6:36:48 PM Well, here we are. I’m situated next to the sound booth, because my battery was dying. I’m taking some pictures as we go along, so hopefully you’ll be able to see those. I’ll also put together a little video snippet so you get the feel of the thing. So far, it’s exactly as expected. The room is quickly filling up with old white people. Outside, I’m pretty sure the Tim Uppal team is still trying to assemble their background. There’s a “how many conservatives” joke in there somewhere. 6:40:23 PM There seems to be a signage war going on between Tim Uppal and James Ford. You’ve got standing displays? We’ve got a bigger, more difficult to assemble one. And team jerseys that say “Uppal” on the back. One thing I did notice, Mr. Uppal is the only candidate who wasn’t out front milling with the crowd when I decided to take my seat. 6:43:21 PM Festival Place truly is a beautiful little theatre. If you have the chance to check out a performance here, you really should. Danu is coming at Christmas. Fantastic Irish group. Sometimes you can get a table up front and bring your drinks in with you. 6:44:47 PMThe Chamber of Commerce has left papers on some of the seats. One side is a letter, in which the president of the chamber seems to subtly threaten not to hold debates anymore. “We will be reviewing our involvement in political forums with our membership in the near future.” The survey question is right from the Quebec Sovereignty Referendum school: “Do you think the Chamber of Commerce should not charge candidates for organizing this event?” I voted yes. I hope that means what I think it does. (check for the background information here.) 6:49:42 PM Retiring MP Ken Epp has just arrived with his bride, as he likes to refer to her. They nestle in at the front of the “real” seats, but he nearly collapses over one of the folding chairs set up at the front. 6:52:00 PM Honest to goodness. I count four people in this room who are within 10 years of my age. No, make that five. The Green candidate just stepped in. 6:54:03 PM The Sherwood Park News has their own box reserved, right up by the stage. Swanky. They’re too far away and the room is too dark to get a good photo. Might be in the video, though. Hi, guys! Love your work! 6:56:25 PM I’m starting to regret the spot I picked to sit in. This thing is scheduled to go longer than I can stay for it. I have domestic responsibilities, gosh durn it. You’d think the Chamber of Commerce would be more considerate. 7:04:43 PM The host felt it necessary to address how the forum was paid for in his welcome statement. Chamber seems to think the debate is about them. 7:06:19 PM James Ford got a big round of applause during introductions. Seems like he may have the most supporters in the room. 7:09:35 PM Opening Speeches are starting. The green candidate Nina Erfani gets polite applause after saying basically, “you’re being taken for granted by liars.” Except she said it much much nicer than that. 7:10:58 PM Rick Szostak from the Liberals gets up and says “If you elect me, I can actually say what I think.” He actually brings up the sponsorship scandal, and pledges that he will stand by his ethics (he has written a book on ethics), and will ensure things like that don’t go uncriticized. He challenges Tim Uppal and James Ford to distance themselves from one of the ethical lapses of the Harper government. That gets a round of chuckles from the audience. 7:14:25 PM Tim Uppal is up, and proceeds to give his employment and political resume. He says he “looks forward to being a voice at the table in a Stephen Harper government.” Hard emphasis on the word “table.” The word “cabinet” was hanging so thick in the silence afterward I almost had to shout it out. 7:15:50 PM James Ford gets up. First line: “I will assure everyone that my speech is not a copy of a speech by the President of New Zealand.” Applause and laughter at that. Not sure who he's trying to butter up. Quoting Berra, he says that people in this riding are at a fork in the road, and they have to “take it.” He brings up 40 years of support for the Conservatives, with no representation in the Cabinet. Ottawa should recognize this riding as what it has become, a cash cow for Ottawa. He brings up his proposal of requiring citizenship for participating in nomination contests. He gets two big rounds of applause at that. This is definitely a Ford room. The clapping means the last words of his speech are cut off. You can still hear them though, “unencumbered by party politics.” 7:19:19 PM Brain Labelle from the NDP is last. He’s actually the best speaker of the lot so far. He’s the only one who’s not nervous. He brings up his pledge to put a portion of his salary back into non-profit organizations, and makes a well-received joke that he would still be making three times the average salary of a social worker. He seems sincere, and he’s more listenable than the rest of them. 7:21:59 PM The first question, which I missed, had something to do with the balance between economic development and environmental protection. Uppal is up first, and he’s stumbling through a written answer. I think the evident support in the room for Ford may have made him nervous. Nina Erfani is next up. She keeps bringing up the Greek roots of words like economy and ecology. The format sucks. These are canned answers to canned questions. Boo for that. 7:26:27 PM Seriously. Brian Labelle is knocking this debate out of the park. He’s telling stories about where cap & trade comes from, is not scripted, and is making a lot of sense comparing it to how well that system addressed Acid Rain. 7:27:21 PM Rick Szostak gets up and immediately takes a shot at Uppal. “MPs are expected to speak without notes. It’s a rule that’s often broken, but it’s what’s expected.” Uppal was reading off a page. He refers to the fact that what businesses want is a tax rather than a cap & trade system, because there is price certainty with regard to pollution. He’s not reading from notes, and he’s doing quite well. 7:29:37 PM James Ford gets up and minimizes the problem. The Tar Sands are one half of one percent of pollution in this country. He then has an awkward pause for applause (an appause?) and it’s a couple of seconds before his friends in the audience comply. Not soon enough to prevent the emotional woman in the row in front of me from shouting “That is wrong!” 