About that debate: pretty good actually

Poilievre shines. Carney survives. Singh annoys. Blanchet Blanchets.

Federal party leaders squared off in the English language debate Thursday. PHOTO: CBC

Thursday night was the English language Leaders Debate in the Canadian federal election. It’s the 45th election since Confederation, if you’re counting, or if you’re not.

I used to have fun on radio by delivering my post-debate review and assessment live on air before the debate occurred then replaying it after the debate to see if anyone could tell. Few could. It was always fun for me. If not always for the listeners. Basically, the standard template review would go something like this.

There were no “knock out” moments during the debate last night and I think it’s fair to say all the leaders accomplished what they needed to do, to call it a win for them. Certainly, their parties think so – I received “Our guy won!” emails from every campaign before the stage lights had even dimmed. The format of the debate was the big problem. There was too much cross talk except for the moments when there wasn’t enough. Leaders were constrained to 60 seconds to provide substantive answers to important policy questions. That’s not enough time, so instead they leaned hard on their rehearsed soundbites, hoping to produce some “viral clips” for social media later. All in all, the moderator(s) struggled to keep things moving and civil. We absolutely must reinvent debates before the next time.

I think it stands up. Every time.

I could probably use it today for last night’s debate as well. But I won’t. There were a handful of things I found notable.

Surprisingly, I didn’t hate the format. Each round started with an incisive question about a specific policy promise directed to each leader from the moderator. A different question for each leader. Then, onto follow ups and open debate. All formats are problematic. This one seemed as good as any I’ve seen before. So props for that.

And kudos to TVO’s Steve Paikin who’s as good a moderator as Canada currently has. It’s always a challenge to herd cats, but he managed to do an impossible job. Your mileage may vary.

My charge to political candidates when preparing them for debates has always been this: It’s not your job to “win” the debate. Remember, you’re talking to people at home – not your opponents in the room. You’re not trying to win an argument on stage. Get your message out to the audience. Repeat it often.

Each candidate last night had a different objective, a different message to deliver. How’d they do?

Poilievre made the pivot – maybe too late

Mission: Look confident, calm and prime ministerial. Be the leader not the pitbull. Frame your vision for the future and yourself as the leader to follow to get there.

I’ve been harping on Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre throughout the campaign to pivot from pitbull to prime minister. He’s a great, cutting attack dog. But, that’s not what Canada needs from its prime minister… ever. Certainly, not right now. We need an inspiring leader who can seize our attention, get us fired up with patriotism and say “follow me!” as he leads us to accomplishments we didn’t think were possible. Sadly for Canada, that leader was not at the debate.

But, Poilievre has changed. He was good last night. He landed some strong, appropriate, punches on Carney – but focused principally on what he and a Conservative government would do. He sounded like he had a plan. He sounded like a guy who knew what he’s talking about. He sounded confident. That’s a huge step towards inspiring leadership and big step away from the belligerence that has marked his persona for too long in this campaign. Will he continue down this path? Does he have enough time to change the mind of swing voters? I don’t know.

Poilievre needs to go all-in on leadership and inspiration. Instead of focusing on rallies designed to fire up diehard supporters – who may well have already voted for him – he needs to expand the bubble to target available swing voters. Inspire them with a vision of Canada that stands up for itself, that doesn’t kneel at Donald Trump’s feet, that defends, feeds, powers and motivates itself – and the free world. Double down on democracy in a world where the USA is abandoning it.

Inspire us. Motivate us. Convince us he’s got the map to a better place and a plan to get us there. Canadians are hungry for leadership and ready to follow.

Overall, I think Poilievre achieved his mission. But, he’s got a lot of work to do to convince Canadian voters in the week he’s got left.

Carney survived – which is all he needed to do

Mission: Don’t. Fuck. Up. You’re the frontrunner – don’t give anyone planning to vote for you a reason to change their mind. Everyone on stage will be trying to get under your skin, to make you angry, to make you seem snarky. Don’t take the bait. Don’t talk a lot. Everything you say will be used against you.

Liberal leader Mark Carney is a political neophyte and it showed. He’s the frontrunner and his team decided to play it safe. That’s a smart call. He made some rookie mistakes about where to look and how to avoid resting-Ignatieff-face. He forgot some of his lines (mistaking a pipeline his government killed for one his government bought) but, overall, he didn’t make any fatal errors.

His team knows what it’s doing, even when he doesn’t. And that’s the biggest criticism of Carney: Who is he? What does he think? Nobody knows. Everything he’s said and done has been tightly scripted by the same backroom staff who produced Dalton McGuinty, Kathleen Wynne and Justin Trudeau. I will be very interested to see what Carney says and does when (if) he sheds their dried up skins and emerges as his own man.

Carney’s big weakness is he wants to suck and blow at the same time. His managers want him to claim credit for policies Liberals imposed over the last 10 years – if you like them. But, Carney wants to avoid responsibility for those same policies – if you hate them. “I just got here,” he said. Which has already been memed by the same Conservative war room that brought you “Just visiting” and “He didn’t come back for you.”

Yves Blanchet put it to Carney directly: You’ve been saying you’re not Trudeau, but can you tell us how your (housing) policy is different from his? Carney had no answer and reverted to his scripted talking points on another topic. Poilievre asked a number of specific, pointed questions of Carney, sounding like a criminal prosecutor who can smell blood in the courtroom. Like a shady witness with much to hide, Carney dissembled, never answering the questions and regurgitating his standby talking points.

