Episode 939: Mount Stupid

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 939. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, 939, it's that thing. Is that an anagram? It's a palindrome. Palindrome. Palindrome. Stephen Carter, do you know what a palindrome is?

Zain 0:17

No, I do not.

Zain 0:19

Well, we just explained it to you.

Carter 0:21

That appears to be an arbitrary number that is divisible by three. Is

Zain 0:26

It's a prime number. It's correct. It's a prime number. That is right. right yes okay yeah prime numbers are not numbers totally palindromes are prime numbers that is correct um

Carter 0:36

know what i love us doing i love us taking all the smart out of the show right off the bat right

Carter 0:40

right like so people have their expectations lowered and then we come in with the political analysis low low expectations some

Zain 0:48

even call that strategy some

Carter 0:51

is this this where i talk about being 50 50 for the afl predictions this

Carter 0:55

this weekend it was tragic

Zain 0:58

you you did did you you're done talking about it because no i mean

Carter 1:01

mean i think the brisbane lions like what was i thinking the brisbane lions you always you're always the brisbane lion i know i'm a home team guy and all of a sudden brisbane's my home team i'm very disappointed it's

Carter 1:14

you know and then sydney lost by one point by one point i mean it was nuts and what's their team team again carter the sydney swans swale

Zain 1:25

right and what are some of the other teams the uh the the west coast bulldogs bulldogs the greater

Carter 1:30

greater western western sydney uh giants that's who beat with the west the sydney swans uh you know who do you want do you want me to tell you who's gonna win yeah yeah go ahead melbourne will be the champion and and

Zain 1:42

and what's what's their team doesn't

Carter 1:43

doesn't really matter you

Corey 1:48

that's great guys uh

Zain 1:50

it's good that's good uh cory do you want to jump into anything i

Corey 1:52

wait for football to start basketball to start anything to start except afl yeah

Corey 1:57

australian football league let's

Zain 1:59

hot take on baseball no actually yes absolutely

Corey 2:04

we're calling this bluff here i

Carter 2:06

i think that the uh the

Carter 2:08

the the stuff on people's hands when they're throwing the pitches is bad

Zain 2:15

bad uh certainly has helped the game uh

Zain 2:19

uh hasn't made it more watchable though no uh boring yeah

Zain 2:23

yeah what they realized carter is that if the ball goes five miles per hour faster it isn't more entertaining it doesn't make the game much shorter um which was uh which is something they found out the hard way uh let's move it on to our first segment our first segment on this sunday night cory hogan explains yes we do this segment every now and then we always don't give it the official title but it's not this this case it is cory hogan explains you know uh one of the things about our dear friend cory hogan uh one of the three members of this uh this podcast is uh is often he will start researching things and then come out with conclusions uh and start texting us constantly about one subject matter and today that subject matter was the polling that we have thus far so i'm not even going to tee this up cory hogan i'm going to just throw it over to you for a segment oh carter you want

Carter 3:12

want a quick question before we go into this do i have to sit on his lap again right well

Carter 3:17

well it felt awkward last time you

Zain 3:20

you uh metaphorically uh very often sit on his lap on this show uh literally you don't have to because you're not in the same room oh

Carter 3:28

oh god thank goodness that was this is

Zain 3:30

is this is cory hogan's explains not stephen carter interjects uh cory

Zain 3:34

cory Hogan back to you I'll mute my microphone

Zain 3:37

please please do Corey Hogan take it away

Corey 3:41

this all started because at the end of last episode I said that the NDP were were doing well and they were climbing and the conservatives perhaps weren't and I started thinking is that actually true or am I just looking at a couple of polls specifically I think abacus where that's the case maybe maybe um maybe Angus Reid as well and uh so I went deep into the polls over the last And I guess what I could tell you, Zane, is that in a general sense, the general story is pretty common amongst all the pollsters. Since the end of July or the start of August, the

Corey 4:12

the liberals are down, the

Corey 4:13

the conservatives are up, they are up, and the NDP are up. Now, the degree by which people are seeing that, it really depends on the pollster.

Corey 4:21

And I think you can generally say the people who are surveying by phone are seeing a bigger liberal decline, a higher conservative increase, and a lower NDP increase.

Corey 4:34

But when you look at the online polls, it looks like the NDP and the conservatives are kind of equal benefactors of a liberal decline. line

Corey 4:41

line right and so all of this is to say it's an interesting uh it's an interesting election perhaps i was selling the conservatives a little bit short on how much progress they have made in the last bit and certainly the tracking polls that came out the day after we recorded the friday ones yeah we're fucking wild no one's just fucking wild yeah they

Corey 4:59

almost seem like an

Zain 5:00

an outlier that in today's i think there's a main street one today that seems was 10 points i think both of those are being discarded by many but keep going cory yeah

Corey 5:07

yeah i mean i didn't even see the main street one when I was this morning is when I was doing this in Main Street's most recent poll was still just plus six. Nanos plus seven, ecos plus seven as well, were what the conservatives were looking relative to where they were at the start of July, or sorry, end of July, start of August. So one of the things though, that I think we need to keep in mind and look at carefully as we all become very addicted to the aggregators is just, and they all adjust for it in different ways, But it's important to look underneath the top lines there and say there seems to be at least some sort of – well, let's put it this way. Last time there was a bit of a divergence between the pollsters that went by phone and the pollsters that went online. And there may be some early signs we're starting to see that again here where the phone pollsters are seeing a little bit more movement

Corey 5:56

movement day-to-day and probably higher conservative. And there's a couple of reasons why that might be the case. case uh one the obvious one is that and people say it all the time they've been saying it for over a decade older people are more likely to answer the phones and so it's a little tougher to connect or correct for but

Corey 6:13

the other way to keep in mind is that online panels these days often are and

Corey 6:17

and i don't know if this is the case in this particular situation with all of the online panels but they're often the same online panel the

Corey 6:24

online sample is often purchased from a company It's no longer called Research Now. It has a new name. I can't remember. Dynata.

Corey 6:30

Dynata. There you go. And so in many cases, you might be surveying from the same basic pool. The other thing is the longer these go on, it's tough. To curate a panel is tough. You know, a new panel is better than an older panel because over time, people just drift in and out of it. And that can really change the composition of your panel. So, something worth watching, but I think regardless of the methodology you prefer, regardless of how you feel about one pollster versus the other, they're all telling a story that's pretty consistent, which is that the Liberals have declined by a pretty noticeable amount, the Conservatives have increased by a noticeable amount, and the NDP have increased as well. Well, some of the pollsters see as much as the conservatives, some see less. But when you consider the lower starting point, it's probably, you know, it's as significant an increase in many ways. So really fascinating stuff here. Real

Corey 7:25

Real fascinating. I can see Carter looks fascinated.

Zain 7:27

Well, he didn't go on mute. He's pounding away on emails. Thank you for doing that, Carter. Oh,

Carter 7:30

Oh, I'm sorry. I was sending

Carter 7:32

sending emails to people, but I wasn't listening. uh

Zain 7:36

uh listen carter you have uh taken a uh a massive shit on pollsters pundits and political scientists uh people can go back to one of our episodes to hear that rant uh what's a cautionary tale that you would uh throw out uh now that we're done week two on this campaign with uh you know even the the to cory's point the addiction to the aggregators tell me a stephen carter cautionary note or cautionary tale related to to polling in the middle of a race?

Carter 8:08

Well, I mean, I think the one that you did, Zane, is probably the best cautionary tale. I mean, you ran Nenshi 2017 and Main Street came out, was it five or six days before the election, predicting a massive Bill Smith victory. And I think it was exactly wrong. It was exactly 100 percent inverted when the election day actually happened. And there's oftentimes a question, does the poll lead the outcome, right? And so is it Main Street's poll that pushed out Nenshi's people out to vote? Oftentimes, I think that these polls, the

Carter 8:39

the ones that are successful are kind of chosen afterwards and say, see how close we were. And the ones that were way off, you know, are discarded. I don't think that polling is wrong. I think that polling is a fabulous science. I use polling all the time. What I don't use polling for is, you know, what we're describing now, the daily tracking things. We use

Carter 9:02

use daily tracking. We use daily tracking in an election campaign, but we're not using it the way these guys are using it. We're not using it to in some way predict the outcome. What we're looking for is trends and we're looking for momentum shifts. And I think that all of us agree that there has been a momentum shift from the liberals to the conservatives in the first two weeks of this campaign. That is true. True. But momentum shifts do not remain constant. Momentum shifts back and forth. And in a five-week campaign, you'll often see a couple of different momentum shifts. And not only that, how we interpret the momentum shift is often wrong. Corey's interpretation of the NDP in Greece, which I did not argue with because I'd seen the same polls, turns out when you do a little bit more depth, in-depth study, a little bit more in-depth looking at it, it was incorrect. It was overstated, right? So it's not actually the thing that we think is happening. So if you're going to use these daily tracking polls, first of all, never use an aggregator. They sometimes get things right, but for the most part, that is not science that's guessing. And if you have polling in a ward or in a riding, then you have something that matters. If you're just aggregating a national poll, what you're doing is getting lucky is what you're trying to do. You're trying They're trying to take numbers and magic them into the right meaning. So I wouldn't look at the aggregators at all, nor would I look at a national poll and say, well, this is how it's going to work out provincially, because it doesn't work that way. That's what we're trying to tell everybody. Now, sometimes it will. And especially at the end, they will find a national poll that matches it to

Carter 10:41

But that doesn't mean it's right. Right. What it means is that they got lucky and then they just matched it afterwards. It's just a statistical matching thing that we all do.

