, you

Corey 59:18

know, increased use of sick time and all of that. And this is annoying. And why do I have to stay home? I'm double vaccinated. And this is just a cold these days. Anyhow, I you know, I just it's none of it seems worth it. And if you can just stick closer to the public health advice and let a couple of other jurisdictions lead the way, what do you get for being a trailblazer in this space? You get nothing for being a trailblazer in this space.

Carter 59:41

Asking for the solution. It was a problem being solved that people weren't interested in. And we've seen that before. When politicians start solving problems that people aren't aware of, they never win. Brent, let's

Zain 59:53

let's let's let's end this segment here, which is talk to me about what the strategy today forward needs to look like for the official opposition, for the NDP. You know, Premier or former Premier Rachel Nolley, opposition leader, has suggested that she's asking for a reversal regarding the isolation requirements. Carter, you know, with hedging the fact that her base, as you said, in your words, is a little bit larger. She's not going for the right flank that Kenny's going for. She's maybe going for her base plus. How does she develop a strategy here, both in terms of messaging and tactics, that appeals to that mushy middle of people that might look at this and not feel right about it, but aren't outspoken about it, that aren't kind of like tweeting about it, that are like, I don't really know what's up here. And I feel like that's the majority, to be honest, right? They're like, oh, what? Like, like, how does she rightfully politically hedge her bets to win over that crowd? But if it goes in Kenny's favor, which the opening like it doesn't have any impact or whatever, she doesn't lose outright lose them for going too aggressive, so to speak. So I think that's the balancing act. You can even disagree with my premise. That is the balancing act, so to speak. But as I see it, that's the act. How do you construct or what are you doing if you're if you're the opposition? position i

Carter 1:01:15

think that there are that i would construct a plan that says what does success look like right and and how do we get out of this we we all agree we're going to get out of this and we're not and and zero covid isn't the solution isn't the metric that we are going to get to zero covid and then we can reopen and everything else is going to be fine that that's just not realistic um we are going to uh get to a manageable level and then we are going to reopen but i would say we're not going to let any more outbreaks happen right

Carter 1:01:45

right we are going to snuff out the outbreaks as they happen we're going to do that by having good rapid testing we're going to do that by wearing masks when appropriate we're going to do that by making sure that we're vaccinating 95 percent of the adult population these

Carter 1:02:00

these are the things that could be done that you know that i would probably focus on if i was running nature rachel notley's i would be able to produce a solution and i think think I've been poo-pooed on actually producing solutions before on the show. But I think that this is one of the cases where you know that Jason Kenney is never going to do what you're going to do. So you may as well just say, it's

Carter 1:02:23

it's not even wishing for disaster. You're hoping for a positive outcome. So you can actually say, these are the things that I would do.

Zain 1:02:29

This would be one of the rare situations where you'd actually pose an alternative, just so I'm totally clear in terms terms of what you're suggesting. Yeah,

Zain 1:02:39

the NDP strategy, first of all, you can disagree with my premise that this is a balancing act to ensure you hedge your bets, so you're not overreacting, so it only becomes base politics again, but you're actually able to appeal to that sensible middle that doesn't actually know what to feel here. If you agree with that premise,

Zain 1:02:56

what are you suggesting for Team NDP?

Corey 1:03:01

I think you make the argument about expertise and about about the value of information um i

Corey 1:03:06

would say this is like britain turning off radar in world war ii we won't have any indication as to how this is unfolding and we are not entirely out of the woods here it's not clever to zag when a world of health experts is suggesting we zig you know this is too clever by half and so i would probably be do something along the lines of calling for a freeze on all changes saying this

Corey 1:03:28

this is this is just random stuff and you know any success is purely accidental we have to put the brakes on all of this we have to review the data and i would call for a convening maybe a congress of physicians of public health experts and saying we've got to take the politics out of this jason kenney is hell-bent on trying to reopen

Corey 1:03:46

reopen this province because of a fantasy he has and we need to get this back to expertise and you

Corey 1:03:52

you know the problem i have is one politician yelling at another politician we should do x we should do y oh it just essentially opens you up to charges of hypocrisy and the next thing. So I really would, it maybe doesn't need to be a Congress of Physicians, but I would be leaning on that expertise thing and saying like, no, no, no, no, I'm not arguing alternative worldview to yours. I'm arguing both of us need to take the back seat and let the experts tell us what we need to do here. There's a world of data. There is best practice out there. And we've got to stop just playing so fast and loose with people's lives. The

Zain 1:04:25

The last thing I'll ask you is a bit of analysis. Carter, I'll go to you on this first. Was Dina Hinshaw the wrong messenger for the Kenny strategy? The amount of vitriol and negativity and hate that she's getting as a result of her standing at the podium responding to these changes after a long, just so our national listeners understand, just after a very long disappearance, so to speak. It's not like she'd been doing this regularly. She was chosen as the messenger. Round us out here on this segment, Carter. Was she the wrong messenger choice from what we saw earlier this week in Alberta?

