00:01:39.580I hope that he is able to facilitate a good debate.
00:01:42.880Well, that unfortunately was not the case.
00:01:45.260And it was very clear from the from the outset, from the very beginning, that this debate was going to be a disaster.
00:01:50.880And I don't completely blame Tom Clark.
00:01:54.240I think that he certainly didn't help the way that he sort of interjected himself.
00:01:59.960It almost felt like we were watching six simultaneous interviews of the candidates as opposed to a debate where they have crosstalk and they exchange ideas and they push back against one another.
00:02:10.820I say that I don't entirely blame Tom Clark because this was organized by the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:02:17.580OK, Tom Clark was a person that they chose to sit in the chair and, you know, basically bear the heat and and and keep this thing on time and follow the rules that I believe were set up by the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:02:31.260I don't think that they wanted a lively exchange.
00:02:33.340I don't think they wanted the candidates to be able to get into the weeds about their ideas.
00:02:37.080They didn't want the disputes, the crosstalk.
00:02:39.680They didn't want the candidates yelling at each other because they were embarrassed by the reaction to the first debate, the one that was hosted by Canada Strong and Free and moderated by myself and Jamil Giovanni,
00:02:51.760who is a lawyer, writer, former journalist, former radio host and the incoming president of that organization, Canada Strong and Free, which, as you know, was formerly known as the Manning Conference.
00:03:01.900And I'm going to tell you why I thought I think this.
00:03:04.960There was a piece in Politico this morning says Pierre Polyev vows to fire Canada's central banker.
00:03:11.480And in it, there's a little there's a little tidbit here about the debate and about how the room felt.
00:03:17.520So it says right here how the room felt sedate mostly.
00:03:21.400Longtime Tory comms guy Corey Han warned the candidates against a repeat of the Ottawa debate where no holes were barred.
00:03:29.060Civil War, Han said, could haunt the party when future liberal attack ads hit the airwaves.
00:03:35.420And then it went on to say the candidates weren't fired up like they were in Ottawa, where moderators Candace Malcolm and Jamil Giovanni egged on fiery exchanges.
00:03:43.880The crowd didn't bring the energy largely because Clark forbade applause and threatened to take time away from any candidates who inspired hooting and hollering.
00:03:54.380And so then if you go to Corey Han and what he tweeted, he had a thread last week basically just saying, look, the debate that we just had in Ottawa, the one that Jamil and I hosted, basically there's an attack ad ready for the liberals no matter who wins.
00:04:11.540So this sort of Tory establishment insider guy is saying, hey, guys, the debate was too rough.
00:04:20.040The candidates were given too much of a leash to say what they actually believe, to debate each other, which is, of course, the purpose of a debate, not only to be entertaining, but to learn about the candidates, to find out where they stand on the issues, to see their vulnerabilities, to see how they react on stage when being challenged by a formidable candidate.
00:04:36.480Right. This is what's going to happen in the general election.
00:04:39.260This is what's going to happen. Whoever faces off against the liberals.
00:04:42.480We might as well see it now. These Tory insiders don't want that, though.
00:04:45.920They're paranoid and absolutely scared of any potential liberal attack ads.
00:04:51.240So they want the candidates to be completely sanitized.
00:04:54.060They want everyone to follow liberal talking points, essentially.
00:04:57.020And they want a very unentertaining debate.
00:05:01.520We had a debate where the candidates were strangled.
00:05:04.940You couldn't you couldn't understand what they wanted to say because of the format.
00:05:09.380So I'm going to go through some of the biggest criticisms of the format.
00:05:13.500And there were a lot. And again, I don't blame Tom Clark, because I think he was given direct orders from the Conservative Party and that a lot of the restrictions were probably from them as opposed to, you know, his own ideas of what he wanted to do.
00:05:25.660But that being said, the whole thing was just uncomfortable to watch.
00:05:29.200And many, many people that I saw commenting on social media said that they just couldn't watch it.
00:05:33.680They just it was just so, so bad they couldn't watch it.
00:05:36.560So first, the first thing that happened was Tom Clark set out these ground rules that basically said that no one in the audience could say anything.
00:05:44.060You're not allowed to react. You're not allowed to clap. You're not allowed to boo.
00:05:46.580You're not allowed to show any emotion.
00:05:48.240We had our own Andrew Lawton on the ground in Edmonton.
00:05:50.820He reported that there were somewhere between 800 and a thousand people in the room in Edmonton.
