THROWBACK - Episode 546: Liberal Strategy Special

Corey 0:04

Previously on The Strategists.

Carter 0:27

to actually stitch together a single cohesive group that will vote for us. We

Corey 0:33

We need to decide what we have is available for strengths. We need to understand our opponents' strengths and weaknesses. We

Corey 0:39

We have to look at the public as a whole and see where their sentiments are right now. And from that, we need to construct a winning coalition. But we can't construct a winning coalition on bad data.

Carter 0:50

So the way I construct strategies is it's all a ladder or a staircase. You're starting from this ground place, And then you are trying to add the next easiest set, the next easiest set, the next easiest set. And maybe you get to majority. Depends on how far you get prior to the election actually happening.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah, so you're constructing a strategy in concert. Corey, you mentioned situational analysis of the ground and the land around you. Explain that. Normally when we talk about data, people

Corey 1:20

hear data and they think polling, but it's more than that. We need to look at the demographics that are out there, past election results, the resources the parties have on hand as far as the amount of money which tells us an awful lot about what we can expect them to do certain things are just off the table if you don't have any local resourcing same with

Corey 1:36

with local resourcing in the sense of staff we need to pull together a picture that tells us this is our areas of opportunity these are our areas of weakness so i think one of the first things we need to do as we take a look at the land is is we need to look at the electorate what does the electorate feel about these things and i think that's going to take some polling

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Let's take some polling. We'll do some polling. Corey, you also mentioned in terms of data, it's understanding demographics. We'll get deeper into that, understanding which type of voters are going to be accessible to this Liberal Party. So it's Thursday.

Corey 2:10

We're going to meet back together on Monday. We'll be talking in between, but this

Corey 2:15

this is a pretty quick turnaround for a strategy, too.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

is a strategist episode 546 my name is zane belcher with me as always steven carter cory hogan guys how are you i'm

Carter 2:41

i'm so excited today very

SPEAKER_01 2:43

very excited corey corey you have not said anything yeah it's part

Corey 2:46

part two it's part two part two is always better than part one sequels are always better than the original that

SPEAKER_01 2:51

that that is rarely true uh but

SPEAKER_01 2:53

but i'll give you that comment But I guess I told you that's rarely true. And let's see how this goes. This is our liberal special. We are now digging in a little bit more into the data. We are trying to figure out how the liberals, the party in third place in this tight race, can tee it up from there. Exciting stuff. Yeah.

Corey 3:12

Yeah. And to give some context, what we've done since we were last talking about this a few days ago, we have gone into the field. We've pulled together some public research. We've pulled together some private research. research and

Corey 3:23

we've done some custom research in order to really lock down some of the big questions we were wrestling with viability accessibility intent issues things of that matter where

SPEAKER_01 3:33

where you know geographically where they're accessible that's

Corey 3:36

that's where this can happen because public polls aren't going to tell you that can

Carter 3:40

can i just can i add a caveat sure so i mean we've pulled all these things together but we've done it with about one-tenth of the budget in about one quarter of the time than we would normally do a strategy. Yeah,

Corey 3:53

hey, we all get paid to do this for a living. I'll tell you, if a client came and said, we'd like a strategy for a national campaign in four days, including polling,

Corey 4:03

I don't think we'd take that. I wouldn't. Well, hold on.

Corey 4:06

Maybe you would. Carter

Carter 4:07

would. How much money is it? Carter might do it. Because if it's enough money, I'll take that.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

There you go. Well, there you go. That's a great pitch for Stephen Carter Services.

Corey 4:20

Jerry Butts, Carter is willing to be that whipping boy for you if you

SPEAKER_01 4:23

to follow the guy. Regardless of how long or how short you need him, he will do it. Absolutely. When it needs to be right. Anything else you wanted to mention there? I think we wanted to get into this right away.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

So, Stephen, tee us off a little bit. Let's start with what our assumptions were and a little bit of our situation analysis as well. Have we reached a verdict, is effectively what I want to say, as to what our situation is. Let's talk about that. Well,

Carter 4:49

Well, I mean, there's the common understanding of what the situation currently is. And Corey alluded to it a second ago. And that is that the Liberal Party of Canada is in third place and they're the underdogs for this election. That's quite a turnaround from where they were about six months ago, where they were the leaders. So I think that the situation analysis that I would rather put forward is it would focus on the electorate rather than on the parties themselves. themselves so i think that the big thing with the electorate is how

Carter 5:17

how volatile they currently are right and the number of undecideds are staggering so we're looking at over one in three women saying that they're undecided one five men saying that they're undecided right

Carter 5:28

those are 33 percent

SPEAKER_01 5:29

percent of women so there's a huge difference between the two yeah

Carter 5:32

yeah there is there's a 10 point difference between men and women undecided um

Carter 5:35

um plus i prefer not to say subset of women that's really big right And so you get these numbers of the electorate that are prepared to shift. Now, conventional wisdom,

Corey 5:46

wisdom, why don't we take it from there, is that, well, okay, so let me put it this way. There is conventional wisdom, and then there's conventional wisdom, what strategists conventionally say, and then there's what appears to be the truth in this case, which is much different still. So people like to say when they look at a poll, oh, yeah, okay, you've got those guys in the lead, but look at that, 30% undecided. If they all break to the liberals, they're going to win. That's stupid. I hope none of you out there are that stupid.

Corey 6:14

counterpoint is something that strategists often say. I know I've said this myself many times, is that undecideds tend to break along the same lines as the decided voters. And that kind of makes sense, especially when you look at it from a statistical standpoint. You've got a sample of 60% voting one way and a sample of 40% who share a lot of similarities with that 60%. How are they going to break? because it's not like the 40% who don't vote are entirely common in other

Corey 6:40

But now let's talk about this time. Let's talk about some of the numbers we've said. I don't want to get too far into them right now, but I'll tell you right now, undecideds are not undecided between the Liberals, New Democrats, and Conservatives. They've written off the Conservatives. Yeah,

Carter 6:55

Yeah, so if you've decided to vote Conservative, you're

Carter 6:58

you're voting Conservative. If you haven't decided, you're not going to decide now to vote conservative in the same number. So that puts this play between the liberals and the New Democrats. And I mean, foreshadowing as we move forward on this, there are some real limitations on the New Democrats. OK,

SPEAKER_01 7:17

OK, that was very, very cool stuff and a lot to unpack there. I do want to quickly summarize for people that may be catching up on on all the things that we just talked about. So number one, high level of undecideds, right? Overall, across the board, high level of undecideds. Number two, Stephen, you're mentioning that the disparity between gender on undecideds tends to favor women with more of them being undecided. That's number two. Corey, you mentioned that there's also this factor that the undecideds do not seem to be breaking the way the decideds are. That's factor number three. And we're now talking about how that may split across all of the provinces or may have particular leanings to specific provinces, right? Right. Right.

Corey 7:55

Right. And I think you might be listening to me and saying, like, well, what do you mean the undecideds are breaking a different way? But we talked about this a bit earlier and kind of our tee up for this. We're not just looking at voting intent and this is their intent is undecided. But we also look at accessibility and viability. Accessibility is who would you consider voting for? Viability is who do you think is going to win? Right. Right. And what you find is that the options that the undecideds are considering are much more likely to be liberal or New Democrat than have conservative in the mix. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Yeah. So we're agreed on that. We're good. Right. You guys feel like that as provides us enough of a base to start with a situation analysis to some degree. I

Corey 8:34

I do. But I want to say there's something really important in there that needs to be said plainly, which is undecided still go to the polls and vote. vote so when we're looking at those top line numbers that are out there publicly i

Corey 8:45

think you've got to shave a few off for the conservatives right now i actually think the conservatives might be in a little more trouble than i believe they were before this poll yeah

Carter 8:52

yeah i mean there's two things uh they are in more trouble because they're just taking some hits little little tappy hits right now but they're also in more trouble because we're

Carter 9:01

we're only counting when we count the the numbers we see in the media over and over again we're only seeing the decided portion of the the poll. And when you see criticisms from me, especially about polling time and time again on Twitter, I'll just bang on these polls that are being published by media outlets as though this is the gospel. This is the way it's going to happen. This right now we're over-representing the conservative vote because we're underestimating how the, how the undecideds are actually going to break. Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Okay. Okay. I want to move it on to, to our next sort of element of this strategic plan. And that's crystallizing between between us what the goal should be for the liberals at this point, and crystallizing that and getting that in place. And, and I should explain to listeners how we want to and how we've planned to do this. And let's see how we execute it on on this show is we want to kind of have Stephen Corey go about what they think the goal should be or what they think some of these other elements should be. And we'll kind of duke it out on the show. And we'll hopefully have some sort of consensus that we come to. And so so maybe Corey, tee us off as to what what you think the goal of this strategy should be. You're writing the strategy. What's your byline on goal? The

Corey 10:10

very, very top line. The goal is a liberal government. And I think, Stephen, you put it well in the tee up where we talk about going up the ladder. And we're going to start with the votes that are most accessible. And we'll continue on from there. But regardless, the baseline objective here has to be more seats than the next party. And

SPEAKER_01 10:28

And that seems obvious, but I don't want to brush over how important it is for us to outline that goal because, Stephen, you have, and maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, do you have a little bit more to add in terms of nuance to what that goal should be? I

Carter 10:41

I mean, 120, I think, is an achievable number. And then you get to the stretch numbers. So when you go through and we're talking about the accessible voters, you

Carter 10:50

you can't assume that the accessible voters are all going to break your way unless something significant happens in the last four to six days of the campaign. So it's, you know, you'd like to be able to control that, but you have to have your base number.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

So for you, 120, is that the first rung of the ladder for you? Is that what I'm understanding or no?

