Episode 988: Win by winning

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 988. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey

Zain 0:07

Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, happy

Zain 0:10

happy Sunday. What's going on?

Carter 0:14

I got admonished at the beginning of the episode. You're

Corey 0:16

You're so bad at this.

Carter 0:18

This whole live thing is killing you.

Carter 0:21

got a stern talking to you because I was making a joke before we went on because we always used to make jokes. remember we would do the whole hand signal thing and we would make jokes mostly at your expense zane and now we're making jokes at cory's expense he's less fine with it he doesn't seem to he's like seriously we got to go live yeah the the thousands of people who are waiting for us online can

Carter 0:42

can wait another 30 seconds right

Carter 0:44

right right people who are online i personally agree cory hogan i

Zain 0:48

i personally agree cory cory does not seem to agree his facial expressions right now really indicate kate that he does not agree with us carter he's

Carter 0:55

he's he's really upset about how much noise i'm making uh

Carter 0:57

uh i'm drinking water like the expectation of the show being better than it's ever been has never been higher with cory than it is right now now that we're taking money for it like

Carter 1:08

like come on carter

Zain 1:10

carter do you want to talk about our edmonton show with that big car do you want to do you want to talk speaking

Carter 1:14

speaking about taking money for it um working together with the maharaja banquet Bankwood Hall, 925734 A Avenue NW in Edmonton, Alberta. Can I just

Zain 1:26

just pause right there? Carter, did you know that you did a perfect South Asian advertisement read right now? As someone who's consumed years of local South Asian advertising on a variety of platforms, the address is a must-include item. And the fact that you included it is fantastic. I just want to let you continue, please.

Carter 1:44

I actually was basing this entire thing on a South Asian read. But now you've broken it up.

Carter 1:49

So starting at 8 o'clock on Thursday, May 19th, The Strategist Live will be in Edmonton. We've opened up a few more tickets, limited number. Limited number, make sure you get them quickly because we've already sold out once and we've been able to open up additional tickets and we anticipate selling out again. So make sure you buy them quickly now. There will be a cash bar. As you know, I will be there, which I believe is the biggest job, and Zane and Corey as well. And it's apparently bring your own Lassie. b-y-o-l so we are looking forward to doing our show how's

Carter 2:26

what's a lassie it's

Carter 2:27

it's like a shitty milkshake is what it is it's not a good milkshake okay that's

Carter 2:33

the mango lassies aren't bad not

Carter 2:35

not a bad not a not a fan of the rest though okay

Zain 2:37

okay now now uh in hindi please carter the whole thing in

Zain 2:42

fuck don't know let's not get them canceled let's

Corey 2:44

let's not get of cancel let's go uh

Zain 2:47

sold out that's the energy by the way it was

Corey 2:55

sort of energy what

Carter 2:57

what happened to a three-way equal partnership it

Corey 3:00

you're just now aware of uh

Zain 3:02

cory do you want to do you want to jump in on anything uh was sold a live show uh

Zain 3:07

uh tickets available it's

Corey 3:08

it's gonna be a humdinger

Corey 3:10

gonna be crazy time yeah it's the day after the results of the ucp leadership review i mean even yesterday we had more reporting about accusations of bulk vote buying this is gonna i mean hold on to your butts it's gonna be

Carter 3:22

be there's no way that we can guarantee that anybody will will be going to jail that night but we're you know nonetheless you don't know you don't know maybe maybe jason gets arrested that day we don't know and if that happens you'll want to be where at

Carter 3:35

the maharaja from 8 p.m till 10 cash bar get Get there early. Drink lots.

Carter 3:41

Now I'm with Corey Carter.

Zain 3:45

don't know if going live with the show is a good idea. Yeah. Yeah.

Zain 3:50

I will say, I will say that unlike the UCP leadership race, actually, I should say, like the UCP leadership, we also let you bulk buy. So buy

Zain 4:00

many tickets on one credit card. We do not care.

Zain 4:03

It does not matter to Stephen and I, at least. It may matter to Corey. but it doesn't matter to the two of us buy as many tickets as you would like i mean until we're sold out again knock on wood they make a

Carter 4:15

yeah they do they make a great gift so everybody that you've bought a membership for in the ucp leadership you can buy them a ticket to this podcast recording could

Zain 4:25

great i think it's great you just you know you find a friend you drop off some mango lussie to them it's lussie not lassie carter that's fine uh and i thought i nailed the

Zain 4:34

i think you're pretty good what you nailed was the address the inclusion of the address i think was down right top notch there guys let's move it on to our first segment our first segment the strategy scale guys we have so many things to talk about scale

Zain 4:49

we've got so many things to talk about from the conservative leadership race in the can

Zain 4:54

can we call it fallout can we call it how well it's aged it's questioning to to how well it's aged to alberta politics as as Corey mentioned, to Justin Trudeau being in Kiev, to the Ontario election. There is no shortage. There's no shortage of topics to talk about. And I haven't even talked about pure polyamory and cryptocurrency. And David Dodge on CTV's question period saying pure polyamory has no idea what he's talking about, and it's a bunch of bullshit. So much to talk about. But guys, let's start here with our strategy scan. For those who are not familiar with this segment, I run down topics. I ask Stephen and Corey to give it a ranking on terms a strategy between one and 10. How good is the strategy? How good is the move? And then we discussed amongst each other. You could also discuss at home. We just won't be able to hear you. It's just that sort of medium. We don't stop the participation. We also don't give credit for participation. So feel free to participate at home, but we will participate here and we'll discuss how we kind of upgrade that strategy, how we make it better, what would make it better, what would have been an alternative take, what would you have done, et cetera. And Carter, what do I always say? There is no better way to get started than to get started. And there's no better person to get started with than Corey Hogan. So, Corey, we're going to start with you. Our first one is

Zain 6:09

is going to Ontario. We're taking a bit of a trip to Ontario with this particular ad that is being released and that has been released by the Ontario PC campaign. So, Corey, we've now got this wild, anotherworldly ability to play clips. This is crazy. People are actually taking a shit on me for my preparation.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Andrea Horvath's NDP are out of touch. They fight against building new roads and highways to end gridlock. They oppose building more homes that families can afford. They attack plans to open Ontario and want to keep it locked down forever. Her NDPers protest, criticize, and delay getting things done at every turn. Because that's what Andrea Horvath demands they do. The NDP would be an expensive disaster for Ontario. Ontario just like they always have been authorized by the CFO for the Ontario PC party

Zain 7:03

I want to talk about that ad I want to talk about that ad from two distinct angles Carter the

Zain 7:08

first angle let's talk about it in terms of the Doug wait

Corey 7:12

wait wait a minute so

Zain 7:13

so you just went to

Corey 7:13

to me first literally to

Zain 7:15

to hit play when you said you're coming to me first I I did but then you know what happened is that I was actually I was I was teeing up

Carter 7:21

up I was teeing

Zain 7:23

up at the end and you know what you you actually prematurely start playing so as a premature play to you yeah

Zain 7:29

as a fuck you to you cory you get sidelined okay you get to build off on carter cory between you and i it's gonna be pretty pedestrian and you're gonna have a lot of opportunity okay carter on

Zain 7:41

on a scale of one to ten the

Zain 7:44

ford strategy here i find it fascinating maybe

Zain 7:47

maybe you find it fascinating fascinating yeah

Zain 7:49

yeah because the the liberals seem to be second in the polls this is an ad attacking currently the official opposition or the official opposition but a third place party what do you think of the strategy on a scale of one to ten carter and then let's talk about it i

Carter 8:03

i want to give it two answers and i want to give it an answer as though they're as though their numbers are correct as though they know something that we don't know so that would get that number i give them was probably about a seven and then the other one that i would give them is about a three because Because so the seven

Carter 8:17

seven answer is there's

Carter 8:19

there's a lot of, you

Carter 8:21

you know, blue, orange switching votes, right? Votes that we don't understand how they move through the, you know, the ideological spectrum of left to right. When you just bounce back and forth, how can they possibly do that?

Zain 8:33

you and I, right? Corey will explain

Zain 8:34

explain it to everybody.

Carter 8:35

Corey will explain it. He understands it better because he was a liberal. Now he's an orange.

Carter 8:39

No, never mind. I can't understand what's going on.

Carter 8:41

But here's what's happening. that

Carter 8:43

that they're trying to get people to step down from Horvath thinking that they will move to the PCs. And they must have some data to support that because the other option is that they are trying to move voters away from Andrea Horvath. And I think the weakness of this ad is that it doesn't do anything to move them to the Ontario PC party.

