OTTAWA—Strict time limits had the nine candidates in the New Democratic leadership race playing nice onstage during their first debate, but the smiles did not stop some rivals from sparring after the show.

“I am in violent agreement with my colleagues,” British Columbia MP Nathan Cullen quipped at one point as all candidates agreed that they would call for a national housing strategy should the New Democrats form government.

The joke summed up the mood — and lack of fireworks — on Sunday afternoon in Ottawa as the race to replace the late Jack Layton began in earnest with the first of six official debates between the candidates gunning for the top job.

The bilingual debate — with the first hour in English and the second in French — on the economy seemed more like a series of short stump speeches than a genuine contest as candidates chose to trumpet their experience and sometimes indistinguishable ideas rather than go after each other.

“We’re New Democrats,” Toronto MP Peggy Nash joked afterward, when a reporter asked about the candidates agreeing with each other on many points. “It’s a first debate. It’s early in the campaign. We’re going to differentiate ourselves more and more as the campaign moves ahead.”

Veteran party strategist Brian Topp — a perceived front-runner in the race so far — tried to increase the tension when he asked Ottawa MP Paul Dewar how he would fund the job creation strategy he announced last week, which includes a permanent national infrastructure program.

“At the end of the day what you propose to do with all of these plans is essentially to finance them by putting them into the public debt,” Topp charged after Dewar said he would pay for it by raising corporate taxes.

“I thought we were talking about the environment and you’re talking about taxes,” Dewar replied.

“We’re not talking about taxes,” said Topp, who released his own detailed plan last week that included raising income taxes for wealthy people and corporations. “We’re talking about how to get it done.”

Topp dropped the aggressive tone for the rest of the debate, but stood by his approach when reporters later asked about the exchange.

“We need to go after a government mandate and the way to do that is not only to issue your list of spending proposals, but to show how you are going to fund them,” said Topp, the former party president.

“I thought that first exchange with Paul Dewar was an opportunity to make that point, so I kind of tapped gloves with him a little bit to see if he wanted to talk about it. In the end he chose not to engage seriously in the discussion and that was his choice, not mine.”

Topp has never been elected to office but touted his time as deputy chief of staff to former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow to show that he has experience in government — a history unmatched by any other rival except deputy leader Thomas Mulcair, who was Quebec environment minister in Jean Charest’s Liberal government.

That does not mean everyone believed Topp had the best ideas.

“Sure we have to talk about how we fund things. Jack Layton always insisted that we have a balanced approach in terms of funding our proposals,” Nash told reporters. “Taxes are one piece of that but having a strong economy is another key element in funding our social programs and funding our infrastructure needs.”

Cullen was more direct.

“Let’s not obsess and only talk about tax,” Cullen told reporters. “We have to talk about employment. We have to talk about balancing our books and not having government spend wastefully as this government has done . . . . There are no silver bullets. Anyone saying that this is the way we get out of this economic fix and only this is not telling the truth.”

The French portion of the debate showcased the different levels of ease with which the candidates speak the language, with Nova Scotia MP Robert Chisholm faring so poorly that he relied on simultaneous translation and spoke English most of the time.

“I think it’s extremely difficult (but) I will learn how to speak French,” Chisholm told reporters after the debate when they repeatedly asked how a unilingual candidate could win now that 59 NDP MPs hail from Quebec.

Mulcair, meanwhile, displayed his ease in both official languages by accidentally responding in English to a question during the French debate.

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“I think it’s also a question of familiarity with both languages, when they are for all intents and purposes interchangeable, it’s the type of thing that happens,” Mulcair later explained, adding that it was not planned.

The nine candidates in the leadership race are Topp, Mulcair, Dewar, Nash, Cullen, Chisholm, Quebec MP Roméo Saganash, Manitoba MP Niki Ashton and Nova Scotia pharmacist Martin Singh.

The grassroots will elect the next leader with a one member, one vote ballot system at a convention in Toronto on March 24.

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