Episode 947: Let me respond to that

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 947. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, they

Zain 0:10

they thought we were done. They thought we were dead. They thought we were going to wrap it up after we ended at the top of the charts. But guess what? Our

Zain 0:19

Our egos are too big, and we're back.

Carter 0:20

What kind of podcast host would just stop recording? That's

Carter 0:25

That's ridiculous. They should never do something like that. No,

Zain 0:27

No, no. To be totally clear... Never again. We should... Yeah, never again. We should be... I was waiting for my flight, and it never arrived. Flair Airlines, keep waiting. So guys, you know, we are back.

Zain 0:41

I finally made it home after three weeks. It was worth it. It only cost me 19 bucks. My time is worth nothing. But the fact that we don't have a real sponsor for this podcast, my time is worth nothing. And I spent it with the two of you. So we already knew that. But But I have made it home after a couple of weeks. So I'm glad we're able to celebrate

Zain 1:01

celebrate Thanksgiving Monday together. And I know that our podcast rivals are thankful that we disappeared for a couple of weeks, letting them flirt with the top of the charts. But they're just going to get crushed now. And it sucks to be them.

Carter 1:17

Yeah, West of Center went to number one, and they actually claimed the credit. You know, like, would you take the credit?

Carter 1:26

congratulations we weren't there cory

Zain 1:29

it's pretty gauche to take credit is it not yeah

Corey 1:32

yeah no that's the kind of thing you you show not tell right you'd never really want to mention you were the number one podcast i mean maybe on the election day or something yeah

Zain 1:40

yeah yeah you'd never want to do that i hope you had a good thanksgiving cory uh

Zain 1:44

uh no i didn't okay yeah me

Zain 1:45

me neither carter carter you uh had a good thanksgiving nope

Zain 1:49

um you had a good columbus day carter is that more Warrior Vibe? What was

Zain 1:58

was that? As the oldest, whitest guy here, it's Columbus Day,

Carter 2:03

What was that? That's like a nasty turn. Columbus Day.

Zain 2:09

There's a lot packed in there. Are

Zain 2:12

we running out of steam? Are we running out of steam? Let's move it on. Good episode. Yeah,

Corey 2:16

was the third mate on the Santa Maria, actually. Oh,

Zain 2:19

Oh, well, fantastic. Fantastic. Carter, you want to tell us a bit more about your time there before we move on?

Carter 2:26

It was a good time.

Zain 2:28

You know, to the many detractors of one Christopher Columbus, if I could have just given him a hot tip back in the day, it would have been to fly Flair Airlines. He probably wouldn't have made it anywhere, and things would have been substantially different. Isn't that correct, Carter? That

Carter 2:40

That would have been a much better outcome.

Zain 2:42

That would have been.

Zain 2:43

it on to our first segment. Our first segment, saving the best for last. Guys, we've heard all the other takes on so many issues. We've got a list of them that I now want to get the best takes on. And Stephen Carter, where do we come to for the best takes? We have all the rest takes, but the best takes come from... Corey. Go in the blanks. Corey

Zain 3:06

does the best take.

Zain 3:07

Corey does the best take. Okay, inflating expectations. I like that. Corey, here's what we're going to do. We're going to run through a list of items, and we're going to get you and Steven to give your best takes on topics that might be, let's just say, a week old in certain cases, two weeks old. Developments may have occurred on certain things. I might tee you guys up with a strategy question related to them. I might just ask you for your pure analysis on where they stand right now, how they impact a certain party, a certain leader. We'll freeform it. But what we want are the best takes. takes. And Corey, I've heard from one Stephen Carter that you provide the best take. So I'm going to start with you. Stephen, you will be going second. Corey, first topic on hand, Justin Trudeau on the fine, fine beaches of Tofino, British Columbia, on the day of, on the first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. Your take from what you saw on the beach, to being chased down, to the silence, to the prime minister's schedule saying he was in private meetings, all the way to what we experienced as the apology, something Trudeau's getting very good at. Maybe not good at, but certainly doing a lot of on the back end of that trip. Your take on Tofino and what it might mean for Justin Trudeau.

Corey 4:31

think Justin Trudeau's problem with Tofino, besides on its face, who in their right mind creates a national holiday for reflection on Canada's ills and then goes surfing to put them behind them, right, or goes to Tofino at least.

Corey 4:46

It really puts into really stark relief the fact that he saw the election as kind of just a, you know, something he just got through and then be a

Corey 4:56

a nuisance that's now in the rearview mirror. And a lot of the high-minded rhetoric that he often carries when he's talking about issues of Indigenous reconciliation was something he got dinged for during the election. The idea that we would have the election at all, because it seemed like an unnecessary thing to be occurring at this time in Canada when there were so many other things going on, he got dinged for that, too. And so then the election ends, and what does he do? He decides, well, now I'm going to go on vacation on a holiday dedicated to reconciliation. And I mean, a lot of it is just, it's kind of a a slap in the face in about eight different ways and so one of the things that i just i'm not quite able to put my finger on is what the hell is this guy's long-term plan if this is where his head is because i get people being tired after election i get the need to spend time with family after you've just gone all out for that but to um on the very first day of truth and reconciliation The first one that you

Corey 5:57

You just say, fuck

Corey 5:59

fuck it, I'm going to the coast. I mean, what is his long-term political plan here? And I don't mean this in the sense of where is his head. I mean, these are not the actions of somebody who's intending to be prime minister for the next six years, right? They're the actions of somebody who thinks he just survived the thing and doesn't give that many dams about what's going to be coming next. And I find that fascinating. And it doesn't really reconcile with other things that he's done, but I find it's not something you could ignore when you start thinking about Justin Trudeau's future.

Zain 6:30

Carter, can I ask you this? Maybe I'll start here. I want to get your take on this, but let's talk about the political scar from

Zain 6:39

big or small, in your mind. Start here for me and then jump on off of what you heard from Corey. I

Carter 6:44

I think it's too small.

Carter 6:46

I think it will not be something that lasts as long as it should because to me, I agree with what Corey said. But I'm going to add one more thing.

Carter 6:54

It was a stupid lie.

Carter 6:56

You know, when his schedule says that he's got private meetings in Ottawa and

Carter 7:00

he's found in Tofino, that's

Carter 7:02

that's just a stupid lie. What if we just did this a little differently? What if we said, you know what, Justin

Carter 7:08

Justin Trudeau is going to go on a vacation with his family to Tofino for these days and he's going to say, going to Tofino, I'm going to meet with this group or that group and I'm going to make telephone calls across the nation or whatever he says he's going to do. if he does that there's no outrage because ultimately while going to tofino may be signaling something bigger about his political future the reality is that the lie was so stupid that he shouldn't even have a political future like yes sometimes we have to lie sometimes we tell fake fakes fake words to to sell a bigger program or to do something we should never lie though i mean especially about something this stupid right this is the dumbest lie in the history of politics okay because it had absolutely nothing but downside and it was so easily found out i mean the guy i don't understand where his head is i don't understand what he's thinking and i don't know why he thought to himself you know what i need to lie about this because there's no way i can get through it when

Carter 8:10

when you know he made a much much bigger problem and it just strikes me that his continued inability to understand the politics uh continues to be the reason why he's not going going to be a memorable prime minister like his father was.

Zain 8:26

Corey, could any political staff, we've criticized, let's be honest, the PMO, the Trudeau PMO, quite a lot, you know, whether it be about we or the island story or their issues management approach in general as being much more focused on optics than anything else. Could a PMO staff be this bad, this blatant, make this mistake twice? Or is there something else going on here that you suspect?

