Evidence of meeting #25 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was journalists.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Director and Acting Commissioner, Leaders' Debates Commission
Yes, and the 19 million people who actually watch the debates.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Ponoka—Didsbury, AB
No, no, but they're not there. I'm talking about people who are physically there.
Executive Director and Acting Commissioner, Leaders' Debates Commission
Yes.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Ponoka—Didsbury, AB
It's basically just your staff, the leaders, the political staff with the leaders, and the press. Along with the technical people delivering it, that's who is in the room—that's it.
Executive Director and Acting Commissioner, Leaders' Debates Commission
That's right. Plus, you have networks that organize studios to broadcast live from the venue. They are not in the press room, but they are close to the press room.
Liberal
Liberal
Tim Louis Liberal Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Cormier, thank you for appearing once again before this committee.
Our review of the main estimates is an important opportunity for parliamentarians to examine how public resources are being used to support informed democratic participation. We know that leaders' debates play a key role in helping Canadians understand party platforms and make informed voting decisions.
You mentioned that there is a definite distinction between an election year and an off-election year. You reduce staff and reduce costs. When an election is called, you referred to hiring for “special projects”, when you have to expand quickly. How fast can you expand? How fast can you bring that team up to speed on average, traditionally?
Executive Director and Acting Commissioner, Leaders' Debates Commission
We can do it quite quickly. I mean, we have people identified who actually come on board when it's needed, but some of the contracts we do in preparation for an election are not done just when the election starts. It's prior to that. For example, there are all the technical aspects of dealing with security and the different security agencies, whether it's physical security or cybersecurity, which changes every cycle because of the evolution technologically. We have people who start doing this months before the expected election. This is one example.
Liberal
Tim Louis Liberal Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
Even in off-election years, you're still keeping those channels open.
Executive Director and Acting Commissioner, Leaders' Debates Commission
In a minority government situation, it's kind of dicey, because you have to try to anticipate. We have to be “election ready” all the time, in a sense. When there is an obvious move towards an election, then we ramp up quickly for the immediate task of delivering the debates. Otherwise, for the planning phase—for example, the technical aspects of the production of the debates and whether they change, or the contracts you have to sign with the providers—that's done in the year or months before the expected election.
Liberal
Tim Louis Liberal Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
You mentioned production facilities, and I believe in the opening statement you said it was a cost savings by having the debate inside a production facility that had all the equipment needed. I believe you mentioned CBC. How much notice did they need, or how much notice would they like? Would you consider doing that again as a cost reduction factor?
Executive Director and Acting Commissioner, Leaders' Debates Commission
Yes, we are. It did work well for the debates. There's already a set there that's just adjusted. Of course, you have the people who work inside their own facility, so it reduces the cost and all of that.
At the same time, we know that it's also demanding on a lot of the political parties and even the journalists who follow the election, because it would be easier and more convenient for everybody to be in Ottawa, where you can take a pause during the campaign and be at your offices or homes, especially for the leaders who prepare for the debates. We bring everybody to Montreal, and everybody's in hotel rooms and temporary offices. It's not optimal, but we think that the money we save by doing this justifies that. We've talked about this to the parties, and they agree that it's well worth the effort to actually reduce costs.
Liberal
Tim Louis Liberal Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
It's basically weighing the pros and cons. Okay, that's appreciated.
Your mandate is to organize two leaders' debates, one in each official language. It ensures broad, accessible, high-quality broadcasts and maintains the debate's integrity. In your opening statement, I believe you mentioned there were other languages that the debate was translated into. Can you mention that again? How many languages was it translated into? Does that number change from election to election? If so, what are the criteria for choosing the languages that a debate will be translated into?
Executive Director and Acting Commissioner, Leaders' Debates Commission
The criterion is that it reaches communities that, because of language, may not be as keen to watch the debates in French or in English. We partner with OMNI Television, which is a multicultural television network. Through discussions with them, we identify which main languages should be offered. They go from Italian to Punjabi to Mandarin. We also assess the communities that actually would be touched by this. The idea is to offer a service whereby people who may not watch the debates because they're not fluent or fluent enough in French or English, will have access to the debates in their language, and that increases political engagement with these communities. I think that's one of the big parts of our mandate.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
We'll now turn to Madame Normandin for two and a half minutes, please.
Bloc
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Thank you very much.
Mr. Cormier, I believe the last time you were with us was on December 4. At that time, you were asked about the work you do on a day-to-day basis. I'd like you to speak to that in more detail.
Could you tell me what has been done since December 4, what you've been working on?
I understand that there were most likely two weeks of holidays at Christmas. Aside from that, could you tell us in very concrete terms what has been accomplished in the past three months? You talked about it in broad terms in response to a question from my colleague Mr. Wilkinson.
Executive Director and Acting Commissioner, Leaders' Debates Commission
We are working on preparations for the next debates. We need to be ready. The government is still a minority government, and I don't know how long that will last. We're also working on the follow-up to our report. Now we have to look at how we're going to prepare, for example, briefing notes for the next commissioner. These notes will focus on the challenges we identified in the report so that there are decision points. That's one part of the job.
We're also in discussions with the most recent producer of the debates, CBC/Radio-Canada, which is still under contract with us for the next debates, if they take place suddenly. So we're working to see what technical improvements we could make. I'm thinking of the layout of the media rooms or other things that are very trivial, but still important.
We are also in the process of reviewing all the technical language, such as changes to the participation criteria and changes related to the accreditation of journalists to ensure that everything holds up legally. That's always an important consideration. We're always vulnerable to legal challenges. That's not the case for media organizations that organize debates, for example. So we need to make sure everything is legally sound. We're also preparing the year-end financial reports, which have to be submitted shortly.
Those are three examples of what we're doing.
Bloc
Executive Director and Acting Commissioner, Leaders' Debates Commission
Over the next three months, we will be completing those exercises. Then we're going to finish the work we're doing with the producers—which also isn't finished yet—to reassess the needs of political parties and the media in terms of debate venues. We'll also be reviewing the technical aspects to see whether any improvements can be made.
One of the things we're very interested in is how AI could pose a risk to the debate environment in future elections. We're starting discussions with security agencies and experts to make sure we have contacts. In an emergency, if there is a computer breach or some form of cyber sabotage, for example, how should we react? We're therefore developing scenarios, a kind of role-playing exercise to determine what needs to be done and who needs to act in a given situation. That's the kind of planning we're doing.
Liberal
Conservative
Michael Kram Conservative Regina—Wascana, SK
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Cormier, for joining us today.
For matters such as this, it's helpful to look at what other countries do and to learn from their best practices. I've looked up what they do in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and France. They all have elections, and they all have leaders' debates, but none of them has a government-run debates commission. The debates are all done by the networks or the private sector, all at no cost to taxpayers.
I'm wondering why Canada needs any of this. Why don't we hand the entire matter over to the private sector and save the taxpayers $3 million?