Episode 936: Sorry about the monetary policy stuff

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 936. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, it's the Corey Hogan and it's the Stephen Carter. Guys, what is going on? And more specifically, Corey, are you enjoying our side-by-side villas on O'Toole Island? Because I feel like there's some people that might want to pay us a bit more than we originally purchased this property

Corey 0:27

I don't mind them so much. And it's not actually really that O'Toole Island is looking that much nicer. It's that Trudeau Island off in the distance appears to be sinking into the water three inches at a time and people are beginning to take notice. And at the end of the day, if you want the highest property, it might end up being O'Toole Island.

Zain 0:45

How's it in Jagmeet Singh's Sky Palace, Stephen Carter? You're doing okay there? i think

Carter 0:51

think you're mischaracterizing my my position as you often do i think that uh cory is also using something called hyperbole uh to describe what's going on with the true with the trudeau liberals but you know what whatever makes you feel better about yourself cory whatever makes you feel better about yourself here's

Zain 1:10

here's what we're doing we're skipping the headlines because no no what no we're you didn't do prep again did you maybe

Zain 1:17

maybe i did not do do prep again. Our first segment, the right to bear arms, guys. Daddy O'Toole is here on the cover. He is ready to introduce policy to the country. Oh my goodness. Yes, you get it, bear arms. Corey Hogan, let's talk about this. Let's talk about, of course, let's do our shits and giggles with the O'Toole cover. Unless, unless, unless you guys genuinely think there was like like a strategic thought behind it. And if you do, let's discuss it. Because I also want to take some time here discussing what the first four and a half, five days look like for Aaron O'Toole, specifically around doing

Zain 1:55

doing the unconventional thing, I'll lay it out for folks, of releasing his policy early, a large policy book, Stephen Carter, 160 plus pages, a lot of different things being discussed in that policy book. What do you kind of make first, first, Carter, of the design, the visual, the brand? Was there a strategic reason behind it? Because I want to get this out of the way by what they tried to do there with O'Toole in almost a Men's Health Magazine style cover? Or was this just, you know, bad design, bad strategy in your mind? Lay it on me and let's hit that question first before we move on to the more substantive of things.

Carter 2:35

There's an awful lot of election science on the, uh, the psychology of voting for someone who, uh, looks like you or is, is representative of you. And I think that O'Toole in a, in a black t-shirt, uh, with his arms crossed, you know, kind of looking like the everyman, uh, was designed to appeal to that. Um, and he, he did, he looked like the, in fact, I'm not gonna lie to you. I looked at the cover of

Carter 3:00

of the magazine and I immediately assumed it was me on the cover of the magazine.

Carter 3:05

was a little bit surprised. Yeah, I mean, I think that that

Carter 3:10

that is probably a fairly strong possibility that they were looking at it as casting O'Toole as the everyman. That makes sense to me. I didn't think it was the abomination that some of the immediate punditry did. I thought that people would see themselves in that cover. And I didn't mind the men's health kind of feel or the McLean's version. I mean, geez, you know, remember when Justin Trudeau got his 12-page spread in the middle of McLean's magazine? No one was complaining about that. So, well, some people were complaining about that. And that was the people that were campaigning against him.

Zain 3:50

Corey, what are they trying to go for? What do you think they're trying to do with it? Do you agree with Carter that, yeah, it was fine and it tried to be resonant with the quote-unquote everyday person?

Corey 4:01

What did I think they were trying to do? What did I think they were trying to do with the platform? What did I think they were trying to do with the cover? No,

Zain 4:08

the cover first, and then we'll head into the platform. Yeah, that's okay.

Corey 4:10

Let's talk about the cover. I don't know what they were trying to do. I hear everything that Stephen said about wanting to make sure that it is reflective of just

Corey 4:21

just the general ethos they want of the campaign. And they had six bullets on the front, almost as though if you were only going to look at this campaign platform as you were at a grocery store checkout, the cover of it, like you would see in a magazine, you'd get the gist and you'd moved on. But here's the thing. For every communications product, you do want to start with an understanding of audience. And who is the audience of a campaign platform, specifically of a 160-page campaign platform?

Corey 4:48

You know, this is the question I think we should be asking ourselves. And it's a rather wonkish audience. It's people who tend to be overly serious about themselves. It's the media.

Corey 4:56

It's political scientists. It's all of the people that are on Stephen Carter's hate list right now. It's people like you and me who

Corey 5:02

who will read through a platform like this or at least skim through it and see if there's any headlines where you want to dig deeper into it. And in that sense, I don't really understand the cover, right? Because the cover seemed to be designed for a low-information audience, and the document itself is for a high-information audience. And perhaps that was the idea, that they just wanted to have on social media the low-information cover that they think people are just not going to click through on. But I'm not really sure—

Zain 5:29

sure— And do you feel like they made it that way, Corey, so that it would catch a sense of quasi-virality? Well,

Corey 5:34

Well, I suspect that was the plan. I don't think it would work because it's not really formatted for social media. It is fundamentally a print document, right? They design it as a print document. You download it as a PDF. So I was a bit confused by it. Carter looks like he's going to jump out at this. Yeah, Aaron, jump

Zain 5:48

jump in here. Why did you decide your cover needed to look like a men's health magazine sitting right next to the National Enquirer about Hillary Clinton's emails once again coming out right next to you? the regis digest but

Carter 6:06

but in the wrong way did it are you still asking the question i

Carter 6:09

i i'm not the question it went viral it went viral on social media it doesn't matter how it goes viral it went viral on social media the people who needed to see it saw it when people go to the website they they see the the cover they see the recovery plan you can click through and and read the plan and it's the pictures and it's all this okay hold

Carter 6:27

um you think but it doesn't matter

Carter 6:31

does not matter. I'm going to tell you why it doesn't matter.

Carter 6:35

campaigns produce platforms, they do not expect them to be read by

Carter 6:39

by a larger segment of the population than 2%. For

Carter 6:42

For the other 98% of the population, the

Carter 6:45

the mere fact that they have a platform goes

Carter 6:47

goes to something that Corey said last week, which is they need to be a serious party that looks like they're ready to govern. And 160 pages is something that I'm never going to read, says to me that it's a serious party that is ready to govern. It doesn't matter. It could be blank pages on the inside. And how I know this is Nahid Nenshi in 2010, when he runs to be the mayor of Calgary, is the smartest candidate, right, Zane? That was his primary brand positioning. Smartest candidate. He had 14 or 18 big ideas that were going to change the way the world worked, Zane. Changed everything.

Carter 7:24

Except only 1.6% of the people who actually went to the website went past the six-word headline and the 20-word description for each of those policy places. They read that there were policies. They looked at the policies and said, Jesus, that looks like a pretty smart guy. And no one actually clicked through to see what the policies are. And that's what the reality of politics is. The fact that he produced the 160-page document is

Carter 7:50

is the point. That's it.

Corey 7:54

I mean, I agree with a lot of that, but I think that there's just a medium challenge here. How many people are going to see the physical platform? And on social media, did the graphics, did they have the sufficient size? Were people actually even able to see those bullets about jobs and all of that? I just looked up O'Toole platform on Twitter and took a scan down and in a few of them sure but in a lot of them no and so i think this is the thing that i have a concern with and everything steven said is true the question for me becomes does the does the ridicule that this snobbish audience who is actually going to read this platform is going to provide to your cover like

Corey 8:27

like where's the balance there you know you've got to look at the pros and the cons on all of these things i'm just not sure the pro of that quick communications gloss that is there for the general public who are by and large not going to see it outweighed the the con of of the other part i'm not sure though i'm not i'm not actually feeling too too strongly about this but i did believe that the audience of the actual product is not that's not going to land with how i got

Carter 8:52

got him how are how

Carter 8:54

how no i'm going to do this how are the two of us or the two of you that are on otul island right bullish on otul how are you two the ones tearing this down and i'm the one who's on liberal island lifting him up how is this possible i'm I'm just saying, I

Zain 9:10

haven't given you my thoughts on it. What I'm actually curious about was a statement you made that, well, they went viral regardless. And I want to know if that was strategic. I want to know if you genuinely think that they're like, let's put a quasi-controversial cover on our 160-plus page Sirius platform, and that's what's going to get this guy's face meme-ified across the internet, and that's going to be net good for us. I want to know if you genuinely thought that was strategic, Carter, or you think that was just a happenstance and this is now some revisionist history justification by strategists that try to find strategy even where it doesn't exist.

Carter 9:49

I don't think there's anything more strategic than photo selection in a campaign. The number of photos that you shoot, the number of photos that you use, the number of photos that you review are staggeringly high because that is how people interact with your campaign. They only see the pictures. So I think this was a strategic decision. I think it was a strategic decision that worked.

Zain 10:11

Corey, let's go here. Before we get into the depth of it, let's talk about the timing of it. I'm curious what you make of him releasing it in the early days, the whole thing, the full document. That clearly was a strategic aim. What do you feel like that aim was? And do you feel like they hit the mark?

