Transcript
Zain
0:02
This is a strategist episode 977. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what is going on?
Carter
0:10
Well, my AFL predictions were going great. And then Sunday happened. And I fell apart. I just fell apart. Like went over three on Sunday.
Carter
0:19
So I'm in second place in my pool.
Zain
0:22
Big slap in the face. Corey, how are you doing? it i'm
Corey
0:25
doing fine i feel like that was an oscars reference i feel like you were talking about uh chris rock getting slapped in the face by will smith oh
Corey
0:33
don't know if you heard this a little clever would
Zain
0:35
i how clever would i be if i if i were able to shoot that in the first hold on like what happened oh
Corey
0:41
oh it's so uh it's complicated uh what you need to know is both were in the right uh they're both heroes and nobody is mad at either party okay
Corey
0:50
yeah make sure to drop that in every cocktail party you go to for the next I'm
Carter
0:53
I'm probably just gonna post that straight away to Twitter you
Zain
0:57
know what everyone has a take on I don't know why we should stop you Carter I'm just gonna post it let me
Corey
1:01
me write this tweet for you right now okay go ahead Corey I support them both equally both great guys who did great things yeah
Carter
1:09
okay I'm ready to continue to do great things
Corey
1:11
they're on in yeah hang
Carter
1:12
hang on I wasn't in Twitter okay
Corey
1:14
okay I support them both equally both great guys who did great things and
Zain
1:21
we'll continue to do great
Corey
1:22
great and uh you know that's too much like it's a little
Zain
1:25
little too much yeah
Corey
1:25
yeah it's too much because there's a bit of an
Zain
1:27
an art to it which
Zain
1:28
which i sometimes miss is that a semicolon
Corey
1:33
that works i think so that's fine it's
Corey
1:38
yeah just fired away i can hear you hang on it's
Carter
1:40
i'm just getting ready to post it probably this is this This is
Corey
1:44
is a visual medium, and it really, people love long pauses, too. These are two things that podcasters want
Carter
1:50
want to hope for. Listen, you two can keep talking. I'm,
Carter
1:53
Well, you know, Corey, what
Zain
1:54
we should talk about, the
Zain
1:55
the Strategist Presents Strategist Live brought to you by The Strategist. Any update you have for the fine people? Well,
Corey
1:59
Well, it's over 90% sold out, so... Of our new venue,
Corey
2:04
Of our new venue, yeah. So... Look at that. So, you know, if you want tickets, you act now, or don't. We don't care. It's over 90% sold out, so who gives a fuck? It's going to look full either way. Our egos will be fine, so come,
Corey
2:16
come, don't come, we don't care. Unless you already bought tickets, in which case, please come, because if it's less than 90% sold out, that will actually be pretty bad. And frankly,
Zain
2:25
frankly, that will create a terrible show, because we will reference that the entire time.
Zain
2:29
It'll be perpetually flop sweat. Like,
Corey
2:31
Like, we'll be out there saying, oh, jeez, we expected more people. All these empty seats.
Carter
2:36
No one's actually coming. They just wanted to give us $25.
Corey
2:40
to Arts Commons, yes. Yeah.
Carter
2:42
Yeah. Yeah. 975 darts commons. It's all working out. I just want to make back my 2,500 bucks. That's all I really care about.
Zain
2:48
Is the tweets end, Carter?
Zain
2:51
Tweets up. Wonderful. Thank you, Carter, for your take and your contribution. We'll
Corey
2:54
We'll see where this goes. We'll see where this goes.
Zain
2:56
We'll see where this goes indeed. I maybe should have quoted.
Corey
3:00
You don't let me move on. Please, go ahead. He tagged me. He said that I was the guy who said this, which is only technically true.
Carter
3:09
in fairness i didn't reference rock and uh and smith so i think
Carter
3:14
think you're gonna get past i think we can we can pass it off as you were referring to zane and i yeah
Zain
3:20
yeah nobody's gonna believe that now i have to read this uh i support them equally both great guys have done a great thing why is it okay because cory i see yeah it's
Corey
3:29
quote uh attributed to me that's good okay
Zain
3:32
okay oh wonderful Wonderful. Very good. Fantastic. Great content, guys. Great, great. Three minutes and 36 seconds.
Zain
3:39
Let's move it on to our first segment, our first segment, Cleaning for the Cleaners. Guys, it is time. It is our annual spring cleaning episode.
Zain
3:50
Corey, Stephen, we do this every year. We do this every year. It is time for spring cleaning. Carter, you were going to say something. I'm
Carter
3:57
I'm always ready for spring cleaning, but I was thinking, you know, I have to actually start my spring cleaning so this is good this is a good reminder so thank you zane after
Zain
4:04
after spring break on the first episode after spring break we always do our annual spring cleaning episode this allows us of course at the strategist podcast to give advice to political parties to give them a uh a sense of scope in terms of how much clean do they need based on of course strategy messaging personnel personnel direction so here's how it works of course i mean you guys know the rules but let me explain it to our dear listeners we've had to endure stephen carter tweeting and having cory uh so we
Corey
4:39
we filter out the
Corey
4:40
we just want the true fans here this
Zain
4:42
this is true we if we filter them out we are now here with you let me tell you the rules you guys are of course familiar
Zain
4:48
i walk you through various political parties in the country in our province provincial political political parties, you tell me whether they need nothing done, no spring cleaning, whether they need a light dusting. You may want to write this down. I know you guys have known this every single year we do this. Whether they need a light dusting. Corey, whether they need a damp cloth to wipe it down, or do they need a deep clean? And you're going to tell me why, based on a cocktail of things, which includes strategy, messaging, their personnel that could be elected and and unelected, their direction, and the issues they're focused and prioritized on. So once again, I'll walk you through a host of political parties, national, provincial. You tell me, doing
Zain
5:36
doing nothing? Is it a dusting? Is it a damp cloth wipe down? Or is it a deep clean? A lot of Ds. Yes, Corey, you've got questions on behalf of the audience, I suspect. The
Corey
5:46
The big one being, is this how you approach cleaning, out of curiosity? This
Zain
5:51
This is your four
Corey
5:51
four choices? This is what you do?
Zain
5:53
These are the four choices. You do nothing, right? Or you do a light little dusting, right? Just cosmetic, performative, perhaps. You know, your damp cloth wipe down, right? Now, there's a bunch of things in between the damp cloth wipe down and the deep clean. But the thing is, everything in between is for amateurs. Everything in between is for amateurs. Where does the
Carter
6:11
the sucking up of the dirt with the vacuum go?
Corey
6:16
Do you consider that a deep clean? That's a good question.
Carter
6:18
No, I think that I'm viewing that as the damp cloth. I consider
Zain
6:20
consider it part of the deep clean. Oh,
Carter
6:22
Oh, that's where you got the big unit you rented, Safeway.
Zain
6:26
Yeah, let me paint a picture, okay? Okay.
Zain
6:28
Okay. You're in your kitchen. Paint us a
Corey
6:30
Zane. Use your words.
Zain
6:33
That's good. You're in your kitchen, right? It's been about seven days. You know, you are a household of four people. Deep cleaning. This
Zain
6:43
It's a deep clean. That's right. Corey's right. You take everything that you have on the counters. You perhaps portion it off to one side of the counter. You do the damp cloth. You take your new
Zain
6:55
bread. You put the bread in
Zain
6:58
fridge. Put the bread back in the fridge, yeah.
Zain
6:59
put it back in the fridge. You clean it out. This is how it works, Carter. No. Do nothing, dusting, damp cloth,
Carter
7:05
cloth, wipe down, or deep
Carter
7:06
I mean, the bread thing would have been shocking enough for people. This is going to be very upsetting that you're doing a deep clean every week.
Carter
7:14
Like, for me, the deep clean is once in every year. Come on, let's get going on this, sir. Okay, no,
Zain
7:17
no, no, no. Now you're bringing something up because this is going to pain me because I think I know the answer.