Corey 8:48

Yeah, I think you guys are being too hard on on the pmo and and the maybe even just sort of the hangover of the the campaign team because we are just out of an election and there is this awkward transition back to governing and it's not necessarily clear

Corey 9:03

clear that you have the keys to the schedule again to the same degree and obviously that is a time maybe the day before and the day after were vacation days it was the day of that caused this weird awkward time and what do you do if the if the boss isn't around the boss isn't around. But I do think that Stephen put his finger on something, which is the idea that you would say private meetings in Ottawa. I mean, you're 4500 kilometers away, you're about as close to Ottawa as you would be if you were in Ireland, right? Like you are not in Ottawa. And to me, that was incredibly clumsy, like this is a big country. And the idea that you would be three time zones over and pretending or not even pretending, I don't know, do we call it pretending? Or we call it just an accident, or what do we call it? But I

Corey 9:44

I mean, it was destined to be caught out, is my point. Oh,

Zain 9:47

Oh, absolutely. And I agree with that. I'm surprised you think we're being harsh on the PMO here. Because they've kind of shown a pattern, Carter, of mishandling issues. Do you feel like this is systemic? Corey, you want to jump in first before I go to Carter on this? Yeah. You

Corey 10:01

You know, be hard on the Prime Minister if you want to. I don't think that you should throw this on his staff at all, because it is an awkward time post-election. So

Zain 10:09

So this may be what I'm trying His

Carter 10:11

His staff is still there.

Carter 10:13

They're still there. There's still a prime minister's office, the prime minister's office. It's not like, you know, the government was dissolved. The government was still there. These staff were still there. I mean, the parliament was dissolved, right?

Corey 10:28

right? I'm sure many of these people are on vacation right now or

Corey 10:31

or were. But the

Zain 10:32

the question I guess I'm trying to ask is perhaps, Corey, you and I might be trying to say the same thing, which is that is this the boss overriding the team? And because the team would probably flag something like this being like, hey,

Zain 10:46

you know, there's multiple things about this. This is almost exactly the same situation you got in trouble for last time, right, in some way, shape or form where you kind of, you know, went away. vacations and us is something written in our binders where we make sure we clear that shit carter do you feel like this is just the boss overriding the the staff and maybe let's loop that back to cory's initial point of where do you think this guy's head is at in your mind regardless of if it was the boss overriding the staff i

Carter 11:16

don't think it's the boss overriding the staff i think that the boss and the staff are on the same page and that's a large part of the problem if you're if you're in a political office and you don't have someone who can stay to you This is a dumb idea. Don't do it. Get a new staff because people need to be able to say to the boss, this is dumb. This is the wrong day to do this. And if you're not surrounded by people who can say that to you, you've got to get new people. And this idea that Corey's pushing forward, that there are no staff, that everybody's on vacation. At the very least, there should be a transition team. There's a group of people. I know it's the same government to the same government, same number of seats to the same number of seats, but they have a transition. They should have a transition plan, and that transition team should at least have some eyes on the prime minister's schedule, because that's what professional governments do. And what has been proven time and time again with this particular government is they aren't particularly professional. professional.

Zain 12:07

Corey, what's more interesting to you as a line of questioning? And we'll go here. Is it the fact that the PM perhaps didn't feel like this was an issue, you know, and what this says about him long term and going down that path? What this says about his leadership, the item you brought up? Or do you think it's more interesting and what's more appealing to you regarding the fact that he may have overridden his staff and said, screw this, this is what we do. This is how I do and the nature of political offices in that regard, the nature of leadership in that regard from a political perspective, which do you kind of find more compelling as an output of the Tofino story in your mind? Well,

Corey 12:44

Well, look, this is all speculative, right? We don't know what the conversations were. But I can tell you, it wasn't like, it's

Corey 12:51

it's not like he said, fuck that. I don't care about September 30th. I'm out, bitches. It's not like he said anything like that. It was, I'm sure, more along the lines of... Once again, we don't know

Zain 12:58

know if he did not say that, right?

Carter 12:59

right? I actually, when you said it, I heard it in his voice. It was exactly, amazing

Corey 13:07

So what I'm imagining it would be more along the lines of, hey, look, I owe the family. I got to get, like, this has been a long time. We obviously gave our summer to this campaign. The pre-campaign was a long period. There needs to be a few days. This is my commitment. This is what I need to do to sort of hold things together um you know domestically right i gotta see my kids and um and so i think

Corey 13:31

think it's as simple as that and then when you're a staff member and you are given those kinds of stakes you've

Corey 13:36

you've got no rope to pull steven is talking like he'd be this tough guy who would say that but you would go maybe two rounds you would say yeah

Corey 13:42

hey listen prime minister yeah like this is pretty important are you sure yes absolutely you know because there there is this pecking order uh in in

Corey 13:51

in kind of optics and in in workplaces and when you pull that card when your boss pulls that card what are you supposed to do carter

Zain 13:58

carter what are you supposed to do if if trudeau if you're the chief of staff and trudeau says you know what carter it's my fucking name it's i am the pm and pmo i am like the fucking person who runs the shit it's on me so you can go fuck yourself what what if you can do

Carter 14:13

do whatever you want as a prime minister you just can't lie about it let's

Carter 14:17

let's just put it we'll just put out a release we'll just put out a release to say you're going to tofino if you want to do that i'm in it's not a problem you can do whatever you want you're the prime minister of the country you can't lie about it that's the that's the part that that needs the pushback not going to tofino tofino is fine tofino is fine because he won't be found on a beach by a cameraman where

Carter 14:39

where he's supposed to be in ottawa if he didn't lie right

Carter 14:43

right if he tells the truth this this is a at worst a minor blip when he lies and it becomes a bigger problem as they do every single time yes

Corey 14:54

yes so look i suspect that somebody very cleverly decided they were just going to say oh i forgot he was not in ottawa right i feel there was an intentionality there it's hard to imagine otherwise but it's also definitely true on those schedules and those itineraries, the default is private meetings in Ottawa, right? So while I find it impossible to believe somebody would just put

Corey 15:19

that out inaccurately by mistake, that's my personal feelings about it. As much as I said it's impossible, it's not impossible, I guess, is what I would say.

Zain 15:29

asking the same question I asked Carter, how big of a scar do you think this leaves on Trudeau? Not very much of one, actually. Really? Yeah,

Corey 15:37

Yeah, no, I think it's tough to, well,

Corey 15:41

well, look, I mean, it's embarrassing. It's when we talk about a gaffe, it's something more than that. It's telling about who the individual is. And honestly, man, what were you thinking? But I don't think this is something that people are going to be talking about even in one month. It's something that's going to get thrown in his face every six months, perhaps, but it's not something that's going to change the course of politics in in this country here

Zain 16:03

here here's can i propose what i think it is i i would say if i was asking myself that question which i'm not i would have said it's a big scar it's kind of packages all the greatest hits of trudeau and into one elitism performative uh you know uh out of touch everything for for symbolism lying dishonest uh it has everything rolled into one you know weak on indigenous which he's kind of said is like one of his key priorities i feel like this is like the rolled oats of political liabilities. It's got everything that you need in one contained package.

Zain 16:38

Why am I wrong, Carter?

Zain 16:40

Why am I wrong that this could be the defining moment for a prime minister, maybe even in his final chapter here as he tries to, quote unquote, land the legacy plane, so to speak?

Carter 16:52

I think it doesn't take off because there's other things that have taken off, right? We're still going through the fourth wave. He doesn't have a government yet. He hasn't named his next cabinet. You know, there's just doesn't feel like people care that much at this particular moment. And frankly, and this may be insensitive, but I think that maybe people, you know, maybe people just barely knew this was a vacay, you know, a new day too, right? Like, it's not like it's a day that has been established. This is the first one. Some people had the day off. Some people didn't have the day off. The number of people actively thinking about reconciliation and what needs to happen moving forward with First Nations population, I don't think it was a high percentage, sadly. So I'm not sure that this is going to play because it just doesn't feel like it was something that was playing.

