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It seemed like such a good idea at first: a three-way faceoff featuring the three federal leaders vying for signing authority over Canada’s chequing account.

But by the time the clock ran out on the Globe and Mail’s economy-centric debate on Thursday night in Calgary, the only clear winner was the bell that forced an end to the seemingly endless series of fractious and frequently incoherent free-for-alls.

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The losers, meanwhile, would seem to be anyone who tuned in with the hope of coming away with a clear, cogent concept of where each of the parties, and their leaders, actually stand on the various sub-topics clustered under the umbrella of “the economy” — that is, beyond the now-standard talking points that have been a staple of their respective stump speeches since before the campaign had even officially gotten underway.

(All three parties will, of course, claim victory for their respective standard bearer, which is traditional, and not to be taken seriously — and honestly, in most cases, the same goes for the insta-verdicts churned out by the punditerati, barring a universally acknowledged Knockout Punch ™, which is very much the exception and not the rule.)