Zain
7:23
Carter, are you shoes in the household sort of person? I don't know.
Carter
7:27
Why would you wear shoes in the household? We're not Americans. We've got to stand for our Canadian identity. You take the shoe off when you get to the front door.
Zain
7:35
And then do what? What are you in for the remainder? Slippers.
Corey
7:38
He's got indoor shoes, Zane. He is a shoes in the household guy. You wear shoes in the household sort of
Carter
7:43
of person. No, slippers.
Zain
7:45
they ever touch pavement? fucking rogers over here god
Zain
7:52
that's how he that's how he acted when he got questioned that's right cory cory are you uh you know and i ask this because on behalf of the uh the racialized community uh to the white community uh which is exactly the the purpose of this podcast people don't realize this this is questions from me to to white men uh cory are you a shoes of the household sort of family you
Zain
8:14
you know i'm not but i'll confess the fact
Corey
8:16
that you stuttered a little more i'm a little more accepting of shoes in the household than i think most that is like i'm not gonna have i'm not gonna have a big problem if i need to wear my shoes and say walk through my house to get somewhere the
Zain
8:29
the the portion of our audience that has uh similar pigmentation to me is having their collective head explode cory this is insane shoes do not belong in the household you need to do a deep clean every single day let's move it on to our segment. Can we start with this, Carter? We have this conversation every year, every
Zain
8:46
every single year when we do this
Zain
8:47
this segment. Stephen Carter,
Zain
8:49
here's a list of items just so you have this in the back pocket too, right? Based on a series of strategy, messaging, personnel, direction, issues. You don't have to answer on each one of these, but this is your considerations in terms of why you're offering one of these four choices. And Stephen Carter, Carter. Let's start with the federal NDP. Are
Zain
9:08
Are you giving them a do nothing? This is immaculate. This is perfect. They're polished. Are
Zain
9:14
Are you giving them a light dusting? Are you doing a damp cloth wipe down? Or does this party need a deep clean based on the cocktail of strategy, messaging, personnel, direction, overall party direction, vision, and issues? Stephen Carter, what is it?
Carter
9:28
It's a spot clean, Zane. I think what we need... This is not a thing, Carter.
Zain
9:31
Carter. This is not a thing. A spot clean is not a thing that fits in between the damp cloth wipe down and the deep clean, which is, of course, amateur hour. Which one of the four is it, Carter? It's not time for fucking games. I think it's
Carter
9:44
it's a spot clean and what you need to do is you need to focus in on the strategy because what I think you've got a leader that actually does connect with people, right? You've got someone who has heard, who has seen, and then you just need to kind of clean around the strategy. It's something that really needs focus and it's the strategic direction of the federal NDP. This is why we need to sell video,
Carter
10:10
video, man. Like you're going to die right there. it's pretty amazing but i think it's a spot clean i'd be shocked if cory didn't agree with me
Zain
10:19
cory which one of the four uh well-crafted uh d's is it is it do nothing dusting damn cloth wipe down or is it a deep clean for the federal ndp and why cory which one of the four which one of the four that i just put on the table is it cory i'm giving you the answer you just have to choose it yeah it's
Zain
10:37
fucking easy you know it's
Corey
10:39
it's tough to say but it's definitely soap and bucket at work right I
Carter
10:51
go so far to say
Corey
10:52
say it's damp cloth I don't know if it's damp cloth but it's
Carter
10:54
it's gotta be it's gotta be a scrub brush it's
Carter
10:58
it's gotta be a scrub brush right you're
Carter
11:00
you're scrubbing right fuck you you just spot cleaning you
Zain
11:03
scrub brushes get fucked man what the fuck is wrong with you I bet you wear shoes in the house fuck you you're lying to me because you know i'm going to judge you no
Carter
11:16
why is it a
Corey
11:16
a damp cloth wipe down no it's it's not it's a soap and butter why is it and
Corey
11:23
guess what i would say is that you know it needs some fundamental cleaning right like you got to get to the basics here you don't need anything too fancy but you need to ask yourselves that what are we trying to do here question and carter sort of alluded to this right when he said that it was a strategy spot clean. I don't disagree, but I would actually phrase it differently because it is about foundationally, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to be that social conscience that rides along with the liberals and holds the balance of power and always manages to make the liberals more
Corey
11:50
more progressive? Or are you trying to actually fight for government at a certain point? So get to the fundamentals. And if you can get to the fundamentals and figure out what it is exactly you do here, you're going to be in a better place. Because I think right Right now, the NDP is trying to do both things at the same time. And at a certain point, at
Corey
12:08
at a certain point, those strategies will become mutually exclusive.
Zain
12:12
Some spring cleaning advice for the federal NDP. Corey, let's keep it rolling. What are you giving the liberals? Is it a do-nothing, dusting, dam cloth wipe down, or a deep clean for the federal liberals right now?
Corey
12:24
Well, I would definitely pull out the vacuum for this one, too. Like, you know what? You've got to get the cobwebs out of there, but you're not going to be able to do it with a brush alone. You're going to have to get in there with some suction action because ultimately I think that the liberals have a problem where they can't really decide – well, I'll put it this way. Why did they care so much? Why did they so desperately want this deal with the NDP, right? It's because that they're – they did the thing to get the thing. They had the election to try to get the majority and they didn't get it. And so now they're going back and they're trying to clean off that area that was there before, to continue your very labored metaphor. It's all on you.
Zain
13:07
This is not on me. We do this every year. It goes flawlessly each and every year. You guys ask me the questions up front. You generally behave. Stephen Carter, between the do nothing, the dusting, the damn cloth wipe down and the deep clean, what do the liberals need right now? What advice are you giving them on the cocktail of strategy, messaging, personnel, direction and issues? is well
Carter
13:26
i think you go out into the garage and you pick up the um the heavy duty garage vacuum cleaner right that's going to come in it's got the the wet and the dry yeah the shop vac right tell me
Zain
13:36
me why the shop vac carter well
Carter
13:38
well because i think that there's a little bit of uh a little bit of deep cleaning that needs to happen and it's difficult for the liberals clean
Zain
13:45
clean so the deep clean carter what
Carter
13:47
what are the four options this is with the shop vac zane
Carter
13:50
zane i need you to pay attention okay it's with a shop vac and what you do with the shop vac is you bring in the shop vac vac and you're coming in and you're you know there's there's moisture all around them because of all the hair gel and so with all of that moisture around them you have to kind of come in and uh you
Carter
14:08
you need to clean things up wait wait use a
Carter
14:12
for hair gel that's actually that's actually what happened to my fucking hair that's
Carter
14:17
that's how bad things went for me i did this exact same same thing here's the thing the
Carter
14:24
think the liberals are looking for easy right now and i it really disappointed me actually that they did this deal with the ndp i've said from the beginning i felt like well this
Zain
14:32
this is you're getting serious for a second i want to actually throw one more data point does does it still disappoint you even with the two to one ratio of canadians favoring it in some recent polling that's come out does it still disappoint
Carter
14:42
disappoint you i think if they just said this is our agenda and what we're going to achieve and then drag the ndp with them they
Carter
14:48
they They don't need to go out and make it public that the NDP dragged them to this deal.
Carter
14:52
Right. This all of these things, if this was really the liberal agenda, this was all attainable to them. So why share the credit? I mean, I watched the NDP out crowing about how great everything was again today. And the NDP didn't need the lift from the liberals and the liberals were going to do most of this anyways. So why not just do what you were going to do, do
Carter
15:14
do what you did for the last six years, which was force the NDP essentially to vote for you and with you. Even in the majority, they would vote against for, you know, they were all over the place because the liberals were setting what we
Carter
15:26
we now call the progressive agenda.
Carter
15:29
So, you know, the shop vac comes into play because it's got the sucking and the blowing opportunities. And both
Carter
15:34
both of those are in play when you're dealing with the federal liberals.