Corey 10:28

I think there were a couple of reasons for it. One of the most obvious ones for me is that by putting out your entire platform right away, you sort of take away the ability for the other guy to have boogeyman about what's going to be in your platform and what's going to be there. It's just all out there and you're able to reference back to it and there's some value in that. I also do believe a lot of it is this make a strong first appearance. If you are trying to put yourself out there as a credible, substantive candidate, you don't want to be teasing out, you know, the napkin version that you had with Doug Ford in Ontario there with five bullets. You want to show you're different from Doug Ford, in fact, and by putting out such a meaty document at the start of the campaign, you are in fact doing that, right? That's a very clear difference with the sort of shallow conservatism of the Doug Ford PC party or, you know, the Donald Trumps of the world who didn't even have a platform, right? Their platform was we just re-endorse everything Donald Trump does and we had a platform in 2016 and isn't that good enough for you people? So there was also kind of that positioning things on there. This is an interesting one as well, because it really harkens back to the platforms of the 90s. You know, these really long platforms that were put out by the Liberal Party of Canada, the Reform Party had all of those bullets, many of you will recall, the PCs had, I mean, they all had really long platforms back then. And we've talked about this in the context of short platforms, but I'll just sort of say it again, and maybe put the emphasis elsewhere here, which is that in really charged times, platforms get shorter, because everybody knows what they're fighting about.

Corey 12:02

And what O'Toole has done here is he's made an interesting ploy to make this like a platform for uncharged times. I'm not really sure that's going to work, but there's

Corey 12:11

there's some psychology here that I want to just put on the table. There are a couple of ways people update prior beliefs. Like if you believed one thing and you change your mind, right? If you already have an opinion and it's a strong opinion, you got to work hard to change your mind. There's all sorts of tactics to do that. There's no point in unpacking them all. But if you don't care, if you don't care, there is a body of research that says volume alone works. In fact, it appears to be the primary determinant. Like, I don't really care. They've got this massive plan. Whatever, we'll do it their way.

Corey 12:39

In social experiments, even bad arguments in volume make somebody who is disinterested more supportive because you've got a lot, right? And you're like, oh, he's thought through, I guess. So

Corey 12:52

ideal if that's your plan. I'm just going to put in a really large amount of bad arguments and hopefully that will land and that will make me prime minister. But I don't think that's what he's trying to do here. I do think he is trying to show a volume that says, I got this. Yeah,

Zain 13:03

Yeah, right. To your earlier comments that you made on previous episodes, seriousness out of the gate, like perhaps even exceeding the expectations that were quite low and starting right away to quote unquote run downhill using a basketball

Zain 13:19

in a sense. So

Corey 13:20

So can I just like put a bow on this though? But if that's your intention, like again, if that's the objective of your comms product,

Corey 13:26

how does that sort of align with the cover that you put on there? I feel like they bolted on a comms tactic and forgot their comms goals, and that's why I remain confused about the cover. So

Zain 13:35

So then, Corey, tell me what you're – and Carter, I'll come to you in a second, but I'll spend a little bit more time with Corey.

Zain 13:39

What would your optimal O'Toole platform release have been? Would you have been aligned with them on timing but would have been different on brand? Is that what I hear from you? Or would you have kind of split it in a different way? Yeah,

Corey 13:52

Yeah, I like what they did on the timing. I like what they did on the substance. I'm not going to talk about the specifics, but just the volume. But I think that if you're trying to be the serious candidate against an unserious liberal leader who's off in the clouds flitting about on notions of rebuilding the country, then you just have like a blue

Corey 14:10

blue cover that says like the Conservative Party platform, Aaron O'Toole, you know, maybe a picture of him, maybe not. But the idea becomes, it's the serious book for serious times. Carter, let's

Zain 14:21

address the same two items. First of all, what do you think of their timing? And what do you think their strategy? Do you agree with Corey's strategic aim to get it out early around the boogeyman concept? Is there anything to add to the timing? And secondly, give me your optimal strategy for O'Toole. Now that you saw, especially around brand and timing, what would you have done if you were in that situation of providing campaign advice to Aaron O'Toole?

Carter 14:46

think the timing is bang on. We haven't talked about this yet, but I'm assuming that we will. You know, the Elections

Carter 14:52

Elections Canada has talked about the idea that they could expect up to five million mail-in ballots. And one would imagine that if I were the conservatives, I'd want to give

Carter 15:03

give my core voters, who are probably going to be the most likely to wish to take advantage of those mail-in ballots, a pretty good kind of model for them to jump on it and say, yeah, this is good enough for me. I know where I'm going with this. I'm going to vote for an O'Toole. By putting the full platform that enables that mail-in ballot, I like the photo. I don't know why everybody else was upset. I mean, you very easily could have gone with the blue

Carter 15:36

blue suit, blue tie, white shirt kind of look that O'Toole would be expected to be wearing in a traditional conservative photograph. graph but right now if you look at the website you're looking at at the uh

Carter 15:48

uh the old tool brand positioning they've got them in you

Carter 15:53

you know blue coveralls with the reflective strips and shit like that and you

Carter 15:57

you know i don't know i

Carter 15:59

i see where they're going they're going with the the

Carter 16:01

the blue collar old tool instead of the the blue you know the

Carter 16:06

the blue tory old tool so i don't know he's

Carter 16:09

he's doing fine it's

Zain 16:13

cory let's talk about the content what stuck out to you a lot of uh personal choice sort of stuff a few dog whistly uh sort of items included in the mix um still a spending budget style approach i think from what we what we saw but maybe just break it down for me from your perspective what caught your attention specifically to strategy what caught your attention in terms of you know oh this is why he's doing this or this is why he's doing that what uh what was on the radar for you a

Corey 16:40

a lot of pocketbook issues a lot of very specific issues around jobs and also kind of securing confidence in in employment um really

Corey 16:49

really what struck me more than anything is like some of these things are so small or so geographically targeted that

Corey 16:56

that i have to assume that this is part of a broader data play by o2 and that these things are going to be put out big time in certain regions i feel in many ways this was filling in the larder and they are going to go out and they're going to be serving an awful lot of meals to an awful lot of people and an awful lot of swing ridings right now and

Corey 17:12

and that's interesting to me

Zain 17:14

is there a few of those that kind of struck you uh

Corey 17:18

uh yeah i mean one of them was like the i i'm just going from memory but i've got the document open so maybe i'll scan a little uh but like there was stuff about the defense industry and let's make sure that we're investing in the defense industry but like not defense the defense industry and the jobs that it provides uh

Corey 17:34

uh there was all all sorts of stuff about agriculture, forestry, mining, specifically addressing things like fisheries as well and communities. And then it went into specific strategies in some of these areas for different components of those industries. And I think that's what I was really quite taken with. It went quite a bit into how

Corey 17:52

how they are going to secure jobs. It was broken into those broad categories they have there. And there was a lot about affordability too that hasn't really come come up on the campaign in general. But that's one of the most interesting things about releasing a platform at a time like this. You know, they are now going to drop these things as

Corey 18:09

as part of their conversation over the next bit. So you've got more

Corey 18:13

more generous parental leave. You've got, I think I saw something about like debit and credit card fees.

Corey 18:19

It's things that they've put out there as broad themes. And these are the specifics underneath it that a lot of people will look at and say oh that's kind of cool you

Corey 18:26

know i mean sure

Corey 18:28

sure debit and credit card fees are a pain in the ass to everybody and and just as a bundle it starts to you know it tells a story about the conservatives whether it's a story that is right for the times tbd obviously you have uh one of the big things this week was talking a bit about their child care plans and how they are not

Corey 18:46

ten dollar a day child care they are something and they're ripping up agreements

Zain 18:49

agreements with with the provinces. They'll get rid of the Trudeau plans and specifically what that means to Quebec. I want to talk about Quebec specifically, so I'll footnote that, or I'll park it to the side for a second. Carter, before you give me your analysis on what stuck out for you, talk to me about Corey's point. Does this micro-targeting of policy, cooking up several different boxed meals and delivering specific flavors and versions of that meal to different swing writings. Does that work? We know the technology's there. We know that you're able to kind of serve it up and deliver it. But does it work from an outcomes perspective? Have we seen it actually deliver? Or do you need that big, stitched story that kind of groundswells people to kind of be like, I'm buying into something bigger rather than I'm getting this little thing that's specifically for me in my region? Where's your kind of strategy compass on those those two tails that can be told from a policy document and maybe may extend it to that campaign writ large?

Carter 19:54

I think it does work. I think it works especially well for conservatives. I think it works better for older voters than it does for younger voters. You know, the generation that had less than 10 channels on their TVs when they were kids are still open to this. uh you know when they didn't have a color television um there's still some some interesting um pieces that are available to them um so

Carter 20:26

yeah i think it micro targeting it does work and i think that having an election strategy that is this well articulated this far in advance also works well for them um the there is a a clever strategy that they've articulated that that they obviously have their full election strategy for the 35 days baked. They know where they're going. You remember we were talking about this a few weeks ago. We were saying you've got that plan that's written on the board. They know exactly what they're doing, where they're doing it, what they're saying to Atlantic Canadians, what they're saying to Quebecers, what they're saying to the people in British Columbia. They've got it all baked, which is pretty impressive, actually, I think.

