My life is now complete.
I have witnessed, in person, living flesh, Jack Layton say that it is “your health card, not your credit card” that will get me health care.
Thats right, the big Dipper himself was in Victoria this morning, at UVic (in the smallest room possible in the Law Building). I’m still not sure why I went, maybe to see if he could possibly convince me to vote for the NDP. I must say, his environmental, educational and health planks of the platform are quite good. I’m just not sure how they are going to pay for it all.
At least the NDP say something about education. The Conservatives say nothing about education, the Liberal’s platform is less than encouraging (reduce tuition overall please).
I’ve never been to a press conference thingy before (whatever you would call these campaign stops). It was interesting. In my hesitation over whether or not I would shake his hand, I missed out and he walked right by. What do you say to a politician when you shake their hand? “Good luck” But if you’re probably not going to vote for them, isn’t that a little hypocrytical? “Nice to meet you” A little bit callous in the type of environment we were in. You can see my dillema. And so I missed out.

So this is what Paul Martin tells himself to sleep better at night?
I approved the transcript of the ads.
I never approved the adds.
The ads never ran.
The ads were seen by too many people.
Which one is it? Make up your mind? You’re fumbling around a bit here, Paul. Make up your mind already.

I just found the English voice over of the French debate on CBC Newsworld. I’m secretly hoping that the person doing Jack Layton’s voice is a woman. How did they find a translator with a voice as monotone as Stephen Harper’s?

So here is my transcription of the debate from the English translation from French:

WHY ARE WE AFRAID OF TWO-TIER HEALTH CARE?

Why is no one answering the question? And why are we comparing it to France? Apparently there is an asymmetric agreement on health care with Quebec. And Gilles Duceppe keeps bringing up the same points in French as he did in English – there are too many civil servants in Ottawa employed by the ministry of health and not enough doctors. We need to employ more doctors and nurses instead of civil servants [amen]. Mr Duceppe doesn’t know reality, according to Mr Martin. What, that we don’t have enough doctors? That’s pretty much on par with reality as far as I can see.
Are we admitting failure if we send people to other provinces for health care? Well yes we are, says Mr Layton. And Mr Martin has been attacking Mr Klein… Oops, Stephen Harper wasn’t listening and missed out. Gilles jumps right in and takes over, and oh, we are out of time. On to…

GUN CONTROL

Smuggling is important, says Mr Layton. Important to deal with anyway. We need to arm everyone at the boarder so we can shoot everyone who tries to come into the country.
The Bloc will make it harder to be a criminal and we want more RCMP in Quebec. Hang on, if you want to separate, shouldn’t you want more of your provincial police force (can’t remember what it’s called) and not the federal police force?
The Liberals will work with the Americans to stop smuggling. This from the man who urges “Mr Harper, the Americans are our neighbours, not our nation.” We need to find hope by incarcerating criminals.
Well, now finally everyone is jumping on our bandwagon of being tough on crime, says Mr Harper. He is right. The Conservatives have been saying this for ages and now the others are finally getting on board. Don’t be so smug. But I like the idea of specific juvenile crime programs. As long as they are good, that is.
Moderator: Mr Harper, why do we need a harder line on crime when crime has, in fact, decreased? She does have a point. Perhaps and even more interesting question to all of the leaders: Why are you only beginning to care about gun violence now, after Toronto, when BC (Vancouver-Surrey) has been having problems with guns for ages.

ASSISTED SUICIDE

What? I didn’t know this was even an issue! Apparently there is a big case in the Quebec courts right now.
Would you help someone to die?
What a question! How do you dance around that one? Mr Harper did a decent job by stating that his party wouldn’t bring such a bill to the table. Mr Martin said he couldn’t. Mr Duceppe is proud of his caucus member who brought a bill forward to this end, and would allow it to be a free vote in his party. Good for him. Mr Layton wants discussion, but let’s prevent pain and suffering (good luck) and talk with everyone first. Lets all sit down and talk together and love eachother and work it out.