Zain 17:47

Corey, I want to maybe talk to you about, as we round this topic off, Trudeau's apology.

Zain 17:53

Not even the substance of it, but the fact is this guy is just apologizing a lot. And apology and Trudeau seem to be going hand in hand. But to Carter's point, when he made earlier, and I don't know if I agree with it, that, you know, for anyone else, Carter, I'm paraphrasing your point, this would have been disqualifying. But Trudeau seems to be Teflon on stuff like this on many things, mainly because he's so quick to apologize when he's wrong. I'm kind of curious, from a political strategy perspective, where you kind of pin

Zain 18:25

pin apologizing in Trudeau. Is it still like one of his secret political weapons, if I hate to call it that? But in some way, his apology kind of either makes the story disappear or minimizes the hurt, and Canadians, at least from the overarching perspective, seem to buy it every single time, including now. Yeah,

Corey 18:44

Yeah, it's not a secret weapon. weapon, it's something that decent human beings should do. When they fuck up, they say, I'm sorry, and then it becomes part of their past, not part of their future. They're not covering it up. They're not fighting about it. And we've seen a lot of politicians successfully deploy apologies as part of their persona.

Corey 18:59

persona. I mean, Ralph Klein here in Alberta was famous for that. He would throw money at homeless people in a homeless shelter and then say, hey, I'm sorry, the next day.

Zain 19:09

me qualify secret weapon. I

Zain 19:11

I talk about it in a way that rather than trying to learn from your mistakes and do the right thing. He always knows he's got the apology card in his back pocket that he can sway people and persuade people with. That's the perspective I'm coming at it from as a secret weapon that many others would not be able to get away with.

Corey 19:29

I think more people could, quote unquote, get away with it than they think. And I'll go back to my point. I think more politicians should apologize when they're wrong. Now, your question is that is that a sincere apology uh is fundamentally justin trudeau just at a kind of place in his life where he's realized hey i can do this uh you know when i screw up i'll just say sorry and i'll move on and isn't it the most of canadian of things just to say sorry right i

Corey 19:55

don't know um that's

Corey 19:56

that's an interesting question if if he thinks that this is if this is something he's now quite intentionally using and

Corey 20:03

and maybe doesn't even feel the apology i'm not sure about about that, but it's something I'll stew on.

Zain 20:08

Yeah, and I don't know if you know if it's a fair criticism, Carter, right? But it seems like he's gotten really good at him. He knows the mileage he can, political mileage he can ascertain with a really good apology. To me, it kind of seems like he, at least, even as a human behavior, you know, if you know that you got that card, you may not need to elevate the game. Am I being too harsh?

Carter 20:33

hate his apologies i i disagree with the idea his apologies are good um

Carter 20:39

they sound over rehearsed they sound like he's got his apology voice i'm just gonna pull up my apology voice it is a distinct voice that we recognize he's got the cadence down that we all recognize it and this time it's like listening to your 12 year old apologize to you for something that they've done that they know that you know that they're not sorry no i'm sorry no sincerely mean it like you're sincere um no they're not going to like it's just but even if they're shit

Zain 21:05

shit crap even even if they're shitty carter like they seem to have worked was

Carter 21:10

was it the apology that worked or was it just the the sin wasn't as big as maybe maybe it could have been maybe this is

Zain 21:16

is where you and i fundamentally disagree in a certain way

Carter 21:18

way i just don't think it was a very big sin and i don't think that it leaves a very big scar and maybe and i'm not suggesting that it shouldn't have have been a big sin but

Zain 21:29

cory any any final comments around us out there before i move on to our next one uh

Corey 21:33

uh it's there's going to be a percent of the population that is rightly pretty mad about this this was supposed to be something that justin trudeau took seriously enough that he created a day and then he spent the day as a vacation but the reality is for a lot of people A holiday is

Corey 21:52

is a holiday, you know, it's a day off to go do things with your family. People on Labor Day don't sit and contemplate the function of labor in their lives. And, you know, the 40 hour work week and the eight hour work day and all of the things that organized labor has brought them. People on Victoria Day don't sort of think about the queen, you know, unless you're our premier, and then you're toasting to the queen on kind of a patio. But it's just, you know, it's how people treat days off, too. It's how most people treat days off. Now, is it right? Is that what we want? The exception, of course, is Remembrance Day. People don't head to the beach on Remembrance Day, but Remembrance Day is November 11th, too.

Zain 22:33

Let's move it on to our next one. And I want to talk about O'Toole leadership. We've heard so much about this column inches debating O'Toole's leadership. Carter, I want to take the strategy perspective. We've had some soak time since some of those columns, the pros and the cons of keeping O'Toole, the, you know, they can't keep recycling leaders regardless of what, where the focal point on the political spectrum is for conservatives. Let's look at this from the lens of Aaron O'Toole. How do you feel he's doing, Carter? How do you feel he's doing, at least from what we see publicly, in terms of trying to save his job? And then we'll get into the strategy of it a bit.

Carter 23:12

think he's doing OK. I mean, I think that, you know, the fact that they haven't had an open call for

Carter 23:17

for his head, you know, and instead they've put together the little processes and they're, you

Carter 23:23

you know, they're they're at least pretending to go through the steps of determining what went wrong and what they can do better. um you

Carter 23:30

you know i think that that's all good for him because you know what how long did sheer last after his his last one i mean is it's just it feels like this is going better for o'toole than it than it was going for uh for sheer um but

Carter 23:48

but it doesn't mean he's out of the woods by any by any stretch i mean this party tends to put their people in the ground really quickly they They get one and done because the problem is there's so many factions within the party that each faction knows that if they were in charge, they would do a better job.

Zain 24:05

Corey, from your perspective, how's it going if you're Aaron O'Toole providing an assessment to him and his team in regards to keeping his job?

Corey 24:14

I think it's going okay. There's a fair bit of media discourse about it would be nuts for them to drop him as leader and then have another leader. And at the very least, I think that's purchased him some time. And you've got to generally say that on that narrative front, it's not too, too bad for him. And he's had a number of people stand up and say they support him, yada, yada, yada. Now, on

Corey 24:36

on the other side, his

Corey 24:37

his caucus did give themselves the ability to turn from his leader. Yeah.

Corey 24:41

And so that that puts him on a bit of a leash. And maybe it makes him more likely to have actually to be subject to the the right wing whims of his caucus. And that's going to be something to watch going forward, because one of the things that Aaron O'Toole, the campaigner, showed was that he was decidedly more centrist than Aaron O'Toole. Well,

Corey 25:01

a governor wouldn't be right because he was in opposition, but the opposition leader, Aaron O'Toole, where

Corey 25:06

he was more likely to at

Corey 25:09

at least pay lip service to some of these right-wing ideals. So the central tension in Aaron O'Toole's leadership has not disappeared. I think that in many ways he has benefited greatly from the meta-conversation about whether it's handy and useful to replace leaders so regularly and whether you'd be better off just to provide them a

Corey 25:31

a little bit of rope, a little bit of runway, let them understand the job, work on it, and move forward from there. So a little too soon to give him a long-term prognosis, but it doesn't look like it's going to be fatal within weeks or anything like that. Carter,

Zain 25:45

Carter, you know, with the benefit of time, the couple of weeks that we've been off from this podcast, a lot of it's written about the point that Corey made regarding, you know, turfing leaders, not giving them a chance to grow, the one and done mentality, we need to get rid of it. You know, look at Jagmeet Singh, he could probably go on forever, we'll get to him in a second, if he wanted to. From your perspective, Carter, would the Conservatives be nuts to get rid of O'Toole? Maybe not because of O'Toole, but because if they do get rid of him, they

Zain 26:11

they perhaps, by default, move to the right with their next leader and perhaps give up the territory that O'Toole is trying to grow in, in the PC lane, if I can call it that, which is where the largest sort of basket of votes and where Canadians more volumously might be sitting. What do you think?

