Everything Wrong With The CPC Leadership Debate

Last night, during the one official CPC English language debate, the federal party decided to showcase why they so consistently screw up elections. After the debate run by independent media got national attention for its excitement, the CPC did what it does best, cater to the people who hate it.

While the people enjoyed the more open format that gave candidates a chance to shine on issues they cared about, while exposing their weaknesses the CPC decided to listen to the few blue check marked pundits who tried to spin the previous debate as anti-intellectual. So the CPC mandated “substance” or at least as much substance can be provided in 15 second answers.

To start, the biggest problem with the debate was by far and away Tom Clark, the moderator. There is a common saying in sports that if you notice the referee then they are doing a bad job. That applied to Tom Clark who made himself the centre of attention, when not asking frivolous questions.

The debate started out on the wrong foot with all these ridiculous rules: No mentioning another candidate, no mentioning another federal leader, no clapping from the audience (why even have an audience) and silly time deduction rules. On top of all this candidates were only given 15 seconds to answer each question.

Whenever a candidate had a good answer the crowd would clap for three seconds, followed up by a minute and a half of Tom Clark self-righteously lecturing the audience in the interest of “saving time”. A great way to kill the flow of the debate.

The CPC leadership and Tom Clark wanted substance, which is why we had questions like: What book are you reading, what is your favourite TV show to binge watch, who is your non-Winston Churchill political hero and what music do you listen to?

The biggest problem for the CPC leadership and the best moment of the night were highlighted when Pierre Poilievre finally took a shot at Tom Clark for the framing of a question. When the CPC organises a debate the moderator cannot be doing the work of the Liberal party, and that’s what Tom Clark was doing when he falsely framed the Freedom Convoy as an “occupation” of Ottawa. Poilievre slammed him for not mentioning the axe wielding eco-terrorists who attacked the pipeline when talking about protests that threaten infrastructure. 

The debate ended with an actual one on one debate section with convoluted rules about raising paddles and only having five paddles that after the first two rounds most candidates couldn’t speak anymore and the debate died.

If you did not have time to watch the debate, don’t worry you didn’t miss anything. The format was so terrible that nothing of substance could be said.

If the CPC wants to have another productive debate they must swallow their pride and leave it in the hands of independent media, which are the only people in Canada who have shown the ability to put on an intellectually engaging and entertaining debate.