4:53 PM Philippe Gohier – Our entire political team—including Paul Wells, Andrew Coyne, Kady O’Malley, Aaron Wherry and John Geddes—will be here at 8 PM tonight to provide analysis of tonight’s leadership debate as it happens. Check back often. 7:57 PM Aaron Wherry – Greetings from the National Arts Centre in downtown Ottawa. Kady and I are here, sitting in front of a flat screen TV with the sound turned off. Perhaps we’ll fix that before the debate begins. Perhaps we won’t.8:01 PM Martin Patriquin – Round table! How quaint.8:01 PM Chris Selley – CTV informs us there is to be no touching –no touching!– by the candidates of other candidates during the debate. Mike Duffy suggests this rule is aimed at Elizabeth May.8:02 PM Andrew Potter – Winner gets to do a dance around the table and kiss the maple leaf in the middle, Igali-style.8:03 PM Aaron Wherry – Canada is not the United States. Glad we’ve got that cleared up.8:03 PM Andrew Potter – BTW, Geddes won’t be with us. I have permission from his wife to blog on his behalf. 8:04 PM Martin Patriquin – Dion was in under 45 seconds. First time in history. I checked.8:04 PM Andrew Potter – Liz May’s French isn’t as good as Howard Dean’s.8:06 PM Martin Patriquin – Duceppe: “There are two economies in Canada.” In theory, he shouldn’t really care about this. 8:06 PM Andrew Potter – Quebec is getting screwed, by who? Oil, and the anti-culture vote. 8:07 PM Martin Patriquin – Damn right you are watching about your RRSPs, Duceppe. Retyirement’s right around the corner, right?8:07 PM Chris Selley – Australian translator. Nice touch.8:08 PM Kady O’Malley – Okay, that was discombobulating – we – Colleague Wherry and I – are in the English media room, which was supposed to have an English-only feed – but somehow, that turned into several English feeds, each of which slightly out of synch with the other, resulting in utter cacophony for the first few seconds of the debate, and utter confusion amongst the journalists present.
It seems to be fixed now – well, sort of – but we’re all a bit out of synch ourselves. Not helping, too, is the choice of intrepreters; they do have a female for Elizabeth May, but the other four are all being voiced by frustratingly-similar sounding men. Well, other than the Australian, which makes me giggle for obvious reasons. (He’s the moderator, alas; clearly, the
Consortium doesn’t have the same sense of whimsy as ITQ would demonstrate, were she in charge of assigning aural stand-ins.) 8:10 PM Philippe Gohier – Is anyone surprised Dion’s the only one raising his hand?8:13 PM Aaron Wherry – Elizabeth May’s primary advantage when it comes to discussing economic hardship: she’s the only one at the table who doesn’t have a big MP pension awaiting her.8:14 PM Philippe Gohier – I’m wishing I had a translated feed for Elizabeth May right now, and I’m a Francophone.8:14 PM Kady O’Malley – You know, I’m really not sure about this format. I’m an oldfashioned girl – I like lecterns. Oak lecterns, even. This hybrid talkshow/panel setup is making it hard to follow the conversation, especially given the unfamiliar voices. Well, also, the camera keeps leaping around. Too often, you can’t actually tell who is talking.
I do like the giant Maple Leaf in the middle of the table, though. Not sure about Elizabeth May’s vaguely Aztec pendant, however.
8:14 PM Chris Selley – I like the roundtable format. They’re closer together, able to fix their steely gazes–okay, mostly Harper–at each other.8:15 PM Martin Patriquin – Harper has set himself up for the night with the ‘everything’s fine, we aren’t the U.S.’ He’ll be a pin cushion from here on in.8:17 PM Andrew Potter – This is interesting. Harper asked for this — a huge chunk of time just on the economy. If he can rope-a-dope his way through it, he’ll be looking for the rest of it. It’s a pretty bold gambit, given the audience for this debate. 8:17 PM Kady O’Malley – Harper looks aggrieved. Why is he alone on one side of the table? Actually, Elizabeth May is there too, but as far away from him as she can get without being in the next room. 8:19 PM Chris Selley – Did I follow that from Layton correctly? We’ve never been in more debt, so we need to lower credit card interest rates? Any behavioral psychologists in the audience?8:19 PM Aaron Wherry – Layton’s primary strength isn’t making sense. It’s looking very sure of himself.8:20 PM Martin Patriquin – Self-plug time: Jack still looks the same…8:20 PM Martin Patriquin –
8:20 PM Martin Patriquin – Sorry, here it is.8:20 PM Kady O’Malley – “Slight challenges”? That’s rather optimistic on the part of the Prime Minister, but I guess it’s better than the reverse.
The Dion voice is markedly deeper than the other three interpreters, by the way. That must be a wildly high-pressure gig, when you think about it. If you screw up just one word, you could lose someone an election. 8:21 PM Philippe Gohier – This has to be one of the first debates where someone gets hammered for cutting income taxes.8:22 PM Philippe Gohier – They let Hugo Chavez ask questions? (Nationalize the oil industry???)8:23 PM Andrew Potter – N-E-P! N-E-P!8:23 PM Martin Patriquin – @ Phil: That’s New Brunswick for you.8:23 PM Andrew Coyne – Nationalization of the oil industry? Only in Quebec…8:24 PM Andrew Coyne – I said before the event that I thought Elizabeth May had “Joe Clark French.” I was wrong. She has Diefenbaker French.8:24 PM Martin Patriquin – Hey Liz, is that pendant bulletproof?8:24 PM Andrew Potter – Current price of gas in venezuela: 12 cents a gallon8:24 PM Chris Selley – Duceppe: Nationalize the oil industry? Madness! Next they’d be after our hydro!8:25 PM Andrew Coyne – By the way, now that I’m online, I LOVE the round-table format. People calm down and are much more conversational around a table. The problem remains that we’ve got five leaders..8:25 PM Kady O’Malley – Kady O’Malley: It’s over for the economy, says the moderator. Now, that’s not very supporti– oh, he meant as a *topic*. Phew. I was going to have to point him at the PM’s sanguine reassurance that the challenges are “slight”. (BTW, apologies for the inadvertantly anonymous posts earlier; I thought the software was magically adding it. Apparently not.) 8:26 PM Philippe Gohier – Still, I like the idea of making Harper defend the idea of *not* nationalizing the oil industry. The question was worth it for that alone.8:26 PM Aaron Wherry – How many times did Mr. Harper shrug in answering that question? I counted at least 17.8:27 PM Kady O’M
It seems to be fixed now – well, sort of – but we’re all a bit out of synch ourselves. Not helping, too, is the choice of intrepreters; they do have a female for Elizabeth May, but the other four are all being voiced by frustratingly-similar sounding men. Well, other than the Australian, which makes me giggle for obvious reasons. (He’s the moderator, alas; clearly, the
Consortium doesn’t have the same sense of whimsy as ITQ would demonstrate, were she in charge of assigning aural stand-ins.)
I do like the giant Maple Leaf in the middle of the table, though. Not sure about Elizabeth May’s vaguely Aztec pendant, however.
The Dion voice is markedly deeper than the other three interpreters, by the way. That must be a wildly high-pressure gig, when you think about it. If you screw up just one word, you could lose someone an election.
Layton did well. May did herself no favours. Duceppe