Did you watch Thursday night’s English language leaders’ debate?
If you missed it, consider yourself lucky. If you caught parts of it, perhaps you flipped the channel before you were too scarred.
And if you’re a deranged, masochistic soul like me and you watched the whole wretched thing from beginning to end, I hope by now you’ve drowned yourself in enough of your chosen vice to forget everything you witnessed and how awful it made you feel.
In all seriousness though, the 2021 English leaders’ debate has to rank amongst the worst election debates in recent memory, if not the worst. It was bad for two reasons: 1) the format was terrible; and 2) the moderating was atrocious.
I will come to the performance of the party leaders eventually, but in truth that is not what motivated me to write this piece. What I really want to talk about is just how painfully clear it has become that we need a drastic re-think of how we organize election debates in this country.
First, let me be clear: I mean absolutely no disrespect to Shachi Kurl, the long-time political journalist and president of the Angus Reid Institute who was tasked with moderating the event. She has been a fixture on the Canadian political scene for many years and, having moderated important debates in the past, would seem on the face of it to have been a perfectly fine choice to take the reins at Thursday’s event.
It’s unclear how much of what transpired onstage at the Museum of History in Gatineau was due to Kurl’s personal approach to moderating, versus direction she received from the head honchos of the media consortium that produced the tv event, versus the inherent constraints of the convoluted format and the attempt to cram the kitchen sink into a single two-hour debate.
What is clear is that, in her maniacal efforts to enforce speaking time limits and adhere to a bizarre, unnatural sequence of three-way debate, two-way debate and rapid-fire single-leader Q&A segments, Kurl spent the vast majority of the night talking over the leaders and aggressively inserting herself into the debate. She systematically cut off speakers every time they were on the verge of making a cogent point, as well as frequently diverting attention away from leaders who had just been attacked instead of letting them respond. Indeed there were many moments when the leaders themselves seemed genuinely confused as to when they might be permitted to engage in actual back-and-forth debate with their opponents. The participants quickly came to learn that, given how precious little time they would have to make a point before being talked over by the moderator, they had to resort to frantic speed-talking lest they be cut off mid-sentence. The result was not pretty.
It didn’t help that the debate included five leaders on stage covering five different themes, each containing multiple questions to each leader posed by a small army of rotating journalists. The compounding impact of nearly half a dozen leaders competing for attention, the wide breadth of topics the organizers were obliged to cover given that it was the sole English debate in the entire campaign, and the fact that each media outlet in the consortium (consisting of CBC, CTV, Global and APTN) felt it necessary to promote their “talent” on air, meant that there would be very little space for substantive debate regardless of how the event was moderated. Add to that mix a moderator who was apparently under the impression that she herself was the sixth debater, and you had a recipe for utter chaos. Which is what millions of Canadians were sadly forced to endure.
Whither the Debate Commission?
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You may recall back in 2015, when Tom Mulcair was riding high in the polls and Stephen Harper was vying for his fourth election win, there was a great deal of hand-wringing over Harper’s decision to skip the traditional consortium debate - which had been the standard venue for televised election debates in Canada for decades - in favour of a handful of lower-profile “boutique” debates organized by the likes of Maclean’s, the Globe & Mail and the Munk Debates. At the time, many speculated that the Conservative leader was attempting to evade the glaring light of accountability that the “main event” provided. The smaller debates had more focused themes that played to his party’s strengths (the economy, foreign policy), it was alleged. Of course it didn’t hurt that the Globe had endorsed his party in the last three elections either. It was, to many, just another example of the Harper Conservatives’ disdain for the media, the opposition, and accountability in general.
Then came Justin Trudeau and his bold plan to restore trust and accountability in Ottawa (they all say that, don’t they?). The Liberals’ 2015 election platform included the creation of a formal Debates Commission that would be tasked with organizing official leaders debates - establishing the dates and parameters, setting clear criteria for who would be invited, and ensuring that election debates served the broad public interest rather than the narrow partisan interests of the governing party.
By and large, the creation of an independent debates commission was a positive development for Canadian elections. For instance, the commission established an objective set of criteria that a party must meet in order for its leader to be invited to a debate: a party had to have elected MPs in the last election, or won at least 4% of the popular vote in the last election, or be polling at an average of at least 4% near the start of the current writ period. We can quibble over the significance of 4%, but at least the rules were clearly laid out. It was on this basis that, for instance, the Green Party and the Bloc Québecois were allowed to participate in the debate, but the right-wing People’s Party of Canada was not.
That being said, we must acknowledge that the debate commission has not hit it out of the park so far. The 2019 debates, like this year’s, were also poorly received, with many observers then being similarly turned off by the excessive presence of tv journalists onstage. It’s fair to say that the commission is 0 for 2 right now. (Though incidentally, in both instances the French-language debates were much better-received than their English counterparts. Perhaps we ought to let TVA and Radio-Canada take the wheel on the English debates next time?)
If nothing else, having a commission tasked with organizing these things means that we have someone to complain to after witnessing the train-wreck that was Thursday night’s debate. In that spirit, I’d like to present some humble suggestions to the commission for how we might make these debates more useful to the Canadian public, and less… painful to the point of unwatchable… in the future.
