Episode 969: Draft Day

Zain 0:03

This is the strategist episode 969. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, we've got an announcement. Oh, it's a big, big deal. First of all, welcome back. But huge announcement. There's been a reason for us being off the proverbial airwaves. Stephen Carter, I'm not going to belabor the point. Give us a bit of a tease and then give us a bit of the news. news?

Carter 0:27

Well, I have to be a little bit careful here, as

Carter 0:31

as always, because, you know, Corey always makes me give away too much information. But 1997, I started working with a politician. And he's the first politician I worked with. And I actually started off carrying the bags for him in when I was in it when he was, he was leader. And that's how I started. And then I wound up doing the very first internet media

Carter 0:52

media conference, it failed miserably, we had two ADSL lines, He was in Montreal, and we had an ADSL line for video and an ADSL line for sound. Video completely failed. So the video conferencing stuff, this is 1997 we did that.

Corey 1:07

it worked so well that he's hiring you for this? Well,

Carter 1:10

Well, let Carter share the news. Let me tell my story. I just said we have news. Jesus Christ. When Alison Redford got elected, the very first premier that we met with was this premier.

Carter 1:26

And he had – unbelievably, they had a premier's residence that was entirely paid for by contractors, you know, who had government contracts. So in Quebec City, they had this premier's – that

Carter 1:37

that was the beginning of Sky Palace.

Corey 1:42

How many times did he meet with Mothers Against Drunk Driving? I

Carter 1:46

I don't think he did. I don't think – because it's Quebec. You don't need to worry about it as much. You know, they've got a social conscience out there.

Zain 1:53

Sounds like a very political thing to say. I don't think I can reconcile

Zain 1:57

that against your past comments on the podcast.

Carter 1:59

podcast. My roots go deep. And I also, you know, Jenny Byrne. Was it not you

Zain 2:03

you that told Quebec to go fuck themselves over Bill 21? Anyways, please. I'm just saying. Please go ahead, Carter. Yeah,

Carter 2:10

I did. I did say that. You were saying something

Zain 2:12

something about someone. Yeah, go ahead. So

Carter 2:14

So anyways, I need to follow Jenny Byrne's example. And

Carter 2:21

working on Pierre Palliev's campaign. campaign and as you know i would run him over in a tank if i had a tank so i have to do my bit and uh so

Carter 2:31

so i'm going to work on john anyways i'm going to work on a leadership campaign i'm going to work on a leadership campaign uh

Carter 2:38

uh to try and make sure um

Carter 2:40

um the pierre peliev does not win and so that that means i can't continue to do the podcast so um

Carter 2:47

um we've decided as a group that you two should carry on a little bit different than when fucking cory hogan screwed us uh in 2015 and went off to the government but you guys will continue on without me and i just wanted to say how much of a joy it's been to to do the podcast with you guys it's been it's been something i look forward to every

Carter 3:06

every thursday and sunday night sometimes um and

Carter 3:11

and uh i really do appreciate it and i think that we've we've uh we've done some good work together and i'm really grateful so So thank you very much for this time.

Corey 3:20

Well, likewise, buddy. It will not be the same without you. Although if your past track record is any kind of indication, we expect to see you back in three months or less. Well,

Carter 3:29

that's really, really fucking hurtful.

Carter 3:33

mean, I mean. I can't believe.

Carter 3:35

I mean, it's pretty fucking raw right now. Right. I had to go. I'm coming back and I'm just trying to find some fucking work. And now you guys are like, hey, you'll be back. What

Corey 3:46

I find most amazing, though, is that you worked for

Corey 3:49

for a year on a campaign and

Corey 3:52

then as a chief of staff, and that didn't stop you from this. No,

Carter 3:57

No, but things have changed. I mean, the hurly-burly has set a new target level, right? Like the curse of politics is now upon me. Before, there was no ethics that

Carter 4:07

that said that I couldn't continue to record the podcast. podcast and um you

Carter 4:14

know frankly i think that this is the right thing to do and so i'm going to do the right thing i'm going to go and uh i'm going to stand stand down from the podcast and uh you

Carter 4:24

you guys continue on and i hope i hope you find somebody who can fill my shoes uh maybe a guest host or rotating guest host we can you know but please don't ask jenny burn ever because you're working with Pierre Poliev.

Zain 4:39

Okay? Love you, Carter. I mean, it's been such

Zain 4:42

such a pleasure. Yeah.

Carter 4:44

you guys. Really appreciate it. It's just tough.

Zain 4:46

I mean, we joke a lot on this podcast, but it's

Zain 4:49

it's legitimately tough. No,

Carter 4:53

it's been a tough couple weeks, to be honest. To be honest, it's been a tough couple weeks. But I

Carter 4:57

I think this is a good opportunity for me and I have to take it.

Carter 5:00

So thanks, you guys. I'll talk to you soon.

Zain 5:02

Okay. Love you, Carter.

Zain 5:03

Love you, too. Bye now. out

Zain 5:08

like that he's gone we

Zain 5:09

we will figure out how we replace steven carter it will be now that he is gone uh very easy uh we are we

Zain 5:16

are open to any and all applications in fact you don't even need to apply uh a respiratory system a pulse that's fine we'll take you um and we're looking forward to having anyone cory uh you know now that he's gone um Do we want to talk about the Super Bowl articulately?

Corey 5:33

No, no, I don't. I mean, I didn't even watch the Super Bowl this year. So I think that actually I was kind of relying on him to be here to be sort of the guy in the middle to beat up on on this.

Zain 5:42

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. You know, it is true. We're missing him already. We're missing his lack of knowledge already. You know what, Corey? Here's what we're going to do. We're going to move to the headlines. It's Thursday. It is time for the headlines. Our first headline comes to us from the Hill. Still, U.S. Senate candidate who smoked blunt in ad burns Confederate flag in latest spot. Corey Hogan, the bar for political advertising, has been raised. Gary Chambers, a U.S. Senate candidate in Louisiana who went viral last month for smoking a blunt in a campaign ad, burned a Confederate flag while decrying restrictive voting laws in his latest video released on Wednesday. today. Corey, is this something we need to start embracing? The more graphic, the more explicit political videos and political ads? Does this need to be part of our political culture here in Canada? What do you think?

Corey 6:31

Well, so it's a little bit mental. And it's already always been a bit part of politics. But you seem to get this sense that everybody is trying to one up each other on this total shock value that they can then drive into kind of national numbers and get get all sorts of fundraising that they can then funnel into their local campaign. But like,

Corey 6:48

I don't know, I haven't spent a lot of time in Louisiana. I'm not even sure I've ever been to Louisiana, now that I say these words.

Corey 6:55

Still feels tonally off from Louisiana. Like, let's just say, based on my limited knowledge, that perhaps this is not somebody who's cruising into Congress in that particular seat.

Zain 7:07

Yeah, no, it's interesting. I mean, I like the fact that he's so explicit. He He gave a really interesting interview to, I believe, a radio station where he was very articulate about voting rights. I think he's like clearly making a name for himself. But this is the nature of U.S. politics. You have to kind of put yourself out there in some way, shape or form to try to win a primary, to try to win your spot in contention. So I think that's that's quite interesting. I want to move very quick. Hold

Corey 7:34

I think we need to acknowledge that this is exactly what George Washington had in mind when when America was set up. So now

Zain 7:40

now this is I mean, this is true to George. hashtag crew to george let's move it on to our next headline our next headline comes to us from fox news tucker carlson says how long until canadian-style tyranny comes to america well cory hogan you might have a bit of insight in terms of how long uh canadian-style tyranny ships its way to to america laid on us what what happened it's

Corey 8:01

it's our second largest export after oil so i you know i think um they can look forward to it very soon you know this is and this is what what you're alluding to i think we ran we created a bit of a meme about this where people could kind of visually fill in the blanks and it kind of went bonkers it was pretty good you people are pretty funny out there it was

Zain 8:18

was a pretty good meme some excellent tweets of tucker carlson with an over the shoulder green screen that we put out there people inserting all sort of items on that green screen canadian cartoons bagged milk uh flare airlines of course ketchup chips um yeah i mean that would be that would be atrocious we would have to actually have a national apology over that carter what do you think oh

Corey 8:41

yeah he's not here anymore i

Zain 8:43

just it's just it's just ah we miss him already we really miss him already um it's it's really unfortunate that he's uh yeah wow that was that was a much uh much sadder moment uh well you know cory like like you said hopefully in less than three months he finds himself um anything else i had to add to tucker carlson and his american style tourney i actually do want to talk to you about this is this the The story blowing up, and we'll get into all the details, folks, but the story blowing up in the U.S., how

Zain 9:13

what does that mean to us here? I don't think I've seen a story that has been Canadian-rooted that has gotten this much international press in the last half decade. Am I overstating that? This seems to be everywhere, and especially picked on by, you know, the conservative media in the United States. You know, MP Lassman yesterday in the House kind of had a back and forth with Trudeau. We'll talk about that. Minutes later, she was on Fox News, you know, talking about that. What do you kind of make of this in terms of our talent, our politics making its way into the United States? It's usually been a one-way street. Yeah,

Corey 9:48

Yeah, well, I hope it ends abruptly. I don't actually like being kind of the subject of all of this American commentary. First of all, it's coming from a place of total

Corey 9:58

total ignorance. I mean, that's given if you watch it. It's true of a lot of the coverage of Canada right now. It's really weird to see your country reflected back to you through the international media. And it does give me reason to think that perhaps all international media coverage is utter bullshit, right? Like just true, utter bullshit. So the thing

Corey 10:20

thing that I can't help but sort of like draw

Corey 10:24

draw a parallel to is, you know, did you ever see that episode of The Simpsons where Australia was really offended by America and they're sort of running through wine? It's because there was this Australia craze in the 80s and then America just moved on and they went on to the next thing. Totally,

Corey 10:37

Totally, totally. It has that feel. Like, I would say, if you are a certain bend in Canada, maybe a conservative who really wants to be part of this American conversation, don't get too used to it. In two weeks, they'll go on to the next thing. I just sort of ping pong from issue of the week to issue of the week. And the worst case scenario is they're still talking about us because it feels like we are like six weeks of coverage away from US senators declaring an invasion of this country. So, you know, I think they're going to move on. That would be my guess.

Zain 11:08

Let's leave the headlines there. Let's move it on to our next segment. Corey, we're going to take the entire rest of the show on this next segment. The next segment, the draft for democracy. I don't think I planned this well because we need two people to have a draft. But we'll figure this out. Here's what I want to do. I have got a list of all of the folks. Well, for fuck's

Carter 11:32

That did not work at all.

Carter 11:36

just got fired from the Sheree campaign.

Carter 11:42

appears they did not want a pre-launch on a podcast so anyway

Corey 11:48

was a bad one for us to live stream that's for sure that

Carter 11:50

that was a mistake yeah anyways

Carter 11:52

anyways thanks guys um thanks

Carter 11:55

thanks for hey thanks for having me back glad

Corey 11:58

glad to be just we just didn't change the zoom password i mean i think you're giving us a lot more credit okay

Carter 12:05

anyways let's get going what's the deal well

Zain 12:07

well Well, talk about perfect timing, Carter. You just came back right on time. I mean, no one's ever said that to you before. No, usually,

Carter 12:14

usually, and generally speaking, these aren't my choices when I come back. Nice re

Zain 12:19

re-entry, Carter. By the way, two words you'd never hear on Flair Airlines. Now, just, here's what we're doing, Carter. We're doing a draft for democracy. We're taking all of the characters, all of the politicians, the leaders, that have been involved in the saga for the last 20-some-odd days, and we're doing a draft. Who would you take to save democracy? Who would you have on your squad? Who would you want amongst the cast of characters to help you get out of this situation? And then we'll use that, as we often do on this show, as a jumping-off point to talk about some things. And there's a lot of things to talk about. It's kind of a way to keep things neatly organized so we don't miss some of them. But I've given you the list of characters. We're going to do a snake draft. Carter, do you know what a snake draft is? Can I count on you to know the one thing in terms of what a snake draft format looks like?

Carter 13:13

I'm going to be honest with you. I have no idea what we're doing.

Zain 13:16

Corey, do you notice? I literally explained all. Corey, what is a snake draft? A

Corey 13:19

A snake draft is where when you get to the end of the draft order, you go back in reverse. So you basically get two draft picks in a row if you're either first or last draft pick. Since there's two of us, I guess that we both get two picks in a row. No,

Zain 13:31

No, so the way it works, Carter, the way snake draft works with only two people is that Corey goes. And then because Corey just went, Corey goes again. And then because he just went, Corey also goes again. And then at the end, it's just all of Corey. See, that's what I planned. And then you fucking showed up again, Carter. This is not what we needed. Well, I'm

Carter 13:46

I'm confused, but this is not unusual. So let's just go forward. So let me just say,

Corey 13:52

Zane, right off the top, kind of a weak draft year. Yeah, it's

Zain 13:56

it's a weak draft class.

Zain 13:56

It's a weak draft year. I

Carter 13:58

I don't know if Dean French is in it. I mean.

Zain 14:01

Let me give folks the list. We got Trudeau. We got Freeland. We got Skippy, Pierre Pagliavera. We got Ford. We got Jason Kenney, Jim Watson, the fired police chief, slowly. We got the RCMP as the collective unit. We got Francois Legault, Maxime Bernier, Marco Mendocino, also known as?

Zain 14:23

And we got Dean French. And if you don't know that last name, we will explain it to you. Those are the people you are selecting in this draft to save democracy. in this perilous moment uh as the trucker convoy continues is dismantled but the energy seal still seems to go on uh here's what what happens we're gonna have three draft picks you guys will go back and forth the final two i'm gonna let you pick uh for the other guy so carter you're gonna pick okay cory's final two and cory you're gonna pick carter's final two the purpose is to draft a team that you feel like in best field that you can best field to save democracy here to save

Zain 15:04

to save democracy i mean it's it's it's a low bar but we're gonna do it and we're gonna make it work and the only way we make it work is

Zain 15:10

is we let the new guy go first steven carter so congratulations you

Corey 15:15

lost all your seniority this is

Carter 15:17

is great i'm gonna open up with the person who um your first draft pick steven carter

Carter 15:24

uh i'm opening up the uh the carter team is prepared to uh is pleased to announce a person who stood up at the podium uh when announcing the emergencies emergency measures act or whatever the hell it's called and uh made canadians feel better made canadians feel strong in that moment and that person is of course christia freeland so i will take christia freeland with our first draft pick thank

Zain 15:47

thank you let's let's talk about christia freeland and let's talk about her in in the confines of she's

Zain 15:55

she's clearly been around but she she almost made all of that emergencies act um

Zain 16:00

um she almost had the majority of the airtime laying it out talking about the finances etc cory carter like this is an extension of what we've seen over the past year or so but in a time of crisis in a time of uh you know very large proportions where people were calling for trudeau's leadership they get trudeau but they They also get a lot of Freeland. Your thoughts on that?