Carter 10:50

It's something we all do. What

Carter 10:52

What I'm very interested in, the

Carter 10:54

the momentum exists for the conservatives. Will the liberals be able to change that momentum? That's what this next seven days is about.

Zain 11:01

Corey, you wanted to jump in here to what Stephen said. And look, Carter, you were listening. So clearly, yeah, clearly you heard what Corey said. Corey, jump in.

Corey 11:11

Yeah, I'm not as down on aggregators as Stephen is. I am pretty down on seat projections, though. One of the things that you need to keep in mind when you look at all of the various seat projections that are out there is that they are all very, they're

Corey 11:22

they're model based. In the United States, they will actually poll district by district, the United, you know, it is a million people in a district in the United States. And so, or just shy of that. And so you can really get into it. It would be like polling in Calgary or polling in Edmonton, or even Vancouver, if you if you do some of the outreach. areas there or exclude some of the outline areas here but here everyone's trying to determine what does the effect of the regional numbers have on the various individual races that are out there and there's a lot of ways you can look at it um but one of the things i really want to stress is that the numbers just don't move all together like that you're not going to go up if your regionals move by 10 points you're not going to go up 10 points in every single riding so people will look Look at how

Corey 12:05

how likely were people to swing votes in previous elections, you know, were they whipsawing around or were they pretty sturdy for one party or the other? I quite often in my own seat projections try to work in the principles that strong stays strong, weak stays weak. It's the middle that really moves around because parties don't necessarily have the capacity to follow up on an increase in kind of drifting support. If they're truly weak, there's probably not a local constituency association that's got that strength. strength if you are strong you really hold on to these things you know it's they've got kind of a culture of being strong there it's the middle where that movement happens and if you think about their share of regional numbers when you look at that you've got to sort of adjust for that but ultimately i guess what i would say about seat projections and my caution to everybody here is that you are taking polling which is a science where you're generalizing based on the results of a thousand people and then you are layering on another thing and so by layering upon layering hearing here, you are getting kind of somewhat removed from the data,

Corey 13:03

data, which is not to say seat projections are always wrong.

Corey 13:06

And can I give a bit of a defensive polling here? I think that people have unreasonable expectations for polling in elections, right?

Corey 13:14

They will be off by two, three points. Those two, three points can be the difference between winning and losing. But

Corey 13:20

it's amazing when you sit back and think about the witchcraft involved here. You can call 1,000 people across the country, and even if you are a fucking terrible pollster, you're probably going to be within five or 10 points of being exactly correct. And that's really amazing. And so when you think about the value of polling and you step back from the horse race and say, okay, I want to understand how people react to message testing. I want to understand how certain demographics are responding. That's the true value. And that's what Stephen was talking about here. The horse race polling on the national level is fun to watch and it gives people something to talk about. It's kind of like sports commentary. It's like random number generators that allow us to have commentary and narrative. But ultimately, it's only stepping back. Do you actually see anything particularly interesting there?

Zain 14:05

You know, Carter and Corey and I appreciate the comments or even the defensive polling. I can say that all three of us have used it extensively professionally and within the confines of a political operation or campaign. But I want to bring up Carter's point for a second, which was about me, of course, and the Nancy campaign in 2017. 17. You know, one of the things that we realized from that campaign is that polling had gone from being strategic, where it was always used as indicating viability. And if you were down three points, you could always wave it in front of your supporters to be like, if we get more fucking people out, we can do this thing, or we're actually in the hunt. It's always been used as that metric to kind of then being weaponized a little bit more. Good or bad, we don't really know. On the national stage, however, there seems to be at least a bar for what a registered poll But I'm wondering, just getting your guys' thoughts on, do you feel like there could be a poisoning of the well here, that someone might try to just say, if that momentum keeps continuing for the Conservatives, that a couple outliering polls for the Liberals, will that neutralize polling in your mind? Will that just poison the well and make people confused? I'm kind of curious from the strategic narratives that might come about should a case like the one that I faced and our campaign faced a couple of years ago emerge here. I see both of you chop it at the bit. So, Carter, I'll let you go first and then Corey jump in. I'm

Carter 15:26

I'm really glad you asked this because what I've been expecting is that, of course, you know, we're talking about different moments in time. And we've been talking about when do people turn on, when do people start to pay attention to the elections. And I think that these polls have actually will wake people up. And I suspect it's what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks is you're going to see a strengthening of the liberal brand. And what will happen is people will say, well, liberals are now going up because the, you know, the number of violent right wing attacks or the violent protests outside of out of Trudeau's office. Now, I'm sure that that doesn't help the conservatives, but I don't think that that's actually going to be the causal reason. I think that you're going to start seeing people return to their normal lives. And as they return to their normal lives, they're going to start answering the phones differently. I think we're going to start seeing people engage with this election differently. and the the idea of a 10-point main street poll that's got a 10-point lead for the conservatives will create a a natural backlash so i'm not seeing it necessarily as the same weaponization that you are i think that i

Carter 16:30

think that there is a a

Carter 16:32

a weaponization of polling that the media are working very hard to kind of stamp out um you know and the cbc is probably leading that charge with their desire never to cover a poll that's not statistically valid they have their own verification processes for the polls that they cover i wish the post media would do something like that because they you know look like fucking idiots most of the time but you know they run conrad black columns though so what am i supposed to expect um at any rate uh i do think that the polls will shift and the weaponization that i will see is um you know the liberals will say hey,

Carter 17:09

we're back in this. They were never that far out. I suspect that we're seeing some outlying polls. I think we're seeing some different groups answering numbers. The sways that we'll see from last week to this week won't be as strong as they were, but the parties will go back to a little bit what you were talking about, waving the poll numbers in front of their supporters and saying, we've still got this.

Zain 17:29

Corey, your thoughts on this either weaponization or advanced strategic use of polling for mobilization purposes or for, you know, purposes of trying to wake up your donors, supporters, etc. Yeah,

Corey 17:43

Yeah, well, I'm not going to go so far as to say that the polls that you're talking about in the Calgary election were weaponized. I think that we need to make two things super clear. One, Alberta in general and Calgary in particular are very difficult places to poll, particularly for national firms. If you look at the track record for national firms in Alberta elections, it's not great. It's really bad. And if you go to 338canada.com right now, and you say how, you know, they've got like the pollster ranking, what you'll see is almost none of them get involved in Alberta, because it's so not great. And those that do get rankings of like D and C, and they get killed by the local people like Janet Brown, who really understand the market and can adjust for things in a way that is responsive to the Alberta market, right? right? And there's some reasons for this. And it does ultimately get down to this notion that every place is somewhat distinct. But I think Alberta is more distinct than other places for a couple of specific notions. One of them is that we are a younger province, we are a wealthier province. And so demographically, there's some tweaking that needs to occur beyond the degree that you normally need to apply in a national context. And so that's important. That's got to keep in mind. The other thing is, when you wait, when you're a pollster, and you're doing telephone phone polling and you're waiting you

Corey 18:58

have a very good sense of what kind of waiting needs to be applied to adjust for the idiosyncrasies in a federal election because everybody is doing it there's a broad body of research on this you've got a pretty good track record you know that you've got to wait for the age and gender demos and that's going to correct for most of your problem here but those may not actually be the demographics that you need to wait for when you you start talking about a municipal campaign. The way people kind of break and divide may be entirely different in a municipal context. So by waiting to deal with the national adjustment, you may actually be expanding error when you talk about a municipal campaign. We all take for granted, adjust for age and gender, and that will correct your poll. But

Corey 19:40

But those things may not actually be responsive in all elections. They just seem to be responsive in federal elections. And so So we've got to be very, very careful about that. And I think that in, you

Corey 19:51

you know, take this as a cautionary tale for Alberta in particular,

Corey 19:54

maybe these are not the demos that we need to be thinking about as much. Maybe in Alberta, it has more to do with income, has more to do with education, you name it. Be careful and understand your local market, understand your local campaign. The other thing I do want to say, though, is that when people like me make comments like this, and people like Stephen make comments like he did, and people like you, Zane, make comments like you did, people

Corey 20:15

people often will take these and say, this allows me to discount every poll.

Corey 20:20

This means all polls are garbage. All polls are broken.

Corey 20:23

There are two mistakes people make with polling. One is reading too much into them. And

Corey 20:27

And there's a lot of ways you can kind of knock that down.

