Election Notebook

Culture, the consortium and going
up against Biden-Palin

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

• With the Conservatives approaching culture funding roughly the same way the Romans did Carthage, the city’s artistic community is freaking out as predicted. And while that shouldn’t scare the Conservatives much—and why would it?—what’s striking is the glaring Tory yellow streak when faced with legitimate criticism. For a party as butch as the Conservatives pretend to be, they sure looked like a bunch of pants-less cowards on Tuesday. EN dragged its bleary-eyed self down to an early morning debate on the culture issue at the Gésu, and of the five parties, guess which one didn’t send a lamb to the slaughter? If you guessed the Liberals, NDP, Bloc or Greens, you’re wrong. The debate’s organizers declared themselves “very disappointed” at the Conservative pass, “despite our repeated insistence” they answer for their sins.

Since they aren’t talking, it’s up to EN to speculate, something we take great joy and little pride in: the Conservatives are cutting their losses in Montreal, so why go through the bother of trying to suck up, much less explain themselves, to a bunch of ungrateful, whiny, artsy socialists?

Harper to artists: fuck you.

• As for the debate itself, it was decent theatre. Better than a high school play, though hardly reaching dizzying Mamma Mia! heights. Think a good Shakespeare-in-the-Park show: worth getting out of the house for, glad it’s free. Ably moderated by Quebec journo Dominique Poirier, the four candidates outlined their positions—broadly speaking, culture is good, needs more money that’s easier to access and the Conservatives are Paleolithic Philistines—with some fireworks thrown in, especially between the NDP’s Anne Lagacé Dowson from Westmount-Ville-Marie and Liberal Sébastien Dhavernas, running in Outremont. Dhavernas—who according to IMDb played Robert Bourrassa in the René Lévesque mini-series and voiced Michaelangelo in the French version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie—drew on his experience as a struggling actor to get his message across, and corrected Dowson on some of her statistics, in between cheap shots and lame jokes. Of the four, he came across as the most knowledgeable and surprisingly scrappy.

• Dhavernas was also the sole candidate to give a shout-out to the city’s anglo arts community, specifically mentioning Mile-End and all the great work coming out of there. A cynic would say he would, since he’s running in neighbouring Outremont, but it’s still nice to be acknowledged, no?

• Sadly, deadlines get in the way of EN reporting on this week’s leaders’ debates. The French debate took place last night, Wednesday, Oct. 1, so if you missed it, catch Stephen Harper, Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe and Elizabeth May go for each other’s throats in English while being held in check by moderator Steve Paikin tonight at 9 p.m., on Canadian networks. These will be the first big national debates for May, and the first chance for Canadian voters to get a look at her up close and personal. Look for May and Layton to go at it hammer and tongs, as the NDP leader tried his mightiest to keep his Green counterpart off the debate slate last month.

• If you don’t really care about this election, or already saw the French version, a more entertaining debate will be taking place at the same time. The other, more interesting election to the south offers viewers a chance to see Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden go toe-to-toe with Sarah “the Barracuda” Palin, the Republican choice, the windbag wonk versus the lipstick-wearing, moose-gutting, God-fearing 44-year-old soon-to-be grandmother. According to the Toronto Star’s Ottawa reporter Richard Brennan, the CBC, Radio-Canada, CTV, Global and TVA—making up the broadcast consortium responsible for running the debates—“picked the same date and time as the Biden-Palin debate to avoid lost revenue from cancelled American programming, since the U.S. networks would be postponing their shows anyway to accommodate the U.S. debate.”

• Last week, EN interviewed Laurier-Ste-Marie Liberal candidate Sébastien Caron, who had some sharp words about his Bloc rival, one Gilles Duceppe, being yesterday’s man. EN dutifully requested an interview with Duceppe to refute these charges, but was turned down. Duceppe had to prepare for the debates this week, we were told, and won’t have 15 minutes during the rest of the campaign to spare for us. Hey, at least we tried!