Last night had the english-language debates between the prime ministerial candidates. A few highlights.
Last night had the english-language debates between the prime ministerial candidates. A few highlights.
One, I suppose Martin did not crash and burn the way I assumed he would. The interesting thing about Harper was that he was able to pretty much lie about his real plans: for abortion, for health care privatziation, for military spending, and so on. This is one of the nice things about being a right-wing politician, it seems: you can lie in public about your agenda because your hard-core is disciplined and will vote for you no matter what. You just need to fool enough of the swing voters to decide the issue. “Left-wing” politicians, such as they are, are the opposite: they lie to their own constituency, to make sure some of them vote instead of stay at home.
The second note is about Haiti. The most despicable moment in the entire debate came when the Bloc Quebecois candidate, Giles Duceppe, was debating Paul Martin over foreign policy, and they both agreed about Haiti. Paul Martin even said: “You and I both have a personal interest in Haiti.” Not even sure what that means. So while these two were ‘agreeing’ on the need to go ‘help rebuild’ Haiti, the NDP’s Jack Layton (who was supposed to be against regime change and the liquidation of Lavalas on Canadian watch) and our fascist friend Stephen Harper (who was for regime change, after all) sat that little one out. That was the exchange most emblematic of Canadian politics. Those who parade as “men of principle” sitting it out while sleazy politicians tell blatant lies about people getting massacred somewhere Canadian companies are making a tidy profit.