Corey 16:23

Well, she would have been my first draft pick, too. So I guess the consensus number one here. And again, it really is more about, as this thing goes on, I think it's a body count. People are just looking at who's screwed up the least when they're making these decisions. But Freeland did exude confidence on this. She certainly had a command of her file. There's just a way she carries herself, too, on matters like this, where she comes in with a big stack of papers and is like, okay, here's what we're going to do. that, I mean, looks like an adult in a room that increasingly looks full of children. So I think that was a big part of it. And also it is the sparing use of her that is to her benefit. We're not mad

Corey 17:02

mad at her, I guess is the best thing I can say about it here. And she talked about, you know, the FinTrack rules, and she talked about some of the consequences these people would find. And, you know, it's an interesting thing because the federal government looked so weak

Corey 17:16

for for many weeks here and um and then freeland comes in and it's like oh yeah they're in charge of money money's a pretty big thing and all of a sudden the whole situation feels a little bit different right like you

Corey 17:31

you shit they can't get to their banks anymore like it was such a concrete step that only the federal government could do it kind of in some ways empowered the federal government again so i think that's this is my summary of why she was my number one pick too Carter, give me your rationale. Is it similar to Corey's here?

Carter 17:47

Yeah. I mean, I think that the quiet competence that she brings has to be the starting point. But then the second point is, OK,

Carter 17:56

OK, now you've run out in the Emergencies Act. Great. Whatever. What does that mean? And she steps up and she's like, bam,

Carter 18:02

bam, bam, bam. This is what it means. This is what it means. This is what it means. And each thing it was like, oh, that's a real consequence. Oh, that's a real consequence. consequence oh and so again it wasn't just this you know and i've derided trudeau from day one about his tone and his tenor and when he speaks and it just sounds so forced and so fake and she comes in and she doesn't sound forced she doesn't sound faked she just comes in and she delivers it boom boom boom boom and each piece um stronger than the last from my point of view of something that was actually going to make an impact for Canadians.

Zain 18:41

That's interesting. Corey, your first pick, who are you taking off the board

Zain 18:47

between Trudeau, Pierre, Ford, Kenny, Watson, the former police chief, slowly, the RCMP, Legault, Bernier, Mendocino, and one Dean French?

Corey 18:54

Well, assuming that Stephen won't trade me his drafted first pick for all of my future picks in this draft. No,

Carter 19:00

No, I will not do

Corey 19:01

do it. You know, I guess I'm going to have to go with Ford.

Corey 19:04

With Ford? With Ford, because when I think about the rest of that list, and I think about what's sticking to who and why, Doug Ford, I would say is exceeding expectations. There's every reason in the world to believe Doug Ford should be one of the main kind of like, shitheels on the list here who everybody is mad at, but somehow he's managed to keep not entirely, but more than he deserves under the radar on this particular thing, right? right? He's the premier of Ontario. He controls the jurisdictional space that you most need to clear this out. He somehow has gotten away with, I think not to the people of Ottawa, but to many rest of Canadians and even other Ontarians, of sort of pretending like Ottawa is not his problem, like Ottawa is somehow somebody else's problem. It's the federal capital, so it's the federal government's

Zain 19:52

government's problem. Kind of like your federalist city, as you were explaining about D.C. last last episode yeah yeah

Corey 19:55

yeah so um you've got to give him credit like he he knows how to sort of navigate the blame game on this one and minimize his exposure so uh look i this entire draft i'm sort of taking in uh if

Corey 20:08

if they were using their powers for good instead of evil who would you want to have on board and and doug ford has shown a deft touch for dealing with this matter in terms of of sloughing off blame that is rightly his interesting

Zain 20:20

interesting so from a political what cory i'm I'm going to stick with you for a second. What part of it, in

Zain 20:25

in terms of the reason or the rationale you took him first in this sense, was that he declared that state of emergency? What part of it was that, you know, he was on side with the federal government in the usage of the Emergencies Act, which, by the way, other conservative premiers across the country were not? Talk to me about those two things in terms of how they factored into you selecting Ford. And was that that good strategy on his part you think well

Corey 20:50

i think so i think in some ways it's a bit of game theory right if if uh if you are the only conservative premier that doesn't do it it's noteworthy and he's got an election coming up and he's got to think about what's popular in a sense that even jason kenney with an election a year away doesn't right and it's this is popular you look at the polling and two-thirds of canadians are done with the convoy now that

Corey 21:12

that means a third aren't and that's a shockingly high number and when you start looking at the regional breakdowns I bet you they get pretty scary. But Doug Ford has, you know, has put his finger in the air. He's seen which way the wind is blowing and he's sort of managed to ride that. And again, he

Corey 21:28

he shouldn't be getting off as clean on this at all. Like, Justin Trudeau is getting so much of the blame right now. but

Corey 21:35

in terms of like ability to have dealt with this sooner it

Corey 21:39

it kind of goes up the jurisdictions right we'll get to by i guess probably not ever drafting some of these ottawa characters right but when they couldn't step in it was absolutely within the provincial government's power to step in with the provincial police and he he kind of didn't at least not in the ottawa context he did in other parts of the province and and somehow it's not sticking to him at least not in the way that you would imagine it should. Carter,

Zain 22:04

Carter, how has he gotten away with it? How has he put himself in this position? Frankly, as a more foundational question, do you agree with Corey that he deserves to be drafted so high?

Carter 22:12

Yeah, I think he would have been my next pick too because he came out and he didn't play petty politics. He didn't say, you know, I'm not going to support this because it wasn't my idea, which is generally speaking, you know, how the conservatives have approached it, how Jason Kenney has approached it. He said, yes, I support this. Let's solve this problem. And he looks pragmatic. He looks like, if not a leader, I mean, not every moment of leadership needs to be, I

Carter 22:41

I am leading, right? Like I am the one who is actually leading. This is something opposition leaders and premiers could stand to learn.

Carter 22:48

Sometimes leadership is being the next person into the group. So

Carter 22:52

So the first person says, this is where we're going. The second person in is the actual leader. There was a video, a viral video about this, I don't know, five, six, seven hundred years ago when viral videos still mattered and there wasn't TikTok. But, you know, the idea was that the second person into the group was just as important as the first person. That was the person who signaled to the group, we are going to follow. And Doug Ford was the guy who went second in. He said, yes, I support this. Yes, we're going to solve this. And he's not solving it, but he's not getting tarnished by it. And I think that that partnership between Trudeau, Freeland, and Ford actually is working in Ontario.

Zain 23:35

Corey, you often talked about in the corporate sense, the leading edge versus the bleeding edge situation. Do you feel like that's what what happened here with with Ford in some ways to Carter's point?

Corey 23:45

Well, not really. I mean, I guess I get the metaphor and the idea that he came in second to Stephen's point. But he

Corey 23:52

he was second, but kind of first, like he was first to the premiers to come in. And what Stephen is saying is he, you know, he stood up and he said, Yeah, this is this good. This is fine. This is what we need to do. Willing to work with the federal government on this. I think we do need to acknowledge and like, let's not go nuts, patting Ford on the back.

Corey 24:11

Ford needed to do this. He acted

Zain 24:13

acted very late. He acted very

Zain 24:37

So he's shifted blame. He's maybe gotten a political win, whether it was first or second. He's kind of come in with the value of being kind of on the leading and not bleeding edge, so to speak, not getting the cuts, so to speak, that Trudeau has. What does he need to do going forward? Because he can't just sit on his hands. Or can he, Carter? Like, can Ford sit on his hands now that the federal government has said, fuck it, we'll make this our problem?

Carter 25:07

I'm going to use Jason Kenney as a great example, right? Jason Kenney didn't do anything to get rid of the Coutts blockade. That was done by the RCMP.

Carter 25:15

But Jason Kenney gets to sit there and say, see, we didn't need the Emergencies Act or whatever the hell it was. No, you needed to arrest 13 people with guns and everybody else went, holy shit, this isn't the protest we thought it was. We're out of here. The people who did that and not getting too far ahead of myself and hope you'll allow me there are my next pick, which is the RCMP. they're

Carter 25:35

they're the ones who cleared out coots and Jason Kenney didn't have to do a fucking thing and he looks like he's in control of the province when clearly he wasn't in control of the province until the RCMP took the action that they did, put themselves at risk and arrested 13 people who were plotting to hurt RCMP officers and others and then when regular quote unquote regular protesters saw the severity of what they were involved in, they all packed up and went home because they didn't think that this was the type of protest that they were involved in. So from my point of view, you know, Ford looks great because he, you know, Ford and Jason are in the same spot. Don't act and you still look good. The provincial governments are relatively powerless. The federal government, daddy's come in to clean it up or mommy, depending on what you want to do with your gender terms. But in they come, and now they're going to clean things up again.

Zain 26:36

Corey, I want to get your take on Carter's second pick, the RCMP. Carter, your team so far, Freeland and the RCMP. Corey, what do you think of that as that second pick, and even some reaction to what you heard from Carter in terms of what they did, their actions? And I've got some follow-up questions on the RCMP front, unsurprisingly.

Corey 26:52

Well, so, you know, I'm of two minds. This is higher than I would have drafted the RCMP. Maybe you draft the RCMP this high if you can wave away their college year where all they did was was was drink and fuck or something like that i mean when they

Carter 27:04

they ignored the ambassador bridge problem they ignored the coots problem you know for the first two and a half weeks yeah that wasn't the best yeah

Corey 27:12

ambassador bridge a little different because that's in ontario and different yeah

Corey 27:15

they're not they're not the provincial police there but yeah like there was kind of this sense of ignoring and maybe that's not even fair because obviously there were guns at coots and obviously there's tactical considerations that need to pull them down um but then even on the clearing out the hugging and whatnot and

Zain 27:31

and i think in general how did you process that you know often i mean i didn't have a yeah

Corey 27:35

yeah okay so i didn't have a big problem with it can i just say late

Corey 27:40

well look i think that you know people can rightly say hey they're treating these protesters differently than they would treat other protesters maybe true but actually that's how i would kind of prefer they treat all protesters and all of the people in this tense moment and so i have a hard time saying like no be shitty to them, right? Like, that's not actually how I want my police force to act. So hopefully, you know, we can see that kind of sort of sympathy and compassion more generally, because I think we do have a big gap between policing and the police right now. And it's become quite a problem. But to get back to my main point about why I wouldn't draft the RCMP this high, it's

Corey 28:16

it's that. I think the RCMP for the first couple of weeks, I

Corey 28:20

I mean, you had people here in Alberta, and I'll just talk about our experience here saying people who hate jason kenney right

Corey 28:27

who have said well maybe jason kenney's got a point about needing an alberta police force because what the fuck are these guys doing right you

Corey 28:33

you had people saying see it's just evidence that the rcmp they're not on our side they're bastards and i just think that there was a lot of poison that was put into the system and it really eroded the rcmp's brand what

Corey 28:46

what i think is interesting about carter's pick and the reason like i wouldn't i

Corey 28:51

wouldn't like crash it on the draft boards or anything like that is that if you're talking about an actual draft to save democracy as you put it there right

Corey 29:00

it's a pretty important component having policing in hand and and there's no comp for me to for

Corey 29:05

for me to draft at this point so i think that well like the ottawa police i guess fucking hooray coming up but uh but yeah like this is this is an organization that has not performed particularly well the the past couple of weeks, but I think is going to be essential in kind of a grander resolution.

Zain 29:24

Carter, I want to get your take. You know, often people don't, I text you guys every now and then about how you should process something. And this is kind of an extrapolation of that. Like, in good faith, I don't know how to process the RCMP incident in Coutts with the hugging and the handshaking and being there for the national anthem. Part of me is like, what the actual fuck? They would never do this to people that look like me or people that were black or indigenous, religionists right in a similar protest like they just wouldn't i can i agree with you and

Zain 29:50

and the other part of me is like maybe this is a de-escalation strategy and maybe this is what they're trained to do like how did you process it carter like i'm like in good faith like i'm not trying to like troll anyone on their perspective on this which is by the way the nature of like our social media on this particular issue i found to be like you're either you know on side or get the fuck off like there's no middle ground but carter how are you processing this one it

Carter 30:12

it looked to me like the the protesters went up to the police and hugged them.

Carter 30:16

And I think that, so it depends on who's the instigator. And I don't really know because all we ever saw was the line of people hugging people, right? And so who

Carter 30:24

who was the instigator? And if the instigator is the protesters,

Carter 30:28

protesters, then the police have a couple of choices. They can say, no, I'm sorry, put their hand up and say, no, I'm sorry, push them away. Or they can turn their backs or they can just give them a hug.

