Thank you, Madam Chair, and through you to the member.
We worked very hard at consultation generally with stakeholders, and in particular with political parties or people who had political experience. Our advisory board, made up of seven people, was mandated to choose people who reflected the diversity of the country and gender neutrality, but in particular individuals who had direct political experience. Three of those—John Manley, Deborah Grey and Megan Leslie—have had long-standing experience in this body. The other four were people who also certainly had interest in, and some experience in, political activity, etc. We profited greatly from that.
Second, we undertook quite direct consultations with each of the parties—the party leaders or the party association presidents—on a number of questions, including who should be on the debate stage. We continued that consultation both before and after the debates.
Our own sense in those discussions with the parties was that they were actually quite satisfied with the degree of consultation. The findings of the Canadian election studies group was that there was a good rapport with the parties. We were careful not to simply take their suggestions and say “That's it” to one or the other. We carefully filtered them through others.
It was by no means perfect, and one can improve on it, but I think our sense was that the rapport with the parties was certainly substantially more involved in the fundamental issues than had been the case when a commission was not present to do that. The negotiations between the parties and the debates producers sometimes produced results that were not as good, including the failure to have an English debate in 2015.