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Perhaps it could have been done a different way, but the Greens being excluded was a very good decisions. The party is a clown show, whose "co-leader" got fifth in his own riding. He even lied about why they were missing so many candidates to distract from their internal problems. Why should they get equal time on the stage to the other leaders who are actually running campaigns?
I think it's more likely than not that the party elected some nutjob like Lascaris as their leader if May followers her word and steps down. I hope they don't get invited to a leader's debate ever again.
The adoption of the co leader model was bizarre yeah it’s fairly common for green parties across the world but why now? it’s unfamiliar politics and I bet a large majority of voters didn’t even know who Jonathan was to them ol Elizabeth May was the head of the greens
The co-leader model is common in unserious parties which will never compete for government. That's why the only other party in Canada to adopt it is QS, who are also collapsing.
In fairness there is one quasi-analogous situation for a major party in Canada. The 1870s Liberals had Edward Blake as their leader but designated Alexander Mackenzie to become PM should they have the opportunity to form government.
Maybe the CPC should follow that model if Poilievre wins the leadership review because of how bad his approval ratings are. Let him technically keep the leadership but designate a different PM in waiting.
In theory they were co-leader and shared everything. In practice he did everything that was in French and she did everything that was in English.
I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good model for the NDP, it would save the disgrace that was the latest Montreal debate where none of the candidate could speak French at all.
So today I learned that the leaders debates commission is not subject to right to information laws. How is an organization created by parliament and which reports to parliament, which assists in Canadas election process, not subject to RTI? I think this is worthy of a letter writing campaign.
An agency of the federal government should not be able to come to a secret settlement with a political party who then has to file disclosure statements (but only during an election campaign)
I think we could be doing better with transparency on this one.
Exactly. My request to my MP, and I think many others should join me, is that the debates commission be included in the schedule of organizations subject to disclosure requirements.
I bet the settlement amounts to an apology, and I kind of think it should be extended to the rest of us at the very least. That was a ridiculous stunt the commission pulled. How about next time take responsibility for writing terrible rules instead of making someone else pay.
Does the green party really deserve an apology? They're not even really a party its just Elizabeth May. They only got 1.2% of the vote for reference the PPC got 0.7% literally a 100k difference between the two
Yeah, I'd be prepared to be sympathetic if I thought the big dogs were bullying the Greens out, but the Greens lied to the Commission (and to the press and public) about meeting the criteria, then lied about why they had lied (or worse they really did fail the criteria on purpose as a statregic decision). Frankly Elizabeth May owes an apology to all of us.
The amount of candidate drops makes it clear it was a strategic decision. The rules could have been more clear to prevent the Greens from skirting them with a simple "you said I had to buy a ticket, but you never said I had to go to it". A certain number of candidates dropping makes sense, life happens, but not the dozens that we saw.
But if we've got an appetite for EC to apologize to Canadians, I've got a big one. I've made this argument before, and people haven't been sympathetic to it, maybe now's a better time.
We all deserve an apology for EC letting Rebel Media make a mockery of the debate scrum.
They pretended to be 16 distinct organizations, were told that wasn't allowed, threated to sue, and the wittle babies agreed to give Rebel four times the representation of CTV, Global, etc news organizations.
The next day, Kat Kanada - born in USSR and paid by RT in the Tenet Media scandal - was one of the people who started the ruckus that got the scrum cancelled. When you watch the tape back, she's the very first to raise her voice. A foreign born person on foreign dime shutting down a portion of my elections process is goddam foreign interference, and if our current definition doesn't include that then the definition needs to change. If they don't consider the media scrum or the debates to be part of the elections process, then that needs to change.
They didn't "strategically" drop the candidates, the party is just so incompetent that they couldn't get the signatures, and then lied and said the lack of candidates was intentional.
The official line of the party at the time was that it was strategic, but the Green Party is full of people who hate each other and can't organize. The main point I was bringing up was that the rules specified endorsed candidates, which the party did meet, when it seems EC was actually ruling based on formal nominations. Rules as written, the Greens should have been allowed to participate, but by the spirit of the rules, they should not.
