Week 7 of the federal election campaign: What we learned

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper wanted a campaign focused on the economy.

This week was the closest he's come to getting it, thanks to Thursday night'sdebate on the economy hosted bythe Globe and Mailin Calgary.

• Vote Compass: Find out where you stand on the issues
• 5 storylines from Thursday's leaders' debate

While the final ratings for thedebate aren't in,the replay available onYouTube had hit 320,000 views by 5 p.m. ET Friday.

For those who couldn't spare time for a full viewing or grew impatient with the endless pre-game punditry what matters now is how it's sliced and diced andspun.

This week's debate taught us a bit about what the parties have learnedsince we last saw the three leaders on the same stage six weeks ago and where the campaignstorylinesareat.

Creepy grin bad, interrupting OK?

NDP Leader TomMulcairtook a serious,studied andcalm approach to Thursday night. His much-discussed smile, found to be distracting during theMaclean'sdebate, was dialled back, replaced by a sometimessnarkyseriousness in his still-safe-and-front-running game plan.

To the left of him Thursday night (andsome days in the campaign as well), Liberal Leader JustinTrudeaudid not appear to significantlyrecalibratehis debating style for the second outing. And why would he? His aggressive, interruption-heavyMaclean'sperformance gave him a polling bump. So he doubled down with content to match his disruptive style, saying the fix he was proposing for the economy was urgent, unlike his slower opponents.

Which brings us back toHarper, onhome turf geographically and politically and fighting to remain steady in not only message, but voice. His key lineechoed his muchdiscussed "I'm not perfect" ad: "I've never said things are great," he said, but where else would you have wanted to be in tough economic times than Canada?

This debate was aclear win forzinger-seekers: here allleaders performed admirably, deliveringplenty ofsoundbites,pre-written or otherwise.

The real loss? Not, apparently, the leftout Elizabeth May, whoattracted a crowd in person and onlinefor her offsite,alternate rebuttal event.

But what aboutthose wanting to hear about topics not coming up in the theme-limited English debates? (The next one, theSept. 28MunkDebates event on foreign policy,is on, by the way, just nevermind that bilingual kerfuffle.) Trudeau squeezed a reference toone example, First Nations issues, near the end Thursday, but the list is much longer than that.

Economic plans:Got it, need it ... don't need it?

On Wednesday, the NDP held a pre-debate press conference tolay out afiscal plan, an attempt to push back against critics who say it can't deliver balanced books.

Reporters have pushed everyone for solid figures.The spreadsheet on offer from the New Democrats goes further than the backgrounders provided by Liberals to date. But foranyonenot in government and without access to the real data, the details were thin.

The Conservatives appear somewhat liberated from this costing pressure,partly because their campaign has, on some days, been simply re-emphasizing aspects of the budget they're already executing. Onother days, small, micro-targeted announcements aren't on ascale to significantly tip the surplus-deficit balance.

This week's fiscal talk hasn't significantly moved polls yet although some days the headlinesdisagreedon who's slightly more ahead in the tight three-way race.

For those wondering,Joe Oliver,the finance minister, isstillsticking close to home, withouta role on the nationalcampaign.

And that refugee pledge?

This week, any talking Harper couldn't do himself went to theMinister of Everything, Jason Kenney.

Despite what Kenneypreviewedlast weekend morehelp coming forSyrian refugees the Conservatives are still punting on beefed-up resettlement efforts.

It's unclear why. (Still coming though, they say.) Security concerns take time to address?

Week seven did continuetotar the reputationsandfray the nervesof candidate-vetting teams across the land. It also added Facebook "like-jacking" to the Canadian political vocabulary.

Star power?

Week seven alsooffered a few celebrities, at least byCanadian standards, with somesigning an environmental manifestoTuesday. (Conservative detractors dubbed it the #Tommunist Manifesto, in honour of the NDP leader.)

One of the signatories, actor Donald Sutherland, didn't stop there, telling red carpet watchersat the Toronto International Film Festival that Canadians shouldchange their government. (His support for the NDP is decidedly not news, although the actor who once married Tommy Douglas's daughtercan't vote himself anddoesn't like that one bit.)

Another ex-pat, who, like Sutherland, is annoyed at being barred from his franchise, is making a show ofrunning against Harper in his Calgary riding. That is, apparently, OK by election rules. Just don't try to vote for yourself, eh?

Finally, Harper tried to build some post-debate momentum Friday night withan event featuringone of the most Canadian-est of big name ex-pats, WayneGretzky.

Which brings us to the artistic opportunityoffered pool cameras in Calgary Thursday morning.

Photographers were rewarded for braving the early morning, near-freezing chill as Trudeau paddled by soloin a canoe.

There was no buckskin jacket (his father's isin the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ont.), just a whitewater-friendly life-vest. The homage to one of the mostfamous scenes in Canadian political documentary-making was self-evident.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi's warmreception aside, thefastwaters of the Bow River still just aren't friendly.

Nice shot though.

And finally

Thomas Mulcair: clear, clear, clear

9 years ago

Duration 0:56

A humorous look at one of Thomas Mulcair's favourite campaign words

We have a little fun with one of Mulcair's favourite words from the campaign trail thus far.