The Debates Commission is VERY bad at their job.

Astoundingly terrible, really.

At this point in the debate, Pierre Poilievre is the last speaker of the evening, about to begin his closing statement. On the clock, both the NDP and the Bloc have been given measurably less speaking time than the Liberals and Tories. | Copyright © CPAC, licensed under fair dealing.

All four leaders did fine in their debate performances across both nights. Nobody pulled out ahead, but nobody fell behind. There was no blockbuster dramatic moment like Brian Mulroney’s famous “you had an option, sir.” This column isn’t about them.

This is about the Leaders’ Debates Commission, which has proven incapable of doing their only job; hosting a functional debate. Each leader did the best with a dysfunctional format, but the moderation was objectively, mathematically, unfair.

The post-debate press scrums were overrun by right-wing propaganda outlets, and later cancelled entirely. This entire production, from top to bottom, was an absolute shitshow! Let’s dive in!

In French last night, the debate was moderated by Radio-Canada journalist Patrice Roy. For English today, it was moderated by TVO journalist Steve Paikin. The format was as follows, regardless of language:

• Candidates are given random time lengths between 35s and 60s to answer various questions

• Candidates will have open debate segments, where the moderator says he will use a clock to ensure all four of them get equal speaking time

• Those who interrupt others or go beyond speaking time will have their microphone muted

One more thing though; all of the above is a lie. Despite having a clock on the wall showing how much time each leader has had to speak, there were wide disparities in speaking time, and microphones for hecklers were never muted.

Jagmeet Singh took issue with Patrice Roy in the French debate for receiving three minutes less in time than Carney or Poilievre. With the short time to answer questions, this means that the NDP were robbed of multiple questions worth of speaking time. Yet the problem was even worse in the English debate, as the header above shows.

The last time the candidate clock appeared on the live feed was during the Closing Statements. The screenshot was taken after Singh, Blanchet, and Carney had given their closing remarks, and before Poilievre began his, which I timed as lasting 45 seconds.

As such, during the English debate, here is how much time each candidate had to speak:

• Mark Carney - Liberal - 32m19s

• Pierre Poilievre - Tory - 29m28s

• Yves-François Blanchet - BQ - 23m48s

• Jagmeet Singh - NDP - 21m45s

This is outrageous. Mr. Singh was given nearly ten minutes less time to speak than Mark Carney, and Mr. Blanchet was not treated much better. Carney and Poilievre essentially operated under a separate set of rules in the debate, with much more time to add nuance and depth to their arguments.

It was one thing to remove the Green Party for failing to meet two of the three criteria, as the other four parties did. I have little sympathy for the Greens claiming that “endorsed” versus “nominated” candidates is a meaningful distinction.

But it is another thing entirely for the moderators to prioritize speaking time for only the Liberals and the Conservatives, while holding the leash more tightly for the Bloc and the NDP.

This is explicitly unfair moderation, with the effect of suppressing two major parties that fully qualified for the debate through meeting the necessary criteria.

If the clock is there to ensure the moderator gives equal time, then both Patrice Roy and Steve Paikin need to be asked why they didn’t provide candidates with equal time. The format was flawed, yes, but the moderator’s job under that format was still to ensure equal time using the clock right in front of them.

For all my criticisms of the debate format and moderators, at least they did the debate. But the post-debate scrum, where accredited journalists are given the opportunity to question candidates over their remarks during the debate, was dysfunctional the first night, and cancelled the second night.

Despite being a registered third-party advertiser which has spent tens of thousands of dollars according to Elections Canada, Rebel obtained a court order requiring the Debates Commission to allow them to send five people to the French Debate scrum, when actual journalist organizations were only allowed to send one.

As a result, more than half the questions on the first night were asked not by francophone journalists, but by right-wing anglophones from Rebel, True North, and Juno. These individuals engaged in offensive hate speech, denying the Residential School Genocide and attacking the validity of transgender women.

The lack of French questions at the scrum after the French debate was itself an embarrassment, but the bigoted attacks on vulnerable minority groups in Canada filled me with bile.

I commend Mr. Singh and Mr. Blanchet for refusing to engage with this filth, and I am highly disappointed in Mr. Carney for failing to stand unequivocally for trans Canadians, and for being unwilling to even say the word “trans”.

But things would get even worse. Today, only minutes before the English-language debate was set to conclude, and the scrum was set to begin, it was cancelled entirely by the Commission’s Executive Director, former journalist Michel Cormier.

Mr. Cormier claimed he and the Debates Commission were unable to provide a “proper environment”, following a verbal argument between Rebel CEO Ezra Levant and a journalist from the Hill Times which drew RCMP officers into the room.

In effect, because of interference from right-wing political groups, journalists were completely unable to scrum the candidates following the English debate, depriving Canadian voters of the ability to learn about the candidates and their positions.

If the Commission’s 2021 debates were received poorly, this was an unmitigated disaster. The format was a mess, where the moderators failed to keep an equal playing field. The press scrums collapsed, as journalists were prevented from interacting with the leaders and holding them to account.

And if the Debates Commission is incapable of hosting debates, then it does not have a reason to exist. Political debates have been successfully hosted by broadcasters and academic institutions, none of whom have suffered anything close to these problems.

I feel bad for my colleagues in the press, real journalists whose time was wasted with this bullshit. I feel bad for both the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, who were forced to compete in an unfair contest and then shamed by the pundit class for being upset about it.

And most of all, I feel bad for every Canadian at home who watched and was deprived of a real debate, with questions from actual journalists.

This was more than pathetic. It was a joke. And I’m done giving it attention.