Corey 20:30

But the other is reading too little into them. They are still interesting

Corey 20:32

interesting data points that allow you to make decisions better than you would in a totally app, you know, vacuum vacuum environment. And so I guess I,

Corey 20:41

I, this is kind of like one of those classic Dunning-Kruger things, right? Like you get on top, you know, a little about polling and you think, you know, too much. And then you just become a polling nihilist. I see this a lot when people start learning about polling. They, it's like a, it's like some first year philosophy student. What is up?

Corey 20:57

How is life? You know? Right, right, right. Yeah. We fucking get it. There are limitations to all polling. Sure. But that doesn't entirely discount the science that goes into all of it. And so do

Corey 21:06

do what Stephen says, track reputable pollsters, understand the methodologies, talk to them. Half of them are on Twitter. I'll bet you David Coletto would love to talk to you about some questions you have on some of these things. Graves as well. So just try to understand it. Don't read too much into it. Don't read too little into it. Don't discount polling, but know its limitations. Well,

Zain 21:26

Well, and can I make mention of that last point you made, Corey, around the philosophy student analogy? I like that because when I was talking about weaponization, it wasn't targeting a single poll. It was the fact that we had one poll saying the race is 12 points this way, another poll saying the race is 12 points another way. I guess what I'm trying to say is that to that point, do you feel like should that happen in this race, that we have conflicting polling? Maybe that's a better use, that there is actually a strategic choice within some campaign or another to say, screw it, my objective here is to poison the well on polling. Because I am down or because I'm behind or because they're not favoring me, I'm just going to try to get something out there that might tell a different story so that the voting public could just be like, fuck it, I don't trust this shit at all. And so I think that's kind of the narrative thread that we experienced here in 2017. But Carter, I want to, Corey, jump in because it's a direct response to your question. you had

Corey 22:22

two polls like there were only two people polling in calgary i mean so it was a lot easier to do that when you have i don't know i named how many pollsters here i guess i named eight

Corey 22:32

eight of them yeah

Corey 22:33

seven or eight and they're all telling the same story finding cherry picking that one poll is is pointless because you know there becomes kind of a thrust that you've got to adjust to yeah

Carter 22:44

yeah i'm always interested in seeing what the other questions are you know frank graves does does a pretty good job of this online, I don't think he's releasing anything vaguely close to what he's got in total. But he'll often put up information that is contradictory. And that's the stuff that I find the most fascinating, right? If

Carter 23:03

If you're looking at data and it appears contradictory, that's the stuff that we want to dig into. Because that means that there's some sort of cognitive dissonance that is occurring within the voters' minds. And they are saying at the top line that they want x when at the when other types of ways they want y and that that's where that's

Carter 23:23

that's where we make our money right that's where political strategists pollsters you know like that's where a winning election is born is understanding those those those moments of dissonance that that create opportunity for us um in the campaigns carter

Zain 23:41

carter let me let me finish on on this question on the polling side. It's actually Corey's question, the don't pay too much attention, but don't ignore them and pay attention to them as data points. Where do you see our political culture in terms of consumption related to polls right now? Do you feel like we're too much in one of those two directions right now?

Carter 24:00

Yeah, I mean, I think we overconsume polls, because I think at the end of the day, journalists can write these stories very easily. You know, if you ever want to have coverage, and this is one of the things I've said to my to my corporate clients you ever want to have coverage just do a poll you know 63.4 percent people of people want pumpkin spice lattes all year round boom

Carter 24:20

boom headline right like

Carter 24:23

and i wish i was i wish i was joking yeah you're not joking that's not that's

Carter 24:27

that's not a hyperbole that that will show up in usa today i mean it's to the point where ctv runs a daily poll i mean i'm not not sure it is global maybe they do but they run these polls they run this you

Carter 24:40

you know what was the survey of the day because people are attracted to them people want to know if they're in the majority the minority how do other people feel and you

Carter 24:50

an online survey isn't a poll but they still run it every day and they still talk about it in their newscasts and they still show it and and that's that's unfortunate because it does it it shows polling to be the

Carter 25:04

the science of polling is

Carter 25:06

fascinating right um that

Carter 25:09

that that science is amazing the science of how to get people to answer a question how to shift their minds you know in a moment that stuff's you know we're making our lives work out of that like that's what we're here for and you

Carter 25:24

know it gets boiled down to you know will you go to a flames game if they require double vaccination yeah

Corey 25:30

yeah you will if

Carter 25:31

they require double vaccination

Carter 25:32

vaccination because you like your hockey more than you care about your vaccination. But right now you're furious,

Carter 25:38

right? Because, you know, people,

Carter 25:42

there's so many factors and we

Carter 25:44

we have to understand the human, how human beings react more than we do. And you know who has to do that? Journalists. Journalists are the ones that really need to take classes. You know, Paul Ferry does these great classes. Trevor Toom does great classes on equalization or politics, political scientists. We need a couple of statisticians to stand up and do, this is what polls look like. This is how to understand a poll.

Zain 26:14

Corey, finishes off here. Are we oscillating in one direction more than the other on your metric of not reading too much or not reading enough into some of these polls?

Corey 26:26

think we're we're pretty well calibrated here gang good for all of us but there are two values to all of these polls and there's two things you need to consider in all of these polls as well one of them is a pretty obvious question a very important question election where are we like if an election was held today how would people vote um

Corey 26:42

um but another one you can ask yourself and there are polls that are better at the where are we right

Corey 26:47

right they they show you more consistently and they have a better track record there but

Corey 26:51

but there's also what's the trend and even Even if it's a methodology that you're maybe not wild about, what's the trend question you can apply to effectively any pollster who's doing a bit of a broad-based survey? Because even if there are fundamental problems with them putting it kind of on the map where it is, you get to see those pressures manifest themselves. And so I guess what I want to really stress here is what's the trend is clear. Where we are is not.

Corey 27:15

We talked much more about the trend than where we are. And that's something that people will argue about and dissect and think about over the next bit. But again, because we are in the system we're in, the

Corey 27:27

the top line numbers don't matter. It's really getting down to the regionals. And the regionals don't matter. It's about individual ridings. And we've got 338 of them. And they're going to move as they're going to move. And we don't always have the ability to see from a distance what's happening on the ground. And so there are always surprises on election night. The trend only matters so much.

Zain 27:47

We're going to leave that segment there, move it on to our next segment, our next segment, Relentless. Guys, it was the headline, it was the name, it was the title of Justin Trudeau's campaign video. We barely heard him utter it at any point during the campaign, but now he might have to act it because for the second time in a week, liberal leader Justin Trudeau has had a campaign event disrupted by protesters shouting obscenities, uttering death threats against the prime minister and hurling racist, and misogynistic insults at people of color and women in his protective detail. While making a stump speech to promote his party's climate change policies in Cambridge, Ontario, Sunday morning, i.e. this morning, the Liberals were forced to delay Trudeau's appearance for an hour because of these disruptions. Signs brandished by angry protesters displayed slogans such as, who benefits from the lockdown? And the Liberals ruined the country, with one protester shouting through a megaphone decked out with the name InfoWars, a US-based far-right conspiracy theory website. In response to this, Justin Trudeau said he's going to power through, he's going to keep going, he's going to move ahead. He's committed too much to these policies, he's leading into them. Let's talk about both the situation and then the raw politics of it. And I don't want to gloss over the situation before getting to the raw politics. Because while we do want to focus on that, I don't want to be too crass about it. Carter, have you seen anything like this on the campaign trail? I know we've seen this sort of rhetoric. This fuck Trudeau rhetoric is pretty popular where we live. So it's not like this is foreign to us. But have you seen anything like this on a national campaign trail before from what you're seeing right now with the last two appearances, at the very least, and then the string before with Justin Trudeau and his campaign?

Carter 29:35

Well, I think that we've seen this type of stuff before. I think we've seen it nationally, you know, where people stand up and they protest and they have signs and that type of thing. Going to the leaders event and protesting the leaders event has been a little bit of a national sport. The difference is the level of anger. The difference is how far this is going. I have video that was sent to me from Chrystia Freeland's office with With protesters, arguably, assholes, fuckheads, dildos, walking up and down in front of her office, pounding on the windows, telling her to come out. I'll post that on Twitter so that people can see the actual video. I've never seen it get to this stage. I mean, yeah, there's people who are angry in the past. There's people who want change and feel like the political overlords are holding them back in some fashion. That's fairly normal. But to see this level of vitriol and having to see it beyond the leader's office seems pretty weird to me. I haven't seen it. I mean, I have seen it in campaigns, the Sandra Jansen leadership, our event, you know, when we went to Red Deer one year and, you know, she left the leadership right after because of, well, the things that were done and the things that were said and, you know, the potential for really bad things. and i've you know this isn't the way the politics are supposed to be done this isn't the way our democracy is supposed to work but sadly people

Carter 31:06

people are super angry they're super duper angry and it's manifesting itself um in ridiculous fashion you know the the anti-vaccine stuff you know the i've got emails that have been sent to me about you know tens of thousands of people are dying from the vaccines what

Carter 31:25

fuck man like do

Carter 31:27

do basic math but this is this is where we are people are angry and that anger i think comes disproportionately from the united states but it's not just a canadian thing it's a european thing it's not a north american thing it's it's it's sadly spreading around the world and uh you

Carter 31:47

you know we're only a little bit away from from totalitarianism. And I don't say that lightly. It's not a game to say that. People do not understand how quickly democracies can fail.