Carter 11:10

no? first rung of the ladder is where we are today okay

Carter 11:13

and the first rung of the ladder for me has us at 72 for

Carter 11:18

for the liberals okay

Carter 11:19

72 is the bare minimum of the number how high

SPEAKER_01 11:22

high up is 120 for you and i don't want to get too deep but this is interesting to me how high up is 120 for you i

Carter 11:27

i can get 115 on

Carter 11:29

on my next step okay and then after that it's another step to the 170 well one

Corey 11:33

one thing and i i think we've got to address is that government in general is a very ambitious goal for the liberals because of how these regional breakdowns were yeah

Carter 11:41

yeah yeah but ontario is breaking weird man like as we're starting to dig into these numbers there is there is well and maybe we should jump to regional pretty pretty quick we will but i

SPEAKER_01 11:53

i want to i want to crystallize this and have all of our listeners know in their head what we are trying to do with the steps going forward so government is cory's word can i add the 120 seats to that am i hearing yes or no because i want to to make sure that this is specific, but also gives us a broad stroke to address the strategy going forward.

Corey 12:11

120 is only governed if you're paring down the conservatives and New Democrats equally.

Corey 12:15

I don't think that's what's going to come out of this. I

Carter 12:17

I think the 120 is viable, depending on where the conservatives sit. There has been a question running in my head. Do the conservatives prop up a liberal minority?

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Disagreement. This is what I wanted. OK, so isn't

Corey 12:32

Where else are they going to go?

Carter 12:34

go? No, they can't support the NDP. There's not going to be anybody else who's got enough votes. And we could easily be looking at a smaller, say, 90-seat conservative election outcome. 120 can be considered government. It is weird enough, this particular election is weird enough that 120 could be considered government.

Corey 12:58

120 can be government because in a three-way split, if it's an even, true three-way split, it 120 is the it's kind of the first real milestone where you can be on the top of the pile exactly

SPEAKER_01 13:08

exactly okay i like that so we're we're gonna we're gonna crystallize it as forming government with that 120 number as as kind of looking as as as a possibility it's like the lowest

Corey 13:17

lowest of the floor

Carter 13:18

i get it but it's the lowest but

SPEAKER_01 13:19

but i think it gives us something to to achieve and lets all the strategies and the tactics and stuff we talk about flow from that well it's

Carter 13:26

it's not that far from where they are right right now.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Okay. So now that we have our goal together and has a certain level of specificity to it, I think it's important for us to have a little bit of a roadmap to getting from our goal to understanding where we need to go. Yeah.

Carter 13:42

Yeah. So first things first, we're going to look at regional breakdowns. So we're going to look at what seats may be available to the liberal party in each of the geographic regions. And then over that, we're going to then overlay issues and particular focuses that we're going to need to look at within the within the second you know how are you going to win these seats so it's going to be issue-based it's going to be money focused it's going to have all these different tactical things that we're going to need to do to win those seats in the beginning right

Corey 14:09

right we move from where are we going to win the seats to how we're going to win them exactly

SPEAKER_01 14:14

makes sense we're not trying to recreate

Corey 14:15

recreate the the feelings that people have created over years as to whether or not liberal is going to be an accessible option to them we're going to find those accessible people and we're going to bring them exactly okay

SPEAKER_01 14:26

okay so broadly carter start us where this where starts right for lack of a better term where are we gonna go the maritimes

Corey 14:32

maritimes let's talk about the maritimes let's go

Carter 14:34

there first i'm gonna expand it and i'm gonna throw in newfoundland and i'm going with the whole atlantic canadian region and you are just you just cost us three loyal listeners in newfoundland

Corey 14:43

my grandmother would stop listening if she'd heard your

Corey 14:47

dead so she's probably did

SPEAKER_01 14:49

she probably never started carter well

Carter 14:52

well i think that the the so the opportunity opportunity for atlantic canada um let's be clear though it's a very small number of seats it's only 32 seats so how many can we get what is

SPEAKER_01 15:03

is how many can the liberals

Carter 15:04

liberals get right and so in my calculations right now i'm looking at about 18 seats that are attainable it breaks down to about five in newfoundland accepting the the the saint john seats they look like they're going to go back to the ndp stay with the ndp uh pei justin trudeau is in pei today in the only conservative Conservative riding, going after the fourth seat that they don't currently have. I predict they'll get four out of four. And then New Brunswick's interesting because on one hand, they

Carter 15:34

they only have one seat in New Brunswick right now. The NDP have one seat, and then the balance of the seats are conservative. But the conservatives in our polling and in our trends are really starting to drop in New Brunswick. And up come the NDP. But I don't think the NDP are going to sustain it. I think that we're looking at three seats for sure in New Brunswick and as many as six. So that becomes kind of our first, oh, here's some seats that we could grab. And then six in Nova Scotia. Let

Corey 16:06

Let me kind of agree with you, I guess, by way of looking at the accessibility numbers. When you look at New Brunswick, when you look at everywhere in Atlantic Canada, the Liberals' accessibility numbers are totally off the charts, both in general and then with the undecideds. In a good way. Yeah, in a great way. Like at New Brunswick, we were just talking about 50% of voters said they'd consider voting liberal, 59% in Newfoundland, 52% in Nova Scotia. Those are high numbers. I mean, I know we haven't gone through everywhere yet, but liberal accessibility numbers are higher in Atlantic Canada than anywhere else in the country. I think their ceiling is pretty high. If anything, I think you're underestimating their ceiling in this context. Well,

Carter 16:43

I think that, first of all, because there's only 32 seats, giving them a maximum set of 24 seems to make the most sense when some of those are ironclad Conservative and some of them are ironclad NDP at this stage. At this particular moment in 2011, it was a Conservative-Liberal fight for most of the seats in Atlantic Canada. At this stage, if the Liberal Party is going to take more seats, they have to be more worried about the New Democrats than they are about the Conservatives. That is going to repeat itself only,

Carter 17:15

again, in British Columbia. Now, some people listening will think about Quebec as our next big subset. The thing is that they're so locked in in Quebec, and the Democrats have such a big set of seats that they're going to win in Quebec, that you're not actually fighting that heavily with the NDP. You're

SPEAKER_01 17:32

You're fighting for the second.

Carter 17:33

second. Well, there's not that many attainable seats. You

Carter 17:35

You have to fight with them in Atlantic Canada. You have to fight with them in British Columbia. Corey,

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Corey, anything else to add to Atlantic Canada, the Maritimes here? Anything that you want to talk about? We talked about the decided vote. Anything on the undecided vote there?

Corey 17:48

Well, just that the Conservatives are in, as tough as I've seen them anywhere. You want to talk about Conservative accessible among undecideds in Newfoundland? It's 11%.

Corey 17:59

ABC. Yeah, they're in a real hard time in

Corey 18:03

Atlantic Canada and in Newfoundland in particular. I know this is not the Conservative strategy special, but if i'm them i'm not wasting a lot of time in atlantic canada which

Carter 18:12

which means which reinforces right you know who are you fighting with thomas won't care okay

SPEAKER_01 18:17

okay so maritimes atlantic canada that's the where where do we want to move to next core you you you direct us why don't we

Corey 18:23

we go uh east to west why not so why don't we drop to quebec because it also seems like when we should strike off absolutely

Corey 18:30

because the uh the new democrats are so dominant in quebec that if i have a hope for the Liberals here. It's simply holding what they have. Well,

Carter 18:38

Well, I mean, I went through it again, riding by riding. And one of the things that I was looking for, the Liberals did a big policy announcement in Trois-Rivières. And I thought to myself, they must have a hope in Trois-Rivières. Right.

Carter 18:49

I went and looked at the numbers. I have no idea why they wasted a day in Trois-Rivières.

Carter 18:54

They have right now, Quebec

Carter 18:56

Quebec seems to be very locked in. With the New Democrats. Just absolutely locked in um i'm

Carter 19:03

i'm as i went through and did my calculations i think that there's nine seats that you can almost count on for the liberals in in in basically in montreal northern north montreal and west montreal and then there might be five seats uh that would be available throughout that region in

Carter 19:22

in around there and and that's it so you're looking at a total of 14 seats now compared to To the Atlantic Canada, where we're looking at 24 potential, this

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Corey, are you on the same page with Stephen here? I mean, is it low attainability right now, or what are your numbers telling you? Yeah, now

Corey 19:40

now and into the future. When you look at the accessibility for the Liberals in Quebec, and this is going to surprise a few people, I'm sure, but the Liberal accessibility numbers are lowest in Quebec nationwide. Lower than Saskatchewan, lower than Alberta, lower than anywhere. The Liberals are very polarizing. what the conservatives have become to so much of the rest of the country the liberals have been for a generation to quebec and they have a real hard ceiling in quebec and that hard ceiling is around 30 percent that's while the new democrats are looking at a hard ceiling of almost 60 percent wow twice that number yeah

Carter 20:11

yeah basically if you were to look at this and say okay let's say that we were successful and actually got a significant ndp drop right let's say that we ran the world's best campaign who's likely to pick up that vote oh

Corey 20:24

oh probably the block the

Carter 20:25

the block quebec wow there is no point in trying to

Carter 20:29

to to reduce the ndp numbers in this particular case you're not helping anybody you're not helping your outcome low

SPEAKER_01 20:35

low priority cory is that where we're at with quebec for the liberals no

Corey 20:38

no priority i'm no priority to play there simply because it's so much now i'm jumping all over the place but it is a lot of the liberal brand is tied up and being the national party but well

Carter 20:47

well and you You still have 9 to 12 seats that you can get, and you don't want to lose those. But the good news is you can land in one airport and win them all.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Well said. Okay, let's move it on. Corey, next one. Where are we heading? Let's skip over Ontario.

