the Good:
- The round table is more like a debate than a speech, reminds me of my high school debating team days and allows for some good bickering and drama.
- The following transaction re: the Green shift:
- Dion: you’re lying!
- Harper: No I’m not!
- Dion (looking sincerely into camera): don’t believe this man!
- May and Layton have some chemistry when they team up to take down Harper- if this were a different country I would say “running mate”?
- Canada cut hospital beds on recommendation by the IMF?! Good on May for bringing it up
- Ohhh arts question! And from Alberta
- Dion waxing poetic about art…”it brings us beauty”. *sniff*
- Harper says “I will never raise taxes” in a muffled voice from behind his water glass. I put this in “good” because it amused me and I am so over caring about taxes.
the Bad:
- Moderator addresses the candidates as “gentleman and lady.” Thankfully it’s the first and last time
- The first half hour is solely all about the economy and mostly taxes. Lots of boring talking points.
- 3 Tommy Douglas references by Layton FTW! Now I like Jack, but you, sir, are no Tommy Douglas.
- The first two questions are from middle class business men about money. Yawn.
- Yay! A question from a black women who asks about… her baby (who is, admittedly, adorable)
- Harper’s government created a lot of health care… commissions. No one cares about your commissions.
- Harper kind of plays the piano- that’s his art cred? FAIL.
- Harper: arts funding is “not effective”. Booo.
- Question about crime going “out of hand”. This isn’t true, as May points out.
- Remember the environment? Climate Change? Natural Resources? I suppose that’s all so passé.
- The last question is from someone who hasn’t voted in the last few elections. She doesn’t vote because she doesn’t trust politicians… sorry, if you didn’t vote against them you don’t get to complain.
WTF?
- May manages to make a question about hospitals about NAFTA. I’m totally lost.
- Big argument over who’s used a private clinic and who hasn’t- somehow Harper knows about the other candidates’ health records?
- Moderator: “are conservatives barbarians?” What kind of a question is that?
- 3 people have recently been killed in Layton’s riding by random bullets! Where is his riding, the Bronx?
- Question 6 is from a retiree who takes a break from hammering a shed to ask about what they’ll do in office with no “bullfeathers”. The line between folksy and annoying is thin, my friend.
And I am over and out… what did everyone else think?
October 3, 2008 at 5:13 am
Good notes, though I think the killer line was Layton’s, “Where’s the platform? Under the sweater?” It was an ROFL moment for me!
To answer your question re May’s linkage of NAFTA and hospitals. It’s definitely linked. We have universal healthcare – no one who needs care will be turned away from a hospital. And that is a free service, paid f or by our tax dollars, so not really free, just a redistribution of wealth. NAFTA has opened the doors to private companies coming in and setting up for-profit hospitals, in contravention o f the CanadaHealth Act.
Last election Harper revealed that Layton’s wife had used a clinic and not a hospital for a treatment — it may have been cancer-related — but it’s still publicly funded service under the Ontario health insurance plan. Harper’s a nasty bugger.
Moderator was awful, I think.
Layton is in Toronto Danforth.
I must’ve been focussed on Palin/Biden and missed the bullfeathers question, though I did see him come down the ladder..
I give the win to Layton; he was *on*!
October 3, 2008 at 5:29 am
Bronx? Jane Creba was killed during the last election – a young innocent bystander – in Toronto-Danforth, I believe. There was a worker at a supermarket in East Chinatown early this year, hit by a stray bullet. I remember Jack talking about that. That’s two – and I don’t even live in Toronto to have this top-of-mind.
October 14, 2008 at 1:35 am
I LOVE Steve Paiken. He called people on their bullshit and I love me some of that.
Typically if you cut me open I bleed orange but Layton was embarassing in that debate. He kept harping about the “50 Billion in Corporate Tax Cuts” and the importance of issues on the “kitchen table, not the board room table”. And it was annoying.
I think May really rocked it. She kept on point, schooled them on stats and cut the shit. But admittedly, it wasn’t hard for her to do because she had nothing to lose. And well, she’s awesome.
Who won? I don’t know. I hate to say it but Harper’s cool as a cucumber stance was hard to deny.
I guess we’ll find out tomorrow…