Carter 21:10

But, you know, they've also got some stuff that they're going to do in conservative areas, some things that Corey pointed out to us when the book first came out that still kind of, you know, jumps at me, like conscious rights for health care providers, banning conversion therapy, caveats and cutouts. um you

Carter 21:30

know things like that that they're also going to you

Carter 21:33

know that they put in black and white for everybody to find and everybody to see that's not just going to be into a targeted ad in

Carter 21:39

in uh conservative areas or christian areas of uh of

Carter 21:42

of the country so i

Carter 21:44

i thought it was very interesting to see to see that and see the the way that they've they've baked their plan this early in the game cory

Corey 21:51

cory go ahead i

Corey 21:52

i just find it such an interesting i mean all of these platforms forms especially when they get long like this they're such an interesting mix of like broad macro policies and very specific policies yes

Corey 22:02

and this one's no exception and on the smaller side smaller i mean it depends on if this is your big issue or anything but we have banning puppy mills banning cosmetic testing on animals national medical isotope strategies but they're right there next to reigning

Corey 22:18

reigning in big tech companies and yeah and we already talked about some of the banking stuff and there's adoption strategies and supporting expectant parents and it's just such an interesting grab bag of things and it paints a picture of not the voter but the voters that they are after right and i don't know i mean maybe it'll work maybe it won't work it seems to me though that it is designed to support if not a micro targeting strategy and narrow casting strategy and i would love love love to

Corey 22:48

to see their facebook ad buys and i guess go

Carter 22:52

go look at their facebook but you

Corey 22:53

know you could buy like you can buy on like my issue is animals boom there you go band copy mills right and it just

Corey 23:01

just feels like if you went by these one by one you could almost see what the targeting metrics would be for some of them and it's fascinating and it gives us a bit of an insight into how the conservative campaign will shape out carter

Zain 23:12

carter When you talk about that from the perspective of what Corey just laid out there, the targeting and what the manifestation of this looks like, let's talk about that a bit more before we move on from this topic. We see the big book come out, right? You know what you're now – you've telegraphed to the world what we're doing.

Zain 23:31

How do you keep the announcements exciting? How do you hold people's attention? Are you expansion packing on your platform? Are you announcing the exact same stuff? Are you announcing new stuff? How does a campaign, from a strategy perspective, now that everything's out there, make the announcements day-to-day, continue to volley the attention every single day with announcements? What would you be advising, Timo Thule, after you both agreed that, okay, get the book out, now

Zain 23:59

now what? How do we sustain attention?

Carter 24:03

Make it regional. So there's a group of national reporters, right? Right. And those national reporters will have covered the campaign launch and the strategy launch. But the regional reporters didn't. They don't care. But the plane lands in British Columbia and you unveil the policy that makes the most sense in British Columbia. You're going to take a logging

Carter 24:24

logging and natural resources policy. You're

Carter 24:27

You're going to talk about funding the Massey Tunnel or you're going to talk about whatever the local story is. And you're going to get three days of coverage out of that because it's new to them. And more important than being new to them, it is specific to the audience. So that is the structure that you're going to want to put in place. So wherever you're landing, you're taking that book. Because again, we

Carter 24:52

we talked about this before. You're not just landing randomly in places. You're landing based on the policy that you want to announce that day. right so you're you've already mapped out the policy the the location the the photo op the the people you're talking with the the the constructs are all in place um there may be some drop in events like today i think that trudeau dropped in uh to calgary skyview i don't believe that was a planned visit with a significant um uh policy announcement it was more of a a candidate rally to show that you know we think skyview is winnable uh we happen to be flying past because you know We're

Carter 25:28

We're not stopping anywhere else. So we stopped in Skyview.

Carter 25:31

Nothing major is launched. But then tomorrow there'll be a major launch, I don't know, Winnipeg, wherever the hell they're going tomorrow. So that's how I think they do it. And I think that that's also a conservative strength. Don't worry about the national media. Focus on the local media. Focus on those pieces of media that people actually know and trust. The Daryl Jans of the local news media, where it's the local anchor that's giving you the story instead of some national news figure that you don't recognize or you don't care that much about.

Zain 26:00

Corey, final word on this segment about O'Toole and his policy release. Same question, though, for you, which is ultimately, you've released it. You think it's good strategy. How do you keep volleying it and sustaining the eyeballs and the attention?

Corey 26:14

So I've had to do this. In the 2012 provincial election, I was the chair of the Liberal campaign here in Alberta. And

Corey 26:20

And we did this. We released the platform, in fact, even before the election.

Corey 26:25

And then we had to follow up with events during the election. And what

Corey 26:29

what we did is we just created a visual and a reason to show up with a news camera and talk about the things. And we laid them out over the course of the four weeks as they were in there. Everyone showed up. Media still showed up because the reality is they've still determined we're going to follow these campaigns. We're going to assign these people to campaigns. When they give us their news release, we're going to show up and then it's going to end up in the paper. And it worked. It worked just fine. I actually think it was a pretty nice combination of platform and tour. Now, we did this for different reasons. If you're familiar with the history of

Corey 26:58

of Alberta politics in the lead up to the 2012 election, the liberals were just, you know, the wild rose had come on so strong. The liberals were seen as a bit of a morbid force. So we wanted to show that we still existed, right? You know, it was still that kind of substance credibility. And, you know, I remember, I think it was Don Braid, I might be wrong, who said, I didn't know the liberals still had it in them effectively, right? When we released a glossy, full platform, full of words, full of strategies. And that was our goal. Our goal was just to show like, hey, we're still here. We still exist. We can still hold this

Corey 27:30

this kind of stuff together, right? We didn't have any of the kind of digital follow-up I anticipate here. nowhere near the budget, nowhere near the sophistication there. I think the conservatives will. And so I guess the final point I want to make is just if we are following the big stories, the big narratives, the CTV news, the CBC articles, Iverson writing about something,

Corey 27:52

we might be missing the conservative election strategy. This might really be one of these things where the major thrust for the conservative party, obviously, you're going to want to have of reinforcing and like leader calms

Corey 28:03

calms but it might really be about those targeted things and putting those those issues in front of the people those issues will matter for and will it work i don't know it's worked for people in the past and it's fascinating to me and

Corey 28:17

i have to then ask one follow-up to to both

Zain 28:18

both of you very quickly how do you keep the glue then together or do you not really care do you do not really care if someone's showing up to the polls because a puppy mills for for you and other people are like isotopes are totally my fucking jam and i don't even give a shit i don't even know about this person like my my instinct has been that campaigns kind of need a glue between their supporters some sort of connective thread uh this

Corey 28:42

this may not have we always talk about yeah

Corey 28:44

yeah yeah well i mean that's the risk right yeah it's it is a campaign without the lift of a story without the cause and we do seem to be in very cause-driven times right now right Everything is in this clash of civilizations language. So in

Corey 28:57

in some ways, I feel like what I've seen from the Aaron O'Toole campaign in this first week is what I would consider an absolutely

Corey 29:04

absolutely awesome optimization of what was a mid-90s election. Will

Corey 29:09

Will this work in 2021? I don't know. But he's doing something different, and I think that is worth watching. And that's fascinating to me. Carter,

Zain 29:16

Carter, you've got a very Roy Kent look on your face. I will let you have the final word on this segment.

Carter 29:21

A couple of things. things first of all i think that connecting these storylines to the character is going to be really interesting um you know if they're able to connect the storylines to the character that will be fascinating uh second i did check the facebook ad live library during some one of cory's rambles that i didn't pay attention to um they only have seven ads running currently and they've spent 55 000 in the last couple of the last seven days so i'm expecting to see much more i'm

Zain 29:48

i'm sure they've They've got multiple pages, though, Carter, right? That's the O'Toole brand. They've got the Conservative Party brand. They've probably got three or four different amongst all of them. Regardless, that's a helpful insight that we can dig into. I'm going to move it on. Let's move it on to our next segment. Campaigns are no time for monetary policy. Yes, of course, we're going to talk about Justin Trudeau using the very famous lines, campaigns are no time for policy. But before I get into how things have gone for Justin Trudeau, maybe I'll start here. Maybe this is an a natural spot to start. But Corey, I'll start with you. While Justin Trudeau launched his election, the Nova Scotia Liberals, the governing Nova Scotia Liberals, lost their election. This was a premier that had never been elected before, so a premier who took over as leader in Rankin, was blessed by Trudeau. Trudeau came, poured a lot of, you know, dump truck some money in Nova Scotia, you know, gave Rankin a pat on the back and said, this is your guy. He got you through COVID. He's the guy that you need to reelect. Trudeau then left and Rankin then lost. If I, and we can talk about Nova Scotia and what happened there. I don't really want to talk about it in depth, but let's talk about it through the prism of if that is the blessing you you gave in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia is not the country. Maybe let's start with a feeling rather than a strategy. How are you feeling this week overall, using Nova Scotia as perhaps a bit of a bit of a litmus test if you are in the Trudeau liberal camp, federally anywhere in this country?