Carter 9:07

that's where I think that the The weakness really shows itself because if this ad actually had been a contrast ad rather than a simple attack ad, this could have put forward a, the PCs want to build affordable housing, but NDP stands in the way the PC want to build highways for you to travel on and the NDP stand in the way the PCs wanted to be more affordable for you, but the NDP stand in the way that would have made more sense for a switch ad. This one feels like they are switching people

Carter 9:39

people off without necessarily turning them on. And that makes me nervous because I think that it very easily could shift NDP voters into the Ontario Liberal Party, which would be disastrous for the PCs given their polling structure.

Zain 9:54

What you're saying, Carter, is that if it is indeed the latter, if indeed the cookie does crumble in that direction, that it doesn't magnetize people to the PCs, this could actually be doing the Liberals' work for them of coalescing, that progressive primary that's been talked about in the Ontario election, even prior to the election being called, this could kind of help in that direction. And that's what you give it a three. And you say it's a seven because there's this universe of orange-blue switchers that this could be targeting as a strict negative, I should say.

Carter 10:25

Well, this could be running in select areas, right? It could be being pushed where there is no real strong liberal candidate. We don't know enough about the ad, but what this feels like to me is an Americanized attack ad. It even feels to me like it's written by an American, And it is targeting, you know, the new Democrats like it's a two party race. Anybody you lose, I'm going to gain.

Carter 10:51

And I just don't feel that's necessarily the case in this in this situation. Corey,

Zain 10:55

Corey, I need your take on this. Scale of one to 10, the Ford strategy here targeting the Horwath NDP rather than perhaps going after who might be second in the polls. What do you think? And what's your answer? And do you have a two pronged one like Carter does? Well,

Corey 11:08

there's a lot that could be going on here, and Stephen's right that we just don't know enough about how the ad's being used or how it's being targeted.

Corey 11:15

So maybe it's a poorly targeted ad, and maybe it will help the Liberals move forward, or maybe it's running nowhere, and maybe they were trying to make it look like they see the NDP as the real threat to push people to the NDP from the Liberals and try to create some chattering amongst the chattering classes. That's also a real possibility. So it's hard to say without digging a little bit deeper into how it's being run and who it's being run towards. I do think one of the things about modern campaigns and how digital they are is you do have an immense ability to target, right? So you can run certain ads with certain people and not worry too, too much about the bleed outside of those communities, or at least not nearly as much as you had to worry about when there were only four television channels back in the 1980s, right? So there are options here that may allow this to be an effective tactic.

Corey 12:06

actual content and construction of it was really interesting to me, too. It is a classic America-style attack ad, right?

Corey 12:12

right? Even the music in the background, that, as you

Corey 12:15

you know, you have these scary

Corey 12:17

scary-looking black-and-white photos of Horvath. And these really blunt, very

Corey 12:23

very direct things, like, it would be a disaster to Ontario, as it always is, or something like that. Just like kind of the shittiest, most kick you in the balls phrasings that you possibly could have. And so maybe

Corey 12:37

maybe this is just politics now, right? But it was certainly quite aggressive and it was interesting because it

Corey 12:45

it leads to many questions about what the strategy is, if not

Zain 12:50

Carter, from your perspective, do you feel like the risk reward of something like this, from a perspective of, I acknowledge what both of you are saying, that this ad may have a much more narrower target than me pulling it out of the internet. Which, by the way, this was an unlisted ad on the Ontario PC, an unlisted video with only a couple hundred views, right? The reason I found it, because it was linked in an article. So there very likely could have been, to your point, specifically

Zain 13:14

specifically targeted, right? Not meant for mass consumption. But

Zain 13:18

But Carter, the risk reward to have it now out there, to be reported in the mainstream media, to be talked about on a podcast like ours right i don't try to make this more too much of a meta conversation but as a campaign practitioner to have this sort of leakage if your strategy is narrow casting a particular message like this is a risk reward worth it if this was meant for a specific audience i

Carter 13:41

don't think so i mean i'm not a real big fan i mean negative campaign ads work so let's start there okay so i'm not opposed to the idea yet you yet you were opposed to

Zain 13:50

to this ad so make sure you include that in your answer?

Carter 13:53

Are you opposed to the construction of this

Carter 13:57

It's not the construction necessarily. It's the fact that it's a three-party race, and it really is a three-party race. I mean, the NDP, I think the Ontario NDP in the last polls I've seen are well

Carter 14:07

well over 20%. The Ontario Progressive

Carter 14:09

Progressive Conservatives are just over 30%. I

Carter 14:12

I think then the Liberals are wedged in the middle, like 24, 26, 32, I think. this literally could move any any direction um

Carter 14:20

um and and the outcome could be decided

Carter 14:23

decided very challenging you know in a very challenging way on top of that you know we're not really sure what the seat projections look like right we could we could see really interesting seed outcomes um and a minority government who's

Carter 14:36

who's the ndp going to prop up you know it's not going to be the the PCs. I just think that this is a really

Carter 14:43

really aggressive attack ad, which I don't oppose, but you need to move those people somewhere and you need to have a very strategic outcome in mind. And it feels to me like this

Carter 14:55

this was just wants to move people off the NDP. And maybe there's something that comes next that they've tested that they will come in and pick up those loose NDP voters. But I think that's It's a hard get for the Doug Ford Conservatives, and I think that it

Carter 15:09

it was an easier play to just do a simple contrast. We're going to do this, they do this. We can do this, they can do that.

Corey 15:16

Corey, you want to jump in on this? Yeah. Look, there's going to be areas of Ontario where people are switching between the New Democrats and the PCs, and the Liberals are a distant third. This was, as you noted, not something that was widely distributed, and so I can see a lot of utility for it in a lot of different contexts. I would imagine if you're the Ontario PCs, you are prepared for this election. This election is as you knew it would be. You've filled the pantry. You've got ads that are probably the equivalent of this for the Liberals. You've got ads for the NDP. You've got ads that knock them both down if it's a three way race. And so I wouldn't I

Corey 15:52

don't on its surface read too much into it. I think it's interesting. And I think it it leads to questions. But I also feel that one

Corey 16:00

one of the other things that can happen when there are so many ads out there is parties get to pick and choose which ones get foregrounded.

Corey 16:07

And sometimes they can pretend that they don't want them foregrounded like, oh, you caught us. We're actually very worried about the NDP. All of our polls show those are the ones with momentum.

Corey 16:16

Maybe they get five points at the Ontario Liberals expense and Doug Ford just sits there triangulating between the two of them. Right.

Zain 16:23

Right. And maybe that's what I was trying to hit on. Could there be some maybe two-step strategy here to what you're saying that things like this getting reported, talked about could reframe the conversation against their principal opponent if they do indeed believe it's the liberals and shine a

Zain 16:39

light to the NDP? So

Corey 16:39

So let me tell you why. One reason why I think maybe and one reason why I think probably not. So on the maybe is it's the early days of the campaign. And the early days of the campaign are when you get to do your strategy in the purest form before you get knocked off strategy and you have to start reacting and adapting and changing as you move along. on.

Corey 16:57

So it's quite possible that somebody somewhere said, all

Corey 17:00

all right, we've got this strategy. We want to stay right in the middle. We want to keep these liberals and these new Democrats roughly even with each other all the way through this campaign.

Corey 17:09

And so if we see at the start of the campaign, the liberals are pulling ahead of the NDP, we're going to pull out this ad. And if we see at the start of the campaign, the NDP are pulling ahead of the liberals, we're going to pull out this ad,

Corey 17:17

right? And just sort of be ready for that in week one. And so it doesn't stretch my imagination and it doesn't get me into an incredulous place to say that very well could have been the plan if after week one party

Corey 17:29

party a's up release ad a party b's up release that totally possible totally totally possible thing

Corey 17:35

thing is though there is a bit of an occam's razor thing here which is ads

Corey 17:39

ads are targeted and they made an ad and that ad went targeted towards somebody so well i don't think it's beyond the ontario pcs to leak out an ad and make it look almost like they were were caught with an unlisted ad showing that they were actually concerned about

Corey 17:51

about the ADP? Right, right, right. You know, the most obvious answer is probably the right one, which is they have an ad for some circumstances, and they're going to use that ad in those circumstances.

Zain 18:01

Corey, I'm going to stick with you for our next one. I want to go from Ontario to Alberta. Well, actually, not really, because I want to talk about Alberta. Well, the guy I want to talk about was in Ottawa, and that's Jason Kenney. I want to talk about the strategy scale for Jason Kenney now doing punditry.

