Tom Mulcair: Some hard lessons learned by Carney and Poilievre from the English debate

CTV News political commentator Tom Mulcair shares his takes on each leaders’ performance, and the cancelling of the post-debate scrums.

Tom Mulcair is a former leader of the federal New Democratic Party of Canada between 2012 and 2017, and a columnist for CTVNews.ca.

Mark Carney largely resisted the predictable onslaught from his opponents during the English leaders’ debate on Thursday night.

He was helped by a boneheaded move by the hopeless Leaders’ Debates Commission that allowed fake news outlets into the room.

Any difficult patches Carney may have experienced were pushed to the bottom of the page in post-debate analysis, owing to the moronic eruption of right wing media that was supposed to help Poilievre. Instead, they unintentionally helped Carney by becoming the news.

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The major distraction caused by pro-Poilievre ‘independent media’ became the number one topic in headlines. Quebec’s largest circulation newspaper, the Journal de Montréal, even used an English word in a headline: “Shitshow.” (Full disclosure, I write a weekly column for the Journal.)

But Poilievre wasn’t alone in being hoisted by the petard of those who were supposed to be there to help him.

Somehow, someone in Carney’s camp came up with the bright idea of having him use his one and only question to Poilievre to try to corner him on the issue of security clearance.

Here’s a primer on that one: When Trudeau made an absolute shambles of the issue of foreign interference in Canadian elections, he was on the ropes like never before. It was, in my view, the beginning of the end of his time as prime minister.

Trudeau’s elves had cobbled together their big ‘Aha!’ riposte against Poilievre. They attacked him for not applying for and receiving a security clearance to be allowed to view the ‘evidence’ about MPs who might be involved in helping foreign powers stick their noses in Canadian politics.

It was a spurious attack and Poilievre was completely right, constitutionally and institutionally, to simply say no. He didn’t want his hands tied in any way and one of the conditions of looking at those files was that he would’ve been barred from talking about the information he’d been given.

All MPs are beholden to their voters. The Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition has an even higher duty, that of holding the government to account. Poilievre didn’t want to compromise that obligation and, in my view, correctly refused.

Of those who accepted, Elizabeth May and Jagmeet Singh notably spoke about what they, respectively, hadn’t and had seen in the reports. So much for deep secrets.

• Complete coverage of federal election 2025

It’s worth noting that after stonewalling and trying to hand the stinking mess off to former GG David Johnston, Trudeau was finally forced to create a Commission of inquiry under Mme. Justice Hogue. She had access to everything and her report warned of potential dangers, but was markedly short on specific cases of skullduggery by MPs.

I have a particular take on all of this having been opposition leader for several years during Stephen Harper’s majority government.

Harper was a tough cookie but he also understood and respected parliamentary traditions.

When there were serious security issues that were brewing, he’d follow a longstanding practice and (wait for it…) talk to me!

I didn’t need to be told it was secret, the prime minister had reached out to share information so I could carry out my role as the security issue rolled out. That’s how the game is supposed to be played.

Poilievre was able to rebut the question and its implications about his loyalty to our institutions. His answer included a reference to my publicly stated position on this issue, which I’ve held since day one.

Both Carney and Poilievre learned a tough lesson during the English debate. Be wary of sycophants who want to curry favour with their very bad ideas.