Front Burner - Recapping a crucial election debate

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

Last night was the only English-language federal leaders’ debate of this election cycle. And with Justin Trudeau and Erin O’Toole neck and neck in the polls, the stakes couldn’t be much higher. CBC senior writer Ryan Maloney joins us for a look at the night’s most significant moments

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Which doesn't work. His costed platform, which you just put out last night,

cuts $2 billion for climate investments and from things. And for our friends in BC, Mr. O'Toole has proposed... So last night was the only English language leaders debate of this very short federal election campaign. And we know, you may not have been quite as glued to it as we were. Maybe you were busy watching that new 9-11 documentary on Netflix. Maybe you were busy celebrating Canadian Leila Fernandez winning her match at the U.S. Open. Maybe you were just outside, taking advantage of these final days of decent weather. You know, having a life. Or maybe, just like us, you're a huge politics nerd,

and you hit play on this episode looking for some quality analysis. Whatever the case, we have got you covered. Ryan Maloney is here with me to break it all down. He's a senior writer with CBC News, and he also writes CBC's Canada Votes newsletter, which you should definitely subscribe to if you haven't already. All right, let's get into it. Hi, Ryan. Thank you very much for joining us very late at night. It's about 1230 a.m. right now. It is. It's very late, but I'm very excited to be here. Thank you. Good. It's great to have you. And your front burner debuted. So it's really great to have

you on the pod. This debate format, I don't know about you, but I find that even though it was two hours, it moved pretty fast. And there's so much going on. And it is hard to follow, even if you follow this stuff for a living. So I'm hoping what we can do this morning, I guess, is let's slow things down and try to get into some of the big takeaways here. And first, how high were the stakes for the two frontrunners, Justin Trudeau, Aaron O'Toole, walking into this debate? Well, I think they were huge.

I mean, the poll suggests that at the end of this, it's either going to be most likely a Prime Minister Trudeau or a Prime Minister O'Toole. And this was the only big English language event. It's coming after Labor Day when people are hopefully tuning in a little bit more and wanting to see what these folks are made of. So a lot of pressure on both of them, I would say. And what did you think Trudeau needed to try to do last night, you know, ahead of the debate? Like, what would you have said that he needed to do?

Well, coming into it, I would have said that his objective was to sort of turn voters against conservative leader Aaron O'Toole. But the way things ended up shaking out, it was almost like his objective became to consolidate the sort of progressive voters. And so you saw him mixing it up more with NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. So I found that very interesting. I did too. I did too. And I want to pick that apart with you more a little bit later. But what did Aaron O'Toole need to do? Well, it seemed to me like Aaron O'Toole's objective was to sort of not scare anybody away, present himself as someone who knows what he's doing and people could be comfortable

making that switch. But to do that, it often felt like he was quiet. I wondered sometimes if he was still on the debate stage, what was going on there. He was so quiet. He wasn't on the attack as much as we might have thought. So some clear strategy there. We'll see if it works, I guess. And I guess I also want to get into why that might be a strategy a bit later too. But first, let's talk about the debate. It started with, I don't know, it started with some fire, I thought. Moderator Shachi Curl just kind of walked out and she just immediately hit each candidate, I don't know, in the nose, basically going straight for what are arguably their weakest points. And take me through how that played out. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so her question for

Mr. Trudeau was the same one he's been getting over and over, which is why are we doing this? Why are we having an election? Because you wanted a new mandate, you plunged the country into an election, even as the pandemic spurs thousands of new cases. But over the last 18 months, opposition parties have largely stood with you, putting the nation above politics. Why aren't you doing the same? For the Conservatives, it was interesting because, you know, she suggested that Mr. O'Toole has tried to paint a different pictures of what conservatives are on, you know, pro-LGBTQ issues or climate change and vaccines. But she brought up that, you know, members of his caucus or maybe members of his grassroots party are not necessarily entirely with him on those things.