Zain 18:17

punditry. commentary about the conservative leadership debate he was interviewed on ctv's question period saying you know this was a feisty first face-off but my advice to all candidates is would be to remember whoever wins you've got to unite the party at the end of it and you got to be respectful about it and try to be respectful about it it's

Corey 18:37

exactly exactly it's like no it's it's actually very smart i think it's a very smart strategy by jason give it to

Zain 18:43

give it to me of course give it to me straight on strategy scale one to ten tell me what's going on and why

Corey 18:47

why in your perspective it's the oldest communications trick in the book like it's the oldest speech trick in the book it's to talk about yourself by talking about somebody else or vice versa right and so every comment he's making about the need for unity and the need to get together and the need not to forget your one party he's actually talking about the alberta ucp and

Corey 19:04

and he's trying to make his point without making it seem like it's utterly self-serving and

Corey 19:09

and that's fine i actually think that drawing that parallel is not a bad one because a lot of people will have looked He looked at that federal debate and said, that

Corey 19:17

that was pretty wild. And is this party going to stay together? And what are the consequences of that? And if he can get people thinking in that frame, as they also cast the vote, and also cast their minds forward to what might happen on May 19, if he wins, but there's still people who might be unhappy about it, all

Corey 19:33

all the better. Why not? It works just fine. And he was there and it can serve a purpose for him. So I don't have a problem with it. It is crazy meta. it is just so funny and it's uh but it's a way to get an argument out there that he wants to make hooking

Corey 19:47

hooking it onto news of the day making it seem less self-serving so why the hell not i'm

Corey 19:51

i'm coming to you carter

Zain 19:52

carter i'm coming to you i know you're champing at the bit cory i need to ask you do you feel like by doing that okay let's extend this as like the strategy he's also trying to insert jason kenney as part of a larger comparison to the other candidates on stage, the shit show that that was that was that debate and kind of make people because the only constituency that really matters to him right now is the very narrow one back here in Alberta, who might have been watching that debate nationally. Do you feel like he's also trying to insert himself as one of like a hologram Kenny on that stage in some ways to be like, just make sure you compare me to the rest of the clown car that is the national party and understand like, you know, understand truly what you got. Do you feel like that's part of

Corey 20:36

of it too? Or am

Corey 20:36

am I going too far?

Corey 20:37

I think you're going too far. I think what it

Corey 20:40

is like, yes, Alberta is 10% of the population of the country, maybe 12%, probably

Corey 20:45

probably 20, 25% of the population of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Corey 20:49

And those are the most motivated members who are going to be watching a debate like that. A

Corey 20:53

A lot of crossover between UCP membership and Conservative Party of Canada membership. It's just an opportunity to jump into

Zain 20:59

into something that everybody's watching and make the point

Corey 21:01

point that you want to make.

Zain 21:03

Carter, scale of 1 to 10 on the strategy scale.

Zain 21:06

I feel like I've only gotten one answer so far, but who gives a fuck? Carter, you're going to give me an answer. You're going to give it to me. Scale of 1 to 10, what are you giving Kenny on him inserting himself into

Zain 21:15

into conservative leadership debate, commentary, conversation,

Carter 21:21

You're going to remember, Zane, that my advice to Jason Kenney was to disappear. Do the work. Don't put yourself into the public eye. don't put yourself into the position where everybody's looking at you and thinking that

Carter 21:33

that they're going to see something uh

Carter 21:35

interesting or you know like that that's not really what he should be doing right now i i don't like him doing this um

Carter 21:41

um not because i dislike cory's strategy not because you know that what cory's saying isn't true

Carter 21:47

true or possible or real you know all of that could happen but

Carter 21:51

but i just dislike this because i want him doing the calls right he could say this to 150 organizers this weekend. He could say this to others. He doesn't need to sit on the national show for Evan Solomon and make a point. That, to me, seems too far.

Zain 22:14

Can I ask you this, Carter? And I'm not going to interrupt you again, but...

Carter 22:19

That's not likely, yeah.

Zain 22:21

make promises I can't keep? Yeah,

Zain 22:22

exactly. But Carter, was the problem for you that he went to Ottawa like to begin with that like why is this guy who's living for his political life right now why is he even in a city several thousand kilometers away was it was it just that premise that bothers you or is it the step above that that's actually bothering you which is actually making himself public known access to interviews etc two

Carter 22:47

two schools of thought with someone like Jason Kenney every time he appears on television he does better or he does worse right i think he does worse every time he appears in the media i think he comes across like a pompous asshole uh and i say that being a pompous asshole so it's you know i'm near to the idea i'm near to the idea of pompous asshole and

Carter 23:09

put yourself there why not pick up the telephone the man is sincere in

Carter 23:14

in on one in one-to-one communications he is empathetic in one-to-one communications. He is larger than life in one-to-one communications. Put yourself there instead of putting yourself into the petulant role of telling everybody what's at stake for a race that you're not in and isn't going to impact you.

Zain 23:32

Corey, I need your response and maybe even retort to that, Corey.

Corey 23:38

he should disappear and do the work was advice we both gave. And there were two reasons that that advice was given. One is literally do do the work find yourself the time sit at a phone and do the work and

Corey 23:48

and he's obviously falling down a bit on that if he's going to uh conferences in ottawa uh

Corey 23:53

uh the other is that you don't want to look desperate by having this last ditch appeal so what i like about this is it's a way to make the final appeal without looking desperate because it's all subtext and it's all you know it's weirdly referential but it's not direct so uh that's okay but carter's right he's not you know necessarily doing the work if he's in ottawa i

Corey 24:12

i doubt that the people who go to a manning center conference canada strong and free conference are anybody

Corey 24:17

anybody but the people who voted the very first minute they got their ballot regardless of which way they were voting you know this is not an undecided crowd so i don't think there's a lot of votes to be got there but uh i also think that he's trying to act like he's already got it so he he's decided that his communication strategy is supported his his strategy overall is supported by looking like it's not actually a thing i got this no big moving on right there's not a groundswell blah blah blah i

Zain 24:45

know we'll see we'll see next week right but um i need to ask you though what do you make of that strategy because this he's actually almost

Corey 24:52

said that to rick bell in a column right

Zain 24:54

right he said to

Zain 24:54

to rick bell saying like i'm confident i feel good about i'm paraphrasing because i don't have it in front of me but like those notions of of like, I'm feeling good. We're feeling good. Like we got this like sort of vibe.

Corey 25:05

vibe. So I don't like it at all.

Corey 25:07

If it's going to change your actual behavior, I think it's fine as a message to a guy like Rick Bell. I think it is very problematic if it means you're going to lose a weekend before the vote and not be working the phones in the way Stephen Carter was talking about. Because it's super easy to say, no,

Corey 25:22

no, I'm not going to Canada strong and free this year. I'm the premier of the province of Alberta. I've got shit going on, right? Like your absence is not immediately suspect it's it's simply not and so you should uh you should just have stayed home and worked the phones and tried to get those last votes because you are really going to regret it if you lose uh you know 49.9 percent carter

Corey 25:45

you want to jump in here i

Carter 25:46

i mean if you're going to win in a landslide if you're super duper confident why are you auditioning to be a pundit you

Carter 25:53

you know like there's pun like that's essentially what he's doing he's like you know i can really do this pundit job. The strategists won't have me on theirs, but maybe there's going to be a spot on Hurley Burley I can get myself into. If Jenny Byrne wins the leadership here, she's going to be off working with Pierre and I can jump into that slot.

Carter 26:11

Why would he do that? If he's comfortable that he's going to win, first of all, if he's comfortable he's going to win, he's an idiot. That's not the way that politics works. Politics works best when you are fighting like you are are, you know, a hundred votes down and you're trying to find a way just to hang on.

Carter 26:27

That's how politics works because the other guys work in that way.

Carter 26:30

And we've seen countless examples of people giving away leads.

Carter 26:34

You know, I mean, countless examples. So why would you do that?

Carter 26:37

Just get out of the way, allow yourself

Carter 26:41

yourself to do the work that needs to be done, allow the federal conservative party to do what they're doing. You have no role in that.

Zain 26:48

that. This is interesting to me, this particular particular question of doing the doing the actual like work on the phones on the ground versus how you present right because carter there could be the other sort of like this is a big deal acknowledging that i'm saving my political life and and i'm on the phone all the time right like i understand the shit i'm in i understand the challenge in front of me and i want to do everything to earn people's respect and trust and ensure i win this thing versus maybe doing all all that. And showcasing this, I got this, right? Both in media interviews and flying across the country, being like, by the way, right? I'm still one of the conservative brain trusts leaders in this country. I'm here. You have access to my brain. You have access to me. I still lead this movement in many ways. I'm kind of curious, that sort of like, hey, I'm going to work for it versus like, I'm going to be chill about it vibe. vibe, what would you... I feel like I know what you'd recommend. Corey, if you were allowing your leader, in this case, Jason Kenney, let's make it particular about him, what would you tell him to lean into in that sense?

