I was all ready to watch tonight's leaders debate and sink my teeth into some exciting politics and inspiring lines. What I was given was a stale and typical political debate among party leaders. A second surprise came later when Elizabeth May(Green Party) and other viewers also mentioned how stale tonight's leaders debate really was.
Maybe it is because of all the drama around the world going on that our politics just couldn't keep up. I mean there is increased nuclear disaster in Japan, politically based ethnic cleansing in the Ivory Coast, Bombing in Libya and a shit storm of other problems everywhere else.
Although the debate was stale though, your typical important topics made the cut and were given proper air time. I was happy to see that our political leaders still care about universal health care and are not afraid to look back on the history of such an amazing concept and mention how it has not only brought Canadians together, but also parties on all sides of the political spectrum. The reality is that our country is going to have a major issue in the future if we do not put into place the proper measure to ensure that our health system can not only continue on, but also compensate for added stress placed on it from the elderly portion of our population. I enjoyed the Ignatieff quote: "We need to ensure that health care is available to Canadians not due to whats in their wallet or what their postal code is." As nice as this might be, I am still very skeptical towards how the Liberals plan on maintaining our health accords after they attempt to keep all of their campaign promises.
When I look at all of the leaders though, it was obvious that Harper has a 3 vs.1 on his hands and sadly in reality it should have been a 4 vs. 1, however the green party was not allowed to come in. Harper did a good job of at least maintaining his own personal goal of the debate, but he has in no way answered to any of the discrepancies that have occurred in his home base. Ignatieff played a little bit of a cocky political contender, mainly due to his assumption that Jack Layton's party would forever be the opposition party. Be careful Mike, because if some crazy change does happen, the NDP could get some huge support since Jack is the only one stepping outside of the cliche political style in this campaign. Jack Layton I have to say did improve a lot and this is mainly due to tactics that Stephen Harper utilized in the last election. One important change is that his platform is simplified, organized and promises logical reasoning with regards to how his goals will be clearly met. Lastly we have Gilles Duceppe, what can I say!? I still want to take the guy out for a beer, but tonight he seemed like his Quebec nationalism had to be acted at points in order to continue stressing his party's foundation. He asked some important questions to stump Harper and keep him on the defensive, but his attempt to be over the top was a little to obvious at times. Overall, all four did a good job at debating the major issues, but with the continued bashing, Harper's focus on the economy made his arguments seem legit.
Overall, the opposition parties are in a gray zone at the moment. They can continue bashing Harper since he has left them with a lot of material and open weaknesses or they can take the approach of inspiring Canadians to rise up and have hope in real change. If they continue stressing all the bashing, this could easily back fire on them as Harper maintains the image that his party has successfully done good for Canada, while their parties rely on nothing but bashing his party as opposed to having real solutions.
I still have my reservations for Harper, especially after he had the gull to mention that Pierre Trudeau's liberal party was known for destructive spending. Yes, the liberals did spend a lot of money in the 70's, but Mr. Trudeau is remembered for doing more for individual Canadians and this country than Harper will be! While Canada received it's country under Trudeau, what will Harper leave us aside from expensive jets and unnecessary mega-prisons for our lower income citizens to fill?
What do you think about tonight's debate? Do you believe that inspiration and hope came from the leaders discussion? Is Harper still your number one choice for this election or have any of the other leaders given you some interest? Is a coalition still a possible reality? More importantly do you agree with Harper with the economy being the most important issue right now?
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