Front Burner - Recapping a crucial federal leaders debate

Episode Date: October 8, 2019

On Monday night, the six major federal party leaders faced off in an English-language debate for the only time in the 2019 election campaign. And the stage was packed: There were more leaders on stage in Gatineau, Que., than at any other point in Canadian political history. Today on Front Burner, Power & Politics host Vassy Kapelos on the debate's highs, lows and takeaways.

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. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson, and today we're going to break down the federal leaders debate, the first featuring all six major party leaders. It was a real chance for all of them to sell you on their vision for this country. So let's get right to it. Let's not waste any time here.

Vashi Kapelos is here, host of Power and Politics. Hi, Vashi. Hi, Jamie. Thanks for being here. My pleasure. All right. This is FrontBurner. Okay, Vashi, let's start right away with Andrew Scheer. What do we see from Andrew Scheer right out of the gate? So right out of the gate, it was possibly the moment that I think caused the most jaws to drop. It was a very pointed attack from Mr. Scheer towards Mr. Trudeau.

Not that we didn't expect there to be those kinds of attacks, but right away he called him a phony and a fraud. He can't even remember how many times he put blackface on because the fact of the matter is he's always wearing a mask. He puts on a reconciliation mask and then fires the attorney general, the first one of Indigenous background. He puts on a middle-class mask and then raises taxes on middle-class Canadians. This was definitely something that demarcated his performance, I guess,

and his approach to the debate right away. Right, and then they also had this thing in the debate where the leaders asked other leaders questions, which I kind of loved because they didn't really end up asking questions. They just sort of ended up asking question statements that were quite sort of entertaining. Yeah. So, you know, Scheer's question. You may pick any leader of your choice and ask any question of your choosing. Pick any leader of your choice and ask any question of your choosing.

He just immediately turns to Trudeau. He gets quite a few laughs. And he just nails him on SNC-Lavalin and ethical breaches. And you fire the only two people in your caucus who are speaking out against what you're trying to do just for telling the truth. Tell me, when did you decide that the rules don't apply to you? Yeah, bada boom, bada boom, burn. Yeah, I mean, very purposeful move by Mr. Scheer. It was clear from the outset, not just in the tone and the tenor that his comments took, or that question that you're referencing, but that he was, it was like all eyes on Trudeau for him in this debate. And that's understandable, given where the two of them stand in the polls.

They're neck and neck. Any little bit of movement can start momentum going and then can change the trajectory of the election for either party. So it wasn't a surprise that he was so directly aimed at Mr. Trudeau. So it was a bit based on, or at least the genesis of it rather, was a bit based on the last debate, the French one for TVA, where Mr. Trudeau had come out very strong and forcefully and kind of attacking Mr. Scheer off the bat. And it had sort of like taken Mr. Scheer by surprise, it almost seems. So he was ready for the fight this time. Do you think these negative attacks work? Is this a good strategy for Andrew Scheer? So it depends on who it works on. And I say that

because if you're a person who just sat down and watched that entire debate from start to finish, and let's say you weren't super decided, yeah, no, that did not work on you. And I think it would just turn you off politics as a whole. And that's a statement on lots of the crosstalk too, and the whole thing. If you are what you're saying anymore. You will be signing. If you are a conservative voter, and this is who I think, and from speaking to people in the war room, this is who this was aimed at. If you are leaning conservative or a conservative voter, the stuff Andrew Scheer was saying

resonates with you. And in fact, his performance, probably the forcefulness with which he delivered those statements also resonates with you, which speaks to the strategy that the Conservatives are employing right now, which is to motivate their already very secure base to go out and vote, which tells you a lot about what they think their chances are and where the polls are right now. Because in a breakdown where each side, the Liberals and the Conservatives have a hold of their base, it's about motivating them to get out and vote for you. Right, right. They just want to get them to the voting booth.

