The more leaders talk, the less we understand

Kim Campbell once said 47 days is not long enough to have a debate about serious issues. That thinking now seems quaint in its assumption that if only the politicians had more time to talk, we’d all come out better informed.

If the nauseating first week is any clue, some politicians plan to use every day of this 78-day campaign to make the electorate as confused as possible about the facts and the parties’ platforms.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair used the phrase “15 dollar-an-hour federal minimum wage” in last Thursday’s debate, which a casual observer might well interpret as a minimum wage established by the federal government. Not so! Sometimes NDP material explains that this “federal” or even “national,” minimum wage applies to federally regulated employees only, and sometimes it doesn’t.

In that debate, Conservative leader Stephen Harper said, “the Fair Elections Act, the principal change it makes that Mr. Mulcair and the other parties oppose is that voters have to show ID to demonstrate who they are.” This statement is false in at least two ways.

Voters have had to show ID to vote since 2007. The Fair Elections Act changes some rules about which forms of ID in which combinations are deemed acceptable. It doesn’t even eliminate the practice of vouching.

And describing something that isn’t new as the “principal change” in a sweeping piece of legislation that governs such things as political financing and the role of Elections Canada — an act that was heavily amended as a result of opposition pressure — is misleading, to use the most charitable term.

What the leaders said in the debate, though, was practically seminar-level analysis compared to what they’ve been putting out in social media and in advertisements.

Perhaps the strangest so far is Harper’s bizarre contention that his party is the only one that would protect Canadians from a “Netflix tax” that no federal party is proposing.

This earned Canada’s prime minister plenty of ridicule, but that’s a small price to pay to introduce a false notion into a few voters’ minds.

While the pseudo-gaffe style of campaign isn’t limited to the Conservatives, they have become the masters of it: They’ll have someone say something so ridiculous, false or offensive that it makes news for being ridiculous, false or offensive, thereby getting free media coverage for their ridiculous, false or offensive message.

If this is serving anyone, it isn’t the voters.