Corey 31:25

I think the Nova Scotia election is a Rorschach test as much as a litmus test. People are looking at it, and they're putting in any narrative, you can find any narrative in it, and it's fascinating. I'll unpack a couple real quick here. Sure. If

Corey 31:36

If you're the liberals and you want to explain it away,

Corey 31:39

Rankin didn't run a great campaign. And Houston really did go out of – the PC leader who won – really did go out of his way to distance from the Conservative Party of Canada, emphasizing the progressive and progressive conservative. And it's

Corey 31:53

it's undeniable that it's a flavor of conservatism that is quite different from Harper conservatism. Certainly not at all

Corey 32:01

all looking like the conservatism you would see south of the border with Donald Trump or anything like that. That said, Nova Scotia was often held up as the example of doing COVID right in this country. The

Corey 32:15

The liberals led in every single public poll during the election, you know, including two polls released the day before the election, two and three points. Now, at the end, when this all sort of settled, they lost only by two or three points. It's not a massive polling miss, but let's just say it's a four-point swing in the federal election. Well, all of a sudden, it's a dead heat, right?

Corey 32:35

I mean, the slight polling miss might cause you concern. Is there something systemic there? The fact that people don't actually seem to be crediting for past COVID performance? Because you can't really do any better than what Nova Scotia did in terms of keeping numbers down, keeping the people safe.

Corey 32:50

That's got to concern the liberals a fair bit. bit. And as a result, because you've got these sort of countervailing facts, you can throw anything into it. And if you're anxious about the campaign, there's things you can point to to be anxious. If you're feeling fine, there's things you can point to and say it's irrelevant.

Zain 33:05

Carter, what are you looking at? How are you processing this in Team Liberal? Let me actually extend it one step further. You are wearing red in this particular example. You are in Team Justin Trudeau. You're a strategist. So you're clearly optimistic about your chances, but you're so You're so fucking realistic because you have to be. You've got no choice. How are you processing what you saw in Nova Scotia?

Carter 33:28

Well, I'm starting off with Team PC is different than Team CPC. You know, the reality is that there's bound to be voters who felt comfortable voting for a progressive conservative government in Nova Scotia that just are simply not going to feel comfortable voting for whatever party is putting forward, you know, ways

Carter 33:49

ways out of banning conversion therapy. I mean, I can't remember the examples just off the top of my head here, Zane, but there

Carter 33:56

there were countless examples of how this progressive conservative party differed even from the progressive conservative party of Doug Ford. And

Carter 34:04

one of them I will

Zain 34:05

will mention that I think listeners might find interesting was having the leader outright say, what does progressive conservative mean? He went through a definition cycle of it, and he said progressive conservative means making progress unabashedly but in a conservative manner, doing progress iteratively rather than trying to say we oscillate between those two things. Now, I don't know if anyone buys that, but there is something to be said about it. I mean, it's

Corey 34:30

not historically accurate. That's not why they're called the progressive conservatives. But

Zain 34:34

Corey's brand point around where Houston was trying to lean into, it gives folks a sense of how far away he was trying to move from from O'Toole in that sense. But Carter, I'll let you keep going. Well,

Carter 34:45

Well, I just think that that's the entire point. Like if that is your definition of conservative party, and if that's the conservative party, or progressive conservatives, then surely, there will be ways to simply keep the number of seats that liberals are hoping to keep in the coming election. And, you know, I don't think it's this tremendous doom. You know, you're seeing a two-point drop, a three-point drop, a two-point gain, a three-point gain in one province. And I've long held that people vote federally for very, very different reasons than they vote provincially. It's one of the things that I hung my hat on in provincial politics here in Alberta. You know, because if you look at the number of people who vote for the Conservative Party, whatever it may be, whether it's the Reform Party or the Conservative Party, it is a it's huge compared to the number of people that would vote even in the landslide victories for, you know, whatever the Conservative Party of Alberta is, whether it's the, you know, the UCP or the PCs or whatever it may be. And there's many different ways to interpret that. But the way I interpret it is simply we're voting for different things. We're voting for a federal government and we're voting for a provincial government. And those two things are different. So let's not try and read too much into it. The federal government touches individuals in very different ways than the provincial government does. And that means that we're going to vote differently and we're going to have different matrices in our heads.

Zain 36:18

Okay, let's I wanted to get that out of the way in some ways, just to kind of see where you guys stood on it. But Corey, let's talk about my, my segment title. Because I think what Trudeau's week has been defined by, but certainly, where the conservatives are trying to pick on it and try to reframe the question of what this election is about to one of your earlier points around affordability, was this conversation on monetary policy was asked by a Bloomberg reporter, when taking questions, what he thought of monetary policy, which which is something generally reserved for the Bank of Canada. But before I go further, Corey, how about you explain to listeners monetary policy and then maybe if you also can just what Justin Trudeau's answer was and then let's get into the raw politics of whether it was a mistake or overblown, etc.

Corey 37:03

Okay, monetary policy. Monetary policy is like the equalization formula. It's something people talk about a lot but know nothing about as a general rule. And if you want to get kind of, you

Corey 37:16

you know, in a nomenclature sense or hierarchical, you have economic policy, and within it, you have fiscal policy, and you have monetary policy. And so monetary policy is the realm of the Bank of Canada. And, you know, a question.

Corey 37:30

Okay, I don't even know where to start with this. I guess I'll start with this. Yes. Monetary policy in Canada at least is

Corey 37:37

is really dead simple in its goals, right? You want to keep inflation on the rails. You want to keep it between 1% and 3% over a long term. And you want to keep it at 2% as the sweet

Corey 37:50

spot here. And that's it. That's what the monetary policy of this country is. And it's done by the Bank of Canada. Bank of Canada does this through a bunch of different mechanisms, but they're all ultimately about how much money is in the system. I'm going going to greatly simplify things here but you know people don't think a lot about where money comes from money

Corey 38:06

money basically comes when banks loan you something that's creating money right it's also creating debt but it's creating money and there are a few levers that the bank has they can change what's called the overnight rate the interest rates this is the rate that banks lend to each other and

Corey 38:22

and you know the bank of canada sets a standard and that becomes what what you

Corey 38:26

you know know, BMO gives RBC money for whatever it is here. They can, the bank can create reserve requirements. That's called a liquidity ratio. We haven't had any here in Canada since the 90s. The US just got rid of theirs. That's something that you could argue is a policy that can affect monetary, you know, a government policy that affects monetary policy. They can announce what their intentions are on interest rates. They can say our current thinking is in the future, we're going to have to rise rates, which can have an effect on forward curves. And you can now, you You see banks more and more nowadays, especially since the global financial crisis in 2008, get into what's called market operations. This is quantitative easing, and it's less glamorous counterpart of quantitative tightening. And that's when they are either buying or selling bonds in the market, right?

Corey 39:12

Long story short, though, how this works, especially in the QE sense, is the

Corey 39:17

the Bank of Canada might say, okay, I'm going to buy these bonds from this bank, which gives them money, which they can then in turn feel more comfortable loaning out more money to other people. They're creating more money in the system. And one of the things I think is interesting is

Corey 39:30

is that people seem to think that booms sort of die of old age.

Corey 39:36

The economy doesn't die of old age when we're in a boom. The economy dies because interest or inflation looks like it's going to creep up. And the bank says, well, we don't want that. So they bring in monetary policy that tightens things up so that inflation doesn't run away. way but yeah you know all of this to say all of this to say the

Corey 39:54

prime minister probably shouldn't think about monetary policy so what the answer he gave was an accurate one i don't think about monetary policy it's

Corey 40:03

it's it's two things though one is that's not an answer canadians want to hear because i would suspect even amongst a fairly informed listener base some of what i said was news to people above right but the other part is uh it's

Corey 40:17

it's prime minister should think about inflation and uh and it again goes back to this where does money come from where does government money come from the same fucking place as the rest of money it borrows money in the same ways i'm not sure that overall government spending has a big effect on inflation you know economists disagree on this point but government policies you bet your ass can make things more or less expensive and i want to talk housing in a minute but i'll take a breath there and say did any

Corey 40:42

any of what i say make any sense to

Zain 40:44

to either of you two for for all of our listeners that haven't shot themselves in the face uh that That was our news segment.

Carter 40:51

segment. We're editing that part out, right? Like we're going to go

Carter 40:54

go back and take that part out? That

Zain 40:56

That was our news segment. Zane makes a big mistake while Corey pitches himself to be a central banker. What a fucking – I mean, we get it. We get it. You have an

Zain 41:06

an advanced degree. We understand, Stephen and I. We don't understand, but we understand you understand, and that's all that we care about. Can we get back to

Carter 41:14

to talking about politics or is this going to be – Stephen

Carter 41:17

Carter, I'm not going to ask

Zain 41:17

ask you about it because I don't want to know anything about monetary policy. And in fact, that's the tie-in to my question. No one knows what the fuck this thing is, which is why I think it was a mistake for Trudeau to say, I don't care about monetary policy in almost like a glib way to a reporter, which is now meme-ified and made into an attack ad video. But Carter, is this a gaffe or is this an overblown moment? Or frankly, is it both?

