Democracy was the biggest loser, and the biggest winner, at the Toronto-Danforth all-candidates meeting held last night at Riverdale Collegiate. Jack Layton, who represents the riding in Parliament, had skipped town — the NDP leader was doomsaying in British Columbia — and sent the local MPP, Peter Tabuns, to debate on his behalf. But not before the auditorium crowd was polled regarding whether Tabuns could be accepted as a surrogate. And the labourious show-of-hands was initially close enough to require an even more labourious recount. 

Yet, given the choice, a stand-in for Layton was more undesired than not and Tabuns made a hasty exit from the event he was initially invited to — along with about 15 other New Democratic Party loyalists. At least the vote-induced walkout gave Citytv the airtime-killer they needed without having to hang around for two more hours.

None of this came as a surprise to Liberal candidate Andrew Lang, distributing a leaflet directing folks to an astroturfy Where’s Jack? weblog credited to a mysterious cranky constituent named “Gabe.” Gabe’s annoyance with Layton’s absentee representation of Toronto-Danforth even extends to pointing out that his website features him basking in a glow a la Barack Obama and Joe Biden, hairplugs notwithstanding.

Lang, whose campaign literature need only identify his age as “raised in the glow of the Trudeau government,” is making his inaugural run for office after working on at least 18 different elections, most notably in the office of ex-Toronto Centre MP Bill Graham, whose firm disposition Lang has adopted. But he also has a former politician for a father, Otto Lang, and yet another for a stepfather, Donald Macdonald. And what might have been a historic night for Andrew’s own résumé — the rare opportunity to publicly chip away at a federal party leader — has been diminished by the inability of Layton to show up. (UPDATE: But it did provide fodder for a day-after press release, not directly attributed to Lang, detailing a hallway “heated exchange.” Also quoted is one Gabe de Roche, presumably the aforementioned Layton-hating webmaster.)

What the remaining audience got instead was a rare spotlight for the kind of candidate that the major parties have determined is no longer ideal for downtown Toronto, if not the rest of the country: middle-aged male malcontents with varied enough observational experience to self-motivate a run for office.

Based on the Toronto-Danforth ballot, these types are least likely to have been hatched in this country: John Richardson, running as an independent candidate, grew up in Boston until age 12, when his parents moved here 40 years ago. Bahman Yazdanfar, running for the 9/11 truther squad Canadian Action Party, was born in Iran, went to university in Afghanistan, and spent time in Europe prior to moving here 22 years ago, seemingly enamored with Canada even if one can apparently be excluded from a democratic debate in this country for not responding to an email invitation that was never received.

Since he bothered to turn up anyhow, Yazdanfar effectively took the spot on stage that was reserved for Tabuns, something which the moderator didn’t allow to have happen before yet another arduous hand-count.

Meanwhile, representing the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada is Marie Crawford, the former owner of Leslieville vegan restaurant Pulp Kitchen — infamously cited in the May 2008 Toronto Life article, “Baby Wars,” for a passive-aggressive sign asking locals to park their SUV strollers at the door.

Their presence steered the debate into something closer to a live version of the online comment thread of a news story, where the respondents rarely need to acknowledge one another, and the main object of their derision contentedly ignores it all.

But those who drew a couple hundred constituents had to try their best, each one waxing some variation of the argument that the system is broken and somebody’s gotta fix it — in other words, the tenor of Jack Layton’s entire political career. And, unlike the rest of them, he’s won a few elections with it.

Doing his darnedest to have an unheated argument with an incumbent who wasn’t there, Lang stressed his own ties to the community, working the “Local Matters” hook. A recent visit to a tenth-grade civics class reminded him about just how cynical the kids are about politics today — as if that counts as a revelation compared to 20 years ago, when a channel like MuchMusic would certainly not have been hosting interactive youth forums with Stéphane Dion.

The rare individual who grew up in a home where politician was considered an honest way to make a living needs to earn legitimacy somehow, right? At least the “I’m in the LANG GANG” T-shirts sported by campaign volunteers have a swell Trudeau-era vintage look. But for a debate where the questioners — at least those who didn’t have their entreaties sternly shot down for not living in the riding — fixated upon the hardscrabble aspects of mid-east end Toronto, any Ottawa-style campaign platitudes meant little.

So, the 28-year-old Conservative candidate Christina Perrault wasn’t subject to the jeers — whether from offstage or on — that any other party representative must weather in the other downtown ridings. While nothing from Perrault’s personal history would implicate her for the alleged sins of Stephen Harper, no publicity may well have been good publicity — word of a younger Toronto version of Sarah Palin would have brought out the wrong kind of punters.

(Or, for the sensationalist purposes of alt-weekly journalism, the right ones.)

Green Party candidate Sharon Howarth, whose environmental concerns would probably trump all other issues in the Carrot Common core of the actual Danforth, served to highlight how these topics have less resonance a few shady blocks south. She could have better applied her Hana Gartner-esque voice to directly nail Layton to the linoleum floor.

As it turned out, the dominant voice in the debate was 52-year-old John Richardson, whose jaded Beantown dialect would surely liven up a future mayoral contest. But it was Bahman Yazdanfar’s irritation with the elusive Layton that seemed the most intense.

Andrew Lang, meanwhile, steered it back to his hope that the riding can tilt back to the Liberal position held by Dennis Mills from 1988 until the carpetbagging candidacy of Layton in 2004. “I’m not a big fan of strategic voting,” Lang proclaimed, although he endorses making one election exception — for himself.

“Jack Layton is too scared,” concluded Lang, “to say that he’s scared.”

 

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