Last night I attended an all candidates meeting in White Rock.

Attending:

  • David Blair (Green) showed up late and nearly missed the opening remarks.  He was well spoken but seemed out of his depth on many non-local issues.  Blair’s personal platform was being anti-”business as usual”.
  • Russ Hiebert (Conservative) came off much like his leaflets: Aren’t Harper and the Conservatives great?  He was an excellent speaker although there was a lot of flipping through the “official party position book” (I was able to predict every answer Harper made in the leaders’ debate tonight).  Only Hiebert was consistently able to answer questions before being cut off by the clock.  The other candidates tended to whisper conspiratorially to one another a lot while he was speaking.
  • Brian Marlatt (PC) never once broke from his monotone, borderline unintelligible pontifications, and came across as being heavily medicated.  He had a lot to say about the Conservatives being evil Neocon Bush-puppets.  Unfortunately Marlatt very rarely got to the topic at hand before being cut off by the clock.
  • Judy Higginbotham (Liberal) got off to a slow start, and had to pause dramatically in order to allow supporters to identify applause lines.  She mentioned the greats of the Liberal Party – Chretien and Trudeau – quite a bit more than I would consider wise in the West.  Higgenbotham was a good speaker, but had a lot of problems with the clock.  At first she just got distracted and trailed out when time ran out, and later ineffectively fought the buzzer on almost every question.  This resulted in her mic being cut off around 10 times in the evening while she yelled as loud as possible with the crowd yelling back “Time’s up!”.  Rather unbecoming.
  • Peter Prontzos (NDP) showed up with his tie-dyed daughters in tow, who proceeded to loudly heckle Hiebert.  He echoed the PC sentiment that Harper is an evil Neocon, but with the caveat that the Liberals are almost as bad.  He called them Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum at one point.

Health Care
Only Hiebert acknowledged that provinces run health care, and that increased salaries are the only way to get and retain more nurses and doctors.  He also mentioned getting foreign trained doctors re-certified faster.  All the other candidates waxed eloquent about more accessible training for nurses.

Income Trusts
Hiebert took a beating about the change in taxation status, but countered pretty effectively with supportive quotes from Liberals from days gone by.

Safety of the Railway Line Along White Rock’s Shore
Higginbotham: Yes, we are going to move it inland, just as soon as the US agrees to pay for it.
Hiebert: We’ll make it safer as is.
Everyone Else: Of course we’re going to move it!

At this point the moderators actually allowed a question about Clinton’s responsibility for the current US financial crisis.  Marlatt and Prontzos took this as an opportunity to rail on about Neocons and Bush.  If I had realized that the bar for questions was so low I would have submitted some of my own!

Do You Personally Support Same Sex Marriage?
 Blair had the most memorable line of the evening here, with “as long as it doesn’t involve me personally”.  Higginbotham’s answer was interesting in that she never directly answered it, instead talking about how not allowing SSM is un-Canadian.

Genetically Modified Organisms
Hiebert was the only candidate against mandatory labeling.

Afghanistan
Prontoz had an eyebrow raising response to this one, advocating that we pull out now, but go back in with the United Nations, and intervene in Darfur as well.

Senate Reform
Much to my surprise, Marlatt actually came out against Senate reform.  Blair really stumbled on this one, falling back on his old standby “more study is needed”.  Higginbotham said something to the effect of “I will be so amazing as your representative that the Senate will be irrelevant”.  I swear to God.

Fixed Election Dates
As the crowd booed Hiebert, a dude with long hair and a crazy beard got up to cheer.  This fellow turned out to be a Whalley street preacher named Brian, who (after the debate) had far more to say about Jesus than I was interested in hearing.  He told me that he was torn between Hiebert (for his leadership qualities) and Blair (for his empathy).

All said and done, Hiebert was the clear winner.  Regardless of whether you liked his policy, he came across as the most calm and informed; even though under constant attack from all the other candidates he remained composed while defusing the most damaging claims.  And his ability to fully communicate his message within the allotted time was very compelling.  Yay for practicing and cheat sheets?

More of Raven’s writings can be found at Fumbled Mumblings.