Carter 41:46

think that this is a um a

Carter 41:48

a gaffe i do i do think that this is a mistake this isn't as big as uh you know kim campbell's statement that that an election is no time to talk about policy or whatever the the i'm whatever however i'm bastardizing that uh that quote but

Carter 42:03

but it is one of those things that will now be turned into justin trudeau doesn't think about you and he he doesn't care about you. What he meant to say is, I don't think about monetary policy in the fashion that Corey just articulated. And Corey is right. I mean, this is important stuff. This is important to understand how these things work and how they impact us on a day-to-day basis. No one understands it. No one cares to understand it. It doesn't mean it's not important.

Carter 42:29

What does matter is

Carter 42:31

is that the prime minister should be thinking about how inflationary pressures are are going to impact me.

Carter 42:36

And what he should have said is, I am far more concerned with the average household cost of an individual Canadian than I am with grand economic theories. And that's what I spend my day thinking about. I think about the average Canadian, not about monetary policy that is being monitored by a very capable head of the Bank

Carter 42:58

Bank of Canada. We've been blessed with fantastic heads uh of the bank of canada you know mark carney was before um name forgot

Carter 43:06

forgot the name of the new of the current one uh but we've we've had great leadership pillows yeah um we've had great leadership and that leadership um

Carter 43:18

is because i keep appointing good people because prime ministers in canada keep appointing good people because i think carney was actually appointed by harper so pory

Zain 43:28

pory here's the thing from from the perspective of politics i feel like this is starting to shift um the the narrative that and we'll talk about trudeau's you know bear traps and wedges he's trying to set on vaccines and other issues but this is moving in a way to affordability and we're only a degree or two away from an area of turf that trudeau doesn't want to compete in gaffe overblown both what do you think um

Corey 43:53

so it's a really interesting question because what he said was specifically correct what he said was true he said i don't think about monetary policy and he shouldn't that's not his job right he says you think i understand about families or i think about families um but

Corey 44:08

but the question he was being asked in a sense wasn't the question he was being asked right he was being asked by proxy about inflation and so his answer there became Because he's generally wrong. Because even though the words he was both asked and the words he was responded with are correct, the general sentiment being asked and the general sentiment he responded with are so offside of what Canadians are looking for right now as they start to get anxious about inflation. Inflation, which we kind of breezed over, but it hit 3.7% in July. It's one of its highest readings in 20 years. That in itself is not that concerning. It's basically just now, because

Corey 44:44

because we had such a dip last year, it's just now above the

Corey 44:49

the longer term average. But do

Corey 44:53

do Canadians want to think about inflation? Yeah, you bet your ass they do in the sense that they're thinking about affordability. Let's just use housing as a really easy example here. The government absolutely has the ability to

Corey 45:06

to affect inflation and affordability in housing. If they make it easier to buy a house, if they lower reserve requirements, if they create incentives, if they let you borrow from your RRSP, that means more people will be able to buy a house, which means demand for housing goes up and pricing will go up. And

Corey 45:23

And so what's insane to me is that in many cases, basically, every party has housing policies that increase demand for housing rather than increasing supply. They make it easier for you to buy at a higher price point, right? And that's having the effect of creating inflation and housing here. But that's beside the point. The point is he does have levers he can pull to make life more affordable for Canadians. And there is a lot of conversation in this election already about that. And so by suggesting that he doesn't care about inflation, he's

Corey 45:50

he's essentially created a gaffe here. He's created this sense that he doesn't give a damn whether or not things get too expensive for Canadians. And so, tricky question, but I think on net, it was a big, big mistake, no doubt about it, and it probably qualifies as a gaffe.

Zain 46:05

Carter, let's split up into teams. You're Team Trudeau. Corey, you are Team O'Toole. Stephen Carter, Team Trudeau, best cleanup strategy on this. What are you doing? tactics, strategy, what is the suite that you're running? Corey, I'm going to come to you thereafter. Your team, O'Toole, you've already done a few little pieces on this. O'Toole standing in front of an airplane saying, oh, well, I'm the one who cares about family and forward. What are you doing there on in? Because it seems like this is a wedge for you to pick on. So Carter, do your best strategic cleanup or channel change. Corey, I'll come to you thereafter. Do your best strategic extension of what happened here in this moment with Trudeau. Carter, over to you first i

Carter 46:45

think that i would just go back to uh campaign

Carter 46:48

campaign strategies that are working you know go back to to um child care find a photo op that works for us um you know even just landing in calgary and talking about the electoral possibilities in calgary changes the channel because at the end of this monetary policy is not sexy um it is going to be very difficult to write about what he really meant with when he said monetary policy is inflation. Even, you know, Corey, who will have brilliant O'Toole Island messaging, is going to have a difficult time sustaining this for longer than two or three days. So this isn't going to be a ballot box issue. If I'm advising Team Trudeau, I'm just saying, back to the regularly programmed schedule. Please, sir, try not to fuck up again. Remember, this is about Canadians, not about you.

Zain 47:38

Oh, interesting. Interesting. So, Carter, you don't think this is – can I put these words to you and then you tell me if I'm interpreting your actions correctly? You don't think this is a big enough deal to try to do any – what Stephen Carter termed jujitsu on or trying to turn around and pay any attention to. You're just back to the script, move on, ignore it, let it die out on the vine a couple of days later. Is that correct largely?

Carter 48:01

Yeah, I think that all too often when something is perceived to be a mistake, we try and clean it. um

Carter 48:07

um it's far better to some

Carter 48:10

some things you have to clean right like some things are just so

Carter 48:14

so so big mistakes you have to you have to go back and clean them this is uh this isn't that type of mistake this is something that is

Carter 48:22

is a mistake to be sure but it's not something you're going to go clean up it is it is not going to stick to you very long and uh you know the the people who remember inflation probably aren't your people anyways i was thinking about this too like when was the The really last

Carter 48:37

last period of inflation that was significant that really hurt people, and I would argue that that was the early 70s, maybe the early 80s. But the people who are remembering it are 65, 75 years old, and they're already voting for the other guy. So move on.

Zain 48:55

Corey, Carter is going to go back to the script, change the channel in the sense of regularly scheduled programming for him. Tim, your leverage of this GAF, your making hay of this GAF, what does it look like? And one additional factor I will add just as context for the listeners is while this monetary policy GAF was happening, we see two polls come out that say affordability is climbing in the ranks and issue salience for Canadians. So, Corey, you're working for Timo Thule. You already have him doing that first video today. Are you hitting on this more? Are you moving on it? Are you expanding the scope? Tell me what you're thinking about and how you're actioning what you're thinking about.

Corey 49:38

Canadians care about money and they expect their prime minister to care about money. Life has gotten less affordable under this aloof government. Yeah, easier for their friends, for sure. Harder for the rest of us. So I think about monetary policy. I think about how hard it is for you to balance your checkbook after five years of liberal government. I think about affordability. In the end, it's not just that I worry that the prime minister says he doesn't think about monetary policy is that I don't think he thinks about you.

Corey 50:04

And I would continue on this line of attack, Zane, and I would continue to remind people about that root of money and the anxieties that we all feel about money day in, day out as the bills come in and as all of a sudden an electric bill is $800 in a month, right? Something that Albertans are sort of digesting right now and people in many parts of the country. Or how all of a sudden you've got to worry about additional fees coming And if you want something that's a little bit more on his platform, maybe the fact that the GST, I could use a GST holiday, personally, but I'm saying, you know, it's it becomes an opportunity to talk about these things. And if you want early

Corey 50:42

early indicators that maybe the O'Toole campaign, maybe

Corey 50:45

maybe it's not enough time, maybe it's just a mirage. But if affordability is truly rising in concern, I think that speaks to his ballot box question. So, you know, much more interesting one. But I got to say, in many ways, this to me is exactly like in the 1992 presidential debate between Bush and Clinton, where Bush was asked, how has the national debt personally affected your life? Right?

Corey 51:09

And Bush's answer was, what are you talking about? Basically, that's a dumb question. I don't understand that question, getting kind of aggressive about it. You're thinking I just don't understand deficits because I'm rich? I can't remember the exact answer. And Bill Clinton immediately got an understanding that the root of the question was anxiety about just spending overall and what it means. Was

Zain 51:30

Was that the town hall debate, Corey? That

Corey 51:32

That was the town hall debate. Yes, yes, yes, it was. And in this case, obviously a different stage and the stakes are lower, but Justin Trudeau played Bush. He took the question and he was flip about the specific question. As a result, he turned off a lot of people with the general anxiety.

