Going to the Candidates' Debate

Conservative candidate Nadir.

Last night I attended a local candidates’ debate here in the Canadian federal riding which, to preserve anonymity and protect the ashamed, we shall refer to as Bitches-East Yuck.

Such an event is probably not representative of anything at all, but nevertheless, I did it, so you must suffer through my notes.

First note: it was a packed house, in a large church. This suggests great public interest in this go-about. This may suggest trouble for the incumbents. Or it may not. Experts argue.

Second note: Liberal candidate Nathaniel Eelskin-Jones oozed charisma. If he survives this election, this guy has a future.

The Libs were out in force with glossy big flyers to hand out. The candidate himself extended a hand to all at the entrance to the church beforehand. A highly professional, well-funded operation. Not hard to recognize the establishment.

Four out of five candidates showed: Greens, Liberals, NDP, and PPC. The Conservative standard-bearer did not show. A pity, because she seems to be gorgeous. This no-show evoked the earliest boos from the audience.

This may suggest that Justin Trudeau’s non-appearance at national debates has similarly hurt him. On the other hand, this riding is historically unTory: they’ve never won it. It is a swing riding between the Liberals and NDP. They probably would have booed her presence at least as much as her absence.

Given this, the PPC candidate, Debandoug Mackenzie, deserves credit for courage in coming.

Actually, I am not quite accurate in saying that only the Tory candidate failed to show. So did Joe Ring, running for the None of the Above Party.

Unsurprisingly, given the electoral history, the Liberal and the NDP candidates got the most applause at their introduction. I could not tell who got more.

The NDP candidate, May Day, ranking challenger to the reigning Nat, was not impressive to look at. Short, squat, long straight hair, she looked like a campus radical from central casting. For some reason, leftist women are rarely attractive, and rightist women always are. She introduced herself as a human rights lawyer. She probable won likeability points by mentioning she was also in a klezmer band.

The Green Man was thin, young, bespectacled, and bowed of tie. Not a serious look. Let’s call him Waldo. If you need to ask why, look closer.

Debandoug Mackenzie was tall and blonde. An appropriate contrast to the NDPer aside her.

The MC, a local news anchor, twice jumped right in immediately after Ms. Mackenzie had stopped speaking, stepping all over the applause. He did this to no other candidate all night. This may have been to hurt, by masking the applause, or to help, by masking its absence. Since there was actually pretty enthusiastic applause, and it began before he did, I highly suspect the former. Like most gentle folk of the press currently, this guy seemed fairly blatantly partisan and on the left. Perhaps the Conservative candidate, Nazeerah Nadir, was forewarned.

I can even name this guy's preferred party: he made it easy being Green. At one point, he cited scandals affecting all the party leaders, in a feint at being even-handed. He had to stretch a bit to hit Jagmeet Singh—only that he had not yet visited the Maritimes. But he actually said it was hard to think of anything against Elizabeth May.

This no doubt came as a surprise to many who had heard of photoshopped straws, or endorsing separatist candidates, or failing to support her own Green candidate against Jody Wilson-Raybould. It was all like the persistent media myth that the Obama administration was free of scandals.

He was not so fond of the Liberals.

For the PPC, he asked about Bernier calling Greta Thunberg “mentally unstable.” Hardly a public issue; more a declaration of partisan allegiances. Mackenzie drew boos by responding, in part, that this was admitted publicly by both Greta and her mother. She might have added that Bernier did not bring it up in his tweet: he was actually agreeing with supporters of Thunberg who were referring to her as autistic. Presumably the problem was no more than his choice of words?

But the boos then also drew pushback from others in the audience.

Not necessarily significant. Obviously, all candidates would have brought with them a corps of supporters.

Later, the moderator asked each candidate in turn what government could do about the housing crisis. The other three all talked about the government building more housing. Odd that none thought of the possible participation of the private sector. But then it came to Mackenzie, who after a halting start saying only that it was not a federal responsibility, said there were two sides to the equation, supply and demand. Short term, it was hard to do anything about the supply. But we can reduce the demand by taking in fewer immigrants.

This provoked a stronger reaction than the Thunberg comment. Someone from the middle rows shouted out, “if that’s how you feel, you should leave.”

But there was again immediate pushback: someone else shouted out, “if you don’t want free debate, YOU should leave.” “This is Canada; we have freedom of speech. We are a free people.”

This may have changed something. Mackenzie was not booed again. When Mr. Green tried to condemn her from the front of the room, for being opposed to immigration, there were voices calling out, “no one said that.”

That seemed to end attempts to attack her from the podium as well. She made her closing statement all about the current assault on freedom of speech. She referred to the troubles around Maxime Bernier’s talk in Hamilton, and specifically to a little old lady with a walker who was confronted and her progress blocked by a swarm of young blackshirts ironically shouting at her that she was a fascist.

This time her ending was not stepped on by the moderator, and she was given energetic applause. There were no boos.

As the meeting broke up, she seemed to have at least as many audience members surrounding her as anyone else. I saw Mr. Green and May Day talking to each other.

I think both audience and other candidates read the room and realized, perhaps with some surprise, that scapegoating the PPC was not going to help them here. But then again, why bother? The PPC is no threat to anyone else except the Tories, and the Tory candidate was not there.

They turned instead, sensibly enough, on the Liberals.

Support for Natty Eelskin-Jones seemed to wane as the night wore on. The moderator asked each candidate how free they would be to dissent with their leader. Eelskin-Jones was the obvious target. He insisted he was perfectly free; that got guffaws. Everyone, of course, was thinking of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. Eelskin-Jones prevaricated in typical political fashion, saying he was personally “not entirely supportive” of kicking the two ministers out of caucus, but “the way things unfolded” it was necessary, because they had made it “personal.”

That got applause from some in the audience. But I suspect to others it diminished him.

As he made his closing statement, he drew hoots: “pipeline!” “SNC-Lavalin!”

The PPC candidate and the NDPer both insisted that their parties and leaders left them free to vote their conscience. Audience members who followed the news knew this was untrue of the NDP, who have recently bounced candidates for little cause. But nobody called Ms. Day on it. Mr. Green, a bit more honestly, insisted that Green MPs would be free to vote their own views on all matters “except a woman’s right to choose.”

Now isn’t that peculiar, and isn’t that an indication that there is something wrong here? The official raison d’etre for the Green Party is, of course, the environment. But once the chips are down, that is not their prime concern at all.

Waldo’s mention may have reminded some in the audience that the Liberal Party has the same dogma: Justin Trudeau is on record that nobody can run for the Liberals who does not support unrestricted abortion.

Nobody took the matter further. It all came too close, perhaps, to pulling back the forbidden curtain.

May Day’s performance was perfectly unremarkable, and nobody ever challenged her or gave her a tough question.

Maybe that means she won. Or maybe that means nobody is very excited about the NDP.