I'm happy to notice that my colleagues are doing what I normally do, which is skipping a committee meeting. And don't worry, I have no intention of making a habit of this.
I should note that while I am an employee of Maclean's and of Rogers, and I have always been a keen student of what is good for my employers, I am not speaking today as their designated representative but as an individual.
I am here at the committee's invitation. I can only guess, because it wasn't explained, but my hunch is that it's because I moderated the Maclean's national leaders' debate in 2015. It was the first debate in the history of Canadian elections that wasn't organized by a consortium of broadcast networks. As such, it upset some people. I believe we did good journalism.
I might make myself more useful today by explaining how the 2015 campaign differed from the 11 previous campaigns, during which the only debates were those organized by broadcasters' consortia. I will explain why I believe, and hope, that 2015 was not a mere aberration, but rather the dawn of a new and promising era in Canadian democracy.
I will explain first why the consortium model was necessary in the past, why it is less necessary or not necessary at all today, and why any attempt to impose a new version of the old, monolithic model could prove very counterproductive.
How did the consortium debates come to be? At first it was a combination of true civic-mindedness and necessity. There was real generosity in the broadcast networks' decision to organize the 1968 leaders' debate. There was also the fact that nearly 50 years ago, only the combined expertise of several networks and their combined news budgets could get cameras into the Centre Block and a live television feed out of it.
For most of my life there was no realistic alternative to a debate organized by a broadcast consortium. Over the last couple of decades, that changed. First, CPAC and a constellation of small, new networks, and then the Internet and social media became viable conduits for the information a debate provides. By 2015, it was feasible for others to organize debates without relying on the big networks. At least two party leaders, the Conservative Party's Stephen Harper and the NDP's Tom Mulcair, saw a tactical interest in encouraging such efforts. So, Maclean's organized a debate, as did The Globe and Mail, sort of, the Munk debates, and two competing French-language broadcast partnerships in Quebec. The old networks declined to carry the signal the English debate organizers offered. As a result, fewer people saw the 2015 debates as they happened than in previous election campaigns. That was a serious flaw.
However, our debate was viewed, as Minister Gould said here the other day, by 1.6 million people on television, and as she didn't say, by large numbers of people on a wide assortment of Internet outlets, including several news websites, YouTube, Facebook, and more. All the debates received saturation news coverage and polling suggests they influenced public opinion.
My main point to you today is that the technological revolution that made 2015 possible is continuing and accelerating. Costs of mounting a live broadcast have collapsed to near zero. By 2019 and 2023, the number of organizations with the wherewithal to organize debates and to get them in front of audiences will be much bigger still than in 2015.
It would therefore be odd to recreate, by public policy, a simulacrum of the broadcast consortium's old, natural monopoly long after the conditions that created that monopoly have ended. As Paul Adams from Carleton University told this committee last week, the consortium partners kept very pragmatic considerations, like audience size and scheduling conflicts, in mind when organizing their earlier debates. Good for them. They should. Anyone else would keep similar considerations in mind. We sure did. But precisely so: the debate model you grew up with was not handed down on stone tablets from a perfect deity. It was a product of its times, both flawed and wonderful. And the times have changed.
In the past few years, I have told my friends that the model for leaders' debates in the near future might take the form of an average citizen from Regina or Moncton inviting the party leaders to their home to sit around the kitchen table, with the conversation being broadcast from coast to coast via Periscope or Facebook Live. In my opinion, the future looks a lot more like that than the old, monolithic model we are used to.
At least that's one possible future if this committee and the government don't try to capture the past in a bottle by mandating a single, monolithic, “one size fits every campaign” model of debates.
I was struck by how every witness you heard last week called for a light, adaptable debate commission that would vet, and in some cases endorse, debate proposals, sometimes surprising and unexpected proposals, from a wide variety of outside proponents, every witness, that is, except the minister. Minister Karina Gould said she wants to institutionalize debates and ensure “broad representation of membership and advisory bodies to be reflective of Canadian society and ensure the inclusion of women, youth, indigenous peoples, and people with disabilities”.
I can only laud the instinct behind that sort of statement, but that language mirrors her predecessor's language during this government's early, brief attempt at reforming the electoral system last year. It sounds to me like it could be a formula for endless internal process arguments leading to debates that would last about six hours and have the leaders of seven or nine parties interrogated by a panel of 40 jurors chosen through what we would no doubt be assured was an open, transparent, and merit-based selection process, and no less open to criticism for all that.
Would representatives of small business, the Canadian Medical Association, the skilled trades, or advocates of proportional representation be included? Why or why not? Would a single moderator ever again have the latitude to press leaders who attempted to provide partial or evasive answers, as Stéphan Bureau and Steve Paikin did in some of the best debates of the past, or would the whole process become so earnest and cumbersome that any political leader worth her salt could effortlessly run rings around it?
The variety of the 2015 debates was a feature, not a bug. Interesting questions were asked. Should Elizabeth May or Gilles Duceppe participate? Should there be an audience in the room? Should there be one subject area or a broad selection of topics? Those questions received different answers from different organizers. Crucially, leaders were robbed of a chance to spend months learning how to beat the format, because they could not know which format to expect.
Variety and surprise are valuable in debates, too, because, Lord knows, life always delivers plenty of both to our elected leaders. I would argue strongly against any future in which the only debates that get broadcast are those designed by a debate commission or by its designated host network. There must be some provision for novel and unorthodox proposals to become reality. A commission could help some of those proposals along by declaring some debates, designed by outside proponents, a “must carry” on traditional broadcast networks, and by declaring them a “must attend” by political leaders. Good luck enforcing the latter provision, though. The stakes in a campaign are so high that, frankly, leaders will do what they believe is in their interests, as all of them always have.
Whatever you recommend, please favour lighter structures over heavier, more flexibility over less. Campaign techniques and the media environment are changing rapidly. If campaign debates become the only element of the modern campaign that doesn't change, then party strategists will quickly learn how to short-circuit them or hot-wire them to their own partisan advantage.
I look forward to hearing from the other panellists and your questions.