Carter 26:33

I think that they'd

Carter 26:34

they'd be nuts to get rid of him because he didn't have the time that he needed to establish his narrative. And this idea that he was going to form

Carter 26:45

form the next government, I know that the polls were certainly up and down through the course of the campaign.

Carter 26:50

But before the election was called, let us not forget that this was Justin Trudeau's for the taking. So, Aaron O'Toole certainly did overperform, you know,

Carter 27:03

know, kind of the expectations depending on when you set the expectations. If you set the expectations 10 days before the election, he underperformed. If you set the expectation 10 days before the election was called, he overperformed. So, I think that they'd be nuts to throw him overboard. So, of course, that means that they will.

Zain 27:22

Corey, what do you think this perspective of O'Toole, if he leaves, does the strategy of running to the center or a more PC conservative also leave the conservatives in the in the near future? I

Corey 27:37

that has to be the risk, right? Yeah,

Corey 27:38

there'll be so many people who say

Corey 27:41

didn't work. If Aaron O'Toole leaves vacates that leadership, you know, if that leadership gets it's vacated, you're going to have a more right wing leader, because Aaron

Corey 27:49

Aaron O'Toole only won it pretending to be more right wing. And

Corey 27:53

And you are not going to get away with that again, they're going to pick somebody who is just undeniably far to the right, they're going to pick somebody with those crazy bona fides that, that really speak to the base of the Conservative Party, you got to keep in mind, this is a party that voted against

Corey 28:08

against putting climate change is real in their platform, Or at least pass it as a policy, I suppose I should say. And so the rank and file of the membership is more right wing, arguably than the caucus even. And that's an interesting situation to be in here. So if you are a centrist, or if you even just think the center is where the votes are, and that's where we want the leader to be, you have to know if you drop Aaron O'Toole, you're going to be moving further away from that ideal. And so I think that's also afforded Aaron O'Toole a certain protection, because nobody thinks they're going to replace Aaron O'Toole with a more centrist leader. You know, the concept execution problem is absolutely academic, because the membership believes that the party wasn't right-wing enough, at least the current composition of the membership. Carter,

Zain 28:55

Carter, we've heard the rest. Now it's time for the best. It's like, that's the name of the segment, right? That's what I say. Yeah. Yeah.

Zain 29:00

Carter, give me your best line of attack to get rid of Aaron O'Toole if you're trying to persuade the membership and the caucus, the broader conservative universe right now. What's the best line of attack to get rid of this guy? We've heard many of them over the course of the last couple of weeks. In your mind, crystallize it, create a new one, highlight one, underline it. Which one is it for you?

Carter 29:20

Aaron O'Toole was trying to, you know, sell principles to the membership when he ran for leader. And then he gave away those his principles when he when he ran uh to be the prime minister as a result we lost if we stick to our principles we win so we need a leader who will actually stick to the principles not just campaigning as a principled leader so someone with actual principles instead of aaron o'toole style of principles is what we need that's why we need to get rid of them cory

Zain 29:47

cory in your mind what's the what's the most potent best line of attack if you want to turf o'toole right now i

Corey 29:54

think steven's done a pretty good job because the party still holds an awful lot of levers here one of the things that i think i'm almost more interested in the question on the other side like if you're trying to survive it yeah

Zain 30:07

jump into it because that's what's the next round i was going to start with you anyway well

Corey 30:09

well he's made some interesting plays here the uh most obvious of them is that when so after the reform act was passed in 2014 caucuses have the ability at the start of a parliament to give themselves the ability to remove the leader now

Corey 30:23

now last time in 2019 andrew

Corey 30:25

andrew sheer's caucus did not avail themselves of this but he was andrew sheer was gone in two months right so it didn't really work that way and so there's a couple of things that spill out of that one is obviously if you're erin o'toole you can't lose the vote if you're on the side of yes you should take uh you should take this power caucus and that's apparently what he said right you should vote to give yourself this power but the other is if things are going to get rocky and things are going to get wild and you're going to have mps speaking out and just sort of muttering about their dissatisfaction with his leadership he has actually given himself a mechanism to say yeah put up or shut up find the 20 of the caucus who's willing to stand with you let's have this fucking caucus vote instead of having to deal with these daggers in this back room stuff and

Corey 31:09

you mean like clarity

Zain 31:09

clarity get that clarity and like actually wage it yeah

Corey 31:13

yeah well sure if somebody is going to be running a rear attack against him, as soon as there's sort of word of that, you can say, listen, man, we have a mechanism to deal with this. Under Andrew Scheer's government, there was no such mechanism, right? It became, how do you rile up the membership? So he's given himself a bit of an escape valve and basically said, you need 20% of Cresta Review, right? And then there's a secret ballot, and then you got to win the secret ballot. So fucking

Corey 31:37

fucking put up or shut up becomes an option here that wasn't for Andrew Scheer. So Aaron O'Toole is taking this approach, It seems of providing the party, the, you know, the controls over him, the release valves. He's willing to let these conversations spill out through the mechanisms that are available. And

Corey 31:54

And I'm certain if a leadership review was held, he would say, I just need 50% plus one, right? He's not going to hold to that 66% standard in Canada here. here so what andrew sheer is doing is he's just essentially trying to say let's

Corey 32:06

let's have this conversation out in the open because it benefits him to have the conversation out in the open rather than having to deal with the cloak and dagger you mean you

Zain 32:13

you mean that aaron aaron o'toole you said andrew sheer

Corey 32:15

sheer yeah well whatever they're all the same carter

Zain 32:19

carter let's talk about lines of attack for o'toole what you want to build on uh anything you heard from cory there

Carter 32:25

um i i don't really want to build on it because i think that you know we we We,

Carter 32:30

you know, I agree totally with the idea that giving himself the safety valve of the, you know, the caucus vote, you know,

Carter 32:39

know, it is really quite genius to give them that lever because I don't think that they'll pull it. I think that they'll be as weak as the Jason Kenney caucus and, you know, just sit back and hope that at some point we get a leadership review that will actually do the work that the actual MPs are afraid to do themselves.

Zain 33:02

Carter, I want to move on to our next one. I'm going to start with you on this. Trudeau and his cabinet making. It seems to be a process that's ongoing. going. Many were thinking a cabinet coming as soon as tomorrow, the day after Thanksgiving, from everything we see. That is not happening. Many sort of strands on the cabinet-making side, of course, gender parity being one of them, perhaps new junior ministries, geographic representation. Alberta's got two liberal members that we can add into the mix. Take this where you want. Let's start from your perspective, but couch it in lessons for cabinet-making for Trudeau that are especially important in his parliament going forward? What are you looking at? What are you looking for heading into Trudeau cabinet-making for this particular parliament?

Carter 33:53

Gender and ethnicity balance. I mean, you can't walk that back. I think he lost three female cabinet ministers in the seat.