Zain
15:40
do you think? Well,
Corey
15:40
Well, Carter's response here. It's fairly consistent with what I was trying to drive at here, which is they seem
Corey
15:47
seem to be trying their best to get the thing they were denied, but they didn't really need it. And so they need to ask themselves, like, why? And part of it seems to be maybe exhaustion. And this is where I say they got to get the cobwebs out. They got to get, you know, some sort of deep-rooted, like, suction on everything that's going on that's somewhat holding them back and making them feel old and stale. So the Libs need to really, really kind of find their spring again in their step. And I guess my fear for them with this deal is that this deal was in many ways a victory for the Liberals and that gets them to 2025. As you mentioned, it's very popular. popular. It is very much reinforcing of what we were saying last week, which is the Conservatives saying, look at this scary coalition, probably not going to work that well, because most Canadians say, yeah, good. I mean, like, I generally support both parties or like a plurality, if not a majority. And so I'm fine with this, right? But where to from here? Where to from here? Obviously, there's still a lot to do. There's an agenda to be assigned here. You can't declare victory yet. You've got to actually deliver on these things. It is a robust policy agenda. It is a robust regulatory agenda. But it kind of feels like you're fighting for the thing you wanted last year. And it's consistent with, I think, a general malaise within the Liberal Party, which I feel so dumb saying it because it's not fair and they continue to do things. And literally last week I was talking about how transformational they were. And I stand by that. What changed for
Corey
17:20
Nothing's changed for me. What's
Zain
17:23
guess the tension for
Corey
17:23
for me is, like,
Corey
17:25
like, I don't know, it's in some ways, you
Corey
17:29
you know, it's coming from a place of exhaustion, not a place of excitement. That's my read. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe that's a dumb thing to say. But I don't really get a sense that there's like the next plan. And it really does seem to be kind of surrendering to a view of the world and the view of Canada that's easy and lazy and black and white. And, you know, the Liberal Party used
Corey
17:52
used to be a party that lived in the gray a little bit more, right, and was willing to tackle a couple more issues and be a little more contradictory if they thought on that it was better for the country. But this is a bit of a – it's
Corey
18:03
it's a bit of a surrendering to one wing of the party and maybe that's fine and maybe the way it's going to go and maybe I'm like lamenting something that was never that great because frankly, whenever the right wing of the liberal party was taking power, I was usually a little pissed off about it. But it did seem like it was a necessary check and nobody seems to be that interested in trying to drive an agenda that's the liberal agenda. They're fine championing the progressive
Corey
18:27
progressive agenda and the soundbites that come with it. But the idea of being that moderate party seems to be totally lost. And maybe that's the thing that I'm having trouble articulate or try to put my finger on here. Let's
Zain
18:38
Let's spend a bit of time on this. Carter, should the call come from inside the House to be the centrist option if you're the liberals right now? Do you even orchestrate within your own party some quote-unquote defectors from the Trudeau agenda so you can cover both flanks, the now kleptomania on the left from stealing long-held NDP policies and, of course, driving to some of your own while simultaneously trying to own the center before the conservatives in their windy path do what they want to do? do not or do you do you just avoid that right now if you're the liberal party how do you how do you kind of um position uh
Zain
19:16
both sides the current direction which is very much crystal clear in terms of where they want to go as well as the uh the middle that they've historically owned what are you doing right now in the liberal party if you if you um want to optimize for both carter i
Carter
19:30
i think this is where i'm really struggling with it because you know i'm i'm in the middle right like i'm not uh
Carter
19:35
uh someone who who lives on the right or the left i'm in the middle and it worries me when we lurch right and so lurching is is kind of uh a thing that i worry about as we move through various different levels of government and the critiques that we've consistently had for the liberal party of canada um the first critique is actually around issue management right and that links primarily to personnel because it all we've always said when they run into a crisis is when they're at their worst this is actually when they're at their best and it feels like they're fixing the wrong problem they're fixing um their their agenda right they're fixing what they want to achieve when really the thing that has kept them back has never been the things that they're trying to do but
Carter
20:21
but instead it's the things that they don't anticipate doing or having impact them um this i mean the ukraine war with russia is actually the the first time that we've seen, I would say, very, very competent issues management, in part because it's so very, very black and white, right? There's a good guy, a bad guy, and Canada and Chrystia Freeland as well being such a driving force behind this actual solution.
Carter
20:48
It's given them a really big step up. But keep in mind that when we've critiqued the Liberals over the last six years, I don't think we spent a lot of time critiquing the Liberals in terms of what they've tried to achieve. Maybe we've critiqued them for doing half-assed measures, or maybe we've critiqued them for not
Carter
21:06
not achieving things fast enough or going too far on some other things. But the thing that we've really hit them on, the thing that really needed that deep clean that you want us to get to, has always been their issues management. And recently, their issues management hasn't been a factor.
Zain
21:23
Corey, you want to jump in on this? And maybe I'll kind of tee it up with a broader sort of notion that you've brought up in the past, which is around the fears of Pierre Polyever, you had this quote, which you said, sometimes people just get sick and tired of their government. They just get sick and tired of the current whatever it is. And I guess the question at the heart of what, or the notion at the heart of my question is, can the liberals own a different version of liberal for the next iteration, so that when the Canadian public gets tired of this leftward march, they're are also owning the center simultaneously, that they've built up two poles at the same time in the same time? Is that idealistic? Is that crazy? How do they kind of ensure that they're not giving up the future of what you've been saying, the gray zone of the Liberal Party or the center with this current iteration of it?
Corey
22:10
Well, yeah, in the 20th century, 70 of 100 years, I think, or something like that, the Liberal Party of Canada governed. And in part, it was because there were those two strong poles in the Liberal Party. And you would have a bit of a drift between them. There was always almost a party within the party in waiting that would take over the major infrastructure and then repurpose
Corey
22:29
repurpose it and reframe it towards Canadians. And look, I'm not going to pretend that it always worked. It most certainly, certainly did not.
Corey
22:37
But it was kind of a bit of a safeguard against what you were saying. And perhaps it kept a bit of a floor on the popularity of the the liberals and you know it's hard not to notice as somebody who was you know worked for that party in the 2000s that when that whole left wing right wing left wing right wing liberal thing broke after
Corey
22:57
after paul martin the party broke you know you know the party broke and it was not necessarily clear those two polls disappeared they haven't truly really reformed since and it's it's been kind of in this nebulous drift at times very popular as we've seen but you know i do worry for it you know one of the things that i would say is that the liberal agenda right now is popular it's transformational but
Corey
23:19
but it's kind of easy like it's it's from like a philosophy policy track point of view kind
Corey
23:25
kind of easy and maybe in the long term kind of insufficient because you're not having to make the trade-offs that that antagonize people all of the time the balance talk
Zain
23:33
talk to me about easy what do you mean by easy just like and it's like is everything that they're choosing like in the pop culture and they're just like picking and choosing those
Zain
23:41
sort of things Is
Corey
23:41
that what you mean by easy? Sort of, but I would go a little bit further than that. I would say that it's not hard to be consistent, right? If you just say, okay, that's popular, I'm going to do that. All of the progressives like that, I'm going to do that. All of the progressives like that, I'm going to do that. All of that and all that, all the way through. And the criticism of the liberals was they weren't true
Corey
23:59
true progressives because they would often balance that out.
Corey
24:02
That balance, however, takes a lot of work. And it's tough on the party and it's difficult. and you see things like Martin Kretchen fighting, and it's a tension within it that needs to be managed. I don't see really that tension, let alone an interest to manage that tension. And so the Liberal Party in its current iteration is not, from
Corey
24:23
from a policy point of view, I want to be clear, because there are really huge stylistic differences too. And I do think there are limits to how far the Liberals would go on some of these things, but it's not fundamentally different from the NDP. I mean, we've said that for a long time. That's been true for basically three elections at this point. Arguably, in 2015, the liberals were further left than the NDP on many things. In fact, when you ask people, which party do you see as transformational? Which party do you see as real change? The liberals came
Corey
24:57
came out on top of it, which is wild when you consider the previous thing we're just talking about, which is they managed for 70 of 100 years, right? Right. Yeah. And so if
Corey
25:07
it runs that way, but the zeitgeist flips, that whiplash that Stephen Carter was talking about, that is so much a characteristic of a lot of other governing parties around the world.
