{"id":12823,"date":"2015-09-30T08:11:12","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T13:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12823"},"modified":"2015-09-30T08:11:12","modified_gmt":"2015-09-30T13:11:12","slug":"let-me-be-clear-fact-checking-leaders-on-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12823","title":{"rendered":"Let Me Be Clear: Fact Checking Leaders on Foreign Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let Me Be Clear: Fact Checking Leaders on Foreign Policy<\/a><\/h3>\n

A civil debate, sure. But civility, it seems, doesn’t always encourage truthfulness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0an 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[103,7902,6213,9432,4169,6214,9431,5917,749,9341,9206,9430],"class_list":["post-12823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-canada","tag-canadian-federal-election","tag-conservative","tag-debates","tag-justin-trudeau","tag-liberal","tag-mum","tag-ndp","tag-stephen-harper","tag-the-type","tag-tom-mulcair","tag-truth-checking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12824,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12823\/revisions\/12824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}