One thing I wish this article made clear is that Pedneault's comments about strategic pulling don't apply to all of the missing names. Pedneault described pulling 15 names, but at the end of the day the actual number dropped from 309 to 232. It's possible 15 were strategic and the rest were incompetence, that Pedneault and May are both telling the truth but can't tell the whole story because it would require admitting the other is partially right. The EC comments from the time emphasize a deliberate element to the pulling of candidates, and call them strategic.
"Deliberately reducing the number of candidates running for strategic reasons is inconsistent with the Commission's interpretation of party viability, which criterion (iii) was designed to measure," the Commission said in a statement Wednesday.
On Tuesday, co-Leader Jonathan Pedneault told CBC News that the party had pulled about 15 candidates out of the race in a "strategic decision" not to run them in ridings where the party thinks Conservatives will likely win.
The commission explained that the criteria to have candidates in 90 per cent of federal ridings was initially satisfied when the party submitted a list of endorsed candidates a month before voting day.
The other possibility is that they were padding the numbers of endorsed candidates, knowing those people couldn't get signatures, which is also deceptive but allowed within the rules. The rules aren't governing what they're intending to govern, and I hope they're clarified by next election.
Keanu Reeves is Canadian, but if he was literally on the payroll of a foreign government and subverting my democracy, I would start bringing up that he's foreign born too.
We passed the Foreign Influence Transparency Registry into law but we still haven't stood it up. I'm confident that Kat Kanada or anyone else on RT payroll (even through Tenet or other avenues) would need to register. We need it in place before the next election.
Just to be clear, when you say EC, I'm guessing you mean Elections Canada? Because Elections Canada has nothing to do with organizing the debates. That's up to the Leaders Debates Commission, which is a body Trudeau created specifically for organizing the debates.
Personally, I think we would be better off scrapping the Commission. It's been a failure. IMO the best set of debates we had was in 2015, when Harper turned his just up at the Debate Consortium and opened it up to new players.
Agreed on all counts, but it was specifically Elections Canada who allowed Rebel to register separate entities all under the same owner, which put that committee in the bind it found itself. With Rebel's divisions all being accredited, there was a whole can of worms to be opened if they were treated any differently than other accredited orgs.
I would guess a written apology, a handshake promise to be more thoughtful next time (no particular committment, which would be illegal) and reimbursement of expenses for the filing of the judicial review (which I would expect to be quite nominal, probably $5k).
The rules were clear. The Green leader admitted to breaking one of them. Hence, excluded. I don't even know if his statement was actually true. Seems more likely they were trying to cover for the fact that they couldn't find a bunch of candidates. But it backfired because he claimed they deliberately didn't run candidates in enough ridings to meet the criteria.
The rules were clear and the greens met enough of them to the exact letter to participate. We’re so good at hating the players in this country while we let the game off scott free. We would be smart to expect better of those who make the rules. Between that and the rebel news stuff the whole commission should have resigned, feels like they have gotten off way too easy.
This story seems like a good reminder of the commission's issues in April -- and that, even though we have a minority Parliament, it's not clear what has been done about them.
The Debate Commission has been a disaster since day 1. It is bad at hosting debates, bad at setting invite criteria, bad at hosting press conferences, and since it's a government body it can be sued for being bad at all these things and then we have to pay for it being bad.
Just abolish the thing and let the Consortium come back.
It was nonsense excluding them at the last minute. I think it's debatable if the Greens met the criteria or not but the decision should have been made well in advance. Every day matters in a campaign, wasting some for a debate you're told hours before you're excluded from is incredibly unfair.
I think it's debatable if the Greens met the criteria or not but the decision should have been made well in advance.
The rules were set out well in advance. The GPC were given preliminary admittance, but when the time came to make the final decision, lost it. They knew they were on the bubble, so shouldn't have been surprised.
The greens being in the debate is irrelevant, they were only ever going to win 1 seat and it's a joke that they are invited to anything when they get similar results to parties like the PPC
The green party got over a million votes in the 2019 election. The NDP is down to like 5 seats now and have lost their official party status. It should be based on number of votes not number of seats.
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Perhaps it could have been done a different way, but the Greens being excluded was a very good decisions. The party is a clown show, whose "co-leader" got fifth in his own riding. He even lied about why they were missing so many candidates to distract from their internal problems. Why should they get equal time on the stage to the other leaders who are actually running campaigns?