Carter 30:39

And so I'm choosing to say that I think that it was, You know, the protesters going over and giving a hug to the police and the police made the choice, the de-escalation choice of giving them a hug. And I've seen all kinds of de-escalation choices. Even here in Calgary, we see de-escalation choices every day when without parade permits, without protest permits, the police enable these folks to protest, to march on our streets. You know, the police march in front of them. They have their horses out. It looks like they're all very supportive and all of that. that well you

Carter 31:14

know what's the other choice right the other choice is to stand your ground and say no you're not leaving this ground you're going to you know we don't want that either so i think that i'm i'm tending towards uh giving the rcmp a pass on this um because

Carter 31:29

because i think that i don't understand enough about the circumstances and it's one of those situations that we didn't see the full clip we saw the middle of the clip cory

Corey 31:39

yeah so i agree with everything steven said at At least that's how I interpreted it, and that's how it sort of ran through. But the reason beyond that why I am in this limited case going to say I don't think the RCMP were out there kind of showing solidarity is that like

Corey 31:55

like the day before, they arrested people with guns who were plotting murder of the RCMP. And in fact,

Corey 32:01

fact, one semi tried to drive into an RCMP vehicle. vehicle there there's not really a way that i can make in my mind like a reconciliation of of a police force being cool with that so i i think in many ways it was like yeah okay let's de-escalate let's do this thing and and frankly the fact that i don't believe that that's the approach they would take with other groups of protesters is is that's the shame like that's the disgrace the idea that uh that

Corey 32:27

that they would let uh you know i don't even know what to say about that emotions get the better themselves their racism get the better of themselves whatever it is but but that's the decision to kind of be like i'm pissed at you but i don't want to escalate this is actually what i kind of hope for my police force cory

Zain 32:44

cory it's back to you with your second pick you've got doug ford on your your draft team carter's got freeland the rcmp left on the board trudeau pierre kenny watson the fire chief legault bernie mendocino and dean french and i will say that after the the second pick by one cory hogan we're gonna have a tranche of new prospects added to the board uh for for the third to the fifth pick so cory go with your second and it'll add some additional prospects to the board this

Corey 33:12

this is this is not how the draft works

Corey 33:20

i'm gonna do it i'm gonna make the pick everyone's gonna be mad about it's pierre pauliev oh

Zain 33:24

oh really god we're four picks in and justin trudeau still on the board but i'm going going to let

Zain 33:30

let you explain this shit away go ahead sure

Corey 33:35

what's what's he trying to do right now

Corey 33:38

he's trying to lead a conversation he's trying to change narratives uh and if you even just kind of narrow it to the conservative party of canada all

Corey 33:47

all of a sudden the conservative party of canada is where polyev was two weeks ago if you look outside the conservative party of canada the conservative movement more broadly conservatives are where he was two weeks ago he has managed to It just sees a certain portion of the population and get them to see the world exactly as he sees it. Like we talk about –

Corey 34:06

you can lead in a bad way. And I said at the top that like I'm going to take this draft in the sense of like if

Corey 34:14

if everybody was using their powers for good instead of evil. And

Corey 34:17

And this is the pick I really want to underline that on, right? He has managed to galvanize a certain group of individuals towards a certain worldview and a certain action. And he's raised his own star with that group of individuals significantly. I mean, there was this thing, there was this semi that had like a Pierre Polyev for prime minister banner on the back.

Zain 34:37

back. I think it was

Corey 34:38

was Usain who said, maybe it wasn't, maybe it was Twitter who said like, somewhere, you know, Bernier just shed a tear or something to that effect, right?

Corey 34:47

Like, these are his lunatics. Now they are Pierre Polyev's lunatics, right?

Corey 34:54

you know, there's really something to that. there's really something to that there's something to the fact that in the middle of all of this madness which is deeply unpopular with huge swaths of the population you have somebody like jenny burn being like yeah i'm gonna go work on his campaign like there is something in the water over on the conservative side

Zain 35:10

like highly credible it's fucking wild

Corey 35:12

wild to me yeah it's fucking wild to me but if you're talking about like just ability to bend reality to his will he's probably the highest on the list and it's probably only the venom i feel for some of the actions he's taken and then skipped him at, you know, fourth pick here.

Zain 35:27

Carter, let's give Corey that charitable benefit of the doubt, underlining that if people were using their powers for good, I actually like that frame because it has more honest conversation. React to him picking Pierre, Skippy.

Carter 35:41

I'm not a Skippy fan.

Carter 35:44

I think that goes without saying. I think he's a horrible person who says things that are horrible and stood up with the, you know, has this Trumpian skill of standing in one place on one day and the next day, moving away from it and saying, basically, I wasn't there. It wasn't my thing. I didn't do it. This is a guy who stood for the Freedom Convoy. It's him and Candace Bergen stood for the Freedom Convoy, right? They were standing, you know, they met with the truckers. They took time. They're the ones meeting with people saying, you know, that are saying, hang trudeau and are advocating for the dissolution of a democratically elected government they're

Carter 36:25

they're they're fine with these people um cory's

Carter 36:28

cory's point is really good he

Carter 36:30

he is doing the job he is bringing together the conservative movement this

Carter 36:35

this is my great fear is that he brings together the conservative movement um him and jenny burn are are a strong team and the moves that they're making right now to to sew up this leadership before it even starts um this is a guy who has no um no

Carter 36:53

no problem uh telling us one story one day and then telling us another story the next and i think that that's an issue but regardless

Carter 37:01

regardless of what i think um

Carter 37:04

he he has an unbelievable power right now hey

Zain 37:08

hey cory i want to let you jump in can i can i paraphrase what you're saying so i can understand it so pierre you're picking him because he's doing what a guy running for the leadership of the conservatives should be doing which is bridging divides and galvanizing the core is that is that fair

Zain 37:26

fair to say sort

Corey 37:27

sort of i mean as you say it like that it makes me feel gross but no

Zain 37:31

no i'm genuinely trying to

Corey 37:33

like i guess what i would say and the way i would put it it is you

Corey 37:37

know he is think

Corey 37:39

think about it in terms of a general zane i guess that's what i would say right you can you can look at a general like macarthur and say brilliant general right and he and he worked for the allies you

Corey 37:51

you can look like a general like rommel say brilliant general piece

Corey 37:54

piece of shit nazi right yeah yeah

Corey 37:57

and now i'm not actually drawing that extreme of a parallel here But my point is you can use a skill set for whatever kind of ends are out there, but you can't sort of deny that Pierre is a skilled

Carter 38:13

Well, I can, but this is a different conversation for a different day.

Carter 38:17

He's doing well in this moment. I

Zain 38:19

I want to talk about Pierre a bit more. Carter, what does he need to do going forward? What

Zain 38:24

What does he need to do? Yeah, your strategy for Pierre.

Zain 38:28

Let's move out of the draft for a second. it your strategy for peer you're helping jenny right um your other gig didn't work out so you're helping jenny now um you know what is is

Zain 38:38

the strategy here to lock it up before it begins do they throw any bone to the pc wing of this party do they try anything to make that what are you thinking right now in the throes of living in this crisis but also running a leadership race um

Carter 38:55

there are two schools of thought in conservative land One school of thought is that the reason that they don't win is because they don't move enough to the middle. They don't recognize where the middle is. And because of that, they

Carter 39:05

they are unable to win. The other school of thought is they don't win because they're not true conservatives. The

Carter 39:11

The Canadians are true conservatives. And if you put forward a true conservative brand, Canadians will move to. And I think that Jenny Byrne and Pierre Palliev believe this and have chosen that this is the path that they're going to take. because they are just going to double down on being, you know, Pierre Pelliev is Pierre Pelliev. He's finance. He's taxes. He's reducing government spending. He's cut, cut, cut. And you know what? He looks like that. And he's right

Carter 39:43

right wing. And so if he's just allowed, if they let Pierre be Pierre, then everything will be fine. And the way that they justify it is they say, we let Harper be Harper and look at all the great things that we achieved then.

Carter 39:57

I don't think Harper was that far right wing. Others will argue with me. But compared to Pierre Palliev, he

Carter 40:03

he wasn't that far right wing. Pierre

Carter 40:05

Pierre Palliev is a totally different level. And so, yes, the best strategy for them is fuck

Carter 40:09

fuck the progressive wing.

Carter 40:12

That's how you get votes. That's how you win elections. Go conservative. Be conservative. conservative no more uh coddling the center if you're really conservative they will come to you look at what happened with jason kenney you

Carter 40:25

you know 2019 he runs as a true blue conservative he wins a massive majority right

Carter 40:30

right look at stephen harper you

Carter 40:32

you know successful strong i can't remember the word strong blah

Zain 40:40

strong stable conservative majority that's

Carter 40:41

that's what it was cory

Zain 40:43

you know in the past you've talked about i remember i made you do do a devil's advocate thing during the uh just before the election about the people's party of canada and i think a point you made has stuck with me since then which was that you were kind of glad that the people's party of canada existed that you yeah i'm paraphrasing your words but you ultimately said remember you were like this is actually good that the crazies have a home in their own little vessel to the right that they're not taking over the mainstream and this was even before the aaron o'toole blue shift to the pc flank of the party during the election And

Zain 41:13

does Pierre-Paul Lierre just blow that up?

Corey 41:18

To be determined, maybe. It certainly puts a giant hole in that particular theory if all of a sudden it looks like the PPC rather than being a place where the more extreme elements can find a home and it doesn't kind of, quote

Corey 41:33

quote unquote, pollute the membership base of one of the major national parties. is if instead everybody looks over it wistfully and says, God, I really want that 12%, that 6%, whatever percent it is. I'm just going to be more like this guy. That's really problematic to me. And it's funny because I

Corey 41:52

I worry that's what's happened. It's almost become seen as a prize. Like, look, we're only three points behind the liberals. And if we had their 10 points in the latest poll, we'd be seven points above the liberals. So we've just got to grab them. I'm going to grab them. We got to go to the right and we can hold the center because these other guys, they just don't like Trudeau or whatever.

Corey 42:12

I don't actually buy everything

Corey 42:15

everything Stephen said, though. You know, this

Corey 42:17

notion of like, if you just offer Canadians conservative values, they'll be more conservative. I don't know that that's what

Corey 42:22

what the Jenny Burns and the Pierre Polievs think necessarily. I don't. I think they think that what they need is a strong leader with a clear vision and, you know, kind of like a conviction. conviction but that that conviction

Zain 42:35

conviction is like it's authentic and it's

Zain 42:38

but it's the conviction

Corey 42:39

conviction that's important it's the authenticity that's important not the conservatism that's important now they're conservatives and they want to be able to sell their vision in the best way possible but i think that uh you know that people can read polls people understand that this country is a little bit more progressive than the united states and all of that they understand that they want to change that for sure but i

Corey 42:58

i don't think it's that they're they're under a belief that there's this secret conservative majority in Canada.

Zain 43:04

That they felt like the ales of past leaders, Scheer and certainly O'Toole, was that no one knew who they really were. They kind of like, they molded and they folded. Couldn't

Corey 43:16

them. Inauthentic politicians. They just want someone with a strong vision. Carter,

Zain 43:19

Carter, what do you make of that? What do you make of the fact that Pierre Polyarif could be a runaway train, not all based on authenticity and sincerity sincerity and conviction of vision and policy, but for a lot of people could build a first and second circle based almost solely on that rather than conservatism, quote unquote.

Carter 43:40

I don't know. He doesn't strike me as a leader in that fashion, right? I don't think of him that way. Sorry, what does he strike

Zain 43:46

strike you as? What does he strike you as then?

Carter 43:49

You know, I mean, that's how I think of him. And I'm biased. You know, You're asking me to throw away my biases, and I think that we try and do that on the show here. But I'm

Carter 44:03

unable to separate myself from the bias that I bring around Pierre Pelletier. I've known him since like 2000, I think, 1999.

Carter 44:17

a childish politician. He was a childish politician then. He's a childish politician now. So he is who he is. and he believes that politics should be done in a certain way, and he does them that way. He's very good at it, to Corey's point. Corey's point when drafting him is he's very good. Corey's not wrong.

Corey 44:36

I'm going to add a couple picks on the board, but before I do that— Because we've only got nine more to go, and we've been doing this for 30

Corey 44:42

minutes. No, no, no. There's only six

Zain 44:43

six more to go. Why do you care about the time? It's a free show. People get a free show, Corey. It's excellent.

Zain 44:49

Carter, on your team, Freeland and the RCMP. Corey, on your team, Ford and Pierre-Paulie Everett. Man, that's quite a team, Hogan. Here's what I'm adding. I'm adding the counterbalances to the board. So in addition to Trudeau, Kenny Watson, the fire chief, slowly, Legault, Bernet, Mendocino, and Dean French, who have four additional picks you can grab. Carter, you got a pen, write this down. I'm writing it down. Number one, you got US President Joe Biden. Many saying he provided the counterbalance, the pressure to Justin Trudeau to get your fucking house in order, man. Joe Biden's now now on the board. Many are saying that the counterbalance to Pierre Polyever and the Conservative Party is the man that is best known for firing Stephen Carter, Jean Charest. He's now on the board as well to select. And then the counterbalance, one would expect him to be more of a counterbalance, but I'll let you guys pick Jagmeet Singh, also available on the board. And the final one, the final pick, the

Zain 45:43

the true counterbalance are the emerging counter-protesters protesters across the country. The need for them in the specific moment, in the general moment, for those that disagree to jump on the board. Corey, you just picked Carter. I'm going back to you. Yeah. These are such better picks. I'm going back to you. You

Carter 46:00

You know what? Yeah.

Zain 46:00

Yeah. Guess what? Guess what? I'm going to pass on my pick. I wanted you to be saddled with Doug fucking Ford and Pierre Polyarpa. That's what makes this interesting. I'm going to take Biden

Corey 46:10

Biden and the counter protesters over anybody. Well,

Zain 46:12

Well, I'm glad you would, but it's not your fucking pick. You're know who is steven carter no

Carter 46:17

no i'm gonna pass my pick over to cory because i think it's more fair

Corey 46:22

it's really kind i'm

Carter 46:23

i'm a you know i'm a good guy that way i'd

Corey 46:25

i'd like to reciprocate that by passing my pick over to you well

Carter 46:28

well i think that in j you know i appreciate that and uh you know in the spirit of our opening today i'd like to really pass it back to you as the person who you know no

Carter 46:38

no fuck it i'm going myself um counter

Carter 46:42

counter protesters zane i will take the counter protesters protesters really the counter protesters tell me why because the counter protesters made it potentially very volatile and

Carter 46:53

the police had no choice like a good thing

Carter 46:56

so the volatility is certain when it's asymmetrical

Carter 47:01

asymmetrical and it's there's just one side you know the the the the the the anti-vax anti-mask uh you

Carter 47:08

you know fuck trudeau crew are out out there um it's annoying it's

Carter 47:13

it's annoying it's it's frustrating um you

Carter 47:17

you know but really the police is the police the

Carter 47:20

the way that they do their their modus operandi is to leave those people in place allow them to shell themselves out and then they go home right

Carter 47:27

right and the thinking is they're going to just go home after a day or two i mean i didn't think it was last this long they're still there apparently they're doing the clean out tonight or they're trying um but

Carter 47:39

the counter protesters change the the math soon

Carter 47:42

soon as you put the counter protesters in place all of a sudden now the counter protesters if they could potentially take matters into their own hands or they could be victimized by the protesters or there could be conflict now the police have to do a totally different mathematical equation how do they best manage a potentially volatile situation and the best way to do it keep the counter protesters out and now we have to actually move and get these protesters to leave cory

Zain 48:08

cory you're smiling you were you're edging i'm so mad why

Zain 48:11

why are you mad his team

Corey 48:12

team is so much better than my you you

Zain 48:15

the rcg and peer polyamory

Zain 48:18

polyamory i'm just letting you know i'm just letting you know your next

Carter 48:22

next bit's gonna be biden and i'm gonna laugh my fucking ass off what

Zain 48:26

what is the lesson here cory the lesson is democracy isn't fair and neither is a democracy draft. Corey, react to the counter protesters.

