Vancouver Centre candidates are contributing to global warming with all the hot air they are spewing

This evening I went to an all candidates debate at the Gathering Place Community Centre. I decided to go very last minute, and now I am wishing that I had just gone home and had a nap like I had originally intended.

I should confess from the start that I did not stay for the entire debate. I made it through about 1 hour and 45 minutes before I could no longer stand the constant stream of nonsense coming out of everyone’s mouth. The debate was largely based around audience questions, which is an extremely poor way to run a debate if you ask me. I do not think that any candidate actually answered the question that was asked of them. It is not surprising that candidates have a tough time answering the reandom questions thrown at them. Some of the questions are so specific to the asker that there is basically no point in answering them. Some questions are so broad that it is not possible to answer them.

I was struck by how little substance was put forth from four supposed star candidates. I do not think that Hedy Fry should really count as a star candidate anymore. She was a star back in 1993, but since then she has diminished greatly. She lately seems to win because she has a very strong volunteer base and she connects well with many people in the riding. She does not have a big national profile like most start candidates do. Lorne Mayencourt is hardly a star either. He was an ineffective and rather unpopular MLA. His only real star quality for me is that he is an openly gay man running with the Conservatives. Adriane Carr is a star as far as the Green Party goes, but she is not well known outside of BC, and even in BC I would bet that most people could not tell you who she is. Michael Byers is the only one of the bunch who you might call a legitimate star candidate. He regularly writes for The Globe and Mail, he is a published and critically respected author, and has been an adviser to Jack Layton for several years now on matters of foreign policy.

While Michael Byers may be a star candidate on paper, in person he does not shine. I had heard from a friend who saw him speak a couple of weeks ago that he has a tendency to yell when he gets excited. Tonight the room for the debate was not large, it was easy to reach the entire room with a strong speaking voice, yet Michael Byers seemed to be constantly yelling at the audience. At one point Hedy Fry commented on how good rhetoric can sound, especially when you are yelling it across the room. It was a good line, but Ms. Fry mostly bandies rhetoric about herself, she just has the decency not to yell it at people.

Not surprisingly, given that I do not like the man or the party that he is running for, I thought that Lorne Mayencourt was the least effective communicator of the group. In a room that was lacking in substance, Mayencourt seemed to be trying to get through the debate without offering up any substantive discussion whatsoever. Perhaps it is a good tactic for Mayencourt. I do not think that the man is unintelligent, but he may not match up too well against Byers or Fry in a really deep policy debate. What Mayencourt appeared to be working hard at was being likable. He seems to be taking the Stephen Harper approach, just make people like you (or at least not afraid of you) and the best way to do that is not to say anything about Conservative plans or ideology because quite frankly most Canadians are not conservative.

Some people in the audience may have liked Mayencourt a little bit more after tonight, but myself, I am not taken in by any of his charms. Any openly gay man who is willing to run for Harper’s Conservatives is not someone I would trust. I cannot see how a man who is supposedly proud of who he is can run for a party that is ridden from head to toe with homophobic bigots. I would like to see how far Mayencourt would get in a caucus where almost all of the members are deeply opposed to same sex marriage.

If I had to pick a winner from the debate, for me it would be Adriane Carr. She did not present any astounding ideas or have any real good zingers for her opponents, but she was able to stress throughout the night that it is important in politics to focus on the solutions, and not whose idea is being used to get to the solution. She criticized the other parties for attacking each other’s ideas not on their merits, but simply because they come from a different party. She used the carbon tax as an example. As far as environmental policy goes, the carbon tax is a quick and effective way to begin to change consumption behaviour. She noted that the BC NDP opposes BC’s version of the carbon tax, not because it is a bad idea, but because they stand to gain politically by opposing it. The federal NDP also opposes a carbon tax, not because it is a bad idea, but because it is a major part of the Liberal platform. Carr also had a good point about how Jack Layton is in a sense responsible for killing the Kelowna Accord and a national daycare strategy. Apparently in late 2005 Elizabeth May pleaded with Jack Layton to hold off on bringing down the Martin government so that the global climate change meeting in Montreal could be allowed to finish. The Kelowna Accord could also have been implemented, and the national daycare strategy of the Liberals could have been fully implemented. Instead, alleges Carr, Layton decided to go to the polls early because the numbers were looking good for some NDP gains.

I fully agree with Ms. Carr that the important thing about politics is the solutions, not really how you get to those solutions. At the same time, if you do not have any seats, or very few seats, you might not ever get anyone to take any of your ideas seriously. It is a fine line then between supporting good ideas, but playing enough political games to make sure you win enough seats so that your own ideas occasionally get heard.