Making the leaders’ debates suck less
1) There should be more debates. Trying to cram all the affairs of a nation into two hours makes for an event more focused on soundbites than a genuine contest of ideas. There should be at least three debates in each official language- preferably with different themes covered in each one, and perhaps focused on (or at least held in) different regions of the country. The public discourse is better served when there are more opportunities to get engaged and learn about the parties’ competing visions for the country- not less. And they don’t all have to include the same roster of leaders. Which leads me to my next suggestion…
2) At least one debate should be held between parties’ deputy leaders. The more we can do to remind voters that political parties are more than mere cults of personality around a leader, the better. Let’s see more faces, hear more voices, and bring more people into the conversation. This has the added benefit of helping parties reach out to the disparate regions of the country. A party that’s weak in Quebec might benefit from fielding a francophone deputy in one of the debates. Likewise, parties that struggle in the west might have better luck with a strong deputy leader from the prairies speaking to westerners. It would also help to ease the burden on the party leaders, in light of #1.
3) There should be a “front-runners” debate near the end of the campaign. Look, this may sound harsh, but the reality is there are parties who compete for seats, and there are parties who compete for government. The commission has already established the precedent of relying on public opinion polling to determine admission criteria, so why not take it a step further? The leaders of the top two or three parties above a given threshold of popular support (something like 20%) based on public opinion polling - say, 10 to 12 days before election day - could be invited to the final debate. As important as it is to have a level playing field and provide a platform for smaller parties to be heard, at a certain point it is also beneficial for voters to thoroughly compare and contrast the positions of the parties who actually have a shot at governing.
4) Respectfully, we don’t need to hear from the Bloc Québecois at the English-language debates. I know, I know - I just talked about the importance of having objective, impartial criteria for inclusion. But let’s face it: the Bloc is not relevant to the overwhelming majority of English-speaking Canadians. Nearly 80% of Canadians couldn’t vote for them even if they wanted to. And even amongst Quebeckers, the Bloc very deliberately does not appeal to anglophones, who in any case have the option of watching the French-language debates with simultaneous translation. As much as Yves-Francois Blanchet may provide the occasional bit of comic relief playing the “uncle with no filter” role, let’s cut the crap and focus on showcasing the parties who actually matter to the people watching. Since we are segregating the debates by language, let’s add a rule to the inclusion criteria: parties have to field candidates in a majority of predominantly anglophone ridings to be included in the English debate, and ditto francophone ridings for the French debates, based on StatsCan data on first official language spoken, or something to that effect. It just makes sense.
5) Ensure that whoever moderates the debates lets people speak, for crying out loud! Ideally, with enough debates scheduled and a better mix of participants in each one, this becomes moot. But it bears repeating: the point of the debate is to hear what the leaders have to say, not to shut them up. And it is most certainly not to hear what the moderators or journalists have to say. Viewers would all benefit from more of a light-touch approach to debate moderation. Let the politicians finish their train-of-thought even if it means going over the time limit by a couple of seconds. Let them respond to direct attacks. Allow for some unbridled back-and-forth where it makes sense. Balance? Yes. Keeping leaders on task, of course. Pressing them when they evade direct questions? Absolutely. But the moderator must also be able to read the room, go with the flow, and know when to lay off.
I’m sure there are plenty of other reforms that could improve the quality of our debates, but those would be a good place to start.
So how did the leaders do?
Finally, a word about the leaders’ performances. Overall, nobody performed terribly. The format did tend to disadvantage Justin Trudeau more than others. To an extent, this is the curse of incumbency: everyone vying to be prime minister beats up on the guy who already is. But Trudeau became increasingly rattled as the night wore on, clearly frustrated by the way the moderator handcuffed his ability to respond to repeated attacks. He is a strong debater - and has gotten better with experience - but given his standing in the polls, he needed to be convincing on Thursday and I’m not sure he was able to meet the moment.
Erin O’Toole largely accomplished his objective by appearing moderate and not scary, and largely avoiding the pitfalls set up by the Liberals to expose him as a closeted right-wing zealot who will eat your babies at night. That said, I’m not entirely sure that anyone fell in love with the Conservative leader based on his somewhat stiff performance, and he needs to boost his party’s vote share by another 5% or so to get within striking distance of a majority government. I doubt his debate performance earned him that.
Jagmeet Singh had an OK night, though my feeling is that he has been more engaged, and engaging, in previous debates than he was this time around. I don’t think he moved the needle much, but given how successful the NDP campaign has been so far, and their modest expectations going into it, perhaps he didn’t need to. Blanchet, the Bloc leader, had very little at stake and it showed- though his repeated tone-deaf attempts to draw parallels between the struggles of Indigenous peoples and the Quebecois nation should disqualify him from the good books of any viewers who weren’t already fed up with the separatist party.
For my money, the hands-down winner of the debate was Annamie Paul, the Green Party leader. Consistently sharp, affable, and relatable, she may have single-handedly saved her party from the worst effects of its months-long campaign of self-immolation. Reasonable people who may have previously written her off as an incompetent leader based on media reports of rampant infighting and disunity amongst the party’s leadership, were likely surprised to learn that Paul is in fact an excellent debater with a strong resume, a quick wit and a touch of charm to boot. There’s no question that of the five leaders on stage, she made the most of the opportunity.
And there you have it - my thoughts on the leaders’ debate. Here’s hoping for a slightly less awful experience next time around.
(P.S. since I’ve sold it so well, you can watch the debate here in case you missed it live.)