Zain 31:59

Corey, same initial question to you. Have you seen anything like this on the federal campaign trail before?

Corey 32:04

Have I seen anything like this? I was trying to think about times where I'd seen people equally angry on the campaign trail. And I think the short answer is no. People had anger manifested in different ways towards bob ray i think in ontario right um you know police it's telling him as he's walking down the street with his kids like you're you're a goner man and shit like that uh i certainly mulroney was deeply unpopular uh in the early 90s as a result of some of the decisions he'd made to meet you like charlottetown gst all of that um and there are stories about people acting crazy obviously even trudeau the elder there are stories about him him dealing with angry protesters that's like you know that's there you know why should i sell your wheat stuff like that these these came from these flashpoint moments and let's not fucking kid ourselves there was a thing called the flq there was the you know there was the kidnapping of officials it's it's not as though there have not been crazy crazy times where people have gone way overboard and threatened public safety in the past this however it is fair to say in my lifetime time is probably a level of vitriol and intensity i've never seen i always hoped i wouldn't see i'd hoped was kind of uh in in the history books here these people are acting fucking nuts yeah

Corey 33:20

and i you know if and that's me being charitable because if i was being uncharitable i would say they are fucking nuts but that you know something has happened to their brains here they've been warped by info wars the internet just being under uh covid restrictions for 18 months which is none none of this is justification. They are, they are acting in a way that's not remotely appropriate for a democracy, and not remotely appropriate for even a civil society, even if we weren't a democracy here. They're yelling at kids, they're yelling at parents, they're disrupting events. This is not how anybody should behave in any kind of normal situation here. And everybody should give their heads a shake and take a deep fucking breath and say, is this how I would feel proud? You know, would my grandkids feel proud if they heard I was doing this? And you know, the crazy thing is half of them think yes they think that they're fighting this weird righteous war and you're not guys you're not nobody gives a shit about your crazy ass ideas and uh and it's just making me mad at this point it's making a lot of other canadians mad so i think we got to talk about the politics at some point because in many ways it drives a sympathy of justin trudeau well let

Zain 34:24

let me ask just that very question do you mind i'm gonna i'm gonna stop you and i'm gonna going to throw it to carter carter very simply is this good for justin trudeau you

Carter 34:33

you know i i think that i said earlier and if so how

Carter 34:37

yeah i mean i said earlier i think that it's actually a different thing that's going to bounce back and look like it was a it was a it was an anti backlash thing um i don't think that this is going to rally people to him i think that people are going to rally to the liberals to stop the conservatives um but if the conservatives allow themselves to be defined by these folks, there's real troubles. I mean, here in Calgary, we've got our own Brett Wilson, you know, saying very similar types of things, you know, like the anger is justified is not that doesn't help. Right. So we have to we

Carter 35:09

have to recognize that these feelings are are everywhere and they're not going like they have to be for Justin Trudeau to really benefit from them. He has to tie them to the conservatives. And I think that the The Conservatives have done a pretty good job of pushing away from it. Now, I will say that when they found out that the campaign

Carter 35:25

campaign workers were part of the crowd that was part of the first event being canceled, the

Carter 35:32

Conservatives managed it very well. But right now, if I was the Conservative campaign manager, I'd be saying zero tolerance. Anybody that you know that's thinking like this, that's talking like this, get them out of your campaign. Get them out of your campaign right now.

Corey 35:45

Corey, good? How good? well so hmm that's well i've

Corey 35:51

i've been struggling with this question for a bit so i think in some ways this could be a bit of a siren song that the liberals should be careful about what does

Zain 35:57

does that mean i

Corey 35:58

i would say that they can see an obvious allure of being tough and even standing up and maybe even the cynic in me says having more events in areas where these kind of confrontations are more likely maybe even justin trudeau coming to alberta where he knows that there's there's more of a appetite for this and trying to trigger a confrontation that's not too bad but one where where you can say, I'm tough, I'm willing to stand up and look at what's opposition to me and almost conflate the two, like opposition to me from these nutbars is just like Aaron O'Toole.

Corey 36:26

Yeah, you know, it's the enemy of my enemy sort of stuff here. Because I do think that there has been a lot of sympathy from the media, for sure, who have had to be there and subjected to these events as well. But also, I think, in general, opinion

Corey 36:40

opinion class on Twitter saying, this is terrible what has happened. And I can't believe we've gotten to a point where an event needs to be canceled. I can't believe we're getting to the point where people are holding up. Pick the, you know, the infamous picture today is the picture of photoshopped of Justin Trudeau being led to a noose. I mean, and yeah, that's

Corey 36:57

that's crazy town shit. There's no question about it, right? Just absolutely bonkers that that stuff is going on here. But this is not, this is, I mean, listen, the conservatives have flirted with this for a while. and some of this is going to come back on them and they're going to deserve it coming back because of how they have acted in some cases in the past. But let's be clear, this is not an Aaron O'Toole crowd. These people probably hate Aaron O'Toole as much as Justin Trudeau, you know, nine out of ten of them. And this is much more of that PPC, Maverick Party ilk. And ultimately, I think they will also be coming after the conservative candidates and they will be just being a nuisance writ large. and i wouldn't put all of your chips on this and the reason i say it could be a bit of a siren song is if that the liberals really lean into this a it could become clear they're trying to lean into it and they should be careful about that because pretty ham-fisted well feed that cynicism that we've talked about in the past and you continue going back to this well at a certain point people will say well what the hell is going on here um there it also is people who are angry with the prime minister and created an insane tension that canadians are not that wild about but the other thing is you might just be um you know just feeding this this general sense of malaise within the country so be careful be mindful uh a lot of canadians don't know how to process this right now they are not sure whether this is uh

Corey 38:22

uh indicative of of kind of conservative values or if this is something different from that and um i

Corey 38:29

i don't know i think just be careful if you're the liberals you know don't lean into it that's for fucking sure yeah that's

Carter 38:36

that's absolutely right well carter

Zain 38:37

carter i'm gonna ask you a question then what should they do so i ask you guys is it good if so how good carter how do you make it better uh and and frankly the question you may want to just you the answer you may want to give me i should say is to say fuck you you don't make this thing better you don't strategize around this you don't lean into this you don't do anything with it that

Zain 38:56

that might be your answer but carter what do you think if you're advising the liberals right right now you've got this situation it's happened twice already um you you clearly are in a political war you want to be very careful about it but what are you trying to do with this are you trying the direct ham-fisted connection to o'toole are you using your primary messenger on it what are you doing i

Carter 39:18

think i'm emphasizing the number of times that it's happened right

Carter 39:22

right in the number of places that it happens i'm making sure that videos like the christia freeland video gets out i'm making Making sure that, you know, there's a photograph shared from, I think, Dylan Hargraves, the candidate for Lethbridge, with an arrow shot through his sign. You know, I'm just going to keep pushing those things out. I mean, these things, physical violence and threatening has no business in Canadian politics. And every day that the Conservatives have to talk about, you

Carter 39:52

know, this is probably a good day. hey, I would not be making this about a conservative problem.

Carter 39:58

I wouldn't be saying these are conservative people. I agree with Corey that I suspect that this group of people would hate Aaron O'Toole as much as they hate Justin Trudeau at this particular moment in time. But, I mean, shit, they even booed Trump the other day when he suggested they get vaccinated. That's who these groups of people are. These groups of people are not rational. But

Carter 40:19

I would just keep focusing on all the different microaggressions and macroaggressions that are happening right now. And they're all over the place. Even in Calgary and Edmonton, when we're talking about vaccinations and we're talking about our Delta variant problems in Alberta, there's a group of people who are coming out to try and intimidate everybody who's speaking. They're everywhere. So let's just keep pointing it out. How do

Zain 40:44

do you build that up to any political value though, Carter?

Carter 40:47

It's a crass question,

Zain 40:48

but I have to ask it. How

Carter 40:49

How do you build that up? We're not going to be silenced. show your bravery i mean you opened it up with the question relentless right where's this you be um beating maybe maybe it's this time it's fearless you know maybe it's maybe it's we're going to stand up my great fear my great fear is that someone's actually going to get hurt

Corey 41:09

yeah me too and

Carter 41:09

and i and i think that that's that's not i mean we've had people come to our house right

Carter 41:14

right i i don't know about you guys but i've had people come to my house knock on my door you know threaten me that's the nature of the game and and that's not the way the game is supposed supposed to be played. You know, my view has always been that, you know, Corey and I met when we didn't meet, but we were on opposite campaigns in 2012.

Carter 41:32

That did not stop us from being friends and friendly and understanding what each of us was trying to do because we were trying to better society. That's the same thing that happens, but should be happening between the conservatives and the liberals and the new Democrats and the greens, right?