The other thing that was pretty clear to me was that Andrew Scheer wanted to take every opportunity he had when he wasn't hammering Trudeau to hammer home his central campaign theme, affordability. It's time for Canadians to have a break. Our universal tax cut will mean $850 in the pocket of a hardworking average income Canadian. And so how did he do there? Yeah, he's basically positioning himself again solely versus Mr. Trudeau as I'm going to make your life less expensive. Mr. Trudeau is going to make it more expensive. Our universal tax cut drastically is much better for middle income Canadians than his proposal. I feel like I'm a bad judge of how this went over,

only because I've heard both their lines on these subjects ad nauseum three million times, and I just, like, can't take it anymore. Right. We're going to give you this tax cut, the child fitness tax credit, the green home tax credit, Trudeau makes your life more expensive, the carbon tax. And then Trudeau says, you guys do nothing about climate change. We're the only ones who do something. The choice tonight is do we pick a government that doesn't believe in climate change or in fighting it? Like I could literally deliver each of their lines verbatim. So they had to land those messaging points because even if a portion of the audience is new to becoming engaged in this election, then yes, you have the opportunity to communicate the essence of your campaign.

And I think actually, to be fair, both of them did that in this debate. It's just for those of us who have heard this like, you know, false dichotomy 500 times. I'm over it. Also, just talking about sweet burns tonight. Also, just talking about sweet burns tonight, there was that really good one from Andrew Scheer where he just turned to Trudeau because Trudeau kept invoking Doug Ford. You seem to be oddly obsessed with provincial politics. There is a vacancy for the Ontario Liberal leadership. And if you're so focused on provincial politics, go and run for the leadership of that party, Mr. Trudeau.

I thought it was pretty good. I thought he deserved some credit for that. Look, Andrew Scheer also got attacked from the right. Maxime Bernier. You don't want to balance the budget in two years. You will have $70 billion on our debt. Andrew, are you a real conservative? No, I think you are liberals. And like, what did you make of that exchange? He did. I was actually really interested to see if the attacks from the right vis-a-vis Max Bernier would have an impact in this debate. And I'm not an expert, but my guess is that they maybe didn't. In fact, they probably helped Mr. Scheer's cause only in so far as Mr. Scheer was able to say,

look, you think this, I think this, especially like on issues of immigration or some of the more extreme issues that Bernier has talked about before. Well, what Mr. Bernier fails to understand is that you can absolutely be proud of Canada's history. You can be proud of our identity. You can be proud of the things we've done and accomplished in the world while at the same time welcoming people from all around the world. I don't know if it really chipped away at the Conservative vote. I mean, time will tell on that.

I don't know how effective they were. I felt like Mr. Bernier was kind of all over the map and saying a lot of the things that he said before without a ton of factual evidence to back up the things he was saying or to explain how they would work. He had a lot of airtime, but I'm not sure it really like landed any knockout blows on Scheer. And I mean, Scheer basically addressed Maxime Bernier. He said something like, I don't even know who I'm talking to.

Was it the Maxime Bernier from the 1990s who was a separatist? Was it the Maxime Bernier who was minister responsible for handing out corporate welfare? And then he just pivoted back to Trudeau. You could see that's where his attention was. Was it the Maxime Bernier who was minister responsible for handing out corporate welfare? And then he just pivoted back to Trudeau. You could see that's where his attention was. Yes, very much so. Let's talk about Trudeau. So I found myself a few times throughout this debate, I don't know if you would agree with me,

asking myself, where is Justin Trudeau? And what did you make of his I if you're sitting there and you're deciding between the two people who are likely to become prime minister, why wasn't I hearing more from both of them? And I'm not saying that's a slag on any of them. I do think that is a function primarily of the format. But yeah, he was I mean, he was part of the debate. He wasn't he certainly wasn't like dominating it, though. Mr. Trudeau, five seconds to respond. Our price on pollution helps Canadians more than removing it does. And yeah, I agree with you that, you know, part of this is a function of the debate. There were a lot of players on that stage and a lot of different kinds of questions coming at them. But Trudeau did spend some time during the night defending his record. And when he did, you know, what was he defending and how do you think he did? He was defending it in the same way that he has

for the past two years, I would say, and on many of the same issues, primarily climate. He was getting a lot of questions, particularly from Elizabeth May in this debate on that and about some of the claims he makes about the progress that his government has made so far, which aren't completely true. The science is clear. Your target is a commitment to failure. That's why it's so doable and achievable, because it doesn't do what the IPCC says we must do.

