Hey! I watched The Debaters on the CBC last night!
That new host wasn’t as funny as Steve Patterson, though, and those six comedians weren’t very funny at all.
But … what’s that?
Oh. Embarrassing! My wife just told me I wasn’t watching The Debaters. It was the Conservative Party leadership debate. No wonder I fell asleep sitting in front of the computer.
I thought The Debaters was just a radio show. I guess it still is. For sure, though, they should think about replacing the squeaky clown-nose sound with that sad trombone.
OK, so that lame bit wasn’t very funny either. But, seriously folks, what are we supposed to say about last night’s first and only English-language Conservative Party leadership debate?
As for the debaters – tonight’s debaters, that is – they might as well have been asked to debate “Apples are nicer than oranges,” or “Spicy food is better.”
The format of the debate – which was like nothing they’d ever seen before, all the professional commentators kept agreeing – was designed to be entertaining without being revealing.
That is to say, the time for answers was so short that none of the candidates could get into trouble. If they did start to say something that might fire a torpedo below the waterline of HMS Tory – which is listing hard to starboard these days – the real moderator, Tom Clark, was there to step in and shut them up.
By the time they got to any potentially dangerous topics, or anything resembling real debate, it was in the second hour, when anyone who needed to be paying attention had either fallen asleep like your blogger, or started nervously doom-scrolling through Twitter.
Before that we had quick snappers. Like, if you could have dinner with a dead person, who would it be? Seriously, people, I’m not making this up!
Pierre Poilievre said Abraham Lincoln, because he admires him so much. Mr. Poilievre, who is upset about Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act in an emergency, is apparently untroubled by Mr. Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus! Well, different circumstances. Somebody – one of the no-hope candidates, I think – wanted to have dinner with John Diefenbaker. Doesn’t sound like much fun to me, but I suppose you could ask if he really fathered that kid.
Jean Charest, if memory serves, named John A. Macdonald – which was either a dog-whistle or an attempt to suck up to the Conservative crowd in Edmonton. I mean, seriously, who wants to have dinner with a drunk racist?
Another snap question: What politician do you most admire? Only one Margaret Thatcher! Luckily, they specified a politician or at least two of them would have named Jesus Christ, I’m sure.
Favourite musician? Mr. Poilievre said Paul Brandt, didn’t he? That was one of several piercing dog-whistles the man delivered! The Coutts Blockaders will know what I’m talking about.
And what was the last book you read? This was the moment the affair actually became a comedy show. Half of them couldn’t seem to remember a book that they’d read and had to scramble to fake it. (Whew! Never saw that coming!) Jean Charest said he was reading a book about Russia but he couldn’t recall the title just then. War and Peace, maybe?
Well, this is Canada, so nobody said “the Bible,” but I bet you a couple of them were tempted.
Mr. Poilievre again: “Well, um … uh, uh … Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules? Great book! And a lot of good lessons. We all need to, uh, improve ourselves and I think he has a lot of good wisdom in that book that could help anybody.”
Right. Mr. Poilievre would do better to take up 12 Steps to get off that junk, you ask me!
There was precious little more of substance, as the format did its job. Well, Mr. Charest gave a couple of stirring Nineties bits about national unity, which seemed not to elicit a single clap of support from the grim Albertans Cons in attendance.
Mr. Poilievre, who is supposed to be the frontrunner, dropped one item of news – not particularly reassuring. He may not have defended his advocacy of cryptocurrencies very well – the fact Bitcoin’s kept falling ever since he first mentioned the topic and has now hit its lowest level since 2021 certainly helped his opponents – but he still wanted us to know the first thing he’ll do if he becomes PM is fire the Governor of the Bank of Canada.
Only Patrick Brown seemed to want an immediate nuclear war with Russia, and since he seems to be rapidly sliding toward irrelevance anyway, that was almost reassuring. Everyone else seemed to be properly briefed on why an effort to enforce a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine might not end well for anyone.
Leslyn Lewis, as she did in the party’s previous unsuccessful leadership go-round, was the only candidate last night who would openly admit to being opposed to reproductive freedom. All the others claimed to be pro-choice – although, given the influence of the party’s base, you have to wonder what kinds of qualifiers and secret deals are built into those anodyne assurances.
Again, the format prevented any serious examination of their beliefs and likely actions.
And then it was over. All the candidates except Mr. Poilievre stuck around to answer questions from the few reporters who were on hand, about half of them from far-right online outfits.
For his part, the frontrunner slipped quietly out the door, never having risked a question that might tempt him to slip out of his message box.
