Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Jan. 30th, 2018

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I'd like to touch a little on some of the dynamics of elections in Trinidad and Tobago. In Canada we have a very strong leader-centred system, where local candidates are very much, for better or worse, tied to the national leader. The success of candidates in local ridings is tied to the national party and the national leader. Is that a similar dynamic in Trinidad and Tobago, where an individual representative in a district is very much tied to the success of the national campaign and the national leader?

[Angella Persad]

Yes, it's very much so. The national leaders really are the ones who are the dominant leaders. We have typically mainly two entities here that are the leading parties in Trinidad and Tobago. Just as a bit of background, we have two major ethnic groups in Trinidad and Tobago. We have the Indians and we have the Africans. The two dominant parties are made up of both of these. Then we have maybe one or two other parties that are made up of people who are undecided, who are not blindly loyal, I would say, to one or the other. That is how the makeup goes.

When this commission started in 2010, one thing that made the chamber decide it must take a responsibility was because of the campaigning that was going on, the dirty politics and the ridiculous, for want of a better word, campaigns that were going on. There was no debate. There was no question of issues, discussing issues, giving people an opportunity to understand how leaders were going to treat and deal with these issues. There was nothing like that at all. There was just a lot of campaign rhetoric. It was speaking of the parties and speaking of individuals as well. The chamber, at that point, decided, “We have to take a responsibility here to improve on this and give our country a chance to really improve the democracy and vote not on tribal lines but on issues.” That's the background, I would say.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Excellent.

Prior to the establishment of the debates commission, were there any debates at the local level in individual districts? I know here in Canada we often have chambers of commerce debates, agricultural society debates. Was there anything like that at the local level in terms of individual districts at all?

[Catherine Kumar]

No, we didn't have anything like that. What you would find is that the chamber of commerce would invite the prospective leaders to come and address their members, and the members would ask them questions. In the context of a debate, no, we have not had that. We've had interviews on television, but not a debate.

Also, the candidates are strongly tied to the leader, even though they go through an interview process before deciding who would be the candidate. The PM has a veto there. Well, the leader has a veto there, and he or she can decide which candidate will go up. It's very strongly tied.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I think that would be, for better or for worse, similar to our system in terms of the centrality of our leader.

You mentioned earlier that the chamber provides a bit of in-kind service to the debate commission. Is that a structure that you would recommend to Canada, having an existing entity provide the administrative support, or would you recommend a completely independent structure?

The example that has been raised is that our Elections Canada could perhaps provide the administrative function, but have a separate commission. Is that something you would recommend?

[Catherine Kumar]

I think as far as possible, you should remain independent from any organization, because as I said, even though the chamber was extremely supportive, there were times when that worked against us, because people said the chamber is big business and big business is supporting this, so you're not really for the people.

So as far as possible, and especially if you get it legislated and you get funding for it, I think you should try your best to have your own supports so that you're really independent.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Ms. Sahota, please.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

My follow-up question is about how you disseminate the debates, how you get them out to people. We had a consortium of networks here in the past that used to organize some of the main debates. There's a lot of competition over who gets to carry the debate, what network is going to be the official provider, who's going to craft the questions, which journalists are going to get involved.

How do you deal with that? You said you had in-house production. Do you produce the whole thing and then give it out to all the networks?

[Catherine Kumar]

This is one area that we still have to look at, in terms of what is the best way for us to go forward.

So far we have contracted an outside production team to produce the debate. Then we go to the media house, the television stations—because it's a televised event—and ask them to bid on what it will cost to actually carry the debate. One of the conditions is always that they will allow all the other media. In other words, they would have a feed to all the other media houses.

That's the way we've operated in the past. For two of our debates, the government, which owns a television station, carried it for us at no cost, so we did not have to pay. We do not have the strong competition that you have or what you see in the U.S., where the different media houses are bidding for it.

The arrangement we're trying to have, going forward with the broadcasters' association, is that they would come together, this consortium kind of thing, and they would decide which one would carry it. They would have the feed go out to all and they'd take up the entire production cost, because the production costs during the debate itself are easily about 70% of our total cost.

If we can get the media houses to take up that production cost, produce the debate and carry it, it would certainly save us a lot in terms of financial resources.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

For us, accessibility is really important, making sure that all types of people with different income ranges have access to this debate, including hearing-impaired people, vision-impaired people. We're thinking about that quite a bit. The problem we run into is in making sure that some of the big networks carry it, because it's the ones that are on basic cable that more people have access to. However, they may not be satisfied with the production quality if we do it with a different production company and don't use their medium to produce; they all feel they carry a certain quality.

That's an issue, but we've been looking at Internet streaming over different types of social media. Have you considered any of that? Is your population connected more via Internet or do you find that more of the population has access to cable?

[Catherine Kumar]

More of the population has access to cable. The Internet as a means of viewing television is really something quite new in Trinidad and Tobago. Most people would be viewing our main cable stations. We don't have the vast number of stations that you have. We probably have only four large television stations, and all four will carry it.

We allow our radio stations to carry it too because, depending on what part of the country you're from, you will find it is only radio that you can tune in to.

