Canadian English-language Leaders' Debate

Who won last night’s Canadian leaders’ debate?

This time, at least, that seems to be the wrong question. Winning and losing really only makes sense in a debate between two sides. It is artificial when you have six.

Each probably had different objectives; everyone did well.

Let’s instead look at each in turn.

Andrew Scheer’s job, I suspect, was to position himself as the obvious choice if you wanted to defeat Trudeau. He needed too to overcome suspicions that he was a milquetoast.

He accordingly went after Trudeau immediately with both barrels. Asked, as I recall, about foreign policy, his response referred to both blackface and firing Jody Wilson-Raybould.

I think he did well at, on the one hand, looking combative, and on the other, still appearing dignified and in control. What he said was harsh, and he interrupted with abandon, yet he retained a calm tone of voice. I think it was effective.

When he raised the bit about Trudeau’s campaign using two planes, he was well-prepared for Trudeau’s inevitable response about using carbon offsets. He responded that “carbon offsets” were something only the rich could afford, something the average Canadian cannot resort to. I think that rang true, and played to a growing perception of Trudeau as privileged.

He got in a great dig, perhaps memeable, perhaps killing this line of Liberal attack for the rest of this campaign, on Trudeau’s tactic of linking Scheer with the less popular Doug Ford. “You seem obsessed with Ontario politics. I understand there is a vacancy for the Ontario Liberal leadership…”

Soon after this Trudeau started to sound a little shrill; I think it may have knocked him off his balance.

Scheer scored likeability points as well, preventing him from coming across as too harsh, with humour: like ostentatiously turning toward Trudeau when told he had his choice of whom to challenge. He scored again by generously praising Singh when the issue of Bill 21 and tolerance came up. This was at no cost: Singh is not appealing, for the most part, to the same voters. Any vote for Singh is more likely to be taken from Trudeau.

He was also ready for attack from Bernier, at his right flank. He accused Bernier of having changed his own positions on the issues on which he claims to be the authentic conservative voice. Bernier might have had a comeback; but the structure of the debate did not allow it.

Scheer was evasive at times. May hit him for this early on, and the charge may resonate. He was evasive on Bill 21, evasive on pipelines through Quebec, and evasive on abortion. This may do him no harm in his contest with Trudeau, who is more evasive; but it may hurt him by comparison to Bernier, among his supporters on the right.

Justin Trudeau was always going to have a tough time. He was the guy to knock off, and he had a record to justify. He faced challenges on two sides: he could lose by leaking votes rightward to Scheer, or leftward to Singh and May, and they were going to attack him from both angles. At one point he lamented, “I knew I was going to be criticized by some for building pipelines, and by others for not building pipelines.”

Which was probably his worst, and most revealing, moment: it suggested, first, that he thought it was all about him, and that he did not have principles. And that he did not grasp basic realities: could this be a surprise? Surely only to one who felt entitled, privileged.

And it opened him to a great response from Scheer: “you did nothing.”

Listened to closely, too, Trudeau is often talking nonsense. The words are all that matter. At one point, he actually argued that we needed pipelines in order to sell more gas and oil to raise the money to reduce our use of gas and oil. Perfectly postmodern; but it seems there is a simpler solution.

But overall to me he seemed well-versed, with facts at his fingertips. He performed much better than in the debates of 2015. I was expecting less; I was expecting him to show cracks under the pressure. At one point, near the end, after a hit from Scheer, but debating Elizabeth May, he sounded a little out of control of his emotions. But otherwise, he seemed fine.

He drew blood, I think, against Singh over Bill 21. Not especially clever of him—Tom Mulcair, in Singh’s own party, had just complained about this. It was raised directly by the moderators before Trudeau raised it. But Singh could not respond clearly, because he feared a firm stand would lose the NDP Quebec support. On the other hand, Trudeau’s own stand is barely different from Singh’s, for the same reasons; his firm stand is only to "leave the door open" to challenging the law in the future. Singh might have made something of that. A little honesty might have gone a long way. Instead, Singh tried to make it all improbably enough about big corporations and poverty. Lame as a two-legged cow.

Singh’s main task was to distinguish himself from both Trudeau and May. I don’t think he did this, but I think it was an impossible task. He did show a sense of humour, boosting his likeability; Trudeau, by contrast, showed little humour. He got a good dig in on Trudeau, unexpected by me at least, over two of his cabinet ministers supposedly using offshore tax havens. Trudeau was not able to respond; again, this may have been because of the debate format.

Overall, however, Singh sounded to me too much like an overeager schoolboy. A CTV commentator this morning declared him the winner of the debate. I can’t see that.

Asked a question on foreign policy, the NDP leader actually led with the need to “stand up to Trump.” This contrasted rather awkwardly with Bernier, who had just pledged to “Stand up for Canada.” It suggested that to the NDP, opposing the current US administration was Canada’s primary foreign policy objective.

I am not sure that will play well with the general public. If it does, it certainly does not reflect well on Canadians. Are we that nuts?

Elizabeth May did well, as she does, on sounding sincere. She took on Singh, for a second time, on the fatuousness of claiming he could pay for all his new spending simply by increasing taxes on millionaires. She was also casting doubt on her own spending plans; but in pointing this out, she demonstrated honesty and sobriety. People do value honesty when offered. Most politicians either do not believe this, or lie habitually.