MARIJUANA

Would you decriminalize?
Mr Duceppe, we need to be stronger on organised crime.
Mr Harper does not intend to decriminalize marijuana. The liberals are too liberal (extra points for the play on words). Handguns, drugs, cool handbags are all inter-related and evil.
Mr Layton says we need to help people with disabilities, Peter Julien (that’s my dad’s MP in New West) proposed a bill to that end. Memo to Jack Layton, we are on to drugs now, not the disabled. Please don’t try to tell me that the disabled are criminal at the moment?
Mr Martin says the problem is grow ops. We want to put everyone in jail, then we wouldn’t have a problem. And now I am going to talk about disabled people.
I see the tactic, we don’t like the question so we just change the subject. Too bad no one can interrupt in our new style of debates.

and now on to… IMMIGRATION

Do we care about immigrants?
Gilles Duceppe – “pick me, pick me, I do, I work with them even when it is not an election and when I can pretend that I am not an member of the Bloc, but then I’ll tell everyone on national TV that I do this so that it doesn’t really matter if I pretend not to be an MP.” Stephen Harper – we need to help people to use their skills in Canada. Apparently we have a force field in Canada that blocks all skills from use here. Oh, its just the government regulations. Jack Layton – “it is unacceptable that immigrants are coming to Canada” oh, sorry, I missed the last bit “and not able to use their skills.” We will also eliminate the head tax. Mr Martin, why did you impliment the tax and then make a new promise now during this election to eliminate it? Paul Martin – “because we wanted to.” ‘Nuff said.

Sorry, I fell asleep for a minute. Apparently every problem with this country comes back to children says Gilles Duceppe. So Jack Layton will give a tax credit for children. I don’t follow. Oh well. I think I’m tuning out again… energy and gas. All four of them are pretty full of both.

And now we are getting mad at each other for being on American TV at some point in the past. Well, I can think of worse places to be seen in America. For instance, in a Hawaiian police station a la Gordon Campbell.

ON NATIONAL UNITY

And my favourite quote of the evening so far, from none other than Gilles Duceppe: “We’re good neighbours, we can have a fence and landscaping, we can agree what colour to paint the fence, but neighbours can’t come in and paint the bedroom.” I don’t really want to be in your bedroom, sir. And then later… “Canada’s a nice country, I like to visit it. We want to be friendly neighbours, even after we’ve wrecked the house.”

[part of me wants to show off and write this whole thing in French, the other part actually wants people to be able to read it and is afraid of embarassing myself with glaring errors in French…]

It is the French-language Leaders Debate tonight on Radio-Canada, and I feel like watching it to see if they actually say anything different than they did last night in English…

Les observations pour le debat des chefs ce soir au Radio-Canada/Observations from tonight’s Leader’s Debate on Radio-Canada:

1. Woohoo, je comprend le debat en francais!/Woohoo, I can understand the debate even though it is in French!

2. Jack Layton is just as annoying in French as in English.

3. Stephen Harper and Gilles Duceppe have again worn the same tie (Is Paul Martin the only one who will not wear stripes?).

4. Either my French fails me (just like the satelite signal seems to be doing off and on) or Jack Layton just stood up for Stephen Harper to Paul Martin. What the…?!? Maybe he felt sorry for him because his French sucks.

5. And now we are worried about minivans… good thing they just recently got the vote here in Canada.

6. Or was that a comparison of the imigrant head tax and minivans? So hard to tell in French…

7. M. Harper: “Vous ne gagnez pas rien avec M. Martin.” Well said, well said.

8. Paul Martin is much more composed tonight than he was last night… oh, but we are just beginning the National Unity section, this is where he loses it every time.

9. Stephen Harper’s ability to memorize in French and in English is just freaky.

10. Disregard previous Paul Martin comment… he is waving and gesturing like he is in prime form now.

11. Favourite words of Jack Layton tonight: “grande, grande probleme.” To you I say, “I know, you are.”

12. Upon finishing yet another long speech in French that actually made sense, Stephen Harper allows himself a smug smile. Or was that a normal smile. So hard to tell.

13. I know it is a complex subject, but I didn’t think that same-sex marriage really fit under “National Unity” Unless of course there is something I don’t know about relationships between the provinces.

14. Paul Martin attacked by Stephen Harper (“I’ve said the same thing in English and in French… why won’t you answer us?”) and then Gilles Duceppe agrees. Paul Martin hides his head in his hands in the background. Only 15 minutes to go Paul, and then you can go bury your head in the sand instead.

15. I guess it is inevitable, but Gilles Duceppe is pretty much in his element tonight.

16. Why do they keep talking about Rene Levesque? I must have missed something. Isn’t he dead?

17. Call me stupid, but I think there are probably more people watching the debate tonight than just Quebecers… so Paul, maybe thank them for voting for you as well instead of closing with “A strong Quebec is a strong Canada”)

18. What a sweet closing for Stephen Harper – “You can tell that French is not my first language, but my politics are still clear…” *sniff* Hold that thought while I reach for a kleenex.

