My thoughts on the French debate

So...my overall impressions are not that different from my thoughts on the English debate.  There were no big winner and no big knockouts.  I thought that Martin was reasonably strong here, actually a little stronger than in the English debate.  And this was precisely because a lot of this French debate was a rehash and/or a response to the English debate, so he had some practice.  It was not, in fact, radically different from the English debate in any particular, including the material covered and the positions taken and even the styles. 

The anglophone leaders were pretty good in French from this non-francophone's expression.  Duceppe was a bit off his game here, and started getting shriller and more aggressive towards the end.  Layton was pretty good, but not enough to win him a seat.  Harper was quite confident in places, but was also more evasive.

Duceppe's passed up chances to attack Martin in order to attack Harper.  He clearly sees Harper as the real rival, because he offers a way out of the sovereignty dilemma, real or otherwise.  Hence his strategy was to try to attach, as in the English debate, the Option Canada issue to the Tories as well as the Liberals.  Harper was partly able to deflect this.

Later interviews with Quebeckers on Radio-Canada seem to suggest that Jack Layton's solutions-oriented approach to the debate does resonate well with Quebeckers.  He stayed more on topic in this debate than in the English one.  Like I said, it's unlikely to turn into seats. 

Martin didn't have any major gaffes, and like I said, he was stronger this time.  But not enough to make many gains from this debate itself. 

One would expect that the French and English debates would be different, with more emphasis on the National Question in the French debate, but this was not really the case.  As I've written before, interest in the National Question has increased in the ROC and decreased in Quebec, in this election.  That Harper is willing to discuss decentralization in a manner that suits Quebeckers further neutralizes the issue in one way while igniting it in others.  So the discussions in Quebec and the ROC haven't been more similar in a while.

So, no winners, no losers, perhaps more lively than the English debate.  The francophone TV media seems to agree with me so far.  We'll see what the print media will bring us tomorrow.

Comments

[Josh]

Harper did pretty well. Despite his frequent use of anglicisms, he was obviously putting in a lot of effort and sounded, well, credible. I think the Tories can safely expect a couple seats.

I was most impressed by Layton, who seemed to be without his overearnestness in English debate yesterday. I did not like, however, his talk about "winning conditions for Canada" in Quebec. Martin did better than last night - I enjoyed it when he took Duceppe to task for suggesting that Health Canada has no need of researchers, as if practising physicians devise and test new drugs.

Duceppe was hostile and mean-spirited for the most part. His comment at the beginning about how the Bloc can never be afflicted by corruption or any ethical lapses was laughable given that the Bloc will never govern nor face the responsibility of holding power.

[Rafael Najera]

Excellent summary of the debate.

I also think Harper did pretty good in French; last time was actually excruciating to hear him trying to articulate grammatically correct sentences. He's obviously more relaxed now. He scored some points at the end when he said the Quebeckers should realize that obviously French is not his mother language but that there are some points of contact between he and the province.

Martin looked as stressed out as last night in English. He's in trouble.

Layton is basically irrelevant in Quebec, but I think people here generally like him. I like him.

As for Duceppe, I've always been impressed at the capacity he has to look good to people in Quebec. He obviously masters his rhethoric skills in French. He wins debates in the view of many francophones not because his mother language is French but because he is very good at it.

[ClaudeB]

As an actual "in-the-flesh" francophone voter, I agree with Rafael, on Duceppe as the best debater of the lot. He was commanding, calm and well-rested and he answered most questions with an encyclopedical knowledge of facts and figures. He was also the only one to mention cities and towns and the problems they're facing.

Martin looked so tired of anwsering the same questions again and looked distracted... it was one hell of a faux pas to falsely accuse
Layton (rather than Harper) of opposing abortion and the inclusion of property rights in the constitution.

As for Harper, he was OK, but his (normal) emotionless style kind of annoys me. There is also this issue with invoking the name of René Levesque.

I (and many others here) find it tasteless and disparaging, especially when it's pointed out (Vincent Marissal of La Presse made the point) that Harper did not disclose all the names of his contributors when he was elected leader of the Canadian Alliance, in 2002 or when he lobbied hard in favour of money from third parties in election campaigns -- when he was GM of the NCC, the lobby group went to the Supreme Court to allow them to spend on elections.

It's the total antithesis of Levesque's action regarding accountability: Both his Election Act and the Referendum Act (a.k.a Loi sur les consutltations populaires), expressly prohibits contributions from people or entities who are not actual voters.

[Mandos]

And oddly enough the same thing happened in the English debate, in almost the same way, re Levesque. I too did a double-take on Harper wearing the mantle of Levesque. You might know better, but I don't think Harper's target audience will pay too much attention to this in Quebec anyway as some people appear to be happy to have *some* alternative to the Liberals.

[ClaudeB]

Maybe, maybe not. This Harper double-speak might tie in with the Option Canada story, with has been THE hot-button topic in the Quebec media (you even hear some people mumbling "Parizeau was right in 1995") for the last six days.

If I was a Bloc strategist (which I'm not), I would play it like this:

1- Option Canada was a shadowy organization which used money to unduly influence the results of the Quebec referendum. This was revealed by Lester & Philpot's book.

2- Harper was the advocate for a some organization (the NCC is not known in Quebec, therefore for the average voter here, it could seem shadowy) petitioning the Supreme Court to allow lobby groups to spend money on federal election campaigns.

3- So, as a potential PM, would Harper disregard Quebec electoral laws in a future referendum, if he's elected? Past experience shows us he is against popular financing of political parties operating under strict limits and support third-party (unions, businesses or lobby groups) financial involvement.