- Duceppe (leader of Bloq) hates Alberta. He views Alberta as the anti-thesis of Quebec. Is his view shared by most Quebecers? Of course, to be fair, us Albertans scorn Quebec for their previous attempts to leave Canada. We think Canada is too great to threaten to ditch.
- Elizabeth May is holding her own. Of course, this may be due to the fact that none of the other leaders are targeting her at all.
- Everyone is picking on Stephen Harper. Of course, this is because he is really the only consertative ideoloigy minded person there.
- Why are they bickering like children? Though to be fair it is much tamer than others I have seen in the past.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Leaders Debate
I am watching the English language leaders debate for the Canadian election.
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3 comments:
I've been processing the debate for a couple of days now, and I have some thoughts (this is going to be long, I think):
1.) I think some of Duceppe's Quebec comments stem directly from the previous night's French-language debate, where he and Harper were fighting about the whole "ordinary Canadians don't care about the arts"-type comment that Harper had made a while ago. Duceppe was really questioning who Harper sees as "ordinary Canadians" and pointed out the fact that arts funding creates thousands of jobs in Quebec. I think he, and other non-conservatives in other parts of the country, have been equating "Alberta" with Harper's sort of conservatism. The funny thing is that many of the original Bloc Quebecois members were first part of the Progressive Conservatives.
(Because Harper's conservatives represent a very specific form of conservatism, and one that's different from what we've had before -- since when has the conservative party in Canada represented free market economics? It's weirdly American.)
Not that I'm agreeing with Duceppe on branding Alberta in this way, but over the past few decades there has arisen a particular "Alberta brand" of politics.
2.) With the whole "others picking on Stephen Harper thing," you have to remember that he's the incumbent. That's always what happens: everyone that's trying to get to be Prime Minister is going to particularly attack the one who is already PM.
At the same time, it's less ideology (although part of it is the fact that his government's decisions have been strongly ideological, more so than most Canadian governments have ever been), and more the fact that his government also has been unwilling to work with the other parties, even in a minority government. It's reasonable to think that the other parties that aren't Liberals might actually prefer the Liberals in power, because at least that party would work with them, and like let their MPs talk to the press and stuff.
Uh, so Chris and I have been analysing the election kind of closely and I've been getting a little opinionated. Sorry for the comments highjack, Jen!
(I meant "Duceppe's Alberta comments")
We talked about it at yps tonight (just casually) and decided none of us want to vote for and of them- our choice is the radical idealistic lady without a shot, the smoozball, the idiot of a punishing-Alberta-carbon-tax-guy, and the bad haircut that I still can't get over.
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