Zain 51:51

So, Carter, I want to come to you back in a second. But, Corey, how much of this – this

Zain 51:57

this is speculative, but we've talked about this before, so I want to reintroduce it. How much of this is the rust of a prime minister turning into the liberal

Corey 52:05

liberal party leader, where

Zain 52:07

gave the answer that a prime minister would at the World Economic Forum or a Davos meeting or some shit like that, that prime ministers attend, versus branding, marketing messages that we work and develop daily on political campaigns, which sometimes you need some muscle memory to get back into. How much of it do you think was that? I

Corey 52:28

think a fair bit of it. One of the challenges always working with experts is they tend to bring in a level of specificity that's beyond what their audience cares to hear, right?

Corey 52:36

right? And so as communicators, we're often in the position where we're trying to package and smooth off rough edges and the tension a lot of the time between communicators and the people that are communicating on behalf of is we're

Corey 52:46

we're making things less precise, maybe even less accurate in the eyes of those experts. And that's frustrating for them. But we do it because of an understanding of audience, and the audience can only get through, you

Corey 52:56

you know, we've got 30 seconds. How much can we teach them in 30 seconds? That's as much as we want to teach them. It's the same reason why in high school they still teach the Bohr model of sort of atomic physics, even though we know it's not accurate, because it's a little easier to understand. You can build on it, you can build on it, you can understand more down the road. And when you've been prime minister for five years, you can't help but learn things, and you can't help but become pedantic about certain things. And this is probably a pretty good example of that, where all of a sudden he's asked about monetary policy. And he's like, that's not my fucking job. Because he knows that because he's prime minister. And he knows that in kind of a bureaucratic setting, that is the appropriate answer in a Davos setting, as you said. But on the campaign trail, I don't think Justin Trudeau of 2015 would have made that mistake. mistake

Zain 53:40

right right because he would have been you know freshly candidate justin trudeau in that sense carter two questions to you as we round out this part about trudeau i still want to get to vaccines um this will be a four-hour episode just so you guys know just so everyone's

Zain 53:52

of it this will be the joe rogan at some point stephen carter through the screen will hand me some marijuana and we'll just start smoking talking about tesla stock um carter tell

Zain 54:02

tell me about this What Corey just said regarding the rust of a prime minister, address that and address Corey's strategy, his O'Toole strategy, which is he doesn't care about you. If he starts doing that, peppering the shit out of you in Timo Trudeau, are you then responding? Are you ultimately going to still ignore it and stick to script? So both of those questions to you. One, continuing down our parallel reality we've set up and one more analysis regarding what caused this gaffe by Trudeau.

Carter 54:33

Well, let's keep in mind that the O'Toole line of he doesn't care about you isn't just for this monetary issue thing, right? He doesn't care about parents. He wants to give only parents that put their kids in daycare support. I want to support every parent. He doesn't understand parenting. He doesn't understand the choices the parents make. Not every parent wants to put their kid in $10 a day daycare. I want to build out the best possible system for everybody. buddy. I want to make sure that your kid can go through loose conversion therapy because it's important to you. He doesn't understand you. He wants to ban conversion therapy. I mean, every topic can

Carter 55:13

can be this. He's not there for you. And I think that that's going to be O'Toole's primary play. The mistake that the prime minister made of being the prime minister in a moment that that he's supposed to be the candidate, is going to be continued.

Carter 55:27

I have long held that this prime minister has an

Carter 55:34

over-reliance on the same advisers time and time again, and he doesn't hear new words to him. And I think that this is one of those situations where having someone who is uttering new phrases to the prime minister might come in uh very handy because um you

Carter 55:51

know having your chief of staff travel around with you as a principal kind of uh candidate whisperer um negates some of the stuff that that needs to be heard i mean this is the same person that's been whispering in your ear as prime minister for six years um which is remarkable though by the way katie telford uh being chief of staff to the prime minister for six years is astounding um but it's it's also i think in part a reflection that that this

Carter 56:16

this prime minister likes the people that he likes and doesn't like change. I mean, what? Jason Kenney's gone, what, through 17

Carter 56:24

chiefs of staff and principal secretaries in a

Carter 56:28

a third of the time.

Zain 56:31

Yeah, that's an interesting

Carter 56:32

interesting point. I'm exaggerating, but not by much.

Zain 56:34

Yeah, no, no. I appreciate that. They still haven't called you, hey? That's really unfortunate.

Zain 56:41

Corey, let's talk about vaccines very quickly and Trudeau. So early and often tried to set up vaccines as a wedge issue.

Zain 56:54

Had a little bit of a moment there when O'Toole's policy of rapid texting and or vaccine for public sector workers was parroted by the Treasury Board. And then, of course, the prime minister said, no, no, that was a mistake, etc. So that kind of set them back. But then we had a second round on this conversation and are currently still actively in that second round as we speak on candidates getting vaccines and almost all parties saying, yep, that's what we're going to do. Doug Ford coming out today saying, if you're an MPP in my caucus, you better be fucking vaccinated. In fact, kicks one person out today, has another person who has a medical exemption. She gets to stay. But O'Toole's still not committing to it. Is this wedge working for Trudeau? Does it have potential for Trudeau? What do you think from what you saw on the vaccine front and the bouncing ball on that over the course of the last five days?

Corey 57:47

definitely think it has potential. Potential. We've talked about the fact that the issue is a winner, at least as it's polled on, which is that Canadians support mandatory vaccines. Although, it's interesting, because Stephen at the time said, yeah, but remember the thing you always say, Corey, beware of novel concepts when you poll on these. And I said, nah, this isn't so novel. People have been thinking about it for a while. But I think Stephen was right, and I think I was wrong. Because there are...

Corey 58:17

clip if steven knew how to clip the show he would do that but

Corey 58:20

but he doesn't so cory back to you

Corey 58:24

is this is one of those situations where you can draw a really hard line in the sand as a canadian and say absolutely you must be vaccinated but the minute someone says well what if you've got like a

Corey 58:35

a religious reason not to or what if you have a medical problem and then people will say well maybe

Corey 58:40

maybe in those cases we need something else and and it's pretty easy to get yourself into a situation where you start feeling

Corey 58:47

feeling that there are reasonable exemptions that are available so as the longer there's in some funny way i think the longer this conversation goes on the worse it is for justin trudeau which is not to say it becomes a loser

Corey 58:57

i'm saying it just goes from like universal winner to something that's a little bit more complex and perhaps the strategy for justin trudeau was or should be not

Corey 59:07

not to not to language too long on this island don't let people people think about it too, too much.

Corey 59:13

You knocked Aaron O'Toole down on this. You punched him in the face really hard. It was a little bit muddied by your own treasury board this week, but maybe that's just the hit. And maybe you let the conversation carry on in other avenues. Because this absolute vaccination mandate, it's not going to be very hard to find sympathetic synthetic,

Corey 59:33

you know, cases on the side of, well, like, I'm a very

Corey 59:38

very devout Quaker, or I have this

Corey 59:41

medical challenge, and I

Corey 59:43

still want to feel safe. And so I actually wouldn't mind a system that would have me tested regularly, or you name it, like, there's no shortage of them. And it's one of those issues that gets a little more complex, a little more you think about it.

Zain 59:54

You know, Carter, this issue, it seems to be that what Trudeau is trying to do is stick on the vaccine front and keep expanding the scope of it so it ultimately gets to the point where it can be about o'toole's party and anti-vaxxers and then that leads into social conservatism and then that leads into the tried and true look at these people he's trying to make their focal point center right but their focal point is far right you can't trust them they're scary boogeyman etc we've seen that movie before we've seen that movie play out uh in different ways in the past what do you think of this wedge issue and maybe i'll tag on another question what do you think of this wedge in this particular moment for trudeau and secondly to cory's point how do you know when it's dead how do you know when to just fucking move on because there's something to be said about you keep hammering you keep hammering you keep hammering and maybe something comes but at what point do you cut your losses in in a 36 day campaign where every day you're starting to keep ham fisting a wedge is a day lost trying something new or changing a channel or or trying to you know trap your opponent in another way so both of those big questions for you but i'm curious to hear your thoughts um

Carter 1:01:02

lake of fire happened with 11 days to go in the campaign uh

Carter 1:01:06

right so we were you know that's when um you

Carter 1:01:10

you know the ucp or not the ucp uh the wild rose under danielle smith our uh bigots and racists started to take off um we had had done opposition work on that for probably 35 days before that every fucking day uh

Carter 1:01:31

uh you were hammering

Zain 1:01:32

hammering it though you were trying to get it there every day not

Carter 1:01:35

not from the leader the

Carter 1:01:36

the leader wasn't the primary

Carter 1:01:37

primary on it we would you know we were backdooring a bunch of stuff and and uh throwing stuff at the media hoping that they would bite um ironically

Carter 1:01:45

ironically lake of fire was not ours it came from from a different person who dropped it in. But I think that had that person not dropped it in or had that person dropped it in and we hadn't done the work to get it, like to put that in play, it wouldn't have happened. So from a communications point of view, and that's not the only thing that you're trying to backdoor, like it's not the only thing that you're trying to get to stick. You are always doing oppo and you're probably doing three or four or five different tracks and you're hoping that they stick because you just never know where they're going to go so my view is keep going 36 days 30 what is there left 33 days um who's

Carter 1:02:28

who's what's going to stick i don't know uh probably wouldn't use the principle probably

Carter 1:02:32

probably would start using attack dogs below the prime minister to start to see if we get this stuff to stick and i'd probably start remember we were talking about that regionalization I'd probably start using regional assets in key markets like the lower mainland where they may have different views or in Calgary. Well, that'd be really interesting for the liberals to launch an attack against the conservatives in Calgary with 817 new covid cases today and the lowest one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country. You know, there may be different pockets of of of opportunity.

