It’s (English) debate day, which means that it will be a low-key day as leaders are busy with debate prep. Yesterday, Andrew Scheer took the day off, while Justin Trudeau went to Plainfield, Ontario, to plant another tree, which I suspect will be the new go-to photo-op of the campaign. There, he accused Scheer of keeping his full platform and costs secret ahead of the debates, and compared him to Doug Ford given Ford’s lack of a platform during the Ontario election. During a later media availability, he said that he was sticking with the Cape Breton candidate despite his past racist and misogynist posts because he had apologised (which is the standard that most everyone has since adopted in this election).

As for Jagmeet Singh, he was campaigning at a farmer’s market in Ottawa with Ed Broadbent.

Other election stories:

• A tentative deal was reached in Ontario to avoid a strike by school support workers, which means no school shutdown.
• A Conservative candidate in Nova Scotia unveiled the party’s fisheries policies, which involves advisory panels on how to rebuild fish stocks.
• The Conservatives’ ad about carbon pricing contains lies about it. Shocking, I know.
• The Bloc Québécois are hoping that “collective guilt” over the near-demise of the PQ provincially will help their electoral fortunes federally.

Good reads:

• Given the rise in online hate posts condoning violence, the RCMP are monitoring them in fear that said violence may cross over into the real world.
• Here is a look at how foreign policy experts are dismayed by the lack of a sustained conversation on the subject in this election.
• Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami is standardising written Inuktut dialects into a common alphabet to better understand one another.
• In light of the talk of Scheer’s dual citizenship, James Bowden looks at the history of Canadian citizenship and how it obliterated a wider British Imperial citizenship.

Odds and ends:

My week four recap video for Loonie Politics can be found here.

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