Totally irrelevant and a waste of time? Probably not, but it sure felt that way.
I rather recall the Diefenbaker government had a near miss constitutional crisis by trying to interfere in Bank of Canada policy choices. Perhaps some somebody should inform Mr. Poo-liver of this still applicable precedent. That is the B of C operates independently of the government. Mr. Poo-liver seems to have missed the course on the Canadian banking system. Perhaps a certain former PM with a Masters degree in the dismal science could enlighten Poo-liver somewhat.
Skippy’s statements are much like Trump’s – if you are reading them looking for factual truth, you’re not going to find much. If you are reading them looking for things to stir outrage and resentment among people he has identified as vulnerable to his brand of propaganda, they start to make more sense.
I’ve thought Skippy was a fork-tounged weasel who couldn’t make a good faith argument if his life depended on it for more than a decade, but I didn’t think he was THIS bad.
PMs have run a foul of Bank of Canada governors before. Diefenbaker’s notable fight with the Bank’s governor at that time resulted in the “Diefen-Dollar” because international markets slammed the Dollar’s value over the matter of the Bank’s political independence being compromised. Later on, Governor John Crow, in a bid to halt the 6% inflation rate and a crashing Dollar, hiked the Bank Rate twice — 500 basis points one week and about another 450 points the next. The resulting 9.5% jump in the Bank Rate, it was widely believed, caused a recession that was exclusive to Canada. There were calls for Mulroney to fire Crow, but he defended the political independence of the Bank and kept Crow, who eventually resigned about three years later.
Trump, famously, wanted to axe Powell as Fed Chairmen because Powell wanted to raise the Fed Rate and dampen inflationary creep. Trump had an election coming, so he was determined to keep the cheap (free) money flowing.
What all this says is that getting rid of a director of monetary policy is usually the dumbest move. Where Skippy Pollivere’s big idea is concerned, I’m not surprised.
If they pull it off, this Conservative leadership race could actually be interesting. There are some major policy differences and potential for some chippy interpersonal conflict that rose to the surface in the last pre-debate debate. Of course this is also the sort of thing that can blow parties up.
So, it seems they tried, or were told, to play it safer (ie more boring) tonight. It seems odd to have the only official English language debate so early in a race that doesn’t end for some time. One wonders if there will be another debate, say perhaps in Toronto, nearer to the end.
The last debate was a bit too chippy at times, so perhaps they over compensated this time. However, I suppose there is still plenty of time for things to heat up again.
I do still see potential for it to be interesting. Lewis seems inclined to go at Poilievre a bit from time to time, Poilievre seems to go at Charest some and well Charest seems fairly unflapable, but they might just get to their Jerry Springer moment by fall if they really work at it more. We can only hope it will not be as boring as the last two Conservative leadership races.
Nothing like a bunch of pretend conservatives and Reformers trying to remain relevant. While there are those in Canada who may not always agree with Justin Trudeau, we would be worse off with any of these people in power. Pierre Poliveire has never had any other employment in his life, outside of politics, and his policies are quite farfetched, so how he has any popularity is beyond me. The rest don’t seem to have any charisma either. Also, their policies are just grandstanding, and murky.
As I have been saying for some time now; conservatives of every stripe have nothing for you.
Not a thing!
Nada!
Not a sausage!
These carpet-baggers, who are in it only for the perks and pension that comes from the job, know it. Media obviously knows it.
And if any thinking person spent 2 seconds thinking about this farce, they too would know it.
Conservatism is an empty and bankrupt political philosophy today. At least as practiced in Canada and the US and the UK.
It is, and it’s practitioners are, merely mouthpieces and stooges for the last vestiges of avaricious and mostly criminal capitalist system we’ve all been part of for the last 50 years. donald tRump is the best poster-boy for this mob.
Anyway, sweep them out, like the debris that they are.
I had very low expectations. My expectations were met in spades.
The only positive for me was that PP’s lack of depth and understanding on such subjects as crypto currency and the Bank of Canada were on display for all to see.
I can understand why he continues to appeal to supporters of the Freedom Convoy.
I think his idea that we can “opt out” of inflation via bitcoin could have come out of the mouth of Sarah Palin.
So, Skippy Pollivere admires Abraham Lincoln? A freeDUMB loving, pro-Trucker Convoy adherent like Pollivere has no problem with Lincoln’s clear and historically documented subversion of every right and freedom, because he was in the middle of a civil war that was killing hundreds daily. I guess that means that Lincoln had a good reason, but PMJT didn’t have a civil war to contend with, so he’s wrong, according to Pollivere’s sage wisdom. But if Trudeau had a civil war, like one involving violence and gun play, I suppose Pollivere would say Trudeau’s actions would be unwarranted, because they’re our people against you people, according to Polivere’s stellar intellect. It appears that Pollivere sees reality as malleable as Jason Kenney.
