Though it wasn’t a sandbox, last night’s televised provincial leaders’ debate sounded like they were in one as all three took shots at each other—and raised their voices to drown out one another.
At one point, moderator Mary Lou Findlay had to interrupt the three as they had become so boisterous, all talking at once, that no one could hear anything any of them were saying.
Though all three seemed to have a strong showing, Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty proclaimed himself the winner. “I won. I won the debate,” he said to media afterwards.
For McGuinty, whose performance in the 1999 leaders’ debate has been described as uninspiring, it’s possible the debate last night felt like a win.
Both NDP leader Howard Hampton and Progressive Conservative leader and premier Ernie Eves stayed away from declaring a winner, instead suggesting they felt they had conveyed their platforms to the public.
“The second period is over,” Hampton said in a telephone call last night after the debate, once again bringing up his hockey game analogy to describe the election campaign.
“The next nine days are the third period and there could be overtime,” he added, explaining that overtime could mean a minority government.
Hampton felt he performed well in the debate. “I simply wanted to get our message out and I believe I did that,” he said.
Hampton, who has been badly trailing both the Liberals and Tories in the polls the entire campaign, felt like he had to be aggressive. He seemed to have the last word in every exchange as he pushed the time allotted to its limit.
He did the same at the all-candidates’ debate here in Fort Frances on Sept. 12. But was it his strategy going into the debate?
“Yes,” he said of using every last second. “You can’t stand around in these debates. If there’s three seconds left, you have to try and use them.
“I am an aggressive debater,” he added. “I’m not talking in vague generalities. I’ve got something to say.”
At times during the debate, Hampton seemed to get angry. His face became more red than normal and his eyes became very intense.
“I went in there determined to get our issues out to the people of Ontario,” he stressed. “Even if the other two tried to elbow me from the debate.”
Following the hockey theme, was the elbow worth two minutes in the box? “I was frustrated,” he exclaimed. “I felt the debate was meandering back to vague generalities.
“And I became incensed when Mr. Eves said something I said was false,” he added.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