Corey
25:18
I wonder, I wonder if we're not going to end up back there. I wonder if we're not going to say, boy, I really hated the cynicism of it, but I sort of miss that centrist liberal thing that just sort of sat at the middle of Canadian politics.
Zain
25:30
Carter, I have a question for you regarding, you know, we talked about the NDP and the liberals. I have a question for you, both of you, but I'll start with Carter. Regarding the
Zain
25:39
the movements, pharmacare, dental care, childcare, housing, there's all these sort of social movements that have come up. I mean, some of them have been with us for 50, 60 years advocating slow burn, aggressive, you know, different cadences, different tempos. Carter, what advice would you have, and I know this is broad, to these movements that now find themselves, hey, perhaps for the first time, have the full attention of the government? The government's got the credit card out saying, what exactly do you need? I'm ready to swipe. What advice do you have for them now with this deal that's in place? How much importance, for example, should they be putting on the NDP? Is there anything they need to hold back or consider differently when they find themselves kind of in the moment in some ways? Pharmacare is finding itself in the moment, dental care. I mean, all these movements kind of weirdly, almost simultaneously are having a movement together. Advice and cautionary principles that you would kind of put on the table as they explore their futures as a special interest, so to speak.
Carter
26:37
Well, dental and pharmacare are very different than childcare.
Carter
26:40
Childcare was something that was embraced by the childcare industry.
Carter
26:45
industry. Let's call it an industry. I'm not sure we can call it an industry, but it is an industry, I guess. So let's stick to that. that but child care is an industry the way that people were were talking about solving child care uh put money into the operators pockets and kept them essentially whole as they went through this no one was asking the child care operator to find a way to operate at ten dollars per child per day right
Carter
27:07
subsidized it was going to be subsidized the uh the thing with dental care and with um pharma care is that the people involved in the pharma you know the pharmaceuticals industry and the people involved in the dental industry aren't going to react the same way um so i i have a different you know like if i if you're talking about the the child care industry the way they've responded the way that the parties have responded to child care everybody
Carter
27:32
everybody was able to get on board very quickly i mean what ford just agreed to it this week um everybody's like oh this is the best thing in the whole world finally it has happened um basically every province is on board everybody's making things happen. Everybody's excited. That's not going to be the same situation with pharmacare and dental care, because they're going to have much larger lobby groups standing up and saying, I'm sorry, but if you do this to pharmaceuticals, you are going to undermine the central premise of pharmacies and pharmaceuticals, and that is research and development and developing the next generation of drugs. So, you know, unless we have a significant, you know, that profit margin that enables us to fund research and development, then what we just saw with the covid vaccine being developed over you know relatively short period of time
Carter
28:19
we won't have that technical capability because that's where we're going to have to start backing things off and in the long run this is going to be worse for people and those those um those
Carter
28:28
those lobbies will be just as powerful as the doctor lobby was in the 1960s when they were opposing uh the canada you know the canadian medicare system uh which didn't you know doesn't start the way we think it starts so i'd be very careful about uh being a party pushing for pharmacy for pharma care and dental care because i think they're going to get they're
Carter
28:53
they're going to get eroded if you start talking about people getting uh full pharmaceutical care there was a book um i
Carter
29:00
i read by a doctor who was talking about it would only cost eight billion dollars or something like that to run full pharmaceutical care that's that's not what we're expecting when we hear pharma care we're thinking Everything that we pay for our prescriptions is going to be taken care of by the government. If that's the actual case, it's going to be a very, very expensive program, but it's not going to get implemented like that. It's not going to be what people think it's going to be. So I think that when you're asking me the question, what's it going to look like? How should parties get involved?
Carter
29:29
cautiously, because this thing don't set yourself up for failure. And if you're, you know, if you're the population expecting something, be prepared for that something to look markedly different than what we are thinking of it when we hear these words. Corey,
Zain
29:43
Corey, I'm going to come to you in one second. Carter, on both of those, am I right to extend your point to say that you could very well see maybe it's the pharmaceutical industry, the dental care industry, if I can call it using industry as a term, to maybe have counter campaigns to try to flesh out the narrative? Would you be advising, if those were your clients, what would you be advising them in this mushy middle period where, let's say, two to one ratio of Canadians support this disagreement support the underlying headline principles in some way how are you kind of and this is taking us from away from the spring cleaning guys but how are you uh how
Zain
30:22
how are you kind of thinking about this if you're if you're in some of those industries right now i'd
Carter
30:26
i'd be looking at expanding the customer base not contracting a customer base we're not contracting the revenue source and that's where you go in and you start talking about a revenue test or a means test to enable those people who are not able to regularly access dental care or who are in in some fashion, not able to afford the pharmaceuticals that are being recommended, those people should be getting something close to full coverage. Or, you know, like what we would normally get on our dental plan at work, right, or our pharmaceutical plan at work, we're going to make sure that that's covered off. And that happens. Already we have Blue Cross and a number of other programs for less affluent people, but there's a tremendous number of people caught in the middle between these programs.
Zain
31:08
Corey, you wanted to get in here both on the broader point of how, you know, these special interests movements and groups kind of participate. What advice and cautionary tales would you have for them? And then what you may kind of see in the coming weeks and months? Yeah,
Corey
31:22
Yeah, Carter fumbled towards my point at the end of his comments there. It's really about the size of the pie, right? Like the reason childcare was so popular with childcare operators is because it expanded the number of spaces. It expanded the pie. pie. And as a result, there was the ability to create winners across the board, right? Just more money in the system for more childcare options. People are talking about how long it's going to take to ramp up these spaces. There's an expectation there'll be far more demand for childcare. And that's great if you're an operator and you can really make that work. When you're talking about pharmacare and when you're talking about dental care, the pie ain't getting that much bigger, right? There are going to be non-government winners and losers. And if the The government is going to run a program like that. It is the things that Stephen's talked about. The government's either going to want to stick to generics and save money, and you're going to have the Pfizer's of the world furious and saying you're destroying R&D, or they're not, and in which case they're going to be paying through the nose for these treatments. And either way, you're going to have people say, why isn't this novel treatment covered? Things that we put up with begrudgingly from private insurers, we would say that's an absolute injustice if it was a government insurer doing it. And
Corey
32:29
And things could get a lot more expensive, a lot rockier, and it is much more fraught with peril. Like, here be dragons when it comes to pharmacare in particular. Dental care, I don't know enough about the data underneath it. I probably should, given my wife's line of work. But, you know, the possibility of expanding the pie there is probably more significant than it is on pharmacare, would be my guess.
Zain
32:53
Carter, let's move it on to our next one. The Conservative Party of Canada.
Zain
32:56
What are you giving them? A do-nothing, a dusting, a damp cloth wipe down, or a deep clean? One may argue that they're currently in the process of their spring cleaning elongated into September. But Stephen Carter, wave your magic cleaning wand. What are you giving them?
Carter
33:11
I think they need a mechanized cleaning method that would involve polishing, scrubbing, stripping, and laundering.
Carter
33:18
they require the full over and out i mean they need to be polished uh the way that they're accessing that you know the language that they're using the way that they are are trying to appeal to their audience of voters is is um it's just unbecoming of a government in waiting they need a scrubbing they need to push the people out of the party that that uh are are taking it in the the wrong direction um they need a stripping in that they need to strip away their their fixation on uh their fundraising being tied to uh far-right extremist ideas um and they need a laundering they need to they need to get themselves cleaned inside and out um because ultimately they want to be seen as a government in waiting instead of a a crew of of fools lurching from one talking point I mean, Pierre
Carter
34:11
Pierre Palliev is showing up on, you know, Bitcoin podcasts and talking about, you know, meeting with hosts that are far right extremists. I mean, these people are off the track. They need to, they need a professional clean. And I really do think that the polishing, scrubbing, stripping and laundering model is exactly where they need to go.