00:05:54.900So picture this. They have a debate in Edmonton, Alberta.
00:05:58.340They fly all the candidates out there. They fly the moderator out there.
00:06:01.140All of the campaign teams, all the insiders go to Edmonton.
00:06:04.960They sell tickets to this thing. They fill up a room.
00:06:07.520It's filled with conservative volunteers, activists, insiders, people who love politics, political junkies.
00:06:13.580They all travel to Edmonton. You know, people drive from the suburbs.
00:06:16.740People drive from rural Alberta to be there to see this thing.
00:06:20.180They fill up a room with nearly a thousand people and then they order everybody to be completely silent.
00:06:27.480They weren't allowed to talk. They weren't allowed to react.
00:06:30.160What is the point of having all those people in a room?
00:06:32.660The purpose of filming these things in front of a live audience is to capitalize on the energy, having people react, knowing where the base stands, you know, who has the loudest applause lines.
00:06:44.460These are politicians. They react to applause, right?
00:06:48.300You're giving a speech, a public speech in front of a thousand people and you don't know what's resonating because you can't, people aren't cheering.
00:06:55.680So this whole idea that Clark set up here that there was no, that there was silence, mandated silence of the audience was just terrible to me.
00:07:05.940Like there's no point in doing a live debate if you are not going to allow the audience to be part of the debate and feed off of their energy.
00:07:14.680So that was very brutal. And then worse off than that, when the crowd sort of ignored Tom Clark and continued to do what they're going to do, which is, hey, this is politics.
00:07:23.920We want to cheer. We want to let the candidates know who, what, what ideas we like, what ideas we don't.
00:07:29.640Well, Tom Clark, the moderator jumped in and penalized Pierre Polyev because someone booed Jean Charest.
00:07:36.220So here's the first clip I'm going to show you. Jean Charest made a point. The audience booed him because he didn't agree.
00:07:42.000And for some odd reason, Tom Clark, the moderator, penalized Pierre Polyev because some guy in the audience booed Jean Charest.
00:07:50.200Unbelievable. You can't make this stuff up. Let's play that clip.
00:07:53.020But on this issue, let's, can we be clear on one thing?
00:07:56.120Every candidate in this race needs to tell the women of Canada where they stand, whether they're pro or against.
00:08:01.820They, the women of Canada, deserve to know where they stand. And Mr. Polyev's answer, quite frankly, does not fit that test.
00:08:10.340OK. We will be taking 10 seconds away from Mr. Polyev, but Mr. Acherson, get in.
00:08:24.420So that part of the debate was terrible.
00:08:26.900Well, the other part was that the, so part of the problem with debates and with political candidates is oftentimes they're too scripted, right?
00:08:33.840They prepare too much and you don't really get the off-the-cuff responses.
00:08:38.460You don't get the reactions that you want.
00:08:39.980It's just too, it's too scripted and it's too robotic.
00:08:45.640People want to know the authentic opinions of the people on stage.
00:08:49.100But in this debate, it was the opposite because we heard from Tom Clark, the moderator, that the questions were given to the candidates in advance.
00:08:56.320So he had an opening question and a closing question that were to do with the candidate's vision of the country, which they were given in advance.
00:09:04.520So rather than hearing the sort of, again, authentic views of the candidates, we just got scripted basically reading of speeches, which is just, again,
00:09:13.000this is something that the Conservative Party of Canada probably wants because they want a boring scripted debate where candidates don't go off message and that everyone is really disciplined.
00:09:22.300But as a voter and as someone who's trying to determine who the best potential prime minister would be, again, it's not what you want.
00:09:28.600So, again, just another unnecessary thing that made the debate even worse.
00:09:52.440This is straight out of like talk radio or something.
00:09:54.440This sad trombone would play, which means that the candidate was not allowed to talk anymore.
00:09:59.940So fortunately, this only happened twice in the debate, but it was incredibly cringy.
00:10:03.560So here is a clip of the stupid trombone interrupting Scott Aitchison, Scott Aitchison for the crime of mentioning the prime minister of Canada during a political debate.
00:11:48.800Tom Clark cut each candidate off right when they were making interesting points.
00:11:51.920They each had an opportunity, 15 seconds.
00:11:54.800And then you just moved on to a totally different question.
00:11:57.300And you had serious questions intermixed with the stupidest questions that you have ever heard.
