Roundup: No real winner, except TVA itself

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The morning was full of Montreal photo-ops in advance of the TVA debate, with Justin Trudeau going to a famous boxing gym, and Jagmeet Singh going to Atwater Market to “pick up snacks” for debate prep – only to be greeted by a racist incident. While Scheer was not to be seen, he dispatched Alain Rayes to make a reannouncement about the red herring of raw sewage that gets dumped into waterways.

And then the TVA debate. If there was a winner of the night, it was the debate format itself, which offered a lot more substantial exchanges between leaders than other formats, and there was significantly less cross-talk or interruption. That said, the night got off to an early start with the three other leaders ganging up on Scheer to demand answers about his personal feelings on abortion, same-sex marriage and medical assistance in dying (one of the few bits of news out of this whole exercise being that Trudeau said they wouldn’t appeal a Quebec court decision that said that the current guidelines are too restrictive – something that Trudeau initially stood behind Jody Wilson-Raybould over). Most of the lines of attack against one another were well-worn, and Scheer kept insisting that his “national energy corridor” project would be a win-win for everyone, while Singh praised himself as the only leader on the stage with an excess of courage. Trudeau held his own and wasn’t the subject of nearly as many attacks as I might have thought, and the host even tossed him something of a gimme toward the end where Trudeau got the chance to declare that he was standing up for SNC-Lavalin jobs, which is a position that gets better play in Quebec, while Scheer in particular was buttonholed as to whether he would have protected those jobs. In terms of the quality of French, Scheer’s was the shakiest, while Singh largely held his own, but as he did in the Maclean’s debate, Singh hewed to well-worn talking points, including the “I was just talking to someone about…” whatever the issue was. The Bloc leader, Yves-François Blanchet was naturally the commanding presence in the French debate, as any Bloc leader tends to be, and Blachet was the first non-Gilles Duceppe Bloc leader on the stage for the first time in about 17 years – and his calm and polished demeanour didn’t even give way to his reputation in the province as being Pauline Marois’ thug from his time in her Cabinet. (More from Paul Wells on the debate here).

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1179615170944856065

Scheer did try to get one new line of attack in the debate, which was to accuse Trudeau of having two campaign planes – which is actually true in the sense that they have a second, cargo plane that goes in advance to locations with audio-visual equipment to get things set up before the rest of the team and the media arrives. Scheer snidely said this plane was for Trudeau’s “costumes and canoe” (which makes no sense as Trudeau has appeared in a shirt and tie at every single campaign event), and while Trudeau quickly stated that they purchase carbon offsets for both planes, the Conservatives were in full shitpost mode over social media to insist this was climate hypocrisy. [insert wanking motion here]

Other election stories:

  • The National Post has updated their lists of the various party promises.
  • There are currently 117 registered third party groups in this election, but they’re not all advertising (yet).
  • There are questions as to how the Liberal promise to let municipalities further regulate handguns might work (particularly constitutionally).
  • Maclean’s profiles the fight in Windsor, where a popular former Liberal MPP is now fighting against the dean of the NDP caucus, and has a chance of toppling him.
  • “Maverick” Liberal incumbent Nathaniel Erskine-Smith is trying to push the party to intervene on Bill 21, institute a national handgun ban and decriminalise all drugs.
  • Jason Kenney will be in the GTA this weekend to help the Conservatives campaign.
  • Here is yet another debunking of Scheer’s claim that carbon pricing doesn’t work.
  • Conservative incumbent Bob Saroya is distributing a flyer with false information about “fake refugees” and false statistics about criminal records.
  • The Conservatives want Toronto’s integrity commissioner to rule whether a Liberal “informal meet-and-greet” at Nathan Phillips Square breached city rules.
  • Here’s a look at life inside of the Singh campaign.

Good reads:

  • BDC is having difficulty finding projects for the government’s stated goal of assisting clean-tech firms, and it’s losing money on those projects that aren’t meeting goals.
  • Kevin Carmichael gives a more nuanced critique of the Liberals’ deficit plans, and why their ostensibly good plans may lack the credibility needed to sell them.
  • Matt Gurney pans the Liberals’ handgun plans as a “breathtakingly stupid” example of the politician’s syllogism.
  • Colby Cosh offers a look at the scourge of rural crime and the permissibility of warning shots as part of the reality of that life.
  • Paul Wells has had enough of this no-good election campaign, and he’s entirely right.

Odds and ends:

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4 thoughts on “Roundup: No real winner, except TVA itself”

  1. I’m kind of sick of pundit class forever telling us this is the “no good” election as if you all are just passive observers.

    The last election there hadn’t been a Liberal government in a decade and PMJT at time wasn’t even in public life, but now it’s an incumbent government and Scheer is the most Harper candidate the Conservative could find and his frontbench are the same old faces so we know what his government will do. That’s not a bad thing that the public thinks it knows where the parties stand, but it does make journalists job harder so rather than rise to challenger, they will choose by the press (and it is a choose) to spend this week talking about campaign planes in the second largest country in the world.

    You have lamented all the time that CPC are in permanent campaign mood. The Government will introduce a bill on some topic like pensions as a random example and we never from “Shadow Minister” for Seniors in the opposition even once during QP that week while all the other MPs get up to ask the same question about a swing set at Harrington Lake more than a dozen times in a row.

    Also this is only second ever fixed election day and usually the government has to rationalize why it is going to polls versus now it’s just because.

  2. So journalists like Paul Wells are complaining this is “nothing” campaign and now reward the small potatoes politics by spending DAYS talking to death about campaign planes? Journalists are part of the problem.

  3. Trudeau said they wouldn’t appeal a Quebec court decision that said that the current guidelines are too restrictive – something that Trudeau initially stood being Jody Wilson-Raybould over)’

    What?

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