I’ll spare you the he-said- he-said- his-party-issued-a-press-release- his-party-issued-one-too-so-he-wouldn’t-be-left-out of the campaign stories today, but there are some interesting tidbits.

André Boisclair, I guess thinking that he wasn’t getting enough controversy, has decided to weigh in on the latest reasonable accomodation debate involving Muslim women that somehow has become an issue only during this election (did Muslim women not vote in 2003?). The odd thing about it is that yet again Boisclair is taking the “it’s unreasonable” side of the debate. I thought the PQ was supposed to be the left-wing party? And I thought left-wing people were pro-Muslim? They are at Concordia at least.

Then I think back to Boisclair’s major talking point: “The regions.” He’s not courting votes in Montreal, he’s going after rural communities. The poorer, Catholic, xenophobic areas like Hérouxville that could go to any of the three parties. So while his party thinks of itself as enlightened (after all, it elected an openly gay leader), he’s pushing it into Reform Party-like xenophobia.

Meanwhile, Peggy Curran is implying that activist students, who were denouncing Charest and Dumont (but didn’t seem to mention Boisclair), are taking a pro-PQ stance, despite claiming they’re not partisan. I wonder if these students agree with the PQ leader’s interpretation of what a reasonable accomodation is.

Dumont is apologizing for a candidate in Abitibi-Est whose “business” website apparently accused Jews of a worldwide financial conspiracy or something, while discussing “questions of international finance and banking in an awkward way.” Sure, if by “awkward” you mean “complete nutcase.” Oooh, let’s make all the links move back and forth and choose random colours for everything. I’ve seen 12-year-olds make better websites on MySpace. And read more coherent economic analyses from them too.

I can’t seem to find the offending text through the WayBack machine, though its latest version of the site is from a year ago.

The Gazette’s Saroj Bains has videos up of the three campaign buses: Kevin Dougherty on the Liberal bus, Hubert Bauch on the PQ bus, and Mario Dumont gives a tour of the ADQ bus. Apparently a fancy coffee machine is enough to keep the reporters in line.