Carter 41:46

right? That's the thing that should be happening. And that's the value that I would be showing if I were a liberal campaign strategist. I will continue to put my hand out no matter how many times it is slapped away.

Zain 41:57

Corey, what do you think from what you heard from Carter and the crass political question of what do you do with this? If you're not leaning into it, as you just said, what are you doing with it?

Corey 42:07

Yeah, the liberals are playing this, I think, over the weekend fairly well strategically, which is just making it kind of murky and pointing to common behaviors between the the Conservative Party, and some of the people there. We've seen the comments about, you know, when some of them are stretches, frankly, but

Corey 42:25

comments about Cheryl Gallant, the fact that the CBAC campaign had, you know, a hat there. It just creates this general pervasive sense of like, there are two sides here, there are sane, rational people, and there's everyone else. And, and they're kind of murky in the water and making it seem like perhaps the Conservatives are part of everyone else. And, and that's not necessarily great. And you can talk about the ethics of all of that all you want, but I think that that's about how you would apply this as far as you can. It'll be interesting to see if there will be follow

Corey 42:53

follow-up hits from the Liberals in the next couple of days and whether there are ways that they will take additional effort to tie Aaron O'Toole and tie Aaron O'Toole's candidates to these actors. Now, the Conservatives are taking kind of a very quick nope, absolutely not, they're not on our side, but it's much

Corey 43:12

it's difficult with people like Gallant and I don't know, No, I mean, if you also don't want to get into a situation of Aaron O'Toole, where you're just, you're playing the hangman yourself, just quickly getting rid of candidates at the drop of a notice, although there will be a big temptation for that.

Zain 43:29

Carter, let's do this one quickly. To Corey Spunner on O'Toole, what are you doing if you're team O'Toole right now? You did the quick denouncement, which seemed to kind of, you know, if there was any nicks, so to speak, politically, you may have stopped those or stopped any sort of bleeding from that. What are you trying to do proactively to try to ensure that this doesn't make, to Corey's initial point as we started this thing off, Justin Trudeau a sympathetic character? Your primary goal here is to ensure that the guy who is probably the best in the race at doing this part of the job, which is giving West Wing-style speeches about compassion and these people had a hard year, too, and we're in it together. other i don't know if that plays but it's a strength of his if you're timo tool how do you ensure you prevent sympathetic trudeau coming out of this whether it be in two days or six days or 10 days uh on the back end of uh of of these protests and these incidents find

Carter 44:26

find out wherever justin trudeau is going to be on wednesday and do a joint event do

Carter 44:31

do a joint event and you call up the trudeau campaign and you say i'm coming because

Carter 44:35

because the most that's

Corey 44:36

that's exactly what i was going to say I

Carter 44:37

I thought I was smart

Corey 44:38

smart to do it. Yeah,

Carter 44:39

Yeah, because that is the complete

Carter 44:41

complete undermining of this. It immediately moves you from I'm on the side of the protesters to I'm on the side of democracy. Our ideas are so good that they should be heard for the strength that they offer, not because of the screaming of the loudmouths yelling down the prime minister. And I'm going to stand on a stage with the prime minister. I'm not even going to speak.

Carter 45:05

I'm not even going to speak. I don't have anything that I need to say. I'm just want to stand beside you, sir, and allow you to speak because this is not how I want this campaign to unfold. And if he's not standing, you know, if this continues and he's not standing beside Justin Trudeau by Wednesday, then they have a campaign problem because then it's it's us versus them. And this is not a time for us versus them. You have three more weeks. If you can kill this thing this week, if you can kill this thing this week, then you have a chance to to win this election.

Carter 45:33

But if you can't kill this thing this week, then this could be the story of the election.

Zain 45:39

Speaking of West Wing, Stephen Carter pulling out some West Wing strategies of his own. Corey, build on what you heard there and help me play

Zain 45:50

play the liberals. How do you respond to an invite by Aaron O'Toole to do

Corey 45:55

do a joint appearance? Look, I mean, so I was going to go there too i think you you offer to do a joint rally against hate right where the original rally was canceled invite jagmeet singh canadians for civil society we disagree but we are not enemies and we stand together against this kind of behavior it's inappropriate in all contexts politicians from many parties have gotten it but don't play this like it's just as bad for us say and it right now our prime minister and he's all of our prime minister right now people he's getting it worse than everybody else and we all need to stand up and say this is wrong and

Corey 46:27

and you know what

Corey 46:29

If Justin Trudeau declines your offer, you've just shown him to be...

Zain 46:35

if he takes it, you win if he loses it, if he doesn't take it. Let's get into the mechanics of it. How are you making the offer? Because people need to know an offer was made. Yeah,

Corey 46:43

Yeah, no, you can't make it public. No,

Corey 46:44

No, exactly. So let's

Zain 46:46

let's get into the mechanics. How are you doing? Are you leaking it? Are you making an offer and it leaks to one journalist? Because if Trudeau declines, you need to be able to show the symbolism was just that. It was symbolism and it was nothing more. So what are the mechanics here? You

Carter 47:00

You pick up the phone and you call the prime minister.

Carter 47:02

You give the prime minister the very first opportunity to say yes to it.

Carter 47:06

And then if he says no, then

Carter 47:09

then at some point later, you know, later you say, you

Carter 47:13

you know, I want to stand side by side with. Then you can just take the messaging. Right. What is the message of going to the event? I'm just going to stand side by side, shoulder to shoulder to stand against this because it's wrong. wrong. And then you just take that messaging and you say, I am willing to stand. Then you can just invite yourself.

Carter 47:30

I'm willing to stand side by side with Justin Trudeau at any one of the events that he wants to do. Because this isn't an attack on Justin Trudeau. This isn't an affront to our democracy. This is an attack on our democracy. And I have to stand against that. And if Jagmeet Singh wants me to stand with him, I stand with him.

Carter 47:47

And if Annamie Paul wants to stand together, then i will stand with her but we are all going to stand together against this type of intimidation

Carter 47:56

know like you but you make the ask first and then you begin the messaging after

Zain 48:02

do you think it's happening do you think this is going to happen no

Carter 48:04

no because i don't think that they're this clever i

Corey 48:08

think the fact that we both came off with it makes me think other people have come up with it too but

Carter 48:13

but they're going to reject it because they don't want to they don't want to promote him right because that right this is i think

Corey 48:18

think actually the answer is interesting go ahead go ahead cory go ahead the risk is actually that they get too cute about it and they do leak it out and all of that i think it is you're spot on i'm not even sure that you do it uh uh o'toole to trudeau i think you do it uh you know campaign manager to campaign manager and say we're pissed about this too and we see this threat too and this threat is and again don't overplay it don't pretend it's just as bad for you say we

Corey 48:42

we don't like what's happening to you right now and we think we need to put an end to this it's it's bigger than all of us here And so we want to pitch that we all get up on stage with Singh and Paul. Sure, why not? We can tell Bernier to go fuck himself. And we're going to stand up and we're going to say this is not what Canada is about. And if there's one thing we agree, it's that this country and those values are more important than any fucking campaign that we've got going on right now. And you know what? I think the liberals would sit there and say, oh, shit, what if we say no to this? But if you have – if he says no, you say, that's fine. You're going to do your thing. But we are not backing down on this. We are going to be going hard on these people. people and uh and then i think actually you have that rally in the exact same place yourself as aaron o'toole and you and you say you know we're

Corey 49:31

we're standing up against this kind of stuff and and you make it actually a bigger thing and if somebody says well what the hell how serious could you be the prime minister's not even here that's just cynical that's when you can start to sort of bleed out like well you know if he wants to come we would encourage that and then it will get out that he was invited at one point so

Zain 49:48

so cory you don't think this is going to happen either

Corey 49:51

you know what um it's tough during a campaign to do something like that because you worry you're going to call and that you're going to play it wrong and it is a bit of a swing and that it will seem awkward or like it's too obvious what you're trying to do but i think if you were actually trying to do right if like if you actually take as a core thing like this is wrong what is happening here run

Corey 50:12

with that and i think if aaron o'toole can internalize that and really feel that and to act in that fashion, he won't go wrong here. But he's got to be, he's got to be careful that even

Corey 50:22

even though there is a political inoculation, this provides that it's not about the political inoculation. And he has to act in a fashion that reflects that it is not about the political inoculation. Carter

Zain 50:31

Carter finishes off on this. It's

Carter 50:32

It's not a debate. It's not a campaigning opportunity is standing against something that is fundamentally wrong. And if you can recall, remember that, and that's why you got into politics, then this becomes a much, much easier decision.

Zain 50:47

We'll leave that segment there. Move it on to our next segment, Yes And. Look at this. You guys worked together in this last segment, and I'm going to try to make you guys work together now as well. Corey, you said you wanted to talk about Jagmeet Singh and the NDP. Well, your wish is now a reality. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to try this. We're going to see if this works. So Yes And, of course, Carter, you know the principle from comedy, improv comedy, improv sketch.

