"It's like apples and oranges my dear Sam Katz..."

This morning's electoral forum debate at Red River College was nothing less than... interesting. This was my first live political debate.

It started off with the topic of increasing crime rates and what each candidate proposes to do about the problem in Winnipeg. When Sam Katz and Judy Wasylycia-Leis were asked to comment on the newly purchased police helicopter, I found myself having a hard time differentiating between who was speaking because they were interrupting eachother. Throw the 'mediator', Richard Cloutier, into the mix, and it was a full on matter of how well you can multi-task interpreting mass amounts of information at the same time.

When I worked in Grade 3, we had such a thing called a sharing stone that would enable only one child at a time to speak. It had a friendly ladybug painted on it. Perhaps this is an idea for electoral debates, as it would deem the event to be more of a professional caliber.

I was lucky enough to have to opportunity to ask the political candidates a question at the end of the debate. I asked if they would be able to say something nice about eachother or give eachother a compliment at which point, there were no words, only Katz getting up out of his seat and hugging Wasylycia-Leis. I suppose there was just too much to say in too little time.