And he was getting a lot of questions from Andrew Scheer on the whole messaging around affordability. Justin Trudeau's attack on small businesses, threatening them, making it harder for them to grow and expand and offer the types of opportunities that lead to the jobs that have much higher income earnings. And even from Jagmeet Singh, so he was getting it from both flanks there. Andrew Scheer is basically saying you're spending your way, you know, you're spending your way to a bad situation for Canadians. And Jagmeet Singh is talking about how he's too close to corporations, basically, and to corporate Canada and to wealthy Canadians.

You criticize Mr. Harper and conservatives on giving billions to billionaires and corporations, but you gave $14 billion more. My question is this. Why do you keep letting down the people that voted for you? He uses similar defense, which is that he has in a lot of these subjects, which is trying to strike the middle ground, basically. So on climate, for example, yes, we bought a pipeline, but I believe you have to grow the economy and you also have to protect the environment. We need to get to new markets so we can invest all the resources, all the money coming in from this pipeline into that green energy transition. And while it sounds, in the context of a debate, very wishy-washy because others are able to take a very concrete position,

in fact, if you look through much of the polling out there, a lot of Canadians do lie in that space, right? Like, there's a lot of people in the middle who, I'm not saying they subscribe to the Justin Trudeau version of it or the liberal version of it, but they do believe on issues of, for example, the pipeline that maybe you do need to get resources to market, but you also should be protecting the environment. And it sounds like a contradiction at times coming from him. But I think there's a reason that he keeps using those types of middle ground lines. And that's because

there's a large swath of voters lying there. Okay, so we spent a lot of time defending his record. But I have to say, I didn't hear him talk a lot about what he wanted to do with his next mandate. Do you think that that's enough, right, to just defend what you did in the previous four years? And that decision to invest in the middle class and people working hard to join it lifted 900,000 people out of poverty, including 300,000 kids. We gave more support for students going to school. We made more supports for seniors. Yeah, again, I feel like if you're somebody watching, trying to make up your mind about who to entrust the government with over the next four years,

probably not, right? Like, there wasn't a lot of stuff put in the window. But at the same time, that is also a function of what we were just talking about, that he was getting criticized and attacked, whatever you want to call it, from all sides during this debate. So most of his, quote unquote, airtime was basically just trying to defend himself against that kind of criticism. You have failed to tell the truth on this corruption scandal. Mr. Scheer, the responsibility of any prime minister is to stand up for jobs. And what you're saying is you wouldn't have done it. Maybe he could have put more stuff out there, more details about what he has planned. But

essentially the Liberal's whole message is like, we've done an okay job, so keep us going. Right. Like keep voting for the same thing. Forward. Yeah. Literally their slogan. Move forward with us. Yeah.

Yeah. So it speaks a little bit to that as well. But you raise a good question. Like, is that enough for people who are looking for something more substantial when deciding what's next? Let's talk about Jagmeet Singh next, who I will say, I think it doesn't matter what part of the spectrum that you sit on. He was probably the funniest tonight. He had really good one-liners. He had some really good one-liners. We want to do that again. Mr. Singh, thank you. Mr. Singh, pardon me.

Mr. Singh, over to you. I don't know how people are getting me mixed up. I wore a bright Orange Tribune on purpose today. What does it take? It was nice to watch him. He seemed quite comfortable. But unlike Trudeau, he does

not have four years of leadership to run on. What was he pitching Canadians tonight and how did he do? I think if he pitched anything successfully tonight it was himself. I know there's a lot of other things specifically that his platform gets into. I don't know if that was necessarily the strongest part of his performance tonight. Yeah he has ideas there he has positions on things. There was nothing new again that he offered today that

we hadn't heard prior. Dental care, pharmacare, tax the rich to pay for it. Those who have fortunes of over $20 million, we're going to ask them to pay a little bit more. Yes, we think they should. Very critical of the Liberals on Indigenous issues. He wanted to fight hard to keep SNC-Lavalin out of the courts, but he's going to drag Indigenous kids to court. That is wrong. Yeah, positions he's articulated before,

and he did so competently tonight. I thought the thing that really set him apart from the crowd tonight was his disposition, his level of comfort and almost an ability that the others didn't have tonight to be human and natural. And it's tough to ask questions in front of a big crowd. So thanks for doing that. I mean, Mr. Bernie, after hearing what was just said, you could have just could have just said hey man i messed up because those are pretty horrible tweets that you made um and that's i don't mean that as like a very specific criticism of the other people like i could not imagine being in their shoes for sure especially when the stakes are as high as they are for justin trudeau and andrew sheer but there is something to be said for the way in which he has conducted himself throughout this campaign so far. And in fact,

