Live Blog: Canadian Federal Leaders Face Off in English-Language Debate

Canadian party leaders face off in their first and only English debate. DigitalJournal.com has live coverage of the debate, so check out what the five candidates have to say about Canadian issues. Share your thoughts in the live blog. Scroll to the bottom of this article for live coverage. (Also, check out the live blog of the U.S. vice-presidential debate happening right now as well. Open a separate tab and participate in both debates!) Taking place in Ottawa's National Arts Centre, the federal leaders debate will run from 8:45 ET to 11pm ET. Tonight's debate will see issues raised by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Liberal Stéphane Dion, New Democrat Jack Layton, Green leader Elizabeth May and the Bloc Québécois' Gilles Duceppe. TVO's Steve Paikin will moderate the event. Paikin will pose 10 questions to the leaders based on eight themes. After each question (selected from about 4,000 submitted by the public), the leaders will get 45 seconds to answer, followed by eight minutes of open conversation. It was recently reported that an additional issue has been added to the format: the economy. As the press release states: "To create more opportunity for the leaders to respond to questions about the economy, the Consortium has decided to eliminate the Leaders' opening and closing statements." This is the final debate before the Canadian election date on Oct. 14. Read below for an overview of how to get active on this live blog: • Comment on what the candidates say, respond to other comments, and vote on polls created throughout the debate • It's not a chatroom. You are on this live blog to mainly find out what the writer has to say. An open chat with thirty or more readers turns into poor, disjointed content very quickly. • Your comments are published at the Writer's discretion. The Writer can view all comments sent to them but only they can publish your comments for everyone to see. • The 'autoscroll' feature ensures you're always shown the newest content without having to refresh or scroll your screen. You can turn this on or off by using the controls at the bottom of the live blog. • Light sound effects alert you to new content as it's being published. This can also be turned on or off as needed Also, if you want to place this live blog on your website, blog or Facebook page, copy & paste the embed code and link below: Canadian Federal Leaders Debate, Live Blog Embed Code: <iframe src="http://www.coveritlive.com/index2.php/option=com_altcaster/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=e03f72eab8/height=600/width=600" scrolling="no" height="600px" width="600px" frameBorder ="0" ></iframe> Canadian Federal Leaders Debate, Share on Facebook or Link on Your Blog: http://www.coveritlive.com/index.php?option=com_altcaster&task=siteviewaltcast&altcast_code=e03f72eab8&height=600&width=600