Debates...

Ignatieff, bashing Harper, challenging him to "try" forming a government should he win another minority. Sure, all we need to do is just to cancel the last two installments of the business tax reductions - and there will be plenty of money for (insert long list of the Liberal spending priorities here). He's got a plan to battle crime and to enhance Canada's "role in the world": instead of "jets, jails and another word with J Iggy couldn't come up with", we need gun control and more funding for NGOs run by Liberal protegees...

Layton, being the most adequate of the three opposition party leaders, trying to play middle-class populist but sometimes letting his Marxist internationalist views slip out, especially when talking about Canada's "role in the world" and multiculturalism. He promises to reduce taxes for small businesses and to encourage job creation with tax incentives... Is this the same Jack Layton that wants to double the CPP payouts - with respective increase in premiums? And, talking about "large corporations", "big oil", "big banks" etc - it's about time he learns that the general corporate rate applies to all business profits above $500,000. In other words, a business with roughly 10 employees too counts as one of those evil large corporations.

"Gilles Duceppe as a prime minister of Canada - certainly not." - that's the only thing he said that actually made sense. Apart from that he sounded like an angry unemployed conspiracy theorist at a bus stop, trying to utter as much anti-Harper rants as possible while he still had the microphone. During his "one on one" with Harper on the economy, his typical argument was "this is not true". He bashed the government for treating Tamil stowaways as "second class refugees" - right after suggesting that multiculturalism doesn't fit in Quebec. (Apparently he was looking forward for those stowaway to fit someplace else in Canada.) And when he started nearly shouting into the microphone that Harper's government would abolish abortion - that wasn't even funny.

Fortunately, Harper didn't dignify that with response, although he did have to utter some token phrases about multiculturalism and Canada's "role in the world". Repeating the phrase "let me be clear" a little too often, he made it clear that he was the only person there with more or less common sense policies. And another thing that was certainly made clear is - if it's not Harper then its the other trio. Which might probably sound somewhat funny on stage, but united a coalition government, this leftist trio will be no laughing matter.

Update: Did Iggy paraphrase Mao?