May put a great hole in Blanchet for speaking of Albertans as others. This was fairly irrelevant politically; May’s support in Alberta is no doubt negligible, and Blanchet’s is nonexistent. It is not likely to help May in Quebec. It suggested, again, that May genuinely is a conviction politician.

But May also said, at one point, flatly and gratuitously, “anyone with white skin has privilege.” Sincerity only goes so far; perhaps Vlad the Impaler, too, was sincere in his beliefs.

Yves-Francois Blanchet had no objectives, and nothing to lose. So he was mostly able just to have a good time.

I think his presence, however, was useful. For example, he was able to give the common Quebecois position on Bill 21 and laicization. I think it is fundamentally wrong, but it does have logic behind it, and people in Anglophone Canada never get to hear it. As Blanchet rightly pointed out, it has nothing to do with race or with people different in appearance—a falsehood pushed by Singh in the debate. Calling everything you disagree with racist is cheap, dishonest, and the ideal way to popularize racism.

Blanchet neatly nailed Trudeau on his usual evasiveness, by asking him a straight up or down question, and pointing out that he did not answer it: “No answer?” And at the end: “No answer.”

He also got in a deft shot at Bernier, predicting that he would interrupt, and announcing the precise second when he did.

Up to that point, Bernier was interrupting everyone. From then on, he seemed to mostly hold his tongue and fade into the background. Probably not the best strategy, for him; suggesting that Blanchet scored a clean punch to the chin.

Which brings us to Bernier, who probably had most to gain by a good performance here.

Maxime Bernier needed to do several simple things: he needed to inform the public on what the PPC’s platform was, since this has generally been suppressed and falsified in the media. He had to make a distinction between himself and Scheer; and he had to sound like the guy to turn to if you are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, to surf the populist wave that Trump found in the US, and Farage in the UK.

I think he did the job, but nothing spectacular. There were no surprise revelations, no quick and withering rejoinders. He said only things he has said before. Except for one memorable phrase: referring to Trudeau’s and Scheer’s promises of tax reductions for specific purposes as “boutique tax credits.” Implying several things at once.

He oddly misfired, on the other hand, in accusing Scheer of not reducing foreign aid. Scheer had just referred to his plan to reduce foreign aid, and caught fire from May for it. Bernier seems to have not been paying attention. Or perhaps his English failed him.

Following the comments on the CBC live feed, the largest number seemed to see Bernier as the overall winner. Either he was, or he has a lot more support than the polls seem to show. Or else his supporters are more likely than others to be watching this debate online on CBC. This seems unlikely—even assuming Bernierites are more likely to be computer geeks, would the right prefer the public broadcaster to the various private channels available?

Perhaps this reflects the reality that his role was intrinsically easier to play than that of Scheer, or Trudeau, or Singh, or May. Unlike them, he was able to turn all his guns in one direction. If all the other candidates turned on him, that was only to his own advantage: it distinguished him as the voice of populist dissent.

Given the barest opening, a question on foreign affairs, Bernier led with his proposal to reduce immigration—his most controversial stand, in the eyes of the media. This was deliberately bringing down enemy fire. But Bernier obviously thought this was his best issue. As he repeatedly said, 49% of Canadians want less immigration; only 6% want more. Yet all five other parties want more immigration.

His judgement therefore seems right. This is a winning issue for him.

Bernier went after Singh on free speech. A bit surprising, since Singh is not appealing to the same voters. This makes me think that he did so out of genuine commitment to principle: Bernier really believes in liberal values. Singh soiled himself by doubling down, insisting on someone’s right—necessarily, in the end, his own—to silence opinions they consider objectionable. I hope others were as shocked by this as I was. I hope this is a winning issue for Bernier.

I know Bernier’s position on the Indian Act, and I wish he had injected it into the debate on “indigenous rights.” But it was probably his strategy to remain mostly silent. The boondoggle of Indian affairs is far too complex and too generally misrepresented to address in a sound bite. Scheer perhaps did as well as could be done in this context by pointing out that “advice and consent” of indigenous peoples is something that needs to actually be measured on the ground, and never has been; their opinions are forever imposed on them by outsiders acting in their name. As if they are to be perpetual wards of someone or other. Bernier did call, at least, for property rights on reserves.

I was disappointed not to hear Bernier’s position on Bill 21, a liberal/libertarian issue. But he was probably wise, again, to duck it. Apparently, he supports the principle of laicization. Nobody but the Bloc can win on Bill 21: the position that is popular in Quebec is unpopular in the other provinces. Bernier deserves credit, however, for bringing up “supply management,” his old signature issue, and calling for the construction of pipelines through Quebec; considered by others third-rail issues in Quebec.

Perhaps the most telling part of the debate was when the issue of abortion came up; something other leaders thought they could use against Scheer. Chaos seemed to immediately ensue, everyone shouting at once, Singh and Blanchet apparently breaking into their own side debate.

I think this is revealing: abortion is actually the single most important issue effecting our politics and culture. It is what divides us.

Very much like slavery in the antebellum USA.

Like slavery, it cannot be avoided forever, and the longer it is avoided, the nastier the inevitable confrontation may become.