Debates (Canadian and American) and Elections

Let’s play a hypothetical.....what if you had a debate between Senator Biden and Governor Palin conducted entirely in Spanish (as it is the 2nd most commonly spoken language in the US) ? I mean a debate where there were no translators or interpreters and where the candidates stood on their own with respect to their linguistic abilities.

This is actually not a silly question. The night before the Biden/Palin debate, I watched a roundtable debate between Prime Minister Harper, and the leaders of other major political parties of Canada. Elizabeth May of the Green Party, Jack Layton of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Stephane Dion of the Liberal Party, and Gilles Duceppe of Bloc Quebecois participated in the debate, along with Harper. A short background is in order. PM Harper called for Federal elections to take place on Oct 14 (remember, Canada is a parliamentary democracy and elections can be called....a similar system exists in Great Britain among others) in a bid to gain more seats in Parliament. The other parties, particularly the Liberal party, see this as an opportunity to try to unseat Harper.

Further background: PM Harper is from the province of Alberta and is an English speaking politician. Both Jack Layton and Elizabeth May are English speaking politicians from Ontario. The other two, Stephane Dion and Gilles Duceppe are from Quebec and speak French (actually, Quebecois).

I have learned that if a Canadian politician, whether “English” or Quebecois, aspires to a position of national prominence (such as Prime Minister or leader of a political party), it is a virtual unspoken requirement that person be fluent both in English and French. For a political party to capture a majority of Parliament, that party needs to win a sufficient number of seats in Quebec in order to achieve this. This is what PM Harper has been trying to do the last several years. He is attempting to grow his Conservative party by appealing to the Quebecois. Some of his words and actions have been somewhat controversial due to the nature of the relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada.

Last night’s debate was the French language debate. I couldn’t fathom all 3 English speaking politicians (in addition to Stephane Dion and Gilles Duceppe ) speaking French. I had assumed, in my American naivete, that the English speaking politicians would be speaking through interpreters. Imagine my surprise when all three English speaking politicians spoke French on their own throughout the entire debate. As indicated above, this is dictated by the nature of Canadian politics. It was fascinating to watch as all 5 politicians were jostling for an advantage and appealing to the French speaking voters. I should note that there are a good number of French speaking people in the eastern part of Ontario and other parts of Eastern Canada. It will be interesting to see how the elections turn out on Oct 14th.

The next night, Canadians did a fair bit of switching back and forth between the Biden/Palin debate and the English language debates among the same 5 participants. My impression, based on the newspapers and in conversations, is that Canadians were more captivated by the Biden/Palin debate.

Canadians have been quite captivated by the US elections due to a variety of factors....the historic race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Who was going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party ? Was Hillary going to make history as the first female nominee ? Or was Obama going to be the first black nominee for President ? The closeness of the primaries was fascinating up here. Not much attention was paid to the Republican side, until McCain chose Palin. That added an interesting mix to the conversations up here. Then there’s the meltdown on Wall Street and the bailout package right in the middle of election season. Naturally, a lot of people are wondering what else could happen between now and Election Day.

In the midst of all this, as noted above, the Canadians are having their Federal Elections just over a week from now. Based on the current polls, it appears that the Conservatives will probably do well enough to form another government. I’ll keep you posted.