Carter 1:05:03

Well, I was reflecting earlier today on kind of the evolution

Carter 1:05:06

evolution of Dr. Dina Hinshaw. And each of the public officers of health across the country have kind of gone through this. Dr. Tam at the national level as well. well and the

Carter 1:05:18

the the thing with dina hinshaw there was a time when they were printing up t-shirts you know um dr hinshaw is my hero or whatever i don't remember the phrasing it was much more clever than that but the you know they were people loved her and um you know she was she was giving us the solutions to the pandemic and she was a strong female leader and people just thought that was great but there seems to be an evolution where she's just turned into another another government, another of Kenny's henchmen

Carter 1:05:49

henchmen that are giving us messages that we don't want to hear. And this one was particularly bad, in part because Minister Shandro said this was her plan. Now, I think we all know that the plan, that Dr. Hinshaw probably put forward a series of actual plans, right? It wasn't just, here's one option, go and do it. There were probably probably multiple options, but are

Carter 1:06:15

kind of hard to choose from. So the

Carter 1:06:19

government chooses the option that they like the best, and then they send her out to deliver it. And I think it was the wrong messenger. And ultimately, I think that it's really hurt Dr. Hinshaw's public reputation.

Corey 1:06:33

No, look at the alternatives. Do we think that this would have been better if it was the premier? Do we think it would have been better if it was the Minister of Health? I don't think so. And at the

Corey 1:06:42

the end of the day, as

Corey 1:06:44

as much as this may have damaged the views of Dina Hinshaw in the public, I don't know if that's true. I suspect it might be.

Corey 1:06:55

If you're the government, isn't that better than damaging the reputations of the premier or the minister of health?

Corey 1:07:00

Look, I mean, just being crass and direct about it. At this point, she's not even doing daily briefings.

Corey 1:07:08

quote-unquote, use for her is more limited at this point. So what do you lose if you're the government doing this, if

Zain 1:07:15

if this is your last play anyways?

Corey 1:07:17

I mean, guys, we're talking about no more

Zain 1:07:19

end of the line,

Corey 1:07:20

so to speak. No more isolation. Well,

Zain 1:07:22

Well, unless she has to come back because things get absolutely crazy, so to speak, right? And, like, then, of course, there's, like, another cycle that she enters into where this eventually will be the end of the line again. end yeah

Zain 1:07:32

hear you i hear your point well

Corey 1:07:33

well look and i hope it's not really the case i i know i know dina i worked for the government for many years as you all know and i i quite like dina henshaw and i she has not had an easy job over the last bit that is for damn sure so um but

Corey 1:07:47

but if you're the premier's office of course it's easier and better for the chief medical officer of health to deliver this than it is for a politician let's

Zain 1:07:55

let's move it on to our final segment our overrated are over, under, and are lightning round. Stephen Carter, how's it going?

Zain 1:08:01

I'm having a great time. You're tuned back in because we do this for you. Yeah, the over, under

Carter 1:08:05

under is good. I like that. Overrated, underrated is hard.

Zain 1:08:09

Stephen Carter, child care deal with PEI that Justin Trudeau and his government have signed. I know what Corey's going to say. It's going to mimic a victory lap. But in your mind, overrated or underrated that the Trudeau government has signed a child care deal with PEI? I

Carter 1:08:27

I think it's probably overrated. I think that it was it was good political strategy. It needed to be done. It was well done. But now a city not much larger or a province not much larger than Airdrie now has a child care deal. And I guess that's good. I guess that's good. So, Corey,

Zain 1:08:47

Corey, you are now allowed to take your victory lap, which Stephen Carter has deemed overrated. Please. The floor is yours.

Corey 1:08:54

Well, it seems somebody on this podcast suggested that if there was a domino to fall, it was probably PEI or New Brunswick. And lo and behold, the

Corey 1:09:04

the beautiful province of Prince Edward Island, population 157,000 or so, they now have childcare. care but yeah i mean to steven's point it's it's barely two and a half times the size of airdrie just

Corey 1:09:18

just give a little more precision than our friend steven gave there and so it's not exactly a game changer although i'm sure it is for the parents on pei politically

Zain 1:09:27

politically though like to have a progressive conservative premier like that's why that's why you said it right just so i can remind people right it's a progressive conservative premier signing on board with a federal liberal government You

Corey 1:09:38

You now get a talking point as the liberals that you have gotten conservative governments – well, you can't use plural, but conservatives, liberals, and New Democrats have signed on to this plan. That's