Carter 21:01

Ontario is 121 seats. It's going to take some time. We'll

SPEAKER_01 21:05

get there, but let's skip

Corey 21:07

over there for now. Yeah, let's talk about Manitoba and Saskatchewan jointly right now. And there's not a lot of seats available to them. no

Carter 21:14

no i mean the big thing in manitoba and saskatchewan is basically the change that happened in saskatchewan with redistribution they

Carter 21:21

they created six urban ridings in regina and saskatoon so three in each of those areas that changes the makeup of of how votes how many votes and how many seats are accessible even then with six urban ridings you might be competitive might might be so

Carter 21:39

so i'm not counting any seats here you might be competitive in three um in winnipeg uh there are so again rural manitoba forget about it but in the in the in the region around winnipeg you may be looking there's minimal changes in the seat structure in in winnipeg so you're looking at about four in that zone yeah

Carter 21:59

where you could attain something now again keeping

Carter 22:02

keeping in mind that one of the things i just said about how

Carter 22:04

how you can win seats in montreal is land in one airport you

Carter 22:07

you can now land in winnipeg saskatoon and regina and look at about three seats in each of those okay

SPEAKER_01 22:14

okay so before before i move on cory i want to give it to you very quickly to talk about the accessibility on this um carter one of the the hypotheses or assumptions that we made initially was that the liberals uh you would only have the ground game in these urban centers but they would only be also only be viable in these urban centers is that what your analysis on on saskatchewan and manitoba showing it certainly did seem to show that in in quebec but is that what you're seeing here that rural they're they're pretty much uh writing that off or should write that off yeah

Carter 22:41

yeah i mean there's too much investment yeah

Carter 22:44

uh for too little return yeah

Corey 22:47

look at these numbers and i don't you

Corey 22:49

you land a plane and it i would maybe hold a rally near the airport but that's that's kind of the extent of it especially in saskatchewan i don't see a lot of hope for the liberals in saskatchewan saskatchewan

Carter 22:58

saskatchewan the riding redistribution is where i'm pegging everything Yeah,

Corey 23:02

can see why. But when I look at it, I see a strong Conservative Party. I see a New Democrats in a solid second place. And I see the Liberals in third. I think that you've got some nice seats that you could potentially play in around Regina, maybe. But the Liberal accessibility numbers are, well, they're the second worst in Saskatchewan. And that's going to be pretty tough for them to overcome. come manitoba is a little bit of a better story for them i just don't know how those breaks are going to favor them yeah

Carter 23:34

okay that's pretty rough so

SPEAKER_01 23:35

so priority where are you putting this this

Carter 23:38

this is after you've secured atlantic canada after you've figured out quebec or after you've and after you figured out ontario and bc these these seats first of all our upside on these particular seats is like six seven if you're lucky seven

Corey 23:56

seven spread across yeah

Carter 23:59

and your best yeah

Carter 24:00

yeah you're and and when we add in alberta yeah

Carter 24:03

yeah we may as well do right now sure

SPEAKER_01 24:05

sure let's get into alberta next let's talk about alberta you're

Carter 24:07

you're looking at 10 seats from the ontario wealth really through all of northern ontario all

Carter 24:18

all of alberta you're

Carter 24:19

you're looking at 10 seats total that is attainable um that's a long flight yeah

Carter 24:26

yeah yes you know anybody who's ever flown out of toronto flown flown over northern ontario flown across the prairie provinces landing in vancouver that

Carter 24:35

that is what the liberals are faced with is just dropping in and basically refueling in uh edmonton and calgary read another analysis today of edmonton center yeah

Carter 24:46

that it's the you know it's it's uh it's the liberals who are out front but i think that's not really understanding gil mcgowan versus randy bossino who you know so gil mcgowan the ndp local candidate i

Carter 25:00

think he's just stronger ground game than randy will be when it comes to actually delivering the votes and that's

Carter 25:07

that's the type of stuff that when you look at these analyses even the analysis that we're doing. The next step of our strategy development would be touching base with local organizers in every community. And in fact, if you're listening to this podcast, you don't like what we're saying, send us the notes because that's how we form the better strategies.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Okay. So Corey, anything else to add in Alberta here? Because we've just thrown that into the mix. What is your take on Alberta? I

Corey 25:34

I think that some of that local flavor Stephen Stephen was just talking about, we can provide as Albertans. I know that just whispered polls, people who drop information in your lap, all of that. I can tell you that Calgary Centre and Calgary Confederation aren't out of play for the liberals. They're not out of play. And if you're going to make 120 seats, maybe they're in that 120 seats. But that

Corey 25:55

that said, that's kind of the end of the list. You could talk about Calgary Skyview as being in the mix. Maybe. I mean, it's got a lot of the same ingredients that Calgary Confederation and Calgary Centre have. Candidates with big organizations doing a lot of things. But, you

Corey 26:09

you know, it just doesn't really seem that likely. And it seems like it's going to be impossible to pull. So any number I pull out of my hat is going to be black magic. Yeah,

Carter 26:18

Yeah, I mean, I feel the same way about Edmonton West and Karen Leibovitz. Yeah.

Carter 26:22

You know, a quote-unquote star candidate for the liberals in Edmonton. And I

Carter 26:29

I think it's going to take a minor miracle for her to win. Now, let me just preface this. So I've talked about seats in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta. If the Liberals are going to get to that 160 mark, they

Carter 26:41

they have to win all those seats. Okay.

Carter 26:43

So really, if you were to take those sets off, we have to conclude those in our steps of our ladder. Yeah. These ones have to be in at least the second or third priority, or we're not going to get to our 160 stretch goal.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

160 stretch goal, 120 men. Okay. Okay?

Corey 27:03

Well, that's that's I mean, let's just forget the the territory. I guess we can't forget the territories. There are three seats up there. We've been talking about blocks of three seats in other places. Yeah.

Carter 27:12

Yeah. But right now, the liberals have just unveiled their new plan. Today, it was unveiled and they've sent an email asking us all to name it.

Carter 27:21

Here's what I'm going to name it. The Never Go North Carrier. OK, I just don't understand why you would take that kind of time to go up to those seats and try and win them. when frankly they're not going it's a lot of investment for

Carter 27:38

for very very little return yeah

Corey 27:39

yeah a little geography lesson this country is almost as tall as it is wide right i mean to go all the way up there is essentially like going across the country

Carter 27:46

country i remember flying uh in in alberta i mean so alberta's you know in just another province and we would fly for

Carter 27:53

for about three hours and get to halfway let's move on let's talk about bc we are all going to be waiting up to

Carter 28:00

to see how bc votes in this election this is we're going to have to stay up if you're in the eastern time zone you're going to have to stay up really really late to find out how this election is going to end because british columbia is unbelievably competitive and they've got more seats so

Carter 28:15

so 42 seats yeah that's what's up for play seats and it's all over the place so you've got these ones like the liberals today if the election were held today might win five seats which

Corey 28:27

which there's been a lot of polling in the past year that you and i have seen and if the election had been held six six months ago the liberals could have won i mean almost 25 25

Carter 28:34

25 seats yeah i mean so you've got this crazy five seat minimum right now they've been and keep in mind too that in in 2011 i think they got two seats in all of british columbia so you have this this incredible shift where where bc is is just flying all over the place yeah it was two seats in in 2011 it was

Corey 28:58

you're gonna see all of a sudden um that volatility not just being liberal volatility but conservative and new democrat volatility these numbers are really tight and everybody's accessibility numbers are right on top of each other the conservatives are dipping behind those guys but the liberals the new democrats both in the mid 40s for accessibility well

Carter 29:15

well team blue is in trouble right now in british columbia today they need to figure out something to change the way that their fortunes but this isn't their strategy this is this is the liberals and where we so

SPEAKER_01 29:28

so Walk us through the viability a little bit.

Carter 29:29

If we have those five seats and where they are, the ones I'm counting just for those of you in British Columbia, Surrey Centre, Surrey Newton, North Van, Van Centre, Van Quadra are the five that I'm counting right now. And I won't go through the other ones, but I'll say there's a couple in play on the island, right?

Carter 29:46

right? So a couple on the island throws a bunch of curveballs at you in terms of geographic problems. Yeah, you've got a lower mainland set. If you ignore Vancouver proper, a lower mainland set that's looking at about 12 additional seats. Actually, I'm sorry, 12, including the two Surrey seats that I was just mentioning. And then another five or six in Vancouver, all of which the Liberals are incredibly competitive in. And it doesn't take a tremendous shift to shift

Carter 30:16

shift everything. We've been doing polling in British Columbia for about three,

Carter 30:20

three, four years. We're really digging into B.C. And we have seen the seats shift, especially in the Lower Mainland, on average every three months.

Corey 30:31

And this is not just a shift between the Liberals and the New Democrats, but the Conservatives have led for a bit. The

Corey 30:38

The Liberals have led. The New Democrats have led.

Carter 30:41

And if you really take it to a far stretch goal. Yeah.

Carter 30:44

Right. You can even see seats going liberal in the interior and in the north. Wow. Yeah. So so seats that you wouldn't think of as being a traditional place where you could get liberal votes because of the three way split, because of the volatility, because of the number of undecideds. all of a sudden you're seeing British Columbia with five in what I would count as the guaranteed subset, another 11 in kind of this step one away, and another 11 two steps away. So if you're going to get to 160 seats, you need to get to those last 22. Okay,

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Okay, so BC is a wild cocktail of things. Corey, how does it play out in terms of the accessibility for the liberals right now? How are they shaping up in that area? Their

Corey 31:27

Their accessibility is as good as anybody's in BC. see the new democrats right now are ruling the roost but uh the new democrats are sitting at accessibility of 46 to liberal 42 that's not a huge difference and i'll tell you right now when you start looking at those numbers broken up into undecided specifically it's 40 40 there there is there is a lot of opportunity for the liberals here and it is interesting because we've gone through and we've talked about atlantic canada being maybe a bit yeah

Corey 31:56

fight between the liberals and new democrats and certainly some research should apply quebec not so great the

Corey 32:01

the prairie provinces not so great but here we are and we're in an area where you can get not just five of your seats not 15 not just 25 but you you you can be in play for 30 or so seats out of the 42 if you're talking really far reach goals right

Carter 32:17

right yeah and seats that are available whereas in quebec they're not right

Carter 32:22

right seats that are uh and atlantic canada even where you've got this quote unquote polling lead yeah

Carter 32:27

um there aren't that many seats available um there are you know but british columbia suddenly has a bunch of seats on the table for you and you have to go and get them if you're justin trudeau if

Corey 32:40

if you're anybody i think at this point and again we're not doing their strategies today but in

Corey 32:45

in in a race as tight as this where seat projections are showing them as close

Corey 32:49

as they are i

Carter 32:49

i mean we haven't gotten to ontario yet but bottom line you're going to get on a plane in toronto and

Carter 32:54

you're gonna fly to vancouver you're gonna get on a plane in vancouver and you're gonna fly to toronto it's

Corey 32:59

it's gonna be like a u.s campaign where they chase the sun yeah yeah

Corey 33:03

that's right sure anything

SPEAKER_01 33:04

anything else to add to british columbia that that is exciting news for the liberals i'm assuming that's high priority stuff but anything else final words that you want to add either of you yeah this

Corey 33:12

this is a real fight you've got to be on the offense and defense there and

Carter 33:15

and it's going and it will force them into different policy positions than if they were We're just doing Ontario. But

SPEAKER_01 33:20

But you have to play. You

Carter 33:22

cannot let this go. You have to play in British Columbia. Speaking

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Speaking of our next area that you have to play, let's move it on to Ontario. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Carter, give us the rundown. Do you need a

Corey 33:35

a minute to change your shorts there?