Zain 34:03

Plus, I think, losing McKenna as well, who did not run again. Oh,

Carter 34:06

Oh, that's right. So now he has a situation where he can't say, well, I did that once, but now it's 2021 and you don't need to do that anymore. That's not going to fly, so he's got to keep that balance. Geographic balance, he can do a little bit better because Alberta's in the tent this time instead of being outside of it. It gives a little bit more flexibility, and that kind of awkward Christia Freeland has got responsibility for most of the West kind of feel is gone. So those types of moves

Carter 34:40

moves have to happen. But the rest,

Carter 34:44

you know, gosh, the weakening of the cabinet that has occurred in my lifetime, you know, there was a time when a cabinet minister in their own portfolio actually had more credibility and more power and more voice in that portfolio than the actual prime minister. And that came with cabinet ministers who would simply resign if the prime minister stepped on their turf. And that's gone. That's gone now. And instead, all of it's been given back to the prime minister's office because these people are too afraid. They're too fearful to give up their cabinet seats because it's the best gig they've ever had and the best gig that they ever will have. have um and

Carter 35:23

and it's frustrating because as a result we got really weak cabinet ministers so it doesn't even matter you don't even need all-stars you don't need anybody else besides christia freeland because it's all going to be run out of the prime minister's office and the deputy prime minister's office and everybody else is just there for show um and that's i think the the probably the the true failing of our system in Canada at this particular moment.

Zain 35:53

Corey, lessons in cabinet making, there's many of them. Many of them are kind of table stakes now. We're on balance, geography. Carter mentioned a few. What are you looking for, particularly in Trudeau cabinet making, as he reveals his cabinet coming forth to us, I assume, in the next couple of weeks?

Corey 36:10

Yeah, well, it's interesting. And you talk about balance, and we've thrown a few different ones on the table here, ethnic diversity, male, female, geographic,

Corey 36:20

geographic, you can go a lot further than that. And certainly, if you don't have, for example, somebody who is, you know, from a sexual minority, if you don't have somebody who is, for example, maybe disabled, and those groups exist within your caucus, then you're going to hear about it as well. So it's a tricky balancing act, always difficult cabinet making, and often you have to just make a decision at some point along certain lines, like, okay, well, this is the thing that I am going for. In 2015, for Justin Trudeau, it was gender parity, right?

Corey 36:51

But although you'll recall, it then turned out that some of the female ministers were in what were junior ministries, and there was a minor snafu about that, right? Right.

Corey 37:03

one of the things that Justin Trudeau has to contend with at this point is that the grand pronouncements of the past are

Corey 37:09

are something he has to live up to now. So he is because it's 2015. That's why I have gender parity. Right. Well, it's 2021 now, my man. Where's gender parity? And so that's going to be an expectation. But as you've noted, there are a couple of holes to fill in the cabinet in that context. Right. There's then female ministers who are just not there anymore, not available for cabinet-making purposes. And then when you start looking at some of the things like regional balance, like let's talk about Calgary, let's talk about Edmonton. These are big cities in Canada. They're some of Canada's biggest cities. They now have liberal MPs, both male. You

Corey 37:45

You add them to the cabinet, all of a sudden you've got to offset that somewhere else if you're still looking for gender parity,

Corey 37:52

So ultimately, something's got to give, I guess, is my point. It will be expansion of ministry. Well, so that's the other expand. That's the thing. Right. So you have a couple of choices here. Either you're not going to have one with gender parity, you're not going to have one with regional representation, or you're going to have an enormous cabinet. And what normally happens with governments as they go on is the cabinet gets bigger to deal with these considerations. So I suspect we're going to see a larger cabinet than in years past because

Corey 38:19

because it's 2021. 21.

Zain 38:22

do you feel like if you're selling cabinet as a messaging construct, 15 was about really, as Corey mentioned, gender parity, 19 kind of had a weird one, because the whole conversation was about Western alienation, how are we going to do Western representation, etc. So you add Carr to that position, special envoy, you try to bridge it. But really, like, you know, let's keep it solid minority government, we need people that know their shit, know how it works. what's your messaging construct heading into this cabinet are you once again doing a gender parody plus are you doing expanded problems in the era of big government so more ministries like we're going to be more active in more portfolios because it's it's a sales job in some way so if you're announcing that sales job uh at the end of this month as justin trudeau standing behind your ministers as you as you're rolled down how

Zain 39:12

how are you selling it what's the the casing that that you're putting a cabinet 2021 in your perspective?

Carter 39:21

Man, I'd really like to make it. What I'd like to do, what I would like to do is not what's going to happen. So I don't want this to be some sort of prediction. Yeah,

Zain 39:30

it on me. What would you advise? Let me ask the question now. What would you try to sell the prime minister on before he sells it to us? A return

Carter 39:36

return to competent cabinet ministers. A return to cabinet ministers being responsible for their portfolio. You can give them those marching orders, mandate letters, that's what they're called, hey Corey? The

Carter 39:48

The mandate letters are handed out to the cabinet ministers and each one of those cabinet ministers is then given the responsibility to deliver and come back to cabinet and have cabinet actually make the decisions about whether or not something should proceed or not proceed. The cabinet committees should be functioning again, not just rubber stamping the decisions that are made in the prime minister's office. I'd love to see that again. But I just don't think that

Carter 40:13

that Trudeau is the leader to do it, which is ironic because Trudeau might be the best leader to bring this back. Because if you put competence into each of the cabinet positions, then this particular prime

Carter 40:27

prime minister might be able to shine as the leader of all of these shining lights.

Zain 40:33

Carter, Corey, before I come to you, Carter, on the competence-based cabinet, I'm going to call it that, how would you reconcile gender, regionality, some of those other key metrics? Would you still care about them or say kind of fuck it and have a little bit more flexibility about those when you're announcing this competency-based get-the-job-done cabinet?

Carter 40:53

I'd say fuck it. I mean if you're going to make competency the number one driver, then you make competency the number one driver. And if it means there's fewer white guys in the cabinet, so

Carter 41:03

so be it. There's fewer white guys in the cabinet.

Zain 41:08

I knew you were going to take that answer there, Corey.

Zain 41:11

That's good. That's good. Oh, I'm not going to make the joke I was about to. Corey, Corey, Corey, Corey. Same question to you. Your casing, your packaging, your sales job. This is a question that's come out of one of your responses, right? Like, you know, 2015 was gender. What is 2021? If you're trying to pitch a packaging to the PM, what would you suggest he think about?

Corey 41:34

You know, it's interesting because there is a difference between what makes a good minister and what makes a good cabinet, right?

Corey 41:40

right? And good cabinets are diverse because they will bring in viewpoints from different regions, from different backgrounds, and they will wrestle with problems from a number of different angles. By the way, for that to be effective and useful, you need cabinet to be a real decision-making body. It can't be a rubber stamp that's just after the prime minister has signed off. Then it goes to cabinet for a non-vote vote that just says, okay, this is what we're going to do. Good cabinet should be diverse. It's the same as any kind of executive team anywhere, right? You know, you want to bring a diversity forward.

Corey 42:13

Good ministers, I mean, that's so individualistic and it depends on the portfolio and it depends on all sorts of other considerations here. And this is where I am sort of jealous of the Americans with their system, where

Corey 42:22

where they can pick anybody who's willing to do the job to become Secretary of Energy, to become Secretary of State, whatever it is. Here we are constrained by who is the members of parliament that are available to us here. And so one of the things that Stephen talked about there where used to be ministers were more powerful and now less so, I think in some ways that's also a consequence of the way our system has evolved over time, right? And when you've got smaller caucuses during the downswings, when you're all of a sudden the liberals with 30 seats and you rocket back up to a majority government, you don't have as many experienced people to pick from. The

Corey 43:02

The governments just aren't as stable. They seesaw more. You see the conservatives basically get eradicated, then come back as a new party, same sort of deal. So because politics is a little less stable, we have fewer people who you can point to and say, that's the professional, that's the expert. And so there's more training wheels on ministers. Sure.