So she noted that. Mr. O'Toole, you recommend vaccinations, but you won't make your candidates get them. You have a climate plan, but you won't dump a candidate that shares climate conspiracies. You're on record supporting the LGBTQ2 community, but you allowed half your MPs to vote against legislation protecting them. Tell me, how can voters... For the Greens, of course, you brought up just the unbelievable party turmoil

that we've seen this summer leading into this campaign, which has really damaged Annamie Paul's campaign. For the NDP, another thing that we keep seeing is questions on how they'll pay for their promises because they don't have a costed platform that they've released. And going back to sort of lack of specifics and details, and that's an ongoing issue for Mr. Singh. And for the bloc who, you know, are obviously when they participate in English language debates, they're not necessarily looking for votes, maybe looking to cause mischief sometimes. But they were, you know, she asked him, you know, about supporting policies that she called discriminatory, such as Bill 21, which, of course, prohibits state employees from wearing religious symbols.

And so she turned up the heat on that. You deny that Quebec has problems with racism, yet you defend legislation such as Bills 96 and 21, which marginalize religious minorities, Anglophones and Aliphones. And you're right. She came out of the gate with fire, as you say. Yeah, yeah. And it was interesting. It sort of set the stage for criticisms that would come up again and again throughout the debate, sort of lobbed by the various leaders and also many of the people asking questions, basically.

Let's start with one of the big themes or big topics of the night, climate change. And I'll just note here for listeners, these are complex issues that leaders had to answer, really short soundbites. So, you know, we do have a whole episode on the party's climate change platforms that you can find in our feed, and I hope that you'll maybe go back and listen to it if you haven't already. But coming back to the debate, the liberals have been in power since 2015. And so how and where did Trudeau get hit here? Yeah, so he was hit over, you know, emissions having gone up,

and the NDP leader hit him over fossil fuel subsidies. Generally, you know, the argument that he's not much of a climate leader or a lack of action. One thing that kept coming up, though, from both the NDP and the Conservative leader was a charge that he has sort of missed climate targets, which is, you saw him push back on that because the targets, whatever you think of them, they're set for 2030. It's not 2030 yet. So the notion that he has missed those targets,

taking some liberties there, I think. But yeah, you saw Mr. Trudeau defend his plan sort of by saying that he has had some good reviews from economists and environmentalists saying that it's ambitious and achievable versus the other ones. And we saw that mix up again with the NDP saying your plan isn't so great and I would give it an F and they were grading each other. It's hard to follow. So how is it that the experts that have rated our plan on climate to be an A

have rated your plan to be an F? Who are these experts? I rate your track record an F, Mr. Schroeder. You've had six years. You don't get to rate. People know. Not just me. Experts.

Why did the experts give you an F on your climate plan? Let Mr. Singh respond, Mr. Schroeder. Let me respond to this. You're talking about the future. Let's talk about right now. You had six years. Why did you get an F on climate? You've got the worst track record

in all the G7 after six years. How could people... There was some grading going on. It was a pretty entertaining exchange, though. I thought it was one of my favorites of the night. Yeah, I mean, I would grade that exchange as maybe like a C- myself. I'm a hard grader. Really? You're a tough grader.

Yeah, I mean. Okay, let's talk about other leaders. Here's O'Toole. What did he have to say about his climate plan, and how did sort of other leaders respond to him? Yeah, so I thought it was interesting how more than once he said, or conceded, I guess, that Conservatives need to win back trust on this issue. This is an area where the Conservatives, we had to win back some trust.

We hadn't met the expectations of Canadians on climate change. It's an important issue for me as a father of a high schooler, and we talk about it all the Putting distance between the 2019 campaign where the climate plan was seen to be really not credible. And you saw him trying to explain his sort of that personal low cost savings account, which is a difficult thing to get out and explain in a debate. But the main takeaway is that, you know, that he is saying, you know, I have a price on carbon as well. I'm not going to give rebates, but I'm going to have this kind of confusing, interesting, you know, savings account issue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then he also relied on sort of the

tried and true kind of conservative argument about, well, we'll call it ethical oil for lack of a better term, saying, you know, if the world doesn't get Canada's oil, they're going to get it from bad actors, he said, you know, Saudi Arabia and Russia and the like. So he's trying to sort of thread that needle. We'll see if it worked. Yeah. You know, so of course, one of the criticisms lobbed his way is that the Conservatives' target is sort of the least ambitious of the pack, 30% reduction in emissions below 2005 levels. But O'Toole came back on that tonight, and he's like, look, I have a plan that's realistic. I have a plan that we can actually hit these targets. And I do wonder whether that argument will resonate with people across the country, it'll be interesting to see.