Carter 1:03:08

opportunity. Opportunity. And that's probably how I would start to attack it. But I wouldn't give up.

Carter 1:03:14

No sense giving up.

Carter 1:03:16

campaign's a long campaign. You never know when stuff is going to stick.

Zain 1:03:20

Corey, do you agree with Carter around wedge issues, parallel tracks, multiple tracks, never give up, keep hammering, perhaps decentralized from the principle? And more specifically, I'll kind of root it back to this one. Do you think it might be dead on vaccines or do you keep on going if you're Team Trudeau?

Corey 1:03:36

I don't know. Like I said, I think it's one of those issues where if you push your point too far, you might find that it actually gets a little bit softer. But that

Corey 1:03:43

that doesn't mean it's not still a winner. You might still end up with it being a 60-40 issue, which is pretty impressive if that 60 happens to be predominantly within some swing voters. And so you've got to do the analysis and you've got to figure those things out. Is it the diehards who have drawn sides or is this something that moves people? And I think it is a high salience issue. I think people are worried about their health and it could have a positive effect on your fortunes as a campaigner. To Stephen's point, sometimes a campaign feels a little bit like being at the roulette wheel.

Corey 1:04:14

You're putting chips all over the table and you're just hoping something is going to come up because you want it to align to various events. And we saw a good example of that this week when the inflation hit 3.7%.

Corey 1:04:29

That's great for Aaron O'Toole. He has some chips on the table there. Imagine a scenario where inflation came in at 2.2%.

Corey 1:04:36

Not so great. Not so great. All of a sudden, it doesn't look like there's an inflation challenge at all. And so campaigns don't put all of their money on one place, because imagine if everything had been about affordability and inflation came in at 2.2%. You know, they spread it around. And in the same sense, Justin Trudeau probably wants to spread it around, keep a couple of these arguments live, drive them through different spokespeople. Doesn't mean you're necessarily leading every leader press conference with it, to Stephen's point, but it's something you want out there. And also one of the fun things about moving it off of the leaders' conversation is it

Corey 1:05:10

it does tend to ossify the conversation. You

Corey 1:05:12

You know, it will continue and, you know, partisans will find their better phrasings and they'll get to where they need to get to. But by and large, that big, big national conversation about it gets stuck when the leaders stop talking about it.

Corey 1:05:27

Not entirely, but more so than if the leaders continue talking about it. So in a situation like this, that might be exactly what you want to do. Just slough it off to the local candidates to say, yeah, go ahead. Hit them over the head with this. That's great. Why not?

Zain 1:05:41

We're going to leave that segment there. Moving on to our next segment. Our next segment,

Zain 1:05:46

elevator ride campaign strategy. Stephen Carter, it's a new segment I am introducing. This segment starts exactly the same every single time. But let me explain it to you. You and Corey are driving in your Hyundai Sonata. You've parked underground in a parkade. You, of course, are trying to go up to the 30th floor of this very tall tower. Both of you are together. You hit the button. You're getting in the elevator. And just before the door closes, one of the party leaders jumps into the elevator with

Zain 1:06:21

And in this case, in this evening, that party leader is Jagmeet Singh. he jumps into the elevator with you and he says oh thank god it's cory hogan and hey steven um

Zain 1:06:35

he says guys i'm so i'm so glad i met you i'm also going to the 30th floor um i need a campaign strategy reset i need some poking and prodding i need just what am i doing good what am i not doing good give it to me straight and so what i want you guys to do is is in 30 seconds, I want each of your campaign strategies for Jagmeet Singh, how his first five days have gone. I can add some, you know, texture to it if you'd like. You guys can take it from your perspectives of how you think his week has gone. But this is the guy on the left that is the most likable in the race in many ways, that it's almost been getting a free ride, many would say. Corey, to your point, no real, using the military term, guns pointed at Jagmeet Singh as the liberals and the conservatives square off. So, you know, he says, I think I'm doing OK, guys, but tell me, where do you see the deficits? What should I be doing that I'm not doing? And of course, he turns to Stephen first because he wants to make sure with Corey he can gut check it. So, Stephen, give it to Jagmeet Singh. What is he doing good? What is he doing bad? What should he consider changing? A quick plus minus delta for Jagmeet Singh and your 30 second elevator ride campaign strategy. It

Carter 1:07:50

is time to put your boot on Aaron O'Toole's throat and choke him out of this game. He was the one who was suffering. He was the one who was seen to be dropping like a stone. And instead of focusing on him, the NDP decided to go after the prime minister, assuming that the negative elements that were facing O'Toole would be permanent. And of course, you guys are so happy on your the

Carter 1:08:19

the elevation of, you

Carter 1:08:22

know, O'Toole Island. Well,

Carter 1:08:23

Well, the one who's allowing that is Singh. So

Carter 1:08:26

So Singh, stop allowing O'Toole to get the oxygen you should have. Remind people that there is such a thing as a blue orange split in Canada, that voters move from conservatives to the NDP all the time. And this is something that we, you know, we'll see it even in Alberta. uh and people know that we're going to see that i mean this surge that the ndp saw was real in in in alberta and everybody just wrote it off and it's the reason they wrote it off is because sing didn't take advantage of it sing didn't launch his campaign in alberta in calgary in edmonton saying we've got a real chance to win seats here and as a result he's

Carter 1:09:06

he's walking away otul's allowed allowed to go back up. And Singh is going to drop back into third place when more Canadians think that he'd be a viable prime minister than think O'Toole is even a viable opposition leader.

Zain 1:09:20

Corey, the elevator has broken down because, of course, you guys have spent way more than 30 seconds. Thank you, Stephen Carter. But you're stuck on the 19th floor. He turns over to you, Corey. He says, that's crazy, isn't it, Corey? Or should I be listening to what Stephen says here? What are you telling them?

Corey 1:09:37

mean, generally, we don't listen to Stephen, especially in elevators. He gets very anxious. He's like a small dog. Listen, you sure don't need a reset. Your popularity makes people receptive to your message, but you need to think about how you use that popularity and that receptivity here. So let's look at some of the fundamentals.

Corey 1:09:55

People believe this week, less than last week, that Canada is heading in the right direction. You have the highest approval rating out of plus 15. That's better than Trudeau's minus four. That's sure better than O'Toole's minus 21.

Corey 1:10:06

You've got a real opportunity here. Bear in mind, your accessibility shares with the liberals, not with the conservatives. I don't know what the fuck Stephen is talking about, but that's what all

Carter 1:10:15

all the data tells us in terms of

Corey 1:10:17

voters. So here's what you need to do. When the liberal voters come looking because they are starting to think that maybe Trudeau is not their guy this election, you need to be the person that doesn't scare them. You need to find your most – you've got to look at your accessible voter universe here. You've got to understand exactly what motivates those people, particularly those that are getting off the liberal bus, and you've got to be there with it.

Corey 1:10:41

And you can do it. If

Corey 1:10:42

If you've got your pants on, this bus is coming.

Corey 1:10:46

let's get going here.

Corey 1:10:50

You're well positioned. Probably I would say this

Corey 1:10:53

this week was your week so far. It's

Corey 1:10:55

It's not saying that you're now at number one, but you're doing better than the other two.

Zain 1:10:58

He says, Corey, you know, listen, this elevator is broken. broken uh we might be here for a while i'm gonna get a little vulnerable with you i'm worried about one thing the one thing i'm worried about outside of stephen carter who's grabbing onto my leg uh

Zain 1:11:11

uh i don't know why i don't know why i make you so much fun of you carter but it feels right it feels right um he says listen my concern is the poll tightening the polls will tighten the liberals will look at all of my supporters that have come to me and say you gotta come back to stop the scary boogeyman on the right, Aaron O'Toole. What am I supposed to do, Corey? How do I prevent that? If I had a good week, that's great. But how do I ensure that, which has happened to my party so many fucking times, doesn't happen again? Yeah, well,

Corey 1:11:44

well, the good news is after 2015 and them promising the last election with first past the post, there will be less of a base receptivity to that message. I think there's a cynicism about liberals using that that is stronger than in years past. You're not wrong, though. the reason the liberals took that off the table is because it helps them absolutely but you've got to keep that in mind and you can't play into this game and you can't let them paint aaron o'toole as the boogeyman you've got to paint him as yesterday's man irrelevant not part of the conversation the conversation canadians now have is what's the mix of liberal and ndp that is going to govern this country and if the mix is more liberal than ndp they're going to find that wanting if it's more ndp than liberal that's something people will rightly get excited about out if you put the right policies in front of them.

