UPDATED: Election debate dates scheduled

Dates have been set for the federal leaders to debate their platforms ahead of the April 28 election, triggered by Prime Minister Mark Carney on Sunday.

Leaders will duke out their perspectives in a French-language debate on April 16 at 8 p.m. EST and an English-language debate on April 17 at 7 p.m. EST in Montreal.

There will be a separate “pay-to-play” French-language debate hosted by private network TVA Nouvelles that federal leaders can opt to buy into for a cool $75,000.

Bloc Québécois Yves-François Blanchet right off the bat agreed to participate, PPC leader Maxime Bernier told the Western Standard on Monday he will shell out the funds to participate and Tory leader Pierre Poilievre Monday afternoon said he would join.

Mark Carney will not be joining and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has not said whether he will spend the money to join the private debate, reported the CBC.

The date of the private debate has not been set.

The People’s Party of Canada has called out the Leaders’ Debates Commission for “once again” changing the debates’ criteria “so they can easily exclude the leader of the People’s party on the basis of dubious polls, as they did in 2021.”

In 2021 parties had to either have at least one MP elected to Parliament, have at least 4% of the total vote in the previous election or have at least 4% on average in polls at the beginning of the campaign.

PPC leader Maxime Bernier was thus disqualified in 2021. The commission put the final PPC poll score at 3.27%, “even though support was clearly much higher and it ended up scoring 4.9% on election day.”

“Mr. Bernier would automatically qualify to take part in this year’s debates on the basis of criterion if the Commission had kept the same criteria,” said the PPC in a press release.

“However, [in January], the Commission announced a key change, dropping that criterion and requiring that parties must now meet not one, but two of these three criteria: 1) have at least one MP; 2) have at least 4% on average in the polls at the beginning of the campaign; or 3) run candidates in at least 90% of ridings.”

Bernier said “this change only has one obvious purpose, one that unites the whole political establishment in Ottawa: Making it easier to exclude the PPC.”

“These new rules only affect me, the leader of the only new party to emerge forcefully on the federal political scene in decades, and none of the other leaders expected to participate. They want to deny a voice to 840,000 Canadian voters who supported the PPC in 2021,” said Bernier in a statement.

“It’s still possible for the PPC to qualify of course, but we are again at the mercy of dubious polls, some of which we know deliberately exclude the PPC from the list of potential responses, which inevitably understates our level of support.”