Segacs’s World I Know

I can’t help but wonder why, with a week left until the election and with the issue never having been on the table in the first place, abortion rights are suddenly making news.

Whatever my reservations about the Tories, I can’t imagine that they would take steps to restrict a woman’s right to choose. And although the attack is supposedly coming from an independent source, it’s difficult not to read between the lines and attribute this to the Liberal strategy of trying to paint Harper with the U.S. right-wing fanatic brush. Martin might think he’s scoring points, but the scare tactics are looking much more like desperation tactics at this point.

Oprah Winfrey has selected Elie Wiesel’s “Night” as her latest book club pick, catapulting the famous book on the Holocaust onto the bestseller list over a half-century after it was first published.

“Night” was required reading in high school French class (though I seem to remember most of us cheating by picking up the English translation from the library). It’s a powerful book and Wiesel emerged as one of the key voices of conscience on the Holocaust. There was a time when Wiesel’s word would have carried more weight than Oprah’s.

Then again, with Holocaust-denial on the rise (from the usual suspects and the Left and the Arab world), and with the generation of survivors slowly disappearing, perhaps this was the right time to push the book back into the spotlight.

In a bizarre twist, ADQ leader Mario Dumont spoke out Thursday saying he intends to vote Conservative and urging Quebecers not to vote for the Bloc:

Dumont said the Bloc limits the province’s influence on the national scene and acts more like a millstone around Quebecers’ necks.

He said he would vote Conservative, but only recommended that voters not vote for the Bloc.

This is a truly odd move for a politician whose party has practically defined fence-strattling on the sovereignty issue, but is nonetheless pretty clearly separatist. The ADQ spiked in popularity a few years back, but came down pretty quickly when people in Quebec realized the party’s platform was a lot further to the right than most of them agreed with.

So ideologically I can understand why Dumont might vote Tory. Politically, I’m not quite sure what he’s doing. Viewed in context of the next election, is Dumont perhaps repositioning himself as a federalist? Doubtful. Though he usually answers questions about sovereignty with the convenient answer that he wants to “get past” the issue, Dumont has never been anything but nationalist.

More likely, he’s betting that the provincial Liberals have lost so much support, that if the ADQ wants to win seats in the next provincial election, their real opponents will be the Parti Quebecois. He sees Bloc momentum as leading to PQ momentum, and he wants to position himself as an alternative voice.

At any rate, most people in Quebec are unlikely to listen. Whatever happens in the rest of Canada, Gilles Duceppe has never been more popular in Quebec right now, and the Bloc is positioned to win perhaps 60 seats, maybe even more. Despite recent polls showing the Tories taking a slight lead overall in Quebec over the Liberals, this is unlikely to translate into any Tory seats, as their numbers will put them second in a number of Bloc ridings but the Liberals still have concentrated support in many Montreal ridings (including my own).

So Dumont’s comments will probably have little effect in the short-term. But they’re worth keeping an eye on for how they might affect the political landscape ahead of the next Quebec election.

Habs’ GM Bob Gainey fired head coach Claude Julien as well as assistant coach Rick Green, and plans to take over the coaching job himself for the time being. He also hired Guy Carbonneau as assistant coach and head-coach-in-training.

With only 7 wins in the last 25 games, it was clear that the Habs were in big trouble and something needed to be done. But was this the right move? That depends on how you look at it. If the talent is there and simply not producing, then it’s reasonable to blame the coach. But if the front office hasn’t made the deals to put the right guys on the ice, then Gainey ought to shoulder more of the blame himself.

Here’s Craig Rivet’s reaction:

I think it’s unfortunate that it’s always the coach that takes the fall for lack of production from players. He gave us a game plan and guys maybe chose not to follow it. That’s too bad because he’s a good coach.

Until the players step up and start moving and controlling the puck and creating scoring chances and playing a full 60 minutes each game, then no shakeups will have much effect. I’m sad to say this as a fan, but I’m not holding out too much hope that this move is going to turn things around. But who knows?

Update: Well, in the immediate term at least, the shakeup seems to have lit a fire under the Habs, who routed the San Jose Sharks 6 to 2 tonight. It’s been far too long since the last time the sounds of the “na-na-na-na hey hey hey goodbye” song were heard in the Bell Centre. Whether the team can keep it up remains to be seen, but this was a good start.

Last night’s “top story” on the news was all about how the campaign has taken a “negative turn” with the new Liberal attack ads on the Tories.

Now, there’s very little dispute that the Liberal campaign has been terribly run. These ads are a bit of a running joke, especially to those of us in the business. And they’re fun to parody and are probably hurting the Liberals more than helping them.

