NDP Leader Jack Layton, cool, calm and collected among a crowd of comrades at a town hall in Sudbury on April 1, 2011.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
Jack Layton likes holding town halls in Northern Ontario.
During the 2008 campaign, he held one in Thunder Bay. On Friday, he held one in Sudbury.
In Thunder Bay, the questioners appeared to be reading questions prepared by the party.
But NDP officials swore the event was not scripted and the audience was made up of ordinary folk who were interested in hearing their leader.
The same would be true in Sudbury, they assured reporters in advance of the event.
If that's the case, there are a lot of ordinary folk in Sudbury who share Mr. Layton's world view.
Take John Peters, a professor of political science at Laurentian University who asked the first question. He was concerned that Green Party Leader Elizabeth May had been left out of the televised leaders' debate and that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has talked about having a one-on-one debate with Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.
"How is this democratic if we don't even have debates between the actual parties that we have?" he asked. "What do I tell my students when seemingly the national networks say, 'Oh no, there is no debate because some parties don't matter?'"
And what do you tell young people when the Conservatives can form the government with the votes of 22 per cent of Canadians? Prof. Peters asked.
Mr. Layton, who has said on more than one occasion that Ms. May should be in the debate - and who believes that there should be proportional representation - did not have a hard time answering that one.
Nor was he knocked off his game by Kim, who said she was one of the "sandwich people" - a reference to so-called sandwich families, who have young children and aging grandparents supported by parents caught in the middle - and wanted to know what the NDP would do to help all students get a postsecondary education.
Or Pauline, who wanted to know what the party would do to create long-term-care beds.
Or Cathy Orlando, an environmental activist who help craft a bill on climate change that was introduced by the NDP and killed in the Senate. She wanted to know what Mr. Layton planned on the environmental file.
The NDP Leader was happy to tell her.
Brad wanted to know about the split in the NDP caucus on the ending of the long-gun registry. That was perhaps a little more awkward for the NDP Leader, but it gave him a chance to explain that he allowed his MPs to vote according to their consciences.
The audience gave him a standing ovation after every question.
So it was smooth sailing or Mr. Layton through the half-hour grilling by the good folks of Sudbury - the ordinary folks off the street.