Corey 43:18

And when there's more training wheels on some ministers, there's more training wheels on all ministers, because you don't create cabinet processes that say, this minister is allowed to do whatever they want, and this minister has to come check with me. That's how you create a lot of ill will in your cabinet. So I

Corey 43:33

I guess the point I'm making is it is complicated. I can understand why ministers have had their power diluted over time, certainly at the federal level. But one of the things that needs to occur here is you're just going to have to trust some of these people. And some of them are going to fuck up and you're just going to have to replace them with more competent ministers down the road. governments are very risk averse but ironically i think that risk aversion has made them worse everything going through the prime minister's office everything going through a premier's office is no way to run a government all organizations are rate limited by decision makers and if we make them only have one decision maker well they're doomed especially if they're as big and complex as government carter

Zain 44:15

carter uh final question for you on cabinet uh for both of you Let's look at a regional focus. Chahal, Boissoneau, both make cabinet in your mind?

Carter 44:27

Well, I think one of them has to make cabinet for sure. I think that George Chahal's little brochure picking out of the mailboxes the night before the election is

Carter 44:39

is going to haunt him. Just for aspiring campaign strategists, I think this is an important opportunity. Please do not have your campaign at all take

Carter 44:50

other people's brochures out of the mailboxes. And really, please try not to have your candidate go from mailbox to mailbox pulling out other people's brochures. Bad look. Every third house is a Ring camera now, so just don't do it. It used to be that we just had to not walk across lawns. Now we have to make sure we're not stealing other people's campaign brochures. Any

Zain 45:12

Any innovative ways to skirt the ring camera? Stephen Carter.

Carter 45:18

We're working on some technology now, but it failed in a sign acquisition last night, so I can't talk too much about it.

Zain 45:25

I'm really sorry to do that. Corey, Blasino, Chahal, both make cabinet,

Corey 45:30

No, I don't. I think that based on what we were – well, who knows? Maybe, I guess, is the point. It really depends on how much the prime minister wants George Chahal in the cabinet. But if you are sitting there and you're saying, oh, boy, it's really tough to balance, particularly on even getting close to gender parity here, if you have an excuse not to put George Chahal in cabinet saying, well, okay, he's under RCMP investigation, at least at this moment, you put Randy Boissoneau in from Edmonton Centre, Calgary just has to live with it. Calgary had to live with it last time between 15 and 19 for a while, right? Yeah.

Corey 46:05

And you just go on with your life. Now, if you are desperate to have George Chahal in cabinet, maybe you really like George Chahal, maybe you think it's a great opportunity. I like George Chahal, I think he'd be a great opportunity for the liberals.

Corey 46:17

Well, then your math gets a bit trickier. But it

Corey 46:21

it really depends on if you're looking for an excuse to put him in or excuse not to put him in. Because all other things being equal, if this hadn't happened with George Chahal, you just you don't put him in, right? But, or sorry, if this hadn't happened, you do put him in, because then Calgary has representation. But here we are.

Zain 46:40

I want to move on from this, but I have to talk about this, this one element. Maybe I'll put it in this cabinet category. Carter, it's Krista Freeland, right? So the minister already named, right? Trudeau at a press conference, Bella, you know, points to her and be like, yeah, Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister, non-negotiable, right behind me. She's going to do this shit. We talk about leading from Corey's question, what is Trudeau's mid-game slash long game in terms of leadership? Many people speculate her. And then today, the story comes out regarding the KGB, yes, that KGB, you know, looking at Krista Freeland when she was an activist and kind of a fixer on the ground there in the Ukraine as someone that, and I'm paraphrasing here, really annoyed them, but they were also very impressed with. That story had to have been planted, put out there from Team Freeland around leadership sort of potential brand perspective. Does it not, Carter? Do you see that race already starting? I'm putting this in the cabinet category, but it is kind of about leadership overall. Do you see this as the first or one of the first proof points of the secondary race already starting and perhaps the focal point of maybe, I shouldn't even say tension, but liberalism under Freeland kind of also being emergent as a parallel stream as this cabinet is made and some of the big milestones are reached in the upcoming months? Well,

Carter 48:10

Well, I'm not sure that it was planted, I'm sure, but I am certain that it was encouraged.

Carter 48:15

You know, this may not have been something that came out of Freeland's office, but no one was sitting on it.

Carter 48:21

No one was saying, you know what, let's hold off on that. The prime minister's had

Carter 48:25

had a hard week. We should probably let him regain

Carter 48:27

regain his footing. No, they were thrilled to take the opportunity to appear more competent and more ready to govern than the prime minister. minister without ever putting any any real pressure on him right like this article you can it's it's it's kind of like a clean article you

Carter 48:45

you can say to the prime minister i had no idea i

Carter 48:48

i had no idea and and sound like you actually didn't have much of an idea so it feels like it was pretty much a perfect free pass i think if you were scripting a leadership you would hope that that would come closer to the announcement

Carter 49:01

announcement of a leadership you know or you

Carter 49:04

you know just before Before the prime minister steps down or just after, um,

Carter 49:08

that would be better timing, but, uh,

Carter 49:10

uh, I think this was a freebie. So take

Zain 49:16

Coy, any reaction to the Freeland piece, uh, Freeland's emerging leadership in the, in the, in cabinet, in this parliament? Um, just your general thoughts, uh, if you have any, or even to responding to, to Carter and what he said here. I

Corey 49:30

Freeland is – we forget how impressive her career was prior to her becoming a member of parliament. She's a badass. Like,

Zain 49:37

Like, that was a great

Corey 49:38

great – Absolute fucking badass. But she's got a degree in Russian history from Harvard, a master's in Slavonic studies or something like that from Oxford. I would be floored if the KGB did not have a file on her, right? She was the Moscow bureau chief. This was after the fall of the Soviet Union, but for the Financial Times and managing director at Thomson Reuters. She's got one hell of a pedigree here, and a lot of it has been in Eastern Europe. So, yeah.

Corey 50:04

Yeah, I mean, like I said, I'd be floored if there wasn't a file on her.

Zain 50:10

Do you sense anything regarding leadership and a parallel stream emerging about her sooner rather than later? I

Corey 50:15

I think that it's probably very much in her interest that people are reminded that she's not just the number two to Justin Trudeau, but she comes with a really strong background. And I'm certain you're going to see more of this as it's going forward, because it's not just going to be from her, but there's going to be jockeying by a lot of people. The first jockeying is the subtle, just look at me, I'm important, I'm impressive stuff, right? The second jockeying is the more opening talking about, well, in a post-Justin Trudeau world, what would that look like? And from there, you start to see people

Corey 50:50

people start taking over riding associations and start making those phone calls and building those shadow leadership teams. And the liberals have a proud, proud history of this. And you just wait. It's coming to a theater near you. Thank you, Carter.

Zain 51:02

Carter. Final sort of conversation I want to have is about Jason Kenney here in Alberta. Heading into Thanksgiving, let's do you know, a lot of ink has been spilled on on Jason Kenney over the last couple of months regarding obviously handling of COVID, the impacts on the federal election, his popularity, caucus revolts, things seem to have tampered a bit, but not really. Give me your take on what you're seeing heading into this Thanksgiving weekend, where you ultimately told Albertans we've made progress. If we fuck up, you fucked up. Once again, introducing personal responsibility in a different packaging heading into the long weekend. Do you feel like Kenny's out of the woods? Is this getting worse? We now have more UCP constituency associations signing on for an earlier leadership review sometime in November to vote on that. Matt, just give me your take on what's going on with the politics of Kenny here in Alberta.

Carter 51:59

Well, I think that, you know, we turned the corner on our fourth wave. You know, things were starting to return towards something more normal. Not

Carter 52:07

Not quite normal. I shouldn't say that. They were starting to go down. Numbers were going down on kind of a regular basis.

