Leaders offer litany of slogans
Two hours of well-honed sloganeering and verbal collisions over issues that the vast majority of Canadians don’t really care about or understand characterized what will perhaps be the only debate-featuring the four leaders during this long election campaign.
As NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair keeps intoning, this election offers voters real choice. But the debate presented less a real choice of solid policy options, as a choice between wildly contrasting views of the current state of the nation. For Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, Canada has done the best of any other nation in creating jobs and in being debt-free. It is the best in growing incomes, cutting taxes. He must have used “best” to describe the country’s performance two dozen times. He calmly addressed the audience with utmost confidence as his opponents marched out proof point after proof point to prove him absolutely wrong.
Our economy has shrunk, we have the worst job creation record of any government, we are in recession. This was the message Mulcair hammered home repeatedly. “Eight deficits in a row,” “we can’t afford another four years . . . ” He got off a good line accusing Harper of doing everything he could to save his own job while doing nothing to create jobs for Canadians. Meanwhile, the young Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau called attention to the awful job prospects for young people.
The same yawning gap on the government’s environmental record. Harper absorbed jabs — a “litany of broken promises,” “no credibility,” “a “laggard on the world’s stage” — and then bravely claimed his was the first government to actually reduce greenhouse gases.
Trudeau and Mulcair, who together will probably have more seats after the election than Harper, stuck to standing up for the middle class — Trudeau with his tax on the wealthy to fund a tax break for the less wealthy; Mulcair with his $15-per-day daycare. Neither offered much further detail on plans to turn the economy around.
But if there was a lack of red meat for the left-ofcentre voter to chew on in trying to decide who should replace Harper, there were moments that showed both contenders at their best.
Trudeau was predictably strong on Mulcair’s approach to a separatist vote. (The NDP leader has said that he would accept a 50-per-cent-plus-one decision.) “No prime minister should make it easier for Quebec to separate,” Trudeau compellingly argued.
Harper was caught flat-footed on Senate issues. Here again Trudeau had the edge with his plans to completely de-politicize the Upper House. (Mulcair’s constitutionally dubious commitment to abolish the Senate sounded hollow.) Harper bobbed and weaved when asked if he would apologize for the behaviour of Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin, whom he appointed, but didn’t emerge unscathed.
Trudeau nailed it on foreign policy: “Harper hasn’t seen a war he doesn’t want to get involved in;” while Mulcair dithered on when and where we should join in military action abroad.
However, the NDP leader scored well on Bill C51’s danger to civil liberties, while this was not a good moment for Trudeau. Harper was right when he said that the Liberal leader was “being for and against it at the same time.”
The incomprehensible discussion on pipelines was perhaps the best example of the irrelevance of much of the two hours to the real concerns of Canadians. Here a nod to the Green party’s Elizabeth May who in her closing reminded patient viewers of important issues that indeed were not broached — inequality, health care, social policy, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s findings.
So with not too much substantive vision or detailed policy, we are left with impressions of performance.
Mulcair the pretender was not arrogant, trying a bit too hard to be pleasant and not quite rising to the level of the withering attacks on Harper he is so well known for in the House of Commons. Trudeau gained momentum through the debate, showing a real combative edge and delivering a very emotional and appealing closing two minutes: “To lead you have to love your country . . . ” And as for the Conservative Leader he showed why he has been able to hang on for 10 years and even grinned as he parried a barrage of nasty thrusts.
No clear winner, no clear vision, but two talented contenders with a shot at unseating a Conservative leader whose time may be up.