This is probably, Mr. Chair, the most gracious and generous group of humans around a committee table that I've every had the joy to encounter. I can't thank you enough.
I have been, as some of you will know, and as the minister knows, one of those leaders who has been through what I would call the leaders' debates wars. I've had the experience of meeting with the consortium. I do know that they did have rules, at least one of which they stated publicly, which was that you have to have one elected MP or at least one MP. Initially, the Bloc Québécois had members who had moved from other parties, and the Reform Party was in the national leaders' debate for the first time before Preston Manning had won his seat but when Deb Grey had, so there were rules.
I know I'm not here to give evidence. I'm grateful that the committee has called the Green Party, and the vice-president of the party will be here on Thursday to present.
I want to add a bit to the minister's answer on why the leaders' debates matter, and then ask some questions.
Only because of my involvement as leader of a much smaller party am I aware that the national media decisions around which parties get covered on a regular basis during the election hinges on that decision about inclusion in the debates. It's actually something that has been controlled by media. It's been very hard and opaque to understand the process, because the news media themselves can't cover themselves well.
Decisions about inclusion or non-inclusion have really large-scale implications for public information about parties. It's almost been as though the national news media have been able to say, “This is a real party, but this one isn't.” Even then, having won a seat, I just wanted to say something about your mentioning that 2015 was a departure from traditional practice. The Green Party was invited to participate in the national televised English-language and French-language debates, but when the prime minister said he wasn't going to appear in the debates, that's when things went quite sideways.
I had a few questions about how you see this moving ahead. I'm very grateful that the government is taking action to create some rules and to set up a commissioner. As you see the development of the rules going forward, how much do you see as an advantage that there will be some continuity of the traditional past practice of ensuring that you have at least one seat? Is that a reasonable criterion going forward?