Corey 27:56

I mean, it feels like such a cop-out, but again, he's going to have the data. He's going to know whether he's got a big lead or not, whether there are actually thousands of votes that have been sitting there on one credit card or not that he can count for on

Corey 28:10

the reality is um

Corey 28:13

that's the kind of thing that only a very like just show okay let let me put it this way you go to this event you walk around you act as though you're the leader of a movement and you're just trying to create this sense of i got this just

Corey 28:27

just decision three this out say you don't have it and you act it that way well then that's a big mistake say you do have it and you don't act that way there was very little downside so i just don't think that there's a lot lot of reason to act this way uh it ultimately does feel a bit like it's

Corey 28:42

it's a desire to stay nationally relevant but you're the premier and um i

Corey 28:47

i it would probably be better spent here regardless i don't know maybe car that's my personal feeling maybe

Zain 28:52

maybe carter's right maybe it's one of the last times he does get to act this way on a national stage in that same regard i

Corey 28:57

i just don't feel that he feels he's going to lose for what it's worth uh maybe he does maybe Maybe

Carter 29:01

Maybe he doesn't, but it's

Carter 29:03

it's stupid even if you feel you're going to win, right?

Carter 29:06

right? Because you can't ever let up.

Carter 29:09

Elections aren't won because you decided you could coast in the last five days, right? He's still got another week of voting. Well, I guess three more days of voting. Do you equate

Zain 29:19

equate this to like a party leader leaving the province in the middle of an election? Is that like why you're so disturbed by it, Carter? Because that's a genuine question. like do you would you equate this to like t minus what do we have 10 days right t minus 10 days three i'm gonna go yeah

Zain 29:34

yeah right we're three to vote so three minus three day okay sure t minus three days and i'm gonna go take a weekend publicly in

Zain 29:41

in the nation's capital yeah

Carter 29:43

don't care if i win or lose is the message that sense i

Carter 29:47

i don't give a shit if i win or lose because if i'm going to win like you are supposed to be at this moment more than ever serving your constituents and And your constituents aren't at the Manning Center's strong and free conference with Evan Solomon on the weekend. That's just not the way that it works. Stay home, make the fucking phone calls, and then put your foot on their throat, because that's how politics is played.

Zain 30:10

Corey, there's also the school of thought that people vote for what they think is going to happen versus what actually might be happening. So projecting a sense of confidence, projecting a sense of I got this, telling the media that that it's like game, set, match, might actually sway that final cohort to say, oh, if he's got this, then I guess he's got this, right? There is a sense of that, that we've experienced all of us in some way politically in the past. But I'll give you a final word on this before I move on and then stick with Alberta.

Corey 30:38

I think that's worth a deep dive into from an academic sense. Somebody should take this on as a project because I think that is less true in leadership races. I feel it almost goes the other way in leadership races. People think they got this. Well, if he's got this, I want him to know I'm still unhappy. So I

Corey 30:55

I wouldn't necessarily want

Corey 30:56

want him to lose, but I want to send a certain amount of displeasure here. So I'm not, I'm not entirely convinced of that argument maybe,

Corey 31:04

maybe, but like I said, it's, it's probably worth an academic deep dive by somebody here.

Corey 31:08

I think that one of the things that's hard to miss is in the last week, there's been a bit of thought leadership and a couple of pieces and Twitter posts about is

Corey 31:16

is Jason Kenney actually like the, just the leader of the conservative movement and just just the best thing that's happened to the conservatism right and it

Corey 31:24

it seems to be a counter-narrative against the idea that he somehow betrayed conservative values reinforcing his conservative agenda in alberta all the things that he's done you saw uh sean spear wrote a column in the national post about this right op-ed i suppose even on

Zain 31:39

on stage at that manning center

Zain 31:41

event similar comments were made about

Corey 31:45

great wide berths to freedom yeah

Corey 31:47

this is Mike Harris jumping in and talking about how he is the guy who made Alberta the freest of the provinces here.

Corey 31:55

Attending a conference like this, weighing in on the conservative movement more generally, reinforces that. So it may very well be strategy to say, I've

Corey 32:04

I've got to show myself as a conservative and a leader of conservatives and remind people I'm not a

Corey 32:10

a second choice or like a red Tory. I'm a blue Tory. And I am a conservative who's getting things done. So it's quite possible it's also part of a strategy there. Is it a good strategy? I don't know. Right. We we lack some of the inputs here. But I do think it's fundamentally a little bit dodgy to leave on the last weekend before votes are due.

Zain 32:30

Carter, I'm going to go to you for our next one. We're going to go actually to Alberta proper because the United Conservative Party is facing another obstacle in the tumultuous lead up to its announcement of the leadership review vote, I should say, on May 18th. as reported by cbc a letter obtained by cbc shows elections alberta is

Zain 32:50

is investigating is investigating allegations made about bulk ucp membership purchases i want to talk about this story more broadly but i have to give you a strategy scale question so my strategy scale question for you carter is

Zain 33:03

is we'll talk about this but i also want to talk about how brian gene has now got involved via a spokesperson vitor marciano an aide working for gene confirmed to cbc news news that the Gene Camp made a complaint at the end of March to Elections Alberta about the concerns that UCP members were purchasing bulk memberships before Bill 81 came into effect, which is a bill that we could talk about that. He said they named the Kenny campaign as part of their complaint. Carter, the allegations here are that a couple of credit cards, handful of credit cards, purchased large amounts of memberships, bulk purchase memberships. That's the allegations here. But Carter, let's start with the strategy scale question to maintain integrity of this segment, right? Because that's what matters the most. Yeah, that's what it's all about. Yeah, that's what matters most. Scale

Corey 33:50

Scale of one to 10, what are you giving the gene camp

Zain 33:52

camp for commenting on this and for filing this complaint and now owning it so close to the voting deadline? Give me your strategy scale, and then we'll address all elements of what is surely a multi-pronged

Zain 34:04

-pronged and very textured story here.

Carter 34:06

Well, ideally, you wouldn't want to own it. Ideally, you just want want it to be covered uh in my thinking uh obviously gene camp has a little bit different view because they they got the coverage and then they jumped into the story um

Carter 34:18

um they want to be seen as the people who are fighting jason kenney i think that that's a stupid move but you

Carter 34:24

you know we've talked about that ad nauseum on the podcast so yeah we think brian gene is stupid okay perfect

Carter 34:31

we've we've covered that so let's cover off the strategy do i think it was a bad idea to uh to launch the investigation or make the complaint? Absolutely not.

Carter 34:41

I mean, we launched complaints against the Jeff Davison campaign some 10 months ago about the work that his third party advertising organization was doing for him.

Carter 34:54

You'll note that there has been no decision 10 months later, and the problem with this decision process that they've embarked upon is that beginning the investigation does not mean you're going to have a decision in time for the the outcome of the election.

Carter 35:07

It's been four years since the RCMP commenced their investigation into the leadership irregularities in the first leadership that Jason Kenney won in the kamikaze candidate and

Carter 35:19

and impersonation of potential voters. And it has been 10 months since we saw the investigation start against Jeff Davison. It's going to be another 10 or 12 or 14 months before we see the outcome of

Carter 35:33

of this investigation by elections alberta therefore uh the gene campaign needed to make sure that it hit the media if i was running his campaign i'd have made sure that it hit the media without hitting us um because i just think that this type of stuff has never seen

Carter 35:48

you know oh good um you know the tattletale on the schoolyard uh is not the most popular person in the schoolyard um tattle

Carter 35:57

tattle but stay anonymous is a way better strategy that

Corey 36:01

that was carter's strategy in grade school yeah that's

Carter 36:04

damn straight i get the shit kicked out of me you find people like cory hogan

Zain 36:07

hogan who were eager to tell on other kids and have his name attached to it i feel like cory you were that kid at the playground but i am cory hogan and i was on the slide and it's like oh my god it just goes from there but

Carter 36:19

but cory's cory's like a decade younger than me when getting beat up wasn't allowed in school right they stopped the fights i

Carter 36:25

i the fights fucking happened in my era. Shit kickens all the time.

