In 1968, Canadian political leaders chose to yell at each other on television and not just in the House of Commons. Our election debates were born.
Now, to call these “debates” is to debase the word. They’re talent shows, scripted standoffs, a theatre of talking points, a test of spontaneous thinking, and an opportunity to lob grenades and bunker for two hours.
I’ve watched and forgotten almost all of them. True, Brian Mulroney made John Turner look like he’d caught an in-denial son shoplifting on the issue of Pierre Trudeau’s last-minute patronage appointments. And, when I tax my memory on the provincial ones, Christy Clark’s haymaker on Adrian Dix’s earlier-life document fiddling was quite the TSN Turning Point. But mainly these telecasts are about body language more than spoken language, and expectations of knockouts are usually greeted with sleepouts.
I suspect I won’t remember the two events this week, which offered some insights but little in the way of determinants or revelations. The first one, in French and shifted at the last minute to exclude the Greens and to only encroach on the first period of the most important Montreal Canadiens game of the season, was supposed to scuff Liberal leader/prime ministerial intern Mark Carney.
His French still emits from a brain that starts in English and searches le dictionnaire for the proper phrases, but he managed well enough in our good-enough world to win by not losing. He likely doesn’t believe himself in asserting he’s a new face for change, and saying he’s not Justin Trudeau is hardly the explanation we need—but it’s what he’s offering and we’ll have to live with it, for who knows how long.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has nice teeth, we are learning, and to smile and not just to bite us. His demeanour has graduated from a scowl into something approaching statesmanlike, and while he’s not entirely morphed from Doberman Pinscher to Labrador Retriever, he has modulated his rapid-fire sense of interrogation into one far less polarizing. There’s something chastening about watching a 25-point poll lead evaporate, to see about eight million Canadians change their political preference, even if Poilievre can’t quite give up the three-word slogans.
This is a two-person, two-party race, thanks in part to the other two onstage, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-François Blanchet, with parties bleeding their support to Carney and only slightly to Poilievre. The result would not be typically bad for the Conservatives if the Liberals weren’t the beneficiaries, but with a week-and-a-half to go the election is Carney’s to fumble, and do so way faster than Poilievre did by laconically responding to Donald Trump’s threats to open the door to a Liberal lead.
The election is at a stage where we all know Trump is going to make our lives less enjoyable and we want to choose a prime minister who can make him leave us alone as much as possible. But we don’t want our prime minister to leave us alone. Far from it. We’d like a plan and we’d like to know what it’ll take to pay for it.
Unfortunately, both front-runners are concealing the bill for a few days longer because neither wanted a donnybrook onstage Wednesday and Thursday on the gory details. In general outline as a preview of what we’ll soon see, Carney will spend and Poilievre will trade out in order to meet their promises.
On Thursday, Poilievre knew this was his last opportunity to gouge Carney to staunch his own bleeding. He did not fail for trying and was most effective around crime and safety, accusing his rival of a failure to appreciate that “people are living in terror” by the scourges of drugs and guns. He repeatedly tried to link Carney to Trudeau, sniping that Trudeau aides were “writing the talking points that you are regurgitating into the microphone.” Carney, unflapped: “I write my own talking points.”
One of the best set of answers came when moderator asked for a 10-second answer on the biggest threat to Canada. Poilievre: “Rampant crime.” Carney: “China.” Singh: “Security cuts.” Blanchet: How Canada is “dependent on the U.S.”
The last segment Thursday permitted leaders to ask each other questions, but it was really an opportunity to get under Carney’s skin: Singh and Blanchet on his private-sector history and the questions of how he ran and what he earned from Brookfield Asset Management, Poilievre (who used more than half his time) on his Trudeau connection, and the two just talked over each other. Carney’s query of Poilievre about not getting a top-security clearances didn’t land; maybe he needed a Trudeau aide to write the question.
The longer the answers, the less focused they were. The events, debates in name but whatever you might wish to call them, didn’t change the state of play. It’ll be up to the party’s organizational capabilities, to the candidates knocking on doors, to some ramped-up negative advertising, or perhaps to a last-minute jolt on something these televised events provided no clue about.
Kirk LaPointe is a Glacier Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism.