Zain 51:14

Yes, you do. Look at this. yes and what

Carter 51:17

yes and i've i not only have i learned about it i've studied it i am an expert in it and i am prepared to do your bidding not

Zain 51:25

not bad a little rusty but you got 15 seconds to prepare usually

Carter 51:28

usually i'm not i'm usually not in

Carter 51:30

in the mindset of you know cooperating with using right

Zain 51:34

here's what we're going to do we are going to construct a strategy uh in fact what we're going to try to do is i'm going to have one of you start us off with the overall strategy and i'll tell you about what in a second the next one is going to pick up on the tactics you have to accept the premise every single time so if cory if carter says this is the strategy cory you have to accept the premise and say okay yep that's right

Corey 51:58

right carter's right and these are the tactics i didn't even fucking do that when he was my boss yeah

Zain 52:03

yeah no well we're gonna change that shit we're gonna try really hard carter after cory gives you the tactics you're gonna have to say yep that's right and and here's the message. And Corey, after you hear from Carter about the message, you're gonna be like, you know what, Carter's fucking brilliant, here are the messengers, and we're gonna end it there. And now the question you are solving, okay, the question you are trying to solve is, how do the NDP and Jagmeet Singh prevent what they know is gonna ultimately happen? Justin Trudeau is gonna turn the entire campaign machinery, whether it be for a day or an hour or a week to the left and say, Aaron O'Toole is real.

Zain 52:44

This guy is too close, too viable. If you're parked with Jagmeet Singh, great guy, love him. You

Zain 52:51

You got to come here to defeat the conservatives. We've seen this movie, what, 50 times? 70 times? 100 times? So many times we've seen this movie. Jagmeet Singh and team probably know what's happening. What I want your guys' has helped right now though is to help him prevent that what's the best strategy for us to to to get that going what's the best tactics the

Zain 53:14

the best message the best messengers and then we'll kind of wrap it put a bow on it and that will be the yes and ndp strategy carter any questions from uh from what i said thus far no

Carter 53:28

damn it yes and um you

Zain 53:30

you just fucked up right away yes and what is your question. Yes and no, you have no question. Will

Zain 53:37

Will this be graded?

Zain 53:39

This will not be graded. I've got a number, Corey, between one and ten in my mind. Whoever gets closest, we'll start with this strategy. Whoever is closest to the number in my mind, we'll start with the first part of this, which is, what's the strategy? And then we'll kind of go from there to the tactics, the message. This might be a total train wreck, but you know what?

Zain 54:00

I'm okay with that. Corey, Corey, what's your number between 1 and 10? Zero.

Zain 54:04

You are zero. Fuck you. Carter, what is the number between 1 and 10? One.

Corey 54:16

Also, Zane, you don't solve questions. You answer questions. You solve problems. Let's fucking grow up. Come

Zain 54:21

Come on. Carter, the number was seven. You are starting. Yes. You are starting. Steven Carter, yes and us. Start with the strategy, the overall what are they doing? Give us the high level. This is your expertise. Corey, you're on deck. As soon as Carter finishes strategy, you're going to say, yes, and here are the tactics. So Carter, lay it on us. What is the strategy for Jagmeet Singh and the NDP to prevent the inevitable, which is Justin Trudeau turning over to all those red-orange switchers and say, it's got to be red. Aaron O'Toole isn't weak. He's viable. He could be PM. This guy sucks. I need you to come over to me. Stephen Carter, what is the strategy? The

Carter 55:01

The strategy is for Jagmeet Singh to say, I am not going to be the prime minister. In fact, the NDP has never been the government, but I do want to be a senior minister. And the way to do that is to go into hyper local areas and to tell everybody in those areas that the thing that stands between Canadians and a majority government of either stripe, of either stripe, it doesn't matter if it's blue. It doesn't matter if it's red. The only government that ever works for Canadians is one that is held together by the by orange. And you can't count on the Bloc Québécois. The NDP must have the largest group that can actually sustain a minority government. And Jagmeet Singh is not going to put himself in a position that he was in the last minority parliament. He needs local

Carter 55:55

local constituencies. Every single NDP riding that is viable needs to stand up against the tyranny of the liberals, the tyranny of the conservatives, because the best government for Canadians is the government that is held together by the NDP. It has been thus from the 1970s till now. That's where we have to go. The strategy is we

Carter 56:18

we are going to go local. We are not going for the PM's chair. We are going for a senior minister, ministership. And I am not going to, as Jagmeet Singh says, I'm not going to as a leader of the of the NDP. I am not going to just prop up a minority government. I'm going to ask for a minister seat.

Zain 56:37

I can just see the pain on Corey's face. Hold on, hold on, hold on, Carter. Hold on.

Zain 56:47

He'll do it. He'll do it. Yes, man.

Corey 56:54

wait. Yes, and you should fire Stephen Carter for something entirely different.

Zain 56:59

on, this is great. Hold on, hold on, Corey. Corey, before you, I just want to, for

Zain 57:03

clarity, I want to understand what the strategy here is. Yeah,

Corey 57:05

Yeah, we all do, Zane.

Zain 57:06

the fuck carter not running for prime minister you're

Zain 57:09

you're so hold on okay so step a admit i'll let you guys do the message i'm not gonna come i'll play i'll play this i just want to i just want to understand it so step a you're saying the ndp are not trying to become government right

Carter 57:20

right they're trying to they're trying to set the moral direction of the government so

Zain 57:25

so so the okay so the ndp are not setting you said something about senior minister i need to understand that that was just thrown

Carter 57:32

thrown in as like a senior minister he's you know what instead of just sitting on the the sidelines he's going to be a minister in the minority government this

Corey 57:38

this is so terrible keep going okay

Zain 57:41

well okay so best strategy they've ever had we

Zain 57:44

we don't we don't want to be government um we don't want to

Carter 57:48

to be the power brokers in the government that's we want to be power brokers and we go local we go hyper local to get it we go to each constituency and say how much more power are you going to have by actually electing an ndp member because it's that's where the power lies cory

Zain 58:03

cory hogan you you gotta do this uh you are on deck for the tactics stephen carter you've already jumped into it after cory finishes this you are on deck for the message i've already

Carter 58:13

already got the messaging yeah so good it's

Zain 58:17

what are the tactics here for the ndp's um prevention of trudeau going to the orange red switchers and saying you have to go red this time o'toole is too real stephen carter has started us off with a strategy that says we do not want to win And we want to be the moral conscience.

Corey 58:37

Salvaging dumb things, Carter says, that I do have some experience with. Oh, my God.

Carter 58:42

It's the best idea ever.

Corey 58:44

Yes. And what we will make very clear to people is that the price of us being involved is an acceptance of certain policy planks of ours that we think would be acceptable to either the conservatives or liberals because they're basically the same party. And so our demands don't need to be different from one party to the other. We are demanding that there is a wealth tax to have our support, which will allow Canadians to pay for the, you

Corey 59:10

you know, the supports for workers that will be underneath Jagmeet Singh's ministry, which will be the other requirement of ours. So ultimately, what we want to do is create a carve-out of government where we effectively are being given the financing and the ability to protect Canadian workers.

Zain 59:25

Okay, so we've got the strategy. We want to be the moral compass. We've got the tactic. I really like

Zain 59:32

well taxed we want the ministry uh okay cory do you want to expand a bit more on on the tactics that they're using to kind of communicate this like from a campaign perspective anything you want to add to to how they go on blast about yeah i mean he

Corey 59:46

he just shouts it into his pillow and doesn't tell anybody this is his dumb idea it's

Zain 59:54

carter what's the message what else are you adding to this i

Carter 59:57

think that the the way to go

Zain 59:58

go on message on message please Louise, you've already teased us with a bit of it. The

Carter 1:00:02

The message is the individual ridings are going to have way more power if they elect NDP. It's not about being 170 members of a governing party. It's 45, 50 NDP members of parliament that are each going to be incredibly valuable, that are going to be able to hold the government to account like the wealth tax. We've already seen the evidence of this. We've seen the evidence of this recently with CERB. We've seen the evidence with this with rent supports. We've seen the evidence of this with not allowing people to be evicted. This is NDP holding government and holding the power.

Zain 1:00:44

Corey, finish us off. Who are the messengers? So we've got the strategy. We've got the tactics. We've got the message that Carter's given us. Hyperlocal, who are the messengers? Corey Hogan? Morgan?

Corey 1:00:54

The messengers are people who used to be with either the Liberal Party or the Conservatives, but have decided to quit and run for the NDP, because apparently that's,

Corey 1:01:05

I don't know, a thing. I don't know. Can I

Carter 1:01:09

I rewind? Such a good strategy.

Zain 1:01:12

You think this is over. You think this is over. Finish your sentence, and then there's still a second chapter here, Corey.

Corey 1:01:21

You want people who can credibly say there is no difference between these two. We have had experience with either party. What we know is that blue, red doesn't matter. It's all about how much orange is in their diet. And we can provide that by working together.

