No Afghanistan questions for defence minister?

Students at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., are set to grill the candidates in Central Nova on student debt, post-secondary education for Aboriginal peoples, market-based approaches to energy policies and the brain drain.

But there are questions conspicuously absent for a debate that will feature Green Party leader Elizabeth May and Conservative incumbent Peter MacKay.

There is nothing on the biggest news of the day, namely how each party will manage the economy.

Stranger still, there are no questions about reducing greenhouse gases and not a single word about the war in Afghanistan.

It's not as if they have a defence minister in the hot seat or anything.

Oh, right, they do.

- Joanna Smith

Debate 'cheap shot'?

“My family uses the public health-care system!” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said when he was being accused of wanting to privatize the system.

“In fact at one point during the last election campaign I was the only national leader who would use exclusively the public health-care system. That’s the system we’ve got to fix for everybody and we’re making important investments.”

Wait a minute.

The moderator cut in.

“That sounded like a shot,” he said. “What is that a reference to?”

The leaders then argued over who uses the public system, whether a private clinic is part of the public system if it is paid for by the health-care card and who had taken a cheap shot at whom.

The name of Medicare founder Tommy Douglas was dropped once or twice.

Harper finally settled things by saying he had been the victim of the cheapest shot.

“You just accused me of wanting to destroy the health-care system in this country!” he said.

They moved on.

- Joanna Smith

Change of heart

New Democrat Leader Jack Layton may not have wanted Green Leader Elizabeth May to join the other leaders in the debates, but he sure liked her help in ganging up on Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

After May argued quality jobs are being replaced by lower productivity, service industry jobs, Layton jumped in to agree with her.

"Elizabeth is dead on here, Mr. Harper," Layton said.

 

A good dad with dangerous principles

When the theme of the French debate turned to "leadership and governance", each leader was asked to say something nice about the leader sitting to his or her left.

This was, naturally, a particularly difficult task for Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, who had to praise Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a man she has criticized with apocalyptic terms.

She finally managed to this: "I think that you are a good father, your kids are lovely. And I think that your efforts for Canada is based on your principles. But obviously I think that your principles will change Canada, take us in a dangerous directions. Unfortunately I think your leadership is more autocratic."

 

Moment of truth for leader stand-ins

Some of the people watching tonight’s debate might not just be watching to see how their leader does, but to see how well they imitated their leader’s rivals and prepped the boss.

For Conservative leader Stephen Harper, MP Jason Kenney played Stéphane Dion, Hill and Knowlton’s Michael Coates played Jack Layton, Michel Lalonde (Jean-Pierre Blackburn’s chief of staff) played Gilles Duceppe, and Line Maheux (who used to advise Stockwell Day) played Elizabeth May.

Dion used a couple of former Paul Martin associates as stand-ins: Tim Murphy played Harper, and Mark Watton played Jack Layton.

-Tonda MacChalres