The National Leaders debates have struggled to remain relevant and a series of controversies made matters worse.
Over the last couple of days, Canada had their national leaders debates. In decades past, the national leaders debates were a way for Canadians to see political points being made from the leaders of different political parties. So, in the past, it was a somewhat big deal. However, as time went on, the relevance of the debates gradually got reduced. After all, we have the internet now and people can more directly access information about different political leaders – even information that the mainstream media are not necessarily fans of people having.
Indeed, on the lead up to the debates, the mainstream media was trying to dress the debates up as this massive big series of events. Words got thrown around like “crucial”, “critical”, and “important” prior to the debates getting under way. One debate was going to be in French while the other was going to be in English. The true intent of the debates were quite clear: the debates were meant to gain viewership that has been bleeding away from them to more credible online sources like Freezenet run by people who actually have a clue what is going on (unlike the mainstream media who spent the last several months alone declaring that they have absolutely no idea what is going on). This has long been reflected in numerous polls which continually show that the erosion of trust in the media is continuing. So, these debates were a desperate attempt to gain back some viewers in the process.
Yet, even before the debates started, there was controversy. While the Green Party was long invited to the debates as they met all the criteria for entry, the organizers of the debates decided at the absolute last minute to “disinvite” the party randomly citing rule violations for eligibility. So, the organizers made it clear that they don’t necessarily want to hear from all political leaders, just the ones that they personally support (ala Liberal and Conservative leaders). Unsurprisingly, the Green Party cried foul given that the last minute decision was made in such a way that there was no possible way to challenge it. So, it had less to do with enforcement of the rules and more to do with censoring voices the organizers don’t personally like. As a result, accusations of this being anti-democratic were quite warranted.
The sad thing is that the organizers of the debates have long been at war with the Green Party. In the past, when Elizabeth May was the main leader, organizers regularly moved the goal posts to do anything and everything to ensure that the party couldn’t partake. May, for her part, moved mountains to qualify to the point where the debate organizers were forced to invite her to the debates after all. With a new leader at the helm, the debate organizers decided to just pull a fast one by holding the decision at the last possible minute so that they can exact personal revenge against the party for daring to be an actual political party.
This ultimately hurt the leaders debates reputation since it was originally sold as an event where you can hear from all parties. Instead, it was more of an event where you heard from leaders that the organizers would allow instead. So, it wasn’t even a true debate from the get go.
While that was controversial in and of itself, things went from bad to worse for the debates. This revolved around the treatment of NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh. Throughout the two debates, the moderator repeatedly interrupted Singh, routinely cut him off while he was trying to make a good point, even outright cutting off his microphone at least once. This while letting the other three leaders finish their trains of thought and make their points. Hilariously, the debate had a turn counter where the amount of time each leader had was counted to show that each leader had equal time. By the end of the French debate, Singh had multiple minutes less than the other leaders. Towards the end of the English debate, the Liberal and Conservative leader had several additional minutes to make their points over the other two.
It really showed that the organizers envisioned Singh to be little more than a potted plant in the room, but when he actually came with great arguments and points, this caused organizers to panic and try to shut Singh up so the Conservatives and Liberals can look as good as possible. So, it was anything but a fair debate for the ones who were permitted to be in the room.
Even the quality of the debates were horrendous. At times, the debates teetered into complete tone deafness. For instance, during the English debate, the issue of climate change was a topic. Obviously, this is a huge issue for Canadians after being faced with successive unprecedented wild fires. At one point, the entire town of Litton burned down to the ground due to a record setting heat wave. This as heat domes cause an increasing number of deaths here in BC. Yet, for the leaders debate, the arguments wound up revolving who can build more pollution projects faster, increasing climate change by getting more CO2 into the air. Singh, always getting interrupted by the moderator, managed to get in the point that we’ve had wildfires across Canada and that we should actually be addressing climate change in the first place.
What had been made clear is that the debates were not really a pursuit in intellectual debates about the major issues facing Canadian’s. It was more about made for TV narratives that jump between relevance (such as the trade wars being waged by the US) and irrelevance (such as the lack of climate change discussion in the climate change section). The media was hoping for a major moment to occur during the debates (such as the fabled “knock out punch”), but, unsurprisingly, that didn’t occur in such a tightly controlled environment.
In the hours after the debates were over, even the media talking heads were forced to admit that they don’t see how the debates will even change very many minds. Today, some were playing revisionist history games by trying to play to their political biases against the NDP by painting the NDP as weak and not on good footing. This despite Singh actually trying to inject relevance to the debate by talking about the many issues facing Canadians (such as pointing out that you can’t necessarily blame immigrants for the housing crisis, not that the moderator would let him articulate it all that well).
The major problem for the national leaders debates in Canada is that the relevance of them have long been sinking. Very few people are going to change their minds in these debates and the media is there to try and control the narrative before, during, and after that.
Hilariously, the mainstream media was whining about why the political leaders aren’t doing interviews with the media as they continue their campaigns online. It might be, in part, because they are trying to reach out to Canadians in ways that are far more effective than some random question and answer session with some random journalist. That alone should be a sign that even politicians know that if they want to reach a wide breadth of Canadians, the media simply isn’t the way to do it. For them, the debates is more of a formality to get out of the way rather than some crucial event that could make or break their campaigns. This despite the sales pitches the mainstream media were arguing.
Ultimately, this years national leaders debates was actually a test to find out if the national leaders debates are still relevant. Steps could have been made to ensure that these media events can still provide value to Canadian citizens. Unfortunately, organizers decided to do the exact opposite of what they needed to do by butchering the process and ensuring that they have that image that they are offering something that no one really cares about. I, for one, can safely say that, based on what I was able to catch, if you missed the debates, you didn’t miss much.