Corey 48:35

The counter protesters are the most powerful piece here. They should have been the first round draft pick because this is where this is the catalyst for all of the action that we've seen. Everything Stephen has said, okay, but I think it's almost secondary. The reality is the counter protesters, despite the counter, is by numbers, if not intensity, such an enormous group. It's so much bigger. And if that group mobilizes, is it makes their voice heard and matches the intensity of the protesters, the protesters don't stand a goddamn chance because there are more of us than there are of them. And

Corey 49:07

And so I think that the idea that you can mobilize this group, if you're talking about actually, you

Corey 49:13

want to get serious for a minute, draft for democracy, this is the only thing that actually saves us, right? People standing up and saying, this is what we need to do. This is what's right. And it's not about potentially creating a risk situation that the police then have to

Corey 49:28

to go deal with. It's about making clear that we're not going to be bullied by a minority that is willing to break the rules. You

Zain 49:34

You know, Carter, to Corey's point, I heard a quote recently applied to something different, but I think it applies to your pick here in this conversation, which is that

Zain 49:44

collectively, with this maybe being a proof point when we look upon it, has proven to us that a zealous minority can defeat a flabby majority. majority, that

Zain 49:53

that a majority that kind of sleepwalks or autopilots or thinks that the next inch, no way that's going to be given, no way that's going to be taken, no way that's going to, that's got to stop. React to that for me from your perspective. And if you kind of feel like that's what we witnessed here in some way, and we're still living in history, so commenting on it while living in it, as I mentioned on this podcast, not my favorite thing to do, but lay it on me as you hear that phrase and as you kind of look at the counterbalance here, Carter. Well,

Carter 50:21

Well, I think that that's true. But I also think that, you know, you can see it in multiple ways. The counter protesters are interesting because you can wind up in a false equivalency, right?

Carter 50:32

right? So if the counter protesters came out and they were actually, you know, like there was a protest today in British Columbia against coastal gas employees, and they were assaulted and RCMP officers were assaulted. So, you know, I'm not going to characterize them left and right, but, you know, two groups of protesters, you could very easily wind up in a pox upon both their houses and the silent majority stays home, which I think we saw in 2016, right? When people created a false equivalency about how bad Trump would be versus how bad Hillary Clinton would be, that was a

Carter 51:11

a disaster. And we wound up with Trump because we didn't get the voter turnout. People didn't come out and stop Trump because they were like, you know, they're all politicians. They're all the same. So if the counter-protest actually wound up being a net negative, you know, if they too turned out to be violent, Because there are people on both sides. And I got in trouble for the horseshoe theory last time I used it. So needless to say, I'm bringing that back. You know, both sides are bad. And, you know, please don't just bring up the Nazis. You got to bring up Stalin. You know, every group of people that are ideologically motivated have the ability to become ideologically motivated in negative ways. And this group that rose up, the counter protesters that I've drafted, not Corey, because he gave up on his opportunity, but the counter protesters that I drafted were very well behaved. They stood their ground and they have forced action without forcing violence, without forcing conflict. And that's why I've drafted them. That's why I'm pleased to have them as number three on my team, the winning team.

Zain 52:20

You know what I've realized, as pointed out by someone on Twitter this week, that my first name is an anagram for Nazi.

Carter 52:27

Corey, you know, that's

Carter 52:31

first time I think of Jesus Christ Zane for a while, you know,

Zain 52:34

know, pretty, pretty big for the atheist. atheist uh cory

Zain 52:39

you know i'm gonna take a slight detour because i want to talk about the counter protester

Carter 52:43

protester and more people there's been a detour can

Carter 52:47

this is 40 minutes in we've drafted five no it's it's

Corey 52:50

it's not 40 minutes in it's 55 minutes it's a free it's

Corey 52:54

it's a free yeah we

Zain 52:54

we had to improvise after you showed up again oh

Zain 52:59

it's a it's a free fucking show is all i'll say cory i actually want to talk about because i've got i don't know if you guys this is a genuine question have you guys gotten texts from people this week being like this is crazy i don't know what to do like this is crazy like there's no there's no give send go for the counter protesters like in a real there's no there's no vote i can't go vote somewhere i already did that there's no there's no like can i can i do i retweet stuff like there's been genuine questions around what the hell to do like and these people are like i mean and to carter's point like do i show up on on the front lines? Isn't that dangerous? I've got kids at home. What is it? When we write the rules for action, we talk a lot about strategy here, but what are the strategic rules for engagement, the advocacy rules, even tactics? Let's run strategy. If you see something like this, you've talked about this for next time. For next time, this is a warning for us. I think you've said that both in writing and here. Even

Zain 53:55

for this time and next time, Corey, what are the the rules for people who find themselves in that massive majority but

Zain 54:01

but have no idea what exactly to do well

Corey 54:05

yeah there's an asymmetry here that we just need to sort of call out and that anxiety people are feeling i'm getting similar texts from people is that how

Corey 54:13

how do you match lawlessness with lawfulness right like how do you how do you stay true to your values and stand up to this and it's something that i think people throughout history have sort of struggled

Corey 54:23

struggled with and you know there's been a lot of talk online about kind of the paradox of tolerance, right? Which is if you're tolerant of intolerance, intolerance will grow. And so in

Corey 54:33

order to be tolerant, you need to have no tolerance for intolerance, right?

Corey 54:39

Easier said than done. And what does it look like? And is it intolerance? And it's always in the gray where people will argue, is that intolerance or is that free speech and all of that? And you can actually get into pretty tyrannical places pretty quickly in the name of good things too so these are these are hard problems and when you are somebody who's looking at it and wants to wants

Corey 54:58

to do right like the system is in many ways failed those of us who who are opposed to this right we had an election these matters came up during the election now a group of people have decided no we want this government to stand down because we are so mad about this right yeah yeah

Corey 55:15

the really interesting poll i saw today uh polling canada tweeted out from Innovative. This is the actual question. This is the actual question I want to read for you. In a public poll, you mean?

Corey 55:24

This is a public poll. At the start of protests, organizers presented a memorandum asking the Governor General and Senate to overrule elected governments and remove COVID restrictions. Do you support or oppose this?

Corey 55:36

Question actually says overrule elected governments. Did you see this? Do you know this poll? No, I'm not familiar with this. No. 19% support, 13

Corey 55:45

13% neutral, 24% unsure, only 44% opposed. Now, you want to say, I don't trust this pollster, I don't trust this sample, that's okay.

Corey 55:55

But you're only going to move things maybe 10 points on the outside one way or the other. That's some pretty crazy numbers there.

Corey 56:01

And so I guess... What's that opposed, unsure, and neutral?

Corey 56:10

19. saying like yes i would overrule elected governments neutral 13 yes i would overrule elected governments unsure 24 so and

Corey 56:18

only 44 oppose the idea of overruling elected governments so

Corey 56:23

jesus fucking crazy it's a crazy time and so what

Corey 56:27

what do you do when you have a group of people are saying like not a system you know these rules we're all supposed to follow by actually i don't care about them fuck your rules and

Corey 56:36

and you know and to give the most charitable view to them, this is wrong. Democracy doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want. So get the hell out of here, right? They think they're standing up to tyrants. They think they're standing up to tyrants.

Corey 56:49

How do you stand up to that? How do you stand up to that in a way that doesn't sort of validate their initial feelings about this? How do you do it in a constructive way? How do you do it in a way that sort of brings them back into a tent that they are so afield from, like they're three counties over at

Corey 57:03

And I don't think there's easy answers to that. And I think that But the hard answers really involve difficult conversations, almost, you

Corey 57:10

you know, in an Ottawa sense, block by block, having groups of people, maybe not exacerbating this situation. But obviously, everyone's so bloody mad about it. And we haven't gotten to Trudeau.

Corey 57:19

None of you have. I'm not a fan of what he said. But

Corey 57:22

But I understand the anger that fueled it, right? And so, you

Corey 57:28

know, it's the hard work stuff. It's the stuff that, look,

Corey 57:32

look, these are always awkward parallels to draw. but think about all of those times in the 90s you looked at Ireland and Northern Ireland and you said, why can't they just do X? Why can't they just do Y? Look at the times you've looked at the Middle East and you've said about Israel and Palestine. Why can't they do X? Why can't they do Y? These things are sort of easy to look at dispassionately from a distance and impossible to deal with when you're living them, because you're feeling that emotion and that intensity. But

Corey 58:00

But we know the answers. They're just unsatisfying. It's showing tolerance and compassion and educating and doing the hard work that takes literally years to turn people around.

Zain 58:10

Carter, what's the majority supposed to do here? If you were advising this textured

Zain 58:16

textured group of people, the majority of folks that are opposed to this, what would you tell them? What would you say that action looks like here? What is the counter-protest if it's not physically showing up to the counter-protest? Well,

Carter 58:30

Well, I think it is actually physically showing up, but not showing up in the same place at the same time. Right. I think that it is showing up. But this is to me, it's the women's march after Trump was elected.

Carter 58:42

Right. That's a good

Carter 58:44

The women's march after Trump was elected said we are not going to give

Carter 58:48

give up. We are not going to walk away from this. And we are going to continue to push. We need more women's marches. So extend

Zain 58:57

extend this for me. Would you be like, well, let's let's hope knock on wood. Right. As we record the convoy arrests are being made. Police are moving out the convoy.

Zain 59:10

Do you think if you were kind of putting the Stephen Carter idea out there that a counter protest of epic proportions is what this country needs to kind of heal and bridge on what will

Zain 59:22

will hopefully be the end of this convoy? Yeah,

Carter 59:25

Yeah, I think so. I

Carter 59:26

I think it needs to be in April.

Carter 59:29

Right. Let's get this behind us. And then let's start setting some positive protests out there. Maybe it's in March. Maybe, you know, maybe it's around Mother's Day. But this this sometime some organizers and it's not going to be me after that sting of the charade campaign. Some organizers need to to step up and say, you

Carter 59:49

you know, we're going to organize what this what this country actually stands for. I mean, very interesting. I mean, you put Singh on the board. It'd be very interesting for a party to start to organize something like this. Generally speaking, our political parties don't organize marches. That's not typical, necessarily. In lots of other democracies, you will see large open air marches and demonstrations, I think, you know, literally called demonstrations of political support for their parties in open air in marches. I mean, Singh might have that type of an audience with the age group that he appeals to, the mediums that he's able to communicate on. He could very easily pull together something like that, you

Carter 1:00:32

you know, the Youth March or, you know, something like that that could fundamentally change the way that we perceive our country. And that's what we need right now, right? This isn't a counter protest. This is now a new start, a new definition of who we are. And that's what the Women's March was, a new start, a new definition of who the United States was. Right,

Zain 1:00:50

Right, that that election, you

Zain 1:00:51

you know, it was valid, but it wasn't the representative of who as America, at least for those people as a country was. Corey, yes, and a bit of this for me. Like Carter mentioned a bit of the political party. He mentioned a bit of a movement, April, May, like, let's build on this a bit. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Well,

Corey 1:01:07

Well, I think that a quote unquote big protest is probably necessary, but not sufficient. So I like what Stephen said about the need to sort of say who we are.

Corey 1:01:16

There's a reason for it beyond just feel good or you know, it's to break this false consensus that this other group has this 30% that believe that they are probably bigger and more representative of the population as a whole than they are. are so we've done work on this in our past lives as consultants and in communications and and you kind of like campaigns and strategy if

Corey 1:01:37

if you are everybody thinks that their views are more common than they are right yeah you know it's this is what we call it we call it a false consensus because it becomes exacerbated when you are with like-minded people and say there's a group of three of you and you all feel that way and then all of a sudden you believe everybody feels just

Zain 1:01:54

just It's just got that swagger of being like, this is it. This is what people think.

Corey 1:02:00

It's a false consensus. It's this idea that everybody believes this. Everybody's income is the same as this. Everybody's background is the same as this. And I think it's fair to say that the 20% to 30% that support this convoy that are opposed to vaccine mandates and all of that, they're a very strong false consensus. A piece of pop psychology that I remember hearing in the 90s, and I have no idea if it's true, so i have no idea why i'm repeating it but was that it takes about 30

Corey 1:02:28

30 of the population if you're hit about 30 you don't feel like you're in a minority anymore right

Corey 1:02:34

you you you can very easily just be like yeah we're we're the group we're the majority you don't feel the awkwardness of being a minority in the sense of like socioeconomic status or you know visual minority or anything like that and

Corey 1:02:45

and so this group has kind of hit that number right and a big protest would would be like, no, actually, there's far, far more of us than you when it comes to vaccine mandates and our desires to see public health measures taken and all of that. So I think it's necessary, but it's not sufficient. What do you do with that? When you break that false consensus, that doesn't immediately make people change their minds. It'll make some people sort of realize that, okay, maybe I'm a bit out on a limb here.

Corey 1:03:15

But what are you going to do with that opening? And that is where you have to start, you

Corey 1:03:19

you know, you have to give a little as much as you hate it with people you disagree with. You have to find a way to bring people back together and sort of turn the other cheek. It's fucking tough. It's a reason why we look at these flashpoints throughout the world and they fester for decades, right? Centuries in some cases. It's because it's tough. It's really tough. But if we want to actually live up to those Canadian values we pretend to have so often, it does involve a certain amount of kindness. It involves bringing people back together. Carter, you're going to jump in on here. I'll let you.

Carter 1:03:50

Yeah, and I wanted to address one other thing, which is why is this 30%? And I think it's because people are longing to belong, right?

