Leaders’ English debate tonight will be a crucial factor in the election outcome

If you are trying to choose a winner in tonight’s English-language television debate, don’t just listen to the six leaders. Watch their body language.

Specialists who prepare politicians for debates like tonight’s and the one in French on Thursday know the average viewer won’t remember most of what the leaders have to say, but they will remember how they looked and presented themselves.

Some debate preppers suggest we try watching the debates with the sound turned off.

Do the leaders appear comfortable in their own skin? All six will be nervous, but which ones look relaxed and which are tense? Are they confident or hesitant? When they smile (as they surely must from time to time) is it natural? Or does it seem forced or rehearsed? Does their passion (assuming they have some) look real or synthetic? Do they to project sincerity?

This not to suggest the verbal content is irrelevant. It is important. This week’s television encounters will be the only times when all six leaders, including the Greens’ Elizabeth May and the People’s Party’s Maxime Bernier, will be on the same stage with an opportunity to present, and defend, their platforms before a mass national audience. (More about the platforms in a moment.)

Barring some ghastly mistake in the final two weeks of the campaign, the debates — and the impressions they plant in voters’ minds — may determine the outcome on Oct. 21. Three outcomes, actually. Whether the next government will be Liberal or Conservative. Whether it will be a majority or minority government.

And, if a minority, which of the NDP or Bloc Québécois will win enough seats to wield the balance of power. At the moment, the Bloc has the edge; its leader. Yves-François Blanchet, performed strongly in the four-leader TVA debate in Quebec last week.

Expect a fair bit of same-old, same-old tonight. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau will be on the defensive as he has been throughout the campaign — and as the incumbent always is in big debates. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer will continue to thrash Trudeau over SNC-Lavalin, repeat his promise to order a judicial inquiry in the Liberals’ handling of that affair, and censure the Liberals for wild spending and a callous disregard for deficits and the national debt.

Trudeau will defend his government’s record, maintaining it has improved the lot of the middle class, then pivot to accuse Scheer of having no real climate policy and of not taking global warming seriously.

He will compare the financial relief the Liberals are promising middle-class families with the cutbacks they could expect from Scheer, who Trudeau will probably portray as the reincarnation of Stephen Harper, the puppet of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and the Siamese twin of Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

Meanwhile Blanchet, predictably, will attack the Liberals for not doing enough for Quebec. May and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh will cite Trudeau’s broken election promises, but they will be more

Barring some ghastly mistake in the final two weeks of the campaign, the debates — and the impressions they plant in voters’ minds — may determine the outcome on Oct. 21. Three outcomes, actually.

critical of Scheer. They know they can live with the Liberals, if they must, but not with 2019 version of the Conservatives.

They will leave it to Scheer to fend off Maxime Bernier in the battle of the right.

Tonight’s debate will be a twohour affair. Unless the independent commission responsible for the production takes it into its head to increase the time — which it won’t — most of the multitudinous promises made by the parties won’t make it into the debate.

For example, the Bloc would offer SNC Lavalin an out-of-court settlement in place of criminal prosecution; the Greens want to make housing a legally protected fundamental human right; the NDP pledges to create 500,000 affordable housing units; the People’s Party promises to abolish the capital gains tax.

There are good ideas and bad ideas, but they are not at the core of this election. It is an election that will turn on the twin issues of leadership and trust.

This week’s debates will give voters an opportunity assess the former while weighing the latter. Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com.