Zain 1:01:40

You know, this show is called The Strategist because it really tries to put the focal point on strategy and really say that without good strategy or without a strategy it's really hard to actually make anything out of it now carter we're not taking a shit on you but that was a very weird idea this

Carter 1:01:55

this is the best which is why which

Zain 1:01:56

which is why it's the

Zain 1:01:58

the best idea again i'm

Zain 1:01:59

i'm running it again this i'm part of

Carter 1:02:02

want to show how important boring okay i want to show i want

Zain 1:02:06

to showcase how important strategy is this is one way to do it cory hogan the floor is yours You are now on strategy. The question, it's the same. How does the NDP and Jagmeet Singh prevent what seems to be now the inevitable? Justin Trudeau, in some way, shape or form, turning the liberal machinery to the orange-red switcher saying, guys, you got to come over. O'Toole is too real. Corey Hogan, you start us off with strategy. Carter, you're on deck for yes and into tactics. Go ahead, Corey.

Corey 1:02:37

think that last one broke my brain. I'm not sure I have anything left here. But, you know, what

Corey 1:02:43

what it comes down to is, is you need to create some sense that perhaps they that they are wrong, that in fact, the NDP are the ones who you should put your votes towards. And that's where all of the momentum lies. And, and so you have a couple of things you can point to. And you can say, No, absolutely not. You know, there's, there's about five different reasons why this is a mistake. First of all, the liberals have told you that it would be the last election and first passed the post. That's clearly not the point. So if you want the things you want, you're going to have to vote for them. There's no intermediate step here. The only way to get NDP values, values that you support, is by voting for the NDP. The second thing you do is say we have all of the momentum right here. If you look at the polls, you can see that the Liberals are in decline and you see that the NDP are on the upswing here. If you were to throw your votes to the Liberals, all you'd be doing is money in the situation and keeping that split exactly where where the conservatives need it to be government. So yeah, we agree with the fundamental premise of the liberals, which is you don't want a conservative government. But we also know that there's a ceiling to the liberal vote, and it's dropping rapidly. And the ceiling for the vote is much, much higher. The only option to a conservative government is an NDP government. The liberals just cannot get it done. So all you would be doing is putting your votes towards an opposition that's going to be run around by the conservative party.

Zain 1:03:59

Carter, the new strategy that we have developed, it's the 2011 playbook with an asterisk, right? We've got momentum on our side. There is no middle ground. If you vote for the Liberals, you're just muddying the situation. They've got a ceiling, and that ceiling is rapidly dropping. So, yeah, the premise is true, you know, but we're the party. The characters have changed. The NDP are that party. That is your strategy. Carter, tell me your tactics. Yes and into the tactics. What are they? Yes,

Carter 1:04:26

Yes, and focus on the preferred prime minister. The preferred prime minister across the country is Jagmeet Singh. The parties have – so dig in on media relations and everybody's desire to focus on polling numbers and keep

Carter 1:04:42

pointing out that the liberals may go up and the conservatives may go up and

Carter 1:04:46

the liberals may go down and the conservatives may go down. But

Carter 1:04:48

But it's the it's the little engine that could that is the NDP that are, you know, with a leader that is universally popular, the only one, in fact, with a positive rating from any of the major party leaders. And you're going to be the ones who can actually get the momentum at the end. Yes, that's that's what you need to do is focus on the ability to actually see an NDP government supported by either the liberals or the conservatives, Because the NDP are the ones that have the only leader that people actually like, the only leader that people actually agree with. And so the tactics that I would do is run a full on campaign nationwide, every region, every jurisdiction, spending money to show that we can keep up with the big kids. And the NDP get to be should

Carter 1:05:39

be seen in the first two media stories every day instead of the first three, you know, really push the media relations side, really push the the ground game, the air war, making sure that that when people turn on their televisions, they're seeing the NDP colors instead of the liberals and instead of the conservatives. conservatives.

Zain 1:05:59

Carter, is there one golden tactic that could really, in your mind, and I'm asking a lot, but, you know, I like to work, you guys. Is there one golden tactic that you feel like could really make this case that we are the progressive choice and not the liberals? I'm throwing some options out. Is it a speech? Is it a sit down on network television? Is it buying some airtime somewhere? Is it like making a case? Is there something that could just totally crystallize this, that might be different, unique, could really try to put Jagmeet Singh in second gear if this is indeed the strategy, that we are the choice, not the liberals. They've got their ceiling, as Corey said. We've got the momentum. As you've said, we've got the most likable leader. We've got the most preferred leader. Carter, is there a golden tactic or two that you'd actually want to add to the list beyond what you've said?

Carter 1:06:49

Yes, win the debates.

Carter 1:06:50

Winning the debates is the the is the tactic that is required uh sing needs to be seen to be uh more than just a popular character on tiktok he needs to be able to be seen as a as a character uh that can hold the national attention hold the national stage um and you know get getting a proper debate team that enables him to uh to stand out and to star um i wouldn't make him into uh the the standard um

Carter 1:07:17

um Um, the standard leader, you

Carter 1:07:19

you know, but, but instead build off of those strengths that he's got on the TikTok audience and build off of the youthfulness, build off of the excitement, uh, and try and capture some of that, which made Joe Clark prime minister in 1979, youthful energy and, and excitement, um, that, that could be a path, uh, for him. I think the debate strategy, the debate tactics might be the most important though, because Because what

Carter 1:07:44

what you're basically doing is saying one guy, one time, there's

Carter 1:07:49

there's a reason this guy is so popular. Let's make him the prime minister.

Zain 1:07:52

Corey, yes, and the message is, message are, is, what is it?

Corey 1:07:58

Yes, and their best case scenario isn't yours. I won't settle. Canada won't settle. Now is the time for a strong NDP. We

Corey 1:08:06

We know that the approval ratings are higher for Jagmeet Singh. We know that if any party can do this, it's the NDP. We know that lending votes to the liberals is like lending to somebody who will never pay you back.

Zain 1:08:23

Nicely done, Corey and Carter. Yes, and the messengers of this message, this set of tactics and this strategy, obviously Jagmeet Singh. Who else are you adding to the mix, Carter?

Carter 1:08:34

I would probably add his pregnant wife. I've talked about this before. this is a family that reflects all of Canada this is a family that shows what the opportunity in the future and the stakes are this is about our children this is about you know relying on a new party that reflects a new future every time there has been a significant shift to a new party in another jurisdiction it is because of a reflection of a new of a youthful energy and a youthful excitement when you see that in in France, when they moved to Macron's party. It was a reflection of youthfulness and a reflection of themselves. And his wife played an enormous role. This can't be done just by a single individual, but it can't be done by committee either. It needs to be done by the single family unit.

Zain 1:09:25

whose strategy are you preferring now that we've got both of them tied a bow on them? Yours or the one that we just did with Corey leading? So

Carter 1:09:32

So my new strategy that's different or Corey's strategy that's failed every time? I think I'm I'm going to go with mine.

Corey 1:09:41

Corey, do you want to respond?

Corey 1:09:42

I'm going to go with Carter's because it'll be interesting.

Corey 1:09:48

So you mean I did the second round for no reason whatsoever? That

Zain 1:09:51

That was well done. That was fun. That was a

Zain 1:09:52

a lot of fun. We're going to skip the elevator ride campaign strategy. We'll come back to that on

Corey 1:09:57

on Thursday. Carter, you don't even know what it is.

Zain 1:09:59

is. You're literally, it's you driving to your lawyers. We'll do it again. We'll do it again. Trust me. We'll save that till Thursday. Let's move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Guys, the reason I want to skip it, actually, is to allow this. Corey, 30 seconds, give or take. I'm going to ask you to do a different type of elevator sort of speech. 30 seconds. Give me the take of what's happening here in Alberta. We've got Jason Kenney gone for a couple of weeks on vacation. COVID rates are spiking. We're hearing not just rates, but hospitalizations and ICU as well. How bad is it? And kind of maybe summarize for our listeners that are not from this place, what do you make? I can only go through one question here. So what do you make of the situation that we're experiencing here in Alberta right now?

Corey 1:10:48

It's not fucking great, Zane. We have a situation where we're seeing COVID climb, and there doesn't seem to be any kind of next act, right? right? It seems to be how far can this go? Will this wildfire burn itself out? And when will that occur? And as a result, you're seeing a lot of private organizations fill the gap. You've seen, for example, Calgary Sport and Entertainment say, no, you've got to be double vaxxed to go to a hockey game. Carter alluded to that earlier. You are seeing, insofar as the government is getting involved at all, it's the don't call it a vaccine passport passport that you'll soon be able to download so that different organizations will allow you to do this. But I think it's fair to say that Albertans right now are feeling somewhat at the whims of of fate and it's a very weird feeling to be in and of course to be a province that is just what between 10 and 15 percent the population of this country and be 33 percent of the COVID cases right now is not a comfortable place to be that said I will also say I don't see people moderating their behavior an awful lot you go out there and you see very full places full restaurants full crowds not a lot of mask use right now. So it does feel like we're just sort of careening into something here. And we haven't even gotten back to school yet. We haven't gotten to cold weather where people are indoors. It's hard to imagine that this is going to end particularly well. But there's a certain nihilism

Corey 1:12:11

nihilism that's taken over the province right now. Not

Corey 1:12:15

Not at all helped by the fact that nobody has really seen from any of the senior people in healthcare for the last bit. That would would be of course our premier our minister of health and our chief medical officer of health we're left kind of hanging too on some things there was some suggestion that we were going to be given some of the modeling that led to alberta making decisions that were postponed frankly we decided not to make those decisions but that modeling does not appear um not

Corey 1:12:42

not not much i can say it's a it's a bit of a mystery right now why we're floating along as we are carter

Zain 1:12:47

carter build on what you heard from Corey and or give me your own take.