Zain
34:33
Corey, are you going as intense as Stephen Carter? Is he overblowing it in your mind? What does the Conservative Party of Canada need? A do-nothing, a dusting, a damp cloth, a wipe-down, or a deep-clean, Corey Ogun? Yeah,
Corey
34:43
Yeah, don't clean it. Put it on the market and start again. Look, this is a pretty challenging place that they're in right now. And I think that they just need to move to a better neighborhood. Their problem is not the amount of dirt in their current house. It's their house. And it's their neighbors. It's where they're hanging out. And it's who they're hanging out with. So the Conservative Party of Canada does fundamentally need to decide what they're going to do and where they're going to be. And of course, that's what a leadership contest is for. And so we get to see how this all plays out. But put
Corey
35:13
put together some of these things, these comments we made about the Liberals with the comments we're now making about the Conservatives here. And if the liberals are
Corey
35:21
are happy to cruise towards the left, and the conservatives are happy to cruise towards the right,
Corey
35:26
we're in for some weird times in this country. And it's not so much that I have a big problem with where the liberals are going, for example, but I do worry that you're going to get into a situation like in the States where they just they flip governments and they undo everything. And we got a bit of a show of what a right-wing government might do in that context in 2019 when the UCP came in and did their big repeal bills and undid effectively everything they thought they could from the preceding four years of NDP government. If that becomes the norm, and if that becomes the norm at the federal level, I mean, it's going to be tough to get a lot of things done, and it's going to be tough on citizens and the chaos of it, and you're not going to move the ball forward. And then if it flips back, you're going to have similar challenges, and you're going to lose confidence in these programs, and a child care operator is not going to want to make the investments for child care spots they think might be going away in three years and whatnot. And I think in general, societies tend to undervalue stability when they think about government and governing parties. And what we're setting up right now is a situation that basically screams instability. You're going to have situations that are going to be rough on the system as a whole. And so I think to pull back to the conservatives here, we need them to do their part in this. We need them to move back towards the center because they have gone really quite a field on the right here. or the way they play footsie with the PPC. I mean, literally, let's just again state it plainly because we get so used to it, we're like frogs in water. We had MPs literally saying the government should meet with a bunch of people occupying the Capitol demanding that an election be overturned, right? It's as simple as that. It's fucking bonkers shit. And we need everybody to kind of come back to ground here.
Zain
37:14
Corey, I'm going to stick with you and use some of your points. You mentioned childcare, come back to the centre. Our next political party I want to hit on are the Ontario Progressive Conservatives. From your perspective in terms of what you've seen thus far, Doug Ford, today on the heels of signing a childcare agreement, what does this party need? Do nothing as they perhaps go to the polls, a light dusting, a dab cloth wipe down, or a deep clean, Corey Hogan?
Corey
37:39
Photoshop. Take pictures as it is and just put on a little bit of a, you know, a lens flare and call it a day. the way the polls look right now the ontario pcs are going to be re-elected that may or may not happen that's not destiny campaigns matter but they're not they're not really far off where they need to be what they need to do is just rebundle it for consumption and part of why we have a child care deal in ontario now is of course election season you don't want that looming out there and
Corey
38:06
and uh so look forward to them taking the picture and just making it better why was it it taking so long for ontario to get a child care deal well they were just gonna get the best deal that's it you know you're gonna see a lot of spin over the next bit but the fundamental pieces are all there and uh and ultimately they're looking to to lock somebody in on the photos not on the actual substance carter
Zain
38:29
carter i'm gonna go with uh cory wants to give him a light dusting even though he's using different words around photoshop and all this bullshit i don't know who the fuck busts out photoshop while cleaning but this is probably what cory does i
Corey
38:39
i try to avoid cleaning
Zain
38:40
cleaning at his his house uh carter what
Zain
38:43
what are you giving the ontario pcs is that a do nothing is it a dusting is a damp cloth wipe down and a deep clean i'm just going to count just to make sure we go through here and you guys have used a grand total of zero of my recommendations just i just want to make sure the audience at home uh or wherever they are are aware uh that this is killing me on the inside carter what are you giving them please you
Carter
39:02
you know when you walk into the old building and it's got a little bit of character and the character is in part because there's that guy working that that machine with the spray bottle and
Carter
39:10
he's moving the the buffer back and forth on the on the linoleum the nice you know nice shine that's what they need to do they need to shine up the old facade a little bit they need a spray buffer where you're spraying it down and then you buff it and then it makes it look uh
Carter
39:25
uh really quite spectacular i think that that we expected
Zain
39:29
could could one could one do that like i don't know with something like with a cloth or something no
Carter
39:33
no no this is a spray buffer it's one of the different things it goes back and forth you've seen them they're now little little riding things that you can kind of do it with but they're you know they have scrubber yeah
Corey
39:42
they also have them now that are automated and will run without an operator like
Carter
39:47
room yeah we can well that's really the the ford pc way of doing it putting the person out of work and then trying to get the work done so
Carter
39:55
the ford way so but i i like the old-fashioned way of spraying the floor and the guy is kind of back and forth with the buffer they're putting a shine on the shit right so the stuff that we expected would bring them down there you know doug ford's kind of buffoonery and his uh his failed buck a beer type of promises and the the populist stuff that didn't connect during covid um he's managed to weather all that and the difference between he and kenny is that he's been able to to kind of keep himself
Carter
40:23
himself in the position by being popular
Carter
40:28
um in quotation marks popular enough that when he just shines it up a bit he's able to uh to look good i mean it's basically what happens to my forehead each morning put a little cream on it buff it up get the shine and then i look i look way better people adore me oh
Zain
40:45
oh that's wonderful thank you carter thank you for making it about yourself at the end there that's exactly what we needed thank you for not going with any of my picks and then making about yourself i want to go to the to the ndp in ontario what do they need carter from what you've You've observed they need a do-nothing, dusting, damp cloth, wipe down, or deep clean. And feel free to use one of the four. I'm just putting them out there just so you can select, Stephen Carter. You don't have to come up with your own. You don't have to Google ways to clean. You don't have to do that. You can choose because I know you are. I
Zain
41:14
I know you are Googling how does one clean, okay? As a guy who's not lying to me about wearing shoes in the house, I know you are doing that as we speak.
Zain
41:22
So feel free to choose one of my pre
Zain
41:27
ways of cleaning. Carter, are
Zain
41:29
are the Ontario NDP doing nothing? Are they doing a light dusting? Are they doing a deep damp cloth wipe down? Or are they doing a deep clean on their party?
Carter
41:38
They're doing a damp mopping. And what they're doing with the damp mopping is... A
Corey
41:42
A dry mopping can
Corey
41:44
can sometimes be just as efficient.
Carter
41:46
It can be, but I'm going damp this time rather than a full wet. A full wet mop, I think, is just... It slashes around all the dirt that's already on the floor. The problem with the NDP or the Ontario NDP is that for whatever reason, they've been unable to rebuild themselves. They've been unable to rebuild themselves in kind of the NDP style of Alberta and British Columbia where we've seen a kind of renaissance in the NDP. And it's in no small part because they seem to have – the NDP seem to have a loyalty to the leaders and it's on the one hand admirable. That loyalty to the leaders is a, you
Carter
42:26
know, it's good, I think, for the party in the long run. But in this particular case, they've been too loyal for too long. And now they've got themselves in a position where the BC NDP has been kind of passed over by the Ontario Liberal Party. I'm
Carter
42:40
I'm sorry, the BC NDP, the Ontario NDP, been
Carter
42:42
been passed over by the Ontario Liberal Party and Doug Ford's populism. Doug Ford's populism has been able to reach into some of the NDP corners and pull out that support. So if I was to give you, Zane, one of your four, I would say that this is definitely a situation where they need at least a dry cleaning.
Zain
43:09
Corey, what do the Ontario NDP need?