Carter 33:38

Ontario, first of all, we've increased the number of seats again, right? So Ontario has gone from 106 seats to 121 seats. So there's no direct. In fact, it's very difficult for me to go in and do a direct comparison from 2011 and drop it into 2015. Right. So when we start going through the seats, which

Carter 33:57

which ones are available? Well, I'll tell you what's not available. Right off the top, Northern Ontario is not available. Right. Anything vaguely rural, not very attainable. um but you start to play in toronto durham york area the you know the suburban torontos the ottawas bramptons mississauga oakville all

Carter 34:19

all of these seats are in play and

Carter 34:22

they're in play to the point where bottom line they've got from 11 to 35 that's a massive massive increase and and we're not just basing that on a wing and a prayer that's legitimate numbers that we think we can are attainable uh today and should be solid base they will not retract from that 35 seats in ontario that

SPEAKER_01 34:43

that 35 is the base cory anything you want to you want to jump in on in terms of what their accessibility looks like right now and then carter will go back to you around stretch goals and stuff like that but i want to hit it to you cory what do you think there's

Corey 34:52

there's there's a lot going i mean it's almost silly to talk about ontario as one region yeah good

SPEAKER_01 34:57

much going on in

Carter 34:59

yeah but you can do most of these ontario regions on a bus is

SPEAKER_01 35:03

is that is that urban urban hypothesis hold as well from what you're seeing carter it's not quite urban

Carter 35:07

i mean you've got this really interesting uh subsection uh elections canada's maps are great on this because they they map out the province in the southern ontario in three subsets and those three subsets of the maps kind of give you a really good overview of how many seats are in play

SPEAKER_01 35:25

handed us maps that's

Carter 35:27

that's okay cory's handing me numbers it's it's uh it's all working It's

Carter 35:31

because Corey and I take a different approach to this same question.

Carter 35:38

I think we're coming up with a lot of the same answers. Yeah,

Corey 35:40

Yeah, I'm not disagreeing with anything you've said right now. It is a few micro battles, but they are all very close and they're all battles. And I think that's what the liberals should be interested in. Ottawa, looks like there's some fight there. The 905, as we call it, the area around Toronto. Toronto itself is a fight between the liberals and the New Democrats. And then Southern Ontario is not exactly out of play either. That's also a battleground, although one that's looking a little bit different than some of the others.

Carter 36:08

The problem with Ontario is that, you know, we talked about BC being a three-way race. Ontario appears to be a whole bunch of two-way races. Yeah. Right?

Carter 36:20

Right? So you're applying these, you know, here you're fighting against the New Democrats. There you're fighting against the Conservatives. Right? Right. And it's a different battle when you're fighting these two different brands. And it's going to be.

Carter 36:34

And not only that, you can't take the way that you fought the New Democrats in British Columbia.

Carter 36:40

And apply it to the way you're going to fight the New Democrats in Ontario.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Corey, do you agree? Totally different beast when you're when you're going into these type of races?

Corey 36:49

Well, they're different races. You're fighting the New Democrat. You're fighting a conservative. You're going to be taking a different approach. But I'll tell you, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're not looking for the same constituencies everywhere. I'm not saying you are. I'm not saying you're not. But you can win, for example, in the 905 against the Tories with some New Democrat support. You can win in downtown Toronto against the New Democrats with New Democrat support. If you want to peel votes off the New Democrats to win either fight, that's a viable option. It

Carter 37:17

It is. It's just a fascinating election because you've got these these swaths of like normally you'd see Quebec more in play. Yeah.

Carter 37:26

Right. Even when the Bloc Quebecois was kind of at its peak, at

Carter 37:29

at least at that in that particular case, none of the parties were getting it right now. So the liberals didn't get it. The conservatives didn't get it. The Bloc Quebecois got it. So in many regards, it was almost like a wash. But now, because the NDP are in this battle and can form government. Yeah. Which is something that we've never said before. Yeah.

Carter 37:49

Right. The New Democrats can form government now.

Carter 37:52

I think their chances are slim. I

Corey 37:54

I think they're not as slim as you do. But another

Corey 37:57

another episode to be continued.

Carter 37:58

continued. I think that the liberal upside is so big right now that they can go after these seats and actually start to compete, especially in Ontario. I mean, the timelines of these things, what's going to make Ontario flip? In my mind, it's going to be viability. Corey mentioned this right off the top where we started to talk about, is it a question of availability or is it a question of viability? And I suspect that Ontario is going to go to the party that they think has the best chance of actually winning this election. Forming government, right. The problem for the Liberals, the

Carter 38:31

the problem for the Liberals is the NDP are locked in at around 60 seats in Quebec. back yeah

Corey 38:36

yeah and there's no doubt that's weighing on their viability but their viability is down everywhere you want to talk viability numbers the liberals are um scraping

Corey 38:45

scraping the bottom of the barrel in a lot of jurisdictions here and ice right now i think is their biggest problem people do not look at them and say that's a party that's going to win i'm

Corey 38:54

i'm looking at this province by province and

Corey 38:57

and with a few exceptions in the maritimes which by the way probably speaks to why they are so strong in the maritimes the liberals are coming in third right

SPEAKER_01 39:05

right and that's that's not particularly surprising is it cory like that they're that they're in third with the viability measure right now that's

SPEAKER_01 39:11

that's a little surprising to me that it is such

Corey 39:13

because you're ultimately not asking with this question do you think uh it's not a binary right you're not saying liberal or new democrat new democrat or conservative you're saying select all the parties you think have a chance of winning this race and you're finding that routinely 60 70 percent of canadians are saying the

Corey 39:32

liberals do not have a chance no they

Carter 39:34

they don't have a chance

SPEAKER_01 39:34

chance Carter, you want to get in? So

Carter 39:35

So what happens, Zane? So

Carter 39:37

So then when we get to how, right? If

Carter 39:39

If the liberals allow the election question to continue as it currently is, where we're seeing the election question seem to go to is who's the most likely to form government. And that is favoring Thomas Mulcair and the NDP right now. Well,

Corey 39:52

Well, I would augment that and say it's a change thing, right? Right. If the ballot question is, do you want to get rid of Stephen Harper and hanging over everybody's head is that nobody believes that Justin Trudeau can get rid of Stephen Harper.

Corey 40:07

Welcome, Prime Minister Tom Mulcair.

Carter 40:10

Right. Well, and so

Carter 40:10

so what we need to do in our House section, which

SPEAKER_01 40:15

which we'll get to in a second yet, is

Carter 40:16

is change the ballot question. Right. Right. Right now, the ballot question is not favoring the Liberal Party. If they continue to push on infrastructure and economy, my belief is that it is not enough to change the ballot box question and not enough to change the outcome. There's a really interesting McLean's poll that was put out, and I'm sure we can put it somewhere on a tag so people can look at it. The bottom line, Mulcair and Harper tie almost every time when we're talking about economic or leadership questions. But when we're talking about a question where people want someone nice to be with,

Carter 40:55

Justin Trudeau dominates. We

Carter 40:57

We have to change the question. We need to create a new brand for the federal liberals that reflects the actual strength of the party leader.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

Okay, that's great. And I want to get to that in just a second here. But before we do, how about, Carter, you give us a summary of where we are today. So we went across the country. We talked about all of the different regions. Give us a breakdown for what the baseline is for some of these provinces and regions, and then give us that stretch goal, and then we'll get into the how.

Corey 41:27

Yeah, tell us how we get to 120 by the numbers you've been keeping tabs there on your yellow legal sheets there.

Carter 41:33

Oh, yeah, I've got more paper for this podcast than any other podcast in the 546-episode history. We've

SPEAKER_01 41:39

We've killed a lot of trees for this podcast. We

SPEAKER_01 41:41

trees for you guys.

Carter 41:42

So what I've got is basically a 70-seat minimum, 70-72-seat minimum. Basically, 35 seats in Ontario. BC is five. I'm giving Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba a total of five.

Carter 41:57

Nine in Quebec and 18 in Atlanta, Canada. That takes us to 72-ish.

Corey 42:03

That's the first rung like we talked

Corey 42:05

think you're being generous in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, but let's not get hung up on it. I'm not going to argue with you over three seats here. Tell

Carter 42:11

Tell you what, I'll drop it down to 70.

Carter 42:13

But right now, I think the baseline is about 70 seats for the for the Liberal Party where they are today. Then there's another set of we need to get these seats. And it's about six in Atlantic Canada in the first step. Quebec, probably about two.

Carter 42:32

Saskatchewan and Manitoba and Alberta.

Carter 42:34

That's the ones that Corey's arguing with me about. We might just see three or four seats in total there. Right.

