OC Glebe Debate review

Apologies for not having this up early

From sitting left to right:

Richard Eveleigh-Independent: 1/10

I knew nothing about this lone Independent, and his stumbling, mumbling, incoherent performance did not help him. From the very little of his platform I could understand, he seemed to be somewhat of an eco-nut (think Green Party circa 1980's) , talking about green roofs and trees on highways. Other than that I couldn't tell anything about his platform except that he is pro-MMP.

Yasir Naqvi-Liberal: 8/10
Yasir gave another strong performance on the evening, although he was helped by the format of the debate, which was less directly confrontational, and the sheer number of candidates, which made it harder for the other parties and the other candidates to gang up on Yasir and the Liberals. Yasir was quick and often to mention his service to the community, and particularly hammered the faith based schools question out of the park, claiming that he, as an ethnic immigrant to Canada when he was 15, was "a product of the public school system", which got a great cheer from Liberal and non-Liberal supporters alike.

Greg Laxton-Green: 7/10
Greg wins the award for most improved candidate, as where he was sometimes stumbling and quiet at the Bronson Centre debate, here he was more confident, without being arrogant or adopting a "holier than thou" attitude that Greens sometimes have a habit of adopting. His only real drawback was he attempted to drawback towards the MMP question a few too many times at the expense of expanding on policy.

Trina Morissette-Conservative: 4/10
The Glebe is not exactly friendly ground for Conservatives at the best of times, and Trina got started off on exactly the wrong foot, going negative early and often. One crack at Dalton she made, which I'm assuming she was hoping would be a big applause line, which only got stony silence. She looked definitely uncomfortable when the issue of faith based schools came up, helped in no part by the fact that with the exception of the FCP candidate, all the parties and candidates were roundly critical of the plan. About the only cheer she got was when she came out against MMP, but this was countered by the fact that yet again, she was the only candidate to get heckled.

Danny Moran-Family Coalition: 6.5/10
Wins the award for most surprising performance of the evening. I was expecting a barely coherent Jesus freak, and instead I got a fairly competent, decent public speaker with a good sense of timing and humour. While his actually party's policy's are of course unpalatable to myself, as a pure candidate and public speaker, he was pretty good. He also got a good non-partisan applause when he answered a question to which all other candidates had given long winded answers with a simple and terse "No".

Stuart Ryan-Communist: 3.5/10
Ryan, a perenial candidate and familar face to many a Carleton student, is simply not a good public speaker. He stayed on his socialist message at least, but is so uninspiring that even the hardest of Marxist's would have had a wandering mind.

Will Murray-NDP: 5.5/10
Murray was marginally easier to listen to this time around, as the lack of the direct confrontation between candidates forced him to tone down his normal fire breathing dragon rhetoric. His biggest stumble was when one person in the audience asked a very interesting question about what spending each government would cut, and he sort of sputtered out a half-formed answer about Colegate.