Corey
43:14
know they're looking at the job and i think they need to phone a friend
Corey
43:17
they their problem is this
Zain
43:19
this fucking idiot is like on photoshop he's phoning friends you don't do anything in your house do you i'm at least googling me i'm
Carter
43:26
i'm at least googling how to clean you
Corey
43:29
i'll tell you sometimes the way that you make that task go by easier is you
Corey
43:34
put on a podcast and sometimes it's you call a friend and you get a friend to help you here and And one of the problems in Ontario, and I'm not saying anything that's earth shattering here, is you've got the
Corey
43:43
the Ontario PCs that are in the 30s. And then you have two opposition parties that are both in the mid 20s. And combined,
Corey
43:50
combined, or if one of them could gather that support, it wouldn't really be a contest in Ontario. Ontario is going to be in this very funny position where it's going to be governed
Corey
44:01
governed by the 30 some percent, which amongst provinces is somewhat irregular. Obviously, federally, we sort of have this situation right now. But federally, you have a situation where the liberals and NDP did find a way to combine their support. And if you could recreate that in some way, shape or form, and listen, that's not going to happen. Not for this election. That's not on. But ultimately, one of two things needs to happen. Either one of them needs to get the other one down on the mat, right, and just gather that support, or they need to find a way to work together. Because right now, what you've got is a situation where you've got perpetual governing by a minority who end up with majority of the seats because of the way the splits are going down. Yeah, so it's got to be frustrating if you're a progressive in Ontario. And so, yeah, phone a friend, figure it out, work together, try to get the big job done together.
Zain
44:51
Goy, I'm going to go from one opposition NDP party to another, the one in Alberta, the Alberta NDP. What do they need? Do they need to do nothing? They need a light dusting, a dam cloth wiped down, or a deep clean. And of course, feel free to use the pre-selected options that I'm providing you, as I do every year on our annual spring cleaning episode. Corey Hogan, floor is yours. Yeah,
Corey
45:09
Yeah, well, I think a nice coat of paint might help, right? Right? And Zane,
Corey
45:13
Zane, it's okay. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. This is all part of spring cleaning. Spring cleaning is something that you're taking too literally. You've got to go beyond cleaning. You've got to take the gutters. You've got to get them all fixed up. You've got to put a new fresh coat of paint on it. This is what spring cleaning looks like here. And I need you to expand your horizons. It's part of home ownership, my friend. This is something you'll understand as you get older, as you get wiser. Here.
Corey
45:37
You've got to paint that house. Do you
Zain
45:38
you want to justify your remarks at all? You got to paint that house. You called a friend, you're on your computer doing Photoshop. You're
Corey
45:45
You're Photoshopping, you're calling friends, and you're painting the house
Carter
45:47
house every now and then. And
Corey
45:48
And in this particular case, what I would say is it's time to start telling
Corey
45:55
telling a story. In Edmonton, on
Corey
45:57
on 92nd Street, there used to be a house that had a big Edmonton Eskimos logo on it. And everybody knew the house if you lived in the Bonny Doon neighborhood. I told a story. You knew something about that individual as you went by there. And what the NDP need to do is tell that story. So there are a stellar opposition. That's evidence in Jason Kenney's support numbers, obviously, some assist by Jason Kenney himself on that particular one and some of the decisions that the UCP have made. but uh you you've torn these guys down as far as you're going to be able to tear them down and we're going to be coming into a situation of very big surpluses in alberta you're going to have
Corey
46:39
time wash away some of like the totally crazy stuff that happened in covid such as the the premier of alberta not being in alberta when a wave of covid was launching and being a bit late to the pump there but
Corey
46:51
but what are you going to do in a situation with kenny without kenny almost doesn't matter where you've got a UCP government able to rain down money and
Corey
46:59
and say, the good times are back and we're going to do this. What's the story you're going to tell us about the future? I mean, ultimately, I think Albertans are a fairly aspirational people, almost to the point of delusion, if we're going to be totally blunt about it. And you need to be able to tell a story about what the economy of Alberta is going to look like in 2060, 2070, 2080. People, this is not what the NDP are offering, but you've got to be clear that you're not offering just the managed decline of the province of Alberta as oil and gas fades away. You've got to tell a story about the next Alberta and how we're going to continue to be an economic powerhouse in whatever future is to come. And for me, that's often what's missing for the Alberta NDP. It is telling that story about the next Alberta. And so I hope to hear more about that as we start moving towards an election here. Because ultimately, it's that marketing element, that fresh coat of paint, where you take what are, I think fundamental ideas that the NDP have about the future, and you put them in front of Albertans in a way so that when they're driving down 92nd Street, you see that big sports logo on the side, you know exactly
Corey
48:02
what that house is all about.
Zain
48:04
Carter, Corey's saying a coat of paint, and I think that fits in somewhere on this rubric. We'll have to figure out when. We may revise this rubric for next year, and by which I mean, fuck you guys, we will not be revising it. Stephen Carter,
Zain
48:15
do nothing, dusting, dam cloth, wipe down, or a deep clean for the Alberta NDP. You
Carter
48:20
You know, the NDP are about organizing the people and making sure that the people are protected. And what they need now is they need to take all these cleaners that have been running around trying to do everything all at once, and they need to organize them. I mean, the first thing you know when you're cleaning your house is you can't do the
Carter
48:35
the vacuuming and the dusting and the mopping of the floors all
Carter
48:40
There has to be some sort of an order and plan. And what I'm seeing from the NDP is that on any given day, they will pursue that headline on that, you know, any headline on that day to the point when the UCP have shot themselves in the foot several times and the NDP continue
Carter
48:58
continue to put themselves right in the way. First rule of politics is don't just, you know, don't interrupt when your opponent is in the process of destroying themselves and they can't help it. They think that they need to chase a headline every day like some sort of, you know, first term councillor. They're the government in waiting. They need to sit back. They need to organize their cleaners and they need to go through this house one step at a time and make sure that first, you know, you said what needs to happen with the strategy. Well, what is their strategy? What is their winning proposition for the people of Alberta? Because it can't be everything that Jason Kenney does is wrong. I mean, sure, fine. I may believe that, but that's not a way to win an election. That's not a strategy. Their messaging can't be whatever the topic of the day is. They need to start dictating what the topic of the day is. They need to put it together in what Corey has described as a story. That
Carter
49:52
That story has to include me and you and Corey as characters and our wives and our children and our uncles and our aunts and our parents. All of them need to see themselves in that story. They need to get the people engaged. You know, you talk about the personnel. Do they have the team to take them through both the opposition structure for up to another year as well as preparing for another election? That is foundational, right? Right. It's one thing when you're the liberals to say we're just going to have the government team.
Carter
50:20
But every year, everybody's struggling. You know, one year until the election, everybody struggles to find both sets of team. It has to happen. And what are the issues that we're actually going to vote on?
Carter
50:30
Right. Because one of the things is there's tons of issues. There's shit tons of issues out there. Right. But what is the issue that I'm going to cast my ballot on in April of 2023?
Carter
50:40
And how do I make sure that whatever that issue is, it's to the NDP's favor? believer because that is and to me that's all about organizing the people that are there and getting them focused in don't just try and clean the whole house at the same time using all the tools it just simply won't work oh
Zain
50:58
oh and i like that roll up carter by the way did you say that we all need to be characters including our wives what would you mention get your wife's name out of my mouth out of your mouth oh my god never mention that just never do that that
Zain
51:09
good i didn't drop you yeah you're welcome uh cory you wanted to jump in here before i move on to to our final one.