At the end of the debate, given a chance to put a question directly to any of the leaders, Carney joked he should ask himself a question as everyone did. It was funny. Instead, he trotted out a curious Liberal talking point about Poilievre “not getting a security clearance” to read the NSICOP report on parliametarians influenced by foreign governments.

The “security clearance” question is a gold-plated gotcha! in the minds of Carney’s strategists and it clearly works with his diehard base. It’s the main message on many of their social media posts and in emails from campaign managers to volunteers and supporters. It’s their only response to the growing weight of evidence that Liberals have a huge China problem. But, I’m genuinely unsure how it lands with non-supporters. Certainly, it falls flat amongst Conservative supporters. I don’t know if it lands with swing voters. Presumably the Liberal war room knows something I don’t.

The charge by implication is that Poilievre is hiding something, so he’s afraid to undergo the vetting process for a security clearance. But that suggestion doesn’t hold up. In any case, Carney’s question allowed Poilievre, who’s been answering this question for months, to clearly and confidently refute the allegations. He explained how they’re wrong, described the devil’s bargain the Liberals had demanded. He pointed out even former NDP leader Tom Mulcair agreed he’d have done exactly what Poilievre did when he was Leader of the Opposition – a nice appeal to conflicted NDP voters. Most importantly, the question gave Poilievre an opportunity to turn the question around and remind everyone of Carney’s personal leadership failure when he refused to act on evidence one of his candidates was complicit with China.

Perhaps the security clearance question is just bait to drage eager Conservatives into lengthy arguments about why it’s a dumb charge, instead of using their available talking time to advance positive Conservative messages.

Overall, I think Carney achieved his mission. He didn’t do well. But, he survived. And, that may be enough.

Singh was the boy with a pin at the birthday party popping all the balloons

Mission: Give traditional NDP supporters a reason to stick with you. Say out loud the stuff they’re thinking. Say the stuff about Poilievre that Carney won’t say.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was most strident when he was interjecting and talking over Poilievre and, to a lesser extent, Carney. I listened to the debate on radio, where Singh’s voice came through as loud as the others, making it difficult to follow what they were saying when he was stepping on them. I don’t think this was just the behavioral tick of a rude boy. I believe it was a premeditated tactic designed to accomplish two things.

First, Singh’s attacks on Poilievre were vitriolic and almost manic at times. I think he was trying to win back ideological NDP voters who hate the Conservatives with a passion. They’re voting for the Liberals because they see Carney as the best option to beat Poilievre. But Carney doesn’t attack Poilievre as passionately as they’d like. By saying out loud what those former NDP supporters were thinking, Singh was reminding them nobody else will voice their thoughts. Which is what NDP voters want. They are not a governing party. They’re a soapbox party looking for an opportunity to preach. Nobody preaches like Singh.

The second objective of Singh’s annoying and constant interjections was, I believe, to “pollute” the audio. He interrupted most often and most loudly when Poilievre or Carney were making good points – the kind of points their campaigns would like to clip and share on social media. By spoiling the audio he made that harder to do. Even if the Liberals and Conservatives use the clips anyway, you’ll be able to hear Singh bleating over it. All of the leaders were mic’d and I expect their audio was recorded on separate tracks, so it should be possible to isolate Poilievre or Carney’s mic from Singh’s. But Singh sounded loud. Perhaps loud enough to be recorded on the other leaders’ mics. At best, it will make clips more difficult to prepare for viral use.

Overall, I don’t think Singh achieved what he wanted to do. At the end of the debate, he reminded his supporters it was the NDP that forced the Liberal government to advance some policies they’ve long advocated for. But, I don’t know if anyone’s listening to him. His time is done.

Blanchet landed some hits on Carney but…

Mission: Chip away at Carney who’s eating up your votes in Quebec. Stand up for Quebec’s independence – within Confederation and otherwise.

Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet looked like the neighbour you invite to the party so he doesn’t call the cops when it gets too loud. He doesn’t know anybody there, but he’d rather be at the party than alone at home listening to the fun next door.

In his closing closing statement, Blanchet reminded Canadians and Quebecers he doesn’t want to be prime minister and he doesn’t want Quebec to be part of Canada. He wants Quebec to be an equal economic partner with Canada.

He tried to cajole Carney to explain how he would be any different from, or better than, Justin Trudeau. Quebecers didn’t like Trudeau. What’s the difference? Why vote Liberal now if they’re the same?

Blanchet made a particularly strong point about the Charter and its Notwithstanding Clause (Section 33) which Quebec has used routinely to build its “distinct society.” Carney had slammed Poilievre’s promise to use Section 33 to override to pre-empt the Supreme Court from overturning a new Bill to allow judges the discretion to impose consecutive sentencing (or parole limitations) for multiple murderers. The Supreme Court had previously struck down a similar law, calling it cruel and unusual. The Bloc leader put it to Carney directly: You’ve said it’s wrong to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause before a court has ruled on a law – and you’ve said it’s wrong to use it after a court has overturned a law. So when can you use it? Why is it there?

It’s a good question and belies the fact Section 33 exists for a reason. If it’s wrong for Poilievre to use it to punish multiple murderers, isn’t it equally wrong for Quebec to use it to protect its distinctness? Ergo, Carney is as bad as Trudeau.

Overall, I think Blanchet achieved his mission. He reminded voters in Quebec the Bloc will stand up for them even in the face of renewed Canadian nationalism. The big question remains, how many Quebecers have been swept up in that same national fervour. And, for how long?

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What did you think about the debate? What surprised you most about any of the leaders?