Episode 949: PMO Pals

Zain 0:03

This is a strategist episode 949 my name is Zain Velji with me. Zain there's no time for that Stephen's battery is almost dead.

Zain 0:10

Well you know what that

Zain 0:12

is a great metaphor

Zain 0:14

metaphor for Stephen Carter. Yeah that's true. Carter do you usually walk into a job with 20 percent battery life? Is that is that what's going on here? Perfect metaphor yeah. I

Carter 0:24

I was working so hard I worked at least Least 80% today.

Zain 0:29

I'm glad that the taxpayers of Calgary know that. That today was an 80% day. Today

Carter 0:34

Today was an 80% day.

Zain 0:37

Oh, that is excellent. Good, good. Anything else you want to reveal?

Carter 0:44

No, no, it was pretty good. 80% is about as high as anybody expects. So we've been pretty well.

Corey 0:50

Long-time listeners will remember when Stephen Carter soft-launched, we'll call it, But Soft launched a leadership campaign on the pod. It was excellent. It

Carter 0:58

It was planned. It was planned. We got a huge balance out of that. It was planned, wasn't it? Yeah,

Carter 1:01

great. At that point, we were

Zain 1:01

were recording in person, and Corey and I just looked at each other and being like, this is perfect. I don't think life gets better than this.

Zain 1:09

was one of the things that two out of the three of us knew what was happening in the moment. Yeah,

Corey 1:13

Yeah, very much so.

Zain 1:16

Anyways, you were going somewhere, Corey, with that. Or were you not going anywhere? No, he just wanted to remind me of how

Corey 1:20

how bad I was. I'm just throwing that out there. Just

Corey 1:21

Just sort of suggesting that Stephen Carter and his ability to keep secrets is legendary. Okay,

Zain 1:26

Okay, fantastic. Well, that's good. So

Corey 1:28

So we're going to hear about the gold under City Hall in

Zain 1:31

in no time flat.

Zain 1:33

And the tunnel infrastructure. I'm looking forward to that. That's a

Carter 1:36

a throwback to Oscar Feck. No one's going to know that. No.

Zain 1:39

There's like five listeners.

Carter 1:41

Five listeners who are like, throwback to Oscar?

Zain 1:44

hell? Okay, now I need to know. What was the gold under City Hall? It's

Carter 1:48

It's under City Hall, Zane. There

Corey 1:51

There was a perennial

Corey 1:53

candidate for mayor in Calgary, never got more than a handful of votes, was

Corey 1:59

was adamant there was secret gold under City Hall.

Carter 2:02

It's under City Hall, Zane. He was very anti-Semitic.

Carter 2:07

exceptionally. That was a legitimate quote.

Carter 2:11

Oh, Jesus Christ. No, and he ran for mayor, I think, like five times. Thank you for clarifying that that was a quote. That was a quote. That was a quote. vote everybody the five listeners will get it uh

Zain 2:22

uh cory over under on six months how long stephen carter lasts in his job what

Zain 2:29

we hear the last comment why are you here carter this is

Zain 2:35

we'll figure it out

Carter 2:35

out nine months on a campaign let's

Zain 2:38

let's uh let's uh let's move on to something that that will definitely not get any of us in trouble uh because we are unified in our perspective As we head into the headlines and our first headline comes to us from the Globe and Mail, does bread last longer in the fridge? Debunking your common culinary myths. Guys, we have made it national. I suspect the discourse from this podcast has finally made it to the national publication, the national pages of the Globe and Mail. In an article by Calgary's Julie Van Rosendahl, she says everything lasts longer in the fridge.

Zain 3:11

Bread and other baked

Zain 3:12

baked goods are an exception here. And then she just tries to sell us the mythology of non-fridge bread. Stephen Carter, as a recent convert to the fridge bread movement, any comments to the national publication known as the Globe and Mail, the RAG that is the Globe and Mail? I

Carter 3:29

have two thoughts. My first thought is, who has room in their fridge for bread? Like, my fridge is packed all the time. No extra room. All the vegetables in there. And

Zain 3:38

And as your second thought, you make room because bread belongs

Carter 3:42

fridge. And my second thought is, everybody knows this, except you.

Zain 3:47

I called you a recent convert to the movement. You have failed me once again, Corey Hogan.

Zain 3:53

Corey Hogan, are we debunking the myth of the myth that's being debunked?

Corey 3:59

I'm a bit of a fridge minimalist. I think a lot of things, when put in the fridge, lose their flavor. I like my tomatoes out. I like my, you know, oranges,

Corey 4:08

any produce that you would normally not find in a chilled section, you keep that out on the counter there, you know? And yeah, it's not going to last as long, but

Corey 4:16

but it's a metaphor for life because it's so much sweeter. It's so much better when you live it to the fullest and don't try to preserve it so desperately in a fridge.

Carter 4:24

And cutting that mold off that orange is a delightful feeling. And here I thought

Zain 4:27

the Globe and Mail was a national travesty. Both of you, fuck off. I have got significant evidence between the three of us where you have all taken a blood oath to the fridge bread movement, and you just throw me under the bus on the podcast. This is actually deeply disappointing, especially from you, Carter. I expected more. It's

Zain 4:46

Carter, I'm going to move it on to our next headline. This one, of course, keeping us in the lane that you now operate, Stephen. This is municipal politics. Oh,

Carter 4:55

Oh, good, good. this

Zain 4:55

this one comes to us from cbc

Zain 4:57

no it's well we'll see if it's dangerous yeah just it's all in your control carter why are you here and it's all in your control just remember that this one comes to us from cbc news city repairs curb reported damaged 28 years ago 16 years earlier than scheduled that is right for winnipeg resident calvin holly finally has some curb appeal back Back on his street last week, a crew hired by the city of Winnipeg repaired his street that he had first flagged broken in 1993. It was damaged by a snow removal machine. The years-long journey to get the work done peaked in 2019 when he was given a number through the city's 311 line to check the file and request. And it was indicated to him that it would be repaired on June 26, 2037. Stephen Carter, is this a classic case of exceeding expectations by the city of Winnipeg? Was this a master class of indicating that you were not getting your curb fixed until 2037 and then coming in in the year 2021 and just making

Carter 6:04

Let me tell you right off the top, that's something that would never happen at the city of Calgary.

Carter 6:09

Although that came out incorrectly, that came out wrong.

Carter 6:13

I have to apologize. No, I listen.

Carter 6:17

Apple does this the best, right? You take your Apple device into Apple and they say it's going to be 18 days before it gets fixed. And then they call you back three days later and say, it's fixed. This is exactly the type of lesson we should be taking from the Steve Jobs empire of Apple. I love it. Way to go, Winnipeg.

Zain 6:39

Corey, how long until Stephen Carter implements this strategy within the city of the Calgary? I suspect very quickly. You may have already done it. over to you on the curb that was repaired 16 years ahead of schedule june

Corey 6:51

june 26 is rudy gobert's birthday so that's

Corey 6:55

that's all i have to say about that well done

Zain 6:57

yeah rudy gobert who's

Carter 6:58

who's also my father's birthday well

Corey 7:01

well your father rudy gobert gobert oh

Carter 7:05

had no idea can

Zain 7:06

can we can we call him right now and ask him no

Carter 7:12

yeah we don't we should have calls We don't

Zain 7:14

don't do enough calls. This is absolutely true. What

Carter 7:17

What are we doing in our listener question episode?

Zain 7:20

Is now the time to ask that question?

Zain 7:23

Well, we're going to ask it in the listener question section of the podcast, which we do after you're done. Corey and I do that every episode. We don't want you answering any listener questions. Our

Zain 7:32

Our next headline comes to us from the CBC as well. Green Party members are voting on Annamie Paul's leadership weeks after she said she would quit. Let's spend a few minutes on this one. There's two headlines I want to spend a few minutes on. This is one of them. Green Party of Canada members have started to vote on whether to remove Annamie Paul as party leader roughly a month after she said she'd announced her resignation. Yes, the leadership review is underway, Green Party communications director said to CBC. Voting on Paul's leadership began yesterday and will end on November 25th, just ahead of their scheduled virtual general meeting. Corey, I mean, the saga keeps going. You had Annamie Paul saying she was done. She talked about the shards of broken glass that she had to walk on. You then had Elizabeth May go on CTV. You had a former leader of the Green Party go on CTV, effectively throwing potshots at Annamie Paul. But now we learn that she still hasn't resigned, still trying to confirm her exit package. Let's view this from the lens of, like, political parties and leadership, as we always have when we look at Green Party stories. stories. Unprecedented, yes, but any additional comments that you may have in terms of what the state of affairs for the Green Party is right now?

Corey 8:47

Well, it's not in good shape. Some of the reporting has been, so a couple of details you need. One is that the court said you've got to pay Adam McPaul's legal fees, Green Party of Canada.