the polling, when it's just about his own numbers, bears that out. He has momentum behind him. It hasn't yet translated to the party as a whole. And I don't know, maybe that that is still to happen. Maybe it just takes a bit longer to take hold. But like for the expectations that he face coming into this campaign or even into this debate or the one last week. He has, I think you can say that he has outperformed them. And I think that translated tonight. He, like you said, he had those one-liners. He was relaxed.

He seemed very knowledgeable about his own position and, like, had the ability to make jokes, right? And land those one-liners and seem, yeah, seem at ease. Speaking of, he probably had the one-liner of the night when, you know, Scheer and Trudeau were arguing like over climate change. He just basically stopped and said, look. You do not need to choose between Mr. Delay and Mr. Deny. There is another option. There is another option. There is another option out there.

But, you know, he did have a very tough question to contend with from Justin Trudeau on Bill 21, the bill in Quebec that prevents public service workers from wearing religious symbols like hijabs and turbans on the job. The federal government under you would not intervene in the question of Bill 21 in Quebec. It's a question where, yes, it's awkward politically, because as Mr. Blanchet says, it is very popular. I will say, although Mr. Trudeau's hedging of the question was really funny, he's like,

I am the only person who might do something. I don't even know what that means. How do you think Mr. Singh handled, you know, basically an accusation that he's not going to do anything? So I think if anything tempers the results of his performance tonight, it will be that question around Bill 21. Every single day of my life is challenging people who think that you can't do things because of the way you look. Every single day of my life, I channel the frustrations of people who feel that as well, that many people across our country who are told that they can't achieve what they want because of how they look.

So why not act on your convictions and leave the door open for challenging? And specifically, actually, a lot of what he said in the scrum afterwards, French media picked up on the comments that both he and Mr. Trudeau made. And basically every question he received in his scrum was around Bill 21. Exactly as you described it, Mr. Trudeau framed the question and was very pointed towards Mr. Singh, saying, you know,

I'm the only one who's going to do anything. And to a degree, I guess that's a bit true. But none of them are really doing anything. Nobody wants to intervene in this thing. They all say they're watching it played on the courts. The difference is, and something that Mr. Joe actually surprisingly focused on or emphasized today, is that he says he's left the door open to intervening legally. And as you and I have talked about many times, you know, the NDP is facing like a potential wipeout in Quebec. And they have a lot of seats that they could lose there. Yeah. And Quebec is so important. There's 14 seats for the NDP. They need to hold on to it. In fact, everyone I speak to in the NDP campaign says the reason that Mr. Singh is taking the position he

is, is because his caucus has insisted that he does, right? Like he's listening to his caucus. They're saying, please do not say that you're going to intervene. So lots in the air for Mr. Singh and the NDP in Quebec. 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. All right, and I know that we already touched on Maxine Burney a little bit. We talked about maybe how his message might not have punched through.

He was kind of all over the place, dealing with a lot of different topics. But, you know, I want to talk about, for a moment, the controversy over having him there in the first place and what you think his presence at the debate resulted in. It felt like it changed

the first 20 minutes of the debate. 49% of our population believe that we must have fewer immigrants. They're not racist. They're not radical. So what you are saying, because I'm in line with the majority of our population, that I'm supposed to be a radical? Did anybody tell you? No, we have the right. We have the right in this country to debate ideas.

I'm not even sure if we would have been having that conversation around what makes a good leader and immigration had Max and Bernier not have been there. I think you make a great point. I was struck immediately by how much of an impact he had as a disruptor over the course of, I would even say, maybe close to the first half of the debate. Mr. Bernier was not supposed to be in this debate. The commission initially ruled that he could not participate. He then was allowed to submit, you know, certain pieces of data that complied with or met the criteria that the commission had been assigned to decide on whether or not someone can participate. What he did was basically say, I have a shot at winning

in these five ridings. The commission then set up polling in those five ridings and found, yes, he does have a shot at winning. It's not a foregone conclusion that he will lose in all those ridings. And so he was allowed to participate in the debate to the ire of many of the other parties who said because of the views he espouses, he shouldn't be on this stage. Are you believing in free speech only when people are saying things that you want to hear? You're asking the question.

