PM games the system
Trudeau limiting debate exposure
Explaining why the prime minister would not participate in the full schedule of leaders’ debates this election campaign, as he had in 2015, Liberal director of communications Daniel Lauzon said his leader would only show up for debates organized by the federal Leaders’ Debates Commission — the one designed and implemented by the Liberals.
“The commission,” he elaborated, “was established after the last election where the governing party tried to game the system.” That much is true. For tactical reasons, Stephen Harper refused to take part in what was then the “official” English-language debate, the one overseen by a cabal of broadcasters known as “the Consortium,” in favour of a hodge-podge of different debates with different sponsors, different platforms — and much smaller audiences.
But it’s scarcely better for his successor to game the system in the opposition direction, using the official debates as an excuse to ditch the others. Even the pretext proved disposable: hardly had the party issued its commission-debates-only rationalization for stiffing the Maclean’s and Munk debates (full disclosure: I am a member of the Munk Debates advisory board), when it was announced Justin Trudeau would participate in a French-language debate organized by Quebec’s TVA network.
What we are left with is a position that is every bit as cynical and self-serving as the one that preceded it, only with the added pretense of high principle. If the 2015 debates were a dubious advance over the consortium model, the current approach looks to be a
significant step backwards. Harper ended up participating in five debates; Trudeau seems determined to limit his exposure to three.
As before, there will be but one official debate in each language, with all of the consequences that might be predicted: the obsessive media focus, with so much riding on each debate, on who “won” or “lost,” at the expense of what the leaders said; the exclusion of significant sections of the viewing public from each, thanks to the unilingual format — the French debate, in particular, devolving into a debate held entirely for the benefit of one province.
So, too, the commission debates have somehow fallen into the grips of an organization, the Canadian Debate Production Partnership, that looks suspiciously like the old consortium — the same clutch of private and public broadcasters, only with the addition of a left-leaning publisher or
A POSITION THAT IS EVERY
BIT AS CYNICAL AND SELF-SERVING AS THE ONE
THAT PRECEDED IT.
two.
The point of entrusting responsibility for the debates to an independent public body, the rules set well in advance of the election rather than by lastminute negotiations among the participants, was to take the self-interest out of it.
As such, the commission was an opportunity to bring some fairness and impartiality to such eternally thorny questions as who should be allowed to participate.
Had there been a concerted attempt to find some consensus on these, whether among the parties or the broader public, the result might have become the template, not only for the official debates, but for the unofficial ones as well.
Instead, the rules of the debates were defined even before the commission had been struck — unilaterally, by the party in power. Not only would there be only two debates — there should be at least five — but the Liberals took it upon themselves to decide which other parties would be allowed to share the stage with them: not by name, to be sure, but by virtue of supposedly objective criteria whose effect is the same.
Thus, according to Order in Council 2018-1322, establishing the commission, a party, to be eligible, must be represented in the House of Commons (“by a member of Parliament who was elected as a member of that party”). It must also have candidates running in at last 90 per cent of the ridings. Last, it must have obtained at least four per cent of the vote in the last election, or have “a legitimate chance” at electing members in the next.
Oh, and: it only has to meet two of the three. So whereas the rules would otherwise include only the main national parties, they also neatly make room for the Bloc Québécois — while excluding the People’s Party of Canada, though it might well meet all three criteria. Obviously there have to be some rules about who gets in, but the rules have to be fair, and to be seen to be fair. These, rather, seem to have been tailored to the designs of the established parties.
That same spirit of arbitrariness seems to have infected the private-sector debates. Maclean’s and Munk would exclude both the Bloc and the PPC. TVA’s list includes the Bloc, but not the PPC (though its leader sits as a member from Quebec) or, incredibly, the Greens (though they are ahead of the NDP in some polls in the province).
It’s just that selectiveness about who is invited that allows the leaders, in turn, to be selective about which invitations they accept. Skeptics point out that you can’t force the leaders to take part, and of course they’re right. They will only participate if they see it in their interest to do so. But that’s the point. The more legitimate the debates were seen to be, the harder it would be for a leader to duck them; participation would be compelled, not by law, but by self-interest.
That’s the tragedy of the debates commission. It was an opportunity to overhaul the debates, transforming them from the disgrace to democracy they have too often been in the past into a vital new instrument of it. Instead the Liberals once again promised one thing and delivered another.
The point of the commission was supposedly to prevent leaders from gaming the system, not to enable them.