French language debate

Election Image of the Day: The leaders’ stances in the official photo for Thursday’s French-language debate weirdly reflect their campaign personae

The Liberal leader’s opponents wanted lots of debates to increase the odds of him messing up. That gambit didn’t work out so well.

The survival of French used to be a key argument in the sovereignist movement. Plus maintenant.

After 50 fraught years of fights, including a constitutional battle or three, French Canada has won

Some French speakers are bewildered by the loosening of long-held rules of grammatical etiquette

Paul Wells and Martin Patriquin take us inside a dramatic campaign with a terrifying finish

Language aside, there were several carry-overs from the English debate last night: the perpetual look of owlish incredulity on the part of Michael Ignatieff, who unfortunately kept getting cut off; the one-off zingers of Gilles Duceppe (‘Yes, Quebec stands up at the UN. It doesn’t have a seat!’) that demonstrate how much less this man has to lose than anyone else; the unblinking stare of Stephen Harper, sticking to his talking points and nakedly appealing to ‘les régions’, spitting out ‘Toronto and Montreal’ like they were curse words (good luck with that Montreal seat, Larry Smith).

Proposed changes would make Quebec’s language laws even more draconian

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Must-reads: Rosie DiManno on the Ontario SIU; George Jonas on politicians; Dan Gardner on eight years of Bush; Lawrence Martin on Stephen Harper’s plagiarized speech.