Corey 9:00

Paul is saying, I'll leave when you pay my legal fees, like I'll formally resign. Green Party is saying, we don't actually have the money to pay your legal fees right now we're struggling to do that and so in the meantime what they're doing is they're i guess running this process so they can formally remove her through a review i mean it's just it's just tasteless upon tasteless uh you know continually

Corey 9:23

continually showing the uh the poor judgment of people within the green party organization here but uh because from the outside it just looks outrageous right and i understand that everybody's maneuvering around around one very specific legal issue here and the ability to conform with it. But the base facts are this.

Corey 9:40

Paul was screwed by the party.

Corey 9:42

Paul wants them to make it right, as a court has told them to do.

Corey 9:45

And they have not done that. And so now they're trying to find leverage, I suppose, to not do that more efficiently. I mean, this is such a bad look on a Green Party that has already treated their leader like absolute dirt the entire way along. I mean, start the healing process here, fellows and ladies. It's time to start acting like a real political party that has some sort of moral backbone, make good with the past leader that you never made good with in the past, and move on with your lives. This is not a thing that you want to do. You don't want to continue this ugliness, even though, yes, you probably have a lot of time. Yes, this is going to be forgotten. gotten. It's just, it's just delaying another day, another day, another day, what the Green Party needs to do to start righting the ship at a time when the Green Party should be one of the most consequential movements within Canada. You start looking at some of the polling that came out from Abacus recently, on how Canadians perceive energy development, on how Canadians perceive the need to act on climate change. And then you look at where the Green Party is in the the polls and you think what the fuck like

Corey 10:49

like what how is it possible that a party that was created for these issues is so out of the conversation and instead we're

Corey 10:57

we're talking about them having fundraising problems not following court orders and fighting with a past leader it's

Carter 11:03

it's but it's pretty pathetic right now right it's it's just about all over for these guys they they you know enemy paul has been banished by the executive so many times it's just ridiculous they've been been fighting from the from the get-go there is no real uh you know plan for them to come back from this and i i think that anybody who voted for the green party in the last election should be ashamed of themselves and cory to cory's point this is a party that should be meaningful but it's not because every other party has jumped in on it every other party except the conservatives has a green platform um that green platform forms the basis of canadian politics except for one so So, you know, they're done. Everybody else is caught up with them. Their raison d'etre is over. Their party itself is over. They should just fold it up, shut

Carter 11:51

shut her down, let her go.

Corey 11:53

Yeah, real-time correction here. I said it was a court order that they had to pay her fees. It was actually an arbiter who said that. So the Green Party is appealing that.

Zain 12:02

Carter, I want to go back to Corey's point around time. People will forget this. Is there any strategic upside for them to say, screw it, if this is the final chapter, We're not going to the polls for another two years minimum, give or take. Let's just, you know, do our thing, double down on our terrible strategy. Is there any shard of good strategy

Zain 12:22

strategy or optimized strategy with what they're trying to do right now by not putting this to bed sooner rather than later and having this fight publicly? There's

Carter 12:29

There's no upside. They have to have another leader. Someone else needs to step up and become the next leader of the Green Party. Do you feel like this is sending a message?

Zain 12:36

message? Yeah, I'm curious. Do you think this is purposely trying to send a message to whoever takes the reins next? Are we soft-launching Zayn's leadership for

Corey 12:45

for the Green Party

Carter 12:45

Party today? I mean,

Carter 12:46

I mean, Zayn, you know, he whiffed on the paperwork for the Alberta Party. Way to go, Zayn.

Zain 12:51

Zayn. No, no, no. I don't think you understood. I don't think you understood. Zayn Velji for Alberta Party leader was actually just a name. So if Zayn Velji for Alberta Party leader were to run for the Green Party, it would be Zayn Velji for Alberta Party leader for the Green Party.

Carter 13:04

Well, this is a good idea. I think that we can make this work. We're getting behind it. But would anybody run? Like, you're not going to be the leader. Everybody knows you're not going to be the leader. Elizabeth May might be the leader. The president or the executive might be the leader. Someone else might be the leader. But there's no point in running and being the leader of the Green Party because you're

Carter 13:24

you're not going to be able to lead.

Corey 13:25

Yeah. Don't have the authority. Yeah.

Corey 13:27

to go back to the Abacus polling that came out around COP26 here, we're

Corey 13:32

we're seeing that 66% of Canadians want more emphasis on emission reduction, which is noteworthy in that it's increased a lot since March. It was higher in

Corey 13:42

in September 2015 when it was just that transition between the Conservatives and the Liberals, because obviously there hadn't been significant emphasis. But think about what's happening right now. Think about how the carbon tax is ratcheting up. up every year like 16 18 21 that they've done this poll i believe has sort of been tied to an increase in carbon taxes or an increase in climate action here and we're still seeing the need for more emphasis we're still seeing canadians say we want more emphasis yeah

Corey 14:10

and that's pretty wild to me and in that environment for the green party to be so irrelevant is um like if you're not relevant Now you're not relevant. And I don't entirely buy into Stephen's argument. But I will say this, if you can't make it happen now, just you

Corey 14:28

you should close it down. You should all just scatter to the various parties that share your views on other issues. issues let's

Zain 14:35

let's move on to our final headline our final headline comes to us from wired facebook is going meta we

Zain 14:42

we have to talk about this guys from wall street to main street to capitol hill everyone is mad at facebook and now they like to call like you to call their company by a new name meta uh amidst all the trouble all the scandal the the leaks to the wall street Street Journal and 60 Minutes. Facebook is now trying to tackle the metaverse. Stephen Carter, I want to kind of focus this on a branding conversation, communications and crisis conversation. You know, often we

Zain 15:13

we see corporations, candidates, political parties, whatever institutions, try to use communications as a gloss over to more fundamental issues, not saying that that's what's happening here exactly, but... That's what's

Carter 15:23

what's happening here exactly.

Zain 15:26

You know, is that what's happening here exactly, Stephen Carter? yeah

Carter 15:29

yeah i mean i think so i mean and i also think that one of the fundamental rules of communications or rebranding is wait for the shit to stop before putting your name up right let let the fire go out before you change your name let let come back stronger in some new i think i

Zain 15:45

i understand why can

Zain 15:46

you clarify why what's the what's the wisdom because

Carter 15:49

because the new brand is going to be tarnished by the shit that the old brand did yeah the shit is still going on yeah the point of the exercise is to get through the negative put

Carter 15:59

put some distance between you and then re-emerge as a phoenix would right with with a brand new brand perception that enables you to to leave behind the negativity they're in the middle of the greatest negative period of facebook's existence and now they're meta i mean my god could you have you ever seen a worse rebuke of a new brand introduction i mean not since the washington bullets became the washington wizards have we seen such backlash flash i

Carter 16:27

did that for you that's good i like that yeah thank you

Carter 16:29

i did it one guy it was a one person joke this

Zain 16:32

this whole thing is a one person uh

Corey 16:36

three person jokes well

Zain 16:37

well it's a three person joke but this this this uh this podcast appeals to one person at a time at any given moment in any given second uh cory your thoughts on this uh do you agree with carter's analysis that they should have waited uh on on rebranding yeah

Corey 16:51

yeah you uh you that is definitely the conventional wisdom for all of the reasons he said one of the challenges is if you are still in the crisis and there are still shoes to drop if there are still leaks that are coming out if there are still articles to be written about the leaks that were there and instead they're talking about meta instead of facebook you it's not great for you it doesn't allow you to get past that if

Corey 17:11

if your goal is to try to move past scandal i'm not entirely sure that's what facebook's goal was because they are a bit more of a diverse enterprise now that has things like vr and whatnot they probably didn't want to be known for just one product to be fair to them google did the same thing with alphabet as their parent company right however uh there is a different communications lesson that i'll introduce here because steven took the point kind of eloquently stated what i wanted to say about you know you wait to the end which is you also don't want to be doing this branding work when people can be looking at other motives out there like you you it's you need to have a bit more of of a calm environment and allow your actual mission to ring through or else you are going to get these cynical attacks that are there so i don't know what facebook was thinking i think it was definitely um if it was to get past scandal it was premature if it was for any other reason it was just mistimed because the scandal is so prominent in the conversation right now i don't know what their impetus was maybe they were just really excited to kind of throw their new logo out there um but yeah

Corey 18:16

yeah you when you're doing these big movements you've got to remember they don't happen in a vacuum and you've got to look at the environment in which you are dropping these kinds of brands and what you might be saying and the cynicism you might be bringing back because regardless

Corey 18:27

regardless of whether it was door one you know the idea that you want to sort of get past scandal or door two you just want to more accurately represent your bundle of products you fell on your face today and your brand is being mocked roundly across the internet that. Brands always get mocked. The reaction to brands changing is always negative, just as a bit of a foundation setting here. But this was still, even in that context, poorly timed.