What we have lacked in the past is coverage through social media. That's one of the things we're looking at for the 2020 elections, so that other people can.... During a debate people send in comments through social media, and we hear what their interests are and what they think about the debate. So far, that has been the limit of what we have used social media for during a debate.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

That's very interesting.

One of the other things we're looking at is whether people using social media can ask live questions to the debaters. How can we reach the greatest number of people?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We all really appreciate your attendance here today. It has been very helpful for us to see another Commonwealth situation that is ahead of us in having a debates commission.

Thank you and good luck. We look forward to your sunshine being sent north.

[Catherine Kumar]

Thank you very much. We wish you all the best in forming a debates commission that is best suited to your country.

[Angella Persad]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We're going to suspend for two minutes while we make a technological change for the other witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Good afternoon, welcome back to the 86th meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

Our witnesses on this panel, by video conference from Jamaica, are Noel daCosta, chairman, and Trevor Fearon, resource consultant. Thank you both for making yourselves available today. I'm sure you're very busy, but this is going to be very helpful for us.

Mr. daCosta, if you would like to make some opening remarks, we'll then have the committee members ask each of you questions.

[Noel daCosta, Chairman, Jamaica Debates Commission]

Thank you very much.

The Jamaica Debates Commission was formed in 2002. Our main purpose was to promote pre-election debate between the political parties so as to promote civil discourse, to defuse political tension, and to inform the public of the protagonists so that they could make informed decisions. The debates commission is a partnership between the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce—and Mr. Trevor Fearon here is the CEO of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce—and the Media Association Jamaica, which is a body composed of media house owners.

We established a “partnership at will” and we have now converted that into a registered legal entity. We are going to be applying for charitable status shortly. The Jamaica Debates Commission is run by six directors who are nominated, three from the chamber of commerce and three from the Media Association Jamaica.

How do we work? We operate under a strict code of conduct. We have developed ground rules and guidelines for debates conduct. We call on our media partners to provide the resources to stage the debates.

What have we done to date? We have organized political debates ahead of general elections in 2002, 2007, and 2011 and staged political debates ahead of local government elections in 2012 and 2016.

Typically, our debates are organized. We have three debates: one on social issues, one on economic issues, and one where the leadership of both parties debate each other. We also have team debates on local government elections.

Our debates are staged live events in studio settings with invited guests. We use moderators, who act as traffic cops, and a panel of journalists who pose questions to the protagonists. All telecasts are free to air, on TV and radio, and since 2007 we have been streaming via the Internet. Those who use our signals are obliged to broadcast exactly as received. We do that because we're supported and funded by sponsors from the private sector. In breaks in the debate we insert their advertisements, their promotional material, so we want those who rebroadcast the signal to use it exactly in that form.

During a debate, we set up a debate watch in various communities where we encourage the people in the community to look at the debate, to record their impression, and to discuss it after the debate has been completed. We also have done polls after the debates to see how effective they are, with some interesting results to date. We also have post-debate debriefings and we report back to our sponsors as to how we have spent the money that they entrusted with us to provide these debates.

Those are my key points.

[Trevor Fearon, Resource Consultant, Jamaica Debates Commission]

I think that's pretty comprehensive.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much.

That's great. It's another different model.

The way the questions work, each member from each party gets seven minutes total. It includes their questions to you and your answers to them.

We'll start out with Mr. Graham.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you for the presentation.

I note that Jamaica seems to have a fairly two-party system. I saw that in the last election it was 50.01% to 49.99% or something like that. It was a very tight election.

What are the thresholds for participation in the debate, and how do you handle third parties, the other parties that don't have significant support right now?

[Noel daCosta]

We have criteria to be accepted, because we've had requests in the past from third and fourth parties to be included in the debates. We have some criteria they must satisfy.

The first is that they should have a written constitution, which requires the holding of periodic elections for the selection of officers. In addition, they must be recognized by the chief electoral officer as an entity that is found appropriate to participate in the debates and to contest political elections.

The second is that they should, in the last general elections, have had an aggregate of not less than 10% of the valid votes cast.

The third condition is that in a national public opinion poll recognized by the commission as having been scientifically conducted, they should have obtained not less than 15% support as a party for whom electors intend to vote.

They must satisfy condition one, which is the first one, as well as either of the other two conditions.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

The board of the commission is three members from the chamber of commerce and three from the media association. How do you assess the independence of the organization in terms of the ability for it to make decisions completely independent from the business community or from media's own interests?

[Noel daCosta]

We have a strict code of conduct that all the commissioners must follow. They sign a document saying that they have satisfied all the conditions.

We have learned that the integrity of the commissioners is critical to people putting trust in the work that we do. For example, our code of conduct proscribes making personal contributions or funding to any of the parties or candidates, attending the fundraising events of any of the candidates, participating in their campaign in any form, writing or authoring any documents that the protagonists might wish to put out, being a candidate in any of the elections, disclosing their own voting intentions, and several other criteria that we have developed to ensure that their political credentials are above reproach.