Corey
51:13
Yeah, I agree 100% with everything Stephen said there. Maybe, I don't know. I drifted out in the middle. So if he said something outrageous, don't at me. But figure
Corey
51:22
figure out your story and the rest falls into place. You want to be the protagonist in the story? Well, what do you need? One of the things that I'm sort of thinking about as I see candidates being selected for all of the parties is, is there kind of, now obviously people put their hand up, they decide to be candidates or not, but is there a story lens to this? If you are trying to be a party that is, for example, about the future, right? Do you have the right number of youth candidates? If you're trying to be a party that is about entrepreneurialism, do you have any entrepreneurial candidates? Or is it just something you say that just becomes meaningless boilerplate absent any activity on this? You want to talk about a future beyond oil and gas? Do you have people who can really speak to that? Or are you really leaning more on the oil and gas thing? and so all parties sort of struggle with this because the reality is you've got to take what you've got to a certain extent but there has to be a certain amount of push and you got to be thinking about how
Corey
52:16
how you round out that overall picture of yourselves and how you're going to use those various pieces to your advantage there and and i think that ultimately
Corey
52:25
you can do it all but you can't do any of it or at least maybe i'll say any success in that area is purely accidental accidental if you're not driving towards the story which means you've got to figure out your story it's a it's kind of a classic work back on april 25th of next year i need people to think that the ndp are all about the next economy uh
Corey
52:47
uh that i believe the next economy can't
Corey
52:50
can't just be about tech because it will scare people we've got to think about how we're going to have people in current jobs who are not even going to want to be retrained and they don't want to do those things things. So I've got to talk about how I bridge those people in a non-threatening way. And so I need a candidate that can talk to the new economy and somebody who has managed to take the old economy and made it work or is retrained or whatever, whatever it is. The point is not the specifics here. The point is, follow your story and work back from it. Otherwise, you're just throwing a bunch of shit against the wall and seeing what sticks.
Zain
53:18
Stephen Carter, the Alberta UCP. Are you doing nothing? Are you dusting? Are you damp cloth wipe downing? Are you deep cleaning. Stephen Carter, this is our last one. Feel free to use from the convenient options that I have placed right in front of you, on your lap, in front of your feet, Stephen Carter, please.
Carter
53:38
I'm going to steal from Corey earlier, when he said that people had to move out of the house, they need to move everybody out of the UCP in their current frat house that they've got, where they're all fighting and unable to get along, and they need to move into two different houses this is a essentially a situation where they tried to put two different families together in one house in some sort of giant polyamorous type of thing that i don't quite understand
Corey
54:06
just keep going perfect
Carter
54:07
perfect and and then you know everybody was fighting uh everybody was kung fu fighting in fact and uh they just need to move into two different houses there's two different families there and those two different families need to separate from one another so you're
Zain
54:21
saying like this this entanglement isn't working yeah
Carter
54:24
yeah this entanglement is not working you know what i i'm not a big fan of multiple wives and multiple multiple husbands i think you're better off just to stick with the traditional family and that puts me out of step with today's youths um well then i'm i guess i'm out of step with today's youths cory
Zain
54:41
cory do you want to add it uh please of course the convenient options do nothing dusting damp cloth wipe down and a deep clean, as they are every year. Corey, for the Alberta UCP.
Corey
54:51
Yeah, I was going to make a joke about ethical non-monogamy or something like that, you know, because I thought Carter's metaphor about, like, sex relationships was better than your cleaning one. Yeah, we could have done
Zain
55:03
Yeah, we should do that next
Zain
55:04
Next year. This is a tradition, and we do it this way every fucking year. Jesus Christ. Corey, answer the question and offer some insight. The listeners are frustrated, and they know it's not my fault. fault they
Zain
55:15
they know it's your fault okay the listeners could have seen
Carter
55:18
seen your face through this whole episode you've taken your glasses off and rubbed your eyes more than any other time in this podcast and i've never been happier let
Zain
55:28
let me tell you something this is a show i do by force okay it takes a lot for you guys to drag me here and then when you don't play my silly games what the fuck is the point gory what the fuck is the point what are you given to the alberta What
Corey
55:40
What the fuck is the point is actually my answer here. Like, I would be looking at the mess in this house and saying, what the fuck is the point? And that's not to say that there's not some sort of resolution down the road. But ultimately, you're talking about cleaning your house while one of the rooms is on fire. yeah
Corey
55:58
and they they've got to figure out this this immediate challenge that they have in front of themselves which is that this party is at its own throat um will will it survive this leadership review entirely or is it going to shed five to seven mlas the minute this thing concludes if jason kenney wins if jason kenney loses is it going to split into two parties after a leadership contest all of these things really tbd really unclear it's in a really rocky place right now And so
Corey
56:27
so when we start thinking about nothing, dusting, damp cloth or deep cleaning, do any of these sound sufficient when you're talking about what the UCP is facing at this particular moment? A little lower on Maslow's hierarchy of needs right now than cleaner house, frankly. They're looking for base survival. And so I think that they've got to get through the next month. They've got to find a way to do it without tearing themselves apart. part. And then we then we can talk about whether there's a sufficiently insufficient amount of grime on the table.
Zain
57:00
We're going to leave that segment there moving on to our final segment are over under in our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we do it for you. We start with you overrated underrated.
Zain
57:09
The Ontario government has come to an agreement with the federal government on a $10 a day childcare deal overrated or underrated. As you saw that happen today, day monday as we record this well
Carter
57:20
well i think it's going to be overrated for the election i think that it's a long ways off from a june election um so you know i guess in that case it's it's overrated uh i think it's underrated for the people of uh ontario that need this type of child care i mean the people are this is going to make tremendous impact in parents lives and uh They're going to feel it in their pocketbook more than any tax
Carter
57:46
tax cut or any subsidy before. It's a big deal.
Zain
57:52
Corey, overrated, underrated, Ontario reaching a $10 a day child care deal with the feds.
Corey
57:57
Well, they're at the end of the line. They're the last province. So imagine this a bit like a grimy table. And what it really needs is a bit of a damp cloth run over it. Get
Zain
58:05
Get fucked. Honestly, get fucked. You're off the show. You know, this is something, yeah. We're going to replace you with a random audience member for each three-minute portion. We actually have a timer there for three minutes, and then people will just filter in and out, and we'll just hold auditions while we do the live show. You know what? That's going
Carter
58:22
going to sell the last 30 tickets. That's a big deal. That's good. Good job, guys.
Zain
58:27
Thank you, Corey. Corey, overrated,
Zain
58:29
overrated, underrated. Pure Pauly Everest saying he wants Canada to be the blockchain capital of the world. What's your take on that?
Corey
58:36
I think it's a really weird idea. generally speaking my concern with well
Corey
58:42
well look i how
Corey
58:44
much time do we have oh we're only at 58 minutes we got another hour in this show here's
Corey
58:50
here's the thing there's a lot of things we need to figure out with blockchain right and it's one of those technologies people wave around and they they can talk about um you know the proof of work that that allows us bitcoin and all
Corey
59:02
of the Yeah. Well, so here's the idiot's short version, grossly simplified. When you make a Bitcoin transaction, that is validated by everybody having the same chain of transactions. And you encourage people to update that chain by incentivizing them through, they do work, just kind of pointless calculations that are increasingly more complex. If you happen to do one that results in a number below a certain threshold, that threshold is ever changing, then you get a Bitcoin and that's worth a ton of money, right? So that's how it works here. But it takes a lot of energy. It's computationally very, very expensive. And so we're at a point where the technologies that people currently think about, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, they're using more power than modest sized countries already. And it's easy to say, well, look at Canada, we have so much hydropower, we use nuclear in Ontario, we have wind power and PEI, whatever it may be, and say, well, you got some clean power sources. But the reality is that's power that we could still be put into productive uses if we weren't running computers pointlessly
Corey
1:00:11
pointlessly in order to do Bitcoin transactions. Now, there are alternatives for managing blockchain that have to do with proof of stake, and we don't need to get into all of that. There are environmentally friendly ways that you can approach these challenges, but we're not sort of there yet. And to see politicians jumping on board of this thing that we know even now where it's still relatively niche is deeply unsustainable is – there's
Corey
1:00:37
there's a fundamentals thing that it just fails here. It fails on the fundamental level. This is not something that's scalable for the entire world. We will not be doing financial transactions this way, or we will all die because we will choke out this planet. So I would be a little more comfortable if I thought that there was any kind of nuance or thought about where this could be or what Canada could do besides offer quote unquote clean power, because we have clean power, right? Right. But that's power that we could be using to offset coal from Virginia or coal from Alberta, frankly, if we had the proper inner ties. So I don't know. I don't like it very much, Zane, I guess is what I'm going to say. But I don't like it in the same way. I don't like a lot of dumb things politicians say without them having very much knowledge of what it actually means.
