NOBODY LIKED THE OLD MEDIA CONSORTIUM THAT USED TO PUT TOGETHER THE FEDERAL ELECTION LEADERS’ DEBATES. SO THE SOLUTION? A NEW MEDIA CONSORTIUM, LIKE THE OLD ONE, JUST LARGER.
Unclear what’s better in new organizing body
Even in the echoing void of daily news that was late July, the Leaders’ Debate Commission failed to make much noise with its announcement of who would be organizing the 2019 federal election debates in the second week of October. The winning bid was … er … well, a consortium of media outlets.
For short, we could call it the Media Consortium. But that would be mean. Nobody liked the old Media Consortium that used to put together the leaders’ debates: CBC/SRC, CTV, Global and TVA. They were stilted, unimaginative, unenthusiastic productions by networks that would rather be showing just about anything else, and so hoped to wring the maximum drama out of the broadcasts. Canadian politics and politicians being what and who they are, this typically led to very little useful debate or drama.
Something like the bipartisan-funded Commission on Presidential Debates south of the border would elevate these crucial discussions above concerns as tawdry as ratings and gotcha moments, proponents argued. And so out with the Media Consortium and in with … the Canadian Debate Production Partnership (CDPP). Its members are CBC/SRC, Global, CTV, the Torstar papers, Huffington Post, La Presse, Le Devoir and L’actualité. (Postmedia, the parent company of the National Post, did not bid to be included.)
The details of the debate are still to come, of course. “In the fall, we will have more to say about the debate format after we have conducted meetings with the political
parties,” CDPP representative Jennifer McGuire said.
In the meantime, if it’s unclear to you how this process is even different than what it replaces, let alone better, welcome aboard. McGuire is editor-in-chief of CBC News, an organization that doesn’t exactly exude innovation and compelling programming. More to the point, she was chair of the previous consortium!
The CDPP’s meetings with party representatives will feature precisely the same horse-trading between precisely the same interests as the consortium’s meetings did. There will just be many more media companies, with all their competing interests and points of view, on the organizers’ side of the table. That doesn’t smell like a recipe for improvement.
Admittedly, there is one notable change: Under the new rules established for the commission-sanctioned events, Green party leader Elizabeth May finally has her guaranteed spot — as does any party with an MP elected under its own banner. But that quadrennial melodrama now likely gets recast with Maxime Bernier as the selfstyled
NOTHING ABOUT THE NEW ORDER COMPELS THEM TO DEBATE, OR RAISES THE STAKES OF OPTING OUT.
victim. Other than that, it’s pretty much business as usual: The new consortium might put together a terrific, memorable debate, or it might not. ’Twas ever thus.
This whole strange thing came to a head during the 2015 campaign, after Conservative Leader Stephen Harper refused to participate in the consortium’s English-language debate. Many Ottawa types recoiled in disgust, their pince-nez clattering to the floor. The current Conservative Leader, Andrew Scheer, will attend the debates, a spokesperson said. But if he does, it will be because he and his advisers think it’s in their best interests. If he or any other party leader decides it’s not in their best interests, they’ll stay home. Nothing about the new order compels them to debate, or raises the stakes of opting out. When the commission was announced, the Conservatives accused the Liberals of trying to “rig the next election.” There’s no reason they couldn’t dust off that talking point if the negotiations don’t go to their liking.
Back in 2015, debate nerds were full of angst because the debates weren’t shown on the major television networks. The CDPP feed, in contrast, will be free for anyone to use for any purpose. But that’s not an innovation; it was true of the independently sponsored 2015 debates as well. The vast majority of Canadians who wanted to watch will have been able to, either on TV or online. But the big networks — including, astonishingly, the nominal public broadcaster — took a pass. And if CBC, CTV or Global hadn’t been part of the winning bid this time around, they might have done so again.
Indeed, by rights, 2015 should have been a banner year for debate fans. There were five debates during the campaign, on different topics, with new moderators and all kinds of different formats and in different cities. (This year’s CDPP debates will be in Ottawa. Novel!) In 2015, you could also watch on Facebook, and comment in real time. It was neat! It had to be fixed!
And so here we are. The worst-case scenario is that the CDPP debates will simply replace the consortium debates in the public consciousness as the “real debates,” reinforce the one-ineach-language expectation, and make it easier for leaders to avoid others. Indeed, had the Liberal government set out to do exactly that, it could have done no better.
That needn’t happen: There are several large media outlets not in the new consortium and lots of nonmedia organizations that can advance the spirit of innovation that flourished in 2015. The mystery remains why so many people who should have appreciated it were so eager to stop it in its tracks.