The Election Debate We Desperately Need

Post 84 | Let's talk about everything

Next Thursday should be a big night on our calendar – the sole English language debate. But my expectations are low.

As written two weeks ago…

Alas, debates will feature too many players to be of value. Some voters will tune in claiming to learn of policy, the gullible sods. But in truth, they will mostly watch for the entertainment value or to confirm bias. They will eye the performance of each leader as though soothing speech or gentlemanly composure has bearing on his vision, intentions and capacity to execute on policy, or ability to navigate the vicissitudes of governing - while forgetting what oozing oratory and riddle speaking begat us for a decade.

Viewers will await pundit analysis of who delivered the “knockout punch”, and rely on their preferred news source to tell them who won and lost. Surely some of the columns have been already written.

But it needn’t be this way.

Canadian federal election debates suffer from the following maladies.

There are too few - by far.

Formats are not conducive to discussion and debate, while not holding leaders to account or demanding direct answers to questions.

Challenging and contentious topics are rarely tackled - particularly those with social or cultural undertones.

We rarely get to the heart of fundamental differences in vision, governing intention and policy, or uncover anything new.

The English event will be moderated by

STEVE PAIKIN

- an excellent interviewer and serious political journalist. But despite being well suited to the task he is not a magician and will be constrained by the format, rules and agreements negotiated between parties while severely limited by time.

I’ve never understood the need to cram a country’s issues into a two-hour time slot. Do the leaders have somewhere more important to be? Should we not demand a bunch of extensive and free flowing discussions as bare minimum toward something so important? And want to see the candidates pushed beyond standard talking points and antiseptic packaging of the campaign trail?

But in the current context of only one French and one English debate, both held in Montreal (Huh?), what we’ll get are sound bites, overtalking and pablum while including two walking dead parties and one committed to Canada’s dissolution.

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If offered a magic wand to fix it all, here’s what Pragmatic Canadian would do.

Hold five debates - four in English and one in French

English debates would be hosted - one in the Atlantic provinces, one in Ontario, one in the Western provinces and one in our northern territories.

All debates would be in seated format facing each other. Yes, this matters - to facilitate actual discussion not yelling.

No audience.

Two of the debates will feature only the top two polling parties - Conservative and Liberal.

Minimum duration of four hours.

Two will be moderated by independent media.

And so I take up my patriotic duty and offer to host one of the two-man events. I’m ready to go next week.

The Pragmatic Canadian debate!

We’ll film it in my living room.

Given the burgeoning world of independent media we’ll get picked up by Substack authors, then propagated to YouTube, X, Instagram, Facebook and more. Even legacy media will run clips. Reach will be in the millions. Take that, Rogan.

We’ll serve tea, fresh baked hot cross buns and cadsupa bread - given that it’s Easter season. Let’s see how they navigate that sticky business along with my questions.

It will play out as follows.

They’ll sit facing each other - preferred seat decided by rock-paper-scissors, best of five.

We’ll run for a full afternoon – 12 to 5 and longer if necessary. Bathroom breaks every hour (mostly for me).

Each candidate will be asked the same questions – alternating who goes first.

To keep us on track I’ll have a sawn-off hockey stick at my side and any evasion, wandering, sloganeering, excessive lecturing or circling back to canned talking points will be met with a smack – Father O’Reilly style from Catholic high school days.

When either guy does the “Oo-Oo, Mr. Kotter” thing, we’ll get into cross-examination and rebuttals. You know – an actual debate.

Have at it, fellas.

There will be no fixed time limits but I’ll be ruthless with the rules on evasion and wandering – entirely at my discretion. Given that both candidates have a strong autocratic and tetchy streak in them, I’m confident they’ll appreciate my uncompromising style. Birds of a feather and all that.

Discourteous interruptions will also be met with a stick across the shins.

Some questions demand a yes or no upfront. A “maybe” could be allowable since life often lives in the grey, but blatant evasion won’t be tolerated. We’ve all had enough of that and viewers will appreciate political feet being held to the fire.

Every so often we’ll pause for a shot of Crown Royal, just to keep things loose. By the end we’ll be so jacked up on honey glaze and whiskey, the truth will run free.

Each candidate will have five minutes at the end to wrap up the case for why his party should be entrusted with our precious Canada and why he is best suited to be Prime Minister.

When the camera turns off we’ll have dinner with my wife, so no further political talk. She’s not a fan.

We’ll finish the evening with a game of Scrabble because you can tell a lot about a man by how he handles a board game, then the guys will head downstairs for a sleepover. That will require an arm wrestle for the spare bed versus the couch – unless they want to share the king bed in the spirit of bipartisanship.

Early next morning we’ll get fired up with a workout, cold plunge, sauna and breakfast before an Uber to the airport.

Sounds to me like a recipe for national unity, don’t you think?