00:12:02.860So if you watched Monday's show where I reacted to media criticism of the debate that I moderated,
00:12:08.320one of the things I mentioned was that Tom Clark sort of became infamous for this interview that he did with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
00:12:15.880Back when Justin Trudeau first became leader of the Liberal Party in 2014, I said that Tom Clark asked Justin Trudeau this really,
00:12:22.840really stupid question about what kind of shampoo he used.
00:12:28.120Luckily, our friend Ezra Levant had the clip and he shared it on Twitter.
00:12:31.260So I'm going to share it with you now just so that you get the idea of the sort of the sort of journalist that Tom Clark is not not necessarily known as like a hard hitting guy.
00:12:41.420He's more of a conversationalist. And you can see from this question, which many conservatives took to be sort of like, again, just the cringiest thing.
00:12:49.060Like the Prime Minister of Canada doesn't wield serious questions.
00:12:52.080He wields ridiculous softball questions from a fanning media.
00:12:55.840So here is that old clip from 2014 of last night's moderator, Tom Clark, asking Justin Trudeau, yes, about his hair.
00:13:03.280So I guess the first thing I should ask you is, are you feeling lucky?
00:13:11.420What a disappointing answer this is going to be.
00:13:15.400Whatever happens to be hanging around at the time.
00:13:18.960I just I love that clip because Justin Trudeau laughs.
00:13:22.200Right. So so the stupid question comes out of Tom Clark's mouth.
00:13:24.980Justin Trudeau laughs and you kind of expect Trudeau to say, come on, Tom, that's that's that's such a silly question.
00:13:30.080But instead, Trudeau takes him completely seriously and says, oh, everyone's going to be super disappointed to learn that I don't use some fancy shampoo.
00:13:37.520As if anybody cares, as if anybody in the entire world cares one iota about Justin Trudeau and his hair products.
00:13:44.980So so again, just just Justin Trudeau's ego being fed to an extreme there.
00:13:50.160But I show that clip just to show you the type of mindset of the moderator, Tom Clark.
00:13:56.780And he brought that mindset to the debate last night.
00:14:00.160So we had a whole slew of just absolutely ridiculous questions that were being thrown at these candidates.
00:14:07.240It was demeaning. It was demoralizing.
00:14:10.020It was insulting to the intelligence of the people who bother to watch this thing.
00:14:13.380I don't think very many Canadians bother to watch this kind of stuff, mostly because it's so in the weeds and it's not entertaining.
00:14:19.520But this just made it even worse. Right.
00:14:21.240These are the kind of questions that you might be interested to hear.
00:14:24.520You know, if you if if it was a longtime politician who was retiring and you were doing like a farewell interview,
00:14:31.240or if you had one of these people over to your house for a dinner party and you're trying to get to know them in a different kind of way.
00:14:37.400These are not the questions that you ask a leadership candidate who is trying to lead the country,
00:14:42.720especially when you cut you cut them off when they want to talk about the important issues like what is the biggest threat facing Canada?
00:14:48.460You cut them off after 15 seconds and then you spend all of this time asking the stupidest questions I have ever heard.
00:14:55.040It was almost like it was designed to embarrass these candidates.
00:14:59.620We heard a question. What book are you reading?
00:15:03.160Look, these guys aren't reading books.
00:15:05.120And it was pretty obvious and that was pretty embarrassing for everybody.
00:15:07.740None of these candidates are reading books.
00:15:09.360And that's fair enough because they are campaigning.
00:15:11.760They are in the midst of a fight for their political careers.
00:15:14.960The biggest opportunity that they will ever have in their lives, likely to lead the Conservative Party and face off against Justin Trudeau in the next election.
00:15:24.360They're going from event to event to event.
00:15:26.020When they have any downtime, they're probably making phone calls to donors and trying to, again, just work on their strategy, work on their speeches.
00:15:35.280So the question of what book are you reading was almost like it was just designed to embarrass them because obviously none of them are reading books right now.
00:15:41.960And we also heard just stupid questions that nobody cares about.
00:16:17.400I really, really wanted one of the candidates to just stand up to the moderator at some point during this ridiculous trade and say, listen, Tom, these are not the important issues facing our country.
00:16:27.300Our country is at a crisis right now, and it is not appropriate to be wasting time on the stage with frivolous questions about what kind of movies we watch.
00:16:36.260Canadians want to know how we're going to deal with these crises, and let's talk about that.
