Justin Trudeau’s absence from the Maclean’s-Citytv and Munk debates speaks loudly, the former being recently held on Sept. 12 and the latter scheduled for Oct. 1.
The leader of the Liberal Party of Canada is seeking a second term as prime minister in what is already shaping up to be a hotly contested election. He has committed to participating in a couple of commissioned debates that will reach far more Canadians through major broadcasters.
However, refusing to attend the aforementioned debates does not exactly paint a picture of a confident leader who is eager to praise his party’s accomplishments and present visionary proposals for the future.
Granted, there is an argument to be made that Canadians don’t exactly watch debates en masse in the first place. And the majority of the public that even pays any attention to politics would most likely only be exposed to carefully edited snippets of comments that could easily be taken out of context by spin doctors and pundits. Especially on social media, where attention spans are on average so short that anything more than a couple of seconds is typically dismissed as too long to bother watching.
But failing to appear and leaving his podium empty is a risky gambit.
Sure, Trudeau avoids the distinct possibility of being misrepresented in news coverage and opposition party campaign attack ads, with brief couple-of-second-clips taken from longer statements to spin and sensationalize.
Yet he also invited mockery, as illustrated by Green Party Leader Elizabeth May’s humorous handshake with an invisible Trudeau, and failed utterly to defend himself against contenders.
One would assume that a leader who is proud of his or her track record would jump at any opportunity to boast about it, as opposed to ducking away, undoubtedly leaving many people with the impression he’s intimidated by facing off against the other parties’ leaders.
Then again, from his failure to deliver on his big 2015 campaign promise of electoral reform to the more recent matter of the SNC-Lavalin affair, whose history to be fair reaches back way before he ever came to power, perhaps there might be method to his madness.
At this point, whether his gamble to be so selective about which debates he attends pays off will be determined when Canadians go to the polls on Oct. 21.
— Ducatel is the Round Up’s editor
