Plenty more time to bore us into submission. Menon,
Who won the leaders debate on Thursday night?
This will be the question the political experts discuss on Friday, blind to the more pressing query: How many Canadians were forced to use our universal health-care system after banging their skulls against the wall while listening to four party leaders bicker, spit out talking points, get lost in policy minutiae, stare into the camera with the unblinking gaze of serial killers, move their arms like marionettes and generally cherry-pick the facts to suit those talking points? Is this really the best we can do? The good news is the same as the bad news: There are 75 days to go until Canada elects a new prime minister. Based on Thursday’s first leaders debate, a two-hour gabfest that, at times, crackled with the excitement of a croquet match played in quick sand, the longest election campaign ever might end up feeling even longer.
The four debaters — Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May — arrived in Toronto looking to land a few knockout blows.
But there were none. This was more of a slap fest.
Instead, each leader did an admirable job of playing to preconceived notions: Harper was authoritative and vaguely patronizing, using “let me be clear” more times than Paul McCartney has used “let it be.”
Mulcair had a strong command of statistics and an intuitive sense of when to attack.
But he didn’t really make the case that, come Oct. 19, he should be doing more than keeping track of numbers or arguing as the bearded opposition. At times, given his pitch and hyper-conscious way of gazing into the lens, it felt like he was trying to communicate with Casey and Finnegan.
May was consistently on-point but mostly ignored by the others, like a hapless mother trying to control unruly teens in the food court. She started to look exasperated near the end. Thankfully, she did not pull out her cellphone to play the theme song from a ’70s show, as she is wont to do.
Then there was Trudeau, who tried to sneak “middle class” into every sentence. By the midway point, he also seemed to be losing patience and losing track of whom he should belittle. At one point, when the camera caught him with a blank expression, it was like he was praying for a disembodied voice to say, “This is the part where everyone removes their shirts and enters a boxing ring.”
The debate was hosted by the resurgent Maclean’s magazine, a publication once known as “that thing you read in the doctor’s office.” The moderator was political editor Paul Wells, who was the most sensible voice on stage, even if he looked ready for a nap or stiff drink.
But with so much time to go until we actually vote, the debate prob- ably won’t be remembered come the fall. Which is good news for each of the leaders who, at times, did not seem qualified to lead a Canadian Tire store during inventory, let alone a country.
There’s still plenty more time to bore us into submission.