19. And just in case we weren’t sure, Gilles Duceppe informs us that he will, in fact, be voting for the Bloc Quebecois.

By the way, if you want to read a funny blog on politics in Canada (sort of on this topic) check out Scott Feschuk’s Blackberry Blog. (Disclaimer: putting the Liberal site on here has no reflection on which party I will be voting for, it is a reflection of the fact that I think Scott Feschuk is hilarious. Just to keep things even, the Conservative blog, but it’s not funny.)

Oh, and I like andrewcoyne.com, good comments, my type of humour.

Conclusions: Harper fumbled, Martin mumbled, Layton is done, and Duceppe won.

1. Jack Layton has finally realised that he is in fact the leader of the NDP, not Ed Broadbent

2. Paul Martin’s favourite word is still “fundamentally…”

3. Gilles Duceppe is a good sport for putting up with Paul, Stephen, and Jack in a language spoken by less than half of the people in the region he runs candidates in.

4. Stephen Harper gives new meaning to the word “monotone”

5. Jack, Stephen, and Gilles all got together this time and checked what colour the other’s tie is so they don’t wear the same one (“Oh, I’ll take the blue one with yellow stripes… because it isn’t Liberal red”)

(Photo coutesy of Scott Feschuk. He doesn’t know, I lifted it off of the Liberal blog)

6. Once again, Paul narrowly escaped crying (“mean, mean Gilles Duceppe wants to take my beautiful Quebec away from me… boohoohoo”). “I am a Quebecer – don’t take my country away from me”

More to follow when I get back from my seminar tonight and watch the rest of the debate (praise God for VCR’s and being able to tape shows!)

7. The debate looks pretty funny when watched in fast-forward (Paul Martin: “Look at me, I can fly…”

8. Paul Martin: “We’ve got to have a more intelligent debate” Well Paul, I’m waiting.

9. If we are admitting that politicians turn people off of politics, is there maybe something that we should do about that? Not just state that it is a problem. Apparently more women in politics will fix that (thanks Jack).

10. “Toronto isn’t Detroit, Vancouver isn’t South LA” Glad we’ve cleared that up.

11. Paul Martin seems to be trying to dig himself out of some sort of hole… oh wait he is in one – his party is down 11points in the polls.

12. Stephen Harper smiled! (Thanks to Eric for the comment on the smile: “his smile was kinda creepy though”… my reply: “look into my eyes when I smile, I can perform a Jedi mind trick on you”)

13. NDP priorities: “Seniors, Health Care, and clean up parliament.” Are they not all one and the same? (ie – Seniors need health care and and make up too much of our parliament)

14. Liberal priorities: “Child Care and Education.” Thanks for funding education now, since I’m graduating this year. So what will you do for grad studies? Or are we on our own by then?

15. Bloc comments: You’re all stupid. “We act in the best interest of Quebec. No one in Quebec likes your ideas”

16. Jack Layton says again, and again, and again, and again: “There is a third option, a better option, vote NDP”

17. Stephen Harper mentioned Ed Broadbent before Jack Layton. Didn’t see that one coming!

18. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

19. Never thought I’d see a question first raised on The Royal Canadian Air Farce appear on the Federal Leader’s Debate! The question? To Gilles Duceppe – “You said at the leader’s debate in Vancouver that the issue of same-sex marriage was decided and should not be reopened. Why have you not applied the same rule to Quebec separatism?” Good question. The answer? “Well, well, they are totally different things.” Not good answer.

20. Enough already, Jack Layton you are not winning voters by looking into the camera and saying with a soft voice “YOU have the option, lets create the kind of Canada you deserve.” No, you are creeping me out.

21. Stephen Harper quoted Pastor Brian Houston, “The best is yet to come…” Jack Layton quoted the mice on Cinderella, “We can do it, we can do it…”

22. None of them seems to really cares about youth/students. Thats too bad since hardly any of us vote and there are a whole lot of us who could.

23. And now we all shake hands and pretend we all like eachother and are the best of friends. How sweet.

Conclusions: It Gilles Duceppe wasn’t separatist and running only in Quebec, I just might have voted for him. Maybe. Jack Layton still annoys me and I flat out don’t like the NDP. I think I’ll vote for Steve Paikin, he did a great job moderating the debate.