Let Me Be Clear: Fact Checking Leaders on Foreign Policy
A civil debate, sure. But civility, it seems, doesn’t always encourage truthfulness.
The fourth debate in this election “season” — a campaign as long as some places in Canada go without snow — was rather polite compared to the first two English debates.
It was clear host Munk Debates wanted a civil conversation among gentlemen, where the moderator held court and didn’t let the leaders shout over one another. The audience laughed and clapped as though there was a flashing sign telling them to do so, and even booed Liberal leader Justin Trudeau for speaking over Conservative leader Stephen Harper. Apparently they’re sticklers for manners, too.
Civility doesn’t equal truthiness, however, and it turns out there were some whopper-sized statements in last night’s foreign policy debate. As per form, we picked one statement per leader to debunk.
Thomas Mulcair: “It’s very difficult to see how Canada’s superior interests were being served when Prime Minister Harper said to President Obama that it was ‘a complete no brainer’ — those were his exact words — that the Americans had to approve Keystone XL. I know that Keystone XL represents the export of 40,000 Canadian jobs because Mr. Harper told the Americans so.”
The NDP leader’s first sentence is misleading. Speaking to reporters in New York at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in 2011, Harper told an American reporter that approving the Keystone XL pipeline, which would ship raw bitumen from Alberta to Nebraska, would be a “no brainer.” He could have said this to Obama in a private conversation, but in public he said it to a reporter.
The second sentence is false, with a caveat. Keystone won’t “export” jobs to the United States. Mulcair could be referring to the fact that exporting raw bitumen means American refineries get to refine the product, rather than a Canadian facility. But the 40,000 jobs number comes from a U.S. state department report, and the majority are either temporary positions or they already exist.
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