Carter 42:39

then it gets to B.C. and Ontario. And this is where things get fun, because 30 seats are available in the next step in Ontario. If we can start to define the election question properly. And there's another 11, 11 seats available in the next step to get to with the B.C. within British Columbia. And the final step has us with about 30, 35 more seats available in

Carter 43:03

in the stretch goal. so it's it's really down to bc and ontario but

Carter 43:09

but to get to those ontario seats especially we may have to win british columbia first well

Corey 43:15

well and to get to those stretch goals we're

Corey 43:17

we're going to need to make sure that we're not salting the earth on some of the strategy on the earlier tiers right so you can't totally ignore uh the prairies or quebec if you know you're going to need to have those seats down the stretch yeah

Carter 43:29

yeah and that's been the mistake that the liberals have been able to to make before well

Corey 43:33

well they've made well able

Corey 43:34

able yeah i'm not sure they should have made it before but this has been a constant mistake of the liberals it becomes a fortress mentality like oh shit we're not going to win rural ontario this time so let's just batten down the hatches to the cities and let's keep going oh shit we're not going to win winnipeg this time let's just take it back to the major cities and keep going they're out of places and now they're now they're they i think they've realized that and i think that that's one of the reasons you have seen justin trudeau out in the the prairie so much and in quebec where there's not a ton of seats besides his own which i'm sure he's pretty keen to hold on to but if the liberals want to move from the 70 they're at today to the 120 and 160 that they need in order to to win this little challenge of ours here i

Corey 44:17

i guess that's a funny way to call an election they absolutely need to start uh you know making sure that those pieces are in place and i think they've done an okay job they have good local candidates in most Most of these centers you've talked about. Well,

Carter 44:29

Well, I think that when they were recruiting their candidates, they were so high in the polls that they actually thought that they were going to win a lot of these seats. And

Carter 44:35

And that brought in a lot of great candidates that now they can draw on. They cannot abandon those candidates. So part of our strategy needs to be preparing for phase three, even as we're not sure we're going to get phase two.

Corey 44:48

OK, well, and as much as I said at the start, let's focus on this election. The liberals need to be thinking about any future elections as well. Well, and it's been bad policy for a long time. Yeah,

Carter 44:59

we could be back in another election within six months of this one. No,

SPEAKER_01 45:03

No, it's exciting. Okay, well, guys, that puts the where in perspective, but let's move it on. So we talked about our situation, our goal. We've now gone to where we need to get to get to these writings. Let's get into what I think is a fun part for me. It's the how. Carter, I'm going to hit it back to you. So you've talked to us a little bit about reframing the ballot box question, But what are the foundational elements that we need to get the how of this started? I

Carter 45:28

I think we have to reframe the entire question. And by doing that, I don't mean we need to walk away from the economic or the infrastructure announcements that have been so foundational to liberals to this point. But I want to reframe all of that. And I want to reframe it all as families first. I want to make the liberal party the family first party that puts why are we looking at bringing in infrastructure construction? because this is the time to invest in our future for our families, for our children. Why do I want to be taking care of the middle class? Because it's about families. It's about middle class families. It's not just about the middle class. I want to now make it about middle class families. Why is the Liberal Party the party that cares about refugee families? Because it's ultimately about families and the families that we bring to Canada. And I want to add in one more thing that they have to put in, in my opinion, and

Carter 46:20

and that's health care.

Carter 46:21

No one has talked about it, and it is the number one issue. I

Corey 46:24

I think I'd want to test some of those assumptions. I want to know if undecideds in British Columbia actually care about infrastructure. I want to know if undecideds and accessible voters for the Liberals.

Carter 46:36

I'm going to guarantee you that the number one thing they're going to care more about. So the economy is a false premise, right? The economy is actually about me, my jobs, and my family's jobs. That's what the economy is. Do I have work and can I buy the stuff I want to buy? That's our economy. We

SPEAKER_01 46:55

We have mentioned it multiple times as being a grab bag of a term, but I think Corey brings up an interesting point here. It's does this new brand or label, I mean, can we just ad hoc apply it to everything and anything that we want to just tag it on? Is that what I'm hearing you say? Because I want to make sure people understand what you're trying to say. Hold on. I don't

Corey 47:13

don't think we need to do that. I think we can pretty easily look at some numbers that we've got right here and see what is an accessible voter, like what is an accessible liberal voter in all of these areas. And we're going to see some commonalities. They're

Carter 47:27

They're going to be female. I mean, I'm going to jump right in and say, and, you know, we used to have this 1950s attitude about who the, you know, who is the head of the household. And we, you know, the idea was that, you know, we wore the pants. So obviously we're the head of the household. and and there was voting patterns that reflected that in the 1950s we would see voting patterns where the male of the household would make a determination of who they were going to vote for and then they would vote for them now my my parents generation in the 1970s 80s 90s uh they started to to cancel each other's votes out and it was kind of oh yeah dad voted conservative and mom voted liberal ha ha ha funny funny now what we're seeing is that the matriarch of the family is having a tremendous influence not just on her vote but on her children's vote and the votes above you know to her to her parents and to her spouse's vote so now if the matriarch of the family is deciding of a certain vote she will be a significant influencer not just on her vote but on her entire family pod so the way that we used to see the patriarch in the 1950s we

Carter 48:34

we are now seeing the matriarch model that same vote out. So when I see 33

Carter 48:39

33% or 34% undecides

Carter 48:42

undecides with a female

Carter 48:45

bent, I want those voters. I want them not just because I want their individual votes, but I want the votes that they control.

Corey 48:52

That's interesting. Well, there's good news and bad news for that hypothesis in the numbers. I mean, when I start looking at the issue by issue breakdowns here I see that absolutely health far

Corey 49:03

far more popular amongst accessible liberal voters than things like economic development education far more popular with liberal voters than things like justice and environment showing some strong popularity that again I think speaks to that I don't want to call it softer issue but I think more of a social focus so that

Corey 49:22

that as far as the numbers I have here in front of me it's crystal clear relative the population as a whole accessible liberals are much more receptive to those issues where where the hypothesis maybe

Corey 49:34

maybe runs into some trouble maybe not i think it's an open question it's open for discussion is the notion that women are going to rule the roost here because when i crunch the numbers i find that uh liberal accessible voters are actually more likely to be men than

Carter 49:49

how old a little younger a little

Carter 49:52

what if i was to propose a hypothesis that says that that people under 40 tend to vote and behave in a more feminine fashion.

Corey 50:00

think you're getting in a lot of trouble. Well,

Carter 50:02

Well, it's true, though. A lot of people. So there's ways that we were educated. So younger people were educated differently, more group work, more things like that. And older men, like myself, like I am right now, tend to be more likely to make these big statements, just like this, and they behave differently. differently so i'm going i'm going to chalk that up as a win and just say that if they're younger then it's going to work because um they

Carter 50:30

they tend to make decisions in the same fashion as evidenced by the issues okay

Corey 50:35

okay but let's let's let's break this down relative to the other guys okay sure new democrats more likely to have female support conservatives more likely to have male support liberals somewhere in the middle well

Carter 50:46

well why don't we go get both why

Carter 50:48

why don't we go get both based on on this idea that that these i'm going to call them softer issues you hedged a little bit but i'm going to call them softer issues because that's what we traditionally the words we use and if we traditionally if we use this softer framing don't walk away from the economy don't walk away from infrastructure we're already in that bed but now we're going to focus on health care and we're going to focus on refugees and we're going to focus on being the dad that canada wants us to be the

Carter 51:16

modern dad the modern father and that's what we're looking for and i referenced this poll earlier when you kind of kind of come back lay

SPEAKER_01 51:24

lay this on this this is interesting who

Carter 51:25

who would cook the best meal trudeau right

Carter 51:28

right uh who would you trust to give your children advice about the future it's actually mulcair uh trudeau's in second who would be most likely to stop if your car was stranded trudeau and mulcair who would you have negotiate a contract on your behalf what care not trudeau because he's

Carter 51:44

well they're all lawyers and someone one's a drama teacher um and neither of them oh well care is

Corey 51:50

is the only lawyer

Carter 51:51

lawyer who would you prefer to babysit your children let him make his point 50

Carter 51:55

50 is trudeau the teacher sure yeah who would make the best ceo of a company trudeau comes in last okay last

Corey 52:03

i agree with you i mean those are interesting but what they tell us is that people see them as they almost should and and that's not to disagree with your basic hypothesis the guy is a teacher he's a drama teacher he's considered a nice guy you want to leave your kids with him that's

Corey 52:18

that's a strength the liberals should be using not they shouldn't be pretending to be a lawyer they shouldn't be pretending to be a businessman that's

Carter 52:25

that's my i think that that's the problem right now when you look at what the liberals are doing to this point what

Carter 52:30

what they are doing is they are trying to compete on true on mulcair and harper's issues on play in places where people trust harper and they trust more care more

Carter 52:40

they and if we just simply shift we've got an opening right now we've

Carter 52:43

we've got an opening with the with the syrian refugee refugee crisis to shift from the economy and infrastructure into more traditional liberal values okay

Corey 52:56

i'm not sure i totally buy everything you just said although though I might end up in the same place at the end of the day anyhow. Here's what I see. I see the Liberals as not really having a gender edge one way or the other, but there's a natural edge to women in elections because they are more likely to vote. Bottom line, five points higher than men in every age group until you hit about 74 years of age. And frankly, none of those guys are voting for the Liberals or New Democrats. Exactly.

Corey 53:22

So we do have kind of that voter turnout reality that that we have to layer on top of it too. And with that, you give a bit of an edge to women. But ultimately, I think thinking about these things in terms of gender is going to lead us astray. I know we're going to disagree on this, but I think ultimately those issues, the accessible voters, they love the issues. Then let's go with the issues. Let's talk about

Carter 53:42

about the issues. Let's stick to those issues, but I think that this is the opportunity. Now, in my head, I'll always frame it as women's.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

Women and younger men.

Carter 53:49

men. I'm not giving you that, but I will concede that we're both going to agree

Carter 53:55

they're on the wrong issues.

Carter 53:57

they're talking about the economy and infrastructure.