But since when is the negative tone of this campaign “news”? The Tory ads have all attacked the Liberals from day one. They were better ads, granted, but they still spoke exclusively of how bad the Liberals were and had nothing to say about the Tories or their platforms. This has been an attack campaign since the beginning; the only difference is that now the Liberals have climbed into the ring. And if these are their “knockout punches”, Paul Martin’s team is in big trouble.

In the meantime, the Tories have their own troubles, with the news that one of their candidates has been charged with smuggling. The Tories claim they didn’t know, which is probably true. But if they’re going to run a campaign attacking Paul Martin’s claim that he didn’t know about the sponsorship money, at the very least they ought to react to this with more than a “it’s not our fault, we didn’t know”.

And as the two parties throw mud at one another, here in Quebec, Gilles Duceppe is using the opportunity to build support for sovereignty. Regardless of the result of the federal election, the news for Quebec looks bleak.

I’m the first to admit that Theodore has been playing lousy lately. But on a night when Huet demonstrated some spectacular goaltending and stopped 38 shots, we lose our excuse of blaming the goaltending for the loss. The Habs managed only 26 shots on David Aebischer, and only a handful of scoring chances, as they dominated the faceoff circle but mastered chasing their tails the whole rest of the game. If not for Huet, we would’ve been out of the game early on.

Goaltending may be an issue, but until the Habs can figure out how to control the puck offensively and create scoring chances, we’re doomed. It’s not Theodore’s fault. It’s everyone’s fault.

Update: Reflections now that the debate is over:

• Someone needs to buy Paul Martin a stopwatch, so he can time his statements better. There was hardly a segment in which he didn’t get cut off for nearly going over his time.
• Jack Layton really needs to stop phrasing every answer with his slogan that there is a third alternative. We get it, okay? We just don’t like it.
• As for seniors, children, and working families being Layton’s priorities, well, that’s all very well and nice. (Oh, and if he were being honest, he ought to have listed labour unions at the top of his list). Personally I’d like a government that works for all the rest of us, too. But that’s just me.
• Stephen Harper said one of the only courageous things in the entire debate, when he defended his belief that large companies need tax breaks in order to stay competitive and to create jobs. Unfortunately, he didn’t follow through. Half the debate seemed like a competition on who could bash the big bad rich corporate bogeyman the most.
• Gilles Duceppe’s name-dropping is getting annoying. I can just picture him as the guy at the B-list Hollywood party trying to score points with the cool kids by talking about his lunch with Brad and Angelina. Can’t you just see it?
• Most of the time, the other three candidates ignored Duceppe, figuring there was nothing to gain from going after him and everything to lose. Martin and Harper, in my opinion, lost an opportunity there. Except during the unity segment, none of them bothered to attack Duceppe, and therefore none of them really managed to make the case that they would strongly defend Canadian Unity in the case of a referendum.
• On that note, I’m not sure what Jack Layton hoped to gain by repeatedly talking about “winning conditions” for Canada in Quebec. He couldn’t possibly be thinking he’s going to win any seats here, could he?
• If you tied Paul Martin’s hands behind his back, who else thinks he would be mute?

Overall I’d have to give this debate narrowly to Stephen Harper on points, because he survived the first real test after gaining the lead in the polls, and managed to sound more coherent than Paul Martin in most of his responses. However, it was far from conclusive. Martin has indicated that there is plenty of Liberal ammunition to look forward to in the next two weeks, most likely in the form of attack ads painting Harper as being in the pocket of American Conservatives.

As Duceppe grows bolder about gunning for Canada in general and promoting sovereignty, Layton salivates with the notion of once again holding the balance of power, and Martin and Harper duke it out for another two weeks, tonight’s debate has one solid conclusion: this debate is still wide open.

…is not so great. So far.

Martin tripping over his words and talking with his hands, Harper so eerily calm that he seems tranquilized, Layton with his little weasel smile, and Duceppe once again making me wish he was on the other side. Plus ça change…

Want to liven up these debates? Let all the parties participate. Not only the Greens, who probably deserve to be there, but also the White Elephants, the Marxist/Leninists, the Communists, the Marijuana Party, the Libertarians, and, for good measure, the Christian Heritage Party. Let the kooks loose on stage and all the 4 main parties will suddenly appear middle-of-the-road.

Polls for the first time are showing the Conservatives taking the lead. People are actually starting to see Harper as the man to beat here as opposed to Martin. I’m still very skeptical. I think this is the high-water mark for the Tories, and that many people who would have voted Conservative as a protest vote will think twice now that they actually have a chance of winning.

But then, there are still 2 weeks until the election. Anything could happen.

Ariel Sharon moved slightly and is breathing on his own after doctors allowed him to emerge from a medically-induced coma. But they’re saying it’s still too early to tell if – and how extensive – there is brain damage.

Whether you like him or hate him, it’s really awful to see such a high-profile man reduced to this.