00:16:40.700Let's have more time to talk about, again, the biggest crises facing Canada or our positions on a variety of issues.
00:16:46.920They didn't even talk about housing prices.
00:16:56.780Again, just a huge, a huge fail on behalf of the organizers and whosever idea it was to include this ridiculous slew of superficial questions.
00:17:06.800So here are some of the worst questions that were asked at the debate last night.
00:17:10.840With Mr. Charest, and Mr. Charest, the very first question I have for you is, what book are you reading now?
00:19:25.260He has, you know, such a reach on social media.
00:19:28.300Our reporter, Andrew Lawton, who was in the room, was interviewing people.
00:19:31.020He said that the overwhelming majority of people that he spoke to supported Pierre Polyev and that Pierre is clearly the frontrunner.
00:19:37.560So because of that, all of the candidates were taking shots at Pierre, Pierre, if he ever wanted to actually respond and have his own rebuke, he had to use up one of his paddles.
00:19:47.740And so because of that, Pierre used up all of his paddles.
00:19:50.140He had five paddles, according to our researchers here at True North, at the one hour and eight minute mark of a two hour debate, Pierre was silenced.
00:19:58.040Pierre's last paddle was used in a reply that he wanted to make to Patrick Brown, and then he was done.
00:20:03.880And he wasn't allowed to talk again for the rest of the debate, except for his closing remarks.
00:20:08.540So you had a two hour debate in which the main frontrunner candidate, the guy who has the most support out of everyone, is effectively silenced an hour and eight minutes into a two hour debate, which left almost 45 minutes at the end where Pierre was absent.
00:20:24.360He was just standing there and he couldn't talk and people were attacking him.
00:20:28.620The other candidates were attacking him and he didn't even have the opportunity to defend him.
00:20:32.160I cannot think of a stupider way to organize a debate.
00:20:36.780And I can't help but blame, again, the Conservative Party of Canada for letting this charade carry out.
00:20:52.220And we saw a lot of legacy media journalists also noting how bad and cringey this debate was.
00:20:59.040So Rosemary Barton, who I'm no fan of and I don't usually quote her in any form of agreement, but she on Twitter was right.
00:21:06.580She said, and now the format is going to lose me, she tweeted.
00:21:09.900She also said, this said, Trabone is apparently part of the debate, oh dear.
00:21:14.160Althea Raj of the Toronto Star and the CBC likewise said, having been involved in three debates as a moderator, federal election 2019, federal NDP leadership and Ontario PC leadership, this one is a bit more like a game show.
00:21:27.160So that's her very polite way of saying this thing is not a very serious debate.
00:21:31.240Evan Solomon of CTV, who has also moderated many, many debates, and, you know, he's good at it.
00:21:37.340He's fair, he's tough, he is someone who is very credible on these issues.
00:21:42.820He said, why would the conservative candidates agree to not mention Justin Trudeau's name in opening statements or get cut off by a weird buzzer?
00:21:51.880Now, a question on Ukraine that demands a yes or no.
00:21:54.340I wish these were not overly simplified.
00:21:56.380He said, gotta say, I could not stop watching the first unofficial debate.
00:22:01.060Even all the nastiness, at least the debate was about the candidates.
00:22:04.560Tonight, the format is getting in the way of the flow of any debate, and it's bogged down.
00:22:09.160The refs aren't the game, the players are.
00:22:11.980He continued, he said, I think this debate will have little impact on the campaign and makes the organization and the campaigns more important.
00:22:18.580This helps Pierre Polyev and maybe Patrick Brown, but it's Jean Charest, who needed the debate to make a punch through.
00:22:25.060So it is kind of interesting to see that I think it was pretty clear that the format of the debate was designed to hurt Pierre, to take away his momentum, to not allow the room to cheer him on, and then to cut him off arbitrarily at the one hour and eight minute mark of a two hour debate so that the other candidates could have more of a chance.
00:22:41.540And then here you have Evan Solomon saying the exact opposite, because the debate was such a mess, such a gong show, such a train wreck, that it won't actually have the impact that the organizers would have wanted, other than maybe the fact that there's no attack ads being cut, which is apparently the only priority of the conservative debate of the conservative party.
00:23:00.040They don't want attack ads, and there was more criticism.
00:23:02.900Don Martin from CTV said, far from giving candidates the latitude to compare and contrast their positions, they were shoehorned into soundbites with fairly strictly enforced time limits.
