Elizabeth May? Why are Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe in the debate?
I couldn’t agree more about keeping Elizabeth May out of the leadership debate. She is the leader of a fringe party that has no chance of forming the government, or for that matter becoming the opposition. But under that criteria neither should two other people be at that debate.
Jack Layton heads a perennial 3rd, sometimes 4th place party. But even though Jack Layton thinks he’s running for Stephen Harper’s job, the amount of energy required to keep up that particular delusion would potentially bankrupt the NDP under Stéphane Dion’s green shift (yes, I just wrote that Jack Layton’s ego causes global warming). I myself have decided to “apply for Stephen Harper’s job,” but that doesn’t mean it is close to being so. Same applies to Jack Layton, he can say he’s running for PM, but cannot be reasonably said to be so. So why should he be allowed to impose his smirk in a debate between the two men who are running for the job?
Gilles Duceppe’s party, le Bloc Québécois, is in the running for exactly zero seats in English Canada, so how is it that Duceppe is in the English Language debate? I’ll leave his usefulness in the French debate to French bloggers, but he serves no useful purpose in the English debate. In fact he often plays the part of class clown in the English debate precisely because he has no possible votes to gain or lose. As such, he doesn’t belong in the debate.
The debate I want to see, the night I will consider sitting down to watch a debate is when the two men who are running for the job of PM, and only those two men, are debating each other. Harper vs. Dion mano a mano.
And that is why Elizabeth May doesn’t belong in the debate. She is just one more person who has no chance to be PM, and she would just be one more person taking screen time from the two men that we really need to hear from.
I agree – the debates often degenerate into a yelling match with everyone talking over everyone else and being allowed to make accusations but not being allowed to refute the accusations thrown at a particular person.
Let two men – Harper and Dion go at it. After all – isn’t that what Dion wanted.
If the Greens are just another fringe party how come I received this (tax payer funded) ad from Harper:
http://i35.tinypic.com/ezhdhg.jpg
Excluding May from the debate is just plain dirty politics, any attempt to spin it otherwise are lies.
Des phrases comme “le bloc n’a pas sa place à ottawa” prouvent justement pourquoi le Bloc A sa place à Ottawa.
Le jour ou le canada anglais va accepter à reconnaitre les Québécois comme une entité nationale et culturelle distincte, le Bloc devra être la pour nous défendre.
Who the fuck said that Jasmin? The statement is, they serve no useful purpose au cours de la discussion anglaise. The word Ottawa does not appear in this post before you came along.