Day 18 and 19: The "English" debate was last night, the only one that I understand. Tonight is the French debate, welcome to Canada.
That picture is of the three main party leaders who have representatives in Parliament from across the country, the fourth guy on the far right is the leader of the Bloc, a separatist party whose purpose at this debate is beyond me. Every time he opened his mouth it was to whine about one thing or another and how his province Quebec should be a nation - separate from Canada. Yet there he was, most of us are not able to vote for him, or against him, because he belongs to the archetypical single interest party - one Province. But that is an indication of the kind of liberal democracy Canada is, imagine such a debate in the United States, I can't imagine it.
The debate itself was uneventful, no knockout blows, but as you might expect everyone tried to gang up on Mr. Harper the government leader. His counter, was to be calm and repetitive, over and over he mouthed the mantra of his Conservative Platform, and I guess he succeeded in fending of his opponents. They eventually seemed to tire.
Fiscally, Harper sounds acceptable to me, but I don't trust him on his record or on the record of previous Conservative governments. The Liberals have in the past, been more prudent fiscally than the Conservatives, as counterintuitive as that may seem.
In my own little campaign, not much to report, no election signs yet, and not much campaigning this week. I've been busy writing speeches and answering emails from just about everyone. Tomorrow I have my first two public appearances, a radio show at 9 am, and a TV taping at 12 noon. So I need to look that over right now.
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