Zain 18:52

Carter, what would you have advised if you were chatting with Facebook in the midst of this decision? I mean, clearly, both of you said the timing was wrong. Was there any other advice from what you saw today, the Zuckerberg video that came out with him introducing this, you know, almost like a home shopping network brand. I'm curious what advice you would have given now having the benefit of hindsight from looking at this launch, this brand, and now the holding company that is Meta. Because one of the things that they did not do, I'll just also put this on the list, is they did not change the name of any of their core products, right? So the user functionality of Facebook or WhatsApp or Instagram from a brand perspective did not change. But your advice, had you been in the room and been invited to chat with them?

Carter 19:41

Mark Zuckerberg's not your best

Carter 19:42

best spokesperson. Mark Zuckerberg isn't the guy that you want to have standing up there like some sort of a clown in your videos. I mean, he's not someone people can relate to. He does not have the capacity to interact with other human beings properly. And he created, I think, an absolutely tragic video. Whereas I think that there are lots of staff, There are lots of people at Facebook that could become the new definition of the – like the team itself, the meta team, if you will, could have been an interesting brand to explore. What does it mean to be part of the meta universe? That actually is interesting. Making Mark Zuckerberg the star at the center of the meta universe just feels like it was pretty stupid. But really, he is persona non grata in just about every group, every organization. Maybe him and Bill Gates can hang out together, but that's about it.

Zain 20:43

Corey, any lessons you would have provided had you been in the room in the lead up to this ultimate rebrand? And, you know, I imagine Facebook would be one of those demanding clients that say, we got to do this. It's on our schedule. If you had the guardrails of that, what would you kind of advise them if they had to go today, if they wanted to have to go, your timeline is off the table, what are some of the things you would have said to them?

Corey 21:07

I think it's pretty tough to not have the CEO out there being the spokesperson for something like this. But I probably would have picked something that was, I get that they were going for this friendly thing, you know, this kind of household background and all of that. But I would have probably made it more look like it was a corporate decision, like have it almost in not a board setting, but you know how Steve Jobs would often be in those auditoriums, you know, and,

Corey 21:31

and, and just try to make it look more like it's about business than product, because it came very much across as about product. And I think that's part of what the backlash is about, is this notion that you're trying to change your products, you're trying to pull one over on me, we still believe that Facebook is destroying the planet. it and and that was really man

Corey 21:51

man or that was pushed along by the fact that the marcoms that supported it the communications the marketing communications that supported it was so productish right there is a there's a corporate comms way you can talk about things and there's a marcoms way that you can talk about things and i think they should have gone more on the corporate comms side do

Zain 22:07

do you feel like there's going to be any sort of pr strategic benefit this goes to you back to you carter from having a company that is not named Facebook now owning Facebook so that anytime Facebook gets criticized, it's kind of diluted across two different brands. Maybe they've created the second brand to also get a shit on so that it's not just the Facebook entity that's getting sharp elbowed. Is there

Corey 22:31

Yeah, Corey, jump in on this. I think it's different than that. I think it's that they know that Facebook proper is

Corey 22:36

is a product that is dragging down a lot of the rest of their portfolio such as you know insta and whatsapp and and some of their vr plays there and so i saw it more as an opportunity and in a sense same as google did although google didn't have the reputational problems of saying we're

Corey 22:51

we're not just about facebook you know we have all of these other things going on that you still use all of the time you talk about facebook dying you're talking about facebook dying on whatsapp with 800 of your friends i mean even us the three of us use whatsapp all the time and

Corey 23:04

and that to me seemed like it was more of the play than rather Rather than saying like, yeah, they'll throw a few arrows at Meta and they'll throw a few arrows at Facebook. I don't think that's the point.

Zain 23:12

point. It's about the drag. So I suspect Instagram by Facebook will now be Instagram by Meta. Same with WhatsApp in the coming days. Carter, any final thoughts on kind of the coordination of the brands and the PR up and downsides from what you may have seen today going forward? I

Carter 23:26

I think that they should have learned more from Google's Alphabet introduction.

Carter 23:29

Google itself didn't change. Alphabet, the holding company, did and it became simply a financial play. If

Carter 23:35

If meta is just going to be a financial play, then make it a financial play. Make sure that investors know that meta will always over-deliver the profitability that you're looking for. Whatever the portfolio growth that you're looking for in your tech, if you want tech stable, then you're going to invest in meta.

Corey 23:55

always love it when

Corey 23:56

when Carter talks finance. It sounds so robust and so rooted in knowledge.

Zain 24:03

And is it, Corey?

Corey 24:05

smart. Tell me more about the finance in your portfolio. And

Carter 24:08

And we'll leave the headlines there. No, the tech in your portfolio, dickwad.

Zain 24:14

We'll leave the headlines there and move it on to our next segment. Hit that music button, baby. Stephen Carter.

Zain 24:21

Justin Trudeau has hit the music button. He's hit the cabinet music button. And it is now time to discuss his new cabinet. and it's his individuals, 38 of them, gender parity, plus the prime minister, of course, on top of that. Many thread lines, as we've seen over the last couple of days, but I want to hit on a few of them. Corey, let's start with the cabinet makeup overall. We'll kind of give the general sort of thumbnail sketch that many are talking about. Melanie Jolie getting a huge upgrade to foreign affairs. Stephen Gilbeau going from heritage to environment. That's a story Corey, because of his activist past, certainly, on the Environments File. Jonathan Wilkinson leaving Environment, going to Natural Resources. And then you have a host of cabinet members, three of them, to be precise, that no longer are in cabinet. Two heavy hitters, Jim Carr, Mark Garneau, and Bartis Chagger as a third on that list, also out of cabinet. Corey, many storylines, including ones here in Alberta. Randy Bossineau from Edmonton getting the tourism ministry. But where do you want to start from what you saw as Justin Trudeau's 3.0 cabinet makeup? Many narratives around legacy, many around these are my best friends, I want to hang with them. What stood out to you when you saw the cabinet makeup?

Corey 25:36

the super friends cabinet uh definitely comes you know to the foreground for me those are the people that he hangs with right those are the people that he brought into politics joe lee for example um

Corey 25:49

there was as a as a albertan i was really also sort of struck by the treatment of alberta saskatchewan manitoba now saskatchewan you got nothing

Corey 26:00

you've got one seat really in play if you don't want to put george shahal in cabinet because george shahal you know is under investigation right now fair reason not to put someone in cabinet right okay

Corey 26:13

that does leave you with randy boissoneau and what he gets and it leaves you with the province of manitoba and what happens there and both i think are storylines worth unpacking here but But let's

Corey 26:25

let's talk about Alberta first because that's home.

Corey 26:29

I think that if you're only going to have one cabinet minister from Alberta, and I think in a perfect world you would have three, but

Corey 26:36

but you just don't have the seats. And in a less perfect world, you'd still have two because

Corey 26:41

this province is a good chunk of the population of the country.

Corey 26:45

Why do we only get one and that one is tourism? You know, I mean, I hate to be so base about that and like we quote unquote earn this or owe this. But if you're going to so under-represent a province in cabinet and then to provide it a relatively junior ministry, that's frustrating to me as an Albertan because with all due respect to Randy Boissoneau, minister

Corey 27:05

minister of tourism is about as far in the back in cabinet as you can be without being in the hallway. And you can always tell when the liberals are trying to make it look like it's a bigger deal than it is when they bolt on one of these like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you're also associate minister of finance, right? Right. Like that's fucking going to matter at all. Like he's going to get the phone ringing one day and he's going to pick it up and be like, yes, I think I've got a budget plan for you. Right. You know, Freeland's not going to call him to pick his brain about the budget. They'll have one perfunctory meeting about that that will change absolutely nothing that was under development. It's kind of bullshit. And then Manitoba really got snubbed as well, to the point that you have liberal luminaries coming in and speaking out and saying this is wrong. This is a problem. Why is Manitoba being snubbed like this? Not

Corey 27:53

Not a great look, especially when you're a government that's already sort of accused of being too Eastern Canada-centric, right? And too this-is-my-buddies-centric. This is the inner cabinet of the cabinet. This is the PMO's pals.

Corey 28:10

PMO's pals is a great kind

Carter 28:12

kind of – That's

Carter 28:12

Yeah, it's good. We're going to start a little TV show. It's going to be nice. It's

Carter 28:16

It's for children. PMO's pals. It

Zain 28:18

It goes right after how the bill is made, sort of a cartoon, but then they've got PMO Pals, which is a superhero. Yeah,

Corey 28:25

Yeah, yeah. It's good. It's good. But I don't know. I mean, I also do appreciate that cabinet making is difficult and that you've got to make tradeoffs. And Stephen

Corey 28:33

Stephen was actually sort of pitching the PMO Pals version in a sense. He said he wanted cabinet ministers with some jam. Doesn't really matter where they come from, right? Yeah.

