A new partnership of media organizations will produce the federal leaders’ debates in English and French this fall.
The Canadian Debate Production Partnership (CDPP) will produce and distribute the election debates, which will take place in the second week of October, 2019. Anyone will be able to access, broadcast and stream the debates for free, the Leaders’ Debates Commission announced Wednesday.
The CDPP includes:
- CTV News
- CBC News
- Radio-Canada
- Global News
- Toronto Star and Torstar chain
- HuffPost Canada and HuffPost Québec
- La Presse
- Le Devoir
- L'Actualité
Canada’s first-ever debates commissioner, former Governor General David Johnston, said in a news release that the CDPP “is able to reach a large number of Canadians, across the country, on a variety of platforms.”
The debates will be widely distributed on TV, radio and digital platforms. They will also be available in some Indigenous languages, sign language, closed captioning, and described video.
The new non-partisan process for organizing leaders’ debates was announced last year.
As part of the rules outlined at the time, parties looking to put their leader in the debates need to meet two of these three criteria:
- have at least one MP elected at the time the election is called
- intend to run candidates in at least 90 per cent of electoral districts
- obtained four per cent of the vote in the last campaign, or have a "legitimate chance" to win seats in the upcoming election, based on public opinion and polling data
With files from The Canadian Press