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Twenty topics and related questions are below, but I’ll be riffing from there with follow-ups and clarifications. Trust me, we’ll have a real discussion and debate. I think Justin’s fancy word for this would have been - a robust discussion.

We won’t pretend history doesn’t exist and will dig into the many places where current positions and policies diverge from the past. There will be nowhere to hide.

I am uninterested in cheap shots, tabloid stuff and not seeking gotchas, though some a-has, oohs and wows may occur along the way.

Most questions will begin with a lead-in preamble and I admit upfront that some of my bias will show through. Candidates will be free to challenge my characterizations if they disagree, without fear of corporal punishment. If you want zero bias, have an AI bot moderate the debate, and even then…

Here’s what we’ll cover.

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Vision | What is your broad vision for how Canada will look, feel and function in four years? If all goes to plan, what will be different than today - economically, socially, culturally, militarily and internationally?

Top Issues & Priorities | What are your top five ranked concerns for Canada over the next term? And what are your top five priorities? At a big picture how will your policies address these versus being short term band-aids or appeasement to voting blocs?

United States | All right - let’s get this out of the way early. My premise is that while having serious near term impacts on Canada, US tariffs and Trumpian chain rattling represent only a small piece of what we need to deal with in this country. And further, that the biggest problems we face currently were not caused by Donald Trump who has been in office only a few months. Specific to dealing with or negotiating with Donald Trump as often worded in polling questions, how will you fundamentally differ in doing so? If so, what does that mean, and how? How much would you advise voters to focus on this topic in their ballot choice versus all the endemic issues at play?

Governing Approach | Let’s explore your different approaches to governing – a Conservative market-driven, bottom-up, smaller government approach versus a Liberal top down, controlled, bigger government approach. Mark is accused of being a globalist and WEF-influenced elitist intent on creating a Canada in his desired image, while Pierre is accused of being a populist, naively enthralled to the free market. Let’s discuss both of those characterizations including what are the upsides and downsides of each - to our economy, industries, personal rights and freedoms and more?

Fiscal Management & Balanced Budget | When and how do we get to a balanced budget? Will spending cuts or revenue increase policies be more prominent in your government’s plan to achieve this? Explain it in detail and what will differ from the past decade that featured budget deficits every year, while missing every budget projection. What will be your target metrics to assess our fiscal health beyond GDP? How will your policies encourage and drive those metrics?

Infrastructure Investments | How will you marry our urgent need for infrastructure, energy and military growth with our lack of fiscal capacity, high debt load and social program entitlements such as daycare, pharmacare and dentalcare entitlements plus myriad other spending items. We can’t have it all so what will be your trade offs, specifically? How will you finance the infrastructure programs everyone seemingly agrees are necessary, while not further increasing our debt?

Military & Borders | Our military is under funded (spending of $41 billion is 75% of our $54 billion debt servicing costs), under staffed and under armed. Let’s discuss your plan to fix it. Where does our military capacity and funding fit into your government’s top five priorities? What is your prioritization for domestic sovereignty and border security including our northern borders, versus meeting international commitments? What needs to change including budget prioritization and mandate? Should we approach this from the 2% NATO funding perspective, or a ground up methodology that sets targets on personnel, equipment and preparedness for specific events?

Immigration | How will you set permanent, temporary and refugee quotas in the coming years to ensure existing Canadians’ services and housing needs can be properly met, while ensuring future immigrants can be effectively absorbed? What is your plan for accelerated accreditation of existing immigrants in their respective fields – particularly to address our nursing and doctor shortages? What is your plan for regional settlement of new immigrants?

Fossil Fuels & Mining | What specific new pipelines for each of oil and gas do you endorse as being critical for Canada’s energy future? How do you marry the existence of the restrictive Impact Assessment Act with a plan for Canada’s energy growth you both agree is critical? How can we justify an emission cap on our fossil fuels industry with the target of becoming an energy superpower? Are you betting on unproven and struggling carbon capture technology? How will you overcome the historic bottlenecks in achieving indigenous, environmental and Quebec buy-in for pipeline projects? What federal powers will you leverage if agreements cannot be reached within a year? I have similar questions for all our pent up mining projects for critical and rare earth minerals that take years before even reaching approval stage.

Innovation and Full Chain Manufacturing | Canada sells most of our fossil fuels and minerals for refining and value-add processing elsewhere - at deep discounts to the finished goods. Meanwhile, recent years have seen us giving billions to foreign corporations to build products on our soil while generating no Canadian IP and generating few jobs. What will be your government’s plan to begin encouraging innovation, funding and development of more full-chain value-added refining and manufacturing of our energy molecules and mining materials? What is your vision for Canada to become a serious player in more than raw materials?