I think it's more likely than not that the party elected some nutjob like Lascaris as their leader if May followers her word and steps down. I hope they don't get invited to a leader's debate ever again.
The adoption of the co leader model was bizarre yeah it’s fairly common for green parties across the world but why now? it’s unfamiliar politics and I bet a large majority of voters didn’t even know who Jonathan was to them ol Elizabeth May was the head of the greens
The co-leader model is common in unserious parties which will never compete for government. That's why the only other party in Canada to adopt it is QS, who are also collapsing.
In fairness there is one quasi-analogous situation for a major party in Canada. The 1870s Liberals had Edward Blake as their leader but designated Alexander Mackenzie to become PM should they have the opportunity to form government.
Maybe the CPC should follow that model if Poilievre wins the leadership review because of how bad his approval ratings are. Let him technically keep the leadership but designate a different PM in waiting.
In theory they were co-leader and shared everything. In practice he did everything that was in French and she did everything that was in English.
I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good model for the NDP, it would save the disgrace that was the latest Montreal debate where none of the candidate could speak French at all.
I assumed the Greens use co-leader so if they get a decent candidate that performs well May can retire and lessen the chance of another Annamie Paul.
They're doing it because Elizabeth May wants out but there's no one else capable of leading the party. She tried a clean break and it was disastrous.
So today I learned that the leaders debates commission is not subject to right to information laws. How is an organization created by parliament and which reports to parliament, which assists in Canadas election process, not subject to RTI? I think this is worthy of a letter writing campaign.
An agency of the federal government should not be able to come to a secret settlement with a political party who then has to file disclosure statements (but only during an election campaign)
I think we could be doing better with transparency on this one.
The simple answer is that the Access to Information Act defines what government institutions are subject to the Act.
Exactly. My request to my MP, and I think many others should join me, is that the debates commission be included in the schedule of organizations subject to disclosure requirements.
I bet the settlement amounts to an apology, and I kind of think it should be extended to the rest of us at the very least. That was a ridiculous stunt the commission pulled. How about next time take responsibility for writing terrible rules instead of making someone else pay.
Does the green party really deserve an apology? They're not even really a party its just Elizabeth May. They only got 1.2% of the vote for reference the PPC got 0.7% literally a 100k difference between the two
The Green’s popularity has absolutely no bearing on whether or not they were wronged by the debate commission
Yeah, I'd be prepared to be sympathetic if I thought the big dogs were bullying the Greens out, but the Greens lied to the Commission (and to the press and public) about meeting the criteria, then lied about why they had lied (or worse they really did fail the criteria on purpose as a statregic decision). Frankly Elizabeth May owes an apology to all of us.
The amount of candidate drops makes it clear it was a strategic decision. The rules could have been more clear to prevent the Greens from skirting them with a simple "you said I had to buy a ticket, but you never said I had to go to it". A certain number of candidates dropping makes sense, life happens, but not the dozens that we saw.
But if we've got an appetite for EC to apologize to Canadians, I've got a big one. I've made this argument before, and people haven't been sympathetic to it, maybe now's a better time.
We all deserve an apology for EC letting Rebel Media make a mockery of the debate scrum.
They pretended to be 16 distinct organizations, were told that wasn't allowed, threated to sue, and the wittle babies agreed to give Rebel four times the representation of CTV, Global, etc news organizations.
The next day, Kat Kanada - born in USSR and paid by RT in the Tenet Media scandal - was one of the people who started the ruckus that got the scrum cancelled. When you watch the tape back, she's the very first to raise her voice. A foreign born person on foreign dime shutting down a portion of my elections process is goddam foreign interference, and if our current definition doesn't include that then the definition needs to change. If they don't consider the media scrum or the debates to be part of the elections process, then that needs to change.
They didn't "strategically" drop the candidates, the party is just so incompetent that they couldn't get the signatures, and then lied and said the lack of candidates was intentional.
The official line of the party at the time was that it was strategic, but the Green Party is full of people who hate each other and can't organize. The main point I was bringing up was that the rules specified endorsed candidates, which the party did meet, when it seems EC was actually ruling based on formal nominations. Rules as written, the Greens should have been allowed to participate, but by the spirit of the rules, they should not.
