CDPP has Bernier barred from the debate ball

Canada’s establishment doesn’t want Maxime Bernier to represent his People’s Party in national debates. The Canadian Debate Production Partnership (CDPP) has imposed the will of mainstream political parties and media on the electorate. Instead of fostering debate, the CDPP is undermining it.

How did this happen? Last November, Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould said Bernier could join the debates on one condition. His new party needed candidates in 90 percent of ridings. She probably thought the PPC had no chance. It was like Cinderella being told by her wicked stepsister that she was quite free to attend the ball…IF she had an appropriate dress to wear.

Surprise, surprise. The PPC did in less than a year what it took the Green Party twenty years to do. When the debate participants were announced in early August, the People’s Party had surpassed the threshold of 304 candidates by at least six. Meanwhile, Gould’s own Liberals had just 242 candidates, the Greens 241, the NDP 149, the Bloc 40, and the Conservatives 332.

So, would the federal debates feature only the Conservatives and PPC? Of course not.

The CDPP had to devise a way to exclude the PPC, include the other parties, and still maintain some relevance for that touted 90 percent hurdle. The answer was to invent two new criteria adverse to the PPC and say that parties would need two out of the three.

One of these additional criteria was that the party leader needed to have a sitting MP elected under their party’s banner. That was something new. Elizabeth May didn’t have that when she joined the debates in 2008. Heck, Preston Manning hadn’t even been elected when he joined the 1993 debates, as he faced off against Bloc Leader Lucien Bouchard who had been elected as a Conservative. The Bloc has been invited to both English and French debates in 2019, but Bernier has a pox on him for being elected as a Conservative.

The other new criteria was that the party either had four percent or more of votes in the last general election or had a reasonable chance of winning seats in the upcoming election. The PPC didn’t run in the 2015 election, but former MPs Stephen Fletcher, Corneliu Chisu and Gurmant Grewal are PPC candidates this year. Somehow the CDPP has decided they have no chance despite having already won in the past.

The excuse offered by the CDPP is the polls. This, too is a joke. Many polls have not even allowed those polled to choose the PPC. Remarkably, some claim that certain phone polls presented the PPC as a possibility but only in pretense (somewhat like Minister Gould and the CDPP). A tweeter named “media—” claimed that he received a phone poll that gave the option, “Press five for PPC.” But when he did so, the list of options repeated itself. This loop continued until a mainstream party was chosen. Only then was the answer accepted and the call concluded.

If the PPC has no chance of winning, why has Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer already taken three trips to Bernier’s Beauce, Quebec riding to campaign for the Conservatives?

No, the real problem is not the PPC’s legitimacy, but the fact it is so contrary to political correctness. The NDP had the temerity to write the CDPP to say the PPC should be excluded because its unacceptable views would lower the nobility of the debates! The CBC has no love for the PPC, given that the party wants to end the public broadcaster’s $1.1 billion annual subsidy. The parent companies of the other media probably want to keep the Liberals happy too, given that most of the $600 million he has promised to “approved” media also depends on the Canadian people approving Trudeau for another term this fall.

If a true clash of ideas is the goal, Canadians would be much poorer if the PPC is rejected. Its stances on equalization, immigration, balanced budgets, multiculturalism, supply management, gender identity, handouts to corporations, and the response to climate change, are all markedly different from the other parties.

Strip away the high-sounding rationale of the CDPP and you will find naked self-interest. The establishment media and parties realize that if Bernier gets a national platform to share his ideas, Canadians might support them, and they don’t want that. Ironically, the exclusion of the PPC from national debates might be the surest sign of its relevance. If Canada’s media and political establishment is so ready to put self-interest above fairness and public institutions, it is high time for a populist political movement to find its voice. Hopefully, the CDPP will change its mind.

Lee Harding is a freelance writer in Swift Current and People’s Party Candidate for Cypress Hills – Grasslands (Saskatchewan).