Juno News - August 13, 2019


Even if you don't like the PPC, Bernier should be in the debate


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

170.2998

Word count

1,013

Sentence count

54


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Maxime Bernier's People's Party of Canada has been excluded from the first round of debates by the Official Debate Commission, a bureaucracy set up by the federal government to decide who gets to debate among party leaders in a state-sanctioned debate.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 As the 2019 election nears, it's the government who gets to decide who has the privilege of
00:00:08.920 debating among party leaders.
00:00:11.920 The official debate commission, the bureaucracy set up by the federal government, by the Trudeau
00:00:16.440 Liberals, has issued its first round of invitations for what will be the state-sanctioned leadership
00:00:22.260 debates ahead of the election.
00:00:24.460 In the invitation list are the leaders of the New Democratic Party, the Conservative
00:00:28.220 Party, the Liberal Party, the Green Party, and the Bloc Québécois.
00:00:32.620 Conspicuously absent from the list is Maxime Bernier, the leader of the fledgling People's
00:00:38.240 Party of Canada.
00:00:39.240 It's not particularly surprising that the commission has excluded the PPC, but what
00:00:44.000 is surprising is how they did it so brazenly while inviting the Green Party and the Bloc
00:00:49.020 Québécois.
00:00:50.020 Now, how the leaders debate commission is justifying this decision is by the three criteria it set
00:00:56.060 out, of which two must be fulfilled by any prospective leader wishing to take part in
00:01:00.460 the debate.
00:01:01.580 In no particular order, the first is that you must have an MP from the particular party.
00:01:07.180 Another is that you must have candidates nominated in 90% of ridings.
00:01:11.380 And a third is that you must have a likelihood of winning more than one seat based on polling
00:01:17.220 information and the discretion of the debate commissioner.
00:01:20.460 That's former Governor General David Johnston.
00:01:23.060 Now, Maxime Bernier is a member of parliament.
00:01:26.400 He is a People's Party of Canada member of parliament.
00:01:29.420 The PPC has more candidates nominated than the Liberals, the NDP, and the Greens, and certainly
00:01:34.960 the Bloc Québécois.
00:01:36.700 But where the tricky part is, is that he does not meet the debate commissioner's threshold
00:01:40.680 for discretion given the low polling number that the PPC has.
00:01:45.820 It's fine to dispute polls.
00:01:46.940 I think we've seen demonstrably them be wrong in the past, but this is the data on which
00:01:51.560 the debate commission is making its decision.
00:01:54.380 But the problem is the commission has moved the goalposts, most notably on whether him
00:01:59.560 being a PPC MP is enough.
00:02:02.300 You see, back in November 2018, Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould, whose ministry actually
00:02:08.940 includes this debate commission, said that Bernier would only need to have the nomination threshold
00:02:15.500 met because he is a PPC member of parliament.
00:02:19.060 But now the debate commission has changed this and said, no, no, no, you have to be an MP who
00:02:24.060 was elected under those rules.
00:02:26.780 So you had to be an MP who was elected as a People's Party of Canada representative rather
00:02:32.460 than just converting to one when you founded the party as Maxime Bernier did.
00:02:37.900 Bernier announced he'd be founding the PPC last summer.
00:02:41.780 The debate rules were put forward in October.
00:02:44.900 It looks very much as though the rules were deliberately designed to include Elizabeth
00:02:50.180 May and the Greens and to exclude Maxime Bernier.
00:02:54.100 But remember, Elizabeth May was featured in the 2008 leaders debate three years before her
00:02:58.740 party ever won a seat.
00:03:00.260 And let's be real.
00:03:01.220 The Green Party of Canada was around for 28 years before it ever had any electoral success
00:03:07.940 whatsoever, founded in 1983, was taken seriously by the media, even though Elizabeth May didn't
00:03:13.860 win the party's first seat until 2011.
00:03:17.380 It wasn't until just a few months ago in a by-election the party won a second seat.
00:03:22.100 The Bloc Québécois has a mathematical likelihood of zero of forming government because it only plans
00:03:28.580 to run candidates in Quebec, in one province in this country.
00:03:33.140 Yet the Bloc Québécois is included to participate in the debate.
00:03:37.220 I've been sounding the alarm about the debate commission for quite some time,
00:03:41.060 but these decisions prove that it is in fact a sham.
00:03:44.980 You don't need to support Maxime Bernier or support the PPC to say that they should have
00:03:49.620 an opportunity to debate.
00:03:51.140 It's a growing party, it's a new party, but quite frankly, it's in a greater position
00:03:57.140 than Elizabeth May was in 2008 when she was invited to participate in the leaders' debates.
00:04:03.380 Now, an easy way around this would be to get rid of this official state-sanctioned debate
00:04:07.780 commission in the first place.
00:04:09.460 Let private organizations and media outlets, as happened in 2015, have their own debates.
00:04:15.300 This is happening this year, you know, McLean's is putting together one,
00:04:18.660 the Monk debates are putting together one as well, and they can make their own decision
00:04:22.500 about who gets to be included and who doesn't get to be included.
00:04:25.620 But when the government is the one doing this, it looks like there is political intervention
00:04:31.620 in this process, especially when there seems to be a reversal from what was previously said
00:04:36.900 about Bernier's own chances of participating.
00:04:40.580 True North is planning on covering this election honestly, transparently, and fairly.
00:04:46.340 And to do that, you need to hear from all sides.
00:04:48.660 You need to hear from all different perspectives.
00:04:51.220 Now, people are saying that, oh, well, the PPC is no more suited to be in the debate
00:04:55.540 as the Marxist-Leninist party or the progressive Canadian party.
00:04:59.220 We know that's not true.
00:05:00.100 We know the PPC has, right out of the gate, a larger footprint than the fringe parties
00:05:05.540 that it is being compared to by critics of the PPC.
00:05:09.460 True North is going to continue to cover this, which means all parties that are making a dent
00:05:14.900 in the national discussion need to be included.
00:05:17.460 And that's why our voice is so important.
00:05:19.300 We can't do this alone.
00:05:20.340 We don't get the government bailout, the $600 million media fund.
00:05:24.260 We don't get the $1.3 billion the CBC does.
00:05:27.060 Our ability to do the journalism we're doing comes from donations by our supporters.
00:05:31.780 Now, they are tax deductible, so you do get a tax receipt.
00:05:34.900 But if you can dig into your pocket and help us out either with a one-time donation
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00:05:42.740 You can head on over to the link in the description box, tnc.news, and click donate.
00:05:47.460 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.