Net Zero and Environment | Per my article Is Net Zero Mostly Wrong? I join many Canadians in concern that net zero policies have been vastly overdone, to the detriment of our fiscal and energy wellbeing, with no measurable benefits, while missing target metrics, and target outcomes moving in the wrong direction. Where does carbon reduction sit as a priority for you and does it take primacy over our fiscal health and energy growth? Where does it fit into a broader environmental and biodiversity plan? Would Canada not have significantly more impact on net zero by increasing our responsibly generated fuels to serve an energy-hungry world that burns excessive coal, rather than imposing mandates against Canadian energy expansion? How does a carbon tax (Carney’s Carbon Tax Head Fake) on industries that have already taken major steps to ameliorate carbon emissions, attract new investment to Canada or help existing industries thrive? Will we not just cause further decline and industry flight to the US while further complicating tariff discussions with a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism?

Government Size | Our federal civil service is up 43% since 2015 (368,000) costing $70 billion annually. Public sector growth plus immigration have been the two largest drivers of our GDP even while it has declined for a decade, while depressing private sector hiring and growth as they struggle to compete with government. What is your vision for the role and size of government compared to our current state? What is your planned approach and policies to reduce the relative size and influence of our public sector while prioritizing our private sector growth, particularly our 1.2 million Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that generate one-third of our GDP?

Government Regulations | With more than 72,000 federal regulations in place including many that constrain our SMEs as covered in Can De-Regulation Fix Canada? how will you reduce these and free up our private sector to grow while increasing their access to inter-provincial and international trade? How will you change policy and tone to enable/encourage business growth, versus the ban/mandate policies of the past decade?

Trade | How will you enhance our trade through the currently active agreements of CETA and CPTPP per my article Carney is not our Trade Saviour, plus inter-provincial trade expansion? Can CETA and CPTPP form the baseline of our diversification strategy beyond the US? If not, what else specifically are you proposing?

India | Given they are the world’s fifth largest economy, will your government re-normalize trade and diplomatic relations with India?

Freedom & Democracy | There are serious concerns in our country with the throttling of free expression and free speech - both directly and indirectly. Let’s have a wide ranging discussion with no holds barred including DEI, lockdowns, mandates, EMA, constraints on various professions, online censorship including Bill C-11, prorogue and more. Where do such internally-driven threats to our freedom and democracy sit on your list of concerns? What will your government do about them? Buckle up - this will take a while.

Sovereignty and National Unity | How do you marry the concept of a single united Canada with the idea that Quebec is recognized as a nation within Canada, indigenous are recognized as a nation-within-a-nation under UNDRIP and Alberta wants to be seen as a nation with their Sovereignty Act – all within the nation of Canada? How can these seemingly competing concepts and identities co-exist within a united Canada at practical, fiscal and policy levels?

First Nations | How do you marry the idea of tens of billions in direct payments being made to first nations for reconciliation, and hundreds of billions yet in the pipeline - with a need for Canada to more broadly build for all, and while we face major budget constraints? Can you and how will you bring an end to the direct outflow of this money, and will energy and mining co-investment policies replace reconciliation payments or be in addition to? How do you see this all playing out and do you have a plan to guide it differently than the current trajectory?

China | Many Canadians are distressed by the lack of accountability or change coming from the 2023-24 Public Inquiry and 2024 NSICOP Report related to China’s meddling in our elections and domestic affairs. What will your government materially do about China’s growing influence in Canada?

Government Structure | What will be the size and structure of your Cabinet? How will yours differ from what I’ve proposed in Put Cabinet on a Diet, including to not exceed ~22 departments?

Let’s finish off with a round of rapid fire yes/no questions.

• Will you rescind the 2035 EV vehicle mandate?

• Will your government seriously assess changes to Quebec’s supply management on poultry, dairy and eggs?

• Is there any circumstance in which you would consider using the Notwithstanding Clause?

• Will you commit to conducting a full, public post-mortem review of Covid actions and lessons learned?

• Will your government openly debate the structure and formula for equalization payments?

• Will you rescind the Impact Assessment Act?

• Will you rescind the emissions cap on our fossil fuels industry?

• Do you agree that DEI policies have been excessive in government and academia hiring and management practices - and need to be significantly modified?

• Do you endorse the Century Initiative that promotes 100 million Canadian population by 2100?

• Given hindsight and everything we now know, do you still characterize Canada as being culturally genocidal?

• Do you support Sir John A. Macdonald again being proudly celebrated in our history?

• Will your government eliminate regional Economic Development Agencies?

Closing Statements

….and that’s a wrap, Gents!

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I’m guessing some of you would tune in to watch this, wouldn’t you?

What questions did I miss?

Meanwhile, I’ll be sitting by my phone waiting for a call from Jenni Byrne and Gerald Butts to get it all scheduled. The kettle will be on and baking in the oven.

Stay tuned and stay pragmatic.