Watching Last Night’s Election Debate Like Watching Paint Dry

“Did Canada Free Press watch the French-language debate last night?” one of the few conservative friends still on speaking terms with us, asked.

Tempted to answer, “No, would sooner watch paint dry”, but knew there was no sense grappling with someone convinced that the Pierre Poilievre-led Conservatives are guaranteed a certain win on April 28.

To this battle-worn corner, last night’s French-language debate was a clown show on disheartening display.

The clowns: Liberal Leader Mark Carney, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Bloc Québécois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet.

In school marm-fashion, the leaders were asked by their CBC hosts, which two policies they were proposing “which would concretely change the lives of Canadians but have nothing to do with the United States?”

None of them bridled upon being asked such a ridiculous question. No one, including ‘nice guy’ Conservative Pierre Poilievre dared remind CBC hosts that the American president next door has diddly-squat to do with the Canadian federal election, other than being made a cover for Canada’s politicians and their destructive policies.

While questions like that were accepted, sheep-like, outside the venue, thousands of ‘From the River To the Sea’ protesters were out in force in Montreal and in other Canadian cities.

Post debate posts on X, were multiple ones from Rebel News, visibly overjoyed to have been allowed in to the debate. It took a court battle to get them inside the venue, and like all litigation, cost a lot of money.

“Carney’s two topics were that the construction of housing must be sped up, and that cultural institutions need to be reinforced and promoted. (Epoch Times, April 17, 2025)

“On the campaign trail, Carney has made a number of promises around housing, such as getting the federal government into home building and cutting municipal development charges to increase the housing stock. On cultural institutions, Carney has also pledged to increase CBC/Radio-Canada’s funding by an initial $150 million.

“Poilievre stayed on one of his key messages to respond to the moderator’s question. He mentioned the high cost of living and said the “promise of an affordable life has been broken.” (Epoch Times)

“Poilievre said he pledges to cut taxes by 15 percent so that work can be rewarding. He also said he would remove the GST on the sale of new homes and incentivize municipalities to cut taxes."

How could anyone take a debate hosted by the Liberal Government’s one and a half billion dollar a year funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) with another pledge of another $150-million, seriously?

The image of ‘Big Bad President Donald J. Trump hovered over the debate. No word about hungry Canadians, some of whom barely survived a more brutal than usual Winter.

Peoples Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier, banned from the clown debate in a late rule change, was, courtesy of Tucker Carlson’s interview, all over social media, replacing the useless blah-blah-blah of the CBC debate clowns.

Shouldn’t they be asking why it is that Mark Carney appears to be so arrogantly sure of a Liberal win—even after reportedly having to pause his campaign three times and being unable to answer direct pointed questions from the media?

Rather than boring the electorate with their blah, blah, blah efforts, the CBC clowns on display at last night’s debate should be taking a sobering closer look at the security and legitimacy of all votes—especially the approved mail-in ballots.

Where are the mail-in ballots stored, who is responsible for their security—and who is counting and scrutinizing the ballots?

Judi McLeod——Bio and Archives -- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.