Corey 28:43

The prime minister may have thought a version of that. I trust these people. I like these people. I think they can deliver. I don't really give a fuck if you're going to have Jason Kenney yelling about the environment minister. I don't give a damn if people don't think Jolie's ready for foreign affairs. I don't know why she wouldn't be, but that's a narrative that's out there. So where

Corey 29:00

where do I end up on all of this? It kind of rubs me the wrong way as an Albertan. It kind of rubs me the wrong way as somebody from the prairies. But

Corey 29:10

But is this the end of the world? Well,

Zain 29:12

Well, it's interesting. Corey, Carter, let's double down into Alberta for a bit. I mean, it is home. Let's stress test one of Corey's assertions that investigation for George Chahal was enough to put him on the sidelines. Would it have been if you were advising the prime minister?

Carter 29:29

I think so. I mean, it depends on what the punishment is going to be. You don't put someone into cabinet when, you

Carter 29:33

you know, three weeks later, they're going to be reprimanded by Elections Canada. It's just not the way. Right.

Zain 29:38

Right. So you would have perhaps also said we can't name

Zain 29:43

name someone to cabinet and then have this come out in terms of what the punishment is on the back end. You couldn't have made that gamble. I guess the question was, is it like table stakes knowledge and wisdom, so to speak, that Georgia Hall was actually out? And this was not a strategic sort of choice rather than one that was imposed upon them, is what I'm trying to suggest. I

Carter 30:03

know Georgia Hall. I love Georgia Hall. And his brother's been an adversary and a mentor to me and to many of us.

Carter 30:13

This was also evidence of being just too fucking stupid to be in cabinet. He was taking other brochures out of people's mailboxes at 10 o'clock at night the night before the election and putting in brochures that directed people to the wrong polling station. like that's

Carter 30:29

that's too fucking stupid you know you got you got to be you got to be smarter than that and you know and i'd say it to his face well i have it's it's frustrating as hell and whoever lets their candidate do something like that you know like that just makes me a bit crazy because this isn't a game right this isn't a game where we all take everybody's brochures and flush them down the toilet or something like that this is real serious stuff and george so hall ran not to to be a member of parliament but to be a cabinet minister and i'll tell you something that cabinet ministers don't do they don't go to people's doors at 10 o'clock at night and take out the other guy's brochure he disqualified himself he may have the opportunity to earn his way back in but you know you got to earn it now you got to earn it it's not going to just be a gift that cory's looking for because you happen to be from the province of alberta uh

Zain 31:18

uh well in in george charles defense they're saying that that is not what they did in the sense that putting they did did not insert brochures that, you

Zain 31:26

you know, indicated folks go to different polling stations but removed them. All he did was remove someone

Carter 31:29

someone else's brochure. But my

Zain 31:31

my question was around invalidation. So you both are agreed with that. So to that point, then, Carter, let's talk about Randy Boissoneau. He gets tourism. He gets the associate minister of finance. Randy Boissoneau is not a person who doesn't have credentials. Randy Boissoneau is not an intelligent, capable person. why do you think this ended with with that particular ministry and first of all congratulations to randy but secondly why tourism carter what do you think them if there was a message being sent by the pmo uh certainly in concert with let's just say who the environmental environment minister and natural resources minister what but in isolation let's talk about randy and what the message to alberta was with the the ministry he got i

Carter 32:13

i want to know what randy bossano did did to Justin Trudeau like

Carter 32:17

like what did he do did he insult his hair like what what happened to Randy Bossineau that he's been put into such a doghouse because let's keep in mind I mean Mark Carney was rumored to be running in that seat um you know yeah Justin Trudeau was on a podcast and you know I think Justin Trudeau honest to god was trying to find just about anybody I mean Don Iveson was rumored to be running in that seat there was a lot of people that were being rumored to be running running in that seat, whose name wasn't Randy Bossineau. And then when Randy Bossineau gets there, essentially as the only candidate that can be put into cabinet, and I think that a case can be made that a slap in the face was made to Alberta on the national resources file and on the environment file. I mean, they switched jobs, right? Like this is an interesting scenario for the steep foreheads in the oil and gas towers in Calgary.

Carter 33:13

But he got tourism. Like, what did Randy Bossano do to the boss? I'd love to know. I'd love to know. Corey?

Corey 33:21

So here's the thing. There's no Department of Tourism, right? There's a Department of Industry that's got a long, elaborate name I forget right now, but they've just bolted on a bunch of additional words. And it's being covered by four ministers. Like, four ministers are covering this $5 billion department. There's this weird cabinet math that's going on that really seems to be designed to kind

Corey 33:41

kind kind of give the impression of cabinet you know coverage without the actual reality and the actual authority and not to sound like an old guy saying back in my day but back in my day in the 90s when i thought about cabinet ministers like they were personalities i knew who they were they had big portfolios and they carried the conversation in the national media nowadays

Corey 34:01

nowadays i look at the list of cabinet ministers and i think boy i haven't heard from them in a while boy i didn't even know that person existed as a human. And I think that's really unfortunate. I really do think that they've diluted the cabinet pretty, pretty far in terms of the authority of individual ministers, just in the, in the simple sense of what they're kind of covering at this point.

Carter 34:24

Well, I think that there's a couple of points here. First of all, just to echo Corey's point, the cabinet minister is a pale imitation of what it used to be at its high point. um you know the center the centralization of power into the central office um it is easier to govern that way there's no question but it may not be better uh for democracy and it may not be better in the overall scheme of governance um but i would here's here's something that's popped into my head does

Carter 34:52

does this look like this could be justin trudeau's last cabinet like he just said you know what i have to hit gender parity that's something i have to hit but fuck the rest of the ratios i don't give a shit i'm

Carter 35:02

i'm not going to worry about regionalized balance i'm not going to worry about making

Carter 35:06

making sure that alberta feels like they've been heard i'll put someone in but i'm not going to put them in to actually advise me or give me actual advice this is i don't care this is my out the door group and this out the door group i'm going to put people i care about close to me and what about the thesis that really everybody after door number two doesn't matter at all

Carter 35:27

I mean, have you looked at the order of succession? I mean, it

Carter 35:30

it jumps from Chris

Carter 35:32

Chris Jeff Freeland, like straight away into Lawrence McCauley, like

Carter 35:36

like Veterans Affairs, like, what the hell is that? Like, that's a really weird order

Carter 35:43

order of succession. And I would argue, quite a drop off. Order

Corey 35:47

Order of precedence. Sorry,

Carter 35:49

Sorry, my friend. Is

Corey 35:49

Is that the order of precedence? Yeah,

Carter 35:51

Yeah, it is. I think

Corey 35:52

think it is based on the cabinet website. Yeah, yeah.

Zain 35:55

Carter, can I stick with you on something for a second?

Zain 35:58

If one of these individuals, and we'll talk about snubs, but let's talk about them more holistically, right? There is names rumored that didn't get in from across the country.

Zain 36:10

And from a strategy perspective, if you're a Georgia Hall, or if you're someone out in Halifax, Lena Diab, for example, or others who didn't make it into Cabinet, what

Zain 36:19

what is your angle right now? Cabinet is made either from overarching advice to either upgrade your position within Cabinet, maybe a Randy Bossineau, or those that didn't make it into Cabinet, what are you trying to do right now to not seem opportunistic, but position yourself? Is it happening? Is anything happening right now that you can do to make that case? Or you're having to wait later on, like 18 months at a 24-month cycle, so to speak, to actually make your case? I'm kind of curious, because you're chief of staff to a former premier. You've seen people jockeying. You've seen different styles and modes of that jockeying. I'm curious what happens once a cabinet is set and what do you do with the folks that might be, you know, hanging their heads in terms of expectations and where they ended up and what they need to do on the flip side to try to make a better case for themselves.

Carter 37:09

We are closer to the next leadership than we are to the last leadership.

