I want to thank the committee for inviting me to speak. I have to say I'm envious of what you're doing. Legislative committees are an essential role in our parliamentary system, and I really want to thank everyone for their service.
Just to situate my ability to offer comment, committee members should be aware that my area of research is Canadian political communication and political marketing. I also study how political strategists are engaged in media management and message coordination. Generally speaking, my approach is non-partisan, and I try to balance all available perspectives when arriving at an informed assessment of a situation.
I want to start by affirming that in my opinion, it's reasonable to create an independent commissioner to organize party leaders' debates. I appreciate that the negotiations with the broadcast consortium can be challenging, and as others have pointed out, the ways of communicating with Canadians are evolving. To me, a debate about debates takes away from attention that should be paid to public policy. However, I don't think we should be fooled; strategic games are not going to vanish by the creation of an individual or any particular commissioner—