Leaders Debates Sep 8 & 9 21

Trudeau sounding a bit angry even when he's trying to express empathy with indigenous people. Fail.

Singh attacking Trudeau on reconcilliation while allowing O'toole to appear prime-ministerial.

O'toole being the most "polite" of the leaders, and this will play well for him.

Yeah Federal NDP's ties to the provincial parties seems to be hurting them in a few ways. It certainly hurts their claim to be more leftwing when it comes to climate change and indigenous sovereignty when they can't critisize the BC party. 

I also wonder if maybe all the talent is drafted from the provincial parties and that's why they don't know how to have actual policies on issues like foreign policy.

Singh finally calling out both Trudeau and O'Toole. You love to see it.

O'toole trying to misrepresent Trudeau's anti-flipping tax by calling it a tax on home sales, no mention of the fact that it would only apply to homes sold within 1 year of purchase.

Singh focusing on home ownership, this is a mistake in my opinion. Would be better for him to argue passionately for social and co-op housing.

Good response from Singh on healthcare. Painting both Trudeau and O'toole as proponents of private healthcare while promising to expand the public healthcare system to include pharmacare and dental care.

Good Jab by Trudeau against O'Toole's position of not requiring his candidates to get vaccinated.

Singh brings up his plan to tax billionaires, but doesn't mention the specifics.

I don't know why Singh doesn't give a few details each time he introduces a policy. It would help him a lot. To be fair this format is exceptionally tight for time. 

Good line of attack from Singh against Trudeau and O'Toole on pandemic income supports. Singh argues that Trudeau and O'Toole are competing with each other to see who can cut pandemic supports sooner.

Singh advocating an an improvement of the federal sick leave program. You love to see it.

That's probably why Trudeau lost it when Singh said that.

The moderator also cut off Singh when he tried to talk about long term care during the foreign policy section of the debate. 

paul did much better than i expected, though overall she just makes me cringe for some reason.  her good performance will make it harder to boot her as leader.   i thought she should have used the line "our mp's" instead of "we" when refering to stuff in the house.

blanchet has the most performance range, obviously.  the time he was hard talking over 2 women looked pretty bad. 

otoole was the most primeministerial, fluff-wise.  

singh did ok, didn't project "vote ndp" as much as he could have.

treudo bullied over and got the last word in.

the moderator should be able to cut the mics. 

All four undecided voters on CBC said they were frustrated by the lack of information and back-and-forth attacks and were still undecided. The only one who said he was moving toward a decision was a male who said he was moving towards the NDP, but that was not because of the debate, but because the NDP had brought a  pharmacare plan for a parliamentary vote earlier. However, he would have liked more info on their plan in the debate. 

I completely appreciate that debates are performance art, not intellectual discussions, but I don't know how the leaders are supposed to say anything with so little time. What a useless two hours.

I'd say that O'Toole and Paul suceeded, Singh and Blanchet neutral, Trudeau fared the worst but I don't think it will really impact his appeal or support.

Doyle: The farce of Canada's televised federal leaders debate is an insult to viewers and voters

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/article-farce-of-a-telev...

"...The so-called Federal Leaders Debate on Thursday evening took the cake. What happened across multiple Canadian TV channels was the worst, an example of utter failure in Canadian television and a disgraceful insult to the intelligence of viewers and voters.

That was not a debate. The fact that the political leaders even agreed to participate in the format is an indictment of their collective intelligence.

Who won? A cat would cackle at that question..."

Glad it wasn't just me. Awful shit. A 'dear god none of the above' political experience in every way. Notable however for this bust-a-gut howler from Justin Trudeau:

'One of the enemies of progressive politics is cynicism.'

ROTFL

Because I think these comments are better suited to this thread I have reposted them.

DistinguishedFlyer wrote:

If this uptick in Liberal support is genuine and not just an anomaly, it seems that Justin Trudeau wins either way: if he does well in the debates it shows how great he is, but if he doesn't it shows how unfair the process is. Shades of down south, although I'm sure supporters of both men would bristle at the comparison.

Both politicians are similar because they are charlatans at heart. I would certainly agree with your assessment about how if Trudeau is attacked he can't lose. The debate process was changed to allow for more attacks and thus the dynamics were set up to Trudeau's advantage, especially since Singh feel into the trap and instead of spending his time outlining his program in depth he and the others all just went after Trudeau.

On pipelines and foreign policy you can't tell the Liberals from the NDP and those are the two areas that most affect both the climate change file and the reconciliation file. Who the fuck cares what they are doing on the edges when both parties are hell bent on supporting the militarization of the planet with new fossil fuel guzzling war machines and sending tar sands gunk to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.

pietro_bcc wrote:

The main issue with the English debate is that there is only 1 of them, not the format. Because there is only 1 debate they have to pack in more topics into a 2 hour span than they are realistically able to in an effective manner. If you had more than one debate, you would be able to spread out the topics across multiple debates and then instead of only have a laughable 45 seconds to answer a question they could have 3-4 minutes.

They should disband the consortium and have 1 debate per OTA national TV station. There are 4 english stations (CBC, CTV, Global and City) so 4 debates and have that as a manditory condition of their broadcast license.

I liked the moderating, they were tough on all the leaders and didn't let them use the 2 hours as a vehicle for their talking points, they asked questions that were framed in a way that opposed each party's talking points to throw them off their game and explain themselves. They were genuinely challenging questions. Also they didn't allow the leaders to go off on non sequiturs regarding issues that are in no way related to the question at hand, which I loved. I hate when they go off topic.

As for the debate I think O'Toole clearly won (not in the sense that I agree with him, but in the sense that this debate will help his polling numbers the most.) He looked prime ministerial, while Trudeau looked arrogant and entitled constantly interupting the moderators when each segment ended and trying to pack in his inane talking points which the moderators were having none of, he looked like a baby.

Blanchet was a mess, but it'll probably go to his benefit because in the french media this is playing out as "the english debate moderator was Quebec bashing". This will probably help him.

Paul and Singh did okay, they got their points out effectively but I don't think their performances will move the needle one way or another.

There should be a series of regional debates in what used to be called "The Rest of Canada"

1) An Atlantic Canada debate- topics could include fisheries, extractive resource issues, the provincial revenue-sharing formula, and the legacy of ethnic cleansing-both of the Acadians, Indigenous Canadians, and Afro-Canadian communities in the region.

2) An Ontario debate- in English AND French, with moderators from all the ethnic communities there.

3) A Praries debate- including Alberta- focused on environmental issues and the leaders' views on the idea of the Green New Deal, and the role of religion in politics.

4) A B.C. debate- focusing on the immigrants and immigration, Indigenous issues, pipelines, again on the Green New Deal(mainly to see how the answers the leaders gave on that would vary on that compared to what they'd been in the Prarie/Alberta debate.