Let me answer it. After a couple of minutes of this debate tonight, I think people can clearly see why I didn't think you should deserve a platform. You know, we can discuss and debate the merits of what he was saying another time. I just felt like it was a lot of airtime for someone who has no shot of becoming prime minister. You know, he's sitting at three percent in the polls. Maybe he'll win his own seat. There could be a chance of, you know, buried support elsewhere, people who aren't comfortable saying they support him. That's fine. Even still, Mr. Blanchet, who you can make the same case for, he's, you know, not going to become prime minister, but he might win enough seats to actually hold a lot of power at the end of the day, depending on the formation of what government we end up with on October 21st. Having leadership or showing leadership sometimes mean not making mistakes.

And arresting the chief financial officer of Huawei might have been a big mistake. And so I just felt like that's a lot of Maxime Bernier for someone, you know, who doesn't have a shot at the top job. Right, right. And I mean, all of a sudden, we're talking about immigration numbers, when that is not something that's controversial among the other major parties. It just felt like a little bit of a distraction from kind of the main issues in the campaign. Okay, so I want to pick up on this idea that you just brought up the formation of government, and what this could look like. Elizabeth May, back to her for a second.

Of course, she hit on her usual points that none of the leaders are hitting the right targets on a mission. She went after all of them for that. We have to restore the idea of real democracy where every citizen has agency and power to work together. Mission possible for climate action. We call all hands on deck. But I actually also want to focus on one thing she said, which I thought was super interesting. And also, you know, I think a good place

for us to end this conversation. She raised the prospect of a minority government. And what case do you think she was trying to make to voters? I think she's decided that the Liberals are going to win this election. I think she was pretty unequivocal about that right at the end. Canadians can know one thing. At this point, Mr. Scheer, with all due respect, you're not going to be prime minister. The question is going to be on a seat count if we have Mr. Trudeau in a minority or Mr. Trudeau in a majority.

Voting for Green MPs is your very best guarantee, Canada, that you don't get the government you least want. Mr. Scheer can respond to that and then we'll wrap it up. Well, I'm going to prove you wrong on that, Ms. Mann. You just watch on October 21st. I'll lay your bets right now. On the idea of a majority, you know, she was saying. To look at you today and know you could have done so much more the last four years. Please, God, you don't get a majority this time around because you don't keep your promises. The pitch she is making to voters is that if there is a minority government, vote for the Greens to have a larger voice at the table. She is essentially, you know,

admitting that unlike Jagmeet Singh, who hasn't made the omission fully yet, she's not going to be the next prime minister of this country. And so in that, then there is the possibility that her party could have a larger voice at the table. I think it's why you're also seeing her focus so much, continuing to focus so much on climate, whereas at the beginning of the campaign, everyone was wondering, would she start talking about a lot of other stuff? And she does have a full platform, but she is really pressing hard on climate. And I think the question she's putting to voters is, if you take climate change very seriously, limit the liberals to a minority, give us a position of power, and we will make sure that there is some kind of action on this issue that you hold near and dear to your heart. that because not much happened in this debate to break the law between the conservatives and the liberals, tonight a minority government might actually look more likely than it did before

the debate. Well, maybe. Maybe. We'll be in for an exciting October. She's very much better at predicting things than I am. I have no idea. I think there's still two weeks, so you never know. There's still a French debate on Thursday. But I agree, I think, essentially with the assessment that if you knew the way you wanted to vote watching this debate, you probably left voting the same way. Right. If you were undecided

when you watched this debate, I'm not sure you're even going to go out and vote. Maybe you just stay home. Hopefully not. I hope that you don't. Yeah, everyone should vote. And when I say tune in, we will literally be tuning in for our election night pod.

I should ask you now if you'll do that with us. What? Yeah. I'm going to do it. Of course. Good. Of course. I never say no.

Okay. Vashti Kapelos, thank you very much. Talk to you soon. Okay, that's all for today. It's just after midnight and I'm going to go to bed. See you guys tomorrow and have a great day.