The leaders of the main federal political parties will be invited to a face off in mid-April — if they meet certain criteria, announced the Leaders’ Debates Commission Monday.
The commission, a government agency created in 2018 to organize federal leaders’ debates, said the French debate will take place April 16 at 8 p.m. ET and the English debate will be held April 17 at 7 p.m. ET.
Both events will be hosted at the Maison de Radio-Canada in Montreal.
Leaders of a registered political party can only participate if they meet at least two of three criteria.
The commission’s first requirement is that the leader’s party had to be represented in the House of Commons by at least one MP before dissolution.
The second is that the leader’s party must be polling at least four per cent 28 days before voting day. The commission says voting intention will be determined using the most recent results of “leading national public opinion polling organizations.”
The third requirement is that the party must have candidates nominated in at least 90 per cent of federal ridings across Canada 28 days before the federal election.
The commission said it will announce which leaders will be invited to participate on April 1
The threshold to participate this time around differs from 2021 when a party leader only had to meet one of the three conditions.
Earlier this year, People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Berner, who did not participate in the 2021 leaders’ debate because his party could not meet one of the three requirements, took aim at the rule change for 2025.
“This change only has one obvious purpose, one that unites the whole political establishment in Ottawa,” he said when the criteria was announced. “These new rules only affect me, the leader of the only new party to emerge forcefully on the federal political scene in decades.”
Commission changing format this year
The commission is also moving ahead with a simpler and more flexible format this year that it says will encourage “meaningful exchanges between the 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 restricted to a single moderator and the leaders themselves.
The commission picked CBC/Radio-Canada to produce and put on the debates, and named longtime TVO journalist Steve Paikin to host the English-language debate. Radio-Canada’s Patrice Roy will host the French-language debate.
Other broadcasters and media organizations can distribute the debate on their platforms.
The commission’s review of its 2021 format found that the debates “did not deliver as well as they should have on informing voters about parties’ policies.”
“A consensus emerged among the stakeholders consulted that the format was too rigid, too complex, too confusing, involved too many journalists on stage and did not sufficiently generate debate between the leaders,” the report said.
TVA also pitching a debate
The commission’s debate is not the only event being pitched ahead of the April 28 votes. The private French-language network TVA is trying to mount a head-to-head French-language debate — for a cost.
Participants would have to shell out $75,000 each. The Quebecor Media-owned television network said Friday the money would be used to offset the cost of producing the event.
The Bloc Québécois and the Conservative Party of Canada have both said they will participate. The Liberals and NDP have yet to commit.
At an event in Brampton, Ont., on Monday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre goaded Liberal Leader Mark Carney to debate him on stage in the TVA debate.
“If he thinks that the Liberals should have a fourth term after the lost liberal decade, he should say yes,” said Poilievre in French.
