Evidence of meeting #86 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was debate.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Is it possible for us to get a copy of that declaration?
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Good day, gentlemen. Thanks for joining us.
Very quickly, you said that it's privately supported. You seek out advertisers and they buy the ads or they get exclusive rights to put on their ads during the breaks of the debate. Is that correct? The broadcast of this debate is fully funded by the private sector.
12:10 p.m.
Chairman, Jamaica Debates Commission
Yes. We approach large corporations and we appeal to their public spirit, their national spirit, their civic pride, and their desire for free and fair elections. We also allow them to advertise during the breaks.
We sell packages. We have three packages—gold, silver, and bronze—which determine the extent of the advertising exposure at the beginning, at the break, and at the end of the debate.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
There is no government money being put forward to help support this endeavour in any of the debates.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
What about compulsory participation? I don't know if this has ever happened. You have a two-party system. I'm assuming everybody plays along, but do you have a rule in place if one of the major parties does not want to take part?
12:10 p.m.
Chairman, Jamaica Debates Commission
Yes. In our last general election one of the two major parties decided not to debate.
12:10 p.m.
Chairman, Jamaica Debates Commission
Well, our partners, you recall, are the media association, so we brought the full force of the media to let the whole country know that they are big clients of the debate and we negotiated with them up to, I think, the day before the debates were scheduled. At every step of the way, we kept the public informed as to how the discussions and the negotiations were going, and the reasons that were being put forward not to debate. In the end, they decided not to debate, so we had to cancel the debate.
An anecdote related to that is that, subsequently, the party that refused to debate lost the election. They did a poll, and one of the main findings of the poll was that their decision not to debate weighed heavily against them in the election. They have admitted that they have sort of learned their lesson, so they will participate in the future.
12:15 p.m.
Resource Consultant, Jamaica Debates Commission
We should say, though, if I could just interject, we had been in negotiations with both parties before, for weeks and months, and there was an agreement in principle that the debates would take place. The backing out came pretty much as a surprise to the organizers and to the Jamaican public.
12:15 p.m.
Chairman, Jamaica Debates Commission
They expressed their disapproval in the actual voting.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Again, thank you to our participants today. It's always nice to hear different viewpoints and different examples of debate commissions around the world, so it's great to have both of you joining us today by video conference.
In your opening comments, you mentioned that there are typically three debates: one on social issues, one on economic issues, and one a leadership debate. Am I right to understand that it's only the third debate, the leadership debate, where the party leaders participate? Who participates in the first two debates? Is it the minister responsible for social issues or economic issues, or is it simply a representative that the parties choose to participate in those debates?
12:15 p.m.
Chairman, Jamaica Debates Commission
It's the representative that the parties choose, but typically it is the minister responsible for the area on one side and the shadow minister on the other side.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
In the past typically has it only been a two-person debate, then, for those social and economic issues as well, or have there been examples where there has been a third?
12:15 p.m.
Chairman, Jamaica Debates Commission
No, in one of the social issues debates we agreed with the parties that they would put up three debaters, so we had three on each side, including those responsible for the particular area. This was a social issues debate. We had three on each side. For the finance debate, we would typically have the finance minister and the shadow finance minister.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Very good.
Now, in terms of public reaction or public interest, am I right to assume that typically the third debate, the leadership debate, is the most widely viewed? I'd be interested in how much public attention the first two debates, on the social issues and the economic issues, get compared to the leadership debate.
12:15 p.m.
Chairman, Jamaica Debates Commission
Those two debates are quite well supported and quite well viewed, not as much as the leadership debates, but the Jamaican society is very politically aware. Both debates engender a fair level of interest, but the leadership debate is the one that usually attracts the highest viewership, and the other two usually get more than average attention from the public.
12:15 p.m.
Resource Consultant, Jamaica Debates Commission
As you will have seen in our documentation, since 2007 we have done polls after the election itself, and from those polls we see the degree of viewership. It's still a substantial viewership. The persons who are watching will attest to whether or not watching this particular debate or that particular debate contributed to their voting decisions later. A leadership debate will probably be the most important, but the others also factor into the voting decision.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Very good. In terms of the commission's role in choosing the moderators of the debate, what role does the commission play after the moderators have been chosen? Does the moderator then take complete control over the debate in terms of the types of questions asked, or does the commission still have a role to play once the moderator has been chosen?
12:20 p.m.
Chairman, Jamaica Debates Commission
The moderator is primarily a traffic policeman. Persons at the debate are panels of journalists. The commission selects the journalists, but they also have to be agreed to by both parties that are debating. We have three journalists who ask the questions during the debate. The commission does not know what these questions are going to be. We sequester the journalists, so that amongst themselves we don't have two journalists asking the same question. Neither the commission nor anybody else has any idea what these questions are going to be.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
You said the journalists have to be agreed to by the political parties. Is it common for one or both of the political parties to veto one of the choices for journalists, or veto multiple choices, or is it generally accepted that the journalists who are proposed are typically accepted by the political parties?