Zain 1:12:27

Carter, he also asked you the same question, saying, poll tightening. I know you want me to go after O'Toole aggressively. Maybe this kind of accomplishes that. But OK, if I'm worried about poll tightening, I had a good week. What am I doing there on after?

Carter 1:12:40

I think you've got to find a way to become one of the top stories. He had a good week. If you think that being the third story every night is a good story for him, you've got got to start achieving above the expectation and right now i just don't think that he's achieving above any expectation at all and the way i would go after it is start to focus on areas that people don't think that they can win and that becomes your your primary driver he

Corey 1:13:11

was in fucking edmonton today it's

Corey 1:13:14

like you're not even yeah

Carter 1:13:15

yeah for one for one by the way can

Corey 1:13:17

can i can i say ctv threw like the the biggest shade in their article about his trip to Edmonton. They had this quote of him saying, it was the largest gathering we had in this whole campaign so far. And I'm now quoting CTV article, noted Singh as dozens of his supporters cheered NDP.

Zain 1:13:36

Let's leave that segment there. We'll revisit that every episode. A different party leader will jump on the elevator. Some of them will have a proclivity to Stephen Carter. One of them might be Aaron O'Toole. of course, who will look into the mirror in that elevator and

Corey 1:13:54

and everyone else. He'll start trying to fix his hair looking at Stephen Carter, I think.

Zain 1:13:58

Let's leave that segment there. Moving on to our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we still have it. We still do it for you. That's why we're here. First question over to you. Overrated, underrated, policy book releases, policy launches, the platform launch, whatever Whatever you call it, is it overrated or is it underrated in your mind seeing the conservative one this week?

Carter 1:14:24

I think it's it's overrated. I think that people think that, you know, this is going to be a thing that that influences the voters. I think this is something you now have to check off of your list. I would argue that the liberals did this when they when they announced the budget earlier this year. That was their policy document. I think we've talked about it before. um now they now everybody's checking off the boxes i mean am i going to get excited when these things happen nope am i expecting them yep uh i'm far more interested in the actual fights that will come uh so you know afterwards yeah

Zain 1:14:59

yeah uh cory same question to you policy look policy books platforms whatever you call them overrated or underrated in your mind

Zain 1:15:08

they're a tactic depends

Corey 1:15:09

on your audience depends on your strategy depends on the times Sometimes the answer to that question shifts election to election and party to party. But one thing is clear with

Corey 1:15:18

with this policy book and what I think will be the knock-on activity after that,

Corey 1:15:23

generals and politicians fight the last war. Aaron O'Toole is not fighting the last war. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.

Zain 1:15:30

Carter, Corey really answered that question as if I asked him about monetary policy again. I just really need that

Zain 1:15:35

that energy suck. That energy suck really just deflated the entire podcast. he could have just been like fucking underrated and then just you know ended on a high note but here here he is cory i'll give you another shot here overrated or underrated facebook some call it a relic of the past some call it still the biggest kept secret of campaigning you know we looked at the spend on on this episode in real time that carter was assessing but in a 2021 2021 campaign, Facebook,

Corey 1:16:07

It's a tactic. Depends on your audience. Depends on your strategy. Depends on the times. Now, what I do find interesting is that with the Facebook strategy, I think the conservatives are unfolding. You always say the generals and politicians fight the last war. Aaron O'Toole is not fighting the last war. Oh, my fucking God. Which

Zain 1:16:26

Which war is he fighting, Corey?

Zain 1:16:28

Jesus Christ. We need to get rid of him. We need to get rid of him, Carter, and let him start his own central banking podcast.

Carter 1:16:34

Oh, yeah, with Mark Kearney. You guys could be

Zain 1:16:37

be a great demand show.

Zain 1:16:40

No one else would. Carter, Facebook overrated, underrated in this election?

Carter 1:16:46

I think it's overrated. I mean, I'm just old enough to remember when it actually mattered. You know, you used to be able to buy a $30 ad and just get unbelievable exposure. That's true. You know, the cost per click or the cost per exposure or whatever your KPI might be. All of those things used to be so cheap. And now it's balanced off. And the digital ad campaign is now as expensive on many levels as a well-thought-through radio campaign. I know I've moved a lot more to direct mail because it's turning out to be a much more cost-effective medium. medium so i don't know i mean i think that i think that uh facebook has obviously you know back in the day there was political advertisers and no one else um now you're competing with gm uh to get the same eyeballs and and it turns out to gm and and toyota have a shit ton more money than we do yeah

Corey 1:17:43

yeah it used to be a steal but the market has definitely corrected itself in that sense carter

Zain 1:17:48

carter i'm going to ask you um the next question you mentioned this when you're talking talking about the O'Toole policy book cover, you mentioned this term of the everyman. I want to talk to you about that composite of the everyman. Is it overrated or underrated in your mind? The campaigns that always strive for the relatable everyman approach, some campaigns less so than other, but it's something that every campaign talks about. How do we become relatable? How do we ensure that people see themselves in the candidate? Relatability. So that everyman end quote unquote slash relatability overrated or underrated in your mind?

Carter 1:18:24

Underrated, completely underrated. People have to be able to see themselves in the story that you're telling. And a big part of that is the character. If you can't see yourself with that character, if you can't see yourself interacting with that character, and it doesn't have to be like the, I've used the every man terminology And every man is part of that. But part of it also is, you

Carter 1:18:47

you know, it can be a romance figure. You know, like arguably Justin Trudeau, 2015, isn't an every man. He's an aspirational man. He's the man that we all wish to be. And that's still a very, you have to see yourself in the story. So that's why I think that it's completely underrated. It is one of those things that too many politicians don't figure out who they are in the story, and they completely miss out on any opportunity that's available to them.

Zain 1:19:16

Corey once also inspired to be like Justin Trudeau and then, of course, started paying attention to monetary policy. So here we are. Corey, the everyman slash relatability argument, conversation, composite figure in every campaign that I'm sure all of us have been a part of, overrated or underrated in your mind?

Corey 1:19:38

think it's probably underrated it's it's probably been true for a very long time that you want a relatable politician that you feel like you can you can go

Corey 1:19:47

go to bed knowing they care about the same things that you care about and politicians do tend to get in trouble when they become aloof from the concerns of you and i in a democracy so i'm going to say underrated and one of those things that perhaps the conversation around it deeply overrated but there is there There is kind of an undercurrent that's always there, and it affects so much of campaign conversation without us even intentionally doing it.

Zain 1:20:13

And we'll go to our final question, Corey, and I want to start with you on this one.

Zain 1:20:18

We'll do this every episode. In the first five days of this campaign, who would you most like to be in this person's shoes today, and who would you least like to be in terms of one of the five party leaders? so who are you are you sleeping pretty tonight and feeling good about the state of the world and who would you least want to be today give me both of your answers and carter i'm going to come to you thereafter i

Corey 1:20:45

am going to say i most want to be sing and i could easily make the case that you most want to be trudeau because he's still leading and so why the hell wouldn't you want to be the person who's winning but if i'm saying i'm seeing positive signs i am seeing polls show that I am bumping up slightly. I'm seeing that I'm still the most popular for prime minister. I'm seeing high accessible vote. I'm seeing big overlap with the liberal accessible vote. And I'm seeing the liberals are starting to crumble.

Corey 1:21:10

Maybe that's a little extreme, but I'm starting to, I don't mean it in the sense that collapse is inevitable. I mean, the sides are starting to fall off like an old building and, uh, and why the hell not? And if I am Justin Trudeau, I have the opposite problem.

Corey 1:21:23

seeing the NDP elect or sorry, the Nova Scotia election results, results, the slight but real polling miss that was there. I'm seeing that the fact that they governed through COVID so strongly didn't seem to have that huge effect. I'm seeing that the vaccine conversation with O'Toole doesn't seem to be damaging O'Toole. You know, again, it's like there's a limited poll set at this point, but it doesn't, he's not going lower. He's not going lower. But what we are seeing is that the liberals are going a little bit lower. And that has got to make me worried because my entire campaign was based around one fight. And I'm seeing Jagmeet Singh, just showing up in my rearview mirror here, making the same arguments I'm making for the same audience I'm going for, and he seems to be having a better time of it than I am.

Zain 1:22:05

Carter, different final question for you. Which writing will Mark Carney run in?

Corey 1:22:10

I'm joking. I believe

Zain 1:22:11

believe it's the American

Zain 1:22:12

That is correct. Same final question for you. Stephen Carter, who would you most like to be after the first five days? Who would you least like to be after the first five days laid on us?

Carter 1:22:23

is who i would most like to be paul

Carter 1:22:25

paul is who i would least like to be shouldn't

Carter 1:22:28

shouldn't have offered all the party leaders

Zain 1:22:33

i'm changing that question i am calling an audible and changing that question next time we're gonna leave it there that's a wrap on episode 936 of the strategist my name is zane velge with me as always cory hogan stephen carter and we'll see you next time

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