The team at Infoscape Lab was following twitter conversations during the debate. Susan's story details the tweets during the first hour and below is a graph showing the tweet activity during the second hour.

The First Spike

The first peak around 10:03pm was around the leader's response to viewer question about the arts: "Greetings from the Prairies. I'm an artist. I have friends who are artists. And we would like to know what the arts means to each of you and the budgets."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper: We were asked what arts means to us. I enjoy the arts immensely. I play a little piano though I wouldn't call myself terribly proficient. I come from my father's side where there was a little musical talent. My wife's family, a very artistic family. They paint, they draw with the artistic abilities. My daughter has a little bit of that artistic flair for design. She's in dance. My son is learning right now and we've increased the arts and culture budget in this country but one of the things I announced in this election, we'll create a $500 tax credit for every child so parents can get a tax credit if they enroll their kids in artistic and cultural activities and that should help sustain and develop the cultures in the country.

Jack Layton: The arts are important to Olivia and I.Olivia's a sculptor. I enjoy it and it's part of our soul. What's ironic is Mr. Harper would give a tax credit. Most people in the arts wouldn't be able to afford to send the kids to piano lessons. The average salary is 12 to 10,000 dollars a year. They're some of the poorest workers we have and you're proposing cuts there and increase the budget by moving somewhere else. You say it's time to give working artists a decent standard of living and make the first 20,000 of what they earn on copyright and residuals tax free and provide assistance in the tax system. Let's support the arts in the workers and families in a real way.

The Second Spike

The second spike in twitter conversations came around 10:33pm EST and occurred around Harper's answer to a line of questioning about Afghanistan and Iraq.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper: It's obviously clear the evaluation of weapons of mass destruction proved not to be correct. That's absolutely true. That's why we're not sending anybody to Iraq. On Afghanistan, on Afghanistan, let's remember Afghanistan is a mission. It's not a George Bush mission. It's the mission of the United Nations. Both parties, Senator Obama is committed to increase, Senator Obama is committed to increase troops in Afghanistan. But you're against the mission in Afghanistan.

The Third Spike

The third spike came in around 10:38pm EST and was around Elizabeth May's response to this question: "I'm a retiree building my shed in the backyard here and I have a question for all of you potential prime ministers. My question is if I should elect you prime minister, what's the very first thing you'll do when you get into office. And I don't want any bull feathers, baffled brains answer, I just want the real issue you're going to tackle."

Elizabeth May: First I'd like to say I'd love to come help you finishing the shed but as a woman and a single mom, I'm really good at multitasking so there will be more than one thing. First we have to fix the electoral system. We have to put ourselves on the path to proportional representation and we don't run the risk of false majorities such as a majority of the seats with the minority of support. We also need to move forward on the plan to deal with carbon and carbon emission, that makes the future more secure. It's top priorities for greens. Top priorities for 80% of Canadians who realize we have a moral obligation to the future to act.

Tweeting the Leaders

Infoscape Lab also tracked how many times each of the leaders were mentioned on twitter during the debate.

The big spike for Jack Layton took place around a Q and A on Afghanistan. Jack Layton's comments: Canadians don't want us to continue in Afghanistan until 2011. It's clear. A vote for the Liberals or Conservatives will not change our long-term commitment and engagement there and in fact will prevent us from reaching targets for international aid and science and what we propose is to take the savings to bring the troops home and use those savings in order to invest through the poverty programmes. Then it represents better.