Zain 1:12:51

What are you making of the situation here in Alberta?

Carter 1:12:54

Sometimes we try and will our own realities, right? And I think we're all guilty of this where we pretend that there's a certain reality that we live within and we try and model our behavior on that different reality. And I think that Jason Kenney has tried to will a new reality that said the Delta variant isn't going to come back. It's not something that matters. COVID is done. We defeated it. You know how I know that? Because he said it. It's done. His team said it as well. And Corey's point months ago was if we could get to these new measures, if we could see that, you know, maybe it won't be case count in the future. Maybe case count is a wrong measure. Corey said that. And I've been thinking about that ever since he said it. But then what we're starting to see now is that back is the hospitalization rate. The ICU rates are as high now as they were in the second and third waves. And that's the problem.

Carter 1:13:46

Even if you take the charitable line that Corey articulated that I've just been fixated on, we

Carter 1:13:53

we are now moved past that. And our but our political leadership, our CMOH, our premier, our minister of health have they

Carter 1:14:02

they don't give a fuck. They've been on vacation for two weeks, and now I'm thrilled to find out how Premier Kenny is going to come back to our province after three weeks away and stand up and say, it's OK, we don't have to do anything. This is exactly what we planned. And it's unfolding the exact way that we expected it to, because that's what his MLAs are saying. That's

Carter 1:14:24

That's what his MLAs are saying. And that is what's making me absolutely crazy.

Zain 1:14:30

we're gonna we're gonna discuss alberta in a lot more detail in a future episode but i wanted to you know take the moment right now especially with the timely developments or frankly lack thereof on the political side uh developments with covid very little developments on the political side with uh with as cory and both you and carter mentioning um our political leadership and our health leadership not there i'm gonna go to our next question carter i'm gonna start with with you on this one. Overrated or underrated as a political strategy, Carter? Overrated or underrated as a political strategy? Justin Trudeau announcing a $1 billion fund for provinces that choose to announce a system for vaccine passports. They'll provide them additional supports for any province that wants to put together a vaccine passport system as a political strategy. What he's trying to do, overrated or underrated? I

Carter 1:15:19

I think underrated. I think if people understand that the federal government wants this to happen and they're doing everything they can, that it helps the people on the ground and it helps us kind of coalesce a provincial vote. Like it could make more seats in play in Alberta and that may be required for the liberals to even hold on to their minority.

Zain 1:15:42

Corey, same question too. Is a political strategy for Trudeau overrated or underrated announcing this new funding for any province that chooses to implement a vaccine passport system?

Corey 1:15:51

I think it might be overrated, because at this point, we've had so many conversations about various vaccine passport systems. Here's the thing.

Corey 1:15:59

Every province but Alberta basically already has one. So it's not really like a lot of a trigger. Carter's right, it could potentially help here in Alberta, and maybe that'll be a couple of seats, and maybe that'll be the difference. But when you talk about the national context, not a huge deal. deal. The feds had already announced that they were going to have a vaccine passport of some sorts for international travel. So this seems somewhat consistent with that in many ways. It didn't feel like a ton of new news. It felt like it was one of those things that was an attempt at a wedge with Aaron O'Toole more than anything else or to start a fight with Jason Kenney. I wasn't really entirely sure, but it didn't seem like it was earth shattering, at least when it was dropped, because correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain that Ford had already acquiesced. It was a

Zain 1:16:42

a weird sort of like, I encourage Ford to do it. And then like minutes, if not, you know, 30 minutes later, Ford's like, yeah, we've got one coming. It's in the hopper. Here we are. So it's pretty much a measure for Kenny. On that front, do you feel like you'll be successful, he being Trudeau here, in actually picking a fight with Kenny Carter? I'll start with you first. Like, do you feel like this will work? Like, to me, this seemed like very nakedly like a billion dollars on the table to try to pick a fight with a proxy for conservatism that's the least popular in the country. Do you feel like it's going to work?

Carter 1:17:12

Well, the old adage, it takes two to tango. Jason Kenney is going to keep his head down during this election because there's not much for him to gain.

Carter 1:17:21

There's just not much for him to gain. And if he becomes the proxy for conservatism, we talked earlier about those protesters being the proxy for conservatism and how bad that would be for Aaron O'Toole. The same will hold for Jason Kenney, Scott Moe, Brian Ballester or Doug Ford being the proxy for conservatism. All of them right now aren't

Carter 1:17:42

aren't doing well. So this is an interesting

Carter 1:17:46

interesting moment in time where Trudeau is trying to pick a fight and maybe he can pick a fight without Jason Kenney coming to stand up because Jason Kenney's actions are what Trudeau

Carter 1:17:57

Trudeau needs to fight with.

Zain 1:17:59

Corey, does it actually take two to tango? Or can you just label this as Jason Kenney and try to shadowbox against him, if that is indeed your intention as Justin Trudeau?

Corey 1:18:10

I think that this is one where it would be very difficult to force the fight yourself, right?

Corey 1:18:15

I'm not entirely convinced. I'm sure that the candidates around here will use it, the liberal candidates. I'm sure if Justin Trudeau comes back to Alberta, this will be something that he mentions and this money is available. But

Corey 1:18:26

But I don't really know why Jason Kenney would jump in on this. It doesn't seem like it's worth it. If anything, Jason Kenney could say this is once again an attempt to get into a provincial jurisdiction. We'll happily take the money. We'll put it towards things that will help here in Alberta. And maybe that's the fight that he's looking for. But I think it would be pretty easy for Jason Kenney to attempt to reframe the fight as one of jurisdiction as well. Well,

Zain 1:18:53

Corey, on Friday morning, Aaron O'Toole said he intends to follow the old Harper-Parris agreement on climate change. The targets of a 30 percent reduction. Canada's current Paris agreements are at 40 to 45. And the agreement also prohibits countries from going backwards upon their creative upon their agreed upon targets. Sorry for that word salad there. What do you think as it relates to a political opportunity for Trudeau? So this stance by O'Toole, overrated or underrated

Zain 1:19:22

underrated in your mind? I

Corey 1:19:23

I thought it was a mistake by O'Toole for sure, because it seems to be jumping back into a challenge on climate where you could have effectively just said, we have a climate plan, it reaches targets, this is what we're going to do. Now you are, you're clearly, you have explicitly said that your approach on climate will be less sufficient. And this is an issue that's pretty important to Canadians right now. So I didn't understand it. Now, that's the politics of the policy reality is in some ways, you know, if you could get the 30% reduction, not not good enough in many ways, but better than perhaps we're tracking to even now, you know, that's a that would be a pretty good reduction. So I

Corey 1:20:00

I just don't know why he said it. Do

Zain 1:20:02

feel like there was a bait there to try to get Trudeau to fight on it so it can get into an affordability conversation? Unlike how Trudeau's policies on climate change, carbon tax, etc., like are harming affordability back into O'Toole's box? I'm just throwing this out there without much thought. It's

Carter 1:20:17

It's not a winning box for the conservatives at all, right?

Zain 1:20:20

Carter, you agree. It

Zain 1:20:22

was a mistake. It's

Carter 1:20:23

It's a total mistake. It's not a place where they need to be on the economy. They don't need to be on the cost structure for the economy. economy uh

Zain 1:20:29

overrated underrated carter on the on the sort of political mileage trudeau can get on this uh

Carter 1:20:34

probably is a good lie

Carter 1:20:35

probably underrated i think that there's a you know there the green party collapse is is thrown three to five percent of the pop of you know of uh votes up into the air the ndp aren't picking them up yet you may as well try and get them steven

Zain 1:20:49

steven carter as we end the weekend who do you want to be this weekend which leader which political party what jersey color do you want to be wearing on this uh sunday evening slash monday morning uh depending on on where you are in this country as we as we finish recording which leader do you want to be i

Carter 1:21:06

i think trudeau i think it's going to be a good week for the liberals cory

Zain 1:21:09

cory same question for you what jersey color would you want to be wearing tonight slash this morning monday morning sunday night uh as we wrap up the week i

Zain 1:21:19

i think i'm gonna say erin o'toole oh

Zain 1:21:23

lot to unpack on thursday I'm sure a lot will happen by Thursday, but we'll leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 939 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we'll see you next time.

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