Zain 36:32

dipping into some of that trauma. Thank you,

Zain 36:39

I'm going to ask you the same question, then let's dig into the story. Strategy scale, Marciano, Gene campaign, owning this, jumping on it, mentioning that Kenny was the complainant. You know, one thing they did do, I will say that the CBC News article, as far as my reading, is not definitive on which which campaign they're alleging the letter indicated was being investigated by Elections Alberta. But the Jean campaign and Vitor and others have just said, yes, we were one of the complainants. We did it in March. And we mentioned the Jason Kenney campaign. I

Zain 37:12

I want to give you a strategy scale question to that. And then let's discuss the broader implications of this story. So

Corey 37:18

So I'll say when I read the CBC article, the first thing is every time I see reference to the gene campaign i get a kick out of that like the gene campaign for what the

Zain 37:25

the is it actually

Corey 37:27

actually an official leadership campaign right now like what the hell is this gene campaign why are their staff working on a campaign for a job that's not open or is it the gene campaign against jason kenney like it's just such a wild thing and you

Corey 37:40

you know everybody is in their

Zain 37:43

say an aid working for gene yeah so right okay so but yes and

Zain 37:48

is me editorializing that but

Corey 37:49

think is is actually how it is described at a certain point but you

Corey 37:53

you know i wouldn't want to be attached to this too too closely uh for all of the reasons that was discussed that

Corey 37:59

that one of the things though um

Corey 38:02

that i find is unclear to me is is

Corey 38:05

this even something that elections alberta is allowed to look into because the the bulk buying of memberships is no longer legal in alberta as of march 31st but the membership cutoff was before that by two weeks right so you know there was there's this really interesting two paragraphs in the cbc article that i just wish i had the original source documents because they did that thing where they they took a statement and they just sort of paraphrased it to me but it it says uh essentially the ucp says not been contacted by elections alberta not aware of an investigation but the next one the money one is the statement adds that membership purchases are accepted in three ways and then it goes with someone paying a personal credit card for themselves or family by check or by cash if that person signs a a membership application confirming their identity the

Corey 38:49

the word r is doing a lot of lifting there i'm wondering were they accepted differently before the membership cut off because i have no doubt that they are now in compliance with the law but what was the state of play just before the membership cut off were you allowed to purchase memberships in bulk in the ucp like legally obviously party rules were you is the question that i think somebody really needs to put the screws to the ucp on here because um yeah temporally i am quite sure they are no longer actively you know breaking what is now the law of the land but that's

Corey 39:21

that's it would have just been you

Corey 39:23

just best practice a recommendation whatever before and

Corey 39:27

to know what the

Carter 39:27

situation was then so

Corey 39:30

guess what i would say is elections alberta is not going to be the competent authority here these are questions that the party needs to ask these are questions the media needs needs to ask but what

Corey 39:39

what is what is elections alberta you

Corey 39:42

know what are they looking into i guess an illegal contribution would be the only thing i could actually think of

Zain 39:48

carter zoom out for me what

Zain 39:50

what are the implications here for the kenny campaign this is just another pile on another investigation to jason kenny like i don't mean to be so like flip about it but like what are the implications here and do you think if you're on the kenny side you actually care about this you talk to me about the timelines of your complaint on the municipal side like

Zain 40:07

like is this just a one two day story we move on we win on the 19th or win on the 18th sorry um and we just power through or is there real implications here between now and uh and what we what we see because we know the we know the gene camp we know the rebels if i can call them more uh categorically in a broader sense we're going to complain about the rules complain about the fairness to begin with does

Zain 40:31

does this really matter to jason kenny and his team team carter not

Carter 40:35

not if he wins and

Carter 40:36

and not if he loses right

Carter 40:38

right so if he loses you're the fuck right

Zain 40:43

wins like by the way do you charge by the word yes

Carter 40:47

yes okay um you

Zain 40:50

carter you had an opportunity there you really blew an opportunity here's

Carter 40:53

here's the thing can i actually answer the question yeah if he wins it's going to be a year before anything comes out and he He writes the laws, right? So he can do whatever the hell he needs to do. These are all laws that were created by the legislature that he's in charge of. They've already fucked around with the Elections Act. They can fuck around more with the Elections Act. On top of that, they could go right into a snap. The odds of this actually being decided before the next election is decided are virtually nil. So the consequences are irrelevant. There is no consequence for this type of accusation in this type of investigation because it moves so fucking slowly.

Carter 41:30

So it doesn't matter. And if he, you know, if he loses, he

Carter 41:35

he fucks off. He doesn't give a shit. So, you know, like this is, this

Carter 41:39

this is, you know,

Carter 41:42

it's not heads I win, tails you lose type of thing. But it is, it's inconsequential in the overall scheme of things. Corey,

Zain 41:49

Corey, you want to get in on here?

Corey 41:51

Yeah, I think it probably doesn't matter that much to Jason Kenney for the reasons that Stephen said. Also, as a side here, we really need to talk about how long these elections investigations take, because at

Corey 42:07

careers end before these things actually come to conclusion. And so they hold no consequence. They hold no relevance. They need to move much faster for people actually to feel like they will hold political parties to account. But

Corey 42:19

But it matters in one big way, and it's probably the reason why Brian Jean was in the story, and this goes back to your original question, which is it's foreshadowing if after May 19th, Jason Kenney wins, doesn't win by a lot, say he wins by fewer than 4,000 votes, for example, right?

Corey 42:37

Well, then that's a pretty good reason to take your ball and go home, leave citizen independent, start some sort of other process against the leader. You know, I mean, the

Corey 42:47

the UCP bylaws could literally, you

Corey 42:51

you could have a situation where the president say, not good enough, do it again, right? And so they just hit the exact same resolution and have the exact same 23 go forward and say, we're now asking you to do one properly. This was a farce. Here are the 18 reasons it was a farce. You said it was only safe in person. You then changed it from in person. You changed those rules after the fact. You allowed bulk purchase of memberships by one party, but not by all parties. You delayed the introduction of laws that would protect us from a situation like that until after the membership cut off. I mean, you can almost imagine it being nailed to a church door like these are our problems.

Zain 43:28

do you think that's going to happen? I

Zain 43:30

very unlikely. I think

Corey 43:31

think it's very unlikely because at a certain point, people need to put their pants on and get ready for the election. But if you're Brian Jean, and you're thinking that you want to at least have the opportunity to continue to kick things up down the road,

Corey 43:43

you've got to, it can't come out of left field, especially if your last word on all of this previously had been, we

Corey 43:48

we don't think these irregularities will change the outcome, which is what his last word was prior to this piece. So in some ways, this is a bit of a revision from

Zain 43:55

from that. Yeah, it is. It is. I think he said some 90-some percent seems to be legitimate. If that is indeed the case, we are well on our way to victory, etc., etc. Carter, what are you doing if you're in the gym camp? Okay, so they're in the story now.

Zain 44:09

Now that the story's out there, it's a story that tells their version of things. At least one would expect it tells a version more aligned with where their heads are at. Are they just putting this on blast? Are they fundraising off of this? Are they trying to get it into the minds of the remaining voters? Are they trying to make it public? What are you advising? Because many things you can do now that you've got, if you call this political ammo or if you call this a nugget, there's many ways to disperse this, many strategies. What would be yours to help them with their aims and their ends?

Carter 44:43

Ignore it and get the vote out.

Carter 44:45

They got the article, it's over.

Carter 44:47

Now move on. You'd spend no resources,

Zain 44:49

resources, no time pumping it up, giving another, giving it more wind, giving it a second life.

Carter 44:54

It's not big enough in the election question. People who believe he's a cheater are already voting for you. So you've

Carter 45:00

you've already got another, you've got another message that you can use.

Carter 45:03

But you don't need to dig

Carter 45:05

dig into the story. All you need is that one link to send out to potential voters and just send that link out,

Carter 45:11

get those voters out, do your GOTV. This is GOTV time. This isn't fuck about time. This is GOTV. Get your vote out. If you can't get the vote out, you're going to lose. So focus on the thing that actually ensures victory. And this is, I think, where a lot of people make big mistakes is when they don't focus on the

Carter 45:34

winning of elections. Do

Zain 45:36

Do you feel like if they focused on the story, it'd be kind of like focusing on an insurance plan or a plan B versus plan A, which is if we outright win, we win.

Zain 45:44

Is that a fair comparison us into May, Carter?

Carter 45:47

Well, I think that the only way to win is to win.

Corey 45:53

got another mug, people.

Carter 45:56

This bullshit of if we're within 4,000 votes or if we're within four points or if we're- Yeah, yeah,

Carter 46:01

Nope. You've got to get 50% plus one. If you get 50% plus one, that's the only way that Jason Kenney is not going to step down.

Carter 46:10

will step down. I

Zain 46:12

lot of fun of you, Carter, but that is clear-eyed strategy here. Like that is that does make good sense that there is a goal and this could potentially be a distraction. Corey, I want to see if you agree, though.

Zain 46:22

If you're the gene camp, you're in this story, you got this story. It's now socialized, let's say amongst a small group because it's put out over the weekend that in your letter, you've identified Kenny as the campaign that you feel like may have made some of these purchases. Are you spending any resources to put this on blast, to put it out there, to increase its circulation, distribution, or are you focused on the Stephen Carter strategy here?

Corey 46:47

Maybe, but probably not so much through the media anymore. I might be driving this through different channels, using it in my conversations with those undecided voters saying, listen, we need you because otherwise he's going to win dirty. You've got to make your opinion known or whatever. These are the accusations they're going to put out there. I don't have a damn clue how

Corey 47:08

how accurate any of these are. They all sound a bit, you

Corey 47:11

know, par for the course, but also outlandish, because outlandish is par for the course around here.