SPEAKER_01 54:00

Is that ground for consensus there, Corey? Is that what I'm hearing? We're going to have a ballot box question that we need to change and specifically on the issues that accessible voters for the liberals perform better on. Is that what we're settling on? Is that good? I

Corey 54:14

I think that this is one piece of it. Now we need to talk about how accessible new Democrats see these issues too. If we just start playing into the new Democrat...

SPEAKER_01 54:22

Democrat... In a vacuum, you make a good point. I

SPEAKER_01 54:24

I think that we may actually end up in more

Corey 54:25

more trouble. Now, one of the things we do know is there's accessibility that is shared by the Liberals and the New Democrats. Right.

SPEAKER_01 54:32

Right. So is the goal here to find accessibility on issues that are unique to the Liberals, Carter? Well,

Carter 54:38

Well, not unique to Liberals. What you want to do is you want to find accessibility that actually splits apart the voter. Right. So the New Democratic voter that is accessible to the New Democrats, Thomas Mulcair has made the strategic decision to go fiscal conservative conservative. Right. To move towards Stephen Harper on the economy, to work, to work, to become Stephen Harper's mirror opposite of what he's doing. And I'll take care of your economy that enables the wedge issue, the health care issues, the other things to be dropped in by the liberals and be more effective. That's what we're looking for is something that we can drop in an issue that says, forget, OK, you to fight over that. This is the real issue. And if we can change the ballot box question, and

Carter 55:25

and that's what we have to do if we're going to be successful with this strategy. If we can change the ballot box question, then we totally change the outcome. We cannot allow the ballot box question to remain, who is the most viable for people living in Ontario?

SPEAKER_01 55:40

Corey, where do you stand on what Carter just said in terms of drawing not issues that are uniquely positive for liberals, but ensuring that they're kind of a wedge? What do you make of that? Well,

Corey 55:49

Well, I agree. I'm just my concern is that we find something that wedges. Right. And one of the ones that does, I think, is health, maybe more so than most. Education is also a big concern for New Democrat voters. But that's not to say it's just a threat. It's

Carter 56:04

It's hard to do

Corey 56:05

that federally. Well, it's also an opportunity because if these are shared voters and we can make a stronger policy on education than the New Democrats are willing to do, that's what you should be spending a deficit

Carter 56:16

This is what I've been talking about with having to run a different campaign when you're fighting against an NDP-likely candidate like in British Columbia versus some of those campaigns where you're going to be up against the Conservatives in Ontario. I think that those ones will flip. I think as soon as you get the NDP voters, the ones that are accessible, using these different issues, changing the ballot box question, once

Carter 56:39

once you get those voters, then those Conservative varieties become a lot easier to get because there could still be the viability question. and the conservatives aren't going to be viable well

Corey 56:49

well let's put aside the issues for a second because the viability is something that i think we can address a couple of different ways and i want to propose at least one that should

Carter 56:57

should be considered by

Corey 56:58

by sure going to war with pollsters just going full war as suggesting all the polls are wrong the liberals are actually leading this thing they're the only ones who have a chance the polls are also wrong and that the conservatives are not as out of this as people think well

Carter 57:12

well i think that you're going to have well i'm not sure i want to go that far so what i want to do is say using

Carter 57:19

using a national number and in a regional race

Carter 57:22

becomes more and more ridiculous let

Corey 57:24

let me tell you why i think it's not a bad policy for them i believe the liberals are stronger on the ground in

Corey 57:30

in a lot of these writings that we're talking about simply for being older longer organizations more so in ontario than british columbia at this point but if you can convince people that rather than looking at the national polls they count signs in their neighborhood which is frankly not a measure of support it's a measure of organization that may help zane

Carter 57:48

zane and i did this when we were driving through vancouver the other day we drove through vancouver and we're you know hearing this great big ndp surge yeah how many signs do we see in vancouver one one ndp sign uh and how many liberal and conservative signs do we see dozens

Carter 58:05

yeah i mean so what we're seeing is exactly what you're talking about cory that on-the-ground organization is going to count for an awful lot more if we can change. I mean, I would go with the

Carter 58:17

the polls are all wrong.

Carter 58:19

Instead of doing that, I would go to an election this regional cannot be measured by national polls. If

Corey 58:26

If we can get the viability question off the table, that

Corey 58:29

that is a huge win for the liberals, at least from where we're standing right now. So, yeah,

SPEAKER_01 58:34

right, right. So that's the first thing there. So we've got and we're settled on that one half of our of our how and the first part of that being changing the viability.

Carter 58:47

Well, yeah. And I think that you need to then change who how people perceive these other parties as well.

SPEAKER_01 58:54

That goes hand in hand in your mind. Well,

Carter 58:55

Well, it's the perception of the of the other guys. Right. Right now, Harper is is seen to be a leader in the economy for whatever reason. right right and you can see the liberals trying to do this has everybody forgotten about the last eight years of deficits um yeah they did right

Carter 59:13

right no one's paying attention so you've got to come up with a better brand position the brand position i'm thinking about for harper is the great pretender no one trusts him anyways so

Carter 59:22

he's a great pretender

Corey 59:23

pretender it's a great song right

Carter 59:24

right it's a great song it's something that we you know you can always you know carville always had those uh james carville everybody has seen the war room sure uh you know the documentary on the on the the 1992 election for Clinton.

SPEAKER_01 59:36

Stephanopoulos had great hair, by the way. The

Carter 59:38

The best of the hair. Yeah, I try to compete

SPEAKER_01 59:40

compete on a daily basis.

Carter 59:41

basis. You can't get there. But he had these ideas, it's the economy's stupid. And for me, it's how do you get to these brand positions that are so simple that every one of your operatives can actually put it into practice. And for me, the great pretender is Harper's. And then I keep coming back with Mulcair to, who knows Tommy Thomas? Who

Carter 1:00:06

Because you don't know which one of those three he is. There's multiple personalities to Thomas Mulcair, and we want to keep bringing them up. Is he Angry Tom today? Is he, what did we call him in the other podcast? Quaaludes

Corey 1:00:19

Quaaludes Tom. Quaaludes Tommy. Or Thomas. So tease it out a bit more for me. What's the end goal? old like what how are we wedging and how are we moving up the middle with the brand positioning yeah i think i'm following you but i'm gonna make you spell it out here i

Carter 1:00:33

i think that harper the harper thing is that we can't trust what he's going what he's saying or what he's doing so that's why it's the great pretender we don't he just pretends to care about us during the election campaigns he's he he comes you know did we see him for the last four years was he part of our lives was he making our lives better and the answer is no and and thomas mulcair everything

Carter 1:00:54

everything with him is political everything

Carter 1:00:56

is political you know running

Carter 1:00:58

running to the next opportunity he just and

Carter 1:01:01

and we can't trust him because he's angry tom in the legs in the house of commons and then he's uh quaaludes tommy in the debate and then he's thomas mulcair the other guy right who is this guy and how can we trust what he's saying when we can't fundamentally trust who he is and to be honest and this is going to get me into trouble with the bearded out there the beard plays a big role in this the beard is not a trustworthy trade that's

Corey 1:01:26

that's why zane got rid

SPEAKER_01 1:01:27

rid of it got rid of it got rid of it okay

Carter 1:01:29

that's why we call you baby face baby you lose

Corey 1:01:31

word trust a lot here yeah

Carter 1:01:32

yeah do you really want to risk making this election about trust i

Carter 1:01:35

do if we're not talking about the economy well

Corey 1:01:37

well look i don't have trust numbers here but i do have uh how you rate the leaders and i'll tell you right now trudeau's

Corey 1:01:43

trudeau's numbers are pretty middling now he gets higher than harper but he gets way lower than mall care if you make it about trust do you risk putting it right into mall care's hands not

Carter 1:01:51

not making it about trust i'm trying to undermine the current trusts levels the mulcair has if we leave mulcair up there can you do that by the way can

SPEAKER_01 1:02:00

can you undermine the trust of other leaders without putting yours into the spotlight oh

Carter 1:02:05

oh yeah you undermine

SPEAKER_01 1:02:05

undermine well of course yeah

Carter 1:02:07

yeah i mean negative advertising yeah but but there's a pledge yeah there's a pledge no i mean you you can you can bring down other people without touching your own i

Corey 1:02:17

i don't know maybe maybe it's the alberta in me but like to To run the Liberals on trust seems... I'm

Carter 1:02:24

I'm not running the Liberals on trust. I am running the Liberals on family, and

Carter 1:02:28

and I am bringing down Mulcair's unbelievably high trust numbers. Okay. Because if we do not bring down Mulcair's trust numbers, we are... What's the word I'm looking for?

Corey 1:02:39

So talk... Sell me on this. Sell me on this. I think trust... And I'm hung up on trust now. I keep coming

Carter 1:02:46

coming back to this. I don't know how many podcasts I've referred to Mulcair as duplicitous yeah

Carter 1:02:53

no that's what i need him to be because

Carter 1:02:55

because if i don't if

Corey 1:02:56

if he's not duplicitous this makes me rethink any ulterior motives you had through every one of our past 540 every

Carter 1:03:03

single podcast has led to this moment what we have to do we have to recognize that when we when someone is strong there's only two things that we can do on the other side except that they're strong and change and shift away or try and make that bring Bring their strength down. Mulcair is seen as really quite trustworthy on things that, frankly, I don't think he should be seen as trustworthy on, especially on the economy and things like that. It's time for us to bring him down. And we have a willing ally there.

Carter 1:03:33

Our willing ally is the Conservative Party of Canada.

Carter 1:03:36

So we need to attack him and bring him down. Otherwise, his trust numbers will trump our family messaging. Okay,

Corey 1:03:42

Okay, well, one of the things that you alluded to was another poll, not ours, that talked about Trudeau is the leader you would leave your kids with. And I like that. That's a level of trust as a parent I can tell you you don't give as easily as some of those other types of trust. And I think there's probably something there. I need to make that leap in my own head, how we make that about government. Government is not kids. Maybe I've just fallen into the conservative thinking about government.

Carter 1:04:11

government. You're trapped in this space. I mean, right now, I mean, another question is who would have the best ideas on how to invest your money? And it's Harper by one point over Mulcair, right?