Zain
1:01:25
Carter, would you give Corey's answer a do nothing, a dusting, a dam cloth wipe down or a deep clean? Did you understand any of it? And which one of the four would you give it? here's
Carter
1:01:33
here's what i heard bitcoin
Carter
1:01:36
bitcoin is made up now all currency is kind of made up right all of our minute all of our money systems you know we're
Corey
1:01:42
we're not gold back that's not remotely what i said no
Carter
1:01:45
no but i'm just going to keep going here um here's the thing i i don't think that we should be basing you know becoming the bitcoin capital of the world or i don't think we should becoming the the blockchain capital of the world because i i don't know where this ends um it's a fad I'm not a big fan of just following fads. Should we become the bootcut gene capital of the world? Should we be the skinny gene capital of the world? We're talking about our monetary system right now. And it feels to me like we're on the edge all too often anyways. So creating something like the
Carter
1:02:23
the blockchain, it makes me nervous. It is something that exists in their economy. And I just as soon let it develop in a more natural way without having government jump in on it. I mean, what is it, the government of Ecuador that's made Bitcoin their national currency? I'm not sure I want to follow that lead.
Zain
1:02:43
Corey, you wanted to respond to this.
Corey
1:02:46
Yeah, I don't know if it's a fad yet. It could very well be a fad. It certainly feels a little ephemeral, right? And what are you really buying? But to your point, that's if you really want to get down to a true of a lot of things that we possess and what is the value of a diamond, for example. So just because something is digital doesn't make me discount it. But I agree with Stephen 100% on the idea of do we really want governments picking winners and losers here anyhow? I mean, let's see where this goes. If there is a market case for it, people will get there. But I also think we've got to watch out for those externalities. If we ran our economy on Bitcoin, and listen, Bitcoin is just one thing within a kind of a broader bucket of things called blockchain solutions here. Are we prepared for the consequences of that? Are we prepared for the environmental consequences for that? Are we prepared for the regulatory consequences of that? I mean, this is still something that is used by a lot of bad actors in a lot of different ways. And then there are even kind of just sort of like efficiency and convenience ones. And look, Bitcoin tends to be thought of as like a gold alternative, right? Most of the world is not using Bitcoin for day-to-day transactions, even when we say like Ecuador is doing it.
Corey
1:03:58
Not quite. We won't go down that rabbit hole. But
Corey
1:04:03
a lot of time to do a Bitcoin transaction. I hand you a piece of gold, that's done, in whatever time it takes me to do that. But I think, what, 15 minutes, half an hour? Sometimes it can take for a Bitcoin transaction to be secured on the blockchain. And that's just going to get worse as the blockchain gets longer and as more of these transactions go on.
Zain
1:04:21
Carter, I'm going to you for our next one. Overrated or underrated, the Liberal NDP deal by a 2-to-1 margin. and the Canadian public thinks it will be good rather than bad. Is that overrated or underrated in your mind?
Carter
1:04:33
It's overrated. People won't remember it as we move forward, right? Like, oh, it's a good deal right now. Well, you know, we've got a few thousand distractions right now. What happens when we don't get the stuff that we were promised or we thought we were going to get, right? So ultimately, it's all in the details and it's all in how it's spun because that's how people pay attention. They're not paying attention to the bigger picture. When we tend to ask them big picture ideas, people tend to like big picture ideas. When it comes down to the details, they start to get a little bit more confused.
Zain
1:05:05
Corey, overrated, underrated, two to one margin, the public thinks it will be good rather than bad for Canada, according to new abacus numbers.
Corey
1:05:12
Yeah, well, let's dig a little bit into those numbers. It's two to one, like 48 to 24-ish, right? There's a number of people undecided on the deal. And what you do find is that that 48 are the people who voted liberal or voted NDP. So open
Corey
1:05:24
open question as to whether it expands the tent in any significant way. I don't think it means very much, the numbers you just put in front of me right there. And I think if I were the liberals or NDP, I'd hold off on having the most aggressive high-five party in the world at this moment. Let's just see where this goes. and Carter's right. It's one of those things that's easy to love in abstract, but when the rubber hits the road, when all of a sudden you've got people saying, well, you're not going to get the drugs you need to stay alive. And grandma's going to die because you needed universal pharma care. You're going to have to go to the United States to get these things. All of the fear mongering we've heard around healthcare more generally, we're going to hear quite specifically around drugs. We're going to hear it around dental. It's going to be a different game. And it's a long list of things that they've agreed to do.
Corey
1:06:13
There's going to be bumps on the road. Corey,
Zain
1:06:14
Corey, I'm going to start our last question with you. We learned today that Jason Kenney earlier this year in February was interviewed by the ICMP in the criminal probe tied to his party leadership race back in 2017. We don't know much more than that. So I'm curious to get your take. Is this overrated piece of information in isolation? Or is this underrated piece of information? As we know it right now, based on all the discrete sort of pieces that have come out thus far about the ICMP investigation? Yeah,
Corey
1:06:39
Yeah, so my gut says underrated, but I want to stress I don't know anything about RCMP procedure and investigations like this. But as a fundamental principle, people
Corey
1:06:48
people do tend to work their way up the chain to the most senior people involved in something. And this is an investigation that's been going on for two years, and they've just gotten around to talking to Jason Kenney right now. So here's
Corey
1:06:59
here's my thoughts. And they're just reckless speculation. If it was, hey, Jason, we just want to know what your view of this is and what you've heard. I feel it would have occurred much earlier in the investigation. But you save it for later in the investigation when you want to get everybody else's story first and you want to almost box the person in or understand or know they may be a potential suspect in this and that you might be bringing charges against them. Because, you know, some of it has to do, there's so much reported on this in the context of Trump, but are there people that you want to quote unquote flip on Jason Kenney saying, if you cooperate with us, it's all good. You know, give us the real, give us whoever's behind this. And if it's Jason Kenney, it's Jason Kenney.
Corey
1:07:39
The timing within the investigation would make me very
Corey
1:07:43
very nervous if I was Jason Kenney. Because either A, they decided after talking to other people for two years, they needed to talk to him. And he was kind of, I assume, later on the list, if not last on the list, or
Corey
1:07:58
they're just getting around to it now, which
Corey
1:08:00
which would be insane. But it would also suggest like either way, it's suggesting something is happening now. Right. And even if what I think is going to happen at the end of the day is they'll find me okay, if I'm Jason Kenney, you
Corey
1:08:11
do not need this now. Are you kidding me? This is a leadership review about to be going on. And if people start leaking out RCMPs making decisions, or even if they conclude it was shady, but no laws were broken or couldn't be proven, that's not going to help you in a political context, even if legally you find yourself scot-free.
Zain
1:08:28
Carter, overrated or underrated, we just found out that Jason Kenney was indeed interviewed by the RCMP as part of the criminal probe into his leadership race back in 2017.
Carter
1:08:40
think it's probably underrated. I agree with what Corey's take was about what the likely seriousness of the investigation is. I mean, I'm shocked it's taken this long. I got to feel that, you know, they're
Carter
1:08:53
they're crossing their T's and dotting their I's because there's stuff there and they're being very cautious about it. Otherwise, if there was nothing, this could have been over much, much sooner.
Zain
1:09:07
we're gonna leave it there we are done that's a wrap on episode 977 of the strategists our spring cleaning episode our annual spring cleaning episode my name is zane velji with me as always with his damp cloth cory hogan and his deep clean stephen carter and we'll see you next time