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Now that was more like it. Last night’s two-hour leaders’ debate on Radio Canada featured fireworks, cross-talk and tough exchanges. Best of all, it covered a wide terrain — made even wider by the candidates themselves, who kept injecting their own pet topics into the conversation. (Stop gas price fixing! Abolish the monarchy!) It also exposed the complicated faultlines that lie in Canadian politics, which can make losers out of winners — and vice versa.

The winner, from a debating perspective, was Gilles Duceppe. The Bloc leader ran rhetorical circles around his opponents, fully at ease, benefitting from political experience and the fact that French is his first language. He effortlessly tossed out quips and one-liners — accusing Tom Mulcair of saying one thing in Calgary and another in Quebec on the environment, asking the NDP leader at one point, “Does Tom speak to Thomas?”

Much of the time, Duceppe acted more like a moderator than a debater. Most memorably, he called out Stephen Harper on the hypocrisy of selling arms to Saudi Arabia, a country that finances Islamic extremism, even before the actual moderators asked a question about the subject. Harper stumbled before replying with the claim that he’s supporting an ally — it was the only time during the evening that Harper looked to be at a loss for words.

But by winning the debate, Duceppe may help Harper win the election. Duceppe hammered home the niqab issue: when Elizabeth May called it a false debate, he countered: “Not for women and not for the National Assembly.” Duceppe described in full detail the broad social consensus that exists in Quebec on the requirement to deal with government “with an uncovered face”, a proposal the provincial Liberals wish to enshrine in law. But if a voter really wants action on that front, he can’t get it by voting for Duceppe, who will never be prime minister. Harper is the only leader pledging to bring in a law on the topic, and who could be in a position to do so.

The night ended with the niqab issue alive and well — and Mulcair left licking his wounds. The night ended with the niqab issue alive and well — and Mulcair left licking his wounds.

And, on the niqab, it was Harper who delivered the best line, when he said that he would never tell his daughter that a woman should cover her face because she is a woman. It played as well in French as it did in English Canada — while Mulcair’s response, that Harper won’t help these women by denying them their citizenship, carries weight outside Quebec but little inside the province, where the niqab is widely seen as an assault on women’s rights.

This exchange fully exposed Mulcair’s dilemma. The NDP leader needs to conserve his nationalist base in Quebec without alienating voters in the rest of the country. Since the niqab controversy roared back into the news last week, his party has dropped in the opinion polls in Quebec, while the Tories and Bloc have increased their vote. So while he stuck to his guns Thursday night, it won’t win him any points in Quebec. He also lost his cool a couple of times, on both the niqab and the question of the “50 per cent plus one” rule on Quebec separation, when he was goaded on the subject by Justin Trudeau — not the best tactic for a leader who wants to appear to be a Prime-Minister-in-Waiting.

Trudeau, for his part, was neither great nor terrible. He repeatedly tried to change the subject to his preferred messages, with mixed results. During a discussion of the right to die, for example, he launched into a tangent on growing the economy. His fellow debaters cheerily followed suit, obviously preferring to talk taxes instead of death. Later in the debate, however, he tried to segue from the economy to cancelling the F-35s, but nobody bit. Trudeau also stated several times that he will give more money to seniors, cut taxes and “invest” in infrastructure; these interjections seemed scripted, as if his only worry was to avoid tripping himself up.

Overall, Trudeau was far less present in this debate than in the Globe and Mail event. At times, it seemed that he couldn’t decide which audience to speak to: with his positions on the niqab, the Clarity Act, and refugees, he appeared to be gunning for an audience in Toronto, not Trois-Rivières. At other times, he directly appealed to Quebec nationalists when he accused the NDP of being a “centralizing” party — highly ironic, coming from the leader of arguably the most Ottawa-centric party in Canadian history.

As for Green Party leader Elizabeth May, she tried hard, but was hampered by her lack of facility in French. She also tended toward hyperbole: in one exchange, she told Harper: “You sold our sovereignty to China!” At another point, she waved a copy of Bill C-51 in the air and declared it “the most dangerous law in the history of Canada”. Moderator Anne Marie Dussault dryly asked her to please put the bill down, presumably before it hit another debater in the head.

At the end of the night, Harper said this isn’t the time to play with our economy and security, and that we should take our citizenship with an uncovered face. Trudeau said he would put more money in voters’ pockets. Mulcair claimed that he has the knowledge and experience to beat Harper. And I missed what May and Duceppe said, because I had to go off to analyze the debate on French television.

But it didn’t matter. The night ended with the niqab issue alive and well — and Mulcair left licking his wounds. Harper may have decried an alliance of “separatists and socialists” in 2011, but he sure didn’t mind making common cause with the Bloc last night.

Tasha Kheiriddin is a political writer and broadcaster who frequently comments in both English and French. After practising law and a stint in the government of Mike Harris, Tasha became the Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and co-wrote the 2005 bestseller, Rescuing Canada’s Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution. Tasha moved back to Montreal in 2006 and served as vice-president of the Montreal Economic Institute, and later director for Quebec of the Fraser Institute, while also lecturing on conservative politics at McGill University. Tasha now lives in Whitby, Ontario with her daughter Zara, born in 2009.

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