Carter 52:16

But we still got hit with new restrictions. And if you paid me $1,000 right now, cash on the barrel, i could not tell you what those restrictions are or how they impact my life i have no capacity any longer to understand what the hell they're talking about when they're talking about their restrictions i believe that no two families should be together inside with a group more than 10 people i might be right might not be right might be 20 people outside i don't know honest to

Carter 52:46

to god this is my understanding honest

Carter 52:48

honest to god i could not tell you what these rules are because we've lost the pot and and my fear is thanksgiving no one cared about what the rules are you know who especially didn't care what the rules are people who weren't vaccinated so i fear that we're going to see another bump going up after this in about a week or 10 days or however long it takes for the delta uh variant to to spread um and this continues to be the defining time of kenny and so we we see kenny saying you know let me own this let me wear this and he is he's wearing this as he you know he's he's wearing this like

Zain 53:26

like a martyr yeah but

Carter 53:27

but so is the entire caucus and i'm extremely frustrated it

Zain 53:31

it court maybe i'll cory i'll go to you on this is it a martyr that also knows he's a dead man walking at this point do you feel like that narrative has kind set in that it is dead man walking no

Carter 53:43

no as long as you're still alive you're alive right until you're you know he could if if he's got until march he can resurrect himself i'm sure he's thinking that way i'm sure he's thinking that that man you know say what you will i mean i have been incredibly negative about jason kenney but the man does not know quit this is his life and this is what he will do and i'm quite certain that if he's got until march he is currently working on a plan to resurrect himself by March.

Zain 54:11

Corey, I don't even need to ask you a question. Do you agree with Carter is my question?

Corey 54:15

Well, there's a lot between here and March, right? You've got arguably the end of the fourth wave, children being vaccinated, a budget, which will probably show economic performance has improved. And that's just to start. There's a number of other things. One of them is coming next week, which is a vote here in Alberta, the dumbest fucking vote. But it's a vote on whether we want Not equalization removed

Corey 54:38

removed from the Constitution. And I just feel people are going to vote for it because it's one of those sovereignty association questions like the Quebec referendum in 95. And people aren't even going to know what they're voting for, let alone that it wouldn't even work.

Corey 54:54

work. But that would strengthen his hand. It allows him to turn back to fighting with Ottawa. Let's not forget, there is now a situation where Justin

Corey 55:02

Justin Trudeau may bring in more things that are with the liberal vision that will allow more fights with the feds where he wants them. So yeah, I mean, there's, there's many things that could occur. Doesn't mean that like nothing is destiny at this point. He's not destined to fail. I think that's probably where

Corey 55:21

where the where the money is falling in betting markets, right? right? People thinking Justin Trudeau is not going to, or Justin Trudeau, Jason Kenney. I'm just shifting leaders all over the place today. This

Carter 55:31

This is what happens when you take a couple weeks off. I

Corey 55:33

I know, seriously, man. And then there's a universe where he survives improbably because he manages to get everybody out to the vote. And he's good at those kinds of things, right?

Corey 55:45

One of the things that I think is interesting about the restrictions that Stephen

Corey 55:51

Stephen was complaining about is this broke a pattern.

Corey 55:55

This is the first time I can remember where Alberta brought in restrictions before the holiday, right?

Corey 56:00

right? He had a bad, bad habit of bringing them in after the holiday because he didn't want to be the heavy coming up to the holiday weekend, whether that holiday be Easter or you name it. And

Corey 56:11

And so now we have a situation where in

Corey 56:13

in advance of Thanksgiving, he said, no, we got to do it. We got to be firm. So take

Corey 56:18

take it for what it's worth. It does seem to to be the most modest of signs that he is willing to be a bit more aggressive in his handling of this fourth wave. So we'll

Corey 56:28

we'll see. We'll see what comes of that. Carter,

Zain 56:29

Carter, 22 constituency associations are required to pass a motion that would accelerate the timeline of a leadership review for Kenny. They currently have 10 that have signed on to do a leadership review before March 1st. A, two questions for you. A, do you think this happens? B, is it a good strategic idea for UCP, the party to do this to have this earlier i'm curious to get your thoughts on both a does this happen b if your interests are the party it's longevity you could care less about kenny but you're committed to the brand and maintaining power is this a good idea for the ucp to do no

Carter 57:05

no because whoever you know um running a leadership you want to have as much distance between this new leader and kenny as possible especially around the covet issues um let's assume just for just for shits and giggles that uh the summer of 2022 is the best summer ever um you want the new leader in place could be for that right you you don't want you don't want um you

Carter 57:30

you don't want to be pulling this guy out too early and then you

Carter 57:33

you know you want to make sure that kenny wears all of the uh the pain and baggage from uh from covet or at least as much as humanly possible and that means that he's got to at least see through

Carter 57:46

through till the end of christmas because we're going to have we're going to have spikes again i suspect after thanksgiving and we will have a spike again after christmas um because we're dumb cory

Carter 57:59

cory same question to other people we're

Zain 58:01

we're brilliant we're uh yeah

Carter 58:03

yeah not our listeners either those six people are pretty great they're

Zain 58:06

they're They're awesome. Corey, 22 needed, 10 have signed on board. Will this happen, do you think? And is it a good idea if your interests are for the party overarching anything else?

Corey 58:17

So Don Braid was tweeting on, I don't know, Thursday or so that he actually had 16 had passed it. Oh, okay. Sorry,

Zain 58:25

I may have missed 10.

Corey 58:26

10. No, no, there was a CBC story that said 10, and he was responding to it saying he'd heard at this point they were at 16. And so if that is their trajectory, if that is the speed on which writing associations are coming online, yeah, I think that's kind of writing on the wall territory here. Devil is in the details, though, right? Demanding a leadership vote before March 1st, well, I

Corey 58:46

I have to see that. I haven't looked at the resolution, but is February 28th good enough? Because that still allows you most of the things that we were talking about, budget and a fourth wave children vaccinated, if you so choose.

Zain 58:58

Let's move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we do it for you. We live for you. We do this podcast for you. Thank you. I'm going to ask you first, which is why I want to ask you, Stephen Carter. We talked about Trudeau and Tofino. We talked about the Trudeau Apology brand. Overrated or underrated, the durability of the Justin Trudeau brand as it stands now as he begins work on his third sort of term, if we can call it? Yes. I

Carter 59:27

think it's overrated. I think he was

Carter 59:30

was supposed to be able to come in here and just dominate his election and take everything. But the brand of Trudeau seems to be overrated at this particular moment in time. And it doesn't feel like, you know, if he was to step down tomorrow and the government suddenly fell, that they'd be calling him back to lead them to a majority.

Zain 59:49

Corey, the durability of the Trudeau brand overrated, underrated in your mind?

Corey 59:54

I don't know. I mean, people overcorrect on this so aggressively. It does feel overrated coming out of that election. One of the challenges with an election like that, where you go in and you take the drubbing you took and you end up just in the exact same place that you were, is that people start saying, maybe

Corey 1:00:11

maybe you were the problem, right? Maybe you, Justin Trudeau, are our challenge right now. And there is, I guarantee you, cocktail chatter about, well, what do we think would have happened if Chrystia Freeland had been leader? Do we think we would have done better? I think we might have, right? Maybe Mark Carney could have done better. Yeah, I could see that. Especially

Zain 1:00:32

Edmonton Center. He would have had such a stronghold in the middle of the country there. Oh, totally. What

Corey 1:00:36

What a smart move if he had done it. Yeah, for sure.