Corey 47:15

I think, though, their

Corey 47:18

their hope is that the media will pick up and run with it and go further and start asking tough questions.

Corey 47:25

But it's, you know, I'll go back to what I said last week, and I think it's still important and still relevant.

Corey 47:31

This is over. You know, there are three days left to vote. And while those are three important days and you wouldn't want to take your foot off the gas, almost everybody has voted who's going to have voted at this point, right? There'll be this surge at the end of people who drop off memberships to those local collection places that Jason Kenney arranged or the UCP arranged to allow. But that's it. I mean, what do we think? I'm dying to know the actual number. What do we think? 90% of the vote is in now?

Zain 47:59

Maybe 80% on the lowest low

Zain 48:01

end, 85%? what do you think what do you think from from you from mapping out trajectories of voting and late voters what do you think there's

Carter 48:07

there's no way cory's wrong on this you

Carter 48:09

you know it's got to be 85 90 percent um you

Carter 48:12

you know but the

Carter 48:14

the question for me is let's say there's 80 that's 95 percent

Carter 48:19

close is it right

Carter 48:21

right if 95 percent of your potential vote is in and it's still within a a couple of points and you got to work on that. That 5% matters. So for

Carter 48:30

for me, I'd be working right down to the end because it's inverted from a regular election, a

Carter 48:37

a regular election, advanced polls open, and then you have kind of like a big day and then it lets go for a little bit, but your biggest day is always election day. In

Carter 48:45

In a leadership, your biggest day is the first day that the voters, the votes open because

Carter 48:49

because you've got a hyper-engaged audience. So that was the the most important day, but your last three days are still important. If you can get disproportionately more votes out in the last three days, that could be the difference. And that's where I'd be focusing my attention.

Corey 49:06

Yeah. You know, I think it's, we,

Corey 49:08

we, again, we talked about this last week. If this was an intentional strategy by the gene camp to bring this into the last couple of days, this, this notion of an October surprise, I think it was a bad one. I think they should have brought it in two weeks

Corey 49:20

when it could have affected more votes. And

Corey 49:21

And at this point, I do think that its effect, even if it were to be a bombshell in the UCP, is

Corey 49:28

is going to be minimized by the fact most people have cast their ballots. So it's less about changing.

Corey 49:34

Here's my thing. If they think it's about changing the outcome, I think that they did this wrong.

Corey 49:38

I don't know that it is, though. I think this is about sowing doubt so that whatever they do after this vote, they've got the latitude to do it because their previous statements on this were, we're just going to sort of accept the process as it is.

Zain 49:50

Gardner, I need your practitioner brain to wrap us up from this particular topic, which is

Zain 49:55

the 11th, three days, right? So we're GOTV final stretch. We've talked about it last week. We've talked about it today, that more than likely the folks that have not voted yet, the least engaged of the membership, those who probably never planned to vote, these are not the folks that probably signed up to go to Red Deer in person, one would assume. Those folks, as you've just mentioned, already voted.

Zain 50:16

What is your practitioner brain telling you for either side, the Rebels or or for Team Kenny, around how they engage the less engaged, or the slightly less engaged amongst an engaged membership, one would say. What advice would you give across the board? I'm not going to make this for one camp or the other. What advice would you give across the board to bring those people out?

Carter 50:37

Well, I'd be playing to emotions, and the emotion I would be using is fear. If you're Jason, and ironically, I think it's the same type of question for each side to put put forward people are going to fall into two camps i mean obviously for or against kenny but

Carter 50:53

why are you for or against kenny right you could be for kenny because you want to win the next election and i think this is the less engaged group the

Carter 51:00

the less engaged group that have bought memberships in the ucp part in the ucp because you have to buy in the membership right like this isn't you know or or it's been given gifted to you um through the largesse of jason kenny's crew but

Carter 51:15

whatever happens you know like you're right now if you're afraid of an ndp government right you could be convinced that jason kenney is the only person standing between you and an ndp government he was the only person that could bring the parties together and he's the only person who can keep the parties together look at how fucked up this thing has been he's at least held it together um

Carter 51:37

um for this four years and if you want to head into an election with strong leadership, then you've got to count on Jason Kenney.

Carter 51:43

And the other side of it is this thing's falling apart.

Carter 51:46

Jason Kenney hasn't been able to lead this group. And on top of that, he sacrificed our core values, which means that it doesn't matter if we win the election or not, because our core values are never going to be served by Jason Kenney.

Carter 51:57

So we have to get our, we have to get things back, back on track for the next election. That's the beauty of this particular timing. It is one year until you have, you know, less than a year now until you are mandated to to have the election. So let's

Carter 52:12

let's go. This is about that election. This isn't about, do you like Jason Kenney or not? This is about, are your values being served or are you afraid of the NDP? That's it. Those are the ballot questions that I'd be pushing on for this lesser-engaged group, because these people believe in conservatism.

Zain 52:31

Corey, same question to you to round it out. What's your advice to mobilize the

Corey 52:36

the less engaged of the engaged, i.e. the membership of this group

Zain 52:39

group in the final

Corey 52:39

final days? I mean, that's the important point, Zane. We call them less engaged, but they've purchased a membership. They're more engaged than the average person.

Corey 52:47

You know, the group is smaller. One of the blessings of being in these last days when 85, 90% of the vote is in is that there's this much smaller pool. You

Corey 52:57

You know what could really motivate somebody who's just not that normally engaged, but could become engaged? I

Corey 53:02

don't know, a call from a premier, a cabinet minister, an MLA, you know, an important person who can say, hey, listen, Frank, I noticed that you haven't voted yet. And I get that. I mean, a

Corey 53:12

a lot of us are not that enthusiastic about things right now. But here's the brass tacks. I know you, Frank, and I know that you want to win this next election. And I know you saw what happened when

Corey 53:21

when the right was split before, you know, with the PC party in the Wild Rose beating each other up. Well, the NDP came up the middle and you know who brought us together? Jason Kenney. and he needs your support right now and I need your support right now, Frank, because I'm not looking forward to being a backbench MLA on the opposition side. I want to continue driving that conservative agenda I know you care about, Frank. And a call like that from an important person make you feel like they know you and they care about you and they're talking to you,

Corey 53:49

well, that's going to get somebody off their ass and go vote.

Zain 53:54

Nicely done, guys. I'm going to move it on to our final one in our strategy scale. it's a biggie justin trudeau met

Zain 54:01

met with ukrainian president vladimir zielinski in kiev with the surprise visit that he made today with the deputy prime minister and the foreign affairs minister cory the surprise trip on

Zain 54:13

on the strategy scale he's joined a long list of now uh you know state leaders to to jump in but he also made comments while he was there he said uh it's now clear that russian president vladimir putin is responsible for heinous war crimes quote unquote following this surprise visit cory on the strategy scale the visit and the comments uh from justin trudeau what do you give it there

Corey 54:36

there is a certain me too feeling to it in the sense of like a lot of other leaders have been there and so now he's going to go and uh do his version of it and

Corey 54:46

and i i have to say like his actual substantive announcement going with it i think was 50 million dollars of additional support

Corey 54:52

kind of shitty next to the many billions that the United States is giving. Yeah,

Corey 54:56

I get that they're 10 times the economy, but it

Corey 54:59

doesn't mean we need to do one 100th of what they do, right? Just to do some rough math here.

Zain 55:05

So I don't know that it's going... If he

Corey 55:08

he was the first, God, it would be amazing. If it was like Boris Johnson, you mean. Exactly. Like Boris. But

Corey 55:13

But at this point, so much of the G7 leadership has gone in some way, shape, or form that it It just doesn't carry the same sort of weight. And, you know, Jill Biden was there. Jill Biden, not Joe Biden, was there today.

Corey 55:26

You had the president of the German parliament, not the president of Germany, but the president of the German parliament there.

Corey 55:35

And at a certain point, it just starts to feel like there is

Corey 55:39

is a moment always with these kinds of things. And I guess this is kind of a broader strategy point where there's a massive first mover advantage, right? Of course. The pictures of Boris Johnson there, as much as you might think Boris Johnson's a bit of a clown sometimes, he really, walking

Corey 55:54

walking around in downtown Kiev in a suit, which was at that point even much more so an active war zone, was kind of

Zain 56:02

But we all remember it,

Corey 56:03

right? Of course we do. We definitely remember that

Corey 56:04

that he was there.