Talking about the NDP for a second, Singh fielded a really good question from journalist Mercedes Stevenson, essentially saying that he's been leader since 2017 of the NDP and asking why they still don't have like a very detailed climate plan. This is this has been a criticism that they've faced from from experts. Don't you owe Canadians a clear answer on your climate roadmap? And will you provide one tonight? Absolutely. And I'm honored to do so. We've got a bold plan that's going to take a lot of courage that requires lots of investment, because we know how serious this crisis is. And we know what we're up against. Unlike Mr. Trudeau,

we're not going to blame previous governments. We know that in power, we have the power to make a change. And if we vote for the same things, we're going to get the same results. So I want Canadians to know, you have a choice. We are committed to ending...

But what is your plan, sir? We'll lay some of it out. One of it is to end fossil fuel subsidies, use that to invest in clean energy. We would make sure we prioritize investing in electrified transportation. We would invest in retrofitting homes and buildings to reduce our emissions. There is so much that we can do. We are confident we can do it. Like, for example, why aren't they clear on the Trans Mountain Pipeline? And what did you make of his response to that question? Yeah. So, I mean, Singh really doesn't ever address this super clearly, the Trans Mountain issue.

He does say, you know, I wouldn't have approved it. But sort of the horses have left the barn. It's being constructed. And so on that next question on what would you do with it, he often will just say, well, I'll examine that later. And I think part of the reason that's a difficult issue is obviously because of, you know, the former NDP government in Alberta, Rachel Notley. Singh's party does have an Alberta MP going into this or an incumbent, unlike the Liberals. And they think they have shots at maybe more in the Edmonton area. But talking about, you know, scrapping TMX or, or, or being aggressive on that could, could really hurt those chances. So he constantly has to sort of walk this balance.

It's, it's, it's a tough one though. And you're right. He often gets asked about the lack of specifics. We saw that on a number of different things tonight. Um, kind of wondering where the, where the meat is, where's the details, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know one we just talked about on the show is, is sort of, they have, you know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I know one we just talked about on the show is sort of, they've talked about putting a price on carbon, but we don't really know how much that is at this point. Let's end this section, the climate section, with Annemie Paul and the Greens.

They have the most ambitious target, 60% below 2005 levels. Although there are questions about whether this target is realistic. You know, we live in a cold country. We're still very reliant on energy to power our economy. And so what did you hear from her tonight? Yeah, so her answers tend to focus on sort of the need to kind of come together as a country to, to tackle this, um, sort of like we did during the pandemic, uh, parties coming together, uh, that could resonate with people, but, um, you know, this was, this was more than that, I think, uh, sort of a coming out party for her. Um, I mentioned

the difficulty her campaign has had is very, very unusual. Um, people don't, uh, haven't had a great chance to, to, to look at her. And so this was her chance to introduce herself, really, even though she was in the French debate last night, but to English Canada or people tuning in. And, you know, she clearly feels strongly about things and I think was able to communicate her views and mix it up, mix it up with Trudeau, mix it up with Bloc Québécois leader

Yves-François Blanchet. Maybe more than I was expecting, I think. So it was interesting. I know. I know. And I want to come back to that because there's some great takeaway moments. But before we do, let's do another big topic that sort of was one of the headlines of the night, reconciliation. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

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going head-to-head in this debate a lot. And it seemed very evident in this section. And tell me what you saw happen here. Yeah, so this was another area where the two people mixing it up here were not Trudeau and O'Toole, but Trudeau and Singh. And it was, I think, the use of Mr. Singh saying that the Liberals government are taking Indigenous kids to court. Mr. Trudeau, sadly, and I don't take any pleasure in this, the calls to justice are out there, and you haven't acted on them. And I meant it when I said you can't take a knee one day if you're going to take Indigenous kids to court the next. That's not leadership.

