The leaders of the main federal political parties will be invited to a face in mid -April, if they comply with certain criteria, they announced the leadership commission of the leaders on Monday.
The Commission, a government agency created in 2018 to organize the debates of federal leaders, said the French debate will take place on April 16 at 8 PM ET and the English debate will take place on April 17 at 7 pm et.
Both events will be presented at the radio-channel maison in Montreal.
Leaders of a registered political party can only participate if they meet at least two of the three criteria.
The first requirement of the commission is that the leader’s party had to be represented in the House of Commons by at least one deputy before the solution.
The second is that the leader’s game must be surveying at least four percent 28 days before the voting day. The Commission says that the intention to vote will be determined using the most recent results to “lead the national public opinion surveys organizations.”
The third requirement is that the party must have nominated candidates in at least 90 percent of federal heads in Canada 28 days before federal elections.
The commission said it will announce which leaders will be invited to participate on April 1.
The threshold to participate this time is differs from 2021 when a party leader only had to meet one of the three conditions.
Earlier this year, the leader of the Popular Party of Canada, Maxime Berner, who did not participate in the debate of the 2021 leaders because his party could not meet one of the three requirements, he pointed out to the change of rules by 2025.
“This change only has an obvious purpose, one that unites the entire political establishment in Ottawa,” he said when the criterion was announced. “These new rules only affect me, the leader of the only new party that emerges strongly on the federal political scene in decades.”
Commission change format this year
The commission is also advancing with a simpler and more flexible format this year that says it will encourage “significant exchanges among leaders.”
The commission previously announced that, unlike the 2021 debate where multiple Journalists were allowed to ask the leaders questions, the next debate will be limited to a single moderator and the leaders themselves.
The commission chose CBC/Radio-channel to produce and put the debates, and appointed TVO Steve Paikin journalist to organize the English debate. Patrice Roy de Radio-Canada will be the host of the debate in French.
Other broadcasters and media organizations can distribute the debate on their platforms.
The review of the commission of its 2021 format found that the debates “did not deliver as well as they should have informed voters about the policies of the parties.”
“A consensus arose among the interested parties consulted that the format was too rigid, too complex, too confusing, involved too many journalists on stage and did not sufficiently generate the debate among the leaders,” the report said.
TVA also launching a debate
The commission’s debate is not the only event that is launched before the votes of April 28. The private network in French in French TVA is trying to set up a debate in the French language face to face, for a cost.
Participants would have to pay $ 75,000 each. Quebecor’s media owned television network said Friday that money would be used to compensate for the cost of producing the event.
The Québécois block and the Canada Conservative Party have said they will participate. The liberals and the NDP have not yet committed.
In an event in Brampton, Ontario, on Monday, conservative leader Pierre Poilievre prompted the liberal leader Mark Carney to discuss him on stage in the TVA debate.
“If you think the liberals should have a fourth mandate after the lost liberal decade, I should say yes,” Pailievre said in French.
