OTTAWA, July 6 (LifeSiteNews.com) – LifeSite was in attendance at yesterday’s town hall debate between Canadian Alliance leadership candidates Preston Manning and Stockwell Day which produced no clear winner leaving Day with the momentum for the final stretch of the campaign. Day’s campaign gained considerable strength from the endorsement he received yesterday from former Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament, Jim Jones. Jones was quickly kicked out of the Tory caucus by leader Joe Clark after expressing a desire to work closely together with the Alliance. He was the PC’s only Ontario Member of Parliament.
The town hall meeting, which was held in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean, was devoted almost entirely to questions from the audience. The three people who asked questions related to controversies surrounding Day’s campaign were booed by the audience. Day categorically denied the allegation of anti-semitism directed at a Christian school where he once taught, suggesting that those kinds of questions sound like they originate in the Liberal camp. When Day and Manning were asked what they would do when the social conservatives in the party started to make demands, they both said that they would allow party members’ views to be freely discussed and debated. They said that, as with other issues, social conservative values would be made subject to majority vote when it comes to policy making in the party.
The two leadership candidates generated some of the strongest applause when they condemned judicial activism and discussed their alternatives. Manning talked about the importance of re-establishing the constitutional distinctions between the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government such that the legislative branch – Parliament – makes the laws and the judges are limited to interpreting them. Day said further that he would set up a non-partisan committee of MPs to publicly scrutinize judicial appointments.
Both Manning and Day were conciliatory towards each other during most of the debate with Day making a special effort to express a unifying, team-building sentiment during the second half of the town hall meeting. He talked about focusing on the Liberals instead of attacking each other and reminded the primarily CA audience that all the candidates have committed themselves to working together regardless of who ends up as the leader. In his concluding comments, Day suggested that the focus of the party, as it aspires to forming the next government, should be working “all Day Long Manning the government.”