Carter 1:03:58

right? They are longing to belong. I'm not necessarily convinced that there's 30% of the population that necessarily agree agree with these types of things. But there have been a lot of very positive things that have come from the protests. There are a group of people who feel like they belong to something. And this is why the counter protests could be very, very powerful. If they were done properly, right? If you had people feeling like they belong to something, that creation of a new family type of feeling. Corey's talked about how we can't walk away from these people. Bring people in, bring people into the groups we are longing to be part of groups this is why i came back so quickly to the strategist podcast uh we

Carter 1:04:44

long for it corey

Zain 1:04:47

third pick on the board is yours you've got doug ford and pierre polly ever i just want to let you know uh we are on an audio this is the worst

Corey 1:04:57

worst team this is terrible we're

Zain 1:04:58

we're in the audio medium let me lay out who else is available. Justin Trudeau, Jason Kenney, Mayor Watson, the Fire Chief, slowly Legault, Bernier Mendocino, aka Eminem, Dean French, Jagmeet Singh, Jean Charest, and US President Joe Biden. Corey, with the third pick in the draft for democracy, or the draft to save democracy, as it has been dubbed by some, who

Zain 1:05:21

who are you taking?

Zain 1:05:22

I'm taking Joe Biden.

Zain 1:05:24

Taking Joe Biden. I told you he was taking Joe Biden. biden explain to me joel biden because here's the thing biden

Zain 1:05:30

pretty much told trudeau to get his shit together did he not yeah

Zain 1:05:34

yeah what happened the next day got his

Corey 1:05:37

well it's pretty amazing what you can do when you you know what so stephen carter has the rcmp i got the fucking marines now yeah he's got everything he's

Carter 1:05:46

he's got the entire forces

Carter 1:05:47

you've even got space force my friend i

Corey 1:05:50

i got space force buddy carter

Zain 1:05:51

carter carter any damage long term to our u.s relationship with with Trudeau's dithering, and we haven't chosen, the reason we haven't gotten to Trudeau, just so we're clear, and all the shit that's happened under the banner that is Justin Trudeau's, because neither of you have selected him, to be totally clear. Carter, does this have any ramifications you think long term to our relationship with the US? Compound this with like the narratives coming out of Canada, filtering into the United States diplomatically, any issues you sense? Or this is a momentary sort of, you know, friends telling each other to check themselves i

Carter 1:06:23

just need to clarify something cory are we currently massing 150 000 troops on the border of another country to invade it uh

Corey 1:06:32

uh not to my knowledge i

Carter 1:06:33

i think we'll be okay then i think our relationship should be okay oh good so compare

Zain 1:06:37

compare it to the alternative i see what yeah

Carter 1:06:39

yeah i mean it's a complicated time and if you're going to have a little mini insurrection in your country this is probably the time to do it uh when the russians are you know playing uh risk um you know That's probably the time to do it. So I think we're fine. I think that Joe Biden's a good choice for Corey. I mean, he and Pierre should get along great. Because Biden's a consensus builder. And so now what Corey's putting together is a consensus team. I like it. I like it a lot.

Zain 1:07:09

Carter, would you trade anyone on your team thus far? Would you give away anyone on your team to Corey right now? Now, are you very happy that you got Freeland, the RCMP and the counter protesters over

Carter 1:07:23

over Ford, Skippy and Biden? Yeah, it was a rhetorical question.

Carter 1:07:28

I'm feeling pretty good. I feel like I feel like, yeah,

Carter 1:07:32

yeah, well, we have I mean, there's still more to go. So I'm not sure where he's going to wind up.

Zain 1:07:36

That's fine. We'll just we'll just power through. Carter, here's the here's the moment of the show where you select the

Zain 1:07:43

first pick for Corey. Now, you can select it either through the frame of, I really want to help a buddy out, because democracy is on the line. Carter, what's on the line? It's democracy. So

Zain 1:07:53

So I want to help a bro out. I'm going to actually draft some real, legit talent that's left on the board for Corey, and I'll repeat the talent in a second.

Zain 1:08:03

Or you could say, I'm

Zain 1:08:06

I'm just going to add shit to the shit list Corey's been building, and I'm going to draft someone

Zain 1:08:10

someone who's totally going to tank. So, Carter, I'll leave that up to you. But from the list of Trudeau, Kenny Watson, the fire chief, slowly, Legault, Bernie Mendocino, Dean French, I mean, Saint-Jean Charest, who are you giving? Who are you gifting with your next pick to team Corey Hogan? Listen,

Carter 1:08:29

Listen, I'm not trying to create an Allen Iverson type situation in the locker room here. I want to select

Carter 1:08:36

someone that actually can make things happen. And I'm going to take, you know, looking at the makeup of his team, he needs Dean French as someone who can be an intermediary.

Corey 1:08:50

I've got Ford. Why do I need a—

Carter 1:08:52

a— Ford chose Dean French to be on his team, to be, you know, this is me putting in the perfect person for you. So you're welcome. Dean French goes into your team and

Carter 1:09:03

and will, I'm certain, broker the deal to get the protesters— I mean, they got to fire up the hot tub after Dean French got involved.

Zain 1:09:12

Carter explains to people who Dean French is, I think you're going to do a better job than I am. And what is his role this past week? His insane role, just so silly, all of it.

Carter 1:09:22

Well, I mean, I think that the

Carter 1:09:24

the best way of thinking of Dean French is, you know, he was the Premier's right-hand man. He was the guy who was... Premier Ford.

Carter 1:09:32

Yeah, Premier Ford, who was, you know, he was the guy who everybody was looking to kind of help manage Ford.

Carter 1:09:41

Ford. And it lasted, I think it lasted a little bit longer than I tend to last. But but not much. And so Dean French was brought in, I guess, or made himself available as the intermediary to talk to the convoy organizers and then inexplicably announced

Carter 1:10:02

announced it to the world that he is, in fact, the intermediary. so generally speaking and again i've only been involved in a couple of these so i may be wrong but generally speaking broadcast generally speaking if you're the intermediary in a a back

Carter 1:10:18

door discussion you're not telling anybody so i'm i'm actually kind of shocked that this is the case so

Zain 1:10:25

so carter just to be clear if you're dean french or a a dean french quote unquote uh you know the the negotiating with the truckers in Ottawa. You don't, and I just want to be clear, you don't write a column in the National Post released six hours ago that says why I negotiated with the truckers in Ottawa. You don't do that, right? No, generally. Generally, okay, you don't write a special to the National Post four-minute read about why you did what you did.

Carter 1:10:52

No, Zane, you don't do that. Okay, yeah, I took the time to think about it, though. You

Zain 1:10:57

You have them on your team. Any redeeming qualities to one Dean French on your team?

Corey 1:11:02

Well, I think that he is the second best person I know at soft launching things. He's got that going on.

Zain 1:11:09

Corey, I don't want to spend more time on Dean French than necessary because I don't know. We've still got some major players on the board. Well, we should take some time.

Carter 1:11:15

We should take some time. Carter

Zain 1:11:17

Carter decided to go with the fuck your buddy approach. And I'm just wondering if you're going the same route. I think you did, Carter. Corey, your team of Ford, Skippy, Joe Biden, Dean French. Carter's team of Freelive, the RCMP, the counter-protesters. This is a time where you just say, listen, I'm

Zain 1:11:33

I'm giving Carter the all-star team and I'm jumping over. Or you can say, Carter, fuck

Zain 1:11:38

fuck yourself. Here's what I'm giving you. Who are you giving to Stephen Carter on the draft to save democracy?

Corey 1:11:43

With Carter's fourth pick, I'm going to have to, after that, draft former police chief slowly.

Corey 1:11:49

Come on, Carter. Say it with me, you pancake-eating motherfucker. Chief slowly. Chief

Carter 1:11:57

Carter. Carter, he slowly acted

Zain 1:11:59

slowly, lost his job.

Zain 1:12:04

okay, well, there's so many angles that we can go in here. Let's talk about them. City council, police governance issues. What the fuck? The police chief himself. Where do you want to go here? You added him to Carter's team for the purposes of not being a good pick.

Zain 1:12:23

Many are now saying that he got screwed over in a situation, but let's talk about it flat-footed yeah

Corey 1:12:29

yeah so it can be true he got screwed over but also screwed over himself they're not mutually exclusive and i think it's a great example of this let's talk fundamentals yeah because i'm a big fundamentals guy when i'm drafting here the tim

Zain 1:12:41

tim duncan of this he

Corey 1:12:44

and i said this last week but it remains my big frustration with this entire thing what was the ottawa police services plan here was

Corey 1:12:53

was it hope you know people came in for the weekend in, they crossed their fingers and said, geez, I hope they go away, despite the fact they said they were going to stay here forever. I hope they go away on Monday. Like, I don't know what they were thinking when they made the decisions that they made, or more accurately, the decisions they didn't make, and let them entrench. I mean, Jesus, you know, if you ever listen to like kind of podcasts on the French Revolution, or read books about it, and you hear about how they created these, you

Corey 1:13:20

you know, de facto ramparts in the streets of Paris, and you think that's fucking crazy. How How did they manage to get away with that? And, you know, the answer is they did it in like a couple of hours. And even then you think that's pretty mental. It took weeks. They had hot tubs up, these guys. I mean, this is crazy. And the police just sort of let it happen. And listen, there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes. And you've got to take all of this reporting with a grain of salt around what the OPP was willing to put up with, you know, what the OPS, you know, police were willing to do. regardless uh nobody loses in this thing more than the ottawa police service and by extension chief slowly carter

Zain 1:13:59

carter you know the black community frustrated they're saying they're hurt by the sudden loss of the police chief there's you know the conversation on systemic racism has re-emerged because of it uh that he was a scapegoat i'm curious to hear your

Zain 1:14:13

your thoughts his exit wasn't like a clean it was a clean break but it's also gonna leave some tread marks so to speak culturally It's going to leave some, as part of any sort of inquiry, it's going to be a question around, to Corey's point, what was the plan, but was this letting go fair? I'm curious to hear your thoughts now that, of course, the chief, Peter Sloley, is part of Team Carter.

Carter 1:14:35

Well, I mean, I think that if

Carter 1:14:37

if we're being charitable to the chief and charitable to chiefs across the country, because I think this is a law enforcement issue across the country, not just in Ottawa, they're being asked to slow down. They're being asked to allow people to have their say, and that's a direct result of overzealous policing, overly active policing choices that were made, especially in minority communities, visible minority communities that were protesting, BLM movements that have been squashed by actions of the police services. And so they've been they've been told move slower. And so that type of thinking is it was was driving them. I

Carter 1:15:24

I mean, if you think back to the Black Lives Matter movement and the Occupy movements, those movements were in some way, you know, they they allow them to happen. happen now there was some violent because there has been violence in the past they've allowed these things to happen but they were controlled this was an uncontrolled thing you know the the occupy movement didn't come in and you know set up a hot tub they didn't set up a this is one of the more well-financed you know like bringing in their own porta potties bringing in their own hot tubs bringing in their own nightclub you know with with music and lights and and like these things things were totally different and because of that the police were caught flat-footed because the tactics changed on one side and they didn't change on the other side and as a result you know the the the end game for the police service is they look like uh incompetent buffoons but in general we've asked the police services please don't break these things up please allow people to have their their right of their fundamental right of speech um and i think that we've we've gone too far in allowing that to happen. You are allowed to have your rights until such time as your rights infringe upon my rights. And that's when there's a conflict. And those conflicts, we have laws, we have laws and we have norms to govern those conflicts.

Zain 1:16:45

Corey, you know, Carter last episode talked about police governance. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. Like, do you think there'll be a fundamental shift in how we think about police governance from a civilian volunteer-led movement, in most of Canada, not all of Canada, I will say, that it's not the case everywhere. But that in moments of crisis, or in moments of peril, or where big, tough decisions need to be made, that we're just ill-equipped from a governance standpoint to do the right stuff.

Corey 1:17:15

Yeah, so two thoughts on that. One is, I really do want to stress, like, when I pick slowly, it's, I'm sort of by proxy picking the Ottawa police service the entire organization

Corey 1:17:23

seems somewhat broken and you know when the dust settles we will see because there's an awful lot of you

Corey 1:17:28

you know frustration with how slowly was treated you know i want to say and i might have told this story in a different context before but i i have a friend who worked on cruise ships when he was younger and he was in charge of the children's programs on the cruise ships and he was an officer on the cruise ship as a result the equivalent of a lieutenant and that's not because kids are hard and it's not because children's programs normally demand like compensation at that level or anything it's because if something goes wrong they're on a cruise ship and they're in the middle of the ocean and he's responsible for children right and so the the kind of classification and the compensation reflected that you were there it's like most jobs you're paid for the bad days not the good days and so the ottawa police service probably a fine police service when things are fine but fundamentally the job of a police service is not to deal with things when they are fine and uh i think that a lot of us are asking the question you just asked saying at this point like is policing set up to deal with this kind of challenge is this challenge going to be more likely even if the answer to the second is not really pretty

Corey 1:18:32

pretty clear that even once is a little too much to not be able to deal with it and so there is going to be a bit of a conversation about police services and next

Corey 1:18:39

next time somebody comes and says i'd like to buy a

Corey 1:18:44

and they say well how about a tow truck asshole you know i mean

Corey 1:18:47

that's going to be the undertones for some of it because there's going to be some bitterness that that rests between uh you know uh the

Corey 1:18:54

the the ottawa police service and and the community that they serve for the next bid

Corey 1:18:59

and it's going to take some time to get over that well

Carter 1:19:01

well you're seeing that right now in edmonton right edmonton is trying to get some some pay some some of their funding for their plane and

Carter 1:19:09

and uh people are like well you kept this secret for

Carter 1:19:12

for years well you know their plane's going to be less likely to be funded as a result of some of their actions of their members or inaction of the Edmonton Police Service over the last few months. So I think it's fascinating. It's fascinating because, you know, we have these and we talked in detail about the governance structures and the governance problems in our previous episode. So I won't go into detail on it, but we're seeing the governance challenges. And I've been spending a lot of time trying to think about what is the best solution for it. And I think that it has to be part civilian and part elected,

Carter 1:19:48

elected, and more electeds. Although the shit show that Jim Watson brought yesterday in the Ottawa City

Carter 1:19:58

meeting was kind of a gong show. So maybe we'll get to that. Who do I get to choose next for Corey? Oh,

Zain 1:20:06

Oh, well, that is your choice because, Stephen Carter, you are giving the next pick to one Corey Hogan. His fifth pick, he's got Ford, Pierre Palliever, Joe Biden, Dean French. Last one gift from you. On the board still, Trudeau, Kenny Watson, Legault, Bernie Mendocino, Singh,

Zain 1:20:27

Singh, and Sharae. Who are you gifting to one Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter?