Zain 1:09:48

That's true. He has a New Democrat angle with BC and Horgan as well. That's correct. Corey,

Zain 1:09:53

Corey, I'm going to stick with you for our next one. Overrated or underrated the political strategy of the federal government withholding health care transfers to the province of New Brunswick, criticizing them for not making access to abortion accessible enough for women. Overrated or underrated the political strategy for the federal government withholding the health care transfers. Well,

Corey 1:10:17

I think it's very smart politics, especially when you look at some of the demographics and where the liberals potentially have such an advantage in the gender gap here. And we'll

Corey 1:10:29

we'll call it underrated because while it will certainly have consequences in New Brunswick, people in provinces don't like to feel like they're under assault, even if the assault is justified. It will probably pay dividends.

Zain 1:10:42

Carter, overrated or underrated, the federal government withholding health care transfers from the province of New Brunswick, the political strategy of it, overrated or underrated?

Carter 1:10:53

I think it's underrated. I think he makes the prime minister look strong and not

Carter 1:10:58

not necessarily a bad issue for him to bring up at this point. There's bound to be a couple of conservatives lose their mind.

Zain 1:11:05

uh steven carter on a scale of one to ten the pierre polliev campaign video that you saw what what would you give that 30 second spot uh of pierre polliev uh which you'll probably reuse at the next leadership race but what are you giving it um

Zain 1:11:20

okay thank you thank you thank you for being so deeply engaged this is this is what i love cory what is that video i

Carter 1:11:26

i don't like pierre polliev i don't care if it was a good tactic it's still a zero i'm

Zain 1:11:32

i'm surprised you gave You gave Tom Mulcair a nickname, but you haven't used your peer polygraph nickname yet, which is just very weird to me. Corey, what do you think on that video, 1 to 10?

Zain 1:11:43

It was a well-produced video.

Corey 1:11:47

There was not anything else, no.

Zain 1:11:49

Okay, that's fine. Nicely

Carter 1:11:51

Nicely done, Corey. Corey,

Zain 1:11:51

Corey, finally, overrated, underrated. We can spend a minute or two on this. The NDP again here in Alberta, lapping the UCP in quarterly fundraising. I think I know your answer. or overrated or underrated, but maybe with a string of them, your answer might change. What do you think?

Corey 1:12:09

Yeah, with a string of them, I think you have to sort of accept that at this point, the money advantage is too enormous to kind of,

Corey 1:12:17

what are your justifications as the UCP at this point? You are just, you're running out of excuses. Last quarter, we talked about saying, oh, we've been too busy on the pandemic. Well, you opened the province, you know, what are you going to say now? So I think it's underrated. I mean, at a certain point, the money lead that the ndp has is

Corey 1:12:35

is is very material now we've talked about third-party advertisers and the fact this isn't all of the money in the system but it's a lot of the most visible money and it's it's really tough to ignore carter

Zain 1:12:48

carter you talk about money constantly in politics it's

Corey 1:12:51

it's the money is the currency of politics that's

Zain 1:12:53

that's what i thank you for stepping

Zain 1:12:55

stepping on my line you taking

Carter 1:12:56

taking my line fuck you that was a good line people love it people write in people

Carter 1:13:01

people write in about my talks they

Zain 1:13:04

carter overrated underrated uh the ndp once again lapping the

Zain 1:13:09

the ucp and quarterly fundraising i

Carter 1:13:11

think it's underrated i think that money is is super important and uh you get another media cycle out of it and you know what else you get that sweet sweet cash to spend so well you know we could do an entire we

Zain 1:13:24

we could do an entire spreadsheet special where we figure out how much they've raised and what exactly they should spend it on but give me your 15 seconds each of you what is that money useful to do right now you know in this current state in time what would you start spending that money on carter laid on me a

Carter 1:13:39

a team of strategists three

Carter 1:13:42

three for example cory throwing it out there ads

Corey 1:13:45

ads on strategy podcasts oh

Carter 1:13:49

yeah how are we not sponsored by the ndp oh

Corey 1:13:52

god get out of

Zain 1:13:53

yeah what are you talking about we only have one sponsor carter and it will never change they have signed a long-term deal so thank Thank you, Air Canada, for doing that.

Zain 1:14:03

Finally, Corey, well, let's end off here. Overrated, underrated, radio.

Corey 1:14:08

the hell is radio?

Zain 1:14:09

Carter, overrated or underrated radio.

Carter 1:14:12

I didn't have to put on any makeup, so.

Zain 1:14:15

We're going to go with underrated. We'll leave it there. We'll leave it there. I'm back. This could not have happened without me. I'll take my own victory lap. And that's a wrap on episode 934 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belgi. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. And we'll see you next time.

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