Ezra's top 10 observations from tonight's leaders debate
Did you watch the foreign policy debate hosted by the Munk Centre tonight? It was pretty good — all three party leaders were on their game.
Oddly, the CBC refused to broadcast the debate — strange, given their public mandate, and the $1 billion in taxpayer funds they get each year.
Ezra watched the debate, and made a list of ten moments that caught his attention — from Thomas Mulcair’s witty barbs against Justin Trudeau; to Trudeau’s love-letter to his father; to Stephen Harper playing the grown-up on everything from the environment to Canada-U.S. relations.
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Regarding your comments on climate change I feel obligated to make a correction:
Living creatures breath out carbon dioxide which is indeed a critical part of how plants produce oxygen for for animals to breath. Burning fossil fuels produces carbon monoxide which is chemically different and it is indeed poisonous (i.e. people can easily gas themselves to death in their garage with a little bit of resolve). Now enough carbon dioxide will kill you too due to oxygen deprivation but carbon monoxide will get you there much faster. I’m not saying we can just stop burning fossil fuels but there are consequences to doing so.
Now before I am dismissed as some troll, I am from Eastern Canada, i.e. the real Eastern Canada next to the Atlantic Ocean (The Maritimes, not Ontario/Quebec). I support the Eastern Pipeline Project because I for one think it would be great to finally have the capacity to have a real national enery strategy in place if we can just get past 10 squabbling children, er I mean Premiers. I think you would find a lot of support for those projects out this way (especially in NB where the refinery is) but we are not the hurtle to getting the project completed.
I also support nuclear energy, as if “we” are serious about getting to zero emissions power generation we have the technology now… and green washing with wind mills isn’t going to cut it (if we can learn anything from Denmark it should be to avoid deluding ourselves that windmills will replace a single traditional electrical generating station). Not a popular position with many environmentalists/Green Peace but the math doesn’t lie (http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/).
If we were to burn domestic oil and/or gradually transition to Nuclear Power we could finally hang out the Saudi’s to dry and stop propping them up. That’s win-win to me.
Sure there are.
If, instead of a pipe to the west coast, XL is built and the oil is sold to America, rather than to Parteignosse Mulcair’s preferred plundering Peking predators.
Brian Richard Allen
Plus: Fyfe endorses Trudeau after this debate. 1) Fyfe is doing it “in our face” as if we were blind!
2) The Liberals are really scared after this debate.
Why change a Gov. that is doing such a good job?
Fyfe is sleazier than I thought! Ugh!
Dirty politics indeed!
On the big issue facing Canada – immigration – specifically Muslim immigration – there is not much difference between the three parties. All three are intent on destroying our safety and security by flooding Canada with Muslim’s. The only difference is the rate at which they plan to destroy Canada. The Liberals and NDP want to accelerate the rate of the Muslim invasion.
Harper has pledged to bring 10,000 Syrian “refugees” by this time next year. 10,000 is the same number that Obama has pledged. Why is Canada – a country 1/10th the size of the USA bringing in the same number of “refugees”? How can we afford them? On the topic of refugees Harper has boastsed about bringing 22,000 Iraqi refugees to Canada. WTH is he doing bringing Iraqi refugee’s to Canada? We didn’t invade Iraq? On a per capita basis Canada admits more “refugees” than any other country. The second largest group come from Pakistan! Since Harper has been PM he has brought in 300,000 Muslim’s to Canada (which he boasts about). If just 10% are radicalized that is 30,000 Jihadists IN CANADA lying in wait getting ready to kill us! This is a huge issue threatening our future and our very lives (and the lives of our loved ones) and no one wants to debate it?
On Syria all three parties say that Assad has to go. Why? Do we want another Libya and Iraq? If Assad is toppled Millions of Christians and Yazidi’s face extermination. All they are doing is following the failed policies of Barack Hussein Obama. Same with the Ukraine. Harper and Trudeau both supported the illegal coup by Obama to remove a a democratically elected President and start a civil war in Putin’s backyard.
Case in point is Notley’s doubling of the SGER compliance costs from $15/tonne to $30/tonne of CO2-e and increasing the yearly reduction targets from 2% to 3%. These increases were not based on science or available technology that could magically increase efficiencies of internal combustion. Increasing carbon taxes were simply a way for the government to make money to cover the promises they offered up to gullible Canadians. Harper at least has the sense to see that there are other ways to reduce GHGs rather than taxing people like you and I.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U36fCE_vCE
The Conservative Party chose early on not to participate in any debate sponsored by CBC or the consortium of CTV, Global, and CITY. Instead the Conservatives chose to participate in a few sponsored debates that would have little coverage. CBC, CTV and Global could not broadcast the Munk debate—it would have been stealing.
That said, there is no reason for apologists on this site to pretend that Harper looked good in the debate. The Conservatives knew from the beginning that Trudeau would come across better in any widely broadcast debate. Indeed, after each debate he has gained in the polls. The Conservative strength is not by putting Harper in front of a camera—he looks dry and tired. Their strength is spending big bucks on ads that attack Trudeau. When they do this their popularity goes up in the polls.
Second, I have to state at the outset that I really have no horse in this race because I believe in abolishing the party system – for me it represented the same old paradox of selecting one of 3 damaging options which represents the least damage to my and my country’s interests.
