For the ones who would not know, there will be a Federal Election in Canada on October 14 (on my Birthday! Do you think I will do my citizen’s duty that day???) … Last night was the Party Leaders’ Debate in French (tonight, they will have the one in English). I have to say that I am not a fan of such debates… usually I do not learn anything new from whatever they have to say!

Yet yesterday evening I decided to sit down for two hours and watch our so called leaders debate on economics, environment, leadership, health, etc.  I was not really interested in what they had to say (every four years, they all come up with more or less similar plans and it sounds rather redundant!)… I was interested in how they would say it! In other words I wanted to do a semantics analysis of their speeches…

Who are our leaders?

• Stephen Harper, Conservative Party Leader and our current Prime Minister
• Stéphane Dion, Liberal Party Leader and Official Opposition Leader
• Gilles Duceppe, Bloc Québécois Leader (useless to say that he will never be Prime Minister since this party has candidates in Québec only ridings!)
• Jack Layton, NDP Leader (he is not really a threat to Harper at this point!)
• Elizabeth May, Green Party Leader (she will never be Prime Minister!)

Our country is officially bilingual (English and French), therefore our Prime Minister has to be fluent in both languages. Unfortunately, it is not always the case…

For the first time, yesterday, the debate occurred around a table… actually, it was like watching “Tout le monde en parle” on Radio-Canada… well… kind of… and without the wine of course! I thought it was quite neat: the atmosphere was somewhat more “convivial”. And actually everyone seemed rather at ease, except for Stephen Harper who was obviously feeling very uncomfortable. This man seems more in control when he is standing up behind a lectern… he is a stiff man, but last night, he was stiffer than ever! Also, his advisors had probably suggested him to smile… Personally I think it was bad advice: the man hardly smiles and, since smiling is not his nature, he looked fake (I thought he had a creepy smirk on his face…)! But… I am not here to discuss anyone’s body language, although moving hands and being animated is a must in French.

Of course I am excluding both Duceppe and Dion from my analysis since French is their mother tongue. I am also excluding Elizabeth May because (no offence there!) she cannot speak French… she has some vocabulary but, grammatically and syntactically, she cannot communicate her thoughts in an articulate way. However, I give her a gold star for her courage! It certainly takes some guts to participate in a live debate with such poor knowledge of the second language! Chapeau Madame May!… and if she ever sticks around long enough, I know she will learn how to speak French fast! In spite of everything, to everyone’s surprise, she actually did participate in the debate…

Consequently I was left with Harper and Layton… Most people think that our Prime Minister is quite eloquent in French… I would say he is when he has a prepared speech but, when he has to answer questions cold turkey, he is not at ease with his grammar and it shows! Yesterday evening, the first ten minutes seemed to be excruciating for him… he was often hesitating, if not stuttering… but he gained some confidence along the way. I had never really heard Jack Layton speak French before and I have to admit I was quite impressed… since he mentioned both his father and grandfather were in politics in Montréal, I assume he lived in Québec for a couple of years when he was young. That would explain why, sometimes, I thought he was occasionally speaking street French… I recognized there the way many Anglophones from Québec express themselves in French.

Obviously Stephen Harper went through l’École de la Fonction publique du Canada in order to learn French… his speech was well studied and to some extent memorized… he was using all the mots-liens that one can find on the list, yet most of the time he was using the wrong prepositions (sur, dans, pour, par)… and, trust me, it is very annoying for Francophones to listen to such mistakes; only because they are all over the place… I also noticed that he used the masculine for most of the words ending in -tion… Even my beginners know that all the words ending in -tion and -ette in French are feminine!!!

I cannot say if Layton went to that school also… maybe! But, even if he attended their program, he did not adopted their complicated way of speaking. He did not use any mots-liens and he was over-using the near future… his vocabulary was simpler, therefore it was easier for him to speak naturally…  and because of that, he was probably much more attractive to Monsieur et Madame Tout le Monde!… He was very confident and totally at ease. Also because he was not using complex structures, when he was misusing a preposition here and there, it was much less noticeable!

During those two hours (sometimes painful!), I did assess the three Anglophone Leaders thoroughly (as if they were taking the oral test to get their required level, which for a Prime Minister should not be less than an E -exemption)… Unfortunately, no one passed my little test. If I had to give a level to each of them, here they are:

• Elizabeth May - somewhere between a strong X and a weak A
• Stephen Harper – an average C 
• Jack Layton – a very strong C, close to an E

Tonight will be the Debate in English… I think Stéphane Dion will struggle because his English is not very good… I would give him a B… But, I have to say that he is learning fast (compared to last year, his English is much better!)… He has to work on his pronunciation though, which is poor… with time he should get it!

Actually there is only one bilingual Party Leader and this person is Gilles Duceppe from Le Bloc Québécois… and he will never be Prime Minister of Canada! Ironic, is it not?…

In my analysis, I had to exclude the comprehension criteria… otherwise everyone would have failed my test… Why? Because no one answered any of the questions that were asked!… I would have to give them an X with the mention “Le candidat n’a pas compris les questions dans la langue seconde”… And that goes for the Francophone Leaders as well!…

Great News!!!

Jessica got her B!!!

Congratulations Girl!… I knew you would make it!

I am so proud of you!!!