Carter 1:04:21

What the hell is Mulcair doing up there? The NDP, like this is where you have to start to undermine these principles that he's been able to backdoor himself into and grab onto these issues and say, we are not going to let you have this trust position and we're not going to let you have this issue. Well,

Corey 1:04:37

Well, Mulcair didn't backdoor his way into that. Trudeau handed it to him when he said, I'm going to start running deficits. it's well

Carter 1:04:43

well trudeau is true here we are trudeau has been is losing on the economy can we agree on that yeah

Corey 1:04:49

yeah i think it stays the same it's yes if the liberals want to make this about the economy i worry about their ceiling then

Carter 1:04:55

then we have to move and there's two things that we need to do we need to bring down the milk we need to bring down more care on the economy and trust and we need to we need to change the question to family if we don't do those two things if we if we just change the question to family we risk mulcair's economic message trumping our family message well okay

Corey 1:05:15

okay except a little bit of history here ignatyev ran the family campaign maybe it was because it was so against type maybe he

Carter 1:05:24

he couldn't he was never seen as a father never seen as a as

Carter 1:05:27

as a family guy right but

Corey 1:05:29

but it fell apart and all of those votes went to the new democrats and

Corey 1:05:33

think that's something we can't forget so if we're going to take an approach like this you have to tell me how we inoculate a little stronger against Tom Mulcair than just he's untrustworthy, he's saying different things. I think we need to start talking about the policies the New Democrats have brought in so far, where they've said they will not go, where the Liberals have said they're willing to go.

Carter 1:05:52

Well, I mean, I think that we can do all of that. I mean, there's been, I mean, if he sticks on, if Mulcair stays on economy, I mean, our great weakness will be, frankly, I mean, this is the great weakness of this campaign will be as if Mulcair goes family before we do. Yeah.

Corey 1:06:04

Yeah. And you know, the liberals have kind of hinted that they're going to be saying things that I think it was along the lines today of, we'll make unions very happy in the next bit.

Corey 1:06:16

No, they're not. But I think what he's talking about is not things that make unions happy. He's talking about things that make working Canadians happy. Then

Carter 1:06:23

Then he needs to make some moves. Okay. He needs to move quickly. I

SPEAKER_01 1:06:26

I want to proceed, but I do want to give our listeners a little bit of a summary as to where we've been i think that's fair so first thing we are all agreed we want to change the ballot box issue to families second thing we want to get the issue of viability off the table make that no longer a concern for the liberals cory suggested the battle with the pollsters carter do any anything add to add to the to the pollster conversation the

Carter 1:06:48

the time to do it is now there's another poll coming out right now that has the liberals in second place the guy in third place saying that the polls aren't right isn't listened to the guy who's one point away from winning

Carter 1:06:58

who's saying the polls aren't right is going to have some credibility. So Trudeau

SPEAKER_01 1:07:01

Trudeau should do it now when he's approaching the spot of second. Corey, you wanted to add something?

Corey 1:07:05

Yeah, well, just that this is going to be an easier sell, I think, than you may think if you're sitting in Alberta where the polls were actually pretty good last time or in Atlantic Canada where they've never been that bad because the polls were very wrong in both of the last provincial elections for British Columbians and Ontarians. And those are the battlegrounds we've talked about.

Carter 1:07:23

about. Yeah, they were even wrong in Quebec.

Corey 1:07:26

That's a great point. Right.

Carter 1:07:27

Right. I mean, you've got these big elections that were held, the three biggest provincial elections, four if you count Alberta in 2012. Right. And you can say, these big elections had the polls wrong.

Carter 1:07:37

We're not going to fall into that trap. We are not going to be saying we're in first place. We're going to put our effort into our ground game, and we're going to pull out as many votes as possible. Well,

Corey 1:07:45

Well, and in fact, if you're the liberals in this particular instance, you can also benefit from a lot of the moves the conservatives have made. Those

Corey 1:07:52

Those polls say one thing, I'll tell you, from where we're standing and from where the conservatives are standing, this is a fight between the liberals and the conservatives.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:00

Right. Okay. So changing the ballot box question, getting viability off the table. Third, defining yourself. We've agreed that that's something that Justin Trudeau needs to do as well. Did we settle on where we wanted to land on that as to what that definition was? Modern dad is the last word I heard on that sentiment. admit it's

Carter 1:08:16

it's for me it's the modern dad uh family first model now he he is the modern dad right he is that guy so that should be fairly easy for us to grab onto and of the three leaders he's the only one who can fit into that place well

Carter 1:08:32

but he has to have some policies to back that up he's

Corey 1:08:34

he's got to have policies but his delivery is going to have to change a bit too this this play act in trudeau you know i mean he's going to have to take a step back and just well

Carter 1:08:43

well the only way to pull him off might be electric shock treatments but i'm not opposed to it i have hated his his acting capacity you know what he does the

Corey 1:08:50

the cadence has bothered

SPEAKER_01 1:08:51

bothered you forever if

Corey 1:08:52

if you think that he's stilted and shatner-esque in english in french he's downright he uh he's got a problem in french his french is very uh

Corey 1:09:01

uh very faux shakespearean oh

Carter 1:09:04

oh i mean his whole he's

Carter 1:09:07

he's gotta stop being so fucking serious now i think the part of that is get him off of the economy get him out of this place where he feels like he needs to play the character of um prime minister he is not going to be seen as prime ministerial candidate until such time as he stops trying to be seen as a prime ministerial candidate yeah

Corey 1:09:27

yeah he is at his best when he's with kids the photos of him you know hanging out looking like yeah but

Carter 1:09:33

but what do we

Carter 1:09:34

think about the balancing child situation

Corey 1:09:36

you haven't done that or something equivalent with your daughters no i just i throw them six

Carter 1:09:40

six feet in the air okay

Carter 1:09:41

okay i had little kids yesterday i spin it around listen listen

SPEAKER_01 1:09:45

listen listen it's like oh

Corey 1:09:46

oh my god people toss kids around like sacks of potatoes

SPEAKER_01 1:09:48

potatoes i don't know how long we've been recording people have been bearing to this point let's let's let's power through and actually give them some content so to make this worth their while okay defining yourself and then finally carter we just finished on the whole notion of defining your opponent specifically on on trust as it related to mall care anything else we want to tease out of that before we We power forward and power through. Well,

Corey 1:10:08

Well, I'm just not willing to concede trust unless it's defined.

Carter 1:10:11

Tell you what. Okay,

Carter 1:10:12

good. We're back to the debate.

Carter 1:10:15

Define Mulcair. Give me the brand of Mulcair from

Carter 1:10:18

from the liberal point of view that you want to have.

Corey 1:10:21

There's so many easy ins for me. I've been talking about him for weeks, if not months. I think Mulcair does have a problem on trust issues. He says different things in English and French. There you go. Yeah. But you got to tell me. So I would define. That's all of a sudden national

Corey 1:10:36

Where the hell did that come from? Let's

Carter 1:10:38

Let's do it like that. Let's do French Guy is Thomas. Let's do Angry Tom. And let's create a Quaaludes Tommy brand. And we will put them into a commercial. All three of them. Which one is the real Thomas Mulcair? That

Corey 1:10:53

That would be a fun little clip show, I think.

Carter 1:10:55

Wouldn't that be fun? We should do that. We're going to cut up that commercial. Okay,

SPEAKER_01 1:10:59

Okay, so Corey, did I just hear you concede in a matter of ten seconds to trust? Or am I hearing you brought

SPEAKER_01 1:11:04

brought in the death? No,

SPEAKER_01 1:11:06

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Or am I hearing you broaden the definition of what that notion could be that you attack him on? Well, narrow. Narrow the definition. Sorry,

SPEAKER_01 1:11:13

Sorry, narrow the definition. Yes, yes, yes.

Corey 1:11:15

Man, I don't know. I mean, this goes back to my concerns with the liberals when they started doing their infrastructure thing and running deficits as a result of that. It's very, very dangerous to start seeding that kind of ground to Tom Mulcair because there are so many moderates out there. When we look at this viability and this accessibility data, as

Corey 1:11:35

much as we say, hey, among those voters who are out there floating, majority,

Corey 1:11:40

majority, preponderance, let's say, are liberal New Democrat splits. There's enough conservatives in there that if you exclude yourself from the conversation with them, you're in some trouble. So I think if you want to be talking about he can't be trusted, it can't be about deficits. So I think I'm with you, Stephen. I just think we need to talk about Tom Mulcair, the

Carter 1:12:01

activist. Actually, yeah, I mean, the national unity

Carter 1:12:03

guy should I'll even take that Margaret Thatcher thing, you know, like, let's do it. Let's take the liberal to the NDP. Let's take the liberal cabinet minister and go to the NDP party leader. There are many different fronts on which I can get to this same message. I don't know who this guy is. is so

Corey 1:12:22

former liberal to come new democrat versus stephen harper both of them ultimately political opportunists you want to talk about a wedge i think that's where we need to start getting to political

Carter 1:12:32

political opportunism great pretender who is thomas mulcair you

Carter 1:12:36

you see you just came running my way of thinking yeah

SPEAKER_01 1:12:39

yeah versus modern dad okay this is good and i think that that's healthy one thing that we've alluded to multiple times ever since you brought it up steven was the the issue of healthcare? How does this fit into all this? I know where you're going, but let's just make sure that all the listeners are on the same page. How does that wedge issue that Corey even mentioned has a particular proclivity towards potentially leaning liberal? How does that factor into all of this? For

Carter 1:13:01

For 10 years, we've had a federal government who's stayed completely hands off on healthcare. 10 years, the closest the conservatives have come to a healthcare policy is a waitlist registry. So they're keeping track of the waitlist now. So now they know how long you wait. That's about it. And now it's time for a government to actually step forward and say that the federal government, as per the Canada Health Act, has a role to play in health care and we are going to play it and we're going to play it with a vengeance.