Carter 37:13

The thing that you should you be doing if you're george shahal or any other mp that has been left out of cabinet is establishing regional dominance in a 300 and what

Carter 37:23

what is it 38 now it's going to be 344

Carter 37:26

or something like that 42 when the new seats are aligned um you

Carter 37:32

you want to be the regionally dominant player in your little world so if george shahal can be the regionally dominant player in 15 or 20 ridings in southern than alberta or

Carter 37:43

or even more because he actually will have some significant play in edmonton and other major urban centers uh even in regina or saskatoon he could become a significant regional player that would make or break the next leader that's

Carter 37:57

that's your next ticket in be the friend of the next guy don't worry about this guy this guy's you know far closer to the next lead to leaving than he is to just coming in so whether it's what if you're wrong

Zain 38:09

wrong on that bet what if you're wrong that trudeau's sticking it around that this was a super friends and he loves hanging with the super friends that the pmo pmo pals the pmo pals is actually getting renewed for a ninth season sponsored by flair airlines flair airlines let's go get that flight crew uh carter you're still originally

Carter 38:33

i feel like i feel like i've got one of your better

Zain 38:38

uh carter what if what if what if this is not about the next leader that this is actually about everything's always about the next leader everything

Carter 38:44

everything i think that's fucking nuts are you serious how are you

Zain 38:48

you in a tenuous i'm going to focus on george or randy for a second in a tenuous area where you win by a hair uh even despite being so good as both of them are at political operators you win by a hair and now you're planning for the next leader and trying to to show regional dominance? Absolutely.

Carter 39:06

I get the regional dominance. I don't get the next leader part. Because if you win by a hair next time, it might be for Chrystia Freeland. And she might be saying, you know what? Thanks so very much, George, for bringing me 1,000 votes or 1,000 points or whatever the number is that you were able to bring to me. Because that 1,000 points was the difference. And in order to get that 1,000 points, she had to sit down with you and negotiate negotiate with you and the negotiations were i don't want to be no stinking minister of tourism because it's people who get leaders elected they get put into cabinet that's how you get to be a pmo pal we're

Zain 39:44

we're writing the script as we go and i really like it there's like a second ring of like quasi pmo pals there's also a couple people who feel like they're this is like almost has a south park aesthetic now that i'm like workshopping this idea i

Corey 39:57

like the three Three of us could do all the voices. See, I was thinking more Muppet babies. I like

Zain 40:01

like the 2D. Corey, what's the advice you're giving to cabinet ministers that want to upgrade their position or those on the outside looking in right now?

Corey 40:11

Actually, I like Stephen's advice a lot, that you make yourself a force to be reckoned with within your region, but acknowledge that that may not be enough. And just because you're a local power broker is no guarantee that you're going to get into cabinet. Certainly, you're not going to get one

Corey 40:24

one of the fun cabinet positions. You'll get one of the weird ones like, you're my lieutenant for southern Alberta or some bullshit like that, and they'll make you minister responsible for X, and this list is full of weird titles like that.

Corey 40:37

So there's only so many things that a non-cabinet minister has that put them in front of the person who actually gets to decide whether you're in cabinet in a substantive way, and so that's the prime minister, obviously. Obviously, strong presence in caucus, being known for delivering on your files on committee assignments, getting that stuff done well, if you're a chair, really driving a strong agenda as a chair. These are important things, and don't underestimate them, because that is one of the ways you can get into cabinet through the workhorse rather than show horse method, right? Right. And and then

Corey 41:14

then ultimately, if they're like, oh, you know, when they're sitting around and they're trying to build that next cabinet, they're saying, oh, God, you know, like Stephen Carter, whenever

Corey 41:22

whenever he speaks up in cabinet, he's he's on message. He knows exactly what we're trying to do here. He's compelling. He's eloquent. He's got a really strong constituency association. He's been helping out in other areas. he's a real leader in caucus and his his he's he can do it like his committee assignments are also looking pretty solid here right you're not going to know the committee assignments are solid instantly probably for the prime minister but that that first part of catching the eye in caucus that's where it's like how is he doing in the rest of his job right that's where you're going to start getting that information and so um think about those catalysts think about the moments to catch the eye of the pmo and uh and make sure that you're a strong performer when they start Start digging deeper to see whether you're worth a damn or whether you're just sizzle.

Zain 42:09

No one has ever said that about Steven.

Corey 42:12

No one's ever talked about Steven.

Zain 42:14

Carter, you were jumping on sizzle. Jump in there. And then I've got a more structured question for both of you in regards to what the PMO needs to do here, if anything. The

Carter 42:23

The caucus voice thing is a double-edged sword. You've got to be really hit it, right? Right. Because you can you can be super vocal in caucus and prove that you have no place in cabinet. Yeah.

Zain 42:40

Carter, to that point, though, what is Trudeau's made cabinet? Thirty eight plus himself. A lot of people on the outside looking in. Prahlsek's still to be named. So there's still opportunity for caucus. caucus. But is there anything that you as a chief of staff or you as a prime minister's office or the prime minister or the deputy prime minister need to do to really like ensure that those that are kind of like hanging their heads are still a core part of caucus, that they're still along for the ride? Or is this one of those situations where you made your decision and you don't really need to justify that decision to anyone, so to speak? How do you kind of handle that? How would you handle this? And I'm curious, Corey, how you would handle it from like a, this is less politics and obviously politics ingrained, but like more like people and like HR in a real sense. I'm kind of curious what your approach would be for both of you now that you've made the list and there's a lot of disappointed people looking at that list that they're not on. You

Carter 43:33

You gotta be talking to people what their futures look like. How do you get to where your goal is, right? So some people's goal is gonna be just to retire and

Carter 43:40

and live the peaceful life. Other people's goal is going to be to

Carter 43:44

to be in cabinet and to be showcasing

Carter 43:46

showcasing their skills at some later date.

Carter 43:49

Ideally, you have regional caucus chairs that kind of represent the view of the PMO, that represent the vision

Carter 43:56

vision that the PMO brings, and they can sit down with the people

Carter 43:59

people one-on-one and say, okay, let's talk about what it is you need. Let's talk about how you become the leader that you're talking about being.

Carter 44:06

I see it in you. I see it in you, Zane. You've got that real opportunity. I think that if we were to work with you in the following three things, right? Let's be honest. You only won by a hair. there's no confidence that if an election is called two years from now that you're going to be able to hold that seat so why would we make you a cabinet minister you've got to be able to show us that you can actually deliver on the promise that you represent if you can deliver two back to back elections randy if you then maybe we can consider you for outside of that tourism role you know george if we can just teach you about ring cameras and how they're always on right if if we can if we can teach you about that it doesn't matter when you press the doorbell buddy they're always there it's always on so let's teach you about that ring camera and then once you understand that you'll be in a much stronger position those are things that you can do with each of the the regional caucus chairs and help people get to the to the higher level uh

Zain 45:04

uh cory i think i could summarize carter's approach as patronizing empathy um that

Carter 45:09

that does sound like me That does sound like me.

Zain 45:13

Corey, what would your approach be? Because there is some risk, I would imagine, that if folks are hanging their heads for too long, that they could be dispirited, even if their rookies and expectations were high. Curious to your thoughts in terms of how you would handle something like this.

Corey 45:28

Yeah, well, it helps to have what I would call a coherent theory of cabinet, right? So when they come and they say, why them and not me, you're able to say regional representation, diversity, better metrics on these things, stronger performer at these moments, be able to essentially say, I'm watching you, and here's what I've perceived, and this is why I've picked them over you. Because those are the conversations that you don't want it to seem like it's just the PMO pals. You want to be able to say they've proven their performance in these ways because the sense of it's just kind of arbitrary, that can be dangerous if – well, look, let's not kid ourselves. Trudeau's got a pretty strong lock on that leadership, but that gets dangerous in choppier leadership times, right? It's like they don't like me. That's why I'm not in. I don't like them as a result, and that kind of mirroring of the emotion you perceive, that's dangerous. dangerous i liked steven's advice a bit about the what do you need it's just like any workplace you're right about the hr draw it's when somebody comes and says i want to be promoted any manager should be prepared to say okay well let's have that conversation let's talk about the gap between the person doing the job you want and your current performance here which is not to say that it's a gap in like quality of individual but it's your your demonstrated ability to do the role right Right.

Corey 46:49

Are you aware of what a ring camera is? Maybe we could even go further and say, are you going to perform in an ethical fashion? Because this is a higher wire act. There's more lights on you. We need you to be an ethical individual. Right. You have not been a strong speaker when we've watched your speeches. They've been a little bit choppy. They've been a little bit drifting. There's not the kind of the media pull that we need for it. So you're going to need to work on that. Your French isn't good enough. You're going to need to work on that. But having that list and giving them not—you have to be careful not to say, if you do this—it's not a box-checking exercise. If you do this, you're in cabinet. That's not what you're saying. You're saying, it's

Corey 47:29

it's always a fluid situation. This is the gap in skills that I've identified. The gap can always change. It's a shifting landscape here. But these are the things I would work on or I would focus on if I were you. you.

Zain 47:41

Corey, who's the I in this situation? Who's generally having that conversation in government? Is that the chief of staff? Who is that generally? You know, I mean, here's the

Corey 47:49

thing. A lot of different, it's going to be different for each government. Let me just sort of preface there. So I can't say with a ton of certainty. But quite

Corey 47:58

quite often, if somebody is feeling on the outside, and that they think they should be on the inside, they're going to be like, I need a meeting.

