On Tuesday, the Liberals held the second of two debates in Montreal, except it wasn’t actually a debate — it was a two-hour long commercial for the party.
This was painfully evident for those who had watched both the French debate the night before and Tuesday’s English debate. Yes, all leadership debates are advertisements for the parties to some extent, but what was significant about this debate was how little any of the candidates actually disagreed.
When the candidates did speak, it looked like they were reading from a script, some looking down as they did so, and not actually responding to each other. Their 90-second openings were pretty much the same as the night before, including Chrystia Freeland’s widely critiqued story about a four-year-old girl from Saskatoon who she asked her, “Can you stop Trump from invading Canada?” Four-year-olds are surprisingly political these days.
The fact that this wasn’t actually a debate is significant. Winning a leadership debate requires candidates to put their ideas forward, so their strengths and weaknesses can be tested and challenged by their opponents. Carny, Freeland, Karina Gould and Frank Baylis did Canadians a disservice when they decided that appearing friendly and united was more important.
The only exception was Gould pointing out that the other candidates all seemed to be adopting Conservative values simply because they had become popular. Gould tried to separate herself from the others by suggesting that, unlike them, she was going to stay true to her Liberal values.
Telling the audience she had actually been excited about what she called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “bold” and “ambitious” progressive plan in 2015, Gould now seems disappointed in her party, suggesting that they weren’t going to bring the youth vote back by being Conservative-light and unambitious.
On Tuesday evening, Gould’s Liberal values centred significantly around reducing poverty, something her government has been combating through its “poverty reduction strategy” since it came to power in 2015.
Gould has held several ministerial positions since 2015, including minister of families, children and social development. Carney should have attacked her for the Trudeau Liberals’ track record on poverty over the last nine years, pointing to long lines at food banks and rising levels of poverty, but that would have made this an actual debate.
It seemed like it was decided beforehand that any such criticism of the party’s past performance was not to be discussed.
Given that Carney was the only candidate on stage who wasn’t in caucus, he should have swept the floor with all of them. Carney could have pressed Bayliss, who was elected as an MP for Pierrefonds—Dollard in 2015, why he was back as a candidate now after deciding not to run in 2019.
While in office, Bayliss was a member of the standing committee on industry, science and technology. Carney could have asked him why he hadn’t put forward any of the technological productivity ideas he had brought up at the debate back then. Alas, that’s the kind of preparation one would do if one actually wanted to challenge one’s opponent.
Carney also missed the opportunity to mop the floor with Freeland, who would have been an easy target. She failed to deliver the fall economic statement and to explain why, as minister of finance, she allowed the Trudeau government to overshoot its deficit guardrail by $20 billion.
This was her file and she performed poorly. What’s worse, she failed to explain this poor performance to Canadians because she had a tiff with Trudeau and abruptly quit. Someone who felt like he needed to win this debate likely would have pointed out that she was remiss in her responsibility to Canadians.
It’s not as if Liberals never challenge each other in leadership debates. In 2006, Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae had some hash words for each other over Israel and Hezbollah. Rae accused Ignatieff of flip-flopping from “not losing sleep” over deaths in Lebanon to accusing Israel of a war crime.
Ignatieff then attacked Rae for his stance on Afghanistan, telling him, “I actually don’t know where you stand on this issue.” To which Rae replied, “You certainly do … for a guy who’s changed his mind three times in a week with respect to the Middle East.“ Offended, Ignatieff retorted, “Absolutely untrue. You know that’s untrue. You’ve known me for 40 years.”
A debate between Stéphane Dion and Ignatieff was also pointed. On his record on the environment, Ignatieff pointed out, “Stéphane, we didn’t get it done. We didn’t get it done.” This led to a very quotable response by Dion: “This is unfair. Do you think it’s easy to set priorities?”
It was so quotable, in fact, that it was used in a Conservative attack ad. Is that what the Liberals are afraid of? Perhaps. But the solution to this problem is to answer questions intelligently, not to avoid bringing up your opponent’s weaknesses. This only leads to the kind of circus we saw on Tuesday, when the candidates seemed to do their utmost to avoid criticizing their own party.
Carney may come to regret failing to treat both these events as actual debates by taking advantage of the obvious ways to challenge his opponents. According to a Mainstreet Research survey published the night of the English debate, Freeland is closing in on Carney, with 31 per cent support, compared to 43 per cent for the former Bank of Canada governor.
In the future, it would be nice if moderators ensured that candidates left their written speeches at home. Having a notepad to ready their responses is fine, but moderators need to ensure that candidates are actually debating instead of reading prepared texts and spouting off scripted answers. Otherwise, it’s a waste of Canadians’ time and becomes little more than an advertisement for whichever party is on stage.
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