Mr. Singh, you love that line about taking Indigenous kids to court. It's actually not true. We have committed to compensating those kids who went through that. And what's more than that, this is important, Mr. Singh, when you talk about... That refers to government lawyers, you know, arguing over a tribunal ruling dealing with compensation for First Nation kids harmed in the child welfare

system. Trudeau tried to, I guess, you know, say that's not true and mix it up with him on that. It's a little bit harder to get that out compared to the sort of phrase taking Indigenous kids to court, which I think is, you know, why we hear that again and again. And that's a vulnerability for him, you know, for people who care about this, the issue of reconciliation a great deal. That's a spot where he is vulnerable. And no doubt that's why Singh was targeting him on that. Right. And like you mentioned before, this is, this kind of goes like right to the progressive vote. Yeah absolutely it's it's it's it's a battle for progressive votes here um consolidating the sort of progressive vote uh trudeau is basically saying to those who are ndp voters or to liberals who might be drifting away from him you know because of the election call because of these various issues uh come back home um you know you have

a progressive uh government here uh we'll see we we'll see I was very happy to see this sort of front and center in the election because it felt like maybe this issue hadn't hasn't been talked about very much in in the last in the previous weeks right yeah and the and the issue of you know the unmarked graves at residential schools. I mean, you know, the idea that that would not be something that we talk about during an election campaign all that much might be surprising to people, given the way it's sort of pierced and jarred people this summer. Absolutely. All right, let's move on to affordability, a huge issue for people. And so what issues kind of dominated that part of the debate?

Yeah, so you kind of saw all the leaders kind of trying to rhyme off some elements of their platform. You know, you had the NDP referencing their desire to boost the guaranteed income supplement for seniors. You had O'Toole talking about some of the more populous measures, that GST holiday that he's promising in December, lower cell phone bills and things like that. You had Mr. Trudeau talking about their $10 a day child care plan. But I think things really started to heat up a bit when they were talking about housing and housing prices and rent and things like that. And I'll just note, again, for people listening, we've also done a whole episode about what the parties are promising around affordable housing and affordable house prices. So I also hope that you might go back and listen to that episode. But I think there was a moment during this kind of conversation about housing that's worth

mentioning here. O'Toole essentially accused Trudeau and the Liberals of a plan to tax the sale of people's homes. And so what happened there and why is it significant? And Mr. Trudeau, Canadians are worried you're going to be taxing their primary home sale. Your advisors have said it. Your candidates have said it. It's on page 14 of his policy book. He's introducing a new tax on the sale of homes. Yeah. So that was a really significant moment for me because, you know, I was wondering like, when is O'Toole going to get in the mix here and try to land a punch on Trudeau? And he came in with that and he said, you know, essentially accused him of wanting to tax the sale of people's home. And that's a complicated issue because people hearing that at home might

think, okay, is he saying that that's a capital gains tax that's coming on my sale of my primary home? And that's a big issue for people in the battleground sort of suburbs, especially around Toronto, GTA. People who have a home, maybe had it for years, and it's kind of like they're sitting on a gold mine that they're going to sell it one of these days and make a huge profit. So Trudeau has said, no, I'm not doing that. There's no capital gains tax coming. But Mr. O'Toole was pointing to a measure that they're proposing, liberals, which is essentially an anti-flipping tax, saying that, you know, if you have a home and you try and you sell it within 12 months and you don't have a good reason, you know, a divorce or a disability or sickness or one of these reasons. Yeah, you will be taxed on that. So or at least that's what they're proposing. So that's that's a measure that they're you know, they're trying taxed on that. So, or at least that's what they're proposing. So that's a measure that they're, you know,

they're trying to prevent house flipping. However, it seems like there's a conflation of those two separate issues. And I think that's something we're going to have to watch in these final days as the things narrow down to these battleground ridings, which I'm saying are in GTA, as I said, I'm watching closely to see if this housing issue

and this claim is something that we hear more and more. I also think worth noting in this section, you mentioned that the Liberals talked about their $10 a day daycare plan. O'Toole took a bit of heat, right, for their position on daycare. And just tell me very briefly about what happened there. Yeah, so I think Trudeau definitely wanted people to know, get on the table, that O'Toole is planning to scrap the Liberal plan for $10 daycare.