Corey 48:05

Let's just say with the prime minister or with the premier, right? And they're going to wait for that turn to come around and then they're going to spring it on them there right and usually if there's a good chief of staff they're going to know that's going to happen and they're going to prep their leader for that or

Corey 48:17

or divert it and say no you can't have that meeting you can have the meeting with me instead and deliver

Zain 48:24

carter have you taken a meeting like that have you taken any meetings of tell us about them if you can't you don't have to tell us names

Zain 48:29

names but i'm curious for

Corey 48:31

for folks that have tried to was

Corey 48:33

was mothers against drunk driving trying to get in the cabinet, Stephen?

Carter 48:36

Yeah, so there's this guy with... And do they want one portfolio or all

Carter 48:40

They wanted the transportation portfolio. You should have given

Zain 48:43

given them tourism. I feel like that's the portfolio you give to people.

Carter 48:47

I would also recommend that people go and talk to senior cabinet

Carter 48:51

cabinet ministers, right? People who are already in cabinet and ask them essentially, you know,

Carter 48:56

what do they think they could do? Look for mentorship from those that are actually in the job. And

Carter 49:01

And that'd be one of the things that we'd be looking for from our cabinet ministers is making sure that they had decent relationships with the caucus because realistically any government is going to have far fewer cabinet ministers than they're going to have caucus members and i remember there was a couple of people uh who you know kind of on basic float you know basic charts

Carter 49:22

charts you could say yeah this person is probably the next person to be in cabinet because it is hard right like being in cabinet it isn't a straightforward getting a game where or you take the best 30

Carter 49:33

30 people or whatever your number is and put them onto your cabinet. I mean, you do have considerations of who else you need to put in place. But getting

Carter 49:42

getting those cabinet ministers to have mentoring relationships with the caucus is super important because you can't do anything if the caucus starts a rebellion against you.

Zain 49:53

Let's move it away from the process to the specifics of this cabinet, Corey. Two threads I want to pick up on. There's the Wilkinson-Gilbeau track, which we should talk about on natural resources environment. There's also the track of Garneau and Carr being out. Which one do you want to pick on first? Maybe we go down the environment natural resources track. I'm curious what you think of the appointment of Gilbeau, the activist now taking on the actor of the minister. Mr. It's quite interesting. I think it's something that many pundits and the political chattering class said would never happen. What do you think the signals for Trudeau and what he's trying to get done? And do you like the pick?

Corey 50:33

Well, it's partially a signal by Trudeau, but it's partially a reflection of how times have changed. We talked about that abacus data, and we talked about the views on climate change here. And one of the stats that really, really jumped out to me was this how canadians view um this was being shared all over it but how canadians view climate change on kind of this oil and gas development spectrum

Corey 50:57

spectrum right so last time they did this in 2018 it

Corey 51:01

it was a 60 40 split with 60 percent of canadians saying we should continue to develop oil and gas resources and get them to markets right and

Corey 51:07

and the 40 percent saying we need to take measures to greatly slow or stop development i've cut the questions off in both both cases they're a little more nuanced but

Zain 51:13

but 60 40 pretty clearly canadians

Corey 51:16

canadians were pro-development and the

Corey 51:18

the three of us worked together at hill and nolton and we had some work in these areas and most of that work was probably done around 2014 2015 probably

Corey 51:26

probably even stronger right like there was this paradox where canadians were pro-environment and pro-development and if you kind of put it in front of them they would ultimately be like well we should develop it we should have our cake and eat it too and you know it was but but development was strongly there in in those senses what's interesting about this most recent data from abacus and it's just one poll sure is that it's flipped now now 51 think we need to take measures to greatly slower stop development 49 want to continue and the regional breakdowns are as you would expect you know it's alberta and saskatchewan that are like no i mean this must proceed and majorities in bc Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic Canada and that's a different game and all of a sudden when you're looking at that and you're looking at a Canadian population that is not saying whoa this guy is going to be very anti-development they're saying hey he's going to be anti-development which is what they want

Corey 52:25

that's a very different game now it sort of jumps to your question about some of the quote unquote snubs of the senior statesmen in the Liberal Party here because one of the things that that this has become a symbol of, Gilbo, is that this is a very left-wing liberal cabinet. Yeah. There's been the quips about it being the first NDP government in Canada. And there is – I mean, it's not that. But there is certainly some truth to the fact that this is a more left-wing cabinet than you would normally see in the liberals. And that is just one of the reflections of it. Gilbo, where he is. Where certain people are not is the other reflection.

Zain 53:06

let's jump into where people are not. Carter, the Gilbo-Wilkinson pairing, what do you make of it? To Corey's point, times have changed, but what do you think of this agenda and what it might say about Trudeau?

Carter 53:19

I think it signals that, you know, the energy transition that we've been talking about for 15 or 20 years or five or two months, depending on your point of view, is upon us, right? And when you're thinking about natural resources, we're not necessarily thinking about the natural resources of old. You know, the natural resources of hydro, the natural resources of sunshine, the natural resources of wind are going to be much bigger players as we move forward. And the natural resources of hydrogen, these things are all shifting. And so, you

Carter 53:57

you know, for Wilkinson to be moved into the resources role, you have a different view, a point of view from someone who was literally yesterday running the, you know, practice yesterday, the natural resources file, and now, I'm sorry, the environment file. And now we've got Guilbeault

Carter 54:19

wanted this change, who's driven for this change for his professional life. Now, I think being in a position where he can realize it. I think that there's

Carter 54:29

there's been an awful lot of consternation in our neck of the woods about what does this change mean for us? Well, this

Carter 54:35

this change means for us the same thing that this change meant for natural gas. I mean, there's

Carter 54:40

massive technological changes in fossil fuels industries. Those technological changes have undermined the structures that existed in the 1900s

Carter 54:52

1900s and into the early 2000s.

Carter 54:56

That just is the way it is. And the market forces, more than Guilbeau or more than Wilkinson or more than Trudeau, it is ultimately the market forces, ultimately Carney, that

Carter 55:08

that is actually going to be the ones that undo the economy of the past.

Zain 55:15

The ultimate PMO pal. Corey, question for you. In terms of the activist sort of angle, what caution would you have for Stephen Gilboa if you were advising him saying, you're in the minister now, like there's obviously going to be cabinet considerations, the considerations of your leader. You

Zain 55:31

know, one of the reasons I thought he would never get into this role is because I felt like it would be way too compromising for him. So they kind of kept him away from environment. But here we are. The guy has got, you know, an expertise in this, but he's got an advocacy and activist expertise in this. What caution would you have for him as he enters this role if you were kind of giving him some within his office or within the PMO?

Corey 55:54

don't know, but I would really need

Corey 55:56

need to know the answer to what were the conversations like with the PMO before that. Before he took on a position. Well, like, you have to imagine that this

Corey 56:05

this was a really big conversation point, right? But in some ways, maybe it's exactly what Justin Trudeau was looking for, to shake things up and say, yeah, we take this seriously. We think this is an area of massive growth for the party. We think we can pinch out the NDP. We think we can just

Corey 56:19

just grind the Green Party into a nub with more of a climate focus. And why the hell not? Like, there's a guy who understands this issue. He'll be quite

Corey 56:29

quite an attack dog on environmental matters or a guard dog, whatever you want to say in that sense.

Corey 56:36

And so all the long way to say, Zane, my

Corey 56:40

my advice normally would be you got a different job now. Yeah, yeah. You're walking in different crowds. You've got to act as though you are taking this equal balanced approach to everything. But I'm not sure that's what the prime minister's office is looking for. I think the Prime Minister's office might actually be looking for a bit of a harder-edge stance on this. This might be quite intentional policy to sort of start these quote-unquote fights. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying

Corey 57:08

trying to back up or bolster some of the outrage that the Alberta government had about this position, but it's

Corey 57:16

it's an interesting political strategy. It seems to me that you don't put him in a role like that unless you're willing to have the fight. And if you're willing to have the fight, I kind of think you might want the fight. Right.

Zain 57:28

Yeah, that's that's interesting. So you're doing it for those reasons. Carter, I want to ask you about Garneau and Carr. And it's you can talk about the specifics of both. And there's been a lot of rumors that Garneau is leaving cabinet or was not invited into cabinet because he's going to be taken on an ambassadorial position in France somewhere. Kind of strange considering an election was just six weeks ago and he got reelected. But my question is less about the specifics, but more about if you've ever dealt with or have advice on how do you put statesmen to pastor?