Speaking of civil wars, Pollivere is taking some delight in poking the civil war in the CPC, by denouncing Charest as a “red tory” a closet liberal. RINO or CINO wasn’t uttered, but Pollivere was getting there.
All I can say is that Pollivere better watch it. Now that the pro-life brigade is rampaging through the US, the like-minded in Canada will pop their heads up and demand the same from the CPC. Charest will never go there and Pollivere is afraid to, which leaves Leslyn Lewis as the candidate most likely to defend the pre-born. Even in the US, the most ardent and unassailable of the pro-life campaigners are women, so she could score enormous SoCON mileage if she pushes anti-abortion in her policy platform.
Yeah, Lewis could be a threat to Poilievre. She has some consistency and he seems to stand for whatever is popular at the moment and dumps it like a sack of cold potatoes later, like the truck protesters. Now he is onto cryptocurrency, just when it seems to be plummeting in value and people are losing lots of money on it. So, we’ll see how long his latest hobby horse lasts.
I’ve noticed that Republicans tend to talk about Lincoln a lot when they’re trying to not appear racist.
Without going to too far into the weeds, Lincoln wasn’t exactly a civil rights icon. He favoured separate but equal insofar as race relations went, provided that the Blacks should never be allowed the vote. But the Great Emancipator did welcome Fredrick Douglas into the White House when he visited. The story is Lincoln had to go to the gate and welcome Douglas personally, because the guards refused to let a Black man onto the grounds, even if he was Fredrick Douglas.
So, for current day Republicans identifying with Lincoln, it not a stretch for that association to make sense.
Very true that Lincoln was not perfect. Fun interesting fact though – Lincoln and Karl Marx had a mutual-fanboy-thing going on! Give it a google, then “offhandedly” mention it whenever a Republican supporter bring up the “party of Lincoln.” It’s fun!
I could be wrong but I’m willing to bet there isn’t a conservative in Canada who doesn’t remember Alison Redford handily defeating Danielle Smith because of the abortion issue. They might think it but the only ones saying it out loud are ideologues in backwards pockets. Conservative women would like the ability to plan their families such as any other, the pro life lobby in Canada is significant but it is NOTHING like the United States.
Sad day when campaigning is not about showing what you stand for, but hiding what you stand for.
“Only Patrick Brown seemed to want an immediate nuclear war with Russia…”
Assuming the debate was not supposed to be standup comedy, Mr. Brown should stick to the dunk tank at the Sunday school picnic.
At least the spent fuel rods at the Pickering Reactor can be put to good use. Nukes, anyone? Anyone?
Had to google to verify this, it seems incredible but the Conservatives don’t intend to have any more English language debates. The plan is to have one more French debate May 25 then go to the polls September 10. That’s 6 weeks of campaigning with no debate. Their first debate was a spectacle, the second was drivel, and they apparently feel there is no need to try to do a real debate.
If this was a federal campaign I’d understand – the more they say, the more likely they are to say the quiet part out loud and lose themselves the election. This is a leadership campaign. One of them is going to win. Super strange and unsettling to me that a bunch of professional politicians are going out of their way to avoid telling their voters what they stand for, except in dog whistles.
I’ve found reported in several places that “Anti-abortion group Campaign Life Coalition spoke Wednesday in front of the Supreme Court of Canada to discuss the implications of the leaked U.S. Supreme Court decision.” I can’t find one further word. I have many questions:
1)Why did the Supreme Court meet with them at all, and why did they do it now, on such short notice?
2)How was the meeting arranged? Were proper channels followed?
3)Isn’t the Supreme Court supposed to be politically neutral, and supposed to avoid the appearance of impropriety and/or partisanship?
4)Is this business as usual and I’m missing context that everyone is aware of?
5)Do all special interest groups have the ability to get meetings on short notice with the Supreme Court?
Any answers to any of these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Neil: Someone is pulling your leg. They held a news conference on the lawn in front of the building. So they were literally in front of the Supreme Court building, not before the court. DJC
THANK YOU! Found that exact phrase in several different articles, very reassuring to think it was a small mistake made by someone that then got copy/pasted into several articles.
To be fair that is* clever wording.
Wasn’t the “debate” held in the former Preston Manning Centre, that once-and-forever beating heart of Canadian Conservatism? (At least ol’ Preston would dearly love to believe so, even though his name isn’t on the building anymore.)