Carter 1:20:35

want to do watson i do i do i want to i don't want to do watson but

Carter 1:20:42

i'm not that much of a prick i

Carter 1:20:44

i am you're gonna do bernier

Corey 1:20:45

bernier aren't you no

Carter 1:20:46

no no my god no i want to give you someone who

Carter 1:20:49

who is ineffective who doesn't have the leadership skills who doesn't get to to who even when he's in charge doesn't look like he's in charge and that my friend is the prime minister of canada Justin Trudeau.

Corey 1:21:04

I'm okay with that. This is actually a fine place to draft the Prime Minister of Canada. Fifth

Zain 1:21:08

Fifth pick for Corey Hogan, Justin Trudeau. Corey, are

Zain 1:21:13

are you ready? Do you have your caffeine? We've got a lot to talk about. Let's start at the beginning with one Justin Trudeau.

Zain 1:21:19

Let's talk about— Well, he was born

Corey 1:21:19

born on Christmas Day.

Zain 1:21:23

true? When was he conceived? Yeah, it is.

Carter 1:21:29

If we want to start at the beginning, life begins at the inception.

Zain 1:21:34

Corey, let's talk about Justin Trudeau. Let's talk about the invoking of the Emergencies Act.

Zain 1:21:39

Should we? I mean, it's a natural point to start. I mean, there's so many points to start that we're probably glossing over, but this is the biggest one. It was the federal government saying, fuck it, we're in.

Zain 1:21:50

Was it too late?

Zain 1:21:51

was it too much? Let's start with those two things. It

Corey 1:21:53

It can be both. It can be both, right? Right. You can obviously always get to a point where you have not done things in a timely fashion and then deeply overreact. I'm not saying that's what's happened here, but they're not mutually exclusive, as I think the first thing we have to say as we talk this one out.

Corey 1:22:10

You know, I do think there is, however, something that after a couple of weeks and growing pressure, and certainly we've seen all sorts of public opinion polling where growing

Corey 1:22:22

growing disapproval with the federal government on this particular matter, and credit where credit's due, I saw a number of pollsters over the past couple of weeks say, hey, as these things go on, people inevitably just blame the prime minister, right? It seems to be very much the case.

Corey 1:22:37

Frustrating in a sense because I think in some ways he was one of the least culpable parties as all of this was going on. But he has not exactly handled it with grace in the past bit here. And I think, well, we can say his actions seemed like he – what

Corey 1:22:58

what can I say about the Emergencies Act? I think he didn't do such a bad job of launching that and saying this is why we're doing it. I want to be clear. we're not suspending civil liberties we're not talking about soldiers uh poor guy in a sense has to deal with the you know his father's shadow on this one on the war measures act because you know there's nothing that by default says that's what it would be he

Corey 1:23:18

he had to be the first prime minister to do the emergencies act but

Corey 1:23:21

he was he was very fairly targeted on it he talked about things being geographically limited which is true for some of the things less true for things like like the financial components. And they were things that seemed fine and seemed somewhat sensible.

Corey 1:23:38

Was it necessary? I suspect many people would agree with me that probably more important would be enforcing the rules that we did have, right? And it's not as though there was an immense amount of powers given on the policing front there. You know, the ability of RCMP to apply provincial and municipal bylaws, sure, okay, that's one thing, But it doesn't seem huge to me. I don't know the nature of Ontario policing enough to say for sure one way or the other.

Corey 1:24:06

The financial stuff did seem huge. The financial stuff did seem huge. And they

Corey 1:24:12

also teased out at the same time, lest we forget, it's not all Emergencies Act said, by the way, we're going to add FinTrack

Corey 1:24:18

FinTrack requirements to crowdfunding and cryptocurrencies as well at the same time. We're going to make that permanent through legislation.

Corey 1:24:28

A former boss of ours, Goldie Heider, he

Corey 1:24:32

he wrote his master's thesis on the idea of, you

Corey 1:24:36

you know, don't make policy during moments of crisis, right? Because it's bad policy in moments of crisis. And, yeah, I think this is a perfect example of that. Do we really want governments creating rules for crowdfunding and cryptocurrency in a moment about a protest in downtown Ottawa? well so

Corey 1:24:52

so this has been me talking out a lot of things where i'm like well i don't know i don't know i could go both ways on this thing um

Corey 1:24:59

but where i can't go both ways is sort of as soon as he did it his

Corey 1:25:03

his rhetoric that followed and you know the comments about you know standing with swastikas great soundbite man but you're supposed to be the prime minister and you just called a literal national emergency so why don't we why don't we park it for a bit and i understand the idea that That you want to call out fascism when you see it. And if I thought that's what he was doing, I'd be a little bit more charitable. But it was politics. It was just politics. Back to

Zain 1:25:29

to the well of rhetoric. Yeah.

Corey 1:25:31

It was trying to stick it to the other guys and gals across the aisle. And even if that's something that you felt you wanted to say, at this moment in downtown Ottawa, do

Corey 1:25:43

do you think that's a helpful addition to the conversation? That couldn't wait a

Corey 1:25:47

a day. you couldn't wait a day to say that when perhaps the situation would be a little less volatile and in fact the emotion would be a little drained and you say all right come to jesus moment time seriously people we

Corey 1:26:00

we had literal swastikas in downtown ottawa we had people across the aisle

Corey 1:26:05

milling about with them i'm mad about this everybody should be mad about this even that's bringing the politics into it but the

Corey 1:26:12

the moment was not now and it just seemed like some combination of unnecessarily

Corey 1:26:18

unnecessarily partisan for a moment that called for statespeople, for sure,

Corey 1:26:24

but also like perhaps he'd sort of lost control of his kind of faculties or emotions in that moment because one of two things happened. He was either being a political shitheel or he lost control. And I don't think either of them is why I could support. And, you

Corey 1:26:38

you know, I said this is roughly around where I think he should be drafted because he's still a powerful person and he has it within him to resolve solve some of these democratic challenges that this is what this draft's all about.

Corey 1:26:49

But not good. Not a good couple of days here.

Zain 1:26:53

Carter, I want to get into the rhetoric. I want to actually get your reaction first on the Emergencies Act and spend a bit of time on that.

Carter 1:27:02

I don't think it is too much.

Carter 1:27:04

I don't think it is too far. I mean, we had 13 people arrested in Coutts with murderous intent, that's real. I think that no one really knows what's going on in Ottawa yet because it's still not down. We haven't taken it down yet. And until it's down, we won't really know the full story. The

Carter 1:27:28

The Ambassador Bridge was a massive economic problem. This

Carter 1:27:32

This needed to be dealt with at a more significant level. I think the Windsor Police and And the OPP did a good job. And, you know, as Corey mentioned, on the Ambassador Bridge, that got him dealt with. But it took too long.

Carter 1:27:45

And so now, my view, he

Carter 1:27:48

he needed to do this. Rightly or wrongly, it lands on the prime minister, right? The most senior level of government gets it dropped on. Mayor Watson was throwing his hands up and saying, we can't deal with this, right? Doug Ford tried a few things. And I think that those things could have been successful if they'd been given more time. um but this was the right time to bring it in this is also we were just talking when i drafted christia freeland because i'm smarter than cory um i drafted her because i got the first choice uh being the most very smart of you to get the

Carter 1:28:19

choice yeah being the most recent first choice normally

Corey 1:28:21

normally go to the last place team though just it goes to the new guy as we discussed new guy

Carter 1:28:25

guy you may have missed that yeah new guy yeah anyways um you

Carter 1:28:29

you know we were extolling her her virtues when she listed the potential punishments that were going to befall these folks. We thought that this was a good thing. So it's kind of hypocritical to then say this is not the act that should be brought in. The act was brought in at the right time, the right place.

Carter 1:28:48

The problem that I see is it's kind of going to where Corey was going, right? It was the swastikas.

Carter 1:28:53

swastikas. I'm fine taking

Carter 1:28:57

the conservatives and saying you were standing with people with swastikas. We've been taking them down. I've been taking them down from on this podcast since the beginning of the of the occupation. Right. The the you know, the fact that Aaron O'Toole went and met with them the day before they occupied on Ottawa. The fact that, you know, Pierre Polyev went the day that they arrived. So did Candace Bergen. These things shouldn't be forgotten. Right. Right. And because I think that they matter because they made the wrong choice. They encourage the wrong people to do the wrong thing. And they're part of the reason why 30 percent of Canadians are, you know, prepared

Carter 1:29:35

prepared to stand with these folks and why 20 percent are prepared to forego a democratically elected government.

Carter 1:29:40

So I'm with. But when the prime minister tries to sound like a statesman and it comes across as forced and faked and, you know, you know, he's reading off the cue cards. And then he fucks up, you

Carter 1:29:55

you know, and screen, you know, does this whole members standing with swastikas. That's the real him. Right. That's the real him. And so this is the problem that I have is that Trudeau was trying to play it a little bit cute. And, you

Carter 1:30:08

you know, he undermined his own position, although I agree with what he said. He just undermined his position.

Zain 1:30:14

Corey, I want to talk about success here for Trudeau, because success, one could argue, might be entirely exclusively results dependent. And like doing it swiftly and quickly, like getting what you need out of this act and clearing the streets immediately. immediately.

Zain 1:30:32

Is that what success looks like for Trudeau? Is there interim measures of success that if you're advising Trudeau saying, sir, this is a big swing, there's interim wins here that we need to hit along the way? Or is this like a binary? You showed it, you did it, or you didn't?

Corey 1:30:48

You've played your one card. I mean, the only other card you have to play at this point is literally soldiers in the street, right?

Corey 1:30:58

that's it. This better work. This better end quickly. And in fact, I mean, and one of the things that I'm almost a little incredulous about is how much time has passed as if we're recording right now, it's Thursday at 10pm Mountain

Corey 1:31:10

So I guess it's Friday in the Eastern time zone.

Corey 1:31:13

And it's not it's not done yet. It's not resolved yet. Right. And I think what you really needed to see as the Prime Minister was rapid beyond even what we've seen kind of resolution. Now, I don't think at this point it's bad. I don't think anyone's saying, how is this not resolved yet under the Emergency Act? But I'm still surprised, I guess, by how long it's moving on. Carter said something really interesting I want to jump on here. And I think it's a point that needs to be unpacked in the days, weeks and months to come here, which is that the Conservatives are a big part of why 30% of Canadians stand with the convoy. And I think that's 100% correct, right? Right. It's also, though, what made this such a weird and awkward situation and so challenging for me that the prime minister made his stand with Swastika's comment. Right.

Corey 1:32:02

I don't think that generally Canadians think about certainly not that 30 percent think about the convoy as like a neo-fascist movement. Right. They see it as a vehicle for frustration with vaccine mandates, frustration with COVID-19 restrictions. restrictions. And part of why they see it that way is exactly that, like the Conservatives have gone and hugged this thing. They've hugged this, you know, convoy and said, look, they're standing up for freedom and look at them and, and all of the things that Pierre Polyev has done successfully, but perhaps not ethically,

Corey 1:32:38

The thing is, when

Corey 1:32:40

when the Prime Minister looks at that situation, and then tries to paint it all with that brush, it really feels like you're calling 30% of of canadians people who are standing with swastikas too which

Corey 1:32:51

which is just i think part of the reason why i reacted to it so negatively was jesus

Corey 1:32:57

jesus man we got to stitch this country back together and again i just i will underline every time i don't fucking like the views that these 30 are carrying right now it makes me very angry but

Corey 1:33:07

but it's not a tenable situation to have such

Corey 1:33:10

such a large even if you just want to say it's actually only a third of it like let's just use the 10 we used before it's not It's not tenable to have 10% just

Corey 1:33:18

just feeling so angry and so at odds with the rest of society. So, I mean, it's a big problem.

Zain 1:33:24

Carter, talk to me about success for Trudeau. Is chasing interim wins with the Emergencies Act a mirage? Is it a bad idea? Are there interim wins or is this success dependent? Is this a binary in your mind?

Carter 1:33:38

Well, I mean, it's going to be successful at some point, right? At some point, the convoy will— Doesn't

Zain 1:33:42

Doesn't time really matter here? like if this was if this is i don't know let me game it out for you we're on thursday february 17 let's say by by next thursday this is not the emergencies act is still in play it's got the 30 day timeline it's still in play they haven't cleared the streets it's not done or it got messy isn't that an l like

Zain 1:34:03

like isn't that legitimately a political loss for trudeau like game that out for me a week from today more

Zain 1:34:08

more than enough time one would think isn't that a legitimate political political loss for justin trudeau yeah

Carter 1:34:15

i think it has to be but i i i mean and the reason i say that is i'm sitting here thinking there's

Carter 1:34:23

there's no way that a week from now they're still going to be there there's

Carter 1:34:25

there's no way it's

Zain 1:34:27

it's thursday evening like we're in the weekend right now like you know like it's it's been like three four

Carter 1:34:33

no i hear what you're saying and and what you're saying is not wrong but i'm i'm a

Carter 1:34:37

a week from now on the 24th of february write it down write

Carter 1:34:41

write it down here we go here we go my rule if it's not and i won't make it a prediction i'll make it a consequence if it's not gone there's going to be significant consequences for the federal government talk

Zain 1:34:52

talk to me about trudeau being caught flat-footed what's fascinating to me is cory's analysis that arguably

Zain 1:34:58

arguably the least culpable now wearing almost all of it ford slips away watson's wearing some of it talk to me about carter from a strategy perspective what the the hell happened here like we had some leading indicators pollsters our podcast uh we'll leave it at those two uh saying that eventually the prime minister wears this because people don't know where to park their frustrations it's it's ironic in some ways it's arguably even meta in some ways because you had a bunch of normal canadians join the convoy because they didn't know where to park their frustrations now the people watching don't know where to park their frustrations and they place it at the feet of the prime minister so

Corey 1:35:32

so actually when you put it that That way is fascinating. Yeah.