Zain 58:00

How do you let these very senior people who have been bedrocks of your party, who've been bedrocks of beyond the party, like have been quite literally statesmen? And I think Garneau, he could qualify as that in many ways, holding multiple portfolios, clearly having a very rich and textured career prior to politics. And then now we kind of learn that he isn't in cabinet. There's this two-step thing. I'm kind of curious if you've ever had to deal with or any insights or thoughts around how you do this. Dion actually had a very different treatment, as you saw, and as we all publicly saw from 2015 onwards, was kind of sent away and then sent packing in that order. But I'm kind of curious around conversations of how do you, you know, set statesmen easy or statespeople easy when you're trying to send them a message about the next generation or about their future and frankly, the direction you're trying to head into? to yeah

Carter 58:54

i mean we did it right away when uh allison redford came into government in 2011 she became the premier and and uh the silver fox uh mel knight from grand prairie had been energy minister uh i think he'd been oh boy how long he'd been like four years uh four years he'd been the minister of energy and we shuffled him out um and he was kind of done um and

Carter 59:19

and the reason for it it is that he was done right like he you know we needed to make space for new people he was going to retire at some point relatively soon and uh

Carter 59:29

uh we tried to to be as good to him as we could now you know we

Carter 59:35

tried not to make individual promises right well we're going to make you something right

Carter 59:40

we'll take care of you later but

Carter 59:41

but people hear a lot of different things when you talk to them and uh

Carter 59:45

uh people hear that they want to get a job or they want to have another gig or there's going to to be another life after being a cabinet minister and

Carter 59:51

and it's tough um and i'd say that we did metal night relatively well uh but cindy 80 was also another minister under redford who or under who was not a minister under redford i think that we did that one actually far more poorly um you know in part because i think that cindy was a more capable minister and she'd been in the tourism portfolio since, I think, the dawn of time. So it's

Carter 1:00:18

it's a very tricky thing to do. But ultimately, you need to put in the new blood. You need to reflect the new

Carter 1:00:27

tone of government. And these are the changes that need to be made. I do kind of mourn for Garneau, who I have always just thought of as one of the great people in politics. He's a really decent man who I

Carter 1:00:44

hope there is an ambassadorship or something for him in the future because he's just a really great man.

Zain 1:00:51

any thoughts on this conversation of where you've maybe seen it done well, not seen it happen so well, and just this overall concept of how do you switch gears when you've got some of these luminaries still hanging around within your party?

Corey 1:01:07

I don't actually have a lot of insight into that. Just based on the different organizations I've worked with, that's never been a big, big problem, right? It is interesting to see the liberal retirement

Corey 1:01:20

retirement plan for prominent cabinet ministers seems to be ambassadorships. You had McCallum and Dion and Garneau, or, you know, that's the rumor at least. So that's

Corey 1:01:32

that's sort of a gracious sunset in general. It's always knowing when it's your curtain call, but everybody's going to pick that a little bit differently. And, I mean, there is no formula here. here, people forget that John Diefenbaker, after he was leader of the conservatives, just

Corey 1:01:51

continued to be a backbench MP for the conservatives, basically up until his death. So, you

Corey 1:01:57

you know, there's many different models. There's many different things, and they largely depend on the person and what they want to do, what they're comfortable doing, and what you're comfortable pushing them to do.

Zain 1:02:07

Yeah, no, I appreciate that and appreciate the honesty saying that you haven't dealt with that in the past. We'll probably have a live wire situation situation on this podcast where we have to tell an aging luminary of the show to perhaps move on and indicate that his best days are behind him. So we'll get some training under our belt very shortly. He probably can't hear us. It's past his bedtime. Are we

Carter 1:02:26

we still doing this podcast or is it over yet?

Zain 1:02:29

I want to talk about one more conversation related to Cabinet. In fact, there's two, but I'll save one for next time. The two women that have been elevated in a significant Of course, Krista Freeland back, Melanie Jolie in foreign affairs, Anita Anand taking on defense. Your thoughts on both of those? And maybe I'll kind of put my spin on it, Carter. Tough positions. And of course, you know, elevating some of your top cabinet positions to be women, competent women, qualified women. But both departments in foreign affairs, Trudeau's fifth minister in the portfolio, not a very sunny waste time in foreign affairs for Canada. And then, of course, defense with all of the issues going on in there. So putting in two women, but maybe not necessarily setting up either one, I would argue, to necessarily succeed. Your thoughts on those two appointments for Jolie and Anand in the Trudeau cabinet? cabinet? I

Carter 1:03:28

think that the big thing for me is just watching how essentially the glass ceiling has been obliterated in cabinet at the federal level. You know, once Trudeau decided that he was going to have gender parity in the cabinet, that changed fundamentally the way that cabinet positions were aligned, or

Carter 1:03:49

or assigned, if you will. So it used to be, and perhaps Cindy Eady, who i earlier talked about was kind of an exact excellent example you know you broke through the glass ceiling and you got into the the cabinet room congratulations here's your tourism portfolio um you know that that type of lower level lower status position was associated with um you know you know we will let you through the through this glass ceiling but we will not let you have have uh the head of the table um and you

Carter 1:04:21

you know what you know matt you know margaret trudeau and kim campbell are kind of the exceptions to that rule but it was almost like well

Carter 1:04:30

well we let them be prime minister so we're obviously not misogynists obviously um but

Carter 1:04:36

but with trudeau and the way that he's approached things he's actually not putting women into positions where you

Carter 1:04:45

you know you put women woman minister. He's putting people into ministries where he needs strong people. And I would argue that all

Carter 1:04:56

all of the women on this cabinet right now, all of the women who are in the positions that they're in, have been targeted into those positions, not because they are women, but because they were the most capable people for that position in his mind. And I think that that's the next evolution six years later after he came in and said, because it's 2015. And

Carter 1:05:16

And now Now it's 2021 and he doesn't have to say anything. And I hope that that's where we are. I mean, and I'm saying this, you know, having just worked on a, you know, a woman running for mayor. Yeah, absolutely. It's the first mayor elected in Calgary in 100 and whatever years. But I

Carter 1:05:31

I don't think we ever ran her as a female candidate as much as we ran her as the best candidate.

Zain 1:05:37

Corey, your thoughts on the new positions for Anand and Jolie?

Zain 1:05:43

Yeah. As related to being set up to succeed? Do you feel like they're being set up to succeed in their two roles?

Corey 1:05:50

I mean, I think it's an interesting question. I don't know – I

Corey 1:05:56

don't really get the narrative that they're not set up to succeed in a sense. I

Zain 1:06:01

I guess the reason for that comment is the two trickiest ministries being swapped out, and it's a twofer for Trudeau, right? He puts in two

Zain 1:06:12

two women in those positions, but at the same time, they're like very tricky ministries that, you know, there's obviously a

Zain 1:06:19

a lot of significant work to be done, but are you setting up success in a meaningful way is the heart of the question.

Corey 1:06:28

I don't, there's been foreign affairs ministers who have been, their

Corey 1:06:32

their first ministry was foreign affairs, Bill Graham, I think of instantly in that sense. I sort of think the conversation is an

Corey 1:06:40

an artifact of a different time. Like, of course they're able to do the job. We've just spent so much time talking about the centralization of power in the prime minister's office. We've talked about the fact that these ministries are often split in so many different ways, and the deputy ministers have all of this power. I have, you know, any minister can fuck up. Any minister can underperform. I don't

Corey 1:07:03

don't have any reason to believe these ministers will fuck up or underperform at a higher level than any of the other people that are within the cabinet of Canada.

Zain 1:07:11

Carter, Corey's comment here has kind of reminded me of something, which is that he's mentioned earlier the leftward march of this cabinet and the direction of this Trudeau government, right? Even the joke around the NDP government, the first NDP government we've had.

Zain 1:07:25

Let's talk about some strategic advice to those that have been elected within this caucus. They either may or may not be in cabinet, but they're looking at this and saying, holy shit, like I'm a very different version of a liberal. I'm looking at this right now. I know that there's a government that there's an election maybe two years away, and

Zain 1:07:46

and they may or may not have leadership potential. But is this the time where we start to see a counterbalance to this leftward flank that is being kind of made the focal point in government? And if so, like, how are you kind of being that counterbalance in a respectful way? Because at some point, someone's got to have to be on the other side of this party to say, by the way, we're still a little bit of, you know, Bay Street, fiscal conservatism, you know, those sort of flanks are still what we're all about in some ways. Don't you or do you feel like we're – once again, it's a different era in many ways and the leftward march is just part of it?