That would explain the quickie answer times and the fluff-and-guff questions. Can’t risk having an actual opinion rear its ugly head and further damage the Con brand.
The debate, its questions and the moderation were sophomoric.
Three of the candidates are or were electable until Aitchison’s “rein in the CBC”, Charest and Brown are palatable. Brown is right on Russia, if any of you have read “The Best and the Brightest” or “From Yalta to Malta” you would recognize a salami slice when you see one. The chance of a missile launch is next to zero, as it would result in the complete annihilation of Russia as a civilization. Russia’s military doctrine is and has been if not met with strength carry on, if met with strength defend until Winter. It is a summation by me.
“Why don’t you watch the debate with me,” asked my squeeze.
“Nah, I gotta practice for a gig…’I used to raise a lot of Cain in my younger days/While—“
“Aren’t you interested?”
“Not really…’—Mama used to pray my crops would fail/Now I’m a hunted fugitive—“
“Well, I’m gonna watch it.”
“Uh, okay, Sweetie…’—with just two ways/Outrun the law or spend my life in jail’”
So I’m just starting to get Merle Haggard’s guitar refrain, only Roy Buchanan style, and she returns with her synopsis.
“ ‘I’d like to settle down but they won’t let me/ a fugitive must be a rolling stone/Down—“
“Well, that was the stupidest thing I ever saw—the questions were just inane!”
“—that’s nice, dear. ‘—every road there’s always one more city/ I’m on the run—“
“I never paid much attention to that Poilievre guy, but I’m really starting to really dislike him.”
“That’s nice, dear. ‘—the highway is my home [then that riff on the Tele…].’ “
“Are you listening to me?”
“Uh, yeah: Poilievre is inane…”
“Oh never mind!”
“But, Honey, how does my riff sound? Alright? …Honey?…Honey?…”
Dang, maybe I shoulda watched it. Truthfully, though, by all accounts, I’m glad I missed it. Maybe watch the highlights—if there are any. And brush up on my diplomacy…
“Honey, I love you and if you want to watch that crapfest, I completely support you. I, however, would rather pass flaming kidney stones through my eyeballs.”
This is when I wish some of the conservative MLAs I knew were still alive to see this gong show. I know Lougheed and Getty would have had a lot to say. They were furious with Klein .
So Pawliver is leading the pack proving just how stupid people are. He watched Klein trick stupid Albertans for so long he thinks he can do it at the federal level and he may get a huge surprise. Unlike conservatives in Alberta , Saskatchewan, and Manitoba who would vote for a bale of hay if you called it a conservative bale, eastern Canadians don’t seem to be that stupid. They have been smart enough to make certain that a Reformer hasn’t been a prime minister since Stephen Harper created his financial mess.
Where else could you praise criminals for creating a $36 million mess in Ottawa and you don’t care. Pawliver did.
Where else could you brag about destroying the careers for about 7,500 young Canadians and get a standing ovation for doing so. Pawliver did.
Where else could blame an international huge cost of living increase on Trudeau or the head of the bank of Canada and promise to fire him. Pawliver did.
Add in the stupidity of Brian Jean and Jason Kenney who had their supporters believing that Rachael Notley and Justin Trudeau were responsible for creating an international oil industry crash that occurred a year before Trudeau and Notley were even elected. Or the fact that Alberta is broke because they have had to send billions of dollars to Ottawa and Quebec in the form of equalization payments, when Alberta has never paid a penny.
As the former MLAs taught me Reformers don’t ever have a solution to a problem they only blame it on others and that certainly describes them. They aren’t smart enough to handle it. It’s comical that while they hurl sarcastic comments at Trudeau he is the guy they run to for help when they can’t handle it. It proves what a farce they are, doesn’t it?
They should not have been debating policy per se. They should have been debating how to make their party and it’s policies more appealing to the great mushy middle of the Canadian electorate, especially in the large urban centres where most of the voters live. For instance, will they ever really, truly, credibly accept the reality of climate change, and propose genuinely effective action to address it?
The current crop of Conservatives seem to be trying to bolster their vote share in their Alberta & Saskatchewan strongholds — the political equivalent of carrying coals to Newcastle. This is not going to get them anywhere.
But my fear is that since Canadians, on average, tend to change their governments after ten or so years in office, for no other reason than that they’ve been in office ten or more years, one of these bozos could end up becoming Prime Minister virtually by default. Should that happen, I think we could all suffer a PM Jean Charest more palatably than a PM Pierre Poilièvre.