00:23:13.540You simply can't beat a clock, which divides one minute into multiple answers from competing candidates and expects a vote swaying answer from anyone.
00:23:21.460Perhaps if the goal was to discourage discussion from the constant quest for a knockout blow for campaign ads, all that's left to make a show of it are game show questions.
00:23:33.000And so I don't necessarily blame Tom Clark, although I do definitely feel for him because he is getting a lot of heat online there.
00:23:40.120Again, lots and lots of criticism about him.
00:23:42.000Okay, so I know I spent the majority of the show talking about how much I hated the format and how it really, really got in the way of a good debate.
00:23:47.960I'll spend the last few minutes of the show here just talking about the substance of the debate because it was honestly equally as bad.
00:23:55.720The substance of the debate wasn't very good, especially from a conservative perspective.
00:23:59.460What we basically had here was all of the candidates or most of the candidates most of the time doubling down and mirroring and mimicking liberal talking points.
00:24:07.700So we heard that the conservatives, mostly aside from Lesley Lewis, all agree that abortion is great and that there would be no limits on abortion right up until the point of the baby being born.
00:24:18.580So in Canada, none of the front runners in the conservative party are willing to even say that they oppose things like late term abortion, things like sex selective abortion, a real, real lack of courage, lack of interest in talking about this stuff.
00:24:31.520It was almost like they were all competing and trying to outcompete one another as to who is the most in favor of abortion, which is, again, so far off from where the base is on this issue and where most Canadians and most conservatives stand.
00:24:44.240When it came to immigration, we heard that they all wanted record high immigration.
00:24:49.200They were all enthusiastically in favor of Justin Trudeau's record high immigration numbers.
00:24:55.460If anything, Patrick Brown said that they should be even higher.
00:24:58.460The only person who had a ounce of common sense on the immigration question was Jean Charest, who mentioned that, hey, there's no point in having large immigration unless you're going to focus on integration,
00:25:10.000which is making sure that the people who come to Canada settle into Canada, acclimatize to our culture, to our values, and that we have jobs and opportunities for them.
00:25:19.340So at least it was a little bit, what Jean Charest said was a little bit helpful and constructive.
00:25:23.940But basically, these guys are all in favor of Justin Trudeau's reckless immigration policies.
00:25:28.960When it comes to supply management, most of the candidates are in favor of our centralized government planned, government orchestrated.
00:25:37.300Dairy cartels are all A-OK, according to this crop of conservatives.
00:25:41.900And there was a question, one of the very first policy questions of the whole debate was about Ukraine, which to me is sort of a moot point,
00:25:49.980because none of these people on the stage are going to be leader during this conflict.
00:25:53.860This conflict presumably will end, and so the whole idea of whether you want a no-fly zone or not is completely irrelevant.
00:26:01.140And yet that was the first policy question that was put to them.
00:26:03.380It was sort of cringy to hear all these politicians answer that question.
00:26:07.280The absolute worst answer was Patrick Brown, who enthusiastically said, yes, he would be in favor of a no-fly zone,
00:26:14.700which essentially means that he's in favor of American jets shooting down Russian jets,
00:26:19.280which would turn a conflict into a hot World War III between two nuclear powers,
00:26:24.780an insanely reckless position for a politician to take.
00:26:27.940Totally, totally out of touch as well, because it doesn't matter if Canada wants a no-fly zone or not.
00:29:33.860So if you're in the GTA, you're in Toronto, you're interested in seeing a debate that will be nothing like the debate in Edmonton last night, where there will be, I promise you will be entertaining.
00:29:43.060There will not be the restraints and the restrictions on the candidates.
00:29:46.340Consider going and checking out that event.
00:29:50.460Head on over to independentpressgallery.ca.
00:29:54.260You can get your tickets there, or you will be able to stream it online if you're not in the GTA.
00:29:58.800I think all of this, again, just underscores the importance of the sort of independent side of the equation.
00:30:03.900The legacy media proves over and over and over again that they are incapable of organizing things, of asking politicians tough questions, of getting to the heart of the issues that matter to Canadians, that matter in our country.
00:30:16.020They would much rather put on a game show-like festival like we saw last night than allow a real exchange of ideas.
00:30:23.100It makes me incredibly grateful for the growth of independent media, for the opportunities that we are having, like the opportunity I had last week to moderate the conservative debate in Ottawa.