Zain 1:35:34

Yeah. So in some ways, Carter, like, talk to me about what happened here from a political preparation, issues management, strategy perspective, that 10

Zain 1:35:44

10 days ago, Justin Trudeau was sitting pretty, not getting involved, being above the fray, and that may have been the right strategic thing to do. 10 days later, he's wearing most of it with the federal government saying, fuck it, we're going to deal with it with an act that has never been used before. What happened? In

Carter 1:36:00

In the 1940s, a young president by the name of Harry S. Truman had on his desk a sign that read, the buck stops here. And the idea was that all

Carter 1:36:11

all problems go to, they

Carter 1:36:14

they escalate up, right? So if the local government can't solve it, the provincial government has to solve it. The provincial government can't solve it, it escalates up. up. And if something's happening in more than two provinces, for example, COVID, right?

Carter 1:36:28

COVID became a federal problem because it was a national problem. Arguably, COVID is a health issue. COVID should be dealt with by the provincial governments. Employment is a provincial issue. You know, very clearly, employment is a provincial issue. Should have been dealt with by the provincial governments. We should have had 10 provincial solutions to COVID. Arguably, it could have been better with individual mandates, you know, individual groups dealing with things. But because it was a national problem, it lands on the national desk. And the nature of this convoy, the way that it developed, the way that it unfolded, and then the way that we saw protests protests across the country, if you will, that forced the prime minister into an action position. And I think that it was the right force, if you will, because ultimately he

Carter 1:37:26

he needed to act to show his leadership. And, you

Carter 1:37:30

you know, you'll see this all the time. You see this all the time when municipal governments will take responsibility for provincial issues or provincial governments will take responsibility for municipal issues if there's a win to be had or there's a loss to be potentially you know taken then

Carter 1:37:45

then you as a government have to step in and trudeau stepped in by

Carter 1:37:49

by the way how long is this podcast because at some point you

Carter 1:37:53

you know i'm just i'm asking for the list at some

Zain 1:37:56

some point at some point george ray is going to call again he's calling

Carter 1:37:58

calling back i've got it scheduled right now it's

Carter 1:38:01

it's past his bedtime so it'll be okay cory

Zain 1:38:04

cory talk to me about how they were caught Do you agree with Carter's The Buck Stops here, that it just keeps, it was an eventuality and they were just ill-prepared for it?

Corey 1:38:17

Yeah, well, I think that in many ways, when we talked about it, the first time we talked about this was two days into this protest, right? It was the weekend, the end of the first weekend. And at the time, I said, I thought it was smart that Trudeau kept his head down. And then the next time we talked about it was a week later. And I said, it's a little nuts to me, he still got his heads down. and uh but i said but i kind of refused to blame him because that's almost what people want to do like that's what his opponents want to do and now here we are again a week and a half after this and it's like you're you're kind of out of rope man of course they're going to blame you at this point and even if you sort of accept this sort of division of powers argument and that it's not really the prime minister's fault there

Corey 1:38:58

there is something to be said for the kind of moral authority the bully pulpit the convening authority of a of a prime minister and in a sense that's It sounds like that's what his government tried to do is get

Corey 1:39:10

province engaged on this matter. Then they could come in with the Emergencies Act and do all of these things. But I

Zain 1:39:18

I don't think it's – as

Corey 1:39:18

as much as I said he's probably least culpable, it's not entirely unfair of people to say, Justin Trudeau, this is your capital city. What in the Christ is going on? What are you going to do about this, right?

Zain 1:39:31

probably something Joe Biden said to Justin Trudeau verbatim.

Zain 1:39:37

yeah maybe yeah also quite possibly like i would not be with other realm

Corey 1:39:41

realm of quite come on man

Zain 1:39:43

come on man it's

Zain 1:39:45

it's your capital city so

Zain 1:39:46

so much malarkey in the capital

Corey 1:39:51

uh i so sure and there is also kind of this broader sense which is where the emergencies act authorities come from this peace order and good government like go in there get things done done when things are of national concern here. Let

Zain 1:40:04

Let me talk about good governance. And let me talk about something that's being suggested right now, which is the collective political role reversal of law and order.

Zain 1:40:15

Justin Trudeau invoking the Emergencies Act has an opportunity to own the label. Doug Ford leaned into the conservative traditional conservative brand emergency in Ontario law and order and the conservatives federally, who are always about about law and order are like mealy-mouthed and sitting on the sidelines as Justin Trudeau invokes the Emergencies Act, and they say it's not necessary.

Zain 1:40:35

Is, Corey, to you first, is law and order, I use the word mirage, so I'll use it again, is it a mirage for Justin Trudeau that it's something he can chase, a brand he can get, a win he can have? Or is that legitimately on the table here? Or is it fleeting and something he should not keep his eye out on and focus on the prize, which is success with this act in place? Talk to me about that a bit. Yeah,

Corey 1:40:57

Yeah, like, I don't know, I'd like to see some polls on it. My instinct is that this is not a brand that is in reach for the liberal government. The other thing is, like, to be absolutely fair

Corey 1:41:08

fair to the conservatives, like, you've painted kind of a bit of a caricature of law and order at this point. It's not, it's arguably not law and order to invoke special emergency powers of the government, right? Okay, that's fair. That's fair. Talk to me about that, though.

Corey 1:41:21

Law and order would be as following kind of standard rules here. As soon as you go a little further, there is a kind of conservative worldview that would say we've also got to be on the eye for kind of government liberties and tyranny, civil liberties. That's

Corey 1:41:34

consistent with the conservative worldview.

Corey 1:41:37

There is a hypocrisy nonetheless that's right there, which is that even before we had the Emergencies Act, the law and order conservatives seemed a little tepid to act in many situations.

Carter 1:41:46

situations. Well, you're describing Kenny's reaction.

Carter 1:41:48

you're you're describing he's he's out today saying that he's going to pass a motion in the or pass a bill and or something i don't know what he's going to pass probably a motion of some sort uh in the legislature opposing this emergencies act oh you know he's fine with bill one which says that any pro any protests that that uh block um

Carter 1:42:08

um critical infrastructure you know they have special powers to take it down that's his emergencies act he's fine with that but the the The Federal Emergencies Act, he's not fine with.

Zain 1:42:20

Corey, I feel like Carter's just asking for it. He's asking for it. He brings up Jason Kenney, and I feel like he wants one Jason Kenney as his fifth pick. Will you be giving him the courtesy with the Stephen Carter final pick to round it out by giving him Jason Kenney, Jim Watson, Francois Legault, Maxime Bernier, Marco Mendicino, Jagmeet Singh, or Jean Charest?

Zain 1:42:42

We'll keep the Kenney convo going, but I want to shoehorn this. Yeah. What is Team Carter rounding out here? No,

Corey 1:42:48

No, I mean, I'm clearly going to give him Bernier. Clearly giving him Bernier.

Zain 1:42:53

Carter, you get Bernier, and we don't get to talk about him. Yeah,

Corey 1:42:57

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Zain 1:42:58

right. That sounds perfect. Keep the Kenny conversation going, though. Corey, do you agree? Jason Kenny,

Zain 1:43:05

okay, a couple of things. Seems like everything, and you guys can feel free to disagree. Seems like everything he's saying and doing is tooled to one date on the calendar. under uh april 9th his survival and leadership um cory this this uh letter that he's worked on to get u.s governors to sign to get uh premier mo to sign uh talk to me about it what do you think jason's kenny's play here is and do you think it's working well

Corey 1:43:30

well let's talk about what he's done and then let's talk about why i think he's done it um sure because so much has happened in the past couple of weeks i think we almost have to sort of say what the hell we're talking Yeah,

Corey 1:44:09

mandates in alberta by the end of the month march 1st and in fact a lot of strong language about if cities tried to maintain their mask mandates maybe he'd look into you know maybe not letting them maintain it because that is an authority that the province has they can just go in and kind of change the municipal governance act if they if they really want to get down to it right so came in really hard on this uh a lot of conversation in the province a lot of criticism about him kowtowing to people who have essentially taken a lawless approach in uh you know at the border and

Corey 1:44:42

and um and since then we've had rcmp

Corey 1:44:46

rcmp raid there were guns there we've had the place actually cleared out so the border is now open again we've had the emergencies act and now we have jason kenney standing in opposition to the emergencies act he's also found time in all of that as as you You were saying, Zane, to pen a letter with another

Corey 1:45:02

another premier and a bunch of governors saying, end all of this stuff, end all of these restrictions. Mandates,

Corey 1:45:08

all over that. But you

Corey 1:45:11

you can look at it and you can fairly say this does seem to be geared towards April 9th, right? It seems to be playing towards a voting base that is going to be showing up to vote at his leadership review in Red Deer. I have some thoughts as to whether or not that's a sensible strategy, because generally speaking, you don't trade a constituency you have for one you want, and I just don't think that the group that's really opposed to Kenny is coming back to him.

Corey 1:45:36

But, you know, there's an Occam's razor version here, too, that I don't think enough people are sort of talking about and weighing as a consideration here.

Corey 1:45:46

is there anything about

Corey 1:45:48

about Jason Kenney's actions in the past two years that make you think he's remotely interested in maintaining restrictions a moment longer than he feels he needs to?

Corey 1:45:57

So as public opinion shifted, I'm

Corey 1:45:59

I'm sure he, as his caucus was also showing up on like this Coutts blockade, I'm sure he was thinking, what the fuck? I don't want to fight these guys. I don't even support this stuff. Why the hell are we even doing this anymore? And public opinions moving against it, for sure it's going to go away at this point. To

Corey 1:46:14

To me, that seems like a much more reasonable justification for why I'm going to take it. And when you

Zain 1:46:19

you say it's going to go away, like these protesters? No,

Zain 1:46:21

this going away, restrictions.

Zain 1:46:24

just to be clear.

Corey 1:46:26

Why in the hell would he not? There's nothing that makes me think he wanted these restrictions. He was backed into these restrictions under duress in the fall. He was backed into them again in Omicron. Of course he's going to take them away the minute he thinks he can get away with taking them away.

Zain 1:46:42

Like, maybe leadership was

Corey 1:46:44

was a nice cherry on top, but he

Corey 1:46:47

didn't want these restrictions. Why are we pretending like he would have done them were it not for leadership?

Zain 1:46:52

Carter, what do you think when you react to the simple explanation that this

Zain 1:46:56

this is who Kenny is?

Carter 1:47:00

This is who Kenny is.

Carter 1:47:03

can he can he um you know he has his ideology and he allows his ideology to govern him and this is where he's going and and the fact that there is a leadership that he has to win in in a couple of months uh the fact that his chief of staff has taken a leave of absence it's a bad bad couple of weeks for chiefs of staff um took a

Carter 1:47:25

a leave of absence unpaid unpaid to uh to arrange uh you you know, his inevitable victory. This is interesting. By the way, guys, pitch.

Carter 1:47:37

We should each buy a membership in the UCP, pay our hundred bucks, and do a

Carter 1:47:42

a marathon live show from, oh,

Corey 1:47:46

I love that you're pretending this is a pitch like you thought of on the spot and not something that I've already rejected.

Carter 1:47:52

Yeah. Well, I'm trying to pressure you into it.

Corey 1:47:54

Yeah. You know, I'm the one who edits the show, right?

Corey 1:47:59

We don't edit the

Carter 1:48:01

Speaking of which, how long is this fucking show now? I'm out of water. I've run out of snacks.

Zain 1:48:09

You're the only one. I need to talk about Kenny a bit more. I do need to talk about Kenny a bit more.

Zain 1:48:14

Lay it on us. His opposition to the Emergencies Act and

Zain 1:48:19

and the risk that it poses to Trudeau.

Zain 1:48:22

Kenny might be the standard bearer in terms of that voice outside of federal conservatives, conservatives, who some may argue have lost some moral authority with their, you know, they're flirting with the convoy. Do you think there's a payoff here, Corey, for Jason Kenney? Or is he just veering out of his lane in that sense by getting involved in the federal issues, by getting involved in this discourse? Is there a domestic political payoff to one Jason Kenney in your mind?

Corey 1:48:49

Yeah, I think there's probably a bit of one. I mean, it's partially it's just changing the subject moving on getting people to think past the border closing and start thinking about this in terms of civil liberties the usefulness of it from his point of view there is if

Corey 1:49:03

if you can if you can really sort of make this about liberty

Corey 1:49:07

liberty more general like so you've got the emergencies act and and you're sort of muddying the water around these freedom issues writ large right you've got freedom versus the emergencies act you've got freedom versus covid restrictions restrictions and and you just sort of get to wrap yourself in a bit of a cloak and

Corey 1:49:22

and dilute i think the conversation being all about rep right so there's some logic to that uh in my opinion it's also i think um so

Corey 1:49:32

so there's this there's going to be like an emergency debate

Corey 1:49:35

debate i think or something to that effect of um of

Corey 1:49:39

of the legislature on on the emergencies act and the use of it it's also a way that they're trying to effectively go back to that old well and wrong foot the ndp and get them on side with trudeau and talk about the trudeau notley alliance and bring back the hits i mean everybody goes to the rolling stones for jumping jack flash not whatever shit was on their last album and uh and just try to bring back some of that old magic that uh that jason kenney applied so effectively as he was bringing together the wild rose and the pcs into the ucp stephen

Zain 1:50:10

stephen carter your Your draft to save democracy team includes one, Christopher Freeland, the RCMP, the counter-protesters, Chief Sloley of the Ottawa Police, and Jason Kenney. Really petered off at the end. Corey, your team, by your own choice. No, no, no, I gave him Bernier. Sorry, you gave him Bernier. I'm willing to take Kenney

Zain 1:50:33

Corey, your team is one, Doug Ford, Pierre Pagliaro, Joe Biden, Dean French, and Justin Trudeau. uh i have one person i want to talk to you about on this list i want to focus in on them but this is of course the time of the draft where you guys choose your sixth pick which is i love

Zain 1:50:51

love it keep going cory cory cory there's a fill in the blank pick anyone anything anywhere you get to add to team cory hogan could be a holy shit for your draft to save democracy cory hogan you have that opportunity. Stephen Carter, we

Zain 1:51:10

we weren't expecting you back, but guess what? Even though you're the new guy, we're going to give you the same opportunity. Anyone, anywhere added to Team Stephen Carter, which let me summarize again, includes Freeland, the RCMP counter-protesters, Chief Slowly and the Ottawa Police, as well as Bernier and Carter voluntarily taking on one Jason Kenney. Corey, your team includes Ford, Pierre Pallier, Joe Biden, Dean French, and Justin Trudeau. Corey, your fill-in-the-blank pick is who and why wow

Corey 1:51:41

i was hoping you'd go to carter first so i'd have a little bit i gave i

Zain 1:51:46

gave i'm ready to go oh

Zain 1:51:48

oh carter go harder you're filling the blank pick is who and why i'm

Carter 1:51:51

i'm going to check uh select former waterloo police chief uh uh tort

Carter 1:51:57

tort uh hang on here i got that you're ready

Zain 1:52:00

ready to go matthew

Carter 1:52:00

matthew torrigan let's go with that matthew torrigan as uh who is the chief of the ottawa police service for about uh 14 hours before uh counselor diane deans was turfed as the police services board chair uh as a in the uh shit show that i alluded to earlier that that Watson oversaw with the attempted purge of the Ottawa Police Board. So I'm going to choose him because he seems like a stand-up guy because he actually resigned once the people who appointed him were no longer there.