Carter 1:08:21

I think the leftward march is as temporary as any other march that we've seen in politics. I mean Kretchen and

Carter 1:08:26

and Martin in 1993 grabbed on to Preston Manning's idea that it is the –

Carter 1:08:32

balancing the budget is the most important part of any government, right? And they were as enthusiastic really almost as Ralph Klein and Harris in Ontario. and and those those balance but that balance the budget era was the march to the right and now we see uh in part because the center and the right haven't grabbed on to to climate change haven't grabbed on to gender equity haven't grabbed on to some of these these big ideas um the right has given up that the center and the right has given up that the left is courting uh voters who are in in those spaces. And so you see a little bit of a switch. If I was the center-right candidate, the blue liberal, the red Tory of the Liberal Party, I'd be trying to, again, I'll return to my earlier talking point. I do believe the Liberal Party is closer to a leadership, closer to their next leadership than they were to their last leadership. So I'd be talking about trying to figure out who that candidate is that can carry the liberal brand as defined by their

Carter 1:09:45

their precursors, as opposed to Justin Trudeau. And I think that there'll be a market for that in the leadership. I'm just not sure who it is. Maybe it's Chrystia Freeland. I don't know how she relates to the

Carter 1:09:57

the leftward lean. Or maybe it's Mark Carney. Who knows?

Zain 1:10:02

Corey, is there any use having that counterbalance before the leadership to showcase that this party still is a big tent and that the leftward march might be the focus in terms of the agenda and the mandate? We've still got some of those, you know.

Zain 1:10:15

I'm kind of curious how you do that as a party and then both how you do that as the individual if you are that counterbalance force being like, fuck, I'm not a Trudeau liberal, but I'm part of the Trudeau liberal caucus.

Corey 1:10:27

So this is a, you've sort of touched on it, but this is a proud tradition of the liberals to have a left wing and a right wing. And historically, they've swapped back and forth. And that goes way, way back, right? You had Turner on the right wing of the party. And then well, before that, you had the first Trudeau on the left wing, and then Turner on the right wing, and then Chrétien on the left wing, and then Martin on the right wing. And

Corey 1:10:50

And it all sort of broke down in the 2000s for a bit with just everything sort of falling to shit. But even then, it was Dion on the left and then Ignatiev on the right. The trading did sort of seem to happen still there. And when those trades happen within the Liberal Party, can I tell you, Zane, as somebody who was quite active in the Liberal Party for many of those transitions, the purges are pretty ruthless and complete. right you're you're all of a sudden at a local board meeting and the entire board gets turned out by you know 50 young lawyers who show up and say we're the new board we're the paul martin board of calgary center right and that's just that's just sort of how the party rolls and so um it's an interesting question to me whether you

Corey 1:11:38

you can go too far with that and then all of a sudden those people who were turned out never come back they say i'm going to go find a different party

Corey 1:11:46

I would argue the risk of that is much lower with the current iteration of the conservative. Absolutely.

Carter 1:11:50

Absolutely. There's not any place to catch them.

Corey 1:11:53

Yeah. So in a funny way, I think that the liberals' leftward slide is a direct result of the conservatives' rightward slide. Because all of a sudden, their orbit, what they're catching before it becomes more palatable to go to conservatives, they can go a little bit more left. They can challenge a bit more to the NDP. That's how they can cobble their governments together. other in such a divided parliament as it is with such low percents allowing you to get within spitting distance of majority government so um we'll see that's the short answer the liberal party has a history of this but you

Corey 1:12:28

you you know you you see a trend for so long the

Corey 1:12:31

the trend is not destiny and it is quite possible that people will start to see themselves on the outs and maybe even if they're not voting conservative maybe they're not providing their efforts and their energy to the Liberal Party, and maybe that's ultimately what dooms the Liberal Party, not the risk of everybody in kind of the center fleeing to the Conservatives.

Zain 1:12:50

We'll leave that segment there. Let's move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, I do this for you. The whole podcast is for you. We start with you. On a scale of 1 to 10, what are you given the Trudeau cabinet in terms of a ranking? The scale starts at 1, just so you know, and then it goes up to 10, just so you know as as well it's

Carter 1:13:08

it's a c plus zane uh i think that it feels more like a last cabinet than a really robust cabinet and uh i think that the regional oversights will haunt him uh in some you know in the in the in the prairies for quite some time so

Zain 1:13:24

so what what number is that carter what number is that it

Carter 1:13:27

was a c plus zane what

Zain 1:13:29

what no and so that's a that's a zane

Carter 1:13:32

zane i think he

Zain 1:13:32

he answered the question

Carter 1:13:33

question yeah can we move on like yeah

Carter 1:13:35

you know this isn't this isn't a zane vehicle okay wow

Zain 1:13:39

wow okay you're gonna hold someone accountable for the first time in many years and this is what i get excellent uh cory thank you for thank you for saving me uh fucking idiot uh on a scale of one to ten what do you give it the trudeau cabinet i

Corey 1:13:52

i i think it needs improvement for sure cory

Zain 1:13:56

cory i'm gonna stick with you why why i'm sticking with you i don't know mainly because it's just the the format uh overrated

Zain 1:14:02

overrated or underrated the role of environment minister i don't even care who's in the position in 2021 the role of environment minister overrated or underrated based on all the conversations we've had uh

Corey 1:14:14

uh i would say it's overrated in the public discourse environment is an area of shared responsibility with the provinces so inherently that power is somewhat bracketed by the constitution and all of the authorities that the provinces naturally have And it's just become this symbol that is a little outsized of the authority of the environment minister. Now, that said, we've

Corey 1:14:37

big environmental programs that are reshaping our economy, changing our country, and the environment is very high on the list of concerns that Canadians have. The problem is it's just the authority rests elsewhere, whether that be the PMO or even finance, frankly, when we talk about things like a carbon tax. and um and it's it's not quite the ministry people think it is carter

Zain 1:14:59

carter the the ministry of environment overrated underrated in your mind underrated

Carter 1:15:04

underrated uh it turns out that the minister the federal minister of the environment just approved a uh springbank dam that's going to be built to help ease flooding concerns in calgary they also stopped the coal mining projects in in southern alberta so the you know in the southwest quadrant of our province uh and they're the the ones that are actually making sure that the environment uh partnership with the provinces isn't taken away by right-leaning provincial governments uh with money only on the brain without understanding the the ecological costs uh that some of this activity will cause carter

Zain 1:15:44

carter you're going with underrated i'm going to ask you another one overrated or underrated foreign

Zain 1:15:48

foreign affairs minister in

Zain 1:15:50

in 2021 i don't care who's in the position it is jolie but the position itself overrated underrated it's

Carter 1:15:56

it's canada itself right now that's not rated right so the if the minute if the foreign affairs minister is serving a country that is at the top of its game then

Carter 1:16:06

then canada's foreign affairs minister is a rock star um and we've seen rock star foreign affairs ministers out of this country um but and

Carter 1:16:17

and of course i'm going to bring up joe clark just to annoy ken bosinko um which is like a total win for me but

Zain 1:16:24

the like we said we do this for one listener at a time go ahead yeah this is uh you never know though listener you never

Carter 1:16:29

never know you never know when it's going to be you um but

Carter 1:16:32

but i think that because our status has slipped on the the world stage, the impact of the foreign affairs minister certainly has slipped as well.

Zain 1:16:43

Corey, same question to you. Foreign affairs minister as a position in 2021, overrated, underrated?

Corey 1:16:48

think Stephen's answer was really spot on. It's not so much that the role of the foreign affairs minister has devolved, it's that Canada's role has somewhat lessened

Corey 1:16:59

lessened relative to our peers. You know, it's a much more multilateral world now. There are OECD countries that we didn't think too much about 30 years ago that are now significant players. And it's

Corey 1:17:13

it's not necessarily a bad thing, can I say, right? It was certainly fun when we were part of this little G7. And it was certainly fun when after World War Two, I'm sure we had basically the only Navy left standing and we were like the third or fourth largest Navy in the world. And people thought Canada was cool in that sense but this more multilateral world's probably a more just world and we've just got to sort of find our place in it but inherently that role is going to be less important in a in a world like that in terms of media but it's going to be more important in terms of you know the connections that your your department has so it's less about the person more about the department cory

Zain 1:17:50

cory which streaming service do you want to pick up our uh adult cartoon pmo pals which streaming streaming service do you want to host this groundbreaking show?

Corey 1:18:02

Well, it to me feels like it's an Amazon Prime property because it doesn't sound very good. But it's quite possible I'll watch it accidentally while trying to find Pete the Cat for my children.

Zain 1:18:15

Carter, Corey's wrong, but for you, PMO Pals, groundbreaking work produced by the three of us, voiced by the three of us uh you know it's going to be excellent which streaming service can people find it on hbo

Carter 1:18:30

because it's going to have male nudity well

Corey 1:18:35

well like the real uh you know uh caucus does for the liberals so that's

Carter 1:18:40

nicely worked in nicely done the

Zain 1:18:43

the correct answer is cbc gem we got to get some of that canadian taxpayer grant

Zain 1:18:48

we'll leave it there that's a wrap on episode 949 night of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velja. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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