Candidates from the Liberals, Conservatives, and the NDP traded verbal jabs and pushed their platforms to students during a debate last Wednesday at Concordia.
The debate between the candidates for the riding of Westmount – Ville Marie focused on issues related to post-secondary education as well as environmental sustainability in front of over 100 Concordia students.
Conservative candidate Guy Dufort opened the debate by outlining his party’s economic track record.
“Federal taxes have reached a 40 year low. We’ve reached a reduction in the tax burden up to $100 billion dollars and Quebec’s unemployment rate have been the lowest in 30 years,” he said
Dufort fired the opening salvo at his opponents, using the American economic crisis as an example that Canadians cannot take chances with “people who squander whatever economic advantages we have.”
He positioned his party as offering the best solution to tackle student debt as well, pushing a tax credit for graduates of up to 20 per cent of the amount borrowed to pay their tuition.
NDP candidate Anne Lagacé Dowson lashed out at the policies of past liberal and conservative governments that saw costs increase exponentially since she was a student. Stating that the average student left university with a $12-15,000 debt, Dowson criticized past Liberal and Conservative governments saying there needs to be a cap on the rising costs of post-secondary education, which she said have now placed it out of reach for many Canadian families.
“Meanwhile the Harper governments gives $50 billion in tax cuts to the most profitable corporations in the country, including our friends in the oil and gas industry, this is both ridiculous and untenable,” she said.
Her Liberal opponent was Compton-Stanstead candidate William Hogg, sitting in for Westmount-Ville Marie candidate Marc Garneau who was in Ottawa attending the leaders debate. Hogg pointed out that education is under provincial jurisdiction in the constitutions, saying that the NDP’s approach would cause conflict with the provinces. He proposed ensuring accessibility, increasing research and development and reducing student debt with interest-free loans and lower interest rates for graduates.
“I know student debt, I’m still paying it,” he said.
Hogg went on to accuse the Conservatives of indifference to issues surrounding the environment, stating his party’s Green Shift would lead to a quick response to greenhouse gas emissions through the carbon tax and programs to make houses more energy efficient.
Dufort responded to Hogg with an attack on the carbon tax as an effective means of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.
“The carbon tax is really a license to go on polluting,” he said. “There are two countries that tried a carbon tax, Sweden and Norway. After five years there was no decrease in greenhouse gas emissions in either country, and as a matter of fact in Norway there was an increase in emissions.”
Though less than half of the students in attendance actually lived in the Westmount – Ville Marie riding, the candidates closed the debate by urging students to vote in the upcoming election, each stating the important role that university students would have to play in the future and the need for the federal government to support them.
Greens shut out from debate
Though this debate was less conflicted than normal, it did have a few controversial moments, most notably when the Green Party turned up uninvited. Green Party member Colin Baker and NDG candidate Jessica Gal showed up to debate the candidates in place of Westmount/Ville Marie candidate William Genest, who was attending the federal debate (in which the Green Party leader Elizabeth May recently won the right to participate).
When they arrived at the student lounge, they were allegedly told they “weren’t a real party,” and couldn’t participate in the debate.
“We weren’t really given a reason why we weren’t invited,” said Gal. “The Bloc candidate didn’t show up and that still didn’t make any difference to them, they then said that for security reasons they couldn’t let us sit there, it was really ridiculous.”
Once the debate began, Gall wrote on a piece of paper to identify herself as a Green Party candidate, showing the paper to the audience before a security personnel told her she would be removed from the premises if she showed it again.
Following the debate, Genest blasted the CSU’s actions as “shameful, scandalous, unjust, and undemocratic.”
Colin Goldfinch, the CSU’s VP of external affairs who organized the debate, defended the CSU’s decision.
“They weren’t invited in the first place is because the Greens have never had a member of parliament elected in the House of Commons, which means at this point they have no ability to affect public policy in Canada,” said Goldfinch.