Corey 1:52:41

Corey? So I've had a bit of time, and I've sort of scanned the Western world, the Eastern world. I've thought about Angela Merkel and maybe some of the wise statesman-like behavior she could bring to it.

Corey 1:52:53

You know, I thought about Vladimir Putin, if we imagine like the best use of the person, you know, very powerful

Corey 1:52:59

manipulative, very, very, very forceful. I've thought about Xi in China, I've thought about perhaps bringing China into the equation. You've got to look also at their ability to bring, you know, COVID down and just the general way to impose authority. But as I scan the entire globe, and I think about who's most excellent i only come up with my own name so thank you great i draft cory hogan to be player coach of this team of misfits and lead them to excellence kind of like the movie slap shot and

Corey 1:53:27

and to a lesser extent the movie slap shot you

Carter 1:53:29

you know what if um you know now that you've mentioned it i have always thought of you as paul newman uh

Carter 1:53:37

my salad dress in this story because of my salad yeah but in this story i'm robert redford so i

Zain 1:53:42

i loved i love you Yo, I have to tell you this. I love Robert Redford and Dave.

Zain 1:53:50

Rest in peace, Ivan Rietman.

Zain 1:53:53

Okay, we've got the teams. End it. No, no, no. We've got

Corey 1:53:57

got a little more to do. We

Zain 1:53:57

We haven't even done the lightning round yet. We haven't. Carter,

Carter 1:54:00

Carter, anyone still listening? Okay. No.

Zain 1:54:04

actually want to talk about Jagmeet Singh.

Carter 1:54:08

End it. No one wants to talk about Jagmeet Singh.

Zain 1:54:11

Okay, okay. Let me give you a pitch in terms of why. Okay.

Zain 1:54:16

this is okay, so I'll try not to draw this out.

Zain 1:54:24

Obviously, the natural home for the NDP from like a social construct and values perspective is

Zain 1:54:30

against the protesters is like, you know, for public health, etc, keeping the mandates. Okay, I think the NDP play a really interesting role by also having their long history with labor, And their long history with the blue working class, blue collar working class folks of the country. And when you look at at least a subset of the protesters in the convoy, the

Zain 1:54:52

the working class element comes out. The, you know, compounding of lack of prospects, losing jobs, you know, the world changing underneath your feet, that sort of stuff that are Western world trends that we're seeing with individuals and certain communities. I felt like the NDP would have been the perfect—and Jagmeet Singh and his party would have been the perfect broker or the perfect voice that didn't pound on fractures but had a way to understand and bridge them. I think they understood boat size or had the capacity historically and with where they sit progressively

Zain 1:55:29

progressively to kind of bridge boats. Am I being naive? Is that a crazy thought? I wanted to throw it out there. It's been in my head for a while that this could have used more Jagmeet Singh because of that specific positioning that the NDP could bring to the fold. But we didn't see it. And I'm curious to get your thoughts on this.

Corey 1:55:45

Well, so I don't think that is a very contemporary view of either the NDP or the trucking industry. okay uh certainly not of singh's ndp i would also say it is falling into the trap that this is somehow sort of representative of the trucking industry which i don't don't believe it is but i

Zain 1:56:00

i think it is somewhat representative of a small group right that's a con but like the the people with frustrations that are parked there and i think those frustrations are with covid but are not exclusively with covid i think there's compounding frustrations with a let's just call it class warfare that i think these people feel like they're fighting against and have an an uphill battle that they're trying to wage. So that's kind of where I'm coming at with, you know, empathy and understanding of that group of people. So

Corey 1:56:27

So I get what you're saying on that, but I think that, hmm,

Corey 1:56:31

I'm going to get myself into trouble if I'm not careful here. It's not really about class warfare. And a lot of the anxiety is that they feel that they are under assault by the very people that I think are more predominant in Singh's NDP than in the past. I mean, people who would say like, you know, know kind of policing their language around you know talking about certain groups you know anti racist things like that where they really feel for whatever reason like this is not an awesome group of people the people who've shown up in downtown ottawa to be truckers no matter what you know i find

Corey 1:57:03

find people on both sides language is yeah

Corey 1:57:08

i don't i don't think that there's

Corey 1:57:11

there's an awful lot they would see in common with the ndp i i don't i mean maybe i'm entirely mistaken on that maybe somebody will correct me and say that there there was but

Corey 1:57:22

so much of what i think seems to be driving this is a feeling of being on the outside uh you

Corey 1:57:27

you know to use kind of the layman's terms of being canceled like just just not being relevant to the conversation and i i don't know that

Corey 1:57:35

that jagmeet singh and

Corey 1:57:37

and his party are the people to have that conversation and carry it forward i think in some ways they're much better situated to capture the group that's really riled up like the counter protest on

Zain 1:57:48

on the other side in opposition seems natural i i agree with that from like a carter

Zain 1:57:52

carter i'm curious about this i mean maybe it's a naive thought and and it's a perhaps a fleeting one on my and just thinking about you know where the ndp voice should have been here maybe more broadly as the question is like and should the ndp voice have found room here because i certainly thought there was room for it here um but i'm I'm curious to get your thoughts on this and Jagmeet Singh by extension.

Carter 1:58:16

agree with Corey. This is not, you know, this isn't the group that Singh should be trying to appeal to. I mean, yes, I do think that there are people who would identify as leftists or left of center in the group that are protesting. And I think that but I don't think that they're there because of left issues.

Corey 1:58:38

I mean, they literally set up a commune in downtown Ottawa. They

Corey 1:58:41

They should probably think of themselves as more left-sub-center than they are.

Carter 1:58:44

are. Yeah, obviously. But I

Carter 1:58:46

I do think that Singh does have an opportunity to play in the counter, in the resurrection of this. I think that his ability to appeal to youth is huge. I mentioned this earlier. If he is smart, he is going to be doing the counter-protest because I think that the NDP should be marching in the streets. I think that this is something that they can do, and they can achieve great things doing it. But, you

Carter 1:59:10

you know, they've been reluctant to take on that, you know, kind of, we stand with the, you know, we stand with the working man, we stand with the everyman type of role. And it's right there. It's right there. They should be totally taking it.

Zain 1:59:25

Corey, what do you think on that? I know we had that conversation a while ago. Last year, it seems like, on this particular episode.

Carter 1:59:32

episode. Was it in this episode? Last year?

Zain 1:59:34

Yes, it was. That is correct. Corey?

Corey 1:59:39

Carter said something that I think I want to jump on here about the NDP. Don't let it

Carter 1:59:43

it go to the lightning round. That's good.

Corey 1:59:46

We think about, as kind of a general broad strokes, as youth are liberal and older folk are conservative, right?

Corey 1:59:55

One of the things that we should all be watching very carefully is like, that's not destiny necessarily. And one of the things that the pollsters are seeing pretty generally, as far as I can tell, is that opposition to the convoy gets higher as you get older and younger people are more supportive of the convoy and its goals.

Corey 2:00:14

and that's interesting to me that's really interesting to me like in i'm not saying that in a younger cohort it's a majority opinion but it's it's not necessarily the divide you would think with an issue that's so closely associated with conservatives and so is this kind of like a harbinger of more

Corey 2:00:29

more conservative youth movements or is this an aberration and that's something i think we're going to need to unpack in the weeks to come

Zain 2:00:36

come i mean there's a massive conversation there especially when you you know double click on us let's just roll up our sleeves and

Carter 2:00:41

and give it a world tonight young

Zain 2:00:42

white men uh carter jordan peterson is he helping or hindering the progression of young white men in western democracy anyways

Zain 2:00:53

you weren't supposed to be here let's summarize the teams cory you've got doug ford mr skippy joe biden dean french trudeau carter freeland the rcmp you missed me carter missed me i'm on my jogan fine

Zain 2:01:05

fine cory you've got player coach cory Corey Hogan, Carter, you got Freeland, the RCMP, the counter protesters, Chief Slowly, Maxime Bernier and that other police chief that resigned. That's good. You're sacking up on the police chiefs that are that are on the sidelines and free agents in your draft. I

Carter 2:01:21

I was also prepared to take Kenny.

Carter 2:01:23

Thank you. Thank you, Carter.

Zain 2:01:23

Carter. That concludes our segment on the draft to save democracy. Let's move on to our final segment are over under our lightning round. Corey Hogan, I'm starting with you. sorry cory in

Zain 2:01:34

in the next 48 hours will the velji rule uh be broken in canadian political culture yes or no are

Corey 2:01:43

we going to say what it is or just am i going to say yes you're

Zain 2:01:44

you're going to say yes and carter's going to explain it to us or

Zain 2:01:48

or are you going to say no who's

Zain 2:01:50

who's saying yes cory's

Zain 2:01:52

cory's saying yes or no and carter's going to explain it to us they're on yes what's

Carter 2:01:58

what's the real again again cory

Zain 2:02:00

cory do you want to explain it carter clearly doesn't seem to want it

Carter 2:02:02

it you know what it's late at night i don't even know why i'm still awake i'm

Corey 2:02:06

i'm not entirely sure you are i'm

Carter 2:02:08

i'm not at this stage this is well past my bedtime i've run out of water and i have no snacks the

Corey 2:02:13

the velji rule is that political career ends uh immediately after a politician starts a public statement with i have always been a friend of the jewish oh that's right and has to walk back something something that they have said.

Carter 2:02:26

That's a good rule.

Zain 2:02:27

I expected Carter, you think it's going to happen, so it's more likely not going to happen. Corey, will it happen in the next 48 hours?

Corey 2:02:33

Well, I already answered. We're in like a loop here now. Corey,

Zain 2:02:36

Corey, will it happen in the next 48 hours? What's going to happen? Let me explain to you what

Carter 2:02:40

Belzey rule is. What happens is-

Zain 2:02:44

Carter, overrated, underrated, the use of the Emergencies Act by Justin Trudeau, the unprecedented use. Is it overblown in the conversation? Overrated

Carter 2:02:51

Overrated or underrated? it's underrated this is important this is and this is way it should be used i'm excited to see it rolled out cory

Zain 2:03:00

cory overrated underrated emergencies act uh he's excited

Corey 2:03:04

excited to see it roll out i'm the fucking wild i

Carter 2:03:07

i want to see some like i'm watching people get arrested this is exciting for me uh

Corey 2:03:12

uh i would say that is i actually think it's overrated that people are drawing these parallels to the war measures act and uh carter just put up a picture of somebody getting arrested it on the screen but

Corey 2:03:23

but it's not really the war measures act it's got a lot more temperance

Corey 2:03:28

temperance in it it was put together by the mulroney government sort of to address the constitutional challenges that came with it and it's not even being fully deployed so i i certainly it's it's kind of a headline maker it's the first time we've used it um but let's not you know we haven't suspended the writ of habeas corpus it's not that and so i i think that um well well a significant moment it's not like the be all and end all that fox news is calling it cory

Zain 2:03:56

cory the law and order brand overrated or underrated in your mind generally

Corey 2:04:02

generally underrated uh canadians are pretty process crazy and i think it's been a real strong suit of the conservatives that they could talk about law and order as as something that this

Corey 2:04:12

this is a fairly progressive country but there are things that the conservatives have that, you know, like, I think, help

Corey 2:04:19

help them when the conservatives win elections here. We all know that, right. And part of it is, you know, the economy, of course, that's kind of a staple of the conservatives, they get a lot of credit on that. But part of it is like this idea of rule of law, and like we follow process and the conservative brand, I don't think is going to be badly dinged by this. I think in Alberta, it's easy to sort of see it as

Corey 2:04:41

as a bit of of a more dramatic moment perhaps than um than it is if you're not in alberta because jason kenney and the coots border crossing and all of that uh but it's it's important it's an important brand and it's probably underrated carter

Zain 2:04:54

carter overrated or underrated the law and order brand uh

Carter 2:04:57

uh i think it's underrated i think that you know cory said at one point that it may not be available to the liberals uh i think there are lots of things in law and order that are available to liberals uh if they chose to take it i think that uh changing the way that we approach manslaughter uh charges and making it murder one to murder um you know a spouse that you're in a relationship with you know within it through domestic violence i think that that should be a much you know there's some low-hanging fruit if you will uh in law and order for um for justice and and liberal ideals but But they never take them. They never call.

Zain 2:05:36

Carter, final question for you. Thank

Zain 2:05:39

Predict this for me. Stephen Carter, get ready. Get all your faculties together.

Carter 2:05:42

Here we go. Okay.

Zain 2:05:44

Will the Emergencies Act be in place for the full 30-day measure?

Zain 2:05:49

It will not? Not. Corey, will the Emergencies Act be in place for the full 30-day measure?

Corey 2:05:55

Do you think Dan Carlin records his three-hour podcasts all in one go? or like... No,

Carter 2:05:59

No, I mean, we're crushing this. He takes like nine months to get out a three-hour episode.

Corey 2:06:06

No, I don't think it's going to be in place.

Zain 2:06:08

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 969 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velge. With me, as always, Corey Hogan and the new guy, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

Carter 2:06:22

great, new guy. Oh my god, how long is that all together?

Transcript