Zain 56:05

We talked about it on our live show. We talked

Corey 56:07

talked about it afterwards. At

Corey 56:08

At a certain point, it becomes, why haven't you gone once all of the other leaders have gone? And

Corey 56:14

I think that Justin Trudeau got in just before the why haven't you gone, right? That's the best I can say about this. He didn't go at the moment where people were saying, well, about effing time, but he doesn't get any extra bonus points for it. He doesn't get a ton of credit for it. I did think it was great that Melanie Jolie and Christian Freeland were with him. I thought it was very bad as a Canadian that this leaked out to the press before he was out of the country. I continue to think that the domestic politics that drive this and make leaders want to go there is

Corey 56:45

is contributing to a tinderbox. I want to support Ukraine, but my imagination goes dark. And I think, what the hell would we do if something happened to our prime minister? What would happen in this country if something happened to our prime minister who was there? You know, as Ukraine media is getting a bit loose, they're so used to leaders coming now, apparently, they

Corey 57:05

don't feel that bad about talking when they're still on the ground.

Corey 57:10

I don't know. I mean, I'll

Corey 57:12

I'll let Carter go. I think the theater of it alarms me.

Corey 57:16

I think the strategy of it from a political point, the best you can say is it won't be a negative.

Corey 57:21

I don't think he's going to get a ton of points

Zain 57:24

carter on strategy scale both the visit and the statement of now uh this is i guess the harshest statement i've heard from trudeau thus far about saying vladimir putin is responsible for heinous war crimes quote unquote carter

Zain 57:36

carter your take i

Carter 57:37

think he had to go i think that cory's right that if he if he'd waited another two weeks there would have been a lot of why haven't you gone i think there was a a small murmur of why hasn't he gone that was starting to develop in ottawa and starting to develop within within people who follow these things um you

Carter 57:56

you know it'll be a good photo um so you know good photos are good you should you should take them uh but this isn't going to change the outcome in ukraine uh and the fact that he was you

Carter 58:08

you know it does feel like everybody and their dog is going right now so you know when zielinski's supposed to actually fight this war um

Carter 58:15

um and i'm i'm still you

Carter 58:18

you know i know that we gave them some uh some

Carter 58:20

some amped up artillery i would have have liked to have you

Carter 58:23

you know had another announcement about you

Carter 58:27

know here's where you know it's here it's doing the job i would have liked a little bit more of the here's how our aid is working cory

Zain 58:34

cory i have a question for you on this is is brought up by what carter said which is good photo hops are good yeah i added that to my list of great steven coder quotes the

Zain 58:43

the only way to win is to wait i'm on fire today i'm on

Carter 58:46

on fire today you guys

Zain 58:48

guys don't appreciate it there is is something to be said about what carter brought up here which is uh the long-standing uh trap perhaps that trudeau falls into regarding symbolism good at symbolism bad at execution or underwhelming on execution at the same time if you're the conservatives if you're pierre or charrette or whatnot it's really hard to take a swipe at a leader for for doing what others have how are you torquing this or are you torquing this if you're on the conservative side knowing that that symbolism argument is available to you, but is it too early? Is it too fresh? Can you do it? I'm curious to get your take on this in terms of how the opposition deals with Trudeau

Zain 59:28

Trudeau showing up and then giving a paltry 50, I believe it's 50 million. I'll confirm before we end it in terms of the aid.

Corey 59:35

Yeah, I mean, 50 million is not paltry, but I do think it is underwhelming for sure,

Corey 59:40

So I saw Sharae's response to this on Twitter. I didn't see Polyev's, um but sheree's response was was

Corey 59:47

was what i would have recommended which is it's

Corey 59:49

it's really good our prime minister went there we need to stand with ukrainians but

Corey 59:53

but we got to do more now

Corey 59:54

now what are we going to do to follow up right yeah that's that is the message that's what you got to say

Carter 1:00:00

that's exactly what i was going to say i loved sheree's message i thought it was bang on and it

Carter 1:00:05

it had the right tone it happened quick enough and

Carter 1:00:08

and it wasn't just that petulant

Carter 1:00:09

petulant attack on the prime minister it built it

Carter 1:00:12

it was it was country building and it also showed what he would do instead

Carter 1:00:16

instead of what the other guy did loved it i

Zain 1:00:19

i need to i said this was going to be the last one i've got one more to throw on throw to you guys on the strategy scale carter this goes to candace bergen now when after telling her caucus not to comment on roe v wade in the united states she came out with her own statement saying quote when it comes to the debate in canada access to abortion was not restricted under PM Harper and the CPC will not introduce legislation or reopen the abortion debate. Your take on her strategy of her message right there, saying initially, don't comment, we're not going to say anything, probably knowing what's under the hood of that caucus, at least with a few folks, and then saying, listen, bringing Harper back into the question, saying that the debate is ultimately settled, we will not introduce any new legislation to reopen it. Your take on the strategy scale of interim leader Candace Bergen and the Conservative Party I think

Carter 1:01:05

think it's the right thing to do. I think that what you do is you tell your caucus you're not allowed to speak and then you speak on behalf of the party with a unified position that is settled. The problem is it's

Carter 1:01:17

The membership of the Conservative Party still does not have that. The MPs within the Conservative Party don't accept that, which does not mean that there aren't MPs in the Liberal Party

Carter 1:01:28

and there aren't MPs in the NDP that

Carter 1:01:31

don't accept this either. I mean, there are people from across the spectrum that have very strong opinions on abortion, but

Carter 1:01:39

that is the right position for the Conservatives, the Liberals and the NDP to take. This is decided. This

Carter 1:01:44

This is decided and we're not going to relitigate it, period.

Zain 1:01:48

Corey, what do you think the statement from interim leader Bergen when it comes to the debate in Canada access to abortion was not restricted under Harper and the CPC will not introduce legislation to reopen the abortion debate? I

Corey 1:01:57

I mean, it is the thing that you want to say.

Corey 1:02:01

It's not the most comforting thing in the world. I mean, it was supposedly decided in the United States. A couple of those Supreme Court justices who just decided the other way declared it decided before this all went down. And

Corey 1:02:12

it's really kind of funny to suggest that it is settled in Canada in a context because our

Corey 1:02:17

our settling it was just to not pick up the ball when the court struck down, you know, our legislation in the late 80s that, you know, there was no sort of like new legislation that sort of came in and enshrined it. It's been an artful dodge of it for the last 30 years in Canada by all political parties because they were afraid to touch that and potentially antagonize various constituents there. there so

Zain 1:02:38

so i mean like it's settled by default i do

Corey 1:02:42

it is more settled here than it is in the united states in a funny way uh but uh but

Corey 1:02:46

but you know also the debate about abortion in canada is not the same as the debate about abortion in the united states and i think many canadians would be surprised by how somewhat limited access to abortion is relative to to what it is in blue states in the united states uh there's only so many places in most provinces that perform you you know, abortions. And there

Corey 1:03:08

there are challenges with people who protest outside of the clinics, those limited number of clinics throughout Canada.

Corey 1:03:14

The bar to which you can get an abortion, the number of weeks is lower than it is in a lot of those blue states in the United States. We tend to look at the, this is one of these classic things we do as a Canadian, where we look at the American issue, we immediately assume where we are relative to America because because we're Canada. But, you know, it's, it's, it's different here. And I actually think in a funny way, if

Corey 1:03:43

if you if you want access to reproductive rights, you shouldn't consider it settled here

Zain 1:03:46

here in Canada, like

Corey 1:03:47

like you shouldn't assume that where our baseline is, is actually that awesome of a place, I guess, is what I'm trying to get out here.

Zain 1:03:54

Carter, I know you wanted to respond to this, but I have a question for you, which is the strategy here around the Conservatives, In addition to that statement I just read to you, right, about what P.M. Harper did, they

Zain 1:04:06

they also said it would be inappropriate to comment on matters before the U.S. courts. It would be inappropriate to comment on U.S. politics. That sort of broader sort

Zain 1:04:13

like cocktail of like we don't we don't. What do you kind of think of that as political positioning? Do you feel like that is just too short term in order to to actually hold any muster? So either either ideally both respond to what Corey said here, but also this this positioning of it being appropriate to comment on matters before the U.S. courts. That's why we will be refraining from commenting on the leaked opinions, etc.

Carter 1:04:36

That's absolute bullshit. I mean, we can comment on anything we want to comment on if it's outside. I mean, if it's in the Canadian courts, we are constrained in some fashions, although we tend to to lawyer up way more than we actually have to. If there matters before the courts, we use that as a convenient excuse for not actually having to comment. It's just bullshit. If you want to say this

Carter 1:05:00

this is a bad decision by someone, you can say that because you say that about everything else. the

Corey 1:05:07

the war in ukraine is ongoing i would hate to give an opinion about it before

Carter 1:05:10

before it's concluded i can't speak about that yeah the

Carter 1:05:13

the um the softwood lumber uh dispute is ongoing i'm i'm unable to comment on it it's a decision by a foreign government well

Carter 1:05:21

well i can't really say

Corey 1:05:22

say that uh you know putin is a war criminal because of course the icj hasn't come to that conclusion yet so tbd

Zain 1:05:32

we're gonna leave that segment then move it on to our final segment or our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we start with you. Overrated, underrated. The political, the domestic political significance, I should phrase, of Trudeau visiting Kiev today, overrated or

Zain 1:05:48

or underrated, Stephen Carter? I

Carter 1:05:50

I think it's overrated. I think that he waited too long. I think if he'd done it much closer to Boris Johnson's initial visit, or even ideally a day or two before that, he would have been seen is a real leader. He's at the exact same level as the first lady of the United States. And that's not great if you're one of the G7 leaders.