7:31:35 PM Next question: the American financial problems are coming here. What are we going to do? Ford’s up first, and he proceeds to read in a monotone voice verbatim from his notes. It’s mind-numbing. 7:33:36 PM Erfani is suddenly unsure if she’s answering the right question. Wow. Flustered much? She compares the relationship between the Canadian economy and the US one to sexual intercourse. “We can’t have a condom on us.” What? Really? That’s making ME flustered. And how do you extend that analogy? Are we trying to avoid getting a disease? Or are we trying to avoid impregnating them? And with what? 7:35:32 PM Rick Szostak takes a shot at the Conservatives for not having a platform until today. He then takes a shot at Harper for finally admitting that his government might run a deficit. I actually heard people groan in surprise. “We should all be ashamed of our government, and we should punish them at the polls for it.” I am really surprised at how aggressive Rick is being. I don’t know if it’ll work, but it’s impressive. 7:37:47 PM Brian Labelle says there’s no reason for anyone to get involved in anything but trades right now, and he says the cap & trade system will generate economic diversification. He loses his train of thought at one point, and ends with “and, uh, yeah, that’s it. Thanks.” The crowd murmurs. Sympathetically, I think. 7:39:35 PM Uppal is up again. He’s saying that Harper has been working on this since 2006. He’s actually crediting Harper with our current economic situation! Wow. Really? 7:40:28 PM The last prepared question? What will we do with the GST. Oh, come on. Really? I’m going to change my vote on whether or not the Chamber should be holding these debates. James Ford takes a shot at the Liberals, suggesting that we’d be in a better financial position now if the Liberals hadn’t “taken $300M from the pot for their friends.” Well, that’s not an accurate representation. About $1.3M went to our friends, I thought. Uppal is brief and takes credit for the changes, and promises that the Conservatives will keep doing what they’ve been doing. The Green candidate Erfani gets up and says that the Greens will increase the GST by a point and give it to municipalities to deal with things like urban sprawl. She gets a shot in about income trusts. Ends on a weak note, though. Tip for debaters: Don’t introduce a new topic in your last sentence. Rick is up next. He says if you applaud against $300M in Quebec, you should applaud louder against the $8B that the Conservatives dumped on Quebec. This from the Canadian Taxpayers Foundation, “not exactly a Liberal think-tank,” he says. Albertans get $15 per capita. “Don’t spend it all in one place.” You can tell that he’s actually impressing Conservatives in this room. There is palpable surprise at this guy. He gets a round of applause by saying that if you’re going to cut a tax, the GST is the dumbest tax to cut. He ends by saying “I’ve got 10 seconds left. Let’s see how many times I can say it. We will not raise the GST. We will not raise the GST. We will not raise the GST...” He got it in 5 times, I think. 7:47:34 PM Brian Labelle comes up and quickly answers the GST question, then goes on to criticize Ford for minimizing Canada’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. “If we were putting out as much pollution per person as China, we’d all be choking on our own cancer right now.” Subtle. After this point, I had to head for home. I missed what ITQ would probably call democracy at its best. I’m absolutely sure that at least one person who wanted to ask a question was crazy. On my way out, the emotional woman in the row ahead of me asked for my domain name. I hope she’s not offended by my calls on the affair. I thought it was the format, but in reality it was the speakers. James Ford and Tim Uppal both read every answer, verbatim from cards. It was like listening to someone give a speech for class president. Ford got two applause lines, both for what were at best inaccurate statements. Erfani was completely flustered by the process. Brian Labelle with the NDP was impressive in how relaxed he was, how conversational he was. In a riding like this, the NDP candidate is going to get one of two responses at a debate: “man, it’s too bad he’s not running for a party with a chance,” and “yeah, yeah, sit down.” He got the first one, by my read. But far and away, and with all respect I can’t say I was expecting this, Rick Szostak has to take the win. He got in a number of zingers that elicited spontaneous applause from the audience, and laughs. He was easily the candidate that the people in the room were best relating to, even though most of them were evidently there to support Ford. His comment about Uppal and Ford reading from cards really set the tone for him. He couldn’t have known in advance they were going to do that. It was not a prepared line for him. But he came up with it in a couple of minutes, walked up to the mic, and proceeded to make the room laugh at their preferred candidates. I’ve never seen anything like that in a local debate. Nor have I seen two candidates who feel so entitled to speak for a riding so unable to speak to it.