Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This recommendation, members of committee may recall, was made by Duff Conacher, the witness for Democracy Watch, in which he suggested we take this opportunity under the fair elections act to create a legislative framework for the leaders' debate. I think we'll all agree that the leaders' debate has become a very significant pivot point during election campaigns and I think a lot of Canadians assume that there are some set of rules and that Elections Canada supervises them.
Probably all of us around this table know it's basically a large cartel of public and private broadcasters—CBC, Radio Canada, TVA, Global, and CTV—that makes a decision among the news directors, generally in consultation with the leaders of the more established parties, and there are no rules. Since there are no rules they can be applied rather inconsistently. So this amendment as proposed by Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch would suggest that the Chief Electoral Officer would henceforth have the ability to set the number and date for election debates, supervise them, invite to the debate the leader of every party in the last election that either had a candidate elected under that party's banner or had won 5% of the vote, and then require all the broadcasters in Canada to broadcast the debate.
This is in the interest of fair, transparent, and consistent leaders' debates for greater public information and engagement in electoral campaigns.
So I submit to you amendment Green Party-40.