Zain 1:06:13

Quite overrated or underrated domestic political significance of Trudeau's surprise visit today to Ukraine.

Corey 1:06:18

think overrated as well for the reasons I was saying, which is it's just he's done

Corey 1:06:25

done it before. People have started really clamoring for it, but not much more than that.

Zain 1:06:31

Corey, I'm going to stick with you. Overrated or underrated the GOTV over the course of the next three days in the UCP Leadership Review? Overrated or underrated the nose to the grindstone, the work that's required? What do you think?

Corey 1:06:47

think it's both, depending on how you want to look at it, right? It is overrated in the sense that most of the votes are already going to have been mailed in or effectively locked

Corey 1:06:57

locked in. Let's just say votes locked in because some of them are just in Canada Post making their way through the system. But

Corey 1:07:03

it's underrated in the sense that if you've waited this long, you actually probably are a fairly ambivalent voter. So your ability to be persuaded is probably higher. And so this is a time where you do want to take action. And the whole reason you gave the

Corey 1:07:16

the ability to drop votes off locally was to get these last minute voters. And there is a group of people who just make these decisions at the last possible moment. So both

Corey 1:07:25

both camps will be wanting to go get them.

Zain 1:07:28

Carter, next time we record, everyone will have voted in the UCP Leadership Review. So the next couple of days, overrated or underrated the final three-day stretch of the GOTV here?

Carter 1:07:39

suspect it's overrated because I think Corey's correct. I think that 95% of people have voted, and I don't think it's going to be within five points. So I think that the people who are casting their ballots at the end may be

Carter 1:07:53

be doing so futilely. But I think that it's, you know, I could be so wrong on this. I mean, it could be a 54, 46, could be 52, 48. No one knows. So because no one knows, I'd be getting my vote out. And one other thing, Kenny's knowledge, Corey said this earlier, Kenny's knowledge of the situation, I think it might be seriously misjudged. And I go back to when Ralph Klein faced this exact same thing. They were shocked when

Carter 1:08:18

when they got a 55% because everybody told them, I'm voting for you, Ralph. Well,

Carter 1:08:22

Well, I think a lot of people have said to Jason Kenney, I voted for you, Jason Kenney, and they put a fucking knife in his back.

Zain 1:08:29

We've heard that in many leadership reviews, classic case, of course, with Tom Mulcair, also the leadership review in Edmonton, where, you know, many folks reported he was feeling like he was going to coast to victory and outright lost that one. Carter, I'm going to stick with you for our next one. This is, of course, a reaction to a Corey Hogan tweet, which we like to do, but it's a fascinating topic I want to spend more on.

Zain 1:08:49

After Pierre-Paul Yves says, you know, we need more control of our money, we need less institutional control. crypto has lost 23% of its market cap at $275 billion drop. Is this a political

Zain 1:09:03

political problem for Pierre Polyarv? On a scale to one to 10, tell me how much it is. One, it's not an issue. 10, it's a massive issue for a guy that's been now joining crypto bros at the hip. What sort of political problem is this for Pierre Polyarv?

Carter 1:09:15

It should be a big problem. It should be a big problem because the financial systems that we live within have amazing impact on us as individuals, but we're unaware of them because it's this big macro thing that happens to us. And we're all very much caught up in our little micro worlds where, you know, what

Carter 1:09:35

what happens around the world and transactions around the world and the rise and fall of our currency doesn't really, we don't feel it that broadly, but it has major major impact. And if we had done what Pierre Polyev has suggested, it would be a bad thing and people should hold them to account, but they're not going to because he's just like Trump and he's 46 issues in and

Carter 1:09:58

and he just continues to rail on the one thing that makes the more sense now. Crypto was going to save us from inflation, but it doesn't matter because Justin Trudeau created inflation. Justin Trudeau, bad. Pierre, good. He's a simple man with simple messages. messages.

Zain 1:10:12

Corey, what do you think on a scale of one to 10? How big of a problem is this for Pierre? I should also mention that David Dodge today said that what he was saying is total bullshit. He used that word on television in addition to saying that he doesn't know. I don't know what he's talking about and neither does he. What do you think? How big of a political problem?

Corey 1:10:29

I don't think it'll be a big one because the world keeps turning. Interesting. I don't think that the problem is that Pierre Poliev doesn't know what he's talking about. I think he might might know what he's talking about but he's willing to say the thing that the group wants him to say that's

Corey 1:10:43

that's my big concern here the

Corey 1:10:45

idea that you would move your money into cryptocurrencies in order to protect yourself against inflation and the volatility of inflation is very

Corey 1:10:54

very bad it's just malpractice um the

Corey 1:10:56

the the reality is bitcoin is up a lot since it was created uh

Zain 1:11:01

uh over a decade ago now a

Corey 1:11:03

a lot a lot and you could have become a millionaire many times over if you got on that train early on. But it is not a stable, you

Corey 1:11:10

you know, it's not a stable asset in any way, shape or form, as evidenced by the fact it's dropped a quarter of its value since that comment was made a month ago, a quarter

Zain 1:11:18

quarter of its value.

Corey 1:11:18

value. It's down now half from its peak. So if you bought in at the very peak of Bitcoin, you've now lost half of your money, at least on paper. And maybe you hold, maybe you do great over the long run. But this is your protection against inflation. Get the fuck out of here. That's the craziest shit I've ever heard. There were a couple of wags on twitter doing the calculations and it's like the equivalent of 1300 inflation annualized over the past month right like

Corey 1:11:42

like this is this is not a stable this

Corey 1:11:45

this is not a stable asset and while it might be an investment that you want to consider if you're a sophisticated investor and you're thinking about these things not my cup of tea uh probably more for the environmental consequences than anything else um you

Corey 1:11:59

you you you got to know that that it is highly speculative it is a highly speculative asset class. It's like buying a junk bond. You don't know if it'll be there tomorrow. You might be very rich tomorrow. And

Corey 1:12:10

And you can't do this with money you can't afford to lose. And my fear is who Pierre Poliev was talking to was not highly speculative investors who would otherwise be looking at junk bonds. He was talking to everyday Canadians who were thinking, boy, inflation's tough. I wish I had something that would shield me against inflation. And they got fucked. And so the the real question for me is how many people actually took him up on that a month and change ago? And how are they feeling about Pierre Polia today?

Zain 1:12:37

Corey, I'm going to start the last question with you here, which is in our previous episode, 987, our Patreon exclusive, we did a deep dive on that first conservative leadership debate. It was weird. It was fiery. It was, to use Jason said kenny's uh word it was fierce uh how did it age cory from from uh when we recorded uh last week to uh to this sunday has that debate aged well yes or no it

Corey 1:13:07

it hasn't aged well i i think the consensus has come that it was bad for the conservatives right

Corey 1:13:12

uh may have been okay for individual candidates and their presentation but bad for the party overall and you saw scott Scott Acheson kind of doubled down on taking his

Zain 1:13:21

his entire party. By the way, if you don't know, was one of the candidates on the stage, folks. Yes. Yeah.

Corey 1:13:24

Yeah. Which is a problem for him more generally that they needed to give that clarity. But on Twitter, he was saying, nobody's

Corey 1:13:32

nobody's going to vote for this party if they watch this. This was crazy. You can't talk to each other and to Canadians like that. And I suspect there will be a moderation of tone back in the next debate. There has to be because it's just too self-destructive.

Zain 1:13:47

Does there have to be Carter? Do you think Pierre is going to continue on the same track and ignore all of the collective this is not healthy for the party advice, which, by the way, today also includes an op ed from Peter McKay, which which probably goes in the overrated column of of what Pierre Polyev will be listening to. But Carter, does it change? And how did it age? Finish us off here.

Carter 1:14:09

I think it aged very poorly. I think the Pierre Polyev will never change. He will do the exact same thing because he has been skippy from the beginning of time, and he will be skippy until the end of his time.

Zain 1:14:20

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 988 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

Carter 1:14:37

you missing The Strategist on Thursdays? That's because you are not a Patreon supporter. If you were a Patreon supporter, you could watch us live as we record all of our podcasts. You could get Thursday episodes, which are free to our Patreon supporters. And you can get so much more by becoming patrons. You got to join. Go to www.patreon.com slash strategist pod and you can join the strategist Patreon community. We've even got a Discord. You guys should totally do this.

Transcript