Corey 1:13:31

Right. Well, for me, I think it's going to have to be a bit further than just tightening up the administration. I think you need a big signature policy. Can't be end of life because at the end of the day, everybody's going to agree with them about right to death and a lot of the things around there. I think it's got to be something more like pharma care or something that dramatically

Carter 1:13:50

See, for me, the big issues in healthcare today are we die badly and it's not about... So when we go all the way to the end and we take right to die, we completely miss the actual reality. So there's a thing in healthcare called the 565. So the 565 is 5% of the population costs 65% of our health care dollars, and they turn over every two years. You know why they turn over every two years? Because they die.

Carter 1:14:19

So what happens is that we are currently spending about 30% of our health care dollars to prolong life about, on average, two to three weeks.

Carter 1:14:28

Okay, so let that sink in.

Carter 1:14:30

We're not dying the way we should die. And when we ask people how to die, you

Carter 1:14:34

you ask them, you know, they want to die at home, surrounded by friends and family without pain. When you die, you will die in a cinder block room,

Carter 1:14:45

pumped full of drugs, in pain, without your friends and family there. That's the current situation in Canada, and no one is talking about it because we're all afraid of it. It's the third rail of Canadian politics, but I think if it's framed properly, not like I just framed it, but framed properly, you could actually turn it into a winning action.

Corey 1:15:05

See, I totally disagree. agree i think that you might be talking about how people want to die but ultimately that's trumped by the fact that people want to live and when you start talking about this notion that we can make those last two years non-existent but comfortable you're going to scare the crap out of a lot of turns out

Carter 1:15:19

out actually we don't have to spend as much money and you're probably going to live as long

Corey 1:15:23

yeah i don't know great

Corey 1:15:24

resonate yeah yeah i mean okay

Carter 1:15:26

okay then do it on wellness so let's flip it around and so so there's the big the second biggest issue on health care works for

Corey 1:15:32

for me talk to me about yes we

Carter 1:15:34

we we could actually change the entire health care system if we change the way that you access health care instead of accessing health care and simply having access to health care when you're ill we now unveil you we make it available to you that you can have access to health care and wellness care so that we prevent illness so there's a whole bunch of kind of science that shows that the the way to prevent illness is actually by having healthy healthy people. Nutrition, vitamins, exercise. None

Carter 1:16:03

of that is taken care of or envisioned within the Canada Health Act.

Corey 1:16:07

Act. Bring it down to me. What does it mean to me as a voter? What do I get as the liberal accessible voter who skews a little bit younger, who we have a pretty much gender parity with, but could potentially give the nod to women because they're more likely to show up? What does it mean to me?

Carter 1:16:22

I'm going to give you access to dietitians. I'm going to give you you access to naturopaths i'm going to give you access to nurse practitioners what

Corey 1:16:29

what do you want you lost me at naturopaths for a second but we can get you

Carter 1:16:32

you can choose you can choose your own access i mean one of the things that we did with the family care clinics and it's been done to a great degree in ontario already is you give access to different types of health care practitioners team it's called team-led practice practices and you get seen by the level of practitioner that makes the most difference to you okay

Corey 1:16:50

okay but make this a sexy policy for me give

Carter 1:16:52

give me a second i just I'm just pulling it out of my ass here. You're telling me on the middle of a podcast to create a health care policy? I've told you the topic. Get me a fucking policy expert in here. He'll tell you. I

SPEAKER_01 1:17:04

I think that's good enough for now, Corey. Clearly, you have higher expectations. But I

SPEAKER_01 1:17:10

I think this is interesting. Are we agreed on wellness? Does that appeal to you as an avenue? You're still not there, Corey. Because we want to make sure you're there before I move on. We do this for you.

Corey 1:17:21

I'm not totally sold in that I think I need to know what that end product is. But I think that I'm 100% sold that health is

Corey 1:17:29

is something that the liberals should be talking about. Good. Yeah.

Carter 1:17:32

Yeah. I mean, we do need to come up with a policy. This isn't the policy analysts. This is the strategists. And we would go to someone in policy. I hate pharmacare because all pharmacare is is a big freaking check. so I would try and find something else that would be better than that that actually reduces the overall cost I stopped

SPEAKER_01 1:17:52

stopped listening to what you're saying I was just imagining what a podcast for the policy analyst would sound like and I imagine just the three of us with pocket squares it would just be the worst once again, change the ballot box the viability is off the table we're using healthcare as our primary issue we're defining ourselves modern dad

Corey 1:18:11

healthcare as part of a bundle

SPEAKER_01 1:18:13

bundle of social issues It's a bundle of social issues that define around family. I don't want to brush through that. Good point, Corey. And defining our opponents. Now I'm going to ask a question that we've asked offline many times when we've been discussing this episode. Where to from here?

Corey 1:18:27

Well, it's one thing to have these areas and know what the accessible voters want. As we've kind of talked about in the last section, it's quite another that turned that into a grab bag of policies that you can announce on a regular basis. But I think that's what we would be talking about next, is rolling out a policy platform that plays into that. Now, normally, when you have policies that test well, sometimes people have the very mistaken urge to just announce them in some random order. But what we want to do is make sure they're layering into a broader campaign narrative now. I

Corey 1:18:58

I think it's fair to say. So, if

Corey 1:19:00

if I can take the reins for a second here, if we're talking about a basic approach of social issues and we think we're going to be having healthcare as the cornerstone of that approach. Correct, yes. The other parts, though, including education, I'm sure some other social protections, getting people back to work tangentially. If we're talking about the economy, it's going to be about what it means in

Corey 1:19:20

your household, right, in your home. Would that be fair to say?

Carter 1:19:24

Absolutely. I mean, it's going to be down to the absolute person, which is what you were trying to get me to with the healthcare. What's in it for me? Yeah. This is a selfish electorate. Yes, you listening, you're selfish. We're fine with that. So we need to tell you in explicit terms exactly what you're going to get from each of these policies. So

Corey 1:19:41

So we've talked about a couple of buckets, and I think we'd want to stick to those buckets. You know, maybe next week is education week, and then the week after that, the economy and getting you back to work or making sure you have a job. But, you know, I mean, one of the huge policies that could be considered by someone somewhere is like the minimum living wage. But let's throw that aside. I throw that out there as like a grenade in the middle of the conversation.

Carter 1:20:02

conversation. Mr. Mr. Orange Corey comes right in, right in by the end. I mean, I think I think there's there's one more thing, Zane, that we need to talk about, which I wear from here. And that's the these last six weeks. Right. I would spend a week right off the bat getting into British Columbia and really getting a foothold. You're starting to see some upward momentum in the polls. Not that we're listening to the polls, but let's get to British Columbia and let's get as many votes as we can get. Then the next step that we're going to do is we're going to take a jump from BC back to Ontario, and that's where we're going to announce a significant policy in two weeks. And that's where you're really going to feel the shift. shift. Trudeau needs to get his acting under control, and then we can start to see, I think, the best possible shifts.

Corey 1:20:56

It would be kind of foolish of us to suggest that we could then

Corey 1:21:01

tell you that that's the strategy as it is, and it's done. At this point, what we would normally do is we would go back out and do more research, right? And then we would do field testing of of these issues right

Carter 1:21:11

right right i mean we would we would go out and especially when we're talking about this regional component we'd have a ton of research on the ground we'd go and we touch our organizers on the ground and get their feedback uh we kind of alluded to that earlier there are going to be organizers listening to the this podcast if you would send us your information your feedback based on what we've given you uh it would go a long ways to helping us flush out a large number of uh the points that we've made if you're in a riding and you think Like, yeah, we're in a riding that is traditionally conservative, but with the liberals are really – don't give me your partisan crap. Don't just give me the we're in it this time stuff. There's got to be some sort of evidence that you're in it. Don't just play this like Calgary, Rocky Ridge, we've got it this time. No, you don't.

Carter 1:21:59

Send us someone who does. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:00

Okay. So this is good. This was an exciting discussion. I do want to tease it back from the top. So we started this thing by forming some hypotheses at the beginning. We talked about the grassroots support, about the urban areas that the Liberals may be strong at. We then went into the field. We got data and we tried to back this up, which informed our situation analysis, which we completed today. It was about the goal. We put our goal at forming government, right? That was what Corey said, forming government and the 120 seats. From there, we went into our strategic opportunities for where we need to go. Carter, you took us across the country. B.C., Ontario stood out as the main grounds that we needed to go. When we look at the how now, we're looking at a

SPEAKER_01 1:22:43

a social-based policy or social-based policies targeting B.C. and Ontario where you're now getting viability off the table and you are now having the issues of trust being put into play. That's where we are today. Corey, anything I missed right there?

Corey 1:22:59

No, I think that's a pretty good summary. These things are always more complicated than that. In fact, there's a lot of data we skipped over in our own analysis because

Corey 1:23:07

perhaps we figured it wasn't germane at the end of the day. But I will say this. Ultimately, if this strategy is going to be successful for the liberals, any strategy, it has to align Justin Trudeau's strengths with the opportunities available in the electorate. And I think Carter and I, I don't want to speak for you, but I think we see there is those opportunities. We

Corey 1:23:29

We may not be convinced they're being fully utilized. Well,

Carter 1:23:31

Well, I think the challenge right now, I mean, if you're a very liberal strategist in Ottawa today, you should know that this election is yours to win if you put your mind to it. And that is a very interesting place, given that two weeks ago they were written off.

Corey 1:23:47

Yeah, no question. And probably wrongly so, because let's not forget they were leading in the polls not too long ago. This is anyone's

SPEAKER_01 1:23:55

anyone's game. Thanks for listening to this episode. We were excited to do it, but...

Corey 1:24:01

Now we're excited it's over.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:02

Now we're excited it's over. That's a wrap on episode 546. My name is Zane Velgey. With me, as always, the irreplaceable Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan. We will see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:18

Listeners of The Strategist podcast,

SPEAKER_01 1:24:20

remember, we are on iTunes and Stitcher, So make sure you subscribe to our podcast on there. Also, we're on Twitter at StrategistPod and individually at Corey Hogan, at Carter underscore AB, and at Zane Velji.

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