The government has signed deals with eight different provinces and territories, and O'Toole has said he'll eliminate that for a system of basically tax credits. It's an important issue, right? Because they're both competing for the swing voters, the female voters. Liberals have sort of said that their childcare plan is an economic plan that the pandemic has shown, you know, that women, when they don't have solid childcare, it affects their ability to work. So we saw this in the beginning kind of of the campaign. The Liberals were focusing a lot on that. Perhaps that's going to become part of their closing argument now.

So that's something I'm going to be watching out for, for sure. So then now let's go back to where we started this conversation or when we talked about what the two front runners needed to do here and and big picture uh talk to me a little bit more about um whether or not you think that they achieved that. You know, we talked about how Aaron O'Toole was a little bit absent tonight. Yeah, I would say, you know, Trudeau definitely tried to get some licks in on O'Toole on some of the things that he's been hammering about, but maybe not as much as I was expecting.

I don't know if the debate format really was part of the reason why he couldn't pivot to those issues. I know he wanted to bring up gun control, the vaccine issues. He tried to work those in, but it didn't always fit. So I don't know that he got as many, you know, attacks in as he might have wanted. But and for O'Toole, I mean, he succeeded in not having any kind of uh outbursts or or something that might turn off uh turn off voters he needs like past liberal voters to get on board with him right so uh i don't know that he had any of that but maybe kind of runs the risk of being a little absent a little quiet especially when a lot of the highlights are going to be showing you know jugmeet singh and trudeau mixing

it up and even i mean there was more i felt like there was more mixing it up with Annamie Paul, to be honest, which, so O'Toole kind of laid back and that was a strategic choice. And I don't know, we'll see how it turns out. Yeah. And then I guess final question for you tonight. Let's talk about Annamie Paul. You know, as you mentioned earlier,

this was kind of her like national debut for a lot of people. Maybe it's the first time that they've seen her sort of in an extended period. And just talk to me a little bit about these moments that she had with Trudeau would be one and Blanchette another. Yeah, so I mean, I didn't have on my bingo card that she was going to have, you know, a spicy exchange with Trudeau really early on. I have said before, and I'll say again tonight, that I do not believe that Mr. Trudeau is a real feminist. A feminist doesn't continue to push strong women

out of his party. Calling him basically not much of a feminist over the handling of sexual misconduct in the military and other matters. She brought up, she name dropped Jody Wilson-Raybould, who I think actually might be the star of the debate, even though she wasn't there and was watching from Vancouver, I'm sure. She was referenced about four or five times this evening. But she also had a really memorable exchange with Blanchette over the issue of systemic racism and his understanding of that issue. I actually had to pull my jaw up, which just dropped,

when I heard what Mr. Blanchet said. I invited Mr. Blanchet to get educated about systemic discrimination. I extend that invitation again. I would be happy to educate him. It's nice to want to educate me. This is my time, sir. It is a nice time to insult people. That was not an insult. It was an invitation to educate yourself. This is leader. She told him that she would help educate him. He felt insulted. Blanchett felt insulted a lot tonight. Actually, there was a lot of moments where he seemed to be upset about his time and amount of time speaking and things of that nature. Maybe not a lot, maybe that's not fair,

but there were certainly moments of that. So I would say that, yeah, for people who are just tuning in to Annamie Paul and maybe only know about, to be honest, a very strange campaign, not much of a national campaign. She's been in Toronto almost the entire time. But this was her moment on the national stage. And I think perhaps people might be thinking a bit differently about her. But the question is, is there enough time? Is there enough time to really make a

difference at this point? We'll see. Okay. Ryan, thank you so much for this. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. me. I really appreciate it. All right, that is all for this week. Front Burner is brought to you by CBC News and CBC Podcast. The show is produced this week by Simi Bassey, Imogen Burchard, Allie Janes, Elaine Chow, Derek Vanderwyk, and Ashley Frazier. Our sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron. Our music is by Joseph Chabison of Boombox Sound. The executive producers of Frontburner this week were Nick McKay-Blocos and Imogen Burchard. And a very, very special thanks to the wonderful Matt Alma

for all of his help with the Maasai interview. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next week. so much for listening and we'll talk to you next week.