Words, Mots, Words
By: Nick Papadakis
Tags: Elections, Cdnpoli, Canpoli, Canadian Politics, Debate

English Language Debate, Sept. 9th, 2021

Coming into the second debate, I had my expectations set on a stronger performance from Singh and O’Toole alongside Trudeau’s continued resilience, and questions about whether Paul or Blanchet could stay relevant as the three bigger parties duked it out. I was not expecting a messy and at times hard to watch affair that left even an eager politics fan-boy like myself struggling to stay engaged.

The first theme of the evening, Leadership & Accountability, proved to be a long and untidy start. The moderator, Shachi Kurl, made her first of many blunders of the night, asking an on-the-nose question to Blanchet about racism and discriminatory laws in Quebec that ruffled his feathers.

A more interesting assault from Kurl was on O’Toole who dug into just how much control the leader has over his caucus. His response was less than convincing. Singh came out strong, hitting his tag lines of the ultra rich paying their fair share when asked how to pay for his platform.

It was in this theme that we saw Trudeau truly squirm, when Paul ripped into him for not being a true feminist, outwardly naming four women who’ve been pushed out of the Liberal system.

He recovered when Canada’s handling of Afghanistan was raised, wading through the slashes of “why did you call an election?” with a riposte that shamed the other leaders for talking down the incredible work that people have done over the course of the war, attempting to tell voters that the election did not get in the way of the evacuation.

The theme ended with our first big Liberal vs Conservative stoush on China, with O’Toole claiming Canada’s voice has been absent on Huawei, Hong Kong, and human rights, lambasting the PM for not maintaining Canada’s status as a giant on human rights and the rule of law.

Trudeau responded by accusing O’Toole of wanting to “lob tomatoes across the pacific” like Harper did, and questioning why he can’t keep the Conservative party in line, let alone China. The other leaders were essentially spectators.

The second debate then moved onto Climate Change where the leaders each spoke to their platform promises. The Trudeau-O’Toole wars continued as the two bickered over voting against climate action and not meeting targets. Singh leapt on this opportunity to offer the NDP as a third solution rather than vote for the ‘least-worse’ which was his strongest showing so far.

Paul & Blanchet’s Reaction

When it came to open debate time, despite O’Toole defending being cautious about limiting oil too quickly due to bad actor countries, it was a visibly irritated Prime Minister who aimed his ire at the NDP leader who claimed the Libs had missed their climate targets, blasting Singh for his climate action plan being given an ‘F’ by climate experts.

Thankfully the third theme of Reconciliation cooled things down a touch, with all leaders admitting Canada had failed and that we needed to better to walk this path. For a split-second it seemed like constructive debate could have flourished, until moderator Kurl completely misread the room yet again and hurled another question at Blanchet about systematic racism in Quebec.

While he acknowledged there are problems, the Bloc leader refused to engage in an answer within the aggressive setting. To add salt to the wound, Yves-François was further insulted by the Greens leader who offered to educate him on the matter.

In a standout moment of the night (and perhaps the one that swayed me the most) within a response to the lack of clean drinking water in indigenous communities, Justin Trudeau said something that both surprised and deeply resounded with me:

“One of the enemies of progressive politics, Melissa, is cynicism, is discounting the hard work that millions of people have been involved in over the past years, and yes, there’s always more to do, progressives always know there’s more to do…”

The night moved on to the fourth theme of Affordability, tackling old age care, retirement, affordable housing and childcare. One of Trudeau’s biggest pain points was exposed by O’Toole as he threw a few well-placed jabs at the PM about spending and the fact that the housing crisis has only gotten worse under the Liberal government.

O’Toole was then challenged on why he insisted on giving some families a tax credit rather than commit to $10 a day childcare. Mr. O’Toole claimed dollars in hands gave people more flexibility. Trudeau was then hit with why his most recent budget had no money for national pharmacare to which he claimed they’d started this process with PEI but it was shelved due to the pandemic.

By the time we hit the fifth theme of Covid Recovery, I was starting to lose steam. Singh once again claimed he’d tax the rich to pay for his big-ideas platform, O’Toole danced around his National Plan’s mention of private/public healthcare “synergies”, and Paul dodged attacks on why she won’t consider mandatory vaccination.

There was actually one moment of tension that stood out to me outside of the political leaders. Evan Solomon from CTV News seemed to have stolen Kurl’s line for starting the final open debate. The camera awkwardly panned to Kurl for 2 seconds. Words can’t describe her expression, so here it is:

Global News — YouTube

YIKES.

The night closed on an open question from Solomon on what programs the leaders would implement that would lead to faster economic recovery. O’Toole wanted to prop up food, services and tourism, Trudeau believed it would be affordable childcare, and Singh got one final lash in, telling viewers they can trust the NDP to not cut their programs like the Liberal or Conservative parties would.

What the media said:

My Final Impression (of both debates):

On the debate themselves: If the French debate was a nice salad with a glass of red wine, the English debate was a kid in an EB Games store after having too much sugar. The whole thing turned out to be an Americanised over-produced journalist-focused circle jerk.

I hate to say it, but I walked away feeling more irritated by the whole election than before, which in turn makes me even more irritated because I love elections and this seems to have tainted it somehow.

I found the English moderator, Shachi Kurl, almost unwatchable. She was increasingly combative, made far too many mistakes, and was quite frankly a negative stain on the whole affair. The themes were poorly organised, the questions jumped around too much, and I found the leaders could barely stay on topic long enough to generate solid debate.

On the leader performances: prior to the second debate I was sliding away from the NDP and leaning more toward Liberal.