That said, even with the moderator injecting serious pointed questions which required rational thoughtful responses, most of the time we heard nothing but mindless sloganeering or self-promoting talking points from the opposition leaders and all I got from the PM was a truncated review of government policy to date (which was not stellar by any means).
My Impressions:
Overall – The way this debate polarized the leaders and the way opposition strayed from the issues was indicative of why Canada does not have a cohesive, reasoned and publically supported foreign policy (or economic or domestic policies for that matter). On this debate stage, as in parliament, there was a total vacuum where reasoned, civil discourse can weigh policy options on their practical merits – that much needed multi-partisan confluence of reasoned debate was drown out by partisan one-upmanship, self-promoting, puerile heckling and other unproductive polarizing priorities. There seems to be no sanctity for conducting the nation’s business in a coherent responsible manner. THIS is why we always end up with half-baked policies (like C-51) or half measures (Like “peace keeping”} or plain bad/damaging legislating (like most budget bills). Opposition has to view their function as public watch dog and as a government support function. What this new polarizing uber-partisanism has done to parliament has conflated what’s good for the electorate with what is good for the party’s/leader’s fortunes – and we are a weaker more factionalized nation for it.
Candidate impressions:
Mulcair: Was stalwart, and linear in his policy positions, he was open about them and made them quite clear to all. I appreciate his candor and full disclosure of intent – unfortunately his policy offerings were either proven unworkable in other jurisdictions, untried and dangerously irresponsible or utopian in nature. I did note that Mulcair always referred to the PM as “Mr. Harper” and to candidate Trudeau as “Justin” with an implied demeaning posture that he was an intellectual and political juvenile/inferior. Tom is indeed an angry man, perhaps as a career politician he feels cheated of his political ambitions by both Trudeau and Harper. Perhaps he is angry that the real world does not perform according to his political models, who knows, – at any rate, his policies are too pragmatically unhinged to be implemented at the expense of the public purse and national security, but he serves as a semi-competent opposition voice.
Trudeau – Yes his favorite subject was himself and this selfie mindset pervaded his performance which, to me, lacked any practical policy alternatives and actually took more to flights of utopian fancy between bouts of self-promoting sanctimony and long winded disjointed bafflegab – channeling the ghost of his father as a jingoistic device for the faithful was just poor taste and bad judgement – a sign of immature recklessness. His policy positions have changed many times in this long campaign and he failed to articulate precisely how they would be more workable than the current policies. All I get from all his incoherent clichéd rhetoric is that he would do what Harper is doing but it would be different somehow – in parliament he supported Harper on the 3 most contentious bills which he was whining about. I think I see a guy who took a job he thought was his inheritance only to find he is in way over his head and is trying desperately to tread water. He may evolve into a responsible MP someday but he is ill suited as a leader of either his party or the nation now – until he discovers the nation does not revolve around him or a single perspective or his family dynasty, that he must be a part of something larger than himself, he is not fit for the position he seeks.
Harper: Simply repeated government policy sit-reps and stats to date, probably with some embellishment but hey, these are politicians after all – no forward looking policy except to “hold the course” which I find to be a celebration of mediocrity – sustain the welfare state, accommodate errant eco-science, go to war with our allies who refuse to buy our oil, build a copy of the US surveillance police state, trust in the gods of the economy to smile on our small efforts at budgetary sanity etc. etc. Not really what Canadians need in this era of both economic and international uncertainty. I wanted to hear about rebuilding Canada’s decimated industrial base, about economic and military self-sufficiency – a rejection of globalist mercantilism and crony capitalism for Laissez-faire free markets. The only place Harper shone was in his initiative to take a leadership role in free nation geopolitics and building our northern sovereignty. Harper was weak and passive and uninspired but the obvious lesser of the 3 evils on stage.
No – I provided the definitive broadcasting industry facts as to why CBC isn’t carrying the debates. But hey, if you want to ignore facts and swing from Ezra’s balls – knock yourself out.
You don’t know what you are talking about or about broadcasting rights. Why do you think different networks air some debates and not others. And I quoted Munk Debates as to who would be carrying the debate.
You need to read this again:
The consortium arrangement under which leadership debates have been produced in previous federal elections was intended to ensure the largest possible audience for these important events. But the plan foundered this time around when the Conservatives said they wouldn’t participate, preferring to support a handful of alternative proposals that Do NOT INCLUDE PARTICIPATION BY THE PUBLIC BROADCASTER.
A subsequent consortium initiative to go ahead without the Prime Minister imploded when NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair said he won’t participate in debates that do not include Harper.
That left the CBC a debate-free zone.
jimmy-duh-silva is just another communist pig with his own “pre-written” narrative handed to him by some other source/political party.
Ignore this stupid communist fuck jimmy-duh-silva – he’s just an annoying turd and doesn’t deserve any further attention.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/trudeau-disproving-conservatives-not-ready-line-of-attack/article26581321/
I read the first paragraph and puked. This is another example of the shit stream media, in this case, ADAM RADWANSKI was the writer. ADAM RADWANSKI – it’s obvious that you run around cupping troodo for a living. No wonder your business is dying fast.