We Watched the Final Leaders' Debate So You Don’t Have To

It was clear in the fourth and final leaders’ debate that everybody was running out of things to say.

The setup for the French debate was the same as its English counterpart, which took place on Monday. All six candidates and five moderators, each from a different French-language outlet, joined a live audience in Gatineau, Quebec’s Canadian Museum of History.

Other than a couple of digs by Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer at Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, the number of sophisticated insults decreased dramatically in comparison to the English debate. Of course, most leaders aren’t as strong in speaking French.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who stuck out for all the right reasons this campaign, didn’t get to lay out his vision as much this time around.

Just the same, the debate felt like the last sigh of a tired animal as we approach the last week before election day. There were no clear winners, and everyone seemed content with getting in their say and moving on. Some other takeaways:

Scheer kept going at Trudeau regardless of who else he was supposed to be debating with. In one of the rare entertaining moments of the night, he said Trudeau wrote the Liberals’ “uncosted” platform on “the corner of a napkin.” Though Scheer likes to call the Liberals’ platform completely uncosted, the truth is that it’s only partially uncosted, like the commitment to implement universal pharmacare.

Trudeau didn’t engage in any extended tit-for-tats, and was happy to repeat talking points that make up the Liberal playbook.

Here’s the Trudeau talking point formula: “We [the Liberals] are good at doing stuff for X, we have been doing a lot of stuff for X, we have done more stuff for X than anyone else [in history], and we will continue doing more stuff for X. Vote Liberal.” Sub in any issue for X, especially the environment, affordability, and Indigenous issues.

At one point Trudeau said his administration has done more than any other government in the history of this country to combat climate change. That seems like an exaggeration since the Liberals ended up keeping the same climate change targets as Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

One segment of the debate was specifically devoted to SNC-Lavalin and whether the candidates would offer corporations remediation agreements. This had to be Scheer’s favourite segment and he got in a zinger on how Trudeau wasn’t trying to save Quebec jobs when he tried to influence then attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould: “The only job he was trying to save was his own.”

Singh stuck to his usual criticism of Liberals as fake progressives who can’t keep promises. “I don’t work for the rich and powerful, I work for people,” repeated Singh in his best Bernie Sanders impression. He said that Trudeau was just looking out for his “cronies.”

The People’s Party’s Maxime Bernier continued to deny that climate change is a crisis. Bernier said there are hundreds of scientists who agree with him—nevermind the hundreds of thousands of scientists who make up the 97 percent consensus confirming that, yes, it’s a goddamn crisis.

(Still hard to believe that this is now a “legitimate,” debate-worthy issue in Canada. Congrats to liberal democracy.)

Bernier then said that Scheer and the Conservatives “want mass immigration” and won’t do anything about “illegal border crossers.” He claimed that “mass immigration” is at the root of Canada’s housing unaffordability problem. Bernier gave no evidence to back up his claim because it’s at best unclear whether immigration plays a huge role in driving up house prices.

Finally, there was a question near the end about whether the leaders would kick out racist or sexist candidates. Bernier’s entire party is filled with people who say outrageous things without repercussion.

Bernier’s response? They can stay as long as “they own their mistakes” because his party is all about “personal responsibility.” In other words: it’s cool if they’re racist, as long as they’re open about it.

Yves-Francois Blanchet of the Bloc Quebecois called out Singh for saying one thing to an English audience about Bill 21—Quebec’s law banning public servants from wearing religious symbols at work—and then doing a 180 when it comes time to face a French crowd.

Blanchet has a point. Singh said during the French debate that he would not intervene on Quebec’s politics and prefers to “win the hearts and minds of people every day.” But he was less laissez-faire right after the English debate, when he said to the press that he’s for intervening at the Supreme Court level if it came to that.

Singh didn’t offer a response outside of saying he fights for social justice every day of his life.

The Green Party’s Elizabeth May repeated this idea that debating over discrimination issues is a waste of time.

She said Bill 21 isn’t a federal issue anyway since it’s up to Quebec and its own system to deal with. Rather, the time should’ve been used to discuss climate change and the environment.

Later on, she implied discussions on racist candidates and discrimination amount to “small politics,” instead of the bigger structural problem at hand: climate change.

Many have taken issue with May’s framing, especially with all the problems her own party’s candidates have had with racist comments.

Sitting through the second hour of the fourth debate discussing the same few issues was pretty brutal. Nobody said anything particularly new.

Do we really need four of these things?

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