Corey 1:00:41

But the point being, those conversations, they start to happen. And then all of a sudden, somebody who looks invincible, and I mean, memories are so bloody short, the liberals were the third party, and Justin Trudeau propelled them into a majority government. But now people are starting to say, maybe we don't need him. Maybe that's not what it took. Maybe it was just how

Corey 1:01:01

how awesome we are, or whatever it is. But in a funny way, I

Corey 1:01:05

I think the narrative and the conversation about his best days behind him has gotten a little ahead of the facts on the ground, notwithstanding what I said at the start of this bloody episode, because he's still the guy. He's still the guy. The prime minister's office is still incredibly powerful, as we have lamented throughout this episode. And so if you're not allowing any of the poppies to grow beyond a certain height besides Freeland, well, then you've just got to keep Freeland happy. happy.

Zain 1:01:32

Carter, I want to talk about Thanksgiving. I often talk to you about Thanksgiving. We did it at the top of the show. You have also been on the front lines of running a campaign on the municipal side. We won't get into the details of that. But I do want to talk about Thanksgiving weekend as a monumental sort of inflection point in the municipal race here in Alberta. You've quoted it in the past as being the most important time a decade ago when you said this This is the time where people gather around the dinner table, they talk about their political views, ideas get shared, opinions get crystallized. In a COVID world, though, this Thanksgiving weekend overrated or underrated for political decision-making for an election coming up, in our case, here in Alberta in about a week?

Carter 1:02:19

People just don't seem to be getting together this weekend. It's a very strange Thanksgiving. and you know

Carter 1:02:26

know whereas before everybody was talking about you know uh nenshi in 2010 and i was certainly planning and hoping that they'd be talking about my candidate this weekend i'm not sure they are i think that people are i

Carter 1:02:40

i don't know where people are it's just the weirdest it feels like the weirdest thanksgiving

Carter 1:02:45

thanksgiving in my history and that's saying something because i seem to recall last thanksgiving being a little weird too cory

Zain 1:02:51

cory we've talked about this in the past too but from from your perspective, this Thanksgiving

Zain 1:02:55

Thanksgiving long weekend heading into an election in Alberta municipally next Monday, overrated or underrated in your mind from a political perspective? It's

Corey 1:03:05

It's absolutely overrated right now. There's no magic to Thanksgiving, at least in a calendar context. The magic, so to speak, is that you get people who don't always come together to talk coming together to talk. And you are bombarding them with viewpoints in particularly in a a municipal election which is often a low information election and then all of a sudden there's a discourse about it at the table and opinions get solid and

Corey 1:03:29

uh that just didn't happen i don't know about you two but uh our thanksgiving was uh we took the family down to laurie's parents we had indian food with them and then we left i mean it wasn't even a turkey it was like it was none of the normal trappings of thanksgiving here and so i just have a hard time believing that that those same conversations are happening in the same way. I will say that in the context of the Alberta municipal elections, this has been the strangest close I have ever seen. I just feel like there is no gas left in the tank after the federal election with all of the drama going on provincially.

Corey 1:04:05

It just does not feel like people care. And I, you know, let's not get Carter to respond to that because he's running a campaign, but I just, it feels like it's ending with a whimper, not a bang. Let

Carter 1:04:14

Let me just respond to that.

Carter 1:04:18

Let me just tell you. Let me just tell you.

Carter 1:04:22

It's because of me. I

Carter 1:04:23

I took all the energy and excitement out of municipal politics and put it straight into this shitter. You're

Zain 1:04:30

You hold a special power, and we're glad you're using it for the right purposes, Carter. Carter, I'm going to start with you on this one. The long-held tradition of the post-mortem article in one of Canada's papers of record where they talked to all the insiders how the campaign was won, In this case, Toronto star Althea Raj talking to 57 insiders around how Justin Trudeau and the liberals beat Aaron O'Toole. These sort of postmortem pieces, in terms of their value that they provide to process people like ourselves and the political strategy and the political nerd community, overrated or underrated?

Carter 1:05:14

Overrated. There are still people who think in 2010 Nenshi won because he developed an app. And

Carter 1:05:19

And that's because we told them that's what happened. I

Carter 1:05:22

I mean, this is just crazy. You know, like, no

Carter 1:05:25

no one gets in there and says, you know what, we really did this election that really fucked the other guy up. No, no one's actually saying what actually happened, Althea. I'm sorry. You wrote a story. That was, it's cute. You talked to 57 people. They all sold you a bill of goods. It's a bullshit story. Sorry to bring you the news. But, you know, these stories don't know what the truth of the campaigns are because no one's talking about what the truth of the campaigns are. No one has revealed what the 11 herbs and spices are in Kentucky Fried Chicken. Is it 11?

Carter 1:05:58

think I got that right.

Zain 1:05:59

It might be 11, Carter. I'm sure you could Google it, folks.

Carter 1:06:02

folks. Maybe 18. Corey,

Carter 1:06:04

do you eat fried chicken?

Zain 1:06:06

Maybe it's 50. Maybe they've just been lying to us that it was 11. Maybe that's where the lie began, Carter, that it was 11. Corey, these sort of pieces and the value that they produce, overrated or underrated, I don't want to take a shit on the article, but these types of stories, it's a launching off point uh overrated or underrated in your mind i

Corey 1:06:24

i think generally overrated spin doesn't end on election day any well it never did but really now it doesn't and so what happens is everybody starts saying this is the narrative we want out there in terms of the next 60

Corey 1:06:37

60 days 100 days and this is how we're going to propel ourselves forward and you combine that with everybody trying to write their own hero narrative about how they are so fucking awesome and that's why why the campaign was won. And, and I just, you know, I, I wonder, and I wonder if I'm just sort of false remembering the past, but when these were a

Corey 1:06:55

a little bit less of a, of a curated structured piece, I think they were a little bit more interesting when somebody won a campaign and they were just loose and, and telling the stories from the war, you know, the 1992 post Clinton stories, for example, I feel like they were a little bit more colored. And really, I guess what What I'd say is when

Corey 1:07:14

when you're reading one of these things, ask yourself, even when the

Corey 1:07:19

the quote-unquote hero is down, are they still acting like the hero? And if so, you're being fed bullshit. You're being fed spin. It's not a question of – because nobody's perfect and nobody doesn't have their ups and downs. And so when I read stories about how like, oh, we were doing our best and then we just realized we needed people to realize this guy was the worst.

Corey 1:07:42

That doesn't fucking impress me very much, right? That's spin.

Zain 1:07:45

Final question here, Corey, for you. I'm going to start here. The Nobel Prize in Economics, overrated, underrated, or non-existent?

Corey 1:07:53

Doesn't exist, Steve. Or, yeah, what's your name? Steven Zane, whatever the fuck your

Zain 1:07:57

your name is. I'm Steven. That's Zane, yeah.

Corey 1:08:00

Okay, there is no Nobel Prize in Economics. I'm glad we were able to clear this up.

Zain 1:08:05

Carter, is there a Nobel Prize in podcasting? And if the answer is no, should there be? And how many medals should they award to us, a triad of podcasters? Would it be one or would it be three?

Carter 1:08:16

Three. And I'll tell you another thing. I'm just really happy that West of Center was able to sneak into the top spot with us away again.

Corey 1:08:27

me tell you something, Zane.

Zain 1:08:28

Let me tell you something. Go ahead. You tell me something. If

Corey 1:08:30

If anybody can just create a prize in memory of Alfred Nobel and claim that that is a Nobel Prize, I am willing to say right now that the strategists can endorse a Nobel Prize in political

Corey 1:08:41

political strategy. It will technically be the strategist prize in political strategy in memory of Alfred Nobel, just to stay on the right side. But what did they offer? 10 million. What is the Swedish thing?

Corey 1:08:55

thing? Krona. I don't know. Krona. Okay. Well, we'll offer 10.

Corey 1:08:59

That's close. And are we awarding it to ourselves?

Corey 1:09:02

Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

Zain 1:09:06

Okay. We've done it. We've done it again. That's a wrap on episode 947 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belger. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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