The Conservative party’s leadership race is in full swing with bloodthirsty politicians vying for the title of party leader, and the chance to become prime minister in the 2019 election. The debate, which was held in Halifax on Saturday, saw 14 candidates in attendance, including media punching bags Kevin O’Leary and Kellie Leitch. The political hype over the two-hour debate was high. However, I still cannot believe how utterly boring the debate was. Now, I’m not even a conservative, but with two controversial candidates in the running, I had hoped to see some drama, and some pointed jabs during the debate. The debate basically boiled down to hearing 15 slightly different answers to the same question with the exception being Lisa Raitt, who almost constantly mentioned being from Atlantic Canada. While that may have been a successful tool to open the debate with, Raitt repeated a few more times how she loves being back home in Atlantic Canada.
Another annoyance of the debate was the constant jabbing at O’Leary. I get it, the guy isn’t a “true” Conservative party member, but the man was smart enough to not take any of the bait. You’d expect at least one of the candidates to drop the juvenile jabs at him. At least if any of the attempts at getting under O’Leary’s skin were half-decent, I would’ve been okay with it. However, they were just so awful, the worst being Leitch’s cringe-inducing comments towards him during her opening statement. Leitch, who initially welcomed the Chicago-based businessman back to Canada, also went on to say, “I’ve heard stories of non-conservatives joining the party to stop me from becoming prime minister, I just didn’t expect to sit next to one!”
O’Leary himself actually surprised me with how he did in the debate. After watching Trump, with his deplorable behaviour and incoherent babbling become the leader of a nation, I was hesitant about watching another rich man enter a race to run a country. While I am by no means necessarily endorsing O’Leary, he managed to keep up with the other, more experienced candidates, and easily deflected any jabs that were pointed at him. While I think O’Leary lacks any sort of empathy and multicultural understanding that deems necessary for representing Canada, he is a little more subtle about it, and is currently grabbing the attention of the Conservative party members.
With a crowded leadership race, you’d expect each candidate to do anything they can to set themselves apart, and get their names out there. Yet, after watching the debate, I fail to really remember any of the candidates unless I search for the list of them on Google. O’Leary is already known to Canadians, whether they are involved with the Conservative party or not. He already has a leg-up over the other candidates simply because he gets publicity. Leitch is also burnt into my mind because of how she sees herself as a copycat of Trump, especially with the recent scandal of her sending out mass emails congratulating Trump’s victory. Also, her recent campaign manager Nick Kouvalis resigned from the position after spewing alt-right terminology, and forging his own version of alternative facts. Despite candidates Michael Chong and Erin O’Toole receiving some media coverage after the debate, it was due to the jabbing they attempted on O’Leary. If any of the other candidates want to stand a chance at earning the right to lead the Conservative party, they better go back to the drawing board, and find a way to make themselves known. They have already lost the celebrity-status part of the leadership race, so they better come up with some policies and procedures that can blow O’Leary out of the water.
