WINNIPEG—In a leadership race seen not really as a race, the federal Liberals staged a debate this weekend that wasn’t quite a debate either.A noisy but brief Idle No More drumming protest at the back of the theatre was the most fiery outburst when nine federal Liberal leadership contenders took to the stage in Winnipeg for a series of one-by-one interviews with a moderator.
A party known for its history of infighting has chosen instead to fight this contest with polite, veiled differences among the contenders.
Montreal MP Justin Trudeau, far out ahead in terms of fundraising and public profile, is the unnamed target of some of the pointed remarks from rivals, focused mostly on the lack of specifics in his platform.
Trudeau, who put out a democratic-reform policy statement in the past few days, to put more power in the hands of MPs, is portraying himself primarily as the shake-people-up candidate who will bring excitement back to politics.
“People are excited by the fact that we might actually have politicians and a political party that starts from the basis of trusting Canadians,” he said.
But his rivals, without mentioning him directly, say Canadians and Liberals are looking for more.
“Canadians are not looking for a product. They are looking for a vision,” candidate Deborah Coyne said.
“We can’t just say vague generalities about the issues of the day,” said Montreal MP and former astronaut Marc Garneau. “It’s not after the election that we want to find out what we’ve signed up for.”
Plenty of policy questions were discussed on stage Saturday—not aboriginal issues, which prompted the drummers’ protest—but on themes revolving around rural and agricultural policy, crime prevention and foreign ownership in the resource sector.
Martha Hall Findlay, the former MP for Willowdale, stood out most starkly for her singular opposition to Canada’s supply-management system.
She called it a “cartel” that is harming consumers and said the opening-up of supply-protected farming industries would create the same kind of thriving market that now exists for Canadian wine after free trade came along.
“We can absolutely do this with dairy, poultry and eggs,” she said.
Hall-Findlay also appears to be the candidate emerging as the one ready to take some shots at past Liberal practice or conventional wisdom, too, saying flatly that the party was wrong to go along with some of the ruling Conservatives’ law-and-order legislation during the past few years.
“We had these crime bills coming up for us to vote on and we were saying ‘we know they’re wrong ... but well, we don’t want to look like we’re soft on crime, we don’t want Stephen Harper to make us look like we’re soft on crime.’ We voted for far too many of those crime bills.”
The first debate in Vancouver two weeks ago, which featured discussion on electoral strategy for the Liberals, had given candidate Joyce Murray an opportunity to distinguish herself as the sole contender in favour of electoral co-operation pacts with the NDP and the Greens.
Murray said Saturday that while this was her main point of departure from her rivals, she stressed she wasn’t talking about “long-term marriage” but “just a one-night stand.”
The Winnipeg debate, however, gave mainly Hall-Findlay a chance to put some policy space between her and the others.
Trudeau made clear once again, as he has in previous interviews, that this was an issue on which he does not agree with Hall-Findlay.
“Let’s not pretend that we live in a free market internationally when it comes to agriculture,” Trudeau said. “I’m always looking forward, I’m looking for ways to reduce the costs for consumers of quality food, but it can’t come at the price of gutting the livelihood of Canadian farmers.”
The moderator of the event was Harvey Locke, who fought an unexpectedly close byelection in Calgary Centre late last year for the Liberals. He asked questions of the candidates for 11 minutes each in turn, with no opportunity for back-and-forth between the contenders.
Trudeau and all the other candidates were careful to take respectful note of the protest, which caused only a brief interruption in the early part of the proceedings. Trudeau tipped a figurative nod to the Idle No More movement, saying he was “excited about the potential” to mobilize aboriginal people, and especially young people.
Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett, the party’s aboriginal affairs critic, went out to speak to the protesters after they were removed and said there were just two people, annoyed that First Nations issues weren’t discussed at the debate.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Susan Delacourt
No comments:
Post a Comment