One thing I wish this article made clear is that Pedneault's comments about strategic pulling don't apply to all of the missing names. Pedneault described pulling 15 names, but at the end of the day the actual number dropped from 309 to 232. It's possible 15 were strategic and the rest were incompetence, that Pedneault and May are both telling the truth but can't tell the whole story because it would require admitting the other is partially right. The EC comments from the time emphasize a deliberate element to the pulling of candidates, and call them strategic.
From the CBC article at the time:
The other possibility is that they were padding the numbers of endorsed candidates, knowing those people couldn't get signatures, which is also deceptive but allowed within the rules. The rules aren't governing what they're intending to govern, and I hope they're clarified by next election.
Kat Kanada is Canadian, I don't agree with her or like her at all just to clarify but you're opening a very large can of worms with that type of talk.
Usually it doesn't matter.
Keanu Reeves is Canadian, but if he was literally on the payroll of a foreign government and subverting my democracy, I would start bringing up that he's foreign born too.
We passed the Foreign Influence Transparency Registry into law but we still haven't stood it up. I'm confident that Kat Kanada or anyone else on RT payroll (even through Tenet or other avenues) would need to register. We need it in place before the next election.
Just to be clear, when you say EC, I'm guessing you mean Elections Canada? Because Elections Canada has nothing to do with organizing the debates. That's up to the Leaders Debates Commission, which is a body Trudeau created specifically for organizing the debates.
Personally, I think we would be better off scrapping the Commission. It's been a failure. IMO the best set of debates we had was in 2015, when Harper turned his just up at the Debate Consortium and opened it up to new players.
Agreed on all counts, but it was specifically Elections Canada who allowed Rebel to register separate entities all under the same owner, which put that committee in the bind it found itself. With Rebel's divisions all being accredited, there was a whole can of worms to be opened if they were treated any differently than other accredited orgs.
I would guess a written apology, a handshake promise to be more thoughtful next time (no particular committment, which would be illegal) and reimbursement of expenses for the filing of the judicial review (which I would expect to be quite nominal, probably $5k).
The rules were clear. The Green leader admitted to breaking one of them. Hence, excluded. I don't even know if his statement was actually true. Seems more likely they were trying to cover for the fact that they couldn't find a bunch of candidates. But it backfired because he claimed they deliberately didn't run candidates in enough ridings to meet the criteria.
The rules were clear and the greens met enough of them to the exact letter to participate. We’re so good at hating the players in this country while we let the game off scott free. We would be smart to expect better of those who make the rules. Between that and the rebel news stuff the whole commission should have resigned, feels like they have gotten off way too easy.
This story seems like a good reminder of the commission's issues in April -- and that, even though we have a minority Parliament, it's not clear what has been done about them.
I don't know why a party that got removed from the debate for not meeting the requirements deserves any settlement at all.
The Debate Commission has been a disaster since day 1. It is bad at hosting debates, bad at setting invite criteria, bad at hosting press conferences, and since it's a government body it can be sued for being bad at all these things and then we have to pay for it being bad.
Just abolish the thing and let the Consortium come back.
It was nonsense excluding them at the last minute. I think it's debatable if the Greens met the criteria or not but the decision should have been made well in advance. Every day matters in a campaign, wasting some for a debate you're told hours before you're excluded from is incredibly unfair.
The rules were set out well in advance. The GPC were given preliminary admittance, but when the time came to make the final decision, lost it. They knew they were on the bubble, so shouldn't have been surprised.
The greens being in the debate is irrelevant, they were only ever going to win 1 seat and it's a joke that they are invited to anything when they get similar results to parties like the PPC
The green party got over a million votes in the 2019 election. The NDP is down to like 5 seats now and have lost their official party status. It should be based on number of votes not number of seats.
Pednault is a great speaker.
We’ll never know the results they would have if he was present. He might have won his own seat.
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If he wanted to be present, he probably should have followed the rules
There is no chance he would have won that seat. He came in 5th place. And was 21k votes behind the incumbent Liberal MP who easily held the seat.