On aftereffects

Macleans' Bull Meter assesses Jack Layton's concerns about reduced family-class immigration paired with increased use of temporary workers and finds them to be...entirely accurate.

By the same token, Stephen Harper's assertion that "we've been increasing (immigration) categories across the board" - coupled with a particularly smarmy "simply not true!" directed at the correct numbers from Layton and Michael Igantieff - would figure to earn an entire herd of bulls.

And the example makes me wonder about the unanticipated aftereffects of last night.

So far, the default assumption seems to be that Harper managed to get away with lying his way through the debate, both in terms of flat-out false statements of fact and in portraying his party's positions as being far more in line with Canadians than they actually are. (It takes something beyond mere acting to pretend that the Cons' reason for killing the NDP's Climate Change Accountability Act in the unelected Senate was that it didn't contain enough concrete measures, rather than because it would have put an end to the Cons' strategy of delay and obfuscation.)

But might the most important takeaway be less the tone of the debate itself than the subsequent checking of Harper's indignant statements of "fact" - so many of which don't stand up to even a modicum of scrutiny? And if Canadian hear enough that Harper's tone of defiance is based on yet another set of flat-out falsehoods, might that well make for a turn in the campaign?